"What are you gonna need that stupid fuckin' rope for?"
Here's what I want you to do. I want you to pull out that armored leather jacket with the Anarchy symbol on it. I want you to spike up your hair into some foot long liberty spikes. Then, grab some mirrored shades and load your Ares Predator, because today's our first official Shadowrun blog post. This was totally going to be a completely different inaugural post, but while discussing that post, I got another idea. While it's much less important a milestone, this will ALSO be our first post giving direct character building advice.
Basically, it's a dominant strategy when building a Street Samurai to immediately assign "the Million" and start spending money like you're a disenfranchised, trampled-upon thug far below the poverty line who just won the lottery. That's a fine way to build a character, and fun as hell, but today we're discussing budgets. Specifically, we're going to talk about the minimum our samurai needs to be good at combat. With "the minimum" in place, you can then go into a whole lot of directions, even building a "hybrid" who's got two jobs, like an insertion decker.
First I'm going to go into my design philosophy a little bit. Firearms are inherently cheaper than creating a melee character, so we're going with that. The differences between the two are quite obvious and it's simple to alter the build to fit melee: Simply take two or more points of Muscle Augmentation bioware, and ignore the Smartlink. This build can also EASILY be improved upon and taken in many different directions, even when talking about pure mechanical effectiveness. Treat this as me saying this is the basics of what you need to start with, like a Lego starter kit...only probably less expensive. Obviously, I'm going to discuss honorable mentions and add-ons too. There's a lot of those.
CYBERWARE
Wired Reflexes I, 2 Essence, 55k Nuyen
Dermal Sheath I, 0.7 Essence, 24k Nuyen
Smartlink II, 0.5 Essence, 3,500 Nuyen
So yeah, this one is obvious. Initiative is all-important in Shadowrun, and Wired I is a must. None of the other, cheaper alternatives will give you such a bang for your buck. There's a reason everyone takes Wired Reflexes. Next up, Dermal Sheath will give 2 points of body, letting you capitalize on one of the Samurai's few remaining strengths that physads didn't take: Raw stat value. A human with this build will easily hit a body of 8, which is my "minimum" for calling someone tough. Finally, Smartlink II is an immense numbers advantage in a very small package, so you'd be foolish not to take it.
BIOWARE
Enhanced Articulation, 0.6 BI, 40k Nuyen
Reflex Recorder, 0.25 BI, 25k Nuyen
Something you need to know about Shadowrun in general is that bonus dice are nice. It's the reason Physads are so powerful and a beginning Physad can easily reach six bonus dice in a single combat skill. When speaking solely of combat skills, the Samurai can reach two: Enhanced Articulation, and Reflex Recorder. Enhanced Articulation is our second most expensive item, but it's another item that gives a LOT for its budget: It's a bonus die in any physical skill(including some you might not realize, like Electronics) and a point of reaction. We took a reflex recorder simply to maximize our two bonus dice in a combat skill: This time, your firearms skill of choice. There are no other stackable sources of bonus dice for combat skills in our toolkit.
So before we discuss honorable mentions and really-should-takes, let's go over our budget. We've spent a total of 147,500 Nuyen, and our boy has an Essence of 2.8 and a bio index of 0.85. A ton of room for other stuff, made even wider if you choose to buy Alpha versions of Wired I and Dermal Sheath. Wired I will be your first choice for Alpha ware given its cost to essence comparison.
So now we're going to talk about some of the important, powerful benefits of being a Street Samurai that aren't necessarily required for combat effectiveness. We're only going to discuss things that a starting character can reach, so while Tactical Computer is obviously one of the most powerful things a Samurai can buy...it's outside of the purview of the conversation.
Datajack and Chipjack. Being able to interface with basic technology is extremely helpful. In addition to that, the cheap chipjack opens up to use some skillsofts: Knowsofts and Linguasofts do not need skillwires, and neither do things like maps which can be viewed on a display link. This also lets you "check" any chips you're stealing or being provided by a Johnson without having to bring a separate device.
Cybereyes. This is another place that you're going to get a lot of value for your money, and another place you want to strongly consider Alphaware. Vision Magnification can help with firearms, though inside a building engagement distances are usually going to be well inside short range anyway. Microscopic vision is immensely helpful: Between this and Enhanced Articulation, you're going to end up an electronics badass without even really trying. Finally and more obviously, thermo or low light reduce vision penalties, and are very cheap.
Bone Lacing. I'm only mentioning this to point out that it's well within the rules to take Titanium Bone Lacing as well as Dermal Sheath III and stack a ton of points of Body. Your ability to stack raw stat values is one of your strengths over a Physad. It also provides a little bit of something a physad can't take at all: Ballistic armor.
Trauma Damper and Platelet Factory. While I'm mostly talking about Trauma Damper, both of these items add a severe amount of toughness by directly removing boxes of damage. You end up taking slightly higher wound penalties sometimes, but it can be mitigated with either edges or other bioware like a Pain Editor or Damage Compensator.
Synthacardium. This is also a general note for all athletics related gear such as the balance tail, balance augmenter, move-by-wire or erythropoietin. This is the one area you can stack MORE bonus dice than the physad if you're a little careful. They have a restriction of their skill rating when it comes to bonus dice, but a samurai does not. Do not discount athletics, for it's one of our major strengths as well as an easily overlooked skill. There's a lot of insane stunts you can pull to lose a tail, gain cover, or bypass security. Despite the fact that things like hydraulic powered digitigrade legs exist, not a whole lot of buildings will design their security assuming an intruder can leap a hundred feet in the air.
Mnemonic Enhancer. Okay, so this one is last for a reason. I want you to remember it. This is your shining holy avenger. Your light in the darkness of being in the physad's shadow. Each of its three levels gives some amount of helpful knowledge and memory related bonuses, but also reduces Karma costs for buying skills by one each. Seeing as how this is 90% of what you're going to be spending your Karma on, it's fucking invaluable. Make room for this item in your budget. Period.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Villain 102: Motivation
That overview I wrote was basically so I had the structure to discuss the 'pieces' of a villain individually. Simply jumping into this would've been really confusing, so if you were bored to tears by my ad-hoc syllabus...sorry. In the spirit of full disclosure I do worry about how much of this is "useful" material for you people, but I have to discuss the stone blocks before we can build the pyramid. Or uh, I guess we're discussing the pyramid blueprints before laying the foundation? I'm not sure where we're getting stone blocks, either. I don't have a car.
So two aspects of the villain, Motivation and Background, control their essence: how the PCs will think of him. The other two aspects, Plan and Means, control how it's going to feel to go against them mechanically. A mournful bard being controlled by an evil artifact and a bloodthirsty cult-leader can feel the same if they both use the same basic means, but the PCs will treat them wildly differently. All four aspects are important to the way your game's going to go, because "mechanical" feel and "personal" feel are both going to have a big impact on your game.
First off, whether motivations are simple or complex, they're not necessarily evil. In fact, plenty of times they're not evil at all, and the way they go about accomplishing their goals is what makes them a villain. You can't fault someone for wanting to rid the world of pain, but you sure can get angry when you find out their plan for doing so is to commit genocide. This is the beginning of your major choice when it comes to your villain: Sympathetic, or Not.
Making a villain who isn't sympathetic is pretty easy, and most stock fantasy stories have one. Usually their motivation is very simple, like desiring more power or wealth. This is perfectly fine. Simple motivations or plans lend themselves to a "High Fantasy" feel in your game, if you want that. Keep in mind that even a cyberpunk game can have a High Fantasy feel and do very well: See most 80s action or sci-fi movies if you don't believe me. Simple motivations are easy to understand and best if you want to define very clearly what side the PCs ought to be on with no grey areas, second guessing or soul-searching.
A sympathetic villain usually has complex or goal-oriented motivations. They perceive something is wrong and wants to fix it. Sometimes this is revenge, or sometimes this is an otherwise altruistic goal. A lot of sympathetic motivations are emotional or personal, too. Basically, this results(most of the time) in a game with gray areas and more discussion or thought about the whys behind the villain in question. It can also feel richer and more relatable, but you have to keep two big things in mind. First, your villain should probably prove themself to be evil in some way, or at least antagonistic to the party. You don't want the PCs motivation to stop the villain to slip or your game's going to derail. Some GMs can simply run with that and alter the scope of the game...but a lot of GMs struggle with this, or simply don't want to alter their story. That's fine. Just make sure you're not shooting yourself in the foot. The second thing to keep in mind is that a sympathetic villain more than likely is going to cause discussion or even disagreement among the group. Plan around this 'coffee table' RP, because it's part of what you WANT when using a sympathetic villain.
So when should you reveal the villain's motivation? It depends. If it's really simple like "I should rule the world" or "I'm a bored noble looking for kicks" you want to make it clear right away, to avoid an anticlimax. The longer the PCs are left wondering about a really simple motivation, the more complex it will become in their heads, and you'll betray their expectations. Basically, while these motivations are perfectly acceptable, they aren't "cool" or "mysterious". Part of the reason to use simple motivation is to draw a line of where the PCs ought to be standing in relation to this guy, and you want that line down as soon as possible.
If you're using a villain with complex or sympathetic motivations, you want to trickle the story to the PCs. They'll have seen them doing some evil or unacceptable stuff and naturally start to wonder why the villain is the way they are. Giving them clues like journals forgotten in ancient dungeons, an abandoned childhood home, or even a former lover to talk to is a little flag saying "Yes. There is a mystery to this." This is what you want, it adds interest to your villain where they may be lacking since they may not be the swaggering, monologuing type.
A special shout-out goes to monstrous villains. They tend to wear their motivations on their sleeve, and this can be a useful tool. Your average player sees a monster and they immediately have an idea in their head of what that monster's motivation is. You can either use this as 'shorthand' to avoid having to characterize a 'little' villain too much, or you can play with their expectations. You can make them think they're a simple, stereotypical version of their race and then slowly slide them clues to the contrary. Obviously you can do this with a non-monstrous villain as well, but it's far easier when the players already have expectations just by looking at the villain.
One final note on 'little' villains, the ones only around for one subplot or lieutenants of your main villain. You have way, way less time to characterize these guys, so simple motivations might be best. A simple story isn't automatically a bad one, and something simple or black-and-white in a subplot diverts attention back to your big bad guy. Of course, if the PCs are feeling like the bad guy is showing up too often and they're starting to compare them to a monster on Scooby Doo, you can always do the opposite: Build a rich villain for a longish subplot to give them a break.
So two aspects of the villain, Motivation and Background, control their essence: how the PCs will think of him. The other two aspects, Plan and Means, control how it's going to feel to go against them mechanically. A mournful bard being controlled by an evil artifact and a bloodthirsty cult-leader can feel the same if they both use the same basic means, but the PCs will treat them wildly differently. All four aspects are important to the way your game's going to go, because "mechanical" feel and "personal" feel are both going to have a big impact on your game.
First off, whether motivations are simple or complex, they're not necessarily evil. In fact, plenty of times they're not evil at all, and the way they go about accomplishing their goals is what makes them a villain. You can't fault someone for wanting to rid the world of pain, but you sure can get angry when you find out their plan for doing so is to commit genocide. This is the beginning of your major choice when it comes to your villain: Sympathetic, or Not.
Making a villain who isn't sympathetic is pretty easy, and most stock fantasy stories have one. Usually their motivation is very simple, like desiring more power or wealth. This is perfectly fine. Simple motivations or plans lend themselves to a "High Fantasy" feel in your game, if you want that. Keep in mind that even a cyberpunk game can have a High Fantasy feel and do very well: See most 80s action or sci-fi movies if you don't believe me. Simple motivations are easy to understand and best if you want to define very clearly what side the PCs ought to be on with no grey areas, second guessing or soul-searching.
A sympathetic villain usually has complex or goal-oriented motivations. They perceive something is wrong and wants to fix it. Sometimes this is revenge, or sometimes this is an otherwise altruistic goal. A lot of sympathetic motivations are emotional or personal, too. Basically, this results(most of the time) in a game with gray areas and more discussion or thought about the whys behind the villain in question. It can also feel richer and more relatable, but you have to keep two big things in mind. First, your villain should probably prove themself to be evil in some way, or at least antagonistic to the party. You don't want the PCs motivation to stop the villain to slip or your game's going to derail. Some GMs can simply run with that and alter the scope of the game...but a lot of GMs struggle with this, or simply don't want to alter their story. That's fine. Just make sure you're not shooting yourself in the foot. The second thing to keep in mind is that a sympathetic villain more than likely is going to cause discussion or even disagreement among the group. Plan around this 'coffee table' RP, because it's part of what you WANT when using a sympathetic villain.
So when should you reveal the villain's motivation? It depends. If it's really simple like "I should rule the world" or "I'm a bored noble looking for kicks" you want to make it clear right away, to avoid an anticlimax. The longer the PCs are left wondering about a really simple motivation, the more complex it will become in their heads, and you'll betray their expectations. Basically, while these motivations are perfectly acceptable, they aren't "cool" or "mysterious". Part of the reason to use simple motivation is to draw a line of where the PCs ought to be standing in relation to this guy, and you want that line down as soon as possible.
If you're using a villain with complex or sympathetic motivations, you want to trickle the story to the PCs. They'll have seen them doing some evil or unacceptable stuff and naturally start to wonder why the villain is the way they are. Giving them clues like journals forgotten in ancient dungeons, an abandoned childhood home, or even a former lover to talk to is a little flag saying "Yes. There is a mystery to this." This is what you want, it adds interest to your villain where they may be lacking since they may not be the swaggering, monologuing type.
A special shout-out goes to monstrous villains. They tend to wear their motivations on their sleeve, and this can be a useful tool. Your average player sees a monster and they immediately have an idea in their head of what that monster's motivation is. You can either use this as 'shorthand' to avoid having to characterize a 'little' villain too much, or you can play with their expectations. You can make them think they're a simple, stereotypical version of their race and then slowly slide them clues to the contrary. Obviously you can do this with a non-monstrous villain as well, but it's far easier when the players already have expectations just by looking at the villain.
One final note on 'little' villains, the ones only around for one subplot or lieutenants of your main villain. You have way, way less time to characterize these guys, so simple motivations might be best. A simple story isn't automatically a bad one, and something simple or black-and-white in a subplot diverts attention back to your big bad guy. Of course, if the PCs are feeling like the bad guy is showing up too often and they're starting to compare them to a monster on Scooby Doo, you can always do the opposite: Build a rich villain for a longish subplot to give them a break.
Monday, June 13, 2016
Villain 101: Overview
"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am: just one bad day."
I was recently asking myself what the most important parts of a Pen and Paper game are. Obviously, the human element is. Having fun is. But removed from all the obvious feely-feel good answers of the people being the most important part, I did have an idea or two. So, before I discuss things like general game plot structure or the anatomy of a good story, we're going to discuss the guy who drives the story, the antagonist who antagonizes the protagonist into proactive action, the Villain.
Today's post isn't called 101 because that's an awesome joke: We're going to be going back to this topic a lot so I'm literally numbering them like a class. Get used to that because when we talk about long-form subjects like building a world or walking through a Let's Create to watch everything we've learned mesh together, I want readers to be able to follow the information without me having to post it one after another. We'll all be happier if I can shake it up a bit. This is probably going to be seven or more posts as I expand on these concepts, and a few more while I do a "Let's build a bad guy" as a big finale of an example.
A villain is an antagonist. Really, this should be Antagonist 101, since your game might have its fair share of villains who aren't bad people, or who have sincerely good intentions. In fact, in an archetypal "Evil" game, the villains are probably going to be mostly good guys. Basically, an antagonist(for our purposes) is someone whose motivations or desires run counter to the motivations or desires of the protagonist. Who's the protagonist? The Player Characters. Man, that one was easy. This means that your game is going to have plenty of villains: Big ones, small ones, maybe some that only show up for one encounter. I'm going to lean toward discussing a villain who's around for at least one scheme and who are traditionally evil in nature. "Good Guy" antagonists are a big stinky can of worms that go hand in hand with discussing "evil" games, and let's not make this post longer than it needs to be by trying to shoehorn them into it.
So whether we're talking about a big bad villain or a little tiny villain, they have the same anatomy. They have a motivation, a plan, a means, and a background. Duh, but I wanted to point out two things: The first is that their background is an important part of the story you're crafting, even if the PCs never find out what it is. The second is that there's potentially not very much that separates a little villain who drives one subplot and a big one who drives the whole game. A pirate king who commands an armada of ruthless pirates and threatens the stability of an entire nation is not very different than a bandit who raids helpless merchant wagons. The pirate king simply has their metaphorical 'volume' turned up: They have a much higher motivation, a much bigger plan and much more means when the game begins.
Motivation. This is the why. Depending on their personality or intellect, maybe it isn't so big or complex. In the first draft of this, I didn't even list Motivation and Plan separately. Their motivation certainly can seem like a small, unimportant thing. Their plans are what drive the plot, after all. Their motivations are crucial to the feel of the villain, though. The thing is...they aren't always bad. Sometimes motivations are good or justified and the villain has been through so much pain or strife that they've lost sight of what's right. Maybe they CAN'T accomplish their goals without hurting people, or doesn't WANT to. While Their plan and means dictate the structure of their story, their motivations and background dictate how that's going to feel, and 'feel' is equally important, if not moreso.
Background. Basically, not a whole lot of people are born evil. In the realm of role playing games, there are totally some people who are, and that's alright. However, even a tiny psychopathic maybe-antichrist had events in their life that drove them to higher pursuits than killing small animals and the occasional dead maid. Even someone who's mentally disturbed is in a position to be an antagonist for a reason. Basically, even if the PC's never find out the background of your villain, having it will help you roleplay them(which is super important) and will help you shape their scheme by using the 'weight' of what's happened to them. You're also making another very important decision here between motivation and background: Is the villain relatable, or not? This is another decision that's going to shape how your game feels: The heroes will feel righteous when facing an repentantly evil person and sorrowful when facing someone who's essentially a victim. Both of these are fine, but you've got to take a little care with your relatable villain. Balance their motivations, their actions and their personality so the heroes feel bad for them(or even for their own actions) but not so much that they'd help them or join their side. Of course, you can always run with that, but whether you do or not that's one big derailing moment.
Plan. This is their big, grand scheme. Again, the specifics depend on their intellect. If they're another villain's subordinate, their plan certainly is a small one: it's probably 'work for this guy and I get money and power'. That's okay. This can be the most important aspect of a big villain, though, since it's going to drive the plot: you're deciding the scope of the story right here. A game's going to feel very different based on your decision here, but helpfully this is more like a Field of Vision slider than a ball-pit full of random potential. Here you're deciding whether the scope of the game is narrow (something that threatens a small group), or wide (something that threatens a very large group). Narrow scope games are no less important than wide scope games, but they tend to be shorter and you may be fighting an uphill battle to convince the PCs that this "matters", depending on the personality of your players. You can also use subordinates(little villains) to 'widen' the scope of the game to keep it going once the game's level no longer truly meshes with a narrow scope. This is as easy as finding out a villain has a 'boss' and the game so far was dealing with only one aspect of the true villain's plan, like the siege of a city taking months of real life gaming only for the PCs to find out the siege was to steal an artifact from the castle vault that the 'big' villain needs.
Be very careful here too. I put a line break here to provide emphasis to this piece of advice. This is a great way to 'iris out' and make the campaign feel like it's going from 'small' to 'big' along with the PC's growing levels, like the campaign leveled up too. However, don't take away their accomplishments: you can easily make them feel like nothing they did in the 'first' part of that game mattered. All I can tell you for now is to give them a victory to go along with this revelation, even a Pyhrric victory is better than some dude they never heard of before teleporting in and grabbing the macguffin they didn't know about, then gloating and teleporting away. Drop hints: Drop a slightly higher amount of hints than you think you need to.
Means. This just refers to the powers or resources available to our villain. Unless they're delusional, a big villain with big plans is going to have big means to accomplish it with. An army, a cult, a family, a dungeon, or even powerful magic or just powerful friends all fit here, and you're essentially deciding what you're going to throw at the heroes as challenges. For most fantasy games this means a big network of varied agents, schemes and manipulations. It's even okay to not decide right now what precisely they have at their disposal: The players aren't likely to notice, or even CARE about the specific number of minotaurs in the villain's death-maze, but they WILL care about the death-maze feeling too easy or too hard. Come up with a general theme or set of guidelines and that's good enough. Coming up with their subordinates is a good idea too.
So yeah. All of these are going to get discussed in detail, and I guess today is just a general structure-building overview. There will be plenty of examples in the future for help, but really, creating a villain isn't that hard. You're making a 'skeleton' here, and draping it with the flesh of personality, quirks and epic speeches next. The 'skeleton' greatly affects your game's plot, and the flesh...not so much. It's perfectly fine(and suggested) to work on it second.
I was recently asking myself what the most important parts of a Pen and Paper game are. Obviously, the human element is. Having fun is. But removed from all the obvious feely-feel good answers of the people being the most important part, I did have an idea or two. So, before I discuss things like general game plot structure or the anatomy of a good story, we're going to discuss the guy who drives the story, the antagonist who antagonizes the protagonist into proactive action, the Villain.
Today's post isn't called 101 because that's an awesome joke: We're going to be going back to this topic a lot so I'm literally numbering them like a class. Get used to that because when we talk about long-form subjects like building a world or walking through a Let's Create to watch everything we've learned mesh together, I want readers to be able to follow the information without me having to post it one after another. We'll all be happier if I can shake it up a bit. This is probably going to be seven or more posts as I expand on these concepts, and a few more while I do a "Let's build a bad guy" as a big finale of an example.
A villain is an antagonist. Really, this should be Antagonist 101, since your game might have its fair share of villains who aren't bad people, or who have sincerely good intentions. In fact, in an archetypal "Evil" game, the villains are probably going to be mostly good guys. Basically, an antagonist(for our purposes) is someone whose motivations or desires run counter to the motivations or desires of the protagonist. Who's the protagonist? The Player Characters. Man, that one was easy. This means that your game is going to have plenty of villains: Big ones, small ones, maybe some that only show up for one encounter. I'm going to lean toward discussing a villain who's around for at least one scheme and who are traditionally evil in nature. "Good Guy" antagonists are a big stinky can of worms that go hand in hand with discussing "evil" games, and let's not make this post longer than it needs to be by trying to shoehorn them into it.
So whether we're talking about a big bad villain or a little tiny villain, they have the same anatomy. They have a motivation, a plan, a means, and a background. Duh, but I wanted to point out two things: The first is that their background is an important part of the story you're crafting, even if the PCs never find out what it is. The second is that there's potentially not very much that separates a little villain who drives one subplot and a big one who drives the whole game. A pirate king who commands an armada of ruthless pirates and threatens the stability of an entire nation is not very different than a bandit who raids helpless merchant wagons. The pirate king simply has their metaphorical 'volume' turned up: They have a much higher motivation, a much bigger plan and much more means when the game begins.
Motivation. This is the why. Depending on their personality or intellect, maybe it isn't so big or complex. In the first draft of this, I didn't even list Motivation and Plan separately. Their motivation certainly can seem like a small, unimportant thing. Their plans are what drive the plot, after all. Their motivations are crucial to the feel of the villain, though. The thing is...they aren't always bad. Sometimes motivations are good or justified and the villain has been through so much pain or strife that they've lost sight of what's right. Maybe they CAN'T accomplish their goals without hurting people, or doesn't WANT to. While Their plan and means dictate the structure of their story, their motivations and background dictate how that's going to feel, and 'feel' is equally important, if not moreso.
Background. Basically, not a whole lot of people are born evil. In the realm of role playing games, there are totally some people who are, and that's alright. However, even a tiny psychopathic maybe-antichrist had events in their life that drove them to higher pursuits than killing small animals and the occasional dead maid. Even someone who's mentally disturbed is in a position to be an antagonist for a reason. Basically, even if the PC's never find out the background of your villain, having it will help you roleplay them(which is super important) and will help you shape their scheme by using the 'weight' of what's happened to them. You're also making another very important decision here between motivation and background: Is the villain relatable, or not? This is another decision that's going to shape how your game feels: The heroes will feel righteous when facing an repentantly evil person and sorrowful when facing someone who's essentially a victim. Both of these are fine, but you've got to take a little care with your relatable villain. Balance their motivations, their actions and their personality so the heroes feel bad for them(or even for their own actions) but not so much that they'd help them or join their side. Of course, you can always run with that, but whether you do or not that's one big derailing moment.
Plan. This is their big, grand scheme. Again, the specifics depend on their intellect. If they're another villain's subordinate, their plan certainly is a small one: it's probably 'work for this guy and I get money and power'. That's okay. This can be the most important aspect of a big villain, though, since it's going to drive the plot: you're deciding the scope of the story right here. A game's going to feel very different based on your decision here, but helpfully this is more like a Field of Vision slider than a ball-pit full of random potential. Here you're deciding whether the scope of the game is narrow (something that threatens a small group), or wide (something that threatens a very large group). Narrow scope games are no less important than wide scope games, but they tend to be shorter and you may be fighting an uphill battle to convince the PCs that this "matters", depending on the personality of your players. You can also use subordinates(little villains) to 'widen' the scope of the game to keep it going once the game's level no longer truly meshes with a narrow scope. This is as easy as finding out a villain has a 'boss' and the game so far was dealing with only one aspect of the true villain's plan, like the siege of a city taking months of real life gaming only for the PCs to find out the siege was to steal an artifact from the castle vault that the 'big' villain needs.
Be very careful here too. I put a line break here to provide emphasis to this piece of advice. This is a great way to 'iris out' and make the campaign feel like it's going from 'small' to 'big' along with the PC's growing levels, like the campaign leveled up too. However, don't take away their accomplishments: you can easily make them feel like nothing they did in the 'first' part of that game mattered. All I can tell you for now is to give them a victory to go along with this revelation, even a Pyhrric victory is better than some dude they never heard of before teleporting in and grabbing the macguffin they didn't know about, then gloating and teleporting away. Drop hints: Drop a slightly higher amount of hints than you think you need to.
Means. This just refers to the powers or resources available to our villain. Unless they're delusional, a big villain with big plans is going to have big means to accomplish it with. An army, a cult, a family, a dungeon, or even powerful magic or just powerful friends all fit here, and you're essentially deciding what you're going to throw at the heroes as challenges. For most fantasy games this means a big network of varied agents, schemes and manipulations. It's even okay to not decide right now what precisely they have at their disposal: The players aren't likely to notice, or even CARE about the specific number of minotaurs in the villain's death-maze, but they WILL care about the death-maze feeling too easy or too hard. Come up with a general theme or set of guidelines and that's good enough. Coming up with their subordinates is a good idea too.
So yeah. All of these are going to get discussed in detail, and I guess today is just a general structure-building overview. There will be plenty of examples in the future for help, but really, creating a villain isn't that hard. You're making a 'skeleton' here, and draping it with the flesh of personality, quirks and epic speeches next. The 'skeleton' greatly affects your game's plot, and the flesh...not so much. It's perfectly fine(and suggested) to work on it second.
Sunday, June 5, 2016
Yes And, No But
This one's a quickie. When you play a game, really what you're doing is improvisational theater. Well, unless you're one of those people who does all RPing in the third person in which case I really feel bad for you. Improvisational theater has so much nuance that people teach classes on being good at it, but we're just going to talk about one big rule that'll make your games run smoother if everyone is mature enough to handle it.
One of the cardinal rules of improv is called "Yes And". Basically it means you should accept what the other actor has defined, and then expand upon it. What it's saying is that you should work with the other person instead of against them. If someone shows up with a gun, it's not 'funny' to yell "WHY ARE YOU HOLDING A FISH", it's just random and dumb. It'd be much better to ask why there's water leaking from their gun, or comment that it's creepy that it's looking at you.
When you run a game, it's natural for players to ask the GM for permission for most things. It's not bad, it's just the way shit goes. In a normal game, the flow sometimes stutters because of questions like this. "Can I buy a tankard of ale?" "Are there leaves here I can stuff under my bedroll to make it softer?" and then usually followed by "Okay, I'm gonna do that.". Basically, if it's an inconsequential action done for roleplay, it's way easier to just let the player handle it. You're building a story together, after all.
Obviously the GM might have to jump in and require a skill check, or even say no. Try not to say no directly, though, unless you have to. If you've described the scene well enough, you'll hardly ever have to say 'no' anyway. There also might be some jackass somewhere trying to use "Yes And" to get ahead somehow. Stop this using the 'and' part of the rule. "Look guys, I found an expensive necklace!" could be replied to with "Yes, And it's costume jewelry. There must have been a play performance in this area.". Ideally you could even expand on this play performance and turn it into a plot hook. Of course, most trolls or munchkins won't understand subtle hints, so if you've got a True Final Form Jerkass in your game, talking to them out of character is the only thing that's going to work. In fact, always keep that in mind just in case I never get around to talking about it: Most of the time, direct confrontation is the only thing that's going to work.
I hope I don't need to tell you that this rule is only to speed up inconsequential interactions. Yes And is really not for anything that would require a skill check, or something that would end in an important item, solution or action. "Hey guys, look! I found a backpack!" is a lot different than "Hey guys, look! I found a plank we can put over the pit!".You also shouldn't fight to redefine something the GM's said about the scene. They ARE the GM, and they DO get first dibs. It should be obvious what you can do and what you should still ask the GM about, but there might be a little bit of growing pains if you don't know each other too well. In fact, if it's a relatively new group, the GM might want to bring this up after a few sessions.
A special mention goes to the reverse of Yes And called negating or, a term I prefer, No But. This is basically when someone, usually the GM, immediately rewrites something someone has just defined, such as someone saying "Look at this white cat I've found." then the GM immediately saying "Actually it's black.". Using this to try to control the scene entirely by yourself isn't amusing or helpful, it's lame. Using it(or even the normal Yes And methods) to mess with people because you think it's funny is worse. This is a team effort, and either everyone should feel like their input matters, or you should just go back to the stuttering pace and constant GM questions. Negating can make other characters look foolish or stupid, which is never something that you should place on a character that's not yours. Most people want their character to feel cool, and even the people who wish to play a bumbling idiot would probably rather control their own pace.
That's not to say you should be scared of direct interactions with people. Find what they're comfortable with, and always use Yes And. Oh, and really try not to start a yes-and-ing war with someone because then you'll be there all night.
One of the cardinal rules of improv is called "Yes And". Basically it means you should accept what the other actor has defined, and then expand upon it. What it's saying is that you should work with the other person instead of against them. If someone shows up with a gun, it's not 'funny' to yell "WHY ARE YOU HOLDING A FISH", it's just random and dumb. It'd be much better to ask why there's water leaking from their gun, or comment that it's creepy that it's looking at you.
When you run a game, it's natural for players to ask the GM for permission for most things. It's not bad, it's just the way shit goes. In a normal game, the flow sometimes stutters because of questions like this. "Can I buy a tankard of ale?" "Are there leaves here I can stuff under my bedroll to make it softer?" and then usually followed by "Okay, I'm gonna do that.". Basically, if it's an inconsequential action done for roleplay, it's way easier to just let the player handle it. You're building a story together, after all.
Obviously the GM might have to jump in and require a skill check, or even say no. Try not to say no directly, though, unless you have to. If you've described the scene well enough, you'll hardly ever have to say 'no' anyway. There also might be some jackass somewhere trying to use "Yes And" to get ahead somehow. Stop this using the 'and' part of the rule. "Look guys, I found an expensive necklace!" could be replied to with "Yes, And it's costume jewelry. There must have been a play performance in this area.". Ideally you could even expand on this play performance and turn it into a plot hook. Of course, most trolls or munchkins won't understand subtle hints, so if you've got a True Final Form Jerkass in your game, talking to them out of character is the only thing that's going to work. In fact, always keep that in mind just in case I never get around to talking about it: Most of the time, direct confrontation is the only thing that's going to work.
I hope I don't need to tell you that this rule is only to speed up inconsequential interactions. Yes And is really not for anything that would require a skill check, or something that would end in an important item, solution or action. "Hey guys, look! I found a backpack!" is a lot different than "Hey guys, look! I found a plank we can put over the pit!".You also shouldn't fight to redefine something the GM's said about the scene. They ARE the GM, and they DO get first dibs. It should be obvious what you can do and what you should still ask the GM about, but there might be a little bit of growing pains if you don't know each other too well. In fact, if it's a relatively new group, the GM might want to bring this up after a few sessions.
A special mention goes to the reverse of Yes And called negating or, a term I prefer, No But. This is basically when someone, usually the GM, immediately rewrites something someone has just defined, such as someone saying "Look at this white cat I've found." then the GM immediately saying "Actually it's black.". Using this to try to control the scene entirely by yourself isn't amusing or helpful, it's lame. Using it(or even the normal Yes And methods) to mess with people because you think it's funny is worse. This is a team effort, and either everyone should feel like their input matters, or you should just go back to the stuttering pace and constant GM questions. Negating can make other characters look foolish or stupid, which is never something that you should place on a character that's not yours. Most people want their character to feel cool, and even the people who wish to play a bumbling idiot would probably rather control their own pace.
That's not to say you should be scared of direct interactions with people. Find what they're comfortable with, and always use Yes And. Oh, and really try not to start a yes-and-ing war with someone because then you'll be there all night.
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