Doing It Your Own Freaking Way!

So it's the two years anniversary of the passing of Gary Gygax and all over the blogosphere people are making memorial posts. I'm going to totally disregard Mr. Gygax and DO MY OWN FREAKING THING instead.

And you should to. Gaming is something that we get to do for a handful of hours now and then, and therefore YOU SHOULD BE DOING YOUR OWN FREAKING THING when gaming.

What does DYOFT entail? Letting your freak flag fly; letting it all hang out; having it your way; shining on you crazy diamond.

Here's an example. You're a newbie DM and you're totally a furry. You'd like to start a D&D campaign full of anthromorphic animals like sexy foxes, fencing mice and bear-wolf people. But you're worried that you'll get laughed out of The Lincoln Middle School Dungeons & Dragons Club for indulging in your furry-ism while DMing.

Fuck that noise. Who cares what they think? Somewhere someone is JUST DYING to play a smouldering cheetah temptress hoochie-mama wizard in a D&D game and you're their manimal! Start up your furry D&D game and make it the BEST DAMN FURRY D&D GAME you can.

Perhaps you'd like to start a Carcosa campaign but are worried that people on the internet will accuse you of being a baby-rapist. Fuck them, they can try calling the Cyber-FBI on your ass while you're DMing an bunch of evil fuckers with a shopping list of funny colored people to sacrifice.

Maybe you're unhappy with whatever edition of whatever RPG that your are refereeing or playing? Than let's just ditch whatever's dragging you down and try something else. "But the party hasn't completed the grand quest of saving yee olde fantasy orphanage!" Fuck the orphans, try playing/DMing what you'd like too, and maybe once you've got it out of your system you can return to the old game or even restart the campaign with a new system.

Maybe you're unhappy with a player in your group? Let's kickstart things, have a chat, and than if the chat doesn't resolve things KICK THE LOSER OUT OF THE GROUP. Sure he/she may be a good guy, a good friend, but if you don't enjoying their participation in the game than they need to go!

Maybe you really want to run a one-shot of Call of Cthulhu or Dogs in the Vinyard or something else but you're players are all "But we already known how to play D&D and plus we still have to recover the dwarven crown!" Tough luck, slam that COC rulebook down on the table at the beginning of the session and tell the players to make some damn investigators.

Maybe you'd like to have mules or octopi as playable character races in your game but you're worried that they'll be perceived as silly or ruin the players immersion in faux-Middle Earth/Krynn. Tough for them, bring in the mules and octopi!

Maybe you're really unhappy DMing 3rd or 4th edition and maybe you've been reading a lot of weird science fantasy (mostly from Appendix N) and maybe you want to start a new D&D game but based on "old-school" rules and with robots and planets and green skinned men instead of clerics and elves. Well than you just freaking do it!

If you want chimpanzee's as a player character race in your game, DO IT!

If you want to replace dragonborn with Godzilla-people, DO IT!

If you want to play Top Secret or Champions or Bunnies and Burrows, DO IT!

If you want to write your own fantasy heartbreaker, DO IT!

If you want to schedule an all-night gaming session with your group, DO IT!

If you think your DM is a jerk and you should find another group. DO IT!

We game as recreation. I'd like to think that our recreation time is too valuable to waste participating in something that we're not fully into. So whether you're playing or DMing, stand up for how you want to play and play the game that you want to you crazy gang of mavericks.