Category: The Gauntlet: Our Community

Last night, we had an incredible session of Dungeon World. It will go down as one of my favorites, I think. 

There were a few things that made yesterday sing, but importantly, the party finally started to take control of its own destiny in the red & pleasant land of Voivodja. Before, there was a tentativeness to all their actions, whereas last night there was simply action. 

We had a lot of fun set pieces, including an encounter with the horrifying Pale Bishop; a showdown with a vampire bride that nearly killed several party members; hints of the campaign to come in Carcosa; and a rendezvous with a new favorite NPC, the Tailor!

Now, I normally treat NPCs as fairly disposable, but I really, really like the Tailor, and especially how the players have embraced him (sometimes literally so). As a general rule, I’m not in favor of slotting in a Gandalf-type character to prod and guide the party members along, but in a weird setting like Voivodja, the Tailor was super-helpful because the party needed a little push from a friendly NPC to really get into the meat of things. He was a fun character who gave the group a certain measure of confidence in their choices. It’s going to be sad when he is inevitably killed by some Big Bad. 

Thanks to Ferrell Riley for running the other table. And to everyone else who came out: Daniel Fowler Marcus Centurian Scott Owen Kristen D Russell Benner Kyle Kowalski and Jeff Burke 

A discussion thread . . . 

Is fun enough?

The argument was made to me recently that a game’s mechanics are secondary to whether or not you are having fun. It goes something like this: so long as everyone enjoyed themselves, it doesn’t matter if the game’s mechanics were a little sloppy, or if the game didn’t introduce something new to the equation. 

Long-time listeners of the podcast will already know my response to this (see: my experiences with the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game). But I responded in this particular instance in a way that was a little more thoughtful than I ever have on the cast:  

“I guess I just view fun as table stakes. Fun should be a given. All of my players could probably gather at my house to play Mario Kart for three hours, too, and we would have just as much fun as we do when we play RPGs. And yet we don’t do that. We play RPGs. In fact, there’s probably a reason we choose RPGs over Mario Kart, despite the fact they are probably equally fun. Within that whole range of reasons, for me (and for a fair number of players, I suspect) is an appreciation for rules; an appreciation for the creative process of the designer; the fun of seeing how a specific story idea can be translated into unique mechanics; comparing a designer’s later work to their earlier work; and so forth.”

Thoughts? Am I way off-base here? Is fun the only thing that matters?

Witness him!

Today we say goodbye to David LaFreniere. Let’s celebrate his legacy with these goofy photos.

Every now and then, I have the idea of running a regular online game. Before the podcast, it was a difficult thing to make happen, because most of our membership was based in Houston, and the FTF Houston games were a more desirable way to spend their gaming time. 

But now, because of the podcast, we have more out-of-state membership. I’d like to hear from those people specifically. If the Gauntlet organized a regular online game (say, bi-weekly) is that something you would be interested in? 

Some pics from gaming this week. On Wednesday, we played Grant Howitt’s Regency Ladies. We had a couple of small issues with it, but it was otherwise great fun. On Friday, we continued our dual campaigns of Dungeon World in the Red & Pleasant Land setting. For Sunday, we played Chuck Eat Cheese, my hack of Dog Eat Dog that takes place in a pizza arcade. I think it went pretty well. 

We’ll discuss all these games on Friday’s podcast, but if you have any questions in the meantime, post them in the comments. Thanks to everyone who came out: Daniel Lewis Kristen D Ferrell Riley Scott Owen Russell Benner Jorge Salazar Kyle Kowalski Stephanie Marcus Centurian Daniel Fowler Jeff Burke David LaFreniere and Steve Mains.

Look at these shitty, hand-drawn checkboxes. smh Grant Howitt

We haven’t had just a straight-up discussion post in awhile.

We have straight male players in The Gauntlet (they shall remain nameless) who have expressed discomfort playing gay male characters. Mostly, I just roll my eyes and get on with things, rather than point out that “Just because you’re playing a gay character, doesn’t mean you are gay.”

As a gay man, I should probably be offended, but I take comfort in the fact that most everyone else at the table finds their position embarrassing. The part that bothers me more is that their choice is often contra to the needs of the story being told. We recently played Fiasco, for example, and one of the relationship ties between Character X and Character Y was “a forbidden love affair” (or something like that), and up until that point, Character X and Character Y were men. Once that relationship tie got added, it suddenly became of paramount importance to change the gender of one of the characters to female, even though doing so made the story about 100 times less interesting (note: I’m sure there were ways to make the story more interesting with the character’s gender swapped, but the players in our case failed to do so).

Another thing that happens in The Gauntlet (I’m embarrassed to say) is discomfort by certain male players at having their character be the object of affection of a character played by another male player, regardless of the gender or sexual preference of the characters involved. It’s a wrinkle on the above problem, but many of the same issues are involved. 

I’m curious where people stand on this. Should we always be allowed to just play the character we are more comfortable with? The specific case of feeling discomfort playing gay characters is almost the textbook definition of homophobia, but should we give people a pass in roleplaying games, since the experience is more immersive/personal? 

Thoughts? 

A little off-topic, but I have never read any of the stories and books that concern themselves with the Cthulhu Mythos. My knowledge of it comes almost entirely from games (CoC, Arkham Horror, and so forth). If I wanted to dive into reading some of the Mythos authors, where should I start? Keep in mind, I have actually read a little bit of H.P. Lovecraft and found it to be a bit dry. I’m open to trying him again, but I know there are authors who came after him who might be better choice. 

Thoughts? 

Yesterday, Doyle ran Call of Cthulhu for us using the Delta Green setting. Listeners of the podcast will know that the premise of our show is more or less an exploration of how deeply we dislike Call of Cthulhu, and so it may seem odd we found ourselves playing it this week.

With that said, it was definitely fun, but that fun had almost nothing to do with the mechanics of Call of Cthulhu. Doyle is a good GM, and the story being told was an interesting one, but whenever we rolled the dice, it felt like we were doing so out of some sort of ritual obligation. Because whenever Task X needed to happen, at least one of us at the table had a high enough skill to pass the check to ensure it happened. In other words, no matter what, we were progressing along in the story. There is another game that does that same thing, but in a much cleaner and more satisfying way: Cthulhu Dark.

But like I said, the story was pretty good, and it was an interesting change of pace to engage in a detailed, forensic-style investigation, which is something we don’t often do in The Gauntlet. Doyle expressed some disappointment that the experience wasn’t scarier, but I would argue that that’s almost impossible to achieve with six players at the table. 

Thanks to Doyle Tavener for running the game, and to everyone else for coming out: Daniel Lewis Steve Mains Ferrell Riley Jeff Burke and Hunter!