So now that I’m not in work meetings and don’t need to be terse… I find it hilarious that folks are talking about the feasibility of things that I do regularly in gaming. Especially folks I’ve played with! Its always amusing to be like “Oh Paul is like my brother from another mother, we game the same!” and then realize we don’t. I mean, we do — and we game well together — but there are whole constellations of things we do with our home groups that won’t ever cross over into what we do at a con together.

Talking about gaming is always a laugh riot, especially when the line between “what I do regularly” and “what I like” and “what should be done” and “what can be done” can never be kept clear.

A thing: when Mo and I ended our Fallen Empires: Khorosan game, the last “episode” was three five hour sessions long. One of those sessions included an entire scene that didn’t happen — a future the would never be — including the voices of the ghosts — who didn’t actually end up dying — commenting on it in sufi inspired couplets. There was another section that was a musical montage, where we saw the world through the eye of one of the characters, then went back and played it again from the outside to see what it looked like when not in the head of a mad man. There was a character whose end was not seen, not described, not rolled for — and only ever told in the sense that other characters — who saw it in character — would not speak of it. The ways they would not speak of it, what they did with hands and eyes, was the telling. And sometimes Mo and I described that, sometimes we acted it out, sometimes we did a little of both.

Not all of it worked all the time! Flat notes happen when you experiment sometimes. But damn, there are a lot of textures to play with. It’s good to think about them, to talk about them — but I also feel like sometimes you just gotta fucking try shit and see what sticks. And know it’s going to be different in different groups.