Category: The Gauntlet: How to Suck Less

We’re a very public FtF gaming group, meaning anyone who finds us on Meetup can show up to an event (provided there is space) and we will welcome them to play. But we’re also a community, and part of participating in a community is eventually doing what it takes to fit in with that community. As you might imagine, not everyone who shows up manages to accomplish that, and it’s on me, as the community organizer, to eliminate those friction points. 


Most cases are very easy. The player who is disruptive at the table, or who creeps on women players, or who uses the captive audience of the game table to spout their foul ideology – I have no problem whatsoever kicking those people out. Then you have the cases that are a little less black & white; people who are fundamentally good, but who are just kind of inconsiderate – the  crafters, the people who RSVP but don’t show, the last-minute cancelers, the chronically late, etc.. I try to give those folks a little bit of space to adapt to our way of doing things, and only ask them not to return when their inconsiderate behavior starts to be an inconvenience. 

But what do you do about the person who willfully refuses to participate in the fullness of the community? The person who is plainly not interested in being anyone’s friend, and who would rate your game on Yelp if he could? The player who reminds you on a regular basis that they’d rather be playing Pathfinder, and that they are essentially slumming it with your group because they had nothing better to do that night? The player who doesn’t give a damn about your G+, your podcast, or anything else you do to enrich the overall experience of being a member of the community? And who, despite all of the above, still turns up on a weekly basis to game?

We have had several people like that, and I never really warm up to them. 

DriveThru now sells these nifty plastic deck boxes. They’re dirt cheap, they come in two sizes, and they work great! Much better than my mounds of plastic baggies stuck in a drawer.

Daniel Lewis won’t let me talk about negative things on the podcast, but he has no power over me on Google+, so here it goes:

I am so disheartened by the OSR vs. Story Gamer tribalism that infects the indie RPG scene. It is the fucking worst, because, while I am principally a story gamer, I have a lot of affection for what the OSR people do, too. Mostly, I like to play games that are good. I don’t attach any kind of ideology to it, and I would certainly never say to anyone who is enjoying the kind of gaming they do “You’re destroying the hobby” or “You’re doing it wrong” (caveat for Pathfinder players: you are doing it wrong).

Maybe the role of The Gauntlet, and other gaming communities relatively new to the scene, is to reject this tribalism, and to reject the idea of using games to advance an agenda. In fact, as far as The Gauntlet goes, I’d say our focus on relentlessly playing games just for the fun of doing so makes us pretty radical in the indie RPG scene. 

Thoughts? 

I’m currently reading through some OSR modules (I like to adapt them for DW) and I am reminded of DW’s great strength vis a vis Dungeons & Dragons: in DW, everything stays dangerous. For example, that goblin sneaking through the shadows, armed with a poisoned blade, might be extremely deadly to a 1st level D&D character, but a total pushover for a character of just two or three levels higher. In DW, that goblin remains dangerous throughout the life of your character, because that is what makes sense. All the training in the world shouldn’t prevent that goblin from sticking his dagger into your fucking stomach and poisoning you to death, and DW’s mechanics acknowledge that.

The reverse is true, too: in D&D, your 1st-level fighter has no chance against a dragon. But why not? If he has the Magic Sword of Farfanel, or whatever the fuck is required to kill the dragon, why shouldn’t he be able to have a shot at it? It’s not like the 20th-level D&D fighter spent 19 levels exclusively training to kill that dragon. 

I know it’s silly to talk about “realism” in a fantasy game, but I’m starting to take Daniel Lewis’s point that “leveling-up” is a stupid concept, and in no way reflects how people in the real world advance in their chosen profession. Granted, DW characters still “level-up,” but they don’t really get “better.” They just get a few more options for ways to be awesome. 

Some dude over on the DW Tavern posted this game aid he uses, and it basically consists of a menu of plot kickers. It looks perfectly functional, but one of the options is “Lady Luck is a fickle bitch.” Am I the only one who finds that a little offensive? Not, like, clutching my pearls offensive, but just kind of off-putting? I’m sure homeboy didn’t mean any harm by it, but it just comes off a little misogynistic to me.