Category: Memes

I can answer these in any order I want! And I want to do WISH 93 right now.

Does joining a game with a lot of background thrill or intimidate you? What do you do to try to learn the background, or to compensate for not having it? If you GM, how do you help newcomers to a background-heavy game? What has worked for you as a player/GM, and what hasn’t?

I kind of like it as an opportunity to play supporting character. I always feel a bit of pressure, when starting a new game, to help establish group dynamics and character. As a newbie to a big game, I can play a supporting role and feel satisfied — I can be there to support someone else’s characterization happily. That’s a lot of fun for me.

It’s also convenient as a method of getting real newbie characterization. The other PCs know things which mine do not, which means I can play wide-eyed or naive effectively. “Look, there can’t possibly be UFOs.” That sort of thing. It’s a dynamic that’s hard to get in a new campaign because everyone’s on equal ground.

I guess in general I’m saying that it’s fun to leverage unequal OOC ground to provide good unequal ground roleplaying in character.

WISH #92 asks:

Have you ever gotten burned out as a gamer? What did you do to combat burnout? Which things you tried helped, and which ones didn’t? Which ones would you recommend to a gamer with burnout?

I actually feel a little burned out right now — not a lot, but a bit — so good timing. Hm.

I think that burnout is a life phenomenon for me, not a gaming-specific phenomenon. My work is keeping me too busy to think about gaming as much as I’d like, and there’re a bunch of other things swirling around, and I have trouble working up the enthusiasm to generate characters or think about GMing or anything. Which saddens me. (Yes, this is a typical symptom of depression; yes, I know.)

Mostly I just nudge myself to press on regardless. I don’t skip gaming even if I want to. I grind out character descriptions no matter how I feel about them, because I know they’re better than I give myself credit for. I read gaming material that’s given me joy in the past. I spent a while this week transcribing NPCs from Classic Organizations into Hero Designer, just to get myself back in the groove of thinking about HERO. And all that works pretty well.

WISH #90 asks:

What do you think about system updates (Paranoia XP, Amber 2.0, DnD 3.0/3.5) and conversions (d20 Silver Age Sentinels, GURPS Traveller)? What about world/setting updates that result in system reboots (the end of the Age of Darkness)? Do you buy them, run them, or use them for resources? Why or why not?

I don’t have a generic answer. I really liked the D&D 3.0 update. I didn’t much care about the D&D 3.5 update. Many of the Traveller updates sucked. The Hero 5th Edition update was great. The Vampire Revised update was quite good, for entirely different reasons. Etc.

I like it when an update is a chance to fix real rules problems or to tighten up the setting. Otherwise I don’t like them. Vampire Revised did a brilliant job at making the setting better without invalidating a lot of old play. Hero Fifth fixed several rules problems and vastly improved the presentation of the rules.

I look forward to World of Darkness 2.0, or whatever it’s officially called, because I think they will do a good rules revamp with the example of the Aeon Trinity system and because I think the new setting may rock. If the new setting doesn’t rock, I will probably not so much care about the rules revamps, though — my interest in WoD is primarily setting-driven.