Supply Lines as World Building
One of the easiest ways to continue building a campaign world and add depth to the game environment is to question the supply lines required to allow the world, or any given area, to function properly. Building supply lines allows players to see a more complete version of the world, as well as providing an interesting backdrop for adventures.
In addition to using supply lines as a place for raiders and thieves to attack merchants and adventure groups, using the depots, warehouses, and bases for these suppliers provides a new and interesting place for encounters, whether they be combat related or not. The new environment will provide a chance for players to show off their ingenuity by taking advantage of circumstances that aren’t always there, such as causing a leak in a brewery to slick the floor, or using the kiln of a smelter to dispose of evidence.
Gaming Lessons from the Great Gatsby
In high school, one of the assignments I faced was reading the Great Gatsby, writing reports on it and taking tests on it. While normally not a problem for me, I found myself unable to read the book past the first few chapters. This was not because the book was poorly written, boring, or of no interest to me. Quite the contrary.
The characters in the book were all horrible people, the kind I found myself surrounded by at school and hating with an unrelenting vehemence. The characters were, in fact, portrayed so well, and in such detail that soon I was unable to read more than a few paragraphs without throwing the book down and storming out of the room in anger and frustration.
As Narrators, we can face a temptation to do something similar, frustrating our players. It is particularly tempting, and easy to rationalize, doing this in order to facilitate role-playing or setting the mood for a game. This can be particularly useful for creating the same feeling of attrition for the players which their characters might be feeling in the game. It can also often be easier to present the players with something you know they will respond to, not because of their characters, but because of the players own tendencies.
When doing so, however, we break one of the primary rules of running a game: ensuring that everyone has a good time. Players who throw their arms up in true frustration are no longer having fun, and will actually role-play less as a result. Eventually, their involvement in the game as a whole may begin to suffer.
It’s better instead to encourage players to truly role-play the emotions and feelings of their characters. Players will often have a lot of fun playing out the anger and frustrations of their characters, the irrationalities, and the sense of desparation; if they can’t or won’t in a given situation, then it’s probably better left skipped.
Does anyone else have any ideas or insights on how to create a mood or role-playing situation without letting the negative aspects cross over from the characters to their players?
Incorporating a New PC
Martin Ralya over at Treasure Tables brought up an interesting question today, How do you incorporate a new character into an existing campaign?
As I always encourage my players to role-play, I am almost always happy to let them sit around half the night as they get to know the new character. It provides a good chance for them to develop the character more fully, and it gives the other players a chance to get to know this new character, allowing for richer and easier role-playing to follow.
Sometimes, however, this just isn’t appropriate. Whether due to pacing issues, the PCs being about to embark on a harrowing quest which had built up a lot of excitement and anticipation, or players just not feeling up to spending the evening role-playing, another solution is needed.
The simplest and best solution I have found is to introduce the new PC as being a friend or family member of either the person who died or a survivor in the group. This makes the new PCs credibility easy to establish, without disrupting Suspension of Disbelief or stunting role-playing opportunities later on. Better yet, it lets the party continue onward as soon as they desire.
This method shouldn’t be hard for most people to accept. It provides role-playing opportunities for those who enjoy them, and allows them to skip arduous role-playing scenes for those who don’t.
LARP: A Tale of Two Games
The following is a comparison between two experiences I had with two different LARPs, and an analysis of the small crucial differences between how the two games are run and feel when played.
At the end of 2005, I had been playing RPGs for nearly ten years, yet I still had not played a LARP, a Live Action Role Playing Game. This type of game was not nearly as popular in my area as the Table Top variant, and was in fact looked down upon by many gamers - those who played in LARPs were seen to be even more geeky and nerdy, to a level that was perceived as strange, if not scary. This idea was enforced by several of the more prominent LARPers in the area who happened to fit an archetype, that of the 28 year old man, paler than a corpse, living in his parent’s basement and working at a store soley for the employee discounts it would bring him on Magic cards, video games, and books. Despite the description, I would get to know several of these people years later, only to discover they were fairly normal.
In December of 2005, however, I was planning to attend PhilCon and saw on the program schedule that a game of Cthulhu Live (a LARP based on Call of Cthulhu) was going to be run on the second night. Unable to resist, I promptly signed up and filled out a questionaire about what kind of player I was and what kind of character I would be willing to play. The anticipation built for a month.
When I inquired for more details at the Convention itself, I discovered that the game was being run by representatives from Skirmisher Publishing, and would be using the third edition of the game, which had not yet been released. The game was to last four hours, with all the players using pre-generated characters. They explained the rules, which took less than five minutes and were very simple and sensible:
Everything but combat proceeded in real time, players could call a GM over at any time to ask questions or attempt something by using one of their characters skills. If combat was declared, time was slowed and players declared their actions using a tick-based initiative system. If you were proficient with a weapon which you had use of at the time and were within range of your target, you were assumed to hit and deal a set amount of damage unless your target had managed to shield themselves.
To put it mildly, I had never had more fun playing a game. To be fair, there were some problems with it, all of which were imposed by the fact that it was a four hour session for a one shot game at a convention. If you have ever played a Call of Cthulhu game, you’re probably well aware that it is impossible to complete in four hours, except by all the players dying.
In the two years following, I received several invitations to join a LARP game of Vampire: The Masquerade from friends and acquantainces I had gamed with in the past. Remembering the fun I had playing Cthulhu Live, I accepted the first offer I could schedule into my plans. Before the night of the game, I poured over several books for the game and designed a character with the help of one of the older players. Satisfied with the result, I eagerly waited for my first night in this new game.
The reality of the game shattered the polished look on the surface of the system and the enticing environment it provided to play in, both of which I had been so enamored with. Execution of the rules seemed to grind the game to a halt, which had the unfortunate side effect of shattering the immersion of the game - which for me, is the best part of playing a LARP.
Every time there was a conflict or someone had to use a skill, role playing would cease for a moment while players and Story Tellers stopped to play Rock-Paper-Scissors, often several games consecutively. This one aspect of the game literally stopped me from enjoying it, despite everything else that was great about the game, because it destroyed any sense of immersion that I had, it wrecked my Suspension of Disbelief.
This was the fundamental difference between my experiences with the two games. Vampire had a resolution system which interferred with immersion, while Cthulhu Live side-stepped the problem entirely by adopting a Diceless resolution system. Other LARP systems have adopted a different Diceless system, wherein combat is played out by the players, using a physical representation of combat instead of a symbolic one based on stats or a randomizer.
Has anyone else seen a game that was ruined by a relatively small part of the game, or found that a game’s system looked good on paper, but felt impossible to execute properly?
“Instant” Spell Duration
Many spells in Dungeons and Dragons and other Fantasy RPGs have a duration which is listed as “Instant” or “Instantaneous,” meaning that the moment casting is complete, the spell’s effects have taken place, and the magical energies of the spell have been consumed or disippated by the spell’s effects. The description of many spells, however, would seem to contradict this element of the descriptor. The two most well known examples are Lightning Bolt and Burning Hands, which describe the duration as “Instantaneous,” but also describe the spell’s as being released through the caster’s finger tips, and traveling towards their respective targets.
Though normally innocuous, this slight contradiction can bring up some problems when explored and/or exploited by a curious player. These spells cannot be truly Instananeous, if their effects and energies do not expire before traveling; an action which inherently takes time. While this problem will rarely crop it’s head directly when it comes to gameplay, some players may try to exploit the inconsistancy, and many players may suffer a small disruption of Suspension of Disbelief, and the Sense of Possibility. How can this be resolved, without shutting down players or altering game mechanics (or ignoring the issue of realism)?
One, rather simple solution, is that the spell’s effects begin before the spell’s casting is completed, but that the effects will ultimately be negated if the spell’s casting is not completed properly. This, however, can bring about several problems: What happens to an object or creature that was being summoned when a spell is interrupted? Was it in transit at the time of interruption, between locations, planes, or dimensions? Does it suffer any harm as a result of this? What happens to the energy the caster gathered in his hands to throw at his enemies?
Another solution which manages to avoid the complexities and problems brought on by the first, is largely theoretical. Instantaneous spells are not instantaneous in reality, only in effect. We may safely assume that magical energy has zero mass or is able to reduce an object/creature’s mass to zero, and so spell’s with a descriptor of “Instantaneous” travel at the speed of light, at which point time dilation forces the passage of time to halt in regards to the spell for the duration of it’s travel. Interestingly, as objects speed towards the speed of light, time not only slows down, but space contracts, at the speed of light, to the point of assuming zero length.
Thus, the spell has an instantaneous or null duration, allowing spells which require some form of travel, such as Lightning Bolt or Burning Hands to continue to meet the requirements needed to preserve game play and balance as well as a Suspension of Disbelief and Sense of Possibility for both the players and narrators.
Everyone Should Run a Diceless Session
Most RPGs use some form of randomizer in order to resolve actions. In many games, dice are used as a randomizer within a system of mechanics. You roll the dice, and apply a formula given to you by the system mechanics to determine what happened. In some cases, this is as simple as trying to roll above or below a certain number to achieve success, such as in the ADnD Non-Weapon Proficiency System. In other cases, modifiers are added and/or subtracted to a roll of dice, though a target number may still exist that must be rolled above or below, such as the Infamous ADnD THAC0.
Dice are not the only randomizer used in RPGs, such as some LARP Systems where players may resolve actions by playing a quick game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, or something similar. For ease of the average reader, and tradition, however, we will refer to systems which have no randomizer as “diceless,” a method of play I suggest everyone embrace at least once.
The first RPG I ever played was diceless, a text-based Star Wars game which we played in the old AOL chat rooms and message boards. In the beginning, we had no Narrator, Game Master, or anything similiar. No one was “in charge” of the game, and only a few simple rules existed:
All characters can die.
Do not announce or attempt to control the results of an action involving another player. Results were generally determined by group moderation, and a consensus could usually be quickly reached based on circumstances, who was doing what at the time, and dramatic effect.
If there’s no trust, there’s no game.
Roleplay, or Get Out.
As time progressed, our playing evolved. Eventually someone would become a Narrator for awhile, and they would be in charge of directing and telling a story. Dice, however, were still not used.
In this time period, I learned more about Role-Playing and Game Theory than I would by playing traditional dice-based systems in the following six years. Particularly, I learned about player cooperation and trust, and learning to let stories grow organically, and out of natural role-playing situations.
Everyone should play a diceless game at least once. Here are a few tips to get you started:
One simple way to convert any normal system into a diceless one is to create characters, NPCs and such normally, and give them normal stat modifiers. These are then used to determine results by comparing modifiers and statistics (the higher one winning if the situation if all other things are equal). Situations are resolved by recognizing what makes sense in the situation, and what makes for a good story in addition to analyzing existing numbers and statistics, which often only allow for the resolution of very straightforward situations, such as an arm wrestling competition.
Another simple way is to abandon statistics altogether and allow for a purely story-driven game. Actions and events are resolved entirely by what makes sense in the given situation and what makes for a good story, and what “feels right.” This method is often especially useful if the players are not all on the same side and do not share the same goals - they are allowing themselves to be the opposition and fulfill more parts of the story. This method most often works best with a Narrator or Game Master to help maintain control, though if players are fulfilling the roles on multiple parts of the conflict, the game may be entirely player driven.
Each of these methods relies heavily on trust, both for the Narrator or Game Master and the other PCs. If players do not trust the people who are determining how actions resolve, the game will fall apart, as it is inherently more cooperative than systems which include a randomizer.
So what do you have to gain from running a diceless system? A better understanding of how to direct stories and character growth, as well as an increased level of confidence in your abilities to run and direct a game; understanding how to run a diceless game will let you feel confident when it comes time to set aside the mechanics of a normal system for story purposes, or just to ensure that the game remains fun.
What do you have to gain from playing a diceless system? A better understanding of how to contribute to the story and growth of a game, and how to interact with PCs and NPCs to do so. Players will often walk away from a diceless session feeling more prepared to take control of their characters destiny and the direction of the story in a normal session, thus injecting more life into the game.
Has anyone ever played a diceless system before? Did anyone try it after reading this? What were your experiences?
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