Okay, this is the first prompt that does absolutely nothing
for me. It’s too broad, too nebulous, despite its status as an action verb. “I
examine…” What, exactly? I could write something about how D&D used to not
have a mechanism for examining things in a dungeon, unless you were a thief,
and even then, they could only look for hidden things and traps. The rest of
the party was out of luck.
Over the years, the proficiency system has blossomed, morphed,
and imploded into the relatively small and manageable stack of “skills” in the
current iteration of the game. These areas of expertise are fairly broad, and
the entire proficiency system is a simplification and a deliberate choice to
help keep the flow of the game moving at a brisk pace.
Yeah, that’s pretty mushy, there. The history of the
development of passive perception is not blog-worthy. In fact, I have an idea: since
this is my first year doing this, there are five previous years I never had a
crack at. So, for this challenge, I’ve taken it upon myself to EXAMINE the
other lists of prompts and compiled them below, along with my answers:
#RPGaDay 2018 day 11 – Wildest character name?
I had a villain in Villains and Vigilantes named Mr. Devo.
He was a computer whiz who bought into the band’s fictional identity and
convinced himself he was a harbinger of the apocalypse. He carried a Roland
Ax-Synth keyboard like Mark Mothersbaugh played in the 1980s, only it shot
lasers and mood-altering beams and the like. My players HATED Mr. Devo. A lot.
I used him sparingly, as a result, but now, in 2019, I guarantee you they are
looking around and thinking, “Damn, Mr. Devo got some of this right!”
#RPGaDay 2017 day 11 – Which “dead game” would you like to
see reborn?
This is kind of a moot question in 2019, when most of the
big games have been reworked and re-introduced to the new generation, and the
things that haven’t been updated have been supplanted by better systems doing
much the same thing.
All that being said, I would love to see Gamma World converted to the 5e d20 system, and while we’re at it, Star Frontiers, too. I
know, they did Gamma World for 4th edition, and that’s my point, right there.
One of the old school things that AD&D did was allow players to genre hop
with Boot Hill conversions and Metamorphosis Alpha, and all of that. We need to
get back to that. Mind you, I don’t think I’d ever run something like that, but
I know other folks would and having it all ‘port straight over from 5e to 5e
would be ideal.
#RPGaDay 2016 day 11 – Which gamer most affected the way you
play?
Not as germane to me, since I mostly run games, and I have
to be honest, I took something from every player I ever spent any time with.
Those multiple sessions, countless hours spent laughing, talking, fighting; it
all went into the bingo hopper. Those people, those gaming groups, are my points
of reference when I, say, encounter a player who wants to wait until the
fighting starts, or the player who insists on writing a complete character
history complete with family scandals…you know, in case I want to use that for
something. They all affected me. How could they not?
#RPGaDay 2015 day 11 – Favorite RPG writer?
My friend, the dearly departed Aaron Allston, put more great
ideas into my head and sent me into hours of self-reflection and deep thinking
about running games and using all of the tools in the box to do it. Lands of
Mystery and Strikeforce remain key elements in my creative gaming matrix.
Second Place? Jason Morningstar.
Third Place is Robin Laws.
Third Place is Robin Laws.
#RPGaDay 2014 day 11 – Weirdest RPG owned?
The game was a collection of psychic powers and a sketch of an idea how to make that interesting. But it wasn’t, except for the cool Matt Wagner artwork. The rest of the game wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t enough.
“Examine.” Boom. Done.
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