2010

Happy New Year!

Sorry it took me so long to wish you that. I had a rough night last night ^_^

As usual for this time of the year, I went to a friends house, enjoyed a good meal and good company, and watched Eindhoven light up. They shoot off fireworks here, and we had a chance to look over the town from a high rise. Colors burst over the whole city, and a surreal mist blurred the lines of all the streets. They had this particularly cool firework which fired off submunitions which fired off more submunitions until they all burst in this entire cloud of light. It was amazing.

I don’t believe in resolutions, mainly because I’m always coming up with things I want to do all throughout the year, so there’s no particular reason to make plans on this exact day. Still, it makes me think. I remember ten years ago, standing outside of Ron’s house while friends played with fireworks, wondering where I would be ten years from there. Where am I? A published author returning to school with a wife and my own house in Europe, with a second language officially under my belt. I guess I have a reason to be proud.

But where will we be ten years from now? I fully expect we’ll hit TL 9 by 2020. I kinda wonder what the big technological change will be. I already knew about the internet and the advance of computers in 2000, but I never expected the swift and amazing rise of mobile phones. What’s the next big black swan? Aerospace? Biotech? Quantum computers? And I can only expect and hope that the economy will improve greatly by then (though we’ll still be complaining about it by then). I want to have my degree by then, and I can only hope I’ll be blessed with a child.

So, a great ten years to look forward to, I think

Spreading the Curse

So, we’ve got to make Vampire characters tonight. I expect it’ll be a disaster, though not because of Vampire, but because this is the first time we’ve got the whole group back together since WotG, and there’s going to be problems, and that will result in drama. Not the least of which: Every time I ask for someone to do something with my microphone, they all hem and haw and pass the buck to one another. *sigh* We’ll see if that continues to be the case.

For Vampire itself, we’re in touchy territory. Alot of the players believe that it’s “gay,” by which they mean “Girls love the stuff, and if we got good at it, we’d get laid alot, which is totally not what straight men,” or possibly “But… it’s not werewolf!” Either way, I need to make my case fairly quickly, though I have been doing so for the past few weeks now, and I think I’ve solidly sold at least two of the tentative players, and the rest are operating off of trust for my excellent skill (which is good, as I do believe they’ll like the game).

Designing Vampires is tricky, though. Setting aside interesting and potentially problematic issues (“What do you mean Humanity? You mean my vampire CARES if he kills people?!”), you can’t “just” create a vampire. Too many vampires end up these orphans of the night, who simply stepped out of their coffin without having a personality or a past. World of Darkness centers everything on humanity, so I’ll focus the players first and foremost on that. Following my abyssal advice, I’ll also try to get the players to think about their relationships with one another, so no matter how much backstabbing and cut throat gameplay we see, the coterie itself will stay united. Vampire, Mortal, Coterie: that’s the three-pronged approach I’ll take, and we’ll sort of flit from one to another until we have everything figured out.

I think the players will have the hardest time grasping both how powerful and powerless vampires are. This dichotomy actually appealed to me, as it melds the “power fantasy” that some players want with the “survival horror” that others want. If I handle it right, it’ll be the “best of both worlds,” but if I screw up, we could end up alienating both. I’m confident I have it in hand, but the players will need to design their characters appropriately, and that means conveying this truth to them well.

Wish me luck.

Vampire Chronicle NPCs

Up to 30! Wooh

Leviathans

An interesting new mini game by Catalyst Game Labs. Like Eclipse Phase, this is Creative Commons, so if you wanted to download it off a torrent, it’s legal to do so.

Mountains and Valleys

So, a few weeks back, if you remember, I bemoaned my lack of players. I had three, barely, and I knew I was at a nadir of gaming in Newton. I believe I also mentioned that if I just kept trucking along, more players would come.

I was right.

Shawn has joined us, and Cass is poking to play, and Swoyer wants to be involved when I start running Vampire.

It’s hard, very hard, to be in a place where not many people want to game with you. It makes me lonely, but another part of me says: “Keep going, and more people will come.” See, RPGs are a social activity, and people want to know that something is worth their investment of time and effort. That may sound cold and callous, but only if you don’t understand it, and don’t compensate for it. This happened with Dark Souls (I went from 2 players to 7), Hunters Hunted (2 to 5), and it’s happening again now. I understand it, I know this, I’m not surprised by it, but there’s always that part of me that bemoans when players desert, and rejoices when they return.

Still, something for other newbie GMs to keep in mind. If you can just keep running, keep going along, and make sure other people know about it, don’t worry, game will happen, players will come.