ROLL FOR INITIATIVE

I want to mention up front that it was a gaming podcast that got me involved in the online blogging community. I don’t know the name of it (maybe it was an early episode of RFI), but James from Grognardia was a guest, and listening to his old school talk, then going on to look at his blog, inspired me to start my own blog about a year or so ago.

I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts, but on occasion I like to listen to some chatter on my Ipod while on the computer at work or working out, and my cast of choice is usually the popular Adam Carolla Podcast. But the blurb I saw at Dragonsfoot regarding "issue" 14 of the RFI podcast mentioned that they would be talking about Gnolls, creating adventures, and giving tips on running thieves, and that sounded interesting to me.

I’ve been gaming since I was a kid in the late 70’s. In those days, we loved talking gaming, because a lot of it was still so mysterious. Everybody had their own point of view on particularities of various game related things. Then in my early teens in the 80’s, I spent a lot of time at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica where lots of older gamers (some who probably should not have been hanging around young people) would philosophize and argue about games over issues of The Dragon and the Alarums and Excursions fanzine. But by the late 80’s and through the 90’s, I didn’t hang out at the store anymore (I actually found the owner and the crowd to be very negative as I grew older) or go to cons, and I culled most of my players from my groups of friends, mostly people with little to no D&D experience. So for the most part my efforts to actually sit and discuss gaming when we weren’t actually gaming usually fell flat. I had the occasional exception, somebody dorky enough to sit around and drink beer and talk about the merits of magic-users and clerics and all the deep stuff with me (one of these in the early 90’s was maybe a little too fond of a certain white, powdery substance), but that was a rarity for me. I would usually just run the game, and afterwards if we talked about anything, it was usually movies or TV shows.

So getting into the blogging community, specifically that involving the OSR, really got my juices flowing again as far as out of game talk goes. Long threads on every possible D&D subject can be looked up at Dragonsfoot.org, and the game blogs are just brimming with invigorating ideas and commentary on gaming. I guess gaming podcasts were kind of a no brainer, but it took me well over a year to have a listen to another one. So it was today with the Roll For Initiative cast, and I have to admit I am glad I gave a listen.

I am sure I will put the hosts names together as I get into further episodes (or go back to the archives to hear some older ones), but for now they seem like pretty good dudes. They don’t come off as any of those annoying, creepy gamer dudes who either smell like sour milk or cat piss. But they do know their 1st edition AD&D, and during the discussions they often actually reference their Monster Manual, Fiend Folios, etc. on the spot, which I found pretty endearing. Combined with the occasional mildly amateurish moment (bumping and fidgeting sounds, microphone thumps, awkward interruptions, etc.), it felt pretty comforting and homey, just as if me and my players were hanging around the game table looking things up as we talked gaming. The guys are fairly comfortable on the mike, so it comes off just like a pre/after game jive session, complete with the type of dopey jokes (they pronounce gnolls, “ga-nolls,” for example) all involved in gaming take part in. It seems like just the right attitude for 1st ed. Talk.

So the guys speak on adventure creation (helpful for new DM’s, but pretty standard stuff for the experienced), do a “creature feature” on the gnoll race (I found interesting because I used these beasts for the first time in decades recently), and give tips for successfully running thieves as characters. Most fun for me was the “Dragon’s Hoard” section, where they discuss a magic item out of the game. I wasn’t particularly interested in their discussion on the Beaker of Plentiful Potions, until to my surprise they dragged out some dice and made the random rolls for potions the beaker actually contained. This was a nice touch, and just the sound of dice hitting the table out of a regular game context was very cool.

All in all, I found this to be a great little podcast, and I’m going to listen to more of them. I’ll praise it more in the future when I know more about the gents on the microphone, and dig a little deeper into the background.