The game

On Sunday, I played my first roleplaying game in about ten years, as part of a group that plays every week. Apparently, roleplaying is riding a bicycle, although I put quite a bit of effort into reintroduce myself to the rules beforehand. It's quite relaxing to take your mind off the real world for a bit (without a computer or TV screen shutting you off from people); I'll be continuing.

Integrating a new character is always a mission, but being a "breather" campaign of class dungeon-crawl DnD, that wasn't as much of an issue. So we were soon off.

The group seems to play for roughly three and half hours, which is quite short relative to the longer games of my youth. There was also a lot more out-of-character chatting and joking too, but I think that was probably good for me integrating.

One interesting advent since I last played is the use of computers (in this case, laptops) within the game. It's a really easy way to keep track of your character, remember when spells run out, quickly look over your possible actions, and otherwise avoid destroying a piece of paper with an eraser and a pencil. The GM had some nice-looking spreadsheets for managing combat (initiative, monster stats, and so forth), and three of the five players (including me) used spreadsheets and other resources to aid their gameplaying. Definitely something I'm going to try keep doing in future, and build some nice gnumeric spreadsheets and open-source-program-friendly data.

Am thinking of running an Arcana Unearthed campaign sometime, possibly outside the current group's times, and perhaps with players who are more newcomer types, who may be easier to keep entertained at a low-level start and the compelling Diamond Throne campaign setting. Obviously, I haven't run a game in almost ten years, so I've got lots of research and effort to put in. It's nice to have a non-computer hobby again.

I'm quite taken with the idea of Tarak, my dwarven priest of Tramarin (a deity of protection and travel). He's the sort of character I'd love to run a campaign with - textured past, some flaws, and dedicated to causes. Of course, that's a bit much for a more dungeon-crawl-oriented game, but it was fun creating him.