Don’t Do As I Do
I considered naming this article DM Confessions, but there won’t be nearly as much drunken nudity as the Confessions genre requires, which should make us all happy and relieved. I also briefly entertained the title DM Fail, but that whole Fail tag is so last interval (month? year? decade?). Finally, I almost busted out the colon (punctuation, not organ), as in, DM Confessions: How I Fail, but that seems like an extremely geeky Lifetime movie. This article isn’t about any of those things. This is about the realization that I’m a pretty terrible DM, and how you can become markedly better by avoiding everything I do.
Telling Stories
No doubt you’re thinking to yourself, “Hold on, you smelly jerk, are you telling me that I should avoid telling stories when I run games? What kind of a smelly jerk are you?” Allow me to explain, and please stop calling me names.
When I first begin conjuring up an adventure, I always start with vivid, evocative scenes. Regardless of whether I know who’s going to be playing or what characters they’ll be using, I imagine things like:
- The moment of dawning horror when the PCs realize that they are the murderers
- The looks on their faces when the colossal dragon coalesces in their midst out of the purple-black dust
- The tears in their eyes when the NPC halfling, their dear friend, shudders and dies just out of reach, crucified on the tree.
I play all of this out in my head, often several times and from multiple angles, and never realize that there is the possibility that the players’ emotional investment might not be nearly as deep as mine. In fact, they might be coolly pragmatic about it, as in, “Okay, we’re the murderers, whatever, I’m still going to search the wizard’s library,” or, “Cool, we have flanking on the dragon, I’m going to backstab,” or, “The cleric will use his healing word on the halfling, and I’ll bend the bars on the gate to get to him.”
You see what happened there? I had prewritten powerfully moving scenes, and those rotten players refused to be powerfully moved by them. I might try to argue that it’s impossible to plan for these sorts of scenes, but since it’s dangerous dealing in generalizations, I’ll just say, it’s awful tricky. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Fantasy Buildings 101
When it comes to designing locations and buildings, the DM/GM has a much more daunting task ahead of them than most players or even the DMs themselves realize. Thankfully in most of the RPGs we play and run it is far from crucial that the design of the world is 100% accurate and entirely believable. Most players are willing to suspend their disbelief to an incredible level and almost all DMs don’t really have the time to make sure every location they put into their game is believable. However, creating an environment that is believable can actually make your players lives easier because they will buy into the game on a more unconscious level. This added level of believability just might turn out to be the whole new layer of depth that your game needs.
What I hope to cover in this post (or series of posts if I think of enough examples and there is a demand) is how to design many of the basic building types that you might find in a fantasy setting. Thanks again to Andy for asking questions and suggesting this idea for a post!
Town Hall
Pretty much every modern city or town has one, and they are often at or very close to the center of the town, so the classic town hall seems like a good place to start. The basic town hall concept is nothing more than a place for gathering, and especially in medieval societies they can be as simple as a roof over top of a very large room. Tools, technology, and materials are some of the main influences in the design of medieval buildings and as a result if it is just one room it will be an elongated rectangle. Any guesses why that is? The answer is in the distance the roof can span, if you attempt to make a larger and larger square the distance you have to span increases quite a bit, but if you make it a rectangle you can span the shorter distance but enclose more space as it gets longer.
When you start to look beyond the one room town hall, as you advance your fantasy cultures the town halls increase in complexity and the number of rooms within them. Often these will include a kitchen, numerous smaller gathering rooms (including exterior porches), offices/residences for rulers or public officials, space to accommodate soldiers/law enforcement, and even in some cases theaters or other typically exterior public functions. The interesting development is that as a society progresses they will often eliminate the larger gathering spaces within a town hall and instead use the building for smaller interior functions and leave larger gatherings to take place elsewhere. As a place of gathering, town halls share many traits with churches and temples because their primary functions are almost identical.
Churches & Temples
Though places of worship or reverence have a lot in common with town halls, they will often be much more obvious in their reflection of the culture they were built by and particularly the specific beliefs of those people. Almost always a church will be designed with a foot print that is a significant shape to the builder’s religion. European Gothic churches have plans like a christian cross, while a Greek christian church will generally be a cross with all arms equal because that is a more meaningful shape to their faith. What this means for you when you design a church or temple in your game is that the basic layout can be very easy to come up with. If the building is dedicated to one deity, simply make the plan a derivative of that deity or religion’s holy symbol. A church dedicated to Pelor (the 4E god of the sun among other things) would very likely be circular in nature with radiating “spoke-like” wings going out in every direction. Even beyond that, have the entire building exude the themes of the religion. Stained glass windows common in many churches glow with a particular radiance, but they also block out direct light so our church of Pelor might instead have clear glass windows to allow the sun to come through and shine on those within.
If you’re looking to design a more general temple or church, perhaps one that is dedicated to no specific entity or to more than one deity, then taking the approach above could be quite difficult. In that case, much like the town hall above, you will generally start with a large gathering space but the difference comes in the developing societies churches and temples typically maintain the larger gathering spaces and simply add on additional, smaller spaces at the back or edges of the gathering area. My main suggestion for a temple like this would be to give it a round plan (and even a dome for a ceiling) or a multi-sided design depending on the number of gods it is dedicated to (8 gods? make it an octagon!) so that there can be a statue or shrine dedicated to each one spaced evenly around the building. The general design of these types of buildings can imply a lot about the cultures they represent, if all of the gods are treated equally then you get an impression of what they might be like versus a culture where there are many gods but one is clearly dominant and even sometimes overshadows/oppresses the other deities present.
Walls & Guard Posts
Even in the real world, many medieval towns were walled in and designed for protecting its citizens, and these people didn’t have monsters like trolls and dragons to worry about! Depending on the time period and society that constructs them, defensive buildings can enclose an entire city with a wall or simply be built around the center of town and designed so that the rest of the population can retreat inside when a threat presents itself. Many times you will see a castle or manor atop a large stone outcropping with walls and defenses built close by and a larger town of undefended houses and buildings spreading out from there. I’ve heard a few times that Minas Tirith in the Lord of the Rings was not designed properly because it only consisted of the fortified portion, the farmers and larger areas of housing that most likely would have been there were missing. Again, that’s comparing these things to real life where we don’t have some of the more dangerous wild creatures that are present in D&D and Middle Earth.
If I haven’t made it clear enough, one of the main guiding factors with designing defenses is rooted in what they’re defending against. In this way many common D&D towns are probably badly designed due to the sources of threat they often face. Walls and guard towers look different when they’re designed to withstand arrows versus later walls that had to deflect or withstand cannon balls and bullets. In the same way, a town that exists in the known territory of several different dragons might not have more than a handful of buildings above ground and be nearly undetectable from the air. A town that has to deal with a local infestation of Kruthiks might build their walls as much above ground as below, or else have large moats in front of those walls to try and catch the creatures coming out of the ground unexpectedly. Let me take this moment to dispel one of the great myths about medieval and fantasy construction – many moats didn’t contain water. That’s right, they were effectively just a large ditch dug outside of walls, but it makes a lot of sense when you can do that and turn a 10 ft. high wall into a 15 ft. high obstacle from up close.
Guard posts or towers are a very important part of most walls constructed, because they provide lateral stability that can help fortify the wall from tipping over either forward or backward. In addition, they often provide the means for accessing walkways along defensive walls or if there are no walkways the guard towers will be even more common so that the entire length of the wall can be covered by at least one guard tower. Sometimes a guard tower will be connected on the inside to a barracks or quarters so that the larger group has quick and easy access to their defenses. In other cases a guard tower might have small rooms set up as uncomfortable quarters for the on duty guards so that they are never far from their posts.
When you’re designing a city or town and want to add some defenses around it, think about the reason that the people of that city are defending themselves and try to make the defenses a reflection of those concerns. It is rare that the wall will just be a straight line with a few guard towers along it, so try to change the direction of the wall at each tower. In real life those changes in direction usually conform to the natural terrain they’re built on because you are rarely going to find a stretch of European land that is completely flat! When it comes to later, colonial style walls they are typically in diamond or star shapes so that the cannons have trouble finding a flat surface of wall to shoot at (where cannon balls can do the most damage).
A Series Within a Series
Depending on how you guys like this initial look into some basic Fantasy buildings, I can see this becoming an ongoing part of the Architect DM series. Already I have a handful of other buildings I almost always use in D&D (Tavern / Inn, anyone?) that should be some of the first ones discussed along with those I’ve already talked about here. If you think of any others that you always use or come across in your games, or any types of buildings in particular that you have had trouble designing or using in your games, please let me know and I’ll most likely address them soon!
Goodbye, From a Grandson
I can vaguely remember one Christmas with the whole family present, including my grandpa Sam. It was 1977, and I was barely 2. He died the following year, and I was too young to understand what I’d lost. I used to sit on the arm of his favorite chair and cough and wait for him, because I loved cough drops and he loved to give them to me, but he never came. He left behind a family that loved him, not the least of which was his wife, my grandmother, Gayle. She hated being called “Grandma”. So, most everybody just called her Gayle. She always did her own thing. It was just how she was.
We loved going to Gayle’s house. Her house was magical. My siblings and I would stay there on the weekends, and for weeks at a time during the summer. It was way better than staying at home. I could stay up as late as I wanted (I can remember when I was 5 seeing SNL start a couple of times before I conked out), I could eat all kinds of stuff I wasn’t allowed to at home (like a whole box of Cheez-it’s for breakfast), and there was always adventure around every corner. The basement of her house was unfathomably creepy to a little kid, which was certainly not helped by the fact that there was a dark, mysterious tunnel dug into one wall and a back room that Gayle always claimed was the habitat of a witch. It was sufficiently scary that we never went down there alone, and only under the direst of circumstances (the cake decorating supplies and Christmas decorations were down there!!). Fortunately, as a countermeasure, we were always armed with Spook Repellant, which smelled mysteriously like old perfume. I had strange nightly rituals I would perform at odd hours, like consuming exactly 7 ounces of Colby cheese, weighed on her precision Weight Watchers scale. (No, this is not some sort of weird joke. I still don’t know why I used to do that — but I miss it.) We had a reversible satin cape that would transform my brother from Superman (red side) into Dracula (black side). I used to wear a blue velvet bathrobe with a red belt that turned me into a karate master. I insisted that I sleep on a little army cot she had because it was way cooler than the big, comfortable bed. We spent endless hours at the video arcade, though her feet were killing her. I knew she didn’t want to be there, but she loved us, and she’d do anything for us.
She was very much a night owl, and was likely to be awake at 2 or 3am, and we used to enjoy the very best late night TV had to offer. As a teenager, I’d watch Troma movies on USA Up All Night every weekend and she’d let me have friends over to play D&D all the time. Even through high school, her house was a sanctuary to me. She even talked my parents into letting me start karate. Of course, since I was a teenage dumbass I always thought she was trying to get on my case just like my parents, and I’d always like to sequester myself in a room tinkering with the c64 she bought me so I could play games with my best friend whose grandma lived across the street. I shudder to think how much of her money we blew on pizza, Faygo Frosh, Taco Bell, and Mortal Kombat at the pool hall down the road. I know I must have been hard to deal with at that age, but she loved me, and she put up with a lot of my crap.
When college came around, I got a job and lots of friends and so much freedom, and I didn’t come around much for awhile. After a few years, I decided to start coming back over to her house late at night, after I’d get done watching the late movie with some friends. I knew she’d be up. We’d talk for awhile and then I’d crash in her guest bedroom until 10 or 11am and we’d have lunch before I’d head back to school. I still have no idea when she actually slept. Whenever she felt like it, I suppose. It was strange at first, because she started treating me like an adult, so we’d talk about grown-up stuff. It was like seeing her whole personality instead of just the warm and happy memories I had of her as a kid, and to my surprise there wasn’t much new there aside from her telling me stuff she was worried about or about people she was mad at. I suppose she did that when I was a kid too. Maybe I just wasn’t ready for it. Through it all, she wasn’t ever really particularly concerned about herself. She’d have done anything for her family and the people she loved.
I’m not 2 anymore, but still I don’t know that I’ll ever truly appreciate what I’ve lost. I still want to drive over to her house and expect to find her there. I find myself there in my dreams very often, usually the recurring dream I’ve had for 20 years about finally being able to go back there like none of it had ever changed. Sometimes it’s been changed to fit the dream I’m in, the rooms retrofitted to contain a mad scientist’s equipment, or a huge cathedral, or a McDonald’s, or I’ll find all the windows boarded up in preparation for zombie invasion (which always precludes an epic and intensely fun battle). I can’t blame my subconscious. That was the happiest place on Earth to me.
Gayle always loved us for who we were. She didn’t grow up with anything like lasers and robots and spaceships and videogames and D&D. She may not have even remotely liked any of that stuff, but she saw that our imaginations were running wild, and she gave them a wonderful place to grow. I don’t know what my little Sam (named after his grandpa) is going to be into when he gets older, nor what my grandkids are going to be into as they grow up, but at the very least I can try to give them the same gifts Gayle gave me: unconditional love, and a place where it’s OK for me to be myself. It helped me become the person I am today. I can’t imagine trying to do any differently as a father, a gaming blogger, or anything else.
I can’t share all the stories or even impart a fraction of how wonderful a person Gayle was here, but I’ll never forget what she meant to me, and I hope what I do for the rest of my time on this planet honors her memory.
I love you, Gayle. The world isn’t as bright without you here. I hope you’re doing better where you are now.
Critical Bits for the week ending 2010-09-26
- RT @Neuroglyph: Tried a 4E build comparison: Check out "Dueling Shadows: Essentials vs. Traditional 4E Assassin!" http://tinyurl.com/2e9e3pr #
- Tests happening about D&D PDF books? (rumor) http://bit.ly/9fvPGy #
- RT @KoboldQuarterly: 25 Essential Expressions of a Gelatinous Cube. http://cot.ag/dfxMFH ^wb #
- RT @Comixace: DC Ends Wildstorm and Zuda lines. http://bit.ly/9iBK5E #
- RT @Nikchick: We are doing an open mechanics playtest for Set 2 of Dragon Age. Head over to http://www.greenronin.com #
- From the Archives:: Batman: TAS Online! http://bit.ly/9OiZGi #charchive #
- Great post by @rjschwalb on dungeon and encounter design http://www.robertjschwalb.com/2010/09/reexamining-the-dungeon/ #
- RT @wordwill: Experience Vincent Baker's brilliant designs by getting all of his @lumpleygames games for $25: http://tinyurl.com/287cjc2 #
- RT @rdonoghue: Real post today about social currency and why 4e's scene economy is so well made. http://j.mp/by1Z1b #
- White Wolf announces entire back catalog will be available print on demand; e-tools coming for fan clubs & char creation #grandmasquerade #
- World of Darkness MMO will launch at earliest 2012, be only Vampire: The Masquerade (AKA Old World of Darkness) #grandmasquerade #
- "Vampire: the Masquerade" MMO will have a focus on player politics and social interaction. #grandmasquerade #
Re-examining the Dungeon: Section, Factions and Fronts
Do you remember those guys?
A few times a year RPG discussions and recent gaming “tech” converge on my radar to present a completely new insight as to how I perceive the game could be played at the table.
The 8×8 Combat Room Issue
Yesterday, Robert J. Schwalb, one of D&D’s most prolific writers, wrote a transcendent piece that may very well be the most thought out, “hammer meets nail” critical deconstruction of D&D 4e’s encounter design yet:
When writing adventures using this format, there’s less room to develop story content because every expected combat must fall in the one or two page encounter spread.
… Without a doubt, the encounters I hate the most are the 8 x 8 rooms with one creature per PC. These fights drag. Everything interesting about the encounter lives inside the monster stat-blocks. And, it is rather upfront about what it’s there to do: let the PCs mine for XP/treasure.
…What it seems is happening now is that the designer/DM creates a warband to throw against the PCs. They duke it out. The PCs win. The PCs get their reward. The PCs move to the next room and face the next warband.
…This system works and it works well, but its structure has replaced the familiar game play elements that existed in prior editions. Exploration and roleplaying exist in the lulls between encounters. And, when the challenge presents itself as monsters spoiling for a fight or a complex skill challenge, game play shifts toward a mechanized procedure, wherein resources are spent and, at the end, recovered.
This rings so damn true it’s scary. I recall saying it a few months back, I think that one of reasons the 8×8 room fight with 5 monsters has become so ubiquitous is because DMs have become complacent with the DM toolkit 4e offers. They keep to the basic templates instead of trying to be creative.
Now I’ve dabbled in the writing world enough to know that the average freelance writer can’t afford to re-invent the wheel when he’s paid peanuts and works under crashing deadlines. I think that pressure becomes too strong a temptation not to default to the average encounter formula. The same applies to the typical DM who only starts prepping a few hours before his game… the urge to default to the templates (or steal from Dungeon mag adventures who have similar designs) becomes very strong.
I think one of 4e’s problems is that DMing tools are now so structured, it becomes a hindrance for people with creativity issues to push through the proposed models and discover “new tech”. I know I’ve been having a hard time selling some of my weirder ideas like “Trap-Monster hybrids” and “The whole party stuck in the same body” because it seems people can’t see it done (or can’t afford the effort to squeeze the concept) in their 4e games.
The Solutions?
Rob then presents a solution which is completely elegant in bringing back some lost aspects of dungeon crawling like exploration, to the forefront:
I propose going back to the older model. Then, divide the dungeon into multi-room sections I’ll call sectors for lack of a better term. A sector might be a large single room or several smaller rooms linked by corridors, staircases, and so on. Each sector exists for a reason. There is something the characters must do, find, or survive before the sector can be “completed.” We’ll call this the victory condition…
Next, populate the sector. Use the standard XP budget, but for one or two levels above the PCs. Use the XP to by monsters of around the PCs level. This should give you more critters to play with. You don’t have to link them to each other, though you do have to link them to the sector.
The “tactical encounter” begins when the PCs enter the dungeon sector. The PCs don’t roll initiative yet as they are in exploring mode. As they move through the sector, they might encounter the smaller groups, at which point they could roll initiative and fight, sneak by the enemy, or talk their way through the monsters.
So in essence, divide a dungeon level in areas which have mini/minor-quests linked to them. Then populate those areas in loosely linked encounters (with a few unrelated ones thrown in) and then let the PCs decide what to do when they meet sub-parts of each: Sneak, Parley, Fight and so on…
I love that. And I really wanted to share Rob’s ideas with you.
But nowI want to build on his idea because I feel it’s not enough. We can push this boundary further.
Neo-Gygaxianism and Fronts
One of the things that the “collectible warband game” mentality of D&D 4e has hindered is the recreation of old Gygaxian factions in dungeons. Those were environment where an Ogre hermit lair, complete with chained Owlbear, kept a warband of Orcs and a Goblins’ den from going at each other’s throat, allowing the Necromancer to work in peace in his laboratory.
In 4e, with challenges properly balanced to allow a party to (narrowly) defeat all encounters, there’s no clear incentive for characters to try to convince the kobold Lord living close to the northern entrance that the Goblin Shaman and her tribe are trying to oust them from their strategic raiding camp.
Much like the DM toolkit gives incentives to the harried DM to colour within the lines of pre-established encounter models, players expect to gain more XPs by slaying every encounters AND they get a more rewarding mechanical experience when they get to use their powers… which, when taken literally, are mostly good in combat only. (They aren’t if you are a flexible DM, but that’s another post).
So Rob’s proposal is great to recreate just that: dungeon sections populated by one main factions (plus associated beasts and/or “natural fauna”). Yet, those who’ve followed my Apocalypse World post may see me coming with a way to make those Sector/Factions come ALIVE and become true dynamic dungeons.
We could make the whole dungeon (and it’s underlying plot) into a Front.
In Apocalypse World, an improv-driven Sci-Fi RPG of conflicting loyalties, all NPCs and places are named and associated “emotions/states” (Envy, Ambition, Hunger, Ignorance, Fear, etc) that could become threats to the PCs or the things they chose to defend.
When the GM builds an adventure, some of those NPC/places are regrouped in “Threats” according to how they could share a dark agenda, a common nefarious goal. A “countdown clock” is then established, a series of steps/event to bring the agenda to its conclusion.
Then you take a few of those threats (the dungeon being one of them) and you unify them into common higher level agenda, and you get a Front, a unified wall of trouble for the PCs.
Well, reading Rob’s post crystallized an idea I’ve had for a few days now:
A dungeon is a perfect element for a D&D Front.
See, a classic 3 encounters + a finale dungeon adventure could be divided into 4 sectors, each populated with a faction that represent a different Threat, for example:
- The Orcs: Establish a permanent raiding camp to reach nearby villages, will eventually destroy the local economy.
- The Kobolds: Snatch humanoids from the surrounding countryside (including unsuspecting orcs) , burn them in sacrifice to bring back spirit of the Dark Dragon God into this world.
- The Mad Wizard (there’s always one): Who’s scouring the temple for that one last element to complete his wand of Very Painful Domination and then test it on whomever is close by!
- The Dungeon: An old temple dedicated to the mad ones and their 5 dimensional dreams of conquest and destruction. Filled with wards that brings it closer to full sentience whenever it catches someone in them.
Each faction would have an agenda… and killing the PCs should not be in any of them, except maybe the Dungeon’s. And yes, it does bear an uncanny resemblance to another approach to adventure design I talked a few months ago.
Players should receive full XPs for dealing with the faction if they manage to thwart their agenda. In practical terms: add the whole XP budget of the monsters/Threats/Skill Challenges of the sector to the Minor/Major Quest that’s linked to the threat. Use that as a pool to hand out XPs as usual, but empty the pool and distribute the remaining points once the threat’s agenda has been nullified, regardless of how it was done, as long as PC choices and action were key in derailing the threat’s plans.
For example, if the PCs convince the orcs to storm the Mad Wizards and they end up all killed by the Temple’s traps, they win all the remaining XP in the “Orc Threat” pool because the villages are safe. Of course, the Temple’s agenda will then be nearly complete. 
So you’d design the dungeon as before but you would then add a new layer over it by creating the factions, their agendas and their “countdown clocks”. During play, whenever there’s an occasion in the story (extended rests, key PC choices, long negotiations with one faction, PC captured, etc), you could push some “Countdown Clocks” further and re-imagine the dungeon’s organization in function of what happened, taking all opportunities to have PCs react to those when possible with generous use of “What do yo do”?
And use those agendas to keep things moving if players get stuck in apparent story dead ends. Players are captured by the Orcs? Well maybe the Kobolds spring them out and give them back their equipment if they accept to deal with a problematic Temple Ward that screws their Divine link to their deity. The Dungeon nearly reaches it’s last countdown clock step and the PCs are down to their last Healing Surge? Well maybe then the bumbling Wizard drops by and disintegrates the newly summoned Gibbering Mouther when his wand misfires during its test run. He then invites the PCs to join his mad quest, providing a short respite of safety for an extended rest.
Explorations, diplomacy, double crosses, twists, complications… all things that this model of adventure should be able to support.
I think it’s a dangerous idea worth exploring.
Thoughts? Ideas?
Loss Builds Character
I’ve experienced a bit of loss recently. I lost my job at Wizards of the Coast this past December. No permanent employment has come my way yet, so I could lose my house. (Maybe not such a bad thing, all considered.) I gave my pound of flesh to the surgeon who removed my little cancerous growth. (Shaking my fist at the sun, I know it’s really my fault.) I lost my sister this past month. Heck, I’ve even lost over thirty pounds, taking the good with the bad. Loss has been on my mind a lot recently.
This isn’t about me, though. Truth be told, despite some dark instances, life has been good to me. Any suffering I’ve endured has been, thankfully, minor. I feel like I’ve gained a lot in the past few months, from experiences to friends to opportunities.
Loss shapes us. How one responds and moves on from loss can have a profound effect on the path one’s life takes and the deeds one performs. In this world, loss is inevitable but often without deep impact. We don’t live in a place where kobolds can eat our babies or a maniac can call up the avatar of the Mad God. Our characters do.
Making Up Losses
The minor travails of modern life are not the norm in for heroes in a fantasy world like those of the Dungeons & Dragons game. The harsher the world is, the greater the potential for suffering. Take Dark Sun. Characters on Athas have a potential for loss few of us would like to imagine. Even if you’re playing a game set in cushy Faerûn, DM or player, you should take some time to imagine loss.
Loss and the desire to do something about it is one root of character motivation. It can be key in the background of a player character and the adventuring party’s forward momentum. Something as little as gambling debt or as big as the death of an entire tribe can shape a character’s path. If you’re a DM, loss can turn good guys bad, bad guys good, and mold the fate of nations and deities.
One element I included in the character history questions for players in my Dark Sun game was had to do with loss. It went something like: Athas is a harsh world in which people suffer regular hardships and loss. What have you suffered or lost? How has this event shaped you or your life? What are you going to do about it?
Malamac, one of those characters, had a lot of loss in his life. He was the only dwarf in his clan who had no touch of primal magic. For “blasphemous” discoveries in an ancient dwarven city, servants of the tyrant of Tyr killed Malamac’s kin and enslaved Malamac. Malamac found himself an unwilling gladiator bereft of possessions and friends.
Like with Malamac, I learned the most about the characters from the losses they had suffered and what they planned to do about them. The answers have shaped adventures and encounters for over a year now. As the characters approach paragon tier, I’m working to provide opportunities to resolve or provide closure for many of those losses. I’m also fostering new attachments and planning possible threats to those attachments.
You see, loss often leads to new experiences and connections. Malamac’s initial loss opened the way for his primal power to blossom. It also provided him with a new “family” made up of some characters in his party if not the whole group. He has risen to leadership among his friends, providing him with a sort of status he might never have gained otherwise. The “loss” of his status as a slave opened the door to adventure, and adventure has led to prestige that might become actual influence in Tyr. Certainly, Malamac and his peers stand in a position to influence Tyr’s future fate.
Losses Influence
Loss I’ve imposed has shaped the narrative course of my Dark Sun campaign. I began the game, and some of my “Welcome to Dark Sun” sessions, with an encounter against a gang of slavers known as the Red Hand. The encounter was (and is) utterly unfair, a beatdown five levels higher than the characters. After putting up a truly spectacular and desperate struggle in the first run of this encounter, the characters fell to the superior forces. They lost their freedom instead of their lives, setting up the first adventure, where they must regain their freedom far from home or die.
The players, and characters, have been itching to even the score with the Red Hand since that first encounter. The current meat of the campaign is rooting out the gang and its leaders, and gaining some payback alongside some justice. The motivation is largely based on the first loss with a dash of “let’s end slavery in Tyr” thrown in.
That’s cool, because the players are the driving force behind the course of the action. Yes, I bait the hooks well, but the players choose which ones the characters bite. Attachment and connection, and possible loss of these, are huge motivators.
In the narrative, characters also wanted revenge on the owner of the Cracked Jack (a cracked drinking horn as its sign), the bar in which they were abducted. Jak, the owner in question, a bald half-elf with a scar down one side of his face, seemed like he was in cahoots with the gang. It turns out, as it does so often, that Jak was almost as much a victim as anyone. What would you do if a gang of thugs gave you the option to let them use your establishment or lose your skin?
When the characters returned to the Cracked Jack, they ended up facing the Red hand again and discovering Jak’s dilemma. They tried to save Jak, but failed. They then felt a sense of duty toward Jak’s orphaned teenage daughter, Danae. She is now part of the characters’ NPC entourage. Jak’s loss has led to new possibilities in the narrative.
Looming Losses
I have another hook floating out there that the Dragon of Tyr demands a thousand slaves per year from each of the seven cities. The free city of Tyr has no slaves to send, and too few prisoners who deserve such execution. Rumors are now spreading on the streets that Tyr is doomed to face the Dragon’s wrath. The players and characters know they can’t face the Dragon and hope to live (at least they can’t at 8th level). Yet this possibility threatens almost everything the characters love. What can they do?
Possible losses need not be that concrete, however. Corvas, a deva avenger, exists on Athas only because he comes from a time long forgotten. He remembers little of his existence as a once-great servant of the goddess Melora, not even her name. Divine power is part of his being, however. He is one of the few devas left on the planet, supposing any others survive. He is the rarest of characters in that he has actual divine power.
Corvas looks at today’s Athas and can feel only great sadness. Although the past isn’t clear in his time-fractured mind, he recalls better days in his subconscious. He also knows who’s to blame. Defilers.
The very threat of any more loss to defiling on Athas drives Corvas to rage beyond reason. Further, he cannot, will not, accept the dying world. A desire to bring life back to the brittle husk that Athas has become drives Corvas to strive and slay, and to seek his memories and true power. Does his “Painted Lady” live, is she dead, or is she a delusion?
Loss looms large in Corvas’s future, formless and ominous. It has countless strings I can pull to manipulate the course of the game.
Loss to Catharsis
The point of loss in a game is to provide some sort of tension. It can provide motivations for villains that characters can sympathize with. Player characters can explain unusual or nontactical behavior with it. (For instance, to the chagrin of his teammates, Corvas breaks off from his current target to attack anyone who or anything that defiles. I like it, even if the other players sometimes don’t.)
Tension is a good thing for any old story, and much more so for a narrative game. The tension doesn’t need to be released, but it’s very satisfying when it can be. Players feel rewarded for their efforts, in character background and in ongoing play, when the game’s play provides a chance to make up for past failures. Imagine how the players felt when they faced the Red Hand again and won with no losses.
Consider using loss and the emotions it entails to give your characters and scenarios more depth and tension. Then manipulate the depth for personalized narratives, and use the tension to set up satisfying clashes and releases. Give loss meaning. I hope I’ve given some of mine a little more by sharing this with you.
Illustrations by Jared von Hindman of Head Injury Theater.
The Architect DM: Environment and Interaction
It’s been a few weeks since my last Architect DM post, but don’t worry the series will continue and there seems to be a lot of information to cover! In my last post I talked about function and playability of a location in a more general and meta sense, but what I originally started that post to discuss was the specifics of how the environment is experienced. One of the most crucial considerations when it comes to design in Architecture is the human experience of the environment, after all the buildings are designed by humans for our own use and appreciation. Often when a building is described as making people uncomfortable (something all too common in most downtown cities) it is because the Architect did not give proper attention to the scale and attitude of the building where it meets the ground.
Fantastic Places for Fantastic Races
When you create environments and buildings for your tabletop RPG, the concept of “human scale” can be one of your greatest tools. It’s one thing to say that the stone ruins were built by giants and are of a larger scale, but it’s something entirely different when a player stands in the threshold of a half-open doorway that is sized for something 60′ tall to walk through. You are taking something that is literally derived from the scale of a human – a doorway, and mutating it to a different scale. This allows your players, and their characters, to directly relate to the environment and truly experience it as if they were there. Many works relating to the Cthulhu mythos reference cyclopean construction, which means the building is constructed out of incredibly large stone blocks, this term becomes very creepy when you can tie it back to a brick building that we would construct and illustrate exactly how large the ruins and those who created them must be. [Read the rest of this article]
Tales of the Apocalypse, Part 4: Bloody Sunrise
With my prep done, I was ready to start this week’s game, not knowing how it would turn out.
Previously on Apocalypse World:
In the desert settlement of Shanty Town, Colonel Allison reigns as chief of a weapons factory, making her the de facto lord of the local economy. With the cooperation of cycle gang leader Thunder, she organizes lucrative raids on the nearby, much richer Fortress-City. Along with bodyguard Eternity and her sinister director of Security Smith, she runs Shanty Town as a relatively safe and profitable corner of apocalyptic Hell, She also keeps a close eye on masked newcomer, Raven.
After a successful raid on Fortress-City, Thunder’s gang was ambushed by a bunch an unruly squad of misfit commandos from the very town they raided. While the skirmish distracted everyone, an explosive charge blew up in the factory. As the various badass heroes of Shanty Town rose up to the challenge, they celebrated and decided to launch a retaliatory strike, once Allison made sure it was properly planned…
Dramatis Persona (reminder)
Thunder: Male Chopper (Cycle gang leader, played by Eric)
Raven: Female Faceless (Masked semi-mystical Brute played by Franky)
Smith: Male Brainer (Psychic Mindfucker played by Mike)
Eternity: Female Battlebabe (Waif-fu Kill-Bill-esque badass, played by Math)
Future Badness derailment
Before we get in the whole game report, please note that none of the scenes were pre-scripted. I had “Agendas” and “threat countdown clocks”, but pretty much everything was shaped by player choices/input.
We start the game with the PCs getting ready to leave for the counter raid, setting objectives for it and making seating arrangement on cycles. Thunder got himself a new recruit from Shanty Town’s dregs, a female hardass named Nutcrusher (complete with the crude joke this name generated).
As they started the 2-3 hour trek to Fortress-city on very bad roads, I made the “announce future badness” move and described how something to the north of the Shanty Town raider was raising a hell of a lot of dust and sand. Thunder ordered his men to rustle up their saddle bags and lo and behold, A pair of binoculars were found in Rot’s things!
After an ineffective use of the unfamiliar object by Rot, Eternity snatched it away and marched northward to get a better vantage point. She was able to inform the gang that a column of all terrain vehicles and what looked like armoured vehicles were headed towards Shanty Town!
Of course, as she relayed that info, a huge gust of wind struck them and Eternity lost her crew! (i.e. I imposed this because she got a soft success for the “spot check” and I made the “Separate them move” as my retaliatory action). She was “saved” by a friendly masked biker who rode up to her and asked her if she needed a ride back to the City. She accepted gratefully and got on the bike.
NPC: I’m Franky BTW, what’s your name?
Eternity: Uh… Gill.
Frankie: Right. You think we can become good friends?
Eternity: I’m sure we will!
And so my “Dark Agenda Countdown clocks” started ticking.
Plans crumblin’, Loyalties frayin’
At this point, the players really got into what Vincent Baker told me Apocalypse World was all about: Loyalties in the face of crises. With the column of Hummers and APCs heading for Shanty Town, Thunder ordered his whole gang around to go defend the home base. Raven, sitting behind Thunder on his Hog, didn’t see it in the same light and we were subjected to a spat about the importance of protecting the many against going to help the truly meaningful.
It ended up in an awesome stunt where Raven got up from the still moving cycle, jumped and side-kicked poor Drim (the one giving Smith a ride) off his bike, taking control of it before it fell down and turning around toward Fortress-City.
Since she got a soft success on that roll I gave her 2 choices for a worse outcome (as established by the move she used: Act under Fire) and I offered her to either arrive too late in the City to help Eternity directly (we already knew she was in trouble by then, see below, I’m reordering scenes for readability) or get there in time but cause Thunder to fall from his bike because of her jump.
Raven chose to get to the city late.
Danger in the City… I call thee Eternity.
During that time Eternity rode into Fortress-City and noticed immediately that a group of rag-tag thugs, wearing military uniforms with a Sun emblem on them, were following them, getting ready to ambush them.
Frankie (getting his helmet off, revealing a mask made of stitched flesh of many colours): So Gill, you feel like, ummm, having a coffee or somethin’?
Eternity: Sure luv, but do we invite all those other guys along?
Frankie: Huh? Hey! I told Sun that if I were to separate her from her gang, she was MINE!
Eternity: Of course I am!
As Eternity got ready to cripple 6 or 7 people, she was unable to overtake everyone and got herself captured as Frankie was sent away, cursing. Of course, Eternity saw him slunk behind them, a scalpel in hand.
Eternity finally found herself on the battleship wreck adjoining Fortress-City, finding herself tied to a dancing pole in the ruins of a shipboard bar. After a short scene, (including her player performing a mimed pole dance) she managed to free herself by cracking the skull of the last standing thug with her thighs… (you read that right)
…as the ship’s gun were loaded and fired a test salvo that shook the much damaged structure.
Go Wolverines!
Thunder reached Shanty Town before the armoured column did and staged a guerrilla ambush on it, sending Nutcracker to act as Sniper to create confusion up front while he and his gang assaulted the last Armoured Personnel Carrier at the tail. Succeeding on his “Seize by Force” move, Thunder managed to capture and hold the vehicle, losing a few of his gang members, including his new Sniper.
He thus moved the captured APC into Shanty Town as the confused column reformed and spread to block all the roadways into Allison’s compound.
That’s when they all heard the Battleship shooting its first salvo…
A Loaded Smith & Raven, a shooting (big) gun
When the unlikely duo reached Fortress city, I offered them to make a custom Move I created for the Fortress (which is another “Threat” mechanic) where they got to try to sneak in the city without being spotted. They got yet another “soft hit” and I announced that they were “spotted” while sneaking in, and that they were now being followed by a weird, patched up guy yielding a scalpel.
At that point, I noticed the Raven and Smith duo had had limited camera time so far, it’s always hard to properly spread “action time” in a game that assumed the party is split most of the time. Not knowing what to do, I voiced the question “what would be needed here to make Raven happy?”
(I must confess that I had not quite realized at that time that Smith had done even less).
Raven: I need to fight! I want to kill stuff soon!
So that’s how Frankie the Grotesque (Skin Collector) got distracted from chasing Eternity and focused on the much more mysterious Raven
Frankie (Off Screen): Ohhh, I must find what she hides behind that mask… NO! I must HAVE it!
And so when Smith and Raven chased after Frankie, who sent some of his skinned dolls after them to slow them down, I managed to disarm Raven (who went Berserk) and separate both PCs. Frankie managed to corner Raven in his skin studio (using the “Expose the content of the Grotesque’s environment” move to freak Raven out) where multiple skin suits were shown like a “Galerie Macabre”. Poor, unlucky Smith was forced to climb the building Frankie had barricaded himself in with Raven.
Player comment: Man, this game is really for those who like PCs to be in deep shit all the time!
Of course, that’s when an unarmed Raven opened a can of whoopass, went for the scalpel, got a nasty scalp wound and turned Frankie into pulp with her fists, knees, floor and walls. When the red mist parted in her mind, she heard Smith calling her urgently from the top of the building.
As she climbed, they saw the wreck’s gun turret rotate slowly and the guns fired, sending a shockwave through the city. As the smoke cleared, they noticed a man all dressed in gold standing on deck, surrounded by tough looking men and women.
Smith: That’s got to be Sun…
Chatty: The boat’s main deck is a few hundred yards from where you stand, you feel you’d be able to hop over the roofs to get there… but that’s going to be for the next session.
I decided to end the session there (at barely 9h30 PM!) so that Yan (Allison’s player) could participate in the next seesion which would focus on Shanty Town’s defence.
Post Game Analysis
What the players liked:
- The Quick and Dirty (literal and figurative) approach to gaming
- Succeeding in some key conflicts (taking the APC, Eternity freeing herself)
- We can do so much in so little time
- The evocative post-apocalyptic imagery we were able to muster.
What players liked less:
- Complete lack of control on situations where they “fail”
- The vagueness of what constitute a move and how much one can accomplish in one
- Unequal camera time (more vocal players get more attention, story as old as RPGs)
Lessons Learned
- Improvising rocks when you have the proper tools to drive it like a unified front of threats (NPCs, Places and agendas)!
- Putting PCs into trouble is really fun, cheering them to pull out on top becomes more awesome.
- Fundamental: I’m starting to feel that this game does not allow me to interact with it’s crunch. I roll no dice, I make no outward combos (except “story combos by setting up narrative moves”)
Last Words
Did I mention I don’t get to roll dice? I like doing it so much so that this will shorthen my planned AW mini-campaign. I recognize my need as a gamer and I want to be able to interact directly with certain aspects game’s engine to revel in its crunchyness.
While Apocalypse World is a crunchy game, it isn’t in the parts I seek as a gamer, not like I have it in D&D or Mouseguard for instance. That’s why I’m going to wrap up this story by concluding the “Sun Rise” front.
Also, I must say that this series is getting abyssal levels of feedback compared to when I write about 4e. I know that less people are interested in Indie games and I expected as much when I embarked on my “tour of the indies”. That however means that if I likely won’t write more posts about this game if I don’t get more active motivations from you guys to do so, except maybe a short wrap up of the story.
So yeah, I’m totally fishing for comments here… I don’t do it often, but here I am.
Cheers!
Image taken from the Romantic Apocalyptic Webcomic
Review: “The Key of Fey”
Key of Fey, published by Emerald Press, is a GSL-licensed module for a party of first to third level Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition characters. While Key of Fey can be played “straight” like any other adventure, it is designed for a mode of play the authour calls mercenary. At the beginning of Key of Fey, the PCs come (for their own, individual reasons, but on the same transport) to a town that has been overrun by orcs. Each character has severed ties to their previous lives, and they are drawn together by their common need for work and amoral willingness to take any opportunities that present themselves. This leads them into conflict with a Feywild-related cult and quite possibly leads them in over their heads.
Mercs
Before getting into the meat of the adventure, I want to discuss the “mercenary” – or, as the module mostly calls it, merc – mode of play that I mention in the introduction, since it offers context for the content. While it is possible to play Key of Fey in the standard heroic mode of Dungeons & Dragons 4e, this adventure is designed as the first installment in a merc adventure path, and other modes of play require some small tweaks, at least to tone. The merc lifestyle suggests that the PCs are most concerned with getting work and getting paid, while matters like ethics and morality will be, at best, a secondary consideration. [Read the rest of this article]
What I Want from Published Adventures
For the past three years I’ve run through the entire 4th Edition H1 through E3 adventures from Wizards of the Coast. Some, like Pyramid of Shadows and King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, I ran very close to the book. Others, like Prince of Undeath, I used hardly anything but the battle map.
With three years of weekly games, published adventures gave me the framework I needed when I wouldn’t have the time to write up my own campaign, but in some cases modifying them took as much time as building it myself. I’ve spent these three years seeing what worked well for me with these published adventures and what did not. Adventures, as written, do not give me exactly what I want.
In short: I want adventures to break away from linear pre-built stories and instead deliver a toolbox of components I can use to build my own story.
Today I hope to get adventure publishers to think differently about the format they use and components they include in published adventures. [Read the rest of this article]
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