Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog

This is the third installment in a regular roleplaying feature here called Evading .300. These are in reaction to an article in Gnome Stew called Batting .300, in which it was suggested that failing to finish most games is acceptable.

Without necessarily disagreeing with the observations and conclusions there, we present causes for game failures and strategies to avoid them.

Today we look at the Next Game — something which is currently plaguing my mind and threating my current campaign.

What is the next game?

The next game is just that. The current game is humming along, planned out, and being played out. And the GM is exercising their creative muscles in directions outside the game.

This can manifest itself in a number of ways. They may feel like it’s time for them to step out from behind the DM’s screen for a while and play a PC, or have an idea for a whole new game that they begin to plan.

Another common problem can be the discovery (or re-discovery) of a different game that the GM wants to play.

What’s wrong with the next game?

There is nothing inherently wrong with looking forward to the next game — variety is the spice of life, and all that — but there is a real chance that the next game will interfere with the current one.

If as a GM, you are planning to run a second game, will you have time to run both well? If not, one of the two is likely to go off the rails and fail. Do your players have time for two games in their schedules, or are you forcing them to choose between the two?

Handling the next game

There are three basic ways to handle the next game — the right strategy will depend on the root cause, your game, your schedule and your players’ schedules.

Roll it in with the current game. Quite often, this problem occurs in mature games. The planning part of your current game has become less important — the bad guys have been established, the game world is well developed, the players’ goals are known, and you pretty much know how to get there.

So what do you do with your planning time? You think of your next game, or your next PC.

This raises a question: Why are these players not NPCs? Why is this the next game, and not a wrinkle in the current game?

There may be a good answer to these questions, of course, but if what you are missing is the creative element of planning for a game, take actions to bring that creative planning back into the game you are playing now.

Take a break. Alternately, the problem might not be that your game has reached a point where planning is unnecessary. Perhaps you’re just tired of running it.

Like all good things, a roleplaying game can start to feel like work if it takes up hours every week and seems to drag on without end. It shouldn’t. So take a break — not from roleplaying, but from the game that is starting to bore you.

We live in a world full of trilogies, serials and sequels. Your players have no problem waiting for the next issue of their favourite comic book, the next volume in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, or the next movie based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. So why would they have a problem with a break from your game for the next couple of months.

Perhaps have every player run a one-shot before moving to the next session? It allows you to make some characters, and gives them all an opportunity to walk a mile in your shoes.

Of course, before the break you need to either wrap up the current plot or find an appropriate cliffhanger. And you need to have a planned return date (or it won’t happen at all). But it can be done.

End the game. In the end, you are playing a game and it should be fun — for everybody, including the GM. Dreaming about the next game is a good sign that you are not getting what you want to get out of the game.

If this is the case, and the above strategies do not seem appropriate, it is time to end the game. Not in a way that leaves your players hanging and the major themes of your campaign unresolved, but in a satisfying way. Figure out how to give the game the send-off it deserves (in no more than four sessions), and end it on your terms.

When the next — as yet undefined — game that you will play in starts to take hold in your imagination, it’s a good sign that your current game is in trouble, and the perfect time to act on it. Whether you need to recharge, inject some fresh energy and creativity into it, or bring it to a close — or have other ways of dealing with it — an intervention is needed.

(Image found here. Credit unknown.)

I absolutely love this photo. It originates with Minimimmo, and seen on FFFFound.

The entire concept is genius. Tiny cardboard doctors opening up a tiny cardboard box.

It all started so innocently.

In 2007 somebody had a funny photo. In that photo, a person was clearly doing something in a manner which would not lead to success in their endeavour.

The enterprising person in possession of this photo wrote “FAIL” on it, and posted the photo to the Internet. It was simple. It was clever. The photo (which I don’t remember, exactly, does anybody know what started it all?) was funny. The “FAIL” added something to it, and a meme was born.

In January 2008, failblog was born — it would eventually be sold for a profit several months later.

Three years later, and the meme is still going strong — surfing the Internet, FAIL photos are easily found in many locations. The FAIL blog now has a YouTube channel, and other sites devoted to the meme, such as English FAIL and Daily FAIL have risen. The meme now needs multiple supporting sites.

But why does the popularity endure? Has it not run its course?

Let us take the following example:

When I started to think about writing this blog post, this was the most recent entry at FAILblog. It was titled Wrestling Maneuver Fail. But who is failing? What are they failing at? It is far from clear to me — and probably far from clear to people who know wrestling — who is successful in this photo.

The funny part is that the wrestler on the bottom is holding the penis of the wrestler on the top. The photo is humorous on its own, but good captions are available:

Mom always said, “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Step one: squeeze.
or
Nearly pinned, Johnny used his infamous hand job move.

“FAIL”, however, fails to be witty, funny, or even descriptive. It is, however, the caption. But even when it is descriptive, there are several reasons why it should die out, and soon.

It is both old and uncreative

It seems most likely that FAIL is just a crutch for people who lack the intelligence, patience, or wherewithal to come up with something original. After all, how many times can you hear the same joke before it stops being funny?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to that question, but after three years of photos with FAIL written on them filling the tubes of the internet, most people should be well past their saturation point by now. This small corner of the internet would make the bet that when people DO laugh at a FAIL-photograph, it is in spite of the provided caption, and not because of it.

It has escaped into the wilds of the internet

The FAIL has managed to escape the photograph, into the wider Internet. Right now it seems largely confined to Twitter and video, but as a problem at Amazon last year shows, even the BBC can get on board with the juxtaposition of a subject and the word fail.

Video is closely related to photography, of course, and Twitter’s hash tags and character limit make it an ideal breeding ground in which FAIL could escape the “unimaginative, unfunny caption” status it currently holds, and make a break to the wider world.

It is already happening. And only you can help to stem that tide.

… and into the speaking world

That is, if it’s not too late.

A pet peeve of mine — and many others — is when people start to speak in text message or internet speak. Not in an “I less than three you” sort of way, but sounding out the letters LOL instead of either laughing or saying “that’s funny”. I worry that these people have had their brains melted by aliens, and are now trying to pass a word-of-mouth virus through the general population that will also destroy my own.

It certainly feels that way.

The final straw in this is when FAIL enters into the conversation. At least LOL and their like is simply a matter of people being unable to differentiate a chatroom from a conversation — they have communication difficulties, but not necessarily true mental deficiencies. Somebody who is incapable of expressing themselves, and instead bleats out a four letter, one syllable word, “FAIL!”. That person has a real problem.

I have heard it in conversation, sadly.

The time to act is NOW!

So, dear Internet, are you with me? We must stop the FAIL before it goes any further. Stopping it’s spread across additional mediums is simply not enough. We need to stop captioning funny photographs with the same four letters.

Humour should be simple, yes, but it also needs to be creative, original and insightful.

Let us stop the spread of FAIL before it becomes more than a meme. It begins with you.