There's just been a lot going on, so I've taken a brief break from blogging - as well as participating as much social media. I blog because I enjoy it, and feeling like I have to put up a post every couple of days kind of takes that enjoyment out of it. In the next few weeks I'll be getting back into my normal routine, but until then there are changes afoot.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Gotta Lot Of Catchup Questions
I kind of slacked off, so I'm doing a few days of this non-D&D blog challenge all in one shot. I'll break it up with some images so it's not too boring.
What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?
What non-D&D monster do you think is as iconic as D&D ones like hook horrors or flumphs, and why do you think so?
I would say Cthulhu, but its just iconic period and not only in relation to RPGs. If I were to take a close second, I'd say Ducks from Glorantha. They're such an odd species to have around, but anyone who reads about them remembers them.
It's hard to take any character seriously when you imagine they sound like Donald Duck |
What fantasy RPG other than D&D have you enjoyed most? Why?
I'd love to say Exalted...I really would...but I've enjoyed reading the books far more than I have the times I've played it. So that honor has to go to Palladium Fantasy (1st edition). We played the hell out of in high school as our first non-D&D fantasy game, and I have a lot of good memories of it. Unfortunately, in the late 1990s we had a nostalgia kick and I picked up the second edition...and we didn't enjoy it nearly so much. It was partly because of changes made to the system to make it compatible with Rifts and partly - well, fuck, it was just the system.
Yeah, the kobold looks whimsical now... |
What spy RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.
If we're going for only "spy" rpgs, I'd have to say 007. We played some Top Secret as well, but I really had fun playing 007. I don't remember a thing about the system though, or my character, other than his agent number was the one that always dies in the movies (006 maybe?).
What superhero RPG have you enjoyed most? Why?
I've not played many superhero rpgs, mainly because it's not my forte. I've played Champions a handful of times and didn't enjoy it much, but before that we played a lot of Marvel Superheroes in junior high and had a blast. It was my first introduction to adjective-based attribute descriptions (I still remember one of the levels for Intelligence...Feeble maybe...had the text "Has trouble with doors"). One of my best friends in junior high was way more into comic books than I was, and having him as a player in the game helped tremendously. I used to scour his Marvel Universe books for characters, and still remember all kinds of details even though I've never read the comics.
No one was surprised when I took an interest in VisiCalc |
What science fiction RPG have you enjoyed most? Give details.
In some ways, science fiction RPGs have traditionally been more in my wheelhouse than fantasy games. It's really a toss-up between CP2020 and Mekton, both of which we played a lot. I've run so many different games using Mekton, and we had Cyberpunk games that lasted for years.
For some reason I always think the one on the left has an afro. |
What post-apocalyptic RPG have you enjoyed mot? Why?
Tribe 8 which should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog or my posts. Why? Because of this:
He has such a jaunty little hat... |
When NPCs Lie
This is an interesting article on research into using natural language for NPCs in video games, specifically things like trade, gossip, and lying (which unfortunately is hardly mentioned, even if it's in the article's title). This subject has always intrigued me, because of this phenomenon I've noticed among players:
It's possible that my experience is atypical and most GMs portray believable NPCs who don't exist only to infodump on the players. I mean, one of the most cliched pieces of advice ever for GMs is to give NPCs personality. Right? Right?
But just in case my experience is one of the more common, the article points out some great things about interactions with NPCs - namely, that NPCs who gossip and can use that relatively meaningless talk to make determinations about how much they trust the PC (or not). It doesn't mean that unimportant (or even important) NPCs should be full of all kinds of deep conversation. Quite the opposite, actually. Time to drag out those old rumor and gossip tables and let the NPCs just say some random shit mixed in with the crucial bits the PCs need to hear.
Players nearly always believe the NPCs. As a corollary, when they do decide to distrust an NPC, it's nearly always the one they should be trustingIt leads to some very interesting developments, for sure, as an NPC can spout off nearly any sort of complete nonsense and the players will follow it right into a trap or worse. I'm not sure exactly what causes it but I suspect part of it is something I've also observed as a player:
GMs who never have their NPCs lieOnce a player comes to expect that NPCs will always be truthful, they're completely unprepared when they're not, and often skew the other direction by never trusting an NPC again.
It's possible that my experience is atypical and most GMs portray believable NPCs who don't exist only to infodump on the players. I mean, one of the most cliched pieces of advice ever for GMs is to give NPCs personality. Right? Right?
But just in case my experience is one of the more common, the article points out some great things about interactions with NPCs - namely, that NPCs who gossip and can use that relatively meaningless talk to make determinations about how much they trust the PC (or not). It doesn't mean that unimportant (or even important) NPCs should be full of all kinds of deep conversation. Quite the opposite, actually. Time to drag out those old rumor and gossip tables and let the NPCs just say some random shit mixed in with the crucial bits the PCs need to hear.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
What other old school game should have become as big as D&D but didn’t? Why do you think so?
Day 5 of the non-D&D blog challenge
This is a loaded question, because I think it has a lot more to do with who was first out of the starting gate than anything else. Any game that amassed the following that D&D had, was a reasonably decent game, would have made it and crowded out the other contenders. D&D was the one that would become as big as D&D in that case. It set the stage for what was expected of a role playing game - had it been a Pride and Prejudice inspired game, we'd have a hobby with very different priorities than we have today.
With that being said, given society and culture at the time I'd think it would have to be another fantasy-type rpg that would have become as big - and I'd put my finger on Runequest over any of the other contenders such as Tekumel. Runequest was accessible, had its own style, and could have easily become as popular as D&D became.
This is a loaded question, because I think it has a lot more to do with who was first out of the starting gate than anything else. Any game that amassed the following that D&D had, was a reasonably decent game, would have made it and crowded out the other contenders. D&D was the one that would become as big as D&D in that case. It set the stage for what was expected of a role playing game - had it been a Pride and Prejudice inspired game, we'd have a hobby with very different priorities than we have today.
With that being said, given society and culture at the time I'd think it would have to be another fantasy-type rpg that would have become as big - and I'd put my finger on Runequest over any of the other contenders such as Tekumel. Runequest was accessible, had its own style, and could have easily become as popular as D&D became.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
What other roleplaying author besides Gygax impressed you with their writing?
Day 4 of the non-D&D Blog Challenge
Gygax never impressed me with his writing...it just never clicked. So I guess my answer is, "Quite a few".
Since I'm not really part of the OSR community, nor do I play OSR games, I don't know how much of a pedestal Gygax is put up on. I acknowledge that he is, for all practical intent and purpose, the father of the roleplaying hobby. I was starstruck in the way that only a teenage nerd can be when I met him at a convention in the late '80s. But my experience sitting down with Mike Pondsmith for something like 45 minutes at a convention was a much greater influence on me. The authors who have impressed me is a long list and growing, and include - in no particular order - Kenneth Hite, Robin D. Laws, Fred Hicks, Josh Mosqueira, Marc Vezina, Greg Stafford, Steve Perrin, Sandy Petersen, Cam Banks, David Pulver, S. John Ross, and many, many more.
Gygax never impressed me with his writing...it just never clicked. So I guess my answer is, "Quite a few".
Since I'm not really part of the OSR community, nor do I play OSR games, I don't know how much of a pedestal Gygax is put up on. I acknowledge that he is, for all practical intent and purpose, the father of the roleplaying hobby. I was starstruck in the way that only a teenage nerd can be when I met him at a convention in the late '80s. But my experience sitting down with Mike Pondsmith for something like 45 minutes at a convention was a much greater influence on me. The authors who have impressed me is a long list and growing, and include - in no particular order - Kenneth Hite, Robin D. Laws, Fred Hicks, Josh Mosqueira, Marc Vezina, Greg Stafford, Steve Perrin, Sandy Petersen, Cam Banks, David Pulver, S. John Ross, and many, many more.
Monday, March 3, 2014
In what system was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D?
This is for Day 2 and Day 3 of the non-D&D Blog Challenge, since I got nothing done yesterday.
In what system was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D? How was playing it different from playing a D&D character?
This is kind of hard for me to remember. I DM'd a lot in the early days, and didn't get a chance to play much. There are two candidates though, both of which were probably about the same time (late junior high/early high school). My parents had friends who would often watch me when they needed a sitter, including when they took trips that I didn't go on. They had a daughter who was quite a bit older than me, and she had a boyfriend who played rpgs. He was really big into the 007 rpg, and I played a short campaign with him one summer. He also bootstrapped me into grokking Traveller, and I remember running a few sessions for him. There was also a guy who was a grade or two older than I who lived in our neighborhood, and I played Call of Cthulhu with him. So it was either 007 or Call of Cthulhu. How playing the character was different...I couldn't tell you. I remember the CoC character more than the 007 character. I created the character with the intent that he would be unhinged. It was, perhaps, my first brush with intentionally doing something that might harm my character (SAN loss from reading tomes and going toe-to-toe with Mythos creatures). He eventually went completely mad and I lost him as a PC, but for that brief time he was a M1911 in one hand, spellbook in the other type investigator.
Which game had the least or most enjoyable character generation?
Mekton II had the most enjoyable character creation, because of the novelty of the Lifepath. It was one of the few games where I would create a character just to roll on the Lifepath tables. A close runner-up would be Traveller, for the same reasons. Having the mini-game include uncertainty made it fun. For least enjoyable, I gotta say Hero. I spent three days making a character for a Hero game once and I think I came away from the experience with less of an understanding of the process.
In what system was the first character you played in an RPG other than D&D? How was playing it different from playing a D&D character?
This is kind of hard for me to remember. I DM'd a lot in the early days, and didn't get a chance to play much. There are two candidates though, both of which were probably about the same time (late junior high/early high school). My parents had friends who would often watch me when they needed a sitter, including when they took trips that I didn't go on. They had a daughter who was quite a bit older than me, and she had a boyfriend who played rpgs. He was really big into the 007 rpg, and I played a short campaign with him one summer. He also bootstrapped me into grokking Traveller, and I remember running a few sessions for him. There was also a guy who was a grade or two older than I who lived in our neighborhood, and I played Call of Cthulhu with him. So it was either 007 or Call of Cthulhu. How playing the character was different...I couldn't tell you. I remember the CoC character more than the 007 character. I created the character with the intent that he would be unhinged. It was, perhaps, my first brush with intentionally doing something that might harm my character (SAN loss from reading tomes and going toe-to-toe with Mythos creatures). He eventually went completely mad and I lost him as a PC, but for that brief time he was a M1911 in one hand, spellbook in the other type investigator.
Kinda like this. |
Mekton II had the most enjoyable character creation, because of the novelty of the Lifepath. It was one of the few games where I would create a character just to roll on the Lifepath tables. A close runner-up would be Traveller, for the same reasons. Having the mini-game include uncertainty made it fun. For least enjoyable, I gotta say Hero. I spent three days making a character for a Hero game once and I think I came away from the experience with less of an understanding of the process.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
What was the first roleplaying game other than D&D you played?
So, I just found out about the non-D&D March blog challenge. This one might be quite a bit more relevant to me.
The first rpg that I played other than D&D was Star Frontiers. Technically it was the third rpg I owned, since I was given the Traveller boxed set shortly before I got my hands on Star Frontiers. This was back when you could get rpgs at Toys 'R Us, which is likely where I got mine. Oddly enough at the same time there was a Sears Outlet close by my parent's house that also had rpgs - I remember seeing Universe and Lords of Creation there at one point - so it may have come from there.
I grew up on a cul-de-sac with a handful of kids that had lived there their entire lives. My parents moved in just after the condominiums were built, and I was young enough to not remember the previous place we lived. All of our families knew one another, and I had made my best friend when I was five years old - Richie - who was also the one that I taught D&D to.
Then there was Melissa Broadway. Her and her dad were relative newcomers to the neighborhood. I don't think the sisters that lived next door, Missy and Heidi, liked her very much. But I was in love with Melissa from the first time I saw her. She was lanky and tomboyish, with dark hair, and we got into all kinds of trouble together. We played action figures, she played a game called "kingdom" with Richie and I where we each had a "kingdom" with borders and a ruler and an army, we got into dirt clod fights at the construction sites nearby, heck I think I even played dolls and "house" with her. We also played Star Frontiers.
I remember playing it with just her and also with Richie, but I can't quite remember the characters. I want to say that Richie's character was a dralasite, while Melissa had a Yazarian. I know that we played through the published modules - while I created and stocked a lot of dungeons for D&D, Star Frontiers was off the beaten path enough that I never considered creating my own adventures for it. Because of that, Melissa moving away a year or two later, and starting to get into Traveller, we stopped playing Star Frontiers once we go through the published modules.
The first rpg that I played other than D&D was Star Frontiers. Technically it was the third rpg I owned, since I was given the Traveller boxed set shortly before I got my hands on Star Frontiers. This was back when you could get rpgs at Toys 'R Us, which is likely where I got mine. Oddly enough at the same time there was a Sears Outlet close by my parent's house that also had rpgs - I remember seeing Universe and Lords of Creation there at one point - so it may have come from there.
It was the Eighties...this was considered exciting |
Then there was Melissa Broadway. Her and her dad were relative newcomers to the neighborhood. I don't think the sisters that lived next door, Missy and Heidi, liked her very much. But I was in love with Melissa from the first time I saw her. She was lanky and tomboyish, with dark hair, and we got into all kinds of trouble together. We played action figures, she played a game called "kingdom" with Richie and I where we each had a "kingdom" with borders and a ruler and an army, we got into dirt clod fights at the construction sites nearby, heck I think I even played dolls and "house" with her. We also played Star Frontiers.
I remember playing it with just her and also with Richie, but I can't quite remember the characters. I want to say that Richie's character was a dralasite, while Melissa had a Yazarian. I know that we played through the published modules - while I created and stocked a lot of dungeons for D&D, Star Frontiers was off the beaten path enough that I never considered creating my own adventures for it. Because of that, Melissa moving away a year or two later, and starting to get into Traveller, we stopped playing Star Frontiers once we go through the published modules.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Tabletop RPGs Are A Poor Environment For Immersion
Immersion comes up a lot when discussing RPGs, typically in response to this style of game making it more difficult or easier for one person or the other to experience it.
The thing is, RPGs are a really poor choice for an immersive experience. I know that we've been told that this is something that's at least a byproduct of role playing, and it's desirable, and for a lot of people is a goal. And it's not a bad goal, either, and it's no reason that if your intent is immersion to not at least try. But at the very least, one has to recognize the odds are stacked against someone who wants to minimize breaking immersion.
Now, before people get out their pitchforks and torches, give me a chance to explain. Most immersive experiences that non-gamers are familiar with - say a movie or a book or a video game - are relatively solitary and internalized affairs. You get so wrapped up in the experience that you feel you're really there and forget about being yourself for a little bit. Sure, there might be things that bump you out of it - phone rings, the kids get too loud, the computer/console crashes - but overall the number of things that you have to interact with to sustain immersion are minimized.
Also, this is not a diatribe against immersion, nor in any way meant to invalidate, belittle, or otherwise tell people for whom its important that it's a pipe dream, doesn't exist, or anything else. It's just a short examination as to why rpgs actually wind up not being the perfect environment for it - in spite of most common thought that immersion is a natural outgrowth of playing rpgs. You have to work at it, in large part because of the activity's format. In some ways, perhaps more, this may be more commentary on why you can't get away from metagaming.
First, we have the game part. You need to interface with the rules in order to play the game. Granted,when game systems "fade into the background" - often as much through familiarity as elegant design - it makes immersion easier. Some people can get immersed even when the system is front and center. But rules and game systems are still artificial, and require bringing an internal process (the immersion) out into an artificial framework. While mechanics can certainly help in certain ways, they can cause a disconnect much more often. I still strongly believe that you actually can't design a system to support immersion - you can accomplish any number of other goals that might help support it, but it's a corollary instead of the primary result. Compare this with, for example, a PC game. While you still have to wrangle with controls, they tend to get out of the way a lot faster than rpg mechanics do - and they're easier to manipulate if you have the money and inclination to go with nonstandard control schemes that can be reconfigured to support playing the game better (i.e., any number of input devices from Razer).
Next, you have the inherently social activity of RPGs. I think that this has a bigger impact on creating a flawed environment for immersion than the rules do. In order to interact with a group of people, you again have to externalize a purely internal process. So now we have two external filters - the rules and the expression of character - to deal with. Again, the social group can do a lot to build up immersion but there are just as many ways (if not more) that someone can do something that pulls you out of "the zone" (for whatever measure of "the zone" that there is for you).
Finally, we have the environment. You can turn down the lights and sit down with headphones for a movie or a video game or a book. You can get yourself in a comfortable and quiet place. Not so with a group activity like an rpg. I mean, everyone could be in really comfy spots in a space with lots of atmosphere to play an rpg (and this is totally a good idea), but the environment is still a shared one and not a private one. That's another ding against an rpg being an ideal place to bring the immersion.
Does that mean that immersion doesn't exist or isn't important? Nope on both counts. But those things that are working against it don't necessarily affect other elements of play. You can enjoy all of the other elements as they are even if the mechanics are wonky or the players or environment are distracting. The traditional structure and mode of playing RPGs simply wasn't designed with immersion in mind and this goes a long way toward explaining explains why it can be so difficult.
The thing is, RPGs are a really poor choice for an immersive experience. I know that we've been told that this is something that's at least a byproduct of role playing, and it's desirable, and for a lot of people is a goal. And it's not a bad goal, either, and it's no reason that if your intent is immersion to not at least try. But at the very least, one has to recognize the odds are stacked against someone who wants to minimize breaking immersion.
Now, before people get out their pitchforks and torches, give me a chance to explain. Most immersive experiences that non-gamers are familiar with - say a movie or a book or a video game - are relatively solitary and internalized affairs. You get so wrapped up in the experience that you feel you're really there and forget about being yourself for a little bit. Sure, there might be things that bump you out of it - phone rings, the kids get too loud, the computer/console crashes - but overall the number of things that you have to interact with to sustain immersion are minimized.
Also, this is not a diatribe against immersion, nor in any way meant to invalidate, belittle, or otherwise tell people for whom its important that it's a pipe dream, doesn't exist, or anything else. It's just a short examination as to why rpgs actually wind up not being the perfect environment for it - in spite of most common thought that immersion is a natural outgrowth of playing rpgs. You have to work at it, in large part because of the activity's format. In some ways, perhaps more, this may be more commentary on why you can't get away from metagaming.
First, we have the game part. You need to interface with the rules in order to play the game. Granted,when game systems "fade into the background" - often as much through familiarity as elegant design - it makes immersion easier. Some people can get immersed even when the system is front and center. But rules and game systems are still artificial, and require bringing an internal process (the immersion) out into an artificial framework. While mechanics can certainly help in certain ways, they can cause a disconnect much more often. I still strongly believe that you actually can't design a system to support immersion - you can accomplish any number of other goals that might help support it, but it's a corollary instead of the primary result. Compare this with, for example, a PC game. While you still have to wrangle with controls, they tend to get out of the way a lot faster than rpg mechanics do - and they're easier to manipulate if you have the money and inclination to go with nonstandard control schemes that can be reconfigured to support playing the game better (i.e., any number of input devices from Razer).
Next, you have the inherently social activity of RPGs. I think that this has a bigger impact on creating a flawed environment for immersion than the rules do. In order to interact with a group of people, you again have to externalize a purely internal process. So now we have two external filters - the rules and the expression of character - to deal with. Again, the social group can do a lot to build up immersion but there are just as many ways (if not more) that someone can do something that pulls you out of "the zone" (for whatever measure of "the zone" that there is for you).
Finally, we have the environment. You can turn down the lights and sit down with headphones for a movie or a video game or a book. You can get yourself in a comfortable and quiet place. Not so with a group activity like an rpg. I mean, everyone could be in really comfy spots in a space with lots of atmosphere to play an rpg (and this is totally a good idea), but the environment is still a shared one and not a private one. That's another ding against an rpg being an ideal place to bring the immersion.
Does that mean that immersion doesn't exist or isn't important? Nope on both counts. But those things that are working against it don't necessarily affect other elements of play. You can enjoy all of the other elements as they are even if the mechanics are wonky or the players or environment are distracting. The traditional structure and mode of playing RPGs simply wasn't designed with immersion in mind and this goes a long way toward explaining explains why it can be so difficult.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Well, I Can Find One Thing To Be Motivated About: Grouchiness!
There was a thread on that one forum asking if Evil Hat was having trouble printing things or publishing things or doing stuff. I got dressed down for my response being "rude", because my response was basically, "Two products that seem to have fallen by the wayside haven't had any recent updates...so? There's all this other shit going on." After which, a few people chime in with wonderment about how anything gets written with all of +Fred Hicks' G+ posts, or that dice must be time consuming. I predict (given my last response to +Michael Moceri) that things will get silly quickly.
My grouchiness with the subject of the thread wasn't really the title ("What's Up With Evil Hat?") or the wording (having "trouble" putting out products), despite how I worded my own response. Of course the post was totally non-controversial and just an innocent question and apparently OP can't Google. My grouchiness is over the fact a lot of the time, gamers can't just accept that sometimes their favoritest most-bated-breath-waiting product will never see the light of day or isn't the biggest priority for the publisher.
Now, maybe I'm spoiled - I used to be a Palladium player, and do you know how long I waited for the Old Kingdom book to come out? For PFRP 1st-fucking-edition? So long that I hadn't even thought about it until just now. Waiting a couple extra months for Atomic Robo is a walk in the park by comparison. I can understand queries about the status of products. I can understand - given the Kickstarter failures out there - wanting to know how something is doing that is now five months late and the creator decided that they needed to clear their head by going to Nepal or something.
Maybe I'm overreacting as the nerd-rage in me builds and gives me a false sense of the motivation and energy I've been lacking lately (I bet it's going to be hell to come down from...I might wind up listening to The Smiths on repeat for maybe 15 whole minutes). For a moment though, let's suppose that Evil Hat just up and decided to drop both products the poster was inquiring about completely (it was the Paranet Papers and Atomic Robo, by the way). Not saying that this would happen, or this is what is happening (because honestly I don't know and I'm not going to ask). Now let's suppose that those two products were put into the pipeline at the time because they were the best choice, given the company's success at that time. Then all of a sudden, the company is catapulted into a new level of success by a super-successful Kickstarter and whole new avenues of potential product lines open up including new books, board games, dice sets, cards, etc. Then throw in some hiccups that would throw a project off its Gantt chart even without any of the the other stuff going on, and we have an understandable situation where a couple products could slip under the radar.
Not that nay of this is anybody's business but theirs, but given they're firing on all cylinders otherwise - it's certainly not an indication of "trouble." Come back and ask again when they've gone the route of DP9.
My grouchiness with the subject of the thread wasn't really the title ("What's Up With Evil Hat?") or the wording (having "trouble" putting out products), despite how I worded my own response. Of course the post was totally non-controversial and just an innocent question and apparently OP can't Google. My grouchiness is over the fact a lot of the time, gamers can't just accept that sometimes their favoritest most-bated-breath-waiting product will never see the light of day or isn't the biggest priority for the publisher.
Now, maybe I'm spoiled - I used to be a Palladium player, and do you know how long I waited for the Old Kingdom book to come out? For PFRP 1st-fucking-edition? So long that I hadn't even thought about it until just now. Waiting a couple extra months for Atomic Robo is a walk in the park by comparison. I can understand queries about the status of products. I can understand - given the Kickstarter failures out there - wanting to know how something is doing that is now five months late and the creator decided that they needed to clear their head by going to Nepal or something.
Maybe I'm overreacting as the nerd-rage in me builds and gives me a false sense of the motivation and energy I've been lacking lately (I bet it's going to be hell to come down from...I might wind up listening to The Smiths on repeat for maybe 15 whole minutes). For a moment though, let's suppose that Evil Hat just up and decided to drop both products the poster was inquiring about completely (it was the Paranet Papers and Atomic Robo, by the way). Not saying that this would happen, or this is what is happening (because honestly I don't know and I'm not going to ask). Now let's suppose that those two products were put into the pipeline at the time because they were the best choice, given the company's success at that time. Then all of a sudden, the company is catapulted into a new level of success by a super-successful Kickstarter and whole new avenues of potential product lines open up including new books, board games, dice sets, cards, etc. Then throw in some hiccups that would throw a project off its Gantt chart even without any of the the other stuff going on, and we have an understandable situation where a couple products could slip under the radar.
Not that nay of this is anybody's business but theirs, but given they're firing on all cylinders otherwise - it's certainly not an indication of "trouble." Come back and ask again when they've gone the route of DP9.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
A Complete An Utter Lack of Motivation
I have been struck with a lack of wanting to pretty much do anything. It's an unshakable ennui regarding virtually everything. It's infested pretty much everything, from work to other projects that I know I want to do or activities I enjoy. I started replaying Thief: Deadly Shadows after finishing the first two, and found that I really couldn't get into it. It crashes whenever I try to move into one of the areas I need to get into...and I have zero interest in trying to fix it. I have a Tribe 8 game that I'm trying to prepare for, and which I want to start regardless, but I can't bring myself to finish the prep work. There's a ton of personal matters I need to attend to, but I'm just not getting around to them. I already know some of those things are contributing to my listlessness. I'm kind of slouching toward a time in the near future that a lot of things hanging over my head will be resolved, and hopefully that will help me break out of this.
In the meantime, I'm not sure how exactly to shake it aside from forcing myself to work on various things - which knowing me will backfire. So, I figured I'd list the things that I really wanted to do but just can't give two shits about right now:
- Fate Core (but possibly FAE) Thief-inspired fantasy world. Seeing a lot of similarities between what I was planning in Will Hindmarch's excellent looking Project: Dark doesn't help motivate me, even though I know that it's not going to kill my project.
- The science-fiction setting I pitched for ADX.
- A Silhouette-like retroclone system, possibly for a re-imagining of a Solar System-based setting with mecha.
- A Fate Core adaptation of The Laundry.
- Coming up with something for Onyx Path's writer's submissions.
Maybe I just need to take a couple mental health days, sleep a lot, reinstall Dishonored, and find some inspiration somewhere.
Monday, February 24, 2014
My Metric For Presenting In Character Or Out of Character Knowledge
I highly, highly dislike overly artificial "firewalls" as +Topher Gerkey put it between in character and out of character knowledge. Yes, I expect that for the most part players will refrain from blatantly using their own knowledge to the detriment of everyone's enjoyment of the game. But, conversely, I expect that they won't stubbornly refuse to use it when it adds to the game.
As an example, since I'm gearing up for Tribe 8, is how I've seen portrayals of characters in post-apocalyptic games finding relatively common objects like flashlights. Usually it goes down as the GM describing the object in vague details, like "It's a metal cylinder with a piece of glass set in the end." and sitting back while Twenty Questions ensues and the GM tries to lead them astray from the real answer as much as possible. If asked to draw it or show a picture, the GM hems and haws and doesn't want to because they know the players would immediately figure out it's a flashlight.
Look, just say it's a fucking flashlight. The players should be able to roleplay their characters figuring out how it works. The words, "What is this weird metal cylinder with glass set in the end?" should be coming from the players and not the GM trying to play some kind of lame game of Charades.
So, to that end here's a quick flow chart of how I make these kinds of decisions:
As an example, since I'm gearing up for Tribe 8, is how I've seen portrayals of characters in post-apocalyptic games finding relatively common objects like flashlights. Usually it goes down as the GM describing the object in vague details, like "It's a metal cylinder with a piece of glass set in the end." and sitting back while Twenty Questions ensues and the GM tries to lead them astray from the real answer as much as possible. If asked to draw it or show a picture, the GM hems and haws and doesn't want to because they know the players would immediately figure out it's a flashlight.
Look, just say it's a fucking flashlight. The players should be able to roleplay their characters figuring out how it works. The words, "What is this weird metal cylinder with glass set in the end?" should be coming from the players and not the GM trying to play some kind of lame game of Charades.
So, to that end here's a quick flow chart of how I make these kinds of decisions:
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