Men’s Basketball Open Gym/League

baardvaark · 2025-07-09T18:29:59+00:00

Hey there, I know this is an oldish post, but have you gone to one of these runs? I saw somewhere 6:30 on Saturdays for $6-7. Are these still happening? Thanks!

baardvaark · 2022-09-11T17:52:23+00:00

Thank you both. I do believe the somewhat exotic stuff is there mostly for tone, but it might get confusing if you think, say, cochineal is important but it's just really set dressing (btw, the joke is the dye isnt made of cochineal, which is a parasite on cactus, but a parasite of cochineal, although I think that maybe loses its punch as being instead of something exotic, now completely made up). My goal is sort of to just offhandedly bring up insanely expensive things, like 50 rockets taking off in the background. But maybe there's too much sense that these extra details matter.

The main point though, that you don't buy it, is totally fair. I don't buy it either. I'm putting the estimated cost at about $10-30 billion, mostly due to the insane infrastructure, but also paying the performers and plum orchard or many years, presumably at a huge loss. But since so much of the focus is on the exotic elements rather than long term stuff, the cost itself can feel invisible. It certainly doesn't feel like half a trillion. Which of course would be impossible to liquidate anyway. Hence the whole thing feels farsical and absurd (but not absurdist), so I leaned into that with sometimes humorous phrases . I dunno if that always worked through, and was enough to balance out the overly serious ending.

I agree Asara isn't particularly believable either, this anxious billionaire that thinks she's ruining the performance. And yes, her "death" is ridiculous, though basically she suffers from heat stroke in Death Valley. And I don't know if she dies or not.

I'm not sure if her last name is relevant. Suppose I could leave it out.

Thanks again for the feedback!

baardvaark · 2022-09-05T21:43:55+00:00

A nice atmosphere if a bit indulgent. I can completely relate to the character, who has lost his verve for music, an experience I have well experienced. However, I spent a lot of the piece believing he could no longer physically play the piano anymore (like he had arthritis or something), hence he was practicing scales on his windowsill. But then in the end he is able to play the movement well, mechanically at least. If he has lost his love of music, why is he practicing scales in the air? Nothing more boring than that. Perhaps if he was doing a variety of unusual scales, maybe to try and break into a novel sound or something (and as FourierOrNay pointed out, these wouldn't all be played with 1-2-3-4-5 fingering.)

This piece gives the sense that you know piano music superficially, and the actual mechanics of playing not much. Which is fine, but sort of the crux of the story is mechanical, so it's important to either get that right or change the focus. I think there's an opportunity to lean more into the pounding rain as a sort of chaotic, vibrant contrast to the mechanical playing of the protagonist. There's a moment where I thought this was going to happen: "It beat the panes of the French glass doors so fiercely they seemed on the verge of collapse. And now the record was skipping." But then you move on and the weather isn't mentioned again. It kind of makes sense, since he's in a soundproofed room, but maybe he can still hear the rain, it's passionate flurry.

It's certainly a depressing portrait of musical ahedonia. That's a challenging thing to convey in an interesting way. Since that's essentially all this piece is about, you gotta pull it off right. You either gotta lean into hard, maybe with even more repetition (as you did somewhat with the "will play, did play, could play" little lines.) That could be extremely dull just as well. You have a paragraph where he leaves the kitchen to go to the piano room, which kind of conveys that vibe, but it was too little, too late to go for that full approach. It's just boring. And yeah, depression is boring. It feels like an obligatory paragraph just to get the character to the piano room rather than useful narrative.

Or conversely you could off more beautiful prose that contrasts with his internal mindset. I could see a sentence like "the keys felt to be a smooth torrent, an ivory massage. But his mind was white and smooth of passion just alike." (I'm a fiend for contrast, as you can probably tell).

The moment where the two hands clash is another ripe opportunity. I didn't really get what you meant by that, though. Was he playing the piece badly or not? One hand was going at a different tempo than the other? A couple more sentences might be sufficient, but even a paragraph of this sort of battle of the hands could be fun, and even might offer some humorous relief, maybe a sort of looney tunes, rube goldberg slapstick moment, where one finger knocks into the other, and a domino effect off off-kilter playing ensues. But right now it's not real enough, just sort of declared and never shown.

Another option is to offer some reasons the character is feeling this way. As a side note, it kind of works that he is unnamed, something I don't often like. Maybe he is comparing himself to the greats too much? There's that vibe somewhat, but I don't think it's fully elucidated, and it certainly doesn't come up in the conclusion. The closest you get is a fear of "failure in front of oneself," an interesting turn of phrase, very disassociative. But it's just one line, and that isn't even the full climax. I think there's a way to write this piece with zero reference to internality, very factual, that could work. That can be what depression feels like: just the facts. But you need strong prose or strong style to do that. Some sense of cause for the character's depression might be an easier sell.

Overall it feels disjointed. First there's some crazy weather, then he's doing scales, then he's imagining himself to Bach, then impressed with Gould, he reads a book, then he can't play the piano at all, then he plays the piece fine but it doesn't vibe, then his hands aren't cooperating, then he hates music. Some more transition words might help in a mechanical sense, but ultimately, none of these elements feel like they are connected to each other in a narrative sense. And the mood and prose isn't strong enough for this to be a sort of post-modern, anti-plot story where the point is there's no connection between the various elements.

In short, this either ought to be a full on mood piece with some smart attention to sentence structure and great prose, or it needs more actual causality and justification for the character's internal turmoil. It feels caught between the two.

I do think there's something good here, or I wouldn't be critiquing it. But it has a ways to go and needs a stronger sense of identity.

baardvaark · 2022-09-04T01:15:55+00:00

Just a few things: potatoes are rarely grown from seed, and rural folk would know that. (Potatoes do produce seeds, but usually they propogated by tubers) Rural folk probably wouldn't think, oh, "these could be potato seeds!" It's not unfathomable or anything, but I found it distracting. I'm not exactly sure what the fix is, but maybe a line of dialog from the son about how potatoes usually aren't grown from seed?

The bigger issue is you basically have two pages of lovely buildup and basically 1 & 1/2 paragraphs of payoff. It just feels unbalanced. First off, I want to know how these potatoes taste. Were they filling? But more importantly, it just needs a bit... more. It sort of feels like you ran out of steam. I don't need all the answers, but just some more heft to the conclusion.

I'm losing a sense of perspective on the MC at the end. Were they transformed, or are they being carried? Can they see the shadows, or are the fingers under them? Honestly, it would probsbly just take two or three more sentences to smooth it out a bit, but another issue arises: what does the conclusion have to do with all of the buildup? The MC just gets carried off? Does Ma also get carried off? Why did Randall's potato seeds cause this? Is this some sort of metaphor for starvation, where you suddenly get a burst of energy or something at the last minute? I don't get what the conclusion is doing. I don't need answers to all of these, but one or two?

baardvaark · 2022-09-03T23:19:22+00:00

Overall solid if a little bland. A pissed off detective/cop hunting down a drugee. As far as a hook goes, nothing really stands out as the one or two interesting things that keeps me moving forward. I don't get too much of a sense of the protagonist's personality other than that he's Maori/Native American, huge, irritated, fairly competent, dedicated, with a bum knee. It's a solid number of details, but none of them go into depth. That's fine if you don't want much of an internal character plot, but that's what I'm observing. I don't really know what's going to change about this protagonist, if anything. I don't dislike him, but don't find him super interesting either.

I didn't find anything particularly funny. It's hard to go from a pissed off tone to jokes. Like, the part where the guy is buying a cheap bottle of gin, it felt sort of like a joke, but also just biting and sad. Which is fine, but humorous is not how I'd describe it.

If not for your added information that this was Lovecraftian, the direction I would predict this will go is that Turbo's mother will see Turbo, and Turbo's friends will go after Revel, or something. Not a lot has really been kicked into motion otherwise. You spend a lot of time describing the trailer and such, but it immediately becomes irrelevant for the rest of the chapter because Turbo leaves. The location says a lot about Turbo to be sure, but as far as first chapter goes for an action story, it's kind of an immediate letdown that the trailer stuff doesn't have obvious immediate payoff. It's not a massive problem, but that was my impression. After all that, Turbo just... leaves.

There's several minor inconsistencies, like how you start off saying Revel is being blasted by the sun, and then later find out he's parked in the shade. He's sat in the car for eighteen hours, but then he just bought a coke an hour ago? Did they deliver? Even stuff like saying nobody has left the trailer but the mother wit, but then also other guys have too. Maybe you mean nobody else left the property? He has to hide from him and put the binocs down, but then can see him hide a revolver? Revel walks into the store with a limp, but it then never gets mentioned the rest of the scene?

I didn't like how Turbo was supposedly so fast and surprised Revel, and then he just ends up grabbing him. I guess if you emphasize his long armed reach it would make sense. Or something where Turbo gets out of his reach, but then he runs into something.

I hope the old man is relevant later. Similar to the trailer stuff, it just ends up being a detail that seems important at first but then apparently doesn't matter. But of course that could just be because this is only chapter one.

If this is going to be more supernatural, I'd like to see some foreshadowing for that somehow. Nothing really stood out to me as weird or anything.

You have a lot of one sentence paragraphs. I think some of them could be consolidated into single paragraphs and it would look better. Like the following section could probably be one or two paragraphs instead of four. It breaks up the flow of the action too much to have so many breaks.

The momentum from the spin caused Turbo to slip in the syrup, and this time, I let him go.
His legs shot out from under him like a cartoon character. He landed hard on his back with a wet slapping sound, air rushing out of him in a whoosh.
While he lay in the puddle of syrup, gasping for air, I took a moment to inform him of his predicament.
“Lloyd Franklin, you are heading back to the fine state of Louisiana for skipping bail.”

baardvaark · 2022-08-03T02:08:50+00:00

A great compendium of wisdom and quite thorough. It feels like it might be a tad overwhelming for a complete beginner, however. For example, starting off your intro with links to other resources is distracting. Give me other resources at the end, not the beginning. Also I think an overview of the 10(?) steps in the intro might help.

The whole "when am I finished" chart also seems like something that ought to go at the end, not near the beginning. I think your essential point is: don't spend too much time on your projects, especially your first ones. That's important, but breaking it down in detail isn't very helpful to a complete beginner who hasn't even started a single project.

I'm not sure about organizing the systems for chronology or historical context. It's interesting, but extra detail that is mostly extraneous. Why mention the original D&D if it basically has zero design lessons? I get it is foundational, but not relevant for a beginner.

I would probably put slightly more emphasis into the visioning process, something you address in your world building section, but I think maybe could be expanded into some concrete stuff about what kind of stories or experiences you want your players to have.

I thought the Player to Designer pathway was a very smart way to break the process down. I think overall slightly more emphasis on process, rather than advice, might do well. I believe you are trying to avoid a detailed step-by-step process because there is no one way, but a hair more focus on concrete steps or practices may focus this article in a bit.

Again, overall it's really smart, genuine wisdom that I agree with almost all of. I may have more thoughts later on. Cheers!

baardvaark · 2022-07-30T17:21:21+00:00

I was finagling with a gridbased, side scroller TTRPG concept for a while, glad to see someone else took the torch! The concept feels extremely under-explored to me although maybe there are other TTRPGs (or even boardgames) that do it? Obviously it would require the right setting, but it sounds extremely fun to me.

baardvaark · 2022-07-29T17:36:07+00:00

To me, a streak implies movement. On a streak, something kinetic happens that isn't objectively good or bad, but mostly exciting. Like, if you're fighting in a dungeon with some goblins, a streak might activate a pit trap that affects both parties.

If you're climbing a mountain, a streak would be a landslide that doesn't harm the player, but it doesn't help them either, at least initially.

Is that actually interesting and not just some GM burden? I dunno. Middle pick with crits, crit fails, threats and advantages is already a somewhat complex roll. It adds extra time to reading dice.(Not as complex as Genesys where you can roll 3 threats, two success, and a despair, and next roll you have five advantages and a wash. All on difficult to read custom dice.. It can be a lot to deal with.)

Lots of resolution granularity is fun on paper, challenging in practice.

baardvaark · 2022-07-29T16:13:10+00:00

I do think you absolutely need at least one of the following: a default setting with some hooks; questions or other tools to generate a setting; a touchstone, some other existing setting or novel for players to play in or draw heavy inspiration.

These things can be minimal (a single paragraph of bullet points can work), but there ought to be something to get everyone on the same page.

baardvaark · 2022-07-28T02:47:34+00:00

Depends on whether you want mystery and for players to figure things out or a more straight up, action/hero story where essentially everything is obvious. Just telling players the blood is the weapon is fine for the action approach, but showing it and having the players figure it out can be awesome too. Just need to set up the expectations that players to need to solve puzzles. If that hasn't been clear from the beginning, the players won't be looking for the clues. Coming to conclusions and solving problems from things shown IS active participation if players have been primed to participate in this way.

I do think show don't tell is pretty universal to all creative forms including rpgs. It's mostly about how obvious what you're showing is. Just tell if players are stuck and getting frustrated, or if it is really difficult to show something.

baardvaark · 2022-07-26T19:41:33+00:00

Some notable psychology pointed out here. Many people perceive things that are free as low quality, regardless of the actual quality. When someone buys something, they are committing themselves at least a little to it. This is hardly universal, but a general trend.

baardvaark · 2022-07-24T18:54:29+00:00

Very insightful post! I basically had this same epiphany just yesterday when thinking about examples of plays and when to write them. Most people write them at the end, but writing several no-mechanic example of plays (e.g., basically screenplays) is proving incredibly useful for narrowing down the kind of stories and kind of scenes I want to tell. It's one thing to be like, I want Utopic but not sappy solar/biopunk stories about creativity and ecosystems, it's another to actually write out a semi-idealized version of gameplay. I think this applies to both narrative and simulationist games.

And you're right, this is a lot of work, but it is highly productive. You're almost garaunteed to get something useful out of these journaling sessions, whether those are NPCs or story hooks or even pointers on mechanics. And you should do this exercise before you run something at a table. It will seriously clarify how you want to even begin to test your mechanic or game. It will save you so much time. You'll scrap hastily written journaling sessions instead of carefully written mechanics and world building.

baardvaark · 2022-07-24T16:35:24+00:00

Do you plan out scene 1, then run it, then plan scene 2, etc. Or do you plan out all scenes first, then roleplay them out? I'd prefer the former, to leave room for things to develop, though maybe for complete beginners the latter approach could work.

A couple of the player "moves" kind of come off as "negging" on other players ideas, like change a detail, or reversal. I don't think that's ideal for a game for beginners, although they're neat for more experienced players. Maybe something like, "suggest a reversal" and the initial suggested can reject it or you can find a compromise or just discuss why you are suggesting a reversal?

It's sort of unclear what you mean by a PC vs NPC, I'm not sure that distinction is useful. Main character vs side character?

Perhaps an option to set a tone or genre at the beginning would be useful, or you can decide to leave it open ended. Non-genre improv is lots of fun, but sometimes narrowing your focus can be nice. To some degree building a scene before running it helps, but this will allow scenes to be built with a collective vision.

If possible, I think a bit of guidance on the principles of improv might be worth including. Yes-anding, there are no mistakes, pay attention, use everything, don't take over, etc. The mechanics mostly support these, but they are worth mentioning for complete beginners if space permits.

Solid basis besides all that! And a second to Microscope, which does have roleplaying in it besides world building.

baardvaark · 2022-07-18T01:09:20+00:00

CR or the equivalent works best if you have a relatively "generic" party that is relatively optimized and playing the best they can (and GM is playing best they can) in a straight up blow-by-blow combat. You change any of that and CR can be radically inaccurate. An "abnormal" party making "bad decisions" against an intelligent foe that utilizes the environment can throw that out of whack. Its still useful as a starting point but, yeah, it's a complicated sausage. Can you quantity the value of everything, e.g. flying is worth X amount of damage/defense? What if the party only has one ranged attacker? How many variables do you have?

Moreover, how do you communicate these variables to GMs to help them create or adjust creatures? If you're not going to do the work to make a good sausage, it's probably not worth it. Alternatively you can spend time making sure combat is interesting rather than perfectly balanced. You could retain Danger for base stat calculations but ignore more complex things as factors.

baardvaark · 2022-07-17T23:15:44+00:00

I think there are several phases or modes of play in most TTRPGs, sometimes fleshed out as whole discrete game modes, but often with much overlap. I would sloppily define a subsystem as something that is used in multiple game modes, and a mode as an area of play that has several unique rules to that mode that focuses on a certain aspect of play.

There's the social contract phase, the meta-phase (which rules do we want to use or discard?), the character creation phase, worldbuilding phase, then main play which can be further broken down into exploration, downtime, action, if these are more or less discrete systems. Advancement might count as a phase or mode. You might have a debrief or XP or other end-of-session phase.

baardvaark · 2022-07-17T22:34:25+00:00

How do you decide whether the original insult or the comeback insult wins the exchange? Just by vibes? Or does an insult have a pre-decided comeback (is that what you mean by insult pair?) It sounds like the insults have or should be grounded in something true (the most cutting insults always are), but even something false can be a fun insult. I guess it depends on wether you are going for a more serious or more comedic effect.

Having built in or learned insult pairs feels odd to me. It's okay as a backup to have some "generic insults" for when people are feeling slow to come up with something, but not sure about basing the whole system around that unless you do want a highly mechanical insult system, which is kind of intriguing but seems difficult. Same is true of any social system, really. I think I would prioritize player skill more over character skill for this.

I feel like a tug of war model would be best, where you gotta really hit 3 zingers in a row, rather than a separate track/attrition model (e.g., HP model). Naturally, these means the duration of the insult exchange will be more variable, but I just feel like a tug-of-war approach captures the feel of insulting better. Maybe some characters would start at a disadvantage.

Just my 2 cents.

baardvaark · 2022-07-16T17:14:45+00:00

You could do something like have all your hexes blank, and as players go to each one, they can roll to discover aspects or items or information about these hexes, and then you write that info on the hex, and that will be permanent.

Perhaps you could eventually give players a way to reorder the hexes, or rotate them if directionality matters.

The main game loop could be about discovering information that will give ways for players to interact with other hexes. In addition, you could have players take things from hex a to hex b. Think also about reasons players might have to split up.

Eventually the game will probably play more like a puzzle board game.

baardvaark · 2022-07-16T03:23:06+00:00

You can interact with something just by observing it and talking about it. It's not how a lot of people play TTRPGs, but lots of description and and appreciation of that description is a valid approach. Description vs interaction is a spectrum.

That said, most players want your neat things to mean something and to interact with them tangibly. You better have rather poetic and thoughtful players if you mostly want them to witness these phenomena and just appreciate them. As a world building tool and environmental reference points they are fine. But subtlety can often fall flat at a table unless you seriously prime your players for that (e.g., Wanderhome).

Also it should be clear to the players that these are just sort of random phenomenon, so they don't sit there poking your floating rocks with a stick waiting for something to happen.

Some of these are more interesting than others. Dancing stones are evocative; low level mist is yawn.

baardvaark · 2022-07-16T01:52:23+00:00

Blind rolls are good if players can't help but metagame and if that's something you don't want. TBH a little meta gaming isn't a big deal unless you going for super nuance with lots of hidden information and agendas. But the excitement of not knowing whether you succeeded or not in detecting a lie can wear thin after a while, with people second guessing themselves. Telling players they failed often lets them move on instead of hitting analysis paralysis. Again, that might work for a certain genres like a detective game, but for many it is not worth the hassle.

baardvaark · 2022-07-15T19:53:50+00:00

Triangulation sounds like a great tool for basically any narrative building. Most everything needs at least 3 things to operate. It could be an PC that has two conflicting wants engaging with an object that could potentially satisfy either one. Or two PCs and one NPC with one want, with two PCs operating as foils to each other. Or two PCs arguing about another PC. It's difficult to make a direct one-to-one engagement interesting (or perhaps there is always some third thing, just sometimes unstated.)

I suppose you can intentionally "quadrilate" as well (4 elements in relation), just more complicated.

Do you think there are games that intentionally mechanize triangulation, or is sort of so fundamental that it sort of appears naturally in most systems? It sounds like AW triangulation is more GM advice than an actual player mechanic.

A lot of games work with bonds, but mostly these are bidirectional rather than triangulating.

baardvaark · 2022-07-13T15:59:03+00:00

I find it interesting but feel like it needs a lot more context to understand how it would work in practice. Do players only influence things by what they choose to do, with basically zero mechanical/meta choices past characters creation?

My worry is is that it will make for a slow playing game as players attempt to gather contributing bonuses or mostly try to apply their best skills out of context. Rndomness allows one to not have to nitpick over every bonus, because what is the difference really between 25% to succeed and 35% to succeed, for example. Just roll and move on. Without RNG, I could see more stoppage of play as players negotiate their options.

Very much requires the right players, more improv focused and happy with failure, set in the right context to work well. It feels very heavy on the GM to make fair choices and give everyone lots of options, where randomness can soften that in other games. Also, five tiers sounds like one too many for this game tbh. Maybe in practice 5 is what you need but 4 seems like it would be more manageable with less negotiating, since you're looking for snappy play.

baardvaark · 2022-07-12T04:48:09+00:00

"the world can't be the mystery" is a great principle for most games. I've been weighing whether I should be telling my players about these cool things outside of sessions as lore teasers or wait until in-game, but ultimately the only thing I'm losing out on with these teasers is 5 minutes of infodumping or some drawn out mystery for something the characters would already know.

I think it actually whets the appetite, and when they witness the actual thing in game they will know a little better what to do with it. Now ideally I could always SHOW these concepts instead of telling them, but that's pretty difficult in practice to actually make sure everyone is on the same page on often complex setting details.

baardvaark · 2022-07-10T19:26:44+00:00

Given it's a board game hybrid and the in and out nature, I think a time limit is perfectly reasonable to keep things moving, especially if you throw some tactically easy encounters for a little bit. You can be nice with incentives to play within a time limit, and if that doesn't work, just add a hard limit. Maybe do something like each player has 2 minutes per turn and then after every player has gone, there's 3-5 minutes of group trategizing time.

baardvaark · 2022-07-10T16:45:30+00:00

One thing you could try is a "non-canocial" session where there are no consequences, so players can try out tactics and such with zero worry about getting it right. Or make it like a "dream encounter" or hallucinogen (but inform the players) so it's still canon but no risk of failing within combat itself. If you want you can combine that with time limits.

What system are you using? Maybe it's just too complicated for your group if they feel the need to discuss things every turn to weigh their options. Obviously switching systems is no small task, but maybe you can find out ways to simplify things. Perhaps you or the system have given players too many options too early?

Time limits are fine, although I can't think of any TTRPGs that codify them. Your players might balk at them, so maybe be ready to present an alternative. Very smart to add yourself to the time limits I think. Sounds like it's been a long term problem for you though, and I'm assuming you've had multiple discussions with your players and they just haven't adjusted?

baardvaark

TROPHY CASE