Friday, April 20, 2012

Agony of the wait

It seems I spend a lot of my life waiting for the rest of my life to happen. That's not to say that I don't do a lot - I lead a pretty active and full life and perhaps that's the reason I notice when I have to wait on things. Often the things I have to wait the longest - not necessarily in actual time - for are the things that seemed like a good or great idea when they got planned just never live up.

So, I got to thinking about making players wait for something - anything - in a game setting. I've decided that's just an asshole thing to do. I've seen people invited to a game and never get to throw a die during the session. I've made players wait for rewards or punishments for their characters, often to pointless or useless effect on the game experience.

Am I condoning instant gratification? HELL NO!!!!! Earning things over the duration is kinda one of the core concepts of gaming. However, I am starting to see the appeal of getting the things you want (not the things you NEED) quickly. Do you need a +5 sword - no, do you need the clues to get you to the next stage of the story - yes.

I'm typing this from my phone as I wait in the CNN Center in Atlanta for my vehicle to return to a drive-able state. So if there are typos and no interesting graphics, sorry.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Rant on the wall of text

Yes, I know this is totally unrelated to gaming, but I've been busy with classwork and moving and taking care of my parents and other more personal stuff - deal.


Part of the aspect of my classes is to respond to online discussion forums.  Not a difficult thing to do and not a difficult thing to format properly, especially for people who are working on a Master's degree.  Or so I thought...


I would guess that at least half of the responses are walls of test, usually 15-20 lines long and 130-150 characters across.  There is usually punctuation and capitalization, but these people do not know how to hit a return key that helps organize their thoughts into coherent groupings.  I've seen and used the term "verbal diarrhea", but I don't think this qualifies, wall of text qualifies, but doesn't exactly convey the concept of so many ideas forced into one response block.


So I'm coining the term "wotwork" - Wall Of Text WithOut Return Key.  I'm not sure if it will catch on, but hey, maybe it will and I'll at least be sorta not famous.