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[Death or Glory]

Okay, first off I'm not trying to backseat gm, exceed my authority, or step on anyone's toes here.  I'm just curious about a couple items relating to the campaign overall and wanted to know what everyone's thoughts are on them and if there was some sort of pre-existing plan that I somehow missed.

Item one, how long is this campaign going to last?  If memory serves, this was initially pitched as the Fall/Winter campaign.  At this point, it seems pretty clear that this campaign is going to go through at least spring, which is good since I'm enjoying the battle for Terra so far and we're no where near done.  What I want to know is, are there plans to extend the campaign into summer or even the fall?  With Rob and Dan off the gming hook for this campaign, continuing into summer would probably be at least slightly possible.  What determines the length of this campaign?  Is there a set number of scenarios that we're going to play through?  Are we ending after a certain month?  Are we going to keep playing until people lose interest in Terra?

Item two, what pace are we going to continue at?  I believe the initial target was to play two campaign scenarios a month.  So far, we've been doing one scenario a month.  Obviously, between Thanksgiving, the harvest trials, talks of Klondike, and Christmas, doing two scenarios a month for November and December was pretty much impossible.  However, with the holidays behind us (and writing off January as everyone still being too frazzled from the holidays during the organizational period at the beginning of the month), getting in two scenarios a month should at least be within the realm of possibility.  If the campaign is going to end by summer, then trying to get in two scenarios a month would definitely allow us to fight things out a lot more thoroughly, than with only doing one scenario a month.  However, this does put more strain on everyone's schedules, increases the pressure on the gms to get things ready quickly, and restricts the amount of discussion time each side has to make decisions about scenarios beforehand.  Basically, what I want to know is, are you happy and content continuing with one scenario a month or do you want to push for two?  Personally, I would like to try to get in a second scenario each month, however my schedule is also less busy than a lot of people's (for example, I have enough free time to leave rambling posts on a Cincinnati gaming club message board at 4:27 a.m. when I can't seem to fall asleep) and I'm not responsible for creating scenarios, so doing two scenarios a month would probably be easier for me than it would be for most other players and the gms.

edit: Wow, my grammar sucks at 4:27 a.m.

[ItsTehPope]

Doing two in Feburary technically may be a little difficult this month as there's only 4 Saturdays this year, and one of them will be right after a game we're already playing.

While I'd like to up the pace, two a month may be a little much, but what about one every 3 weeks or so?

[phlop]

Ah you beat me to it, I was thinking that if we gamed more I would only be able to do it every 3 weeks. Alot depends on everybodies availability.

[serrate]

Item one, how long is this campaign going to last?

Haven't thought about this too much myself, as it really doesn't matter too much.  As long as the story is engaging (and it has been), the scenarios are interesting (and they have been), then I plan to show up and play BT.  Maybe it was originally pitched as a Fall/Winter campaign, but I think that might've just been a way to distinguish it from the "Summer" Solaris campaign.  I never actually had an expectation that it would end within a few months.

Our group hasn't really operated on a set time-line before (other than the Solaris campaign).  Our previous clan campaign ended when the GM decided it was time to do something new (possibly he felt it had started to grow stale, or maybe he wanted to end it before it did).  The most recently concluded campaign ended because the failure of the btechunits.com website effectively erased our records (extensive), and our fiction (which really was exceptional, imo, considering that we don't truly run a rp campaign).  We were all (I think) having a great time, I know I was having a blast GM'ing the Farwell contract, but when everything went up in smoke it was mutually decided that it was as good a time as any to start over with something new.

So, now we're in Travis' and Mike's Jihad campaign, and it's possible they've got an end-date in mind, or perhaps they've got a certain story path mapped out and how fast we reach the end depends on how often we play.  Considering we've got more Jihad publications coming out this year, it's as good a time as any to play in, so if we stay in it for another year or longer, it's fine with me, and if it ends in March, that's cool too.

Item two, what pace are we going to continue at?  I believe the initial target was to play two campaign scenarios a month.  So far, we've been doing one scenario a month.

Fair question, and I think you've outlined a lot of the reasons that we've slowed down.  For myself, I'd love to play every weekend, assuming I also had infinite amounts of time available for my family, job, sleep, and other pursuits.  Sadly, my time is a lot more limited than that.  As much as I love to play BT, I've come to the realization that about once a month is all I can really spare (if we're talking about a full Saturday gaming session), and I'll enjoy other parts of the hobby from home like reading sourcebooks/novels or painting minis.  I might fit in an extra day every now and then, but not often.  Others have got different circumstances, like yourself, so I've got no problem with the group scheduling games more often; I'm just saying I won't be able to make all of them.  I'd guess that sometimes the GM's find themselves short on available time as well.

As a suggestion, if you see that we can't play a campaign game for a few weeks, try to schedule something yourself for a different weekend.  No doubt you can get a few people together for a gaming session. 

This works best if you don't simply say "Hey, let's play a game on the 15th, bring some sheets!"; instead try coming up with an interesting scenario (or easier yet, steal one from the scores of available sourcebooks/chaos tracks/etc) and make a post more along the lines of "Game at Sci-fi 1/15:  Gray Death Legion ambushes 4th Skye Guards!".  Post up the details of the scenario (lifted from HTP: Glengarry, of course), ask who can make it, and what faction they'd prefer to play.  You'll definitely get some takers, and while it won't be a campaign game, it'll be every bit as fun.  Plus, for that day, YOU get to be the evil GM.   

[agustaaquila]

Now now, we all know that GMs aren't inherently evil.  They just operate on a completely different moral schedule than the PCs do. 

[maddyfish]

This works best if you don't simply say "Hey, let's play a game on the 15th, bring some sheets!"; instead try coming up with an interesting scenario (or easier yet, steal one from the scores of available sourcebooks/chaos tracks/etc) and make a post more along the lines of "Game at Sci-fi 1/15:  Gray Death Legion ambushes 4th Skye Guards!".  Post up the details of the scenario (lifted from HTP: Glengarry, of course), ask who can make it, and what faction they'd prefer to play.  You'll definitely get some takers, and while it won't be a campaign game, it'll be every bit as fun.  Plus, for that day, YOU get to be the evil GM.   

Brian, are you volunteering??? If not I have thought about a couple scenarios playing out the battles in the novel Mercenary's Star.

[Darrian Wolffe]

Now now, we all know that GMs aren't inherently evil.  They just operate on a completely different moral schedule than the PCs do. 

No, we're bloody evil and you damn well know it.

In any case, the main reason I asked somebody else to run this campaign is because I had run or had a large part in running the previous 4 campaigns in which I had been involved, dating back to 2006-ish (the campaign with Al, the Clan Trinary campaign, the merc campaign, and Summer Solaris), plus doing an increasingly large amount of work for CGL and I was, frankly, experiencing the early stages of burnout.

At this time, having gotten a chance to play for a bit, I've actually more or less revitalized my floon* and have an interesting campaign planned that will be serving as a testbed for integrating ATOW characters into a BattleTech setting (in preparation to help set up the persistent ATOW campaigns that will be featured at conventions); this campaign can be as RP intensive as each individual wants to be - if you only want to show up and shoot crap, that's fine.  If you want some RP on the forums between sessions, the campaign can handle that.  If you want to take it into almost a full-on RPG that leads in to the BattleTech games, that's fine too...and the campaign can deal with all of these simultaneously.

I'm in no hurry, mind you, to get back to GMing.  As Mike and Travis have mentioned recently, it's an incredibly time-consuming and brain-intensive job, and having "creative" players (that's most of you people) just makes it better and worse at the same time.  So rest assured, once they feel like wrapping things up, there's something ready to go.  But Travis and Mike are doing a great job, and I'm having great fun just getting to play (and not having to feel responsible for 10 other people's enjoyment...  ).  The campaign will be over when it's over, so let's not worry about tomorrow and enjoy the ride.






*Floon, noun.  Floon is a term used in some of the LARPing communities in the eastern US. Someone whose floon is said to be high is enthusiastic about gaming, while someone low in floon has allowed various factors to reduce this enthusiasm. For a player, low floon means lack of desire to attend games. For a staff member, low floon can mean lack of inspiration to run and write them.

Think about your day job. When you haven't had a vacation for a while, you've been doing thankless tasks for weeks, and you've just gotten another boring assignment, how good of a job are you going to do with it? Your enthusiasm is low, so your work will likely be the minimum that you can force yourself to do. Now compare that to a time when you're energized, well-treated, and given an interesting project. The interesting project will probably turn out much better even if it's of the same difficulty as the boring one.

Working on a game is no different. If you've lost interest and enthusiasm in what the team is doing, you're going to be putting in the minimum of effort towards everything you do.

This is something of a downward spiral. As your work suffers and slows down, it's going to take even longer to move to the next stage in the project. You'll be bored for longer, and your work may suffer even more. If things get truly bad, the staff may burn out from lack of floon before the project moves to something of more interest to everyone.

[agustaaquila]

Alright, because 1) you asked for it 2) Di Pietro got knocked out in a goalie on goalie fight and 3) other people posting up the next campaign, I will law out a basic outline of everything else I have planned.

4 more scenarios. 

That should be basic enough to understand.

Any questions?

[Darrian Wolffe]

Alright, because 1) you asked for it 2) Di Pietro got knocked out in a goalie on goalie fight and 3) other people posting up the next campaign, I will law out a basic outline of everything else I have planned.

4 more scenarios. 

That should be basic enough to understand.

Any questions?

Ah - as a note, the only reason I'm posting up campaign stuff this early is because working out the kinks will take a bit of peer review, and we need time for that to happen.  No worries or pressure, guys.

[Death or Glory]

Alright, because 1) you asked for it 2) Di Pietro got knocked out in a goalie on goalie fight and 3) other people posting up the next campaign, I will law out a basic outline of everything else I have planned.

4 more scenarios. 

That should be basic enough to understand.

Any questions?

Wow, I assumed there would be at least 6-8 more scenarios.  I guess it's time to step up the ruthlessness.