Kicking Around

As everyone who has ever existed well knows, I’m a sucker for mythological or folkloreian content for games.

So, while I don’t really pay any attention to my Kickstarter rewards, I did back this:

I’ve passed on a number of Kickstarters, including a Native American oriented one, because they weren’t trying to provide a rehash but were just inspired by the mythology or history or whatever.  I really want a great precolonization era source book for North America.  I do realize a lot of the problem with such is that so much history was lost to where it kind of makes more sense for people to make stuff up to create enough content.

Other random thoughts as I almost had full topics but forgot what I was going to write about.

While I’m not into elaborate backstories for PCs, when I was informed that Fiji’s only medal was in rugby 7s, I pointed out to the GM that another event Julio would be interested in (one I would be neutral on) is, um, rugby 7s.  So, while his backstory hasn’t terribly mattered, his family would care about baseball, his family would care about Mexico, he would be into sailing and anything Fijian, etc.

So, I keep pointing this out, but I’m way more interested in the civilian identity than I am the superhero identity.  I don’t really have good ideas for what he would do flying around electrifying things, where I have all sorts of ideas for what he would do when not using powers.  If he had his own comic, could have all sorts of stories around the world or even around Colorado.

I tried to think of any team sport at the Olympics I was interested in.  I’m certainly interested in “partner” sports like synchronized diving, beach volleyball (well, women’s beach volleyball) or bobsled, but I couldn’t think of any team sport I was interested in besides women’s soccer.  Even then, I don’t feel the need to watch the same match two or three times … programmers.  Then, why watch any Olympic sport where the most important events aren’t the Olympics?  So much wasted time on tennis.  Haven’t been inflicted with golf, even though I like watching golf more than most sports.  Sure, lots of stuff is boring in part or whole – mountain biking was really interesting, briefly.

I had some thought when I was trying to sleep about ranking True Dungeon tokens, but I can’t actually remember what my thinking was.  I had already given thoughts on class legendaries.  I also had already used the post title “Legendary” – good thing I searched my own blog to not repeat post titles.  Maybe it was ranking legendary weapons, but that doesn’t seem right as that was something someone did on the forums a while ago.

I was commeting on Discord recently about recent eBay auctions and token values.  I could post my supersecret, soon to be patented system for determining relic/legendary pricing in the absence of historical data points.  But, where’s the profit in that?  I did explain most of it to someone in a private message.  I did talk about how you can reverse engineer pricing to someone else in a private message.

That the wizard relic and legendary went for so little in recent auctions wasn’t shocking, but that they went for less than the cleric and fighter comps was somewhat so.  But, then, single data point, where eBay has a huge timing factor for when bidders may be engaged.

I have at least one RPG supplement specifically for Greek Mythology.  While the type of book I’m interested in for lots of other mythologies, it still doesn’t really evoke strong enough feelings.  I was mapping some stuff near Cyprus from the obvious inspiration of ruthenium – it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out how this all ties together.  Anyway, like everything can lead to something else.  I’ve been too tired to have my latest RPG thoughts that incorporate Olympic themes, well, other than the supers campaign stuff.

There’s discussion on new L5R home campaign.  It’s early to talk meaningfully about this, but I guess it brings up that I have more capacity for RPG play, including L5R play.  I think I have a character concept, though I still don’t understand why players get to create characters in a vacuum.  Yes, player input helps GMs and other players crystallize ideas of their own, but there should be some sort of hive minding to happen first so that folks don’t get too far down an unproductive or, at least, suboptimal path.

Only thing CCG related that I’ve put any thought into is our conversation about patching Traveller.  We want to get errata, rulings, clarifications updated, but there’s also some interest in balancing cards.  One would think I’d be all fired up about that.  Except, I’m not trying to compete in this game, and it doesn’t seem like there are that many others who are trying either.  I just want to spew out more content to keep the game lively, to the extent that that’s possible.

Energywise (and dollarfoolish), my main passion currently is in the TD milieu, which doesn’t seem all that useful to my audience.  How many people have taken interest in PTD or VTD because I’ve blogged about them?

Blissward

Wow, so long since I made a post.

One would think that a week ago I would have written something since it was the 5C True Dungeon weekend.  5C being the last virtual dungeon for the VTD season.

Not going to dwell too long on TD as my thoughts are far more relevant on forums.  I ran 5C six times, 5ABC total of 16 times.  5ABC was the most consistent dungeon of the five.  Three weekends of same dungeon, though, is too much.  I did the 16th run only to see some content I wasn’t able to interact with on other 5C runs.

Didn’t really care about change to 5C-D1.  For some groups, lot of puzzle damage.  My second run was a solo run and I got the answer right.  Speaking of solo run, AC36 Monk did not go well.  Change to room 3 was harsh.  AC36 just not good enough to grind out combats.  Died in room 5.  Why post title?  Charm of Blissward was my most fun meta play of the weekend.  On Epic run, we crushed the dungeon – no combat went longer than 2 rounds.  Brings up that Epic is too easy for a full party that knows what it’s doing and is running Epic builds.

Moving on, as this is already a rehash for me.  RPG time.  Finger wagging time.

Players who want narrative stuff to happen need to assist the GMs with what they are interested in.

While I’m sure I provide way more stuff than others on what I’m interested in, it’s often diffused.  I have a variety of thoughts, sometimes lots.  GMs don’t have the energy to cater to a bunch of stuff that may not even involve the rest of the party.

So, while work has been … trying, I finally carved out time Friday night to start thinking about what I wanted for my PCs in my Saturday and Sunday campaigns.  I was much more direct with what I was interested in for the Saturday game.  It didn’t matter for Saturday’s session, as we were in the middle of doing party stuff.  On a side note, that was probably the most coherent session of the 11 I’ve played.  There was a good balance to the session and our decisions were impactful.  Long argument afterwards about XP, but, since I don’t get worked up by the XP system as much as others, I don’t feel compelled to bring up things I’ve brought up in the past.  Still, would have been good to focus on the positive.

For Sunday’s game, I realized something Saturday – the Olympics are happening.  Now, I realized this on Friday, when I had the opening ceremony on for a really long time even though I was barely paying attention to it or its replay.  But, there’s a NPC in the Sunday game who was training for the Olympics, so I made a connection that could have been made earlier of wondering if we had the Olympics going on in our campaign at this time.

We do.  So, while the campaign is Covid free, as no one wants that much reality, for whatever supers world reason that an Olympics might be delayed a year – alien invasion perhaps, my PC (and his family) attended.  Family whole time and watch a bunch of baseball.  My PC just a few days, primarily to watch women’s pentathlon for, um, reasons.

I only wrote up details of what I cared about for subplot stuff after today’s session because … we were in the middle of doing things in game.  And, because talking with the GM made it clear that I needed to focus my thoughts/cares.  Buying the Denver Broncos can come later.  Hiking Native American Territories or Southwestern World Playboying can come later.  Hunting for a teleporting martial artist in Shanghai can come later.  Visiting family in Mexico can come later.

Focus.

So, speaking of Olympics, it’s very background noise for me this time around.  I don’t have much sense of the competitors.  Not trying to hunt down things I want to watch.  It’s so hard to follow fencing, but there was some interesting stuff shown only because Americanos were getting medals.  Canoe/kayak stuff is another thing that sounds like it would be interesting but isn’t well suited to TV.  Skateboarding not been that interesting to me as it’s like one trick at a time.

Why am I talking about Olympics other than how I like the Olympics?  Focus.  What sport is giving payoff?  The one you like watching the most or have the most rooting interest or whatever.  I was coming up with events Julio would be interested in besides pentathlon.  They aren’t the same as what I’d see in person if I can ever figure out how you actually get tickets.  We both like water, but he would be interested in sailing and swimming even though I think swimming is likely far better on TV.  We both would find diving interesting.  I think badminton is likely terrible to watch in person, too, but I’d still try and see.  Nothing is as good as curling as a spectator sport, but we can try.  Julio would be interested in surfing both because water and because new.  He would try to watch some baseball with his parents and uncle and might find it worth some time, where I’d rather watch archery even given how numbing that is likely to be.  But, I would imagine seeing a lot of different sports is a hassle unless you are well organized or very knowledgeable about how Olympics are conducted.

I don’t want GMs to struggle.  I can empathize with not having the energy to do gaming things – see my not blogging in like a month.  Maybe they won’t use what I send them.  But, they can’t use what I don’t send them.

HoR is fine for playing something mechanical that occasionally becomes thematic.  Home games should really see thematic play where mechanics support.

So, no CCGing, still.  TD is TD (totally awful treasure, again).  Conventions are getting sneaky close to worry about.  Really been RPGs that have been notable in how they could be better and how I can try to make them better by presenting what I care about.