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L. Marcus

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  1. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to BoloOfEarth in Funny Pics II: The Revenge   
    My go-to response when someone's (justifiably) complaining about something major is, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
  2. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Cancer in Ctrl+V   
    First, I recognize that the (snip) campaign was a labor of love.  There's way more work here in terms of details, structure, and underlying rationale than in nearly all the campaigns we do.  Unfortunately, I think that's both a blessing and a curse.  Now I go on a long personal exposition as why I think that last "curse" part.
     
    I had a parallel experience a bit more than twenty years back, while I was still in Pullman.  You may recall that there was a brief science fiction campaign ... I no longer remember even what system it was, because that wasn't important to me; may have been Hero.  (snip) was the at-table GM.  The social/political context of the campaign world was largely based on C J Cherryh's Chanur books; we didn't use her races but the interstellar political strucutres were similar.  It was more or less current-day Earth, albeit postulating the invention of an interstellar jump drive by humans.  Some of the PCs had been abducted by aliens and transported off-Earth.  Others were in a crew for a Space Shuttle class ship fitted with the jump drive.  There were other bits to it, almost all of I've forgotten now.
     
    That campaign, too, was a labor of love.  With lots of input from (snip), I created a race of sentient, psionic shrubs, with a couple of client races, the most important being something like partly uplifted weasels.  (I don't think the PCs ever "met" one the shrubs, though a couple I think did interact with a couple of the weasels.)  Based on what was at the time very recently released real astronomical data, I chose stars for other inhabited star systems (and got a bit of satisfaction years later when the one I'd chosen for the shrubs' homeworld was found to have a planet orbiting it), computed distances and so on.  I postulated performance characteristics for the jump drive, and did a bunch of thinking about what that implies for the physics of interstellar travel (trajectories and velocities needed for entering jump so as to reach your intended destination, and what the emergent velocity would be at the end of the jump, how you'd get rid of most of that velocity snd get politely and safely into the habited parts of the system, etc.).  Lots of interesting physics and reasoning out the interstellar travel and defense infrastructure a starfaring race would need.  I had lots of fun doing thst.  Similarly, I had lots of fun on side calculations as I explored what all that would mean for a special case, if you postulated our Solar System with an interstellar culture.  Those side calculations informed me a lot about how other cultures would act and the infrastructure they would have to build with that ensemble of interstellar travel characteristics.
     
    Eventually we kicked it into a shape where we thought we were ready to play it, and we got started going with table play.  Things went south in short order.
     
    As is the flip side of any real-physics discussion of interplanetary travel (not interstellar, which is all inconsistent impossible crap), physically realizable techniques force you into regimes where ... there's nothing for people on board such ships to do until literally the last few minutes of docking micromanuvers.  The orbital mechanics of manuvers and trajectories are dictated by the original incoming velocity and pop-in point, the calculations require heavy computation no human can do, and so on.  For hours or more likely days at a stretch, there's nothing for passengers of such a spaceship to do but think about information about the system as it comes through the instrument array.  They can't do anything with that information, but they can think about it.  Maybe.  It's hard to think about a situation when there's serious question about how relevant you are.
     
    The players rebelled before it got too far.  There was nothing for them to do, and their attempts to do anything had to be talked down as being either impossible or counter productive.  All Tell, no Show, as we have heard this situation described in some discussions on the web of this sort of GM failure.
     
    Yes, there was, I think, another session, where I spammed individual-player infodumps out to people between sessions.  Ultimately, though, I recognized that I had put together something that was a personally fascinating construction, and could perhaps be made into the overall setting for an interesting ***story***, but it made for a more or less unplayable ***game****.  Of everyone at the table, I was the only one who could understand and work with the physical problems my chosen axiom set posed.  Far more important, I was also the only one at the table WHO WOULD CARE.  It was an astrophysics problem.  By real-world personal preferences and interests, I was the only astrophysicist at the table (I believe (snip) had not yet joined us at that point).  By the logical requirements of the underlying circumstances, there wasn't much chance of anyone else being interested in those sorts of problems, even though I found them fascinating.  Yet, for the quality of the game, by far I was the one who mattered least.
     
    At that point I realized I'd made a fundamental mistake: I'd let my interest in the physics override what ought to be a GM's principal concern, and that is to keep the players engaged and entertained.
     
    It was a bit more than a decade before I tried running anything again as I internalized those lessons and thought about how I might run something again.  (It's not like we had a shortage of GMs and stuff to play, so I felt OK about spending that time and doing long thought about it; also, embroiled in a temporary career change as I was at the time, I did have other things on my mind.)  I was resolved not to repeat those mistakes, while at the same time recognizing another personal issue of mine, without which I wouldn't want to run anything at all.
     
    That personal issue is that I am a die-hard top-down simulationist in terms of running an RPG.  When constructing a game which I alone am running, I have to have a fundamental idea of a grand plot arc, and I make sure everything that happens in the game fits into that arc (modulo intentional red herrings that I might put in for their own plot reasons).  At the same time, the players *can* do things to affect the arc's path and it's my job to accommodate those player alterations of the world while maintaining a meaningful and enjoyable campaign.  (Shared games like Rocket Age and Feng Shui don't count; for those there doesn't need to be a unifying plot, in my opinion.)  Also, I greatly prefer playing in games where there is such an arc so that I can puzzle out what it is and how it can be solved.  You've seen me enough at the table to recognize this shortcoming of mine.  It's a big reason why I have never, ever liked Star Wars as a game-world.  The attempt after the very first movie to retrofit story and rationale into the Star Wars universe is so hopelessly inconsistent that I lost interest in it immediately.  As action movies, the first three are great movies.  But taking that setting and putting players in it ... it doesn't scratch an itch I personally need to have scratched.  What happens is what's going to happen, and what anyone outside the nucleus of the Skywalker clan, Sidious, and Yoda does is more or less irrelevant to the course of future events.  Lots of people can have the opportunity to kick serious butt, but even the most spectactular of this peripheral butt-kicking doesn't have any effect on what happens in that universe.  Further, because that means the entire purpose of the game itself is that butt-kicking, one of my personal favorite situations -- finessing the party around direct physical confrontation with large bad guy forces and accomplishing a major strategic goal while sidestepping the big team of Big Bads -- is rendered impossible.  The butt-kicking itself is the whole point of the game, so to try sidestepping it is counter to the only reason to play.  That combination of PC irrelevance to the fate of the world, and the inherent necessity of exclusion of the kind of lateral strategy I like to create, makes it hard for me to have any real interest in that setting.
  3. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Lord Liaden in More space news!   
    Massive subsurface frozen sea discovered on Mars
  4. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to tkdguy in A Thread For Random RPG Musings   
    I'm still working on my homebrew based on California as an island aka Insula Calafia (Island of Calafia), based on a legendary Amazon queen who included griffins in her forces. I'm also working on the changed geography and adding fantasy elements, such as turning California Condors into rocs. I also renamed a couple of the major cities.
     
    San Francisco = Porta Aurea (Golden Gate)
    Los Angeles = Urbs Nuntiorum (City of the Messengers)
     
    Other details are extrapolated from this video:
     
     
  5. Like
    L. Marcus got a reaction from Old Man in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    "Oh, yes ... good old Merv, we used to go there for chai."
  6. Haha
    L. Marcus got a reaction from Lord Liaden in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    "Oh, yes ... good old Merv, we used to go there for chai."
  7. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Old Man in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    If we ditch the European requirement, central Asia is an outstanding source of inspiration.  I have a history of central Asia that reads exactly like a fantasy novel with intrigues, wars, dynasties, and entire civilizations that no Ur-Murrikan has ever heard of.    Largely because they were erased by the Mongols, and later the Russians.
  8. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Starlord in Alphabet Game 2021   
    Forgot W
     
    The Winds of Winter by George...Aww crap!  Nevermind!
  9. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Cygnia in Funny Pics II: The Revenge   
  10. Like
    L. Marcus got a reaction from Eyrie in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    Equality. In my little world, the oldest recognised child inherits title and land. If, by some random events, someone would inherit more than one title, the next generation with more than one eligible heir would divide the titles among them, the eldermost child taking the most prestigious title/richest holding.
  11. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Cancer in Funny Pics II: The Revenge   
  12. Like
    L. Marcus got a reaction from Doc Democracy in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    Henke is a bit of a legend, true. Almost as good as Ibrahimovich and much more personable! When he went from Celtic to Barca in '04, the two clubs met in the Champions League, the game played in Glasgow. Larsson scored on his old club -- and refused to celebrate. Class act.
  13. Like
  14. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Cygnia in Funny Pics II: The Revenge   
  15. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Doc Democracy in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Less hate for a dessert you probably have never tried.  There are a lot of scandi-snacks that I might point at that are, health-wise, as questionable as the modern classic you are trying to denigrate.
     
    😄
  16. Like
    L. Marcus got a reaction from assault in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    Deep-fried Mars bars aside, the Scots are alright.
  17. Haha
    L. Marcus got a reaction from Khymeria in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    Deep-fried Mars bars aside, the Scots are alright.
  18. Thanks
    L. Marcus got a reaction from tkdguy in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    The Scandinavian elites of the 12th century had given up plundering and pillaging abroad for using the Christian ideology to increase their domestic influence and power. Early medieval Sweden was still an elective monarchy, and civil war between competing magnates over the crown was almost a yearly occurrence. Our national patron Saint, Saint Erik, was a king who bit it in one of these struggles. He started a crusade against the Finns and was murdered in a church, they say, so he must've been very holy, even if he ended up more holey.
     
    Not that the coalescing kingdoms didn't engage in a little light conquest -- the Danes tried for Balticum, while Sweden managed to snag Finland.
  19. Thanks
    L. Marcus got a reaction from Old Man in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    The Scandinavian elites of the 12th century had given up plundering and pillaging abroad for using the Christian ideology to increase their domestic influence and power. Early medieval Sweden was still an elective monarchy, and civil war between competing magnates over the crown was almost a yearly occurrence. Our national patron Saint, Saint Erik, was a king who bit it in one of these struggles. He started a crusade against the Finns and was murdered in a church, they say, so he must've been very holy, even if he ended up more holey.
     
    Not that the coalescing kingdoms didn't engage in a little light conquest -- the Danes tried for Balticum, while Sweden managed to snag Finland.
  20. Like
    L. Marcus got a reaction from Ragitsu in Ctrl+V   
    I've gone through Basic Training, and I work in health care -- my life revolves around proper footwear!
  21. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Lord Liaden in Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)   
    Their believing that doesn't make sense... but this is MAGA, so when do they ever.
     
    But I'll bet the opposite way. MAGAts may be fired up, but they're a fraction of conservatives. Trump doesn't work up the majority of Republicans the way he used to. Many of those who bought the "rigged election" line when Trump was president, have no reason to believe it'll be different with Biden in the White House. And that's just Republicans. Trump can't win with just them, he needs moderates and independents, and he's done everything to alienate them. That isn't even considering the impact of his many trials.
     
    I absolutely agree that Democrats can't let up. They have to get out the vote. They have to challenge Republican hypocrisy, ineffectiveness, and corruption at every turn. They have to trumpet all that the Biden administration has accomplished. But I'm betting that Trump has doomed the GOP.
     
    I guess we'll see who's right. 🤞
  22. Like
    L. Marcus got a reaction from DentArthurDent in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    Early Medieval Sweden, around the conversion to Christianity, with a dash of the Karolingian Empire without their bloody stupid inheritance laws.
  23. Like
    L. Marcus got a reaction from Ragitsu in Ctrl+V   
    Epic boots.
  24. Like
    L. Marcus got a reaction from assault in Favourite Mediaeval Setting?   
    Early Medieval Sweden, around the conversion to Christianity, with a dash of the Karolingian Empire without their bloody stupid inheritance laws.
  25. Like
    L. Marcus reacted to Clonus in Funny Pics II: The Revenge   
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