On some real quasi-leftie shit, organizing a tabletop game of any sort shows how little control regular Katz have over their lives. The fact we can’t just to sit around a table with our friends with ease shows just utterly borked our notion of free-time is. I don’t think most nerds are flakes (some are for sure but In general most are pretty solid) but most nerds are often just beat down by time and work.
I don’t have any real labor theory backing me up on this but I do feel the average RPG player is a worker and workers have a raw deal across the board.
Tabletop gaming in my opinion requires a lot of emotional investment to bring the fun out and make the magic happen, and it fuckin hard to do after work/school/life. Worse yet I would assume most nerds genuinely do want to play but this hobby of collective conversation with dice rolls is just hard in our modern world where we aren’t allowed to just with each other. Playing a tabletop game (rpg,minis, board games, whatever) is not passive consumption, you actively have to engage with play for the wonder to come alive. People just beat these days sadly.
I feel you bro, it’s rough to just find people to enjoy “play” (in the rhetorical sense and the gaming sense) in adulthood. Not saying it’s impossible but needlessly difficult to play pretend with the homies these days.
This 100%
I think that the concept of shared storytelling (which is what I believe table-top gaming is at its core) is an aspect of humanity for me.
My work schedule is on months and off months, so I can game during off months but is impossible during on months, so I have only gotten into one-shots and the like.
Also want to say that the emotional/time/labor investment of the person running the game is often more so than the rest as they tend to become the logistics person as well as taking on alot of the work of the game itself.
In some ways, the widespread use of online tools and platforms for ttrpgs is fantastic but I find that in person gaming is ultimately more satisfying.
This is why we have a group of like 10 people that are in a chat together and we have an algorithm that decides who gets to play that day. If they can't make it, they say that to the bot and the bot messages the next person in the algorithm's list and asks if they're down. With 10 people odds are we'll have 4-6 players ready to go that day and so far we've had consistent play times every week without having to handle scheduling anymore. If someone leaves the chat we do a manhunt to find more people from local clubs and groups and open up their skull to determine if they have 'homophobic' etched onto their brainpan. If they don't notify the bot they won't show up they get points deducted from their social credit score.
Oh yeah, its big brain time :galaxy-brain:
How do your games work with that amount of drop-in, drop-out? Seems like it'd be a struggle for the DM to plan stuff and have set-pieces balanced correctly. Is this 5e, or are you based?
We had a similar thing in college with World of Darkness, where as long as at least 3 players showed up (physically at the student hub), its game time, but that was a bit more manageable, as WoD isn't really party based the same way DnD is, though it definitely was still a struggle at times.
Is this 5e, or are you based?
PF2e :comfy-cool:
How do your games work with that amount of drop-in, drop-out?
We choose narratives where it makes sense to have random assortments of adventurers. Right now we have an exploration ship that sails from island to island and we have a small description of each session that we post in chat after each session so everyone knows whats going on previously. Still allows for character development and RP stuff.
We've done basic 'you're in a guild hall with all the other adventurers' or 'you're scouts/special ops in a vast military operation' or 'you are protectors of a frontier city and are building it up' sort of stuff too.
Seems like it’d be a struggle for the DM to plan stuff and have set-pieces balanced correctly.
We have a bunch of stuff printed out and we use AI generated maps for almost everything. So AI generates a map on top of a flat monitor and throw our 3d printed minis and structures on top of it. If someone plays with us and are reliable they get bribed with free minis for characters, bonus points if they bring food.
Sounds cool! And I've been a PF2e enjoyer the past year too :party-parrot: Tight math of PF2e probably offsets some the difficulty of balancing encounters. Seems like more personalized stories are a small price to pay for regular game night.
I've been running two premade modules for 2e over the last year or so, and we've probably average a game every other week for each of them over that time, which is better than a lot of groups I've been in. Haven't really been a module DM in the past, but TBH I really like Paizo's work, and its pretty easy to still personalize and modify to fit the players more tightly, while still being less of a workload on me. Run on FoundryVTT currently; still hermit mode due to Covid unfortunately. Foundry is super quick and easy with its automation, but I definitely still miss the coziness of in-person play.
If your social credit score is high you're gonna be at the game every weekend anyways so you do get to develop your character a lot. Theres a lot of little things that effect the algorithm, like we keep track of people bringing food, getting new books for the dm, messaging the bot before a session that you can't come, whether or not you joined the group recently, etc. so that it isn't 100% on the DM to host and do everything. Makes it quantitatively fair without having to fret about stupid stuff.
I am so blessed to have had the same 5 friends over nearly every Saturday afternoon for the past two years, playing the same long-running Pathfinder campaign. We've cancelled sessions when one of the players had something really important to do, but otherwise my group is super consistent.
This was never possible when I was younger.
Ugh, yeah, that feel
FWIW, best strat I've found is pick a game day that generally works, and that's the day and time. If more than one person can't make it, no game; reschedulings is a goddamn headache. If people reliably stop being available, well, that game wasn't meant to be, but maybe the set date/time can be moved.
Also, feel old now that 2 of my 4 active games are now set to start at 8am, Saturdays and Sundays. But I guess that's what happens when the squad generally starts work somewhere between 5am and 7am.
I play with several family members and between weekend shift workers, mon-fri workers, commutes and early wakeup times for the above mentioned shifts it's hard to get everyone together. I'm the GM and we actually play on a day I work, immediately after I get off work, because that's the only way we can swing it.
