The Architect DM: On Modern and Futuristic Settings
I’ve talked quite a lot about worldbuilding and running roleplaying games in fantasy settings, but I’ve been planning on addressing modern and futuristic RPGs for a long time as well. One of the big hurdles that I have to overcome when thinking and writing about modern/future settings is that they seem inherently more difficult to deal with than their fantasy counterparts. For a modern or even a historic RPG I believe the difficulties come from the game being based in a real world that brings with it a vast amount of expectations from the players. If you’re running a game in these settings and a player at your table knows more about history than you, it can become very intimidating to even try to plan or run the game. Science fiction and futuristic games are a little bit better, but you’re still dealing with a lot of heavy science and realistic elements that can lead to issues where they might not have arisen in your typical elves and magic infused setting.
This topic is fresh in my mind because recently I was discussing with a few people online about how most fantasy RPG settings have levels implied in their character creation and most modern/sci-fi settings do not. Certainly there are some examples to the contrary (Star Wars Saga uses levels and is based on the d20 system, for one) but it does seem like a trend in RPGs that can be analyzed and discussed. It is always good to remember that generalizing and categorizing things like this is an imperfect practice, but I think it is safe to assume certain things about particular settings and so I’m going to discuss some of those things here. While taking part in the RPG levels discussion, I realized that in most modern/sci-fi settings the emphasis is less on the character increasing in power and more on their skills and equipment improving.
The Acquisition of Personal Power
If you have a modern/sci-fi game where the majority of the characters are increasing in personal power, it often falls more into the superhero mold of game. This train of thought led me to think about the typical Dungeons & Dragons game and how it can be seen to trend towards the superhero spectrum of fantasy games, a trend that I feel has been increasing as D&D has progressed through more and more editions. You are certainly perfectly free to run non-supers games of D&D, but rather than these being the norm for fantasy games they are now a sub-category often categorized as “gritty” or “low-fantasy”. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Worldbuilding Diary
For well over a year now I’ve kept an eye on the material that our friend Dennis has been producing over at his blog The Spirits of Eden for his RPG setting, the World of Adel. I’ve talked to him a few times about his worldbuilding and the setting that he’s created, and every time we talk I marvel more and more at what he is creating. Today he has started a series of posts he is calling a Worldbuilding Diary and I was instantly impressed and inspired by it.
If you haven’t seen his blog or read anything about the World of Adel, I highly recommend it if you’re in the mood for a setting unlike any of the published settings I’ve seen. It has a very personal feel to it and has Dennis’ fingerprints all over it, but the various elements he has combined and the amount of raw passion that goes into his efforts really make it stand out for me. I remember talking to him over a year ago and being very interested in his dislike of the proliferation of humanoids in standard D&D and his desire for more alien and insect-like allies and adversaries. The world has evolved since then, and to start this post out I’d like to share some of the aspects of it that interest me the most.
The World of Adel
Dennis may comment on here that I’ve gotten it all wrong or that I’m focusing on the wrong things, but here’s why I think you should care about his setting. Dennis has started categorizing the World of Adel as “Sci-Fantasy” and managed to get beyond my initial cringing at any kind of cliche combining of concepts by comparing it to some of the earliest Science Fiction stories that most people would barely put into the category. This sentence alone would hook me into a non-standard fantasy setting to start with:
Adel has many accoutrements of science-fantasy: there are robots you can accidentally wake up that will kill you, high-tech artifacts lying around, and a few people can find and carry around laser guns, often to the alarm of everyone around them.
For many of us this most likely conjures images of a setting like Eberron or something very steampunk that meshes fantasy ideas with the low-end of the science fiction spectrum. However, Dennis goes on subvert these ideas by explaining that much of the setting is still very rural and set in a world that can literally speak to the inhabitants through active spirits. This quote is the next part of his diary that really hooks me in: [Read the rest of this article]
Infinite Possibilities, Itty-Bitty Comfort Zone
My nerdcation to Washington DC last month opened my eyes to a lot of things. These included crab chips and secret ginger candies that stop motion sickness. Mostly, it was the exposure to open-form roleplaying games that has been taking up most of my free processor cycles. Despite being the guy in our group that would cheerfully handwave every combat in favor of having an all-roleplay session, I find myself flummoxed when faced with the infinite possibilities of a game like Fiasco. I have a lot of fun when it works, and nobody has fun when it doesn’t.
The Points Don’t Mean Anything
My first real exposure to improvisational theatre was an acting class in college. I had a case of extreme senioritis and an elective I needed to fill to graduate. The class was taught by a grad student who was the lead in the university’s production of Angels in America (a very serious and powerful play about homosexuality and HIV). One of our class assignments was to see this play and give a report. There were a couple serious and insightful discussions during that class that I barely remember. One that did stick with me was when I learned that conflict is the birthplace of drama, and that the conflict can be external or internal and still work. However, 99% of the class consisted of one activity, that being the playing of “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”. I learned a lot about cognitive dissonance that semester.
I used to watch Whose Line quite a bit in those days, and the performers’ ability to instantly roll with insane scenarios never ceased to amaze me. Coming up with weird scenarios, on the other hand, was a breeze. For whatever reason, I’ve been blessed with nonsequitur lobes about twice the size of a normal human’s. This means I could dish it out, but I had trouble taking it. This trend has continued until present day. I can look behind me and see the husks of former DM-brains, charred by my besugared mind — yet a curveball thrown by my players frequently gets met with me freaking out and putting things back on the nice, safe rails.
I’ve noticed that a lot of new D&D players are a bit gun-shy when they first start the game until they start to get the rules. Then, once they start to realize they can roleplay, a secondary shyness sets in. This one is frequently worse, and I’ve heard multiple people tell me they don’t roleplay they’re afraid someone will think what they came up with is stupid. There are games considered RPGs that just let you run around and fight. The only real distinction your character has from any other is its abilities and gear. On the other end of the spectrum, you have games like Fiasco, where you get 2 sentences that describe a scenario and a couple more vague words describing relationships to other characters and you’re expected to come up with the rest.
The initial reaction I’ve seen from three separate sets of people playing Fiasco for the first time is that they understand the concept, but they have no idea where to go from there. Dave “The Game” taught us all the game in the first game of Fiasco I ever played, and I was thankful to have someone who knew what to do there. He took the first scene and gave us all some context as to how things worked. I’ve done this twice for my group (albeit somewhat poorly), and it was enough that we all picked up on it enough to get the game off the ground.
In both the games I’ve played with my group, we seem to be able to hit the ground running but by the end we find ourselves working together to determine what should happen and then the actual scene happens and it’s nowhere near as good as the narrative. On occasion somebody feels the urge to solilioquize, which makes sense in some cases, but then we start getting hung up on making sure we follow the rules (of which there are few). It’s curious to me how we gravitate toward structure when given freedom.
It occurs to me that everyone I’ve played with has had some roleplaying experience before. I’d be very curious to see how a random person off the street handles a game like Fiasco. I wonder if it would be easier or harder. D&D has given me roleplaying experience which helps with the initial awkwardness, but it also comes with a certain way of thinking that’s hard to shake at first. You know who your character is to a certain extent, and (due to your class) you probably know your basic role in the party from the second you start. It’s the difference between having context to start with and having to create your own. I remember as a kid, we didn’t usually start from nothing at all but somebody would say “HEY wanna play spacemen?” or “HEY wanna play army dudes?” or “HEYYYY WANNA PLAY REAL GHOSTBUSTERS” (the last one is me, very overexcited). We had some context, just not much — kind of like Fiasco gives you. We didn’t give a crap back then what people thought. Why do we now?
Helpful Improv Tips
One thing that helped me greatly was to draw on some of the stuff I learned in that acting/Whose Line class. I’ve found stuff like this useful in D&D for years, but they mean a lot more in something like Fiasco.
Say “yes, and..” when you’re suddenly faced with the unexpected. This is the “first rule” of improv theatre. It’s very hard for me to deal with is the loss of control when playing a more freestyle game, but this isn’t like D&D where you have one person in authority driving the narrative. This is a shared experience where everyone is creating the story equally. Yes, you will wind up with stories that don’t go the way you want them to. Somebody may even kill your character. But this is also different in that games like this require a much greater deal of trust between players. You can’t play Fiasco in a group that would kill the party’s paladin for littering.
Here’s a link to a lot more very useful tips for improv theatre. I’ve found stuff like this useful for years for D&D, but they carry a lot more importance in something like Fiasco.
Mucking About In Places We Probably Shouldn’t
All this is not to say, of course, that we haven’t been having a blast with Fiasco. We totally have, and will probably play again soon. One wrinkle in our plans is that our decision awhile back to let more people into the group (I can’t remember if we have 7 or 8 now) has impacted us in unexpected ways for Fiasco. We have 3-4 more people than Fiasco’s maximum of 5 will allow. Granted, my new arcade cabinet can certainly help this, but it does kind of suck to get left out.
My friend Dave (from my gaming group, not CH’s dark overlord) and I have been discussing trying to change things up a bit. One idea that I find interesting is playing 2 games at once and intertwining the two somehow at the Tilt (the middle part where Something Unexpected Happens That Messes Everything Up). My initial thought is to have everybody play Act 1 in two separate groups (with the two rounds of scenes as normal), and then have everyone sit together for one final megaround. I think it would be interesting if each group were a rival team of some kind, be it sports teams or news teams or (my favorite) car dealers across the street from each other. The first half of the game everyone hatches elaborate plans and in the second we set them into motion and watch everybody try to mitigate the various disasters around them.
I would also love to see what happens if a bunch of kids play a game of Fiasco, minus all the killing and sex and whatnot. Could a decent Fiasco playset suitable for kids be made? It’s all about relationships, needs, locations, and objects. Kids love all those things.
I’m pretty sure these break the whole idea and flow of Fiasco somehow, but it sounds like fun so we’ll see what happens. I just hope it doesn’t end up in a real life Fiasco. And if it does, I hope I get a crapload of white dice by the end.
D&D Zombie Apocalypse, Part 1: Genesis
A few weeks ago, I got to attend New York’s ComicCon as one of Wizards of the Coast’s volunteer DMs. I ran a few “Learn to Play” events, using the recent D&D Red Box and a few level 1 pre-generated characters to entice new (and returning) players back into the fold.
As I was getting ready to play the less than stellar adventure found in the Box, the event’s organiser pulled me aside and told me these magical words:
“Forget about the red box adventure, make something up entirely. Just start with a Roleplaying encounter and play it by ear from there.”
I had just given me the keys to the kingdom… and no one was there to watch me steal the crown jewels.
(Ewww, get your mind out of the gutter!)
You see, while the adventure in the Red Box is quite ordinary and the character generation method is one of the worst I’ve seen since Battlelords of the 23rd Century, the Red Box’s DM’s book is a solid piece of introductory gaming. Thus, armed with the monster chapter and the digest rule-42 on the last page (i.e. the DC table for level 1-3 gameplay), I got ready to inflict my very own brew of D&D on unsuspecting players.
I decided to put all my small press experience to bear on those games and approached the game as such:
Chatty: Okay, so you’re all relatively new adventurers who’ve banded together in the recent past. Can you tell me about your last adventure? More specifically, can you tell me one thing that went really good for your group and what that was really bad…
This post is about one of the best answers I got: [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: On Character Creation
If someone asked me for a single bit of advice to improve their roleplaying games, whether as a DM or a player, I would tell them to spend as much time as they can reading the great fantasy and sci-fi books that are out there. For the first several years that I was playing RPGs I was not an avid reader and had not even heard of many of the classics, including ones that everyone should have heard of like The Lord of the Rings. At the time I thought many of my friends were insanely creative or stricken by some miraculous form of otherworldly inspiration, but as I’ve read more and more of the books out there I began to realize that most good ideas in our RPGs have been inspired by or even directly ripped from other sources. For example, in one of the first D&D games that I ever DM’d a player showed up with a character named “Muadib” and I remember thinking that it was a very unique and interesting sounding name. A year or two later I started reading Dune and groaned when I realized he’d simply lifted the name straight out of that book.
Let me start by saying that there is absolutely nothing wrong with naming a D&D character after your favorite character in a book or being inspired in any other way by what you’ve read. The reason I groan or roll my eyes when I realize something is from a book is often because I thought it was an original idea and as a result I feel like a chump. I’ll state it again just to be clear, the problem in these situations is with ME, and not with the people who are using books for inspiration. The reaction I have is an expression of feeling less educated and less informed than other people.
Read, Read, Read then Borrow, Borrow, Borrow
From the introduction to this post you might think I’m against borrowing from books in RPGs, but I’m simply telling you how I slowly came to the realization that borrowing can greatly improve your games. Aside from a handful of actual groan worthy concepts, such as showing up to a D&D game with a dual scimitar wielding drow ranger, the people that you game with will most likely appreciate any ideas inspired by other sources. If they’re familiar with the source material then they should be able to enjoy the experience in the same way as you, and if they’re not familiar with the source then they might think it is a very unique and interesting idea. One end result of this process that I never predicted at my own table is that some players, upon finding out certain ideas were inspired by a series of books, have sought out the books and begun reading the series to enjoy the same inspiration that many of the other players and I have had. [Read the rest of this article]
Improv Pushups: The Movie
A week ago today, in the wee hours of the morning, I bid farewell to one Dave Chalker (who I had been staying with for the week, and who had risen with me to get me to the airport before the coming of the dread Day Star).I came all the way to the East coast for one specific purpose: to game my face off. More specifically, DC Gameday was this weekend, and I wanted to game my face off as close to Congress as I possibly could. Somebody’s got to show those guys how to play nice together, right?
Pre-Con Festivities
Luxury accomodations!
After I landed Thursday night, Dave took me to Looney Labs for one of their weekly game nights. I’m not sure what I was expecting exactly, but my mental image of the place involved a sterile-looking office building. That proved to be wildly incorrect, as Dave stopped in the middle of a nice residential neighborhood and we walked into the Looney home. Immediately inside was a huge unfinished mural made out of woodcarvings that made up what I’m pretty sure is some Beatles album art. I also smelled baked goods. My expectations were thusly shattered.
Everybody was really nice there. We played Ascension and some MtG: Commander, and it was not unlike a game night with my own group, except with that totally different people part. There were others playing a few different games including Seven Wonders and some ridiculous game that had everyone drawing Dr. Who having sex with moon rocks or something. I’d get more context but I suspect it would make a lot more sense (and we can’t have that). I will have to find out more so I can play it with my group, I suppose.
Phil and I playtesting D&D 5e.
Friday, we picked up the Chattiest of Phils and brought him back to Fort Chalker, where poor Dave valiantly (and repeatedly) made his will save and continued doing Real Work while Phil and I gamed 10 feet away. It was like a summer day as a teenager. We played the old Mattel electronic D&D game, which I always wanted to try as a kid. It was horrible but TOTALLY WORTH IT. We played some more Ascension. We played lots of World of Warcraft TCG, and Phil was schooling me pretty hard with my own decks. (I think he might be a Shaman IRL.) We even played some oldschool NES games, including Kung Fu, Double Dragon 3, Q*Bert, and (best of all) Popeye. It was awesome.
Friday night, I played in a Magic booster draft. I took dead last, but I had a lot of fun. The new Innistrad set is pretty cool, and very dark and horrorlicious. Even the white cards make you want to hide under the bed, and the black ones make you want to hide in a hole under a bed that’s under a bed disguised as another bed. I played a monoblack deck with lots of regenerating creatures and stuff that could put Shroud on them, which wasn’t a bad plan until I discovered everybody else could fly. There was also one match when I realized my opponent was about to deliberately deck himself, and I was very confused until he pulled out his Mad Assistant to win. [Read the rest of this article]
I Was a Manchild at Geek Girl Con
The inaugural Geek Girl Con ran last weekend in downtown Seattle, and I was there to check it out. The con focused on female geeks of all stripes. There were panels about gaming, comics, movies, TV, feminism, and gamer culture.
The panel track was the main emphasis of the con, from my perspective anyway. The exhibitor hall and the gaming room were pretty small by comparison, and there wasn’t a big promotional presence. That makes a lot of sense for this con, especially in the first year. The con’s strength is in reinforcing the culture and solidarity of female geeks, and cons are the best way to do that. The first con looked like it was very successful, so it will be interesting to see how the con evolves in years to come.
I was curious what the demographics of the con would look like. Most geek conventions have more men attending than women (though the numbers aren’t nearly as skewed as they used to be). Though Geek Girl Con was focused on women, men were welcome (and welcomed), and my rough estimate is 70% women and 30% men. It looked to me like the concert was about 50–50. In case you’re wondering, Molly Lewis figured out that the female equivalent of a sausage fest is a book club. [Read the rest of this article]
Roleplaying Resurrection
This past weekend (10/8 – 10/9), my bestest friend, Dave Cohen, actually agreed to come all the way down from RI to participate in the wild extravaganza that is DC Game Day. On Saturday and Sunday, we found ourselves navigating the shadowy incompetence of the Metro system, marching all over the northwest corner of DC, and occasionally rolling dice and playing games. DC Game Day has the feel of a mini-con, several games spread over two days of four sessions, friendly and intimate where strangers fall into easy conversation with one another. Dave and I spent the first session trundling down from BWI, and we played Savage Worlds Saturday evening, Gamma World Sunday morning, and Fiasco Sunday evening.
Savage Worlds is a hoot, a game that somehow manages to be both light and nimble while also being crunchy and numbery. I get that the primary–ONLY?–rule is: you need a four. “I want to shoot the 35′ Nazi bear.” “Roll the dice, you need a four.” “Do I see the trolls approaching?” “Roll the dice, you need a four.” “Can I blow up the barracks with my mortar?” “Roll the dice, you need a four.” Of course, it appeared there were lots and lots of conditional modifiers: there’s fog rolling in, so you’re at -2, but you’re using a scope, so you’re at +2, but it’s long range, so it’s -3, but you have “the drop,” so you get +4, and so on forever and ever, bang-boom.
For me, the real revelation of the weekend was Fiasco, a game I’ve heard many people rave about so passionately that you feel like edging away from them before the drooling and screaming begins. This game tends to elicit appreciation, in the same way that brainwashing encourages cooperation. Well, now I’ve played it, and… hold on, I’ve started drooling, which means the screaming comes next…
It’s been a little while since I’ve been any good at roleplaying. Despite being Vulnerable 15 to peer pressure, I used to have no trouble at all acting up a storm at the gaming table, because I knew that I would be hopeless at strategy and planning. When it came to my turn, I could kill it with the shuddery lip and the welling tears, the heartfelt speeches, the utter consumption and apprehension of my character. I would most often play clerics of some sort, because everybody loves a devoted holy man who won’t shut up about his god, right?
Of course, this was a long time ago, and I’ve grown considerably (in several directions), and I’ve come to realize that I just don’t have that piece of myself anymore. It’s tough figuring out the mentality and motivation of a pretend person, and then having to stick to that for hours at a time. Can’t I just roll a dice and tell you my result? That’s a whole lot easier.
And so, Fiasco. In Fiasco, there’s not really dice rolling, except for the start and middle bits, and trust me, those don’t count. It’s all decisions, decisions and storytelling, decisions and storytelling and improvisational roleplaying. Uh oh, there’s that word. Roleplaying. I’m going to have to sit at a table with other people and write a story out loud in the voice of a character that I just met, all while those other people are staring at me and judging me and hating me. This kind of thrown-in-the-deep-end roleplaying is a little daunting. No, wait, that’s not the right term. It’s gonad-shrinkingly terrifying. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Dungeon Interconnectivity
Yesterday I started playing the new game Dark Souls on the PS3 and the level designs in the game are very inspiring when it comes to planning out dungeons. One of the coolest things that Dark Souls and many other video games do with their levels is interconnecting different areas in creative and unexpected ways. This is also an element that I see very rarely in tabletop RPG dungeon design, and that’s a disparity that I’d like to see changed.
Imagine an extreme case of dungeon interconnectivity where you run an entire campaign within one big dungeon. I’m sure it’s been done before at least once, but if done correctly I think this could be a very interesting idea for a game and create some unique moments for RPGs. Whether or not you want to think about the extreme case, I think adding some well placed connections at different points through your dungeon can not only make it feel more realistic but also add a whole new level of interest to the dungeon for you and your players.
Classic Use of Thresholds
Perhaps the most common method of accomplishing this that I’ve seen in published RPG dungeons is through the use of doors, often of the locked variety. The locked or otherwise impassable door is the simplest way of redirecting players but then allowing them to gain access back to a previous location quickly and easily. Instead of hand waving the party’s exit from a dungeon, why not include a barred doorway in one of the first rooms that they then get to the other side of at the very end of the dungeon. When the players open what they think is a door further into the dungeon, perhaps into the big bad’s treasure room or to an even greater threat beyond, and find themselves back at the entrance to the dungeon they might feel a little bit more immersed in the world as it suddenly makes sense that their characters don’t have to backtrack all the way through the dungeon just to get back to town. [Read the rest of this article]
Review: “Dark Delve”
I was checking my email yesterday when I saw a request to review an Xbox indie game called Dark Delve by a fellow named Mark Harvey. He even sent me a code to download it for free! Given our corporate policy to give great reviews to anybody who gives us free stuff*, I hope that my immortal soul was worth the $1 cost of the game.
Let me start this by saying I have a weakness for indie games, especially “studios” that are a one-person operation. I grew up on shareware games from the early days of PC gaming, back when 256 color VGA was a luxury. I played my c64 so much I broke a Wico Bat Handle joystick. THAT IS VERY DIFFICULT.
In the early 90′s, I used to run a BBS. I made sure to keep my filebase stocked to the brim with shareware games. A few software companies like Apogee, Id Software, and Epic Megagames put out some “commercial quality” games (remember Doom?), but there was a huge explosion of hobbyist coders releasing some really cool games. (One of my favorites was Galactix.) Even back then, these smaller games didn’t usually have the smooth polish of a commercial game (or especially a console game) — but they always had something compelling about them that kept me coming back.
For awhile now, I’ve been watching the Xbox Indie Games marketplace with more excitement than their regular fare. Sure, a lot of crap comes down the pipe, but occasionally I find something that transforms me back into a happy teenager and evaporates all my time for a day or two. I’m happy to say Dark Delve fits squarely into this category. [Read the rest of this article]
