The Art of Game Creation

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

1 hour ago, Aeoryi said:

Imo it really isn't too much. Sure, you probably have to spend 30+ minutes at regular intervals each day, but that's about it. Rollovers take a bit of time and other than that it's very low investment. An active GM will do more vote counts, but even that doesn't require a lot of time on your hands.

I will say you need to be able to dedicate a good amount of time at the same time for rollovers and if you're struggling/uncertain if you will be capable of that, it's okay! Just make sure to pick up a coGM or get your IM on board or something.

For more complex games, things can definitely take a bit longer but I'd advise against hosting a complex game with tons of moving parts as your first GM game of the shard. QFs are also the most time demanding of the three formats, with MRs being the least

Wouldn't LGs be the least? Why would MRs take the cake over LGs? I do understand QFs being the most time demanding though

1 hour ago, Jo and the Bush said:

I actually find GM'ing to be less time intensive than playing. With GM'ing, other than answering questions, you really only need to spend 2ish hours a turn, around rollover. I strongly recommend spending more than that, just keeping up with the game and the players, but you don't have to in order to run a fun game. It is more time STRICT than intensive though, for the obvious reasons of a scheduled rollover every turn.

46 minutes ago, The Unknown Character said:

I'd say they're less time intensive, unless you're running a complicated game and/or are making big (or even medium tbh) writeups, but even then they're about equal. 

Basically, you need about a half an hour on each side of rollover where you're completely focused on the game, but outside of that you don't have to do anything, and even if you choose to do more, it'll only take 5-15 minutes whenever you have the time for vcs and actions and such. 

You do need to quite a bit the first rollover/before the game starts, with sending GMPMs and making/finalizing the distro. There's ways to mitigate those though. 

thanks for you replies, yeah I did kind of think it was likely GMing would be easier.

1 hour ago, Mystfall said:

I’d be willing to help btw

I will be taking you up on this offer. Once I get to the game I'm planning though. I'll prob get some easier, simpler ones first to gain experience.

[Aeoryi she/her]

5 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

Wouldn't LGs be the least? Why would MRs take the cake over LGs? I do understand QFs being the most time demanding though

Because you have to do both day and night writeups, you actually end up doing 2 rollovers over 3 days compared to 1 rollover over 2 days

[CoderDrag0n8 He/They]

2 minutes ago, Aeoryi said:

Because you have to do both day and night writeups, you actually end up doing 2 rollovers over 3 days compared to 1 rollover over 2 days

That actually makes a lot of sense!

[Mystfall He/Him]

23 minutes ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

I will be taking you up on this offer. Once I get to the game I'm planning though. I'll prob get some easier, simpler ones first to gain experience.

I will warn you that in a year I’ll be off the shard for two years before coming back, so idk when you’ll be able to do that, but just a heads up 

[Jo and the Bush all/any]

Hot Tips for GM'ing!

1. PM's have a cooldown! If you want to start a bunch of PM's at once, it can get annoying. When starting the game, if you have an IM or Co-GM, I strongly recommend sending all the GM Role PM's to just them before the game starts, then you can add the player once the game begins.
2. Put links to the GM PM's in your master spreadsheet! This makes it so much easier to find the player PM you're looking for, instead of scrolling through the 300+ game PM's you have.
3. Steal Automated spreadsheets from the nerds who make them.
4. Have a copy/paste-able writeup format in your writing doc so that you don't have to constantly make sure you're remembering to include everything every rollover!
5. DON'T INCLUDE ROLES THAT CAN REDIRECT TARGETS. IT MAKES EVERYTHING SO COMPLICATED. WHY DID I INCLUDE TWO DIFFERENT ROLES THAT COULD DO THAT???
6. Time how long it takes you to do rollovers and writeups so you know how much time to give yourself in future cases! (If winging it works for you, more power to you, I'm jealous)

Only like three of those tips are useful, but IMO they're all useful.

[Mystfall He/Him]

23 minutes ago, Jo and the Bush said:

PM's have a cooldown! If you want to start a bunch of PM's at once, it can get annoying. When starting the game, if you have an IM or Co-GM, I strongly recommend sending all the GM Role PM's to just them before the game starts, then you can add the player once the game begins.

I actually ran into that during Archer’s game, plus a time before that

When I was making PMs with other players it got mad at me, and there was this other time I was as bouncing between three different active PMs at the same time and it wouldn’t let me send anything 

[Hoid Slayer He/Him]

When I CoGMed with TwinStorm, what really helped me was keeping all my PMs in folders. With them all organized, keeping track of actions for rollover was actually really easy. I just went through all the GM PMs one by one and plugged in players' actions into the spreadsheet

1 hour ago, Jo and the Bush said:

Only like three of those tips are useful, but IMO they're all useful.

The self-contradiction

[The Unknown Character he/him]

1 hour ago, CoderDrag0n8 said:

That actually makes a lot of sense!

That's actually why I often do 48/48 for my LGs. 24 hour cycles suck imo, but my games are too complicated for MRs.

1 hour ago, Jo and the Bush said:

Put links to the GM PM's in your master spreadsheet! This makes it so much easier to find the player PM you're looking for, instead of scrolling through the 300+ game PM's you have.

This is pretty smart (though tbh I didn't use them in the game we co-GMed because I'm on mobile and using links opens new tabs which is just as annoying as finding the PM), though another trick is just going to your PM inbox and sorting by PMs you started. It filters out player PMs, leaving just GMPM

[Jo and the Bush all/any]

1 minute ago, The Unknown Character said:

This is pretty smart (though tbh I didn't use them in the game we co-GMed because I'm on mobile and using links opens new tabs which is just as annoying as finding the PM), though another trick is just going to your PM inbox and sorting by PMs you started. It filters out player PMs, leaving just GMPM

THAT'S A THING????? The world is beautiful.

[Aeoryi she/her]

3 hours ago, Jo and the Bush said:

DON'T INCLUDE ROLES THAT CAN REDIRECT TARGETS. IT MAKES EVERYTHING SO COMPLICATED. WHY DID I INCLUDE TWO DIFFERENT ROLES THAT COULD DO THAT???

Okay so redirection nodes:

the idea is very simple: roles can have access to actions which can be used on other players. There is three parts to an action resolution: the caster (who submits the action), the action itself (what the caster is doing) and the target (who the caster is doing it on)

So for example, a seeker typically can scan someone. Therefore, their action can be modeled as:

Seeker Scans Elim

Redirection can happen in many forms, but it nearly always changes the targeting component of an action. 

Essentially, the jist of a redirector is that they can make the caster use their action on a different target than intended. Where some people get tripped up is the targeting aspect of the redirector. Assume in this case a redirector can target a player. Any actions made by this player can go to another player of the redirectors choosing. In this, the redirector's target is the caster of the action, the redirector is picking another player as the subject of the new action. As such it has two targeting components (although I prefer to simplify it to make it so they can only functionally visit one, typically the former)

There are also redirectors that impact incoming actions. In essence, the redirectors choose a target and make it so all other players who have the target component the same as them are moved elsewhere. 

I advocate for roleblocks to be processed before redirection, but they can happen either way. typically redirection must occur before MOST actions though

The nature of a redirector is that they functionally fulfill the niche of a roleblocker while also just being more useful and specific than a Roleblocker. As such, I typically advocate for them to be used as an alternative to roleblockers and other interference roles, instead of as a compliment.