We're coming up on the New Year. That means resolutions and staying up until midnight to watch the ball drop and all that other fun stuff. It also means taking stock of the previous year and making plans to go ahead. The new year presents us with new chances. Chances we can use to improve ourselves. I'm hoping to put 2013 to good work personally. Mostly on the writing side, but also as a GM. Before I can do that though I need to look at the previous year and how it worked out.
So, how did I do?
Well, coming in to 2012 I had two goals. The first was I wanted to improve how I presented and played my NPCs. The second was to keep both games I was running at the time going.
NPCs
On the NPC front it is still much a work in progress. I've gotten better at playing them, but I still retreat more than I want to. I really don't get this nervousness either, as out of game I am basically shameless. At the table though, and suddenly things become very weird. Still, I feel I am doing better than last year. Small progress is still progress, but this is going to have to stay on the boards.
2 Games Running...
Batting .500 on this one. One of the games - Deathwatch - died an ignoble death. the game went on hiatus for a small break and never got back together. Fairly standard as far as most games go, but still somewhat sad. In place of Deathwatch I tried running Marvel Heroic RPG but found I hated the game (not the system, just that particular game I was playing). At present I am running Shadowrun which is a lot of fun and has me hooked. The other game, the L5R game, is still going strong and a few sessions into the second generation.
Over all, I had progress but not a lot of it. I think I can do better next year. How about you? I'll update Monday (or Friday, maybe) with what I'm hoping to do next year. Both as a GM and in other ways.
How about you? How did you do with your New Year Resolutions this year?
Coming into 2012 I had a few goals as a GM.
ReplyDelete1: Keep up a strong living world in the games I run, and the feeling of living NPCs.
2: Run a lighter hearted game with more "Good" PCs rather than the morally ambiguous ones.
3: Not over extend myself in regards to GMing or gaming in general.
NPCs and the world.
Overall I feel I'm doing well with this. Swapping over to running the Dresden Files and running a Battletech game has led to the world doing well. In Battletech a lot of the world life has come from a player, but I feel that accepting and using that instead of getting weird about it has been good.
Using FATE has led to NPCs being very easy to use. I mostly just have 3 defining aspects for them, and anything more that develops naturally. People like, or at least fined engaging, the NPCs.
Lighter Hearted
Definitely. Transitioning away from running Dark Heresy to Dresden Files has been good for that. Things are always going to be a bit rough in any game I run, and you're going to have to work for any goal, but I'm not slamming people with consequences all the time. In Battletech things are tough, but people's characters still laugh and have fun.
I'd say that in Dresden Files while the characters aren't all "goodguys" in the traditional sense, they are all at base Good people. The thief is a gentle generous man, the former mob driver just wants to help. I know I don't have full control over this, but I think it is successful, and the worlds allow for that.
Don't over extend.
Mostly I haven't over extended. As I went from working one job to two, I had to adjust my gaming life, and had to drop games. (Sorry about vanishing on Deathwatch! I wanted to continue, but needed an unclaimed day.) Running two, every other week games, and playing in three seems to work out fairly well.
Overall not a bad year for gaming. I think the quality of my GMing has dropped a bit as I've been so heavily engaged in work, and I want to try to bring that back up. But that's a goal for next year.