I know I slightly hinted at this before but I might as well explicitly state this

I will never miss a beat to trash demon slayer 🗿

Why yall ganging up on galaxian bruh

Like, 3 of you guys are on team stardust and Galaxian is the only one on here that's on team seafoam

If I knew it was going to be like this I might've joined (I am lying I probably wouldn't have joined)

Last edited by Time (June 21, 2024 02:00:18)

Time wrote:

Why yall ganging up on galaxian bruh

Like, 3 of you guys are on team stardust and Galaxian is the only one on here that's on team seafoam

If I knew it was going to be like this I might've joined (I am lying I probably wouldn't have joined)

This is funny because in a different friend group I'm outnumbered (most of the people there are seafoam LOL)
but I had to go for stardust (pensive emoji),, star aesthetic is too much for me to resist

the call of the void (of space) is strong
stronger than the call of the sea
 

i mean i have heard the term "a sea of star" being used to refer to space
so i guess they are one and the same!
just made of different stuff
 

I am taking summer classes

Echowo wrote:

Time wrote:

pancakes are superior comparted to waffles.

L take, get ratioed and I hope all your pancakes explode. In fact, I'm exploding all your pancakes with my mind.

Incredibly real actually, waffles >> pancakes
The texture is so much better

i've never had pancake but if it's as thick as in movie i don't think i would like
waflle simply...Batter
(am chuckling at that stupid pun congrats)
 

Its the same thing with MORE EFFORT

with little square compartiments for holding whatever you wanna add onto them

Anyways I'll be rambling in this post to just get out some thoughts that aren't particularly important. Today's topic will be TTRPGs, which is a topic I'm pretty sure most of you guys can't really keep up with since you personally haven't played them yourselves, it doesn't really matter.

Since like everyone else here, I too am on summer break. During this time, I have been fiending or some good TTRPG games to play. I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head that I want to try out or see if it can come to fruition.

In addition, I've been thinking about westmarches campaigns. I don't know much about them, but at times I wonder if they are what I am looking for. They sound so large and impersonal, it feels like your personal story will be overall ignored or you won't really have any time to interact with anyone. However, at the same time I hear the exact opposite, they're specialized for greater player autonomy, and overarching actions can affect other players.

I hear that also the term "Living World" and "Westmarches" were originally two different things, but now they are interchangeably used, which may not be the proper terminology as they both were supposedly the same. Maybe it's the size of the group? Living worlds are much bigger maybe? Maybe the comment I made in the last paragraph was referring to a living world instead.

I just did some research, and maybe it could be West marches are much smaller than a living world. Like a smaller group of 10-15 or so players/cast as a pool to pull from. It would be a lot of character variance, while still being quite small and I know everyone's characters. Plus, with 15 characters, there are plenty of personal arcs and plots to go around. If the players are motivated that is. That sorta leads me to the last bit of thoughts.

The only issue I've noticed repeated a many times is how difficult it can be for a GM to run such a game. Due to the sheer bookkeeping that goes on (or maybe that's an issue with only living worlds?). Plus, where are you going to find 10-15 dedicated high-quality players on top of that? I know the GM to player ratio can be atrocious at times, but finding people who you jive with is still pretty hard.

some people call that "character development"

Not really. I usually prefer being a PC over being a GM. However, I'm thinking of trying to find a new campaign or something similar.

Anyways, I'm just going to use your question as leeway into more rambling. Feel free not to respond.

Most tables run DND 5e. While that's fun and all, nowadays that's something I'm really not looking for. I'd like a different system and a different setting over your standard fantasy. I want to explore different topic or tell different stories that you normally don't tell in fantasy settings. Idk if you know this Violet, but I always think sci fi is cooler than fantasy.

I will talk about Westmarches to clear things up.

Westmarches is a TTRPG campaign style. It was first introduced by Ben Robins, named after the campaign, "West Marches". A standard TTRPG table would run on at a scheduled time, and have about 4-6 party members with a concise plotline. Westmarches on the other hand, is different.

Much of the plot/events in the story are decided by the players, and then the GM will work accordingly to see it happen. This makes it feel like a sandbox for stories, with reverberations affecting other characters. From an outsider's perspective, it will make the story seem extremely character-arc focused, and that it's pretty hard to tell what has been a planned out interaction, and what is improv (though that may just be me and my inexperience with the style. I have heard that much of the interactions are planned to help with storytelling). This is of course, everyone at the table knows, and does, their job well.
Westmarches were also designed to overcome the scheduling issue that many tables have. Instead of your standard 4-6 size party meeting weekly, a standard party will be around 10-14 players, and session times will be decided on the fly by players/GM as well. Naturally all 14 players will never be there all at once for a session (unless there's something extremely important happening). Instead, they act as a pool to draw from to make your standard 4-6 player party of people available at that time.
Imagine you're in a character select screen, and you have to make a squad before going off into battle.
Because of this "character pool", there's usually a strong trait that there is a "home base" for PCs to reside when not on missions. Usually by the end of a session or arc, that specific party returns back to home base to "refuel" and exchange characters for the next story beat. Naturally there can be times where the session is entirely spent at home base.

Here is an example senario. Though I am sure my depictions are innacurate since I act as someone who is an outsider, and unfamiliar with innerworkings of the campaign.
The party is a group of upstart mercenaries in a part of the world that has recently been torn to shreds. They all are apart of this group for various reasons, and have their own personal backstories.
A player wants to kick off his story for his character. He says that he wants to run a mission where the team is tasked with collecting a special artifact, but things change when the character hears a distress signal from her family member that went MIA in the initial bombings. During the conflict that ensures, the character finds her missing family member dead, and she breaks down. This is what the PC most likely wanted. However, there was something unexpected. During the battle, another player's character had died.
This causes 2 things:
On the player level, an unexpected death makes the players and/or the GM decide that the next session should be more character interactions of what people think of the mission, and that a small service should be held. Normally, they'd just go on with their next story beat, but an unexpected change in the story will reveal new sides to characters that wouldn't normally get to be seen, and see how relationships will develop. This is standard unexpected storytelling from TTRPGs, but on a larger scale. Characters not involved in the conflict will still know what happened, and their outlooks/relations with other characters will change because of it.
On the character level in the next session, our primary example character I have been talking about is going through it over the death of her father, but she doesn't know why she feels bad for the death of one of her companions, and she feels horrible for it. Normally, if everything went expected as planned, she's probably only be saddened by the death of her father, but the death of a companion not only spices up the plot, but gives it extra complexity.
We see one of the leaders (which is another PC) of the mercenary group scroll through the small amount of files of info on the deceased, playing over the footage of their last moments. Normally, he's seen as a ruthless and logical person, but he spends much time thinking on the events that happened on that mission, deciding on what to say in a speech at the funeral. This is a side we would have likely never gotten to see unless someone died.
We see a PC that wasn't on the mission, actually take interest with another that was on it; due to reckless actions she took during the conflict. He has a conversation with her to try and understand why exactly she acted so recklessly, and we are able to learn of both of their perspectives on life. Even when it's not connected to the "main event", "smaller" actions that PCs take still have effects on other PCs which lead to greater interactions and more storytelling.

It's not exactly the most ideal example. I don't think I know exactly what was planned, what was improv, and what was inbetween. Also, I didn't account for behind the scenes notebooking by the player and GM that outsiders normally see.
Maybe I can pull up another example that's more relevant later if this doesn't make sense. I was going to write more, but it seems I rambled about Westmarches for too long.

As a side note for future me: I know that I'm going to look back at this post with total annoyance and disgust, because that's what I do with all my TTRPG posts, but hey: it's fine future me.

Edit: Or that example I just gave is litterally all improv (with only a few small story beats by GM) ok then

Last edited by Time (July 5, 2024 13:36:03)

Ok I've been thinking of The Hidden Sails lately. Yes this is still an active project, believe it or not. I've been planning in a linear order because I wanted to post things linearly. But lately, I haven't been liking the plan, and I eventually did away with it. I need to focus on characters and what their true meta-purpose in the story is.

I don't wanna leave you guys waiting as much as I actually want to make real progress on crafting a story, instead of everything being just thoughts bouncing in my head. So here is my thought:

I focus on the areas of plot that I know the most about. I write what I feel most motivated to write. I post things in little bits and pieces. This will make it extremely nonlinear, but at least something will be getting out. When I've taken the first steps, I can tie things together and edit as needed.

Essentially what you'd be seeing isn't really a first draft, but rather the process of someone writing their first draft. What do you think?

Last edited by Time (July 2, 2024 16:02:49)

Thanks for the insight Echo 🗿