Bluestocking's Organic Gaming

Okay. Okay. So this is the obligatory sexism-in-gaming-culture-sucks post. I was honestly writing something else for today, but then I was hanging out on Old School Gamers , which is a facebook group for gamers who like Old School Games (OSG). And there was a picture of a sexy female on a couch, posed, with a large plush D20 in her hands. The comments below the picture included, but were not limited to: "That looks so fun. I gotta get me one of those. The die is cool too." " Strip D&D... Never thought of that one..." and my favourite "It might be nice if she rolled my d20s." Being the angry little feminist I am, I was immediately pissed off. I mean, the picture was posted with the line "I bet she DM's without a screen." Seriously? So I decided to say something, and was immediately met with the " not my toys " mentality and how I needed to lighten up . Other people had mentioned how this wasn't inclusive, and how this w...

Most of you know I play table top role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons (but not usually that game in particular) for about the last decade and a half. It occurred to me recently that I hate rolling dice. To the point where my GM says "Everyone make a spot check " and 75% of the time I don't bother rolling, or I respond with "Do I have to?" And she's wonderful enough to only make me roll when it's important. When she does tell me to roll something, sometimes with a knowing smile, my heart gives a jump, my anxiety goes up a little, and my chest tightens. Why? Because there's a likelihood I'm going to fail. And not just fail, I may roll a 1. I roll 1's regularly. Often, in fact. Or I fail at least. I'm known for it. It's to the point where I don't usually run games (and I run a lot of games) that require important dice rolls. My main game uses playing cards. I also no longer bring my own dice to games because it has be...

It's been a long time, blog. A really long time. I've spent two years updating my education in a madness inducing storm of anatomy, massage techniques, and hydrotherapy. But I survived, and despite a firm agreement to avoid gaming while in school, it continued to creep into my life, here and there, until I found myself gaming more days than I was going to school some weeks. Not that I ever skipped class or anything... So here's a short (and long) review of the past two years. Insert quaint folk music here. Heroquest About a year and a half ago I became involved in an on-going drop in game of Heroquest run by a friend. It had a large cast that I was very excited with when it first began that steadily began to drop off into a smaller, almost non-existent cast mid-way through. This was the result of busy lives and the scattered methodology with which our GM ran the game. When we were down to about four players, I began to recruit other friends, and drew in a regular in al...