It's a good thing February was so good to my painting goals, because March is practically a goose egg. The good news? Even if I don't get anything else painted for March I'm still pretty much on track for the 150 I want to get painted for 2012.
So what have I been doing instead? Is it vaguely relevant? Let's see:
1. Work
Work has been kicking my ass lately, especially when it comes to stuff in the evening, which is when I usually paint. I'm talking three or four evenings a week at a minimum. So if I give one of those evenings to gaming and another to my wife, I'm got maybe one evening free and don't I have two children? Oh yes, I do...
2. Trying to figure out how I'm doing that one night of gaming
So what have I been doing instead? Is it vaguely relevant? Let's see:
1. Work
 |
| Not actually me. I'm better looking. |
2. Trying to figure out how I'm doing that one night of gaming
So part of my gaming life is that I can only do it every other Friday because one of the charter players in our group has the other weekends with his daughter. Saturday nights are out for me because I have to go to work early on Sundays. But, if I have conflicts on the other guy's good Fridays (no Lenten pun intended), then we've got a problem. And we've got a problem all the way through June. So a lot of time has been spent meeting with the other players trying to figure out this weird alternative schedule, because we're basically one gaming session away from the end of this almost year-long campaign, and no one wants to miss the final battle.
3. Pathfinder
So once that long campaign arc is done, in theory the GMing role switches back to me, and my son Ammo Grot has been hassling, I mean requesting very strongly and often, that I run Pathfinder instead of 4E. This isn't a huge edition-wars sort of thing. Ammo Grot loves Order of the Stick, and loves the idea of animal companions/familiars, and is somehow convinced that Pathfinder, with its wealth of PC-creation options, is a superior game. He might be right, although I think that it is just a matter of what kind of gaming experience you want, but trying to put together even a two- or three-session mini-campaign from scratch requires so much more work on the part of the GM. Aside from having to basically un-learn 4E because they are so similar I will inevitably get some rules confused, I have to do the whole "add levels to base monsters" thing. This is on top of having to introduce the rules to my entire gaming group, since none of them even played Third Edition.
4. The Game After That
I don't see Pathfinder being the Next Big Thing for my gaming group; most of them are just humoring Ammo Grot (I could be wrong, but I think that they will think that it is too similar to 4E to justify a long-term switch). So what will come after the mini-campaign? Well, there's some options. The guy who is currently running our 4E game has been hinting broadly that he’d like to keep going, maybe even switching to Gamma World. Add to the mix that I’ve got another person who has approached me about joining the group. And the aforementioned scheduling problems.
I think that we’re heading for a bit of a crossroads in some ways, namely a situation where the other GM runs a game on the “good” Fridays, and I run a game on the “alternative times” with the new player, and some people play in both games (including the other GM). If that sounds confusing, it is. Let’s make it easier: Evan (the other GM) runs a game with Todd, Other Rob, Rachel, Ammo Grot, and me. I run a game for Other Rob, Rachel, the New Guy, and maybe Ammo Grot and Evan. Two games, five players in each game. Evan likes 4E and Gamma World and in general the games that require miniatures. I'm good either way, and in fact might enjoy doing something totally different for a change, since outside of EOW I haven't played a game of something other than 4E in almost four years, and that was a very short campaign of WEG's Star Wars.
So I'm currently bouncing around games, everything from Modern d20 to Serenity to one of the Star Trek RPG incarnations. Sometimes I think I'm just being stupid and should just stick to 4E, which happens to be the only game that most of the players know, period.
Closing
It it too late to salvage March? Probably. I'm out of town for the next week or so, which means I'll have about a week if I'm to do anything, which again is unlikely. In the meantime I'll spend some of the week pondering my RPG situation, and hopefully coming up with an answer.
Closing
It it too late to salvage March? Probably. I'm out of town for the next week or so, which means I'll have about a week if I'm to do anything, which again is unlikely. In the meantime I'll spend some of the week pondering my RPG situation, and hopefully coming up with an answer.
Comments
Post a Comment