it's happened!
Whee. Some "weekend hangover" effect today.
In that, I'm not actually hungover at all, but I am mentally tired. I think there's some consequences for the bad sleeping and irregular eating of the weekend. It's hard to do all the things!
I did run my Eclipse Phase game. Ah, er. I would do some things differently for next time.
Thoughts:
- either have people make characters in a very simple, stripped down way over the course of the game or do better prep. RPPR's Ross did the first and I think it maybe works better than using the pregens.
The pregens did lead to a lot of great questions and ways "in" to the setting, though. So I'm not totally sure.
If I used pregens again, I would have people do it the week before, then work on making sure they had all the equipment listed on the sheets. I did as much of that as I could, but some of it was missing and led to rules hiccups.
- Trim it down and/or make it multiple sessions. Half the table was getting pretty tired by the end.
- Make sure that the security side knows what they prevented/controlled with hacking. That player didn't feel like he did much when in fact he sidestepped most of the pre-written obstacles.
- Add in some more roleplay heavy parts? It definitely went as a primarily tactical run.
- Get better at the combat/hacking rules. I did okay.
That said! I had a lot of fun preparing it and I loved how everyone got into the setting. I am glad that I did it despite rules hiccups.
Final analysis: Not perfect! The crunchiest game I've run since 13th Age! But fun and everyone at least said they had fun.
Other stuff:
3.5 days clean on somethingawful. Checked reddit a couple more times than usual instead, not great there.
I feel like it's freed up some mental resources for curiosity, though. After we watched Fellowship of the Ring last night I spent about 30-45 minutes reading up on backstory on wikipedia articles. It was interesting and I probably wouldn't have done it if I could have just checked in to SA.
The impulse is still there, though. Like, watch FotR -> think about fantasy RPGs -> want to look at the 13th Age thread or other fantasy RPG ones.
But I haven't actually read all the 13th Age books, so that would be a better use of my time. On a larger level, the 13th Age thread is not too bad on negativity - mostly cool stories and homebrew classes in the past. But if you venture into the D&D themed areas, well, suddenly it's nothing about fantasy at all. It's all about feat taxes, balance, and especially whatever the current WotC employee in charge of D&D said on twitter. I not only don't care about all that, I don't want to read about it at all.
I am hoping that the trend continues, because I've really felt that my creativity isn't too high lately. My hope is that, with less junk food, my brain will get back to more original and curious thoughts.
Other RPG talk:
Somewhat similarly, I was reading an article about Torchbearer this morning. The article really loved the game and how well designed it is. But the whole dungeon crawling in the muck aspect isn't really what draws me to fantasy in the first place. I really want the soaring vistas and interesting interactions between bizarre characters. If I want a game about desperate, hard scrabble people trying to eke out a living, Red Markets is more my thing. To me, that kind of desperation works perfectly in Lovecraftian and post-apocalyptic stories.
But it's more jarring for me in fantasy. I actually see most fantasy as ultimately heroic or aspirational, and being ground into the mud of the dungeon isn't really what I want to do there. Maybe in a computer game, but Darkest Dungeon is a lot different when you control all the peasants. Basically, it's the difference between Darkest Dungeon [Dungeon Crawl Classics - grimdark meatgrinder] and Torchbearer [Dungeon Crawl grind] and 13th Age [straight-up heroic fantasy].
A lot of people see it differently, which is totally fine, but that's definitely where I'm coming from. Pat's game is definitely more survival fantasy, I'd say.
In that, I'm not actually hungover at all, but I am mentally tired. I think there's some consequences for the bad sleeping and irregular eating of the weekend. It's hard to do all the things!
I did run my Eclipse Phase game. Ah, er. I would do some things differently for next time.
Thoughts:
- either have people make characters in a very simple, stripped down way over the course of the game or do better prep. RPPR's Ross did the first and I think it maybe works better than using the pregens.
The pregens did lead to a lot of great questions and ways "in" to the setting, though. So I'm not totally sure.
If I used pregens again, I would have people do it the week before, then work on making sure they had all the equipment listed on the sheets. I did as much of that as I could, but some of it was missing and led to rules hiccups.
- Trim it down and/or make it multiple sessions. Half the table was getting pretty tired by the end.
- Make sure that the security side knows what they prevented/controlled with hacking. That player didn't feel like he did much when in fact he sidestepped most of the pre-written obstacles.
- Add in some more roleplay heavy parts? It definitely went as a primarily tactical run.
- Get better at the combat/hacking rules. I did okay.
That said! I had a lot of fun preparing it and I loved how everyone got into the setting. I am glad that I did it despite rules hiccups.
Final analysis: Not perfect! The crunchiest game I've run since 13th Age! But fun and everyone at least said they had fun.
Other stuff:
3.5 days clean on somethingawful. Checked reddit a couple more times than usual instead, not great there.
I feel like it's freed up some mental resources for curiosity, though. After we watched Fellowship of the Ring last night I spent about 30-45 minutes reading up on backstory on wikipedia articles. It was interesting and I probably wouldn't have done it if I could have just checked in to SA.
The impulse is still there, though. Like, watch FotR -> think about fantasy RPGs -> want to look at the 13th Age thread or other fantasy RPG ones.
But I haven't actually read all the 13th Age books, so that would be a better use of my time. On a larger level, the 13th Age thread is not too bad on negativity - mostly cool stories and homebrew classes in the past. But if you venture into the D&D themed areas, well, suddenly it's nothing about fantasy at all. It's all about feat taxes, balance, and especially whatever the current WotC employee in charge of D&D said on twitter. I not only don't care about all that, I don't want to read about it at all.
I am hoping that the trend continues, because I've really felt that my creativity isn't too high lately. My hope is that, with less junk food, my brain will get back to more original and curious thoughts.
Other RPG talk:
Somewhat similarly, I was reading an article about Torchbearer this morning. The article really loved the game and how well designed it is. But the whole dungeon crawling in the muck aspect isn't really what draws me to fantasy in the first place. I really want the soaring vistas and interesting interactions between bizarre characters. If I want a game about desperate, hard scrabble people trying to eke out a living, Red Markets is more my thing. To me, that kind of desperation works perfectly in Lovecraftian and post-apocalyptic stories.
But it's more jarring for me in fantasy. I actually see most fantasy as ultimately heroic or aspirational, and being ground into the mud of the dungeon isn't really what I want to do there. Maybe in a computer game, but Darkest Dungeon is a lot different when you control all the peasants. Basically, it's the difference between Darkest Dungeon [Dungeon Crawl Classics - grimdark meatgrinder] and Torchbearer [Dungeon Crawl grind] and 13th Age [straight-up heroic fantasy].
A lot of people see it differently, which is totally fine, but that's definitely where I'm coming from. Pat's game is definitely more survival fantasy, I'd say.