<< December 2006 | Main | February 2007 >>
January 13, 2007
Adventures In Improvisation
It happened six days ago, but I owe a bit of a report on the Spirit of the Century game mentioned last post.
Quick Summary: it went well. Quite well.
Oh, there are things about the system I need to know better before I run it again. I really hadn't gotten the balance of NPC abilities to PC abilities in my head, so my opposition was way too weak. And I didn't do a good job of explaining what sort of characteristics should be Aspects and what should be Stunts (partially the fault of the system, maybe, but mostly me). But I was very impressed with how the "guest star in their novel" character generation built common background elements for the PCs and even as I made up new difficulties on the fly so the characters were challenged, the game ran pretty darn seamlessly.
Hence, the title of this post. If SotC has a strength I hadn't noticed in reading, it would be that it is very easy to change or add things on-the-fly that can make the story the players participate in match their PCs more closely than the one the GM walked in with. And that's a very good thing.
I won't be commenting on detail of the story, as I may use this plot outline (with more effective NPCs and different improvisational additions) as a pick-up game somewhere else along the line, but I had a good enough time as GM and the players say they did as well that I'm hoping we can schedule a next chapter in their story. I've already got a plot in mind, this time more directly matched to who the PCs are, and maybe that'll let me see how well the system works when the improvisations are less crucial to the flow.
Posted by ghoul at 08:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 05, 2007
Less (and More)
So, for those who might have wondered what happened to the boardgaming club reports... I haven't stopped doing them, but I also haven't made it to a Wednesday night gaming day in almost two months. I'm hoping work will lighten up a bit and let me resume attendance soon!
My bi-weekly RPG was called on account of GM cold this week, which would make this nothing but a message of "no gaming" except...
This Sunday, I'll be heading up to Geeks and Gamers and giving a trial run to Spirit of the Century, an RPG I've been looking forward to giving a try to since I spent the drive down to T'Con reading it. If this goes well, I'm hoping it lead to more opportunities to try small-company and Indy RPGs. I've put together what I think is a solid little intro episode (lacking only because I don't have PCs to directly hook plot points to) and printed up character generation aids... Should be a great day!
With any luck, you'll be hearing more about this soon!
Posted by ghoul at 04:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack