Thoughts on Literary RPG Stories

I've for some years now had the idea that literary stories, ones that map to literary conventions and that are satisfying in their own right as stories, are possible to produce through Role Playing Games (I'm thinking of the Pencil & Paper version). Some RPG designs purport to facilitate or enforce this idea, which collectively may be called "Story Games".

However, despite the enthusiasm in some circles for Story Games, I will not be discussing those because my intention is to think about this in relation to my own game, which is Elthos RPG. My game is what people now'days would probably call a "retro-clone" of OD&D (I would be inclined to dispute this, however).  The point is that I'm interested in using what might be called a Traditional RPG to produce Literary Stories.

First I should like to clarify what I mean by satisfying Literary Story. What I mean by this is that the resulting story has literary merit, follows in a general sense literary conventions such has having a story arc with a beginning, middle and end, shows a degree of character development, and by and large uncovers larger truths about life and the universe in which we live. In the end, when transcribed or told verbatim the story would entertain, and perhaps even enlighten the reader in some way.

When an author writes a story they have control over the Characters actions in the story in a way that the author of an RPG story does not. The Players control the various Characters in the RPG, and those Players typically will do unexpected things that the Gamemaster has not anticipated. This forces the game to adopt a strongly improvisational stance. When you add the fact of luck through dice rolling into the mix, it positively ensures that game per game, the Gamemaster has little or no control over the outcome of each episode. As a game this works perfectly. But as a story creation tool, well, like I said, the traditional RPG presents challenges.  One never knows if the Player Characters will even live or die in any given game. And yet, the goal is to achieve a satisfying story that stands on its own merits and can be read from end to end and be enjoyed purely as a story in its own right.

Can RPG play result in such stories? I believe so. Does it require a special set of rules mechanics to do so by attempting to enforce "story"? I don't think so. What it requires is is a Gamemaster and Players who understand the nature of Story, and a willingness to achieve it through excellence of role play. That is all. Yet though this sounds simple enough, it is not easy. In the same way that Micheal Angelo was able to paint a masterpiece with relatively simple tools and following a standard formula of putting paint on a brush and applying it to a canvas, so too could true GameMasters (ie - Masters of the art) produce this kind of Story.   The tools available are not nearly as important as the mind of the artist.

I have created over the years a number of examples of this kind of play and have published them on my blog. There are currently two primary examples, both based on the actual play of my test games between 2009 and 2014. You can read those stories via this page: http://elthosrpg.blogspot.com/p/elthos-rpg-play-tests.html.

I won't claim that they perfectly achieve the Ideal to which I aspire, but I believe they may suffice as examples of the direction I wish to go.  Each entry is a Chapter that represents a single game session and they could be read in a ad hoc manner to get the idea, if you wish.  However, the examples are rather long (totaling over 260,000 words  for the 2011 - 2013 game) , and so I wouldn't expect to read them through in a single sitting.

What I would like to do now is discuss, and open a dialog about, the challenges involved with this objective.

One challenge is that of combining the chance involved in a dice game with the development of a coherent and satisfying plot line.

A related challenge is the 'Cat Herding' required to get Players to stay on Story Target.  In other words many players have a tendency to completely forget their character's goals or interests as they encounter things in the world, and hence may wind up chasing after every detail presented by the GM.  Learning as GM how to build a Campaign so that it leads to good story is one of the arts of the thing that is not easily explained, nor easily learned except by trial and error, and an excellent understanding and appreciation of what makes a good Story to begin with.

Another challenge is in the portrayal of a World that does not inhibit the game aspect, but at the same time effectively conveys the sense of the world, the scene and the characters involved.

I'm not going to try to tackle all of these challenges in this post, as it would turn out too long to read for many people. I'll just ruminate some, and leave it at that, and then continue posting on this topic with "- Part 1, 2, 3, etc" as new thoughts come to me.

So here I will talk a bit about the first challenge. That of Dice vs Story. It's probably the most commonly understood challenge, or at least the one I've seen most often discussed so far. It basically comes down to this: how can you create a coherent story when at any time the Heroes of the story can get themselves killed by an unlucky roll of the dice? Well, yes, this is a challenge indeed.

When reading a story it would be hard to swallow "And then Prince Valiant slipped while fighting the lone Goblin, and accidentally chopped off his own head" due to a Fumble roll that went horribly wrong. That is something that could happen in an RPG because we are dealing with the luck of the dice, and one never knows just how bad things will go when dice are involved.

So what's the answer to this? I can see a few possibilities. One, the Gamemaster might provide a buffer against such outcomes by including a "knock out" option for primary PCs. So instead of dying, they will knock themselves out. Yes, this is a mechanical modification, and a bit of a cheat in a way. But a modest one, and given it's utility for the purpose I wouldn't balk at including it as a house rule for my game.

Another answer to this problem might be to ensure that in the event a major PC does happen to get killed, that in some way it turns out to be meaningful. This might be done by causing a kind of domino effect where in the end the fact that the hero perishes does something to the remainder of the story that causes lose ends to tie up a certain way, and thus still provides a satisfying story. In other words, you wouldn't say "And then Prince Valiant accidentally chopped his own head off. The end." You would instead finesse it. "And then Prince Valiant accidentally chopped his own head off... which resulted in Queen Illana marching with her army on Castle Frostguard in order to secure her sovereignty there, and this began the War of the Ladies and resulted in the Coronation of Prince Varin as King of Palamir."  In other words, a Character death if handled with a bit of Story teller's magic can be the beginning of a new story, rather than The End.

Another similar way to handle it, at least for some kinds of Worlds, would be to not have it that Death is The End of the Character, but a significant event instead... as in one case in my world where a Character died and found themselves on the way to Hades, and had an adventure there (one that allegorically reflected what was going on in the campaign).  He was subsequently rescued from Hades as a result of a Quest on the part of the other players.  So Death of a Character from bad luck can and should be incorporated in a way that makes the bad luck something that blends in and works for the whole of the Story.  Who knows?  Perhaps the Character obtained some secret knowledge in Hades, or found a treasure there and was able to bring it back... thus turning bad luck into good luck ere the end.

Another way to handle this kind of thing would be for the GM to carefully ensure that no challenges are of sufficient difficulty to make it probable that the Player Characters will die. I'm not especially in favor of this approach because it runs counter some of my other goals as a GM, but for some it might suffice as a strategy.  Simply lower the odds of a Bad Luck outcome.

Lastly, the Players themselves might try their best to play smarter, not harder. That means playing Characters intelligently enough to ensure that they don't get themselves into situations where their odds are poor, and endeavoring to maximize their chances of success. This, however, may also be a kind of cheat, as Players should be expected to Role Play, and it is quite possible that their Characters are actually not that smart. I have a Character in the Whitewode Campaign who is only of average intelligence, and he often makes plans that are poorly thought through. And that's fine, as the player is playing true to the Character.  The results are often comical, in fact.

In any case, the issue of Dice vs. Story is one of those things that Literary RPG enthusiasts ruminate over, and there's quite a bit written about it out there if you poke around. The principal underlying the dilemma is that it seems difficult for one to play a game based on luck and still somehow derive an interesting and meaningful story out of it. I propose that it is certainly possible, and desirable.  But it takes quite a bit of skill to pull it off, on the part of the GM and the Players alike.  Yet, it is a worthwhile objective and I encourage people to try.

I'll be ruminating about this further on, most likely. But for now I wanted to jot down these thoughts. I hope you will forgive me for the rambling nature of this post.

Elthos RPG Beta Test Report - July

Hi everyone.  July has seen some significant progress in the development of the Elthos RPG and supporting Web Application known as The Mythos Machine, and I'm quite happy to say that the feedback I've gotten has been tremendously helpful. Among the items that have been improved or are currently being worked on:

1. Beta Video Tutorials have been created and linked to a InfoGraphic display of the Primary Features of the Mythos Machine.
2. A variety of forms have been improved to make the application more attractive and more responsive.
3. World Templates have been added and I now have two, Fantasy and Wild West to select from. More will follow, one for each genre.
4. Site Administration and Reporting has been improved.
5. Rules Book Updates have been ongoing and I am now on Version #8 of the Final Draft (oxymoronic in a way, but ... )
6. Some minor bugs were crushed.
7. Improvements made to the World Print Report. New options for output were added, and filters improved.
8. Working on but have not completed a re-rationalization of the Magic Categories System.
9. Planning for the Wandering Monsters System drawn up and reviewed.
10.  I produced a tidy little FAQ regarding the project.

So, I'm making steady progress with it, although I admit it feels like I'm moving at museum speed. I also have to say that the revised Beta is working somewhat better than the Beta 24. It seems that it will be a slow pick up in terms of getting people on the system and trying it out. For one thing, we've had the big lead up to GenCon 2015 and my guess is that almost everyone who is into RPGs is there at this point... except yours truly, and I guess the rest of us who couldn't make it this year. So I can't expect to make much of a dent with the Beta Test at the moment. Understood. Still, I will keep trying.

My guess is that Elthos will be among the early crop of a new breed of GM Helper Software products, and it will take some time for these tools to become well known and popular. There's a lot of hurdles ahead. Pricing, marketing, and improving the products will take a lot of work, and probably a considerable amount of time to build up steam and take off. I'm ok with that. For one thing, I don't feel a dreadful need to rush ahead. Anyone who knows me and has followed the Elthos Project will know what a wonderful understatement that is. For those who don't, I started working on this project in 1978. In 2004 I taught myself programming in order to create GM Helper software based on my Elthos Rules. By 2000 I had a fully realized feature rich Visual Basic application that does a lot of what you see today in terms of features on Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and other similar applications, and quite a bit more that you don't see.

Unfortunately, the original Elthos Gamesmaster's Toolbox application was written in Visual Basic, which means that it was simply too buggy to send out into the wild. I tooled around with it and used it for my own games for half a decade before deciding to shelve it for the next big thing. So in 2006 I started work on a mini-system called the Elthos "One Die System" for use by the Literary RPG Society of Westchester, and then in 2007 I began programming that system for use via a Web Browser. My goal was to create a light weight mini-system that would be easy to learn, and easy to run, providing GMs with the ability to create their own Worlds based on the Elthos RPG rules. That system is called The Mythos Machine, and I've been using it among my friends since 2009, making various updates and improvements and making sure that the Rules and the Mythos Machine are coherent and work nicely. So far so good. I'm now in Open Beta and looking forward to people trying it out and hopefully getting useful feedback.

Ok. Back to the salt mine here. For those of you at GenCon  have a great time! I'm totally jealous.

But for those who are not at GenCon and maybe looking for an interesting RPG thing to check out ... Elthos RPG Mythos Machine might just be the thing. Please take a peek and let me know what you think of it. 

You can find it here: http://elthos.com

Just click the floating Cosmological Map card to get started, and make a free Beta account for yourself. Scroll down the Main Screen to find the Beta Tutorial Videos to get an idea of what the Mythos Machine is about. I do hope people will find it fun to use and useful!

If you want to get a quickie idea of what the Mythos Machine is about you can check out these videos which shows off a little bit about the Mythos Machine's Primary features...

Player Viewpoint
Create a World
World Configuration Options
Create Places in your World
Create Campaigns in your Places
Create Adventures in your Campaigns
Manage the Things of your World
Manage Races of your World 

 Enjoy!
:)

Thoughts on Philosophical GameMastering

It seems to me that most GameMasters that have a story in their minds, a vision of a World, also have something that they'd like to say. Or perhaps a better word would be 'teach'. They want to bring their Players into a World in which certain points can be made and illustrated through the course of play.

Some GameMasters may not quite realize that this is somewhere near the heart of their endeavors. But it very likely is there.

An example of this might be the GM who believes that the Universe is really just a gigantic eating machine, as my late friend David Kahn used to say. And in his own way he demonstrated this through his World of Telthanar. When we encountered beings of tremendous power and mind boggling motivations, it became quickly apparent that these beings were just as likely to stick a fork in us and shove us in their mouths as they were to engage in some kind of dialog. And those dialogs were just as likely to bring about the dining pleasure of our ill-met conversationalists as anything else. It was not that everything in Telthanar tried to actually eat us... but the overall impression was that sooner or later we would get "et", as David used to say with a dry eye and wry grin. It seemed to me that he took great pleasure in our astonishment at the underlying voracious attitude of the creatures and beings that we encountered in Telthanar, and it was those Players who most quickly adapted to this reality and achieved a composure as ruthless as those we encountered that fared best, and climbed highest. Telthanar was as amazing as it was astonishing, and those of us who had the pleasure to adventure there are unlikely to ever forget it. And as David most likely wished, we all learned a few valuable life lessons there as well. Sometimes things do want to eat you, you know.

Other GameMasters have other points to make about what they see as "the true nature of things", either metaphysically or politically, or socially. Many, though, do not see their Worlds as a platform for illuminating these ideas. Some may not even know that any such ideas permeate their Worlds at all. I would argue, though, that whether they know it consciously or or not, every World is an expression of the innermost convictions of it's GameMaster. Those GameMasters, however, that consciously know that they want to express their philosophies through their World are numerous, though even among these they may not wish to expressly declare as much to their Players. Partially because it might ruin the surprise, or disrupt the lesson, in a similar way as telling someone "The butler did it" as they pick up a mystery novel. Still, though, the intention to teach lessons is quite likely there, at some level, and to some degree. Some GameMasters wish to express the idea that Truth and Nobility are the most important virtues in life. Some wish their Players to understand that in the world of Politics no one can be trusted. Some wish simply to impress upon us that careful planning and diligent attention to detail is our best route to achieving our goals. Most GameMasters have a whole pocket full of ideas and lessons they'd like to impart, and often use their Worlds as a stomping ground for their most far flung and outlandish musings. Their Players are quite likely to be subject at times to the underlying philosophic conundrums of their GMs most convoluted and perplexing ideas. Many GameMasters in fact offer us a plethora of potentially valuable life lessons... all to be learned through the auspices of the wondrous invention of RPGs. This is, in fact, one of the most profoundly fascinating aspects of RPGs. And the fact that many GameMasters keep the subject and intentions of their lessons a closely guarded secret during the course of play is a necessary and equally fascinating aspect of the nature of the game. No one wants to simply spill the beans and blurt out what hidden treasures are in store. Every GameMaster worth his salt wishes for the Players to stumble upon such things themselves, and have that quintessential moment of realization for themselves. Getting the Players to the point of "Aha!" is one of the great pleasures of GameMastering.

Of course, one can, and should say the same thing for authors, script writers, poets and musicians. We are all in the game of expressing our innermost philosophical ideas through the medium of art. And for us, our RPG Worlds happen to be our artistic medium. This is why I refer to RPGs as the new Art Form of the 21st Century. The difference, though, I think, between RPGs and other forms of art is that with the RPG the Author / Teacher / Philosopher comes in direct contact with the Player's thoughts and feelings in a way that is far more accessable than with other art forms. After all, we are collaborating together in the exploration of our Worlds. It is not a one sided art form. It is multi-sided, and as such the GameMaster is just as likely to be shocked and amazed, and learn new things, as their Players. Which is another marvel of the game.

So I'm curious... do you find yourself imbuing your World, consciously or otherwise, with philosophical lessons that you think your Players might be either entertained or illuminated by? What kinds of musings do you find permeating your World?

RPG Carnival: My BadAss RPG

First off, the Elthos Universe has got Mr. BadAss Bunny as it's Mascot, so that's hard to beat.

Second, I would say that the adventures that come out of Elthos are pretty badass as well.  I try to GM concepts that I think will surprise my players, and in some of the more recent cases the most badass thing they did was shrink down to the half the size of rice-grains in order to escape an enemy, riding on the backs of aphids.

It all started with chores.  I have my players as members of a large household of swine herders way out in the sticks, with lots of chores to do.  They are between the ages of 12 and 16, and don't know much beyond their farmstead.  They got involved, however, with a shadowy character that promised them huge wealth if they would plant certain black seeds on the first day of spring. Nope, they could not wait and planted them right away - wrong move!.  As soon as they did there was a tremor in the earth, and that got the adventure rolling.  They went to pay a visit to the local Monastery of the Golden Sheaf (sacred to Minvar, the Elkron of the Earth) so they could report the quake (but not mention the odd coincidence regarding the black seeds).   Along the way they met Old Biddy Mable, and managed to rescue a girl and her brothers from the lonely witch's magical snare.   The Abbess at the Monastary was kind and helpful, and all was well, until they got lost on their way home and wound up in the Black Forest.  There they met Lady Lucia who governed the Green Dragon Inn, and met some swindlers there, one of whom took a fancy to a Party member named Morgana.  Whoopsie, in the morning the Party woke up to find that Morgana was missing from her room.  They pursued up into the mountains where they found an old ruin occupied by a rather brutal gang of thugs, lead by a magician named Thurwulv.   There they were, cornered on the parapet of an ancient tower, having rescued Morgana, and in the process causing the death of her captor, Mr Montague (who happened to have sincerely fallen in love with the girl, who herself fell in love with him despite his crooked ways).  Trapped by Thurwulv and his men thursting for revenge, the Party escaped

Old Biddy Mable

with the help of Biddy Mable, who happen to be watching over them from afar.  She brought them into Weeleena's Tea House (an interdimensional tea house that fey like to visit).   To escape they climbed the Shrinking Stairs, and found themselves half the size of a grain of rice, and were escorted by two Princes of the Aphid people, upon whose backs they rode to discover the Aphid Temple inside a stone on the western parapet wall, and communed with the Holy Aphid there (an old man).  As it turns out the Insect Kingdom is ruled by a mysterious Insect King (whom they never saw, but had a big influence from afar). Despite having a King, however, the world of the Insects is fraught with faction and continuous warfare.   The Locust Ambassador arrived.  He was a large bulky half-man/half-Locust, redish in color, and plated with magical copper armor. He demanded that the Aphids support their claim to the King that the Ants stole their food and must deliver it, ALL of it, to the Locusts, or they would rise the Grand United Army and destroy all the green things of the valley.  This of course included the Player Character's home town.   They got busy.  First they decided to capture the Locust Ambassador (they were not big on diplomacy), and haul him in front of the towns folk so that they could see there was a real threat coming, and so help them to build a huge bonfire on Mount Zin in which they hoped to focus the Locust Swarm and destroy it.  The focusing would be done by praying to the appropriate Elkron at the right time to funnel the winds in such a way as to drive the Locusts into the blazing mountain grotto.   This plan was executed, the Red Locust Ambassador captured, with the help of Lady Isabella, a LadyBug Princess who took an interest in one of the Player Characters named Storm Wizard (aka, John Bellowick), and her body guard, Captain Ferdinando the Wasp Warrior.  Unfortunately, what they didn't know was that the ferocious and barely containable Red Locust Ambassador did not come alone.   His brother was nearby watching with a Squadron of Hypnotic Crimson Mosquito Fighters (think Air Force), and Water Bugs (think Artillery), not to mention the Silver Locust Ambassador who himself was another formidable opponent.  An epic war broke out between the Locust forces and those of the King, who had taken umbrage at the audacity of the Locusts and sent two Ant Armies to rectify the situation and capture the errant Locusts.   During the battle the tiny sized adventurer's found a tunnel under  rock that lead into a spider cave, which was actually the entrance to the Temple of the Spiders, and nearly got lost in the Illusions and trapped the 'Web of Lies' therein.

Nevertheless they escaped and as they fled on the back of a lady bug into the distance they watched the last moments of the battle from the air wherein the Locusts were finally captured by the Ants and their Wasp Warriors (the other Air Force). Needless to say, it was exciting.   And that is to leave out quite a bit of detail about how Juliette Bellowick died, and was able to rescue Pamela McFearson from Limbo, and managed herself to be seduced by the Dark Scorpion Prince of the Underworld, and escaping there arrived safely at the Monastery where the Abbess had performed many a life-summoning ritual.   By the end of the story (and leaving out lots of details) the Party made it safely home to their anxious father and ailing mother, and so ended that Chapter of the Campaign.  Oh, needless to say, the black seed that Juliette had planted in a flower pot grew into a peculiar and monsterous plant-man the size of her thumb which sprang out of a hairy black bulb on the top of the plant.  The bottom of the plant was a long stringy vine that overflowed down the side of the pot, down to the floor boards and vanished below the barn.  They tried cutting the vine but that, as it turned out, was not as easy to do as they had hoped.  The vine, as it happens, was what old mama Bellowick tripped on when she banged her head and fell ill, soon after the Bellowick children disappeared off into the sunset on their adventure.  Fortunately, when they finally got home, they were able to call upon the friends they made along the way to bring mom healing soup, and so everything turned out well.

Overall, it was pretty damn BadAss.  I wrote up the entire story in prose with all of the actual dialog and detail and maps on my Blog.  You can find the whole "Actual Play" Story write up in Chapters here, which is another BadAss expression of Elthos.   And then of course there was the incorporation along the way of the Elthos Tarot Deck, another bit of BadAssery that I created with the amazing artistic assistance of Jason Moser, by which Morgana foretold the Death of Mr Montague, though in the end it saddened her greatly.

Lastly, the final BadAss aspect of Elthos are the "One Die System" (ODS) Rules which is a Mini-System I created for the Literary Role Playing Game Society of Westchester so we could try out GMing ideas at the local pub where we have our meetings.   The Elthos ODS has turned out to be a pretty handy little system, that as it turns out is simple enough, yet complete enough, to run a reasonably light weight Traditionalist, non-Genre-Specific game.  It also has the virtue of being programmable due to is simple mechanics.  So I created one more BadAss thing - the Elthos ODS Web Application that runs all of the ODS Rules as a web based Application.  It allows GMs to create their own Worlds, roll and manage Characters, equip them, and maintain records of their adventures, doing all necessary calculations.   Basically a Gamesmaster's Toolbox, and World Weaver's Development Studio.

Ok, that is all the BadAss I have (except also for my Elthos Drawings!).   But gosh, that's enough already!  Sheesh!!

And finally, a warm and hearty "Thank You, kindly" to our RPG Carnival Host at Nevermet Press!

Borrowings from Sapphire & Steel

I ran across a post called "The Time of the Metalanterns" which talked about Sapphire & Steel, (thank you, GreyWulf!) which reminded me that I absolutely love that series and wanted to borrow some of the ideas from it for my World.  In case you don't know, it was a British Science Fiction TV series that I think of as a cross between 'Doctor Who' and 'Dark Shadows'.  It never failed to give me the creeps, while wigging out my mind with incredibly awesome science fiction concepts.

The outlines of my adaptation (or borrowing as the case may be) is that there are super-sentient beings in the Elthos Universe, and a host of inter-dimensional creatures / monsters that are scarcely comprehended by mankind.  One of these beings is Time.  Most beings live within time, but do not understand that it is a sentient force that lives off of the life energy of those within it by devouring them in bizarre and often hideous ways, often by trapping them in the folds of time and strangulating them metaphysically.  When it does this it often causes rifts in the space-time continuum.  There is a shadowy Order of Time Keepers whose task it is to repair the rifts, and rescue those who may be caught in Time's traps before they are devoured.

Edit:  Another aspect that I glean from S&S is that Time will tend to be attracted to beings who are fixated in some way on Time, or an object that has deep significance to Time.   Some examples are:  1) a Scientist who invented a Time Machine, 2) the Oldest Photograph in the world, 3) a Race from the Future who wanted to transport a Monster they accidentally created into another time to escape its Civilization destroying wrath, 4) a ghost who refused to leave the hotel where she was killed by clinging to a Grandfather clock, etc.   As it happens Time will devour every living thing eventually, and if you consider that life spans typically do not last very long in big scheme of things, Time can be seen as a ravenous monster indeed.  On the other hand, some races live very long lives, and so have found ways to evade Time's traps.   As such the vast majority of Time's conquests are quite normal, and really amount to dying of Old Age, which everyone takes as natural.  However, mankind in Elthos was not intended to be a mortal race originally, but through the original deception in Eden, Time gained a foothold on the race of men, and so every person is doomed to die, at some point in Time.  And thus, the Time Keepers know that even natural deaths of Old Age are really the Serpent Time devouring its victims.  However, dying of Old Age does not cause any temporal rifts, and so the Time Keepers do not involve themselves typically with Old Age deaths at all.  That is just beyond the scope of their duties.

Along with Time, there are other forces and entities that are aware of how Time operates, and are able to either manipulate Time in order to advance their own agendas, or have malevolent objectives which entail the destruction of sectors of the Universe by the twisting of Time in ways that cause all kinds of havoc in the ordinary world.

An example of some of these beings would include a race of beings that pinch time causing it to fold it's coils, which they use to escape dangerous situations, and which usually leaves mind boggling havoc behind them as time retaliates in the local area.

Another example are Time Spies, a race of beings who use the coils of time to spy on the events taking place in past and future, and report back to their shadowy order.  These beings work in conjunction with the Time Keepers.

The Time Keepers function like The Time Lords of 'Doctor Who', but since I don't use that Universe, I renamed them Time Keepers, and have them operate similarly to the Time Lords, but with significant alterations as to their methods and goals.  Essentially they are Time Tamers, whose purpose it is to keep Time flowing forward, and without injury to the many countless beings within it.

Other large scale beings include things like Gravity, another sentient being, as well as Space, a being so horrific as to eliminate the minds of those who perceive it, and Judgement, the Ultimate Knower of the Universe.  These gigantic Metaphysical entities will hardly ever come into actual play in my world, I'm sure. However, the concept that they exist, and that Time in particular is a kind of wrathful and hungry serpent, will lead to a certain segment of adventures which will involve Time, and the Time Keepers.

While I don't actually anticipate running a Time Adventure anytime soon, it is still very interesting, and something that I will jot down Campaign notes on, and create a few adventures for anyway.  It's just too fun a concept not to salt my world with.

:)
Mark

Some Thoughts on GMing Great Story

Maighdean-Mhara (the Sea-Maiden)

All went well for three years until one day the young couple were walking by the loch shore again.  This time the monster rose out and it was Finnseang who was dragged under the waters before Murdo Og had a chance to defend her.  Murdo Og was wailing and lamenting his lost bride when an old man walking by asked what was wrong.

Murdo Og told him and the old man said: “I will tell you how you can rescue your wife and destroy the monster forever.  In the center of the loch is an island.  On the Island is a white-footed hind, slender and swift.  If you catch the hind, a black crow will spring out of her mouth and if the black crow were caught, a trout would fall out of her beak, and in the mouth of the trout would be an egg.  Now in the egg is the soul of the monster.  If you crush the egg, the monster will die.”  

When I read this passage I was struck by the simplicity and natural forthrightness of the flow of the story. Here is magic at its most enigmatic, and it is at the same time handled without flourish or frills. We are told that the magic is of a certain nature and we are expected to accept that this is magic of an enchanted realm and that the magic works as such. I liked the matter of fact-ness of the way the scene is described and my feeling is that it is the attributes of simplicity and forthrightness regarding an enigma that makes the story not only work, but moreover, great literature, as is evidenced by its vast longevity.

Then I was thinking about how a Gamesmaster could make such stories.  Is it legitimate, for example, for the Gamesmaster who might be playing out this above described Adventure to show up as the old wise man Non-Player Character with the magical knowledge, and even the exact solution to the problem?  Well, almost it does, but it becomes something of Deus Ex Machina, one feels, and I think we can legitimately question if that would be truly satisfying in a game-play sense.  After all, it is the seeming spontaneity of the events in the story that make them charming.   So how does the Gamesmaster go about creating truly literary quality stories, where the Characters (both Player and Non-Player) act in ways that convey the same kinds of qualities as we find in the fairytales and ancient legends of old?   The author of the ancient stories was able to imbue his tales with a depth of meaning and his characters with a significance that makes them accessible to everyone who reads them, even now after many centuries, though the world has changed so incredibly.  The stories still carry the power to speak to us out of the depths of time.  They still have meaning for us, even if we don't quite understand consciously exactly what they are whispering to our hearts.   This is the nature of Literary Quality stories.  They flow with the currents of an inner and often hidden universal significance.

But in a Role Playing Game it’s hard to achieve this.   Naturally, the author has a great advantage over the Gamesmaster and Players in this regard – for the author every Character is far more likely to do what he wants and expects and directs them to than in an RPG where the Gamesmaster does not control the principal Protagonists (Player-Characters).  It is not far fetched to argue that this fundamental difference makes it much more difficult to achieve truly Great RPG Stories.  However, it can be done, and it’s our job to see that it is done.  The question I keep asking us to consider is, How?

Well there’s so much RPG Theory out there, and yet my feeling about the vast majority of it, in summary, is “hogwash and fiddlesticks”.   Honestly, I do not think we can find the answer to that question via RPG Theory.   What the Theorists seem to wish to do is to establish rules by which RPGs can be made into a Science of Story Creation, but that is more than I think is possible for the Art.   They seem to believe that through rigorous analysis of RPG Players and Gamesmasters behavior (and feelings) can be factually and accurately defined, process flowed, and manipulated, just as a biologist might describe the interactions of a microbe, or a psychiatrist describe a patient’s spiritual epiphany.

But RPG Stories are not subject to this analysis any more than is art or spirituality.   In fact, it really comes down to the fact that you cannot codify the Spirit of Beautiful Art.  As such, I do not believe in a 'Science of the Spirit of Beautiful Art'.  Science is based on facts and measurements, and art is based on intuition and spirit.   You cannot measure intuition and spirit, so there can not be a science of it.  There is a great deal of scientific (or analytic) commentary on Literature, its styles, modes, periods, forms and the myriad of other things that Academics and Scholars like to study.  And all of it is well and good and interesting stuff.  But I think the Ancients went to school to learn the craft of authoring the immortal myths learned that craft in a very different way than what we think of as School today.  The myth-maker was, in the most ancient of times, a Shaman, and his education was obtained by two means.  The first was technical.  He learned the tools of his craft, which were complicated and difficult to learn and use well, with many technical details to be mastered.  But there was another side to their education that I do not think is generally understood today.   And that has to do with the Mythic-Journey.  The entering, spiritually, into the Other World to glean wisdom, and winning such pearls of wisdom, bringing them back to our ordinary world as the gems we have handed down to us in the ancient myths.

The ancient Shaman-Poet-Myth-Maker wrote from the genius of his heart, mind and spirit, and he took the world around him in all of its glory and pain and translated it into words for the sake of creating beautiful art.   I do not believe it was a science of art that made him great.  In fact, were he to have tried to do this via a scientific method (or in our case Gamesmastered according to RPG Theory) I seriously doubt he would have produced the wonders he did.  So that’s my criticism, anti-Intellectual as some people may find it.   Nor do I think we will find that RPG Theory alone can produce Great RPG Story, try as it might.   What I do not find when I read RPG Theory is what I'm seeking - how to create RPG stories that have the qualities of great literature or ancient myth.  There is something deep and profound hidden within and behind the mythos of the ancient stories.  I would like to know how I can bring this quality into my RPG World, and allow my players to experience something similar to what we experience when reading the ancient works of literature.  I do not feel that I will find the answer in RPG Theory as I find it has been discussed thus far.

What I think is required, instead of Analytics, is actual Life Experience.   Gamesmasters who wish to create Great RPG Stories should read great literature in abundance, and learn to distill out from it what makes those works Great Story, or Great Art.   But moreover they should seek to live a life full of experiences that can help them to shape their Inner Vision of the World, and make their inner light gleam with the pearls of wisdom so necessary to creating Meaning in Story. Then they can begin to add elements to their RPG Worlds that may begin to cultivate a landscape in which Great Story has a chance of growing.   It is not an all or nothing thing, but I see it as an evolutionary process.  You simply start with something that has literary qualities, and you keep watering it, cultivating it, and letting it grow with your players until you begin to see that your World bears the fruits of Great Story over time.

Sea-Maiden

Another aspect that I think may be helpful is for the Gamesmaster to learn to develop a vision of the world based on their own life experiences.   To do this requires living a life in which experiences lead to insight.   I recommend this in the same sense that Shamans would head off into the other world via their dreams and obtain wisdom from the spirit world, and bring that back to their community in the form of healing stories.   I read a great book on this named “Coyote Wisdom”, and highly recommend it for Gamesmasters to read and consider.  Spend some time reading the classics and contemplating the stories of the ancient world.  In them you may find hints of Shamanistic experiences from the long forgotten swell springs of inspiration.

Now back to my questions:  How can Gamesmasters and Players create truly literary quality stories via their games?  And really, is it legitimate for the Gamesmaster to show up with the Deus Ex Machina, and for the Players to follow certain pathways pro-forma?  Well yes, sure, of course – it all depends on the timing, the mood, the Players, the phase of the moon, and how many butterfly wings flapped along the beach on the coast of Hawaii in the year 1200 BC.

But I also think that Gamesmasters who have insight, who have through their life experiences obtained a certain wisdom, can, and indeed do, foster Worlds from which Great RPG Stories can emanate.   I am seeking that path, and encourage my friends to do the same, as I believe in that direction Great Story is to be found.   Many say "it is impossible", and "Games can never be art" and other such nonsense.   I don't believe them.   And so I will continue my search, alone, perhaps, but happy in the delusion of my Great Story Dream.

If you care to read the outcome of my latest effort in this direction you may find links to my 2009-2010 Elthos Game Story here.   Enjoy.

Elthos PearlTree

Just a little something I've been toying around with... :)



Maybe it will work? What the heck, I'll try it.

...hmmm... seems to work nicely in Chrome, but in IE7 not so great. Not sure why. Oh well. Nice try. Anyway, I like the base website for PearlTrees. Definitely cool. Embedding, so so. But main site? I like it.

Pearls For Your Sandbox

This morning I was browsing RPGBloggers and I found Andreas Davour's post on THE OMNIPOTENT EYE blog: My thoughts on sandboxing

I think Andreas is certainly on the right track. These are my comments which I decided to cross-link to the (LRPGSW) from his comments box, since my comment started getting a bit involved. I decided to Cross-Post this to the ElthosRPG Blog as well, because, obviously, different communities of readers may find it in either location.

To Andreas:

I've run sandbox games all along so I'm pretty much sure that with what you have here would provide a good gaming experience for, as you say, pro-active players with some imagination. That said, I would add what I think is an essential concept to sandbox...

Create Pearls. Pearls are loosely coupled objects within your World that can be moved around and connected at will. Pearls can be people, places, things, or events. The pearls can be rolled out during the game when the NPCs or PCs trigger something that calls for one or more. What you probably want to avoid in your pearls are things that define them too rigidly within the world, although you can create strings of pearls that have defined links, for example an object-pearl that triggers another event-pearl that triggers a place-pearl. An example of a few loosely coupled pearls might be:

1) Lady Elaina, Princess of the Moon-Wolves Tribe.

2) Rathan Mountain, a jagged ice capped granite mountain on which is an ancient oak forest in which wolves and dryads live in uneasy co-existance.

3) Chaknorak, Wolf-Bane Sword, +2 vs Lycanthropes, and will return lycanthrops to human form on critical hits.

4) The Rising of Elehan: An ancient coffin in which is the skeleton of Elehan is opened, and the corpse of that terrible Wolf-King reanimated. His first goal is to find Chaknorak, and destroy it, for that is the weapon that killed him long ago.

Now you can see the obvious link between these is the moon-wolf theme. However, notice that there are no dates listed. No specific location relationships, or direct connections. Only implied ones. Those three would make a nice string of pearls, but they need not be strung together. Stringing them would simply be a matter of adding a notation that links them more directly. For example adding a trigger to Chaknorak as follows:

3) Chaknorak, Wolf-Bane Sword ... The relic is hidden in a large cavern guarded by the phantom of King Elehan. Whomever touches the sword will awaken the King's spirit and be lead by hook or crook to his tomb, one way or another, over the course of several days at most. The sword will hum in the presence of the tomb, and this will trigger the awakening of Elehan, who will try to remove the lid of the coffin, but be unable to do so on his own since the sacred seal must be broken from the outside. Once open the ancient King will speak in a long lost dialect, and attempt to take and destroy Chaknorak. If he succeeds he will return to Rathan Mountain and seek to find his old throne, resume his Lycanthropic form, and revive his kingdom.

As you can see the adding of the trigger to pearl 3 certainly ties it much more closely to a timeline, place and events that follow.

Pearls are a good conceptual model for Sandbox games. You want to create a bunch of people, places, things and events that are loosely coupled (by theme perhaps), but not tied together too rigidly. This gives the GM a lot of fun things to throw into the game, and yet not get tied up by criss-crossing complications due to rigidly defined timelines or relationships.