Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Sunday, December 28, 2003

On the fourth day of Christmas, the universe gave to me...

Call of Cthulhu, a chance to sleep late...Return of the King...and a trip to grandma's house.

Okay, no re-do for Salem yet but it was nice to get together for the first time in a couple of weeks and try to free England (both current adventures are set there) of Cthulhoid menace. Nice, normal kind of adventures, you'd think, although we've already had a major Mythos creature (Nyarlothotep) show up, pretty as you please, to taunt us. The characters made it through that but I thought the players were going to pee on themselves. Evil Gamemaster!

But then, this is the one thing real roleplaying has over, say computer games. I've never found a computer game which truly simulates the care and feeding of a good game that a great gamemaster puts into it. The scenarios, no matter how great, lack the human touch that makes for truly great gaming. But then, lots of gamemasters lack that too. Fortunately we are blessed (or cursed, depending on your perspective) with someone who is highly intelligent, devious, viscious, yet fair (i.e., there's always a way out of a situation, although it may take a truly creative player to find it). Which is one of the reasons (along with a rich universe and highly-developed characters) we've been playing one game for twelve years.

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