Fighters and Fanzines

Soon, I might be able to write a little about my first experience of Play-By-Post roleplaying, having joined an ambitious Pendragon game on Roleplay Online. I'm not sure quite how roleplaying will work by this method, but I'm looking forward to getting up and running. Or riding - I'm playing a knight, of course.

Brainstorming with the GM and the other players, I'm trying to give my player knight (PK) a set of traits that will give him a suitably Arthurian tragic-hero trajectory. At the moment I'm thinking of creating a PK whose father was (accused of being) a coward. In questing to demonstrate his own valor, to redeem the family reputation, the PK risks undoing the traits that his father did bequeath him; perhaps from his father he has inherited mercy, forgiveness, or modesty as well as cowardice.

Brave Sir Robin

I'd be interested to hear if anyone has used game mechanics such as Pendragon's traits and passions in order to give concrete shape to the extremes of PC personality in games such as D&D. Was a PC the only survivor of a near-TPK at the hands of Ogres? Create a directed passion - Hatred (Ogres) - to be rolled against during encounters involving Ogres. Or has anyone used a similar system in order to surrender some control of NPCs to the will of the dice. Will the clan chieftain accept the PCs' apologies for their trespass? Make a roll against his forgiving/vengeful trait to decide.

A couple of links:

Anyone who finds this blog will probably already be familiar with Meatshields! the henchmen and hireling generator. As it nears its one-year birthday, the blogger at Discourse and Dragons, one of the creators of Meatshields!, has posted a discussion on the way that he uses this neat little application in his own campaign.

If you are British and in your 30s, then it is likely that your introduction to fantasy gaming came through adventure gamebooks. It is nice to find, on the web, that I'm not unusual in my love of this classic mode of gaming, seemingly superceded by CRPGs and MMORPGs. Via the Fantasy Game Book blog, I found this enormous fanzine - Fighting Fantazine (pdf) - which includes a short preview of a new edition of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG, including re-releases of Out of The Pit and Titan - the best fantasy world to fit into a moderately-sized paperback book.

And there is one addition to my blogroll - the excellent Hill Cantons.