Due to a busy schedule I probably won't be able to comment much before Friday, but I have a lot to say on this subject.
Due to a busy schedule I probably won't be able to comment much before Friday, but I have a lot to say on this subject.
I don't care if you respect me, just buy my fucking book.
Formerly known as Old Geezer
I don't need an Ignore List, I need a Tongue My Pee Hole list.
The rules can't cure stupid, and the rules can't cure asshole.
How do you reconcile this with the player's need of having Something Happening all the time? (or is this a modern requirement?)
Filtering for players that can make their own "Happenings" within the "reality" of the game can lead to having no players these days.
It is even more critical with Play by Post games where any pause can cause player loss.
I try to use time compression but from your reports Mr. Barker did not.
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Ah. I think I understand. I'm still trying to get my head around all of this; it's pretty alien to the way I play.Originally Posted by AsenRG
Well, Chirine, I've told them pretty much the same, both in more and in less polite terms...
I guess I'm not the person to defend that stance. In fact, I just asked, because a few of them defended it with "that's something all GMs have been doing since there were GMs".
I figured that I'd better check, since I can't imagine how your playstyle would work if mixed with such tactics.
It's the difference between an emerging story that you write as you go, and one that you have written already. If you do the former, well, your style more or less emerges, with some changes due to mechanics and the goals of the players. If you do the latter, you need to avoid players' actions having consequences that can spoil your story.
I've done both (hey, I was taught first that "players should not be allowed to spoil the GM's story, when I ditched this approach I thought it's a new style). I can attest that while the stories might be similar, they just have a different "feel". I can also attest that the latter approach is more taxing on the GM
In short, it's like the difference between pre-planned and emerging anything (or between kata and application, if you want).
I'll be interested to hear your take on this, actually.
I suspected it would be. But I was curious to see it confirmed
+1
Um. Let me try to answer this.
I don't worry about having 'something happening all the time'; in my experience, and I think that this is because I do what Phil did, and play a larger 'meta game' campaign over and above what the players are doing. There's always something happening, which the players can interact with or not as they desire to. I think that because I have this over-arching framework of activity - the 'background radiation' of the continuing world-setting - there is always something for the players to do in my campaign. There is no 'down time', unless the players choose to take an in-game vacation from 'adventuring', and then we have fun gaming out that 'leisure time activity'.
Yes, I have run games and mini-campaigns of players going to the marketplace to go shopping; this has resulted in some of the best gaming - by our standards - that I have ever done.
I do compress time as needed, when people don't want to watch the ocean go by. I do not know why Phil didn't do this; I think it was just the way he played.
I find this discussion fascinating. I have been accused by some players of running a 'railroady' campaign because I have this over-arching 'meta game' running in the background. I have been told by these folks that unless I have something called 'complete player agency', they will not play in my games. I will confess to being very confused by this, as in both Phil's and my games I allow the players to do literally anything they want. I do not 'script' adventures; I let them grow organically from the players' actions and how these affect their interactions with the world-setting. This seems to be a bizarre notion, in some places.
For Phil, Tekumel was a living, breathing thing that kept right on going no matter what we might or might do in the game sessions. Every month, he'd sit down with his copy of Tony Bath's book, and roll for what was happening in the world of his 1,800 NPCs. We'd then get to hear about their adventures through the marketplace rumors, dispatches, and other 'media' at our disposal. I do the same thing; my campaign keeps rolling right along, and my players drop in and out as they are able to.
Is this what's called 'sandbox play' or am I mistaken about this? I genuinely don't know what a lot of people mean by the terms that they use, these days; it's like a different language, to me...
Complete Player Agency (CPA): A Platonic ideal of non-railroading the players, which has about as many meanings as there are people using the term. Possibly the meanings might outnumber the users, as I suspect
In extreme forms, it means you want to kick the person using the term out of your group now, before there's time for him or her to create too much drama around it
This is definitely how I see sandbox play. Since there's no vocabulary of roleplaying games, some people think that a sandbox game means the NPCs and locations don't change unless the PCs visit them and bring some change.For Phil, Tekumel was a living, breathing thing that kept right on going no matter what we might or might do in the game sessions. Every month, he'd sit down with his copy of Tony Bath's book, and roll for what was happening in the world of his 1,800 NPCs. We'd then get to hear about their adventures through the marketplace rumors, dispatches, and other 'media' at our disposal. I do the same thing; my campaign keeps rolling right along, and my players drop in and out as they are able to.
Is this what's called 'sandbox play' or am I mistaken about this? I genuinely don't know what a lot of people mean by the terms that they use, these days; it's like a different language, to me...
I usually oppose such statements with the argument that this is merely how a poorly done sandbox looks like
I think a lot may come down to "players expecting to be entertained" or "GMs trying to entertain" instead of having players entertain themselves in a moving world, with a GM turning the hand-crank.
I think that "Dungeon World" re-introduces that with its "Fronts".
What's old is new again.
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Um, all right. Gotcha.Complete Player Agency (CPA): A Platonic ideal of non-railroading the players, which has about as many meanings as there are people using the term. Possibly the meanings might outnumber the users, as I suspect
In extreme forms, it means you want to kick the person using the term out of your group now, before there's time for him or her to create too much drama around it
This is definitely how I see sandbox play. Since there's no vocabulary of roleplaying games, some people think that a sandbox game means the NPCs and locations don't change unless the PCs visit them and bring some change.
I usually oppose such statements with the argument that this is merely how a poorly done sandbox looks like
I should say that I do not have any players in my games who think this way; I ran into this when I tried to do some 'outreach' to local gamers, inviting them to play in my campaign. The effort failed quite miserably; I was told that I am quite out-of-step with modern gaming.
<shrug>.
Ah! Understood!
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