"Rats Live on no evil Star." (A conversation piece edited for your taste.)

Hey all,

"Radio killed the Radio Star, Radio killed the Radio Star.." And rats live on no evil star. *garble garble*

The last line might have been pushing it a little, but palindromes have been around for ages, and I for one have been intrigued by them since young. Back to the front, and front to the back, always constant, yet so different at first sight.

Okay, an update on Chapter 2 of my Caen Campaign. Shell recently revealed to me that his current campaign arc will end in about a couple of months, which means that mine will probably start in December thereabouts. For the campaign-related articles that I promised the last time to ease the players into the new chapter, they will appear weekly in the month of November.

In this day and time, Humans residing in Singapore have a lot on their mind, be it pondering on their next life quest or deciding on what item/s (vehicles, entertainment, necessities) to spend their gold pieces dollars on, or just basic responsibilities. DnD is a past time and not a full-time job (nor is it mine), so releasing the campaign-related information a few weeks before the start of Chapter 2 actually makes a lot of sense.
Our attention span can only last so long, and this way, the players would be able to recall and use some of the information, or jot it down somewhere for future references.

Recently, I had a conversation with an old friend of mine. He was mildly interested in joining the DnD sessions and being a Singaporean Gamer, until he realized that he did not want to be: a typical Singaporean Gamer.

The above images depicting typical "Singaporean Gamers" must have gone through his mind. No wonder he was scared. Composing himself, he gave me his initial view of my players and my sessions (without seeing or knowing my players.)

• min/max abilities, 
• not wanting to role-play much but just see the game as a goal-oriented activity (rat-race).
•  requires a great deal of help from the DM for quest-related information that are not obvious in the first place or tied to an ostentatious amount of XP. 

Yes, our DnD players do have some of those traits but to a certain extent, except for a select group who has all of those qualities. I retorted that there are many different players who derive joy from DnD in other ways rather than the traditional "role-play" way. Then he said something that was rather narrow-minded but made some sense.

"I understand that there are different people around. But why play a role-playing game without much role-playing? The environment should encourage non-linear play, interaction between the characters, and the goals should just be markers of your path through life."

He continued, "But this is impossible amongst typical Singaporeans. They worry too much about making the right move, how not to look "foolish" to their other gamer friends so that they can succeed and not be considered a failure. DnD originally allowed one to be a hero, and for one to act as one in his own way.

He laughed cynically (he is compulsive at that), "But for typical Singaporeans, they never were comfortable in doing things their own way. Our society does not promote that. We turn out to be mere unfeeling robots, squeezing the life out of an activity that is supposed to be fun and natural, and trying to win a non-competition."

I kept quiet for a while after his rant. I wanted to tell him that what he said was totally not true of my gaming clique. But I did not want to lie. I have many players who take the game this way. They feel pressured, angry and dejected after a session. Rare are the days when players recall fondly of gathering up to adventure in a faraway world, killing mythical creatures and saving a damsel in distress, instead focusing on whether they got the most out of a situation or what could have been.

But there is hope yet. I told him that I can see that in the right environment and setting, those same gamers will role-play. That plays a big part in making someone come out of their private shell and be someone else.
I mean why bother if there is no difference if one role plays or not,-and I'm not talking about XP or rewards here-, just that would it have made a difference at all?

Also, another thought struck me. If my friend was stuck in an environment where nothing you role play matters, he might just turn out to be the typical Singaporean Gamer that he hates so much.

I too, have a bit of those traits in me as well. But the desire for me to play/win with a certain style is very strong and tends to overwhelm my Singaporean instincts. I purposely roleplay out most actions to minimize the impact of the move just being a cold and calculated, min/maxed Singaporean Gamer move.

This is also one game that I can min/max my character but I do not need to min/max my actions. The min/maxed character simply gives me the option to do so if there was a situation that arose- aka "be ready for anything".

All I am saying that is we might never be amazingly eloquent gamers like some ang-mos or arty-farty dudes are, but the keyword here is "some". Not all of them are eloquent and cool, and I know of a few who are even worse than "Typical Singaporean Gamers".

All we need is to maintain a certain style and the simple joy of going into something without actually coldly calculating every move (unless we are dying of course), then we can go beyond our "Typical Singaporean" roots, and leap into the untapped realm of our imagination.

Singaporean imagination. *grins* An oxymoron no more.