Iron Seer has an RPG Blog

Inspirobot reminds you what is important in life.

This blog records things from my games.  That's pretty much the gist of it, slick.

I've been a game master for quite some time now, almost three decades.  In this blog I'm going to share a lot of my opinions.  That's just how it is.

I like to think that I've developed a certain style, as I have been GM/DM far more than Player.  It's also not something I shy away from - in fact I probably enjoy being game master more than being a player, for the most part.  All the prep work, reading, plotting - I love it.

I've written about a lot of this stuff before, so I'm going to skip a lot of it.  Or revisit it.  We'll see what's necessary.

 Either way, I interviewed myself for this position and I was satisfied that I was qualified to be Iron Seer and talk about how to be an elf (or whatever) in a tabletop game.

Couple things though:

1. RAW
• One of my favorite parts of this hobby is learning the rules and watching them interact.  You can't do that if you don't play the game as closely as possible to how it is written.  Where it's not possible to discern how a rule works, a house rule will be invented - but you can count on the written word here.  We're not looking to find or create the 'perfect' ruleset according to a certain paradigm.  Nay, I say that no such thing exists.  We play all the games.
2. Mortality Rate
• You won't be coddled.  You might have a Fate Point, but you should probably hold on to that as long as possible.  The old games are frustratingly hard...you should harden yourself now to the idea that your character, at some point, will probably die.  Be wary - and extend that wariness to your fellow party members to your fellow party members if applicable.  No magical outside force will stop them if they decide to drive a dagger into your liver and steal your potions.
3. High Level
• Low levels are fun, but we'll probably breeze past them to take on greater challenges quicker than most other campaigns will.  That's because once you've been a 1st Level Fighter more than ten times it's going to get old.  You start wanting to play aaracokra wizard/cleric/barbarians and other such.
4. Expect the Meta
• Who cares?  Just don't read my adventure.  As long as you don't read the adventure we're running, literally WHATEVER else your character might know about the world (through novels or game books) or himself (through min/maxing) can be written off pretty easily.  That is to say, this character LIVES in this world.  So it's no big deal, and probably heightens the experience for everyone.  That's right.  I don't care if you min/max and metagame, in fact I somewhat expect it from competent players.

I'll explore each of these points in posts at a later date.  A fair number of other things, as well - including my own campaign records for official published works.  For now, I just wanted to lay out what sort of game you could expect at my table, and depicted on my blog.