Sticking To A System

Not as a rule a habitue of gaming stores -- I've gamed out of my home almost exclusively since the mid-80s -- what I see about how other gamers think comes from a couple of online forums.  One of the common themes you see on such forums is the premise that a Real Gamer Tries Many Games, and threads about diversity in selection are frequent.  In particular, a number of people heavily tout a willingness to try many so-called "indie" games (i.e., self-published games of which 95% of the RPG public have never heard) as a needful virtue.

Being asked my own opinion, I reply that I started GMing The Fantasy Trip in 1983, flipped to its successor system GURPS when it was in playtest a couple years later, and have pretty much GMed nothing else since.  An answer considered unremarkable when the system you solely play is D&D (or, these days, Pathfinder), this bugs a surprising number of people.  What's the point of doing that? I've been asked.

For one thing, I don't dance around genres much. I've done some SF, done some Firefly (not quite the same as space opera), done some French Revolution. Mostly, though, I've been doing the same setting, genre and milieu since 1978.

This has its advantages. I know my gameworld to an eyepopping degree. I have DECADES of prepwork behind me. Detailed realms. MULTIPLE cities with hundreds of businesses apiece. Hundreds of NPCs, many of which have detailed notes. 20 page writeups for religions for the in-depth priest. Etc etc ad nauseam.

So tell me, why would I forfeit the sheer knowledge there to run Some Other Setting? I couldn't possibly do the same job. I don't have the time or the energy to duplicate all that work ... or at my age, the longevity left. I'd have to say "I don't know" a lot more often, and slow up play to think up an answer.  (And I'd sure get caught out a lot, when the players knew I was wrong, and was contradicting myself.)

That's how I feel about switching systems. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there is a setting I want to run, and that X System is "better" than GURPS for running that setting. (This being an argument made about a hundred times more often than it's been proven, and has always seemed to me an attempt at self-justification, but let's go with it.)

But I understand GURPS. I have long experience in creating characters, and long experience in shepherding others through character creation. I know how the combat system works. I know how the magic system works, and I've created hundreds of new spells to go with it. I don't have to refer to a rulebook very often at all during runs. I know the weaknesses of the system - or at least those elements I feel to be weak - and have come up with variations and houserules to cover the gaps.

So tell me, why would I forfeit the sheer knowledge there to run Some Other Game System? I couldn't possibly do the same job. I don't have the time or the energy to duplicate all that learning. I'd have to say "I don't know" a lot more often, and slow up play to look up the answer.  (And I'd sure get caught out a lot, when the players knew I was wrong, and was contradicting the rulebook.)  Never mind that once again, at my age, I just don't learn as fast or as easily as once I did ...

I don't have GM ADD, I'm not enough of a moron to feel that a game system which wasn't invented last year is "obsolete," I don't ascribe unique virtues to systems just because they're published by the creator, I'm not rich enough to drop hundreds of dollars on corebooks and splatbooks every switch, and I'm not insane enough to insist my players go through the same relearning process just because I have a short attention span.

There. That's the point.

Spicier Cities

There's a set of tables for more interesting cities out there, from a blogger, called "One-Roll Cities" (actually, they're quite a few rolls, with a fistful of dice), fitting with the Reign RPG.  One of the tables lists ten interesting attributes a city might have.  I found the idea good but the execution scanty, and here's the one I did up in response, fifty deep.  Enjoy!

1.  Constantinople: The city has massive defenses of legendary stature, has never fallen to assault, and is considered impregnable.

2.  Akita:  There is a famous monument with miraculous properties.

3.  Baghdad:  A key element of infrastructure has fallen into disrepair from neglect or lack of funds, causing major impairments to business, lifestyle or public order.

4.  Mainz:  The printing press has exploded into consciousness; broadsheets and handbills cover every lamppost and wall, and books in the vernacular are affordable.

5.  Ur:  At least some of the infrastructure predates the known history of the city, and in its durability points to secrets of construction long since lost.

6.  Eburacon: There is a magical icon which awaits the return of a Sacred Ruler, and will only respond to that one.

7.  Paris:  The city is a marvel of planning, and the streets are on the whole well lit and maintained.

8.  Odessa:  The city has an extensive sewer system/catacombs. Huge.  Big enough to hold a city of its own.

9.  Alexandria:  The city has a colossal artifact which has been a landmark for all of history.

10.  Stonehenge:  A major supernatural site is well known, and the subject of much pilgrimage and study.

11.  Avonlea:  There is one outstanding unspoken quirk, such as red-colored roads, for no good or known reason.  Natives are either amazingly proud of it or blandly incurious.

12.  Providence:  The city is noted as a refuge for an exiled faction, race or religious group.

13.  Plymouth:  A city with historical significance well beyond its size or geopolitical/economic impact.

14.  New England:  Everything is historical, or is fancied to be.  You can scarcely travel a block before tripping over a commemorative plaque, a monument, a Tree of Liberty or some other historic site.

15.  Appalachia:  The city has unusual folkways distinctive from the regional culture.

16.  Everwood:  Many prominent structures are repurposed older buildings, and obviously so; churches turned into marketplaces, for instance.

17.  Salem:  A tourist center based on terrible events.

18.  Seattle:  A trick of local geography has weather significantly worse than the region’s in one particular fashion: very muggy in summer, rains too much year round, high snowfall in winter, the like.

19.  San Francisco:  The city is built on steep hills; there are many terraces, switchbacks, funiculars and stairs.

20.  Las Vegas:  The city is new, with either little in the way of history or little respect for such history as exists; old buildings are razed for new ones, all architecture is modern, and not much is built to last.

21.  Boston: The city is a trendsetter in a field of arts, culture or literature.

22.  Pleasantville:  Everyone is nice, quiet and traditional, and outsiders or strange ways draw a lot of attention.

23.  Manãna:  There is a strong culture of laissez faire, and stirring people to prompt, decisive action is difficult.

24.  Geneva: This city is well respected for its neutrality, and is frequently used as a meeting ground between warring or contending parties.

25.  La Serenissima: Residents do things the way they have always done, and are staunchly resistant to progress.

26.  Centralia: An ongoing man-made environmental disaster seriously impacts the health of the residents.

27.  New Orleans: The city lives for partying and spectacle, and the festivities go all night long ...

28.  Hong Kong:  Business – and The Deal – is the raison d’etre, and the overwhelming focus of the populace.

29.  Chicago:  The people want to be a major player, and think their home is, but suffer from an inferiority complex where the national/regional capital is concerned.

30.  Compostela:  The city is a major pilgrimage site, above and beyond its normal ecclesiastical footprint.

31.  Jericho: The city is one of the – if not the – oldest cities in the world, and the ruins of older iterations of the city are nearby/underneath.

32.  Los Angeles: Celebrities from the arts/sports are lionized, and their every utterance is on every tongue.

33.  Memphis: A major, international celebrity has a compound here.

34.  Star’s Hollow:  Eclectic, unique festivals are held every month, and it seems that whenever you’re there, there’s yet another offbeat parade or fest, for which much of the city shuts down.

35.  Minas Ithil: There is a spiritual sense to the city; either bright and elating, uplifting to the populace, or a dark miasma, corrupting and darkening every spirit.

36.  Venice: The Golden Age is long past, and people cling to shadows of ancient glories, sure that things will never get better again.  Buildings, dress, trappings are all beautiful and once-costly, but now shabby, faded and worn.

37.  Manhattan:  The residents have a positive, cheerful outlook and are sure Things Are Getting Better in this best of all possible worlds.

38.  St. Petersburg: The glitter and grandeur of the palaces of the aristocracy rub up against desperate slums, and the gulf between the haves and have-nots is unusually wide.

39.  Jakálla: The residents are xenophobic (and violent about it) to a high degree, and obvious foreigners leave their own insular districts at some risk.

40.  Peyton Place:  Everyone’s in everyone else’s business, and the notion of privacy is considered quaint and somewhat suspect.

41.  Gotham City:  The city has seen it all in its day, and attempts to improve its reputation or make cultural improvements are difficult and meet with resistance.

42.  Levittown: Everyone’s more or less of the same socioeconomic strata.  All the buildings are pretty much the same.  Most everyone pretty much acts the same.  Conformity in all things is the chief virtue.

43.  Belfast:  The city's just this side of a war zone, with hostile factions committing frequent depredations upon one another, often in defiance of the law.  Outsiders, based on the color of clothing they wear or a turn of phrase they use, are often assumed to be a member of a faction, and in any event are quizzed as to where they stand.

44.  Hershey:  The city has a renowned product or good.  Everything is about that product, every business revolves around it, every bit of architecture or art features or celebrates it, and everyone is either scared to death or provoked to rage at any threat to or disparagement of it.

45.  Dhaka:  A periodic natural hazard -- terrible winters, annual floods -- is a major but predictable problem for the city.  Either locals prepare for some weeks for the event (and risk being wrongfooted if the timing is off) or are dourly fatalistic over its impact.

46.  Juneau:  The city is geographically isolated, and cannot easily be reached by any land route ... if at all.

47.  London:  An integral part of the city's infrastructure -- or the prevailing technology -- is the most advanced in the world by far.  It's a major source of civic pride, and travelers from around the world come to study it.

48.  Jerusalem:  Multiple faiths (or sects of the same faith), hostile to one another, regard the city as a sacred site; at the very least, ill feelings visibly simmer.

49.  Strasbourg:  The city has a strategic location which has caused it to be invaded, and conquered, many times in its history.  Its population is ethnically and/or religiously diverse, with the most recently conquered faction being very unhappy with the reversal of fortune.

50.  Rome:  Once, the known world was ruled from this city.  Though those days are long past, its natives carry themselves with an arrogance born of ancient times, and upstart empires still seek the approval of -- or the rule over -- the imperial capital of old.

So, backstories ...

"Gamer ADD" in action.

Most of us have run into GMs who’ve asked people to submit a couple biographical pages about their PCs – who they are, where they’ve been, what’s led them to adventuring, what might their motivations be.  Some gung-ho players turn these in to GMs, unasked.

It’s a surprisingly controversial subject, and discussions of it on forums – which invariably start with the topic creator shaking his fists at the notion – explode into many dozens of posts worth of tirade. 

For my part, I love them.  From a new player, it tells me – above all – that he or she is likely to be a strong roleplayer, certain to view the character as more than a piece on a chessboard.  It’s reasonable to assume that the player is going to be unusually interested in setting details, and I’ve got a very dense setting.  They provide plothooks, they provide motivations, they make it easier to introduce NPCs, they're good for getting past the awkward "Why in the heck do these people want to adventure together?" They aid me in helping the players create their characters - certainly even the one-line stories some have mentioned above like "I'm an ex-gladiator who bought his freedom" and "The king ordered the murder of my parents" suggest skill sets, advantages and disadvantages obvious to many of you.

Am I intimidated by them? Certainly not. Some are good, some are crap, some are too long, some don't tell me anything I couldn't have figured out from the character sheet ... yeah, I figure that someone with Farming skill and five weapon skills probably was a farmer who decided to go off to become a warrior, thanks ever so.

Now there are certainly campaigns where backstories are pointless.  High-mortality?  No need to write a background for a PC who’s going to be dead inside of three sessions.  Hack-n-slash?  If the campaign’s not about roleplaying, a roleplaying tool doesn’t make much sense.  But otherwise?  Allow me to dig into my archives and toss out some common complaints:

* So the players gave you different amounts of backstory?  I don't consider this any more of a problem than when Player B goes into extensive RP with the NPCs and the others don't, or when Player A uses sound, well-reasoned tactics and the others don't, or when Player C takes the trouble to learn the rule system and the others can't be bothered.  Yes, there are players who hate to put pen to paper. There are also players who hate to roleplay, players who hate to read so much as a page of rules and players who can't stand plans more complex than "I walk up to the dude I think is the bad guy and hit him with my sword." I don't go out of my way to nerf those who go to some trouble in order to provide lowest common denominator gaming for the lazy or the mediocre.  Players who put time and trouble into the game get more benefits than those who don't.

* So you can’t stand the player who wants to blather about the cool things his character did in the “past?” People do that a lot in real life. But it's not as if we neuter combat because there are players who are combat-obsessed, or eliminate loot because some players go completely over the top in treasure-grubbing, or eliminate character creation because some players get obsessive over that.  A GM who doesn't have "Nice try, but no," in his or her arsenal is hamstrung from Day One.

* So most backstories are written like bad fanfics? And I suppose GMs are all a combination of Frank Capra, John Grisham and Spencer Tracy? You're all expert plotters and character actors? I sure like getting a couple of well-written pages over a couple of poorly written pages, but c’mon?

* So you don't like getting a five page backstory? Quite aside from that many GMs have background handouts / webpages that run a hell of a lot more than five pages, and that I have little sympathy for GMs complaining that reading five pages at the start of a campaign will break them -- this while using a stack of 500 pages worth of corebook and splatbook rules -- there's a startlingly simple answer: no one's forcing you to read it.

* So you believe that backstories are stupid and every trait should be developed through play? Great. Don't write one, and develop all your PCs' traits through play. What? Your players might have different play styles and likes and dislikes than you do, and aren't necessarily going to play the exact same characters you would in the exact same way you'd choose?

* So a backstory might clash with your setting?  Ah, but there's this marvelous invention called a pen. When reading through a backstory, if there's a bit that clashes, take that pen and draw a line through the offending material. Hand it back to the player and tell her about the clash. Why, you've even informed your players more about your setting by doing so! Win-win.

* So you’re secretly worried that your world won’t be as awesome as what the player envisons?   Since when did this become a zero-sum competition, where people are so afraid of the possibility of excellence that it has to be banned?  Are players writing backstories really so self-absorbed that they're ignoring the other players, if not the whole rest of the setting, but at the same time are thinking "Aha! I'm going to stick it to those mediocre bastards, who of course can't possibly be as creative and skilled as I am, and show them who's the real author of the bunch! Take that!"

* So you’re puzzled that a player wants to introduce stuff into the game before play starts?  So what?  I don’t imagine someone who wants to be engaged with your setting before play won’t care any more thereafter, do you?  I've been creating for over thirty years now, and I'm not remotely close to done. I'm not only quite happy for players to take some of that burden off my hands, but to bring their ideas and concepts – ones I might not have thought up on my own – to the game. I'm also quite happy when they're thought out in more detail than three minutes of bull session around the dice and potato chips, and I'm somewhat at a loss to figure out why such creation taking place outside of game sessions needs to be reflexively disqualified.

* So you don’t like a player developing friends and family outside of play sessions and think that RP should solely be contained around the gaming table?   I'm likely to make a great many other choice that you yourself wouldn't make in my shoes. You might hate playing rogue/mercenary types. I like them. You might hate playing hardbitten survival experts. I like them. You might hate playing characters who fuss over equipment lists. I don't. You might have no use for characters who avoid frontal assaults. I do.  Sorry, but I don't want you choosing the degree I have insta-camaraderie with the group at the expense of the character's life to date, any more than I want you dictating the type of character I play as well as his personality traits. Come to that, I believe I can figure out for myself what constitutes a more enjoyable game experience.  If I believe that involves an elaborate backstory, that's my decision. I won't require my GM read it – at least I won't be any stuffier about it than he'll be about me reading his handouts – but I don't expect guff about the degree to which I pay attention to it and play according to it.

* So you think the character will change far beyond the realm of any backstory?  I agree: the person my character will be a year from now, or five years from now, will surely be different from what it is today. Any long term character of mine – and my two longest duration characters went for fourteen and twenty-three real time years respectively – will be affected by his experiences. No kidding.  But of how many of us can't that be said, in real life? Are none of us changed by our experiences? Does that therefore mean our pasts don't matter at all? If we were to sit down at a coffee house and get to know one another, how many of you would respond with "What I've done, what I've seen, what's happened to me, who I am; none of that matters worth a damn. All any of you need to know about me is what you observe from this moment forward."  To which I'd likely respond with an "Ooookay" and turn to the next guy, hoping he wasn't quite so weird and/or combative as all of that.

* So you think that players who submit backstories are pulling themselves out of interactions with the other players in favor of their own narratives?  Stipulating so, so what? My job as a GM isn't to get people to play the way I think they ought to play, but to have fun at my table. With the proviso that it's a cooperative genre, and that there's a point beyond which freelancing isn't possible, what a backstory does is to give the player more tools for roleplay. It is not only not my job to compel each player to deal only with the stimuli presented by the other players, no one has ever adequately explained why I'd want to do so.  Beyond that, you're talking something that's unenforceable. I'm not a mindreader. I have no idea what's going on in any of my players' heads. As long as my players are paying attention to the action instead of their electronics, well ... that's seemingly a tough enough thing for the 21st century GM to ask, from everything I see and hear. I decline to worry about Goodthink and Goodspeak.

* So you resent the time you “waste” reading them?  As a GM, I like to know things about characters. I don't require backstories, but I appreciate them, and backstories engender interesting plot tailored to them.  I don't require that they be expertly written; they're tools, not literary exercises, and I'm not grading on style.  Does that mean I "suffer" through turgid writing every rare once in a while?  I can't say so, because I'm not remotely enough of a whiner to complain about the two and a half minutes "wasted" in going over a four-page backstory (I just timed myself reading an example I'd saved) every year or two.  What was I going to do with those 150 seconds, get into another Internet discussion?

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Ultimately, my longstanding belief is that the hatred of backstories comes from fear. Fear that the player's somehow "better" than the GM, fear that he or she will demand more, fear that the player will somehow "take over," fear of anything not fitting into the paradigm. Because sure: there are drama queens out there who expect the world to conform to the backstory. I can even remember one player who was. That's ONE player, out of 176, over 43 years. And I dealt with that the same as I've dealt with other uncooperative players over the years. It would never occur to me to avoid backstories forever because ONE player tried -- and only *tried* -- to abuse them, the same way it would never occur to me to disallow mages (or aristocrats, or rogues, or character generation, or combat ...) because a couple players went off the reservation. 

I will accept the possibility that there are gaming circles out there riddled with drama queens and prima donnas, clutching their scripts with white-knuckled grips, and acting like a Hoffman or a Streisand towards anything or anyone daring to dent their preconceptions, while wimp GMs tremble in fear at the prospect of confronting them.  

But I don't swallow that the syndrome's endemic in the gaming world, nor that the term "backstory" imposes an obligation upon a GM or a gaming group of a script that must be followed to the letter.  Seriously, naysayers, grow up.

For love of Arduin

Mm, I know, I've had a couple months off.  First it was the holidays and the burnout from my extreme rehearsal/concert schedule towards the end of the year, then I was quite seriously ill for a month, and haven't yet really recovered.  Still, 'tis time to get back on track.

At the dawn of RPGs, White Box D&D was so seriously and obviously broken that pretty much fifteen minutes after it was published, a bunch of people came out with sourcebooks of new classes, races, plug-in systems and other material to juice it up.

Happily, I started GMing a couple years after that, enough time for some of those people to get their stuff into print.  There was the seminal APAzine Alarums & Excursions, where dozens of people from around the world sent in contributions and discussions, back in the pre-Internet forum days.  (It’s still being published, too.)  There was Judges Guild, an outfit that created the first large scale setting and the first published RPG city.  I was a contributor to A&E for a few years, and came upon a lot of rules that made it into my VD&D campaign, as well as made a number of contacts.  The JG City State of the Invincible Overlord was my first campaign setting, and my game world still is based off of the original JG “Wilderlands” maps.

Then there was the Arduin Grimoire.

The work of Dave Hargrave, a Vietnam vet living in the San Francisco area, the Arduin campaign was an artifact of the West Coast gaming scene in the 70s -- that gonzo, very high-entropy era of the multiverses, where characters hopped from one VD&D campaign to another and no one worried about system incompatibility, and 70th level characters weren't self-evidently ridiculous.  Hargrave was the first known GM to do cross-genre runs – light sabers and blasters and wizards and demons and all.  Self-published, in tiny print, and with the quasi-amateurish illos common to RPGs of the time, the three original books of the Grimoire had a disproportionate impact in the pre-AD&D era ... not only in rules, but in setting detail that no one up until then had attempted.

The only contact I had with Hargrave himself was in the pages of A&E (I still have a warm glow from him calling me a clever guy), but like many another gamer in the seventies, I mined Arduin like I was strip mining silver.

The calendar.  The moons.  Star-powered mages.  Deodanths.  Phraints.  "Flesh tastes bad to monsters."  Special abilities charts in general.  Rune weavers. Prismatic walls.  Spell Of The Red Death.  Blaze Of Glory.  The ever-popular Curse Of Tindalos!  The very concept of modifiers for facing.  The dreaded critical hit #37-38 (genitals torn off).  Weather tables.  Air sharks.  Kill Kittens!  The optional appearance chart.  All those lovely variant classes.  "A core hit is like a shell going off between your legs."  Multiversal's extensive price lists.  The Red Shiva Society ("Red Death to all!").  Owned and inherited equipment at startup. The revised hit point system. Aphrodisiac Aura.  The Shadow Assassin. Tamra Shadowfire walks my world, as does the Trinity, and though she has never yet been encountered, the mere rumor of Shardra the Castrator has send decades worth of parties a-tremble.

I've run GURPS for nearly thirty years now – and, alas, Dave Hargrave passed away not long after I started – but it is surprising in retrospect how much of Arduin still colors my gameworld.

Starting From Scratch (pt VI)

The Dessert Menu

So here we are at the end of the series -- for now, anyway -- and it struck me to include a menu of miscellaneous tips to make the startup a bit easier.

The first is, I find, crucial: save everything.  This won't pay off in the short term, but it will in the long term.

I have a folder in front of me, a battered old thing labeled "Old Adventure Stuff."  Random notes and scribblings, cheat sheets for enemy hordes, maps, clipart, adventure writeups, notes players have slipped me, town handouts, mercenary companies, TOOs for set-piece battles, descriptions of books.  There's an excerpted scene I wrote from a play (the group were masquerading as actors, and I evilly forced them to read through the scene), there's poetry I wrote for divination purposes, there are lists of pirate ships.  The oldest slips in there are notes I scribbled during workbreaks in the mid-80s.  Thirty years on, it's about two inches thick.

You can recycle these.  One of those notes from the 80s I never did use, until I pulled it out about six years ago, and it turned out to be crucial.  The castle design you use with your party next month may turn out to save you time with another one five months -- or five years -- from now.  Beyond that, since I run a sandbox campaign, there are just times when I prepare materials that just don't get used.  The players pass on going into the ancient ruins?  They stay in the city, so they never encounter the bandit gang?  They decide not to split the party and stick instead to Strongpoint B, so the key NPC who assaults Strongpoint A never gets used?  Don't growl in frustration and tear those up -- stick them into the Old Adventure Stuff folder.

(Another benefit to Saving Everything: something I've been making a habit of doing since damn near Day One is keeping copies of PC sheets.  This not only has helped with "Damn, Bob, sorry, I forgot my sheet today, do you have a copy?" but for my own reference to remind myself of what characters can do, when I'm doing adventure prep.  But the biggest benefit?  Let me throw you a quasi-hypothetical -- "quasi" because it actually did happen in my campaign.  Let's say that while you're in the middle of GMing, you need to come up with, on the spot, a NPC necromancer who (a) is something of a good guy, and in particular (b) is anti-slavery.  And just your stroke of luck, someone played one once.  Hey look, you have Larindo's sheet in the Old PC Folder: got the guy's spell list and everything.  And you remember how John played the fellow: a bit on the bombastic side, loves sports, and just a touch unlucky at times.  Great!  You're good to go.  I do this sort of thing a lot -- never mind the genuine achievement PCs can manage -- and out of the city my current group's running in, the list of one-time PCs in NPC roles includes the Queen's husband, the Grand Master of the mages' guild chantry, five (!) innkeepers, a ship captain, the mages' guild Apprentice Master, a provincial ruler, a wino, four young nobles in the jeunesse doree, an ambassador, three parish curates, a legion commander, a crime boss, two alchemists, a dancer, two financial magnates, and the aforementioned necromancer.  Waste not, want not.)

The second, a tangential item, is to put mook NPC lists up on your computer.  I've got an example on the right, of a well-connected gang of thugs one party had to deal with.  Most of it is, of course, system mechanics, but there are a number of symbols and abbreviations which tell me race, background and other key bits of info, and moreover there's a line or two on each that personalizes them.  Not a great deal, but enough to make them more than faceless red shirts.

This is the third iteration of, roughly, the same bunch.  I've changed the names, fiddled with some of the weapons, fiddled with some of the descriptions.  The players never knew, and it took me all of ten minutes to do that much.  The more you do this as word processing files, the more you can play with it at will.  And, after all, a gang or a bandit band does have some of the same archetypes: the leader, the sullen lieutenant who'd like things rougher/kinder than the boss, the friendly fellow, the psychopath, the one who knows just enough magic to get in trouble, the heavy hitter, the wannabe with more balls than experience, the sneaky skirmisher, the committed one, the coward.

The third is this: unless you really get off on it, and you've got the spare time to do it, don't put in more detail than your players will be enthusiastic about.  A run sticks out in my memory of a GM who, when our party was taking a trip on a ship, insisted on reading out the curricula vitae of every damn member of the crew, down to the scullion and the bilgesweepers.  I wasn't the only player with glazed eyes, fifteen minutes into his recitation, because I really only care about the NPCs with whom I interact (quite leaving aside that I ought not be hearing about the details of NPC lives when there's no realistic way for me to have known them!).  I've known GMs to give loving details about the furniture in rooms, describe in minute detail the different fabrics and styles of bodyguard garb, insist on pointing out how many tiles of which color and pattern are on that floor there.

There are several reasons why this is a no-no for startup campaigns.  First off, you don't want to bore your players out of the gate, and this style will do just that ... even if it wasn't the case that a lot of players just want to know who to whack and what the loot is.  Secondly, it builds a lot of delay into run sessions, not only in all the descriptions, but in players assuming that there's a reason why you're so intent on telling them the exact style of the inlays as well as the woods being used.  It's very difficult to get players away from the sidetrack once they've convinced themselves that it's a key plot element ... why would you have mentioned such a seemingly trivial detail otherwise?

Fourthly, steal liberally.  There are a lot of excellent materials out there from a lot of companies: Columbia Games' Harn and Paizo Publishing's Pathfinder, whether or not you're a fan of the Harnmaster or D&D systems (and I'm most certainly not), both have published excellent setting works.  There are also websites full of free stuff you can use -- lythia.com (which has Harn fan material and hordes of small villages statted out -- the map that's the artwork on the first Medieval Demographics post is an altered one from that site) and santharia.com are two of my favorites.  Just change names, file off the serial numbers, and you have heaps of NPCs, businesses, customs and plots to use in filling out your setting.   

Fifthly, I have a handful of bulletpoint questions concerning your setting to consider, which will both spice things up a bit and suggest upcoming plots.  To wit:

    * What are the races/nationalities/factions the locals hate, and why?

    * Who's the regional overlord?  

    * What's the big nasty event three years ago the locals just do not want to talk about? 

    * Who's the most infamous bandit leader/pirate king in the land?

Finally, in a startup campaign, you just don't have the prep time to waste.  Even in the low-key startup setting I recommend, there are still the dozen or so businesses to create in that small village ... the dozen key NPCs, some background detail on the region, the exact particulars of the first adventure, setting details about the world, its religions, its customs, those strange weird animals ... all of it.  You've gotten all that done already?  Very industrious of you, but much Sooner than Later, your players are going to be washing the muck of their home village off their feet, and head for the Big City.  That's some serious prep work: not a dozen NPCs or a dozen businesses, but a hundred or more.  If you've got the spare time early on, might as well get started!

The Starting From Scratch series:
Opening Gambit: Your town and its NPCs
Faith Manages: Designing religions 
Setting The Table: Party composition and equipment
The Appetizer Round: Tips on portraying NPCs
The Main Course: Your First Adventure
The Dessert Round: Random tips and suggestions 

Starting from scratch (pt V)

The Main Course

Alright ... so you’re writing your first adventure.  Awesome!  There are some principles you should keep in mind:

* Format.  Something that might help you is the Darlington format I cite in this post.

You need a hook (why the players want to do this), a problem (what is it that they’re supposed to do?), complications (why it won’t be easy for them to do it), resolution (what does solving the problem look like?) and fun stuff  (silly bits that will churn up the mood if things get too serious). 

All this is important; if you’ve got a party of newbies, you want to give them a reason to come back.  If you’ve got a party of veterans, you want them to think you’ve got what it takes to GM.

* Knowledge.  Know what your characters can do.  If possible, have copies of the character sheets.  One thing I do is to put together a quick-reference cheat sheet (an example at right) of the PCs, their key stats and combat info, and such advantages and disadvantages that might impact play.  It’s a problem if you design adventures that can only be solved through skills the PCs lack, or if you hinge your plot on solving a difficulty that a skill or spell you forgot can easily circumvent.  (That being said, those skills and spells are there to solve problems.  The result of a rogue who never gets to use her burglary skills is a grumpy player.)

* Time Management.  You’re creating a setting ... an entire world.  Even on the low-key scale I suggested in earlier installments of “Starting From Scratch,” you’ve got a lot to do.  So, rather obviously, you don’t want to spend twenty hours penning an adventure.  That’s a pace that’ll have you burning out quickly, even if you don’t have to hold down a job, raise a kid, get through college or pay attention to a SO or spouse.

So let’s keep things simple.  Don’t put a trap on every door.  Don’t create a magical item for every mook guard.  Don’t develop more information for NPCs than will really be needed ... you don’t need a full character sheet for each of those guards, you don’t need combat stats for the village schoolteacher.  Don’t spend all your time planning for the players to advance through the castle gate, when they might cross you up by going over the wall, or by bypassing the castle altogether.  Which leads to ...

* Options.  My opinion is colored in that I run a “sandbox” campaign, where – within reason – I let players go where they want and decide what they want to do.  The opposite way of doing so is a “railroad” campaign, where the GM wants the players to handle a problem in one particular way, and will go to some lengths to cajole, manipulate or (if need be) force them to do so.   I dislike railroad campaigns.  I want my choices to matter.  And your players likely will too.

So think about this some.  Your players just need to get past that door, huh?  A railroad campaign might require them to pick the lock, and if they don’t have a locksmith, tough.  Me?  Well, doesn’t some guard or steward have those keys, and how do we get them off of the person?  Is there a ceiling crawl space?  Can we break down the door without too much noise?  What side are the hinges on?

This often requires a nimble mind, because I guarantee that you can’t figure out every option beforehand.

So ... what’s that first adventure?  If you took my advice in Part III and have a party of teenage friends from the same village, you’ve got a classic ready-and-waiting: the party was out on a picnic/hunting frolic/visiting the next village over, and they saw a large pall of smoke over the homestead ... Dashing back, they find that a bandit/mercenary/orc raid came through, torching a third of the village, kidnaping some folk, and stealing anything they could usefully carry.  At least one PC has had his home torched; at least one PC has had parents killed.  Anyone who could meaningfully resist the bandits was killed or wounded.

So ... it’s up to the teenagers to save the critically wounded, organize the bucket brigade for the cottages that might be salvaged, and to chase after the bad guys to get revenge.  They’re going to be outnumbered, possibly badly.  They might have trouble overtaking the bandits, considering that the only mount left is the donkey that was out in the fields grazing.

The bandits will have some classic tropes: the brutal leader who rules through fear (and who is too tough to take on in a straight fight except through luck, guile, magic or treachery), the lieutenant who thinks he should be in charge, the bandit with a severe attack of conscience, the bandit from three villages over who was given the choice between crime or death, the insane torturer who’s devoted to the leader and loves to hear victims scream, and the enemy of the torturer who’s no goody-two-shoes but doesn’t care for purposeless cruelty.

Loot?  Well, you don't want your players to get rich too fast, and bandit gangs aren't wealthy (if they were, they'd retire!).  So you'll likely get what's left in their pockets after that last key debauch -- just a handful of coin, if that much -- and what trade goods they haven't ruined or spoiled.  But the key bit is in scrounged stuff.  Mounts are expensive, and the bandits will have them.  (Of course, this can get the PCs in trouble, because the mounts are certainly stolen from elsewhere, and some rich merchant four adventures down the road might recognize his favorite dappled gelding -- why, the PCs must be Those Bandits!)  The bandits will have weapons in good condition, and bits and pieces of armor in mediocre condition, which the players could use or sell off.  The leader might have some fine pieces of jewelry -- keeping in mind the aforementioned former owners -- and will certainly have the best weapon.

Have at it!

The Starting From Scratch series:
Opening Gambit: Your town and its NPCs
Faith Manages: Designing religions 
Setting The Table: Party composition and equipment
The Appetizer Round: Tips on portraying NPCs
The Main Course: Your First Adventure
The Dessert Round: Random tips and suggestions 

Starting from scratch, pt IV

The Appetizer Round

In my last installment, I promised that in this one I'd get to the New Campaign's first adventure.  Alright, that turned out to be a modest fib.  Before I do that, I want to talk about how to play NPCs.

What I am is a method actor; I put myself into the shoes of damn near every NPC.  Part of this is acting like real people do, and not like faceless red shirt existing only to provide unyielding opposition towards the PCs, or speaking like a pompous 50-year-old college professor.  If the words in your mouth sound stilted and wrong, it's probably because they're coming off stilted and wrong.  Beyond that ... 

1)  Real people don’t fight to the death en masse; it’s an enduring military truism that a force sustaining 25% casualties will probably break, and a unit sustaining 50% casualties will almost certainly break.  Many systems have morale rules ... use them!  If they don't, fake it.  Let's say a low roll means an individual will surrender or bug out, a high roll means he's holding the line.  Add simple modifiers where appropriate -- if the other side's got a Conan-type who's covered in the blood of the NPC's comrades, if the NPC's side has a strong leader rallying the troops, if there's a hereditary enemy involved.  It's easy to figure out.

2)  Real people don’t stolidly respond “I dunno” to a PC’s questions; most everyone knows something, or think they do, or at the very least will shoot their mouths off to appear that they do.  Not even a dumb mook wants you to believe he’s a dumb mook.

3) Give every mook, and I mean every mook, one or two personality traits.  “Old Jon” is a stereotypical sailor in a red striped shirt, always with a concertina or a dirty bottle of rum, and is always willing to help newbies learn the ropes.  Larghos has an odd cowrie shell charm he claims came from his “mermaid wife” and protects him from drowning.  Natyzha abandoned her home and family for the sea due to crushing debt and means never to return.  There are user-submitted sites full of lists of folks like that, and automatic NPC generators on the Web that can do that much too.  It really helps, it doesn’t take much work, and you can easily recycle the lists.  The first time you see a mook go down in a battle, and another screams and runs and flings himself on her body sobbing, well ... the PCs might finish them off anyway, but many of them will pause and reflect.

4) As far as the mechanics go, acting is like any other skill ... you get better by practice.  I do a lot of different voices, and it’s to the point where I can voice several different NPCs sequentially and folks can distinguish them easily, but I’ve had a lot of years of practice at it.  It’s pitch, intonation, cadence and the use of idiom.  Heck, it doesn’t take more to establish a very formal, snooty, upper crust NPC than to use a measured, even tone and decline to use contractions or slang!

5) On the female front ... I speak with a somewhat modulated, quieter voice and employ some body language, but of course my female characters come out as contraltos; I’m not descending to Betty Boopesque caricature.  That being said, the problem of most male GMs nervous about portraying women might be not so much that they come off as creepy or whimsical, but that they're convinced they are out of self-consciousness.  My advice is not to worry about it.

6)  Stick in a viewpoint NPC.  I've editorialized about it in this blog post, which pretty much covers it.

And with that out of the way, I seriously will put the dinner on the table next time out.  Promise.

The Starting From Scratch series:
Opening Gambit: Your town and its NPCs
Faith Manages: Designing religions 
Setting The Table: Party composition and equipment
The Appetizer Round: Tips on portraying NPCs
The Main Course: Your First Adventure
The Dessert Round: Random tips and suggestions