Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Over the weekend (yes, I realize I should've posted this on Monday), I spent a fair bit of time around games and dealing with gaming stuff. On Saturday, as mentioned, I finally played Munchkin for the first time.
On Saturday night, I sat in on Rich's Shadowrun campaign. I didn't play. I just watched and listened. Shadowrun is one of those really cool settings with a set of game mechanics that I don't really like. It's a dice pool-based game, but if you a roll a six (on a d6), you re-roll and add it to the score on that die. And you're counting successes. So with a lot of dice and some good luck, it can get confusing (for me, anyway).
The point of sitting in was two-fold, although the guys at the game only knew one of the reasons. The more known reason was that I was sitting in to see if it was a game/group I wanted to join. There wasn't a lot of number-crunching during the session, so I am thinking that I would like to join.
The second reason was that I wanted to observe another GM in action without having to focus on running a character. I've been trying to improve my GMing lately, and when I'm playing in a game, it's very difficult to focus on what another GM is doing right and doing wrong. Just sitting there and watching everything unfold allowed me the opportunity to see how Rich runs his games. I think I picked up a few good habits that I'm trying to add to my own GMing.
Which brings me to the Sunday night D&D game. I tried to incorporate what I had learned from the Shadowrun session, and we actually ended up having a really good game. It was ninety percent combat, but it was fun and interactive.
I'm sure Rich, if he's reading this, is wondering what I took away from his Shadowrun session and tried to incorporate. Simply put, I tried to take my time with things. One of my problems, I have found, is that dead air tends to unnerve me. If I don't fill that space with something GM-ish, then I believe that I'm not reacting quick enough to the players and they'll get annoyed/bored. Rich seemed to have a more casual GMing style. Although he was pretty good at coming up with responses in a reasonable amount of time, I think it's clear that players aren't going to mind if they ask me a question and I take a few moments to collect my thoughts before answering.
Since Sunday night was mostly combat, and it was coming from several directions (basically, it was four encounters that turned into one big encounter), I had to take my time. I slipped up early on and made some bad calls, which someone challenged (although this someone really could've found a better word to use than "stupid" when describing my decision). Keeping track of initiatives proved to be a chore, but I think I've got a pretty good system going at this point. Still, the odd mistake happened, like when I missed one of Logan's actions. Oops. At least it corrected quickly.
On Saturday night, I sat in on Rich's Shadowrun campaign. I didn't play. I just watched and listened. Shadowrun is one of those really cool settings with a set of game mechanics that I don't really like. It's a dice pool-based game, but if you a roll a six (on a d6), you re-roll and add it to the score on that die. And you're counting successes. So with a lot of dice and some good luck, it can get confusing (for me, anyway).
The point of sitting in was two-fold, although the guys at the game only knew one of the reasons. The more known reason was that I was sitting in to see if it was a game/group I wanted to join. There wasn't a lot of number-crunching during the session, so I am thinking that I would like to join.
The second reason was that I wanted to observe another GM in action without having to focus on running a character. I've been trying to improve my GMing lately, and when I'm playing in a game, it's very difficult to focus on what another GM is doing right and doing wrong. Just sitting there and watching everything unfold allowed me the opportunity to see how Rich runs his games. I think I picked up a few good habits that I'm trying to add to my own GMing.
Which brings me to the Sunday night D&D game. I tried to incorporate what I had learned from the Shadowrun session, and we actually ended up having a really good game. It was ninety percent combat, but it was fun and interactive.
I'm sure Rich, if he's reading this, is wondering what I took away from his Shadowrun session and tried to incorporate. Simply put, I tried to take my time with things. One of my problems, I have found, is that dead air tends to unnerve me. If I don't fill that space with something GM-ish, then I believe that I'm not reacting quick enough to the players and they'll get annoyed/bored. Rich seemed to have a more casual GMing style. Although he was pretty good at coming up with responses in a reasonable amount of time, I think it's clear that players aren't going to mind if they ask me a question and I take a few moments to collect my thoughts before answering.
Since Sunday night was mostly combat, and it was coming from several directions (basically, it was four encounters that turned into one big encounter), I had to take my time. I slipped up early on and made some bad calls, which someone challenged (although this someone really could've found a better word to use than "stupid" when describing my decision). Keeping track of initiatives proved to be a chore, but I think I've got a pretty good system going at this point. Still, the odd mistake happened, like when I missed one of Logan's actions. Oops. At least it corrected quickly.
// posted by Chris @ 10:05 AM 
Comments:
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Dude, Sunday was great! Lots of battles, and so what if you messed up a bit. You had 4 battles at once. Us players only really were concerned with the one we were fighting, or the 2 that wanted to kick our asses!
You did fine!
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You did fine!
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