Pulp My Game

This week my gaming group returned to the world of 1920’s pulp with ‘TheTimeless Sands of India’ an Age of Cthulhu scenario by Goodman Games.  Pulp is an interesting strand of the Cthulhu games pantheon which promises a heady mix of action and adventure. Indeed Goodman Games draw on this idea to describe this series:

“Age of Cthulhu is first and foremost dedicated to exploring the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos, and to bringing the excitement of heroic pulp-themed adventure to your gaming table. So dim the lights, load your trusty sidearm, and prepare to venture into the unknown…”

The problem?  Call of Cthulhu 6^th edition, as written, doesn’t really support this style of play.  The system is (deliberately) lethal to the characters, as a form of promoting helplessness and enforcing a spiral into madness or death for the character.  To compound the mixed messaging, all but one of the pre-generated characters in the scenario have no combat skills (a nurse, mathematician, missionary and student), and the character that does (a retired soldier), has a well below average sanity score (which is further eroded by the starting condition of the scenario).

I previously played ‘Death in Luxor’ the first in the Age of Cthulhu series, using the pre-generated characters, and in the opening scenes of that game my character (with below average sanity) went permanently insane during the first scripted scene of the scenario.  The experience left me questioning the realism of the character continuing to 'investigate' the situation and ultimately spoilt my fun a little.

Now I think ‘Timeless Sands of india’ as a good pulp outing.  In fact, it reads very much like an Indian chapter of Masks of Nayrlathotep, with all the same ingredients and some neat twists on the traditional Masks formula.  It has the same potential for epic action, exotic and atmospheric investigation and a neat backstory.  There are some tweaks needed here and there, a few details that don't really make sense - but the overall bones of the scenario are sound.

What it needs, in my opinion, is to reconcile the pulp aspect with the constraints of 6^th Edition Call of Cthulhu. 

‘Basic Roleplaying’ the system which underpins Call of Cthulhu can achieve many of the needed changes.  Other minor tweaks, like allowing players limited opportunities to re-roll skill checks, would also help.  The pre-generated characters also need to be updated, and made appropriate to this style of play.  In short, this scenario is pulp-ready, but not pulp-enabled.  House rules are needed, along with new pre-generated characters, to make this scenario fit for purpose.

Eventually, I hope that the release of the long-promised ‘Pulp Cthulhu’ will codify the tweaks needed to make Call of Cthulhu suitable for a heroic adventure style of play.  Until then, I’m satisfied that my house-rules will allow my players to experience the scenario in the style which scenario author, Jon Hook, intended.

The Art of the Flashback

This post is about flashbacks (individual scenes shaped by a player to reveal something about their character).  Although a major element of EPOCH, since we’ve been playing the game I noticed that many of the folks I game with have been using this kind of framing in other, more traditional games, to simply and interestingly communicate character exposition.

 

In EPOCH the mechanic of the flashback has a specific purpose.  The character voted most interesting each challenge round, receives an outcome card back to their hand, increasing their chance of survival, while all the other characters receive a flashback card, which they can use to initiate a flashback scene during the next tension phase.  In practice this means that it is unlikely that the character who has just been voted most interesting, will do so again in the subsequent round, as the ability of other characters to ‘flashback’ to interesting scenes or moments which highlight their characters backstory will usually overshadow the character who cannot activate a flashback in the minds of the players when they vote.

 

Flashbacks and Backstories

 

Example 1: Framing a character in ‘Behind the Mask of Evil’

 

In ‘Behind the Mask of Evil’ (a scenario set during peacekeeping operations in the Congo) I was dealt the group relationship card “unpopular” and was given the role card “photographer”.  Drawing the shortest line between two points (an unpopular photographer), I determined the character would appear to be a sleazy paparazzi.  However, it also seemed like that might not give me enough mileage or interest value in subsequent tension phases, so I also completed my "secret" card, specifying the character was actually a secret agent – being a photographer was just his cover.   Having a generic, but significant twist – like being a secret agent twist would allow me a variety of options to engage with either the plot or the other characters as part of my characters ‘mission’.  But as I obviously had no idea about their characters or the plot of the scenario, I could let the story evolve and decide what ‘mission’ my agent had been assigned once I knew more about both.

 

Flashback #1

For the characters first flashback, I wanted to hint at the characters secret and help frame why he was in Africa.  So I set the scene as a Hollywood red carpet, where my character, along with dozens of other paparazzi, snapping pictures of a glamorous celebrity. At the conclusion of the scene the character left the red carpet and entered a large black SUV, where a big man in a suit was waiting.  He uploaded his pictures onto a laptop and both men considered the close-up shots of the diamonds that the celebrity was wearing.  This foreshadowed a connection to blood diamonds, which I had (by now) decided would be a major motivation for my character.

 

Interacting with another characters backstory

 

Flashback #2

We were now in the meat of the scenario, and the stakes had been raised.  I wanted to frame this flashback to provide a significant and specific reason why my character was in the movie.  As the plot we had experienced so far seemed to have little to do with blood diamonds, I decided that my role was to do with smuggling.  At this point, I thought it might be interesting to interact with another characters backstory (this may involve some negotiation, but usually creates a much stronger story) so I picked a character who had not revealed much to that point, but who had narrated their character as being sick and sweaty, and framed a scene set in at night in an African morgue where 3 living people, one of them who looked very much like his character, were being operated on to have bags of diamonds inserted in their stomachs.  My character was present and clarified with the doctors, that the drug cocktail applied to the characters would mean they had no memory of their abduction or this procedure.  In this way I linked my characters story, with another character, but also gave that character a reason to explain why he didn’t know about this particular twist, and even allowed him to opt out (by specifying the character on the slab ‘looked like’ his character – perhaps it wasn’t that character, but rather a close relative etc.)

Fortunately the player in question took this story, and ran with it – literally.  He activated his flashback and piggybacked off mine, narrating how, soon after my character had left, he had woken up and managed to stagger off in the darkness, clutching the recently stitched wound in his stomach, pursued by the doctors.  Hiding down a dark alley, he placed his hand on his stomach and spoke several words in a guttural language and the skin healed itself.  And with that twist he established both that he still had the diamonds implanted, and knew that he had been operated on, and that he had some kind of mystical power – a revelation which won him the ballot that round as most interesting character.

 

Example 2: Framing a vendetta in “Home Front”

 

In ‘Home Front’ (a scenario set during WWII in Britain), one of the players had created a character who was an eccentric doctor, who desperately wanted a commission in the Home Guard, but had been unable to secure one.  Another of the characters had revealed during flashbacks, that they had been heavily involved in the black market, and so the doctor framed a flashback where he contracted the black market character to ‘remove’ my character who he saw as the obstacle to his commission.  This was a surprise to me, as my own characters backstory had made no reference to this, but it was undeniably interesting.

 

I played along, and in subsequent flashbacks revealed how my character had secretly provided a poor reference, which had dashed the doctors hopes of promotion, and further revealed that I had done this because I blamed the doctor, when his nurse had rejected my characters romantic advances, citing the need to be at work with the doctor as an excuse on every occasion that my character had asked her out.  Thus the backstory filled with petty jealousies, and escalating to hatred and violence came to a gripping crescendo in a challenge round where almost every character played a Zero card on someone else, creating one of the most memorable scenes I’ve thus far experienced in EPOCH.

 

Keeping it fresh

 

Employing a flashback to increase the interest in your character can be challenging.  The initial cards and secret probably only give you enough material for one or two flashbacks (and if you are too vague or only reveal a small amount of material in order to portion this out for longer, the other players may be confused, or simply not remember the scene when voting).  So in the case of example 1, by the time I reached my 3^rd flashback I had largely exhausted the interest value in this aspect of my characters backstory, so I needed something fresh.   However, coming up with something new once your character has been established, and after you’ve played in their skin for an hour or so, can be very difficult.   One obvious solution is to interact with another characters backstory, in a similar way to the examples I’ve provided.  This is best performed with the lightest touch, where you do not change the fiction the other character has already established, but rather weave your character into their story in a way they might not even have been aware of, thus allowing the other player the choice to seize on this story and continue it, or to ignore it.

 

Equally, if you’re just plain stumped, the complication deck is specifically designed to provide a player with some simple suggestions which may trigger great ideas for twists in your characters backstory, or at least interesting ones.

Four Campaigns I’d Like to Run

We’ve been playing a lot of EPOCH recently, which has been terrific fun, but too much single-session madness can sometimes set you hankering for the meaty substance of a longer campaign.  There are many games on my shelf that I’ve been looking at wistfully – planning to run one day when time permits.  Here’s my shortlist:

 

1. Call of Cthulhu 7^th ed.: Horror on the Orient Express

A Chaosium classic, I played through parts of this campaign and ran parts of this campaign years later, but I’ve yet to give it a thorough and solid run.  An evocative campaign with many classic horror moments, I plan to run this campaign with 7^th edition next year, when both that kickstarter and the new Orient Express Kickstarter are delivered.  I’m particularly interested in seeing how the writers have addressed some of the more ‘clunky’ elements of this campaign, and what material they’ve added to the new prequel scenarios.

 

2. Rogue Trader: The Warpstorm Trilogy

After running Lure of the Expanse I had a hankering for another, longer Rogue Trader campaign.  The Warpstorm Trilogy remains high on my ‘to be run’ shelf, although I am a little concerned about how many Rogue Trader books have been published since we finished Lure of the Expanse, and what new or extended rules might now exist, and have to be ferreted out, deciphered and interpreted.  As always with Rogue Trader, the amount of preparation needed to stay ahead of the curve seems fairly high, as each sub-element of the game has different rules and tables.

 

3. WFRP 3^rd Edition: The Enemy Within

This version of the game has vexed me for some time.  I really like the idea of this game, and some of the elements of the latest edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay seem really neat.  My initial playtest of this edition was not a great success, but that probably had something to do with just how many choices are involved in character creation.  I’d love to give it another try and this campaign seems like a good option.  I ran the original Enemy Within Campaign, and this product seems to have little resemblance to that, but I still think it will offer an entertaining and accessible epic fantasy campaign, if only we can get through character creation.

 

4. Mutants and Masterminds 3^rd Edition

Epic Villains and Vigilantes campaigns were an important part of my formative gaming years.  Ever since I’ve thought it would be great to have an ongoing supers campaign with a decent amount of crunch.  My recent supers campaigns have had a much more narrative style – and while these have been great, I’d really like to run a game which used a more detailed system, and have players that were engaged with their characters on that level.  I think it would add a deeper level to the important narrative aspects.  M&M 3rd Edition seems like it might offer an interesting entry to this style of campaign.

Buckets of Dice 2013

This weekend I attended my first ever Buckets of Dice, a roleplaying and boardgaming convention held in Christchurch, New Zealand.  I had been wanting to get down to Buckets for a while, but this year, the opportunity to combine a trip to the ‘con with family commitments and also showcase EPOCH, was too good to pass up.

The organisers were also nice enough to list me as a ‘special guest’ and promote both my EPOCH scenarios and have me facilitate a panel discussion on game publishing.

I understand the ‘con attracted around 50 registrations, although that included both board-gamers and roleplayers.  Initially it proved a little tricky to find the venue, nestled amongst the sprawling University of Canterbury campus, but thankfully there were many chalk arrows which helped guide me to the right place.  The people I spoke to before, during and after the ‘con were all very friendly, and made me feel very welcome, and it was good to see, and catch-up with some familiar faces from Kapcon.

Round 1 – EPOCH: Hard Time
I initially pitched 4 EPOCH scenarios before the ‘con, and brought the full catalogue and offered the players the choice of any scenario they wanted.  After some discussion the popular vote was for science fiction, and Hard Time was the preferred option.  Some interesting characters were generated, although many of the characters on this run began as hackers – however, as the game went on the characters became more involved with the fiction until they determined that two of them had been responsible for Project LAZARUS, which had unleashed the source of the horror on all the prisoners. 

I love it when players do this kind of thing through flashbacks because I think it really enhances the mesh between character and scenario, while bringing in new ideas and fresh twists.  Of particular note in this run was one character played the Hero twice (through taking back a second Hero/Zero card after winning a ballot) so ultimately doomed their character to elimination in the last challenge through selfless sacrifice.

Panel on Game Publishing
Much like the discussion that took place at Kapcon, this was a round-table discussion about lessons, pitfalls and opportunities involved in self-publishing role playing games.  Attendance was light, but there was some clear interest, and enthusiasm for exploring the new opportunities that the current market offers.

Round 2 – The Company
I signed up for this game as it was one of the few with free spaces following round 1.  The game used Apocalypse World (which seemed to be extremely popular with con-goers – almost all the other games on offer used AW or an AW hack).  However, there was a neat science fiction twist – the game was set on Pluto in a highly bureaucratic civilisation which imposes crippling taxes on its people (the setting was borrowed from a 1977 Dr Who story called The Sun Makers).  I played a skinner called Dodge and spent most of my time trying to keep the other characters from coming to blows, while seeking some escape from the tedium of a system which charged a daily breathing tax.

We spent a fair bit of time on trying to acquire the finer things – probably half an hour trying to leverage enough funding to purchase an apple, before delving into who was really pulling the strings of the company.  The scenario ended with a bang when we confronted the inhuman villain behind the scenes and ignored his warnings, pressing a button which doomed the entire civilisation.  It was a fun time, although I think Apocalypse World wasn’t an easy mesh with the aims of the scenario.  Given the complexity and detail of the setting, I think pre-generated characters with embedded knowledge and agenda might have provided stronger direction to fulfil the GM’s vision for this scenario.  Equally, an investigative system like BRP or Gumshoe might have better supported the characters attempts to find clues and interact with the Company hierarchy. That said, I had fun and really enjoyed the other players take on their characters.

Round 3 – EPOCH: Hard Time
I was ready to run almost anything, except Hard Time again.  However, on day 2 when I put it to the players they were again keen on science fiction, and had heard good things about the run of Hard Time from the day before – so away we went!  This run had some characters who took really different directions, leading to some rich flashbacks and some intense in-character confrontations.  There was a Prison Break style story, with one character being sent to rescue another inmate, only to discover at a crucial moment that the other character was an android replacement… 

Another of the characters was a space pirate, previously abducted by aliens, while yet another was a clone who had rejected his corporation-specified genetic programming.  This character led to many trailer worthy moments including his memorable refrain: “How can this fu*king sh*t get any fu*king worse?” Really, really great fun, with another suitable epic ending. 

Overall I really enjoyed my time at Buckets of Dice, and if the opportunity presented, I’d definitely go again.  I also enjoyed introducing EPOCH to new players and seeing how folks interacted with the game in their own ways.

The Right Stuff

I thought I’d post a short update on the progress of the latest EPOCH scenario collection.  EPOCH: War Stories will see a diverse range of scenarios which feature war – either taking place in wartime, or with war as a backdrop.

A couple of weeks ago I ran a playtest of the scenario by Mike Sands (of Monster of the Week fame) called Coldest Winter set during the Winter War (Finland and the USSR, 1939-1940).  We enjoyed the epic scale of this scenario, and had some great characters.  With a little polish I think it’ll make a really strong offering.

Last week we played through Marcus Bone’s scenario From Above and Below which took us to the horror of trench warfare during the Great War.  You can read Marcus’ thoughts on the scenario here, and how he found the process of creating an EPOCH scenario.  As a player, I had a great time, and found a really evocative setting, paired with a solid premise, and some really atmospheric scenes, made for a really strong scenario.   Marcus has a little more polish to do, but I found his first EPOCH offering very impressive.

My own scenario is progressing more slowly than I’d like.  Mass Destruction is set during it in the first hours of Operation Iraqi Freedom, as a collection of journalists are transported to witness the discovery a cache of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.  The first few scenes are fairly clear to me, as I have a strong idea about the source of the horror, but the final scenes are yet to unfold.  Hopefully I’ll have a finished working draft ready to playtest in a few weeks.

There are some other intriguing sounding scenarios being crafted – Igor will soon test a fantasy war scenario, Andy M. is working on a Home Front scenario with, what I hope will be, a creepy twist on Dad’s Army while Liam will draw on some working knowledge of African Peace Operations.

It’s an exciting time seeing these great ideas resolved into great EPOCH scenarios.

Horror and Helplessness

A little while ago Lowell Francis, a blogger who has posted extensively on horror roleplaying games, posted that in his view,  "horror thrives on player uncertainty and lack of control”.  I thought about it a little bit at the time, but when he recently repeated the assertion that “most horror operates from threat, entrapment, and some degree of helplessness “ it helped me crystalise my own thinking about the nature of horror in roleplaying, and helplessness.

Helplessness is tricky in roleplaying games because of the question of trust.  Most traditional RPG’s are a shared paradigm where one individual has more narrative powers, and can set the stakes for most conflicts (as GM).  In this relationship, trust is essential.  Implicit in this traditional paradigm is the fact that the GM is not subject to any meaningful checks and balances beyond their social relationship with the players – and, therefore, can structure the story to kill, maim or incapacitate one or all of the characters (or place them in situations where the survival of their characters is unlikely).   But even if the stakes aren’t this severe, the players are effectively being asked to trust that the GM has the best interests of their characters, and their enjoyment of the game as players, at heart.  In a traditional roleplaying games, therefore, the players are largely helpless against the authority of the GM.

Nowhere is this paradigm more evident than in horror roleplaying games.  Many of these systems conflate character helplessness with player helplessness.  They use a mechanical system to establish norms, then ensure that exposure to horror will irrevocable and perpetually erode the characters mental wellbeing within those norms (a la Sanity points in Call of Cthulhu).  In this context the system is continually reinforcing to the player, that their character is helpless against the horror (in the case of Sanity points, they will almost always lose sanity points faster than they can gain them, and each loss is accompanied by periods of system dictated distress helplessness – temporary, permanent and indefinite insanity, often at critical moments in the action).

Other systems use similar mechanics.  In the Gumshoe system the characters spend from a wide pool of perpetually diminishing resources to investigate, encounter and attempt to survive their brushes with the horror.  In Dread, each pull of the tower brings the characters closer to their doom.  In Geiger Counter the horror increases its dice pool every test.

But, in my view, most horror isn’t actually about helplessness. 

Horror is about the intersection between character and something terrible (the source of the horror).  The essence of horror is not helplessness, but rather the human struggle against the macabre and inhuman.  The place where a protagonist tries to find the strength to struggle against forces that would otherwise eviscerate their physical or mental wellbeing.  Lovecraft’s Robert Olmstead escaped Innsmouth, Armitage dispelled the Dunwich Horror and Dyer returned from the Mountains of Madness intent on warning others.  Ripley ultimately defeats the Alien, Ben survives the horde during the Night of the Living Dead, MacReady bests the Thing and the Freeling family flee beyond the reach of the Poltergeist.

So, if you accept that horror is about the struggle, rather than helplessness, what does this mean for horror roleplaying games?

To reflect the way these stories play out, the GM should be continually exploring the impact of the horror on the characters.  The horror should have no independent motive or agenda – rather it exists entirely through the prism of the characters experiences.  That’s not to say all the characters must survive, or that there isn’t a broader story – but the experience of the characters should be the focus of the game.

But that’s not how many games play out.  This blog is called Total Party Kill because of precisely this tension.  The idea that GM’s sometimes violate the relationship trust – exploit the helplessness of the characters in their games.  Indeed many systems and scenarios are explicitly designed to create this experience, or will inevitably result in this outcome without modification.

Some players may accept, or even enjoy the helpless downward spiral of their characters.  Some may even embrace it – but unless you’ve had a conversation with your players about exactly how they enjoy interacting with the horror, its safest to assume that some players are looking to try and triumph against the horror like so many protagonists in horror movies and literature.

For these reasons, when I designed a horror roleplaying game, I put that conversation front and centre.  I also ensured that there would almost always be survivors of the scenario, just as there would be victims, and that the decision about which character survived, and which did not was an artefact of highly structured collective decision making, rather than putting the load on one individual – thus, the players are not helpless in a story that is all about their characters.  I designed a game that I believe exemplifies the struggle that I believe is central to horror.

Surviving EPOCH

Character survival is the aim of the game in EPOCH.  The scenario will remorselessly eliminate characters, so the pressure is on to make your character one of those that will survive the horror right through until the end scenes.  While is true that EPOCH is guaranteed to eliminate characters, it is equally true that there are guaranteed to be survivors so long as there is a basic level of engagement with the scenario.  So, how to make it through to the end? 

Because eliminations are the result of collective decision making, there is no guaranteed method, and every group will be different – but here are some methods I’ve observed as a GM that are often the hallmark of characters that go full distance:

1. Start with an interesting backstory 
Okay, this sounds like unhelpful advice because, of course, you are going to create an interesting setup for your character, but how can you get others to judge this as interesting enough to vote for your character?  Use the opening scene and consider some of the following:

• Introduce conflict, things aren’t going great for the character, be it relationship, career or otherwise.  You don’t need the detail yet, just establish that the character is feeling some pressure because of competing agenda.
•  Hint at something dark or secret.  You don’t necessarily need a lot of detail, but hopefully you might have an idea for a secret that you could hint at in the opening scene which you can develop later – or even ignore completely, but if you do some basic groundwork now you are likely to look clever later as you weave things together.
•  Embrace the conflict.  In the opening scene you should get an opportunity to show the audience how your character responds to some minor conflict or challenge.  Milk this camera time for all it’s worth and try and avoid ambivalent or run-of-the-mill responses.

2. Use the flashback for maximum impact.
As the scenario develops you will receive flashback cards – these represent a golden opportunity to have some dedicated camera time to develop your characters backstory.  I have observed that the difference between people who have played EPOCH before, and those who are playing for the first time, is the use of flashbacks.  Veterans understand that a well crafted, clever flashback is a major factor in deciding the winner of a ballot, and use them accordingly.  When using flashbacks: 

• Clearly establish the scene and time as it relates to current events as while it may be clear to you, the rest of the audience may be confused without this explicit framing.
• Use it to increase audience empathy, or intrigue about your character – ideally revealing more about the secret you have established, or a major motivation for your character.
• Again, be as clear as possible when framing this scene to avoid confusion.  Everyone needs to understand what the scene has revealed, and how it relates to the character in order for the flashback to increase your chances of survival.
• As the game goes on, play flashbacks sooner, and the time between challenge rounds is likely to diminish and you don’t want to miss an opportunity for that spotlight time.

3. Play your Hero/Zero card for maximum effect. 
The Hero/Zero card allows you to have an important and direct impact on another character.  If you do this in an interesting enough way, it may secure you some enhanced interest value.  This is particularly true if you Zero another character.  If you Hero another character, your chances of survival may be increased by a reciprocal act of heroism, but this is only likely to happen if you back it up with some bonding during the next tension phase.  Be sure to milk this for as much as you can to try and secure some additional support.

4. Play up your injuries or trauma. 
Be sure to emphasise the impact of the outcome card you played during the previous challenge round.  The more you emphasise the wounds, the more the other players are visualising the character, and the greater chance you have of making an impression in their minds when they vote. 


5. Add a twist 
Some of the most successful characters add a twist half way though the game.  Often this is something completely out of left-field.  A sudden agenda, secret or history which makes their character undeniably interesting.  The complication card deck is designed to offer a suggestion for this twist, if you are having trouble thinking of something (and it can be hard, once you have a clear idea about a character).  While a complication card often, at first, seems impossible to weave into your characters story – if you think about it laterally there is almost always a way to make it work.  This should instantly give you some new material for a flashback and enhance the interest level in your character.