Dungeons.

I like D&D 3.5. I have some friends currently running games in completely different styles, and that's fine. D&D can be an excellent system to RP in-character in, and it's pretty good for busting in and killing things, too.

Now you get to hear about my characters, lucky you.

In one corner, weighing in at...a lot, is Arcanist Nils Gaup, a 4th level wizard. In a fine tradition of picking celebrities or actors to use as a description of my characters, Nils is portrayed by David Ogden Stiers. Not your adventurer type, he's career wizard--an astrologer with a wife, and two girls that he hopes will follow in his footsteps. His most distinctive feature may be his familiar, Lars--an albino rat that's been with him for the last 25 years, drinks from a thimble Nils carries around, gathers things in little spoons, and spends a great deal of time hiding in Nils' voluminous clothing. Nils is a conjurer, and likes to solve various problems with Summon Monster spells. He's from conquered racial stock, but has bought into the dominant race's society and values. He's True Neutral.

In the other corner, wearing slightly darker trunks, is Tala, daughter of the chieftan of the Rovers of the Barrens, a 3rd level druid. She escaped from slavery after her tribe was raided by followers of Iuz--she was forced to watch as her father, the best shot in the tribe, had his hands slowly broken to teach him and his people a lesson about how serious his captors were. Though relatively wise, she's reckless, hates anything that seems like slavery or imprisonment, and she doesn't even really get along with animals that well. She fights like a barbarian...and one day, her understanding of the cruelty of nature will gift her with the ability to take the forms of deadly predators--if she lives that long. She runs fast, defends herself with bravery and ferocity, and will probably die while the rest of her party blinks after her.

Tala is in the hack-n-slash game, Nils in the RP game--not that we don't pause for a bit of IC banter in the hack-n-slash game, or get into interesting fights in the RP one. If I could change things, I'd have a nice talk with a few players in the hack-n-slasher, asking them to please, for the love of Wee Jas, respect that other players may have their own interests, and that the game isn't about them, with the rest of us as supporting cast. I'd ask that people bother with some of the RPing, because it could be cool. I'd ask that we move things along otherwise, that being more ready to start closer to start time is probably simply polite to the others, that constant OOC tangents during play are funny and interesting, but not why we got together during that particular block of time.

I'm probably guilty of most of the above to a slight degree, and I would never ask it if I weren't willing to pay more attention to my own actions.

What I think really helps is having non-gaming time set aside before gaming time, in order to feed and fraternize, so that we get some of it out of the way and we can concentrate on killing things that are different than us, and taking said things' stuff. It's worked in a number of games I'm played and GM'd. I should mention this idea first, and then criticize other players if it doesn't help enough. Yeah.

~j