Is prep time "gaming?"

[Treebore]

Nope, not one bit. It's usually fun, and it usually makes the gaming even better, but it isn't gaming itself. Unless there are PCs doing things and a DM refereeing, then you aren't gaming in my book.

Thats it.

 

[The Shaman]

To be honest, I try NOT to be too specific in my definitions -- that way lies madness.

Well, we don't want that.

And endless semantic arguments.

And we definitely don't want that.

I can accept either definition of "gaming".

Cool.

If somebody wants to disagree violently with either definition, I guess they can.

Oh, let's not.

 

[Treebore]

What sorts of products would save prep time for you?

Castles and Crusades saves me a ton of prep time, and I get to use all my 1E and 2E modules as well, which saves me even more time, plus it is just a blast to be playing them again.

 

[Uder]

It depends on the game and the type of prep being done. To me gaming has randomness, even if there is no winner or loser.

Prep time for a game like Traveller and O/AD&D is much like gaming - in the former the prep is purposefully given form. While randomness is not as encouraged in the latter games, it is presented as an option for refs pressed for time; using the tables in those books feels much like playing solitaire. Prep time for games that don't rely on randomness is not gaming. In most cases, coming up with plots, writing backgrounds and personalities for NPCs and drawing maps is not gaming.

 

[The Shaman]

It's not gaming to me any more than talking about golf is playing golf, or watching a sports event is playing in the sports event.

Hmmm...

I agree that talking about golf isn't playing golf, but what about putting a ball into a cup on the living room carpet? Or driving a bucket of balls at the range?

Turning it around a bit, I would agree that sitting down and reading a gaming book or posting about it on the interweb doesn't usually qualify, but creating a new character (player or non-), or writing encounters for an adventure, or working on the setting, certainly falls under the rubric of gaming for me.

I've heard quite a few Traveller players refer to the "solo games" of character creation, ship building, and star system generation. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I do the same things when I'm preparing that I do when I'm sitting at the table - I just don't have immediate feedback from the players or the game master.

Prep for me is enjoyable, so that undoubtedly plays a role in how I view it as part of playing the game, rather than apart from it.

 

[Morte]

What sorts of products would save prep time for you?

1. Adventures that fit together into campaigns, or fit into existing campaigns/settings.

Try running T20 Traveller in the Gateway 993 setting. It's got 1444 star systems and 48 of them are described in the text, they're spread pretty evenly so once you start playing there'll be 3 within a year of you. The rest you have to do for yourself. The gap between the ending point for one published adventure and the starting point for the next averages about six months' travel, and the GM has to provide everything along the way. It is a point of pride amongst Traveller authors to write adventures that are closely tied to a particular location, e.g. a star system with a religious dictatorship and non-breathable atmosphere that's within ten parsecs of the Zhodani border. Since there are 11,000 systems in Traveller, and identical worlds are extremely rare, that makes it a point of pride to write adventures nobody can use.

D&D people have been better served than most of late, with the various adventure path and campaign in a box products. ISTM that the rest of us are just screwed.


2. Fast chargen software for PCs and NPCs, with libraries you can customise etc.

I think you can get partial solutions for D&D, but you'll probably have to type in that non-SRD monster yourself. GURPS will perhaps be better served, once the base of GCA users finish swapping libraries for GURPS 4e. And that's about it. Play anything else, you're stuffed.


3. Format your damn adventures to be used by GMs who game, not read in bed with a mug of coco by RPG collectors.

Whenever there's DM information and player information, there should be a page break between them. Maps should be duplicated at the end of the PDF, or in a free PDF download if it's a book. If a map involves a secret door, include a player map that hides it and a GM map that shows it. Put the NPC stat blocks in the text where they're likely to come up, then repeat them as PDF "print and cut up" initiative cards. I want to see "Appendix A: GM cribsheets, print once" and "Appendix B: player handouts, print up to one per player". Put 'em in a zip with a readme saying what to print. None of this involves substantial extra material, just copy/paste and some thought.

Those should keep you busy.

 

[barsoomcore]

Well, Morte, I don't play Traveller, and I'm not about to duplicate the immense amount of work the PCGen team have already done. Except that I DID provide a pretty easy way to store, copy and paste statblocks, which, if you already have your non-SRD monster stat block in text form, can easily keep it somewhere handy for you.

And the True20 adventure I'm working on (and any products published by Scratch Factory) will always be formatted with the working GM in mind. I share your pain.

 

[ThirdWizard]

And we definitely don't want that.

Sure we do! [semantic arguments]

I agree that talking about golf isn't playing golf, but what about putting a ball into a cup on the living room carpet? Or driving a bucket of balls at the range?

Okay, take baseball practice. If you say you're going to go play baseball, I'll think that you will be playing the game of baseball. Not practicing your swing or tossing balls back and forth. It's the same with other games.

 

[The Shaman]

Sure we do! [semantic arguments]

No, we really don't.

If that's where this thread starts going, I'm going to ask the mods to close it.

It's not a quest for universal truth, nor is it a competition for one-upmanship.

 

[Henry]

It's not a quest for universal truth, nor is it a competition for one-upmanship.

Yeah, let's stick to agreeing to disagreeing rather than getting people riled up.

Your "mini-golf-in-the-living-room argument, though, I don't see as analogous to game-prep. I'd see it as analogous to you and a friend getting together, making characters, and having a one-on-one D&D character arena battle on an off-weekend, because you couldn't get the whole group together for a full-blown game. That's just my take on it.