Trollbabe website - ideas solicited

[sirogit]

I'd like micro-actual-play snippets. For example, you could have a list of mechanical processes - Gaining a relationship, losing a relationship, being discombobulated, being injured, etc - And for each item on the last, a compilation of 3-5 paragraph descriptions of what that looks like in play, with the ability to add your own.

- Sean Musgrave

[Ron Edwards]

Thanks to everyone for your input. I'll clarify a little bit of my perspective on the game and what the site might be able to do.

Part of the aesthetic is the idea that you make stuff up that floats your own boat using only those components in the book as a starting point. Everything else like the local communities, local geography, the Stakes and the tension surrounding them, and any magic tweaks if present, is properly yours. To put it in a less-friendly way, Trollbabe is for people who want to make stuff up, and whose minds are always steaming up with things like what I just listed. I want my examples to be only exemplary, and in fact not to be adopted by others into their games. Using them as a first-time, stepping-stone aid, sure, that's OK, but I don't want to publish a smorgasbord of fantasy-game elements that you can choose off a list, and then present as a dish to impress your friends.

As an example, I do not regard highly the use of pre-made towns for Dogs in the Vineyard, based on my observations of the effect on our own game, although I do like seeing towns that were made up and used be available for discussion and inspiration. I really should get around to posting about that.

That applies to user-created materials as well. The site should be recording what we do to celebrate it, not presenting or accumulating resources to use. I totally agree with you, Markus, about the local maps, and in fact, the new rules make that an explicit step - I'd love to have a feature that allows people to post what they've used, but the trouble is the nigh-inevitable interpretation that this is what, say, the Blood Gate looks like up close, when it's a crucial part of prep and play for that precise level of detail to be made up. If such presentation and accumulation were the direction I was going, then I might as well publish a line of fucking sourcebooks and canned adventures.

I'm really struggling to find a way to make my real goal work for a website, and if you can help, I'd really like that.

Now for the comics. Ideally, I'd really like to have them all up there. The problem is that I'm missing some of the strips - one from "We All Have Issues" and about half of "The Naked Helpless Sacrifice Scene." I'd like to find them, but am currently stuck.

As far as more comics are concerned, I'm a little surprised to see posts about how much people liked them and how well they communicated anything about the game (which incidentally wasn't a priority in writing them). Responses when I was posting them were considerably, significantly less pleased about them, and the "friendly advice" only demonstrated that I was not reaching the audience I wanted. Not to put too fine a point on it, I didn't get a lot of positive indication that there was any point to doing more of them. It's nice to read more positive views now, but the fact is, comics are a fuck of a lot of work for everyone involved.

One file that sits on my hard drive is the collected annotations and reflections on doing the comics. Maybe if I can scrape all the strips together one day, it'd be worth publishing in book form.

Best, Ron

[rafial]

Ron, I appreciate your desire to avoid any wiff of "canon" in the interpretation of the Trollbabe world, but I have to say for my own part, my creativity seems to be mostly about elaboration and implementation rather than core insight. Give me a situation kernel, and I can go for days, but I have the devil of a time arriving at those situation kernels myself.  So those kernels are what I personally would be looking for.  I have no interest in finding out what the Black Gate looks like in somebody elses wold, but a nice tight, emotionally resonant conflict situation is gold to me.  Fortunately I now have IAWA Oracles to pillage

I'm sorry to hear that your experience with the comics was a negative one for you.  I certainly appreciate the amount of work that goes into them, and I suspect that you ran afoul of the classic feedback dilemma which is that people are who are dissatisfied are all to happy to carp at length, while those who are pleased typically smile and move on.  I know that's what I did.

Eagerly awaiting the new edition, no matter what form it takes.

[ejh]

Ron, drop me email about what missing strips you need.  I downloaded a ton of them a while back; perhaps even all of them; I'm pretty sure I have all of both "we all have issues" and "the naked helpess sacrifice one" (I have 8 strips of each).

I have absolutely no comment whatsoever on the topic of Trollbabe porn.

[Markus]

Aha! I just have to post this. Warning: it could seem like madness at first glance. Maybe it is.

OK: the website should try to communicate, and matbe help or promote, the joy you'll experience while *creating* stuff for your TB sessions. That is, actively, personally crating, as opposed to "choose from the smorgasbord" approach that Ron does not favor. And, yes, now I can see his point, and also why in long term such a palette of elements could detract from the whole TB experience.

Rafial, I don't know if you know that game, but It's a bit like the Over the Edge book... You read the first chapter, and you're all excited about this wonderful setting; then you read the 100+ pages of detailed places, npgs, etc... and you fall asleep. Because that richness robbed you from creating *your* stuff. (Now that I think of it, this is something I really understood only after reading Sorcerer & Sword).

So the conundrum seems to be, how can you present the activity of creation without showing the result of this creation? My answer is: present your stuff on the website, but change the communication medium. Create maps, but post *text* about creating maps. Create npgs but post *drawings* of them. Create stakes, but post *comics* about those. In this way, you could still take advantage of what Rafial is describing, but this would *inevitably* involve direct, personal creation on your part.

Btw, and it's not an original idea, it's good old Hermann Hesse speaking here really: "Just as madness is the start of any wisdom, schizophrenia is the start of any art, any fantasy". (From "der Steppenwolf". The pathetic translation in english is mine)

bye

M

[Ron Edwards]

Yes, that is what I want!

I'm talking with a cunning web-making person about how exactly to do it, but with the right text, the right "what to do to play" aids, and so on, I think the section about sharing your Trollbabe creations through uploads could work really well.

Best, Ron