The Black Campbell

I’ve often had plenty of time to research, plan, and set up for the games I game master. I’ve been doing it for three decades and the practice in getting ready, quickly, for a game has made me a lightning fast researcher and writer — which has been handy in my varied professions and in my doctoral studies. With a four-month old in the house, I’ve been surprised at how much of your useful time is eaten up with having to simply pay full attention to the kid — she needs picked up and carried around, she needs talked to and played with on the floor, she needs fed. Before you know it, ten hours have blown by and you’re exhausted…and you really haven’t done anything.

And it’s eating into my study, my professional writing, and my game prep time. So what to do? I tried to get others to GM — one decided to bail on the game he was going to run a year ago, another is just as busy and not as interested in doing it as he thought, and the new couple of gamers I tried to vet were flaky on their schedules and preparation. So once again, I’m running the games. And doing it on a lot less free time. So how to “wing it” and be successful?

First when GMing…never go full retard. That is to say, if you’re going to wing it, you still have to have something to improvise on. Like any good bit of jazz or rock, you need that three chord/basic 4-8 bar tune to work from.

Second: KISS — “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” You can improvise some of the other elements but keep the main plot simple — for example: My Hollow Earth Expedition game has been pretty straightforward. The first few episodes were an attempt to find a mellified man. They were sidetracked by Japanese agents and rival communist gangs in Shanghai. Then they get a line on the ancient monastic order/former rebels against the Qing that have the prize and they have to find the monastery in question. They find it and have to get the caskets of mellified men.

Time to throw in a twist to slow them down…I throw in a new storyline they have to address first: one of the monk/warriors had eaten some of the meelified man to heal their wounds and is infected with the evil spirit of the human confection. She is looking to wake the petrified army of teh first sovereign emperor…now they have to chase her to Xi’an and stop her from doing so, otherwise she’ll rule the universe from beyond the grave. This story is a simple capture the flag/stop the bad guy plot. Once done, they’ll be able to recover the meelified men and finish the initial adventure.

I have an upcoming Supernatural “pilot” — the characters will get together to stop a monster in Manhattan. Find it, kill it. Simple. I have been adding the bits to make the investigations more interesting, but it’s a one or two night and done deal.

Keep it simple. What’s the ending? What’s the goal or McGuffin? (The thing that motivates the story, whether important or not — like the case in the car trunk in Repo Man or Rosebud in Citizen Kane.) Who’s the bad guy and their major henchman? Where’s it happening?

This is my technique: What’s the mission? (Say, it’s stop a terrorist bomb plot.) Who’s the bad guy? (The new SPECTRE [or QUANTUM, if you must) led by Hans Yodelson. Henchman — big, bad ex-Spetnatz guy, Rostov. How do they get the lead? (An investigation into Russian mob gun running yielded it.) Beginning and ending done. Now the filler:

INTRO: give the intelligence. Action Sequence 1: Breaking into a bad guy office building. Clue 1: Reveal Yodelson’s invovlement. Action Sequence 2: Meeting Yodelson or surveilling to gain intelligence. Clue 2: Meeting with known terrorists. Action Sequence 3: Team discovered — car chase or firefight. Clue 3: If captured, the line of questioning tells there is an attack coming in a day in [pick place], or they will learn it from their pursuers. Action Sequence 4: Trying to follow terrorist to attack site. Clue 4: Something to get them in them to next action sequence. Action Sequence 5: fight in bomb location and stopping attack. Car chase to get bad guy. END: Kill/capture bad guys. If escape, next mission…

After that, I like to fill in the locations. Sometimes I actually do this first — “wouldn’t it be cool to have a base jumping sequence off that building?” or “a car chase on that alpine road would be cool.”

Basic plot: simple.

Third: Know your players. This is pretty important, period. It allows you to anticipate their most likely actions and not only plan for it. If you know the player/character has a tendency to do X, plan for it. Give them a problem/action sequence that is not their usual forte from time to time, but play to their strengths and weaknesses. If you know they love kids, put kids in danger every once in a while to direct them how you want them to go. If you know they always go after the bad guy like a guided missile, even when the baddie has to escape in that sequence, have the bad guy lead them into a trap.

Four: Steal. Steal your stories from movies, books (preferably ones they haven’t read/seen), from the news. For espionage games, I almost always get my inspiration from a story. Iraqis are busted helping Sinaloa cartel members in San Diego…go from there. Theres the bad guys. What were they moving? To where? How did you find out? Pick locations in San Diego or Tijuana…you’re 3/4rds of the way there.

Five: Keep notes. As you make up NPCs remember KISS: give them a hook — a look, skill, or a mannerism. A name. Jot it down for later — you never know when they might come in useful or the players will take to a character and want to contact them again.

Six: KISS — keep the maps simple, if you need them. Try to simply run on narrative, where you can. Use set pieces — standard office parks, high-rise buildings with the classic three corridors between two adjoining corridors on either side (you’ve been in this building…trust me.) Steel mills — operating or abandoned. Subways. Use set pieces from movies: “It’s like that classic James Bond bad guy set up — the two levels with staircases with no handrails and a central metal support for the steps, the ceiling’s oval and higher on one side, bridge over a small stream running through the middle of the room…” “It’s a loading crane like the one from the end of The Losers…”

There’s plenty of ways to wing it, but the prep time on an adventure like the one above averages me 30 minute to two hours, depending on complexity of the plotline. Find something that catches you imagination, drop the basics in (villain and villain’s nefarious plan), add cool locations or chase/combat sequences. Shake. Run.

Tower of the Archmage is hosting this month’s RPG Blog Carnival with the topic “Animals in RPGs”…so let’s jump in!

Animals have been companions to humans since time immemorial — from work animals to pets, people surround themselves with these creatures. They care for them, name them, and sometimes view them as part of the family. Who hasn’t gotten at least a bit misty when a family dog or cat dies? Before cars, horses weren’t just your transport, they were your companion — selling a prized horse just didn’t happen unless you fell on hard times. Farm animals might be less “familial” for people, but they were no les important — they were your food or your money made incarnate in noise and crap.

Yet, outside of fable-based games like Mouse Guard how often do animals play an important role in role playing games. Yeah, you ride your horse to the dungeon…then what? A horse doesn’t do so well in a 10×10′ room with other people and some nasty…in fact, the horse can, at that point, become a seriously dangerous liability. I’ve seen people buy a falcon in a D&D campaign, only to forget it’s even on the sheet; they don’t know how to use it as an item, so it gets forgotten with those climbing stakes until last minute.

If animals are so important in most peoples’ real lives, why do they disappear in the game world?

One reason is obvious: Who’s playing the dog? Is the dog an NPC? Is he the GM’s responsibility? Tracking the creature’s stats, actions, and location can be distracting from the main character, thinks Runeslinger. (Good guy, by the way; check out his blog!)

The trick, if the character is managing his animal companion, is not to think of the creature as separate from him, necessarily, but an extension, a familiar… I have a cat named Vishnu that knows my moods well – he knows when to try and comfort, he warns me when my infant daughter is waking up with a meow and a nose on the eyelid, he eats bugs… So make the critter an extension of your character.

We had a Serenity campaign where one of the characters had a shepherd mutt named Asshole. He picked him up as a pup in the Unification War, and the dog grew up through the combat. It warned the characters of intruders, of things not right with the ship (he heard strange noises and prodded the engineer awake), he attacked villains, he crapped all over the ship providing comic relief…he was useful. The players originally hated Asshole, then grew to love him. When he got injured by a thug, they made that person their sole focus of ire for an adventure. The dog provided story.

I had a ferret in an old DD campaign that would hunt rabbits and other things for the character. That’s how he got his meals when they needed meat. I would forget about him periodically, until he was killed by an arrow. He stopped the arrow, actually, and saved the character. He was useful. and I made the OIQ (orc in question) pay for it dearly. It provided motivation and story.

“I find I prefer the understanding that the animal companion is a specialized form of NPC and as such is not merely a tool for the player, but a being with whom the character has a close and very personal relationship…” opines Runeslinger. If the GM is running the animal, it can get lost in the shuffle of NPCs…hell, major NPCs have gotten lost in the shuffle when running a game. “Say…wasn’t Trapp Sommers with us?” Oops! But if the GM infuses the animal with its own character (I played Asshole as a bit stupid, lovable, and codependent on his owner, and had a ball with him…so to speak.)

If they have a purpose, they’re less likely to forget them. In the current Battlestar Galactica campaign, the characters are serving in Aegis, a light battlestar that is new off the line. During construction of the ship, a cat somehow got onboard and has been with her ever since. The crew named it Kevin and we learned from the previous commander that Kevin is considered not just the mascot of the ship, but her good luck charm. They had put Kevin off and within days suffered major engine failure. When Kevin was brought aboard once more from Scorpia yards, things just seemed to work themselves out…or so the crew says. Kevin is, in many ways, the living expression of the ship for the characters to become attached to. He’s fat, cantankerous, and shows up in places he shouldn’t be…but the characters have taken to him already.

Not every campaign requires a pet companion. The sword & sorcery genre is a good one for having animals that hunt for you, or that you ride from place to place. So are Victorian-period/Western games: the English are crazy for their dogs and often would drag them on holidays (or adventures) — how the hell did Tintin get out of half his scrapes? Dogs are useful for cowboys in herding or warning of danger. And they are good companions. In space-based campaigns, a dog or cat might not be the best addition. For one, the dander and loose fur get in the air filtration systems…it’s a mess! they may not always be appropriate, but they can add to the fun.

Most of us want to play big, strappin’, competent characters — the clever mage, the powerful fighter, the ultra-suave spy, the tough or  sexy femme fatale…but sometimes, stepping out of the usual can provide the player and group with a bit of fun. One thing I’ve rarely seen people rush to play is a child. Not a toddler, mind you, but the pre-teen/teenager.

Why would anyone want to play a kid? 1) In the case of prepubescents, and unless you’re a member of NAMBLA or B4U-ACT, it removes the sexual aspects from the character. This is especially nice for the younger player, or for that newbie that doesn’t want to get wrapped up in the weirdness of intercharacter relationships. 2) Children provide both particular challenges and benefits in many settings, that aren’t the case with most adult characters. 3) It makes the players have to think and work at the play…and that’s fun!

Point 1: My wife recently started playing. She’s new to gaming and she’s seems a bit uncomfortable with the idea of inter-character relationships (but I could be reading into things.) Her favorite character was a toss-off, a recovered character from a then-abortive campaign set in 1936 China (now resurrected and running well): “Shanghai Sally” — an 11 year old street urchin and thief that works for one of the other characters. There’s no sexual tension between her and the other characters, there’s no distraction with boys, etc…she’s all about the fun and the score.

Point 2: Sally provides some unexpected benefits to the player. As a child in a city full of homeless or itinerant children, she’s invisible for the most part. People don’t notice her doing surveillance while playing in the street. People don’t concern themselves much with an underage, dirty street girl poking around the bad guys’ hideout, save maybe that she might steal something. She doesn’t tend to attract violence, save a disdainful cuff to the head by the local toughs and cops. She’s small and fits into places the adult characters can’t. No one expects her to pull a Colt .380 Pony out of her pants. She’s been able to play the cute factor a few times to keep from getting pulped by bad guys.

The downsides are obvious: she’s not strong, big, or particularly talented in fighting. In fisticuffs, she usually comes away the worse for wear if someone lands a blow. She’s not as fast as adults, but she is quicker, able to dodge, weave, and use small spaces to escape. She has no real rights as a minor — the state can do what it likes with her. She only garners a certain level of respect, no matter how effective (she’s their “monkey”)…because she’s a kid. She doesn’t have money or a real job.

Point 3: Unlike what I expected, she’s turned Sally into a fantastic part of the campaign — our Short Round, if you will. Sally has just enough fighting skills to get herself into trouble if no dealing with a mook, and that leads to complications and more fun. She has to think her way out of trouble and uses her surroundings to her advantage (I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a hotel luggage cart used as a weapon!) She provides comic relief by making the other characters have to worry about the kid in their midst. She’s fun, and she makes the game fun.

So kids…an interesting role to take on for a game, if you’re thinking about something different.