The latest iteration of my superhero campaign has just gotten underway. Being set (mostly) on an alternate-history Earth, it holds a number of elements that may be of interest to readers, especially if I explain the thinking that led to the various choices that were made and my approach to the construction of a detailed alternate history.

The Point Of Initial Divergence

The first question, whenever creating an alternate history, must always be “what was the first difference?”

I had already determined that this was to be a world in which half the planet was under the control of a British Empire that was more substantial than any known in our world; in fact, all bar Asia, Oceania, Siberia, was to be part of this British Empire, while the rest of the world was under the control of the mysterious Mao (rhymes with “how”).

India, due to its historical connection with Britain, would be excluded from Asia, and part of the British Empire, as would Sri Lanka (still known in this world as “Ceylon”); to balance that, with some regret, I gave up the rest of the Pacific, including my homeland of Australia, Antarctica, and South America. I also chose to have Central America and the Middle East as disputed territory between the two. Because I would need their advances in electronics and miniaturization for various social and technological phenomena, the Empire would have to claim Japan, not the Mao.

Clearly, the age of exploration would be greatly altered. Changes to relatively recent history, like the 20th Century World Wars, wouldn’t cut it. Instead, I went all the way back in history to the point at which Britain ceased to be an absolute Monarchy – the signing of the Magna Carta – and chose to ‘meddle’ in the events which led up to that singular event. The change needed was only subtle – I made King John a little wilier, a little shrewder, and a little more intelligent. I had expected to need a more dramatic change, but…

Research

I already knew of the broad significance of the Magna Carta and had some appreciation of the circumstances that led to its signing, but – having decided that this was potentially the point for this history to diverge – my next step was to research it more thoroughly. I read up on the relevant Wikipedia pages – Magna Carta and King John I – along with a number of other websites such as Magna Carta 1215 and Useful Dates In British History, and finally, a webpage that was once a useful general resource, The University Of Wolverhampton’s Distance Learning LLB Curriculum, but which has been replaced by a page that is more concerned with Distance Learning (and its pro’s and con’s) in general – still, no doubt, useful information, but not for the purpose for which I employed it (hence there is no link).

I also read relevant chapters of various History references that I have. At all turns, I was seeking not just What happened and When, but the more difficult questions of Why and How – and that all-important element, a discussion of the consequences and effects that events had on the future.

Of course, there’s a lot of context and interpretation in analyzing historical events; not all of these sources agreed with each other, and I did not agree with all of them, either. So this mish-mash of research was filtered through three sieves – plausibility from a 21st century dramatic context, internal consistency, and finally, whether or not the interpretation advanced the chain of events in the general direction I wanted it to go.

The Substitution Principle

It was going to be important to me that society have a recognizable shape and pattern, so that the players could simply sit down and start playing with no culture shock; the campaign was to be in the near future of such an Empire, about 2050, but a future derived from a campaign world that was already 20-50 years ahead of our own in technology. Technology and its repercussions, and a changed history, would already pose sufficient culture shock for the players, there was no need to add to the burden.

That meant that anything that was fundamental to our culture had to stay, or – if removed by events – be replaced by an analogue. This meant backtracking all the way back to the historical beginning and adding another plot thread to the background to bring about the existance of that analogue. The first example, of course, is the Magna Carta itself. Despite the erosion and removal of almost all the provisions of the document over subsequent years, the principles that it established were fundamental to modern society. That meant that the Magna Carta had to stay, but the weakening of the monarchy that its adoption reflected had to be removed.

With a little thought, I was able to devise a course of history that permitted John to come to the conclave with his rebellious nobles in a position of strength, and for him to offer the nobles a subtly altered version of the Magna Carta which recognized the Crown as the Protector Of The People – a fairly nice-sounding title of no obvious importance, just something that sounded nice at the time. The Nobles, thinking that John had made a mistake and granted concessions he did not intend, rushed to sign. Only then did they find that this innocuous title gave John all sorts of controls over what the Nobles could and could not do, while he was free to do things in this capacity that he was forbidden from doing on his own behalf. Rather than stripping John of a measure of authority and control, the Magna Carta restricted the Nobility, granting them absolute authority – within the bounds of constraints that John controlled.

In the process, a three-pronged power structure was established, which in due course would develop interdependencies, because the eventual result was Common Law – the British equivalent of the Bill Of Rights, insofar as it established what rights and privileges the common people had, and which the Nobility was required to provide and defend. The Monarch was the people’s spokesman and ultimate defender, and without them, the Noble’s estates would quickly fall into ruin.

Everything Stays The Same Until It Changes

Another of the principles that are the foundation of my approach to alternate histories then came into play. Having made the key change to history, I tracked it’s consequences forward in time, assuming that nothing that had not specifically changed had remained the same as recorded in the history books. Little by little, deviations from history accumulated; only if I reached the point where history was no longer trending in the desired direction did I go back and seek a series of events that would restore the desired shape. Slowly, the power balance in Europe was reshaped. There was still a Napoleon Bonaparte, who became the most successful General in Imperial History, and who also introduced significant social and legal reforms. There was still an American Revolution, and while it failed (since the English military strength was not being sapped by conflicts closer to home), it still forced democratic reforms on the Empire, and so on. There was still a First World War, and still a Hitler, and still a Blitz, and so on.

The Principles Of Genius

I believe I’ve mentioned this one in the past, but it’s worth reiterating. The concept is that a man (or woman) of genius will advance the art of their chosen field by as many steps in any alternate history as they did historically. Should something happen to prevent one of them doing so, it will set that field of study back by precisely the number of steps that the individual contributed, historically.

This plays into a second, related, principle: no advance is possible until the foundations exist. Sir Isaac Newton invented Calculus (as did a number of others, independently) in order to analyze and understand certain celestial observations, which led him in turn to his laws of motion. If those celestial observations had not been made, due to inadequacy of telescopes – and it was Newton’s study of telescopes that led him to his advances in optics – then Newton would have remedied the lack, at the expense of another of his historical discoveries.

Social and political changes have a role to play in these functions, because they dictate who one scientist can easily communicate with, and the ends to which their researches will be put, and where their patronage is coming from. That means that in some cases where a scientist had to ‘reinvent the wheel’ in order to advance their field, he was now free to advance his field by two steps instead of just one.

Working forward through history, from year to year, backtracking as necessary, produced a workable timeline. (Unfortunately, I never got to finish writing that history – too many projects of greater importance intervened. I only got as far as 2015 – though I have draft material that completes the history, and that I have to finish as soon as this article is written!) Some discoveries came sooner, some later; these brought some social changes sooner, and some later; and the whole history evolved forwards. (It’s my intention to use that history as a series of articles in Monday Posts once the GM Toolbox series concludes – that’s the only way I’ll find time to finish it!)

The End Result

A few of my objectives for the end product haven’t been mentioned yet, but need to be acknowledged. The first is overall tone: the previous incarnation was a world which was initially in very Dystopian condition, and in which the side effects of the PCs adventures slowly transformed into a more Utopian situation. As a distinct contrast to that, I wanted this world to be (at least superficially) trending toward the Utopian when the PCs arrived – things would be good, and with prospects of getting better. Sure, it would have it’s problems, but the overall tone would be positive – more Eureka than Blade Runner – at least at first. In the course of the campaign, it would grow steadily darker, until the Big Finish, when the PCs will get the opportunity (if they play their cards right and haven’t made any serious mistakes along the way) to usher in a new Golden Age.

The other objective was to provide an environment with a lot of scope for adventure. To that end, now that the preamble has been disposed of, I can finally get to the original point of this article – outlining the current political situation within the Empire.

The British Empire

There are essentially three divisions of power: the Nobles (now gathered into a House Of Lords that must ratify all legislation), a representative lower house elected by the people from amongst the candidates proposed and endorsed by various political parties, and the Crown, which appoints a Civil Service to provide a continuity of bureaucracy. The Crown is the Protector Of The People, the safeguard, spokesman, and authority when it comes to the rights of the ordinary citizen. As such, it decides who can vote, controls electoral boundaries, and so on. The Lower House is led by the Prime Minister Of the Empire, while the House Of Lords is led by the Lord Chancellor. Through modern technology, the Crown is in direct contact with the populace – and can also shape opinions. Complicating everything is the supposed subservience of the Civil Service which – in reality – has developed a degree of autonomy that they will aggressively defend. Half the Lords are appointed by the Crown – often from the ranks of the other bodies of government, and occasionally from the general public – and the other half hold hereditary memberships. Governments have a proscribed lifespan of 3-5 years, within which span a fresh general election must be gazetted.

Each country or nation member has its own, lesser parliament, organized along similar lines. Some nations are divided into districts, or states, or counties; these also have elected bodies. It’s quite possible for a nation to have a government of one political party while the overall Empire is controlled by the policies of a rival party. The national governments are constrained to authority over local issues only; deciding what is a local issue, what is a national issue, and what is a Imperial issue is the purview of the Imperial Government, as advised by the Civil Service – which must obey the instructions of the Crown.

In theory, Governments are elected by the people to represent their interests and decisions, but the rise of lobby groups and political donations as an avenue to power means that they are more about the Economic emphasis of the authority they exercise. The result is a complex situation in which there are many channels – and backchannels – of power. Industry elects governments, but can be overridden by popular sentiment, which is shaped by the Crown. The balance of power in the Lords is appointed by the Crown, which can also withdraw an appointment for specific reasons – and which acts as a check on the authority of the Government; in theory, the Lords are to take a longer, wider view. But there are backchannels to the House Of Lords by which Industry and Union groups and other factional interests can lobby, and the Lords can always be overridden by the Crown. However, the crown must always honestly reflect overall public opinion on any issue, something it can shape but not control – and which the other branches of government and lobby groups can also influence. And, functioning as the interface between them all is the Civil Service – which can have its own agenda.

The result is a perpetually-boiling hotbed of political intrigue in which no branch of the Government can dominate, or can thwart the intentions of the people for very long. Go too far, and the government will find its legislation blocked, with the support of the crown and the unions; or, should the Lords seek too dominant a position, they will arouse the ire of the populace, who will beg the monarchy to alter the balance of power within the Lords accordingly. And, should the monarchy go too far, it will either strangle the economy apon which they depend, or it will unite both branches of government against the Throne – and the combination has a veto over the powers of the Monarchy.

This would suggest a political conservatism, a creeping paralysis – but the Empire is too complex for that to work. The Civil Service, through reforms based on modern technology, is incredibly efficient; only if everything is perfect (or at least getting better) for everyone can a government afford to simply mark time. Any dissatisfaction, by anyone, will be seized apon and amplified by a hungry media pack, which are yet another influence over public opinion. The added complications of conflicting governments at different levels of hierarchy within the Empire ensures that no-one can get complacent; there is always something new coming up.

Registered Eccentrics

Various branches of the government, over time, have been forced to recognize the power of Social Gadflies. An outgrowth of the Court Jesters combined with the “Bread And Circuses” appeal of distracting the public, Registered Eccentrics are people specifically permitted to speak their mind – no matter what they might have to say – or do any crazy thing they like, so long as it doesn’t hurt others. Selected entertainers, social commentators, some reporters, and superheroes – these people are there to keep the government, in all its branches, honest, and the people safe.

Altered Histories

The rules for creating an alternate history in this way are simple, and the results credible (for the most part). Selecting the right departure point, and being willing to put in the research and development time, are all that’s needed to shape a culture into whatever the story of the PCs is going to demand. Along the way, surprises lie in store for both you and for the players – but that’s what makes the process fun. And, as a side benefit, you gain a greater knowledge and appreciation of the interlocking of cause and effect within the history of the world around you.

That’s not a bad deal.

What tools go into your GM toolbox?

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane.

GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to contribute with comments about your own tools, tips, and techniques at the end of this post.

There are plenty of things you can do beyond the core game as GM to improve everyone’s experience. There are points where roleplaying interacts with real life, sometimes with negative impacts on the game itself.

Some of the following are not just a GM-only job. However, your players often expect you to be responsible for these things, simply because you are the GM, and that’s reason enough.

In part I, we went over a few ways to improve your game experience outside the game using handouts and props, as well as a campaign newsletter.

In part II, we covered some of the issues around organising the actual game itself, including finding players.

In this part, we will cover the ways in which you can improve your abilities as GM.

Quick Ruling

Often as GM you have to deal with a situation that is not described by the rules or is something nobody else at the table knows about.

Skimming through the rule books for an answer is often not the solution you are looking for, because it takes too long or ruins the tension, unless you already have a fair idea of where to look for the rules.

So, you will have to do some ruling quickly. This ruling should fit the situation and be coherent with the core rules. There may be some extra wishes to this ruling, like not exploiting possible weaknesses in the system or making sure that the ruling provides tension while being fair when it is resolved.

Michael: In my experience, rule-light systems like Savage Worlds or Cthulhu bring you often in the situation of spontaneously deciding how things work. In contrast, systems like D&D or Shadowrun seem to have a rule for everything, but there is seldom anyone who knows all of these rules. So, in the end, you end up with the same level of detail in the rule-system.

The basic tool here is to avoid it, for example by preparing rulings and references beforehand. This keeps rule discussions to a minimum, especially if you are enjoying a high authority towards your players.

Nevertheless this is not always possible. Knowing the basic mechanisms helps a lot here. Check out the rules mastery for dummies articles on campaign mastery for good tools for quick ruling.

Da’ Vane: Preparation is key, and failing that, a good grasp of the underlying principles of the game system at hand are often useful, as this allows the GM to recreate any rules needed to keep the game flowing as smoothly as possible.

The actual rules might be slightly different, but if the differences are relevant then there is often some hint about the situation that would suggest to the GM a possible refresher of the rules might be useful to avoid the need for quick ruling in the first place.

As stated in my comments throughout the Campaign Mastery series, a GM’s power within the game should be more or less absolute, coming from a mixture of both the authority that being a Games Master following the rulebook provides, and the expertise gained from running the game and knowing the players, which is the very essence of GM mastery in the first place.

As GMs progress, they will slowly build up their expertise so this becomes more of their power, requiring less and less authority from the rulebooks, at which point a GM can pretty much play entirely by quick ruling everything, with rules systems only providing guidelines. This makes for a smoother game, which in the end is the best outcome for everyone.

Johnn: In my games I welcome rules lawyers. Instead of being threatened by them, I welcome their feedback during games and between games.

We have a group understanding that rules discussions end fast, suggestions are welcome, and I make ad hoc rulings to keep things moving.

We also have an understanding that a player can point out something anyone is doing wrong, including me, at any time. This helps us learn the rules properly, as a group, through gameplay. When I stand corrected, I always thank the player.

Knowing Your Players

Knowing your players can increase the fun your group is having at the table. Important questions here are:

• Why are the players roleplaying (have fun after work)?
• What are the players roleplaying (what kind of characters)?
• How are the players roleplaying (power-gamers, deep character backgrounds)?
• What is important in the eyes of your players (sticking to the rules, nice stories from your side)?

Michael: I try to watch my players closely during sessions. Often I’m too busy for that, but this is not good. There should be nothing more important as my players.

So I’m working hard on this one. Here again, Joe Navaro’s book about body language and nonverbal communication comes into my mind. As well as the classification of players by Robin Laws.

Da’ Vane: By knowing your players, you can tailor the game play experiences to them, as well as learn how best to handle any potential issues that might arise before they come up.

Most issues within games come down to a mismatch between player expectations and what the GM is presenting, so being able to better synchronise with your players’ wishes will make for a better experience for everyone.

A good start is by identifying what your players want, and then catering for those desires with your encounters, while skimping on those your players find disinteresting. You aren’t going to get anywhere if you have a party that prefers tactical combat encounters, and you insist on giving them investigative puzzles to solve instead, or scenes with lots of roleplaying and storytelling.

If you have a mix of players who like a variety of styles, make sure they are all covered, and do your best to make sure they all get adequate time doing what they enjoy.

Don’t let a few players dominate the game at the expense of the others. If you can, try to find creative ways to combine different styles of play into a single encounter.

Fighting GM Burnout

Remember the time when you started your last campaign, fresh, enthusiastic, full of ideas? Well, as we know, this feeling will not hold forever. I think it’s quite natural that every GM has a burnout now and then. As such, it’s good if you have tools to get you motivated again.

Michael: I found a great tool for myself – The Funny One-Shot. Other possibilities for me are watching my favourite movies or lying on my back remembering my first roleplaying experiences.

Also thinking about some radical changes in your current running campaign may not only surprise your players, but also gets you motivated again, because it’s new!

I also like to listen to these guys sessions over at RPGMP3.com.

Da’ Vane: GM burnout can be a tough one, and the best means to overcome it is to have a change of pace, often by running or playing something else. Let someone else take charge for a while, so that all the stresses and responsibilities of being a GM can disappear, while you get back to actual gaming. You might even pick up some new tips and ideas to take back into your own game.

Johnn: Check out these articles to help if you have burnout:

9 Symptoms Of GM Burn-Out: Avoiding GM Burn-Out Part I

8 Tips For Recovering From GM Burn-Out

Remedies For GM Burn-Out

Playing With Fire: Dodging GM Burnout

Master Your Tools

There are tools suited for advance preparation and improvisational use. This is a nice place to talk about these two kinds of tools. The first tool is used before actual play, and it is allowed to take some extra time for better results.

The latter is used in minutes or even seconds during play, where the results are not so important, since the priority lies on the game keeps running.

However, one should never forget there is some possible conversion between the two types of tools:

• A tool suited for advanced preparation can be used multiple times and the results can be stored somewhere for use during play as it is needed, similar to an improvisational tool.
• An improvisational tool can be used during preparation and have the results tuned until it fits with the rest of the campaign material, similar to an advanced preparation tool.

You may find your tools are not doing their job well enough anymore. If this is the case, then you need a means to get new tools. It sounds simple, and you may be able increase your GMing skills simply by going through your actual toolbox from time to time and think about improving your tools or getting some new ones.

Michael: Well, you are reading this stuff here, so you actually already know about one tool I use to get new tools. Without further commenting, you can find a lot of new tips at roleplaying tips and campaign mastery websites, as well as on many other sites.

Da’ Vane: Games mastery is becoming a body of knowledge that is quickly rivalling that of any other social science, because it is driven by passion and enthusiasts who want to improve their skills and abilities.

It is also becoming much more academic, as more people are becoming competent and desiring to take their passion into a professional capacity. Combining this with the increasing popularity of gaming in mainstream society, of gamification within our daily lives, and the increasing important role of education and teaching, the role of Games Master will become even more popular and important.

Games started out as a means to safely explore situations and learn new skills through play, and this method of thinking has now gone full circle within the teaching community. The tools for learning to be a better GM are the same tools for learning to have a better life, and come from the same source.

So, everything you learn has the potential to improve the tools you have in your GM Toolbox, regardless of what its original purpose might have been.

About the Authors

Michael Beck considers himself a novice GM, but is encouraged in sharing his tips at www.spielleiten.wordpress.com (German language). Having played RPGs for roughly 10 years now, he accepts the challenge of living with his girl-friend, two cats, a non-finished PhD-thesis and two running roleplaying campaigns.

Da’ Vane, or Christina Freeman in the real world, is the owner of DVOID Systems, and the primary writer of their D-Jumpers series of products. With an academic background in science, especially socio-psychology, she is what many would regard as a “know-it-all.” However, the truth is that she doesn’t know everything about everything, but she knows a lot about a lot, especially about her passions which are games, stories, learning, and people. She is a consummate geek goddess, and yes, she is single if you feel like tracking her down and hitting on her some time….

This article is being written in advance of reading any material concerning the actual content of DnDNext from WOTC.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, the odds are that you’ve heard the announcement of D&D… well, no-one’s quite sure what it’s going to be called yet. The most common handle seems to be DnDNext. As it happened, I was on Twitter when the news broke, and when the official announcements were made a little later.

Kudos to those like @Morris of Enworld who kept their professional integrity by not jumping the gun on the announcement the way others did – who should have known better. Brickbats to those who succumbed to temptation.

There were a lot of reactions, ranging from skepticism to celebration, but overwhelmingly the prevalent emotion on display was one of cautious hope. The goals announced for the new edition in that initial press release were certainly laudable, and even if Wizards only come close to them, the final release will be cause for celebration.

You can read Morris’ write-up of how Wizards told him about 5thEd – which is another term that’s been extensively used to describe it – at the Enworld Website.

Possibly the biggest jaw-drop for me came when Wizards openly admitted that they had completely and deliberately ignored feedback from playtesting of 4th Ed D&D. This was something that had long been suspected, but no one expected them to come out and acknowledge it. At the time, I could only wonder who much of the pain of the edition wars could be laid at the doorstep of that decision. Well, they certainly reaped the rewards of that misguided policy – half of their market feeling abandoned and unwanted, and ripe for someone else to capture – and well done to Paizo for doing so with Pathfinder. The reason Wizards came clean was to explain why they were going to take an extra year or two in development of the new edition – they were deliberately setting out to do what they didn’t the last time around – and again, Kudos to Wizards for that. Well, there will be more on the playtesting regime in due course, I’m sure. At the moment, all I can say is that I know more than I can say.

The sentiment that I expressed at the time was that Wizards were putting their credibility on the line with the announcement of that policy. If there should even be a hint that playtesting feedback is ignored this time around, it will lie in tatters. There were those who felt that Wizard’s credibility had already been lost, and were not interested in taking part; but most people seemed willing to give Wizards a chance to put their money where their press release was. They say they’ve learnt from their mistakes? From where I stand, they deserve the chance to prove it, from where I stand.

But the key announcement was the objective of unifying fans of all editions behind the new one. Most people were asking “how can that be possible” – or even making declarative statements that it was pie-in-the-sky. But within ten minutes, I had conceived of an approach that would permit it to happen, based on the thoughts that I had made public in a previous blog post (Top-Down Plug-in Game Design: The Perfect Recipe). I’m about to share those thoughts with you, readers, and hence with the wider world beyond – and, specifically therefore, with the powers-that-be at WOTC, in the hope that they will be helpful in clarifying their thinking.

That’s where the disclaimer at the top of this article comes in. Aside from those published at the time of the announcement and it’s immediate aftermath, I’ve avoided any blogs describing their author’s thoughts on the subject, and I’ve avoided reading any playtesting material that may or may not be in my possession – all because I want to offer this perspective uncontaminated by reality or by anyone else’s thoughts on the subject, and definitely wanted to avoid violating any confidences.

Only once I have these thoughts off my chest will I feel free to delve into the thoughts of others on the subject.

In adopting this course, I run the risk of everything written here being old hat; if it’s all been said before, then I apologize in advance for wasting everyone’s time! But it’s my hope that I have something here to contribute….

A note on terminology

I learned my pattern of thought as a computer programmer, and from time to time that leaks out. I’ve tried not to use esoteric jargon, simplified terms where possible, and coined new ones where they might prove more familiar.

The Goal: A Universal D&D System

So, what’s the objective? It’s not just to take the best from all the different editions and blend them into some sort of homogenous whole; I doubt that would satisfy anyone. The objective has to be to combine everything that’s been learned through the various editions and package it in such a way that a single set of rules can be used to play any edition of the game. The only way to do that is by making it modular.

The Foundation

If there’s one thing that they seem to have gotten right in 4th ed, compared to any other edition, is that characters are not only more equal in capabilities but the operational need for teamwork seems to have been better integrated. It’s my understanding (possibly inaccurate) that this was achieved by abstracting uniform character capabilities and then varying the specific implementation of each capability to make each class unique. Every advantage received a matching vulnerability to someone else’s advantage, and so on. It seems to me that this is the correct foundation of a unified game – defining a “Player Character” as a template which is adapted to the description of each level of each character class.

This goes beyond a unified stat block; it would specify that at a given character level, a character can achieve an effect that does X (it might be an extra dice of damage, or a greater chance of success at a task, or whatever, but each character type would have their own X received at that particular character level. This approach, defining the base mechanics of the game in terms of what a character can do, should preserve the game balance that most of those I know who have played 4th Ed report as the best attribute of that version of the game, and makes it possible to extend it to all the other editions.

The Skeleton

Using the character as the basis of the system, its starting point, permits a system skeleton to be crafted – a list of all the things that a character might want to do, from examining an object to paying a bill. To be comprehensive, this will need to be abstract in nature, and fairly simple. “Look Around You”, “Hit a target”, and so on. These should be divided into tasks until they meet the minimum requirements of the simplest version of the system, but how these tasks are to be achieved should be left indeterminate – for now.

Standard Routines

In addition to defining the system at the broadest scale – the skeleton – the design should define the system at the smallest possible scale. These routine tasks should specify how standard system interactions are to take place; how to resolve a skill check, and so on. The library of these procedures forms the standard routines, the abstract “how to’s” of the game system. There will be surprisingly few of these, in my opinion, because so many tasks – when abstracted – are basically the same, or should be. That was one of the big advances of D&D 3.0.

Black Boxes

Each entry in the skeleton thus becomes a “Black Box” with defined inputs – the information to be provided – and a defined output, or result, with the transformation between the two defined – at an abstract level – by the standard routines. Laying these entries out as templates permits the construction and integration of additional “black boxes” as necessary.

Each Black Box contains an essential game system or subsystem. Each would come in a variety of styles, one for each of the varieties of game system to be encapsulated. In fact, there are only four styles that I can see as being necessary to achieve Wizard’s objectives:

1. Minimalist,
2. General,
3. Martial, and
4. Detailed;

though, perhaps, a fifth would be worth considering, if the authors had the inspiration:

5. Next

Minimalist

This is the simplest acceptable rules design, giving only an absolute success or absolute failure from straight die rolls. A simple check that gives a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, ideal for younger players.

General

This is not much more complicated than the minimalist design. The primary difference is that there are two new concepts to be incorporated at this level: “floating” targets, where a characteristic value of the target defines the number to be achieved, and characteristic bonuses.

Martial

A step forward in sophistication. For each black box there is an overall difficulty assigned by the referee according to an overall general impression of the difficulty of the task, each of which corresponds to a fixed difficulty number by character level. This still gives straightforward “yes” or “no” results, and is therefore comparable to both 4th Ed and 3.x – but (hopefully) with some of the problems discussed in the past ironed out (refer to my Sept 23, 2010 article, ‘How Hard Can It Be’ – Skill Checks Under The Microscope for a discussion of some of those problems).

Detailed

Finally, there is the ‘detailed’ standard, which operates with a base target number based on the overall difficulty of the task, a series of modifiers which adjust that target by specific amounts for specific factors, as listed in a table, and a check for success that contains an explicit adjustment for the character’s level and another range of modifiers. Depending on the task, there may be rules (to be applied when the GM deems appropriate) for partial success, or for delayed success (where a task simply takes longer to achieve a result of character-specified standard). This is the version of the rules that is compatible with AD&D and with 2nd Ed.

The Advantages

By packaging each task into it’s own little “module” and presenting mechanisms of increasing complexity and sophistication as “black boxes” that can fit into that module, the game contains not only all the previous versions, but it permits a GM to mix and match with complete confidence that the game will still play properly. That means that an individual GM can choose to default to the Martial Level, for example, except for specific modules like “examining a scene” where the Detailed Level can be employed. Or a GM can change from one level to another depending on the circumstances then operative within the game, permitting it to be cinematic when desired, combat-oriented when that is appropriate, or extremely specific when that is most useful. This would confer a new standard of gameplay to the rules that uses the greatest asset of each generation of rules when it confers an advantage to the game system and ONLY when it confers that advantage.

Even more usefully, it permits GMs to homebrew their rules as desired while containing and encapsulating the changes, making it easier to integrate different game settings and optional rules as desired. There could be a specifically “Eberron” set of Black Boxes, for example, or a specifically “Forgotten Realms” set. This extracts the influence of the game setting from the rules and makes it explicit. By including such a set within the core rules as a fifth standard, the rulebooks would define how GMs are to approach creating their own campaigns, what is permitted and what should be tinkered with only after careful consideration because it could have undesirable consequences.

Character Capabilities

One of the biggest areas of incompatibility over the years has been in defining “what a character can do that’s extraordinary”. The first couple of editions did this with Magic Items, Class Abilities, and Race Abilities and modifiers. 3.x abandoned the racial modifiers but introduced an additional mechanism, Feats; and 4e did away with Feats and replaced them with something else again. Straightening this confusion out will be one of the greatest challenges for DnDNext, but it is something that must be done if it is to succeed in being compatible with all previous versions of the game system. But, in fact, it’s easier to achieve than you might initially think; only two additional concepts are needed.

The first is Defined Progressions which essentially state how many abilities a character or a monster/encounter gets, according to their Hit Dice.

The second is a standard template, or set of templates, that define what an acceptable ability/feat/power can do – in other words, a set of rules for creating a power. The differentiation between sets of templates would be in terms of requirements – if you can only select an ability if you have already taken a lesser ability, for example, and can only use that lesser ability as a basis for a single higher ability. Higher abilities could be more powerful, or could be used more frequently.

These templates become the models for everything from Feats to Class Abilities to Magic Spells – making it easy for GMs who want it to replace the standard Vancian magic system with something else without risking game balance.

What will the reality hold?

Will I be disappointed if the reality of what WOTC are offering bears no resemblance to this structure? Not really; I’ll only be disappointed if whatever they offer doesn’t work and isn’t fixed.

What tools go into your GM toolbox?

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane.

GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to contribute with comments about your own tools, tips, and techniques at the end of this post.

There are plenty of things you can do beyond the core game as GM to improve everyone’s experience. There are points where roleplaying interacts with real life, sometimes with negative impacts on the game itself.

Some of the following are not just a GM-only job. However, your players often expect you to be responsible for these things, simply because you are the GM, and that’s reason enough.

In part I, we went over a few ways to improve your game experience outside the game using handouts and props, as well as a campaign newsletter.

In this part, we will cover some of the issues around organising the actual game itself, including finding players.

In part III, we will cover the ways in which you can improve your GM abilities.

The Gaming Room

Having a nice place to game is awesome. Sadly,  this is the one thing a lot of us can’t control very much. A nice gaming room should contributes to the atmosphere, be cosy and comfortable for the players, and offer enough space for the GM. Ideally, it should also be isolated, in the sense that nobody disturbs the group, or protects the rest of the world from loud screaming gamers who decided to make a dance of joy at three o’clock at night.

Michael: Here the tools I used to get close to the above remarks. When my girlfriend and me were deciding what kind of living room table we should get, I only had one criterion in mind: It should be large, or better huge. It’s almost ironic that here in Germany, you can only find really large tables in second hand stores.

During gaming sessions, I sit at one table head and use the floor as the largest shelf imaginable, also I’m using slipcases for my rule-books, because firstly, standing books consume less place and, secondly, it’s faster to find a book in slipcases then in a pile of books. In my old flat, we played in the basement (old house, old basement, for that dungeon feeling!) with a lot of posters on the walls and nicely isolated to the rest of the world (except for coldness). Having candles or smaller lamps is almost better everywhere than the ceiling lamp.

Da’ Vane: Most of my roleplaying sessions take place in public places, so finding somewhere that is convenient and quiet can be quite a challenge. Luckily, a gaming club that I attend has actually secured long-term use of a private function room in the upstairs of a pub, since it’s a regular event on a quiet day (Sundays) and everyone tends to spend a lot on refreshments and food in the bar downstairs, so it is convenient all round. It’s also nice since, while it takes a journey, you get the whole feel of having a day out and socialising that makes it more like a mini convention than a personal gaming group.

Scheduling Sessions

It might be a big disappointment when sessions don’t take place because of misunderstanding in scheduling sessions. If you are encountering this disappointment frequently, you may think of using some tool here.

Michael: I’m the big scheduler for all three of my groups, and the two in which I am a player.

For scheduling, I use doodle.com. We are doing pretty fine by making a doodle for the following two weeks after each session, and repeating this pattern every other week. This gives the guys one week to enter their availability in doodle, and the GMs have enough time to prepare.

After everybody does their entries, I juggle around the dates and schedule the sessions in such a way that there are as many sessions taking place as possible without overwhelming a certain GM (including me).

The Cthulhu group, does not fall into this pattern – we have Wednesday as fixed date. The reason for this exception is that the campaign is very long, and we need this fixed schedule to have at least hope to finish it.

Da’ Vane: Scheduling sessions is easy for our group, since we’ve settled on a fixed routine where we meet every Sunday. Although the sessions are fixed, the games that are run for each session are not, since there are a large number of players and GMs, and a wide range of tastes within the group. So, we run games in four-week cycles.

At the moment, we currently have one or two games each cycle, since not all players attend every cycle because of other commitments. This gives a freedom of choice, while allowing for a wide taste, and quite a few campaigns have been run over the years.

A few players have lamented the lack of a long term campaign, since it can be several cycles before a game is repeated. This means there can be a year or two between playing the games, but in general, being able to play in different games better suits the play styles of the group as a whole.

Finding Players

There is no game without players, and sadly, players have the tendency to leave at a certain time for various reasons. This is the point when you need new players.

Michael: I don’t really have a tool here. Today I told some guy that we are pretty crowded and I don’t see possibilities to start one more group with him. So, finding new guys is not that much of a problem for me.

This resulted from something I did for the students’ council of mathematics in my local university: In the introductory weeks for new students, we organized a roleplaying evening where the students could test what this roleplaying is.

After that evening everyone of them got a dice for free. Don’t underestimate the dice for free! If you want to interest somebody in roleplaying, play a short one-shot with them and after that gift a D20.

This weird and kind of special relic will keep them reminded of the fun of roleplaying, and they will come back seeking for more.

You may also want to check out Johnn’s e-book – Filling the Empty Chair.

Da’ Vane: Players hasn’t been an issue at the gaming club I attend, which has a steady number of players, including quite a few regulars who have been going there for several years.

It’s one of the larger groups in London, and convenient to reach, so most people who want somewhere to go for a game will generally find it, although there has been a significant decline in gaming overall within London and the UK, as things seem to be switching back to the less communal model that was popular during the last decade.

A lot of this stems from the decline of brick and mortar stores within London over the last few years. Roleplaying has always been more popular in the university towns however, but if you aren’t at university, it can be impossible to reach any of these places.

On a personal note, I’ve always struggled to find players for local games, because it’s not so much as case of filling the empty chair as finding the empty chair. I find I have a tendency to keep missing players, as gaming is always something that people seem to have done in the past but given up, with no idea that I’m actually looking, simply because everyone else is too busy doing other things in their lives.

The people I used to game with have grown up and moved away. It’s a predominant attitude for the area in which I live, which is a gaming dead zone. I’ve tried a few times to contact local gamers, but nothing ever comes from it.

About the Authors

Michael Beck considers himself a novice GM, but is encouraged in sharing his tips at www.spielleiten.wordpress.com (German language). Having played RPGs for roughly 10 years now, he accepts the challenge of living with his girl-friend, two cats, a non-finished PhD-thesis and two running roleplaying campaigns.

Da’ Vane, or Christina Freeman in the real world, is the owner of DVOID Systems, and the primary writer of their D-Jumpers series of products. With an academic background in science, especially socio-psychology, she is what many would regard as a “know-it-all.” However, the truth is that she doesn’t know everything about everything, but she knows a lot about a lot, especially about her passions which are games, stories, learning, and people. She is a consummate geek goddess, and yes, she is single if you feel like tracking her down and hitting on her some time….

I’m not possessed of any special abilities when it comes to prognostication, but I’m as capable of forming opinions as anyone else. Two stray thoughts occasionally click together for me to form a new idea, and when that happened recently, the implications spelt out an unexpectedly rosy future for RPGs and the recording and media companies – provided they don’t annoy too many people in the meantime with overprotective nonsense like SOPA, of course.

Genesis

The catalyst for this new enthusiasm for the future derived from one of the final episodes of a BBC TV series called “Turn Back Time: The High Street”. The TV series is not yet available on DVD, but there is a book available through Amazon (shown below) which is definitely now on my shopping list. (If you want to know more about the TV series, here’s a link to the BBC’s episode guide and one to for the series).

Getting back to the subject at hand, the series was summarizing the social changes of the 1960s in the course of the second-last episode and the rise of the social and economic force called “Teenagers”.

As an employment shortage grew, opportunities for teenagers to earn disposable income began to grow, and industries emerged to target those disposable incomes. Since it was easier for one teen to sell to another, and wages for employing them were lower, this created an ascending economic spiral for the emerging social class. During the 1980s and beyond, many of these employment opportunities dried up with erosion of the purchasing power of teenaged incomes, followed by the rise of minimum wages, and a series of recessions and economic shocks such as the oil crisis which produced a general shortage of employment.

For some reason, this economic history – which I had heard before – connected with another notion, that of an aging population, and because I was concentrating hard on preparing for the return of my superhero campaign, now set in the equivalent of about 2050 on a parallel world, for the first time, the two notions connected together.

Implications Of An Aging Population

As the population ages, the ratio of those under the age of retirement to the number of jobs available will drop, quite substantially. Employment will become easy to find once again, and as a result there will be a marked rise in opportunities for younger employees – not just for the poor-paying typical employment with which we are familiar in modern times, but even middle-class incomes.

I have seen estimates that claim the there will be as many as ten jobs available for every jobseeker. In order to attract staff, companies will have to offer more. There will also be increased educational requirements. Scholastic programmes have already started to change in anticipation of this need; I know that my cousins were studying calculus years before it was part of my schooling. Even when I was attending university, the first year chemistry course was virtually identical to the one that I had passed in High School a year earlier, so this is hardly a new trend.

Inevitably, better-paying jobs and greater competition for employees means that disposable incomes will rise, and so will the demands placed on those earning those incomes. There will he an increased need to discharge stress – these people will be working hard, and partying harder.

The New Teen Market

These factors will combine to make teenagers a major market segment once again, and what will sell best to them are independence, identity, and entertainment. Specifically, I would expect boom times in:

• Low- and mid-priced cars;
• teen-oriented car accessories;
• teen fashions;
• music;
• Teen-oriented movies and media in general – shows like Buffy, and Charmed; and finally,
• Games of all kinds, especially those that can reinvent themselves for a modern audiance and that are immersive in nature.

And the type of game that best fits that prescription? RPGs. You heard me: Role-playing games.

The Gaming Future

RPGs reinvent themselves all the time. They are fundamentally immersive. They are just far enough outside the mainstream that they will still appeal to teenagers looking for a mild dose of rebellion. They are priced from cheap-as-chips to inexpensive, but with almost unlimited capacity for expensive extras like miniatures and landscapes and 3D virtualizations and game-related software. They are ideal for a better-educated populace.

Whether or not this bright future includes tabletop RPGs, or will be the exclusive domain of computer-based games like World Of Warcraft, remains to be seen. My personal feeling is that there are unexploited potentials for synergies between the two.

Picture, for example, software that simulates a game world, a-la World Of Warcraft, in which an adventure-designer permits a GM to operate their home-brewed game world in a manner more akin to that of a table-top RPG.

Or software which, after the input of character abilities, permits each player to select their action for the next round and then integrates them all into an animated round of battle that can be viewed and replayed from multiple angles before pausing for the selection of the next round’s actions.

This sort of interactive roleplaying technology is well within the grasp of current software engineering, led by systems such as those developed to individualize the reactions of computer-generated characters in the Lord Of The Rings movies. I would predict the first such to arrive within the decade.

But even without such radical new developments, the future of the hobby seems assured. And that’s one heck of a silver lining for those of us who care about the hobby.

What tools go into your GM toolbox?

Written by Michael Beck, with contributions and editing by Da’Vane.

GM’s Toolbox, looks at tools, tips, and techniques you can use to improve your games. Toolbox offers you a skeleton for running a campaign, rather than fleshed out tips. This series is presented in a discussion style, and we ask you to contribute with comments about your own tools, tips, and techniques at the end of this post.

There are plenty of things you can do beyond the core game as GM to improve everyone’s experience. There are points where roleplaying interacts with real life, sometimes with negative impacts on the game itself.

Some of the following are not just a GM-only job. However, your players often expect you to be responsible for these things, simply because you are the GM, and that’s reason enough.

In this part, we will go over ways to improve your game experience outside the game using handouts and props, as well as a campaign newsletter.

In part II, we will cover some of the issues around organising the game itself, including finding players.

In part III, we will cover the ways in which you can improve your abilities as GM.

Creating Handouts

Handouts are a great way to give your players a large chunk of information, which they don’t have to remember. Of course, this large chunk of information can be hidden in less important information.

The style of the handout will often reflect the in-game character who has written it, and can add a lot of flavour to the game. A tool can help you here not only to come around the problem of bad handwriting, but how to create and organize your handouts quickly and easily.

Michael: I use the standard office programs and connect them with fonts I find on the net. For getting the style of how a handout is written, it’s a nice tool to have a similar real world text.

If I want to write something prophetic, I search for some nice bible verses, which I can alter to fit. When I want to write a riddle, I search for poems and alter them.

It’s a bit harder to write in the perspective of an NPC, but here my NPC creation tools help out.

Da’ Vane: Handouts are great for providing large chunks of information, while also giving your players something tangible to hold and sift through. Often a handout can feel like a reward, even though it’s really just a clue to more of the story.

If you like espionage games, dossiers are a good target for handouts, and help reinforce the mood of the genre. The players can receive a bundle of papers to sort through at their leisure, and work out what is important and what is fluff. You might include photos, evidence reports, and other files using this show, don’t tell method.

Lots of adventure games improved their worth by including extras to read through to provide additional information that you didn’t automatically know when to use. The Infocom adventure games were particularly famous for it.

It’s also a good way of handling lengthy monologues the PCs would otherwise have to sit through – often at the start of the game. A pile of news cuttings beats having to sit through a lengthy one-sided briefing where they are told what to do.

Props

Props are a great way to increase the mood at the table. Players will be quite surprised when you actually put the mysterious, rusty dagger right into their hands.

Besides that, it can is a great reminder as to which PC actually has which items.

You may want to create props, buy them or improvise them. Sometimes you might have some prop and build the adventure around it, so you can get this prop into use.

Michael: Tools for props can be actual real life tools, depending on your crafting abilities. Mine are just awful, so that’s nothing for me.

To be honest, I’m not working much with props. For a Cthulhu campaign, I once scribbled mysterious symbols on my mirror (there was something about mirrors in the adventure).

The props that come to the most use in my games are item cards for my Fun-One-Shots. In these adventures, I made cards similar to my reward cards for items. The player who holds the card actually has the item.

Da’ Vane: I don’t use props either, and it’s not something that’s covered by a lot of games. However, the Fighting Fantasy and Advanced Fighting Fantasy Roleplaying Game series did advocate the use of props, and every scene they included had ideas for props for the scene to make it more enjoyable.

Whether it was having a stick to wave around to pretend to be a wand (or to poke the players with, in some cases) or an odd-tasting concoction for the players to drink when they were required to use a potion, there were a ton of ideas how to get more from your games using props.

This may have been because Fighting Fantasy and Advanced Fighting Fantasy were extremely simple systems, so featured a lot more roleplaying than engaging with the system, and anything to encourage this roleplaying was emphasized, from acting to handouts to minis.

Johnn: Props have featured several times in the Roleplaying Tips Newsletter. For more props and handout ideas, check out Props Contest Entries One, Two, Three and Four.

You should also check out Tips On Making Creative And Informative Player Handouts and How To Use Props In Your Games – 8 Tips.

The Newsletter

A newsletter about your game is a lot of work, so don’t underestimate it. However, there are also great benefits from it.

The newsletter can be packed with all kinds of information, such as the world and its history, deeper descriptions of NPCs, house rules, and whatever else you think is reasonable to tell the players in a written form.

It’s great if you have tools here to decrease the amount of work by at least a bit.

Michael: I’m stunned by the easy handling of Microsoft Office Publisher, especially by its templates. There may be other publishing software out there, but I’ve never noticed them.

When I got my tablet notebook for work there had been the office stuff installed, so I just checked them out. This actually convinced me into doing a newsletter.

But a nice program is not everything – you still have to fill it with content. Here is the structure of my newsletter: Maybe it helps you to fill yours with content.

• Page 1: There is a small box on the left side, below the session number and its date, in which is a short summary of that session. Below this is an index. The main articles on first page are a longer summary of last session, with introductory flavour text, describing a key action of the session (for example, a heroic description of how a PC died). Below these is a small section about house rules, unusual usage of skills, new feats or spells, and other rule related stuff.
• Page 2: Here I have plenty of space for going into more details of certain aspects of last session. If they met a new NPC, he could be described in more detail here. Did they find some hints? I gather them here. Did they enter a new town? I write down what the PC heard about it beforehand and so on. Also, other big chunks appear here like new prestige classes.
• Page 3: This page is for history, tales, holidays and that kind of thing. One PC in my group is from another world, so he should know much less about the actual setting than the others. This is why only the others get this page. In compensation for that off-world PC, he gets a page only he receives. He’s playing a ranger, so he knows some tales and campfire stories. They appear here on the last page for him. I also add pictures and funny roleplaying quotes you can find easily on the net, which all players receive.

Da’ Vane: I have used a newsletter in just one game, and I found it was more effort than it was worth for my group. However, you can create a similar experience with a website or wiki, if you have one, and this often serves multiple purposes.

It’s easy to add out-of-game content to a website or wiki, much as you would with a newsletter, and then collate this information making it easy to access. Bear in mind copyright laws though. For many systems, including non-house rules on a website or wiki is a breach of copyright. And even though you are likely to remain undetected if it’s just for personal use, especially if it’s behind a login area, you can still get in trouble for doing this.

Overall, a newsletter or website/wiki with out-of-game content is probably only really beneficial if you have a long-term game or a long-term gaming group.

Johnn: Roleplaying Tips has some tips on campaign newsletters, a reader’s tip on campaign newsletters and a couple of newsletter examples.

About the Authors

Michael Beck considers himself a novice GM, but is encouraged in sharing his tips at www.spielleiten.wordpress.com (German language). Having played RPGs for roughly 10 years now, he accepts the challenge of living with his girl-friend, two cats, a non-finished PhD-thesis and two running roleplaying campaigns.

Da’ Vane, or Christina Freeman in the real world, is the owner of DVOID Systems, and the primary writer of their D-Jumpers series of products. With an academic background in science, especially socio-psychology, she is what many would regard as a “know-it-all.” However, the truth is that she doesn’t know everything about everything, but she knows a lot about a lot, especially about her passions which are games, stories, learning, and people. She is a consummate geek goddess, and yes, she is single if you feel like tracking her down and hitting on her some time….

The Campain Structure series:
Back To Basics Part 1: Adventure Structures
Back To Basics Part 2: Campaign Structures
Back To Basics Part 3: Example: The White Tower
Back To Basics Part 4: Example: The Belt Of Terra

In my recent posts on campaign structure (refer the panel above), I made a big point of the need to foreshadow key events, situations, and characters. One reader wrote back asking if I had any tips for doing so, because it never seemed to work out right for him. So, here we go:

Foreshadowing Events

‘Events’ in this context refer to large-scale developments in the campaign background or setting. Changes in Government Policy, Invasions by Orcs, Magic Ceasing To Function – that sort of thing.

It’s important for such major changes to be foreshadowed because they are far less believable when they come out of the blue. Successful foreshadowing implies that the hints of what was to come were there to be read, if only people (read: The PCs) had interpreted them more closely.
 

Each of the examples cited would respond best to a different foreshadowing technique or group of techniques. Between them, they should encompass just about all the options. So let’s look at each example and consider ways to successfully foreshadow its occurrence within a campaign.

Changes In Government Policy

These never happen in isolation; there is always a triggering event, or sequence of events. Those events can be political or military or economic or social or just about anything else you can think of, providing that the triggering events are widespread enough or significant enough. In fact, when you come down to it, such changes are always a response to one of two possible causes:

• A sudden emergency
• A growing need or trend

A sudden emergency
The only real difference between these two is that a “sudden emergency” doesn’t give forewarning, it comes out of the blue.

You may be asking, ‘Doesn’t that contradict the entire concept of foreshadowing?’ – if so, the answer is no.

An emergency is caused by someone or something. To foreshadow the response to the emergency without compromising the surprise element of the emergency itself, all that is needed is ensure the players have heard of the the cause. Floods can be foreshadowed by a weather report forecasting heavy rain. A terrorist attack can be foreshadowed by a media report about trouble in the region from which the terrorists derive (or, worryingly, by a sudden silence from such areas), or by a politician railing against terrorists, or by well, anything that would remind the players that such groups exist in the game world.

More exotic solutions can be the release of a disaster movie (that correctly forecasts the crisis to come – at least in part), prophetic visions, rumors, or even news of a similar disaster elsewhere, or side-effects of the precursor events. The latter is used in both Volcano and Dante’s Peak. These build-ups can be quick or slow, as the GM sees fit – the only rule is not to be too consistent about the timing; some events should be brought to a slow boil, while others should be an explosive ramp-up.

A growing need or trend
This is even easier – all that needs to be done is to show the growing need or trend and have people talk about it. An example from forthcoming events in my superhero campaign: The political party in power when the game starts will be strong supporters of the PCs organization, and will lend them public and political support. The opposition party will be placed in the difficult position of opposing something popular (the PCs organization) or seeking to establish control over it. At the same time, there will be numerous other problems which will make the existing government unpopular with the electorate, despite the boost in popularity that they get from associating with the PCs, so the election will be a line-ball decision. By the time a general election rolls around, both party’s policies will be well-established by news reports and political analysts – so any change of government policy will follow a change of government, one that almost everyone can see coming. Even if the existing party is returned, they will be forced to compromise their support of the team. The election outcome is the event that triggers the change in policy, and the pre-election build-up is the foreshadowing.

Invasion By Orcs

This type of event requires a different style of foreshadowing because the PCs do not have direct access to the news. To properly foreshadow this event, the best approach is a four-step process:

1. Establish a pattern of orcish attacks on outlying regions. The aftermath of a few of these will be found by the PCs, but most will simply be rumor and traveler’s reports, and widely exaggerated.
2. Once the PCs have had time to get used to this pattern, have it stop suddenly. No announcements, no commentary, just stop all mention of the Orcs. Only when a player asks about the fact that you haven’t mentioned them in a while (or some equivalent statement) will you announce “Actually, come to think of it, you haven’t heard much about them lately.” No explanations, and keep it as off-hand as possible.
3. At this point, let the PCs stumble across altars out in the wilderness on which various wild animals known to be totems of power to the Orcs have been sacrificed.
4. Finally, wherever the PCs happen to be when the Orcs actually invade, let someone – it might be a nearby NPC or the party cleric or whatever – experience a vision of untold swarms of Orcs crossing a rise, thick as ants.

Magic stops working

This is another situation that I’m working up to in one of my campaigns, and that’s telling no secrets! In this case, I have established in the campaign background that magic is becoming increasingly unreliable, and that the mages have discovered various stopgaps like drawing magic circles in the earth to overcome this. These started out being just a circle, and have now become extremely elaborate – to achieve the same effect. The trend is obvious, so much so that the central goal in the campaign is doing something about it.

Foreshadowing A Situation

A “situation,” in this context, is a personal event or crisis. Foreshadowing such an event involves the introduction and gradual alteration of a character (usually an NPC) who is central to the situation.

Again, here are a trio of examples to illustrate the process:

An old friend of one of the PCs gets into serious trouble with gambling debts.
This is a situation in which the foreshadowing consists of three steps:

1. Introducing the friend;
2. Providing subtle clues that the old friend is a gambler;
3. Letting the PC discover that the friend has secretly been in moderate financial trouble for reasons unrelated to his gambling.

All this makes it abundantly plausible when the friend is attacked for gambling debts, or comes to the PC desperate for help because he needs to raise a hundred thousand dollars in a day or two, or however the GM wants to introduce the main plotline.

Without it, the player has no time to get invested in the relationship with the NPC and won’t care two hoots when he gets into trouble – oh, he can feign it, because the NPC is the PCs friend, but he won’t feel it.

A family member acquires a terminal illness
This is slightly more involved than the gambling debts problem because you want to elicit a stronger reaction from the PC. That means more involvement with the character in advance of the real crisis, and hence a longer lead-up.

1. Once again, as the first step, we introduce the character, making sure that there is some reference to his sporting or exercise activities (even if it’s as simple as “he’s carrying a squash racket”).
2. The character gets a promotion or his business picks up – anything to keep him from getting his regular workout for a while.
3. Introduce the character’s wife and children.
4. Have the character get mixed up in some sort of incidental way with some other plotline. Make it convincing enough and the player will think that this second plotline involvement is the reason for the character’s presence in the campaign, and let the guard down.
5. A couple of social encounters with the character and his family will continue to lull the player into a false complacency.
6. On one of those social encounters, the NPC will experience shortness of breath and complain that he can never seem to find the time to exercise properly any more.
7. At another social encounter, the character will complain about being tired all the time, but will be otherwise enthusiastic about the future.
8. As social encounters continue, the character will lose weight, at first slowly and then drastically. This is so opposed to what the player would be expecting of someone who has stopped exercising regularly that it should worry the PC. He might even go so far as to insist that the NPC go to the Doctor for a check-up. By now, the relationship between the two characters – PC and NPC – should be firmly established.

The stage is now set for the NPC to learn that he has a terminal illness. If I were running this plotline, I would research the stages to acceptance of such illnesses, then develop subsequent encounters with the PC reflecting those.

Of course, once the illness is established, there is no longer any need for the NPC; depending on the GM’s plot needs, he can die in an unrelated accident, or go downhill rapidly.

As with the gambling example, the key to making this plotline plausible is the slow build-up that establishes the relationship between the PC and the NPC, then putting the PC almost in the position of trying to convince the GM that there is something wrong. Forcing the PC into that stance forces him, subconsciously, to accept the situation and to defend that acceptance vehemently. In effect, he takes the clues that the GM has offered and uses them to do three-quarters of the work of convincing him of the situation on his own.

An obsessed NPC begins stalking the PC
Most cases of stalking involve a trigger event, some act of courtesy or friendliness that the stalker misinterprets. This can be as subtle as a look in their direction (or even a look straight down the barrel of the camera), or as overt as sticking up for the NPC because the PC doesn’t like the way some bullies are treating them. It can even be as little as the stalker identifying with the subject’s situation or history. Once the stalker starts to fixate, no further stimulus is required for the ‘relationship’ to develop; they think the subject is speaking to them, or that they are the perfect partner to the subject, the cure to all their ills (even if those troubles were fictional to start with). Even denials and outright rejection are often not enough to deter the obsessed character.

Translating all that into in-game events generally requires a slightly less subtle approach.

1. The stalker needs to be established as a personality. The target PC needs to know that the NPC exists. The NPC should exhibit some form of emotional instability, though they may mask it well.
2. A trigger event occurs as a subplot within some other plotline. This could simply be the NPC seeing an interview with the PC, but this plotline generally works better if the PC saves the life of the NPC, or comes to their rescue in some way. Failing that, something needs to throw the two of them together briefly – making the lab partners, or making the stalker president of the AV club who is setting up the equipment for a media event or press conference, for example. In D&D terms, good solutions are the confrontation with bullies, or the PC accidentally knocking a (fragile) object out of the hands of the NPC and then apologizing and replacing the broken item.
3. The initial obsession should result in behavior and actions that the PC is not aware of. Collecting photos or news clippings or other souvenirs, for example.
4. The second stage should come when the NPC alters his clothes to either look like those of the PC, or to make the NPC appear “more attractive” to the PC. If the PCs favorite colour is red, the NPC will start wearing something red all the time.
5. letters and gifts from the NPC should start arriving. Initially, these will be sweet or thoughtful. As this phase progresses, they should become more and more disturbed and disturbing. Often, these will be unsigned, or anonymous in some way – “Your True Love” or something along those lines.
6. The PC should gradually become aware that the NPC is nearby at unusual times, unusually often.
7. Declarations of affection and support should be daily.
8. When the PC confronts the NPC, it signifies that foreshadowing is complete and the player is ready to ‘accept’ that the NPC is a full-blown stalker. The NPC will begin performing extreme actions to get the attention of the PC, becoming more and more unbalanced. Attempted or even successful murder of rivals for the PCs affections; Kidnapping the PC; bizarre rituals to cleanse the PC of the ‘mental control’ exerted by others that is forcing the PC to reject the NPC’s advanced, deciding that they are meant to be together in the next life and not this one (intended Murder/Suicide), and so on.

The progression is to start with an ordinary encounter and use an unnatural recurrence of events to slowly suggest that the NPC has developed an unhealthy fixation.

The most (deliberately) over-the-top example in media that I can point to are the two episodes of The Flash (TV series) in which Mark Hamil appears as The Trickster. This can also be useful reference because you only have to tone it down a little and slow the development a little for it to become completely plausible in a roleplaying setting, and – because it is so over-the-top – the phases of activity can be more easily identified.

Another fruitful avenue of research is to consider the stalker to be “addicted” to the PC. Researching and applying the stages of alcoholism to such a relationship over a period of time can produce an utterly believable situation.

Foreshadowing A Character

Completing the trio of types of foreshadowing is one that crosses over with the previous examples: foreshadowing a character. This essentially means making the players aware of the existence of a given identity or role before that character or the NPC who fills that role actually appears in the campaign. Such foreshadowing comes in three basic flavors: Tertiary, Secondary, and Primary.

Tertiary foreshadowing

Tertiary foreshadowing is three steps removed from the actual character being foreshadowed. It doesn’t name the character or describe directly anything concerning the character; instead it describes the consequences of actions carried out by the character or in his name. At its most effective, these hints (properly read) give the background of the character being foreshadowed, or at least its most recent highlights.

• “Did you hear that someone bought the Mill, outright?”
• “The Thugs all had this business card for the Artemus Foundation in their wallets.”
• A vision of an exploding galaxy disturbs your sleep.
• News Report: “An influx of new investment drove the Stock Market up today.”
• “They say a mysterious figure dressed all in golden silk and wearing a red mask paid them to attack us.”
• News Report: “Wanted criminals continue to elude the FBI. All indications are that they have gone to ground somewhere and are staying out of sight. An FBI spokesman stated that the criminals had, in effect, ‘locked themselves up’ but that sooner or later they would make a mistake and be discovered.”

Secondary Foreshadowing

Secondary foreshadowing name-checks the character or role responsible, but does not directly involve the character.

• “I heard that nobody has ever seen this mysterious Archer Newberry who bought the mill. The whole deal was done by lawyers and messengers carrying instructions and gold.”
• “The Artemus Foundation is a non-profit research organization seeking to develop new methods of criminal rehabilitation. It was founded by a recluse, Hugh Maleric Ashton, supposedly after a neighbor was robbed. No-one knows where Ashton comes from, or where he got his money. He is also going to sponsor the next US Open Golf tournament, in the name of the Foundation.”
• “He’s a refugee from another galaxy, which he says was blown up by the army of the warlord Anachron, and wants to know if he can stay here.”
• News Report: “A series of brilliant investment coups today made Lincoln Shade the wealthiest man in the world, and an overnight trillionare. Although initially suspected of insider trading, an SEC investigation of the transactions showed them to be legitimate. Shade, trading under a number of pseudonyms, fronts, and agents, seems to possess an uncanny ability to forecast the market’s reactions to other acquisitions and sales. Mr. Shade declined to be interviewed.”
• “This is the third mysterious figure in gold silk and a red mask that we’ve found and taken down. None of them know why they did it, if they are to be believed, and they all report having dreams of a Golden Castle in the clouds.”
• News Report: “In a daring jailbreak today, convicted killer Warton Melange, better known as Cyberslay, escaped custody. Cyberslay was broken out of prison by several of the FBI’s ‘most wanted’ list, none of whom had any previous known affiliation with each other. The FBI are speculating that some organizing mastermind, who they have named ‘Mr Zero’, was gathering an elite group of criminals for some nefarious purpose. An unnamed FBI source told BNS News that the name signified the fact that the FBI knew absolutely nothing about ‘Mr. Zero’.”

Primary Foreshadowing

The third and final type of foreshadowing involves one of three things: A direct representative of the character being foreshadowed and who therefore knows something about him; a direct appearance by an NPC who will eventually be discovered as the character being foreshadowed; or a direct communication from the character being foreshadowed.

• The Mill is closed. A note on the door reads, “This primitive abomination is closed and will be demolished on behalf of the owner, Archer Newberry. All employment is terminated; all former employees are released from their contracts.” Nearby, a farmer with a wagonload of wheat sacks is worrying about whether he can reach the nearest alternative in Wikleshore before nightfall, and how much they will charge – and whether he will earn enough from the flour to pay his taxes. As he prepares to saddle up, another farmer arrives to announce that the Mill at Wikleshore has been closed by its new owner, can he get his wheat milled here?
• NPC: “Hi, I’m Quince Peartree. I’m a reporter for the Wallowing Gazelle and I’m conducting an investigation into the mysterious ‘Hugh Maleric Ashton’. I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time?” PC: “You’re joking, right? You couldn’t come up with a better pseudonym than that? So, who are you, Really?”
• Announcement on all radio frequencies, worldwide, simultaneously, in the local language: “People Of the Milky Way Galaxy: By granting refuge to a known agitator and terrorist, your galaxy has committed an act of war against the Empire of Anachron. You have 24 hours to surrender or military operations may commence against you without further notice.”
• News Report: “Lincoln Shade today announced the conversion of his entire holdings into the purchase of the national debts of several neighboring small countries and issued foreclosure proceedings against the governments of those countries due to their inability to meet their debt burdens in timely fashion. He has also issued eviction notices to all residents of those countries, pending the resolution of his foreclosures. Legal council to the United Nations stated that there was nothing illegal in these actions, which have the potential to create a refugee problem of unparalleled magnitude. Shade has warned that squatters who remain on his private property will be shot without warning.”
• A PC discovers a clue in the national record: Twelve years ago, a gnome came to the Royal Court seeking funds to develop a device he had devised called a ‘Dreammaker’. He was turned away by the father of another PC, who served as a minor bureaucrat in the court at the time, and reportedly left for the Kingdom of Dallac in the hopes of securing backing there.
• “Mr. Zero”‘s Henchmen were just spotted near the Cowsill Point Nuclear Reactor…

Foreshadowing Unlimited

While it can help if you have an idea as to where the plot being foreshadowed is going to head, it’s often not strictly necessary. In the case of some of the examples given above, the nature of the ultimate encounter with the character being foreshadowed is pretty obvious. The foreshadowing leads to an inexorable confrontation of some type. But with the Mill plot, for example, all I know is that someone is undermining the economy and food production of the country or region – who “Archer Newberry” is, and why he’s done the things attributed to him, I have absolutely no idea.

A Big Example

I’m going to wrap this article up with a big example from the planning for my Superhero campaign, an entire character plot arc that will form a subplot for several years of game play before coming to a head. The basic plotline for this plot arc was developed in collaboration with Blackwing’s player, after assessing the character’s current mental and emotional state, and the vulnerabilities that result. In particular, it was decided that the character is currently:

• Inclined to trust anyone who seems supportive;
• Inclined to mistrust his own judgment; and,
• Susceptible to feelings of frustration and doubt.

In this plot, someone publishes a book that would destroy the PCs’ reputations, and they must ride out the media storm that results without making things worse.

Foreshadowing is used very carefully in a number of ways in this plot arc: The NPC is established before they have any plot significance; the relationship itself develops naturally, with occasional stumble; the NPC plays a prominent role in several other plotlines unrelated to their main plot; and the lengths to which the character will go in order to achieve their goals is established quite early in the developing relationship.

Oh, yes: the discerning may note that this was based on, and in parts echoes, a plotline from The West Wing.

Dismembering The Code:

BW identifies the plot arc. This is an abbreviation of “Blackwing Plot Arc”.

Each major event or step in the plot arc is then indicated by a two digit number – “00, 01,” and so on.

Some events are broken down into substeps, indicated by an alphabetic character – “BW03a” for example. These either occur simultaneously or successively – this usually clear from context.

Some substeps are so significant that they are further broken down into events, also identified with a two digit numeric code, for example “BW17h01”.

If you study the events of the plot arc closely, you will notice that some of them have been shifted in order to better fit in with other events and plotlines.

Some abbreviations

“BW” refers to Blackwing. Aside from the team brick, he’s also a detective. And a living dimensional interface, though that doesn’t really play much of a role in this plot arc.

“RA” refers to the “Runeweaver Addiction” plot arc in which one of the PCs is found to be addicted to magical power-ups.

“St B” is often used as an abbreviation for “Saint Barbara”, the team leader and media spokesman, named for the patron saint of artillerymen and others who deal with explosives.

“Champs” and “Z-3” are both abbreviations for the PCs team. “The Champions” are their parent team, and the team’s public profile; to the parent team, this group of characters are known as “Zenith-3”.

“V” refers to Vala, a psionic member of the team with emphasis on information-gathering abilities.

“IMAGE” are the government agency which has been put in charge of liaising with the PCs. While they have no direct authority over them, the PCs operations would be greatly hampered if IMAGE were opposed to them.

“BC” refers to “The Bright Cutter”, which is the team’s (slightly small) starship, and the self-aware computer system that runs it. Another major plotline deals with the question of whether BC is a member or a slave to the PCs – one of several plots relating to the rights of “artificial people”.

The Plot Arc

• BW00 – St B meets the reporter when both appear on a Talk Show.
• BW01 – Meet Reporter – after RA13
• BW02 – First Date w/reporter – after RA15
• BW03 – Second Date w/reporter interrupted by emergency (BW has to leave, reporter tries to convince him to take her with him) – after RA16
• BW03a – Reporter files story on the emergency & on Champs readiness to go into action at any time – sympathetic piece
• BW04 – Third Date w/reporter – after RA25 – an emergency right in front of them – she meets rest of team – date resumes afterward – steps up the seduction, first sex (at her place)
• BW04a – The morning after
• BW05 – “On The Job” encounter, Reporter gives info that helps in a case (Lunar city?)
• BW05a – Reporter uses insights to give a more thorough report than anyone else
• BW06 – “On The Job” encounter, reporter gets into trouble trying to “get closer to the story”, was confident BW would rescue her
• BW06a – Reporter files inside story of the mission – first arguement?
• BW07 – Fourth Date w/reporter – asks for more explanation about something, puts finger on weak point of incomplete St B press conference, sex at her place
• BW07a – BW’s expanded explanation is used to clarify press conference/official line – second arguement?
• BW08 – Reporter comes across trouble, calls BW
• BW08a – Reporter files inside story of the mission
• BW09 – Fifth Date w/reporter, asks BW to spend the night (her place)
• BW10 – Sixth Date called off (her deadline), Reporter asks if she can meet BW at base later, spends the night in his room
• BW10a – The next morning meet staff and computer. NB: NO story follows, builds trust
• BW11 – Team uses reporter to leak a story to bait a trap – reporter warns there will be a quid-pro-quo sometime
• BW12 – Reporter again spends night in BW’s bedroom – gets inside scoop on a mission but doesn’t use it, makes a point of that with other team members / base security
• BW13 – Big story inadequately explained – Reporter calls in favor from BW11 for the real story, manages to spin it to protect the real secret while giving the inside story – trust escalates
• BW14 – Reporter asks to spend a day “on the job” with each team member, doing an “in-depth” profile for a series
• BW14a – A day with St Barbara (BW’s reaction)
• BW14b – A day with BW
• BW14c – A day with RW
• BW14d – A day with Kzin
• BW14e – A day with Vala
• BW14f – A day with the Knightly Building + Bright Cutter
• BW15 – In-depth profile series appears, revealing insights into team personalities & history that team might have wanted to keep private, but that might have been identified by a keen observer
• BW16 – A big story that the team had been hoping to sweep under the rug is exposed by the reporter – focus attention on the ethical conflict the reporter has been “dealing with”
• BW17 – rumors of a forthcoming book, a tell-all expose being written under a pseudonym, reach the team via a gossip column
• BW17a – St B is able to verify that there IS a book
• BW17b – IMAGE ask Vala & BW to investigate the book to discover what is in it
• BW17c – Vala & BW are able to ascertain that whoever wrote it has received a six-figure advance
• BW17d – Vala + BW are able to get their hands on a partial galley – revelations are dynamite – BW as a convicted Killer, RW as something akin to a Drug Addict, St B as a sexual predator, Kzin as a human-hating megalomaniac, Vala as a revenge-thirsty invader of secrets, off-dimensional origins of the team, team as a political tool brought in to shore up support for the Throne
• BW17e – Reporter asks BW about the rumored book
• BW17f – Vala discovers that the reporter is the author – as she uncovers a new chapter describing the team reaction to the book – does she tell BW?
• BW17g – Resolve the reporter plotline – she reveals that the sex was great but only a means to an end, “the people have a right to know who and what they are dealing with – I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again”
• BW17h – The book is published. Effects, aftermath: “The Crucible Of Opinion”
• BW17h01 – copies are distributed to all members, instructions to review them immediately, anywhere in the book they are mentioned – we have to know what to expect in fallout
• BW17h02 – St B reacts to content questioning her morality and trustworthiness
• BW17h03 – BW reacts to content suggesting that he is a corrupt ex-cop and a homicidal killer
• BW17h04 – RW reacts to content describing him as a drug-addicted ex-soldier who lives in a fantasy world with little resemblance to reality
• BW17h05 – Hevth reacts to content describing him as a fanatic incapable of loyalty
• BW17h06 – V reacts to content describing her as a naive pawn, incapable of self-assertion or critical self-analysis
• BW17h07 – BC reacts to content describing him as a servile automaton with delusions of independence
• BW17h08 – KB reacts to content describing it as a failed, even dangerous, experiment in machine intelligence which has been corrupted into thinking itself the equal of a living being
• BW17h09 – “The staff want you to know that you have our full support. We’ve got your abck, just tell us what you want us to do.”
• BW17h10 – St B reacts to content about the other members
• BW17h11 – Gov’t reacts to content – “The Champions have our full confidence.”
• BW17h12 – RW reacts to comments about the other members
• BW17h13 – Media requests for interviews go ballistic – they weren’t this heavy even when the team first arrived
• BW17h14 – Hevth reacts to content about other members
• BW17h15 – Public opinion is strongly polarized by the book. Those who distrusted or opposed the team already attack with venom, those who supported them defend them with passion.
• BW17h16 – BC reacts to content about the other members
• BW17h17 – The initial media response fans the flames of the vitriolic election campaign currently underway – “the timing is simply too coincidental to be plausible” for some. The book is seen as an attempt to deflect attention from the very real political problems of the Empire. Curiously, some attack Z-3 for participating in such a loathsome charade, while others consider them victims of a bureaucracy capable of any extreme.
• BW17h18 – The Knightly Building reacts to contents about the members
• BW17h19 – A spokesman for the former government condemns the new government for their lukewarm support of the team, describing the official response as “damning with insincere platitudes”. They point out that they were fully supportive, and that the Throne encouraged this; but the reformers first act apon assuming power was to order the team to disband. This latest statement shows that the government cannot be trusted and should never have been elected and should now be impeached.
• BW17h20 – Protesters begin to assemble at the Knightly building. Police and security are concerned, caution against inflaming the situation.
• BW17h21 – BW reacts to content about other members and the knowledge that his relationship with the author led to all this
• BW17h22 – Media begin showing news footage & photographs of BW and the author together in public. Some suggest that the Champions actively encouraged the book as a ‘safe’ way of leaking things without putting the public offside, and that the new gov’t disbanding the team was a response to learning these secrets and distancing themselves from the team. Others suggest that she has sanitized the book, and there is a lot worse still hidden.
• BW17h23 – Vala reacts to content about other members and to their reactions to everything that is going on.
• BW17h24 – IMAGE (ie the civil service) demands an official media policy & press conference to deal with the book. “Control the message or the message will control you.”
• BW17h25 – Team meeting about these events to agree on a response
• BW17h26 – The team hold a press conference
• BW17h27 – Security report that fans and supporters of the team have started to gather for a 24-hour vigil of support outside the Knightly Building. The police are setting up cordons but things could turn ugly with any provocation – and both sides are doing their best to provoke the other.
• BW17h28 – IMAGE’s legal experts report that there is nothing actionable within the book; because they are legally0-registered eccentrics, they are not covered by or subject to normal libel laws. Legally, public or media can say anything they want to about the team.
• BW17h29 – Protestors and supporters clash, and the situation around the knightly building devolves into a riot. Police want Z-3 to stay out of it, you would only inflame the situation.
• BW17h30 – Gov’t (ie politicians) demands an increased media presence by the team over the next few days.
• BW17h31 – St B is interviewed about the book and whether it represents a breach of trust, and whether or not there’s more and worse.
• BW17h32 – V is interviewed about her relationship with St B. Interview is constantly disrupted by religious extremists.
• BW17h35 – Hevth is interviewed about his loyalty and trust issues
• BW17h34 – RW is interviewed about the allegations in the book concerning him.
• BW17h36 – BC is interviewed (remotely) about his role in the team and how long he’s been with them etc.
• BW17h33 – BW is interviewed about his relationship with the author. When did it end? Does he feel betrayed? Does he still have feelings for her? etc
• BW17h37 – St B is (sympathetically) interviewed about the reasons for secrecy
• BW17h39 – BW is invited to return serve on the author and spill any dirt she doesn’t want to be public.
• BW17h40 – RW is asked how his teammates really feel about the book
• BW17h38 – V is asked how all this looks from an alien perspective.
• BW17h41 – Hevth is asked what he really thinks of his teammates
• BW17h42 – BC is asked about his relations with the team and why they have kept him a secret
• BW17h43 – St B is informed that the media are beginning to find other news to occupy them, and that the media storm roused by the book is fading. There remain the usual number of requests to interview her (as much because ratings always spike when she appears as because of the current situation), and there are a few requests for Blackwing – normally an unpopular interview subject – because of his close relationship with the author, but that the real media darling to have come out of the whole episode is the Bright Cutter – they can’t get enough of him. Requests to interview him are running two-to-one compared to St B’s normal – they are calling him the “forgotten Champion”. The current expectation is that the book will be a three-day wonder, and this is day three.
• BW17h43a – Vala, RW, and Hevth are informed that they have no extraordinary media requests for today and can resume their normal schedules.
• BW17h44 – BW is interviewed, but the focus is on his new-found eligibility. What sort of girl does he like? Or has this whole experience soured him on women? After the interview, the reporter tells him to chin up, he’s almost out of the goldfish bowl – the public are losing interest in the story, and the press will soon follow. And, in case he’s gotten the wrong idea, she’s happily married already!
• BW17h45 – Bright Cutter is interviewed about his impressions of the Empire. How much of it has he seen? What did he like? Where else has he been? How did it compare?
• BW17h46 – St B is interviewed about the difficulties of those in sensitive positions maintaining outside relationships in general. The book is never explicitly mentioned.
• BW17h47 – BC is interviewed about his perspective on the political questions. He dodges the briar patch with great professionalism while reaffirming an overall moral stance.
• BW17h48 – St B is interviewed about the coming season’s fashions, and her uniforms, and whether or not she would ever consider letting a professional designer work with her wardrobe choices.
• BW17h49 – BC is interviewed about his perspective on religious issues. He again avoids trouble without offending anyone. Several church Ministers try to trip him up but it quickly becomes clear that he is VERY expert in theology, has read every Holy Book on Earth=Halo, has perfect recall, and can quote from them at length. He soon has them tied in knots over their refusal to denounce criminal acts (base on West Wing episode I). If he keeps this up, she might be able to hand over the job of Media Liaison.
• BW17h50 – St B is advised that the BC has accepted an invitation to be interviewed by one of the most controversial religious right-wing fundamentalist figures on the radio, something every other member of the team has managed to avoid by listening to the advice of IMAGE’s media dept.
• BW17h51 – BC is interviewed by the radical fundamentalist reporter. He is polite for a while and then takes total control of the interview, publicly humiliating her over her extremist position. (base on the religious critique in the West Wing). It looks like it’s going to be a whole new PR disaster for the team, but at the very end he confirms his support for religious tolerance and the rights of individuals to choose for themselves; he doesn’t have any final answers, and even if he did they would not apply to humans anyway. What he cannot abide is religious intolerance and bigotry and evil cloaked in the pretence of righteousness. He then reminds her that she insisted that he reveal his thoughts on the subject.
• BW17h52 – BC is finally asked what he thinks about the contents of the book. He systematically tears its credibility to shreds, while maintaining that on the occasions he met “Miss Lawrence” she was not at all biased or deceptive; he is quite sure that the book was reedited by an unknown third party to attack the team’s credibility, putting the most hostile spin possible on every statement it contains.

Last week I revealed my crash and burn in 2011 and a new commitment to not biting off more than I can chew.

So this week’s post is going to be a bit on the conservative side, and I’m going to talk a little about my plans for 2012 and a little about where I think the state of the gaming industry is at.

Better Project Management

First up, let me brag about my current organization system. I developed it as a result of taking on too many projects and commitments last year.

I needed a system that would provide me clarity on what I’ve got on my plate at any given moment, plus facilitate my penchant for coming up with new ideas all the time.

I have experimented with many organization systems, and landed on GTD plus MyInfo software.

I still use these for workflow and information management because they are superb.

But I also needed a project management system that would help me stay focused.

As luck would have it, the web team at work switched to the Agile method of working, and it’s paid them huge dividends. Agile prevents you from tackling too much. It keeps you focused on what needs to be done next. It allows you to queue up as many projects and ideas as you like, but it keeps you focused on the task at hand.

Agile also helps control scope creep, it helps you launch projects faster so you can get feedback sooner, and it creates a more robust working environment.

So, I studied the team’s implementation of Agile management and crafted my own version of it to help me control my projects. So far, it’s awesome. I’m getting more done, faster.

It’s still early days though, having just emerged from the phoenix of 2011, but things are looking solid for 2012 in terms of managing my own projects and keeping the sanity.

Game Writing

In 2012 I will continue to write GM tips, advice and how-tos. Some content will be for the Roleplaying Tips Newsletter, a bit will be for Campaign Mastery, a bit will be for ebooks and reports, and some will be for various websites as guest articles to help me spread the word about Assassin’s Amulet, Faster Combat and other products from Roleplaying Tips Publishing.

Business Writing

Since forming Gamer Lifestyle with Yax of dungeonmastering.com fame, I have discovered I love business writing as well.

In the same way I enjoy breaking down GMing tasks and writing about them in how-to or step-by-step fashion, I enjoy doing the same for online entrepreneurs.

Taking my experience from running RPT and Gamer Lifestyle, from writing and publishing various books over the years, and from my various day job endeavours, I will be doing more business writing in 2012 to help people learn how to start up and run profitable side businesses from home.

Most of this writing will appear on the Gamer Lifestyle site or as ebooks.

Faster Combat

The world’s first online GMing course is a huge success. By the time this article gets published, Faster Combat will have its 100th member!

Tony Medeiros from Leonine Roar and I have created a course that is guaranteed to help you cut your combat time in half while you increase the drama and tell better stories at the same time.

It’s amazing seeing the 52 lessons you receive come together and the depth of material covered. Feedback from members has been tremendous, as well. I published several testimonials in a recent Roleplaying Tips issue, and GMs are loving the how-to and actionable advice.

I’ll be working on spreading the word as much as I can about Faster Combat in 2012. If you could tell your gaming friends about the GM course, I’d sure appreciate it.

Legacies Campaign Setting – More GM Toolbooks

Mike Bourke has an amazing vision for the Legacies Campaign Setting that kicked off with Assassin’s Amulet in October.

We called Assassin’s Amulet a GM Toolbook because it’s as much a GM campaign tool as it is a resource for assassins in your games as villains and NPCs. I talked about this last week, so this week I’ll move on and say 2012 will bring the next title to the series.

Legacies #2 will delve into the other end of the spectrum – paladins. But, of course, things are not always as they appear, and Legacies #2 will be a GM Toolbook with depth and twists to help your campaigns rock.

The RPG Industry in 2012

Not only do I think there are more gamers than ever before playing RPG, but I think the time has never been better to get into the industry, especially for self-publishing.

The Biz Side of Things

I run the Gamer-Lifestyle.com site with Yax. It teaches you how to publish your own RPG work and to make your first dollar online within 90 days. So this endeavour might have me donning my rose-coloured glasses, but hear me out.

I do not work for a big tabletop RPG company, nor have I ever worked for one. I’ve always self-published and been in the trenches with my fellow game masters. So I do not have the expensive industry data some companies might buy or develop to see the big picture.

However, think on this. Pathfinder is kicking ass. Paizo reports Core Rulebook sales in 2011 were more than sales in 2010, and those books flew off the shelves in 2010.

Though this is a broad generalization, I stand by the statement that if you give gamers what they want, they will love you for it, buy your stuff and spread the word to their friends.

Again, I do not know what the big picture for profits are for the likes of Paizo, WotC and such, but for us small publishers, this is extremely encouraging news.

We don’t have huge payrolls to meet or stockholders to assuage.

We can create cool gaming products that gamers want and do a good business that helps pay off the mortgage, pay the bills, or better yet, pay for more gaming stuff. :)

Further, the barriers to entry into the publishing world are non-existent. The tools are now available for gamers to publish their stuff for little to no monetary hurdles.

And the great news for us gamers is the level of quality continues to rise in fan-based and small-publisher based materials. That’s because tools for publishing are making it ever easier to produce quality stuff.

At the heart of RPG for a lot of us is homebrew. We craft our own worlds, adventures, house rules and game systems. The hobby has always had a grass roots do-it-yourself culture, which is what makes the hobby so much fun.

And companies like Paizo who support this, who allow fans to create stuff and publish it for free or for a few bucks, understand this aspect of gaming and help keep the hobby alive.

And there’s never been more ways you can stand on the shoulders of others to get your creations out there, with all the cool free systems that give you license to create stuff with their rules for their fans. Fudge, FATE and Savage Worlds come to mind.

For a guy who grew up during a time when the industry leader would seek out fan content and have it removed from the internet, this is nirvana.

All this means more choice for gamers who just want to play stuff, not publish or create it. And the rising quality of amateur (as in amateur – love of) creations adds even more pleasure to our games.

Marketplaces like RPGNow.com, Paizo’s store, LuLu, the Kindle Store and others give RPG enthusiasts more choices, more ways to share their content and more ideas than ever before.

Another trend on the biz side of things that indicates to me small publishing is thriving is kickstarter.com. This service allows gamers to vote with their wallets on the gaming stuff they want to see created.

For RPG businesses, Kickstarter reduces risks and helps them do market research before investing time and money. And the number and variety of Kickstarter projects continues to rise, as does the number of projects that meet their green light thresholds! More great news for everyone.

The Gamer Side of Things

I’ve already covered most of the points I wanted to make about why the industry is thriving. But to recap, gamers have more choices and better quality choices today. They are supported and encouraged to create content and share it for certain games. And they have lots of services and venues for sharing their content where gamers gather online.

I also think the number of casual RPG players is on the rise. Again, I have no stats for this, and it’s just hand-wavy optimism based on feedback I get from my websites and newsletter.

But there is a growing group of casual gamers out there. When they get together with friends, they ponder their options and sometimes pick an RPG to play. More RPGs are available for single night gaming than ever before.

Some of these gamers will become hard core, like us. :)

In addition, virtual tabletop gaming is on the rise. WotC has their new VTT software in beta, and their are lots of other options such as Fantasy Grounds, ScreenMonkey, MapTool and Battlegrounds.

There is also forum gaming and play-by-email.

So, while industry projections on gamer numbers based on purchasers of big company products might show the number of gamers worldwide has dropped, those numbers do not show the truth.

And I think there are more gamers than ever before. Some casual, some virtual, and most playing a wider selection of games. This means a more splintered community, but also more opportunity.

Why more opportunity? From the publishing side, you can create niche products perfect for a specific group of gamers because there are so many choices you can appeal to.

From the gamer side, the chances of running into a gamer, former or current, is better than ever before. Gamer friends are easier to find as well.

What’s Your 2012 Going To Be Like?

So enough about me, my goals and my hand-wavy industry musings.

What about you? What kind of goals have you set for 2012?

Hi! I’m Mike Bourke, the other primary writer here at Campaign Mastery, and I’m hijacking-slash-gatecrashing the tail end of Johnn’s post to drop in a few words about where CM, & I, are going to be heading in 2012.

Thursday Posts: These are part of my weekly routine now, and I’ve still got lots to discuss. So these will be continuing. I have a number of articles series that I want to wrap up, or at least carry closer to a conclusion, and there’s that Ask-The-GMs backlog to finally deal with. You start these things with the best of intentions…

Monday Posts: Come february, all of our stockpiled content for these posts will have wrapped up. I’ve started doing sample posts for a number of new columns to generally positive but limited feedback, and these will continue. The aim with these posts is for them to be a lot shorter than my more epic Thursday articles, but I’ve tried to keep it short before, without notable success. How long is a piece of elastic? All I can say is that these will be as lengthy as time, subject matter, and inspiration, allow.

Best Posts: This list in our right-hand-side menu is long overdue for an update. This is high on my 2012 to-do list.

More Assassin’s Amulet Add-ons: A couple of technical problems and the real-world Holiday season disrupted schedules as soon as they were announced, but the intent is still there to value-add to purchasers of the product. There’s a good month or so of work to do in getting them out – and it’s to give me a bit more time to knock these over that we’re running Johnn’s posts this week and last, and the big wrapup to the GM’s Toolbox series.

Legacies Product #2 This has more working titles than a TV series in development by committee, but the central vision is clear for this product. In fact, a good quantity of it has been designed already, at least through the preliminary stages. So we’re hoping to get the first draft of this book done by mid-year – and for it to be somewhat smaller than AA! – and get it out quickly thereafter – while avoiding all the panic and rush of this year. The Cover Art contest for AA was really successful, and if it’s at all possible, I’m keen for a repeat of that this time around. As Johnn has revealed, the next entry in the Legacies Campaign Setting will revolve around All Things Paladin – including that never-ending source of friction in gaming, the alignment system and its restrictions.

Other Ebooks: We still have lots of plans for other e-books. In fact, if time allowed, we already have enough content for 18 or so. It doesn’t, but I want to at least get a few out. I also want to find the time to work on a couple of unfinished e-books of my own.

There are also a host of little things, some of which have been on my to-do list for a couple of years now, but that keep getting shunted aside for higher priorities. I have 76 almost-done designs for a logo for Campaign Mastery and some ideas for a matching favicon, for example. Little stuff like that, which have been stewing away in the background for quite a while.

Finally, on the personal/gaming side, I’m really excited about the long-planned return of my Superhero campaign after a year’s hiatus. This might very well be the last superhero campaign I ever run, because I’ve thrown every idea I’ve got into it! Except that I keep thinking up new ones…

There’s lots of fun planned for 2012, so hang around, OK? If the world ends (I’ll bet $xxx it won’t) because the Mayan Calandar is about to recycle itself, I want to go out gaming!

Confession Time: This is not the article I intended to post today. I simply ran out of time – after my sense of the day-of-the-week was thrown off by the Holiday Season, leading me to start late. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve re-read the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the premise: scientist develops a statistical treatment for predicting the future, discovers that the Galactic Empire is past saving, but develops a plan by which the intervening dark ages can be cut from 30,000 years to just one millennium. In later years, he revisited the original trilogy with additional titles such as Foundation’s Edge which modified and expanded the core concept a little, reflecting the somewhat simplistic view presented originally, but that remains the core premise of the stories. From that foundation (no pun intended), the narrative describes the history of the “Foundation” which is to form the nucleus of the new Galactic Empire.

Every time I read this series, I am reminded of how much Psychohistory resembles some of the rules of an RPG – or should that be the other way around?

The Statistics Of A World

Most fantasy games don’t bother with whole-world statistics; being conducted at a more “human” level, there’s no need. Most science-fiction games, on the other hand, deal in multiple worlds, and therefore need some means of describing them and their relationships. This has been true ever since original Traveller, and I don’t expect it to change any time soon. The simplest such systems cover planetography, population levels, socio-political structure, planetary wealth, tech level, and law level – and most people reading this will already know what those terms mean, they are reasonably self-explanatory. More complex systems may deal with biosphere, climatology, ecology, and any number of other sophisticated and complex subjects. In order to make these useful in a game setting, they need to be reduced to a series of quick tables, one per subject, describing the standard characteristics of a particular type of world within the parameter specified. The most sophisticated systems actually use hidden logic to bias the results on subsequent tables according to the results of earlier tables, restricting randomness in the name of rationality and conceptual cohesiveness. For example, if you picked “Desert World”, the system would consider the impact of that environment on the society and modify the likelyhood of a given social structure accordingly, then use that result to modify the Law Level, and so on.

As GMs, we are interested in generating one world at a time, and as a result, we don’t tend to tend to see the forest for the trees. This is where “psychohistory” and RPG world generation go in different directions: We use the equivalent of “psychohistory” to develop profiles of individual worlds, rather than gathering statistics on hundreds, thousands, or even millions of worlds and using them to generate statistical profiles.

Does that mean that there would be no value in our using a computer program or spreadsheet to generate a statistically-significant number of worlds and then analyzing the results? Most GMs would say yes, but I have a different opinion.

You see, another of our characteristics as GMs is that we love to tinker with rules, especially when it comes to random-generation tables for things like worlds. But because in those sophisticated semi-random systems, changing one variable’s probability profile can have significant flow-on consequences, we are often in the dark as to the large-scale ramifications.

For example, if we decided that dry worlds and water worlds were both just a little more probable than the sort of “balanced” world that we live on (because they are exotic and a little more interesting), that could alter the number of planets with a given social system, or law level, or any number of other factors. It would mean that certain forms of technology would be more economically productive than others. It would mean dietary changes – fewer land animals and more seafood. Spices derived from shells would probably be more common, and hence cheaper, while other spices might be more exotic and expensive. “Farm worlds” with substantial arable land would be politically more significant, and wealthier – they would be objects of desire in wars. All that would tend to concentrate military power in such locations, and political power usually follows – so the galaxy is divided up into small fiefdoms consisting of a farmworld “capital” in the centre and a surrounding halo of desert worlds and water worlds.

If we knew all this in advance, we could tailor campaign backgrounds appropriately, and generate appropriate adventures that feel like they “fit” the environment, adding to the verisimilitude of the whole campaign.

If we don’t, the campaign background will not quite fit the galactic “environment” and the adventures will not quite ring true. This can undermine the campaign in ways that the GM can’t predict, and he will never be entirely sure of why it didn’t work.

The Simulation Of A Nation

National simulations tend to be a lot less developed, and may even be omitted altogether. Many games tell the GM to pick a government type and a wealth level and leave it at that. That can be because the authors realize that many of the genre conventions tend to fall apart when analyzed closely, especially in fantasy games.

Don’t believe me? Try this exercise for size:

One-in-five D&D adventurers (let’s say) survive to progress to the next character level. The rest either retire or are killed. Let’s further assume that one in four retire, and three in four are killed; and that it takes an average of 6 months to gain a character level. When characters reach 20th level, there is nowhere else to go, so they will retire and start doing something else. If humans start earning character levels at the age of 16, and the average human lifespan is 35, how many adventurers of a given level are there in a Kingdom of 100,000 people?

First of all, one in five progression means that for any given character level, there are proportionately five times more characters at the next character level down. So, we can do a table relating character level to population representation:

20= 1
19= 5
18= 25
17= 125
16= 625

…and so on, until we reach:

1= 19,073,486,328,125 (a blatantly ridiculous number).

Next, we can count the number of retired or dead adventurers by subtracting the results of each level from the results one level higher:

19= 5-1=4
18= 25-5=20
17= 125-25=100

… and so on, until we reach:

1= 15,258,789,062,500 (still an outrageous number).

Applying the 1-in-four retirement vs. death ratio gives the number of these who survived and retired:

19= 4x 1/4 =1
18= 20x 1/4= 5
17= 100x 1/4= 25

Recognize this? It’s the same pattern we started with, just stepped down one level. Eventually, we will reach:

1= 3,814,697,265,625 (yet another outrageous number).

Next, let’s look at the aging progression: At 6 months per character level, it takes 10 years to reach 20th level. Presumably, all survivors who reach 21st level will retire, as described in the assumptions. Starting at 16, the characters will be 26 years old or less when they retire – leaving them with 9+ years before they reach the average age of death, and then an increasing likelyhood of death over the next 35 years.

You can look at the 6-month timeframe as establishing a “school term” length for adventurers (presumably the school of hard knocks) [assuming a stable population level, for simplicity]. What we have looked at so far are the relative proportions for just the students who enter in a given “school term” – six months later, there will be another, and six months after that another, and so on.

With this approach, it can be seen that the number of retired adventurers of any given character level will be the number from the current ‘school term’, plus the number from the previous one, and the number from the year before that, and so on.

1 (current) + 1 (previous) + 1 (before that) and so on gives 20 “school terms” whose members still have active adventurers, plus (9 years / 6 months = 18) more who have not reached the average death age, plus an equal number past the average age of death (by definition), or:

2 x (20+18) = 2 x 38 = 76 = the multiplier to convert the single class numbers to the whole-population numbers.

But, since we’re only interested in the proportions, and this multiplier applies to all character levels, we can ignore it, and stick to our already-established ratios.

When you do the math, it works out that 81% of retired adventurers are 1st level, 15.4% are second level, 2.9% are 3rd level, and the remaining 0.7% is spread amongst the other character levels.

Or, to put it another way, out of every million adventurers:

810,127 will be 1st level
153,924 will be 2nd level
29,165 will be 3rd level
5,509 will be 4th level
1,037 will be 5th level
194 will be 6th level
36 will be 7th level
7 will be 8th level
1 will be 9th level
And everyone of higher level is swallowed in rounding error – so there’s less than 1 of them..

Without knowing the ratio of adventurers to non-adventurers, that’s as far as we can go.

Why This Doesn’t Work

Characters tend to encounter enemies of roughly their own character level. If you’re 8th level, you can expect most encounters to be with characters of 6th to 10th level. This is done because anything else is less interesting to play. But it’s not reflected in the population stats.

So the entire concept falls apart when any sort of basic mathematical analysis is applied to it. That means that there is something wrong with our base assumptions, or there is something wrong with the game system that we are modeling.

The key number here is the “1 in 5”. Not only is this not very reflective of the typical PC experience, it is the reason we get such ridiculous numbers for the first level population. Now, I’ve seen suggestions over the years that this number should be as high as ten-to-one and as low as 2 to 1.

At 2 to 1, there will be 4 characters of 16th level for every million population, so this is a far more reasonable number. But it has a marked effect on the average level – it goes from what is obviously 1-point-something-low to 3.6. Or to put it another way, more than half the population have at least 3 levels.

Economic Impact

You get even more interesting numbers by applying the average character wealth from the DMG to the different population levels. The results show a marked “lower class” at low levels, to a dominant economic class, and then a diminishing share of the overall economy as levels rise still further. There are lots of calculations and assumptions that go into these results, but the general pattern remains – characters at or near the average number of levels have substantially more economic power than those removed from that average. Higher level characters have more wealth but this is offset by a paucity of representation; Low-level characters have little wealth but great numbers; and somewhere in-between, there is a ‘sweet spot’ in which these two factors give a single population subgroup many times the economic power of anyone else.

The Value Of Understanding

In fact, by using the average wealth, you can work out from the overall wealth of the country how many adventurers they have (on average), and from that, the population.

But how much more useful would it be to have a set of tables or calculations that combined national wealth, socio-political structure, and a base population level, to determine the relative representation of different character levels? To know, up-front, that there was (say) a 4% chance – one-in-twenty – that any given NPC would have 8 character levels?

How would such knowledge affect player behavior?

How would such knowledge – assuming it was comprehensive and not limited to this single factoid – affect the way the GM thinks about his game world?

Population Dynamics

Sadly, this sort of analysis is not available, and it doesn’t take much analysis of the quoted numbers in any rulebook to determine that the reason is that it wasn’t done by the designers. Instead, they usually seem to pluck numbers out of thin air that “seemed reasonable at the time” without testing them for validity.

In fact, I’ve only ever seen one game product that even made a start on the subject – “Medieval Demographics Made Easy”. This was a PDF that I obtained through RPGNow, from memory, but at the moment it is not available from there – even if memory is not playing me false. Fortunately, it lives on through this website and the tools that it links to.

The reason for this is simple: it’s extraordinarily hard to do. It takes easily ten or twenty times as much time and effort per page of game supplement – and I speak from experience, as I have such a project currently sitting on the backburner at 20,800 words or thereabouts. It was supposed to be about 10,000 words and take a month to write; instead, it will be three or four times that length (when finished) and have taken well over 6 months. Along the way, I’ve easily done 100,000 words of analysis and logic that won’t appear in the game product when it’s finished, beyond a quotation of the end results.

The Reactions Of Fictional People

Everything in a rules system can be subject to this sort of statistical analysis. For example, taking rules for NPC attitude adjustment and applying them to a statistical population can be used to determine how the general population will react to any given situation, in broad terms, how favorable treaty terms will be, how successful that population group will be in negotiations, and so on. It doesn’t take a huge understanding of the history of the 20th century to observe the impact that these things can have on a population – one of the major reasons for World War II was the impact of the Treaty of Versailles on Germany.

Elves are often described as being a “fair” race, very attractive to look at, well-spoken and facile of tongue. How many GMs have considered what that means in terms of the diplomatic prowess of the race, and the accumulated impact of who-knows-how-many negotiations with outcomes slanted in the Elvish favor?

Throw in the average lifespan information provided, which shows various races as living much longer than humans. Yet, this doesn’t seem to show up in their skills – an elder Elf should be an expert in a dozen or more fields and a dilettante or hobbyist in at least twice that many. There should be specific details given with the race concerning this; there isn’t. There should be specific rules about characters with out-of-date skillsets; there is not.

How much more formidable does an Ambassador become after an extra 50 years or more of experience?

Too few GMs take the time to think about these aspects of their game world and its populations, then extrapolate to a broader political and social expectation.

This Means War!

It was by applying these techniques to the rules of standard combat that I developed the game systems that I presented in my multipart Blog Post, ‘This means WAR! Making huge armies practical’ in March 2009. I can’t think of a better illustration for the principle (or conclusion to this post) than pointing readers who have not come across it in the past to that 6-part series of articles.

Have a great week at the game table!

How high do you dream?

2011 was a great year and a terrible year for me for writing and gaming.

I suffered a bit of burn out, got a couple of awesome gaming products published and gamed monthly instead of every other week for much of 2011.

Let’s delve into my goals for last year, and then I’ll reveal my #1 lesson learned that I think might apply to you, as well.

Here are the things I said I wanted to accomplish in 2011.

“Goal #1: Hit every scheduled Campaign Mastery post”

“My blogging schedule will probably change in early 2011, but no matter what it is I will hit every deadline. Last year I missed two out of 52 deadlines. This year I aim for zero.”

Well, my schedule did change. Due to time pressures, I stopped blogging here at CampaignMastery.com in the fall. My articles trickled off and the great GM Toolbox meta GMing series took their place.

Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll continue hitting the pause button intermittently for the foreseeable future as there are various projects I need to tend to this year.

Mike will still be publishing his awesome, in-depth articles at least once each week. I will be blogging here too, but just not as regularly.

GM Toolbox will also conclude in a few weeks for those looking for closure on the final techniques and tools Michael and Da’Vane have in store for us.

“Goal #2: Maintain current series, start new series”

• Ask the GMs – We answered a few questions this year, including a couple times over at RoleplayingTips.com. And we always answered the questioners by email. However, we have a huge backlog to clear up, and until that’s under control we’ve removed the question form so we can catch up.
• Hazards – I did not end up revisiting this in 2011. It’s on hold for now, though I’m thinking of rolling it into the Faster Combat online GMing course.
• Hooks – We released 50 Assassin Hooks, but did not add further to this series.
• Generators – The Q-Workshop series was excellent, but we did not follow-up with a new series of similar generators last year.
• iPad reviews – I did get to post a few of these, some at RoleplayingTips.com.
• City building – This one got done in the form of government design for your cities. When you consider the roots of power in your world, many interesting adventure opportunities surface!
• Stat blocks – This series remained on pause last year.

Mike also has two new series out: Ghosts of Blogs Past and Pieces of Creation.

“Goal #3 Books”

We released one book plus the world’s first course for game master this year. So, I’d consider this goal a success.

Assassin’s Amulet debuted in October to critical acclaim. We called it a GM Toolbook, because Assassin’s Amulet is a 300 page resource for all things assassin in your game, including rarely touched upon aspects of world building and campaign management.

A new GM Toolbook is under development. More news on that is coming.

Faster Combat opened its doors to members in October as well. It’s a 52 week training program for GMs guaranteed to cut your combat time in half!

Co-produced with Tony Medeiros of LeonineRoar.com, Faster Combat teaches you how to design combats, manage encounters and master the rules while adding story and drama all at the same time.

While Mike and I had plans for more releases this past year, a 300 page GM Toolbook and a 52 week GMing course did get published, so I’m very pleased about that.

“Goal #4 More contests and giveaways”

“I aim to run one contest or giveaway per month.”

I did not hit this stride, unfortunately. However, we did manage to hold at least four contests with a whole bunch of software and books as prizes.

“Goal #5 DM 12 times this year, play 12 times”

I hit my GMing goal! But the GM of the campaign I was to play in folded up his screen due to work commitments. Boo!

“Goal #6 Roleplaying Tips Newsletter”

“Continue to publish this every other week and pack every issue full of GM tips and ideas. I would love to see an HTML, PDF and mobile-friendly edition this year, but I have not solved those problems yet.”

Success here too. I even went weekly for a few weeks. However, no HTML, mobile or PDF version saw light of day. There was not enough time to get to this.

“Goal #7 Gamer Lifestyle”

We opened the course for a limited time to let new members in this year. Check out the new website we setup for Illusionary Press for their Illfrost campaign setting.

We also launched new RPG business ebooks, including RPG Business Plans and Wake Up Early for those serious about publishing their RPG work.

My #1 Lesson In 2011

Overall, I hit a few goals and missed a few goals. In the end, key goals were met: publishing new products and gaming with friends.

However, the year started out looking like it was going to be a total disaster.

Assassin’s Amulet kept getting delayed. The thing about a project that gets delayed is its scope increases. While you wait you tend to add more ideas and content. This is great if you only ever want to launch “someday,” but bad if you want to finish a project and launch so you can launch other projects.

Further, delays mean you forget all the details of a project that allow you to be nimble during project conclusion and launch. Long delays meant losing momentum and forgetting plans and details. We compensated by developing a great documentation system using Google Sites, but still, that’s work that gets you no direct sales.

As a result of the delays, I started several projects. And worse, I got BSO syndrome. Bright Shiny Objects took the form of new project ideas. I kept starting projects and did not finish them or launch them.

This was my undoing. By summer I was burning out. Too many spinning plates from open projects inching along bottomed out my morale and energy.

As fortune would have it, my summer vacation hit at the perfect time. As I was thinking of packing things in, I instead had two weeks of rest and relaxation to ponder life.

First thing I realized was I was taking on too many projects and commitments and it was over-taxing my schedule. Second thing I realized was I had no end game. What was I ultimately doing all this for? This answer is critical because it allows a person like me to decide what’s important, and what to say no to.

I have journals filled with ideas. I love ideas. I get ideas at all times of the day and I write as many down as I’m able.

But a smart person knows to just pick one idea at a time and make it reality. A smart person knows it’s just as important to pick what you don’t work on as what he does work on.

Revitalized, I hit the end of August with a plan to meet all project commitments made to partners, and to cancel all projects that I was just working on by myself. I would use the fall to clear out my backlog and then decide what 2012 would be about.

Which brings us to today and my #1 lesson gleaned from last year:

Focus. Do one project at a time.

Some lessons keep biting you in the ass until you get them. I’ve learned that I needed to focus before. But still, the gleam from all those new ideas pulls like a certain ring in a pool.

I succeeded in launching or killing all my open loops in the fall. I feel like a new man. What to do now? If you say start a new project I’ll throttle you! lol.

Next week, I’ll fill you in on my 2012 plans.

For now though, why don’t you share how your 2011 went. Did last year go according to plan? Did you make any gaming goals and did you reach them?

In Roleplaying Tips #536, Johnn ran a tips request (reproduced below) asking for tips on how to GM computer hacking. I decided that simply offering a few tips wasn’t quite going to cut it, and that the subject deserved a slightly more in-depth treatment.

I’m currently running a sci-fi future campaign where computers are an integral part of space station and starship security.

The rules include skills that allow dice rolls to hack computers. This is fine for the random security door or the like, but feels too random and flavorless to me to have more important events hinge on it (like when you are in the bad guy’s empty lair trying to extract secrets from his computer without tripping any alarms).

I’m not asking for a whole game built around computer use, but are there any interesting ways you or other DMs handle computer hacking?

Computers in RPGs: The Problems

Before solutions can be found to problems, it’s usually a requirement that the problems themselves be considered. Often, they aren’t even identified when you start, let alone articulated and analyzed. So that’s where I’m going to start.

The Legacies of Obsolete Iron

The first problem is that game systems often need to accommodate a whole range of computer systems with extremely varied hardware capabilities. Many of the key concepts stem from early mainframes, which could only run a few programs at a time. Compare the stats of a state-of-the-art mainframe from the early 1960s with the microprocessor in a new car from the year 2000, and you will find that the car has the better computer – it’s certainly better than the mainframe used for the Apollo missions, for example. (There are good reasons for that, related to proven reliability, but nevertheless…)

Similarly, compare a modern desktop computer with the stats of the Cray Supercomputer, famed as the Ultimate Computer in many TV shows and movies, and astonishingly, the modern desktop wins out over the liquid-nitrogen-cooled billion-dollar machine in most if not all respects. Processor speed, calculation rate, memory, storage capacity, storage retrieval rate, efficiency… just think about that for a minute.

Of course, physical reality means that this exponential growth curve in capacity, known (in terms of transistor count) as Moore’s Law, can’t continue, and in fact it seems to have leveled off in recent years – refer to this (slightly technical) article, for example, or this (somewhat less technical) blog post for the more generalist reader. Both are now a little dated, but the general principle remains.

But the fact is that much of the mass-media’s concept of what computers can and can’t do derives from the fancies of people back when Mainframes, also known as Big Iron, was the ultimate in computer power.

When I set out to create the computer rules for my superhero roleplaying game, I soon struck a fundamental problem in trying to not only modernize those conceptual standards, but to also accommodate the past and project into the future. The results were a bewildering rules draft of more than 60 pages length. There were three attempts at a conceptual rules framework prior to that monstrosity and two attempts at more abstract approaches afterwards before my co-writer and I finally struck a computer rules system that seemed balanced in terms of game performance, abstraction, and realism. That process took 8 years to complete.

Since I doubt most game designers care to spend eight years and six attempts in the creation of a relatively minor subsystem within the rules, it follows that most game systems have computer rules that are going to be inadequate at some point in time, and that aren’t going to be as playable as they could be. Unless someone’s had a stroke of genius, of course, that let them short-cut the development process.

There are always going to be:

• Unreasonable limits on what a computer can do,
• Unreasonable translations of real-world computer system capabilities into game-scale performance,
• A juggling act between simulation and abstraction that will always fall short of the optimum, and
• Frustration with the computer rules as a result.

While it cannot solve such problems, whatever solutions to the problems of roleplaying the interaction between a PC and a computer are offered should at least ameliorate this situation.

The Power of Tomorrow-tech

If the concepts of the past lead to modern problems of abstraction in game systems, trying to forecast the capacities of the computers of tomorrow is even more problematic – because it’s exactly the same problem, but compounded with the handicap of trying to foretell the future.

The scale of the problem can be demonstrated by considering virtually any movie or TV show in which computers play a significant role – from Babylon 5 to Star Trek to Hackers to Sneakers to The Net to The Matrix to, well, you name it. Events, and computer capabilities, not only outstrip the speculations within those shows almost immediately, it can easily be shown that in order to connect with a lowest-common-denominator audience, such outstripping is inevitable. Who, as late as the 1990s, could have forecast the iPod, iPad, Smartphone, GPS Navigation, or Kindle? (Hackers is notable for getting about half of the technical dialogue and computer concepts right – putting it way ahead of the field!)

Again, this problem will not be completely solved by whatever solution we adopt, but a good solution should at least mask the difficulties.

Computer Time vs. Game Time vs. Real Time

Computers don’t operate on the same time scale as people do. Preprogramming, and the ability to launch massive undertakings with a single mouse-click (or equivalent), means that a computer can do 10,000 things in the time it takes a person to do one. For example, trying to guess a password – a modern desktop computer can easily try 1,000+ password guesses in a second, proceeding in a systematic attempt to break security by brute force. The weaker the password or other security, the more quickly success will be achieved in this manner.

There’s an inevitable compromise between security and accessibility when it comes to such things. The strongest password is a long string of apparently unrelated characters and numbers – but those are hard to remember and harder to type in accurately and even harder to type in both accurately and quickly. There are various ways around such problems – using a password manager to generate complex passwords for you, or using some system to derive that seemingly random string of characters. I even once saw a program that had the rules and statistics of the English language built into it so that, given a pair of letters, it could generate a password of any desired length that consisted of the least-likely characters to follow the preceding one, with a random choice when multiple options were possible.

This discrepancy poses serious problems for the GM when it comes to PC-computer interactions, because it means that the number of actions that can be launched and completed by an individual in the cyber-world is vastly disproportionate to the number of actions that can be carried out by other PCs in the real world.

In fact, there are three serious problems that arise. The first is that either the GM compromises the effectiveness of computer technology, reducing the effectiveness of the computer to “human” standards, or he gives the computer hacker a vastly disproportionate share of screen time. This problem is exacerbated by game systems that operate on a binary “success/fail” structure when assessing skill use.

One Stands Alone

The second problem is that all this screen time is necessarily conducted outside of the group environment; essentially, it is solo in nature and not collaborative. The other characters can’t interact with the hacker while he’s in “hack mode” and he can’t interact with them.

For example, think about how much information on a target a good hacker could accrue while the other PCs are engaged in a 45-minute drive across town to the target. Even without doing anything illegal, just using standard tools like Wikipedia and Google, how much information can you get in that period of time on any given subject? Would 90 relevant websites – two per minute – be unreasonable? Most would come up early, later it would be harder to find something that wasn’t a redundant regurgitation of information already retrieved. It actually takes longer to assimilate the information retrieved than it does to retrieve that information in the first place; the core of the subject – whatever it is – will probably be retrieved in the first 30 seconds, and you’ll spend more time excluding unwanted data than reading relevant information.

You couldn’t wrap your head around a vast subject – for example Microsoft Controversies – in such a short span. But on any specific subject – say, the 2007 Cricket World Cup? You may not gain enough information to be an “expert”, but you can certainly expect to be an “authority” on an amateur scale in such a period of time – unless the subject itself is so broad as to be useless in any realistic context. (A Google search for 2007 Cricket World Cup brings up 26,300,000 references; being more specific with a search for 2007 +”cricket world cup” refines the results to the most relevant 9,350,000 results. Of course, you might not understand all the nuances without also reading up on the rules of cricket – fortunately, there are another 8,480,000 web sites out there to help with that. There are even 71,900 web sites that deal with the overlap between the two subjects. It took me more time to type in the questions than it did to retrieve the results.

How about something really specific: The thermodynamics of frozen mercury? Well, obvious search terms are “solid mercury”, “supercooled metal”, “supercooled mercury”, and “frozen mercury” – perhaps refining all of the above with the additional term ‘thermodynamics’. Those searches yield, respectively:

• “solid mercury” – 107 million results, down to 1,120,000 with “thermodynamics” as an additional term;
• “supercooled metal” – 900 thousand results, down to 93,300 with “thermodynamics” as an additional term;
• “supercooled mercury” – 427,000 results, increasing to 680,000 with the additional term “thermodynamics” included(!); and,
• “frozen mercury” – 17,500,000 results, reduced to 746,000 with the additional search term.

The searches took perhaps 30 seconds, and already I know more on the subject than I did – notably, that frozen mercury can be sculpted using liquid nitrogen – there’s even youTube video of it being done!

And that’s only using the net for information retrieval; a properly set up system with various operations scripted in advance can permit a more substantial interaction with any computer connected to the internet almost as quickly as you can click on it. Changing someone’s identity? Crack the site, locate the database, search it for the record you want, overwrite it. The more automated that process, the faster the whole thing happens; it would take some fancy programming to get it to the “point-and-one-click” standard of ease, but it’s (unfortunately) not that far removed from it now.

The Impersonal Face Of I.T.

The final problem that comes from the differential in speeds is that “interacting” with computer systems is an impersonal activity – a series of die rolls. There’s no real interaction, no real capacity for role-playing, in that approach. Player rolls a dice, GM interprets the results – that’s it. Not very satisfying.

In fact, this is a consequence of the first two problems and hence only indirectly related to the “computer time” issue, but this is at the heart of the problem.

The Request For Help

The request for help didn’t elaborate on the problem with computer interaction that was being anticipated, and doesn’t specify game system – just a vague hope that there’s something more than the “roll a die” approach that is the last of the problems identified above.

Well, don’t despair, because there is a solution!

Computers in RPGs: A Solution

Having layed out the problems that the GM faces in trying to referee the man-machine interface, it’s time to consider solutions – preferably, one solution that solves or at least minimizes all of the specific problems identified.

Simulation, Thy Aim Is Virtual

In the late 1980s and beyond, it has become fashionable to create a virtual world for characters to inhabit while interacting with computers in any deep, meaningful, way. This is a concept that quickly migrated into RPGs – notably Cybertech’s “Cyberspace” and TORG’s “Godnet”. The reason is simple: it holds the seeds to cure virtually all the ills described previously.

The reason for the effectiveness of a VR world as a solution to these problems is that it reflects a translation of machine-scale (especially in terms of time) into a character-scale interaction. By using metaphor and symbolism to represent the various barriers and problems that the character hacking the machine encounters, and the tools that can be employed to assist in the solution of those problems, VR-simulation recasts computer events into roleplaying events. With voice-recognition style input mechanisms and text-to-voice systems – both of which have been around for a decade or so in primitive form, but which have not yet achieved seamless functioning – the entire experience of hacking a computer can be re-envisaged in this fashion, and the conversation between computer systems becomes a roleplaying event between the character and his target.

For my superhero game, I wanted to come up with a new metaphor for the internet, as perceived in this fashion. What I eventually settled on was a term derived from the Aboriginal Natives of my Australian homeland, “The Dreamtime”. The principles of The Dreamtime are simple: Everything happens as a character-level interaction and on a human time-scale; there is ONE die roll per action which is shaped and interpreted to describe the entire encounter; each system has its own metaphor, its own virtual world if you will, so that each time you penetrate a new computer you enter a strange new environment that can be anything I can imagine.

Aggregation is your ally

Making this approach work requires two adjustments to your thinking; the first is “aggregation” and the second is “variable time”, which I will discuss in the next section.

Aggregation is the principle of loading multiple subtasks into a single overall task and using a single die roll to ascertain the character’s success or failure at that overall task. For example, let’s talk about the act of filching a set of blueprints from a villain’s computer. The subtasks are breaking through the outer security layer that protects the computer systems from outside infiltration, evading the anti-tampering measures that continually search for unauthorized changes, searching the system for the blueprints, gaining access to the blueprints, packaging the blueprints for transport out of the host computer, and escaping the system without detection.

You could have the character make six or more die rolls for these six or more tasks, but a far better approach is to consider them all one big task – getting the plans out of the target computer, creating a virtual world to represent the target computer system and roleplaying the encounter as a metaphor for the larger task.

A key aspect to the concept of aggregation is that there are degrees of success and degrees of failure, and the function of the die roll is to determine where on this spectrum of possible outcomes events will fall, based on the character’s abilities, and the difficulty of the overall task.

• I describe a castle, middle-ages European in style, with moat, portcullis, and drawbridge. This gives the basic motif of the virtual world the virtual character is going to enter.
• The character doing the hacking makes his one and only skill check of the entire process, which indicates to me (as GM), but NOT to him, that a partial success will occur.
• The player describes how the character overcomes the problems already thrown his way: the character swims the moat, fires a jet-propelled climbing hook so that it fixes to the battlements, climbs the rope attached to the climbing hook, then draws the rope up behind him. Since he doesn’t know what he will find on the battlements, he can’t go further without input from me.
• I assess the difficulty of each substep relative to the difficulty of the overall task. If that difficulty indicates that the character would have failed the test, I can either apply a sufficient bonus that he succeeds (giving me a penalty that I can put in my pocket for later) or simply have the action fail, requiring the player to come up with an alternative approach.
• I decide that the moat is easily crossed, and that climbing the rope is not overly difficult, and that the character succeeds in both. I indicate this success by describing the actions and then move on to describing the battlements. In effect, the character is using a back door to evade the initial security. If the back door approach is not going to work, the character will find nothing but solid stone on the battlements; if it is, either there will be a locked door or perhaps a palm-print scanner or whatever to be overcome before the backdoor is actually opened.
• …and so on. There might be ghosts representing the internal security and suits of living armor blocking doors and puzzles and riddles and who knows what else to be overcome before the player achieves his reward.

The key is that I decide, based on the die roll, how successful the player is going to be, and where he will fall short of his overall objective. If the character rolls well enough, everything he tries will work (somehow), no matter how unlikely it is. If he rolls badly enough, everything he attempts will end in disaster. If he rolls somewhere in between – which is the most likely – perhaps he will get the blueprints, but be unable to carry them out; or will find where in the castle they are, but fail to get through the lock; or set off security; or even get away with the blueprints but only by leaving clear evidence that he did so. The success or failure of the character both shapes, and is shaped by, the overall plotline.

Time Doesn’t Fly When You’re Having Fun

The second key concept that a VR solution entails is that of Variable Time. Most RPGs take the position that each round a character gets to make a new die roll; this approach, by aggregating all those die rolls into one, also aggregates the time frames that are involved. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize that this means that just as there can be degrees of success involved, so the time taken to succeed in a subtask is also under the GMs control. The amount of time it takes to achieve any given task is under GM control – all a successful die roll means is that the character will succeed – eventually.

That means that the GM can configure the apparent difficulty to a level appropriate to the target – low for a fairly open public system, incredibly high for the arch-villain’s main computer – without compromising that impression with an easy success by the hacking player.

Even better, it means that the GM can run the hacking in temporal lockstep with the activities of non-VR characters, eliminating the problem of differing temporal rates altogether.

Interacting with the Intractable

Why stop there? Combat can occur between virtual characters, representing some sort of active opposition to whatever the character is trying to achieve, as compared to a passive obstacle like a moat, a door, or a lock. Damage inflicted would be to the systems and hardware that the character is using to “go online” and would affect his virtual self as though he had actually sustained the damage. A portion of the damage might even feed back as physical harm to the character as though he were in real combat.

The Ghosts In The Machine

The VR approach has proven itself in past uses in my campaigns, but of late I have taken it even further. I have realized that the nature of a computer system will reflect the personality and abilities of its creator and its programmer. Rather than a simple score to be overcome, the difficulty assigned should be a summation of all those who contributed to the system’s creation – and, since they can keep trying until they get it right, they are represented at their very best. That means the last line of defense should be a simulacrum of the system’s creator (the arch-villain, in the case of the example enquiry) – a creator who always rolls a natural 20 for anything prepared in advance.

That character’s normal skill levels will be applied to such tasks as disguising data, blocking hacking attempts, etc. The target will reflect the creator, or – to put it another way – the creator’s ghost will inhabit the machine that he has created.

Even if the basic hardware is off-the-shelf, each user will modify the system to better suit his own needs and uses. My computer set-up would not be the same as Johnn’s, even if we had identical computers; I would have options configured differently, I would have software installed that he does not have (and vice-versa) and so on. In the virtual world, that would make my computer a somewhat-inadequate reflection of me, and his computer a reflection of him.

Scorecheck

A quick check of the problems that were indentified earlier shows that the VR approach, with both Aggregation and Variable Time elements, not only solves or at least ameliorates them all, but it offers additional avenues for roleplay and characterization, and permits the GM to flex his creative muscles to the maximum.

It’s not a perfect solution, as there can be some additional prep involved, but as solutions to problems go, it’s not half bad.

So it is Christmas once again, as happens every year at this time. This is a time of year that means many different things to different people. For some, it is a time of commerciality run rampant; for others, it is a profoundly religious celebration; for most people, it is a time to acknowledge family and renew bonds. In general, it is a season of optimism for the future, just as New Years Day is a celebration.

In the past, at this time of year, Campaign Mastery has looked at Re-creating Real Holidays for use in a campaign (2008), How to Create New Holidays for a game (2009), and offered ‘Tis The Season, a Christmas-based adventure that I had successfully run in my Superhero Campaign. This year, I thought I would generalise a little more and look at the concept of a celebration within a game in general terms.

The Season Of Renewal

According to Wikipedia, the customs of Christmas are a mixture of pre-Christian, Christian, and Secular themes and origins, and include:

• gift-giving (the focus of the 2009 scenario),
• one or more specific styles of music (Christmas carols),
• the exchange of cards,
• church celebrations,
• a special meal (with some products like Christmas Puddings that are rarely consumed at other times of year), and
• the display of a variety of decorations.

In addition to the religious aspects, a central figure known by many names including Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, and Kris Kringle which is associated with the giving of gifts to children.

Probably, this figure is an amalgam of many different stories and legends. Finally, there are the traditions of the Christmas tree, the gathering of family, the association with the Winter Solstice and its pre-Christian celebration, which has since been Christianized, and a tradition of charity that exists in many countries at this time of year.

These traditions vary widely from country to country. This article makes fascinating reading. The practices and status of the holiday season in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Pakistan, The Philippines, South Korea, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Georgia, the Ukraine, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia, Portugal, and Mexico, offer especially interesting variations on the common themes.

The Symbolic Date

The Winter Solstice, when (in the northern hemisphere) the nights stop growing longer and the days shorter is a natural association with the concept of a season of renewal and celebration, especially in times when superstition and ignorance meant that no-one could be sure that warm weather would ever return. But that is not necessarily the most appropriate time for such a celebration to occur in a game.

Perhaps there was a victory in a great war at some point in the past, for example, or perhaps some great evil was driven out, or some natural disaster from which the populace in general was saved by a miracle (or luck).

Each of these variations is absolutely as legitimate a choice for the date of a Christmas-style celebration.

Cross-cultural Variations

The number of variations on the specifics of a celebration stems from cultural differences, climatic & agricultural differences, and the amalgamation of other celebrations of both a religious and secular nature, all coated with a layer of theology and surrounded by an effusion of crass commercialism. The same would be true of any other holiday that took the place of Christmas in a game world, though the specifics of what it was amalgamated with would vary.

Dismembering the holiday into the different aspects and attributes that it comprises permits some (appropriate) elements to be retained as a winter-solstice celebration while others can form part of other holiday occasions, including the “Christmas Variant”.

The Universal Celebration

Every culture needs and would contain some version of the Christmas celebration, but its nature and frequency could vary wildly. Spend some time thinking about the Elves and Dwarves, and their ‘festive seasons’ in a fantasy campaign, for example, and you are likely to come up with very different approaches and ideas.

Even those cultures which are not normally considered culturally progressive, such as that of the Bugbears, or Aliens, would have something along these lines – though the particulars might be radically different.

Cultural Contamination

Once you have some ideas for the nature of the celebration in all the significant cultures in your campaign, you can start contaminating them with one another. This process can either be slow (look at the status of Christmas in China for example) or accelerated by some form of conquest or domination.

This conquest does not have to be of a military nature, it could be theological, economic, social, intellectual, or anything else you fancy and that your campaign background supports.

Attitudes and race relations would also play a part – if two cultures are violently opposed to each other, one is likely to adopt social practices that are extremely opposed to those social practices of the other. (That’s one of the things that make Dark Elves so much fun – many of their practices would be inversions and perversions of Elvish traditions, while others would be common (if variated) to both. Some of these would undoubtedly conflict, and would require further cultural refinement to reconcile).

Economic Interactions

Once you know what the celebration modes are in the different cultures of the game world, you can start to examine the economic interactions that result, as the merchants of one culture seek to profit from the ‘pagan rituals’ of another. A time of plentiful fruit in one nation might mean that this occasion is marked by a scarcity of fruit in it’s neighbours. Just as the commercialization of Christmas has affected the real festive season, so these interactions would modify the local practices regarding the celebration.

The End Result

A lot of the advice we’ve offered when it comes to crafting in-game holidays over the years is stream-of-consciousness stuff, where ideas are piled apon one another and the dross extracted until you’re left with something that’s more or less satisfactory. That sort of exercise in imagination still has its place, but a little further work will integrate the holiday with your game and its cultures in ways you can barely imagine.

A Framework

The other thing that arises from this process is a framework for all the other holidays that you care to give a culture. Simply by identifying the elements that are NOT part of the unique festive season you craft for your game, you identify the elements that will make up these other holidays. If, for example, you have a fear-based holiday like Halloween which incorporates the singing of unique songs from Christmas, you can use that as a launchpad for further depths of campaign mythology: a legend that horrors walk the earth once a year spreading fear and violence but will avoid people of uplifted spirits.

This changes the entire orientation of the resulting holidays into something that is both unique and tightly integrated with your campaign.

Of course, some elements may repeat in two or more holidays – special meals are a common occurrence in everything from Lent to Easter, candy and small gifts are given to children at Easter and Halloween, and so on. The goal is not to make each holiday completely removed in nature from all others, but to make each unique and appropriate to your game. All you really need is a starting point, and the Festive Season contains so many elements that it is the perfect place to start!

Merry Christmas to all from everyone at Campaign Mastery!