I am going to make a very long post about roleplaying games and how I feel about the three that I currently play in, feel free to just skip over most of it, because I don't think most of you care about how I feel about a fake world. I might bold important parts.
We have three games, Jason running D&D 4e, Tom running Exalted rules with sky pirate (think One Piece) themes, and Alan running Werewolf 2e.
We have been playing Jason's game the longest, and I was sort of getting into it. I started as a cleric, but by level 2 I 'rerolled' into an invoker. I am lawful good, now, when I think lawful good, I think lawful: does not break the law of the land or the law in the cities. Done, I don't really do much to break laws. Good: doesn't do evil things. Done, all actions that I take are either in the name of my god or for the benefit of the party. We can get into a huge discussion about good and evil, and how it is a lot of gray area (which it really is) but last week, when we were playing, we started at midnight, and it was around 2am, well, we were in combat pretty much the entire time. So, the player (me) decided to try and find an alternate method to do things, since fighting zombies for 2 hours gets really fucking boring. So, I rationalize it through my character "these zombie hordes are endless, I'd better go scoop up the party in our magical wagon thing." I run back to the wagon and the driver will not go into the town, even though I told him that he needs to so that we can save everyone. He just absolutely refuses, so I tap him on the head with my staff. Tap, no damage, just like a "hey, stop being a coward, lets go" sort of thing. Apparently this was attacking him. Then I just wanted to intimidate him, to force him to fucking drive. I rolled a natural 20 and the fucker ran off scared because I threatened him. So I see this young girl on the other side of the wagon, peering at me. I go around the other side and ask who she is, she says nothing, so I grab onto her.
Lets take a moment and think, I am in a place where zombies seem to come out of nowhere and everywhere all the fucking time. There is this random girl who won't say anything, am I just going to let her go, probably causing some more zombies to show up, since that seems to be a trend in this place? No, I'm going to hold on to her. I continue to ask her who she is as I investigate if I can drive the wagon (I can't) and eventually I just grab her by the throat. Now the important thing here is the word grab, I did not choke her, I explicitly mentioned that I was NOT going to choke her, that I just wanted to hold her, by the throat. This is possible. I was told that I was choking her out (after the game), when I disputed, saying, no, I was holding her, the DM says "well, how do you know" and I basically said, because it is really easy to tell if you are choking someone, and you can hold someone without choking them. Now, he is telling me that I took evil actions that were way uncharacteristic and I have tried to refute saying, its not evil since I was only trying to do a good thing.
me: "I didn't harm anyone"
DM: "you hit the driver, and choked out that girl"
me: "I did no damage to him and did not choke her"
DM: "well, you don't know that"
Now, the girl ended up being a bard or some shit and knocking me out, then she says "leave him he is evil" and so I was pretty upset, but I like the guys I play with, its fun, so I tried to dispute my actions after the game, and he won't have any of it. I can't really think of another way to make him see that what I did was not at all evil, or really even bad. I will probably end up quitting the game, because that is bullshit.
Lets move on to our second longest game, Tom's Exalted campaign.
I originally made a character who talked, because I thought it would be fun to be the guy who talked the groups way out of things. Pretty much every single time I accomplished something socially, it was trumped by the villains, so I just stopped trying, took a session and remade my character into someone who can actually fight. I do much better now, but it was pretty disappointing to me that everything always ended up in combat one way or another. I have given up really trying in the game and will probably just quit if the next session doesn't go well.
The final game is Alan's werewolf campaign. We started it last night.
There is a full circle (all 5 group spots are filled) and one experienced player who is sort of our guide. Now this is actually a really cool game because we are playing a relaxed version of ourselves, but as werewolves. (I am like charisma 4 in the game which is one step below hitler level of charisma, I am not really like this in real life) So, we started playing, and the pack doesn't really decide things, so I try to take the alpha spot (since we're a pack) and say "come on, lets go" and every one just sort of looks at me and goes "you aren't the leader." Even though no one else makes any decisions, they just keep asking questions. Time passes, we move on, stuff takes FOREVER to get done, and we end up in combat. Now, we've got 5 badass werewolves and one super badass. We should be able to fuck some shit up something fierce. Well, not so much. I jump over this fence to a coal mine, and so does the veteran, two guys run off into the mine, and two guys run off toward the trailers, I am thinking "wow, great move you split the party in a place tainted by heavily tainted by the wyrm." We (the veteran and I) end up flipping a crane over onto some of the trailers, and then stepping into the umbra (spirit world) to fuck up things in their spirit form. Meanwhile, two of the party are choking on gasses in the mine, and two are getting torn to shreds over by the remains of the trailers by demons (essentially). I start to fight some giant bats with hyena heads in the spirit world (which I got stuck in) and I end up zangief-ing one, except I pulled its head off instead of grabbing the whole body, and the body backlashed and clawed me for some damage. Oh damn, that sucks. Its cool though, I'm into it, so even though I fall to the ground, I immediately jump back up and start to corkscrew at the one that didn't lose its head. Well the headless one clawed me and I was knocked unconscious. A were-bear that we had met earlier in the game came to save us in his pick up and we all piled in. I was pulled out of the umbra by our veteran, and the game ended there.
I was very unhappy with this game for a couple reasons:
-it took forever to do things, time was passing (both in game and out) and nothing was getting accomplished, and trying to speed things up and make decisions didn't work.
-I ended up being critically wounded, which gives you a battle wound, which is cool, but not really because I have a collapsed lung. And if I WAS critically wounded, the state that I was wounded in meant I should have been dead. So I should either NOT have the battle wound, or I should be dead. THIS IS HOW THE RULES READ. Basically I am trying to avoid having a collapsed lung because that fucking sucks and means that I cannot run or do any sort of physical exertion for more than an hour in game. Also, I get hurt more when I get hit.
-There was not a sense of party at all. One guy (the DM for the D&D game) said that we were working as a team, but we were basically 3 groups of 2 that weren't really coordinating at all. Hell, two of the guys weren't even a group of two, they just went the same direction and ended up acting totally independent of each other. In a game where you are a pack, you'd think it'd be a Bad Idea to split up. It never worked for Scooby and the gang, and it never works in combat.
I'm going to be talking to our DM about this tonight when he gets back from work (we are flatmates), I was just unhappy with how things turned out, and may not be returning next week.
tl;dr
I am venting about fake worlds and how I might quit. Any of the roleplayers here could give me feedback if they wanted, but I mostly needed to vent.
