When the cluebat fails.

I know it's been a long time since I lasted posted an update, but I need to get something off my chest.

If you read my last post, you'll know that I was starting off a high-level Pathfinder campaign for some  characters. Well, it's going really quite well. But my last session, things went a bit odd.

The characters had decided to go and rescue a city that's in the middle of an internal coup attempt (thanks to the machinations of one of the groups of bad guys in the campaign). They teleported into the castle, had a few moments to orient themselves, when... BOOM! The floor basically exploded underneath them, the ceiling collapsed, and they tumbled into the dungeons.

The first thing they heard when they started to recover from their fall was someone somewhere complaining that "if you'd just waited ten more minutes, nobody will be able to prepare for the other attacks!"

So, imagine my surprise when, after finding the bad guys who just blew up the castle (in my traditional NPC naming style, they were Guy, Fawkes, Gunn, Pahdr, Trey's son Enplut) and learning where other attacks were due to take place...

They did nothing.

Seriously. Absolutely nothing. Well, they decided eventually to go and fight off the dragon that was tearing down the city gates, but I gave them half an hour of real time before the temple got hit, and another twenty minutes real time before the waterfront got dropped into the river.

Fortunately, it hasn't derailed my plot, but I'm still a bit baffled about the decision to not try and do anything at all to save lots of innocents.

"You should have just asked 'Do you want to play Gelf again?'"

Due to some recent unfortunate events, my weekly Pathfinder gaming group got a bit shaken up a couple of months ago: One of my friends, who was actually my co-GM in the campaign he'd designed, decided that he wanted to take a break from regular RP.

Now, that's fine, really. I don't think anyone would (or should) begrudge someone else the decision to stop gaming, whether temporary or permanent. The only problem I had was that he was the GM of the game we were playing. Okay, co-GM. But it was his campaign world, his overall plot. I sort of took a bit-part role, filling in some blanks with ideas that I thought were cool. So when the setting designer and chief GM gets burnout partway through the campaign, what do you do?

Well, I had a few options, really - and they were very much my options, since I'm the only person in my gaming group who feels confident enough to quickly pick up the GMing ball and run with it:

• Continue the adventure.
• Start a brand new campaign.
• Do something a bit different.

The first of those wasn't really an option for me, since I had no idea where the adventure was going: we were literally half-way through an encounter when things went pear-shaped and he decided to call time on his GMing (and playing).

Now the second isn't a bad choice. I even had a campaign in mind that I'd been bouncing off some of my fellow players for a few weeks. I'd done a broad-strokes examination of a world, knew how I wanted things to kick off (vaguely), but hadn't really written anything pertinent down, like details - I'd have to work damn fast to get that one working.

The third option, though... well, now. That's a pretty broad statement, taken just as it is. Fortunately, a few of my players had been helping me out with a bit of playtesting for an upcoming Pathfinder product: Mythic Adventures. I'm a big fan of high-level play in D&D, and I was looking at how this new set of rules worked when added to 20th level characters. So, every few days, we were running a purely combat scenario (in a fairly scientific fashion) with some characters that I made up. One of those characters was a guy named Chemlak, who may or may not be my favourite ever RP character (I'll let you guess), and may or may not have been carefully converted from 2nd Edition AD&D (which was the last time he was actually roleplayed), through 3rd Edition, 3.5E and up to Pathfinder. And I'd come up with a 20th level version of Chemlak's partner-in-adventuring, Gelfar, for one of my players. The other playtest characters were quickly generated to fill out the party, and we were having a blast fighting insanely high-powered enemies and tearing through them like nothing you've ever seen.

You can probably see where this is going.

Chem and Gelf (as we tend to call them), had long-ago (in the real world) retired from adventuring (somewhere around 1994, if you're keeping count), but they remain ever-present in conversations, reminiscences and jokes.

Only one real question remained: Could I quickly (I had less than a week) come up with a plot outline for even a short adventure that could challenge these characters?

Umm... HELL YES!

The last thing that happened to Chem and Gelf was that they established a small town in the middle of nowhere. They had friends, followers, and (fortunately) some unfinished business with some enemies.

I had to get busy. Really busy. I sketched up my plot outline, checked it for gaping plotholes, and ran it through the "what would Batman do?" process. It looked solid. Easy hook, nice way to bring in the new characters, and some pointed reminders to not allow the long-established characters overshadow things.

I just had to sell it to my players.

First, I got my wife on-side. That was surprisingly easy, actually. She'd never had the chance to RP alongside Chem at all, but loves to hear stories of his adventures and background. Then my other players - maybe I'm a bit of a coward, but I wanted to get everyone accepting the idea before I pitched it to Adam, who played Gelfar. Well, the general consensus was "sounds like a laugh, as long as you're sure you can manage it". Yeah, I'm sure.

Then came the REALLY hard sell. I grabbed Adam on Skype, and explained my reasoning for not wanting to launch my "next campaign" because it would take a long time for me to get the details I need down, of not wanting to try to continue the current campaign without the lead-GM. I explained that I had a high level plot idea, and that it would be great to take the playtest characters out for a spin in a real adventure.

His reply was the title of this post.

Damn, I can be long-winded for no good reason, sometimes.

Fatherhood and Games Mastering

Something very strange happened to me last week. I had to stop and think about it for a minute, before I realised what was actually going on.

I was writing a bit of prose for a friend of mine for my weekly Pathfinder RPG game - his character has had a semi-prophetic vision (of the "prevent this" variety), and I'd set up the scene of the vision, and wanted to describe something to make it seem more dramatic.

Not wanting to go into too much detail about the scene I was describing, suffice to say that it was about demons terrorising a town that they had taken control of. Now, to me, demons in RPGs are evil, end of discussion (though I am also a merry user of the redeemed demon as one of my favourite NPCs in my long-running campaign). So, any evil thing you can think of is fair game for demons. Since I happen to have a fairly vivid imagination, I can think of quite a lot (though some truly depraved things still shock me).

So, I had an idea for a particular part of the scene - not to go into too much detail, but it involved a young child being harshly treated by a demon, and the child's mother able to only watch. I got about half a sentence into writing it, and stopped. That half-sentence got deleted. I got on with the rest of the story - I didn't even think to try and come up with a different description to use to "strengthen the image".

Why?

Because, as a father with a two-year-old, the image in my mind sickened me. Sickened me on a level I can't properly describe. Over the years I've described lots of things for RP, some of the worst crimes one human can inflict on another, and I've never had a problem writing things down for stories, but I had to avoid this one.

I doubt I can really explain it, but I've found one of my taboo subjects, and it's there not because I as a person consider it particularly depraved or awful - I can write that sort of description until the cows come home - but because I cannot separate the emotions I have regarding my own son and the things I write.

I can intellectually discuss rape, or torture, or the vilest means of dismemberment - I know the mechanics of them, but I have no deep visceral understanding of them, even though, for example, I have a close friend who was raped. But evil being done to a child? That's when Daddy steps in and slams on the brakes.

I'm not the same person I was before my son was born. I didn't really realise that until last week. Up until now, I'd always thought I could deal with anything in a mature, intellectual, detached way.

Boy, was I wrong.

I was again reminded of this when I was flicking through the archives on Gnome Stew and came across a post about taboo subjects, which is what prompted me to write here.

I don't think I have all that many taboos in my own games, but I certainly don't revel in pushing the boundaries of politeness, and I'm certainly a lot more careful than I once was about even mentioning certain subjects. The important thing is what stopped me writing that thing about the demon: if it doesn't add to the story itself, it's gratuitous, and if it's gratuitous, it probably doesn't need to be on the page.

My two-year-old son taught me something about writing and Games Mastering that I didn't understand until now. How awesome is that?

Whatever happened to the weekend?

Well, that seems to be a damn good question.

For some reason I don't really feel like I had a weekend break, and as a result of that, I didn't run my Sunday night M&M game last night, so I'm afraid I don't have anything to say about it. As such what would have been a recap/update post has to turn into something else.

I'd be kidding if I said I knew what.

I guess it's a good time to waffle on a bit about how detrimental it can be to have a roleplaying session where the GM isn't in the spirit of things.

In all my years RPing, I've seen recalcitrant players, bored players, powergamers, deep-immersion storytellers, excited players, frustrated players, involved players... well, a lot of different types of players, really. But I know that the one thing that can utterly destroy a campaign is a GM who just isn't "into it".

Every once in a while I get struck by writer's block, unable to come up with even a half-decent storyline or plot idea. Usually I can get away with it by throwing a random event into a session, and feeding off the RP that comes out of that event to create a tangential storyline, but believe me, it doesn't always work.

The GM is one of the driving forces behind an RPG, and if the GM doesn't have the right "feel" for the session, the players will always pick up on it - they become despondent, lethargic, unenthusiastic. Nothing kills a game session faster than the GM giving off "I can't be arsed" vibes.

I've said before (in another blog, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away) that I believe that no plot can ever survive contact with the players. It's a truism I've lived by as a GM for over 20 years, and I've never seen it proven wrong. Well... except where a GM tries to railroad the plot. That sucks, by the way.

It gets worse when the GM knows that no matter what he does, no matter how his carefully crafted plotline is prepared, the players will ignore it, focus on their own agenda, and rip the plot to shreds.

The whole point about RPing is what I refer to as "shared storytelling". I'm not strictly brilliant at it, because I tend to have firm opinions about the direction a plot or scene should take, and sometimes I get locked into that. It's all about learning to say "yes" to the players. Letting them get away with things that enhance the story, but might not fall strictly into the bounds of the rules of the game.

If Gnarg the Barbarian wants to pick up the table in the tavern and charge the brawling patrons with it, the GM can require that he makes a Strength check to lift the table, and apply all the appropriate modifiers for using an improvised weapon as part of a charging bull-rush... almost certainly causing the attempt to fail, if Gnarg is only 1st level, but otherwise being a trivial task for him... so why bother rolling? It makes for a good scene, it makes for an entertaining interlude, and unless it's an important scene for the plot (and how often has the tavern brawl actually been important to the plot?), then I see no reason for Gnarg to fail. After all, he's the hero of the piece, being one of the PCs. Sure, let the agile assassin dance out of the way as the table rushes in, but Gnarg is going to squash a number of people with that table, and there is no good reason for a GM to deny the player a memorable moment.

The story always wins. It's something that sets excellent GMs apart from adequate ones. It's worth pointing out that the plot and the story are not the same thing. The plot is the carefully crafted series of events and encounters that the GM has decided to throw at the PCs. The story is what actually happens once that plot meets the players... and the plot will not survive. But that's okay - because the story is what matters, not the plot.

Any GM who thinks that the plot matters more than the shared storytelling experience should just go away and write a novel - because their players will end up feeling like they have no impact, no control over their characters' destinies, which will ruin any RP campaign or adventure. The GM's job isn't to "run the game", despite what it might say in a dozen guides and rulebooks. The role of the GM in a roleplaying game is basically to start the ball rolling. Create that plot that he knows is going to be ripped to shreds inside of five minutes. Describe the scenario, and then sit back and watch the players have fun.

I've met some GMs who seem to believe that GMing is "them vs. me" regarding the players. These GMs should play wargames, where their competitiveness can be allowed a good outlet. I have never grown so attached to an NPC I've created or used that I would get upset if the PCs managed to do him in "early". What's the point? An NPC isn't really a character - it's a tool to enable the players to have fun. It's a plot-device to help drive the story... and plots don't survive contact with players.

Wow. This post ended up in a totally different place than I was expecting. But that's not a bad thing, I guess.