Lillian Cohen-Moore

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #31: How would your life be different if you’d never gotten into gaming?

My life wouldn’t be at all where it is now. There are people whose work I would have never read, games I’d never edited, friends I’d never make, people I’d never meet and fall in love with. Things about myself left unlearned, stories never told. I’d be a completely different person, with a completely different life.

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #30: What lessons have you taken from gaming that you can apply to your
real life?

When shit upsets you, walk away and keep breathing for awhile. Obstactles are often overcome with the help of friends. Fear is something to overcome.  Children are precious. Faith is worth clinging to. Morals worth fighting for. Few things are black and white. Everyone has a reason, no matter how shitty. The future is malleable. The past is never entirely something one can escape. Facing your demons is unavoidable. Surviving is not a crime. Love is the most beautiful thing in the world.

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #29: What does the word “gamer” mean to you? Is that different than what
other people seem to think it means?

Someone who loves games, and loves to play. It doesn’t matter what system, console, war game, card game or board game you love. It’s about loving the feeling playing a game gives, and the community we can build as gamers. That’s my definition, at least.

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #28: Do you have any house rules when you game? What are they, and why
do you use them? If not, why not?

I’ve been in very few games without house rules. It’s usually a handful of rules that over course of play have shown to either not fit in chronicle theme, or seem too ambiguous to use as written. In Orpheus we had rules about was and wasn’t possible with some of the Poltergeist powers, killing Reapers, and we had a few damage tweaks as well. That’s what I remember off-hand. Somewhere between 5-10 house rules. The last LARP group I was with had literal binders of house rules, and a variety of them changed when storytelling staff switched to the next staff. It was a daisy chaining clusterfuck of rules shake ups.

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #27: If you were an Ent, what kind of Ent would you be? Or, what other
NPC creature would you be? Why?

Tarrasque.

I mean, just say it with me. Tarrasque.

\m/

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #26: Who or what was the most memorable NPC you’ve ever encountered?
Why?

NPCs that had emotional impact on the game are the most memorable for me. I don’t have a most memorable, as much of a host of them.

Most of them were long-running NPCs that were as much a part of the chronicle as the player characters.

Black, the mysterious and cantankerous Marshall in a Deadlands game. Bob Brown, the Syndicate operative who made the lives of player characters a financial living Hell in a Mage game. Prince Goldwin, in a vampire game, who I knew different angles of from character to character. Prince Alice, his successor, who had one of the most moving, brutal death scenes I’ve ever seen in a LARP. Lucias Saint James, who shed a light for a group of player character Hermetic Apprentices on their mentor’s painful, private life, and her complicated marriage. In Eberron, a dragonmarked bureaucrat who betrayed the local government and his own family. Recently, in Aethertide, Will’s been the most memorable NPC. As a little boy he was loved, and as an adult, utterly heartbreaking.

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #25: If you game enough, you’re bound to run into someone being an ass.
What’s the most asinine thing someone’s done in a game with you? How did you react? Did that
experience change the way you game?

Meta-gaming in a LARP. For those unfamiliar, meta-gaming is using out of character knowledge you have of setting or other information your character doesn’t, and using it for your advantage against someone else. I was pissed and upset afterward, but I stepped off to the side with a few friends to take some deep breaths and try to laugh it off. I’ve dived right back into game after being upset about something. Doesn’t end well. So I tried to get my calm on, and my jaw dropped a few minutes into my friends trying to help me vent so I could get back into game. I could hear one of the storytellers, from the other side of the venue, in a screaming match with the player I’d butted heads with. That ST has the most fixed-point need for fairness of any ST I’ve played with to date, and meta-gaming was a hot button issue for them.

After that game session, I started avoiding gaming with that person whenever possible. I still liked them in real life, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with meta-gaming. I eventually quit playing that character because of the issue, and I think it did change the way I game. I’ve become a lot more mindful of trying to play strictly to what I know, which is admittedly difficult in games I know particularly well. I think meta-gaming taxes emotional reserves in real life as well as in game, so I do what I can not to spend other peoples spoons for them in a game.

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #24: Have you ever been to a game convention? What was it like to be
surrounded by so many other gamers? If not, would you like to go to one? Why or why not?

GenCon and PAX, last year, both for the first time. In honesty, I liked GenCon better, even if PAX is literally in my backyard. I was working as a book seller at GenCon, but I got to play games outside my booth shifts, talk to people endlessly about games, and see people so amped and happy to be in one place with so many other gamers. If I can afford it, I’d love to go back. I haven’t been to many conventions, but a lot about GenCon makes it up there in my favorites.

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #23: Have you ever experienced Total Party Kill (TPK), or been close to it?
What effect did that have on you personally? On your group of players? Have you ever used retroactive
continuity (retcon) to save yourself? Why or why not?

In the D&D games I’ve played in recently (Eberron, Dark Sun, and a homebrew setting) TPK is a nearly every session occurence. In Eberron, it’s because spies and thieves aren’t built for head on combat. In Dark Sun, the world is trying to kill you. In that custom setting built by a friend, a party of eighteen year old characters under level 10 when played correctly often make terrible decisions. These include opening a door, seeing a dragon, and not running. In most cases I find the TPK risks artificially stressful and on some nights, frankly pisses me off. My current table’s usually pretty level-headed and on task, but long combats usually lose them both when it comes to paying attention and staying in character. I haven’t used retcon to save myself, but I’ve seen it used to save other players, and that’s something I’ve seen in other games as well.

Reverb Gamers is a January long prompt bonanza run by Atlas Games. They’re giving daily prompts that revolve around RPGs and gaming. You can find them at  www.Atlas-Games.com and follow them on twitter @ReverbGamers.

REVERB GAMERS 2012, #22: Describe the worst game you’ve ever played in. What made it so bad?
Did your fellow players help, or make it worse?

It was either Twilight Imperium, a game that I hate with every fiber of my being, made slightly better by the people I was playing it with, or Settlers of Catan, which I have yet to find a single thing that improves that game for me, including fellow players. Both games appeal to so little of what I like in board games that it’s easily to discern I’m not their audience. That doesn’t put us off to a good start. But TI takes what feels like a feel aeons in space to play, and I’m rarely willing to sign my life away to an entire day for one game. TI also has an immense amount of moving parts. If I’m not playing it, I think it’s a lovely, complex game. Playing it, I want to gnaw off my own limbs to escape. As for Settlers, my dislike begins with it feeling tedious and ends somewhere around the truly horrible jokes I hear when people play that game.