Reflecting on the first Serpents Fall session

Well we made our first attempt at running an introductory session of Serpents Fall (our G+ Fate Accelerate Fantasy game) last night; i've just sent off messages to all of the players in it asking for feedback and thought i'd put my own views in this blog.

You can find a link to the video footage here.

For me the game was something of a mixed bag, consisting of both positives and negatives; since I was on a bit of a downer following the amount of work that myself and the players had put into the campaign setting only to have the first session so dogged by technical hitches I thought that i'd list some of the positive and negative points in an attempt to cheer myself up:

Positives

• Everyone seemed to enjoy the session.
• Character genning was fairly quick and I really loved how the players all grabbed hold of the story based idea of the Fate Accelerated rules system.
• Was good to do some tabletop with friends whom I don't get chance to game with (in that format).
• The player characters seemed to gel as a party with the first flickers of IC banter and relationships forming.
• We managed to carry out a small introductory (since not all players are familiar with the Fate Accelerated rules) combat that went off fairly well.
• The scene is now set for the next main session.
• All of the players seemed willing and keen to do another session.

Negatives

• Almost constant technical problems meant that we had people dropping out and jumping back in, I got booted from the hangout twice meaning that we ended up having to film it in three segments.
• Due to the tech problems the game felt a little dis-jointed since we had to keep re-capping for people who had dropped out and re-joined.

In Summary

Despite feeling a little down about the campaign when I originally sat down to start writing this post, looking at the list of positives and negatives there are far more positives from the game than their were negatives, indeed the only negative points seem to stem from the technical issues that we had.

Writing this post has cheered me up no end and made me far more optimistic about the potential of Serpents Fall as a long running campaign; I'm now going to wait for the players to get back to me with their feedback and see where we go from there, our next session is scheduled for a couple of weeks time - hopefully we'll have a bit better luck on the technical side of things and we can just jump straight into the game :)

The Terror of the Unfinished Game

I'm terrible for starting games with long over-arcing plots and never actually getting them to a satisfactory conclusion (although I am getting better at this); the game might not get finished for numerous reasons, either I get writer's block or run out of ideas, most of the party dies, some RL reason gets in the way or any other number of factors could potential be the death knell of a game. In the wake of my God Machine game, which was one of the few games that i've created from the start with a definite goal and a finite finish in mind from the start (also one of the more satisfactorily wrapped up mini-campaigns that i've run), i've been thinking a lot about why so many of my games in the past have not gotten the finale that they deserved; some have puttered out due to factors beyond my control, but there must have been a fair few where, with a bit better planning or a little rescue work they could have reached a more engrossing conclusion?

For myself, it seems as though, I have no problem with concluding a game as long as I have a rough idea what the end conditions are when I go into a game; for example, in my God Machine game it would end when the people in the block of flats rioted and their violent anger awoke the God Angel, who would absorb their hatred and be activated, destroying the flats and those within, whether this included the player characters or not would be down to their own actions (in the actual game the players triggered the God Angel earlier than scheduled, but because it was weaker than it was supposed to be they actually escaped - full session write-up is available here). My main problem would seem to stem from when I start a long rambling game with no real idea of an end goal, when this occurs there is generally one main outcome, the game continues on until I run out of any ideas and then it gets wrapped up (too) quickly and we move on to the next game. This is often very unsatisfactory and it is obvious (from the quick wrap up) that the game has effectively run it's course or that I have become dis-illusioned with it and that my mind has already jumped onto the next concept.

However, recently, we've been running a number of one-offs where we've been taking it in turns to host a game for two sessions (one for character gen and prelude, and the next for the main session); this has been great fun and has really forced us to think about what elements are vital for an entertaining game and what can be safely jettisoned in order to fit an enjoyable game into a couple of sessions (really only a single full session). Something else that has been helping me recently has been my adoption of the Fate rules (in particular Fate Accelerated) since the focus on story through use of Aspects and Compels/Invoking makes it really easy to come up with plot based on stuff that the characters are interested in right of the bat, it also makes it very easy to see what a characters goals are and set the achievement of those goals as an end point for your campaign.

Going forward I think that my campaign planning is going to roughly conform to the following:

1. Come up with idea for campaign.
2. Design world & setting.
3. Help players with character generation.
4. Come up with an idea for first session based on characters.
5. Help characters come up with concrete goals for their characters.
6. Come up with a couple of end conditions for the game (in addition to the players achieving their goals).

Expanding and linking my channel

After Jacek Brzezowski commented on one of my videos on G+ about setting up an RSS feed it occurred to me that I had a number of different 'pages' spread across the internet to do with my blogging and Youtube channel; it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to consolidate them.

Below is the current list of 'pages' for my channel:

• RED DICE DIARIES (Youtube Page)

• RED DICE DIARIES (Facebook page)

• RED DICE DIARIES (G+ page)

• RED DICE DIARIES (written blog)

• RED DICE DIARIES (newsfeed)

• RED DICE DIARIES (twitter)

Things I learnt making an RPG youtube video

Inspired by several members of the Youtube RPG brigade and various youtube footage that I had watched about tabletop RPGs I decided to have a go at making a couple of videos myself and uploading them to my youtube account (the results can be seen here for anyone interested). The videos that I made were fairly spur of the moment affairs using just the built in webcam on my laptop, without any real planning (or experience of handling video footage); although the videos didn't turn out too badly in my opinion and most people were fairly kind and constructive in their feedback there were a few things that became obvious that I thought i'd pass on in this blog to anyone else who is thinking of making Youtube RPG videos:

• Have some notes ready to prevent stumbling over words or rambling.
• Make sure that any props or the like are ready to go or (preferably) have them edited in afterwards to save fumbling around for a book (or whatever) during the video.
• Do a quick rehearsal or run through of what you plan to say first, this helps enormously when you come to record.
• Have a play around with some of the free video manipulation software available on the internet (i've been doing this myself and plan to incorporate what i've learnt into my future videos).
• Talk clearly and concisely, trying to minimise long pauses.

Overall I quite enjoyed the experience of making the videos and definitely plan to make some more in the future (I would recommend anyone at least try it), i've gained a few subscribers and have had some encouraging comments; hopefully by following the advice above i'll be able to make some slightly more published videos.

If you plan to make some videos and are perhaps looking for some more advice, you could do worse than joining the YouTube RPG Brigade G+ community.