pointofyou
Hero
Thanks for the examples. I haven't run Blades in the Dark and didn't enjoy play enough to really feel drawn to doing so.Going to use this post to demonstrate what “prep” looks like for a Blades game.
Thanks for the examples. I haven't run Blades in the Dark and didn't enjoy play enough to really feel drawn to doing so.Going to use this post to demonstrate what “prep” looks like for a Blades game.
I agree. They might not prep between sessions anything like as much as the GM but that's not close to the same thing as "passive."I'm getting the impression that the sampling of gamers I've played with regularly are not the norm. I can't remember any iteration of groups I've gamed with regularly having players who as a habit did no prep and just sat there waiting for the GM to make things happen.
Hexcrawls require no prep? Interesting.
I'm getting the impression that the sampling of gamers I've played with regularly are not the norm.
I can't remember any iteration of groups I've gamed with regularly having players who as a habit did no prep and just sat there waiting for the GM to make things happen.
I wasn't mis-characterizing my experience, but I might have been overstating the no-/low-prep, passive players end of things that some other posters were complain about.I think you're kind of overstating or mischaracterizing the actuality a bit.
F'rex, if the GM says we are playing in a published adventure, and I agree, I'm expecting them to give me something that precipitates action, and I'm going to grab at one of the first things they dangle in front of me. From there, I'm going to choose from the various (usually bleedingly obvious) items relevant to the present content at hand. This takes no preparation on my part.
Oh did they redo Spirit of the Century in Fate Core??The Fate Core game Spirit of the Century has an interesting character creation phase that asks the PCs to come up with a title for a novel starring their character “Character in ….” eg Bilbo Baggins in An Unexpected Party They then add a 2 sentence blurb and generate 2 Aspects from it eg “a gentleman of the shire” and “a dash of the Took*”.
To be fair, explaining a game can be kind of like explaining food. It can be useful if the person receiving the explanation has some relevant experience with related cuisine/dishes, but otherwise is apt to fail to generate clarity.
And he later makes a point about unrelenting positivity - sometimes discussions of non-trad games is conducted in a way that tends to dismiss areas that the games aren't actually great at, or that they sacrifice in the name of their focus.
I've participated in hexcrawls that were randomly generated on the spot, from tables the GM had gotten from a published product. So, they can be run without preparation, even if that's not the common approach.
If your problem is that the people who like "Story Now" games like Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel and Blades in the Dark like them so uncritically that you can't understand what they're telling you then ask me. I didn't much like them in play but that's not about failing to understand them so much as it was tastes and preferences.The problem is the overwhelming positive view point that makes the games hard to understand.