Babble Post 101: Talking to your players (again)

 Imagine my surprise when I realised that I've hit over 100 posts on this blog...

... no really! It was a surprise. I mean, I babble and have been babbling on here for over ten years. That is an achievement in and of itself, but then to add that I have been babbling so much that I can note that I've reached that amount? Colour me stunned.

So today's post isn't actually about all that though. I wanted to revisit a subject I brought up in a previous TTRPG-related post about getting feedback from your players.

There's something exceptionally daunting about asking for feedback in any context. Asking for it as a DM when you're not prepared for the answer could make or break you - especially if you're not used to constructive feedback, or your players don't know how to delivered it in that fashion.

But a couple of months ago, I heard of a method of feedback giving/receiving that works fairly well. This method is called Stars and Wishes. 

Now again, I suppose it depends on the type of people you have in your party. But how this works is, in your discord server or roll20 talks or whatsapp group messages (whatever you use), you allow for a channel or time for stars and wishes after each session or so. 

This is an opportunity for the players and DM to hand out Stars to someone for something they did well - be it the plan the rogue came up with on the spot or the roleplay of a particular scene. So it's not just feedback for the DM but for everyone. Stars is the opportunity for praise that you don't usually give but might think of about a particular moment, incident, or aspect.

Wishes is a mix of feedback and desires: things the player/character would like to see or encounter or would like to see LESS of like politics and puzzles, particular monsters or story beats. It can also be things like "Less talky-talk and more combat". It can be projections into the future or feedback on behaviour like "Allow the DM to explain what you see first before exploring with your tokens" or "DM, explain what we see first before showing us the map so we don't go off into the unknown."

Stars and Wishes is a really great tool to get consistent feedback without the stress of directed, scheduled feedback. It also allows a space for people to chat after a session about the things they liked or would have preferred. 

I think the negatives of Stars and Wishes is that if you're looking for direct feedback, you're not necessarily going to get it or, if you have that particular player, you might get too much of it. So whether this strategy will work or not is heavily dependent on the type of people in your group.

But yeah, just an interesting concept I thought was worth sharing.

Ramble about games

 Update: I'm still alive!

It's been a while since I said anything, mostly because I don't have a lot to say. This post is going to be a ramble about everything I've been up to... I think. 

PC Gaming - what have I been playing (a lot)

Satisfactory

I can't tell you how long have I been playing Satisfactory in my recent playthrough. Well, technically I could, I suppose, if I look at the save files. But I don't know whether I should. It's such an addictive game with a basic concept. It's been in Early Access forever, but the game is still a lot of fun to play regardless of its 'unfinished' state. It's fairly polished with only one annoying bug that I feel should have been fixed by now.

But, I digress...

Satisfactory is a first-person factory-building game where you arrive on a planet and it is your job to get its resources. If you are the slightest bit OCD, you might find yourself agonising over where to put what and how to get the squares aligned and whatnot. My character isn't that far gone though. She lives in a disorganised factory where she leaps over equipment constantly and shuns walkways. That said, I still reach my target in terms of resources submitted to the big sky via sky elevator, so I'm not doing all that bad.

I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Baldur's Gate 3

I have to admit, as much as I love D&D, I can't say I'm completely enthralled by BG3. It's good, no doubt. With the interactive world and poor dice rolls my character makes, it's almost a bit too real. But I've just never been able to get into games like it - from the original BG to Divinity: Original Sin. I think the game is brilliant and well thought out. I just don't know whether I can say I like it. Still, I'm open for correction, so I spend a couple of hours here and there mostly dying due to poor choices and die rolls... again art imitates real ttrpg...

Battletech

I've always liked the revamped XCOM-style top down tactical strategy games. Battletech is that with far more finnike parts. The problem is that, while I enjoy these types of games, it doesn't mean I'm any good at them. I'm not a master strategist who knows about bits and bobs that you put on mechs. Still fun though. I've lost so many hours on this game...

TTRPGs - DM-ing spree

At the death throws of a Dragon Heist Campaign

I've lost count of how many times I've run the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. I think this would be my fifth time with only one of them having resulted in an early bailout. So three of the five were completed, one was a bail and now I'm literally waiting for the last session of the last Dragon Heist campaign (at least that I'm going to run in a while). Story-wise it's been utterly fantastic, but I am eager to get it done. I don't want to rush the finish, but I'm also ready for it to be finished.

Homebrew Babble

So I've had 35 sessions of the homebrew with the South Africans. It's going great. I got a little tired of churning out content, but it seems like, after a bit of a rest, I'm back at spending at least an hour a day working on / agonizing over the campaign. It's silly of me, but I still have a fight with my anxiety over the game. I know it's silly though, just performance anxiety and the desperate need for approval that I viciously stomp on every time it rears its head. :-P Nothing to see there.

But yes, I've been at it for two years and it's still going well. I'm ridiculously happy about it.

The multi-national group has had four sessions and they've already made very different choices than previous groups - which makes it both delightful and daunting to run for them. While these deviations aren't game-breaking, they do keep me on my toes as I learn what to cater for. The only negative I can give is that, when I prep for them, I constantly want to update my maps and make them better. This is a time-consuming process that doesn't actually yield as many rewards as I would want and I need to actually settle down a bit about it. I don't regret fixing the maps I have fixed, but I need to accept what I have already created as being good enough.