Lisbon Gamer

Hey, all, 🙂

The Shadow Of Yesterday continues to shine for us. After a rather bland start, an awesome third session and a rather bumpy fourth session, last week, we had one of the best RPG sessions I remember ever having in my role-playing career. Ever!

We stopped playing at about 2:00AM. We lingered about for a while, then Ana and I drove home, and because we live far from where we played and we’re responsible for distributing everyone, we didn’t get home till about 3:30.

At 7:30 AM, I still felt like the session had just ended, and I just could bring myself down enough to even think about falling asleep!

Here’s an Actual Play report I posted at the Forge.

Here’s a funny thing that Rogério, the GM, pointed out to me yesterday: Among those that are contributing, each player’s level of contribution to the game is seemingly inversely proportional to their experience as role-players.

There are six of us at the table, meaning one GM plus five others. Of those five, two of them are really just coasting along, playing it as if it were a traditional RPG. I think they just haven’t caught on, yet. When they do, I predict they’re either gonna dive in or give up altogether. I’m hoping for the former. 🙂

Here’s the low down on the other three, though:

• Ana, my wife, is clearly the least experienced gamer at the table, and she has clearly asserted herself as the TSoY MVP for the group. She was the first to make a strong statement with ther character, by engaging with Key buyoff and purchase mechanics. Her character’s attitudes are clearly the driving force behind the bonds that are forming between our three characters. When the initial situation was put on the table, her character felt like a minor side character. Now, it’s like she’s in the center of the story.
• Isabel, the other woman at the table, is a close second. She’s consistenly been the strongest provider of color and general context in the game, really grounding us into the game world and making it real for us. She too has engaged the Key mechanics very strongly, especially in the last session. But mostly, throughout the session, she’s just there! In her real life, she wakes up early and we game late, which makes for very sleepy gaming for her, and still, you can tell by looking at her at the table that she’s totally in the zone, contributing and conneting with the other players on a very basic gut level.
• And then, there’s me. I’m probably the most experienced gamer there, with the possible exception of the GM, but of the three, I’m the only one who has to make a conscious effort to be in the zone. The fourth session, for instance, passed me by completely because of my assumption that the story was about the situation, instead of about the characters. I’ve always felt that play should be about the characters, but this is the first time I’m actually seeing that in action.
• Even the GM himself has had to overcome a huge truckload of traditional GMing “tricks” (also called bad habits) in order to make this shine for us.

Someone somewhere in the blogosphere said that one sometimes has to unlearn how to walk, in order to learn again, in order to finally learn how to run really fast. I think we’re seeing a whole lot of that right there at that table.

But mostly, it’s just wicked fun! 😀

Cheers,
J.

Edit: That someone was Brand Robins, over at Yudhisthira’s Dice, and he said it here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 27th, 2006 at 13:23 and is filed under Actual Play, Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.