The Black Campbell

Today’s prompt has been jamming me up a bit. How to address Promise /prŏm′ĭs/, which is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as a noun that is 1. A declaration assuring that one will or will not do something; a vow, 2. Indication of something favorable to come; expectation, “a promise of spring in the air.”, 3. Indication of future excellence or success, “a player of great promise.” I think I’m going to focus on the second definition.

One of the greatest feelings is that expectation, that excitement that comes with a new purchase or gift. Is it going to be awesome? Man, I hope this will be awesome! Then you open the wrapping and get into it. Every roleplaying game I’ve bought brings that same moment of antici…pation. There are a few that have seriously disappointed; some have been much better than I hoped. There are a few that the layout and artwork have really sold the promise of an experience. Others, it was the franchise they were modeling.

Back in the ‘80s, that antediluvian era of gaming, the disappointments were more frequent than the promise delivered. I remember being sold on the game Universe due to the tremendous star map that was included. The system..? Meh. After playing D&D, I was hopeful for Top Secret and Gangbusters — only to be disappointed that the mechanics couldn’t capture the flavor of spy-fi. James Bond’s art and presentation were decently professional for the era, with excellent graphics for the cars and guns, and the system caught the feel of the movies — it was a game so good, we used it for decades. Likewise, the rules-lite d6 system of Star Wars pushed the feel of the movies that the very pretty, but ultimately less effective d20 version of the 2000s — a disappointment.

So what recent games have promised a lot and delivered? 

Probably the most delightful surprise was the Alien and Blade Runner games. The layout and artwork is beautiful — Free League excels at the game book as table art piece. I was surprised to find that the rule-lite approach worked well for the sci-fi horror genre, particularly the fear aspect that is hard for a lot of gamers to allow themselves to roll into. The improved die mechanic of Blade Runner (also used in Twilight: 2000) maintained the rule-lite flavor of Alien, but allowed the joy of rolling different types of math rocks. Another delight was the recent Legend in the Mist, which is getting accolades for a reason. In addition to being gorgeous, with high production values for the physical product, the system is rules-lite and dispensed with a lot of the math and rules limitations that Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder place on a GM or player. The sheer volume of rules is enough that I have avoided running D&D for a long time. LitM, on the other hand, spends a lot of its page count providing examples of adversaries, events, and challenges that make running a quick session a simple matter of finding something in the vein of what you wanted to run and stringing them together with only a few tweaks. I was running games off of the PDFs with no issues and very little prep time. There’s a wealth of player options that are never overwhelming, but provide guidance to making a character quickly and tailored well to what you want to play. The comic book style primer to playing is based on the create-your-own-story style of book and works well for getting the basics fast.

There have been a lot of games I’ve bought that have not disappointed, this is the first in a long time that genuinely felt like it was worth every penny. It was enough I bought their City in Mist — another game where the presentation is good, the system is loose enough to do what you want…but it’s not quite as pretty as LitM.

The Kickstarter for the Cowboy Bebop RPG was very promising. They had obviously leaned into the music as a theme for the game — too much, I think. The character attributes are based on different musical styles, and while they can be serviceable, there’s a heavy learning curve that was a turn off. When the base mechanic is something to overcome — promise not fulfilled. Similarly, the look of John Carter of Mars that Modiphius put out a few years back looked great. My game group was one of the playtesters on the early rules and the writing was so execrable as to make the base mechanics impenetrable. It was bad enough I avoided 2d20 for a long time. After a few sessions of my friend running Fallout, I gave 2d20 another chance for a Star Trek campaign. The layout and writing, again, worked against the player and the index was utterly useless; not good. The second edition has cleaned much of the issues, the artwork has improved, and the general presentation of the new products is excellent. 2e of the game has rehabilitated it for me.

Probably the most disappointing example of beautiful presentation brought down by the ruleset is Jovian Chronicles an anime-inspired hardish-science RPG by Dream Pod 9 that hit at the end of the ‘80s. The spaceship designs are gorgeous enough they did artbooks of them. The background material is plentiful and there is a lot of room for playing in their universe. The overarching meta-story I thought was potentially restrictive unless a GM ignored some of it, and the rules set was a hot mess. I’ve wanted to run JC for decades, but I haven’t made the jump to a more workable system.

Desire is a fantastic motivator for a character. Millennia of fights, wars, songs, inventions, most of human civilization was birthed by some guy wanting to impress a woman, or the desire to improve your station, bank account, or have your name sung for all of time. Desire, the Buddha tells us, is also a trap; wanting is what causes suffering, and it is only be letting go of those things that we hold dear that we can get off the wheel of reincarnation and suffering.

The ability to craft an excellent character around this idea, and to form good adventures that use this to challenge and reward the character, is central to a good story. Using the new Legend in the Mist mechanics, here’s a good example of a character with a lot of talent (perhaps overly optimized for his job), but with a ton of immediately accessible flaws and desires (quests in LitM terms). Trogdor Trollmorder is a young man (15-16 for the 800s Viking campaign we’re running) who was found by his adopted father Alfgeir during a raid years ago. There are all sorts of boastful stories that the young man tells about himself, mostly based on the limited story of how he was found at the base of a ruin stone in Saxon territory that mentioned a dragon. The boy grew up wanted to be accepted by his new tribe, and to be the strongest and best fighter who goes to become a hero, while still not really knowing who he is.

Trogdor’s desire to be the strongest has worked in his favor a few times, but also causes him to overestimate his abilities. (The character was nearly killed in the first fight.) While he has an adopted family that have cared for him, he still wants more. His origin story makes him think he might be something special, and I’ve dropped hint that might be true…but it could also be a lot of crap. These wants coupled with a few excellent flaws — his “might makes right” and “fist-shaped problems” frequently lead him to act rashly and violently where another approach might be in order. His boasting and need to prove himself show a highly insecure mind behind the very talented body.

In a fight, Trogdor is deadly — frequently gaining bonuses to his combat rolls that equal that of his ship captain, who has a crew he can call on for a sizable bump in power. His being a braggart often works because he’s been able to back it up — so far. It’s a character where the GM can drop carrots for the character to follow, then hit him with a bigger stick. Will his desires lead him to be a leader, perhaps a ruler? Or will his desires and “draconic ancestry” lead him to be avaricious and violent (perhaps to one day become a dragon his friends will have to destroy?)

It’s a fairly extreme version of desire. A less grandiose version of this problem, funnily, shows in another character by the same player. LT Stephen Archer started our Star Trek Adventures campaign as a fresh from the academy helmsman — the sort of seat of the pants flyer that’s common for the hot shot pilot theme. He was built with a few Values that defined him in the Kirk mould: adventurous, loyal, and a bit randy.

Some of those values have stuck and gotten strong over the campaign: this is Archer as of “season 6” — only six years into his career and already ops officer and on the cusp of a possible promotion to lieutenant commander. He’s showed himself to be an exemplary pilot, a brave officer and leader, but headstrong and driven by his family’s legacy to live up to the Archer name. He’s also shown a repeated ability to get himself into trouble with his philandering. By this time, he’s married to an Orion girl, but has still followed the “what happens in space, stays in space” mindset. He has a tendency to fall in love easily, and once the relationships are done, he blithely continues on. He had a crush on his captain, and through a series of emotionally charged missions, finally wore her down. then screwed it up with yet another fling with his best friend’s sister (and this is about to bite him in the butt, hard.) 

He’s a character that the womanizing and desire to be the best has frequently led him to make bad judgment calls, some of which have worked out, some — not so much. But he’s a fun character to build character beats for in our game. 

A trend we see in the entertainment industry – from books to TV to movies — is what I’ll call narrative bloat. It’s especially bad with writer/director/producers in movies, but equally bad in books that become serials — the Patrick O’Brians, Robert Jordans and George R.R. Martins. In TV, we see this strongly in series that have been going for decades — the Law & Order serials are a perfect example of this. I know, you love the world-building and the characters and you don’t want the journey to end, but that’s kind of the point to a story. The ending.

This ties into another staggeringly lazy, dated bit of writing: the mystery box. From the start with The X-Files, running through various shows and movies — usually the JJ Abrams crowd of writers — TV and movies have given us fantastic first acts with this trick. Introduce a mystery: who is the smoking man? What is this secret organization? What is happening on the island? Who is Rey? What’s in the trunk of the car in Repo Men (to get old school). It’s a great hook that pulls the viewer or reader in…but eventually, the box needs opened. If you haven’t planned for that — who are the Final Five Cylons in Battlestar Galactica — you will eventually have to wedge the answer into whatever corner you’ve painted yourself in, because you didn’t bother to answer the question for yourself. In other words — there’s no point.

A good example of making the mystery box work (while still having to dance around issues of production) was Babylon 5. Who was Morden? We find out. Who are the Vorlons (and by extension the Shadows)? What do the Shadows (and by extension the Vorlons) want? What happened to President Santiago? Who is Sinclair and why did the Mimbari end their war against the humans? All get answered and with a few hiccups (the three that are one, for instance), they get answered satisfactorily because the answer was, at least in broad strokes, known.

So, how does this apply to running a game campaign? If you’re going to have a mystery box (and it’s an excellent way to get buy-in), you have to broadly know what the endpoint is. You should have a few waypoints that give hints and clues, and be ready for the characters to figure it out before the big reveal. There’s nothing wrong with them figuring it out early. This is where “red herrings” are useful — let them press forward to discovering the location of the treasure, or the identity of the person they’re chasing, or uncover the secret cult that’s been committing unspeakable horrors — then throw a plausible alternative to throw them off course for a session or two. But don’t suddenly change “what’s in the box”, because they got there before you wanted them to. If they get there early, let them find the treasure, perpetrator, secret early…when they’re probably not ready for the big bad guy. Hit them harder than you intended, but give them room to escape, succeed with some major consequence (the hostage dies, the bomb goes off, whatever…), or let them win. The cheap shot is always “yes, but who was pulling their strings” in the case of discovering the identity of the big bad.

There’s a great line in Clerks 2, where the ever-assholish Randall Graves says, “Those hobbit movies were boring. Three movies about walking to a fucking volcano…” Again, yes — colossal and rich worldbuilding, great characters and battle scenes — and while I enjoyed them…three movies about walking to a fucking volcano.

What you don’t want in your game is to lose sight of the point. Maybe you have several side quests and red herrings because it stretches out the fun and the player, inevitably wander off course because the simple barmaid character caught their eye and they are convinced there’s something more there than there is, or they get the plot wrong. But unless you want to scrap your big reveal, big bad, whateveter (and there’s nothing wrong with this), you may have to come up with another denouement for your players. Alternately, much like the writers of shows with a mystery box, you retcon the hell out of your original plans to fit with where the players decided to wander. 

From the Ron Swanson Pyramid of Greatness, we get the following advice: “Intensity: Give 100% 110% is impossible. Only idiots recommend that.” or as a motorcycle buddy of mine likes to say, “Twist the throttle and send it…” (Of course, I don’t think he has a single joint that isn’t mechanical now.) Certain types of people don’t just do; they do with abandon, with our day’s word: intensity.

There are a bunch of these characters in fiction, people who feel too much, who are constantly restless or reckless, perfectionists, who have trouble setting boundaries or dangerously self-sacrificing. They are the extreme opposite of yesterday’s “composure.” We tend to see a lot of the adrenaline junkies in the movies and a bunch of them are played by Tom Cruise. Be it CPT Pete “Maverick” Mitchel, who pushes himself and his aircraft to the edge; or Ethan Hunt, who’s idea of relaxation is free climbing mesas in Arizona and can’t move from place to place except at a full-out sprint — these are characters that typify on-screen intensity. There’s Pitch Black’s Riddick, where Vin Diesel managed to combine intensity and composure (intensely), at the time. Kinda like Batman — a barrage of violence wrapped in quiet, growly menace.

There’s the ones looking for the “big life” — Jay Gatsby looking to live life to the fullest, no matter the cost; James Bond’s caviar and fine wines, martinis and beautiful women for dinner and death for breakfast.

There’s the intense empaths — the people who can’t help but empathize with even the worst life has to offer, in the case of Will Graham — the FBI profiler from Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon. The same book that gave us another extreme personality, Hannibal Lektor, the cannibal psychologist and killer who preyed on victims that offended his highly honed sense of aesthetics. He is the antithesis to Graham — intellectual but unempathetic. Like the android David in Prometheus, he understands human emotions, although he does not feel them himself. (Lektor becomes much more nuanced over the course of Harris’ works and the movies based on him.)

The actress Gene Tierney once quipped, “I approached everything, my job, my family, my romances, with intensity.” A good example of what this looks like is a character from our Star Trek Adventures game: LT Stephen Archer is a descendent of the famed Starfleet captain and former Federation president. (We posited he married late.) His uncles, father, grandfather, aunt, brother — all of them were Starfleet, and Archer feels a real weight of this legacy. He was also brought up by his mother who indulged him in a lot. As a result, he is a big personality in almost every way. He takes to people quickly, wins them over with his enthusiasm, and takes ridiculous chance not just to prove he’s the best at whatever — but for the sheer thrill of living. He’s got the Han Solo/Maverick reckless pilot thing down pat. He volunteers for missions that he’s not really suited to. He has intense romances with women, but when they’re over — they’re done. Everything on the boy is turned up to 110%.

Famously, there was a scene cut from Office Space, the dark comedy abut office life in the mid-1990s, where after having his Porsche 911 towed from a handicap spot, the seemingly emotionless manager Bill Lumberg had a full-on raging melt down. Apparently, the outburst was so convincingly played by Gary Cole (a massively under-rated actor), that the cast and crew were “uncomfortable” watching it play out. Cole and director/writer Mike Judge (Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill) agreed to cut it because it undercut the rest of Lumberg’s scenes by humanizing him. The best villain don’t lose their temper in a fit of childish rage (Kylo Ren, for instance), but are superbly calm, confident, in control. Even when the chips are down and the hero has them boxed in, they keep their cool. 

Think of the best screen villains — they often fit this mould. Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Darth Vader in Star Wars, Michael Myers in Halloween, Anton Chigur in No Country for Old Men, Agent Smith in The Matrix all were the epitome of composed menace. While Myers and Vader had the added benefit of a mask to hide facial expressions, their physical actions were also unhurried and controlled. An exception might be the superbly unstable Stansfield from Leon or The Professional, again played by Gary Oldman with glacial calm that would flip to explosive outbursts that just as swiftly disappeared. This is the reason why the Terminators were so terrifying, that inhuman lack of emotion; it was the same with the cold logic of HA

L-9000 — there’s nothing there to empathize with, to negotiate with. I would suggest that one of the undersung villains in film history is Michael Fassbender’s David from Prometheus. Like the other mechanical menaces, he’s not a person, although his can emulate one. His emotional facsimile is, in some ways, even worse — he seems to have emotions, however subdued or nascent, but if you look at the character’s actions throughout the movie (and ignore Covenant) he’s still following the directives set down for him.

The ice-cold villain is a great foil for characters, especially the “face” — the charisma guy or gal that manipulated the mooks and henchmen with ease. Not beign able to get under someone’s skin tends to…well, get under your skin. It makes them seem like they have the upper hand, even when they don’t. You might even use that composure to do a “counterattack” on the characters, shaking them up.

What might this look like for a character? Using the speedy character creation of Outgunned Adventure, I put together Archibald “Nakuru” Steele. I envision him for the late 1920s — a young run-away who took to the sea, only to get conscripted into the British army in Africa to fight the Germans on the lakes along Kenya and Tanzania, he probably served in the Gallipoli campaign and possibly toward the end in France. He’s since returned to Africa as a big game guide and hunter.

Being pulled into the Great War in his mid-teens, he’s seen a lot of death and horrors. Hunting big game means keeping your wits and composure about you; animals can sense fear. Between hunts, he finds things to do with his time — if this were a Call of Chthulu game, he would most likely get drawn into the search for eldritch horrors, maybe he leads an expedition that finds the Hollow Earth, or he helps solve crimes in European capitals. Whatever the challenge, however, Steele brings a cold resolve, an implacable demeanor, and a steady mind that puts him in a position of leadership. He is the calm in the storm and can use that to steady his companions. He’s an attractive man, but ultimately, one meant to be alone, as the same emotional reserve eventually becomes emotional detachment that breaks relationships. But when you need him, he’s there.

Sometimes, the threat an adventurer faces isn’t just injury — it’s fatigue, it’s disease, it’s mental trauma, or something more spiritual. Game systems have been trying to model this since the start of roleplaying games, sometimes badly, sometimes well. So which ones do the best job from a standpoint of game mechanics and/or narrative play?

Dungeons & Dragons first dealt with this in the form of the “constitution check”. Did you drink too much? Was the forced march tiring? How about that climb up the wall to the castle? Constitution check: you pass, you’re all good; you fail, you suffer a penalty to your ability or in later editions, skill check, later still the disadvantage.

In the rules-lite Outgunned!, a character who is trekking through the jungle muck, bitten by mosquitos would do an Brawn+Endure test. Set the difficulty — let’s say a “basic” requiring a single match. Our scoundrel, John McCray, from earlier in the RPGaDay, has a Brawn 2 and Endure 1 — he’s a city boy, not an action archeologist. He rolls no successes! He takes a point of Grit (all characters have 12), but the GM decides that the heat, humidity, the muck, the stings add up to the condition “You Look Tired”, which takes a die off for the next tests until he can camp down and get some rest. The condition wasn’t necessary. He could just have lost Grit, the equivalent of hit points, but it’s not so much he’s hurt, as everything had just come together to wear him down.

This use of damage in point form and/or some kind of injury is something we see in Star Trek Adventures. Here, the main damage track is “stress”, which can be physical, social, mental, etc. In physical combat, stress is used to avoid injury. Example: Lt. Idrani is in a knock-down fight with a Nausicaan thug. The Nausicaan throws a punch at Idrani with his Daring of 11+ his Security 5 (focus in hand-to-hand) and needs two successes. He needs under 16 and gets a 5 and a 10 on 2d20 — the 10 is a success, but the 5 is under his security and due to the focus, he gets two successes, gaining a threat he throws to increase his punch severity. The fight’s been going on for a while and Idrani’s stress track of 13 is already at 8 — this would make it 10. Instead of taking the stress, he decides to take the injury trait Battered 2. The trait counts against his fighting tests, but he’ll be able to stay in the fight longer.

It’s similar for a mental attack. The monster of the week attempts to invade Captain Kerr’s mind. It’s an opposed test, with Kerr’s Control of 9+ her Command 4, a 13 is needed. The creature rolls two successes to control her mind. Kerr rolls a 14 and 8: one success. The creature can take her over, or she can take 2 stress to resist.

In Blade Runner, characters have health for physical injuries, and resolve for mental ones that are based on their physical and mental attributes. Detective Tomas D’Angelo has a health of 7, a resolve of 5. In a struggle with a perp, D’Angelo gets stabbed — ordinarily, that’s 1 off his health for the weapon, but BR uses a success-based system and the bad guys got two successes on his attack: that 2 health gone, but it allows a critical injury at a d8. The baddie rolls a 2 on the critical piercing table: he’s been stabbed through the hand and has disadvantage to hand-to-hand and firearms tests. Similarly, experiencing the trauma of the injury does him a 1 resolve. If he’s already suffered trauma — say, the loss of another cop — he might have to roll on the critical stress effect table.

In Alien, as stress builds up, the character gets an additional die to their roll (of a different color or rolled separately) — a 1 on any of the stress die can lead to panic effects.

In Legend in the Mist, conditions are tracked based on what they do. Trogdor is faced with his first real challenge, a troll! The giant creature roars at the party with its booming voice, and it is big and strong — +2 to its roll. Trogdor’s soldier and fiery disposition seem to fit the bill, knocking that back to 0. Trogdor rolls a 7: he does not flee, but does take a intimidated 2, which will work against him in the fight. During the fray, he biffs one of his rolls against the troll swinging a small tree at him and takes battered 4. Heroes can only take 5 before they are taken out…if this fight doesn’t get done soon, Trogdor is mince meat.

There are a lot of ways to model endurance — be it physically pushing through cold and damp, or resisting mental stressors like interrogation. Most are some form of mechanical disadvantage to any tests the hero tries, or a form of damage that might take them out of action. Some model this a bit better than others — having some kind of detriment given to the character that isn’t necessarily life threatening (you’re out of hit points!), but do make their lot harder to push through.

Drifting off the character orientation of RPGaDay this year for day 14’s prompt of regard. Here I’m going to go with the transitive verb form of “to show respect or consideration for; to hold in high esteem”. There’s a plethora of games out there, and much more so now that Backerkit/Kickstarter is a thing. So, here’s a few game systems or settings that I hold in high regard.

The first and oldest of the bunch is a game that we played the hell out of from its introduction in 1983 up until about 2008. I suspect I lost the taste for it after my former career: James Bond: 007 by Victory Games. Gerard Klug and tam developed a game that was unlike anything else at the time. You had d20 (in this case Top Secret), you had a few oddballs like Traveller and Universe, but JB:007 was different — d100 with difficulty levels on a 1/2 to 10 scale that tied into the combo of your attributes and skill. It had a unique quality result system that meant when you rolled well, you saw it in terms of escaping in a chase, damage in a fight. The gear was different in stats in a way that would probably seem overly specific to folks these days, but really leaned into the product placement flavor of the movies. It was a huge success, only killed off by the licensing fights that happened after License to Kill. 

It was flexible enough I was able to tack on cybernetic rules for cyberpunk campaigns, aliens for a Stargate campaign, and it was the intro game for several gamers I played with in the ‘90s. By far, the game I still think the most fondly of, even though I think a few do it better, now.

A good example of doing it better is Outgunned!, the “sequel” game, if you will, to Broken Compass. Very rules-lite, it works on a Yahtzee like system where to do matches, with the number of dice based on your attribute and skill. Gear is a bit less generic than it was in Broken Compass, with some attempt to get some of the uniqueness to weapons and vehicles that JB:007 had. I did an expansion on some of those rules here. Very quick and easy to play, it’s an excellent pick-up system, and works fine for longer campaigns. I used it to teach a bunch of students at high school this past year roleplaying games. It is easily customizable for any genre, and they do “Action Flick” books that let you do just that. There’s Outgunned Adventure, which returns to the Broken Compass pulp-action. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Another oldie that has just as fond memories is Space: 1889 by GDW. I got this on a whim back at its launch in 1989 and was hooked. It’s probably the reason I took a degree in history (with a specialty in British and Italian Imperialism). The setting was innovative and fun, and spawned a host of copycats like Castle Falkenstein, and keeps being resurrected by different companies. (There was/is a recent Kickstarter that added unnecessary fantasy races — pass!) The rules system, however, was a hot mess — essentially bolted onto the wargame companion Cloudships & Gunboats.

The era is perfect for all sorts of play: Westerns, Meija Japanese samurai, space travel on Mars, zeppelins, dinosaurs on Venus. We played the hell out of this one for over a decade, and even ported it over to Castle Falkenstein (with heavily modified combat rules.) It got displaced for a while by Hollow Earth Expedition, but I ran a short campaign using Broken Compass rules for the daughter and hooked her on the steampunk. There’s a reason this one is held in high regard by many; it’s the grand-daddy of Victorian sci-fi games.

One of the game systems that knocked off my old favorites was Margaret Weiss Productions’ Cortex. Original crafted for an RPG based on her novels, it caught me when it came out after the release of Serenity. I liked the system — just enough crunch to be interesting, just lite enough to learn and play quickly. The next iteration for Battlestar Galactica is still one of the best pay and GM experiences I’ve had for a system. They also used it for Supernatural, then it got “Fate-ified” by folks for Leverage and the tragically short-lived Marvel Superheroes. I hated the way it worked for the former; loved the way it worked for the latter…but it still wasn’t Cortex. Later attempts to revive the game leaned into the last version of the game system. I’m still considering it for the engine of my white elephant camapign — the one that continues to elude me — Jovian Chronicles, by Dream Pod 9: an absolutely rich universe that reminds me of the Expanse, before The Expanse was a thing.

My latest acquisition that has made an impression is Legend in the Mist. From the excellent artwork, to the innovative craft-your-own-story comic to teach the rules, to the very rules-lite system, LitM is very easy to run, quick to play for, and is extremely flexible. You could use it, with almost no work, to run any time of fantasy game. They even did a small booklet showing how to port D&D 5e characters and creatures over. I’m using this for our current 800s Viking campaign, and so far the flexibility has made the way-too-rules-heavy magic system of D&D look positively antiquated. It’s a simple system: 2d6, plus however many relevant tag you or the scene have add or subtract 1 from the roll. Success and the number of positive tags give you the “power” of your action, attack, spell, whatever… you can succeed with a complication on 7-9, so you do what you wanted, but something that wasn’t positive happens.

It just works. I’m looking forward to seeing how City in Mist, Son of Oak’s noir detective/mythic heroes/superhero-ish game runs. I’ve an idea for a Streets of Fire-like 50s meets the 80s setting in “the City”. Maybe we’ll get a sledgehammer fight.

I was looking at the other prompts for RPGaDay, and realized that some of the ideas I had for this post would be covered in others…so what to do? Runeslinger had an alternate series of suggestions for the prompts, including “what was the heaviest set of RPG things you’ve had to carry?” for strain. That one’s pretty easy — way back in high school, I’d walk the half mile or so to my friend’s place to GM most evenings. After a few years of collection minis, maps, dice, folders of characters, books, etc., a trek to his place had a 20 pound case of minis in hand, a backpack full of the other crap (probably another 10-15, easy).

The other strain, over almost a half century of gaming, has always been finding players and keeping a game going. Back in the bad ol’ days of the “Satanic Panic”, you didn’t just go advertising for players; you had to suss out the geeks. It was like a senator tapping your foot under the bathroom stall for an illicit hookup — except you’d roll a d20 under the stall wall and hope to hit “critical hit!” Everytime a game group blew apart — either because I moved away, or a bunch of folks all moved out within six months of each other — you were back to square one. By the ‘90s, gaming was getting pretty accepted, and finding players was probably the easiest it had been. A lot of the groups from that point usually had at least one player from the last, and often they brought someone into the group with them. Even in the military, changing posts, I usually had someone I knew about. The last real blow for finding players was in 2010, when a divorce lost me half the group, then others having divorces or moving away left us with one to two players, and a bunch that cycled in and out irregularly until the current group.

Once you have players, keeping them is the hard part. It’s easy when you’re kids. You have time, often disposable cash, and your schedules usually allow a normal meet-up. College, it’s often similar. It’s the working world and real responsibility that gets in the way. I’ve noted that to keep a gaming group intact you need actual commitment. Sometimes, it’s a pain (or strain) to keep that weekly nerd night; I’d suggest it’s worth it. The hard part is simply consistency. Even with a very regular group in play, right now, I’ve got one player who got bumped to management at a national lab; he has to travel a lot to beg for money. I’ve got another guy that goes on vacation seemingly every few months, though with the new live GF, I suspect that’ll get curtailed. Another travels for business quite a bit.

The trick is that Nerd Night happens every week. Period. If you’re not there, we play something else that doesn’t need you. Or there’s a movie night, or board games night; but if you lose the momentum, it’s done within a few weeks. Everyone has something else vying for the time. If it’s not regular, it’s not happening. Having Nerd Night be other things is also important. Movie night, board games, something — because if you’re not friends outside the group, there’s less connection to keep it going.

I’d point out that it’s often worth it. Mental health, alone — the ability to have friends outside the marital group, the ability to walk away from the real world for a few hours, the camaraderie in an era where people complain that “loneliness” is on the rise is a good reason to put in the time. 

So make the strain; show up.