New Scheduling Thread

[Kathryn Karnage]

So, When are you free, Ed, as I have a yen to play lots of D & D ;)

[Rory Cullen]

On Tuesday, 28 January 2020 16:29:02 UTC, Kathryn Karnage wrote:

So, When are you free, Ed, as I have a yen to play lots of D & D ;)

We haven't even heard back from the last group yet. We could all be grey goo by now ;)

On that subject, by the way, I'm not sure there's much point in the real-time delays between game sessions and "when your characters would get back" - we're not really scheduling sessions closely enough together that group B can act on information they "couldn't have known" from group A's activities and I find it leads to a lack of impetus. I mean I guess I could write up the session immediately afterwards and just post it later, but that doesn't seem to happen.

[Richard Jackson]

Hey, if you've turned into grey goo, that's your own doing.  Nothing to do with us. ;op

There's a real, practical reason you can't have known what our group got up to yet - we don't know ourselves!  We had limited time last Saturday and I don't think I'm giving anything away in saying we ran out of time.  We'll be resuming this Sunday.  (Ed thinks we'll be finished then, but we're on another early finish and I'm sceptical, given our group's current to-do list.  Maybe he's planning to kill us all...)

Personally, I rather appreciate the real-time delays.  Partly because I like the real-time suspense of whether we all made it (No one's ever forgetting that 2nd session TPK...).  Partly because it gives a known timescale for getting a write-up done in.  If the option's there to post straight away, it's likely to be the same players (whoever's likely to write the adventure up fastest) telling the story all the time.  If I know someone else will probably post up what we did several days before I get round to it, I'm likely to either rush out a slapdash version or just not bother.  I'm far more likely to put in the effort if I know we'll all be posting about the same time.

[Ed Chivers]

Darn, I hadn't seen this new thread, sorry folks.

The time delay exists for a couple of reasons - one is coordination between groups, though as Rory says we're not playing often enough for this to make a significant difference. The other is mostly for dramatic effect, to keep other players in suspense. Rich also makes a good point about knowing when the posts are due so that it's not the same people posting up each time. That having been said, one thing I've been asking for the last few sessions, right at the start, is who is going to do the write-up. That person then knows they should be taking notes - and of course gets to put their spin on things ;)

So let's keep the delay for now, but if more people feel like it's not working then we can look at it again.

As for scheduling, I had intended for this to be more player-directed but since we're mostly grown-ups with jobs we can't be quite as flexible as the young whippersnapper students we used to be. In my day... wait, where was I? Anyway, I'm going to draw up a schedule of when I can *definitely* host, and people can choose dates that take their fancy (this was Krissy's idea and I like it).

We've got a group playing tomorrow, carrying on from where we left off last week, with Dr Robotnik's giant Orbital Death Laser pointed at the valley* - let's go for an 11 o'clock start.

*warning: may not actually be true.

[Ed Chivers]

Hey folks - I am in the process of setting up a shared Google calendar for organising sessions and flagging availability. This absolutely will not replace the current scheduling thread(s), only augment them - I know that not everyone likes the Googly Empire but I suspect enough folks will use it to make it worthwhile.

I'm going to send out invites within the next day or so, starting with those people who signed up to the valley with a gmail address. If that doesn't sound like you, but you'd still like to use the calendar, let me know and I'll send an invite your way.