The New Deal

[Josiah]

Hi everyone,

After a lot of thought and some discussion, I've decided that running
these two games, these two groups, as we've set them up, isn't going
to work out very well. There are a number of reasons for this,
including mismatched expectations, scheduling conflicts,
transportation issues, venue concerns, the desires of my friends, the
needs of my roommate, and of course my own interests.

I don't believe that I'm prepared or have adequate circumstances at
this time to run an ongoing, continuous, semi-narrative campaign with
more or less random groups of strangers. I want to step back from
these stopgap games that I've started, and put all of my campaign-
building focus into working on my Penumbra game. Once that is ready,
I will also be considerably more selective and engage in a much more
involved screening process for the players, so that I will be sure
that everyone is on the same page as far as playstyle preferences and
capabilities.

In the meantime, I've come to the decision that it would be best for
myself, my roommate, and at least some players if I were to avoid
running any traditional "campaign-style" D&D games with a persistent
group and schedule for now, and instead simply participate in the RPGA
and Living Forgotten Realms shared campaign. This is a limited,
episodic, fairly casual format in which players at the table can shift
in and out interchangeably, and I am not expected to come up with any
overarching story or motivation for the characters to be together or
undertake the adventures.

Eventually, I will be ready and will desire to run my deep, long-term
Penumbra campaign. I'll want to find some very serious roleplayers
for that, players whom I know will be as interested in investing a
great deal into their characters and the story as I am. But until
then, I would much prefer to run some short, standalone D&D
adventures, in the RPGA style, which focus a lot more on "crunch" and
system mastery and tactical combat. As such, I'd prefer to play, for
now, with players who tend to think more in those terms, who have a
fairly solid working knowledge of 4th Edition rules and their
characters' capabilities, and who are highly interested in learning
this side of the game even more.

So I'll be holding short RPGA sessions at home, each of which will be
a self-contained adventure, with no set group, but individual sign-ups
for each separate game day. I won't be locked into running these at
any set time, or specific day, and will have the flexibility to skip
weeks whenever I need to. None of the players who sign up to come and
play will have to commit to anything beyond one day, either.

There will be some opportunities for roleplaying, but the focus will
be on episodic adventure, action, tactical challenges, and combat. I
will show a preference in scheduling to players who have some
experience with the rules system and feel that they are at least
moderately skilled players, or who are actively and eagerly working to
learn the "crunch" of the game (by reading the books, asking
questions, and so on).

Anyone from either of my two current (now defunct) groups may, of
course, sign up to play in the RPGA sessions. I like each of you, and
the dissolution of the games is not an expression of anything to the
contrary. I'm very glad to have met you all, and thank you sincerely
for coming to try out my game. I do apologize for this sudden end to
the groups, but despite the brevity of our activity, it was very
valuable as a learning experience. Myself, and my roommate, now have
a much clearer picture of what will work for us, what we want, and
what might be more trouble than its worth.

I hope that this doesn't make me seem like too much of a jerk. I wish
everyone the best, and should any of you wish to look into the RPGA
play experience, by all means let me know.

Enjoy your adventures, on Earth or whatever world your imagination
takes you to!



-Josiah

[Dawn Brown]

Thank you for the game, and have a great year, :)   I really appreciated your help with my character, I'm going to be using her in a future game with the RPG meetup group I'm in.   I enjoyed meeting you all,   Dawn --- On Thu, 1/1/09, Josiah <firesna...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Kontazler]

Thank you for taking the time to write this explanation,
everything sounds justified to me

this actually works out well for me,
because im about to start DMing a more local game
and it would be nice to give that my full attention.

[Lena]

I know almost exactly how ya feel.

And frankly, I wouldn't have been able to make it to any more sessions
as is, because there's no way in hell I'm risking my life on those
buses again.

Cheers