Life, the universe…and glasses!?!?!

So then, here we are a little over a week since my last post, and quite a bit new has been going on over this neck of the woods.  Well, ok, not really all that new I guess now.

This past weekend I had what was likely to be THE best shopping experience for glasses I’d ever had.  I’ve been wearing glasses now for around twenty five years now, buying my own for about the last fifteen or so.  Now I don’t know if its just the culture here, or the one back home in Canada or not…but man it was like comparing night and day.

My experience in Canada has always been…blah.  The last time I had to buy some (pushing three years ago), was an absolute nightmare.  The store broke the original ones I’d wanted, so I had to settle for different frames.  Then, they took another week (the first pair also took a week to come in) to get the “new” ones, and they STILL couldn’t get the lenses to sit right.  In the end, it took nearly a month to get things “right”…and apparently, they never were.  For the record - I normally have to drop in the neighbourhood of $1000 Cdn for a pair of glasses (between a good frame, and my prescription)…so I usually tend to expect some decent service.

See - for the first time in the last ten years, the optician where we went for the new glasses noticed that I did something “odd” when I was taking the eye exam.  It turns out - I’m getting older than I thought.  First it was the grey in the hair everytime I went to the hairdresser, then the mass amounts of grey in the beard…now I need bifocals.  Bleh…man I’m really starting to not like this getting old thing

So in any case - the people at the place I went to (ProfilOptik), were amazing.  Not only did they take the time (despite my poor Danish) to explain things completely (fx: why I couldn’t get the one pair of sunglasses I was looking at, as well as the whole bifocal thing), they helped find the “right” look for me, and made me feel important, and not just a “walking pile of money”.  I ended up getting a really slick looking pair of glasses, AND my first EVER pair of “real” sunglasses!  Now of course it’ll be a few days yet before I have them (which is normal for me…even at the “One Hour” optical places back in Canada), but I can’t wait!  I promise, as soon as I get them, pics will be going up

Now then, that little “rant” of a sort leads me onto something that I got to thinking about that is gaming related, and more specifically related to gaming on Fantasy Grounds.

The Dreaded Shopping Trip

Ok then…maybe not so dreaded.  Yet it seems like many games come to a grinding, gut wrenching halt, the second the party arrives in a town with pocketfuls of gold, and there’s a store selling whatever.  Inevitably the session, which the GM undoubtedly took many hours to lovingly craft, degrades into nothing more than a shopping trip.

Now - I don’t personally mind a LITTLE bit of this in a session, but I’ve seen games come to a crashing halt by the one or two players who have to mind-numbingly count, haggle, and whine about what they can and can’t buy.  Its insane.  This behaviour has a real tendency to destroy sessions in Fantasy Grounds, where sessions tend to run a little slower than they would in face to face games.

So how do you avoid this?

Well personally - I wouldn’t worry overly much about all the details, I mean, who really cares how many days rations someone’s carrying?  Or how many feet of rope, and whether or not its silk or hemp rope?  Obviously though, if the session revolves around crossing a desert by foot, and you’re also trekking up some odd mountain like formation at the same time (don’t laugh…it COULD happen!), that kind of information could matter.  But really in the grand scheme of things - the general rule of thumb is this:  If it helps move the story forward, do it!  At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter a lick.

Now obviously, this kind of attitude could lead to abuse.  So what I normally do, especially when I’m running a Savage Worlds game, is to allow my player to make a Common Knowledge roll to see if they remembered to bring that 500′ length of rope along on the dungeon crawl.  Its quick, it simple - and it doesn’t bog the game down.  After all - Common Knowledge in my head equates to Common Sense.

Another way to handle this, especially in relation to Fantasy Grounds, is make use of forums and emails to handle all these transaction type things outside of the normal play sessions.  I could do a whole post on this, which I think I may just do for next time (once I’ve had a chance to think on it all some more).

But I think I’ve gone and rambled on long enough.  I’m going to close this post off with some links to a couple of new screenshot galleries I’ve setup.  One is showcasing Player side screenshots taken during some of the Fantasy Grounds demo sessions I’ve run this past week, while the other is some GM side screenshots from those same sessions.

So here are the links:

Client Side Screenshot Gallery

GM Side Screenshot Gallery

I plan on adding more screenshots as I run more sessions…and I hope within the next couple of days I’ll have some sneak peeks at the new Shaintar Ruleset we’re working on over at Digital Adventures.

Oh yah…and Kevin - I put some pics of the Market up

That’s it for today all!  Take care!

V