Improving Problem Gamers

I might be signing my blog’s death warrant by some #Critters out there, but after watching this video clip from Orion about his experiences and how they impacted his life and how he mentioned about wanting to come back to Critical Role. There were a slew of comments about how his play style was detrimental to the show and the other players and things like that, thus why he should not be allowed back on the show. This is the exact same show that allowed voice actors that have never played the game before come on the show and play, so they should at least be understanding of people screwing up in game.

i don’t know the behind the scenes drama, so there could be many burned bridges with his friends that would cause issues there. However, assuming they are all still great friends, I would hope they would be willing to have him at least guest star as some new character  and see how things go. Some people say playstyle doesn’t change over time, I know that it can. You need to want it to change because you understand that the people you play with don’t like it and these are your friends who you want to play with again. So long as the other players were okay with it, I’d be willing to let someone like that come back to my table, as long as they understand that they need to play differently, play more like the rest of the people.

Now, to go back to the things Orion did that really seemed to stand out as issues with his playing as I noticed was he was brash and impulsive, which could be said to be his character due to stats and personality. Without seeing his sheet and Matt’s house rules, I cannot say for certain about the issues with how many sorcerer points he had at any time (though there was at least one where I remember him saying he was out and then using more in the same combat; could have sacrificed a spell slot or something according to comments, but the player did not account it). There were some concerns with him putting his personal story above others, which in-game may fit the character, but out of game he should work with people to give them all moments to shine. A big one is the ending note where Tiberius poofed to go get a dragonborn army for the reclamation of Percy’s home. I don’t even know if he tried to run that past the GM first, just ‘Here, handle this new turn of events’, which would have thrown any encounters out of whack as well due to shifting Average Party Level and such.

I understand that people may not always change from their core much, but I think they can change their play style if given time and encouragement. So, I think we give the players that encouragement and keep working with those who have a desire to be better. Show them that there are different ways to play, let them see that the game is more than just powering through on Godmode and who knows what you’re going to end up with.

Growing Plots from Newspapers

I have talked about an ability I have to be able to read a newspaper and from the articles come up with at least five different plot seeds. I decided to give it a try using April 3rd, 2017th online edition of the New York Times to show the thought process I come up with for it. I will show it as close to a step by step process as I can put into words.

Step 1: Find an interesting article title.

One that jumped out to me immediately as I skimmed the opening articles on the site was “Explosion on St. Petersburg Metro Kills 11 as Putin Visits City“. Now, without even having read the article yet, I see possibility for this being an assassination attempt gone wrong. We don’t have a reason why or a group who will be responsible, but we know that they were planning to make this assassination when the leader was coming to the city. 

Assassin’s Creed: Paladin Edition

With the release of the Assassin’s Creed movie to DVD, I got thinking about the game series. One thing that immediately jumped to my mind was the maxim “Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted”.

In the movie, it is brought up  in the ceremony of becoming an assassin as “Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember, Nothing is True. Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember, Everything is Permitted. We work in the dark to serve the light. We are Assassins.”  The saying has been interpreted differently by the various assassins that we see throughout the series, as they can find ways to justify their actions through it in some way or another. One of the best in universe explanations of it was in Revelations in a speech given by Ezio:

“To say that nothing is true, is to realize that the foundations of society are fragile, and that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that everything is permitted, is to understand that we are the architects of our actions, and that we must live with their consequences, whether glorious or tragic.

The ‘Assassin’s Creed’ is referenced in the games with the key tenets being ‘Don’t Harm Innocents”, “Hide in Plain Sight” and “Never Compromise the Brotherhood”, the rules they must follow while they work to make the world a better place. We see that reflected in the idea of Ezio’s speech, saying that they need to be careful in the way they go about creating the new world with their actions.

Bringing this to the RPG table, my first thoughts upon reviewing this is does this not sound like a Paladin? I know there are going to be some people whose immediate answer is no, and their arguments will be about how in early editions of D&D, they would spell out a Paladin’s code including ‘Never perform an Evil Act’, ‘Respect Legitimate Authority’, ‘Don’t Lie’, ‘Don’t Cheat’, ‘Don’t Use Poison’. Also, alignment issues with being a Paladin is Lawful Good and Assassin classes were generally Evil alignments, so you can’t be a Paladin Assassin.

To rebut those objections, here are my reasons in point form to make them easier to read:

• I would start with the fact that the class system in D&D is about the abilities one has access to, not a statement of guild membership specifically. An example is that you could be a member of the Thieves’ Guild and be a fighter, you just beat people up and take their money rather than picking their pockets for it. So, if a ruffian thug could be a thief with no levels of the Rogue class, then that same fighter could probably join the Assassin’s guild if they could meet the guild requirements.
• As for the Paladin’s code, it has entries like ‘Punish those that harm or threaten innocents’ and the ‘Respecting Legitimate Authority’ with emphasis on the Legitimate, since they are working to build a better future by eliminating those who would stand in the way of their fight for ‘Peace in All Things’ since the Assassins are fighting on behalf of those who do not possess the abilities, resources and knowledge to speak out against those who abuse their power.
• Regarding using poisons and such, assuming the blade of the assassin is just a blade and not treated in any way, then they might only be compromising by ‘Hide in Plain Sight’,  but that could be gotten around by the idea they would be guilty of that if they were asked to identify themselves in some way and they did not come forward. Using the original game as an example, if you walk with a bunch of scholars, the guards just assume you are a scholar and leave you be.

So, the assassin is a champion for the downtrodden, working behind the scenes to help rally Law and Order back to its rightful place by eliminating those who would stand in its way. A great comparison to this is the Dark Brotherhood from The Elder Scrolls series, who were Assassins for hire and would kill anyone that they would be called to by those who performed the Black Sacrament. That group of Assassins did have a code they followed, which was basically just ‘Do what you’re told and don’t go against your Guild’, since the Dark Brotherhood did not stand for much more than killing.

Of course, the code of the Paladin is going to be important here as is the actions that the assassin takes in performing their duties, but a skilled Gamemaster should be able to roll with this and give interesting encounters and roleplay opportunities to any player who wants to try stretching themselves in unique ways. Much like the fighter thug as a member of the Thieves Guild or the Paladin Assassin, there could be many such examples of how to put characters in spots where their classes may not seem like they might be up to the task in question. Again, the idea is to make the game interesting and fun for the characters and I hope the sort of thinking past what the name of classes and the stats say they can do and focus on the roleplaying and what they actually do.

Believable Battles

Before getting into today’s topic, I want to apologize about my absence, Life got really hectic with losing work and having to move and a whole bunch of other things, but it has settled and thus I am back and ready to resume posting. Also, an announcement that I have also been providing weekly content at Aboard the Airship‘s blog. There is a lot of material here, so check it out and let them what you think.

We all know the old days of RPGs on the computer and consoles where NPCs only had one thing to say, as parodied with Times are Tough guy from RPG World. Things have grown since then, where we now have NPCs who grow to take on lives of their own like Knights of the old Republic had with HK-47 or Planescape: Torment had Morte, but that is because those NPCs have complex dialogue systems that allow them to get multiple lines of dialogue. Granted, even with limitations as far back as the SNES days, Final Fantasy let NPCs have multiple lines of dialogue if they were important enough as Final Fantasy showed us.. But what about those one off types you encounter in the towns? They still only usually say one or two things, in some cases still to this day.

Imagine that in a tabletop game and your players will look at you like you’re crazy, as it destroys pretty much any level of immersion into the game. However, we still do this in other ways with our NPCs, such as the way they fight. Enemy behaviour in video games is similar, where they will be scripted to execute one of a selection of attacks based on however many variables like their health, their magic points, the amount of enemies and their positions (if we’re dealing with tactical combat games like FF:Tactics).  In a lot of tabletop games, NPCs fight like they have nothing to lose because to the Gamemaster they are little more than cardboard cutouts with no real backstory. They will gladly fight to the death instead of running away to fight another time, though some game systems tried to remedy this by adding morale checks. Other times, you’ll have situations like in the Counter Monkey tale of the Leaping Wizards where you can see just how stupid some adventures are written to create encounters that players can win.

There are different levels of awareness in opposition. In D&D type games, this could be represented by an intelligence stat, however you could even just abstract it to the type of enemy it is. Is it an animal? They would generally have limited capabilities for tactics, focusing on things like smacking the person who did the most recent damage to them or the closest person or whatever sort of criteria you may want to choose for them to be focused on in their limited minds. Same way they would probably do things like avoid fires and any intentional damage that they might do to themselves. They may run at the first sign of resistance, unless there is a reason to stay like protecting their young. These are creatures operating on pure instinct using what is essentially the ‘lizard brain ideology of psychology, which is the human limbic system that controls basic elements like fight or flight, feeding, fear and freezing-up, and fornication.

A smarter creature might be able to start with an ambush or even use hit and run tactics. Dart out of a bush, move into attack and back into the bushes. They might be able to use traps or terrain advantages such as leading characters to bottlenecked areas or having them go over compromised ground.

As we get into smarter enemies, you begin to factor in ideas like waiting and planning rather than just reacting to a situation that falls into their lap. Their sort of tactics could include building fortifications or ways to bypass your fortifications, as well as picking the moments to attack when you’ld be at your weakest such as sleeping or even doing things stealthily. These are where I’d say Tucker’s Kobolds could fit in, for example.

You could probably add a level above that, where you look at creatures that can make full use of the terrain and other groups of enemies. Those who can delay their own self-interests and make use of the tools around them to eliminate their enemies. I personally would see this being like people who would realize that by weakening this wall, you could cause lava to flood the area and burn the opposition alive. They could also be the ones who might supply information to goad another group into attacking and then coming in to clinch the battle afterwards.

After figuring out what battle strategies they are capable of coming up with, you can then decide how they will use those skills to implement them. I would also suggest once you start getting into the higher levels of awareness, you also begin to think about how the elements outside of the creature, such as family and friends and the desire to live and see them again, will factor into the decisions that will be made. Some people may choose a heroic last stand where they go down in a blaze of glory to protect their loved ones from a really bad thing, but the majority will think about the fact they want to live because of those close to them and will use that desire in their planning. To quote from Blackjack’s Guide to Bitter Gamemastering,

I decided one session to try GMing without NPC sheets and instead use NPC descriptions. With this change I also made the conversion from plot driven runs to personality driven LIVES. Many interesting things began to happen. First off, my NPCs fought to the death a lot less often. When I thought of a security guard as a B:4 Q:5 S:5 C: 3 I:4 W:3 piece of paper it was a lot easier to let him get wasted. When I thought as him a Jim from Renton with two kids, a dog named Sammy, and a bracelet for his wife’s birthday in his locker, things changed. The Yakuza soldier who normally would have stood in the middle of the street blazing away at the runner’s van before getting run over suddenly started hiding behind stuff and taking more reserved shots. I really liked the feeling of depth and character I got from GMing this way.

Now, he does go on to say that if you have players who don’t have a full set of morals and enjoy killing anyone who gets in their way like they were in an action movie, then you’re going to  have to come up with a way to trick them into seeing your  NPCs as more than just cardboard cutouts. This is his version of a solution for that problem.

[O]ne day, they hooked up with an NPC who went by the street name of Kill Em’ All McKay. McKay needed assistance with a hit on a small gang living in an old apartment complex. As the runners walked up the staircase they encountered a teenage boy who, upon seeing them, turned and ran. One of the runners reacted by mowing the kid down with an SMG. And then, with great drama, Kill Em All McKay, he who is feared by God himself, responded to the action with complete horror and revulsion. “You shot a kid! A goddamn kid!!!”. The boy, who was not entirely dead, proceeded to drag himself with one arm, crying, screaming, and trailing blood, into his mother’s apartment. And, to top it off, his little sister, aged seven years, boldly waddled into the hallway holding onto her blankie and, thorough a river of tears, screamed at the runners for hurting her big brother. The runners mellowed a bit after this.

And, another of Blackjack’s articles gives us another example of why thinking about those who matter to the NPC is important, beyond just how the NPC themselves will act in the face of danger.

The runners have just succeeded in extracting a scientist from a random megacorp and are now leaving via a stolen helicopter on the roof. As they leave a detachment of fifteen corporate soldiers pour onto the roof, weapons deployed, yet hold they their fire because they have been ordered not to harm the scientist. The runner piloting the helicopter decides to react to the sudden appearance of troops by launching a salvo of APMs at the roof. Fifteen killed, no survivors.

Now let’s review the scenario. Granted, the runners had no idea the guards were not going to open fire so the response was at least partially reasonable. Had the guards opened fire the helicopter probably would have been destroyed. The runner eliminated the enemy, thus removing the threat. Or did he? Let’s do some math: 15 guards. I’ll assume five had no family or friends. That leaves 10. I’ll give half of them a spouse, a kid and two friends. The remaining five I’ll give two friends as well. That leaves behind 30 people who are going to be very upset at what the runners did. Odds are at least a few of them are going to want to get even…. …Some may hire runners, some may charge at them with a knife, some may try to blow up their cars, etc. Through the runner’s action he has unleashed a pandora’s box of threat. If the runners did this on a regular basis, the whole world would soon be after them.

So what should the runners have done? I don’t know. Fire one missile and take out a sacrifice guard. Maybe just point the missile tubes at them, that alone would make most of them seek cover. The point is that the runners must realize that every action they take is not without consequence. Some consequences are petty..some are down right deadly.

Using these above tactics will help you build some richer and more realistic combat encounters, varied by the sort of opposition you choose to have your characters face. The little critters who may not do much beyond attack or avoid all the way up to NPCs with various sob stories to go on like:

I was eleven years old. When I was strong enough, I dedicated my life to the study of fencing. So the next time we meet, I will not fail. I will go up to the sixfingered man and say, “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Teldore #5: The Bard, The Demon and The Crypt

We solved our way into the fountain that the others were held up with before.  It might be a good thing we were all here as we went down only to get attacked by skeletons and a creature in a pool of water. My first thoughts were I must teach this group to fight as a cohesive unit as none of them have had formal training. However, I think that has been lost as… Boris may be no more.

I solved the riddle of the statue and we were well on our way dealing with monsters, even though the water monster got one almost downed and another got knocked out by skeletons. Of course as I’m bringing the medical care, we have  Boris working on getting to the magical artifact in the room and crushes it in his hand… causing an arcane explosion that seemed to separate his soul from his body.

His last wish was for Maili to take his body to Newt and we shall carry that out for sure, but the next events make me seriously wonder what the future will bring as we apparently stumbled into a much larger war than we knew of.

The Duke is seeking a sword, it sounds like this red one which makes me wonder if he has the second sword. There were two key holes on the upper level, so I assume there were two swords as well. Except the Great Mother told me, a while ago that there were three.

The Demon in the crypt was put there to kill off survivors from the Duke’s search party as he likely did not want word to get out. There was one survivor, a Bard who was being tormented by the evil. I believe that the mind of the Bard was addled by his experiences as he has lost all grace for dealing with people… if he ever had any, who knows the mind of the fey. Legends and fairy tales speak of it, but I never put much stock in things I did not experience as tales can be colored.

Now, we managed to slay the creature with Evandrian the bard’s help. That does not make his shape changing, secret keeping and general…. torment endear him to me or the others but we shall see if he will be a danger to himself or others, as I do not know if he takes anything seriously.

Maili went to return the body of Boris to the Thieves Guild and we shall see the results of that. As that was ongoing, me and Tomas had a bit of a heart to heart about events and… I guess I should cut my team some slack. They may not have the same battle training and so dedication to a cause like I had drilled into me while training. I can’t expect them to embrace sacrifice as easily as I have. The things I have had to give up to serve do weigh on me, leaving my clan possibly for good, maybe never even to have a mate because this calling may take everything from me…. I cannot expect others to follow so easily, so instead I keep them safe, I support their weight to let them keep their heads held high.

Teldore #4: Innagadadavida

While I was doing my prayers and rituals and trying to find what I could about this whole sword thing, the group decided to try some initial surveillance of the castle we are going to break into.

They found some information on a way in it seems, as well as finding some secret garden Grove that they were talking about and these various mysteries. I guess we will see it sometime.

After a time, we break into the jail area for these friends of Boris’ and manage to free them without a lot of trouble, though any prison break is going to be problematic, especially when we end up Great Mother knows where…

In our escape, we made it out to the Grotto that the others examined before and… well, I do not know, it seems a magical place but I do not know exactly what it is, why we were here and not our friends? I guess all will be revealed soon enough. 

Teldore #3: Die By the Sword?

So, we make our way to the city of Delon and definately end up with quite a travel, but the big surprises were coming from getting into the city and what we found there. I mean, what kind of a city has such an issue with apple trade that they flag down merchants? Some strange things were going on in this city, so much so that I wonder if I will have time to help bring the light back to any of them.

First, there was finding out about the sword, this cursed blade I carry with me. I found out some little truths about it but no one seems qualified to do anything or keep it secure, at least no one I could trust. I almost hope to hear something from the Great Mother and have her give me some guidance on how to protect the world from this.

Of course, while I am doing this my friends got up to quite some hijinx, as they somehow got a hold of a brick of some sort. It is supposedly cursed, but I believe that it is just my friends chasing shadows, as they seek out something to make them feel active when they can’t be involved in matters they may not directly understand. I see this as some kind of joke brick, but it is falling flat with me.

I feel this after my meeting with the Goblin King. We were able to make some peace, but I think that my allies may be a little too headstrong to work in such diplomatic times. Sure, I may not have completely understood the nuiances of such, but at least I was able to appease the King enough for an audience, I just hope that the visit to the Thieves Guild went about as well, but I can only speculate.

We are being… hired, perhaps? As a favor to the thieves guild for their aide and information to break into the castle and free their people. I suppose the Duke is not the greatest man so such… deception does seem like it would be a bit acceptable to my tastes, to bring some righteousness back to this system… Of course, I am only going on second and third hand information at best, I need to make sure I am not releasing another plague on the world like I am with this blade.

Puzzling RPG Experiences

I have uploaded a video to YouTube of some examples of using Puzzles in your tabletop games especially if you are nowhere near each other, such as via Roll20. I will add a sequel to this with some more detailed examples but as I had shared them with a Dungeonmaster first I didn’t want their players to get an unfair advantage to the line of thinking. Once they give me the okay, I will adapt the conversation into a post of examples and explanations, but I wanted to get this out as soon as possible.

I apologize for the quality as it was done by phone as my PC currently experiences some overheating problems with the CPU and I haven’t been able to get it looked at yet. Once I get it looked at so it doesn’t shut down midway through rendering the video I should be able to release better quality videos. 

The video in question can be seen here on my channel on YouTube.

Is Disneyland A Sandbox?

I was watching a video from GDC where the speaker was using Disneyland as an example for video game design, about how everything was used to tell a story, from the macro world design of entering the park to the medium level design of the various themed lands and then to the experience of being on the attractions  the micro specific moment or scene that they are experiencing. This was being done for video games, but I figure we can use it for roleplaying games too.

In a video game, you power the game up and enter the world, usually through a narrative cut-scene to set the story for you and then after the story settles and you begin your level, you will usually see how things are crafted for the story they want to tell, the experience they want you to have and tailored almost like one tells a movie with specific choices of camera placements, pre-designed events staged in a certain pattern for you to encounter and so forth.

When designing it for a tabletop RPG the players have freedom to go wherever they want and the GM is the one that gets them there. So, in a sandbox environment, you would start the players on the small scale events and give them larger ones to build onto, things they would see coming as they progress and can plan for, like a theme park goer who walks into the park will make plans for the Roller coaster and then the flume ride and then onto another smaller adventure in this big sandbox to play in.

There are two ways.people will talk about designing game worlds, be it sandbox or not and that is inside out or outside in. Both design approaches have merit, but for Disneyland they went Outside in, focusing on the theme park first then to the different lands then to the attractions in the lands and then even down to the specific minute to minute experience the park goes had.. Using this world to land to attraction to experience is comparable to looking at your game in a world to level to experience viewpoint. You build the map, then you populate it with encounters for the player to take part in then you build their minute by minute adventure as you lead them through it. Extra Credits did a good talk about sandbox design here and goes into some ideas of how to incorporate things.

When designing a sandbox, a good writer will try and bring in some foreshadowing giving ideas of some things that might be previously encountered. like the posters in Bioshock giving an idea of how the plasmids will power you up, but some of it can be done in simpler ways like the Half Life 1 Tram Ride showing off different bits of the area. This may seem harder to do in a roleplaying scenario, but you can put a little focus on various points like if you plan to have part of your story take place in or on a volcano you could make mention to a ritual being done where some animals or treasure are sacrificed to appease the gods or in re-enactment of some great battle taking place there. If you want a specific landmass to be important find a way to emphasis it, perhaps something as obvious as “Everything the light touches” moment from the Lion King or as subtle as a mention about having there be a patrol going out to the area and later in the game make mention they were not heard from.

Walt Disney did invent the idea of Weenies, which are called Weenies after the idea of leading a dog from point to point by holding out a hot dog wiener for them. In Disneyland the rides, the castle and many other things are these weenies, as they are points of reference drawing you to them and helping you find your bearings by them. Think of it like the cartography in Miasmata where you actually need to take triangulation to figure out location of landmarks and to complete your map. Makes the game seem like that much more of a grand adventure to me. Might be harder to do in a game, but you can give your players a description of it and if you really want to be evil, have them have to figure out where they are going if they have no map and get lost.

One big thing you’ll realize in Disneyland is that not everything needs to be an E-Ticket high attraction exhibit, sometimes you need a moment to break and rest. Using the idea of Interest Curves, as discussed here at Extra Ctedits, you see that by letting things build and fall  you let your audience relax after having things built high.or you won’t be giving them a proper feel for your work. In other words, give your players a little quiet time before throwing events at them. Now,feel free to have one thing be a major drama high time thing with a countdown timer as they try and solve something but then give them some time in and out of game to relax and get back to a baseline.

Be sure to reward your players with something at every encounter they take.It doesn’t have to be a statistical bonus, it could just be an event that furthers their understanding of the world like stumbling on a treasure and then a pirate demanding you give them back their treasure, or perhaps a stone carving of native artwork explaining some of the history. By putting specific key points that the player will encounter without being able to see that it is a plant is economic storytelling, you are putting something in place to tell a story and then another piece in a second area, such as running into a key character before a battle in a fortress and then after the battle meeting with them again and all it is is just placing these two encounters and not having to measure what happened to the character during the battle since the players never got to see it.

To see the sort of ideas in work, the film talks about the Indy queue for waiting for the event. There is lots of foreshadowing — snake imagery telling you what danger you’ll encounter later, which makes your mind wonder what the danger will be, creates anticipation. Anyone who watches horror will know that expectation enhances surprise as you are waiting for things to happen so you are on edge. Once inside the queue, all kinds of minigames, puzzles and storytelling to keep the players interested as they are waiting. The examples they use are hieroglyphs and coded messages, but you can do anything with it. These puzzles aren’t gating devices, they’re story elements. Also, since the idea is not to directly endanger the ride-goer, Disney has tons of implied threats, skulls, easter eggs and interactivity like yank-rope with a collapsing ceiling, great to show players possible danger and keep them on edge without directly challenging them.

Some idle points to help in designing areas in general based on the details given in this video. First, a good juxtaposition of interior and exterior spaces to keep things changing and giving players some differences. As well, narrow areas have danger, wide areas are for exploration. There are also some great game design tricks for getting players to choose certain areas and paths that you can use to help in your roleplaying, my favorite descriptions of them coming from Leverage and Youtube channels Extra Credits and Game Maker’s Toolkit.Some of these are visual tricks, sure, but you can come up with similar tricks for verbal storytelling.

Gamers of the World: Unite

A discussion I had recently was with someone had meandered into how they feeling like people were going to alienate them for their lack or knowledge of a game system. I can understand that feeling of being like you would be cast to the outside as I grew up as one of those outcasts in school, the kid who was too unfit to be a jock, too nerdy to be preppy while being too socially adjusted to be a stereotypical nerd, even wore second hand clothes well before the practice was acceptable. I just had my clique of friends I hung out with and was made fun off by the kids in my class. So I know all about alienation.

However, one place none of us should be alienated is at the gaming table. I know we all had experienced some sort of experience where we felt like the outsider, maybe not the same way as I have but there is always that view of being a little different, a little stranger than all the others. I don’t think we should have to feel that from the group of players of a game we enjoy. These days, RPGs are a lot more acceptable than they were in the eighties and nineties when I was growing up and interested in them. I think part of this is because of the advance of video games, like Baldur’s Gate, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Elder Scrolls, and so forth getting people interested in roleplaying games and having some explore the source material. Also it could be due to some of the famous people bringing the hobby into a much better light than it was a generation ago.
You will see Vin Diesel talking about his D&D character, even having it be part of the inspiration to the Witch Hunter movie and writing the foreward of the book 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons. We have Wil Wheaton having a channel on Youtube where he gets to play games weekly and introduce them to people (not to mention the weekly RPG broadcast he did, and others done on the same channel). I would have loved to sit at a table with Robin Williams,  if he put some of the zany energy of his standup into his characters. All walks of life including porn stars like Sasha Grey and basketball player Tim Duncan.