*Cross-posted from the forum* Well it looks like this has wrapped up. Still we got four or five enjoyable sessions out of it so it wasnt entirely wasted. I suppose we started at a poor time of year, after illness, false starts and holidays delayed the game we ended up too close to the end of the year and 1/4 of the player base leaving. Which sort of killed my interest, so I suppose its really my fault the game fell through. A pity I suppose. I did learn a few things though.
If I’m going to go with a sandbox game I need to work harder on setting up “hooks”, its unrealistic (and possibly unfair given the standard rpg play dynamic) to expect players to generate much content/conflict/engagement when they are new to the game. Ideally the first few sessions should be full of expandable hooks which will help the player engage with the world and story. Secondly, if I’m going to try and go “transmedia” with something then I need to have a firm outline in place for how thats going to work. I’m also likely better advertising such things on rpol.net or Obsidian where theres an actual possibility of people opting in. Thirdly, games set in the real world and in “real-time” dont really work when you are only playing once a week. Well possibly they do but its something I’d need to think about before hand. Fourth, M&M 3rd edition runs much more smoothly than its previous incarnations and would certainly be what I’d turn to for super hero gaming from now on. Though some parts of the DC Adventures book are rather poorly layed out (or maybe I should have done more prep). But even Adam (who loathes any kind of crunch) seemed fine with the system so thats something.
All in all I quite enjoyed it but I think going forward I’m going to avoid doing any kind of sandbox gaming (unless at some point I get the fabled “stable group” I’ve heard off). From now on anything I plan to run will be a one-shot or a four session arc at most. I really want to run Anima, but as everyone I know who games is leaving or has left Dundalk (as I too might soon be doing myself) I dont see myself getting to run it any time soon. Suppose in one way thats good because by the time I get to run it the English translations may have caught up with the Spanish releases.
I suppose the other thing I learned, though only tangentially and not really from the game, was that even if I’m not going to get a chance to run something I still enjoy reading rpg books and roughly planning out campaigns and characters.