Glyfair
Explorer
I had a very long Free RPG Day, and it took a while to digest my experience.
To start with, I should nopte I'm a night person. If I don't have any place to be, I often am up until 6 am or longer. I started with one of those nights and didn't hit the hay until about 4-5 am. So, once I finally got moving I wasn't very energetic.
I started the day at my less local game store, Between Books. It is primarily a book store with a large science fiction/fantasy bent. However, it is also a hobby game store, a comic book store, and a bit of a new age store. It has a gaming area in the back with room for about 2 tables of games, 3 if you don't mind being squeezed.
Two of us were there to run games. I intended to run "Chimes at Midnight" from Dungeon magazine and the other GM intended on running something experimental D&Dish. There were a few people dropping in and talking for a bit, but not a lot were there to actually play. We ended up with enough players for a single table and I elected to have him run. After all, I was running in the evening and I wasn't sure he was interested in playing in my game.
The other game master was a big "indy-game" fan. In fact, he introduced The Burning Wheel to our game store when they had first edition numbered copies.
He decided to introduce us to his style of game. His concept was losely based on GenCons "Iron DM." First he had us design characters. He required us to all be experts and limited our choices at character creation (for example we choose skills but assumed they were at max). Even so, character creation really took too long for a one-off event, in my opinion.
Part of character creation was assigning our characters beliefs. We had to choose one belief and how we acted on that belief. For example, since we were discussing the Dying Earth RPG earlier I decided to run a Cugel the Clever-like Vancian character. My belief was "If I want it, it should be mine." The way I went about it was to try to get it while avoiding conflict as much as possible.
We then gave him three ingredients to the adventure and he spent time discussing with us the story that developed from these ingredients. One ingredient was a heist, one was a conflict of interest and I forget the other two. We ended up with an adventure that had us going after a magic item (chosen from one of Paizo's item cards) for various reasons.
He then gave us a goal and asked how we were going about it, while giving us a general story element (some nomads wandered the woods and had changed their patterns). He had given us the goal and story reasons why we were concerned.
We knew we needed a container to get this item, so we decided that the creatures had something and went to explore it. Essentially we were designing the adventure with input from the DM. He stated we would only have one roll per story element, but might have other modifiers. We basically would each add stakes to the encounter (we added what we hoped to gain, he added what would hamper us if we failed) adn they all fell on that die roll.
Skipping the details of the encounter (perhaps I'll elaborate later), we were essentially designing the adventure at the table. In fact, roleplaying was scant and adventure design was dominant. At least some of it was because he was teaching us the game structure, but it seemed very clunky to me.
I wouldn't object to using some of those elements in a game, but they would need to be heavily deemphasized at the table. If I wanted to design an adventure, I would run a game. I want some control at the table, but not that level of control and certainly not that much "metagaming" at the table. The metagaming is inherent to the structure of that game, it seems.
One of the players had to leave, and I only had about another half hour, so we decided to pack it up. It was an interesting experience. I'm not sure I'd want to do that sort of thing long term, but as I mentioned, there were some ideas there I wouldn't mind utilizing in a different format.
From there I went to my more local game store, The Days of Knights. There I ended up running the planned adventure. I'm not sure how much the players enjoyed it. I messed up the middle section because of my tiredness, completely forgetting about the time issues and the lightning rail scene was botched (I do find it to be the least entertaining element of the adventure because the time element is screwy).
Still, we ended up finishing and even though we started at 7:30 or so, we didn't end until 2am. I'm surprised no one suggested we wrap up at the table. At least one person mentioned he was conscious of time.
To start with, I should nopte I'm a night person. If I don't have any place to be, I often am up until 6 am or longer. I started with one of those nights and didn't hit the hay until about 4-5 am. So, once I finally got moving I wasn't very energetic.
I started the day at my less local game store, Between Books. It is primarily a book store with a large science fiction/fantasy bent. However, it is also a hobby game store, a comic book store, and a bit of a new age store. It has a gaming area in the back with room for about 2 tables of games, 3 if you don't mind being squeezed.
Two of us were there to run games. I intended to run "Chimes at Midnight" from Dungeon magazine and the other GM intended on running something experimental D&Dish. There were a few people dropping in and talking for a bit, but not a lot were there to actually play. We ended up with enough players for a single table and I elected to have him run. After all, I was running in the evening and I wasn't sure he was interested in playing in my game.
The other game master was a big "indy-game" fan. In fact, he introduced The Burning Wheel to our game store when they had first edition numbered copies.
He decided to introduce us to his style of game. His concept was losely based on GenCons "Iron DM." First he had us design characters. He required us to all be experts and limited our choices at character creation (for example we choose skills but assumed they were at max). Even so, character creation really took too long for a one-off event, in my opinion.
Part of character creation was assigning our characters beliefs. We had to choose one belief and how we acted on that belief. For example, since we were discussing the Dying Earth RPG earlier I decided to run a Cugel the Clever-like Vancian character. My belief was "If I want it, it should be mine." The way I went about it was to try to get it while avoiding conflict as much as possible.
We then gave him three ingredients to the adventure and he spent time discussing with us the story that developed from these ingredients. One ingredient was a heist, one was a conflict of interest and I forget the other two. We ended up with an adventure that had us going after a magic item (chosen from one of Paizo's item cards) for various reasons.
He then gave us a goal and asked how we were going about it, while giving us a general story element (some nomads wandered the woods and had changed their patterns). He had given us the goal and story reasons why we were concerned.
We knew we needed a container to get this item, so we decided that the creatures had something and went to explore it. Essentially we were designing the adventure with input from the DM. He stated we would only have one roll per story element, but might have other modifiers. We basically would each add stakes to the encounter (we added what we hoped to gain, he added what would hamper us if we failed) adn they all fell on that die roll.
Skipping the details of the encounter (perhaps I'll elaborate later), we were essentially designing the adventure at the table. In fact, roleplaying was scant and adventure design was dominant. At least some of it was because he was teaching us the game structure, but it seemed very clunky to me.
I wouldn't object to using some of those elements in a game, but they would need to be heavily deemphasized at the table. If I wanted to design an adventure, I would run a game. I want some control at the table, but not that level of control and certainly not that much "metagaming" at the table. The metagaming is inherent to the structure of that game, it seems.
One of the players had to leave, and I only had about another half hour, so we decided to pack it up. It was an interesting experience. I'm not sure I'd want to do that sort of thing long term, but as I mentioned, there were some ideas there I wouldn't mind utilizing in a different format.
From there I went to my more local game store, The Days of Knights. There I ended up running the planned adventure. I'm not sure how much the players enjoyed it. I messed up the middle section because of my tiredness, completely forgetting about the time issues and the lightning rail scene was botched (I do find it to be the least entertaining element of the adventure because the time element is screwy).
Still, we ended up finishing and even though we started at 7:30 or so, we didn't end until 2am. I'm surprised no one suggested we wrap up at the table. At least one person mentioned he was conscious of time.
