Geek on the Borderlands

We´ve all seen this at one point or another. Our GM has this interesting, convoluted story that he has devised over the course of weeks, and once the group starts playing, it´s clear that there´s little they can do to stray from that path that the GM has set for them. The players, if they´re good, notice this, but decide to cooperate, for the good of the game. After all, it keeps the story going. However, things don´t change, and session through session, players are bending over backwards to do what´s sensible from a normal human´s point of view, instead of what any reasonable powergamer would do. They cooperate with the NPC´s, even if they know they´re gonna get betrayed. They happily get into an ambush because their characters still trust those NPC´s, although all the players know it´s gonna be a possibly lethal ambush. You know the drill.

But what happens when the players decide that it´s too much? This can bring a rebellion in the table, and send the game down the trash quickly, specially if the GM cannot react fast enough, or the players end up being driven into a dead-end. However, should things reach this state, the players will already be touchy when it comes to their lack of freedom, and even if the game manages to get back on track, it will be very hard to get them to cooperate with the GM again at all.

In short: give your players more freedom, even if that means changing your carefully designed plan. They will be happier for it.

After lots of anticipation and wait, I finally received my preordered copy of Space Hulk´s rerelease. Most of out readers should know what Space Hulk is, but for those who might not know, we´ll travel 20 years back in time.

Back in 1989, Games Workshop hadn´t turned into the “evil miniatures empire” gamers tend to know they company as, and it still would publish boardgames that people still remember fondly. Heroquest, published together with Milton Bradley, was probably the most famous of them all. However, despite of that popularity, there is one game that most gamers remember for its apparently simplicity, but high tactical complexity, tension, and sheer fun. Space Hulk.

Space Hulk pitted a small squad of five Space Marine Terminators against a host of deadly Genestealer aliens. The game itself involved lots of tactical decisions in a very short expanse of time, since the marine player had a limited timer, and the odds were heavily stacked against him.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of its release, Games Workshop has put together a limited rerelease edition of Space Hulk… And boy, did they deliver.

It is hard to describe the sheer impressiveness of this package. Even describing all the bits and bobs inside it doesn´t do it justice. However, to give you a rough idea of it, I´ll mention the stuff that impressed me the most (and refer you to check out Games Workshop´s webpage for images of the actual thing).

For starters, the one thing that you notice is that there are a few sheets of cardboard, packaged together inside a plastic bag. Those cardboard sheets hold the various tiles for the game, the doors and bulkheads, and the counters for the game. Every tile is made of very thick cardboard (about 3 mm. thick, which is approximately twice as much as they were in the original game), and they come out nicely of the punched sheets. They´ve also included 4 small plastic bags to keep the counters in, which is a very nice touch, in my opinion.

The second thing you notice is two very beautifully illustrated booklets, the rulebook (which sports a terminator´s head on its cover) and the mission book (which has a genestealer´s head. Lovely detail, isn´t it?). The rules are decently explained, and they mostly mirror 1st edition´s rules, with a couple of minor touches (the addition of the broodlord, and a couple of balance changes and clarifications, mostly). The game also includes most of the new stuff in the Deathwing and Genestealer expansions, only leaving out stuff that´s ended up mostly outdated due to fluff reasons, like the genestealer magi.

Finally, and I suppose this is Space Hulk´s most impressive part, you get to the miniatures. Oh boy… I´ll let a couple of images speak for themselves.

A genestealer:

A Space Marine Terminator:

Another Space Marine:

That should give a good indication of the quality of the stuff they´ve put in there.

So, is the game only a pretty display feature? No, not at all. The game plays just as well as it did 20 years ago (or maybe even better), and even though I still am not sure one or two things aren´t errata (the storm shield, in particular, seems ridiculously powerful, for example, and the rules for it are a tad awkward), the marine player keeps having that oppresive sense when the genestealers are coming close and time is running short, as well as the feeling of achievement when you get to finish mission nº 1, suicide mission (yes, that´s the actual name of it, and I have to say that it´s far harder to beat than some of the ones that come afterwards in the campaign).

Finally, for those that love to critizise Games Workshop, I have one thing to say. In this case, GW are offering a very high quality product for a hefty sum (78 euros for the box in spain, nearly $100 US), but the game is well worth it (might as well point out that 5 terminators cost $50, right now, and the box includes 10, plus 22 genestealers, and a whole bunch of other stuff). In fact, the box´s content is so massive that once you open it, there´s no real way to put everything back in it. Pandora´s box, anyone?

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.

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.

Today, while reading through the first few pages of the old 2nd. edition AD&d “The ruins of Undermountain”, and seeing The Yawning Portal Inn mentioned (the everpresent inn run by a retired high level adventurer that was so prominent in the Forgotten Realms), I came to the realization that we didn´t ask ourselves so many questions about gaming back in the day, and that it was both a good and a bad thing. It was good because it meant that we would simply concentrate on the fun side of things, and less on the metagame. Things were that way just because they were that way, and it wasn´t important if it didn´t make much sense, as long as it was fun.

On the flip side, gaming has evolved much thanks to those very same questions. It is undoubtable that RPG´s have become more playable, streamlined and user-friendly with time (using logarithms for Traveller space combat, anybody?), and that they are better because of that. The only question that remains now is: “are RPG´s more fun thanks to that evolution, or not?”. Given that the simplicity of 1st. ed. D&d is still appealing to many people, and how a greater complexity, rules-wise is not always a good thing, it´s not an easy question to answer, and the most likely way to do so is to say “it depends”.

Ultimately, I think that a game is only as fun as the GM and the players make it to be. No amount of good rules can save a bad group, nor can a bad system throw good players off the right track when it comes to having fun… And that is the beauty of our hobby .

Ernest Gary Gygax passed away today at the age of 69 in his house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. This is a piece of news that hit me, and many others, like a sledgehammer when we read about it earlier today. Apparently, his health had been failing lately, as his wife reported, and soon we will know more about it.

All in all, this is very sad news for every single gamer, whether they know it or not. Gary, together with Dave Arneson, brought us the first commercial RPG, Dungeons and Dragons. Without what the two of them brought us, videogames, roleplaying, miniature gaming, and many other of our little hobbies would not be the same. We would probably not be enjoying so many fantasy and sci-fi novels as we can enjoy nowadays, we wouldn´t spend countless hours in front of a table, with friends, pizza and mountain dew, slaying dragons and taking their loot just for the sheer fun of using our imagination and enjoying the company and the presence of our friends. Our lives would simply not be the same.

If that was not enough, Gary left behind many great things as a legacy: he took part in creating the wonderful Dungeons and Dragons cartoon series, he was both approachable and friendly whenever the fans interacted with him, and above all, he was The Original Dungeon Master.

Whichever plane you are now in (and I am sure that not even Elysium and Mount Celestia are good enough for you), you have our love, and you live on in your legacy and memory, Gary. May we meet behind the DM´s screen.

Javier.

This is just a little idea I worked up for a thread over at RPG.net. I thought it was interesting so I’m going to share it here. Basically it’s a slightly tweaked format for a street level supers game.

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Seems like there’s one of us in every precinct these days. We don’t announce it, it’s not quite so you’d notice, but some of us are different. Just a little bit tough, or stronger, or faster. Me? I took a bullet that should have landed me in a grave. Three shots right to the chest with teflon coated bullets. As it was I was laid up for a good seven weeks and landed a desk job down here in records. But I lived.

I thought about what had happened long and hard as I was recovering. I should have been dead, but I wasn’t. Most of the guys on the force just told me I was too damn stubborn to die, but I knew the truth. I was just a little bit more than human, just that much tougher. Once I recovered I started checking all the incident reports and discovered something rather startling. In my town alone there were three other guys and two women that had survived unusual incidents. Reports of an officer dead lifting a car off a wreck victim which was officially cited as him pushing it off in a surge of adrenaline. Well, I talked to Lt. Williams and told him my suspicions. He then showed me that he could bend a 1 inch steel bar almost three inches. Nothing like you’d see in the comic books but he sure as hell had more strength than anyone else alive.

So Frank and I began our search for others like us. We managed to gather almost four hundred people from around the states with varying powers. One kid, only thirteen at the time, managed to create some sort of super cell phone for all of us. It could scan things, take pictures, do conference calls and do rudimentary chemical analysis. Granted none of us but that punk kid really understand how they work, but they’re still helpful.

To what end? Well, once I started working in records I started noticing a trend with a lot of these unsolved and cold cases. Strange evidence patterns, unusual suspects, just all manner of strange things. I suppose folks who watch too much TV would have claimed they were X-files or something. I didn’t, I knew the truth. Just as there are hundreds of us who have these special gifts and live normal lives, there are hundreds of criminals. Probably twice the number that we have, since power tends to corrupt. This isn’t great power, but it sure is good power. And it’s corrupting people pretty damn well.

Problem is, there’s no real evidence to close these cases. Trails have gone cold and killers, rapists, and worse have gone free because we simply don’t have the skills to put them behind bars. Well, that changes now. We’ve got our network of people all over the states and you’d be surprised just how many of us are in law enforcement, or the justice system, or the medical field. See, those of us with these powers who don’t become corrupted often have a draw to serve the public good. We’re never going to be funded or recognized by the police departments or the U.S. Government. So our job is to find these bastards, collect the evidence to link them to the crimes, then arrest them with that proof.

Every time someone like me somewhere in the U.S. finds a case that’s been shelved due to inconclusive evidence or strange circumstances we send out the call for heroes. We don’t wear tights. We don’t go in and beat up the bad guys and leave them in front of the police station. But we sure as hell put them behind bars. The old fashioned way; with a badge and good investigation work.

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Basically this is a low powered street game that follows the rules of the real world. You can’t go in and beat up the bad guys – you have to gather evidence and arrest them. Sure you might get shot at and sometimes you’ll have to make a citizen’s arrest (or a real arrest, if you’ve got a law officer in the team) but by and large you’re doing real investigative work. This is basically a weird mish-mash of a mystery game, Global Frequency, and low powered supers. It also owes a bit to Hunter: the Reckoning in that you might sometimes fight out and out supernatural things that aren’t human.

If I were to run this using Mutants and Masterminds I’d go a straight Power Level 6 but with about 100 points to build with. I’d limit everyone to about 1-3 powers in a very closely themed power set. The idea is that you’re not clearly above humanity, only at the very peak of human potential with a few extraordinary powers.

We have all seen the image. The lone Conan-esque warrior, on top of a pile of corpses, with a wench in his muscled arm and a bloody axe on the other. This is an image that invokes many ideas on our mind: bloodshed, grittiness, Arnold Schwarzenegger, testosterone, ManOWar, and many more things. But, deep down, instinctively, there is one thing that we all think: “kicking ass”.

Some RPG´s are defined as being “metal” (WFRP is a good example of this). They all have in common a gritty feeling, they tend to be very dark… But then, one thinks about Call of Cthulhu, and doesn´t think of it as “metal” despite it being dark and gritty. Why is this? In my opinion, that is because, in CoC, the main characters do not have the chance to really kick ass, at best they can survive. In contrast, the troll slayer in the WFRP party can charge headlong against an army of orcs, and hopefully make them flee in terror or at least die gloriously with many greenskins at his feet. So, in the end, a game that´s metal is a game where, no matter how bad everything seems to be, the characters can still go out in a blaze of glory, they can make a difference, for good or bad… And for most players, that is a welcome feeling. Call it poetic justice, or revenge at the dark, gritty world, but it does work well.

So, how metal is your game?