A Good Time in Spite of All

So, its been quiet round here? Well, yes, the Smart Party have been heavily involved in weekly games and organising campaigns and not so much of the one-shots we’re here to talk about. With summer over however (did it ever really begin?) there’s a convention a month into the new year starting with last weekend’s CONcrete Cow in Milton Keynes. This is a one day con Ideal for one shot adventures, and although I could only go last minute and hence didn’t get much chance to prep games or get involved in advance, I did get chance to play in a game of Spite: the second book of Pandemonium – following on from Dread (the first book, not the game involving Jenga as a resolution mechanic). Ably refereed by the always-reliable Mr Dorward and good fun as it was, it reintroduced me to the world of Playing RPGs With People You Don’t Know and threw up some behaviours I observed around the table; behaviours I think we could all do with trying to avoid…

Support Your GM

It’s easy to go to cons and think that the GM is there to offer you a service and should be great at what he’s doing and deliver a fantastic game with control over all elements, including other players (who he doesn’t know).  It’s also easy to forget that most people running games are doing it for the love of the hobby, that they’ve paid to be there and if they do get some kind of reward, a five pound gaming voucher doesn’t really cut it when compared to the normal out-of-hours rate they could be getting on a weekend…  So what can we do to help?

Wimmin

Strange beasts aren’t they, with their funny smells, crazy ways of dressing and odd ways of thinking about things.  But enough about mad hermits in roleplaying games, how do we deal with the fairer sex?  Well from a player point of view that’s easy isn’t it?  Treat them like everyone else – what’s wrong with you you chauvinist pig!  Female characters however are often neglected.