City of Mist cool stuff

 I've never formally mentioned how much I love City of Mist as a setting. It's probably one of the more creative premises I've seen in a while for an urban fantasy setting, a sort of combination of the Percy Jackson books, Changeling the Dreaming, and Mage the Ascension.

A PBtA system has it's advantages and disadvantages. It's simple, easy to learn, and easy to just run out of the box, but it is built for shorter games. City of Mist somehow negates that latter limitation. I didn't know it was possible, but they did it.

So, I've been part of a game that's been running for about 2 years now. I've had two characters, the first being the wonderfully insane embodiment of  Rumpelstiltskin: the conspiracy theorist private investigator, Adam North. The second is a Gatekeeper Silver Soul who has a name, it's just impossible to remember. Let's call her the Secretary.

The Secretary has recently replaced Adam as my character, considering that the latter is currently trapped in a different dimension. With her in the party, things are going as normal.

So this brings me to my art today.

We're investigating the Chief of Police, who we believe is working with a nefarious private security company called Spire Security.

The scene is as such: He's onto us. He calls for backup, and we get into a fight. At the end of the fight, he kicks our collective asses, and resets time.

My character uses the opportunity to arrest him, seeing as he just committed a serious violation of Normality.

I pull open my Key fob, which allows me to teleport to Gatekeeper HQ, and the team follows me.

It turns out, the BBEG is capable of hacking Gatekeeper technology, seeing as he redirects us into a Spire Security SWAT team, disguised as Gatekeepers.

Fortunately, we figure out the ruse, and get into a standoff with them, me holding the police chief hostage, and the other party members ready for combat.

I'm happy with how this turned out. It was good lighting practice. I think I'll be able to do both lighting and perspective better now.

 

Additionally, for today, here's one of my current characters. He's a clay golem thing that's purpose is to be the body guard of another character in the party. I built him in the hopes that he gets to learn how to be a person over the course of the game.

So far, not a lot has happened when it comes to the character actually being developed, but here's to hoping!

Campaign Format

 More and more often I've come to realize the reason that I like shorter campaigns. As someone who's run a good few, I have always felt that longer campaigns feel empty. That they tend to fizzle out rather than end.

This is due to player engagement, and story development. I've always hated games that fizzle out. My games only thrive as long as players enjoy them, and when players stop wanting to play, the game stops functioning.

I believe that this is true for everyone to an extent. Most players run games for the enjoyment of their group, not to, as they claim "tell a story". The latter is true for some, but frankly, I wouldn't want to be at the table with them in the end.

Here's the realization I've had: a truly good game consists of a series of interconnected, but ideally self-contained stories.

Plot hooks can be thrown out, threads can be unresolved. In the end, the players will not care if they don't fully explore every aspect of the story. The aspects they didn't explore can be the core for another.

Your players might  want to explore all of the plot hooks right away. This means the players are enjoying the story, and are willing to stay for it. The moment they start to lose interest in the plot hooks you throw at them, is a sign that they are probably going to start enjoying the campaign less and less.

This is typically a sign to change campaigns, game systems, or something else to freshen things up. Heck, making new characters might be something as well!

Either way, it's something to consider, that I think others should also consider.

About Time

     Honestly, I've been doing art for a very long while, but I've been kind of shy to create a blog. I don't know if it's just my lack of confidence or what, but I'm doing this now. So, here's to a first post. So, what's this blog going to be?

    I'm not particularly sure. Hopefully, my art, and RPG related stuff. Maybe keep people up to date on what I'm doing. Maybe even a place to put my campaign logs.

    I'm not sure, but I will find out. Here's to hoping things work out!