Thursday, October 18, 2007

Catching Up

And here I thought that having a new computer in a clean office (my "cave") would give me more time to blog. Alas, my iTunes rating didn't transfer (funny -- comments and other info did) and I've been waaay too distracted rearranging my image library for iPhoto's Event-based system. In addition to regular photos, I have literally thousands of gaming-related images that I have scanned or ripped off the Internet in recent year. To all copyright police --  I use them inspiration for my games and for the occasional player handout (and maybe an image or two for my neglected websites).

Where was I?

I yes, it's been a while since I blogged. In my last post, I mentioned that we had another double gaming session coming up. Well, we had it and it was fabulous. My Dragonspire game was good, but Greg's season finale of Slaying Solomon was amazing. I simply can't recall ever having such a powerful gaming experience as a player. Emotions we running high in Nazi world. I was starting to tear up when I mentioned that Erik would be showing up at Juanita's door with flowers at the end of the episode. Slaying Solomon is one of those special games where the characters take on a life of their own. They go waaaay  beyond the combat stats you see in most games. The characters are defined by their quirks and relationships. Powers and abilities are definitely secondary. I can't wait for the upcoming 5th season. Greg's running the main arc, but I will definitely be directing several episodes.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It wasn't just you -- all the other players said they had trouble sleeping afterword (although Jodi later amended that to claim it was just the cats walking over her). I certainly agree that it's the best thing I've ever run.

However, if you're expecting something like that from Season 5, I wouldn't hold my breath. For one thing, I have no idea what I did. Some of it, I think, was just the utter horror of Nazi world, which obviously isn't going to apply to future episodes (and which I can't really take credit for, since it's hardly an original idea). Beyond that, I have no clue why that episode worked so much better than any other. So, to whatever extent it was me and not you guys who was responsible for that experience, I wouldn't count on a repeat.

Actually, after planning that for most of a year, the last couple weeks I really started freaking out thinking that the Sam Is A Vampire plot, not to mention the alternate reality plot, had been done to death already and that everybody's reaction was just going to be, "not this again."

--Greg

Unknown said...

Don't worry so much about Season 5. I think half the formula for success was the accumulated characterizations of the various cast members. Four seasons is a long time. All it took was making things personla and painful (and putting is un real jeopardy). Way to go Greg, I think Season 5 will be great.

Unknown said...

Don't worry so much about Season 5. I think half the formula for success was the accumulated characterizations of the various cast members. Four seasons is a long time. All it took was making things personla and painful (and putting is un real jeopardy). Way to go Greg, I think Season 5 will be great.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully. Personal and painful definitely. But actually this was the only season finale where nobody was actually in real jeopardy. Alternate time line means never having to say "roll up a new character". As long as the universe was restored in the end (and continutity with the TV series requred that it would be), any physical harm done in Nazi world would never have happened. Mental harm, on the other hand...

--Greg