Fun and Games at Origins
Something that gets assumed a lot about the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Actual Play podcast is that we all knew each other prior to this game. In reality, it is online gaming that brought us together. Today’s meta post about the podcast is how we got together as an online gaming group.
Group History
My interest in DCC RPG was growing back in the summer of 2012 but it didn’t really seem like my local group’s thing at the time. G+ Hangout gaming was taking off and an opportunity to try out DCC via a Hangout was presented. Carl Bussler (of Flagons and Dragons podcast fame and much more) was going to start running DCC RPG. He wrangled up a group of folks to start out with Sailors on the Starless Sea. Hopefully I don’t forget anyone, but that group had me, Kelly, and Matt in it. It also had Tony and James who both did brief forays into the one-shot I ran and early in the Sunken City Campaign days.
We managed to play two sessions of Sailors before that game went to the wayside. Carl’s schedule got busy and we lost some momentum. I ended up running The Jeweler That Dealt in Stardust as a one-shot. That game had Kelly and Matt, plus Tony, I think James, and Dustin in it. We had a great time and I decided to kick off an actual Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign back in the late summer of 2012.
When Sunken City launched we had Matt, Kelly, Dustin, Tony, James, and Joe (a local friend of mine). James made a session or two, Tony held on for another session or two before school reared up. We quickly brought Aaron on board with some 0-levels just after the other characters hit 0-level.
From Fall of 2012 to Spring 2013 the group was Matt, Kelly, Dustin, Joe, and Aaron. Eventually Kelly had to drop because of time commitments, but we kept on with the core group rolling through the rest of Spring 2013 into the summer. Coming into the summer we made plans to meet up at Origins in Columbus, Ohio.
Oh – I should also mention that a Dungeonslayers online game was started by Kelly in January of 2013 and there was a heavy mixing of the same players with some new faces in the DS game. The Origins meetup also involved a couple of the Dungeonslayer players – Adam (now in the DCC group) and another Dustin.
A great time was had at Origins and that likely did a lot to further cement the solidness of this online group.
After Origins, Joe needed to drop from the game so we were looking for another player again. We ended up recruiting Adam from the DS game to play DCC.
Which brings us to today, a group made up of Aaron, Adam, Dustin, Matt, and me.It seems Kelly will be returning to the group in April bringing a lot of the original crew together again.
Strength of Online Gaming
A lot of folks will say online gaming isn’t like being at the table and steer away from it. And while there are differences, online gaming has brought me a group of folks that I would call great friends. Meeting at Origins helped cement that (and we have plans to do the same this year at Origins and this time we’re dragging Aaron along – can’t wait to meet “Baptist” in person!)
So if you are out there lamenting the fact you can get some local folks together for gaming, don’t be too quick to dismiss online gaming. With a little work I suspect you can find yourself a great group of folks to play games with and build some new friendships as you do so! I know our group has had a great time playing. It has worked out very well for us!
Yep. This sounds a lot like what I went through with the Metal Gods crew. I don’t know to what extent you pitched a particular kind of game. We did (Adam and I), and we seemed to acquire our players based more or less on the pitch. It’s been really fantastic.
It is sort of funny, I initially pitched it as a loosely strewn together campaign of some of the existing modules out there at the time. That was one of the reasons I used Purple Sorcerer’s Sunken City as a basis as it had a built in “transport anywhere” system in it through the Sending Stones. So initially starting I thought that would make it easy to drop in various adventures along the way. I used that for the first three adventures and then from there the campaign got legs and has evolved on its own.
The whole experience has been very positive, and I consider all of the guys real friends. It makes the wait for Origins for F2F gaming seem like forever.