For about 3 or 4 sessions I've been playing Palldium's Robotech at my local gamestore. While I was very excited about it, cause the GM is a huge fan and very knowledgeable, it isn't working out for me.
First of all I'm not crazy about the other players. One likes to show boat and ends up fouling up our missions or crashing his Veritech fighter on a regular basis. At one point he tripped over the bridge of the SDF-1 with his mecha. You know the flagship of the human defense force and the vessel we are assigned to. Now we have a new player bringing the group to three pilots. This one has no sense of humor, personality, charisma...I could go on for days, but why bore you? Let's just say his personality is not to be thrilled all the time about anything he is doing. So teamwork really isn't going to happen when you think of the other players as bullet shield #1 and bullet shield #2. Which one is which? I don't care anymore.
Last session did not go well in my opinion when each time my wing was sent to a theater of conflict we were called away the second we engaged before I could destroy a single enemy. Normally I don't have a problem with going into battle and getting shot up, UNLESS your GM awards a portion of your EXP based on what you kill. I didn't kill crap that week.
Lastly the GM's EXP awarding style isn't something that is meshing well with my role-playing philosophy. I play RPGs to relax and have fun. Even if it is a mystery solving setting I am laid back and having fun, not working up towards my first stroke. I am not one of those players that freaks if his players is killed in a legitimate manner. (i.e. not getting killed by a space-borne bank vault falling out a clear blue sky.) I understand when you charge twenty baddies that there is a good chance I might come out the other side as a pile of ham salad. Shoot me, whip me, make me write bad checks, its only a made-up person written down on paper. If the decision is sneeze in my bare hands or blow my nose into my character sheet, I'd go for the later. This doesn't mean I have no passion when playing, I just don't plan on pulling a Tom Hanks while role-playing. So when the GM says "what did you learn this session?" I'm supposed to scramble to come up with some clever return so I can earn the rest of any possible EXP? If I wanted to learn something new and be graded on it I'd be back in college. With all the other GMs I've played with, they awarded points on how well I played my character, not on some esoteric lessons I should have learned. Did I stay true to my characters personality, virtues or goals? Did I help propel the story along or achieve the goals set in front of me? These are the questions that should be asked at the end of a gaming session in my opinion. Well I guess after blogging this I know that answer to my opening statement.

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Tags: Robotech RPGs

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