How I used to run games
Apr. 24th, 2008 | 04:12 pm
This is how I ran games:
I spend the game watching the players' reactions, and if I'm running the game I almost never sit down. I concentrate on how my speech translates into responses in the players. We typically use a very small coffeetable with drinks, dice, and an 8 1/2" x 11" page map on it, so the players' attention largely is on the actual real life human beings in the group. By doing this, I encourage gaming that looks away from the pages / maps, and focuses on the other players and DM. The first 15 mins to half hour of a game is spent on the shared "off-camera" life of the PCs, to help them get into character and bring the group together. PCs in my campaign are always created to be members of a party - such as boatmates on a viking warship, members of a mercenary company, aspirant shamans, etc. A system that supports this style of play is a prerequisite of starting a game.
This is why it's done me wrong:
I'm taking responsibility for everyone's fun, and dominating the social airwaves rather than getting the cool out of my players and helping build on it. Players are falling into roles in my story, and are happy to do so - but this is exhausting and it puts off my gaming.
I spend the game watching the players' reactions, and if I'm running the game I almost never sit down. I concentrate on how my speech translates into responses in the players. We typically use a very small coffeetable with drinks, dice, and an 8 1/2" x 11" page map on it, so the players' attention largely is on the actual real life human beings in the group. By doing this, I encourage gaming that looks away from the pages / maps, and focuses on the other players and DM. The first 15 mins to half hour of a game is spent on the shared "off-camera" life of the PCs, to help them get into character and bring the group together. PCs in my campaign are always created to be members of a party - such as boatmates on a viking warship, members of a mercenary company, aspirant shamans, etc. A system that supports this style of play is a prerequisite of starting a game.
This is why it's done me wrong:
I'm taking responsibility for everyone's fun, and dominating the social airwaves rather than getting the cool out of my players and helping build on it. Players are falling into roles in my story, and are happy to do so - but this is exhausting and it puts off my gaming.
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How to build RPG Settings
Jun. 3rd, 2007 | 07:35 am
location: home
mood: clear
music: Counting Crows - Long December
Background vs. Foreground
A well-developed setting doesn't just have lots of background material. Background material entertains the gamemaster / reader, and it provides a wealth of description and fiction that isn't immediately relevant to play.
A well-developed setting needs foreground material; the problems, threats, resources, and rewards that get right in front of the players. Not all foreground material is immediately available to the players - but it is designed with their experience in mind. Foreground material shouldn't all be placed in teh first scene - but it's still designed with that use in mind.
As I've remarked elsewhere, the best foreground material comes in 4 flavors: Problems, Threats, Resources, and Rewards. When all these elements are present in a roleplaying game, that game is wide open for all players to be active participants.
Art Gallery or Amusement Park?
There are painstakingly developed settings that are all background, no foreground. These settings feel like art galleries: They are filled with artistically appealing efforts by the author that evoke emotions from the reader but do not lend themselves to interaction.
Other settings are like amusement parks, and the content is deliberately interactive, with other considerations de-emphasized in favor of the experience of the visitor, or player.
The latter is far superior for a roleplaying game.
Depth
Now some will object, "what about depth? An amusement park doesn't have depth. It's just dumb show." While that's a fair assessment, it's no excuse to go back to the art gallery: A setting with reams of information that the players never care about or interact with is just as shallow as one that simply wasn't prepared. Depth in an RPG setting has to help the GM engage the players - not just speak to the GM.
A setting's depth is the ability for changes caused by player-characters to have consequences that cascade through the setting and thereby provide feedback or consequences for the players. If you want a deep setting, relate the elements players can change back onto each other over and over again.
The Approach
Think of the campaign setting like an amusement park - but the players are halfway between visitors and employees.
As you design your setting, you can use a map of the physical landscape, or you can leave that for later. The most important thing will be placing the stuff that player characters can really interact with. These are rides, restaurants parades, and other special events.
Rides
Rides are the cool and important locations where player-characters go to experience something dramatic. These could be dungeons, evil citadels, ghost towns, hives of crime and corruption, battlefields, places that will come under attack, and so on. They are the big-money sets of your campaign.
Restaurants
Restaurants are places the player-characters can interact with others without (normally) assuming a threat of physical danger. They are the home bases for your players, the spots where they can take a few minutes to recover or gather resources.
Parades and Special Events
These are major campaign events. They can be localized and change existing rides and restaurants, like a dragon attacking, a meeting of a coven of witches, or a natural disaster. Some can be used in multiple locations, or have ramifications for the whole setting.
Now that we've got a basic idea of the setting, we move on to the people:
Just as important are the employees - especially those in charge of the rides (villains and allies). Don't forget vendors (home base NPCs) and performers (wandering NPCs). For the purpose of the analogy, centralized management of the theme park has totally collapsed - so determine what cliques (factions) have formed, who's in charge, etc. Most of all, think of how they would react to the PCs showing up - would they shun them, throw food at them, try to scam them, get a hand calming down some belligerent visitor, or put them to work?
Visitors fall into two categories: Peasants and monsters. Neither really has any idea what is going on, but the former just do what the employees tell them to do, and the latter mess things up for the employees. Vandals, as well as the scary guy who owns the farm next door and hates the amusement park also fall into the monster category.
Don't worry so much about the boundaries, except to make sure that on the way to a boundary there is always a ride or restaurant that will look like more fun than the parking lot.
Last of all is the special guests - bands and whatnot that come with big events. What's their story? Are they just trying to sleep with the waitresses or are they looking to cause a riot?
Don't stress out over plot. Plot-heavy linear isn't everyone's style, and I think it creates a problem when you have Location A leading to Location B leading to Location C rather than the players having freedom to go back to places they've been and find interesting stuff to do near the places they'd like to go to.
What you want to watch for, though, is anything uber. If only one guy sells bulletproof t-shirts, or the cotton candy vendor can basically kill everyone in the park, you hit deadlock. The players basically fixate on that one element forever. Even if bulletproof t-shirt guy balances cotton candy vendor, it makes the whole rest of the place less fun.
As a final note, it's a theme park. Design everything along your theme. A good setting will have enough premise-appropriate content to fill all the roles I designated above.
A well-developed setting doesn't just have lots of background material. Background material entertains the gamemaster / reader, and it provides a wealth of description and fiction that isn't immediately relevant to play.
A well-developed setting needs foreground material; the problems, threats, resources, and rewards that get right in front of the players. Not all foreground material is immediately available to the players - but it is designed with their experience in mind. Foreground material shouldn't all be placed in teh first scene - but it's still designed with that use in mind.
As I've remarked elsewhere, the best foreground material comes in 4 flavors: Problems, Threats, Resources, and Rewards. When all these elements are present in a roleplaying game, that game is wide open for all players to be active participants.
Art Gallery or Amusement Park?
There are painstakingly developed settings that are all background, no foreground. These settings feel like art galleries: They are filled with artistically appealing efforts by the author that evoke emotions from the reader but do not lend themselves to interaction.
Other settings are like amusement parks, and the content is deliberately interactive, with other considerations de-emphasized in favor of the experience of the visitor, or player.
The latter is far superior for a roleplaying game.
Depth
Now some will object, "what about depth? An amusement park doesn't have depth. It's just dumb show." While that's a fair assessment, it's no excuse to go back to the art gallery: A setting with reams of information that the players never care about or interact with is just as shallow as one that simply wasn't prepared. Depth in an RPG setting has to help the GM engage the players - not just speak to the GM.
A setting's depth is the ability for changes caused by player-characters to have consequences that cascade through the setting and thereby provide feedback or consequences for the players. If you want a deep setting, relate the elements players can change back onto each other over and over again.
The Approach
Think of the campaign setting like an amusement park - but the players are halfway between visitors and employees.
As you design your setting, you can use a map of the physical landscape, or you can leave that for later. The most important thing will be placing the stuff that player characters can really interact with. These are rides, restaurants parades, and other special events.
Rides
Rides are the cool and important locations where player-characters go to experience something dramatic. These could be dungeons, evil citadels, ghost towns, hives of crime and corruption, battlefields, places that will come under attack, and so on. They are the big-money sets of your campaign.
Restaurants
Restaurants are places the player-characters can interact with others without (normally) assuming a threat of physical danger. They are the home bases for your players, the spots where they can take a few minutes to recover or gather resources.
Parades and Special Events
These are major campaign events. They can be localized and change existing rides and restaurants, like a dragon attacking, a meeting of a coven of witches, or a natural disaster. Some can be used in multiple locations, or have ramifications for the whole setting.
Now that we've got a basic idea of the setting, we move on to the people:
Just as important are the employees - especially those in charge of the rides (villains and allies). Don't forget vendors (home base NPCs) and performers (wandering NPCs). For the purpose of the analogy, centralized management of the theme park has totally collapsed - so determine what cliques (factions) have formed, who's in charge, etc. Most of all, think of how they would react to the PCs showing up - would they shun them, throw food at them, try to scam them, get a hand calming down some belligerent visitor, or put them to work?
Visitors fall into two categories: Peasants and monsters. Neither really has any idea what is going on, but the former just do what the employees tell them to do, and the latter mess things up for the employees. Vandals, as well as the scary guy who owns the farm next door and hates the amusement park also fall into the monster category.
Don't worry so much about the boundaries, except to make sure that on the way to a boundary there is always a ride or restaurant that will look like more fun than the parking lot.
Last of all is the special guests - bands and whatnot that come with big events. What's their story? Are they just trying to sleep with the waitresses or are they looking to cause a riot?
Don't stress out over plot. Plot-heavy linear isn't everyone's style, and I think it creates a problem when you have Location A leading to Location B leading to Location C rather than the players having freedom to go back to places they've been and find interesting stuff to do near the places they'd like to go to.
What you want to watch for, though, is anything uber. If only one guy sells bulletproof t-shirts, or the cotton candy vendor can basically kill everyone in the park, you hit deadlock. The players basically fixate on that one element forever. Even if bulletproof t-shirt guy balances cotton candy vendor, it makes the whole rest of the place less fun.
As a final note, it's a theme park. Design everything along your theme. A good setting will have enough premise-appropriate content to fill all the roles I designated above.
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How to improve RPG exposition in 3 easy steps
Jan. 31st, 2007 | 11:37 am
Exposition can be the most tedious part of an RPG, because the GM does all the talking. But it doesn't have to be that way. See below for how to improve this crucial part of RPGs.
Step 1: Plan
Before the game, prepare small snippets of info for the players - the kind of stuff that gets listed in "adventure background" and then relayed by a "talking head" NPC. Usually this takes the form of about 3-5 cards with snippets of info on them (about as much as a well-filled Magic card).
Step 2: Deploy
Give each player one of the above cards. The player reads the information, and decides if their character could know this. If it's inappropriate to their character, have them hand it to someone who they think has an appropriate character for the information. The players are trusted not to mix player and character knowledge, although if the conversation comes up or it seems relevant, the PC is of course free to mention the information. Now take the boring, talking-heads NPCs out of your game. The players will find out for themselves (do you really think they won't go looking for Lucius after the notes for Freeport, below?)
Step 3: Profit!
This is a great way to remove boredom from the game, and keep players focused - they consider themselves custodians of the information, and it reduces the red herring effect. I find it makes my games feel much more organic - the players aren't always outsiders to the world and its events.
Death in Freeport Example:
a. A timeline of the recent political history of Freeport, including the Drac family succession law, assassination of Anton Drac, and Milton Drac's financially ruinous plan for building the lighthouse.
b. A description of a violent run-in with some of the orcish crewmen of The Bloody Vengeance in a sketchy tavern in another port some time ago. The character who gets this is described as "not quite winning" the fight, and having a vague ache in their shoulder.
c. Description of Lucius, an old friend of one of the characters, who about a decade ago started acting very strangely, messed up his life as a temple scribe, then turned up five years later without knowing what had happened for that intervening period. The character wants to check in on his friend, see what he's up to.
d. Scraps of academic information about an ancient civilization of snake-people. The book the information was in generally concluded that the snake empire did not exist.
e. A few rough-and-tumble contacts at the docks in Freeport, and a mention about watching out for press gangs (or how decent thug-money can be made if willing to organize one).
Whispering Cairn Example:
(some PCs assumed to be from diamond lake)
a. A description of an ugly run-in with Balabar Smenk and his troupe of fawning lackeys. Smenk took offense to some totally innocuous comment by the PC, and the PC got beaten a few days later by an albino half-orc named Kullen. Diamond Lake is a rough town.
b. A childhood dare took this PC out to the Stirgenest Cairn, and he even went inside. He got a good, hearty beating for it when he returned home, and assured - with more beatings - that some of the Cairns in the hills near Diamond Lake were in fact inhabited by monsters and undead.
c. A quick overview of the different alehouses and brothels along The Vein, noting that the Feral Dog is among the worst, mostly because of Smenk's group of thugs that routinely hang out there (and occasionally shake down other drunken miners in alleys along the vein).
d. A description of Tirra - a friend of the PC's family from the Free City - and a rumor that she has fallen in with unsavory company.
e. A teenaged Free City recollection of an odious young boy named Filge that had been torturing - and trying to animate - a dog. Filge later got in trouble for it - and the PC was directly or indirectly involved in word getting out (PC's choice). The PC only saw Filge one or two times after that, but Filge remembers the PC for sure.
f. This PC was also involved in the run to Stirgenest Cairn noted in B, but largely got away with it, receiving only light beatings. An uncle of the PC later told a sad story about one of the nearby families, and how after the death of the father a young boy thought he could save the family by treasure hunting in cairns. He was never seen again. The rest of his impoverished family, now without a father and without a strong son, eventually succumbed to sickness and died.
Step 1: Plan
Before the game, prepare small snippets of info for the players - the kind of stuff that gets listed in "adventure background" and then relayed by a "talking head" NPC. Usually this takes the form of about 3-5 cards with snippets of info on them (about as much as a well-filled Magic card).
Step 2: Deploy
Give each player one of the above cards. The player reads the information, and decides if their character could know this. If it's inappropriate to their character, have them hand it to someone who they think has an appropriate character for the information. The players are trusted not to mix player and character knowledge, although if the conversation comes up or it seems relevant, the PC is of course free to mention the information. Now take the boring, talking-heads NPCs out of your game. The players will find out for themselves (do you really think they won't go looking for Lucius after the notes for Freeport, below?)
Step 3: Profit!
This is a great way to remove boredom from the game, and keep players focused - they consider themselves custodians of the information, and it reduces the red herring effect. I find it makes my games feel much more organic - the players aren't always outsiders to the world and its events.
Death in Freeport Example:
a. A timeline of the recent political history of Freeport, including the Drac family succession law, assassination of Anton Drac, and Milton Drac's financially ruinous plan for building the lighthouse.
b. A description of a violent run-in with some of the orcish crewmen of The Bloody Vengeance in a sketchy tavern in another port some time ago. The character who gets this is described as "not quite winning" the fight, and having a vague ache in their shoulder.
c. Description of Lucius, an old friend of one of the characters, who about a decade ago started acting very strangely, messed up his life as a temple scribe, then turned up five years later without knowing what had happened for that intervening period. The character wants to check in on his friend, see what he's up to.
d. Scraps of academic information about an ancient civilization of snake-people. The book the information was in generally concluded that the snake empire did not exist.
e. A few rough-and-tumble contacts at the docks in Freeport, and a mention about watching out for press gangs (or how decent thug-money can be made if willing to organize one).
Whispering Cairn Example:
(some PCs assumed to be from diamond lake)
a. A description of an ugly run-in with Balabar Smenk and his troupe of fawning lackeys. Smenk took offense to some totally innocuous comment by the PC, and the PC got beaten a few days later by an albino half-orc named Kullen. Diamond Lake is a rough town.
b. A childhood dare took this PC out to the Stirgenest Cairn, and he even went inside. He got a good, hearty beating for it when he returned home, and assured - with more beatings - that some of the Cairns in the hills near Diamond Lake were in fact inhabited by monsters and undead.
c. A quick overview of the different alehouses and brothels along The Vein, noting that the Feral Dog is among the worst, mostly because of Smenk's group of thugs that routinely hang out there (and occasionally shake down other drunken miners in alleys along the vein).
d. A description of Tirra - a friend of the PC's family from the Free City - and a rumor that she has fallen in with unsavory company.
e. A teenaged Free City recollection of an odious young boy named Filge that had been torturing - and trying to animate - a dog. Filge later got in trouble for it - and the PC was directly or indirectly involved in word getting out (PC's choice). The PC only saw Filge one or two times after that, but Filge remembers the PC for sure.
f. This PC was also involved in the run to Stirgenest Cairn noted in B, but largely got away with it, receiving only light beatings. An uncle of the PC later told a sad story about one of the nearby families, and how after the death of the father a young boy thought he could save the family by treasure hunting in cairns. He was never seen again. The rest of his impoverished family, now without a father and without a strong son, eventually succumbed to sickness and died.