Apathy Games

Accepting Failure

Last Friday I issued a challenge to call comers.  The result of which I would write about anything and relate it to gaming.  I’m going to keep the comments open for a week before closing them down.  So get in and send me whatever you got!

I’m hard pressed to accept failure, especially in a game like D&D. The cost of being a hero in a fantasy game is low. Yes there is a momentary value to failure (death specifically) but it’s offset by the fact that you can come back. In fact one of my most beloved characters died twice, and once came back as the undead, because of opportunity and my inability to accept his failure.

As a GM it’s a bit different. Without the chance of failure what are the odds that players will act in accordance to their characters? In a recent Iron Kingdoms campaign I started out telling the players that I’d be rolling in front of them and the dice would land as they would. I wouldn’t be botching it and I definitely would not be pulling the punches. The result? They were far more careful as adventurers. In the year and a half of play I experienced my first player death. Even I found a hard time watching the character die. Truth is, I probably took it harder than he did. I loved watching the characters grow and interact and it’s hard to watch one of them leave.

Cole of Singular Moments in Adventuring may accept failure as a part of his games, but I’m hard pressed to really accept it myself. As a GM I’m mostly talk. I want to pull my punches, keep the characters safe, but they are adventurers. Without the threat of danger, where is the glory? If at the beginning of the game I handed them all the treasure and experience they would ever receive, what would my players really do? They’d likely quit and roll up new characters.

Failure maybe a part of our games, maybe even our lives, but what fun is riches, fame, and immortality when it’s just handed to you? However, it was once said by a wise man, “Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyways.” So much like our characters before us, we only have so many rolls of the dice left in us. One day we’ll roll snake eyes and accept failure like so many of those before us.

A Story that shall live in Infamy

Last Friday I issued a challenge to call comers.  The result of which I would write about anything and relate it to gaming.  I’m going to keep the comments open for a week before closing them down.  So get in and send me whatever you got!

The Queen sat lightly on her throne. She was decked out in her finest royalty, covered in her crown jewels and the finest cloth. Looking down upon the adventurers in front of her she let out a small sigh and said, “Well, as we’re all here. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Her voice was posed and proper. Her posture fit of a queen; not even a hair out of place on her head.

“Well,” Grak the Dragon Rider said in all seriousness. “I like poop jokes.”

The group burst out laughing. We all eyed Brian who just busted that on us. Who sat there with a shit eating grin on his face. Paul, the GM, sat there with his palm planted firmly on his forehead giggling. After a while the group recovered and continued the game but the joke, and story, to this day, lives on.

Stories bring us together, but drama and jokes keep us hooked. Even jokes about poop still find there place into every game. Paul later told us that if he hadn’t been laughing so hard he would have killed Grak. It’s what the Queen would have done after all. Sometimes though, a well-placed one-liner is better than any saving throw.

What story lives on in your group after years of play? What are the celebratory moments of your games?

Your Mother is a Whore and Other Character Archetypes

Last Friday I issued a challenge to call comers.  The result of which I would write about anything and relate it to gaming.  I’m going to keep the comments open for a week before closing them down.  So get in and send me whatever you got!

In Sins of our Fathers I discussed the implications of our parents on our lives and specifically those on our characters.  When the challenge to write, “Your mother is a whore” came it got me thinking about characters that come from the streets or from impoverished areas and how they might become adventurers.

Common Thug

Tossed out shortly after the day they were born.  Growing up to be a bully he quickly outgrows everyone in the orphanage and shows a taste for terror.  He takes to adventuring to garner riches and become powerful so he can never feel neglected and lost again.  He shows no mercy in combat, is cross, and naturally distrustful.  He trusts no one and prefers his own company.

The Man of the Cloth

A child born of the streets his mother a common street walker, but she brought him up believing.  He took to his faith like no other.  Feeling called upon to spread the word and right the wrongs of the street.  A character with this background would likely cling to those around him, studying deep into religious texts and likely being quite scholarly in his own way.  He would be careful who they trusted but when granting the trust would do so completely.  His word is his bond.  He takes to adventuring to help people and spends his riches bettering those around him.

Hooker with a Heart of Gold

Walking in her mother’s footsteps this sex worker this girl is as innocent as they come.  She also happens to be well trained in the art of kicking butt.  Life on the streets is hard she’s done what she’s had to do to survive.  Now that she’s managed to escape she’s not going back.  This strong lass has taken to adventuring as a means of escape and no way in hell is she going back.

In each of these examples all the characters start in the same place but end up in vastly different areas.  Partly in the way their parents treat them and partly how the world has treated them.  Just because your mother is a whore doesn’t mean you can’t be an interesting character with a story to tell.

Take on all Comers

While writing Don’t Break the Chain I got to thinking of challenges I set for myself as a GM and as a writer. I find myself when writing blog posts to have the uncanny ability to write just about anything and somehow relate it to gaming.  I decided it’s time to level up my writing and creative thinking skills. So I issue this challenge:

Give me a topic, any topic, and I will then relate it to gaming and give you a blog post.

Now to issue a further challenge to myself I will try to focus on GM/Player advice. I will not take any shortcuts on any ideas and the post will make sense. I will write them in the order they have been received and it will dictate my posting schedule until this is done. For my sanity please include references to what your referring to so I can make sure I’m meeting the challenge. Please note these posts will not interrupt Savage Mondays or any special posts we currently have on schedule. You my dear viewers now control this mouth piece. Please, don’t be gentle.

Below will be the List. Every time I write a new post I’ll link to it here. Check back periodically to see my progress.

The Big List

• Your Mother is a Whore – Brian Williams
• Poop Jokes – Grak the Dragon Rider
• “Accepting Failure.” – Cole
• Robert’s Rules of Order – Will
• Ontology – Will
• Pokemon – Will
• Trees – Will
• Refinishing the dining room table to original spec. – kimberlyunger
• Mandelbrot Set – tehgeekmeister
• Diagnosing Your Pet’s Illness Through Inspection of its Fecal Matter – kinjikai
• Bob Uecker – kinjikai
• Statistics on divorce in the state of Wisconsin – kinjikai

What challenge can you issue yourself? Call everyone out and throw down the gauntlet. It’s time to see what your made of.

Don’t Break the Chain

Years ago I read an article at the amazing site Lifehacker called Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret. Simply put, when you start a project or goal you simply keep going at it as long and as hard as you can. His method involved getting a calendar and a red pen and marking an X every day he worked on his jokes. The goal, don’t break the chain. Do what you set out to do every day and don’t let anything stop you.

When we started the blog in November, I set out on a mission of not breaking the chain for any weekday. Monday through Friday of every week you’d heard from us. No matter how bad my grammar and spelling may be (and people have pointed it out to me), my words would be available to you. I think about gaming and what I can share with all of you every day (even the weekends) and work hard to get it out to you.

I’m not going to lie, blogging and game design is tough stuff. Personally I salute the fantastic Treasure Tables for having something up for every day of the week for two years. As we slowly march to our 100^th post and our six months of filling your brain with our nonsense, I know I have enough in me to beat his record. Some days are just going to be harder than others. Just don’t break the chain.

So I ask you, what can you do to not break the chain? Could your game be improved by a little time each day? Is there something you’ve always wanted to do and just never have? Learn a new language perhaps? Start your own business? I spend every day on mine to a greater or lesser extent. I couldn’t be happier. Ask yourself, what goal do I need to set? Then go.

Whatever you do, don’t break that chain.

How Valve Spins a Story

Recently the Internet has exploded about the Portal update. It got me thinking about how to keep a crowd interested in the gaming you’re creating. Valve is well known for their minimalistic story and refined style of play making for extremely enjoyable games. So what lessons can we take to our tabletop games?

Refine, Refine, Refine

I bought Orange Box when it came out and played Portal and Team Fortress 2 much like everyone else. While Portal was touted as the end all, be all, single player experience, but I found myself constantly coming back to TF2. Valve has been steadily releasing patches and class updates for the game refining the game since it came out. They’ve tweaked the classes gave them new styles of play and have kept their audience engaged in their game. As GMs we always want to tweak our games here and there. While this temptation should be allowed every once in a while pick your battles carefully. Make little changes at first and then play them out; then see where it takes you.

Go Big, just don’t tell anyone about it

One of the most intriguing things about the new Portal teaser is how quickly the fans begin to speculate. How quickly they craft the story around what they are seeing. The rumors build and build into a cascade of excitement. Use this to your advantage. Come up with an idea and tease at it in the background. Try not to give away more then you have to and let the players piece it together. If they are completely off base, run with it. It might turn into a grander tale then what you were looking to tell anyway.

Keep them Guessing

In recent play testing for our game I had a player that kept asking tons of questions about what was going on each bit more elaborate then the next. I played my cards close to my chest (we’ve seen this done before in previous testing) and let her go wild. The results were quite hysterical (they typically are). Valve does this by not answering questions about the story they are telling; it draws people in. Carefully keep your players on their toes and keep them guessing.

Who do you look to for story style inspiration?

Side Note: The Team Fortress 2 community is hilarious.  As show in this hilarious Spy & Pyro video.

Sins of our Fathers

Whether we like to admit it or not, our parents played a large role in forming us into the people we are today. Sons look to their fathers and daughters to their mothers. So why is it that we almost consistently put no thought into family when designing our characters? Why do we omit that glaring fact in our characters history? Even if we’ve gone to the trouble of putting some names on paper, how do we breathe some life into these people?

Pick Some Traits

Your characters’ parents have likely influenced them on some base level. Personally my father is a frugal man and instilled these values into me to the point of annoying my fiancée regularly about money. What traits does your character have that can be traced back to his roots?

Consider the Upbringing

I’ve heard loads of stories from people that were brought up in various churches. Their parents made them go every Sunday and were deeply religious people. These stories tend to come out one of two ways; the person is now vehemently opposed to everything even remotely religious, or is a stronger member of their faith. Was there a ritual your character had while growing up that they remember well? How does that affect them?

Sliding along the Axis

Always consider the upbringing of a character when choosing their alignment or general disposition. If, for example, you’re playing an evil character, what in their life may have caused them to choose the paths that they did? While we are talking about parents, they aren’t always to blame. Other family members have just as strong of an influence on us as our parents.

Have you ever designed a character with their family history in mind? What was the result of your work?

Top Twenty Reasons Your Players Hate You

1. Rust monsters destroyed my epic magical items.
2. Rocks Fall [WARNING: TvTropes.org Link we are not responsible for the time suck that is about to occur].
3. Your NPC is more interesting then me.
4. NPC’s should not be able to out drink me.
5. Your dice don’t hate you / We can’t see what your rolling.
6. All your characters talk the same.
7. You’ve canceled the game.
8. Your wife/girlfriend is playing an albino vampire were-tiger, and I’m not.
9. You keep wanting to play an online game and can’t get the tools working (My GM has Gremlins).
10. My foot has been tied to a train.
11. Your toddler/cat keeps walking over the battle map.
12. You’ve turned this game into a drinking game and I can’t remember my character’s name.
13. Because I’m hungry, and you don’t live next to a Circle K.
14. The only beer you have in the fridge is Bud.
15. Hummus and Vegetables are no substitute for Cheetos and Mountain Dew, goddammit!
16. You made me sign a contract with the Infernals.
17. Uzi wielding Ninjas dropped from the ceiling.
18. Mirror of Opposition.  On the ceiling.
19. Zombies should not be your default.
20. Your idea of prep work is two hours of FreeCell.

What is your worst experience with a GM? Share it with us in the comments and continue our list!

How to Build a One Sheet Adventure

While I was writing Game Mastering on the Fly I started thinking about Savage Worlds One Sheets and what it would take to design one.  Most of them are written like fleshed out hooks with images and fleshed out enemies.

For example in “Feast of Famine” a Deadlands: Reloaded Savage Worlds One Sheet (really guys are you trademarking One Sheet or SW One Sheet?) the hook could have been, “After coming across an empty Saloon the posse hears rumors of ‘tall, black-suited salesman’ spreading lots of merchandise upon further inquiry it seems there is something more nefarious afoot.”  It’s a little vague but leads you with questions to expand upon and tell your story.  But how do we go from hook to fleshed out One Sheet?

Start at the End

As backwards as it may sound starting at the end gives you a clear picture of where you want to end up.  Coming up with ideas about your enemy and the end goal allows you to easily figure out how to get there.  What’s your enemies purpose, their goals?  If your looking to setup a dungeon crawl what kind of traps do you want to unleash on the PCs?  What treasure brings them to this location?  Once you’ve picked your enemy or your dungeon/treasure try to summarize the adventure in a couple of sentences, similar to developing your hook.

How do they get there?

Once the end goal is in mind come up with how they are going to get there.  Be general to the setting.  Taverns are great places to hear about unexplored dungeons full of treasure.  Futuristic/Modern/City settings may lend themselves to a bounty hunt.  Give enough description for other GM’s to know what your trying to get across without being too specific.  Naming a tavern is wonderful touch.  Naming the city, state and current king in power might be getting to be to much.  Try to lend your One Sheet to fit into any campaign where the style fits.

Flesh it all Out

Now it’s time to put the pen to paper and block out enemies name some NPCs and begin the hard work of writing.  The most amount of detail is going to be needed at the end with the stat blocks and final scenes, so start there.  That way if you end up taking an entire page (the back in this case) you know how much space you have to get the PCs where they need to be.  Once your all done writing it up PLAY TEST!

The Red Pen is Mightier

Run through the adventure a couple of times with a couple of different groups.  Keep good notes, where did you have questions?  What could be cut out and left up to other GMs?  Then edit, edit, edit.  Your goal should be to reduce your word count while still leaving things clear.  Once done hand it to another GM to play it without you around.  This step is important as you will not be around to explain to anyone else running so sit on your haunches and wait.  When the GM gets back to you, let them tell the tale once through before letting asking questions.

When they’re done, ask the following:

• Did you have fun running it?
• Did your players enjoy themselves?
• Was it easy to understand?
• Did you have any parts that didn’t make sense?
• Would you want to run it again?

Make sure to thank them for their time, absorb their feedback and make changes as appropriate.  Now, find a new GM and do it again. Continue this process until your ready to claw your eyes out.  Once your done bleeding your ready to publish! HURRAY! We’ll pause for celebration.

Tyson loves creating adventures, but sometimes wishes he could lower his standards.  He does wonder however, how much luck have you had writing a published item?  How much writing, editing and play testing did you do before you released?

Game Mastering on the Fly

I’ve previously discussed organizing your hooks but what if your new to Game Mastering and don’t really know what a hook is and don’t know why you should keep them all organized. A hook is a couple of sentences that give you a jumping off point to begin an adventure. You should keep them easily organized because it allows you to quickly start an adventure and allows you to thread in different events to your game.  Personally I keep a couple hooks handy to drop in as needed.

Picking your Hook

Obviously one of the toughest choices is picking which hook you want to employ on your characters.  Questions you might be asking is how much detail do you put into a hook?  What should a good hook do? A good hook should be vague and get you thinking about moving your PCs forward. Let’s borrow an example hook from Rocks Fall Everyone Dies which I lovingly abuse for such matters.

“One of the PCs has an admirer, a powerful one. An enchantress known across the land as having the ability to bend lesser wills to her whim at only the slightest exertion of her talents. She may have worked for a friend or foe in past, but somehow saw her chosen PC in action. If the PC is flattered and accepts her advances, she quickly proves too commanding to coexist with the PCs peacefully. Either way, after being rebuffed, she flees the city, and promises to ensnare her love’s mind as soon as he leaves the protection of civilization.”

The premise is simple and can be summed up in a couple of sentences. Its open ended, vague and allows you to fit it into any campaign. It also hooks the PCs into the action and continues from there. Imagine the awkward flirting that’s about to ensue between the GM and the lucky PC from this hook. I’m sure that’ll be worth a good story or two.

Fleshing out your Enemy

Now that you’ve either selected your hook or created your own it’s time to flesh out your enemy. Using our previously mentioned hook this would be the enchantress. This is the time to figure out her stat blocks, personality, background and motivations. Once the motivations are done you’ll know how to slot the enemy into the game.

Elaborate and Go

The only thing left to do at this point is establish a background for the game and the hook.  Using our established hook we’d ask ourselves, “Where do the PCs meet the enchantress and how are we going to introduce her now?” Once the background and introduction has been established start rolling some dice!

What’s been your favorite hook to use and what results did it lead to?