Melancholy
So while I have one computer trying to repair a hard drive that's looking pretty screwed, I seem to have time to think. That's not always a good thing.
The company's starting up a new health program of sorts with online tracking and such. I wonder if filling out the questionaires will tell me the number one medical-related problem I really have: I'm a creature of habit, and my habits don't include going to the doctor. I haven't been to one in... years. Heck, I don't "have" a doctor, and I can't imagine any place still has records of me on file. This may be an opportunity to change that - maybe. I guess we'll see.
Saw the new Indiana Jones movie on the weekend. It was decent fun and worth admission and time, I'd say, but not great. The "supernatural" stuff was too blatant for me compared to the others, and other elements were too over the top for my tastes. "More over the top than Nazi's having their face's melted?" I was asked. Well, maybe not, but in a different way. I don't want to go into too much detail, but things like the vines and the fridge struck me as gratuitous in a way that only served to distract from the film rather than contribute to it.
Roleplaying, often online, still makes for one of my primary forms of semi-social entertainment.
Offline: The mid-week games are generally fun, if a little draining when I have to go to work the next day. That's only every other week, though, so it's not too bad. Weekend games are... sketchy. Schedules aren't working out real well there with 3/5 of our regular group having had babies in the last 6 months or so. Dylan and Cathy have brought their kid over, but I'm increasingly leery about that as he grows - our home is not baby-proof in any sense, and I really don't want to have to make it so or be distracted with a kid while playing. On top of that, I find that half the games we play don't seem to hold my interest as well as in the past. Still, it is usually nice to see people, at least.
Furryfaire is what it is. I still find myself doing small scenes more often than the spontaneous "play the character in the surroundings with other people" that MUCKs seem more designed for. It's hard to make something you've done a hundred times feel new and interesting, but sometimes it's just fine entertainment.
The Exalted games rolls on. I'm pleasantly surprised it's lasted so long, but I still feel ongoing "problems" that I have urges to fix even though I'm not really in a position to do so. The players still differ greatly in levels of involvement and enjoyment. The pacing of events is still uncomfortable to me, and there are still a lot of theoretically-important threads that aren't being explored. I still generally enjoy it, though, unless such things are being made particularly apparent to me at a given time.
One pacing-related line of thinking I had today... There's a "realism-based" school of thought that events in the setting of a game should happen in the absence of PC involvement. If there's a war and one side has an edge, they might crush the other nation in X months if nothing changes. The problem I see in application of this is it seems most frequently used by GMs are a way to push players to action by punishing them for inaction. "You guys didn't do anything, so the lich conquered another kingdom," seems common. "You guys did your research, managed to find an ancient warp gate, and befriended the locals, so you have an army ready and the lich is a month away," almost never happens, in my experience.
As an example, let me paint a picture from the Exalted game (because most who read this will be somewhat familiar with it, and the Storyteller frequently promotes this method of running a setting through hasn't advertised it specifically in this game that I've noticed). The PCs have made extensive use of magically fast transportation to hasten their work. If they did not, yet the rest of the world had run at the same speed, here's a few things that would be different:
- The PCs would probably be on their first trip from Nexus to Whitewall still, rather than having gone back and forth a couple times over. They might have had a few smaller adventures along the way.
- They would not have yet acquired the Crown of Winter for Five Days Darkness. They would only have two (?) of the five swords they were collecting for other reason.
- Symphony of Perpetuity would still not have been to her manse, thus not have been able to "upgrade" yet.
- The Shogun of Shattered Grave's circle would have found, retrieved, and repaired the Five Metal Shrike and the PCs would not have even heard about it yet.
- Tainted Whispers would be sitting on her duff in Thorns for who-knows-how-many-more months before the PCs ever arrive there for her to play helpful. Actually, I suppose if her spies are so incredibly good as to be able to track the PCs all over Creation and Yu Shan, she probably would have enough warning that she wouldn't be at Thorns yet or would manage her meeting somewhere else.
- The First and Forsaken Lion's forces would still be two weeks from Gem, thus probably bulldozing the city and moving on to tear up Autochthon before the PCs even reached Whitewall. In fact, the PCs probably wouldn't even have heard of this entire plotline until it was over.
These are not things "moving at their own pace regardless of PC involvement." These are things being accelerated/scheduled to happen when the PCs can deal with them. It's a more "cinematic" approach, and not necessarily a bad way to run things. It depends on the game. In this particular case, it's just a bit frustrating because it makes me feel that not using fast-travel isn't an option or the whole friggin' world will collapse by the time the characters get anywhere and that means no/limited training time available.
Aaand... that's about it for now. Time to go check that hard drive...
The company's starting up a new health program of sorts with online tracking and such. I wonder if filling out the questionaires will tell me the number one medical-related problem I really have: I'm a creature of habit, and my habits don't include going to the doctor. I haven't been to one in... years. Heck, I don't "have" a doctor, and I can't imagine any place still has records of me on file. This may be an opportunity to change that - maybe. I guess we'll see.
Saw the new Indiana Jones movie on the weekend. It was decent fun and worth admission and time, I'd say, but not great. The "supernatural" stuff was too blatant for me compared to the others, and other elements were too over the top for my tastes. "More over the top than Nazi's having their face's melted?" I was asked. Well, maybe not, but in a different way. I don't want to go into too much detail, but things like the vines and the fridge struck me as gratuitous in a way that only served to distract from the film rather than contribute to it.
Roleplaying, often online, still makes for one of my primary forms of semi-social entertainment.
Offline: The mid-week games are generally fun, if a little draining when I have to go to work the next day. That's only every other week, though, so it's not too bad. Weekend games are... sketchy. Schedules aren't working out real well there with 3/5 of our regular group having had babies in the last 6 months or so. Dylan and Cathy have brought their kid over, but I'm increasingly leery about that as he grows - our home is not baby-proof in any sense, and I really don't want to have to make it so or be distracted with a kid while playing. On top of that, I find that half the games we play don't seem to hold my interest as well as in the past. Still, it is usually nice to see people, at least.
Furryfaire is what it is. I still find myself doing small scenes more often than the spontaneous "play the character in the surroundings with other people" that MUCKs seem more designed for. It's hard to make something you've done a hundred times feel new and interesting, but sometimes it's just fine entertainment.
The Exalted games rolls on. I'm pleasantly surprised it's lasted so long, but I still feel ongoing "problems" that I have urges to fix even though I'm not really in a position to do so. The players still differ greatly in levels of involvement and enjoyment. The pacing of events is still uncomfortable to me, and there are still a lot of theoretically-important threads that aren't being explored. I still generally enjoy it, though, unless such things are being made particularly apparent to me at a given time.
One pacing-related line of thinking I had today... There's a "realism-based" school of thought that events in the setting of a game should happen in the absence of PC involvement. If there's a war and one side has an edge, they might crush the other nation in X months if nothing changes. The problem I see in application of this is it seems most frequently used by GMs are a way to push players to action by punishing them for inaction. "You guys didn't do anything, so the lich conquered another kingdom," seems common. "You guys did your research, managed to find an ancient warp gate, and befriended the locals, so you have an army ready and the lich is a month away," almost never happens, in my experience.
As an example, let me paint a picture from the Exalted game (because most who read this will be somewhat familiar with it, and the Storyteller frequently promotes this method of running a setting through hasn't advertised it specifically in this game that I've noticed). The PCs have made extensive use of magically fast transportation to hasten their work. If they did not, yet the rest of the world had run at the same speed, here's a few things that would be different:
- The PCs would probably be on their first trip from Nexus to Whitewall still, rather than having gone back and forth a couple times over. They might have had a few smaller adventures along the way.
- They would not have yet acquired the Crown of Winter for Five Days Darkness. They would only have two (?) of the five swords they were collecting for other reason.
- Symphony of Perpetuity would still not have been to her manse, thus not have been able to "upgrade" yet.
- The Shogun of Shattered Grave's circle would have found, retrieved, and repaired the Five Metal Shrike and the PCs would not have even heard about it yet.
- Tainted Whispers would be sitting on her duff in Thorns for who-knows-how-many-more months before the PCs ever arrive there for her to play helpful. Actually, I suppose if her spies are so incredibly good as to be able to track the PCs all over Creation and Yu Shan, she probably would have enough warning that she wouldn't be at Thorns yet or would manage her meeting somewhere else.
- The First and Forsaken Lion's forces would still be two weeks from Gem, thus probably bulldozing the city and moving on to tear up Autochthon before the PCs even reached Whitewall. In fact, the PCs probably wouldn't even have heard of this entire plotline until it was over.
These are not things "moving at their own pace regardless of PC involvement." These are things being accelerated/scheduled to happen when the PCs can deal with them. It's a more "cinematic" approach, and not necessarily a bad way to run things. It depends on the game. In this particular case, it's just a bit frustrating because it makes me feel that not using fast-travel isn't an option or the whole friggin' world will collapse by the time the characters get anywhere and that means no/limited training time available.
Aaand... that's about it for now. Time to go check that hard drive...
A little of column A, a little of column B. Exalted is more cinematic, and I'm keeping this in mind for the game. On the other hand, I'm also keeping a mental tally of what's going to happen if the PCs aren't as involved as they could be. If you didn't have cloud travel, things may have gone something like this: The PCs teleport to Tamara's Manse, since she has a hearth stone which allows it. The manse is reasonably close to Naga's, so the PCs could have gone there. At some point, Symphony would want her upgrade, so Naga would take the group via the Yu Shan gates down to the region near the Manse, allowing the PCs to learn about the war. The PCs would then have the choice: Try to get the blades, and fight FaFL a few months down the line, or enter Autochthon now and face him before he gets firmly entrenched. I'm keeping things flexible enough so the PCs don't critically botch by taking too long, but I'm trying to keep the drama up. You may notice I'm not adding sub-threads into this at the moment, since I do want the group to be able to finish a number of the existing threads before I go anywhere else.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I have trouble with understanding the increasing number of people, places and events going on - and part of that is probably the fact I came in late. I have people I can call on to help explain this, but frequently I'm still left wondering 'who is that?' 'where is threatened?' 'so this is how bad?' It's like a dramatic moment hangs on an exciting chord, shocking all the characters *GASP* but then there's me, wanting to raise my hand and go 'uhm...what?'
ReplyDeleteI could try to help with that some - and by the way, Exalted tonight. ;D
ReplyDeleteOK thanks. :)
ReplyDeleteHeck, I have trouble keeping track sometimes, especially remembering full sobriquettes for people. Moreso, though, I have trouble keeping track of what's known and what isn't. I've read through a lot of the books, and the setting has a lot of "secrets" that characters don't necessarily know. Keeping track of what I know versus what my character knows in this sense is tricky.
ReplyDeleteWell, as I said, it was mostly a good example due to familiarity. I recognize that the game is moving at a more cinematic pace, and thus it's hard to "get ahead" without off-screen downtime being involved. Generally that's fine. In general, however, my argument is that I tend to see the "real-time" approach used more as a stick to beat players into moving where a GM wants rather than a carrot to urge them onward toward rewards for efficiency.
ReplyDeleteI don't disagree with you on that point, for sure.
ReplyDelete