RPGaDay 2021 - Day Ten

 

To be honest, when I first saw “TRUST” as the prompt for today, the first thing thought that popped into my head was “Yeah, but can I be TRUSTED?” It's a line from a Wayne and Shuster album I listened to endlessly as a youth. In addition to frontier Psychologist and Shakespearean Baseball, it included “Rinse the Blood Of My Toga” and the line is Brutus talking to Flavius Maximus about potential suspects in the "Julius Caesar Caper", which Brutus has hired Maximus to solve. It got me thinking about how that album and all the Mad Magazines and Monty Python and later improv sketch comedy that’s informed my role-playing (and possibly deeply flawed coping mechanisms for the rest of life). There is a meme with two pictures and the words How All My Campaigns Start and How All My Campaigns Turn Out - the first statement is a picture from the Lord of the Rings movies where the fellowship is leaving Rivendell and the second statement is over a picture of King Arthur and the Knights of the round table from Monty Python and the Holy Grail… which I can kind of relate to. I try to play “serious” games, sometimes… but in the end, it’s a game, and I can’t take anything, in a game, too seriously. As a GM I try to keep things LIGHT (ooh! I worked in one of the other prompts!) and never let rules get in the way of a good story or having a fun time. This is why I've never been all that keen on the competitive/matched play aspect of Warhammer and such. 

Also, I have to admit, I find I am less trusting of strangers as I get older, which has made it challenging to connect with new people to play games with… role-playing, miniatures or boardgames... 

I do count myself so very fortunate to have a family that's been willing to play games with me and a core group of friends that will roll dice and flip cards and push toys and counters around a board or tabletop. Also that so many of those I've encountered along the gaming journey have become such great lifelong friends. The ONE good thing that'd come out of Covid was being able to reconnect with some of those friends that have moved away to play role-playing games with them online. The game kind of fizzled - for now - but I have high hopes I'll get it going again in the fall.