Gaming, friends and of course das cat.
Got back from the College having failed due to temporal matters to run a game. So, and here was the point for me, listening to people around talking about metagaming and stuff around that. Obviously and no you really don't have to point it out I'm rather odd here. I run/ play games for fun. It doesn't matter to me if I get gakked early on or not, if my master plan crumples in a pile of steaming yak manure or not. I do however care about having fun. I do oddly enough think as one of the many eejits out there who runs games think it would be good if my players enjoyed themselves.
And here in lies the issue, I can write the most esoteric, convoluted, “magic word” plot known to man. Added to that, there is a reasonable chance that some of the players will get quite a large chunk of the stuff (I'm smart but so are the players, dammit), but... Plot has to be mutable, plot has to be driven by characters to a certain extent, your plot (the ST/ GM/ Admin/ DM, whatever) matters for bollocks if your players are feeling crap afterwards. That's my point, that's my feel. Over the years I've dropped huge chunks of prepared stuff, mainly and invariably because it made the game run better. And then you get the veiled accusation of dumming stuff down.
So who as a game bod doesn't play to their players strengths, and if not, why not? That has to be the question, answers on a postcard please.
Friends thing, a couple of gamers, let me rephrase that “a couple who are gamers” that I know quite well and whom I should really get to know better were yattering. One of them, curiously enough Welsh muttered that I should introduce them to HW. I know HW rather well and she tolerates my oddities of behavior - can't stand golf, get bored by football and have a strange habit every now or then of joining several people in grouped flights of fantasy. Mainly because, I really am where I say I am and on the whole it doesn't overly infringe on our time. So my curiosity piqued and the brain vaguely functional I run some pattern defence, can they play cards (apparently yes), okay then. So the first hurdle is rather well taken, still I'm not convinced so I have to manufacture an event when the four of us can get together and meet each other in a social setting. Yup that would be me the human wallpaper organising a social gathering... And for added joy, I know that HW will read this soon as will in all probability one of the other couple (grins like a loon).
So now all the important people have been invited, beer some Sunday down by the river?
Das cat, looks pitiful when pitted against the blackbirds of doom. Really have to find a firearm soon. Otherwise it has to be alka seltzer and bread for the buggers.