(no subject)

[rowyn]

I’ve decided to take the rest of the month off from my
fiction-posting-schedule.  This is in large part because I haven’t really been enjoying writing to deadline for the last few weeks.  It’s also because I’ve had a houseguest since Friday evening, and while I could have ignored tahkhleet to get some writing done, I haven’t wanted to. And next week, I am going to be visiting terrycloth in Seattle from Thursday evening through Wednesday, and I’m not going to want to ignore him in favor of writing either.  I plan to snatch bits of time at work to write this and that, but not fourteen entries’ worth.  I might make some erratic posts, but I’ll probably just save it for October. There’s a pretty good chance I’ll switch to posting fewer entries per week in October, but I dunno exactly what I’m going to do yet.
 
In related news, since I’m not making enough time to
do all of the things I want to do now, I’ve been thinking about adding a new timesink to my schedule.  Yeah, that doesn’t actually make any sense.  But I haven’t been in a PBEM since April or so and I miss it.  Also, for a while I was in multiple PBEMs and none of them actually consumed my entire life.  So who knows?  Maybe I can start another one without it spending every waking second on it.
 
Some time back, bard_bloom wrote a draft of a game where the premise was that the PCs played newly-hatched baby dragons from the same clutch.  The hatchlings would be born with sophisticated racial memories and strong personalities, but no parents (the eggs of the species routinely outlast the parents before hatching) and little knowledge of the contemporary world into which they are born. I was thinking of tinkering a bit with Bard's draft (with its permission) and running a half-assed PBEM around using the system. 

By "half-assed", I mean mainly that it'll run until I and/or my players get bored/sick of it. I'm not going to push myself to keep going for weeks even if it feels like work. I ask that my players do likewise -- if a week or more goes by when you haven't found yourself enjoying the game, please withdraw.  Much as I love bringing a game to a satisying conclusion, I'm not setting my heart on doing so with this one. Which means it'll probably die somewhere in the middle. I'm okay with that.  If I have more than one player, I will try to arrange it so that PCs can be written out without having to be killed off, so that the game can survive a player's departure.

So: anyone interested in playing a young dragon testing her wings on an unknown world? If you are, please leave a comment or send an email to my rowyn-at-livejournal address. :)

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Not really interested in dragons unless you're desperate for players but hope it's a fun game for you! What happened to the other PBEMs? Well, besides the one I was in.

Which, I hasten to add, was completely interesting and I wish we had been able to finish it, but I discovered that it's really stressful (to me as a player) if the players aren't cooperating toward a common goal. I realize some people enjoy that, I'm just not one. :)

[rowyn]

I've been in ... five? I think, since then. They've all petered out rather than closing at the story's conclusion. The closest one to resolving was the X-Men PBEM, which stopped at the end of an issue. The GM meant to get back to it someday but I think life got him caught in other things.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Ouch! Any thoughts on why PBEM games tend to have so much trouble? Could be that the nature of the medium encourages long replies, and people get discouraged about typing up a lot of text at once, so they put it off, causing a generally slow pace that doesn't fit well with big campaign arcs.

Thought about trying Google Wave? Even if the service itself is shutting down by end of the year, it'd be feasible for me to set up a Google Wave server on my Linux box for people to use.

[rowyn]

I think that the RPGs which do not finish are more common than ones that do, overall. The always-on nature of PBEM may contribute to some of its volatility, though.

I hadn't considered using Google Wave because it's going away, but it you can keep one running ... hmmm ..... Maybe if it works on my smartphone. =D

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

That I dunno, you can always try it and see! I haven't really used it myself. For Avatars 2.0 purpose, I figure I'll still use the cambots on Sinai and just use a virtual table as an adjunct, to show the map and such.

As an aside, from some things people have said about trying to use Google Wave for RPGs, you may want to break it up into chapters or scenes so each individual Wave doesn't get too big. Otherwise, evidently, you wind up scrolling through a humungously long list - imagine trying to read an entire novel in a webpage.

[rowyn]

The Wave does look like it has a lot of potential (I am still sad that it's being discontinued) but it doesn't work from my smartphone, and I like being able to keep up with a PBEM from work. Alas! I may ask my players what they think of using a Google Doc; I like the idea of having a "clean" record of the play-to-date instead of the giant mass of emails with assorted in-line replies that PBEM usually generates. But I fear the technology to get that with an asynchronous game that I play from my smartphone is ... probably not quite there yet.

[sandramort.livejournal.com]

I have no idea if you'd laugh at me or like this idea, but Eva might be interested. If you'd like, I can ask her. One thing she's got is free time and pc access! (Errr... two things, I guess)

[rowyn]

Oooh, that could be fun! She's 12 or 13 now?

I'm going to wait until the end of the month to start; lemme so who's interested then and make sure they're cool with it, then I'll get back to you gto see if Eva wants to join. :)