Exchange of Realities

Railroad is one of the buzzwords that strikes up ire in most playgroups, the kind that gets players fuming and leads to GMs being reviled. Unfortunately, it’s also a technique that’s very, very easy to fall into.

For the uninitiated, railroading is forcing the characters back onto a plot when they’ve gone astray, usually in a very blatant manner. Most often, this is done by giving “choices” that all lead to the same conclusion, by making all options other than the one the players are “supposed” to take essentially useless, or by creating a situation out of nowhere that forces them back onto the path. The iconic example involves players trying to step off of a road between two points and being chased back on by a giant monster they can’t possibly handle, but not all methods are that blatant.

“What’s the problem?” you ask. “Isn’t it my story?” Yes, but this is where we come up against free will, and the idea of everyone enjoying themselves. These people aren’t here to follow a path with no chance of being able to change anything; if they want that, they’ll just play a video game, or read a book. Short version: Do. Not. Railroad.

Now, this isn’t to say that a little guidance isn’t a bad thing, on a covert level. Every now and then a group gets lost, and needs that little hint to get back on track—or worse, they’re going after a red herring far longer than they should have. The thing is, you have to make sure there’s still some sort of meaningful choice.

This can mean a lot of things. We might ad-lib something as they move farther and farther from the road, in general creating a situation that doesn’t ruin the game but bores them or inconveniences the characters sufficiently that they go back of their own accord. If they insist on not going after that beast that lairs a few miles away and occasionally eats random villagers, it does the logical thing and keeps eating random villagers, and if the players billed themselves as heroes—well, they’ll be lucky if all they get from the locals is nasty looks. If they’re considering killing someone important to the plot, particularly in a civilized area, we remind them out of character about the laws around here, and if they insist on killing the character in question anyway, we enforce them. (Note: While suddenly making the person they weren’t supposed to kill and/or the town watch way to powerful for the group is quite effective, it has a tendency to break suspension of disbelief; try to keep your reaction in keeping with how the world had worked before the group got out of line.) If they try talking to the people they’re supposed to fight, we make it very, very difficult for that strategy to succeed, but not quite impossible. The basic thing to keep in mind is that in just about any world, actions have consequences, and the object of the game is to demonstrate this in as internally consistent a manner as possible.

The next time you need to nudge your players, look at your strategy carefully, then ask yourself a few questions. First, could this reasonably happen, according to what both you and they know about the world? Can it be done within the rules? Has it been in some way set up, or implied? If not (even if so), will you be able to find and deliver a convincing explanation for it later? If your answers come up yes, you’re probably clear to implement it; if not, consider a modified or even entirely different technique.

If out of character redirection attempts don’t work, don’t be afraid to let the group know that you’re having difficulty with their decisions, either. Often, it will be possible to come up with some sort of compromise that leaves the characters true to their concepts and the story still true to your plot.  Don’t be afraid to change the story, either; oftentimes, the group stepping off the tracks will lead to a better result than the road(s) you had planned for them.

Note: These strategies are designed for reasonable players. If you have a group that avoids plot hooks for out of character reasons that sum up to “They’re plot hooks”, they’re probably not the kind of people you want to game with anyway.

Plot.

You’ve probably got the basics of plot at this point. All plot requires conflict, conflict works better with enemies, and you need to find some way to make it interesting. Easy enough, right?

When gaming, it gets a lot more complicated. It can’t just be interesting from a reader’s perspective; you have to find a way to involve the characters as well, and you need to be able to figure out how they’re likely to break it.

Now, plots can be approached in two different ways. You can either start with a plot and then add characters, or start with characters and then come up with a plot. I find the former method to be easier than the latter; it’s hard to get a story out of nothing, and having a plot ahead of time can give people a better idea what sorts of characters to create. On the other hand, if you’re basing the plot on the characters, you know they’re going to be motivated.

So first, you get an idea for a plot—and looking for those is a post in and of itself, so I’ll come back to that. Then you give your players time to give you their character concepts (having hopefully given them some idea what sort of game you’re playing, so you don’t end up with an intrigue-specialized character in a war zone, or a bunch of people who think with their weapons in an urban mystery). This part is very important; once you’ve got an idea who these people are, you’ll be able to figure out how best to interest them in the plot.

Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to do so. The greedy ones can be attracted by wealth, the ambitious ones by a challenge, the smart ones by knowledge (or in some cases by patronage, if they’re experimental sorts), the compassionate ones by… well, you get the idea. And everyone’s driven by self-preservation. Or you can use people they know: friends, rivals, enemies…

One important thing to keep in mind is balance between your players. If they don’t consider themselves a unit, hooking one might not be enough to get the entire group; even if they are the kinds where hooking one means hooking them all, focusing too much on one can lead to irritation from the others. Everyone wants the spotlight at some point; giving it out unequally isn’t fair to the ones who are being left out.

Once you’ve got the plot, and the hooks, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to keep people on track. There’s always the chance that they’re going to kill the one who knows a fact that they’ll need to get where they’re supposed to be going. Or that they’ll offend someone who was supposed to be their ally. Or that somebody will see something unrelated and decide that it’s important. This last is a rather common problem among players, and one that takes a lot of practice to learn to deal with. Being too heavy-handed about it, or “railroading” is a very fast way to lose players; I’ll discuss that further tomorrow.

Until next time!

It’s time again to see some nice impractical applications for this week’s tips.

This week, I’m going to focus on one of my more recent attempts to introduce a new character to my narrative.

Her name was Taki, and she was a musician. I designed her to go with a place I’d created (described in yesterday’s riff, here ). Since this place was a city of spirits, I didn’t have to make her entirely humanoid, so I decided to have some fun. At the time, my main rule for designing musicians and groups was that they had to fit music I had access to; Taki was the representative for my selection of koto and shakuhachi music.

I introduced her first by reputation: Taki was a difficult hire, with a very strong and rather idiosyncratic collection of artistic principles. This allowed me to hook the players early; they were intrigued by her picking and choosing her hires, and wanted to see if they qualified. The later admonishment to, among other things, not step on her tail only hooked them further, as they wanted to know if it was a metaphorical or literal order.

Then they found her, practicing in a half-destroyed cluster of buildings under the starlight. “In the middle of the center building is a figure standing over a well-polished koto,” I wrote. “At first glance, she is a very large lizard, with four scaled arms reaching down to pluck the strings with her claws, her frills lying flat against her neck, and her throat sac vibrating as she flutes in accompaniment to her playing. Her robes are deep blue and come down to her ankles, and her scales are bluish-silver.” I then proceeded to elaborate on her. The group soon learned that she could either sound like a flute or talk, but not at the same time, and that she actually had to tickle her throat sac a bit to switch between them; that she had the reptilian habit of tasting the air around her (though not what she tasted), that she felt the past only looked good in the dark (by dark, she meant nothing short of a moonless night) and that as a result, she refused to linger long enough for the sun to come up again; and that she had a very strong philosophical bent and a tendency to speak in not-quite-riddles.

They never did finish their conversation, for that exact reason. She did, however, apparently work.

Until next time!

It’s easy to forget the world around us, but can you imagine if we didn’t have a background? Difficult, isn’t it?  We’d notice the absence of the background in the real world–and though it isn’t quite as obvious in a story or a game, not being able to see the scenery around the characters can still leave quiet disruptions in the suspension of disbelief.

This means that scening is a very important skill, for stories and games alike. In games, it presents a difficulty, due to the limitations of both formats and the attention spans of the players. It’s worst face to face, since players can be rather prone to distraction; there’s nothing quite as bad as realizing that your people zoned out halfway through the explanation of their surroundings. In play by chat, it’s not quite as bad, since they can read over whatever they zoned out on. The catch is that most chat programs have a text limit per post, so you have to break up the description, and it’s hard for your players to tell when you’re finished, so they might either interrupt or sit there waiting a while after you’re done. In play-by-post it’s most straightforward; all text, no interruptions. But the problem with play-by-post is that it doesn’t allow one of the most unique scene-setting tools of the game session: Music.

What this means, for the formats in which you can be interrupted or lose player focus, is that it’s a good idea to account for the possibilities of interruption, and focus on the important parts first. Avoid the story of the D&D DM who began with the treasure in the room, and was interrupted before he was able to tell the players about the ticked-off dragon on the other side. So you’ll want to start with the big things, then go into the small details.

The first thing to think about when scening is what the place is, and what sort of mood you want to get across. These can often feed into each other.

When I describe a scene, I usually start with the light levels. It’s the primary visual cue, and it colors most of the rest of the background. After that, I start in on the big stuff; that’s what people are going to notice most. It doesn’t have to be the largest objects in the room, or even visual things; sometimes it’s a pervasive aroma of some sort, or that odd whistling noise from the other side of the hall, or the way the energy in the room makes people’s hair stand on end when they walk in. Then you toss in the little or the not immediately noticeable details, like the bric-a-brac on the cabinets, or the sound of breathing from the next room over. The big things to remember is that everything you put in should do one of three things: help establish mood, help establish what the setting is, or have some effect (be it usefulness, danger, or something else) on the people in the scene.

Different media allow for different ways to add extra punch to the scene. In a face to face game, or in a chat game if you have a way of sharing music (I recommend pumping it through Ventrilo, though that can get awkward if you haven’t planned ahead), you can use some sort of musical background to add extra atmosphere. It’s an imprecise science, though; I’ll have more on soundtracking in a later post. In any format you can provide pictures, though by face to face it requires using a link rather than being able to just brandish the picture in question.

For instance, the other day I had occasion to introduce a new setting and a new character in my chat-game. Now, this was particularly convenient; there was an aura about the character that allowed her to on her own contribute to the feel of mystery and lost grandeur that I had wanted to give. So what I ended up with was this:

It’s dark out, and a moonless night, but the stars on their own are almost bright enough to light your path. From a distance, the place to which you are going seems to be built like a relatively normal party complex, the walls vaguely shimmering in the starlight and almost amplifying it, but as you move closer you realize that not all of it is whole. In one place, a pagoda-roof is missing one corner; in another, an empty but otherwise beautiful room lacks an entire wall. Some buildings are still functionally intact, but for the teeth of empty windowsills; others have enormous gashes up the sides of which ivy and morning glories thread their way, softening the jagged edges. And there is something else, you realize as you work your way into the complex. Somewhere in this place, so soft as to almost be part of its atmosphere, someone is playing. At this point I kicked in the Ventrilo-music: Duo En’s “Moonlight Over the Castle Ruins.”

Here the point was to get across the feel of what was and is no longer. The combination of the starlit night and the buildings’ own reflection—for various setting reasons, they were made to practically glow in starlight—softened all the rough edges of the place, allowing me to establish it as closer to the memory of what it had been before the damage to it took place, and gave it an air of the mystical that added to this effect. Focusing the description on the damage—the changes to the buildings—allowed me to add to the over-and-gone feeling. And then there was the fact that for once, instead of the soundtrack just being the theme for the place, it was actually being performed there; that allowed me to bring the group into the location in a way that I hadn’t been able to manage in quite a while. (It also let me play a few games with the timing; usually I begin my music right before I start copy-pasting my text into the chat window, rather than waiting until the end.)

So start with the big details, then focus inward. Writing ahead of time is both good practice and excellent for getting all the little fiddly bits just right; all it takes is a few ideas and a little bit of inspiration. Have fun!

Long had the Palace of Burnt Cedars stood on the hill, watching over this valley. Its name had come from the fact that it was built upon what had once been a cedar grove sacred to the Ashardala, the indigenous race now driven out by the conquering Raita people, before their ruler, known to history only as The Bloodthirsty, had in turn been kicked out by the noble Yelin, who then took the throne, building his capital around the Palace of Burnt Cedars and becoming King Yelin the First. He was followed by a run of kings bearing his name, until midway through the reign of Yelin the Thirteenth, who had no son, making it rather difficult for there to be a Yelin XIV. Not to be kept from their tradition, the people tried to foist the noble name of Yelin off on Yelin XIII’s daughter, Silia, but as she had liked her name and wanted to keep it, she resisted. This led to a thirteen-year succession battle, during which….

Are you bored yet?

Exposition is one of the greatest challenges to face both the speculative fiction author and the game-master. On the one hand, this is not the world the audience used to, and the history, the legends, the mode of dress, and almost everything need to be established for those who are unfamiliar with it. How does one go about explaining everything that needs to be explained, while not engaging in infodumps like the one above? And when is it safe to deliver such information?

First, let’s start with what not to do.

Don’t make it a conversation between two people who already know all of it. Speculative fiction writers call this “As we all know, Bob” exposition, and they do not forgive it lightly. Players will be even more bored by it, as it requires the GM to talk to herself for as long as it takes to deliver the information. For the love of whoever you’re using as the Powers That Be in your setting, don’t.

Don’t deliver it unbidden on the tongue of the Designated Plot Escort. While it isn’t quite as bad as “As we all know, Bob”, it’s going to make the Escort come across as—stereotypical at best, insufferable at worst. Answering players’ questions is legal, though—just try to keep it concise. If anything, you’re better off going in bits and pieces and giving them a chance to ask “And then?”

And please do not deliver it as a rant on a character’s backstory without any sort of trigger or preamble in the middle of an otherwise actionless scene, particularly if it’s an internal monologue on the part of the character and nobody can act on it. Even on a play-by-post. Just no.

Okay, I’ve gotten my pet peeves out of the way, and we all know forbidding something without suggesting an alternative is just asking for trouble. So, what do we do?

First, dangle bits and pieces of information: statues of the king from the Time of Ballads, bits of lore that have been an isolated village’s lore for so long that the superstitions remain without knowledge of the reasons, initials carved in the tree under which the village elder naps on summer days (extra credit if he occasionally looks up at them and smiles or sighs), that sort of thing. It hints, and if we’re really lucky, it makes the PCs curious, so they ask about it themselves.

When your PCs are natives of a certain culture, or there are things that everybody knows, though, we can’t get away with that. In that case, I recommend writing down the things they need to know and handing it to them: historical details, local superstitions, what language who is expected to speak, what you don’t do around nobles (and what they do to you if you do it anyway), that sort of thing. They’ll retain it a lot better in written form than if you deliver it all in one long soliloquy at the beginning of the first meet.

And let them ask questions. If you’ve got some sort of stat that determines how well-grounded people are in history, or in matters of magic, or much of anything, by all means use it.

Speaking of letting people ask questions, I’m instituting a suggestions page; look in the tabs up top for the link. Feel free to request future topics or ask questions!

The most difficult thing about putting together a world is often the people. This goes double when you’re running a game, as the impressions your players can get of your secondary characters can have plot-changing repercussions. (Note: If looking for straight writing advice, substitute “Main characters” and “audience” for “PCs” as seems appropriate.)

So how do we get them across properly?

First, we need to know who they are and what, if anything, their purpose is. Are they friends or enemies to the PCs? What sort of emotion are they supposed to evoke? Who are they, when they audience isn’t watching? Figure that out, and then store it away for now; we don’t want it getting too tangled up in the next part.

Then we get into the secondary information. It’s important to realize that only we are likely to end up knowing all of it, unless we’re dealing with really curious people or ones who are very good at reading between the lines. This part is particularly important when dealing with secondary characters who have very defined roles relative to the PCs; there is nothing that ruins a character quite like being the designated love interest first and a person second. Figure out who they would be on their own—personality, motivations, the short-term and long-term goals that spring from these motivations, the quirks that cause them to react in ways that someone of their archetype might not and where those quirks come from, and other useful factors. What’s their culture like? Do they embrace it wholeheartedly, rebel against it, or somewhere in between? Memorize them, and then file them away; you’re not going to be directly using them in your descriptions, since the characters are limited to the knowledge that they themselves can directly acquire.

Now we can bring in other people as individuals, particularly the PCs. One way to develop the emotions between them is to establish a pre-existing connection, whether it’s by blood, tutelage, old rivalry, a vendetta (one-way or two, your choice), or some other factor. This is something you’re probably going to need to coordinate with the player, but that makes it more reliable—after all, since the relationship is as much the player’s creation as yours, she’s going to try to follow it a lot more closely than a player who’s just been told, “This is your teacher, this is how you know him, you’re supposed to respect him, now let’s go.” I’ve seen multiple examples of this in games I’ve both played and run. In one, one of my fellow characters had been written with a massive vendetta against another family in her backstory, and as a result was vehemently opposed to them even when for all practical intents and purposes they were on our side and most of the group was telling her to quit with the prejudice already. An example of the opposite effect of this was in the game I currently run; there was one character, didn’t seem to care what most people thought about him—but would quiet down if he got so much as a disapproving look from his mentor, and shut up completely if she asked him to.

If there isn’t a pre-existing connection, you’re going to want to have at least some idea how the new character will interact with the PCs. Start by figuring out what they know in advance, and what sort of first impression you expect them to get from what they know. Now, that may not be the first impression they end up getting; PCs are unpredictable creatures, particularly when you have a plan. But it will give you something to operate by, and if you combine it with the rest of what you know of the character, it should at least make sure that you won’t be at a loss for first impressions.

Speaking of impressions, you also have to take into account their first impression of your character. That’s the tricky part. Again, a certain amount of player input could help; the best way to ensure a good response is to know what makes the characters tick—or what makes the characters ticked—and aim the side character to mesh with those particular issues. If you’re trying to make a villain work for someone who hates being looked down on, arrogance might be a useful tool. If you’re trying to build a friendship between one of your characters and a PC, incorporate qualities that he values, or play to a shared interest. If you want one of your people to gain the respect of a character whom nobody takes seriously, have him listen to her. Attitude counts for a lot, as well. Sometimes, you can do this before you even introduce the actual character, by tactics ranging from giving one of the group’s enemies (or one of their allies, depending on desired effect) a grudge against them to taking advantage of a character’s associations for people like them to just adding an air of mystery; just a few days ago, I managed to get most of my group interested in talking to a musician they’d never even heard of before that session by mentioning that she was picky about her hires.

In the future I’ll go into detail on some of the techniques in question, and the difficulties with certain character types. For now, practice hard and have fun!

“You’re looking for the writers, the musicians, the drama people, and the sociology majors.” That was the recruitment advice I got from the first person who ran a game for me at college. It’s not always accurate, but for people like us it’s a good start.

The big thing about finding a group is making sure you’re all playing the same game. Now, that doesn’t just mean all playing the same system, and all showing up at the same time. That part’s easy. The difficult part is figuring out the less obvious details.

One is what kind of game is being run: not all games are created equal. If you’re using an established system, how closely are you cleaving to the rules? Some people will be irritated by the constraints of a game that has no rules-flexibility, others will despise one in which things don’t always work the way the book says they do. Are you running something with a very definite plot, or are you giving your players a world and saying “Here it is; have fun”? Some people rail against plots that sweep them up, others prefer to let what’s supposed to happen guide their decisions. How much fighting is there going to be? Talking? Puzzle-solving? How useful are skills that don’t directly apply to the above?

Then you get to writing and characterization style, which matters a lot more than many people might think. I’ve seen a few cases of this going wrong. One was a game in which about 60% of the group were trying to be comparatively serious, and the other 40% had a tendency to goof off at every available opportunity and stretch the bounds of suspension of disbelief; there was a certain amount of grudge going between those sides, and when the fellow running the game got into it, things only got messier. There was one time in which a game had been introduced as a lighthearted run through a relatively safe neck of its world, adventurous but not taking itself too seriously, and—well, suffice it to say that most of the group was in a corresponding style, except for two members who looked like they’d stepped right out of a rather grim and very over-the-top barbarian fantasy novel. To say that this caused difficulties would be a minor understatement—sure, it was in only one game, but it was two entirely different stories.

And don’t forget the presence or absence of the fourth wall. If you’re the type who wants to run a game that could be publishable if the names were changed and the clear product identity markers were taken out, seeing the group refer to each other by name before actually being introduced, accept a character they barely know who has little in common with them (or, for that matter, try to hang onto a character who wouldn’t logically stay) with no apparent rationale beyond “He’s a PC”, constantly drop references or anachronisms in character, and in general beat on the fourth wall as much as they do their enemies can be highly frustrating. By the same token, someone who stays within the fourth wall in a game in which it is meant to be broken can be just as bad.

The short version is, you want to make sure that the group can agree on what the game is. The best way to do this is to tell your recruits all of your expectations. System, format, level of plot control, level of humor, how detailed you want their characters to be (trust me, this matters), how much of a tolerance or lack thereof you have for metagaming and cross-world references, what kind of story you expect to be telling (having subgenre examples or writing styles might work, or giving them a bit of an idea how you write), what sorts of situations are likeliest to crop up, and whatever else you think might be relevant.

Good luck!

So now that you’ve decided to play, and figured out approximately how (no need to commit yet, though, since these things are all intermingled), the next choice is what you’re going to play. Now, this part gets a bit more difficult.

First, there’s the simple question of whether you’d prefer a freeform or an established system. The advantages to freeform are quite simple: there’s no cost to it, since you don’t need dice, rulebooks or much of anything else; it can handle any genre you’re willing to throw at it; and you don’t have to worry about game balance in the traditional sense. There are catches, though. The lack of formalized mechanics leads to possible confusion in the players (or a strong possibility of one of the players finding one tactic that looked reasonable at the time and applying it to everything in potentially plot-breaking ways). Similarly, it’s hard to resist the urge to re-power things on the fly, which can backfire a great deal. Moreover, there’s not much of a jumping-off point, making it a bit harder to just throw together a game for a quick test of how this stuff works. It should be universal in format, but most of the freeform I’ve played has been by chat, so I tend to associate it with that medium.

Then you get to established systems—and let me tell you, the list even of relatively well-known ones is rather daunting. There are a lot of factors to take into account there, including the genre you want, how interested you are in dealing with game mechanics, and even what format you would prefer to play in. And some systems have edition difference issues, which makes life even more difficult. Note: Many systems’ purposes can be subverted; the below explanations focus more on what the system best lends itself to—and my knowledge is admittedly rather limited. (Comments are welcome!)

Genre is the easiest thing to sort games by—well, aside from GURPS, but that’s mainly because GURPS can do any genre to some degree with the right sourcebooks. For high-powered high fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons is one of the prime contenders, with the more wuxia-oriented Exalted coming in at a close second. People working with Earth as a setting tend to favor d20 Modern (for Earth in general), Shadowrun (for cyberpunk), Call of Cthulhu (horror—comes in its own version or in d20), the World of Darkness (various dark supernatural), Scion (demigods in the real world), or Spirit of the Century (pulp fiction-based, though highly adaptable). The superhero genre has several contenders, including the HERO system, d20’s Mutants and Masterminds imprint, and White-Wolf’s now-defunct Aberrant (good luck finding it). For those who prefer a dystopia-flavor and lots of intraparty suspicion and conflict, Paranoia is a popular choice. Science-fiction has several possibilities, including at least one d20 variant and the rather pretty Alternity. There are also a host of more niche-oriented games, from the Amber Diceless RPG (based on the series by Roger Zelazny) and Dogs in the Vineyard (Mormon enforcers in an alternate Utah) to the very over the top wuxia-based system Weapons of the Gods and the rather quirky variants of PDQ.

One thing to take into account is the basic mechanic of the game. Some games, like D&D and its d20 analogues, are class-based; abilities are determined by classes, or overall templates. Others, like GURPS, are point-buys: improvement comes bit by bit rather than in batches, and any stat has a value and can be improved. Even point buys have a certain amount of variation; some, most notably the White-Wolf titles (Exalted, World of Darkness, and Scion) are somewhere between the two, with templates that provide a few unique powers and can serve as guidelines, and separation between categories of stats during character generation, but an overall point-buy experience mechanic. While point-buys are more open to customization, they’re also easier to make either massively overpowered by specialization, absurd by taking advantage of “Flaw” rules, or just plain ineffective; class bases allow for somewhat less customization, but are more straightforward to build and require a different sort of knowledge to break.

Another is medium compatibility. Most games can be played in almost any format, though some are particularly suited to one or particularly irritating in another. For instance, D&D, particularly 4^th edition, is a highly visuals-dependent system, and as a result is less compatible with chat-based gaming than it is with face to face (where you can use maps and models easily) or play by post (where a map can be posted by the GM between turns without slowing the game much more). Similarly, systems which focus as much on non-combat mechanics and don’t have particularly position-dependent combat systems (most White-wolf games, for instance) are well-suited to the written formats like chat or play by post. Again, these issues can be bypassed with sufficient effort and skill.

Another note: Pay very close attention to edition number. D&D is up to four, and none with non-matching first digits are particularly compatible with each other (for the storytelling game-master, I recommend 3.5; 4 is considerably more suited to a combat-intensive, tactical style). Exalted has two, which are semi-compatible but still sufficiently different that a build made for one usually won’t translate to the other (I personally recommend First, as the power creep from Second is getting absurd and I have a rather low opinion of dice-based social interactions, but the combat system has a bit more of a safety net for new players in Second, and the material is overall more organized). Shadowrun has at least four, the World of Darkness has its own rewrite (whether you want the new one or the old one I can’t say, but making sure you don’t have a mix of the above is recommended), and… well, the short version is, make sure your editions match. In general, newer systems will be easier to find than older ones.

Tomorrow: Bringing in the players!

As joanne1398 has pointed out in her response to my opening post, a lot of the problem with getting into roleplaying is knowing where to get started and whom to get started with. This series will be on the basic decisions that go into game setup.

The first thing you want to consider is the medium in which to play. There’s three basic options: The traditional live game, the game-by-IM/chat, or the play-by-post.

The live game is what you probably think about when you hear about the average game system: a crowd of like-minded people gathered around a table and talking through the game. The first advantage of this is that you’re getting the social experience as well as the practice; everybody’s there, you can chat before and after session (or during, for that matter), and everyone can crack up over the in-jokes and toss each other dice (if applicable) as needed. Another advantage, if you’re playing in one of the systems in which positioning really matters (almost any edition of D&D, for example), you can see and even interact with the board easily. Moreover, there’s a strong element of body language, of face to face activity like jumping up on the chairs and making a speech (yes, I’ve done that), of doing funny accents without it looking silly, and of… well, being there. It’s also the fastest format to play in, due to its lack of typing lag.

There are a few catches, though. One is an issue of logistics—can you find a sufficient number of players looking for the same thing you are in a game? If so, can you get their schedules to line up, even taking into account transportation? Who’s going to host? Another, this one more important for those of us who are writers first, is that unlike chat or play-by-post, there is no way to keep a log. As a result, we can’t look back over what we did quite as effectively as we can in the other two formats. Moreover, for those of us who are more articulate through the printed word than spoken, or even just quieter than the rest of the people we choose to work with, being face to face can serve as a bit of a handicap.

Second is the play by chat. I’ll admit now, I’m biased towards this one; it wasn’t the first I played in, but it was the first I played a character I would consider successful in with people other than my immediate family in, and it’s the only format in which I will willingly run a game solo. Its first advantage is that it’s a balance between the other two; it can almost match the speed of a face to face game, but has a good measure of the locale flexibility of the play by post—I’ve seen chat games run with people spanning three states worth of West Coast, and was even in one in which the players were in locations spanning most of the Western Hemisphere and the game-master was in England. The second is the ability to keep a log, so you can look over your sessions afterwards, review what happened, overanalyze the players’ actions, make sure you can keep your non-player characters straight, and coordinate your plot points. The third is the potential for richness of description: you can type a certain amount ahead of time and then copy-paste it in, rather than reading it off of a script, and if you’re ad-libbing you can make absolutely sure you didn’t tell them the light was blue six times. (Theoretically.)

There are plenty of difficulties to this format, though. One is that, while it eliminates a few of the logistical issues of the face to face, it does still require lined-up time slots. Another is that it’s more impersonal, and tone of voice isn’t as cleanly conveyed over the Internet. Yet another is the lack of visuals, though there exists software that can work around that. Another is the type-lag; it takes longer to type words than say them. This can range from irritating (“What’s taking him so long?”) to downright hazardous (one person responding to the first half of a sentence, but the response landing after the second half, which says something completely different).

Last, we have the play by post, conducted by individual posts in message boards. This one’s advantages are numerous. First off, it is the closest of the three formats to transcending location and business schedule: you get onto the board, type a post, and let it sit for a while so that others can respond. Second, it both allows for and encourages vivid description—the character limits range from high enough that they rarely interfere to nonexistent, and there’s plenty of time to formulate one’s posts. Third, it’s the easiest to recruit for; most message boards on which games can be run have plenty of people who would be more than willing to play. Some will even have tools, like built-in dice rollers and map functions.

The catches? First is its speed. It can move decently quickly when everyone is online and posting, but even then it can’t match either of the others, and more often there will be days in which only one person posts. Second is that different people have different schedules; it’s quite possible for there to be a day in which, while one player is off at class, two others manage to get from one end of an argument to another. (During fights, particularly under a set initiative order, these problems both magnify each other—particularly since under most message boards, it can take three or four posts to resolve a roll.) Third is their longevity; just as play by posts are easy to find people for, they’re easy to lose people from, often without warning.

Tomorrow: System (or lack thereof) and how it fits with format.

Friday:  The one day a week on which I spend my time outwitting my own little sources of chaos.  As a result, I’m not going to give you a long-winded rant today, or any other Saturday.  Instead, I’m going to show you how I’ve been using what I’ve been ranting about.

So, since I’ve been making such a fuss over what can be learned from PCs this week, here’s what I’ve learned from mine so far.

The Laws of Drama aren’t always enough.  Sometimes, when you dump two people who are always bickering into an unfamiliar environment, where the only ones they can depend on are each other and they have to work together to survive… they’ll still bicker.

There are always aspects to their personalities you can’t expect.  I have one player who is pulling these things out at every available opportunity.  Just the other day, I was treated to a lovely explanation of why he didn’t operate under the assumption that the object of his affection might turn on him:  He did.  He just didn’t think it would bother him enough to be worth formulating contingencies about.  The teammate he was explaining this to found it unbelievable.

People will sympathize with the oddest things.  This includes calling dead Creators from before the beginning of time that are possessing their teammates “the poor thing”, trying to initiate romances with living Creators from before the beginning of time, or deciding that a skinchanger that favors feeding on those of pure hearts might be a better leader for a tribe of barbarians than the one he replaced (most of the group disagreed, fortunately).  Of course, these are the same people who will spent a good hour or so mistrusting someone you created to be an ally and gave them no reason whatsoever to mistrust.

And there’s always the rules of confrontation:  If you expect them to talk, they’ll fight.  If you expect them to fight, they’ll talk.  If you expect them to keep their mouths shut, they’ll reveal a secret that should really get them killed.  If there’s a none of the above solution, they’ll take it, particularly when it just happens to be so symbolically appropriate you have to accept it–and they won’t even realize that’s why it works.  And just because they’ve been backed into a corner and are facing off against someone they’ve been vowing to destroy for over a year in real-time and almost as long in game-time does not mean that they won’t, against all prior precedent, try to run away.

Back to real content tomorrow!