My corner of your imagination
Games
Effortless Motivation
Sep 3rd
As a GM you have to make sure the players always have something to do, but you don’t want the players to feel like you’re pulling them through the plot by their nose. At the same time, you’re not doing your players justice by letting them ride your coat tails while you guide them through your scripted story. The days of dungeon crawling are over, and a game should not be a system of A leads to B leads to C.
If done right, you should be able to run the same adventure three times and have three different outcomes. I, myself, have run published adventures more than once with the same group and it never ends the same way twice. If you find you’re always getting the same results then you’re railroading your players through your plots. Now don’t get me wrong, as many players would rather not think for themselves, but I personally feel this takes power from the player and that’s the purpose for this post.
For me, players are the star of the show and they should feel they are so. For those that want to find a way to empower their players, I offer some advice on motivating your players without actually doing anything on your part. All you need to do is ask yourself this questions: Is there something else the players could be doing right now? If you’re doing your job as a GM the answer should always be ‘Yes’.
I will give you an example from my own, recent, Shadowrun 4th ed. game (which you can get in PDF format from Drivethru RPG for just $15 right now!)
In the game the players were hired to kidnap someone. As they wandered around, doing next to nothing, I asked myself; Is there something else the players could be doing right now? The answer was that they could be planning the kidnapping. Obviously. So I did nothing as a GM and let the players wander around talking about doughnuts and coffee. This not only lead to some very funny player to player interaction but I took the time to make notes for the upcoming double cross (more on that later). Feeling like nothing new was going to jump out at them one of the players finally said “Okay! Seriously, we need to decide how to grab this guy.” Sure, I could have said that – but then I’m driving the story. Make it seem like the players came up with the idea, and suddenly they’re in charge of their own game.
I let them make calls, buy a van, discuss some options for where they could grab him including how and when. I let them formulate this plan and even came up with, on the spot, a concert they knew the target would be attending. And what ended up happening? They ran into the target at a coffee shop and grabbed him like a Grande Mocha Frapp and ran back to the van!
Now, obviously my plan, as a GM, was to have them go to the concert. But I was effortlessly waiting for someone else to say the words “So we’ll just wait for the concert” but that didn’t happen and one lucky roll of the dice and three phone calls later they were causing public panic. Again, had I told them we were going to jump to the concert I would have had to come up with a much more complicated scenario than a pastry counter. I waited for them to tell me when it was time to go to the concert and, funny enough, they ended up derailing their own plans while making my own job easier in the process.
Back to the story-
They go back to the safe house and instantly go into securing the perimeter. I knew what was coming, but I still asked myself; Is there something else the players could be doing right now? The answer was still a ‘Yes’ because I was about to make them fight for their lives. I’d had the NPCs specifically tell them to sit tight and the players even relaxed not knowing what was about to come next. Why? Because I don’t pull them around the plot. They, on their own, constantly hit these pockets of thinking they have nothing to do for a while or they’ve created their own space to breath. Sometimes they realize there is something they could have been doing and other times they don’t realize I was just letting them get lulled into a false sense of security.
When the attack came they were all surprised. They thought the point of the day’s adventures was the kidnapping! It helped that I wasn’t rushing them with urgency, knowing I wanted to kick the real plot off later. Now they are sitting around trying to figure out their next move. Is there something else the players could be doing right now? As a matter of fact there is, but I’m not going to tell them.
Another way to effortlessly motivate your players is to do nothing. I mean, literally do nothing. A player in a game once sent a text message to someone asking for help. I said, “okay you send the message.” and then sat there. And sat there. Aaaand sat there. Finally the player says “okay, I give it 5 minutes.” I responded “Okay.” and nodded that I understood, but I still sat there. And sat there. Frustated they said “Send another text…” and I nodded “Okay. You send the second text.” and I sat there. Finally the player looked to the others and said “We’re on our own!” to which another replied “You think!?”
I could have just as easily told them that no one calls them back. But then it’s me telling the player they need to come up with a new idea. By doing nothing I seem to give total control of the game to the player. After a while they learn that I’m not going to feed everything to them. What’s great is when a group of players does something to surprise me.
In one game I ran, the heroes are fighting their way up a tower, Game of Death style, to reach the top. Half way up one of them told the others, “Why don’t we just bring him to us?” and so they decided to take out the building from the ground floor. As a GM I could have said “No! Impossible!” and forced them up the gauntlet – but why? Because I had written out the stats of 4 more bad guys they had to fight? That’s petty. Instead I rewarded them for thinking up a creative solution. I had to get just as creative to keep the bad guys alive, but it’s nice when they make me think too! As a GM I like to be pushed to improve just as much as I push my players to improve. We really do need one another.
Role-Playing Anti-Immersion
Aug 27th
Posted by bard noir in Bard's Abyss
On the heels of topics like Immersion and Bleed I thought it would be good to take a moment and discuss some solutions for dealing with these things. Once again, I’m blessed to know some very academic role-players. One of whom, SJ, defined what was traditionally abstract. I would like to take her short bullet points and expand on them a bit.
The first thing to keep in mind is that you are not your characters. This is probably the hardest part because a lot of our characters are based, in some small apart at least, on ourselves. This can either be by taking on a part of our own self and pushing the character to that extreme, such as a guy who fixes computers playing a world famous computer hacker extraordinaire. You could take part of your personal life and make it a part of your character, like both you and your character unable to admit your feelings to the object of your affections. Or even taking on strong opposing traits to what we perceive as character flaws, like someone who’s single and working minimum wage playing Jame Bond. So either way a part of our psyche gets built into the character.
Between emotional and creative investment, as well as the sheer number of hours it takes to write up a good character, it’s important to be able to distance ourselves from these on-paper creations during a role-playing session. There are also times when a role-playing session may simply hit a little too close to home as even I’m not immune to it. I had to admit to a GM that he’d accidentally touched on a very real, and deep rooted, personal fear I had. He apologized for it and in the end I didn’t blame him, but I can still remember how shaken I was by that game session.
First of all, it’s important to remember that role-playing is an emotionally-charged medium. In many games I’ve set up moments that were meant to challenge or even traumatize a character. It’s only through conflict that a character can develop and grow, so without personal conflict and growth you end up playing 4th Edition D&D.
Second, there will be cases in the game where NPCs will, and should, take the lead in certain threads and game sessions. This one is for both GMs and Players because a balance and understanding has to be found. GMs could, being as they can break all the rules the want, end up using NPCs to just walk all over players. Players, having to do as the GM says. They have to trust that the GM isn’t bending and breaking rules or if they are, the GM is doing so with an express goal in mind. But if there comes a time when a Player feels this is starting to become an issue they should feel comfortable addressing it with the GM and GM’s should always be open to suggestion. the GM/Player relationship is very symbiotic. GMs need players or they just have a shelf full of books that are barely worth the paper they are printed on. And Players need GMs or they have a character sheet that isn’t worth the ink jet cartridge it cost to print out.
Third, is issuing a disclaimer. Do this by telling your fellow players how immersed you’re planning to get so that players don’t feel like OOC malice is coming out in game. You can take another player aside (as a GM or fellow player) for just a second to simply say, “This is my character that has a problem. I just want you to know that I like everything you’re doing in game. Keep up the good work!” The goal here is just to let other players know that the in-game intensity is intentional and not some kind of un-conscious bleed from some out of game drama.
Taking a break! High emotions can be pulled up when you least expect it. In my experience taking a break doesn’t mean you walk away from the scene and then mull over what just happened with your character. It means leave the game world for a bit. Something as simple as being fully in the moment of pouring just the right ratio of salsa to chips on your plate (don’t you hate when you run out of one before the other anyway?) can be enough time from a scene to shake off a lot of tension you’d be lugging around if you, instead, gathered food while planning what you about to do in-game. In a LARP you can admire a painting while drinking a glass of water. The goal here is to take a mini-vacation from the intensity of the game and your character.
Remembering to speak in third Person can also help. This is one that’s pretty common in table top play. If you notice, we do this to describe our character’s physical actions but speak in first person for dialog. This is not so easy to do in LARP settings because you’re acting out everything and don’t break character to describe what you’re doing. But pausing to think about your character, and remind yourself you’re just playing a role, and then start your next line of dialog with “{Character} is going to say/do…” can help take the pressure of you as the player and remind everyone else that this isn’t personal either.
Have an out of character area or gesture. In my own troupe we hold up our hands with fingers crossed, a kind of “time-out” signal. Often, if a player isn’t getting heard, they ‘fingers crossed’ and a repeat of the statement as a “player to GM” moment that is totally out of character. In LARPS there are often areas designated as the OOC area, so that people standing there are out of character and immune to what’s going on in game. And while I don’t recommend taking up the habit of smoking, the OOC and Smoking area tend to be one in the same. Still, there are times that I’ve joined the smokers to just sit on the bench and enjoy NOT being around in the game for a little while.
Personal Space. One thing, I think, that goes unnoticed, is how players camp out when there is not a table present. In all of my sessions everyone picks a place to sit and they stay there. You get to see gamers with a little pile of books and dice where they want them or feel comfortable having them. And they don’t ask a player to up-root without a good reason. Players should feel like they are in their own little Power-Cave with dice as their totem. This is an element missing from any LARP setting, and the amount of tension you can feel in those games can be as thick as the summer heat of Houston.
Try and remember that you’re playing a game and the game is meant to be fun. People get into this hobby for many different reasons but no one Role-plays to try and be psychologically traumatized in real life. So try and use some of these if you find that tensions are running too high in each game or make up your own. The goal is to break the tension somehow and if your in a combat LARP, perhaps what works for everyone is to stop and do a scene from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog just because that’s so removed from the game it requires you to break character. And above all, don’t borrow trouble. If the last session went bad, don’t go into the next one anticipating it to go bad or you’ll find a way to make it so.
Have Fun!
When Players Attack
Aug 20th
We’re not talking about when they roll to attack something in game, we’re talking about a player turning into a rabid ferret and trying to take someone’s face off with their teeth. Yep, this is going to be part bitch-session but it’s also taken from some advice I’d given another GM who was having problems with this very thing. Recently another GM has also had a similar issue, and I felt it was about time to post what I shared the first time around because this, clearly, isn’t as rare as people may think.
In my many years of role-playing, I’ve learned that some players just do not play well with others, but at the same time I can still love the character and role-play I get from that player. To me it is hard to understand why almost everyone in a game world could get on the last nerve of any character that a particular player makes and yet I seem to walk through unscathed. Or, by contrast, that a player feels I’m being a tyrannical and unreasonable GM while everyone else in my troupe only sings praises about my games.
I now believe it’s just the nature of the beast that a game can just come together in all the wrong ways, and key players aren’t going to get along with other key players, or even myself, for one reason or another. But just because a problem-player shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near one game, doesn’t meant they can’t be one of the most valuable players in other games. And just because a player may think I’m being too heavy handed, doesn’t mean they don’t add something to the game that the others feed off of.
So how do you deal with this without feeling like you should hang up the GM hat forever?
As a GM you have to be political about how you treat players. It’s easy to slap one player on the wrist for crossing a line. The problem comes when you find that other players don’t see them as a problem at all. In those cases it then seems you are the unreasonable one. Any time more than one player feels there is a problem it should be something you need to look at as a GM. The old days of the Dungeon Master saying ‘My Way or the Highway’ are over. You have to give a player the benefit of the doubt and quietly take the moral high-ground.
I know that it may feel like you’re giving up and letting the players run your show, but the reality is that a GM without players is a movie director without actors. In the end your just a person with a vision and no one around to give it life. Time and time again I’ve see other players instantly respect any GM who proves they are willing to work out problems with another player. It proves you would do the same for them and that your commitment is to the game, and not to the power one can get lost in as a GM. The Win-win of it all is that you learn to calibrate your GMing style or new develop new techniques to use for future games and sessions.
When it’s all over, I’m often glad to have had the experience of a problem player. You always learn something new from it! But, just like getting kicked in the head teaches you to keep your Karate guard up, I’d rather not have to experience the pain more than necessary. Here’s to hoping you don’t either.
Good Luck!
Character Bleed in Role-Playing
Aug 13th
Posted by bard noir in Role-Playing
“Bleed” is a buzz word that I’ve been hearing a lot in the RPG community. So what is it?
“Bleed” refers to a player’s thoughts and feelings influencing the character, or the character’s feelings and thoughts influencing the player. An example of this would be two players having a falling out during their real life, and when they come to the game these feelings “bleed” into the characters who suddenly, and for no in-game reason, start having a falling out.
Bleed isn’t always bad, however. In a Call of the Cthulhu game I was able to use character bleeding to scare the players and thus freak out the characters. To me bleeding is a “necessary evil” because we need to know what our characters are feeling and thinking in the moment. All of my games focus on the human element, and even in fantasy games it’s not all about running into the dungeon and killing the dragon. It’s also about the town under a tyrannical dictator, or a corrupt sheriff trying to force a tavern owner’s daughter into a loveless marriage. Without empathy the players could care less because there’s no measurable XP for “preventing a wedding” but this is measurable XP for killing a human with 12 hit-dice so long as you don’t mind having amoral characters in your world.
So in these regards, immersion is good, but you can run the risk of the fantasy becoming your reality. I’ve seen and heard of players who’s character goes through so much that the player ends up depressed, angry or jealous of things that have no basis on in real life. I’ve had people who are all smiles in life, but very bitter and cruel to one another in game as they vent in a way they think is safer for the ‘relationship’. In truth it’s only going end up bleeding back out into reality eventually.
There have been times when I’ve raked my own character over the coals so that I can step back and watch what happens next. Now there are also times, especially in LARPs, when I’m not setting out to do so and I feel upset by what happens but usually it doesn’t affect my characters or my out of character interaction. In one particular LARP, recently, I had [fake]guns pointed in my face three different times before I even drew my own gun. And when I did, it was to shoot at someone who was shooting a teammate. After that I was later gunned down while tending to my wounded just because the other player knew his stats made him almost unstoppable.
So I was upset, and I took a break for a bit. When I came back, 15 minutes later, the character who’d killed me had been killed because of 1 bad die roll (the only way he could be killed it turned out) and I missed it. With a new character in hand though, I didn’t immediately start targeting the bad roleplayers who were needlessly holding guns in my face earlier. I was upset about that, but I couldn’t let my feelings towards them bleed into my character.
Bleeding is something I feel you want to simply recognize and control. I’ve seen many games fall apart because of player/character bleeding. One player was so bad at it, we changed both the day and time of the game and just didn’t give him the updated schedule. Easy enough. And one D&D game fell apart because I was finally given in-game justification to kill the character of a player who’d been harassing me (in-game only), for weeks on end. It bothered me out of character because I could tell he was using his character to pick on me (the player) but in-game my Chaotic Good character continued to defend this party member with his life because he never know this klepto Cleric (srsly?) was the one picking his pocket and causing him to “misplace” all his stuff.
Let your characters tell you where they want to go, go there and then let THEM go there. You can follow along, but you don’t have to stay there with them when it’s all over.
WotC… WTF?
Jun 9th
In case you haven’t read up on the latest and thought D&D was dead there’s a new article talking about a new product that Wizards of the Cost is trying to promote called “D&D Encounters”. Here’s the full article, http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/wayoflife/06/08/new.dungeons.dragons/index.html?hpt=C2 but I can save you some time.
“Wizards of the Coast, the current publishers of D&D, recognized that some of the 24 million people who used to play the game left, not because they didn’t want to play, but because their lifestyles changed and they didn’t have the time anymore — so they have created a new rules system to address those concerns and bring back their former fans.”
Yeah, this sums it up for me right here. WotC, WTF?! The reality isn’t that the people who used to play have had life style changes. Trust me, I just did a Firefly Shindig and these guys still have the same free time for gaming now as they did 20 years ago. No, it’s that the 24 million people who used to play hack and slash games have evolved to seek a higher level of entertainment than just “roll-playing”.
“”Encounters” has premade characters and a premade adventure provided to the game’s referee and storyteller, the Dungeon Master. Maps, tokens, game pieces and player aids, such as bonus cards, are all included.”
So let’s just call this for what it is – “Gold Box Pen and Paper!” Yes, I went there! I mean let’s get real, this is everything you love about MMOGs without the subscrpitions or creative thought process. At least “Daggerfall” let you crate your own character before it tried to railroad you along the plot line.
“Wizards of the Coast wants to remind players that using an active imagination can be very satisfying compared to simply being fed information from a computer screen.”
Because being fed information from a human, word by word, is much better than walking around the Shivering Isles going “Wow! Check out the trees!” Thanks but compare that to my friend who named all the vendor stalls in town after pop culture references that only we’d understand. And I can’t forget a Toy Store owner who looked at my character and went “Oh, thank God. I thought you were some damned kid. I hate kids!” I’ve never talked to him since, but I haven’t forgotten him either.
Even though I’m loosing faith in White Wolf, I do have to thank them for changing the role of Game Master to Storyteller. What real Role Players want is the story. To live the story, and be the story. We want to create something that is our own, not just meander through the motions of a setting someone else created. If I wanted that I’d re-install “Neverwinter Nights”… the original http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_(AOL_game)
*shudders*
"Wet" (the Game) just get better…
Sep 4th
For those that are out of the loop, I’ll quickly explain that there is a new console game coming out for my beloved XBox 360 called “Wet”. The best way I could describe this game is to say that it looks like ”Stranglehold” meets “Max Payne” as imagined by Quentin Taratino and produced by Bethesda featuring a character who makes Lara Croft look like Safari Vacation Barbie. In short, I was drooling the moment I saw the trailer.
What makes this game so different from just everything out there is the visual style and the interaction. From the trailers Rubi (the main character) is built less like Pam Anderson and more like Mila Jovovich. From the moment you see her, inked up like Kat Von D, you know this is a girl who probably could take out a room full of mobsters with a six shooter and pair of chop sticks. In the sequences from the trailer she’s seen leaping through the air and shooting opponents, hacking at them with what appears to be either a Chinese styled broad sword or a stylized Katana and at one point jumping on the roofs of moving cars in the most creative (if not impossible) approach to a car chase imagined.
Like “Max Payne” there is a Bullet Time of sorts as Rubi does acrobatics, causing the game to slow down which allows you to target multiple opponents better. And while this may seem like a rip off, it is actually a very practical approached if anyone’s ever played John Woo’s “Stranglehold”. In a scene during that game you’re allowed to jump up on a rail and slide down while shooting at enemies. While this is very cool in concept, the problem was you had to go from right to left picking off people shooting back at you, but by the time you’d get the enemy in your cross hairs you’re passing him. Now you have to switch targets but can’t seem to move quickly enough to take out the new target. If the game had slowed down to let me target better this wouldn’t have looked like amature hour at a skate park.
So from the game play ideas and visuals alone this looked like a very exciting game, and one that I was assuming I would rent or maybe buy used. That was until, someone upped the stakes. You see, it now seems that Eliza Dushku is voicing the main character Rubi Malone. I almost found myself pre-ordering this game.
Here is the link to the actual game and you can see for yourself – http://wet.bethsoft.com
Hmmm……. Eliza Dushku.
OwlCon 2009
Feb 8th
So Last Night (and I guess this morning) I was at OwlCon.
For thoses that don’t know, OwlCon is a year RolePlaying and Gaming convention here in Houston, TX held at Rice University. Normally I either win the T-Shirt logo design or I end up GMing a game and get a free pass to the entire convention. This year however, I did neither of things thing (mostly because I didn’t bother to try and do a t-shirt design when I missed the deadline) so this was the first time I actually paied to get in.
This was also the first year I did the LARPs at OwlCon.
For those that don’t know, a LAPR stands for LIVE ACTION ROLE PLAYING. Think of it more as improvisational theater with rules. The first game was a “FireFly” LARP. While it may be hard to imagine 50 some old people all playing roles in such a game I have to say… It worked amazingly well.
I ended up paying a Miner with no faction. At first even I didn’t think I could do much with a fatctionless Miner in a FireFly game. Espeically when there were three ruling parties in a powerplay for control of the planet. I mean what’s a lowly dirt miner going to do? So quickly my firend Don and I came up with a plan of our own. We decided that our character needed to take over a local… in Japan they would be called “Tea Houses” and we’ll just leave it at that.
Needless to say, in order to do that we had to get rid of the man who owned the place first, who just happened to be one of the men running for office and maybe get some venture capital from his rich opponent. Instantly a political play was formed! We then went around striking deals with everyone we could find who would further out plans. When the game was over one player said they weren’t sure who Don and I were actually allied with and I explained “Depending on when you talked to us would have made the difference.” He and I even one “Honorable Mention” as “Best Roleplayers” and the guy playing the Sheriff won “Best” which I think is rigged if you asked me. He got it for “staying in charcter” but there was more character. What did Don and I have to work with? It was something like “You work in a Mine. You have political party” I mean what about that gives us enough to stay in character. I think we should have both one first place for developing a charcter, estbalishing our own motive and then screwing with everone else in the game.
Thankfully we’d have revenge 3 hours later in a “Cthulhu” LARP. For those that don’t know about Cthulhu as a game the point is that there are dark things that man isn’t meant to know about hidden in the Earth. The more you learn about them the more you go crazy. The whole idea behind the game is to go insane fighting the forces of darkenss. In this game I went from a calm and down to earth Catholic Chiliean Priest named Father Diego to a man holding a bone saw, wearing a strange alien artifact around my neck and telling people that I’m getting message from God. Once I was able to make Don’s character mostly insane it didn’t take long for him to go totally insane. After that it was just he and I attacking people at random until we left the game early.
I’m pretty sure no one is going to forget us for a while.
The Window (RPG System)
Aug 6th
There is this little game group, dare I say ‘company’ called ‘Methods in Madness’ who have released a game system called: The Window
“The Window” is unlike any game system I’ve ever seen before because, for starters, it’s free… Seriously! Second, it’s not meant for people new to true role-playing games and finally, the rule book is about 40 pages long and it WORKS.
The problem with most rule based games in role-playing is finding a way to play something within the confines of the rules or to re-work the rules so that you can introduce a new concept. This can become taxing.
The alternative of course is what’s called ‘Freeform’ role-playing where there are no rules, and each person just adds elements to the story as it goes along. This process ends up more like collaborative fan fiction than anything else. But the biggest problem with ‘Freeform’ is the lack of TRUE control a player has. They instead of an illusion of complete control but all actions are decided on the whim of the Storyteller or Game Master. There is no chance and there is no risk as you cannot fail without the storyteller saying so (thus true success is not in your hands) or you cannot impact another character without their permission (so true influence is also out of your hands).
With a System as free and fluid as “the Window” one can make any story they wish, the dice only serve to by an unbiased third party mediator. This not only takes the responsibility of maintaining the story out of the Game Master’s hands, thus freeing them up for focus on goals and plots instead of smaller details, but also adds a level of drama since players COULD potentially influence and be influenced by one another.
It took me not time at all to go through the 40 pages of rules (the first 10 of which is just an introduction and background to the system mostly) and I truly believe that this is a new direction for all role-playing.
Less system/More Character/Better Story.