HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Jun 12, 2013 17:23:56 GMT -8
I think it can be "too sandboxy" for a given group of players--or for a given GM. Well that's true. Just as there's no wrong way to play when you're talking about the entirety of the RPG hobby, but there are wrong ways to play when looking at any individual group, I think that games can be too sandbox-y for some players (including the GM). It all comes down to personal taste. I enjoyed the plot hook discussion, but again, nearly all of it was focused on playstyles where the GM develops a lot of the meat of a session beforehand. I don't mean railroading, where the GM has preplanned out everything that will happen during a session (though that can happen), but having There was talk of feeling let down or being annoyed (mostly from Stork and CADave, I think) when players get the sense that the GM is winging it. I kind of took issue with that, because that is basically how I run all of my games now; off the cuff. That's how you're intended to run Apocalypse World-based games (which everyone is sick to death of my talking about, I know). Yes, you go into the session with some prep (more or less depending on the game being run) which may or may not include a clear goal for the characters, but it's mostly big picture stuff. I'm hoping to finally get off my ass and put up the DUngeon World AP I ran with D.T.Pints and jfever this weekend. I've been obsessing over the sound quality as it's an international Skype call, and so not as clear as the "official" Happy Jacks APs. But I'll put up my prep notes for my Tower of the Ice Witch scenario so people can see just how little "traditional" prep goes into those games.
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jfever
Journeyman Douchebag
FEVAH!!!!
Posts: 218
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Post by jfever on Jun 12, 2013 19:17:03 GMT -8
Side note: I am truly saddened that not a single person on the podcast was able to correct Stu's pronunciation of namaste. naMAste? ?? Really? ?? It's pronounced NA-ma-STAY.
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D.T. Pints
Instigator
JACKERCON 2018: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY June 22-July 1st
Posts: 2,857
Currently Playing: D&D 5e, Pathfinder, DUNGEONWORLD, Star Wars Edge of the Empire
Currently Running: DUNGEONWORLD, PATHFINDER
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Post by D.T. Pints on Jun 12, 2013 22:58:34 GMT -8
I'm hoping to finally get off my ass and put up the DUngeon World AP I ran with D.T.Pints and jfever this weekend. I've been obsessing over the sound quality as it's an international Skype call, and so not as clear as the "official" Happy Jacks APs. But I'll put up my prep notes for my Tower of the Ice Witch scenario so people can see just how little "traditional" prep goes into those games. Yeah I really hope you consider G+ for your next game Hyve...we use it in my Pathfinder game, Sir Guido's L5R, and now the upcoming Jackercon games...and I have to say sound quality and interface are superior in G+. I'm looking forward to hearing that game, it sounds so great in my head I wonder how the reality will live up to my mental, nostalgia prone brain ?
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Post by bloodsparrow on Jun 16, 2013 5:27:31 GMT -8
Tyler, While I have not played Heroes, table top or LARP, I do have a lot of experience running Classic WoD LARPS at Strategicon conventions. (Not that they'll have a record of it. No matter how many times we gave them an updated list of our Storytellers and Narrators, I always ended up with a badge that said "Daniel Storm".) Sadly, I'm in Texas now, but if you're running it at the con in February I could help depending on when you're running it since I'll be in town.
Shackled City was a great adventure path! I went through part of it run by my friend Brett in 3.5e. Good fun times.
Plot hooks: "Your sister has been kidnapped!" "... I have a sister?" This reminds me of the time we started a game and we didn't really talk about our backstories with the GM. I was basing my character on a book I read where the mother of the hero was a horrible person. So when the game started, and the GM says that I receive a message from my mother asking me to visit home because she needs my help? I was like, "Let her deal with her own damn problems!"
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Post by jazzisblues on Jun 16, 2013 9:39:06 GMT -8
Tyler, While I have not played Heroes, table top or LARP, I do have a lot of experience running Classic WoD LARPS at Strategicon conventions. (Not that they'll have a record of it. No matter how many times we gave them an updated list of our Storytellers and Narrators, I always ended up with a badge that said "Daniel Storm".) Sadly, I'm in Texas now, but if you're running it at the con in February I could help depending on when you're running it since I'll be in town. Shackled City was a great adventure path! I went through part of it run by my friend Brett in 3.5e. Good fun times. Plot hooks: "Your sister has been kidnapped!" "... I have a sister?" This reminds me of the time we started a game and we didn't really talk about our backstories with the GM. I was basing my character on a book I read where the mother of the hero was a horrible person. So when the game started, and the GM says that I receive a message from my mother asking me to visit home because she needs my help? I was like, "Let her deal with her own damn problems!" And that dear people is why you always want to base your plotlines on the characters rather than come up with your own and try to make the characters fit. JiB
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2013 17:11:33 GMT -8
So I finally managed to listen to this episode while mowing the lawn today, because I'm absurdly behind on all of my podcasts, and -- oh hey, it's my gaming nightmare story! Awesome! Thanks for reading it on-air, guys -- I'm glad you got a kick out of it. To clarify some points about that ridiculous game, and provide more salacious details: - I didn't really go into the absurd plot that this GM had going on because I have no idea what story he was actually trying to tell, and frankly I'm not sure he did either. All I know is that by the time I joined the game, all of the Forgotten Realms had turned out to be one large Halo/Ringworld-style artificial construct, massive spaceships on a million-year journey were going to show up to either destroy the place or evacuate it (I could never get that crap straight; guess how much I cared), and somehow a wooden pirate ship filled with pit fiends factored into this somehow. I'm pretty sure the game had to absorb various "cool things" from whatever he was reading or watching at the time, no matter how inappropriate to a fantasy game. (Seriously not joking about the Halo thing, either.)
- Yes, Stu, I think that stupid backpack gave 9 first-level spells, 9 second-level spells, etc.. I think that was also the item that was granting me an extra feat every single level.
- If I recall correctly -- and remember that it's been eight years now! -- those massive stat bonuses were inherent gifts from various deities of the Realms, because that was the reward the GM handed out a lot and he needed to catch me up. Incidentally, even with those ridiculous stats, my little cleric of Kelemvor was still far and away the most underpowered character in the group, because I'd joined late and didn't have the absurd crap the GM had piled onto the other characters. I recall one guy had a cloak that made him immune to weapons, for example; that sort of nonsense. I specifically recall that the rogue had a Dexterity score north of 100, for all the good it did us.
- Speaking of the other players: What's funny is that some of the players started taking feats specifically to make all of the dice-rolling and math inherent in this ridiculously overpowered game that much easier. The sorcerer took the Maximize Spell feat (which makes every die of a spell's damage do max damage, in exchange for the spell using a higher-level spell slot) solely because it meant he didn't have to roll fistfuls of d6s. He could just multiply his caster level by the maximum of whatever die he was rolling, and that was the damage he did.
- Incidentally, I was wrong about this being the last game the rest of these guys played with this awful GM. Turns out they kept inviting him to games I wasn't a part of -- never as a GM, because they'd learned that lesson, but as a player. I think that finally stopped a couple of years ago when they realized he simply wasn't ever going to improve as a player, GM, or person, and it was too much trouble putting up with him.
[li]Also, when I said "creepy (as in 'rapey')" in my email -- yeah, not hyperbole. I never let my girlfriend be alone in the house with him, and neither did that game's one female player or her boyfriend.
Aside from that, the rest of this episode was very good. The discussion of plot hooks particularly appealed to me, because instigating action has always been my biggest problem as a writer and a GM. I can worldbuild and describe quite well, but creating action's a big weak point for me, and this really helped a lot. Good stuff as always, guys, and thanks for reading my email!
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