"Foxes are Great": Sunday & Monday 4/6-7 in Florida

[rowyn]

We slept late again on Sunday. The plan for the day had been to see Anthony and his family. Anthony is a mutual friend of John and mine from different places: they met on FurryMUCK, while I used to game with him when I lived in Ohio. He lives about an hour from John's place, but we've only managed to see him a couple of times in the last three years since I've started visiting Florida regularly. So I was really happy to get out to see him again.

Traffic on the highway slowed to a crawl for several miles, which was annoying but did give me a chance to get started writing up Friday's events. We got to Anthony's place at about 2:30. Their daughter, S, was napping when we arrived, so we had a kid-free hour to talk like adults. I looked at the very pretty selection of jewelry Anthony's wife, L, had made, and Anthony showed off some of the miniatures she's painted. Including seven Dalek figures, each painted to match a different Dalek color scheme from the various eras of Dr Who. Hee!

Then Anthony showed us Portals, which John hadn't seen before. I'd watched Lut play bits of it before, and watched the endgame on Youtube for the dialogue. John played that for a while as we watched; it's not a bad game to watch because the dialogue is funny.

Anthony also showed an Amiga-tribute video done by Eric Schwartz to the tune of "I'm Still Alive", the closing-credits song for Portals done by Jonathan Coulton. It was very cute, and immediately made me think of narile.

After S woke up, we watched assorted other video clips from Youtube and other sites the Anthony and John remembered. Then we played with S and handpuppets for a while. S took a mouse and a rabbit handpuppe6t for herself, and gave Anthony a
fox one (of course), me a raccoon, and John a tiger. Anthony and John did great voices and personalities for theirs: Anthony's fox had a high pitched, scheming sort of voice, while John's tiger was low and slow and growly. S and Anthony performed "The Fox Song" for our benefit a couple of times. The first verse went something like "Foxes are great, foxes are good/Foxes are taking over your neigh-bor-hood." It was quite a lot of fun. As Anthony pointed out, "Kids are a great excuse to act like a child again."

Afterwards, we went out to eat at a nice Italian restaurant. It had a fairly formal adult sort of atmosphere, but they brought out a piece of dough for S to shape (read: play with) which they then took back, baked, and brought out again. John and L helped her, making a cat out of it. After it was baked, she played with it some more. We talked geek-stuff mostly, relaying anecdotes from recent RPGs, and sharing the theory that you can never, ever, make a mystery too obvious in an RPG. "You know how many clues the protagonist gets in a mystery novel? Give ten times that many to the PCs and it still won't be too much." I know this but I'm still not good at giving enough clues to PCs in my games.

Then we went back to Anthony's house to hang out some more. We played Guitar Hero for a while, which Anthony owned and which I'd never played before. John was pretty good -- I don't know if he's played at all before or not, but he doesn't own it. I was awful, failing at three out of four attempts on various songs, all on the easiest settings. "White girl needs rhythm, badly". (I'm awful at DDR, too.) Guitar Hero is rather painful to play when you're horrible at it, because it wrecks the song, too.

L put S to bed while Anthony dug out a non-video game we could play. We settled on a Steve Jackson card game, Chez Geek, whose theme mimicks the geek lifestyle. You use time and money to get things, or experiences, that give you "slack", and there are cards that represent people you can call over to your apartment. People who give you slack you need to roll 3-6 on a d6 for them to show up. People with bad consequence, you play on your opponents and don't need to roll for. (They roll to get rid of them.) "It's just like life. Good people you need to call and some times they're not available. Bad people just show up and you can't get rid of them." Your job determines your income, free time, and how much slack you need to win.

John has a copy and we'd played once or twice before. It's a cute game. We played one round with the three of us, and another with L after S went to sleep. At one point, I played the "Psycho Ex" on Anthony, and then John played the "Whiner" on him.
John: "He's the Psycho Ex's ex."

Anthony [in whiny tones]: "'Oh, yoooooouu get a stalker! Why don't Iiiiiiiii have a stalker? No one cares enough to stalk meeeee.'"

It's the comments the game provokes that make it fun. :)

After the second round, L went to bed. We lingered a little longer, talking to Anthony, and eventually headed home around 11 or 11:30.

Monday was pretty low-key. We'd hoped to catch a few hours with ladyperegrine while her kids were in school, but she'd caught a flu bug, poor thing. We'd also hoped to go to All Fired Up to paint pottery, but they turned out to be closed Mondays. And Glaze Under Fire, another pottery-painting studio, was likewise closed Mondays. I was sad. Though at least this visit I remembered to bring home the coasters and bowl I'd painted last year.

So we wound up at Panera for lunch and to sketch for a bit before my flight. Then we headed to the airport, where my flight was a little delayed so we hung out there for a while. One of the Orlando airport art exhibits was "The Traveller", an amazingly realistic sculpture of an ordinary-looking tourist half-asleep with his bags around him. About the only thing missing was body hair. Very neat.

The flight wasn't too delayed -- much less so than this write-up -- and I made it home in good order.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I'm terrible at leaving clues and picking up on clues, both. Usually, when I pick up on a clue, it turns out not to actually have been a clue at all... sometimes, the GM is nice and retroactively makes it a clue, though.

That's a trick I've had suggested to me -- listen to the players speculate, and pick one of their theories to be what's actually going on so that they can feel clever. :P

[rowyn]

And here I had you down as good at puzzling things out. :)

I've heard of that approach to GMing, but never done it myself. One of the problems with it is that you can wind up with continuity problems, if you threw a bunch of clues out and the PCs didn't come up with a theory that accounted for all of them.

I've heard of GMs throwing out a bunch of random stuff without a backstory and then let the PCs figure one out that works, but I think that's just asking for trouble. >:)

But the worst is when your PCs find a clue that's really just a GM mistake. O_O;;

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Well, that sort of thing calls for GM flexibility. If the players just aren't rolling the way the GM wants them to roll, you can either railroad them or you can change course. And PCs would in general rather feel they're smart for figuring something out on their own, than slapped in the face too many times until they get it, so...

Remember when Mirari was going to be 'just a few weeks'? >_> Same sort of thing, I think. And I'm sure we've got some continuity errors in there, but on the other paw, the setting was flexible enough it didn't matter.

[rowyn]

I think there's a big difference between "not railroading the PCs" and "changing your backstory to match PC expectations". If the GM sets up a mystery where Mr. Yellow killed Ms. Blue and framed Mr. Red, it's perfectly reasonable for the GM to stick with that backstory, even if the PCs all hate Mr. Red and want him to be the real murderer and are ignoring any clues pointing to Mr. Yellow. Just like, for example, there was no need for Greywolf to decide the base the PCs attacked last Saturday was full of evil pirates just because PCs had started fighting them. Part of playing the game is being able to make mistakes.

I'm not saying GMs should be pilloried for changing elements of the backstory, or that I never have. >:) But I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a mistake for a GM to stick with the original backstory rather than going with what the PCs are wishing was the case.

Also, that can easily veer into favoritism, if the PCs aren't in agreement on their theories. >:)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Well, depends on how you feel the players will react. If they're the kinds who can't stand to have their PCs be wrong, then learning that their PCs are wrong will un-sell them on the game. On the other paw, if they can roll with emotional blows like that, they may welcome the opportunity to 'atone' for their errors, so their characters grow emotionally and in game terms.

And then hey, if you decide that you just plain like the player explanation for what happened better than the original idea...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of the people I play with would be happy that Mr. Red was going down even if he was framed, and start hiding the evidence that pointed to Yellow instead of just ignoring it, if ignoring it wasn't working.

Really, I tend to try to avoid mysteries and clues in general when I GM. It's more 'Something happened, and you don't know why? Well, how are you planning to find out?' And if the method is reasonable and they succeed, you can just, you know, tell them. Or at least tell them part.

I guess their method could be 'let's look for clues!', and then I'd be forced to make up some. Ugh. q:3

[rowyn]

I think a lot of the people I play with would be happy that Mr. Red was going down even if he was framed, and start hiding the evidence that pointed to Yellow instead of just ignoring it, if ignoring it wasn't working.

Heh, yeah, it does depend on what the players are like. But it's a different sort of problem (or not a problem at all) when the PCs know what's going on but decide to manipulate the situation to their liking than the kind where the players are trying to will the universe to be different in a metagame fashion.

... Mirari sort of turned that bug into a feature, come to think of it.

Really, I tend to try to avoid mysteries and clues in general when I GM. It's more 'Something happened, and you don't know why? Well, how are you planning to find out?' And if the method is reasonable and they succeed, you can just, you know, tell them. Or at least tell them part.

In theory, I'd like mystery-solving to be a chance for the PCs to look cool and the players to feel clever. In practice, I never have gotten the hang of it.

Writeup is cool.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

I have played it before, I can't remember where. I think at Maggie and Jonathan's, and if not there then at Chris'. I've done a bit more of the DDR, and that's helped somewhat with getting the reactions down and on-beat.

Portal is cool.

I've read a bunch of mystery novels, and played in a couple hard detective games, so I think I can do it right, but the observation is true. Also, how one should never run two mysteries at the same time, as the players will just extrapolate really wild things that explain all the clues, when the real truth is a bunch of things are unrelated. Especially odd is when players accidentally stumble on an end-of-chain clue and think they're making progress when they work backwards.

I'm missing the bowl and coasters already, and have made a coaster replacement so far.

Hanging out was very cool.

Re: Writeup is cool.

[rowyn]

Yeah, you can't run a mystery in a game the same way an author writes one, because the author's characters never miss a thing and PCs do all the time. :)

I wanna find a pottery place locally and go paint stuff myself. :)

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

Well, there's an All Fired Up in Johnson County which isn't too far from 'random spot' in KC, MO.

And a couple other similar ones about.

[narile.livejournal.com]

Heh, would probably be better to link to me if I had updated my LJ or any journal/blog in the last 2-3 years. ;)
Then again, it can be nice to be remembered.

[rowyn]

Hey, I link to Lut's LJ name, too, and he hasn't ever posted to his blog. And you're still reading and commenting, so that counts as far as I'm concerned. :)

[krud42.livejournal.com]

It really, really bugs me that they call it Portals. ':P

(But then, I haven't worked on that story in years, so I have no room to gripe, really.)

RYN: Thanks! I just finished it, actually. (The song.)