Every time that I've discovered a new group, it's been because I pushed myself to engage with someone outside of my comfort zone. I'm not a gregarious or outgoing person. Interactions tire me. I like gaming with others though, and miss it when I'm not. So after a group breaks up, in general, I've found myself going outside of my comfort zone to talk to others. I've me several of my lifelong friends in that way. When I moved, I fell in with some people at work, and we engaged with others to pull together a group. But they were all a lot younger than I, and going through life with children entering the picture in one way or another, and we gamed less and less, and as they left the company, it became really sporadic, until there were no more sessions. I found out a bit after that some them had gotten back together and were gaming. And I wasn't contacted. By that time, I'd really gotten back into online gaming- play by e-mail, roll20, play by document- and found solo gaming. I now find that I don't really crave that level of interaction in person, though I wonder if I'd see that need if I gamed in person again at a convention or some other function, and if I'm forgetting some aspect because I don't want to try again.
I've tried to run investigation games before- they've always turned out poorly. At first, I could blame the root cause on one thing- me as a GM. In preparing the adventure, I didn't follow the rule of 3s- have three sources of information, so that the players wouldn't get stuck by not seeing the clues or a faulty dice roll. But even after having that, in some cases, players just didn't see things in the same way that I did when making the adventure.
Then I found Gumshoe. For those who haven't heard of it, Gumshoe is a roleplaying system designed in 2007 by Robin Laws. It's designed to solve the flaws of players finding the clues by changing the focus of clues in a game to deciphering their meaning. It does this by having two different sorts of abilities – Investigative Abilities and General Abilities. Investigative Abilities center for the most part around professional skills, and as a professional, you are assumed to have more than a basic level of competency. Investigative abilities always work; there are no dice rolls involved. If a scene contains a core clue and a player character uses an investigative ability that relates to the clue, the character will find the clue.
A spend for an investigative ability costs points from the Investigative Ability pool, in exchange for additional clues. These clues are not necessary to solve the scenario, though they should give additional information or other benefits. Spent pool points from investigative abilities are refreshed between scenarios.
This method of telling a mystery keeps the onus of continuing the trail off of the players and off of me when writing the scenario, so that we can just narrate the story of what happens. It's one of my favorite systems now!
As a result of the DramaSystem Kickstarter, the SRD has been released, and can give a good overview of what the system is like before you dive in. The SRD can be found on The Pelgrane Press Site.
Towers are a staple in RPG- the high spires in the villain's castle. Or the towers where a final defense is mounted in a siege. Even in sci-fi, you have the skyscrapers and, to take it to an extreme, the orbital elevators that tie a planet to the stars. Usually, there is some reason that you have to fight your way to the top. Some incredible hard-fought (or over the top depending on genre) prelude to the final battle with the Big Bad high above the ground below, or to rescue someone important. Think Trinity and Neo in the Matrix, or Bruce Lee in Game of Death. It's a trope because it works- it's a way to communicate to players that this is climactic and should be treated as such, and this will get harder as you rise in levels- akin to levels in video games. How can we take this trope and turn it on its head?
The Big Bad is out for a meeting. Or something that takes him away from the location. Of course, you have to give the players something for the battle that they just waged to get there, but it doesn't have to be that final battle. This is especially true in more modern day scenarios where executives don't always stay put.
A fight from top to bottom. The only way to enter the sanctum is from the top- it is the least heavily guarded location in the big boss's domain.
Use of technology or magic to get around the trope. In our long-running Middle Earth campaign, after we goofed and Sauron got the ring, we were able to get a magic item that boosted the mage's power enough to teleport us directly into Sauron's tower. Of course, that didn't end well, but it was a different take.
The boss at the top isn't actually the boss, but a fall guy. This fall guy has some seemingly insignificant clue to the bad guy's location. (Make sure you have at least 3 ways to get this information in case your player characters aren't as fast on the uptake as you'd like)
What are some other ways that we can subvert the Tower trope?
It's funny that this topic should come up today- just yesterday, the Question of the Day on RPGGeek was related- what unlikely friendships have you formed because of gaming.
My Answer – Most of my friendships are from gaming, so I don't consider them unlikely. I'm not one to make friends in other manners- I'm a solitary person by nature. I've always gone to the movies alone, gone traveling alone, and just been alone. The only thing I don't necessarily like to do alone is game. I do game alone- I like solo role-playing as an activity. It helps me a lot with my writing. But this shared interest in gaming is what binds me together with others socially; in environments where gaming isn't a focus, I have a hard time with trivial things like 'small talk'. And of course, you can't conversate on heavier things, so I tend to fade into the background as a means of defense.
My first thought at the prompt of 'Comfort' brought to mind the tendency of some in the hobby to find a system and stick with it, no matter the relative merits of the system. It might even be the first system tried- for some, there is that tendency not to stray from the system. I know that when I first started, I dabbled in several areas- from a start in AD&D 2nd Edition, I moved on to Marvel FASERIP and GURPS, adding Rolemaster once I went to college. I think that's one of the qualities I like about role-playing- the ability to get a different feel just by switching to a different system. Though I still buy and read a lot of systems, thinking about it I've seen a pattern. I'll have one primary system, and adapt everything to that system in order to run it more comfortably. I suppose that's no different than the gamers who stick with a particular system- my loyalties just switch from time to time as my sensibilities change. But, even for that, I still think that I'm more willing to try new things than most.
Since I'm in the midst of creating this campaign world, Dramatic immediately leads me to one of the steps in my process that I've just started- creating Drama in the world. Drama- meaning to me, meaningful excitement. Not a plot. I've made that mistake before, plotting out too much, and wasting a lot of time on things that the players are not interested in. But dramatic hooks that I can play as the players decide that they want to follow them, and find out what they entail with the players.
In my Drama document, I answered these questions in order to detail the dramatic hooks.
What are the major current affairs in the world (good and bad)
Detailing the city-state, I created a general outline of the relations with their neighbors- allies, frenemies, and outright hostilities. Also I gave a general overview of a couple of threads- an unexplored landmass that was recently discovered, a natural disaster that ravaged the southern farms, and forces stretched thin because the government is more concerned with the new area, rather than the plight of the outlying villages, as the food stores in the capital are not affected. Internally, a dissident group has been making waves, and rumors in the streets are that it is a group that was suppressed last year. The government denies this through the news sheets. There are developments of some new and exciting diversion for the rich, and there is supposed to be a large launch party with a celebrity chef serving up new culinary delights.
What are the threats the inhabitants of your world face
For threats, I went a bit more into the specifics of what a war means, and the general paranoia brought on by the cold war. There are natural threats everywhere other than the capital, and the safety of your home is based on what city you live in, and what sort of protections you can afford. But living in larger cities brings the threat of the government itself and its more draconian measures.
What are the everyday struggles of the people in your world
The struggles vary by where a person lives. In the Capital, the struggle is to survive against the draconian and sometimes mercurial rule of law. The lower castes have it worse, as they also struggle for sustenance and basic necessities. The larger hamlets have the same problem, but it varies depending on the ruler of the Satrapy. Villages don't have as much of a problem with the draconian law other than by the intermittent roving patrols that are supposed to protect them, but practically bleed them for the protection. That freedom is tempered by the constant dangers of the wildlife and the storms that wreak havoc to anyone unprotected out in them.
I'll have to go back and edit later, but I think that by focusing on the possibilities rather than the specifics of the plot, I can more ably react to what the players want to do once their characters are in the world.
For all else different in the 1984 Dune movie, I loved the introduction from Princess Irulan. Specifically, I loved the quote, “A beginning is a very delicate time.” That quote states a truism, as the beginning is the time when a think is not set, and is most prone to go in a different manner than you intended. It is the same with an RPG campaign, especially when you're the GM. How do you frame the entry into your world for your players, to get the correct feel across to them? It doesn't matter if you're making things up as you go along, or if you've spent a lot of time building your world, as a GM, you have a certain intention when starting a campaign, and it is for that reason that I think you have to set up your intentions in your players' minds even before they take their first actions in your world.
I think about this because I'm currently working on a world for Fate Core, and thinking back on my other experiences as a GM, and how I might have made the transition easier. I'm working through the world building process, and wondering how best to present it not just to my players, but in the material in case I use it elsewhere. Many products produce a quick start or a primer to the world- and I'm thinking that's the way that I will approach it, answering burning questions that will set the stage for the players.
What is unique about this world?
Why is the world the way it is?
What does it feel like to experience this world?
What are the recurring themes of the world?
Once I answer these questions, I will go into the specifics of the world, but I think if I answer those questions correctly, it should set the stage, and I can add some more specific factoids to the primer document to give the players some idea of what to expect as they start playing their characters.
I play a lot of Play-by-Email, and have played quite a bit of Play-by-Post. One of the advantages of the medium is the ability to divorce the player from the character, since you aren't looking at them while you're playing, but instead focused on the prose. To make it even more immersive (and to keep an idea of the public facing stats) we use custom made banners in our posts. This idea was born from playing a lot of Amber in PbEMs- one of the ideas in Amber are Trumps- cards that depict people that can be used to contact them, and for travel. We always made Trumps to depict the characters, and that evolved into the banners. I find that it adds an element to the game- a couple of examples are below.
There are two types of games- ones that descend from the D&D trope that rest heals all wounds. You go to sleep, wake up, and gain your spells, or a certain number of hit points, or even less believably skill levels and class levels. It just magically happens when you rest for a specified period of time. Others try to model the real world, where you keep up with the time that has passed since you received a wound, and healing takes place as time passes. Or you get experience for succeeding (or failing) a skill and when you get enough of whatever measure you're keeping track of, the skill increases. My initial gaming was in D&D, GURPS, Rolemaster, and Champions, which skewed towards the idea that rest was a needed thing for adventurers to recover any modicum of effectiveness. I remember when we were playing the tomb of desolation modules, and barely escaped into the desert. That trek was made worse by the fact that we'd just used all of our spells getting out of the place, and couldn't regain what we needed to survive because we couldn't really 'rest'. It felt arbitrarily punishing. I now play games that are more narratively driven, and the mechanism to recover from wounds and use of resources is more organic. It's ironic that in the simulationist vs story-game, most story games handle immersion a lot better than the games that have a rule for every little thing.
A trope in gaming is for adventures to be delivered via message. A mysterious courier arrives, looking for the party. The phone rings in the middle of the night. It's so used because it gives an easy way to involve the characters without having to create a lot of background. It's also used as a way out of being written in a corner, i.e. if the PCs can't find the clue you're looking for, finding a more obvious message that leads them to that thread is a lot easier than watching them flail. As with all tropes, unless it's couched in a way that is a bit more original than the device would suggest, it can bring on groans, and sometimes even a resistance to take the lifeline. The trope can be subverted, as in an expected message being counterfeit, which is a good way to use the trope in an unexpected manner. But how can you use the standard trope without it being so easily identified as such? That's a good exercise to dwell upon.
