News Archives: January 2005

Monday, January 24, 2005

Robin's Laws

GMs everywhere should read Robin D. Laws' latest post. An interesting take on a problem you may have without realising it. In general, most role-players will get a lot out of reading most of Robin's blog.

Posted by graham @ 05:56 pm

Why "Venus"?

I'm now the proud owner of a venus flytrap. All I need now is to grow a beard, buy a hat, and learn how to tell jokes, and I could become Terry Pratchett.

On a completely unrelated note, can anyone recomment a good book/website on distinguishing small, brown British birds?

Posted by graham @ 02:56 pm

Friday, January 21, 2005

The Book of Years

Over the last few months I've been writing a series of short stories, all set in the same mythos. The result is the first entries in the Book of Years, available now on its own, rather ugly web site. Hope you enjoy them!

Posted by graham @ 05:25 pm

Monday, January 17, 2005

Claire's Ceilidh

Friday night was, I think, pretty successful. Three dozen people gathered for the ceilidh, which was alright - the band weren't brilliant, but Claire and I danced lots anyway, and generally enjoyed ourselves. After the dancing finished, most of the crowd retired to the nearby Standing Order, where we stayed till chucking out time, chatting, and enjoying the soap-opera of some of the other boozers. Saturday was then spent recovering, Sunday at the zoo, and today has been a bit of a shock getting back to work.

Anyway, thanks to all who came, and hope you enjoyed it all too.

Posted by graham @ 10:19 pm

Thursday, January 6, 2005

A New Year

It seems to be fairly mandatory to start a new year with a set of ambitions, ideas, predictions, or whatever. I've been feeling like crap all year so far. After Claire left for work this morning I put my head down "for an hour or so" and knew no more until about half one. All in all, I've achieved very little this week, but today's extra sleep has sorted out my head, and I've started thinking about what I want to achieve in the next little while.

So, here's a vague list of stuff I should be achieving in the next year or so. Much of it is ongoing material from last year, and none of it has a deadline of next Jan 1st.

• Getting rid of this cold. I had it last year, I still can't breathe properly. First priority!


• Ending the ongoing Grey Dogs game. Some of the players may be leaving the area this summer, and I'd like to end the campaign before they do - it'll have been going for nearly five years by then (and some plot threads stretch back to other campaigns from three years before that). The ending will be epic and definitively final. More than that I have little idea. (Although I welcome suggestions!)


• Writing. I'm currently thinking in terms of getting three projects into "publishable condition". I have an idea what they are, but, no, I'm not sharing. This is the most likely one to spill into next year...


• Dropping time-sinks. I don't mind doing stuff for free if people appreciate it. Online Opinion has more or less vanished because no one seemed to care - I may return to the site at some point, but probably in a much less intensive (from my viewpoint) format. The Glorantha Digest, which so far has had one real message sent to it this year, needs hard thinking about.


• Become G Robinson, MSc. The only firm deadline so far - September 2005.


• Clearing up the last few projects from last year, and much on-going house maintenance, long-standing arguments, etc. Getting better at managing the to-do list probably belongs in here...


• Company stuff, but that's a list all on its own.

Finally, I recently had a conversation with Claire about how people read blogs. Basically, I'm happy knowing there are lurkers out there, Claire likes them to prove their existence by commenting now and then. Anyway, it would be nice if any lurkers would leave a comment, just to say "hi". Don't feel the need to leave a real name, and please only leave one comment, so I can tell you all apart. Oh, and if you're reading this on the livejournal mirror, you do need to go to the real site to comment - there's a link just below here...

Posted by graham @ 07:18 pm

I lost my innocence in 1984

Normally, I avoid these things, but the Role-Playing Purity Test was a bit much to resist. It is very heavily weighted towards D&D, and almost every point I lost in the first section was from before I was fifteen...

Your Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score
Category	Your Score	Average
Hacklust	48.11% Will kill for XP	53.5%
Sensitive Roleplaying	36.71% All the game's your stage	54.4%
GM Experience	25.36% Closer to a novel than to a campaign	69.4%
Systems Knowledge	79.94% Local rules guru	90.3%
Livin' La Vida Dorka	29.89% Carries dice in pocket 'just in case'	63%
You are 46.51% pure Average Score: 68.7%
Take The Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Test and see how you match up!

Posted by graham @ 06:54 pm

Wednesday, January 5, 2005

Types of Role-Player

I've been thinking/chatting about role-playing a bit recently, mainly players. Types of players. Taxonomies of players. A couple of useful ones seem to include :

• Passive Players who quietly allow their characters to follow the obvious plot lines.


• Reactive When presented with an interesting challenge or situation, reactive players will come up with interesting ideas for their characters.


• Proactive Proactive players who don't wait for a plot to come along - they generate plot of their own.

Or :

• Players who enjoy interesting stories involving their characters.


• Those who enjoy wish-fulfillment through their characters. (The difference here is that the above group enjoy interesting bad things happening to their characters, while this one prefers boring good things.)


• Observers who don't really enjoy role-playing themselves, but enjoy being part of a group that does. They're happy for their characters to be spear-carriers, as long as something interesting is happening to someone.

The latter taxonomy doesn't seem very definitive, and I haven't gone into motivation at all. (A "passive" or "observer" may lack self-confidence, rather than any particular desire.) The two taxonomies are also largely orthogonal.

At some point I might develop this and other thoughts into a Grand Theory of Role-Playing. At present I'll just suggest that most of us would like to think of ourselves as "proactive story-tellers" while most people I've played with are actually "reactive or passive wish-fulfillers" or "passive observers". Finally, GMs can get into real trouble by assuming (or wishing for) one type of player, when they have another.

Posted by graham @ 09:25 pm

Monday, January 3, 2005

Happy New Year

I'm back online after a bit of a break - reasons for which should be clear by the end of this post. In general I've had a good Christmas and New Year. Highlights include :

• Visiting my parents for Christmas, and Claire's parents immediately after.


• Receiving numerous cool presents, primarily CDs, DVDs, and books. (Some of the last suggested by Nick Brooke - I may thank him again after I've read them...)


• Getting a good reaction to the various presents Claire and I bought. Those of you who were faking have only yourselves to blame when we buy something similar in the future.


• Many, many cards from friends and relatives. Definitely better to receive than give here. Thank you all.


• Remembering to send cards to everyone. Also, Claire's wonderful card design.


• Duncan and Ruth visiting between Christmas and New Year.


• Jane and Dave visiting for New Year. In return for us putting them up, they generously provided hours of entertaining conversations, bought us a fine meal, and washed up embarrasingly often. Pretty much perfect guests - they even brought chocolates and booze.


• Dave V's New Year party.

In case you're starting to think everything was perfect, the (shorter) lowlights list :

• Losing my wedding ring on Christmas Day; although it did turn up several hours later.


• Finding out that Claire's car needed new tires *again*. The local garage kindly (and cheaply) looked at it at extremely short notice, and found that Kwik-Fit hadn't adjusted the tracking like they'd claimed. Twice. Hmmph.


• Leaving Claire's camera in the pub while out with Jane and Dave. Thankfully the bar staff found it, and kept it for us.


• The Edinburgh Street Party. Bloody disaster. Too many people, too little on, no room to move. Hour and a half hanging around in the freezing cold for five minutes of (admittedly impressive) fireworks. And no Auld Lang Syne. Next year, I'm staying at Dave's all night.


• The bloody cold I've caught off Claire.

Overall, though, a good holiday. Hope everyone gets what they deserve in 2005.

Posted by graham @ 09:33 pm

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