Ask Me Anything: DarK_RaideR

That's a really interesting examination that I never thought about.

My theory is they like clearly defined (and easily defensible) spaces
There's a certain cultural distance inbetween, sure. I guess it's similar to, say, us Westerners trying to play a game set in feudal Japan.

I always thought that adventuring heroes and monsters roaming the land are more from the Classical period than medieval times. D&D itself has the aestethic of Medieval contental Europe, but story structure it's more Mythic heroes meet Wild West bounty hunters.

Agree on the problem with translations. Some cool names/places don't sound as cool or completely out of place in different languages.

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1. While on the topic of translation, how the name of the leader of the Argonauts, Jason in English, is actually spelled and pronounced?
2. What is the question you want to be asked but no one ever asked?

1. Ιάσωνας. It's pronounced ee- (like in "bee") -ass- onas (as in "Jonas"). Emphasis on "ass".
2. Top 3 favourite/most memorable campaigns/characters and why?

Oh! I just thought of a most brilliant question!

Top 3 favorite/most memorable campaigns/characters and why?

That's a really good question, aquafina! Congrats for coming up with that!

A.M.A.: Ask Myself Anything :P
In no particular order:

Campaigns
- A d&d 3.5 one where I threw my unsuspecting players into the Beastlands and from there to Sigil. At level 1. And then at Dis (second layer of the LE plane of Baator) at level 2. I'd made a literal underground bare knuckle fight club with representatives from all the factions and reasons for their philosophy to take them there, which was a nice way to introduce factions and some long term NPCs. But my proudest moment was inbetween. They were very videogame-esque in their approach: get the quest, do the thing, return quest, get gold and XP. I sent them into a maze to reclaim a sword for their faction. They ran into groups from 2 other factions (rule of three!) and by the time they were out, they had a moment of clarity where they debated whether instead of just completing the quest, they should haggle for a better reward, see what other factions were offering or even keep it for themselves. I felt like a proud parent, seeing them explore options.

- A WFRP 2e one, where I used Tome of Corruption and we ran a Chaos campaign. I'd hand picked 4 guys whose personalities I thought matched the 4 gods and we started with them retreating after the Siege of Praag by Asavar Kul. They had to survive some Winged Lancers chasing them, regroup the troops, gather 4 artifacts to make a banner and assemble another army to head south, more or less in the place of Archaon's 4 generals. It was a very different experience to playing as Imperials and we named the campaign "The 4 Pedestrians of the Apocalypse" because they acted mighty and thought themselves great when they had no armor or mount, so the joke was that they were marked to bring the Apocalypse but they'd still be carrying their starting gear while doing so.

- I ran 5e Curse of Strahd just before covid hit, we'd done everything except the Amber Temple and castle itself. It wasn't so much the game but the people, we had such great chemistry. Plus my gf used our gatherings as an excuse to cook foods she wanted to eat but were too much of a hassle to just make for the 2 of us.

Characters
- I've always wanted to see a wizard in WFRP but rolling for careers means chances are slim. I was invited to join a group that were running Enemy Within (they'd just finished Bögenhafen) and was told they'd be willing to let me pick a wizard class if I was willing to take the risk that comes with spellcasting. I made a College of Light (exorcists and demon hunters) wizard and had great fun playing him. He once burned down an empty farmhouse with a miscast trying to repel some goblins, then much later his second miscast saw him get possessed by a purple horror of Tzeentch, ironic given his concept.

- Two for the price of one: Several years ago, I played PbP on a different website and joined an evil campaign that drew heavily from the 3.x Book of Vile Darkness supplement. The main concept was to gather some artifacts, the Regalia of Evil, for Rallaster the Razor God, but I joined late as the party were hunting down some drow for the last bit, then collapsed as we each wanted to do different things with the artifacts. One of the players portrayed a succubus; authoritative, arrogant amd sultry to the point where I legitimately hated the player, not the character. She'd charmed another PC, a human assassin, who was her absolute pet and fiercely defended her in conversations. During the final showdown, the succubus flew up and sniped us with arrows while the assassin cast darkness and hid. My character fell and the succubus flew down for the coup de grace, only to be stabbed by the assassin who'd taken his 3 rounds inside the darkness to prepare his blow. This final act redeemed him in my eyes as the revelation of him pretending to be charmed all this time set in, then the succubus' player apologized in the OOC thread for the character portrayal and pressing any buttons. That made me separate the player for the character again and respect the rp, even as others joined in saying they loved the portrayal but would never want to play with such a PC in their party again. Masterful, both of them.

- First ever Shadowrun character I made, a sprawl ganger troll. He had run ins with human racists, which made him an antifascist and also caused him to drop out of school, combined with his mom falling ill (she also was oblivious to him having turned into a troll, that was inspired by Marv from the Sin City comics). He'd worked as a bouncer for clubs, which gave him street level connections and a love for Troll Thrash Metal and Goblin Punk, but that wasn't enough to pay for the meds so he dabbled in shadowrunning. He had a badass chopper, a sawed off shotgun under the seat, titanium bone lacing and subdermal kevlar armor. Absolute beast and so fun to play as, especially after our GM decided that one of his contacts (who I hadn't bothered to flesh out) was hitting on him. Had to drop the leather jackets and suit up for a high class meeting, so what he handed me was a pastel pink jacket with a white frilly shirt. Hilarious.

Its a bit low level to fumble around on the planes, but cool nonetheless.

Are you planning some plane walking anytime soon?

What were the first books/movies/games/... that got you interested in the Fantasy genre?

In my defence, they were all pre-made adventures for low level characters: the trek through the Beastlands was pulled from Something Wild, the one where they had to recover a sword from a mazed warrior was -I think- in Well of Worlds, they went to the Lower Planes because they played Fires of Dis and then we got up to the middle of Faction War. If anything, I tweaked that stuff to make it somewhat easier for a 2 PC party. The greatest part though was that players were as clueless as their characters.

This isn't the only online community I'm active in and I'm already GMing 3 games and playing in 3 more; sometimes life happens and I don't check in for a couple of days, then have to just rush in and say hi just so my players don't think I'm ghosting them. Don't quite think I have the capacity to run a PS game in the near future, though that would depend on 2 of the games I'm GMing here. They're in the "let's try this out as a one-off and then we'll talk about maybe expanding it" category, so if they do fizzle out, my workload might allow for a PS game. I've also been debating what non-D&d system to use for a PS game here and so far the best I've come up has been Dungeon Crawl Classics. If anything, I'll keep you in mind and PM you if something comes up.
In an earlier question I talked about mythology etc planting some early seeds. I'd say a large part of that had to do with the illustration of a specific publishing house. Here are a few samples from the covers of their books:
Mythology
Persian Wars
Hercules
Sparta
Iliad
Not quite fantasy, but certainly epic in feel.

Another major early literary influence has been Joe Denver's "Lone Wolf" choose-your-own-adventure books that someone passed me as a young teen, which I consider instrumental in me loving the idea of reader/player agency in how a story evolves.

I was also a metalhead, so swords, knights and dragons kinda came with the territory. Never really got into the likes of Manowar, Rhapsody, Blind Guardian and all the other super cheesy epic stuff though.

Pretty sure I read the Hobbit after I got into D&d and heard everyone raving about Tolkien. I liked it, but never managed to do LotR. First attempt I made it up to Rivendell, second attempt I finished Fellowship but didn't get to the other two books, so thank god they made those into a movie.

I really liked reading the LotR books (though I did skip over most of the songs 😅) But I absolutely could not get into the Silmarillion

1. Is there any kind of fantasy you don't like? Any specific worlds, guns in fantasy, etc.?
2. Which system/setting do you wish was more popular and more people knew about/played?

Just fun fact, I lived in Greece for a year when during my university days. I learned how to read and speak it ok, but it was like 10 years ago and I only remember bits and pieces, but I can still read it lol.

1. Not really, but your example was helpful in pinpointing what I don't like and that's poor execution. Case in point, guns in fantasy. The Witchfire adventure books (which would later spawn the Iron Kingdoms) did those right, 5e artificer doesn't.

2. WFRP, Shadowrun and RuneQuest come to mind, but they're not exactly unknown, just stuff I couldn't find enough people to share with. My vote is split between Midnight (a "what if the bad guys had won?" Tolkienesque world) and World Wide Wrestling RPG.

What is one thing great about Greece that you think the rest of the world doesn't know about or ignores?

As an Iron Kingdoms fan I agree. I love that setting. I enjoy SR except the rules can be overly intimidating and complex. WFRP I always hear about but it also looks very complex so I've never looked into it more. There are so many fantasy games, it has to do something "unique" that is strong enough to make me play it over something else. What about WFRP and RuneQuest make them stand apart to you that would persuade others to try them out?

That it's got a marginally shorter coastline than the entire continent of Africa? I don't know, that's actually a pretty tough question to answer.
I've answered before about what I love in WFRP, but I guess this is more about a pitch to hook in players.

WFRP
- It's actually post-medieval to early renaissance, which is a change of scenery. There's primitive firearms and an emerging merchant class that challenges the nobility.
- Magic is rare, wild, powerful, dangerous and unwieldy. Which to me preserves a sense of mystery about it, as opposed to Vancian magic systems where spells function exactly as written.
- It's built on the wargame's rules and if you've watched a bit of Fantasy Battles, you know how miniatures drop like flies. This lethality coupled with the magic system makes it supremely rewarding when you actually make a stand against all odds and still somehow prevail.
- All of the above don't sound like something unique or innovative, but remember this first came out in 1986. It was back then, and it's been refined since, on top of the setting itself having a ton of lore by now if you want to dig into it, without that being a requirement to play.

RuneQuest
- It's set in a Bronze-like Age. A nice change of scenery from the usual medieval fantasy, plus I've written before about growing up with mythology, Homer's epics and all that.
- Everyone can use magic!
- "Adventurers" are an organic part of society, as opposed to the more Wild West approach of them being trouble seekers for money.
- It uses the BRP d100 system, which I think is a bit crunchy and exhaustive but works wonders in levelling, especially since you raise what you use in a very Elder Scrolls kind of approach. It's the same base system as Call of Cthulhu d100, so knowing that one eases the transition.
- Since I brought up levelling, you get to run one adventure per season, which tends to pace a character's growth, as opposed to just going into a dungeon for a couple of days and walking out with +5 levels.
- The slower pacing means you don't hit cartoonish levels of power all too fast. Plus, downtimes make sense as you rest up and take care of your family, livestock and estate, which in turn provide a steady source of income and spare backup characters while also grounding you to the world itself so you don't become a murderhobo.
- Again, this first came out in 1978 so it was a wild deviation from the D&d paradigm. Also its creator was huge into shamanism and stuff, so all that spiritual and magic stuff is written pretty solid.

Those are good pitches! I'll see about reading some more about those games.
I'll take a stab as this from an American's POV. Siestas! The pace of life is slower in general and people took an hour or two in the afternoon to relax and rest. Most shops are also closed this time.

True, though valid mostly anywhere but the capital. I was raised in Crete, my house is a 15-20' walk from downtown so my dad would always join us for lunch and return to his work in the afternoon. Living in Athens myself now, the commute is such that most people bring their lunch to work and stay there till the evening.

I studied ancient Mediterranean history back when I was in school. It's always been a fascination of mine. Having the history it does, I would love to travel to Greece some day. Any tips on often over-looked or under-appreciated places to visit for a first time history fan in Greece? Anywhere that's the opposite - very overrated or should be avoided?