{"id":15948,"date":"2011-12-21T18:00:50","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T00:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/?p=15948"},"modified":"2011-12-21T14:16:26","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T20:16:26","slug":"tales-from-the-gazebo-keeping-the-%e2%80%9ci%e2%80%9d-out-of-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roleplayerschronicle.com\/?p=15948","title":{"rendered":"Tales from the Gazebo: Keeping the \u201cI\u201d out of Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Keeping the “I” out of Team<\/strong>
\nBy Cape Rust<\/em><\/p>\n

This week we are going to look at sharing your ideas and concepts with your players and ways to do it. Socializing the next game while your current game is going on can become distracting and quite disrespectful to your current GM. The big problem is that if you are on-deck to run the next game and are doing your best to keep it from turning into an epic fail, then some socialization might be in order.<\/p>\n

If you have already been invaded by the GIF (Good Idea Fairy) then the socialization process might fall into the knife fight mentality. This is the point where you might get cut but you\u2019re not going to die. You might not die but the idea that was born because of the laborious collaboration between you and the GIF might turn into a bleeder. I think you can guess that while I see the benefits of the GIF, I tend to want to engage the GIF on my terms and on my time table. If you feel like you have yourself squared away, have the time, and are open-minded enough to run a game, you are ready to prepare for the next step. Yes, more preparation!<\/p>\n

This preparation is completely self-serving in its nature, and that is a good thing. At this point, you should be getting ready to appropriately approach your future players to get their input and feelings for the next game that you happen to be on-deck to run. I have stressed gaming as a team sport and mentioned how important it is to get player input, but as the GM you have a vote and you have a say. If you are cunning and flexible, you can shape and influence the players feedback to develop a game that you want to run and they want to play.<\/p>\n

While shaping and influencing might sound dirty and underhanded, they really are not. Because you are running the game, you deserve to set some parameters for the upcoming game. You want player ideas and input, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. One big mistake I made when my children were young was to give them too many options. Players will be overwhelmed with options and you will be no closer to knowing what kind of game your players want.<\/p>\n

I think the best way to approach these dirty sounding concepts is with a walk-through. So here I am: I am going to run the next game and my current GM thinks she has three or four more weeks until the current game ends. I just got done re-re-re-watching the Firefly<\/em> series and want to run a game in the Verse. I haven\u2019t discussed this concept with the other players, but this is the route I want to go. Because I read Tales from the Gazebo<\/em>, I know I shouldn\u2019t just go all out and develop a complete adventure without socializing this.<\/p>\n

The first thing I do is analyze with my gaming group this question: Has everyone seen Firefly<\/em>? Ok, everyone has seen Firefly<\/em>. That works in my favor.<\/p>\n