fenzer said:
Ledded, thanks for the clarification on GMPC. I'll be honest, I did not know what that was.
Ledded, I understand about being the "X-osaurous". I am the librarian (I have all the dern books), the geologist (I have the battle mat/terrain), and ref (I seem to have a reasonable handle on the rules). As far as GMing goes however, it looks like I could take a page or two from Drew's book. The hard work and talent are ovbious.
Yeah, the GMPC is good, because we are now on our 3rd guest director in a row (someone new GM'ing an episode) so OldDrewId has had a very nice break so that he can develop his character, who didnt get behind because he played him as a GMPC while he was running the show.
As far as terrain, well, I've made these large foamcore sheets cut to fit the table, and they have printed sheets with grass glued on one side and stone on the other, nice one-inch grids layed out across the whole big thing. The foamcore is stiff enough to avoid damage and flip over easy, and it's in sections so we can have one or more corners different. Plus, it looks pretty darn cool and has the convenient grid squares. I've made a *ton* of trees and brush model railway style, plus bought a few others that I found cheap. We have a ton of buildings, everything from cardboard stuff (like Mordheim ruins to Microtactix dark streets cardstock buildings for modern) to store-bought stone buildings which I painted, to some home-made foamcore/styro buildings, to some very nice Hirst Arts home-cast buildings that Fludogg and Pierceatwork have created (with tremendous amounts of time and expertise). We've collected vehicles, from resin wagons/medieval stuff to Star Wars AT-ST walkers/speeders to motorcycles to 1:48 toy cars that work great for Modern (including an 18-wheeler and a full set of construction vehicles, because Fludogg loves to steal bulldozers and front-end loaders to use as 'weapons'). We also have a painted collection of miniatures that numbers at least 400 (D&D, Star Wars, and Modern) if not a lot more, and quite a few of them have pretty decent paint jobs on them. On top of that, I have slowly collected and painted a huge pile of resin, plastic model, and toy accessories in everyting from GW, to Void, to Mystic Moldwyrks, to old army toys, to 1:48 models, to O-Scale railroad accessories for dressing up pretty much any scene (like, I have mailboxes, streetlights, telephone poles, phone booths, desks, chairs, tables, couches, bookcases, campfire scenery... well, you get the point). Pretty much, if the GM/DM calls for any piece of terrain more than once and we dont have it, my particular psychosis finds a way to subconsciously purchase, paint, build, or create it. I once build a couple bridges at OldDrewId's request out of 3' dowels, popsicle sticks, and balsa wood that were used to span multiple tables in our game so that we had a running combat (literally) that took up most of the room. I have a set of scale resin pirate ships so we can stage full naval battles.
We are well-terrained. We are well-supplied. We are terrain/mini psychotics,
the earls of dork-shire, the dukes of dork, absolute and unrepentant gaming geek deviants, but hold fairly normal lives outside of our little obsessions (we have little rules like 1) we never talk about fight club in public. 2) we never talk about fight club in public...)
And the sad part it, the above statements are only the tip of the iceberg of how crazy detailed we get about things sometimes ;^)
OldDrewId is the absolute game designer guy, he even worries about the ecology and daily life of wandering monsters, and thinks up the details for things like that even when he knows he'll never use it in-game. He can write a compelling drama, war story, or murder mystery, and never fails to make a game interesting.
