Here, I’m talking about something typical to all roleplaying games or, specifically, gaming groups, but the example I have close to hand is something that came about on CoH over the last two night.
\nSo. It’s Sunday. Monday? Whatever. Must have been Monday night. Jackie has Shock.Therapy on and I’m … I don’t know why, but I’ve got Rose.Red on, maybe to take a shot at finishing off some of her missions or something — I’d really like to get teleport for her, cuz she’s slow as dirt. Anyway. Point is, Jackie and I were off doing our own things.
\nI’m gallumphing my way through the Hollows and I get an invite to team up from one “Punchie”.
\nFirst, I have a rule I generally follow, and it’s served me well — I don’t accept invites from people I don’t know, if they haven’t at LEAST sent me a tell (translation: in-game instant message) and used decent… you know… language and communication skills. Like the one’s I’m displaying in this post. Not.
\nBut still, any moron can click the invite button — show me you can communicate with a message better than “Grp??\/”
\nBut… I dunno. I decided to accept the invite, if for no other reason than to have someone’s messages to read on my slow-ass journey across the the get-me-killed Hollows (and if an area ever encouraged players to learn about teaming up, that one does), and I was feeling snarky and playing Rose who is, frankly, mean to people, and I thought “Punchie” might be a good target for ridicule.
\nLo and behold, Punchie can type. Punchie is funny. So are the other people on the team. I change my plans and actually group up with them for a mission — we don’t have any major damage dealers at all, but we roll the mission (a hard one) EASILY. Halfway through, I get Jackie’s toon into the group as well — we roll that mission, and proceed to Kick the Holy #*@#& out of every mission anyone can find to run. We’re awesome. Everyone’s funny and interesting and can type worth a damn. They’re smart.
\nNo one gets a free trip to the E.R. the WHOLE NIGHT. We had to retreat from a bad ambush at one point and we even did THAT well.
\nSomewhere in there, Punchie goes to level (everyone on the team leveled twice in about 3 hours, which is amazing), and comes back having registered a SuperGroup for everyone to join — in keeping with the fun of the night the SG’s name is Punch and Pie (“We joined because we were told there would be Punch and Pie…” is the motto) and the all-female-toon group determined the pink-and-black color scheme and heart-emblem.
\nIt’s all in fun — we had a really really good time with an awesome group. The “Punch and Pie” night goes down in my head as one of the best nights on CoH evah. It was just FUN.
\nLast night, Jackie logged on the same toon and sees a new team member. Later, I’m playing Gilly with Jackie and, the conversation on her SG channel was:
\n“What’re you doing, Shockie?”
\n“Grouped with a tank named Gilly?”
\n“Cool, does she want to be in a SuperGroup?”
\nAnd just like that (they didn’t know it was the same player as the night before), I get an invite.
\nWe group with some of the SG guys and some other guys… it’s not a BAD group — no one dies, mostly thanks to Jackie and the player running Punchie being on the same tactical page… but no one really impresses me as being a really kick-ass example of the player base, y’know?
\nEvery. Single. One. Of. Them. gets an open invite to the SG. Hmm.
\nNow, one of us comments about the really active recruiting, and the player doing most of it says “I ran in a guild in Everquest for five years, and if you don’t recruit, you don’t grow. Worse, you wither. I’m just trying to make the group even better.”
\nBetter? Better than the amazing thing we had going the night before? How is this possible? Why try? Why SCREW with it, for one thing?
\nSo… lengthy game example aside that’s where this ties back into gaming in general.<\/p>\n
\nWho’s had this experience?
\nYou and some people sit down to game — frequently, it’s a pick-up game, or something you’d planned as a one-off, or something. Damn little prep — maybe not a group you would have assembled on your own — alot of it came together by chance, or it just seemed to work out the way it did in an odd way.
\nIt rocks. There’s no real explanation for it, but it’s some of the best gaming you’ve had in awhile, and the most fun in a long time. It’s cool.
\nYou continue, but you tweak stuff.<\/b> You try to make it better.
\nThe first group was only the GM and two people? You add a few folks… maybe just to have ‘more to do’? Who knows.
\nYou lay in some backstory and concrete location to what was sort of a hazy background that offered (you realize in retrospect) a lot of freedom for everyone to create.
\nYou switch game systems to add more depth. A whole session goes by with conversions and figuring out how things work now.
\nNone of this makes the game *bad*… it just makes it not the same as the great experience you had — which is ironic, because you’re making all these changes to achieve either find or maintain the experience you had *before* the changes.
\nNot to say that change isn’t good — sometimes you add people becuase you need a better dynamic. Sometimes the rules you have don’t work.
\nBut when everything is great? What’s that about?
\nAnyone? Am I the only one to experience this? To be guilty myself? I think not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here, I’m talking about something typical to all roleplaying games or, specifically, gaming groups, but the example I have close<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mmos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}