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You don’t have a fever nor are you throwing up.
Sorry sweetheart, OFF TO SCHOOL.

@Alveraxus I would be Very Interested to hear how this goes. Good luck!!

Getting yelled at by a 7 year old just minutes after they woke up is apparently a huge trigger for me. Who knew?

I do love a good, structured downtime between major arcs, whether those are episodes or just metaplot pushes. It’s nice to have some time where you know you can relax a little and pursue some slice-of-life or personal drama without the “tea party in the zombie apocalypse” issue.

But I do think you have to be careful about how long those times are. The Network tended to feel a little too long for me, but I think that’s also because it was such an isolated setting and blank slate characters. I could see being more chill with a longer downtime if it was like - the ‘episodes’ were missions into alien territory, and then the ‘downtime’ was being back at home base, having access to all the NPCs and your character’s life to pursue.

Balance in all things, I suppose. And making sure the downtime still has something hooky for people to poke at - this doesn’t have to be a mystery or something staff-run. If, instead of full amnesia, you had a situation where specific chunks of someone’s memory were gone at the start of the game, and each downtime they could pursue and ‘reveal’ that part of themselves if they wanted, it would be very player focused, but still give that feeling of ‘pursuit and revelation’ that could keep restless players engaged over the lull.

And it doesn’t have to be memory. In a horror game, it could be player-led additions to the setting - each downtime you get to create a piece of the town or an artifact in the creepy vault, or whatever, and explore its curse and backstory. Or if you’re in a weird magical school setting, every downtime each character gets to work on and demonstrate a single magical project. Just something to provide enough structure for people who need it.

I’d actually be curious to see how Alveraxus handles this, when they get there. In many ways, a generational jump is episodic, and I know it’s a thought I’ve kicked around as a problem to solve when thinking about generational games or time jumps. Anyone playing there that can speak to it?

Robert MacNeil, creator and first anchor of PBS ‘NewsHour’ nightly newscast, dies at 93

@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:

But also… I don’t want to play in some kind of pre-established utopia. I’d rather play fighting for one and building one. Having no adversity and no socially structured limitations on a game sounds boring as fuck.

@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:

…But I absolutely don’t think it’s wrong for a game to explore or reflect these sorts of prejudices that exist IRL (either in modern days, or historically). Some people who have experienced prejudice or trauma don’t want to touch anything that resembles it in their hobby space, and some of those people actively want to engage with it in their hobby space. It’s just different preferences here.

Agree with you both here. I think what’s most important for me is just that it says on the box what you are getting into. I don’t want to find out a year in that actually I’ve been living under authoritarian jam control.

I quite enjoy playing scrappy underdogs fighting against a terrible status quo. @Yam and other friends have run some great little games that let me tell amazing stories in those kinds of worlds. You wanna talk wish-fulfillment, man. Fulfills my wishes to think we can overthrow corrupt institutions. :')

I get where game runners are coming from when they try to push against the tide. I think there’s a tendency to over-correct and avoid some of the more uncomfortable elements of theme because you always run the risk of getting the players who actually think it’s super cool and fun to run around slinging slurs and call it historical. They are not there to overthrow institutions. There are there to be institutions.

As ever, the problem is players.

It’s easier to just lean hard into a more progressive setting rather than navigate the sticky bits.