I revived an old Traveller campaign wiki of mine and started creating two characters, and asked my wife to create a character… I’m excited!
The existing wiki is mostly in German because I was expecting to run a Solo campaign. I’m not opposed to mixing languages or using English if my wife isn’t there (as we like to say in the German speaking parts: “Denglish”, haha). So English could be OK.
At the same time, I guess I’m also looking for a smaller game. Fewer people. I’m hoping this makes the game more intense; perhaps that makes for more satisfying remote gaming sessions. I wonder. These days I’m a player in two D&D 5 games, and I’m feeling ambivalent. It’s nice to play with friends, but I’m not enjoying the mechanics and the fighting and the Roll 20 aspect too much. We use Roll 20 in just one of the games and it does invite a lot of token pushing. That’s OK, too. When these games started, we had all agreed to focus on fighting and dice rolling when we meet and to focus on character interplay via posting on the wiki between games. The writing on the wiki has sometimes been fantastic, deep, moving, a whole new level! Then again, I also feel it’s one player in particular that’s pushing me to join in. Mutual inspiration at its best!
So now I’m finding myself moved in two directions:
On the one hand, the online sessions aren’t intense enough. I’m easily distracted. The presence of actual people at the table took care of that, for me. The monkey brain is easily engaged when people are there. So perhaps, mediated via the screen and the Internet, fewer people is better for me.
On the other hand, I’m starting to appreciate the writing between sessions. Sometimes things happen, and we know there must be consequences, the soul sighs and is weary, the mind suspicious, the friendship deepened, the courage shaken, the triumph glorious, the epiphany blows our mind – and that’s hard to go into at the table, but we can work on it in our writing. I used to say: none of us is an author. True. But we could be. We could be working on it. I’m finding myself enjoying that part.
So here’s what I’m thinking. I’m going to start with some solo stuff. Creating characters was a good start. Think of an adventure, roll some dice, write it up. Maybe ask my wife to join. Again, roll some dice, and *write it up*. Short games, perhaps 1–2h games with just one or two players might be key. And then a lot of writing on the wiki. Perhaps chatting on the phone when we’re not gaming, via Signal, or Threema.
Playing via a wiki and maybe an instant messenger with a chat group is a possibility I’m willing to try.
#Traveller
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Interesting, never been one for such games myself.
– cosPgSKkiPM 2021-01-19 05:43 UTC
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Yeah, me neither. But given the pandemic, and given that I’m in two games via video chat already, I’m willing to try new things.
– Alex 2021-01-19 09:27 UTC