The Western Terror

S. Craig Zahler's Bone Tomahawk is a film that plays out like a DnD One-Shot. A kidnapped woman, a group volunteers to go after her, a journey into the wilderness to the Troglodytes' base, and the resolution by combat with no quarter asked and none given. Here are a few things from the movie I'd like to bring into my next game session.

The Hook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BPf_wiLEI4

There's a lot to love about the scene of the Native American guide who helps the party locate the Troglodytes' base. There's a weird power-dynamic between the Indian Expert and the White Settlers. Behind that tension, all his passive-aggressive answers build-up the mystery and danger of the mission:

• What kind of tribe doesn't have a name? One that doesn't have a language
• You'll take us to them? I won't. Cause you're an Indian? Cause I don't want to get killed
• Well what are they? Troglodytes
• What do they look like? A man like you would not distinguish them from Indians, even though they're something else entirely
• You'll show us where they're at? You'll be killed if you enter their territory
• How many do you think there are? It doesn't matter. You don't have a chance against any number of them

The Journey

One of my favorite recurring western themes is the journey through the wilderness. The party must travel over long barren wilderness to reach their destination. As DM I usually drag this out a bit, with random encounter rolls, and lots of questions about the party's camp preparations. I especially enjoy playing out the tension, will they get attacked at night. What I'd like to add is the effect of the journey/weather. Some constitution checks for men and their mounts to leave the party not at their best when they arrive.

The Terror of the Bow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFPZzWrHyvs

The ambush by the Troglodytes is great. The party is sneaking around, trying to scout out the enemy base, when out of nowhere, arrows. The attack is so silent and understated, it takes the audience a couple seconds to process what just happened.

TPK

DM's who provide real dangerous challenges for the PCs must occasionally deal with Total Party Kills, when the entire adventuring party gets wiped out in one combat. One option is to roll up a new party of characters who are friends or relatives of the old one. Bone Tomahawk uses the classic trope of "Knocked Unconscious then Wake Up in a Cage". This works if you are using a system which distinguishes between death and unconscious characters.

On Sandbox Settings

One of the reasons it's been so easy to run a Star Wars Open Sandbox game is that there is so much material available on the Star Wars Universe. This is thanks to the Expanded Universe(now called Legends).

Since the first film was released in 1977, LucasFilm has produced numerous films, novels,  comics, books, computer games, and role playing games, with the requirement that the setting for these works be internally consistent. The result of this coordinated, multi-decade project is a fictional world comprising an entire galaxy of inhabited worlds, it's millennia-long history, and detailed descriptions of significant personages and technology. This provides a wealth of material for contemporary creators to build off of.

This is important for running a sandbox game pen and paper RPG. In a sandbox RPG, the Game Master has no idea what is going to happen in a session. The players' choices during a given session are ultimately what determines the direction of the action. The GM's job is to respond to those player choices in a way that is consistent with the game world, as well as just generally bringing the world to life for the players. As such, the GM needs a really strong grasp of the game world, it's current events, and each NPC's motivations. Being able to build off a deeply developed world, be it real or imaginary, helps the DM bring his own game world to life.

My WWII sandbox game All Zombies: Polish Resistance, had a similar benefit since there is tons of information about World War II Europe. Wikipedia and Google Maps provided most of the background for the game world and as GM I just had to choose a specific location, create NPCs, stat up weapons, and come up with the specifics of local events.

The process for a Star Wars game has been remarkably similar. I've gotten 90% of the background material from Wookiepedia, plus some of the local details from Tramp Freighters.

But recently I got stuck. The party has been looking to acquire a large merchant freighter, and while Star Wars wiki has articles on a number of them, these articles have minimal content and no gameable stats. This makes sense since the various official Star Wars games generally have you interacting with military ships, not boring old freighters.  As GM I could just make up some quick and dirty ship stats, but I'd rather use something with a bit more basis.

So I was feeling pretty stuck until I stumbled upon this list of complete stats for Star Wars Heavy Freighters.

What is this wonderful site, you may ask? It is a free, community-driven Star Wars MMORP with player-created content. That's right, where the Expanded Universe leaves off, StarWarsCombine picks up in order to provide a fully gameable Galaxy Far Far Away. Needless to say, this is a great resource for running a Star Wars Sandbox. In fact, I've already been using their Nav Computer tool for calculating hyperspace distances, without realizing what SWCombine was.

Needless to say, I'll be visiting the Combine again in the future for high quality Star Wars game content.

Catching-up with the Dragon Queen

Behold Kunab! Wonder and be amazed!

Well, I can't say I've been terribly on-task with our Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign. I've been lazy about posting updates and also I've missed many of the game sessions. Real life has been getting in the way again and when I don't have as much time to game I also find I'm less excited about posting summaries when I do manage to join our group. That said, I've had a week's vacation to recharge my batteries, so here goes:

Session X

First off, I switched-out Sir Manly for a bitchin DCC Wizard: Kunab the Wizbarian, randomly generated at 6th level from purplesorcerer.com. He's pretty mediocre at the whole Magic-thing, and a bit low on the hitpoints, but he got personality up the wazoo!

On the trail of the dragon cultists and their treasure, the party found themselves at the nexus of a number of teleporters, and near a rather large and imposing hunting lodge.

Kunab summoned some small birds to spy the place out and the party determined(incorrectly, as it turned out) that the place was being run by cultists and rather ripe for the plunder. We weaseled our way inside and split the party to more speedily loot the place. Half the party(including my characters Kunab and Rama), went off to check out one of the rooms dominated by a large magic painting, while the other half went off to poison the lodge's food supply with sleeping elixir.

Kunab, Rama and the party's Paladin quickly found themselves on the wrong side of the tapestry which, much to their dismay, included exactly zero magically enchanted stags and one all day hike to rejoin the party.

The rest of the gang ended-up in a full-out brawl with the kitchen staff and then other denizens of the lodge, which they managed to survive.

Finally, towards the end of the day, the party was reunited and we got to meet the mistress of this lodge, Talis, a high-ranking, magically-inclined cultist. She immediately saw through our attempts to explain away the reduction in her staff but nevertheless hired us to sabotage the plans of her rival cultist.

Session X + 1

Gulliver and Laputa

Is the following session, Talis sent us after her rival's floating castle, which is being used to transport the hoard.

(On a side note, floating castles are one of the most popular trope's in fantasy literature. Their first appearance seems to be Laputa, from Gulliver's Travels, though even that seems to be inspired by the floating island of Aiolia from the Odyssey.)

In any case, the party made their way to this remote village near the floating castle, disguised as cultists with the pass-code to the castle. We quickly ended up in a fight to the death with the inhabitants of the local tavern.

Now here we had a misunderstanding. All the players had assumed the village was full of "civilians" not associated with the cultists. So, when they started actively trying to prevent us from leaving the bar, things quickly escalated.

DCC and VSOP, always a winning combination

Towards the end of the combat, the DM told us that, in fact, the village was entirely populated with cultists and that he had told us that already and it was our problem that none of the players had heard that detail. That may be true--we had a lot of info dumped on us at the start of the session, while leveling-up our PCs and I'm sure I missed at least half of it.

Now there is certainly something very Old School about that sort of "Gotcha" DM attitude. That said, I generally prefer a different approach. It's true that the DM should act as an oracle for the setting whenever players ask, but that isn't enough. I think it's also the DM's job to proactively correct player misunderstandings regarding setting details.

Many of our players have jobs and families and we only get together once or twice a month for a couple hours. None of us has the time to read about the setting on our own. Not only that, but our game sessions tend to be rather rushed, trying to fit as much as possible into 2 hours or so. So often times, the setup for a session occurs while ordering pizza, leveling-up characters, or communicating with players who are running late or trying to connect via video-chat. That being the case, the DM should keep an eye out for misunderstandings or missed information.

Of course, there's another side to that coin, that we, the players, also need to make sure and ask if something is unclear and to try and help the DM understand what we have missed.

In any case, the party eventually neutralized the denizens of the tavern, stole their magic mug of endless ale, and blended-in to the large cultist caravan, before we could be caught by the cultist Warden and his pet wyverns. Once we passed through the gates of the floating castle, we ended the session there...

Combat or Roleplaying?

Doc Bargle recently wrote a great little post pointing out the tension between good tactical combat and good roleplaying. I recommend that you read it in full, but here's an excerpt:

the good Dr. instructing a new player to his group
(source Google Image Search)

I play mostly with people who have not and will not read the rules. And so I am acutely aware that combat with lots of choices equals victory to those with system mastery. I find nothing more disheartening when I read roleplaying forums that are 'epic' accounts of encounters that concentrate on the 'synergies' that the players managed to set up between their powers or other clever exploitation of the system. In the games that I run, once combat is started I want the encounter settled quickly. I want it settled quickly because I want the consequences of that combat to result in further interesting choices for the PCs. Choices about the game world, not the game system.

I definitely agree with Doc's model of tactical combat vs. roleplaying. Just look at our 4e games--when every encounter take between 45 minutes and the entire session, there just isn't any time left for roleplaying!

At the same time, I disagree with Doc's conclusion, that the roleplaying should be at the center and the combat an afterthought. DnD grew out of Chainmail, a simple wargame, and wargames are all about interesting tactical combat.

The subtle joy of obscure polearms

Even when Gary and Dave discovered the joys of roleplaying, combat continued to be a major part of the game. Heck, the whole reason I got sucked into DnD to begin with was that I just couldn't put down the equipment list for Pool of Radiance--I just had to keep re-reading it and figure out what these strangely named weapons were(it was only a decade later that I figured out what the heck a Bec-De-Corbin was) and try them all out to see what worked best.

Bottom line, I enjoy the Roleplaying and I enjoy the Tactical Combat, and I want both in my game, dammit!

Help! My Encounters are Too Easy

So here's a common question DM's face: "Encounters in the game I'm running are too easy and it's making for a dull game, combat-wise. What can I do?"

I've had this problem in at least two of the games I DMed and I've also heard 4 other DM's struggling with the issue at various times(I remember Nathan collecting suggestions for dealing with this problem in his Somewhere North campaign, but I can't find that post...). So, let's look at some possible solutions:

Give Me MOAR!

I ran into this problem at some point when I DMed my first game. My solution was simple:

1. Develop a feeling for what the party can handle
2. Adjust any encounters that seem too easy with more/tougher opponents

And it basically worked, though step 1 took some time for me to really get a feel for.

This also worked fairly well for one member of our group when he was running WFRP and our party was just steamrolling whatever he threw at us. His solution was simple yet effective: start throwing in some extra Chaos Warriors. (My solution was to throw in some poison and laser beams!)

Tactics

The problem with just scaling-up the baddies mechanically is that, at higher levels, combat becomes this long battle of attrition, where each side tries to wear the other down first(also happened to us in WFRP 1e with heavily-armored adversaries).  So, you're back to dull combats, but of a different kind.

I remember reading this great blog post(which of course I can't find now) where the guy described a long-running campaign he played in. There were many nasty monsters, but the worse were...Kobolds!

No, the DM didn't use 10HD kobolds. Instead, the kobolds played smart and used tactics. They would ambush the party in a narrow corridor filled with arrow slits in the ceiling. They would lay nasty traps and then attack when the party triggered them. They would cut-off the magic user from the rest of the party and then pepper him with arrows. He described how, going back out of the dungeon, the party would take a huge detour to avoid the Kobold-infested areas. (UPDATE: thanks, Jay Rutley, for pointing me to Tucker's Kobolds from Dragon 127, pg. 3)

So it's not just monster mechanics that matter, but monster tactics. I once wrote a post on better monster tactics while dealing with too-easy combat in WFRP, so read that, if you want...

The Difficulty Roll

So we have mechanics and tactics, but there's another level--the psychological level. Until now, the DM has been trying to guess the perfect difficulty for a combat, but it's an imprecise process. Sometimes the players end up with too easy a fight, and sometimes it's too difficult. What I've found, is that I tend to try and err on the side of caution. No one wants to be the DM who accidentally TPKed the party because he overestimated them.

So instead, what I generally do when rolling-up a random encounter, is have a relative difficulty roll on 1d6:

• 1-2 an Easy Encounter- the party shouldn't have too much trouble wiping the floor with these guys.
• 3-4 an Evenly Matched Encounter- it's a toss-up who's going to win this one. The players better bring their best.
• 5-6 a Difficult Encounter- the party had better flee or come-up with some really out-of-the-box trick if they want to come out of this one alive

This takes a lot of the pressure off of me as the DM to find a perfectly matched encounter for the party. For one, I only am trying to do that about 1/3 of the time and secondly, the players learn very quickly from the hard battles to choose their fights wisely. I think there's also better DM/Player communication since I've already determined ahead of time how sure I am that they will be able to handle the fight (very sure, somewhat sure, not at all sure). As such, I describe it differently and we end up with better DM/Player communication.

This approach worked quite well for me during our Polish Resistance campaign, where, after the first PC deaths(it was almost a TPK), the party was happy to skip encounters that sounded high-risk, unless the rewards were just too tempting.

On the Other Hand

On the other hand, one could argue against this whole approach. Aren't randomness and player choice the king and queen of DnD? I reject out of hand the idea that every combat should be perfectly balanced for the PC's. That takes away all the game's dynamism and much of the onus for players to think creatively. At the same time, lull periods of dull combat occur and my intention with this post is to, hopefully, give my fellow DMs tools to deal with this eventuality.

On 5e Bonds

OK, let's talk about the "Bonds" provided in "Hoard of the Dragon Queen". I complained previously that giving each party member a personal reason why they should take an interest in the adventure hook is a light-handed form of railroading. Here's the list provided by the module:

1. Leosin Erlanthar, a wandering monk once saved your life.  He's sent an urgent summons for you to meet him in a small town called Greenest.  Looks like it's time to pay off that debt.
2. When an orc raid drove your family from your home, the people of Greenest took you in.  Anyone who threatens Greenest is your sworn enemy.
3. Every five nights, you have a strange sequence of apocalyptic dreams.  The world is destroyed by cold, choking fumes, lightning storms, waves of acid, and horrible fire.  Each time the dream ends with ten evil eyes glaring at your from the darkness.  You fell a strange compulsion to travel to Greenest.  Perhaps the answer to the riddle of your dreams awaits you there.
4. Ontharr Frume, a crusading warrior and champion of good, is your friend and mentor.  He has asked you to travel to Greenest in search of rumors of increasing dragon activity.
5. You have heard rumors that your close childhood friend, a half-elf named Talis, has been kidnapped by a strange group of dragon cultists.  Your investigations into the cult have led you to the town of Greenest.  You must save her!
6. Being the grandchild of a renowned dragonslayer is usually a good way to impress people, but just last week a gang of ruffians attacked you.  You barely escaped with your life, but as you fled the ruffians told you that the Cult of the Dragon never forgets and always avenges.  You're hoping to lie low in a sleepy little town called Greenest, until this blows over.
7. On his death bed, your father confessed that he had been involved in a group called the Cult of the Dragon.  They paid him to smuggle goods across the Sword Coast.  Wracked by guilt, he begged you to investigate the cult and undo the evil he may have helped foster.  He urged you to begin your search in a town called Greenest.
8. The dragons destroyed everything you hold dear.  They killed your family and destroyed your home.  Now, with nothing but what you carry on your back and a horrid scar of the near fatal wounds you sustained in the attack, you seek revenge.
9. You and your family were members of the Cult of the Dragon until your rivals in the cult arranged to wipe you out.  Though they slaughtered your kin, you survived, but they think you are dead.  Now is your chance for vengeance!  Your hit list consists of three names: a human cultist named Frulam Mondath, a half-orc named Bog Luck, and a half-dragon named Rezmir.  You have arrived in Greenest knowing it's next on the cult's list of targets.
10. You have a secret.  You were once a gold dragon who served Bahamut.  You were too proud and vain, to the point where Bahamut decided to teach you a lesson.  You have been trapped in a weak, humanoid body, with your memories of your former life but a dim shadow.  You remember only one thing with clarity:  Bahamut's command to go into the world and prove your devotion to the cause of good.  If you prove worthy, on your death, you will return to his side in your true form.

Roleplaying & The Agency Paradox

While I think the point about railroading is true, I'd like to push that complaint to the side for the moment. Some DM's don't know how to or aren't interested in running a sandbox. They buy a module and read it and now they want to run it for their group. But they now have a roleplaying problem:

In a sandbox, the PC's enter a dungeon/scenario for their own reasons: to find treasure, to help someone, to impress a girl, because they are curious... As such, roleplaying in that dungeon emerges naturally. Questions of, when to forge on, when to flee, what to look for all follow naturally from the PC's original in-character intentions.

But when the DM just picks a module to run, the roleplaying can suffer. Without a clear in-character motive for entering the dungeon, the players will likely just treat the scenario as a railroad, following whatever seems like the next place the DM wants them to go to be polite. I felt this quite distinctly in our recent WFRP campaign where I just sort of went along with the clues the DM dropped, even though Seigwart and Sigyn really had no reason to be chasing this warpstone meteor across the empire.

Bonds are one solution to this problem. Let's artificially provide characters with the motivations they are missing by not playing in a sandbox. Now "paying back my debt to Leosin Erlanthar" is my motivation. I'm going to want to look for him first and foremost, and the results of that search are going to greatly effect how I roleplay the adventure.

This yields an interesting result. By railroading the PC's into the dungeon with these artificial motivations, you're actually giving them more agency within the dungeon, since the DM has given validation to their in-character motivations. Now, as a player, I can riff-off of those motivations and our play through the dungeon can be driven by the players rather than by DM railroading, as it should be.

So, while my preference is to play/run in a sandbox setting, I think that Bonds are a good thing when that isn't an option.

A More Natural Solution

That said, these Bonds come-off as being rather artificial.

"The dragons destroyed everything you hold dear.  They killed your family and destroyed your home."
"You have a secret.  You were once a gold dragon who served Bahamut."

Really!? We're just throwing some huge world-changing fact in order to justify the party's presence in the dungeon?  It just feels too forced to me.

I could see using this approach on brand-new PCs, but in an existing campaign the DM should use their own creativity and knowledge of the PC's to draw them in.

1. Don't make-up an NPC that no-one has ever heard of. Instead use an NPC that the party grew close to in previous adventures.
2. Leave a clue at the end of the previous adventure that leads to the next module you want to run. Like when "Against the Giants" had clues that the Drow were to blame
3. Don't tell players that "just last week a gang of ruffians attacked you". Instead, set-up the attack previously, maybe several sessions previously. Telling the players "the attack happened" just seems like lazy DMing.

CROSS IT OVER, MASH IT UP!

So, I just finished reading Tad Williams' unfortunately titled "Otherland Volume 1: City of Golden Shadow". It was pretty good, although the fact that the author couldn't provide us with any closure after 900 pages of suspense was a bit of a disappointing end to the folio. (Although perhaps it's a better strategy for pacing than "Chronicles of Amber" which, in my opinion, got worse with each book because so much had been revealed in previous ones. )

In any case, the narrative starts out switching between 5 or 6 different parallel threads from different genres: fantasy, cyberpunk, thriller, sword & planet. Over time it becomes clear how these stories are related and towards the end of the book many of the book's major characters have met one another.

Crossover Time!

So how about this? What games have I DMed/played-in the last few years? WFRP, CP2020, a few different flavors of DnD. What if you're running a session and then suddenly the PCs meet the party from another campaign, possibly even from another system?

For instance, the Basque Pirates piss-off an insane wizard, who blasts them off to WWII Poland where they have to fight alongside Andre and the gang. Or the WFRP party is sailing along the coast of New Tilia when a freak storm blows them off-course. When the seas calm, the stars look different and then they're set-upon by Basque Pirates. Or our Pendragon characters go off and run into some very disreputable characters, including three mohawk-wearing Dwarves...

Yeah, it's a little zany. But that's the wonderful insanity of Pen and Paper RPG's(and anyway, comic books do it all the time so we should get to too!)

I Love it When a Sandbox Comes Together!

There's nothing like the joy of when your sandbox setting starts to take shape and show a life of it's own. I've had "Surfers of the Apocalypse" on the back-burner for a while now and I'm starting to think about fleshing it out. I started brainstorming who might be the major powerful factions the players could encounter. There's definitely a fair share of "Out of the Dark" mixed in here...

	Goals	Location
Aliens	Shock and Awe attacks on Earth to subdue it's population quickly. Hopes to use subjugated humanity as a pawn in intergalactic politics.	Flying around in ships. HQ in West LA Federal Building, as well as other strategic locations.
Survivalists	Live out in bunkers/caves in the woods. Whatever it takes to survive, including preying on anyone who enters their territory. Eventually mount Guerrilla attacks on Invaders	Santa Monica Mountains
Army	Major bases have been nuked. Survivors still intent on fighting an insurgency against the invaders.	All over
Black Dragons Gang	Triad. Experts in criminal enteprise/extortion. Can get anyone anything for the right price.	Fled Nuked East LA to the Valley
Latin Kings	Gang with drug dealing focus. The invasion is bad for business, so now they're looking to branch out.	Based in the Valley
Devil's Diciples	Motorcycle Gang taking full advantage of their ability to navigate the gridlock on the roads. Charge to get people places.	PCH and other Major Highways
Scientologists	Surprisingly, their mysticism works against alien troops. They're gathering an all-star team and looking for a way to launch them to the Aliens' mothership.	Hollywood HQ
Freemasons	Trying to summon the Great Old Ones in defense of Earth. Need a relic from the Scientologist HQ	Hollywood Masonic Lodge

Let's Get Critical

Books

Good literature--it tends to be of the type that submits to deep Critical Analysis. This may be intentional on the part of the author, as with William Gibson. It may be less so, as with Robert E. Howard. Or it may be intended, but the book nevertheless comes out a dud, as with Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union. Nevetheless, the good stuff, tends to be the sort where Critical Analysis reveals layer after layer of meaning, like the proverbial onion that keeps on giving. 

Movies

Good movies, on the other hand, don't necessarily have the same depth as good books, and when they do, it's often not a required ingredient. Unlike books, a movie is typically experienced for a couple short hours and that's it. Unlike books, you can't stop and think about it, or flip back to check what happened before and how it relates to what's happening now. The film just keeps racing ahead and any deeper meaning hidden there by the filmmaker is lost on 99% of the audience.

Just look at Refn's Drive. The movie has a metric ton of symbolism and meaning, and it's slow pace and great cinematography actually allow the audience more opportunity to identify it than in most films. And yet, all but the most overt symbols were completely lost on most viewers, with audiences describing the film as "boring". As much as I like Bergman, Kubrick, and Refn's movies, their love of intricately deep layers of meaning is not a required ingredient for a "good movie".

RPG's

So what about Role Playing games? On one hand they're like books--many published adventures have put a great deal of thought into their text. On the other hand, they're even more extreme than movies--the players experience the game as a game session in real-time, not as a text, and while you can rewind or re-watch a movie, live game sessions generally don't have that luxury. Plus, due to their non-deterministic nature, you don't know which material will be covered and it's even quite likely that scenarios will occur that explicitly aren't covered in the book. If anything, RPG's are most like improvisational performance art.

And Now for Some Practical Advice

Sooo...now I'm supposed to offer some great practical advice for adventure authors and DM's based on the preceding brilliant observation on the nature of pen & paper RPG's...Right. Any minute now...

Well, what I will say is this. Keep in mind that not all your brilliant ideas and witty text are easily translated to the format of the live game session. So try and focus on the stuff that does translate: tactical combat, stimulating mood, opportunities for PC development(either mechanical or narrative), challenging puzzles, wondrous exploration, or whatever you see works for you and your group.

Not an Optimization Problem!

It occurred to me the other day that two types of argument that I hear fairly often are actually quite similar: "Which programming language is better for X?" and "Which RPG rule(set) is better for running scenario X?" Let's start off with the former.

Programming Language Preference

Programmers LOVE to talk about which language(or which technology) is better. What's the best language to start out learning? What's the best language to do my project in? Why is the language I designed objectively better than all the rest? Some people will talk to you for HOURS about this, going into the most detailed minutia. And I always feel a little uncomfortable about these conversations, regardless of how good the arguments being made are. I think Jonathan Rasmussen's point in his book "The Agile Samurai" is relevant:

You Pick Your Architecture When You Pick Your Team...A team strong in databases will naturally want to do most of the heavy lifting in SQL, while a team strong in object-oriented design(OO) will want to put all complexity in there... 

The point is that, in practice, there are many valid and effective way to accomplish your engineering task. The problem with these "which language is better" conversations is that they treat the question as an optimization problem: let's look at the problem from every possible perspective and determine which solution is optimal. This sounds very logical, but the truth is that there are many reasonable solutions, and engineering is very much an art, rather than a math exercise to find the solution to.  Pick tech that works for you and then move-on, so you can start worrying about the actual execution of your project, because that's going to make or break it for you regardless of the language you pick.

Rules Preference

It's the same with a lot of rules discussions that I hear. It's not that people aren't making valid points.  It's that they(often times myself) have a tendency to obsess over these rule choices and treat it as an optimization problem. Just pick a system that you like overall and start worrying about your execution!

The rules aren't the alpha and the omega of what makes the game. I'll be honest: whether I run WFRP, or DnD or Cyberpunk 2020, I tend to run the game a certain way.  And the same tends to hold true for other DMs I've played with. There's a lot of artistry and technique to running an RPG beyond the rules, and it's going to make a hell of a lot more difference than what kind of saving throws you chose to use, ascending or descending AC, etc!

So yeah, that's my rant for the day. Figure out what tools work for you in this situation and then get on with it! Get out there and write some great software/run a great game!

Winning isn't All That

So, why did I come home last night with a bloody mouth and a big dumb smile that I couldn't wipe-off my face?

No, let's start over...

There are some DMs who think their job is to set-up encounters just difficult enough to provide the party a bit of a challenge, but not, heaven forbid, to put them in any real danger. They may even apologise to you if a particular combat starts going against the party. And if things really go South, they will start fudging dice rolls or having the monsters make intentional tactical mistakes.

Their reason for doing this is that they don't want to ruin people's fun by having them lose, but, ironically, their combats aren't fun, since there is no incentive to think too hard, try anything new or novel. Just roll your dice everybody, round after round after round until the inevitable...

Compare this with the DM who doesn't pull any punches. When the party finds themselves in a crunch, they've played with this DM a while and they know it's do or die. Suddenly the creative juices start flowing! Tactics, strategy, dirty tricks, religion checks for divine intervention. A PC sacrifices himself so that the others can escape!

Now that's fun! That's engaging! The players push themselves to their limits. In this way, a lost battle can be more fun than a hum-drum victory.

OK, so back to last night...

Last night was Jiu Jitsu practice. Now, I started out training with several guys who have only been training for a year or two: enough to give me a hard time, but not that hard a time. I got to try out a few new techniques, as well as apply some old favourites. Good times.

And then I had a match with J. Now I never really stood a chance with J. He's been training various martial arts since he was a kid, and BJJ several years more than me. He's younger, stronger, and he also fights a bit dirty when he's frustrated. So I had to use all my resources in the match: my most solid techniques, a few fake-outs, and also ultimately pain tolerance when he did manage to pin me in a bad position. Ultimately the match ended in a draw. But that hard-won draw was infinitely more fun than all of the night's textbook victories.

A Wargaming Education

So I've had a lot of secondary exposure to Wargaming. When I was a kid, an older friend created a WWII boardgame for mass battles. In our current WFRP game, I've had to look-up rules in the WFB rulebook. And in general, you hear occasional wargame discussions in RPG sites.

But when I watched this video of a WFB game the other day, I was surprised by how relatively smoothly this big 100-troop battle ran.

1. No Grid

I remember hearing that ODnD movement is in inches like a wargame, but I didn't really get what that meant until I saw this video. They actually each have a tape-measure and you can move your troops along any diagonal axis you want. That's pretty cool!  And quicker than counting a ton of grid-squares.

2. Group Movement

The movement are per group, rather than per individual unit. That's a really good way of managing a ton of troops in a lightweight fashion. There's even a little rectangle underneath each group so you can move them together easily. I have to remember to do the movement by group next time I'm DMing and I run a big battle. Maybe that way it won't take all session.

3. Group Attacks

Attacks are also a lot quicker because they roll a handful of dice for each unit's attack. For WFRP, where it's a percentage, this might be a little unwieldy, but for d20 based systems it seems very do-able.  Like when the archers fire, you can just roll a handful of d20's and then divide them up between the PCs. Or if a group charges the party's front line, then you can roll a handful of d20's and divide them up between the PCs in the front line.

So in conclusion, I think there is what to learn from wargames about running big RPG battles smoothly, and I'm excited to try this out next time I DM a fairly big action.

Rules vs. Content: A Question of Emphasis

OK, so here's the thing.  I used to be really into the question of "What rules to use?"

You know: "What system to use?", "What houserules to use?"

And I still am pretty opinionated on the topic(probably a bit more that I should be).  But it hit me recently, that, while rules may be important, there is something more important: Content. What you run and how you run it.

Because rules can RUIN a game, creating a distraction, taking the focus away from the actual role playing experience.  But it's rare that the rules make a game session GREAT.  That's more of a question of the adventure you're running and the art of how you're running it.

And it's an easy mistake to make, focussing too much on the rules, at the expense of content. The rules are static, mathematical, open to easy analysis, relevant from session to session.  This, as opposed to the adventure you run, which is always changing, or how you're running it, which is a dynamic, inconsistent process, for which there is no definitive guide.

I look at the incredible bounty of Rule Systems our hobby has created: there are so many RPG systems and variants out there. There may well be more systems and variants than there are adventures/modules. It makes me think that I'm not the only one who has made the mistake of over-emphasizing rules when I should have been focusing my best efforts on Content...

NPC Tactics

So, looking back on a recent WFRP session I ran.  This was set-up to be a seriously epic-battle.  Lots of mutants, about to overrun Mother Brain's waning forces and the PCs have a chance to turn the tide. But it didn't turn out that way and I want to think about why...

Static Tactics

I had assumed that the party might succeed against the mutants at first, but that eventually their superior numbers would drive the party back into hiding within the caves.  This was not the case.  The party were mechanically better than the mutants, and they employed a number of tactical methods for furthering their advantage.

• Move party to within the passage so they can't be flanked
• Dwarf fighters up front
• Archers/magic users behind a chest-high barrier
• Set traps in front of the passage

My plan to counter this consisted of the following:

• Mutant groups 1, 2, 3 will charge together
• Mutant groups 4, 5 will attempt to enter the dungeon's Southern entrance

Both sides stuck to their plans, and Mutant groups 4, 5 did indeed achieve their objective, but much to my chagrin, groups 1, 2, and 3 got slaughtered without putting up much of a fight.  This made for a long, but not particularly interesting battle.

What makes an interesting battle?  One side makes a move.  The other side adjusts to counter the move. So the first group changes to a different tactic.  Their opponents respond in turn.  i.e. it's the chess game, the tactic and counter tactic, changing as the battle progresses that really makes things interesting.

So here are some potential tactics, in retrospect, that the mutants might have used to give the PCs a run for their money and made the battle a bit more dynamic and interesting.

Make them Flee Without a Fight

Rather than having mutant groups 1, 2, and 3 attack outright, I could have had them wait for 4 and 5.  At the same time, the mutants would taunt the PCs to try and intimidate them with their numbers.  If this didn't work, the mutants could also bluff and pretend they have some secret plan, like if they would start carrying timbers to the position above the PCs on the crater rim and start making a lot of noise and hamming, so that the PCs would think they are up to something and flee into the tunnels.

Archer Superiority

WFRP has a rule that if you fire into a group of tightly-packed opponents they you can use double your Ballistics Skill and determine the target randomly.  The mutants were spread out widely and had many short-bows among their ranks, so they could possibly have used this rule to chase the party out of their tightly-packed formation in the passage.

Height Advantage

In the initial ambush, the mutants were up above the crater's edge and the party was down below.  Also in the larger engagement, the mutants could have sent a party around to take up that same position.  Now I gave the party a 10% to hit the mutants up there, but I think I could have made it -20% according to the Target in Hard Cover Rule.

Also, rather than having some of the mutants scramble down the cliff to engage the party, the mutants with no ranged weapons could have thrown rocks or even rolled down boulders onto the party.  A good sized boulder(+5) has the potential to harm the toughest dwarf.

And if party members tried to climb up to the mutants, they could be attacked with a +20% WS(major advantage of ground).

Flank Rather than Charge

Instead of giving the party's archers several rounds of free shots on their charging opponents, I could have had a group of mutants go around and flank the cave entrance via the cliffs above.  That way the melee would start from close and the party wouldn't get all of those free shots to reduce the mutants' ranks.

Similarly, the flying beast man could have flown high enough so as not to give the party's archer an angle on him until he swooped down to engage them.

And finally, when the moving mutants engaged the static party, the DM could have remembered to use the charging rule and give them +10% to hit.

Personal Motivation in Mystery Games

One topic I've been thinking about a lot is how to run a mystery game.  There are two unique challenges that running mystery games present:

1. Player Agency- this is a problem of all adventures with a pre-determined plot, but it is especially acute with a mystery focussed adventure.  The DM wants to steer PC's towards a certain goal, but when the players want something else(as they often do) then he must step on the toes of Player Agency to do so.  When the DM drags PCs where their players don't want them to go, they get frustrated/bored with the game.
2. Player Skill- solving mysteries can be difficult, and additionally, what seems obvious to the DM may not be to the players.  So what does the DM do when the party is stuck, besides throw a tasteless Deus Ex Machina at them?

Motivation to the Rescue

When I ran Polish Resistance, I dealt with the Agency problem by making the mystery totally optional.  And it worked okay--some sessions the PCs focussed on solving the zombie problem, while others they spent running around the sandbox pursuing their own goals.  Dave Sokolowski, in the "Keeping" Section of the "Masks Companion"(thanks TotGaD for the link), takes a different approach.

"My motivation?  To stay away from tentacles."

The Story
Deciding the investigators’ introduction point is the most important decision relating to character generation the players will make—how do they know Jackson Elias? And how does his death suck them into the mysteries of the cult? While this is discussed elsewhere in this book, one point must be made here: the further your investigators get from their original relationship to Elias, the more difficult it will be to keep them engaged. All investigators need motivation, and Elias’ death is ultimately only one part of the puzzle.

The point is that players will be much more motivated to solve the mystery if their characters have a personal reason to.  As DM you should take the time to connect each PC to the mystery and as the investigation progresses, more work will be needed to keep them connected.  This doesn't force players to take the path you have laid for them, but in practice you will have less of a disconnect between the plans of the DM and the actions of the players.  And a smaller gap means that it will be easier for the DM to improvise when the players do choose a path that he hasn't prepared for.

Examples from Shadows Over Bogenhafen

As an exercise, I'm going to brainstorm a few examples of how a DM could connect PCs to the mystery in Shadows Over Bogenhafen as per Dave's recommendation.  I chose Shadows because I'm not the only player who has observed that it has this Agency Problem.

1. Murder of a Friend

Like "Masks", "Shadows" also pulls the PC's into the mystery with an NPC murder, that of an Dwarven drunkard that they meet at the festival.  So I would attempt to connect the PC's more meaningfully to that Dwarf, so that they are more motivated to investigate/avenge his death.  For our recent game that should be easy, given that 3 of 6 PCs were Dwarves.  Upon meeting the Dwarven drunk, it would turn out that he was a well-known Dwarven hero, fallen on hard times, whose service to his race is a well known tale.  Additionally, he was the personal friend of one of the PC's fathers and even saved his life once, etc.

2. Saving a Friend

One of our PC's was a noble, so in that case one could say that one of the lower-ranking cult members(all high-ranking personalities) is an old friend of his.  The cult member confides in him that he's gotten in over his head and needs help.  Then he disappears.

3. Getting Back What's Mine

Our party spent a long time getting the run-around from town officials, but never really encountered any harsher sanctions.  Why not have them fine the party so that the party will want to prove their innocence.  For instance:

The party has to check their weapons at the door upon entering the town hall.  When they compain to a clerk, he offers to file a report for them that the official story about the Goblin was false.  When they then go to collect their weapons, they are told that they are being fined 100GP for having filed a false report, and that their weapons are being kept as collateral against the payment of the fine.  The PC's may pay the fine or not, but either way they now have a motivation to solve the mystery and thus prove their innocence!

4. Let's Rob a Cult

Our party was more interested in making some cash than bringing down a cult.  So if I were to run this, I would slip some hints of riches to be gotten in bringing down the cult.  For instance, in the message about the new temple being ready, I might mentions something about the Jewels for the altar having been delivered or something like that.

Players and Risk

On a recent episode of EconTalk, Bruce Schneier proposed an interesting theory on risk in the modern era.

For many years in our country we have recognized that the price of liberty is the possibility of crime. We deliberately reduce police power because we have a better society because of it, even though the occasional criminal gets through. Those sorts of tradeoffs, those sorts of acceptances, become harder as we live in a world where risk systematically gets removed. Where medical science, where product safety--where all of these things reduce risk, suddenly we look at our residual risk and we are aghast. What do you mean, we haven't fixed terrorism? We have warning signs on ladders, for heaven's sake. Right? We don't allow children to swim in pools unattended any more. We know better. What do you mean we can't fix terrorism? Go fix it. That's a perfectly reasonable reaction in a society that has just gotten rid of risk after risk after risk. Here's another one; just get rid of it. Can't I take a medication to get rid of this risk like I do with all the other ones? We need technology to save us. 

Let's assume for the moment that Schneier is correct, and our relationship with risk is distinct from that of previous generations, and is still changing as we speak.  How might this changing outlook be effecting the world of Role Playing Games some 40 years after DnD's invention?  I'd like to suggest two possible directions:

Risk Aversion

This player is bothered by the "residual risk" is his life and feels that he is constantly playing the proverbial chess game with Fate(if not with Death himself).  For him, gaming is a cathartic experience in that it allows him to live and thrive in a world without these imperfections.  In this world, combat is balanced and  PC death is a rare malady, always proceeded by unconsciousness and possibly 4e style healing surges.

When this player DMs, he likes to run modules with a neatly charted plot and lots of text explaining what to do in each situation.

Risk Taking

This player finds the lack of risk in his life droll and uninteresting.  For him, gaming is a cathartic experience in that it allows him to take the risks that modern life doesn't provide him with. The world if full of chances and dangers and sometimes he loses one of his Picaresque Characters and has to start over, but that thrill is what he loves about RPGs.  He may even play a horror game or a DCC funnel where PC deaths are a given.

When he runs a module, it's a chaotic, open-ended sandbox, where anything can happen and often does.

These days, I tend to fall more in the Risk Taking camp, though when I was living through my chaotic teenage years I probably related move to the Risk Aversion perspective.  In any case, both options are certainly out there, proving that once again that there is a high variation in what players want from the game.

Playtest! Creatures!

So, I listened to the recording of this game session over the course of a workday.  From what I understand, these guys have a weekly, rotating-DM game of horror one-shots.  Listening to RPG recordings can be pretty tedious, but I think there's value to be gleaned from seeing how other groups do things in-practice.

Agency

I really liked how the GM handled agency in what was a pretty tight locational adventure.  He was patient.  When the party wanted to flee the area, even though they were clearly leaving the defined "adventure location" he let them and he improvised.  And he gave them a very good in-character reason to return to the haunted cabin--because the police didn't believe their story and they didn't want to get charged with murder.

This was a surprise to me.  It just goes to show that having a plotted adventure doesn't have to mean taking away player agency, as long as the GM can improvise good, in-character incentives to stay on track.

And it was totally worth staying on track, since the whole thing turned out to be a rather smart quantum physics joke!(which, for some reason the players didn't really seem to get)

Actually, I think the entire 9-11, ambulance, trip back to town, police was improvised on the spot by the GM, so CHEERS TO YOU, DUDE!

Horror

So among the players there was some interesting tension here between the "Old School Caution" mindset and the "Naive Victim" mindset.  Sometimes PCs were being super cautious and grabbing any items that weren't bolted down to add to their character sheets.  Other times they were behaving more like in a horror film, where they brush-off the lurking danger and advance regardless.  There were even times when the players were arguing over which of the two approaches to take.

And the game was clearly being run as a Horror Game.  Besides the setting, whenever an NPC would go-off alone, they would turn-up dead(as opposed to the DM running a combat between the NPC and the monster).

The game ended a bit prematurely due to time constraints, but with a presumed TPK.  This demonstrated to me the value of running Horror as a one-shot, where the players aren't going to cry about their Mary Sue character getting killed-off.

Skills

At one point they needed to drive and one of the players goes "So... did anyone actually take the driving skill?"  That's why I love the CP2020 system for running contemporary settings--because you have lots of skill points to use on lots of modern-day skills, yet with a very simple to use skill system.

PC Death and OOC Factors

Speaking of PC death, players generally don't want their characters to die.  But why is that?  I'd like to divide the reasons into two categories.

Immersive Reasons for Player Caution

Immersive reasons that I don't want my PC to die are due to the inherent nature of Role-Playing.  As a player in a RPG, I become emotionally invested in my character, an adventure, or the game-world.  Some examples of Immersive Reasons are:

• I like this character
• I identify with this character and his desire to survive
• This character and I have been through a lot together
• I want the mission to succeed, and PC death interferes with that

External Reasons for Player Caution

External reasons that I don't want my PC to die are not inherent to the act of Role-Playing.  These can be Systemic i.e. caused by the way a particular RPG system is set-up.  They can also be quite personal.  Some examples of External Reasons are:

• It took me a lot of time/effort to create this character
• It took me a long time/XP to make such a powerful character
• If my PC dies, the other PCs will take his stuff and my new PC won't have cool stuff
• If my PC dies then I feel like I'm "losing" relative to the other players

I would like to claim that Immersive Reasons are good for the game, while External reasons are bad for it.  Immersive Reasons draw players into the gameworld, while External Reasons draw them out.  If your game decisions/game-world is being shaped by External Reasons, then you are doing it wrong.

Systemic Solutions

So to a certain degree, you can reduce External Reasons for Player Caution with changes to the game system.  DCC reduces creation effort with it's host of PC generators.  The Polish Resistance game I ran had slow/limited character advancement.  However, the effect of these sorts of changes on player psychology is limited.  Also, there may be factors other than player caution that supersede these considerations, such as wanting to use a familiar system, or players who want room for considerable advancement.

Behavioural Solutions

So the more holistic solution to this problem is behavioural.  Players should try to focus on becoming immersed in the game and try not to consider External Reasons that they want their PCs to survive.  This may be difficult since it requires a certain degree of self-awareness.  At the same time, I'm not the first one to say "don't be a Powergamer" or "you're Metagaming".

So to all my fellow players out, don't forget:

...to live in fear...That's what it is to be a slave...

Should Players Know the Rules?

So, last session, I had difficult GMing moment.  I stat up my own monsters, even ones which WFRP has stats for.  There are a number of reasons I do this:

1. Anyway, the monster descriptions in WFRP are impractically long, so anyway I write my own shorter stat-block in my spreadsheet, so might as well tweak them
2. Even veteran players won't know what to expect, which adds tension
3. New Tilia is far from the Empire, so monsters tend to be a little different
4. It's fun to make your own stuff

Anyway, last session I rolled up a random encounter with Giant Scorpions.  Now the Giant Scorpions I made kill with a successful tail-hit, as opposed to WFRP 1e's Giant Scorpions which take two doses.  I made this change because I think that PCs should be terrified to come within striking range of the things, and because I think that an occasional PC death adds a lot of excitement to the game.

Anyway, the character failed his poison save, despite being a tough Dwarf.  I gave the Herbalist a check to see if she could improvise an antidote on the spot, which she also failed.  So I said, "Sorry, you're dead--better use a Fate Point."

What followed was 10 minutes of rules debate, which concluded with the player looking up the WFRP stats for Giant Scorpion(which I wasn't using) and pointing out that it says the first dose doesn't kill.  I gave-in to this argument.

Now I think that's fair. I'm willing to be flexible, within-reason, about the rules.  Especially in a rotating-DM game such as this one.  But I still wasn't happy with the result, which detracts from the sort of atmosphere of tension and terror I'm trying to create.

At that moment, I suddenly felt that I understood noisms's recent lament about GM authority as an enabler for art.  Now I know why he likes to run homebrew systems like Pendragon-Mechwarrior, or WWII CP2020.  Because when the players don't know the rules, and by-definition can't look them up, since there is no authoritative text, then the GM has a greater freedom to craft a truly-unique game-world.

The Other Side

Anyway, having made that point, let's wrap this post up with a foil.  WFRP 2e gives 5 "Golden Rules of GMing".  Here are two relevant ones, which are often at odds with one another.  "Lay down the law" is about giving the GM the authority to do his job well.  "Give them a chance" is about giving players the freedom to experience real agency and thus feel invested in the game.