The Black Campbell

The last couple of subjects for the RPGaDay didn’t much interest me, and I was recovering from a 1200 mile weekend on the Triumph, so I didn’t post on them. This day’s question, however, is a good one: What innovation could benefit RPGs and their players most?

This obviously suggests “technology”, and I’ll address that first. Online platforms that allow players to connect across the world is the obvious one. We have Roll20, Google Hangouts, and other video conferencing platforms that allow folks to communicate and play together. Roll20 and Google Hangouts have added functionality — especially the former, which is specifically designed for use by RPG players — like dice apps, character sheet uploading, virtual tabletops, etc. This is all great for the players, and Roll20 looks to be growing quickly…I haven’t had a chance to use it, but I’m intrigued by it.

One of the reasons I haven’t jumped in is the same reason I’ve found this platforms of limited utility — normally, I have a group of two or three people on one end, and a player or two that can’t be at the table on the other. Video conferencing works best when everyone is on the computer and talking online…and while this allows people to connect across the world, it loses a certain bit of the personal touch of sitting together. When you have a bigger group on one side and a person on the other, it’s very difficult to get the logistics of the big room to work well — you need a camera and mic that can capture the entire table, and you need a screen positioned someplace where you can have the virtual player visible by those players. To be frank: it’s a pain in the ass.

The times I’ve tried Google Hangouts, it’s pretty stable for a short session, two to three hours, and with a limited number of people (I haven’t tried more than three.) Improvements in video conferencing due to better data bandwidth is the most obvious innovation in distance gaming (did I just coin a term? I hope so!) I think once Roll20 and other platforms also move away from the focus on fantasy gaming toward more generic maps and tokens, character sheets, etc. would be a close second. I don’t play D&D or Pathfinder, but a lot of people do, so that’s just supply and demand, I suppose.

But another point of “innovation” that might be very helpful would be in the field of book design. There’s been a steady move from the ’90s to today toward graphic intensive books: full color, glossy paper, massive tomes that cost a lot, are hard to read, and blow up your tablet when you try to use the pdf. I’d like to see a move (or a regression, if you like spending $60 for a coffee table book you’ll probably never play because you can’t read the damned rules…) toward simpler, cleaner layouts.

Movies.

I know for a lot of folks, it’s books, but for me, it’s film and television. I’m a visual guy and I grew up going to the movies with my dad as a treat, then later escaped to the theater to get away from reality with the likes of Indiana Jones, Mad Max Rockitansky, the Goonies, and James Bond.

I learned the three act structure from movies. Learned that doing an action game could easily use the “three exotic locations for an action set piece” with exposition between of Bond movies. I learned when characters worked, and when they didn’t, and how to set a beat for a scene. This is too short, this is too long. Keep it simple. Move the story.

I went through a period in the late ’80s of getting into comics, and running superhero games. The tone, the beats, and the way to structure a campaign required a rethinking. Longer arcs, but more episodic in nature. This fed into the ’90s, where I started running longer campaigns, rather than ones that lasted a few months. This required a different type of thinking. Instead of organizing a game like a movie, or a series of movies, I started thinking in terms of television series.

About the same time, series that had overall story arcs that were (generally) well-planned were starting to show up. Hill Street Blues, Saint Elsewhere, and the granddaddy of well-planned arcs, Babylon 5.

After Bond movies, Babylon 5 was probably the biggest influence on how I game, at least from the notion of having a metaplot that the characters can affect, and the effect of which also change the world and the characters.

There have been other movies and shows that have served as inspiration for our games, and a few books — some of Ray Kurzweil’s stuff from decades ago, the Flashman series heavily informed my Castle Falkenstein games, Greek myth always seems to creep in.

But from how I plot, to how I manage a scene between players, to how I describe things — “Smash cut to the plane over ocean superimposed on a map…” or “We pan down to see your characters moving through the building…” — movies are still my go-to inspiration for games.

Ah, nostalgia! Now I haz the feelz.

If I could put any group together to play, I think I would cobble together a group of my two main gaming buddies from high school — Jim and Eric — and combine them with humorous and very creative team of gamers I had from 2011-2013: Matt, Susan, James (whose Jack MacMahon remains my standard for dumb but useful brick), Joe (of the Jerry P Neimann infamy), and Paul.

Hell, even the just that last group, alone, would be delightful to have back together.

Right now, we’re into a good campaign of Hollow Earth Expedition, but there’s a few games that are on the back burner for the near future.

Atomic Robo — this is more pulp goodness, but this one tends to focus more on Science! and big robots. There’s a few things i was thinking about doing with it, not the least being tossing the comic books’ “canon” and just borrowing the stuff I want. The stripped down Fate system is much faster to play than Ubiquity, which powers HEX.

Unnamed system X — Black Campbell Entertainment is going to be releasing it’s own system, and that means playtesting. I have an idea for a near future dystopia game, as well as an espionage story, that I want to use to test the system.

Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition — I haven’t played fantasy for 30 years and with good reason: it always seems some derivative Tolkein pap. I have an idea for short campaign that I’d like to play in 5th Ed. simply because it reminds me so much of a slightly improved version of AD&D from when I played in high school. (So it’s probably a nostalgia kick.)

The one most likely to get played, I suspect, is Atomic Robo, but who knows..?

This isn’t a tough one. I’ve had a couple of really long-lived groups over the years, but the one that was a constant for 18 years of those was my ex-wife. I’d already had a pretty good handle on my gaming style — cinematic in how I structured adventures and scenes, I had a certain patter already, but playing with her in the group before and after marriage for that long, she was the main driver of how I play, simply because she always being in the group.

As an inveterate romance novel reader, I tailored stuff to address that aspect of her personality. Where before romance was mostly off-screen, it moved to front and center. Similarly, play moved from PG to R (and occasionally X)…that’s what the audience wanted. At the same time, the games that we were playing tended to showcase that sort of play — Victorian sic-fi like Space: 1889 and Castle Falkenstein, where social drama can drive a session as well as a punch up or mystery.

It colored things deeply enough that, even though we’ve pulled back from the extremes of that style of gaming, adult themes, romance and/or sexuality, still permeate play…and that’s alright: my players are all adults. If you can’t handle some blue scenes, you should probably stop gaming and go get laid.

Mine take on this is going be be different, I suspect, than many folks. The biggest surprise wasnt’ an event or a monster or any kind of plot hook, but rather a character so well played and crafted, that he took over an most of a session and had everyone laughing and enjoying themselves that no one wanted to bust in on his groove.

We were playing a Supernatural game, in which the Vatican had gotten a pair of priests that were part of a “secret service” handling exorcisms and the like. In the process of tracking down what would turn out to be werewolves in New York City, they enlisted the aid of said character…who needs to be described in detail:

Jerry P Neimann is the son of an Air Force colonel and a schoolteacher who grew up in East Orange, New Jersey. He was a fat, introverted kid who binged on sci-fi and Lovecraftian horror, and is a gamer. Smart, catastrophically lazy, he got an MS in computer security and has become a moderately successful computer security guru, who is legendary in the northern Jersey RPG and comic communities for his toy collection. On the side, he “ghost hunts” for his YouTube channel (and claims that SciFi screwed him out of his pitch for Ghost Hunters.)

Jerry is a 300 lb., red-heaired, pink sausage of a man who is nearsighted, has a “neard” (a neck beard), and is obsessive about the wonders of Android over iOS, Linux over everything else, and open source whatever.

You’ve met this guy.

Jerry discovers the werewolf infestation while ghost hunting in the abandoned train tunnels under Manhattan, and is the pot device for getting things rolling, but it was only once he got on a tear about werewolves, SciFi’s blatant theft of his idea, computers, the Church, his bunion, and a few others things that Jerry P Neimann managed to burst forth from the inestimable Joe LeConte’s head and completely derailed the night. In a good way. He was so damned funny, no one wanted him to stop.

I’ve seen great gamers, but I’ve never seen a 6’3″ black Irish kid from Boston turn into the stereotypical red-headed stepchild gamer and computer geek so fully, and amusingly, as to simple steal all the air out of the room.

It was delightful.

Miss that guy.

While our group definitely gets together to game once a week, for most — if not all — of us, it’s a reason to get together with friends. Sometimes, we just simply do a board game, or watch movies, or still and chat. But mostly, we game.

A good session is aided, for me, by the side banter. i know there are a lot of gamers and groups where out-of-character talking is discouraged, or you have to throw up your little handsign to show you’re not in character, but most folks with a modicum of social skill can normally figure that out. It’s the fun — the laughing at a good joke, or a humorous moment int he game, or an exciting or embarrassing moment for the characters that we can all enjoy. It’s being together with friends in a comfortable environment (I’m talking a home or a good play space…but a game session relaxing in a seaside bungalow in the Maldives probably counts, too…) and enjoying each other’s company.

Add in some decent food — I and another gamer tend to do most of the hosting, and we both like to cook and entertain, so if we’re at his house, it’s several course meals; at my place I tend to focus on a bit pot of something tasty. Booze is a nice addition — I’m a sucker for mojitos and ginger martinis, but a good cider or beer will do, as well.

The game’s only as good as the people you game with.