As I was in the midst of carnage
I saw beside me an arm,
On each several finger of the fingers
A ring of red gold like blood
Its heroic proportions, its vast size,
Alas! for him from whom the limb was severed!
Its beauty, its length and its span,
Ruddy and beautiful were the nails.
A sleeve of glossy silk,
And a golden tunic sleeve,
Was around its whole length
Up to the corselet.
I lift it up, it was no small effort,
The hand, both flesh and blood;
I hear it with me, terrible was the distance,
To Druim Ibar of the estuaries.
The Hand of Nuada that I found there,
The High King of the Tuatha De Danaan,
It was seven year in my bird's abode:
There,O Fintan is my story for you!
- A bird to Fintan in an Irish Poem reprinted in The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom
Now I know where that arm went to. Pesky bird.
Sometimes the plot of a game requires a GM to keep secrets. Is it better for the GM and other players to keep most out-of-character knowledge secret, or to assume that players are capable of keeping in-character and out-of-character knowledge separate? Where and how do you draw the line as a GM and/or player between what secrets should be kept and which ones are OK to reveal?
I believe in trusting the players and try to let them be involved in everything of the story even listening in on parts that they are not involved with. I have the good fortune to play with soe excellent roleplayers who are quite capable of remembering what their character does and I believe they enjoy the game more by getting to see the whole story.
In the last couple of "episodes" of Changeling: The Shattered Crystal I started and ended the adventures by describing short scenes that none of the PCs were involved with. Just like a lot of adventure shows on television start out with the teaser of a villian preparing his next dastardly plot or ebhind the scenes characters discussing the actions of the main characters, I gave the players a teaser of what is to come or what is actually going on behind-the-scenes and with it a little bit of information that their characters didn't have. Instead of losing suspense by giving away the mysteries, I tried to give the players just enough to keep them interested without giving away the big mysteries; a teaser of the over-all plot and things to come.
The only times that I believe in keeping secrets are when the plot is a mystery and the bit of information is a significant clue that may give it away to everyone before the suspense has been built up properly or when the characters are actively working against eachother. Then I'll have secret conferences with players. Of course, if the characters are conspiring against eachother, the players will usually ask to pull the GM aside.
A long time ago I read an article on GMing that suggested starting out and ending each game with a piece of music or something that becomes a ritual that tells the players that "the game has begun." I tried it out for the first time with the Vurt/Cyberpunk/Masterbook game I ran. I started each game out by either playing or quoting the first track from Billy Idol's album, Cyberpunk which I will now quote to the best of my memory.
The future has imploded in to the present with no nuclear war. The new battlefields are people's minds and souls. The Corporations are the new government. Computer-generated worlds are the new frontier. Although we say all information should be free, it is not. Information is power and currency in the virtual world that we inhabit. Welcome to the future....cyberpunk.
I would end each Vurt adventure with a snippet of a radio program that exists in the Vurt books, the Game Cat. The Game Cat reviews the newest Vurts to hit the streets and warns vurt-heads about the dangers of the vurt. In some of the early games I just read Game Cat passages out of the Jeff Noon novels but later I had the Game Cat talk about things that directly realted to the game. When one character faced off of against his father in the vurt, the Game Cat ended that adventure warning his listeners not to try to work out all of their psychological issues with vurt. The vurt can guide you deeper into psyche and give form to your greatest fears but there are some things you have to work out in the real world.
This framing technique worked really well in Vurt and I have used it in several campaigns since. In some games I used music at the beginning of each session. In my first Changeling game I started some of the sessions with a poem. (I didn't have a fitting poem each game but luckilly C has quite a collection of poetry books for me to draw from.) In the last Changeling game I tried the teasers.
(It's been a while since I posted one of these. This next one is extremely important for Amber GMs.)
Rule #6: God-like NPCs suck. Avoid using them. A character can have god-like powers, but he or she should still be flawed. If you design a really powerful villain, make sure that the characters can see some sign of weakness. Give them hope that your new villain, despite his or her fantastic powers, has some flaw that. The glimmer of hope that they can use the knowledge of that flaw will keep them struggling. Otherwise, where is the hope? What is the point of struggling if the villain already knows all your plans, has absolutely no weaknesses and can blip your character out of existence with a simple thought? Even a friendly NPC should not allowed to be built without limits. Otherwise, the characters will know that they can go to that NPC and have everything solved, so why should they do it themselves?
Ginger asks: Describe three systems you have gamed under: one you thought was good, one you thought was all right, and one you didn’t care for. What were the good points and the bad points of each system? Did the systems support their genre? Were they complex or simple? How easy were they to GM and play? Is there a system you’d really like to try that you haven’t? Which ones wouldn’t you try based on reading them?
My thinking on game systems is that whatever system the GM is most comfortable with is fine by me. I would even play AD&D (a system I can't stand) if a good GM were running it. Who knows? Maybe the problems I have with AD&D stem from having really bad dungeon-masters.
Game systems that really work
GURPS- I've run several games in GURPS and the system is great for certain settings. The combat system can be as complicated or as simple as the GM wants and the GM can easily add or subtract as many rules as he/she likes. Character Creation is about as balanced as you can get. (The idea of a truly balanced game is the holy grail of game design. It's nice to strive for, but you're chasing a myth.) The detailed skill system allows for more detail in the all important question of "what can my character do?" Experience and character growth allows characters to grow at a fairly realistic pace while being able to gain new skills after each adventure. The game only breaks down at higher point (aka high-powered) levels as character creation becomes extremely unbalanced and time-consuming.
Champions- (aka Hero System) Champions is is a little heavy on the rules and unlike GURPs it isn't as easy for the GM to run without using all of the detailed rules. However, most of the rules are excellent and add a sense of depth to the action. Combat in Champions can really feel like the action in comic books. Comparing Champions to the other superhero games I have played is like comparing the movie Batman to Spiderman. Both are based off of comic books characters and are fun movies, but the action sequences in Spiderman actually felt like a comic book while the fight sequences in Batman were stiff and awkward. I've never used the Hero System for anything besides Superheroes, but I would think that it would also work well for a very-high powered fantasy game. Any low-powered game would probably be better off using another system, since Hero was really created for the superhero genre.
Masterbook- (the out-of-print "universal" system from West End Games) Masterbook included the Indiana Jones Roleplaying Game, Tank Girl, Necroscope, Tales from the Crypt and one of my favorite games of all time: Bloodshadows. The system was much more streamlined than GURPS or Champions. Character stats can be created in 10 minutes and still have a decent amount of detail. The main thing that I loved about Masterbook was the card system. At the beginning of each game, players were given cards that allow their characters to take special actions or in some cases be able to add their own sub-plots to the game. Also, Masterbook required very little dice-rolling. In combat, one dice roll would determine both if a character hits and how much damage the hit does.
These game system are ones that I feel are OK but could be a lot better.
Storyteller- (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Wraith, Changeling, Hunter, Mummy, Exalted) There are things that I like about White Wolf's Storyteller system. Character creation is a painless process. Basic skill checks are really simple to do and I have always liked the idea of "the level of your skill=the number of dice you roll", but it falls horribly on its face when you get in to combat. White Wolf has tried hard over the years to fix the flaws in the system but in my Changeling game I figured out what the system really needed: a complete overhaul. In Changeling I had to throw out a lot of the rules for cantrip casting (both Mage and Changeling have magic systems that are far more complicated than they needed to be) and change the dice rolling system to someting more streamlined. Another option I have found that improves White Wolf immensely is to play it diceless. If you want to use dice, be ready to tinker with the rules.
Amber- Amber got one thing right, but it was a biggie. "We don't need dice." Dice are nice, but sometimes they can get in the way. I had run several game systems diceless (GURPS, Storyteller and Palladium) before Amber came out, but it was nice to see a game come out tell me people to put their dice away occassionally. Unfortunately, Amber has a lot of flaws. The powers and how they are bought could use a complete overhaul allowing for variations in how characters can use the powers such as Caine's "Trump Tricks" in Shadow Knight which allows him to listen in on Trump Conversations (like he did in the Corwin books) without being a trump artist. In general, I don't think the diceless system is perfect for the Amber setting but it works. If I were to start up an Amber campaign next week, I would probably use GURPS. GURPS works just as well as a diceless game as any other game system and allows for a lot more detail on what a character is good at and how good he or she is.
A system that doesn't work-
Palladium- (Palladium Fantasy, Heroes Unlimited, RIFTS, Robotech, TMNT and more) My first roleplaying game was Heroes Unlimited. I GMed or played in a Palladium game about once a week all through high school. I ran a Heroes Unlimited campaign that lasted five years. You's think I'd have fond memories of Palladium. I don't. The system has a lot in common with AD&D and other earlier RPGs and suffers many of the same flaws. The rules often don't make any sense, (I won't get started on the rules and spare you the lecture) but the thing I dislike most is character creation and advancement. Palladium is level-based. Instead of constantly learning from his/her day-to-day experiences, he/she doesn't learn anything until he/she reaches the next level when suddenly he/she becomes better at everything, tougher to kill, and learns x more spells! What is the source of this epiphany and why did killing 1d6+1 orcs suddenly cause our trusty wizard to understand the spell "Carpet of Adhesion" while also becoming 1d6 HP tougher and 5% better at swimming? Who knows?
So why did I GM a game for so long that I didn't like? Well, my friends and I didn't know anything about the other games out there (a few players had played AD&D and warned me it was worse which after trying I agreed) and we were having fun. I tinkered with the rules enough to make them stomach-able and focused more on the stories. By the time the Heroes Unlimited game ended it was "mostly diceless" anyway and the rules were more mine that Palladium's. I eventually weened my high school gaming buddies off of Palladium with GURPS and we never looked back. Eventually, we even returned to the world of the "Global Guardians" using Champions and I was a happy GM. We were returning to the game world we spent years building and I was able to GM it in a system that added more to the game than it hindered it. Sure I had to tinker with Champions as well but at least I had a solid base.
Games I would love to play or GM based on reading the book:
Nobilis- (No suprise here.) In my opinion, it is a much, much better diceless system than Amber.
Stormbringer- If you know me or have payed close attention to my blog the last couple of weeks, this shouldn't be much of a suprise either. Character creation is simple enough and the system doesn't seem overly complex or simplistic. I just got a copy of the newest version of the rulebook and the Corum supplement. (Corum is another Michael Moorcock fantasy series.) The new edition seems to have improved a lot on the old editions.
D&D Third Edition It's still level-based but it seems to have improved in a lot of other ways. I think it would be a lot of fun as a simple hack-n-slash, orc-bashing dungeon crawl game like the old Heroquest boardgame and would be a good chance for me to get more use out all these fantasy miniatures I've been buying. Still, for "serious roleplaying" I would look elsewhere. To quote my friend Neil, "D&D makes an excellent video game but I wouldn't use it as a roleplaying game."
A game I would never want to play in again:
The Morrow Project- The most rules intensive game I have ever played. A neat setting, but the system actually has charts to see wether you die instantly from getting punched in the face. (There is after all, a one in a million chance....) The Morrow Project goes in to more detail on the types of wounds a character can get than any RPG ever should. "Let me see....you rolled a 46.....that's a sucking chest wound with a 40% chance of instant heart failure from the shock.....you didn't make it! Lucky dog. If you had made it you would have lived for 2d6 more minutes in excruciating pain."
based on some of my favorite books listed earlier.