All Eyes on Me

This is a bit late, but yesterday I was kind of mentally decompressing on the subject and wasn't really up to thinking about it again yet. But now that Woodsmen has officially run for the first time,

I will preface this by saying I am not in love with the World of Darkness universe. My personal interpretation of vampires (and, indeed, my way of "doing angst" in storytelling) is very different than White Wolf's. I like its gothiness, but believe it or not, it isn't exactly my kind of gothiness. So I have troubles with lots of the establishments of the setting, but I was content to accept them as the setting for this idea I had for a mod. So my attachment was ancillary at best. And let me say now, overall things went well. There was nothing majorly broken, nor was there much unexpected that I couldn't bullshit my way through. I was pleased with the story I made. Moreover, more importantly, the players seemed to have a good time.

But there were a number of things that could have gone better. One thing I hadn't taken into consideration that tends to be an issue in World of Darkness games is the likelihood of inter-party conflict. As often happens in games where the characters are inherently kind of evil, they have lots of in-character reasons to fight and not to work together. And I didn't really have much of an in-game reason for them not to. I was terrified player-vs-player combat was going to break out at times, which I really was not prepared to adjudicate, but fortunately things didn't go that far. Also, as Jared pointed out to me when I related the details to him, one must either tailor the mod to the players or the players to the mod. I wrote the mod before I knew who would be playing what in it, and I could have done a better job helping some of them (particularly Sheena, I think) choose characters that would make sure they'd have enough to do. It was a very mystery-solving-heavy mod, with some social interaction and one large instance of combat, and I think next time I will make more of an effort to guide players building characters to slightly more specific things.

But mostly it went well. I had times when I wasn't so good at rolling with things as a GM should, but I will learn better. The mystery aspect of things worked well, as more or less did the story, and the final combat, after much testing and adjusting, turned out pretty much as I hoped it would. So by and large, success, though I think I'll be going over it to change and edit things. Not right away, though, when I run a project, I need a bit of a break from it afterward. It's the reason Alice didn't get edited until the second run forced me to get things done. :-)

But anyway, thank you, players, for agreeing to take part. It meant so much to me that you were willing to play.

I am reading through a DMG2 thoughtfully lent to me by bronzite in hopes of learning a few tricks about strategy for dealing with players and GMing a tabletop game in preparation for the long-awaited run of Woodsmen this coming Wednesday. While some thing were fairly intuitive and I'd picked up on them just in the course of general gaming experience, I must say I am somewhat horrified at some of the pain-in-the-ass things the book warns me that players can pull. Still, I've got a good feeling, and I'm very excited to put what I'm learning about DMing to use.

I am also struck today with a desire to write poetry. Not the inspiration, mind you, only the desire. I have no ideas at the moment. My poetry has never been very good, and tends toward the hilariously emo side of things, so God only knows why I actually want to be responsible for bringing more of it into the world. I blame, I suppose, being fascinated as I am by love and pain and words-- 'cause I'm so very, very goth, evidently --to the point where I just adore twisting them all together in a swirl of tragic butterscotch ripple.

I also find myself wanting to dress goth for tonight. Not sure it would be appropriate, though I guess with this crowd, it's never exactly INappropriate. I haven't had a chance to in quite some time, and I am overwhelmed by the urge to dig out all my cute gloomcookie stuff. Eh, we'll see. Sometime this weekend, maybe. The overwhelming tragedy in my soul, it calls. ;-)

Yeah, my satisfaction at the video for my internship coming out so well is short-lived. Because my boss called a last-minute meeting tonight, and I had plans to go with the rest of Elsinore to Alex's place for dinner. So much with not being irritated with my internship for five whole minutes. I was quite looking forward to this, so I called Alex and he said he'd see if everyone was okay moving things back a bit. I'm really hoping that works, as I'd like to be able to go.

Have made significant headway on a character sheet that requires a lot of back story for Men of Respect recently. Interestingly, this was the first character I came up with, whose development progressed very rapidly with Jared's help. From the looks of things, these character sheets are going to be very detailed, and almost certainly on the long side. More work for us, the writers, but hey, more fun for you, the players, right?

Also, after checking with lots and lots of various schedules, what would my Vampire players think of a Wednesday, July 16th run of Woodsmen, one week from today? Sometime in the evening, maybe starting at seven, or whatever time works? I think that meshes with what people have told me. *crosses fingers* I know everyone's busy, but I'd really like to run this thing.

Jared wrote me a poem. There are no words for how happy this makes me. I love you, babe.

This week will mostly be spent preparing for his visit. I am scrubbing the house from top to bottom, organizing/putting away/trashing the unwanted items of junk, and planning lots and lots of good things to cook for him. I'll need to make a to do list, and a shopping list, and get on that this week.

Had a wonderful time at bleemoo's birthday party. Made me realize how much I miss him and the rest of the group. Sheena, Mac, and I want to have BSCF at our house now. Keep the same time, 7PM on Thursday, only have people come to our place, because Brandeis and the immediate area seems to be a good convergence point for everyone. We're a little light on seating, but that will improve shortly, and if people could just either bring a folding chair with them or something or be prepared to roll with things if we run out, we should be okay. If people would be willing, we could even do it as early as this coming Thursday. I'd really really like that.

By the way, I think I'd like to shoot for next Wednesday-- June 25th --for the first session of my "Woodsmen" Vampire game to happen. Sheena, Matt, Lise, Toby, David, Bernie, does that work for you guys? Let me know, and send me your character sheets before then. We'll pick an appropriate time.

Four more days until my poet comes.

I've been napping when I get home from work lately, which helps me with the sleep issues created by having to get up so early, but it makes me lose an hour or so that I never seem to be able to keep track of. I always am surprised it's later than I thought it would be.

I've very much enjoyed the Smash Brothers marathons we've been having at home. As Bernie says, it's not the game so much as playing it with friends that makes it awesome. My best character at the moment is Link, though I'd like to get better with Yoshi, who traditionally has always been my favorite.

I want to get my Vampire game going as soon as possible. Any time in the near future you people playing in the first run are available? I want to plan, and it might give those who haven't gotten their characters totally together *glares at those guilty parties* incentive to get their butts in gear.

It's so damn hot. I wish I had convenient access to a swimming pool that isn't so heavily chlorinated it eats out my eyeballs.

Jared's in Stratford, Canada right now. I can't talk to him for the next couple days until he gets back. Just nine more days until he comes.

 Just now putting the finishing touches on that confounding NPC. I took the advice of neuromancerzssand ignored the parts of character creation that weren't necessary to my purposes for this guy. It worked well enough because, as he said, there isn't much there intended to keep things balanced, so it wasn't as if anything could get particularly thrown off. My NPC needs some editing, and I think I'm going to fill out a character sheet for him just for my quick reference, but at least he's made. FINALLY.

Now all that's really left is to go through the game and double-check the statting. I want to make sure all the passive checks are in place as well. Overall, I'm pleased with how this is turning out. I won't know for sure until I playtest it, but I've got a good feeling for now.

Despite a sudden, out-of-nowhere onset of a sick headache and vomiting late this afternoon-- seriously, no clue where that came from, I went from completely fine to BOOM, laid out flat --I made gangbuster progress on "Woodsmen," my Vampire adventure today. I should have it totally worked out by tomorrow, with only the details and the statting remaining to do. All you interested parties should follow the shining example of electric_d_monkand send me character ideas! Matt, I love your concept a lot, and I'd love it if you ran with it.

Currently, my understanding is that the first run shall consist of:
- Toby
- Matt L
- Lise
- Sheena
- Bernie
- Jonathan (? - morethings5, tell me if you're definite)

lightgamer, since you won't be around to play this summer, you shall be guaranteed a spot when I run it again when school gets back in. I'm really glad you're interested.

I hate it when my internship boss doesn't send us pertinent information until the night before we need it. Since I'm not in class anymore it's not so bad, 'cause I can just do the preparations during the day, but still, it makes planning my time out a lot harder.

Hung out with my friend Ally today, helping her pick out equipment for the pet tortoise she's going to be getting. He's a cute little bugger, a Greek tortoise with a pretty shell and thick stompy legs. Also, did not sacrifice my life to Morrowind, but instead actually made some progress on my one-shot, which I suppose is solid enough at the this point that I can describe it here.

I'm putting together a Vampire: The Requiem adventure to run when I get back to Waltham. At this point it's just a one-shot, but open-ended enough that if I ever get an idea for how to continue it, that will be possible. I'm looking for four to six people to create characters to play in it. It's called "Woodsmen." The premise of this will be that all the players are newly-Embraced vampires who have yet to establish themselves in World of Darkness Boston. You will all respond to an invitation by the Prince of Boston for a chance to do an errand for him that will allow you to introduce yourselves to him and to begin to make names for yourselves. If there is enough interest, I'd be glad to run it more than once, so anyone who might be interested, please let me know.