The following are simply my thoughts on running a shadowrun game; they may or may not work for you. Always remember to play to your strengths as a game master and deviate or ignore my advice when it suits you. While these tips have worked for me in the past, they may not work for you or your group.

Shadowrun is Fantasy Cyberpunk
The one thing that sets Shadowrun apart from other cyberpunk games is that it incorporates a lot of fantasy into the world. Shadowrun is filled with shamans, mages, elves, dwarves, trolls, and even dragons. Don’t forget to include these fantastic elements in your game where appropriate – they will lend a lot of flavor and interest to your game.

Use the metahuman races, mages, and other fantastical creatures and threats when appropriate to the situation. This is the one thing that really makes Shadowrun unique from other cyberpunk games and it should be used when possible and appropriate. But remember that these fantastic things reside alongside technology, not separate from it.

Shadowrun is a Caper Game at Heart
A caper game is simply a game focused around a group of thieves or criminals who commit illegal acts, using cons or theft, for their own ends. Remembering this can give you a great many ideas for runs and help to focus a game around a particular type of caper. Generally a shadowrun team will develop a type of caper or run that they excel at performing, so if this happens it’s likely that they’ll be hired by Johnson’s who want them for this type of job.

Being a caper game at heart, its easy to find inspiration for runs. Simply think about what the Johnson and his corporation wants and then set up a few obstacles to obtaining that object or person. For example, if Ares wants the plans for a new laser pistol from their competitor, you have the caper: steal the plans. Now you just need to figure out who has it now, what protection that object has, and a few ways for the team to find out what these protections might be. Don’t worry about providing the team a way to get around them: most players are more than creative enough to figure this out and all you have to do is react.

Simply put, figure out what their employer wants, figure out who has the object of desire currently, and then place protection and obstacles to obtaining that object. Almost all runs boil down to either stealing something, kidnapping someone (for good or ill), or killing someone who knows too much (or not enough).

Technology is Ubiquitous
Being set in 2070, Shadowrun is filled with all sorts of technology, which you shouldn’t forget about for a moment. This doesn’t just mean high tech digital security and hacking. It also means that the store you walk into has an Augmented Reality display for everyone, that everyone and their dog has a commlink, and that very little is done on paper these days.

When the characters walk down the street be sure to describe what they see in Augmented Reality. Also remember that this Augmented Reality doesn’t have to conform to real world physics or ideals, either. Many businesses will use AR to really spruce up a plain building, creating objects that fly out at you, that flash, and that try to spam your Commlink.

Also remember that nearly everything is wireless now, even down to cyberlimbs and simple objects. Information is never more than a thought and an eye blink away, and you have to be very careful to make sure that someone else isn’t stealing your data. Corporations know this, too, and will often protect sensitive data behind shielded walls or even servers that can only be accessed manually (which makes a good goal for a team – get to the secured server undetected).

Combat is Brutish, Deadly, and Short
Smart shadowrunners know that running away is the smart thing to do. Shadowrun combat is often fairly deadly and most threats are entirely capable of taking down entire runner teams in just a few short rounds. Add to this that most healing isn’t nearly as instant as in most games and you have a recipe for dead runners.

By no means should you avoid adding in combat encounters, but generally the focus of a shadowrun game is not getting into a fight in the first place. It’s also important to remember that most opposition are just working for a paycheck, so when things go south they aren’t afraid to retreat and try again later (if at all).

Mostly I like to use combat to add some excitement to a run, not as a the main event. If the characters are clever enough to avoid combat, by no means force it on them. If they successfully sneak around roll with it and don’t just make up “random encounters” for them to fight.

Megacorps are Businesses: Threat Them as Such
Megacorps are businesses first and foremost, and as any business they are ultimately concerned only with the bottom line. They hire shadowrunners to do dirty work that they don’t want to be caught doing themselves. Be this sabotaging a competitors operations, stealing secret plans for a new product, or even forcefully “hiring” a rival worker, they do what it takes to make money.

This also means that they prefer to distance themselves from shadowrunners as much as possible: this is where the Johnson comes in. He’s a middle man between the runners and the corp, and most often they don’t know everything about the run. In fact, shadowrunners rarely have the whole story about why they’re doing something. Most good teams try to check this out ahead of time, but when they don’t bad things can happen.

Just remember that the folks hiring the runners are more concerned about making money than anything else. But they also want to do things quietly – runners who make a habit of doing things loudly and without much finesse often don’t get hired for anything other than brutal sabotage. If the runners keep doing things sloppy and carelessly then jobs just might dry up.

Avoid Over-Use of Screw Jobs
Shadowrun has a reputation as a game that encourages a “screw job,” where the runners are generally treated like dirt and betrayed by their employers at the first opportunity. This is neither fun for the players or all that realistic. Most Johnsons and Corporations want to groom a decent working relationship with runners and so try to avoid screwing them over all the time. Else the word gets around and pretty soon they can’t get any but the most desperate of shadowrunners to work for them.

So only use a screw job when it really is in the best interest of the corp to do so. And even then, try to set it up so that the runners will either die or have no way to trace back the screw job to its source. At the same time, make sure that the players have some way to figure this out ahead of time: if they do their homework.

Sources of Inspiration
Finally, there’s nothing like stealing ideas from other sources when running a game. The RPG.net forums actual play section has several very good actual play reports from good GMs. Lost Demiurge ran a brilliant game entitled the Sorrow of Elves that you can find here: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=319569. I helped to start a 101 Instant Scenarios thread that can be found here: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=321504.

Further inspiration can be found from various caper movies (Oceans 11+ and others) and the film Smoking Aces is a brilliant movie that shows just how badly a run can go. Finally, the new TNT show Leverage is more or less Shadowun – Magic: the Television Series. If you want to run a game about a bunch of hooders then this show is tailor made for inspiration, both for players and GMs.

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Synopsis

Dungeons & Dragons has long been a game about exploring new places and fighting dangerous monsters. Usually these adventures are set either in an established campaign setting or a home brew world devised by the dungeon master. This variant outlines a method in which both the players and the dungeon master can create a world together, creating a new method for world creation.

Basic Rules

This method of world creation is quite simple; the dungeon master and the characters each take turns naming facts about the world, its geography, its people, its customs, and its legends. Both the dungeon master and the players are encouraged to think creatively and to place locations and legends that they’re interested in exploring and examining. This is a simple process that has only a few basic rules.

• Everything Exists: Any information found in the core rules supplements exists in the world in some fashion. No participant in this process can state a fact or legend that invalidates a choice found in the rules books. The dungeon master and the players should be able to select any rules option in the books in this campaign setting.
• The Basic Premise is True: The basic premise of dungeons & dragons is still intact in this world. Tieflings once hailed from Bael Turath, all of the core deities exist in some fashion, and adventurers still explore dark dungeons and buy magical treasures. While individual facts about the common legends might change, the basic premise cannot be altered with stated facts (though legends can offer different options).
• No Contradictions: Once a participant in the world building process states a fact or legend, nothing can contradict this statement. If a player states that the village of Green Hills exists in the Flowering Valley another player cannot then state that the village doesn’t exist. Once someone states a fact it becomes just that: a fact. You can, however, append additional information to a stated fact. In the above example a player could state that the village of Green Hills is linked to the Feywild and that it only actually appears during the daytime, disappearing at night.
• Beware the Monkey’s Paw: While this is a cooperative world, the GM does hold ultimate power over the setting, mostly in order to ensure that the game is actually a challenge. If you state that the town well holds powerful magical items the DM can alter this fact to ensure that 1st level characters don’t start off with holy avengers. Be careful what you wish for, as the DM can alter facts if they’re clearly placed only to give an unfair advantage to the players.
• Be Cooperative: This is a group exercise and as such try not to rain on someone else’s parade. Work with everyone else at the table to make an enjoyable setting. If someone raises a big objection to one of your facts ask them why they object and consider meeting them halfway. While you have ultimate power on your turn you can and should talk to the other players if there’s some question about your fact or legend.

Building the World

Filling in the map is an easy and enjoyable process. Simply gather your group together, grab a piece of paper, and place a dot somewhere near the middle of the paper. This is the starting village where the characters will begin their adventuring career. You can name it now or leave the name as the first stated fact of the world building process. Then elect one player as the scribe (this is usually the GM). The scribe writes down all the stated facts so that there’s a written record of the world.

There are two smaller parts to the entire world building process. The first part is the phase, which is a broad category of the world building process. The phase determines what kinds of facts and legends each player can state during each round. Each round every player can name one fact or legend for that phase. Most phases consist of two to five rounds before the next phase begins.

Each round every player gets a chance to name a fact or legend appropriate to the phase subject. These statements can either be a simple word or phrase that other players can elaborate on or a one or two sentence statement. Players can make two types of statements.

A fact is something that is completely true (so long as it follows the general rules above). Examples of a fact would be the location of some terrain feature, a general truth about a race, or the name of a place or culture.

A legend is like a fact, save that the details of it can change to fit the story or the needs of the world. Legends can also simply be keywords, adventure ideas, or common beliefs of the world. Unlike facts, legends can be changed by the GM in secret to surprise the players. Examples of legends would be a story that a dungeon exists in the Sunlight Plains, that dragons cannot see people who wear their own color or that when a wizard casts a spell his eyes glow.

The Phases

While there are no hard and fast rules for how many phases are used before play begins or for how many rounds each phase contains, the general outline below will produce a vibrant and adequately detailed region suitable for adventuring.

Phase One: World Myths [2-3 Rounds]
World myths are almost universally legends rather than facts. World Myths tend to include legends about how each race was created, vast world spanning legends, and facts that everyone should know. This phase is intended to get everyone thinking about the broad theme of the world.

Phase Two: The Races [2-4 Rounds]
This phase can contain both facts and legends about equally. This phase allows the players to detail the races and how they might deviate from the core books. This phase is most useful for players who want to come from a unique culture or for players who want to ensure that a race is either common or uncommon.

Phase Three: Local Geography [3-5 Rounds]
In this phase the players begin to fill in the blank map with details about the local geography. Everyone takes turns drawing in terrain features such as mountain ranges, rivers, plains, and other such things. Players can either leave the places unnamed or given them a name that might suggest further facts.

Phase Four: The Village [2-4 Rounds]
In this phase the players begin to name facts and legends about the starting village. These can include the absence or presence of services or people, the local religion, the general feeling of the town, and other such things. This phase can be expanded if the players expect to spend a great deal of time there.

Phase Five: Local Threats & Factions [1-3 Rounds]
Once the world has been filled with a few terrain features and a local village, the players now need to place a few threats and monsters in the area. Threats are generally found in the surrounding terrain while factions are generally reserved for the starting village or for neighboring nations. Players can be quite vague here, leaving a lot of wiggle room for the GM to plan adventure around.

Phase Six: Local Legends [1-3 Rounds]
This phase is entirely limited to legends, not facts. Players should start listing common legends about places, people, and races. These are intended to give the DM ideas for story seeds and adventures, so the more evocative and vague you are the better.

Phase Seven: The World Beyond [2-4 Rounds]
During this phase the players all take turns filling out facts and details about the large world. This can be where the roads lead to, neighboring towns or villages, facts about the local nation, or even the presence of another continent. This is intended to provide locations for further adventures once the local area has been explored.

Phase Eight: Final Details [3-8 Rounds]
This final phase is intended for a catch-all where players can name a few last details about the world. No subject for facts or legends is forbidden and this phase is generally used to flesh out existing facts a bit further.

Bringing it All Together

Once all of the phases have been brought together, the DM should compile all of the information into one easy to read format. This is now the beginning of the campaign world. As play begins the DM and the players can further define the facts during play. Should the characters find themselves lost for something to do they can simple start naming more facts that the DM can use to create further adventures.

When the players finally progress beyond their home region you can go through this process once again to create a new region ripe for exploration. Simply start at phase three for the new area, keeping in mind that previous facts cannot be invalidated. In this way you create the world a little bit at a time.

Final Word

This process is far from the final word on cooperative world building, and indeed it is not even that unique. These are simply my suggestions for the process and you should change them to better suit your own group and play style. Above all remember that building the world should be fun for everyone.

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And by good design, I mean graphic and print design, not game design itself. I’ve been a practicing print designer in the RPG industry for a few years now, and if I’ve learned anything it’s that too few people pay attention to print design as it relates to an RPG. Sure, the big houses generally do a very good job, but I feel that the smaller press companies often don’t pay enough attention to the subject and art of designing a visual look for a product.

At its core, print design works to enhance the rules and feel of a product.  It should take the rules, present them in a clear and legible manner, and then give you a visual short hand for the theme and subject of the game.  When someone opens up your book they should immediately be able to grasp the theme of the game from the look of the product without actually reading the rules.  And when they do start reading the rules, they should be able to do so easily, with a minimum of effort.

I’m certain that part of this is that some developers do all of the layout and print design themselves, both out of necessity and lack of available help.  Yet even this isn’t a huge excuse, as it doesn’t take much effort to learn the very basics of good design.  There are dozens of wonderful publications and websites that explain the basics in a clear and concise manner.  Even if you’re not visually talented or skilled you can still at least create a product that’s legible and easy to read.

I’ve seen too many books that try to cram as much text as possibel into a set amount of pages, resulting in a muddied wall of text that’s intimidating to read.  I think that it’s better to either spring for the extra pages or cut some material in order to bring the text size up to something readable.  I’d much rather be able to easily access and read the rules than get a few more pages of content.

I think that this is where 4th edition really shines.  Sure, Wizards of the Coast has a lot of money to throw around on things like design, but for once they spent it wisely.  The text is airy, easy to read, and very distinct.  The visual design space is open but filled with a very neat visual shorthand and theme.  The artwork is wonderful and used correctly.  Some people complain that the large text size means less content for the money, but in my book this is an example of very good design.

Ultimately the goal of a print designer is to present the game text in as concise, readable, and beautiful manner as possible.  It’s not some job you can just pawn off on anyone if you want to produce something that’s going to be a truly memorable project.  If you’re working on your own game rules, try to find someone who knows what they’re doing.  It’s time that we give print designers their due and recognition in bringing an RPG to life.  Don’t settle for something that merely works when you could get a book that truly sings.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that this might be somewhat self serving.  I’m talking about my own role in the industry, but I’d like to think that I know what I’m talking about.  Print design is important, especially in a book filled with rules and ideas!  But I’ll end this with saying that I’ve always tried to help fellow designers, both rules and print, in this industry.  I’m willing to work cheaply (sometimes for beer) if it means showing the rest of the world how important this is.  Especially in this digital age, where you can hire anyone from the world over to work with you.

I mean, what would you rather have?  A book of rules that’s presented like a college textbook or a nice tome that looks like it was ripped right out of a wizard’s hand, a wizard who had very good penmanship?  I think that almost all of us would much rather have the latter.  And that’s the power of good design.

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Twofold Adept

I walk the twofold path, balancing and blending many skills into one harmonious and deadly whole.

Prerequisite: Novice Power, Acolyte Power, Adept Power

You have decided to walk the twofold path, focusing not just one your primary class but on your multiclass as well. You have better learned how to use the abilities of your multiclass and have even unlocked the secret of combining the powers of both your classes into one furious assault. You understand better than most that true power comes from versatility.

Twofold Adept Features

Twofold Action (11th level): You can expend an action point to regain the use of a single power you selected with the Novice Power feat instead of taking an extra action.
Twofold Training (11th level): You know one additional at-will power that must be selected from the list of at-will powers available to the class you multiclassed into. In addition, when you retrain the Novice Power, Acolyte Power, and Adept power feats you may choose to replace up to two of your class powers instead of only one.
Twofold Harmony (16th level): You may now use the benefit granted by your class-specific multiclass feat twice as often as normal. For example, a character with the Initiate of the Faith class feature could use the cleric’s healing word power twice per day instead of once per day.

Twofold Adept Powers

New Keyword

Multiclass: Powers with the multiclass keyword are considered to have the same keywords as the power source of your class and of the class you multiclassed into. For example, any power with the multiclass keyword used by a fighter with the Initiate of the Faith feat would have the martial and divine keywords.

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Today, while talking to Save-vs-DM, he said, when seeing my MSN nickname, “blood for the Blood God!”, to which I answered “Kill! Maim! Burn!”. As any Warhammer or 40K fan knows, those two screams are usually uttered by the blood-thirsted followers of Khorne, one of the four Chaos Gods. This made the following realization come to my head: part of the appeal of Chaos when it comes to people that play those armies, or those types of characters in the RPG, is that they can explore the idea of letting go, and giving in to one´s basic instincts. Following from here, we get to the follow-up idea:

“Blood for the Blood God!” is a scream that talks about something so primal, so basic, (basically, killing and dying) that strikes some chord inside us (whether it repels us or attracts us is another debate entirely). So far, there are no battle cries for Tzeentch, Slaneesh or Nurgle, and yet, Khorne has two. The Blood God definitely represents the decay of civilization at its very core (unlike Nurgle, that is just statism and decay, Tzeentch that represents hope, change and deception, or Slaneesh that represents hedonism taken to the extreme), going to a state of primal barbarism, of the “law of the jungle” that makes it feel much closer to our instincts than the more abstract concepts that other Chaos Gods deal with. Slaneesh is the only one that comes close to the Blood God in that respect, and while pleasure is a huge driving force for us humans, it certainly is not stronger than the instinct of survival, the dichotomy between life and death, nor deeper-rooted in us (or any animals, for that matter).

With all this in mind, one has to wonder if Khorne has been so popular in the minds of players only because its message of “kicking ass and taking names”, or if there´s something deeper going on, that makes it have an extra appeal to most players.

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A long time ago, there was only wargames. Then people starting experimenting with things, and we got results like the Braunstein games, and eventually Dungeons and Dragons.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Through the years games have straddled the lines. Examples of wargames with RPG elements include Inquisitor and many of the offerings from twohourwargames (Nuts, 5150, Chain reaction etc). Examples of RPG’s with wargame elements are most strongly represented by D&D and Warhammer FRP.

For our current roleplaying campaign, I tossed around a lot of ideas, and my initial thought was to use a wargame set to run a roleplaying campaign. We’d have rules for the tabletop combat, and then just roleplay through the “talky talky” scenes. In the end, we settled on GURPS, since it has a very strong tactical combat aspect, but if we run a large battle, we may switch the mechanics to resolve that.

In the upcoming session, the two players are respectively the sergeant and corporal of a French infantry squad near the Franco-German border in 1940. They’ve been sent on a routine patrol to check out a bridge in the area, where they’ll be attacked by a German patrol.

The interesting part will be that this will be run using GURPS rules, but with miniatures and terrain set up (if a bit primitive looking, as I only have so much time to prepare), and conducted as a tactical battle, in the vein of a proper wargame.

The players will have to issue orders to their subordinates (8 squad members in this case), and may have to endure those orders being misunderstood or not carried out, based on morale and leadership tests. All aspects traditional of a wargame. Simultaneously, they will be able to act independently, come up with ideas and implement them, and act “outside the box” in the manner of an RPG.

Nothing about this is truly new, it’s existed for years, but I think the core of it, is something that is too often overlooked in roleplaying games. Plenty of games use miniatures and tactical movement, but they often omit the things that wargames have done for years: Opportunity fire, morale, the uncertainty of whether orders are carried out, the importance of leadership. We have to go back to Megatraveller before we see those things making an appearance and that’s been how long?

I often get asked why I don’t like D&D, since I like tactical combat so much. My response is twofold:

A: Swords and spears don’t interest me, rifles and tanks do.

B: D&D has good tactical combat in the sense that it’s fun and is pretty much a game in itself. But it doesn’t have plausible tactical combat. When I play, I want to think about whether I can place my machine gun in enfilade, whether my men will be able to hold the line, whether my ambush will work, NOT whether I am placed in the right square to get a +2, or how these three powers will interact with each other.

And that is where we can turn to wargames, to find solutions to those problems.

Whatever happens, it’ll be interesting to see how they deal with the situation, and how they react to the fog of war of not knowing where the enemy is, until they are actually observed on the table.

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Often, when designing an adventure or, specially, a campaign, we have a preconceived idea of what we want to do, and start building a whole story from the ground up, and then we shoehorn the PC´s in, or request that the players create specific kinds of characters for the kind of game we are going to run. This, however, takes very little consideration of the players´ philias and phobias, and specially, it ignores what kind of game they want to play.

For this reason, it is often a good idea to ask players those very questions: what do they expect from this game, what is it that they´d like to see done, even if it´s on simple, abstract terms: for example, in a D&d game, do they want to play a game of high adventure and epic storylines, or a smaller, more down to earth game, with lots of side quests tied to specific locations?

Another thing that must be taken into consideration is the players you are dealing with. A friend of mine recently told me that after playing with some novice players (his girlfriend, a friend of his and his cousin, all of which were first-timers in gaming), he realized that the plot he had come up with was far too complex for them, and they were in over their heads. He reflected on the fact that, for a more experienced RP´er, the plot would have felt simple, and that they would have have no problem uncovering it if that was the case, but that due to their lack of experience, they could not follow what was going on behind the scenes. I pointed out that, for novice players, you needn´t complicated stories to surprise them or make them feel things are new and enthralling, and that often, something they can follow and get to the end of will feel satisfying enough.

Finally, you have to strike a balance between what you want to run and what your players want to play. If you are running something that has no appeal to you, you will soon lose interest in the game, and it will end up in a failure.

With all this in mind, the best way to plan what you want to do is, once you know what your players want, adapt what you want so that it fits both your desires and your players´. Making a rigid outline of the story won´t help. No matter how clever your plans are, your players will always break them in some way. For that reason, be sure to be flexible, and while you will need to plan ahead, don´t be afraid to improvise something out of the path. If you can be quick enough to make the players go back to the original plot without them feeling like they are being led by you, then all the better.

To sum up:

1. Decide what you want to do.
2. Learn what your players want you to do.
3. Mix those two.
4. Spice the result up with some good plots and ideas that fit your players.
5. Be ready to improvise to correct the whole thing
6. Profit.

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As a follow up to one of my gaming resolutions, I thought to share some of my own tricks and tactics for making fights a bit more dynamic.  This list is by no means exaustive, but these bits of advice have worked well for in the past.  By way of example I’ll be using two of my favorite systems to showcase how these techniques can be used.

Create A Living Environment
One of the most successful tactics for creating a dynamic fight is also the most GM intensive.  When setting up an encounter area for a game, try to create an environment that lives, breathes, and changes.  I think too many of us (me included) create these incredibly static encounter areas that don’t change over time or in response to player actions.  This can quickly lead to characters standing in one spot and wailing away at enemies until one drops.

So, when I design an area for a fight I try to include three different aspects.  The first, and most important, is littering the area a bit with objects that can be interacted with.  The prime example of this would be the bar fight - you have tables, chairs, and beer bottles that can all be used as improvised weapons.  You have bars and perhaps a stage that can be used as cover.  The area is littered with objects that hamper movement and limit where you can fight, forcing players to move around and use the terrain to their best advantage.

It’s important, however, that this not become nothing but a limiting factor.  You have to use the carrot as well as the stick.  If you’re designing an area that can be interacted with, it’s important that their be bonuses for doing so.  Perhaps ducking behind the bar gives you a bonus to defense.  Using a chair as a weapon might give a bonus to disarming that warrior using the big weapon.  Jumping up on the table should give you a bonus to attack people lower than you.  The basic idea is to reward your players for using the environment, and these rewards should be noticeable.  Error on the side of generosity if you must, at least until it becomes more of a habit.

It is also equally important that your enemies make use of this feature as well.  In fact, having the enemies using the terrain in this manner is a good way to exemplify how the environment can be used.  Be sure to declare (loudly if you must) what the enemy is doing and what tangible benefit this action has.  If the players discover that the enemies like standing on bar tables to get attack bonuses one of two things will happen.  Either they’ll do it themselves to get that nice bonus or they’ll start destroying the tables to negate the benefit the enemy receives.  Either way you’ve suddenly started changing the field of battle.  Which leads us right into method #2.

Change the Environment
Just as you can create an interactive environment, you can also change the environment as play progresses.  This generally comes in two flavors: change that’s independent of the players and change that is initiated by the players.  Both types are equally useful but tend to evolve differently as play progresses.

The first type, player independent change, is best exemplified by the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons.  This new edition added encounter traps that act somewhat like a monster.  I’ve used this to great effect in all of my games by designing some aspect of the area that keeps changing over time.  A prime example is an encounter I ran just recently for my D&D game.  The players entered a room that had grates in the floor.  Every round a few of the grates would fill with flames from an underground volcano sort of deal.  Smoke rising out of grates each round would indicate what grates would be filled with fire the next round.  The players quickly started using this to their advantage, pushing and pull the kobolds into the smoking grates to burn them up quickly.  It made the fight a lot more mobile.

That’s a pretty specific example, I’ll admit, but there are dozens more that you can find in the real world.  A fight in the sewers might have changing water levels, pipes that spew raw sewage every round, or other such things.  Just so long as there is some aspect of the terrain that changes in a mostly predictable way you should be good to go.  But as above, make sure that there’s some benefit to using this terrain to your advantage.  The idea here is to get the players interacting with both the enemies and the environment.

The second aspect of this technique is player initiated change.  If players break a window consider making the area right next to it damage people who run over it or make the square more difficult to move through.  If the players are in the sewer and break a pipe, have it start spewing sewage.  Basically any time a player interacts with the environment it should change in some manner that makes the battle interesting.  This can even be combined with player independent changes, so that the players can change how the environment works with some thought.  In the above fire trapped room example, I gave players with some control over fire the chance to make a square burn permanently or not at all.

Just remember that your enemies can use this same technique as well.  It might be more valuable for the enemies to change the terrain to their advantage than it would be for them to directly attack the characters.  Again this shows the players what they can do and changes the fight dynamic a bit.  And sometimes the ones changing the environment might not even be the players or the villains, but random NPCs that are part of the fight.  Which leads me into my third point.

Use NPCs to Your Advantage
This one really works well in superhero style games.  So long as you’re making an interesting environment, you might as well populate it with people who are mostly just extras in the fight.  This gives you a direct tool to change the environment from round to round and a method of increasing tension as well as limiting player actions for a short period.

The first use of extras is that they can be used as hostages by enemies.  This forces a player to decide between hurting the bad guys or rescuing the innocents.  If you go this route, be sure to reward players for actually rescuing the mother and her baby.  If you’re running mutants and masterminds, give them a bonus hero point right then and there.  If you’re running D&D, use an action point.  Mostly just give them whatever temporary but useful bennie you can to reinforce their actions in a positive manner.

The second way to use extras is as mobile hindering terrain.  If you have a fight taking place in the mall chances are that some of the extras are going to panic and start storming the doors.  Now running through areas with a bunch of civilians is going to be a lot harder.  Enemies might use this to their advantage, putting the extras inbetween them and the heroes.  Now you either have to find a way around them or think creatively to get through them (or over them).

You can also use extras as a sort of trap or mobile benefit.  In a supers game all of the civilians might throw objects at the enemies for a little bit, earning his wrath but giving Captain Hero a chance to get up and rejoin the fight.  In a D&D game all of the Orc mothers and children might try to mob the adventurers with crude sticks and rocks, forcing them to either fight them off or retreat to a less crowded room.  All of these can make the area seem a lot more exciting and lively, as players have to deal with both all of the extras and the people they’re actually fighting.

Create Optional Goals
Finally, I’ve actually adopted a tactic from war games: optinal objectives.  If you give the players something to accomplish beyond simply fighting the bad guys it will make fights more interesting.  This one can be hard to do and it’s something you shouldn’t use all the time, but in big or important fights it can make all the difference in the world.

An optional goal should be just that: optional.  It shouldn’t generally relate to beating up bad guys, but might make that job easier if accomplished.  Basically you create other things your players can do beyond fighting someone and then make sure accomplishing this goal either adds an extra reward or makes the main fight easier.  You’ll have to be pretty up front about this fact, either using a visible goal or using knowledge type skills to inform the players of extra options they can take.

Example #1: The heroes encounter the sinister Dr. Twilight, a mage of great skill.  His minions are enacting a ritual that will summon forth monsters from the beyond that will fight with him.  Now, the players can ignore the mooks until last and just fight Dr. Twilight, but if Mister Magic uses his magic skill to distrupt that ritual suddenly they don’t have to fight the monsters from beyond at all.  Sure, it takes Mister Magic out of the fight for a bit, but in the end it has a greater reward of making the fight easier.

Example #2: A band of shadowrunners has to extract a doctor from a corporation.  When they finally meet up with him he informs the runners that if they can also hack into the computer and retrieve his research he can reward them extra.  It will take extra time and might make the extraction harder, but if they succeed not only do they get an extra reward but the doctor can use his research to install new cyberware into the characters.  Plus it sets the doctor up a bit better in his new life, which in return might mean he can lend them a hand in future games.

Example #3: The hearty adventurers finally catch up to the great dragon Roazun.  Outside the cave they can see a few kobolds working on a ritual.  The party wizard informs them that this ritual is strengthening the dragon but the kobolds are so distracted that they can sneak past them.  Now the players can either kill the kobolds and stop the ritual, which makes the dragon weaker when they fight him, or ignore them and just go fight the dragon.  One path is faster but harder, while the other is longer but makes the end fight easier.

As you can see, some of the optional objectives happen during the fight and some happen outside of the fight.  Either way what they do is change how something functions, giving the players more control and making things a bit more interesting.  If at all possible, try to make the optional objectives happen during the fight, as it makes things more interesting.  But as you can see, even my examples don’t all happen in fights.  It’s a hard thing to do and is usually best used sparingly.

In closing, I’d like to mention that the one thing that helps more than anything else is simple enthusiasm.  If you bring a lot of energy to the table and describe actions well it will do a lot towards making the game more exciting.  It might not change how fights really function, but it will help folks get into things.  It’s also important to remember that everything I’ve typed here works well for me, but it might not work well for you.  If you can find something that makes your fights more dynamic by all means use it!  And tell us about it too, either here or on the forums.

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As I sit here waiting for the ball to drop in the western time zone, I’m pondering a little tradition of mine - gaming resolutions.  They’re a lot like normal New Years resolutions, only directly related to my gaming.  Just as we can strive for personal improvement we can also strive for improvement in our gaming.  I thought that I’d share my own resolutions and what prompted me to make them.

Resolution #1: Learn to Put My Foot Down

This one comes directly from the Mutants and Masterminds game that I’ve been running.  While M&M 2e is a great system, it requires quite a bit of GM oversight to avoid potential problems.  I had a player who made a character that, while completely rules legal, didn’t really fit the street level theme I had going for my game.  Instead of putting my foot down and telling the player that the revision wasn’t kosher, I let the player go with it for a session before I realized my mistake and the disparity.  The player was very generous and decided to revamp the character again, but for the player it felt like a downgrade in power.  I’ve I’d actually had the stones to put my foot down in the first place it wouldn’t have been a problem and the player would have gotten an upgrade, not a downgrade.

So from now on I’m going to try and learn how to say no a bit more often, at least when it really counts.  I love saying yes while actually playing, but I need to stick to my guns more when it comes to character creation and big decisions.  Some things just shouldn’t be used in certain games and I need to be clear about that from the beginning.  As a poster over at RPG.net is fond of saying, “You’re the DM and you wear the Viking Hat.”

Resolution #2: Make Fights More Dynamic

It’s weird, but it took running a Supers game to really make me understand how entrenched my idea of combat had become.  For years I’d run almost nothing but D&D and I was locked into a pretty static idea of combat.  It took a game with lots of esoteric and fanastic modes of travel for me to break out of the grid and start working on more dynamic fights.  Even with this impetus I don’t think my fights are nearly as dynamic and fun as they could be.  I really want to start working the scenery and extras into the fights as much as I can, which will make for more exciting encounters.

4th edition has helped in some regards, but I feel it’s going to be my supers game that will really help me break out of my mold.  I’m lucky enough that my players have been good with feedback and I’ve got forums like RPG.net to help me figure things out, but it’s going to be a long haul.  In preparation I’ve been watching shows like Avatar: the Last Airbender and Samurai Champloo to help me figure things out.

Resolution #3: Take Better Notes

I’m lucky enough to have a pretty good memory, but I really need to start taking better notes during play to help with my recaps and to string my otherwise wing-it style plots together.  I’ve gotten better at this and buying a little notebook has helped, but I really do have to be better about this.  I’ve been studying books like Getting Things Done to help me with this, but in the end it’s going to take simple willpower.

Resolution #4: Update This Blog!

I know I’ve said it before, but I really do need to post here more often.  Luckily enough I’ve got a few friends here helping me put content up, but I’d really like to make writing here a more regular thing.  So starting in 2009 I’m going try to make a post a week and then go from there.  If I make this a regularly habit maybe I won’t keep forgetting about it.  I even have my next post, a fun encounter area for 4e, ready to go.

So, happy new year folks!  Hope you have a safe and happy day of booze and debauchery!

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I’ve talked about in the past why I think a realistic game system is superior to an inherently unrealistic one, ESPECIALLY in a fantasy or superhero game.

But that’s not what I am going to talk about now, even though its one of the strengths of GURPS.

Neither is it points based character creation, which I’m not actually a huge fan of.

Its the toolkit.

A lot of games these days are driven by their powers, races, options etc. D&D, as well as White Wolf’s various offerings relies hugely on this. Setting books don’t sell as well as rules books, and people like lots of rules to put in their games (looking at the games that sell well these days. overwhelmingly D&D and White Wolf, but also Shadowrun, GURPS and WFRP, they are all crunchy games with enough text and charts to make your eyes bleed if your not inclined towards that)

What drives me up the wall is that outside of GURPS and HERO, most companies never actually give you the keys to the toolbox. You can get book after book with countless pages worth of predefined powers, abilities, classes, races or whatnot, but you are never actually given the freedom to just use the toolset for yourself.

If D&D 3.5 was supposed to permit you to play any character, why can’t we have a system for constructing character classes? They published hundreds of the damn things, so obviously more classes were wanted.

Of course, if I can make it myself, I won’t want to pay you money to do it for me, but that frees up the developers to make books that actually matter, instead of just repackaging more “powerz” that I should have been able to do myself.

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