|
"So where are you going this summer?"
"I'm not entirely sure. I have to be out of the country on July 23rd,
so I'll be in Beijing then, but before that, maybe Chengdu, Xian,
Qingdao? We'll see."
"Well that's fine then. When do you leave?"
"Tomorrow."
I really don't know which direction the influences work in this case,
but being a real-life traveller and being a gamer are exceedingly
similar in how you deal with planning.
We're all familiar with those sessions that are based on the plan.
Figuring out how the group is going to sneak into the castle, beat the
crap out of the gangsters, rescue the princess from the genocide
weapon or whatever is a grand tradition in the world of gaming. And
when I say "a grand tradition," I mean "an exercise in frustration."
Of course, that's a bit harsh and extreme and whatever, but how many
groups have seen their plans fall apart as soon as they start to
implement them? Sometimes it's because the plan was stupid in the
eyes of the GM; sometimes it's that adversarial style coming out, or
just the idea that "if everything works it's not interesting."
That is exactly what happens when you travel in weird places. You
never feel more like a GM is running the universe than when you show
up to a bus station to find that the buses you need only run on
alternate Thursdays. This kind of runaround is exactly what I expect
from a GM. Of course if it was a good GM, there'd be some
dramatically important, or at least interesting, event that'd happen
because of trying to find the other bus station or whatever. But life
is a crappy RPG.
Because of these kinds of events, most shoestring travellers I know
have been forced into the "vaguest plans possible" mode. Since it's
impossible to tell when a train will arrive anywhere, why make a hotel
reservation? It just adds stress when things "don't go according to
plan."
Now in gaming, I take the same sort of approach. As a player I tend
to get frustrated with the planning stages unless they're being done
in character. I tend to think that whatever plan we make will be
completely changed by the actual situation on the ground, so wasting
time with details beyond "land the helicopter on the roof and find the
hostages" seems to be just that, a waste.
As a GM I do the same thing. I've got a vague idea of where the
characters might want to get, and what I want to happen, but nothing
is set in anything resembling mineral deposits. Read Ian
Sokoliwski's Winging It column for more on this kind of
thing. I like this because it cuts down on the extraneous niggling
problems that players might get frustrated with (like going to the
wrong bus station) and lets me keep things interesting. I try to make
sure that characters' plans work without a hitch sometimes. Now this
is actually a bit of overcompensating on my part. As I said before,
real life isn't so accommodating, but fiction is.
What this means for your games though, is that you can end up with a
clash of styles. If I'm coming in all loosey-goosey saying "we'll
make it up as we go" it might lead to conflict with the tactical kinds
of people in the group. I have a couple of law-enforcement officers I
game with and playing Delta Green or anything remotely
police-procedural with them gets tricky because they want to do things
right, while the other players are fine with handwaving and being much
more Mulder and Scully than the CSI team. Not that the people who
want to do things right are wrong (and my players aren't jerks about
it), there's just a difference in styles.
The clash can be even more grating on travellers. It's important to
pick your travelling companions wisely. If you don't like having more
than the vaguest plans, you might not have a great time with someone
who needs schedules to squeeze the most out of every single moment.
Or you can do what every gaming group should also be doing:
communicate with your companions.
My mom came to China to visit me in January. It was her first time
out of North America, and she likes things to work out easily. That
doesn't happen in China. For months she'd been asking what the plans
were for her trip. Where were we going? What would we see? And for
months I explained my travelling style was very relaxed and we'd try
to see this this and this, but that might not all happen. It took
months but by the time she came she was all over not being rushed from
place to place, and seeing what happened when we got somewhere.
Okay, that's all I've got for this month. Next time I'll be talking
about the fun of visiting little countries.
J Unrau
Hungry J Propaganda
www.djs5.com/hjp
|
