[Triumph] Not feeling it.

[jadedmusings]

I went ahead and retired my character. I'm still on as a GM, but if you want honesty, I'm going back and forth on that as well. With the rp I was coming away feeling extremely frustrated and annoyed. I was not having a good time and I spent most of my most recent session complaining in another room.

To be blunt, I know I am a strong roleplayer, and the character I made has a strong personality. I like her (and I hope I can use her for something else), but she's too much for Triumph, especially when I need to be more a background character since I'm also a GM. Her plots would have to fall by the wayside in order to prevent jealousy or claims of favoritism. Plus, there's the fact that I just never feel any desire to rp her in the OOC room or anywhere else. Yes, I'll go ahead and admit that there's also a few names in the roster I would rather not deal with. And yes, I do roll my eyes quite a bit at a few others.

I think I've just gotten so close to a handful of people and I've gotten comfortable with them as GMs and players. Frankly, they're good at what they do and I'm drawn in to their stories and feel compelled to add to those stories. In Triumph I feel rather apathetic about the whole thing.

GM-wise, I feel like an outsider. Sure, there are at least two people on the team I'm close to (hell, the arbritrator is my boyfriend), but I don't know anyone else, and all of them built this world and planned the plot before I came along. I'm lost most of the time, even though I've read most of what's there, and I don't feel comfortable telling someone else's story. I've been feeling this disconnect even more with building my own campaign up again. There I can have a say in what happens and there is no one to tell me I can't do that, and I'm not in fear of stepping on anyone else's toes/plot. In Triumph, that's not the case. Hell, I'm not even sure half the people involved like me most of the time.

My personal life is changing, and there's been so much going on that I don't have the energy to put into a game that's only giving me grief (and that's all it's been giving me). I've got so much I want to focus on (my son, my relationship with Sam, my writing, my campaign, my life) that I'm having a hard time finding a reason to stick around.

I'm not making a decision yet. I have retired Sabela, as I said, but I haven't completely decided to leave as a GM. I know I don't think I can run more than one session per month, and that's not a good thing considering there are GMs who aren't doing much at all. I feel guilty for leaving, and I think Sam's a little disappointed even if he says all my reasons are valid and he understands. I am simply not sure of what I should do.

It shouldn't be that big of a deal, but it is.

Comments

[seferia.livejournal.com]

First of all, let me start off by saying I'm a huge hypocrite for giving this advice when I'm sitting on the sidelines doing the exact same thing. With that said, I think it's important to even throw out something once a month.

Triumph has a huge Player to GM Ratio as is, and as I said before, Guild Campaigns are the only thing that actually will attract people to the community. (Save for the possibility of regular campaigns being open submissions, and choosing a stranger over someone they know. Fat chance.)

You came in during AG. I came in during GP. I at least, can say that I most likely would not have ventured into this community had it not been for a guild game. It gave me a decent understanding of the system, which then allowed me to apply for others campaigns and get accepted.

Take to mind, when I started I was anything but an ideal player. I was the local session whore, involved in everything, and my PC knew more metaplot than most of the GM's on the GM team.

My application was riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies that would make my head bleed, now. Hardened(2) on a child Taru? Elemental Deficiency Water because I'm short and drown easily? [I changed these before getting accepted, but still.] My Lore points were nearly double the alloted amount and I had too few skill points. My entire background consisted of a petty revenge plot that could be resolved by level 15. Finally, my starting statline was 3/5/4/5/13/10.

I was having a discussion recently with Ice and Justin regarding newbies in general when I realized something. When I started out, I was just as functionally retarded as the people I bitched about now. Yet somehow I went from http://guildperilous.wikispaces.com/page/diff/Hakkuru-Rinkuru/1598805 to "Oh, and Sam and Fue deserve mad props as players too. :)" Take to mind I didn't even have the ability to read said entry back then.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everyone is going to blossom into a decent player. Nor am I saying that I am now superb at roleplaying. There's still a lot of areas I'd like to improve on. I will however say that everyone starts off like this. Some improve over time, while others stay where they're at. I can understand why you wouldn't want to play with these players as a player, but as the GM team dwindles, so does the prospect of new blood to the community.

In my opinion, Guild Games are the tutorial to FFRPG. So in short, you need to ask yourself the question. 'Are you someone who can tolerate people not understanding a concept that seems simple to you?' Personally, I answered no. It's another reason I'm sitting where I am.

[jadedissola.livejournal.com]

If only it were the newbies. I think I could tolerate (some of) the stupidity if it were just them. However, there are long-time members of the community that continue to, well, how can I put this politely? There are long-time members of the community that frustrate me to no end; a few of whom I have a bad history with thanks to GP. I can handle the jerks of #returners (dating one, hello), but in Triumph you've got people who are just plain mean-spirited, then you've got the people who think they're god's gift to gaming and their concepts are the most awesome thing ever. And those are not newbies, and they've been that way as long as I've known them.

There's also the constant whining and the players fighting amongst themselves until sometimes I wonder if I'm watching over a pre-school class. I know that with the amount of people we have personalities are going to clash, but it happened in GP too, and I never remember it being this bad. (Then again, most of us had other places to go to bitch instead of the same room.)

Here's an important thing about you: You listened to suggestions. I can't divulge much about the review process, but you wouldn't believe the gall some people have. And I'm sorry, but you can only explain why twinking/min-maxing is bad so many times before your head explodes. It shouldn't be that hard of a concept for people to grasp.

Oh, and as for how I got into AG, it wasn't necessarily that there was a guild game. It was that Tet was involved and knew I was looking for a better game than the one we were in at the time elsewhere. I joined, created the first version of Pasha, and voila.

Finally, there's one thing some people don't seem to understand: I'm not a strong GM. At least, I don't feel like I'm one. I feel ok GMing Fourth Age because I know Sam, Justin, and Julian will all be able to help instead of just throwing out "Oh this sucked" and not be able to tell me why it sucked. (And Serigo is there to remind me of the borderline between funny and batshit insanity.) It's a bit anxiety inducing to try to GM when I look at the other GMs who are also devs who really know how to work the system. As a player, I have all the confidence in the world, but as a GM I really have none. That also brings us back to the players I've dealt with before who I really don't want to deal with telling me how to improve or what to do because, yeah, they're so awesome in their own mind.

[seferia.livejournal.com]

I think I can relate with you on the 'not a strong GM' front. I felt I was a terrible GM and I didn't think I was doing a good job at all. You can see just from what I posted in my feedback threads that I was super critical of everything I did. [Examples at the end of the post]

Despite this however, I'm not regretting the past. I think that GMing in that kind of environment gave me some experience I wouldn't have been able to pick up elsewhere. I was so concerned about not becoming the next WC or Moryssa that I even read over my session logs after I was finished and started to pick apart the things I should improve on and not do again.

In a Guild Game environment, you're open to all sorts of criticism, good and bad. Criticism can only be productive for one thing, and that's to improve. I'm not sure if I'm actually right here as I haven't hosted something in a non-guild fashion. In a normal campaign the players are typically used to your GMing style after a while, so the feedback would be a lot different from them in an enclosed environment than it would be from a large playerbase. As the playerbase that are involved in your sessions expands, so does the range of the criticism. Everyone has different opinions. As long as it's explained why they think that, I believe it's important to take their words to heart.

While your other reasons are certainly valid, It's my opinion that the good outweighs the bad on the 'how you feel about GMing' front. As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect. The only way you can improve in foreign territory is to act in foreign territory. Again, I'm aware I'm being a huge hypocrite. It's just that I've thought about this a fair bit in my own shoes in the past.


Me being self-critical examples:
http://guildperilous.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=feedback&action=display&thread=424
http://guildperilous.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=feedback&action=display&thread=466
http://guildperilous.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=feedback&action=display&thread=444
http://guildperilous.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=feedback&action=display&thread=434
http://guildperilous.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=feedback&action=display&thread=432

[falar.livejournal.com]

D:

I had some fun with Sabela! You're the only GM I've chosen to play under in an actual campaign! You rock, Jade!

But all your reasons sound good and I'd probably leave if I were you. It will put the campaign in an even worse place, but you should make decisions for you, not for other people. Like me. I'm probably one of those annoying semi-oldies anyways.

[jadedissola.livejournal.com]

Nah, you're not one of the oldies that bother me. You're not even close.

I'm going to be talking to Tempest when he's around maybe about cutting down to a session per month and explain that there is just so much going on in my life. I don't want to see Triumph fail, I really don't, I just don't have the desire to rp for it like I did with AG and with GP.