A Role Player’s Return to Roleplaying

I’m terribly excited to return to the world of role-playing after a long hiatus from playing any pen & paper RPG’s for the past four or so years.  And on top of that I haven’t personally role-played in a very long time, as I have always been the GM.  Mind you, I love more than anything crafting a great story for players and challenging them to be creative and shape exciting gaming sessions, however a brother needs to throw down occasionally and be reminded what it’s like in the passenger seat.

I recently was offered an opportunity to dust off my polyhedral dice (ultra nerd feat +1) and jump into a game run by a gentleman who I’ve heard great things about his GMing.  Naturally, I’m super stoked (excited for you non-west coast-skateboard-surfing-snowboarding-and-anything-else-that-starts-with-an-S sorts) to get back in to the gaming scene for RPG’s, especially since my experience since moving to NYC years ago has been very limited in this area (ultra nerd feat -1).  While I have a few people that have begun to take some interest in the idea, I haven’t moved forward yet to establish anything solid locally.

Another cool thing here is we’ll be playing with the Pathfinder system, which I’ve wanted to try out myself, with the intention of beginning a game here in NY.  This is the perfect chance to give it a test run.  I dutifully searched the interwebz for a digital form of the sourcebooks for Pathfinder (ultra nerd feat +1) at the expense of legality perhaps…not that we condone such things here at Geekcentricity.  Personally, I have been busily purging my collection of books, DVDs, and CDs, and I figured it’d be easier to find it done for me this time rather than spending a day scanning 500+ pages.  Much to my surprise and extreme delight I found that those forward thinking geniuses at Paizio have all Pathfinder materials on PDF.  So I quickly purchased them for $10 each and danced in excitement for the rest of the night.  My life is nearly complete.

Photo: Paizo.com - Go buy their books!

So I got the Core Rulebook and Advance Players Handbook from their website and downloaded them on my faithful iPad and Lappy.  I’ve been spending some time brushing up on the rules, as they are very similar to D&D 3.5 with some streamlining.  I really enjoy what they’ve done with the feats and skills simplifications.  All of that being said and I’m back to trying to figure out which character to play and all the fun stuff associated with getting a game started.  Do I use a character voice?  What role in the party should I play?  Do I go with the old faithful Ranger I always loved, or branch out to something new like Alchemist or Summoner?  Do I wear pants during the game?  (that’ll make more sense in a minute)  So many questions!

One of the unique elements of this game series we’ll be doing is that it’ll be online.  Things will be interesting for sure.  I’m not really sure how an online game works, I’ve heard good things about Fantasy Grounds 2 in conjunction with Skype, but have yet to experience any of that yet.  I’ve wondered about how the rolls will be done, and if the quality of Skype will affect the atmosphere too much.  Regardless I’m very excited to get back to role-playing and I’ll keep our faithful readers posted on the process.

And as a final thought I also received my Dragon Chow dice bag in the mail this week, so now my little poly sided dice will have a comfy new home. Yay!!

Dragon Chow dice bag

Let me know if you have any questions about Pathfinder or gaming through the wonders of the web, I’ll be glad to answer anything.  On the other side, has anyone out there had any experience with gaming online?