Role Playing

After I left school, moved to Reno and met my husband, my gaming tastes turned to Champions and Fantasy Hero, and then, finally, to GURPS. Of all the systems I've tried I like GURPS the best, mostly because of its extreme portability from genre to genre, and because it's a system I can use to make up my character exactly the way I want her. It's true that the combat is fairly inadequate, but since I don't care about combat that doesn't bother me.

After we moved to Oregon, for many years my husband ran my friends and I in a game of his own design every Friday, a dark fantasy world full of angst and triumph, heroism and despair. We were all much more interested in the role-playing aspects than in combat. One of his standing pieces of advice to any newcomers who joined our group was "don't kill anything until the ladies are done talking to it." There were few things that infuriated me more than having some schmuck try to kill an NPC who I was in the process of developing a relationship with. Sigh.

Many of our original group has drifted off, in the process of starting up their own little families or being turned into Everquest junkies. We now have a new group, and are messing around with 3rd edition D&D (not MY choice) and round robin GMing. Game related web sites:

Wizards of the Coast

These are guys who exploded into overnight success with the card game Magic

These guys make Middle Earth, Dicemaster, Rolemaster, Silent Death, Combat Express. They're going through bankruptcy...don't know what's going to happen with them.

An alternative to Campaign Cartographer.

Most of these seem to be in the midwest area. Put up by the Metro Detroit Gemers.

I scored 58%! Not sure if that's good or bad :)

An "industry focused" role playing site.

Main list for the sites on the GURPS webring.

Worldbuilder in Germany has created these backgrounds for the GURPS system, including Babylon 5, Bubblegum Crisis, Captain Future, Dark Crystal, Gor'Li, Robotech, Stargate One, Tripods, Star Trek, Star Wars.

MUDS, MUSHES and other MUs

I also wasted a lot of time on various MUDs and MUCKs. For the most part I found them to be hotbeds for exactly the sort of social structure I despise the most. There were the "movers and shakers", and the hangers-on. PernMUSH was one of the worst, with their obsession with "hatchings", as if there was realy any chance element to who "impressed" the dragon constructs. I kept waiting for something even vaguely resembling a real plot development or role playing but it was a waste of my time and theirs. What they had, though it may have met the needs of many of their members, was not what I wanted.

Though the programmer in me had a good time learning the languages of the various MUs, there was never anything I could DO with them. I constructed puppy animals that would "respond" to commands by "posing" various actions, but it just seemed like an exercise in vanity. (I'll oh and ah over your cool construct if you'll do the same over mine)

To date I haven't found a decent venue for on-line gaming. To be honest, I haven't been looking for a while, so if anyone out there has a suggestion, please email me with it. I've got net friends it might be fun to game with, and I'd be interested to see what advances have been made in the area.

The MUD Resource Collection

A list of MUSHs, MUDs, FAQs and other information.

Information of interest to PennMUSH administrators.

Return to my Home Page, my Writers' Resources Page, my Science Fiction/Fantasy Page, my Fanfic Page, my Fantastic and Mythical Creatures Page, my Pets Page, my Gardening Page, my Computer Games Page, my Sherlock Holmes Page, my Computer Page, my Crafts Page, my Music Page, my Page of Search Engines, my Miscellaneous Page, or email me.

Background and graphics courtesy of a very generous and talented lady at