That Old Familiar Feeling

Burnout is the curse of every DM, especially a nutty one that puts as much work into his world as I do. Lately I have been feeling that sensation of weariness with my campaign a lot. About the time my ex-wife asked for a divorce I started to really feel the crunch of it. I don't know if it was depression or apathy or what, but I just began to feel tired of Hekinoe, or at least this campaign. 

As I said in a previous post, this campaign was helped along a lot by talking to my ex-wife about it, and I am sure that that alone has a lot to do with my weariness regarding the game. Another aspect of it is that this is the longest campaign I think this group has ever had, I mean the first part was the first campaign this group has ever actually finished, even if it was only fourteen or fifteen scenarios long, and then we kind of over zealously moved into this second part of it.  Which I blame entirely on myself. I was really psyched about it and wanted to get started with it and never once paused my work on it to kind of recoup. 

On top of that, Eric guessed pretty much immediately that the group was a collection of clones or had been cloned or something along those lines and everyone spent a lot of time telling him how stupid that was or that I was a better GM than one that would use a plot like that. In the most recent scenario, the group found out they were in fact clones of The Robust Five, which is awkward. It is awkward because I have been listening to them inadvertently tell me how stupid my plot was for a while, heh. I'm not the type of GM to try pretending I made something different than I did halfway through though, so I ignored the unknowing mockery and continued with the clone plot, because I like it. Also, I may or may not have based some aspects of this campaign on the six Star Wars films. Hehe. What can I say? I'm a hack.

I just feel run down and exhausted about this campaign. I'm tired, and my heart is only half in it and I don't know what to do. We've come so far that I feel like ending things would be a slap in the face to the guys that have persevered and I feel like just suddenly ending a campaign would leave a sour taste in the mouths of Lance and Laura, and Laura is really still kind of a first time gamer and it would be the second campaign she has participated in with this group that has fallen apart. It would also be the second time I've gamed with Lance and the campaign fell apart. 

Logically, I know I will have to give up GMing in the nearish future. The next paramedic program starts in March and I am seriously considering signing up, not that I have five grand laying around to pay for it. Being a paramedic is something I definitely want to do. Normally I tack on an eventually to that sentence, but I'm almost thirty and it might be time to admit that eventually should have come around a few years ago. Running and creating games is way too mentally labor intensive for me to go to school and work fifty hours a week and still be a responsible student. I did it while I was training for being an EMT, but that is a four month class and most of the learning is common sense applied in an emergency situation. With the paramedic program I'd have to turn the blade of my intellect to learning shit like drugs and dosages and metric conversions and analyzing cardiac rhythms and that sort of thing. A little more involved than CPR, blood pressures, and putting in a King airway. 

So what do I do? I feel like if I abstain from GMing, our DnD dies. Fred has already refused to invite me to his campaign, and Eric can only really run his intermittently, if at all due to school and work. On top of that, with the talk of the Conteog and Vacusu in the last scenario, we are starting to get into some really cool ass stuff in the Psychogenic Fugue arc. There is a three scenario arc planned for The Bottom of the World and while the second chunk is going to be more or less a dungeon crawl, the third chunk is going to be fucking nuts and resolve a big point of pain from the last campaign in a big way. 

And if I do put a pin in DnD, or outright quit, what then? Will everyone be left wondering what happened and what was going to happen? Will the blog die? No. I have promised a few individuals that if the campaign dies, full disclosure will occur. I'll lay out the whole plot for them and what led to the campaign and all that stuff. The blog would probably drop to a once a week post and become more focused on the "fiction" or whatever you want to call it of Hekinoe. I do love this world, it has been a labor of love in one form or another for many many years and I never want it to die. Plus, when I don't play DnD, I write like crazy and when I don't write, I DnD like crazy. I need that creative outlet for the stories and thoughts in my head. So I would likely continue some more focused work on The Robust Five story I am half-heartedly working on and continue posting that here, along with other random DnD thoughts and nonsense.

I am kind of the alpha male of DnD for the group, and I kind of drag everyone along into DnD with varying degrees of willingness and interest. If I stop GMing, will the group follow suit? I've said before that I would love Eric or Fred or Jeremy or someone to run something in Hekinoe that I could possibly participate in as a player and advisor to the GM, but Eric says he would never do that and Fred has his own thing going on and I think Jeremy has only vague interest in the idea of running games. I think it would just make me sad if DnD ended with a yawn, rather than a bang, for the group. 

I don't know, anyone have any thoughts on the whole topic?

Psychogenic Fugue Arc 05: Coming To The Land of Ice And Snow (Where The Harsh Wind Blows)

29th of Fourthmonth, 10006 DK

The group left Steeltown in their Organization loaned zeppelin.

9th of Sixthmonth, 10006 DK

During their flight, The Robust Five discovered a southern continent with zeppelins anchored in a northern cove and saw them flying Nakmander's flag of Meroteth. The group noted the coordinates of the continent in the hopes of investigating it at some later time. 

30th of Seventhmonth, 10006 DK

The group arrived in The Bottom of the World and discovered Traith Harris waiting for them. Traith explained that several years ago, lots of Fell Humans began disappearing from Kusseth, one among them was his grandmother. He investigated his missing grandmother and discovered that Kusseth was selling its Fell Human population off to Nakmander. Traith wouldn't let matters lie and ended up getting sold to Nakmander as well. He discovered that Nakmander was cutting apart Soulless and attempting to graft their mechanical parts onto the Fell Humans sold to him in hoped of making an incredibly durable and destructive military force to use to defend Meroteth. Traith explained that A'lst discovered this and fought Nakmander and claimed the Fell Soulless and did what he could to ease their suffering and sort of adopted them into his workforce. Traith explained that little could be done for himself, as he was more metal than flesh, and what little flesh he had left was sick and mostly dead. He did not elaborate on the fate of his grandmother. Traith lead the group to A'lst's compound and watched with disinterest as they fought a snow giant that attacked from beneath the ice. After the battle the group confronted Traith on the fact that he had stood by and watched and he stated that D'alton and Xein were unreliable and it was his job to protect A'lst and his interests and he needed to know what the group was capable of if they decided to screw things up down here they way they had up north with Nakmander. 

When the group arrived at A'lst's compound, they discovered a large bunker similar to his warehouse back in Kusseth and filled with a large contigent of Rankethlek, Soulless, and Fell Soulless. They found A'lst in the center of this level of the compound on a raised platform, next to the platform talking to A'lst was a huge Soulless that stood roughly fifteen feet or more tall and had very beast-like qualities to its construction and was etched in sorcerous runes. They later learned that this was the legendary Omne-4. The group approached and A'lst greeted them and bent to the task of confirming whether or not Kethralzahn had been tampered with, while Omne-4 blatantly threatened D'alton. When A'lst finished he had determined Kethralzahn was in fact Kethralzahn and that Omne-4 was angry for the sake of anger and said that he knew D'alton and Xein were not responsible for the death of Kethranmeer. 

Omne-4 spoke with the group for a short time about some of their strange memories. He agreed that taking flesh and blood from the group would enable a powerful sorcery to exert an unimaginably powerful sorcerous hold on their actions and very thoughts. Based on some of their vague memories, he agreed that it was entirely possible that Nakmander had at one point had them under some sort of enchantment. At Xein's prodding, he also agreed that those same pieces of flesh could be used to create clones of the group, though that would not explain their memory loss, as when one clone in a series dies, the memories and actions of the previous enter into the next, though the unreliable nature of sorcery could explain the memory lapse. Xein asked Omne-4 if he could determine if they had been tampered with sorcerously and Omne-4 cast a potent divination on the group. He determined that they were who they thought they were and that they were currently not under any sort of hidden sorcerous control. He urged D'alton and Xein to inspect the interior of eachother's lower lips. The two did saw and say a marking of "1x2" on their lips as a sort of tattoo of some kind. No one had any knowledge of the significance of the mark. 

The group was invited to work with A'lst while they were in The Bottom of the World, or they could rest and relax in his compound until he could arrange their transportation back to The Known World. The group agreed that they would like to work with A'lst and asked what research he was engaged in here. A'lst explained that he desired to find a power source of some kind for Steeltown that would give their new nation an advantage against the older and more established nations of The Known World. He described huge black pyramids that lurked beneath the ice of The Bottom of the World and were guarded by black skinned cyclops. His eventual goal was to open up and investigate a pyramid because he believed that a power source of some kind was entombed within them. His first task for the group was to accompany a train that was carrying supplies to A'lst's camp at the base of a pyramid and defeat a cyclops that would waylay it. A'lst explained that the cyclops were intelligent and always blocked such trains, but no one could convince them to step out of the way. 

The group rode the train as directed and met a Vyanth warrior with no mouth. Further interaction with him showed that he had a fanged mouth on the side of his neck and they later learned his name was Aluenarelel, a warrior of Vyanthnem that served A'lst here in The Bottom of the World. As expected, the group encountered a cyclops on the way to the encampment. The cyclops stated he would not move until the White One ordered him to do so. The cyclops spoke an unknown language, but was able to convey its words in the minds of the group. The group engaged it in further conversation and discovered that the White One was the Conteog on Hekinoe and that the pyramids were traps for the Vacusu. They also learned that the Conteog were one of the creators and that the Conteog was somewhere on this world. Aluenarelel was very bored by the conversation and made several gestures to the effect of "can we hurry this up?" and eventually the group just attacked the cyclops. When the cyclops fell, Aluenarelel used a grenade given to him by the train's conductor to destroy the corpse. Aluenarelel stated that the flesh of the cyclops was poisonous. The group searched the remains and found a strange bronze amulet with bizarre depictions of a scorpion, a bat, a bird, and a lizard. Aluenarelel stated that it was a token of the cyclops' gods or some such. With nothing much left to do, they continued their train ride and arrived at a fortified encampment at the base of a black pyramid. 

We gamed. Huzzah.

We played the next Hekinoe scenario the other day, the 5th scenario in this campaign. I think it went very well and they got some interesting little tidbits about the plot and the campaign world. The scenario moved quickly and there were few hang ups. Combat and dialogue moved quickly and again, with few hangups. All in all, it was actually an incredibly smooth running scenario. Didn't extend too long either, just about three and a half hours or so.

One of the main issues seems to be that I have lost track of the little black journal they have been writing down notes in. This is a problem, and I have no clue whatsoever where it might have gotten to. Since we couldn't find the little journal we didn't draw memories for Xein or D'alton or give a memory reward at the end of the scenario. Turns out that Fred had the journal and was going to digitalize it, but didn't. Heh. Also, he didn't show up at the session due to being sick and entering a comatose state. Unfortunate, but these things happen.

I think Laura did very well for her first venture into Hekinoe, and her character is kind of badass. A Child of Volung fighter with a scythe that had her name written on the scythe, but has killed so many people with the scythe that she has lost her name. I think that is just swell. 

Not much really to say about the session, other than the fact that it went very well and very smoothly, despite Fred and John being absent. There was a big delay in getting started, everyone was running behind and no one had any idea where or what Fred was up to, but we just kind of hung out till we got started, so no real big deal there. Everyone also agreed that they would like to play Hekinoe next, rather than Fourthcore. 

Fear and Loathing in Las Kusseth

I am anxious about my Hekinoe campaign, specifically The Known World. I am running low on players at the moment. With Fred's schedule changing, he cannot really commit to sessions anymore. Perhaps he'll be able to come, perhaps not. Shawn has been out for a while, what with the spawn. This leaves with me Jeremy, John, and Eric. John is fairly easy to work with and gives me plenty of notice that he can't come or that he is coming, he is kind of awesome in that aspect. Jeremy and Eric are reliable as well, a little slow on the response to my questions about whether or not they can come, but they let me know.

So we are essentially down to three players. Eric is going through some frustrating issues with school though, the work load for class is such that he may have no choice but to give up DnD, which is fine. It is a legitimate thing to do that does not invoke my wrath and hatred.

This issue has led me to recruit players from other areas of my life. One of Heather's friends wants to game with us. He has said before that he'd like to game with us, we've just had too many players and were too deep in a plot when he originally asked a year or so ago. I also have a replacement for Shawn, and Jeremy's wife Laura would like to join us as well.

So we have plenty of players to keep the game going, however my issue with it is this: The plot of the campaign is so intrinsically tied to the previous campaign and the current group of characters, the it is meaningless to new players. If things go the way I worry they will, we have Jeremy and John and three new people with absolutely no knowledge of the plot or that campaign world. John likes to have a story to go along with his DnD, he has said that before, but it is not his main focus when he plays. I know Jeremy is a big fan of my world, but he already gets flustered when in roles of leadership and authority and I feel he would have trouble guiding and educating the people who are not invested in the plot at all. I mean, we'll play the game and it will be ok, but it just feels like a lot will be lost with a group where Fred, Eric, and Shawn have been replaced by three new guys with no ties to the previous campaign other than tenuous ones that I use to justify their presence.

The plot of the campaign is about to get cool, really cool, exciting to me cool. We're about to delve deeply into Kethranmeer and A'lst's history. A lot of cool shit is about to happen, and I think Fred and Jeremy and Eric and John would all think it was pretty awesome stuff. The three new players might think it was neat or cool, but they don't have that strong connection to Kethranmeer like the other guys do.

Edit After The Fact: It looks like everyone will be able to come to the next scenario in Hekinoe, and it looks like Martel and Fred will be able to participate in Fourthcore, so I guess I am just a worry wart and freaking out here. We'll see. After basically a month not doing anything DnD related, I'm starting to get really excited again about the next scenario. 

DaMaging/ Tribute

I have made a few observations over the last 16 years of gaming, one of them: the DM does all the work. I have had the pleasure of watching Clint go from notebook-and-pencil-my-way-or-the-highway to the pretty damned good DM he is now... He has kept me from quitting a few times as well, and always bends over backwards for his players to make their experience fun for them and everyone else.

That being said, some of you may think I am copping out when I went ahead and purchased a premade adventure set, as Clint has built his from the ground up (over sixteen years, a lot in the last couple), but I say to you, nay, WE ARE BUT MEN! Wait, what?!?

Anyway, as I was saying, typing, whatever... there are a few things I would like to point out about me: I have attempted in the past to be the DM/GM a handful of times, most with utter failure. I have tried world building and then I get to the point where I don't know how I want to set something up/ anal for detail occasionally. I have a lot on my plate lately and the summer off I have isn't enough time to try and make something solid. Also, I have some learning to do/ nervous about a lot of things in the game world, people laughing, for example, at something I think could have had the potential to be really cool and neat if you could have only seen it through my eyes (I use undead carnival as an example).

So what am I trying to say? I am got us a premade adventure for several reasons, the first and foremost is time constraints for me and the second being that I need to learn how to set this stuff up without making myself look like a buffoon. Hell, I guess there is a third as well, how to manage a group...

I hope I am going to do this game justice for the two people we will be introducing it to, and I won't lie, that makes me even more nervous. My own girlfriend and one of my best friend's wife, I would love to show them what makes us all love gaming for the different reasons we do (friendship, crazy and the story/ choose your own adventure).

I would like to be all set to game on the 26th of June, with all characters made and ready to go so we can get as much done as we can before the eventual boredom I perhaps foresee happening. I don't know, hope it doesn't feel like I am bugging everyone to get their stuff done. Ker already said if feels like homework.

Till next time, ROCK OOOOOOON!

Do I dare?

There are groups that have multiple campaigns, with the player of one GMing the other. This is something I have sought as the goal of a Grail Quest for over a decade and have finally achieved, thanks to Shawn. Other groups have multiple campaigns all run by the same GM. Which is impressive and terrifying.

Last night (which is earlier this week at this point), I was over to the house of my friends Jeremy and Laura. Heather and Serwin soon followed. The main point was so Jeremy and I could possibly finalize some of his thoughts on D'alton and the brooding existential crisis the character was going through in dealing with post-Kethranmeer life. I ended up grabbing a bunch of page protectors from my wife and going through our catalog of old character sheets and protecting them and placing them in binders as well. Fun stuff. Once Old Firebeard came over, I turned myself to the task of getting him squared away for next campaign. He alternately wanted to play a gunslinging pirate with stabbyness and hints of vampirateism and a witch.

Now here is the thing, and my wife pointed this out, I handed Sean Erwin the core book for Pathfinder and said, "Here are the rules, first thing you should do is to look through it and kind of get an idea about what class you wanted to be." I then proceeded to tell Serwin no about thirty seven times. "Can I be an elf?" "No, there aren't any elves in my world." "Can I be an Inquisitor?" "No, there are no divine classes or gods in my world." and so on.

What followed was a discussion with my wife and Jeremy about how perhaps you need a background in DnD to play my campaign, and can't just be thrown to the wolves. We then moved onto a discussion about how perhaps I could do a beginner DnD campaign with people who have little or no experience with DnD in addition to my Hekinoe campaign. It was a tempting and fascinating discussion, and at one point it involved this other group hunting down my Hekinoe group and hatemurdering them.

The problem with doing two campaigns is burnout. I wanted to take a whole month off with no DnD or planning for DnD to recharge the batteries, and now I'm considering immediately running not one campaign, but TWO, in addition to being a player in another. It seems like I've just thrown caution to the wind and said fuck it all. Which is dangerous. To get this far, to make this world and this campaign, I would hate myself if three months into our new Hekinoe campaign I was just like "Fuck you guys and fuck DnD, I'm playing Minecraft."

Now, if we imagine for a moment and say that I am going to do this, how would I stave off burnout? What kind of campaign would it be? Who would play? What system would I use? We can't use my current campaign world, my wife kind of convinced me that it is far too complex and goofy for beginners. Not because I am awesome, but just because it is too overly complicated and even if you have the core rules for Pathfinder, you still need to read a bunch of other materials to figure out what is remotely playable and how it operates. My world has all kinds of goofy alternate rules and feats and traits and flaws and restrictions on races and classes. It is kind of like throwing the kids into the deep end and letting them flounder. Plus, Serwin doesn't have the attachment to the world and characters that the other players would.

So what am I doing here? Considering a new campaign world? Is this a noob group? Not per se, but kind of, and I certainly do not mean noob in a negative or condescending context. Who would be in it? Serwin Firebeard obviously, my wife, Laura, and perhaps Kerry. Martel as well if she wanted to, though she already has a group and is technically a veteran of two campaigns. Basically people interested in DnD, that don't have a ridiculous fifteen years of experience under their belt are who I would invite.

So how would I stave off burnout? How would I keep myself interested?

As a veteran gamer, it is kind of my duty to expose new players to the game. To usher in the next generation so to speak. We've done that with Josh and Jeff, though neither of them really plays anymore as far as I know. Helping to generate new players and new interest in the game and genre is something that really appeals to me, and doing that is something I could definitely be committed to.

The brunt of the work of my other campaign is done as well. We're not starting a new campaign world with the guys, they're just continuing their adventures in a world that is already built. The plot is done and I have roughly eleven thousand words of an outline for it that are basically a collection of plot hooks and adventure ideas. Ultimately the goals will be shaped by the players, rather than me, I just have to make the scenarios, and if we're working under the whole 3-4 hour long session format, that is pretty easy to accomplish with a little bit of dedication. This is not to say that I am done putting effort into Hekinoe, not by a long shot. It just means that the world is there, the wiki is there, the only thing that isn't there yet are the players and the stuff they want to do.

The goal these days is to work smarter and not harder, it makes everything easier. I don't really write dialogue anymore, I write the intent and goals of NPCs and base the conversation with the players on my notes. I don't write DCs, I just keep in mind whether a task is hard or easy and watch the result of the checks the players make. Stuff like that makes everything easier and less stressful on me. I want to carry that over to this potential new campaign.

I have an obsession with making things not a carbon copy of other things. I started with odd things like desert Elves and non-metalwork obsessed Dwarves and whatnot, now I've moved to a place where there are no "normal" fantasy races in my campaign and no race is dark and evil and monstrous, every race is just sort of annoyingly grey as far as morals. I'm going to skip that if I do this second campaign. Everything is bog standard DnD (whatever system we use, but we'll get to that later), Elves like forests and Orcs are evil, all the classes are available and work normally. The background will be minimal, the gods will exist and do godly things and be involved in the exploits of mortals. That way, when you read the book, you know you're reading the actual rules and don't have to worry about them being different than what you're reading.

If I were to do any background, it would probably fairly simplistic. This is a forest, elves live here and have done so for some time. This mountain range is where Dwarves live, and they have lived here for some time. Etc. I think I would create a frontier area full of monsters and lawlessness, like a newly discovered continent or island or something. A place with ruins and swamps and that kind of thing. Then make a big continent nearby and say, "This is where all the old and ancient empires are. You are colonists and adventurers here in this new land, don't worry about the past four thousand years of history. Just go clean up the colony. With swords." I think I would also let the players determine some background, like if they were sick of Goblins are evil and Elves like forest cliches, I would let them determine what things should be like.

Another thing I could do to lighten the load of this campaign is to get a co-GM. By this, I mean an actual GM. Someone to actually run scenarios or work on them if I can't or need to take a break. Now the obvious choice would be Eric, or even Tony if he'd do it. They both have experience. No, though. I would choose Jeremy. Seems an odd choice perhaps, I'll explain. Jeremy really started to get a handle on playing DnD in 4th Edition, more than he ever had in the past decade or more. He hit a rough patch changing to Pathfinder, but he wants to get back to where he was at. The best way to get better at gaming and understanding a ruleset is to run the game, to be the GM and have to find all the answers to the questions the players are asking. Maybe he wouldn't agree to that level of commitment, but he would be my first choice.

The main thing, if I do decide to do this, would be to ensure that the group is very interested in doing so. I'm not even going to help roll characters if they're not genuinely, seriously, interested in playing along. I also want to make sure that we all go in with the understanding that I will drop this shit like a hot coal if it begins to affect my attitude regarding DnD in general or begins to detract from my other campaign. Don't mean to be harsh, I just have a gaming commitment first and foremost to the Hekinoe group.

There is a concern about time. If I am running two campaigns, there will be an investment of time into DnD. Maybe not a shit ton more, but I'll need to let go of something, and that something will probably be the dream of playing Warmachine. Which is not to say I won't buy a figure, I will, because there is one that is perfect for an NPC in my next Hekinoe campaign, but I just don't think it would be prudent to buy a bunch of rulebooks and minis and not really have time to paint them.

The final issue of this whole nebulous idea comes down to system. 4th Edition has a certain amount of ease of use to it that appeals to me. It is easier to learn and easier to GM. It is also less complex, which makes it harder to get what you envision your character to be. Pathfinder has the appeal of being Pathfinder, it is more streamlined than 3.5 but more complex than 4th Edition, so it would be harder for beginners to get a handle on, but when they did, it would probably allow them to get more out of it. Heather and Martel want unicorns, hard to do in 4th Edition, easy to do in Pathfinder (albeit at 14th level, and you have to be good). I'll mostly likely discuss it with whoever I invite and see what they want to do.

Whoa, text.

To Do List

There are some things I need to do. Here is a list of them, because I like lists and need to write things down. They're listed in order of importance.

Things I Need To Do

-Finish the Dogdamn Rebellion campaign arc. (Completed: 11/23/10)

-Clarify and write down all my house rules so everyone can finally know them all. (Completed: 1/17/11)

-Finish the first scenario of the next campaign and the newerish mechanics that go along with that. (Completed: 1/18/11)

-Make the list of traits more robust and easier to read. (Completed, More or Less: 1/17/11)

-Add more Flaws. (Completed: 11/18/10)

-Add more Hekinoe specific feats. (Completed, More Or Less: 1/22/11)

-Complete the campaign book.

Things I Want To Do

-Play Dark Sun (as a Thri-Kreen Ranger)

-Play Gamma World (as an Android Cockroach)

-Run a one-shot Shadow Chasers/Darkest Night Detective Agency adventure of my own devising using Gamma World.

-Play GURPS (as a Brain In A Jar, or as Reginald the Sentient Tumor)

-Run or play the 4th Edition Tomb of Horrors adventure as a one shot.

-Run Laura and my wife through the 4th Edition Red Box adventure.

-Look into alternate options for the wiki.

Edit After The Fact: You'll notice that some of these have a date of completion that occurred before this post was posted. This post is a few weeks old, and having it here is helping to inspire me to crack the whip at myself.

Additional Conversion Rates (Among Other Things)

I effing hate me some Derf the Swordmage. The Swordmage concept is so hard to fit into anything other than 4th Edition DnD. Derf is expensive in GURPS, but impossible to fit into 3.5 Edition or Pathfinder. Psychic warriors have some elemental attacks, but Derf is magic, not psionic. Swordsage would work, they're kind of mystical warriors that master pseudo-magical blade arts. Both of those classes lack teleportation effects similar to the Swordmage. There is a third option of a Fighter/Wizard multiclass with the appropriate feats and prestige classes to alter it. That might work, but I don't have much knowledge about spells and whether or not they are any that can lightning-ify swords and whatnot, or if Fred would have to settle for fireballs and lightning bolts and whatnot, heh.

I've been toying with both GURPS and Pathfinder conversion stuff, and it has been getting to me. I would really like us to settle on what system we will eventually be using, but I don't want to bring up the issue before it needs to be addressed. I don't want to focus too much on what is to come and distract myself from what is going on at the moment.

I've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender lately. I actually just started the third season. Jeremy and Laura recommended it to me a while ago, and I kind of added it to my Netflix Instant Watch on a whim. It is surprisingly enjoyable for being a cartoon based on a manga. I have watch a fair amount of anime and cartoons in my life, I was a big Naruto fan for many years in fact. Eventually I get sick of the comical faces and goofy crap though. Anyway, Avatar is a pretty decent show with some surprisingly mature themes scattered throughout it. I mean, a lot of the plot is just blatantly obvious, but it is after all a kids cartoon on Nickelodeon. Or it was at least. I find myself really wanting to reach the final conclusion of the show. Appa is also amusing. I really enjoy the animals of the world, boarcupines, sabertooth moose cats, turtleducks. I find them cute and entertaining.

More DnD. In an email a while ago, John told me he would like more battles that have consequences based on the actions of the party. I have a hard time dealing with this question because I feel like the consequences are fairly obvious. I think I understand what John is saying now, but the players so rarely come near to failure that it feels like any sort of consequence for their actions would be wasted effort on my part, and deliberately causing them to fail feels like hardcore railroading. I mean, you can't win every battle, and you are bound to come up against something that whoops you at some point, but the players are so underpowered already that actually making them fight a difficult battle feels like picking on them. John still doesn't really understand the way attacks per round work (one, always one, unless your powers say otherwise), or saving throws. Does anyone know what a bull rush is? Charge? The benefits to each action? I have to tailor the fights to their capabilities, because this is a learning the ropes campaign. What is the sense in making a bunch of tactical options for combat, if they're just going to use their at-wills the entire fight? Is this a chicken and the egg situation though? Are my fairly straight forward fights the result of their less then rock hard understanding of their options, or is it the other way around? I'm guessing the former, rather than the latter, but I eagerly hope to be wrong.

The question remains, should I be more proactive and frequently tell them their options? No. I am an adult, just like they are adults. If they have a rules question, I will answer it, or if they ask "can I do this?" I will tell them how, but I will not hand hold more than I already am. They have all the information at their fingertips and in the books that they have. Their understanding of the rules, or complete lack thereof, is on them. Kind of like whether the scenario sucks or not is on me. Maybe that makes me a grognard, or a hardass, or just a bad GM. It is my stance though and I stand by it. On the ground. In an earth bending stance. With a rock ready to be flip kicked into someone's face or some such.

The handholding will however cease once we get to the next campaign. Heh.

Edit After The Fact: Completely got sidetracked about combat. I mention John's email because I think I may make a post about how the player's have affected the world around them with their choices and actions during game time, just to kind of show that they are affecting the world around them and shaping it as they pass through it.

Presentation of Information

I've been hard at work on a few things (school, scenario, some writing odds and ends, etc), so I haven't been posting as much lately, I hope you'll forgive me.

I'm about an hour away from finishing the eighth scenario in our The Known World campaign and I'm pretty pleased with how it is going. I'm trying to force myself into becoming one of those GMs that is able to come up with details off the top of their head. I've decided I want to game more often, and to do that I need to slim my scenario data down as much as I can without leaving things vague. I don't need a paragraph of text for every room in the scenario, I just need a general impression of what it looks like and may or may not contain. If the players take an interest in the fixtures, I can just say "They're nice well taken care of brass, looks like they're regularly polished and dusted." rather than write that or a variation of it down for a few dozen rooms and whatnot.

I'm also working on a different method of organizing the data for the scenario as well. Rather than writing out every word an NPC might have cause to say, I just write out a general guideline of what they want to say, their personality, and what they may or may not need to hide from the players. This allows me to work from something that is informative and reminds me of the purpose of the NPC, but it keeps me from having two paragraphs of possible dialog options for them. I don't know, maybe it will help me organize things better, rather than just spam data. Anyone that has seen what I write for DnD has seen that I have lots of information to give people, but spend very little time organizing it into a format that is easily absorbed by others. I guess I'm doing all kinds of experimentation with this particular scenario. We'll see how everything goes.

On the GURPS front, we're supposed to be playing Eric's first scenario after his birthday in April, which is about nine months after we all got together and decided we were going to play some GURPS in the Reich-5 setting. I've accepted that fact, but I still think everyone should be aware of it. I still have no real handle on what I want to play, other than something psionic. I have an idea for playing a psychically potent brain in a jar or a "living" radiation shadow, but I dunno how practical they'll be. I dunno, whatever. I did speak to Dan and Laura the other night about GURPS and how it relates to my campaign world, and they both agreed that it might be fun to join up for that. This means that if the current group continues on to GURPS plus Dan and Laura, we have a group of eight players and a GM. Holy shitfuck. For that group I might seriously need another GM.

I've already started a bit of work on the true conversion to GURPS for my campaign world. It works pretty well. I've got two races down and so far I am able to keep the amount of data spammed at the players to a minimum. Its basically, ok, this is what the race is about, this is what they have to have to be this race, and here are some suggestions. Hopefully I'll be able to keep that theme of only the most pertinent details being thrown at the players. The extra stuff is good to throw into the ZuluPad thing, or in the story that Eric, Jeremy, and I are posting back and forth. I guess I'm realizing that it is better to let the players be curious about something, and ask questions or investigate it on their own, rather than throw three thousands words of text at them telling them everything they'll ever need to know.

On the writing front, I've started two new stories. One called Fear of Water which is about the Nel after the events of The Last Blade that will very likely get canned until I feel like picking up the Nel again. The other is Soulless, a collection of short stories about a certain soulless that kind of chronicle his life and adventures. Actually, I've started three, not two. The third one is called Rebels and I don't find myself liking it at all, so it will probably not go anywhere. I dunno. I like to write and I'm writing, so I guess I can't complain.

I also have an idea for a mini I'd like to play around with and work on. I'll have to order some bits though, because the model pieces I need are fantasy bits and not 40k bits.

Edit After The Fact: I was twenty minutes from finishing the scenario. I still have to review everything and write out the Walthuler missive though, so it may end up being an hour. We'll see.

Music: Killer Queen - Queen

Music: Stone Cold Crazy - Queen