An Update

It is probably a terrible idea for me to post after midnight.  A long time ago I determined that was a bad idea, therefore I'll try not to revert to my young adult ways of painful whining and cheap emotion.  I've considered a new blog for such things, but don't know if it would be worth the pixels it would be displayed on for me or anyone else and I'd definitely not post it here.  I feel this blog should at least pretend to be more... Professional?

The space game has ended.  I've concluded the overall experience was at best a marginal success.  At worst a grand failure.  I am not entirely sure what the failing was specifically.  However, I would be willing to easily submit that it was a combination of things including; the medium (Skype/Maptools), the players, and of coarse myself.

Towards the end, I wasn't into it.  The players would not consistently show up, therefore the main plot could not continue.  Furthermore, I guess I had no player trust.   This I believe was a result of the players previous experience and perhaps the situation I had established.  At every turn they were just waiting for me to steal their ship.  Or short them some stat, or balance the game out of their favor (god forbid I create a challenge.)  Also one player didn't seem to be 'into' the science role.  They assumed it was a doctor, and not that they would man any real station.  Finally, the whole thing was just to test the space combat, and the thing the players were determined to do?  Avoid space combat.  I did however get the opportunity to tweak the chase rules (AKA marginal success).

The players would not retain attention or attendance.  Even during character creation and past campaigns even the best players would be browsing the internet, drawing, or at the worst, playing a video game!  There were mixed expectations, conflicts of vision and so on...  Some expected, but perhaps a tad heavier than overall expected.

Finally the medium...  Nothing matches live.  Not really.  Nothing ever will.  There's a certain accountability, lack of anonymity and... ceremony involved in the process.  It feels like a good half goes out the window digitally.  Not just GM respect, inter-player as well.  For instance, the previously mentioned attentiveness.  Grabbing and altering another players materials, pushing other players around... tracking resources.

Anyhow, to avoid the content mentioned in the first paragraph I'm stopping here.  Perhaps someday this game will make it to the live table and more things can be noted, grown, developed.  Now I just need to rebuild the steam to push onwards for other projects.

Oh, by the way, I joined a Pathfinder game at work.  It's pretty cool, they have all their content online for free, so I didn't need to buy a book.  The GM is... interesting.  It's a bit slow right now as we basically have two newbies.  The rules are just far enough from 3.5 I find myself assuming too much.