What to do?

Yeah, I should elaborate. My goal is to whittle down the choices in front of us. In any other world, I’d expect “the PCs auctioned off a semi-functional Ur ship” to be where things stop for that group as PCs. It’s not just a 10-credit job, it’s the sort of thing that turns the group into an arm of some larger faction by necessity. But it also makes us wealthy. Seon can go finance world revolution, Armin gets his moon-monarchy, Monster gets whatever the hell it is Monster wants, Drifter visits home and, like a good son, invests most of it in his family’s ship-homes before finding more trouble to get into. Kei gets tenure and realizes the trap he’s placed himself in.

If everyone thought that made sense, you’re off the hook - you can now jump immediately to something else (like “the gate opens, these PCs hire some new squad of PCs to go through and check it out”), and whether you or Mike runs that (and in what system that is) is up to y’all.

Bill’s not wrong. Selling the ship could make for a fine end for the game. And if you want a movie analogy, this is the part where we don’t get the ending we expected because the budget (read as “the GM’s mental bandwidth”) ran out, but we do get some sort of payoff and then we cut to an 80’s rock ballad while pictures of the crew come up with epilogue text shows up below them.

Also, I will reiterate what I said five months ago. “It was an experiment and a palate cleanser. It only needs to go on as long as everyone’s enjoying it.”

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I realized what Monster wants, a combination buffet and boxing gym. “Come for punch, stay for lunch!”

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So I just spotted this thread, and I don’t have time right this second to read through and comment cogently (I will try to do so later), but I definitely feel your pain here, Doyce. If you – and/or we – are not having a good time, then we’re missing the point.

More later.

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Okay, I’m back.

  1. I will admit my fun quotient on this game has not been great. Part of that is the character I’ve chosen and the options/limits on how I can play him in context (and part of that is my limitations as a player, too, admittedly).

(Part of it is, as has been discussed multiple times, the system, while incorporating some very cool mechanics, seems to get in the way of things a lot. Also, be it system or setup, I don’t feel like we’re a team in the way I’d like us to be, which is another discussion.)

It’s not like I’ve been miserable, by any means. But I’ve not been as engaged as I’ve wanted to be, to the extent that, “Oh, no game tonight? Ah, well, plenty else to do,” has happened to me more than once.

I’m game to continue, so to speak, but if we pivot to something else, I’m actually possibly even more than okay with that.

Yes, this. Honestly, this has gone on far longer than I’d expected, and my sense is that it’s because everyone is going along with it because we’ve mutually committed to do so and because Doyce has had some things he wanted to try on us.

Monster would like to open the Gate and see what’s there. If it’s more of his people, awesome-sauce. If it’s scary Elder Gods that his people fled from, fine, he’s up for a blaze of glory.

If it never happens … well, it’s a big galaxy, with lots of taste sensations to try.

I’m curious as to what lies beyond the gate, but I’m not devoted to another dozen episodes to get there and find out (or a compressed two episodes to force the issue artificially).

I have no significant objections to any of these options. I’m not sure (a) fixes some of the problems we have (aside from getting Doyce into a happier place, no small thing). It seems like (b) might be a bit darker than I’m yenning for at the moment, but that might last as long as it takes for me to think of a character. As for (c ), that wushu romance thing raised a few times sounds like it might be a hoot.

Let me rattle the cages of the others in the house here to see if they have any particular sentiment they’d like to add.

Very much “indeed.”

While it does sound interesting, I will remind you it’s still in playtest, if that makes a difference to anyone (not me, but I know that isn’t for everyone).

If there’s ways to do that in the context of a new game (or Mike jumping into the driver’s seat), I’m happy to see that through.

I’m happy to give this a shot and I don’t mind playtest-quality stuff. You all signed up for a one-shot of WITCH and that was very much in early-ish stages.

In some ways, that’s even better. There’s sort of a tendency with written-and-published rules to say, “Well, wait, we need to try this as the rules are written, even if it doesn’t make any sense, and stick with it because presumably it’s all tested and it has worked for folks” before we bypass the awkward bits. That’s come up in S&V more than once. And speaking as the Lawful guy in the room, I certainly understand that.

Whereas with a game in playtest I think we’ll be more willing to say, “Yeah, that doesn’t work / doesn’t look like it will work / didn’t work, let’s fix it”.

Worst case, even if Doyce isn’t feeling up to running anything, we can at least convene at our normally appointed time and foretell the future! (Though the medium of making decisions about what to do.)

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I wrote about Genesys earlier, but with more familiarity with the system, I’d consider recommending it for the group at some point. The core mechanic is really lightweight if you have play aids (and Roll20 has a Genesys game system plugged in already), and the choices players make tend to be around “how do I spend advantage”. There’s tables of options to pick from, with 2-3 options per tier.

I wrote more about this elsewhere, for example a post about Conan the Barbarian in Genesys. The core book includes some space opera stuff as well, and could probably recreate the characters from this game with little to no effort (for example). I’ll run a demo for any interested parties at their convenience.

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To be clear, while I’m totally down with switching up GMing duties, I’m not on GM burnout either - this current thing is pretty much confined to me running forged in the dark stuff.

With that said, I’m always aware of the fact that there are at least three other experienced gms in the group. :slight_smile: but I also know that bill and Mike run other games I don’t want them to overload either :slight_smile:

I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t ready to do it. :slight_smile: That said, I’m glad it’s not burnout, and it does feel like we have plenty of other system offerings, without totally giving up on the closure some characters can get from the current story.

Just a quick note with my two cents:

  1. I’m hear for the story. This group could play the hell out of the back of a cereal box. The game is a means to the end. The end is the story
  2. For me the game mechanics are getting in the way of the story. They break the action and sometime (downtime) stifle creativity.
  3. I want to know how the pieces fit together and the story ends. But it doesn’t have to be in-game
  4. As noted above, we all want everyone to be having fun. I trust you guys to do that.
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And apparently I can’t spell - who knew. I’m here for the story

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The cage has been rattled. I honestly don’t care if we were to stop the game as is. I haven’t been as invested in my character at least (which might be partly due to throwing them together last minute and not developing them more past that). Reiterating what others have said, this has honestly gone on way longer than I expected.
That all said, I am good continuing playing till we open the gate and see the hellscape on the other side, with whoever is gm. Though I think that all this means that we should definitely start discussions on what our next game will be.

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I think the obvious conclusion this far is that this evening will either be a discussion of what to do next, or some sort of very short one or two shot that we can do while we are having that other discussion online.

I’m not sure that that discussion sound super enticing for burning a night on, but it may be the most efficient way to get through the discussion quickly? However if we want to play and want something short, I would suggest for the queen as a true one shot, or psirun, as a game that will take two sessions.

Both are super simple, and basically if you know how to roll dice in roll20 you pretty much know how the rules work for psirun, and for the queen doesn’t have dice at all. Both games have you discovering your character during play, so prep for the group is pretty much nonexistent

Enticing? Maybe not. Important to maintain communication so that we don’t play a game no one was excited to play for six-seven months? Yes.

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To be fair, I don’t think we realized it wouldn’t be great for us until we actually tried it. I posted early (mostly negative) feedback on the mechanics, but I think a lack of good system alternatives to sustain the story at the time led us to stay the course. That’s one of the reasons I mentioned Genesys - my alternating Sundays group has a similar deal going on (they love PBTA, but they also love custom settings), and it’s appealed to them.

I’m glad that people are willing to say what works (or doesn’t work) for them, rather than just “I’ll play anything”. I think that’s important for figuring out where to go next.

A fair assessment. I do like Forged in the Dark games, but I don’t think it was a good fit for this group.