Ravings of a Textual Deviant

I’ve said before that I tend to think of roleplaying as improv theater to a certain extent, and pacing is an important part of any production. To a certain extent, I think that if the timing is managed well, it’s invisible to the players. So, what are your thoughts on pacing?

The thinking that prompted this week’s question was the realization that I’ve made something of a habit lately of running games in which the game is the journey rather than the destination. This is a sharp contrast to several games I’ve played in which travel was a series of random encounters between Plot Arc A and Plot Arc B; nothing more than an opportunity to pick up some XP on your way to somewhere else. After a point, I think that the attempt to condense travel time starts to interfere with the game’s pacing.

This week’s Lunchtime Poll is ridiculously easy.

What’s the last board, card, or roleplaying game you bought, and what do you think of it?

The last game I bought was the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG, but as I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, I don’t have much of an opinion. Ed brought home a wildly politically incorrect, anime-satire card game, SPANC, which we also haven’t had a chance to try yet, but will later this week (I hope!) The last game I bought that I’ve actually have played was Ninja Burger, and I liked it so much that I bought the t-shirt. It’s very much in line with my “if it’s weird, sick, or twisted, I’m there” gaming preferences.

I’m nicking this week’s Lunchtime Poll from a comment on a discussion on the 20′ x 20′ room. The commenter states:

But your group is not all female, Mike. You’re the GM. Not that the dynamic isn’t interesting and your comments aren’t valid - it just struck me as odd that you’d refer to this game and others you’ve run as “all female” and not “mixed.”

As interesting as the gender aspect of the discussion is, what caught my attention was Mike’s implication that the GM isn’t part of the group. So this week’s question is:

Do you consider the GM part of the group, and why or why not?

Personally, I can’t imagine a GM not being part of the group, but my group has a lot of history together as friends in and out of gaming. Furthermore, there’s more than one person in the group who GMs. For years and years, either Rob or Doug ran our regularly-scheduled games, and I’d occasionally run a short-term humor campaign. All three of us were players in each others’ games; it wasn’t uncommon for Rob and Doug to have simultaneous every-other-week campaigns on complementary schedules. When Rob moved to another city, I found myself stepping into his spot as a full-time GM (much to my surprise). I refer to our delightful band of misfits and nutjobs players as “my group,” but that is no more than a convenient shorthand, because I haven’t ever felt that I’m not part of the group, or even that I’m “in charge.” More often than not, I’m fairly certain that the inmates are running the asylum, and I’m just helping them along.

This week’s Lunchtime Poll (which may well be the last, as they don’t appear to be getting much traffic) is inspired by the retcon discussion on the 20×20 Room.

Rather than debate the merits of ret-conning, let’s go for a case study. What’s your most memorable bit of retroactive continuity, good or bad? What, if anything, would you have done differently?

One bit of retcon that turns up for me occasionally is the Dilemma of the Lost Character Sheet. If the character sheet is well and truly gone, the player has two options; scrap the character entirely (not usually a popular option) or recreate the character from scratch (all kinds of potential for abuse). More often than not, I’m inclined to let a player re-create a character, but the new version has to pass my inspection. It seems to be the least objectionable option, and yet somehow, it seems unfair to the other players, who have been responsible and kept track of their important pieces of paper—especially because my games are very character-development-oriented. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a better solution to the Dilemma.

This weeks Lunchtime Poll is about tardiness, in acknowledgment of the fact that it is, itself, late.

Describe a game you’ve played in or run (or would like to play in or run), based on a “ticking clock” setup.

I’m going to take the easy way out and say I’d like to run the “Red Alert” game I described in Paul’s IRE #5.

Lunchtime Poll is taking this week off. Although if anyone has any suggestions as to what might be good for lunch, I’m listening.

Describe the best game you came up with and never got to run (if you’re a GM) or the best game that you were invited to join and never got a chance to play in (if you’re a player)?

The game that I’ve never gotten to run is The Magnificent Seven, which involves having the characters climb the tallest mountain on each continent, and would be another game in the Grand Ellipse series. Part of the reason I’ve never been able to get this off the ground is that I can’t come up with a setting that makes me happy and yet remains sufficiently sensible and internally consistent for such an endeavor to be practical. Given that Everest wasn’t successfully climbed (that we know of) until the twentieth century, the late-Victorian level of technology I tend to prefer makes that aspect of the adventure simply an elaborate way to commit suicide. Maybe one of these days an answer will present itself, but until then, I’ve shelved it.

This week’s Lunchtime Poll was inspired—if that’s the right word—by the story of Germany’s exploding toads.

Describe your ideal apocalypse, a few of its signs and portents, and what your players might possibly be able to do to avert it.

I am fascinated by Ragnarok, myself. It’s dramatic, apocalyptic, Nordic; how can you lose? But the thing I like best about it is that it’s necessary for the next world to emerge. I also like the idea of Ragnarok occuring in a post-modern setting, so that the Fimbulwinter, for example, is written off as environmental change. Massive earthquakes would be attributed to extreme but normal geologic process (we in the Midwest are due for some New Madrid fault action, for example). Scientists would, of course, be puzzled by the appearance of Loki and Fenrir, and further study would be required. I would probably end up structuring the game so that the characters had to bring Ragnarok about, for the good of the future universe, rather than prevent it.

A common complaint that GMs hear is that they’re unprepared. Another common complaint GMs hear is that they’ve overprepared. How’s a GM to know when she’s hit that sweet spot, and the level of preparation is Just Right?

Personally, I feel as though I tend to overprepare, but I also tend to run complex games with lots of twisty subplots. A lot of those twists and turns come from having a well-developed and detailed sense of what’s going on in the game world. I spent one afternoon working out the family tree of a royal family in a location that I knew the players would visit (because it was a stop on an Ellipse). That seemed kind of like overkill at the time, but a) I’d like to use that particular game world again, and b) it ended up solving a plot problem that I’d put off solving until the right idea came along.

There have been a lot of photons spilled on the topic of railroading players through a “script,” rather than letting the players find their own ways to wreak mayhem and get themselves in trouble. As a player, it’s one of the things that annoys me most, and as a GM, I try to avoid it. Still, it happens, and this week’s Lunchtime Poll is:

Is there a cure for railroading? If so, how do you go about curing yourself or your GM of this habit?

If I were going to try and cure myself of railroading, I would *shudder* prepare less. If I’ve spent hours working out every one-horse town along a particular road, and my characters decide they’re going to go by river, or hot-air balloon, or any other method that doesn’t use the road, I’ll wish that I had a better idea of what was going on in the countryside, rather than know the name of every innkeeper’s child for forty miles. Like most GMs, I have a lot of ego and emotion invested in my work, and I would want my players to have the best possible experience by shoving nudging them in the direction where my effort has been invested. Ergo, if my effort is spread out across the entire countryside, both the players and I will enjoy the experience a lot more.

As a player, however, I am not one to try and cure a GM of railroading. Cross a loose cannon with a loon, and that’s me. I am sure that I’ve driven Rob and Doug to distraction so many times that we all know the way by heart. However, I suppose I do make a good example of why railroading is a bad idea…