Tales from the GM Crypt

Follow along as this Lich delves into GM topics and Campaign discussion. I promise there is a point somewhere.

[gmcryptkeeper]

Campaign Grimoire #2: Strange Aeons

Ah, traveler.  Good for you to join me.  Today, I plan on discussing the beginning of Strange Aeons.  As with the previous grimoire, I do not plan on divulging much story wise, if possible.  However, I do plan on discussing broadly what my esteemed colleagues went through and my own decision making processes during that time.

You Wake Up in a City Shrouded in Mist

The beginning is designed to elicit unease in the players, something I wanted to do well to set the tone.  Beyond utilizing setting methods that have been detailed in the book, I wanted to use interpersonal means to create tension, which is the point of this section.

What does that look like?  Well, at first, I began subtly.  I started the session by speaking calmly and slowly, appearing relaxed in my chair.  I took time to detail their immediate surroundings.  That was until they heard scratching on the wall.

From here, I leaned forward towards them and pressured them into what they were going to do, highlighting the malevolent presence that felt as if it were prowling, hunting for them.  I spoke somewhat faster, pushing them for their next moves, dragging them narratively through the environment as they go told me what they wanted to do next.

They fought the creature, only to find the hidden message as they did.

For the purposes of this game, horror is a major theme.  You will encounter beings that rail against reality, that fail to be easily defined.  Beings that are from the Great Old One Mythos (again, one of my personal favorites).  Additionally, there are opportunities that exist to explore horror through means that are more subtle than simply facing terrifying creatures that your characters may actually die against.

Knowing this, my team of travelers cumulatively have a lot of experience with Pathfinder and D&D, so deadly encounters do not often fall under horror in and of themselves.  So, for this part of the campaign, I did it by being descriptive about the surroundings to give the sensation that things are off.  I did so by evoking feelings by my body position, my tone, by pressuring for choices while emphasizing that they don’t have time to decide.

Suspicion and Survival

When the characters entered the next part of the game, they immediately encounter a foe who appears normal by all cursory examinations but proves to be far more insidious.  They face a doppelganger almost immediately.  However, this part of the game, that kind of encounter can be excessively deadly since they do not immediately have their equipment.  Between the enemy being distracted and having some of the strongest self-preservation drive that I’ve seen, the goal was to elude combat with the players.

That was her goal, especially upon figuring out that one of my players has Improved Unarmed Strikes, which actually makes him capable of effectively combating this foe.

What I wish I could tell you was that the creature escaped to antagonize the players later.  But with the players grappling the doppelganger into the ground, they managed to fell a terrifying foe early on.

However, it soon became apparent that the creature was not the only of its kind running around the asylum they found themselves in.  They have no knowledge each other or how they ended up in an asylum and now they face enemies able to change their faces at will.  The feelings of suspicion sank in quite easily, a little among the party but more of any creature they met early on was met with suspicion, including survivors that they found.  However, with no answers as to who they are or potential for respite, they had to align with a group of survivors they found, even though said survivors were exceedingly suspicious of them.

Strange Stories Breed Strange Heroes

A couple of my players (Synth and Poly) decided to make very strange characters to engage in the setting.  Poly’s character is an Occultist with psychic reading abilities and specialties in necromancy.  This surprised me when he was going around to corpses and having me roll d100 in order to determine if the corpse would give a short phrase that revealed potentially cryptic truth.  Why was this surprising?  Because it managed to expose a hidden enemy that would have been a little bit more of a nightmare for them to deal with.

Now, why was this surprising?  Because, admittedly, I made the mistake of getting comfortable and not reading ALL of my players abilities and whatnot.  This was a mistake that even this Crypt Keeper fell for as I was lulled into complacency somewhat.

The lesson I took from this is to be more prepared for these abilities, take more interest in how my characters are seeking to build themselves.  Not to obfuscate more parts of the game, but to give them times to shine and illuminate background pieces that make this story interesting.

In fact, I’ve noticed even in this book that Strange Aeons is written with a wealth of background material that would not normally be available to the players without some kind of supernatural way of finding this information.  Or spending a little bit more time to craft pieces of information that can be found.  For instance, in session 2, which I will discuss later, I handed out patient records of fellow residents of the asylum that gave some more insight into different characters they meet.

The point of this was to find ways of giving active engagement to my players, which if I am being honest, took more than just this session to get everyone on board.

Concluding the First Session

The players faced a lot of difficulties starting out and two of them almost fell in combat in this first session but I managed to help push them up to level 2.  The players began to look as tired as their characters likely felt at that point.  It was here that I figured maybe there should be some more structure to our games.  Of course, we have already established a rough start time but it was here that we discussed what is an appropriate end time since all of us had day jobs to attend to the next day.  If I can offer any wisdom here, have a decent structure and keep your hand on the pulse of your group’s energy.  You do not want to push them to where they are tired and have it actively impact their decisions poorly.

Even though I intended to write on both the first and second session here but in writing this up, I realized how much information I could discuss due to my players and my decision making during even the first session.  Session 2 we will spend time discussing difficulties that players face as both characters and within their lives, how it impacts game, and how I handled these situations as a GM.

Additionally, someone submitted an anonymous question via Tumblr about campaign design around a specific story (not that I will detail here because I can save that for later).  My conceptualization of this campaign build along with how I may design different parts of it and where I get inspiration will be in the first of my first Reliquary entry.  So, if you were the anonymous questioner, I plan on answering this quite soon.  I plan on getting on a regular schedule with these and have separate times for my Reliquary entries.

For now, travelers, I wish you safe journeys.

-GM Crypt Keeper

[gmcryptkeeper]

Campaign Grimoire #1

With all things, there is a beginning, especially the campaigns we run.  How we start is often extremely important to how smoothly the campaign ends up running.  So, with that said, I will take a little bit of time discussing my role in the beginning of the campaign I’m currently running.  In this entry I want to go over what made me interested in running the campaign that I am, speak a little on the campaign itself, talk about my recruitment process, talk about my players and the discussion of their characters.  That being said, since this does include information about a Pathfinder Adventure Path (AP), I will do my best to not spoil overly much about the campaign but you should be warned that reading this may give you hints to the AP that (if you’re a player) you should not otherwise have.

Why GM Again?

So, I should start by stating that it has been a little bit since I’ve GM’d last, specifically before I started my venture into graduate school.  I decided that I wanted to make my own campaign after being on a hiatus and would eventually bring people into the world after I felt comfortable with the product.  Even so, I wanted to be able to do something in the mean time, so I chose to pick an Adventure Path from Pathfinder since my group endorsed interest in playing in it.  So, knowing what kind of games I love, I ventured into selecting the Strange Aeons AP.  After all, it couldn’t hurt to dust off the ol’ skills every now and then, right?

Strange Aeons, indeed.

Let’s look at the top down.  Pathfinder is a system that I’m very comfortable with running and playing in.  It has a lot of customizing options for both players and GMs (much of these things can be ported to other systems with a little bit of knowledge, confidence, and the hopes and dreams of small children).  Strange Aeons is a story that is very involved with the Cthulhu Mythos.  Now, if you remember from my introduction, this is something that I’m very interested in myself, something I’m a little more practiced with.  Also, considering the people I was going to be running with, not many of them have played in a horror setting, particularly.  Upon reading into the AP, there is definitely some difficulty there and ways to introduce horror in combat, in social settings, but also atmospherically.  Plus, the more I thought about it, different aspects of the late game make this AP able to be tied into my larger campaign once it’s finished, despite not being on the same world, technically.  I wanted to pick something that would give me hooks into my world later on but something that may not be entirely (initially) connected to my world.

So, important notes: I looked at setting, interconnections into my larger work, confidence, and difficulty.  These were important to me but this may be wildly different for you.

The Pitch

I’ve been discussing getting back into the saddle as GM for a while with my playgroup.  At the time of the pitch, two of our group’s members were running games of their own (one 5th edition, one Pathfinder).  So I cast a wide net among the group and asked who would be interested.  Keep in mind, I had selected what I wanted to run for the campaign.  Now, does that always work?  Not particularly, but I do believe that in order for a good campaign to get rolling, the GM needs to actually be interested in running the campaign.  Additionally, I’ve played with many of these people many times.  After all, we call our group (affectionately) 2′s and 20′s.  I’m sure you can figure out why.

I consider myself very lucky to have this group.  There are many different styles of players that bring different things to the table.  We have a couple of members that formed the core of the group (the forerunners, you could say) and we have inducted more into the group as different campaigns have fired.  I had a pool of about 7 to pull from in the beginning when I needed 4 players.  Fortunately, 4 was not a hard number to accomplish.

Had the situation been different, there are numerous other styles I could have used.  For one, the game store I work at has a lovely posting board for gamers to connect.  I could have sought help through Meetup or other such sites.  Or I could have spent time at the store physically recruiting people if necessary.  This could be an anxiety inducing situation to be in if you’re not overwhelmingly extroverted like myself.  With that said, we could discuss this as another topic entirely in another entry.

The Players

I managed to get 4 hapless fools wonderful associates to play in this AP.  So let’s do a quick run down of my people.  None of these judgments that I’m putting forth are meant to be critical but to show what I know about these people (and often love).

The Polymath: This is a player who I, as a GM, have to be very alert for because more often than not, they are prepared for just about any natural or unnatural disaster that I could throw at them.  This is someone who has a ridiculous knowledge of the game on an integral level and is subtle about it.  He’s very interested in building characters that work almost seamlessly into the plot but with abilities that seem strange, at first, but will ultimately be used to devastating effect.  How often does this happen?  Roughly every game I’ve run or been in with this player.  As a GM, I’m excited to run for him.  He’s very engaged, will come up with an intricate backstory and is someone that I’m very prepared to take the gloves off for.

The Would-Be Hero: This character is, as the title implies, someone who often will step into the heroic role.  This is someone who, in real life, very much believes in being a good guy and generally believes in being honorable.  He’s definitely someone that I’m used to counting on for wanting to be in melee, blazing in a path of glory.  He likes to integrate his character into the plot of the story and responds well to being important to the overall story.

The Synthesist: This player is rarely a player and often a GM.  That informs his ability and desire to make different types of characters that are generally very unique and often either obscure or a couple of mixed classes.  He is someone that is innovative and actively engages with his environment which really pushes me to either prepare a lot of interactable situations in my setting or pushes my improv to accomplish this.

The Green: This title exists for two reasons.  One reason being that she is fairly new to tabletop roleplaying, hence, Greenhorn.  The second reason is that she has a knack for playing nature focused characters.  See, I’m occasionally clever.  She has become so much more confident in interacting with the overarching stories of games and coming up with something she connects to meaningfully with her characters.  Once she’s invested, she can become a major pilot for the party if she feels strongly about what her character cares about.

The Characters

I find it is only natural to talk about the characters following my short description of the players.

Poly/The Occultist: The Occultist character is designed to be a little unhinged.  This character is missing much of his past, only coming in on wisps of insight, only to be consumed by nonsense.  That was the essential feeling the player gave me.  Poly wanted to play a character that had occult origins that would fit well into the game.  The Occultist is an elf who, between some work between me and the player, has a tragic backstory that is marked by trauma that he currently cannot remember.  Lack of memories is a theme to building a character for this AP.  This character specializes in Necromancy and Divination, starting out.

Hero/The Fighter: The Fighter is someone of noble bearing.  He remembers being associated with a noble house and having a noble cause, but cannot remember who were his enemies or what happened to him or his estate.  He is a harsh character who believes that his order, his rules are the ones to be followed.  Hero wanted to play a character that was within his type but he wanted to venture out a little and picked up the Loremaster Fighter.  Someone who is more knowledgeable and inquisitive while still being a fearsome foe.  He chose to become a switch-hitter and definitely capitalized on the “Rich Parents” trait in Pathfinder.

Synth/The Bloodrager: The Bloodrager could be believed to be more beast than man at times, someone who is tempestuous and wild.  However, underneath that frightening exterior lies someone who was created to be this way and utterly broken.  Experiments dot his hazy memories, especially ones of pain, injections, and a laboratory.  Synth has an entire build that he wishes to see how it turns out for this character and made a horrific backstory to back it.  This character will end up having multiple bloodlines but how he originally got them is locked in his mind and something that may be better left hidden.

Green/The Druid: The Druid is someone who is solid and stable, much like the Earth she worships.  She was brought up in a Circle but set out on her own to fight at the corruption that sought to taint the land she defended.  But who are her true enemies and what horror did she hope to vanquish?  Green wanted to stick with a nature oriented class but this is her debut into 9th level casting.  She has a quality as a player that is reflected a bit in this character (based on the creation) that will very much help with this AP.  She is someone level-headed and stable (at least, the Druid believes she is such) and will be a solid anchor for the rest of the party.

The Session Zero

Every game should have a solid session zero in my opinion.  Doesn’t mean that good games cannot come without it but it eases parties and GMs into the game.  It gives the GM more to prepare (the hooks for the characters) and the players to figure out how they’re going to work together.  All of the information I just provided you was provided and developed in this Session Zero.

Here’s the but.  I would have loved to have a formal session zero with a couple of hours dedicated to everyone sitting at the table and focused on this character creation process and plot building.  Despite it being an AP, much of it is determined by the characters background and how I inject that into the larger plot.  The party has a good dynamic of mix a classes and should be adaptable to the encounters that they run into.  However, there isn’t a bunch of communication among party members as to what they were planning to do.

Now, Strange Aeons starts everyone off with the classic “Amnesia Backstory”.  As in, they don’t remember much about themselves except maybe some of their older memories, so they don’t need to figure out how they know each other.  They are thrown together awfully fast in the very beginning of the first book.  However, there could have been other discussions, such as expectations.  This is a big concept for any group.  I did seed that the path would be difficult and that they should be aware that death is something that can come quite swiftly if they’re not careful.  However, not much else was stated globally about expectations, which was a mistake on my behalf.

Why did this happen?  Well, at the time, I didn’t push for it as much as I wanted and I believe my desire to run the game outweighed my patience.  It happens sometimes.  The other thing to consider is that many of us had particularly chaotic schedules leading up to this point (this is an issue that became resolved fairly quickly).  As I previously mentioned, I’m finishing grad school, I’m in an internship, and I work part time at a fantastic game store.  There’s a lot on that plate but I went into this setting aside some time to be able to run this and pull this off.

We were able to handle the major things: 

-How often do we play?

-What time/day of the week?

-How fast should we progress?

-How we will communicate about status of attendance and whatnot for the game?

-Where will game be? (This is easy, it’s always my place).

-A reminder of limitations, what to do about cancellations, etc.

Next Steps

From here, we move on into the campaign itself.  At the time of this writing, we have moved through 4 sessions.  When I post the next campaign grimoire, it will likely address general things of session 1 and 2, followed by an entry on 3, and an entry on 4.  I plan on discussing a little bit about what the party did/how they interacted given the circumstances of their situation but I don’t want to give too much about the game as it may spoil some of you.  I will note the changes I’ve made/improvisations that came about and what was important about the sessions in terms of me as a GM.  But that is a sample of the things to come.  For now, traveler, I bid you farewell.

-GM Crypt Keeper

[gmcryptkeeper]

The Beginnings of GM Lichdom

Good evening, traveler.

Let me begin by introducing myself.  For the purposes of this blog, I will be the GM - Crypt Keeper.  Now, why?  Because I thought it would be terribly cute to make a reference to Tales from the Crypt and something to do with GM’s.  Or something.  I’ve been tabletop roleplaying for about 8 years now (a lich shouldn’t really give his age).  Now, for many of you, you may have been in this field for much longer than myself.  But for some, you’re burgeoning GMs who might find some of these musings useful.  For others, maybe we can discuss topics within the roleplay setting that leave some of us stumped or have different perspectives/approaches.  Who am I to say that I’m the authority on any of this?

Why start a blog?

Well, if we’re being honest, tabletop roleplaying has become wildly more popular in recent years and there are a host of people looking to get into it, some of which want to learn how to GM.  So, for that end, I want to provide my own mark, my own experience to maybe help someone.

Additionally, this felt like a great idea to discuss topics in GMing, campaign design, group dynamics, etc.  Some of you likely have more experience than me and I very much hope you join in this discussion via comments or whatnot.  Some of you may be fresh to this but have some very interesting thoughts to add to the discussion.  Some of you may, in fact, be the ones asking the questions.  My goal is to be a voice to start that conversation, to talk about what has worked for me, what hasn’t, what I can improve on, what I excel at, and to give a view through my lens (and hopefully a more objective one, as well).

Honestly, this is both a resource to any reader who may have questions and a resource for me.  How does this work for me?  Well, I get to engage people with my ramblings and thoughts, my campaign diaries, etc. to make myself a better GM and player.  I get to process things after games or after spending some time thinking about different topics and hopefully get your input, too.

What is the structure, then?

For the most part, at least starting out, I’ll be putting up campaign diaries around my current GMing project.  With that said, I’ll be filtering in some topics that I want to put my two cents in for the general discussion.  Some of these may be around world building, politics, what unique monster of the whatever (week, month, century, who knows) that you can throw at your party in different and unique ways, party and group dynamics (bringing in some of that good ol’ psychology), and perhaps even topics such as mental health in relation to tabletop roleplaying.  Some things I discuss I will literally ask you what you want to hear.  I’m not just doing this blog for my health, as I’ve mentioned previously.

So, who are you?

Honestly, traveler, I thought we were passed this.  Again, I’m the GM - Crypt Keeper.

Oh, you meant what kind of GM am I and whatnot?  Well, I suppose it would be useful to know what my lens is in this.  Perhaps it would be of use to discuss what systems I have GM’d, which I have played in, what are my preferences for setting, character preferences, my current projects, and a little background, yes?

So, as I have previously discussed, I’ve been playing for about 8 years now, since part way through my college days.  It wasn’t long before I tried my hand at GMing to almost disastrous results but, hey, you live and you learn.  (Or you die and come back as a lich because ain’t nothing holding you down).  I have been in many more games than I have run but I think that’s probably the case for most people.  Maybe.

Systems: Well, there have been many.  I’ve explored D&D 3.5, D&D 5e, Pathfinder, 13th Age, Mutants and Masterminds, New World of Darkness (and now the God Machine Chronicle), Scion, Dresden Files and Call of Cthulhu.  Now, I have many more on my bookshelf that I’m going to be cracking into such as Through the Breach, Fear Itself, Starfinder, and Shadow of the Demon Lord to name a few.  I have actively run settings for D&D 5e, Pathfinder, New World of Darkness, and Scion.

Setting Preferences: I’m kind of eclectic with games.  I love different settings.  I’m a diehard fan for High Fantasy.  I also love modern fantasy/urban fantasy.  I love horror.  I’ve recently gained a taste for Sci-fi.  There are so many wonderful systems and settings, I’ve always wanted to have elements of different things offered to players, which probably informs how I’m building my world/campaign (more on that in a different entry).  

Current Projects: Okay, so to give you an overview of how many crypts I am playing in currently: I’m in a Pathfinder game currently in a custom world designed and run by one of my best friends.  I’m in a 5th edition game currently in a custom world designed and run by yet another great friend.  I’m currently running an adventure path (AP) from Pathfinder that I plan on seeding into my larger story when my world is finally complete.  The AP is Strange Aeons, kind of right up my alley.  And mentioned at least 100 times, I’m developing my own world and campaign.

Current Restrictions: I think it’s important for us as players and GMs to look at our restrictions.  What do I mean by this?  Well, I have a mausoleum full of responsibilities.  Like I mentioned, I’m in 2 games and running 1 game currently.  I’m in my last semester of grad school, in an internship, and part timing at one of the greatest game stores I’ve ever seen.  Plus, I’ve decided to write up these simple musings.  With that in mind, I should probably do an entry on self-care and knowing your limit, hmmm?

Character Preferences: So, I also think it’s important that when you think of yourself as a GM, think about who you are as a player, too.  It honestly informs what things you find interesting to do and informs where you might be spending more time in your design.  I encourage everyone to provide a balanced approach, but know where you come from.  I love, absolutely love, playing dark characters.  Characters that normally have right being heroes but make it work.  Do they always succeed?  No, some have actually caused more harm down the road than the harm they tried to stop.  But I think that they are good tools in a story.  I like playing strange characters, with strange backgrounds, and strange powers.  I will also almost always play a spellcaster given half of a chance.  Now, this mostly applies to fantasy/sci-fi settings.  I’m also a very political player.  I usually play some kind of social characters because I love intrigue and getting into the background of the campaign.  Do I exclusively play these characters?  No, but they are definitely my favorite.

Are you always this long winded?

Probably.

Future Directions and Closure

Okay, okay.  I think that covers the introductions.  I really do hope that this ends up working for me and working for whoever may be reading these.  Now, you may not always agree with my decisions or my perspectives, but that’s the beautiful thing, you can disagree with me (and this is my blog, so yeah).  

From here, I will be doing my campaign diaries up into the current part of my game, typing up background thoughts, critical decision making on my behalf, etc.  The goal isn’t to spoil a lot if you are a player or GM looking to run the AP that I’m currently discussing.  The goal is to look at my process.  Also, I have to keep in mind that some of my players may be reading this and, even though somethings may be out in the open, I have to save some surprises, right?  I’m sure you will all here about that at some point, though.

For now, adieu.  Know that I look forward to producing some content on this and look forward to hearing from you, traveler.

GM Crypt Keeper