Creating a Boring Game With Intent

Artwork Copyright William Ausland, used with permission.

Artwork Copyright William Ausland, used with permission.

Last week I ran a boring game! I fully understood what I was doing and I ran with it. I wanted the game to be boring. I wanted the players to look at me and for me to shrug as the game was their responsibility at this point. I planned it, I ran it, and it worked very well. Today’s post is in a way about why I did this to my players, and on a larger scale, a follow on from last weeks post about violence in games where I said I would write about other styles of conflict.

Now, the game I ran last week was not so fantasy based so let me relate to you the tale in fantasy speak. The players are members of a vessel that set out exploring trade in mysterious lands. Unfortunately the player that had taken up the sextant in the role of the navigator knew very little about where he was going and somehow managed to get their vessel afloat in the sea of darkness. With me so far? Good!

The players aboard the vessel soon learnt they were not alone in the sea of darkness. They found another interesting vessel seemingly built for a different race afloat on the sea. They boarded it and found nothing but unusual magical items and a tome written in a long dead language. They returned to their own vessel and began the process of deciphering it. As they did though another ship appeared on the sea of darkness and offered our lost heroes a way to free themselves from the sea if they would just follow them. They did and found a big vessel long thought lost to the ravages of time.

Right, now we are done fantasying up the Traveller game I ran (sneaking it under Jeffrey’s nose as fantasy is a job I enjoy!) [Editor’s Note: Not so sneaky! I pre-read all posts! ~Jeffrey] let us talk about why I made the game a boring one. Players are largely used to working out things with the help of large neon signs that we as GM’s load up the game with. If we want to get you to rescue a princeling or something similar, he will likely appear in a couple of games and then be stolen in the dark of night once someone takes a liking to them. Or they will find a scrap of one of the players clothing left at the scene of the crime and you will have to rescue the blighter just to clear your name. In his room you will find a bone wand inimical of the orcish clans just north of the city. You get there and find out it was stolen but one of the orcs caught sight of a member of the thieves guild stealing it. You head back to town and hit the thieves guild finding the princeling and uncovering a larger plot… continue campaign.

Sound familiar? We GM’s can be real stuck in our ways at times. Well in my exceptionally fantasy Traveller game I actually run a very open game and I have a completely open mind when it comes to running it. I don’t necessarily want massive amounts of conflict to run the game and I take the cues from my players as to what is actually happening in the game world. In the particular game I mentioned the players have put themselves in a pickle. I have allowed them the chance to get themselves out of it but they need to drive this. So what did I do? I put the players in a room (errr.. cold dungeon cell) under guard and allowed the game to run from there.

I did this because the vessel (yes I am fantasying it up again) was controlled by two things. First thing that the players would realise is that they were being held by a spirit (best analogy for an AI I could come up with) and it’s henchmen undead (read robots) for guards. They were by no means inhospitable and all requests were met with excellent focus though they were not allowed out. So the players sat in the cell and discussed their options. They seemed to be talking with other real life people but they knew there was something shifty going on. They discussed this at length with themselves and kept coming up with plans to be let out of the room. After all, they had been promised a way out when they came here. In all honesty, the game lasted a good two and a half hours with the players trapped in this room. There was much conjecture and trialling going on by the players and eventually they cracked the “spirit” and made an interesting discovery.

They were not alone. In fact there were other humanoids also in lockdown that were being kept alive and there was also a new race on the scene, a GM special as we GM’s arrogantly like to call them. They were a race borne of humans and they were the only living thing the spirit allowed free roaming on the vessel. OK, if you want to know how our hale adventurers (read space explorers) handled themselves, nip over to my blog (the awesome Pathfinder Chronicles and look up the blog that mentions the errr… pre-eminent fantasy writer Asimov?) As for the rest of this blog I will explain why I designed the game this way and show you why it was the best boring game I have run in a long time.

This game was all about conflict, but not the kind that involves eruptions of blood from arteries in high action sequences. This was four characters in a room with no idea what was going on who had to make sense of their situation. It plays on the amnesia trope in a way where the player wakes up and has no idea what is going on. In this situation though the tension was drawing on the fact that they knew everything that their character knew up until walking into the room, but had no clue what was going on aboard the vessel! The conflicts in this game came from social conflict (as they had communication remotely to the spirit and its incarnations) between themselves at times as well as the unknown environment. The other thing that this setting brewed up was the imagination of the players. I can not tell you how many hairbrained situations that they came up with while trying to work out what was going on!

The players really enjoyed this game I think. Right at the end they got to meet with the true villains of the piece (the Panold race) and have some interaction with them. They had a great game and not a single shot was fired (although they did mention it a lot!). There are some secrets in making this style of game come off well.

  1. Know what is really happening before you play this style of game. It is really important as a GM that you go into this eyes wide open. If you wait for the players to come up with a great idea for you to run with you will overstay the excitement of the game and then they will say that you just did what they said.
  2. Play up to some of the PC’s propositions if the circumstances could seem to be exactly what they are saying
  3. Push through the silences. The players will look to you for a giant glowing neon sign. Do not give it to them. Just keep asking what they are doing or how their character is feeling. They have to become aware that the game relies on them to make the decisions.
  4. Have an exit point. You can’t leave the players in the room forever. Have them spot something in a vent (er.. small cave) that may show them another way out. Do not reward them with anything informative though. They still need to use this new information to find out what is going on (e.g. they feel a breeze coming through a crack, could there be a passage just beyond the door?) This gives them a way of getting out of the cell but they will still be surprised by the new race and the overall plot.
  5. Let them out when they are close enough to knowing something that they could succeed at a bluff with. Once they are that close, reward them. They are never going to guess that they have been captured by a race of highly intelligent mice but they might be able to get close and they should be rewarded!

So there you have it. Combat is fun as it risks a character’s mortal coil, but social or mystery encounters can offer new and varied experiences with the game that puts a focus right on the character. Consider your current game and think like Batman’s Riddler. How can you wrap the next clue to the puzzle in a box wrapped in a mystery and surrounded by an enigma that the players need to solve by role playing their characters. Once you have that in your head design it and you are guaranteed to make a memorable session for the players. Keep rolling!

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

Violence in RPGs

Blood SplashWhat purpose does violence in an RPG have? Why is it the section of the rule book that gets so much love in most games? In games that have multiple types of combat it is not unusual to see multiple combat chapters that factor in the different styles of combat! It must be a very important topic to warrant so much information to be written about it in all of those rule books that sit on our shelves, beside our bed or in our tablets.

First, let us consider why combat is featured in games. Combat is a staple of the role playing worlds, especially fantasy. What would Conan be if he talked everything out? Boring, that is what he would be! That statement also holds a bit of the key as to why combat is so important in the game. It adds a layer of excitement to the game. But where does that excitement stem from? Conflict and the risks that are involved in that conflict. A role playing game could quite easily be about a person who gets up every morning, goes to work, struggles with a member of HR over leave, heads home, has tea and then goes out trying to find love. Why is this game not common? Because there is very little risk involved.

For a game to be memorable to a player there has to be the risk of failure present. In the day to day life that I mentioned in the paragraph above there is little risk and the risk that is involved involves very little consequence. If they fail the argument with HR the employee is likely to be stuck with the status quo, as is the same with trying to find love as they head out for the evening. In role playing these circumstances there would likely be rolls involved (unless you are playing Lords of Gossamer and Shadow that was released yesterday!) and the tension for the player comes from the random roll, will I succeed? If there is little investment in this though what is the point and many games these days are suggesting that if there is no real consequence, just let the player succeed. This is why combat is so popular in role playing games because if you fail it is possible, sometimes even likely, that you will pay the ultimate consequence.

There are a number of situations other than combat that offer consequences that are important and significant. Imagine if the fight with HR actually had a separate context such as the HR officer was actually stealing from the company and you were trying to weed that information out of them. The consequences are larger in this circumstance and more dynamic, but it is still not as dynamic as having a dragon snake out its long scaly neck and attempt to bite you in half as you use a pillar for cover. The consequence is obviously a much more important thing here and make it a much more exciting scene.

Are role playing games far too focused on combat though? Running a game you probably have combat rules for an individual with a weapon, some have magic battles laid out separately, you may have rules for chariots and mounted combat, rules for fist fights, naval battles and so on. I watched a video blog once by Shawn Driscoll on Traveller and he boiled it down to a basic statement. Combat really boils down to a single roll, be it a skill roll in some games or an ability roll in some others, so why do we go through all the complicated rules? I agree with Shawn’s point of view but there needs to be some provisos put into that statement.

Traveller has an abstract and deadly combat system. Combat erupts and there is likely going to be a death. The system prepares players for this by even introducing the possibility of death into character generation itself! In other games though players are not as used to losing a character every second game. These combat rules are there so that the players can work things to their favour as they are invested in the characters that they build and invest themselves with. An example of this is things like cover and spells such as blur and displacement or the grappling rules.

As Shawn pointed out though, it really does boil down to a single moment of conflict resolution. Try to simplify this as much as you can as a GM. One thing that I do enjoy doing with new games is looking at the combat rules and playing the “will I use it?” game. Look through the rules and decide what is going to complicate your game and also cause you to have to go for a rule book every time that the situation comes up. Once you have your list do one of two things with the rule, either chuck it or alter it.

Chucking it is exactly as it sounds. We think that the rule is either going to be needed so rarely and is too complex to use or it is just too confusing to use so we put it on a list of rules that aren’t used and communicate this to the players. When a group sits at a table they expect to get some gaming done and very few people enjoy dead time where you are all sitting around while people investigate rules. It needs to be clearly communicated though so the rules lawyers of the groups know up front that they cannot expect to use that rule for justification in a game.

For the alter rules you need to find a happy medium that you can live with. House rule the material. By saying you want to alter the rule you are saying that the situation the rule refers to is valuable and needs consideration. The actual rules may be a little too complex or convoluted for the game though so work out how you want to approach that and create a rule that you and the players at your table can understand. These house rules should be recorded in a place that is easily accessible such as an online Campaign collator or in a book that the GM brings to the game each time. If these are the rules that you play to then they should be as accessible as the core books that you use for the games.

Once this material is all nailed down then you should abide by these rules and also remember that combat is just a skill roll or an ability roll. Honestly, you could run a combat with one roll, but most systems tend to try to branch it out into a number of rounds. In general though, the person with the better skill or ability will win a conflict. Clever play can alter these results of course.

Combat does tend to be the most intense form of conflict resolution and you will rarely find a group of players so attentive as when the beholder starts shooting off its eye rays because of the mortality of their character. The idea that their 9th level character that they had played all this time could be killed because of a bad roll or result really makes them wake to the circumstances. Close shaves stick in the memory like caramel to a wooden spoon.

Remember that there are other types of conflict and a game needs to be more than just fight after fight. Social and magical conflict is important in games as can be investigations and subtle maneuverings. Players will tire of well balanced fight one after another and want more from their game. It is a great way to get their attention but not an excellent way of keeping it. I will look at other types of conflict in my post next week to see how they can be used to make your game a complete story guaranteed to keep every type of player interested.

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

The Thing I Hate About Pathfinder

pathfinder_core_coverSo, hopefully we are going to start a discussion here that I have been wanting to have for some time. I think this is an important discussion to have and I most certainly want to hear your point of view on it. I want to discuss the one thing that I dislike the most about Pathfinder and it is not even Pathfinders fault, it is a legacy of third edition D&D.

I dislike complex rules systems and Pathfinder is really not all that difficult except in one aspect. Feats. I hate feats. I hate them as a GM and don’t mind them as a player which is a bit of a paradox. I GM far more than act as a player. If people ask me what I do not like about Pathfinder I will unerringly mention feats. These things have been a core of the rules since Wizards of the Coast created their first version of D&D and interestingly enough Wizards of the Coast in their D&D Next material have begun to pull away from them as well. Is it possible that the company that created this curse is as annoyed at them as I am?

Why do I hate them? It is down to one thing and that is rules bloat. Every single feat is a little gem of rule changing evil, or new rules or rules twists. And there are thousands of them depending on how many books you have. They are little packets of moderately powered rules changes. Consider that from the GM’s perspective who works to be an arbiter of the rules. The d20 based rules of Pathfinder are pretty easy to come to terms with but then when you look at feats you have to rethink everything you know because for nearly every rule they mention there is at least one feat that modifies it. Apply several of these to a character or creature and you really have a complex series of interactions occurring that you need to juggle in game which can be quite a hard job.

I understand the rationale behind feats though, which means I am torn. Feats were introduced so a character could apply some individualization. Prior to this (2nd edition D&D), if you played a fighter, a fifth level fighter had all the same abilities as any other fifth level fighter. The differences between characters largely came through experiences and favored equipment. TSR realised that with newer style games coming out focussed on character customization that they were beginning to lose players. They worked on their books that introduced more combat options and also started working on certain builds that mixed up the character creation process. I actually think it was this explosion of customizable material that led to a lot of rules bloat and confusion to 2nd edition and it also caused a lot of players to leave the system.

Feats were born in third edition so the customization was built into the core rules from the very start. When I first played 3rd edition I liked the concept and enjoyed the differences they could create in a character. Of course I did not know then, when I held that Players Handbook 3.0 that feats would bloat horribly. To customize anything the company would add more feats, the third party contributors would add more feats and in the end feats became a swamp that I found myself being sucked into. Overwhelmed I could not get out. So between feats and attacks of opportunity I left my 3rd edition D&D behind.

So, there you have it. I do think feats overcomplicate Pathfinder, but what can you do? As a player I like feats because each one gives me that little bit extra for the character but as a GM they are too much. Especially when players take feats but take no responsibility in keeping them in mind either and a round after an action they try to retrospectively change it because they forgot X feat did Y. Then every NPC has reams of feats, monsters have them too as well as their normal abilities and I find the times I have to pause in game to check a rule always tends to be to look up the rules of a feat.

What do you think? Am I making a mountain out of a bullette burrow? Is there something that you hate more? Let us talk about the things we hate the most about Pathfinder and see if we can come up with some solutions to these problems! Until next time, keep rolling.

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

Reflections of a Non Player Character

Lords of Gossamer & Shadow CoverOf recent times I have been spending a good deal of my blogging time creating non player character (NPC) profiles for the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow RPG over on my blog. Due to this I have had a lot of comments from people regarding the way I make these NPC’s from the rules and how I have applied them right through to the themes I have used to create them. One comment in particular caught my eye this weekend and got me to thinking a little more in depth about the process I use to create all NPC’s in all of the games I run.

The comment was made to the FATE Core community on Google Plus and mentioned as an aside that the work I had been doing on my NPC’s had highlighted the importance of gear, magic items, allies and all surrounding material as a reflection on the NPC itself. This obviously was not a new concept to me as it is true, I was making the items, creatures, domains etc. all be reflective of the NPC as a whole. This is an important concept when building an NPC. If you want the players to accurately demise the archetype of the character, you use all of the character, not just their personality to reflect this. If I am after a big bruiser barbarian in Pathfinder I am unlikely to dress him in ceremonial robes of a peace god and arm him with a rapier. It is more likely that he will appear in the hide armor of a T-Rex (that he killed) and wield a massive two handed vorpal battle axe or something similar that evokes the reaction of the big bruiser barbarian with the players.

It sounds simple enough. Some might even say it is really a no-brainer that you use this method to create flavor and evoke feelings from players. But it is not in actuality all that easy when you are working with a complex system such as Pathfinder for example. The reason this becomes a much more complex problem is based on the complexity of the system. Let me take the big bruiser barbarian from above and explore the idea a little further.

Let us suggest our players are around 7th level and the big bruiser barbarian (henceforth known as Bob) is going to be their nemesis from say their current level through to around about when they are level 12. Bob is the mid-range foe in an adventure of Cthulhu worshippers the players are trying to shut down. If we take that description and think about our mate Bob for a moment I would suggest that we put him at 13th or 14th level as a Barbarian class, or CR 12 to 13 for GM speakers. From a simple building of the class perspective we find this is going to involve 3 ability score increases (easy – Strength or Con depending on starting stats), 8 feats (8 because Bob is a human. All the best monsters are human. This is a tricky one though because feats are very complex) and 6 rage powers (also not a simple solution based on the number of powers available).

pathfinder_core_coverWe are really just dealing with the core build of the character here and we are already frowning and reaching for multiple rulebooks. Stats are an easy decision because any good Barbarian needs to be hale and healthy as well as capable of lifting a small moon should the need arise. But then we move on to feats and the complexity involved in those decisions can be a bit overwhelming. If you look at the core books alone (Core Rulebook, Advanced Players Guide, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Campaign, Advanced Race Guide, Mythic Adventures, Inner Sea World Guide) you can easily be overwhelmed by the number and complexity of Feat choices that you need to make. Of course as a fighter class we would expect to see Improved Initiative and Toughness as well as some weapon specific things like Weapon Focus, Improved Weapon Critical etc. but really there are thousands of options here and even more combinations that could be used so it really is up to personal knowledge and choice here.

Once we are past that we are then faced with a similar customization problem with barbarian rage powers. You could take an archetype suggestion and build Bob from that perspective or do you try to customize him yourself. Certainly there are far less options than feats in this regard but getting the right balance can be a difficult thing entirely. The good news is that once we are at this point we have a naked Bob with all of his personal functions dealt with. This is Bob when he wakes up of a morning and Bob when he goes to bed at night. But we need to look at the external things to Bob and how they reflect Bob to the external world.

What I am speaking about specifically is Bob’s equipment, allies, pets, magical items etc. This is what anyone wandering down the street who runs into Bob has to look at and reflect on to decide how they view Bob. Although most of the material that we have covered is how good Bob is, this is the stuff that we can flavor Bob with for the true purpose of role playing him in our adventures. We want the players to fear Bob (rightfully so when they first encounter him) and have him a recurring threat to the players for a good portion of the campaign.

But of course we are back to the same problem here as we were with feats. There is soooo much to choose from. If we want normal equipment we have the Ultimate Equipment guide, if it is magical then we are staring again at multiple (at least 4) books for the information. But each piece that we add to the character builds him up. A GM with a photographic memory will do this very well as they will remember the precise items they need but this search can take a long time for those of us that start to read magic items one at a time to get the right match.

From the above six paragraphs I have given you a basic understanding of the complexity that can come of making a simple NPC for a game. The larger the ruleset the more likely you are to find the complexity shoots through the roof. I actually intend to do a series of Pathfinder NPC’s for my blog in the near future and I already know that I will be spending a lot more time on them because of the complexity of the system. Believe me, complexity of a system does not necessarily mean that you will end up with better NPC’s overall either. The NPC’s that I have worked up for the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow have such a small rule base to choose from but the rules are really aimed at storytelling conventions and thus each is very different from one another, even those that have a similar focus.

brigandineSo back to how we make our NPC reflective of what we want. The very first thing is have the concept. We have Bob the big barbarian bruiser and we want players to be fearful of him. Why are they afraid of him? Is it because he is deadly, or just intimidating? I want to go with an intimidation style for him so I think about how that looks. T-Rex armor mentioned before would be cool, but what is cooler and scarier looking is a suit of magical bone armor! Perhaps the bones of a T-Rex instead. His weapon needs to be large and differentiate him. When I want a weapon that stands out I normally choose a flail, and in this case I think that is what I will do. A big double headed flail with spiked heads that has some kind of magical enchantment. I would like an amulet of bone or something similar, but he already has the bone armor, so perhaps we work on a magical amulet (probably natural armor or something similar) fashioned from the shriveled T-Rex’s heart? Take the above three items and apply them to a mental image right now. He is an intimidating guy. Now, just for flavor add the crisscrossing of many scars to his exposed body and a scar that starts at his right brow and marks its way all the way down to his left cheekbone. Nice.

By considering the character first and what you want to achieve you can peel away some of the complexity. Make the weapons and armor be custom magic items and you can build them how you want. Decide what you want in a magical item (such as the amulet) and then backwards fashion it. An amulet of natural armor is normally made from bone or beast scales. I don’t care, lets make it a T-Rex heart, it is all good!

Regular equipment is normally not that flavorable. Of course you can make it a little more intense with description but this tends to delude the player into thinking things are magical (if it has a description it is magical to a player) so it is best not to be too descriptive of other material. But then consider if they ride a dragon (Bob doesn’t but wouldn’t it be cool if he did!) or have a troll hound as a pet. What about his generals that surround him? What are they like? Are they strong and confident or sniveling and scared? All of these factors build up an impression for the players.

The next thing to do is to plan how the players come across Bob. It is much better to layer an NPC onto the players. The first time they meet Bob have him making off with a magical treasure they were sent to collect. He is by himself and he fights and defeats them making off with the treasure. Then the players do some surveillance and to their surprise they find him at the heart of the enemy camp, seemingly surrounded by sniveling lieutenants, suggesting he may be of importance.

This layering of the NPC builds the tension and the sweet success the players will feel as they finally defeat him after a string of interrelated adventures. You use other NPC’s and the NPC’s gear to be reflective of the character as a whole. That way they do not necessarily need to talk to Bob to realize he is the big bruiser barbarian. Of course it is nice to work against archetype once in a while (e.g. Bob actually sympathizes with the players and becomes an ally in the long run) but these twists should be used rarely or otherwise the players will always expect the unexpected from your NPC’s and rightfully so.

Crafting an NPC is an important role and I hope the points above help you to consider a few things you may not have in the past. Simply getting the class and stats right is only one half of the job, if that. Players will judge based on how the NPC looks and how they act. They rarely know that Bob has Strength 22 but they do know he just cleaved that Hobgoblin right in two with one hit. Consider your NPC’s from every angle and make sure they accurately fit the bill that you need for your game on game night. Keep rolling!

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

Handling Social Awkwardness

con_tableIf your games are designed anything like mine your players will face the reality of having to do social interactions to find out key pieces of information. Even if the Barbarian beats the NPC to an inch of his life and then intimidates him it is still a social interaction right? Now I do not want to tar everyone with the same brush but it is true that there are a lot of socially awkward people that exist in our hobby.

Take me for example. I am a good writer (great when I can be bothered editing what I write), intelligent, a good teacher and trainer and great public speaker. BUT put me in a party where I have to talk about my self or about socially acceptable things and I clam up. I can’t stand large social gatherings. I get angry and upset at myself which turns into a brusqueness that people mistake for me being a complete and utter ass. I also am recovering from depression so mixing alcohol with that mix is a recipe for social awkwardness at best.

In game though I expect, and am expected to, run characters with social confidence. I can do this because it is a hat that I can put on that is not me but others may struggle to do this because of their issues. So, as a GM how do we handle a player’s ability to handle social interactions. Nearly every game has a social mechanic added to it and suggestions on how to handle that social nature of the game.

Inside each of these games there are suggestions on how to handle this material. Some games suggest if the players are comfortable then role-play it out. Others suggest players may not be as charismatic as their own characters and that is why the mechanic exists as it acts as an equalizer for the party. Of course there are a number of options that exist in between in many games and I think I have tried most of them over my gaming career. But which works the best.

It may or may not surprise you that it depends on two things. The first is the makeup of the party and the other is you, as the GM and your capabilities. The first thing you really need to look at is yourself. This is the one thing you have the most control over and hopefully the most understanding of. You need to do some self reflection and work out why you want to run a game that is at its heart a social game. It is all about the to and fro interaction between yourself and the group and how that dynamic works.

I do not want to scare you, especially if you are a new GM. But you must know your limitations. If you know you are going to struggle with social interaction, or more importantly, the roleplaying of social interaction look to the system you are using and get familiar with the system. Because it is the great equalizer. You can say to the players “The guard asks you for your identification again even though you have told him you don’t have any. This is going to need a bluff roll to get past.” That is all great. It equalizes things, especially if you have really experienced players who are trying to hog the limelight and railroad you into letting their honeyed words convince you.

The second piece of advice I have for you is this. Being a GM is wearing another hat. It is a role you can inhabit. NPC’s are other people you can play to. As a GM it is expected that you will act in these roles and it is your time to be able to inhabit the mind of someone else. Ham it up. Use this time to build your confidence and know that the longer you do this role the easier it gets. Sure it is demanding and people will look to you as an authority but you are also human and it is OK to muck up as well.

The second thing you need to look at is your group and the mix of players. There are a bunch of different player types that I don’t want to confuse you with here (but if you want, read my post about it at the Pathfinder Chronicles) but I need to say you will have players that enjoy a different style of play. Some of these players may be more socially capable than others so look to their characters as well. If a player is roleplaying their half-orc barbarian with a charisma of 3 as a fluent, socially capable character trying to convince a princess to give up some information, something is wrong.

This is also where the system can act as a great equalizer. With a mechanic then all players are equal. That said, though your group may roleplay to the character and you may be comfortable enough to run the roleplaying freeform. It is likely to cause you quite a bit of trouble over your career as a GM before you work out where that line exists in your game. The longer you run games, the quicker you will adapt to situations and be able to run game with different groups successfully, but you really need to know all the different styles out there for this type of material.

So, in short, my best advice is take a look at yourself, at your players and experiment. It can be daunting and it can also be fun but get in and give it a try. Put the hat on and GM like a demon and listen to your players. You will soon work out what they like and don’t. Keep rolling!

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

Flavor of Magic

Magician and SpiritsIn your campaign, do you flavor your magic? When a spell is cast is there some attempt to color the casting of it by description. Are they an interconnected style of casting like wisps shadows for necromancers, sparks of energy from an evocation specialists, rainbows of color falling from the illusionists hands. Do you allow the players to build up their own evocative descriptions of their casting of spells or does your table just use the spells as written?

Creating an immersive environment in a game relies on a lot more than just running an interesting plot or using interesting NPC’s, creatures and other threats. To provide an environment that helps the player lose themselves to the visualization it is often best to incorporate as many senses in your descriptions at once. Especially around the idea of magic in a Fantasy campaign as magic is often the backbone to a Fantasy campaign.

I always try to add something to my descriptions of a spell being cast. There is little of interest in simply saying “the mage reaches out and casts web”. Instead flavoring it produces a much more immersive environment like “the mage thrusts out his hand and a wad of sticky strands hurtle forward spinning outward causing a web to emerge as it grasps at your body”. Sure it takes more effort and a few more words but those words are worth so much more to the part of your players mind that is currently trying to visualize the action. It makes it real to them in a sense and they will easily become immersed in it.

But now my challenge is to take this technique and take it a little further. There is much more magic in the world apart from our mages. Take the cleric’s spells and energy channelling powers. How would their gods want this power to appear and manifest? Is it pure light of divinity or the whiff of sulfur from the pit. Rite Publishing’s Secrets of Adventuring offers up a really good level of information for the channelling powers of the cleric giving the appearance, sounds and senses involved as the cleric channels (in fact they make a new class called the Divine Channeler which is pretty damn cool).

But even further from this is the idea of magic items! Does the sword glow when it’s magic is operational? Does the ring clamp onto the finger tightly so that it cannot be removed easily? What about the robe of the archmagi? Such a powerful item surely exhibits some kind of behavior different to the robes of the other mages. perhaps it is self cleaning or powers a stronger aura for the wearer.

Fantasy games almost inevitably have the themes of magic right through them. There are magic poor fantasy worlds and games but there are very few (in fact I can’t think of one) if any fantasy games that do not address magic in the game. My suggestion to you as the GM is to think about how that should manifest in the game. You may want to make it complicated and ritualistic and layer every type of magic with a different appearance and feel or keep it a little more simple and simply have a few standard ideas to run with. But make sure you do do it. It makes the story and game that much more believable and immersive for your players.

Getting your players into a game can be difficult, keeping them playing week to week is another skill. You will have rules lawyers that will want to discuss the specifics of a spells description but that does not mean you can’t flavor it all up with some nice descriptive words first. Get the description right and then look at the detail. That way the more theatrical players will have their minds engaged while the more factual players can concentrate on the nuts and bolts.

A GM has to come to the table armed with a lot of skills. You are a relationship manager, a rules expert, an actor, an improviser and above all else you are the players senses in this imaginary world. Play that up and I guarantee you will make a stronger game and your players will love the approach of game time. Of course it is hard to get right all the time, but just try and with practice you will find this all happening automatically for you. Until next time, Keep rolling!

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

Diceless Roleplaying

Lords of Gossamer & Shadow CoverIf you are a follower of me on my blog at www.thepathfinderchronicles.com you may wonder what has overcome me this week. I have blogged about very little apart from creating some non player characters for a new game that is to be released (you can actually get the PDF now) to non-Kickstarter backers early in December called the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow written by Jason Durall and published by Rite Publishing. What is it about this game that I am so wound up about? The first thing that caught my eye about this game is it is a random free zone, or a diceless system if you want!

Back in the good old 1990’s a system was released that was revolutionary to the RPG industry in that it was a diceless system. The system was Erick Wujcik’s Amber and it caused quite a stir. Many gamers around me at the time turned their back on the game because they did not think it was  roleplaying. It was collaborative storytelling at best and that was a bad, bad thing – apparently. I have always been someone that is fascinated with new things in RPG’s but with all the gamers around me having no interest I had to pass it by so never quite got my teeth into it.

I am not really sure what happened with Amber in the long run but I do know that the people who gave it a go, loved it. I am always on the lookout for a copy and they never show up. Then one day I am skipping through my Google Plus feed and an interesting image popped up that caught my eye. It is located at the bottom of the Rite Publishing’s page for the game, right down the bottom. It depicts a group of horned monsters in shadow who have just broken down a door and are attacking a group of people (who are all in the light). It is a fantastic little image and I went and investigated it a little bit more.

Turns out that the game was the Lords of Gossamer and Shadow which had been shared around a bit on the feed with the cover of the book as the image. It had interested me, just not enough to click on it by that stage. What I found is this game was considered by some the “spiritual successor” to Amber. In fact it used Amber’s diceless system but applied a new setting to the game. I downloaded the preview of the game and set to reading it.

Diceless got me in to the system and in reality it is not a scary mechanic by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, it takes a lot of the random nature away from the game but you still have stats, powers and the like. There is a set of cohesive rules that work to create the game and guide the GM to provide a fair and equitable game. There are rules for player death, damage, fighting and the like. So what is different? Well largely the decisions of the players are dictated by two things, attributes and tactics. Put two characters in a room where no tactics can come into play and have a contest of attributes, the highest attribute wins every time. However, if the lower attribute character can create an advantage for themselves through their actions it may be a different thing altogether.

The focus is really on  roleplaying in the game. The building of the story and having the GM as an arbiter of the final outcomes from the players actions. A lot of the people I have spoken to believe that it is all by GM caveat but I would argue this after having read the full rules (as a Kickstarter backer I have early access to the rules PDF) that this is not the case. There are rules that are clear on what needs to be done. This game is going to be as much a revolution to me as it was the first time I played FATE or Dungeon World.

While the system has me really interested, it is the setting that has me completely enamored. I have played systems before that promise you can build any type of game or world you want but this game offers a setting where anything, anything can be encountered. The premise is you play a powerful character (in essence they would be considered a God on Earth) that has access to a Grand Stair which has doors attached to it. Through each of these doors is a connected reality that you walk into. That connected reality could in essence be any type of world or space possible, as long as it has a door to travel through. So in essence, I suppose the only reality it can’t represent is one without a door.

This means you can play any style of character from a D&D Dragonborn to a creature from the Hellraiser books because the travellers of the Grand Stair all come from one of these realities where they develop the ability to, or find a key to open the door onto the Grand Stair and then everything changes for them.

So the reason I am truly excited about this? (Sorry but this needs to be capitalized) BIGGEST SANDBOX EVER! A lot of the feel for the game has the characters utilizing weapons of a fantasy type, and there is a reason for this, but they will travel through sci-fi, horror, fantasy and all kinds of genres if you want them to. They will have no idea until they step through the door (not strictly true, there is a power that helps) until they turn the handle.

If you are a fan of Amber, or you want to investigate a new game that has an unbelievable number of narrative possibilities I suggest you keep an eye out for this. I am lead to believe that you can get the PDF from the web page at Rite Publishing so if you can’t wait, check it out! Keep rolling.

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

Fantasy Game Diversity

Dungeonslayers - Question MarkWell, my past week researching the suggestions you offered me last week has kept me very busy! There were a good number of suggestions and I spent a good deal of time investigating them. I watched some gaming videos of a few games and I also downloaded the freebies of the games that were suggested that came with the premium price tag of free!

There is one thing that I can say for the fantasy RPG market after doing all of this research and that is RPG’s are thriving. There are the big players of Pathfinder and D&D but so many more that are very good. Dungeon World has a great following and it does have some great ideas to explore though it is not really my cup of tea. Dungeon Crawl Classics was mentioned but it really did not have what I was after either.

13th Age was something I had been dying to look at for a while but after watching a few of the videos that are online for the game I have to say it was not the game I was looking for either. Maybe one to follow up at a later stage but definitely not the one that I needed for my friend. I went over a few of the games I still had lurking around my iPad like D6 Fantasy and even Hero Kids but none of them seemed to suit.

I then went and looked at the Dungeonslayers game. I have to say that this was the game that came the closest to our needs but the talent bloat got a little too much in the same way that Feats make Pathfinder a little bloated. Dungeonslayers is a really good option though. It is simple, smart and customizable. Everything that I asked for in fact.

The talent bloat problem was a little too much though so my friend and I have started to build a system up that borrows from quite a few other games. Pathfinder, Dungeonslayer, James Bond, Earthdawn, D&D and a few others to boot! The system that we will come up with will have a basic ideal of describing all of the actions that are possibly available for a player. From that point each basic character will get a standard set of these actions that it is considered everyone can do and then the players will use a point buy system to specialize their characters with other actions to form a character of their own concept.

I was kind of surprised that a system similar to this did not already exist and the system will actually double for the backbone system of the game that I am creating too. I have changed the system three times already but there is a different feel to this system. After discussing it for a bit it is a system I can see myself playing. It has crunch and customizability. It will allow a player to grow their fantasy character with no need for level advancement and no stricture of a class to follow. Their may be restrictions applied by the GM but in reality the game can customize near any character concept that you can think of.

This is down to you, the readers of the Iron Tavern and your free advice for me when I asked about the systems out there. So thank you. The system will be offered free and we have done a lot of the heavy lifting (well thinking) and now just need to do the writing to bring it all together. Hopefully one day it will come to be as well respected as Dungeonslayers! Until next week, keep rolling!

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

Fantasy System Customization

Questioning BoyToday I come to you asking for help. I am trying to find a system that matches requirements for a certain type of play style that arose out of a conversation I got involved in yesterday. I was asked recently by an American friend to investigate games based on customizability. There was a large discussion about the systems we know about and I think he shaped precisely what he wanted from that discussion. We talked Pathfinder a little and I lamented about the one thing I don’t really love about the system that was introduced with D&D 3rd Edition and that is Feats.

What my friend is wanting to do is find a game where he can take an off the rack class (say a fighter) and through options of customization, turn him into a stalwart defender so to speak. Or it might be he wants a rogue that customizes to become an excellent burglar. Just the ability to take an off the rank archetype and make it your own. I talked a bit about feats as they were topical at the time I joined the conversation and I stated how I really did not like them. Feats as a tool for customizability are good but they make the rules systems intricate and complex.

I have been watching a person on Google Plus (Keith J Davies) who is currently trying to model the feats and their dependencies in UML (maybe, but definitely some kind of flow chart) and he is coming up with some intensely complicated diagrams. These diagrams are just for the requirements too! Let us hope he doesn’t try to model the effects also! From a GM perspective, feats are a nightmare as there are hundreds of them and they all essentially change, tweak or break the rules in some way. In an ideal world the players would all know their own feats but I get asked at least once a game what a feat does. Not to mention the NPC feats and monster feats that you have to be across to utilize your opponents well.

OK, feat rant over. They are good for customization but they introduce a massive bloat in complication. Once we had reached this point in our discussion we started to look more broadly at the customizability of other games. D&D Next was looked at favorably apart from the removal of the skill system introduced also in 3rd Edition D&D which we thought limited the customization of a character. Instead the system relies on a very poor amount of proficiencies (taking it back to similar to first and second editions). Dragon Age was mentioned as a possible option though we do not like the proprietary feel of the system. Exalted came up and was looked at favorably but the “charms” it uses create new rules and thus has the same problem as Pathfinder with every “charm” offering more complexity to the game.

So what I guess we are looking for is a fantasy system that does the following things;

  • offers a healthy level of character customization so you can build different characters from the one archetype;
  • contains a skill system that is variable (i.e. not a binary system of you know it or you don’t, but a system that offers levels of understanding)
  • customization mechanics need to build off present rules so that the effects only modify what any character can already do
  • customization options must not be “overly” extensive (i.e. there can’t be so many that the games complication outweighs its usability); and
  • it has to be a game with a certain amount of “crunch” value (where “crunch” means a robust rules set and the game is not considered rules-lite)

This is a challenge that I put out to you all dear players and GM’s of the interwebs. We all have our favorite systems (and despite my rant about Pathfinder feats it is still one of my favorites) and I am hoping that for some of you the points above may be ringing true. There are a lot of fantasy systems out there and hopefully one will fit the bill. Do you feel the game that you play meets those dot points? Does the game you play fit the points because you house ruled it? Do you feel that these points would represent a game you would like to try or do you not value customization in a game? Please help us out and share your systems with me that you think will meet our needs. Until next week, keep rolling.

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.

What Do You Prefer? High or Low?

Magic CloakMagic. That all encompassing power that pervades the fantasy worlds we all love and play in. Pathfinder’s Golarion world cover the gamut of high and no magic. Most campaign worlds tend to stick to one or the other though. Forgotten Realms is definitely a land full of magic while Greyhawk is a lot more middle of the road and Conan’s world is definitely low magic punctuated by individuals of great power.

I am keen to try different things with magic. I liked the idea presented in Pathfinder’s Ultimate Magic of Words of Power being an archaic but still functional form of magic but it is a little hard to get my head around how a secondary magic system works in the system. This desire to find something that works well is also why I recently supported the Spheres of Magic Kickstarter hoping that they will come up with a good alternative to the specific spell systems used in Pathfinder. There are just so many spells in Pathfinder and in my experience a player will read the title and expect the GM to know the rest. Well with that many spells available we don’t know them by heart, so learn your spells.

Right, rant over. So why is there such a variety of different magical settings? Magic is magical isn’t it? Everyone should love a high magic setting and a lot of people do. High magic settings always seem to fall into settings of high civilization and neat approachable fantasy lines. There are some that fall in love with the low magic settings run to a gritty realistic experience in game. Every game is a struggle and finding a magical item is like the culmination of several sessions of story arc. That +1 dagger forged from cold iron is exactly what we need to take down the demonic army feel! In a lot of games the magic system is the core that a lot of the rest of the material is born off of.

Consider Conan for a moment. And I mean Howard’s Conan, not the silver screen incarnations. He is a barbarian that wields his blade with utter faith that each strike will fall true and he is capable of dealing with any situation. Imagine if a sword that guided his hand and burst into flames at times was found by him. He would throw it away scared of the magic and the demons that may possess him. But in most standard fantasy systems that are well known you cannot play the magic fearing barbarian as the systems are actually balanced on magic use. Conan would not be able to take on the demons with the sword he carries as it would be completely ineffectual based on this balance.

Magic RingMy point with the Conan decision is to play a fantasy game in a certain way you may actually need to make hard decisions about the system that you are going to use. There are some expectations that I have shown above as to what type of system you are likely to get with a basic presumption of high or low magic. There are some that break the mould (Earthdawn is high magic but gritty realistic feel) but in general they will be high magic, highly civilized; middle magic, standard adventuring fare; and low magic, gritty struggle for life most days!

Of course, all of the above is just conjecture and opinion based on my experiences. I have found out that there are a lot more game styles out there that I could ever imagine and I learn a lot from reading all of your comments. Tell me I am wrong, but also tell me why. Show me the proof of these things. Tell me why I am so old school because of my examples, but most of all tell me about your experiences! Tell me if it is high, low or middle magic that you prefer and why it is so. Do you see yourself in the Lord of the Rings where magical items beyond weapons were but myths that only the high wizards and elven rulers used or are you akin to Elminster of the Forgotten Realms with rooms full of magical trinkets because they are so pervasive in the world. Or are you Conan, wandering the wilds destroying the sorcerers and their items one individual at a time. Tell me in the comments which it is that you prefer and why! Keep rolling.

Mark Knights is  39 year old guy living in a small rural town called Elliott in Tasmania, Australia.  I have been role playing since I was 11 years old playing the original versions of Dungeons and Dragons, MERP, Elric, Dragon Warriors and the like amongst other genre games.  I played D&D 2nd Edition through the 90′s but I ran Earthdawn for my fantasy setting and loved it as a GM.  When 3rd Edition came out for D&D I tried it but found it too heavy on rules.  I ignored the 3.5 edition of DnD in favour of Earthdawn (big mistake) as I thought it was just a money spinner.  When 4th Edition DnD came on my players and I gave it a red hot go but hated what it had dumbed the game down to be.  On a trip to Melbourne to buy some 4E stuff from a hobby store an old mate of mine pointed me at Pathfinder and in a Fantasy setting I have never looked back.