Jump, Push, Start
Yes, indeed. This slow as hell speed we’ve been going at for the past few sessions are annoying me. I mean, I’ve written about 12 pages to the setting you have to play in, but freedom seems to be the biggest prison for you. So let’s see how we can make this work…
I have a few suggestions to solve this but before that I need for you to consider your characters a little in perspective, this especially directed at Forsberg. Can you play this character, do you still understand this character, and do you have a direction a raison’dêtre with your character? It’s not solely directed at Forsberg, but he is the one who seems to bring his character back on track once again. This is post is also directed at Ankan, so it concerns you too. You also need to think about how ambitious you are and want the group to be. If people don’t really matter what happens I rather go back to ‘old school’ planning rather than do all this stuff I do now. I mean, twelve pages is effectively going to waste when people are stale and not really doing anything, at all. Ignore this post and I’ll know how high your ambition for the group is. I mean, it’s only role-play after all. Who Cares?
We can go back to the more directed play style instead. Give you clear goals and put events around you and limit your actions so it won’t be as much trouble. I can do this, it’s a little more work, but more specific work so it’s easier in the end. And this way I can effectively show what I want to show and slowly feed you what you should need to know. I mean, you seem to lack compassion and understanding of the world anyway, and this style will give you some of that.
Another is that we jump over everything in total and do like we do when we set a stage. You get some major choices and we jump to a place where you have everything you need in front of you and the only thing needed is to solve the riddle, run to Anubis and then Macabre and then finish the whole Macabre Timeline and see how many that is left. After that, your goals should have changed if you are alive and you will all need to focus on what to do next. Jump over the hard part with some story telling. Then I push you into position and we can start and you’ll just have to focus to play from there.
A third alternative is to disband the group and completely forget about Macabre. Throw away some characters and continue in an essentially new group, maybe with some of the old characters but mostly not; a new group with other goals and other setup and history. Maybe even in another country. Because I’m growing tired of the lack of understanding that’s been occurring over and over again and the low will from certain parties. I won’t put a Terminator into your midst again but if nothing is happening I sure as hell feel like it.
And fresh blood with new beginnings, truly new beginnings, does tend to give back some of the inspiration and the will to waste my time and plan stuff. Because right now I almost feel like it’s a waste of time to play with some of you when it’s practically not playing. But well, it’s just me, and I could be wrong. Maybe it’s a big tragedy.
You have been warned…
Gerenan Marauder
Well , atleast I dont want to go back to some older style of play. And yes the latest sessions havent been going so smooth , since around the explosion and loss of two characters(atleast for me).
I dont really have any excuses, but I dont think starting a new group would help really. Although I do not in some ways agree that its been going that slow , its just that some actions take time and well we havent really played in a high tempo lately.
Guess we will see how the next session goes , hope it will be atleast satsifactory for most parts involved.
I don’t really know the state of the group right now since things seem to have changed since I last played. But hopefully it can be fixed, it would likely be fixed with a new group, but that doesn’t seem like a good idea right now. We want a fierce country! If we swap, atleast I want to go somewhere else.
If your planning is spoiled, a possibility is to temporarily go back to another style of playing and then slowly going back to the current style. We try, I think, but it obviously doesn’t work out right now.
There are some odd stuff with my new character and I cannot claim I completely understand everything. But I think I will be able to play. Will have to change some things to make it all work, but it will be for the better.
I’m at a at a loss of what to say actually. On one hand I find the story lines interesting and fun and on the other hand I really don’t like what has happened to the tempo of the game.
Last session I think we would have all been better off if you would have made a suggestion to the inactive parties, I mean, you even went as far as to offer to take over the characters. Advice should be the lesser of two evils in that case, I’d think.
We seem to get bogged down in more or less trivial or uninteresting situations taking up lots of space for various reasons. Certainly your solutions would help, however I don’t feel like giving up on the group or the storyline; that would be a huge waste in my opinion.
As I pointed out in an earlier post this is the kind of situation where the ‘objective based’ session would be good. Although next session might be different, it’s a bit hard for me to predict. Hopefully we will be back on track soon, if not then I think that we should either go with a more forced style of play or a setting of the stage up to a point where the group is atleast gathered.
As for my character, I still feel that Devon is worth continuing with and I see a few interesting paths he could end up on in the future. I’m still thinking certain things over, but I would like to talk about the future of Devon at some point.
That wouldn’t have been possible. My advice would have equaled to take over their characters. It was not WHAT to do, but HOW to do things. It was like I mentioned earlier. A more descriptive way of doing what they were doing. Just to show how little it takes to give the scene some more color.
Well, it would certinaly be a waste to throw away hours planning. But when I feel that people aren’t trying then I rather do something else or put less energy into RPG instead.
I’m a bit doubtful that I can continue playing my character, but I’m not certain. If I’ll drop Erion I might consider creating a new charater, however if I do I would want put in more time in single sessions, kinda like Eldtoffs.
This free form style of play might not be the best for me with Erion, but I think that if we would play like this but superimpose some guidelines to think on for the sessions (for me that is), I think it might work.
But I will consider if I’m going to drop Erion, the thing that might point against this is if I think I could muster what might lead to a comeback. About that I think I need to contemplate abit more.
This is a possibility, yes. The catch though will be that you won’t have as much control of your character with this as usual especially when you will be forced to act in certain ways. But this might work to get your character back on track, which is vital for the group if Erion are to be a part of the group.
PB wrote:
A new group would help with the tempo and the inspiration. It always does when new fresh things are provided. Though it wouldn’t help you as a group to manage situations like these.
As for the ‘tempo’ it’s meant for you to do things, and to act. As I saw it the tempo would and should have been pretty high when you got free reigns, but well, the motivation on the thoughts wasn’t in place so well, it didn’t.
Well, my planning isn’t spoiled, just not used it’s like buying or providing a toy, with multiple purposes and uses like a computer of great speed and power and then only use it for writing in notepad.
Yes, I will change the style of play since you all seem not to be ready for an open style yet. So I will return to a more controlled play and focus much on events and actions. I will try this for a little while and if I think it doesn’t work I will set the stage instead.
Well, I suggest you make this decision quickly as I plan to take over this character otherwise since he is most useful in many ways and I know for certain that I can transform him into an NPC too.
I want to try and see how it works out with this restricted play so I’ll give him a shot.