I played my current default fantasy game with Gastogh and Cryptic. It featured a desert, a disguised lizardman thingy, wereanimals and a slayer of beasts, as well as an old acquitance, Martoh the summoner, this time buying a slave (and not opening a gate to hell).

The session was mediocre. It kinda fell flat. The reason probably was that I did not tie the characters together well enough and that there were only two players, hence creating much faster gameplay than I am used to. (I should run a game for only one player just to get practice at faster-paced gaming.)

Characters and such are on the persistent fantasy page when I get around to adding them. Gastogh’s character has an amusing trait.

Some rule changes

Characters can be tied to another. Such characters are written in square brackets on the list and are treated as though their player is not present. Another named character on the list must have a trait that keeps the tied character with them, as a pet, prisoner, cohort, or whatever. The tied character is not considered an active entity, most of the time, unless gameplay provides a change to break the ties.

Also: If there are less than four players, then only three oracle entries should be generated. This requires testing.

Inn-fighting

A card game by Wizards of the Coast. We played twice (I did not win, bleh). I’d say the game is somewhere between Munchkin and Fluxx/Uno, closer to the latter. It does not reward system mastery (knowing the cards by heart) significantly and has a great deal of luck involved. It fits my preferences far better than Munchkin, mostly because it is less fiddly. The game needs dice or similar to be used as hp indicators. D20 is also needed for attack rolls and some other stuff.

Another game session of the new fantasy game. I created a page that catalogues what is known of the setting and named characters. It will be updated whenever the game is played. The page is likely to be renamed but currently stands as persistent fantasy. Anyways. Participants in this session: Me, Thalin, ksym, wgaztari.

And so it begins

Abulafia speaks:

An unsavory treasure-seeker, with an honest map.
A mad alchemist brewing potent substances in his lair, where a monster is about to break out of its cage. (This oracle entry inspired by Ian Toltz, actually.)
A towering spire that overlooks the surrounding lands, left alone for centuries.
An unseasonal and destructive flood.

Thalin again plays Lóng the musician and ksym plays Kyo the ronin, as those two are on top of the list, aside from Chen Pong, who is not included as Ari is not playing.

wgaztari plays Cadoc the unsavory treasure seeker with an honest map. Stats: Treasure seeker 4, unsavory 4, honest map 4.

It is decided that Cadoc is hunting for the treasure that lies in the deserted spire. Lóng is seeking the alchemist living in the same. There are horse-riding barbarians, known as sedanei, who hold the spire sacred and Kyo is on a mission to find out why they are restless. There is a flood that has just about isolated the town from the knight who actually rules this border.

The spire is on a large hill with plenty of boulders, rocks, and such, many with sharp edges. Cadoc arrives during evening and makes a camp. Kyo, not much later, chooses to wait until day before seeking the sedanei and happens upon Cadoc’s camp. Both have horses. Kyo negotiated his from the one who ruled over the small town he just left, while Cadoc happens to own one. They share the camp.

Lóng joins them soon enough, first sneaking close and then pretending to come from afar. He introduces himself as Hûang. For all night everyone feigns sleep or sleeps lightly, save for Lóng who once sneaks to the tower, knocks, hears random animal noises and then someone opens the door a bit. Lóng asks if the one opening it is the alchemist who lives here. Answer is “No!” and the door slams shut. Lóng gets back.

Dawn, things start moving

Come dawn Cadoc starts climbing the tower. It is far from easy, the tower being 100 meterst tall and the lowest windows being around 50 metres from the ground. (The next set of windows is very close to the top.)

Kyo goes on the meet the sedonai coming closer; there are two warriors and three priestesses coming. Some discussion and bribery leads to discovering that there have been some human sacrifices (which is unusual by ksym’s narration) and offer to take Kyo to the spire to see what it all is about.

Lóng hides among the rocky slopes of the hill to spectate all of this.

Kyo and the sedanei get to the spire. There is a small stone table for sacrifices there; fruits and few dead animals are placed there, then there is waiting. Cadoc reaches the 50 meter mark at this point, though some rubble falls down and alerts the sedanei that something is going on. Inside every room takes one floor of the tower; there are unnamed liquids and random body parts in jars, one floor with moss and rats, next one with a leopard (that is not hungry at the moment), and the next relevant room is one with several buckets of water and half a human body.

Lóng pays a visit to the barbarians. They are not very happy at a random person intruding their sacred site. One warrior tries knocking him unconscious; Lóng plays along, pretending to succumb to the warrior’s attacks. He is bound and thrown to the altar-stone. Kyo chooses to also go inside. The door to the spire soon opens; there is a human-like shape of mud inside. It watches the sacrifices, then turns around. Kyo grabs Lóng and they both enter, with the ropes quickly cut. The golem then goes to pick up the rest of the sacrifice.

Cadoc rises to the highest floor of the spire. There are large windows, actual light (as opposed to mere torchlight) and one quite hungry gryphon loosely bound by four golden chains. Cadoc goes back one floor and feeds half a human to the griffon. It seems satisfied for now and lets Cadoc circle to rope ladders that allow entry further.

On the ground floor Lóng deals with the alchemist, trading some precious stones for a liquid that allows jumping into campfires without being burned. The golem starts ascending the stairs. Kyo and Lóng soon follow. On the way up they see something of an alchemist’s lab, a cage with human-monster hybrids and other similar details. Lóng tests the liquid given by the alchemist and finds it works, maybe even better than assumed. Lóng gets some gunpowder from the lab, applies it to the cage of the monstrosities, then starts making a trail of gunpowder towards the top of the tower, some floors behind Kyo.

Cadoc has climbed as far as possible. There is a ruby hanging from four frail golden chains there. Cadoc rips it off. The more massive chains that bound the griffon are likwise ripped apart. Now there’s somewhat malnourished gryphon keeping Cadoc stuck up there. After a while it becomes necessary for Cadoc to come down. The griffin grabs Cadoc and takes to the air. Kyo reaches the floor just in time to see this happening and throws some knives after it. Cadoc stabs it at the roughly the same time. The knives miss and the dagger Cadoc used causes the griffin to loosen its grip. The griffon dives, straightening just before hitting ground and then throws Cadoc away. It hurts. Cadoc gets new trait, “broken bones 3″. The gryphon’s 7 dice for fighting served it well here, as can be seen. I overall rolled pretty well. Note to further game mastering: Creatures with high traits hurt, a lot, as they should.

The gunpowder Lóng set up goes boom. Kyo runs down, the golem, after having placed the foodstuff to where the gryphon used to be also starts moving down, and finally Lóng, too, starts moving down, playing his instrument of choice while doing so . The griffon assumes this to be a challenge and answers in kind while circling the tower (after having eaten the leopard that did not appreciate the “music” Lóng produced). Kyo encounters one of the formerly imprisoned disfigured monstronities, this particular one with a frog’s or toad’s head, somewhat mantis-like forearms, though not quite as formidable as weapons, and in other ways this one is human-like (later named Gez). It tries to hit Kyo who jumps over it, and the dice would have it succeed, by ksym chooses Kyo to instead take 1 harm. Running further down the only other relevant creature is a large, spiderlike thing that has leathery substance between its limbs, creating rudimentary and nonfunctional wings. First Kyo just dashes underneath it, but then turns around and after a single swing there are two halves of the spider-creature.

Lóng also gets past the critters, of which Gez takes a liking to his playing. Lóng avoids it (for now). The two eventually go to chat with the alchemist. There is some oil on the lowest step of the stairs, but it causes little harm. Little discussion, then action: Kyo rushes the alchemist, who first throws some dust that Kyo avoids, then Kyo gets grappling but has hard time due to only having one arm, and further the alchemist touches Kyo with his stuff, which makes Kyo nearly freeze. ksym chooses that Kyo takes harm in place of being paralysed by the cold; total harm is now 5, which means that the only relevant trait of Kyo is “ronin”.
In spite of this the alchemist is finally subdued by Kyo.

The mud golem finally gets downstairs. The griffin is waiting outside for someone to exit the spire and be eaten. Kyo forces the alchemist to turn the golem off. Said alchemist does tricks that look like magic and that may or may not be related to the golem, which does stop doing anything. Gez the disfigured monster comes down and tries to hug or kiss or pet Lóng, who easily avoids the clumsy monster. Kyo and Lóng ponder and discuss a bit, deciding to have the alchemist eaten by the griffon. The alchemist, for obvious reasons, doesn’t fancy this at all and orders the golem to slay Kyo.

The happy ending

Kyo and Lóng toss some alchemical liquids around, the alchemist is cast out but not eaten by the gryphon, which is scarred by an explosion and which quickly leaves the scene after that, Lóng (and Gez, carried by Lóng) exit the spire, Kyo and the golem are trapped in the spire by poisonous fog (well, Kyo is and the mud golem doesn’t really care), Cadoc is discovered by the horse-barbarians (sedonai) and tied to the ground as a sacrifice to the griffon.

Lóng, still carrying Gez, releases Cadoc. Gez attacks Cadoc but is easily stopped by Lóng. Kyo and the golem duel, Kyo gets some scars and finally defeats the golem, but is trapped inside the tower. Cadoc’s map reveals a hidden passage into the spire; along the way Lóng observs that the alchemist has disappeared; once on entrance to the passage, it becomes clear the alchemist passed that very way. The map turns out to be reliable; A way is discovered for Kyo to leave the tower and Cadoc secures an egg, presumably one of a gryphon. This he keeps hidden from the others.

The list

• Chen Pong (Ari)
• Lóng (Thalin)
• Lóng (Thalin)
• Martoh (Tommi)
• Cadoc (wgaztari)
• Cadoc (wgaztari)
• Kyo (ksym)
• Cadoc (wgaztari)
• Grisnach (Tommi)
• Kyo (ksym)
• Grisnach (Tommi)
• Kyo (ksym)
• Kyo (ksym)
• Gez (Tommi)
• Lóng (Thalin)

Observations

Thalin avoided the dice pretty skillfully, so I did the stress-testing on other players. Worked out well enough. I’ll need to clarify some minor details related to attacks and such that affect several targets.

When not to roll dice

The following conditions are not sufficient for rolling dice: Someone is sneaking around and someone might notice the sneak; the dice only become involved when the sneak tries to accomplish something concrete, or the potential observer is clearly hostile towards the rogue. Likewise, merely lying is not a sufficient condition for rolling the dice; there must be concrete consequences to succeeding and failing. Besides, characters that are walking lie detectors are, simply, boring.

In which I will gush about the actual play of the game I built in the previous post; first, a few words about In a wicked age, then the actual play.

In a wicked age

The game that inspired this one; if you want sword-and-sorcery, a light but important system and episodic play, I can really recommend the game, assuming it plays at all like my hack does. For more information on the game, see the rpg.net index (and linked review), this rpg.net thread (or the relevant seach results), or search the Forge for relevant actual play.

Actual play

Players present, in no particular order: Ari, Thalin, ksym. Players not present: Wgaztari. Hence, no victorian game. The random generator, which I tweaked a bit before play to provide slightly more explicit NPCs, generated the following:

A conjurer who needs blood to entice his uncouth spirits.
A troupe of musicians for hire, one of whom is a burglar and cutpurse.
A seerstone, one of only five, which rumours suppose to be close to the entrance into the underworld of lost souls.
The site of a pitched battle, ground churned and stinking, and the widows mourning there.

Thalin first claimed the burglar/cutpurse/musician, Ari fixated on playing the seerstone, while ksym after some pondering chose to play a one-armed veteran of the pitched battle. The game kinda drifted towards somewhat oriental flavour, so the final characters (at chargen) were:

• Lông (bad musician 6, ninja training 3, liar 4) played by Thalin
• Chen Pong (merchant 4, stone 5, fat 4) played by Ari
• Kyo (ronin 6, one armed 3, fast 3) played by ksym
• Martoh (summoner 5, fighter 4, spirit guardian 4), an NPC

Quick and shallow characters, much as they should be. I told it doesn’t matter and is in fact positive. Mister Chen Pong requires some further explanation (if Ari plays Chen again, the traits will probably be changed to reflect this). Chen’s one eye, usually covered, is (IIRC) an emerald. Chen does not know this and to him the eye does not feel extraordinary.

On that note, I just now notice that I managed to misread one of the entries: The seerstone is “supposed to be close”, not “supposed to close”, a gate to underworld. Well, no matter. Other things were ignored or altered slightly, too. The widows were totally ignored and the uncouth spirits somewhat turned into demons of Christian mythology. Not to mention “burglar and cutpurse” evidently meaning “ninja”.

Crafting the situation

It did not take long for me to draw connections between three of the random elements: Certainly the site of pitced battle is exactly what is necessary for a summoner to open a gate to the underworld (which was implied by the seerstone). I asked if any PC had connections to the summoner; it turned out that the Chen Pong the merchant has a deal regarding a barrel of gunbowder, for which a small opal was given as a payment before the deal and more were implied to be the reward for providing the barrel in a fairly discreet manner.

Where does this leave the others? Well, in the same tavern as the merchant, of course. Of Kyo’s background it is known that he was healed in a nearby monastery (which later turns out to be a Christian one) and tended by one sister Victoria residing therein. Lông and the related troupe of four musicians get some meager food and lodging in echange of performances.

The plot threads are created

The musicians play (Lông pretends to). Kyo is drinking. A young man or woman, shaven completely shaven of all (visible) bodily hair, including eyebrows and lashes, enters the tavern He or she is wearing robes that are somewhere between grey and black in colour. People first fall silent, then nervously start talking about anything but the hairless one, who walks straight to Chen Pong, handing him a sealed letter. The letter containts instructions on where to deliver the gunpowder and when (a burned building midway between the monastery and the only local mountain, at the this midnight).

Soon the hairless goes away, merchant Pong asks the tavern’s owner about the young one. He instructs not to ask more. Kyo sits nearby, yet reacts not. The troupe stops playing, Lông sits next to Chen the merchant, orders some milk (cue random jokes), steals a few gold coins from Chen and finally pays his milk with one. This is first time the rules as used; Thalin rolls 3d due to ninja training, Ari 2d due to merchant 4. Thalin is the victor and suggests the aforemention stealing, which Ari accepts. Tavern keeper is quite impressed with the gold coin and soon offers a meal.

Some interaction between Chen Pong and Kyo, Chen and Lông, happens. End result: Chen offers to provide Kyo with some fairly rare rice beverage from a certain village, further notices that some coins of his have been stolen, one troupe member called Jin is more-or-less framed by Lông, is chased away by Kyo who doesn’t catch him (but gets on the list due to failing the roll), after which all the player characters gather outside near where the musician got away (the vile rogue!). Ari adds trait “suspicious towards artists 1″ to Chen, ksym “suspicious towards vagabonds 2″ in imitation.

A serving wench from the tavern addresses Lông, provides him with an iron key to his room for the night, should he wish to take it, then goes back to the tavern. Lông soon follows, enters his room, goes to rest. Chen Pong hires Kyo to work as a bodyguard and the two take Chen’s wagon and start their way towards the meeting point, though Kyo first wants to visit sister Victoria in the monastery.

Tying some threads together

Visiting sister victoria at night involves waiting and an illicit deal with a monk who greatly appreciated a soft pillow and traded it for a nice, hand-crafted prayer carpet.

Lông gets a visitor; the aforementioned tavern wench. They try to make each other drink the provided wine; end result is Lông taking 1 harm and the wench being drugged to sleep (after some hours that were promptly skipped when playing so that people may imagine whatever they will). Lông leaves through a window, immediately after which a trapdoor on the floor is opened and six robed, hairless young ones come in, pick up the drugged woman and lock the trapdoor behind them. Lông runs to catch the two other PCs, who do not expect him.

Aside: I so wanted to get Lông there. Who has ever heard of evil summoners using beautiful women as sacrifices? Well, the dice roll as they may and random serving wench is not a terribly powerful opponent, generally speaking.

The grand climax

Chen and Kyo are at the burned house. The stone walls are still standing, but roof has burned away. The doorway is covered by a curtain that serves as a temporary door. Chen’s eye feels a bit strange. There is someone playing a flute inside the ruins; Lông, now present, recognises it as Jin the alleged thief, who did not play quite that well before the occasion.

Kyo rolls the barrel next to the doorway, Chen enters first. Inside there are the following: A naked serving wench tied to an obsidian altar. A bonfire. Jin, not very attentive, playing the flute between these. A warrior, sword on his belt and a sacrificial dagger in his hand, waiting. Some initial hostile reactions avoided the trade is sealed: Six of the hairless kids carry a small chest, which containts a small fortune in opals and gold, to the merchant’s wagon; then they carry the barrel of gunpowder inside what remains of the burned house.

Every PC is ready to depart. Lông reveals his presence. First there’s some hesitation but then the PCs decide to go and rescue or kill whoever is in need of either. Chen Pong sees the doorway fluttering, as if in wind, but the others see no such effect. The action: Lông enters the building, Kyo is about the follow, Chen starts playing with fireworks aimed towards the doorway, which takes some time. As Lông brushes aside the makeshift door and steps in, the situation is as follows: The six young ones are holding vessels with gunpowder and are standing around the bonfire. The pace of the music has been ascending; the summoner is preparing to use the dagger. Oh, yeah, and the curtain-door dissolves into something of a living, axe-wielding shadow that attacks Kyo at the Summoner’s behest. (It is the summoner’s very own death spirit guardian shadow demon. Something to that effect, anyways.)

Kyo and the demon start dueling. Lông utilises the blowpipe hidden in his flute against the summoner (dice favour Thalin, whose suggestion I accept) who is hit, drops the dagger which cuts one hand of the (right now very drugged) woman free from the bounds, then staggers some steps backwards and (my small addition) draws out the spirit of poison, which starts fluttering around him.

Kyo and the shadow duel; Kyo is clearly better at it, even if his blows are not terribly effective. They do drive the spirit back to the building, where the energies involved in opening the gate fortify the spirit again (2 more dice due to summoning 5 of Martoh the BBEG). The dice favour me and my suggestion is that the shadow is, finally absorbed into the blade that Kyo uses; it is accepted. New trait: Demon sword 3. (Summoner consequently loses the relevant trait.)

Chen Pong fires one of the prepared fireworks. Dice get rolled (doorway has 2 dice; 2 seems to be a decent arbitrary number for random enviromental obstacles); the doorway wins and my suggestion that the projectile hits one of the young ones, who spills gunpowder around; particularly, upon the woman (and Jin the flute player). Such happens, the projectile then goes up and explodes pretty harmlessly there.

Kyo gets there and starts fighting the summoner, who is pretty overwhelming due to the demonic sword being the summoner’s pet. Pretty intense bit of fighting ensues, end result being that Kyo gets a small wound and two drops of his blood end up on the altar. Meanwhile Lông is busy saving random people, which involves jumping into the bonfire and slapping the flutist, and so forth.

Chen’s eye starts seeing things; there had been random ominous signs some time before, but now
there is an actual gate inside the bonfire; it is small, but grows slowly. Chen walks to the gate and the bonfire it is around gives way. The summoner approaches Chen, Kyo gets in the way, there’s dueling and finally Kyo defeats the summoner.

The gate is bound by an iron crossbar, but something big is striking at it from the inside. Chen knocks on it and a window appears. There’s negotiations with demons, which don’t seem to be going too well be fore Lông starts playing music; such bad music is something the demons can’t stand (and the three dice give some extra weight to the negotiation). The final deal: Demons get the summoner (who is in need of what they call training, having failed in opening the gate), some of the rice beverage and some fireworks, but don’t open the gate by themselves.

Everyone leaves the scene; Lông had saved all the hairless and evidently enchanted young ones and now grabs few opals from the chest before leaving. Kyo and Chen Pong leave with the drugged girl and the wagon.

Everyone lives happily ever after, or at least until the next game where they take part. Chen Pong gets trait “rich 3″, Lông gets “rich 2″ and The current list with strikethrough indicating that the character is no longer on the list (at least in that position).

• Chen Pong (Ari)
• Kyo (ksym)
• Lông (Thalin)
• Kyo (ksym)
• Martoh (Tommi)
• Chen Pong (Ari)
• Kyo (ksym)
• Lông (Thalin)
• Lông (Thalin)
• Martoh (Tommi)

The setting

Here’s what is known about the setting: There are somewhat oriental lands, there are also mroe European-themed lands with Christianity dominating. There was a war between these two. There is a tavern with at least one room designed so that people sleeping there can be captured. There is a monastery of mixed genders (strictly separate). The monastery is very close to the war zone, but was not pillaged.

Running the game and theoretical blathering

There process of running the game is not mechanically complex; to use DNAPhil’s terms, the hard skills are not terribly complicated. The way dice work is complicated to explain in words, but very intuitive in play.

The process: First, use the oracle to generate random inspiration. Then guide players in character generation and explain how the game works. Once all the characters are somewhat done it is time to weave them together. Players are a great help here, especially those who sometimes GM. The trick is to have enough plot threads to make the situation interesting, but not too many so that it doesn’t explode all over the place. One session only to solve all of them. Either I have accidentally learned to do this or got lucky. (We did play past midnight, but that is not unheard of.)

In actual play try to win all rolls and suggest interesting stuff. The players are good enough to beat you every now and then, but there is little reason to play soft with the resolution. You can’t accidentally kill anyone off or otherwise screw their characters, because they get to shrug off unwanted consequences by taking harm. Essentially, the players have total control over their character concept, but if they are blocking everything, the character will be harmed enough to drop from play.

Note to self: Thalin is a powergamer and good at it. This particularly means that I have the responsibility to hold him in check by throwing some nasty consequences at him. There’s always harm as an alternative. So, next session will involve stress-testing the system when real pressure is applied to at least one player.

Resolving conflicts

There’s the traditional way: Player tells what he tries, rolls dice, GM tells the success or failure and describes it (or lets the player to describe it). There’s the hardcore Forgish way: What happens upon success and failure are negotiated before the dice are as much as touched. (I usually live between those two, though closer to the Forgish extreme.)

This game used a third way: First roll the dice, then negotiate. This has the good aspects of stake-setting, in that everyone must know why the dice are on table, but this is faster, as the margin of success kind of implies how significant the suggested results can be and only one outcomes needs to be negotiated. Further, the way traits are gradually brought into play creates narration during the conflict, which often implies certain consequences and hence guides the process.

It is interesting how this resolution feels extended while actually being mathematically equivalent to just rolling all the dice at once and being done with it. I guess it is the extra narration and the fact that the dice can shift who the conflict favours mid-conflict, even a few times.

Fictional content

I relied heavily on stereotypes (and so did the players). It may not be necessary with a group that has enough common history, or if the session can take a long time. One should not think too hard about such things as a cohesive setting or sensible villain actions, if there is a villain.

This post will be about techniques for accepting and influencing the inputs of other participants when roleplaying. Inspirations: Improvisation for roleplayers by Graham and an rpg.net thread by R00kie. Observant readers can see why I use exactly six different categories. I am sure they can be merged and more can be added if such are searched for.

Context

Say, I am running a random dungeoncrawl. A player character has discovered a secret passage to what seems to be a room full of treasure and wants to and grab some. The secret passage is quite crambed.

How can I react, as a GM? The process of picking which way I actually react may be a matter of rules (e.g. failed roll, no treasure; successful spell digs a tunnel), predetermined facts (the character is fat, no treasure; the character can pass through stone, easy entrance), on-the-fly setting creation (there’s a forcefield between you and the treasure; a minor earthquake opens up the passage), or by other means. That’s not the main focus here (not that I’ll keep quiet about it).

Blocking

“You can’t get through.” Blocking means that the input of the other participant is, for whatever reason, by whatever means, mande insignificant. As a general heuristic, one should avoid blocking. It slows everything down and disrupts flow of the game. Blocking is the way into boring failures when dice are not favouring the players.

here are some expections: The first is an idea that is totally out of synch with the rest of the game. A gritty and serious dungeoncrawl and someone is yelling Superman to widen up the entrance a bit. (Another common reaction is treating it as in-game sillyness. I’m not seeing the benefits of that, but won’t start yelling badwrongfun, either.)

The second situation that may merit blocking is when something has been established as futile, yet someone keeps trying. You really, really can’t get past that forcefield by hitting it with a club. Really. No, not even when raging. This is usually a case of communication failing between the participants and should be handled as such.

Shifting

“No, you don’t get inside the chamber, and further the dragon hears you.” The idea with what I’ll name shifting is that the previous outcome is not achieved and something else surpasses it in importance. This is what I used a lot in the Burning Wheel game (in context of someone failing a test). Basically, shifting is one interesting way to handle severe failures and setbacks. Not only does the attempted action or contribution to the fiction work, but also something else comes and grabs the attention.

Shift is something one might do when the game is running too slowly and some character screws something up, or other suitable situation occurs. More generally: Use a shift to change the pacing or other aspects of the game significantly. Like, “The orcs overwhelm you. You are standing there with a spear to your throat. The demon who leads the orcs walks through their ranks to face you.”, where an encounter with orcs does not lead to (immediate) character death and a potential BBEG (big bad evil guy) is introduced. Hectic combat is replaced with some probably hectic in-character dialogue and potential deals with demons. (Now I want to run that game. Damn.)

Opening

“You can’t get through, but there is this jar you just could tip over to make some noise (presuming that there is another entrance to the treasure trove and guardians in the place).” Opening still prevents the original intent from happening, but offers some other viable action or cause of play. Note the “offers”. Shift forces one instead of opening up new possibilities. Openings tend to slow down the game a bit, as people like to evaluate different options they have.

If running a game where the characters are not sticking together, open up opportunities for one player and move on to the next one. I wish I had figured this out and explicitly written down way before this. Using shifts in the same way may work as (mini-)cliffhangers, but killing the momentum is at least as likely.

Complicating

“You get through the passage, but a several guardian skeletons rise from the thrones they were sitting in.” Complication means that whatever was attempted actually worked, but so did something unanticipated and usually unwanted. Complication, like shift, changes the nature of the conflict, but tends to keep the goal fairly intact, which shift is likely to not do.

Complications are easy to introduce when some action is almost a success (or partial success or whatever), or when some minor mistake is done is some way. Complications often slow down the overall speed of events, but their effect on tension varies; use them as a pacing tool when something important is happening too fast to be enjoyable. “Your finger of death kills the BBEG, who barely manages to snap a wand in two. Red haze fills the room.” The action of the player is still relevant, but the climatic battle is just about to start.

Building

“You get to the treasure vault and of all the treasure a particular golden ring catches your attention.” Building means that whatever the other participant wanted to add to the game is now part of the fiction, and something that enhances the effect also happens. Interesting successes are situations where something is built. Building means that the goal, if any, is achieved, and yet something interesting happens. Run from the bandits and discover a hermit living the woods.

It is usually possible to ignore the new hooks that entered play, but it is considered bad form in some groups. It is essentially a way of blocking: “No, I don’t even touch or look at the ring.” In other groups the same behaviour might be called smart play.

Resolving

Where block is a clear No, resolution is a clear Yes. It is a closure, an end. A time to move towards other points of interest, or to end the game entirely. The trick is using resolution if and only if it is appropriate: Too rarely and the game bloats with new options, making it a huge mess full of unsolved events (I do this.); too often and the game will look episodical with only tenous connections between the different sessions or other instances of play. (If you enjoy episodic play, reduce the duration of the episodes until you are no longer interested, like so that every encounter is very much a discreet unit of play with little connection to anything resembling a setting or story.)

Larger scale

Assume that a given instance of play can be divided into scenes, each of which is fairly continuous with regards to characters, location and time. Ignore the scenes that are not interesting (for your particular definition of interesting), if any such exist.

The question is: How are the scenes linked together? This all is after-the-play reflection or even analysis, though may work as a preparation strategy, too. Particularly: How do scenes end and how do they start? My gut reaction is that if a lot of scenes end in resolution, the need for contrived plot hooks and the like is increased to keep the character engaged. Compare: Kill Kranach the raider lord, gather reward from the sheriff, enjoy the reward, spot a plot hook, grab it, go rescue a puppy from a cave. Alternatively: Kill Kranach and rescue the tiny girl at the same time. The girl asks you to go find her dog, which got lost in the nearby dark cave.

The actually final session of the BW game.

Scene 1

Halvard is woken up by one of the crew members telling that Leif’s men have left. Some organising later everyone (including still somewhat befuddled Mori) are on their way back to the village. Halvard gets a roll to detect the ambush ahead; success. The group is divided into two: Brunhildr and Halvard both take 10 men. Mori hides before battle, as per the relevant trait and accidentally chooses to hide in a bunch of bushes where some warriors of Leif were hiding. Mori tells the plans of Halvard to the men, who happen to include the hunter/guide/tracker who helped in discovering the ambush site, and they use a bit of archery to carry the message forward.

Scene 2

Halvard and his men have taken a position below a rocky cliff (the best position for an attack, certainly). Bruhildr and the rest have likewise moved onward. Two arrows are let fly, both from behind them, one to the general direction of both groups. Brunhildr and the 10 rush towards the location of the hidden archers, who promptly try escaping across a river and taking Mori with them. Arrows are let loose, two out of the three perish, one escapes (that would be the guide) and Mori survives, but is just a bit cold.

Scene 3

Halvard and his ten rush the hillside and are promptly forced into hiding behind the rocks that are large enough for that by a flight of arrows and spears. Since Burning Wheel doesn’t have a mass combat system, I improvised and used the rules for ranged combats (Range and cover) with relevant adjustments. Some tense rolls are made with the defenders getting and keeping the edge, though Halvard does manage to sound his horn to notify Brunhildr about their location. Whenever they get successes that are not used to give more dice to them due to their location, I give wgaztari two choises: Take hits or have your men perish. The trick is that Halvard is well-armoured, which gives a fair chance of the arrows doing nothing at all. Some rolls are made and the situation looks grim: The defenders have position worthy of 3 dice which gives them an edge of two dice over Halvard and his retinue. They win another round. One of Halvards’ men dies and Halvard gets a nasty hit to torso. It goes through the armour. A midi wound: Very nasty -2 dice to everything. Steel roll is a failure, which means that an ordinary man would swoon, run screaming, beg ofr mercy, or just stand and drool and bleed.

Halvard, the gloryhound, instead yells “For glory!” and rushes forward. Steel close, practically suicidal maneuvre, unless one has absurdly high steel. Deeds artha, which basically let one double the dice pool used or reroll all failures, are used. End result: About 16 dice (10 is maximum for skills, 8 for human stats) are rolled. Halvard’s men run behind him. Few uneffective arrows or spears are let fly but after that the enemies rout. A massacre ensues, only Leif and few others manage to esape. Halvard gives chase.

Scene 4

Brunhildr and the men accompanying her discover a small ambush of theirs with the aid of Mori, who also fuzzes around with some poisons. There are few well-positioned men who try to stop their advance; end result of the sorry attempt is one dead defender (the rest escape).

Scene 5

Halvard and his men catch the fleeing Leif. A spear to his back, after which Leif grovels and is then slaughtered by Halvard. All PCs meet again. There are rolls made so as Halvard could recover from his wounds; failed treatment implies a permanent -1 to some stat; in this case, forte, which is kinda nasty. Mori doesn’t suffer any significant consequences due to his icy bath.

Scene 6

Halvard and Brunhildr go to meet Nässla, with the hearts of Nifur and Leif safely along. Gilla’s been fine. There are two plates of food ready; Brunhildr eats, Halvard does not. The food is, naturally, poisoned, but more on that later. The fire used for cooking and such is smoking profusely.

After some fumbling it becomes clear that Nässla is willing to tell who killed Halvard’s father for the small price of Nifur’s heart. Leif’s heart is evidently of no value to him.

Nässla consumes the heart, seems to change somehow, throws some random herbs into the fire, which fills the entire hut with smoke. Steel tests are rolled: Gilla (played by Thalin) miserably fails while Brunhildr and Halvard both make it and don’t panic. A brief exposition ensues: Nässla was the one who poisoned Thorvald as a punishment for him consulting a pitiful pretender Grímr instead of a competent witch (Nässla). This heard from the hut’s entrance. Halvard rushes out to find that Nässla is there no longer; Brunhildr finds the panicking Gilla (who can see her aura and is more than a bit scared of her) and gets out.

One of the Nässla’s magpies craws something about the village and flies that way, guiding the characters.

For the record: Nässla never left the hut. This trick partially stolen from some Icelandic saga that I can’t name right now. They are good reading, full of drama and with a taste of the fantastic here and there.

Scene 7

Meanwhile, in the village, Mori had a bit of fun with a drug of his that makes people very impulsive and prone to, say, violence. I adjudicate this as a poisons test: Achieving Obstacle 4 means some deaths, 5 much killing, 6 minor fires, 7 major fire, 8 a totally devastated community. The fun part: I give Thalin the ability to get two extra successes if Mori gets caught bloody-handed. Thalin can make the call after rolling. Test result: 5 successes. Thulen makes it 7.

Brunhildr, Halvard and Gilla rush to the town. The entire place is burning (even the few wheels of any carts that might have been there). The mead hall has crumbled. Mori is standing atop the ruins, laughing/giggling in an unhealthy way. “Gilla, what do you see?” quoth Brunhildr. “He is no human.” sayeth Gilla. Brunhildr uses her bow and Mori falls off, an arrow protruding from his torso. Halvard and Brunhildr rush there. Some futile questioning ensues, followed by a summary execution of Mori by Halvard (with spear, not Nithingr).

Scene 8

Grímr is discovered in the ruins of a burning building. Some treatment after it is clear he will survive (albeit scarred by the flames). Some more exposition by the coughing Grímr: Thorvald did indeed ask him to divine the future. He is not actually much (or any) of a witch, so he could only give his best guess that something nasty was coming.

Not much after that was Thorvald found dead. Soon enough came Nifur.

Time paradox aside: Thorvald asked Grímr to predict the future. He said something bad was coming. Hence, Nässla poisoned Thorvald, which was a bad thing indeed, and hence predicted by Grímr. Or maybe the prediction was about Nifur and there was no time paradox.

And everyone lived happily ever after

In the distance, a ship with the body of Thorvald in it is burning.

The poison that Brunhildr ate was mind-affecting one: Brunhildr now has an instinct to guard every witch. (This is totally realistic.) Nässla is healthy and young again.

There is a bunch of scattered norsemen around with no leader and little hope. The winter is coming.

Mori is dead; Loki or Hel will no doubt enjoy his company.

There is a would-be-assassin and no doubt more than a few very angry people who would do almost anything to kill Brunhildr and Halvard; they slaughtered many men.

Post-mortem

Personally, I am fairly happy with Burning Wheel. This is my first successful game with it; a solo game with Nakano didn’t go too well beck then. Next time I’ll be using the rules much better and not cut quite as many corners.

Traits worked well; I am confident in being able to use anything similar to any game after this. Instincts had some effect; beliefs didn’t work well. They were what the folk at BWHQ call proto-beliefs since they tended to not have a concrete statement of action in them. Most of the blame is mine to take, of course, but part goes to the character sheets not having sufficient space for them.

My acting still sucks. I can play maybe one or two different characters. Improving this is a matter of practice. Ouch.

I can now GM in a game with actual (emergent) story, even if preplanning one is out of the question due to my distaste for knowing what will happen. I can also run a game with epic enough events; Gastogh and Cryptic would be happy, now, and the Dragongame could have worked.

Next task is to update the character info on wiki. Then, chargen for Thulen’s game.

This was supposed to be the last session. Actually was the second-to-last one. The game started with the confrontation with the giant.

Scene 1

Nifur is moving towards the ambush site, at first followed by Halvard, who then lets the giant take some distance and blows to a horn to warn the people that the giant is coming and of the direction the giant is coming from. The relevant roll is successful and people duly warned.

These people include Mori and Brunhildr, of whom the latter stands guard next to the corpse with Nithingr and the former, having no time to poison everyone with a good meal, decides to go for toxic fumes. I rule the feat as absurdly hard, obstacle 8. Thalin, in spite of his generally good luck, manages to fail the roll (but gets a challenging test towards advancing poisons), which manifests as Mori accidentally inhaling some of the fumes and, after a brief struggle, falling unconscious. Thalin gets to play a soldier. To be more precise: A bowman ambushing the giant. This one just happens to be the one whose brother Brunhildr killed in a duel and who seeks revenge.

Scene 2

Brunhildr stands next to the Thorvald’s body. Nifur is near the valley and jumps down. Halvard runs to the scene. A tactics roll is made to determine if Nifur jumps to a pit or such; alas, that is not to be. Brunhildr runs towards Nifur, Nithingr on hand, and cuts the giant’s leg badly, making the giant fall and getting away from it. Nifur fails a steel test and some scewering is done; a dead giant lies slain, bleeding profusely. Brunhildr gets the hatred of Mori, as a result of the killing.

While this is happening, Halvard commands the people who were hidden around the valley and armed with javelins or bows. They are about to shoot/throw as the giant falls. Halvard yells: “Don’t shoot!”, and a single arrow is fired towards Brunhildr. It hits her armour, harmlessly glancing off. (This is a pity; the scene would have been beautiful if Brunhildr had died.)

Halvard demands to know who shot at Brunhildr. One man points at the character played by Thalin who is the shooter. Thalin’s NPC points back. Dice are rolled; Thalin gets far more successes than I do. The other man is hence one of Leif’s and thus can’t be trusted. Some accusations and such after, the man is thrown off the edge by Halvard, who manages to calm the situation before any further fighting is done. The man survives, Brunhildr tosses him around more than a bit, but doesn’t get any answers.

Scene 3

Mori’s awake. One belief of Mori was linked to Loki, who is linked to fire, so I decided this to be an excellent moment for including some drug-enhanced visions. I left the details to Thalin, which was possibly a mistake, since he didn’t seem all too eager to share them. Message: Go and cause mayhem. A lot of it.

The player characters are all more-or-less present. There is some discussion about eating the giant or immediately going to the village, but since it is dark and Nifur is nigh-inedible without suitable cooking (Brunhildr tries), the plans are postponed. Halvard gets Nifur’s heart from Brunhildr and further gets Nithingr, as Brunhildr feels it brings bad things to the one wielding it.

People are asleep, save for some guards. Mori sneaks to Thorvald’s corpse and takes the heart out. The relevant rolls are quite successful so nobody notices this (ever, as it happens). Mori is blessed by Loki: Opens a new skill at G2 (intimidate, but revised to be soothing platitudes which is essentially a form of flattery) and gains a version of the lawbreaker trait: Around Mori, fires and shadows act strangely. Mori, too, sleeps.

Since the Lemming had a post about this and some other blogs where he (or she) mentioned liking my GMing rambles, here is a new one.

Making the fictional events personal to player characters is a good idea. This blog post is not about that. Making things personal to players may make an excellent game or cause the entire thing to burn and crash. This is not the subject, either.

Example

The first session of the post-apocalyptic game set in Finland has been played. (What is interesting that opusinsania ran a similar game not long ago; totally unfounded claims about spying were included in the session before play began.) I set the game to happen near Pori, because most of my relatives live in that direction and I have some familiarity with the area. To be more precise: a significant encounter happened in a location which I imagined as the home of my grandparents. This was a good thing for the following reasons: There was little fear of severe contradictions as I know where everything was and what everything looked like. Second, I had an emotional connection with the place: some of the player characters effectively assaulting the place was interesting to GM.

The session consisted of the characters saving the dog (named Fifi, as any dog tends to be) of one PC. The mood was not very dark (given a post-apocalyptic game), though one character did lose an arm at the very end. This was pretty traditional game in that there was background info the players know little about. Anyway. The relevancy of the dog.

(Credit for the picture: My sister. Copyright her, I guess.)

I lived some years with Tara and still meet her at least once a month. I like dogs. Making the game about “rescuing” one means that it gets a n immediate reaction from me.

Pattern

Make locations and events personal to you and you will certainly be interested in the game; the extra context the relevant elements give adds value. Enthusiasm is a likely consequence, and enthusiasm is a good thing.

Using actively painful elements might or might not work, but is certainly not adviced unless playing with close friends who can and are willing to take it.

Overall, this technique is useful for having a full, detailed mental image of something: A place, building, or person. Use it as you will. As an additional bonus, you get to know what a bunch of armed attackers would do if they wanted to attack your house. That might end up being useful.

Some Wednesdays ago was the second-to-last session of the Burning Wheel game. It might have been possible to make it the last, but the price would have been significant. There has been some time between the game and the write-up, so details are very much not present.

Reporting

There was a short summary of the recent events due to the significant break. I have a bad habit of forgetting details I don’t consider significant, but at least Thalin seems to remember them and think they are valuable. Makes one wonder…

I started generally ramping up the consequences of rolls in this session; since the end is nigh, significant rolls to any effect are unlikely to totally spoil the play for anyone and they add some tension to the rolls.

Scene 1

Mori (Thalin’s char) is in the village, hears that Leif and some others are preparing to go and rescue (more-or-less) Gilla Brunhildrsdottir from the clutches of the evil witch. His response is, as normal, to poison them. The game is approaching the end so I try to have many rolls have pretty high stakes; as in, fail the roll to poison them and you will be caught and clearly be guilty. Of course the roll was successful. (Though some fate artha was used). Leif and his best warriors are enjoying a fine diarrhea.

Mori also finds out that all the crew members are busy preparing the ambush site.

Scene 2

Halvard, Brunhildr and the five warriors are near the village. Brunhildr starts moving towards the ambush site while Halvard and the others go to the village, meeting Mori on the way. Leif’s fine plotting that resulted in sending all Halvard’s men away does not bear fruit. There is some dialogue, almost a duel between Halvard and one of Leif’s men, inspiring speech from Halvard to the (not too friendly) audience, and orders to get Thorvald’s body moving. Halvard also manages to lose Grímr’s trust by being a bit secretive about Gilla and not good enough a liar to pull it off. Halvard starts moving towards the ambush site. His men carry Thorvald’s body in hiding and use another way.

Brunhildr arrives at the ambush site and talks to the crew members. They are not very happy at her having “deserted” them to do some petty quest. I have trouble playing them properly because the hostility is due to the sword and the in-game justification is a bit too shoddy. Idea of the sword is good, but I am not sufficiently skilled at playing the effects.

Brunhildr starts moving back towards the village to find Halvard.

Scene 3

Mori seeks Nifur (the giant), finds him after some wandering, tells about what is happening everywhere, and heads back towards the village.

As it happens (damn these coincidences; credit goes to Thalin, more-or-less), Nifur happens to meet Halvard (but not his men) while Mori and Brunhildr meet elsewhere in the woods.

Mori and Brunhildr wander towards Nässla’s hut for some time. Brunhildr gets suspicious about how long it will take (she should be at the ambush site); dice are rolled. It is draw, so I let Thalin decide from two options: Either Brunhildr notices Mori has been misleading her and is within an arm’s reach but she doesn’t have time to get to the ambush site or that Brunhildr does make it to the ambush site in time but Mori was not obviously misleading her. Thalin dutifully avoids the issue as well as he can, eventually arriving at the latter decision.

Scene 4

Halvard and the giant. Halvard leads Nifur to the village first (Nifur goes and immediately checks the temporary tomb, finding it empty, which ought to be suspicious), then start moving towards the ambush site. Nifur knows what is there.

And during the next session

Our intrepid heroes shall confront a giant over the corpse of a dead hero. Or maybe they will be poisoned and die a painful death while the giant feasts. Who knows?

I stumbled upon a great blog: A journey through a land of fantasy. The author has a lot of insight into the matters of building a good campaign. I see a lot of familiar goals combined with totally different techniques to get there, which always makes for interesting reading.

One can hope that  the author continues reporting the preparation and maybe even the actual session material.

I spend this weekend prepping s person for the mathematics part of the matriculation examination. The student was a pretty smart guy, but he did not have much routine in twisting numbers and letters around.

I could not help noticing some parallels between teaching and running games.

The matter of preparation

When running a game, I have some possible events that I can confront the player characters with. Extensive planning is just work and encourages railroading (when done by me). I also learn the system well enough so that I don’t need to check the books that often, if at all.

When teaching, I had some ideas about what subjects to handle and possibly some specific problems to solve or tricks to show. I did not build a script of the teaching session. I did go through the MAOL formula book (contains most of the formulae used in the matriculation examination and can evn be used in said examination). I still have an excellent handle of almost all of the material, differential equations excluded. Maybe I’ll ask Thalin to give me a quick summary or alternative check out some literature. Anyway.  I familiarised myself with the “rules”. The parallels are clear, I hope.

The flow of the session

When running a game, I usually have prepared enough toget the thing going and then follow up with improvisation that springs from player choices and the dice. This leads to quite dynamic gameplay, but does have some drawbacks, too. One relevant strength is that I can change the direction or emphasis of the game based on player input, verbal or nonverbal. This would work a lot better if I actually noticed the nonverbal cues, as opposed to what I do now.

When teaching, I had something to start with (nested functions, understanding derivatives to be the rate of change or angle of a graph). I explained something from different angles until the Samuli, the student, understood what I was talking about. If a difficult problem came up, I constructed a series of problems so that it started with very simple and basic, every problem was a bit more complicated than the previous one, and the difficult situation was culmination of the series. The longest series was probably three or four, so nothing terribly elaborate. Likewise, if something was easy, we could skip past it and get on to the harder stuff.

The skills required

Roleplaying and game mastering are both skills. They can be learned, improved, or get rusty. Ditto with teaching.

I think the following skills are all central to both running a game and teaching, if interpreted sufficiently broadly:

• Gauging interest: Are people yawning or eager and focused?
• Building suitable obstacles/problems that are not trivial, yet are not too difficult.
• Clear communication: Explaining/describing things so that shared understanding of the subject matter/fiction is built. See anchors by Bruce (Tumac).
• Leaving room for the student/players: Teacher/GM knows more about the problem/obstacle than the student/players does/do. Yet, the student is the one who should solve the problem, and players the ones who deal with an obstacle. No use setting up a problem or obstacle and then solving it by yourself or having a GMPC solve all problems.
• Judgement: When a solution or mode of action is suggested, teacher/GM is the one who judges how well it works. Sometimes a simple mistake is done, sometimes the solution is flawless. GM does have the luxury of letting dice arbitrate some events, but even then the difficulty or modifiers of those rolls are up to the GM. (There are some games where this is not true. E.g. Primetime adventures, Beast hunters, Agon. This all IIRC; I have never played any of those.)
• Quick thinking. This one is obvious and general enough to not be worth extensive commentary.

Other styles

I had the luxury of only teaching a single person. This is good. It is very exhaustive. I’d say that teaching a group demands slower pace and is probably more conductive to  preparing. Reasoning: If everyone must understand a subject, more numerous angles of presentation are useful. It is often hard to improvise multiple ways of doing the same thing (at least for me it is). Hence, preparing them ahead of them is something between viable and necessary.

Does this apply to roleplaying? Does a larger number of players imply easier or more useful preparation?

In my experience (I have never run a game with many players; four is probably the upper limit), solo games move fast. It takes huge amounts of prep to not have to improvise in solo game. When there are many players, OOG chatter is more prominent, the characters interact with each other, and generally everything takes more time. This means that less content is used in the same time and hence preparation is more possible.

On the other hand, multiple player characters means more complex plans can be formulated and practically achieved. I’d say that the time planning takes means that adjudicating such is not a huge burden, as opposed to the rapid-fire approach a single player is likely to take.

Also, when there are several PCs, the material can be more generic, because nobody assumes that every moment of the game is relevant to every character in a very personal and intimate way. I hope.

Conclusions and a warning

There are clear parallels between teaching and game mastering. The different styles, prep-wise, are quite similar. (Sandbox play would be roughly equivalent to having a huge menu of problems for the studen to choose among; there is similarity between a textbook and a published setting).

The warning part: Don’t use roleplaying to teach a lesson. Like, “greed is teh evilness”. Punish every character that does a greedy thing, reward every generous action. Players will see it and resent it. Be open about such an undertone and add it as a setting or rules premise, like a setting where the generous are held in esteem and greed as a sign of possession by evil spirits. Let players challenge the notions and don’t fiat a conclusion you like. Provide a playground, not a brainwashing session.

This applies to teaching ethics, too. Teach something and people will resist it just because. Give something that people can interact with and they will form their own opinions about it and actually learn something.

Disclaimer

I have no training in pedagogy. Take my opinions with a grain of salt. They are opinions, not facts.