azuretalon
Journeyman Douchebag
I poop violence!!!
Posts: 150
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Post by azuretalon on Aug 12, 2012 5:20:11 GMT -8
I love the idea of creating problems without solutions. It's been my primary scenario design philosophy for most of my gaming career. Maybe one paragraph problems without answers can be the next Happy Jacks Contest, "I got 99 problems but a lich ain't one."
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Nolinquisitor
Journeyman Douchebag
Next Project: BrigadeCon, RPGS 2 Your Science Fantasy Toolkit Supersetting
Posts: 162
Preferred Game Systems: GURPS, M&M, 7th Sea, Cypher System
Currently Playing: Playing is for the weak.
Currently Running: Cypher System, D&D 5E + Freeport
Favorite Species of Monkey: Dr. Zaius
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Post by Nolinquisitor on Aug 13, 2012 7:36:13 GMT -8
About ending campaigns: I plan my campaign ending almost all the time. The only exception would be sandbox campaign or when a game just won't work (a uncommon thing).
See, our group tries a different games for 8 to 10 sessions and then we end the campaign and switch to something else. Doing this for 5 years, we played a lot of games and genre, and we end a lot of game with big final scene or battle. Some of these will stay with us forever and I cannot begin to emphasize how much a good ending can have a strong impact on the players.
So about ending a campaign it's very easy to do, especially with short campaigns. All you have to do is to realize that campaign are not ongoing tv shows that will stay on forever like tv novella. A good campaign should be a hollywood movie, with explosion in the beginning and an even bigger explosion in the end. As a GM you can give some thought about how you want this thing to end.
I think that a campaign with a clear end is a good thing since it will leave the player with a "complete story" feel.
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Post by jazzisblues on Aug 13, 2012 10:45:26 GMT -8
Old campaigns never die they just fade away.
For me, rarely does a campaign end, they just seem to fade away and the stories no longer get written.
Wanted to comment about Oscar's email.
First off, my apologies I did not mean to exclude Oscar's game on Friday. I'm not sure whether it hadn't dropped (shown up in the list) or whether I just didn't notice it though I suspect the latter. I certainly meant no insult or disrespect to Oscar. My comment on the cast was that there were no games that I would race out of my way to play. Which was true based on what I had seen at that time.
Secondly, Strategicon has been going through some changes of personnel and have had some challenges with getting ready for Gateway. Pre-registration for games opened at noon on Saturday but they were still adding games late into the afternoon.
Cheers,
JiB
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willh
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 220
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Post by willh on Aug 13, 2012 11:04:19 GMT -8
They were adding games while I was registering for games.
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Post by bloodsparrow on Aug 13, 2012 11:07:53 GMT -8
Trying not to give too much away about "So You Want To Be A Vault Dweller" since I will be running it with Kertain at Dragon*Con later and I may run it again at the LA cons at some point (and a sequel)...
I tried to come up not do much a series of problems at first. First I came up with a number of environments and the challenges came from that.
Also loving the level of Torchwood shutouts in this episode.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2012 11:28:21 GMT -8
Great episode as usual, thanks!
It was nice to see Fantasy Craft get a little shine -- it's a really impressive system with a whole mess of super cool mechanics. It's not especially gentle as far as prep goes, however, so I recently opted to convert my campaign over to something a little easier on a lazy but well-meaning GM.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2012 11:38:51 GMT -8
For me, rarely does a campaign end, they just seem to fade away and the stories no longer get written. I couldn't agree more. I've only wrapped up a handful of campaigns in my time roleplaying, but I think I've been lucky to rarely feel cheated by the premature end of a campaign. Apropos of nothing, I've found that I really only feel very strongly about the campaign story arc coming to some sort of conclusion when I'm running the game. When I'm playing I find that I care far more about my individual character arc.
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clanhanna
Journeyman Douchebag
The Muffin
Posts: 221
Preferred Game Systems: Storyteller, O.R.E, Mongoose Traveller
Currently Playing: Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Dark Ages, D&D 5e
Currently Running: Vampire: The Dark Ages
Favorite Species of Monkey: Peanut-buttery Rhesus
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Post by clanhanna on Aug 13, 2012 13:24:54 GMT -8
Apropos of nothing, I've found that I really only feel very strongly about the campaign story arc coming to some sort of conclusion when I'm running the game. When I'm playing I find that I care far more about my individual character arc. I can definitely agree and sympathize with that take on it. For myself, as GM, the story arc of the greater world takes precedence, but for the players, their own characters' story arcs are of greater personal importance, I'm sure. However, as with a good novel, or a good series of novels, it is understood the characters' lives continue past the end of the novel's story. Assuming that the player characters survive the end of the campaign story, their individual story arcs could continue in some form or another after the last game session.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2012 14:00:09 GMT -8
I seem to be an anomoly. I have only ever played one campaign, thats the two year one I jsut wrapped up. I GM'd and we actually came to a satisfying wrap up. We could go back to the characters at some point, and very well may, but for now that campaign has ended, the big bad was defeated and all of my party members took care of the main arcs of their characters.
Hopefully I can keep that luck up with my next campaign, which will likely be a shorter one as I want to try out some new systems so I'll do several mini campaigns of six or so sessions apeice instead of the 30 some it took for the last campaign.
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Post by inflatus on Aug 13, 2012 14:16:16 GMT -8
Gummi Vitamins- like eating a salad. Good one Stu. thecheeseshop.org------ (Reliving the RPG Obsession Through GURPS)
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Post by henryhankovitch on Aug 13, 2012 15:22:25 GMT -8
Apparently Gary Gygax was the gaming Jesus. Implying that His opinions may not have been the be-all and end-all of gaming wisdom is heresy, and one of His acolytes will surely be along to correct you on the matter.
For Gygax so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Modules, that whomsoever campaigneth shall perish, and be disintegrated by traps. Amen.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2012 15:58:52 GMT -8
Ending campaigns...
Most of my games end when I convince myself that I'm doing horribly as a GM, I find it's not fun anymore, and I convince my players to let me stop. It's generally sad and gives me a bad taste in my mouth when I remember the game.
The slightly-better-version of that is when I get to the point where I hate the game, and manage to stop on a "chapter end" or "cliffhanger end," with the belief that someday we'll come back to it.
The few actually *good* endings... "finished" games, both as a player and a GM... have been due to time constraints. I've ended a couple pretty cool Vampire campaigns that were run on summers home from college, when I *had* to finish before I went back. And a couple of good, complete campaigns I played in were in college, when we tended to do semester-long campaigns, just in case some players were graduating, dropping out, or studying abroad next semester.
In my current campaign, I'm *determined* to make this one work. I'm going to keep going, as long as the players say they like it, even if I think it's going poorly. I have no particular story because (as I've mentioned) I'm getting most of the stories from the players. The plan is to run it forever (maybe years), until we all feel we've got a lot out of it... then I'll probably come up with some final storyline.
We'll see how it goes!
--Pukka Tukka
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Post by Kainguru on Aug 13, 2012 16:48:23 GMT -8
As to High Gygaxian . . . It is hard to read etc but I believe misattributed. Like everyone in the AD&D 1st ed halcyon days we spotty faced teenagers argued fiercely about this rule and that and how each sentence should be read. The penny dropped one day when I realised that GG's writing style, in terms of grammar and sentence structure, resembled that of my Grandmother in her letters . . . Even more it resembled the prose of Lord Dunsany. I tackled 'The King of Elflands Daughter' and in reading the introduction was introduced to the term 'purple prose' - this term described the prose of that time and of Lord Dunsany and his contemporaries. Later I discovered GG was a big Dunsany fan and it made sense . . . The difficultly of GG's prose is not because he uses High Gygaxian it's because he was a product of his time and influences . . . It's a generational thing as languages evolve. It can be seen if you revisit the likes of early Asimov, the language is English but it's a little different from the prose you read now . . . Try reading The Worm Ouroborus or Wuthering Heights (my all time favourite) they are terrific novels but they require a degree of effort to read compared to reading the latest Terry Pratchett offering. Language changes . . . there is new standard of English called international English that has fewer words because of precisely this problem . . . Each generation in each country and part thereof changes the language to suit its own ends. Mind you we could be French . . . Then there would be no argument because they have a ministry dedicated to maintaining the integrity and consistency of the French language precisely because this is what happens to all languages . . . It's not High Gygaxian it's just old fashioned . . .
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Post by Forresst on Aug 13, 2012 16:55:46 GMT -8
A little bit of a non sequitur, but I used to be an armoured car guard, and loaded ATMs full of money. They hold anywhere from less then 10k, up to (usually) a maximum of 160k, depending on the forecasted traffic for that machine between service days. Banks don't like to put more money in it than they have to, as an ATM is actually not hard to knock over, so loading only the necessary amount plus a small buffer in case of unforeseen withdrawals limits their risk.
Usually, the little machines that aren't directly affiliated with a bank will have less money in them at any given time.
Also, most machines will only be serviced once a week, unless they're so busy that even at maximum load they can't get through the week. So a good ATM robber will make sure they know when the machine will have the most money in it.
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Post by jazzisblues on Aug 13, 2012 17:12:34 GMT -8
A little bit of a non sequitur, but I used to be an armoured car guard, and loaded ATMs full of money. They hold anywhere from less then 10k, up to (usually) a maximum of 160k, depending on the forecasted traffic for that machine between service days. Banks don't like to put more money in it than they have to, as an ATM is actually not hard to knock over, so loading only the necessary amount plus a small buffer in case of unforeseen withdrawals limits their risk. Usually, the little machines that aren't directly affiliated with a bank will have less money in them at any given time. Also, most machines will only be serviced once a week, unless they're so busy that even at maximum load they can't get through the week. So a good ATM robber will make sure they know when the machine will have the most money in it. So, the next time we hear about a rash of atm robberies we know where to look. JiB
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