My Resolution Was To Write More

And so I'm trying. I haven't written since October!

So I started NaNo, failed that. It sucked. Then the holidays came, and I sort of got in a slump. My goal is to make up for that, at least somewhat. Ugh. RN isn't dead though, it's just on life support.

Since this is the blog post least likely to be read by returning readers, I've decided to write about something maybe more personal than normal. It will be also more scattered than normal, and believe me, I know my posts are already pretty scattered.

I love drama.

This isn't a new discovery for me. I like interpersonal relationships, and I like hearing about other people's feelings. It's fairly natural, if a little effeminate, for me to enjoy drama.

So a while back, in November, my RP group was thrust into a crunch scenario. The players were forced to make a bad decision - either turn themselves into international criminals, or start a war between two countries. I may talk about the overall campaign later, but it's this decision that is the most important one. So far they've gone on the path towards starting the war, and there may come a time where it may be impossible to stop that. But for now, they aren't 100% hedged in that path.

The drama regarding this decision was amazing. I got hours of quality, GM-free player interaction where they fought, argued, and talked over one another in order to debate all of their possible options.

In character.

It was epic! Everyone had an awesome time and felt good about what was going on. I mean, they didn't feel good about the circumstances, but everyone felt like they had something to contribute, because they all had opinions on what they should do.

As a GM, I love it when my players are excited about their game. Drama is just one way of doing it, and it isn't even the easiest option.

Drama is especially hard because a lot of roleplayers don't take the game seriously. It's hard to have someone who thinks entirely in meta terms to think about how their character feels about something.

Since I tend to attract the meta types of player, it's a little harder than normal for me to instill this sort of drama. At the same time though, it's hard for me to find 'real' roleplayers that actually want to sit down and play a game rather than use the game as a chatroom.

Still, in the end I enjoy character interaction as much as anyone. Roleplaying is about being a group of characters in a scenario, not a bunch of character sheets plowing through a dungeon. To me, roleplaying is about using that character sheet to form a character that has real strengths, real weaknesses, and who we can establish a deep and intricate personality with.

It's rare to really get that same level of roleplaying spirit in a group, and so I really enjoy it when it happens.

I dunno, this post makes no sense, but it's okay. I'm allowed to ramble in my blog a little, right?