tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202612634352350608.post4517400311286459821..comments2024-03-26T02:03:33.336-07:00Comments on Mazirian's Garden: World Building and Old School GamesBen L.http://www.blogger.com/profile/04568198881628052274noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202612634352350608.post-41067411344216562622020-09-09T08:42:46.581-07:002020-09-09T08:42:46.581-07:00Back when I wrote this, I was still using a Google...Back when I wrote this, I was still using a Google Community to handle all of this, which worked brilliantly. I could do posts for downtime activities, posts for XP and recaps, etc. Now I use Discord which is not as good, because it's harder to find stuff in the endless streams of conversation. But it still works on the whole. Ben L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/04568198881628052274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202612634352350608.post-55154522091486929452020-09-09T08:40:16.715-07:002020-09-09T08:40:16.715-07:00Reading this I am struck but what a joy it must be...Reading this I am struck but what a joy it must be to play in one of your games. So much care and consideration! Really excellent advice, thank you so much for sharing. <br /><br />You mentioned a community page, what do you use? Do you take notes or just leave it to the players? I had a Trello board that started off with some player notes but was pretty quickly abandoned and just became a place for me to drop procedural rulings for reference. I want to do something more effective for my next campaign, so looking for any tips you have on that end.qpophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15688150333185235575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202612634352350608.post-14055862349621141502017-12-20T02:35:13.263-08:002017-12-20T02:35:13.263-08:00Well, the blog's mostly been actual play write...Well, the blog's mostly been actual play writeups recently, so you can judge for yourself. But thanks!<br /><br />Last time I added a new player to my group, I handed him a great mass of notes on the game so far. He didn't read them. What he did do was ask the other players: 'Who is this robot who's following you around? How did you come to own an island? Why do you worship a giant alien frog?' And the players would deliver their in-character explanations, which were always much terser than mine would have been, and much more focussed on what needed to be understood right here, right now, in the context of this specific adventure. So I think that's probably a duty that can be shunted off onto the other players, who, after all, have both IC and OOC reasons for wanting the new guy to have a functional grasp of what is going on, even if he doesn't need to know the deep background behind it...Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202612634352350608.post-21570376163849216142017-12-19T20:39:22.007-08:002017-12-19T20:39:22.007-08:00I've struggled some integrating new players no...I've struggled some integrating new players now for a while. Although some folks have no problem jumping into the weird without context, others struggle. I'm convinced that a good streamlined system of notes could fix this. I just have a messy community page, which is a jungle, and my blog. Next time I'll do better. <br /><br />By the way, your game must be really great. Your blog is nuts, Joseph Manola.Ben L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/04568198881628052274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202612634352350608.post-82747236699954564722017-12-19T20:39:06.118-08:002017-12-19T20:39:06.118-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Ben L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/04568198881628052274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202612634352350608.post-11964345154660118782017-12-19T16:07:44.640-08:002017-12-19T16:07:44.640-08:00This is all really good advice, and chimes very we...This is all really good advice, and chimes very well with my own experience, which is that players can get their heads around damn near anything if you start with something simple and drip-feed it to them, one oddity at a time, through the medium of actual play.<br /><br />You can see this a lot with genre TV. They'll start with their Just One Weird Thing in the pilot episode, and three seasons on they'll have spun this baroque tapestry of invented mythology, and even the non-nerds in the audience will be completely OK with it and fluent with it, because it's all been fed to them one piece at a time.<br /><br />The other thing I've come to believe is that, once you've done that, it's totally OK for new people to arrive right in the middle of things. People are great at making sense of weird new contexts - they just seize hold of the bits they need to make sense of the situation they're in *right now*, and forget about the rest until it's important. (Much like viewers who start watching a TV show three seasons in, in fact...) As long as it's all tied to *action* rather than infodumps, they'll do just fine.<br /><br />And, honestly, I don't really bother with set-piece descriptions at all these days. Just a few evocative adjectives per thing and then move on. Anything really important will come out through actual play...Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.com