There are quite possibly a million things I've been putting off posting about.
Unfortunately, dealing with those million things is consuming all my home time. And during my breaks at work, I usually have jut enough time to take care of my bodily needs, and then check my messages. I can usually respond to two or three of them. But not always. So I usually need to triage my needs, and way to much gets dropped.
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I appreciate the gesture at the option. My record is fairly clear. But honestly, 14 isn't a whole lot better than a lateral move for me currently. Not enough considering I would probably have a less flexible schedule than I have now. Though I agree, the city is good to its people on benefits. I have applied for city before, but it hasn't worked out yet.
As far as switching campaign worlds with the same character, how do you think Colin would react to me trying to bring a Mage character into his robot-apocalypse game, and then converting it into your home brew pseudo d&d? And a large part of what makes a character hwo they are is the world they live in and the people they travel with. Converting a character once in a while can be pretty sweet, and I've done it, but every few weeks when the group changes system? You can't tell me you think that would really work.
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The other two player characters? An investigator death mage, and his wacky hippy friend. You had expressed that the players weren't getting into the concepts of the magic system. So I made Patricia loosely recycled from another game; D&D3 characters testing the d20 system. A refugee living behind a warzone, I originally made her based upon two mission statements: "I am going to cast magic missile," and "I am going to piss off Bob Norman." I was successful in both. Bob's precise reaction was "Oh, my god! You made my mother!"
I was going to have her go out and buy some D&D manuals, bringing mine as props, and base her magic spells on what she read there. And there was going to be a lot of eighties style use of cleavage and hair. Instead I found us immediately in combat mode with people stealing our house. So I spent two or three sessions in and out of combat mode. When combat was finally over, you announced that you had no idea where to take the game without killing us all. At the time, I thought you were being lame, and said so. Now I understand, you were bored.
We let Colin have a go with prepping Burning Empires. Setting concept? Parasitic brain worms are traveling in hosts through space and taking all the universe over planet by planet. Fatalistic.
I tried to make a character who was a sort of pope/profit. He was a major figure and was trying to keep hope and faith alive in a time of fear. We never even played that. We just played board games. I offered to run something, but I was basically told, "we would rather play board games and wait for Colin to never run anything than play what you want to run, dude." I let it go. And you bitched for weeks about how frustrating it was.
We then played your d&d homebrew that you were designing and changing during play. You used the Birthright setting as a backdrop. Not inherently fatalistic. However, we are not nobles in the Birthright setting, but normal guys. We are on a ship being sent after a previous doomed mission to a mysterious island that is seeping with death, and we may not be returning alive, or at all. Fatalistic.
I watched the rest of the group make characters, and made a character to compliment them. I saw this as likely going like Colin's game, so I put considerably less effort into it. I was amazed when we completed a story. I was excited that we left it on a weird cliff hanger. I kept my notes as files on my desktop until the night I told you I wasn't coming back. You barely even talked about following up on it.
Colin's turn again. Gurps, he says is his home system. He can make a real game. We spent as many weeks or more prepping for it as we did actually playing it. Setting? Post-technological singularity. High tech. Fatalistic.
I tried to make a character who was a mother taking care of her baby and had a reason to keep fighting and remain hopeful. The group summarily denied me my baby. I made the character anyway, without the motive to keep going.
I misunderstood. When I think "robots enslaved the world," I think terrible bleak worst case future. I didn't realize is that Colin wanted post-apocalypse Shadowrunning. Not bleak, he ran it as action. Sorry, but there is no way humans would be running around on the surface of the planet in any manner besides away in fear. A sentient AI that had access to all major systems would simply win, all the time. Apparently we had a population of enough free humans running around to actually be a problem to an AI that controlled nukes.
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And then we had a discussion on what to play next. I made it very clear I was not interested in playing any more GURPS. We tossed around several other options. And settled on you running more GURPS. I wondered if you wanted to run GURPS more out of motivation to show Colin how than to actually play it. I knew I wanted out at this point, but for our friendship, I tried to stay with it. Setting? Traveler. Not inherently fatalistic. Waxing into Lovecraftian style horror on a rogue smuggling vessel a la Firefly? Fatalistic. I was really fed up, so I made a killer. A cold scientist type, eager to solve problems with a gun first. I made him to be a pain in the ass. If I got frustrated, I wanted to be able to channel it into the character. Just like Vince always builds in forgetful or absent minded. Colin always makes greedy merchant a major feature (except for your homebrew when he made a thug). Joe is a power gamer. I have only seen Gemma make like three characters, but they seem to be innocent girls who are not really innocent. You make petulant loners, all the while moaning about how its not how you would run things. Even then, I put thought and care into his full personality to be worth playing. Enough that you asked me for permission to keep using him, and went on about his awesomeness. You like my fatalistic character.
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Now I understand, you were bored.
I wasn't, Vince and Colin were. I would love nothing more to go back to GMing a modern day WoD campaign, or the player-generated d20 fantasy world I've talked about. But if I did either of those, I think I would need a different group. I think the sci-fi game has really struck a chord with everyone in this Thursday group, and I know Joe is a little unhappy with the move to WoD rules because he keeps pushing to GM himself, but I don't care about what Joe likes. I care about having fun.
In a way, yes, I did want to show Colin how to run GURPS, but at the same time I thought it would be fun for me. It wasn't. Too many things to keep track of. At game I keep imagining how you would react to the things that have happened since you left, and based on your complaints, everything that has gone down would please you. One week I announced that I was fed up with the complexity of GURPS and I had separated most of my GURPS books out of my collection because I'm getting rid of them now. Which was the same week I said, I want to run this game with nWoD rules and I think I can convert it pretty easily. Nobody really protested except for Joe - since he min/maxed his character to suit GURPS.
The Reign of Steel game would have been fun if Colin used True20 rules. I think Colin falls into a trap of over preparing and not understanding when to simply say "it works" or "it doesn't work" - there have been many times with the GURPS rules that we start looking up a rule and its taking forever so I just say "Fuck it! It works." This unnerves Colin, but it's also why he kind of sucks as a GM because he can't let go of the rulebook.
I would say the Burning Empires game was a complete failure because of this flaw.
And the OWoD Mage was us, as a group, learning to walk. Before Gemma, Joe and yourself joined it was just Colin, Vince and myself, and we had a pretty good dynamic, and as other people came into the group the dynamic kept changing and thus so did the game.
I think we've found a pretty good dynamic right now, personally I think it would be better if you were here to play your fatalistic character, but that's just me - I don't think anybody else in the group really properly brings a dark side.
Like I said, I wasn't trying to be offensive, but I guess I should have also said "This statement is not meant to be a criticism of your playing style, but rather that you say you never truly get to know any of your characters, because to me they all seem like the same character but with different props."
So yes, I like your fatalistic characters!
I've tweaked Xanthus a bit since you left, gave him some piloting skills and made him loyal to the captain. He's still not a very combative character, but he is still the ruthless killer you sought to create.
Don't really know what else to say. It sounds more like you simply don't like the group of players, which is a perfectly valid complaint. Especially if you feel unwelcome because Colin acts uber-atheist and Joe is a douchebag.
For myself, I can't GM two different games every week, I suffer from burnout after awhile, and that's what I was doing last year and that's part of why the nWoD Mage game fell apart, because I was focusing more on the sunday Star Wars game I was running. But if you ran a fantasy game during the day (or simply, not on Thursday nights) I would probably be interested in playing, but I don't know how much I would like playing with Runequest or Talislanta rules (just saying).
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It actually sounds very likely I will be co-GMing a thing with Ash soon. He is moving back into town in like a week. Amazing what can develope in a chat box.
I have a massive myth structure, and he has a substantial amount of geography and historical ideas. We are now talking about working out a shared history over a set of locations. Major events will be preconfigured, with some other general concepts outlined. Then one of is taking bronze age equivalent, and the other is taking later era, alternating parallel chapters. So two sets of characters, one with higher magic and lower tech, and the other with lower magic and more intrigue. Could even run two different systems, but that remains to be worked out. I agree about Talislanta system, may as well do d20. And I would generally never run anything but a setting I created. But I don't know what you are talking about with Runequest. Runequest is awesome. For my part, I'm thinking d20 with some powered down modifications to leveling, and a nod at the Runequest combat system.
And yeah, I made a number of characters with similar traits because I never felt like I was done playing them. And it is true, no one does dark side like I do. Its Tobi. He never seems to shut up.
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http://1-and-the-many.livejournal.com/336062.html
There were certain limitations I was including into my rules based on how I felt magic should work, both independent of and in collusion with the gods I was imagining for that game. I started thinking "What if the players helped define those rules? Then I can just arbitrate and expand on something they invent for themselves."
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I can't think of a better word to call your attitude except "close-minded," or maybe "limiting" ... "handicapped" ... "deliberately slow" ??
But regardless, I do think it's kind of close-minded to say that you can't discover a character without playing them for years and years. The most fleshed out character I ever played was in a game that lasted four sessions, and it was also one of the most fun games I ever played.
FYI, http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16224
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