Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
The X-Men - especially the Chris Claremont X-Men - is maybe the single biggest influence on my approach to situation as a GM. Group dynamics, convoluted backstories that drag the PCs (and players) in, more and more emerging over time as the PCs become more competent and more invested in the setting.
That's pretty much my favorite era of comics and definitely helped form the way I see narrative.
pemerton said:Until the last 5 to 10 years, sword and sorcery for me was Roy Thomas's Conan. I now have some REH on my shelf, and don't mind it to read, but I can't say it's a big influence on my game.
Out of curiosity (and if you already talked about this upthread, apologies for losing track of your posts), did you move from D&D to a more simulationist (RQ, RM etc) system?
I never really went into the deep sim pool. I'm fairly young. 3e come out during my freshmen year of high school. It pretty much defined gaming in high school for me. I spent a lot of time trying to tame 3e to give the results I desired, but it never really worked for me.
When I first went to college I drifted towards games that combined a strong narrative and sim bent. When I wasn't out and about I gravitated towards Exalted, Vampire the Requiem, the Riddle of Steel, Mutants and Masterminds and read The Burning Wheel but never got to play it. All games with a strong meta element, but otherwise were strongly grounded in simulating the fiction that inspired them.
4e's release coincided with me joining the Army and my discovery of Sword and Sorcery fiction. I took a lot of liberties with it, but after awhile learned to make it sing for the sort of larger than life, violent tales I was reading at the time. As time went on my tastes drifted back towards the mythic tales I read when I was younger and I really embraced 4e's implied setting.
My rediscovery of AD&D and embracing its tropes for some games is a fairly recent phenomenon since I've gotten back to Colorado to attend business school. I'm also playing in a very narrative rich GURPS game based on Supernatural. It's further on the sim side than I would like, but the group doesn't seem to mind me approaching my character from a more narrative stand point. My fellow hunters do consider my character a bit of a loose canon, but I'm good with that.
Oops. Didn't mean to lay out my entire gaming history.
pemerton said:I'm glad it's looking good for you. I was thinking about backgrounds and setting, and thinking that some of [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]'s ideas about skills that he uses in his hack could be incorporated to use in backgrounds that would be more interesting than the ones in the playtest (eg instead of "Lore +3" you might have "Student of the Spiral Tower +3", which would bring setting into play as a direct input into action resolution).
What underwhelmed me about the playtest was the action resolution mechanics - especially the lack of mechanics for the 2nd and 3rd pillars.
It's interesting that you bring up the notion of more fiction-centric skills. That was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the new skill system. Of course at that time I had visions of 13th Age dancing in my head which handles skills in exactly that manner.
I'd say so far my favorite feature of 5e is the way backgrounds decouple skills from character class and provides traits that firmly ground the character in the fiction. I've also been pleasantly surprised by how the Rogue class has thematically appropriate abilities that really validate the archetype. Rogues are cool under pressure so they're never perform below standards. They also get the job done when it matters so they have an ability that reflects that. I also really like the fact that they spend so much time skulking about that they learn to handle themselves in the dark. I really hope we don't lose elements like that. It would turn me off of 5e in an instant.
I was never really expecting too much in the way of firm mechanics for the other pillars largely because to be effective things would most likely get too meta for some folks to enjoy. I've always looked at 5e as a possible opportunity for a game that I could enjoy with my friends that 4e doesn't really work with. A sort of fusion between 1e and 4e sensibilities. I'm hoping there's enough push back that the final game is something I can still see using.
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