My Online LL Group is a Treasure

Members of my "home" Labyrinth Lord group in fall 2010. 

I recently wrote about experiencing DM burnout and consequently placing both my Labryinth Lord groups on hiatus. In that post I noted that

gaming over the internet, for me, is a pale shadow of gaming live, in person, at a table. No matter how good the technology gets there is, for me, a disconnect or a missing piece that rears its head in various ways online: less spontaneous fun chatter and humor takes place, some details get missed or talked over or need to be repeated, to somewhat lessened effect. The whole thing feels like a giant, three-dimensional, full-sensory experience being strained through a small, thin, partial, two-dimensional medium.

In that same post I claimed that gaming over Skype has been a "disappointment" to me. That is indeed how I felt at the time. Yet my DM burnout was particularly intense then. I was feeling grumpy about the slow winding down of my local public game, which dwindled to two regular players late last year, then an unsustainable one this spring.

No, that earlier statement should be read more as venting than as analysis or plan. It reflected my emotional state and was not meant to condemn the concept of RPG'ing via Skype in general. Most importantly, it was never intended to impugn the members of my "home" gaming group or to devalue the wonderful gaming experiences I have shared with them in the years since this campaign began in 2010.

I am quite lucky to have such a wonderful group of gamers and if Skype is the means by which we must reach each other, so be it. We are lucky to be able to keep this thing going in such a relatively simple and straightforward way.

Our particular group is especially fortunate to include players with a wide array of real-world RPG'ing experience. We have one neophyte player, a couple three with some limited prior D&D experience, and three of us who have been playing RPGs (with varying degrees of consistency) since the 1980s.*

Furthermore, the members of this group are gaming associates and also friends. I went to graduate school with most of them, played in a band with another, have edited essay collections with one guy, co-authored scholarly articles with another, and am generally invested in all or their lives outside of RPG'ing.

Given that, it is remarkable and exciting that everybody in this unique assortment of folks is willing to make time to play Labyrinth Lord once every four to six weeks or so, despite being of adult age with families, busy careers, etc.

Most importantly, we all generally get along, in-game and out. There is a supportive, light-hearted, laughter-inducing atmosphere during our sessions. This harmonious vibe shines through, for example, in Yor's player's supportive, appreciative comment on my last session report post: "Thanks for putting these together Carter." It is, of course, my pleasure.

I still have a few minor qualms with the gaming-via-Skype format, but those aren't likely to disappear, barring major, Star Trekkian advances in technology. Probably not even then. Live at the table will always be best. But I have a good thing going here. Maybe I can re-tap into some of the feelings I had earlier on, when I wrote this celebratory post about keeping our campaign group together over Skype: "Skype is our friend!"

In any case, my "home" Labyrinth Lord group is something very special that I will be sure to nurture, appreciate, and treasure. Thanks friends!

Some of the same folks one year later, fall 2011. 

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* One of our experienced participants is Carl Nash, who introduced me to the OSR via Mutant Future and who is still quite active in the OSR blogosphere. Check out Carl's blog and be sure to purchase his amazing adventure locale, The Fungus Forest, available for "pay what you want" here on RPGNow.

Scrying in LL?

My blogging activities and my "home" Labyrinth Lord Campaign (which plays online over Skype) have both been on hiatus for some time. The last time that particular group played was last September. There are several reasons for the break, chief among them the arrival of two babies -- two of our players have recently become fathers -- and my own mad scramble to get my academic ducks in a row for a major review I'll be subjected to this coming fall (it's not my actual tenure review but it will heavily inform that tenure decision, which lies one additional year in my future). So it has been a busy time full of changes in our non-gaming lives.

Additionally, as I told my group of players via email a few weeks back, I was beginning to experience some DM's fatigue last year. Some of that fatigue may be attributable to a personality quirk of my own: I have this funny thing (in all things I do) where when I reach the "nearly finished" point -- about the 80% complete mark -- and I start to lose interest in a project or undertaking. I have been feeling a bit of that type fatigue with the "home" campaign before the hiatus. As I wrote to the players:

It is not that I "know" our campaign is about 80% done. I do not. There is no way to predict that and I do not have one, set endgame in mind -- I just know who's out there doing what to whom, so I will judge how those personas respond to your party's inevitable meddling . . . 

That said, I tend to think that old-school D&D characters should retire from adventuring around 9th or 10th level -- so around then I would expect your characters to be running things (probably not all of Ara -- the Noffellians would secede if you guys took over -- but surely Rogaland, a temple of Endra, a bard's college. etc.) and then we might think about next steps. I could run another campaign in Ara, or . . . . Satan knows. 

However, what I didn't tell the players (because I didn't realize it yet) is that part of the issue also lies with the medium through which we play: Skype. I do not mean to single Skype out here, what I mean to refer to is the general difference between playing long-distance vs. playing live, in person, at a table in the same room. For me, there is simply no substitute for that latter experience. I know this because as I have reported before, I am having a grand old time running my public game at the local bookshop. There is a certain magic that can occur when folks are in the room together, and I think certain aspects of character interactions and subtle plot nuances are more easily conducted and conveyed live.

All that said, my online group played again last night and had a thrilling, awesome session (the 87th session of our campaign). It was so fun that we are meeting again in a week. The group teleported their way into a crypt buried beneath the Free City of Kaladar in order to do battle with a vampire and to seek an interdimensional gate they strongly suspect lies somewhere in or near that crypt.

In preparing to go after that vampire, the PCs enlisted the services of a wizard who briefly visited the vampire's lair, allowing himself to be transported there via a magical archway that appears to transmit living beings only, depositing them naked at the destination with none of their gear. This wizard, Tim, was instantly attacked and life-drained by the waiting vampire, and then he teleported himself back out of the vampire's lair to rejoin the party. They all retreated back to the above-ground city to scry the location Tim had seen via a crystal ball, so everybody could be teleported back in to do battle with the vampire.

This raised a question for me and my players: how, besides a crystal ball, does one scry in Labyrinth Lord?

None of us could find any direct reference to scrying except in the spell description for teleport (LL p. 40, AEC p. 80). Any thoughts?

P.S. I checked out my DMG this morning and found that EGG says this about scrying and anti-scrying:

ConstantCon - Sticking with Skype?

I have been gaming with my "home" Labyrinth Lord group via Skype for over a year now, and have grown quite comfortable with it.  Skype seems to handle larger (4-5 participant) video chats relatively well so long as some of the participants use headphones for audio. [Actually, lately we have gotten away without even using headphones at all.]

 

My home Labyrinth Lord group: clockwise from top left, that's Spawn in Pennsylvania, Vivuli's and Yor's players in Oregon, Hazel's player in Wisconsin, and me [at bottom center] in upstate New York.

So as the mid-October start date for my ConstantCon Game approaches, I find myself wondering: to Google+ or to Skype? I know practically everybody else in the OSR blogosphere has been going gaga over G+ of late, and part of me feels I ought to use that for Tales from the Hotel Kaladarian since many of my players will be from that blogosphere and may feel more comfortable on G+. However, I did run a two-person test of G+ Video Chat with Uncle Junkal's player about a month ago, and both of us felt that G+'s video dimension in particular was far inferior to that provided by Skype. I already pay for Skype Premium ($8.99 [US] per month) in order to get access to Skype's Group Video Chat feature, so I could easily hold my ConstantCon games over Skype, so long as my players all have (or are willing to download) it.

Or maybe I should start with G+ Video Chat on a trial basis and then if I don't like it, I can always revert to Skype?

Any thoughts or suggestions on this matter from the blogosphere?

Skype Will Keep Us Together

As I have previously reported, my Labyrinth Lord group is now gaming via Skype.  Four of our players are still on the West Coast (where the campaign began last January), one player is in the midwest, and I, the Labyrinth Lord, am now in northwestern New York state.  Skype is our friend!

 Me in New York state. . .

. . . Hazel's player in the midwest . . .

. . . and the rest of the gang in Oregon!

We use the three-way video conferencing function, which is currently available on a free-trial basis.  The rumor is that Skype will start charging for this particular service in the future, though given how reasonable Skype's rates are for calling landlines etc., I don't anticipate that the expense to our group will be very substantive when / if they do start charging.

I have also used Skype on a couple of occasions to participate in Carl's Mutant Future campaign, also taking place on the West Coast.  Recent schedule changes have made this difficult -- they are starting sessions later, so late that it is too late for me to be awake on East Coast time -- but in theory, I could still be gaming with that group as well, thanks to Skype and a couple of well-placed webcams.

In some ways, I am surprised more RPG'ers don't use Skype in this fashion, especially when I hear folks bemoaning their difficulties in finding other gamers to play with locally and regionally.  Skype eradicates the geographical barrier!  Maybe some gamers simply resist this option because it feels too "weird" or their internet connections are not speedy enough to make Skype video conferencing feasable.  It might also be difficult for those that rely on miniatures and battle maps -- I have no truck with that stuff, our combats are all processed verbally, so no hassles there for us.

Is anybody else out there doing stuff like this?

New Contributor Joining The Lands of Ara!

So much has changed since I last posted!  Obviously, I have been away from the blog for many months, for multiple reasons.  The main ones are: (1) I moved across country to take on a very busy full-time job as a Film Studies Visiting Professor in northwestern New York State, and (2) my current campaign in the Lands of Ara -- "Arandish Campaign 2010" -- is humming along nicely (despite my move -- THANKS SKYPE!) and so, swept up into the day-to-day duties of being an active Labyrinth Lord, I rarely have much creative "oomph!" left over to put toward keeping this blog going.  But thankfully, in a brilliant move I should have taken the initiative to suggest myself, one of my players has volunteered to join me as a co-contributor to the Lands of Ara blog!

I will leave it to that player to self-introduce, but suffice to say that this player has already been doing an extraordinary job as a record-keeper, mapper, and general party leader in the context of the ongoing Arandish campaign, so I am sure that the blog will take on a lively new existence in the coming weeks and months.  And maybe, just maybe, I will get re-inspired myself and will once again start pulling my own weight around here.

Thanks for your patience, dear readers, apologies for the long hiatus, and stay tuned!

Cyborg Gaming and Witch Attack!

These are exciting times for my Labyrinth Lord group.  We are about to play our first session with a player not physically present: Hazel's player will be joining us via Skype (from out of state) for tomorrow evening's session.  Soon we will use the same technology to connect me to the group as well, for at the end of this week I move from Eugene, Oregon to Brockport, New York. I will become a virtual DM!  Shades of Brian O'Blivion!

In addition to these cyborgian developments, we are also looking at some rich story development in the next few sessions, as a couple of the PCs' haunted pasts and past deeds are going to start to catch up with them.  Heh, heh, heh. . . .

Another thing I am excited about is a SECRET PROJECT that my friend Carl is working on at present.  I am not at liberty to say much specifically about it, but Carl has let me read a Beta version of the supplement-in-progress, and WOW, it sure is going to be useful to me as a DM.  What I can tell you is that the supplement he is writing -- intended to be compatible with Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord -- functions (among other things) as a kind of fast NPC generator, a shorthand way of quickly adding a new NPC or even a whole new class of NPC to a game, because it is a system based around Mutant Future-like special abilities (what MF calls "mutations" and what I believe Carl is calling "quirks") without regard for traditional LL classes.

For example, one of the "quirks" Carl has created centers upon the ability to throw curses and hexes at people, and of course this instantly suggests a Witch type character.  I FUCKING LOVE witches, and have never felt truly satisfied with their quasi-treatment as "witch doctors" in the DMG (as a kind of sub-par cleric, p. 40) nor in their iteration as a full-blown NPC class in various issues of Dragon Magazine (#5, #20, #43, and #114).  This is no fault of those articles, but rather a function of my own laziness: I am not big on rules-intensive preparation (nor rules-intensive gaming for that matter) so I rarely generate complete stats for any but the most central NPC's in my campaigns.  Therefore I welcome a system that allows me to plunk a witch into the game without having to stat up a full-blown NPC.  Rock and roll Carl, and look out all you Labyrinth Lordlings in my campaign!