Is the Magic Gone?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Scarab Sages

Like many older RPGers, when I was younger I used to game every chance I got, and my group would often start at 6 or 7 at night, going through until the wee hours of the morning, and occasionally sun-up.

Then, for a while, it was just a sporadic, once or twice a month.

Then not at all.

My dry spell lasted for several years, and finally came to an end shortly after World Wide D&D Game Day of 2005. That's when I gamed at my FLGS with two guys who help form the core of my new group. For a while, we were pretty regular. But, being guys in our 30s, and some of us closer to 40, life gets to intruding.

These days, we have dry spells of maybe a month or two, and not everyone in the group can game that often, but it also helps that we do other stuff together.

And, of course, I also have this place to help feed my need.


Treantmonk wrote:

The best analogy that comes to mind is driving. When I first got my licence, I would look for any excuse to drive. Loved it.

Now that I'm older, the shine has worn off. I still like driving as it happens, but not with the enthusiasm I had when I first began.

When I was 10 years old I could roleplay all day every day and be happy with that. Now, nearly 30 years later, if I roleplay for a few hours once per week I'm good with that.

However, if I go a few weeks without roleplaying, I still miss it. :)

Some people suggested changing systems or genres can help, and I agree. Our group is doing some non-pathfinder roleplaying right now (Deadlands, Dark Heresy, In Nomine) and it's great to change things up.

Treantmonk, I think that hits solidly. I think it is a certain minetality that some people never lose that sense of wonder. I still love driving. Doesnt matter where. I will drive just to drive.

None of the group I play with has ever lost that wonder in gaming. We play every weekend on Saturday and Sunday for usually 6-8 hours. Two games every weekend. Uusually four games going during a given month. Usually at least two different systems. Somehow it never loses the magic for us.

Going a while with out a game for us results in dice withdrawl...your hands start twitching, you see pips everywhere... ;)

-Weylin

Scarab Sages

Viletta Vadim wrote:
With sufficient vision, anything can be made spectacular, even in the most serious of games; I've integrated badass bacon trees into games before.

Pedro: Juan, Juan, are you eenjured? Who deed thees?

Juan: Pedro, stay way, eet ees not a bacon-tree. Eet ees a ham-bush...


Snorter wrote:
Viletta Vadim wrote:
With sufficient vision, anything can be made spectacular, even in the most serious of games; I've integrated badass bacon trees into games before.

Pedro: Juan, Juan, are you eenjured? Who deed thees?

Juan: Pedro, stay way, eet ees not a bacon-tree. Eet ees a 'am-bush...

Reminds me of an old Dragon Mirth with a one-frame comic and a party fleeing a humanoid palm tree...."Run Away! It's a Coconut Treant!"...a treant that grows his own missle weapons.

-Weylin


As one party member speaks to another as they are running ... I didn't know treants could ride horses. Ok, well maybe Monty Python doesn't apply, but it is worth a try.


Hi,

I'm getting back into gaming after a long hiatus.

For me, I think the magic comes when I try to see the game from the character's perspective. For instance, in a recent session, we encountered a monster than any one member of the party could have trashed in a round or two. We'd never encountered one before, and no one rolled a success on their knowledge skills to identify it. So we skirted it and avoided going anywhere near where we saw it. IMHO, that is as much a part of role playing as developing a big backstory for your character because here you are actually living your story. We put a lot of points into things like linguistics so that we can speak with and get information from allies and enemies. Sense motive is HUGE in our campaign, because you have to find things out not just read a guidebook or other materials.

Playing the game from the inside is a whole new experience.

I don't think that's incompatible with min-maxing or playing a concept.
It does change things though. An Int 7 fighter is unlikely to be calling tactics for the party that includes an int 18 wizard and a 16 Wis cleric. Either of those would have much better ideas for general adventuring and specialized knowledge that would help against specific foes.

Dark Archive

Aberzombie wrote:

And, of course, I also have this place to help feed my need.

Brains? lol...

Before I moved to this wonderful city of Plattsburgh, NY, I was playing a weekly game with my family. Me, my 2 brothers, my step-sister, my brother's friend, and my dad. Now, mind you, my dad is 50, i'm 28, and he still plays D&D with us. To me, that just kicks ass. Anyway.. we've been doing this for the past several years, and my brothers and I take turns GMing. One of us would have a great idea for a campaign, and we'd play through it, beyond epic levels, and even becoming demi-gods in one. When it got to that point, the campaign was over, and the next brother would start up a new game. Each time, character creation was slightly different, one was completely ridiculous, and featured one player as a vampiric balor. But towards the end of each campaign, the players would "lose their magic", they'd get restless, and bored with the current game.

One thing we tend to do, is take a week off, and usually that gives the GM enough time to recuperate, gather his thoughts, and try to breath life into the campaign. Sometimes it's due to players getting to mired in the rules to enjoy the game for what it is. When that happens, the GM has a talk with the players, citing his frustrations with "rules-lawyering" and second-guessing his decisions. Typically that's enough to get the game rolling again.

Now, I'm in a new city, I've found a new group, and I love it. I didn't at first, in fact, it almost got to the point where I almost left. (I think I even had a thread of me ranting about how terrible it was). At first, there was no magic. I was just glad to be playing the game again. But after sticking with it, I've become enthralled with it. Discovering my issues at first had nothing to do with the GM, and everything to do with disruptive players, was the key. Now, not only do I love my current character, but so do my companions. Enough so, that they pooled all their money together to have me brought back to life after I died (level 5ish i think). That, in and of itself, was enough for me to roleplay my new obsession with "blood magic". My character is now a diviner 10/blood magus 2, has more hp than a typical wizard, and even more than our party rogue.

Last session, the group had made it to the duergar city, and had encountered a durzagon. I made a deal with him, signed a contract, that resulted in him aiding us take over a castle run by a tyrant. The durzagon quickly showed how dimwitted he was, and while my character was away, the party cleric made wonderful use of stone shape, encasing the durzagon in a stone coffin. Now, we have a castle.

Most fun I've had with this game so far. And very excited for the next session, where we get 13 pages worth of treasure, try to manage a castle, set off to free a god, ask it's aid to restore a wall that's supposed to separate the giants from the rest of civilization, try to convince that god to teach my character rune magic, and try to get this damn angel off our backs. =)


Sometimes you need a break, sometimes you need some variety, somtimes you're just burned out from playing the same thing over and over. Just like everything in life, you need some new blood, a mix up of some kind. For me, I love actually not knowing things, not having everything explained or hammered over my head. Throw curves. Change rules. Go against the expected. From what I and my friends that play rpgs have experienced, its usually (in our case) falling into that rut. I don't think the magic is gone...just a bit overexposed maybe. I guess I just like surprises so I like when I can't predict what will happen next. I got that feeling a lot when I played Planescape...sigh.

Dark Archive

A new game system or change in genre or world can often do wonders. Sometimes that can help revitalize some of the "new shiny" feel that made the game what you loved before.

I'll admit that our group was undergoing creative lag for a while, and part of the reason on my end (as GM) was the system itself... I didn't mind 3.5, but our big combats were sluggish, and I honestly felt less like a storyteller and more like a statistician when it came to making up adventures that would challenge my players-- and that's okay... there's nothing wrong with admitting that a game works really well, it's just not a great fit for you as a GM, which was the case with me.

At any rate, I suggested I try to run a more old-school-style (Latest Edition C&C, actually; the SIEGE system is pretty streamlined, but enough of it has its roots in 1E/2E that it feels old-school) campaign in a world I'd created a long while ago but never touched as a GM. It was great to see the enjoyment that rolling for stats, learning the ins and outs of a new system, and finding out about a world they'd never seen before brought to them. On top of that, some of those old dusty storylines I'd considered unusable fit perfectly in with their characters, and even advanced themselves in ways I'd never have figured. We had enough fun with it that the other GM in our group tried an old-school Basic D&D game and was ecstatic about the way the old creative juices percolated just looking at some of the old books we never thought we'd use for anything but fluff.

Try a new system for a couple weeks, see if that helps. Heck, try an old system; if you don't like it, at least you might bring about an appreciation for what you currently play or a new way of looking at some of the things that may have grown stagnant!

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