#RPGaDay 14 and 15
Day 14 - Your dream team of people you used to game with
There are individual people who are absolutely awesome in their own ways...great sources of ad-lib story ideas, knowledgeable manipulators of rules, injectors of chaos, mediators...
The problem with awesome individuals is that sometimes they don't work well as a team. The US Olympic Basketball team might be filled with the best of the best, but they aren't trained to work together, and the sum is less than you'd expect from such premium parts. The same almost always works for the Prime Minister's 11 as a cricket team, awesome individuals used to getting the limelight and glory, sometimes rewsentful when they have to share it.
If I could pick a bunch of players, each specialists in their own type of gaming, contributing to a dream team, I'd have to tailor a few teams based on the type of game being played. I can think of a bunch of players who would be awesome at streamlining the crunch in a fiddly and complex game system, I can think of a completely different group of players who ad-lib really well and probably wouldn't open a game book at all through a short-run/six-session campaign. But I know full well that certain members of each "dream team" do not get on well with one another, and if I were to combine members from different dream teams, I know that the game would go downhill even quicker.
For me, the social aspect of roleplaying games is paramount. I enjoy diversity in games, and as I mentioned in an earlier question, I've learnt to instinctively play the player... I'm not necessarily proud of this, but I know how to react to most players I've dealt with in the past. That's why I like running games at conventions, and joining in games with other groups at conventions (where I might not kjnow everyone in the group). Thios means there are wildcards in the mix, new people to experience, new combinations of play that lead to new stories.
I try not to dwell in a past of "might have beens".
The problem with awesome individuals is that sometimes they don't work well as a team. The US Olympic Basketball team might be filled with the best of the best, but they aren't trained to work together, and the sum is less than you'd expect from such premium parts. The same almost always works for the Prime Minister's 11 as a cricket team, awesome individuals used to getting the limelight and glory, sometimes rewsentful when they have to share it.
If I could pick a bunch of players, each specialists in their own type of gaming, contributing to a dream team, I'd have to tailor a few teams based on the type of game being played. I can think of a bunch of players who would be awesome at streamlining the crunch in a fiddly and complex game system, I can think of a completely different group of players who ad-lib really well and probably wouldn't open a game book at all through a short-run/six-session campaign. But I know full well that certain members of each "dream team" do not get on well with one another, and if I were to combine members from different dream teams, I know that the game would go downhill even quicker.
For me, the social aspect of roleplaying games is paramount. I enjoy diversity in games, and as I mentioned in an earlier question, I've learnt to instinctively play the player... I'm not necessarily proud of this, but I know how to react to most players I've dealt with in the past. That's why I like running games at conventions, and joining in games with other groups at conventions (where I might not kjnow everyone in the group). Thios means there are wildcards in the mix, new people to experience, new combinations of play that lead to new stories.
I try not to dwell in a past of "might have beens".
Day 15 - Your best source of inspiration for RPGs
I love bad movies.
Actually, that's not completely accurate.
I love movies where there is clever worlbuilding, even if the major narrative and plot leaves a lot to be desired. Jupiter Ascending, Bounty Killer, Prometheus, the second and third Matrix movies ...a movie can be a great way to get everyone on the same page quickly with regard to a setting. You spend the first session a\watching it and coming up with character ideas while this happens, maybe even making the characters during the movie. Then you tell the stories of this world that didn't appear in the movie, perhaps using a specific scene as a launch point for the new story, perhaps simply encountering some of the places and lesser members of the cast.
Movies are good because they're generally self contained, but if everyone is willing to sit down with a comic, or knows a particular historical period, the same idea can be applied. Use the common knowledge as a starting point and deviate the story on a tangent from there.
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