Highly Speculative

Damn this guy has a lot of hair...

First off, I got a promotion! Only a temporary one for three months though, but I'm hoping they'll be needing me permanently come spring. So in celebration, I went on a shopping spree! It's still October! :D



First off I bought two new loli skirts second hand. I finally found a 'decent' priced Chess Chocolate skirt from egl sales group. And then I went to see what Closet Child had to offer and found this very cute Baby skirt with a bear print. And now I'm just waiting for the first to be shipped from Moscow and the second to be shipped Japan. Getting those confirmations were a joy on their own, since you never know if someone has snatched them up just before you, since there usually is just one piece.

On non-clothing section, I bought Rayman Legends, since despite my best efforts to suggest it, Valentine got me something completely different for last Saturday. Those were good presents as well, don't get me wrong (I got that long coveted tripod for my camera and a recipe book for cupcakes :D ). This is just as good a game than Rayman Origins. There's so much to do, and this time it's not as linear as Origins. To top off my good mood that has kept me grinning for the past few days, I went to meet Deary yesterday. We went to take photos of Saburou (one pic above, rest when I have energy to edit more) and Josefina in the chilling sunset and drank the sweetest vanilla caramel tea. We also talked alot about RPG, which brings me to the topic of the day.

I've been thinking a lot of the differences between tabletop gamers and forum gamers. Not saying that there aren't also differences among representatives of each group. Neither is this meant to be an all-clearing thesis. It's just that the two forum gamers I know and the rest I've heard about second hand, all seem to have the same difficulties adapting to tabletop games.

Now I have one remark. When talking with Dear about what her character intends to do in our D&D campaign, she brought up that she hadn't thought about her character's background that much (and hence she hadn't thought about her motivations and such). It only occured to me later how odd this sounded to me. I had meant the question as "your character has exprienced these events in this campaign, where do you want to go or what do you intend to investigate as first priority if the opportunity comes" and I hadn't thought at all that the character's backgroud prior to the campaign would have much say in this.

Then I realised how vast a difference there is in background detail in forum and tabletop games. Now I haven't played in any forum RPGs, but what I've gathered is that it is the norm to create a detailed, multilayered background for your character. Deary even once told me about this one forum-master, who nitpicked about minor inconsistencies in the backstories and whined if they weren't detailed enough. And this is something I'm really not used to.

When we begin a tabletop game, I can sum up my character in one sentence. Like Taffee is "a goldlusting young girl" or Bory was "an elven slave with a bigass sword". Even my most loved/used NPCs have pretty vague backgrounds. Emma started out as "an easygoing helicopter pilot who has a robotic arm and a semi-obsession about finding Vainary". Nigel is "a grumpy know-it-all". Backgrounds are more important in forums, where they provide the flavour of the game and possible story-hooks to exploit. But I think that in tabletop gaming, they can actually be a hindrance.

Like, imo, my two forum gamers have evolved a lot as players in the D&D game, as opposed to the DG campaign. I credit a lot of it to the fact that since they weren't given the option to think beforehand what kind of a character they were going to play, they were actually more open to the whole campaign. The one major problem I had in DG was that since their characters were developed in such detail in beforehand and off-game, the characters were very rigid and unable to go with the scene, sometimes even unable to act with other characters due to restraints the players had put on the characters. And since tabletop games are all about interaction, it's quite a big obstacle to put in front of oneself. Not saying that some restraints and obstacles can't be fun, of course they bring flavour to tabletop games as well, but if it hinders the entire point of the game, then we have a problem. If you play a superhero, who doesn't want to leave home, then we can't have that much of a superhero game ;)

So my opinion is that long time serious forum gamers haven't realised the benefits of figuring out backgrounds on the go when it comes to tabletop gaming. When you only start with a vague character concept and add things when they seem appropriate in the current game scenario, your character is pretty much bound to go along with the rest of the group and the campaign. If you have decided beforehand that your character is x, y and z nevermind how well they go with the overall campaign (as an extreme example lets say a character is afraid of water in an aquatic campaign or the above superhero thing), then it's like asking everyone else to adapt to that specific character, campaign and GM included.

I've talked about it a lot, but tabletops are mostly about compromising. Players compromising with each other, so that their different characters can work as a cohesive group (on the premise that the campaign is about a group of characters, and not like everyone competing against each other, you get my drift here...). Some conflict between personalities is interesting, as long as it's not a big wedge between the characters. Then players make compromises with the GM, so that players follow the generic scenario the GM has laid out and GM takes into account the wants of players and does not just lead them like a monorail.

Of course there's more to 'good' roleplaying than just flexible backgrounds :D But that's more about roleplaying vs. acting, or experience in RPGs sort of thing.