What about a Thursday?
Jul. 31st, 2025 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse What if I tried journaling two whole days in a row?
I'm willing to risk it, if you are.
I should be working on my novel, but I got out of the writing habit and now I've got to figure out how to claw my way back into a routine. This is going to sound counter intuitive, but luckily we are headed up to a friend's cabin tomorrow morning for a weekend of lakeside bliss. I will not even try to write over the weekend. HOWEVER, Monday will already be very Monday, being post-vacation, so I will just put my head down. I have a writers' Zoom every M-Th, so there's even a time to "show up to work" already scheduled. This should be a very effective restart button.
At least I hope it will be.
In the meantime, I have been, once again, working far too hard on preparing for the one shot I want to run at Gaylaxicon. I have, in the past, complained about some of the mechanics about Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Some of you may have heard this rant before (and still others may not give a hoot about RPGs,) in either case, feel free to skip the next little bit. I will even been kind to you and put it under a cut. You will miss the photo of what I've been calling my enrichment program, but them's the breaks, I guess. Your loss.
One of the most innovative--and, in my opinion, equally baffing--mechanics in Thirsty Sword Lesbians is the idea of STRINGS (which I will capitalize to distinguish it as an actual mechanic--a move a character can make as part of game play action.) A quick definition of STRINGS is that they are a box you can tick on your character sheet that represents relationships and connections between your character and other player's characters as well as to any non-player characters you meet and interact with, though a different set of specific rules applies to each.
If you go onto Reddit forums about Thirsty Sword Lesbians, as I did when I was first trying to figure out how to game master this game, you will discover that a lot of people just choose not to use STRINGS at all. I get this? One of the problem of having STRINGS that exist between player characters is that when you spend a STRING you are mechanically exterting your character's emotional influence on another person sitting across the table from you. Technically, it's the other person's character, but these things sort of become the same when one of the things that the rules actually state is that "that they might be pressuring or tempting the character to take another course of action (represented by the mechanical temptation to take the XP bribe.) They might be taking advantage of their insight or burning goodwill to figure out what it will take to get someone to do what they want. Their influence also letts them figure out just how to help or hurt the other character." Also, once you have a certain number of STRINGS on a person, you can FORCE an insight that the rules note "that even they don't know."
This feels very manipulative? Like, I don't want my fellow player to tell me that it's time for me to have some kind of emotional awakening or for them to have the opportunity to decide FOR ME what secret or insight I DON'T EVEN KNOW MYSELF that they want revealed so that they, basically, have more power over me.
That's uncomfortable.
It's feels especially uncomfortable in a one-shot, when it's strangers at a convention sitting around the table. That kind of move would take a lot of trust, you know? Like, what if someone just says "Yeah, the insight I get about Lyda's character is that they were once convicted of a terrible crime against humanity" and I've been trying to play my character as tree-hugging peacenik! I mean, sure, maybe fun twist? But maybe I'm really not in that mood for that and I DO NOT WANT. Because it's a mechanical application of a move in the game, technically I just have to accept it. There's no "counterspell!" I can throw down.
Unless, I guess, if I have a STRING on them in return and then... just do it to them as a kind of revenge?
Seems gross.
I have, in fact, noticed that in my long-running Thirsty Sword Lesbians campaign players are reluctant to take strings on each other. I'm pretty sure, in fact, none of them have. Even though, I suspect, that choice might surprise the designers of the game, I fully get it. The idea of using a mechanic to make a player do something they probably said out loud that they didn't want to do? Kinda not okay. I'm sure the designers didn't intend it to work that way, but it sure reads as something that could be easily abused.
So, I rarely remind my players that they can take out STRINGS on each other. I do, however, hand them out like candy when I'm playing NPCs.
That leads me directly to my goofy little project.
In a one shot, particuarly one that actually would be most satisfying if you can complete the storyline in one sitting at a con, it's kind of great from a GM's point of view to be able to pre-load pre-generated characters with STRINGS. I can literally give people a check mark on their character sheet that will give them someone they already know who might be willing to do a favor or might have information or be another arm in a fight. Whatever. I can give them options and they can decide to use them how they like. The options are nice! They let me pre-plant story seeds!
However, figuring out how to give people the information they need to find this character and to know what their options are for things they can do with them has been... complicated. The Thirsty Sword Lesbian character sheets are messy. They're already full of a lot of information, a lot of it fully unnecessary, but that's just my opinion. There's not a lot of space for notes and there's a lot that you need to come up with for your characters, including the Sword part of Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
So writing all of this information on the character sheet adds to the "WHAT DO I EVEN LOOK AT?" of the TSL character sheets. I did this anyway last time I ran this at a con and very, very few people figured out they had STRINGS and where to find the information.
So, I had an idea. I could make cards to represent the STRINGS my pre-generated characters had on non-player characters!
Image: the back side of a STRINGS card and the front side of another.
So what I did here is that I have a bunch of these colorful cards. The front side reminds the player what they can do with a STRING on an NPC and the back side has (in order from top to bottom):
But, yeah, so I've been occupying my time making these things for about 18 different pre-generated character sheets (2 choices for each of the nine "playbooks"). I always allow people to make their own characters on the spot, if they really, really prefer that... but in a cyberpunk setting knowing "what's allowed" can be hard. Plus, because the one shot is supposed to be fast and fun, I've pre-loaded all the pre-generated characters with some cool cyberpunk-y extra powers that won't really affect game play but add to the vibe.
Feel free to burst into applause at my effort.
Thank you, thank you very much!
I'm willing to risk it, if you are.
I should be working on my novel, but I got out of the writing habit and now I've got to figure out how to claw my way back into a routine. This is going to sound counter intuitive, but luckily we are headed up to a friend's cabin tomorrow morning for a weekend of lakeside bliss. I will not even try to write over the weekend. HOWEVER, Monday will already be very Monday, being post-vacation, so I will just put my head down. I have a writers' Zoom every M-Th, so there's even a time to "show up to work" already scheduled. This should be a very effective restart button.
At least I hope it will be.
In the meantime, I have been, once again, working far too hard on preparing for the one shot I want to run at Gaylaxicon. I have, in the past, complained about some of the mechanics about Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Some of you may have heard this rant before (and still others may not give a hoot about RPGs,) in either case, feel free to skip the next little bit. I will even been kind to you and put it under a cut. You will miss the photo of what I've been calling my enrichment program, but them's the breaks, I guess. Your loss.
One of the most innovative--and, in my opinion, equally baffing--mechanics in Thirsty Sword Lesbians is the idea of STRINGS (which I will capitalize to distinguish it as an actual mechanic--a move a character can make as part of game play action.) A quick definition of STRINGS is that they are a box you can tick on your character sheet that represents relationships and connections between your character and other player's characters as well as to any non-player characters you meet and interact with, though a different set of specific rules applies to each.
If you go onto Reddit forums about Thirsty Sword Lesbians, as I did when I was first trying to figure out how to game master this game, you will discover that a lot of people just choose not to use STRINGS at all. I get this? One of the problem of having STRINGS that exist between player characters is that when you spend a STRING you are mechanically exterting your character's emotional influence on another person sitting across the table from you. Technically, it's the other person's character, but these things sort of become the same when one of the things that the rules actually state is that "that they might be pressuring or tempting the character to take another course of action (represented by the mechanical temptation to take the XP bribe.) They might be taking advantage of their insight or burning goodwill to figure out what it will take to get someone to do what they want. Their influence also letts them figure out just how to help or hurt the other character." Also, once you have a certain number of STRINGS on a person, you can FORCE an insight that the rules note "that even they don't know."
This feels very manipulative? Like, I don't want my fellow player to tell me that it's time for me to have some kind of emotional awakening or for them to have the opportunity to decide FOR ME what secret or insight I DON'T EVEN KNOW MYSELF that they want revealed so that they, basically, have more power over me.
That's uncomfortable.
It's feels especially uncomfortable in a one-shot, when it's strangers at a convention sitting around the table. That kind of move would take a lot of trust, you know? Like, what if someone just says "Yeah, the insight I get about Lyda's character is that they were once convicted of a terrible crime against humanity" and I've been trying to play my character as tree-hugging peacenik! I mean, sure, maybe fun twist? But maybe I'm really not in that mood for that and I DO NOT WANT. Because it's a mechanical application of a move in the game, technically I just have to accept it. There's no "counterspell!" I can throw down.
Unless, I guess, if I have a STRING on them in return and then... just do it to them as a kind of revenge?
Seems gross.
I have, in fact, noticed that in my long-running Thirsty Sword Lesbians campaign players are reluctant to take strings on each other. I'm pretty sure, in fact, none of them have. Even though, I suspect, that choice might surprise the designers of the game, I fully get it. The idea of using a mechanic to make a player do something they probably said out loud that they didn't want to do? Kinda not okay. I'm sure the designers didn't intend it to work that way, but it sure reads as something that could be easily abused.
So, I rarely remind my players that they can take out STRINGS on each other. I do, however, hand them out like candy when I'm playing NPCs.
That leads me directly to my goofy little project.
In a one shot, particuarly one that actually would be most satisfying if you can complete the storyline in one sitting at a con, it's kind of great from a GM's point of view to be able to pre-load pre-generated characters with STRINGS. I can literally give people a check mark on their character sheet that will give them someone they already know who might be willing to do a favor or might have information or be another arm in a fight. Whatever. I can give them options and they can decide to use them how they like. The options are nice! They let me pre-plant story seeds!
However, figuring out how to give people the information they need to find this character and to know what their options are for things they can do with them has been... complicated. The Thirsty Sword Lesbian character sheets are messy. They're already full of a lot of information, a lot of it fully unnecessary, but that's just my opinion. There's not a lot of space for notes and there's a lot that you need to come up with for your characters, including the Sword part of Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
So writing all of this information on the character sheet adds to the "WHAT DO I EVEN LOOK AT?" of the TSL character sheets. I did this anyway last time I ran this at a con and very, very few people figured out they had STRINGS and where to find the information.
So, I had an idea. I could make cards to represent the STRINGS my pre-generated characters had on non-player characters!
Image: the back side of a STRINGS card and the front side of another.
So what I did here is that I have a bunch of these colorful cards. The front side reminds the player what they can do with a STRING on an NPC and the back side has (in order from top to bottom):
- the name of the pregenerated character (so I know who gets which cards, because some characters may have STRINGS on the same NPC if that NPC is critical to a plot point and I want each player to have unique information that fits with their personality/job/etc.) in bold,
- the name of the NPC that they have a STRING on,
- Where to find the NPC, their job title or other identifying information, the NPC's pronouns,
- a word or two that describes the kind of influence they have or the "flavor" of the relationship, this one you see says "professional" so the player can interpret that as they like, but they have a clue that this is someone they've worked with before,
- A brief description of the NPC, how the character knows the NPC (like did they do a job for them, or do they play video games together, are they childhood best friends), and then followed by
- A prompt about how the character could decide spend this string on this NPC, things like, "they have a lot of information, plus they owe you after that job that went pear-shaped" or whatever. So that the player isn't just left thinking "Okay, but what can I actually GET if I spend my STRING?"
But, yeah, so I've been occupying my time making these things for about 18 different pre-generated character sheets (2 choices for each of the nine "playbooks"). I always allow people to make their own characters on the spot, if they really, really prefer that... but in a cyberpunk setting knowing "what's allowed" can be hard. Plus, because the one shot is supposed to be fast and fun, I've pre-loaded all the pre-generated characters with some cool cyberpunk-y extra powers that won't really affect game play but add to the vibe.
Feel free to burst into applause at my effort.
Thank you, thank you very much!
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-08 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-01 01:09 pm (UTC)I need to get back into writing as a bi-weekly practice. My life has been so incredibly disrupted lately that not only do I feel behind on the book, I keep getting the "well, now you'll never get back into it" brainworms.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-08 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-05 08:48 pm (UTC)anyway, *applause* and looking forward to hearing how it goes!
no subject
Date: 2025-08-08 03:10 pm (UTC)But, yeah, STRINGS are weird. I do love them for one-shot stuff, though!