...I think I need to get rid of at least half of my Key Words. My Key Word Cloud is pretty much unusable. What's a good limit on keywords, anyone know?
Sunday, 7 November 2010
How not to handle death...
So, continuing from my last two posts, on the theme of death... -actually I should point out I've just come back from the pub so I'll lay in the apologies up front if this post goes awry- here's how not to handle death.
The following excerpt is from a MegaTraveller game played several years ago.
So the party had fought their way to the top of a ultra-high-rise building whose top few floors were above cloud level. Barricaded in the office of an executive whom we had planned to kidnap, with extensive (and homicidal) security en route, we considered various escape plans. It all looked pretty bad. A rift had already begun to form between our party of four with two players pairing off against the other two.
My character had an AG harness (which essentially meant he could fly). I did some calculations and realised the power output of the harness was sufficient enough that the device would effectively slow the descent of three people, if used only as a parachute. And then only as a HALO jump, as it would drain its batteries rapidly. My character also had a wall-charge, a shaped explosive device which would blow out a hole in an armoured wall.
So, with tensions rising in the high altitude penthouse office and the party divide causing as much threat to each other as the imminent threat from the security pounding up the stairs (we had killed the elevators by this time). I decided to blow a hole out of the bulletproof window. So whilst the party was setting up for a firefight with the rapidly inbound security, I set up a timer on my wall-charge and placed it on the window behind me. I realised the pressure at this altitude would mean we might be sucked out of the window if we stood next to it. As the timer counted down, I grabbed hold of the executive we were supposed to kidnap, and my buddy (played by the inimitable Chris Hart).
Just before the security got to the office, the explosive went off, blowing a massive hole in the window, and the pressure differential began to suck us out. Having hold of the executive, and my buddy - with the trust of the other two PCs drawn heavily into question, and blatant hostility coming from one - I jumped out of the window, expediting what the pressure was aiming to do anyway. Dragging the other two with me, we plummeted through the clouds.
Having now effectively stranded the remaining two party members, the more hostile of the two took umbrage and fired out of the window at us. Fortunately at freefall speed, we were soon enveloped in clouds and out of his sight, still we heard the gauss needles zip past us.
When ground rush began to kick in I whacked the AG on emergency full power and the harness kicked in. It took all my strength to keep hold of the other two. (Strength check made).
We landed in the parking lot, and as the bulk of the security was now several thousand feet above us, engaged in a firefight in the penthouse office of the exec I had just kidnapped, it was a relatively easy stroll to lead him at gunpoint to our waiting groundcar. Thus ending that session.
Apologies for being long-winded, but that's all backstory.
The next session resumed with us (myself, my buddy, and the kidnapped exec) driving into the starport, with a view to getting the exec aboard our spaceship and blasting off. I can't even remember why we were trying to kidnap him now. We got to our ship only to find that the two PCs we had left behind to duke it out with the security were already onboard the ship! To this day I still don't know how they'd got there ahead of us. We had freefalled out of the building and drove straight to the starport, but still they had managed to get there ahead of us. This was my first questioning of the GM's coherence. It just made no sense that the other two PCs could have got to the ship before us, and I thought he had done it, purely to tie up the two disparate parties. My first warning is this: as a GM you have all the power to do whatever you want, BUT YOU MUST MAKE IT COHERENT! Have a reason for it. An explicable reason. Even if you don't explain it straight away, it needs to be plausible, possible. Events in games which defy explanation and look to the players that you threw them in just to get yourself out of a sticky situation only serve to piss players off. PLAN EVERYTHING! (...this is actually impossible of course) but where possible, PLAN EVERYTHING! ...or at least have escape routes / interventions that you can logically throw in.
So... there was naturally some frostiness between us (me and my buddy - with exec in tow) and the other two PCs. Regardless, we blast off and get the hell out of orbit and into jumpspace before the security start chasing down their kidnapped exec.
I realised it was just a matter of time before the particularly hostile party member came for us, so with much deliberation I decided to jump the gun.
My character was a computer whizz (computers 6 in MegaTraveller terms). He made most computer whizz's look retarded. And so I set about re-writing the ship's computer to vac the ship whilst we were in deep space. What I did was set the computer to open up the bay doors (in the ships hull) and then every internal door except for my stateroom door, my buddy's stateroom door, and that of the brig where the exec was being held. These doors would remain locked, and the ship would vac for 5 minutes before all doors were sealed again.
I had to make several checks against my computer skill to do this, but made them all. So now we just waited (it was all on a timer).
Prior to the designated time, my buddy and I retired to our staterooms. As an added precaution I climbed into my vac-suit too. So I had my own air-supply, just incase something went wrong.
It was at this point that the GM finally seemed to realise we were poised to dispose of half the party (under the remit, as far as we were concerned, they would come for us sooner or later). So at the horrifying thought that I was about to kill two other PCs, he threw a rather ill-thought-out spanner in the works. He said an emergency alarm went off. Now, my character with computers 6 had already made several rolls to make sure I made the necessary changes to the ship's computer to set up the vac protocol. But somehow I had missed this final alarm. So one minute before the vac was scheduled to take place, an alarm sounded announcing it was imminent. WARNING! DANGER! SHIP VAC IN T-MINUS 60 SECONDS AND COUNTING.
What did the other players do? Well the hostile one, took offense at this imminent ship-vac and pulled out his gauss rifle and shredded out stateroom doors with it. My buddy hadn't had the foresight to don his vac-suit so was now in danger of being deprived of oxygen for the five minutes the ship would be exposed to space. So he fled his stateroom in an effort to secure himself somewhere else. As he left his stateroom he was shot by the hostile PC and rendered unconcious and bleeding to death. Without rapid assistance he would die. So having seen all this on the security monitors I had piped to my stateroom, I crept out of my stateroom and went to his assistance. I managed to creep up on the hostile PC and shot him at point blank range in the small of the back with my shotgun. But alas, shotguns have a low penetration, and his body armour absorbed the majority of the damage. The hostile PC was stunned a little, but nevertheless, turned round and shot me with his gauss rifle at close range - crippling my character, rendering him immobile. By this time the countdown was at T-minus 30 seconds and two of the party were down. One unconcious and bleeding to death, the other conscious but immobile. The two remaining party members knew nothing about computers, or the ship's safety systems or much else for that matter. So they waited, 30 long and drawn-out seconds for the ship's doors to open, and all and sundry were flushed out into space.
In trying to prevent one half of the party summarily wiping out the other, the GM had shortsightedly ushered us all to our deep-space graves. I sometimes think about that lone exec, imprisoned in our brig, on an otherwise empty ship, lost in deep space. I guess he must have starved to death. And probably 200 years later our ghost ship would be found by pirates, or salvagers and boarded and they'd wonder: what happened here?
But there's a warning in this tale. As a GM if you have to think very carefully about the repercussions of your actions. One can very easily let things get out of hand. Like party-rifts. And once they're in place. Chances are PCs will start dying. PC's after all, are generally the most dangerous things in the game. And when such hostilities do commence, one needs, as a GM, to think very carefully about the repercussions of not just what the players want to do. But also what you, as the GM, say are the net result of their actions.
I still believe to this day that the GM in that game put that alarm in to give the other two players a chance. Because without it they would be without warning flushed into space. But in doing so, set up a pattern of events which lead that game to end ubruptly, and well-short of the story mark. None of us saw how the game was supposed to end. None of us got much more than about half of the story.
Sometimes, as a GM you have to let PC's die. Always you have to think ahead carefully and map out the likely results of actions. Its kind of in the job description.
Still, a memorable ending to what was a highly enjoyable game. It still brings a smile to my face. In a forgotten universe somewhere, there is a ghost ship with a skeleton in its brig. And no other crew. And the last entry into the flight computer is a command which told the ship to vac.
If I were GM, how would I have handled things differently?
Well, sometimes its hard to avoid intra-party feuds. Thinking back, in the case of that game, the hostile party member was the root cause of numerous party feuds and PC deaths across multiple games. It would be difficult to manage him out of most of those situations (which he seemed to enjoy), short of not inviting him to play. (Lesson X - choose your players carefully). That said, intra-party feuds are not always a bad thing and can result in some fantastically tense and atmospheric games. I recall one game in particular which my brother ran, in which all seven players had hidden agendas and secret societies and all manner of subterfuge which pitted most of us against most of us. But that's for another post.
It is my belief that the game went wrong when the other half of the party that was left stranded in the office, managed miraculously to arrive at the our spaceship ahead of us. The feud was already underway, and could not be helped considering who was playing. But it was the GM's decision to blur reason and have us all wind up on the ship at the same time.
With the feud in place I would be tempted to have the other half of the party pursue us. Run a dual game with the same story now revolving around two competing half-parties. That could have been good fun.
As a GM, once you let a feud develop to a point where a dice-roll can and may cause the death of one PC at the hands of another. You must have something pretty special up your sleeve not to just roll with it. Because it either smacks of GM intervention, or the PC's die. And in this case, both.
Death in P&Ps... part 2
Okay, so, continuing from my previous post - STOP PRESS! Just found out my American friend has just won $200,000! So cool! - killing off player characters in P&Ps can be a tricky situation to get right.
As mentioned in part 1, John Wick in one of his Play Dirty YouTube videos talks about random deaths attributed to a dice roll being trivial. My response to that is its up to the GM to make these deaths not trivial. Its really up to the GM by and large to protect the dramatic flare of the story. This does mean, if the GM can get away with it (i.e. don't ruin the tension by ignoring a dice roll in order to let a PC live) GM's should as E. Gary Gygax allegedly once put it: "Only roll dice for the sound of it." ...at least some of the time. If it feels wrong to kill the character, don't kill the character. But have a few tricks up your sleeve to handle the inevitable fall-out.
If its near the end of the game, and its a dramatic scene, go with it. Build the death up, make it happen in excrutiating detail. Have the PC die in the arms of his comrades. Use all the tricks you see in films to create a scene of drama and tragedy. But you don't want to necessarily milk it. You can also hide the fact, don't draw immediate attention to it. Let the other players continue to fight for awhile (or roll perception rolls to see if anyone has notice a comrade has fallen). And in that way create a more sombre subtle reaction in your remaining players.
Early on in a game, a random death can still be painted as important, and you may want a couple of back-up characters that players can choose from so they can re-enter the game as someone else.
Other techniques I recommend using to make more of the death, and thus avoid the trivial is playing the prophecy card. At a viable place in the future of the game, have the PCs come across a tome, or a manuscript or a bard's tale or a tapestry which concerns the PC's passing, as if it were meant to be. You can also develop this concept further and throw some mystery and magick into the mix by saying that the blood of the fallen PC is now a poison the party can use to kill their archenemy. Go wild, come pre-armed to the game with a couple of well fleshed-out prophecies and then retrospectively apply them to any PC that dies. If you're clever, you can even set them up, hint at them, prior to any deaths (without mentioning who) and then fill in the blanks, or better still have the players reach that conclusion after the death of a PC - and all of a sudden it seems like it was meant to be. And it adds a lot of atmosphere.
Another technique you can employ is have the PC return as a ghost. Work out some decent ghost mechanics for your game, and then employ them at such a juncture. The PC may then still verbally interact with the party, and they might have some fun spooking some enemies. You can even let them periodically interact with the world, pull the odd lever, cause a candle to go out, create a cold draught. Whatever. But be careful here. I use 'ectoplasm points'. i.e. any such ghosts have a limited number of points they can spend on physical actions in the world. The smaller actions, the fewer the points. If they want to shove someone of a ledge for example, it may take all their points in one go and they have to disappear off to the spirit world for awhile to recharge. Ghosts can easily be overpowerful. But careful working out of the supporting mechanics can provide a useful response to the death of a PC.
Another technique is intervention. But use it sparingly. Perhaps once in every other campaign. At a poignant moment have a deity or a representative of a deity, intervene. Do it with drama. Blinding light which transfixes all the mortals in place. A glowing figure lifting the mortally wounded player, words like "It was not your time". And then a sudden transportation to another place. Perhaps even have the players wake up the morning before, and they cannot be sure they didn't have a shared dream. Make them play the lead-up to the death scene again, but now they have some additional knowledge, and hopefully can circumnavigate the risk that previously lead to one of their deaths. You can even have the enemies share the same 'dream'!
Given some thought, no death needs to be trivial. All deaths can be handled correctly. And you can create some memorable scenes from either deaths, or the sidestepping of them.
That said, there's nothing like killing off the character of some player who's acting like a prick. Get them out of your game. Move on with cool players who respect the atmosphere and verisimilitude of your game.
Death in P&Ps...
Okay, so I just watched a video of this GM talking about how he intends to kill one of his player characters tonight. And I can't say how much I disagree with this notion. And it stimulated to write this post.
First off, let me categorically state that I am utterly opposed to planning to kill one of the player characters. That seems like killing for the sake of it. Like its some power-trip for the GM. It has no place, IMHO, in mature gaming. And if a player found out that you set out to kill their character - that you had that objective in mind before you even started the game - I don't think they'd be particularly happy with you. For a start, a GM has ultimate power, above all the gods, and so killing a player is easy, if thats what they want to happen. But as a wise man once said, with great power comes great responsibility.
The only time I would condone planning to kill a PC, is under these particular circumstances. And I've found it works really well to build tension. Sometimes when I'm running a game, one of my experienced players can't make the full session (I tend to game on occassional long weekends these days as mentioned in a previous post), but want to come along for a few hours one evening. If this is the case, and if it fits the game, I ask them if they mind if I kill their character. And I dont tell the other players this is going to happen. In these cases, having a player turn up for a cameo - especially at the beginning of the game. With the other players thinking the cameo player is there for the full session, it comes as a terrible shock when the cameo PC dies after a few short hours, or in the opening scene.
Or perhaps the cameo player rocks up mid-game. Whatever the case, I let the other players believe that the cameo player (I never openly refer to them as that) is going to be there for the rest of the game. They're just a regular player. And wham, I kill them off within a few short hours and it brings shock and tension to the remaining players and their characters. -Man, this guy is serious, he's not pulling any punches!- It works great in any game, but especially horror games which hang off their atmosphere more than any kind of roleplaying. Some genres are more forgiving than others for allowing comic asides. My advice is to avoid them in games where you want players to feel fear and dread.
So apart from that specific example, where you pre-plan with the player's approval that you're going to use their character as shock-tactics to instil fear into the surviving party members, by having them think you're that brutal. I do not condone planning to kill of a PC. It's just to easy anyway. You're the GM, you decide what happens.
So when do I kill off PCs? Death can be a tricky concept to manage in P&P games. On the one hand, players invest a considerable amount of time and effort in developing and playing their characters, so you don't really want to go round slaughtering them willy-nilly. That said, you also don't want them to think their characters are 'immune to the plot' as John Wick puts it. As a GM you often tread a fine line between wanting to kill the PCs to maintain realism and tension, and not wanting to kill them so at least the majority of them experience the full story. After all, much of GMing is about crafting an immersive world in which the players contribute to the story.
I'll happily kill off a PC if the player is repeatedly doing something stupid. Not heeding the warnings, trying to take on too much. Generally playing unrealistically. This has happened a few times in my games. On one particular occassion, in a fantasy game, the players were tricked into opening a daemonic gate. As the rift between worlds began to form, one particularly reckless player said he dived in. I looked at him sternly, hopefully coveying with my expression: "are you freaking nuts?" and gave them once chance to reverse their decision. They repeated they wanted to jump into the gate. So I took them to oneside, described in detail the experience of doing so and what unimaginable horrors awaited them on the other side. I then gave them an extremely hard sanity check to flee. They MADE their sanity check but refused to budge! I shook my head in amazement and led them back to the table. I then announced to all the players the results of this one reckless player's actions. And descibed how bits of him - by all means not all of him - just some random bits, were emitted from the gate a few moments later, bubbling, hissing and still writhing, as if some warped fragment of life still possessed some of the parts, a quivering cheek, a blinking eye torn from its socket. And some greasy loops of intestine which defyed gravity in the vicinity of the gate, and hung there, ejected the last of its faecal matter.
In my next post, I'll talk about some interesting ways you can handle death.
Friday, 5 November 2010
Historical weapons vs enchanted weapons...
This is a brilliant concept posited by my brother, which I instantly adopted for my fantasy gameworld. The notion is simple. Items that played a significant role in a significant event and have been around for awhile, pick up a kind of natural magick - like a background radiation of sorts - which signifies their historic usage somehow.
For example, when Druyen singlehandedly kept back the Orc Raiders at the Fall of Desemony, so that the orphans could escape, before finally falling to a hundred arrows (always exagerate the tale!). The broadsword he used, over time, becomes a historic weapon. 200 years later in another game, the broadsword is known as Druyen's Revenge and turns cold in the presence of orcs (because Desemony was a fort in the frozen, far north) and bestows a bonus when fighting orcs, and a defensive bonus upon its wielder. The weapon has accrued magick based on its epic usage.
Such items are different to artefacts created purposefully by enchanters to possess specific powers. And not only serve well to enrich the background of the game, but you may wish to have them operate in explicitly different ways. For example, historic items cannot have their powers dispelled.
Either way, I think its a great idea. Have fun with it.
Thanks goes to Olly for that one. He does have his uses. =)
Player impact on the game world...
One of the advantages of running games in a world that you've developed over the years, is that you know it so well. Personally I never (almost never) set my games in places derived from other people's fiction. I don't run games in the Star Trek universe, or the Star Wars universe, or on Middle Earth or in the Elric books. Though I have been tempted to run a game set in the Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials world with armoured bears and shape-shifting daemons. Might do that one day. There is an advantage derived from doing it however, especially if your audience is familiar with the milieu. You can add a lot of atmosphere just by setting a game in a certain universe. I however prefer to make up my own shit.
This however has meant that I now have a fantasy gameworld (amongst other genres) which has been developed over more than 25 years, and spans six Ages. Each with their own distinct events which characterise those Ages. Now when I choose to run a game, I usually start with a rough idea of a plot, or story and think, which Age (if its a fantasy game), best suits this story. And the thing practically writes itself. But that's getting off the point. I want to talk about player impact upon the world.
This is a fundamental which MMOs get so wrong, and one of the tragic flaws with WoW for example. But I won't get into WoW and explaining why either, that is for another post. What I want to do here is explain how you in classic P&P adventures, imbed some essential player impact into your games. And there's many ways one can achieve this.
When running a game in a world that players have gamed in before, with different characters, there's an easy thing you can do. Its a no-brainer, it has little impact on the new game (possibly) but just goes to add a bit of flavour to the proceedings, and I have used this mechanism several times. Statues. Now let me explain:
Place statues of previous PCs (from a game set in a previous Age) in a key location. A town square. A fort that was saved from destruction by a rampaging dragon 1000 years ago. Whatever your players do. If they do something cool, have the locals erect statues to them. Then when you play a subsequent game, set 500 years later, have the new party come across statues of the old party. Give the players a little warm feeling inside.
Similar things can be done with portraits, bards' songs, tombs, historical weapons. The latter is a great one. Have a PC wield a sword that was once wielded by the Great (insert previous PC's name) at the battle of wherever. Give the weapon appropriate bonuses (which reminds me, must do a post on historical weapons vs arcane weapons). But I'm sure you get the idea.
In games set in a more modern genre, contemporary or futuristic for example, you can have previous PCs turn up on the covers of old magazines, or listed in Who's Who 2121. Or have spaceships named after them. Or protocols etc. "Captain, may I recommend we initiate Defense Plan Erasmus?" Says the NPC 2nd officer. Where Erasmus was a PC from an earlier game that evaded enemy capture by faking the evacuation of his own starcruiser whilst it was being boarded.
Whatever the setting of your game, there are myriad ways you can resurrect past memories of previous games by referring back to the epic exploits of PCs gone by.
Player character backgrounds
I'm a firm believer in working with players to develop characters that are well-wrought and properly embedded in the game. Even if its just for a one-off game.
I like to provide as much information about my gameworld that they (as characters) would realistically know, and let the players develop a character that fits in with the world, the situation and the particular aspect of the story that the game is going to cover.
In this way its easier to create tension in the game. We know that character A's father was savaged by wolves. So now we can introduce some wolves later in the game. We know that character B's mother went missing and is remarkable because she had eyes of different colour (heterochromia). So later we introduce an old crazy beggar woman with heterochromia. Is it the PC's ma? No one can be sure... to begin with.
All these things serve to make a rich tapestry of game story. And all of them can be leveraged.
There's also a few game mechanic techniques one can employ to help develop these concepts. I like to use:
1. Bloodlines. No matter what race the character is (and I use my own races rather than the standard elves and dwarves etc.). But no matter what the race is, I present at least two different bloodlines which the player can choose from. Whilst they are the same race ostensibly, the use of bloodlines offers some subtle variants between the two. A generic example of this (not from my gameworld) would be Men. With bloodlines of High Men and Nomads, or you could call them Nobles and Gypsies. They're the same race per se, but have subtle yet significant differences which influence background and prior experience.
2. Childhood. No matter what your character is, they grew up somewhere and developed some skills - before they became a warrior, a sorcerer, a bandit, or whatever. Some skills are fixed and relate to where the character grew up, or what race they are. Other skills might have been derived from their parents. Father was a ranger, so character gets basic tracking and basic herbalism, for example.
3. Star Sign. Tho I hold little truck with zodiac in real life - I don't believe in zodiac, I just believe in aquarians. =) - I like to use them in my games. But under names like Sign of Thief, Sign of the Wolf, Sign of the Sage etc. Each culture (race) in my gameworld has a slightly different take on these (more variants) but basically each Sign bends the character slightly, providing it with minor bonuses in keeping with that sign. I.e. a thief character born under the Sign of the Thief, will have a few extra points on agility and sneak. One born under the Sign of the Sage, will have a few extra points on reasoning and diplomacy, whilst the Sign of the Beast might convey a character with some decent fighting skills, despite the fact they're a thief (perhaps turning them into more of a thug). But it doesn't take much to develop a zodiac like system for your game, and it adds a nice flavour to the characters.
4. Secret societies. This is something Paranoia taught me. In my fantasy world I have a number of different secret societies. I don't necessarily give every player a society. Some societies are fairly small, local affairs, based solely in a particular city for example. Some span continents and races with agenda's that date back Ages and over-rule other petty prejudices such as race and profession. i.e. a Human Mage and an Elf Ranger may have little in common until they learn that they are both members of the Order of the Night's Eye. All of a sudden these characters have a bond which trangresses their birthplace. Members of secret societies may also know some secret signs of recognition, or even have a secret language. All of which can be used to enhance the game. ...You see what appears to be a crescent moon etched into the gate-post....
5. Forbidden secret. This can be different to the above and far more vague. But its another great tool for providing PCs with interesting backgrounds. Imagine if your character's father was a murderer. Or the character had accidentally killed his own mother, and no one had ever found out. Or the character had elven blood in them (1/8 elf, something like that). Or was a serial killer. There are all sorts of things you can provide the PC with to enrich their background. Player suggestions welcome!
6. Heirlooms. Have the player inherit his great grandfather's sword, or ring, or castle. You don't even have to tell them straight away. Or tell them what power it may or may not possess, or even tell them much about the relative that bestowed them with it. There's nothing quite like adding a bit of mystery to the game by having a lawyer rock up and thrust a scroll into a PCs hand which is the deed to a rundown castle in some backwater province. You can even set an adventure (or sub-adventure) there!
Okay, not all of these necessarily fall into the remit of game mechanics. But they can do. All you need to do is have them influence the dice in some way, under some specific condition of the game. Also, you don't have to provide every character with every one of the above. I played a great game GMed by my brother years ago now, in which each character was a member of a secret society (in some cases more than one!) and as such had hidden agendas and who they were friendly with in open-game, would actually be their arch-rival if they only knew which secret society they belonged to. But that's for another post.
Come to think of it, I'm sure there's some classic ones missing from this list. If anyone would like to comment on this post with some suggestions of additional tools for enhancing player-character backgrounds, be my guest!
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
Educating players... + heroism and courage
So this isn't going to be a post about Player Impact as I had previously intended. That'll have to come later.
Here John Wick talks about a suggestion he made to a friend who was running a High Fantasy game for his 16 year old daughter. I heartily recommend checking it out. Nice idea of how to educate careless characters.
Mr Wick is actually talking about heroism and courage, but I like it as an idea to educate players.
On courage and heroism, I recall a game I played in - not GMed, for once! - many years ago. The party journeyed into these subterranean caverns which transpired to be the lair of some hideous spider god cult. On the way in we were confronted with a pit-trap. In the floor before us was a huge pit, hundreds if not thousands of feet deep. Hanging from the ceiling above it, dead centre, was a rope.
One agile member of our party (to whom we attached a safety rope) ran and made a jump for the rope dangling above the pit. As soon as he grasped it, the entire section of the ceiling to which it was attached dropped down, slottingd perfectly into the mouth of the pit and stopped, thereby creating a floor over the hole. The trouble was, our thief was now trapped under this 'floor' dangling from the rope within the now sealed pit. Thank goodness we had him tied to that safety line.
He decided to let go of the dangling rope and trust in the safety line. As soon as he did so, the section of ceiling that slotted into and blocked the mouth of the pit, rose rapidly to form the ceiling again. Effectively reopening the pit. We pulled our thief to safety.
So we had a problem. How to get across? The pit is too wide to jump. The inside of the pit walls too smooth to climb, even for our agile thief. What we did was this: We tied a rope to our thief and got our brawny dwarf fighter to hurl the rest of it, in a big coil, across the pit to the other side. This he managed on his second attempt. The thief then made a jump for the rope dangling from the ceiling. Sure enough the ceiling dropped and slotted into the mouth of the pit again and our thief clung on for a count of 30. Meanwhile the rest of the party ran across the 'ceiling now floor' and grabbed the rope which had been hurled across, and which was now being trapped by the dropped ceiling section, but still attached to our thief dangling beneath.
With the party comfortably across, when the thief got to 30 he let go. The ceiling rose once again, but the party had hold of the other rope and we pulled our thief to safety. We had safely negotiated the pit trap.
Or so we thought.
The trouble came about five hours later in the game, when we had disturbed some foul spider god ritual and were now being pursued by a bunch of psychopathic cultists (aren't they all?) and a handful of giant spiders, and were fleeing back out of the dungeon. With the thief in front the party rounds the corner, runs up the passageway and realises they now have to negotiate the pit trap again, in order to escape. Trouble is they don't have enough time to tie a rope around the thief, hurl it across the pit, have the thief jump for the dangling rope, blah blah blah. The cultists are hot on their heals, and outnumber the party about five to one. If they stand and fight, the party will unlikely survive.
There is a moments hesitation. And then the dwarf fighter in a moment of extreme courage, heroism and self-sacrifice jumps for the rope himself. He only just makes it. And once again the ceiling slides down into place, forming a floor over the pit. The party run across the pit and turn around to face the cultists. As soon as the dwarf hears the second set of pounding footsteps across the ceiling above him (which he guesses are the pursuing cultists, he lets go of the rope. The dwarf plummets... and we never hear him hit. Of course as soon as he lets go the 'floor come ceiling' rapidly rises into place again, crushing the few cultists that were on it at the time. The remaining cultists are on the other side of the pit and hurl rocks at the party as they retreat in stunned silence. Their warrior, the brusque dwarf fighter had sacrificed himself so that they might live.
That scene remains one of the most memorable in my history of roleplaying.
Can't remember the name of the dwarf now. But it was played by the inimitable Chris Hart. (A valuable addition to any game. No one gets more scared, and infects the rest of the party with fear like Chris).
Thanks mate. =)
The images below illustrate how the pit-trap works, in case my explanation confounded you....
1. Shows the trap unactivated.
Some considerations when writing dialogue...
What place has this post in a blog about game design? Well, in P&P a GM will often find themselves needing to convey some key pieces of information, to drive the plot forward, through one of the many NPCs present in the world. So some techniques that apply to novels and film, also apply to some extent to P&P.
1) Be true to the voice of the character.
What I mean by this is don't let your character draw on information they would not be privy to. If you penalise your players for 'speaking out of character' then the same rule is at least as important for your NPCs. Also the character must sound convincing, i.e. if they are a peasant, and thus largely uneducated, don't let them use long words or say much on high concepts. Your characters must sound authentic. Sound a surgeon sounds like a surgeon and surgeonly tales to tell.
If you get this right, like all techniques, you can then start to subvert it. Have a character that appears to be a peasant, talk like a peasant 98% of the time, but slips up occassionally, giving a hint to perceptive players/characters that they may not be all they seem.
2) Reveal something about the character.
This comes down to painting the richest picture of your NPCs as you can, as this all adds to atmosphere. You will often find as well, that knowing your NPCs well, not only makes their voice (dialogue) more convincing, and your game detail richer and thus more fulfilling to play; but in exposing (quite often on the fly) some seemingly irrelevant element of their backstory, you sometimes can introduce a gem of an idea which you can refer to time and time again and which becomes an additional thread (or even subplot) you can weave and add into your story. Some of the best twists I've added to my games, came about on the fly, whilst talking in character, which I then later worked into the plot (as if it the game had been designed that way - GM's prerogative I call it!).
3) Drive the plot forward.
Just like in the movies, your characters are speaking for a reason. So they should drive the plot forward. Where possible. This can be acheived even when a player character is conversing with an incidental NPC because the player is barking up the wrong tree, or investigating a red herring or dead end. When I say drive the plot forward I mean, literally that, or setting the players on the right path. Whilst I hate rail-roading players, P&P is afterall the ur-example of sandbox games, and rail-roading should not come into it. You do have a story to tell, and want your players to make the most of it. Getting your players to get involved in the right story in a rich world glutted with subplots is an art in itself.
My treatment of magick
First off, I always write 'magick'. I learnt this from Crowley. But I am referring still to P&P.
Secondly, in order to support my notion of 'story comes first', I have always strived to create the richest possible backdrops for my games to take place in. Regardless of system (no longer an issue, because I use my own) or genre.
In fantasy games, one of the things that frequently frustrated me, was the almost commonplace and throw-away nature of the concept of magick and spell-casting. This, to me at least, sucked a lot of the atmosphere out of magick. Magic-users in many games, being as about as unusual as bakers or blacksmiths. So for my gameworld I set about sewing rich threads of magick into the tapestry of the land.
First came my historical understanding of what magic was, and it is this which I will begin by imparting.
In my games, magick is essentially a dialogue between sorcerers (the generic name for spell-casters) and intelligences that exist in dimensions beyond our own. By 'our own' I mean those typically inhabited by the players.
And for you to understand what I mean by this, I need to really explain a philosophical concept I have concerning the nature of reality - and this applies to the real world as much as it does any gameworld.
On the one hand I believe that in all likelihood what you see is what you get. There are no gods, no afterlife, nothing spiritual. That said, you can kind of leave the subject alone, it requires no more thought. And that provides one with plenty of opportunity to consider other possibilities. And one concept that intrigues me is as follows.
And it goes a little something like this:
If one considers that potentiality - i.e. the potential that something might exist is a dimension of sorts, than this could have been the trigger to the big bang. There was a chance that something could exist, so in one flavour of reality, something did exist, and in realising itself suddenly came into being.
And just as the big bang brought into existence the three physical dimensions we inhabit, and the fourth we call 'Time', then so it also brought into being all the other dimensions that theoretical physics claims may, or must exist. And the probable many others we (as an inherently limited species) haven't a clue about.
So just as humans have evolved to inhabit and be aware of (to some extent) these four dimensions (we can call them 1,2,3 and T), we can sumise that we may rub shoulders with some other dimensions, and perhaps are even influenced by some we have no real grasp of.
And if you consider that a possibility, then it naturally follows that some other 'intelligences' may also have evolved to inhabit and appreciate other subsets of dimensions. Some may overlap with ours, and some maybe so far removed from ours that never the twain shall meet.
In this model of the universe, it is not necessarily far-fetched to imagine that some intelligences have evolved which inhabit and largely dominate most dimensions. To us, these beings would seem as gods. And to stretch the notion one step further, then one can also describe a Supreme Being as that entity which incorporates all dimensions. But we really don't need to go there.
Lets then apply this philosophical (dare I say theological) model to the archetypal P&P gameworld. All of a sudden we are presented with the notion that 'Dream' can be a dimension, and even 'Luck' can be a dimension. In my games, intelligences can utilise the dimension of Dream to converse through symbol and allegory with other intelligences. And by studying such symbol and allegory a perceptive man may unlock some hidden secrets of how the universe works beyond the remit of his regular dimensions. To the uninitiated such feats would appear as magick.
In the history of my gameworld, this is the case. Gods (read: complex intelligences inhabiting many dimensions) reproduce not in the physical way that corporeal beings do, but by 'evolving' such lesser beings to appreciate (and thus be privy to) extra dimensions. As such, magick is thus a route to eventual deification. However, the journey is long and arduous and frought with disaster and the vast majority of sorcerers die before ever attaining the knowledge.
In the history of my world, the first age is known as the Age of Ancients, or the Age of History and although I have never set a campaign or run a game which operates in this first age, it is a backdrop to all of my games. In this age, people were primitive, tribal and magic had not yet been 'discovered'. One such tribe, known as the Eidemak, employed a soothsayer / witchdoctor type character to advise of matters spiritual. During a routine hallucinogenic ritual, he and his apprentice witnessed what they referred to as a Falling Star. A meteorite, which tore across the heavens and slammed into the earth. Thanks to the use of their hallucinogens, the passage of this meteor was forever marked indelibly on their minds' eye.
The soothsayer sent his young apprentice out into the snowy wastelands to track the passage of this Falling Star to its resting place.
The star was in fact a method employed by higher intelligences of raising the conciousness of primitive folk such as these, and it contained two materials, a mineral substance, which later became known as Arcanite, and a metallic substance called Star Iron. In conjunction these two materials served to warp and enhance some subtle dimensions which rubbed shoulders with these physical planes. And notably that of Dream. So as the young Eidemak - as it is lost in the history of my world if the name of the people was Eidemak, or it was the name of the apprentice, specifically - gathered up some samples of this meteor, he opened himself up to the realm of Dream and using this channel strange intelligences whispered to him each night as he slept, and taught him secrets about the world.
By the time he reached home, he had become the land's first sorcerer, able to bend reality (albeit not very ably initially). And so it came to pass that magick was brought to the world.
So thats the first thing I did. Explain magick. But in doing so, hopefully I have kept some mystery.
So in the history of my gameworld, all magick can be traced back to these simple origins. And from there I draw out a family tree of notable sorcerers. Across the two subsequent ages when magick evolved rapidly, different schools of magick came into being, with notable exponents and originators. Essentially, what I did here was give a slight nod to D&D and expand massively (on what I believe to be their failing).
In D&D you have spells like Tenser's floating disc, and Milf's magic arrow. Or something like that. =) I can't remember exactly, its been a long time. Because I used the Rolemaster system, I had all the RM spell-lists as the basis for magic in my world, and what I did was create particular and specific personalities to support those spells. i.e. I have an infamous NPC called Ladumon (of the 2nd Age), who is generally accepted to be the originator of all spells which distort physical dimensions, i.e. teleportation and bags of holding are all down to him. I have effectively created a Who's Who of Sorcerers for my games. So any spell a player casts has a history and ultimately an author. This I have found to be extremely useful in helping to create a rich backdrop, and thus atmosphere for the magickal aspects of my games.
This also provides players with an opportunity to craft their own spells. Following a school of thought, a particular style of magick, and the teachings of the Past Masters in that school gives them a direction in which to further evolve that school.
The other thing I did with magick is use Presence (Charisma) as the defining stat for sorcerers, and also made magickal aptitude extremely rare and marked by heterochromia (a difference between the colours of each eye, i.e. left eye blue, right eye brown). This makes sorcerers 1) rare, 2) unusual to look at, and 3) mightily charismatic so you can't ignore them when they walk down the street. This later element is not always an advantage. As charismatic people are noticed and thus generally find it hard to blend into a crowd.
What I have found is this approach has certainly spiced up the roles of sorcerers in my games. All of a sudden magic-using isn't just another character-class option. It scintillates.
Its in ways such as these that a GM can create mood and atmosphere and ultimately get one step closer to the desired objective or painting the richest, most enthralling picture of an alternate world possible. And a world that players buy into effortlessly.
I love it when that happens. As this supports something I mentioned several posts earlier. Part of the joy of roleplaying for me is setting up a scene and sitting back and listening to the players discuss it. By providing players with the richest possible tapestry, its far easier to do this.
My recommendation then for those of you wanting to run your own game. Know your world. Populate it with well-wrought characters and events. Create a timeline and well-defined settings, and give your players as much information (that they would be privy to) as possible. Its like an author knowing their characters, so that when they write dialogue, that dialogue is believable.
This gives me an idea for two new posts: 1) General tips on running a game. 2) General tips on writing dialogue. All of which under the ever-present IMHO caveat.
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