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camwynWorking at the moment. But also thinking about RPG stuff, and plot things, and GM'ing.
See, right now I'm running a PBEM that's just acquired its second player. The purpose is to shake down the VicMage.Asia setting before the time comes when I have to run it as a virtual tabletop game - or even, possibly someday, as a real tabletop game. 'course, that would require me having. . . you know. . . players near me in RL. Could be something of a problem, that, as most of my gamer friends have moved away; I'm not sure how I feel about the prospect of putting a sign up at the comic store and waiting to see who bites.
I've been dealing with RPGs in one form or another for a very long time now. I have no idea who gave me my first copy of Dungeons and Dragons, a million years ago. I was. . . I don't know. In third or fourth grade at the time. I remember being fascinated by the idea that dice could be shapes other than cubes, that they could be colourful, that there was some actual use for those funky shapes Carl Sagan had displayed on Cosmos years ago. I remember being fascinated by the monsters, too - especially the dragons. Always the dragons. I never found players, though; I was one of two or three who had the game, and none of us really understood the rules at that age no matter how hard we read the books. I tried in fifth grade, at another school, when there was a D&D club. It didn't go well - mostly because I tried to translate characters from my favourite fantasy novels into stats for PCs.
Didn't bother trying again until college. Someone introduced me to Vampire. If I recall correctly, it was the same weekend Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula hit the theatres. After that came other games - Werewolf shortly after, Mage after that - and other systems - GURPS, Rifts, ElfQuest, Ars Magica, Amber. Played some AD&D; that was... I think three weekends. Still got fond memories of my thief, Slick Willi (I had no patience for choosing alllllll the spells and paraphernalia a mage would've required). Played two tabletop sessions of Vampire. Watched in awe as the three of our characters destroyed the GM's campaign entirely by mistake during the second game session. After that, though, no tabletop. Don't quite know why. I've never been very good at just slapping the piece of paper up on the wall to say 'come on, let's play'. Some of it's worry that if I say 'I want to have total strangers show up and do stuff', then I won't have the right to say 'I don't want to play with you any more' if they make me uneasy or uncomfortable. Some of it's just laziness.
Anyway. Did a lot of online gaming thanks to the phenomenon that is MUSHing. Bought a lot of game books. Never used most of 'em, but they were fun reads, and if I ever met people to play with, I'd have 'em. When I graduated from college there was no gaming for a while except a few MUShes. Then there was Feng Shui, with some friends of mine - the aforementioned gamer friends who have since moved away. It was all very, very cool, and at some point in the last few years I started reading the comic book Knights of the Dinner Table. THAT, more than anything else, was what got me seriously interested in gaming stuff again. Hell, it got me to buy my own copy of Hackmaster and join the Hackmaster GM's Association, even though I have no players immediately available!
This is where I run into the stuff that I'm worried about, though. See, way the heck back when I was a wee little n00b13 and so wet behind the ears you could plant rice and get a decent crop, all I had to go on for my idea of gaming was the D&D box set, and to a lesser extent my cousin's AD&D books, which I read every time I was at his house. Those had pre-generated adventures in them. The impression that I got was that a GM had to have everything, or nearly everything, mapped out and pre-planned. That impression wasn't changed at all by the tabletop sessions of Vampire that I played in. I mean, let's face it - we destroyed the campaign. (Said destruction involved a Malkavian who'd absorbed a bit too much of both The Empire Strikes Back and Highlander, a saber, and the sixth generation Sabbatnik who was supposed to be behind it all. For the record, my Malkavian was on the other side of the room, attempting the Cretan bull-dance with the biggest Sabbat types she could find instead of bulls.) The GM didn't have anything else planned. . . we never met as a group again. MUSHing was a different world altogether, since so much of MUSHing is your character's life when it's not adventuring season. But on the few occasions when I staffed, the impression I got was still overwhelmingly the same: plots had to be written out beforehand, checked over, and kept within certain parameters. Knights of the Dinner Table, though comedy, was more of the exact same thing - only stricter, because Hackmaster and the organizations affiliated with it in the comic were parodies of AD&D.
I'm currently working on the plots I plan to use in VicMage.Asia. I've got the first one roughed out as best I can, and I hope it's all right. The second one is more freeform, and I still have quite a few things about it that require shaping. I've put a tremendous amount of work into the setting and consider that to be a labour of love, as it gives me an outlet for my rampaging case of Sinophilia. I know the setting and I know most of the major characters; I have antagonist groups and I know them well, although I'm a little nervous about individual antagonists because I know how easy it is to screw them up. The thing is. . .
The thing is I've never really been a real GM before. I've run a couple of sessions of Mage for friends of mine, but we had very different expectations of what the game was supposed to be like. (Not to mention that one of the friends, unbeknownst to me, had both OCD and a lithium prescription - a fact which made it a bit difficult to gauge what to expect from him.) I've pretty much stunk when I've been a wizard online, because taking up the wizbit has the magical power of sucking all the fun out of RP for me, with the single solitary exception of a game where I've had the wizbit from the very beginning. I've read all kinds of stuff about GM'ing, and about writing, and about players, and all sorts of stuff. . . but in the end I've never GM'ed. I love my setting. I love the players that I'm going to have playing in it. I want to do them both justice without screwing one or the other over, and I'm afraid of not being able to do it. I'm worried I'll wind up like Dave Bozwell in KODT, botching so badly that the players figure out how to come after me and smash my GM screen over my head - or that I'll end up like B. A. Felton instead, watching as something I've planned for a dog's age gets broken alllllll to bits because I over-planned it and lost flexibility to the point where the players chose to do something unforeseen and shattered the whole deal. I'm worried that the plot ideas won't be interesting, or that the players' expectations will be for something else altogether and they'll start finding reasons to do other things. Or that the plots will be too serious. Or that they'll be too silly. Or that trying to leaven thoughtful examinations of the clash of emerging technological culture with entrenched, yet viable magic and tradition with plots where the central question is "What's with all the puking?" won't work. Or that, in the end, the plots will just be stupid and I won't be able to see it because they're my babies and I won't know until I share them with someone, but part of their charm is the novelty of the setting, so I can't share them with the people whose opinions I value most because they're the ones I want to PLAY the plots. The importance of the game to me ought to be secondary - the GM can't do diddlysquat without interested, entertained players. I'm just freaking out about it, I guess.
Anyway. That's what's been going through my head. I'm gonna go breathe into a paper bag now or something.
See, right now I'm running a PBEM that's just acquired its second player. The purpose is to shake down the VicMage.Asia setting before the time comes when I have to run it as a virtual tabletop game - or even, possibly someday, as a real tabletop game. 'course, that would require me having. . . you know. . . players near me in RL. Could be something of a problem, that, as most of my gamer friends have moved away; I'm not sure how I feel about the prospect of putting a sign up at the comic store and waiting to see who bites.
I've been dealing with RPGs in one form or another for a very long time now. I have no idea who gave me my first copy of Dungeons and Dragons, a million years ago. I was. . . I don't know. In third or fourth grade at the time. I remember being fascinated by the idea that dice could be shapes other than cubes, that they could be colourful, that there was some actual use for those funky shapes Carl Sagan had displayed on Cosmos years ago. I remember being fascinated by the monsters, too - especially the dragons. Always the dragons. I never found players, though; I was one of two or three who had the game, and none of us really understood the rules at that age no matter how hard we read the books. I tried in fifth grade, at another school, when there was a D&D club. It didn't go well - mostly because I tried to translate characters from my favourite fantasy novels into stats for PCs.
Didn't bother trying again until college. Someone introduced me to Vampire. If I recall correctly, it was the same weekend Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula hit the theatres. After that came other games - Werewolf shortly after, Mage after that - and other systems - GURPS, Rifts, ElfQuest, Ars Magica, Amber. Played some AD&D; that was... I think three weekends. Still got fond memories of my thief, Slick Willi (I had no patience for choosing alllllll the spells and paraphernalia a mage would've required). Played two tabletop sessions of Vampire. Watched in awe as the three of our characters destroyed the GM's campaign entirely by mistake during the second game session. After that, though, no tabletop. Don't quite know why. I've never been very good at just slapping the piece of paper up on the wall to say 'come on, let's play'. Some of it's worry that if I say 'I want to have total strangers show up and do stuff', then I won't have the right to say 'I don't want to play with you any more' if they make me uneasy or uncomfortable. Some of it's just laziness.
Anyway. Did a lot of online gaming thanks to the phenomenon that is MUSHing. Bought a lot of game books. Never used most of 'em, but they were fun reads, and if I ever met people to play with, I'd have 'em. When I graduated from college there was no gaming for a while except a few MUShes. Then there was Feng Shui, with some friends of mine - the aforementioned gamer friends who have since moved away. It was all very, very cool, and at some point in the last few years I started reading the comic book Knights of the Dinner Table. THAT, more than anything else, was what got me seriously interested in gaming stuff again. Hell, it got me to buy my own copy of Hackmaster and join the Hackmaster GM's Association, even though I have no players immediately available!
This is where I run into the stuff that I'm worried about, though. See, way the heck back when I was a wee little n00b13 and so wet behind the ears you could plant rice and get a decent crop, all I had to go on for my idea of gaming was the D&D box set, and to a lesser extent my cousin's AD&D books, which I read every time I was at his house. Those had pre-generated adventures in them. The impression that I got was that a GM had to have everything, or nearly everything, mapped out and pre-planned. That impression wasn't changed at all by the tabletop sessions of Vampire that I played in. I mean, let's face it - we destroyed the campaign. (Said destruction involved a Malkavian who'd absorbed a bit too much of both The Empire Strikes Back and Highlander, a saber, and the sixth generation Sabbatnik who was supposed to be behind it all. For the record, my Malkavian was on the other side of the room, attempting the Cretan bull-dance with the biggest Sabbat types she could find instead of bulls.) The GM didn't have anything else planned. . . we never met as a group again. MUSHing was a different world altogether, since so much of MUSHing is your character's life when it's not adventuring season. But on the few occasions when I staffed, the impression I got was still overwhelmingly the same: plots had to be written out beforehand, checked over, and kept within certain parameters. Knights of the Dinner Table, though comedy, was more of the exact same thing - only stricter, because Hackmaster and the organizations affiliated with it in the comic were parodies of AD&D.
I'm currently working on the plots I plan to use in VicMage.Asia. I've got the first one roughed out as best I can, and I hope it's all right. The second one is more freeform, and I still have quite a few things about it that require shaping. I've put a tremendous amount of work into the setting and consider that to be a labour of love, as it gives me an outlet for my rampaging case of Sinophilia. I know the setting and I know most of the major characters; I have antagonist groups and I know them well, although I'm a little nervous about individual antagonists because I know how easy it is to screw them up. The thing is. . .
The thing is I've never really been a real GM before. I've run a couple of sessions of Mage for friends of mine, but we had very different expectations of what the game was supposed to be like. (Not to mention that one of the friends, unbeknownst to me, had both OCD and a lithium prescription - a fact which made it a bit difficult to gauge what to expect from him.) I've pretty much stunk when I've been a wizard online, because taking up the wizbit has the magical power of sucking all the fun out of RP for me, with the single solitary exception of a game where I've had the wizbit from the very beginning. I've read all kinds of stuff about GM'ing, and about writing, and about players, and all sorts of stuff. . . but in the end I've never GM'ed. I love my setting. I love the players that I'm going to have playing in it. I want to do them both justice without screwing one or the other over, and I'm afraid of not being able to do it. I'm worried I'll wind up like Dave Bozwell in KODT, botching so badly that the players figure out how to come after me and smash my GM screen over my head - or that I'll end up like B. A. Felton instead, watching as something I've planned for a dog's age gets broken alllllll to bits because I over-planned it and lost flexibility to the point where the players chose to do something unforeseen and shattered the whole deal. I'm worried that the plot ideas won't be interesting, or that the players' expectations will be for something else altogether and they'll start finding reasons to do other things. Or that the plots will be too serious. Or that they'll be too silly. Or that trying to leaven thoughtful examinations of the clash of emerging technological culture with entrenched, yet viable magic and tradition with plots where the central question is "What's with all the puking?" won't work. Or that, in the end, the plots will just be stupid and I won't be able to see it because they're my babies and I won't know until I share them with someone, but part of their charm is the novelty of the setting, so I can't share them with the people whose opinions I value most because they're the ones I want to PLAY the plots. The importance of the game to me ought to be secondary - the GM can't do diddlysquat without interested, entertained players. I'm just freaking out about it, I guess.
Anyway. That's what's been going through my head. I'm gonna go breathe into a paper bag now or something.
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no subject
Date: 2002-06-25 02:23 pm (UTC)I have GM'd...twice. Once I had no plot, at all. I pulled it out of my ass as I went along. Fortunately, it was an entirely new system and setting for all the players, so I got to distract them with Shiny Newness. :P
The other...The players went off and did the WEIRDEST things. I had to set the plot aside and make shit up for forty minutes before they got back to it. It...went okay.
You'll be okay. For starters, you /know/ your setting, and your antagonist groups. That's the key to "out of your ass" GMing...it gives you things to DO, until you figure out how to herd us along to point B.
We want to have fun. We want you to have fun. This means give and take is okay. If things get confused, and you're not sure where we are, or what to do to get us back to somewhere useful...say so. Say "I'm not prepared for this, give me a sec." E-mail or page one of us, and say "Pssst. How would you feel about doing X?"
It's all gonna rock, hon.
no subject
Date: 2002-06-25 06:52 pm (UTC)Well... it doesn't show.
Date: 2002-06-26 12:37 am (UTC)It's good...
You're good...
Keep at it.
G