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...

Well. It's been awhile. For those of you that want to know about my actual life, I just got married and am applying for school. Thus, been busy. I know it's been more than month since the most wonderful FanExpo , but I'm finally getting around to talking about what happened there. Deal with it. Time & Temp is an indie game by game designer Epidiah Ravachol . It's about being temp workers at a time travel agency. And yes, it's as hilarious as the about line indicates. I've had this game on my shelf since last Christmas and had never really gotten around to trying it. I had never played it before, and as I learn best by doing instead of reading, I found the task of learning a new system from a book a little daunting. It wouldn't be the first time I've done it, but my habit of reading only a little and making the rest up sometimes screws with indie games and I don't like it doing it. But FanExpo came along and we needed GMs. A lot of GMs as w...

Players - Characters: Emma - Ruthie Russell - Dave Chris - Floyd Watson - Alistair Jack - Kinkaid Erica - Alexa Jasse - Mel Problem: Young female musicians are going missing after signing a contract with Sound Tapestry. The owner of Sound Tapestry is a man named Blue. He has blue hair. This was our fifth session of Deliria and by now, most players had settled into the slightly railroaded reality that Gedeny, their boss (see Rube in Dead Like Me) was an offhandish man that didn't give them much more than a basic sentence or news story. The rest, really, was up to the clerks to figure out. This week, Gedney handed them a missing poster. As usual, the clerks were off exploring different avenues of investigation and intrigue, resulting in hilarity, cleverness and eventually, one very frustrated player. But more on that later. I watched and took notes on character behaviour vs player behaviour, social scenarios within the game and outside of the game, and for the first ti...

Deliria is a modern fairy tale game using popular tropes and highly developed characters to slowly play out the complexity of humanity and morality by putting ordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances. It has been said it is Changeling done right. I cannot attest to this as I have never played Changeling and so far, never will. As a system, I find Deliria a little broken, but not so broken that I don't love it and don't embrace it. It uses a complex character creation method that brings to life the character in ways I have yet to see another system do. It uses playing cards and a simple stat/skill set instead of dice. It focuses on who you're playing, not what you're playing, and encourages role-playing over conflict resolution through skills and stats. I'm running this game and have been for a few months now. This is not my first nor last time running it. In fact, thank you Phil Brucato, Deliria is my go-to campaign system. This game of Deliria is an o...