One thing I regret not really getting into when I was younger is role-playing games — of the tabletop variety. Actually, saying I didn't "get into" role-playing games isn't accurate at all; I've bought a whole bunch of sourcebooks over the years (I had a great collection of Vampire: The Masquerade books while at university!) but just, for one reason or another, never really had the chance to play them all that much.
I have two particularly fond memories of times when I have been able to indulge in some role-playing, and interestingly enough, neither of them involve a well-established, rules-heavy system. In both cases, they were simple acts of collective creativity — and they were vast amounts of fun as a result.
The first time wasn't really an organised session as such. I was in my second year at university, living in a grotty old flat that had very large rooms. Some of my friends from my school days had come down to visit, and they were sleeping in the living room; rather than retiring to my own bedroom down the hall, I decided to sleep in the living room with them. And before long, rather than falling asleep, one of our number kicked off a completely improvised role-playing session where our probably drunk, definitely tired and increasingly delirious selves got our characters into increasingly ridiculous situations — inevitably with the worst possible outcomes constantly happening to one of our number, because that was the funniest way things could go.
I forget the details of the "adventure", such as it was, but I do recall that my friend Edd found himself under attack by a giant penis monster at one point. So, naturally, he decided to cast the spell he'd made up called "REMOVE COCK", and you can imagine what the actual result of that was. It was an utterly ridiculous evening that I will always remember immensely fondly — and not a single die rolled along the way.
The other occasion was when I was around at a friend's house, and one of said friend's friends with whom I had previously become casually acquainted said he was going to run a role-playing game session for us, using what he described as a "freeform system" that he'd devised himself. Said system had just three statistics: Attack, Defence and Power, and all three of those statistics fluctuated according to the things we were doing; you'd "spend" points from each on various actions, and could regain them in various ways, usually by making progress through the adventure.
Because the system was so freeform, we were invited to come up with any kind of character we wanted. Being big into Japanese role-playing games at the time — not like now, obviously — my character was somewhere between a vaguely imagined half-elf character I'd mentally doodled at various points over the prior months, and basically Dante from Devil May Cry. Lots of flashy moves, big sword, pyrotechnics, all that sort of thing. His name was Rush Hurin.
Alongside Rush we had The Luggage from Discworld, a sentient suit of armour named Arryth, a cloud of amorphous pink gas and the archangel Tyrael from Diablo. It was a motley crew to be sure, but we had some grand adventures — and the skill of our dungeon master was such that he was able to devise dungeons and scenarios on the fly that meant we all had an opportunity to shine along the way.
Okay, yes, he pulled puzzles from a straight-up Big Book of Puzzles that he brought along with him — and on more than one occasion we entered a room in a dungeon with an elaborate-looking mechanism that had a big sign on it saying "COME BACK LATER" — but even using that "source material" and occasional little "cheats" to keep things flowing along, we ended up with an enormously entertaining adventure that culminated, as I recall, with us fighting a skyscraper-sized flaming demon, each using our own unique abilities to bring it down in various ways — culminating with The Luggage swallowing it and sending it to an unknown other dimension, as most of our other encounters concluded.
Both of these were great fun, yes, but I also just kind of… hunger for an opportunity to play something as basic bitch as Dungeons & Dragons, even though I know that's not fashionable any more. I always thought Vampire: The Masquerade would be fascinating to play, too — hence why I had a bunch of sourcebooks for it back in my early 20s — but that, more than almost anything else, strikes me as something you very much Need The Right Group For.
Why am I talking about all this? Well, I watched an episode of Mythical Kitchen this evening where they had the cast of Critical Role on there, and it reminded me that I've never… watched, listened to, whatever you do with Critical Role, and I was thinking I should probably correct that at some point. Sure, it's not quite the same as being part of my own campaign, but I think I might enjoy it… maybe it's time to add it to the "bedtime listening" rotation.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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