Having Fun Between Delusions

Written by Jeff Carlsen on 2009/12/11 – 08:00 -

Behind the BarThank you for your feedback last week. It was quite valuable.

In exchange, I’m going to let you in on a terrible secret. This is just between you and me, though, because Apathy Games is a game developer first and foremost, and this could destroy us.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter what game you play. You could have just as much fun with your group without every buying another RPG product. This is because roleplaying is just playing make-believe with your friends. Mutual delusion, if you will.

We’ve always made an experience of it. Bad jokes and movie quotes are still the heart of our sessions. At some point we added drinks, flirting, and socio-economic debates, but it’s really just a party we hold every week at the same time.

I’m sure you do the same. Sure, you love your characters. The settings and plots can be imaginitive and gripping. Someone will inevitably start shouting about the rules, or spend their entire turn searching for a dropped die. But it’s a party with lots of pretending.

What We Want From You

Chances are, some of your best gaming moments had little to do with the game, and we ask you to share these in the comments. And to up the stakes, let’s make this competitive. The person with the best story will be featured in next week’s Behind the Bar, along with our accolades on how awesome they are. Also, I live by Mount Rainier, and while I won’t climb it, I will totally roleplay myself shouting your name from the mountain top.

So get commenting. We need those stories for our insidious plans.


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We Need You, We Want You, We Got to Have… Your Opinion

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2009/12/04 – 08:00 -

Behind the BarFor this week’s Behind the Bar, we’re asking more of you than ever before. Today, we want your feedback.

We’ve been posting for a month now, with a variety of differing topics and formats.

We’ve discussed our invasion strategy, after exploring its unexploited potential.

Covered how everyone should play an obnoxious character.

And continue to show you how to introduce a new player

Some of these spark more discussion than others. So, which have been your favorites? Which leave you underwhelmed? Are there days you simply ignore?

And most importantly, what would you love to see that we’re not doing?

Thank you for your time, and we look forward to your comments.


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What is your favorite character and why?

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2009/11/27 – 08:00 -

Behind the BarEvery Friday we’re going to open up the comments and our forums to asking you, the reader, questions. Then the next Friday we’ll highlight the best comments from the previous week’s discussion. Got a question you would like to pose to us or the public at large? Let us know!

What  is your favorite character and why?

My favorite character was a Shadowrun character by the name of Ed. He took the uncouth, and computer illiterate hindrances and didn’t speak English exceptionally well. So I role played this by consistently referring to myself in the third person. Of course, when he spoke in his native Japanese he was polite and was an exceptionally good speaker. The problem was most people didn’t speak Japanese. I loved him not only because he was a fucking damage machine with pistols but the role playing opportunities he rewarded me with. I could be a complete ass hole and it’d be “OK” because it entertained everyone at the table. Jeff (the GM for the game) had to start coming up with reasons to not give me karma points every game session because of my whacky antics, as I was beginning to overshadow some of the other players.


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Don’t Sweat the Rules

Written by Paul von Meerscheidt on 2009/11/20 – 08:00 -

Earlier this week when we gave you confessions from a rules lawyer, we posed the question, “What advice would you give a novice GM?” Apathy Games editor, Paul von Meerschedit, had this to say.

First rule: Don’t sweat the rules. Ever.

Especially in your first couple sessions. The rules are there for a reason, yes.  Eventually they will be both your crutch and your damnation, but until then they are a stumbling block to running a satisfying game, for either you or your players.

Rules are important in two situations:

1) Roleplay: Your players are trying to do something that you won’t just let them do, and they need to back it up with dice.

2) Combat: A numbers based abstraction of actions and maneuvers characters might use in a fight, used to delineate winners and losers.

Thus, the rules exist as an aid to enforce fairness (if all the players follow the same rules, favoritism is significantly more difficult) and provide stat based challenges to your players. With this in mind, consider the following: When a player asks to do something and you do not know if a specific rule for that action exists, does it matter? As long as the player is given some numerical way to attempt the challenge, the exact rule is irrelevant.

When I first run a game using a new system, I read the rules before play begins. I attempt to get a general idea of what a standard challenge is, and the way roleplaying and combat are adjudicated. Then I run the game. For any given situation, be it combat or roleplay, I will only look up one rule. The rest will either be adjudicated to the best of MY understanding, according to rules I have already learned, or with a simple test defined on the spot. After the situation has ended, I will look up the correct way to run that rule.

As a new GM, what do you do to avoid getting hung up?


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Weekly Question: Why do you roleplay?

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2009/11/13 – 08:00 -

Every Friday we’re going to open up the comments and our forums to asking you, the reader, questions. Then the next Friday we’ll highlight the best comments from the previous week’s discussion. Got a question you would like to pose to us or the public at large? Let us know!

Previously we asked how did you start roleplaying, and got a good number of interesting responses. One story talked about starting young and the simple addicting joy of games.

Lysander wrote: “1978. San Antonio Texas, 2:00pm, 4th grade (Yes, I’m that old). Elementary School. Mrs. Jonnie Heirholzers class (Yes, that’s her real name). She had not been feeling well the last couple of days. She said, “Free time, do what you want, but do it quietly.”

My friend John says, “Hey Mike, you like gladiators?” (Really! This was before the movie Airplane, where it has a a completely different connotation) I said “sure!”

Out comes a Microgame from Steve Jackson called ‘Melee’. It was simplistic, it had dice, maps and cool action figure picture/pieces. But to a 9 year old, it was ‘WOW’. I was hooked. John addicted me to this, which laid the foundation for D&D. Ever since them, my school work and personal relationships suffered, ‘cuz I’d be playing or writing or thinking of things for RPG’s instead of studying or trying to meet girls.

That’s my story. What a ride! Can’t wait to see what’s over the next rise…”

Thanks for story Lysander! Be sure to let us know what the next rise is!

For this week we chose a question that sounds simple but can have a breadth of responses.

Why do you role play?

Tyson J. Hayes – Playing games always sparks my imagination, especially role playing, where I can develop new personas and live out far more fantastical lives. Of course my characters tended to be counterparts of myself as I delved into what it would be like to play in a morally polarized world where there was definite good and evil with less shades of grey. Would I be the good healer? Or Chaotic Stupid warrior hell bent on destroying everything? So for me I role play because I’m allowed to do things in game that I would never do in person and then get to play out the consequences.


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Weekly Question: How did you start Roleplaying?

Written by Tyson J. Hayes on 2009/11/06 – 08:00 -

Every Friday we’re going to open up the comments and our forms to asking you, the reader, questions. Then the next Friday we’ll highlight the best comments from the previous week’s discussion. Got a question you would like to pose to us or the public at large? Let us know!

As it’s our first week of our weekly questions we don’t have anything to highlight from the previous weeks post. Want us to highlight your comments next week? Leave us a comment letting us know how you started roleplaying!

How did you start Roleplaying?

Jeff Carlsen: This question brings back memories best left buried. See, when I was very young I loved dragons. LOVED them. This is well before I knew what statutory meant, and my torrid love affair forced my parents to buy me a board game called Dragon Strike. Turns out, this wasn’t really a board game. It was a gateway drug produced by TSR to lure supple youths like myself into the dark realms of Dungeons & Dragons. The rules were stripped down, and it used pre-printed maps on standard monopoly style boards, but the rest was all there. Polyhedral dice, plastic miniatures, pre-built adventures, a DM’s screen, and pre-printed character sheets. But most evil of all, it came with a cheesy introductory video that showed you how to…(gulp)…roleplay.

When my uncle, a veteran roleplayer, discovered that I was playing this game, he took me under his wing. He started introducing rules like initiative and locations not on the supplied maps, and before I knew it, I was playing D&D. He ran a couple of games within my family, but his greatest gift to me was showing me Shadowrun. In one session, he turned my desire to play a game with dragons into a desire to build roleplaying games. I’ve been doing it ever since.


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