Subscibe to Comments!
It’s been a long time coming but I finally figured out a bug that prevented me from activating the Subscribe to Comment plugin (I stopped getting notifications on posts I authored.. which is 99% of the posts here).
Now, dear reader, you can now receive notification of any comment thread you are interested in. Just mark the little box after the comment field when you leave a comment and you’ll be able to follow what others say!
Sorry it took so long, me no good at Debugging code…
Mean Things I Have Done in Horror RPGs
- Had a PC’s longtime girlfriend seduced by a butt-ugly vampire.
- Replaced a resurrected PC with his evil twin… permanently. (As a result of this)
- Force said evil twin into working with the PCs after he was disowned by the rest of his doppelganger crew.
- Killed a PC’s roommate, brought him back as a Frankenstein’s Monster. His personality remained mostly unchanged.
- While investigating a missing professor’s home, they came across a pathetic looking dog who seemed to be malnourished… in fact, was filled with demon-rats who exploded out of the dog at an appropriate time. (This is the only time I have made a player cry in one of my games.) [Read the rest of this article]
Afterschool Trope Special: Fill Up the Nighmare Mobile
What, two Trope posts in the same week?
Why not? It’s been ages since I wrote any of them, and this is Halloween after all.
With a satisfying ‘thunk’ Tragak the barbarian sheared the Orc Shaman’s head, sending it flying in the room’s dank, dark corner. As he was looting the body, he failed to notice the eight spindly spider legs bursting out of the shaman’s brain case and 2 huge mandibles pop out of the head’s eye sockets in a jet of aqueous gunk. Tragak was in for a surprise.
A lot has been written about Horror RPGs and how to host a scary game. The word out is that it’s not easy scaring players, even less easy to scare PCs without coercion.
Well I decided to add my voice to the echo chamber by digging in the deepest wells of my depraved soul to come up with some seriously troubling imagery.
And what better way to look for new ways to scare the guts out of your players than looking at one Horror Trope I find intriguing and troubling:
A catch-all term describing stuff in popular culture that gave us nightmares, whether they meant to or not.
To really be effective Nightmare Fuel, as our examples show, you’ll need something that was meant to either amuse, entertain, or be only slightly scary to the audience. In execution, they’re so trauma-inducing that they may cause even adults to void themselves in terror.
When the effect is 100% intentional, the trope becomes Unleaded.
Take an aspect that defines your favorite Roleplaying game but push it too far and see the result. Go for out of this world creepiness that will make your players skin crawl.
Fantasy Nightmare Fuel #1
The PCs are asked to recover a legendary suit of plate mail armour renowned to be nearly weightless and make it’s wearer nigh invulnerable. As the player race to recover the item against a recurring villain, they arrive just too late and see him wearing it.
During the ensuing fight, the villain is hard to hit and the armour lashes out with tentacle-like metal spikes whenever it is hit. However, as soon as the villain becomes bloodied/badly wounded, the tentacle dig in the Villain’s wounds and the armour starts flowing inside the wearer’s body!
Screaming inhumanly, the villain’s organs burst out from all sides as the armour fuses with his wearer’s muscles and Bones, becoming a dread construct of gore and Steel, ready to unleash its true potential.
Fantasy Nightmare Fuel #2
While eating at the Inn and waiting for the next dancing plot point to show up. the PCs hear disgustingly wet popping sounds all around them. Looking up from their mutton, they notice that all other customers are turning inside out, exposing their insides and rising as freakishly bloodied and chunky zombies… Then have the Innkeeper’s family burst out of the kitchen, fangs-a-showing, telling the PCs that ‘this meal is on the House’
Modern Nightmare fuel #1
A lone, very anxious 6 year old is running scared and crying in the streets of your campaign’s metropolis. Whenever people stop to help her and look her in the eyes, she screams in fear as they turn into grotesquely inflated fanged psychotic clowns!
The circus is in town, and the only way to stop it is to wake the sleepwalking girl, gently…
Modern Nightmare Fuel #2
On a dark night under the shadow of some ancient evil, a gun fight erupts between the PCs and a street Gang. An inordinate amount of screaming and cries of pain are heard throughout the fight. Investigating leads to the gruesome discovery that all bullets are alive and doing all the screaming, drowning in blood and suffocating in the bodies of the dead people…
Further investigation leads to the discovery that a twisted priest of chaos has trapped the souls of countless innocents into ammunition and is engineering gang violence to sacrifice all these souls to bring about Chaosocalypse.
Modern Nightmare Fuel #3
One name, The Corinthian
Fear is in your head
Horror roleplaying is about atmosphere, setting, mood and description. Don’t try to scare PCs, go for the players. Give them the creepiest WTF moments you think they can handle… and the ask them how their characters react.
Therein lies you next drum of nightmare fuel that will leave your players creeped out long after the game.
Happy Halloween.
Credits: Robin Stacey (Ragz), Sandman comics (The Corinthian)
Give Feedback to your GM… and live! Part 2.
In part 1, I discussed about players giving feedback (both good and bad) to DMs in such a way to make it more useful and to limit the damage of criticism.
Today I want to talk directly to the GMs who, while craving feedback, aren’t always that ready to get it.
Having to prep, run and referee the game is a huge responsibility and necessitates a lot from a person. Often, the amount of work poured into a game makes the GM emotionally involved with the game to a point where honest feedback on the game, both good and bad, is taken as feedback on the person.
Dear GM, if you are truly interested in getting relevant feedback from your players, you need to accept, at the deepest level a few very important facts:
1) You are not your game!
Good or bad feedback is not automatically related to your running of the game or a statement on you as a person. You need to detach yourself from your game in order to be better prepared to receive feedback.
Of course, if all players had a great time, I won’t prevent you from feeling like you are on top of the world. A great game session is one of the things that make GMing so incredibly rewarding.
Just remember that you are not the only reason why the game went so well. The GM is a facilitator of fun, not the sole provider of it.
For the same reasons, if a session went less than admirably, you are not entirely at fault. While you may get feedback about decisions you made or how an encounter you wrote turned out, view this not as an affront on you as a GM but as something to explore when trying to become a better GM.
You are just a part of your game, not all of it.
2) You are not as good as you think
Like so many drivers, some people tend to overestimate their skills in a discipline. After having GMed for a couple of years, they think they’ve reached a peak and are at the top of their figurative game.
About 5 years ago, I saw myself as such. Having been a Gamemaster for about 20 years, I deluded myself in thinking I knew everything there was to know behind the screen. While several of our games were fun and exciting, I still had about one game in 3-4 go wrong enough as to leave me feeling like the evening was somewhat wasted.
I started to realize that maybe there were a few things I could improve. I was not the only one responsible, but I had my part to play in these less than stellar games.
Now I’m a much better GM than I was then, thanks to this blog and my game reports, still I manage to learn new things I could do better at every game!
As a confident GM you still need to accept that you can get better before asking for honest feedback, otherwise, you’re just looking for validation.
So take it down a notch and listen to what your players are really saying.
3) You are not as bad as you think
The opposite of the last one. Some GMs are just so damn ready to beat themselves up whenever something goes awry.
There is no way you can write the perfect game, plan for all contingencies, or hit all players motivations all the time. You are not a robot, you have issues and level of tiredness too. You also have limited influence on what your players will do.
With time, it will become easier. Getting better is a slow process. You need to trust that you will. You also must stop yourself from trying to meet unrealistic expectations or worse, spiral into self-doubt at the drop of a bad encounter.
In that sense, you have to grab positive feedback at face value. It’s not something your players will give you just to make you happy. Take the time to note what it is you do well and reflect on that. Similarly, any criticism is not a confirmation of your suckiness, the player giving it, if not a total jerk, probably wants the game to be better too!
If you make player enjoyment your main mission around the table, you are bound to get better faster.
So stop whipping yourself, if you were such a bad GM, no one would show up for your game or ask you to do it in the first place.
The Unspoken word
I’ve said it in past posts, but you can get a ton of non-verbal feedback from your players. Once or twice during a game session, pause the game for a few moments, empty your mind of whatever GMing detail you were focusing on and look at each player’s body language.
Are they leaning forward, talking excitedly? If so, note what kind of scene you are playing. If a player sits back, doodling, note that too. Keep this in mind for future discussions with them.
You’ll need to work for that feedback
How many times have you packed your dice and rulebook after a game, asking innocently enough ‘So, how was it?” only to get grunts and shrugs with a few ‘was okay’?
Unless the player you ask is a chatty extrovert, chances are that putting people on the spot with no preparation will result in limited, non-committal feedback.
In part one, I’ve been preaching that players need to recover from whatever emotion they carried in the game and must identify some concrete element of the game to give useful feedback on. It stands to reason that as a GM that read both articles, you have to give your players time to prepare.
So after a session, or before a campaign, you may tell your players that after the game, you’ll go around, through email, text messaging or face to face discussions asking for feedback on what they specifically liked about the game and what they didn’t.
You should not necessarily do it with each player for each session, but going around the whole group over a period of a few games is a good plan.
Roll that listen Check!
When you discuss the game with players, do what management courses call active listening.
Stick to asking questions almost exclusively. Use answers received to formulate new questions. Don’t argue or explain your decisions (unless asked to), focus on the player. People liked to be listened to and eventually come out of their shell when they feel you are genuinely interested in what they are saying.
Ask open questions, those that can’t be answered by a simple yes/no:
“How did you feel when that dragon cut short on your diplomacy attempt and attacked?”
“Why do you think Jack decide to kick down the door that brought all these demons in the fight?”
If they can’t find anything to say, try to recall how what kind of body language they had and bring it up as a question:
“During the fight vs the dragon, you didn’t seem to be all that excited, what was going through your mind then?”
Active listening is one of the best, most useful social skills that a GM can learn. Look it up and practice it… it’s well worth it!
Open Questions, they talk, you keep a lid on your defensiveness, you move the conversation with more question and you will get the feedback you want!
Post Scriptum: The limits of feedback
Some players and GMs have limited communication skills or don’t actually care about others all that much. This can make any form of feedback nearly nonexistent at best or downright rude and hurtful at worse.
While I leave conflict management for a future post (or see Tony’s excellent take on the subject here), you must try to differentiate lack of social grace with uncompromising selfishness. If a player refuses to give feedback or says something that comes out wrong, don’t automatically assume the worst. Settle on non-verbal feedback gathering until better trust is established and the group works out how to interact better.
However if over a prolonged period of time, a player’s feedback is solely focused on getting more at the expense of you or the others, you likely are dealing with a problem player.
Oh and it bears mentioning that an uncompromising, selfish GM is among the most toxic things you can find around a gaming table, flee those like the plague!
Thanks for reading, feel free to add more things I didn’t cover. This is a large subject and I already wrote 3000 words on it!
The Big Switch
Today, I have made a big decision.
For the past two and a half years, I’ve received a monthly comic shipment straight to my door. It was a time when I was buying and reading a lot of comics, and wanted to be in from the beginning on 52, the first of DC Comics series of weekly comics (and the only weekly comic I’ve enjoyed so far.) The local comic shop’s subscription deal wasn’t very good, and in fact, got worse not that much longer after I first inquired about it. I signed up with SciFiGenre because of their price, but I also have to say that I have always been VERY impressed with their service. Rarely any kind of issue whatsoever, and they always let me know when there was a problem with an incoming book. Plus, being able to view upcoming issues and the list of all available titles is a big plus.
However, all that said, I’m canceling my account as of today, and not picking up individual issues any more. [Read the rest of this article]
Kobold Love Playtesting Posted
Last night I posted the last part of Kobold Love’s playtesting report from the Draconis gaming con.
(For those not in the know, Kobold Love is a long winded project where I tackle writing a D&D 4e adventure directly on a website, open to comments and feedback. Other readers are also invited to tackle this adventure for their favorite game.)
What I got out of it was that the adventure has huge potential. What really works in such a reverse dungeon adventure is anything that makes playing kobolds different from an average party of adventurer. Player-controlled traps, cunning, getting back to ‘the man’… all these things worked.
What worked less was straight forward fighting encounters. The adventure loses some of its specialness when the PCs are fighting in a neutral environment like an Inn or on a country road.
I’ll therefore try to fluff it up some more.
In other news, my good friend Heather has started blogging again and has just written about creating your own D&D Status markers!
Also, later this week (if I can stop going to bed at 8h30! Damn Jet-Lag!):
- Part 2 of my “Giving Feedback to DMs” series
- My Inter-review of Goodman Games Fogotten Heroes
- The October Super Heroes Blog Carnival wrap up (Hurry, you have until Friday to turn your pieces in).
Review: Fable 2
So, first let me start off saying I really enjoyed the first Fable. The game had a number of flaws but it was still fun. It was so easy that a friend of mine decided for a challenge he’d play through without leveling up, naked, wielding only a stick. He managed to almost beat it without being touched. The skill system was also broken – I played through the entire game using one spell which made me basically invulnerable (inferno, I believe). However, the character of the game was brilliant. That’s what made it fun for me. This holds true for Fable 2 as well.
Inq. of the Week: New Games?
I was actually pleasantly suprised when I saw the question Dave asked last week, to find out what our favorite undead creature is, and some of the results are a bit surprising. The Lich came out in first with 25% of the total votes, followed in a very distant second by the blood-sucking Vampire with 16%, and then Zombies and Ghouls tied for third with 12%. The lower numbers were led by the bane of the argonauts – Skeletons, on top of Wraiths and then Mummies. A few popular undead baddies were left off the list, such as the popular Death Knight and the always frightening Huecuvas and Atropals!
In the last two weeks I was kind of hit over the head by what seemed like a wave of quality new games being released and talked about. I’ve been hotly anticipating Fallout 3 for two years now, so Tuesday is going to be a sweet day but it turns out there are a lot of games that either just came out or are coming out soon (or were delayed) which I’m very interested in playing. Fable 2 has been big with our friends since it came out, and it seems like everyone has either heard about or been talking about Little Big Planet and it being unfortunately delayed. On top of these we have Tycho from Penny Arcade really talking up Dead Space, and of course there’s Guitar Hero World Tour with its tasty selection of musical excellence.
That brings us to our Inquisition of the Week!
Loading ...I’ve left an answer for Other, because I’m sure there are a few more new games out or coming out soon that people will be picking up, and we’d love to know about them! Also, if you’ve already bought and played some of these games please share your thoughts in the comments.
Afterschool Trope Post: Holy Super Heroic Fantasy Batman!
This month, I am the custodian of the RPGbloggers Monthly Carnival which is about Super Heroes.
I thought it would be a perfect occasion to do a new Trope post about mixing some Super Heroes in my D&D Kool Aid!
Trope: A narrative shortcut taken in a story that the audience will recognize and have expectations about. See this site if you have never heard about them.
Some of the critics on D&D 4e revolve around the fact that the PCs are too heroic and too competent, robbing the genre of its historical Zero to Hero vibe. That’s a perfectly valid critic and is part of the Old School revival we see on the net.
My stance on this is to embrace the new design philosophies and turn the volume to 11.
By default, D&D 4e is be about:
- Exceptional Heroes equipped with powers few mortals share
- A world filled with Evil and Danger
- Combat in dynamic and challenging environments
- Teamwork to surmount difficult odds
I don’t know about you but that really does sound familiar…
A series where the main character has powers and/or abilities that set him aside from other people. Usually (unless he’s Not Wearing Tights) he is a costumed do-gooder with a colorful outfit (which likely sports a Chest Insignia), a Secret Identity and often unusual and useful superpowers or equipment (Snip)
Sometimes the show focuses on a team or other grouping of powered individuals.
So basically, most of the work has been already done to make a D&D 4e campaign into a fusion of Fantasy Super Heroes. Let’s explore this a bit:
Powers and Origins
That one is the easiest. All D&D classes come packed with powers who are derived from a specific Power Source. You can therefore tweak the fluff behind each source to make it more inline with Super Powers.
Martial Power Source: PCs are Batman-style super normals. They learned the secrets of killing people with dull spoons and 3 headed flails through secret Monastic Orders and long lost martial lore. You need to describe moves with silly Anime names like ‘Avalanche of Monkey Thunder’ (Thanks Bobzilla) and ‘Wall of Raging Steel Elephants’.
Divine Power Source: Fearless Leaders, these characters can call both destruction and healing from the Powers of the Planes. From the Tankish Paladin to the Buffing Cleric you need to play these guys like Avatars of Divine Powers, exuding Glowing Holy Energies like a Leaking Plutonium Reactor Core.
Arcane Power Source: The Blasters of the campaign. These guys laugh at the rigidity of physical laws. Need a light? Ding, here’s one! Need these mooks to be fried? Boom there it is!. Oh noes, I’m being cornered by orcs! Poof! Suckers, I’m over here now!
If I was to make a Super Arcanist, I’d make him into a Teleporting Warlock and I’d make him as Chatty as Spiderman
In fact, a key point of doing a Super Fantasy game is to encourage players to come up with an origins story to explain, in their own ways, how they got thier powers. It would also increase the feel of the story to have players come up with reasons why they would learn new powers upon leveling up. They can visit their old mentors, study old scrolls during adventuring or practice new moves during rest periods.
Costume and Secret Identity
I find it hard to imagine why a Fantasy Hero would want his identity to remain a secret. It is however one of the key difference between the genres (apart from the whole medieval vs Modern theme of course).
Here’s how I’d envision it:
The world has fallen through dark times, hordes of monsters and marauding barbarians have overtaken the old kingdom and the self-contained Free City is the only standing bastion of safety. This safety has been brought at the cost of ever increasing power to the civic leaders and severe limitations on freedom.
“We control your life so that others don’t try to take it from you!”
Much like Feudal Japan, all non military citizen are prevented from bearing arms and all must toil in the City’s Gardens, merchant Navies and Services under the watchful eyes of the the City’s Blackcloaks, the Secret Police arm of the government.
Enter the PCs. They have learned thier (Illegal) powers in secret and are motivated to fight both the encroaching danger of the wilderness but also the choking tyranny of a state that has had power for too long and now clings to it.
Being all citizens of the city, with family and loved ones, they must hide thier identities to perform thier deeds, for fear of reprisal.
Of course, at a certain point they become stronger than all Civic Forces and need to decide how to restore freedom and still protect the city… Fun Times!
Alternative to Secret Identities
Have all PCs be part of an adventuring group, complete with tabards and a name.
Then thier costumed identity makes them more recognizable and more likely to be invited by the leaders of your campaign world for request of help. It becomes a marketing thing to wear the Blue Cloaks or to proudly wear the Tabard of the Order of The Soup Bowl… don’t laugh, its a very very respected all Halfling adventuring group.
Campaign Models
One thing a Super Heroic Fantasy campaign does not do very well is ‘Kill them and take their stuff’.
Super Heroics is about saving people, facing world-destroying threats and dealing with one’s inner vulnerabilities, making the genre perfect for Psychodrama seeking players.
The campaign should be under the theme of our heroes being asked for help by different organization to face dangers no average mortals can deal with. That model can then be made more complex by having each organization’s agenda become incompatible with other’s and have the PCs find out how they are being used and abused.
So here’s a few campaign ideas:
PCs are Rangers (in the Tolkien sense) protecting a region from encroaching hordes of baddies… and a rift to both the Abyss and Hell opened and things are pouring out… and fighting each other!
There’s a crazy Wizard-Alchemist that developed a serum to “unlock” to true potential. By a stroke of sheer luck he managed to do one ‘good’ batch. The PCs (all orphans) were exposed to developping their current power. Since, the mad man has been trying to re-create his early success but has only managed to create and release psychotically savage monsters in the city. The PCs must trace him back in the depth of the dungeons under the city and put a stop to his activities.
Magic Items as Powers
Since money more or less becomes irrelevant in such a campaign, I suggest that Magic Items (the main reason to keep track of money in 4e) be unavailable for purchase per say. Instead have Magic items become part of the PCs’s Powers as Super Equipment! Then have this crazy allied gadgeteering Gnome or Dwarf NPC make Magic Items out of whatever pieces of strange doohickeys the PCs find in their quests.
So Magic Items then become the Bat-gadgets of our heroes.
of course, PCs will still find magic items in their quests, but then they players will need to work together to weave them in thier stories.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to don my Flanged Plate mail and Full Face visor for I must foil the latest plans of the Evil Eye, Mastermind Beholder of the Underworld and his Death Gnoll Minions!
What more? Check Out Ninetail’s take on the same subject!
Credit: Nice One Entertainment (Image)
And also, the end of the D&D Miniatures game
As Graham points out, Scott Rouse (brand manager for D&D) made a post on Wizards yesterday that explains the changes. To me, the most important part of the whole thing is:
November’s release of Demonweb will be the last new set that includes skirmish statistics… official sanctioning of D&D Miniatures skirmish events will cease right after D&D Experience in February.
I started with Harbinger all those years ago, and really had a blast playing the skirmish game. As a long time fan of skirmish-level minis games (Mordheim and Bloodbowl being among my favorites), DDM had the advantage of being relatively quick-playing, using familiar D&D characters and creatures, and most of all, I didn’t have to paint the damn things. [Read the rest of this article]
