Critiquing Myself - Drunk Girls*
Oct. 18th, 2024 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseBefore I leave behind this subject, I wanted to review myself as a GM and talk a little bit about how the game itself actually played out.
As I noted in the previous entry, I had some really good players. I play regularly withlcohen in our on-going Star Trek campaign and writers tend to be a good bet--and, as it turns out, naomikritzer is also a theatre person. I knew my friend Nick would also be good, since we played role-playing games together after college. The other two were unknowns, but turned out to mesh perfectly with the rest of the merry adventurers, as it were.
I am an inexperienced game master/runner. As much discussed here, I ran a Thirsty Sword Lesbians campaign at ConFABulous last year, and, ramping up to that, I test-played my homebrewed scenario several times with different groups. I ended up running that particular game a half dozen times in total? But, this was my first time running the classic Dungeons & Dragons, which, as you probably know if you are at all familiar, has a LOT of rules.
Also, this was the first time for me running a game via Zoom.
I was, at least, smart enough to realize that there was no way we'd get through the full adventure in three hours. So, I planned for two sessions, with the second one being optional--if, by some miracle--we tore through everything in record speed.
My most clumsy day was our first session. It didn't help matters that one player was running late and then two players had technical difficulties (one with connection, the other with an echoing microphone). But a poor carpenter blames her tools. When I ran the previous TSL game, it worked well to let each player introduce themselves as they came into the coffee shop, and so I'd thought to start the same way. However, I made the entrance to the tavern a bit too interesting and enticing and so the first player lingered at the night market in a way that, in retrospect, took time--even though I was able to work that interaction into a pivotal moment for that character in the second session--a bit unfairly from the other players. Had I to do that over, I would have just let people enter the bar normally and not bothered with the night market scene. This is now filed under: "cool Idea, but not necessary good for a one-shot."
Also, because it had taken everyone so long to get into the tavern, I feel like I probably rushed them into the scene with the drunk girl. Everyone just seemed to be starting to get into role-play when I felt guilty about how longlcohen had been waiting in the wings. This is one of those areas that I think is just generally hard to judge and which will probably just take me time to learn how to balance--by which I mean, what's the perfect amount of random, silly role-play that players want and enjoy versus a desire of the players for the story to continue to move forward? I think it's probably OK for a GM to hustle action along in the case of a one-shot, when people are expecting to get to a resolution of the conflict in 6 hours (two 3 hour sessions.) But, as a player who would happily role-play wandering a museum and looking at pictures for hours, I always feel bad when I'm the one who cuts those kinds of scenes short.
Because I wantedlcohen to be at least somewhat surprised by the action, I had her maid-of-honor kidnapped by the Cultists embedded in her soon to be in-laws. Thus, began the dungeon crawl.
Again, somewhat naturally, my first session was where I made the mistakes that was able to compensate for by the second session. The way I planned out the one-shot, I had all my notes--including monster stats and maps--in a single document. I don't think this was a mistake per se. What was a mistake, was not having a printed copy and/or a back-up screen so that I could consult that stuff without popping in and out. Basically, there was a rather dizzying back-and-forth when I needed to refer to my visual description notes or the monster stats and the players still needed to see the map. This was WAY TOO much toggling back and forth between sharing screen and not sharing screen, especially since half the time I would forget to collapse my hyperlinked index which had titles like "Monster Goes Here" and other spoilers.
Even though it wasn't disorganized in terms of me not actually HAVING the information, the way I presented things certainly FELT that way.
Solving my part in all that was relatively easy. By the second session, I not only had a print out of everything I needed, but also had a back-up screen in my iPad, which was carefully disconnected from Docs, so that I could move through the whole document easily, without switching what people saw on the screen.
Story-wise, I think things went OK as such things go when you have to improvise, like one does. The groom and his Cultist relatives could have been a bit more logical. I did not want to lean into the the whole "they needed a human sacrifice" idea because that felt darker than the tone of the story we'd started in the first session. Because I didn't go for the lowest hanging story fruit, as it were, there was a bit of bumbling storytelling on my part about exactly why and how the Cultists decided on Cyra (the love interest) as an acceptable substitute for Thalia (the drunk girl) and what, exactly, they'd been planning from the start.
But everything ended in a lesbian fairy (literally as Elves were involved) wedding, so I kind of feel that all's well that ends well in this case.
Other things that I am proud of include, but are not limited to, the character of the Bone Naga (an undead snake skeleton) Essence, who was very child-like and innocent, despite being a scary-looking guardian of an evil Snake God's secret cultist temple. She very much wanted to taste the party but settled on eating the remains of the spider they vanquished on her behalf. I amused myself, if not the players, with that one. At least two players (the drunk girl and the paladin) got complete stories, which is not a great average given that I had five players. However, given my newness to this all it felt like a win.
Plus, everyone had enough fun that we are all talking about reprising this particular merry band for another one-shot in the same universe, so that feels good.
As I noted in the previous entry, I had some really good players. I play regularly with
lcohen in our on-going Star Trek campaign and writers tend to be a good bet--and, as it turns out, naomikritzer is also a theatre person. I knew my friend Nick would also be good, since we played role-playing games together after college. The other two were unknowns, but turned out to mesh perfectly with the rest of the merry adventurers, as it were.I am an inexperienced game master/runner. As much discussed here, I ran a Thirsty Sword Lesbians campaign at ConFABulous last year, and, ramping up to that, I test-played my homebrewed scenario several times with different groups. I ended up running that particular game a half dozen times in total? But, this was my first time running the classic Dungeons & Dragons, which, as you probably know if you are at all familiar, has a LOT of rules.
Also, this was the first time for me running a game via Zoom.
I was, at least, smart enough to realize that there was no way we'd get through the full adventure in three hours. So, I planned for two sessions, with the second one being optional--if, by some miracle--we tore through everything in record speed.
My most clumsy day was our first session. It didn't help matters that one player was running late and then two players had technical difficulties (one with connection, the other with an echoing microphone). But a poor carpenter blames her tools. When I ran the previous TSL game, it worked well to let each player introduce themselves as they came into the coffee shop, and so I'd thought to start the same way. However, I made the entrance to the tavern a bit too interesting and enticing and so the first player lingered at the night market in a way that, in retrospect, took time--even though I was able to work that interaction into a pivotal moment for that character in the second session--a bit unfairly from the other players. Had I to do that over, I would have just let people enter the bar normally and not bothered with the night market scene. This is now filed under: "cool Idea, but not necessary good for a one-shot."
Also, because it had taken everyone so long to get into the tavern, I feel like I probably rushed them into the scene with the drunk girl. Everyone just seemed to be starting to get into role-play when I felt guilty about how long
lcohen had been waiting in the wings. This is one of those areas that I think is just generally hard to judge and which will probably just take me time to learn how to balance--by which I mean, what's the perfect amount of random, silly role-play that players want and enjoy versus a desire of the players for the story to continue to move forward? I think it's probably OK for a GM to hustle action along in the case of a one-shot, when people are expecting to get to a resolution of the conflict in 6 hours (two 3 hour sessions.) But, as a player who would happily role-play wandering a museum and looking at pictures for hours, I always feel bad when I'm the one who cuts those kinds of scenes short. Because I wanted
lcohen to be at least somewhat surprised by the action, I had her maid-of-honor kidnapped by the Cultists embedded in her soon to be in-laws. Thus, began the dungeon crawl. Again, somewhat naturally, my first session was where I made the mistakes that was able to compensate for by the second session. The way I planned out the one-shot, I had all my notes--including monster stats and maps--in a single document. I don't think this was a mistake per se. What was a mistake, was not having a printed copy and/or a back-up screen so that I could consult that stuff without popping in and out. Basically, there was a rather dizzying back-and-forth when I needed to refer to my visual description notes or the monster stats and the players still needed to see the map. This was WAY TOO much toggling back and forth between sharing screen and not sharing screen, especially since half the time I would forget to collapse my hyperlinked index which had titles like "Monster Goes Here" and other spoilers.
Even though it wasn't disorganized in terms of me not actually HAVING the information, the way I presented things certainly FELT that way.
Solving my part in all that was relatively easy. By the second session, I not only had a print out of everything I needed, but also had a back-up screen in my iPad, which was carefully disconnected from Docs, so that I could move through the whole document easily, without switching what people saw on the screen.
Story-wise, I think things went OK as such things go when you have to improvise, like one does. The groom and his Cultist relatives could have been a bit more logical. I did not want to lean into the the whole "they needed a human sacrifice" idea because that felt darker than the tone of the story we'd started in the first session. Because I didn't go for the lowest hanging story fruit, as it were, there was a bit of bumbling storytelling on my part about exactly why and how the Cultists decided on Cyra (the love interest) as an acceptable substitute for Thalia (the drunk girl) and what, exactly, they'd been planning from the start.
But everything ended in a lesbian fairy (literally as Elves were involved) wedding, so I kind of feel that all's well that ends well in this case.
Other things that I am proud of include, but are not limited to, the character of the Bone Naga (an undead snake skeleton) Essence, who was very child-like and innocent, despite being a scary-looking guardian of an evil Snake God's secret cultist temple. She very much wanted to taste the party but settled on eating the remains of the spider they vanquished on her behalf. I amused myself, if not the players, with that one. At least two players (the drunk girl and the paladin) got complete stories, which is not a great average given that I had five players. However, given my newness to this all it felt like a win.
Plus, everyone had enough fun that we are all talking about reprising this particular merry band for another one-shot in the same universe, so that feels good.