The Reflex….Saves!
I’m taking a micro break from my self imposed blogging hiatus to give you some news.
I’ve started sleeping again. Yay!
I’ve started writing the D&D 4e adventure I have to deliver next month. I plan to start spending some half-days during weekends to get it out faster. Yay squared!
I’ll be playtesting Kobold Love again this weekend with Eric Maziade’s gaming group. I hope to have some time to fix the last scene before playing in out. I’m looking forward to start playing again.
Speaking of Kobold Love, have a look at Ancient Sensei’s stab at it for the Paizo Pathfinder game. I’m happy to see some of my friends are keeping the project alive. I’m looking forward to take it up after I’m done with the Goodman Games adventure.
Oh and last night I went out to see Duran Duran who were giving a show in one of Montreal’s smaller, but kickass Venue.
I grew up on Duran Duran. They were the 1st pop group I listened to, from 4th grade up till high school.
Last night’s show was a delightful trip down memory lane and also a rare one on one date with my wife.
I need to go out more!
Cheer people, thanks for hanging around. I’ve received multiple offers of help and support in the last few weeks and I really appreciate all this. You all rock!
Chatty's Reruns: Making Memorable NPCs
I’m on Blogging break until the week of December 20. In the meantime, I’m re-posting some of my old texts.
In this one (August 29th 2007), you can see me start linking out to fellow bloggers where I write my take on a subject they recently talked about. Not too long after, I started getting comments from people other than my friend Yan!
Today, Yax over at Dungeon Mastering brings an interesting post on how to play villains that will be hated by your players. (Emphasis mine, see below)
Vanir, from StupidRanger chimes in the comment section about how the villains in his play group actually take notes from the PCs actions.
This little raises two separate but related issues in terms of playing adversarial NPCs.
1) How to make memorable, credible adversaries in a role playing game
2) How to role-play evil characters without resorting to lame clichés or plain boring bullies.
I’ll tackle number 1 below, and I’ll ponder on number two for a future entry.
From my personal experiences, and hugely inspired by Monte Cook’s D&D 3.0 DMG and Dungeon magazine’s Dungeoncraft series, all NPCs should have 1 or 2 defining traits (physical, personality, rumors, secrets) that bring them out of the ordinary.
I think an adversarial NPC only needs to be fleshed out further than that if:
- It is a returning villain in the campaign
- One or more player ‘bites’ at one of the NPC’s traits and steers the role-play toward exploring the relation with the adversary.
Case in point:
Wwe were playing one of those Dungeon Crawl Classic adventures (The Mysterious Tower) and the party met with an Otyugh (a Trash eating tentacles-equipped walking-mouth). Expecting to see it killed faster than I could say ‘roll for initiative’, I had given it just one trait. In halting Common, it always referred to other living creatures, including itself, as food.
So as the PCs came face to face with it, they heard it say ‘Ahhh, lot’s of Food-on-two-sticks! Come to Food-that-Eats, Food-that-Eats hungry!!!!
The player’s loved it! So much so that the poor creature became an instant party mascot. The PCs starting actually feeding it with dead monsters and they got a loyal friend in return.
So giving a few out-of-the-ordinary traits is a great start for would-be memorable NPCs.
Now I could not help noticing that Yax mentioned NPCs that his Players hated.
Strong emotions are the best catalyst to imprint a strong NPC in the minds of players. And this here calls for some metagaming cheating on the part of DMs.
If you want an NPC to truly stand out with a group of characters, you have to go after the player’s guts (note the very metagaming distinction of player’s vs their characters). One of the surest way to do that is to mimic a NPC’s personality or trait that your players hate in people. While all books of good DMing say to stay clear of Real Life issues, you can still ‘borrow’ from it and make that NPC a caricature of someone or a personality trait that is instantly unlikable.
Second case in point:
I made this Bronze Dragon NPC that always, always asked for validation whenever he did or said something:
- So, do you think I was scary enough with those cultists?
- Do you think this breastplate is a good choice when I’m in Human form?
I had knowingly given a character trait that one of my players (Eric) absolutely hates in people. So much so that we almost had a Good on Good fight right there. The other character’s rush to calm their friend down was priceless and made for one of the best Roleplaying scene I had seen in a long time.
That is emotional highjacking at its best and this Dragon NPC became another instant recurring Good guy. To achieve that, I went for the player’s guts, not the character.
Inspiration for strong Hateful character traits
- Web Forum Trolls!
- Ex-petty bosses (or college teachers, or schoolyard bullies) shared by most of the group
- Religious/Console/Computer Platform Fanatics.
- Passive Aggressive people
Lot’s of strong emotions there.
But! There is a fine line to walk. Do not bring to the table issues that are currently strongly affecting one or more players (especially for players that share work/school outside of the game). Go for the common cathartic enemy, don’t be that DM that plays an overbearing alcoholic or needy psychotic NPC that has a strong resemblance to someone close to the players.
Peace out.
Equivalent Exchange
icv2 reports that Full Metal Alchemist will be getting a second series. Sequel series that picks up after the movie? Re-done version that sticks closer to the manga (ala Hellsing)? The adventures of the protagonist pair’s alter-egos in our world during the early 30′s? The article doesn’t say, but I’m skeptical that anything will be able to compare to the original. As far as wrapping up every plot thread, it seems like they did a pretty darn good job the first time around.
Chatty's Reruns: My craziness and DMing….
Until the week of December 20th, I’ll be posting reruns of older blog posts.
One of my earliest Blog posts (August 21st 2007). I wrote this while I was planning last year’s D&D campaign. Its still very actual and defines me as a person in all my life spheres. Its a bit rough around the edges so I couldn’t help editing it a bit. Enjoy!
I’m a guy that somehow likes to give himself trouble. Whenever I set out to create stuff, I impose myself with limits, restraints that sometimes end up conflicting.
Since D&D is my main creative outlet (current blogging experiment excluded) that’s where it all crashes. It seems that the concept behind the KISS acronym (Keep it Simple, Stupid) eludes me to no end.
I always start a new campaign with a core idea and that idea explodes into a thousand others I wish to cram in the same game. House Rules collide with the latest cool book and the new plot idea I thought of last night to create an absolute mess that often ends up giving me the mother of all writer’s block.
I know why I do it. I’m a weather vane, a change agent, always hunting for the latest cool thing to augment my player’s experiences.
I did a personality profile once that said that I generated more idea in a day than an average person does in a month. That’s so true !
Anyway, in regards to D&D, I need constraints to drive my creativity because if I don’t put limits I just don’t know where to go with it.
For my campaign I went about creating a core idea: Evil Fiends are plotting to invade the Player character’s homeworld. Simple and neat.
Then, being the failed writer that I am, I try to fit this idea in a certain continuum that is my Home-brewed gaming world. I then allowed one of my players to keep a really cool character from the last game we dropped. A character that responds to a widely different set of rules that the 4 other characters.
Then I wanted to use as much as the recent material we bought, so I’m staging the game in Ptolus (it cost 120 $).
However, Ptolus is set in a Prison-world that disallows plane-hopping, so we needed to fudge a lot of the setting to fit it in my game-world, because I (and the players) also want to have a Plane Hopping campaign….
It goes on and on and on…. (Tons of house rules, conflicting storylines, etc)
Now it would not be such an issue if I wasn’t such a stickler for rules. While, I love change and bringing down systems to rebuild them, I still have a strong urge to abide by the rules (internal and external) of a system. So much that I often paint myself in a corner and become distressed. (Dec 2008 Edit: How familiar)
Up until one of my good friend gently reminds me that I made all the rules that got me there in the first place and that I was perfectly allowed to change them again at my whim to get out of that corner… doh!
Add to the fact that like all skilled DMs, I’m somewhat insecure and neurotic about it all. I put emphasis on stuff the players never notice and I drive myself too hard.
So yeah, I often need to be reminded to KISS. I know I won’t do it, but when I see that that corner coming, it helps to know I can simplify things.
So my personal take home message for this campaign is this:
Your friends show up for a few hours of Heroic Storytelling with a sprinkle of Buttkicking, exploration and Drama. Your job is to stick to that.
Inq. of the Week: Settings for Adventure
Two weeks ago, we asked what setting you’d like to see next updated to 4e. The big winner was the bunch of bashers who know the dark about Sigil: 29% chose Planescape as their top pick for next setting. Second place (22%) went to Dark Sun, which presumably will need some psionics rules first. Third place (12%) went to Ravenloft, and all the settings listed got at least a little love.
Both Planescape and Ravenloft have gotten a bit of 4e support in Dragon magazine. Dragon featured a new Domain of Dread which suggests the role of Ravenloft in the 4e cosmology. Likewise, the Mercykillers article went up today, which answers a lot of questions about the role of Planescape and Sigil in 4e. It includes a lengthy introduction (with some in Sigil cant) and then presents the Mercykiller faction as a Paragon Path. Some of who have received the Manual of the Planes early have also reported that Sigil gets some more love in that tome. I’m not sure what any of that means for the two settings’ chances of hitting print as standalone works, but at least there’s something for us to sink our teeth into in the meantime.
Consider this an edition-free follow-up to the last question. There was top pick for what should be next in 4e, but I’m curious:
Loading ...Feel free to use your own metric of whether or not you’ve played in the setting or not. For example, since 3e used Greyhawk as the default setting, many would answer that. However, I played in plenty of 3e games that used the Greyhawk deities and such but never felt like I was actually playing “in Greyhawk” so I’m leaving that off my list. Likewise, you might have played in a Planescape campaign but never chose a faction or set foot in Sigil. Make your best determination, and let us know where you’ve adventured.
Take a trip down to Fabletown
Legends In Exile
This project has really high potential, but I fear could easily suffer from a serious watering down that would make the show revolve around a “fable of the week” concept at the expense of its excellent overall plot line. For those who do not know, the comic revolves around exiled fables that set up in New York after an evil empire conquers their homelands. Major characters include Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Jack of Fables, Little Boy Blue, and Prince Charming.
Half-Season Break
Sometimes life sends you little subtle signals like a string of insomnia-laced nights. When it does… it kinda pays to listen to them.
I’ve got a social calendar that’s really filled up until Christmas, (Hell I’m out every evening from Wednesday till Sunday this week). I’ve also an adventure to write that must be delivered in the next 45 days. Since things are often interrelated, I’m also having some health stuff to deal with.
Thus, I’m turning Musings into rerun mode until the week of December 20th. I plan to post at least three of my old articles a week. Each will have open comments which I’ll follow and respond to.
Alternatively, if you’d like to step up the plate and write a (or a few) guest posts on this here blog here, I would be very appreciative! Just send me a short email at chattydm@chattydm.net and send me a pitch. If I retain it, I’ll create you an authors’ account and I’ll let you post your piece!
I’ll be back with new content at around Christmas time.
Until then, I hope you’ll enjoy some of my oldies and/or the guest posts and I hope they will kindle some new and great discussions.
Have a great week!
Adventure Design: The Importance of Choices
Last night, while lying wide awake and watching the excellent Avatar cartoon series, I started pondering on how important it is for a characters to be shown as having an effect on a story.
Avatar is filled to the brims with this. In each show, characters make choices, wrong and right. This ends up affecting where the story goes and how characters interact with one another.
Compare this to a pair of movies I saw in the last year: The Last Mimzy and the 1st Chronicles of Narnia.
In The Last Mimzy, a sentient toy from the future is found by a pair of kids. It then goes to show them (directly and through telepathic suggestions) how to create a Time portal so that the essence of one of the kids can be ‘borrowed’ to save the future.
Throughout the movie, the kids only basically do what the toy tells them to do and then their civilization is saved. I don’t recall them making a decision of importance about anything related to the story (except “Do we tell mom?”)
Something similar happens in the first Narnia movie. Some kids find a parallel world, are drafted to become its leaders and basically end up being figureheads for the near omnipotent Lion who steals the show with the old ‘make them believe I’m dead’ ploy.
(Yes I’m being somewhat unfair to an otherwise good movie).
Movies/books are not the only culprits. In the early days of the d20 game, Privateer Press published a beautiful, fluffy adventure cycle called the Witchfire Trilogy. The adventure was, to me, nearly unplayable because it was such a darned linear railroad. I felt that the PCs were only a glorified audience to the events of these adventures.
An audience that got to fight at certain intervals.
Much like J-RPGs on consoles…
Am I loosing my thread here? Hmmm.
Anyhoo. My main point is that in both classic narratives and Roleplaying games, significant choices made by characters are key to an enjoyable experience. Yet as Gamemasters and adventure writers, its often easy to get caught in the coolness of your story and unwillingly relegate your players to an audience in certain scenes.
The choices you give PCs don’t have to be colossal. You can let them choose to let the bad guy live or die. They could chose to help the Baron instead of the Baroness for a given side quest. You don’t need to make your game into a sandbox if that’s not your style (it sure ain’t mine).
So be they combat powers to choose from or getting to influence the story with a key moral choice, players want the feeling that what they chose matters.
In my next campaign I had planned to send my players to establish some new trade relations between their Halfling Robber Baron boss and the Underdark elements of Thunderspire Labyrinth. In my first mental draft, the mission was a straightforward plot hook to get the players into a published adventure.
But as I was pondering choices, I foresaw that the PC’s patron will likely encourage them to choose the best trading partners and negotiate the deals (for a cut of course!) This will likely make my Storytellers more interested to participate in an otherwise battle-heavy adventure.
I also have to keep that in mind for the freelance adventure I’m writing. 
So when you write your next adventure, make sure that your PCs have an impact on the events they participate in. Your players will appreciate and your efforts as GM will be better rewarded.
Bioshock's Lead Designer on the Triumph of the Nerd
Ken Levine’s keynote speech from the latest Penny Arcade Expo is fantastic, so I’ve embedded it here. He talks extensively about what it was like growing up as a nerd in the 70′s, and talks extensively about finding a gaming group. Not only does he share much of how I feel, it’s a hilarious talk- he uses the phrase “Gygaxian Gingerbread House” at one point. It’s about half an hour long, but well worth listening to.
Thanks to joshx0rfz for sending it my way.
