Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Grab a can of Evil
Image Source: The one and only PM!
This is part of a continuing series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki.
Ahhhh Evil, evil, evil… Misunderstood, detectable, and too often Color Coded so the characters can know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, who to kill without any remorse.
You have your garden variety evil: Bullies, Mooks, RPG Fluff Authors. And then you have your major league evil: Demons, Evil Overlords and … successful RPG Fluff Authors.
But there is a more sinister evil, one that makes a Lich Lord shiver and a Pit Fiend break out in a sweat. An evil so ancient and powerful that the only way to beat it was to seal it…. in a Can.
Sealed Evil in a Can
A long time ago, some great evil was beaten. However, it was beaten in such a way that meant it was imprisoned as opposed to killed. Said prison usually ends up preserving said evil so well that 100/1000/5000 years later when it escapes, the civilization that imprisoned it, and their abilities to do so, are long gone.
This trope is so compatible with Fantasy Role Playing games. In D&D there even an item based on the Trope, although a bit on the lamish side of the power scale. Here’s a few other ways to play on this trope:
- It’s the last seal to a portal to a prison world where some sort of God/Abomination sits since the dawn of time. Using the weakening seal to seep sweet maddening whisperings to overly receptive potential cultists. (That one has been done to death in D&D, but you have to respect your classics)
- It’s a sword that has trapped the spirit of some ancient, lost Demonic entity and it’s wielder is subtly nudged to break the sword whenever it’s used. (Nitpickers alert: yeah I know Stormbringner IS a Demon and not the prison for one,
)
- The ‘Can’ actually contains a whole world of beings of ultimate evils that start rampaging the whole world right after the power-hungry-but-not-necessarily-evil wizards pops it open.
Monte Cook, no stranger to all things evil (his work overflows of Lovecraftian influences) has created a whole D&D adventure, called The Banewarrens, around the idea of a Dungeon-Sized Sealed Can filled with evil items, monsters and artifacts. Guess what happens to the seal in the 1st chapter? (Truly one of the most psychologically evil, non Gygaxian adventures I’ve ever DMed…. the players NEVER get a break!)
Sealed Evil In A Can, as the name suggests, is a way to introduce a villain suddenly, especially one that is legendary and powerful. It also explains why the villain hasn’t done anything up to that point. (It just escaped recently.)
That part of the trope’s description can be applied directly to tabletop RPGs. The DM gets bonus points if he gets the player to open the Can out of greed instead of trickery.
Alternatively, once the characters have just vanquished the campaign arc’s Big Bad, the Can can be part of the loot, waiting to be opened to perpetuate the very RPG-applicable trope of replacing dead Big Bad with new and improved Super Big Bad.
Anyway, if the characters are smart and decide to give the can to the proper authorities, they just gave you the keys to having it opened whenever.
Extra Sealable-in-a-Can Evil DM Bonus Points if you make the Can the actual Phylactery of the Campaign’s Lich Lord. (Translation for non D&D heads: A Lich is a Wizard Undead dude that traps his soul in a doohickey. The Lich is immortal unless you destroy said doohickey, Mwa HA HA HA!).
Sometimes, the Big Bad‘s plan is to unseal the can, gaining them the power of the ancient evil; if they succeed, it almost always turns out that the Sealed Evil was manipulating them into freeing them, making the Big Bad a Fake Boss and the Sealed Evil the true Big Bad. Sealed Evil almost never rewards those who release it. In fact, they usually kill their releaser.
That’s basically a campaign in a Can if you’ll allow this failed novelist a poor attempt at wit.
But what is a discussion on tropes without a short blurb on subverting them!
- An evil, corrupted and ruined kingdom keeps a Urn made out of Abyssal Iron, Coated in Hellish lead and stored in a pool of Liquid Evil(TM). The Urn actually contains a being of pure good that used to be the kingdom’s benevolent, if somewhat aloof, leader in centuries long past.
- After following rumors of a vile artifact containing the most gruesome of Demons, the characters defeat a host of demonic beings led by a Demon baddie at the very limit of the unbeatable. Once they get their hands on the Can, they find clues that cast some doubts on the denizen of said container. Opening the Can reveals a stupid and sheepish apprentice Demon summoner…
And as usual, if you want to play this subverted trope to its extreme:
The Crystal Orb of Lost Hopes, sealed with magic stronger than the gods of this world can wield, was recently recovered, after being lost for eons, by the evil Baron Von Schmuck. Having finally assimilated the arcane knowledge of the 9 Shadow Lords, the power of the 5 Fingers of the Iron Fist and the forbidden knowledge of the Unspeakable Divine Word, Von Schmuck now yields more power than all.
His eyes filled with greed, he invokes his all to open the Orb…. only to find himself surrounded by four level 6 player characters. They are bit surprised to be here, suspecting that the DM just pulled yet another fast one on them.
The four then proceed to open a Can of Whoopass on the Baron only to realize that finding a way home from a world where Epic = 5th level might be harder than expected.
Have you other examples of this Trope applied to RPGs?
Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: The Blessed Cursed.
Image Source: WotC’s Ravenloft baby!
This is part of a continuing series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki.
This afternoon, while Gtalking with PM, my new Troper partner-in-crime, he proposed an interesting one for the series. While it didn’t strike me like an easily RPG-adaptable trope at first, inspiration struck me shortly afterwards.
With no further ado, I give you:
Cursed with Awesome (I love the trope’s name)
A character has some “terrible” curse placed on him that is actually pretty awesome. Often, such characters will bemoan their fate and go to great lengths to be rid of the “curse” instead of taking advantage of whatever cool side effects the curse may have. Other times it’s the “reward” for Heroic Willpower. Sometimes there’s a subset of people who try to tell him this.
The most classic RPG application of this trope is immortality. I mean you can’t die! What’s not to love about that? A very simple application (and possibly hilarious) is to make a more-annoying-than-evil NPC truly un-killable. Oh, he drops ‘dead ‘ in a fight all right, but his body disappears, Michael Myers style, and he keeps coming back at a later time.
No matter how badly the characters treat the remains, he comes back, possibly slightly less fresh from one encounter to the next. Dealing with the cause of the curse can become a secondary focus to the campaign.
Aside: Actually, I seem to recall a reader’s comment about this exact example… I just can’t find it anymore (sorry, I’ll link if I do).
Alternatively, if you are of the Evil DM persuasion, maybe the curse is transmissible like a blood-borne or airborne disease. An Immortality Plague then starts to spread in the lands. That’s initially a great thing, until the local evil overlord realize that such a plague translates into zero-maintenance infantry units…
Then the problem can becomes the campaign’s main issue.
For special-extra-crunchy-bonus-evil-DM points, have the PCs ‘catch’ the immortality bug when they finally get the nerve to open the Chest made of Pure light. Let them enjoy the curse in the next few sessions. Poison them, expose them to the worst diseases known to humanoids and have a few dragons drop by and comment on the barbarian’s Dragon Hide armour. Always with no lasting effects on the players… Then have the ‘plague’ start to spread with all kinds of repercussions on your game world.
That’s Epic baby!
Aside the second: The Night’s dawn trilogy is an insanely good Sci-Fi literature application of this trope.
Other ideas for such curses:
The Hellbred race from the Fiendish Codex II is a repented evil soul reincarnated to get a second chance. It can handle evil artefact’s and weapons regardless of alignment but if he dies, it’s over, his soul is damned to Hell unless redemption was achieved.
Vampirism is one cool curse to have! (I even heard they made a whole extra fluffy game about that in the mid nineties). Have a look here for one of the coolest d20 mechanics I’ve seen for Vampires.
Lycantrophy is also cool. It hardly qualifies as a disadvantage if you are the type to disregard hordes of peasants with pitchforks, PCs with silver weapons and the occasional morning where you wake up bloodstained and naked in the forest. Sean K Reynolds’ Curse of the Moon is also a great re-interpretation of the d20 rules for balanced and cool were-creatures. It’s just 5$ US.
David Farland’s Runelord series features Magic Crucibles that transfers an attribute (Strength, Brains, Beauty, Stamina, etc) from one person to the next, creating a superhuman on one side, but leaves the giver a cripple that needs tending to afterwards. Death of the giver leads to loss of the attribute.
Actually that last one could qualify for a subversion of the trope, a Blessing that has the added curse of responsibility.
Finally, you can apply the trope to put a fresher twist on the much-maligned Cursed Magical Item. By cursing a truly powerful magical item, you can create some very interesting role playing challenges:
The Sword-Relic of the Sun Gods slays the undead on touch during the Night… but it must be kept immersed in fresh blood during daytime to work properly.
The land’s legendary suit of full plate armour, as light as silk and as strong as 5 inches of laminated steel. With the slight disadvantage of fusing with your skin and powering its magic by feeding off your soul. (Inspired by Iron Heroes magic items. They’re all like that!)
Any other ideas for Awesome Curses? Let your inner evil DM out!
By the way, I’m having a real blast writing these posts on tropes, in no small part because of the awesome feedback I’m receiving on them. Thanks to all!
Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: …and Cut!
This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki.
Description: a DM’s main weapon and canvas to paint the world in which the players cavort.
Wowing the players with descriptions is not always an easy task depending on your natural style (and some DM just drone on and on). But from my own experience, short, enthusiastic burst of descriptions, especially during action scenes, are a winning strategy.
Playing with the following trope is such an approach.
Diagonal Cut
A swordsman strikes an opponent or other object with a mighty blow, almost always on a diagonal — from shoulder/armpit to opposite hip if the target is human(oid). For a moment, nothing appears to happen. A few seconds later, though, the top half of the object begins to slide off the bottom half: through great strength, great skill, the legendary virtue of the sword, or a healthy dose of Applied Phlebotinum, the sword has neatly cloven the object in two with a single blow. If the cloven object is a person, they may laugh for a moment before a shocked realization and the slide-apart.
Here’s a very graphic presentation of the Trope (If you’re in a hurry, forward to the last minute, it’s well worth it):
This is a great way to exploit a player’s critical hit that instantly drops a foe. Take a few seconds to describe how a character’s sword cut through an opponent like a hot knife through butter. Also adding the details on how the 2 halves slowly slides in opposite directions is guaranteed to bring a smile to your favorite butt kicker and Supercool players.
Heck, if a player kills your last ultimate Boss with a Single Stroke, you might as well milk this anti-climatic event for all it’s worth. Do a second by second account of the whole combat round, complete with the hero charging the boss, sword held up high, the moon’s reflection traveling across the blade, and the single stroke, cutting so clean through the enemy that the hero fails to see a wound… . Wait a few seconds, checking your stats, getting your attack dice out, smile and say ‘my turns now’ and describe how the Boss collapses to the floor in slow motion, a bemused expression on his face.
Players often expect the DM to be disappointed when the Boss is killed too easily, and they’re right. Not showing the disappointment and segueing directly to the diagonal cut description will surprise them and lead to very positive reaction on their part.
I pulled that one on Eric the Butt kicker in the last session and he loved it. We were in a fight against a large numbers of mooks and I was trying out the hit point pool variant. He activated one of his crazy Crusader attacks that dealt enough of damage to cover 2 mooks’ hit points. Since he has the Cleave feat, I described, with gestures, how his diagonal cut dropped 2 mooks in one stroke without rolling a second time for the Cleave. His expression was priceless.
Adapting the trope to other type of weapons is also interesting.
- The Arrow/bullet in the eye.
- A Crushing Blow to the vitals that makes the heart stop beating with no signs of external damage.
- An Axe Stroke that cleaves a body in two from head to groin
The possibilities are as numerous as they are gruesome.
Do you have similar examples you used or seen in your games?
Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Glowing Fluff Elemental
Image Source: RPGnet’s Forums.
This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki.
Quite a number of tropes exist solely because of the Rule of Cool. I’ve already covered the Blade Run in a very Crunchy way. Today’ as a writing challenge, I’ll try to tackle another related trope from a fluff perspective. (See here for my 1st discussion on Crunch vs Fluff).
This week, it’s all about Power!
Power glows. The more power, the more glow. So, anything that glows is automatically presumed to be superior to otherwise identical things that don’t glow, and more glow is better. This is closely related to the Rule Of Cool because glowing is cool, so things that glow automatically get more Willing Suspension Of Disbelief, allowing them to be more unrealistically powerful. They’re often Colour Coded For Your Convenience, too. For example, evil glows bright red, good glows blue or gold, and radioactive materials glow green.
A DM’s visual descriptions will never match a movie or a TV show. But it can fire the imagination if enough flavor can be packed in a short description. Mentionning some glowing in a description can go a long way:
- Describing a desecrated altar as pulsing with a strange violet and sickly green lights will evoke images of things Adventurers were not meant to know (Black Tentacles anyone?).
- Dark Tomes of Eldritch Power, chained to lecterns with magic-damping links and clamped in bands of Cold Iron emit rays of piercing red light from it’s pages whenever the tome shifts under it’s own unholy powers.
- An innocent child, chosen by the Prophecy to succeed to the tyrannical Baron Von Schlep, has crystal-blue eyes that are known to light up like the rays of the 5 suns whenever he witnesses an hidden agent of evil.
- The Potion of Eternity glows so strongly that it threatens to blind all that look directly upon it.
- The Pits of Insanity underneath Ptolus are filled with Liquid Chaos that shimmer with all the colors of the rainbow at the same time (and no, this does not give a greyish-brown glow, logic and proper color mixing are not cool)
Glowing Eyes Of Doom? Inherently superior to ordinary, everyday, garden-variety eyes. Glowing Battle Aura? Opponents who don’t glow won’t stand a chance! Any physical object that glows will also be powerful somehow. Glowing sword vs. boring sword? Glowing sword wins, every time. Explody things that emit a glow first are bigger, louder and/or do more damage. The most powerful magical potions will also glow to signify their superiority over ordinary, non-glowing magical potions. And don’t forget the inherent awesomeness of the Pillar Of Light, which is Glow going to Heaven just to show how overwhelming it is.
Fiends and Celestial can have auras of pure Good or Evil that are so strong that they become visible to the naked eye of even the most mana-dense Barbarian.
Also, you can put glowing in the player’s bling. The first glowing sword a low-level fantasy RPG party will meet will always bring some sort of interest in the players. Heck, in a Sci-Fi setting, a charged Plasma cannon is always comforting when it lights up the dead-dark corridors of a derelict space Hulk.
You can even go totally overboard with this and blow your player’s virtual senses:
- A Chest made out of solid light, bound by chains of Fire, sitting on a Platform of white-hot Iron and bathed in a pillar of ‘Shadowy light’*
I’d bet my next round of XPs that no one will want to touch it before at least some honest research is done. Anyway, if you don’t subvert this trope, the players will expect it to contain a Hole of Absolute Nothingness or a Sphere of Annihilation in it.
Speaking of subverting the trope, this can become interesting also. Light-absorbing, magic-draning swords have cropped up here and there in fantasy literature and campaign settings. A low-power antagonist might blow his whole ‘level-equivalent’ ressources on illusions and light-bending magic to make him look stronger than he is
Aside: Who hasn’t cast continual light on his cleric PC at least once? Huh? Huh? Anyone?…..(Crickets) ooookay, moving on .
Or maybe the more powerful an item, the more darkness it ‘radiates’ as it feeds from ambient energies.
The Cloak of the Night, The Staff of Shadows, The Hammer of the Depths… Possibilities endless.
Have you used or seen this trope in your games?
*Mini crunchy rant: That nerfing of D&D 3.0 darkness is sooooo stupid. Yes pure darkness kills a low level game dead, but Shadowy light???? Come on!!
Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Let them see the light.
Image Source: D&D 3.5 Monster Manual
This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki.
“I’m sorry, you’ve never faced a troll before, so you’re not supposed to know that fire damage is lethal. That’s Metagaming”
“Ah come on!”
Have you ever had this discussion or one like that with your players? I sure did, and quite often too. That’s why I’d like to tackle another trope that fantasy gaming DMs* more often imposed on their players than on their NPCs:
Genre Blindness
A condition afflicting many television characters, seen when one demonstrates by their behavior that they have never in their life ever seen the kind of show they’re in, and thus have none of the reactions a typical audience member would have in the same situation. Worse, they are unable to learn from any experiences related to their genre.
The current incarnation of D&D is all about near-super humanoid heroes and their quests to become the legends that bards will sing about for centuries to come. And there lies the problem of DMs applying this Trope ‘for believability’ or ‘to prevent Metagaming’. If bards have been signing songs about all the world’s heroes exploits, then any tavern scullion worth her salt would know all about Trolls regeneration, Succubus life drain, Color-coded dragons and Rust Monsters by the time she was 12.
I have always found it easier to design an adventure while assuming that the characters know nothing about the monsters and the context they would appear. But that’s being somewhat unfair towards the inherent coolness of the characters. The later D&D books confirm this by allowing players to know key things about a monster or character class with a Knowledge skill check. So I now try to avoid imposing this trope. Heck, the Rust monster’s continued existence from edition to edition is directly linked to the huge reaction it triggers in Fighter types, so using them might not be all that bad …
Furthermore, in order to properly challenge the players, DMs create encounters where antagonists are painfully aware of the whole Fantasy Genre and take creative measures to prevent getting killed and losing their loot (the early Goblins webcomics were exactly about that).
I’m not saying that players should be handed all the monsters books and be told about each special abilities. But they should not be penalized if they react or plan based on commonly known things about canonical creatures of your game world. However, once this is established with your players and they had the immense pleasure of using bits and pieces of knowledge to their advantage, it’s your turn to subvert the trope and surprise your players:
- Trolls may be killed by fire, but Crystal Trolls are only vulnerable to Sonic attacks.
- A Silver dragon caught a disease that makes it always ravenous and destroys all the crops and cattle of a trusting community.
- A Succubus was actually striped of all her powers and she must actually fall in love with a Paladin and get him to reciprocate for her to regain them.
How was this trope used or subverted in your games?
*It may happen in other genres, but I think the trope actually needs to be imposed in most horror campaigns or any game where a certain level of cluelessness is ‘de rigeur’.
Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Running on the Edge
Image Source: Gamespot
This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki.
All right, so Marty’s dead now and we need new cool tricks to spice up our game.
This week, I decided to go deeper into the Rule of Cool and start to dig up for a Trope that exist solely because of this Rule and see how it can apply to a RPG scenario.
The Blade Run
The hero and his enemy are in the midst of a fighting duel. The enemy makes some flashy move with his conspiciously large sword that’s guaranteed to reduce any mortal to tomorrow’s worm feast. But as the dust clears, the enemy is in for a nasty surprise, as the hero is balancing in an Ass Kicking Pose on the blade of his sword, which is the perfect place for him to run across the blade toward his unguarded opponent.
The concept of this trope is perfect for fantasy and is pure Fluffy coolness. Ingredients: Hero, Villain, Big-ass sword, shake and serve. Hmmm…. Pulling it off from a Crunch point of view might not be that easy….
Aside: In an Anime style games like BESM it’s so simple it hurts. You declare to the GM that you won’t attack and put all your efforts on jumping over the next sword stroke and stand on the sword. If the GM is cool sensitive he’ll allow it (I think I would). Then mention that now that you’re standing on his huge sword, you can charge into the bad guy who should be a bit short of defenses.
However, just thinking about doing this in D&D makes my eyes water.
Ahhh I see a challenge here and I must rise to it! Caveat: let’s not do the classical thing and create a subsystem (AD&D) or a feat (D&D 3.5) for it. This trope can be achieved in D&D (or any crunchy system) by doing a slight subversion and play with the scale of the encounter a bit for a cool adventure hook. I’ll give you an hint: look at the image.
You have this Gargantuan Humanoid construct that’s rampaging the countryside. It’s shaped like a plate-mail wearing Cyclop with lots of knobs and pointy ends sticking out all over it. Oh yeah, Colossus guy also has this Kickass sword the size of Bus and uses it to destroy the nearest plot-significant(TM) piece of real-estate.
Aside the second: While a PC can’t usually occupy the same space as another creature in D&D, it can stand on an adjacent space. If the only point of contact of said space happens to be the creature’s leg, chest, shoulder or head, it’s still usable. Heck Iron Heroes is practically built on that assumption! Holding on to said space is another matter and subject to some serious DM controlled chills and thrills.
So say a 50-60% chance success before bonuses to climb from it’s feet to its head’(i.e. DC = 13+character level). At half speed, this should take quite a few rounds.
Now while your more prudent players are trying to be inconspicuous about it and try to slowly climb up on the colossus to get the the eye-mounted control gem, your Maverick wants to get up there real fast and open a can of Whoop-ass on that walking piece of Architecture. You allow her to spot that when the creature strikes with its huge sword, it usually digs a few feet into earth/rocks/walls/cattle/Martys and stays there for the rest of the turn. So once Starbuck’s turn comes, she rushes to the sword and start running up it’s steep incline (Balance Check). If she’s short on speed and is still on the sword by the end of her turn you give her the following options:
- Jump onto the Colossus body and make a grab for a handhold (Running jump check followed by a Dex Check, or for the soft at heart… Roll behind screen, say ‘you lucky dog’ and tell Gung Ho that it worked)
- Drop and grab on the sword until the end of the next swing (Balance Check + Strength Check)
- Stand on the sword and run over and under the blade and it’s edge to always stay in the same relative position (Huge Difficulty, but compensated by a huge Coolness bonus, Balance checks ) while the sword is swung again.
The idea is not to let the player fall, unless the fall isn’t too dangerous and the hero can try again. If you must give the hero a real challenge, drop a few mooks or a brute on or near the sword for her to fight while running the blade. Go overboard with the description and always, always let the player know that she stands on the sword because you feel it’s still cool enough. She must know that she’s on borrowed time and need to get to that gem pronto.
If she grows cocky or careless, drop the gauntlet and have the colossus smash the sword against the nearest temple. Give Batgirl a reflex save to avoid total splatterification but make it clear that she blew her chance and must pick herself up from the sacred ruins, dust her outfit and start again (maybe loosing to that lame rogue who made all his boring climb rolls).
Such risky maneuvers must absolutely have an equivalent reward (else no-one will try it). If Stupid Ranger (he he, I finally placed it) makes it to the shoulder of the colossus, poping the gem (or activating the lever that drops the sword for good, or getting to the switch that opens the hidden door underneath the Creature’s feet, etc…) should be easy
as pie.
So there you go. No new rules, cool set up…. At least I’d like to think so
P.S.: Can you believe that I wrote most of the piece before finding out that this is exactly what happens in the 3rd or 4th fight in the Shadow of the Colossus PS2 game? Honest! That’s a Trope for you!
Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Meet Marty Stu
Image Source: RPGnet’s Forums. (Check out Wil’s blog he’s a gamer too.)
This is part of a series of articles that tackles the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. It is heavily inspired by the sheer goodness of the TV Tropes Wiki.
We’re probably all guilty of having introduced a Marty Stu (or his sister Mary Sue) at least once in our careers. Who are they you ask?
Mary Sue is perfect. The hero of the story pales into insignificance beside her…or would, if he wasn’t crazy in love with her. The villain can harm her (perhaps) but will never break her magnificent spirit — and even if she needs rescuing occasionally (got to give the hero something to do), she will in the end save the day.
(Marty Stu is) The male of Mary Sue. Handsome, clever, better at everything than anyone else on the show. Quite often an author stand-in in Fan Fiction. (Source TV Tropes).
I don’t think I’ll have have to adapt that trope too much gather where this is going…. (All DM blogs seem to tackle this one sooner or later).
Mary and Marty are our beloved Pet NPCs. Our stand-ins with the party, our (cough) ‘Interactive Narrative Devices‘, our Elminsters, Gandalf and Dritzz. They know everything about the campaign’s baseline plot, they are more powerful than the players (sometime the whole party), they send your players on lamish Fed-Ex quest only to show up later on the same quest to ‘help out’. Yeah I’m talking about those.
I think that having Pet NPCs is okay, it shows a DM’s emotional involvement in the game and it can help build flavor and believability. You’re more likely to role-play a little harder and pour yourself a little bit more in playing them. But pet NPCs are only good as long as don’t hog the PC’s spotlight, and this can be hard to do.
I have had my share of Pet NPCs in my 2 decades of DMing. From talking daggers to Neurotic Dragons, including Genius Trolls, a Wight named Barry, Turncoat imps, Food-god halfling cleric using a chicken leg as a holy symbol, and a Goblin Merchant with an oddly familiar Phoenician Accent.
I don’t think I made any of them Marty Stus but I did write some of them in a little too many scenes.
I think Jeff Rients’s summed up the Rule Zero of NPC’s: Your NPCs suck and they are all going to die.
This rule should especially apply if you suspect that you wrote a Mary Sue or a Marty Stu in your plotlines. I guarantee that if you give your Marty a Red Shirt and get him killed in the most cinematic, gory catastrophe ever, your players will never stop cheering and will probably be ready to take the very next plot hook you present them with no hesitation.
Now fellow DMs/GMs, since we never seem to get our players to care enough to hear it, tell me about your Pet NPCs . I’m taking notes here.
Certifications like 70-293 as well as 642-845 train one in conventional manner. 1z0-042 and 642-552 help in going away from the typical and 642-436 helps in bringing in more contemporariness.
Mining Tropes for RPG nuggets: Opening up the mine
This is a first stab at tackling the concepts of tropes and how they can be applied by a DM/GM to improve their favorite Role-Playing game adventures. I’d like to make this a weekly feature if it garners any interest. It sure does interest me!
For those who have read at least one of my previous post in the last week, it becomes rapidly obvious that I went absolutely nuts over the TV Tropes site. Whatever free time I had while not prepping my game or writing here was spent on that Vacuous Grimoire.
I’ve already expounded Ad nauseam on the joys of the Rule of Cool so I’ll let that one be for the moment.
What I’d like to do for starters is start with TV Tropes’ definition of a Trope and discuss how I would introduce the concept to Gaming prep.
Definition of a Trope:
Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations. If a trope gets used too much, then it becomes clichéd. The word cliché means stereotyped and trite. In other words, dull and uninteresting. (From TV Tropes)
Switch ‘writer’ for DM and ‘audience members’ for players and it applies perfectly. Your players instinctively know about tropes and have certain expectations about how an adventure should go. You can and should exploit these notions to create a stronger link between your players and the story you are unfolding for them.
The part about cliché is extremely apt for RPGs especially Fantasy RPGs. The Meet-in-the-Tavern-and-get-accosted-by-an-old-man scene has been done to death. There are other ways to introduce characters to a game. Clichés, unless Subverted (see below) or used as a humorous device, is Coolness Kryptonite. I particularly like the concept of starting a campaign in Media Res, even if it has recently blown out in my face. (And later saved by some hasty salvaging).
Have a look on the site and try to link one trope to your next game and see your player’s reaction. Believe me it’s pure gold!
Subverting a Trope
Tropes live in the minds of the audience. When a screenwriter successfully builds an expectation that a trope is coming, then wrests the situation into a very new shape, invalidating the expectation and surprising the viewer, you have a Subverted Trope. (Again from TV tropes).
That is the typical Bait and Switch approach. You build a story around saving this young princess, Heir to the Throne of Frevonia. As your player’s arrive in the Big Bad’s cave they hear screams of pain and see the girl going all Waif-Fu on the mooks saying ‘What took you so long? Come on! Baron Von Schlep just ran away! He’s mine!’.
These are all known tropes your players can relate to but they might not have been associated together in their minds at the onset of the adventure. Subverting a trope creates player engagement (as they help Suspending Disbelief) and the Switch can create a slight emotional shock/surprise that can increases the experience and make the game more interesting.
Next week I’ll start tackling some of the Tropes that were made possible by the Rule of Cool.
If you have examples you tried recently in your game, I would love to read about them, in the comments or on your own blogs!
The Rule of Cool
Image Source: The TV Tropes Wiki.
I just found out about possibly the coolest site for failed writers (raises hand), Meta-plot analyst (raises hand… again) and just plain Story-driven entertainment junkies (Me me me!!!).
It’s called the TV tropes Wiki and it may very well Ruin your life. (God! I must be the billionth blogger to use that Schtick). It’s about plot devices and common tricks used in successful TV/commercials /movies. I love this as I’ve always been a great fan of discussing plots and narative techniques in novels and TV shows.
I haven’t yet spent a lot of time on it, but I probably found one of the best rules of adventure design and DMing I’ve come across: the Rule of Cool.
The limit of the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its degree of coolness. Stated another way, all but the most pedantic of viewers will forgive liberties with reality so long as the result is wicked sweet and/or awesome. This applies to the audience in general, as there will naturally be a different threshold for each individual in the group.
To transpose to RPG terms: Your player will put up with almost any illogical or “wobbly” plot devices or encounter as long as things get cool enough for them.
Which basically makes me think that my efforts as a DM should not so much be on far-reaching World Building and tight nitpicking-proof plot lines and such. I should go all out for encounters and role playing that will swamp my players in coolness. Think combat on ice Bridges, negotiating the release of prisoners in a flooding underground prison, hopping from floating island to pieces of flying ruins in order to catch the thieves of the Star jewel of Radnia. Yeah, that`s the ticket!
Enjoy the site, I know I will.
Red Shirts anyone?
See also this as it is where I found what type of DMing I aspire to achieve.
