I Create, Therefore, I Am

Creation has a particular energy. It can be catalyzed by outside influence, it can be channeled any which way, but there is no denying that the energy comes from within the creator. Inspiration of any stripe, whether the head-spinning altitudes of love or the blood-soaked sorrows of despair, serve merely as the trigger ready to unleash the whole thing upon the canvas of the creator's choosing--paint, dance, pencil, garden, auto, sex, game, poem, song, research, what have you.

My current canvases are pencil and paper, the word processor, and the game. Drawing and writing are sort of self-evident, and the day will soon come when I can explore other canvases, but tabletop gaming is something that may need elaboration.

Role-playing at the table with a group of friends is a collaborative work of art. It is a sort of cooperative storytelling, which has been a fixture of human history that has largely been lost in America. We joke and talk about the rest of our lives as we sit at the table, but we also tell a story, of characters we grow to know and love and hate, facing a world that is even more uncertain than our own while allowing more decisive actions than we can usually take in the world of electronics and red tape. We grow legends in these game sessions, vicariously living in a world that, for many, can become as familiar or even moreso than our own.

They are legends because they do not simply cease to exist when we leave the table. Their stories live on, in our imaginations during quiet moments, during conversations of remembrance, and when telling others of the daunting tasks faced and overcome by (or occasionally, which overcame) our heroes. Each player becomes tied to the others through this ancient rite, and it grows our hobby and grows us as creators of this amazing experience.

Drawing

This was a quick fig from this image, courtesy of FantasyStock at Deviant Art.

Boldly Going, Part 2

An explorer and his pet human.

Okay, before the the second Great Flood descended upon Duluth, I was discussing exploration for my ATOMIC tabletop role-playing system. I talked about landmarks and Schrödinger's manhole.

One thing I hadn't gotten to was that random locations can be used within the controlled environment of a dungeon (a self-contained, generally interior location for adventuring that is somehow isolated and distinctly different from the external environment and populated by hostile "others," and which, in ATOMIC's case, includes derelict auto factories, abandoned sewer systems, the husks of skyscrapers, etc.) in the same way. Perhaps the location itself (a particular room) is known, like the radioactive swamp in the previous post, but its contents are undefined, and the random location can fill it in. In other cases, perhaps there is a hidden panic room behind the pile of collapsed rubble. You get the idea.

However, I promised to talk about the way a system's rewards drive play, and how exploration can benefit from that. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten. We'll get there.

It has been noted by minds greater than mine that outdoor travel in tabletop games can be problematic. Part of the problem is that we are used to hand-waving travel at the table unless a random encounter is rolled (this is reinforced by fast-travel options in video games like Fallout: New Vegas and World of Warcraft). Another part is that the outdoors is so huge, we can envision it easily (we see it every day) but how do we begin to describe it? Just like any other aspect of an RPG, the central focus needs to be what -C at Hack & Slash terms "player agency," the ability of players to make meaningful choices in the game. This means the GM needs to tell players environmental information that they can actively apply to the decision-making process. Ideally, no more, no less. In a dungeon environment, this is simple, as movement is restricted by things like walls and line of sight. Outside, however, they could literally wander off in any direction.

This requires a subtle bit of gaming when using a system that does not require maps. The GM should describe visible landmarks to give the players a star to guide by, and randomly-rolled locations become visible from a distance that makes sense. This, of course, is made easier if the characters use their travel time to discuss strategies, or backstories, or other party interactions, so finding locations becomes more organic, and it feels like the characters have actually been traveling instead of their travel being "interrupted" by encounters or discoveries. If players decide to explore, they can tell the GM how much time they want to spend doing so. Random encounters are rolled every hour while exploring, so the players can have a concrete idea of the risk up front.

To reward this behavior, ATOMIC GMs have two simple, powerful motivators. Skill points (SP), which are spent to upgrade skills, and experience points (XP), which are used to purchase perks, which improve character abilities, and whammies, which are fun and interesting new abilities that the bad guys probably won't like. Discovering a new location by physically arriving there (not just seeing it off in the distance), awards 1 SP and 50 XP. To give an idea what impact this has, it takes 25 SP to improve a skill and 500 XP for a perk and 1000 XP for a whammy. Now if a given area of about 25 square miles has three landmark locations, and half a dozen Schrödinger's manholes pop up, a party spending a day exploring that whole area (taking the time to risk random encounters that may shoot them or eat them or set them on fire or some combination) will gain 9 SP and 450 XP--almost enough for a perk by itself, without any XP from quests.

Combat in ATOMIC is intentionally lethal and monster kills do not earn XP, so it is a balancing act, an active and interesting choice for a group to decide whether to risk it and explore or stay safe and advance in character ability more slowly.

Questions, comments, snide remarks?

Story Hook Thursday

My buddies, they told me about this.  They called it spacer sickness, but this wasn’t what I expected.  I feel like the emptiness between the stars outside the frosted glass of my cockpit is somehow aware, perhaps even intrigued.  I dunno why it feels that way, but I swear on a stack of Bibles it does.

And I swear It’s calling me.

Andy clicked off the toggle switch on his recorder.  He shook his head, a little embarrassed, and closed the device carefully, so he wouldn’t blow any of the precious remaining vacuum tubes.  It was damned easy in this cold.

He slid the war-green metal recorder into the stiff leather satchel and reached up to rub away the ever-encroaching frost.  Through the thick glass lay nothing at all but the distant pinpoints of stars.  The way his plane was lazily tumbling, it would be another hour before the somewhat brighter, somewhat closer star he hoped was the sun would warm the cockpit enough that he could take off his gloves for a few minutes without worrying about frostbite.  Time enough to pee, maybe eat some K-rations.

Andy didn’t dare open the door leading to the cargo hold.  The seals had held so far, and the filters were still keeping his air from going stale.  He had power in the cockpit, but a short would deprive him of the tiny bit of residual heat from the electrics and more importantly, wipe out his radio set, so he kept almost everything switched off unless he needed it.

A stutter in the crackle from his radio headset caught his attention, like it always did, but as he hiked up the gain on his radio receiver, the stutter was gone, leaving only the endless sibilant background hiss of a jillion stars.

Not for the first time, he glanced around the cockpit, looking for something…no, really anything with which he could improve his situation.  The floating tumble of piss-bricks held by netting on the other side of the copilot’s seat, the succession of K-ration cans ready to thaw inside his clothing after he ate next, a couple girlie and Popular Mechanics magazines, manuals about the starplane and pilot procedure.  The copilot’s seat was stripped to its wire frame, the padding and leather cover now part of Andy’s nest.  The remains of several large chemical warming pads were also tucked around him; after every calorie of heat had been wrung from them they made good insulators between his body and the frame.  He was wearing Edgar’s flight coat, and he hoped again that Edgar didn’t need it.

He must have dozed, because he suddenly noticed the frost on the inside of the cockpit glass was brighter.  He rubbed away the space he tried to keep clear of ice and squinted past the surrounding glare.

The bright star wasn’t there.  He couldn’t spot the brighter stars, nor the Galactic Band.  Then, a glint of twice-reflected light illuminated a slim edge and the tiny crescents of a handful of distant rivets.

He cranked up the radio, switching on main power as it groaned to life.  The hiss in his ears got louder, and as he fiddled with the tuner, he yelled into the microphone.

“Mayday!  Mayday!  Unidentified plane, this is Andrew Williams aboard the Lady’s Grace, do you read?  Mayday!  Mayday!  I have been adrift for several days, repeat, the Lady’s Grace is disabled!  This is Andy Williams!”

He frantically shouted into the microphone, sliding through frequencies as quickly as he dared, straining to hear any sign of a response.  His mittened hands were clumsy on the dial, and he felt panic well up in his throat as the light over his canopy faded.

“Mayday!  Mayday!  Can anyone hear me?”

There was an impact, a sickening lurch, and Andy felt the plane move.

“Mayday!  Mayday!  This is not a derelict plane!  Repeat, there is at least one survivor on the Lady’s Grace, do you copy?  The cockpit is pressurized and there is a survivor on board, I repeat, a survivor on board!”

As the starplane swung lazily, Andy swore.  He held the microphone as well as he could as he struggled out of his warm nest and desperately scrabbled at the impossibly stiff voidsuit.  If anyone breached the cockpit, that’d be it, no air, no warmth, no nothing.  He had seen a man in void without a suit, and the man had lived fifteen whole seconds as he simultaneously suffocated and froze to death.

Not the way Andy wanted to go, that was for damn sure.

The rings around the right shoulder creaked ominously as he tried to shove his arm through the sleeve.  The suit had been flattened and frozen for over a week, and it was not giving up its reposed posture without a fight, but Andy maybe only had moments before a scavenging crew would pop the seals and blow the whole cockpit into void.  He flailed his arms about, trying to find the button on his microphone so he could keep sending strangled yells over the radio waves.

He heard the heavy steps of magnetized boots through the steel of the frame.  Zipping the frosted zipper in a puff of icy motes he sent himself bouncing against the ceiling, grabbing at the helmet.  The suit was not rated for any real length of time in void, but it gave a man more than fifteen seconds.  The helmet went on backwards, but Andy could feel footsteps closing, so he locked the seals down.  He cranked open valves in a panic, feeling the icy hiss of canned air fill his suit as he turned the suit’s radio crank hard to juice it up.  He clicked a dial on his helmet after remembering it was on the other side.

“Mayday!  Mayday!  There is a survivor aboard the Lady’s Grace!  My name is Andrew Williams!  Please don’t…”

Air buffeted him, knocking him toward the door of the cargo bay as it fled into void.  Andy tried to turn around to see who had opened it, but of course he couldn’t.  Dammit.

A thick hand felt thicker on his shoulder through the frozen layers of canvas, leather and rubber.  He was turned, gently, hands patting him down.  He grabbed for an arm, and the radio speaker in his helmet sizzled to life.

“Hello, Mr. Williams.  Please do not fight me.  Your helmet seems to be on backwards.”

Something about the voice made Andy stop.  There was something odd about the words, even and almost metered.  He let himself be pulled backwards, toward the cargo bay.  Another pair of hands helped steady him, and he felt the metallic clink of a safety tether being attached to his belt.  He drifted along, tugged slightly this way and that, feeling the cold of outer space like claws finding every thin spot in the suit, sucking away what little body heat he had left. He reached up to crank the air valve all the way open to offset the alarming leakage he could feel somewhere near one ankle, found another hand already there adjusting it for him. 

Before too many minutes the inside of his helmet brightened and he felt his hand being guided to a hand hold of some sort.  He gripped it and it pulled him upward.  When it stopped, he was aware of the suit’s increasing suppleness. Wherever he was, it was warmer than anywhere he’d been in weeks. 

He tried to crane his neck around, but all he saw was a sliver of glare coming through the tiny viewport in the front of the helmet.

And then hands were on his shoulders, on his neck!  He panicked, swinging wildly at his invisible assailants, hyperventilating from terror and in an effort to flood his body with extra oxygen.  Hands, then more hands, pinned his arms to a wall, then more hands pinned his legs, and he couldn’t do anything but keep hyperventilating until his vision swam.

The helmet turned, and Andy blew out his breath, screwing his eyes almost entirely shut as it was lifted up and off.

His face did not freeze, nor were the last tattered bits of his breath being wrenched from his body.  He slowly relaxed his eyes, and when his lungs could no longer take it, he sucked in a huge breath.

Of clean, warm air.

He gulped another lungful, then another, gasping as several men in voidsuits released his arms and legs to hang weightless in the whitewashed chamber.  Andy could do nothing but gulp down air as his eyes adjusted to the brightness.  Before long, a canvas pouch with a drinking tube was held up to him.  He took a sip, sputtering when hot coffee coated the inside of his mouth and throat.

He chuckled along with his rescuers as he took another sip, this time prepared.  “Thanks,” he croaked.

“You are quite welcome,” came the reply, in that same metered voice.  He turned slowly, sucking down the coffee.

She was a beauty, this one, that was for sure.  Long black hair like the void itself which shimmered blue with reflected light, heavy lids and lips that promised and denied at the same time, generous figure made even more interesting in zero-G, clad in a creased black suit.

Accessorized by a red armband emblazoned with the broken Nazi cross.

Flooding in Duluth

So, this is something of an aside. Due to the recent attempt of the Apocalypse to destroy the Twin Ports, my second post regarding exploration is going to be delayed by one. I went for a drive this afternoon, once the deluge had abated, looking for some of the damage from the storm. It seems I wasn't the only one, but I was the only one I saw trawling some of the off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods.

I saw the lake the Zoo has become, so the early reports make a lot more sense to me now. Many people stopped and parked along Grand Avenue to approach the fence and look, but I simply drove past and took a lovely picture of my passenger side seat belt and the top of a bush. I suck at taking pictures blind. Or that picture, at least.

However, back off the main drags (which were uncharacteristically...gridlocked!), there was plenty of damage. I got a few pictures, but had to cut my sojourn short due to rising temperatures and enough steam to make any Finn happy.Click the pictures for full size.

Garden converted to a rice paddy. Or a crappy pool.

From the erosion of the substrate. Like winter isn't hard enough on roads.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't drains supposed to go the other way?

A lot of road from uphill after relocation.

Look closely. Those washed-out sections are 3-4 feet deep.

Update: I just discovered that in our part of town, we got over 10 inches of rain. All at once. Equivalent to about 95 feet of snow. I LOVE it up here.

So, that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

To Boldly Go Where (You Have Never) Gone Before

Pic unrelated.

As discussed in the last post, exploration is something that video games do fairly, even exceedingly, well, but tabletop systems have difficulty with. Let me explain what I mean.

In the freeform collective narrative of a roleplaying game, the storytellers and the audience are one and the same--the players, including the GM. As such, this small group is the only demographic the night's game session is targeting, and because our playing time is limited by life, we want to get to the "good part" quickly, and stay there as long as we can. What the "good part" of the game is depends on the group, and usually the night. Sometimes, it's spending a session playing through a day-long shopping trip in the bazaar of a fantasy city. Other times, it's brainstorming potential solutions to problems the characters face. Still other times, we just want to kill monsters and go through their pockets for loose change.

Because of this focus, travel takes (or should take, if everyone's on the same page) exactly as much time as it remains the good part (yeah, I'm tired of the quotes) or, that failing, exactly how long it takes to get from one good part to the next. Generally, traveling is only the good part if something happens en route, or, as in our recent Vertigo game sessions, if there is planning and plotting and discussion to be done. Otherwise, a trip of anywhere from five minutes to five weeks can simply be hand-waved in order to get to the next good part and move things along. We, of course, see this aplenty in TV shows and movies, Star Trek being a fine example (so I guess the pic was related, after all).

That sort of narrative pacing works just fine for most RPGs, but I want ATOMIC to have exploration as a focus. The world is a wasteland, with nearly two centuries of industrial development interrupted, then finished off, by catastrophes that almost ended everything, followed by another century of survival and the struggle to regain any scrap of the greatness was lost. The players' characters are newcomers to this, or at least people without knowledge of the world beyond the horizon and the chatter of the local radio DJ, so a big part of the adventure, as well as a big part of the reward, is broadening those horizons, seeing what has become of the world, and finding places that are exciting, dangerous, unusual, or just damned cool.

Pic related.

In order for that to be a realistic goal, the rules of ATOMIC need a structure that encourages and rewards exploration for its own sake. Complicating this challenge is the fact that I do not want to force the GM to create maps ahead of time. I would much rather have them use an old postcard or gas station road map (I got a great one of Long Island from 1957 via eBay for my Fallout: New York* tabletop game) if anything, and those are pretty sparse with detail beyond towns and roads, most of which are extinct, defunct or otherwise misrepresented on the map now, anyway.

Here is my current thought, borrowing an idea or two from video games like Fallout and World of Warcraft. First, any campaign area (like Long Island/NYC in Fallout: New York, or maybe Denver and its environs, or the DC Crater) should include a number of readily-identifiable landmarks. These are large natural features like the Rocky Mountains or Lake Huron, artificial constructions or monuments like Crazy Horse Mountain and the Hoover Dam, ruins like the Golden Gate Bridge or St. Louis, and living settlements of decent size like Megaton near DC or the Empire State (housed in the Building, of course) in Manhattan.

There don't need to be tons of these. Several are good to begin with near the start point, to facilitate player agency in making meaningful decisions for their characters, but they are also readily suggested by the real-world features easily seen with Google Maps or Bing. These are the locations for major hubs, trade, home base, and continuing adventure.

Now the next bit requires imagining the rest of the world as resting in Schrödinger's box. I don't know of many GMs that enjoy this sort of free-wheeling, but bear with me. The idea is this. You create other interesting locations on a table, or in a list, on cards, whatever, and when you make checks for random encounters (we'll get to that eventually), these locations can come up, too. The characters are in a mucky radioactive swamp, check for an encounter, BAM! Manhole out in the middle of it. There doesn't need to be any more explanation than thermonuclear war and a century of entropy and we're playing a game here not mapping the world for a class. The manhole wasn't there until the dice were rolled and it came up, but it was there, lurking on that table, waiting to be rolled. Since no other group is playing this particular campaign, it doesn't matter where these outposts, bomb shelters, makeout points, donut shops or whatever show up--nothing has to be set in stone at all until after the metaphorical box is opened, and then, only with this particular group (for continuity's sake).

So we have a way to keep maps light (or unneeded) up front. Now, to reward players for exploring the world around them, what do we do? That will be the topic of my next post. Until next time, true believers.


* This old campaign blog is dead--I'm linking it for curiosity's sake only.

Aesthetics and Game Design

The aesthetics in ATOMIC start with the idea of DIY as evidenced by pulp magazines like Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Mechanics Illustrated, etc. Every home needs a workbench, and we'll teach you how to build your very own hovercar with this collection of instructional films for only $199.99/month for 6 months! Take our correspondence course and our certified instructors will give you personalized instruction in the art of seduction, satisfaction guaranteed or your money back (less shipping and handling)!

Popular Mechanics is not responsible for personal injury, property damage or decapitation.

We also find influences from men's pulp fiction magazines, like Man's Life, Action For Men, and True Adventures. These are filled with stories of outlandish macho adventure, of romance...wait, no, these were men's magazines, after all...of grateful women and their boobs, and blood-pumping battles against man and beast. And lustful women. Good times (it isn't a stretch, particularly in our world today, to imagine women's magazines of a similar niche with less needlepoint and more strapping lads in need of a rescue).

A question for philosophers and sages.

So how does this translate to something definable for ATOMIC? Well, it means that combat, while a fun and needed component in a post-apocalyptic setting, does not need to be the be-all and end-all of an RPG. When survival is at stake, being able to find or make what you need is a very important skill, and the DIY motif of the first category of magazines suggests an easy fit--crafting. The high adventure of the second group of mags reflects the importance of exploration, and, if you read the witty banter and dialogue, social skill.

These categories are notoriously poorly-defined in most tabletop games. Many RPGs for computer and console have a decent crafting system, though it tends to be focused around the game's central mechanic of combat. A select few even have decent social options, but those are still scripted and dependent on whatever options the programmers thought to put in ahead of time.

Crafting in most CRPGs. YMMV.

 
Where the realm of computer RPGs (CRPGs), particularly western CRPGs (part 2, part 3) truly shines is in encouraging exploration. A sandbox game is set in an open world where you are not artificially prevented from going (almost) anywhere and trying anything the game engine allows. Typically, there are tons of things to do that are not directly connected to the main story of the game, which makes exploring satisfying as its own reward.

So, we have one system that, while modeled terribly (if at all) in most tabletop systems, can be adapted and extrapolated from a multitude of examples in CRPG-land (crafting). We have one system that needs to be adapted from the rigidly (if expansive) predefined map of a sandbox video game level to a degree of abstraction that works well for a tabletop without being hinged on extensive/intensive mapping (exploration). We have one system that has traditionally been handled ad hoc at the table (largely by GM whim and fiat in the name of "role-playing") has existed a). with governing attributes but b). without an objective basis for determining success or failure given that it is often typically used as a mechanism for conflict (social skills).

Sounds like a challenge to me. Of course, I already have some ideas, maybe even a few answers. Comments and questions until then, however, are welcome.

Until next time, true believers.

War. War Never Changes.

This is the mantra, voiced by Ron Perlman, of the Fallout series of video games. It is profound, cautionary, and subversively humorous in juxtaposition with the cheery mug of the series' ever-present mascot, Vault Boy. The games themselves support the tagline, as again and again, it is made obvious that, despite living in a world almost completely destroyed by war, humanity still cannot seem to learn the lesson.

Fallout is a great setting for role-playing games, and for a long time, I was working on converting the spirit of those games into rules for a tabletop RPG. I actually did run a few sessions with a very early iteration of such rules, vaguely based on the Pathfinder system, with some Type IV thrown in for spice. However, as my design moved forward, I had a moment where suddenly I didn't feel empowered by the setting of Fallout as much as constrained by it.

I let my imagination drift for a bit, exploring the things I love about Fallout and figuring out the things I wanted different. To whit:

• I love the googie influence in architecture.
• I love the retro-future "atomic optimism" design sensibilities in everything from cars to mascots to ray guns.
• I love the dark humor, best illustrated by the cheerful Vault Boy and the silly pop culture references.
• I love the satirical elements aimed at imperial notions of capitalism, industrialism and militarism as indicated by strong in-game branding and the unfolding story of the War.
• I love the strong emphasis on exploration.
• In Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, I love the radio music, generally culled from the post-WW2 years, which also led me to discovering the music collated by CONELRAD--fun stuff.

• The branding proves problematic with a system that is so wildly divorced from the source IP that the rules may actually be marketable one day. If I designed my ruleset around Fallout's brands (Vault-Tec, Nuka-Cola, RobCo, etc) it would be like knowing I was sticking labels on jars that I'd just have to take off again later. Same goes for Vault Boy and distinctive naming conventions.
• The history of things to come in Fallout is a bit bland for me, and by all my calculations, seems to indicate that universe diverged from this one sometime in the first half of 1961. That means that a LOT of things from our real history cannot really be referenced without some serious retconning.
• I don't want to be confined to lore-established technologies, politics or geography. I want there to have been flying cars before the War, dammit!
• I don't want the whole world to be a radioactive desert. Radioactive, maybe. Desert, no.

These are the most important points, but there are, of course, more. Point being, Fallout is not where my game lives. Mine is in a universe that is, perhaps, next door to Fallout, but they never get together for holidays or anything. I'm still trying to come up with something suitably clever for a name, but its working name for the time being is ATOMIC.

Musings to come. Until next time, true believers.

On The Road

We had a short session of Vertigo the other night. I wasn't actually prepared for company that night, so we had to scramble a bit for food, which cut into our gaming time a bit, but we managed a couple hours.

It's interesting to note that, in two sessions of playing/playtesting, we have conducted and concluded two meetings with high-ups of the setting and gone on two...check that, three car rides. We also found ourselves twice in situations that could have easily erupted into combat, but we managed to schmooze our way through one and pay our way out of the other, so we still haven't run that particular gauntlet yet.

Travel is an often-overlooked (nearly always-overlooked, in games I have played and GMd) facet of the traveling group of heroes. In traditional stories about such groups, travel is not simply about getting from Point A to Point B, it's about how the characters interact during such travel. This is the heart of stories including literary classics like Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy, and Huckleberry Finn, movies like Stand By Me*, Dead Man (which is on Netflix Streaming), even the original Star Wars, and TV shows that include much travel, from Star Trek to Supernatural to almost every ensemble cast anime ever made. Travel time is when we really get to know the characters as people (using the term loosely in many cases). Travel is used to give us time to care about them.

Which brings us back to our two car rides so far. Now, I'm a fan of duking it out in a game as much as anybody, but a recent trend in tabletop mainstream has been focus on combat to exclusion of virtually everything else, and travel has never been handled well by the systems I have played with. In Vertigo, however, our little group of three--the hot-headed human anarchist, the mellow alien negotiator and me, the information-broker robot--has already had ample opportunity to develop and scheme in-character, courtesy of our employer's chauffered car. We're tiny cogs in an unimaginably complex political and economic machine, and we find ourselves trying to find our place in it...and maybe, one day, carve out a bigger piece of the machinery for ourselves. And we've been able to talk about it at length because of travel time.

My suspicion is that the atmosphere of being in a limousine fosters this sort of collaboration between our characters as well as us players (yes, the grammar is correct), maybe because we aren't having to imagine paying too close attention to what's outside the armorglass windows unless something unusual happens, but we also feel like we are objectively progressing to a next step, even if the driver is wandering us aimlessly through Amsterdam (at our behest).

It's an unexpected little bit of emergent play that I am going to keep an eye on, look for patterns, because two is a lousy sample set.

That's what I've got tonight. Until next time, true believers.



* With obligatory geek homage to Wil Wheaton

What's all this about tabletop RPGs, Part 2

Last post started this discussion, so you should read that before this one.

In the end, the rules (including the use of dice) are what really separate one RPG from another. Beyond the rules, all RPGs are played in essentially the same way:

Setting up

The players make characters, and the GM lays out a framework for an adventure. Everybody gathers in one place (a player's house or the back room of a gaming store are most common) and arranges themselves comfortably, usually in a circle of some sort to facilitate communication between everyone. Each player brings their gaming supplies-dice, paper, pens and pencils, books and munchies-and sets up their spot to their liking. The GM does likewise, though the GM usually has a visual screen of some kind-a trifold cardboard screen, an open book or the like-to keep the players from seeing too much information (including the surprises) about the adventure.

There is invariably a lot of talking, catching up, occasional gossip, joking and 'shop talk' as everyone is setting up. This takes longer, usually, than setting up, but since this is a social game, that's half the point. At some point, though, the GM draws everyone's attention to the game, and it begins.

The GM and players may recap what happened the last time they played, refreshing their memories of what has brought their characters to this point. Have you ever played a video game, then not gotten back to it for a week or two, and when you start it up again, you have no idea what's going on anymore? Same thing here, except you have everyone's memory working to catch up with the moment again.

This done, the GM then explains where the characters are (usually where they left off, like the cliffhanger of a movie or TV episode), reminds the players what they were doing or planning (in my case, frequently, the players have to remind me) and reestablishes the environment and situation. Remember, this is all done verbally, though many GMs like to use visual aids like photos or drawings to more quickly explain. Anybody the characters are talking to or interacting with (including fighting) are described again to refresh the mental image. These "non-player characters" are abbreviated as "NPCs". Quicker to say, quicker to type.

Playing the Game

Having thus established the scenario, the GM then turns things over to the players. They may ask questions to clarify their mental image, like, "Where is that beady-eyed guy standing now?" "What color is the carpeting in this room?" "Does the door look weak enough to bash in?" "Does the king seem amused by the fact that we're covered in mud?" The GM, who has the original mental image of the scene in mind, can answer these questions off the cuff. She acts as the eyes and ears for everything around the characters, allowing the players to experience it more vividly. Simple questions based on perception are answered truthfully.

It bears mentioning that certain questions will not be answered truthfully, or at all. These are questions the characters would have no way to know the answers to. "Is she going to try to pick my pocket?" "What is the combination of this lock?" "What will happen if I pull this lever?" "Does he really like me, or does he just want me to buy his merchandise?" Any questions regarding information the characters have not stumbled across, or questions about what an NPC is thinking can only be answered according to the characters' perceptions or, if all else fails, with a simple, "You don't know."

Now the game really begins. Armed with the information provided by the GM and what they see in their minds' eye, the players can have their characters take action. "I charge the dragon with my axe, yelling at the top of my lungs." "Can I climb this wall?" "I take a drink of ale and listen to the guys at the table behind me." Taking action can also include (very importantly) talking to NPCs. This is done "in-character," as if the player was really her character and the GM was really the NPC the character is talking to. Characters can negotiate, travel, fight, sleep, flirt, eat, research, anything people in that environment can do. Many characters can also do things most people could not do in that environment. They may cast magical spells, or use high-tech spy gadgets, or use psychic abilities, or walk a tightrope as thin as kite string (depending on the game, of course). They may fight (and kill) demons in righteous fury, they may travel between different worlds, they may become rulers or start their own martial arts academy.

RPGs are not limited in their choices the same way computer and video games are. Imagine a fighting game like Super Smash Bros Brawl where you could choose to knock out one of the blokes watching the match. How about a computer game like Baldur's Gate where you could build a house in the town of Nashkel? RPGs offer that kind of flexibility. The good GM pays attention to the interests the players show through the actions of their characters, so she can plan adventures that will appeal to them. Does the character want to plant an orchard? No reason he can't, unless the setting has nothing like trees. Does the character want to sneak into someone's mansion and make off with their silverware? She can go right ahead and try...unless nobody in the world has a mansion (or silverware). Players will know the ground rules for the setting, and they will understand what they can and cannot do according to the way that world is. Perhaps it is a world where there are no horses, but instead the people ride huge flightless birds. In this setting, a character could decide to take up riding-bird breeding, or have an idea to race them, or simply want to buy (or catch, or steal, or win) one with particularly bright feathers. The character's player wouldn't try to buy a horse, because there are none, but she is free to do (or at least try) what she will when it comes to the birds.

Combat

Most RPGs also have combat. Usually a lot of it. There are always monsters to fight, evils to vanquish, dragons to slay. Even in a game without monsters, there are usually terrorists, or Nazis, or gangs, or raiders, or poachers. There is always some foe, some conflict that is more than "man against nature", "man against himself" or "man against God." Without such conflict, RPGs would be little more than playing House, and, as a game, that's no fun. The characters (and, vicariously, their players) need to feel that they are making a difference, that they are heroes, and that the world is the better because they do their derring-do.

Combat can be anything from the finesse of a rapier duel to the messy splash of bullets from a machine gun to the flash and roar of terrible magics. Undead are turned or destroyed by faith (and, when that fails, bashed to flinders), dragons are slain in protection of innocent damsels, armies are decimated and always, always, there is something waiting around the proverbial corner to test its ability against the might of the characters. Some villains never learn, neh?

Sometimes, the characters must only protect themselves from a bunch of hooligans. Other times, they fight to protect their homes or loved ones from an invading army. And then there are the times when Evil is afoot, the world (or at least some significant portion of it) is in jeopardy, and the characters are the only ones who can stop it.

Rewards

The characters' rewards for heroing vary, from the simple gratitude of homeless people (hopefully not homeless due to the characters' actions) to wealth, status and power within the game's setting. Their rewards tend to be the kinds of things we wish we could get in this world. Piles of gold, tracts of land, titles of nobility, membership to an exclusive (game-world) club, adoration of fans, and the like. Many times, better weapons for the fight against evil make the most valued treasure of all. After all, who knows when the next villain is going to start mucking things up?

There are also less tangible rewards for the characters. Experience breeds competence, and characters may grow stronger, faster, smarter, more accurate and more knowledgeable. They may acquire special powers or associations with important organizations in the game world. There is always a system of improvement in RPGs, however, because if the character cannot develop and grow, that character will be no fun to play for very long.

Which brings us nicely to the other major difference between RPGs and computer, video or other kinds of games. RPGs are open-ended, not only in terms of choices that can be made, but also in terms of length. You do not "win" in an RPG, not in the classical sense. It is not the players versus the GM, nor is it a competition between players. As a story being written ad-lib, the end of one adventure can (and usually does) lead into the beginning of the next. Just like life, the story doesn't end when one obstacle is overcome-there are always more obstacles to face.

What this means is that RPGs are not usually games played in a single evening and then forgotten. It is typical for a group of friends to meet once a week, once a month, or more or less often, over the course of months or even years as they play out the adventures of their characters. Many players (and GMs) even play two or more separate storylines at the same time, perhaps meeting for one particular game every Monday night, another every third Saturday and yet a third on whatever night everyone can manage to get together, whenever that is. Players and GMs both may belong to different gaming groups, which expands the social aspect of the game even more.

In the end, there is usually not a set point at which any RPG can be considered "over". If a particular group of adventurers achieve goals that remove them from adventuring life, or if a party of heroes is wiped out by a particularly nasty encounter, another group of adventurers with different dreams and goals can be created and thrust into all-new adventures, whether in the same setting, or a different one entirely.

What is the Point?

Like any hobby, the point of an RPG is simple: to have fun. They are called role-playing games for a reason, after all. RPGs are a good way for friends to get together, share each other's company and participate in an activity that promotes cooperation, creative and logical thinking, problem-solving and social interaction. The imagination is unfettered, there is a (sometimes, much-needed) break from the difficulties of real life, and it is a chance to refresh and recharge.

It is also a way to create legends, stories the players and GMs will tell and retell with fond memory for years to come. The reason for such romanticism is that, in an RPG, characters (and, vicariously, their players) can make a real, measurable difference in the world. I mean, how often does one of us poor schmucks get to save the world, or even save the day? Players of RPGs come away from the gaming table feeling a sense of accomplishment, and even this can be elusive in our real lives.

Role-playing games are a self-affirming activity. Your decisions in the game have consequences on your character, and you get to see the relation of cause and effect. You see what decisions were poor ones, but more importantly, you also see what decisions were good ones. This helps bolster self-confidence and makes a person feel relevant. It helps develop social and communication skills (after all, you can't play without talking to other people) and promotes reading (anyone who cannot or does not read will find navigating rules to be pretty sodding difficult, at best). It encourages creative problem-solving and also offers the chance to really blow off steam.

Because sometimes, the dragons just need to be taken down.

Until next time, true believers!

What's all this about tabletop RPGs?

I initially was working on a post where I was going to talk a little about a project I'm working on, but as I was reading over something I linked from my old Angelfire site, I realized it may be a good idea to put it here as a permanent reference. As permanent as anything in the Cloud, anyway. So, here goes:

What are Role-Playing Games?

Of all the role-playing resources I have seen online, I have yet to see anything that begins at the ground level, something for those curious about gaming who have no knowledge. Time to rectify that.

Games We Know

Action games are the ones we drooled over as kids. Hungry, Hungry Hippo comes immediately to mind, as do Ants in the Pants, Perfection, Matchbox car race sets, even that robot boxing game where a KO is achieved by literally knocking your opponent's head off (when I was a kid, my Holy Grail of this type of game was called Colossal Fossil Fight, something of a cross between that robot game and Hungry, Hungry Hippos, but with dinosaurs. Never did get my hands on one. Ah. Well.). These games combine board games with toys, and I never knew a kid who always played those games the way they were "supposed" to be played.

We are all familiar with board games, old favorites ranging from Candyland, Chutes & Ladders and Sorry! to Clue, Monopoly, Scrabble and Risk to classics like backgammon, Go and chess. Card games are close relatives. These games have certain things in common. They are meant to be played by at least two people, they have an established field of play (the board), they incorporate avatars (the playing pieces), they are based on alternating (or cycling) turns, and there are defined rules regarding how to advance and, ultimately, what constitutes victory. From these parameters, the games themselves vary wildly in theme, scope, intellectual level and time required to play. Some use dice to determine the number of spaces a player may move her avatar, others add cards for random effects, some use play money or scorecards in order to track progress.

Party games are games like Pictionary, Outburst!, You Don't Know JACK and the like. These games emphasize socializing, meant to be played and enjoyed by a group. They occasionally include a board and avatars, but more usually they use props like paper and pencil, a box of cards, things like that. They often use a timed-contest format instead of turns, where one person, pair or group competes against another to see who can finish first. Sometimes, too, they use a vaguely turn-based system where the winner of one round becomes the focal point of the next (like in charades). Most emphasize talent (or lack of it) is some arena-knowledge of obscure facts, drawing ability, even music (impromptu games of Name That Tune come to mind). The fun comes from the social aspects of the gathering more than tactical or strategic maneuvering.

Action games, board games and party games all have one thing in common. They are competitive. Each of these games has rules determining what constitutes victory. Winning the game ends it, so by default, there are also rules determining what constitutes finishing the game. This sets the stage for an important counterpoint later, so keep it in mind.

Finally, there are games that don't really fall into the above categories. These are games that are purely social in nature, with no defined goal beyond having a good time with friends. Karaoke and truth-or-dare kinds of games fall here. Another kind that we can all identify with is likely the kind we are all the most separated from at this point in our lives.

Make-Believe

When we were children, the first kind of game we played was make-believe. It usually involved a lot of running around, hiding, screaming and laughter. We chased each other in games of tag, hunted during hide-and-seek, played as cowboys and cops and bandits and monsters. We shot each other with invisible bullets and rays, usually ending in a shouting match as to whether we hit or not. We saved the world and robbed the bank and came home at the end of the day, scuffed, exhausted and exhilarated.

There were quieter times, too, when we took on the roles of mommies and daddies, dressing up, having pretend lunch or tea. We would pretend at things that, later in life, would become pedestrian and ordinary. We shopped, and cooked, making our own decisions in ways we wanted to, and therein lay the fun.

Make-believe was a rich ground for us. We came up with impossible ideas, and occasionally even attempted some of them. Most didn't work, but that never stifled us. We dreamed all new disasters, building forts and making peculiar use of discarded bike parts and used appliances.

Video Games

Many of us, and many of our children, have found a new way to make-believe in video games. We take on the role of the hero who is going to save the day, no matter how many times we need to reload to do it. We explore worlds that are becoming more complex, but never bigger than, most of our old make-believe worlds ever were. We can, in video games, swing a mighty axe and watch the blood spray, we can command massive robotic machinery to do our bidding, we can fly in military aircraft over hostile territory or we can alter reality through the use of magic. It's full of color and sound effects, dramatic music and comic-book action rendered in real time.

On the down side, video gaming, even competitive head-to-head games in the spirit of Street Fighter or Call of Duty, is an isolating, sedentary activity. In order to play, we must be in front of our monitor or TV, our bodies braced to get the best grip on the controller, and our attention is devoted, not to the person playing against us, but to the screen. Jibes and taunts may abound, but this is interaction at its basest level. Our hands play, our eyes play, we even get excited, but the lack of social aspect makes it nothing more than two people in the same room...and most of the time, it is only one person in the room to begin with.

Role-Playing Games

Role-playing games (RPGs) are most closely related to the way we all used to make-believe. Though there are many who enjoy live-action role-playing games (LARPs), most of us don't have the resources (or inclination, in some cases) to take it as far as costuming and going into someone's backyard to play-act out battles with the bad guys. This is where normal role-players diverge from the run-around-until-you're-exhausted kind of make-believe.

To put it simply, role-playing is about making a story. Most of the people in a gaming group make up characters for the story, the people the story revolves around. One person has a different responsibility. This person is the game's referee (called a referee or game master, or GM, in most games, a Dungeon Master, or DM, in Dungeons & Dragons). His or her responsibility is to set not only the stage, but the general plot of the story. She decides what possibilities for adventures are there for the characters to explore, figures out who or what awaits them as obstacles to achieving their goals, acts the parts of everyone and everything that is not the other players' characters (PCs) and is the game's ultimate referee.

In order to keep things from devolving into arguments about who is "dead" like happened so many times when we were kids, each RPG has its own set of rules. These rules come in books, and they are rules both the players and the GM must abide by in the sake of fairness and continuity. How hard is it to leap over a 20-foot gorge? Can a character buy a lightsabre? Did the dragon's fiery breath vaporize the character or just singe his clothes? RPGs have rules to cover these questions...and ideally, have enough internal logic and consistency that pretty much any question that could be asked regarding the imaginary world of the game could be answered.

Most RPGs also incorporate the use of dice. Dice don't just come with six sides, like the ones you use for Monopoly or Yahtzee. They come with 4, 8, 10, 20, even 30 and 100 sides. Dice are a way of assigning probability to actions (did the scorpion inject enough venom to kill my character, or only enough to make him ill?) and adding a random factor (even the world's greatest Olympic athlete has off-days and occasionally a 60-year-old woman can lift a car off some trapped berk). They also prevent GM favoritism, as the dice fall how they fall, and they determine what rules apply.



Part 2 in the next post.

Guess who?

My players should easily recognize this personality. He's back!

Until next time, true believers.

Back in the Saddle

The thing about writing a blog is, you know, actually doing it. In the bustle of a day, some things have to give, and for me, that is often writing. Not writing, maybe, but writing in a blog. So, like any other habit, it takes some time to knock the rust off and get things greased up* again.

I have been drawing in a large sketch pad (11x16? I think. Maybe a bit larger? It's not right here) lately, which is too big for my flatbed scanner and photos I take are over- or under-exposed and usually blurry anyway. I may have to finagle some better positioning for the scanner, and when I do, I'll put some lo-res stuff up. Been drawing a lot. Much of it is junk, knocking the rust off those skills, too, but there are some bits I don't mind the world at large seeing. In related news, my wrists are healing well, but I still can't shake the feeling that something is wrong rather than right. It isn't, of course, it's just that 15 years is a long time to live with pain and discomfort, and it just felt normal. Now that it's gone, everything seems weird. Hopefully it won't take long for that to pass, you know, like five, ten years.

This afternoon saw me sorting, prepping and freezing strawberries we got from a roadside stand and some ginormous blackberries. And, of course, set some to macerating for prompter consumption. Of course, mine isn't complicated, just good old-fashioned sugar. The others were washed, dried on a paper towel for an hour or so and put in the freezer on baking sheets. Before bed, I'll double-bag them and they'll be ready for cooking, baking or smoothies. Probably mostly smoothies, though.

In other news, I've discovered Pandora recently, and find I am a fan of a number of metal bands that have female leads. Halestorm was my gateway drug (Lzzy Hale can do no wrong), but she, via Pandora, led me to others like Hydrogyn and Benedictum. It's easy to find songs on YouTube, so knock yourselves out.

Anything else tonight? Hm. Doesn't appear to be. Until next time, true believers!

* Sorry, couldn't help myself!