Saturday was kind of my D&D day. We fronted up at 9am for Tracy Hickman’s Killer Breakfast, which has to be one of the best large-group RPG events ever. Tracy and Laura Hickman got the whole audience to get on stage, six at a time, to play first-level characters and survive as long as possible. The only real rules were be creative, funny and entertaining while collectively improvising with Tracy Hickman.
You will die sooner or later. Most often sooner and by the stupidity of fellow players, as evidenced by our group who filled a 10’x10’ room with a pegasus and the Tardis, and six PCs before the action started. Tracy ruled we were all crushed and sent off stage before we could do anything.
Both the Hickmans are great presenters and very funny. Tracy is quick on his feet and very good at juggling what’s going on in his head with what everybody is doing and saying. The game deals with many common RPG tropes and he deliberately parodies Dragonlance as often as possible. The game was interspersed with sing-along musical numbers (again, more gamer and Dragonlance humour) and “Laura Quests†to give away Killer Breakfast swag. And we got to keep our character sheets.
P and I had a three hour break in which we took in the sights of rainy Brisbane. Our return was to a much more serious presentation by Tracy Hickman: Xtreme Dungeon Mastery. Though presented in his characteristically humourous style, it reinforced and introduced many many behaviours of good game masters. I sat with two GMs from my regular group, and they took copious notes, which I will have to nick at some point.
I can’t (and won’t) repeat everything Hickman touched on, but would like to relay something he said when he dropped the humour and spoke from the heart. For him, the reason that tabletop gaming is so important is that it encourages human interaction. Nothing compares for interactivity with shared experience, and it is the job of the GM (no matter how escapist and frivolous the game) to ensure that the right messages are being conveyed in the game.
The most obvious message is that of fun. The game is just that: a game. But characters should also be bigger than the players; they should be able to accomplish much larger things. To that end, Hickman spoke about the Campbellian monomyth, which is detailed in the book Hero With a Thousand Faces. He believes, like me, that the “Hero’s journey†plot archetype is the most important because it imparts a message of hope. It can be very effective in RPGs because not only do we get to observe the hero walking that journey, we actually walk that road ourselves. This act can be very replenishing.
Afterwards, I caught up with the Hickmans and got their autograph. Tracy was a missionary in Indonesia, and so we got to talking about his experience there, the food, and the influence it’s had on his writing.
He tells the story that a woman approached him and said that her mother had named her after a word from one of his books. Tracy then had the tough job of explaining that this word, “Neraka,†was the Indonesian word for “hellâ€. Let that be a lesson for those of you considering naming your children after things in your favourite fantasy novel. Do your research first.
Anyway, back to the gaming. We hooked up in the evening with our RPGA posse and brought the Valley Girls back to Ratik for “Sacred Groundâ€, a very amusing module in which we were sent undercover to the war camp of an invading army of orcs. My character finally got his end in, and the events leading up to that established the tradition of the “Fist of Karnakâ€, whereby any who wanted to apply for the position of consort of his tribe’s princess had to prove that their orchood was at least the size of his fist.
As usual, we broke the module and hilarity ensued. A great ending to a fantastic day.