Getting Out of the Dungeon

I love Dungeons & Dragons. It is definitely my favorite RPG (both in terms of mechanics and settings). But I still like to play other games, other RPGs.

Last Saturday I went to a RPG event here in my city called "Sai da Masmorra" (which could be translated as Get Out of the Dungeon). The goal of the encounter is to promote games that are not well known, or at least, games that people don't play anymore as often as they used to. Basically, as far as I understood, anything other than D&D 4e, D&D 3.X and basically anything using the d20 system badge (although there many d20 games largely unknown). Even though I think some people there don't know D&D 4th, which makes it a unknown game to them, I have no problems with that, I have my ongoing D&D group and I went there to play other stuff anyway.

So, I arrived there hoping to play some hours of "Trail of Cthulhu" (there would be tables for "New World of Darkness", "Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition", "Trail of Cthulhu", "Johnny Quest", "Tagmar" and something else I do not remember). But by the time the other tables were already starting I could not find the person running the "Trail of Cthulhu" game, so I ended up sitting in the "Tagmar" table (needless to say, as soon as I sat down and choose a character, the GM for "Trail of Cthulhu arrived and started to arrange things). "Tagmar" is a Brazilian RPG similar to D&D in terms of setting and feel. The system is obviously different but with some similarities with older editions of D&D, but it still has a unique feeling. I played a dwarf warrior, and had some fun roleplaying in a party with two elves and a half-elf. But one of the players made me think about this article I read at The Dungeon's Master blog (which is one of my favorites and a must read for D&D players). He took things without asking, he constantly asked for the GM's attention in other people's turn, he kept asking to use skill in random situations, and decided to do stuff alone that took a lot of play time from the rest of the table. He was simple annoying. Other than that, it was a good game. I could have enjoyed more if my character wasn't critically hit in the first round of combat and kept out of the action for two rounds when the battle was over.

All in all, it was a great day. I got to met new gamers, I played instead of just GMing, and a got to see how other people play and GM. It's very nice to see how those people do their things to improve your own style. Sarah Darkmagic (another great blog) has an article bout how important it is to run games and event like these and I totally agree. Playing games is also important so you can feel like what it to be on the other side and see what is cool or not for players. On the next "Saia da Masmorra" I am probably going to run a table, something that is not D&D for a change, and I can't wait!