2002-10-15 -

Instant Gaming Withdrawl

Somehow I got eight hours of sleep last night and still woke up feeling tired. Where's the justice, I ask you?

With Mer's game done, I'm trying to devote some serious skull sweat to prepping the Champions game. I was going over the notes Jill and I made earlier this year and couldn't make sense of a couple of things I had planned to do. Oops. If they were good ideas, I hope I have them again.

I've been checking out a program called HeroSphere, which offers the possibility of using a computer to do all the GMing drugery- roll dice, track stats, etc. It's not there yet, and suddenly I'm not sure it ever will be. It does a lot of things, but not all the things I do, so I'd have to be popping it into "GM Mode" to manually twiddle various things, and keep notes somewhere about the sublter facets of the game. I don't mind keeping notes, of course. If I run the game using dice and paper, I'd have to keep lots of notes anyway.

The thing is, if I'm running everything myself, it's all part of the flow. I can just stick a post-it on the guy's character sheet saying "terrified, no offensive action". If I'm using a computer program, I'm not looking at paper, I'm just clicking people around and choosing attack options. I'm worried I'll forget stuff.

At this point my plan is to at least run some prep sessions and see if I can run the game the old-fashioned way without everything bogging down. If I can't, obviously the computer comes out. If I can, hey, bonus. All we'd need then is a table. And a house to play in. But otherwise, bonus. For sure.

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