Tick Tock
We're coming up on a changing of the guard, I think. People's schedules are changing, including mine, and I forsee a major alteration in my regular gaming schedule, probably within the next month.
Not sure what I think of that.
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We're coming up on a changing of the guard, I think. People's schedules are changing, including mine, and I forsee a major alteration in my regular gaming schedule, probably within the next month.
Not sure what I think of that.
Turn of a Friendly Die: WISH 14: Cross-Gender Play
What do you think about cross-gender characters (i.e., men playing female characters and women playing male characters)? What about GMs playing them as NPCs?
Wow, this could be a long post.
In my 'regular' gaming group (by which I mean the dozen or so people with whom I game regularly in one genre or another), there are quite a number of people who (either infrequently or invariably) play cross-gender characters. I'm going to talk about them in turn and my response to them, and contrast them in turn with some of the folks that never play cross-gender (in my experience).
Juli
Juli's probably the poster-child for successful male characterization (see Lysander in the TiHE pages for more info). She almost never plays females (and rarely plays anyone who isn't a fighter/warrior/athlete of some sort), and although her men tend to be... comfortably in touch with their baser interests, they all come off 'right'. A little rough around the edges, not much good in a social setting, but ultimately with a heart of gold... maybe a lot like the guys she tends to surround herself with. Her portrayals are honest, visceral, and from the gut: she simply is the guy she's playing, and while she's playing them, she whole-heartedly feels the way a guy would feel in that situation -- her portrayal is emotional in a large sense. It works. It seems odd to say it, but when Juli's playing, she's often playing a large part of herself, which is odd to say of a happily married woman playing beach-bums in chainmail :)
She plays guys so well that one of her characters inspired one of my favorite characters to play: Tye, who is very much in that 'lopsided grin bright blue eyes' mold.
Dave H
Dave is all about subtle body language. He's created... lesse, three four female characters (out of six total?) for one or another of my games, and what I take out of almost all of them is that he puts a lot of effort into the subtleties conveyed visually by a character. His chinese cat-girl looks like a chinese cat-girl, and is quite different, visually, then Della, a sort of slightly-cherubic Beru-with-a-blaster pistol newlywed adventurer he runs for some of our Star Wars stuff. His portrayals are always carefully considered, and the more complicated the scene, the more he thinks about how the character in question would react. This is a very different method than Juli, but it also works, and it's great fun to catch his little 'tells' that he's planted here and there.
Dave G
Dave's played a few women either in games I'm running, playing, or both. His portrayals are a great contradiction for me: he's very comfortable playing something of a ham in these situations, and his female characters are always a little over the top. I don't necessarily consider them sexist -- I guess I'm curious to know if women do, but I think someone would say something if they did -- in some ways it's the same question that's raised in my mind when I see a woman playing a 'flaming' gay man. The contradiction? he's playing a... almost a parody (but a parody that certainly exists in literature and other media), and I like more honest characterizations, but he plays it so well that I still enjoy it. Does it work? YMMV.
Margie
Initially, I didn't list Margie as one of my cross-gender players. Then I realized that, of the six games I've GM'd with her in them, she's played four male characters. I had to wonder what it meant that I forgot. Upon consideration, I think it comes down to this: each of her characters have certain important characteristics, but none of these key character bits hinge on the sex of the character (understandably, Dave H approaches his character concepts in a similar way). In her case, the sex of the character is merely part of the whole picture.
Jackie
Riiiiight. Jackie's obviously not one of the cross-gender players. She plays women because she finds strong female characters interesting. Males aren't. The reason I mention her here is that her characters do exhibit some of the polarization one sometimes sees in cross-gender characters: professional virgins with no interest in romance, or very sexually aggressive characters.
Me
Well, I'm not going to sit back here and just point fingers at everyone else now, am I?
Me as a player
I've only come up with one character that just seemed to 'need' to be female. That's Sarah Parker, aka "Bombshell", the team-leader and group 'brick' for Dave Hill's super's game. She's sort of an amalgamation of Fairchild and Alias (the TV show, not the comic), and as such, there was a certain... sensitivity that I needed in the character that seemed to be female in nature.
I doubt I pulled it off in the flesh. I didn't do the sorts of female tells that Dave does, I wasn't 'in' the character the way Juli is, and Sarah's not a vamp, so using Dave G's technique was right out -- I suppose, like Margie's characters, most of the femininity of the character was in my head. (When you can lift 170 tons, there isn't a lot of waifishness to portray.)
Also, people just don't look at me and instinctively use the female pronoun set.
I'd love to write the character. I think she'd be a tremendously interesting and fun protagonist, and I think my wife would like reading her. Who knows?
Mostly, though, I play males, and frankly I think I play them better, so that's what I lean towards. There you are.
Me, the GM
I think I'm much more successful (not perfectly so, but better) with the female NPCs. I've always been happy with Fiona from TiHE (though she was rarely played), and I'm currently pretty happy with Nayda in Prince of Alderaan.
Scene: Nayda has amnesia due to a combination kidnapping/drug overdose. Group has arrived at the apartment of a guy who claims to be a recently-abandoned ex-boyfriend of hers. Stepping into the abode, they are greeted with discarded food wrappers, dirty clothes, and a scent that could only be described as funk.
Nayda: (whispering to others) I know I've never been here before.
Keema: I thought you had amnesia.
Nayda: I do, but I know I've never been here before. [significant glance around the room]
I think Lori (playing the only female character in the group) finally started to understand Nayda at that point, and I think I started to get a third dimension into the character. Maybe. We'll see.
It's been a long time since I've had a pivotal female character in a story that I've written (I end up playing them much more in RPGA stuff). Maybe my preference for male characters just carries over.
I'd really like to be able to play the virgin/sexpot dryad from Cort's ACNW game as well as he does... that would be my ultimate goal. I'm not there yet.
The group on the independant space station (Corvo, Dag, and Keema) find themselves in a heavy gunbattle with two improved humanoid battle droids and a Droideka. Everyone is badly beat up from the battle, and nearly half of the Rim World Consortium is taken out (including the ship's captain they were supposed to be introduced to by the 1st mate), but they beat the things down (and cart at least one of the droids (the droideka, natch) back to the ship under a tarp.
--
The Iktoch group (G___, Sharess, Nayda, and Simon) end up in a fight with themselves... or clones of themselves... or something. It becomes more evident as to what is going on when one of the attackers drop with sparks flying. The six attackers are all droids. The "jedi" have repulsor pads in their hands and feet to increase Jumping and simulate Force push effects. The false jedi's "lightsabers" use a completely different technology, projecting heated plasma into a 'magnetic bottle' that looks like a blade. The weapon's output is someone less than that of a Jedi's weapon, it doesn't cut through solid substances nearly as easily, and the power supply for such an inefficient design is tapped completely out in just under a half hour of use.
--
The group on the space station negotiates to follow the pirates to a neutral meeting zone on a nearby mining colony. Upon arrival, the pirates have left their ship and are chasing all over the base. It turns out that one of their own number was a spy for the Trade Federation and has jumped ship. The "old" captain was very careful about not mentioning their RWC ties to planets like Naboo (where they get supplies), but the 1st mate mentioned it out in the open to the PC's after the fight. The fellow is obviously selling this information to the highest bidder (or taking it back to his employer).
--
Simon locates the speeder that their attackers arrived in. He works on the craft's GPS for a few minutes and manages to create a 'back track' of the vehicles route out of the Iktochi wastelands. Everyone hops in and they take off into the wastelands (after sending most of the droids back with the police).
The wastelands are unfriendly, and the quartet's speeder is accosted by a "tri-horn bull" (aka a "reek") -- a native, ugly herd animal that is very territorial. They avoid it and finally come to a narrow canyon that ends in a large concealed blast door. As the stolen speeder approaches the door, it opens onto darkness beyond -- apparently automatically.
They have a bad feeling about this.
Turn of a Friendly Die: WISH 13: Character Backgrounds
How do you like to build character backgrounds? Do you think they are important or not? Do you prefer to write an elaborate background, or fill in later? Do you find character quizzes like the one in the ADRPG or related exercises like the round of questions in Everway character development to be useful?
I tend to build character backgrounds in pieces, grabbing bits from here and there in my head. I think they're important as a concept, but I've had as much success with a very sketchy idea that turned into a detailed persona as I have with a very detailed background. Perhaps more: I think that with a very detailed background you can end up writing yourself into a corner that conflicts with the game you're going to be playing in. I'd rather write a few short things that give a sense of personality with only a few hints of actual history (more of less, seasoned to taste, depending on the campaign).
I've had the most initial fun with "this is the character, and this is his 'bit'". If that works, you can fill in the depth as you play.
I don't particularly care for character quizzes as a player, although they are interesting enough if they aren't going for more detail than I'm comfortable with defining at that point. I've never done the Everyway QnA thing (all the players, pregame, ask each other questions, in character, which should be answered truthfully, but may or may not be known In Character once the actual campaign begins), but it seems as though it might be an interesting exercise IF you were playing the right kind of game.
IF. Big if.
Rey is organizing events for the October Rebellion convention here in Denver, which is running 'living' games exclusively. For those not familiar with the RPGA, let me explain that living campaigns are basically like home campaigns (gain exp and gear, advance your character) except you've got 15000 people playing in the same setting (maximum of six to a table, please).
Most of the campaigns are good ones, and thus the judges (GMs) also like to play, so in order to get judges willing to GM tables for most living campaigns, you have to first organize "Slot Zero's" for the judges (so named because they come before the First Slot of the convention). Judges play their own characters at the Slot Zeros, which lets them actually gain experience points and gee gaws for their characters as well as familiarizing them with the module in a way that a simple read-through rarely can. It's a pretty good system (provided you can find someone willing to GM for the judges) and generally, when you sit down with a table full of people who are willing and able to GM for a group of strangers on a regular basis, you've a table full of good role-players.
Last night (Living Greyhawk) was no exception (although with the guys we had playing, we had more joking going on than actual hard-core roleplay, but still), and I had a great time, plus, this module's a two-parter so we're wrapping it up tonight with the same group. Good stuff.
Next week on Tuesday/Wednesday we're Slot 0-ing the Living Force stuff (Star wars), then the week after that is more Living Greyhawk and some other fantasy thing I still need to create a character for (a much darker, intrigue-oriented thing).
Yeah, I'm playing a lot of games right now. I know. I plan to do something about it, then I think "wow, this would be a really cool campaign to run". There just isn't enough room in the week for everything I want to do, plus writing, plus working on the house and doing family stuff. I expect that there will be some changes pretty soon, since the current schedule has held together for about six months (or more) with no major changes... some players are getting new jobs, etc., and frankly there's some stuff I'd like to wrap up to make room for other things.
Plus, hey, it's coming up on the start of new seasons for my shows. That's going to have an impact, I'm sorry. :)
An annoying railroad section of the plot has come and past, but besides that, probably the first game I've really enjoyed as a GM in this particular campaign.
Don't know why, but I had fun.
I've finally added a link to the Pulp Adventures! website on the linkbar to the left. (The only reason I hadn't up to this point was technical complications that would have come up with certain search engines.)
At any rate, this thing has been taking up a big chunk of my time lately, especially at cons, and I'm really excited about what we're working on -- in a few more months, we should have all the requirements completely in place to become an official member-run "Living" campaign for the RPGA. This means that people will be able to download and play the available scenarios anywhere the RPGA is active, using characters that gain benefits and experience as the storylines progress (yeah, just like in a normal campaign, but participating in the storyline with hundreds of other gamers). The fact that this could be a very popular and fun thing to be working on is a benefit -- the fact that the whole thing is set in the Pulp genre of the 30's makes the whole thing a blast.
After an abortive attempt at creating some gaming products last year, Rey and I have sort of fallen backwards into this and already accomplished even more than we'd originally planned for the other project.
It's been easy (except for all the ass-busting labor). Go check it out.
Ahh, the paranoid religious tracts of Mr. Chick. I remember seeing Dark Dungeons in the 'reading rack' in the entryway of our church when I was a kid.
Those were the days...
Go ahead, click on the link... it's like that DnD comedy skit that everyone's got as a .wav file on their computers, except it's not really funny.
(via Jon)Turn of a Friendly Die: WISH 12: Mood Maintenance
How do you keep the mood? And once lost, how do you try to bring everyone back? Can you? Is it even possible? And what do you do with that one player who is always the first one to crack a joke and break up the tension you've built to so carefully, no matter how many times you've asked/warned him/her not to do that?
I'll be an arrogant bastard and say that I don't have many problems in any of my games, but this one definately is a problem, and a big enough one by itself to make up for the absence of others.
The problem is me, at least in part: I usually can't resist 'making the joke' if there's one out there to be made. This is true of myself as a player and as a GM (although I try to curb it as a GM a little bit), and I apparently have 'led by example' until my players follow suit... and most of them don't need help.
I've got a few players who are especially bad about this, constantly cracking jokes or quoting vaguely-related movie lines... practically anything (it seems at some points) to avoid remaining in some semblance of character for two consecutive minutes. The odd thing is that I've never really given any thought on how to deal with it. Major digressions cost the players experience points (or gain them experience points, if I'm the one digressing), but I've never focused on mood breaking, and I'm beginning to think that maybe I should.
I've read some of the other posts on this subject, and I like some of the ideas that have come out of it. I think my DnD game is going to see one type (mood breaks = random encounters for 0 xp) and I'll try another one on my Star Wars group (regular breaks to allow the chit chat which that group seems to so desperately crave).
Interestingly but not surprisingly, my Oriental Adventures game doesn't really have this sort of problem. (Then again, the nature of that sort of game means that mood is far more a central requirement in the enjoyment of the game than for most.)
Or maybe I think that, which makes it so, and if I took that attitude with the other games, I'd have a similar result.
Hmm. Bears thinking about.
Tuesday Morning Quarterback is a pretty entertaining way to keep up on the weekly pro football action. It used to be part of Slate. This year it debuts on ESPN's site.
My roster for the Weblogger Fantasy Football League:
Favre, Brett (QB-GB) Horn, Joe (WR-NO) Rice, Jerry (WR-Oak) Green, Ahman (RB-GB) Williams, Ricky (RB-Mia) Gardner, Rod (WR-Was) Bench McNair, Steve (QB-Ten) Pittman, Michael (RB-TB) Price, Peerless (WR-Buf) Walls, Wesley (TE-Car)
Conclusion: Eh.
I like many of these players, but most aren't on teams I (can) watch most of the time, so it's hard to get into it. I'm pleased about Michael Pittman, because I think he's a good match for Gruden, and Joe Horn was good for my last season. Jerry Rice, Ahman Green and Brett Favre are going to be my best chances to 'watch' my team, given my location, and I like those guys, so I guess it's all good.
Given the number of times I trade players during a season, it's not like any of this is written in stone anyway.
Update:
I missed my kickers and Defense:
Elam, Jason (K-Den) Vinatieri, Adam (K-NE)
Very cool. I like Elam a lot, and he's my only home-town boy. Overall, I've got 4 of the 25 top-ranked players going into the season. We'll see.
Cleveland (DEF-Cle) New York (DEF-NYJ)
On the other hand, I really don't know what to think about these two. Ugh.
(Then again, since I did no prep, no research, and let Yahoo auto-pick my team for me, it's not like I can really bitch. What I really need to do is sit down with Jackie and see what she thinks of the team and the players that are still available. I see some names I like in the free agents list, but she knows some of the guys I've got better than I do.)
An all-weekend gaming convention does not take up the whole weekend; it takes up the whole month.
Between getting modules from the con admin, running (or playing) "Slot 0's" to prep the other GM's that haven't played the scenarios which you have, prepping player handouts and other tidbits to make your tables "special"...
Denver has four of these mama-jama's going over the course of the year. Tacticon is this coming weekend. I'll be glad when it's wrapped up.
Via Dave, the Verbal Kung-Fu Generator, providing five new Kung-Fu Moves every 15 minutues!
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