Bzz, bzz, bzz.
My brain is buzzing again. It's 11:30 and I can't sleep, which is unusual since we got back. It's really hot and humid, too, but I still want to do things. And especially, think things. At the same time, I'm having trouble focusing.
I finished reading a chapter of the Mouse Guard RPG, which has a rather brilliant idea on separating the game into a "GM turn" and a "player turn." During the GM turn, the GM uses the elements of weather, bad luck, other mice, and other animals to make things difficult but interesting for the players. After surviving that, the players then run the show during the player turn - they earn resources during the GM turn that let them recover from their misfortunes, plan for future problems, and drive the plot for a bit.
This is clever because it's something that happens in a lot of games - in D&D it would be the difference between being in the dungeon and then saying "you get to town, what do you do?" but working it into the game so explicitly makes things more focused. Both the GM and the players know when they're supposed to be proactive and when they should be reacting. Even when not running Mouse Guard, I'll probably steal some aspects of this.
Obviously I haven't tested it in play, but I think the beauty of it is - unintuitively - limiting the number of checks (actions) the players get in the player phase. Because, this makes them prioritize what they really want to do instead of becoming paralyzed by too many options - something that I think has been a problem in my more sandbox-type sessions. And they can earn more checks by getting into trouble during the GM phase, so it sets up a nice rhythm of play.
Topic shift!
I found out about this band and I want to check out their album: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unification_%28album%29
It's supposedly inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion but they're a pretty well-known UK group, which is .. weird.
Speaking of things that are pretentious, we watched a movie called Waking Life yesterday. I liked.. parts of it. It's sort of about lucid dreaming but also other things. It's not something that easy to describe. It's mostly animated in an interesting style. It's weird because I really enjoyed some portions and could not wait for it to end at others. I still think it was about 30 minutes too long.
Going to try and run Paranoia tomorrow. I have a couple plot ideas, just need some good NPCs to go along with them.
I finished reading a chapter of the Mouse Guard RPG, which has a rather brilliant idea on separating the game into a "GM turn" and a "player turn." During the GM turn, the GM uses the elements of weather, bad luck, other mice, and other animals to make things difficult but interesting for the players. After surviving that, the players then run the show during the player turn - they earn resources during the GM turn that let them recover from their misfortunes, plan for future problems, and drive the plot for a bit.
This is clever because it's something that happens in a lot of games - in D&D it would be the difference between being in the dungeon and then saying "you get to town, what do you do?" but working it into the game so explicitly makes things more focused. Both the GM and the players know when they're supposed to be proactive and when they should be reacting. Even when not running Mouse Guard, I'll probably steal some aspects of this.
Obviously I haven't tested it in play, but I think the beauty of it is - unintuitively - limiting the number of checks (actions) the players get in the player phase. Because, this makes them prioritize what they really want to do instead of becoming paralyzed by too many options - something that I think has been a problem in my more sandbox-type sessions. And they can earn more checks by getting into trouble during the GM phase, so it sets up a nice rhythm of play.
Topic shift!
I found out about this band and I want to check out their album: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unification_%28album%29
It's supposedly inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion but they're a pretty well-known UK group, which is .. weird.
Speaking of things that are pretentious, we watched a movie called Waking Life yesterday. I liked.. parts of it. It's sort of about lucid dreaming but also other things. It's not something that easy to describe. It's mostly animated in an interesting style. It's weird because I really enjoyed some portions and could not wait for it to end at others. I still think it was about 30 minutes too long.
Going to try and run Paranoia tomorrow. I have a couple plot ideas, just need some good NPCs to go along with them.