…everyone’s favorite manga cutie
Well, today was certainly a mix of fucking annoying and pretty good. It started off with the Dish Network guy not showing up. When I called the place to find out what was up, the pinheaded little hosebag that took my order earlier in the week told me that, gee, she seemed to have lost all the info I gave her. I told her, gee, she could tell her boss that they had lost my business and maybe I’d call Dish Network and complain while mentioning her name profusely. Then I hung up. We’ll see if her boss calls me on Monday trying to kiss my ass.
Much of the rest of the day went ok, except for some yuppie fuckwad tailgating me on a crowded stretch of road. He started honking his horn as I slowed down to pretty much a crawl. After about a mile, he turned off on a side street, hauling ass. Pity he chose an area with lots of street repair going on:)
So, anyway, I’m about half drunk on Guinness Draught (which, like several of my female friends from My Wild & Misspent Youth, goes down very smoothly) and feeling as tho I should finish my RPG post from a couple of days ago. Let us proceed then, eh wot?
Sorta Kinda Long Distance Multi-GM Cyber Enhanced Roleplaying
I’ll be using a fantasy setting as an example, but really, you could adapt this to many other genres, altho you’d most likely want to bypass the world building aspect.
The idea here is that, much like the world building game I ran a year or two back, the players start off running a small kingdom. Now, originally, I had several players running several kingdoms on a map created by the one GM overseeing it all. However, in the series I’m trying to lay out here, you’d have two groups of PCs, each playing under their own GM, running one kingdom per group. For the sake of this post, we’ll say one group is in Concord, New Hampshire and the other is in Sacramento, California.
To start with, the two GMs design a continent sized land mass using whatever mapping tool they both own. One designs one half, the other designing the rest. They share all of the basic info about the world, but only share the fine details as they evolve in gameplay.
Next, each GM starts his players off in a small kingdom, telling them that each one will be a Minister in His/Her Majesty’s Government. The GM will play the King/Queen. As in my Kingdom Building Game, the game time per session will probably start out at X (or even XX) Years = 1 Session. This works out very well for gaming groups that only meet once a month or so, or for groups that only roleplay on alternate sessions.
As the two groups expand their kingdoms, the GMs modify both the local area maps and the world map. At some point, the GMs agree to end the player based world building and move to a traditional roleplaying style. At this point, the GMs might move up a century or more beyond the timeframe of the WBG. This allows for doing some extrapolations and expansions that the PCs might not be aware of. Naturally, the GMs are comparing notes and updating the map.
The cyberplay aspect of this whole deal comes into play one of two ways: First, you can just have GM #1 conspire with GM #2 online while #1 is running a game. GM #2 can play monster or opponent rolls or even minor NPC roles like the innkeeper or such. Creative folks will find ways to maximize this using not only a computer but cell phones and other electronica.
The second, vastly more involved and more fun way to do it is for the GMs to set up an online meeting between the two adventuring parties. Could be cooperative, could be antagonistic, but it would surely be fun. Probably not something you’d do every week, but for a once a month session, it would work.
Oy! I’ve gotta hit the sack. Comments on all of this are appreciated.
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