ugh

[kindkit]

I have managed to feel worse now, at the end of my weekend, than I did at the start. Go me?

I think my bad cold may have turned into bronchitis, because my chest feels tight and sore and it's hard to breathe deeply, and also I feel SO TIRED. On the other hand, I'm not coughing and I don't have a fever.

In my weakened state, my willpower failed me and I re-downloaded Best Fiends. I had it once before, but I deleted it after two days because I couldn't do anything else but play. We'll see how that goes. I've spent a lot of the afternoon playing, but it's not like I could have been doing much else.

I also started listening to the Rusty Quill Gaming podcast. I'm not sure yet if I enjoy it or not, apart from my fondness for those participants who are also voice actors in The Magnus Archives. But it is a thing to occupy my brain while I lie in bed feeling terrible.

Am now attempting to cook dinner.

Comments

[kindkit]

I'm currently partway through the metacast on designing a campaign, and finding it very interesting. Writing plot is something that has always defeated me, even as a fan-writer, but listening to Alex talk about the theoretical/technical issues (both here and in the Magnus Q&As) is making me wonder if I've just been approaching plot in the wrong way.

Have you listened to the recent metacast on sensitivity in gaming? I'm really interested in that but I'm wondering if it's spoilery for later episodes of the gaming podcast. If so, I'll wait.

[rydra_wong]

Have you listened to the recent metacast on sensitivity in gaming?

Yes, and it's fascinating (though it crams a lot in and could easily have been twice as long; a lot of it's on group dynamics and issues like player consent and ensuring everyone's comfortable at the table). I think it does have some spoilers but only relatively minor and contextless ones (plus things that are spoilery by implication but that you're already spoiled for, like "Helen is there!") but I was fairly heavily spoiled anyway so may not be the best judge.

I was planning to have a re-listen anyway, though, so I'll keep that in mind and try to report back on the spoiler level.

[rydra_wong]

Re-listened, because I had long cold bus rides today. Spoilage for the main RQG campaign is pretty minimal; it's limited to:

Helen's character's name and class
[character] insists on going on a shopping trip on their own at one point, but it's pretty uneventful!
in [city], there's a potential [fraught type of social conflict] which the players successfully intervene to prevent

There have been various previous discussions of specific/spoiler-y issues which I'd consider relevant on this general theme, but they're in the Q&A/Mail Bag eps -- this should be pretty safe for you.

[rydra_wong]

A bit of context, btw, just because it delights me: Helen's character sheet has "NO YELLING" written at the top (acquiring progressively more and more underlining) because Helen has The Best Reactions Ever and the volume of her shrieks and squees is actually capable of hurting the mikes.

[rydra_wong]

Writing plot is something that has always defeated me, even as a fan-writer, but listening to Alex talk about the theoretical/technical issues (both here and in the Magnus Q&As) is making me wonder if I've just been approaching plot in the wrong way.

I would love to know more of your thoughts about this, because I think I struggle with some related stuff, and I suspect it's part of why I'm fascinated by what I might be able to learn from RQG (and from their willingness to be transparent with the meta). I mean, collaborative group improv storytelling as a game is obviously a different process from writing a novel, and has somewhat different satisfactions for the audience, but I feel like there's chewy brain food there.

[kindkit]

Belated and very quick response: one of my objections to plotting is that it feels mechanical to me. What RQG is making me think about is, basically, leaning into that, accepting that it is mechanical but that doesn't make it bad storytelling. The opposite, in fact.

I don't know why, thinking about it now, this was such a mental stumbling block for me. I very much believe in fiction as a craft, not as divine inspiration, but somehow I never connected that to plotting.

It's also potentially helpful for me to think of plot as a plan that can be affected by character choices (because sometimes things taken unexpected turns) rather than as "on page 83 they will have arrived at the spooky warehouse."

[rydra_wong]

It occurs to me that you've got an interesting potential mental model in terms of the game world/Alex/the author offering the characters a series of potential plot hooks and choices, but the characters themselves deciding how they react.

And there's obviously a huge amount that Alex has planned and prepared in advance -- he knows what's going on with the Simulacrum, the weird weather, the Harlequins, there's stuff that's paying off seasons after it was set up, etc. -- but the characters have huge freedom to wander around within that world,

[rydra_wong]

One of the things that also really interests me about RQG is that they're using a system which is infamously "crunchy" and mechanics-heavy, but they're using all of it as fuel for story.

[rydra_wong]

If you make it through to the end of S3, the metacast on "longplay" is massively spoilery (and probably requires having listened to most of the show to make sense) but SUPER-interesting; a lot of it's about ways the characters evolved that the players didn't necessarily expect, and Alex talking about his role in forcing "pivot points" for the characters, points at which they have to "change or die[/stagnate]".

Still chewing on it, but it strikes me as potentially very relevant for novel-writing.