Topic.

Because I missed last night, and Friday night, and I need to keep my momentum up.

Sometimes, I paint myself into a corner with stories. Tonight, I managed to have a rather significant number of powerful NPCs show up in game. I tried to set things up so that they weren't dominating the dialogue, but by their very nature they draw attention. The PCs kept deferring, in some cases the players didn't think they could really do anything significant in scenes with so many major players. I ended up narrating. And talking to myself. Argh.

This from someone who is trying to be very careful about these sorts of game sessions. I complain about them all the time, and then they sneak up on me and I can't seem to do much about it. I suppose it should make me more forgiving of other GMs, but it just makes me more determined to stop it from happening.

The issue with Nobilis and this particular problem is Imperators. The gods of the game, they give the PCs their power and usually send them out to do things. But they have their own relationships. They're big, they're powerful, they're forces of nature. And they make the PCs feel small. Even though they should do something in the world, they should often do those things off-screen, away from the PCs.

For my Nobilis game, I want to have big, cataclysmic stuff happen to the PCs and their home and their boss, so we can take a step back to look at the game. I want this so that we can decide what we want next. Are the stories we've played the sorts we want to continue playing? If not, how do we want things to change? Imperators showing up and being impressive is one way to do this--but definitely not the best. I'll remember this for the next time I want to shake things up.

Play and learn.

~j