11 November, 2013

RPG Problem Children: The Min-Maxer

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 

This is a variant of the “rules lawyer” we’ll get to in another post — the min-maxer is a particular problem in that the player really isn’t doing anything wrong, per se. They’re trying to tailor their character to their role, and this is admirable…but it can lead to narrative issues down the line.

One of the standard min-max techniques in Dungeons & Dragons is to pump a character up on their physical stats, but slight charisma, so that they are a survival monster, but something of a duffer in social environments. This is understandable when one considers that the stereotype of the gamer is a maladjusted type that can’t get a girlfriend. But that’s a stereotype…most of the gamers I’ve met are fully functioning human beings (but when the stereotype is in effect, whoo boy!) By slighting charisma, the players are doing a cost-benefit analysis, and erring on the side of being able to kick the crap out of the monsters and live…shmoozing at the tavern is not a priority.

This sort of cost-benefit design shows up in other settings, as well, and has the main side effect of making the character annoyingly good at some particular set of skills, often to the detriment of creating surprise, suspense, or a sense that failure is possible. A few examples:

One of my former group commonly would design their characters in our Victorian science game to be social and charisma masters. This made sense because 1) this was her fantasy, to be attractive, engaging, and sexy, and 2) it was the equivalent of maxing for social “combat” — the primary venue for a female character of the upper class in the setting. However, it meant that she would often run roughshod over NPCs of power and created connections that quickly put the character and her companions in a very rarified strata where they were essentially untouchable from a legal and political sense. To balance her out left other characters so outgunned that they were simply props in these social scenes. However, they would often flub rolls due to the higher difficulty this primary character created, and hence her friends would cause her trouble she would have to smooth over.

Another would be the detective who is uncannily good at sussing out the truth. The character was built with incredible analytical skills, intuition benefits that allowed them to make deductive leaps that made it very difficult — if they asked the right question — to disguise intent or guilt of NPCs they were investigating. This in itself isn’t too bad; you can find ways to adapt a good mystery by creating more layers of intrigue or guilt. However, he was also built with sixth sense skills, enhanced reflexes, all the sorts of things that make him the combat monster of the traditional sense. To challenge this character, I’ve had to either throw serious number of bad guys or very tough ones at him, or I have to come at the problem sideways such as giving him a problem he couldn’t dodge his way out of…and that’s the trick with a min-max character:

When you need to challenge them, one thing you can do is give them something outside their specialty to do. If you can split the party, give the bad ass with the low intelligence the riddle to solve. Give the thief a situation where they have to talk their way into a place to steal the object in question. (Shoulda put more than a 2 in charisma…shouldn’t ya, sport?)

Another is to play to their weaknesses. Most newer RPGs have some kind of weakness or trait system that either compels a response (usually for a reward) or or has a mechanic to adversely affect the character. So that tough guy is afraid of snakes, huh..? Shame to get to the McGuffin they need, he has to go through that room of dangerous asps. That thief is great in a building, working on locks and such, but never really got used to heights…and the way out, it’s through that 6th story window. Maybe that alcoholic pilot shouldn’t be drinking so much before an important dogfight.

The main thing I think a GM can do is to work with the players during character creation to decide exactly how far they want to push a certain trope. Sometimes, even in a campaign like a pulp game — where the characters are supposed to be over the top — you can go too far and have a character that “breaks” the game because they are just too much. (I actually designed a character like this for a player that seemed great on paper, but once in play just trashed the reality of the setting.)

 

9 November, 2013

RPG Problem Children: The Spotlight Hog

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 

This was an earlier piece that I’m including in this new group of essays on “problem kids” at the role playing game table:

We’ve all had some version this guy/gal in our groups. They get their moment in the spotlight during the session and just don’t seem to be able to let it go. Maybe they’re someone that every day is a “me day.” Maybe they don’t get to play often and just get overly-enthusiastic. Maybe they GM much of the time and are used to being the center of the group. (cough me cough) Maybe they’re the wannabe actor/tress for whom attention is the thing, more than the play. Maybe they just talk…a lot. (You can tell what spurred this post, can’t you?)

So how do you shut down the spotlight hog without hurting their feelings, being to obvious about it, or being a jerk? If you tend to be a hands-off GM, it’s going to be harder to move the action along than if you are a bit more active. For me, as a narative-type who likes to be involved more with the play than a simple “What do you do?” sort of GM, it’s a matter of engaging the player first, then shifting the focus of of them in a way that feels natural.

Example: The GIQ is doing a bit of expounding on the legal complexities of the adventure or mission the characters are on. It should be a simple bit of exposition, but the player (as well as the character) is a lawyer. And a bit long winded. Okay, knock off the “a bit”. He’s been on a roll for about five minutes, already, and has missed the queues from one of the other players — the equivalent of “Read you. Press on.” In the interest of advancing the plot and letting other characters get a bit of “scene time”, it’s time to step in as a GM.

At this point, I engage the player sort of like a director talking to an actor. Get into his mind space, or his emotional state with a few pointed questions. I’ve got his attention now. I shift the attention to the character he was talking about — how do you feel about this? What’s your perception of the information? Now the attention is on the other player and I can get the other players back in.

Now, I’ve found that 9 times out of 10, you’ve just fixed the problem. But sometimes GIQ is not going to want to relinquish the spotlight so easily. If you have successfully moved the attention — even for a moment — a simple upraised finger  (a “wait” finger) should do to keep that player sidelined long enough for the other players to get their say in for the scene, then return the spotlight to the player, or move on.

This is the gentle way to use social judo to take control of your game when necessary without coming off as a jerk.

Any other techniques out there?

 

9 November, 2013

No, Ma, I Don’t Know When I’ll Be Home! Character Family in RPGs.

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

There’s a great schtick in an awful (but funny) movie called Brainsmasher: A Love Story: the lead character’s mother seems to always be able to reach him by phone, wherever he is. Standing next to a pay phone? Mom calls. The villains are torturing him, and the lead bad’s cell phone rings… “It’s you mother!” “Gimme the phone. No, Ma, I don’t know when I’ll be home! Hang up on her.”

In a lot of RPGs, players often exit in a vacuum, much like character in movies — they are sprung fully-armed and armored from the Players’ Handbook, ready for action. No friends, no family, no real background. they develop in media res, and are a product of the numbers on a sheet and the adventures they work through. In a fantasy campaign, you can Conan the hell out of your background — the warrior/mage/rogue that has lost their family, or they simply don’t impact their lives — but in other sorts of games, building in family and friends for the characters at the start can really help flesh out a game.  

I’ve written a few times on how adding friends and family and playing a “season” before the Cylon attacks in our Battlestar Galactica campaign really helps the players experience their characters’ loss, but this isn’t the first time that family has been important in our campaigns. Often in espionage campaigns I’ve run the family is an important part of the character’s backstory. They’re the people you want to get back to (or escape the chaos of young child, as a former special forces guy I know admitted.) They don’t like when you’re out adventuring; they want you home. The issues of family and spies have been well done in True Lies  and more recently, TV’s Chuck. 

Family make decent motivators for adventuring, as well — family make great McGuffins: The terrorists have your daughter! The alien menace is advancing on the hiding spot in which you left your family! Your best friend discovered a hidden city in the Amazon! You son just knocked up his girlfriend and you’re way too young to be a grandfather! All of these can be seeds for an adventure.

But the best use of family is as, what they call in television, the “B plot.” Something is going on in your private life that needs your attention, and which distracts from the “A plot” (the adventure). Perhaps there’s an issue with your kid or wife that needs your attention — the wife was in a car accident and is injured and at the hospital — this murder investigation is just going to have to wait for a bit. Or you keep missing that parent-teacher meeting because you’ve been fighting creeping tentacled evil that is trying to break into this world…not exactly something you can tell them, but if you don’t get your ass over to the school right now, they’re going to think you are a negligent parent.

Beyond all that, even if you’ve just got the characters getting the occasional phone call or letter from their parents, having connections to the world around them outside of the plotlines gives a sense of reality to the world, no matter how fantastical it might be.

 

7 September, 2013

After Action Report: Battlestar Galactica RPG or Some Practical Examples of Good GM/Player Action

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 

I was reading over a couple of pieces on 11 Things to Help Your Players Be Better Roleplayers over on Gnome Stew, and the referenced 11 Ways to be a Better Roleplayer on LOOK, ROBOT and realized that several of their ideas were on display at this week’s game session.

The last few weeks have been a clusterf#$% regarding player attendance — between GenCon for one, another as a speaker at the Transformers convention over in England, and the third have to be away for work and other issues, we’ve been at least one player low all month. The past two weeks had me adapt to this by throwing together a murder mystery for our Battlestar Galactica game, set on one of the ships in the civilian fleet.

The two characters are members of the new Colonial Marshals Service, tasked with looking into violent crime, hoarding, and other immediate issues to fleet security. “Victimless” crime is ignored. However, in the aftermath of the Fall of the Colonies, there have been an understandable spate of suicides and suspicious deaths…they all have to be investigated. The veteran, Chaplain, is annoyed by this — he wants to focus on the Cylon menace, but I need the guy investigating crimes for this episode…right here, the player was doing what Grant highlighted in the second piece as points 3 and 4 — “Don’t Try to Stop Things” and “Take Control of Your Character”: The player didn’t pull the “my character wouldn’t do that” shtick — he followed the instructions of his boss, who told him he needed these cases closed and to get on it; the second character also had a case on the same ship — a missing 16 year old girl. The two decided to pool resources and investigate. The characters both bitched about their assignments — that was fully in character, and they were given the opportunity to harangue their boss…but they’re doing their jobs. In that, I was engaging in point 2 of Phil’s piece on Gnome Stew, Create Opportunities for the Players to Express Their Characters.

Points 3, 4 and 9 of the Gnome Stew article come into play here: One of the things I’ve always tried to do was act more as a director than a writer in games. The characters were given enough information to take action on their own. The players don’t lolligag — they immediately start looking into their respective cases. The whole time, I try to not just play the NPCs, but give possible queues that they might miss in the action, or might not have occurred to them while playing that tie into their character — getting inside the heads of the characters, as it were. Example: The new guy is a geek, an overweight former programmer than helped stop one of the prongs of the Cylon attack. He’s a coward, but he takes on the responsibility of being a cop seriously. As he realizes the parents of the missing girl are hiding something, and the younger brother is upset, I suggested that — this guy, the guy that no one would notice at college, that spent all his time playing a hero in RPGs and computer games, was suddenly the one guy that actually could make a difference and save this girl — he might find this both terrifying, but also an important moment for his self-esteem and personality. The player ran with it. They didn’t have to.

The veteran realizes that the suicide couldn’t possibly have happened as the report says — the safety protocols, etc. are too complex for a guy who was, in essence, the garbageman of the ship. He was murdered. The character is pissed, because now it’s not a check the box suicide investigation…he has to take it seriously. The two both run into a lot of stonewalling by crew and passengers and start to realize they are in real trouble…there’s something going on aboard the ship. They could, at this point, try to get backup or something, but they investigate further (Point 1: Do Something), checking the ship’s cargo manifests and the coming and goings of cargo ships and shuttles (the vessel is a major logistics hub for the fleet.) They also note the tattoos on the security men and crew of the ship — they realize it’s a Ha’la’tha (Tauron mafia) ship. They get the brother of the missing girl alone and find out she’s was sold to the HLT for extra food and clothing rations.

Point 3 for the GM: Keep things moving. Paraphrasing Raymond Chandler, the pulp mystery writer, when a scene bogs down, have guys with guns burst in. That’s what happened here. We’d been building up the suspense for a while and it was time to get things moving. The newbie’s questioning of the kid brings the gangsters after him. There’s a chase and hiding from the bad guys scene in a crew habitat that I described as being a lot like the living quarters in Outland. (I wanted the catwalks, the multiple tiers with points that would require jumping from level to the next. See the movie — it’s a great action set piece.) The vet has to come rescue him and they proceed to kick serious ass. Having done that, they find out they work for a HLT lieutenat operating out of the “box city” — an area of interconnected pressurized cargo containers (like those on a real cargo ship, but with pressure doors, etc.) The same place where the suicide-now-murder took place.

The encounter the bad guys, whom the vet taunts for their obvious lack of forethought on trying to kill them. “What do you think is going to happen? You’ll just wind up with more cops of the marines in here!” Of course, the gangsters are planning on scattering and changing their identities — easy enough with the terrible record keeping currently in the civilian fleet (it’s less than a month from the Holocaust.) It’s a Mexican (or in this case, Tauron, showdown…)

At this point I realize we’re getting close to quitting time for the night and seek to wrap the night before they get to the part where they rescue the girls. The question — do I go for the anticlimactic “Oh, you’re right, here’s the girls” ending, or step it up. I go Chandler — the area is suddenly sealed by other bad guys and the “big bad” (now just a minor functionary) tells them they’re all dead. The gangsters included. The trail will dead end here.

The area is getting vented and the characters had a series of misadventures trying to get to safety including attempting the classic air duct crawl…only to get stuck. Really stuck. Two botches in a roll stuck. At this point I invoke point 10 in Phil’s piece: Make Failure Interesting. The vet is stuck and goes seriously claustrophobic/ upset that after all the shit he’s been through with Cylons and other dangers, he’s going to die stuck in an air vent…and he doesn’t even know why! The players embraced failure, as grant suggested and ran with it. Eventually, they managed to get clear, but it gave a great half hour of entertainment.

One point grant had: Don’t try to stop things came into play here: the newbie is a coward, had been nearly killed, had to shoot a man, and he’s a wreck…his beloved top-end datapad was shot (saving his life) in the hab fight. He wants to get on the first ship off the craft, but the vet knows the HLT isn’t going to let them do that. They settle for hacking the comms system and firing off a report/call for backup from the CMS before they go after the big bad (see above.) The characters argue, they alter each other’s pans, but they don’t try to undo what the other player is doing. They built on it.

We ended for the night with the characters stuck on a gangster controlled ship, who were nearly killed by nameless baddies, but they know where the brothel/club that the HLT is running is on the ship and the newbie — cowardice pushed aside by pride and the chance to be a hero — is determined to save them.

The thing for players and GM to remember is that RPGs are a collaborative form of storytelling and play. The GM (at least in more traditional sorts of games) creates the outlines of the world and the players flesh it out with their actions. Sometimes it’s just offhand comments like the newbie stating the bad guys were trying to make their deaths look like accidents. Well, no, I was trying to come up with a quick ending that didn’t involve the characters getting killed by the ready to shoot villains…but it sounded good, so I ran with it. Take what the players are doing and mold it to work with what you intended — or it their idea’s better, purloin it [without telling them] and run with it. Ultimately, as long as everyone is having fun, you’re doing it right.

 

30 August, 2013

Setting the Scene: The Teaser

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
[2] Comments 

Having really cut my teeth as a GM with the James Bond: 007 RPG in the 1980s, one of the techniques I used to introduce characters and/or stories was inspired by the Bond movies (and many other television series and action movies) is the teaser.

The teaser allows you to give a player(s) the chance to intro his or their characters in a simple action sequence. You begin in media res — the action is already underway. The teaser can have a connection to the rest of the story or not; you can make this the tail end of another unrelated mission, or you can connect it to the upcoming plotline through either a recurring villain or NPC, or some aspect of the teaser that eventually ties to the rest of the adventure upcoming.

The teaser should place the character firmly in their element of expertise, and play to the characters’ strengths and weaknesses. Let’s use Skyfall as an example. In this, we’ll stick with three “new” characters — Bond, Eve, and Tanner. (Why Tanner? We’re using him as the “eye in the sky” or hacker/backup for purposes of example.) You’re looking for a missing hard drive. We think we know who the guy is that has it. (Bad guy NPC Patrice.) One of our agents has tracked him down and is now not responding. Bond is our brick/fighting guy — the experienced, jaded one; Eve is our wheelman with some combat skills — she’s new and a bit unsure of herself; Tanner is their “hacker” — he’s the guy with the satellite feeds, the maps for them to use to try and get ahead of people, the guy that can get medical to you. He can coordinate the action between the characters when they are separated, effectively keeping everyone together, even if the characters are in different locations. He is, in essence, the glue between what could be completely separate scenes, and hence keep all the players involved.

Bond should have a moment to play to his jaded nature (he finds the injured agent — stabilize him or get after the bad guy?), he should have a combat sequence — fistfight or gun fight (or both) to show his combat prowess. Eve should have a chance to use her driving skills in a chase. (He’s in the black Audi!) She should have the chance to get into combat, but try to keep Bond in the spotlight for this. Tanner should be the guy directing them in the case (He’s turned left! If you go through the market you should be able to get ahead of them! [Give the Eve or Bond character some kind of bonus if Tanner gets a good roll on an appropriate skill to help manage the operation.])

Teasers should be short — around 30 minutes or so for a three hour session, but sometimes, they can be intensely fun on their own. I’ve had teasers run most of a game session (2 hours) for particularly complex action sequences. Example (let’s use Bond movies again, this time Goldeneye): The beginning of Goldeneye has a fairly complex action sequence involving Bond sneaking into a secret Soviet weapons plant and linking up with 003. The new characters might be just Bond, or Bond and Alec (003). They have to slip into the main portion of the factor to blow it up. They get cornered and have to escape while still destroying the place. A teaser like this, I can tell you from experience, is probably a one to 1.5 hour affair, minimum. There’s a lot of moving parts, but they do the same thing — Bond does action stuff like base jumping, shooting, and some stealth. Alec, if played by a player, would have to either be doing the same, or come in from a different direction. They would have some moment to play up their friendship or animosity, depending on the weaknesses with which they were designed. (Imagine the base jump’s the only way in  and one of the characters is acrophobic — golden!)

The teaser is a great method for introducing the characters: get them into their element, give them a few challenges that play to their strengths and weaknesses, then move onto the main story or campaign. But it’s also good for reintroducing the characters after a break, or introducing the next plotline.

The Living Daylights begins, as many Bond movies do, with a short mission that seems unrelated to the main story. Bond is training in Gibraltar with other 00s when one is killed by SMERSH. But SMERSH was deactivated! He chases down the assassin but the man is killed in typical spectacular fashion. It seems completely disconnected from the “main mission” — evacuate a Soviet general from Czechoslovakia who is under sniper protection…until the general is spirited out of the Blaydon safe house by SMERSH. Eventually, the plot would reveal the recaptured general is actually behind the SMERSH attack at Gibraltar in an attempt to get rid of a rival in the Soviet intelligence community who is closing in on his dirty opium for diamonds for guns operation.

You might have a character who encountered serious issues in a previous adventure. You might introduce the character in a teaser where an old bad guy turns up to have them murdered, and this drags them back into a life of action. Or that thief who was retired but has burned through his money, or is presented with a challenge just too juicy to ignore — reintroduce them living happily, then hit them with some minor action piece that plays to their diminishing money or requires them to use their mad thieving skills…boy, don’t you miss the rush…?

Hopefully, these few suggestions can give you a new tool in your GM kit to help the players connect with their characters and with the world/adventures you are presenting. While I’ve used primarily modern day examples, you can easily adapt the teaser to any genre you might be playing.

 

11 August, 2013

Character Design: When Shtick Fails

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 

One of the things most players do when creating a character is develop some sort of hook, or “shtick” for their alter ego — it could be a defining trait, skill, weapon or look, something that makes the character easier to connect with for the player, and the others at the gaming table. Having a shtick is nearly essential for a pulp-style game: the fearless, slightly (or very) unsavory archeologist who ultimately does the right thing; the earnest, down-on-his-luck pilot that finds a rocket pack and turns into a hero; the two-gun toting “shadow” that uses his powers to cloud men’s minds fights crime in a manner that is itself highly questionable; the whip wielding Mexican (well, Californian) hero out to right wrongs…. all have something quickly definable about them.

Shtick is good. It gives a character personality almost immediately, and while it might change or develop over time, it gives you a nice shorthand for describing the character to others and yourself.

Shtick, however when taken too far, or when too well designed can actually hijack a character and make them hard to relate to, or makes them unsuited for the game world they exist in. Here’s two examples of very similar characters…one worked, one did not:

In our Hollow Earth Expedition game, we had the action sidekick in the form of Jack MacMahon. He was a Columbia-trained lawyer who couldn’t pass the bar due to being a bit thick and lazy. He was the son of a politician, rich and well-connected, a bit spoiled, and generally somewhat untalented…except when it came to having guts and fighting. Put his totemic (and at the time, very rare, Registered Magnum) in his hand and he was nigh unstoppable. He was a two-fisted, gun-slinging combat monster — but he also was careful not to go so far over the line he would be arrested for his actions. He was always in the right (well, mostly…) He was a sucker for women to the point he couldn’t hit the female ninja kicking the crap out of him. He was loyal to a fault, almost puppy-dogish.

Jack kicked ass, threw off memorable quips, and always did the stupidly brave thing. And he got his ass kicked, even when he won fights. He was human.

The character was retired when the player could no longer make it to the game. I retooled the campaign, helped one of the new players who obviously liked being the action dude build a “Jack replacement” — “Daredevil” Dan McCoy, a movie stuntman and sometime wing-walker for flying circuses with a sideline in two-story thievery. He was enthusiastic, brave to the point of lunacy, and so damned good at just about anything physical as to be unstoppable. He was a showman and the player obviously enjoyed taking him right to the limit…and over.

The shtick became unmanageable. He would get into scuffles with important NPCs they needed and screw over the other players. He notably chased down bad guys by (unnecessarily) ramming a car through the lobby of a fine hotel in Lisbon, drawing the attention of the military police (Portugal being fascistic at the time), and otherwise was a rabid dog off the chain.

The problem was the combination of the character and player made for shtick run wild, and it ruined the verisimilitude of the world, even though the other characters were also over-the-top…but in a way that was believable for the world. Think Indiana Jones. In real life, he would have had local authorities up his ass on any number of times in the real world. (But then, there also wouldn’t have been Nazis running around British-allied Egypt, either…) He was just enough, but not too much, to make the movie setting fly.

There are ways to manage shtick run wild, and you can see some of the techniques in “the best there is” characters who are suitably restrained by plot and their world. One that springs to mind is Starbuck from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. We see her in action in the cockpit  the first few episodes of the show – she’s lunatic, better than the best, and unstoppable. So what do the writers do to make it not “Starbuck saves the day” every episode? They break her leg after a crash caused by, frankly, being too damned good in the cockpit and taking on too many Cylon raiders. She has to do other things that are outside the character’s purview.

An example of a similar combat monster/same player in out Battlestar Galactica game: SGT Cadmus is a marine that aids in trying to uncover the Cylon menace. In combat sequences against people or skin jobs, he’s the ruler of the roost. So I stuck him on a number of investigatory adventures that required him to be subtle, use his brain. He’s outside his element, but the player loved it because, eventually, he got to shine in a fight. But the character was restrained so that the shtick was important…something that, when used, made the character stand out, but didn’t stomp on the other characters’ moments in the spotlight. (Eventually, he got to meet the centurions, did very well, but was nearly killed. It gave the players a sense of how damned dangerous the toasters are close up and personal.)

Another example would be Cliff Secord from The Rocketeer. We are led to believe he’s an incredible pilot, and we see some evidence of that in the movie…but what does he he wind up doing most of the movie? Investigating crime, trying to stay out of the clutches of the FBI, and throwing punches — not his strong point. When he gets to fly, he’s a bit out of his element because of the nature of the rocket pack, until he gets the hang of it.

Another way to control shtick gone wild, other than make it a less important element of the game adventure, is to have consequences for folks that, say, blast bad guys when it might not be strictly legal. The cops could be an ever-present issue, requiring them to disguise themselves, a la  The Shadow or Batman, or Zorro. Your war on crime in the 1930s, your raid of that “evil” creature village in your fantasy setting, that murder of an important figures still-beloved zombie wife or child leads to hordes of not-shambling dead coming for your head. The forces arrayed against you are large, well-funded, have the monopoly on the legitimacy of violence, and will eventually get the character, if they don’t step it down a bit. It’s not railroading…it’s a bigger challenge.

 

16 June, 2013

A Little Something For a Pulp RPG

Posted by blackcampbell under History, Roleplaying Games | Tags: , , , |
Leave a Comment 

As per NPR, archeologists have found the ruins of a ancient Cambodian city using remote-sensing technology.

Mahendraparvata, a 1,200-year-old lost city that predates Cambodia’s famous Angkor Wat temple complex by 350 years, was part of the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer Empire that ruled much of Southeast Asia from about 800 to 1400 A.D.

From Wikipedia, the location is in deep, swampy jungle — perfect for the ’30s (or even modern — added danger: landmine are common there) pulp-style game:

They initially uncovered five new temples. Eventually, using the Lidar data, 30 previously unidentified temples were discovered. In addition to the temples, their research showed the existence of an elaborate grid-like network of roads, dykes and ponds forming the city…The city’s origins date to the reign of Jayavarman II, considered founder of the Khmer Empire. His reign was consecrated on the sacred mountain of Mahendraparvata.

The only European that had been in the area as of 1936 was Phillipe Stern, a French archeologist.

 

 

7 June, 2013

After Action Report: Battlestar Galactica RPG

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: , |
Leave a Comment 

One of the things I liked about Babylon 5 and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica was that the characters had to make big decisions based on bad information, little sleep, and through the prism of emotional strain of surviving the apocalypse. It’s something that was present in my last BSG campaign, but it is firmly up front and center in the current game.

The last few game sessions revolved around the death of Sergeant Hadrian, the master-a-t-arms, found murdered near the water tanks. It gave me a chance to do a police procedural in the environment of Galactica. The characters chase down forensics evidence — surveillance cameras near the scene, fingerprints and other evidence on the murder weapon, and the like — there were a few red herrings in the episode, and they were tripped up by sabotage of the tanks ala the episode Water. They have to solve the murder and sabotage at the same time. One of the suspects is the still-present Aaron Doral. In our campaign, he was a Ministry of Education flunkie responsible for the museum transition on Galactica and who is now the Scorpia delegate to the Quorum of Twelve. Eventually, it turns out Doral was set up by a Cylon agent whom they stop in a desperate fight outside of auxiliary damage control, where the bad guy was aiming to vent the ship and kill the crew.

The B story, however, seems to indicate where the meat of the campaign is going to be: BIG decisions. As the new government gets its legs, they are trying to decide what the government, laws, and life of the fleet is going to look like. One of the characters is the commander of Galactica and he is already showing signs of authoritarianism. He’s been floating the idea of a military dictatorship, something the vice president character seems to be somewhat supportive of. What kind of law and law enforcement are they going to have for the fleet? Concentrate on violent crimes only? What about crimes involving coercion or other kinds of “force”? They have two cops…do they form a bigger police force? What kind of authority should they have? What kind of surveillance and expectations of privacy should you have?

These kind of issues don’t turn up often in the average dungeon crawl or setting where the players are “street-level”, but they make for good fun for characters that have some level of power. What happens when your fighter becomes king of the realm..? Do you rule as a “good king”? Even if you do, what kinds of freedoms can you give your people? How does power affect your decision-making process — can you stay “good” or do you let the power go to your head?

What about the street runner that becomes a corporate exec in Shadowrun  or Cyberpunk — do you sell out? Do you work to fix the system from the inside? Do you convince yourself you’re doing one, while actually doing the other?

 

 

31 May, 2013

Play Report: Gaming Via Skype

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games, Technology | Tags: , |
1 Comment 

During our play session this week, we took the opportunity to finally try something we’ve wanted to do since we had most of the old gaming group fall away back in September. One of these gamers had scheduling issues — he works in Los Alamos on the days we usually have open to game. He lives in Santa Fe. We play in Albuquerque. If he were to leave for the game after work, he would have 93 miles during rush hour traffic to get here. It’s a two hour run at the best of times, and another 45 minutes to an hour to get home.

In other words, not doable.

We’d thought about trying to link this player and the one who GTT (Gone To Texas, for you non-history fans) to the group through the internet. During test runs in September, we’d found Facetime was the most stable platform, but couldn’t handle more than two callers; Skype could do multiple callers, if one of you popped for the ability, and was generally stable if not as much so as Facetime; and we tried Google Hangout, which could handle multiple callers and was mostly stable, but got increasingly twitchy over time.

Since we were only bringing one person in on the video call, and only one of us had Facetime, we went with Skype. The result was much better than I’d hoped for. We got the call-in about 1900 hours and game ran until 2230 hours. The call audio quality was good, although we’ve decided it would be a good idea to rig the iPad we were using into its bluetooth speakers next time. Video quality was patchy — good for the first hour or so, but it steadily degraded until the remote player had to kill his video feed for about 45 minutes. During a break, he called back in and the video was good again.

He has a few issues receiving video from us at first, but it cleared up after we hung up and recalled at the start of the session. He had a few problems tracking the crosstalk on the table at one point, but otherwise was able to feel part of the action and not terribly disconnected.

Here were the observations:

1) Positioning is very important. Depending on the webcam, laptop, or in this case, an iPad, you want to find a place where the camera can see the entire group and can adequately pick up the conversations.

Just as important is the GM’s position. I was seated to one side of the table — iPad at one end, players arrayed in front of me of to the opposite side of the iPad, and occasionally I would lose track of what the video caller or the player opposite of him was doing/saying. Better to position yourself so the players and teleconferenced person are in front of you; be at the head of the table, if using one, with the teleconferenced player at the other end of the room, so you can see everyone. this cuts down on the chance that you favor one side of the room or the other. I managed to avoid ignoring the video caller over the rest of the people in the room but I had to keep it in mind throughout the night.

2) Venue. Try to avoid big. empty rooms with lots of hard objects. This bounces the sound more, and the echo effect can make it difficult for the video caller. You want something big enough to allow the camera to pick up all the players, but small enough not to jigger with the audio.

3) Equipment: Screen size: we were running the conference on an iPad — an 11″ screen. It was good enough we could see the player just fine in the space we were working with. A bigger room, or more myopic players might like something larger. A good microphone and speaker are important when doing a conference call with a room full of players. I mentioned the bluetooth speaker to get past the reflected noise of the host’s kitchen and the generally crappy speaker of the iPad2 and later. If you have a TV and can connect the device running the video conference, the speakers and video should be more than enough to the purpose.

4) Coordination. As with tabletop gaming, coordination can be a real issue. This gets worse the more time zones you throw between the two sides of a call. This has prevented me from setting up a game with another gamer in Korea — 14 or 15 hours is a lot of time to work around; you’re in different days, much less times of day. Even a call home to Scotland is  six hours offset. Keep this in mind, even for something like a single timezone. An hour in the evening can mean starting too early for someone, or ending a touch to late for another.

Overall, our experience was very positive, with two of the players and myself expressing the wish to continue with Skyping the player in, and the others being positive about the experience in general, but not so enthusiastic. They’re also not part of the group from last year, so that’s probably a reason.

Video conferencing is a great way to retain players who have moved away or for some reason can’t make the haul to game. Depending on the number you need to conference in will decide what service you want, but if it’s just a single player Facetime (if they have a Mac) and Skype seem to be the most stable. Google Hangout is great for multiple players, but our last test showed it to be twitchy. They may have improved it since them, and it included a plug-in dice roller, so there you go. Just attend to the tips above, and you should be able to bring in long lost friends or busy players.

 

5 May, 2013

Looking the Part: Costumes at the Gaming Table

Posted by blackcampbell under Roleplaying Games | Tags: |
Leave a Comment 

Tabletop gamers and LARPs have plenty of overlap in players, though I’ve found those who straddle the line prefer one type of gaming over the other. One of the elements of LARPing that rarely makes its way to the table is costuming. I’ve known player that have special dice for certain games, or some kind of fetish that gets them into character easier — one of our current players has dogtags from Quantum Mechanix for his Galactica pilot, (They’re lovely, by the way…) and a cowboy hat he wears for his Texan in the pulp campaign. Others have worn a Psi Corps badge in a Babylon 5 game, or brought Star Trek props to the table for a game. Hell, one of the players even dressed in BDSM gear for her character.

It’s fun. It helps the players fit in. But it can also make other players who haven’t quite made the leap from a social game of pretend at the table, to that more immersive style of play that LARPers and dress-up types bring with them. (Especially when you’ve got a girl wearing nothing-there leather bits…)

Personally, I could couldn’t care less. If the players are having fun, they can bring whatever prop or costume they want, so long as it’s not sharp or loaded, but it’s a good idea before people get too out there to make sure everyone’s comfortable with level of costuming being done.

Have your say.

 

« Previous Page — Next Page »