Always glad to see more folks taking an interest
E: What are the players like, if you don't mind me asking? A friend of mine speculated that some might be (ex-)soldiers, he thought he recognized the particular brand of humor.
Actually none of us have ever served, but we've spent a fair amount of time around friends who have, and all share a fondness for military fiction books, movies, and games. Also, Sarge and Twitch both play WW2 reenactment paintball.
Our group is a bunch of programmers and techs who went to school together in Colorado and played a lot of D&D. Nowadays we're all grown up, Sarge and Doc have kids, and we only get to play every few weekends.
(I was going to try and do a detailed rundown of how everyone acts, but it wound up sounding really awkward, so I'm just stealing something our DM wrote)
Around the table it's a sort of movie-theater attitude when there's not any combat. Everyone is sitting around the mat and yelling advice at eachother, pointing out the army-men that represent the team or the npcs and slandering them, or speculating what sort of craziness they could accomplish with their current situation. I'm throwing out raw information and acting as final judge, and Sarge's player is acting as a sort of arbitrator and organizer. Shoggy sits there and tries to take notes whenever someone says or does something amusing. If he's behind on his writing we have to take his laptop away so he stays focused.
I'll typically lay down the generalities of a situation and let them either ask for details or make up the minor stuff themselves. Also, after they get into the swing of things, the players will occasionally handle a NPC's behavior for me, which improves speed nicely. It's a far more collaborative environment then the games I ran back in school were.
In combat everything is a sort of controlled panic, with everyone watching the turn timer and checking their sheets and postion on the mat. It's occasionally punctuated by people slapping their actions down or someone yelling at everyone to shut up and help with the idea they just had. When stuff get's really bad one of them will start running interference by asking me annoying questions about enemy positions or something while the rest scramble.
Another quote from him about how gameplay generally tends to go
The players tend to act like kids playing with dolls or drunken spectators, than real roleplayers. You hear a lot of "Twitch does X" as opposed to "I do X". Here's a sample of how a scene tends to come together
- We've just finished a combat scene, I've described the horrific results, and just informed them that enemy reinforcements are coming.
- They ask if the shuttle's coming, I ask them what they do when they realize the shuttle hasn't been called
- Doc's player decides that Aimy irrationally blames Tink for not thinking of it sooner
- Tink's player ponders whether it would be funnier to let that lie, or to antagonize her, then leads a group effort to think of what the most assholish response would be. "Skunk-haired-super-bitch" is arrived at.
- Doc's player announces Aimy's intention to beat the shit of Tink for that one
- Tink's player decides Tink will run away while whooping like zoidberg, but I make him roll initiative, he loses
- Doc's player vaguely describes how Aimy is totally kicking Tink's ass, Twitch's player suggests that she is forcing him to eat dirt and asking "who's the bitch now" Hilarity Ensues
- While some of the players continue to discuss what sort of semi-witty responses, and pleas for mercy Tink might make, I ask Nubby's player what he's doing....
[/li]
[/list]
Author
Topic: The All Guardsmen Party (Read 46409 times)