Some weeks ago, I was offered a review copy of a “solo-player RPG”. I was hesitant at first because it sounded like a computer RPG, which is not the meat-and-potatoes of Campaign Mastery, but reading the invitation more closely made it clear that this was a tabletop game, and that intrigued me, in particular with the potential for a GM to use it for world-building. The author, Luke Miller, assured me that it did indeed have that potential and he himself had used it for that purpose.

A review copy duly arrived, and I have to state up front that Luke has been cooperative and of assistance in every way possible in the preparation of this review. I’ll try not to let that sway me!

‘Journey’ by Luke Miller

“Journey’ is all about the theater of the mind. The player decides how many places their imagination is going to take them on this particular journey, and where the first one will be, and then uses d6 and playing cards to proceed through the process of travel, arrival, and exploration. At the conclusion of this process, you “send a postcard home”, i.e. make some brief written notes, and then either travel further using the location just described as a starting point (if that’s what you had started to do) or return home to reflect on, and sum up, the journey.

There are a number of options and variations that may require advance decisions or may simply grow out of your imagination organically. For example, the random elements will often refer to the inhabitants of a location (using the generic term ‘people’) but they may not be human. Your own form and mode of exploration is also entirely up to you; you could be a disembodied spirit floating above scenery or a Victorian traveler who reaches the fantasy city of Zudernu by means of a steam locomotive that uses mechanical arms to lay (and recycle) its own ribbons of floating track as it travels.

Key to each journey is the selection of the subject that will be the focus of attention on the next leg of the experience, called the Waypoint. This is done with a d6 roll. It is worth noting that a setting can be a single room, or can be an entire planet – that’s something else you get to decide when setting out.

Exploration is the process of focusing in on one or more randomly-selected feature of the environment – you use a d6 for the number of experiences and a deck of cards in combination with the Waypoint to specify what they are, in general terms. Each of these specifics is an “aspect” of the Waypoint.

And, really, that’s all there is to it. Sure, you can add travel events to the mix and various other refinements, but ultimately, this is an exercise in “directed imagination”, using a random stimulation to focus your imagination on an element of a location that you might not have considered.

Physically

‘Journey’ is available as a 6″ x 9″ booklet, perfect-bound of a little more than 70 pages, or as a PDF from DrivethruRPG – I’ll go into specifics and offer a link at the end of the review.

There’s a liberal use of art to break up the text, so much so that you find yourself missing it when content crowds it out. The art itself is not bespoke, it’s generic clip art for the most part, but that’s actually beneficial to the product; it means that you get the stimulatory effect of the illustrations as ‘seeds’ of imagination without being tied into a specific genre or perspective.

In keeping with the spirit – I’m using clip art from the book with this article. Some of it is presented pretty-much unchanged, and with some of it, I couldn’t resist having a play-around.

The author, Luke Miller, comes to TT RPGs from a background love of Fantasy and Science Fiction by way of being a writer, game designer, and software developer.

What ‘Journey’ is not

‘Journey’, most emphatically, is not a choose-your-own-adventure book. It is, by nature, open-ended and expansive, not circumscribed and pre-generated. But the openness comes at a price: you have to do virtually all the heavy lifting yourself.

That’s an acceptable price to pay when you realize that you aren’t locked into any single genre or location, but can instead explore settings of your own creation, using this as a tool to assist in worldbuilding while keeping yourself entertained.

More on how effective it is (and how it can be more useful in that regard) in a little bit.

‘Journey’ as a solo game

Before I get to that, though, I need to discuss it’s effectiveness as a solo TT RPG – the usage for which it was intended.

Unfortunately, while the concept of such a thing intrigues me, the interactions are too limited and monotonous in nature to really work.

The good news is that there are enough hints and displayed potential to show that ‘Journey’ is on the right track for achieving something that still boggles my mind.

What more is needed?

Stats

The first order of business is some really simple character construction mechanics – something so basic that they can be used as a character foundation within any game system.

The simplest one that I can come up with uses just four stats:

⧫ Physicality – capacity for all things physical

⧫ Book-learning – knowledge of things

⧫ Sociability – capacity for immersion within a culture and making yourself welcome

⧫ Resourcefulness – capacity for problem-solving

Because we don’t want make game mechanics intrusive, let’s give these a score by using the same deck of cards that you need for the rest of the system (Ace = 1, Jack=11, Queen=12, King=13) – simply shuffle the deck and draw four cards.

But (because I can’t resist), the suits should have an impact as well:

• Hearts: Two points have to be transferred from this stat to one of the others.
• Diamonds: Plus two on this stat.
• Clubs: Minus two on this stat.
• Spades: Two points have to be transferred to this stat from your next-lowest stat.

This gives a range of -1 to 21 in any given stat. To succeed in using a stat, you roll 2 dice and have to get a result less than or equal to the stat. If you are opposed by a challenge or a challenger, compare their stat to your own and add the difference to your target number.

EG: You have a score of 9 in a stat. Your opponent has a score of 6. Your score is 3 more, so you add three to the 9 to get a total needed for success of 12 or less – which will be a fairly easy success, every time.

EG2: But let’s say that your opponent or challenge has a score of 12 in the stat. That’s three higher than your score, so you will succeed against them on a roll of nine minus three equals six. Well, technically, it’s nine plus negative three. That’s a bit worse than a 50-50 chance.

Rules

Next, a game mechanic: after a round of engagement, you can shift the basis of the confrontation to one that suits you better provided that you can come up with a plausible justification for the change in narrative form.

For example, your challenge might be a combat, in which you quickly realize that you are over-matched. If you manage to survive the first round of the physical challenge without being beaten, you can then shift the basis of the challenge – employing trickery (i.e. resourcefulness) or tactics (i.e. book learning) or persuasion (i.e. sociability) to give yourself a better chance of winning. Note that unless you win the resulting contest immediately, though, your opponent can change the basis of conflict to something that suits him better after a round – which might be physical again.

Combat and challenges are completely abstract. To win, you need to accumulate success in a given form of challenge by a total of 12 points. You get a point towards the total for every point below your target that you achieve on your roll.

For example, you have a score of 14, your opponent has a score of 8. That gives you +6 to succeed, i.e. you need to roll 20 or less on 2 dice. So success of some sort is guaranteed. Let’s say you roll a nine – that’s success by 11. Which isn’t quite enough for an outright win, but it comes close. Your opponent will immediately seek to change the basis of his challenge – if he can.

Note that there is the capacity for a mismatch so egregious that instant victory over the challenge is automatic. In the previous example, if the opponent had a score of 4, that would be +10 to succeed, i.e. 24 or less. It doesn’t matter what you roll, you will succeed by 12 or more – instant win.

Challenges

The final ingredient that’s necessary is a variety of challenges that you have to overcome, and a challenge phase to the game. With only four stats, it’s easy to associate each type of challenge with a suit:

• Hearts: A social challenge
• Diamonds: A resourcefulness challenge
• Clubs: A book-learning challenge
• Spades: A physical challenge

As a general rule of thumb, the higher the value of the card, the more difficult it should be. So the nine of spades might be “challenged to a duel”, while the Queen might be “arrested for a crime”. The six of hearts might be “invited to a card game”, the eight of Diamonds might be “have to pick a lock”, and so on.

Making sense of the circumstances that lead to the challenge is entirely up to you, as is transforming the outcome into narrative form.

In general, the nature of the challenge is transformed as necessary to match up with the mode of exploration – if you are a disembodied spirit Astrally Traveling to someplace exotic, then even a physical assault will have some magical or supernatural component to it. Get creative!

The Challenge Phase

There should be only challenge per Waypoint. One Aspect of that Waypoint should lead to the Challenge. Which means that the Challenge Phase interrupts the Exploration of the Waypoint until it is resolved.

Losing A Challenge

So, what happens if you lose? That’s entirely up to you, but it should be the cause of some difficulty for the character without necessarily bringing his adventure to an end. For example, “invited to a card game” and you lose – that might mean that you offend one of the other guests, or get caught cheating, and get beaten up, or it might mean that you lost your shirt and have to take a local job for a day or two to get eating money.

Why are these changes necessary?

The key words are ‘challenge’ and ‘interaction’. The ‘game system’ as it stands is too much like a tourist seeing the sights without any sort of immersion in the environment; these changes are intended to force interaction with the environment and hence that immersion. The need for some mechanism to deal with challenges mandates the inclusion of stats. This also assists in the creation of a ‘role’ for the player to occupy.

I have deliberately tried to be simplistic and abstract in the construction of these mechanics, so as to be a good fit with the rest of the system.

It might seem like these are fairly significant and substantial parts of an RPG to leave out, but ‘Journey” – as the name implies – seems very much to have been conceived as a sort of ‘there-and-back-again’ game of tourism, so the flavor that it has is very much what would be expected. The focus is on static perception, not dynamic interaction.

Why these changes are unnecessary

If Luke wants to incorporate these changes in a future second edition, I would be more than chuffed to grant permission to do so. But they should be marked as optional rules, because if your interest is in using “Journey’ as a world-building resource, they aren’t necessary – though incorporating a challenge might be seen as deepening immersion in the resulting ‘pocket’ of the world being constructed; so I would give the player the option of disregarding any challenge if it isn’t useful.

In world-building mode, rather than rolling to succeed or fail, simply spelling out the circumstances that lead to the challenge and the (abstract) consequences of success or failure – in other words, incorporating a small encounter into your world-building exercise.

Your character stats therefore become useless and irrelevant in this context, and possibly even misleading. It might be more useful to put yourself in the shoes of one of the PCs who will eventually be face-to-face with your world-building efforts, if you know them.

If you don’t, then that’s fine, too – simply specify that the most obviously accomplished in the indicated sphere (or least-obviously accomplished) is to encounter the challenge (depending on how hard its supposed to be).

‘Journey’ as a Content Generator

I’m breaking the ‘World Building’ functionality of the system into two distinct spheres – Content Generation and genuine World-Building. So I should probably start by making the distinction clear, though there will be significant overlap.

Content Generation happens when you already have a location that’s been explored to a certain extent, and may even have been specifically detailed to a greater or lesser extent. What you need to do is flesh out the setting, ‘put salt on its tail’ and bring it to life.

As with the Solo-play RPG aspect of the game functionality, ‘Journey’ is less than optimal for this purpose – but is close enough that its potential is clear to see.

Content Generation is less about generating content (ironically) and more about manifesting and expanding on the existing content in some interactive form. What are the impressions, the sights and sounds? Every aspect should lead to some sort of interaction. Using the system to generate content with no real starting point is a more abstract creative endeavor, which I will deal with in a subsequent section of the review.

I find that the randomness of the system is counterproductive in this context. A more directed format is more useful.

1. You are approaching the location. What is your mode of transport? What sensations does it engender?
2. What is your first impression of the destination and how is that impression colored by what you already know of it?
3. Whereabouts in the location do you ‘make landfall’ or dismount?
4. Visualize it. What is the general impression – sounds, smells, color.
5. How are those around you going to react to your arrival?
6. One of them approaches you. What does he or she look like and what does he or she want?
7. What is your purpose here, and how long will it take? Do you need a place of residence in the meantime?
8. Heading in the direction most likely to yield such a place of residence, what do you see?
9. You have found a place where you can abide. What’s it like?
10. Who owns it and who operates it? What’s wrong with it (may not be obvious to you)?

….and so on.

The key words here are interaction and experience – what do you experience as you interact with the location?

Your experience will be different if you are arriving by ship – you will be starting at the docks, for one thing – than if you are approaching overland in a carriage or astride a horse. Or flying in on a magic carpet.

The goal is to capture the essence of each aspect of the environment that you will encounter in a logical and progressive sequence. But, every now and then, something random will intrude – whether that’s the Mating Flight of the Shadow-Drakes or an attempted pick-pocketing. That’s where the random element comes into its own.

Whenever you are en route from one sub-location to another for any purpose, choose a random Aspect as usual and try to weave that into the resulting narrative text.

• “A six-legged dog comes up and smells your boots.”
• “A shadow flits from eave to eave, never quite there when you look at it, but occasionally visible from the corner of your eye.”
• “A hawker on the corner sells love potions, endorsed by the Crown.”
• “A seller of rare books places a sign in the window, ‘new shipment arrives today’.”

Randomness has its’ place, but is insufficiently structured to be comprehensive, and that’s what you need most when pursuing this application.

Unfortunately, there is no such comprehensive list of specific questions included, so you will need to generate your own (using the ones I have provided as a starting point). Then file this away for re-use in the future; your questions won’t change, only the answers.

You might go so far as to generate a new series of questions for each different campaign, as a means of giving the locations within that campaign its own distinct flavor. But the bottom line is that, for this purpose, ‘Journey’ is a resource and a good beginning, nothing more.

‘Journey’ as a campaign resource

Randomness – in its way – is even less useful in the true world-building application of the game. Instead, the questions should be even more directed and, at the same time, more abstract. You are less interested in a contiguous narrative than you are in being prompted for abstract high-order concepts, each of which should be explored in depth until you arrive at specifics.

1. What is this location? What is it’s purpose and what makes it well-suited to that purpose? What is its biggest drawback, and how do the locals try to overcome that?
2. How is the location structured and organized?
3. What is the architecture like? What feature is most obvious? What feature is most distinctive? What is the one aspect of the place that you would forever associate with this place specifically? What advantage does that appear to confer on the populace?
4. How does this location interact with animal life? Are there animals in the streets? Are there architectural elements or specific buildings specifically for animals?
5. What are the people like? What is the most unusual or distinctive thing about their behavior or dress? What is the general demeanor? What is one common activity that a visitor will notice?

Here, the randomness can be useful as a prompt or idea generator, as the example within the text makes clear.

The results will be a collection of disorganized impressions that still need to be compiled into a cohesive whole. Each thought, however, builds on the notions that you’ve already constructed. It’s a systematic approach with random elements of focus, in other words. Nothing that results is set in stone; they can all be changed if the results are a more cohesive, coherent, vision. Your goal is to define the location enough that you can do two things:

1. Define, for subsequent exploration in the same way, sub-locations; and,
2. Conceptualize the location and its sub-locations sufficiently and cohesively that you can proceed to Content Generation when you need it.

There is more to the technique than simple free association; the questions structure and direct the imagination, while still giving scope for creativity.

In general, instead of using the randomness of the game system as supplied, you are looking to integrate one or more specific elements in each
Aspect of the Waypoint. The game system is your guide, and a stimulant to your imagination.

Once again, there is no such list of questions provided, but you can simulate having such a list using the mechanics that are provided – but generation of such a list and relegating the existing mechanics to the subordinate role offered above would yield a far more useful and satisfactory process. Once again, the impression that you get from the product is that it is incomplete, it doesn’t quite give you everything that you need for it to be as valuable as it could be for this purpose.

‘Journey’ as a multiplayer game

I wasn’t originally looking for this usage of the product. Nevertheless, as I read it, an idea of how to do so came to me. In this concept, everyone at the game table is both the GM and the shared owner of a single character.

Let’s say that there are four participants, A, B, C, and D, in that order around the table.

There are four roles that these players are to perform in the game context. These are

⧫ Location Master

⧫ NPC Master

⧫ Interaction Adjudicator

⧫ Player

A starts out in the role of Location Master; D starts in the role of NPC Master; B starts as the Interaction Adjudicator; and C is the Player.

It is recommended that the First Player generate a PC using the game mechanics described earlier, but any game system can be used. The genre of the game system determines the flavor, nature, and any restrictions, of the adventure. As a general rule, you want character construction to be FAST so that too much playing time isn’t lost while the others are twiddling their thumbs.

Play starts with the Location Master, who describes the location or setting where the player is. Once he has done so, save for answering specific questions about the location, he has finished his activities for this turn.

The Player describes what he wants to do at the location (which may include ‘go elsewhere’). He is free to describe some purpose that his character has. In the first turn, he should also describe the character and what the character is doing at the location.

If the player hasn’t instigated looking for someone to interact with, the NPC Master then describes someone appropriate to the location who attempts to interact with the PC in some manner.

The Player and the NPC Master then roleplay the interaction, with the Interaction Adjudicator functioning as arbiter. When the encounter is resolved, the PC can proceed with the next step toward achieving the goal that was initially set for him or her, or can abandon it in favor of something more urgent. But as soon as the Player announce the PC’s action, the game turn ends.

If there are no NPCs, then the NPC Master can pose some sort of environmental challenge for the player to overcome.

As soon as the game turn ends, each of the roles rotates one participant to the right:

• Location Master rotates from A to B;
• Interaction Adjudicator rotates from B to C;
• Player rotates from C to D;
• NPC Master rotates from D to A.

The function and ambition of the two Masters is to make the PCs life interesting and pose challenges and obstacles for the Player to overcome. The Interaction Adjudicator deals with consequences and fairness, making sure that there is a solution to the challenges posed. The goal for the group overall is to tell an exciting and interesting story while enhancing their improvisational and theater-of-the-mind skills.

The principle source of inspiration for this idea is “What goes around, comes around”. Everyone should try to be hard but fair, because if they aren’t, the other participants will have ample opportunity to balance the scales. At the same time, making life too easy or being too generous to the player will quickly become boring.

All participants have equal ownership of all four aspects of the ‘life’ of the PC and his world.

It may sound like ‘Journey’ itself has no input into this gameplay, but that’s not entirely true; at least one copy is needed, gets passed with the role of NPC Master, and can be used to generate challenges or random elements as usual.

For example, the die-and-cards combination may yield an “Archaeological” Aspect, “The smell and feel of the air in this Waypoint” – so the challenge is for the NPC Master to do something relating to the odor or atmosphere in the location. That might be an electrical panel shorting out, or a stench presaging an attack by a wild animal, or an encounter with an NPC wearing excessive perfume or a meteorite puncture or hole in the hot-air balloon or whatever.

The only limits are what the participants consider reasonable and plausible within the genre. The Location Master might describe the bridge of a spaceship, expecting the PC to be the ship’s master only for the Player to adopt the role of a space pirate or a trader who has discovered the ship derelict or even an Army Officer exploring an Alien Ship that has crash-landed. The NPC master then takes his cues from what the two of them have said and from the random element, and makes life interesting for the PC for a while.

This is the simplest approach for taking the principles and essential concepts of ‘Journey’ and making them multiplayer that I can envisage.

Three Participants

If you only have three Participants, abolish the position of Arbiter and let that become part of the duties of the Location Master.

Two Participants

You have one participant who is the GM, and the other who is the player, who keep swapping roles.

Five or more Participants

Add more NPC Masters as necessary, with the leftmost (the last one) controlling the leader and assigning roles for the others.

I mentioned in last week’s post that this multiplayer arrangement was part of the inspiration for the unique campaign structure in which each player has to ‘trade in’ their initial characters in order to become an active participant in solving the mystery / adventure. I couldn’t be too explicit then without tipping my hand with respect to the above system, but I’m sure that the connections are now obvious to anyone who has read both.

‘Journey” as a commodity

In general, ‘Journey’ does several things, none of them completely satisfactorily – but all of them well enough to make it a useful resource to have on hand. All the shortcomings are easily countered with the provision o some extra content – whether that be some simple game mechanics or some simple lists of appropriate questions.

It’s an invaluable product that simply isn’t quite all that it could be. And it can be yours for a fairly low price from DrivethruRPG. Copies cost $9.99 for the PDF, $24.99 for the Softcover, and $29.98 for both. Just click on the cover to the right.

There is also an expansion, “Expanded Aspects for Journey”, available as a PDF at www.drivethrurpg.com, and sign up at graycastlepress.com for a new game based around the same core concepts, “The Explorer’s Guild”, shortly to enter playtesting. I suspect that it’s likely there will be a Kickstarter for the game, but it’s not ready for prime-time – yet.

I’d like to close out this review by inviting Luke to steal any or all of the ideas offered in the course of the article, and to drop a line to tantalize readers about what “The Explorer’s Guild” will do with the Journey engine (assuming all goes according to plan, of course)!

Today’s article was originally going to be just an example of using logical structures to construct an adventure from the middle out, but that should be fairly standard (and possibly dull) fare for anyone with a reasonable amount of experience – so I was looking for a way to dress it up and add to the interest it would hold for experienced readers.

Also on my mind was an article that will be done soon reviewing a game, and an idea for how to take it from a single-player event to a multi-player multi-GM event.

Those two thoughts came together with various other half-realized thoughts to produce a new adventure structure that I’ve never seen before that I think will provide that extra-interest that I was looking for in a mini-campaign. This might run for two or three game sessions, and is all one big adventure. It could be an Agatha-Christie style mystery or, as I originally conceived it, a Call-Of-Cthulhu adventure. I’ve called it ‘A Wealth Of Suspects’, because – in that respect – it ties in with the current Blog Carnival.

Fundamentals

The adventure starts with the players providing the staff, family, and friends of a wealthy figure in a late 19th / early 20th century setting. One of them has been subverted by an evil cult for a purpose that has yet to be decided, but the players don’t know which one and neither does the GM.

In the course of achieving this purpose, the wealthy figure is killed, and his personal library looted. What has been taken is unknown to the PCs.

To start with, they have to decide what to do about this state of affairs. Several of them have a secret they would die (or kill) to protect – but the GM doesn’t know which and the other players also have no idea. Oh, and everyone has some reason to fear or hate the old man, in true Agatha Christie style; everyone has a motive for committing the deed, hidden from most but known to at least one other.

Each time events call upon someone else to make an appearance – a lawman, a doctor, a detective, whatever – one of the original PCs is killed and the player takes over running the new character. Similarly, each time someone’s secret is about to be exposed, the PC has the choice of attempting to kill whoever is about to unmask them, or of committing suicide rather than being shamed by the revelation. So the body-count will steadily rise.

Only when half the PCs have been replaced in this fashion does the GM determine which of them was the original killer – if it’s a PC that’s already been killed, they have presumably faked their death.

Of course, it’s the PCs collective job to discover the identity of the killer and put a stop to whatever nefarious scheme is underway. But any of the PCs brought in by events might also have been subverted by the same cult, and so be doing their best to sabotage the investigation.

Who to trust? Who’s an enemy and who’s not? Who’s the killer? Everyone’s a suspect – but the PCs have to work together or be picked off, one by one. Those are the interpersonal dynamics at play in this challenging interactive story concept.

Choice of Game System

The simpler the game system, the better. You want to be able to generate characters quickly – ideally in less than 10 minutes. If you think longer will be required, using pre-generated characters is probably the best option.

Beyond that, the mechanics should be simple and either quick to learn or familiar to all the players already.

Initial Generation

First, the GM gives a very brief introduction to the NPC ‘old man’ (or woman).

The GM then has the players draw from a deck of cards. Highest card (break ties by suit – diamonds, hearts, clubs, spades) gets first choice of initial role.

The choices available are Son, Wife, Friend or Business Associate, Butler, Maid, Priest, Doctor, Lawyer, Gardner, Cook, Maid.

There are clearly more roles than will be needed for most adventuring groups. Once a role is chosen, it is off the table for those who have yet to choose.

Character Generation – part 1

Everything else about the PC is up to the player to decide. That can extend to gender in some cases, and may include race, qualifications, relationships, abilities, stats, etc. The character is assumed to come with all reasonable possessions for someone inhabiting their role.

Each player then has to think of a motive for wanting the old man dead, and write it down somewhere that no-one else can see it – the GM needs to know, arguably, but even that’s not strictly necessary.

Character Generation – part 2

Each player then secretly rolls a d6, showing no-one the result. On an even number, the character has a secret that they would die or kill over. This also has to be written down secretly, and may or may not have anything to do with the motive for killing the original victim. On an odd roll, the player should write down some gossip about their character that they wouldn’t like known, and which may or may not be true, but which they don’t have such strong feelings about, so that everyone has something to show everyone else.

In the same order in which they chose roles, they then have to roll a die of appropriate size and use it to determine which other PC knows their secret, and show it to the chosen player. If the character doesn’t have a secret to share, they should still roll, and show their gossip to the indicated PC. More notes should probably be made!

To facilitate the sharing, each player should move to a different room or a different corner, and the GM should then escort each player to each of the other players one at a time, so that no-one knows who has received what information.

Play begins

The GM then gives each player a reason to be at the residence of the victim on the night in question. It might be that they work for him, or that they’ve been invited to dinner. The GM might also choose to pass a note relating the ‘real reason’ they are in attendance as well as giving a reason for public consumption.

The GM should prepare various notes and select from them at random if he wants the character to have a stronger motivation to be there. “The Old Man is blackmailing you” or “You’re blackmailing the old man and he is late in paying” or “The old man has something you want to steal” or “The old man has threatened to cut you or your organization out of his will” or “You want the old man to leave a donation to some cause in his will” or whatever. Half the notes should be harmless fun – “You have a gift for the old man” or “You love the apple strudel that the old man serves at formal dinners” or things of that type, and he should select from the notes at random.

How the PC reconciles the note with his relationship with the old man is up to them. Most of these are susceptible to petty interpretation, for example – “The Old Man is blackmailing you” – into joining his bridge club, and you intend to take the opportunity to try and beg off.

He then has to bottle everyone up, separate them, and get the old man alone. A terrible storm that comes out of nowhere works for that, especially if cars won’t start (assuming they exist at all). You can even let someone who insists start to leave, and then discover that they have left behind something of vital importance, and have to turn back. In other words, you are to give everyone an opportunity to commit The Crime.

You then let the game play out, with each person doing what they normally would (under the circumstances) until someone discovers the body. The GM can (and probably should) even tell the PCs, “and one of you is the killer!”

Phase One

In phase one, the PCs have to decide what to do about the situation – whether or not to summon the authorities (in this case, the local police constable). If one of them isn’t the doctor, he might be summoned first, to confirm that the Old Man is really dead.

Or perhaps they will decide to play amateur sleuth. Or simply to bury the old man and forget all about him.

Whatever they decide, that’s when an NPC servant will report that someone has looted the library, dumping multiple books from their shelves. Something might be missing, he or she can’t tell. She will insist on summoning the authorities if the PCs haven’t already decided to do so.

Phase Two

The GM rolls randomly and secretly selects one of the players. He then has their PC killed in some appropriately mysterious manner – if the whole group are together, they are poisoned or fall victim to some trap that could have been planned in advance; if they have separated, it only makes life easier for the GM. He then either suspends play while the player rolls up the first Investigator to get involved – that could be the doctor or the Constable, depending on what the PCs decided in Phase One.

The GM has to take possession of any character so killed off, including their recorded secrets and motivations.

The constable will no doubt do his best, but strange clues should keep turning up, which have a significance that he can’t interpret. A jeweled dagger goes missing; a quantity of arsenic used to poison rats is discovered to have been disturbed; part of a manuscript bearing strange and ominous lettering is found. Since the GM doesn’t yet know who’s guilty, he can paint with very broad strokes, confident that most of what he dishes out will be red herrings.

The correct procedure, which the Constable should follow after making some preliminary inquiries, is to summon the doctor if he’s not already there (and if he hasn’t been killed).

If there is some certainty of foul play, he then has to summon a detective. This could be from a nearby city, or they might have to travel by train from somewhere larger like London or New York or whatever. Someone competent to investigate gets called in, in other words.

Phase Three

Which means another PC has to go to make room. Again, kill someone at random, and either pause play while they generate the new character or give them a pre-gen

An investigation means that all sorts of hidden secrets might start to come out. Everyone knows they had a motive for killing the original victim, and might be able to pull some suspicion off themselves by offering up someone else’s secret. Some of those secrets will start coming out – initially about the dead, but then about the living. Each time a PC dies, a new investigator gets called in – an archaeologist to consult about the jeweled dagger, a linguist to translate the piece of manuscript, a doctor from the city (if the local doctor is deceased), whatever.

Eventually, half the PCs will be dead and replaced by investigators, and everyone should be looking very intently at those who have not been so replaced.

Phase Four

Phase four is when the GM makes a die roll to select the player whose character is or was the killer. He can also throw in a plot twist if he feels like it – perhaps the Detective is the killer! But it’s time to start steering the ship towards a destination.

Meanwhile, suspects continue to die off in – let’s just say “noteworthy” – ways, and get replaced by new PCs. One advantage of the ‘broad strokes’ used earlier is that all sorts of experts might be necessary. The discovery of a hidden ledger – that requires an accountant. The will has gone missing? Summon the lawyers who wrote it.

Phase Five

Ultimately, there will be only one original PC left, who will be the center of attention – but it’s almost certain that he’s not the real killer (though the players don’t know that).

All sorts of theories will now have been offered up by the investigators, some plausible, others easily disputed. If the GM is going for the Cult idea, it’s time for an urgent cable stating that one or more of the bodies has vanished from the morgue, and an NPC shows up with dire warnings about the Cult and the Old Gods that they worship. And then the last remaining PC gets killed, and the player takes on the role of this new investigator.

Either way, the GM now picks the player theory that makes the most sense and patches any holes in it with more discoveries and revelations. If the cult is not a red herring (i.e. this is a straight mystery adventure), the GM lets the PCs put together a definitive story of who killed whom. It might even be that the Old Man himself was the one who faked his own death!

Phase Six

If there is a cult, it’s time for the PCs to figure out where they are and initiate a final confrontation before they succeed in summoning their foul god from beyond the veil.

If not, the culprit needs to be unmasked and the character who faked his death (and stole another body from the morgue to confuse his trail), found and captured or killed in a confrontation.

The GM as detective

It’s important to note that the GM has to be as much of a detective as any of the players, but he has the advantage of them spinning theories. The original killer might not have committed any of the other crimes; instead, his act and the subsequent investigation, could have set off a chain reaction.

Only once the GM knows who the original killer was, can he combine that knowledge with the information recorded on the PC characters to start throwing out definitive clues that rule various suspects out. Until then, he’;s simply been throwing shade and inventing things of interest to keep the players thinking.

If he’s adept at concealing the truth of such things at the game table, he can even lie (before it becomes a lie) and tell the players that he won’t know who the murderer is until the players tell him their identity!

It has to be presumed, in the early part of the investigation, that everyone has an alibi for the original murder (except possibly the first Dead PCs). Or no-one does. And if everyone does, someone is lying. All the other motives for wanting the old man dead are red herrings, but they chew up time and distract the players long enough for secrets to start coming out, making this character and then that seem guilty.

They chew up time and provide ready-made plot twists to keep the players entertained.

Retro-authorship

In order to make all this work, the GM will either be adept at retro-authorship – creating a story from the middle out – or will learn to be better at it from this experience.

So let’s talk about that, since that’s the point of the exercise (the fun involved is a bonus)!

From The Middle

I’m going to use my Dr Who campaign as an example because readers have access to the original drafts of the adventures (published in Vortex Of War: A Dr Who campaign construction diary).

This adventure has as it’s primary campaign-level objective, getting the Doctor back to Gallifrey and involved in the Omega Archive. As a secondary objective, it functions as a plot vehicle, connecting a series of more ‘traditional’ Doctor Who plotlines.

The easiest solution to achieving the primary objective is to have the Doctor come into possession of a super-weapon under circumstances that eliminate all other possible ways of disposing of the super-weapon safely. Since the overarching narrative is about the relationship between the Daleks and Time Lords and how that leads inevitably to the Time War, the Daleks are the most obvious source of that super-weapon.

In my draft notes, the nature of the weapon is discussed. What is not discussed is (1) how the Daleks came up with it; and (2) how the Doctor gets involved. But even before we get to thinking about those questions, there are some other elements of the preliminary draft that need shoring up.

Starting point – in the middle

The super-weapon is on the Tardis.

1. How did it get there?

 
It needs to be taken to the Omega Archive on Gallifrey.

2. What other solutions are possible?
3. How can they be made unsatisfactory?
4. Where’s the challenge?
5. Where’s the sense of urgency?

Perhaps the weapon has been activated on a delay. It’s a ticking bomb!

 

6. How can that make sense?

An anti-tampering circuit that sets off the device, a default ‘fail-boom’ mode of operation, that gives authorized operators the opportunity to defuse the problem or get away. If the weapon is so dangerous – a galaxy-killer – then its design would be such that the operators would have time to get to safety, anyway, so that makes sense. What gets set off is not the weapon, then, but this pre-programmed countdown.

 

7. How does this happen?

Perhaps the Daleks have an experimental weapon that targets this particular Tardis (so that even if the Dr has just dematerialized, it will still be affected. This electrifies the Tardis interior and activates the countdown timer.

This implies that the Tardis gets damaged, and that brings us back to Question 4 – the challenge is to be able to beat the countdown, overcoming the damage to the Tardis and offloading the weapon in the nick of time.

 

8. Damaged? Be more specific. And how does that make this a vehicle for other plots?

I’ve bundled those questions together because the answers are clearly interrelated. At this point, the memory of an air crash that I saw described in an “Air Crash Investigations” episode (a series known as “Mayday” in the US) came to mind – the pilots flew off-course and crashed because they didn’t initialize their gyroscopes while stationary, they did it while taxiing for takeoff. Translating that into an in-game equivalent gets us into Tardis Navigation.

To know where it is going, a Tardis would need two sets of coordinates – where-when it is, now, and where-when it is going. But that gets complicated by the fact that the Tardis disappears at one location and simply appears at another, without traveling through the space-and-time in between; instead it traverses a Chronal space-time environment which has been given various names by the writers over the life of the series.

That means that the distance in space-time to be traveled is more complicated than just the difference between those two coordinates; there is the possibility of non-linear scale of motion. That means that two more vectors are needed, these ones relative to that Chronal space-time.

In other words, a translation matrix that converts measurements relative to a fixed point in space-time (the temporal beacon that makes controlled time-travel possible) into a change of position on a four-dimensional map of the universe. That time beacon itself provides one coordinate – defined as “0,0,0,0” – which means three more would be needed to reestablish navigational control. Which means letting the Tardis set down somewhere and finding out exactly where that “somewhere” is. For precise control, a dozen readings might be necessary, but for a ball-park, three would be enough.

What’s more, if the two space-time continuities were dynamic, ever-changing, that would explain why the doctor sometimes has only the vaguest precision in his destinations, while on other occasions, he can pinpoint his arrivals to the desired second.

A second thought – quantum uncertainty – then intrudes. This states that you can’t learn one fact about subatomic particles without interacting with the particles being measured in such a way that another fact becomes unknowable. In other words, the act of observation in and of itself is enough to change the environment being observed. The Tardis, being a time-traveling machine, deposits its passengers (and itself) somewhere in history, and that constitutes a significant interaction with that environment and all subsequent points in history. That’s why you need the Time Beacon in the first place, as a defined ‘anchor point’ in time and space. Navigation is thus a constant race between measurement accuracy and distortions caused by the act of transiting from point A to point B.

What’s more, recent series have introduced the concept of “fixed points in time” – events that are so locked into history that they can’t be changed easily or with impunity, and that the universe has evolved defenses that actually and actively resist such changes. The implication is that sensitivity to navigational decay is not a fixed quantity, and some places are more sensitive to the passage of time-travelers than others.

Okay, that’s all very interesting and adds a lot to the science-fiction credibility of the game. In practical terms, it means that the Tardis would need to set down somewhere three times and take measurements of where and when it was, in order to get a precise fix to re-establish its translation matrix. There would still be a ‘fuzziness’ because its passage to those places would distort the readings, so more trips would be needed for precision – but three would be enough for an approximated baseline.

Throw in the ticking clock, and we have the basics for a suitable in-game challenge and plenty of tension.

 

9. How long would it take to obtain such measurements?

Position on the scale of a solar system would be easily established from the position of known pulsars – easily obtained by something like the Tardis (but requiring a radio telescope and substantial period of observation for anyone else). Once you know the solar system, you can employ the positions of the planets in the system to get time and space down to a much tighter accuracy.

Back in the days of deterministic celestial mechanics, it used to be believed that knowing where the planets of the solar system were, and their orbital motions, you could calculate where they would be at any given point in time, or – by measuring where they happened to be – could read off the time like the hands of a great cosmic clock. But chaos intrudes – in practical reality, there are all sorts of minor perturbations to those orbits, and in fact this only works reliably for a roughly 10,000-year ‘window’. This actually assists in precision in this particular case, though, because the Tardis would presumably have a complete Ephemeris of planetary positions for every significant star system, permitting it to compare the positions ‘now’ including the effects of those perturbations with the actual positions in its records. How long does it take to obtain a precise measurement of the locations of the planets? Using basic astronomy, one 24-hour cycle is probably enough.

But the countdown timer changes that. Let’s say it takes X hours from the countdown to get basic functions back up and running on a damaged Tardis, and you only have Y hours left. You need part of those Y hours to actually deliver the weapon to the Omega Archive. That leaves the balance to set down three times and get navigational references. If Y is significantly less than 72 hours, your only recourse would be to get astronomical positions from the locals. And that means, logically, getting mixed up in whatever is going on. So that completes answering question 8.

 
Let’s recap what’s unanswered, so that I don’t miss anything: Q1, Q2, Q3 – pending
Q4, Q5, Q6, Q7, Q8, Q9 – all answered.

Q2-Q3 Revisited

Q2 and Q3 relate to other solutions and making them inaccessible. For the most part, I don’t care what the other solutions are if they aren’t actually going to solve the problem, so Q2 can be refined to exclude all possible courses of action that are made unsatisfactory by Q3.

I’ve already thought about the device as having an anti-tampering circuit that sets it off, but imposes a delay before initiating detonation. So it’s already going to go off, but it’s being held back. So simply lobbing it into a star won’t prevent it from going off, it will simply destroy the inhibiting circuitry – and “boom”. Doing anything to the anti-tampering circuit has no effect because it’s already initiated the device, its’ done its job and is now irrelevant.

With the possible exception of a black hole, the same holds true of dumping it anywhere within the galaxy – it will either have no effect, or will simply accelerate the detonation.

Logically, that leaves only two choices: Black Holes and Outside The Galaxy.

Black Holes are often gateways into parallel worlds or (inhabited) pocket realities in this Canon, so that becomes an unconscionable choice – to the point where it doesn’t even need to be explicitly dealt with, in-game.

That leaves “outside the galaxy”, say the midway point between the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds. First objection: if this is a galaxy-killer, how near are those galaxies relative to the size of the Milky Way?

I was all set to tear off and look up the answer, when I realized it didn’t matter – even if they were so close that the blast radius would catch the edges of inhabited space, there would be other galaxies somewhere that were further apart. What I needed was a general solution for all of extra-galactic space.

The mere fact that there can be scenes set aboard the Tardis in the TV series (and therefore, within the game as well) means that there is some internal passage of time while traveling within it; the duration of that time experienced is simply unrelated to the distance traveled in ‘real’ space-time. With a device counting down within that internal time-frame, and a damaged Tardis, I simply have to state that it’s impossible to get that far before the bomb goes off. But I don’t like offering absolutes when the character isn’t in a position to give absolute answers – and sufficient doubt is all that’s needed. “You aren’t certain that you could get there, given the damaged state of the Tardis and the internal time available, before detonation.”

Sideways growth of plot

All of the above (except for the still-unresolved Question 1) can be considered ‘sideways’ growth of the plot. They all circumscribe the options available to the PC for choosing future actions, and can be considered part of the situation that the character finds himself in.

Are there any other such that need to be added to the plot before I start extrapolating backwards to an answer to Question One?

Well, I have this Dalek experimental weapon that sets off the countdown timer and damages the Tardis. There should logically be some immediate difficulties caused for the characters to overcome. So lets’ have some environmental hazards – the Tardis is a ‘flexible environment’ anyway, so damage severe enough to cost it navigational references would have all sorts of other effects. Gravitational shears, ‘down’ being at strange angles, the swimming pool blocking the only passage to wherever the PCs have to go to start repairing the damage, that all sounds both good and logical. Having the control console explode? Nice and dramatic, hinders the easy resolution of the problems, and adds some minor additional challenges to be overcome – all that sounds good.

If the protagonist happens to be in contact with something carrying the electrical current created by the Dalek weapon, he could be electrocuted. That’s nice and dramatic, and adds an air of continuity to the discovery of the countdown being activated. But how can he survive? The only other character present is incorporeal – but is a natural prodigy at computer programming and hacking. So let’s have something present that he can take control of, in order to revive the protagonist. Wouldn’t it be ironic if that something were a Dalek? It could then self-destruct in shame at its systems being used in this way, doing still more damage to the control room. A few details would need to be cleaned up, but that works.

But there’s less impact if the protagonist just happens to be touching a metal railing or the control panel, especially if his companion is piloting the Tardis at the time. Maximum impact should have him holding the bomb itself. So he must have carried it aboard and not have had time to put it down. That smacks of a smash-and-grab coming unstuck at the last possible second, and hints at the long-waited answer to Question One.

So, we have now started expanding the plotline into the past from the middle as a logical consequence of the middle.

• Situation: Tardis damaged, needs new navigational references. is preceded by,
• Situation: Tardis damaged, needs systems reboot / repair, which is preceded by,
• Situation: Character discovers that the countdown has been activated, which is preceded by,
• Situation: Dalek explodes after being used to revive the Character, causing further damage to the Tardis, which is preceded by,
• Situation: Dalek experimental weapon electrocutes the protagonist, activates the countdown timer on the bomb, and damages the Tardis, but the Companion uses a Dalek to revive the protagonist, which is preceded by,
• Situation: The protagonist enters the Tardis with the device, a Dalek in hot pursuit.

Expanding Backwards

A similar process is used to expand the plotline backwards, looking for how the protagonist gets involved in the first place.
 

1. How does the bomb get on-board?

The protagonist steals it from a Dalek weapons research facility.

 

10. How does he know it’s there?

He follows the energy signature from somewhere else.

 

11. How does he get the energy signature?

It was at that somewhere else for him to get a reading on, but was then stolen by the Daleks.

 

12. Why would the Daleks need to steal it from someone else?

Perhaps the development was inherently dangerous and likely to attract unwanted attention.

 

13. Unwanted attention from whom?

From the protagonist and possible others. Specifics would depend on the nature of the research & development, which would logically need to be to satisfy some need / desire / program of the developers.

 

14. How does the protagonist become aware of the research, and why does he get involved in it?

If the research is all that dangerous, logically, some groups or individuals would become aware of it before others. If the expected responses by the major powers of the galaxy/universe are considered undesirable by some of those ‘early-detectors’, and they aren’t the type to get their hands dirty, they might alert the protagonist and persuade him to meddle.

The Black and White Guardians fit that prescription. Manipulators par excellence, they could easily use the protagonists’ own personality profile – in particular, his curiosity – to overcome his distrust of them.

 

15. Hmm, “Guardians”…that reminds me of a long-held thought deriving from silver age comics….

Specifically, what would the citizens of the galaxy think if they were aware that the Oans were preparing to create the Green Lantern Corps, and what would they do about it?

Logically, some would support the endeavor. Some would feel threatened by it, because the GLs are, explicitly, Lawmen.

Wait a mo – who’s law? No-one would be sure in advance – so this would be seen as elevating a randomly-chosen local to demigod status and giving him authority and rule over his sector of space, answerable only to some distant aliens of uncertain motivation. More opposition.

Then, there would be those who want to steal the technology for themselves. And those who don’t want their enemies to have it. And those who consider it too dangerous for anyone to have it.

That’s sounding more and more like a general free-for-all with the Oans at the heart of the anarchy. It’s so corrosive to peaceful relations between worlds, so disruptive to established history, that the Time Lords would inevitably be drawn into the conflict, and since – at some point – the Oans imperatives would conflict with those of the Gallifreyans, the result would be a Time War.

And that possibility, and the PC actively working to prevent it from happening, and getting sucked into the middle of the situation whether he wants to be or not, resonates so strongly with the overall theme of the campaign that it amounts to a compelling argument.

 

Minor Details

Thus, the broad strokes of the first part of the adventure become defined. There were some minor details that were added in to flesh things out – the Dalek research facility, the obstacles to be overcome, how did the Daleks get into position to steal the research product in the first place, and so on – but that’s true of any plot breakdown to this, fairly abstract, standard. Not all of those answers have yet been discovered by the player, so I can’t go into them at this time.

The General Principles

So, let’s abstract this process and generalize it into some lessons to be absorbed.

Starting from the middle means defining a situation that the character needs to resolve – “the problem” that they need to solve, and constraining less-satisfactory solutions from being valid or preferable choices. The process of developing and implementing that solution, overcoming obstacles and challenges on the way, is the part that comes after the “middle”.

An internally logical path extended backwards one step at a time, always looking to answer the implied question of “How did we get into this mess this time?”, defines the part of the adventure that comes before the “middle”.

Positioning within the broader narrative of a campaign can impose additional demands upon the problem or the resolution. It’s important to bear these in mind at all times, because ultimately, so long as the journey is entertaining to the participants, you don’t care how you get to those objectives so long as you do get there.

That’s your +4 longsword vs Plot Trains, right there. It means that almost any variation on the planned journey that the player(s) choose is acceptable so long as those two objectives are met. Plot trains are always a danger when you construct an adventure this way, but this puts the players in a metaphoric four-wheel-drive instead of a steam train without brakes.

There are three sources of answers to the logical questions that arise that you should draw upon.

• The more answers to your logical questions that you can find in established campaign lore, the more internally-consistent the adventure becomes within the campaign context. The earlier in the campaign that an adventure takes place, the less you can rely on this source.
• The more questions that are left unanswered by this, that you can then answer from your campaign setting, the more tightly integrated the campaign becomes with its setting. The corollary of the ‘earlier in the campaign’ thought offered above is that the earlier in the campaign the adventure is to take place, the more you will be – or should be, at least – drawing on this source of answers.
• The more that you can derive answers and motivations from the PCs, the more tightly they become integrated with the campaign – in effect, the more personalized it becomes to those specific characters as protagonists.

Logically, that means that a campaign starts as completely deriving from the source material – background and setting – and, as it proceeds, the characters become more and more defined in connection to the setting, and the better they become as a source of material for the GM. By the campaign mid-point, the characters have become the primary drivers of the campaign. As it proceeds from that point, less and less reliance needs be placed on the source material, in favor of the intersection between established characters and their past acts and decisions, and the more inevitable the planned end-point becomes.

Coherence. Internally Logical. A story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, that strives to be fun for the participants throughout. Isn’t that what all campaigns strive to achieve, to be?

This same set of principles applies at all scales within the campaign, as you can see. When I’m planning a campaign (and I know that I’ve made this point many times before), many of the early adventures have as their sole function within the campaign context as putting in place the building blocks that I will need later in the campaign as planned.

When I’m planning an adventure, it will be in service of the campaign-scale plot elements that justify the adventure’s inclusion in the campaign plan.

When I’m planning an encounter or challenge, it will be in service of the adventure-scale plot elements that I need for a ‘fun’ situation to manifest and then be resolved in a satisfying manner – while achieving the adventure’s campaign-level objectives.

Stories within stories, like short stories combining to become a novel.

Which brings me back to ‘A Wealth Of Suspects’…

Hopefully, the relationship between this example and the principles that it lays bear, and the campaign premise offered at the start of this article, will now be clear, but just in case, it’s worth revisiting.

In the early part of the adventure-campaign, the GM doesn’t know the ending. All he can do is toss out interesting building blocks and dig the PCs in deeper. When he gets to the midpoint, he starts getting answers to the questions that the PCs will have been asking all along, and – with them as his assistants and co-authors – starts fitting those building blocks into a rational and coherent storyline.

By definition, anything that doesn’t contribute to that storyline is a red herring, a side-mystery, or a distraction.

Since the GM doesn’t know what is relevant and what is not for the first half of the campaign, he can’t create a plot train, and has to treat each building block on its own merits.

In theory, that means that the same GM could run the same basic adventure for the same players, and have an entirely different outcome.

In some respects, this reduces the GM to something closer to the players – everyone’s improvising like crazy. As a tool to sharpen certain GMing muscles, this can’t be beat.

• Improvisation.
• Logical Plot Construction.
• Coherence of Plot Elements.
• An emphasis on Fun. And,
• Building an adventure or campaign from the middle, out.

Have fun!

980… 981… 982…

The countdown has begun! This is the 982nd article that I’ve authored or co-authored here at Campaign Mastery. That’s just 18 more to go until the big Four Digits! What I’ll do to mark the occasion, I don’t know (suggestions welcomed) – but somewhere around October 18th, it will happen!

I love doing art-related posts for Campaign Mastery because they give me an opportunity to flex my artistic muscles and have some fun. As a result, I’m afraid that the example that I planned to use as an introduction to this post has grown rather larger than expected. It’s worth reading, though :)

One of the tools that I use all the time when compositing images is Blur, but it also has applications beyond the artistic. I’ll get to the relevance of this post to the current Blog Carnival, and to those applications, a little later. First, here’s a show and tell on how I use blur to successfully composite images.

Compositing Images

If you’re going to demonstrate compositing of images, then you need an image to composite into, so I started by throwing together a quick background. I literally spent about 5 minutes on this one – I would spend a lot more time on the real thing, of course.

You’ll also need an image to composite into the background. I spent quite a bit of time looking for the right piece of maritime clip art before finding an image of a shipwreck by Egor Shitikov from Pixabay. I downloaded it (always at a higher resolution than you are going to need, if possible – I was working at 1350 pixels wide, so I chose 1920 pixels wide for the download. I then pasted the downloaded image into my workspace as a new layer so that I could work on it, and resized it to fit.

Since I wasn’t including the sandbar, I needed to paint in some rocks. These would be almost completely obliterated by surf, so they didn’t need to be very good, but they would provide my guideline to the behavior of that surf – where it would break, and so on, so I needed to put them in. That also meant that I wouldn’t have to worry too much if a bit of them showed up behind the surf. I was careful to use the same color palette that I had used for the foreground land – consistency matters, even here.

The next step was to get rid of the unwanted parts of the imported picture. This is not as easy as it sounds; you have to select the parts that you want to keep and as little as possible as you don’t want to keep. I have to zoom in and out a lot in this process. I also have to keep in mind where the light source is and how much reflected light there will be – because of two factors.

First, the behavior of my art program – like most such, when I select a pixel corner-to-corner, it applies any operation ordered partially to that pixel. That includes deletion of unwanted pixels.

Second, if there has been any sharpening of the source file, there will be a halo of light around anything dark. This needs to be taken into account when choosing what to select and what not to select.

So it takes a fair bit of practice to get right, and a lot of ultra-finicky work. Masking can be more than half of any photo-editing operation!

Naturally, the human desire is to find shortcuts to this time-consuming operation – and I use blur to achieve that. This permits the use of a “relatively” rough job of the selection – but I still want to do what I can to cut down on the later difficulty. It’s an improvement but usually not a miracle!

This closeup gives you some idea of how accurate I have to be.

Once the extraneous material has been cut away, this is what I’m left with:

I started to reposition the image and then noticed the guard rails near the top of the boat. Sections of the old sky were still visible through them where I hadn’t cut them away – so that was the next thing to do.

Next, it was time to reposition and scale the boat to the size that I wanted. Notice that I very carefully didn’t put it in the exact middle of the image, even though I wanted this to be the focus of attention; that always feels fake and posed when it comes to landscapes. Instead, I positioned the boat roughly 2/3 of the way across the image, and completely in the lower half. I also had to bear in mind which side of the image was shadowed and keep the side away from the light source – people may not know why the image doesn’t look quite right, but they will know something’s off.

I decided that the prow of the boat was aground, as you can see below. The other thing to notice is that the image feels very “tacked on” at the moment, especially at the rear of the boat – because it has been.

Next, I need to start gathering what I need to put in the surf. That means selecting everything that’s not boat and then copy-and-paste the background that will be visible into a new layer.

This reveals the problem that I spoke of earlier, the part-pixel gap. It results in a void in between the two parts of the image. I wasn’t sure how visible it would be with the images reduced in size for display here, so I did a screen capture while zoomed in close:

All those half-pixels have become a void, bereft of image content. This is something that will have to be fixed, later.

First, let’s paint in the surf breaking on the rocks on the ‘surf’ layer. As with most art, I started with the darkest color (the same as the water beside the boat), then something lighter, then the lightest sections.

The next layer I need is the foreground. This is so that I can control the amount of blur in the image overall.

Once again, I mask, copy, and paste into a new layer.

But there’s a problem – part of the ship’s prow has to go in front of the foreground, but this foreground is currently in front of the ship, and will be so in the finished image. So I need to cut out the part of the foreground that will let the ship show through. The technique is to mask the ship, go to the foreground layer, and delete. When I do so, I get this as my foreground layer (I’ve shown an almost-transparent ship so that you can see how it will all fit together).

But, of course, this risks creating another void, one that extends around the entire bow of the ship.

This is the last piece of the puzzle in terms of compositing the image, before I start applying the blur. I thought readers might appreciate a quick summary at this point, so I’ve provided one:

This shows the four layers side by side, in the order that they will combine to form the finished image. (1) is the foreground; (2) is the surf; (3) is the ship; and (4) is the background.

It’s now time to apply the blur – but I never do so to the original layer, it’s always to a copy of that layer, and the order is important.

The graphic below tells the story. If my image was only one screen tall, I would use half the blur indicated; if it was 2700 pixels wide or so, I would think about 3 or even 4 pixels of blur. The choice is all about how it will appear when displayed full-screen.

The other thing that I’ll do before completing the image is to sharpen the boat image (not the blurred one, the one in front) – because the original was shrunken down from a considerably larger one, there is a natural blurring that takes place. This image shows the results, in closeup.

Once all the layers are consolidated, I will act to control the blur even more precisely. The sharpen function in my graphics software is all-or-nothing, but that simply forces me to use a better technique – I duplicate the composited layer, sharpen the duplicate, and then control it’s opacity, giving me 100 different sharpness levels to work with.

It might not show up very clearly because I have to shrink the images to fit the Campaign Mastery page, but this is the sharpened image, 100% opaque. Notice how the voids, those ghostly outlines, have all but vanished!

That’s too extreme for me, but that’s intentional. Look at what happens when I dial that sharpened layer back to 23% opaque, letting the original, underneath, show through:

The final step is to add some shadow from the prow onto the rocks – the water behind them is quite a deep navy blue and shadow on that won’t really be visible. But this is a chance to ram some extra shape and texture into the foreground. To do this, I paint a pool of black in a new layer, use various tools to tweak the shape and blur the edges, then set the compositing method to multiply and the opacity to whatever percentage looks right – in this case, I decide that a very light shadow is appropriate. But the results speak for themselves; the boat looks like it belongs in the image.

If I weren’t having to stop, save intermediate images after every step, fiddle around with screen captures, and the like, this image would have taken me about an hour to produce – 10 minutes (twice as much as my quick-and-dirty example) for the background, 20 minutes selecting the elements to be composited (the boat, and I might have also added a seagull or two), and 30 minutes putting the two together – more than half of it on masking. I literally spent more than three times that explaining the process!

Here’s a real one, put together for my Doctor Who campaign while I was thinking about this article:

There are only three floral patterns used in this image, but those three have all been manipulated in many different ways – shifting color spaces, inverted colors, more color spaces, reflections. I also used a lot of different compositing modes in combination. I also worked hard with my masking so that I got a three-dimensional render effect on adjacent panels. A significant part of the original image was gold, and the rest was virtually white when I started. And, of course, the background was a completely separate image. Finally, notice that a ‘void’ has been carefully created and preserved on the lower right because the image is dark against a dark part of the background at that point.

Ladies and Gentlemen (and anyone else reading this), I give you Brother Simon, the titular character from my Dr Who adventure, “The Pacifist” – a character who is dead throughout the adventure, so this is his one and only star turn outside of game recaps!

A Wealth of Specifics

As GMs, we need, and work with, specifics as often as possible. If there’s a tower, we need to know how tall it is. If there’s a golden urn, we need to know how heavy it is. If there’s a… well, you get the idea.

The game mechanics all run on specific numbers, and it doesn’t generally matter which game system your using for that to be a true statement.

We need those specifics so that we can objectively interpret what the players choose to do and answer their questions.

• “How tall is the tower?”
• “I want to climb up the outside of the tower. How long does it take?”
• “I’ll use a fly spell to beat the rogue. How far up has he climbed by the time I get there?”
   
• “Will the urn fit in my backpack?”
• “Is the top sealed? What’s inside?”
• “I’ve seen some of those really big Asian urns – how big is this one?”
• “How heavy would it be if filled with gold pieces?”
• “Maybe it’s filled with emeralds and rubies, what would they be worth?”

If any of the above ring true, it’s because I’ve heard them all in actual play. The problem is that because we have the details we need to answer these questions, there’s a tendency on our parts to answer questions with specifics, skipping ahead to the end of a process rather than inhabiting the moment.

• “The tower is 120′ tall.”
• “You climb at 20′ per turn, so it will take you six turns, maybe more.”
• “You fly at 40′ per turn, so it will take you three turns to get to the top. You’re twice as fast as the rogue, so he will be half-way up the wall by then.”
   
• “The urn is made of clay, 18 inches tall and 8 inches wide. So it would fit but you would have to take everything else out and then see what you could fit around the urn.”
• “There is a cork stopper. You can’t see what’s inside without opening it.”
• “It’s 18 inches tall and 10 inches wide. The mouth is flared to six inches across, and the neck – at it’s narrowest – is about 3 inches across – all outside diameters, you can’t see how thick the walls are. So it’s not one of those huge urns that you’re talking about.”
• “It would be too heavy to lift. and the bottom would be prone to staying in place and separating from the rest of the urn if you tried. But it isn’t that heavy, so you can be fairly sure that it is not filled with coins. There is something inside, though, you can hear it bouncing around if you shake the urn.”
• “If it were filled with precious stones, they would be worth at least 100,000 GP, but it isn’t. Unless you want to go shopping and fill it with your own money, of course.”

(For the record: what’s inside is an Undead cobra, who only gets more ticked off if the urn is shaken or lifted.)

All that sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Most gamers wouldn’t blink twice at hearing such answers.

But let’s apply a little (metaphoric) blur, and see what a difference it makes:

• “You can see birds roosting on the roof but can’t tell whether or not they are Sparrows or Rocs from this distance.”
• “If you want to start climbing it, I’ll tell you when you get to the top. Make a climbing roll.”
• “You fly at 40′ a turn, but it will take more than one turn to get there. You’re ascending twice as fast as the rogue; by the end of your turn, you aren’t half-way there yet, but the rogue is at least one story below you.”
   
• “The urn is made of clay, about 18 inches tall and 8 inches wide. So it might fit but you would have to take everything else out and then see what you could fit around it, and it would be quite obvious.”
• “There is a cork stopper. You can’t see what’s inside without opening it. Shaking the urn from side to side tells you there’s something solid inside, but you hear nothing metallic about the sound.”
• “It’s not one of those Asian urns. This one is made of clay, 18 inches tall and 10 inches wide. The mouth is flared to six inches across, and the neck – at it’s narrowest – is about 3 inches across – all outside diameters, you can’t see how thick the walls are except at the mouth, and most clay urns have a thick lip, so that’s not the most reliable guide.”
• “It would be too heavy to lift. and the bottom would be prone to staying in place and separating from the rest of the urn if you tried – clay isn’t strong enough. But it isn’t that heavy, so you can be fairly sure that it’s not filled with coins. There is something inside, though, you can hear it bouncing around when you shake the urn.”
• “If it were filled with precious stones, they would be worth at least 100,000 GP, but it isn’t. Unless you want to go shopping and fill it with your own money, of course.”

Some of the responses have changed a little or not at all – some are unrecognizable. And notice how trying to make estimates involves some interaction with an object – if you want to know how heavy something is, without knowing what’s inside, you have to at least try to lift it. There’s an “if” that has become a “when”, for example.

Some players would complain about that – “I never said I was touching it!” – but the answer is “Then don’t ask questions that require touching something to answer.”

“Adding blur” in this case means redacting specifics, not jumping ahead to the end of a sequence, and assuming that if a player asks a specific question, their PC is doing what they have to do in order to get an answer.

Specifics make life mechanically simpler for both the GM and the player, and there are times when that’s appropriate; but most of the time they drain all or almost all of the color and life out of the scene, reducing it to a black-and-white sketch.

“A Wealth Of Specifics” is great, even essential, for the GM – but if handled in the most obvious way, as specifics, they are about as useful as “A wealth of Debt” – not a good thing at all.

Too Much Blur

You can also go too far, applying too much blur of this kind. This forces the players to tell the GM what they are doing to obtain their answers, which ends up being slow and very frustrating for the players. A taste of this is usually the best answer if you get multiple complaints of the “I never said I was touching it” variety; after that brief taste, a happier compromise is usually reached along the lines of “All you can tell without trying to pick it up is that it looks solidly constructed.”

Distance Blurs

It’s really hard to have both the background and the foreground in focus at the same time – it requires photography from a distance and a zoom lens and cropping the image to a small fraction of the original.

In both photography (without these heroic measures) and real life, there’s something called the focal plane. Objects outside this focal plane are blurred, and the more they are removed from it, the more they are blurred.

To understand this, you need an object a couple of feet away that is also a couple of feet away from a wall, like a chair, and a pen (if you don’t have one, use your finger). Hold the pen so that it’s about an inch from your eye. You can then focus on the pen / finger, or the chair / object, or the background behind the chair / object, but even in quite a small room, you can’t keep all three in focus at the same time.

When you look at the pen / finger, the chair / object blurs, and the background becomes almost nonexistent, it’s so blurred and vague. When you look at the chair / object, the pen / finger blurs into a vague patch of color, and the background is blurred but not so much that you aren’t aware of it. When you focus on the background, the chair / object becomes blurred, and the pen / finger blurs so much that you are barely aware of it. In fact, the human brain often subtracts details to the extent that the pen / finger can completely vanish from view – unless it does something to attract your mental attention.

The Basketball Gorilla

I love the “basketball gorilla” optical illusion, because it takes this to the next level. You need three basketball players in a dark uniform, three in a light-colored uniform, and someone in a gorilla suit who is initially out of sight. You tell a bunch of people – the audience – to count the number of times a player in a light-colored uniform passes the ball, then have the players pass the ball back and forth between them, sometimes to a like-colored uniform, sometimes not, all while moving around a bit. After a few seconds of this, anyone concentrating on the task has their awareness ‘tunnel-vision’ – they stop seeing the uniforms per se, and just see ‘light’ and ‘dark’. At which point, the gorilla can walk right through the middle of the play, can even catch and pass the ball, and as many as nine-tenths of the audience won’t even notice him. Even if they are told what is going to happen. What’s more, the remaining one-tenth or whatever will usually have an inaccurate count of the number of passes, because they were too busy watching for the gorilla (or whatever) to focus properly on keeping count. (NB: If you go looking for this demonstration on youTube, you have to view it full-screen for the effect to work; on a small screen, the image is so small that your brain processes the image as a single ‘object’ and isn’t fooled. A google search for ‘invisible gorilla’ will find several videos demonstrating the experiment, but I’d like to draw attention to a book by the people who first came up with the experiment – The Invisible Gorilla [I’ll get a small commission if you buy a copy]).

There are people who think that study should be conducted in an environment that is as antiseptic as possible. Others have music or TV playing continually, and the first group have trouble understanding how the second can study effectively with the environmental ‘pollution’ distracting them.

One of my early answers on Quora addressed this specific question. I’m one of the second group – unless the topic requires a great deal of intense focus, I learn more effectively with (reasonably soft) music in the background, especially if it’s not new music. My mind recognizes the familiar, and ‘tunes it out’ – and tunes out all sorts of other environmental distractions (birds, insects, passing traffic) at the same time. Careful ‘contamination’ of the environment brings me closer to the ‘antiseptic’ environment recommended by the first group. What’s more, should my attention slip (because the lesson is boring, for example), the familiarity of the sonic environment makes it easier to refocus.

Our brains have evolved to subtract the familiar so that we can better focus on the unfamiliar and potentially dangerous. We need to give priority to assessing anything that falls into that category for survival!

So, let’s apply those principles to a PC in an RPG.

Scene one:

As he has done every day for the past month, the PC sets foot out of the inn where he’s been staying and heads for his first appointment of the day. He has to remember where he has to go, and keep track of where he is; this requires a focus on the details of the mid-ground. He will be barely aware of the familiar sounds of the urban environment – the caravan-master bellowing at his wagon-beasts as he delivers overpriced wine to the inns and taverns, the sound of seagulls, the bells of the distant temples, the shouting of street urchins at play, the rustle of the summer breeze through the leaves of the many trees, the vague rustle of a million feet hurrying from place to place on the cobbled streets, the sound of the PCs own footfalls, and so on.

Because that list of sounds is so lengthy, it blurs in the mind of the reader (or listener) into an overall impression – “urban environment, leafy, near the sea”. If I had only provided a couple of them, or hadn’t run them together in that way, the details would have stacked up in the ‘focal plane’ until the player / reader had reached his individual capacity, at which point they would be ejected from awareness to make room for the next point of focus. Instead of painting a blurry picture of the environment to serve as a backdrop to events, the onus would be placed on the player formulating such a general impression for himself – which means that he’s distracted and not really listening to the GM (me).

There are ways to make use of this phenomenon. I could try to slip something into the background that I wanted to be there but not the focus of immediate attention, but that’s usually risky – if the player notices, he will focus on that and lose almost everything that follows. I could tack such a something onto the end of the list, so that there’s nothing ‘additional’ to lose, providing a natural segue to something of more acute interest and making it seem a natural part of the environment. Or I could simply leave it there as background as the character moves through the environment from landmark to landmark on his journey to whatever his first task of the day might be.

Notice that there’s a sparsity of details about any single item. That ‘fuzziness’ contributes to the ‘blur’.

The more often this description is repeated over successive days of play, the less the absence of any particular item will be consciously noted, especially if I randomly re-sequence them. This practice also keeps the description effective at creating that ‘backdrop’.

Once the character is focusing on the landmarks of his journey, it’s entirely plausible for him to fail to notice a ‘gorilla’ – a shadowy figure following some distance behind him, for example – unless I specifically mention it (in which case the player will immediately obsess about it). Some sort of perception or awareness or spot check is required, but getting the player to make one can give the game away by telling him that there’s something to focus on.

There are two solutions to that: making the roll yourself, or letting the player make the roll and then providing something else for their attention to momentarily focus on if they don’t succeed by enough in the GM’s opinion. Until about five years ago, I focused on the first, but once I thought of the second, it’s become more and more a part of my go-to toolkit.

Scene Two:

“You step out of the alehouse, counting your change carefully. One of the coins doesn’t look quite right, and you almost turn back to have words with the barkeep before deciding that it’s not worth the trouble right now. Besides, you have to be at the Palace Garden in a hand-span of minutes, and it wouldn’t do to keep the Prince waiting.”

This ticks several boxes – there’s color, there’s movement, there’s a little intrigue. There’s a vague impression created by mention of a Palace Garden, but it’s immediately undercut by the unusual “hand-span of minutes”, which in turn is immediately undercut by wondering what the Prince wants, and how he knew of the adventurer in the first place.

This effectively pushes “Palace Gardens” into first the mid-ground and then the background, mentally blurring them for the player and creating a backdrop. I can drop in all sorts of details about the gardens during the lead-up to the encounter and use the same technique to integrate them into that general background impression:

“Rose bushes arch overhead in cascades of color. The grass is lush and green underfoot, and somehow softer than any you have felt before. In the distance, you hear the cries of a hunting Malrog, no doubt terrifying herds of sheep and their handlers in equal measure, but the fierce hunters generally avoid urban environments – too many ballistae and siege weapons – so it poses little threat to you. The Prince stands in the shadows, his expression both unreadable and somehow clouded and dark. Normally a bright, cheery party-going type, this new mood is hard to assess, and bodes ill.”

Again: color, movement, and a progression from trivial to significant. The player might have asked about the gardens, especially after teasing about the grass being somehow unusual, but would then have been distracted by the Malrog, which he’s never heard of before (but which his character is obviously familiar with) – but then he gets distracted from that by the Prince.

Creating backdrops like this not only generates atmosphere, and helps players get into character, it helps the GM get into character too – but, most importantly, it creates depth of immersion. You get sucked into the story.

Interrupted Narrative

Some players will try to interrupt with questions whenever the GM takes breath. Others will wait patiently for the GM to finish. I vastly prefer the second, because it lets me build up ‘depth of narrative’.

At one point, I tried implementing a policy of “the narrative ends as soon as a question is asked or the GM is otherwise interrupted” – which matters if you have a progression from least important to most important! – but I decided that was unfair on the players who didn’t interrupt.

Over time, I’ve found that some interruptions break the mood, others simply overlay something else onto it momentarily, and learned to recognize the latter and simply roll with it. Interruptions of the first type get answered, curtly and with some evident annoyance on occasion. As a result, they have become far less frequent – and, in truth, I was sometimes not quite as irritated as I seemed, as an interruption lets me know when the interruption is too lengthy. So I’ve evolved in technique with experience, too. (All that being said, there are two things that will eventually make me blow my top – being constantly interrupted, and being nagged – and the latter is rare at the gaming table).

I wish I could be more specific for the benefit of the other GMs out there, but the differences are hard to pin down and might even vary with the mood of the table and the current in-game circumstances. As a very, very, very general rule of thumb, questions about content can be disruptive, passing side-comments less so.

I’ve even reached the point where I can anticipate possible interruptions to the narrative and build responses in that indulge the player being ‘triggered’ before steering back to the narrative, minimizing the distraction created by the interruption.

Conclusion

Blur is important in RPGs, just as it is in image compositing. It obscures details and creates a blended backdrop which imposes depth and immersion. All good things!

Once again, the wheel of days has traversed the circle of time to Campaign Mastery’s turn at hosting the Blog Carnival, following on from Full Moon Storytelling’s Festivals, Holidays, and Birthdays.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a post up for that Carnival (sorry, Dave) – I had a post run over two weeks when it was originally intended for only one. But it’s spring in the Northern Hemisphere, a season of renewal, and so I’ll put that failure behind me and turn to this month’s subject instead.

This month, the subject is Wealth – anything at all that you want to discuss that falls under that heading. Past Carnivals with similar themes have looked at Loot, Treasure, and Magical Treasures, and been quite successful.

A couple of handfuls of the possible interpretations of the subject are:

• Unexpected forms of Wealth
• The Difference Between Wealth And Loot
• What Wealth Can Do For The PCs
• What PC Wealth Does To The GM
• Material Wealth
• A Wealth Of Information
• A Wealth Of Knowledge
• A Wealth Of Character
• A Wealth Of Connections
• A Wealth Of Reputation
• A Wealth Of Mistrust
• A Wealth Of Evidence
• A Wealth Of Allies
• A Wealth Of Potential
• A Wealth Of Targets
• The Possession Of Wealth
• How Do People Change With Wealth?
• Tales Of Wealth
• The Pursuit Of Wealth
• Aphorisms About Wealth
• Unusual Forms Of Wealth
• When Does Booty Become Wealth?
• Wealth In Your World

To participate in this month’s carnival, all you need do is write or record something on one of the subjects above, or any other interpretation of the term “Wealth” and leave a link to where it is freely available.

I hope people find the diversity of interpretation to be both inspiring and fun to write about – I look forward to seeing the variety of subjects people come up with, I’m sure the above selection only scratches the surface!

Make sure to drop me a note in the comments space below with a link to your submissions (pingbacks aren’t always reliable). As always, about a week after the Carnival moves on, there will be a round-up of your submissions.

Technically, as an anchor post to the carnival, the above is all that’s needed, but I like to reward readers who stop by with something that’s worth their time, so this isn’t just the anchor post, it’s also the first post in the Carnival.

A Wealth Of Characters

Today, I’ll be looking at an item that isn’t even on the list above – A Wealth Of Characters.

One way the inexperienced think that being more experienced as a GM is that they have accumulated a wealth of stock characters that can be pulled out of the ‘hat’ at a moment’s notice as needed.

Experienced GMs are actually less likely to resort to a stock character, because they become more skilled at compiling a unique and original character on the spur of the moment, and more confident about their capacity for doing so.

The Flip-Book

Let’s imagine a mechanism for character creation based on the metaphor of a flip book.

How many leaves must a page be broken into for a full GM character creation schema?

• Well, there’s going to be physical abilities, and possibly some relative indication of physical size.
• There are going to be stats for the non-physical abilities.
• There will be some form of a personality profile.
• There will be some form of racial profile.
• There will be some measure of capability.
• There will be some measure of resources that can be used in a confrontation.
• There will be some measure of resources that can be used outside of a confrontation.

Random Numbers

Each of these can be represented by a random number table.

With a flat roll, probabilities are inherently even, and are relatively easy to manipulate. If you start with a base level of 1 in 100, you can easily double or triple the chances of a more prevalent trait arising just by doubling or tripling the chance in 100 of that choice being selected.

There are three problems that arise: (1) you need to associate that base chance with the rarest of outcomes, because there is no capacity for a smaller result on the simple table; (2) it’s very hard to produce anything approaching a natural progression; and (3) the consequence of (1) is that the more common results will chew up a large quantity of the potential space on the table, which limits the number of rare results that can be included. Before you know it, you run out of room.

Every entry that is twice as frequently-occurring as the extreme of rarity represented by the baseline takes away the capacity for one such baseline entry. Every entry that is three times as frequently-occurring takes away two rare choices – and so on. Four entries that are, say, 16 times as likely as the base “rare” result consumes 4×16-4=60% of the capacity of the table.

And there’s a fourth issue, one implied by (2), that rarely gets thought about, because everyone is so focused on problems one through three: (4), plausibility often takes a back seat.

To solve these issues, people with a little more experience usually resort to one of two answers, or some combination of the two: nested tables, or a bigger table.

A bigger table

Let’s look at this one first, because it’s by far the simplest one. What if, instead of rolling d100. or d% as it’s often abbreviated. you also rolled a d-whatever and read that as the first digit of a three-digit number?
d6d% means that your results now run from 100 to 699 – a total of 600 results to play with. or, using a d10, you end up with a d1000 (reading the 0 on the 10 as a “zero” and not a “10”. A d20 gives a d2000.

This usually means that you have more than enough room on the table for every option, and for tweaking the allocations of chance for each option as much as you want. Doesn’t solve problems (2) and (4), though, but those problems are frequently ignored.

Nested tables

There are two approaches to this, but at first glance, they have a lot of commonalities. Individual tables are smaller, and results lead to a whole separate table with a separate die roll on it. d6 x d6 gives 36 possibilities. d20 x d20 gives 400. d20 x d20 x d20 gives 8000 – and the basic probability is still a completely flat curve. This is both good and bad – good because it makes assessment of chances easy, bad because it doesn’t solve problems (2) and (4).

Non-Linear tables

The other approach is to make some or all layers of the nest non-linear die rolls – 2d6 or 3d6 or 2d10 or whatever.

Those involving two dice are inherently simpler because the probability curves are still straight lines. To see this, contemplate the possible results of 2d6: first, all the results with a ‘1’ on the first die (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) and then all the results with a ‘2’ on the first die (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) and so on. Write these on a six-by-six grid and you’ll soon start to see patterns appear:
 

2	3	4	5	6	7
3	4	5	6	7	8
4	5	6	7	8	9
5	6	7	8	9	10
6	7	8	9	10	11
7	8	9	10	11	12

 
Notice, for example, how the numbers in each column are the same as the numbers in the row of the same number? Notice how you get the same number repeating up and across?

If you count up the number of rolls that yield each result, you get another pattern – the only number that appears in every row is a seven, and so that has a probability of 6 in 36. Six and Eight both appear in one less row than that, so they have a probability of 5 in 36. Five and Nine, 4 in 36; Four and Ten, 3 in 36; and so on. If you plot this on a graph, you get two straight lines – one going up to 7 and one coming back down.

I wasn’t going to do this, but it became useful to have on hand later in the article, so here’s a similar treatment of 3d6, with one d6 across the top and 2d6 down the left-hand side. The first column is the 2d6 result, and the last column is the frequency-of-result value determined above.
 

2d6 res	1	2	3	4	5	6	2d6 prob
2	3	4	5	6	7	8	1
3	4	5	6	7	8	9	2
4	5	6	7	8	9	10	3
5	6	7	8	9	10	11	4
6	7	8	9	10	11	12	5
7	8	9	10	11	12	13	6
8	9	10	11	12	13	14	5
9	10	11	12	13	14	15	4
10	11	12	13	14	15	16	3
11	12	13	14	15	16	17	2
12	13	14	15	16	17	18	1

 
To compile the probabilities out of 6×36 = 216, start by listing the rows containing the results:
 

3	= 2
4	= 2 + 3
5	= 2 + 3 + 4
6	= 2 + 3 + 4 + 5
7	= 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6
8	= 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7
9	= 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8
10	= 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9
11	= 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10
12	= 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11
13	= 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12
14	= 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12
15	= 9 + 10 + 11 + 12
16	= 10 + 11 + 12
17	= 11 + 12
18	= 12

 
Then replace each of those row values with the 2d6 probability in 36. Do the resulting math, and you get the chances in 216 of the result occurring on 3d6.
 

3	= 2 = 1 = 1
4	= 2 + 3 = 1 + 2 = 3
5	= 2 + 3 + 4 = 1 + 2 + 3 = 6
6	= 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10
7	= 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 15
8	= 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 21
9	= 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 5 = 25
10	= 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 5 + 4 = 27
11	= 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 = 4 + 5 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 = 27
12	= 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 = 5 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 = 25
13	= 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 = 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 21
14	= 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 = 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15
15	= 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 = 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10
16	= 10 + 11 + 12 = 3 + 2 + 1 = 6
17	= 11 + 12 = 2 + 1 = 3
18	= 12 = 1 = 1

 
There are even more patterns embedded in these results – so much so that digging out and analyzing them can become an addictive interest in and of itself. I won’t try to dig them all out, let alone explain why they are present or what they mean, but a few are noteworthy ones need commenting on:

• First, the pattern of results shifting up and across in the 3d6 table. This is obviously because the d6 across the top increments in results by 1 each time, as do the results down the 2d6 column.
• Second, notice how many rows contain a given result – at a 3d6 result of 8, we hit a peak of 6 because there are 6 columns in the 3d6 table.
• Third, notice the pattern in the listing of rows containing a given result – 2 – 2 & 3 – 2, 3 & 4, and so on. When we get to the peak number of entries, we start losing the leftmost entry to make room for a new entry on the right-hand-side – and when the rows reach 12, there are no more replacement rows, so the number of entries starts declining.
• Fourth, notice the pattern in the translation of those row results into a probability-in-36.
• Fifth and finally, notice how the dumbbell probability shape emerges and is defined by the components that make it up. At the start, each result is the sum of the previous line plus the result column in question – so the result for the second row is 1 (the previous row) plus 2 (for the second row) = 3. Even the first row obeys this rule if you assume that the ‘zeroth row’ contains a 0 result. That means that the curve is continually steepening until we get to the eight result of 21. But from that point on, we’re losing a leftmost contribution to make room for a rightmost one, and the latter are getting smaller with each row – so the curve flattens out from this inflexion point.
• Oh, and a PS: the peak probability of 27-in-216 appears twice, telling me instantly that the average result is “something and a half”. But this is a theoretical number; you can’t actually roll it. So, like quantum phenomena and Schrodinger’s Cat, any real results have to “collapse” into one of the two integer results on either side of the average. Which is just a cool factoid in its own right.

Practical application: From the point of inflexion until its mirror-image on the far side of the probability curve (results of 8 and 13, respectively), individual results can be assigned meanings with some granularity, especially if the middle band (10 & 11) are coalesced into a single outcome. This will make ‘average’ outcomes FAR more probable than any other – 27+27=54, and 54 out of 216 is exactly 25% of the results.

If you want to flatten the probability of extreme results a little, you need to combine two results together in a similar way, but combining two results other than the most extreme three always exceeds the probability of the next highest outcome – so a result of 15-16 is more likely to occur than a result of 14. Nothing wrong with that, but your results table needs to be reordered if that’s the structure you’re using. The alternative is to combine non-adjacent results.

That gives a table with 9 entries:

3, 5 = 7/216 = 3.24%
4, 6 = 13/216 = 6%
7 = 15/216 = 6.9%
8-9 = 46/216 = 21.3%
10-11 = 54/216 = 25%
12-13 = 46/216 = 21.3%
14 = 15/216 = 6.9%
15, 17 = 13/216 = 6%
16, 18 = 7/216 = 3.24%

or, further collapsed a table with 7 entries:

4, 6 = 13/216 = 6%
3, 5. 7 = 22/216 = 10.2%
8, 9 = 46/216 = 21.3%
10, 11 = 54/216 = 25%
12, 13 = 46/ 216 = 21.3%
14, 16, 18 = 22/216 = 10.2%
15, 17 = 13/216 = 6%

or, still further collapsed, a table with 5 entries:

3-7 = 35/216 = 16.2%
8-9 = 46/216 = 21.3%
10-11 = 54/216 = 25%
12-13 = 46/216 = 21.3%
14-18 = 35/216 = 16.2%

[This 5-entry table is what I need for later in the article.]

There are other ways of collapsing and coalescing results. Game designers love playing around with such geekery – if they are any good at it. But that’s as far off point as I need to stray, for now.

The more dice you have, the more sophisticated the resulting curve, until it becomes a very close approximation of what is sometimes called “natural” probability. And that’s very useful, because that means that you can map rare results to unlikely results with a very simple roll. This is the basic principle of AD&D (and second edition D&D) and the Hero System and all sorts of other RPGs that are dice based. It was D&D 3.x that took such a system and (mostly) made it a flat roll using a d20 – something that I did for the Hero system a long long time ago (1981, to be exact).

Using combinations of flat rolls and non-linear rolls, you can solve all four of the problems – but it’s a lot more complicated and a lot more work. In fact, most rule-writers start playing around with such systems without fully appreciating just how complicated they can get (If you’re interested in looking deeper into this subject, which is in danger of wandering off-topic here, you can look at my descriptions and analyses of the Sixes System that I created a while back – see this series of posts).

Connections

By the time you are experienced enough to really dig into the nuances of such systems of die rolls, and understand why something you’ve put together does or doesn’t work (or why it seems to work sometimes and not in others), though, you are already approaching the point of outgrowing such simple random tables.

You start seeing connections between the content of different leaves of the flip-book and – usually – try to reflect those by incorporating the concept of modifiers, and by completely reorganizing the structure of the tables.

For example, don’t you think that the selection of Species might have some bearing on the physical stats? Don’t you think that a high roll for physical stats like Strength would have a similar impact on the options available for personality profiles? How about the non-physical characteristics?

You probably haven’t finished revising the pages of the flip-book when Confluences start showing up. Species may impact the physical stats – but won’t it also have an effect on the available personality profiles?

Before you know it, your simple system is groaning under the weight of conditional modifiers and is so complex that it becomes a miracle if it ever works right. Realism is what usually suffers the most – problem (4) is back, and is often far more noticeable.

Usually simultaneously with the above, you start trying to factor in regionality, and not just environment – so you might have a bonus for Elves to appear in a Forest, but that bonus would go WAY up if the Forest lay in Elven Lands. Every such refinement adds to the complexity and the difficulty of creation of a general set of pages for your flip-book, and increases the chances of some gross miscalculation.

Generalities

Often, the next stage of expertise achieved by a GM involves generalities, which are attempts to simplify the whole process. For example, you might dedicate a full third of your racial outcome probabilities to “the same as the last encounter”. You might dedicate half of that amount to “natural enemies of the race previously encountered”, and another third of that original amount to “species closely associated with the species previously encountered”.

In effect, this extracts specific general cases from the master table and sets them aside as a simplified subsystem relating to one key parameter of the leaves of the flip-book.

Another way to look at it is to create customized character generation systems for each general representation on the list of entries pertaining to your key parameter. That could be environmental – a purpose-built set of tables, if not a whole different sub-system of character creation, for Urban Communities and Settlements.

Or is that Urban Communities and Settlements of a particular population level?

Or Forested Urban Communities and Settlements of a particular population level?

Or Forested in Elven Lands Urban Communities and Settlements of a particular population level?

How finely do you differentiate?

By now, the trap and flaw with this system is obvious – it’s either too blunt a weapon, or too much work, or both. I can easily envisage a situation in which you need 120 or more character generation systems to accommodate all the local variables – and even if those are all variations on the one set of master tables, the results are so much work that its almost impossible to do adequately. By the time you got half-way through, any enthusiasm for the project would have well and truly dissipated – and there’s always the possibility that your differentiation isn’t specific enough. And, worse still, 90% (at least) of this work will never be used, and that means that you’ve diverted time to the project that could have been used more productively.

Interpretation

Most GMs make a start down this dead-end, discover the trap, and start looking for a different solution. Either on their own, or as a gift from some other sympathetic GM, they find themselves pursuing the path of Interpretation.

This generalizes the whole process all the way back to the original flip-book concept, does away with the whole concept of connections (but probably keeps the nested tables for their realism value). One system for all.

But consulting the flip-book is now just the first or second step in a process. Each sentient species now comes with a set of guidelines for interpretations, and a general cultural description. If you get a result on a subsequent leaf of the flip-book, you can either interpret it – or flip at random to a different leaf and see if that fits any better.

Once you have a characterization, you then refine it for locality, sub-culture, and circumstances, as you see fit.

Simplification, Generalization. Abstraction, and Deeper Interpretation

A successful result or two sets your GMing feet on a continual process of simplification and generalization as you discover more and more that doesn’t need to be explicitly stated and can be left out and generated at need.

The more practice you have, the more comfortable you become at refining and interpreting a generalized or abstract characterization into an individual, on the fly, and the more you simplify the character generation process.

Ultimately, you may even discard the entire (metaphoric) flip-book in favor of some more abstract process.

I’ve offered several such abstract processes here at Campaign Mastery. The ‘Characters‘ page of the Blogdex contains more than 100 links to past articles, with more to be added.

In particular, I should direct attention to

• The Backstory Boxes – Directed Creativity
• Creating Alien Characters
• The Wellspring Of Euonyms
• What matters to your character – the value of the shameful secret
• Part 3 of the series on Writers’ Block, which deals with characterization
• Leaving Things Out: Negative Space In RPGs
• 3 Feet in Someone Else’s Shoes – getting in character quickly
• Ask The GMs: Seasoning The Stew (making races feel distinctive)
• Principle, Cause, and Course – complexities in motivation
• Getting Into Character Part 1
• The Characterization Puzzle Series
• The Ubercharacter Wimp
• Look Beyond The Box – a looser concept for NPCs
• By The Seat Of Your Pants – the 3-minute (or less) NPC
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics
• Inversions Attract: Another quick NPC Generator
• Creating Partial NPCs to Speed Game Prep
• The Flunky Equation – quick and easy Hors d’Combat
• I See With My Little Mind’s Eye: The Power Of Visualization, and finally,
• Ten Tips For NPC Creation

The inaccurate presumption

Having charted the evolution of technique that most GMs experience, it’s time to look back at the original proposition with a more critical eye.

One way the inexperienced think that being more experienced as a GM is that they have accumulated a wealth of stock characters that can be pulled out of the ‘hat’ at a moment’s notice as needed.

Anyone who has this impression is mistaken. If anything, experienced GMs rely less on an accumulated stockpile of characters than they do their ability to improv and interpret abstract characterizations.

Experienced GMs are actually less likely to resort to a stock character, because they become more skilled at compiling a unique and original character on the spur of the moment, and more confident about their capacity for doing so.

…as I said.

Let’s review the flip-book to see this in action:

• Physical Abilities, and possibly some relative indication of physical size.

Physical Abilities aren’t really needed. A relative indication of physical size (taller, shorter, fatter, or thinner than average) might be useful but can often be implied by characterization. So this entire set of leaves can be left out.

• There are going to be stats for the non-physical abilities.

Again, this is not needed, because personality and competence are enough to indicate the contents, and in a more directly useful way.

• There will be some form of a personality profile.

Now, this is something that’s always useful – but what’s desirable is a more abstract system that permits interpretation. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but somewhere in my voluminous accumulated notes I have a personality generator that takes a small number of d20 rolls and selects, menu-style, from a list of personality traits. There are no indicators of how these traits fit together or how they express themselves or their causes or even the underlying psychology – that’s all interpretation. When, eventually, it surfaces, I’ll be posting it here at Campaign Mastery.

• There will be some form of racial profile.

The creature’s write-up in the Monster Manual (or equivalent) is ample for this purpose. In fact, it’s more than enough; distilling the entries for each sentient species that might be encountered down to a single paragraph as a ready-reference for the busy GM, in order of encounter likelihood, would be a far more beneficial use of time than creating a whole character generation system.

• There will be some measure of capability.

When I originally listed this, I was thinking in terms of D&D character levels or the character-points base from the Hero System, and I suspect that most readers would have assumed those are the sort of things I was referring to. But that’s more detail than needed. Instead, I would use two 3d6 rolls and a far more abstracted results matrix – I’ll present one at the end of this section.

• There will be some measure of resources that can be used in a confrontation.

And, with such a 3d6-by-3d6 matrix, this becomes somewhat superfluous – if someone is ‘highly capable’, that carries certain implications in terms of the resources that they have available. Again, see below.

• There will be some measure of resources that can be used outside of a confrontation.

Even more than the confrontational resources, this is implied by the combination of personality traits and the matrix result. However, recasting this as a more abstract indication permits the readout from the matrix to be the input (with one of the two previous 3d6 results) to nuance the outcome.

In summary, what we have left is a characterization, some racial profile notes, and some abstract indicators of capability and resources. Almost everything else can be generated on the fly.

Almost everything else. Clearly, I think that there’s something missing, and that this was missing from our original flip-book model to start with, no matter how complete it may have seemed.

I’ll deal with that in just a moment, too.

A Demonstrated Capability Matrix

To a certain extent, it doesn’t matter how skilled or capable a character is, potentially; other characters can’t see potential, they can only objectively measure actual results. However, some characters can promise much and under-perform – or be an armchair expert with no field expertise at all. So the distinction can be important.

Achievement level relative to opportunities:
 

Opportunities [3d6]	Achievements [3d6]	Interpretation
3-7	3-7	very few opportunities, all wasted
	8-9	very few opportunities, not exceptional
	10-11	very few opportunities, did okay, local craftsman
	12-13	very few opportunities, did very well, needs support
	14-18	very few opportunities, did exceptionally well, improved circumstances will follow
8-9	3-7	limited opportunities, substandard performance
	8-9	limited opportunities, inexperienced performance
	10-11	limited opportunities, performed adequately
	12-13	limited opportunities, did very well, needs practice & training
	14-18	limited opportunities, did exceptionally well, apprenticed to a master
10-11	3-7	typical opportunities, wasted them, a failure
	8-9	typical opportunities, substandard performance
	10-11	typical opportunities, workmanlike performance
	12-13	typical opportunities, shows promise, needs more experience
	14-18	typical opportunities, did exceptionally well, regional respect
12-13	3-7	ample opportunity, under-performed badly
	8-9	ample opportunity, made sloppy mistakes
	10-11	ample opportunity, a professional but no genius
	12-13	ample opportunity, did well, able to tackle any job
	14-18	ample opportunity, did exceptionally well, national respect
12-13	3-7	privileged beginnings, wasted every opportunity
	8-9	privileged beginnings, unskilled performance
	10-11	privileged beginnings, barely adequate performance
	12-13	privileged beginnings, lived up to expectations, administrator
	14-18	privileged beginnings, exceptional performance, famous or will be so

 
This table presupposes that a privileged starting position or natural genius will equate to roughly the same level of opportunity to demonstrate competence. While the dominant thought in constructing it used the paradigm of a builder or architect, the general pattern will apply to everything from swordsmen to accountants, from beekeepers to lawyers, from factory workers to research scientists. The “big” contracts (a relative term) will go to those in the top two tiers, and the top three results within those tiers – or, if a local contract, to the top two results of the middle tier.

There’s lots of scope for interpretation, depending on context. In D&D, for example, the bottom result of the top tier could represent the thumb-fingered son of a local noble, taken on to keep a patron happy. In any setting, but especially in more modern ones, it represents an incompetent who survives due to inherited wealth or position, or corrupt business practices. The result above may represent someone who’s just not very good, or someone who has abilities but has poured them down a bottle, or who has made a massive mistake in the past and is now trying to rebuild a shattered reputation.

From these results and their interpretation, you can determine what level of resources the character has available to them – one result fits several possibilities. You could roll randomly, but the results are likely to be inconsistent with the characterization; it’s better to determine the latter and then interpret the confluence of personality, opportunity, and success.

The Relationship to Career

Race and stats and level of success and capability and the difference between resources earned and resources expended are all well and good, all useful in their own ways – but our original flip-book concept left aside entirely the whole question of what the character does. Is he a priest, a preacher, a scribe, a butcher, a general, a librarian?

This was left off for good reason. If you have a defined personality, who has done well, you can select a career that is appropriate for that personality. If they have not done so well, you can choose a career to which they are not so well suited, or apply some other reason for the failure. Without both personality and the above Demonstrated Capability Matrix, you can’t select a career appropriately.

If, on the other hand, you have a particular profession as the defining characteristic of the NPC you are creating, the Demonstrated Capability Matrix defines the suitability of the personality to that role – again, without it, you can’t determine the relationship between profession and personality.

The X-factor

One further level of abstraction is possible, and that is to take the entire question out of the in-game realm entirely and employ a metagame generation principle – a Concept. Think about which characters will advance your plotline. From amongst those, pick the one that is most interesting, or will generate the most entertainment. Take that central concept and make it plausible, make it believable. That will select a personality profile for you, and replace the die rolls on the Demonstrated Capability Matrix with a deterministic outcome – and, as I’ve pointed out already, from those fundamental basics, the entire character can derive.

How much of that derivation can be done on the fly is a function of experience. It’s always preferable to do work in advance if you can do so; but if you need something improvised, such a concept will steer you in the right direction. It’s an entirely acceptable compromise to gave generated the concept in advance – and to have left it at that.

When you dig right down into all those past articles and techniques, they are all methods for generating the seed of a character concept. They just hide that truth to a greater or lesser extent.

The same is true of the Demonstrated Capability Matrix offered above, and of all similar game aids relating to characterization: they are, ultimately, all supports and seed-generators, or at their best when used in that way. Master the principles and techniques of character generation, and you too will have a Wealth of Characters – without going to all the trouble of generating and stockpiling them.

A necessary preamble

For anyone who writes articles that they intend to last (called ‘evergreen’), one of the most annoying and frustrating phenomena occurs when you have a really great idea for an article – but by the time you can get the essentials down in some permanent form, it’s vanished from thought like a puff of smoke.

Last week, I had just such an idea – and by the time I got to make a note of it, the idea was gone. One day, it might come back to me, or it might be gone forever.

When these things happen, there’s not much that you can do other than get up, metaphorically knock the dust from your shoulders, and go with a Plan B.

I always try to have a Plan B for any critical event, whether it’s going to an appointment, putting together a plot thread for an adventure, or writing an article. Often, the trick is knowing at what point you have to abandon Plan A if Plan B is to be completed in time.

This article is a Plan B, but one that was always intended to get presented at some point in the near future.

One of the early Ask-The-GMs was a question about creating mystery plots – Ask The GMs: Penetrating The Veil Of Mystery – in which I described a near-catastrophic failure in adapting a mystery to an RPG setting, and looked at why the problems that almost scuppered it had arisen.

I revisited that incident with additional details in tip 2a, “Ripoff Blues”, in Eight Little Tips: A Confection Of Miniature Posts.

In between those two, I wrote a more extensive article on the subject, The Butler Did It: Mystery Plotlines in RPGs, which has since become one of the most popular on the entire website. I followed that up, at a reader’s request, with a couple of examples in The Jar Of Jam and The Wounded Monarch: Two Mystery Examples a week later. (The first of those has since come in for high praise from a number of sources and been linked to by WOTC themselves in a blog article on the subject!)

Aside from the occasional mention, that’s more or less where I’ve left the subject because I literally had nothing further to say. But, in the past week or so, it’s been on my mind as a subject because I had a mystery without a satisfactory solution on my hands in a broader plotline.

This article isn’t about that particular mystery per se; that was just the catalyst. But, as a result of my ruminations, a few deep thoughts came to me; this article is all about sharing them with you, the readers.

On the agenda today are – 1. getting the players involved, 2. a couple of thoughts about clues; 3. a technique for seeing the Big Picture in the small details (and vice versa), 4. roleplaying in a mystery, 5. the structure of a mystery plotline, and finally, 6. finding and assessing solutions to the mystery.

Let’s get started….

0. Working Definitions

A mystery plotline is one in which a question is posed either by or to the PCs for which there is no clear and obvious answer. Almost any question can be the foundation for a mystery – “Who” is the most common, but “Why” and “How” are also common. “Where” and “When” are more unusual. Most of the time, one will be dominant, but they will all need to be answered in the course of the investigation. I remind myself of this by remembering the well-known phrase from “Clue” (or “Cluedo” as it was here in Australia) – “Professor Plum, in the Library, with the Candlestick.”

The plotline details the investigation that resolves this problem to some identifiable standard. That could be “justice is served” or “know the identity of the enemy” or “discover what’s really going on before it’s too late” or “capture the bad guy and hand them over for prosecution and punishment”, or any number of other alternatives – but this is always identifiable from the outset to the investigators, and shapes the available pathways to a solution..

The investigation may be hamstrung by the need to adhere to certain restrictions, such as evidence being legally admissible, but more frequently, the players will not adhere to such restrictions unless forced to do so.

Mysteries can be the focal point of an adventure, or may be a smaller sub-plot in some other storyline. They can also form a plot arc weaving through multiple adventures as a subplot.

“Means, Motive, and Opportunity” are the generally-accepted requirement for proving someone guilty of the commission of a crime – which are often at the heart of a mystery plotline (this, of course, immediately provokes most writers into contemplating situations in which someone can have all three, yet not be guilty).

So, if we’re all clear on the ground rules, let’s get to the real meat of today’s offering.

1. Matters of Presentation

Like most t forms of RPG, writing for a Mystery means engaging in a dance with two partners. At one level, the content has to attract the interest of the characters, but (even more importantly) it also has to compel the players to take an active interest.

There’s not much that’s worse than hitting the first of those two targets and not the second; that, effectively, compels the players to engage in something they are not interested in – which is as good a definition of a ‘chore’ as I’ve ever come across. RPGs are supposed to be fun…

Engaging the characters

It’s actually relatively easy to engage the characters, because they are in writing to a large extent, and where they aren’t in writing, they have been exposed to past events that reveal their natures and personalities. If a mystery connects to some subject that’s of interest to the character, that’s all you need.

You can even infer such interest even if that itch has never been scratched in-game before – if the character has a skill in it, or in some related field, you can largely assume that a connection can be forged.

If, for example, you are presenting the players with a Loch Ness style monster mystery, and the character is a fisherman, the hook has been baited with an irresistible lure; you just have to dangle it in the water for a bit.

The better you know the characters, the more success you will have at this with less effort, and the longer the campaign has been running with these characters, the better you will know them.

Enticing the players

Enticing the players to engage is often the more difficult part of the process. They are more complex and nuanced as personalities, frequently have only a limited and visceral understanding of themselves, and are not codified at all. “I know what I don’t like and this ain’t it” is often the best that you can hope for, to misquote the redneck trope.

To some extent, side-conversations and general chatter can be illuminating, because these display a person’s interests outside of the focus of play. As a GM, you don’t care if the player and PC have different reasons to be engaged in the plot; what you care about is that they are both so engaged.

In particular, listen to what TV shows and movies they like (or don’t) and what plotlines and plot structures they like and dislike. Similarly, note any likes and dislikes in novels and other stories. Note the subjects of any anecdotes – but be prepared for the player to be more of an expert on the subject than you are!

The Texture Of Mystery

Mysteries hold a greater propensity for frustration than any other sub-genre of adventure. So long as the characters have a clear course to follow, this is mitigated, but leaves you vulnerable to finding yourself in a situation where you are railroading the plot.

It’s very easy for mysteries to become clue-driven, and since you are the dispenser of clues, and of the logic that connects them, railroading is ever-present as a danger, in any event.

Clue-driven mysteries are like color-by-numbers books – the end result may be appealing, even satisfying, but the process is superficial, and leads to performances that can be ‘phoned in’. I have found that watching B-movies and trying to discern why a given movie falls into that category can be enlightening in terms of a cautionary tale, i.e. what not to do. This is especially true if the movie or TV show clearly aspired to something better – an a-list cast, proven scriptwriters, solid direction and producer – the more a production tries to be an A-list product and fails, the more that there is to learn from it.

Often, the flaws will be subjective, and that’s where there is the most gold to be panned. For example, the movie “Se7en” was a moderately-big hit, world-wide – but I didn’t enjoy the ending. You want your heroes to get there in time to save the day; real life may not be that way, but too much realism gets in the way of entertainment. There is a difference between realism and plausibility; you want to stretch the realism as thinly as you can in favor of entertainment. The ending of “Se7en” falls on the wrong side of that equation for me, and for most of my players.

Equally-educational can be those productions that are more than the sum of their parts, that come together despite being handicapped in many and various ways. These are productions that clearly aspired to be nothing better than a Good B-movie but which rise above the pack to be solid entertainments despite their handicaps. As an example of this category, I commend to your attention a movie called “Ricochet” starring Denzel Washington and John Lithgow, made before the former became a star of the magnitude that he came to enjoy after the Pelican Brief made it big. Comparing the differences in resolution between the original novel of “The Firm” and the movie version is also educational – because they both work, in terms of the medium in which they are presented, while the solution of the other medium would not be as effective.

While the lessons so discerned are always important, mysteries are often the sharpest point on such matters. They have a textural component that makes them especially susceptible to problems that might otherwise be glossed over. It’s my opinion that this is because there are fewer distractions to cover up those flaws in such adventures, which is not the case when it comes to movies and TV – in a Mystery RPG Adventure, there is nowhere to hide.

That mandates closer attention to the ‘feel’ or ‘texture’ of the Adventure than you need to pay in non-mysteries.

I once ran a game session in which a thirty-second character interaction grew and expanded to fill almost the entire session, simply because the players were having so much fun interacting with this fictional individual. In terms of roleplaying, of bringing this NPC to life, I was “in the zone” that day, to the point where even the experienced players congratulated me. That doesn’t happen often. The next game session, the magic had gone, and everyone got on with playing out the adventure. What I was most aware of, after the fact, was the difference in the ‘look and feel’ between those two sessions – same players, same characters, same plotline, same adventure, same situation, same GM – but nevertheless, different. Fortunately, I didn’t fall into the trap of trying to recapture that past glory, which is very easy to do; the feeling when you are “In The Zone” can be intoxicating. I knew that the stars would not have aligned so perfectly a second time around, and the results would have been a pale shadow of the past success. That’s what makes it such a feather in your cap when it happens.

The point is this: when it works well, the results are greater than the sum of their parts, and the texture is the stylistic framework that brings those parts together and binds them. You can have the best ingredients in the world; they will be hamstrung if they aren’t combined properly, and that means getting the texture right.

Another way of looking at what I mean by texture is to describe it as the “Metagame style” of the adventure – how the game mechanics and the in-game world are melded together in terms of the in-game events that comprise the adventure. Making a skill check at the right time can be a crescendo, the denouement of the entire experience leading up to it, or it can be deflating, and it’s all in how that particular skill check is handled and the lead-up to it.

Pay closer attention to the texture, the feel, and the pacing of mystery plots. It won’t guarantee success, but it will alleviate the avenues of failure.

2. Clues

Mysteries are frequently, if not perpetually, clue-driven, as I stated above. That means that the treatment of clues is critical to the success of a mystery plotline. This treatment has to balance on a knife-edge, because there are too points of failure that are polar opposites: clues can be too obvious, or they can be too obscure.

Too obvious

This frequently arises in reaction to a sense that the clues are too obscure, or were too obscure in a previous adventure – correct or otherwise. In other words, you underestimate the capabilities of the players, often because you overestimated them in the past. But one session is not the same as another; on any given day, the players can outperform themselves, and you can’t predict when that will happen.

What’s worse is that there isn’t a lot you can do about it when you make this mistake, not without overreacting. Trying to complicate your mystery at the last minute is the usual response, and it never works. The best response is to cut out entire scenes that are now redundant and short-cut the adventure – and to have something prepped and on standby to fill any excess playing time that results. But that requires knowing your mystery, and its moving parts, like the back of your hand.

That, in turn, exposes a risk that comes from a canned mystery adventure. These have to be written to suit the vast majority of game-tables, the lowest common denominator – and that’s never your game-table. And, since you have rarely read and understood the structure of the mystery as well as comes from having written it in the first place, you are totally reliant on the match between the expectations of the writer and the reality of your players, as they are on that particular day, marrying up perfectly – which happens so rarely that its not worth writing about.

Worse still, your players will rarely follow the straight line laid out by the authors; they will want to talk to someone that the author never expected them to, leaving you scrambling to fill plot holes that should not exist.

There are no easy answers to this problem – you need an understanding of the source material that you simply can’t get on the spot. The only answer is to be prepared to throw the source material away completely, in terms of plot and solutions to the mystery (keep it for characterization and locations) and let the players discover their own solutions to the story.

One final word of advice before I move on – the night before you are to run, read your adventure from start to finish. Pay special attention to any need to skip forward or back within the content and where you have to go to find what you needed to in order to understand the adventure. Even if you are the author, the added expertise in understanding the content and its structure WILL reward the effort.

Too obscure

The opposite problem comes around when the dichotomy between the players and their characters gets exposed. No matter how skilled they might be at impersonating the characters, players are not their characters. The characters know things, by virtue of living in the game world their entire life, that the players can’t even conceive of, and they will have subtly different thought processes.

The consequence of this is that the players struggle to connect dots that the GM expected their characters to link together effortlessly.

If you’re lucky, this will only happen once or twice in the journey from puzzle to solution, and you will be able to cover it with an appropriate skill check or even stat check. This is a solution that becomes wearing, even grating, with overuse, though.

But you can’t rely on players making a successful roll at the critical moment without making the roll insultingly easy, which is a thinly-veiled rebuke of the player – whether it’s meant that way or not. And that means that you need a get-out-jail plan “B” that you can implement. Ideally, that Plan B will have been devised by the players themselves (in other words, by the PCs) – but players grow confident in their ability to improv just as GMs do, and this is one circumstance on which the two can fail to link up. The results are unsatisfactory for all concerned.

There are also occasions when, in an attempt to stimulate a player with a challenge, the GM makes things too hard and the player just goes limp, their every fall-back stymied. This can happen no matter how experienced the player is – and, while it can happen in any session, it’s more likely to arise in a mystery plotline.

It follows that it’s more important in mystery plotlines for the GM to have a Plan B of his own that he has prepped in advance, and that one of the objectives of that Plan B has to be getting the player to re-engage.

3. The Big Picture

One of my skills has always been the ability to see the impact on the big picture of the small stuff – to Zoom In and Zoom out of the mental picture. This has made it easier in the past to explain technical details to non-technical people back when I was in I.T. – one of the managers that I dealt with regularly back then called it the ability to translate “Geek” into “Human”.

It’s an ability that comes naturally to me, something that I find it hard to impart to others because I don’t know how I do it, it happens naturally.

There have been a few occasions where it has let me down, and I’ve made careful efforts to consciously learn from those (I wrote of one such occasion in My Biggest Mistakes: The Woes Of Piety & Magic). Recently, though, I perceived something that may be at least part of the answer to the unanswerable question of “how”. This was a large part of the genesis of this article, and everything else included is a bonus!

The Little Picture

The first trick is to keep track of a “little picture” of the Big Picture. You could think of this as a “thumbnail” of the Big Picture. At each scale of perception of that Big Picture, I simplify each of the small-picture elements enough that this overview can be comprehended in its totality.

Let’s look at how this works:

In an encounter, I can keep track of the personality of the character being encountered and the plot-objective of the encounter, with enough capacity left over to deal with players and their questions and level of engagement.

That encounter is thus one part of a plot thread; I can focus on that plot thread and see it as a standalone entity. It has a purpose and a narrative structure all its own. This is achieved by simplifying the component elements to their key fundamentals – encounters and their purposes within this broader plot. This permits me to revise and break down the broader plotline into smaller chunks that will form parts of actual adventures. That means that I can define encounter sequences in terms of their contribution to the larger plot, their purpose in other words.

By mentally simplifying those plot threads or plot arcs, I can construct a larger narrative from the interaction of several plot arcs and they way they push PC circumstances this way and that. This is either a campaign, or a single phase of a campaign that’s being designed to be long-running. That permits me to break the plot arc into adventures and subplots to be incorporated into adventures.

If the latter, then I can simplify the campaign phase to see how several of them will fit together to tell an even more sweeping narrative.

When most people try to view the relationship between a specific plot element and the big picture, they try to keep it all at the most granular level, I think, and struggle as a result.

A single line of code in a computer program takes milliseconds to execute. That same line of code executed 200,000 times a day takes up a significant portion of the day – so much so that it breaks the functionality of the computer program and the process that it is supposed to support. Nor are all lines of code or steps in a process created equally – some take longer than others. Minimizing those may make for less elegant code – but it makes for far greater efficiency. The same skill, or technique, that I use as a GM permits that big-picture overview (which others can understand even if they don’t understand or appreciate computer code), is what enabled me to perform those ‘translations’. So this is a skill that definitely has a real-world benefit, if mastered.

How to learn or practice it for yourself? I can only speculate on whether or not this will work, but here’s my suggestion.

1. Pick a past campaign that ran for at least ten game sessions, and preferably for a year or more, that you can still remember fairly clearly. This could even be a current campaign if that fits the description better.
2. Summarize one memorable encounter from that campaign into a single paragraph of text, 2-3 lines long, four at the most. Include the personalities of the characters being encountered, any interpersonal dynamics that feature, and the function that the encounter had in leading to either the resolution of the adventure or laying the groundwork for another adventure. While not easy, this shouldn’t be too hard.
3. Think about the resulting adventure. In a single line, summarize the previous summary, focusing on the purpose.
4. Synopsize that adventure in a single paragraph, no more than 6 lines long. Include its relationship to any adventures before or after it, and how they combined to tell a bigger story.
5. Take that synopsis and summarize it into a single line.
6. In a paragraph of no more than eight lines, synopsize that entire campaign. What was its overall story?
7. Now boil that synopsis down to a single line.

That’s all practice, to start developing methods and techniques. To fit everything in, you will need to simplify and leave things out; the trick is to isolate what is significant and identify what can be left out.

Use the same technique with a favorite movie or TV show, which has the benefit of being watchable over and over. Go from scene to act to episode to season to whole-of-show..

Once you have a bit of practice under your belt, it’s time to start to learn to do it for real.

1. When you start planning an adventure or game session, take the time to think about it in terms of what you did in the previous adventure or game session, and how it derives from that.
2. Take another moment to think about what the next game session will contain as a result of the game session you are now planning, and how you can shape the content of the game session you are working on to enhance the next one.
3. Try to summarize the game session or adventure in a single sentence.
4. When you are preparing a character or an encounter, take a moment to think about how it will be influenced by events prior to it in the current adventure…
5. …and then take another moment to think about how it will integrate into and drive the overall plotline of the adventure or game session.
6. Every time your adventure will call for a skill roll, or an attack roll, take a moment to think about how success or failure will impact the course of the adventure overall.

It’s important that these exercises be carried out mentally, not in writing, just as it was important that the initial exercises relieve you of some of the mental burden by putting your thoughts down on paper. Those exercises set a standard, teaching you how much you need to compress, and how to go about it. The exercises described subsequently teach you to create ‘thumbnail’ pictures on the fly, in your head. You may need to reset your targets from time to time with a refresher practice of the initial exercises, though. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, this should get you to success, eventually – I think.

Zooming Out

Having mastered the technique itself, you then need to learn to apply it in real-life, in real-time, when you distracted by a dozen other things. This is just a matter of practice – every time a player makes a decision, examine it in terms of the overall adventure or day’s play; every time you interpret a die roll or answer a player’s question, think about the implications for the big picture. You have only a second or two to do this; if it doesn’t happen in time, move on. It’s important to try for speed, even if you don’t achieve it at first; not doing so can cement bad habits in place, and actually taking the time to complete the task can lead to you losing contact with the moment, the ‘now’. Although you might not be aware of it, each time you make the attempt, your mental speed and ‘muscle’.will develop, and you’ll get a little closer to success.

Zooming in

Zooming in largely happens in prep and planning. Some people think that means that speed is less important; I disagree with the premise of any such statement. I want it to happen fast so that I can use the big picture to guide my smaller-picture content without taking me out of the creative ‘zone’. I don’t want to have to stop and reorient my thinking. So take a second or two to attempt it, without trying for too big a ‘zoom’ movement, and then keep doing things the way you always do. As you start seeing the details that are necessary to support the bigger picture, the awareness and sense of direction that result will naturally integrate themselves into your creative (prep) process.

The Relational Model

That’s all very well and good, but not meaty enough to become the core of an article of Campaign Mastery depth. It was perception of another piece of the puzzle that achieved that.

I recently became aware that whenever I think of an object or event and its properties, I always frame those in relation to the bigger picture of which it is part.

I have several real-world examples to illustrate the process.

Let’s start with the unexpected bill – it happens to all of us. Making the assumption that it has to be paid, either immediately and in full, or after a short delay or in parts (depending on what can be arranged), one of the properties of that invoice is the impact that it has on my personal financial plans, and hence, on my life in general. By looking at it in terms of the bigger picture, I can see how other things might have to be rearranged to accommodate the payments, and what terms I might have to pursue.

In winter, I have (on occasion) been presented with an electric bill for more than A$1000 for the quarter. My heater used to cost $1 an hour to run – that has been replaced with a more efficient unit, and electricity prices have come down a little, so it’s now less than that, but it’s an easy number to work with. Ten hours a day, thirty days a month, for three months? That’s $900 right there. If you can afford to pay bills of that size at the drop of a hat, good luck to you – I can’t. I budget in advance, making all sorts of assumptions, like an annual 5% increase in prices, and an extra $200 on the estimated bill that results in case of heavier than usual usage. I have, in other words, built a budgetary process around preparing for the worst. And if a bill comes in that is worse than my worst estimates? I know instantly how to adapt to cope with it. Before I started doing this, electricity bills were a source of quarterly stress and angst; now, they are a source of mild apprehension at worst, and something that I can ignore most of the time.

Second example: I don’t think of the flavor of a food that I have purchased, I think about that flavor in the context of how it will taste when used in particular ways. I buy mince and pineapple to add to my sweet-and-sour. I add ginger, black pepper, onion, and garlic to tinned ‘chunky’ soups, plus additional minced meat, vegetables, and carbs. I buy preserved peaches or fresh bananas to add to certain breakfast foods for additional flavor. And so on. These products don’t exist in isolation; they are part of a meal, and that meal is part of a menu, and that menu is part of an overall food plan. This permits me to buy five or six weeks’ worth of groceries at a time, minimizing delivery fees – from $12 a week down to $3 over 5-6 weeks, a saving of (conservatively) $600 a year.

Under this way of thinking, an NPC has certain attributes, but these are less important than the relationships between the NPC and other in-game elements (including the PCs). I don’t think of the NPC in terms of their skills, or abilities, or stats, or even personality traits; their defining properties lie in their relationship to the plot and to the other ‘moving parts’ of the game experience.

A piece of treasure will have certain attributes like value and effects, but I am more interested in, and think about it more in terms of, what it will permit the characters possessing it to do that they couldn’t do before. My players have learned to expect this (nothing happens by accident), which means that I can manipulate their expectations with treasure placement – ‘A cloak that gives a bonus toward invisibility from Undead? What’s he (meaning me) got in store for us, this time?’ – Answer: not what you’re expecting, but I want you looking out for moving shadows and graveyards!

The Big Picture in Mysteries

Changing – however inadvertently – a single word or line of dialogue in a mystery can completely transform the whole experience, the internal logic that holds the whole thing together. Everything has to be nuanced to generate the correct ambiance and interpretation that leads to entertaining gameplay while preserving fidelity to the eventual solution. You never want the answer to be the most obvious guilty party, nor the least-obvious – you need to build towards a plot twist. In no other form of adventure is awareness of The Big Picture so important.

It was to evade that need that I offered the solution that I devised, a decade-and-a-half ago, and described in the Ask-The-GMs article referenced earlier. In a genuine faux-Agatha-Christie manner, everyone is potentially guilty, and the actual guilty party is identified in the course of game-play; if the players rule someone out that they shouldn’t, that NPC immediately becomes the guilty party.

But not all mysteries work in that particular mode; big-picture awareness and using it to guide every GMing decision along the way lets me give the players more independence from scripted situations, and a better in-game experience, no matter what the plotline.

Always maintain as much big-picture awareness as you can, especially when running mystery-oriented adventures or plotlines.

4. Behavior

Putting a mystery into an RPG setting has some of the same requirements as doing so in a literary setting, and permits adaption of some of the techniques developed over the years for the satisfaction of those requirements.

Characterization

Having characters act out-of-character happens regularly in real life, but it never works out very well in either a literary or RPG context. Real people are, in other words, a lot more complicated than any that can be expressed in a creative mode; the credibility of plot and setting are too fragile to withstand such breaches.

That said, premeditation permits a character to deliberately conceal their true characterization and identity. This is as true in Mystery adventures as it is when dealing with a hidden double-agent in a super-spy adventure. Success in this approach requires the GM to successfully lie to the players while preserving fidelity to the truth, while providing hints and clues that will lead to the unmasking of the culprit. This is generally fairly easy if the right questions are asked – so the goal has to be to make those ‘right questions’ improbable at the outset.

I once wrote up a mystery adventure in which one part of a split personality tried to murder the other, in a situation in which multiple external individuals had any two of means, motive, or opportunity to commit the crime, and (in some cases) had actually tried to do the deed – unsuccessfully. No-one even suspected that the victim had this mental aberration, the legacy of an encounter with a doppelganger in the service of a Mind Flayer while in a fragile mental state. I never got the opportunity to run the adventure, and it is now long-lost, with only vague recollections remaining. The notion was that the PCs would be able to piece together the fragments of clues to the condition from the statements of the other potential killers until they were prompted to ask the right question – one that would never have occurred to them at the outset. The consistency of characterization would be the key to solving the mystery. If possible, to provide motivation, I would prefer to have one of the PCs be an obvious suspect, if I could possibly arrange it!

Characterization is critical in mysteries, especially if one or more characters are not who they seem to be.

Displays of Characterization

Any time a character is not who they seem to be, you need to provide some display of their true personality that can be ferreted out. Even if that’s not the case, you still need set-pieces designed to put the potential guilty parties on display – and you need to remain true to the personalities that are so revealed, so those set-pieces need to be very carefully planned and executed – while seeming completely natural.

What’s more, if they aren’t to blend together into a hopeless melange, each of these will need to be sufficiently different and distinct that the players can readily separate them. Each has to be a different occasion, in a different setting, with a different tone and different structure; in most cases, the display should seem incidental to the in-game events. A dinner party, for example, might have no other purpose than putting one guest’s behavior on display.

This all connects back to what I wrote about earlier – big picture awareness and designing the small scenes to contribute to the big-picture tapestry.

Ideally, to ensure differentiation, most (if not all) of these display sequences should predate the commission of the crime at the heart of the mystery. Introduce the characters and then tell the PCs why they have all been gathered at this time and place.

Extraordinary Situations producing Out-Of-Character Responses

The one time in an RPG or literary work that out-of-character behavior is acceptable, credible, and even necessary to the point where its absence would be the less credible alternative, is when an ordinary person is put into an extraordinary situation.

The problem with such as the basis of a mystery is that knowledge of the extraordinary situation immediately puts investigators on the path to a solution, which can then become an anticlimax. Discovery of the situation should thus be a revelation, and one that is not easy to achieve. You can get a lot of mileage from a relatively simple mystery whose solution is obscured by the motivation provided by a hidden situation of this type.

There is a maxim that anyone can become a killer if pushed hard enough and in the right way. This scenario explores that maxim, proposing – for example – that a loving mother could commit murder to protect a child, and then conceal their guilt for the same motive. This sort of situation can also explore the difference between Justice and the Law in thought-provoking way by putting the players on the spot – punish the guilty party and the re-victimize the child, let her go free and she may be pushed into a repetition of the act. Some people can plausibly even become serial killers “on the side”, ‘protecting’ other children from the same potential harm. Some of the best episodes of Law & Order have this sort of thought-provoking quality to them.

Persona Thumbnails

I generally find it very helpful in such situations to have produced ‘persona thumbnails’ in advance – in writing. A one sentence, and preferably one-line, summary of each NPCs personality, motives, and the objectives that they will pursue in the course of events. This gives me a foundation when, inevitably, I have to improvise some action or reaction to PC-instigated situations.

I try never to have someone describe the personality of an NPC without providing the opportunity for the PCs to make up their own minds (or be misled by an attempt to subvert whatever truth there might be in the description).

It can also be very helpful to know who an NPC will (rightly or wrongly) hold to be responsible for some action. It can be great fun to have someone identify correctly the guilty party for all the wrong (and easily dismissed) reasons. “He may be a masochistically obnoxious piece of ruthless pond scum, but that doesn’t mean that he’s wrong”….

This is yet another example of the sort of big-picture “Zoom out” awareness that I described earlier, and the seed of the technique I described earlier for developing this facility in yourself (if you don’t have it already).

5. The Road to Solution

By now, you are probably gaining an appreciation (if you didn’t have one already) for how difficult a Mystery adventure can be to run successfully. I’ve tried hard not to state this now-obvious fact until I felt that it had been demonstrated through analysis, but the time has now come. Mysteries are hard – which only makes nailing the running of one that much more satisfying. To use one of my favorite analogies, nine-tenths of the behind-the-scenes work needed for such success will (or at least, should) never show, like an iceberg.

Having established how difficult they can be, and given some specific advice on achieving satisfactory outcomes in the face of the difficulties, it’s time to take a look at the usual general structure of a Mystery, and how that fits into the telling of a satisfactory story with the players involvement.

Multiple Moving Parts

Another of those obvious truths is that Mysteries can have many more moving parts than most adventure types, and these all have to mesh perfectly for the mystery to be successful. Unfortunately, each mystery is different in terms of what these are and the challenges that this poses to the GM, so general solutions are also going to be less than satisfactory. Awareness of the problem is part of the solution, and some of it can be simply jotting down reminders when something is not going to be front and center of your attention for a while but still needs to be kept track of – but, the main solution is to have developed your ability to monitor the big-picture while handling the detail-scale.

a. Teaser/Hook

Most adventures start with a teaser or hook to get the players engaged. Sometimes, you will want to employ a hook that is unrelated to the eventual mystery that will unfold – essentially, a pretext for introducing the participants before the fun sweeps everyone up in a difficult situation.

b. Investigation

Eventually, a puzzle of some sort will be presented to the PCs for them to solve. They will start by planning some sort of investigation to gather the information they need to reach a solution. This will often present them with an early or obvious theory, or one may have been handed to them as part of the puzzle. It’s critical that there be some sort of pathway for the PCs to follow, if they can’t or won’t devise their own. The latter is a significant warning sign to the GM that the players have not engaged with the adventure, and immediate action to correct this problem is needed.

c. Complications

The investigation will then strike problems, such as disproving and initial or obvious theory. Complications may also take the form of someone actively trying to interfere in the ongoing investigation. The term ‘setback’ is often used in script-writing classes and studies of the theoretical structure of fiction, but I have deliberately chosen this term because it can include a simple raising of the stakes.

d. Progression

For every door that closes, a window should open (and vice-versa). The investigation should never be permitted to stall in-game, though it may get put on hold. A fun way to do things is for the investigation to hit rocky ground, but to distract the players by uncovering something else that may or may not be unrelated that they can get their teeth into in the meantime – an action piece, for example, to give those players that aren’t predominantly intellectual something to get their teeth into. In general, though, progression will take the form of progress in overcoming or bypassing the complications so that the investigation can continue.

[c.-d. repeats]

The Complication-Progression cycle can repeat many times. Watch carefully for any signs that the players are finding it repetitive. The square brackets are a shorthand that I use to indicate optional content when planning adventures and campaigns.

[e. deeper mysteries]

Sometimes, the solution to one mystery only brings to light a bigger one. For example, the PCs might be the target of someone seeking revenge while they are at an unpredictable location – they don’t know who, how, or specifics as to the why. The obvious possibility is that this is a target of opportunity, and the players will probably proceed on that basis, with the full support of the GM. They will identify and capture their enemy, bringing an end to the original mystery, only to learn while questioning him that some anonymous benefactor told him exactly where and when to find the PCs. Suddenly, the original mystery is just the tip of the iceberg…

[f. babushka-doll mysteries]

Sometimes, investigating one mystery can lead to another, without the first being solved. This muddies the waters – you can’t convincingly solve one without solving the other, first, so that you can exclude evidence pointing at mystery #2 from the first one. There are two ways a third mystery can then impact what is already a complicated plotline – either the resumed original investigation leads to another mystery in the same way that it led to mystery #2, or investigating mystery #2 can lead to mystery #3 in the same way that investigating Mystery #1 led to #2.

Either way, I think of these by the collective term “Babushka-Doll Mysteries”, and if you thought a regular Mystery Adventure was difficult and complicated, with a lot of moving parts, each additional “Babushka Doll” increases those problems exponentially. It’s very easy for players (and sometimes the GM) to lose track of the outermost Babushka Doll in the shuffle, or confuse one mystery with another.

g. Resolution

Eventually, though, a solution will appear. Hopefully, at the prompting in-game of the PCs, by finally asking the “right question” (having asked a lot of wrong ones to get to that point), and getting an answer that makes sense of everything that has transpired.

Dynamic, not static

One of the biggest mistakes that GMs can make in implementing a mystery is to have them be static and unchanging. Quite often, the best form of progress in the face of a stalled investigation is for one of the parties suspected to do something that opens up a new line of investigation. Each of them should continually be trying to achieve some personal objective, however trivial in comparison to the mystery itself this objective might be; achieving some milestone in that pursuit changes the context of what has already been uncovered. The guilty party will perpetually be trying to make themselves look innocent, or trying to discover if they are under suspicion; this was the structure of almost every early episode of Colombo, in which the audience had already seen the crime, and might already know who the guilty party is – Colombo would simply stir around, dropping the occasional piece of bait about how difficult the investigation was proving, and see who tried to be helpful in pointing the finger at someone in particular. But he didn’t do so, blindly; he was always very clever at eliciting information that would prove someone innocent, until he found the one party who knew too much about the circumstances of the crime.

6. Solutions

Which brings me to the subject of the solutions to a Mystery. These are not always as simple or cut-and-dried as people might like (meaning the players). This is especially true in a campaign, where plotlines can spill over from an isolated adventure into a larger narrative.

Partial Solutions

Sometimes, you never learn the whole story, or at least, not at the time. There can be plot threads left dangling, to be taken up at some later point in time – that’s part and parcel of a campaign-level narrative. In RPGs, a partial solution usually takes the form of determining who, and resolving the immediate crime/problem, while leaving open a question of “how”. That’s covered under the “deeper mysteries” section of the breakdown of a Mystery structure undertaken above.

Unhappy Solutions

I’ve touched on this earlier in this article, as well – sometimes the solution to a mystery is only a prelude to a deeper problem, of a completely different nature. I am, of course, referring to the problem of the Guilty Mother, which poses a difficult moral question for the Investigators to solve. The solution of the mystery is just a prelude to this more difficult problem – which becomes even more important if there are consequences that will derive from a choice in a future adventure.

Appraising Alternative Solutions

The final item to note in this examination of the Mystery form is the potential for the players to offer an alternative solution to the mystery than the one the GM originally intended. The GM has two choices – he can reject that solution and stick with his original plans, or he can consider accepting it and replacing whatever he had planned with the alternative. To make the choice, if he doesn’t reject the notion out of hand, he will need to assess whether or not the players solution is “better” than what he had in mind.

It could be “better” in many different ways, and even “better” in some and worse in others – for example, one might be more interesting, or more plausible, or create more opportunities for interesting future plotlines, or be more consistent with the established past of the campaign, or simply be a neater package – that’s important if the GM wants to bring this particular plotline to a resolution, which happens toward the end of a campaign. Perhaps the most important possible form that “better” could take is an option that “better” achieves the big-picture goals for the adventure.

Once he has evaluated the proposition, he has three choices, two of which will occur naturally to most GMs out there:

1. Reject the proposition, it’s not “better” enough.
2. Accept the proposition, it’s clearly superior.
3. Take some of the best bits and apply them to the planned solution.

Not “Better” enough

Accepting a different answer means discarding the internal logic that was used to generate the solution and the problem and the pathways from one to the other in favor of revised plot that the GM improvises on the fly.

There may be a contradiction between evidence already obtained by the investigation and the proposed solution. There can be errors in logic. There can be flawed assumptions. These problems might not be noticed by the GM at the time, forcing him to scramble to plug plot holes when they do come to light.

In a nutshell, it means throwing away a lot of what the GM has carefully prepped and replacing it with revised material that supports the new theory, with all the risks and dangers that come with doing so – and that inevitably entails more work for the GM.

So there is a major price to be paid for accepting a “better” solution, one that may not be justified. The GM has to quickly assess whether or not the improvement in the plotline is sufficient to justify this additional workload, and his capacity for carrying that additional load. This is where the ability to zoom out and see the Big Picture is absolutely indispensable.

Accept the proposition

Sometimes, the answer is yes, the improvement more than justifies the dangers and workload. If that’s the case, and the GM has the capability of doing the extra work (in amongst his other commitments), the good of the game demands that he set aside any wounded pride and accept the proposition. And immediately start thinking about how this will impact the bigger picture.

Steal from the proposition

The option that won’t be obvious to many is to steal some or all of the bits that appeal to the GM, that make the proposed solution to the mystery “better”, and revise planned content to add them to the existing adventure structure. This makes these elements of the proposed solution half-right – or correct but misapplied. It’s just about as much work as simply accepting the proposition, but it’s a viable choice when the alternative is to reject the proposal for reasons of flawed logic or assumptions or contradictions with established in-game facts.

I’ve also seen at least one occasion when a player’s half-baked theory illuminated a flawed assumption, error in logic, or contradiction lurking in the tall grass of the adventure – leaving just enough time for the GM to scramble to a solution to his own resulting problem!

Whenever one of the players proposes a theory of the solution, the GM has a lot of quick thinking to do. The decisions he makes in the next few moments can make or break the adventure.

Deciphering The Mystery

Two other articles that are relevant and might prove useful are I See It But I Don’t Believe It – Convincingly Unconvincing in RPGs, about how to roleplay a character convincingly when you want the character’s story to be unconvincing, and The Conundrum Of Coincidence, which looks at the hard reality that coincidence is a real phenomenon that cannot be plausibly replicated in fiction or RPGs without undermining the credibility of the scenario presented. Both of those have an indirect bearing on the subject of mysteries, but ones that are worth closer examination in this context..

Mysteries are hard to get right and do well. We keep using them because they are so rewarding for all concerned when we get them right!

This continues the article that I started last week, offering a simple technique for the quick and easy generation of families for RPGs. Most of the time, this would be used for the families of PCs, occasionally it might be used for the family of an important NPC. I should also note that most of the time, this technique will need a little modification for the generation of Royal Families, simple because they have a far sharper focus on inheritance!

Starting in, I think, the 1980s, John West started a global advertising campaign around the concept that it was ‘the fish that John West reject’ that made their offerings better than those of any rival or competitor. That concept, in a way, is also at the heart of the simplification process.

Whole branches of the family tree are replaced with generalizations, and more time is spent adding to the family as the focal character knows it. That’s the key – this family construction is subjective and not objective.

Normally, that’s a bad thing – objectivity permits truth to show through and fair comparisons to be made, when context is taken into account – but subjectivity has its place. Objectivity can make the character more aware of their family than they ‘should’ be, can make the character more familiar with their history than they ‘should’ be, and leaves fewer holes for the GM to use to forge personal connections between the shared storyline that evolves through play and the characters participating.

One memory has persisted throughout the writing of this introduction – one of my players, for one of his characters, presented a complete family, every member listed in detail, with stats (D&D) and classes and characterizations and a synopsis of personal history. About 1% of which actually got used in the campaign, simply because what he had provided didn’t fit into the plots. The details were incompatible. As a result, 99% of his work was wasted, and it wasted a lot of my time when running the campaign – not something that either of us intended. Prior to that experience, I would have (and did) encourage completeness and objectivity in such things, so this was a developmental experience on my road to where I am now. As a result, the memory remains sharp even now, 20-odd years later.

Throw in the fact that it’s a lot less work, and I have no hesitation in commending this as my preferred technique henceforth!

The process contains 12 stages, one of which won’t always apply. These have been divided into three groups representing increased levels of abstraction and vagueness – the patterns will become clearer as I proceed through specific descriptions.

These steps are:

Immediate Family
1. Family Theme
2a. [Spouse & Children]
2b. Siblings
3. Parents

Family Nexii
4. Matriarch/Patriarch
5. Handyman
6. Record-keeper

Remote & Extended Family
7. Family Clusters – places and family groups
8. Direct-line anecdotes and measures of ignorance
9. Extended family, with anecdotes and measures of ignorance
10. A couple of notables – anecdotes, possibly untrue
11. A couple of family legends

Detail Limits

The level of detail is relatively easy to regulate using the groups and the number of entries to be contained.

Immediate Family

For a family of typical size (2 parents, 2-3 siblings), half a page. As the family grows, increase this length by about 10% for each additional member. If the character has entries in stage 2a, Spouse and Children, they may receive twice this addition (+20%, not +10%). If the family is extraordinarily large (2+ parents AND 9+ siblings/nieces/nephews IN TOTAL), go for a 5% increase per added person.

The larger the family, the less room there is to be detailed and specific, indicating that the character’s knowledge of them will be more general. It is presumed that the player will actually do most of this work, perhaps in consultation with the GM. That’s appropriate because this is all about the PC’s family background – but, once it’s done, the GM has full license to get creative about filling in the blanks and specifics, which will proliferate with growth in the size of the immediate family.

Family Nexii

Normally half a page, max. If the character is a family nexus, or a prospective nexus, you may add 25% to this, to be used to detail the individual who used to have that role in the family prior to the character taking it on.

Remote & Extended Family

At most, a page (approximately) should be devoted to this entire group, again forcing compression, abstraction, and leaving things out. At the GM’s discretion, the last category (family legends) may be excerpted and given a half-page of its own.

For the typical family, that’s two pages, maybe 2½. And a blank line should be left between individual entries to make them easier to parse – that’s about half a page used up before word one gets committed to paper. That’s not a lot of room to contain everything a character knows about his family – but that’s because it isn’t, quite, everything he knows. It’s just that everything else is the GM’s responsibility.

For example, so long as it doesn’t violate anything in the written family description provided, the GM can quite happily tell a player (upon his arrival in a new town), “You have a distant cousin who lives somewhere in this city. You’ve only met Rodrango a couple of times, mostly when you were both children; he’s a little older than you and seemed to be quite a risk-taker back then, getting you into trouble on both occasions. Still, it’s to be hoped that he’s settled down somewhat; you have the vague impression that he married and has children of his own, now. The family are somewhat estranged from your more immediate relatives, due to bad blood arising between Rodrango’s father and your grandfather years ago, but you don’t remember the details (if you ever knew them).”

That should tell the player that his family member is somehow going to be bound up in the plot that comes with this particular location – either a provider of essential information, or a victim, or any number of other possibilities. It also gives them an immediate splash of color, and adds some color to the family that the player knows about, increasing their engagement with the adventure immediately. The Family Member is a bespoke part of the plotline, not something being adapted or injected into it as an afterthought – but it still provides a personal connection to both location and events for the character, which can be important if the plot is something they would normally have more sense than to get enmeshed within!

Sure, the GM is fully capable of dropping that information into the plot, regardless of how much work the player has done in imagining his family – but how much better would it be if this cousin and his story fitted the family story, as devised by the player, like a glove?

What results is not, then, an end-point; it’s a foundation, a garden bed into which innumerable plot seeds have been planted, ready for the GM to harvest.

Immediate Family

Four steps. Half a page in most cases, maybe more, but the growth in space is slower than the growth in family.

1. Family Theme

Every family has a theme, a general single-line description that summarizes the story of who they are. As the circumstances of each generation evolve, so can this story – the character’s grandchildren might have an entirely different view of the family; that doesn’t matter. This is how the character sees his family – which means that his relationships with them will inevitably color the theme, and that the theme itself can evolve and change as the character does.

That means that the family theme is, at least partially, an outgrowth of the personality of the focal character, and this entire process shouldn’t start until the owner of the character has some idea of what that personality will be.

However, if the focal character is currently just a mass of stats and game mechanics, and has not yet appeared in play, this can also be the beginning of characterization, should the owner be ‘stuck’.

Here are some examples to get your creative juices flowing:

     “Flowers in the muck”
     “Diamonds in the very, very rough”
     “Rebels without a clue”
     “Contented drifters on the river of life”
     “Social Climbers who always choose the slipperiest slope”
     “Prickly and dysfunctional but with great depths of affection for each other beneath the surface.”

This isn’t to say that every family member will fit this mold. But every one will have experienced some sense of the generalized family. and have a reaction of some sort to it. So this is not only a kick-start to personalizing each of them, it gives the owner of the focal character a general relationship with the rest of the family that can be interpreted and played off.

I especially want to draw attention to the subtleties that are possible – the first and second items are similar, but not the same. The first suggests that the circumstances of the family may be rough and common, even lower-class, or criminal; but that the family themselves regularly rise above that in some respect or perhaps many respects, even while drawing strength from it. The second says less about the family circumstances and more about the individuals – rude and even crude and crusty exteriors, always arguing with each other and putting each other down, but they would give you the shirt off their back without your even asking, and should an outsider threaten one, the family will instantly form an impenetrable barrier to protect that individual (criticizing him or her and complaining, the whole time).

These show just how much can be unpacked from or implied by these simple descriptions, how much meat can be contained within. This simple statement is, in essence, an abstracted introduction to the family in generalized terms, and the foundation of everything else.

2a. [Spouse & Children]

Which means that it’s time to get specific. The most important people in the focal character’s life are their spouse and children, if they have any. Focus on the relationships and the modes of expression that reflect and cement those relationships. Try to avoid cliches. Specifics should be little more than name, gender (if not obvious from the name), and current age.

What’s the cornerstone of the relationship? In the case of the spouse, what attracted the focal character to them, and vice-versa – and how is the relationship holding up? How do those involved feel about that?

You don’t have time for a long and involved story – which means that this is nothing more than the foundations of a subplot or plot arc to form part of the background of the campaign. So you should be more focused on telling the GM the status quo of the relationship and how you see it evolving over time (how it actually evolves in response to campaign events may be something completely different, so if you have a strong desire for a particular outcome, now is the time to express it).

If you get specific, you might be able to afford 1-2 lines per individual. But if you can conflate individuals into a general statement, you might get four or five lines to describe the general situation – ironically, permitting greater detail in the process. That’s because, as individuals, each has to be followed by a blank line – one that can contain content if the two are treated as one. Which approach you use is up to you. And, the more you can summarize and synopsize, the less space an individual entry requires, leaving more space for others.

Here’s an example: Loldath bonds with her sons over sports and games, never suspecting that she hates them and only participates because they enjoy them. She is closer to her daughter, who loves to cook, and is driven to a study of science by a fascination with the way the world works, the same drive that draws Loldath into politics.”

To see the effectiveness of this approach, let’s summarize:

– Loldath hates games but is drawn to politics.
– Her sons love sports and games.
– Her daughter loves science and cooking.

…and yet, that summary tells us so much less than the short narrative passage about the bonds between mother and children and the expression of the relationship. It also tells us less about Loldath herself! The latter is dry and objective – the former, when added to names and ages, creates a starting point for characterization and personality.

2b. Siblings, [Nieces, and Nephews]

The same process should be employed to discuss siblings and any nieces and nephews. In general, the best results will manifest if you treat each sibling and their spouses and any children as a single “bubble”, OR make a general statement about in-laws and nieces/nephews. These are two different structures for the generalization and compression that almost effortlessly strikes the right balance between specifics and general statements.

As usual, here’s an example or two:

“Harold has an almost paternal relationship with his nieces and nephews, seeing them as representative of the children he never had. They don’t see him in that role – he isn’t with them often enough, for one thing – but they sense his deep affection, nevertheless.”

“Jonlyn feels distanced from his sister by competitiveness with his brother-in-law, something he deeply regrets. He is even more estranged from the older of his two brothers; his relationship with him having always been fiery – but he knows that should his brother ever really need him, he would be there in a heartbeat. Until that day, he’s content to almost pretend that his brother does exist. He is deeply supportive of his younger brother, who has always struggled to emerge from the shadows cast by his older siblings, one of the few things that both elder brothers agree on.”

3. Parents

In most families, there will only be two of these. Some families – exceptions to this rule – may have three, four, or even five (and that’s before unconventional family structures are even considered) – for example, my parents are divorced and both have since remarried, so I have four parents (and get on with all of them).

Here’s a challenge: write down everything you know about each of your parents in three or four lines. When they were born, and where, and their personalities, and their relationships with your other relatives, and all the family history – it’s really, really hard to do without leaving most of it out. But this exercise will give you some idea of how much you need to compress these entries on your family tree. Plus you need to squeeze in the focal character’s relationship with his parents, as well.

You will need every trick that I outlined in my 6-part series on Stylish Narrative and maybe one or two more. The secret to success is not to actually squeeze everything down to the indicated length, but to try to do so – and, if it takes an extra line or two to describe one of the character’s parents, so be it.

That said, self-censorship, and the art of knowing what to leave out, will serve you in good stead.

As usual, an example:

“Brignath has always adored his mother’s spirit and compassion; never cowed or defeated by circumstances; no matter the struggle, she always embraced it in good humor. He worries that he has disappointed her, but his temper was always too fiery and his pride too easily tweaked to fully emulate her example.

“She was born in the midst of a locust plague, when prosperity deserted the land and all had to scramble to make do, and this was always the making of her (to hear her talk). ‘When you have nothing, you feel grateful for the least scrap,’ she impressed upon her children.

“His father was a traveler from afar, a butterfly who landed within his mother’s life one summer, and found himself captive to her positivity and enthusiasm for life. Where he came from before than, no-one knows.

“Brignath simply doesn’t understand paternal parent, and the choices that he has made to favor various obsessions over his offspring over the years; Brignath thinks that his old man would cross a field of broken glass in furtherance of this or that, but wouldn’t even cross the street to see his children. He hopes that there will be more to the story, and that it is not too late for him to bond with his ‘lost parent’ – though it would be with the remove of two adults and not a child’s unconditional love, which was lost long ago.”

Only one example this time, because it is more complete and substantial, and emphasizes the points made earlier.

And that’s the entire immediate family done.

Family Nexii

In terms of relationships and recent histories, the members of the family nexii are treated the same as family members, but with twice as much room to be expansive. In reality, because you need to include some details about how they perform their role, you might think that you need even more space, but in most cases you won’t know very much about their family histories; they simply are, appearing complete and from nowhere within the family, bigger than life.

4. Matriarch/Patriarch

You can generally only choose one – there isn’t room enough in the family for both, much of the time. When both do appear, not only do you have to squeeze two people into the space left for one, but you need to explore the relationship between the two. Part one of this article detailed some of the many ways in which a Matriarch or Patriarch can fulfill their role within the family structure.

You also need to specify how, and through whom, you are related to this personage or personages, and that further eats into the available space.

“The matriarch of Clan Donaldson is Grandmother Levitica, who rules with an iron fist. One does not approach a parent for permission to marry into the family; it is Levitica who must be wooed and won over. If she vetoes a match, it is an ultimatum – choose between the family and the prospective match. If she is in favor, it’s a done deal, no matter what objections a parent might have. Above all other concerns for her is family unity, because her own family was so dysfunctional; once a year, she hosts some social event, which all members of the family are required to attend; it might be a wedding, a birthday, or some other occasion emphasizing togetherness. At least once a year, every branch of the family can expect her to show up out of the blue and take over the social life of the branch, regardless of what plans they might already have; none dare overrule her. Nevertheless, she is always mindful of family unity in the timing of these events, giving ample notice of her intentions. If ever a family member is in need or in crisis, she will be there immediately and in full formidable authority, and will not depart until she is satisfied; at such times, those she was to visit are expected to come to her, wherever she may be, and however inconvenient that might prove.”

That’s one example; here’s another:

“Uncle Joe is everyone’s uncle, no matter their actual relationship. A busybody who can’t leave the least situation alone, he arrives with the force of a hurricane, sweeping through lives and problems, dispensing helpful advice and the occasional form of assistance, cutting problems and difficulties down to size, and then blowing out again as quickly as he came. He visits each branch of the family regularly, at least once a year, if not more often, turns whatever problems may be present at the time into a Project and involving himself endlessly until it is deemed manageable. Gruff when expressing his emotions, but a font of dime-store wisdom. He doesn’t rule the family, he guides and shapes it, having mastered the art of making each branch indispensable to the others, and with the memory of an elephant for all matters practical or family.”

Both are clearly the hubs around which their respective families revolve. And both are open invitations to the GM to make the character’s life more complicated – temporarily. But they also bring resources to the character that the GM can exploit to turn mountains into molehills, when that seems necessary.

5. Handyman

Again, see the first part of this article for more information on this role. How it is done is less important, in this case, than the personality of the handyman. Nor does it matter what their trade or specialty might be; they are simply always there to help, no matter what it is that needs doing.

“The handyman. of the family is Aunt Matilda. Thumb-fingered at the best of times, except when in the kitchen, she will nevertheless appear whenever something practical needs doing (of a certain scope); she will either provide amateur assistance and opinions, in equal measure, or food and opinions that frees the usual ruler of the kitchen to assist. She also loves to make ‘arrangements’ for those areas of expertise that are outside the family’s resources – if a carpenter is needed, she will ‘assist’ in choosing one.”

or, perhaps,

“John Tweedy is a relative by marriage. A carpenter by trade, but unofficially able to turn his hand to almost anything of a practical nature. He likes nothing better than to watch a professional or craftsman perform some task that he doesn’t know how to do himself, taking mental notes and looking for a reason why he can’t attempt it on his own the next time he encounters the need. Sometimes, he finds one; sometimes he doesn’t. When he does, he never forgets it; when he doesn’t, he learns.”

6. Record-keeper

There are many different reasons why someone would become the family record-keeper. It might be a fascination, or nostalgia, or sublimation of some unrequited desire, or curiosity, or a love of photography, or a dozen other possibilities. Perhaps the most common is that they didn’t; they simply inherited the role and the efforts of a past record-keeper and felt responsible to perpetuate it.

Sometimes, the record-keeper can even be the Matriarch, and the family history the mechanism and justification of their rule!

To the rest of the family, it often seems like the knowledge that “X” knows all about it gives them license to ignore the family history and just get on with life – until something happens to make them value a broader perspective on the family, and their place as part of a grander whole. Often, a near-death experience, the birth of a first child or grandchild, or the questions of such, can be the impetus behind seeking the knowledge of the Record-Keeper.

Factor into that equation the fact that we’re mostly talking about PCs who have adventures, here, as the person of focus – and adventures rarely come without some form of near-death experience or crisis – and suddenly, the PC finds themselves more closely connected to the record keeper than they ever imagined they would be.

In a family with wealth, it would also be common for the ‘records’ to be accountant’s ledgers, and not the more common family memorabilia. So there is latitude for individuality in this area, and ways to make the role more interesting. Perhaps the family record-keeper is a Bard who puts the family stories into song?

So the record-keeper is likely to be more important to a PC or prominent NPC than to most members of the family, and that justifies treating them in as much detail as a family Matriarch or Patriarch, and in the same manner. How does the record-keeper function? In what form are the records? How frequently are the records consulted?

Lots of questions – this is where the owner of the character of focus puts the answers.

I’ll forego an example, because the above details in combination with the examples of the other Nexii provide enough of one.

Remote & Extended Family

And with that, the second part of the family structure is complete. From this point, isolated individuals are even less commonly mentioned, and often names are semi-completely left out, or shorn of context. Abstraction and generalization is even more favored and necessary.

7. Family Clusters – places and family groups

Each sibling of the matriarch or patriarch not already detailed or in the direct ancestral line forms part of a distinct and separate family cluster. Where these are male, and so is the line of descendance, they therefore will have a surname in common with the focal character, and the cluster will be geographically-oriented – “The Bristol Kellys”, “The O’Hares in America”, “The Golgaths in Mur-Whizdon”, or whatever. Whenever the surname is not the same as the focal character AND the matriarch, the surname itself is enough – my family has (amongst others) The Reads, The Scarrs, and The Galvins as family clusters.

Don’t try and specify all of them – just a few that have been significant to the focal character. Treat that entire branch of the family as a single unit, specify how they are connected to the focal character, and talk (very briefly) about the focal character’s relationship with them. If there are one or two members of the cluster who are particularly well-known to the focal character, those individuals should be named and specifics of the relationship synopsized – all in the space of half-a-dozen lines (or less if there are many clusters).

“The Zarulths are centered in Lower Dunsdith, in the Greenglow Mountains region. Jacklun doesn’t know them very well, but before they moved so far away, he visited them a number of times in Roaring Bullswither in his chlidhood, and found them friendly but oddly formal and a little stuck-up. His distant cousins Radger and Floreth were good company, though; it’s a shame Radger was killed by a wild Joath some years back. ‘Mater Zarulth’ is the centre of the family, and sister of Jacklun’s grandmother. He always wanted to see their mountain homes, which he imagined to be so very different to those of the plains he knows so well, but the journey was too far and his opportunities too few. One day, perhaps.”

8. Direct-line anecdotes and measures of ignorance

Who were the Matriarch/Patriarch’s parents? Who were their grandparents? How much does the character know about them? Give one or two colorful stories (perhaps of dubious accuracy) that would have survived the years. “My great grandfather was a light horseman at Gallipoli” – to anyone from Australia or New Zealand, that statement means a lot.

To anyone outside of this part of the world, perhaps not so much. I remember that a horse trod on his thumb there, allegedly, and that was why he only had half a thumbnail – but, contrary to this official story, I suspect that he may have been both wounded and very lucky. But I may have mixed up the whole story; I was about 8 years old at the time, and that was a very long time ago.

Geography tends to be fairly tightly woven into these anecdotes, and that may demand assistance from the GM depending on the game setting.

“My grandmother’s father was a spy in 18th century Greece.” (really?)
“One of our ancestors was rumored to be a pirate.” (are you sure?)
“The family has a long history of political office.” (then why aren’t you or your parents in Politics, then?)

There’s a tale to hang off each and every one of these, if not several – and you can never tell when the GM will bring one of those stories into modern-day relevance.

9. Extended family, with anecdotes and measures of ignorance

It’s time to mention a couple of other aunts, uncles, cousins, etc – those you know are somehow related to the character of focus, but you aren’t completely sure how. Each should have some anecdote attached that justifies the person of focus remembering them.

A real-life example:
My uncle served as an MP in Vietnam, for example, staying with my Great Grandmother (who was no relation of his except through my parents’ marriage) prior to deployment and leaving some comic books behind – there was a Spider-man, an Iron Man, an Avengers, a Batman, a Fantastic Four, and maybe two or three others. And I remember this story because it was with the Spider-man that I taught myself to read (at 3 years of age, which makes it 1966-7), and with the Iron Man that I proved to my relatives that I could do so.

Don’t ask me which issues they were, though!

I still remember descending the staircase in her apartment, which was wooden, steep, narrow, and twisting, sitting down and lowering myself one step at a time, because it wasn’t considered safe for me to go down it standing up. Each step came up to my shins, making them about eight inches in height. The apartment was positively Victorian in many ways, and whenever I see a documentary about such times now, I flash back to it.

10. A couple of notables with anecdotes, possibly untrue

Individuals who could find a home here are people who aren’t members of the family, or are incredibly distant members, but who get treated as family members, nevertheless.

“Uncle Norm”, who was related to my Uncle-by-marriage, and who eventually became my sister’s father-in-law, for example. Or my step-father’s old roommate, Stephen, or his brother Mervyn. Or my great-grandfather’s second wife – no blood relation to any of us, but as dearly a part of the family of my youth as any ‘real’ great-grandmother could have been. Or my grandfather’s seeing-eye dog. Even some of my school-teachers were almost as close as extended family – and some such are even closer to their students (in some cases).

You can also add in some other family members who the person of focus considers notable for some reason, or anecdotes about family members already listed. The family member to whom I always had the closest resemblance was my Uncle Johnny, for example. I used to compose music for my Aunt Maria to play on the piano (i would have been about 8 at the time). The time the nuns got tired of resetting the high-jump bar and taped it in place, shattering (?) my sister’s kneecap. The time when my little brother fell out of bed onto a shag-pile rug and managed to break his nose and drive the bones back through the skull, having to be rushed for emergency surgery here in Sydney, 700 miles away.

People’s lives can be expressed through an endless stream of little anecdotes like that, and they all add to the family history far more than a dry and empty family tree, which exists only to give those anecdotes context within the family structure.

Always remember to indicate how little the person of focus knows about the individual beyond what you’ve written – it might be a lot or very little. But always, the focus should be on the relationship between the named individual and the focal character.

11. A couple of family legends

Lastly, there are all those forebears who came before get represented in some family myths and legends. The accuracy of these is dubious, to say the least. For example, my family is supposedly related (extremely distantly) to both English and Irish nobility, back in the 16th century sometime. These relatives even went to war with each other at one point – or so a family legend has it.

I have another ancestor who supposedly abandoned his English wife and children and traveled to Australia, where he bigamously remarried and became a vital link in my family chain – or so another family myth represents.

This approach doesn’t focus on identities within the family structure, for the most part; it focuses on relationships and anecdotes. I hope that I have demonstrated that these can be far more informative than the dry and factual structures that most players and GMs put together, while leaving more room for the GM to make the family information relevant. There may be more writing in this approach, but it’s easier writing – it’s a lot easier to tell a story, perhaps a fanciful one, than it is to create and populate a family tree – and the results are a lot more realistic, to boot.

I’m a fan of the history/biography show, Who Do You Think You Are?, as I have explained a time or two in past articles.

Watching some episodes of the show recently, a recurring thought concerning the abbreviated family trees they show finally coalesced into the concept for an article.

That article changed and morphed several times in the process of development. Initially, I was just going to offer one tip, one insight, on family structures for RPG characters. But that led to another, and then another, and before I knew it, I had an entire system for developing perfect families for NPCs and PCs alike. The structure of the article will walk you through this development, because each stepping-stone adds an important concept to the process. It’s possible that I won’t get it finished in one part, though I’ll do my best!

“Perfect”?

The term “perfect” needs some explanation in this context. I’m not interested in creating the sort of plastic ‘perfect’ families that you saw on some 1950s and 1960s TV shows; “perfect” in this case means “perfectly suited to their purpose”.

That purpose is to explain, support, and embellish the personality of the featured character while adding plausibility and realism. It’s also important that the family contains negative space – deliberate holes in the background, some of which the character knows about, and some they don’t, from which future encounters, family situations, and plotlines can be hung.

Family Ownership

That means that, past a certain point of development, the entire family has to be turned over to the GM if the family is attached to a PC. The GM is then free to revise, embellish, or extend the members as he sees fit, provided that the player’s perception of the family remains unchanged. When the player uses this (or any other) system to create his character’s family, what he’s really doing is describing the family from his character’s point of view; these are NPC seeds for the GM to use to add some personal interest and supporting cast to the campaign. The family belongs to the GM – but the PCs perception of them belongs to the player, and can’t be messed with by the GM.

Foundations

I want to start with the diagram shown in figure 1. This shows how family trees on TV shows like “Who Do You Think You Are?” are usually depicted.

At the bottom of the tree, you have four individuals. One of them will either be the featured person or a significant ancestor of theirs – significant in terms of the family as the featured person knows it. That could be an important person in the family, or in their childhood, or it might simply be as far back as they have been able to trace their lineage.

The convention is that these are four siblings, in order of their birth, oldest to youngest.

Above them are their parents. Again, it’s fairly traditional for the father to be on the left and the mother on the right, but sometimes this gets violated to simplify the tree structure when second wives / second husbands and children born out of wedlock are important to the structure.

This abbreviated tree then proceeds through three generations of ancestors who were significant only in terms of their place within the tree. These are nothing but names in the context of the focal point, that key individual. Sometimes, that’s because their contributions to the family story have been described in a previous segment in the report.

The lack of importance in terms of the current story segment is indicated by their ‘names’ being faded or grayed out in this representation; that’s usually not the case in ‘real’ family trees, because you start with the names of ancestors and relatives, not knowing whose stories will be interesting or relevant to the family.

This tree describes the ancestral relationship between the featured individual and a famous or important ancestor, in this case, their Great-times-3-grandparents (sometimes abbreviated ‘GGGgrandparents’).

To make this relationship clear, everything not relevant to it has been left out, and that was the starting point for this article – I started thinking about the things being left out.

A more complete tree

Figure two depicts a more typical family tree. If the person of focus has children of their own at the time, these are shown in the bottom row, and they are one of the two parents shown on the second row up, with the other being their spouse. If not, then the person of focus is on the bottom row. To simplify descriptions, I’m going to assume that the focal point is once again on the bottom row.

That means that the POF (person of focus) is on the bottom row, and the second row shows their parents. The third row then shows the parents of each parent, in other words the four grandparents of the POF; and the fourth row shows the eight great-grandparents.

Things get more interesting with the fifth row – while some of the 16 GGgrandparents are shown, four couples are represented as unknowns, symbolized by the question marks. This is probably more extreme than most real-life cases, but maybe not. I knew only one of my Great-Great-Grandparents, for example. But if I had talked with the three grandparents who survived to the time of my birth, they would have known their parents, and many of their parents’ parents.

This tree traces ancestry back one more generation, into the 32 GGGgrandparents. Once again, there are three question marks, and (of course) the question marks from the 4th generation trace back no further – as a result, only 10 of the 32 GGGgp’s are shown.

The result is a fairly clean, pristine, depiction of the direct ancestry of the individual.

But a family is more than the direct ancestry. Quite often, that’s the least part of it.

What’s been left out to achieve this nice, neat, picture is the extended family – the siblings of every one of those parents and grandparents and GGgrandparents and so on, and their spouses and children.

When I was growing up, on my paternal side, there was my grandmother, and my father’s four siblings; who (one by one) married, and in most cases, had children of their own – my aunts and uncles and cousins. In the direct line, there was my great-grandmother, from whom I think I got my love of city life, and at whose place I taught myself to read. There were also my grandmother’s sisters, and their children and grandchildren (and now great grandchildren and maybe more). There was another elderly relative and her husband but (without getting out the family archives) I’m not sure of the exact relationship – my GGmother’s sister, I think. We simply knew her as “Aunty”. On my mother’s side, there were two brothers and a sister, and their spouses and children – more aunts and uncles. These families formed four or five major ‘local clusters’, two of which overlapped in my home town, and there were a couple of branches in odd places.

While this large extended family came together regularly, I could say that there were only fifteen or sixteen or seventeen that I knew well and saw every week or so. There were others that I saw every year or two (sometimes more often), and a fringe beyond that who were little more than names most of the time. As I grew up, there was a gradual diaspora and the number of clusters grew and grew. Sometimes, family passed away – it happens to us all – but their places were taken by new arrivals (more cousins).

On top of that, there were relatives of my mother’s sister’s husband, who formed a sort of extended-extended-family.

Almost all of those relationships are left out of that neat diagram. In fact, if you were to follow every descendant, family trees don’t grow up like this one, they grow down like tree roots from one ancestor. Adding a new member to that family – which happens every time a member gets married – adds a whole new and growing hyper-extension to the family.

In a more abstract way, this diagram attempts to illustrate the results of the process of hyper-extension over four generations starting with a single couple (who, for the sake of simplicity, have no known siblings).

• Gen0: The couple with no relatives
• Gen1: They have children;
• Gen1: Most of those children get married, adding in not only the spouse but the spouse’s siblings and other relatives, and those relatives’ spouses as well.
• Gen2: Most of those couples have children.
• Gen2: Most of those children get married, adding in not only the spouse but the spouse’s siblings and other relatives, and those relatives’ spouses as well.
• Gen3: Most of those couples have children.
• Gen3: Most of those children get married, adding in not only the spouse but the spouse’s siblings and other relatives, and those relatives’ spouses as well.
• Gen4: Most of those couples have children.
• Gen4: Most of those children get married, adding in not only the spouse but the spouse’s siblings and other relatives, and those relatives’ spouses as well.

Let’s assume 3 children per couple on average, which means that each generation also contains 3 spouses. Each spouse has 2 parents, 2 siblings, 2 aunts/uncles, 6 cousins, 2 brothers or sisters, 2 spouses, and 6 nieces and nephews. There may also be 4 grandparents and 8 great-grandparents, but there might not be – so let’s assume a 50% grandparents survival and 25% great-grandparents – so 2 grandparents and 2 great-grandparents. Those grandparents (both living and dead) have 4×2=8 siblings, 4 of which also survive; and the great-grandparents (both living and dead) have 8×2=16 siblings, 4 of which survive. I think that’s everyone! Adding those up, we get 1+2+2+2+6+2+2+6+2+2+4+4) = 35.

So, the chart shows:

• Gen0: 2 people at the top;
• Gen1: 3 children;
• Gen1: 3×35 = 105 spousal relatives.
• Gen2: the children, cousins, and nieces/nephews all have 3 children each, so 3x(3+2+6+6) = 3×17 = 51 children.
• Gen2: Each of those 51 add 35 spouses and spousal families, so 51×35 = 1785 people.
• Gen3: the 35 people include 17 who will have children, so that’s 51×17 = 867 children.
• Gen3: Each of those 867 add 35 new relatives by marriage, so 867×35 = 30,345 people.
• Gen 4: 867×17 couples have 3 children each: 14,739 sets of three children, or 44,217 children.
• Gen 4: Each of those 44,217 bring an additional 35 new relatives into the hyper-extended family, or 1,547,595 people.
• Adding all of these up, we get 2 + 3 + 105 + 51 + 1785 + 867 + 30345 + 44217 + 1547595 = 1,624,970 members of the hyper-extended family.

Realistically, there is no way that you would ever get to know most of these people. And most of what’s left might be known by name only. But any one of them can find themselves part of the immediate circle of relatives of an individual.

There is, similarly, no way on earth that any player or GM, no matter how detail-oriented, will create and individualize 1.6 million (plus) NPCs.

That’s the inadequacy of a typical family tree – it leaves too many important things out

Of course, it should be noted that the assumptions are completely unrealistic. Some couples will have more than the assumed three children, some will have less, some will never marry, some will die young. Wars and plagues or pandemics will take a substantial share.

The Splintering Of Families

What actually happens is that families break up into smaller clusters, each of which belongs on its own extended family tree. On my side, for example, the Galvins form a large cluster of their own – I’ve met some of them (all of them and many of their spouses in a specific generation, sometimes a number of times, sometimes only once or twice). But I wouldn’t place a bet on my ability to name all of my first cousins from this cluster – they are outside my immediate family. But 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, 4th cousins, 4th cousins by marriage No.

That entire cluster can thus be reduced to an abstract ‘pool’ of relatives, some known and some not. I know of the existence of each of my family clusters, and have the occasional social engagement that connects me to them and renews the bonds – but these are few and far between.

A family can thus be considered to be a series of nested ‘family circles’ – the immediate family in the innermost circle, the innermost core of the most immediate clusters in the outermost circle (which includes any ex-members of the innermost circle who have lost contact with me but know who I am), the rest of the family in a third circle, and so on.

How much I know about the family members is a function of the circle they are in – I know a fair bit about the inner circle (with some more central, who I am in regular contact with, and some more out on the fringes); I know who the members of the second circle are, and have vague ideas about how they are doing and their personal histories; and I have little or no current information on the few members of the third circle whose names I even recognize. (Social Media has enabled me to reconnect with some distant cousins who had almost completely vanished from the second circle into the third).

Including the outer fringes of the immediate family, these days, there are probably 50 members or so. And my family is both large and strongly socially-connected compared to many.

Cluster Hubs

Every family cluster has a hub around which the cluster revolves. Sometimes these are Matriarchs, sometimes Patriarchs. Two secondary hubs may form around Handymen and Archivists.

Clan Matriarchs

It’s been my experience that families all have a Matriarch or a Patriarch. These are the hubs around which social activities take place. When I was a child, the Matriarch was my Grandmother; she was the person everyone kept in touch with, the link connecting the clusters and regularly hosting or visiting those remote cousins, aunts, and uncles. When she passed, the family broke into two clusters, and my Great-Aunt became the Matriarch, largely because she moved into a very central location in the Sydney CBD. When she passed away, there was a further fracturing. For a while, it looked like my Aunt would become the new family matriarch, but she found it to be more than she could keep up with – and that’s how a fracture occurs. Nevertheless, she occasionally steps into that role, and definitely still occupies it with respect to the family cluster that remains in my home town.

Meanwhile, my mother has become the unofficial matriarch of her side of the family, though they have largely scattered into their own remote clusters. She’s even tracked down a branch of the family that none of us knew existed, still living in England.

Matriarchs aren’t all the same. Some exert direct veto over family affairs, some are micromanagers, some are gatekeepers, some are social animals who summon remote family clusters to renew ties with them whenever they start to drift, some are simply the type of person who keeps in touch with everyone, the disseminator of family news. But they are the nexus around which a cluster orbits, the person who has to be invited to a family function to make it “official”..

Clan Patriarchs

Some families don’t have a matriarch, they have a patriarch. And some have both. A Patriarch can serve exactly the same function as a matriarch, or can be the glue that holds a cluster together for some other reason – in the old days, money used to be a major one, and social status another.

Clan Handymen

There’s almost always one person in a cluster who is the person you call upon when you need help – it might be putting in a new window frame or a new roof or whatever. It used to be my uncle Stan, but he passed away too young of a heart attack. My Uncle Dave occupied this role in more recent years – until his retirement, seemed to do as many family jobs as he did paid ones, these days he still does family work but is otherwise retired. My father is slowly assuming this role in another family cluster.

The major distinction between Clan Handyman and Clan Patriarch. is that the former go to the family branch, the latter brings the families to him.

Clan Archivists & Scribes

Most family clusters have one of these – the keeper of the records, the person who know the most about the family history. Quite often, these family members become the Matriarchs or Patriarchs of a family cluster, simply because keeping abreast of that family history implies regular connection with the different branches.

Successors

Most of the time, any objective review will identify the person most likely to succeed one of the holders of these unofficial positions within a family hierarchy. These are people who find themselves attracted to some function of the role – my cousin loves to cook, and is likely to become the hub of the immediate family of my hometown cluster as my Aunt gradually hangs up her metaphoric spurs. She’s been seeing how it’s done for many years. When my mother passes, my sister is likely to become the family archivist, while I expect to be pushed into the role of family scribe, simply because I write quickly and efficiently – my mother has already called me into service a time or two when she’s needed assistance.

What they have in common

It’s fairly rare these days for a clan hub to exercise control over a family cluster. What they do is provide the ‘glue’ that holds the cluster together, socially, forming the hub of the network of family contacts. When my Grandmother died, there was no longer a living relative directly linking my side of the family with the Galvins, and their cluster began to drift away from my immediate family. But the legacy she left behind in terms of forged social connections was still strong, and that enabled my Aunt Muriel to step into the (completely unofficial) role. Every family member who came to Sydney had to stop in to visit her, and many made such trips for no other reason than to do so. When I first moved to Sydney for University studies, I live with her; when I moved back to look for work, I used to visit her every Friday night.

So, here’s the contention that came to me while preparing figure three, which I’ll come to shortly: that outside of the immediate family circle of a character, the only people that you need to define for a family are the clan hubs. Individuals outside of that might connect to important personal anecdotes, but those aren’t necessary to character creation – though writing up one or two such can greatly humanize a character.

A more realistic family tree

The graphic above is my first attempt at distilling all of these thoughts into a coherent structure, one that was capable of containing the kind of extended family that I had experienced. Right away, there was one problem – this is a static picture, a snapshot that is only true of a particular period in family history.

It depicts the family from a character perspective, and describes what the specific individual knows, or thinks he knows, about his family and their history. Which means that whole areas of it might be incorrect.

Family members in yellow are part of the immediate family cluster for the individual. Those in green are names that he will recognize, and about whom he might have a personal anecdote.

Despite appearances, there are only four generations shown – there wasn’t enough room at the top to show the parents of spouses of the third generation, so I had to use a second row for them.

Four primary hubs are shown – the current Matriarch is shown with a red border and the capital M; the current Patriarch is the Matriarch’s son-in-law. The matriarch-in-waiting is the granddaughter of the current Matriarch (lower-case m), while the former patriarch is shown with a crossed-out lowercase p – but when this was drawn up, no distinction was made between the role of Patriarch. and the Handyman.

Boxed off to the right of the diagram is a secondary cluster. Despite appearances, a sibling of the current “Handyman Patriarch” is the only formal connection between this boxed-off family cluster and the main family group; the grandparents of the spouse of this sibling are shown with the main family because they were close family friends with the former Patriarch-handyman, which – no doubt – is how the younger couple came to know each other.

To the left, three children are grouped into an oval with unknown parentage who were adopted, one of whom went on to marry his stepsister or brother. This is not strictly illegal in most places, but it’s unusual, and the sort of thing that gets gossiped about in families. The asterisks on the couple who adopted these three (in addition to two children of their own) indicated that this couple collectively form a secondary hub for the family as the family historians.

At the top, you can see that one person has married twice, having children with both partners, and that both of these children were then married to the children of another couple. This is another unusual fact, and suggests that everything left of the capital M represents a ‘black sheep’ branch of the family.

Once the current Matriarch passes away, there will no longer be a direct connection between the cluster to the left (boxed off in blue), and they will begin to drift away from the primary family. They won’t become a separate cluster until they develop their own primary hub, however – or perhaps it might be more accurate to suggest that when they begin to drift away, someone in the new cluster will find themselves ‘pressed into service’ as a primary hub! At the same time, this will cut the primary family group off from the old secondary archivist hub, so there is a significant risk of the loss of family history when that happens.

When I started work on this diagram, this article was all set to be about family structures and the four types of ‘hub’ – social, authoritarian, practical (handyman), and archivist, and the theory was that those, plus the rest of the immediate family, were all that a PC or NPC needed. Everyone else could be assumed, or would be the subject of a family anecdote.

But by the time it was finished, the ‘family circles’ concept had evolved, and while it doesn’t disagree with that concept, this diagram lacked the capacity to display those. There was only one thing for it – a more complete diagram. So I started putting one together…

The Circles Of Family

…but by the time I had finished, a matched pair of new concepts had arisen – the Significant Person and the Fog Of Distance. Fortunately, this diagram permitted the expression of both – but I’ll get back to that in a moment.

The place to start in understanding this diagram is at the bottom. The person of focus is the red square. That is the PC or NPC who this family is about. Their siblings and parents form the immediate family.

Surrounding that immediate family are the P/M extension, which includes all family members (and their spouses) in a direct line between the Person of Focus and the current Patriarch or Matriarch of the family, shown in pink and blue. The fact that the blue box is off to one side while the pink is directly above the parents and grandparents of the current character implies that this family has a Matriarch, not a Patriarch.

One of their children is labeled R3, indicating that this person is the record-keeper of the family.

Since no Handyman is shown, it can be presumed that this is the function of the Matriarch’s husband, a subordinate Patriarchal role.

The family members outside of the P/M Extension are divided into two categories – those on a direct line back in time and their siblings (above the Patriarch/Matriarch couple) and extended family (below), which are grouped into two branches.

Next, I would draw the reader’s attention to the two purple boxes in the middle of the diagram. The larger one shows the family as it was when the previous Matriarch was the hub, and the smaller one shows the additions to the family while they held sway – long enough for another generation to be born (great-grandchildren), and in all but one case married – but not long enough to be presented with any great-great-grandchildren.

The previous Patriarch / Matriarch are shown, of course (in purple and orange), and the current holders of those positions within the family were well and truly inside the family at the time. The fact that both are centrally located suggests that this was a far more equal position, which – given how long ago it was, and that there would have been a lot less casual travel, is not too surprising. One thing that the modern communications of the latter 20th century have given us is range; before long-distance phone calls became routine, and affordable, physically migrating to a different locality almost certainly meant distance from the family in the social sense, as well.

There is also an earlier ‘keeper of the records’ (R2), the younger brother or sister of the current Matriarch.

In the Ancestors, which takes the family tree of the current POF back to their G6-grandparents (Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandparents), three people are colored – one couple, who are family legends as a previous Matriarch/Patriarch, and R1, the first keeper of records within the family, whose work was inherited by R2 and subsequently passed on to R3.

What’s missing: Spouses of the siblings of the current Matriarch/Patriarch, and siblings of every generation prior to that generation. Either there were none – it’s not impossible for the children of two single-child couples to marry – or those clusters have split off and are nothing more than names in the family archives, at best.

The Fog of Uncertainty

These groupings become the defining limits of each successive family circle, and the wall of ignorance that they represent. If this is filled in as a series of more and more intense fogs of uncertainty, then the family tree becomes as shown in figure 5:

The POF knows his story, and the story of his siblings. He has some idea of the story of his parents, and knows who they were. He also knows his Maternal Grandparents, one of whom is R3, and the current Matriarch/Patriarch, but knows less of their personal stories. He knows a number of uncles, aunts, and cousins in the extended family by name, and has an anecdote about most of them, or some piece of family lore. Above the current Matriarch, though, things get decidedly vague. He knows that R3 inherited a mess of stuff from the brother or sister of the current Matriarch (R2), and that R2’s parents used to be the central figures of the family until the current Matriarch took over. There are a couple of family legends about their ancestors beyond that point – and that’s about it. Most of the family are shrouded in fog, lost in the pages of history. They can logically be assumed to be there – and that’s about the extent of it.

It is this fog of uncertainty that shows that most players (and GMs, if it comes to that) go far too far when generating families. They attempt to produce something akin to figure 4, in which everyone important is named and specified, to at least some extent – when what they should be aiming for is figure 5.

The other thing that stands out, as a result of the work done in designing and generating these family trees, is that it is not the identity of the people in the tree for the most part that matters; what’s significant is not Who these people are as the Relationship between the Person of Focus and any other individual.

It’s not for the player to give details about any of them; these are NPCs who might never appear in the campaign. That makes them the GM’s province; what is necessary is for the player to define the relationship, and for the GM to respect that, and the creative limits that it places on those identities. Specifics should only be provided – should only be generated – when they become relevant to game-play.

For the most part, except for names, a lot of that generation can be done on the fly by most GMs. I except names because they are often the part people struggle with, so it can be advantageous to have prepared them in advance.

Which takes us full circle to the very first family tree diagram (figure 1), but now the significance has changed. This shows the immediate family of the person of interest, and their parents; the grandparents, Ggrandparents, and GGgrandparents are just names on the page, but there are two GGGgrandparents who have been relevant to a plot at some point, and so have been fleshed out.

How Long Is A Piece Of String?

How many roads must a man walk down? How many wishes must be made before one comes true? Deep philosophical questions with no more than abstract meaning in the real world, and the important question about to be posed is often seen as another of them: How long is a generation?

People in their thirties can have children – and by the time those children are ready to have children of their own, close to 50 years will have passed. If those children also wait until their thirties, two generation can stretch over 70 years; this puts the upper limit somewhere around the 35-40 year mark.

At the other extreme, it was not all that uncommon in years gone by for children to be married at 14 or 15. Because it’s an easy number to work with, let’s go with 15.

So a generation can thus be assumed to be somewhere between 15 and 40 years.

A strict averaging of these extremes gives 28½ years. But that presumes that the curves are symmetrical about this point, that it’s just as likely for a couple to be childless until their early thirties as it is to have a child at twenty.

Right now, because of advances in medical science, that may well be the case, especially in the upper-middle-class. But go back in time a very short distance (perhaps one of those longer generations) and childbearing skews younger – and go back two or three times that, and the skew is even more pronounced.

The current generation may well be 30 years long (rounding for convenience); the previous generation, it may have been 25 years long; before that, perhaps two generations spanning 45 years between them; and prior generations are likely to be 20 years long, on average. Always with the same lower boundary; it’s the upper limit that shortens.

Let’s see what that means for the family tree in figure 1. The person of focus can be one of the parents, who have a total of four children – that puts their year of birth at one generation plus 4 years, minimum, or plus eight years, maximum. But if you are at the upper extreme of a generational limit, you won’t have four children – you need to start earlier to have such a large family except in unusual cases, like quadruplets. If anything, those 4-8 years need to be subtracted from the upper bounds. Splitting the difference, we get 6 years – which drops our generational window more or less back to the 25 year mark.

So, 25 years before the birth of the first child marks a generation – the birth of the POF. The three ‘grayed out’ generations are 25, 22½, and 22½ years long, respectively (maximums). The birth of the highlighted couple was a generation earlier than that, 20 years. Add those up, and you get 115 years.At most, this tree depicts 115 years of family history. Subtracting these generations and comparing the total to average lifespan gives some notion of whether or not the Person Of Focus could have known the highlighted characters at the top of the tree personally – the answer is, ‘not likely but not impossible’. 115 years less 25 is 90 – so the people at the top would have been 90 years old when the Person of Focus was born.

If we take the minimums of each generation, a different story emerges. four generations at 15 years is a total of 60 years – so there was every chance that at least one the people at the top would have known the person of focus for some years. But this is also unlikely, so it doesn’t change the overall answer.

In practical terms, ‘Living Memory’ extends back three or four generations, no more, except in unusual circumstances. This puts a maximum depth on family trees – the living memories of the eldest survivors, or six or seven generations – to the 4Ggrandparents of the current youngest children. Beyond that lies only myth and family legend – and the archives of the family record-keeper.

This is the last central concept that we need to embrace before we can get to the generation system that I have devised to short-cut the process of generating families for RPG characters.

But it also carries me WAY past publishing time (I might have made it had I not taken a nap – but I was nodding off, which is why I needed the nap, so I might not have done).

Next week, in part 2, I’ll take these conceptual building blocks and construct from them a system for the (relatively) painless quick generation of families for PCs and NPCs alike. One final note: these observations are, for the most part, entirely genre-less. They apply to Fantasy games as much as to modern or sci-fi gaming. See you then!

A couple of days ago I came across a Quora post by Deb Paul describing some experiments exploring hope as a motivational force. The experiments in question were both revolting and enlightening, and I immediately shared the post with the Dungeon Masters Deep Dive group because I could see a connection to group behavior in a TTRPG. It seems a lot of others found the thought compelling, too, because it’s received 17 20 23 24 30 likes in very short order – within the context of this small subset of Quora users, that’s a runaway success.

Hope: The Experiment

The experiment took place in the 1950s (when, it must be assumed, people had a different sensibility when it came to these things).

Professor Curt Richter filled a half-dozen large glass jars half-full of water and placed a rat in each, then timed how long it took them to drown. The size of the jug prevented the rat from clinging to its sides or jumping out. On average, he found, they would give up and sink after about 15 minutes.

With the baseline thus established, Richter then repeated the experiment, but with a twist – just before the rat gave up due to exhaustion, a researcher would pluck them out of the jar, dry them off, let them rest for a timed couple of minutes – then put them back into the jars for a second exposure.

It was important that each rat be rescued only once, so that what took place could not be considered a learned behavior or conditioned reflex. What the researchers wanted to know was how long the rats would continue to swim, the second time around before they reached their physical limits – in other words, how long hope alone could sustain them.

In ignorance of the actual results, most people would expect the rats to swim for at least the same 15 minutes, maybe even a bit longer. Others, more pessimistic, would undoubtedly question whether those couple of minutes rest were sufficient recuperation time, or would only partially restore the endurance of the animals, resulting in a quicker demise.

The average saved-rat swam, the second time around, for sixty hours. One lasted for a full 81 hours. Saving the rats once had given them enough hope that the same thing might happen to sustain them for 240 times as long in the water. The conclusion drawn was that since the rats believed they would eventually be rescued, they could push their bodies way beyond the limits that they previously thought possible.

This experiment is often cited in books about the power of positive thinking, and occasionally in books about cancer survival when they talk about the impact of positivity. (For my money, it isn’t referenced often enough when governments discuss welfare programs – the provision of just a little hope can have a multi-fold “bread upon the waters” impact on citizen’s lives, the extinguishing of that hope has impacts equally profound – at least, that’s how I interpret the experimental results. Or, to put it another way, ‘you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar’. But that’s just my opinion).

Application to TTRPGs

People are vastly more complicated than rats, it must be said. And the coalescence that is a player acting ‘in character’ is even more complex, still. Nevertheless, if it’s an even partially-correct truism of human psychology that hope can give a capacity to endure, while a lack of hope is often a self-fulfilling prophecy – and I consider this amply proven through masses of anecdotal evidence – then it must be true of players and their characters, too.

The experiences may be visceral rather than actual, but identification between player and character is sufficiently strong that an effect would be felt, however diluted. It was this thought that led me to share the answer with the DM’s group on Quora, and which underpins today’s article, which will examine the relevance of the thought and the impact of this phenomenon on RPG campaigns.

Chronologically-sensitive applicability

Depending on the game system, when a player first starts playing a character, they have relatively little investment in that character. His loss can thus be written off with relatively little psychological impact.

When the player has had the character for a long time, their psychological investment is huge, and a threat to the character’s survival can have very real impacts, and an escape from certain death can be almost as exciting and thrilling as the real thing might be. I’ve discussed before how the gaps between PC and player, and player and Game System, would provide a mitigating factor, holding the character’s situation at somewhat of an arms’ length. What’s more, with greater expertise and experience comes greater capability, which also attenuates any sense of threat.

But there has to be an intersection point between these two conditions, in which identification is strong enough for a player-PC complex identity to be vulnerable, while expertise is still sufficiently weak that it can be overcome. This critical juncture will arrive at different points in every campaign, and is directly influenced by choice of game system – some game mechanics make the interface between character and player more superficial, while others mandate such strong investment in a character during the character creation process that identification between the player and character is almost immediate.

I have identified three situations that can arise at this critical point, and thinking about the possible nuances and consequences divided the last into three variants, for a total of five possible scenarios. Every campaign, at its critical point, will fall into one or more of these categories, which I have labeled 1, 2, 3a, 3b, and 3c, respectively.

1. Critical TPKs

In scenario one, a TPK (total-party kill) takes place at the critical point, but the campaign doesn’t end; it reboots or carries on, with new PCs.

Clearly, this would have an impact on the approach of the players in the subsequent campaign, making them more risk-averse; the GM has shown himself to be a ruthless arbiter of fate, so players will be less inclined to tempt such fate going forward. Having started to grow accustomed to increasing levels of character ability, they are also likely to feel acutely more vulnerable from ‘day one’ of the subsequent campaign.

The combination would have an immediate effect on the players, but – equally importantly – it would have an immediate effect on the next campaign. Two of them, in fact.

One: it would bring forward the critical point of the next campaign by making the players more sensitive to danger.

Two: it would delay the critical point of the next campaign by making the players more hesitant to become invested in the characters.

These would tend to oppose each other in terms of the critical phase, but would combine to make the next campaign far more difficult to GM. Engagement would be desultory and difficult to induce.

A GM could be forgiven for such a sequel being an abject failure. But some players might find it to be so little fun that they drop out of the hobby altogether.

Again, each campaign would be different in terms of the intensity of these effects, and there is a general mitigant which I’ll discuss later. So the picture is not all doom and gloom, which is why most players and GMs survive a TPK.

2. Critical character deaths

Scenario two kills some PCs, but not the whole party, and requires that the GM do nothing to rescue the surviving PCs or single out those who die. The impartiality demonstrated immediately becomes part of the expected style of the GM – a ‘hard but fair’ reputation that many GMs actively seek to cultivate. I’d go so far as to describe this as the baseline condition.

Those players whose characters died might be exposed to the same effects described in (1), but these would be contained and potentially negated by the fact that some survived; they just weren’t amongst the lucky ones. I have seen situations in which a character-class prejudice derives from the experience, however – certain classes being deemed more at-risk than others (front-line fighters because of their role within the party, rogues because of their party function, mages because they are always low on hit points – depending on what the player deems his character death most attributable to), which can be interpreted as a more delineated form of the problem. This problem can become more acute with repeated exposure; when that happens, it can indicate a problem with the GM’s approach, which unfairly targets one segment of the PC group, but it’s more likely that this a perceived problem (not an actual one).

At the same time, the survivors are likely to experience a diluted form of the (3c) effect, described below, making them more inclined to taking rash chances. This effect, too, would be moderated by the fact that not everyone survived the critical encounters.

The intersection of the two effects can create rifts between party members in terms of their approach to in-game problems – one group balking while the other is more willing to rush in where angels would feat to tread. Immediate remediatory efforts are required of the GM in the wake of such an event to permit the characters of the respective factions to reconcile these points of difference, but this is wasted effort if the PPK (partial-party kill) didn’t occur in the critical phase of the campaign. While it would be nice to imagine that every GM has sufficient fingers on the pulse of his campaign that he would recognize whether or not this was needed from general communications with the players, it just doesn’t always happen that way. There are likely to be subtleties of communication during the character creation process that might tip off the GM, for example, but if character creation takes place outside the regular game sessions, away from the communal gaming table, he will have far reduced chance to pick up on such signals, let alone to recognize them. It would not be at all uncommon for the GM to remain in blissful ignorance of a problem’s existence until it blows up in his face!

An additional complicating arrives in the form of the question (where relevant) of what power level the new arrivals should be – the same as the party average, the same as their old characters, something less, or complete novices. There are too many nuances to this question to look into it with any depth; suffice it to say that realism and fairness call for one answer, character parity and balance call for another, and most GMs try to compromise on some middle ground that they hope will satisfy both imperatives but usually ends up satisfying neither. Game system is both irrelevant to the question and critical to it – irrelevant in that a game system may or may not have articulated character levels, but those games that don’t have some other mechanism of dictating character expertise; critical because character advancement is often non-linear, amplifying any disparity between characters. Secondary problems can also manifest – there will be a natural tendency for the higher-level characters to hog the spotlight or occupy a dominant position in intra-party decision-making, for example.

The so-called ‘baseline’, then, is a turbulent and complex compound with its’ own unique set of issues for the GM to solve.

3a. The Absence Of Life-threat

Nobody dies. In fact, no-one is even placed under serious threat of dying.

This, too, becomes part of the signature ‘style’ of the GM – their campaigns are seen as problem-solving spaces, a place for puzzles and intellectual stimulation, with a perceived lack of passion and emotional engagement – a ‘safe’ game. While there can conceivably be a place for such a campaign style, for example when GMing for young children, it’s strictly theoretical – I’ve never seen anyone who actually utilizes this style. The safer you feel, the less need there is to hold yourself back. Risk-taking is easy when there is no risk perceived to exist.

I’ve occasionally been accused of doing so by critics, a charge that I strenuously deny. I look on my campaigns more as a collaborative novel, or a series of novels – most such are not all that enjoyable if a favored protagonist falls too early, but the threat, and the danger of doing so must always be present. I make sure that there is at least one way out of any predicament, especially if it’s potentially character-life threatening – but it’s up to the players to find their way through the maze to a valid solution, be it the one that I know or another, and my goal is always to make the experience an entertaining one for the participants. So there are definite life-threats to be overcome. This avoids the worst consequences of this scenario, but leaves my campaigns more vulnerable to scenario (3c) problems – a trade-off I’m happy to accept.

3b. Critical Deus-Ex-Machina Saves

The problems of case (3a) become even more acute and virulent if the GM makes the mistake of pulling the PCs buns out of the fire with a deus-ex-machina. Divine Intervention is always a temptation if the GM thinks that the danger to the PCs is unfair and not of their making, i.e. not attributable to player stupidity. Universally, it happens when the GM has become so invested in his campaign that it has become more important to him than fidelity to its purpose. Some beginners make this mistake from day one; in other cases, it waits until that one ‘special’ campaign comes along, but we’re all vulnerable to the occasional moment of weakness when ‘our babies’ are under existential threat. Since I adopted the perspective described in the previous paragraph, I’ve had far fewer such moments!

There’s another issue of game philosophy that gets entangled with any discussion of this subject at this point – are the PCs ‘special’ in some way, are they extraordinary, or are they ordinary citizens of their game world who become transformed through experiences into something more? I’ve run campaigns with both premises. The more extraordinary the PCs are supposed to be, the more baggage comes with that – Why? Are they the only ones? Why these characters and not those other ones? Who or what made them this way? Does this special status make others more inclined to shelter or protect them? Does the universe go out of its way to save them now and then? Do they have a manifest destiny? Does that intervene directly from time to time?

The whole concept of PCs being extraordinary is sometimes incorporated into the game system, either implicitly or explicitly. The latter has its own baggage, as shown above; but far worse are the cases where it isn’t explicitly stated, because these questions can then be comfortably ignored – right up to the point when they smack the GM between the eyes with the power of a freight train. Solving such complicated questions with first instincts rarely works out well; solving them in advance yields infinitely better answers. Worse still, players and GM can look at the same body of rules and reach diametrically opposite conclusions – building their (potentially flawed) assumptions into everything else they do, respectively. The incompatibilities can prove toxic to campaigns.

There can be a chicken-and-egg relationship to the whole question of extraordinary PCs that is relevant to this discussion – which came first, the deus-ex-machina rescue or the conception of the PCs as extraordinary because that protects the players’ investment in the GM’s world-view? A single mistake in this area can have campaign-devastating repercussions, so I am more inclined to think that it’s the panicky mistake that the GM makes when his campaign threatens to fall apart, especially in the case of a beginner, but that’s not always going to be the case.

3c. Borrowed Time

Perhaps the optimum outcome is a variation on the above, which complicates the whole question. That takes place when the PCs face an existential threat and overcome it on their own (perhaps following breadcrumbs laid down by the GM). This can create a sense that the PCs are living on ‘borrowed time’ and have to ‘make it count’ before their sands of time run out. This benefits the GM because there is no problem seen as too big for the PCs not to buy into it, boots and all – a depth of buy-on on the players parts that inclines them to dramatic action and big stories that are inherently fun to play (and GM). “Street-level problems? Huh – we’ll see your street level problems, flatten them, and pave over the top with good intentions.”

And therein lies the flaw in thinking this is the optimum solution – a fatalistic overconfidence that sees the PCs take bigger and bigger risks until one catches up with them. The resulting campaigns can be short, sharp, and explosively fun – while they last. They are a metaphoric game of Russian roulette with only one player – the campaign; sooner or later, it will crash and burn.

Unfortunately, that exhausts the logical possibilities, showing that there are NO outcomes from the critical campaign phase that don’t spawn problems, issues that can have effects that linger far beyond the campaign in question. It’s not going entirely too far to suggest that a GM’s respect as a legend of the table stems almost entirely from how well he solves the problems that emerge from the critical phase.

For example, I’ve known at least one GM who never ran a campaign with characters of less than 8th level (and usually 10th-plus); his justification was that this gave the PCs the capacity to get involved in serious problems within the game world, and – until now – I’ve always taken that justification at face value, even though it didn’t feel like ‘the whole story’. Now, I think that he was, either consciously or subconsciously, avoiding the critical phase in his campaigns, perhaps after getting burned a time or two.

I’ve spoken to other GMs whose campaigns never last beyond this same sort of point, coming to an end between 4th and 8th levels, and none of them have ever been able to give me an adequate explanation of ‘why’. I’m now of the opinion that its just a different solution to the same dilemma. Both are simply avoiding the problem, putting it into the ‘too hard’ basket.

GMs whose Campaigns have serious longevity can be expected to have (at least) muddled their way through these problems, perhaps without even noticing (due to the mitigating factor I’ve mentioned from time to time) – player experience.

The Leavening Of Experience

Just as a mental experiment, try this: Count up the number of GMs you’ve gamed under. Add 1/4 for every campaign you’ve played with the same GM, after the first. Now, round up. Add another 1 for every different game system you’ve played. The result is a rather arbitrary rating for how experienced you are as a player. My score comes out as somewhere in the vicinity of 24 or 25 – but I’ve been mostly a GM for the last 40-odd years. I have no doubt that some players could decimate that score after with just a handful of years under their belts!

The longer you play, the more that you have seen before, and the less perturbed you tend to be about things. PC died? Okay, isn’t the first time and won’t be the last. GM in over his head gets over-protective, or goes soft? Same story.

GMing for experienced players requires a different mind-set and creates a different experience to GMing a relative novice. If that novice is young, to boot, they have little life experience to buffer the impacts of these psychological effects – and are prone to magnify every problem encountered, to boot.

That doesn’t mean that the scenarios described aren’t a problem with more seasoned players – just that they are less of a problem.

Hope vs Overconfidence

The psychology of heroism also plays a part here. The British stiff upper lip can be said to be ‘endure until there is no longer any hope – and a little longer, just in case you’ve missed something in the gloom. Heroes have to believe that if they keep pushing back against the forces of darkness, sooner or later, something will break. That’s hope, whistling in the dark until it attracts someone with a lantern.

There’s a difference between those traits and a foolish overconfidence. Heroism leads to Adventure, regardless of game genre. It’s the difference between heroic epic fantasy and – well, no examples actually come to mind; every example I can think of is in the heroic fantasy mold, from Mission: Impossible to The Hobbit, from Conan to The Mummy, from Terminator to Alien to Avengers. Foolish Overconfidence leads to a crash-and-burn, to a Shakespearean tragedy, or a Greek tragedy – to wings of wax melting in the sun.

The ultimate difference: one is desirable (in controlled quantities according to taste and genre); the other is not.

Paranoia and Survivors’ Guilt

If you were a player and your party kept getting killed by the same GM, surely it’s reasonable to expect a paranoid “he’s out to get us” attitude to take hold? In terms of maintaining the fun, it sounds rather counterproductive to me.

Equally, if yours was the only character to survive a GM’s stress-testing of the party, I would expect the character to experience some level of survivor’s guilt (which is fine, that’s characterization and roleplay) but it would be only reasonable to expect some level of the same to be felt by the player of the surviving character, and that’s not beneficial. A certain level of objectivity, that isn’t calloused, needs to be maintained.

A Witches Brew: The Ghost At The Table

Circumstances play into experience inside each player’s head after a traumatic event to produce a psychological consequence. The circumstances are the past and can’t be altered; the experiences are also the past and can’t be changed. So the existence of consequences is an inevitability that the GM needs to confront, and manage.

However mitigated, the critical period produces a witches brew of stimulus and reaction; you can even think of the past as an extra player, an invisible ghost at your gaming table.

Solutions

It’s not enough at Campaign Mastery to point out problems and leave them sitting there, unresolved. Practical advice and solutions are required. So, let’s offer some – but I’m running out of time, and every campaign will be different, so there will be no one-size-fits-all solutions that aren’t very broad and general. Nevertheless, that’s a good start, so that’s what I’ll be offering.

Solution: Critical TPKs

Humans have had a long time to figure how best to manage the grieving process. It starts with an acknowledgment, a somber tone, and then a focus on achievement. If the death was in some non-literal medium, like an RPG, the grieving should be just as visceral and conducted through the same medium.

Start the rebooted/sequential campaign with a funeral – it doesn’t have to be for the lost PCs, but should be for someone who could be said to exemplify them in some way. Then recruit the new PCs to finish some unfinished task of the fallen NPC, or to exact retribution for the death, or otherwise to take action inspired in some way by the fallen. This does two things: it sublimates and encapsulates any feelings that might derive from the deaths of the old PCs and then it gives them a purposeful outlet, which just happens to lead them into the first adventure. The lost NPC might or might not mean anything to any of the PCs, it could be simply a random stranger to them – but they meet the description posted with the town criers or in the newspapers or pinned up on an appropriate noticeboard (or come close enough in their own minds to doing so), which has brought them together at that time and place. The quality they share might be a desperation, or a zeal for justice, or simply a willingness to take a risk in order to make a buck (or a gold coin). Or they might be responding to different adverts, each one pitched exactly correctly to lure them in. Those are inconsequential details; the important thing is that they were lured to the service, after which the pitch gets made to them – when it is hardest for them to turn it down.

There are variations possible – a dedication, a celebration, a birthday party – the specifics are malleable to fit the campaign, the society, and the game world. Pick one that works for you.

Solution: Paranoia

Paranoia is a lot harder to combat, and takes longer, and a multifaceted approach. First, the GM has to be overtly helpful for a while – “no need to roll for that, your character will figure it out sooner or later, deducing blah, blah, blah” or equivalent. Secondly, encounters in which failure don’t have the potential to kill or screw over the PCs should feature for a while. Let someone else (an NPC) wear any consequences. Let the players plans work to whatever extent they make sense, up to the point where the players discover the flaw in their logic and can formulate a fresh plan. Finally, any time that you have to rule against the interests of the party, have someone check the appropriate rules and pronounce their doom, erring on the side of the PCs just a little.

Think of it as a karmic redress. It won’t be forever, just for long enough to establish that you don’t pick on the players, that it’s not an us-vs-him situation. Then gradually segue back into making balanced calls, fudging die rolls as necessary to bring the fun.

Solution: Survivor’s Guilt

Assume that whatever the player is feeling, the character is feeling even more intensely. Have an NPC ‘diagnose’ the PC’s situation accordingly. This sublimates and encapsulates the negative emotional baggage, as previously described – then give it a productive outlet, but explicitly suggesting that outlet using the NPC. The survivor may choose to disregard this cue to externalize his survivor’s guilt, but it gets the player thinking along the right lines; eventually, he will come up with his own outlet if one is necessary. Sometimes, the appropriate prodding can be enough for the person to start getting over their problem – and putting it all on the shoulders of the character makes that easier for the player.

Solution: Excessive Caution & Hesitancy

The problems aren’t getting any easier! The best solution to this one that I have come across is to underplay the enemy NPCs for a while, then reduce awards because ‘that was too easy’. Once the players have started to get over any excessive caution, throw a problem their way that has a time-pressure involved; the players are sure to feel that pressure as pushing them towards making a mistake. Deliberately let the PCs succeed (after an appropriate amount of trouble, of course) just this once – when they see that the boldness necessary to deal with the time pressure didn’t end in disaster, a natural progression toward a more balanced posture will naturally begin. They will always be a little conservative, a little cautious; by now, that’s part of the PCs characterization, but it will become more balanced..

Solution: Overconfidence

The hardest problem to deal with of all those presented is overconfidence, because it requires the GM to walk the finest of lines – taking their confidence down a peg without going too far. Sometimes the easiest way to achieve this is to deliberately go too far and then re-balance things with the anti-paranoia or anti-hesitancy prescriptions. But that lacks finesse and makes it more likely that your manipulations will be detected by the players.

The Mastermind Assumption

My preferred solution is “The Mastermind Assumption.” This is a mastermind’s plan in which the different solutions that might be exploited by the PCs are discovered, one by one, to have been anticipated and closed off. The trick is to ensure that one of these ‘ruled out’ solutions only appears to be ruled out of the question; the assumption that the solution won’t work is therefore invalid, but this should not be discovered until the obvious ones have all been perceived as blocked by the PCs. This won’t happen in the course of a single adventure; it will (at the very least) be a small plot arc.

• In phase one of the plot arc, the MM’s moves to block a weakness in his plans is noticed;
• In phase two, a second such makes it clear that events are not occurring at random.
• In phase three, the PCs should learn of the MM’s objective (which they should actively NOT want him to achieve) and they may or may not learn his identity.
• In phase four, they actively search for information, identify the MM if they haven’t already done so, and start looking for ways to prevent his success. That sets the PCs up to have the overconfidence knocked out of them, as they discover that the move that first came to their attention was actually one of the LAST moves to be made by the MM, and that he now has them blocked at every turn.
• In phase five, they thrash about a bit and confirm that the MM has them stopped cold.
• At the 13th hour (eleventh if you’re feeling generous), the now thoroughly-deflated PCs discover the flawed assumption, the one mistake that the MM has made, the one area in which his plans’ protection is not absolute. It should NOT be easy for them, by any means, even now – just possible. This revelation may be a distinct phase six, or it may be the conclusion of phase five, that’s up to you and the specific adventure.
• In the final phase, the PCs do whatever they have to do to exploit the window of vulnerability, even as the MM realizes his mistake and starts moving to counter it. This ramps up the pressure on the PCs so that they will be finding things anything but too easy. But the MM isn’t quite in time, even though the outcome hangs in the balance for a while, the PCs win in the end – perhaps paying a price in the process.

Phases one and two hook the PCs in and phases three and four take advantage of their overconfidence. Phase five knocks the stuffing out of that overconfidence, while the final phase rebuilds confidence to a balanced level. This perfectly meets the prescription offered at the start of this section. I’ve run variations on this outline at least a dozen times over the years – sometimes revealing that the first moves were, in fact, noticed by the PCs at the time and completely mis-attributed, but that’s an artistic flourish, not a necessity.

At it’s shortest, I’ve run this as a 1-2 punch (two adventures); at it’s longest, it occupied about five real-time years (but drew on plot seeds planted eight years earlier that I had floating around for whenever I found use for them), and the final phase was a five game-session epic! Master the Mastermind Assumption; it will amply reward you.

Campaign platform stability

The objective with all these solutions is the same – to do whatever you need to do in order to deal with the legacy of the last campaign critical state that your players experienced, whether that is in the current campaign or a previous one, whether you were the GM or someone else. It’s about shredding whatever baggage the players may have brought with them, and achieving a stable platform on which your campaign can unfold.

The more experienced your players, the less necessary these interventions will be – but the more those players are likely to appreciate what you are doing and why. It’s one less thing they have to worry about, and says good things to them about the GM and his skills – both of which loosen them up and encourage them to both have fun, and to make the game fun for everyone else (including the GM). And that, as it says on the lid, is the point.

All GMs should recognize and follow the rule of cool, which states that if a player wants his character to do something cool, the GM should try to find a way to let him, even if it violates canon or what the character should normally. be capable of.

Alas, in one of the great inequities of the TTRPG, the same is NOT always true of anything that the GM thinks would be cool. In fact, more often than not, anything that’s “cool” for the GM is troublesome for the campaign.

The GM is an enabler – it’s his job to make sure that everyone is having fun. Often, anything that he perceives as “Cool” is self-indulgence, and while a certain amount of that may be warranted to give the GM his share of jollies, a campaign has a strictly-limited capacity for such.

Perhaps the most seductive of temptations for the GM is the introduction of an artifact or relic. Dropping one of these into the campaign immediately makes the campaign all about that artifact or relic, whether the GM realizes it at the time or not.

To explain why this is the case, it will be necessary to dig deep into the conceptual fabric at a metagame level, and take a good look at the very concept from a multitude of angles.

This is being written as Campaign Mastery’s contribution to the April blog carnival, which is all about Artifacts and other over-the-top magic items, and is being hosted by Codex Anathema.

I could have simply done another in the series describing the Omega Archive, because anything there would probably qualify, but for a number of reasons, I didn’t want to do that – most notably because magic items are primarily a Fantasy device, and Artifacts are supposed to be the ultimate in magic items, while the Omega Archive primarily has a science fiction orientation.

While some of the contents might be adaptable to fantasy gaming (and any such adapted creation would definitely be considered a relic or Artifact, there’s no certainty that the contents of any given part of that series will be so translatable – so while it might meet the letter of the challenge laid down for this Carnival, I didn’t think that it did so in spirit.

Artifacts can generally be considered unique magic items of power greater than that which is normally available to PCs.

Artifact / Relic – D&D, AD&D, 2e

Artifacts have been a part of the D&D mythos since the publication of the third supplement to Original D&D, Eldritch Wizardry. These classic examples include such notable examples as the Hand and Eye of Vecna.

Relatively little was specified about them as a class of magic item; that took place during the creation of AD&D.

In AD&D, they were all considered “Miscellaneous Magic Items”, even those that were weapons, armor, or rings. Each had a number of Minor and Major Powers, and always came with side effects which triggered when the item was acquired, and when its Major Powers were used.

The DMG in 2nd Edition expanded greatly on the text surrounding these items as a class.

“Vastly more potent than the most powerful magical items are extremely rare items ancient power and majesty – artifacts, constructs of the utmost wizardly might, and relics, the remains of awesome powers and the greatest of holy men. These are items of great import and effect, so their use must be strictly controlled.”

“The appearance of an artifact or relic must always be the basis of an adventure. These items should never be casually introduced into play.”

“Each artifact and relic is unique. There can only be one of that item in existence in a given campaign. It appears in a campaign only when it has been placed there by the DM. These devices never form part of a randomly placed treasure and so are not on any treasure table. The DM must choose to include each particular artifact in his game.

Artifacts and relics always possess dangerous and possibly deadly side effects. These effects are all but irreversible, unaffected by wishes and most greater powers. Artifacts can only be destroyed by extraordinary means.”

     — Selected excerpts from the 2e AD&D DM’s Handbook.

For the most part, these conceptual foundations have been preserved throughout the many incarnations of D&D that have followed, including the derivative rules systems of Pathfinder (D&D 4e is a notable exception).

There are some important implications. First, there is a conceptual division between magic items that a PC can commission or create, given sufficient resources – “mundane” magic items – and artifacts.

That means, secondly, that each artifact must have an origin that is exceptional. There has to be a reason why these items are beyond even the most powerful PCs or NPCs, and a set of circumstances that permitted some long-past creative force to go beyond those restrictions. Those circumstances, because of their uniqueness, tend to be noteworthy events in the past history of a campaign. It’s really hard to drop such events into the history after the fact. Perhaps the best analogy in modern media is the creation of Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet – how many movies did this take? Certainly everything from the Chitauri invasion engineered by Loki in The Avengers is part of it, and so are almost every movie in the Marvel Comics Universe through to Infinity War/Endgame. But there are hints here and there that even earlier events in the MCU were early signs of things to come. The Chitauri invasion and Loki’s manipulations were presaged by the end-credits sequence in Thor (2011), while Thor itself was presaged by the end-credits sequence of Iron Man 2 (2010). Returning to the topic at hand, while (possibly hypothetical) PCs who live through the events may not appreciate the significance of what is taking place, they will definitely notice that something big is going on.

Third and fourth implications stem from the power that these artifacts and relics posses, and the impact on game balance (third) and the share of the spotlight that a character possessing one comes in for (fourth). It is all too easy for the other PCs to become support mechanisms for the PC with the artifact. While some players will be fine with such a role, there is an inbuilt preference in good, well-run, campaigns for equality in such matters.

The worst-possible solution to this problem is to give each PC an artifact of their own. The power they posses already means that there are few challenges which the PC cannot meet; I have seen campaigns in which gameplay consisted of the other PCs arranging circumstances and working down a checklist of requirements for the (relatively) safe usage of the Artifact.

In a nutshell, these artifacts are so powerful that they become the central focus of a campaign, able to steamroller virtually any opposition. The notion of challenging PCs, which is at the heart of most campaigns, means that the presence of an artifact implies the in-game need for such power. Without such a need, the campaign becomes relatively boring. But the incorporation of such a challenge leaves the other PCs completely over-matched, and frustration is equally poisonous to a campaign.

As soon as such power is introduced, then,

1. Significant Identities will take notice.
2. Significant Entities will take immediate steps to possess the Artifact before the possessor masters its use.
3. Other Significant Beings will attempt to prevent (2).
4. Some Significant Individuals will seek to influence or control the PC, either directly or indirectly.
5. Some Hostile forces will bring forward their plans, even launching them prematurely, in hopes of achieving their goals before the possessor can intervene.
6. Every problem under the sun, from the trivial to the monumental, will be submitted to the possessor with a prayer for assistance.
7. Lurking in the shadows is always the threat that the PCs need the power of the artifact to deal with.
8. There will be good people who believe no-one should have such power; those who might have been allies under different circumstances will become mortal enemies. “I wouldn’t trust my sainted grandmother with that much power” (or similar sentiments) will become a dominant sub-theme of the campaign.

There are just two outcomes, when you boil all this down: either it was always the GM’s intention to introduce the artifact, and he has planned his campaign accordingly, and solved every problem that he can anticipate; or the artifact will become the dominant focus of the campaign, henceforth, with anything else that the GM wanted to incorporate reduced to secondary import if it survives at all.

Either way, the campaign will never be the same again. It will either ascend to new heights (rare) or crash and burn (far more common).

So, that’s the problem for today: how to have your artifact cake without completely destroying the campaign in which it appears.

A Scale Of Magic

The search for a solution begins by contemplating magic items as a continuum, from the trivial at one extreme to the epic at the other.

When you do so, you quickly find that there’s a very large and exploitable gap between the strongest magic items typically available to PCs and Artifacts like Baba Yaga’s Hut or the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords.

I have charted such a spectrum, and divided it into 11 distinct categories. It’s my contention that each category represents an entirely different proposition in terms of placement and GMing considerations; sometimes, these will be variations or nuances of a general theme, at other times there will be a distinctly different set of considerations and requirements from one category to the next.

0. Trivial items
1. Weak one-use items
2. Weak multi-use items
3. Moderate non-permanent items
4. Moderate permanent items
5. Strong permanent items

9. True Artifacts – Minor
10. True Artifacts – Major
11. Artifact Sets

Sidebar: D&D 5e

D&D 5e uses slightly different scales in assessing item Rarity, essentially mapping the range of item categories 1-6 into a range of 5 frequencies of discovery: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, and Legendary. Artifacts then form a 6th category, in which every entry refers to a specific and unique item.

But it has always been the case that an implicit increase in Rarity has accompanied an increase in the power of a magic item in D&D; the relationship was usually an indirect one, frequently addressed only through the value of the item. In it’s own way, this was a useful construct, because it reflected the economic reality that more affluent and politically-influential characters could afford better equipment than the plebs and commoners.

Sidebar Side-note: But this also has its own conceptual problems, relating to the cap on the power of such equipment; should the extremes available to such upper classes be greater than those available to the commons, such that the range spread is more or less the same, or should the ultimate reaches available to both (assuming the wealth and resources) be the same? There are profound consequences for the culture within a campaign regarding social mobility, amongst other things.

5e is simply addressing the relationship more explicitly and directly.

Anyone with sufficient ability to count on their fingers will have noticed the sizable gap in the list proffered, to which I alluded earlier.

The scale of the gap is not arbitrary; it results from having three entries to incorporate into the list. These complete the continuity, bridging the gap between Artifacts and “Mundane” magic items of the highest quality.

The missing entries are:

6. Demi-Relics
7. Legacy Items
8. Epic Magic Items

I’m going to discuss each entry in the list a little more volubly in a moment, and it can probably be inferred from the title of this article that item 6, “Demi-relics”, are the primary subject of this article. But first:

Sidebar: Exotic Potential, a concept from the Tree Of Life campaign notes

In this campaign, materials were rated according to their “natural” potential for containing magical powers in a stable configuration from one to three.

Ordinary Wood, common Leather, and low-quality steel or high-quality bronze or brass were rated as a ‘1’, which meant that they could be +1 items, containing at most 1 magical effect other than the bonus. “Plus-1 items” could confer no more than +2 to a stat (i.e. +1 to the stat bonus), or +2 to a specific single skill, or +1 each to two related skills, or +1 to four related skills under specific circumstances or applications.

Rare Woods, Exotic Leathers, and Good-quality steel were rated as a ‘2’ – they could be enchanted to become +2 items, and could contain either two minor effects or a range of effects that occupied both “slots” (and so, were not available to materials with a rating of ‘1’). “Plus-2 items” could confer no more than +4 to a stat (i.e. +2 to the stat bonus), or +4 to a specific single skill, or +2 each to two related skills, or +1 to four related skills.

Rare Woods with unusual treatment or preparations, Extremely exotic Leathers or Exotic Leather with unusual preparation, extremely high-grade steel, and exotic materials such as Mithral (also spelt mithril, mythril, mythral, mythrel, or mithryl, depending on who’s doing the writing) are all rated as a ‘3’. They could be enchanted to become +3 items, and could contain either three minor powers, a minor- and an intermediate power (rated 1 and 2, respectively), or a single power rated ‘3’. “Plus-3 items” could confer no more than +6 to a stat (i.e. +3 to the stat bonus), usually configured to be +4 to one stat and +2 to another; or +5 to a specific single skill, or +2 each to three related skills, or +1 to all skills based on a specific stat under specific circumstances or usage..

To get more powerful forms of magic, you had to incorporate two materials into the one item, with both the individual treatment of each element and the act of incorporation being of masterwork quality (defined in the game as a success by 20 or more on an appropriate skill check). One slot of the original item’s enchantment potential was consumed by the blending. So a 3-rated material and a 2-rated material could be combined to get a four-rated composite (+3+2-1=+4). This not only could be enchanted to be +4 in capabilities, it had four slots for powers, which could be configured in multiple ways (3+1, 2+2, 2+1+1, 1+1+1+1) or which could contain one of a whole new range of 4-rated powers.

Finally, you could combine two 3-rated materials to get a five-rated material (+3+3-1=+5) – with the benefits being similar to those described above.

Enchantment had to be performed separately for each step of improvement, increasing in price, skill/character level required, and difficulty with each increase. Each power also required its own ritual and added to these variables by the scale of the power – so adding a 5-rated power made everything else cost a lot more, adding a combination of smaller abilities less so.

On top of all that, exotic materials could be ritually consumed in the correct way to add up to another +6 to the mix (again, consuming one of the slots in the original material). The best that could be achieved by a magic item was therefore plus ten (+3+3+6-2=+10). The requirements at the top end of this scale were quite ridiculous – a flame capable of vaporizing rubies, for example – and no-one in the modern campaign world was capable of more than +2 in such enhancement. But they kept trying, and spending vast sums in the attempts. But some legendary artisans of the past got lucky on occasion. Any power slots over 5 can only be used for minor powers.
Note that such materials are themselves only rated 1-3 each – so +6 comes from consuming two specific ultra-rare materials in a specific way in the course of fabricating the item.

In theory, appropriate exotic locations or conditions could be used to confer up to another +6 in the same way, but the requirements start to get truly epic. “Plunge the blade into an intact ice cube at least 1′ on each side whilst in the heart of a volcano; the ice may not be permitted to melt or fracture in the process”.

Why mention this? Because it furnishes the basis of a systematic, continuous, architecture for magic item construction. Since the whole notion of such a continuous spectrum is at the heart of today’s article, I thought this worth spelling out (briefly). The same principles go into the making of scrolls, and potions – exotic ingredients and components, used the right way.

Before I get into the new category and other related concepts, let’s run through the complete list, at least briefly.

0. Trivial items

Trivial items contain magical effects so minor that they would be considered only an Orison if cast as a spell. These may be single-use or have a number of charges or even be permanently enchanted; the effects are so minor that it doesn’t make much difference, either way.

These generally represent some sort of convenience, nothing more. For example, I once gave a PC am infinite roll of toilet paper. Used sheets were instantly cleaned, magically, and attached to the beginning of the roll – so it couldn’t be used to write messages on, and wasn’t strong enough to form a rope or anything of the sort.

Another example: some potions were available in the Fumanor campaign that were multi-dose (healing potions, especially). So someone came up with the idea of enchanted spell bottles whose glass changed color according to the number of doses remaining unused.

1. Weak one-use items

Generally, potions and scrolls. Use once and they are gone forever.

2. Weak multi-use items

Some potions and minor wands. They are more powerful than category one, but that’s not saying a lot. Frequently useful, though.

3. Moderate non-permanent items

This category contains things like wands of fireballs. So ubiquitous in some campaigns as a poor-man’s artillery substitute that they deserve a category of their own.

You can have fun by making the spells as ‘interpreted’ by wands different to the spells cast by mages. A little goes a long way, however, and confusion & delay will result repeatedly if you aren’t consistent.

4. Moderate permanent items

Anything rated +2 or less is definitely either in this category or less. A vigorous debate is possible about whether or not +3 should fall into this category; I think, ultimately, which side of the line a given weapon or armor fell over would depend on what other powers the +3 item conferred.

This category is notable because these items should be bestowed with caution at low character levels; they are powerful enough to alter the balance of power between PCs. At the upper end of the scale, and depending on the campaign, this advice would hold into mid-level characters.

5. Strong permanent items

Anything +4 or +5, and perhaps some or most +3 items, are at home in this category. Nothing of this power should be available to a PC until double-digit character levels at the very soonest. These items tend to be individualized to a considerable degree, and usually have a history that can be traced from one past owner to another. That means that there is almost always going to be a story describing how they came to be wherever the item was when the PCs found it. These should be embodiments of the campaign history, or at least of parts of it; there should have been notable battles where the item was used. A key to the proper appreciation of the item is making this history relevant to the wearer/wielder.

6. Demi-Relics

Demi-Relics are a new idea being put forward for the first time in this article. For now, suffice it to say that they are more powerful than Strong Permanent Items but with limitations and a penalty to usage that is steep enough for characters to hesitate. At the same time, they are sufficiently limited in scope that the problems of most Artifacts are not applicable; you can treat them as even rarer examples of Strong Magic Items in terms of their presence in the campaign.

7. Legacy Items

Like Demi-Relics, these were introduced to occupy and exploit the gap between major ‘mundane’ magic items like a +5 Holy Avenger and Artifacts. They were introduced as part of the background to Assassin’s Amulet, and the bonuses that come with that game supplement include ‘player friendly’ versions. The basic concept is artifacts that start off very weak (and so can be included in the campaign from early on) but which gain in power as the character gains in levels. In some cases, the abilities are relatively minor in comparison to established artifacts, in others they are not. Like artifacts, they have side effects, and in some cases, may have powers that can only be unlocked by using lesser abilities enough times for the side effects to have a marked and permanent effect on the wielder. I describe them in more detail in An excerpt from ‘A player’s Guide to Legacy Items’, Part One and Part Two.

8. Epic Magic Items

I can’t speak of other editions’ versions, but the 3.5 Epic Level Handbook contains a whole bunch of magic equipment that confers (effectively) +6 or more, without most of the limitations and side-effects of Artifacts, but with far steeper requirements that a character has to meet in order to utilize them. They don’t have the majesty or power of true Artifacts, though, which is how they can get away without those penalties and drawbacks. Some of these are, regrettably, quite boring; others look like being such fun that you will be tempted to incorporate them early.

9. True Artifacts – Minor

Even a minor artifact can be a literal game-changer. Most of the time that these are included in a campaign it’s because the GM thinks they are cool, and it’s done with insufficient thought as to the consequences. The official advice quoted earlier from the 2e DMG says that they should be the centerpiece of an adventure; I disagree, they should be the centerpiece of an entire campaign in my opinion.

There are times when an artifact is the absolutely appropriate thing to introduce to a campaign. Most of the time, it’s not. For that reason, I want GMs who are thinking about dropping an Artifact into their campaign to contemplate one of the lesser alternatives – because even an Epic Magic Item will do less damage to your campaign than a Minor Artifact when you aren’t prepped for it.

10. True Artifacts – Major

The Holy Grails, of course, are Major Artifacts. How do you draw the dividing line? Well, destroying a Minor Artifact should be the objective of a plot thread within a campaign, and should be its own plot arc within the campaign. It still leaves room for other plot arcs. Destroying a Major Artifact demands that anything else be set aside, no matter the cost – think of the destruction of the One Ring vs the destruction of a lone Nazgul, to borrow a metaphor from the Lord Of The Rings.

Everything said about minor artifacts goes double and triple for Major Artifacts.

11. Artifact Sets

A highly unofficial category, there are two examples that come to mind: The Wand of Orcus and the Rod Of Seven Parts. There are undoubtedly others. These are artifacts that may or may not hold powers in their own right, but which are designed to unite with others to form a set that is as powerful, or perhaps even more powerful, than most Major Artifacts.

The Imbalance Equation

All the negative impacts associated with the introduction of Artifacts are mitigated by the substitution of lesser items. The game imbalances and inequities don’t go away, but they are at least reduced in severity. As one of my gaming friends used to put it, “The Imbalance Equation yields a smaller dividend”.

There are, in fact, only two alternatives of which I am aware (other than letting ‘nature take its course”).

Controlled Abstinence

The first of these is controlled abstinence, aka the Lord Of The Rings solution – there is some reason why the Artifact is not to be used, regardless of the provocation, which the PCs buy into; they are only lugging it around to make sure that no-one else uses it. The GM is continually trying to tempt them by throwing problems in front of the PCs for which the Artifact is the perfect solution. That’s answer number one.

A Pantheistic Approach

This is really difficult to pull off, but in its essence, Artifacts and Relics form a balanced Pantheon in which the wielders of such items contest the shape of reality. If a Dark Artifact is found and claimed, a Light Artifact begins moving about in the world in search of a Champion.

There’s nothing intelligent in this relationship that should be inferred; it’s a Karmic Balance thing.

Four answers – risking a Campaign Implosion, Controlled Abstinence, a Pantheistic Approach, or choosing something that will do less damage to the campaign than a full-blown Artifact. Having looked at the alternatives, it’s time to get down to cases.

Epic Magic Items

These are restricted to Epic Levels within the Epic Level Handbook for a reason – because they help make the new phase of the campaign more exciting and interesting. The problems confronting the PCs ramp up enormously, and so do the tools at their disposal. They become more than mere characters, they become legends – and perhaps lose touch with a little of their humanity in the process.

If your campaign fits this description, then these might be the perfect solutions.

Legacy Items

Legacy Items are a problem if introduced when the characters are already high level – they aren’t powerful enough until the character is a much higher level. They are designed to be part of the campaign from early on, and to “grow into” the role of a near-Artifact.

As a solution to the Artifact Problem, they only work if the GM has pre-planned for the situation from very early on. They are peerless under such circumstances; but they are far less satisfactory than anything else if those aren’t the circumstances of your campaign.

Demi-Relics

So there is still a gap. The prescription is for ultra-powerful magic items that are suitable for “cold insertion” into a campaign, that are nevertheless constrained enough that they won’t have the disruptive potential of Artifacts and Relics.

To leave room for the other solutions, when they become available and appropriate, in fact, they should be less powerful than Epic Magic Items.

As soon as I put the problem in those terms, having contemplated the spectrum of magic item power, a solution suggested itself to me, and Demi-Relics (aka Demi-facts) were born..

Contemplate a magic item that temporarily gives you a massive boost to one of your stats or numeric values – it could be hit points or attack or anything else. Each item affects only one specific such value. From the scale of mundane items (+1 to +5) I think +8 is about right (per level in the case of Hit Points). That’s the good news.

The item takes the permanent place of anything else – if its a suit of armor, you can’t have any other armors in your possession or it will not activate. What’s more, whatever the numeric quantity is, it takes a -2 hit whenever the item is not being worn – That’s the not-so-good news.

But there is worse to come: there is a price to pay for the activation of such an item. When the bonus wears off, it takes one point of whatever the numeric value is, with it – permanently, and cumulatively except when the item is activated– and the non-wearing penalty increases by one. That’s the bad news.

What the time frame is, is up to the GM – he can specify it as a minute, an hour, or a day. The longer it lasts, the more tempting the item will be.

Overall, this is a Faustian bargain of the first order. The first few times you use it, the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. Before you know it, you are relatively helpless without the item. Every time you use it, you become more dependent on it. Before too long, even relatively moderate threats pose a serious temptation – you can be your old self again, and more, you just have to say the word.

At first, you might think that character advancement means that the price is too low. But character advancement slows over time, inevitably; and so, therefore do the characteristic gains that can come from such advancement. All character advancement really does is hide the price of using the item from the PC – at least for a while – until they are well-and-truly hooked.

Think about the character potential – the legendary fighter who can barely lift his hand overhead, and can’t even get out of bed without his magic whatever, but who – once or twice more – can become the stuff of legend, the hero he was born to be. The rest of the time, he is short-tempered and feels worthless, and is forced to live on old glories. Worse still, people keep showing up, expecting the legend – only to be deflated by the reality. Some of whom will vocally express their disappointment. With every such event, the temptation to prove yourself worthy of the accolades would have to grow, until the temptation was too great to resist – and mark off another point of permanent loss…

Picture the paranoia that could easily result when your not-wearing penalties are up to -6 or so. In that key attribute, you are 8-12 levels behind your peers; what if the item on which you are dependent gets stolen? Would you ever take it off?

This is NOT a cursed item. It’s simply an item that costs something to use, something more precious than gold or gems. It steals the (metaphoric) soul of the character, one little slice at a time. And it’s the perfect mid-range magic item to throw into a campaign at the drop of a hat – simply because it’s cool, and the damage that it can do is contained, and self-limiting.

Be an evil GM and indulge yourself just this once – I won’t tell your players, I promise! Do so, and they will never forget the campaign that follows…

Whew! Finished at last (I slept in today, which never helps)! Hope it was worth the wait, everyone :)

Yesterday, on Quora, I answered a question about beginning as a GM..

The question originally posed was “How can I play NPCs in DND and how can I get started DMing? This is my first time and I’m so lost.”

There was already an excellent answer to the question, so I took a more general approach rather than simply make redundant noises.

That answer is the foundation of today’s article. Anything that’s inset is new; everything that isn’t was part of the original answer (though it may have been rephrased slightly and broken into multiple paragraphs instead of long bullet points).

When you are the GM, you have four responsibilities to your game and gaming group that you have to satisfy, each and every time.

The First Duty

First, you have to make the game fun for everyone, including yourself. Interesting can be great, can even be fun to some people, but interesting alone is usually not enough.

Improvement

There aren’t a lot of shortcuts to improvement in this space. Experience at reading a crowd and motivating them is the only real education. But there are a few areas around the edges that can be studied and improved. Most of them revolve around communications in various forms.

Public Speaking

Lessons in Public Speaking assist in communicating clearly with the players. There are a number of oratorical techniques that speechwriters utilize and understanding and applying them can help the GM, too.

Debating Techniques

Studying Debating Techniques can help in the organization of your presentations.

When I was in 3rd class, my school had what was called an Eisteddfod, but that term was only loosely applicable. This is essentially a maths, english, and performing arts contest across the entirety of the school in the manner of a sports carnival.

The debate was the problem – there was only one entrant, a boy from 12th form (at the time, “class” was the term used for years 1 to 6, and ‘form” for years 7-12, because education in those years was built around classes in specific topics). My opponent was nine years my senior, and I was a shy kid and not a confident public speaker; he was the dux of the school (something like Valedictorian in the US).

At around 9:30AM, the day of the competition, the School Principal and my teacher approached me and begged me to participate, taking the affirmative position. Because the topic – “nuclear energy” – was something that I understood well, I agreed, and hurried off to my Grandmother’s place (which was relatively close by) to prepare (with permission to do so, I should add).

The debate was to take place at 2PM. I dashed off a 2000 word handwritten essay which examined the pros and cons of the subject in a realistic manner, dismissing the cons and talking up the pros.

The essay was in three parts – the first part talking up the benefits, the second part identifying and dismissing the objections, and the third part discussing public apprehensions and their validity. I keenly felt that I could have done a better job with time to research properly – it was full of unsupported assertions and generalities – but it was straightforward in presentation and comprehensive.

I got back to the Town Hall at about 1:30, notes in hand. As the ‘affirmative’ position, I went first, and simply read aloud the first part of my essay in the two minutes allowed. I was so nervous when I started that I almost wet my pants!

My opponent followed; he had assembled talking points on index cards and simply improvised around each point. His presentation was clearly better than mine, but his claims were more nebulous and vacuous than the specific benefits that I had cited.

It was then my turn again, the concept being that I would argue against the points my opponent had raised in his introductory presentation; but he had been so ineffective at countering my opening statement that (with growing confidence) I simply continued reading my essay, raising an objection that my opponent might make and explaining why it was flawed. This was, effectively, preempting his second turn in the debate.

When his second turn was, he tried to counter the points that I had made, shuffling repeatedly through his index cards to find the notes that were relevant. Where I had told a story, his response was disorganized and – at times – almost incoherent. He had been able to use the research time that was not afforded me, and was able to offer facts to challenge the opinions I had voiced – but was completely unconvincing.

It was at that point, just over half-way through the debate, that I won it. In the third phase of the debate, I was able to continue simply reading from my prepared script, first acknowledging public apprehension of nuclear energy, and then dismissing such fears as over-generalized overreactions, and concluding by inviting those listening (especially the judges) to review the entire negative case in that light – was it substantive or a ramshackle collection of paranoid thoughts?

My opponent then made his final mistake – he rearranged his entire planned conclusion to respond to my allegation, shuffling through his index cards several times (saying nothing while he did so), repeating himself, contradicting himself, and sounding completely unsure of his entire case. The judges were unanimous in giving me the victory (and none of them knew until afterwards that I hadn’t even signed up until that morning). I still have the certificate of proficiency in public speaking that I was awarded!

Okay, that’s a rather lengthy tale from my distant past (it will be 50 years ago in a few more months) – but the lessons learned on that day were the foundation of my GMing style when I got started. Content is great, but a smooth presentation and clarity of communication counts for more – you can always fill in details later, so long as you don’t undermine them with inaccuracies.

Presentation Aids

Handouts and illustrations, sound effects, different voices and accents, and even minis and battlemaps, they all enhance your presentation, especially if presented smoothly – but they are like my opponent’s index cards in the true story offered in the previous section, if you have to continually shuffle them to find what you are looking for, they will (at best) simply counteract the negative impression that results and (at worst) will fail even to achieve that.

Going in for such things is easily overdone and counterproductive – which makes any prep time invested in them, a waste. It takes time and practice to learn to integrate such things into a smooth presentation. I suggest starting with just one of these enhancements, mastering it, then starting on the next – while going lightly on the enhancement tool that you have already mastered. It generally won’t take as long to master the second, because some of what you’ve learned from the first will be transferable knowledge.

There are books and blog posts out there on effective presentations and how to create them – what works with PowerPoint might not be directly applicable to what you are trying to achieve, but indirect application of the lessons learned is still useful. It merely requires acceptance of the point being made ‘in principle’.

One of the key lessons from such information sources is that specificity and detail are the enemies of clarity and absorption. At the same time, specificity is key to sounding authoritative. How and when you present detailed specifics are therefore key to an effective presentation.

What’s more, simply telling the audience what they already know or believe may avoid putting noses out of joint, but it’s a recipe for boredom; people want to hear something new (that agrees with their existing beliefs and prejudices).

Learning how much reassuring padding to include before you branch out into something new is something that can’t be taught; for one thing, every audience will be different (the larger it is, the more homogeneous reactions will be, but a GM is typically presenting only to a very small group and will need to tailor his presentations to the group)..

The Second Duty

Second, you have to collaborate with the players and their characters to tell a story that revolves around those characters.

All of them, both collectively and individually, in equal measure, as perceived over a substantial period of time.

There are two essential ways of doing so: as an ensemble performance, and by putting the metaphoric spotlight onto first one individual and then another. Neither is usually enough on their own, but most new GMs pick one as their primary technique. See Ensemble Or Star Vehicle if you want more on the subject. That usually means that you will have to create a series of stimulating events while being flexible enough to cope when the players choose a third or fourth path through the story.

Improvement

This is such a broad umbrella that there are many subjects that can be studied within it. Here are just a few of them:

Storytelling

Everything listed in earlier parts also helps meet this responsibility, but beyond those, there are other techniques. When you watch TV, keep one corner of your mind asking questions about technique – How have the writers used events and dialogue to further the story? How have the conveyed a unified characterization despite most TV and movies being filmed completely out of sequence? What is the plot and why does it have the shape that it does? How do the characters become embroiled within the plot? Is there any foreshadowing? The list goes on and on, and anything you learn in response to any of these questions is directly beneficial to your craft as a GM.

Do the same when reading a story, or an article. Everything that you see and hear has the potential to teach you something, if you are paying attention to it.

Acting Techniques. Direction techniques. Production techniques. These are only indirectly relevant, but no less powerful for that.

Cast and production commentaries contain vast amounts of information of this type for you to digest – I try never to buy a DVD that is “just the movie”. (That, by the way, is one reason why I dislike the trend towards streaming).

Story structure

This can be a double-edged sword; while it’s a useful area of study for GMs, you have to think carefully about how they will translate to the unique medium of the tabletop roleplaying game. This is something that many of the articles here at campaign touch on, but few address directly – I know that there’s one that does, but I can’t remember its name. I’ll update this with a link if I find it.

Characters

Better, more memorable, characters never go astray. There are many books and blog posts on the subject to draw on (often aimed at other media, like fiction or TV), but a simple premise is at the heart of the best advice in this respect: good characters come from good plotlines. That’s not the end of the subject, but it’s a good beginning.

Characterization

The difference between character and characterization is a subtle one that some people may not appreciate. A good character is one who makes a notable contribution to the story, that is memorable and distinctive, and that is “fit for purpose”. But those are all superficial attributes; characterization is about the personality that fills those superficialities and gives the character substance.

So psychology is a starting point, but it tends to be rather deep and lots of it have limited relevance. There are writer’s guides to practical characterization that are more useful, at least to the novice. Sociology is another key area of study, as is History in terms of how people lived, day-to-day, and how those lives were shaped by the circumstances around them. The more you dig into this area, the more there is to know, and you soon find yourself asking questions for which there are no firm answers – “Does growing up in a different culture cause an individual to have different reactions to events and other stimuli?” for example. “What is the role of contextual interpretation in underpinning reactions to events?” for another.

Often, you can phrase the question, find something that purports to answer it, but find that you lack the foundation to understand the answer.

It reminds me of a scene from a novel (I forget which) in which, for his doctoral examination in Physics, the character was asked to explain why the sky was blue. He answered by talking about the scattering of short wavelengths more than long wavelengths, to which the examiner simply asked “Why?”. Every time he answered that question, the examiner simply asked “Why?” and forced the character to dig deeper into his understanding of physics.

Media

You aren’t alone in wanting to know about these things. Writers have been answering questions about where their ideas come from for centuries. Playwrights have faced similar challenges for a similar length of time. These days, movies and TV are at the cutting edge of the questions, and the subjects have been given more intense scrutiny than ever.

Media studies can be superficial (at school, they were a shorthand for ‘we have no lesson planned for some reason so watch this TV show for 40-odd minutes and keep quiet”) but if you dig a little deeper, there is lots of advice out there for the taking. Their techniques might not work for you directly, but with suitable adaption, they can add to your repertoire.

Narrative techniques

There are three obvious areas of study when it comes to narrative technique, of increasing remoteness to the subject.

The most direct and obvious one is about efficiency in writing – how to compress narrative and description, how to identify what’s essential and what’s getting in the way, how to make your narrative compelling and succinct and stylish, and so on.

The most indirect but equally obvious one is to study media, especially costuming, lighting, and set design. The “why” of each decision can be translated into a principle of some value to the process of GMing.

But, perhaps the most useful is to study (and ruminate on) Radio Plays. These frequently have to operate with no narration at all, creating environments through sound alone; and when they do have narration, they can’t waste a bit of it. The techniques of radio plays can therefore be very educational to the GM.

The Third Duty

Third, you have to bring the world to the players. This inevitably means that you will have to create some parts of it, even if using a published setting and ‘canned’ adventure modules..

Many GMs find it easier to do this if someone else does that hard work, which is why canned adventures and commercial game settings are common starting points, and many GMs feel no need to expand beyond them.

Others – like me – find it easier to do this if they have created the world in its entirety, especially if you become exasperated by inconsistencies in published material, or try shoehorning a published adventure into a game setting that it doesn’t fit.

One requires a lot of reading, the other requires a lot of creativity and general knowledge, both chew up time like pretzels in a bar.

One of the things that is significantly harder if you have gone down the creation path is letting go of your creation – the players can and will change things through the presence of their characters, they won’t adhere to any script you may have had in mind. Your creations are the floor-plan and carpentry; they get to choose the paint and wallpaper and what each room is used for.

Improvement

There are fewer resources out there to draw upon in this area, because it is more unique to the TTRPG environment. Other media may have similar problems from time to time, but their techniques and solutions are less relevant.

Fortunately, this makes it a popular topic on RPG blogs. Most posts on world-building or running games will be relevant. A lot of posts on plot and encounters will be meaningful in this context. Posts on game settings are usually useful.

The Fourth Duty

Finally, you have to arbitrate the rules, fairly and evenhandedly, and in such a way that you DON’T ruin the fun.

That last bit is the hardest part.

What’s more, you have to do it without sucking the life and momentum out of the game, which is even harder.

Being an expert in the rules isn’t necessary; giving a player the interpretation of the rules that he wants isn’t always the right thing to do; the easy way (rolling over and playing dead for the players) is usually much more work in the long run. But at the same time, being a rules tyrant kills the fun stone dead every time a rules issue comes up. Firm but fair and consistent is the rule – kind of like raising kids or puppies.

There are reams of advice out there that address this issue, or there used to be.

Improvement

There are lots of articles that talk about adjudications of specific rules and situations. Most of these are useless in terms of the general situation, because too many of them simply present their answer as a fait accompli without describing the process by which an answer was reached.

This frequently leads to arguments in the comments from people who disagree (rightly or wrongly) with the conclusions of the author. And heaven help you if you advocate actually changing the rules – there are people out there who consider them as sacrosanct as holy writ!

All of which may be interesting, or intriguing, or simply fun, to look at from the outside – but don’t help you much. They are nowhere near as interesting, intriguing, or fun when you’re in the middle of them.

For that reason, Johnn and I established a rule for Campaign Mastery’s “Ask The GMs” from the very beginning – specific game mechanics were only to be referenced when the question posed could be abstracted into a broader, more interesting general principle. We simply didn’t want to buy into such divisive territory.

Fortunately, such problems seem to have receded of late, perhaps exported to social media.

That’s why so much of the free preview of Assassin’s Amulet was material that didn’t appear in the main text – it was a deliberate look behind the curtains on the writing of the product, the logic behind the creative decisions, and so on, as well as a presentation of selected portions of the content. Another principle that we deliberately pursued in the writing was that the free preview contained usable and useful material in its’ own right – we had both been served up preview versions that simply excerpted a handful of pages, the contents of which were only useful if you bought the full product. They weren’t a preview, they were an advertisement.

Here at Campaign Mastery, most of the posts may be pitched at the experienced GM, but I am at pains to describe the thought processes that lie behind any in-game decisions or events described, because that tells the GM who doesn’t know how to do it what I did, and why.

Over the eleven-plus years of publication, I’ve tried to bring that philosophy to every aspect of the hobby. Most, if not all, have something written about them. It’s often just a matter of finding the right post!

Outside of these pages, studying industrial arbitration, diplomacy, and the art of negotiation may be rewarding. Those allied subjects are the closest that you will find to immediate relevance.

Putting Content In It’s Place

When you look at the totality expressed, it will be surprising to some that there is so little that’s about content.

Purely by chance, over the weekend, I stumbled across the finals of a local show called Lego Masters, which provides the perfect metaphor for the relationship of content to everything described, especially original content: This article has been about a sketch pretending to be a blueprint; content are the bricks and mortar. Content doesn’t determine the shape of the finished house; the blueprints do. And a really good idea that doesn’t fit should be set aside for another day, another opportunity.

But better bricks not only make for a prettier, more attractive structure, they may make possible structures that would otherwise be impossible. Content is important – but not as important as the four responsibilities.

In fact, Everything that I haven’t described as part of the four can be characterized as personal style and repertoire of technique. It isn’t essential, just sometimes nice to have.

These four things are the four obligations that you have to meet as a GM, and the better that you do them, the better a GM you are.

PS: When I was just starting out, I had another GM/player who wasn’t in the game but who had a lot more experience mentor me. I’ve written an article about the experience, encouraging others to do the same, but it mentions a number of the lessons he taught me, and may also be useful as a result: Bringing On The Next Generation, part two: Gamemaster Mentors

I explained in Part 1 what the Omega Archive is, why I’m creating the contents of it, how to use the contents in your own campaigns. Instead of repeating all that, I intend to get more or less right down to the content!

But first, the ongoing index list:

In part 1 I covered entries 1-6:

1. The Anima Device
2. The Anvil of The Photosphere
3. The Arc Of Nestrus
4. The Blue Bowl of Xiphilxus
5. The Cortex Realignment
6. The Could-Have-Been King and his army of Might-Have-Beens and Never-Weres

In this part, I aim to deal with 7-12:

7. The Cipher Plague of Dantus V
8. The Entanglement Grenade
9. The Festival Of Delphaeus
10. The Gauss Lock
11. The Greater Key
12. The Gridwyrm

And still to come are:

13. The Halo Field
14. The Lord Of Travesties
15. The Meteorite Funnel
16. The Moment
17. The Nanodust Collective
18. The Nightnare Child
19. The Orphaned Hour
20. The Parallel Cannon
21. The Perspective Cannon
22. The Proton Shell
23. The Pyrovore Effector
24. The Singularity Locket
25. The Skaro Degradations
26. The Stellar Catapult
27. The Sword Of Eternity
28. The Tear of Isha
29. The Wormhole Reflection
30. The Time-Gun of Rassilon

So, with that out of the way, let’s get creatively mercenary with a sextet of original ideas….

The Cipher Plague of Dantus V

The Cipher Plague is a computer virus that has a particularly devastating payload – over time, it gradually introduces into a computer system a condition that resembles aphasia in humans.

To really appreciate how nasty that is, you need to read the background in the Canon Notes below. I’ll be back afterwards to talk about the symptom progression and why the various obvious solutions are ineffective.

Canon Notes: This is a completely original creation.

I was captivated by the fifth episode of Deep Space Nine in which a plague sweeps the station causing Aphasia, and eventually, death.

Aphasia is a condition in which the ability to comprehend or formulate language is lost, usually because of damage to specific regions of the brain. It’s a real, and quite frightening, condition.

In other words, someone says something entirely reasonable – “Good Morning, how are you today? I am very well, and ready to get to work,” and the aphasic person hears a string of unrelated words “Umbrella teapot, mountain dew coffee chew sun sugar donkey, waterfall grab stark lunch.”

Aphasia can affect visual languages such as sign language as well as reading and writing. Like I said, scary – how would you like to hear nothing but babble when it’s clear from the tone that someone is trying to tell you something important? Or to be reduced to communicating in babble, without impacting in the slightest your intelligence, i.e. your capacity for having something to say?

So, now you know. Let’s translate this into computer terms.

Computer subsystems and components have to talk to each other all the time, and they generally process every task symbolically – they don’t ‘think’ of ‘apples’, they ‘think’ of a term that represents ‘apples’. Certain parameters and values may or may not be associated, depending on the design of the storage data structure – green, red, granny smith, delicious, worm, apple tree, Beatles, you name it. All communications and processing employs such index values or ‘tokens’ to find and retrieve the data on “apples” or whatever query you might have – it doesn’t matter if this is a line of text in a document being held in memory, or in a file, or an entry in a database (which simply means that the arrangement of contents itself holds meaning), or whatever. So the first thing you notice is file corruption – depending on the robustness of the system design, you may get a warning that a file save has failed, or that the file could not be loaded correctly, or it may assume that whatever it has retrieved is exactly what was supposed to be within the file.

That’s a relatively trivial problem in a memo. It’s a critical problem if the file contains specifications for the manufacture of a pacemaker.

The second symptom is the failure of common functions, possibly leading to program crashes. Reloading the program will sometimes cure these, and sometimes not. These will gradually become more prevalent. In reality, all functions are equally likely to be affected, but because the common functions are used more frequently and routinely – “load this”, “save this”, “print this” – problems in these functions are noticed more quickly.

So, your data gradually becomes more corrupt, and so does your software, and so does your operating system, and so does your boot-up process. Because such problems tend to compound, this is a fourth-power growth rate in malfunctions – and because both saving and retrieving data produces this corruption, it’s going to be in the middle of that range.

If the virus can initially cause only one failure per hour, at the end of one hour, it will be capable of something like 5 to the 4th power, or 625 failures per hour (about 10.4 per minute, or one every 5.76 seconds). An hour after that, we’re talking 390,625 errors per hour, or about 6510 per minute, or 108.5 a second, or one every 0.009216 seconds, and your computer is a complete idiot.

Human viruses that are too lethal rarely become epidemics; they kill the host too quickly for the virus to spread. The most series epidemics and pandemics come from viruses that kill eventually, but leave their hosts alone, with mild or even no symptoms, for a period of time in which the illness can spread. Make them highly infectious as well, and possibly airborne, and you have Covid-19 on your hands. The Cipher Virus is so disruptive that, left to its own devices, it would fall into that “too lethal” category.

For this reason, it is restricted by design in it’s efficacy (but not it’s infectiousness); it contains a countdown timer that slows the rate of it’s malicious activity by a random value between 25 and 500.

Let’s look at what that means. First, a 25 (the fastest ‘kill’):

• start: 1 per 25 hours
• 1 hr: 1 per hour
• 2 hrs: 25 per hour.
• 3 hrs: 625 per hour, or one every 5.76 seconds.
• 4 hrs: 15,625 per hour, or more than 4 per second. Computer is almost a brick; in terms of user interaction, it already is.
• 5 hrs: 390,625 per hour, or more than 108 per second. Even automated functions with retry-until-success like internet communications are unreliable.
• 6 hrs: 9,765,.625 per hour, or than 2712 per second. Computer is unlikely to successfully boot-up, but still shows enough life to try and fail.
• 7 hrs: 244,140,625 per hour, or more than 67,816 per second. Computer is a brick; any attempted operation generates error messages, then error messages about not being able to log error messages, ad infinitum.

Seven hours vs two hours might not sound like a lot, but at internet speeds, that’s a huge difference. At the other end of the scale:

• start: 1 per 500 hrs. Other sources of error will usually swamp this. 0.2% chance of detection.
• 1 hr: 1 per 400 hrs. As above. 0.25% chance of detection.
• 2hrs: 1 per 320 hrs. As above. 0.3125% chance of detection.
• 3 hrs: 1 per 256 hrs. As above. 0. 39% chance of detection.
• 4 hrs: 1 per 204.8 hrs. A fraction under 0.5% chance of detection. Might be noticed with a lot of infected machines. Probably not.
• 5 hrs: 1 per 163.8 hrs. As above. About 0.625% chance of detection.
• 6 hrs: 1 per 131.1 hrs: As above. About 0.76% chance of detection.
• 7 hrs: 1 per 104.86 hrs. A fraction under 1% chance of detection – noticeable with a lot of infected machines. Doesn’t look like a serious problem yet.
• 8 hrs: 1 per 83.9 hrs. About 1.2% chance per machine of being notices. Still doesn’t look serious.
• 9 hrs: 1 per 67.1 hrs. About 1.5% chance per machine of being noticed. Large installations may notice more than one machine misbehaving.
• 10 hrs: 1 per 53.7 hrs. About 1.9% chance per machine of being noticed. Large installations will seem multiple machines failing, and start getting hints that the situation is serious.
• 11 hrs: 1 per 43 hrs. About 2.33%.chance per machine of being noticed. Large installations will recognize a virus and commence rehabilitory action.
• 12 hrs: 1 per 34.36 hrs. About 2.9% chance per machine of being noticed. Antivirus measures by large installations ineffective because machines are reinfected as quickly as they are cleaned. Problem is considered critical, strategy meetings convened, alerts issued to security agencies.
• 13 hrs: 1 per 27.5 hrs. About 3.6% chance per machine of being noticed. Medium-sized installations notice occasional misbehavior, but it doesn’t look serious yet (sound familiar). Meetings conclude at large installations with a total shutdown and virus-cleaning of the entire network. Management are not convinced, but reluctantly agree. Process will take about an hour.
• 14 hrs: 1 per 22 hrs. About 4.5% chance per machine of being noticed. Medium-sized installations notice occasional misbehavior, but it doesn’t look serious yet. Antivirus systems at large installations, compromised by the cipher aphasia, accelerate the problem while claiming to have fixed it.
• 15 hrs: 1 per 14.7 hrs. About 6.8% chance per machine of being noticed. Medium-sized installations notice occasional misbehavior, but it doesn’t look serious yet. Word gets out that government and large corporations are under cyberattack, if it hadn’t already leaked. Large installations discover antivirus measures ineffective. Propose another shutdown and a complete restore from secure backups believed to be clean. Management is even more reluctant.
• 16 hrs: 1 per 11.73 hrs. About 8.5% chance of detection – one in twelve home systems now infected. Medium-sized installations and small networks notice misbehavior. Management of large institutions hold crisis meetings, reluctantly agree to cyber-security proposal. Will take three hours to prepare, minimum.
• 17 hrs: 1 per 9.4 hrs. More than 10% chance of detection. One in nine home systems infected. Governments start advising citizens to disconnect from the internet. Some do, most won’t hear the instruction for 6 hours or more.
• 18 hrs. 1 per 7.52hrs. Increase in infections is greater than the number of systems disconnected from the internet. Elevators are declared unsafe as a number of malfunctions are reported. Fire suppression and sprinkler systems deemed unreliable after instances of premature activation are reported. Manufactured goods found to be seriously faulty in excess of any quality control tolerance.
• 19 hrs. 1 per 6 hrs. Final preparations for infrastructure shutdown are made. Military placed on highest alert status in case someone tries to take advantage of the situation, but they are also hamstrung by comms, command, and intelligence failures. Day’s manufacture scrapped, factories closed after a few fatalities from malfunctioning equipment come to light.
• 20 hrs. 1 per 4.8 hrs. Infrastructure shutdown takes place. No water, no power, no comms. Lots of people still don’t know what’s going on, so this comes as a total surprise. They don’t get the message to restore systems from backup. Restoration software, corrupted by the aphasia virus, restores large operations to some prior point on the timeline – roll a d20. Hospitals and other installations with standalone power begin discovering that patient monitoring systems have been corrupted. Some people die from maladministration of medications, others because the symptoms that should have triggered alarms, don’t. Secondary failures begin cropping up – overloads etc – taking down as much infrastructure as would have failed had nothing been done.
• 21 hrs. 1 per 4.8 hrs amongst domestic, medium and smaller installations, less amongst infrastructure & big business. More crisis meetings. Situation declared either an act of war or of Terrorism, depending on who is deemed responsible. Cost of the viral attack reaches the billions if it hasn’t done so already. Word gets out that the ‘restore’ strategy has failed. People begin to panic and act out against individuals and institutions associated with whoever the public blames, including their own governments. Localized rioting and looting.
• 22 hrs. 1 per 3.8 hrs (domestic, medium and small installations). Everyone is now aware of something going on, even if they don’t know what it is. Connections to the internet in search of answers more than compensate for those who have heard, and are obeying, the instructions to disconnect. A small hard core refuse to obey, unilaterally.
• 23 hrs. 1 per 3 hrs (domestic, medium and smaller institutions). Government shuts down the internet to slow the spread of the virus. Manufacturing has shut down. Businesses with low operating margins start laying off workers. Economy on the verge of implosion. Rioting and Looting become widespread.

Okay, so fewer than one in three computers are compromised, and very few have become bricks – the damage is arguably worse because there has been time for the news to spread. This is the difference between a Terror weapon and a tactical weapon.

But the timeline assumes that every infection is at the slowest rate – instead of it’s own random value. So 1/3 of personal devices are junk, and so is 1/7th or so of industry and infrastructure. One quarter or so of people who were on life-support are dead, and so on. Hundreds have died because their sat-navs have gone haywire, or because the traffic lights have gone nuts. It’s not quite the ‘aircraft falling out of the sky” forecast of a Y2K doomsday, but it’s close enough – and all in less than a day.

The ‘restore from clean copies” strategy is the correct one, but to be successful, it has to be EVERYONE. Any data that postdates the clean copy must be considered lost. Forensic examination of infected systems by ‘clean’ systems (while they remain functional) is needed to identify the point of infection; but, as with cancer, it is more important to eliminate every cell than it is to avoid removing healthy tissue, or – in this case – data. Some people won’t do this willingly, so force will be required. Refusal will be considered an act of terrorism in its own right, akin to holding onto a bio-weapon after their use has been made illegal.

Recovery will take months. Governments will have fallen. Wars may have started. This is a nasty, nasty, weapon.

The Entanglement Grenade

Everyone’s heard of voodoo dolls, right? The Entanglement Grenade binds a group of individuals to the manipulations of a high-tech version of such a doll, using quantum entanglement as a potential weapon of mass destruction. Those affected are not controllable at a macro level, but can be affected at an atomic or subatomic level en masse – drop the binding object in acid or in front of a fusion torch and a large swathe of the enemy just go away. And the effect is for life, it cannot be undone. Worse, no matter obstacle can obstruct the effect, and separation after exposure is irrelevant – you can be hundreds of light-years away and still be just as quantum-entangled.

This device binds multiple individuals by targeting something the targets have in common, usually elements of their genetic structure. But they can be made more discriminate or less – you can target every left-handed redhead in a crowd and leave the others untouched; it’s all in how you set the controls of the grenade and on the sample that you use to bind its entanglement to the targets. This flexibility makes this an especially dangerous weapon to the morality of the wielder. How many German civilians would you be entitled to eliminate if, in the process, you wiped out the majority of Nazis amongst them?

There are bio-weapons that – in theory – act this way. But they take time to target and manufacture, and there are ways of preventing exposure, and they tend to persist and pose the danger of rebounding on the user. For this reason, they have been outlawed. Entanglement Grenades suffer from none of these drawbacks; they are quick to customize, can be mass-manufactured in advance, bypass protections from both clothing and installations, and (unless misused) pose only limited dangers to the user. That makes their use a lot more tempting. And that’s their real danger.

Canon Notes: This is a completely original creation.

The Festival Of Delphaeus

Delphaues was a madman who thought it would be liberating to walk a mile in a stranger’s shoes, as the old saying (almost) goes. To ensure that he had ample targets, he constructed The Festival to walk amongst a crowd, removing and storing minds as it went, then bestowing upon the hapless victim the stored mind of another of its victims. These changes were only temporary; in 50 hours, the host would automatically revert, to discover himself in whatever position a random stranger had left him in.

The festival itself is a humanoid machine, standing about 3′ tall, and in the approximate shape of a child, usually female. The device is designed to mimic the appropriate outward appearance of the dominant species wherever it finds itself, but is designed to be incredibly resilient.

To obtain appropriate visual samples, The festival visits a location containing a number of children every 50 hours. This means that its first victims in a 50-hour ‘exchange spree’ are always children, who are far less able to cope with the trauma of suddenly finding yourself in a stranger’s body, perhaps of a different gender, or perhaps completely alien to you. The resulting trauma frequently causes long-term psychological disturbances.

Canon Notes: This is a completely original creation.

The Gauss Lock

Inversions of a planetary magnetic field are indescribably traumatic for the planet. Technically, it’s called Geomagnetic Reversal. Wikipedia’s article section on Reversals paints a relatively understated picture of the potential impact; limiting it to increased cosmic radiation and increased volcanic activities, the combination of which could be responsible for mass extinction events. This understatement is due to the difficulty in analysis of past Reversals and the biospheric impacts they did not did not produce.

That means that we are in the realm of theory and best educated guesses for the most part, but are obligated to more-or-less assume the worst. Birds and other creatures who navigate using magnetic fields will get lost. Electronics including satellites and electric grids could fail. Parts of the planet could become uninhabitable because of cosmic radiation. Throw in a massive increase in geothermal activity, ash clouds blanketing the planet, and possibly triggering a new ice age, and almost certainly triggering eruptions and earthquakes..

But the Gauss Lock doesn’t just invert the magnetic fields of planets within a solar system, it inverts the magnetic field of the sun. And the consequences of that make these mere terrestrial consequences pale shadows of the true calamity.

This happens naturally every 11 years, so it might not seem too serious at first glance. Solar magnetic reversals accompany a peak in solar activity. The solar magnetic field extends beyond the orbit of Pluto.

According to this article by NASA, when solar physicists talk about solar field reversals, their conversation often centers on the “current sheet.” The current sheet is a sprawling surface jutting outward from the sun’s equator where the sun’s slowly rotating magnetic field induces an electrical current.

The current itself is small, only one ten-billionth of an amp per square meter (0.0000000001 amps/m2), but there’s a lot of it: the amperage flows through a region 10,000 km thick and billions of kilometres wide. Electrically speaking, the entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet.

During field reversals, the current sheet becomes very wavy. Phil Scherrer, a solar physicist at Stamford, likens the undulations to the seams on a baseball. As Earth orbits the sun, we dip in and out of the current sheet. Transitions from one side to another can stir up stormy space weather around our planet.

But those are natural reversals, powered by the internal energy and structure of the solar core. The Gauss Lock generates a massive EM wave that completely reorients the magnetic field, attracting one pole and repelling the other, and generating electromagnetic waves that tear the sheet apart.

The result is a ten-fold increase in solar radiation, causing a rapid ballooning of the affected sun as the misalignment in rotation of the magnetized elements within the solar structure are twisted and folded and flung outward or collapsed inward. From every sunspot, huge blisters of plasma erupt; most fall back rapidly, but some can extend millions of kilometres into space. Anything intersecting these are annihilated by the plasma, which is at a temperature of (usually) 10-20 million degrees (at this scale, it doesn’t matter too much what temperature scale you’re using!) and may reach as much as 100 million degrees.

This is followed by a rapid (but temporary) inflation in size of parts of the sun surrounding these flares as it enters an artificial (and short-lived) phase of giantism. This normally subsides in less than a week, but again causes a spike in the radiation levels of any planet that survives exposure to the super-heated surface. If the star is sufficiently close to the end of it’s life, this giantism may be permanent, or the star could even explode into an artificially-induced nova.

And it is worth remembering that planetary magnetic flips are also induced by the device, reducing their protection against radiation just at the moment when they most need it, exacerbating all the consequences experienced.

In physical terms, the device consists of a satellite that releases a number of lesser satellites that position themselves relative to the parent to form a ring oriented toward the solar source. Solar radiation is captured and released into this ring, which functions as a particle accelerator, increasing the mass of the particle. Because its’ spin is not altered, this also intensifies both the magnetic field of the stream of accelerated radiation and its responsiveness to the magnetic fields generated, becoming more and more stable and energetic. When it has reached sufficient energy levels, the magnetic fields that have shaped the path of the stream into a closed loop are released and the super-accelerated particles fly off like a catherine wheel being spun in reverse. Half the resulting energy is dissipated away from the solar source, but some sheets through the rest of the affected solar system, and some discharges through the solar source.

All this, naturally, obliterates the solar satellites, leaving no evidence that this was not a natural phenomenon, but that’s a secondary consideration.

Canon Notes: This is a completely original creation.

The Greater Key

It is said that there are hidden universal laws describing the genetic structure of species, and that if one decodes and analyzes enough such structures, these universal laws can be inferred, studied, and eventually, proven and put to work.

One scientist (whose name has been lost to the ages) was impatient and created a device to seek out species it had never encountered before, vivisect two or three specimens (more if necessary), correlate the findings with an analysis of the genetic codes of the victim, then return to the time and place from whence it departed.

Unfortunately, the scientist was a better biochemist than he was a software engineer. Every time the Greater Key discerns one of the universal laws, it returns to its time and place of origin, attempts to report its’ findings (but fails due to a programming error), wipes it’s accumulated findings (but not the record of the races whose genetic structure have been examined) and then sets out to start all over again.

If that were all it did, it would be a menace but not significant enough to warrant it being held in the Omega Archive.

It retains partial genetic information on the creatures it has previously examined (in theory, so that it can avoid redundant data), but the content is variable and random. When it performs an analysis, it releases a mass of nanotechnological bio-bots. These are supposed to heal the victim of the examination, but instead they rewrite the genetic codes of everyone in the vicinity with a mixture of the sampled DNA and recombinated variants from alien races. This essentially rewrites some of the individual’s organs to alien specifications. Sometimes the results are compatible, more or less, and the victim lives; sometimes they are semi-compatible, and the victim is horribly mutated or deformed; and sometimes, they are incompatible and the victims all die.

Worse, because it’s records are corrupted, it generally fails to recognize an encountered species as one that has been sampled.

Even this is not the end of the nightmare reality of The Greater Key. It was designed to be an ethical medical instrument by its’ now long-dead creator; if its mission is interrupted or disrupted, it is to assume that those around it are hostile to its mission, and it is to ‘bribe’ them for their race’s cooperation by releasing a set of bio-bots. into the general population. This is intended to temporarily incapacitate enemies while ‘repaying’ their contribution to science.

The net effect is that anyone who attacks the Key causes a localized plague that afflicts all in the vicinity of the device.

The first species to be completely wiped out by the plagues of the Greater Key were those of its creator; because it would periodically return to the same point in time and space, and then forget that it had sampled them long ago. It therefore unleashed wave after wave of artificial plagues upon them eventually afflicting almost 1/3 of the planet, until the society collapsed and could no longer resist the Key.

Canon Notes: This is a completely original creation.

The Gridwyrm

The most pernicious computer virus ever created, the Gridwyrm is capable of recreating itself from a mere fragment of the original code, revising itself to overcome new defenses and reinventing itself to infect new operating systems – in other words, it is both immortal and evolves.

It’s essential drive is to survive. Its secondary priority is to reproduce itself. It’s tertiary mission is to “sew mischief” by inverting all controls it encounters – every switch that is on must be switched off, and vice versa, every control set at 10% is to be reset to 90&, and so on. Of course, a millisecond later, these become the new ‘default state’ and the inversion is reversed.

Few forms of advanced technology are able to cope with this barrage, and eventually fail. The barrage also functions as a denial of service attack on the technology. The author did not properly appreciate the consequences of this seemingly minor act of vandalism. This virus routinely wipes out entire civilized cultures; the more advanced a society, the more vulnerable it is.

Most antiviral systems operate using a recognition sequence, sometimes with heuristic pattern-matching that will recognize malware that is similar in functionality to the original. This virus propagates itself through its viral signature and then sets about rebuilding itself on a newly-infected system; in effect, the antiviral protection acts as a distribution channel for the virus code.

Canon Notes: This is a completely original creation.

So, there you have it – another half dozen nasty ideas for super-weapons that would sit comfortably in any Space Opera story alongside Death Stars and Sunbeams.

The scary thing is that we aren’t that far away from being able to actually build a couple of these…

Integration. What does that mean, exactly?

Well, in mathematical terms, it means – essentially – accumulation of results from designated start point to designated end-point. In social terms, it roughly translates to incorporating or mixing one thing with another so well that the results appear completely uniform and consistent. Both are on speaking terms with the usage of the term in this article.

This post has been inspired by part of a conversation with one of my players on Saturday. We were discussing whether or not I had ever contemplated “turning pro” and GMing for money, which is a subject for another day, when he made the point that any campaign I ran would strike trouble because my campaigns demand an inherent buy-in to roleplaying.

I replied that this wouldn’t be a substantial problem because I would simply specify “roleplay-oriented” in the description. Which is when the player made a really astute point – that most people, when they read that, would assume that it meant ‘combat-light’, and that description doesn’t fit my campaigns at all.

Integrating Combat and Non-Combat Action Sequences

For a start, I want to make it clear that I generally broaden my horizons by conflating “Combat” and “Non-combat action sequences”. When thinking about such things, I don’t generally distinguish between the two, I treat them both in the same way and as different shades of the same color.

The reasons for this are simple, and have their roots in the way players approach the two – both are handled in exactly the same way, in strong contrast to the way everything else gets handled.

You see, with ‘everything else’, characterization and personality and in-character decisions and thoughts and words tend to be uppermost in the players minds, and I do everything I can to encourage this. Similarly, in my mind as GM, these things are also near the top of the priority ladder, second only to the need to tell a story that the players will find entertaining and engaging, and hence will want to participate in.

As soon as some sort of action sequence comes around, game mechanics, and especially those game mechanics that pertain to the abilities and actions of their individual character, climb the ladder. At first, they share the same rung as the characterization elements described, and then they climb over the top of those elements and assume the ascendancy – unless I take active measures to oppose this hierarchical inversion.

That’s more easily said than done, too, because (of necessity), game mechanics are also elbowing their way to the forefront of my thinking as GM.

I combat this by thinking as much as I can about the characterization elements in advance and making specific notes concerning their applicability and impact on the tactical situation and any decisions that might have to be made on behalf of an NPC. That means that I don’t have to think about them as much when the time comes AND I have a reminder in front of me not to neglect them.

Integrating Planned Action with Plot

A lot of what appears spontaneous in any campaign isn’t, or shouldn’t be. I put considerable effort into considering action sequences as “advancing the plot by other means’, to borrow from a famous definition of war in terms of diplomacy.

That comes in two flavors, in any practical sense. The first is maintaining awareness when prepping for the day’s play of what actions a PC might initiate – what stimuli I’m putting in front of them, and how they might react. That includes any skill checks to actually do something (as opposed to simply knowing something).

Everything should be couched in terms of the PCs – how they will find out about it, what they might think of it, how they might react to it, what they might attempt to do about it, how likely they are to succeed or fail, and what the consequences will be. This is, of course, an impossible ideal, a theoretical abstraction that can never exist perfectly in the real world – but I strive to get as close as I can in every game session to that ideal.

The second flavor is always ensuring that every scripted action sequence serves a plot purpose (even if that purpose is to have the players spinning their wheels while the plot thickens around them).

In practice, the latter receives heavy (at least in part) because we only play any given campaign once a month, and only for a handful of hours (usually less) at a time. There’s little time to waste, so everything has to be to the point – even if it doesn’t seem to be so at the time. And I never have an encounter or piece of dialogue or whatever doing only one ‘job’ if it’s capable of doing more than that without compromising that primary purpose.

If we were to play twice as often, or for twice as long at a sitting, my prep burden would only increase about 50%, because I could afford to be that much more casual about such things – as was the case a decade or so back. Even playing until 6:30 (as we used to do), instead of 5PM (as we now do), would be a significant playing time increase – 4.5 or 5.5 hours instead of 3-to-4.5 hrs. That’s either +50% or +22% – so even the most pessimistic view of the increase would add up to more than an extra two game sessions worth a year, and it could be as many as an extra six.

This isn’t to voice a complaint – it’s simply to place some context around what I’m describing so that readers can interpret what I do and adjust my advice to fit their own circumstances.

Integrating Plot with Planned Action

The converse is also true. While the impact any pre-planned action sequence on the plot is critical, the plot should always impact on any pre-planned action sequence. Action should always have a plot purpose, as I said, but plot should always guide and shape the action, too.

The easiest way for this to happen is to have the plot define the parameters of the action sequence – the terrain in a battle, for example. If any action sequence is not so defined, that action sequence is too generic, in my book, and the action sequence and plot both need to be honed until they mesh more specifically. There’s another impossible ideal here towards which I try to aim – to have every action sequence sufficiently unique and defined that they couldn’t possibly take place in exactly the same way at any other time, place, or circumstance than the one dictated by the plotlines – both as defined in the immediate term, and in any broader long-term, and in any other plot structures that happen to be relevant to the campaign.

You can get a long way toward this ideal simply by choosing, whenever there are multiple approaches to a problem or situation, the one that is most appropriate to the character supposedly tackling that problem or situation – in other words, with good role-playing. From that foundation, though, preplanning is necessary to go any further.

Most GMs discover this, and the value of it, simply by taking advantage of an opportunity to think a few minutes ahead every now and then. They find that their plot it more engaging, the action seems more appropriate, and the characters seem more ‘solid’ and realized. After it’s happened by accident once or twice, they start deliberately courting the benefits, and that sets their feet on the slippery slope of game prep.

Integrating Planned Action with Characterization

There are times when plot and characterization can be in a tug of war, and times when they are both pulling in the same direction. The latter are reasonably easy to cope with – it’s just a matter of going with the flow, after all; but the former occasions are more problematic.

Just how problematic depends on the exact situation within the game. If the opposition between the two is not too extreme, you can often resolve the conflict by inserting a roleplaying/characterization ‘beat’ into the middle of the action sequence. “I wish you weren’t making me do this” or “Under other circumstances, things might have been different” or any of a thousand other expressions of regret over the choice being imposed by the plot.

(Care needs to be taken with this, however, because it inevitably adds more paths to resolution of any conflict with the PCs, which can rebound and reverberate within the plot).

Even more superficial conflicts can be avoided by basing any tactical decisions on the personality of the character making those decisions – good roleplay, again.

But, in more extreme cases, you may need to insert additional backstory to reduce the options available to the NPC to those that are compatible with the plot. This is the great advantage of the GM relative to the players: they have to live in the moment, the ‘now’, except as exempted from this restriction temporarily by the GM, whereas the GM is free to insert whatever background material he needs; the only constraints are the limits of his imagination and sense of fair play (and the fact that if he abuses this power too strongly, he will be a GM without players).

In even more extreme cases, it might be necessary to introduce revisions or deviations into the characterization, supported by appropriate events in his or her backstory, of course. In other words, if character and plot are in conflict, change the character! While this approach always works if done properly, there is a price to be paid in terms of consistency of characterization, so it is best not to over-use this solution; and the best way to avoid over-use is to reserve this for when your back is to the wall and nothing else will suffice.

Integrating Characterization with Planned Action

As usual, the converse is also true – a character’s personality is only partially defined by motivations and justifications and rationales; the primary definition stems from the accumulation of their actions and choices. One of the cleverest and most interesting ways of redefining a character is to change the perception of past actions!

I love having ‘good, moral characters’ that do the ‘wrong thing’ from the point-of-view of the PCs because it is the ‘right thing to do’ from the NPCs perspective. And ‘bad, immoral characters’ who do the right thing not because it’s ‘the right thing to do’ but or the personal benefits they can squeeze out of it. And the occasional ‘boy scout’ whose solutions result from oversimplification of problems and short-term thinking. And the even rarer out-and-out villain who makes no bones about being antisocial and looking out for #1 without conscience or remorse. And characters who want to do the right thing (as they see it) but have made a mistaken assumption, or a wrong interpretation, or simply have a flaw in their logic. And, most rarely of all, a character who wants to do the wrong thing (as they see it) but get it all wrong in practice. Populate your campaign with those six archetypes and endless fun and depth of characterization both results and is perceived to have resulted!

Integrating Random Action with Plot

Most of the above was not part of our conversation, on Saturday, which moved on to random encounters fairly quickly. It was suggested (truthfully) that my primary approach to integrating random action (in the form of wandering monsters or other ‘by chance’ encounters) is to generate a specific encounter table in which every result advances the plot in some predictable way. As with any other GM’s force, if all outcomes are satisfactory in terms of the GM’s “agenda”, you don’t care which one(s) actually eventuate!

But I also have three other strategies that I employ in conjunction with this approach, which presupposes sufficient prep time and prescience to both know that such an encounter table will be needed, and the wherewithal to actually create one.

First: Generate your random encounters in advance, during game prep, and then integrate the products of chance into the plot, redefining them as necessary, and amending the plot as necessary.

Second, when using legitimately third-party or preset encounter tables, integrating the results with the ongoing plot before the encounter actually starts. I do this more frequently than most of my players ever realize. After all, when you roll an encounter, you have to decide how the encounter will come to the attention of the players, and how the terrain, circumstances, and other context, will integrate with the encounter; it doesn’t add too much burden to that to consider what impact they might have on the plot and how you can use the encounter to further your agenda (of entertaining everyone).

And third, being prepared to sacrifice part or all of the plot on the alter of that agenda. If all roads lead to Rome, who cares which one events steer the PCs down? Never sacrifice the long-term fidelity of the campaign with a slavish adherence to whatever you had planned in the short term. Your adventures should be treated as living things, growing and evolving in unexpected directions, guided only by the ultimate principle of long-term entertainment and direction. My players forget, on a regular basis, that I do this – but if you want an example (and proof that it happens), consult the write-up of Mortus from a few years back, and in particular how adequate prep gave me the freedom to cope with it when the players wanted to do something that wasn’t in the plot.

Random chance can derive from player choice or unusual die roll results – from the GM’s point of view, it should make no difference; adventure-internal plotlines should be robust enough to accommodate and even harness these events; that’s the point I was striving to make in Compounds Of Confusion: Luck and the GM, and Shades OF Yes and No.

Getting The Mix Right

The net effect of all these techniques is that, for the most part, my players simply can’t tell what’s been pre-scripted and what hasn’t; and the discontinuity between action sequences and roleplay sequences are substantially blurred and obscured, if not erased completely.

Action furthers the plot, the plot creates the need for action, and outcomes from action sequences further advance and define the plot. Integration is achieved when you can only tell where one ends and the other begins in hindsight (and not even then with complete certainty). Both plot and action sequences are strengthened by the integration, and the campaign becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Or, to put that last point another way: do it right, and you get many times the game-play value for your prep-time buck!

A shorter post than usual because of the Easter Long Weekend. I hope everyone has had a happy, comforting, and comfortable break! See you all next week, when I’m thinking of offering up another serving of the Forbidden Weapons of the Omega Archive. ‘Till then, Game on!