Closing Out A Game

I hate ending games improperly. I love my multi-year sagas that end with some form of closure. Unfortunately, my Dresden Files game isn't going to get one of those endings.

I realized after running Exalted and then trying to run a game of Reign that I needed to swap genres. I needed to tell different stories to cleanse the palate and recharge my creative juices.

But this time it would be different, right? I ended my Changeling game just before the birth of my daughter, and then took about six months off. That should have been enough to let me go whole hog into my Dresden Files game.

Should have. Would have. Could have. Wasn't.

So today, I sent an email to my players confessing that I'd hit burn out and that after the current arc, I was going to take a break. And of the four, one had to drop shortly to up her athletic training, and another had the opinion of "if it isn't fun, why do it?"

Because it is fun, I just wasn't inspired. I had NEAT ideas on what to do next, but I couldn't find the motivation to move from the opening sequence to the neat imagery I saw as key points (subject to change to player intervention).

So what's next? A short break, maybe some board game ideas, then something different. Right now the lead contenders are Marvel Heroic Roleplaying or 13th Age for some good casual fun. Only War is definitely an appealing thought, but I'm not sure I could get the right folks for what I'd want to do for it.

But first? A break from running, or thinking about running games for a bit.

Choose Your Doom, Players

I've been playing around with the idea of players outlining scenario/campaigns for their PCs to survive - and letting them choose the amount of risk vs. reward they want to take on. I think my first serious introduction to it was John Wick's Wilderness of Mirrors, where as the players develop the mission from the GM's premise, they get the equivalent of plot points.

Now I wouldn't want to do this for every mission, but it would definitely clear up a concern I have about players not getting the spot light time they want, or feeling like they are getting challenged enough (or perhaps they just want a laid back, casual, run and gun scenario versus the nail biting, everything is at risk type of scenario).

What would it look like? It's is going to vary from game to game - my Dresden Files game is going to have different challenges than a D&D game. But some basics I would expect there to be a premise, challenges, and rewards. Using my Dresden game as a basis:

Premise: One line summary is happening. "A conclave of evil wizards is headed into Denver to summon the dark gods."

Challenges: There are three primary challenges:

1. Determining who the wizards are;  
2. Determining how they are going to do it; and
3. Stopping them from summoning the dark gods.

Challenge 1: Who Are the Evil Wizards

• Large number of Wizards, who have powerful lackeys.
• Other wizards are in town, who may be innocent of THIS plot.

 Challenge 2: How Will It Happen

• Happening at a collection of ley line points outside of town.
• Going to require a large sacrifice of energy, perhaps a local spirit, perhaps lots of people. It won't be subtle.
• Requires knowledge and understanding of the rites.

Challenge 3: Stopping Them

• Direct force at the ritual site with ensuing pyrotechnics of massive wizardry battle.
• Obtaining all resources before they get them, preventing them from summoning local spirit to sacrifice, rescuing kidnapped children.

Rewards: Significant Milestone, or Major with combination of another plot line, such as the New World Order pursuing one of the PCs.

For another system, I'd want to rate each challenge based on the number of obstacles and the difficulty of each obstacle. I probably could do it with this game, and granting each area a "Max" rating from +1 to +20 for the max skill of the opposition.

What Do The Players Do?

I feel like I have trouble describing what is critical in my game for people to be able to do. The core of many games could be considered: 1) Fight; 2) Explore; and 3) Socialize. I think this came up most  with the D&D Next play test; however, I also saw it in reference to a Marvel Super Heroes hack where instead of "Solo/Buddy/Team," the split was along "Fight/Explore/Socialize" dynamic.

For my games, I'd probably alter the default list slightly and add a fourth category: 1) Fight; 2) Explore/Movement; 3) Investigate; and 4) Slice of Life. To break it down:

• Fight: Fighting is easy, doing harm and avoiding harm done to you. You can scale this up to size of the fight and range.
• Explore/Movement: Movement within spaces, as well as getting places in particular methods. Primarily for overcoming environmental obstacles, and the occasional chase scene.
• Investigate: Replaces social in my eyes, because generally people don't generally talk to just talk, or rather, they do, but dice don't hit the table then, they talk to find out stuff. Plus, the good ole "search the room for the clue" schtick.
• Slice of Life: My games seems to have a lot of the players just wanting to explore the world, set up merchant empires and other things that don't bring them into conflict with other people, but may generate plot lines that do so.

I think the problem with this set-up comes that Fight/Explore are what you do; Investigate is what you do; Social is how you do it, so if perhaps we added a fifth category of "Influence" that would make more sense for when I tell people what my games are generally about is the following, in order of game time used: Investigation, Influence/Fighting, Exploration, and Slice of Life. That seems a better representation of at least how my Changeling and Dresden Files games represent themselves.

Health Tracks, Revisited

It is easy to kill a player character, so that decision doesn't really interest me. However, a player saying, "This cause right here, this one is worth me dying for," is damn interesting to me as a GM. I enjoy the way that Fate, per Dresden Files, has a stress tracks to determine when a conflict ends, as well as allowing the player to choose to take long term wounds to stay in the fight as well; similarly, Fate bribes the characters to be willing to lose a conflict by gaining Fate Points by conceding before a roll is made.

I, previously, riffed on an idea by setting stakes overtly in what you were willing to risk. On my Facebook page it received a lot of flak because it broke how people thought it should work - because the principle is that minions should be less likely to risk death. They made a decent point, even with my preference of sacrificing reality for a really good narrative, i.e., modeling fiction, not physics.

So how to deal with health came up again in terms of how to model cinematic damage. And there were a few two ideas there that I wanted to capture:

• The more you get beaten up, the more you demonstrate your determination to fight, the better you fight. Tenra Bansho Zero, an Japanese Fantasy game, flat out has two stats: Vitality, which once lost, you are knocked out, and Wounds, which give you a bonus to fighting instead of losing vitality.
• There is no real death spiral in cinematic fighting, ala Savage Worlds, there's a shaken/stunned, maybe an injured, incapacitated/taken out, and dead. And the last is rare for the hero.

So how do I combine these? To do something vaguely White Wolf inspired (i.e., rating of 1-5) not unusual, I'd envision the track looking something like this (and remember, my young toddler probably has more artistic skills than I do):

The principle is the same, bad stuff happens to you, you mark off Body or Spirit tracks depending on the nature of the bad stuff. If you don't want to mark off the bad stuff, you mark off a point of Grit, get a die bonus - with more and more grit showing how bad you want to risk it.

Then the question is, how you do recovery Grit? The first way that comes to mind is through time, you slowly regain more and more Grit. In the short term, you might take long term penalties, i.e., wounds to regain the Grit.

I'm not entirely sure how to make it work, as I don't really have any other bits to hang off it, but it was an interesting enough concept I wanted to record it, so in six months when I get bored at work and want to play around, I can think about how to incorporate this into a more holistic system.

Things I Need To Work On: Pacing and Scene Control

Despite primarily being a GM for the last decade and change, there are some things still I don't do all that well. For example, I suck at in-character voices/accents that aren't absurdly silly. I can do some wonderfully good insect demon, scary little demon girls, and the similar ilk. And at this point, I never going to be a Nicole and master those particular theatrical arts.

However, something, if I'm going to continue being a GM most of the time - I need to work more on my pacing. It showed up in my Exalted game, it showed up in my Changeling game, and it is showing up in my Dresden Files game (oddly enough my Adventure! game didn't have many of those moment, but some of that may be distant hindsight being rose filtered, or a bunch of really awesome players, this being my blog, I'll go with the latter).

So let's talk about what makes a scene. You can get advice all over the place, and admittedly fiction isn't always a good translation to gaming (because you only get one chance, generally to have the scene, and you don't get an editor to review and revise it to make the dialogue sing), the best summary I've seen is that a scene has three purposes:

1. Establish or reveal facts about a character;
2. Establish or reveal facts about the setting; or 
3. Move the plot forward.

It is the third purpose, moving the plot forward, that's my sticking point, as the first one is more dependent on the players as far as establishing facts goes, though certain situations may be engineered to bring that about; and the setting details, I think come out in play fairly clear. But my players are free to argue with me.

I think my problem comes down to the third one, where I'm stuck on how to encourage my players to move the plot forward. One the best examples of this was in my Exalted game, where there was a Big Bad Deathlord, nigh indestructible, though each had an Achilles Heel, through various hijinks it came out that this Big Bad's weakness was Love.

Now me as a ST figured this wouldn't be too difficult a solution. I was willing to go with just about (note that caveat) any solution that fit within the theme of Love, figure out what the Deathlord loved and lost (ala Rosebud), or social-fu her into loving something and using that to defeat her. A session or two pass, and the players are stumped, and I think had gotten to "Puppies are love, right, so let's just throw puppies at her." Shortly they bumped into a Fae, with a sword named "Love", which WAS the Fae's emotional of Love forged into a blade, and many sessions later, we had a PC fake betraying the party to be his love of a previous life, and then slide Love into her.

A bit hokey? Yes. But it seemed the only solution that worked.

Maybe it is just me being bad at figuring out what motivates my players - my Changeling game became synonymous in my head for doing it's best to negate Chandler's Law, every time I'd throw a direct threat with some loose ends for them to follow-up on, they'd negate the direct threat, but ignore the threads. Even when those threads would burn them in following sessions.

Maybe I'm just not blatant enough. Whatever the reason, this is something I'm going to need to focus on so my players stop getting bogged down in the beginning and middle of arcs - just not sure how to do that without it feeling too forced or like a trail bread crumbs for the players to follow.

40k Only War Bug Bit Me

So, based on the recommendations of my friends, I picked up the new 40k book from Fantasy Flight Games: Only War, and it arrived Friday.

And yeah, the gaming ADD bug has bit me hard. New! Shiny!

But can you blame me? Fantasy Flight put out a beautiful book, in a universe that eminently gameable - 40k. Yes, it is grimdark and bleak, but if you are okay with that, it just works. As a GM, I don't have to figure out why the other "heroes"/"supervisors"/etc. aren't here doing this task, there's just the PCs so if they want it done, they will need to do it themselves! Or get shot by the Commissioner trying and showing insufficient valor and fortitude. 

I'd run as one part grim and dirty combat, of going house to house, with the panic of not knowing what was inside the doorway. One part will be the preposterous of orders and commands, contradictory and impossible, that fills the stereotypical soldier's life. Then finally, the comedic silliness that is part and parcel of the gaming table, as translated into the actions of bored soldiers who are on permanent deployment and will never be going home.

I'd want to run it as a series of Campaigns, from start to finish, as a war/conflict moves forth on various planets. Very much in line with Gaunt's Ghosts. I'd need to come up with some sort of tracking system so as the arcs progress, the players can watch as how the fight moves forwards and backwards.

Mission Based Gaming Fantasies

I'm getting fidgety with my gaming. I keep having thoughts of running something more episodic in nature, versus the saga-esque nature of my Dresden Files game. Basically, run a campaign where there's a more defined beginning, middle, and end, versus the shifting boundaries of how my current game is settling where there's rarely an easily defined path to success.

And I'd like to change that for another game, not that I have the time to run one. A game where there was an assumption of competence and success. Plus, some of this is gamer ADHD where there are all these neat systems out there that I want to try out. For example:

• Cortex+: either Leverage or Marvel Super Heroes. The latter is probably better suited for what's in my head which is more "beer and pretzels" of getting a few friends together and gaming without needing to remember every detail of what happened last session.
• Night's Black Agents: The temptation here is because my games keep being about investigation, investigation, and more investigation, and Gumshoe is supposed to be about the investigation - it is designed around it, and this iteration has a more robust combat system to back it up. Probably wouldn't use the setting precisely as written, but there'd definitely be something of the Weird™ at play.
• Home Brew Mercenaries: Inspired by listening to some actual play podcasts of a Mass Effect game involving a mercenary company, while I don't want to play the same system (modified nWOD), but the idea of playing a game with a group that has a mercenary company to control and build up, as well as playing the individual mercenary, appeals to me

Some of this is in reaction to something I was reading of FATE where it best supports when the players have a stronger vision, and the GM works within that framework, this would be within the notion of reversing that dynamic where the GM has a stronger vision of how the game goes (by controlling the missions with input from the players) so there will hopefully be less of the players "grasping around in the dark" trying to find a workable solution to the challenge.