Casting Shadows

Today is the thirtieth day of August and so #RPGaDAY2025 has reached its 30th prompt: experience. If we take this word at its face value, we find it relates to ability obtained through trials. If we push just a bit harder, we might end up thinking that what that face really wants to tell us is that it has attempted things. It is a very appropriate word for what we have been sharing for this event with the development of this campaign pitch, and the notion of a troupe of characters.

Day 30: Experience

A character made for a game using the Ubiquity Roleplaying System and following the standard rules for starting characters has definitely benefitted from a few attempts to do things. They are competent characters, but best viewed as competent members of a competent team. What we learn in play, is that they will quickly be able to leverage the experiences of play and rapidly shore up weak areas, while continuing to develop their core competencies. It feels very much like seeing people transform their theoretical understanding into a more personal and accessible understanding that is truly a part of them and how they do things. With a little bit of experience, new things start to make sense. With a little bit more, things we thought we understood take on a deeper and broader sense.

Of course, in cosmic horror, that starter set of sense can carry a wallop. When we dig into the horror…?Well, some experiences you do not just walk away from.

That leads us to the sharing of experiences across several characters. It takes a certain wisdom in a person to recognize that the struggle they face might be larger than they are or ask them to do things they are not adept at doing. Help is needed. The struggle may be brutal, long, or both. Someone or some cult may be trying to bully you into silence, outright kill you, or trusting that you alone will get tired, give up, and go away. They might believe that no one will listen to you.

Experience shows us, they are wrong.

Band together with your troupe. Be open to new members. Mourn the fallen, learn from the veterans, welcome and prepare the newcomers. Embrace the view from multiple perspectives. Fight the good fight.

Win.

Defeat the vileness rotting the world and share your experiences so when it crawls back from beyond space and time to corrupt us again as it has done before, we will remember what it is, what it does, and how it does it. We will know how to fight it in our future generations as we learned how to fight in our past ones.

See you tomorrow for the last day of RPGaDAY2025 – Day 31: Reward