I’m going to dedicate this week to people on the Internet who are annoying. As far as RPG’s go let’s talk about forums. In general, forums are pretty useful. They allow publishers to announce new products and discuss their products with their fans. They also let fans communicate ideas across the far corners of the globe. But sometimes things just go sideways and usually there’s somebody behind it. Let’s face it, you’ve seen these guys on whatever forum you happen to frequent. And to put it bluntly they’re just plain annoying at best.
I’m going to go beyond the run of the mill Forum Troll, here. We all know that type. He’s contradictory, will say anything to start a flame war and piss people off just to get some attention. But I’ll take this time to discuss some the more interesting sub-species.

The Know It All: He knows everything and has been everywhere. He’s an expert on particle physics, international trade laws, ninjas, guns and the migratory patterns of feral cats. This guy knows about it. He’s not afraid to let everyone know. He’s never wrong about anything. Being patronizing only adds to the veracity of his arguments.

Mr. “I don’t want to buy the book but I’m going to get it one question at a time”: He comes out just after a new game or supplement hits the shelves. His questions start of with “ I just bought my book but I can’t find. . .” Oh, let’s say. Character Generation. It’s a whole freakin’ chapter, dude. It’s fine to ask for rules clarifications or other people opinions. But this guy is just way too obvious. Sometimes he’ll just come out and ask for a copy and paste from a section of the book.

Professor “Min-Max the Power Gaming Rules Lawyer”: He has calculated the probabilities of each and every weapon, armor, class, race, spell, feat and magic item combination. The numbers do not lie. Any character not built for the maximum killing efficiency is just a bad character and a player using such a character is an idiot. Yes, I know. No matter the system there are ways to build characters that just plain suck. But you can still have fun, build an effective character and still make choices that are based character and story and not a spread sheet.

Now, how do you deal with these guys. It’s simple. Ignore them. Don’t argue. Don’t fall into the circular arguments of a Flame War. Just let it go. Take a deep breath and move on. No matter what you say or do, you won’t change these guys. You’ll just pile on a bunch of stress on yourself that you probably don’t need. It’s just not worth it.

I’m still catching up on posting and doing my usual web surfing but figured I’d take some time to bring up these two little things.
The venerable Uncle Bear posted the Rolpunk Manifesto many months ago and it popped up again a few days ago. This time I took the time to think about it a little more. Damn, how very true. Around the same time, I was wandering my through Tracy Hickman’s Xtreme Dungeon Mastery. OK, I haven’t bought the book and I have to admit at $30 it’s pretty far down on my shopping list but the web site has enough tidbits and teasers to get the idea.
These two concepts of gaming boil it down to the simple mantra of “Do it your way and have fun”. No ranting and raving about “you’re playing it wrong”. Or the Edition Wars. Or the ever annoying Power Gamers and the Cult of RAW. Just shut the hell up. Roll the dice and have fun. You aren’t out to prove that your better than the GM or the other players. If you are then chances your group is either doormats or desperate. Proving your intellectual prowess via rules litigation just slows things down and annoys everyone else.
Feel free to convert, kit bash and house rule the crap out of your favorite game. Be creative. Remember to age old Golden Rule that rules are just guidelines. Don’t be afraid to choose story and entertainment over power builds. Remember the Rule of Cool.
Which brings us to the Rule of Gordo. If you happen to keep the occasional eye on the Friday Night Tweetfest, you’d know a couple of weeks ago we were down a cleric for our Pathfinder Council of Thieves game. Things did not go well. My Tiefling ranger thoroughly got sliced and diced by a couple of Bearded Devils. My ranger was pretty much your brooding stoic type. But with his untimely and very bloody death, we have the party member. Enter Gordo the Magnificentest. (This is an inside joke about another player’s character from Crimson Throne, Kaden the Magnificent.) Gordo is a halfling aberrant sorcerer. After two sessions, he has managed to burn down a building which contained hefty amount of loot and the party’s fighter who ran back into the building to rescue the treasure. He has attacked a Bone Devil with a tree and turned an evil devil summoned circle into meat. Which came to rise the Rule of Gordo: There’s a right way, a wrong way and the Gordo way of doing things. The Gordo way may not be the best or most efficient but it tends to memorable and entertaining. So I do have to admit that I did have some inspiration when creating this character. (And yes I have the Doom Song on my cell phone.)
So to sum up this rant. Shut up. Roll the dice. Have fun. And play whatever game you want to; how you want to.

OK, that may sound silly for someone who blogs about RPG’s and who has been rolling d20′s since the Golden Age of the White Box. But it’s not. During one of our Friday Pathfinder campaigns, I realized that I was playing D&D without regard for character or story. It was a dark moment of clarity and a guilty pleasure.
Any thoughts of character were lost in a caffeine and sugar induced fugue state. There was a story there somewhere but my mind had drifted off to the land of game mechanics, dice rolls and Chex Party Mix. My character was just a set of numbers sent to kill monsters and take their stuff. I was just a guy spending an evening with some friends making geeky jokes and risque comments. Idiosyncrasies in the rules set up our running gags. Bad dice mojo lead to more jokes of virgin sacrifice, replacing the lucky gaming hat or just buying some new fricking dice. I couldn’t hit a sleeping orc with a great sword while the fighter was holding it still and the bard inspired me.
And you know what? It was damned fun. This isn’t meant as anything negative about our DM or the campaign. These things happen. Just like reading a corny book or sitting down with some popcorn and a B Movie, sometimes you just gotta do it for the entertainment value. It was just one of those times when it was fun to be just a gamer and just, well, play the game.
At the moment I lost my sense of character and story, I felt a mystical connection to every other gamer throughout time and space who had ever hacked and slashed a bloody path through a dungeon. It was a brush with greater gamer cosmic conscious. It was a glimpse at my own identity. I was gamer. I will always be a gamer until they pry my dice out of my dead cold hands or resurrect me.