This week’s Game WISH:
In the gaming you are doing lately, what do you miss from earlier games? What works so much better you never looked back? Three examples?
What I miss:
- Character-driven gaming, at least in F2F games. Between Living stuff and just how things work out even in our non-Living campaigns, the characters just seem a lot more like cardboard set pieces than they used to be. Part of this may be lack of prep time on my part, but I think part of it is that games seem more chaotic (less focused) than they used to be — a problem discussed in an earlier WISH. (PBeM games are more character-driven, certainly.)
- I miss staying up all night, either playing until the wee hours of dawn or working on rules and campaign stuff until then. That’s both due to declining CON and increased demands on my time.
- Drinking a lot of beer. I used to drink a lot more beer, and enjoy it. Now I drink more than a couple of beers and I can’t focus on my damned character sheet. Feh.
What I don’t miss:
- Doing it all by hand. Excel (not to mention other, more sophisticated tools) rock, as do game company message boards, e-mail, etc.
- AD&D r1 and the other RPG silliness of the early 80s. Arduin Grimoire, anyone?
- Really having people wonder if I was a Satanist. Or, worse, one of those gamers — the scrawny, pimply kind in black t-shirts with no social graces and a tendency to drone on and on about incredibly esoteric stuff. Mercifully, I am no longer scrawny.
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A further thought on #1.
One of the thing that’s an indicator to me of character-driven games is secrets. Things that the character knows that others don’t — maliciously, desperately, whatever. The most successful games I’ve run had a lot of this sort of stuff in it, and some of the better ones I’ve played in as a character.
And an indicator of that is notes between the player and the GM, and “stepping out of the room” moments. Which can be disruptive, if taken too far, but also provides a few moments (or more) of socializing time in-game for the others, which is a good safety valve.
When every player knows everything that everyone else does then I think it takes a little bit away from the characterization, because acting in any way other than an honest, above-board fashion is much more difficult. If Fred hides the fact that his character, Frederil, pocketed the Mystical MacGuffin as he searched the room, but all of the other players know he did, it’s not fair to Fred or the other players, and the pressures that come to play will be much different.
Part of this, I understand, is also a part of player/GM preference. Some folks find that sort of stuff a distraction. Not me.
(Not sure why it took until later this evening to figure this out, given that I had a one-off chance to do some “secret” playing this past weekend. Not the same thing, quite, but still fun.)
Heh, secret playing. That was fun.
Your post gave me some pause, since I’m trying to start up a game (well, I have been for a year, but there you go) for Lee and De and I’ve been hemming and hawing about what game to run.
Finally settled on Living Arcanis, which is fantasy with dark cthulu elements and conspiracy (to satiate the preferences of various players) and Living, which means a little less work for me.
At the last moment I’ve had reservations about the whole thing, knowing the players and what they’ll want, wondering if I’m making a mistake and getting into that same rut of a ‘wide open’ no-secrets Living Campaign.
Or any campaign. Lord knows I keep stuff pretty out in the open in all my games — did in TiHE, even, which was maybe a bad thing.
Honestly, I think I’m just too lazy to find the pad and paper I’d need to write the note.
Like I said, different styles for different people. I probably took it to an extreme the other direction in my own Amber game.