Apologies for the long break - things have been hectic!
It's been a few Deathwatch sessions since the last post, and we've had some interesting changes; briefly, Jim is now playing a Blood Angels chaplain, having converted over since we obtained the new 'Rites of Battle' sourcebook.
We've been chugging along well with the new story arc, which has shown to be very interesting - a series of three missions compiled in 'The Emperor Protects'. Seems a pretty ironic title, as there is plenty of stuff in here for GM's to kick some major PC butt with!
In fact, as I write this, I currently have a hapless Ultramarines Librarian currently without his left arm (Tim), and my poor Blood Angels Assault Marine missing his right leg (Chris). Would be a much, MUCH uglier situation if not for fate points! With this in mind, the players are close to the end of the first mission, with plenty left to go and this week I expect the arrival of 'Mark of the Xenos', which is basically the DW version of the Monster Manual :-)
Other events of note since the last post include Jim's 40th birthday and my 30th. Some bloke called Damien also turned 32, but it was decided that this was of no real consequence.
What I've found interesting is that my 'How Old Do You Feel?' stat seems to have paused somewhere between 19-21 years old. I've considered this for a long time, and firmly believe that it's our hobbies and other diversions that keep us young. For geeks, this makes us all practically eternal children, who never really grow up in some ways.
After all, our spare time - outside family and partners - is invested in the playing of games, which sadly, a lot of adults simply do not make time to play any more. Consider the make-up of our current playing group:
Chris - Manager at Woolworths and night-shift planking supervisor
Damien - Door manufacturing and panda keeper at Melbourne Zoo
Tim - IT guy at some dodgy company which will probably end up on Wikileaks at some stage
Graham - IT guy at a secondary school and 'Is it plugged in?' solutions expert
Jeff - Service station worker at Woolworths and Canadian
Dave - Croupier at Crown Casino/7th Layer of Hell
Silas - Pharmacist and recent corporate shill
Michael - Secondary teacher and CRT whore
Jim - GE Money/8th Layer of Hell
Myself - State & Federal Government/9th Layer of Hell
A pretty diverse group, with extremely diverse hours of work among the ten of us. Yet we all make time to get together at least every fortnight (and for some of us, every week!) to sit around a table, spin stories, roll dice, take the piss out of each other and generally have a pretty good time.
Those of you familiar with this bunch will also attest to the fact that there's a few big kids in there, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's never all sunshine and lollipops, but we get along well most of the time. Like most kids :-)
Ask yourself - among your 'non-geek' friends, how many people can say they do something social with such a large group regularly? For a lot of people, the answer will be something along the lines of 'Not as much as I'd like'. I think the current corporatespeak refers to this as a state of being 'time-poor'.
One of my favourite teachers had a particularly erudite way of putting things, and one of his favourite sayings was this - which I close with:
'We never have time, because we never make time.'
I've been making time for playing games since as far back as I can remember, and I intend never to stop.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Herding Cats - Part 5
Well, we're back for 2011 after the Christmas/New Year break, and an unfortunate bout of severe laryngitis combined with a nasty chest infection!
The second Deathwatch session for the year took place three weeks ago as a result, and we are well and truly into the current storyline now. I managed to go - much to the dismay of some players! - two and a half sessions without a single dice rolled in combat, but the natural order of the WH40K universe was finally restored in this chapter, i.e. lots of fighting.
(Also of interest - as I write this, FFG (Fantasy Flight Games - the good people behind the Deathwatch RPG) have just announced 'Black Crusade'! Roleplaying for Chaos in the 41st Millennium!)
This post promised however to deal with our third psychographic, commonly found among roleplaying groups around the world - 'the cruncher'.
(Please see 'Herding Cats - Part 4' for 'the social player' and 'the Mal')
The cruncher is perhaps THE most immediately familiar player profile to most roleplayers/gamers, but even among crunchers there is stratification. I tend to group them into two separate types.*
'Type I crunchers' choose to treat games and game systems as mathematical problems to be solved, and these spreadsheet warriors are usually the product of too much MMORPG or simply math geeks.
Tell-tale signs at your gaming table include any player who ever utters the abbreviation 'DPS' or keeps a calculator/phone in close reach during combat - watch out for this guy. Chances are his mind is more focused on the next purple item waiting for him back home in WoW than it is on your current storyline! Ultimately though, his numbers are only as good as the tools you provide him with...
'Type II crunchers' are less concerned with the numbers, but will usually do their best to abuse other game mechanics/rules to the point where a number of things can/will happen, for example:
i. Their character becomes indestructible.
ii. Their character becomes un-hittable.
iii. One of your characters (NPC's), and ultimately all of your characters are reduced to the point of such inefficacy that you need to make a house rule.
Of course the severity of what sort of damage this type of cruncher can inflict depends heavily on both the game system in use and the leniency of the GM, but you get the idea. This type is usually harder to deal with too, since their first argument is guaranteed to be something along the lines of
'But it's in the rules!'
For inexperienced GM's, this can be extremely frustrating. After running a few games however and finding your comfort zone, you'll soon find yourself distinguishing which rules can be left untouched or which others might need to be adjusted in 'the spirit of the game'.
If in doubt, go play some more games under a GM who knows what he's doing. I consider myself lucky to have played under some pretty good ones, and this is the best way to learn what and what not to do!
In closing, DW is on again this week on Thursday evening. I can't wait.
:-)
* For those of you keeping score, I would say my current group probably includes two of the first type and one of the second type. I leave it to the reader to assign blame ;-)
The second Deathwatch session for the year took place three weeks ago as a result, and we are well and truly into the current storyline now. I managed to go - much to the dismay of some players! - two and a half sessions without a single dice rolled in combat, but the natural order of the WH40K universe was finally restored in this chapter, i.e. lots of fighting.
(Also of interest - as I write this, FFG (Fantasy Flight Games - the good people behind the Deathwatch RPG) have just announced 'Black Crusade'! Roleplaying for Chaos in the 41st Millennium!)
This post promised however to deal with our third psychographic, commonly found among roleplaying groups around the world - 'the cruncher'.
(Please see 'Herding Cats - Part 4' for 'the social player' and 'the Mal')
The cruncher is perhaps THE most immediately familiar player profile to most roleplayers/gamers, but even among crunchers there is stratification. I tend to group them into two separate types.*
'Type I crunchers' choose to treat games and game systems as mathematical problems to be solved, and these spreadsheet warriors are usually the product of too much MMORPG or simply math geeks.
Tell-tale signs at your gaming table include any player who ever utters the abbreviation 'DPS' or keeps a calculator/phone in close reach during combat - watch out for this guy. Chances are his mind is more focused on the next purple item waiting for him back home in WoW than it is on your current storyline! Ultimately though, his numbers are only as good as the tools you provide him with...
'Type II crunchers' are less concerned with the numbers, but will usually do their best to abuse other game mechanics/rules to the point where a number of things can/will happen, for example:
i. Their character becomes indestructible.
ii. Their character becomes un-hittable.
iii. One of your characters (NPC's), and ultimately all of your characters are reduced to the point of such inefficacy that you need to make a house rule.
Of course the severity of what sort of damage this type of cruncher can inflict depends heavily on both the game system in use and the leniency of the GM, but you get the idea. This type is usually harder to deal with too, since their first argument is guaranteed to be something along the lines of
'But it's in the rules!'
For inexperienced GM's, this can be extremely frustrating. After running a few games however and finding your comfort zone, you'll soon find yourself distinguishing which rules can be left untouched or which others might need to be adjusted in 'the spirit of the game'.
If in doubt, go play some more games under a GM who knows what he's doing. I consider myself lucky to have played under some pretty good ones, and this is the best way to learn what and what not to do!
In closing, DW is on again this week on Thursday evening. I can't wait.
:-)
* For those of you keeping score, I would say my current group probably includes two of the first type and one of the second type. I leave it to the reader to assign blame ;-)
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