Difference between revisions of "Current events"

Revision as of 12:51, 5 April 2007

This page is for discussion of stuff related to the game coming up this week, no matter when that actually is. For instance, we can all assume Nate isnt coming for some lame reason and that Ed is sick of pizza and is bringing teriyaki or some other crap. They can post something here if that happens to be untrue.

Location

Date...........game.........Location
1/5/07......PA............BEN'S
1/12/07......WHFRP............Jason's
1/19/07......WHFRP............Bens
1/26/07......WHFRP..........Jason's (heather is post call, so my place is out)
2/2/07.......Jin Dynasty......Ben's
2/9/07.......Jin Dynasty......Gabe's Bungalow
2/16/07......Jin Dynasty.........Jason's
2/23/07......Nephron One Shot..........ben's
3/2/07.......Toonball and random shit......Ben's
3/9/07.......Jin Dynasty......Gabe's Bungalow
3/16/07......Jin Dynasty......Gabe's house of gaming
3/23/07......Jin Dynasty......Matt's House of Tyranny
3/30/07......Exemplars........Gabe's
4/6/07.......Gemini Character Creation...Ben's Condo
4/13/07......Gemini........???????
4/20/07......Exemplars/one shot...?????

Attendance and Food preference

04/06/07

--BenofZongo 13:57, 1 April 2007 (MST)Present. My sister will also be here. Both of us will be having pizza. The pizza will be "on the house" this week: ie I will pay for it. If no one objects, I think I'll get it from Pudge Bros.

--Dieter the Bold 01:47, 2 April 2007 (MST) I'll be there. And I love frakking Pudge Bros. Please count me in.

--Edmiao 08:09, 2 April 2007 (MST) I'll be there and it would be rude to turn down free pizza..... And I'd hate to be rude. .... So I won't be rude....... Which means I'll eat the pizza.

Does somebody want to either give me nate's email (nathansc@u.washington.edu still?) or email nate themselves to see where the fuck that guy is (probably under a table somewhere)?

Also, I realized Gabe will want to be there extra cause I got a phatty art book recently: some of it I think is so so, but there's a lot of awesome shit in there (it's all very anime-styled).

Ranting and raving

--Dieter the Bold 18:32, 4 April 2007 (MST) Section cleaned up and additions to this new rant solicited: Attention focus during gaming
This has come up many times before, and it was an issue during the Exemplars prequel for some (Gabe and I have discussed this), so I thought perhaps we might rant about this issue to try and put it to final rest? I'm one of the bigger offenders, self-admitted, and I didn't realize I was pissing Gabe (and perhaps others) off so much with my random metal factoids when that came up last Friday. Part of my tendency to start doing something else is an attempt to avoid metagaming (i.e., if Anjou and Jacob are plotting something with an NPC at a party that none of us are near, I don't want to play close attention as I'll just have to expend greater effort later to play Eckhardt fairly later). The other part is, of course, my character's not involved in the current scene and it could last a while so I'm plain bored. I personally don't think it's fair to ask people to just sit around without doing anything else for 10 minutes. One suggestion: GMs demand no distractions during scenes where everyone's involved or where those who aren't involved have a minor wait, but allow people to do whatever if they won't be involved in a scene for another X minutes. And they can also require those uninvolved to sit somewhere else so as not to distract. Now RANT AWAY you dissentious mob.

--Edmiao 19:12, 4 April 2007 (MST) Several comments on above. If players or GM want "secret" things to occur, then they should leave the table and often do. Therefore, I assert that anything said at the table can be assumed to be communicated to other characters later in character to character chit chat that occurs off scene {{{I retract this statement below}}}. If that is the case, then other players should pay attention, while out of the scene. This prevents us from having to repeat everything that just happened. Thus when a new character enters the scene and says "what's up" the player can say "I sum up what just happened" instead of us having to go on and on for minutes retelling the last scene. This does not address the "I get bored" issue, which occurs when a scene drags on and is not interesting to spectate. I am guilty of getting bored also and thus the comix, etc. There is a happy medium somewhere in between having to watch and sit quietly for long cut scenes and being completely out of it. I don't know how to draw a firm line.

--Dieter the Bold 20:28, 4 April 2007 (MST) So if people want to have an interaction with an NPC and only share parts of what happened, they should leave the table? I'd be fine with the implied assumption that if you say something at the table and someone asks you about it later, we can simply use what we've just heard in-character. This would increase the amount of leaving the table, as I think it's rarely wanting a 100% secret interaction, and mostly just wanting to be able to control the information shared with the other players.

--Edmiao 20:46, 4 April 2007 (MST) No, let me recant. I agree that we don't want to have everyone leaving all the time. Let's say that whatever is said at the table is open for metagaming. Ah ha!! I've got it. if you want to keep a secret from the characters, you can stay at the table. if you want to keep secrets from the players and characters, you need to leave the table. it is a level of metagaming risk, I think. So if Jacob wants to warn the brothers Giovani that we are after them, such a thing should be kept secret from the players because it would be very difficult not to metagame increased suspicion of Jacob. But if you are Anjou and you have a date, assume that the other players don't necessarily know, but it's not really a super secret. Players get to listen in and be amused by the scene, and not much risk of metagaming. If you are Gabe in last session and investigating the ships, all players should have half an ear open because all info gained will be divulged in the interest of the investigation (this prevents repeated retellings).

--Gdaze 08:49, 5 April 2007 (MST) Except that... There have been quite a few times where the player HAS had a conversation with an NPC infront of us, and not told the rest of the group what happened in it. So that "I sum up what I just saw" rarely works. I think if you don't want the pcs to know, you leave the table. As for getting bored, I think that is fine. But when you start distracting other players, which I've done too, then it is a much bigger problem because you are taking away from the game as a whole.

--Matts 10:23, 5 April 2007 (MST)There are two options here, the way I see it. One is to invite collaboration in scenes where your character isn't active. I personally think there's a fair amount of cool stuff that happens when our group is fractured, and I want to see it as a person, if not a player. If that leads to metagaming, fine; just call people on it if you think it's gone too far. We spend too much time as it is being like "well, my character doesn't know that, so he'll twiddle his thumbs until someone fills him in." If the story has advanced when one player's out on his own, I think it's fair that in some interstitial moment that that character filled in the others, so we don't need to spend 10 minutes going through the routine of reciting things. THAT IS, unless the character has something to hide, at which point the dissonance between meta-game and game makes for an interesting space anyways. But ideally we're not playing our character for ourselves alone, we're playing it to make a piece of something everyone enjoys.

The other option is to not splinter up so damn much. Secret agendas are fun and all, but if it means your character dominates 25% of the GM's time, or even just 10 or 15, then that's not really fair for the other players. Something we can hopefully do with gemini is keep our secret agenda stuff between the GM and the player, between sessions, or in special early sessions, and then if your character is off doing whatever, you can play a supporting character.

But you can't just say "focus" without attacking the problem from both sides. We dick around because we're bored, and while maybe it's a discipline issue, I don't come to gaming to get reprimanded for my minor ADD; I come to gaming to have fun. Sitting around waiting for dude to finish his solo adventure isn't fun, so I fill the space with something. So, either invite me in, as a spectator or whatever, to dude's solo adventure - make it matter to me, or keep dude's solo adventure on the sidelines so that when we're all there we can all have a good time.

--Gdaze Well like I said, I don't mind reading as much as long as it doesn't suck others in. As for your first part Matt I agree that we spend too much time trying to find out info from other people sometimes. I mean in a way it is rollplaying... since we talk how our characters would. Personally I feel like we meta-game though if there is every something we want to hide. Time away from the GM is fine, just stop what your doing when they come back to the table ya know? Also limiting that time would be good.

--BenofZongo 11:48, 5 April 2007 (MST)As the GM, I'll say a few things on this. First, I no longer feel bad telling people to put their shit away and listen up when it matters, so if I don't do that, chances are that I'm ok with you drifting off for a bit. But when I say pay attention, then pay attention. Second, with the introduction of "supporting characters" players may be involved much more frequently, since even if their main may not be interested in activity x, they can always tag along as a support. (really, the only thing that differentiates a main from a support is that nobody else can use your main). Finally, I actually think that stuff like reading or whatever when you are not involved is much less disruptive than breaking character to crack jokes, tell stories, or talk about non-game stuff when you are actually involved in the action. Thus, I would emphasize that when you are involved, please try to save the out of character stuff for times when the GM is dealing with someone else.

The Next Step in Exemplars

Shoot the Midget

The Next Step in Gemini

--Dieter the Bold 18:16, 4 April 2007 (MST) Edited all the Gemini pages so that there is a link to the Gemini Index at the top of all of them. This should speed navigation up, hopefully. Also nice job to Ed for cleaning up the Ship Creation page.

--Edmiao 08:48, 5 April 2007 (MST) ben, do you have wireless internet? i was going to bring the laptop for character creation so i don't have to redo math constantly and to access the wiki.

--208.146.45.110 09:30, 5 April 2007 (MST)We do have wireless...I think you should be able to hook up to it...I think.