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!

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.

 2. Shows the trap activated, with the thief dangling from the rope, safety line in place.

 3. Shows the trap activated for a second time, with the safety line tossed to the other side (prior to activation).

 4. Shows the remaining party members (in truth there were five but I couldn't be arsed to draw them all) scamper to the other side.

 5. Shows the thief let go from the dangling, trap-activating rope, and being hauled to safety by his party.  I didn't bother drawing the trap to illustrate the sacrifice of the dwarf... it was just too sad.

 

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.

Players contribute to the drama...

...in more ways than you might think.  Yes in P&Ps of course players contribute to the drama.  As I've hinted at before the art of good GMing is only telling half a story.  You need to be remarkably restrained at points and allow the players to determine the outcome, and even in some cases be open to the notion of rewriting aspects of your story, in response to what players sometimes generate themselves (though you never tell them this!  Well, not in-game of course!).

But players can contribute in other ways too.  I've mentioned previously my concept of a magic item known approximately as The Oneironautic Pendant, which creates the possibility for the player to some extent define an aspect of the game.  But John Wick presents another interesting mechanic in his previously mentioned YouTube videos on game design.

Here he talks about the notion of allowing players to determine the outcome of spectacular successes or failures.  Now I haven't had the opportunity to playtest this concept yet, and I fear that it is fraught with potential misuse, but moderated well could present for some really interesting scenes.

It has been said that Hitchcock once said of film-making, words akin to: "Movies are simply some interesting scenes strung together with dialogue."  P&P games are much the same.  But with two kinds of dialogue, that spoken by the characters, and that spoken by the players.  Its like watching a DVD with commentary on.

...in a way.

Narrative devices in TV shows

I like Fringe.  For me it was a bit of a slow-burner, but transpired to be excellent.  It bears some similarities to X-Files, and employs some clever devices which work well to drive the narrative.  Its some of these, and devices used in other shows, which I'm going to explore here:

Please be aware, this post contains spoilers!

1) John Scott's memories.

It is revealed early on in season one of Fringe, that Agent Olivia Dunham has absorbed some of the memories of her former lover, and FBI partner, John Scott.  I won't spoil how this came about but what transpires is a wonderful device the writers can utilise on a whim to drive the plot forward:  anything Dunham looks at may trigger a memory of John Scott's.  Thus, without knowing why, she may have a feeling or an association with a particular event, person, place etc.  This is utilised several times in the first season to great effect.  And essentially acts like a 'gut feeling' with some concrete foundation.  The genius comes into play because the writers can pick it up and drop it as a tool, as they see fit.  Thus if they get to a sticky point in any particular narrative they can simply play the "Dunham recalls a John Scott memory" card.  In fact, it is a similar device, and allows me to segue nicely on to...

2) Walter Bishop's 'insanity'.

Walter Bishop is a savant.  A genius so genius he is a genius in multiple fields. This sets up a nice device for the writers to use.  Fundamentally, Walter is an extremely useful character able to solve the vast majority of scientific dilemmas the characters face in the show.  However, in order to control the output of these solutions, the writers cleverly make the Walter Bishop character pretty flaky.  His 'insanity' means that sometimes he's off in a world of his own, which means just when they need him to utilise his genius to solve a particular issue, he can't always be relied upon, and is away with the fairies.  This creates for tension when tension is needed, and solutions when solutions are needed.

The counterpoint to 2) is how the Heroes TV series was nearly hoist by its own petard. In season one of that show, Peter Petrelli discovers he is an empath.  In the mythology of that show this means he can absorb other people's powers, just by standing near them.  This creates for a potential narrative blackhole, which I described to a bunch of friends over a meal one night.  The trouble is, if Peter has half an ounce of brains, he could (towards the end of the first season) teleport himself to Molly Walker (the little girl with the power to locate anyone).  He then absorbs her power automatically, and then can target anyone in the world with a power, teleport to their location, absorb their power, rinse and repeat.  Pretty quickly Peter would become godlike in his ability, and Sylar, and indeed anyone else wouldn't be able to stop him.

This is a pretty good example of the dangers of writers writing themselves into a hole.  Only really happens with writers dealing with fantastic subject matters like special powers, mind.

The way Heroes writers got round this problem was to have Peter stripped of all his abilities, and when he regains his empathy, have it limited to one power at a time.  i.e. he has to ditch his current power to take on a new one.

Co-op in video games

An aspect of contemporary, online video game design I think is much undervalued and potentially unappreciated by many development houses is co-operative play.  And my appreciation of it probably stems from my P&P pedigree. Afterall, P&P is almost, almost, all about co-op to a large extent.

The amount of P&P games which are solos (i.e. only feature one player character) vs the amount that feature more than one player character is a testament to this.  And even solo games will frequently feature some form of collaboration between PC and NPCs.

MMOs obviously include co-op elements of gameplay pretty much by standard.  But other genres can benefit from this aswell.  I'm thinking in particularly about FPS.  One of my favourite genres.  I've been an avid fan of Counter-Strike and the Battlefield series in the past, but must admit rarely play FPS these days.  That said, I am currently stumbling through Bioshock.

Whilst FPS as a genre has covered co-op play in several notable examples, rarely is it pure co-op.  I.e. players vs AI.  It is typically players vs players.  And I still think there is a lot of fun to be had from players vs AI.  And also possibly a gentler experience for some of us older gamers, than having our collective asses handed to us by some cola'd up pre-teen with reflexes like a vat-grown ninja.

Other games I think would benefit from co-op.  I'd love to see a co-op mod for Assassins Creed II, which I've recently (admittedly I came to it late) completed.  Great game btw Ubisoft.

What's the point of this blog?

Now I probably posted something similar on this subject back in 2008 when I started this erratic blog.  But I can't be bothered to look back and check.

I just wanted to say that this blog is about:

1) Pen & Paper (P&P) roleplaying games.
2) Game design in general, including video games

There is a crossover there.  I'm a  firm believer that good game design is not necessarily platform specific.  And things learnt in one medium can frequently be utilised (perhaps with suitable modification) in another.

As in P&P narrative and story feature so highly on my list of 'things one must do well' - I'll probably also bring in some devices used in good TV shows and film.  Because these may also influence game design.

Yes, I know the title kind of suggests its all about P&P, but it isn't.  Try and see P&P as the bedrock of game design.  And if I think of a title which adequately encompasses all I want to witter on about, I'll let you know... and alter things accordingly.

Experience Points & reward in short games

Just to focus on mechanics for a moment.  Though this does require some back story.

So, back in the day:

In the early years of my roleplaying 'career', I generally participated in more than one game per week.  By participated I mean either played or GM'd.  There was usually one 'serious' game going on, and a least one 'filler' game, generally more humourous.

The 'serious' games were generally long-running, involving at least one major session a week (maybe on the weekend) sometimes more if all the players could make it and we could squeeze it in.  But these were back in the day when I (and the majority of the players) were in our teens, and so can afford the luxury of defining our recreational time to a large extent.  This meant that games could (and often did) go on for months and even years.  It was really the golden age of P&P for many of us, and playing games under these circumstances meant that the mechanic of Experience Points (or XP) could be used to full effect.

For those of you 'in the know', and by that I mean have some experience of P&Ps, you'll appreciate that XP has two major uses in a game.  Firstly, it is the point-accrual system which influences, in most systems, how rapidly characters develop their skills and abilities.  Although game systems vary, most games award XP for things like: killing monsters or opponents, attaining significant goals in the plot, discovering new areas, accomplishing some major feat, and for actually roleplaying - and by that I mean playing true to your character.

This last factor is especially important, and a device I use frequently to ensure players do not corrupt the atmosphere by suddenly talking about last nights episode of Family Guy, just when I'm trying to create some tension.  Or by acting on some piece of knowledge that they as a player are familiar with, but which their character would have no knowledge of.  And more subtley such aspects as being true to the philosophy of their culture, or profession or hidden agenda or... you get the idea.

As a GM, I award XP in two major ways: On the fly, i.e. in the moment.  If a player performs something miraculous, or comes up with a gem of an idea, or plays in character in a particularly significant way, I'll maybe right then and there slap an extra 500, or a 1000 XP on them.  This can be done swiftly, without much chance of jeopardizing atmosphere, and I have learnt is generally a good way to keep players in check.  Reminding them what they should be doing.  The reverse is also true.  A player plays out of character: minus 500 XP.

I also, in campaigns, do a roundup at the end of each session, and reward points for monsters killed, special acheivements, blah blah blah.  This is a chance for players to speak up and tell me what they think they did well, and I'll go round the table bestowing points.  It also serves as a good device for recapping on some key moments in the narrative of the game, and for the players to re-live some cool scenes.

The trouble is, long gone are the days when I could get the same group of players together, once a week, for several months or ideally longer, to play out a fulfilling campaign.  These days, my P&P fraternity have to arrange highly focused P&P 'long weekends'.  Running these games requires a far more episodic approach to constructing the gaming narrative.  Generally we start gaming on a friday evening, play as far into the night as we can manage, resume after breakfast on saturday - continue for as much of the day, and as far into the night as possible; resume after breakfast on sunday, and so on.  Typically rounding up on sunday evening, or if we can arrange it, we carry on through the monday as well.  This gives us on the whole around 30 hours to game in.  So under these circumstances, the classic system of awarding XP to control behaviour and award good play is largely irrelevant, as such episodic games don't benefit from the multiple sessions of a campaign, characters don't develop in that way, i.e. from session to session... and so the inter-game mechanic of XP award and reward is irrelevant.

Thus, some while ago I began to ponder how best to make use of XP in these short, episodic games.  I.e. How to use XP intra-game.

The mechanic I developed is (loosely) thus:


I still award XP in and for the ways mentioned above.  But now I allow players to take 1% of their awarded XP and use it to modify dice-rolls, in-game.  Thus, a player, mid-session has earnt 3500 XP.  This equates to 35 'luck points'.  i.e. being able to 'luckily' modify the dice in their favour.  They can use this 35 all on one roll.  Or spend it a bit at a time.  (I should point out at this juncture that I run games using percentage dice - d100).

I developed this mechanic for the last game I ran, and it worked very well, because not only did it condition players to operate in the right way, stay in character, be true to the atmosphere of the game.  By allowing them to occassionally influence the dice, they sometimes, when needed, we able to perform miraculous feats which made for some memorable scenes in the game.

For a later post I will be discussing an interesting mechanic I have just been made aware from game-designer John Wick's YouTube videos on the Game Design Seminars he runs. They're a couple of years old, but I've just discovered them, and there seems to be some interesting stuff in there.  I'm just about to resume watching his episode 2...

You can find John Wick's stuff here.