Fancy Pants: Well, you certainly seem like a pony worth knowing. If it’s convenient, would you mind gracing us with your presence at the Canterlot Garden Party?
Rarity: Sounds interesting… What is that, exactly?
DM: It’s a very important yearly event in Canterlot, where all the most elite in the city get together for a night of games, socializing, and networking. As far as local cultural significance goes, it’s second only to the Grand Galloping Gala.
Rarity: The Grand Galloping…?
DM: THE biggest, THE most exclusive, THE greatest social event in all of Equestria? I never mentioned that?!
Rarity: Not once, I’m afraid.
DM: What else have I missed? Do you know about the other cities like Cloudsdale and Manehatten? What about Equestria’s holidays? Have I at least gone over who the Wonderbolts are?
Rarity: …Yes, Fancy Pants, I’d love to go to the Canterlot Garden Party.
Alternate punchline:
Rarity: All I heard was "rich people and their unsecured valuables in high density," so consider me interested.
DM: Some of those rich people might also be experienced thieves.
Rarity: Well, it can't be TOO easy, can it?
(As for Session 10 of Fallout is Dragons, we ran into some technical issues over the last week and it's thrown me for a loop, so it'll be up... sometime today. (Within the next 18 hours.))
Note: Guest comic submissions are now open! Guidelines here. Current deadline: 4/1/21.
I had players like that. They hold their dice constantly like a security blanket. Hey, whatever works for them. :) My thing (when I'm a PC) is to constantly be scribbling something, whether it be notes or a sketch. Can't put the pencil down.
"By the way, why has your horn been glowing all this time?" "Oh, I've just been snatching a few loose valuables..." *cut to a giant hoard of shiny jewelry*
Considering past experiences with the DM freaking when things go off the rails, I like that Rarity is trying to keep them calm by glossing over how NONE of those things have ever come up before.
I can understand the GM's worry about forgetting to relate things of the game world to players. GMs like us spend a lot of hours invested in creating worlds full of culture like holidays and history, but we want to gush to our players about how neat it is, and it can either become a data-dump or we forget something that is plot-important for an adventure...
One thing I did to help organize all my world-building was to solidify it into one world and keep to that. That some things like the calendar and history carry over and since the PCs are somewhat familiar with it already, it's one less thing to retell.
By the end of the run, I had completed about 3 campaigns with the same world and the continent was about the size of North America. I still have a lot of the notes too. I guess if WoTC ever hold another contest for new settings, I could send them that.
Oh man, I have issues with that sometimes... When I build a world, I really build an entire world. Whenever I get a new player they're always surprised, because I'm a pretty quiet and calm person normally, but as a GM I explain EVERYTHING and get excited about all of it. I have to really rein myself in or I wind up ranting about the histories for the entire session or explaining the mechanics of the nobility and the royal families or accidentally letting slide some plot-relevant secret or something... So yeah, I have to really hold back on describing the setting now, heh.
I would love to have you as a GM Razomyure, and you would probably hat e me as a player, because I am the type to just sit there and listen to EVERYTHING you would say, and remember it. (Then again, I would probably be a good "journal" keeper of everything you have said, ehh.)
Honestly, at the moment, I'd like a group that pays more attention - most of the players I have right now are more the passive sort. It's getting to be more than a little annoying with the whole silent, internal "Okay guys I spent hours and hours making this setting and all this lore for you to mess around in WHY ARE YOU ON YOUR PHONES"
It could be worse. They could have their character sheets solely on their laptops. Which means they're constantly browsing the Internet rather than paying attention to anything that's not actively trying to kill them. And quite a bit of what is actively trying to kill them.
And then they lose the character sheet file. After you explicitly told everyone to print out a hard copy, just in case. Ugh...
This is why I do the following when I get together with my Shadowrun group:
1. Disable wireless internet. If they bring their laptop they won't be able to access the internet. Smartphones? We don't get signal where we play so they are also useless.
2. Have a hard copy of everyone's characters in my record folder. They lose their character data, they have to live with the last known update to their character that I have.
The hard copy I keep on record, I purposefully have it 1 run behind where their characters actually are, as punishment for not taking better care. My group did agree to me doing this, so they know what's in store. So far, only one person had to use my hardcopy, so he is actually behind the other characters. He's regretted losing his character records since.
See, the problem is that all my players have their sheets stored online (which makes it all the more impressive when they lose them). I have my own copies of them, but still...
With my next group and/or next campaign, I'm definitely going to be using something local instead.
Or you could run your next campaign online, but with people you know will be interested and invested in the game. People like us, maybe?
I've been itching to get back into Roleplaying again, but all the people I know in the area who're willing to DM, well, aren't actually that good at it. Just a few too many DM-created NPC races and such, and inability to reign in the other players.
Oh gods, I hate that. And there's the one guy who's got his "soundtrack music" going, but only in earbuds. Then one of them interrupts critical plot relevant exposition with laughter about a funny video someone sent them on Facebook.
And of course, you have the one or two players who actually have nothing but hard-copy character sheets and are working on getting into the world, that're cruelly being yanked out of it by the others.
We have a house rule for that. You get 3 strikes; after that, having your phone out makes you fair game for smacks upside the head. In other words, phone use provokes attacks of opportunity.
My friends and I do the same thing at restaurants. I'm the only one without a smartphone, so I haven't had to pay in a while. I usually get my own way anyway, since they have to pay for everyone else and I have an "unfair advantage"
World building, you say? Oh man, have I got fun stuffs for you!
I built a fantasy kitchen sink where death is permanent, but all mythological figures are real. Thor? Check. Zeus? Check. Crom? Check! I twisted D&D into a bizarre world where you can hang out with Charon, and Cerberus is the prison warden of hell.
And all theze deities can be called forth, but cannot be harmed by mortals.
Yeah. You can summon Pelor, but he will kick your ass for allying with that rapist warlock. And you better be damn sure you aren't just wasting their time.
One of the most powerful spellcasters in the world is a pixie.
And jackelopes are as rare and magical and noble as unicorns.
Yeah, I used to be a PC with the group I'm in now before the DM stepped down (he's one of the PCs now) - even then I was the only person in the group who was consistently focused on JUST the game at hand.
I use my weeny netbook to keep my character sheet and personal campaign notes. I was surprised but pleased when the GM asked me for a copy, as they were blatantly character-centric.
In one campaign I gave out one-page 'about the world' sheets, usually with information about the PC's current location, a famous local NPC or two, and at least one local legend or historical tidbit. It seemed like a good way to expand the world slowly, without drowning the players in infodumps.
I love Fleur. Not because of anything in the show though, but because, in a MLP app game I have, she glitched and instead of having to be won I could just buy her for a ridiculously low price.
The Desiel Punk Psychic Detective storyline is coming along fine, but after all this Rogue Talk...I couldn't help but doing a criminal game. Trixie, in this version is a low level psychic gun specialist who arrives at Canterlot from Manehatten. She finds that there are several major criminal organizations in the city. But the one that draws her in the Garden of Shadows. She is recruited by Fleur, who sits at the right hand of the Garden's boss, the Luna.
Rarity: All I heard was "rich people and their unsecured valuables in high density," so consider me interested.
DM: Some of those rich people might also be experienced thieves.
Rarity: Well, it can't be TOO easy, can it?
(As for Session 10 of Fallout is Dragons, we ran into some technical issues over the last week and it's thrown me for a loop, so it'll be up... sometime today. (Within the next 18 hours.))