The Nerdery #25

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

reference: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1109

Another solution to the problem IS to play multiple campaigns at the same time. Trading off sessions. Of course, if one game is much better than the other, you might have low attendence at the other game's sessions, but then, you don't want to be playing that other game anyway, right?

[Tage]

I've been in a few campaigns with Sprig, and I feel the same way. In fact, I think I was the catalyst that destroyed our last D&D game, albeit unintentionally.

One thing that wasn't mentioned was finding people with compatible playstyles. My problem is that I'm too easily annoyed. When Sprig would start chatting about the new DS news in the middle of combat, it would drive me nuts. But EUOL likes to play just to hang out, so it didn't bother him at all. People are different, and if you're going to play for 4 years across various campaigns with the same people, you need to "play well" with each other.

[42]

I'm with e on this.

What has worked best for my group is to trade off who GM's each week. We even have back-ups in case someone doesn't show or scheadules change.

It turns the whole thing into a "let's get together and hang-out and do some role-playing" kind of event. Kind of like a geeks version of family home evening.

Anyways we've managed to complete at least three campaigns this way. Well, completed to the point where the story-line is essentially done.

I do agree with Tage that you need people who play well together. Fortunately, my current group does play well together, though we could use one more dedicated player since Prom is moving.

[Fellfrosch]

Prom is moving?

[42]

Yup Fell, to the far off land of Sandy, UT.

[Spriggan]

I've been in a few campaigns with Sprig, and I feel the same way. In fact, I think I was the catalyst that destroyed our last D&D game, albeit unintentionally.

I just want to state that this article wasn't inspired by any one event, when you've been a gamer for as long as me (12+ years) you have plenty of things like this happen.  I don't know how much of a catalyst you where since most people were getting tired of it.  Sadly I was just beginning to enjoy it since I was starting to be useful in combat.

When Sprig would start chatting about the new DS news in the middle of combat, it would drive me nuts.

Well in my defense having to wait 10+ minutes on average for a new round to start gets really old really fast.  When Tage, Fell and EUOL are combined into one group things take a while do to "stragatizeing".  It also didn't help that the power levels of characters were horribly unequal and I had the second worst character damage wise in the group while all the monsters were scaled up so the most powerful two had some type of challenge.  Combat was fairly tedious for me in the last campaign.  Heck I wasn't even good at running interference since my HP were so low, I was only good for getting people out of trouble.  But I don't want to turn this into an argument about bad feelings about the last game (which I don't have, I was bored not annoyed) it was more my fault for not munkining since half the players and the GM did (and I knew they were going to).  I also didn't know my entertaining myself during turns in combat annoyed Tage or I would have found less intrusive ways of doing so.

[Tage]

Ha, it wasn't just you Sprig, EUOL did it too, and he was the GM. Also, I didn't like the long strategizing, but anytime we just tried to barge in we got our collective rear-ends handed to us.

I guess what it comes down to is that some people (i.e. your brother) like to sit around and think up nutty strategies or just hang out and chat in general. I like to sit down and relax, not doing anything too cerebral, and just get through the story. Earl just wants to feel invincible. Etc.

Designing campaigns that appease everyone is really tough. EUOL did his best to do that in the last game, and pulled it off admirably. I think he overestimated our desired challenge level, but balancing fun with challenge is probably the most difficult part of GMing.