We are a group that have always played together regularly... although recently that means just at Xmas. Mainly because most of the people have moved abroad to work. We used to play weekly... Mainly on weekends... or any day that we didn't have to wake up really early the next day.

Some interesting points:

* "RPG as a learning tool" - Our mother tongue is not English, which is very handly for roleplaying... because we communicatre what our characters are doing in our language then whenever the characters are talking, they talk in English... Which can be kinda werid for those who have not roleplayed with us before... but we have taken people from 43% english in school to over 95% - In this way one can see roleplaying as an educational tool. - Not just language but cause and effect, morals, team playing, building trust between people, social interaction, etc. ALL of these skills have been vastly improved over time with roleplaying.
Some of our players have come from a bullied background and through roleplaying (someone else) built up a personal sense of security that enabled them to proceed in their own lives... Seeing the importance of things like settling down with someone they are comfortable with has played an important part in their finding a partner in real life and settling down. - I have actual examples of ALL of the things mentioned.

* "Having fun" - This is what keeps bringing people back to the table for more. Although some groups need to have a terrible threat and have characters die left and right... Our group tends to favour character survival. Beforte peopel start dissing this to render the game predictable and pointless... Our point is to have fun. Domination of others isn't high on the agenda, or bossing people about... The main fun element is living in a kind of movie reality... Where the plot relies on there being characters to persue it. -

* "Good GM(s)" - Although, these days, we all take turns GMing (controlling the game)... We had one of the best GMs around (in our opinion) at the start... He was great because he just let the characters get on with what they wanted to do... Without really having an adventure to railroad us through. - Most of the time we found our own adventures just "living" as the characters in this fantasy world. - Since we all take turns being shop keepers, guards, etc. as necessary... even sometimes, we have to exchange roles in the middle of the game... Like, when another's character enters the same shop, I'd have to play the shopkeeper with the same mannerisms and quirks hat he had when the other guy was playing him. This is now commonplace in our campaigns... The GM ended up just making a character to join in the fun!!!

* "After experiencing the BEST, anything else is a cheap imitation" - This is how I feel after playing with other groups because our original group has been split up due to people's occupations. Nothing else comes close to how our group evolved. I feel this is due to the amount of experience the group has roleplaying... and also our personalities don't clash. We are in harmony. Our characters may not all see eye to eye because of their backgrounds... They love to hate each other... but know they have to rely on each other to survise (sometimes) so they have fun with it.

* "Method of play" - When we meet many of us have ideas for what we might do... and we discuss the various plots we have in mind, then go with the one most of us find interesting. Sometimes parody, sometimes fantasy sometimes a kind of simulation... Man, I would have loved to have enough cassettes, or have remembered to TAPE any of our games... because many are like one long comedy film... but because it's spontaneous and many great creative minds at work, it's almost always hilarious. Ranging from slapstic from fumbled rolls to eating a duck warrior after he helped us with the quest. Another funny one was a guy who was collecting a "Circus of Freaks"... and the Troll he'd captured thought of the whole thing as his own little food store. - Fantasy you all know, like the epic tales of heroes... and simulations can be anything from running a newspaper (reporting crimes & conspiracy theories) to horror and super heroes... Like "What would you do if you suddenly could do - THIS?"

* "Our own system" - Early on we discovered flaws with all these rule systems... It just wasn't possible for any book (or person) to forsee or address every event that might need resolution by dice or such... So we started looking for simpler rpg systems. RuneQuest was excellent, because the stat was it's own limit. You had to roll OVER to improve it... and under to succeed. That made a lot of sense, but % was too much of a hassle and the magic system wasn't versatile enough... so I ended up writing a D9 system I called "RPS" ("Role Playing System"... (0 is always a fumble, 1 is critical))... but even that was contained in a booklet since it had some tables to help out with random character generation... but that wouldn't do if you were in the middle of no where with nothing but a pen and paper to play... So we toyed with D6 based Fighting Fantasy (Skill, Stamina Luck/Magic)... which led us to abandoning dice altogether. After years of playing this way, one of us found a mention of such diceless roleplaying games and mentioned people were calling it freeform roleplaying... So we called our little diceless system "Freeform RPG" and you can read about it here to see how we used it: http://www.heimsnet.is/thestone/freeform.htm

* "Bond" - Between us is a kind of lifelong bond, or friendship... More than friendship really, because we have discussed just about EVERYTHING in the world and WAY beyond... So we know where each of us is "coming from"... as they say. Occupationally we're very different people... Today one of us is a soldier in a foreign land, another is an instructor, a 3D animator, a wine salesman, ship yard manager... and a teacher.
... but we are all from Iceland.

I think you've summed up the virtues of roleplaying quite nicely. Rules are just tools, to be modified or discarded as the needs of the group dictate. RPGs are at their best when they are about communal storytelling. My group in New Orleans is also fairly eclectic, but we have this shared passion, and we love a good story. I think it'll be a challenge finding a collection of people that works together this well again . . . but then, I said something very similar before this group was assembled. Stories are good for the soul. Novels, movies, comic books, RPGs; the format (like varying rules mechanics) are just a delivery system.

And Thor, if you don't mind: my wife and I are planning a trip to Iceland for our honeymoon. If it's not too much of an imposition, can you contact me privately? I have a question about the place I can't seem to get answered anywhere . . . . ballingrud @cox.net

Hi Thor,

Thanks for posting. From what you describe, your gaming group seems to have a kindred spirit to my formative gaming communities. Especially with respect to:

• Playing multiple characters.
• Rotating/sharing gmships.
• Improvising system.
• Commitment to eachother as friends, with good communication and synergy.


Some instances from my current group's campaign have been written up on the Forge. Some are listed here. I'd be interested to see what you think. Another of my co-gms has posted the whole lot of links on his blog, if you go there now (12/31/04) you'll see them.

I've been wondering just this week about other game groups with a similar dynamic that must be out there. I'm working on an essay that will discuss this kind of play. An influential game in our groups' history was Ars Magica, which encourages many of the above aspects of gaming.

What do you think were the important games or factors that helped this arise in your group?

Best to you,
Emily Care

Ah, I just saw your free-form page. Yup, it's good stuff.

edited to add:

But it's interesting that you stick with gm's. Have you experimented with different structures (eg multiple gms, simple shared authorship etc)?

Plus: Welcome to the Forge! : )

friartuck wrote: ... And Thor, if you don't mind: my wife and I are planning a trip to Iceland for our honeymoon. If it's not too much of an imposition, can you contact me privately? I have a question about the place I can't seem to get answered anywhere . . . . ballingrud @cox.net

HEY! Where have you been all my life?
hehehe... No, that's not a "come on"... That's a kind of roleplaying greeting expressing sadness that our group didn't get to know you sooner!

I love it when like minded people get together... and indulge in what they enjoy most! Be it eating pizza, almost sleeping over (I say ALMOST, because most people go home after the session... in sunshine, rain or snow... and some are delayed a bit by acciidents on the way... but SHOW UP in those collar things, you know, in case they have had spinal injury!!! Nopw THAT'S DEDICATION! - Another guy, who just got his driver's licence reversed into a lamp post on his way here (we mainly play at my place))... Where were we?

... had we finished?

Ok... Well, it's great to know you (and your group) exist... and hope we can stay in touch! I bet our groups would blend seamlessly! Amazing.

Your roleplaying brother up north,
Thor

hey, I did some writeups of some of our campaigns too:

http://www.heimsnet.is/thestone/rp/rplinks.htm
(Scroll down to "Ongoing RP Campaigns")

I did most of the writeups myself... The others can't be bothered... and that's probably also why a camera crew arrived here one day... It was a bunch of multimedia students doing a final which was a documentary of roleplaying. I set them straight on a few things. - THey never did send me a copy of the tape, but friends (and some "admirers who are in denial") told me they had seen it playing at the multimedia dept. of the university. *sigh*

(I read your posts - and it seems Necrophilia seems to know no borders! ;-) We had one of those! ... we even had a kind of twisted Ad&d campaign where you only get Xp if you do something perverted (& therefore funny to others? for some reason!) - Problem was, the word got out what we were up to... and after that they thought we ONLY played that sort of thing... Now, it's really easy to GET a bad name... but you try getting RID of it... eh... example? Ok... Mr. Jackson!)

Hmm... Just caught a glimpse of that last statement...

Emily Care wrote: I've been wondering just this week about other game groups with a similar dynamic that must be out there. I'm working on an essay that will discuss this kind of play. An influential game in our groups' history was Ars Magica, which encourages many of the above aspects of gaming.

What do you think were the important games or factors that helped this arise in your group?

Emily Care wrote: Ah, I just saw your free-form page. Yup, it's good stuff.

edited to add:

But it's interesting that you stick with gm's. Have you experimented with different structures (eg multiple gms, simple shared authorship etc)?

Plus: Welcome to the Forge! : )

UPDATE
This Xmas our session was totally incredible! It really confirms the points outlined in the first message of this thread.

I'm working on a game log... and as usual I got/get totally carried away! What can I say... I just LOVE the whole group dynamic we have going on! It had a bit of everything... from chills going up and down one's spine (from seeing the pale blue face of a dead guy staring up, out of the water) to the "ahhh, love!" scene when one of our characters (under the influence of the fairy "dust of broken hearts") met his "true love"... whom the rest saw just as a common farm wench. - Ok, she was young and common looking, but with long hair. - Even her BROTHER (npc) was puzzled by the character's fascination. (hehe)

That's what I love about our games. They are constantly variable because of the creative minds at work around the table.

Yours,
Thor

ps. I'll post a link to the session log as soon as I'm done. (Warning: It may be LONG! It's already about 30 pages! - I do love my game logs! I don't know about other people... but when/if I ever have kids... These game logs are something I can read to them. Another pretty cool thing to do with these logs is to have the Windows Voice thing read them out. Man, my kids might get really screwed up, though! Perhaps I better not (hehe) It's a pity when they're teenagers, they don't like to be read to! ;-)

Hey Thor,

Gaming is the best, yes? And gaming well is truly priceless.

Gaming logs can be useful things. In Japan they write up scripts of excellent campaign sessions that they call "replays" (right, correct me somebody if I got that wrong.). However, rather than just a recounting of what happened in the game world during that session, they include descriptions of how the players interacted, letting other players who read the replay know how the game group worked together to have such a creative and productive session. This is helpful in a lot of ways--much of the activities of gaming are basically oral tradition: how to "GM" and play is such a subjective and changeable thing that being able to have an insight into the actual dynamics at work in a well-functioning gaming group is extremely valuable.

That said, 30 pages would be a lot to get through to hear about a game session! : ) I'd be most interested to hear a few pithy descriptions from you of interactions that exemplify how you and your game group bring those amazing moments into being. What kinds of collaborative brainstorming lead up to the characters finding the dead guy staring up out of the water? Was this something sprung on the players as a gut wrenching surprise? Or in the midst of discussion, had someone said "uh-oh, you know where we find him don't you? Right in the blessed mere!"

Every play group has unique ways of working together, that are influenced greatly by the system they are using which interact with the interpersonal dynamics of the group. From what you've described of the free-form system your group uses, your dynamics would most likely be pretty unusual. If that makes sense as a framework for describing some of your game session, it'd be great to hear about it.

yrs,
Emily Care

ps the thought of the windows voice reading a game log is very funny! *and-then-the-ar-cher-took-straight-a-im....*