This past weekend, Dante & I went to a dinner with some of his coworkers who also relocated to Colorado.  Our post-dinner conversation turned to a very familiar theme, one our good friend Tolkien incorporated into his well-known books:

I tried to resist this, but the continuing onslaught of comment spam lately has forced me to enable Blogger’s captcha system. It appears to be largely World of Warcraft related goldfarming spam, so you can take this opportunity to thank that subculture for this change. I recommend thanking them with repeated kicks to their groin.

I was making a feeble attempt to clean up these messes as they ocurred, but with all of the other draws on my time I have been a bit less diligent about patrolling comments on posts that were a week or more old. Stupid real life getting in the way of internet fun!

Those of you that are not comment spammers, please accept my apology for the addition four to five keystrokes to prove you are a human being with a soul. We fully intend to migrate StupidRanger.com to a platform where we have more control over the spam blocking features (*cough cough* WordPress *cough*), but until then please bear with us!

In addition to the gaming hiatus due to our relocation, we are also smack in the middle of the Winter Drag that affects many roleplaying groups. With all of the social obligations, shopping, and general merriment that is involved with the Thanksgiving/Christmas corridor, often there is not time for traditional roleplaying.

But there’s always exceptions!

The olden days of college gaming were about the only time during the holidays when we would roleplay, and we had many contributing factors to making this happen: proximity to other gamers, the need for a break from studying, and the lack of family members demanding various holiday gatherings until it was time for the short Thanksgiving or Christmas break that we were given.

Ways to Donder your Blitzen during the holiday season

If you do really want to game during the holidays, one-shot campaigns are your best friend. That, and stringent scheduling. I usually put some cycles toward campaign planning during the winter months, putting together a few episodes worth of common campaign encounters is a pretty quick and easy prospect that doesn’t require other people to complete.

I also like to plan some holiday related encounters during my campaigns so the characters in my campaign have the opportunity to relax and celebrate in-game. I’ve had Santa Claus drop off a few fun presents, and the occasional useful item to my players in the past. The Easter Bunny shows up in every one of my campaigns in some way or another (the vorpal Easter Bunny from another dimension was fun one year) and most of the time the players appreciate the fun diversion.

Occasionally, you will have a player or two that balk at the anachronism or find the presentation of holiday related campaign events childish, but those people can officially Cram It With Walnuts.

Take the time to relax and enjoy the holiday season, however don’t forget that you can use these times to create some great moments for use in your campaigns once the presents are unwrapped and the turkey is far into leftovers!

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on management-style topics lately as a result of my new job, and after you read several different books in rapid succession you start seeing patterns. One such pattern is that of personal accountability, and most of the books and websites that I have been reading are discussing this topic in preparation to become a better employee or to “go that extra mile” in order to make you stand out at the office. (Not that I need this advice, I’m already pretty outstanding, thank you very much!)

Be a better roleplayer by asking how you can make the situation better.

Many people complain about their roleplaying experience as a function of the shortcomings of the DM or the interaction of the roleplaying group as a whole. Blaming others is as natural as drawing breath for most people, and in some cases it may be warranted and deserved. I want to challenge everyone to stop blaming everyone else and take some in-game actions to get noticed and inject your character into the roleplaying mix.

Ask yourself the following question: “What can I do to get more actively involved with this story or my adventuring party?” By being personally accountable for helping to steer the story or interact with the other players, you will drive yourself to not be a victim of circumstance within your group. This may spawn a myriad of different results given your roleplaying group and DungeonMaster, but I’m sure it will open up some roleplaying avenues to make you a more satisfied player.

This also works for introverted roleplayers too!

As you all may know, the DM often has many things to juggle behind the screen and it can be quite easy to overlook the more quiet and subtle roleplayers in the group. If you’re not a very outgoing person and this is an especially hard challenge, ask yourself what you can do to support someone else’s strong roleplaying. Often, acting to support another player’s roleplaying will get you noticed because its so darned unusual that most DMs will take pause when you do this.

This advice should also help in groups with very strong roleplayers, and it will help safeguard you from getting drowned out by their bold style. Having fun is the first step, that should cause the DM to notice and throw some more formulated roleplaying/adventuring opportunities your way!

Once upon a time in a faraway village, the citizens lived in constant fear of attacked by the local dragon. While the dragon had not attacked in the village in all the years anyone could remember, there were stories told by the elders of their grand-parents’ days of gruesome, dragon-related deaths. No one could actually claim that the local dragon featured in any of the stories, but the current generation, sure that the dragon’s taste for livestock would evolve into a taste for villager-stock, decided that after completing the harvest, they would mount an expedition to the dragon’s lair to eradicate the threat once and for all.

The dragon, possessed of exceptional hearing, overheard the plans as he was selecting a tasty morsel from the herd of cattle grazing just outside the village. He was outraged, as he considered himself to be a great neighbor, dining only on livestock and keeping more aggressive dragons out of the area. While he did not want to destroy the villagers (who else would provide him with such tasty cattle?), he was not sure how to proceed. So he went back to his lair to ponder his predicament.

The villagers mounted their expedition a few days later. Waving pitch forks and torches, they climbed the mountain trails to reach the dragon’s lair, only to find it empty. When they turned around to head back to the village, they found their path blocked by the dragon. This was when they realized that a flying dragon may be a terrible sight to behold, but a dragon up close is much more terrifying.

Most of the raiding villagers scattered, seeking shelter behind rocks, trees and each other, trying to find indirect paths back to the village. One man, however, stood his ground in the middle of the path. “Oh, Dragon,” he said, “We are here to bring eternal peace to our village by destroying you. Yield to us now.”

The dragon raised his eyebrow at this speech, taking in the absurdity of the speaker’s situation. “Oh, Human,” he replied, “I will not yield for my destruction will bring not eternal peace but many years of heartache and despair. For upon my death, another, more terrible dragon will take my place.”

The speaker looked around for his fellow companions, uncomfortable with this turn of events. Another, more terrible option had not been considered. Realizing that he was in this alone, that all of the other villagers had fled, he shuffled his feet, digging in the loose dirt with the toe of his boot. “We cannot allow you to live for fear of our lives, yet we cannot survive a more terrible dragon. What solution do you propose for resolving this impasse?”

The dragon refrained from stating the obvious, that he had never taken a life of a villager. Instead, he attempted to reason with the speaker. “If it is only fear of your lives that prevents us from being neighbors, perhaps we can reach a compromise. If I swear only to eat your livestock and never your families, can you swear on behalf of the village to leave me in peace?”

The speaker appeared thoughtful for several moments, knowing that the decision he made would affect the entire village for many, many years to come. The fear of a more terrible dragon, however, forced him to consider this compromise as the best possible option. “I swear, on behalf of the entire village, that so long as you only dine upon livestock, no action will be taken against you by our citizens.”

Making it official, the dragon stated, “I do so swear to only dine upon livestock.” Both the speaker and the dragon smiled, the dragon only a little to avoid showing too many teeth. Then the dragon proposed a feast to celebrate this newly established peace. The speaker promised a spectacular feast in three days’ time and returned to the village to share the good news. While many still gazed fearfully upon the mountainous trail leading to the dragon’s lair, most were willing to accept peace at the price of a cow.

And so, when the sun rose on the third day, the dragon carefully settled himself in the field and shared a spectacular feast featuring the fruits of the harvest. And thus, all were happy, especially the dragon, who had become quite found of cattle.

Stupid Ranger and I traveled home for the Thanksgiving holiday this week, making a very dull 16 hour drive from Colorado to Illinois to visit my family with our very own riding dog, Teddy, in tow. In between cycling music CDs and keeping tabs on which state license plates we saw rolling down the road alongside us, my thoughts inevitably turned to our D&D campaigns and the inevitability of longer haul travel.

Does that sign really say that? Yeah… it does. Wow.

This is a topic we have covered before in some fashion, however I found myself interested in the small details as we went down the road. Strange things sparked conversation, such as a giant hand painted yard sign in the middle of a field that said “OUTLAW SODOMY” in big letters. Adventure is ensured for the intrepid folks that would seek out the people so dedicated to that particular cause that they got out the ol’ bucket of Dutch Boy and made that thing happen!

Other, less controversial points of interest caught my eye… weird storefronts, museums to historical figures I have never heard of, even some truly strange town names. Before long I was keeping a little crib sheet in my head of ideas for my next D&D campaign.

It just goes to show you, new ideas can come from anywhere!

Dante & I successfully completed our cross country trek and are settling nicely into our new home in Colorado.  Life here is pretty much the same with some very notable exceptions.  One exception, a very happy one, is the fact that we can see the mountains anytime we leave the house.  Another exception, not so happy, is that we haven’t played D&D in a Very Long Time.

Surprise!! I’m still around, but with the move, I’ve been a little busy lately.  I hope you all didn’t miss me too much! With the holidays, I’m sure things will be a bit chaotic around stupidranger.com, but I’ll try to be here more often for you!

Stupid Ranger and I are finally getting settled into our new home! Fortuitously, as if by some divine plan, I received a sales email from the guys over at Geek Chic lauding their new demi-Sultan table that will be released to the masses on November 23rd.

Cursed Consumerism!

This just threw a healthy splash of gasoline on the fire for me to plan my new gaming sanctuary at my new home. While I might not be able to afford the Sultan (unless their big reveal is more economical models!), I certainly would like some sort of a custom gaming area to inhabit with my motley band of adventurers.

The space itself needs some finishing, so once that is done I am looking ahead for some good multi-purpose ideas for using that space as a gaming/recreation area. I’m thinking a big, home-rolled whiteboard would be nice both for drawing encounters or keeping score for the ol’ dart board. A more high tech solution might come along depending on how my research into multitouch surface technology goes… that may take a back burner until warmer months when I can comfortably build things outdoors again.

Other necessary components, aside from a place to rest one’s butt:

• A food/drink/alcohol dispensary of some kind.
• One to many book containment units
• One to many miniature containment units
• Some sort of music system to provide some mad roleplaying tunes
• The all-important ambiance factor, meaning a place to display the ample Lord of the Rings prop/sword collection
• Some sort of glorified display for my autographed OD&D sourcebooks, perhaps with mini Gygaxian Shrine (seriously not a joke here people, I want this!)

I will provide updates as they develop… or when the guys at Geek Chic finally get the hint and drop ship me their newest model for… uh… review and testing purposes. Heck, I’ll even take their slightly loved used equipment off their hands!

As I return from dreamland, feel free to shout out whatever random stuff that comes to mind when you think about your ideal gaming space. Coolest ideas I haven’t thought of already will likely get you hugged if we ever meet IRL, and have a distinct possibility of being implemented in the final Roleplaying Dungeon!

Amid the hail of boxes and packing paper, I found a few minutes tonight to catch up on reading the comments to last Wednesday’s post on your right to be unique. Comments on that post are certainly a fascinating read and spawned off enough material to warrant another post on the matter, since many of you seem to have some valid points.

Humility replaced with shame/bravado

One of our commenters, Marty Lund, pointed out quite correctly that humility isn’t something that comes commonly in our culture. This is cutting very close to exactly the point I was trying to articulate… you can take ownership of your nerdly leanings in a humble way and not defaulty replace it with shame as many of us do.

When I am approached by someone at work that notices the d20 on my desk or my “Chewie is my co-pilot” sticker in my cube, I usually just tell them plainly that I enjoy roleplaying games (yes, like D&D) and I let the conversation unfold. Usually they don’t throw holy water on me and cast my demons out, nor do they laugh and tease me… in fact, most folks that I work with have at least tried roleplaying or know someone that is into it well enough to have some context, and it turns out to be a good conversation.

I will admit to being a little pumped up from watching a certain president-elect speak when I wrote the last post, but I really am not advocating you jump up on your chair at work, cite page 32 of the OD&D sourcebook, put on a towel as a cape and run around your cube to show how much you’re into the roleplaying nerd genre. In the end, I’d just be happy if we fought a little bit against that common (but not universal) reaction to self-deprecate.

That being said: I really wouldn’t MIND if you did the things I mentioned above. 🙂

For the record: yes, Anonymous, I am married. To Stupid Ranger (the person, not the site) and luckily she’s as much of a nerd as I am!

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post, the intelligent discourse was certainly refreshing!