Monday night was supposed to be a regularly scheduled gaming night, but it turned into a sort of intervention. Of late we’ve been getting together, horsing around, cracking jokes, having an all-around good time, but not getting much actual gaming done. Now, I’ve been through this before with other gaming groups, and in fact the other group Katie & I are in just went through this past summer. It can be a painful process, but it doesn’t have to be.
The first topic of discussion was whether we still wanted to game, or just hang out. This is the only opportunity some of us have to see each other on a regular basis, so we naturally want to catch up. We order pizza, and theoretically start playing after we’ve eaten, but the chatter always continues. If we were going to just be a social group, that would be fine, but if we wanted to game, we needed to discuss some things and come up with some rigor.
Going around the room, everyone agreed they wanted to game. The question was, how do we apply rigor. Do we set a firm time when the table talk ends and we snap into character and game, so that we know to get all of our catching up out of our system? Or do we go to an every-other-week schedule, alternating between gaming and socializing? Most people preferred the former, with an occasional “skip week” when a campaign hits a good stopping point, or at the end of a campaign. When one of the members pointed out that she’d be more inclined to bail on a social week because she’s got a lot of things on her plate, but she’d keep commitments to game, that pretty much settled it in my head.
A suggestion I made was that maybe we weren’t playing the right game. No offense to the various gamemasters (I’m one of them) or the settings or systems we’ve played, but if we’re not all enthusiastic and engaged we’re going to drift. We’ve played games because one person was passionate to run it, and players weren’t thrilled but willing to go along and try to find their passion within it. We’ve played games where the players wanted to play but the gamemaster sort of took up the mantle because no one else would and wasn’t enthused. We needed to find a game that we’d all agree on, and all be excited about playing. We needed to find a game that we cared about enough that we wanted to play more than screw around.
The rest of the night was pretty much a discussion of player styles, genre preferences, and systems. One thing we all happily agreed on was that the issue wasn’t any sort of personality conflict between players. If anything, we all get along too well. We needed a game that would leverage the group dynamic.
What we came us with is a superhero soap opera. I’m going to run it, with Katie as my backup/co-GM. I have no idea what system I’m going to use, but it’s got to be something reasonably light, and I’m probably going to roll all the dice so the players can focus on in-character interaction. Almost like LARP rules, but sitting around a living room not in costume. Nothing out-of-the-box fits the bill, so I’m considering cobbling together something out of FATE of, more likely, knocking together a supers version of Domnio.
Next week we’re doing a “social week”, no gaming. The week after we’re doing worldbuilding and character creation (ideas and backgrounds, if not actual number-crunching and mechanics). I will blog about it.
Given the way this new campaign started, and the supers and soap genres, I’m proposing we name both the campaign and the superhero team The Intervention.
LOVE IT!
Posted by Matt! :D | October 13, 2011, 6:03 pmIcons. Check it out. Both the FATE and Risus ideas are very grand. And, I have some ideas for Risus supers if you want to pick my brain, but Icons is pretty darn light, will support your die rolling vision and is cored with FATE.
It is sweet, sweet nectar… For me anyway.
But, yeah, FATE 2.0 or a Spirit of the [blank] sort of thing will work just fine.
Posted by drcheckmate | October 13, 2011, 8:31 pmI agree with Stefan, to a point; I’m not sure how you can get much lighter than Risus. But then I’m biased.
Posted by cleireac | October 14, 2011, 1:26 pmNot lighter. Still pretty light.
Posted by drcheckmate | October 14, 2011, 1:29 pmI like your proposal. I think your out look of what happened is good. I think the solution will work.
Posted by Deb Rhymer | October 13, 2011, 8:42 pmThis group already knows Cortex (from playing Supernatural), so I looked at Smallville. Close to, but not quite, what I want though. Icons is on my short list to look at, I think I have a copy somewhere.
Posted by Berin Kinsman | October 13, 2011, 8:43 pmMaybe look at leverage? More group oriented than smallville.
Posted by Henrik | October 14, 2011, 12:34 pmSounds like you have a good group and had a good discussion about what everyone whats to do. It’s great that everyone is serious about playing. Even so, it’s a social activity, and as you said, people like to catch up on each other’s lives and chat. It’s important to keep that part, too.
Our groups meet for games on a regular schedule, but even so, we’re friends, and we like to chat before and joke around, tell each other what’s been going on since last session, etc. We have our usual routine of meeting up at someone’s place, going to the table for 20-30 minutes of social time, then the GM will start talking about the game. It could be something formal, like a set phrase (“When we last left our heroes…”), or easing into it, like asking for what the players spent their XP on, then moving into the game from there. We also take regular short breaks. We know that when game talk starts, that means the game is on.
By making the social “goofing around” time part of the gaming ritual, it makes it much easier for players to focus on the game itself. Good luck with the new campaign!
Posted by Kaiju | October 14, 2011, 12:51 pmI can offer review copies of any Cortex-based product, just FYI. Henrik is correct that Leverage is a whole lot more group-oriented than Smallville, if only because it’s not designed to promote inter-character drama.
Posted by Cam Banks | October 14, 2011, 2:47 pmThanks Cam. I have Smallville and Leverage and I’m looking at them both because this group knows Cortex (from playing Firefly, BSG and SPN), but I’m looking for inter-character drama. Working on cobbling something together that promotes it.
Posted by Berin Kinsman | October 14, 2011, 2:57 pmIf your group is burned out why not try a different rpg every month or every other week until you find something you like?
Posted by John Johnson | October 20, 2011, 5:03 am