TRPG General Chat

12:00 PM

It's a mass event, people usually go out and have the first picnics of the year. Students wear their society colors and academic caps

Stuff I'm usually glad to partake in but this year I'm just pooped

BESW

@Anaphory Oooh, dramatic.

Anaphory

@BESW I think the idea of the adventure is to drop the involvement of the victim's father in local politics very early, but my players had forgotten by the time they had thrown-down the intermediary villain.

trogdor

@kviiri fair enough, I am not usually a party person

BESW

@Anaphory I've learned to never underestimate the value of a player who takes copious notes.

trogdor

the only one I ever really liked every year was the treeburning, and really that wasn't for socializing for me, it was for the food and the smores

BESW

12:01 PM

...or the power of player amnesia without one.

kviiri

@trogdor for me it varies a lot by party

trogdor

(it's a local thing based near where I used to live where there is a party on a particular beach and everyone who comes brings their Christmas tress from last year to burn in a huge bonfire)

BESW

@trogdor Did you see my link to "Bungy Jumping for Introverts: The Joy of Public Speaking" by Tara J. Brannigan?

Anaphory

@BESW It wasn't even really amnesia, just a failure to connect those dots without the additional clue, which felt very forced at that point initially. At some point I managed to drop the topic of politics into the discussion, and from then on it ran fine again.

trogdor

@BESW no, but I am now reading it

BESW

12:04 PM

One thing I've learned, painfully and repeatedly, is that my players will always overcomplicate a mystery all on their own; I can make a mystery as simple and obvious as possible and it'll still get wildly circuitous.

trogdor

@kviiri that only works for me if I can know what to expect beforehand

BESW

@trogdor I ran across it in the context of a conversation about introvert GMs.

trogdor

@BESW yeah so far what she is talking about I get

Anaphory

It ended with the politician culprit's house being sprayed by the punks and filled with glitter, with a mockup newspaper in her own printer queue about the scandal if she, a publically liberal and progressive politician, was caught in the context of bullying a trans-man high school student.

trogdor

it doesn't mean I actually like it like she does, but I experience the same thing

BESW

12:05 PM

Specifically that GMing is easier for some introverts because they don't have to compete for attention, they automatically get the floor.

trogdor

where I put on a show as an extrovert, whether it's during a play, or a presentation, or sometimes as a GM

it's a little harder as a GM honestly

but easier in some ways because I trust all the people I have had to GM for

BESW

@Anaphory That escalated quickly.

I like it! My players did their best to keep everything as low-key and quiet as possible, to avoid collateral damage.

Which was also fun, and very on-brand for us. But not quite so cathartic.

trogdor

@BESW but to some extent yeah, the fact that I don't have to speak up, everyone already is hanging on my words because I am setting the pace and the tone, it's just strangely harder to turn my extroverted side on in a smaller conversation than it is in either a presentation I am giving where no one can interrupt me in the end or a play where I have lines I just had to memorize and deliver well

but I have noticed that when I manage it my strength in GMing is improvisation

because I like seeing the other Players make something up I didn't expect and then getting to react to it

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