Monday 7 August 2017

#RPGaDay 2017 - Day 7 - Most impactful RPG session.

Day 7 of #RPGaDay 2017. At this point I should be on a plane for Florida so you all get to see how well I schedule posts :D

What was your most impactful RPG session?

A bit more than a decade ago I decided I should write more RPG reviews as well as get involved in playtesting. I'm pretty sure the driving force back then was to get some free games. People seemed to dig my feedback so I've stuck with it on and off over the years. I can't remember how Nathan D Paoletta found me. He was, at the time, an unknown indie game designer who was big into this thing called The Forge. He contacted me to playtest his new game carry. a game about war.

I had no clue what The Forge was or what it stood for or what it would become. Nathan, was an unknown to me and pretty much everyone back then. I didn't know it at the time, but my playtest of carry was the first public playtest of one of Nathan's games and was a huge step for him. To me it was just another indie game. Well not quite.

carry. Broke my brain. It broke my wife's brain. It broke my best friends brain. It broke my cousins brain. What was this thing? What did we just play. What just happened? Why are people crying. Why was I shaking? 

I had no idea an RPG could be what carry. was. Back then I had played a ton of different systems. From D&D to Cyberpunk. From Chill to Mekton. From Land of Og to It Came From The Late Late Late show. I even dabbled in Amber Diceless. I though I knew the breadth and scope of what RPGs had to offer. That was part of why I felt qualified to playtest these games I'd been playing for year.

Nathan D Paoletta and his 'little' indie hippy story game changed my life as a gamer. He opened my eyes. I learned that RPGs could be so much more than I thought they were. It was a beautiful thing.


For those wishing to play along at home, here are the topics for this years #RPGaDay. Feel free to use these cues in your tweets, facebook posts, g+ threads, blog posts and more.


2 comments:

  1. I've never heard of that game, so thank you for sharing.

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    Replies
    1. It is quite different from any traditional RPG. Changed my view of what an RPG can be. Well worth checking out.

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