_www.FantasyLibrary.com [Visit Who Is Joseph Teller?] Synthesis & Synchronicity 020

Synthesis & Synchronicity #20

I admit that I've given this incarnation of my column/Journal/Blog/rambling a rather useless title. I just didn't have an idea on what to call it this time, and if I had spent time looking for inspiration I would have put it off another day, which would have led to it becoming Monday before I wrote anything. Since I'm increasing my writing output on the website as part of an effort of re-establishing my writing discipline (which fell apart back in the spring along with lots of other things when I had my stress overload) I decided the sub-title was less important this time out. Please bear with my insufficient creativity.

Last Night was the latest session of my Department of Things That Go Bump In The Night campaign. It went well, my pacing was much better and in general the story flow and player interaction worked better. The group solved one of their mysteries and appear to have eliminated the problem (granted it was a mundane mystery) and have taken some major steps towards the non-mundane problem in the plot. I do fear that they will not wrap the story up quite as fast as I expected, so this may continue on thru a chunk of August before they come to a conclusion. But, they are moving towards a conclusion, which is better than normal with this particular group of players.

Endpoint After much consideration, and after the departure from the roles of the Western Ave Irregulars of several members who had been on sabatical for much of the past year, I've come to the conclusion to abandon my previous Sunday campaign, the Unnatural Alliance. This game, which last ran last year, was ended on a cliffhanger that is impossible to resolve with the departure of one of the players from the stage. I wrestled for a long time on how to deal with this, and my ideas of how to resolve the storyline with or without the character, and came to the conclusion that its not possible and that the stress from this was just one more thing I don't need in my life. So I have now given it in my mind its passage into the past and will remove it from my plate so I can go on to create new worlds, tales and mechanics. (The game used the Earth Unmasked setting, and the Cosmic Synchronicity rules).

Along the way I became dissatisfied with the "loose' magic systems I've been using for the past few years. When you build a system that depends on players to create their character's spells, it leads to a wider lack of control (unless the structure for spells is VERY complex and with a very tight balance, such as game systems in Hero or Ars Magica) and potential campaign disaster. It also means that less players will play mages, and often those who do are more likely to abuse the mechanic (or rules lawyer it) to the detriment of the rest of the players. Since I consider magic part of the fun of fantastic settings, especially magic that can go very wrong or needs a lot of setting oriented requirements, I've decided to avoid extremely loose systems for the time being.

Its not that I want to eliminate player creativity in the magic systems, but I feel the need to take a greater roll in the design, and the ability to say exactly what the prices, limits, needs and risks are involved when using magic in the game. I don't want the mages making the purely skill based characters moot, nor do I want them to fall into D&D artillary and medic cliches. If players want to create spells, it will be with a lot more GM editorial controls to better fit the setting and system.

Things The porch work continues, and it now appears we can expect completion and usability of the porches on maybe next wed. Our front hall has been repainted, and the back hall will get repainted next week. The rear stairs to our building (except the basement) have been mended, we again have outside lighting (with motion detectors to prevent night time intrusions), and there are plans for a police 'security inspection' this weekend to help keep things crime free nearby. Masonry has been shorn up and repointed along the rear of our house, and the rubbish will be dragged away tomorrow so we can start thinking about our non-existent lawn getting replanted.

I've acquired, from Staples a nifty item, a folding crate, sort of an oversized plastic file box (or milk crate) that folds flat, with wheels and an extendable handle, so it becomes a mini-cart for towing stuff around (like the mound of books I need for some of my writing projects). Its good for up to 70 lbs of cargo, and means less strain on my back in some situations, as well as better organizing me for my writing (always a boon).

I'm looking forward to this weekend's game on Sunday, when we return to Dave Jackson's Greenstone campaign, under Hero, but haven't updated my character sheet yet for the game (as well as the base sheet I was working on for the group). I did grab the update for my copy of Hero Designer, the related software for character creation (I had fallen 3 updated behind) which seems to need constant maintenance to deal with erratta and bugs that people find. My character's secret has been leaked out to his teamates, and he's gotten into an interesting ethical dispute with one of the other characters over the legal status of certain 'magical beings/constructs' that the GM wasn't expecting along the way. It should all prove interesting along the way and grist for roleplaying....

Well, that's about it for the moment, I'll proof this in the AM (when I'm not under the influence of 2 glasses of white wine, our weekly libation for health) and post it up then.

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings.....

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