Kid Socrates
First Post
Horribly clunky title, I know. Okay, to give some background for the question, so it makes sense.
I ran a game that recently came to a premature end -- my attempt at a homebrew from almost the ground up. I had the idea in my head to create a Final Fantasy d20 game, and I couldn't find one online that I wanted. Both "The Returners" and the project linked off EN World were based in fantasy times, and I wanted a world like VII or VIII's with materia and all that stuff. The game itself was pretty high-power, for just two people, so I built the game completely around them, and spent about a year figuring all the specifics out. I've got pages and pages of things I wrote (at work) for it.
One of my players moved back east for reasons of his own, and so the game (designed for 28 sessions, most likely) ended at 10 sessons, on a major cliffhanger. It depressed me for a good month -- I sank so much work and energy into the Final Fantasy: Apotheosis campaign, only to have it end, and the game couldn't be run as a solo for the remaining player; there was too much for both of them, and it was designed as a teamwork thing. So the other player and I decided just to let it die. Then his work schedule changed, so I pretty much had every evening free while he was at work, so we couldn't do another solo campaign, and I don't know anyone here in Overland Park, so I don't know where or how to find another game to join and test out.
Whenever I planned a session, I printed out 9-10 pages of plot stuff (half of which wasn't touched, as they'd skip this but then go do that), pages for the villains/NPCs/what-have-you, and then I'd spend an hour getting music set up. We gamed next to my computer for the music, because, well, music is important in Final Fantasy. They picked out themes for their characters, I picked out themes for everything else (all instrumentals), and I'd switch from one to the other while gaming. I had a folder on my desktop that had all the mp3s in it, named appropriately.
When my player left, I decided to do one last Apotheosis project as far as the game itself went, and I basically got pretty silly with it. I took some of the songs, and arranged them in a playlist, to commemorate the game. But I couldn't decide which ones to do, so I kept trying to fit more in, until I finally decided to just create the Final Fantasy: Apotheosis Official Soundtrack. 4 CDs, 65 tracks, with each CD having a name. Disc One was "A Sword and A Staff," Disc Two was "Prisoners of Fate," Disc Three "Into A Time of Disorder," and Disc Four "The Omega Sessions," with music from how I estimated the game would end with them on their current path. The music's pretty varied -- Linkin Park to Trigun to Cowboy Bebop to Final Fantasy to Chrono Cross to even Riverdance. I decided to send the soundtrack to both of my players -- the one that's here already knows about it, and even though things are tense with the old player, he's still my friend, and I plan on sending it to him, too.
It wasn't until I finished the CDs that I realized I made a 4-CD set OST to a freakin' tabletop game. And it didn't feel that weird to me.
So my question -- what has anyone else done like this for a game? What level of obscene preparation have other DMs gone to? This works for players, too -- what have you done for a game, for your character, to really set him apart, or contribute to the game?
This is Matt, who still can't figure out how Riverdance wound up on his CD.
I ran a game that recently came to a premature end -- my attempt at a homebrew from almost the ground up. I had the idea in my head to create a Final Fantasy d20 game, and I couldn't find one online that I wanted. Both "The Returners" and the project linked off EN World were based in fantasy times, and I wanted a world like VII or VIII's with materia and all that stuff. The game itself was pretty high-power, for just two people, so I built the game completely around them, and spent about a year figuring all the specifics out. I've got pages and pages of things I wrote (at work) for it.
One of my players moved back east for reasons of his own, and so the game (designed for 28 sessions, most likely) ended at 10 sessons, on a major cliffhanger. It depressed me for a good month -- I sank so much work and energy into the Final Fantasy: Apotheosis campaign, only to have it end, and the game couldn't be run as a solo for the remaining player; there was too much for both of them, and it was designed as a teamwork thing. So the other player and I decided just to let it die. Then his work schedule changed, so I pretty much had every evening free while he was at work, so we couldn't do another solo campaign, and I don't know anyone here in Overland Park, so I don't know where or how to find another game to join and test out.
Whenever I planned a session, I printed out 9-10 pages of plot stuff (half of which wasn't touched, as they'd skip this but then go do that), pages for the villains/NPCs/what-have-you, and then I'd spend an hour getting music set up. We gamed next to my computer for the music, because, well, music is important in Final Fantasy. They picked out themes for their characters, I picked out themes for everything else (all instrumentals), and I'd switch from one to the other while gaming. I had a folder on my desktop that had all the mp3s in it, named appropriately.
When my player left, I decided to do one last Apotheosis project as far as the game itself went, and I basically got pretty silly with it. I took some of the songs, and arranged them in a playlist, to commemorate the game. But I couldn't decide which ones to do, so I kept trying to fit more in, until I finally decided to just create the Final Fantasy: Apotheosis Official Soundtrack. 4 CDs, 65 tracks, with each CD having a name. Disc One was "A Sword and A Staff," Disc Two was "Prisoners of Fate," Disc Three "Into A Time of Disorder," and Disc Four "The Omega Sessions," with music from how I estimated the game would end with them on their current path. The music's pretty varied -- Linkin Park to Trigun to Cowboy Bebop to Final Fantasy to Chrono Cross to even Riverdance. I decided to send the soundtrack to both of my players -- the one that's here already knows about it, and even though things are tense with the old player, he's still my friend, and I plan on sending it to him, too.
It wasn't until I finished the CDs that I realized I made a 4-CD set OST to a freakin' tabletop game. And it didn't feel that weird to me.
So my question -- what has anyone else done like this for a game? What level of obscene preparation have other DMs gone to? This works for players, too -- what have you done for a game, for your character, to really set him apart, or contribute to the game?
This is Matt, who still can't figure out how Riverdance wound up on his CD.
