New Ideas in 2020

Welcome back Team:

We tossed around a few ideas the other night about re-defining our Dresden session categories.

Previously, I had been calling the San Francisco games Chapter 1 and the GSB games "the New Chapter or chapter two".

I heard the suggestion to revise the nomenclature to "books"

So, SF games would be our Dresden book 1, GSB to now would be book 2 and whatever we come up with next could be book 3.

What say you, My motivation is to ease our discussions of these games. Can you believe that it has been going so long? Albeit slowly...

Any way Please leave your feedback.

The Merlin

Books makes more sense to me, as for the most part the characters are different. Chapters suggests a building story, but there aren’t too many consistent elements between the SF game and the GSB game. Other than Jade’s character.

So I agree with the move towards Books, over chapters.

Slagathore

I like books as well, very Desden-y!

I also like that, while different stories, our adventures happen in the same "World" at a similar time and that previous characters can make guest appearances, or get "cast" permanently in a new book.

Totally agree.

I’ve always liked the idea of a team where everyone has three characters and the team “chooses” the characters needed for key missions. So you can play a character with the needed skill sets. Why, yes, I did watch a lot of GI JOE. How did you know!

The SF group had a slight lower refresh of course, but it is cool to have characters crossover. It would be fun to have to call in the GSB strike team for a future session, say, when we are running different characters.

Have you thought about a game with a very focused arc, like: kill Dracula. Or Free the city from the grasp of the insane mayor/cult leader who is reaching powered from beyond the gates - in a way that doesn’t land you in jail.

But, in a way that is still compartmentalized, so that we have stories that build on each other to overcome a bigger challenge, but whose episodes are still complete stories? I don’t think I could do it well, but it might be a way remain episodic, while still having a player driven story.

I love the GSB structure for getting together once every year or two to play. We can’t hold onto threads of information over an extended period of time playing so infrequently. But I would think a monthly game that was designed to be episodic and draw on many characters could take advantage of such a structure.

Or, coincidentally, a Zoom game 3/4 of the Saturdays for 3-4 hours.

Slagathore, I think it depends on what the Merlin is looking for here. If the idea is to have an extended campaign with the same group of characters, and be focused on them, then your idea is harder to pull off, but doable. However, everything I remember about the GSB implies that it was supposed to be a more GI JOE esque style to allow people to drop in or out due to availability (I also watched the TV Show, and read the comics as well). So I feel like your idea could work, for a more “graphic novel” or “trade paperback” style where all the sessions for an arc come together to create a complete story. Again, it’s all about what the Merlin wants to do here.

Books, it is...I will have to do a bit of editing and redacting in my records to get the new nomenclature in place...

I like the idea of a more focused story arch...perhaps also keeping the modularity we've enjoyed with the GSB, but perhaps a more obvious and tangible goal with more specific adversaries.

In all honestly I've struggled with consistent "bad guys" over many story archs.
It is one of the feedback elements from past games to have more continuity between sessions but I have yet to make it work. But it a goal for me to do so.

See you all in the game tonight.

The Merlin

So, Splinter, I don’t disagree with you at all.

And I was not looking to be critical of the Merlin’s approach at all, so if it came off that way, I totally apologize. I was just musing on things that I thought might work well to keep his interest in running the game with a little more regularity. I really enjoy it. And I really like both characters I’ve olayed in his games, which is often heavily influenced by the GM working with the players chatter concept. I really feel like he works with us, rather than against us in terms of seeing that we get to really do our thing.

I really like the pure episodic GIJOE approach. And I want more of it. But it gets him off the hook when he finishes an episode. I would rather he felt like he finished a chapter so we could play more often!

And to be clear, other than Yokai’s infiltration skills and Carbury’s Scholarship, we are pretty limited in a social or investigation game. Team 42Alpha is really the group called in to handle one off issues that require contained violence.

But if we find ourselves facing a different kind of challenge, we might then bring in other team members or even Team 42Bravo (the investigation team, or the Fey response team, or the Gate Crasher team to track down and eliminate Cultists looking to open a gate to the Far Realms - whatever it might be).

Just trying to inspire the Merlin. I love his games so much!