Harrigan comments on Symbaroum episode

Dug the Symbaroum episode, @Fafhrd and @sean, and I’m glad Brett shares some of the opinions I voiced about the game all those months ago when he first was poking at it. From the incredibly evocative art (it’s what grabbed me first as well) to the dark, very moody and very focused setting, I hold the game in pretty high esteem.

One thing to emphasize if it wasn’t clear in the episode is that the characters can come from all walks of life, not just from the recently arrived Ambrians, who have come to the area after winning a war with dark forces that cost them their homeland. The players could all be members of the decimated barbarian tribe that the Ambrians displaced, or one of the various tribes that are now adjusting to the new status quo and the continued expansion of the militant and battle-hardened Ambrians. There are religious dissenters within the Ambrians’ ranks, there are independent communities who have thrown off the yoke of the Queen, there are royal relatives with axes to grind, there are refugees from the terrible war, years ago, who are still arriving… and who are being shunted into the Davokar, the dark forest because all the good land is already gone. There are multiple factions within the Ambrian nation… frankly there are juicy campaign and story hooks on virtually every page, and I think anyone who enjoys dark, gritty, grounded and mysterious fantasy would dig the game, whether they play the original or the forthcoming 5e version.

Hoping you guys both run this at some point!

Eric Salzwedel comments on Saying No

This concept is something I’ve been thinking a lot about more lately. Simply because when I first got back into the hobby I re-evaluated my previous game experiences specifically around gamemastering. And I definitely wanted to in the past try to retell epic tales and had a very set design in my head. Since then I have become much more flexible and in some cases I haven’t cared what the players picked at all as long as it was something that was in the Roebuck or created from the existing rules.

I have even had a little bit of frustration and some of my games where I felt like the Gamemaster was being restrictive for reasons that I didn’t agree with but the more I think back on it they were simply trying to curate a particular type of experience for everyone including themselves.

When discussing this with some of our group there is a little bit of disagreement, all friendly of course but at least some members of our group believe that the game master should be accommodating and allow the players to play whatever they want as long as there’s some rule or mechanic that supports that. While I agree that we should want to run games that our players want it also has to be the games we want as a GM and if you truly want to run a human centric campaign with no wizard then being accommodating for the personal who wants to be a wizard might not be the right thing and in fact maybe your group isn’t the right group to run that game.

I know I’m rambling a little bit here but just kind of brain-dumping recent experience I have a player playing a cleric of a particular deity who’s about being crafty and trying to evade death a deity of the night. They mentioned potentially multiclassing into Paladin and it wasn’t for a role-playing aspect but for Pure mechanical advantage. I did step in as GM and say hey that doesn’t make sense this particular deity they don’t have churches per say I can’t see them having Paladin’s running around. In my games and settings paladins are either holy knights or Unholy knights and even in games with other side deities those ones may not have Paladin’s they could have priests but they won’t have Paladin’s.

Ok enough rambling