Finding Meepo in the Sunless Citadel

Hello

My name is Harry. I'm 32 years old. I live in Belfast. And for some reason I have been playing a lot of tabletop roleplaying games. I wanted to write down some of what I enjoyed about them. I also wanted to reflect on how I was running them for other people. All of this could be a colossal waste of time. But I've wasted enough time in my life to let that annoy me.

I've delved into many blogs over the past few years, bought a load of weird indie RPGs, found different online niches and discussion hubs and backed all four issues (as of this post) of Knock! I'd say that gives you a sense of what I'm into as an RPG player. I enjoy reading about and (occasionally, not as often as I'd like) playing all sorts of OSR games and their various forks, mutations, second cousins and evolutions.

Meepo                                     ©Wizards of the Coast 2016
Olga Drebas

One of my favourite experiences with TTRPGs was the time I ran "The Sunless Citadel" for some friends in D&D 5e. Something about its fairly vanilla theming and focus on dungeon exploration awakened a thirst in me. I needed more of this kind of fun and less monkeying around with twelve stacks of +2 modifiers and crafting four page backstories that feel like writing a CV. And who could forget Meepo?

That isn't to say I don't like other forms of RPG. Not at all. I am sure the boundaries between these kinds of games are a lot fuzzier than we tend to imagine them to be. Currently I'm enjoying playing a campaign in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Our GM is very good and he is running The Enemy Within campaign for us. I've enjoyed many games of Pathfinder and D&D 5e in the past, too. I really liked my last 5e Cleric character, I got really into the character and interacted with the fiction of the world in an appropriate way to my character's backstory.

Some of the silliest fun I've had with Pathfinder was when I played a goblin barbarian who used only his teeth for weapons. I leaned into it and had him perform all sorts of ridiculous combat feats. Mostly they were ill-fated, but his build was so overpowered that he'd manage to succeed anyway.

Another of my favourite TTRPG memories is of playing Paranoia (I have no idea what edition) many many years ago at university. The GM was really chill and allowed us to try all sorts of silly antics. I'm pretty sure it was the first time I actually had fun playing an RPG. Until then it had been badly explained Pathfinder, spending hours with other equally baffled players agonising over a hefty tome of character creation rules.

All that is to say I'm always open to more variety in my games and this isn't necessarily going to be a solely OSR focused blog. Often though it might be, since that's the genre I've been thinking about and reading about the most lately. This blog is simply to encourage myself to engage with the hobby more thoughtfully. 

Thank you for reading and I hope to post something about an adventure I am running for The Black Sword Hack soon.

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