Sneaking this ramble-rant in near the end of a post lol. Anyway, I've just been thinking about DW again lately. I played in the past for years, then took a very long break, then came back and played for a bit and then took another long break. I'm back in that phase of "Hmm, but what if I try again...?"
To clarify ahead of time: I never left because of drama, and I'd be surprised if anyone here knew me.
Rather than that I find my problem is that I join games, start with big dreams of doing things with my characters and shotgun activity, then don't make any connections with my characters and my activity slowly drops off into barely making AC, until I either idle out or drop out to avoid squatting.
Basically, I find my characters not doing anything I can't handwave, because they're not interacting with people enough, and as a consequence it feels awkward trying to engage with people, and we hit the death spiral. This is not a 100% track record of failure, of course. Sometimes the game dies when I'm actually doing pretty well and once or twice I've played for years and just gotten bored. But I always worry about it being the case.
It's my fault, but I'm still frustrated by it.
When I was first introduced to this format I got the impression that CR was made completely organically - you throw a character into a big game, randomly encounter others, and see what stories get spun up from a combination of those random encounters and monthly events. Instead of that, CR is mostly dominated by OOC planning, and if I just throw my character in and rawdog it, not much is gonna happen. This not only causes issues with positive CR, but really causes problems when I want negative CR (both petty and more serious) or if I want my character to be confidently or tragically wrong and ruin experiences, relationships, and opportunities for themselves.
Anyway, I said it'd be a ramble, but I'm not trying to make it a diary. I'm not saying 'I'm so much better, if only everyone were like me'. Charting out CR OOC makes sense, and when I occasionally fell into that it worked out. But I can't seem to break the habit of trying, or of longing for that impression I initially had to be true, and then burning out when it doesn't work out.
So - in short - does anyone else have that similar experience? Are there people who wildly prefer just throwing characters naked into the wilderness and seeing what happens?
Also, are there perhaps good games or genres I should really be targeting for this kind of CR experience? I always assumed the randomness of a jamjar would fit this best, but maybe a story-based game would force interactions better.
Let me tell you, the 18+ smut games where you're supposed to bang someone every week or month are a hilariously poor fit for it. I always think it'll be good for forging random connections, and then my characters end up on life support and I just sweep 'who have you banged lately' under the rug.
I haven't decided if I should come back again, but the siren's call of group RP is there. I'm just in that stage of mulling over whether I think I'll end up with another bad experience, or if I am self aware enough to dodge it this time.
I say it anonymously because I think it would be rather silly to have a long ramble about how I may in fact suck at RP and then immediately turn around and say "hey, x big game, can I come in...?"
no subject
To clarify ahead of time: I never left because of drama, and I'd be surprised if anyone here knew me.
Rather than that I find my problem is that I join games, start with big dreams of doing things with my characters and shotgun activity, then don't make any connections with my characters and my activity slowly drops off into barely making AC, until I either idle out or drop out to avoid squatting.
Basically, I find my characters not doing anything I can't handwave, because they're not interacting with people enough, and as a consequence it feels awkward trying to engage with people, and we hit the death spiral. This is not a 100% track record of failure, of course. Sometimes the game dies when I'm actually doing pretty well and once or twice I've played for years and just gotten bored. But I always worry about it being the case.
It's my fault, but I'm still frustrated by it.
When I was first introduced to this format I got the impression that CR was made completely organically - you throw a character into a big game, randomly encounter others, and see what stories get spun up from a combination of those random encounters and monthly events. Instead of that, CR is mostly dominated by OOC planning, and if I just throw my character in and rawdog it, not much is gonna happen. This not only causes issues with positive CR, but really causes problems when I want negative CR (both petty and more serious) or if I want my character to be confidently or tragically wrong and ruin experiences, relationships, and opportunities for themselves.
Anyway, I said it'd be a ramble, but I'm not trying to make it a diary. I'm not saying 'I'm so much better, if only everyone were like me'. Charting out CR OOC makes sense, and when I occasionally fell into that it worked out. But I can't seem to break the habit of trying, or of longing for that impression I initially had to be true, and then burning out when it doesn't work out.
So - in short - does anyone else have that similar experience? Are there people who wildly prefer just throwing characters naked into the wilderness and seeing what happens?
Also, are there perhaps good games or genres I should really be targeting for this kind of CR experience? I always assumed the randomness of a jamjar would fit this best, but maybe a story-based game would force interactions better.
Let me tell you, the 18+ smut games where you're supposed to bang someone every week or month are a hilariously poor fit for it. I always think it'll be good for forging random connections, and then my characters end up on life support and I just sweep 'who have you banged lately' under the rug.
I haven't decided if I should come back again, but the siren's call of group RP is there. I'm just in that stage of mulling over whether I think I'll end up with another bad experience, or if I am self aware enough to dodge it this time.
I say it anonymously because I think it would be rather silly to have a long ramble about how I may in fact suck at RP and then immediately turn around and say "hey, x big game, can I come in...?"