These are the Games of Our Lives - Part Three

Running: Call of Cthulhu - Final Flight

I ran this Pagan scenario as a one-off session the other week. I found it was laden with good detail, but almost completely undone by a poor layout. It’s a simple adventure involving a plane flight and then an aftermath of about the same length. It’s a nice idea, but the scenario as written involves a dozen NPC fellow passengers, including cabin crew and a major villain. This was pretty challenging, and while the scenario thoughtfully provided me with a matrix of their stat’s it didn’t do the same for their personality elements or motivations, making it a pretty hair-raising experience.

Then the second part of the scenario really needs some work, tying in the fairly cool elements sketched out in the scenario into a comprehensive story. IMHO, add in a story tree of possible actions and responses, options for setting it somewhere else at another time, and some colourful and fun pre-generated characters and you’d have a really excellent ‘con game. As it stands it was fun, but unnecessarily hard work.

Running: WFRP 3e

So, I’ve been intimidated by the new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay since I purchased it. For those who don’t know, the game is played using a collection of cards, with relevant rules printed on them rather than having a rulebook as reference, and uses ‘special’ dice. I had played a game with Luke over Kapcon weekend, and wasn’t convinced that the game really did anything that 2e couldn’t do better, or that the special dice and card represented a worthwhile addition, given the associated mechanical hassle. However, having spent a decent chunk of money on it, I finally got up the courage to give it a run.

I ran it as written, rather than creating pre-gen’s like Luke did, as I don’t especially like reading rules in my free time, so was keen to learn with the players as we went (although obviously I did do some pre-reading).

The character creation session was extremely daunting. Players can spend their points on virtually any combination of statistic, wealth, or pick from a range of ‘action’ and ‘talent’ cards. By throwing it open like this, the players really need to read almost every card they might pick from in order to select the best value-for-points for their characters. Because they hadn’t played, this also meant that I needed to explain the rules as they went, so they had some idea of the relative merits of each selection. A huge job, made easier by the fact that the players, despite being a little overwhelmed, really engaged with the game.

Characters made, we then had just enough time for the into involving some brief roleplaying and a combat (I was determined to get the combat in so that the players could see how their choices worked in practice). It actually went very smoothly, and I was pleasantly surprised. The fight was flavourful and challenging, but I think ultimately a lot more empowering for the PC’s than a 2e equivalent would have been (at entry level that’d be rounds of everyone missing their targets).

I hope to get the next session under our belts next week. I am a little concerned as two of the players picked (and randomly chose) the Waywatcher and Swordmaster careers, which seems to make them pretty kick-ass in combat, when compared to the Gambler and Rat-Catcher. Story wise, appropriate, but I remember how incensed my 2e players were that some characters were better at combat than others – the idea that other characters are better in social situations, didn’t hold much sway. I’m also not convinced about abstract movement in combats where there are multiple attackers, nor do I find the monsters easy to run when there are many of them – however, time will tell if these kinks work themselves out.

These are the Games of Our Lives - Part Two

Playing: Cthulhu

In addition to the ongoing D&D saga, I’ve been playing a little Cthulhu as well. I playtested Liam’s Cthulhu Invictus scenario “Chaos in Rome” which I understand he entered in a recent Chaosium competition. It was not what I was expecting, and despite my initial reservations about Cthulhu Invictus, it was good fun.

Regrettably for Liam, we played on the setup (an upper class Roman family at each other’s throats after the mysterious death of the patriarch) and this culminated in my spoilt momma’s boy character conspiring to poison his brother (played by Mark as a particularly nasty piece of work), then after that failed, hiring some footpads to ambush him. Both attempts were ably thwarted by Igor’s centurion. The problem was that after all that excitement, and by the time we found the lurking menace, the resulting action was necessarily truncated by time pressure, leaving several character’s suddenly dead.

I’m also playing in Liam’s run of “Bad Moon Rising” a classic Cthulhu adventure from ‘The Great Old One’s’. After a full session of abortive investigation, we have arrived at the heart of the scenario, albeit in a way which makes me question if all our attempts at investigation were really needed (and find that I agree with the GUMSHOE manifesto more and more). To Liam’s credit a lot of the older Cthulhu scenarios require considerable shoe-horning to run as intended.

Finally, I’m looking forward to playing in Andrew M’s playtest of a forthcoming Trail of Cthulhu scenario. I’ve been wanting to run Trail for ages, but find that there is more than enough regular Cthulhu I also want to run, without having to learn, and teach, a new system. Hopefully Andrew can do the heavy lifting on that account for me…

These are the Games of Our Lives - Part One

It’s been a while since I updated; but I was reminded today that a couple of people take a look at what’s here so I suppose I should update my current roleplaying goings on:

Playing: D&D 4e

As you may recall this D&D 4e game was set in the ruined city sealed by magic, and overrun by demons. We currently seem likely headed for another TPK after a two session combat. In short, to earn our keep in the ‘good’ human faction we were asked to clear a tower which was overrun by froglockes (bullywugs). We were told that there were around thirty of so of the enemy, although they spawned rapidly. Scouting we ambushed a party of around 20 or so young ones (almost all minions). Then we attacked the tower itself (it’s more of a complex multi-level fortress) doing battle on an outer courtyard wall. We battled several giant dire toads guarding the door, and then entered a melee with 30 or so froglockes (all brutes).

Late in the fight a froglocke that was part human, and part water elemental , joined in and did some big hits, before teleporting away. We won the combat, but found ourselves defeated by the stout, barred doors of the fortress, so hurried to a garden which seemed strangely free of froglocke corruption. We encountered ghostly soldiers who offered to escort us to the ‘mess’ to rest. This was a door into the tower, which when opened was a large chamber entirely filled with froglockes and a huge giant dire toad. Queue a huge fight. We have so far dispatched 50 of the froglockes (most of them) and bloodied the toad, but are still grappling with the remaining elite guard and have expended pretty much all our resources.

At this point 3 of the water-elemental, part frogs arrive and put the hurt on my character (200 hit points worth of damage in 3 rounds – the only way I’ve survived to date is by virtue of Andrew’s specialist healing cleric who is now in a bad way as well). So I suspect it’ll be new character time shortly. Overall, it seems a little frustrating that we faced such a tough ask as an initial mission, and that the ‘friendly’ npc intelligence was so far out. Both of these gripes can be explained in story terms, but I feel would be a hard ask in game terms.

I must face some blame, because I was the catalyst of pressing on into the tower without a full rest, when I think one or two of the others had level-ups pending and needed to restore daily powers. I stand by my decision, because it was driven by roleplaying elements, rather than tactical considerations, but then that’s what happened the last time we were TPK’d…

A Door in your Mind

So, the other day in my regular D&D game, our group of hardy adventurers were on their way to dispatch an outpost of one of the many factions which inhabit the ruined city, when we happened across a door. Not just any door mind, a giant door with a huge skull above it. And when I say happened across, I mean that we sensed the door, through some grand plot stuff, and detoured to discover it. As soon as we saw it, I cynically wagered another player that we would eventually open it, despite the obvious omens and the fact that we had another job underway. Needless to say, despite the many, many efforts of the other player to prevent such an occurrence and nearly thirty minutes of play, the door was opened by another character.

When running games I’ve always found that a door, trapdoor, or a deep hole, can easily occupy several hours of gameplay as players bicker, discuss and hypothesise what might lurk beyond. Often the imagined scenarios are far grander than the reality, and it is hard to not re-write the game to reflect the nice ideas floated. Inevitably, no real consensus will be reached and one player (usually the one who has become most bored) will simply announce their character will open the door/descend into the hole to the outward exasperation, but secret delight, of the others. This period can be extended by adding more detail, such as a sound or smell which is hard to place coming from beyond, or inscriptions or pictograms on the portal.

The door/hole was, for me, often an unexpected and unwanted sink of time during a scenario, however, I have come to appreciate how they can also be a very useful device. A method of exploiting and drawing out existing character divisions, or, when used with some degree of time pressure, an exciting challenge, or simply a chance to think about, and prepare responses to unanticipated in-game events from earlier in the session. All in all, I have come to appreciate the value of a good mysterious portal.

A Player's Tale

This week I spent a fair bit of time playing in some different RPG’s. Here’s a brief snapshot of the week that was;

On Monday I helped playtest Morgue’s forthcoming superhero adventure for the ICONS system. I had previously created a character by rolling superpowers randomly (love that old-school, V&V feel) and decided on the basis of rolling plant control, animal control and the ability to excrete toxins that I would be the ‘Green Man’ and environmental avenger and super-hippy. It was a pretty wild time, and I must give nods to my fellow heroes for having some great laughs. Our team was entirely dysfunctional with two fairly straight characters (Slade played by Norman and Salamandress played by Jenni) and two kind of lame, oddballs (Robo-Zard was played by James and was particularly memorable for his stalker style antics involving Salamandress) and me of course.

Other than a fondness for the characters, I was reminded just how much a GM has to try and continuously reinforce the role of the game world’s reality and provide some kind of basis for normalcy in an old school supers outing. It can be a continuous and exhausting process depending on the power level of the Supers and the creativeness of the players. Perhaps it’s the difference between a campaign, or long-term game over a short run, but If anything, I think that it reinforced that I prefer super games which deal with origin stories and bring a focus on ‘real-world’ pressures on super characters, over short run, four colour adventures.

On Tuesday I played my ‘Brutal Scoundrel’ in my regular D&D campaign. It’s been several sessions since the TPK and I like the other PC’s, but it seems that we might have to change party roles around and introduce new characters soon in order to replace our ‘healing role’ which was left vacant after a player left the game. We continue to explore a gigantic city cast out of time and magically sealed, overrun by demons, fey, frog-locks, bugbears and many other assorted nasties. The number of factions involved has made me concerned that we may once again find ourselves betrayed and TPK’d but I guess time will tell.

Last week we were ambushed by bugbears who referred to us as 'noobs', which I guess is true, but certainly made me feel like it was a very long road ahead. Without any bushcraft capabilities, and obviously being at the low end of the power scale in this setting (or else it'll be a short campaign) I pondered whether there was any point in trying clever strategies or trying to do anything but blindly walk into one encounter after another and hope that we can beat it. After all, everything else in the setting is likely more powerful and more in tune with the local environment than we are, so unless the GM is willing to give our ideas and plans a credence that defies the perscription of our level, he or she is unlikely to let us gain any real advantage over the NPC's.

We have our first actual serious, non-combat, interaction with NPC’s next week and it's possible the group will shatter and fragment when given the opportunity to find different motivations . I think that from this game I took away the need to use pace appropriately in order to try to reveal a story of this scope.

On Thursday I played Dr. Ivan Borkovsky, a Czech Archeologist on expedition to Meso-America in 1914, in Call of Cthulhu. We spent almost the entire session making characters (well, talking about making characters and other things) and finding our way to an ominous and largely undiscovered ancient, overgrown Mayan city. Fortunately my fellow explorers were sufficiently outlandish in their antics that my Dr. Borkovsky was actually fairly buttoned down, despite my outrageous accent (I guess that balances out my Green Man mischief on Monday). The group is heavily armed, but on the basis of the scenario build-up so far, I fear that Dr. Borkovsky is unlikely to live long enough to publish his paper on the lost city…

Who's Bad? - Part Two

So in my original post I tried to illustrate what I have observed as a potential problem in some old-school style games; the idea that sometimes the villain becomes too powerful, as a result of the GM conflating their own knowledge of the PC’s actions, with the notion that the main villain should be more powerful and intelligent than the GM would be in a similar circumstance, leading to a very high degree of difficulty for the PC's possible victory.

To the mailbag, Mash asked: “Looking at your example: if the PCs don't really understand how powerful the villain is, then is there scope to downgrade him without creating a continuity error with what they do actually know?”

I think there surely is, my point on this topic is that the GM is not willfully nor consciously doing this. It is a problem that creeps in, often undetected except in the final throes of conflict after a TPK. Let me go to an example:

I have primarily experienced this in older D&D games, where the villain’s level was a predictor of his or her relative powers, and as such, far exceeded that of the any given PC (as a way of equalizing the cumulative power of all of the PC’s fighting the villain at the same time). However, the actual manifestation of this was that as PC’s, we encountered the villain’s hench-people and defeated them without really understanding much of the why’s and wherefore’s of the situation. The consequence of that action would be terrible and extremely powerful revenge visited upon us, usually through a pre-prepared ambush, which would often defeat or kill the PC’s.

The result from the player’s perspective was a degree of confusion: ‘why did we just get our asses kicked? That sucked!’ and the response from the GM would often be ‘that’s the consequence of meddling in the villain’s schemes, you guys should have been smarter’ and also ‘had your characters actually survived, you might have learnt your lesson’. This might be a 'fair' outcome from the GM's perspective, but because we didn't ever undertsand all the variables involved we couldn't assess the fairness, only the fun-ness, and it was not 'fun' (for me at least).

To be fair I have run a similar situation myself; several instances of Delta Green come to mind, where the villains in question were a race of sentient insect fungus from space. Possessing advanced technology they are able to easily spy upon the PC’s without detection, and while their motives and actions should be appropriately abstract in terms of plot, I had difficulty in having them overlook the PC’s plans for violence or disruption of their plans. I tried to give some clues of this infiltration, but what occurred in the most recent game of Delta Green I ran was that the players acted hastily (in the context of the government agents they were playing, not in terms of some tired gamers around a table) and enacted a raid that was a spectacular failure due to the villains having made preparations along the lines of the Branch Dividian in Waco (one of the villains listed ambitions was to cause the federal authorities significant embarrassment to back off future operations). I’m not sure the players enjoyed the experience, and we didn’t play Delta Green again.

Which brings me to the next point of discussion. If the GM might sometimes attribute additional intelligence, perception or power to the villain’s interaction with the game-world, then who exactly are the PC’s?

To illustrate this point with an example, a friend of mine recently complained that despite having a high Charisma score in his recent D&D game, the GM often belittled his attempts to elicit information or charm NPC’s because the GM did not find the player’s strategy for achieving this to be successful, irrespective of the characters ability. He was equally miffed that the other PC’s did not treat his character in a manner that befitted the natural charm and charisma that his character should exhibit in the game-world. His argument was that the PC’s and NPC’s should all act as though his character was the extremely charismatic and charming individual the system said he was, largely irrespective of his own personality at the table.

Obviously the same argument can be leveled at investigation games, where the PC’s are playing expert and professional investigators, yet the players are often stumped in situations that their characters would not be (enter the GUMSHOE debate).

I know that when I run a game I try and keep a mental picture of each character distinct from the player, and try to overlay one with the other when they interface with NPC’s, but I suspect I’m not always successful in doing this.

To be continued again...

Who's Bad? - Part One

I have observed, over the years, the power creep of creeps. Or, to be more specific, how hard can be for GM’s to distance themselves from their villains. It’s a problem I can understand only too well. When you create an adventure or dungeon or campaign, you usually arrange for there to be an adversary for the players, a villain, or in special cases even a super-villain (being an especially successful villain). This NPC is vested with dastardly schemes, and likely a range of accomplices/underlings/hench-people that can be deployed to achieve these ends. Often the villain’s actions which do not involve the PC’s directly are unscripted, left to the imagination of the GM, as this NPC interacts with the game world through his or her imagination alone initially.

Naturally, during the course of the game, the PC’s will encounter some aspect of the villain’s plan, either by accident or intent, and inevitably confront underlings or allies in a manner which will either thwart, or otherwise inconvenience the villain’s schemes. It is, therefore, only natural that the villain will take measures to stop/eliminate or distract the PC’s once they become aware of them. It’s pretty much the plot of any bulk-standard Hollywood action flick right? So far, so good?

Here’s where it gets tricky. The GM has watched events unfold, probably with a smug look, as PC’s bicker and blunder their way through plots (by which I mean quality roleplaying of course!). The GM is aware of just how lucky they have been to this point, whereas the NPC villain may only be aware of something going awry with a plan, or the sudden death of a minion in a very remote way. Can the GM adequately separate his or her own knowledge and intellect from that of the villain?

The problem is that most villains are extremely successful operators within the game-world. Where players have fluked or blundered their way through encounters and survived often by luck (or the use of GM fiat), villains have risen to their position through force of personality, ruthlessness and cunning. They are wealthy and powerful in a way that is remarkable. In most cases, they are more successful in these ways than the GM, so it is somewhat natural for a GM to justify superior reasoning and capability to the villain.

What does this mean? Well, sometimes it means that no matter how clever or well thought out the actions of the PC’s the villain will be neither surprised nor prone to sudden defeat. It sometimes means that the villains will lways achieve their major aims because they can tap into the game-world better than the PC’s. It also can mean that the villain will rarely suffer a major defeat or die in a non-epic way. It might even lead to the GM berrating or belittling the PC's due to perceived shortcomings, when their actions are compared with the villain's.

It might even have serious consequences for a game, but is there anything we can actually do to combat this phenomena?

To be continued…