Moar Westward! Also, ADoA / STing thoughts.

The focus of yesterday's W! session was the dance competition thingy, since King Deshane decided he wouldn't join the treasure hunt unless one of "our people" (who turned out to be Lily's concubine Violet Dusk) danced against the worst of his male dancers (who turned out to be far from horrible, really!) and won. I suspect the competition was rigged and Deshane just wanted to see how well we dance, but hey, Dusk won, and that's what we needed. ^^;

Then there was OMG CLIFFHANGER! and people (other than Lily who really wanted some intimate time with Dusk :P) went off to figure out who stole our stuff. Yeah... it was a short scene overall. But it was a good thing to play W! I always kinda feel like we gotta clamor for it 'cause Darkheart might let it NOT run for a longer period of time. ^^; So that's why I'm always all "wheeeee~!" when it does run.

Well, it's not JUST that -- I genuinely enjoy it, too! It's as much 'cause of the game itself as it is 'cause I absolutely love to play Nahia. I wish Westward could run regularly (as in, some guaranteed time once a week) though, 'cause then I know I'd get my fix. It's like playing a vacation, you know? ^^; It doesn't try to be too serious about itself... it's just a buncha Exalts on an adventure.

One thing I'd like to see more is opportunities for chara development, though. That's one way a game like ADoA shines, 'cause there's so much opportunity for scenes, and so many KINDS of scenes, from the dramatic to the purely social. Minis abound, and Col encourages that, generally. Hell, that's a good sign that people care about the game and their chars, if they're doing all those minis. ^^; Though Col worries that people don't care about the plot... I try my best to keep abreast of it, but there's a lot Ryshy still doesn't know. I hope that that's more because she's an outsider and not because I'm just ignorant. :P I've saved every log Ryshy's in, at least! And whenever I know Ryshy can make a difference at an important plot point, I do my best to make that happen! I just don't know whether that's happened yet, other than Ryshy saving people's lives... hey, she's good at that, at least.

I've heard Col is depressed about his games lately, and I don't blame him. Not 'cause I actually AGREE people don't like his games, but because it's hard being a ST. I know that well enough now, having run Exalted for over a year (gasp, has it really been that long?) I mean, finding that balance between running something you personally like and enjoy, and running something the players find interesting and involved in... that's hard. So is trying to juggle the rules, especially if you're running something as rules-heavy as Exalted, for a player base with wildly different needs.

The rules-ness of White Wolf games is something I still lament to this day. As much as I like playing Exalted, I SUCK at Exalted combat, and damnitall, why can't anyone agree on a solution for social combat in Ex1? WHY! I still like my solution for Emberdays (the one I posted in my journal a while back) but I'm pretty sure Selina hates it, so I can't use it. x.x But! I still play Exalted anyway. And run it. Haha! Why am I so crazee? I do think I probably will never run another Exalted game besides Ember Days though. Except Shattered Age stuff, and I plan to run that with just Jon. Maybe a Kraken if he has time, but it's looking more likely that it'll just be Jon n' me. And it could be a LONG time from now 'cause of some rule changes I want to write and test out.

Anyway, as I was saying, being an ST is hard. It's especially hard if you're prone to being underconfident in your own works sometimes. I seriously have no freaking clue how well I'm doing with my game most of the time. I can't tell whether people like what I've written, whether they really WANT to know all that detail (I remember thinking during the last Emberdays session, "do people REALLY care if it's granite or jade? GAH!"), whether they feel like I'm putting enough hooks in the game for their characters to care about, and so on. They might even SAY they like this or that, but it's easier for them to say it than for me to believe it when the end result isn't quite what I was hoping for.

My guess, though, is that that happens a lot with STing, and the BEST way to deal with it is to roll with it and just be adaptable When I'm NOT feeling completely stressed out and paranoid, I think I can be pretty adaptable, but lately, it's just been hard. B&B has just killed so much of my confidence. I REALLY TRIED with that game, but after a while it was the nth time someone's not shown up, or the nth time people have seemed utterly bored, or the nth time I just haven't been up to running, and that's all I could get myself to see -- the bad stuff. I couldn't enjoy running it AT ALL, and that's really what killed the game, even more than the apathy I was sensing in my players. Eventually, I think, your feelings as an ST reflect on the players. People saw I wasn't enjoying it... so why should they?

This entire ramble (other than the W! parts) has been inspired by me trying to figure out how someone running this HUGE (10+ players) long running epic GAME of GAMES (also known as A Dance of Angels) for over 2 years could think that people don't like it. Part of it is that if you don't believe it's good, you just... won't. >.> Part of it, too, could be a lack of appreciation from the players -- not necessarily 'cause they think it undeserved, but because they're busy wanting this or that for their chars, or having a bad day, or whatever else, and they forget to stop and say "Hey, I liked the game." You know, by the end of B&B, I really felt it was a chore, for everyone. Myself, the players... just... ugh. It felt like I was dragging people into it, c'mon let's just PLAY ALREADY! I wonder whether Col feels that way sometimes, trying to get people in 2931743 different timezones to sit together and PLAY.

I'm kinda losing my coherence here, so I'll just end this by saying this: I enjoy ADoA, and I'll stay as long as the enjoyment is worth the time. Sometimes I get stressed about timing, but it's mostly because I worry that I'll slow the game, and I hate to be the one to slow it. ;.; I realize that with all those players in the game, setting up regular times is next to freakin' impossible. So... I make do. 'Cause it's fun. It's given me a great opportunity to develop a character that I love (that being Ryshy of course!) And Col's the creative force behind the game -- he's the one who brings the world to life, gives our characters a context in which to interact, and puts up with all our demands. So I'm thankful to him for that.

Okay, I've written that last paragraph several times by now. x.x I probably repeated myself a lot and said some stupid presumptious stuff. But I have the excuse of it being LATE (like, 5:30 am!) here, soooo yeah! Me sleepy now (though I might not sleep just yet.)

Oh, and... Grandquest later today, woohooooo~! :D