Originally published at TGTMB. Please leave any comments there.
I’m back in the saddle with episode 5 of TGTMB – so look out.
Check out the full text of the episode – along with links where appropriate – below the cut.
See ya ’round.
Hey folks, I’m Mick, welcome to TGTMB, The Good Time Meat Boat, Episode 5. Yeah, I’m getting back on the horse, folks – I’ve decided I’d rather be riding Big Brown than Eight Belles, so let’s make a run at the wire, shall we? Hey – It’s May and I’m in Louisville – did you think for a second that I could get through this thing without making a Kentucky Derby reference? And yes, for those of you with gutter brains – really twisted gutter brains, I’d say – I’m talking about the Derby, folks, so whatever you thought when I said “riding Big Brown” – well, you’re even weirder than I am. Back to the show – I’ve got a lot to catch you up on so let’s roll this thing. I’ll start with what’s going on at my table, then I’ll tell you about a couple things on my radar, and finish up with some chatter about my goals as a roleplayer (in other words, NOT my goals as a podcaster, not my goals as a play-style evangelist, but my goals as an actual player) So I’ll be right back to get going, after this brief message from Ennie Award Winning podcaster Paul Tevis: [RPGpodcasts.com tag] First, I want to thank my listeners, readers, and friends (many of you are apparently all three) for the deluge of supportive feedback I’ve gotten over the past couple weeks both here on TGTMB and in emails. It’s a fair question whether or not I actually ought to need the kind of affirmation and support that you’ve given me – but in any case, I got it, and I think it’s safe to say it has helped to get me back into a right proper misfit state of mind. Now beyond that heartfelt shout out and thank-you, let’s say it’s time to turn a corner and move forward rather than look backward, to set aside the blathering over unimportant stuff and the angst and high drama, and just pull together as a party and clasp hands while we go out there and kick John McCain’s ass. Oh, wait. This is my ROLEPLAYING journal. Got my wires crossed. (seriously though, if you think we roleplayers have the corner on torching up the internets with our horrible treatment of one another and other forms of inane online behavior, go check out the comments to articles on The Huffington Post, or Political Base, etc. Those asshats make us look like rank amateurs) But, um, time to move forward and get back to what TGTMB is for. Let’s talk about what’s going on at my table. Because for a guy who is not involved in a local face-to-face group, I hafta say, things are shaping up pretty sweetly for me since last I babbled at you. Since all the recent misfit drama and my last interstitial episode, all this has happened… So what all this essentially means is that, far from me falling off the podcasting radar, as I pondered doing a couple weeks ago, I’m actually going to get pretty ubiquitous again for a stretch. You have been warned, rpg podcast listeners. On My Radar It’s time to give some love to a few things that’ve blipped on my rpg radar over the past few weeks. All of these have been instrumental in helping me map my way back to “relax and have fun”-ville, over the past few weeks, so I want to share them. · Ryan Macklin and Paul Tevis – excuse me – Ennie Award winning podcaster Paul Tevis – got together at the Nerdly Beach party a few weeks ago and recorded a conversation that was released in two parts – the first on Have Games Will Travel #108, and the second on Master Plan # 28. They discussed many interesting things, but the part that influenced me most was the play-style discussion that took place in part one – especially the way they contrasted the way each of them approach playing games like Burning Wheel, The Shadow of Yesterday, and Primetime Adventures and how they approach games like Polaris and 1001 Nights. In broad terms (at least the way I interpreted the conversation) they described the first group as being somewhat more traditional in structure and approach – although still innovative in terms of using system to help build the desired narrative result. The latter group they described as being a little further “out there” on the spectrum, basically GM-less games that are structured to be one-shot collaborative storyforming games. The bottom line of all this was that it allowed me to realize that at this point in my journey I’m really more interested in playing the first category of game – the PTA/Burning Wheel/Shadow of Yesterday kind. That’s not to suggest that I couldn’t have fun playing one of the other games – but that the discussion Ryan and Paul had solidified for me that what I’m mostly looking for at this point is to experience the kind of play that they experience when they play the first category of rpgs. Actually, the way Paul describes what he experiences in a game like Burning Wheel or PTA seems pretty much dead-on with what I’ve been looking for. So if you think you’re anywhere near where I am in that sense, and you haven’t listened to Ryan and Paul’s conversation yet – you need to. You’ll get some clarity out of it, I’m willing to bet. · Another thing that blipped onto my radar recently is Jonathan Walton’s relatively new site called Bleeding Play. Among other things, this site is an in-progress repository where Jonathan is putting up free online versions of the articles that appeared in PUSH Volume 1. I bought PUSH volume 1 at GenCon 2006, and I have to say, it has become a big foundation-stone for my play philosophy ever since I read it. Especially the first two articles by Emily Care Boss on Collaborative play and by John Kim on Immersive Story methods. Both of these articles are up on Bleeding Play right now, so you can now read them even if you don’t have a copy of PUSH. But fair warning – both of these articles take a pretty different path than what most traditional roleplayers think of as normal gaming. You will see in these articles the seeds of several of my supposedly wilder declarations about what I want out of play. And if you have never actually played a game in the ways described in these articles, you might not get it, or you might get it and decide you don’t like it. On the other hand, it might awaken in you a sense of what’s possible and you might find yourself wanting to try out the kinds of things that Emily and John are describing. That’s what happened to me. And although I think I’ve only maybe gotten to play once or twice in anything resembling what the PUSH articles describe, they still stand out as pretty formative for my belief in what is desirable – and possible. Re-reading them myself last week really got me back into a clearer frame of mind for what I’d like to bring to the table. Which brings us to my main commentary for this episode. I’m going to read what I wrote on a thread over at Cultures of Play, the community I mentioned earlier, where users are asked to write what we wish to bring to the table as roleplayers. I think I’ll also pick out some of the answers other people gave, and then make a few observations about what’s being shared. The thread started with Joshua Bishop Roby asking this question: What do you wish you brought to the table, but have troubles figuring out, providing, or getting comfortable with? Here’s what I wrote: · I want to improve these things in my play: 1. I want to be more confident and relaxed and let my energy and creativity flow more freely. Right now I tend to gum up my brain by putting too much pressure on myself to live up to some self-perceived level of instant competence. In other words, I want to stop unfavorably comparing myself to other people at the table and stop telling myself that if I’m not able to bring the awesome on the same level as the other participants, then I don’t deserve to be at the table. My head knows that’s bullshit. But it still seems to be my instinctive approach. I’ve gotta bust that down. 2. Once I’ve got my own mojo flowing, I want to become one of those guys who can be counted upon to help set other players up to get what they want out of play. I want to take spotlight when it’s appropriate, but also be aware enough to help shine it on others when the flow of play goes toward them. 3. I want to have more fun and be more fun at the table. Overall, I think #2 and #3 can’t authentically happen until #1 is working, so #1 is the crux of the whole thing. That really sums it up for me. Having more fun and being more fun is of course something I took right out of my TGTMB declarations. And that remains my goal for play. Here are some of the other answers people gave that I found especially intriguing: · Ryan Macklin wrote this: “Honestly, I find myself as a player to be lacking. I’ve been recently hailed as a good player by a couple folks online, but I’m pretty self-conscious about it — as a player, I feel pretty selfish. While I see past my own character, I don’t think I do it enough. Oddly, as a GM I am pretty selfless, and I think it’s because I have a broad “let’s all have fun and do something cool” agenda as a GM, but as a player I have a “I want to be awesome” agenda. It’s something I’ve been striving to deal with, but I get so caught up in my own moment in most games that doesn’t constantly remind me of everything that’s going on (like, say, IAWA’s Best Interests, and I’d suspect PTA’s issues when I finally get to play PTA). It’s also easier in story In other words: when I recognize myself as a protagonist, I sometimes don’t fully respect that I’m not the only one.” o This is not all that different from my desire to become better at selfless play, so I totally grok it. Oddly, though, I’ve never played with Ryan or heard him play, but this is an impression I would not have gotten from listening to him talk about play. I guess how we perceive ourselves is often pretty different from how we are perceived by others. · Here’s What Rich Rogers wrote: “Something I realized while editing the Star Wars PTA recording from last GenCon is that I, like Ryan, can get wrapped in trying to impress people with my uber character and my cool accent or whatever; as a player, I sometimes don’t share well with others.” o Okay, I WAS at that table, and I don’t feel like Rich was doing that at all. I mean, this was the pilot episode, the first chance any of us had to kick the tires on our characters and introduce them not only to one another but to ourselves. In those circumstances, I think you HAVE to focus a lot on your own character, so you can get a rhythm going. But even in that context, I never got the impression that Rich was trying to overly impress us. Of course maybe that’s partly because I felt so overmatched by everyone else at the table – but that was my own issue, and that was then, not now. The beauty of listening to those Star Wars recordings that Rich is releasing over on Canon Puncture is that I’m discovering I didn’t suck nearly as badly as I thought I did, and that I can definitely go into this year’s episode with my head held high and my wookiee flag flying. · This one’s from Paul Tevis: “I wish I had a better insight into what I’m doing at the table. I’m moderately good at reading other people, but I have little or no insight into my own motivations or the implications of my actions.” o This surprises me, too. I’d have pegged Paul as the guy who is capably self-aware (I mean that in a good and balanced way) more than most anyone I’ve met or played with. He is the guy who I’d consider my template for success in terms of the three play-goals I’ve set for myself. Of course, maybe that’s the cool irony of this whole thing. You could say that one of my problems is that I’m TOO self-aware, that I have been focusing too much on what I’m doing at the table and pressuring myself to make up for the shortcomings I’ve convinced myself are there in abundance. So it makes sense I’d want to be more like Paul, because Paul is good at reading others and whether he knows it or not, that makes him good at lifting all of us up to better play when he’s at the table. The bottom line is, especially in terms of our Star Wars PTA game, The destinies of my character and Paul’s character are very intertwined, and pretty much anything one of us chooses to do is going to affect the other one of us big-time. If both of us can bring the kind of give-and-take coolness to future episodes that I feel like Paul brought to last year’s session, then watch out, the table’s going to catch fire. Well, I’m starting to suspect that this episode is going to run too long if I keep going, so I think I’ll put a bow on this one and send it out. It feels good to be back, and it feels especially good because I think I managed to make this episode do what I want TGTMB to do. Here’s hoping you get something out of it, too. I’ll be back with more when I’ve got more to say, whenever that may be. Until then, go out there and play for fun – don’t be afraid to expand your horizons and test out new muscle groups or use new tools. But don’t get so focused on all that that you lose your sense of enjoyment. Oops. I think I just gave advice. Oh, well. Toodaloo, Misfits.
