Welcomes and Introductions---Start here! 👋

[Paul_T (Paul Taliesin)]

Wonderful! Welcome, Chiara!

It sounds like you’re doing some really good and valuable things to bridge the RPG communities of the world. That’s very exciting to hear!

[Froggy (Claudio)]

I have a lot of respect for Chiara as a player, and it’s been obvious to me in our past discussions that she shares the Wynwerod values—which have been brewing in my head for many years, before I opened this forum.

Somehow the stars haven’t aligned for us to play together—possibly because of her interest in LARP and our physical distance across Europe. I end up skipping ChamberCon each year because it’s up in the mountains and takes a long time to get to. Hopefully we will find a chance!

I find a lot of LARP culture alien and sometimes unconstructively obsessed with 100% in-character play, but whatever is there that interests me, Chiara represents.

Welcome!

[zeruhur (Roberto Bisceglie)]

Hi there,
I am Roberto, 39 years old from Italy and I am here because of my acquaintance with @Froggy and his Locanda forum.

I played informally since my early teenage years and my exposure with gamebooks, but I first played a “true” RPG only in my university years. Then a long hiatus until 2020: with the pandemic I rekindled my interest in roleplaying (especially in solo games) and I read a lot about what I missed while I was following other interests.

I mostly play very rules light games, I have a thing for tag-based frameworks and Freeform/Universal is what I like and play the most.

I have also an interest in old games, my favorite in this category are Original Dungeon & Dragons and most of all Traveller, since I am fixed with old science fiction and space opera.

In my spare time I hacked and translated some open licensed games, some of which with @LordPersi

edit: adding at last the matrix of my favorite games

[xenopulse (CW Griffen)]

Hi folks!

My name is Christian (any pronouns), and I started RPing in 1989 at age 12 after picking up The Dark Eye 2E boxed set from a department store (TDE is as central to and prevalent in the hobby in Germany as D&D is in the US, or at least it was back then). Throughout high school I played (mostly ran) lots of games from Werewolf to KULT to Harnmaster to MechWarrior and more.

In late 1995, I joined CompuServe and fell deeply into the freeform chat-RP hole. That’s where I met my then future wife, which is why I moved to Portland, Oregon, USA in 2000, where I went to grad school and where we still live. Though currently I’m visiting my family in Hamburg, Germany.

I played some AD&D 2E with coworkers after that, and did not enjoy it very much. In 2005 or so, I found the Forge, and thereafter started designing and publishing my own games (the biggest ones being Beast Hunters in 2007, Anima Prime in 2011, and Meridian in 2016).

From 2010 to 2015 I also did improv theater once or twice a week, which not only gave me some tools to deal with my natural shyness but also got me more interested in LARPs. Several parlor LARPs had a big impact on me after that, most noticeably Better Living Through Robotics and Athena’s Chosen. I haven’t yet done a weekend LARP but would love to do so (maybe next year).

I like a wide range of games, from action-focused ones to romantic two-player games, but mostly I play narrative-focused ones like Primetime Adventures, PbtA games, Archipelago, Fall of Magic, and so on.

In the rest of my spare time I like to make music, write fiction, and learn the basics of skills I’ll never apply to anything.

[Paul_T (Paul Taliesin)]

Hi, Christian! What a fun surprise. Nice to see you here! (And I didn’t know you were also a music-making person. Seems there’s a few of us around!)

[dreamup (Ricardo Tavares)]

Olá from Portugal My name is Ricardo Tavares (he/him), I love tabletop games in general and RPGs in particular, so I guess I’ve come to the right place Some people may know me from the Story Games or Gauntlet forums. I also love to host the #RPGenesis game jams that @PaulCzege has mentioned. In my country, I also like to help organize regular RPG meet-ups, although the covids have sidelined me for a while.

I started playing around the 90s when hobby stores in my city were not yet completely taken over by Hasbro and we had a bunch of different RPGs getting played. The one that attracted me at the time was Vampire: the Masquerade and, beyond watching other people play, my first experience with RPGs was buying the V:tM book together with a few friends and having a lot of fun discovering the role of a storyteller. I accumulated a lot of experience with White Wolf games, I enjoyed Mage: the Ascension and Exalted, but grew tired of their formulaic approach. I also was fortunate enough to play other things like Call of Cthulhu, Legend of the Five Rings, several editions of D&D or Cyberpunk 2020. Our local scene at the time carried a lot of different RPGs.

With the help of the internet and discussions at the Forge, I also discovered other games like My Life with Master or Dogs in the Vineyard. I felt I had more fun with purposefully designed games that even tested the limits of what I thought an RPG was. I also got into designing games myself and learned a lot from that, this is why I started hosting #RPGenesis.

More recently, I’ve found a lot of value in ideas I’ve gathered from Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark, I believe that moving from the fiction first has a lot of advantages. I’ve also become more divorced from the D&Ds since 4E and have generally moved away from traditional notions of “running” games for “my” players and having to “handle” stuff. I assume that the role of the GM is just another kind of player, I don’t like to sit at the head of the table or to have a screen in front of me. When I play a character, I like to keep my foot on the accelerator and drive towards story happening with the other players.

Hope to see this new community grow. I’ve been lurking at the Adept Play Discord and I enjoy Actual Play posts (not the performative play that has become so popular). I like talking about theory and game design, but I’ve found that often Actual Play topics lead to more productive discussions as they don’t get caught as much on semantics. Glad to have found this place!

[Froggy (Claudio)]

Bemvindo Ricardo! I’m curious, how did you find this place?

[dreamup (Ricardo Tavares)]

I think I saw it linked on mastodon.

[thekernelinyellow (Lorenzo)]

Hi! I’m Lorenzo (he/him) but I mostly go as The Kernel in Yellow in RPG spaces because my name is really common and people mix me up with other people with the same name.

I’ve known @Froggy for a long time and we’ve had our good share of disagreements on RPGs, but we started realizing the similarities of our play philosophies in recent years. I’m another user of the Locanda (as most of the Italian contingent here).

I started playing D&D when I found my father’s old Basic (in the Italian edition) and totally misunderstood the rules. It’s been a fun experience of which I’d like to do some analysis now that I have more experience, but it was also nearly 20 years ago so I only remember a few moments. After that I moved to D&D 3.5 as it was being published in Italy. Then I’ve tried more games than I can remember, but Vampire: Dark Ages has always had a special place in my heart (it was also my longest campaign as a player, 9 whole years).

A little before the pandemic I fell in love with OSR games and their mix of weirdness and simple rules. They’re currently my most played games and I often bring them to conventions near me.

I’m also an admin of an OSR-oriented forum, the OSR Pit, and I sometimes translate open licensed stuff along with @zeruhur and @LordPersi. I’ve helped both of the already-mentioned Italian cons TPK and Froggycon.

As for my favorite games (I’m doing a list because doing the grid on mobile is hard):

• Maze Rats (which I’ve translated in Italian)
• Cairn
• Hell4Leather
• On Mighty Thews
• Vampire: The Dark Ages
• Changeling: The Lost

Recently, I’ve mostly played Cairn and Maze Rats.

[Johann (Johann Mitland)]

Hi everyone!

My name is Johann and I started playing in the late 80s with a buddy’s homebrew system. It broke down pretty soon, but I was already hooked and have been into DIY ever since.

In the 90s, I played a ton of Germany’s RPG juggernaut, Das Schwarze Auge, as well as the usual suspects (Cyberpunk, MERP, Vampire: the Masquerade etc.) and a few evenings of (A)D&D, which I dismissed back then.

After several long campaigns with D&D 3e/4e, I was swept up in the OSR and radically and systematically changed the way my core group played – via DCC and its wonderful character funnels (which helped me to stop pulling punches) & unpredictable spells (which helped with lingering tendencies to railroad). I blogged about my quest to become a ‘Killer DM’ for a while.

I also like reflecting upon our hobby and improving my play and was active at rec.games.frp.advocacy, the Forge, Story-Games and the OSR blogosphere, though not always under the name of Johann. I’ve played quite a few smaller games (e.g. Primetime Adventures, Ten Candles, The Pool) but not nearly enough!

I’ve designed lots of stuff for myself and my friends, as when I unsuccessfully tried to make the Rolemaster critical hit tables usable for Shadowrun etc. or tailored a swashbuckling game for my best friend’s (proudly nerdy) bachelor party.

I’m currently developing my first game for publication, In the Realm of the Nibelungs (or Im Reich der Nibelungen, as it’s called in my native German). You can check it out here.
Due to various real life responsibilities, I suspect I will mostly be lurking, but I like what I am seeing here!

Thank you, @Froggy, for setting up and maintaining this space!

[perfischer (Per)]

Hi,
I’m Per, Danish oldtimer, expat since 2002, but was heavily involved in the Danish RPG scene in the 80s and 90s. I have written a bunch of convention scenarios, mostly for Fastaval. My early RPG history goes D&D, CoC, Shadowrun 1st, Ars Magica, Kult, etc. Tonnes of systems, lots of dissatisfaction.

Then I discovered The Forge via the game Sorcerer. I was very active there and later on Story-Games.

These days I mostly play solo or online due to lack of FTF options. I do have a group of noobs I run some games for, lately Legacy and Mothership (yes, I’m also trying to play around with that OSR thing).

I have a now more or less defunct blog (https://darkplaces.wordpress.com/) with some of my games, and recently started a substack writing about solo play (https://perfischer.substack.com/), feel free to peruse both.

[Paul_T (Paul Taliesin)]

Welcome, @Johann and @perfischer!

Per, it’s been many years since we’ve played together (we met back in 200X and played Polaris as well as Land of Nodd, a game I was developing - I tried to find the online report about that, but I can’t Google it, it seems). If you’d ever like to play a game again, perhaps we could something online - it would be a pleasure.

Johann, your Old School Trinity is one of my favourite series of posts about old-school play, and one of my first recommendations for people interested in that playstyle (along with my own guide to the Fellowship of the Bling, which I posted here on this forum recently).

[Froggy (Claudio)]

Great to have you, @Johann, @thekernelinyellow, and @perfischer!

[Matteo_Sciutteri (Matteo)]

Hi everyone! Finally, I overcame some personal struggles and found the time and space to join this new space!

I’m Matteo - passionate about RPG, cats, and so many other stuff. I’m a (video)game designer by day and ever-GM by night. I really like to talk about rules, systems, and the way to convey a feeling or an image with them, playing around the table. So, a couple of years ago, I started to publish some small games (like many of you, I wrote games for my entire life, but now I like to share them with players worldwide).

The games of my youngest era

[/grid] [grid] [/grid] [grid][/grid] [grid][/grid] [grid][/grid][grid]

The last games I played and enjoyed

[/grid] [grid][/grid] [grid][/grid] [grid][/grid] [grid][/grid] [grid]

[Froggy (Claudio)]

Welcome, Matteo, it’s great to have you here as well.

[Ouroboros-Binary02]

Hello everyone!

My name is Andres Nicolas “Nico” Zarta, and I’m really happy to be here. I have been playing role-playing games for the past 18 years, and have enjoyed a wide variety of different experiences and styles of roleplaying. I’m originally from Bogota, Colombia but I have been living in New York State/City, USA for the past few years.

I was invited by my friend @Paul_T, who for the past 5 or so years has been kind of a mentor figure when it comes to exploring different roleplaying paradigms outside of the more traditional systems. In my exploration of “story gaming”, which is the paradigm I adhere to the most lately, I have come to fall in love with PbtA games, particularly those that follow closely the model of implicit conflict that AW outlines.

Lately I have also been exploring the OSR scene and its been really fun! I’m happy to live in an age where different RPG cultures can be appreciated and enjoyed for their differences.

I’m really passionate about the theory of RPGs and a voracious reader of all things The Forge, AdeptPlay and Lumpley Games. I will probably engage in conversations that address any topics that are closely related to those “schools” of thinking.

I have lately played Apocalypse World, Old School D&D, Ironsworn Starforged, Avatar Legends, The Wolf King’s Son and Root RPG. I have also been getting into journaling games and I really enjoyed reading @PaulCzege 's “The Ink that Bleeds”.

[Paul_T (Paul Taliesin)]

What a kind introduction! <3 Welcome, Nico. Really nice to see you here!

[Froggy (Claudio)]

Sorry for being late to this—much to do! But I’m really glad you’re here, @Ouroboros-Binary02. Your history sounds really interesting and I hope you find it easy to share your experiences.

[dereel]

Hi, My game alias is DeReel. I enjoy games like ForTheQueen, Svart av kval… and Venture and I write one page storygames that I publish on itch, where you can find my storygamer life story and artgames where I express my relationship to writing games.

I also spend too much time skimming new games to find new ideas, and talking RPGs on discord

I’m glad to see a community with people with the same specific interests as me

[Froggy (Claudio)]

Welcome @sam_1234 and @dereel!