OOC Discussion

On work trip and hotel wifi is atm slow or broken so its hard to post here. Hope it's better tomorrow. Sorry for the delay.

I said before that this and another game that I started at the same time are my first ever PbP (and thus also GP) GMing.

And I just want you to all know how much I'm enjoying playing this with you all, how impressed and inspired I am with your role-playing, with how you're developing this story. I feel really lucky to be playing this with you!

Thank you! I'm really enjoying the journey so far and your GMing style.

^second that! Good stuff.

^ Third! Thanks for hosting a fun and unique game, and with such a descriptive style and inclusive manner. Really looking forward to what comes next.

Happy holidays to anyone celebrating the holidays!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Wishing you all the rest or excitement or fellowship or happiness you need as we come to the end of this year!

So! As you know - 'cause I keep talking about it! - this is one of the first GP/PbP games I've run. I started three at roughly the same time, and this is the one that has progressed the furthest.

Part of the fun I have running games is seeing and understanding the fun had by the players. In person, it's easy for me to sense that - much less so here via PbP.

Thus I'd like to check in with you for some Stars and Wishes - to help me guage how things are going for you all.

By this I mean, I'd really appreciate if you could let me know:

- one or two things/moments that have happened so far that you liked/enjoyed
- any extra things you'd be excited about having included in the game (setting, characters, mechanics we've not looked at yet) that we haven't seen yet

I'm not looking for critical feedback on things you would like me to have done differently - I'm my own harshest critic of this kind of thing, and I've learned that a better way for me to make positive change is to focus on Stars and Wishes rather than critique.

Any of that you'd be willing to share, would be much appreciated :)

-The Pixies reference was a nice touch! Love it.
-I’m new to the system, and I’m also the type to learn by doing so I’m kind of nervous about something rules structured (like combat). A part of me wants to dive into stuff like that because it’ll help me grasp the mechanics of play.
- you’ve got a good handle on writing/atmosphere and so far you’ve done really well with creating a vibe that echoes Kings writing.

Stars:
I second this!

The game really feels lived in especially the character dialog. That is really great.

I also really like the collaborative world building aspect.

Wishes:
I would love to meet the Black Tower's version of bumblers, see the sights of Lud, or take a scenic trip to Castle Discordia.

I'm not sure I get the ex-gunslinger's motivation to do such magic. The two of them do not know us, nor did we tell them about our mission. Beretta does not seem all too worried that we might choose something terrible for her companion. Why should they do such a risky thing at all, if there is no gain for them and they cannot know our true intentions?

At the moment I am not even sure which three questions we should ask, seeing as we have just started the game and do not have any context yet. I guess I don't get what this whole magic business is about and it seems kinda strange logic that we do not trust them, but we let them bespell us (with a potentially dangerous spell) in order to gain trust...?

English is not my first language so I might have misunderstood or don't get a certain nuance. At the moment I am a bit lost when it comes to the whole trust-issues-magic-curse-cost-thingy 😅

Thanks for asking, @Adrasthea, I really appreciate you reaching out about this. I'm sorry that the story-telling feels confusing and the NPC motives impenetrable. If I encountered that, I expect I'd find it frustrating, not fun - and I want the game to be not frustrating and fun! So I'm going to try and redress this.

Part of what I enjoy about The Dark Tower is what I experience as a febrile nightmare fairy-tale-like quality to the story-telling. The logic and motivation that seems to drive the characters feels often unworldly and non-sensical to me - and, even more confusingly, seems to change unpredictably.

If it were just like that, then I don't think I'd have enjoyed the books. But for me, King mixes this with just enough continuity and real-world-ness to motivations and drives to be uncanny and disturbing in a way I find spooky and enjoyable. This is part of the mood and sense I'm looking to build into this story.

Beretta and Spline could be shape-shifting monsters, high-tech robots, ex-gunslingers whose memories have been warped as the world warps around them, or something else. With the way the world moves on, the way time and space and worlds shift and distort, it's hard to tell.

Here's what I'd hoped/imagined the scene looks like so far to a PC.

Beretta and Spline could indeed be former gunslingers. That they are somehow compelled, or committed, to helping you in your quest - because they, as ex-gunslingers, and having some magic about them, can indeed understand and know what you are doing, and they feel it is very important. Maybe the most important quest in the world.

They want to help you, but in the face of the party's distrust, feel like they aren't able to help you as they need to. So they are trying everything they can think of to show that they are trustworthy.

When Mattie, however, didn't want to enter into the magic they offered, they feel the magic is less useful. But they already offered it, and don't want to take the offer away if it WOULD be useful for Henry and maybe Rose.

If anyone joins them in the magic, then Spline looses a lot, and the party members who join them end up knowing a dark secret of each other. Beretta isn't happy about this, but if it helps the party, she will do almost anything (including Spline taking all this harm) to help you.

I agree, it doesn't feel like a good deal - but Roland makes a lot of decisions that feel like a bad deal in the books, so I leave it to the PCs to decide whether they want in on this strange offer.

My guess is that I'm making the scene and the world strange and twisted in a way that makes it too hard to follow for a TTRPG. Oh, and, also, I'm not Stephen King, so I assume it's certain that I miss the fine line between weird and mundane that I love about these books. And that this takes away the fun for you from the game.

My suggestion is that we play out this current scene - and stay with the strangeness that is in it. I will then make future scenes less strange, more in line with the kind of logic and motivation we expect in "our" world, and thus hopefully more fun and accessible to you.

If it would help you, I'd be happy to share with any of you that want it, the "truth" of what is happening in the current scene by DM.

If something else would help you instead, then I'd like to try and make that work for you too.

Basically, in summary, I want us all to enjoy this, and will make potentially large changes going forward about how I guide the story, to try and indeed make it enjoyable for us all.

I can deal with weird. I just wasn't sure if I had overlooked important clues to make sense of it all. It is good to know that this is intentional and all in the name of strangeness. Let's see what happens 🙂.

Thanks for letting me know that, @Adrasthea - I'm very open, as I hope is clear, to adapting the way the story is told, where we're going with this, to lean into the preferences and interests of different people in the game.

Cool. So what is happening at the table Rose and Henry are waiting at?

At the table, I'm waiting to see if Rose/@DragonDweller62 wants to join Spline and Henry in the spell.

If you do share secrets with Rose, would you want that to be via notes so that only Rose/Henry can see them? I guess that might make it easier to avoid inadvertant metagaming?

Or would you prefer just to keep it all out in the open so everyone can see the full story, and we aim to avoid the metagaming?

Both are fine by me.