Tag: Tom McGrenery

I totally forgot to post about the first Gauntlet APAC session last weekend.

I totally forgot to post about the first Gauntlet APAC session last weekend.

I totally forgot to post about the first Gauntlet APAC session last weekend. We played World of Dungeons in the fantasy South-East Asia setting of Qelong.

Our heroes fought some brightly-painted guardian statues, talked three pythons into being their friends, helped several boatloads of destitute refugees and totally failed to sneak past a river blockade (but got out of it thanks to some help from the pythons).

I enjoyed GMing with the hexcrawl rules presented in Qelong — but next session I will prep some more-fixed scenes, since short runs mean you’re not rolling enough times in total to get all the cool stuff on those encounter tables.

GMing transparency. What are your experiences with varying levels of it?

GMing transparency. What are your experiences with varying levels of it?

GMing transparency. What are your experiences with varying levels of it?

I think I did this already but I’ve been more deliberate about showing the inner workings recently.

– PbtA: “Make your move but never speak its name.” I break this rule all the time in the first session, especially with new players. I explain that the MC has moves too, and one of them is ____, and I’m doing it now.

– GUMSHOE: Ken and Robin say it’s less tense if you know the difficulty. They are wrong. Even “I only fail on a 1” is tense if the stakes are high enough.

– More generally: I say things like “I’m going to do X, because Y”; “It’d be unfair to force you to make a decision on this little information, so…”

Player reaction is mostly positive. Sometimes they’re a bit “yeah, yeah, whatever, get on with it” but no one seems to actively hate it.

(More detailed explanations of when I don’t do it, etc., removed because that is boring.)

On Saturday I MCed Sunken Sydney, an Apocalypse World scenario/playset.

On Saturday I MCed Sunken Sydney, an Apocalypse World scenario/playset.

On Saturday I MCed Sunken Sydney, an Apocalypse World scenario/playset. The authors suggest 3 players minimum but I had two, and it went really well.

Pros: – instant-ish setup

– evocative imagery without needing to know much about Sydney (there’s a bridge and an opera house and… er…. )

Cons: – if the new player in the group turns out to be an actual Australian, the MC may become self-conscious about his sensitive and nuanced portrayal of Aussie culture.

http://thor.divnull.com/pub/aw/sunken%20sydney.pdf

So, hey. Here is a thing I have been thinking about lately.

So, hey. Here is a thing I have been thinking about lately.

So, hey. Here is a thing I have been thinking about lately.

For a long time, I tried to record and preserve my play experiences – through detailed session write-ups, audio recordings, and other ways to make concrete things out of RPG sessions.

In recent years I have almost entirely reversed course on that. I now think that one of the things I value about the RPG is its ephemeral nature. (Insert allusion to mono no aware here.) I like the way that this particular session of Night Witches is a limited edition creation. Only me and my friends ever saw it, and we can’t recreate it. I like having made a silly game about jousting that we played once and will never play again.

[DELETED my tedious mitigating statements about drawing maps, pictures of PCs, etc.]

How do other Gauntlet people feel about this?