Every campaign needs a game physics, whether the GM knows it or not. And, in fact, they all have one, whether it’s specified or not, and whether the GM knows that or not, as well.

Boy, that was a short article! Now that we’ve established both need and solution, can we move on to another topic, because this one sounds both geeky and boring? Well no – not so fast, fly-boy.

Why? What’s a “Game Physics” for, anyway?

The Game Physics is what the GM uses to decide anything that’s not explicitly stated in the rule books. It’s also what the GM uses to comprehend and interpret those things that are explicitly stated in the rule books, and the standard of comparison for cases where one of the rules doesn’t work – either producing nonsensical results or being in aparrant contradiction with another rule. It’s the GM’s understanding of how the game world actually works.

The Usual Game Physics

Most GMs don’t explicitly spell out a Game Physics, don’t analyse things to that level of detail, either for themselves or for their players. They make rulings based on one all the time, mind you, but never put together a comprehensive picture of the inner workings of the universe, relying on “the usual game physics” – which is to say, they rely on their understanding of how the real world works, and rule that the book’s description of the various unusual phenomena possible within the game system constitutes the equivalent of the laws of physics for those particular subjects. And, most times, that’s all the players want or need.

From time to time, the GM will make a game ruling (which should get added to the House Rules of the campaign to maintain consistancy). Each such ruling should either be explained by the existing Game Physics or should expand apon it.

For example, it’s very easy to take player knowledge of physics and apply it to the game world. Lever action, harmonic oscillations, centrifigal force, gunpowder and plastic explosives, plastics, rifled gun barrels, electronics, microchips, pocket calculators, etc. The GM is perfectly entitled to rule that any or all of these don’t work in a fantasy campaign in order to preserve the level of technology within the game at an appropriate level. Every time he does so, he is changing the physics of the world in ways he probably doesn’t understand.

So why go beyond that?

An excellent question. There are multiple benefits to a more explicit approach to defining a game physics.

First, it puts players and GM on common ground. They will know right off the bat that certain things won’t work, so don’t bother trying them – which in turn helps them stay in character by only doing things the character expects to work.

Second, if the GM extends his understanding of the game physics beyond that of the characters, he can maintain consistancy of rulings and technology even if the game develops into untapped areas of high-technology. This is obviously valuable in certain genres – SciFi and Superhero being the obvious ones. It means that the players and NPCs are playing by the same ground rules, whether they know it or not – if a PC attempts an experiment which reveals a physical principle that they didn’t know, they will get an unexpected result and an explanation for certain things that may have happened in the campaign’s past. They can even extend the game physics beyond it’s starting point if they are so inclined. Instead of technobabble, we have technology – with limits and failure modes and creative applications.

I would contend that the same is true in any campaign – only the specific subjects change. In a horror campaign, the better the GM understands the “mechanics” of summonings and metaphysical manifestations, the better he can run such games. In a fantasy campaign, the more he knows about how magic actually “works” in the game world, the more he can push beyond the rules as and when necessary – something I touched on in a previous post (A Quality Of Spirit: Big Questions In RPGs).

Third, it makes the job of being a GM easier, and quicker. Instead of having to mull deeply over questions and their implications when they arise, an understanding of the game physics often lets the GM make an immediate ruling without batting an eyelid and get on with the game.

And finally, it adds extraordinary depth and verisimilitude to the campaign. Instead of a shared fictional world, it starts to feel like a real world that the characters happen to live in. This last has been known for as long as there has been science fiction – you have to establish the ground rules before readers can really get into the story. Read any SF novel, and you’ll find that a key element of the first quarter or so of the book is an establishment of the scientific principles that matter to the story. Read a short story, and you’ll generally find it in the first couple of paragraphs, certainly within the first two pages. A side benefit of doing so is that even when contradicted by later scientific discoveries, a story can remain timeless if the story is good enough – examples include the Lensman series (E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith), the Skylark Of Space series (‘Doc’ Smith again), the Incompleat Enchanter series (L. Sprague DeCamp and Fletcher Pratt), the Black Cloud (Fred Hoyle), The Known Space series (Larry Niven), and the list just goes on and on and on from there. Contrast this with any of the… poorer SF of the past century, and you’ll find that either this material is absent, or it’s so abstruse that most readers can’t follow it (or get bored trying).

In a nutshell, it takes the flash-bang-wizardry out of the picture and lets a story be judged on its merits as a story. Applying the principles to an RPG brings the same benefits to the game.

The Downsides

It can be a lot of work doing a comprehensive game physics (it can also be a lot of fun). But the real downside is that it can be harder to impart a sense of wonder.

I would contend that modern audiances/players already find that harder to tap into, another subject that I’ve written about in the past (Are Special Effects Killing Hollywood?).

So it can be argued that adding additional impediments is the last thing that you should be doing. It can also be argued that part of the GM’s job is fitting the game to the expectations of the players, and that modern players mandate a modern approach – and GMs should be grateful that there are ANY side benefits in doing so. I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this subject!

The Conservation Of Counterintuition

Another common approach is to rule that if a phsyical law seems counterintuitive, or just too difficult for the GM to understand, or requires higher mathematics, it just doesn’t work. That means that most GMs draw the line at Relativity – anything more complicated (including relativity itself) is out, anything less complicated is in. This is true even in modern and sci-fi campaigns. Any technology appropriate to the game era that relies on those physical priciples still works, but the physics are different because the complicated stuff just isn’t there.

Of course, different people will have different levels of understanding of physics; what seems obvious to me may not be obvious to them, and vice-versa. But as a rule of thumb, this one principle is enough definition of a simple game physics to make it useful.

The Metaphilosophical Properties of Genius

When I first started GMing, this was the game physics that I came up with, and it’s still perfectly servicable. It derives from the fact that physics and chemistry and science in general used to be known as “Natural Philosophy”. The concept is that the state of knowledge contemporary to any time period is a complete and accurate description of the way the physics of the time period actually works, but that occasionally individuals come along of sufficient intellect to (literally!) reshape the world with a deeper understanding. Thus, heavy objects fell faster than light ones until Gallileo performed his famous experiment to prove that they fell at the same speed.

I even evolved a house rule: 5 points of intelligence above whatever constituted “genius” permitted one breakthrough with sufficient effort. On that basis, Sir Isaac Newton gets an INT on the D&D scale of about 60, Nicola Tesla gets a score of about 45, and Gallileo rates a 40. If you had a little less than this, and spent twice as long on it, your theory might also be correct – but would take decades or even centuries to become accepted.

Evolving a unique game physics for your campaign

Okay, so (assuming that I’ve convinced you that having one is worthwhile), just how do you go about constructing a game physics for your campaign?

Well, you start with one of the three foundations described above.

You then go through the rulebooks of the game you are running and add explanations (in terms of physics) for anything they permit that the foundation physics doesn’t cover. It might be “magic works”. It might be “the gods are real.” It might be that “morality has measurable physical effects” (lawfully-aligned weapons doing extra damage to chaotically-aligned targets and so on). It might be “FTL is possible”, or “superpowers exist”, or “time travel is possible”.

Each time you add such an item to your game physics, re-examine the central concepts of rules and genre and cross off anything that is now explained. For example, one theory as to the nature of divinity might also cover the “morality” question above, while another did not.

These explanations can be as extensive or simple as you like – a single sentence, or multiple pages.

At every stage, you have the option of deciding that this part of the game rules simply doesn’t work in this particular game – decisions that can have significant repercussions; see, for example, Garry Stahl’s article on removing alignment from his campaign. D&D without magic, or without gods, would be no less significantly altered.

You can also explicitly remove selected parts of a subject, or give them additional explanation that radically reinterprets them. D&D without Necromancy is an example of the first; the treatment of Illusions in my Shards Of Divinity campaign is an example of the latter, one which I’ll blog about some other time.

Once the rules and genre conventions are fully dealt with by the game physics, the next step is to think about anything else that makes this particular game, and game world, unique, and make sure that they are also covered by the game physics. An example of this is the Cyphergate in Johnn’s Riddleport campaign-in-development.

The final step is to go over the compiled Game Physics and create any house rules that are needed to put a game mechanics interpretation on the principles you’ve devised.

How Much Should You Tell Your Players?

Your first house rule should usually be that there is a Game Physics and that it will be used as the basis of any rulings that you are called apon to make as GM. The Game physics determines what is possible and what is not.

My players have come to expect a fleshed-out game physics lurking in the background of my campaigns, so I don’t need to include this, but WOULD need to warn them if it was not the case.

After that come any house rules that result.

I DON’T necessarily tell the players what the game physics actually are – how many characters would actually know that? Instead, I let the players seek to deduce the physics from their interaction with the world. I might let the occasional principle dribble out in response to particular skill rolls if they are relevant, but that’s as far as it goes.

How Much Should your NPCs know?

Another trick that I’ve found useful is to rate each line in the game physics in terms of how abstruse the knowledge is on a scale of 1-4. This permits me to edit copies of the game physics into formats describing the knowledge level of commoners, educated laymen, well-educated nobility, experts/sages, and GM only. Anything beyond their level of understanding is replaced with a dumbed-down version or the simple statement “it works”.

Commoners in an uneducated society get nothing more than the foundation rule and “it works” for everything else. And – for authenticity – I’ll sometimes insert deliberate fallacies and misunderstandings and superstitions. Experts will get only one or at most two of the advanced principles, in all other respects they are at the level of educated laymen; Sages also only get one or two advanced principles, and are considered to be at the level of well-educated nobles otherwise.

I find it easiest to go from most educated to least educated – the GM knows it all, so he gets the actual game physics, everyone else will have less than that. When inserting falsehoods and fallacies, I will work back up the heirarchy, adding comments such as “The common supersitition is (blah blah blah)…”

The result is a “bible” for the roleplaying of different levels of education within society that ensures consistancy. After you’ve used them for a while, the consistancy of format that results from editing a copy of an existing document makes finding what you’re looking for second nature, and you will often not even need to refer to these “bibles”.

Going Further

Another key point that’s worth remembering is that the game physics can always be revised or extended. It represents the combined level of understanding of a collection of contemporary experts, and is not necessarily gospel – and is certainly not the last word. Thus, if any problems arise within the game physics, those physics should evolve to encompass a solution and an explanation. This may move the game physics a little closer to the real world, or it may make it stranger.

It can be very useful to have some knowledge of how certain physical laws were proven, as these will inform you of how things will be different in your world. For example, you might decide that sound and light travel at the same speed – in that case, you would hear the thunder at the exact same time as you saw a flash of lightning, and would hear the axe chopping the tree in perfect time with the motion of the axe-head striking the wood. (I don’t know why you’ld bother with that one, personally, but it’s just an example).

Ramifications

The obvious ramifications have already been mentioned, in the earlier section detailing why a Game Physics is worth having. But there are also some more subtle consequences that are worth mentioning.

The first of these is that each game physics lends a subtly-different flavour to each different campaign. Even though they use the same core rules, my Shards Of Divinity campaign is distinct from my Fumanor Campaigns, which was different from my Rings Of Time campaign. While some of that derives from the characters and some from the differences in adventures, some of it is a spice from the game physics.

Secondly, there is a continuity of such flavours from one campaign in the same game world to another; it’s not just as shared history that connects the two Fumanor Campaigns that I currently run with the predecessor campaign, they feel like they’re taking place in the same world.

Thirdly, the game physics can form a common foundation amongst several GMs, permitting a shared world experience that I can’t believe would be possible any other way.

And finally, it makes it easier to keep one campaign distinct from another – an absolute necessity when you run as many of them as I do!

Caves of Uthriam by Djekspek courtesy of the Cartographers Guild

When mapping, I tend to focus on the corridors, rooms, streets, caverns, and buildings. However, every map has more than just these areas; each has three zones in your design control. Next map you build, think of these zones and how you can change things up to be fun and interesting for your gaming.

This post focuses on zone 3, negative spaces.

“Negative space is the space around and between the subject of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape.” – Wikipedia

Walls

On homebrew maps, walls are typically thin pencil marks used to divide the map space up into rooms and other encounter areas. But those little lines are significant. They not only block line of sight, but they form important barriers PCs might interact with.

As you design your maps, think about the type and quality of the walls. PCs might try to listen through walls, break through them, or use spells to pass between them.

Fire and other hazards might be blocked or helped to spread because of the walls, as well. Stone creates great barriers, while rice paper allows eavesdropping and would not stop a lightning bolt.

Redrawing cues

A peeve is complicated maps that are difficult to redraw during games on battlemaps and player maps. You can make your maps easy to redraw with just a couple of quick GMing tricks:

• Use black and white. Colour and textures make it harder to see what spaces you’re drawing. Photo-realistic maps look great, but they are lost on players unless you reveal them, and they make it harder for you to redraw. I’ll take a black and white map any day.
• Use simple lines for the original map, make them complex as you draw. The players won’t see your copy of the map, just what you redraw for them during battles and while adventuring. So, make your maps dirt simple for easy understanding and redrawing, and make your embellishments and squiggly lines and whatnot as you redraw maps during games.
• Negative space is sometimes easier to draw. Rather than drawing the shapes of rooms and corridors, it might be easier with some maps to draw the empty or null spaces. For example, counting squares takes awhile. Inner shapes are smaller, and counting those squares takes less time at the game table than counting the outside lines.
• Pre-count lengths and note them. Some GMs and game books treat maps like art. That serves game masters poorly. Make maps useful game aids, not pieces of art. For example, count the squares or dimensions of various walls and areas before the games and put the numbers on the map. I should never have to count lengths when redrawing.

Negative spaces make great clues

Turn negative space into clues. For example, a map from one famous module forms a skull. If the PCs realize this early enough they can predict the rest of the dungeon layout and use this for better tactical planning.

Another favourite is to hide secret areas in such a way that they can be logically deduced by looking at the negative space on the map.

Negative spaces can also form letters, symbols and other shapes as fun clues for observant players.

What is the dungeon made of?

A quick look at the negative space on the map can help you catch logic errors and inconsistencies before they get you mid-game.

• Note the base material of the area. Is it stone, wood, dirt?
• Next, look at how thick the walls are, specifically the thickest and thinnest barriers. Are these thicknesses possible? Could crafty players circumvent a carefully planned setup because of a thickness error? For example, 3″ stone walls are no match for a maul.
• Are the spaces between rooms and areas realistic? 5′ thick wood walls stretch the imagination. When a player asks you during the game you might get caught and say that the walls are wood but made of boards. Curious players will leap on this and break through the boards to see what’s in the enclosed space. Suddenly you have a bunch of passagesbetween rooms. Oi!
• Give a bit of thought to the original construction, why the place was built, and for whom. Do the null spaces make sense?

* * *

This winds up our series on the three parts of maps we don’t often think about: the places you travel into and walkabout, the lines that separate these spaces, and the negative spaces. Hopefully, a quick look at each helps catch errors and inspires creative tweaks to make adventuring even more fun and mapping easier.

Image by BJN

We all have problems with our imaginations freezing up on us every now and again. While there are a number of things that you can do to kick-start your creativity when this happens, I have always found that it’s a good idea to have a stockpile of ideas that can be developed as needed for those times when inspiration is lacking.

There are lots of techniques out there for generating such ideas. Today, I thought I’d tell you about one that I call apon from time to time and that I havn’t seen written up very often.

The Random Word-pair Technique

The technique itself is simple enough: take two random words and pair them. One must be an adjective, the other can be anything at all. A thesaurus is the perfect tool for this because it is nothing but words; a dictionary is a poor second. Further value can be found in the fact that the thesaurus is not in alphabetical order, avoiding biases toward one letter or another.

Since this revelation alone is hardly enough to fill a blog post, no matter how useful it might be, I thought I’d pad this one out with an example, filtered through a number of different campaign genres, to illustrate the technique (and give out a few free scenario ideas along the way).

Thunderous Marraccas: an example

Okay, so this is the random word-pair that I came up with to demonstrate what I’m talking about. Now that I have it, what can I do with it?

I should emphasise that none of these ideas were thought up in advance, and they are presented in the exact order that they occurred to me. None have been left out, there has been no editing or going back later to replace an idea that wasn’t good enough or that was too silly for words. I’m also not saying that I would actually run all of these – but most are of an acceptable standard, if a little thin in some cases. And some are quite good, I think, and proof that even a silly-sounding fundamental concept can become the heart of a useful scenario – when your back’s against the wall.

Fantasy / D&D

This is clearly a magic item. Perhaps it is a bardic instrument that puts out a sonic attack, or perhaps bolts of lightning. Or maybe it can summon storms, and Storm Giants. Having the PCs merely find such an instrument would be dull, and hardly worth a scenario. So instead, let’s have someone else find it. How about we have an alpine village which the PCs visit only to be trapped by avalanches caused by the wielder of the Thunderous Marraccas?

It used to be said that thunder was the sound of the Gods brawling. Terry Pratchett has thunder be the sound of the gods rolling dice, in his Diskworld novels. I have always liked storms – nature’s free pyrotechnic displays – so I always preferred the analagy of the Gods partying hard. At a party, you get drunk, and when you pick up things while drunk, you occasionally drop them. This gives us a nice little origin for the Thunderous Marraccas, and a convenient way to take them back out of the campaign when the story ends.

Start with a truly awful Bard, who couldn’t hold a song on key if he were nailed to it (there was an Asterix movie on TV recently). He gets run out of an alpine village, just as the PCs arrive, only to discover the Thunderous Marraccas, which he uses to trap the village and create a captive audiance. Part 1 of the scenario is all setup. In Part 2, the PCs have to battle their way through the avalanche and the storm giants to get the Marraccas off the bard. In Part 3, the PCs discern the divine nature of the Marraccas and have to decide whether or not to return them to an appropriate temple. Part 4 is either the Party Gods (still drunk) harassing the PCs (if they decided to keep the Divine Instruments) or a bunch of party poopers (who don’t want the item returned) doing so. The scenario wraps up when the PCs finally deliver the Thunderous Marraccas to the appropriate temple and get some sort of divine reward.

Pulp

While clearly still a weapon, the concept should be a bit less whimsical – even to the point of rephrasing the idea completely. A sonic weapon, capable of splitting open bank vaults, knocking aircraft from the sky, and making the glaziers of the city very rich. Instead of “Thunderous Marraccas”, perhaps “Thunder Lance” would be a better description. We put it in the hands of a two-bit thug who has forced a scientist to create superweapons for him by kidnapping his beautiful-but-fiesty daughter, and who subsequently goes on a crime spree with his new toy.

We can start the scenario with an encounter between the PCs and the thug (plus henchmen), in which they get solidly trounced. In Part 2, since it’s obvious that he’s not up to the job of creating such a super-weapon himself, the PCs track down the scientist (a noted expert on sounds), but he refuses to help until his daughter is rescued from the clutches of the evil fiend. In Part 3, the PCs find and rescue the daughter despite the opposition of more thugs (the master criminal is still off running wild). In Part 4, they return the daughter to the Mad Scientist who whips up a handy-dandy (and highly experimental) neutraliser to partially negate the weapon. In Part 5, they confront the villain with the neutraliser and defeat him.

There are lots of places the plot could go from this point. We can close it out by having the villain push the weapon too hard in an attempt to overcome the nullifier the PCs have brought along. We could have the daughter become enamoured of one or more of her rescuers and become a recurring NPC. We could have some more powerful arch-villain grab the device from the thug at the last instant, revealing that the thug was simply field-testing it for his true master all along. All pulpish ideas that would immediatly elevate this scenario from “filler” to “ongoing campaign element”.

“Soft-science” Superhero

Unless we’re talking quite low-powered superheros, we’re going to have to up the ante. One of the staples of the genre (ever since The Flash Of Two Worlds in 1961) has been the notion that adjusting subatomic vibrations to a different rate can project you from one dimension into another. And what makes things vibrate? Sound. (You could pay lip service to more modern physics by suggesting that the weapon changes the vibration rate of superstrings. You don’t even have to understand what superstrings are – this is soft science fiction!)

Perhaps a supervillain has created a device that rips whole cities into a different dimension where he can pillage and loot at will.

This gives rise to a scenario in which the PCs get called in when a city vanishes; they deduce the cause due to the effects on the fringes of the device’s range, and reports of an incredibly loud noise heard from dozens of miles away; they find a way to replicate the effect and follow; they confront the villain, who uses the weapon on them to trap the PCs in a far more hostile dimension; the PCs battle their way out, again confront the villain, and melt his device down for scrap, which somehow returns the city (and occupants) to it’s point of origin. Or perhaps the villain attempts to use the device to escape only for the PCs to change it’s tuning at the last second, leaving the villain lost in an unknown dimension, ready to return for a rematch any time the GM has another good idea for using him.

“Harder-Science” Superhero / Sci-Fi / Espionage

Intense sound can make substances exposed to it vibrate so hard that the molecular bonds that hold it together can be broken. This is the perfect way of disposing of atmospheric pollution, or so it seems – just fit one of these to every smokestack and exhaust pipe. The range at which the sound is effective for the purpose is very limited.

There are a lot of ways to develop this concept. Perhaps someone figures out how to overcome the range limitation, converting the devices into in-place disintigration bombs – that’s the superhero idea. Perhaps the treated pollution forms free radicals which start affecting various substances (and people) in a variety of unpleasant ways, and have been doing so for some time – that’s the sci-fi idea.

Other sci-fi ideas: Perhaps the device is capable of raising an object’s internal temperature without melting/boiling it, creating a form of matter in solids that is analagous to superheated liquids from a microwave oven, in which it is easier to induce a fusion reaction – and in which that fusion reaction is much harder to control than is expected. No-one would ever want such a device, would they? (rhetorical question!) Or perhaps it’s a device that monkeys with Heisenburg uncertainty, making nuclear reactions more prone to cascade into a chain reaction and rendering microchips useless in the vicinity – a terrorist group or criminal gang could employ them for the second purpose without knowing about the first. But every time they do, the nuclear reactors that power the city or the naval submarines or whatever happens to be nearby go out of control, and it’s this side effect that gets the PCs involved…

Western

None of the above ideas work in a wild-west setting. So perhaps “Thunderous Marracas” is the name of a Spanish-Indian halfbreed who comes to town to cause mayhem. I’m afraid that this is not my preferred genre, so this is only half an idea; I’m sure that someone more in tune with this style of game could take the idea much farther, or come up with a better one.

Horror

Finally, we come to the horror genre. Again, the idea that the words inspire when considering this genre are very different to all the others I’ve listed so far: I find myself connecting the sound with the term “death rattle”. Perhaps the device kills, the souls of the dead then being utilised for some nefarious purpose. Or, more unpleasantly, perhaps it only simulates death momentarily, permitting the posession of the body by an outsider – producing a number of otherwise sensible and well-respected people who without warning or explanation become members of an evil cult, bent on doing the will of some nameless horror…

Do your prep in advance

If you can keep ten or twenty such ideas on file that you’ve prepared in advance – to about the state of readiness of the examples above – then there is no need to fear the occasional dry spell. And sometimes what you came up with for filler will resonate especially strongly with an existing plotline that needs something more to fill it out.

For example, if in a pulp campaign I had an existing plan for a confrontation with a major villain but needed a few scenarios to build the bad guy up first, the pulp plotline suggested above could be incorporated into the bigger picture perfectly. If I had a D&D plotline that needed the PCs to be in a temple at the start of the scenario, the Fantasy idea is a perfect vehicle to lead into that scenario.

You can never have too many ideas, because ultimately you’ll never use them all – and the more you have, the more you can cherry-pick from the best of the ideas you have. And an idea you’ve prepped in advance in this way is much better than not being able to think of anything at the critical moment as a deadline looms!

But ultimately, the greatest strength of this technique is that by starting from an unusual idea, you develop a scenario that immediatly moves beyond your ingrained habits. The technique is liberating to the imagination. I would never have thought of half of the ideas presented above if it weren’t in direct reaction to the artificial phrase “Thunderous Marraccas”.

A few more pairings to inspire you

Here are a few more random word pairings to get you started, and to wrap up this article nicely. Tell me you don’t get inspired reading them and I’ll add your name to the party poopers in the fantasy scenario….

:)

• Sorted Holes
• Blue Crush
• Twisted Fruit
• Domino Stack
• Frigid Yellow
• Drum Politics
• Fast Measure
• Tissue Disk
• Sandwiched Pit
• Grounded Beast
• Urban Wings

…have fun!

Map for an adventure by Carnifex courtesy of Cartographers Guild

When mapping, I tend to focus on the corridors, rooms, streets, caverns and buildings. However, every map has more than just these areas; each has three zones in your design control. Next map you build, think of these zones and how you can change things up to be fun and interesting for your gaming.

This post focuses on zone 2, the spaces the PCs adventure in.

Improv the details

The best time to put flavour into maps is at the game table. You can certainly plan details out before game sessions, but they only benefit you. Details provided during sessions benefit players.

A little bit of improv about map details during games saves you a lot of planning time as well, so you can focus on higher priority items.

The best way I have found for improvising details is to visualize first, then tell. When drawing the map before the game, visualize the space you are creating. When drawing the map out for players during games, visualize the space again, and describe what you are visualizing.

This method gives you two mental run-throughs before you need to talk. The double-practice helps me a lot when trying to think up details on the spot.

By visualizing while you draw, you imprint the space better in your mind and associate it with the place you draw. This helps with remembering details, both long-term and while GMing.

The lines create a space

At the time of drawing, think about the spaces you create. What just seem like lines and patterns on a page are actually living, working or travelling areas. The lines close in on each other and create these spaces.

What are these spaces like? What kind of environments did the architects or builders create? Be a bit curious about the spaces on your maps as you craft them.

Picture yourself in each space, walk around a bit and think like an inhabitant.

For example, a 10’x10′ room. In one place it’s a bright reading room with soft carpet, comfortable chair and light beaming in from a high window. In another place it’s a stinking cell, chains hanging from stained walls and a drain on the floor to take away the torturer’s work. In another place it’s a quiet refuge of solitude, incense swirls around tapestries and sconces and stained glass colours the peaceful place with a soft red and blue glow.

Envision the inhabitants first

Another trick is to think of the dwellers and visitors first, then envision the place. Why was the place built and for whom? What amenities, services and storage was needed?

This not only gives you inspiration for furnishings and details, it also guides the map spaces and zones you create.

How tall and wide are the dwellers? How many arms? How did they move? In fantasy and sci-fi settings you can create interesting maps from spaces built for monsters and aliens.

Lighting and lighting effects

My favourite lighting effect in shows and movies from the 90s is the fan. Smoke or no smoke, the strobe and flickering effects of those fans added spooky and dramatic atmosphere to scenes.

Lighting in your mapped places does not need to be tactically reduced to just whether or not low-light or darkvision is required. Think up interesting ways to provide different kinds and levels of light:

• Reflective ceiling
• Stained glass
• Small holes instead of windows, perhaps in patterns (clues)
• Magic light fading – flickers or sparks
• Painfully bright
• Partially lit with dark shadow areas
• Disco ball

Air quality

Here is a great way to get smell and taste senses into play.

It’s so hard trying to fit the five senses into your descriptions. The smell and taste of the air or atmosphere, though, is a perfect opportunity to trigger player imaginations.

Study your map:

• Where does the air come from? Follow it to the source.
• What places are between encounters and air source that could taint the air?
• What things or nearby encounters could affect air quality and smell?

Ground and floor, ceiling

Something else overlooked on maps is footing and other ground features. As with light, switch up floor and ground types to make encounters and descriptions fresh. Think again about residents. Giant dire rats will make a nice nest in rooms that make footing tricky, slimes will leave behind pitted or slippery floors, guards might make watch marks or games on surfaces.

Same goes for the ceiling. Add chandeliers and stalactites to give flying PCs something to think about. Create nooks and holes for foes to hide – who looks up when assessing threats? Painters might decorate ceilings with delicious clues or world stories you can narrate.

Line of Sight

This is a personal favourite feature when creating my own maps.

Put yourself on the floor, into the map. How far can you see? What can you see?

For combat, line of site is important. Make twisty maps, with corners and offsetting doors and entrances so one can’t see far. Sharp corners also reduce lighting.

For roleplaying, line of site affects observation and spying. Create easy ways for NPCs to spot PCs talking with others to spur intrigue and rumour, and vice versa. Clear line of sight allows sound to travel better and lip reading.

Alternatively, close things up if you want to discourage this. Make it difficult to spot things by creating breakout rooms, corners, curtained areas, and so on.

Movement

Your design will impact movement. Charging lanes, bottlenecks and access points are examples of design considerations.

A classic GMing trap is players finding alternate and unexpected ways to access an encounter location. Recently I ran an encounter out of a module where guards and barricades were facing one direction, and the PCs entered through the rear door. That encounter was short and sweet, and if it was by design to reward clever PCs then great, but I got the feeling the designers had intended the PCs to make a frontal assault.

That wraps up the adventuring spaces on maps. Stayed tuned for the final part in this series coming next Monday: negative spaces. Subscribe to our blog via RSS feed or email to get notified when part 3 goes online.

In one campaign years ago, the PCs did so much travel it seemed far-fetched to give them an encounter every time they hit the road. However, I still wanted to pace things so the party was not instantly appearing at their destination each time. A fun solution we came up with was campfire chats. This month’s blog carnival is about travel in games, so I thought the campfire chats would be topical.

These chats take only a few minutes real time and are social mini-games that involve roleplaying and character development. Even combat gurus will enjoy these games, and all PCs will benefit, especially the cardboard ones.

Campfire chats represent periods where the party is killing time and telling stories about themselves. This might be done while sitting out dark nights around the campfire. It could also be done during brief exchanges when the PCs clump together on the deck or in their saddles to trade barbs and friendly banter.

The game is played like a trivia contest where players try to guess or remember information about each other. Groups with well-developed characters could use it to work out deeper character motivations and issues.

Here is how the game is played.

1. Create the questions

Before the session create several questions based on information and trivia characters would know about each other.

For example, how many siblings does each character have? Bonus: what are the siblings’ names?

It is not fun if you ask questions players would have no chance of correctly answering. The game is most rewarding if players get answers right.

2. Prepare materials

For each question during the game, players will write out their answers for each of their companions. How do you want answers to be recorded? You might need to prepare pens, papers, and whatnot.

Some options:

• Scrap paper, throw-away answers. Players use any old scrap paper, and after answers are tallied you don’t care about keeping the information and answers are pitched into the trash.
• Spare paper, keep answers. Use good paper you or players can keep and reference later.
• Notebooks. This is my preferred method. I buy $1 notebooks at the dollar store and players record questions and answers in them. I collect the books between sessions and study answers for hooks, spotlight opportunities, and ideas.
• Character sheets. This might be the best answer but requires advanced planning. Have players use character sheets with areas to record personal information about their personalities, traits, backgrounds and motivations.Answers to chats are available on the sheets, and if players don’t flesh out their PCs this way before the campaign starts, you can use the chats to get answers into slots over time. A nice easy way to round out PCs as the game wends onward.

You might also want to have spare pencils and erasers handy for player use.

3. Decide rewards

For every answer the players get right they receive a small reward. This teaches them to pay attention to the little details about their fellow players’ PCs.

For every answer other players get right about a PC, players also receive a small reward. This encourages players to share character details and remind each other about them, ideally through roleplay.

You decide what the rewards should be. Do this before session start, and best before campaign start, so you can establish game balance.

I use XP rewards. At low levels I offer 10 XP for each correct answer, for example.

You might offer other kinds of rewards, such as action points after 10 correct answers, special treasures place in later encounters after 20 correct answers, Pocket Points, bonus dice to future rolls, and so on.

Next, calculate the maximum reward possible after each chat. If a player gets every possible reward from a chat, what is the total? Use this number to see if you are potentially unbalancing the game, and then adjust individual reward amounts down if so.

If the maximum reward seems too small, then increase individual rewards a bit until you hit a sweet spot. Some players might not be too excited by these chats, but a decent reward will get them interested.

4. Start a campfire chat

When you feel the time is right, tell your group they are chatting with each other in-game, and that you’re initiating a round or two of campfire chats.

Try to set the scene with a good description to ease transition from typical gameplay to the campfire chat mini-game.

“You manage to build a small but warm fire despite the wet wood. As you huddle close, touching shoulders, to get the most warmth out of the meagre flames, you start to share bits and pieces of your pasts, taking turns it seems, so the memories might do their part to warm you up on this dark night in strange woods.”

Have your questions ready. Decide how much real time you want to spend on a chat. Often a single question is a great way to switch things up and make travel seem like it took awhile in-game.

A question should take about 10 minutes of game time, depending on group size.

5. Play the game

You ask one of your prepared questions.

Each player writes down their answers, usually one answer per fellow character.

For example, you might ask what each character’s last name is. In a group of five, that means each player needs to write four answers – the names of the other PCs.

Provide a time limit. A minute or two.

When time is up, you start with one player, who reveals the true answer. Go around the table and have each other player reveal their answer. Wrong answers can be funny and their own reward.

Correct answers get the reward you’ve assigned. Each player with a correct answer gets a reward, and each player who has a correct answer about their own PC gets a reward.

Depending on the question and type of answer, you might ask players to weave a short tale behind their true answer, or you can run this as a simple trivia game.

Once all questions and answers are done and tallied, approve the reward totals and resume the main game.

Hopefully the players will have learned more about each others’ characters, and maybe their own as well.

6. Good questions are the key

The true benefit of the game is the answers that come out. Answers will teach players about the characters and the party. This is a great tool to flesh out characters, generate inspirational material, and connect characters with the campaign and setting.

The quality of an answer depends on the quality of the question. So, asking fun and interesting questions is the key to this mini-game.

Here are a few examples:

Trivia

• What deity does each character follow?
• What is each character’s favourite weapon?
• What is each character’s favourite saying?
• When is each PC’s birthday?
• Who is each character’s biggest enemy?
• What food does each character like most/least?

Hooks

• What does each character’s father do for a living?
• What is each PC’s hometown?
• Who is each party member’s greatest enemy?

Character development

• Why is each character a member of the party?
• What does each character want more than anything else?
• What does each PC fear most?

In groups where character stories are important and shared often, you might consider questions like these:

• How did each PC get to be so good at their best skill?
• How did each PC come to be a memmber of the party?
• What was the lowest point in each character’s life and how did they get out of it?

Another way you can use campfire chats is to promote forgotten clues or to celebrate great campaign moments:

• What does each character think the true identity of the villain is?
• What is the best battle fought to date?
• What’s been the worst inn stayed at so far and why?
• Who does each character think has been the most interesting to meet and why?

This mini-game is a lot of fun and gets players thinking beyond the numbers and the rules. If you try campfire chats in your next game, came back and let us know how it went.

Tony Scott, in the interviews that accompany “Beverly Hills Cop II” states (while discussing the casting of Brigitte Nielson for that movie) that his background is in painting, and that casting is like putting colours on the canvas.

I found this to be a really interesting comment. I’ve written articles in the past about giving each PC their own role within a scenario (Scenario and Campaign Arc Building Tips, Part 1, Part 2), but this suggested something slightly different to me – the concept of giving each principal character (PC or NPC) their own distinct emotional tone. The suggestion was that emotional tones amongst the PCs that are complimentary would create a more cohesive and interesting style of interaction amongst the members of a group of connected characters, whilst contrasting tones would help set key NPCs apart from the group.

If The Chemistry Is Right…

Associations immediatly began to flash through my mind. We’ve all see movies where we feel that the leading actors are slightly miscast, even though there’s nothing wrong with the actors abilities or with the interconnection between the roles that we’re playing. When the reviewers talk about such films, you always hear them use the term ‘chemistry’, as in “there was no chemistry between the cast”. A favorite example is Dick Tracy – there was nothing wrong with Warren Beatty as Tracy, or with Madonna’s performance in the movie, when considered in isolation – but the combination just didn’t Gel, at least for me. In comparison, where the chemistry is right, such as that between Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwartzenegger in Twins, it doesn’t matter how unlikely the combination seems at first glance – it works brilliantly on the screen.

That was the first association: that this was a metaphor that permitted an insight into creating a “chemistry” between the principal cast of a movie – or, in our case, a game.

Identifying Emotional Tones

Artists use specific terms to describe colours, some of which translate directly into emotional terminology. Warm, friendly tones work well together. A single strong contrast with a hint of a matching tone can be complimentary. A lighter tone only balances a darker tone in the company of a central tone, whose ambiance associates with both the other tones. There are all sorts of colour-compositional analagies that can be created.

Can you picture a single colour that is representative of the emotional contribution of a single PC in your campaign to the overall party? What sort of ambiance is created by the interplay between the colours of the party – and is anything out-of-place or missing?

These are subjective and philosophical questions with no easy answers, but the benefits of such an identification, at least in theory, are manyfold.

Using The Palette

Every NPC is more than just a collection of statistics on a page and a story function. Even if there is a personality profile and background, there are still a whole range of ways that personality can be expressed, a diversity of styles in the way the character can manifest – and each with its own emotional nuance and colour.

The metaphor, in other words, gives a tool by which the manner in which the antagonist’s relationship and interaction with the protagonists can be tuned and tweaked. Bluster and Bombasticy? Icy and emotionless? A perpetual slow boil? A Sarcastic manner of expression? Everybody’s friend? Soft-spoken and Creepy, or Loud and Manic? By choosing what aspects of the personality you put on show, you manipulate the mode of engagement between the PCs and the character, with the result that the relationship can be exploited to support the story function of the character.

Exploring the emotional tones of the character within a campaign won’t solve every problem, but it’s a different way of looking at the makeup of a campaign, and having a different perspective at your disposal is never a bad thing.

A magic tome speaks to the wizard and tells him to do things at night in exchange for the promise of great future power.

The following ideas could be used for player characters stuck on a PC background and purpose. Game masters could also use them for interesting NPC wizard hooks. If you have any ideas for more hooks, just comment below, maybe we’ll get to 100.

1. Master’s experiment goes wrong, transforming the PC and cursing the master. PC quests for way to save master’s plight.
2. To become powerful enough to destroy an evil artifact that has cursed his family for generations.
3. Impress the local village beauty with wizardly power and marry her.
4. Bend a powerful, named demon to his service for 100 years.
5. Seeks immortality, not just for self, but for ailing mother as well.
6. Raised and trained in a horrible wizard school, he yearns to return a hero with great powers and lord it over his teachers and former fellow students.
7. To become a god, but not just any god. He wants to stage a coup against the god of magic and control the entire domain himself.
8. An evil despot enslaved his family. He will pay.
9. To uncover a whole new source of magic (via a rules supplement you’ve been dying to try out).
10. He does not understand his powers. They seem to happen at random or when he’s in great danger. Perhaps he will one day learn to control his gift.
11. To become a benevolent master of several worthy apprentices.
12. To found a significant and powerful school of magi.
13. To master the art of magic item creation and quests for ways to make the process quicker and easier.
14. His master and fellow apprentices were attacked by powerful creatures and whisked away. It’s up to the character to find out where they are being kept and to free them.
15. To attain the power of wish and use it to undo a great wrong the PC has committed.
16. The character desires to master illusion to become a spy for the arch-magi.
17. Magic is dying, fading. The mage must discover the source of magic, learn why it’s diminishing and restore it.
18. A race of strange creatures who feed and grow on magic are hunting wizards and magic items for food.
19. The character wants to create an artifact to solve the problem another hook in this list poses.
20. A thief broke into the master’s tower and stole a powerful item. The PC has been tasked with the item’s return.
21. The PC is being forced into marriage against his will. He flees instead, determined to use his wits and growing magic powers to make a name for himself in the world.
22. The character found a scroll long ago with magic writing on it. So far he’s been unable to read it, but it promises to reveal incredible secrets and knowledge. The PC searches for a means to read the scroll.
23. A mysterious order has recruited the PC in its fight against a powerful cabal.
24. The PC’s family serves a nearby wizard enclave’s mundane needs. Now that the character has shown some magical aptitude, he’s been assigned the role of ambassador to help with village-magi issues in exchange for ongoing training.
25. The PC has discovered a secret path to a strange realm and wants to explore it, but he cannot do it alone as the realm seems dangerous.
26. The PC has learned of overlaps between planes and dimensions and seeks these areas out to explore possible treasures hidden within.
27. The wizard yearns for fame as the scribe of the world’s most powerful spells.
28. The identity of the PC’s master remains a secret, and the missions he sends the character on are bizarre, but there must be a grand plan behind everything, which the PC is determined to discover.
29. The PC wants to travel the planes and explore places never seen before with civilized eyes.
30. An ancient prophecy predicts a dangerous result but great rewards, and the mage is determined to make the prophecy come true.
31. The character wishes to learn the source of magic – and then control it.
32. The PC’s bullying brother is also a wizard but much more powerful, and the PC needs to protect his parents and other siblings from the brother’s brutal ways.
33. The wizard seeks magic power to gain temporal wealth and mundane power to rule a region.
34. The PC wants to build a society of scribes who trade knowledge, incantations and scrolls throughout the realm – and to also act as an organisation that fights against evil/good/an enemy.
35. The character wants to setup a simple alchemist shop, brew potent potions and become a secret power who manipulates the nobility.
36. The mage quests to learn a whole new type of magic and bring it back to the King to protect the small kingdom from its many enemies.
37. A demon killed the wizard’s master and the PC now seeks the creature’s identity, its home base, and a way to kill it.
38. A cult bearing torches and pitchforks drove the magus out of his village and left him to die in the forest. The PC wishes to return some day to drive the cult out so he can be with his family again.
39. With a lust for magic items, the wizard seeks to collect one of every type of magic ring.
40. He longs to start a travelling road show that delights folk with the strange monsters, cruel traps and wondrous magic he encounters in his travels and explorations.
41. He inherited a mighty artefact yet cannot determine how to tap into any of its powers. He must keep the artefact a secret while pursuing all options to learn how to unleash the item’s abilities.
42. The fledgling wizard has six powerful spells he desires to someday master (such as invisibility, teleportation, etc.) as a matter of personal style (think themed comic book hero or villain).
43. To graduate from the school where the PC has become an exceptional student, custom dictates he duel another graduating student to the death. The PC has exercised an obscure rule that allows him a two year sabbatical to give him time to gain more power on his own and ponder what he will do.
44. A secret order of magi who serve the emperor has told the PC he will join their ranks, but the PC has no desire to become a magical assassin and has evaded their recruiters…so far.
45. The wizard’s youngest sibling summoned a being from another plane who escaped his shackles and now roams free in the land, killing and sowing misery. The being has sworn vengeance upon the character’s entire family.
46. The spellcaster wishes to merely be an entertainer who uses his abilities to amaze audiences, but the Bard’s Guild forbids magic use and is watching the caster carefully.
47. The wizard’s noble upbringing gave him the life-long services of a humble servant who is secretly a spy and who has been responsible for many of the PC’s conflicts while growing up without the PC realizing it.
48. The wizard’s family worships a god who opposes magic, and now the PC is being hunted by his own relatives.
49. The god of magic is actively trying to recruit the PC, going to more extreme lengths each attempt.
50. The character craves to join an elite group of warrior mages but he is not tough enough, so the mage quests for ways to make him stronger and a better fighter.
51. The mage is cursed and is one of the rare few who can fumble while casting spells. (While the PC quests for ways to remove the curse, the DM should make up a fumble chart.)
52. A battlemage since birth, he is tired of war and went AWOL a few weeks ago. He is uncertain if the military hunts him, but if so, there will be other battlemages as part of the hunting unit(s).
53. The wizard wants to assemble a great library of arcane knowledge and hire sages and scribes, but agents from the Library of Lore plan to sabotage his efforts and steal away any scrolls and books of value.
54. With intentions of founding a new arcane guild, the character has created an order that uses colours of robes and styles of hats to establish a hierarchy, but enemies see this as a way to identify the most valuable targets.
55. The character has studied the planes all his life and now recruits companions to explore legendary locations.
56. A villain amasses a strange retinue of monsters that the PC has learned consists of thought eaters, rust monsters, disenchanters and other threats to knowledge and lore.
57. An ancient tome, that has fallen into a young wizard’s hands, describes the incredible and powerful properties of rare herbs whose locations are remote and dangerous.
58. The character seeks to make his name famous and synonymous with high quality and powerful magic items that he will some day learn to craft.
59. In a terrifying discovery, the hapless mage now knows the true name of a powerful devil.
60. Magical locks are his specialty, and he makes good coin with his security services, but when a rash of thefts from his clients occurs, fingers begin to point at him.
61. The character specializes in breaking magical locks, bypassing arcane barriers and solving the most diabolical guarding puzzles. A villain who depends on his magical defenses targets the mage and his associates to rid himself of a potential security threat.
62. What would you do with knowledge of crafting various types of golems faster, cheaper or with new capabilities?
63. The mage wishes to make his young warrior companion the King so he can become the power behind the throne.

I thought I’d talk a bit about Drama vs Melodrama and how the two function in an RPG. This subject came to mind when reading “Hooked” by Les Edgerton, a book which I would not recommend for most aspiring authors because the author defines “good writing” as something suitable only for general fiction and posessing certain characteristics. Not only do I disagree with the content on a number of issues, the advice that he offers is of absolutely no value to the writing of Scenarios, and Scenes, and so on, in a gaming context (which is why I’m not providing a link to the Amazon product page). But one of his main points early on in the book is about the difference between the two and his assertion that Drama is Good and Melodrama Bad – to oversimplify his point outrageously.

Drama

Drama can be described as “Meaningful interaction between two or more characters with intimate personal significance for at least one of the characters.” Drama doesn’t have to mean battle, or conflict, or even arguement.

There are a number of loaded assertions in that description that are worth clarifying.

• “Meaningful interaction” means that what one character is saying or doing or emoting affects the character feeling the significance – for now, let’s call him the protagonist – affects the protagonist in some way that he cares about. Drama is not a discussion about a lunch menu, or the latest football scores; it’s not trivial, it Matters, it’s Meaningful.
• “two or more characters” …it’s normal for a scene to revolve around just two characters, with the others more or less along for the ride, but groups can be involved in a drama, either as the source, or as individuals who are all personally affected by the events / dialogue / action in some way (and not necessarily all in the same way). If the drama source tells the group of PCs that one of their friends has been found dead, or is missing, that’s dramatic for the entire group, though past histories and individual relationships with the missing character will mean that they will each react just a little differently (or a lot differently) to the news. One way or another, though, it will matter to the group.
• “intimate personal significance” verges on tautology but conveys that the dramatic event is important to the individual protagonists and not merely to the group as a whole, and that this importance is a function of the personality (-ies) of the protagonist(s). Or to rephrase into an RPG vernacular, the drama requires the character to roleplay some sort of emotional nuance or reaction as well as responding with dialogue. A good actor would choke up while delivering his dialogue in reply; an average actor might clear his throat or announce that he is feeling ‘choked up’ or ’emotional’ or ‘worried’ or whatever before deliving his dialogue; a poor actor will simply deliver the reply in a monotone manner. A great actor can convey the emotional overtones without detracting from the clarity of the dialogue. The same is true of roleplayers.

Put all of these elements together and you have a scene which conveys some sort of reaction from the protagonists, whether there is one of one hundred of them.

Drama by Proxy A quick “sidebar”: the source of drama can be something impersonal, provided that it is a means of communications. A woman crumpling bonelessly to the ground in a dead faint after opening a telegram is dramatic. A clearly-depressed man crumpling his tax return forms in one hand while drinking from an open whiskey bottle in the other is dramatic. In both cases, the source of the drama isn’t actually the prop in question; the prop is just a vehicle for the drama, functioning by proxy as the “character” who is the source of the drama.

Melodrama – Dissection of a definition

There are multiple definitions of ‘Melodrama’ out there. My dictionary talks about ‘crude appeals to emotion’. The Edgerton book talks about Melodrama being the firing of a gun, or an explosion, and tries to imply that in ‘good writing,’ melodrama is only acceptable when it is the inevitable outgrowth of previous drama. The example to which the author returns, time and time again, is Thelma & Louise, which – to go by the gushing praise lavished on it – must have been the best-written movie ever made.

It is only towards the end of the book, where the author is lamenting the shrinking market for “General Fiction” and relative growth of what he describes as “Genre Fiction” at his local bookstore that I percieved the necessary context in which to interpret his statements about melodrama – to wit, the books that were selling like dinosaurs were those which accepted his definition of melodrama, while those that were crowding them off the shelves (and out of the cash registers) were those which routinely utilised what he would term melodrama.

An Alternative

So I reject his definition as both self-serving and unhelpful. We’re talking about an RPG, which by definition includes stylised representations of some form of violent conflict, usually protracted – and within which, such activity is not only acceptable, it is gosh-darn-it necessary.

That means that we need an alternative, one that distinguishes and defines Melodrama as distinct from ‘Hyper-drama’, which is acceptable or even essential, under certain conditions, which form part of the definition. So here it is:

Melodrama is action which has been unjustifiably escalated in excess of the game’s story needs. Anything else is acceptable.

Once again, a definition full of loaded assertions.

• “unjustifiably” implies that any action that the GM can justify in terms of substituting for exposition is acceptable. In other words, instead of telling the players that the region they are entering is populated with dinosaurs, a minor combat encounter with small ‘saurs is a better approach – and should put the characters into the right frame of mind for a later encounter with a T-Rex or whatever. A wandering monster should never be a meaningless random selection from a table – unless that table is specific to the region or environment, in which case it can serve as reminder, or new exposition. Whenever the dice indicate a wandering monster, the GM should view it as an opportunity for the players to discover something new about the world – even if that’s only that it’s even more dangerous than they thought!
• “escalated” and “in excess” suggest that there is some less violent way of resolving the situation; this is the crux of the ‘official’ definition. It means that you shouldn’t have a mild-mannered reporter whip out a 44-magnum in the middle of an arguement with his editor, because it’s out of character. The reaction is too strong for the character and circumstance that’s been established. It means that the bad guys don’t perform acts of superfluous violence just to show that they’re evil – they should always arise out of some need or desire of the character, and hence inform the audiance (the players, in this case) of the character’s personality, even if they don’t have the context (yet) to understand them. And the level of violence should always be the minimum that is appropriate to the situation.
• “the game’s story needs” – there are those GMs who treat themselves as authors, and the PCs as his literary monkeys. I’m not one of them; I consider a game to be a collaboration, in which the GM puts the PCs into an interesting situation, lets them find their own way out of it, then uses the ramifications, implications, and consequences to generate a new interesting situation. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a story; it just means that the players are co-contributors, and that the ‘protagonists’ have a ‘life’ of their own. There is a marvellous quote in the the Commentary (I think) to the Fellowship Of The Ring from Fran Walsh, in which she states “We found that it wasn’t necessary to tell the audiance about Dwarves; you simply hire John Rhys-Davies and he’ll show you what Dwarves are all about” (or words to that effect). That’s the position of the players – experts brought in to bring life to a central character beyond what the GM could do on his own.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

Well, we’ve established that a game consists of drama, ‘acceptable’ melodrama, and filler – the latter including trivia, ephemera, background, narrative, and exposition (naturally, you want the bare minimum of filler to connect one dramatic scene to another). We’ve established what Drama is, in an RPG context, and what ‘acceptable’ melodrama is – and, by implication, what is not acceptable. Sounds to me like we’ve covered the topic…

Divine ways are not meant for mortal minds

In the first post about gods and the Cypher Gate in my upcoming Riddleport campaign several readers supplied great ideas. Thanks to that feedback, I have a better picture of how things are in the pirate city. The secrets of the Cypher Gate as it is in my game, with reader feedback interwoven, are now revealed.

If you are a player in my campaign, please stop reading, as spoilers await thee.

A massive stone arch that spans Riddleport’s harbour. It seems to be indestructible, though it is a bit weathered, revealing unfathomable lengths of time or other forces could wear the gate down.

Three wagons can travel abreast over the arch, and locals say it is 3000 paces long. Measurements reveal the arch is twelve cubits tall at both ends, which appear to be buried miles deep into the bedrock of the world itself, and 8 cubits tall at the peak.

It does not radiate magic, though true relics never do.

Strange glyphs, the height of a man in his prime, span the arch on both sides. The glyphs seemingly have been carved out of the arch. They are interspersed unevenly, with gaps of varying distances between them, making some think runes exist out there that will fit into the spaces, while others think the arch awaits new carvings.

The brightest and wisest and most knowledgeable of Golarion have studied the arch over the centuries without the slightest idea of why it exists.

A guild of mages dedicated to unraveling the Cypher Gate’s secrets has formed in the city that lies in the arch’s shadow. Known as the Order of Cyphers, it welcomes new members who seek to study the phenomenon for themselves. A huge bounty is offered to anyone who can glean any insight into the gate’s existence or purpose. The guild jealously guards access to the gate, however, and all who might take a close examination must be granted the privilege by the guild’s strange leader, Syzzinar.

The truth

The Cypher Gate is actually constructed of the immortal remains of the Primals, explaining its near invulnerability, and its weathering, as the Primals are imperfect beings.

The arch is a member of a series of arches that litter the planes of existence. It and its brethren were crafted by the Primals as a mechanism for elevating mortals to divinity. The arches form a primordial switchboard, allowing Ascended to draw power from their plane to maintain their exalted status and powers.

Each Ascended is attuned to the arch of their home plane. And each plane has its own gate, often buried and lost in time and memory, though the Divine and Ascended never forget the gate they are attuned to.

The glyphs are created at the time a mortal Ascends. A rune is carved out of the archway through the blind power of the Primals, and this becomes the attuned shard of the Ascended. With a small expense of power, an Ascended can change the physical properties of their shard to better hide, carry or wield it. As the shard is part of the arch relic, it does not radiate magic either.

The glyphs are free morphemes of the Divine language. This language is power unto itself and drives the structure and state of the universe. Mortals can never understand this language, and to just glimpse the partial meaning of a single character is enough to drive a mortal insane.

The Ascended draw power from the shards, which are safely regulated and downgraded to a controllable level by their associated arch. Distance does not diminish the link between shard and Ascended, though a shard cannot leave the plane of its gate, with one notable exception.

An Ascended can transport their shard to their Divine patron’s plane by expending ongoing power. As divine power is costly to recoup, few do this, and when they do it is only for an hour, day or week at most.

The Cypher Gate is aligned to the cardinal points, though not the cardinals of its plane but to the universe itself. A rune’s location on the gate signifies an Ascended’s immutable orientation:

Law – East
Chaos – West
Good – North
Evil – South

As the arch has finite dimensions, which implies limitations on the number of Ascended a plane can support, and the portfolio mix of alignments is fixed.

The Ascended know they must protect the gate at all costs (even though it is seemingly invulnerable) because if it goes, they all go. Divine or Primal power could be spent to damage or destroy a gate, but that has never been successfully accomplished.

If an Ascended is slain, their shard returns to the arch and the glyph disappears, ready for another similarly-aligned mortal to Ascend. For the arch on Golarion, this has not happened in centuries, though it was witnessed by a few whose journals (in various forms) have been lost through the ages.

The Divine connection

Embedded in each glyph is a representation of the affiliated Divine. This connects the Divine with his agents. For mortals it facilitates direct communication, domains and spell imbuements. For Ascended it allows at-will travel between their home plane and the plane of their Divine, bequeathment of Divine power points, and telepathic communication between Ascended servant and Divine master.

Any Divine can attune themselves to any Cypher Gate and use it as a portal to enter the plane. Divine also draw Primal granted powers, power points and other boons via any gate except those that are diametrically opposed to their alignment.

Few know that Ascended can be killed by mortals. Fewer know that each Divine has a unique weakness that can be exploited by mortals (such knowledge is usually accompanied by a Divine hunt, some sport and then a long and painful death).

And even fewer throughout the planes know that, with proper ceremony, a glyph on a gate can be turned into a scrying portal using its associated shard. A mortal must hold the shard of an Ascended to its glyph on the arch. This will reveal the true name of its linked Divine (the meaning of the glyph). Speaking the true name will gain the mortal speaker instant knowledge of the Divine’s Achilles heel. Unfortunately, the Divine is instantly alerted to this and can use the arch to determine the identity of the blasphemer.

Finally, the descendants of the Servants of the Primal are still around as aberrations and the like. Some work (ala the Serpent Priests in Raymond E Feist’s novels) to release their masters from their confinement, while others work to maintain their current state of independence. This puts the Cypher Gates in jeopardy from time to time as a cult successfully learns how to tap into the power of an arch and turn it back on itself, usually through imprisonment and abuse of an Ascended as the key.

Plot ideas

My Riddleport campaign does not yet have a plot. I’m still crafting the major pieces, such as figuring out the Cypher Gates and defining a few factions. However, here is a list of potential gate-related plots I could draw from, either as epic campaign threads or short term developments. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment and I’ll add to this list.

• As Mike pointed out, there is irony that arcane casters control and study a divine relic. Should the divine nature of the arch be gleaned, the temples and mage’s guild would conflict. The Order of Cyphers depends on the gate, as discussed, [https://www.campaignmastery.com/blog/mage-guild-mastermind-survives-pirate-haven/]. Plus, it’s unlikely the arcanists would allow the balance of power to shift to the current balkanized temple factions.
• False shards. Information about a false shard could pop up at anytime. It could just be another relic, a magic item or a piece of junk. Either way, it will be wrestled over, experimented with, studied. Rumours will abound and a spotlight will be cast upon the gate in the game.
• Someone has a glimpse of understanding of what a rune means and goes insane. Can the PCs help decipher the madman’s ramblings/drawings/prophecies? Perhaps the NPC leads them to several adventure sites or encounters of conflict within the city.
• A journal of someone who spotted a glyph being created or destroyed is recovered but it’s cryptic. Another fight over an item and information, drawing the PCs into conflict. Likely they are the ones who discover the journal, but they might be hired to steal it or examine it as well, regardless of the owner’s intentions.
• An NPC in Riddleport is coming close to becoming an Ascended. While they consolidate their power, other Ascended are concerned such an event would remind Golarion what the Cypher Gate does, and jeopardize the balance of power they currently hold on the plane. Meantime, the would-be Ascended has yet to choose a patron diety, and several Ascended have been instructed to convince the NPC using any methods possible.
• A mad god and his Ascended seek to destroy the gate. An aberrant cult comes to town and stirs up all sorts of crazy.

Thanks to C. Rader, Robert and Mike for the ideas and feedback.

This will be an unusually brief post, inspired by Johnn’s reprise of his hits-and-misses when it came to his 2009 resolutions, which you can read here, and by the fact that this post will appear on New Year’s Eve, 2009.

It all revolves around some thoughts I had while pondering the question:

Why do people make the same New Year’s Resolutions year after year?

Reasons for failure

There are many possible reasons for the failure to fulfill a Resolution, leading to it being listed again and again on someone’s “to do” list.

• Some are meant frivolously, and are treated that way by the people making them.
• Others fail because priorities change in response to outside events.
• I’m sure that people lose interest in them sometimes, and that can also be a valid reason for the failure.
• Sometimes, fulfilling another Resolution takes so much time and effort that something we had previously achieved goes by the wayside, so it has to be listed to do all over again.
• And it’s not all that uncommon for resolutions to depend on outside factors that the maker has no control over, or for a resolution to be completely impractical.

It’s when we get to resolutions that the person is both serious about, and capable of achieving, that things get more interesting.

• Sometimes, what we’re talking about are low-priority tasks that don’t get fulfilled because other (more interesting) activities distract the person making the resolution.
• Sometimes, the unexpected forces a deferment of the fulfillment, but when that happens repeatedly, we have to start looking at the previous answer with suspicion.
• Sometimes, the person making the resolution severely underestimates the difficulty or inconvenience that’s involved in keeping the resolution.
• And sometimes, the person simply has no willpower for the keeping of the resolution – they make it as a promise to themselves because they think it’s expected of them, with every intention of actually fulfilling it, but they don’t really want to do whatever it is.

Three Types of Resolution

To my mind, there are three types of resolution. These are the ought-to-do’s, the self-improvement, and activity resolutions.

Ought-to-do’s are Resolutions that are something the person thinks they ought-to-do, or ought-to-want-to-do. These are trivial and meaningless because they are never backed by serious intent.

Self-improvement Resolutions are a statement of intent to change something about yourself or your habits. It might be to lose weight, or learn to speak publicly, or whatever.

And Activity Resolutions are a statement of intent to do something more often, or do something less often, or begin or complete or at least further some particular activity or objective. It doesn’t matter whether the goal is to eat fewer peanuts or write the Great American Novel, but it’s some concrete and objective task whose progress can be monitored. It might take minutes or all year long to achieve.

Note the difference between the latter two types – the objective might be to lose weight (by whatever methods are necessary) or they might be a specific goal (eat less cake) whose health benefits are a side issue.

Character’s Resolutions

At this time of year, I’m often tempted to ask players what their Character’s “New Year’s Resolutions” are – and, equally importantly, if they fail, which of the above will be the reason they expect to put forward, if speaking honestly.

Like all such questions, the actual answers don’t matter a whole lot (though GMs can use the information as a resource in planning scenarios during the year); the real value comes from having another tool to get inside the head of a character.

The question applies equally to NPCs, of course.

The Virtues Of The Question

In fact, it serves a quadruple benefit to whoever answers it; not only does the question itself define an objective of the character, and offers an insight into the character’s thinking, it helps to define what the character considers important, and – by implication – describes what the character percieves as a fault or flaw in themselves or their lives at the current time. In an NPC, being able to key all of that to the answers to two simple questions makes it enormously quicker and easier to define the NPCs personality succinctly.

That’s a lot of soup to get from such bare and simple bones.

But why stop there? Every organisation has plans and objectives – “New Years’ Resolutions”, if you will – that they want to achieve. Some realistic, some pie-in-the-sky, some with detailed action plans already in hand, and some waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

I know some players and GMs don’t take such questions seriously, and that’s fine; but if that’s the case, why not try it sometime and see if it rewards you?

Have a safe, prosperous, and happy 2010, everyone.

A campaign killer is falling behind on planning and preparation, especially once a campaign starts. You soon lag and feel unready to GM. Then stress builds, fun flees and sessions get cancelled.

This post is inspired by tips on beating procrastination over at RPG Atheneum. Alric discusses four procrastination motivators and a few tips to overcome putting things off.

I’d like to build on those tips with some additional techniques I’ve used to overcome putting off campaign planning, preparation and maintenance. While I don’t get into specific methods of campaign prep here, as there are ways to plan less so you can play more, I will provide great methods to keep planning momentum going so you feel confident about GMing.

Short bursts regularly

Make your planning sessions short. Having to carve out multi-hour planning periods is nigh impossible in busy schedules. Short sessions can be squeezed into your life much easier.

If you are not in the mood for campaign prep, having a lengthy planning session ahead of you adds even more pain and makes it less likely you’ll start. You will always be able to find a reason to not do your GM planning. Something can always be prioritized higher, be made more urgent, or seem more interesting. That will never change. This is true for any activity you procrastinate on.

Instead, short bursts can often get you to your computer or notebook or binder to do a little planning. Some authors say the most difficult part of writing is geting the courage to begin each writting session. Once they start, things go well. But the build-up, anticipation and growing dread causes them to skip many hours of productive writing even though they always enjoy the act of writing whenever they get through the start-up barrier.

Prepping in short bursts is effective because it increases your chances of starting. Once you start and get into the flow, you’ll find short sessions sometimes become long ones – at your option. The key is doing whatever you can to just start the activity.

Be like snow

Watching it snow one day as a child I could not understand how one fine snow flake could shut a whole city down. A flake is so small, it melts in your hand in an instant, it’s so light you can’t feel it. Yet, once it starts snowing, you can do something for awhile and then look outside and see how the ground is covered and the snow is piling up.

The key I realized that day was consistence and persistence. Even though there was so much space between the flakes, and flakes seemed to be falling in slow motion, the snow kept coming. Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, and unrelenting snowfall built up into a half foot of the stuff. Amazing.

When it comes to campaign planning and maintenance, be like snow. Put in consistent and persistent effort. Plan daily. Plan in short bursts if that works for you, and make those bursts happen every day or at least several times a week.

If you don’t know what to do next, pick anything. Just keep at it. My default when I get lost with the weight of my to do list, or get stuck on what to prioritize, is to make an NPC or short encounter. Even if I don’t get to something with higher priority, I at least got a new game element I can use next session.

Imagine doing a 15 minute planning burst every day. In a week that’s a little under two hours planning accomplished. In a month, that’s about seven hours accomplished. In a year, that’s over 90 hours of campaign prep! Each little 15 minute snow flake eventually builds up into a deep carpet of campaign planning. Err, you know what I mean.

Getting started is a skill

A little secret of the daily short bursts method of beating procrastination is you eventually build up a skill at getting started on the task at hand. You figure out how to sweep aside the tricks your brain plays. You learn to recognize all the excuses and reasons why you manage to avoid the task. You build up muscle when it comes to getting over fear or false feelings of pain.

Getting started is a skill. Start often to learn how to become better at it.

Schedule your time

If you wake up each day not knowing when and if you’ll do some campaign planinng, chances are it won’t happen. You might have a vague idea or desire, but that is part of the reason why it won’t actually get done.

“Ok, tonight after work I’ll get out the books and do some prep.” Then the work day ends and you feel too tired to get into it, so you put it off for a couple hours. Then when that time comes you feel unmotivated. After that, your favourite TV show is on. Before you know it, it’s time for sleep. “I’ll get to it tomorrow night.” Repeat ad infinitum.

Get yourself out of this trap by scheduling exactly when you will do your campaign prep. Perhaps you set aside Saturdays from 10am till noon. Maybe you can get some done every lunch hour. You might have great success by getting some done first thing in the morning.

That last one is my choice. How great is life when you can get up and work on your RPG campaign for awhile? Can’t make it happen? Why?

I solved it by not doing email. The 30 minutes it used to take to check my email each morning was a time sink. Only rarely was some hot issue burning that came to my attention thanks to an email check in the morn. Instead, 99% of the time I’d do a “quick check” that became a half hour or longer email session because I couldn’t resist making a few replies to trivial correspondance or clicking on a link to something interesting (that could have waited until later) that lead to another click and another.

When I get up now, I make a quick skim of my inbox. Emergencies I’ll tackle right away, but they are so rare that I don’t mind the lost planinng time. Everything else waits until I’ve got my D&D campaign planning and other daily routines done.

Prepare for planning

You’ve carved out the time and found the courage and willpower to sit up at the table to do some planning. What now?

First, create a default. If you ever get paralyzed, immediately perform your default planning action. Some examples of great defaults:

1. Create an NPC
2. Layout a skeleton for an encounter
3. Write out notes from last session
4. Organize next session – scheduling, notifications and other logistics
5. Create a location
6. Create an interest reward: a mundane or magical item, or a cool social reward

Still can’t decide? Roll 1d6 at the start of your planning session and refer to the chart above. :)

It’s important to have a planning system in place. How do you prefer to organize your notes and game materials?  How do you prefer to take something from an idea stage to session-ready stage? How do you prefer to record all your ideas as they come to you?

Get your planning systems in place first if you find yourself consistently at a loss of what to do and how to do it.

A nice way to end a planning session is to setup your next planning session so you can jump in right away tomorrow. Make a couple notes of what to do next time so you can act immediately.

Those are my ways of beating procrastination. What do you do?