I am a huge fan of tabletop rpgs, especially of the indie variety (PBTA et al.). I think it's one of the highest forms of gaming since it is so responsive to a particular group of people and the stories they want to tell, which creates a lot of potential for cool leftist gaming experiences and stories. However, I haven't been able to find time to run a game for a few years (and I struggle playing solo rpgs since it's basically just creative writing) so I wanted to hear from chapos that are (or have been) in a campaign so I can live vicariously through you.
What game are you playing? What's your character (or favourite NPC) like? Any highlights from your campaign? Are you living out a revolutionary power fantasy or playing a chill "beer and pretzels" type game?
Ugh, the last game I was in was honestly pretty cringe. I joined because a buddy of mine was throwing the group together and asked and it had been years since I played DnD, so of course I said yes. Anyway my intention to play a relatively run of the mill Paladin with the Oath of the Common man was fucking immediately derailed by the DM's campaign setting being an alternate version of our hometown but in DnD but we still had like, contemporary technology and guns. My DM you see, was a super-nerd Libertarian techbro (who in our introductory meeting insisted his company just doesn't do commentary on their code, they just depend on the coders to be so good at code as to understand it. I'm not a coder but I know enough that that sounded bonkers to me) and I guess didn't want to just run a fantasy session, which is fair enough, and the Shadowrun local interest was an idea I already had worked on in the past so nothing really seemed off. Then we learned our characters were gonna be high schoolers. This was immediately pretty weird to me, I have no desire to be that young again, or really roleplay that young, especially in DnD but it's been forever so I just rolled with it.
So this motherfucker I shit you not, starts our DnD campaign with us surviving a school shooting organised via mind control magic by some shady cult. He had really nasty gory descriptions of our self-defence, while not at all dwelling on the fact that we were (mostly) child solders going on the usual DnD murder hobo killing sprees. Shit got really weird, on top of our bizarre high school scooby gang adventure to try and solve murder mysteries we got mixed up in some kind of war between the security apparatus and Hot Dog Mafia.
Honestly I really clocked out that first session, I kept playing cause I was high as shit and didn't want to just bail. And I had looped another person in on this awkwardness as well, besides. Thankfully it only lasted like, 3 sessions, the last of which was online thanks to Covid, before I'm pretty sure the buddy who got me to join hooked up with the DM's girlfriend, who was also playing and the group haven't spoken since.
A more fun adventure was when another group ran the All Magic Party, when I played a straight-man wizard along with a group of escaped psychiatric patient sorcerors who were recruited by not-Sheogorath into an other plane to be his champions in the Grand Duel of Gods. Good time that was.
wouldn't be a thread of campaign stories without the GM horror stories lol glad that campaign didn't last too long