Hello WordPress. It’s been nearly 4 years since I’ve checked in here. Good lord. Alas, the events of 2020 and beyond have kind of taken the driving seat as I’m sure you’re painfully aware. I’ve discovered the great evil of Content Creation (twitch.tv/hamsterofwrath and youtube.com/@hamsterofwrath if you’re interested) which has actually been far more successful than I possibly imagined when I started. Viewers have been incredibly generous and for that I thank you. I am most assuredly a very tiny fish in a very big pond.
Though I haven’t had a regular RPG group in some years, I’m still accumulating rulebooks (thank god for PDFs) and never getting around to using them, something some of you will relate to I’m sure. I’ll give some recommendations below somewhere. So. On to the main point of this post!
Managing Expectations
I recently stumbled across a Twitter post (no I’m not calling it X and yes the place is a goddamn dumpster fire) where an individual posted (and I paraphrase) “I’m not sure I can play Dungeons and Dragons because I’m not a good enough actor.” Let that sink in for a moment. This illustrates a fairly modern trend that your average session of D&D (or any roleplaying game for that matter) is now perceived to have an entry standard now.
I remember my first RPG session. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition. We had no silly accents, streaming wasn’t a thing back then, we were a group of chucklehead schoolkids throwing dice and gently hallucinating we were in the Dragonlance setting making a menace of ourselves. We had no expansive three page backstories. It was GREAT fun. I had a fighter I based off Axel Wulfric from the Dungeoneer Fighting Fantasy book who was a “barbarian” who was basically just a grumpy fighter. He had no stat higher than 13 and no stat lower than 10. He was captain average. It cemented my love of RPG games to this very day.
Critical Role (or any high production Actual Play) does not represent your average RPG session.
I need to preface this by saying I have enjoyed Critical Role in the past. I watched the entirety of Season One and watched it turn into the massive media powerhouse it is today. I drifted away from it a little bit, got distracted by other things. Season one is probably the closest to what your average game of D&D probably looks like, with the obvious and glaring exception that everyone involved in the series is a professional voice actor. Emphasis on the word actor there. These days, they have their own studio, music, attached publishing house, assorted sponsorships, you get the idea.
I believe a lot of people think this is what RPG games should look like now and seek to emulate it in their own way. However in reality, this is simply not the case. If your RPG session doesn’t look or sound like Critical Role….that’s okay. Give it a try anyway, you might have fun regardless, if your group gels together. The “Matt Mercer Effect” is a myth. It’s purely your own expectations working against you.
Everything is (not) Content.
This might be a funny thing coming from a Streamer, but I urge you to keep at least one of your beloved hobbies separate from the scrutiny of the internet. The moment you use that hobby or interest for a live stream or a video, you’ve put it out there for everyone to see and you’ll start measuring views and comments as a metric of success regarding it and it will change your perception of it. I’m old enough to remember (in the case of RPGs) when we didn’t worry about this kind of thing, it was enough to turn up at the table, have a laugh, roll dice and have memorable moments.
Well. Good lord that was a word salad. Short version, manage your expectations, have fun, throw dice and try not to break any posh glass with a D20 (we managed this once, they are pointy!)
RPG Recommendations (which aren’t D&D!):
Age of Sigmar: Soulbound https://cubicle7games.com/our-games/age-of-sigmar-soulbound
Talisman Adventures RPG https://pegasusna.com/products/roleplaying-games/14200/core-rulebook-hardcover-talisman-adventures-rpg
Alien: The RPG https://freeleaguepublishing.com/games/alien/
G.I. Joe the RPG https://renegadegamestudios.com/g-i-joe-roleplaying-game-core-rulebook/
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http://linktr.ee/hamsterofwrath for all my assorted links!
HamsterOfWrath 