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Combat - The Situation

Forgive the unhelpful title, Adventurer, but today I will touch upon a topic that doesn't have an easy appellation. Worse yet, this will be one of those common-sensical ramblings whose wisdom may seem obvious.

So why bother reading it? Well, you like me, don't you? Also, I've never seen this topic laid out explicitly in the all the gaming advice I've read. Whether or not you find it useful now, having it presented in this manner might be just what you need the next time you get stumped on making combat interesting.

I'm talking about something that I've called the Situation. This is basically the kind of challenge your NPC foes present to the party in terms of number, size, strength, speed. Varying these these factors is crucial to exciting combat that stays exciting over multiple encounters, and even merely being aware of them helps you avoid repetition.

Once you have a interesting place for combat to happen, you then present your enemies to the players. Whatever they look like, whatever the setting, it's probably going to come down to only a few possibilities.

Few vs Many

Your players are outnumbered by foes! Number is the primary enemy advantage in this Situation, but the degree of this advantage can vary wildly. It might be the enemy squad has a few extra guys, or your  party might be inundated by kobolds! The more of them there are, the less damage they deal individual and the fewer hitpoints they possess.

Few vs Hordes

This is basically the same situation as above, but with an important variation. Here the enemy are so numerous the party cannot hope to defeat them all! It might be a swarm of insects that can only be dispersed, or more likely it's an epic battle where mighty armies clash! Either way, there will always be combatants to fight, and so the Objective (which I have more to say on in a later instalment) isn't to defeat each combatant, but throw a switch, capture an item, rescue a prince (or princess), or some other action. Note that the outcome of any of these things could still result in the enemy's defeat. Your players might be trying to get to the central computer core whose deactivation will stop the legions of battle-bots, for instance. But that happens as a result of combat, not within the combat itself.

Evenly Matched

Sometimes you just have to play it straight. While the odds of any combat are pretty much always in the player's favour (if only slightly), this situation makes them as even as they get. Your players fight another group of roughly equal size and strength. This emphasized the need for good tactics and sond decision-making.

Mirror Fight

Like the Horde fight, this is a variation on the Evenly-Matched situation where the party finds themselves fighting their doppelgangers. There are exactly as many enemies as party members, and each one is a clear antagonist for a particular player. Whether each player actually meets his match is up to you, Adventurer, but I suggest that they at least cross swords once. You can achieve the mirroring effect in two obvious ways: each doppelganger can either be eerily similar to his counterpart, or completely the opposite. In the first case, you might put a Lawful Good Cleric up against a Chaotic Evil Cleric, with the natural opposite god of whatever pantheon you're using. In the second, you pit a lithe Rogue against a Barbarian in a test of speed vs strength, brains vs brawn.

Few vs Fewer

It might be a dark trio of vampires or a pair of twin monks, but there are fewer of them then are of your party, and that's a problem. That means that each one could take down two or three party members on their own, and so choosing who fights who is the soul of this situation. Small groups like this are usually tight-knit, and so removing even one might shatter the resolve of the others. They might be more literally reliant on each other in some way. Maybe they're twins or triplets, or maybe they share in some dark compact, but regardless, removing even one is usually the key to victory.

Few vs One

Whether he's really big or really fast, one of him is enough to present a challenge for everyone. He probably has multiple attacks, or each attack is strong enough to heavily damage or kill a party member. The One of this Situation usually an exemplar of some ability, strength, speed, endurance, or perhaps simply being very, very well prepared. He relies on this advantage to carry him to victory. This usually means he has a major weakness of some kind that can be exploited. Your party must counter strength with agility, speed with endurance, or preparedness with chaos.

Bossfight

A variation on the above, what distinguishes the bossfight is the element of surprise and wonder. Whether it's the creature dropping down from the ceiling, the sheer size of the beast, or its ability to change forms, the Bossfight never goes according to plan. Bosses are generally at least decent at every relevant ability, and they might have hordes of minions to help them out, breaking the combat into more than one Situation. And of course, just when you think you have him finished the Boss reveals that has been his plan all along and morphs into something twice as big and three times as dangerous. Sudden reversals are key in any fight, but critical in a Bossfight. Plan for at least three.

These are the basic situations and classic variations. If you think you've seen it before, you have, but novelty isn't in the set-up. As we'll see next week, a lot of combat is about factors decided before the fight even begins. 

[gamenightswith-blog]

Combat -The Arena

“I throw a chair at him I guess.”

“He's behind the island.” “What?!”

“It's a kitchen. Even serial killers have to eat.”

“Fine, I get a knife”

“What? Um, no, yeah, he keeps those in the basement.”

“Well, fine, I go for the door.”

“Which door?”

“How many are there? Is there one near to me? Can you draw me a map?” “2, no, and no. And to your next question, hell no.”

Whether or not you see yourself in that terrible example, in this first instalment of Combat!, I'll explain the foundational importance of an oft-neglected element: the setting in which the fight takes place!

Neglected, you say? What about these boxes of battle tiles? What about all this terrain? I flecked it myself!

Thing is, you model player you, not every RPer or GM uses terrain in their games. Maybe models are expensive, maybe the group finds them cumbersome, or maybe it's just not that kind of game. Even then, having pre-made terrain doesn't necessarily mean you'll have a good Arena.

The Arena, Adventurers, is that place in the mind where the fate of fictional people is decided. These lands are soaked with blood, ichor, venom and spilled vanilla coke. This place can look and shift and change on a whim, but in the end, it's always the same: a closed, but dynamic environment with interactive elements structured to highlight the power dynamic of the combatants. 

I'm going to explain, but first let me say that neither Pom nor I favours a hyper-realistic approach. Drama and Story are our masters, sometimes harsh ones.

The Arena you create or wildly improvise should be closed in some way. This could mean physical borders like walls, but it could also be the suggestion of them, like lines in the ground, or just sheer distance. If you have to run a mile over open ground, just hoping not to hit by archers, dragons, or faster enemy troops, that's just as good as any wall. However you work it, it shouldn't be easy for any of the sides to escape, unless that's the idea, in which case you have more of a chase scene. More on that in a future instalment. Even if it's an open battlefield, there are hills, forests, and all sorts of things to put in  the way. The point isn't to railroad your characters to staying in place. In fact, really great combats in the movies and games often shift Arenas a few times, but note how each is its own environment, and when the shift happens, the scene goes with it. The point is to cue your players into realizing that shit's on. It's come down this, but they can they prevail? This could be the classic portcullis slamming closed, but it might just be various skeezy bar patrons all standing up in unison.

The dynamic of your Arena is important also. Only very rarely will your group find themselves in an environment designed for combat. Most of the time, the Arena was ostensibly made for some other activity, and it doesn't just stop because your barbarian pulled an axe. In a bar fight, people can continue drinking, maybe not realizing how serious things have become. A clock tower has all sorts of moving gears, a factory would have machinery, a cinema might have a film a playing when the fight begins. Tossing out a detail like this brings the Arena alive, and that's what we want.

Now some Arenas are still, and that's fine too. Stillness is a dynamic of its own, and it often comes along with darkness. Think basements, crypts, keeps, dungeons, closets and coffins. Even a normally active environment might be unusually quiet for some reason. An empty theatre, a field the morning before battle, or anywhere abandoned are examples of this. And you can vary these two things within a combat. Your party might be fighting in the engine room of a derelict spacecraft, only to find it starting up on its own! Alternately, when a normally cacophonous jungle goes suddenly silent, you know something big is nearby.

This leads into the next point. Try to find places for players to interact with the environment. It's difficult to list examples, but they tend to grow naturally out of the dynamic of the place. Again, a bar has tables that can be overturned. A loading dock might have a crane that can be used to pick up crates. When combat begins, look for places where the players could jump in, and pick two. I usually ensure one defensive and one offensive element. The difference here should be obvious. Tables, crates, non-functional vehicles, dampening fields, all can help a crafty player prevent damage to the party. Turrets, heavy weights, traps, and tools can help players do more damage. And of course there are elements that change the geography of the environment, switches, cranes, parked vehicles, sandbags, and the like.

And speaking of, consider the geography of the Arena itself. The layout should make it clear who's attacking, who's defending, and who's trying to get away. It should underscore the power dynamic between the parties. A  brawl is usually everyone vs everyone, and a bar's layout is perfect for this: tables, chairs everywhere, with no clear focus. A siege is one attacker vs one defender, so usually the defender has position with advantages, like height, cover, and the like. Classically this is a castle, but just as easily be a house, a single room, or an alley leading to a pile of crates. Sometimes you have an Ambush, where the party has been surprised. This means few exits, with places for the enemy to hide, like a jungle, a series of catwalks, a bridge or a sewer. I think you follow me, Adventurer.

Design the Arena to facilitate the kind of combat you want to see, and you'll have an easier time getting that out of players.

[gamenightswith-blog]

Changing Expectations

Hello Adventurers! As some of you may have read we took a break from our normal game sessions last week to play an extra special haunted house game of Dread. The w has already gone over the gist of what happened from his perspective as GM, but I found something very interesting happening as a player in the game. I played the Insider on the bank job and as such constructed a formal persona around the character. Cassandra Elanore Winscotts, codename The Lady, was someone who looked out for themselves. As it was a stand-alone game and I have tremendous trouble coming up with character concepts I decided to play towards an archetype of Femme Fatale. She was supposed to be out for herself, while she understands the value of teamwork to pull off something like the bank job, she is a strict survivalist and doesn’t hold herself down with petty loyalties. Every time in the past she has done so, she was disrespected, mistreated and burned and she would certainly not undergo that again. As it was a one-shot I didn’t care to think about character progression or about getting into her head too much. After all, it’s Dread and if the characters didn’t die by the end they certainly would be shelved and likely never played again. So my expectations for the game was a fun, frightful romp in a haunted house playing a stone cold classy but selfish survivalist who wouldn’t go out of her way to hurt anyone… but certainly wouldn’t go out of her way to help anyone either. In fact, on her sheet one of the questions was “You sold out one set of friends, but would you do it again to survive the night?” and the Lady scoffed. “Friends? A concept of the naïve.” Funny thing happened over the course of the short chronicle though, and at the end of the game I had to add a caveat “Except Ghost.” Which was unexpected. I hadn’t designed the character to progress in any way. I designed the character to survive the night and hopefully get away with some of the Bitcoins they’d hijacked, but once mortal danger was introduced it seemed as though there were only two people who forgot about the score and simply were trying to survive: The Lady and Ghost. Ghost was our getaway driver and a closet witch, who was more practical minded than nearly anyone else in the gang. After a couple of encounters and turns it became clear that the party was going to split. While none of us wanted to wander alone, each of us had different ideas of how to survive the haunting. I have to say, that I will give folks in horror movies a little more credit as long as they are separated in the head of something going on because we tried our best not to separate but ended up splitting the party a total of six times that evening. The w tried desperately to reunite us each time but… players what are you gonna do eh? Ghost and Lady were the only two who seemed to forget about getting rich and only wanted out with their necks intact, as such they ended up spending a lot of time in the house together following the same path, which we considered to be the “main group” considering we didn’t deviate but everyone else kept going down side passages and trap doors. Lady started out not believing in magic and ghosts and the like but ended up with a renewed respect for her mystical grandmother Elanore and for witches like Ghost. It was odd how the tense sense and the hand-shaking tower pulls pushed Ghost and Lady together, after all Ghost had a similar friend question to Lady and also answered that friends were dumb. Neither of us expected character growth in the end, but both of us got it. This raises to me an important notion: Changing expectations. As this was just a one-shot, changing expectations holds little weight to the situation, after all once the game is done it is done. There is no pick up and resume next week. However what happens when expectations and characters change in the course of a longer chronicle? This is a difficult situation to find yourself in because the changed expectations and character play may no longer fit the story given or the original tone of the game. What then, adventurer? Do you push forward without concern? Do you stifle the growth and continue to play the old persona that matched the tone of the game? Or can games shift in tone and expectation and still maintain? I would like to think that discussion with the GM and perhaps group may be required at that point. If you find the character or game no longer meshing or you unable to get back into things you used to because of a changed expectation or perspective. I think it’s important to keep in mind the other players styles and not expect the entire game to shift just because your character has, but perhaps once a shift takes place one should talk about it with their group. After all, the rest of the group may have felt a similar shift and would like to take the game in the new direction, or perhaps it is just your character and elements of the shift could be incorporated without ruining the tone and style for the rest of the group. That’s why touching base with your players and your GM every once in a while is, I think, something quite important. Just to check in and make sure everyone is one the same page. In gaming things can change fairly quickly, because of the nature of stories even if you don’t want change it will be hard to deny it in the end. As such, it’s also important for continued communication about expectations of the game happen once a perceived change takes place. What about you Adventurers? Do you ever find yourself with a character radically different from what you expected? A story that went in an entirely different direction? How do you deal with these shifts of expectation? 

[gamenightswith-blog]

Halloween Fallout

I hope you survived the night of horrors, Adventurer. Maybe you even levelled up, and with a sweet candy reward. You must understand, Halloween is a high holiday here at Game Nights. It's about exuberance, fun, rule-breaking and sugar. It's the one holiday that is (for-us) baggage-free, and doesn't revolve around family life or, shudder, wholesomeness. Urgh.

Given how those kind of holidays are coming up, I plan (next week) to embark on a series about our most beloved and/or hated aspect of gaming: Combat. You never know. It might just save your life! As we all migrate back to our homelands, facing long, dangerous journeys, judgement, family strife and other holiday threats, it's best to be prepared.

Did I mention I hate Christmas? You should probably know that about me.

But first, I offer some meandering, post-gaming thoughts for your perusal.

The Halloween game is a long, storied tradition in our group. Since our very beginnings, it's always been a one-shot tale of horror, fear, gore, slapstick comedy and death. And this year was no different, though the system was. Dread is, in the designer's words, a game of Horror and Hope. It's an indie RPG, winner of the 2006 ENNIE awards, and you can currently buy it for a pittance ($3!), which you should do. Right now.

It's a perfect choice for a one shot-horror game. The system is minimal, and the book has been described as 1 part rules, 9 parts good advice.

The system is designed to create the feeling of fear it's named for, which also happens to be the kind we've discussed before. No dice are used. Instead, let me introduce The Tower. You will need to  have/purchase a copy of Jenga or similar block-stacking-removal game and set it up in the middle of the gaming table. When a character tries to do something that's either or dangerous or difficult (ideally both), he pulls from The Tower. If the Tower stays up, the action succeeds.  If at any point The Tower is toppled, either from a botched pull or even by accident, the character of the player responsible dies, goes insane, is called away, or is otherwise removed from the narrative permanently. Obviously, this creates a deep respect and fear for The Tower, encourages caution, and makes things get the most difficult when the plot gets most exciting (about two -thirds of the way through a session, when the Tower is swaying precariously).

You can also knock over The Tower deliberately. Doing so means your character is taken out, but succeeds at some final action as his last act. This kind of strategic martyrdom can come in handy, as I found out this past weekend while thoroughly massacring the game I love so much.

Our Halloween Game, was about a group of bank robbers on the run from the police and carrying a wounded man. In the middle of a terrible storm (of course) and with a broken-down van, they take refuge at a spooky, abandoned mansion to wait things out. But this mansion is not empty. A woman in red stalks them, trying to force them out, protecting an ancient secret of terrible power.

It didn't quite go according to plan. An evil presence haunts the place, which combined with a deliberate confusing design, made getting lost a certainty. Combined with that and deadly traps, such as  pitfalls, blades, and animated suits of clockwork armour, I thought it certain the player would stick together and be systematic.

Nope! I have to give them credit for playing their characters, because each one of my six players was self-serving bastard with an obsessive focus on either keeping the haul for themselves or just plain escaping, but mostly both. I had to intercut between the various groups the whole night as players would wander off, run from danger, or disappear to hatch some nefarious plan for the rest.

In the mist of the chaos, I missed out on some neat things I wanted to do, a bits of character backstory I wanted to play into. Overall, story-wise, the thing was a mess.

But some things went just great. Everyone was suitably in Dread of making pulls, especially toward the end. Rhythmically, I did very well, timing the final confrontation for when the Tower was at its flimsiest.

And what a final confrontation it was. I was going for a bit of a grindhouse feel, and we got it, Django Unchained style.

Necessary Fact: there were in fact two women in red running around that night, one trying to keep the ancient evil locked up, and the other wishing to free it. This evil was a blood-themed Lich, an ancestor of them both, locked in the basement. The party was in two parts at this point, one that was going to free the Lich, and another trying to keep it locked it up.

Having finally got everyone to the basement, two of the party, both anti-Lich, sensing the end, set at each other's throats. Their string of pull-counter-pull ended in a Tower topple, the victor winning only because of the vial of poison he'd been carrying around.

Meanwhile, in the pro-Lich camp, the psychic in the party, so close to Lich and its terrible presence, lost her mind, and started psychically assaulting those near to her until allowed to go free her. Another party member snuck up and slit the throat of the pro-Lich woman-in-red, because of her general sliminess.

Now at the tomb, and all together, the anti-Lich woman-in-red killed the psychic for trying to free the Lich, and got shot herself by the poisoner. But surprise! The pro-Lich throat-slit woman-in-red wasn't quite dead yet, and used her blood to awaken the beast. Now arisen, and mostly alive, she tore into the nearest party member, who drank the poison, killing the now-living evil, while simultaneously being shot in the head by another party member.

Did you make sense of that? No? That's fine. It's best left to the ages. But it was scary, bloody, stabby good time for all.

And that's all that matters. Next week, get ready to take up arms, as my series on Combat begins!

[gamenightswith-blog]

Sympathy for the Devil

Welcome again, Adventurer. I apologize for my tardiness. But, I think you'll find the subject matter worthy of your attention (isn't it always?). Just barely in time for Halloween we find ourselves contemplating the only thing more evil than a Monster: the Villain lurking behind him.

The difference? While a Monster is often no more than a brute, even when he's intelligent, he's simply acting out his nature. Monsters are almost forgivable, in fact, sometimes we do just that. There's a long tradition in Horror cinema of cheering on the killer, creature, or monster as he completes his evil task.   

A Villain, by contrast, chooses to walk the path of the Dark Side, and it's the reason why that makes him interesting, more than any gadget, scheme, costume or catch-phrase. Learning about the Villain teaches you about story structure, and the nature of Heroes. Let me tell you the Villain's story, though you already know it. It hides, twisted along the Hero's path.

When plotting out a typical story, you generally begin by introducing the Hero, in a state of balance. This balance may be a Heaven or Hell, both or neither, but it's stable. Then, something happens! It doesn't really matter what! But it upsets the Hero's world, and now to restore the balance, or a build a better one, he must surmount a series of increasingly difficult obstacles. If we like him, and the story, we hope he succeeds. This is Drama.

Who's the shady dorito-bogarting creeper behind all these obstacles? Why, that's our Antagonist. He's the counter-force to the Hero, setting up every major obstruction, and always staying one step ahead. In the fiction we gamers like, and in our games, the Antagonist often has every advantage that can be had in his world (wealth, power, magic, intelligence, status, minions, territory, technology, etc). But in the end, the Hero still triumphs, Good stands astride a defeated Evil, and the Hero returns to a new equilibrium, often with a damsel on his arm.

But long before that story even started, the Villain's was almost complete. This how he begins with the upper hand. He's spent years putting together a criminal organization of ruthless efficiency! Or, he dedicated his life to unlocking the secrets of an alien technology and now stands a master of its strange power. Perhaps he quested across distant lands and harsh terrain to recover the ancient artefact that's now made him into a living god.

To do all that, he needed a motivation. He wanted something, something out of reach, something that would only come at great cost, but whose worth is superlative to him. Simpler Villains desire things like money, prestige, or power. While all Villains probably want these things to extent, the kind that madly chases power for its own sake is the stuff of comic books, pulp and cartoons. Some Villains might be out for revenge, and this can mean delivering retribution to the original perpetrator, or to any person, nation, even planets. A Villain might also just like being evil, relishing destruction, chaos, or just being contrary. There's as many reasons for a Villain to be a Villain as a Hero to be a Hero.

But the Villains that truly resonate are those that think they are Heroes. It's not hard to see how this might happen. A Villain's arc is the same as a Hero's, though it often starts before the Hero's, and always collides with Hero's world in some way. A Villain is just a hero whose goals are contrary to the Hero's, and are often immoral, unethical, or just plain evil, but that's secondary. 

Now some Villains originate with their Heroes. Co-origination is always a possibility. It binds Hero and Villain, often to teach us something about power in the wrong hands, or to highlight what we've been discussing so far, that Hero and Villain are harder to tell apart that we may have thought.

Some Villains do arise after the Hero does. This is common for established Heroes who've already had an adventure or two, or are otherwise known. The Villain might be threatened by the Hero, what he represents, or might inadvertently cause. Or, the Villain might just see an opportunity for profit.

Villains, like Heroes, have a recognizable style, even if that's just to be secretive. Some Villains don't want or need their work to be known, while to others it's pointless without recognition. The methods you choose for your Villiain will tell us what kind of Villain we're dealing with long before he says anything, or we're told his motives.

A brute of a Villain often has base desires. If he's just a big guy who pushes around other people, he may only be after power. But subverting this can be effective. A good example is Bane, possibly Batman's most effective enemy. He's a ruthless guy who at first looks like a thug, but actually has a genius level intellect and devious plans of a grand scale. Other Villains, those that aren't as prone to brute force, often have more abstract goals. Mastering a certain skill, for instance. A Villain who's not as physcially able may have something to prove, stemming from a sense of inferiority. Again, The methods chosen by your Villain should speak to his goals and motivations, if only to obfuscate them. 

Sidenote: That's why Bond and other heroes often get the Villain to spill their plan in the final act. Because without this, we might never know why the Villain did what he did. And that frustrates the audience.

Have sympathy for your Villain, Adventurer. Not only is their role more complex than a Hero's, but they've worked harder, longer, and in the end probably aren't going to win. You can demonstrate this with what Michael Sparaga calls a save-the-cat moment. This is the act that redeems a character we're meant to sympathize with, and too often this is accomplished by showing a character fawn over a cute animal (Hellboy, anyone?). It's proof that they're not really a bad or unlikable person, they just do bad things. Or like the Ninth Doctor said, “Sometimes, you let one go.” Giving your Villain such a moment will highlight the fundamentally pitiable state of Villainhood. Similarly, not giving us one can underscore just how cruel they really are.

And on that note, stay Heroes this Halloween, be safe, and eat all the candy. 

[gamenightswith-blog]

How to Make a Monster

Monsters are the staples of table-top entertainment, and RPGs in general. Not only are they kept plentifully in stock, but they bind your story together with their... pointyness? That one sort of got away from me.

Tortured metaphors aside, you need monsters in your game, Adventurer, but do you really know what they are? From the most common Goblin Raider to the most hideous Eldritch Horror, monsters serve a specific function, and really understanding this will improve your storytelling and game design considerably. In this latest halloween-themed article I'll shine a light into their dark lairs and then run for my life. Keep close, Adventurer!

Monsters are personified horror.  They are, each and every one, a moment of horror given form. Their very existence is a violation of The Rules (if only in theory), and their presence alone is enough to inject chaos into every scene. A monster is the Abject, the subject position that destroys other subject positions, but this line is a bit theoretical for our discussion.

Monsters emerge when the rules of our fictional universe are broken. Sometimes this is a cultural taboo (defiling a grave-site leads to an undead menace), the laws of nature (tampering with DNA results in a creature unknown to science), an assumption (assuming we're alone in the universe leaves the earth open to alien infiltration), or, the most primitive and my personal favourite, the prohibition. Don't say bloody mary in the mirror three times or she'll appear. Don't you laugh as a hearse goes by, or you may be the next to die. Don't go into the woods alone, or the evil witch will eat you.

We usually find the Monster lurking about before we understand its cause. Their presence a dark thing happening somewhere, one your heroes are destined to defeat. Dark riders stalk the roads at night. Whispers come on the night winds. They say the Dark One rises again! The Monster and its Cause are intertwined, and often solving one removes the other. Within a particular narrative, this usually works only one way.Slay the beast and end the problem, or the solve the problem to defeat the unkillable creature.

Now you might say, Adventurer, Monsters are just enemies to put in the way of my Heroes. They aren't  these grand creations you make them out to be. And while that might be true, that doesn't mean they're not monsters. It depends. Going back to our Goblin Raiders example, Goblins may be simple mooks, but they also say something human nature. Small of frame and mind, greedy, stupid and pitiable, Goblins embody a set of traits we humans hate in ourselves. They're the worst kind of folk, not even properly evil most of the time. And if they're running rampant across your kingdom, there's probably a reason for it. Has the King neglected the border patrol, thinking his lands safe? Or has he been cutting funds for the military to line his own pockets? Perhaps a Lich has risen in his long-forgotten tomb, and employs the Goblins to keep people away from his sanctum as he gathers his energy for some dark purpose. Maybe it's worse than any of that, that a Great Age of prosperity is ending, falling into darkness, and it's Goblins and their ilk that will inherit the realm.

In all of these cases, our Goblins are symptoms of an original evil, initially unknown to the players. They're monsters, minors ones, but monsters nonetheless. No monster exists in a vacuum. Unless it's a space-monster.

But what if you take pains to make your Goblins empathetic? Maybe Grog and his raiders are just trying to feed their families, driven to desperation? This makes things a little trickier. As I've said, it depends. Are your Goblins the result of an original sin? Do they run counter to the assumptions of your world? Then they're still monsters, just with some human traits. But if they would exist without the original sin, and are just a natural part of your world, then they're no longer monsters, but just another species, with customs and concerns of their own. They've become obstacles at least, and possibly even characters in their own rights.

Just because we empathize with a Monster, doesn't he mean he stops being one. A Monster  is not a set of qualities, though they tend to have many in common. Exaggerated physical features, disgusting habits, dangerous weaponry, a belligerent mindset, etc. Monsters are a function, a narrative role. And it's possible to move a character into this role, and then, if you're really good, out of it, but it takes some work. This usually means something like, say, a handsome Vampire getting his soul back and trying to make up for his sins. I'm talking Forever Knight, here. Did you think I meant something else?

It's important you decide what the Monster in your story is. A wise storyteller, Adventurer, knows most of what he's up to. He knows what themes he's trying to work with, and picks the Monster(s) to fit. There are always going to be things that emerge from play, themes and moods you didn't count on. In fact, you probably won't know what it's really all about until it's over. But if you're aware of what you're doing in the first place, you'll only be pleasantly surprised, and not shocked or horrified when this realization hits.

And knowing your Monsters is one of the more important steps in this endeavour. But even more important, is knowing your villains...

[gamenightswith-blog]

Breathing Life Into Characters

Hey there Adventurers! Pom’s back and, well, still healing. My ribs were jolted way out of place again and I have muscle tension and whiplash from the whole thing. Concentration is still fleeting so I apologize if the article is sub-par for my part. I wanted to share things I was thinking about lately while comparing my play styles to others I’ve seen. Perhaps it was because of my free-form RP roots or perhaps because even before that I was writing and even before that I was storytelling, but I’ve always felt the need to breathe life into my characters. Not simply give them a fairly deep and well-rounded personality and build, but even more than that. I’ve always been one to think about what happens during the “down-time”.  Between Adventures, what does my character get up to? I’ve always found these details to be important to the overall story. After all, the action is only part of the character’s story and as much as I am working to resolve the metaplot I also play to see how my character can grow and experience the changes. I’ve always found that this requires some processing time, some reflection on the characters part, about the events and how it impacts their worldview. As such, I’ve always kept little side-projects on my characters. Either stories that allows me to dig more into their mental states than game allows me to express, or personal journals or dairies the character keeps to even going so far as to map out the floorplan of a character’s house. Others I’ve played with in the past have never thought of anything of the sort. As far as they are concerned their character doesn’t exist “between games”. Something like watching a television episode where it doesn’t show the down-time between episodes, there is nothing to show the down-time between games. This concept was jarring the first time I heard it. I’ve never not given characters a rich and full life outside of their scenarios. Not doing so, for me, takes away some of my ability to understand and as such act the role of the character I’m representing. To see someone else so easily slip into roles without that sort of deeper understanding of the character’s life is simply foreign to me. So it got me curious about the various ways in which we breathe life into our characters. Sometimes we are simply able to have the character spring forth at a moment’s notice, othertimes it’s a struggle to get in the headspace of the character. For some it’s easier to keep track of the daily life of the character between sessions, for others it’s easier to simply pretend that stuff does not exist. Adventurers, my question then is how do you breathe life into your characters? What’s your process?

[gamenightswith-blog]

Horror the Soul of the Plot

It's a poem. Aren't I erudite?

This week I shall speak of Horror, grim brother to Terror. Last week I spoke of Terror, which I said emerges naturally if a few conditions are met. There must be something to lose that your players actually care about: items, loved ones, or their very lives. While I didn't explicitly state this, (though in retrospect I should have) the force that tries to take these things away must be a credible threat, that is, the players must actually think it might succeed, and conversely, that they might fail.

Certain kinds of fear work very well in game-space, and I talked about them last week. Others do not. It's impossible to deliver events with the speed and timing necessary to bring out the jump-scare that modern, shitty “horror,” loves so much. Visual media are good at sudden, quick things. Primarily oral media like gaming are not. The kinds of fear that are most effective in gaming are the slower sort, the dangling what-ifs that the keep the players up at night between games. What if our mission fails and plunges the Empire into darkness?

Recall that Horror is disgust or revulsion over transgressive acts. It cannot exist without a clear set of rules that can be broken, a morality or ethical code. It leaves us asking questions. How could you? Why, god why? What kind of person is capable of these things? Contrast this with Terror, where, if we ask anything, it's usually immediate and transitory. Where did HE come from? Where is that thing hiding? Can't this thing go any faster? She's in trouble!

Thus, Horror thrives in gaming environment, where there's plenty of time to consider the heinous acts of your villain between sessions, and your players have probably bought into values and codes of behaviour from their character choices, in addition to those they bring to the table (see what I did there?). In say, a Vampire: The Masquerade game, the horror comes from the gradual decay of the Man, the human the vampire used to be, in face of the Beast, the new primal urges that threaten to take over the Kindred each night he rises. He has to look the Beast in the eye each time he feeds, and hold back the urge to drink all the blood until there is no more. The Vampire sees what monsters his Elders have become, and if he's unlucky enough, he might come across secrets even Vampires shudder to consider.

I highly recommend this game.

But you can make use of Horror in just about any system. Handled appropriately, it turns up in many non-horror movies. Consider the self-disintegration scene in the Wrath of Khan. Captain Terell, a Starfleet officer, knew he was powerless to stop Khan's mind control, and rather than kill a fellow officer, he chose to turn the phaser on himself. Khan is filled with these moments, and they're used to show us that Khan is everything that 24th century rejects. Authoritarian, ruthless, calculating and obsessed with revenge, Khan is the perfect villain for Star Trek. And Horror is one of his many tools.

Horror can be a difficult thing to bring out in a game, because it requires player investiture, more so than terror. Caring about an NPC and buying into a moral system are vastly different levels of investment. So when aiming for horror, it's usually best to target the player, not just the character.

Casual games usually aren't a good place for it unless you're going for a scary-fun style, like in Evil Dead. You need belief and attention. While a moment of Horror can be a great way to get attention back if your players are starting to lose focus, the tactic won't work if you never had investiture to begin with. Horror is Serious Business, and it can't just leap out at you without the moment becoming comedic.

Perhaps your party comes across a dead NPC, and hopefully one they care about. Written out like that, this isn't horrible, it just provokes anger or even annoyance. You need to offend the player's sensibilities. Violate their taboos, and twist their most basic assumptions.

Let's look at a few ways to bring the horror out of this scene. Oh, and let's call our NPC something, say Steve, a merchant who outfits Adventurers.

They must have come for him during the evening meal. We found him on the dinner table, laid out among meat, cheese and bread. They had forced the carving knife straight through his heart and into the bare wood. His eyes open, a piece of bread still in the corner of his beard. He couldn't have known that this would be last supper. But there were four place settings – where were the children?

Now we've destroyed a scene of domestic bliss. We have he vague suggestion of cannibalism, equating poor Steve to meat. And we've left something hanging – he had children. Have the bad guys killed them too?

10 silver pieces – that's what Steve owed Lysar, and that's what his life was worth. His flesh twisted and burned where Lysar had branded him, right on his forehead. He had to have been alive when they strapped him to the chair, and warmed the brand by the nearby fire. The never-break mythril cords he'd been hard-selling all month were more than enough to hold him fast while Lysar and his thugs broke him. Killing him was probably just an afterthought, or unfortunate side effect.

Here Steve's been ironically killed by his own devices. We generally belief in the inherent value of human life, so cheapening it can have the desired effect. Never mind the torture or suffering. But we're not through with Steve quite yet.

He seemed so peaceful at last. Ever since the fire last winter he'd been sleepwalking through the days, fraught with silent, inward turmoil. But hanging from the noose, still swaying in the light breeze, the stool overturned nearby, a serene, half-smile hon his lips, he seemed himself again. With closed eyes and head hung low, he could have been napping in his favourite chair. He was with them now, the children, and Marie. He was home.

Death is the worst thing ever. Making it seem at all tranquil can be among the worst things you can do. Especially since Steve's probably been dying slowly, right before our eyes and if only we had seen it. Worse, there's nothing to do about it. No bandits to track down or criminals to apprehend. There's just a sense of loss, and futility.

Be careful with this last one. There is no Horror without Hope. If death is absolutely certain, people, characters, players will become stoic and resign themselves to it. There has to be a way to set things right again, to avenge the dead, or save the endangered, or else it's just Death, and the world has enough of that as it is.