Numenera is an incredibly awesome game. I've already gone off about it, but if you don't own it or don't know about it, you should probably check it out (and likely buy it) here: Numenera by Monte Cook Games
One of the brilliant things about Numenera is the Cypher and Artifact system. The true beauty of it is that it takes William Gibson's writing philosophy of "The Street Will Find Its Own Use" and injects it straight into a faster-than-light drive. Boiling it down, Cypher in Numenera are remnants of bygone technology that now do something useful in a manner they were not originally intended. An unstable power core from an old vehicle is a grenade. An old portable entertainment system is now a displacer cloak style adornment that broadcasts multiple images of you for a few minutes. A charged energy crystal can be affixed to your armor to deliver a nasty jolt to anyone attacking you, or to your trusty weapon to make it a combo weapon/taser.
And that's not even touching on the artifacts.
This article is a reference document for some of the custom cyphers that I have come up with and used (or have yet to unleash) in my Numenera games. Cyphers with similar effects can look wildly different. One unstable power core that is now a grenade can be a rusty hunk of strange metal, while the next one could be biomechanical, or completely organic, or even stranger. I've included how I personally envisioned them, but if you decide to use one from this list, please change it up as you desire to make it fit the mood and environment in which it is found. That's part of the glory of Numenera... you always have to keep things weird.
Temporal Stones.
A blue glass orb with a red panel on one side that seems to be filled with a grey liquid or gas.
The stone is activated by thumbing the panel, then thrown (or slung) towards the target. If the stone strikes the target, the target repeats the last action it took. If a cost was paid for that action, no additional points need to be spent.
Hazy Shade of Spray
A small crystal canister that appears to contain small stormclouds.
When used, it fills the immediate area with nanites that travel near the canister. The nanites will attach to any invisible or clear item and project scintillating light.
Brickwash:
Small glass orbs of thick brown/red liquid that feels like a gritty paste.
When smashed and rubbed on the skin, it hardens the body against assault, granting 2 pts of armor and lasting 1 hour. For the duration, all speed defense tests are one step more difficult.
Moonfruit:
A pale white fruit about the size of an eyeball.
When eaten, the PC can see in the dark for 28 hours, but their eyes glow a pale white color and they can not speak above a hoarse whisper.
Three-Eyed Squid Stone
Small, six inch statue of a mass of tentacles -- When activated, 3 glowing gold eyes appear in orbit around it. Activates for 10 minutes.
Creates an extradimensional field which removes organic and mechanical life forms from the dimension, though they remain visible. All affected life forms can still communicate, but no combat or external effects can be used, and nothing the life forms do can affect the rest of the world. A life form can still use esoteries, skills and powers on itself, however.
Kiss of Karu'zul
Small vial of black liquid which, when shaken, produces a faint musical chiming
When quaffed it will heal 1d6 might and restore half that to a pool of the imbiber's choice.
Side Effect: Makes everything taste like rotten meat for two days, and causes all body fluid to become acidic and/or explosive.
Mechanical Jackalope:
Glass and steel statue of a small, two headed ground rodent with horns, antlers, or antennae.
When activated (stays active for 2 hours) the statue animates and begins to scan the area for bits of salvage, cyphers, or artifacts. The good part is that it finds things. The bad part is that it doesn't discriminate what it finds, and will occasionally activate/destroy things in the course of digging.
Unrelenting Past
A white orb full of thick blue goo
When eaten, nanites restructure the user's brain to give them total recall of memories. Also, anything experienced for the next two weeks can never be forgotten.
Groundserpent Oil
A small clay bottle of spicy smelling liquid, also produced in pill form
Made from the prismatic ground serpent, this externally applied liquid gives a boost in confidence and a unique aroma to the user, who then counts as 'trained' in all matters of social interaction for the next four hours.
Antennae Grub
An odd, metallic caterpillar about three inches long
When placed on the head, it burrows several hind legs in to the skull and begins to transmit sonar-sight in to the forebrain. Lasts for 28 hours.
Rain Bomb
A six inch diameter crystal orb full of white ooze with several wires attached to the outside
When broken, this cypher creates a sudden storm effect. Player rolls d20 for result:
1 - 2 feet of ground fog over short range
2 - waist high fog for short range
3 - light snow in area for 20 mins
4 - heavy snow and wind in area for 10 mins
5 - sudden cold multicolored rain for 10 mins
6 - 40 mph musical winds for 10 mins
7 - 60 mph silent winds for 10 mins
8 - a searing sandstorm for 10 mins
9 - hail, pea sized, for 5 mins. Unarmored/unsheltered individuals may take damage per GM
10 - blizzard like snow for 30 mins
11 - heavy rains for 8 hours, may cause flooding
12 - thick, pea soup fog for 5 miles, lasting 4 hours
13 - temperature drops by 40 degrees for an hour within long range
14 - vicious hail, up to golf ball sized, can do considerable damaged to unarmored/unsheltered individuals
15 - blizzard for 2 hours
16 - torrential downpour, 1 hour, monsoon strength. Might test to not be knocked off footing when trying to move.
17 - tornado
18 - rain of frogs
19 - pick one from table above
20 - pick two from table above
Double-headed circuit snake
A small blue box with a cable coming out of two opposite sides. Ends of each cable end in a jaw-like clamp.
The circuit snake is a power conduit/transformer that will route power from any device to any other device, and will not overcharge the receiving device. After it is done, it fries out, and destroys itself. This can be very useful in recharging depleted artifacts.
Seeds of Shas-Balu
A soft, spongy orb that explodes in a non-damaging puff of ochre spores when thrown or suffers an impact.
The shas-balu is a quickly growing fungal life form that is highly aggressive.
-- If thrown during the daytime the spores cause choking, coughing, blindness, and possibly death. Might defense vs. diff four or take 5 points of might damage and go blind. Also speed vs. diff 4 or take 5 points of speed and you can not communicate vocally or physically from coughing and shaking.
-- If thrown during the night time the spores will grow in 4 rounds to a highly evolved fungal predator that will last until dawn unless slain.
Shas-Balu
Health 25
Level 4
Armor 3
Trained in tracking, sneaking, and hand to hand
Takes double damage from fire and cold
Any electrical damage done to the Shas-balu heals it instead of harms.
Bifuricaine
Usually injected, sometimes a pill form.
When taken, a large black discoloration appears on the skin. The taker ceases to feel all pain and gains 10 might pool for 1 week, as well as +5 to all recovery tests. At the end of 1 week, the PC falls into a coma from which they can not wake for 1 day, during which the discoloration begins to swell and grow into a fist-sized tumor. Sometime during that day (usually when no one is watching) the tumor detaches and rolls/floats/digs its way through the ground to get away. One week later, a complete clonal copy of the PC begins to track it down in order to slay the PC.
Thoughts on gaming, thoughts on living as a gamer, and how to roll better than a critical and get the life of your dreams.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
In Which I Discuss Kitchen Sink Games...
A number of games in the past have been declared to be “kitchen sink” style games. If you haven’t heard this term before, please allow me to define:
A kitchen sink game is a game which includes damn near everything. It has swords, sorcery, psionics, futuristic tech, cavemen, zombies, ninjas, intergalactic travel, small villages possessed by demons, and darn near anything else your fevered imagination can come up with. Kitchen sink style games run on the premise that if there are cool things, then putting cool things together make things even cooler. Sometimes they work, sometimes they fail miserably.
In this article, I’ll review what have been a few of my very favorite kitchen sink style games to experience, because even when the game is horrible, it still tends to be damn fun.
First off is my very first experience with a Kitchen Sink game. It is, also, the worst on the list. It also has the most incredibly awesome retro name ever… like something out of the 50s, almost. I introduce to you, fellow gamers, BattleLords of the Twenty-Third Century.
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| Kind of like a kitchen sink... and a blender... powered by antimatter. |
See? I wasn't joking.
Lets just step back and take a look, shall we? What do we have here… we have a human in the upper right with some sort of explosive doodads. We have a massive lizardman with a lazer gun on the upper right. Smack dab in the center is a gigantor freighter/war thingy of space chasing some poor schmuck in a pleasure yacht past some moons. In the lower left there’s some creepy half-face guy with a lazer sword. On the lower right… uh, I don’t know what that is, but it’s pretty messed up. I sure wouldn’t want to meet it in a dark alley. Then at the very bottom there’s a psionic big-head-alien type guy with a finger full of light. Up at the very tippy top, right under the title of the game, is an Evil Menace With Glowing Eyes (EMWGE) as required by law.
Oh, and there’s another spaceship wedged in there in the lower left, you know, because it wasn’t ‘futuristicy’ enough for them.
Wow… that’s a lot. And the thing is that all this stuff is in the actual game. The humans, of course, are humans. The big lizard guy is called a Ram Python, and they come from a very backwaters and barbaric swamp world. They’re basically hand picked from the best and then taken to a more civilized reach, because if you gave these guys guns they’d eradicate the entire world without thinking about it first. Spaceships are, well, you know, spaceships. They come in all sizes, and we won’t go into that right now.
Now, the guy in the lower left, he’s pretty cool. He’s an Eridani SwordSaint. Yeah, that’s not like the title of his caste or anything, that’s what they call the entire freakin race. A WHOLE WORLD of people who worship the sword, in all of its myriad forms. Even laser swords, which, IMHO, is cheating… but I’m not a swordsaint, so what the hell do I know? The whole race is very bushido, and they’re all built like action stars. Ironically, they since they ALL worship swords (every last one of them), there’s no florists, or cobblers, or bakers or anything. Just swords, I imagine. Never mentions anything about The Sacred Blade Bakery in the book, so I just imagine that they don’t exist.
I could go on and on about the races, but instead, I’ll just sum up. Here’s the “quick list” on the types of races you can play:
Human – Everyday Joe Human, very versatile.
Gen-Human – Genetically Modified Human. Roy Batty+
Orion Rogue
Python Lizard
Ram Python
Chatilian Empath
Cizerack
Mutzachan
Mazian
Orion Rogue
Phentari
Zin Rigeln
And then there’s the Aeodronian, Andromeni, Ashanti, Fott, Gemini, Goola Goola, I-Bot, Ikrini Geomancer, Jezzadeic Priest, Kizanti, Misha, and Tanndai Techknight. And that’s just the stuff that your GM doesn’t make up on the fly one night when half drunk and realizing he doesn’t have anything planned for game in 2 hours.
One of the things I do remember liking very much about the game is something that completely threw most of the rest of my gaming crew for a loop: It is classless and levelfree. Everything is based on earned skills and stats. Stats are strength, manual dexterity, IQ, agility, constitution, intuition, charisma, and my personal favorite: aggression. SECONDARY stats (because 8 is not enough) are Tec Knowledge, Military Leadership, Persuasion, and Bargaining. Each stat and skill is run on a percentile system, and it is possible (AFAIC) to go above 100 percent.
What makes the game truly and gloriously kitchen sink is the ability to have the game run in any setting on any world type you desire… as is common for many intergalactic games. TYPICALLY the game is much like ShadowRun. You are hired by an intergalactic megacorp to go do some sort of deed somewhere. You are some sort of a merc or other form of ‘deniable asset’ to help them complete a goal, and you should expect that they’ll try to screw you over in the end. However, it’s very easy to stray from this… one of my favorite games involved us starting as veteran characters who had been stranded after a crash landing on a jungle world. No comm net, limited power, and only as much ammo as we’d brought with us on the ship… which was rapidly depleted due to the amount of indiginous, player-eating wildlife we encountered in the first four hours of the game. I think we lasted a total of maybe six hours before the last brain was eaten. Total Party Kills are the best!
As for system… it’s clunky, but effective. The matrix (that’s the combo of magic/psionics in the game) is tough to understand at first, and combat can span lengthy minutes with each combat round if players aren’t up to par on the rule set. Overall, it’s a great game in concept, and admittedly I haven’t played it since the first edition rolled out… it is my highest hope that they’ve revamped the system itself to a point where it is far more fluid. My hopes are mildly dashed though, by taking a look at the character sheet, and seeing pretty much the same thing I saw years ago.
On a d20 scale, this game rates about an 11.
NEXT we have one of the most expansive Kitchen Sink Games ever. This game came out in 1990, the brainchild of a man known as Kevin Siembieda. It has, quite literally, everything.
It’s a little game known as Rifts, and it’s got about 60 expansion books detailing alien races, orbital colonies, every continent ever known by man and then some that aren’t, dragons, ninjas, cybertechnology, mutant dogs trained to drive power armor, floating prison cities, and about 90 bajillion other things that I can’t list off of the top of my head.
Of all of the Kitchen Sink Games, Rifts stands at the top of the heap for having EVERYTHING. It even has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
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| That is literally a kitchen sink that the big ugly alien is flying on. Surrounded by well endowed dish washers. |
As with most Paladium games, everything skill based is run on percentile. There are levels, and clas… no, that’s not being fair. There’s so many gorram classes and races that they actually had to change how classes and races were done. There are OCCs, RCCs and PCCs. OCC stands for Occupational Character Class. This is what you and I would have, as humans. We are humans, and as such, we’re versatile enough to be mechanics, scholars, scientists, snipers, lawmen, porn stars, and anything else we really want to be. On the other side of the coin are the RCCs, which stands for Racial Character Class. RCCs tend to be OBNOXIOUSLY powerful, due to the fact that they’re a stop-gap measure against having a dragon uber sniper who wears glitterboy power armor… which is still something you can do if you’re smart about it (all you really have to do is shapeshift, but I digress). PCC stands for Psychic Character Class. PCC doesn’t -technically- exist in Rifts, as it is a hold over from other Palladium games, but it tends to help draw an easier-to-understand line in the sand which can save some new players from utter madness.
To give you an idea of how many different things you can play in Rifts, here’s a small rundown:
OCCs: There are over 255 Occupational Character Classes for Rifts, including City Rat (basic lives-in-the-city criminal), Warlock (casts spells, uses the undead), Shifter (magician who hops dimensions), Saloon Girl (self explanatory), Juicer (someone who has an implanted drug factory that shortens their life span but gives them near supernatual physical ability), and 4 varieties of Ninja (no, I’m not making that up.)
RCCs: There are over 150 Racial Character Classes for Rifts, including Dragon (6 kinds), Godling, Tritonian Sea-Wolf, Anti-Monster, Dog-Boy, Gargoyle, Lycanthrope, Oni, Tengu, and Valkyrie. Some of the RCCs are so sickeningly powerful that they can realistically take on an army by themselves and come out slightly scathed.
PCCs: Psychics are more limited in scope, having about 30 to 40 types, but having some of the darn coolest names in the game, including Shifter (dimensional hopping mage), Mind-Melter (uber offensive psychic), Blaster (blows things up with her mind), Freezer, Zapper and Nega-Psychic.
Am I forgetting something… OH YEAH, actual freakin races. These are races that tend towards the more-potent-than-humans side of the equation. Asgardian elves, goblins, giants, scorpion men, lions, tigers and bears. OM(G)!
The beautiful thing about Rifts is also the most terrifying. The game is DEEP, with a lot of commentary on social mores, racism, and other such actual topics that make a game truly enjoyable. It includes every level of technology, from stone age wooden clubs to self-tracking limited yield nuclear MIRVs that can phase into and out of existence. The precise problem is that, eventually, damn near every game of Rifts ever played devolves into a shoot-em-up, with the biggest guns left standing. It usually starts innocently enough… a group of friends get together, someone plays the ex coalition officer, another plays a rogue scientist, maybe one or two people have some power armor and a laser weapon. Soon enough, the GM makes a mistake and wipes out 3 people with one grenade… because they’re all ’soft’ characters. Now, by then, the remaining members have levelled and gained some serious gear, which means the new gen characters either have some serious catching up to do, or they start off ‘buffed.’ And if they’re going to be buffed (which is usually the option chosen), then why not allow someone to play a young adult dragon as an RCC? This offsets everything, and leads to a rapid escalation of armament akin to the US/Soviet cold war. Before you know it, your PCs are hunting down phasewalkers and Splugorth slaving rigs, and all sorts of other wonders of the world with guns that can quite literally destroy small towns with an errant shot.
Rifts is a truly glorious game, if the GM can keep things in check… unfortunately, it is very common that in order to keep things in check, he or she has to wipe out PCs or figure out some clever way to strip away a ton of gear and several powers… and even that tends not to work. The majority of Rifts games I’ve been a member of, and run, have ended with either a TPK (Total Party Kill), or with the GM attempting a TPK (as they don’t know what else to do because things are so wildly out of hand) and then throwing their hands into the air in frustration after the third army gets decimated by the player characters.
Rifts, as a basic concept, is beautiful. The world has endless possibility. The whole backstory is incredible… it takes events through the world, both human successes and failures, and gives birth to a reason for having massive amounts of psychic energy unleashed due to mayhem and death which end up ripping open interdimensional rifts. Through these rifts returns magick, dragons, demons and alien explorers looking to both help and exploit the human race. If you can strip out all the uber powerful crap, Rifts becomes a game of high adventure in which the broken spirit of the world struggles onward against impossible odds. The problem is that all that uber powerful crap is REALLY well written, and is very enticing for both players and GMs alike.
The system runs like a dream, with the former caveat. Palladium games have always been pretty slick systemed… but Rifts can bog down when you have uber powerful characters. For example, if you want to snipe someone who’s normal, you roll to hit, and if you hit, you roll damage. That’s it. However, if you have an uber sniper who’s sniping someone uber powerful, you have the roll to brace and set up your sniper shot, then you have 8 modifiers to the ‘to hit’ roll. After you roll it, the target can potentially get a chance to notice the shot coming. If they do notice it, they can potentially auto-dodge the shot, and if that misses, they have a chance to auto-parry the shot with whatever weapon or power they currently have active. After that, if they take the hit, certain RCCs and OCCs have the potential to ‘roll with the punch’ of the sniper bullet… if it makes it past the phase or other style of energy shield that the uber character is most likely employing.
That’s as far down the rabbit hole as I’m going with this particular example, because I don’t want to get any deeper. To sum up, it can get pretty disgustingly complex.
Rifts is not a bad game, mind you, in fact it’s probably one of my favorite games ever… easily within the top five at least. But only if the GM is able to keep a proper grasp of the game, and guide it with a loving and firm hand. The first time the players get access to a Naruni market, or other ‘high end’ seller of goods the game goes down the toilet if the GM budges on what they can and can not buy.
All in all, it’s about a 16 on a d20. Badly run Rifts average about a 5 on a d20.
Which brings me on to my next review. This game started, in concept, in 1987 as a companion to WarHammer Fantasy Battle. WarHammer 40k is world renown as one of the best sold table-top wargames of all time. In 2008, Black Industries and Fantasy Flight Games got together and released the RPG version of this incredibly well fleshed game.
Dark Heresy was the first section, which details the life and struggles of up-and-coming Acolytes who are working for an Imperial Inquisitor to stop the incursions of the aliens, the heretics, and the mutants.
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| Why yes, Ma'am, I am completely badass. Thankyou very much. |
Rogue Trader is the second section of the game, which is a bit higher power. In Rogue Trader, you take on members of a crew to a Lord Captain, a man or woman who owns their own starship and is working to profit off of the frontiers of man in any way possible. Ironically, with most Rogue Trader PCs, if they ever met the counterparts run in Dark Heresy, a mighty gun battle would ensue. While Dark Heresy focuses on keeping everyone in line and purging the unclean, Rogue Trader focuses on skirting the rules and morals of a dystopian society in order to turn the largest profit possible. Having played both of these systems, I must say that Rogue Trader is by far my favorite, as it seems to have more character freedom than the earlier counterpart.
What makes this a kitchen sink game is much the same as my first example, with BattleLords. DH/RT (Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader) takes place in the mighty Empire of Man, which spans a large portion of interstellar space. Through this venue, you can have ship-based games, corporate style games, military campaigns, explorations of deep nether reaches of space or in fact other dimensions, or on-the-ground-in-the-mud primitive style games. One of the backgrounds for PCs is to come from a Feral World, and it’s long been my intention to entice one of my GMs into running a game that begins with all the PCs living on a Feral World and rising to the top. Through our heroic acts we would, of course, eventually be noticed by the Empire of Man, and brought up to train our skills for the good of mankind… but again, I digress.
Classes in DH/RT are very similar to WarHammer 40k, but allow you to get much deeper into the mindset of some of the singularly odd unit types that you see within the table top tactical assault game. In DH, common classes are Arbiter (lawman), Assassin, Inquisitor, Cleric, Tech-Priest, Guardsman, Imperial Psyker, Adept (smart guy) and Scum. In RT, the more advanced requirements of the game put you at a higher starting standpoint than in DH. For example, the Tech Priest in DH is someone who is learning the mysteries of the Omnissiah, where as in RT the Tech Priest becomes the Explorator, which is a fully indoctrined Tech Priest who has made the great pilgramage to Mars and has welcomed the machine spirit into his or her very body. Starting play as an Explorator gives you access to servoskulls (human skulls which are filled with a small engine, sensor arrays, and typically small arms to help the PC in tasks), servitors (basically a servoskull that is a whole human instead of just a skull… a cybernetic slave), and a mechadendrite (a massive machine arm that comes out of your back that can be fit with damn near any device the player desires.) Despite the power level difference, both games are exquisitely written, with massive amounts of trivia and knowledge for old fans as well as new.
Systemically, both games are brilliant. Running off of d10s exclusively, skills are easy to understand and use by a new player, with character advancement being a bit more in depth. Each skill and stat can only be raised a set number of times, so having a good set of opening stats is very important. Both games are easily as deadly as they are beautiful as well. Technology is highly advanced, but the human body is pretty much the same on a basic level. Laser guns are potent enough to scorch stone at 200 yards, which means if the PC gets hit in an unarmored location, it is very likely the last scream they will ever emit. Healing arts are equally advanced, but the first requirement to healing is survival, which can prove to be quite the chore in the wrong situation.
Whether you want to play a low born feral worlder, a member of a hive planet (a world so civilized it has no wilderness left), a politically oriented void born (born in space), or a noble with a knack for assassination… or any of a thousand other concepts, these games are for you. They are glorious pieces of roleplay engineering who should be experienced by all. Even if you don’t intend to play, the knowledge and concepts alone are exceptional, and the art is top notch.
Any stalwart fan of WarHammer 40k will probably be screaming “But Space Marines?! WHERE ARE THE SPACE MARINES?!” Don’t worry your pretty little head, darlin… they’re out there. It's called DeathWatch, which does detail the life and times of a Space Marine, doing battle in the name of the Emporer of Man.
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| Yes, that's a chainsword. The original chainsword. |
Real Space Marines... not those watered down StarCraft sissies.
Across the board, these games get a 17 of d20, only losing points for the somewhat clunky advancement practices, which do take some getting used to.
Which brings me to Numenera. This is literally the only game I've ever played that scores a Nat 20 on my crit-o-meter. Not only does it have everything, but the rule set is angelic. Which isn't really surprising, considering the source. Lovingly hand crafted by Monte Cook and polished by Shanna Germain, it allows the player to pursue any creative outlet they may desire, and it allows (and encourages/requires) the GM to be as outlandish and weird as possible.
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| There's some things I've gotta explain here... |
Let's take the cover of the book for instance. See that big shaft right in the center? That's the Amber Obelisk. It hovers 500 feet in the air, and stretches 1500 feet in to the sky. It is named the Amber Obelisk because it is both colored amber and slightly translucent, just like the stone. Normally things like this don't just hover, but it does. It also has some rings that orbit it as well as some strange, massive gears that are visible when the sun is shining from behind it. What does it do? What is it's purpose? What does it mean? Is it a god? Is it a superweapon? You got me. But that's kind of the point of Numenera.
Numenera is a roleplaying game that is deeply devoted to the idea that exploration and discovery should be the focal point of a campaign. You aren't really there to kill abajillion orcs (or abhumans, as the case may be)... you're there to figure out WTF the ancient races were thinking, what they were building, why they were building it and how it can help the world advance (or be destroyed.) Most games give experience based on how much crap you killed, or how cool you looked doing it. Numenera gives experience based on what the heck you figured out. Did you kill abajillion abhumans? Great. Good for you, buddy, but if you didn't figure out why the abhumans were doing what they were doing that made you have to kill them, then you're kind of SOL from an experience point perspective.
Now the one thing that is confusing for new players in Numenera is how rolling works. It's a target number based game that uses only D20s... and the target numbers are generated off of the creature level multiplied by 3. You can spend your pools (hit points, most would call them) to modify that target number, as well as use skills and technology. The beautiful thing about the system is that it is only confusing when you look at it. If you just get your players to start playing the system, they'll pick it up in a snap. And any lingering confusion is completely counterbalanced by one very awesome game mechanic:
The GM never rolls.
That's right. In one fell swoop you eliminate half of the time for combats and other time-wastey actions. If the player wants to hit an NPC, they roll against the target number. If they make it, they hit. If the NPC wants to attack the player, it does, and the player makes a defense check. If they make it, they don't get hit. It's that simple.
Okay, there's like one time the GM rolls. And it is specifically made mention of in the book with a tongue-in-cheek joke about how the GM never rolls. It's truly lovely.
I can not recommend Numenera enough. I had the luck to play through it in beta with a very good friend, and it captivated me from day 1. I didn't even have all the rules, and I knew it was the game for me.
Thanks for reading!
Sunday, December 2, 2012
GameMastery 101: Part 2 - Types of Players
Doing the Deed.
You’ve got everything ready.
You have a stack of notes a quarter inch high. On your left you have a chainmail pouch full of glittering polyhedrals, with a few artfully spilled out for ease of access. On your right you have a stack of books vaguely reminiscent of the Plateau of Leng out of mythos… high, insurmountable, and barren of topography. Before you might be a GM screen full of charts, pictures of bikini clad whatevers and critical hit modifiers… or there might just be a few cans of half-empty Mountain Dew as you frantically scrawl your last concepts (or just vaguely doodle some boobies) as the wall clock ominously ticks down to the final moments of your plan’s life.
Because no plan survives contact with the enemy, er, players.
You wrack your brain… is there anything you’ve forgotten? You’ve got enough Dew, you have Doritos hidden on top of the fridge for backup snacks, you have the Domino’s guy on speed dial, your mom is at bridge club… you should be ready. Then the first knock on the door comes. Your first player is here. In walks…
The Professional.
The Professional player is always on time. He doesn’t let down his team mates. If he’s not going to be there, he calls ahead of time, sometimes a day or more in advance, to inform you of even the slightest chance that he might not make it. Srs gamer takes gaming srsly.
You promised a +2 to hit if I brought Mountain Dew. It's in the fridge. Remember this note?
The Professional Gamer is the type who waits outside of game stores on release days… not for video games, but for new expansion books. They download PDFs of expansions you’ve never even heard of. They know every last in and out of the rules, but they don’t play to win, they play for the love of the game. The Professional is reliable, attentive, hardcore, and in most respects, completely awesome. If you’ve never had a Professional in your gaming party, then I mourn for your soul. It’s a treat. Most commonly, during generation sessions where the group is making their various characters for the first time, a Professional will sit back and help everyone create, looking for what’s not covered. They usually end up in support roles like Cleric or Paladin, or wide-spread roles like Ranger or Bard type PCs. No matter the genre, they’re there to support the other players, and make sure The Game Goes On.
At higher levels, it is not uncommon for the Professional to respec into a Gamemaster, or a Gaming Addict.
Usually paired with the Professional is the Jester… who usually doesn’t have a car.
The Jester.
The Jester, if he or she doesn’t show up with the Professional, will be a fashionable fifteen minutes to an hour and a half late as they try to spange for a taxi, bum a ride from another friend, or hoof it across town. The Jester shows up not only because they love the game, but because this is their chance to truly ‘kick it’ with people who understand them. The Jester is typically unorganized, owning not really so much as a character sheet as a character packet. Each note or scrap of paper is somehow important to the character, and they seem to innately understand the hordes of chickenscratch on snippets of pulped tree, but it would take 15 game masters and 20 cryptographers to figure out what even half of it means.
In addition to the occasional 1d6 puncture damage eradicating some of the information.
Though jokes and levity are very common in a group with a Jester attached, usually they do their best to keep the game rolling. Of all of the player types, the Jester is the most likely to bring backup Doritos or beverages, the most likely to lend his or her dice out without throwing a snit fit, and the most laid back about losing a character.
Usually close on their heels comes the Wannabe.
The Wannabe.
There’s something just not quite right about the Wannabe. Maybe they don’t understand the spirit of the game, but they know all the rules. Or maybe they really, really want to be the knight in shining armor, but they don’t understand that encumbrance counts. The Wannabe, in general, is a great person, but sometimes a fairly mediocre gamer. Usually at one end of the spectrum or the other, either completely fitting the stereo type or breaking it.
The Wannabe, for some reason, is commonly just slightly outside of the norm for gamers. It’s not uncommon for Wannabe gamers to become true gamers, but even then sometimes they wonder… are they gamer enough? Should they own more dice? Do they have enough books? Despite that sometimes nagging self doubt, it is quite common for Wannabe to level up into Professional status.
The Wannabe usually gets into gaming by someone else’s hand. Introduced to the idea by a fanatic who sold them on it. Usually, this means they come part and parcel with...
The Book Keeper… or Arcanist, as they’re sometimes called.
You know the term Rules Lawyer? Most of the time it is used as derogatory. When it is a good thing, however, you’ll want to be respectful. The Book Keeper is your best friend and your worst enemy as a GM. They know all the ways you can spin or coax an extra +1 onto your character sheet, they troll the game forums for new errata daily… heck, they probably have a legion of RSS feeds going straight to their blackberry if they own one. If another party member wants to make a PC who can stop bullets with his or her crotch, the Book Keeper is the one to consult on how. On the flip side, the Book Keeper is your best way to get a player who doesn’t grasp some facet of the rules to begin to understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Since the BK is one of them (a player) and not one of Them (you, The Man, the GM, or “He Who Is Trying To Kill Us”) they have a much higher “acceptance index” for arguing minutia and displaying to the offending player that it really is impossible to fire four laser pistols at the same time no matter how many ranks in dual wield you have.
Due to the immense knowledge that the Book Keeper wields, you need, NEED to make this individual your best buddy in the game. Don’t treat them differently during the game sessions, don’t give them extra XP (unless they deserve it) or extra favors/items, but make sure you’re close buddies outside of the game. This will help defuse the inevitable arguements that crop up when you step outside of the rules and you don’t want to just put the big “GM SAYS THIS HAPPENS” boot down.
Usually there’s a little bit of a wait before the next pair shows up… they’re typically a bit late. First in the door is…
Trouble.
With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for Player.
Yep. "That Guy."
Trouble usually shows up at the game when he’s bored or doesn’t have anything else to do, and is conspicuously (and sometimes thankfully) absent the rest of the time. Trouble is the player who just seems to exist to put a thorn in your rear end… or sometimes push you out of a helicopter into a forest full of cacti. They’re looking for amusement, and they don’t quite care how they get it. They may seek to derail your entire campaign by shooting your main and quite important NPC in the face for a perceived insult. They may constantly derail the game session by keeping out of game conversations going, heckling you or other players, or just generally being an asshat. Unfortunately, most of the time, Trouble is very good friends with one or more of the other players, making it virtually impossible to excise them from the game without causing social drama. They’re usually quite close to…
The MinMax.
I’d like to thank Tarol Hunt of GoblinsComic for actually making MinMax into a character. Here he is, and it explains it all:
MinMax, the Unstoppable Warrior.
The MinMax might not “get” gaming yet. They’re probably either someone who got pushed into gaming because it sounded neat, or they’re someone who’s played a lot of Risk or Xbox 360, and are still in the mindset that you need to win a game for it to be a game. In Goblins, MinMax traded several ‘useless’ skills for additional combat bonuses. For example, MinMax (in the comic) traded the following:
His ability to Wink was traded for Weapon Proficiency: Furniture.
His ability to rhyme on purpose was traded for Improved Unarmed Strike.
And so on.
MinMax players are there for destruction. They want to do the most damage, the most times, to the most creatures. They want to Win The Game. I myself was a MinMax player for a while during my youth, so there’s definite value in encouraging the MinMax player to keep playing with your gaming group… as long as you can figure out how to make sure that they don’t butcher the entire scenario in a single round. I find it very useful to send the Book Keeper out to get something from the convenience store before using some bullshit rule to immobilize the MinMax before progressing with the fight.
Now that you have most of the party around the table… the phone rings. It’s…
The Leader.
The Leader is arguably your most important player, but sometimes they won’t even bother to show up until they know, for a fact, that everyone else is in place. Sometimes they’ll show up with The Professional… and on rare occasions, you may have a dual-classed player who is both.
Honestly, I’m doing the Leader a bit of injustice with my quip above. It’s not uncommon for the Leader to show up early, or to help wrangle your other players with phone calls asking if they’re going to be at game, if there’s any problem, or anything of the sort. The Leader tends to be very involved with the players, a close friend to most, and a stern guiding hand to folks like Trouble and MinMax. He works to keep the game moving forward, to keep the players on task instead of making worthless sidetrips to the Apothecary Shoppe to find out which tentacle of the Freshwater DoomSquid is the most potent for regeneration potions, and to make sure that not only do things get accomplished, but they get accomplished with style. The Leader is usually the most charismatic gamer of the group, though this is not the case in all groups.
Of all the types pictured above, remember that there innumerable and unquantifiable combinations. You may have a Trouble Leader, or a MinMax BookKeeper (the WORST thing ever, by the way.) You may have a group without all of the components listed above, but GameMasters can’t be Deities. You can’t create your own game group, no matter how hard you try. You can, as any artist does, look around at your environment and pick the best things, and do your absolute damnedest to make some art.
Because that’s what you are. An artist. A GM paints a picture for the players, creates a world that’s so believable that it puts any book to shame, and breathes life and emotion into every moment of the game. Hopefully the profiles above will give you some hints on how to deal with a troublesome canvas.
And now to figure out what to do for Part 3. Suggestions are welcome!
You’ve got everything ready.
You have a stack of notes a quarter inch high. On your left you have a chainmail pouch full of glittering polyhedrals, with a few artfully spilled out for ease of access. On your right you have a stack of books vaguely reminiscent of the Plateau of Leng out of mythos… high, insurmountable, and barren of topography. Before you might be a GM screen full of charts, pictures of bikini clad whatevers and critical hit modifiers… or there might just be a few cans of half-empty Mountain Dew as you frantically scrawl your last concepts (or just vaguely doodle some boobies) as the wall clock ominously ticks down to the final moments of your plan’s life.
Because no plan survives contact with the enemy, er, players.
You wrack your brain… is there anything you’ve forgotten? You’ve got enough Dew, you have Doritos hidden on top of the fridge for backup snacks, you have the Domino’s guy on speed dial, your mom is at bridge club… you should be ready. Then the first knock on the door comes. Your first player is here. In walks…
The Professional.
The Professional player is always on time. He doesn’t let down his team mates. If he’s not going to be there, he calls ahead of time, sometimes a day or more in advance, to inform you of even the slightest chance that he might not make it. Srs gamer takes gaming srsly.
You promised a +2 to hit if I brought Mountain Dew. It's in the fridge. Remember this note?
The Professional Gamer is the type who waits outside of game stores on release days… not for video games, but for new expansion books. They download PDFs of expansions you’ve never even heard of. They know every last in and out of the rules, but they don’t play to win, they play for the love of the game. The Professional is reliable, attentive, hardcore, and in most respects, completely awesome. If you’ve never had a Professional in your gaming party, then I mourn for your soul. It’s a treat. Most commonly, during generation sessions where the group is making their various characters for the first time, a Professional will sit back and help everyone create, looking for what’s not covered. They usually end up in support roles like Cleric or Paladin, or wide-spread roles like Ranger or Bard type PCs. No matter the genre, they’re there to support the other players, and make sure The Game Goes On.
At higher levels, it is not uncommon for the Professional to respec into a Gamemaster, or a Gaming Addict.
Usually paired with the Professional is the Jester… who usually doesn’t have a car.
The Jester.
The Jester, if he or she doesn’t show up with the Professional, will be a fashionable fifteen minutes to an hour and a half late as they try to spange for a taxi, bum a ride from another friend, or hoof it across town. The Jester shows up not only because they love the game, but because this is their chance to truly ‘kick it’ with people who understand them. The Jester is typically unorganized, owning not really so much as a character sheet as a character packet. Each note or scrap of paper is somehow important to the character, and they seem to innately understand the hordes of chickenscratch on snippets of pulped tree, but it would take 15 game masters and 20 cryptographers to figure out what even half of it means.
In addition to the occasional 1d6 puncture damage eradicating some of the information.
Though jokes and levity are very common in a group with a Jester attached, usually they do their best to keep the game rolling. Of all of the player types, the Jester is the most likely to bring backup Doritos or beverages, the most likely to lend his or her dice out without throwing a snit fit, and the most laid back about losing a character.
Usually close on their heels comes the Wannabe.
The Wannabe.
There’s something just not quite right about the Wannabe. Maybe they don’t understand the spirit of the game, but they know all the rules. Or maybe they really, really want to be the knight in shining armor, but they don’t understand that encumbrance counts. The Wannabe, in general, is a great person, but sometimes a fairly mediocre gamer. Usually at one end of the spectrum or the other, either completely fitting the stereo type or breaking it.
The Wannabe, for some reason, is commonly just slightly outside of the norm for gamers. It’s not uncommon for Wannabe gamers to become true gamers, but even then sometimes they wonder… are they gamer enough? Should they own more dice? Do they have enough books? Despite that sometimes nagging self doubt, it is quite common for Wannabe to level up into Professional status.
The Wannabe usually gets into gaming by someone else’s hand. Introduced to the idea by a fanatic who sold them on it. Usually, this means they come part and parcel with...
The Book Keeper… or Arcanist, as they’re sometimes called.
Hey man, I've been doing a bit of research on familiars, and...
You know the term Rules Lawyer? Most of the time it is used as derogatory. When it is a good thing, however, you’ll want to be respectful. The Book Keeper is your best friend and your worst enemy as a GM. They know all the ways you can spin or coax an extra +1 onto your character sheet, they troll the game forums for new errata daily… heck, they probably have a legion of RSS feeds going straight to their blackberry if they own one. If another party member wants to make a PC who can stop bullets with his or her crotch, the Book Keeper is the one to consult on how. On the flip side, the Book Keeper is your best way to get a player who doesn’t grasp some facet of the rules to begin to understand what’s going on behind the scenes. Since the BK is one of them (a player) and not one of Them (you, The Man, the GM, or “He Who Is Trying To Kill Us”) they have a much higher “acceptance index” for arguing minutia and displaying to the offending player that it really is impossible to fire four laser pistols at the same time no matter how many ranks in dual wield you have.
Due to the immense knowledge that the Book Keeper wields, you need, NEED to make this individual your best buddy in the game. Don’t treat them differently during the game sessions, don’t give them extra XP (unless they deserve it) or extra favors/items, but make sure you’re close buddies outside of the game. This will help defuse the inevitable arguements that crop up when you step outside of the rules and you don’t want to just put the big “GM SAYS THIS HAPPENS” boot down.
Usually there’s a little bit of a wait before the next pair shows up… they’re typically a bit late. First in the door is…
Trouble.
With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for Player.
Yep. "That Guy."
Trouble usually shows up at the game when he’s bored or doesn’t have anything else to do, and is conspicuously (and sometimes thankfully) absent the rest of the time. Trouble is the player who just seems to exist to put a thorn in your rear end… or sometimes push you out of a helicopter into a forest full of cacti. They’re looking for amusement, and they don’t quite care how they get it. They may seek to derail your entire campaign by shooting your main and quite important NPC in the face for a perceived insult. They may constantly derail the game session by keeping out of game conversations going, heckling you or other players, or just generally being an asshat. Unfortunately, most of the time, Trouble is very good friends with one or more of the other players, making it virtually impossible to excise them from the game without causing social drama. They’re usually quite close to…
The MinMax.
I’d like to thank Tarol Hunt of GoblinsComic for actually making MinMax into a character. Here he is, and it explains it all:
MinMax, the Unstoppable Warrior.
The MinMax might not “get” gaming yet. They’re probably either someone who got pushed into gaming because it sounded neat, or they’re someone who’s played a lot of Risk or Xbox 360, and are still in the mindset that you need to win a game for it to be a game. In Goblins, MinMax traded several ‘useless’ skills for additional combat bonuses. For example, MinMax (in the comic) traded the following:
His ability to Wink was traded for Weapon Proficiency: Furniture.
His ability to rhyme on purpose was traded for Improved Unarmed Strike.
And so on.
MinMax players are there for destruction. They want to do the most damage, the most times, to the most creatures. They want to Win The Game. I myself was a MinMax player for a while during my youth, so there’s definite value in encouraging the MinMax player to keep playing with your gaming group… as long as you can figure out how to make sure that they don’t butcher the entire scenario in a single round. I find it very useful to send the Book Keeper out to get something from the convenience store before using some bullshit rule to immobilize the MinMax before progressing with the fight.
Now that you have most of the party around the table… the phone rings. It’s…
The Leader.
The Leader is arguably your most important player, but sometimes they won’t even bother to show up until they know, for a fact, that everyone else is in place. Sometimes they’ll show up with The Professional… and on rare occasions, you may have a dual-classed player who is both.
Honestly, I’m doing the Leader a bit of injustice with my quip above. It’s not uncommon for the Leader to show up early, or to help wrangle your other players with phone calls asking if they’re going to be at game, if there’s any problem, or anything of the sort. The Leader tends to be very involved with the players, a close friend to most, and a stern guiding hand to folks like Trouble and MinMax. He works to keep the game moving forward, to keep the players on task instead of making worthless sidetrips to the Apothecary Shoppe to find out which tentacle of the Freshwater DoomSquid is the most potent for regeneration potions, and to make sure that not only do things get accomplished, but they get accomplished with style. The Leader is usually the most charismatic gamer of the group, though this is not the case in all groups.
Of all the types pictured above, remember that there innumerable and unquantifiable combinations. You may have a Trouble Leader, or a MinMax BookKeeper (the WORST thing ever, by the way.) You may have a group without all of the components listed above, but GameMasters can’t be Deities. You can’t create your own game group, no matter how hard you try. You can, as any artist does, look around at your environment and pick the best things, and do your absolute damnedest to make some art.
Because that’s what you are. An artist. A GM paints a picture for the players, creates a world that’s so believable that it puts any book to shame, and breathes life and emotion into every moment of the game. Hopefully the profiles above will give you some hints on how to deal with a troublesome canvas.
And now to figure out what to do for Part 3. Suggestions are welcome!
GameMastery 101: Part 1 - Types of GMs.
Getting Started.
You’ve gone through all of the preliminaries. Everything is ready.
You’re stoked.
You have your dice shined and polished. Your books are stacked. Character sheets are still cooling after being ejected from the printer. Maybe you have a twelve pack of Mountain Dew, Coke, or even some beer chillin and ready.
Your players show up, ready for a game… and they stare at you. And stare. And stare… and stare…
And it sinks in slowly. You’ve never done this before. You’ve never run a game. You’ve played them, sure, and it looked sooooooooooo easy to just get up there, flip open a book, and try to murder your friends with dice.
But it’s not that easy, is it? It’s not that easy when you’re staring down the hollow eyes of five disappointed friends who trust in you, who have faith in you, who have a firm belief that you, and you alone, can transport them on the shoulders of your imagination to a world they’ve always wanted to visit and then horribly mangle.
So what’s a wannabe GM to do? It’s not like Yale offers a course on gamemastery. The first thing you’ll want to do is try to figure out what gamemastering style you work best with.
Style #1: Hardline.
First you have Hardline. Why do I call it Hardline? Because it sounds cooler than “Nazi-style GM.” Plus, uh, apparently Nazi has some connotations. But I digress.
Hardline GMs tend to be very rigid and structured. You like your shit locked down. You like deep notes. You like stats on every single NPC that you are going to use. If you have a rat that’s going to run through the gutter when a PC steps out of a Taxi on a rainy Seattle day in ShadowRun, then BY GUM you want those stats! In fact, that’s not deep enough! You want a background! You want to know what motivates this rat, and why he chose this particular shoe to run across. You know where he came from (working out at the YRCA), you know where he’s going (first to the Circle-K, then home to see his lovely lady wiferat who he hopes didn’t find his kitty-fetishist porn stack hidden under the bedding like she did last month, one of the reasons why he’s running instead of just ambling casually), you know when he last ate (32.5 minutes ago, stale Domino’s crust) and how the meal is sitting with him (badly.)
Being a Hardline GM can be marvelously rewarding to both players and yourself. Because you put so much work into the world, because it is so structured and real in your own head, you have a much easier time with imparting your vision to the players, of drawing them into your world as well. Through your investment, the game takes on a very real aspect, and your players will most likely appreciate this.
It’s not all a cakewalk, though. Being Hardline can very easily lead to being a ScreenHitler and railroading your games towards a specified end that you desire. Is this the way to do it? Honestly, it just might be. It all depends on if your players enjoy that, which is something we’ll touch on later.
Hardline GMs tend to be extremely strict with rules. If the GM’s manual doesn’t explicitly state that you get a combat bonus for ambushing your target by leaping from a 10 foot ledge and landing on his head with a battleaxe, then by golly you aren’t going to get combat bonuses! But you will most likely take that falling damage, thankyouverymuch.
Hardline GMs also tend towards a structured play environment, to keep the world continuously feeling the same in a physical aspect to the players. Playing in the same room, with the same maps on the walls, with the same stale, half-empty cans of Mountain Dew that Steve ALWAYS leaves on the freakin windowsill can be a great help to a player settling back into a role week after week. You want your game to run like clockwork. Every Tuesday at 4 pm, running until 10 pm, or the like.
The Hardline GM style could very easily be attributed to a Lawful perspective. You follow the letter of the laws laid down in the manuals, and you follow every single letter to the grave.
Style #2: Revolutionary
On the opposite perspective is your Revolutionary (or Chaotic) GM. Revolutionary GMs tend not to believe in things like, like… books… man. They play the game because of the spirit of the, like, game, and those McCarthy-era rules and strictures don’t have any place in this world, man! Revolutionary GMs tend to show up to game without such things as notes… or sometimes books… or even dice.
The Revolutionary GM commonly doesn’t give a crap about having all the T’s crossed and the I’s dotted. They’ll cross and dot as those letters present themselves. Revolutionary GMs tend to read through the game world books repeatedly out of sheer love, where Hardline GMs do it out of a deep need to know every last modifier and oddball rule. This pure love for the spirit of the game is a double-edged sword, though. Revolutionary GMs tend to have very vibrant games that hinge heavily on the desires of the players instead of a pre-fabricated plotline and designated end point. They’ll introduce subplots left and right, chase a few of them, and leave the others to wander aimlessly in a game-less universe in which they are suddenly free. If a particular subplot interests the majority of the players, they’ll go after it, if not, then off it goes to la-la land until it becomes convenient to reintroduce, if it ever does. The converse of this is that, due to the Revolutionary GM’s lack of note-taking ability or preparation, games can be rather erratic in playstyle. A Prime-NPC (one that reoccurs through the storyline) that you fought 3 sessions ago may use entirely different tactics and abilities, instead of remaining constant. An entire village may disappear from the shores of the sacred River of Black Thorns because you didn’t write it down.
Revolutionary GMs tend to play hard and fast with the rules. If the player takes the time to climb up to a 10 foot ledge to ambush someone from behind and above with a battleaxe, then the Revolutionary GM will most likely figure out some delicate scientific equation (read: pulling it out of your butt) and give the player a combat modifier which is fitting.
Revolutionary GMs have a massive benefit over the Hardline types in that they tend to be ready to run anywhere and anywhen at the drop of a hat. They don’t need notes, because they don’t use them. They have some (or sometimes even most) of the important details stuffed into their cranium, and they can spin a story purely off of that. A large note of caution to any wannabe Revolutionary GMs is to not let the players closest to you have a ludicrously higher amount of playtime than those who are not. If you’re running a 5 player game, and 2 of them live with you as roommates, you could easily have ‘mini games’ with those two players every night. This would be marvelous for them, but very, very crappy for the rest of the players. The players who are not involved in those ’sub sessions’ will quickly lose track of what’s going on in the game as it continues to grow more and more focused on that fraction of the group that you dedicate more time to. Another warning, if you do run ’sub sessions,’ is to do them no more than one sub session for every two real sessions. Even though the plotline continues to spin and unfold in your lovely little skull between games, if you run too much, you’ll find yourself quickly burning out on the game and concept.
How do I know these things? I’ve been both. The earlier part of my career as a GM held me as a Hardline, but later on I “evolved” into a Revolutionary. Why the quotes? Because the word evolution typically denotes that the after-change state is better than the pre-change state. That’s simply not true. Both styles have wonderful advantages. Knowing which you need to be is important.
Style #3: Common Sense GM
Or you could ignore all of that, and do your best to be a Common Sensist GM. To save my fingers, we’re going to abbreviate that to CSGM. A CSGM walks the line between the two, creating a super-fueled Hybrid of both styles, taking the best from both and leaving the worst. You know, like a half-drow, half-orc ninja/ranger/sorcerer/priest who grew up in the Orient learning the sacred secrets of lovemaking from the famed Pink Lotus Geisha.
CSGM style tends to be -very- difficult for beginners. Why? Because beginner GMs usually have a poor grasp of exactly which rules can be fudged (combat modifiers) and which ones can not (stat or skill gains) without major game repercussions. In order to grasp what can and can not be changed without mucking about with basic concepts, you need to first have a deep understanding of not only the game you’re running, but game mastery in general. Does this mean you shouldn’t try? No. By all means, do go ahead, it’s the best way to discover which kind of GM you are, but do warn your players first. Tell them straight up that you’re experimenting with some new concepts and ideas, and that it may jam up the game from time to time if you get stymied at how to cross a T which is suddenly leaning heavily to the left, or how to dot an I that is now inverted entirely. Gaming Science at it’s finest.
The most important thing to understand about being a beginner GM is that you will make horrible mistakes. Your buddy Brad will convince you that there’s really nothing too powerful about playing a drow elf. Sweet Michelle will help you understand why a plasma pistol isn’t really -that- overpowered… I mean everyone else is running around with laser guns anyway, she just wants to be beautiful and different. You will, at some point, most likely give someone a baby dragon as a familiar. Don’t sweat it. Drow elves can be killed. Plasma pistols can be stolen. Baby dragon familiars can grow up and decide the PC would make a better snack than they make a master mage.
You will most likely experience a TPK. A Total Party Kill. This event will (or at least should) change you. You’ll feel a brief rush of exhilaration as you realize that you actually won. That the player’s didn’t win. And then you’ll look around the table at the crushed and hollow eyes of your forlorn players, who stare alternately at you and at the crumpled remains of Tristian The Fearless Doombringer’s character sheet. You’ll see the pleading eyes, the quivering lips, and you’ll realize what a shitty job you just did at GM’ing. You may decide that it’s not for you. You may decide that you need to take a long break. You may feel your own eyes begin to water, your own lip begin to quiver.
You’ll need to man up at that point. TPKs happen. They happen to the best GMs and the worst GMs. The worst GMs are the ones who cackle madly at the victory and then never run again, stopping while they’re ahead. Maybe the GM in question pulls a TPK and then grows depressed and despondent, vowing never to wield such terrible and awesome powers for evil again.
The best GMs are the one who realize that every end is just another beginning. Experience a TPK? Have a nearby king/diplomat/archaeologist/historian hire a new party to go find out what happened. Not up for the whole “Mr. Johnson hiring a party” scenario? Have your players write up peasants, or young people, or refugees from a war-torn nation nearby that stumble over the remains of the old party.
Or just ditch the whole thing entirely, and go start another game with the same players. No matter what it is you decide to do, you have to do something. You can’t just wallow in grief/victory and let your players rot.
Few players have the skills to be a GM. Fewer still have the balls to stand up and do it. Of that small percentage, only a fraction has the raw talent to be an excellent GM right from the start. I should know, I sucked when I started. I experienced TPKs. I experienced the dreaded Walk Out, where your players just decide to screw the game and go to a movie. I’ve been told, to my face, that I suck and I’m the most horrible GM ever, and that I’m the only reason the person who told me this no longer roleplays. (The exact moment of ‘breaking’ came when he stood below a helicopter, killed the pilot by shooting through the copter’s floor, and then didn’t move. Then he got horribly angry that I had the temerity to land the damn copter right on him, because, you know, physics? Anyway, I digress.)
That’s not the same story now. I persevered. I scratched and clawed and crawled and limped and then walked along the trail to becoming a “Good GM.” Now I stand here, moving easily at a swift trot, making sure not to outdistance the players, but still keeping them seeking the same goal I am: An incredibly enjoyable gaming experience.
This is your duty. You are part of the few who are brave enough to take the blame, to take the burden, to provide for your friends in a way nothing else can.
You are a GM. Congratulations. Just don’t give up, and you’ll see it gets better.
At the end… there’s cake.
You’ve gone through all of the preliminaries. Everything is ready.
You’re stoked.
You have your dice shined and polished. Your books are stacked. Character sheets are still cooling after being ejected from the printer. Maybe you have a twelve pack of Mountain Dew, Coke, or even some beer chillin and ready.
Your players show up, ready for a game… and they stare at you. And stare. And stare… and stare…
And it sinks in slowly. You’ve never done this before. You’ve never run a game. You’ve played them, sure, and it looked sooooooooooo easy to just get up there, flip open a book, and try to murder your friends with dice.
But it’s not that easy, is it? It’s not that easy when you’re staring down the hollow eyes of five disappointed friends who trust in you, who have faith in you, who have a firm belief that you, and you alone, can transport them on the shoulders of your imagination to a world they’ve always wanted to visit and then horribly mangle.
So what’s a wannabe GM to do? It’s not like Yale offers a course on gamemastery. The first thing you’ll want to do is try to figure out what gamemastering style you work best with.
Style #1: Hardline.
First you have Hardline. Why do I call it Hardline? Because it sounds cooler than “Nazi-style GM.” Plus, uh, apparently Nazi has some connotations. But I digress.
Hardline GMs tend to be very rigid and structured. You like your shit locked down. You like deep notes. You like stats on every single NPC that you are going to use. If you have a rat that’s going to run through the gutter when a PC steps out of a Taxi on a rainy Seattle day in ShadowRun, then BY GUM you want those stats! In fact, that’s not deep enough! You want a background! You want to know what motivates this rat, and why he chose this particular shoe to run across. You know where he came from (working out at the YRCA), you know where he’s going (first to the Circle-K, then home to see his lovely lady wiferat who he hopes didn’t find his kitty-fetishist porn stack hidden under the bedding like she did last month, one of the reasons why he’s running instead of just ambling casually), you know when he last ate (32.5 minutes ago, stale Domino’s crust) and how the meal is sitting with him (badly.)
Being a Hardline GM can be marvelously rewarding to both players and yourself. Because you put so much work into the world, because it is so structured and real in your own head, you have a much easier time with imparting your vision to the players, of drawing them into your world as well. Through your investment, the game takes on a very real aspect, and your players will most likely appreciate this.
It’s not all a cakewalk, though. Being Hardline can very easily lead to being a ScreenHitler and railroading your games towards a specified end that you desire. Is this the way to do it? Honestly, it just might be. It all depends on if your players enjoy that, which is something we’ll touch on later.
Hardline GMs tend to be extremely strict with rules. If the GM’s manual doesn’t explicitly state that you get a combat bonus for ambushing your target by leaping from a 10 foot ledge and landing on his head with a battleaxe, then by golly you aren’t going to get combat bonuses! But you will most likely take that falling damage, thankyouverymuch.
Hardline GMs also tend towards a structured play environment, to keep the world continuously feeling the same in a physical aspect to the players. Playing in the same room, with the same maps on the walls, with the same stale, half-empty cans of Mountain Dew that Steve ALWAYS leaves on the freakin windowsill can be a great help to a player settling back into a role week after week. You want your game to run like clockwork. Every Tuesday at 4 pm, running until 10 pm, or the like.
The Hardline GM style could very easily be attributed to a Lawful perspective. You follow the letter of the laws laid down in the manuals, and you follow every single letter to the grave.
Style #2: Revolutionary
On the opposite perspective is your Revolutionary (or Chaotic) GM. Revolutionary GMs tend not to believe in things like, like… books… man. They play the game because of the spirit of the, like, game, and those McCarthy-era rules and strictures don’t have any place in this world, man! Revolutionary GMs tend to show up to game without such things as notes… or sometimes books… or even dice.
The Revolutionary GM commonly doesn’t give a crap about having all the T’s crossed and the I’s dotted. They’ll cross and dot as those letters present themselves. Revolutionary GMs tend to read through the game world books repeatedly out of sheer love, where Hardline GMs do it out of a deep need to know every last modifier and oddball rule. This pure love for the spirit of the game is a double-edged sword, though. Revolutionary GMs tend to have very vibrant games that hinge heavily on the desires of the players instead of a pre-fabricated plotline and designated end point. They’ll introduce subplots left and right, chase a few of them, and leave the others to wander aimlessly in a game-less universe in which they are suddenly free. If a particular subplot interests the majority of the players, they’ll go after it, if not, then off it goes to la-la land until it becomes convenient to reintroduce, if it ever does. The converse of this is that, due to the Revolutionary GM’s lack of note-taking ability or preparation, games can be rather erratic in playstyle. A Prime-NPC (one that reoccurs through the storyline) that you fought 3 sessions ago may use entirely different tactics and abilities, instead of remaining constant. An entire village may disappear from the shores of the sacred River of Black Thorns because you didn’t write it down.
Revolutionary GMs tend to play hard and fast with the rules. If the player takes the time to climb up to a 10 foot ledge to ambush someone from behind and above with a battleaxe, then the Revolutionary GM will most likely figure out some delicate scientific equation (read: pulling it out of your butt) and give the player a combat modifier which is fitting.
Revolutionary GMs have a massive benefit over the Hardline types in that they tend to be ready to run anywhere and anywhen at the drop of a hat. They don’t need notes, because they don’t use them. They have some (or sometimes even most) of the important details stuffed into their cranium, and they can spin a story purely off of that. A large note of caution to any wannabe Revolutionary GMs is to not let the players closest to you have a ludicrously higher amount of playtime than those who are not. If you’re running a 5 player game, and 2 of them live with you as roommates, you could easily have ‘mini games’ with those two players every night. This would be marvelous for them, but very, very crappy for the rest of the players. The players who are not involved in those ’sub sessions’ will quickly lose track of what’s going on in the game as it continues to grow more and more focused on that fraction of the group that you dedicate more time to. Another warning, if you do run ’sub sessions,’ is to do them no more than one sub session for every two real sessions. Even though the plotline continues to spin and unfold in your lovely little skull between games, if you run too much, you’ll find yourself quickly burning out on the game and concept.
How do I know these things? I’ve been both. The earlier part of my career as a GM held me as a Hardline, but later on I “evolved” into a Revolutionary. Why the quotes? Because the word evolution typically denotes that the after-change state is better than the pre-change state. That’s simply not true. Both styles have wonderful advantages. Knowing which you need to be is important.
Style #3: Common Sense GM
Or you could ignore all of that, and do your best to be a Common Sensist GM. To save my fingers, we’re going to abbreviate that to CSGM. A CSGM walks the line between the two, creating a super-fueled Hybrid of both styles, taking the best from both and leaving the worst. You know, like a half-drow, half-orc ninja/ranger/sorcerer/priest who grew up in the Orient learning the sacred secrets of lovemaking from the famed Pink Lotus Geisha.
CSGM style tends to be -very- difficult for beginners. Why? Because beginner GMs usually have a poor grasp of exactly which rules can be fudged (combat modifiers) and which ones can not (stat or skill gains) without major game repercussions. In order to grasp what can and can not be changed without mucking about with basic concepts, you need to first have a deep understanding of not only the game you’re running, but game mastery in general. Does this mean you shouldn’t try? No. By all means, do go ahead, it’s the best way to discover which kind of GM you are, but do warn your players first. Tell them straight up that you’re experimenting with some new concepts and ideas, and that it may jam up the game from time to time if you get stymied at how to cross a T which is suddenly leaning heavily to the left, or how to dot an I that is now inverted entirely. Gaming Science at it’s finest.
The most important thing to understand about being a beginner GM is that you will make horrible mistakes. Your buddy Brad will convince you that there’s really nothing too powerful about playing a drow elf. Sweet Michelle will help you understand why a plasma pistol isn’t really -that- overpowered… I mean everyone else is running around with laser guns anyway, she just wants to be beautiful and different. You will, at some point, most likely give someone a baby dragon as a familiar. Don’t sweat it. Drow elves can be killed. Plasma pistols can be stolen. Baby dragon familiars can grow up and decide the PC would make a better snack than they make a master mage.
The Dreaded TPK.
You’ll need to man up at that point. TPKs happen. They happen to the best GMs and the worst GMs. The worst GMs are the ones who cackle madly at the victory and then never run again, stopping while they’re ahead. Maybe the GM in question pulls a TPK and then grows depressed and despondent, vowing never to wield such terrible and awesome powers for evil again.
The best GMs are the one who realize that every end is just another beginning. Experience a TPK? Have a nearby king/diplomat/archaeologist/historian hire a new party to go find out what happened. Not up for the whole “Mr. Johnson hiring a party” scenario? Have your players write up peasants, or young people, or refugees from a war-torn nation nearby that stumble over the remains of the old party.
Or just ditch the whole thing entirely, and go start another game with the same players. No matter what it is you decide to do, you have to do something. You can’t just wallow in grief/victory and let your players rot.
Few players have the skills to be a GM. Fewer still have the balls to stand up and do it. Of that small percentage, only a fraction has the raw talent to be an excellent GM right from the start. I should know, I sucked when I started. I experienced TPKs. I experienced the dreaded Walk Out, where your players just decide to screw the game and go to a movie. I’ve been told, to my face, that I suck and I’m the most horrible GM ever, and that I’m the only reason the person who told me this no longer roleplays. (The exact moment of ‘breaking’ came when he stood below a helicopter, killed the pilot by shooting through the copter’s floor, and then didn’t move. Then he got horribly angry that I had the temerity to land the damn copter right on him, because, you know, physics? Anyway, I digress.)
That’s not the same story now. I persevered. I scratched and clawed and crawled and limped and then walked along the trail to becoming a “Good GM.” Now I stand here, moving easily at a swift trot, making sure not to outdistance the players, but still keeping them seeking the same goal I am: An incredibly enjoyable gaming experience.
This is your duty. You are part of the few who are brave enough to take the blame, to take the burden, to provide for your friends in a way nothing else can.
You are a GM. Congratulations. Just don’t give up, and you’ll see it gets better.
At the end… there’s cake.
In this case: Not a Lie.
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