Regarding pointless grinding...

As previously mentioned, Stupid Ranger and I are preparing for a cross-country move. As a result, I've been forced to burn a few of my precious, precious personal days to prepare our current home for sale. The last two days of my life have been consumed by pointless repetitive tasks.

As a result, I decided to write for a few moments regarding the process of doing pointless repetitive tasks in games as a means to build skill, earn rewards, and roleplay. In many video games I have played, this process is known as grinding.

I might be biased, but I hate this.

In my case, I am grinding not to gain experience but for a monetary reward and to advance the plot of my life. The nicer the house looks, the faster it will sell, hopefully for more money. In roleplaying games, I have played in several systems that rewarded grinding a certain task to build skills (like fletching, masonry, or forging) or to gain rewards (sweep the floor one thousand times and you get a pass to join the thieves guild).

The particular game I'm talking about here is a MUD that I used to play named Gemstone IV. I loved this MUD, however I fell quickly out of love with the fact that many of its systems are built on grinding a task and then resting while your experience absorbed (the time at which it would actually be applied to your experience total). As the years went on, they attempted to tweak their system to allow much more of a constant flow of experience and skill building, but it grew too much for me.

How to avoid this

In my games, I tend to do a few things when tempted to present my players with a long task to "build character". Firstly, don't do it. Make discrete tasks equal rewards whenever possible, doing a certain task one thousand times is just going to be annoying and tiresome to the vast majority of players. Secondly, if you must force your players to grind make it a skill challenge. That at least gives some interactivity and randomness to their success.

Finally, if you are bent on forcing them to do a task in a repetitive manner give them the opportunity to roleplay while they do it, or do a cinematic storytelling moment where you explain that your players spent the next two weeks sweeping the floor and on the other side they are tired, weary, and have their invite to the thieves guild.

If anyone has experienced a satisfying experience grinding a task, please share your experience with us in the comments. If you hate it, let's hear from you too, I'd be happy to spearhead the International No More Grinding Society. Maybe if I gave that name more than three seconds of thought I could've made a cooler acronym.

Oh well, I've got painting to do. *sigh*

Surviving the Crazy Times -- Packing

As Dante & I prepare for our cross-country move, we are finding ourselves overwhelmed. There's so much to do to prepare for this kind of move. I expect that over the next few weeks, as we're trying to maintain sanity and sell our house and find a new house and try to keep up with the miriad of other details involved in the whole thing, our blogging schedule may be a little off.

Sorting and packing boxes has given me a bit of an appreciation for the sheer footloose-edness of my characters. In our campaigns, we frequently take off into the wide blue yonder with only the contents of our backpacks. If we're really on top of things, we sometimes procure horses and other related traveling paraphenalia, but we're not always that prepared.

I have a hard time imagining myself taking off on a great adventure with only the contents of my backpack. I'm a bit of a pack-rat though, so I'm sure things I would consider necessary might be negiotable. Excluding electronics (assuming no way to recharge them) and cash (move all funds to the First National Bank of Bag of Holding), I would probably pack:

1. Basic toiletry kit - 'nuf said.

2. Towel - Gotta stay safe in case I encounter the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. Also, when I need to replace #1.

3. Hair pin - If Scooby Doo has taught us anything, it's that a hair pin is singularily the most useful hair accessory one can have. But it's not just for picking locks. Use it in place of a cloak pin when you wrap your towel around you for warmth. Plus, it's an easy accessory to make you look fabulous.

4. Notebook (and pen) - I don't travel far without my notebook, mostly because I have a tendency to forget things if I don't write them down. It would be highly useful for keeping track of landmarks to keep from getting lost. Or if you are lost, to make paper airplanes to request help.

5. Bottle of water - even when it's empty, you can use it as a canteen to transport water.

6. Scroll case with lots of useful scrolls - I'm assuming I'm an arcane spell caster. :)

Gaming with too much baggage, epilogue...

Last week, I lamented my position of having too many old gaming books and paraphernalia laying around. We ended up with a box full of loot that we needed to dispose of, and I was none-too-picky about what we got out of it.

No Longer Trapped in the Closet

I made a cursory trip to my local game shop, Gamers' Sanctuary. The nice lady behind the desk informed me that they would be happy to put up a "FREE" sign on my box of loot, but I could probably get a little bit out of it on their used rack. She recommended that I come back later on to speak with another team member who knew how to price things appropriately and they would help us.

So yesterday, SR and I made the trek back to the game shop, lousy with our box of old 3.0 D&D books, my previously mentioned and unfortunately maligned Deadlands, a Mage: The Awakening sourcebook that was never played (sadly), and some miscellaneous Gamecube games that hadn't seen the light of day in a long time and the system to play them on (replaced with a Wii). Amazingly, they did some math and gave us $71 in store credit!!

I informed them I would be spending that store credit RIGHT NOW and picked up the new Forgotten Realms sourcebook for D&D 4.0 and two boxes of Against the Giants miniatures. Stupid Ranger practiced her awesome skills in divining cool gaming stuff and we pulled a Fire Titan out of one miniatures box, pretty neat stuff!

So whoever provided the advice to take my stuff down the FLGS, THANK YOU! We converted a whole box of crap that we never play with into a shiny new sourcebook and miniatures that we certainly will play with. We also reduced one box down to almost no cargo space, so that will help with the reduction in stuff initiative!

There is still the matter of what to do with the Magic collection, but I'm going to save that topic for another day. The jury is still out!