The Open Range Rides Again

This weekend I kicked off my newest 4E D&D campaign, set in the Wild West-y world my friend Jeramy and I have been designing for some time (tidbits can be found over at our D&D blog, LevelAndClass.com).  I had previously written about the world and ran a couple of gaming sessions in it, but I haven't been able to run a full-fledged campaign in the world to really put it through its paces, so I'm excited.

The players are PhD students from my wife's program, some of whom have never picked up a D20 in their lives:  a scandalous situation for any college student, let alone those who liked school so much they want to make their careers out of it.  One of the players is a very experienced D&D player (and a freelance designer like me), so he and my wife are helping the other new players learn the ropes while I have my hands full wrestling down the campaign setting so their players can hog-tie it.

Pushing the Envelope of Stupidity

The video gaming world is full of bullies, idiots, misanthropes and mouth-breathers.  The Gentleman Gamer knows this, because they all wound up in my Zul'Gurub dungeon run last night.

Even though the GG has preached the mantra of patience and subscribes to Wheaton's Law, I fully recognize that sometimes you just can't fix stupid.

So how does the Gentleman Gamer handle himself when surrounded by jerks and jackanapes?

Turning A Corner

An epic congratulations goes out to the Progression raiding team in my WoW guild, The Risen on US-Thorium Brotherhood.  Not only did they get their first Ragnaros kill this past week, they scored the server-first kill for the Horde.  It's the first time in the guild's history we've accomplished something like that on the raiding scene; for years players like us have been living in the shadow of guilds like Bloodrite and never actually considering that we could get a kill like that without being uber-hardcore.  Last week, we liberated ourself from that kind of limited thinking.

Of course it couldn't have happened without Blizzard's changes to their design philosophy, the efforts to make content more accessible to guilds like ours.  We have teachers, professors, students, lawyers, and other professionals that all have full-time jobs and full-time social lives, but still manage to put in one or two nights a week to join nine other online friends and slay some digital dragons.  And I couldn't be happier for them.

My own team, the Core raid group, also turned a corner Tuesday night by killing three of the Firelands bosses in one night.  We one-shot Shannox, two-shot Rhyolith after taking a wrong turn and ditching into the magma, and then four-shot Beth'tilac to get our first kill on her.  Before we'd been struggling to just kill one boss a night, so going in and kicking down the door that quickly on three bosses means big things, and hopefully a Rag kill of our own sooner rather than later.

RISE UP, SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE HORDE!

My Wife, the Slayer

In D&D, there are a number of different players personality types that show themselves over and over again.  The folks at Wizards of the Coast have put labels to most of these, such as Spotlight Gamer, Power Gamer and Explorer, to help DMs and players understand these tendencies and motivations better so that they can run better games and keep their players involved and committed.

When my wife first joined my D&D games, she gravitated toward an Observer role.  She was a new player with several experienced gamers, and was more comfortable providing quiet support while enjoying the clash of the other personalities at the table.

After we moved down to Louisiana, however, I noticed her tendencies had shifted in a direction I hadn't expected.  And it led to me letting her down as a DM on several occasions.

New Developments

There's been a lot going on since the last time I posted, both in my life and in the world of gaming, though it didn't seem like it at the time it was all happening.

First, work took a turn for the uber-stressful, just as temperatures hit record levels back in Arkansas. The past year has probably been the most stressful I've worked in television besides my very first year as a producer, and if something doesn't change in the next couple of months things are going to get hairy.

On happier topics, I'm starting another D&D game with some PhD students from my wife's theatre program.  Once my other game finishes the heroic tier in a couple of months I'll turn over DMing duties to another player in the group. I'm debating whether I want to stick with the group as a player or if I want to set it aside completely and focus on my other game.  Considering the time and stress I'm dealing with at work, it'll probably be better not to try and two too many things at the same time.