Once Upon A Time, I dabbled with gaming as art. I had a lot of fun writing these articles, and thinking about these concepts while failing Phys Ed in college. (Well, I didn't fail, but I didn't swim very fast, either. Screw it, I was there to study video production, not the dog-paddle.) I was into it.
Somewhere along the line, I decided to share all of my gamemastering wisdom (ha!) with the world. To this end, I started to design a Gamemaster's Seminar -- a class for beginning and veteran GMs alike, where we'd discuss the basics as well as some advanced techniques, including The Adventure Funnel* and some of the above hoity-toity ideas about mood-setting with color palettes and crap.
I think that...uh...let's see. About 9 people have attended in the 3 times I've presented it. They all had a good time, though, and I hear that this latest time, one of the participants went back to the FLGS (Avalon in Bloomington, IN), ran a bitchin' game, and told people he'd taken my seminar.
Kick-ass.
But that's not my point today.
My point is this: obviously, all that crazy-ass thought and research into employing art techniques and crap like that did me some good. I did it, and I'm the better for it.
Here's the trick.
How much of it do I actually need? That's what I need to figure out. I need to figure out the balance between High Gaming and all-out GFS Theory that'll suit me. It has to be useful. It makes too much sense.
I think it'd help if I could actually game more...
*Which wasn't called anything until I posted it on this blog. You are witnesses to history!
