So I basically gave up my campaign three sessions in.
I love the setting, and the premise, but the idea of "every time you go somewhere new you rebuild a third of your character" (i.e. choose a new Foci) was proving too much. It's supposed to be easy and a feature of the game: the players just pick from a selection of existing foci and go on their merry way. Except to do this gameplay either needs to stop while everybody digs through one (or more) books. Even if PDFs "fell off a truck", that still slows things to a crawl. And me printing outjust a few of the foci at a time was proving too much work for me (after cleaning them up for printing and all), while asking them to "do homework" wasn't an easy sell. I'd considered adventuring longer in an area (i.e. recursion), but that just delays the problem rather than solving it.
Any ideas?
In the campaign I played in the GM sat us down before the first session and said something like:
"These are the recursions you are most likely going to find yourself in. It's not all of them, because I'm not going to tell you where you have to go or can't go, but these are like 75% of the common setting. Are there any others you can think of now that you will want to go to?"
He added them to the list and continued.
"We're going to make characters now and I want you to pick Foci for all of these recursions, that way if/when you end up there you can switch sheets and we're good to go. It's up to you to "level" them all up as needed between games and keep them up to date."
It eliminated the stop and wait each time we changed locations. There were a few occasions we did have to pause to create something new because we found ourselves off the reservation for one reason or another. Those were few and far between and it wasn't much of a bother because we weren't doing it every time.
Quote from: rgalex;1057632In the campaign I played in the GM sat us down before the first session and said something like:
"These are the recursions you are most likely going to find yourself in. It's not all of them, because I'm not going to tell you where you have to go or can't go, but these are like 75% of the common setting. Are there any others you can think of now that you will want to go to?"
He added them to the list and continued.
"We're going to make characters now and I want you to pick Foci for all of these recursions, that way if/when you end up there you can switch sheets and we're good to go. It's up to you to "level" them all up as needed between games and keep them up to date."
It eliminated the stop and wait each time we changed locations. There were a few occasions we did have to pause to create something new because we found ourselves off the reservation for one reason or another. Those were few and far between and it wasn't much of a bother because we weren't doing it every time.
Very interesting! Thanks!
Any others?
I was wondering how actually playable this game was. I guess now I know.
It's perfectly playable and doesn't need fixing in this regard. It's not a slog to pick Foci, doing it either beforehand or ad hoc. Also, it's perfectly acceptable to grant a more "basic" Foci (especially if it's cross-Recursion) and then swap it out once a player's more acquainted with the Recursion. I would definitely have the players pick Foci for the Ardeyn and Ruk prior to translating.
Yeah, our game ran for a little over a year of weekly play. Everyone had a great time.
The few times we had to pause to pick new Foci, we worked it into the next smoke/bathroom break. By the end of the campaign we had roughly a dozen recursion versions of our characters and I think maybe 3 or 4 of those were done on the fly.
The game ain't perfect (armor, I'm looking at you), but it's pretty playable out of the box.
Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1057902It's perfectly playable and doesn't need fixing in this regard. It's not a slog to pick Foci, doing it either beforehand or ad hoc.
When a person asks for help, saying "you're wrong" isn't helpful.
Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1057902Also, it's perfectly acceptable to grant a more "basic" Foci (especially if it's cross-Recursion) and then swap it out once a player's more acquainted with the Recursion.
Enh. While I respect that Foci swapping is part and parcel for the game, it seems like swapping Foci while in a recursion is the exception than the norm and feels about as smooth as changing all your class levels in D&D ("You found a Cypher that allows you a one-time Foci switch! How convenient!").
Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1057902I would definitely have the players pick Foci for the Ardeyn and Ruk prior to translating.
We were doing Foci picks between sessions. My method (which I thought was cool), was to print up 7 of them in detail. Give four to player 1, he picks, then pass the remaining three to player 2 and add one, he picks, then pass the remaining three to player 3 and add one and he picks, and -then- everyone reveals. Idea being that each player had a unique foci, it sped up selection by narrowing the pool, players didn't have to read through books (I was fine with it, they weren't), and everybody got a unique option the other two didn't. I -think- the players liked it, and while we agreed it slowed things down, it wasn't as bad as digging through... 4+ books would have been (I had a third party foci book, and the Cypher system, and the two Strange books with foci, and would allow Numenera Foci for the right recursions).
What did you do to speed things up with selections? How did you handle players needing all the information for their foci at hand?
I never said "you're wrong", I said "It's perfectly playable and doesn't need fixing in this regard". The "perfectly playable" part was to Pundit and the second was for you. You imply by your title that The Strange needs fixing, which as a whole it doesn't. I was simply commenting on that to illustrate that. It wasn't meant to be a slight at all and apologies if it came across that way!
Swapping Foci while in a recursion isn't what I was suggesting. I was illustrating that for ease, if a player's not sure what they want because of lack of knowledge of a recursion, give a player an "easy" Focus like "Carries a Quiver" or something as simple and appropriate. If they like it, great. If not, once they're familiar with a recursion let them translate with a new Focus next time. As a recursion molds to sccept their existence, it's perfectly viable, even if rare.
Your way of doing it seems cool and if your players seem good with it I say roll on! Assuming you know what kind of things they like, you could suggest Foci they may enjoy. For my first foray they chose Foci for Earth (where we started) and I gave them Foci for Ruk once they translated. I said that if they didn't like what they got, they could swap it out on the next translation. As far as abilities go, we've printed out the pages for each one for our Cypher games, but another way is to cut and paste the text. It's a very easy way to compile information. Unless you're going to a new recursion multiple times a session, I don't think you're going to end up with a booklet.