30 Days of GameMastering--Day 21!

Today marks the start of the final leg of Lindevi's "30 Days of GameMastering" challenge; we're going to start talking about some of the "meta" details of gaming, starting with...

What are your favorite books about gamemastering?

Let's get one thing clear.  GMing means writing.  Even when you're running a game off-the-cuff, you're creating a narrative in which your players interact.  Even if you're using a pre-made setting or pre-made adventure, the details will always be different:  your Greyhawk is not my Greyhawk is not JimBob's Greyhawk.  And, even if you're not committing your campaign to text for posterity's sake, it's still being published each and every game night.

The best manual on GMing
that you could ever want.

Because of this, my favorite book about GMing is actually my favorite book about writing:  Stephen King's On Writing.   Say what you will about Stephen King--I find his writing poignant and tense, though I do enjoy his short stories more than his novels--but the man knows how to weave together interesting characters into a great narrative.  And, his magnum opus--the Dark Tower saga--is nothing short of masterful.

King intersperses his insights on the writing process with the story of his own development as a writer, taking a painful and self-deprecating look at not only his years of substance addiction, but also the recovery from his crippling car accident.  King's autobiographical moments permeate his advice, as he's able to contribute a full lifetime of writing and reading to his advice for other writers.

I can't really recommend On Writing highly enough; but, in the words of LeVar Burton, you don't have to take my word for it.  Take a good think about the following 6 rules--taken directly from a Guardian excerpt of On Writing itself--and then go pick it up:

1. The basics:  forget plot, but remember the importance of 'situation'.
2. Similes and metaphors:  the rights, the wrong.
3. Dialogue:  talk is sneaky.
4. Characters:  nobody is the 'bad guy'.
5. Pace: fast is not always best.
6. Do the research, but don't overdo it for the reader.

30 Days of GameMastering--Day 19!

Okay, brief warning before this entry in Lindevi's "30 Days of GameMastering" challenge:  this one might be a touch triggery for those sensitive to certain issues.  Apologies in regards to my fully admitted poor judgement, though I believe this story is worth telling.

What was your worst session and why?

This is a story that I don't tell lightly, because despite my cynical nature, I try to focus on what's good and what's exciting in the gaming world.  While I've gone on my share of rants--mostly regarding the upcoming D&D Next and my issues with Monte Cook and Mike Mearls--I tend to only review things in a positive manner and do my best to provide constructive criticism at every level of a game's development.  But this session stands out as my absolute worst; I feel guilty about it to this very day.

Roxanne Butler:
our unfortunate Huckster.

When I was running my Dark Tower/Deadlands crossover, the PlatinumChick played as Roxanne Butler:  a card-slinging New Orleans Huckster, trying to find her missing father.  Roxanne had worked for years as a "lady of the night", using her Huckster abilities to delude her 'johns' into believing they'd had a sexual liason, while actually preserving her virginity.  Roxanne came coupled with numerous bonuses to persuasion and charisma, often serving as the party 'face'.

While in Alderman's Creek, a small town plagued by numerous problems, Roxanne went off on her own to investigate a Paul Ashby, a preacher with particularly loose morals, who might have some leads on the town's issues.  The intention, naturally, was to use her feminine wiles to convince the preacher into revealing something of note.  I had intended to play up Ashby as being overly aggressive, resulting in a more difficult interrogation.

What I had not anticipated, however, was that scenario devolving into an in-character, attempted rape.  Lost in game-space, the scenario quickly degenerated into an ugly scene of the Ashby pinning Roxanne down and attempting to penetrate her.  Luckily, Roxanne was able to escape as one of the posse's followers shot Ashby before he could complete the deed.

I fully admit--as a GM, I was in the wrong in narrating/GMing this scene.  The description of this scenario was overly graphic and traumatizing.  I really have no excuse for my actions in this regard; that night after the session, I actually made a full written apology to my players afterwards and offered to retcon the scenario, but the damage itself was already done.

Now, I have no issues with including sexual material in my game.  In one of the playtests of Cold Steel Wardens, my players actively pursued a lead to a BDSM dungeon, hoping to find some information on a recent visitor.  However, sexual content and sexual assault are two very different animals.  In this Deadlands game, I neglected my players' personal comfort in favor of letting the dice fall where they may, and there's simply no excuse for that.

I can't stress this enough:  you've got to know your players and know their limits.  I crossed my players' limits, inexcusably, though they were kind enough to forgive me and give me the benefit of the doubt going forward.

So, what can I say?  I've learned a harsh lesson from this experience, reminding me of something very valuable.  As a GM, your job is to provide entertainment and amusement for your players--not to play things out 'realistically', especially without giving thought to the consequences.  Be aware, be sensitive, and when in doubt:  err on the side of PG.

30 Days of GameMastering Challenge--Day 18!

Lindevi's beating me to the punch in her "30 Days of GameMastering" challenge.  Let's fix that!

How do you handle rewards, be they XP, magic items, or gold?

Full disclosure?  I hate bookkeeping.  Even while teaching, the act of grading papers and filing student records nauseates me.  Keeping track of player XP and doling out parcels of magic items is tantamount to extra work on my part, which I can't stand.  To me, each second that you spend with the details of minutia like XP tallies is less time that your party is actually out earning that XP!

As such, I very rarely use a true "advancement" system by rule.  Rather than tallying up XP for each character individually, I have a hard and fast rule of "level up every third session".  That way, players still get to watch their favorite characters advance and grow more powerful, while eliminating the need to tally XP or penalize players for having life get in the way.

Loot!  Glorious loot!

For the same reason, I very rarely dole out magic items en mass either.  Rather, I tend to favor the "inherent bonuses" option common in D&D 3.5e and 4e, which provides the same mathematical bonuses without suffering any mathematical imbalances.  If a system doesn't offer such a system and magic items are an expectation, I try to encourage my players to build a "wish list" of items that they feel would fit well with their character over time.  Having a list for each player lets me prepackage items that the players actively want, which satisfies them and makes my job as GM easier.

However, when I do hand out magic items, I do my best to ensure that they're unique and flavorful.  Warlord Kang's daisho from our run-through of The Flood, for example, was inhabited by the spirit of Kang's murdered brother, inciting any who wielded it into an unholy rage.  Maerlyn's Grapefruit, from my Dark Tower/Deadlands crossover was scry on others or to cast any spell...but with potentially disastrous results.
The key thing for rewards, though, is that they have to feel special.  A generic +2 sword?  No one gets excited about that.  But when those elements have a background, unique powers, or plot significance?  That's when the cream rises to the top, friends.

30 Days of GameMastering--Day 5!

It's Day 5 of Lindevi's 30 Days of GameMastering challenge; let's do it!

Stealing like an artist:  what inspiration have you drawn from other games, books, movies, etc.?

I'd be an utter liar if I didn't say that I steal ideas shamelessly.  When I come across something interesting, I find a way to toss it into my games.  I use maps from adventures with NPCs from other systems and plot points from random campaign settings.  Anything that makes my game more fun is fair play.

One of my most successful intellectual thefts came in appropriating Stephen King's The Dark Tower mythos and pulling it into Deadlands.  Roland's quest, Blaine the Mono, and Maerlyn's Grapefruit fit into the Deadlands universe like a hand in a glove, with my players meeting a number of movers-and-shakers in both mythologies.

However, the entire point of that campaign was the crossover there.  In terms of stealing an individual element, let me go back to a campaign from long ago:  the Heroes Unlimited game that inspired Cold Steel Wardens.

A must-own for any
Call of Cthulhu fan!

One of the major NPCs that I had intended on using extensively was a bar owner known as Stephen Alzis.  Stephen Alzis was the owner of the Shining Star Bar and Grille in Hub City and actually employed L-Train's vigilante, Lockshanks, as a part-time dj.  Alzis was an enigmatic figure whose most notable interaction with the party occurred when Lindevi's psionicist, Scheherazade, attempted to read his mind.  Wracked with visions of horrific madness, Scheherazade passed out from sheer psychic overload and was plagued by dreams of otherworldly vistas for weeks afterwards.

Stephen Alzis, as a character, comes word for word from the fantastic Delta Green sourcebook, and will soon be its own game.  Alzis's stat block, in its entirety, reads as such:

"Stephen Alzis is many things.  Vulnerable is not one of them."

He's a Cthulhian wild-card of the highest order, able to be whatever you need him to be...and I couldn't pass that up.  While I couldn't appropriate such a character for Cold Steel Wardens--that'd be a huge disrespect to Delta Green, which I love--Alzis' influence can certainly be felt in CSW's seedy underbellly...

In Which The Warlock Tries to "Make it New"...

Bear with me here. Back in the day (the early 1900s, that is), when the Modernists roamed the Earth, poet Ezra Pound wrote "Make it New!". In the book, he set forth the concepts of a revolution of language and literature, in which even the smallest concepts are revisited, resulting in drastic changes to fundamental ideas. Pound himself was a devotee of Dante Alighieri, and produced his own Cantos centered around The Divine Comedy, but with massive alterations in structure and in metaplot.

Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot

Therein lies the rub and, for that matter, our subject for today's blog: newness! If you've been following along, I've been working diligently on my Deadlands game, trying to blend it with Stephen King's Dark Tower mythos and his larger, gestalt world. You'd think that'd be an easy task--toss in an Overlook hotel here, a creepy sewer-dwelling clown there, and the task is complete, right?

Wrong. In the postmodern era, King himself has assembled a pastiche of thematic concepts that started with Robert Browning's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, to the spaghetti westerns of yesteryear, to the venerable (and immensely gamed-out) Lord of the Rings, to Pound's Modernist buddy T.S. Eliot. Ask any "sane" reader, and an assembly of this magnitude seems schizophrenic on a good day.

The Dark Tower

So, of course, on top of all of this, I'm trying to fit the themes of alternate history (a la Harry Turtledove) as well as elements from Deadlands' own canon. Difficult? Monumental! To say that one cannot serve two masters is something of a misnomer here, but it becomes a massive challenge to provide more than lip service to the combination of canon, inspiring works, and ones' own ideas.

But, it's gaming "work" that needs doing. I was originally drawn to Deadlands for its uniqueness in gaming--in a medium slavishly attached to fantasy cliche, it was a breath of clean winter air in my lungs. Similarly, while still in classic D&D, the Eberron setting inverted so many generic fantasy tropes that it could hardly be recognized as D&D until you broke out the d20s! World War II-era Berlin, dropped into a fantasy world? Zombie "Soviet" soldiers, marching to war against dinosaur-riding tribal halflings? Sentient robots fighting psychic spies aboard lightning-driven trains? Sign me up!

It's this concept of 'newness' and originality, even when (as a GM) you're pulling from other sources, that keeps people pulling up a chair to your gaming table every week. Games that center around only one central pillar, be it mechanical or thematic, are destined to fail, simply due to disinterest. Players want more, and it's our job as a GM to give it to them!

The same can be said for games that are linked too closely to the idea of 'canon'--which, in some ways, tips my hand in terms of my relationship with the RPGA. In a medium that supposedly values and rewards creativity, the "Living" campaigns reward mediocrity and repetition. Similarly, I have been openly lambasting Wizards of the Coast's D&D Essentials line for being overly slavish to nostaligic ideas, many of which were clung to without rhyme or reason. Instead of embracing the mechanical creativity of 4e--which, even within its own mechanics, had been evolving!--the design team took a deliberate step backwards, which will leave the game worse for the taking.

John, over at World vs. Hero expounds on this idea, as he was providing contest advice for some of the entrants on his website. There, John breaks it down in terms of a combination of "Originality" and "Allure". The neat thing is, though: originality does not necessarily mean 'without inspirations'. Rather, he elaborates that:

...originality is a rather fluid state, and we should not be paralyzed into inaction for fear of being unoriginal. When honesty precedes the presentation of creativity, the quality of “being original” becomes “being true to a fresh vision of old and new ideas,” and, under this definition, our art may be judged fairly for what it is...

John, brother--Ezra and Thomas would be proud!

The core of gaming, if it is to ever be taken somewhat seriously as an artistic medium (or to continue on into the "Twitter" era), is to blend new ideas with the fundamental archetypes that serve as the foundation of our collective hobby. Slavish devotion to canon, for whatever reason, leads only to stagnation and, eventually, dismissal. In the end, we're a jaded group. We've been there, and done that. We've killed the orc, taken his pie, and moved on.

Give me something new!

Six-Gun Alien Banner

In Which The Warlock Rebuilds The Weird West...

As I've been raving about in my last few posts, I've been really jazzed about my new Deadlands game, which I'm now two sessions into over at Wittenberg. The players that I have are genuinely engaged in both their characters and the burgeoning plot.

One of the biggest reasons that I was drawn to Deadlands in the first place is the creeping element of horror built into the metaplot. The Weird West, in addition to being untamed of its natural obstacles, is the province of horrific creatures that exist only to prey upon man's fear.

But, the one thing that Deadlands didn't have was the one influence I really wanted to build in: Stephen King's Dark Tower saga. Similarly filled with creeping horror, King's masterwork has mysticism and dreamscape elements that just aren't found in standard Deadlands. Plus, I wanted to avoid certain canon elements in Deadlands that seemed a little much...after all, it's a bit much to think that all of the major NPCs have evil, supernatural powers!

As such, I find myself using a tool that I've experimented with earlier--when I was running "Pirates of the Underdark"--an Obsidian Portal wiki.

Obsidian Portal Logo

I had made the mistake of attempting to start the "PotU" wiki mid-campaign, which made it difficult to keep up with all of the backlogged information. With a fresh start in this campaign, I was able to easily upload images, files, and information on the setting of the campaign, as well as on major NPCs. Plus, I can also include various setting changes, like going "todash" and information on The Beams and the like. Woot!

What might be lurking in the Jaegretty Gulch mine?

For now, my players are just outside of Amarillo, in the dying boomtown of Jaegretty Gulch. They're trying to lay low, after getting into a barfight with Josiah "Josey" Riggins--the son of mining mogul and Circuit Judge George Riggins. But, as they explore an "abandoned" mine rumored to be the home of Mexican banditos, the PCs find that other 'things' may be present in the mine...

All of this world-building (or, re-building, as it may be), reminds me! I'm judging a contest!

World vs. Hero!

John Fiore, over at World vs. Hero, asked me to judge a world-building contest along with several other game designers/editors/cartographers/artists. The challenge? Using the guidelines in his one-on-one roleplaying brainchild World vs. Hero, design a campaign setting in less than 200 words. Get cracking, though, kiddies! The deadline is September 24th!

Up for the challenge? Get all the details on John's contest here: World-Building Contest at World vs. Hero

In Which The Warlock Shoots for a Straight, but Flops a Full House...

So, remember a few entries ago, when I was wondering about which game to run? I really ended up in a dead heat with the two ideas, tossed between the conspiracy-horror of Delta Green and the gritty, street-level superheroes of DC Adventures. I honestly was having a hard time deciding between the two. Friends and fellow gamers recommended both in almost equal measure, eager to roll up their FBI agent, their power-suited vigilante, or something in between.

Deadlands: Hucksters and Hexes

And so, I debated. I wrote promos for each game. I blogged, obviously. And, in the end, it came down to...none of them.

You see, in amongst the rest of the game ideas I've had, I've had a new love. It's gritty, it's pulpy, and it's got so many plot ideas built in. It has all the elements I love in a game: horror, alternate history, characterization, and deep moral intregue.

As such, I find myself with a full table, ready to run Deadlands Reloaded.

I've been slowly developing an affection for Savage Worlds for a year or two now, with its free-form character development and its speedy, creative combat. But, for whatever reason, Deadlands had always eluded me. Back when I was at Wittenberg, BLoff and his brother had tried to get us to play it, but it lost out in favor of Call of Cthulhu and D&D.

I suppose it's been building in me for a while. I adore Stephen King's Dark Tower saga, and love the creeping horror found in the Weird West. After one read-through of Will the ManMan's Deadlands: Player's Guide, I was hooked. Plot ideas were flowing through my brain like wine, and they had to get out somehow! And so, a new campaign was born.

As such, I have a full table waiting for me on Sunday afternoons: "Follow the Walkin' Man, a King-inspired tale of the Weird West, where the players will start off in Amarillo, and head out on a dark adventure to find out the secrets behind Maerlyn's Rainbow and the Man in Black known only as "The Walkin' Dude".

Stay tuned here to find out more!

One last thing before I let you go for the evening: I'll be running WEGS: Old Skool Redux demos all day at Springfield's Champion City Comic-Con. Swing by between 10am and 6pm for a run through one of two classic WEGS demos: "Dungeons OR Dragons" and "Dwarf Walks Into a Bar". Alternatively, stick around after 6pm for a run through the exclusive debut of my module "WEGS+Cthulhu=WEGSthulhu!" Catch it before it hits this year's WittCon and next year's Origins Game Fair!

Hope to see you there!