Dormitories & Dragons
So anyhow, here are some random thoughts I have about college gaming clubs.
Some books every library should have:
- The latest D&D core books: People will want to play this. Even if you hate it, I have yet to meet the gaming club that can derisively sneer at every D&D player that walks through the door and still stay viable.
- World of Darkness and Star Wars: These are also fairly popular, and it's a good idea to have them on hand.
- Paranoia, Mongoose edition: The 2nd edition is what I cut my RPG teeth on, so I have a soft spot in my heart for it. Still, I would argue that it provides, at the very least, an RPG experience few forget, and when run well (usually Straight style, in my book), it's a great time that few other products can deliver.
- The core GURPS books, Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition: These might not be on everyone's favorites to play, but their flexibility is strong, and the two options together provide a pretty good balance of crunch.
- Warhammer FRP, 2nd ed.: A good alternative to D&D, and easy to run. Read it over a little in your spare time and get a sense for how the rules work. The random character creation tables make prep work a snap, and it's simple enough that players can pick it up fast. I've run some good on-the-spot one shots with this.
- Over the Edge, 2nd edition: By my book, this is a must. The rules are dirt easy, and once people get passed the paralyzed-by-choice part of character creation, PCs are easy to make as well. I've gotten more people to stick with the BGGS running this game than any other game I've owned.
- Unknown Armies, 2nd ed., Traveller, Wild Talents, 2nd ed.: I think these games do their genres amazingly well, so it's worth having them in reserve.
- City of Lies boxed set for Legend of the Five Rings: I like the whole system, but the City of Lies boxed set is pure campaign genius in a box. Even if you don't invest in L5R, it's worth having this as an example of how to design and run a sandbox-style campaign.
- Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering: a cheap little book that helps a lot with figuring out how to GM.
Some games every library should have:
- Munchkin: Too popular to ignore. It might even be worth having two copies if it gets used a lot.
- Kill Dr. Lucky: Who doesn't want to murder a rich old coot?
- Apples to Apples: I've met a few people who hate this game, and to a person, it's because they want to use pure tactics to win everything, and the subjective nature of the judge irks them to no end. Accept that these people hate it--this game is tactical kryptonite. For your casual/social gamer, though, this game is gold, and since you may end up with people who tag along with other gamers, this is a great game to have. It's worth it to get all the expansions, just to have the options available.
- Give Me The Brain: I like this little card game, and it's easy to get into.
- Settlers of Catan: I hate this game, mostly because it seems like I always lose. But enough people seem to enjoy it that it probably deserves to be in the library. Don't get the 3D edition; it's far too expensive, and it actually hurts gameplay a bit with poor piece design.
- Dungeoneer: The card game fills a nice little niche between D&D and board games, allowing you to satisfy a dungeon-crawling itch without making all the characters and adventure planning. The expansions give this more options for play as well.
One area I wish gaming clubs did more of was public discussion of gaming topics. It's generally one-off, but I think that a regular public forum of gaming topics, perhaps once a month, would do wonders for a gaming club.
In terms of public relations, it would be a godsend. Your club could have its own meeting, maybe once a month or so, where you hold a panels discussion or a roundtable or some such about some issue currently being debated about gaming. You could do some research, maybe invite a professor or two to discuss it with you, and put up some fliers inviting everyone else to join in. You could cull topics from the headlines or just talk about some generic issue. It could be like a book club, perhaps, but with games.
The reason I think it's so wonderful is because it helps legitimize the hobby in the eyes of many people, especially the faculty. If you have a club where a bunch of people just sit around and play games, you're wasting time. But if it's a club where you consider the social repercussions of evolving entertainment options whilst engaging yourself in these, that's something an educational institution can really get behind. It may even help bring in an academic advisor who wants to explore such issues. I realize that gaming is an escape from the classroom for many students, but at the same time, in an educational environment, I think that trying something like that every month or so wouldn't detract too much from the gaming environment, but at the same time, it would add a different avenue of exploration to the club. And for an academic group, I feel that's pretty important.
Related to the above, I think gaming clubs should try and experiment more with types of games. Offer a Scandinavian LARP sometime, or help organize and sponsor a Humans vs. Zombies game. Try and offer a meeting on how to design board games or something. Try designing short little games that can be played in class. I've known a lot of students that want to make their own setting or system or adapt a system for a setting, and if there was some way to help with that process, I think the club could really benefit from it.
I'm not sure I've brought it up before, but I think it's really important to have a generic game night once a month where all of the groups decide to do something different. Maybe it's a board game night, maybe it's just a bunch of one-shots, but whatever it is, it should be entirely different.
Part of the reason is that it breaks up the monotony of the gaming club. Let's face it--two months into the school year, and it starts to feel a bit tedious. A gaming night breaks people out of that shell. In addition, you want to make sure that everyone gets to know everyone else, and that's hard to do if you're running a regular RPG campaign and you can't fit any more characters in. In order to keep everyone friendly and involved with each other, a monthly gaming night where you do something different with different people is a good idea.
It may help if your club has a large secondary focus. I always thought it was a missed opportunity that we never had a Magic: the Gathering night in the BGGS. Even though it was Magic night for all of the die-hard Magic players, just once I think it would have been a good will gesture to set aside a night where we did their thing. Of course, it would likely be a bigger deal for them, since they would have to teach a bunch of people, and make decks and whatnot, but I've yet to meet even a semi-serious Magic player that doesn't have a half-dozen decks on his or her person. Maybe they'd have to download some quick-start rules or some such. It would have been tricky, but wouldn't it be nice to focus on the smaller group once in a while?
The one act I've commonly seen that will drive people away from it faster than anything else is the "girl gamer" jokes. You know, jokes based on stereotypes that women don't play games, or they don't play certain games, and so on and so forth. Add into this the fact that a not-insignificant portion of your members are probably amazed at the idea that a female gamer might actually want to interact with them on a social level, and you have the makings for a group that, while perhaps not intending to be hostile to women, creates an uncomfortable environment. Sure, there are women who recognize and deal with that environment, but there are plenty of others who don't want their relaxation time to take place in a room where they're being quietly ogled by some guys who think they're being discrete or unnoticeable.
I always thought this was weird. After all, it seems like gamers tend to be fairly open to possibilities. Minority gamers? Not a problem. Homosexual gamers? Not a problem (usually.) But female gamers? That throws them for a loop.
I think part o the problem is also the assumed sexism of the hobby. Sure, there are plenty of people who treat female gamers as normal people, but even then, sex jokes will get tossed around, and inevitably some guy thinks nothing of using "rape" as an equivalent of "lost"--i.e., "Man, I got raped in that last combat"-- and these actions tend to make some people uncomfortable. Making gaming friendly to these people means taking out some of the more forceful sexual imagery that usually gets tossed around in a gaming session, and it's a hard barrier to knock down. Even I did a lot of that stuff before my wife got upset at me for using such images. Some people just don't think you should be joking about sexual assault or objectifying others. It's easy to laugh and say that these people are too serious, but is it really that bad of an idea to eliminate those from the gaming culture?
Maybe I'm just bothered by it more than most people. I'm not sure. It sounds like I should probably talk about this for next month's column though--summer is a good time to do some of that reflective work. As always, if you have any other ideas or input, send them my way--I'd love to hear them!
See you next month! Alec "Kid Twist" Fleschner
