How Did I Get Here??

We established in the last blog post that this blog and (the coming??) YouTube channel are being built out of overwhelming boredom, a need to play RPGs and a wistful hope of becoming a full time gamer. But, this particular project went on a bit longer of a journey - I thought I would share that with you here…

I started by looking for people running solo games on YouTube. I was shocked to see how little of that kind of content existed. Lots of crafting videos by one creator, lots of groups playing games, almost no solo players. In fact, I really only found one: Me, Myself and Die.

Voice actor Trevor Devall makes for quite entertaining viewing. I can not recommend his channel enough. He gets very excited about the games he’s playing, you can’t help being excited with him.  If, after you watch his channel, it appears I am entirely copying him, well, it’s nearly true. His work was a big inspiration and I only hope that if mimicry is the truest form of flattery, that indeed he is flattered.

I started off not looking to create a YouTube channel, I was merely looking for ideas on how others were playing solo games. After watching just about everything on MMD, I convinced myself that it might be an extra fun kick to share what and how I’m playing with the world.

At first, I wanted to find a way to play something like Star Wars. I wanted to play a lone padawan trying to learn the ways of The Force. I thought I would use my preferred ruleset, the Revised Rulebook from Wizards of the Coast (it coincided with the D&D 3.5 rules.) Right about the time I thought about playing that on YouTube, Hasbro, who knows less about roleplaying games than they do about good Star Wars toys, forced WotC to start messing with the latest Open Gaming License (OGL), which pissed off the gaming community as a whole and forced a great deal of creators to rethink their association with Wizards and the D&D brand. It occurred to me that Disney now owns the rights to Star Wars and Hasbro owns the rights to the d20 ruleset, these are two of the most litigious companies around. I don’t want to ruin my life messing with either of them, thank-you-very-much.

I looked at GURPS, my old friend, frankly the best system ever made. (Fight me!) I looked around their website to see if there were any rules about running a game on YouTube. All I found was a FAQ, written in 2012, that mentioned running a GURPS game on a BBS… that’s what page they are on at Steve Jackson Games. I must admit I’m very disappointed. I read through their Facebook page, post after post about Munchkin. I must have looked for at least a half hour, I saw one, a single lonely post that mentioned GURPS. It’s as if they don’t care about their product anymore. Just another dead, abandoned RPG - I guess. The current market is clamoring for D&D alternatives - I hope they find a way to capitalize on it soon.

I wanted to stay with Sci-fi, and at this point I wanted to try something very new to me. Especially since most of the things I was comfortable with were disappearing fast. I had long been curious about Mutant Crawl Classics and its predecessor Dungeon Crawl Classics, both from Goodman Games. I found a nice bundle on Drive Thru RPG for MCC and I tucked into reading the book. It took me a couple of nights, but now I’m hooked. I’ve not only purchased the third party produced Star Crawl but have also purchased the DCC bundle. I have been listening to the Glowburn podcast and will likely add Spellburn to my podcast list soon. I’m really excited to be playing this game and sharing my fun with the world.