Warning: Homebrew Is Dangerous

"Gamemasters should not homebrew their RPGs. Ever. The dark fact is, it can be dangerous, both to the GM, and their players. Homebrewing is something that has to be done with extreme caution. It's really super hard. Even absolute Einsteins get blown out of the water by it. Frankly, most GMs should just avoid it or they could get hurt. Seriously. It'll put you in the hospital. I lost a leg during a homebrew in 2005. Look at this stump. And I know how to roll d20's! These days, I tell my friends - just don't do it. Stick with pre-fab rules systems and campaign worlds by reputable companies. Don't take stupid chances. Just say "Hell No" to homebrews. Otherwise you will regret it. They're just too damn - "

• Pat Mordier, Dec 21, 2018

A recent interview with VB-Wyrde, et al, on Coast to Coast
Coast To Coast - Episode: 38 - The dangerous world of Hombrew RPGs

#ElthosRPG
https://Elthos.com

What is a Homebrew RPG?

There I was enjoying a nice warm cup of java the other morning when the topic of Homebrew came up in conversation, as it often does. Some people were saying that they homebrewed their game by altering the rules of a popular RPG. After spewing some java out my nose, I let out an anguished cry. How can that be what you mean by Homebrew?! I asked incredulously. I was offered a few quips in reply, but nothing that was said assuaged my feeling that this really was not the right word for what they meant. So I'd like to clarify what I mean when I say "Homebrew" in relation to RPGs.

I started GMing in 1978 with my first World, and first rules system, both going by the name of Elthos RPG. The rules I created after a skim-reading of "Men & Magic", the first volume of the original three (and highly magical) D&D booklets. My rules system had a couple of design goals. One was to eliminate the odd zig-zag math used by OD&D. I wanted even charts with easy to remember values. The second goal was to centralize (what later became known as) Conflict Resolution. I created one centralized chart that pits Difficulty Level vs Skill Level for all possible skills. In this way I wanted to avoid the need for endless additional charts for all of the doodads I might want to add to Elthos over time. The goal was to create a Homebrew system that I could rely on to only change in ways that make sense for me as the GM, and to avoid being tethered to rules systems that would inevitably alter the nature of the world itself. Thus I would be able to maintain my world for a long time exactly the way I envision it, and my world's history would not be subject to the whims of TSR's rules editions over time.

These two design decisions resulted in a system that has served me well for 40+ years.

The second leg of Homebrew is the Setting. My world is my own creation. Sure, of course I borrow ideas from many sources, historical and literary, but there is no tether that is tied to any of them. As such my world's only cannon is it's own history. The reason I wanted it this way is to keep my players from being "in the know" about things in the world that would be much more entertaining as surprises, than facts they encountered elsewhere. To me this is much more fun for everyone.

So for me, the word "Homebrew" suggests a creation from more or less whole cloth by the Gamemaster. Filled with surprises and idiosyncrasies that make sense to their creators, and are not beholden or tied to some corporate behemoth. It is the freedom and versatility of Homebrew that attracts my ardor. I think from a creativity perspective Homebrew is definitely the way to go.

As for what I think the correct word for what was mentioned by my buddy online the other morning is "House Rule". Homebrew and House Rule are two different things. There is some overlap, of course, but they are really quite distinct in my mind.

What do you think? Am I right about this? What's your definition of Homebrew?

What Makes A Great Gamesmaster?

Just a few thoughts on what I think makes a Great GameMaster, and my recollections of David Kahn's world of Telthanar...

I am thinking of my old friend David Kahn's world of Telthanar. The way he ran the game, to my mind, seemed infinitely amazing. I couldn't wait to get to his house on certain weekends to find out more about it. But what did he do that was so great? Let me think...

Well, for one thing, David was definitely master of his game. He used his own rules (as most of the GMs I knew did in those days), and he knew them back and forth, up and down. There were no quibbles about the rules, and rules lawyering was nigh on impossible. But moreover David had a personality that established him as "The Authoritative Source", and so even if there was a quibble... people would look to him for the correct and official answer anyway. And that went a long way towards keeping the mechanics of the game running smooth.

Also, when he created his rules, he kept it reasonably simple. The complicated parts were largely hidden from the players, as he would do the calculations behind the screen himself. Character development was probably more involved than he let on, and calculating things like armor class and total attack level was something he did on the fly in his head, but from our point of view as players it was seamless and looked easy. Of course, there's also the fact that he fudged his own rules. In fact the first time I rolled a Character in his world he said with his usual benignly wry and dry humor, "By the way, I cheat." That was David.

Lastly, as far as his rules were concerned, they were also interesting. He imbued a lot of philosophy into his rules system, and that made them fun to think about. For example, his magic system incorporated a fascinating numerology that established the underlying metaphysics of his world. More on that another time. Suffice it to say, his rules were an embodiment of his philosophic musings.

But more important to the joy of his game than his handling of the rules was the scope, depth and nature of his World. Telthanar. What an amazing place that was. First off it was huge, but at the same time discrete. There was a continent on which were major civilizations, some old, some new. The old ones had been buried in ruins for ages, and mostly forgotten, except by those who took it upon themselves to explore the ancient places. Over 20 years of play the story was unveiled, one tidbit at a time. David was very reticent about explaining anything of his world out of game. To learn about it, our characters had to explore it. He didn't wax eloquent about it's grand history, or tell us off hand what transpired and why the ancient Agmarians fell, or anything. But we fought hard for clues all the time.

So that made the World itself a huge ball of intriguing.

Then there was his style of playing NPCs. David had a very natural way of role playing. He could play any Character or creature and you really felt like they were in the room with you. But he didn't over do it to the point of being hammy either. He gave a strong impression of each NPC or monster, and each one was an individual. Even down to the guards at the local town hall. Every character in his world seemed to have a fully fleshed out life of their own, a personality, goals, traits, secrets and so on. And it all flowed so naturally from David's lips it really gave the impression of a living world.

Also, his maps. David made amazing maps. They were done on huge pieces of graph paper with the small squares. they had long long corridors, with clusters of 20 rooms or so at a time. He had a stack of these gigantic dungeon maps neatly piled on his desk. And no, we were not allowed to look at the maps. We could only see them from a distance. On our end we had to do the old fashioned style of mapping from his descriptions. And our maps were not bad, but we had mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes were costly. A flight of stairs that we wrote went up, when in fact we forgot later actually went down. Costly mistakes. But that of course was part of the fun of the game. We tried to be careful, just like we try to be careful in real life - but mistakes get made, and consequences are paid. Part of the challenge of the game was getting the mapping right, even amidst the bluster and excitement of battle.

Another thing is that his dungeons were actually very imaginative. For example, when entering the Major Ruins of Agmar there is a main hall, after you get down into the thing a certain ways. On the ceiling of this hall, which was something like 360' x 360' (iirc), was a pool of molten fire. On the ceiling... gurgling, bubbling, frothing fiery magma. It didn't drip down. It seemed as though gravity on the ceiling was simply "opposite". One could speculate about the how's and why's but ... we never really knew. But we knew that David knew. And we would scurry through that glowing red hall every time. The rest of the dungeon awaited on the other side through vast towering doorways that led into long corridors heading off in different directions. And so on. That was just one interesting spot. David had hundreds that were equally intriguing. Eventually we discovered that the Ancient Agmarians created the entire dungeon to be a magic item. The whole dungeon itself was a magic item... one that they used to keep the fabric of reality from tearing apart under the duress of their experiments with Chaos Magic.

Lastly, I'll say that David possessed a dry sardonic wit that made his Gamemastering something really enjoyable to behold. One always had a sense that he was gently challenging his players to do their best under perilous and uncertain odds. He was tremendously fun to be around, highly intelligent, very well read, and a true and natural story teller.

So David's world was fascinating on many levels. The history. The philosophy. The execution. The rules. And for all of this David earned his place as my all time favorite Gamemaster. He was the best Gamemaster I ever encountered.

My dear friend died of a stroke at the age of 54. Far too young. And very sad. May he rest in peace.

To put his life in a little perspective before I leave off, here is a piece about David's father, Herman Kahn. You may want to listen to the recommended sound track shown at the very bottom of that post while reading it. It may add correctly to your understanding of the atmosphere in which David lived his short but intensely creative life.

A Small Poemish Thing - The Edition Wars ...

Upon the reading of this fair post, my mind a'lit with the fiery inspiration, so...

People who didn't notice these things at the dawn of time, and therefore didn't create their own homebrew RPG systems that made actual sense to them fell into The Great Miasma, never to return from thence. They are there today, wandering soul'striken from edition to edition, ever groaning, ever the darkened scowl and storm-brow furrowing...

Those who escaped to heather-fields of lightened systems a'joy in everlasting bliss, owners of their own worlds... worlds that make sense to them, that do not change on some corporate cretin's whimsy-doodle. Ahhh... fair winds a'light to catch my sails, thou blessed thing! My rules! My rules!

Primer on Types of RPG Maps

As a follow up on my original post regarding the problem with beautiful maps, and as an addition to a thread I am participating in on google+ on Combat Map Scaling, I want to jot down an overview of the types of RPG maps that people generally deal with for those who may be new to the game. It seems to me that there's several uses for maps, and each type of use creates its own requirements for how the map should be created.

Please note: I am going to include a series of maps at the bottom of this post that may be spoilers for some of my players. If you are one of my players and do not want to be spoiled, and you shouldn't, then do not look past the spoiler alert. For everyone else, please enjoy the maps selection as they demonstrate the various kinds of maps I will be discussing.

Maps for the GM

World Maps can include entire worlds (or star systems), or parts of them, and show distances, avenues and barriers and key points of interest. Less commonly, maps can show story elements (I like this kind of map and call them Story Maps), main characters, symbols representing themes, and so on. There are also Cosmological Maps, which may show the metaphysical or cosmic scale aspects of a World, including Deities and their relationships to one another, planes of existence and dimensions among other things, of which there have been any number published over the years. And lastly I have Concept Maps that show aspects of the world that may represent inner symbolism or relationships between non-physical things, such as Alignment & Political Doctrines.

GameMaster maps contain GM secrets which are simply things that the Players and their Characters do not know. These are not maps that are used for combat, and players typically do not see these maps. Should these maps be beautified by the GM? That's a debatable question. Given we only have so much time in a week, and game prep takes a lot of time, beautifying maps that only the GM will see could be considered wasteful. On the other hand, a true craftsman will want to beautify anything that they work on and turn it into a work of art, regardless of whether or not they are the only person who sees it. On these maps things do not necessarily need to be to scale.

The GM's dungeon map (or wilderness) is a very detailed view of the tactical layout of a given area, revealing various secrets such as traps, secret doors, and where the various monsters and factions of the dungeon are located. The GM does not show these maps to the players (usually). They may or may not be beautified. They should be to scale. They can also take a number of forms but the most common is the top down viewpoint map, where you are looking at a blue print of each dungeon level. Another style is the oblique projection map which shows the dungeon from an angle so that you can see the three dimensional depth and get an understanding of the relationships between the various levels of the map. These maps are fun, but can not be used as combat maps easily (as miniatures would have a hard time fitting on such a map).

Maps for Players

These can also be maps of Worlds as well, but will not have GM secrets on them. These maps should be beautified by the GM (or whomever makes them). They are not combat maps. They are not necessarily to scale. They do not necessarily even show what is truly out there. These maps might come to the Player Characters via a merchant, an adventure guild library, or discovered during the course of an adventure.  Or they may not be maps that the Player Characters have, but simply ones that the GM shows to the Players themselves because their Characters happen to know the region well enough to see it on a map.  Often these maps are used to help players understand where places are in relation to each other so they can plan expeditions, or consider factors such as kingdom boundaries, trade routes, or where wilderness happens to be located.

Then there are Dungeon Maps (which should be distinguished from Combat Maps as they are not quite the same thing, and serve a different purpose). These usually are drawn on graph paper and show the layout of the levels of a dungeon. They can be paper maps that the players look at over the GM's shoulder. They can be maps that they themselves draw based on the GM's description (in the old days this was how everyone did it, and I'm not exactly sure when or why this changed). The GM may use this as the sole map for a dungeon, describing it verbally to the players during the game while their Characters explore the thing. As such the GM description might be something like "You're Characters are heading West down a ten foot wide corridor made of gray stone blocks. They can see by the torchlight into the darkness ahead about 40 feet and up ahead the leading thief spots a wooden door on the North wall of the corridor. What do you do?" Then the player who is designated as the mapper would be drawing what he hears on a piece of graph paper to keep track. Not all parties designated a mapper. Many of those parties got lost in the dungeon and never found their way out. After that most parties had a designated mapper. Player drawn dungeon maps, by the way, are often wrong. This is used to simulate the idea that when in a dungeon it's relatively easy to get lost in the maze. So the party usually relied on the mapper to get it right, and as often as not, they failed somewhere along the line. That said, it is not necessarily the case that the failure is noticed by the Players for quite some time, even in some cases taking years before the issue becomes apparent and the disaster of being lost down the wrong corridor becomes a serious problem. I've seen that happen. Also notable is that Player maps are rarely beautiful, and quite often rather ugly affairs, scrawled in the heat of play, and barely serviceable beyond the rudimentary function of showing the way back out.

Then there are Combat Maps which should definitely be to scale, often show only small section of an area and are specifically used with miniatures or tokens representing Characters and their foes. The combat map is used to keep track of exact distances so that movement and attack ranges can be properly and accurately determined. They may or may not be beautified, and can take any number of forms. There's the standard large grid map where the squares are one inch, and the GM draws the dungeon as lines on the map. I often use this style. Then there's the table top diorama map where the dungeon is build out of plastic pieces or some such, and shows the exact layout of the dungeon in 3D. These are often quite handsome. They also serve as battle maps, and are probably the oldest form of battle map in the hobby, as they come directly out of the game Chainmail which predates the original D&D. Lastly on my list are virtual combat maps, which are becoming more popular these days as you can share them over the web via interfaces such as Roll20. Again these maps can be beautiful or not depending on the GM's inclination, talent and time. These maps should always be to scale.

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*** PLAYERS SPOILERS ALERT ***

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Concept Map

Story Map

Virtual Tactical Combat Map (Elthos RPG System I)

Cosmological Map

Cosmological Map

Dungeon Map on Graph Paper - Top Down View (Aphid Tample)

Dungeon Map - Side View (Murder Hole)

Dungeon Map - Top Down View (MS Excel)

World Map - City View (Hobbington)

World Map - Simple (MS Paint)

Player Combat Map

Player Wilderness Map (Harrows Gate)
(note there are no names and parts are missing)

Player Combat Map - Wilderness

GM World Map - Side View (Mysterio Island)

GM Dungeon Map - Oblique Projection (Grimdel's Lair)

Story Map (Yellow Clay Campaign)

Story Map (Yellow Clay Campaign)

The Problem with Beautiful Maps

People are doing some spectacular RPG cartography lately. Best I've ever seen. I've experimented with some new styles and have come up with some interesting maps myself as well. The maps look beautiful.

That said, lets think about this. There's two kinds of maps in RPGs. There's battle maps, and then there's geographical maps. The Players may see the battle maps as that's the point of them (though just as often they do not as there may be things on the map they should not see, such as hidden doors). The geographic maps, on the other hand, ... the GM sees, and those the Players often don't get to see as they may wind up being spoilers for the World. After all, for a lot of Players half the fun of the game is exploring and discovering.

So here's the problem... The more beautiful the map the more inclination there is for the GM to show all that lovely beautifulness to the Players... especially if it is the GM's own map that they hand crafted themselves. Of course, we like to share our creative work. Especially when we bother to make it look as beautiful as we can. And the Players love to see that work because it lets them know that the GM has really put some time and thought and serious effort into their world. Which adds enormously to the Players sense that the World is a 'real' thing (in the GM's mind) and that they're actually exploring someplace, as this is what makes immersion possible. All good stuff. But that pesky problem ... we have to be careful not to make our geographic maps with things on it that the Players shouldn't see. But we do want to record those things because ... well, the map is supposed to record what's in our World... so we wind up with this weird situation. We can either make multiple maps that show two (or more) different views of our world (and that's really asking a LOT of anyone). Or we can make our Maps for Our-Eyes-Only. Or we can try revealing little bits of our maps as they become revealed to the Players. Each of these solutions is less than optimal. The least odious among them is to reveal little bits at a time, of course, as that requires the least amount of labor and still allows us to share our beautiousness with our Players. So that's the one I go with.

But there's a rub. Sometimes I make beautiful maps that are somewhere in between Geographic Maps and Battle maps. They're lovely to behold. But they contain all sorts of stuff the Players shouldn't see until they get to it. We can't quite use them as Battle Maps either as they're not quite entirely designed to be used for that purpose. I'm thinking in particular of some of the isometric projection maps I've done recently (similar in style to the one in the image at the top of my post, but you can also see it here). Their purpose is to show me, the GM, what's in the dungeon. Including where the Pit Traps, Magical Thingies, and other WhosieWhatsIts are located. In fact it's completely awful because I have this lovely looking map that I can't share with my Players. At least not before the end of the game. And when does an RPG game actually end? Oh that could be months. Or even years. And even then, sometimes you still don't want to share it because you think "They might someday show up here again, and they still haven't seen the whole thing... don't want to spoil it for em... I'll just hold on to it." And so, in this case you have this lovely map that no one ever gets to see except the GM.

Then we have another form problem as well. What happens when you like someone elses maps, and you want to use them for your game... but the Players may have already seen it because it's been posted online or in a module or something somewhere? My Players are the sort who would not go out of their way to find a map that I was using from another source (I don't do that anyway, but even if I did, they wouldn't) ... in fact I know them well enough to believe they'd specifically avoid it. But not every Player is like that. And sometimes having a map's secrets in hand (especially if the GM doesn't realize you already know the map) can make a big difference in the outcome of a campaign. "Should we turn left at the fork, or head head to the right?" ... "Oh, lets go to the right. Maybe there's treasure up that way or an old temple or something ..." And lo ... there is. Big difference (especially when the left path leads instead, for example, to a muddy cavern of giant Bobbit Worms, ya'know?). So this is a different variant on the same basic problem. Maps are designed generally to benefit the GM. Not the Players. Stuff on maps most often must be kept from the Players. And yet, ... when they're so gorgeous... how can you not share them? Wahhhh...

This entire issue is about Fog of War in relation to Maps. And the problem I have with loving to create beautiful maps, but hating to share them before the Players have completely finished with the scenario. I want to make them useful for myself as GM, so they include all the little details the Players mustn't see. And yet... it's beautiful and I'd love to share it.

Case in point. The other day I was having a computer problem. My players came into my little side room to help me troubleshoot it, and on my desk was one of my nicer-than-usual maps in a new style my players haven't seen yet.

"WOW!" they exclaimed. I had to quickly grab the map before they could take a real look at it. Now they really would love to see it. That's good and bad. I can't reveal it to them without giving important information away. So I hide it. Oh duh. Why is this such a problem?

Because that's just how it is. It's a weird and convoluted thing, frankly. And I'm not sure what the elegant solution to it all may be. For now I will just hide the maps and reveal them little bits at a time by covering over what they haven't seen yet with black construction paper. And believe me... that's not really all so ideal... though it does have it's benefits. The maps are intriguing them sufficiently to make them want to press forward to look around at everything they can get their eyes on. Which is kind of cool... but may well turn out to be misleading and dangerous for them. After all ... somewhere in that maze of gorgeous looking chambers and caverns is the Serious Bad Guy. They might just not be up to it... but their desire to see then next thing on the map could compel them forward. It's like a bit of meta-gaming in reverse and at a diagonal. And I'm not at all sure how that aspect might play out. We'll see. Hopefully, I'll come up with a good way to handle the whole kit and caboodle of this issue before that happens. And in the meantime I will refrain from publishing my map for you on my blog ... where they might see it. Waaaahhhh.... :p

Ok. Nuff said for today on this. If you have thoughts, suggestions, insights or epiphanies... please let me know. Darnit, I'd love to hear em.

The GM as Master Artisan

Lets talk a bit about the GamesMaster as Artisan.

The idea struck me this morning, not entirely for the first time, but in a sufficiently organized way to write something about it.

There's a lot to being a Master Artisan.  It takes a combination of natural talent, studied skills, and enough time to cultivate greatness.  Artists aren't simply born into existence.  They are cultivated through enormous effort.

I won't go into the vast array of skills required to be a great artist as it would take too long.  And if I attempted to do so for GamesMastering I suspect it would take even longer.  The reason why is that GamesMastering combines a host of arts into one activity.  Improvisational Theater, Literature, Story Telling, History, Art, Game Play of various kinds, and so on ... in fact it can encompass a very wide range of existing arts and knowledge.  The more you can master all of the component arts and knowledge that is useful for Gamemastering the better a GM you likely will be.  Being born with talent is easy.  Cultivating it into a Artisan quality craft takes time and effort.  Things to study are Literature, History and depending on your interests I would also include Science, and possibly Folk Lore, Anthropology, and Ethnography.   A study of comparative Religions is also a pretty-darn-nice-to-have, as well as basic Psychology.  In other words, you could spend a lifetime studying all the various subjects that might pertain to your role as Gamemaster.   Easily.  And that is simply covering the knowledge aspect, and not touching on the skill sets required.  

So instead of going through all of the various aspects of what it takes to be an Artisan quality GamesMaster, I'm going to focus on providing what I think are a few bits of Key Advice that come primarily from my experience as both a GM and artist.

• Details & Flourishes.
• Details and Flourishes matter.   If you take a piece of artwork and put it on a page, and it has a nice outline, good composition and basic colors then you have a piece of artwork.  If you add shadowing, it gets more refined looking.  If you add a border its even more refined.  If your border includes flourishes in the corners it starts to take on the quality of a finished work and a delight to the eye.   Applying this concept to GMing is a matter of doing the same thing, but for your back-story and Narrative Descriptions.   Think in terms of filling in the details, not necessarily in advance, though you can, but along the way as well.   It is a matter of being able to improvisationaly expanding your Players vision and understanding of your world.  This can be done, for example, by including details such as smells and sounds, as well as what the Player Characters see.  Naturally a lot more could be said on this, but I'll leave it to you to consider how you might go about it for yourself.
• Composition 
• When looking at a painting or photograph composition is extremely important.  How do the elements of the scene visually line up with one another?   Is the scene balanced (or intentionally out of balance)?  Does the composition flow so that it guides the eye to the main subject of the thing easily?   This concept as applied to GMing involves knowing how to shape your story.  What are the main elements of the thing?  How do they relate to each other?  Is there a sense of balance (or intentional imbalance)?  How does this concept translate into story?  The things you might consider have to do with how well balanced the story is.  Do you have a number of Main Characters who have clearly defined objectives?  Do those objectives balance with one another to form a holistic tapestry?  As a contra-example, if you have four Main Characters but their objectives are completely unrelated to one another, this will not produce a story with a good composition.  Consider it. The whole of your back story should blend together to form a cohesive narrative.  It should, in other words, tell a story, and a compelling one, and in a compelling way.
• Subject Matter & Meaning
• Great art, despite what modernists may tell you, have meaning.  The greatest art has the greatest meaning.  It stands the test of time because people who look at it find value in it.  The value is that they derive meaning from it.   And this has to do with subject matter.  What makes Greek Art so intriguing for example is the many layered nuances of meaning behind each story, and what one can learn about human nature from them.  Freud and Jung went to town on analyzing Greek mythology from a psychological perspective.  They found untold depths of meaning in the works.  Most people will not immediately recognize the meaning of a great work of art unless they've studied the subject.   But throughout the ages people have been drawn to it because they sense there is a meaning, and in their subconscious heart-of-hearts they connect to it, and it answers something for them at some level.  Maybe they don't know why.  But they come back to the art because their interest in it is piqued.  The same thing is true for great literature.  And it can also be true for your RPG.  You just have to think about it and put meaning into your world.  I would recommend reading works by Freud, Jung, or Joseph Campbell to get an idea of how that can be done.   Another pair of interesting books to read that give clues as to how this might be done are "Tolkien's Ring" by David Day, and "Holy Blood and Holy Grail" which though an apparently debunked conspiracy fabrication by Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln, nevertheless is fabulous at revealing how art and history can merge together to form an amazing hidden tapestry of inner meaning.
• Story Arcs
• Lastly for today is the topic of story arcs.  A lot of people have talked about this already and you can probably find tons of blog posts on how to apply this idea to RPGs.  I won't go on about it except to say that it's important, and that you can link this idea to both Composition and Subject Matter to form amazing RPG stories. 

I encourage GMs to think about how to merge all of these ideas into a unified whole.  There is every reason to believe that going forward into the future we will find GMs who aspire to Great Art via their talent and skills by making their Worlds into beautiful tapestries of Theater, Story, and Art.

Of course there's much more than can be said on this subject, but I will keep it short so that my post doesn't become TLDR.  Oh darn... too late, probably.  ;)

The GM as Magician

Just a brief rumination that occurred to me while driving home today. There's a lot of tips about how to GM better games. And that's all well and good. But keep in mind something as you GM - you are like a magician to your Players. Well, I should caveat that by saying that it varies to a certain degree depending on the type of game your running. The more Narrative your style of game, the more Magician you become.

How so? Well you set up encounters. You create Maps. You create NPCs. You act them out improvisationally during the course of the game. No one knows really exactly what is going to happen because the Dice and the Players conspire to change whatever plans we may have had. And so improvisation is required.

But what the Players don't know, and in my opinion shouldn't know, is exactly what's been planned, and what's being improvised. They know its a mix. But they don't know how much of a mix. And that's a good thing, and should stay that way. Because one of the things that brings interest and excitement to the game is the idea that the GM's World is this real "other Place" that you can use your imagination to venture into. And when that works and you achieve some level of Immersion - it's awesome. Provided of course that the GM's World is actually awesome. But that's a different point. What I'm suggesting is that the GM should not divulge to the Players what his 'tricks' are... any more than the Magician will show you how he does a coin trick. The moment he does - the mystery is finished. You may have learned a trick, but you've lost the Immersion.

So unless you are teaching a new GM the tricks of the trade - don't tell your Players anything about what's going on behind the curtain. It's more fun for them, and probably improves the quality of their experience overall.

Thoughts on Fear and Courage for GMs

Over on The Gamesmaster Academy (on Roll20 Forum) a new GM posted his Campaign concept (you do need to join the GMA to read the post, sorry) which I thought was a great and ambitious idea. After describing his concept he asked "How do I make the helpless powerful again? What is perfect? What is beyond magic? how do I instill fear and courage at the same time?"

This is what I wrote...

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I see what you're looking for and this is a very ambitious project for a new GM! I like it. But it is very tricky to do what you're looking for, and I would not expect to be able to achieve it in one shot. You might think of it in terms of changing moods and feelings over the course of the campaign. At first you want them to feel powerful. Then you want to show that no matter how powerful you may think you are, in the end there is always something beyond you who can easily defeat you. Then you want them to start from the beginning and build their characters knowing both that they can become powerful, but never the most powerful thing there is. This will, if all goes well, teach them to play their Characters with some perspective and humility, whether they are powerful or not. I like the concept. Again though, this is a real challenge to pull off well. The challenges you will face have to do with 1) players rarely do what you expect them to, or feel the way you think they should 2) in a game of probabilities and dice things can always go in unexpected directions. For example, you give them level 20 characters and they go out and fight something that they should be able to defeat - but woopsie bad luck - they die there and never even meet the Assassin. Stuff like that happens all the time. Another problem you face with this idea is that it is, by your design, a railroad adventure, at least in the beginning. That's a set piece scene where the characters actually have very little freedom, and the GM is "railroading" them down the track of his or her intended story line. All to good purpose and for the story, of course. But seldom do players like being railroaded, and will most often try to jump off of the train - hence, problem #1. So yes, very ambitious. I like the concept. It will be challenging. Best wishes! Keep us posted as to how it goes, and feel free to ask specific questions.

As for instilling fear and courage at the same time... remember, courage is the overcoming of fear in order to do the hero's work. They both come in the same package. For most ordinary people they are consumed by fear, and can not rise to the level of courage, but for every courageous act, fear was what they overcame to accomplish it. So your real question is "How do I instill a sense of fear, without making it so overwhelming that they players give up?" And again, this too is tricky. Courage is a very personal act. It can't be faked. The thing you are afraid of must be something that is worthy of being feared. Courage comes when you determine to overcome that fear and find some way to defeat the opponent, even when it appears the opponent is overwhelming. It is an act of will. Ultimately courage must be born of the will within the individual. The GM can not, and probably should not, instill courage into their players. They can simply present challenges that they know could be over overcome IF the players rise to the challenge and determine to make their characters overcome their fear. Again, tricky to pull off, but definitely possible.

So the first part of that equation is "How do I make my players feel fear?" And that is something that can be done with a couple of techniques. One, make the opponent a real challenge. The monster must be tougher than the Characters. Two, introduce the monster in a way that inspires dread. Think of horror movies and how the Director builds up the story so that at the point you encounter the monster you're on the edge of your seat. Follow that kind of pattern and be careful to build your scenes with plenty of Descriptive Narrative setting the mood by describing the scene verbally with plenty of detail. Tell the players what they see, what they hear, what they smell, and set the mood by describing the lighting, the weather, and anything that adds to the narrative the elements you want to instill in their minds. In this part of GMing you are setting the stage, like a Director. Show them, for example, the scene of the last horrible crime the monster committed and describe the dreadful details in a way that lets them know that "Whatever did this was - Powerful and Horrible". Set the scenes and build up towards the encounter with the monster. Through this process you can instill fear... and from that provide the players with the opportunity (but not guarantee) to achieve courage.

Very interesting project. I look forward to hearing how it goes. :)

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Thoughts?

On Beginnings, Middles and Ends for RPG Campaigns

In response to a recent thread here... Google+ Post on  Reading the Shadowrun 5th Edition GM Advice Chapter ... I came to describe my own method for creating RPG stories with a beginning, middle and end.  I thought I would share it on my blog as well.

I like to have a traditional story arc for my games, with a beginning, middle and end.  However, how I handle that is quite different than conceiving of the ending in advance.  What I do is lay out the general back story, and main NPC characters, their motives, and resources.  I roll them up even.  And play them like a chess game in the background, regardless of what the Player Characters are doing.  Even if the PCs don't interact with them, they still are executing their own plans and doing things.   So, from the point of departure the back story is already in motion.

At that point I create a Beginning.  This entails Role Playing with the Players their ordinary lives for a session.  It could be "life in the village of Hamfest" and it describes the nature of the environment, sets up the histories of the PCs, and gives some clues and information regarding the bigger picture of the Back Story.  So that's the beginning.

The adventure begins and this goes on for some time and is The Middle.  During this phase I take note of the plot threads and keep a list of the important NPCs and/or clues they encounter.   These each form plot threads.  In any given Campaign I find Players will follow some plot threads and ignore or abandon others as they go.   That's fine.  It's free-form play, do what you think is best.  Meanwhile in the background, or foreground as the case may be based on the Players choices, the Back Story marches on.  Indications of this are peppered throughout the game.  This forms the Middle phase.

Now for the End Game.   At some point after a few months of play, if the Players haven't done so already, I begin to Wind Up the Plot Threads.   I take note of the one or two that the Players feel is the most important.   Note - they may have totally missed the crucial plot thread.  That's ok.  They'll find out in the end what it was (for example The King of Brawn invaded the Western Lands and destroyed the Barbarian Queen's capital city, and laid waste to the Jewel of the West).   The PCs either are involved with that, or they selected other threads to follow.   Whatever threads they touched, I begin tying up the loose ends of three or four of the more important ones (usually there are a half dozen or more loose ends by the End Of The Middle - it's ok to leave some mysteries for later Campaigns, or just let them float away).

To tie up loose ends I simply re-introduce NPCs or Plot Points that they encountered in the past but have forgotten about, or lost track of.   I push at this point for Plot Resolutions.   Did they find the girl who had the Rosery Beads that the old monk mentioned?   Well, now they do - and she saw the Army of Brawn heading West.   Did they investigate the tunnel beneath Oakenwold?   Well, someone from there encounters them in a bar and explains that his own group investigated it, and found the Sword of the Western Sun there, and returned it to the Queen of the Western Lands.   Etc.   If a Campaign is 20 sessions of The Middle, I may have 4 sessions of The Beginning of the End.

Finally, there is a climactic End of the End where the main plot line gets tied up.   They intercept King Brawn as he enters The Eagle Pass, and with a skillful bout of diplomacy, logic, and heartfelt pleading on behalf of the innocent Queen, cause him to change his mind.   Or what have you.   The Player Characters decide by their actions what the ending is.   Could be good, could be horrible.  But what makes it work is that The End has Come.

And then we go on to the next Campaign, usually, yes, after a break where I re-organize and plan for a new Campaign.

So, in no way do I determine in advance what the Ending will be.   I let the play-flow determine that.   My example shows a tie up where the Main Plot was resolved by the PCs in the end - but it could have just as easily been the case that the Players had no interest at all in the Queen of the West, and the End Game involved their tying up all the loose ends related to The Witches of Dunswick on the other side of the Kingdom.   But the method stays the same.   If that were the case, then at the very end I would mention, "And news comes to you as you're celebrating your victory over the Witches of Dunswick in the Green Owl Tavern, that the King of Brawn has returned from the West with his Army, having concluded a successful and glorious Campaign against the Rebel Queen of the Western Lands.  * ahem * ... All hail the King!"

Rounding Story Corners

When GMing a traditional style RPG it can be difficult at times to keep the story aspect of the game story-like (ie - containing traditional story attributes such as a beginning, middle, and end, ongoing Character development, etc). The main problem is of course that we wind up having to cat-herd the main characters, which quite frequently turns out to be rather difficult. The reason being that we do not have control over what the Players decide to do with their Characters. Given three obvious options by the Gamesmaster, the Players will frequently invent a 4th, 5th and 6th option never thought of. From a game perspective that looks at things in terms of combats, points lost and gained, treasures acquired, this is not a problem at all. Who cares if there is a story, if the interest is more or less focused on the Game Aspect? However, some GMs and some Players (I think a reasonably high percentage) are just as interested in the Story, if not moreso. So the Gamesmaster also wants to ensure that the story does not become something along the lines of a Monty Hall Game Show where all that is really featured is a Dungeon with Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3. Not that this style is no fun for those who like it, it is. But for those who want more of a Story, the Gamesmaster needs to provide a way for that Story Aspect to manifest and shine through.

So how to do that?

One technique I would like to talk about for a moment is something I am going to call "Rounding Story Corners". What I mean by that is that the GM looks for opportunities to avoid game elements that would divert attention from the intended plot line. This could be something as simple as "skipping ahead" to the next important story-juncture.

An example of this was recently played out in my Hobbington Campaign. The Players had determined their objective a few months ago to be to rescue Hermel's sister, and the other kidnapped villagers from the Bandit 'Black Patch' and his gang of thugs. To do so they decided to illicit the aid of the village's old Kung Fu teacher who had moved to Bear Claw Village. Along the way they met with two side adventures, one centered on the Salt Mines of the Prancing Unicorn Vale, and the other centered on The Grey Serpent Cave, both of which involved the finding of ancient artifacts which would become a tie in to the larger story arc of the world.

However, at this point they had arrived in Hobbington and Hermel wished to use his resources to purchase sundry useful items in order to conduct the rescue. He wanted to trade a precious Jade Dragon Stone for money so he could make the purchases. Instead of walking through all of the details pertaining to finding the man he wanted to conduct business with, with the potential introduction of yet more sub-plots, I "rounded the story corner", avoiding complications, and made one simple roll of the dice to see if anything untoward happened (with a suitably low percent chance). Seeing as nothing happened along the way, the Player found himself at the door of the man he wanted to see. No fuss, no muss.

This technique is helpful if you want to advance the story along it's plot trajectory without introducing more complications than necessary (especially if they have already wandered far and wide). To get a story to have a beginning and a middle is relatively easy in game-land. To get it to tie up loose threads and have an end... that requires more focus. Rounding Story Corners is one technique that can help. It's simple, clean, and moves things along in the intended direction by avoiding the slippery slope of chance encounters along the way. I would say it is a good tool to keep in one's belt, but to not over use it. If you use it constantly then your world will feel too much like everyone is on a railroad train going from station to station. But used at the right time it can help a lot to keep the story focused and allow the Player Characters to tidy up those loose ends.

:)
Mark

A Bit Of Diabolical Player Guidance

So there I was, running my world in the middle of a year long campaign when I received from Fate & Destiny a new Player with very lofty plans. He wanted to play what we might fairly call 'the ultimate villain'. Oh my goodness! His concept for Character was so grand, so vast, and so diabolical that I had to sit down, and really think this over. Do I want such a diabolical Character in the otherwise humorous campaign? Will this upset the delicate and entertaining balance we've achieved? The new Player's Character's goal was to eviscerate the humanity he so desperately despises, and then go on to destroy the entire Universe itself by igniting a Cosmic War among Elkron (Celestial Deities) themselves! And his Character had the balls to do it as he wanted to play a version of Satan himself. Gosh. Why are Fate and Destiny so outrageous sometimes?!

Well, well, well. Very interesting. So far as Characters go, I was impressed with the scale of his ambition. He had worked up a rather elaborate, though vaguely defined, master-plan that started quite small, and grew and grew and grew until it ripped the Universe to shreds. Fascinating idea. Though somehow I feel it is something of a risk to my otherwise light-hearted fairytale adventure story campaign, for some reason I like the idea of letting him go for it, with the pre-game caveat that his Character may not have the properties he's assigned to him (immortality, and a vast super-intellect), but might instead simply be insane. Either way, he was game to try it, and I'm game to let him. So there we go.

However, I found that my new Player may possibly have bitten off a bit more than he could chew, though I can't really quite tell yet. My feeling after the first two games was that he may may need a little friendly GM Guidance, so to say, as his plans were not completely solid, and seemed to have certain possible flaws that might derail him through simple logical errors and/or conflicting requirements. First off, though his Character was a diabolical Ultra-Genius who thought in Thousand Year sweeps of catastrophic domino-destruction, he himself seems to be a rather nice guy who would never hurt a fly. No problem with that, of course, but it seems that his lack of inner-villainy may hamper his Character's potential since his Character might think in ways that are far more devious than the Player. Possible. Of course what is impossible is for me to know that for sure. Going on impressions here. As it happens, part of his plan, naturally, is to deceive everyone around himself into believing that he's a very decent Lawful Good-Guy, Altruistic, Friendly and Pure. So short term his Character is on 'Best Behavior', all the while looking for opportunities to implement his diabolical Omega-Plot, one slow, ultra-cautious step at a time. Since I start all Player Characters off at 1st Level he understood and accepted that his Character would not have the benefit of anything remotely resembling super-powers, or super-genius, but would have to grow into that over time if he could. As such, he intends to play him with extraordinary discretion. A slow and meticulous Machiavellian is he. I described the Character this way in a previous post:

"He was an unusual man whose very deep and profound mind thought in spans of hundreds of years at a leap. He was a careful planner, a devious plotter, a slow and methodical plodder, the rare type of man who would serenely sacrifice the present for the future of his incredible designs."

So, when in a recent email my new Player explained a his first "plot" that he wanted to hatch as one of his first steps towards universal cataclysm, I read it over and thought to myself... "hmmmm...?" He planned to free the slaves from the salt mine, and help the rest of the members of the party accomplish their good-guy goals, in a situation where the elites of the local region were plotting and conniving themselves over a valuable new resource (salt) and the discovery of an ancient (and rather darkly powerful) artifact, information to which his Character had become recently privy. Nowhere in his plot did I see so much as a hint of diabolical self-interest. No conniving at all. Why there was nothing diabolical about it in the least. Nothing of the sort. In fact, he planned to give up the artifact to the local Adventure Guild, help the miners escape by exposing the secret mine to the entire community, and in so doing relinquish that one thing above all that Machiavellian Super-Dastards strive for the most - 'knowledge of secrets'. With such knowledge he could ingratiate, he could manipulate, he could blackmail, he could bargain, ...he could do any number of cunning things. And who knows what horrendous powers were locked up in the artifact itself, which faintly glows a dingy light-devouring yellow-gray and causes horrendous nightmares. Hmmm... and so, I realized that my Player (not his Character) may need some Special Gamesmasterly Guidance. Maybe.

However, what I don't want to do is railroad my players, giving them the idea that I have any sort of plan that they're supposed to be following, nor do I want to tell them "No, you can't do that - it's against your character," or anything heavy handed like that. So I needed a way to present to the Player some ideas that may or may not pertain to his character's thought process, without being insulting, or suggesting that he *should* do something other than what he thinks is best for his Character... I really don't mind what his character does, so long as he is actually acting "In Character". In this case I was not so sure. Seemed to me that it might be better for him to consider brown-nosing up to the Magistrates and letting the miners go to hell, so to say. Keep the artifact and hold on the the power. Something like that. How to convey that. Hmmm... hmmm...

Not to worry. And so from my bag of sneaky GM techniques I pulled out ...

A dream.

And this is how the GMing went ... by email:

Ibis fields this concept to his hitherto unmentioned friend.

It is often the case that when Ibis goes to sleep he is visited in his dreams by a little red faced man with a pointy black beard.  He stands about two feet tall, and is usually found in a cave in which there is a fire burning above the lip of a hole in the cave floor. Ibis has made a habit of telling his little friend his ideas, and receiving thoughtful commentary. The only thing the little man has asked for is that whenever Ibis likes an idea that he take a feathered doll from a brass bowl that is standing next to the fire, and toss it in to the fire. They watch it burn together, and the little man usually laughs hysterically, finding great pleasure in this event.

This time the little dream-man has this to say:

"Given the extraordinary opportunity you have to use this information to your sole and discrete advantage (which is to say, to curry favor with the elites in the region *wink wink*), I wonder why you would decide to forgo that in exchange for freeing slaves? After all, they have volunteered their services at, as you say, good pay! While your short term goals are Lawful Good, we both agree (hehe) those actions, I would think,would most likely be in order to impress necessary (important) people that you are not the crafty long-thinking villain you really are. This, it seems to me, may be going a little too far, given how much you would be sacrificing in terms of future advantages. I would imagine you would rather derive a completely different plan based on the principal of "secret and exclusive knowledge that can be exploited for personal gain is a good thing for you". In particular, I would think that you would very much prefer to keep his knowledge regarding the nature of the artifacts to yourself in the hopes that such information may prove useful to you at some time in the future. In fact, my guess is that you would prefer to obtain the artifact yourself, and find others of its kind, thereby advancing your personal secret knowledge and power. Such power could come in quite handy given your long term, and I might say, rather fantastic goals."

With this the little man leaps into the hole and Ibis awakens with a start.

And so, fellow Gamesmasters, just a tidbit of technique to encourage you all along your way toward more Literary Quality RPG Story Telling. I do hope you find this useful sometime!

Best wishes, and Game On.

Post-Script: As it turns out, my Player wrote back and said his Character was going to "think about his plans some more", and then came back in a few days with a detailed description as to why his Character would do what he had in mind first of all... and it made a heck of a lot of sense. Yet he said that my sending him the dream caused him to sit down and seriously think over what he was planning and why, and how he wanted to execute that plan, and question it's viability in more detail - all of which he said was tremendously useful. So there you have it. Game well played. :)

GM Tricks of the Trade

GM Pearls of Wisdom

Here are a few tips and tricks I have learned along the way on how to Gamesmaster 'sandbox' style games. I will very likely be adding to this list over time, so you might want to check back again later on as well.

Player Interaction

• Make sure you understand your player preferences for game style and play, and make sure they understand yours.  You can look at the GM Badges List to get an idea of the many options available.
• Let the game flow in terms of rules.  If you run into a rules issue try to avoid getting caught up in niddling over rules with players in-game.  Go with what you think is right as arbitrator of the game, and suggest letting the rule stand for the current game and do research on it afterwards.  Be willing to retrofit game events in case you happen to have been incorrect with a ruling, if necessary.
• Be sure that if you have rules lawyers in your game, that they are an asset rather than a liability. 
• Establish reasonable player expectations (what kind of game are we playing?)
• Play the game without trying to Beat the Players and win the game for your NPCs, while still playing the NPCs as smart as they would be according to their own intelligence, levels or other characteristics that would come into play. 
• Use GM Fiat wisely.  There is a time and place for Fiat, but it can easily be abused.  Try to be as fair as an umpire should be.
• As GM, avoid falling in love with your own NPCs in such a way that you favor or protect them unfairly.
• Treat all Player Characters equally.  If you have a significant other, or best friend playing, make sure that you treat all characters equally without any particular favoritism. 

Game Preparations

• Know the rules of your game system system well.  It pays to study the rules carefully in advance of playing.  This is one reason why I prefer a rules-light system, myself.
• Be prepared for each game.  Have your NPCs and monsters, and back story sussed out in advance.  If you feel unprepared it is sometimes better to postpone than play without proper prep.
• Typically you want to make sure the odds against the player characters are not overwhelming (accidentally or otherwise).
• You also want to ensure that odds against the player characters are not obviously too easy as well.
• Try to create intriguing back story for the non-player characters, and the world itself.  You don't have to go too far with this, but it's good to know generally what the motives or the NPCs are, their plans and objectives, as it helps you to handle story aspects of the game more effectively.
• There is a fine line between rich story, and over complicated.  When you have more than three hanging threads in the current story, it's a good time to start tying them together again before introducing new threads.  This helps with avoiding confusion, dissipation and contradictions within the story.
• On the their side of the coin, overly simplistic scenarios can turn out to be too bland, so if you only have one thread, or sub-plot, it's a good time to introduce a second.  Often you can get sub-plot ideas directly from the player character's actions.  For example, did someone leave a wounded Kobold behind?  Maybe he follows behind the party causing troubles from afar.  
• Monty Hall Dungeons can work, sometimes, but not often, so use them sparingly.  Used once in a while they can be a lot of fun, and rewarding for the Player Characters that survive it, but making them the entire campaign can wind up being uninteresting after a while.  Remain sensitive to the mood of the players.
• Try to establish party unity in the back story or setting.  Perhaps the party are all members of the same family, or Adventure Guild, or army.  Building cohesion of the group in the back story helps the players to justify staying together rather than wandering off on the separate ways during the course of the campaign.
• Know your world well.  Have a good familiarity and understanding of the map, the history, politics and economics of your world (within reason).  It helps tremendously with playing 'sandbox' style games where the Players are free to roam around as their inclinations lead them. 

 Gamesmastering Style

• Allow Players to roam around your world and explore.  Let the story flow from the interests and actions of their characters, rather than trying to control the story according to a preconceived plot.  This is what is meant by "sandbox" style.
  
• Allow the story to develop in a way that goes beyond mere combat encounters.  Encourage exploration, negotiation, planning, and relationships with non-player characters.
• Play above board, meaning let the players know the odds of success for most actions, unless you have a good reason not to in a particular situation.
• Play your Non-Player Characters with the with distinct personalities, voices and mannerisms.
• Use descriptive narration to give the players a sense of the environment, including what they see, hear, and feel.  An example would be "The characters enter the edge of a cedar wood forest, shaded with dappled sunlight, beautifully scented.  Birds are singing, the air is warm, and a breeze is rustling the leaves in the trees around them." 
• Pace the granting of treasures and goodies, including information about the world.  Let the players work for what they get and they will appreciate it more.
• Let PCs die if they play their characters foolishly.  Don't bend over backwards to keep them from suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.   It makes them play smarter next time.   One thing you can do, however, especially for favorite characters that die, is to provide some means by which those characters may be able to be returned to the world of the living.  Other-world Quests are a good means of doing so.
• Try to illicit emotions from the Players by using descriptive narrative to create moods, and Player Character relationships to create dramatic tension within the context of the story.  
• Make your monsters scary, rather than 'Experience Point Bags' by describing them in ways that leave players mystified in various aspects.  Instead of announcing "there are four third level orcs in the room" you can use atmospheric descriptive narrative to leave it ambiguous at the start of the encounter... "When the door bursts open, Rothmon shoves his lantern through the door.  There are flickering shadows dancing everywhere.  From the north corner a dark faced orc with fangs bared is leaping toward the door.  Behind him you see two shadows emerging from the darkness wearing spiked helms, unsheathing glinting steel swords.  You hear a loud grunt and snarl coming from behind the door, but you can not see that part of the room."   Same situation, but as you can see the second one is much more engaging, and leaves the players as unsure about the exact circumstances as they would be in real life had they burted into a room under the same conditions.
• Make your villains dangerous.  They are the plotters and planners of devious machinations, so play them that way.  However, don't give them knowledge of things that their characters would not know, such as which way the party went, if it is something the villain would not have knowledge of.  In other words, don't make your villains invincible.  Just play them like smart monsters that plan ahead, set traps, and the like - not like gods who know everything.
• Throw a little romance into the game.  Let the NPCs occasionally show some romantic interest in the Player Characters.  This can add noble incentives for the Player Characters (your Princess has been kidnapped, etc), or provide points of humor during the course of the game (the Player Character who just can't score, etc).

Good Gaming to you!  Let me know if you have other suggestions that you might like to see on this list, and I'll be happy to tack them on.  Thanks Chris for inspiring this post. :)

Tricks & Traps: how to think like a Villain

Yeep!  Sorry!  

This post has been sent back to Draft, hopefully in the nick of time before any of my players notice it out here!  We have not quiiiiite finished the campaign yet, and due to some last minute changes there is now information in this post that they definitely should not see yet.

Very many apologies, but this post will be Re-Posted again, intact (with a few minor edits that I just made) as soon as the Campaign is completed!   Promise!

I will post a note indicating when this post has been re-posted.   :p  

Plz forgive me....

RPG Carnival November 2011 - Summary

Thank you very much to everyone who participated in this challenging topic! We heard from a handful of intrepid GMs who offered their insights and advice on how to think like a villain in your campaign. Here’s a brief recap:

Runeslinger: wrote "Cracking Open the Skull of Evil" with a focus on Horror-Genre villains, Runeslinger offers his considerations of the villain’s motivations and provides some great examples to illustrate what he means.

http://runeslinger.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/cracking-open-the-skull-of-evil-11-2011-blog-carnival/

Berin Kinsman: over on Dire Blog, Berin accepted the challenge with  “The Indifference Trap”, in which he focuses on how to think about Traps that the GM’s Villains might spring on their Player Characters. Traps must serve a purpose: to guard things, to give an opponent tactical advantage, and to capture players without killing them.  Great insights!

http://berinkinsman.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/rpg-blog-carnival-the-indifference-trap/

Lee at HouseRule wrote "Players Have All the Answers": A short but sweet post on his thoughts regarding traps. A key bit of advice here is to not lock your Players into a trap that corners them hopelessly… give them choices along the way. And provide a sense of urgency as you do it.  Worthwhile advice!

http://www.houserule.com/?p=384

Satyre at Satyrlite wrote ‘Villainous Psychology – traps & tricks’ a well organized overview of methods and motives for trap building with great examples. Method, Motive, Opportunity are the subject titles. Well worth the read!

http://satyrelite.blogspot.com/2011/11/villainous-psychology-traps-tricks.html

Desyth at DrunkDM wrote a post “Tricks & Traps” that focuses on a series of really killer traps. Lots of fun and great fodder for ideas!

http://www.drunkdm.com/campaignworkshop/itemsandtraps/november-2011-rpg-carnival-tricks-traps/

Runeslinger followed up with a second post, “A Penticle of Trapping”, which focuses on the second side of my question: the traps, in which he explains the five principals of trapping. This set of principals is where you want to be as a Villain-Thinker. Great ideas.

http://runeslinger.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/a-pentacle-of-trapping/

Michael Schultz at LateToTheParty wrote about his bad guys, how they think and how they function. Most villains, in fact, don’t consider themselves villains – they’re driven by passions, but they rarely say to themselves “I’m evil, mwhahaha”. Bringing realism and depth to your villains is a great idea!

http://latetotheparty.ca/?p=547

Fitz at Game Knight Reviews posted “Thankful for Gleeful Villains” some interesting advice on letting your villains have fun with their wretched diabolical plots. After all, if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing… why do it?  LOL!

http://www.gameknightreviews.com/2011/11/the-gassy-gnoll-thankful-for-gleeful-villains-rpg-blog-carnival-tricks-traps/

IronWolf at IronTavern wrote his entry “Thinking like a villain: tricks & traps” and discusses how to provide balance in the pursuit of villainy. After all, if villains are as smart as the GM (ie – omniscient) then the Player Characters may never survive. So it behooves to consider villains as characters of depth, and offers his advice and observations on the topic, as well as two great examples of two types of villains.  Great!

http://irontavern.com/2011/11/25/thinking-like-a-villain-tricks-traps/

Again - Thank you everyone for some really great ideas and examples!

And as for my own thoughts, I will post them soon in another post.   For now I leave you with a small poem that washed up on the shore of a desolate beach in Elthos one day, written in bloody script, doubtless by the hand of a Player Character who'd been done in at last by his Villainous foes...

Down, down, down

to the Hilts of their swords

they will strive...

till all but their anguish 

lies dead and forgotten

in the sands of time