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Last night at the FLGS

Started by thedungeondelver, February 17, 2012, 10:56:12 AM

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Serious Paul

The few games I've seen at the FLGS seem like they were okay enough games-everyone seemed to be having fun. I know there's another place that has a regular 4e game, and Warhammer. The RPG's definitely seem to have a more laid back atmosphere than some of the MtG tournaments I see.

I know a lot of people who play in the MtG tournaments and their number one complaint is cheating. Apparently it's a pretty off putting and serious problem.

I hope my comments aren't construed as trying to detract from the original poster-but rather just as me relaying my own experiences up in my neck of the woods.

Doom

I think there's one 'table' at my FLGS that plays AD&D as well (lots and lots of Warhammer miniatures, and I'm told a different shop is into M:TG).

That's not counting at my house, where we finished off Ghost Tower of Inverness last night (and used the Soul Gem to rescure Colist from the siege of the Sphincter God's troops, but that's from an official module. :P ).

Now they're off in search of the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun; as luck would have it, I just got some boosters from the Tharizdun D&D cards. Pretty they'll only work right with 4e, though.
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A nice education blog.

jadrax

Quote from: Greentongue;515264It is much easier to get random people to sit down for a M:tG game then it is to get 3+ people to show up at the same time several weeks in a row.

I think if more focus was placed on "One-Shots" there would be more play.

The system would have to support super easy character creation or pre-gens that people would be interested in playing.
=

I was in a university RPG society about 4 years ago which focused on on-shot gaming, it basically meant me sitting through 4 hours of people not being able to generate a character quickly for one hour of role-playing. It actually got to the point where I could turn up, generate my character in the first 20 mins, go to a three hour tutorial session I had arranged, and be back before the other characters existed.

Serious Paul

If I were going to run one shots, I'd either make sure characters were generated in advance of the session-with the agreed upon recourse for failing to bring a character having one provided by me.

Or I'd provide characters. Whatever one I could get my players to agree to. Obviously that assumes I can pull that off, but I think I could.

noisms

Quote from: thedungeondelver;515116Easily 50+ games of M:TG being played.  One RPG being played.  That RPG?  AD&D 1st edition.

Significance?  Probably very little to none.  Just nice to see is all.

(I'm sure in 1975 guys like me were reporting (by word of mouth or typewritten and mimeographed "club letters") "Went to the hobby shop last night.  Easily 50+ games of "Dungeons & Dragons" being played.  One boardgame being played.  That boardgame?  AH's Guadalcanal...")

Still, nice to see.

Funny you should say that. I sometimes play at a local "gamer friendly cafe" and there are usually 50+ games of M:TG or Yu-Gi-Oh going on... and us (currently playing CP:2020).
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thedungeondelver

I always do pregens when I run games at cons.  It's just way, way easier.  If there's a player or two joining in despite me having a "cap" on the game in terms of players (I've run games advertised for eight and had sixteen people cram their names onto the signup sheet), I'll let them gen a character or use one out of the Rogues' Gallery.
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Mcbobbo sums it up nicely.

Quote
Astrophysicists are reassessing Einsteinian relativity because the 28 billion l

jibbajibba

Quote from: thedungeondelver;515457I always do pregens when I run games at cons.  It's just way, way easier.  If there's a player or two joining in despite me having a "cap" on the game in terms of players (I've run games advertised for eight and had sixteen people cram their names onto the signup sheet), I'll let them gen a character or use one out of the Rogues' Gallery.

I could never imagine running a con game without pregrens. Normally I gen 8 for a 6 person set up with the 2 spares being female.
This is because I find it daft that most games have 50% female PCs but 90% of the players are males and a lot of the males neither want to play females or have any skill at it so at best you have a male PC called Susan.

As for our LFGS it closed 10 years ago, but by then there were already selling more plush dolls, any sort of collectable and sweets than they were games. For a while 10 years earlier they had a room with 2 tables and opened it up to play 1 night a week.
The nearest one to me in terms of distance is 50 miles away through some crappy roads and they are really a magic venue (well they make most money from card sales so that is a guess). In terms of shops there is a toy shop about 40 miles away that has a small section, although there are a couple of chain bookshops like Waterstones that might have some 4e books.
Now this might make sense if I lived in a hick town but I live in a town of 170,000 and with its adjacent towns and satelites the total population is 400,000 and we have an active university and a very large population of young foreign students.
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Peregrin

#22
Quote from: Greentongue;515264It is much easier to get random people to sit down for a M:tG game then it is to get 3+ people to show up at the same time several weeks in a row.

I think if more focus was placed on "One-Shots" there would be more play.

The system would have to support super easy character creation or pre-gens that people would be interested in playing.
=

I had decent success doing something similar to Justin's open-table OD&D.  Just tell people "Hey, I'm free this day if you guys want to play, let me know."  You play with whoever shows up.  Or, if you're all hanging out and there's nothing better to do, break out the graph paper and just pick up where you left off.  TSR D&D and T&T are great for this, since there is no assumption about a "proper" adventuring party, just that a group of ragtag adventurers will get together and do shit.

Basically, one-shots aren't necessary because the game-world doesn't care who the PCs are and will continue chugging along if some disappear for a bit or others die or whatever.  You just have a sort of master-list of all the PCs that exist in an individual campaign, and when the players show up, they become active again.
"In a way, the Lands of Dream are far more brutal than the worlds of most mainstream games. All of the games set there have a bittersweetness that I find much harder to take than the ridiculous adolescent posturing of so-called \'grittily realistic\' games. So maybe one reason I like them as a setting is because they are far more like the real world: colourful, crazy, full of strange creatures and people, eternal and yet changing, deeply beautiful and sometimes profoundly bitter."

jibbajibba

Quote from: Peregrin;515486I had decent success doing something similar to Justin's open-table OD&D.  Just tell people "Hey, I'm free this day if you guys want to play, let me know."  You play with whoever shows up.  Or, if you're all hanging out and there's nothing better to do, break out the graph paper and just pick up where you left off.  TSR D&D and T&T are great for this, since there is no assumption about a "proper" adventuring party, just that a group of ragtag adventurers will get together and do shit.

Basically, one-shots aren't necessary because the game-world doesn't care who the PCs are and will continue chugging along if some disappear for a bit or others die or whatever.  You just have a sort of master-list of all the PCs that exist in an individual campaign, and when the players show up, they become active again.

That is the whole point of the RPGA and the 4e Encounter based play model.
You all have balanced PCs that exist in a common world with a common rule set playing the same rules. You can turn up and play a single game or come back week in week out and there are a rotating pool of PCs that are about for individual games. In this regard 4e is very Old School.
By the time D&D reached 2e (well really by the time it reached Dragonlance or earlier)  that mode of play had been usurped by character driven sandbox play or just straight up 'special' party play where the PCs gain a certain script immunity and a campaign with a smaller common group of PCs or at least of players who might change PCs when old ones die.

Of course the Old School model only works in reality when you have a large enough density of players (not that I am saying Old Schoolers are dense ..hoho :) ) .
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Peregrin

#24
Sorta.

But the RPGA isn't about sandbox play, nor does it involve the potential for PC vs PC conflict.  It's a different dynamic, IMO, because the local campaign isn't about metaplot moving forward, it's about what people who know eachother did last week in the game that might've changed some setting aspects entirely.  A lot of detail in 4e RPGA is carefully prepared adventure-path play.

Like, saying X villain did Y thing because most people in Region Z were able to defeat the encounter is different than the west wing of the castle being collapsed because Joe's wizard used the wrong spell last week while defending a noble, and Bill (who wasn't there for the collapse) being able to go up to Joe when he runs into him outside the game and say "Dude, what the fuck did you do??"

What I'm trying to get at is that a game run the way classic D&D was creates a sort of common experience while at the same time being more personal and dynamic because everyone involved is local.
"In a way, the Lands of Dream are far more brutal than the worlds of most mainstream games. All of the games set there have a bittersweetness that I find much harder to take than the ridiculous adolescent posturing of so-called \'grittily realistic\' games. So maybe one reason I like them as a setting is because they are far more like the real world: colourful, crazy, full of strange creatures and people, eternal and yet changing, deeply beautiful and sometimes profoundly bitter."

jibbajibba

Quote from: Peregrin;515496Sorta.

But the RPGA isn't about sandbox play, nor does it involve the potential for PC vs PC conflict.  It's a different dynamic, IMO, because the local campaign isn't about metaplot moving forward, it's about what people who know eachother did last week in the game that might've changed some setting aspects entirely.  A lot of detail in 4e RPGA is carefully prepared adventure-path play.

Like, saying X villain did Y thing because most people in Region Z were able to defeat the encounter is different than the west wing of the castle being collapsed because Joe's wizard used the wrong spell last week while defending a noble, and Bill (who wasn't there for the collapse) being able to go up to Joe when he runs into him outside the game and say "Dude, what the fuck did you do??"

What I'm trying to get at is that a game run the way classic D&D was creates a sort of common experience while at the same time being more personal and dynamic because everyone involved is local.

Well yes because it's local, but the base concept. Whoever turns up can play, we all exist in the same game world, the game world is consistent on the macro scale, etc etc is much the same.
The tale of Joe's wizard becomes the tale of that Guy Joe from New Orleans who destroyed the west wing of the castle and the tale was so cool that the wrote it intot he next adventure etc etc ... becuase its no longer local it is a different scale but the concet is basically the same.
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