DRAMA!

People can jump to conclusions very quickly. Even as you see one person after another being led to assume the same thing, you need to know exactly what's real information and what someone is just assuming. And realistically, let others know that too. Assumptions are often wrong, but if we treat them otherwise before actually knowing, real feelings get hurt.
In other news, sometimes it's better just to keep something to yourself if you everyone will jump to the same unsubstantiated conclusion. Another lesson for me to file in the "why the hell did that just happen" file.
Ran a session last night. Should be an interesting campaign, but now I need to write more. When the hell will I have time for that...maybe Spring Break. Maybe.

Random!

Randomness

On the heels of this, I kind of want to run a 'random' Cyberpunk game. Roll for role, straight dice for stats (either straight or assigned, depending on how cruel I am), and then use fast/dirty rules for inventory, and maybe also skills. No lifepath, instead, write a description of how the hell the character happened.

Damn, now I really want to do this. If I can make it streamlined enough...

OK. The campaign will be entitled 'Disposable Heroes', and character death may be extremely frequent. Now to go reacquaint myself with the fast/dirty generator.

New thinking

In the throes of my recent illness, I had some time to reconcile my personal caveats with a fantasy setting. Now I have some great ideas.

I don't want to give away too many details. That being said, the concept is the world after a cataclysm has ripped away at the fabric of the universe. In this setting, the fabric metaphor is taken a little literally.

There's the steampunk influence, the post-apocalyptic influence, there's magic, and there's some interesting religious elements. With some variations on material I've already written and some liberal usage of concepts from GURPS Thaumatology, I think it'll be both a unique and very cool setting. My plan is to write more over winter break.

My Weekend

Oh, my weekend...
Well, after classes being over on Friday, I went out with friends, then came home and slept til 11. After that, I proceeded to gather the troops for my GURPS one-shot. It went beautifully, though it took 7 hours to get everyone there (1), make characters (3) and play (3). Still, it was a lot of fun, and we're going to try and play again during finals.
After that, I went to a party with some of the group. No details there, but...

I went to sleep at 9:00 AM Sunday morning. It was epic.

Should have saved the onomatopoeia for this week

In summary:
I want to hit something really hard with something really hard. I am very, very, very frustrated right now.

But, on the sane half of my brain:
So, I sent out an email, and am actually going to start a campaign sometime soon. I've done some very interesting planning, and already have four responses from interested people. I'll probably send them out more detailed instructions regarding character creation at the end of the weekend

Speaking of weekend, I'm being Dexter's navigator for a road rally this weekend, going from Uniontown PA back to Pittsburgh. It should be a lot of fun, especially if I have some wheel time, as driving is one way I can take out my frustration.

Well, that was ADD all over. I'll try to be coherent next week.

Be careful what you blog...

...Because sometimes, people will find it more offensive than you originally intended. And just because it's under a cut doesn't mean they won't read it.

>_>

<_<

Yeah. Party soon. Should be amazing.
I've continued to brainstorm for my post-apoc campaign. I may try to write a little more for it before unleashing it on anyone, though. I've also decided I'm not going to be running with my full group this semester. Too many other things to worry about right now. I may run a smaller game, but only if I feel ready to do so with what I'm writing.

Bunch 'o Stuff

I've started writing and brainstorming my post-apocalyptic campaign ideas. It should be pretty interesting, and I think I'm going to take a different approach to running it, once I do run it. This should be more organic, and less plot-centered. The one good thing I see immediately about this choice of genre is a good amount of freedom, and more immediate motivations than would be provided in a fully developed city. I think it should be a lot of fun.

All in all, I need more motivation to do things. I'm still not entirely back in school mode.

Too much in my brain...frustration is still in the lead.

'Congratulations, Daniel. You've just completed your first D&D campaign.'

I got the weirdest creativity injection today. Now, for some reason, I really want to run a game again.
Based on what I saw, I was reminded of things that made me enjoy roleplaying. Additionally, it just reminded me why the medium is so neat.
Roleplaying games empower players to do things that they could not otherwise do in real life. They give a sense of accomplishment. Both of these need to be at least understood by the GM, otherwise someone won't be having fun.
The GM, on the other side, gets to tell a story, and even revel a bit in the player's accomplishments. And write a bit, and act a bit.
It's not much more complex than that...and I'm afraid I've been making it more complicated.
I have a great idea for writing a post-apoc/high adventure game. It still isn't formed in my head completely, but it'll be a lot of fun if it goes off properly. And I don't think I'm aiming for any deep intrigue stuff this time. It's clear my group isn't terribly interested, and I don't do it so well. But running and gunning is fun, and given a nice bad guy to deal with and some complications along the way, it could be a short, sweet, and badass campaign. Now if only I could write it before September.

More on this

Once you have gamed the system, and done all of the necessary quests to get your magic boots and your divine steed. Once you’ve reached the top level and have nowhere to go. Once you become bored enough to just stop playing, they may begin to realize that the point of RPGs wasn’t just to kill things and take their stuff, it was the storytelling and the friends that they made that mattered. No MMO has ever held the possibilities of those little paper books. Until an MMO does, which will probably occur in my lifetime, abandoning the market and making the games harder to play is probably in everyone’s worst interests. That hasn’t stopped them though. I mentioned to a friend that 4e reminded me of Second Edition, and he commented back that it reminded him of Chanmail. I don’t think we need D&D to be a tactical wargame, but it is.

-Ross Winn

I like Ross Winn. His column on RPGNet is interesting, and he wrote material for Cyberpunk 2020, which makes him awesome. He seems to share my opinion on 4e. I play roleplaying games to tell stories, and to build characters. If I wanted to kill monsters, I have several computer games to choose from.
Speaking of telling stories, I'm considering starting to write one. It'll probably be long, possibly even novel-length, but I'm not sure. My plan is to set the story in Dubai, mostly because of the city's rich and interesting social dynamic, as well as it being the perfect place to set a modern-day cyberpunk story. I'm still brainstorming on details, but this is the first time fiction writing has excited me in a long time.

The critics have spoken

D&D 4e Review by David Banuelos on RPGNet

This explains fairly well why I no longer have any interest in D&D. Too bad.

A Summer's Worth of Random

This may be long, but more because I have a lot to say, less because I want to rant about it.

I started my (and I mean my) project at work. Just started, but it's already totally worth it. I'm an engineer, bitch! All in all, I'll say I really like this job. I would definitely work at ArcelorMittal if they offered me a job. Not going to commit until I see who else offers me jobs, but we'll see...

D&D 4th came out a few weeks ago, and the reviews are starting to leak out, in both the 'love it' and 'hate it' camps. I'm going to say now that, because of the type of gamer I am, I'm probably never going to play D&D again, barring nostalgia or promises of free alcohol. 4e is not the only reason, but it's definitely one of them.

As I've played more RPGs, I've kind of learned what I like in terms of gaming. I like stories, I like settings. I like images in my mind (which sucks because I can't describe for shit), and I like seeing character sheets turning into real people. I like wanting to write stories about characters when games are done. I like development, I don't care for advancement. I like conflict and even violence, I don't care for 'combat'. I like competency and concept, I don't like min-maxing and point builds.

If you're going to use the GNS model (which, flawed as it may be, boils things down pretty well), I'm halfway between N and S, narrativist (or dramatist, to some) and simulationist. I like story and conflict, and to a degree, I like realism. I mean, I can't play a fantasy game if I don't understand the consistency of the world, physically possible or not. And of course, I like stories. I like telling stories, which is one reason I GM so often.

D&D was born out of wargaming, and has been based on fantasy characters killing each other since it started. Gygax turned it into what it was because he saw more potential: potential to tell stories, potential to make characters that grow and develop. Of course, when his game started making shit-tons of money, there was no need and no reason to develop it out any further from wargaming than it already was. Its roots in the preexisting hobby no doubt made it more popular, and there were others who would do the boundary-pushing later.

Now, I don't like wargames. I'm not going to bash Warhammer or anything like that, it's just not my cup of tea. Risk is as far as I'll go when it comes to strategy, and I'll admit I like Risk quite a bit, as well as Chess. What I find interesting comparing Chess to something like Warhammer is that when the unit equation is made complicated, gameplay is simplified. The more wonky shit people put into wargames with all the different units and everything else doesn't make the game deeper. Chess is a game that becomes intellectually interesting because of its simplicity. It's easy to learn, hard to master. Warhammer is harder to learn, but after that, all you need is 1000 bucks to buy powerful shit and you're golden. You don't tweak armies like that. You choose a strategy and then stick with it. Yes, it's interesting to pick apart army builds and figure out weak spots, but you know what? I don't need to play to do that. And the play itself isn't necessarily more interesting than, say, Command and Conquer. C&C is cheaper, too.

So D&D 4th has further optimized toward the MMO crowd and the wargame crowd. They'll make a lot of money, I'm sure. I have no doubt that mechanically, D&D is now a simpler system to comprehend. It's also so far from what I'd consider enjoyable as an RPG, I know for a fact I'm not going to even bother to play it. It's not what I want.


Finally, after I scared you all off with the nerd speak:
I guess I did kind of want to rant, and to a degree, I did, about D&D. But you know? I should have learned a long time ago that vomiting words into the internet does little good.
I guess I just feel like bitching about relationships because I feel so removed from people I care about right now. People or person, I guess, depending on how widely you paint. It's only June... not a great time to start looking forward to mid-August.

Scary Things

So, I said something scary to someone today. Well, scary for me.
"After this semester, I don't have anything left to learn in MechE."
I mean, not literally, but it is pretty true. I have a project course and a lab left, meaning no more brand new course material for MechE.
I'm getting really close, and it's scary.
Speaking of getting really close...
My last relationship ended by kind of fizzling. At some point, you're no longer, well, attracted to the other person, for lack of a better term. It happens. I've been in a funk before, and it happened a bit again, where I was thinking 'do you ever meet a person you don't grow tired of?'

The answer is unequivocally yes.
That being said, everything happens for a reason. It's foolhardy to expect that whatever reason you had before is just going to disappear. I'm thinking I should tread slower, and lighter.

Gaming kind of on hiatus while I finish out the semester. Don't know exactly what I'll do over the summer, I had an idea, I'm still playing around with doing something different. Still planning to run Ebmist next year, but I know I won't have the time or motivation to finish writing until summer.

In so many areas of life, I'm not going to commit to anything just yet.

NERD!

Yup. The sordid evidence of my biggest hobby.

Struck a Nerve

I kind of had a revelation as to why I blog, or at least why I have been.
When some kind of stress-inducing event occurs, my first instinct is to tell everyone. This made my childhood a bit easier because I told my parents everything. And in high school, I had a livejournal and wrote a lot of random shit. Kind of wish I had a copy of it, because random shit is sometimes fun to look back on, in a twisted way.
Anyhoo. Now, when some things happen within the fraternity, they stay within the fraternity. That's how it is. But when things both happen within the fraternity, and stress me out, as is wont to occur in some circumstances, my outlet is gone. I can't talk to anyone outside the situation. And that means that the stress and/or anxiety sits there with no outlet. I'm a little frustrated about this. And of course, I can't say anything about it. So it goes.

To cap it off, this weekend I also ran a very intense (and quite good) session. So, thinking both about where I'm going with it, as well as how to consider avoiding some mistakes I made, a lot is already in my head. Not to mention, I'm still doing schoolwork. Well, yay.

In other news, I'm addicted to The Movies. As I start to make my own movies, I can watch my free time evaporate. But it's cool. The whole house is under its spell, and some very funny and bizarre movies are floating around online due to my brothers (Joel, I'm looking at you...)

Me with free time? No....

So, today is the first Valentine's Day ever where I haven't been single.

In many ways, it's exactly the same as every other Valentine's Day.
But somehow, it's better. Hard to say. All the random lovey-dovey crap that's everywhere made me smile instead of cringe. It's just a change of attitude.

Ah well. I've been running my new campaign, and at two sessions in, it's going really well. I have lots of ideas, and different ways to make everything split off in multiple directions. Already, session 2 was a prime example of 'woah, I didn't expect you to do that'. Although there was a bit of rules hiccup, we got it settled, and we'll be ready to go again in two weeks (my brother is here this weekend, so I'm taking a session off from GMing to show him around CMU). I've started to write up session 3, and I've realized that in only two sessions, I'm already seeing the complexity level of the plot I want to foster increase. With what I have planned next, hopefully things will get less one-sided in terms of combat and player participation. I've also done some of the bookkeeping I want, so keeping track of ammo and damage is working out. I really want to figure out what the rule is regarding damaging armor, but with the blunt trauma rules, and other things, everything seems to be pretty balanced.
Moral of the story: You can't purchase skills with limitations.

And finally, weekend

It felt like this week took forever. But now, it's Friday, which means Hillel tonight, chilling and chillaxing, then gaming tomorrow.
My new RPG friend is www.printfreegraphpaper.com. From there, you can print hex sheets! So, I'm going to print a bunch of hex sheets for tomorrow. It should be awesome. Also, tomorrow to me signifies the actual start of this campaign. I'm finally seeing places where things can go in a lot of different directions. I'm actually excited for the possibility of diverging away from my original plans. It could be really good.
This semester has started out being a lot of work. In the next two weeks I really have to push and get ahead of the game, so I can spend next weekend (16th and 17th) with my brother, and not have to worry about any work hanging over my head.

Post 300!

This is madness!
Madness? THIS...IS...BLOGSPOT!!!

Yeah, 300 posts. Woo.

So, I still have been having major RP ADD with regards to settings. I've had a bunch of ideas, but am still rapidly flitting from one idea to another with little regard for compatibility or continuity. After seeing the previews for GURPS High-Tech, I'm quite aware that a lot of fodder exists for a modern setting. I kind of want to do a modern setting with some fantasy or horror elements, but overall something pretty gritty. I've been able to narrow a bit onto my next bit of GMing, which will be an espionage PbP. That being said, I've been having a lot of ideas that I want to work into something new. I think for my next game, depending on what I want to do, I may limit it to four or five players, just choosing the first four/five that submit to me a character with the right depth of field that fits into the concept. Hopefully, no one will take it personally if I tell them a concept doesn't fit...and that wouldn't preclude them from participating, necessarily. Anyways, I'll probably get another journal and use it exclusively for fiction and RPG stuff. They sell quadrille journals, so that may be awesome. I can also use it to write down ideas during other games. Dan's game will start soon, and though my character concept isn't completely tacked down, I think the game will be pretty cool. Anyway, I'm going to go get that journal now, since I thought about it.

"It's Complicated"

I blame Facebook for giving me any incentive to care about others' relationship drama.

In other news, this roleplaying forum has given me a new place to vomit all of my cool ideas on. I want to see how this wiki thing works, though I'm a bit scared about what will happen. In all honesty, the fun of it is seeing where it goes. It's not going to be as totally off the wall as Ghyll, but since we don't have as many people, it wouldn't be efficient to start from random points. If I ever knew 100 interested people, though...
I'm probably going to make the process a little different, now that I've had some time to think about it. For one, there will most likely be an upper bound on the number of pages one can write in a round, to prevent any one person from being more prolific than anyone else. Also, there may be a stage called 'gameplay' instead of or after the last round, where aspects of the wiki are updated and changed as things happen ingame, or to account for possible additions to the world dynamic in the form of backstory or revealed history.
All in all though, I think my set of rules will work well. Seeing how everything emerges, we can decide exactly how kooky and/or cool this will be.

NERD! NERD!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/4521/DD-v3-5-Character-Sheet-All-Class-Compatible-Color-Coded

Click on "Listen to a recording of this document".
Pure Gold.

I figured out what my favorite type of music is

My favorite type of music is live music.
I mean, I'll listen to anything, but a good concert is almost always more enjoyable.
Live jazz? Sweet. Live Hip-hop? Saw Atmosphere, that was pretty sick. Live Reggae? Matisyahu. And so on...
Saw these bands tonight, Marking Twain and We The Living. Both on the indie side, only moderately within my typical circle of interests, but live, they both had great stage presence, and put on a good show, so the type of music wasn't a big deal.

Tomorrow, we finally meet to start the space campaign. I am so fucking stoked.