Of Gossamer and Shadows
*sigh* I had my thoughts much more organized last night. As I was trying to get to sleep. Bleh. Inefficiencies of life! Nevermind that these aren't exactly chipper thoughts about an ongoing game, but... sometimes you have to take a critical eye to things.
So... yeah... I'm a little daunted by the energy shown by our Lords of Gossamer and Shadow GM. Mainly, that's because I don't share his level of enthusiasm. That is, I think, largely a personal issue and an accumulation of multiple factors.
I've said before that I have issues with multiversal, "anything goes" settings. To me, setting and characters' interaction with it is important, perhaps even defining. When the setting itself says anything is possible, and probably is happening somewhere, then each little event and choice feels less meaningful to me. Or utterly meaningly, depending on how easy it is to find an alternative reality. Now G&S isn't technically as bad as it could in, in that there is a "real" reality of the Stair in between all the myriad other universes, but even that somewhat skeletal, with a few places and personalities established.
So... faced with all that, I made Nova as more of an explorer type as something of a deliberate choice. Since I couldn't define any real stakes in the world, I set her up without major goals. She doesn't really want to go back to her world of origin because the people she personally knew are dead and the place is embroiled in an ongoing interstellar war that, while she trained to fight, her wider view as a Warden has shown to be somewhat meaningless in the grand scheme of things. That leaves her as a brilliant tactical mind who 1) sort of wants something she perceives as a worthy challenge, but 2) isn't really invested in any events, locations, or peoples currently.
That seemed workable to me at the outset. Unfortunately, it doesn't mix well with the way things have gone. As a relatively "young" Warden, when she made a friend with John, she was eager enough to sink her teeth into his fight. An ace mecha pilot with a superhuman eye for strengths and weaknesses from a tactical/strategic view ought to make a good asset against an alien incursion, right? And on some level, she could see that as a chance to help an Earth avoid the fate of her home. That worked. But everything since then has sort of undermined that.
Rather than settling in to win a war, as new characters have been introduced, the group has been pulled off to a tour of the multiverse. I suppose it's really more of a spectrum, but it feels like that gives Nova two main ways to deal with this. Either she invests in these worlds and tackles the goings on with everything she's got - which sounds wearying, with little payoff when you're just going to hop to another world anyway - or she just sort of goes with the flow and does what's immediately needed without any real attachment. Maybe there's player bias slipping in there, but she's opted for the latter.
World with far off civilizations that might be interesting? Well, we're just here to try to ambush an Umbral Gaunt, so there's not much point in exploring.
Eve Online world? Why get deeply acquainted with the ships and tech when you're just there to blow up a space station?
Tyria? Okay, it's a nice meal and all server up, but we're not staying, so it could have been a meal anywhere.
Add to that how we're adding a new "party" character... well, it feels like every session. It takes more than introductions to consider someone a friend, much less someone you trust with anything important. Of the current group, Nova's really only had time and experience to form solid opinions about John and perhaps Sparrowhawk. Dove Prince gets some points as "teacher" for Eidolon, but still. Everyone else is like "someone I met a couple days ago." As a player, I'm really having to extend a lot of latitude that isn't "earned" in-character - seen in the discussion about icons, for example. Nova may not be a mage, but she understands icons provide a link - and the thought that someone she just met, with powers she doesn't fully understand, might have a link to her (or be able to make them) is... well... I'm having to force her reaction to "unsettling" when it probably should be a whole lot more worrisome. And as more characters are thrown into the mix, or rotated out, it only gets harder to actually bond with any of them (in the same way it's hard to get invested in Gossamer worlds when you're only there briefly).
The format doesn't help. I think it's always a challenge to run sessions for multiple people online, and playing just for a few hours every week that way even more so. I don't know that I would assign a whole lot of blame there, but it inherently makes it all more difficult.
So that is, as best as I can explain at the moment, why I'm having trouble feeling deeply invested in the game right now. I've got a character who could be a crusading warrior or general at the strategic core of a team who is instead just floating from world to world surrounded by people she's mostly just met. "Party" chemistry doesn't happen overnight, and when things change so much, I'm not sure i can ever really gel.
So... yeah... I'm a little daunted by the energy shown by our Lords of Gossamer and Shadow GM. Mainly, that's because I don't share his level of enthusiasm. That is, I think, largely a personal issue and an accumulation of multiple factors.
I've said before that I have issues with multiversal, "anything goes" settings. To me, setting and characters' interaction with it is important, perhaps even defining. When the setting itself says anything is possible, and probably is happening somewhere, then each little event and choice feels less meaningful to me. Or utterly meaningly, depending on how easy it is to find an alternative reality. Now G&S isn't technically as bad as it could in, in that there is a "real" reality of the Stair in between all the myriad other universes, but even that somewhat skeletal, with a few places and personalities established.
So... faced with all that, I made Nova as more of an explorer type as something of a deliberate choice. Since I couldn't define any real stakes in the world, I set her up without major goals. She doesn't really want to go back to her world of origin because the people she personally knew are dead and the place is embroiled in an ongoing interstellar war that, while she trained to fight, her wider view as a Warden has shown to be somewhat meaningless in the grand scheme of things. That leaves her as a brilliant tactical mind who 1) sort of wants something she perceives as a worthy challenge, but 2) isn't really invested in any events, locations, or peoples currently.
That seemed workable to me at the outset. Unfortunately, it doesn't mix well with the way things have gone. As a relatively "young" Warden, when she made a friend with John, she was eager enough to sink her teeth into his fight. An ace mecha pilot with a superhuman eye for strengths and weaknesses from a tactical/strategic view ought to make a good asset against an alien incursion, right? And on some level, she could see that as a chance to help an Earth avoid the fate of her home. That worked. But everything since then has sort of undermined that.
Rather than settling in to win a war, as new characters have been introduced, the group has been pulled off to a tour of the multiverse. I suppose it's really more of a spectrum, but it feels like that gives Nova two main ways to deal with this. Either she invests in these worlds and tackles the goings on with everything she's got - which sounds wearying, with little payoff when you're just going to hop to another world anyway - or she just sort of goes with the flow and does what's immediately needed without any real attachment. Maybe there's player bias slipping in there, but she's opted for the latter.
World with far off civilizations that might be interesting? Well, we're just here to try to ambush an Umbral Gaunt, so there's not much point in exploring.
Eve Online world? Why get deeply acquainted with the ships and tech when you're just there to blow up a space station?
Tyria? Okay, it's a nice meal and all server up, but we're not staying, so it could have been a meal anywhere.
Add to that how we're adding a new "party" character... well, it feels like every session. It takes more than introductions to consider someone a friend, much less someone you trust with anything important. Of the current group, Nova's really only had time and experience to form solid opinions about John and perhaps Sparrowhawk. Dove Prince gets some points as "teacher" for Eidolon, but still. Everyone else is like "someone I met a couple days ago." As a player, I'm really having to extend a lot of latitude that isn't "earned" in-character - seen in the discussion about icons, for example. Nova may not be a mage, but she understands icons provide a link - and the thought that someone she just met, with powers she doesn't fully understand, might have a link to her (or be able to make them) is... well... I'm having to force her reaction to "unsettling" when it probably should be a whole lot more worrisome. And as more characters are thrown into the mix, or rotated out, it only gets harder to actually bond with any of them (in the same way it's hard to get invested in Gossamer worlds when you're only there briefly).
The format doesn't help. I think it's always a challenge to run sessions for multiple people online, and playing just for a few hours every week that way even more so. I don't know that I would assign a whole lot of blame there, but it inherently makes it all more difficult.
So that is, as best as I can explain at the moment, why I'm having trouble feeling deeply invested in the game right now. I've got a character who could be a crusading warrior or general at the strategic core of a team who is instead just floating from world to world surrounded by people she's mostly just met. "Party" chemistry doesn't happen overnight, and when things change so much, I'm not sure i can ever really gel.
Comments
Post a Comment