Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Mannahnin]

That's interesting. She made an agreement for arbitration with an entity that doesn't legally exist. Hmmmmm........

Pretty sure that's just the mechanism to register a trademark, similar to what we saw in the nuTSR case.

I'm sure the car dealership is still a legally-incorporated company with a tax ID from the IRS, which is what establishes them as existing. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to sign contracts.

 

[Ryujin]

Pretty sure that's just the mechanism to register a trademark, similar to what we saw in the nuTSR case.

I'm sure the car dealership is still a legally-incorporated company with a tax ID from the IRS, which is what establishes them as existing. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to sign contracts.

True, but I wonder if they might have missed a bet by not putting something like "123456 Inc, acting under the name...." in the contract might not end up being an issue. It at least bears legal scrutiny.

 

[RealAlHazred]

Confession: I do this occasionally, but not often. And when I do, I take pains to make the character fit nonetheless, so that the burden ISN’T solely on the GM.

I mean, every character must share spotlight time. As GM, it behooves me to make the game entertaining for everyone. That doesn't always require that spotlight time is exactly divided -- so long as everyone else is okay with it, and they usually will be if everyone is friends and enjoys the craziness going on, then it's fine. Entertainment is key.

But, for instance, I attended a playtest at a convention, where we were asked to write three specific sentences on an index card to describe our characters for a two-hour scenario. One of the other playtesters kept writing, and writing... and writing... She needed, eventually, another index card to get her character down. It delayed the playtest by fifteen, twenty minutes; and then another half an hour during character introductions to describe herself (the instruction had been, "Briefly describe your character in a sentence or two.")

That kind of thing is bad, and people like that should feel bad.

 

[Velderan]

I mean, every character must share spotlight time. As GM, it behooves me to make the game entertaining for everyone. That doesn't always require that spotlight time is exactly divided -- so long as everyone else is okay with it, and they usually will be if everyone is friends and enjoys the craziness going on, then it's fine. Entertainment is key.

But, for instance, I attended a playtest at a convention, where we were asked to write three specific sentences on an index card to describe our characters for a two-hour scenario. One of the other playtesters kept writing, and writing... and writing... She needed, eventually, another index card to get her character down. It delayed the playtest by fifteen, twenty minutes; and then another half an hour during character introductions to describe herself (the instruction had been, "Briefly describe your character in a sentence or two.")

That kind of thing is bad, and people like that should feel bad.

I wouldn't be willing to run an on-going campaign for someone that puts that much thought into their backstory, let alone a 2 hour convention playtest session.

I don't even want to know how someone that puts that much thought into their backstory would respond if that character was killed.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I wouldn't be willing to run an on-going campaign for someone that puts that much thought into their backstory, let alone a 2 hour convention playtest session.

I don't even want to know how someone that puts that much thought into their backstory would respond if that character was killed.

Yeah, this was at Metatopia, which is a convention made up entirely of playtests; the whole gamut of regular convention games get playtested there - boardgames, card games, rpgs, etc. Part of the way the timeslots are structured is that you'll have, say, two hours for the game itself, and then an hour or two feedback session where the players can tell the designer what worked, what didn't, etc. After this one, she stuck around and, I'm sure, talked the designer's ear off about her character and how the game should be designed for at least that hour or two. I don't know, I didn't want to hang out near her so I moved on.

 

[overgeeked]

I wouldn't be willing to run an on-going campaign for someone that puts that much thought into their backstory, let alone a 2 hour convention playtest session.

I don't even want to know how someone that puts that much thought into their backstory would respond if that character was killed.

I speak from experience when I say I’ve had players like that rage-quit when their beloved PC took a single point of damage. I absolutely do not understand this type of player.

 

[prabe]

Yeah, this was at Metatopia, which is a convention made up entirely of playtests; the whole gamut of regular convention games get playtested there - boardgames, card games, rpgs, etc. Part of the way the timeslots are structured is that you'll have, say, two hours for the game itself, and then an hour or two feedback session where the players can tell the designer what worked, what didn't, etc. After this one, she stuck around and, I'm sure, talked the designer's ear off about her character and how the game should be designed for at least that hour or two. I don't know, I didn't want to hang out near her so I moved on.

Even if the designer/s wanted to make the game more ... compatible, I guess, with that sort of character thinking, that's almost certainly not what playtesting should be about. At least, it's perfectly reasonable for it not to be.

I haven't (yet) had too much problem with backstories in the games I've run. Occasionally someone will get a little overattached to something, but it's never been a big deal that I've noticed.

 

[dragoner]

I have had the opposite, with a player had a long back story, they thanked me for not fudging the dice when their character died.

 

[Mannahnin]

Colville had a nice video on backstories last week.

 

[overgeeked]

Colville had a nice video on backstories last week.

Yeah. It's a great one. I thought about posting it when it dropped but didn't want to deal with the push back.