GM: Manifesto Part 1

This is part one of me making random comments in regards to the way I currently would like games to run. First step is....

Everyone Needs to Entertain not just the GM

A few people seem to judge a good game on how much the GM prepares and how interesting the delivery of scenes are while they get to sit back and watch the show making the occasional prod or rolling dice every now and again.

My preference is that everyone at the table needs to bring in the entertainment. The players should drive the narrative and the GM should react to their actions and not shut them down if he decides it doesnt work. The players need to be empowered to bring things into the world that they are interested in.

I have tried the former approach to GMing and I got burnt out very quickly. The players would occasionaly shift the story about which was awesome but then once they had forced a shift they then sat back and let me drive it along again.

I dont like getting burnt out from gaming, no wonder people approach running a game with fear. I think it boils down to intensity. I would like the players to operating at the same pace and intensity as the GM.

Im not sure how to bring this on yet but damn it.. Im gonna try!

Burning Wheel - The Sword

Last Friday I run The Sword for some people. Most were quite familiar with Burning Wheel one was not. I didnt feel it went that great, I didnt mention anything on the spot because I wanted to give it some thought first. Hopefully everyone who was involved will read this and not be offended by my take on it all.

First up I gave out the Characters. I also gave the person who was not familiar with BW an overview of Intent and Stakes. Unfortunatley I didnt read out the blurb on each character from the booklet which meant people were probably not clear on the best way for their character to participate.

Started well with a dual of wits between the Roden and the Dwarf - Roden wanted to be paid double, Dwarf wanted to pay when they got out of the dungeon. It was a tie with both hitting zero in the same action. The compromise was that the Roden would be paid his agreed to amount once the sword was found. Everyone seemed to really like the Dual of Wits.

The sword was found and the dwarf paid (with no help from the elf or human) needless to say he was taxed into the ground. Probably should have made him do a Greed test to make him get some helping dice from the others.

Meanwhile the Criminal tried to steal the sword and was noticed by the elf who stood and did nothing. He then tried to conceal the sword about his person and make a run for it. He used Tomb-Wise to find a secret exit but failed - there was a secret door but the dwarf was standing on it. No one was going to stand for the criminal stealing the sword so out broke the fight! It not the most intelligent move on behalf of the criminal (I put this down to not giving a good briefing on how to play each character, of course when someone spots the word "criminal" they assume a typical D&D "take anything thats not bolted down" thief)

The fight started well but I think I failed a bit in not asking for clear intents for positioning and actions, it made the system a bit mechanical and not as interesting. For example once the elf established he would use ManWise for a FoRK on his sword skill he would just automatically take the dice everytime. I should have made sure he stated an intent that explicitely brought Man Wise into play each time he tried to use it. Another thing was that even after the Criminal became wounded he just kept going as if nothing had happened, i think at that point he should really have given up and made up a dodgy excuse instead he just kept on going until he was knocked unconscious.

Also there was a bit of distracted talking while others were resolving actions during the Fight! which meant many people were talking at the same time, something i really dislike! One good point though is that I was able to pull off a multiparticipant fight quite easily, I think I have grokked positioning to about 80%.

Considering everything The sword is an excellent introduction to the burning wheel rules. I would happily run it again especially after learning so much from this session!

Dogs in the Vineyard is Brilliant

Last monday I played in a game of Dogs in the Vineyard. This game is fucken awesome!

My character is  Brother Ezekiel. As part of his initiation he failed to prove to himself that the mountain people (Native Americans) are not strong in their Faith. He was an orphan and was contacted by his blood relations (mountain people) to return back home, help look after them and abandon the Faith that nutured him into the man he has become. His belief in the Word of the Book of Life was challenged and he was tempted by them to leave the faith. He finally refused but his belief that the mountain people could be redeemed in the eyes of the King of Faith was destroyed. (As part of the fallout for that conflict I took a Trait that The Mountain People can never be set on the true path of Faith and also added further complication to the fact that he is of the Mountain Peoples blood)

After that we vistited a town that was under the influence of a sorcerous old woman who had formed a Cult and was practicing false doctrine. The Dogs eventually got her to repent her sins but she managed to challenge further Brother Ezekiel's belief in the Words of the Book of Life. He took another trait that the Love and minds of man can be more powerful than the Words of the King of life.

It was quite interesting that he started as being quite dogmatic (sorry no pun intended) however the first two conflicts he was in had shaken his beliefs to their very core.

Its really great the way that the conflicts in this game actually shape your character. You really end up striving to fail often as that is the way you develop your character.

SotC - Professor Vortex Man from Tomorrow

Here is a character made up for Spirit of the Century which hopefully will be played this weekend! Bonus points for recognising the source of his likeness.

Background
He Appeared in the trenches of WWI and was hit in the head by a stray bullet. He was taken in as an Prisoner of War by the allied forces, as he was babelling incoherently they mistook him for a german. The wound had given him amnesia! He doesnt know who he is but found he had a knack for electronics.

The War
His stay in the Prisoner of War camp taught him to survive on very little food, in fact he found he could survive on next to nothing except cigarettes and water. Having limited access to components he found he could make gadgets with pretty much whatever was on hand at the time, even though often it was only good for one use. He came under the tuteledge of Alan Shakespeare who recognised his uncanny abilities and made him an honoury member of the century club. He was encouraged to stage an escape attempt but unfortunately Alan was lost in the tunnels and never found again. It was fortunate that Alan was rich and left everything he owned to Professor Vortex.

Professor Vortex and the Ant Headed Humanoids from Mercury
The Professor's uncanny knack for technology soon attracted the attention of the Ant Headed Slavers from Mercury who wished to use his Brilliant Mind to rescue their bloated queen from the Mercurian Gorethrax. He managed to rescue the queen and was rewarded by being Betrothed to the queen, the only way in mercurian law to release him from his engagement was by death however a brilliant Planetary Lawyer rescued him with a loop hole in earth marriage law.

Quincy Wild vs The Mutant Banditos guest starring Professor Vortex.
Professor Vortex is was investigating a source of the rare mineral Immaterialium in the deserts of the American South West when he is beset upon by a group of Mutant Banditos who seek to use his know how to break into Quincy Wild's munitiioiins warehouse.

Shotgun Suzie vs Turkish Delight and guest starring Professor Vortex
To stop the Turkish Delights mobile train fortress Suzie visits the professor in his secret Alpine Labratory to borrow him and his Radiomatic Wrench to derail Turkish Delights evil plot.

Radiomatic Wrench
The Radiomatic Wrench is a highly customisable gadget that basically can be used to achieve anything under the rules of the Universal Gadget Stunt

Aspects
Man from Tomorrow
Who Am I Really?
Machine Whisperer
Can live off cigarettes
Upsets Aliens
Mad as a Cut Snake
Coveted Science
Escape Gone Awry!
My Handy Radiomatic Wrench
Lets Hideout in my Secret Alpine Labratory

Skills
Science!
Engineering - Resources
Academics -  Empathy - Pilot
Mysteries - Athletics - Alertness - Contacting
Drive - Investigation - Rapport - Resolve - Survival

Stunts
Universal Gadget
Scientific Genius - Physics
Theory in Practice
Scientific Invention
Weird Science

Me Want!

Just to remind myself these are the RPGs I would like to purchase - The list isn't exhaustive.

I can only afford one at the moment which will it be?

Inspectres
Lacuna
Spirit of the Century
Dont Rest Your Head
Capes
Polaris
Burning Wheel
Dogs in the Vineyard

At the moment I am favouring Spirit of the Century and Lacuna Pt 1, but then i just said i can only afford one.

I hope there is one of these at Cancon as I am allowed one thing from Cancon and one thing from indiepressrevolution.

Ars Magica Magi Herbal Highs

My character in Andy's game is going to be a crazed hippy Merinita who uses psychedelic herbs to help fuel his magic. Here is some info i lifted from Erowid

Native European Drugs

Belladonna is a 1-2 meter tall perennial herb that produces small red to black berries. These berries contain atropine, scopolomine and hyoscyamine and have a long history of use as a medicinal, poisonous, and ceremonial herb.

Ergot is a fungus that infects cereal grains, replacing kernels of the fruit with small black masses of mycelium. It produces ergotamine, a potent vasoconstrictor and precursor to LSD. Ergot poisoning (St Anthony's Fire) causes hallucinations, gangrenous loss of limbs, and death. Outbreaks plagued medieval Europe and were associated with witchcraft and the Inquisition.

Henbane is a biennial herb growing up to 1 meter that produces veined yellow flowers and large quantities of seeds. All parts of the plant contain scopolamine, atropine, and hyoscyamine and can be deadly poisonous.

Mandrake is a low perennial herb growing up to 30 cm high with yellow berries. It grows from a thick forked root which is known for sometimes resembling a human form. All parts of the plant contain hyoscyamine and scopolamine and can easily cause death by respiratory paralysis. It has a long history of medicinal and magical use in Europe.

Wormwood is a silvery-green perennial herb growing up to 1.5 meters tall which contains the volatile oil thujone. It is added to distilled ethanol to create absinthe. Its effects alone are not well understood.

Middle Eastern Drugs

These are here because I think they would be available just not easily obtained.

Cannabis, a fast-growing bushy annual with dense sticky flowers, produces the psychoactive THC. It is the most widely used illegal psychoactive and has a long history of medicinal, recreational, and industrial use. The fibrous stalks of the plant are used to produce clothing and rope.

Syrian Rue is a perennial shrub with fleshy spikey-looking leaves, growing up to 1 meter tall. Its small, brown seeds contains harmine and other harmala alkaloids. It is one of the plants speculated to be the Soma or Haoma of ancient Persia.

Opium Poppy is a annual that with brilliant white or red flowers growing on a central bulbous pod. When scratched, the pod produces a milkly latex called opium. This latex contains a variety of opiates including codeine and morphine. It has a long history of use in Asia and Europe.

The End of a Chapter

On Sunday I drew my current Arcana Evolved game to a close. My intention from this game was to ignite conflict between the Giants and the Dragons of that setting. However the torch I used I only lit I stopped short at lighting the fire. I did this deliberately to have what happened next undefined, let people think of their own endings. Hopefully one of the players may be inspired to explore this conflict by running their own game. Here is what happened.

The game mainly took place in Serathis(detailed in Ruins of Intrigue). The group had recovered an ancient powerful artifact called a Tenebrian Seed. The Dragons had many millenia ago used them to create the Dramojh a twisted nightmare fusion of Demon and Dragon. This particular Tenebrian Seed was used to create the first Dramojh with the Black Cyst located in Serathis. It was the first generation of Dramojh who created Serathis. As you can imagine everyone cant trust each other to possess the Seed so conflict is inevitable.

The culmination ended with a cult who claimed they wanted to destroy the Seed and the Black Cyst to prevent the Dramojh being recreated, A leader of the Giants in Serathis who wants to study the Cyst to further her own research, party members who want it destroyed, party members who think it could empower humankind to take control of the Lands of the Diamond Throne and who knows what else.

I can think of a number of different agendas beyond those above to do with this artifact and I am keen to explore them in play. This is however an experiment to empower all members of a gaming group to have a say in the plot and story beyond that of myself as the original GM.

Lets see what happens, if anything at all.

Shared Setting and Agenda's

I'm interested in the concept of disempowering the Game Masters' position on dictating setting and story. That is not to say it should be removed, more redistributed. I think all players of a game should have equal input into defining the elements of Exploration. I have been harbouring these thoughts for a while.

However today I took a step towards possibly articulating and defining a methodology for facilitating play to examine these ideas. It took the form of an email I sent to a friend. here is the bulk of those articulations...

I just had a thought that it would be cool to have a core group of gamers who develop a host of characters based in a city or some such environment. The group would define various factions in the city and then play out various interactions between the groups with one person taking the role of the antagonist (ie the DM) and the rest being protagonists. The group wouldn't have a dedicated DM but would take it in turns "exploring" the issues around those characters.

One adventure might explore what happens to a patrol of the City Guard on one night. Another might be based around a cult trying to assassinate the leader of a church. another might be a merchant faction trying to establish a monopoly on dragon scales.

This is more or less an evolution of the Maralith Arms campaign i proposed the concept of earlier this year just with a broader scope

I might even pitch the Eberron game along these lines, I dunno, I have plenty of time to think it through.

Character Backgrounds

I belted out a concept for an Ars Magica companion I will run probably next year. I had a fairly defined list of circumstances in the concept that was to have/will happen to them. The story guide made a good point in that it will make the character more interesting to play the events in the background out in game as the campaign progresses. What a simple and excellent idea.

I have seen backgrounds for other peoples characters and alot of the time all the cool stuff has happened to the character already. There are quite a few arguments I can see for playing out these events in game.

• All the cool stuff has already happened to the character


• This makes it difficult for the GM to "live up" to the cool stuff that has happened in the background


• often the background has no indication as to where the player wants the back story to develop next


• Its more fun to play out those events


• It gives you time to react to the events differently as you are continually developing the character further during the game

I think when developing characters the players should submit to the GM a plan of where they want the character to end up as play progresses as opposed to submitting a detailed and rich back story where basically as the game begins the character has already lived a full and enriched life.

D&D Firearms

Ahh firearms rules right under my nose in the DMG on page 145. They are simple enough for me to incorporate. Not OGL though :(

Someone has also kindly added rules for firearms on the WOTC boards too - Custom Firearms although I think I am going to stick with the simple DMG version.

Someone on the boards mentioned that it takes longer than a standard action to reload a firearm which I agree with however I am just going to keep them as written. I don't want to house rule too much stuff for this game.

Ideas from GUMSHOE

Esoterorists Sample

This is an excellent snap shot of looking at issues with the old Call of Cthulhu method of investigation. As this will probably relate to my Eberron game the d20 system will be used.

The main premise in the sample is that there are degrees of success, the d20 skill system already supports this. Incorporating these ideas will come down to scenario design where you allow the degrees of success to reveal more and more clues and information to help solve the mystery.

GNS Theory and Planning a Game

Just started reading through Ron Edwards "GNS and Other Matters of Roleplaying Theory" article on Indie-Rpgs. Im going to make some random thoughts here about it.

When advertising a game to canvas players it is a good idea to make clear the premise of the game. That way everyone is quite clear. I like the distinction Ron makes between Genre and Premise.

Considering that I go ahead with the Eberron game here is the Premise as broken down into Ron's catergories of Premise

• Character: The basic premise will be that the characters are a group of Investigators maybe in a detective agency or something like that.


• System: Core D&D with added Eberron crunch - I plan to keep rules as written fairly closely.


• Setting: Set in Sharn the City of Towers - I'm aiming for basically a 1920s level of tech except without firearms. If I find rules for archaic firearms I might grab them too.


• Situation: The characters will be pitted against the agents of darkness (Cults of the Dragon Below in various guises) Most antangonists will be humanoid cultists and their pets. I will try to use the aberrations sparingly to keep their impact greater.


• Colour: Sharn will be gritty and dark. It will be constantly raining and most adventures will take place at night. Imagine a figure cloaked in partial darkness drawing back deeply on a hand rolled cigarette

Emont - Entry 2

The times have become quite interesting of late. One of the councilors of Valderas managed to escape the chicken pie and has organised something of a resistance cell. Interestingly enough we have been tasked to bring in the resistance leader. Why we have been given such an important task when we are so green and 'untrusted'? Oh well opportunities abound I'm sure!

We tried to make contact by heading down to the docks precinct where the last resistance attack took place. we didn't get too far because Hanno put his foot in it as is becoming usual! We then tried making contact with the widows of the eaten councillers but they had been intimidated by DeLorenzo's golem goons. Hanno came to the realisation that the golems could be controlled and all we had to do was find the key stone. This would be of great value to the resistance and get us closer. Plus it may be quite lucrative. Surely such a thing would be extremely closely guarded so another 'in' needed to be found.

We thought that the son of the Merchant House Brewer may be bitter that his father was made into a roast chook and obtained some documents from a rival merchant house. Again he has been intimidated or doesn't seem to care about the situation, but he was able to direct us to a seedy pub where more lucrative work may be found.

We made it to the pub and found a gentleman who represented the resistance. He seemed interested in information we might be able to provide from the city guards. Opportunities abound! We just have to win his trust.

Emont - Entry 1

Phew what an intense few days. There I was taking a drink at my newly discovered water hole - "the wenches lament" when from behind me some heavy object struck upon my skull.

When I awoke i found myself inside a dingy cell chained up to 3 other miserable unfortunates. There was a somewhat large warrior looking women - who kept going on about not having a good pair of boots anymore. I have no idea what the fascination with boots is. Oh well. Then there was a scrawny looking elf - quite pretty as elves go but somewhat emaciated. perhaps a few solid meals will make her look more healthy. Then there was a salty old sea dog, a nasty looking character if im any judge.

We found an oddly scrawled note on a piece of paper which proceeded to give us directions. I dont remember trusting the written word at any other poing in my life but hey there is a first for everything.

Eventually after in hindsight was perhaps a wrong turn or two we rid ourselves of the manacles but were promptly waylaid by a pair of stinky shuffling corpses. A brief fruckus followed in which almost saw the end of us(Except the treacherous pirate).

We managed to escape after a brief refreshing swim and were rewarded with a somewhat sumptous feast. Mmmm delicous. We were also rewarded with a rather lovely job with the new city guard. Never took myself as the justice delivering sort. Oh well the pay is appalling but there might be some oppourtunities to be had so lets see where it takes us...

Intro for Emont

Ive been toying with the concept of creating Blogs for my RPG Characters, This is an attempt at doing so.

Emont is a character im running in Alex's game. Im playing him sort of as the halfling equivalent of the Grey Mouser (if you dont know who he is find out!)

Here is his Bio.

Emont grew up in a small travelling community of halflings. When the group was passing through Valderas, Emont became caught up in some rather nefarious incidents and landed himself in gaol. By the time he finally got out the rest of his community had moved on. He has begun to get some money together through various bulglaries and other odd jobs for the thieves guild.

Ok lets make an entry

Well i signed up for this thing a little while ago and decided it was time to put an entry in. not much to say at the moment - probably update it when i think of stuff. I have a few ideas of what say so I will update it when it happens