Friday, July 15, 2005
This Corridor Is Boring
This was probably one of my favorite gaming moments, which happened in my last weeks session of Adventure! The characters were being led down a brightly-lit, underground corridor by large iron men, and I was droning on about doors and the lighting and stuff like that, and one of my players was all "So, are we done with the corridor yet? Cuz this is boring."
It's my favorite for a bunch of reasons. First off, because he was right - it was boring, and he told me so, and it was totally cool, and we moved on to the next fun part. Second off, it was one of the very few boring moments we've had since we started this game, and it hilighted to me how we were totally not having 20 minutes of fun in 4 hours of gaming. We've been having, like, 3 hours of fun in 4 hours of gaming, and thats with a half hour break in between and bathroom and water breaks. You see that? Nine times as much fun. Thats freaken awesome.
My brother had work tonite, so I ran a one-shot of Inspectres with the two other players instead, and it was pretty cool. It wasn't fantastic, but there were some great moments, and some laugh-out-loud moments ("Oh, I guess I should mention that I'm a big black guy" after about 20 minutes of play being, in context, hilarious). Afterwards, me and the aforementioned player hung out and talked about gaming, which was pretty awesome. And, you know, we talked like adults about stuff that was causing him some consternation, and we came to a solution, like, y'know, real people talking about something that mattered. I find it hard to beleive that this is apparentely a minority situation among gamers, but thats the stereotype thats reinforced in a lot of places, so I kinda have to beleive that it is, which is sad.
But you know what he said? This friend of mine, who I've been gaming with for about 10 years, off and on, who doesn't really game with anyone else or is into any kind of theory or anything like that? He said things like "the most interesting characters are normal people in messed up situations" and "D&D was really boring because the only time you roll dice is during fights, and thats the last 20 minutes of the session" and "the problem with fantasy games is that people don't think theres consequences for their characters actions" and "kewl powers are fun, but shouldn't be what the game is about."
You don't need to be a theory wonk to get all this stuff, you just have to be willing to talk about it and willing to think about what you find fun and what you don't.
I told him to keep telling me when the boring things are.
It's my favorite for a bunch of reasons. First off, because he was right - it was boring, and he told me so, and it was totally cool, and we moved on to the next fun part. Second off, it was one of the very few boring moments we've had since we started this game, and it hilighted to me how we were totally not having 20 minutes of fun in 4 hours of gaming. We've been having, like, 3 hours of fun in 4 hours of gaming, and thats with a half hour break in between and bathroom and water breaks. You see that? Nine times as much fun. Thats freaken awesome.
My brother had work tonite, so I ran a one-shot of Inspectres with the two other players instead, and it was pretty cool. It wasn't fantastic, but there were some great moments, and some laugh-out-loud moments ("Oh, I guess I should mention that I'm a big black guy" after about 20 minutes of play being, in context, hilarious). Afterwards, me and the aforementioned player hung out and talked about gaming, which was pretty awesome. And, you know, we talked like adults about stuff that was causing him some consternation, and we came to a solution, like, y'know, real people talking about something that mattered. I find it hard to beleive that this is apparentely a minority situation among gamers, but thats the stereotype thats reinforced in a lot of places, so I kinda have to beleive that it is, which is sad.
But you know what he said? This friend of mine, who I've been gaming with for about 10 years, off and on, who doesn't really game with anyone else or is into any kind of theory or anything like that? He said things like "the most interesting characters are normal people in messed up situations" and "D&D was really boring because the only time you roll dice is during fights, and thats the last 20 minutes of the session" and "the problem with fantasy games is that people don't think theres consequences for their characters actions" and "kewl powers are fun, but shouldn't be what the game is about."
You don't need to be a theory wonk to get all this stuff, you just have to be willing to talk about it and willing to think about what you find fun and what you don't.
I told him to keep telling me when the boring things are.
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I'm sorry to hear that, man. You'd think that people who enjoy doing something would talk about what they enjoy. Try getting the most promising one alone, that might work out. Don't talk about theory as such, just about, y'know, what you like about gaming and what you don't. Good luck.
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