No News Is No Drama...

Things are plugging along at the ol' Gopher hole... Sales are slower than I'd like, but that is just kind of what summer is like in retail in what is essentially a large college town.

Work proceeds apace on the Champions game. Once I post this, I have to fire off some e-mails, and then work on a couple of things. Now that I have some background from a few of the characters, I can start piecing some things together in regard to history. I have some things in mind that will be "public knowledge" and some things rattling around in my head that won't be. Whether or not the player's discover the hidden knowledge is entirely up to what direction we take the campaign.

Beyond that, life proceeds... I don't have much to say at the moment, but that's not all bad. It means the drama level is down...

-- GopherDave

Woof...

One... I know it's been a bit since I posted a picture, but it's been a nasty combination of hot and humid here the last couple of weeks, so I've been slumming it. Two, looking at this picture, I am beginning to realize that this is one of my favorite shirt/tie/sweater combinations. I wear it a lot compared to others. I'll have to watch that...

It's been a bit since I posted, so I thought I'd update some folks...

The Champions game is supposed to start tomorrow/later tonight (it is late as I'm writing this), but I have one player who still needs to build/finish his character. The player has a solid concept of what he wants to do, but he's new to the game system, and Champions Complete, for all it purports to be, is really kind of lacking in several areas (most notably examples). I will watch the store for the early part of the day, then try and sit down with him and get the mechanics for what he's trying to do knocked out.

I also am down yet another player. This brings the game to four. I originally wanted six players for the game, but given the experiment I was undertaking, having one guy drop out to bring the group to five was kind of a blessing. Now we are down to four. I have players waiting in the wings, but there is at least one of them that is not getting anywhere near my table again.

This player had played in one of my previous games and it was all I could do not to strangle him. On a personal level, this individual is not a bad person. Far from it, in fact. In game, though, this individual is the worst metagamer I have EVER encountered in 36+ years of role-playing. Frequently, there would be scenes that his character would have ZERO clue to know about and literally ZERO reason to be even be involved in, but this player would try to storm the scene with some bullshit reason and literally force the character FOR WHOM THE SCENE WAS WRITTEN/PLOTTED FOR out of the picture. I tried talking to him nicely... then firmly... then... I just gave up the game because he sucked the fun out for everybody else at the table, me included.

This is where being the store owner puts me in a precarious position. I do not want to alienate *ANYONE* from my store for any reason if I can help it. Blowing up at a person over a game tends to do that if one is in the position I am in. Thus, instead of tearing into the person like I would normally do (because subtlety and tact are not things I'm good at), I just sort of quietly put games on hiatus. It kind of sucks, but what can I do?

Like I said earlier, the player in question is not a bad person, just a frustrating player to have at a table. I have had many a great conversations with him outside of games, and honestly would love to keep doing so. In fact, he is trying to start up his own game, and if I were not participating in another game already, I'd probably play. Why, you might ask? Well, simply put, some of the things that make him frustrating to deal with as a player are actually pretty good qualities for a GM. I honestly think he would pretty damn good at the head of the table.

Anyway, I need to get going and finish some things for later. Part of me wishes I weren't running the store in the morning, but someone has to... C'est la vie... =P

-- GopherDave

Preliminaries...

Okay...

Got together with the play group on Saturday night to begin hashing out characters and setting/world info for the upcoming Champions campaign I'll be running.

The game will be set in modern-day Indianapolis, Indiana. Not the the first big city you think of, but definitely something I can work with. In addition to the various industries that we'll be creating for the game, Indianapolis is also the real-world home to Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals and Dow AgroSciences, as well as a few others. Just those two companies alone already have got me coming up with some cool ideas.

Mechanically, one of the characters is fully done, and another needs to finish disadvantages/complications. The other three are under construction, with two of them being done by players fairly well-versed in HERO System, and the other being a complete newbie, but more than willing to read and learn.

I'm off to go work on stuff... have fun...

-- GopherDave  

Choices, Choices...

Once again, not much is happening at the store today. I do have some important business that will take me away from here later on, but I am debating on if I am coming back to the Gopher afterward.

Why would I come back? Simple, I would really like to play some Warmachine, and we just put it back on the schedule last week. We'll have a Journeyman league starting next week, and part of me cannot wait. I just hope I will be able to participate on a regular basis.

However, if I come back to push little metal/plastic dudes around, then no work will get done on the upcoming Champions game, and I am seeing work I could be doing at this point. Why I didn't see it before is something that boggles me, but it's there.

Warmachine may have to wait until next week, but my Menites will not stay down forever. It's been some time since they burned the flesh of heretics, and they are hungry for the sight of the Flame of the Creator once again...

-- GopherDave

Nervous Anticipation...

It's another lovely day here at the Gopher. Skribl is inputting some new items into inventory (like I taught him) while I tap away here at the keyboard. There's actually a bunch to do, so this will be short.

"Non-work" proceeds on the Champions game. While I am not really doing much in the way of pre-planning, I am starting to template things in like general social support staff (mayor, cops, media, and such). Not entirely certain what the prevailing social attitudes will quite be yet, as that is, in part, to be determined by the backgrounds that the players hand me. More of that will also be determined by the meeting this upcoming Saturday where we hammer out character concepts and builds. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

The approach I am taking with this game, though,  is *VERY* foreign to me. Usually, by this time, I have at least a skeletal timeline and world history typed our, potentially important NPCs sketched out, and major villains of the world completely done in terms of stats, personality, and motivation. Currently, I don't even know exactly where the game will be set other than in a major city on modern-day Earth. While I stated above that I am looking forward to it (I am), the whole idea of having practically nothing really put together ahead of time has got me in a state of anxious apoplexy.

It kind of makes the whole thing seem exciting...

-- GopherDave

Ahhh, The Possibilities...

It is currently 4:15AM on Saturday as I write this. What is pictured above is what I wore all day Friday from about 10AM until just before now. It was a long night at the store. The day before (Thursday) was one of the slowest we've had in recent history. Tonight (Friday) was good. It wasn't as stellar as we could have made it due to an absolutely *BONKERS* new Magic: the Gathering set dropping today, but we will definitely take it.

The set is called Modern Masters and it is an *EXTREMELY* limited set of cards in terms of print run. The packs MSRP for $3 more than a normal pack ($6.99, as opposed to $3.99), but the set has *SEVERAL* $10+ value cards in it. As it goes, we, as a store decided not to sell any full boxes, nor make any individual pack sales of it. The set is meant to be drafted, so we decided that we would hold back our allotment from sale and break it out for events, prizes, and other big draws. While I know we've upset some people, I believe we've made the right long-term call. A number of places I know are selling full boxes (24 packs) of this set for $225 a box and higher. That's great if you want to make a quick short-term buck, but this set has the potential to draw so much more business than that if a store can market it creatively. We've already got a couple of ideas in mind... stay tuned for those.

I have to be back at the store in about six hours. I will be there, once again, all day. The only part that is even a the slightest bit mitigating is that the last half of the day/evening, I will be playing in Shady's Terracide game. I will also be more than half loopy when I do so. Currently, I'm not entirely certain where we can go in the game. There are some situations that we could clean up, but every time we try to fix something, three other things draw us away from it all. Ehhh... We'll see how it goes. If necessary, I will talk to Shady about it. I really do get the feeling that the game is one the downward spiral in terms of wrap-up, but I've been wrong about these things before. Perhaps it's the fatigue talking... who knows?

-- GopherDave

Not Even Trying....

Today at the store was... slow. Agonizingly slow. So slow that I felt guilty not doing any real work, but given how "GO-GO-GO-GO-GO-GO" I have been the last couple of months, slow was kind of what I needed.

"Planning" for the upcoming game is going. As I've said in earlier posts, I am trying to not pre-plan anything, as I want this game/comic to be about the PCs, and not the cool villains I can make or the neat plots I can spin that keeps the players going in circles. Yes, there will be plots, but (if I can keep my own tendencies in check) they will be centered around things I get from the players. I will add my own spices to the stew, of course, but I am looking for this game to be as player-centric as possible.

With that said, ideas for the game are starting to tumble into my head from a number of different sources. I have a player who, despite my saying do not cement any concepts down, has already handed me a back story for a character idea. I have been trying to not think about it as I did not want to cement anything in my head. Today at the store, in my very idle time, I came up with ideas for play off of said background. In addition to this, I was listening to some music last night (Planet P Project's "Pink World") and ideas were germinating from that.

As it goes, I cannot wait to get this game started. I haven't felt that in a long time. It feels good...

-- GopherDave