Mightier Than the Sword

I've lamented in the past (and mentioned here in this blog) my total lack of aptitude for the arts & crafts that would make my RPGs better. Stuff like being able to draw good maps, paint minis, or just hand-make various visual and play aids. That's just not what I do, and any attempts to do so usually end up in either a crappy product or an unfinished one.

So now I'm trying a different approach. Instead of frustrating myself by whining over the skills I don't have, I'm going to try to take a more pro-active approach and use the skill I do have. That skill is writing. I'm not saying I'm the best writer ever or anything, but I've got two degrees in it, a wealth of experience, and even a little publishing under my belt. That's gotta count for something, right?

Here are some of the tricks I have employed in the past and intend to employ in the future of my games to exploit my writing skills and make the best overall RPG adventure session I can. If any of my fellows in the "society of letters" (that's "writers" for you non-hipsters out there) have any suggestions on other techniques, please share!

1. Read-aloud text: GMing 101 usually says the last thing a GM should ever do is read a bunch of sentences out loud to the players. Even most adventures that do have read aloud text are almost apologetic about it, emphatically emphasizing that "you don't have to do this" or "you can paraphrase it however you like." Whenever I write my own adventures, however, I absolutely load the sumbitches with read aloud text: any time a player enters an important scene or meets an important NPC, I usually have about three to five sentences ready to recite to the players. Now, read aloud text certainly can be a bad thing, if a) The text isn't a reflection of your GMing style or speech patterns, and b) You read it blandly, like you just got called in on Social Studies class to read the next section in the textbook. If you craft your sentences carefully, using words you actually use in regular conversation, and you read them in an energetic, enthusiastic delivery, read aloud text can actually be a very potent GMing technique.

2. Scene-based, narrative combat: This is a move I've seen floating around on the Internet, as well as explicitly utilized in games like Fate Core. Instead of a combat grid with one-inch squares, grab a stack of index cards. Each card is a zone in the scene. On each card, write the name of a location within the scene (e.g. "Throne room") and beneath that title, some descriptors of stuff in that zone (e.g. "Giant golden throne on a raised dias.") Finally, position the index cards in a relative position to each other...if the Audience Hall is south of the Throne Room, then put the Audience Hall card beneath the Throne Room card. Instead of tracking literally every step the PCs make, you simply say they can move one zone on their turn, with certain special abilities allowing you to maybe move two or more zones. If a PC (or NPC) wants to utilize a feature in that zone ("I smash the guard's head into a Stone Column in the Audience Hall!") you house rule it appropriately.

I haven't actually used this technique yet, but it sounds really useful, and I personally would much rather deal with the vagaries of this system than maps and minis. That is, of course, my preference based on my style of game; your mileage may vary, and even at my table, if we are intentionally playing a more tactical game, I'd probably just do it the normal way. How this caters to my strengths in writing is that this approach keeps everything firmly within the theater of the mind, communicated with words and not physical things. Again: not necessarily a better technique flat-out, but definitely a better technique for me and what I try to commonly do at the table.

3. Aspects: One of the single best mechanics that has ever come out in the history of tabletop gaming is the Aspect, as currently used in Fate Core. An aspect, for those of you who don't know, is a short phrase or sentence that describes an important detail about the game you're running. It can be part of a character (Loose-cannon cop), a place (Burned-out crack den), or even an idea (Survive, by any means necessary). Basically, a player can use a Fate Point to "invoke" an Aspect, allowing him or her to reroll the dice, take a small bonus to the roll they already made, or create/edit a detail in the story based on that Aspect. Likewise, the GM can "compel" an Aspect, creating problematic siutations or complications with those Aspects and giving the affected players a Fate Point for their trouble.

What's so awesome about this mechanic is that it gives words real power. If you're chasing a thief down a muddy alley, that muddy alley could suddenly cause a big problem for you (or the thief!) Yes, other games can do this, but the Aspect mechanics specifically calls out to the details of the narrative. Thanks to Aspects, you're not just getting a +2 circumstance bonus to your Athletics check; you're calling out the fact that you have dwarf-crafted climbing gear! 

So, writer-GMs, convert this Aspect mechanic to every game you play. Surprisingly, D20 handles it quite well: my current infatuation game Mutants & Masterminds uses a "complication" system that's essentially the same thing. A reroll is a small but potent reward or penalty, and that can be worked into damn-near any RPG without completely breaking it. And you can control the amount of times an Aspect can be tapped through the use of Fate Points or Plot Points or whatever, starting the PCs off with one at the beginning of the session and giving them more as rewards for roleplaying, creative problem solving, and, of course, compelling those Aspects against them!

4. Scripts: This is another technique I haven't tried yet but am eager to pull out at the next session. To convey cutscenes and "away from the camera" interactions between NPCs that are of plot significance to the group, I'm going to whip up a quick, two-or-three page script in Celtx. I'm going to assign the parts to different players at the table and read the narrator bits myself. This, I think, is a fun way to emulate plot points that aren't happening directly in the player's perception. The specific instance I'm going to use this technique in is in the next Mutants & Masterminds adventure I run. In it, mutant rats have taken hostages in a shopping mall. After I describe the situation to the PCs, we're going to table-read a short scene where a few of the rats talk about how "everything is in place" and "they're ready for any meddling superheroes." No real spoilers or plot info in it; just a little scene-setting to let the players know what they're in for! I have high hopes, I think it's going to be fun.

5. Letters and emails: If you're a writer, and you want to utilize your writing skills at the table, then the most direct and simple way to do that is to let the players read your writing! I do this a lot in Cthulhu games. Emails between NPCs and letters sent back and forth to each other is a common clue in an Ed Gibbs Lovecraftian game. When the investigators find them, I crack open my folder and hand paper copies to the players and let them read. This technique has to be used sparingly, as you don't want your players to have to read a friggin' novel at the table, but when used correctly, it provides that tangibility of having a real clue in your hands, and it puts your writing skills right in the spotlight.

So that's all I have for now, but as I said before: please share with me your tips on how to emphasize writing skill at the table!

Today's Heroes

Following is my campaign setting for Mutants & Masterminds, tentatively called "Everyday Heroes." I drew a lot of inspiration from The Watchmen, Silver Age Sentinels, and even from The Incredibles. I intend to add more to the setting in time, but I'm hoping to get a lot of input from players and you, Dear Reader, on what directions I can take the setting in.



Everyday Heroes
Power Level: 8-12 Style: Grayscale (Light-leaning)
Setting: Modern Scale: Regional

Heroes have been a part of modern society since the 1940s. Their superpowers and heroic mentalities have integrated deeply into everyday life. Today, superheroes (a term considered politically incorrect since the 80s, being replaced with “capes,” and now in the 2000’s with “metahumans”) are a significant part of nearly every facet of culture. There are superhero teachers, superhero politicians, and superhero athletes that play in “meta-league” sports. There are PR firms and talent agencies that work exclusively with superheroes to help their public images, manage their social calendars, and even put together superhero groups. Many insurance agencies offer “metahuman coverage” for collateral damage caused by heroes and villains clashing in the streets.

National super powers like Russia and China are engaged in a Meta Cold War to find, train, and exact allegiance from powerful superheroes to help further national agendas. Many countries demand capes to register themselves...including full disclosure on their powers and secret identities...to the federal government, and be subject to drafting in times of war and national emergencies. In the 1960s, following objection to the Vietnam war, the United States ended their superhero registration policies, making America one of the only countries in the world where metahumans are truly free. It is because of this freedom that the U.S. has the largest superhero population on the planet: nearly four of the estimated seven million metahumans in the world are American.

Where the federal government steps back, however, capitalism steps forward. The world’s largest corporations constantly court superheroes for endorsement deals, offering to finance hero’s crime-fighting efforts, pay for collateral damages, and offer health benefits and retirement packages to heroes who sign a contract with them. Most corporate endorsements come down to simple PR; however many superheroes become full-on employees for their sponsor, lending their superhuman intellects to R&D and their heroic charms to advertising and marketing. Metahumans with teleportation or flight powers are often hired to aid in corporate logistical matters, lending to an interesting rise in prominence of metahuman truck drivers and pilots in recent years.

Even with super-strength or speed, life can be very difficult for a metahuman. Persistent, demanding bystanders, supervillains looking to build a name for themselves, and corporations recruiting talent are ever-present nuisances to anyone who shows potential superpowers. Internet rumors abound on secret identities, and more than one cape’s life has been ruined when his or her home address has been revealed and a supervillain shows up to exact revenge. Discrimination against metahumans is also an all-too common part of their lives. Employers often don’t want to take chances with the possibilities of collateral damage and work disruption hiring a cape can bring. Many people don’t want the complications dating or marrying a superhero can bring, and thus many metahumans are ostracized and alone. Many notorious villains claim rejection from their “lessers” as an important part of their origin story.

Many metahumans form groups or “leagues” to protect and support one another. A league can be as small as four or five high school friends to as many as thousands spread out acorss the globe. Though many leagues exist to coordinate heroic efforts and battle villains, many leagues aren’t even composed of superheroes; they’re just groups of low-powered metahumans trying to protect each other from the never-ceasing demands of a world obsessed with their “super” nature.

Not all metahumans are created equal. About 60% of metahumans range between an 8 to 10 on the Kirby Power Scale, giving them great capabilities but not any true capacity to radically affect life on a global, or even national, scale. About 39% are even weaker. Scoring between a 5 and a 7 on the Kirby Power Scale, these metahumans have powers on such a minor level that they hardly deviate from human norms (the term "sidekick" has often been used to describe metahumans at this power level, often used in a derogatory manner). This can be a mixed blessing, however, as it allows them to blend into “bystander” society much better. The remaining 1% of the metahuman population are often regarded as living weapons of mass destruction. Their movements and activities are carefully monitored, and entire national policies exist on dealing with them should they ever turn hostile. In the past 70 years, there have been reports of at least four superheroes who have become so powerful that they left our planet, flying off into the stars, shifting into another reality, or translating to a different plane of existence. Where exactly they went, what they’re doing, and if they’ll ever come back is debated heavily amongst scholars.

Metahumanity is a very segmented cultural group, with various divisions along the lines of moral stances, the nature of their powers, and their origin stories. Among moral stances, metahumanity is commonly (and crudely) divided between “heroes” and “villains” based on their public actions. Although many metahumans embrace these standards and wholly consider themselves one or the other, there are many capes who refuse to be placed in these categories, which paradoxically often places them in other categories like anti-hero (a hero who sometimes acts like a villain), renegade (a villain who’s done heroic things in the past), fallen (a hero who has become a villain) or redeemed (a villain who’s become a hero).

Aside from morality, the other main dividing factor amongst meta-humans are their origin stories. Origins tend to fall into three generally-accepted categories: mutants, humans with a “metahuman gene” whose powers manifest around puberty; altered humans or “alters” that were human until some random event such as an unexpected reaction to radiation caused them to manifest powers; or vigilantes, regular humans who act like superheroes (or villains) for their own, personal reasons, often utilizing technology or elite training to emulate natural superpowers. All three of these groups are subject to rampant debates on their natures; vigilantes, in particular, are often under severe scrutiny regarding whether or not either society should accept their self-identification.

The cumulative effect of metahumans on today’s society is a theory dubbed by some sociologists “the Zero Effect:” the belief that every innovation or evolutionary leap forward made by superheroes is effectively cancelled out by the destructive machinations of supervillains. This theory has led some to believe that reformation...or total annihilation...of supervillains to “break the cycle” should be society’s most important endeavor. The majority of humans and metahumans alike, however, believe that metahumans will always “zero each other out” and that the ultimate fate of humanity lies within the hands of regular, everyday people, continuing to move forward as a society and relying on their own human ingenuity and empathy to survive.

The Only Constant

I've stated several times in the past that I don't think I could ever run a satisfying superhero RPG because of certain hangups in the genre.

I have also made fun of myself in the past about how wildly my tastes and preferences can swing.

So, naturally, I impulse-bought the third edition Mutants & Masterminds: Deluxe Hero's Handbook this morning, read it over the course of the day, and wrote a short adventure for it I intend to run after I finish my current Cthulhu adventure.

Hey, what can I say? After spending the past month+ steeped in Lovecraftian horror, I decided I wanted a little break. A creative vacation, if you will. So I went from the slow-burn, cerebral mind games of Mythos adventures into some rock 'em, sock 'em superhero action! I think the desire for a change of pace is part of what gave me the momentum to get over my hangups with the genre.

Another helpful tool to break down those preconceptions was the game itself. I've had a ton of respect for Mutants & Masterminds ever since I heard about it, but I never got into it, myself. Then, on a whim one day, I picked up the True 20 corebook. I loved that system, and swore that if I ever wanted to get into a D20-based RPG again, it'd be True 20. Incidentially, True 20 is based on Mutants & Masterminds (not technically true, but close enough). Sure enough, I love this latest edition of M&M as much as I loved T20, if not moreso.

Another piece of the puzzle was my friend Joey. On Sunday, after a short session of my typical Lovecraftian stuff, I gave the stage to Joey and let him walk us through a demo of a 2nd edition M&M game he'd been working on for some time. Though I didn't care much for all the tired d20-ness of it, I personally did have a lot of fun, and so did everyone else. More to the point, it was great just being superheroes punching out bad guys instead of being so serious in the past several horror games. So I thought, "maybe it's time to roll with this into something else!"

And so, just like that, I've gone from being dead-set on running a Lovecraftian horror campaign set in my hometown to wanting to punch out some supervillains and roll up some caped crusaders. Now don't get me wrong; I'm quite certain I will return to True North (the aforementioned Upper Michigan-based horror campaign) very soon, but first, I think I'd like to explore this little tangent, see where it goes, and have a little fun!

Hometown Proud

I've written a little in the past about how tabletop gaming has made me appreciate life a lot more than I ever used to. Here's another example.

I was born and raised in Marquette, Michigan, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a town with a population of around 20,000. The nearest large city, Green Bay, WI, is about three hours south. I disliked living there as a child and teenager. It was secluded, I didn't connect at all with the local culture's huge emphasis on outdoorsmanship (tabletop gaming's arch-nemesis hobby), and I felt isolated from the area's Scandinavian heritage. As an adult, I really disliked living there, as in addition to the stuff that bothered me as a child, I had the added disappointments of a weak job market and poor economy. I would never go so far as to say I hated living there, but there certainly were times where the relationship between me and my homeland were quite strained.

But now, I look back on those open miles of virgin forest, those tiny clusters of civilization they call "cities," and the cold, deep waters of Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world, and I think "Man, that's a cool setting for Call of Cthulhu!" I have virtually no experience with living in New England, so that region doesn't really carry the magic for me that it did for Lovecraft, but the U.P. has much of the same thematic elements that make Lovecraft country such an ideal setting for lurking, cosmic horror. I can summon up pages and pages and pages of local color and detail about the region, infuse it with the Mythos, and have it feel extremely authentic, because it is. 

And that is precisely what I did. Utilizing the sandbox campaign creation tools in Silent Legions, I wrote a dozen pages in just a few short hours detailing the Mythos and its centuries-old connection to the U.P. I outlined the major organizations, key members of the conspiracy, local rumors, and important locations. And all of that stuff is completely real. I didn't have to conjure up a single imaginary building. In fact, I even used some of the region's local celebrities as NPCs! I didn't have to Google a single detail; it all came from my own experiences living there. The few questions I had about the area I either sent to a few friends on Facebook, or just asked my wife.

I never would have thought in all my years that such detailed knowledge of such a little part of the country would be so valuable to me. I'm actually looking forward to the next opportunity I get to go home and visit my family and the handful of friends I have still living there, just so I can draw more inspiration for my games! It would be so cool to describe an area to my group, then show them a picture of that area that I took myself! Ha!

Anyways, the moral of the story is this: tabletop gaming is awesome. It's awesome because when you're into it, everything can become part of the hobby. And I'm not just talking in some trivial or abstract way, like how you think your office might make a cool level in a first-person shooter or how you named all your Sims after people you work with. I'm talking about actual inspiration that can directly lead to detail, utility, and purpose. Anything that makes life a richer experience is an activity worth pursuing.

Michigan's Upper Peninsula: where the Elder Gods sleep. Also where I was born.

Bringing '88 Back

I used to look down on the "OSR" with a bit of derision. For those of you who don't know, the OSR or "Old School Revival (or Renaissance)" is a movement within the tabletop RPG community who stick very closely to the abandoned roleplaying games from the birth of the hobby in the 70's and 80's. This mostly equates to the earliest editions of Dungeons & Dragons, back when D&D was sold in colored boxes and an "Advanced" D&D was sold in hardcovers, but there's a lot of love for the oldest versions of Traveller, the old West End Games D6 stuff, and TSR's old Marvel RPG, as well. Though GURPS and Champions were big at the time, too, they tend to fall out of the scope of the OSR since they're still around and their current editions haven't spun too far away from their original versions (the same can be said for Call of Cthulhu). 

I used to look down at this whole movement because I believed that it consisted of stubborn, now-old men who didn't want to have to buy new books or learn new systems. I believed that most of these OSR gamers were just trying to hide their stinginess, stubborness, and political incorrectness behind a thin veneer of "classic gameplay."

Then, I ran across a man named Kevin Crawford, and things changed.

Kevin Crawford, the single man behind game publisher Sine Nomine Games, is a dedicated OSR enthusiast. He has several products under his belt, but is perhaps best known for three major game lines: the sci-fi, Traveller-esque Stars Without Number, it's Gamma World-ey spinoff Other Dust, and the fantasy setting Red Tide, designed to be used with another OSR system, Labyrinth Lord. Recently, Mr. Crawford has released another standalone, OSR-styled game, Silent Legions. It is this last game that has most-recently blown my mind and made me rethink what the OSR really is.

I'm not going to get too deeply into Silent Legions. For that, you can look at my Geek Native review. But what I will say is this: reading this book has been a blast. And it has indeed stirred in me quite a bit of nostalgia for an older, "simpler" time of gaming. The pre-d20 days where systems didn't try to make sense; they just worked, and you just dealt with it. Systems that intentionally didn't try and do everything and expected you and your players to house-rule as necessary. The pre-internet days where the hobby itself began and ended at your own table, face-to-face with your friends. It's hard to put into words, but there is definitely this feeling, this emotional connection, to these older game systems that isn't there for the newer games. Is that purely nostalgia, or is there some kind of sensibility to those old games that isn't in the newer stuff? I don't know.

If there is some kind of forgotten design philosophy that gives those games their potency, Kevin Crawford certainly knows the recipe and has applied it with great success to everything he does. I have some theories on his style (and, by extension, the OSR) that I'll get into later as I read more material, but for now, I'll say that I was wrong about the OSR. Though I'm certain there are at least a few grognards in the group that fit my negative stereotype, deep inside that old-school veneer is a vein of pure gaming genius that gets tapped in Crawford's productions. I'll definitely write more on this later.

"I get another horse in the morning."

Why Do All My Dreams End in Death?

My friend Boomer said awhile back that his campaigns tend to lean towards the cheekier side, that despite his efforts to do otherwise, his games inevitably end up being "over-the-top, slightly comedic, rollicking action-adventure games. I have fun with that though, and I think I have to just go with the flow."

If we look thematically at the games I do best, the stuff I tend to lean towards, it turns into horror. I certainly have done plenty of non-horror in the past, Firefly campaign chief amongst them, but my favorite games, the ones I'm good at and enjoy the most, are games of terror. tremulus. Call of Cthulhu. My zombie apocalypse horror RPG World Gone Mad. My mind lives in a dark space with grey spots. This even extends beyond my gaming and into my own media consumption. Diablo III. Breaking Bad. Batman. 

Ironically, I'm not really a dark dude by nature. I'm a bit of a joker, really. My wife is always mad at me because I think "everything is a joke." I can be a real goofball, I admit. But my stories? My games? They're dark, full of death, madness, bitter struggles to survive, and backstabbing. A professor once told me that our dreams are often our subconsciousness' way of exercising thoughts and emotions it doesn't get to do in real life. Thus people with content, happy lives tend to have stressful, angry dreams. Is this what's going on with me? I have a pretty simple, relatively peaceful life, so my hobbies are a chance to exercise a darker side?

I see this often when my mind turns to the superhero genre. I really want to try out a supers game, but every time I get to brainstorming about it, my head goes into dark places, and suddenly a cheerful, four-color, Golden Age comicbook adventure becomes an homage to The Watchmen.

It happens in fantasy, too. If I think about doing an adventure with swords and knights and wizards, when I think about their villians, I don't tend to go to the dragons, goblins, or orcs. I go to zombies, vampires, and liches. When I think about fantasy worlds I want to run adventures in, I immediately go to Ravenloft, and have little interest in going elsewhere. I think this might be why all attempts at a fantasy campaign with me have fizzled. There just isn't enough death to keep me interested!

I think this is also why I don't get much inspiration to run sci-fi games, either. Space operas full of laser guns and freaky aliens and hot rod-like spaceships do nothing at all for me. Abandoned freighters where the entire crew has been savagely murdered, the onboard AI has gone insane, and something is trying to beat down the blast doors in the infirmary? NOW we're getting somewhere!

This whole notion is unsettling to me for two reasons: one, obviously, I'm afraid I'm quite disturbed; but two, I pride myself on being a diverse GM who can work in any genre. Yet left to my own devices, I wander over to what's comfortable: horror. Though I do officially and chemically struggle with depression, I don't really consider myself an "emo" guy at all. And yet that's exactly where I go when it comes time to run a game of my own choosing. Is this who I am as a gamer? Or is this just a real dark period I'm going through right now?

Recap: Islands of Ignorance

Yesterday, I had five players over for "Islands of Ignorance," a Call of Cthulhu adventure of my own design. Well, it was supposed to be CoC: after lots of hemming and hawing, I finally decided to switch the game over to Realms of Cthulhu, the Savage Worlds conversion of CoC by Sean Preston, the guy who did tremulus. But I'll talk about that in a different blog entry...

Though I designed the adventure as a one-shot, I knew while writing it that there was a good chance this could stretch into a two-parter. Turns out that's exactly what happened. Here now is a hasty recap of the first session, so that my players can stay fresh on what happened for when we continue.

There were five investigators. I don't have their names right in front of me, so I'll call them the Soldier, the Inventor, the Con Artist, the Knife-thrower, and the Lady.

The adventure began with all five investigators going about their morning routine. They all picked up the morning newspaper and on the front page was a story about the suicide of a woman named Heather Sparks. I then read this aloud to all the players:

“As you read the article about Heather’s suicide, you feel a growing sadness, as if you are missing her, as if she meant something to you. To your knowledge, however, you’ve never seen her before prior to this news story. Looking at her face in the paper, a wave of deja vu washes over you, so intense you need to sit down for a moment. You wrack your brain, trying to place her, but you cannot recall when...or if...you’ve ever met Heather Sparks.”

So all the investigators seem to recall knowing Heather, though with no clear idea why or where. The Inventor's last name was in fact Sparks, and she had no knowledge of whether or not Heather was even related to her!

The Inventor did discover that she was related to Heather...they were sisters, which she discovered from her father, whom she also didn't remember. They were eating dinner and her father was going on about how terrible this was.

Meanwhile, the Knife-thrower (a former circus performer) was having a drink at the local speakeasy when he was approached by a mysterious man in a magician's outfit. "Did you have anything to do with this?" the man asked, referring to Heather's death in the newspaper. The Knife-thrower never let on to the fact that he had no idea who the hell Heather was or why he'd be involved with her, but he found out from the magician that he was asked by him to follow Heather and figure out what she was up to. The Con Artist, out of curiosity, listened in on this conversation, and ended up getting roped into a plan with the Knife-thrower and his friend, the Soldier (a WWI vet).

The three of them went to the funeral home where Heather was, hoping to examine her corpse for clues. The funeral director was less than thrilled about the idea, and for his reluctance received a knock-out punch from the Soldier! The mortician then entered the room, only to get a gun stuck in his face from the Soldier. The Knife-thrower then rummaged through the director's office and found Heather's address. The Soldier checked out Heather's corpse but didn't find anything unusual. They vacated the area just as the police showed up.

Meanwhile, the Lady, a genius chemist and executor of the vast estate left behind by her deceased parents, discovered from her butler that she was on a "sabbatical" in Zanzibar for three months last summer. She had no recollection of this, and started investigating who told her butler about her absence. She found out one of her assistants received a telegram from her announcing her vacation. A close inspection of the telegram, however, revealed it as a forgery. The Lady went to Western Union to ask about it, but came up with a dead end. She then pressed her staff for more information and discovered (to her surprise) that she was in fact good friends with Heather Sparks. Her butler then reminded her of an incident last year during a summer party when Heather and her fiance (the Soldier!) were making quite a scene of yelling and ranting about "various things, including and not limited to the very end of the world" and had to be escorted out of the party because they were panicking the other guests. The butler then implied that the Lady herself seemed particualrly sympathetic to Heather and her fiance's ramblings, though he is "grateful that my Lady has now come to her senses."

Meanwhile, the three funeral home raiders went to Heather's apartment, where they found a notebook full of random scribblings and notes. Virtually none of them were comprehensible, though a date was clearly written repeatedly in the book: December 20th, 1932, two years from the current day of the adventure. Also in the notebook was a flyer advertising the Amazing Cicirelli, hypnotist and magician...the very magician who approached the Knife-thrower earlier that day! Unclear where to proceed, the three hooligans headed to a restaurant...the same place where the Inventor was having dinner with her father.

The four investigators all recognized each other, though none of them could place exactly where or how. The father then identified the Soldier as Heather's fiance. The father, finally overcome with guilt, explained that last year, Heather and her sister (the Inventor) were acting very oddly, and he was afraid for their sanity. So he had both of them committed to a mental institution for three months last year. He was instructed by the institution that his daughters may have no recollection of their stay, and to please not inform them as it may cause them to relapse into madness. Fearing that that was already happening, however, the Inventor's father came out with the truth, hoping at this point that maybe the information would help.

Together, the investigators went to the asylum but were unable to get access to any medical files pertaining to them. Indeed; it seemed as if no such files existed. Not wanting to take no for an answer, the Knife-thrower hid in the bathroom while the others left. The Soldier returned home to discover the Lady looking for him. They got together and exchanged the information they knew. The Lady, hoping to leverage her more-potent social standing, headed back with the others to the asylum, hoping to have better luck in getting some clues.

Meanwhile, the Knife-thrower snuck through the asylum and ended up in the record-keeping office. Unfortunately, he was unable to find any files, either, and his cover got blown by a wandering nurse. The Knife-thrower was captured, placed in a striaght-jacket and put in a padded room till evening.

The other investigators happened to arrive as the Knife-thrower was trying in vain to escape the hospital. The asylum then was on lockdown, and the other investigators were not allowed to enter. The investigators, with no further leads, waited outside the asylum. This proved to be fortunate, as one Dr. Marcus Stone came to the Knife-thrower's aid. Dr. Stone explained to the orderlies that the whole situation was a misunderstanding, and that the Knife-thrower should be released with no further delays.

As the Knife-thrower was released, the doctor cryptically-warned him to keep himself and his friends far away from the asylum, and that further inquiries here would only lead to trouble and danger for them all.

And so the adventure ended with the Knife-thrower getting kicked out of the asylum, where thankfully his fellow investigators were loitering in the parking lot. Much of the mystery still remains unsolved, and now the investigators have been threatened to keep it that way. Will they heed the doctor's warnings? Or will they see this mystery through to its end? We'll find out next week!

The warm, welcoming halls of the Fisher Institution for the Mentally Troubled...

Off the Dome, Vol. II

Following are 20 more ideas for short adventures I came up with off the top of my head yesterday. As with the previous entry, I appreciate all feedback, questions, or comments. 

I'm not going to do this too much more, but I'm finding it a fun little exercise so I'll keep going just a little longer. I typically hate a lot on "ideas/adventure seeds," because coming up with an idea, to me, is always the easiest part: coming up with specifics, statting out NPCs, and getting an entire plotline together and managing the pacing for it are the lion's share of adventure work, and an idea doesn't do any of that. I would be far more inclined to buy a book of 100 usable NPCs than 100 adventure ideas. 

If I didn't know any better, I'd even say that a lot of new RPGs these days are built around the concept of making ideas easier to directly translate to gameplay. I applaud those efforts, but I do believe in the end what it all comes back to is balancing "game" and "story," and an idea is just one tiny drop of either.

All that being said, here we go:

1. Fantasy RPG: A horde of wererats has launched an assault on a city from below. The PCs enter the sewers to take the battle back to the rats.
2. Superhero RPG: A mutant rat supervillain rises from the sewers and attempts to take over an entire city. He has super strength and intelligence, as well as the ability to summon and control swarms of rats. He can also see, hear, and smell through any rat he’s aware of, allowing him to spy almost anywhere in the city.
3. Star Wars: The Rebel PCs must break into an Imperial base and hijack an iconic Imperial vehicle (TIE Fighter, AT-AT Walker, Imperial shuttle, etc.)
4. Fantasy RPG: The Walking Dead for D&D...the PCs awaken in a temple after being treated for serious wounds from a previous adventure and discover the entire town they’re in has been overrun with zombies. They don't know why; they just have to survive.
5. Numenera: The PCs must escort an Aeon Priest into the heart of an underground complex, where the priest will use a control panel to put up a force field around the town, and protect it from a coming wave of the Iron Wind.
6. D&D: To fight a wave of dragons, the PCs must enter an ancient temple, defeat the guardians, and perform a ritual that turns themselves into dragons to face off against them.
7. D&D: The PCs are vampire slayers. They must enter a crypt housing hundreds of vampires, defeat their guardians and slay as many of them as possible before the sun sets and they rise. This game would be played in real-time, to make the rush to stake sleeping vampires more intense.
8. D&D: The PCs all discover that their memories and backgrounds are false, and that in reality they are all created beings, Frankenstein-style. Illusionary magic allows them to look “normal.”
9. D&D: The PCs must go to an exotic location to gather ingredients for the cure to a disease the region is suffering from. The PCs themselves are suffering from the disease, as well, causing group hallucinations as they try and find the reagents needed for the cure.
10. D&D: PCs spend half the adventure exploring an abandoned castle...then the other half of the adventure defending the castle they just explored from a marauding army of goblins.
11. Star Wars: A Casino Royale-like scenario where the players are involved in a sabacc tournament, all the while trying to accomplish some covert mission at the same location where the tournament is.
12. D&D: The PCs accidentally stumble upon a meeting of dragons who are intending to terrorize the region. The PCs, hopelessly outmatched by these dragons, have to convince the king of the impending doom.
13. D&D: The PCs, with the help of magic, are polymorphed into orcs to disguise themselves and infiltrate a massive warband gearing up for war. Within the warband, the PCs are to cause as much chaos and dissension in the ranks as possible.
14. D&D: The PCs are trying to woo a princess/prince into a marriage. The PCs must face-off in duels of wits against other suitors...and may even have to square off against each other...to win the prince/princesses hand.
15. Zombie Apocalypse: The PCs are besieged within a drugstore by the horde. Most conventional items that can be used as weapons were looted long ago, so the PCs must fashion weapons and tools out of whatever they can find to fight their way out.
16. D&D: The PCs are a team of fantasy lawyers. They are representing a hero wrongly accused of assassinating the king. The PCs must work together to put forth a defense, interview witnesses, blow holes in the prosecution’s case, etc.
17. D&D: The PCs get involved in an illegal underground trade making potions and magic items using forbidden magic. The PCs must deal with things like production, distribution, and competition from rivals.
18. Deadlands/Western RPG: The PCs are hurriedly approached and asked to stop a train robbery. The PCs must ride their horses to the train, jump onto the train, fight their way to the front car, and stop the train.
19. Superhero RPG: A Skynet-style scenario has happened, and robots mis-programmed to murder all humans have been unleashed. The heroes must stop them.
20. Contemporary RPG: A classic King Kong/Godzilla scenario: a massive superbeast is tearing the city apart. The PCs, in addition to coming up with some way to stop the monster, must try and rescue as many people as possible.

Off the Dome

In an effort to generate more quick adventures, I tasked myself yesterday with coming up with 20 adventure ideas, Mad Men style, off the top of my head for later review. These are the 20 I came up with. 

Dear Reader, please look over these 20 ideas and tell me which, if any, have potential for becoming a full-length adventure. If you have any other modifications or tweaks to these ideas, let me know!

1. The Strange: Players are sent/stuck in a recursion based on cheesy 90’s action films.
2. Star Wars: Age of Rebellion: Players are stuck on a star destroyer and must escape.
3. Fate Core: A “GM-less” zombie apocalypse game where the PC’s must survive, and address things like food, shelter, defense, etc.
4. D&D or Numenera: An “Oregon Trail” like adventure where the PCs must travel across a fantasy landscape and deal with various issues like food, shelter, weather, wandering monsters, etc.
5. Sci-fi/space opera RPG: The PCs crash-land on a hostile alien planet and must defend themselves/survive until a drop ship comes to pick them up.
6. Shadowrun: The runners are hired to stop an armored van moving drugs.
7. Cortex Plus Dramatic: Players are pro wrestlers in a wrestling promotion; adventure is a week in their life leading up to the live show.
8. The Strange: PCs must translate to a recursion based on high school TV shows/movies to track down a dangerous foe.
9. World of Darkness/God Machine Chronicle: The PCs must go undercover with a cult that worships the God Machine.
10. Sci-fi RPG: Players are athletes in a future sport and their team is fighting to get into the playoffs.
11. D&D: The PCs discover an abandoned town and explore/loot it, trying to discover what happened to the townsfolk.
12. D&D: The PCs have been shrunken down to miniature size and must find a way to undo the curse/spell.
13. Call of Cthulhu: The PCs are bootleggers and have some kind of run-in with the Mythos.
14. Sci-fi: The PCs are floating in space, trying to repair a ship or something. Comms are down, so the players cannot speak to each other, and must communicate with the GM via notes.
15. Zombie apocalypse: The PCs must move between two buildings from the roof. They cannot leave the roof because mobs of zombies are on the other side of the door. The buildings are too far away from each other to jump; however, a cable is connected to both buildings. The players have to find a way across using the cable.
16. Numenera: The PCs must bring a dead body to a special place that can bring the dead back to life. The PCs must navigate several environmental issues to move the body, such as over a chasm, through a river, etc.
17. Superhero RPG: The PC heroes are on the trail of a supervillain who hunts down the affluent, successful, and wealthy of the world, murders them, and breaks their empires down.
18. Contemporary action RPG: Terrorists take over a restaurant, taking the patrons hostage. The PCs must break in and save the day.
19. D&D: The PCs work for a nobleman who is trying to get a position of prominence in the king’s court. The PCs must influence, blackmail, or even assassinate key personnel to make this happen.
20. Contemporary action RPG: A remake of Jurassic Park. The PCs arrive on the island and all hell breaks loose.

Basic Adventure Design

The following is an outline of a "Gibbsian adventure," the elements that I consider important in any adventure that I make. As usual because Internet, here's the disclaimer: Your Mileage May Vary. This works for me; I offer no assurances it'll work for you.

Please let me know if there's anything I should add in, take out, or otherwise edit. If you have any other questions, comments, or critiques, don't be shy!

A complete adventure needs the following to be successful:

1. PLOT: The plot is an event that happens in the game world that the players’ characters try to prevent, decipher, or solve. It’s important to note that a plot does not have to come externally, as an NPC hiring PCs to do something. A plot can instead be internal, meaning they happen of the PCs’ own volition. Examples include:
1. Finding a missing person, object, or information
2. Preventing something from happening
3. Traveling to a designated area
4. Surviving for a set period of time
2. ANTAGONIST: The antagonist is any person or force that is in direct opposition to the protagonist (the PCs’) goals. An antagonist can be a single living entity, an army or group of entities, or a non-living force (e.g. a forest fire). Antagonists tend to have the following traits:
1. They are defeatable by the PCs, even if it requires a third party element (e.g. a special weapon or piece of information the PCs need before engaging the antagonist) and even if it’s only temporary
2. They have an agenda of their own that they will carry out if not impeded by the PCs. This is possible even for inanimate objects (a fire’s agenda is to consume everything it can before it dies)
3. A history leading up to the antagonist’s involvement in the adventure. This history need not be known to the PCs.
3. SETTING: The backdrop on which the action of an adventure plays out. A setting can be a single area, or it can be a range of areas, and often have the following:
1. Objects or NPCs that can be interacted with;
2. Direct connections to other scenes/settings;
3. A definite sense of place and narrative
4. ACTION: A good adventure tends to have certain, definable action inherent to the resolution of the adventure’s plot. Common actions in an adventure include combat, exploration, social interaction, puzzle solving, information gathering, etc. Important things to remember about action are:
1. They serve towards resolution of the adventure’s plot;
2. They have variables, and can accommodate different ideas/approaches;
3. They have definite goals in and of themselves (e.g. a certain amount of enemies to beat in combat, or a particular pattern that needs to be found from available data)
5. PROTAGONISTS: The PCs are the protagonists. Players make them, run them, and the GM works with them in the resolution of the adventure’s plot. Protagonists who make for good adventures have the following traits:
1. A strong motivation to resolve the plot of the adventure;
2. A defined personality and background that shapes and informs the actions the protagonist takes;
3. A connection to every other protagonist, and the ability to work with them as a team to resolve the plot of the adventure.

The Adventure "No-Fly" List

Although they have similarities, an adventure for a role-playing game is fundamentally very different from the plot of a novel, movie, TV show, or videogame. As of such, there are particular trends and tropes that may work well with those other mediums, but not so much for an RPG adventure. 

A typical RPG adventure should NOT have the following:

1. A solitary protagonist (unless, of course, you're writing an adventure specifically with only a single player in mind);
2. A set course of action that cannot change on a moment’s notice;
3. Essential information or events that happen "off-camera," without the protagonists’ discovery or involvement;
4. A theme that occurs without the players’ involvement;
5. A single ending that happens regardless of the events leading up to it.

Specific tropes that should be avoided include:

1. The "captured" trope, where the protagonists are hopelessly overwhelmed and must surrender;
2. The "invulnerable bad guy" trope, where the antagonist is encountered early in the adventure and cannot be reasonably defeated by the protagonists.

Note that some adventures can have some of these elements in them; however, most don’t. A GM is better off excluding these things for the sake of a good adventure, rather than including them.

This pic has little to do with anything I'm about, but it's kind of cool and came up in a Google image search for "Adventure Design," so what the hell?

Cypher Save

Yesterday, an ice storm crippled my game. Three of my five players had to cancel due to road conditions. This left me with two players. Since these two players were regulars and were planning on coming next weekend, I decided to postpone the regularly schedule CoC game I had spent the week prepping and run it next weekend with a full house.

In the meantime, I didn't want these two players, who braved the ice and snow for me, to walk away with nothing. So I started thinking about my short order options. First on my mind, as is always the case in situations like this, was tremulus. But as these two picked their playbooks and I started looking over the Ebon Eaves playset, I decided I didn't want to do this. I just wasn't inspired enough to go from my meticulously-prepped CoC scenario to an on-the-fly game of tremulus. So I started looking at other options.

Earlier in the week, I was beginning to thumb through my copy of Numenera again. I had an old adventure I had written for the game a year ago still on my Google Drive. So, I figured, why not? And in minutes, we were up and running in the Ninth World. The adventure was short and, in my opinion, not very good, consisting of little more than some dice rolls and a single action scene taking place in mid-air where the two players, using portable hang-glider cyphers, engaged in battle with an ambushing tribe of sathosh flying down onto a small, defenseless town. However, as rough around the edges as it was, the players had a great time, and were vocally expressing their hopes that I would return to Numenera in the coming weeks.

Overall, although the session was just about ready to be declared dead on the table, it was saved by Monte Cook. Huzzah!

The lesson I learned looking back is this: I want to cultivate some more short-notice options. I went into this session yesterday with only CoC prepped and ready, and I was left scrambling when I only had two players and decided to postpone the game. I know there are some very easy short-prep games out there (Fiasco immediately comes to mind), but I'd like to have a more traditional RPG experience ready, as that is the kind of game most of my players come to my table expecting. I'd also like a game that can be run with very little logistical prep; this is the big problem with me regarding Apocalypse Engine games. To play one, I need a complete set of playbooks printed out and ready to go.

So what I'm really looking for in an "emergency" RPG is a straightforward system that can be played easily with a single copy of the corebook and blank paper, and plays in the traditional paradign of RPGs (the players control their characters, I control everything else). After thinking on it a bit, here is the short list I've come up with:

1. Dungeons & Dragons. It really says something about how amazing the fifth edition of this game is that it can end up on this list, when its previous edition would probably be the very antithesis to this list! The Basic D&D pdf alone could enable this game to be played for free, and none of the stats are so complicated as to require a nicely-formatted character sheet to keep track of.

2. Fate Core. Fate and its lite spinoff Fate Accelerated are so incredibly flexible they can be played very easily with nothing more than a sheet of paper and a single copy of the pdf (and even that isn't strictly necessary, as my cheat sheets have virtually all the rules right on them). The only sticky part are the dice, but my trusty Pip app for my iPhone is more than capable of getting the job done there!

3. Numenera/The Strange. This goes without saying as this game is what saved me yesterday, but I'll put it on the list anyway. For all the funky flair of Numenera's character sheets, I actually found a regular piece of notebook paper was more than capable of holding all a character's stats with little fuss.

4. The D6 System: There's a massive movement out there of grognards who have preserved and revised the old West End Games Star Wars RPG. When I heard about that, I thought "why? The FFG versions are SO GOOD!" But yesterday, I realized there was one great advantage the old school game had: it's much simpler. All you need are a pile of D6's and a couple of blank sheets of paper and you can be off the ground and running adventures immediately. The FFG games have quite a large profile, between the funky dice and lack of official pdf. And, hey, who doesn't love Star Wars?

So keep in mind as you look over this list that I have some very specific, exacting criteria. I know there are a ton of "mini" RPGs out there that can be played off of a business card or a single sheet of paper. In theory, that sounds like what I want, but the reality is that I'm not necessarily looking for a light RPG; I'm looking for an easy RPG. There is a difference, albeit a slight one.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there is one component missing to all of them: an adventure. That's fine. I want to create the adventure. I just need a low-maintenence game to run it with!