20141005.0847

One of the things that has been keeping me occupied is work with the online Legend of the Five Rings Winter Court. I am on the staff this time after playing twice before, and things have opened up somewhat for it. Shepherding--or horse-herding, as the case more nearly is--has begun, and it is actually entertaining. Then again, it would be; I have been engaged in L5R stuff for a while now, including some more formal discussions of it. And there are aspects of the work of doing so that remind me of teaching when the teaching works well; the players are like engaged students, looking to work together on something in which they have a shared interest and do the necessary outside reading to be able to do it well.

There are, of course, the...less pleasant to deal with, both in the game and in the classroom. They can never be wholly avoided, and some emerge as matters develop. It is happening in the online forums where the game will be occurring. (Play has yet to begin. Character development has begun, and background development has been in process for a while.) One or two are coming off as pedants who seem bent on being "right" despite the likely fallout, and one or two others are looking for ways to use the system to break the system. Those of us charged with oversight are only human, and we are waiting for things to happen that will allow for...correction. They inevitably do--as is true of the classroom as well.

How things will progress, I do not know. It looks as if people are already having fun with the thing, which is good. I have seen pedantry and system-breaking ruin things that start out well, though, and I have to worry that the actions of a few will poison what the rest get to have. And not only in the game--some of the classes I teach got off to a decent start, but in one or two, there are a couple of people who seem bent on screwing around with things. Why they would do so, I do not know. Perhaps they feel they have to compensate for something. Perhaps it is the only way they know to validate themselves. Perhaps also they have been steeped in the belief that those of us who teach do so because we cannot do (damned Shaw again), or in the belief that the professoriate "hates all that is good" or some such thing. But I cannot do with my students as I can with those in the game; in the latter, the offenders can be ejected, while in the former, although I have the technical right to do so, exercising that right is...problematic. And I have to consider that my own insecurities might be at work...

People wonder why I spend time with RPGs as I do, why I read the things I read when my reading time is my own (which is not so often, anymore). Some of the answers should be obvious.