Tag Archives: GMing

Tsathoggua – Primeval Duraflame Log – Pt 1

Through no fault of my own – I swear these universes build themselves – I suddenly find myself needing to become more acquainted with the Great Old One Tsathoggua as well as figure out some very practical places for it to appear in my Call of Cthulhu game. So in my effort to figure out how to make it appear and influence my game, you get a blog post on how to better use Tsathoggua. (edit: MULTIPLE blog posts…)

According to The HP Lovecraft Wiki’s entry on Tsathoggua, he is one of the most referenced GOO’s in all of Lovecraft, which is crazy for how little he is used in Lovecraft investigation games. Furthermore, while Sath (my shorthand for it, at least for this blog post) is a creation of Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft of course took him and made him his own, and the two versions differ substantially. Finally, in most books Sath is represented as a monstrous toad-like creature who sleeps all the time – not the most horrifying of visages when put against its peers. So no wonder Sath is underutilized, which is all the more reason to figure out how to use him.

My Arkham Call of Cthulhu campaign strings together published scenarios for a group of PCs that run an antique store that was inherited by Rupert Merriweather (of Edge of Darkness fame). In the group’s first scenario – of course, The Haunting – one of the PCs got his hands on The Book of Eibon (TBOE), in which the titular wizard Eibon learns to communicate with Sath and eventually shares spells to do so (as well as summon Formless Spawn, which I’ll come back to).

I am working on a mini-game to make studying Mythos tome more fun, which is not ready to share, but for now know that I’m using it as this PC (a forgery artist named Miles) continually goes back to TBOE and tries to crack its code. TBOE is full of references to Sath and I’ve started to feed in some information, bit by bit, on what that looks like. But honestly, I don’t have a full take on how to make reading about Sath fun and interesting as well as dangerous.

Then, months later in game time, the group is now investigating a series of murders that seem not only related but powered by witchcraft (and probably Mythos magic). In this scenario (which I’ll be vague and spoiler-free for now), the antagonist has made a pact with Sath (via the mentioned murders) and the deity in turn provides all sorts of Mythos magical powers to be used in nefarious ways.

So I have two needs to crack the code on Tsathoggua:

  • What does making a pact with this deity – trading magic powers for ritual sacrifices – specifically look like for both the antagonist (who made the pact) and the PCs investigating her? How is a pact with Sath different from a pact with Nyarlathotep or any other GOO?
  • How does reading TBOE (basically an instruction manual on how to contact and make a pact with Sath) impact the reader? What changes does my PC undergo as he continues to investigate this arcane and very dangerous tome?

But before I do any of this, I need to do some research of my own and figure out who the subterranean madness this Tsathoggua fellow is.

New GOO – Who ‘dis?

One of the main reasons to own the Trail of Cthulhu book (by Ken Hite and Pelgrane Press), whether you have a weathered 1e (like me) or backed the upcoming 2e (also me), is the incredible section on Gods and Titans. Hite, a Mythos scholar if there is one, doesn’t just give static descriptions of GOOs – instead for each GOO he provides a few options of how that GOO may appear in your game that both works thematically and gives you practical advice on how to incorporate into actual investigations.

So when I am challenged to visualize how a GOO might appear in my game, this section is the first place I go. Without repeating the whole entry, after reading and mulling about, I found this entry on Sath most appealing:

Tsathoggua is a protean, formless Great Old One, usually encountered in the shape of a loathsome toad-like lump of black slime. He was the first GOO to seep onto Earth. His spawn are likewise formless, and they are his primary servitors. In some sense, all his spawn are the same being, connected through immaterial pathways of perception and lineage.

This entry has so much to sink my teeth into! It ties together how and where Sath and its servitors may appear (in the cracks of Earth), how they appear (black slime), and how they interact with each other, as well as mortals (connected through immaterial pathways of perception and lineage). This gives me everything I need to frame up both the pact and the PCs’ research (both for the PC reading TBOE and the overall group investigation).

Armed with this, I can now fill in the details on what the pact looks like.

More in Part II…

“It’s a Cold and Wet Sunday” – Calendar and Weather in Investigative Horror

Closed on Sundays

Recently, in both 1920s Call of Cthulhu games I’m running, the players laid forth plans to get out on the town and get some shit done – knock on doors, talk to folks, figure out what was happening. But as they went about their business, they soon found that all the shops were closed and people were unavailable. It was Sunday, and most places are closed on Sunday.

This forced the players to retune their expectations and come at the problem in different ways. In one game, where they wanted to interview a shop owner, they asked if there was an apartment upstairs that might be the residence of the owner. There was indeed a residence, and a successful Luck roll later, they found the shop owner home on a Sunday morning, surprised in her morning robes, but willing to bring them in for tea and a brief visit.

In the other case, the group wanted to find a professor of archaeology at Miskatonic University and ask them some questions. Since there’s no school on Sunday, chances are the whole department is closed and no one available. “We’ll try anyway – see if anyone is working the weekend.”

Another Luck roll and this was a Critical Success – as it happened, they found the department head redoing his bookshelves on a Sunday, and were able to capture his imagination with their recent artifact finds. They engaged with the NPC and got the clues that sent the story off on a whole new direction…

In both cases, what might have originally been seen as a blocker – it’s Sunday so no clues for you! – was actually an opportunity for both the players and me to reframe the scene and solve the problem in a new way. It was less about preventing clues or encounters and more about verisimilitude and presenting the world in a way that feels real.

I love the word “verisimilitude.” First off, six syllables is a lot, and 50% more than my last name, so it’s just a big, neat word. Also, it packs a lot of punch for investigative horror games where the disparity and dichotomy between our “normal” reality and the cosmic horrors we encounter are what gives these stories a lot of punch.

The word means “the appearance of being true or real” and while that seems pretty straightforward, it’s definitely a tool that can easily be misused or mishandled in these sorts of games. It’s an amazing tool that definitely needs careful use.

I’m not even going to talk about people who use it to justify prejudice (racism, sexism, etc) in their games, saying “XXX people had no rights in that time period, so we’re going to lean into that part of the game.” Blech, no, shut up and go away.

I’m talking more about people who get lost in the details of the period and roleplay the least important part of the games  – like buying bus tickets or presenting a dinner menu. These are neat, yes, and certainly taking a brief moment to set the scene and ground the story in historical appropriate details helps build the atmosphere.

But often writers and GMs get lost in these details and use them as excuses to avoid real stakes or interesting traction in the story. Just in my above example, I could have just said, no the place is closed on Sunday and moved on. But the players pushed back and asked for a way to work around in a manner that felt real. So they themselves leaned into the details and countered the real situation with appropriate details of their own.

This is good, and we want to encourage and reward this behavior. Good players, here is a clue.

But also good GM – I didn’t let the verisimilitude get in the way of the story and instead used the details to create something different than what was expected.

Cold and Tired

The next thing I’m trying to do with this verisimilitude is with the weather, which everyone is discussing but no one is doing anything about. Seriously, I describe the weather all the time, especially when it becomes inclement – rainy or even snowy and cold. One of my groups is currently in London during the month of February, and before that were in NYC in January, so I was constantly describing the cold weather in an effort to bring the scenes alive.

And that’s great, but… then what? So it’s raining and cold and overcast and damp, and we need to carry umbrellas and wear coats and hats… And then? How do these details make acting during these scenes more interesting and real? What tools can we as GMs bring to bear that make the weather more impactful?

I don’t actually know at this moment, but what I am wrestling with is being realistic with PC exhaustion, or “you haven’t slept in 36 hours because you’ve been running and gunning from the police, so you’re too tired to do anything.”  Again, this came up in both of my games, and I wrestled with how to bring realism to the game and still keep it fun.

No one wants to be left out when the group gets together to discuss clues and the mystery and what to do next. I don’t. Those scenes are one of the best parts of the game, and it’s no fun to be told by the GM “you failed your CON roll so you’re asleep in the other room.”

I know that it’s not fun, because I did that in both games and watched the players itch to get back in the scenes. As a follow up then, I had the PCs check their CON, and that potential success could end in a reward of MP or HP, resulting from a good night’s sleep. And then I just picked up the whole scene and brought everyone together for breakfast together. It worked great.

Paying Attention

Verisimilitude is not just a great word – it’s a tool to use to ground players in the realness of our game, and is particularly useful in period games. But it can be overused or misused to put up roadblocks or churn for players who just want to engage with the story.

Paying attention to the day of the week often feels like too much bookkeeping for my tastes, but it allowed me to bring some realism and shift the tones of scenes without much effort. It worked very well and I will definitely use it again.

However, if my investigators spend too much time out in the cold rain and happen to get colds or the flu, I’m not sure needing to spend the weekend in bed will be as fun for them as it is for my storytelling. I need to find a better way to use weather to impact the game.

What are your tips for using verisimilitude to build details and realness in your game?

9 Player DCC with Player Roles

9 Player DCC with Player Roles: Caller, Mapper, Quartermaster, Time-tracker

I recently ran a 5-hour session of Operation Unfathomable with 9 players, and one of the key things that helped everyone at the table – especially me – stay engaged and organized was that I had four players help me run the game. Before the game I identified four sets of information and decisions that I wanted to offboard from me, and then I asked folks ahead of time who could help me. It was easy to setup and once everyone was engaged it worked like a charm.

I’ll describe each of these roles, and will finish by talking through what it means to have responsible players that you can trust.

Caller

Back in the early days of OD&D/AD&D, having a party of 6+ players was the norm. The legends speak of 8, 10, 12 or more players around the table for the early games, and I’ve certainly played in larger games back in the early ‘80s. There just weren’t enough DMs (still a problem today, though not as severe) and getting invited to sit at a game – any game – was a thrill, no matter the party size.

In order to maintain the chaos of decision-making during non-combat turns (the 10 minute long ones, more on that below), one player is designated the Caller. I’m still digging through the AD&D books to find a citation, but the Caller is the player responsible for holding the party’s collective decision making process for the DM. This is the first time I’ve ever run a game with a Caller, and while I only needed it a few times, when I did it was beautiful.

The Caller’s job is to hold the answer to the question “what are you doing now?” for the entire party, gaining consensus (or not) and anointed by the DM as the single point for an answer. My friend Dan is a Sr Director at a large tech company and so he was an easy pick for this role.

I only used him a few times – a key example is when the party emerged from the entry side tunnel (we’re underground) and I asked “do you go left or right?” The group took a good five minutes to discuss, and then slowly waded into a confused back and forth that these large group decisions often go. So then I pointed to Dan and said, “Well?”

He stopped the discussion, made a decision, and checked back in with the group (“everybody okay if we go right?”), got a collective shrug of acceptance, then told me, “we go right.” And that was it.

There is an important psychological moment with agency and decision consensus that the group went through, but it took Dan’s energy and focus to hold the group in that moment, and I didn’t have to do anything. Furthermore, it wasn’t me as the DM holding the decision, it was the party who did it, which also builds a greater sense of buy-in and agency. We didn’t need it often – most of the turns I gave people the opportunity to do their own thing – but when we did, it worked extremely well. I’m all in with the Caller.

Mapper

There was a mix-up at the start when I asked the second Dan to bring a battle mat and he only brought smaller folio-sized combat maps. I had envisioned mapping the tunnels in a large-scale – not necessarily to scale, with one square equaling 20 feet – but putting the large map out in front so everyone could see it. But it all worked out in the end.

Rob heartily volunteered for the role of Mapper, and his job was to draw a map that showed the dungeon with any notes of encounters. This was particularly important because we are only playing once a year, so there needs to be continuity for the group to pick up in 2025. Rob did great.

We agreed on a few key ideas as we started:

  • 20 foot squares
  • There are no cardinal directions (as we’re underground) but for the sake of simplicity, the top of the map is north
  • If Rob needed clarification, he could hold up the map and ask “like this?” and that while I would not correct every single detail, I would make sure he has the overall structure correct.

And that’s how it worked. Like the Caller, we didn’t need it until we needed it. He checked in a few times, but for most of the game he was sitting at the end of the table, creating a map of the dungeon and quite enjoying himself. A few times he helped steer the group back on course, a few times he asked if he had it right, and now there’s a map of what they’ve explored so far. Absolutely easier than what I had in my head when I started.

Quartermaster

Again, I was thinking about getting decisions and tracking off my plate and onto a player’s, I asked Dan2 (not the Caller) to manage the group’s inventory. I did this for three reasons:

  • The campaign starts with the PCs getting a bunch of magic items that I didn’t want to manage myself.
  • I wanted someone to track food and ammunition (more on this below).
  • And there would be treasure and other items the group came across to track.

Moving the consensus building from me to a player was again so helpful. When the party arrived at the start of the dungeon, I gave Dan2 an index card with a list of 10+ magic items, and then he went around the table and figured out who got what. While he did this I continued to prep and think about where the first encounter would be.

Also, I don’t really like tracking individual rations and ammunition, and like to use the One Year Engine’s resource-tracking die mechanic (they didn’t need torches because the dungeon is lit by phosphorescent fungi). Basically, your resource (eg rations) start at a d20 value. Then, whenever you eat (let’s say daily) you roll that resource die, and if you get a 1 or 2, it drops down to the next die in the chain (usually d12 down from d20 but we’re playing DCC and I haven’t decided where the d14 and d16 fit it, lol). Then you repeat until you reach d4, when if you roll a 1/2 you are out of that resource.

We did it for ammunition for the one crossbow in the group (no bows strangely) so it wasn’t used a lot, but Dan2 just rolled a couple times and didn’t get a 1 or 2, so ammunition stayed at the d20. Much easier than tracking individual shots, and really great to have this all managed by someone not me.

Time-tracker

This final piece was the one I wasn’t sure about, and I waffled up until that morning, then just decided to go for it. I’ve not run a large scale dungeon crawl in a while, and 9 players or not, I don’t have a go-to framework for managing the action economy while exploring. After some research and discussions with a friend, I just went simple and built the following rules:

  • It takes 10 minutes to explore a 20’ square and gain the core information.
  • Any other exploring or resting will take another 10 minutes.
  • 60 minutes to an hour, etc.

The key for tracking time is used for:

  • Tracking daily rations usage
  • Tracking spell and other underworld and Chaos effects
  • Understanding overall time spent for in-game context

It was fascinating to discover at the end of five-hours in actual time that we had spent five hours in-game. The ebb and flow of 10 minute exploration rounds versus the few intense encounters centered on the large combat (which only took 30 minutes in game but a whole hour in real time) still ended up with a very similar time-frame.

Glenn gladly took up this role, and he pressed me a couple times to be clear in how much time had passed. The first few times I had to think about it, but we got into a groove and by the end, I was comfortable judging whether or not to tick off another 10 minutes. He created his own tracker on a piece of graph paper, and again, was happy ticking time away with almost no inputs or management from me. So good.

On Players

The key thread through all of these roles is that I had players who easily jumped into their responsibilities with almost no prodding or management by me. These are all good friends of mine, and I’ve known most of them for decades, so there’s a level of trust and communication that already exists. I’m thankful for their help, and I recognize that a less mature table (maybe comprised of strangers at con) may not be as easy and effective as mine was.

One would hope that sitting down with a larger group at a convention, or even at an annual gaming weekend of friends like mine, would naturally bring the engagement needed to pull this off. I could write a whole blog post on managing people’s expectations and what communication skills are needed to pull this off, but that will be for another day.

For now I’ll leave saying that these roles not only helped the party function and gave the players more agency – they made the game more fun for me as the DM. It’s a lot of work managing a dungeon crawl, never mind one with 9 players only run once a year. Getting help in this way significantly improved my enjoyment of the game, took many decisions burdens off my mind, and let me focus on the story and encounter flow.

I heartily recommend these roles for larger groups, and feel like the whole thing is possible with these shared responsibilities. I hope you get a chance to try them some day.

6 Inspirations for your Alien RPG

I recently picked up five Aliens graphic novels as I’m a bit hungry for  inspiration for my game. I thought I’d post little quick reviews and recommendations here to guide purchase. The key here is that, as far as the rpg is concerned, these are all pulling from the same canon (six movies), and show a broad set of interpretations of those materials. Mild spoilers here but I’ve tried to stay away from major plot points. I’ve linked all books in the text itself:

Alien 3 by William Gibson

With all the recent uptick in Alien interest, the powers that be went back to the unused William Gibson screenplay for Alien 3 and turned it into a graphic novel and audio play. I remember reading the screenplay itself in the late 90s in the nascent days of the internet and being unimpressed, and I think the feeling is still there. Now, Alien 3 (the actual David Fincher directed movie) is a total train wreck, but the new cut at least pulls it together into something that makes some sort of sense. But for all that Fincher’s 3 does wrong, at least it focuses on Ripley, who is the key protagonist for the series. This makes Gibson’s choice to Anyway, this is still a MUST READ for rpg influence if only because it paints a picture of the UPP and how they might interact with UA forces, as well as WY science vessels. I’ve heard good things about the radio drama of this as well, but for me the graphic novel was easily consumable in an evening, and I was very glad to have that now as a touchstone. Grade A: Highly Recommend

Dead Orbit by James Stokoe

The Heavy Metal vibe in this collection is heavy here and it sucked me right in. The story itself is not that original, but it does put a new spin on the Space Trucker, so anyone planning to run a Trucker game this is a must-read. The art is totally bonkers with a heavy Moebius vibe but also a Dave Gibbons level of detail. I give the story a B+ but the art is A++++. This one is also a MUST READ if you are looking for some new angles on your Aliens game. Grade A: Highly Recommend

Resistance by Brian Wood & Robert Carey

This collection picks up Amanda Ripley’s story after the Isolation video game (which has officially been removed from canon apparently), and is the first part of a two-parter by Wood. I stopped reading comics because I really became attached to a certain style of drawing and I don’t like many overall, but Carey’s art is phenomenal. And Wood carves out a nice little corner of the Aliens universe with this story that involves WY and synths and more bonkers experiments. The story here is pretty clever and could form a whole backbone for any kind Aliens campaign. This one was probably the best of all my reads. So good on so many levels. Grade A+: Must Read

Rescue by Brian Wood & Kieran McKeown

This story is the surprise part two to Resistance, and picks up Ripley’s story for one more go. I am not enamored by McKeown’s art but it’s not bad, just very normal. The story is also not quite as original as Resistance, but since it’s the same characters, there is a strong feeling of continuity. It shows again how WY influence is broad and corrupt, and expands the universe well enough. It’s okay and is not a must read, except that, now that you know you want to read it, don’t you? If you’re going to . Grade B: Solid Copy

Dust to Dust by Gabriel Hardman & Rain Beredo

I am super touchy about using children as protagonists because apparently they’re so hard to do that no one can really do them justice (except Miyazaki, bless him). This story is okay and sheds some dark light on WY’s corruption; it gives some cool flavor to the universe and could even be a cool convention one-shot. But I don’t really like the art, and I don’t like how the 12 year old main character is incapable of actually taking care of himself for most of the story. I would not recommend picking this up unless you’re trying to get everything. Grade C: Only for completists

Sentient by Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Walta

This collection came recommended after I bought all the others by the monster that is the Amazon AI, which is funny because it’s a story about AIs and their capabilities. No spoilers here, in order to preserve the surprises, but while there are no aliens, there are definitely powerful AIs that are central to the plot. This black and white comic is well written and even more beautifully illustrated. The story is dark and scary with only humans and AIs, which is the perfect inspiration for your Alien rpg. Grade A: Must Read!

On Providing Choice to the PCs

I started my 5th Edition D&D campaign last week and am very excited for it. It’s been a while (well, two years) since I started a new campaign, but, more importantly, I’ve invited a bunch of close friends to join me weekly on Roll20, with shorter hours (more on this later), which will make it very easy to keep going on a regular basis. With a consistent gaming schedule, I find I can focus my efforts on prepping and running the game instead of worrying about whether enough players will show.

But for me, running a campaign isn’t just about gaming. It’s about taking an opportunity to flex my storytelling muscles at the same time I’m having fun in a game. I can’t help but use the opportunity for running a game to find the story components and engage with those as much as possible. And it’s even more important in a game like D&D, where the story elements aren’t as pronounced as, say, in a Dungeon World, Fiasco, or FATE game (which are more rooted in story out of the gate).

So if I’m taking the effort to learn and explore storytelling in my 5th edition game, there’s no better place to start than at the beginning. And having just begun my game, I want to identify all the places I can get the team working on these elements, and it starts with PC introductions. But it’s not enough just to make the PCs’ various histories important to the game’s present — you need to make it matter with choice. Choice is one of the fundamental aspects of storytelling in that it fundamentally creates characters — when characters make a choice, they show their true colors and instincts. And the harder the choice, the more interesting the story. Does Luke join Darth? Does Frodo keep the Ring? Does Neo take the red or blue pill? Without choice, story is nothing.

For the first session, I came up with a list of choices for each PC (one each) to make that will inform their own personalities and loyalties. Each choice had something to do with the old world versus the new world. In the campaign introduction, the group has been recruited by Lord Silverhand of Waterdeep, but the PCs also have their own factions and other personal allegiances — will they turn their back on their old world connections or move forward into their new futures? Will they accept their new responsibilities blindly or do they second guess why they’ve been hired? How will they approach this new mission in light of their personal backgrounds? These are all interesting choices that give color to characters.

The best games and campaigns are rooted in choice. One of the most classic RPG campaigns of all time — Masks of Nyarlathotep for Call of Cthulhu — opens by giving the PCs multiple choices on how to approach the game with a large handful of clues and information. Out of the gate the PCs have agency to determine their own direction in the game and I believe this set of choices (which ultimately follows the group throughout the game) helps cement the campaign as one of the all-time greats.

As a game master, it’s your job to set the tone of your game — the earlier, the better. Yes, we’re playing out of the box 5th edition D&D, but we’re also playing in my game, and I like stories, the bigger, the better. I don’t want to just crawl through the dungeons or wilderness and not give opportunity to let the story be about the characters and their choices. Just giving the PCs these introductory choices — just one quick choice along with one scene bringing them into the world — set the tone and gave each player something to latch onto. I think it was a good start.

I’m interested in all the ways we can actively bring storytelling elements into our RPGs. What other ways can we allow players and PCs to make choices?

High Castle Playset for Fiasco Under Development

One of the best parts of living in our Golden Age of RPGs is that the choice of systems to use provides an unprecedented level of game design flexibility. Recently I was watching the Amazon TV show Man in the High Castle thinking how much I liked the story as possible RPG setting. While my first impulse was to develop some system and setting out of whole cloth, I quickly realized that the setting was the perfect candidate for a Fiasco playset.

If you’re not familiar with Fiasco, it’s a GM-less RPG that revolves around high ambition and poor impulse control. Originally seeded as an opportunity to play out a Coen Brother style session, it has evolved into an RPG engine that can provide amazing gaming sessions in myriad different genres, tones and depth of story-telling. The writers of Fiasco have open-sourced the playsets it uses to allow anyone to create a Fiasco session in any really anyway, anytime, with all sorts of interesting gaming levers to pull.
So instead of going and designing a new game based on The Man in the High Castle (both the TV show and novel, both of which I like immensely), I just decided to build my own playset. And, quite frankly, it worked out quite well. This last weekend, at BigBadCon in Walnut Creek, CA, I ran two separate sessions of Return to the High Castle, a Fiasco game set in the world of The Man in the High Castle. My game description was as such:
Canon City, Colorado, 1962: Sixteen years after the Nazis bombed Washington, D.C., the Greater Nazi Reich rules Eastern North America, while the West is governed by the Japanese Pacific States. High in the Rocky Mountains lives the remains of the USA, those unwilling to submit to the will of the totalitarian state, those hiding secrets and their past, and those who are still willing to stand up and fight. The Resistance has a move to make, something to hide and sell, but there are spies, moles, and double agents everywhere. Time for plans to fall apart. Time for a fiasco. Loosely based on the Philip K Dick book and Amazon TV series “The Man in the High Castle.”
I will be writing more on the playset, but for now, I wanted to note some of my thoughts on the two sessions and some give feedback for myself on where to go next with the playsets. Most of my feedback drops into one of two buckets:
1. The Setting Can Be Really Dark… or Not: So just running a game with Nazis and Imperialist Japanese with a modicum of verisimilitude creates problems right out of the gate. Basically, these were horrible fascist regimes that did horrible things to many, many people. The impact of what was done is still being felt today and will be felt for a long, long time. So much so, that there are a lot of stripes to fascism that are still in our public conversation today, in discussions on race relation, immigration, and, oh, I don’t know, the fact that Aleppo, Syria today looks like Berlin in 1945. So yeah, those are still fresh scars.
The first key here is, then, to just talk about it. We had an open conversation at both tables, though one was far more thorough than the other, on where we might cross boundaries and how we were going to talk about it if we did. One observation is that, for both sessions, we limited the action in the game to just the city and area around Canon City, which plays a central part of the TV show. My playset is set there because it represents the perfect arena for plans to come undone, but we also found that no one wanted to play in the either of the occupied parts of the former USA, either the West/Japanese or East/Nazi occupied lands. Not playing in these areas allowed us to stay away from most of the really dark stuff that might come up. We were playing in what was, ostensibly, the remains of the USA, which allowed us freedom that might not be available in the occupied areas. It also kept us at arm’s distance from the fascist regimes that might be able to easily crush the freedom that we, as players, needed to exercise in order to avoid some of the darker topics.
The key component of a good Fiasco game is high stakes in imperfect plans that come tumbling down, usually in a tragic manner. Keeping the action to Canon City, and away from the darker parts of the setting, allowed us to set up some dark comedy and tragic plans without needing to pull in the really, really horrible stuff.
2. Dick’s Split Reality: One of my favorite parts of any Philip K Dick story is his playing with reality and perceptions. All the best PKD stories have characters punching through the veil to realize that things are not really as they seem. It’s very Dickian for the High Castle stories (both novel and TV) to have people realize that their reality, in which the Axis won WWII by dropping a bomb on Washington DC, is not the only reality, and that a reality exists where the Allies won (aka our reality). Not only do the characters realize it, but they travel to that reality at some point, as well as have artifacts (film and book) come from one reality to another. So it’s key to any PKD-inspired story to have shifting realities be a part of the narrative.
Well, in the first game we played, this was only hinted at when one of the PCs (mine) came across a USA flag with 50 stars. Not only is the the flag banned contraband but the USA of the High Castle reality would have never reached 50 states (with Alaska and Hawaii both gaining statehood in 1959). So 50 stars on a USA flag is something strange but not reality shaking. In our second game, as we attempted to raise the stakes, one of the PCs encountered what seemed to be a Nazi listening post (much like the Japanese one in the High Castle TV show), that implied that every place the PCs had been was tapped. This had serious implications for the narrative. Well, we just ran with it, and came up with a very Dickian story with double and triple realities, possible time travel, and maybe even androids posing as PCs. So yeah, Dickian.
Lots of different avenues to investigate then with this playset, and I was amazed and overjoyed with the sessions. Of course, it helps to have high quality players, and I was blessed with eight amazing gamers who jumped in with both feet for this unusual and somewhat risky endeavor. But the session bouyed my intuition that the High Castle is a valid and interesting setting for RPGing, especially in the Fiasco realm. The possibilities and details providing in the playset were more than enough primer to help build a unique, interesting, and most importantly fun Fiasco session.
There is still work to do on the playset, some tweaking and some open questions on organization that need to be answered. I aim to provide this playset free of charge, so we’ll see how that whole thing works out with Intellectual Property and all that. More soon with further developments.

The Companion is Finally Live!

The Masks of Nyarlathotep, if you didn’t know, is often hailed as the greatest Call of Cthulhu campaign of all time, and even gets logged as one of the all time great RPG campaigns of any genre. But one of its problems is that there is a lot of room left in the story — there are so many details undocumented, questions unanswered. It’s a great campaign but could really be so much greater.

More than five years ago, Bret Kramer came up with the idea of building a companion for the campaign, and the Kickstarter for that companion is finally live. Back in 2009 I wrote a number of pieces for the book, one of which was about how to run and organize the massive game. Apparently I had some good stuff to say, because it’s one of the first pieces in the book, and my name ended up on the cover.

There is a lot of vaporware in the tabletop RPG world — material that people write that never sees the light of day. The Companion was definitely heading toward that and I am so excited and proud that it is finally going to be published. I distinctly remember writing my Companion pieces on my deck in Oregon, with my work laptop in front of me and a beer next to me and trying very hard to stay focused on completing what I had agreed to. I was so desperate to complete something, to be a part of a project, and I had no idea it would take so long for it to see print.

More importantly, I really wanted to write something that other people would read and understand and be thankful for. My key contribution for the Companion is the keeper introduction, wherein I try to help keepers wrap their heads around the enormous task of running Masks. I really enjoyed writing the piece because I felt like I had something to say and the writing came easily and naturally. You mean people want to hear what I have to say about how to run a better game? I was glad to step up and write all I could on the matter.

And with the Kickstarter now up to 20k pounds (~$30k), it’s clear my contribution is part of the greater whole that people are excited to support. The project is finally a success, and though my part in the overall book (which is bigger than Masks itself) is relatively small, it’s huge for me.

For me, 2015 is a year of “out with the old” as I not only take care of some health issues that have been dogging me for a while, but also try to clear my backlog of personal and writing projects. That the Masks Companion is finally done and going to print is very cathartic to me as it validates some efforts that have been sitting around for at least five years, and allows me to move onto other pastures.

The timing couldn’t be better.

4 Keys to Preparing for Successful Con Games

This weekend is one of my favorites for the whole year — Dundracon, the longest running gaming convention in the San Francisco Bay Area, is here! I have been attending DDC since seventh grade and, aside from some gaps in the mid-90s, I’ve been to most of them since. I love DDC for many reasons — it’s got all sorts of games, is run very well, and all my friends go there — and every year I run (at least) one official RPG that both keeps my GMing skills hot and gets me in the door for free.

Last year I ran HWLL twice and it was too much. When you’re running your own RPG, especially when it’s tied to an in-progress Kickstarter, there is a lot of pressure to do it right. Running two games last year was too much of that pressure and I promised myself I would run only one official game this year. Well, I may be running only one official game, but I have been pressured into (okay – volunteered, I’m an attention slut and I just love running games too much) running two more games, so now am running three games — one Trail of Cthulhu, one 5th edition D&D, and my own Cthulhu Dark scenario Sun Spots.

The TOC and D&D games are really just for friends, are not “official” games where I have to wonder at what sort of gamers I will get, and will start when I get my friends together, not at a specific time. They’re also written by other people, which is something I don’t normally do but realized that was the only way to run additional games and not lose my mind. But still, it takes effort to run a good game, whether official or not, and I want to cover the things that I do to prepare for running RPGs at conventions.

The feedback I get tells me I run a pretty good game, but not only am I always looking to improve my game, I also hold myself to pretty high standards. I also know some pretty awesome GMs who do many of the same things I do to prep for their games and I like to steal good ideas whenever I can. Here are some things I’ve found are key to running a great RPG at a convention:

  • Own It – First and foremost: be a goddam professional. You need to treat this like your job, and show up firing on all cylinders. To start, whatever it takes, show up 10-15 minutes early, all your materials in hand and ready to go. There is nothing that builds early player skepticism than having all the players sitting at the table 10 minutes early but the GM is 10 minutes late (this happened to me last year). Especially if you are fortunate enough to have people show up early because your game is overbooked, you want to show that this is your game. Then, start on time, unless you need to wait for pre-registered players. Even then, only wait ten minutes maximum. If a player can’t make it to your game by then, too bad. And again, if you’re lucky enough to have a full game and people are waiting to get in (what a compliment!), communicate directly with them on what they can and cannot expect. For me, I take players first-come, first-served, and will take the names of people like waiting for a table in a restaurant. Other GMs randomize. Regardless, communicate what your plan is, how many possible spots you have, and set expectations out the game. Own the game from the go and your players will quickly realize who is in charge.
  • Provide Everything They Need – I know it seems odd, but some GMs barely provide enough to get the game going. You, as a player, must provide dice, pencils, scrap paper, etc. Some GMs may even expect you to bring paper to use for your character sheet. Screw those guys (it’s unprofessional). You bring PC sheets, probably already filled out as pregenerated characters, but hey why not also bring snacks, chocolate or even bourbon. I like my players to use special dice, so I bring those too. If I’m playing in a game I’ll bring the rulebook and other supplements to share. Basically, bring everything your players need to play your game — everyone will love you.
  • Be the Ball, Billy – What does your game look like when it’s a total success? Can you see it in your mind? Athletes have been using visualization for years to win medals, so why can’t you? Days before the con, picture in your mind how the story will go, where the fun/quiet/exciting parts are, and how the whole thing will end. See yourself and the whole group having a great time, see everyone creating great memories and collaborating on an amazing game, one that people talk about for years. Spend some time thinking about your game well in advance and give yourself room to improve and grow. Sure, it may not go perfectly, but the preparation will help you create the best possible experience.
  • Go Big or Go Home – Finally, if you’re running a game at a con, you have all the permission in the world to make your game as memorable as possible (as you’re not restricted by an ongoing campaign or your friends’ pre-existing expectations), so why not make it as great as possible? Just as you’re going to own it and be a professional, don’t be afraid to put all your eggs in one basket (as it were), killing, maiming and driving PCs mad, all with the goal of creating (with the help of your players) the best game everyone had all convention. Nothing bugs me more than a tame con game — people pay good money to come to a con, and it’s your job to make it worth their while. Bring all your best ideas, craziest stories and wild inspirations for your players. Whether this is just from creating cool props and PC sheets (see above) or by killing everyone off in one big explosion in the end, leave nothing out. Give people something to talk about, and they will tell their friends (awesome) and come back for more (even more awesome).

D&D Comes Full Circle

Sometime in the winter of 1980-81, I played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time. I was in fourth grade and Ronald Reagan had just been elected to president. My friend Greg has an older brother who had started playing this crazy fantasy game, and we sat down and tried to figure out what all the Roman numerals meant in the adventure scenario as we fought monsters and collected treasure. It was so easy back then to just jump in and game — you had your character, some basic stats, a couple pieces of equipment, and you just played. Yes, there were a couple charts, but overall it was just easy and fun and you could really play with just the game book, some pencils, paper, dice, and, of course, your friends.

I was hooked for life.

My parents bought me the red dragon boxed set (the one with chits instead of dice – lame), and over the next few years I began collecting RPGs: first the AD&D books and modules, then other games (including Star Frontiers and Marvel Super Heroes), and I even wrote my first RPG: TimeLords. For these first ten years or so (including heading off to college), I played D&D off and on. I ran a short campaign in college, played the Warhammer RPG briefly there as well, and even ran a 2ed AD&D game for kids when I worked as a summer camp counselor in the early 90s.

Eventually, though, I just stopped caring about D&D. I would play it every couple of years at a convention (usually with 1st ed stalwarts), but other RPGs and genres became far more interesting. Superheroes, science fiction and of course the Cthulhu mythos all became much more intriguing worlds to game in — at some point I even hacked together a time travel campaign for GURPS using multiple sourcebooks, which I would never try these days. (Using GURPS, that is; clearly I still have a thing for time travel games.)

The last game of D&D I played was around four years ago when our high school gaming group reunited to play 4th edition. My entire experience with that trainwreck of a game system can be summed up with me attempting to read the flavor text from the spell card and being told in no uncertain terms from my fellow gamers to “shut the fuck up and just tell us what you’re doing.” The complexities and time it takes to move through 4th ed combat inspired, it seems, impatience with the actual role-playing part of the game.

So it was with slight trepidation when, 2.5 years ago (has it really been that long?) my gaming group at the time playtested D&D 5th edition (which was called D&D Prime at the time, I believe). Sure, of course I’ll play, nothing to lose here. We played through B1, the original scenario, and I sat down at the table to be handed a dwarven cleric and a beer.

I was immediately overwhelmed by how simple the game had become. It was like I had been transported 30 years into the past and suddenly I could just play. It’s like the game had circled back around and found me at 9 years old, except that now I have much higher standards to what constitutes a good and fun role-playing game. And yet, this game was good. This game was fun.

Flash forward to just a couple weeks ago and my 9 year old daughter was harassing me to play D&D. Last summer, when she had seen this video on girls playing D&D with boys, she shouted “I want to play D&D!” Since then, every couple of months she had asked to play, and I had continually put her off. Finally, realizing that a) WotC has posted the D&D rules online for free, and b) what the hell was I waiting for?, I got us playing D&D for the first time just two weeks ago.

The results could not be more amazing. Fifth edition is so easy to learn and run that I really have to give it up for WotC, who has done an amazing job at fully rebooting the game. Firstly, giving away a streamlined version of the rules online for free shows they understand how to market games and interact with their customers in the 21st century. Basically, anyone who wants to play D&D just needs the requisite pencil, paper, dice and friends (plus the free rules) to get started. This is a gateway game, folks, and they’re treating it that way.

Second, the rules have *finally* been streamlined to remove so much of the chart-referring, page number memorizing days of old that you sense a full understanding of how RPGs have changed in the last decade. All high rolls are good, all low rolls are bad (not the case with 1st-4th eds); a monster’s armor class is the number you need to roll higher than to hit them (goodbye THAC0!) — these are a couple examples of how much easier the game is to play.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, the game has really made it easy for the old-school gamers (like myself), to feel right at home with a game world that can be fleshed out as you play. For starters, during character generation, the game helps build out PC backgrounds that not only provide context and history in categories such as Ideals and Flaws, but also tacks on game-world applications to these: character bonuses, special equipment and world-building opportunities (which guild do you belong to?) all help create verisimilitude out of the gate. But the game is also incredibly fun once you get into it. The ease of gameplay lets both players and DM focus on doing cool stuff and not having to refer back to the gamebook all the time.

This is incredibly important for first timers like my 9 year old, (and eventually her friends) who has never played RPGs before. If we tried to play 4th edition or some other new RPG that is more complex or awkward than it needs to be (Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, I’m looking at you), her first interaction with RPGs would just result in confusion and frustration. But with such an easy method for creating fleshed-out characters, with a fun and easy to understand game system, and with some excitement and passion for having a good time, my daughter was hooked.

Just like I was 33 years ago.

It seems far easier for a company with intellectual property, especially something as iconic and old as D&D, to lose sight of what originally made that IP special (*cough* George Lucas *cough*). Greed, ego and laziness can all get in the way of doing the hard work it takes to continually keep the IP fresh and evolving. This is what happened with 4th edition — changing the game system to hook in the “video game kids” is a good concept on paper (and I’m sure was a great pitch to the executives), but it lost sight of what the game really was about. Instead of making the game an easy way for kids to enter a world of fantasy role-playing, they made it about leveling-up your powers and reading really small text from cards.

With this new edition, though, they finally got it right. You should check it out.

Delta Green Conversion Notes for He Who Laughs Last

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR HE WHO LAUGHS LAST FOLLOW

REALLY, YOU SHOULDN’T

 

 

The following are notes on converting HWLL to the Delta Green RPG setting…

As a contemporary horror story, He Who Laughs Last can easily be integrated into Delta Green, Pagan Publishing’s modern day RPG setting of conspiracy and terror. The scenario needs very little to be inserted into any DG game, but there are two key components that require discussion: the scenario introduction and the use of a green box to distribute clues.

For the scenario introduction, there are a few different ways to bring a group of Delta Green investigators into the story:

  • The most straightforward option is to transform Becca’s father, Dale Kingsley, into a DG friendly who reaches out to the party for help, knowing they are capable in these sorts of investigations. Dale can be a doctor/surgeon who has helped DG in the past but now has nowhere else to turn. A simple phone call from Dale outlines the problem – his daughter has died mysteriously and he is desperate for their help. Or this call could come through “proper channels” to have the PCs reach out to Dale, again, as a DG friendly who is in trouble.
  • Perhaps Dale is a friend of one of the agents. Dale contacts his PC friend (they were college roommates or served together in the same branch of military), distraught and overcome with despair. This is just a slight change from the above suggestion – Dale still reaches out to the PCs, panicked and desperate for help.
  • Another option is to have one or more of the PCs be friends with Becca (through family or work) who are directly impacted by her “suicide.” Becca is in her mid-20s, and if any of the party is generally her age, they could have been friends with her either during or after college. Pulling the party together for this might seem like a challenge (to find a justification for all the agents to travel to LA for a funeral of someone they don’t know), but given the size and scale of the larger LA area, it shouldn’t be too hard to justify a handful of agents taking a vacation for a week to help their friend.
  • One last option would is to have Cell A (or whatever infrastructure your campaign uses) assign the DG agents directly to investigate the mystery.  Just Becca’s suicide alone could be enough to get the party involved, or the investigation could be bootstrapped by having a DG friendly point out some of the irregularities coming out of the coroner’s office.

With the introduction covered, there are still a couple of considerations to make this scenario work smoothly in the DG universe. First is that the PCs probably won’t be from the LA area and so won’t have the Hollywood connections that make it a bit easier to navigate the story (as mentioned in The Industry, pg. 12). They can, of course, play up their law enforcement credentials, or just play it straight as they try to uncover the mystery. The PCs will just have to be a bit more thoughtful and creative as they work to make connections with the various NPCs.

Finally, one easy way to get the PCs the information from David Lee (Package from the Coroner, pg. 29) is to provide it in a green box. While there is no specific need to deviate from the narrative, if the PCs ask about a green box or the party doesn’t end up meeting with Lee, send the PCs a key from a small green box located in a Burbank industrial park. You are free to put any additional information there for the PCs, but otherwise you can just substitute the green box for the the package from Lee as the mechanism to deliver the clues. Instead of receiving the package at the front desk, inside the green box they find a number of boxes, smelly and old from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, stacked in the corner, ready to divulge their secrets.

Those are all the elements that should be necessary to convert HWLL to a Delta Green scenario. Please let me know if you have any further questions on this, and I would love to hear if you successfully convert it to DG.

You can buy the scenario at DTRPG.com here.