Blackmoor Vituperative

By “gaming” I am referring to role-playing games. That means pen-and-paper games like Dungeons & Dragons and Mutants & Masterminds, not video games like EverQuest or World of Warcraft: those are not role-playing games. It also applies to PBEM (play by email) games, if those games stress character interaction and story development in addition to things like combat and pillaging ruins (or whatever).

What interests me

• I value cooperation and creativity.
• I like the opportunity to defend the innocent and rescue the endangered.
• I enjoy the occasional moral quandry or pyrrhic victory, but in the long run I want to know that I am fighting the good fight. I may play a sinister character from time to time, but even they have things and people that they value and would defend.
• I like some mystery and horror thrown in from time to time to spice things up, as long as the mysteries do eventually get (mostly) solved, and the horrors eventually get (mostly) driven back.

What does not interest me

• I am not interested in a game with as many house rules as there are official rules — two or three is okay, but more than that is just not worth the hassle. Stop fiddling with the trivia, and let’s play.
• I am not interested in games that require the players to play established DC or Marvel (or Buffy, or Harry Potter) characters — I do not mind if they show up as NPCs, but I am not interested in a game where we just ape someone else’s characters. I want to create my character. I am not interested in playing someone else’s character.
• I am not interested in PBEM games that exist only to satisfy the GM’s desire for free internet porn — I’m over 18, and I do not mind an adult situation now and then, if it makes sense in context of the game, but if I want smut I know where to get it.
• I am not interested in PBEM games where the GM is a control freak who imposes bizarre requirements on how the players format their posts, whether that is mandatory past tense, mandatory first person, mandatory “one asterisk means this but two slashes means that”, or whatever — I am happy to tolerate just about anything from the other players, as long as we are all having fun, but I am simply not interested in jumping through inane hoops. For Pete’s sake, it’s a role-playing game, not a novel or a technical manual — stop micromanaging how players write their posts, and let’s get on with the game.

Games I play, and games I do not play

There is a relatively small number of games I am actually interested in playing:

• D&D 3.5e
• Mutants & Masterminds 2e (any genre, not just supers)
• Any super-simplified game system (Jazz, Risus)

I am also open to playing games not on this list. But these are my preferences.

And while I do not want to seem negative, there are some games that I have no wish to play ever again:

• 1st or 2nd edition D&D
• Hero System (aka Champions)
• Palladium
• Rolemaster
• Any game system with a life-path style chargen (Space Opera, Cyberpunk, Mechwarrior, Traveller)

I see no reason to suffer through these now that we have better (in my opinion) alternatives.

A little more about me

I have been role-playing since the early 1980s, and I played Champions and D&D for most of that. Early in 2006, I moved on from Champions to Mutants & Masterminds, and I haven’t looked back: Mutants & Masterminds is a much better game system. I didn’t realize how stilted and clunky Champions was until I saw Mutants & Masterminds. I have played in numerous tabletop and pbem games, and I have run more than a few (mostly successfully). I appreciate how much work it takes to be a good GM, particularly a good PBEM GM. I think I am a good player, and I make a genuine effort to get along with the other players and make the GM’s job easier. (You’d think this would go without saying, wouldn’t you? I wish that were the case.)

I am a programmer/analyst and Linux system administrator by profession, and from time to time I apply my skills to provide resources to other gamers. Here are a few:

• RPG Library: an index of role-playing related links and resources.
• PBEM News: a forum for PBEM announcements, primarily for games seeking players and players seeking games.
• Secure Dice: a secure dice server which emails and verifies its results.