Why won’t Paramount put a million dollars per episode into this
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Mothra have you ever in your life quit a ttrpg group, or has some fell spirit cursed you to be a ttrpg sineater, maniacally powering through any game offered to you until everyone else quits first
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Well, my favorite thing to do is to goof around with friends, so it’s a minor miracle when someone you know decides to run a ttrpg, a game where the main premise is to goof around in the space (unless you are an insane person trying to win the game). You have to jump at the chance and put your entire ass into it.
That said, I’m also too dumb and stubborn to leave a game when it has ceased to be in any way fun.
There’s a few reasons for this:
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I feel like it’s as much on the players as the GM to make a ttrpg fun. You can genuinely fill an entire session with goofing around if the GM is completely checked out (I am in one such game right now), or in the case of the Trek game, I can basically do a one-on-one session with the GM, and it’s still pretty fun. To take an example, I was in a really dull Greyhawk game where me and another player started becoming snake oil salesmen and that thread kept me engaged the whole time. I’m gonna be there at the table in good faith no matter how bad it gets, until the GM or the players arrive at the decision that they want to engage or leave.
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In the cases of particularly rough GMing, like when the GM seems to want to actively torture us (that “realistic” modern game a few years back), there’s this sense of solidarity with everyone else in the game, like, in the adventure and in real life, we’re in this together, we’re gonna get through this as a team. This is where I just make my own fun with side character stuff like this or by suffering comedically with the other players.
I’m also stubborn if it feels like I’m being unfairly put into the iron maiden. I will just allow the torture to run its course, which usually obliterates my character, and start creating the next character, which usually resolves in the GM having gotten whatever it is out of their system and having found it unsatisfying. That’s just a general tactic I do of denying satisfaction to people that are being inexplicably sadistic.
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The toughest ones are when you are railroaded and don’t really have any opportunity to make your own fun, and the railroad is also not fun. This is a dab of hell for me because essentially you are at work, ensuring that your every action is delivering the optimal DPS, you are maximizing the use of all resources properly, and you are keeping the chatter to a minimum. This is like crawling through a field of broken glass in my estimation. These are the games I should quit but I usually just try to imagine the minds of my fellow players and glean where the enjoyment is flowing from for them. If the thesis of Neon Genesis Evangelion is that we tragically cannot truly know each other’s minds no matter how we struggle, I behold it in every way at those tabletops. This is me watching the captain turn down the call to adventure again, my eyes wide, not believing what I am seeing. Just these moments of foundational disagreement on what we’re here to do at the table.
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Gotta say this perspective is so good, you helped make that apoc world one shot I ran recently such a delight because you were throwing out fun ideas right from character creation
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Next game I run you definitely automatically have a slot, no man has ever deserved it more
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any possibility for some rpg time at the meetup?
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I know Tulpa is bringing Fiasco. Last year scratch ran a couple white hack (black hack? whatever, lightweight OSR thing) sessions. Prolly similar things will happen
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As cuba said, I’m bringing fiasco, I’m also thinking of at least one other game to bring
my goal for the meetup is to have some ttrpg fun with as little prep as possible
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Excellent. I would have offered to run something but all of the games I have require just too much prep for me to want to bother.
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i have the shab al hiri roach
and de profundis
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Have y’all ever heard of a “West Marches” game? I sort of blundered into an exceptionally poorly run version of it, but, curious how it’s actually meant to function.
The prime idea is that it is player driven. Until a group of players tell the GM what they want to do, there is no scheduled session to just show up and play at - but even this has been thrown out the window at a lot of tables with regular play slots.
In this version, nobody knows how the game is going to work, most of all the GM.
The GM: “I’m trying to find out what works for me too.”
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scratch either ran one or prepped one a few years back! might not’ve gotten much past character creation
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I’ve never actually been in a proper west marches game but I have been in many games inspired by the west marches format and I feel like it has been a big influence on my own GMing
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never played west marches but i love a hex crawl
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I think the key to understanding a west marches (I’ve never been in one either lol) is that it’s really an alternative form of scheduling, not play, mostly. You can run a sandbox hexcrawl in a plotless OSRy way for 4 people on game night or whatever; that’s not a west marches game, that’s just one venerable flavor of regular tradgame. The player-driven recruitment style has some implications for GM prep and between-session player downtime, but when you actually come together at the table and plumb a dungeon or explore some hexes you’re doing 98% of the same stuff you’d do in a normal game. It’s a scaffolding, not a whole new experience.
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Can I play?
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My best friend used to run a lot of our games very similarly because we didn’t have a consistent group most of the time. But also she used to make us play these games where she was coming up with the rules in real time too which is what I really miss. Shadowrun without any defined combat rules before the combat starts is hilarious. It’s already a game where shit happens randomly. The DM is making up rules so you can do cool shit… she’s letting the entire party commit suicide by making bad decisions without stopping them…real democratic roleplaying
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The Black Hack games last year were a variation on West Marches – there was a shared map between the parties and what one group did influenced the world for everybody else. We didn’t play enough sessions for that to really come out – I’ll bring Black Hack and some dice again and maybe we can try something similar.
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Yeah I was counting this one as an inspired by west marches in my head
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