Bringing Back the Sense of Consequence...

I've watched another Buffy episode today, also from the 3rd season. One concept slipped to my mind from it. It's nothing new, or surprising, but it's the single best way to stop our murder hobos from doing something that they're gonna regret about forever. The concept is consequences. If there will be consequences for what the PCs do, the PCs will stop with doing evil bad things for no apparent reason.

Anyway, here are 4 quick ways to bring back the sense of consequences to the game:

1. The police and other law enforcement groups are the single most common way to deal with it. Sure, players will sometimes pooh-pooh the police, but the sheer numbers of the policemen should be enough for that. If a party member commits a huge crime, have a chaotic scene in which the police takes the characters to an investigation, and the rest will be history...
2. Dreams. When that particular PC sleeps, dreams about the infamous action will come to the character's head. If the character has problems with sleeping, that little extra edge has been achieved. 
3. Vengeance. No real need to expand it, I think...
4. Alienation from the world. The stink of the evil doers has been glued to the character. People are whispering around him/her, every shadow is like a killing machine ready to destroy him/her...

And that's it for today. How about you? How do you bring this sense back?

Lessons from Buffy's Homecoming

I'm watching Buffy, again. I still find new things there, quite a lot, actually, which is kinda nice. Anyway, in season 3, there's an episode that just screams: "GMs, learn from me!" This episode is on the right with this scream. It's a golden episode for GMs.

So, without any far ado, let's get to the nitty business. What can we learn from this episode?

• Drama is prominent in the small details and not only in the big ones. Look at the conversation between Buffy and Angel at the beginning of the episode. You can feel the tension in the air. You can sense the drama that whispers in our ears when she tells him that she moved forward. It's a small scene, the only scene with Angel in this episode, and yet it's one of the most dramatic ones in the episode.
• To create a sense of conspiracy, little hints are all you need. Look at the beginning of the episode, when Scott breaks with her. We suddenly move to a view from a camera. It's all we needed. There's a conspiracy there, and we know it. It was prominent earlier in the season, when Snyder talked about the mayor also. Little details and little hints, and suddenly the sense of conspiracy is there.
• The protagonists have normal life also. Even slayers like Buffy have normal life, or at least the need for it. A contest for the Homecoming Queen, a basketball game, it doesn't really matter what it is exactly, but give a sense of normality. No one is a hero (or a heroine) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• When done good, party conflicts can bump the tension quite a lot. It can also give excuses for adventures. If there wasn't this conflict, it would have been Buffy and Faith, and as such much less interesting.
• If the players come with a nonviolent way to solve a violent event, go for it. Cordelia lies to Lyle about being a slayer, and the better one, and it works. Being used after such a conflict between them, I wished to see the face of Buffy when she heard it...
• Think about how you show your big bad of the campaign. The mayor is presented greatly, with a scene that both shows how he reacts with people, and both shows how evil he is. Having your villain focus on such things as how dirty one's hands are, we get an intriguing fella. Use it.
• Using meanwhile scenes to present the dangers that are coming to the PCs can be a useful tool. It both shows the antagonists at their peaks, and also creates a sense of danger.
• Contests are a sure way to get the engines rolling.
• When organising a cool adventure, think about its name, and present it to the players (and to their characters) in an intriguing way. An exploding TV, a plane that falls on them, a dream sequence... If it will come in a cool way, it will be remembered better.

So, these are my 9 lessons from this episode. How about you? What lessons did you take from this episode?

5 Great Fears

Today I wanna talk a little bit about the things that we are afraid of. I talked a lot in the past weeks about information and expositions, about plots (twice) and about isolation. What I didn't talk about, though, was about what we're afraid of. I've touched it a little bit when I talked about how to create the monster in the story, but that's about it. So, without any more introductions thingy, let's get our hands dirty...

We can create about 5 groups of things that we're afraid of. Almost any horror story/ movie or the like falls at least in one of those groups. They are, of course, not frightening to the same degree, and a more frightening level is usually harder to truly achieve. Yet, it can be achieved, and it usually deserves this amount of energy. 

1) Evil Threatening Us

This is the least frightening level. In this level, the horror that we're dealing with, stalks us. The killer tries to kill us is the easiest example. Most of the Slasher Movies fall into this category. Look for example on Halloween. Michael stalks Laurie, trying to kill her. Even when he kills other persons, it's only after we grew a little bit of sympathy for them. He's not hurting anyone to make Laurie on her toes, but just to kill them. It can be seen in Psycho too, when Bates kills his victims only after we saw a little bit of them. We get to like Marion; we get to like the inspector...

2) Evil Threatening Others

A little bit more interesting level is the one where the horror stalks the one we're closed to, but we can't do anything to prevent it. Buffy's episode Passion is a great example of this: Angelus teases Buffy, but he kills Jenny in order to drive Giles mad, he kills Willow's fish to get her out of her comfort zone, he stalks Buffy's mother in order to drive Buffy out of her nerves, and all of this combination of things drives Buffy into making a few mistakes along the way (and almost costs with Giles life). 

It can be seen in The Exorcist too, where we see how our protagonists tries to save her daughter, calling for psychiatric help and later to the exorcists.

3) Creating Evil Ourselves

Now we're starting to get our hands really dirty. The horror doesn't come from the outside world, but out of our creations. Look at Frankenstein, for example, where we can see the Frank's creation is the one that destroys his life, or at Rosemary's baby, where Rosemary's afraid of the possibility that the child that she's carrying is a monster. 

One of the reasons that this is the level where we get really dirty is that in this level, the horror isn't only from the other side, from the outside world, but it also comes from within, "it was my creation that did this..."

4) Being Evil Ourselves

Advancement in the curve, the horror is really us. We are the evil thing; we are the monster that everyone is afraid of... Vamp stories are the clearest example of this: "I get to live forever, but at what price?" Werewolf stories address this level also, as we lose control of ourselves and become the monsters. We see the horror as it happens, remembering every little bit of it, but without the ability to do something. 

It can also be seen in such stories as The black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe, in which our protagonists is going mad and kills his beloved cat, resulting in a series of crimes to prevent the discovery of this thing. It ends really badly for out protagonist.

5) Living in an Evil World

This is the highest level of horror. Lovecraft used this level a lot in his cosmic horror stories, as this is where they come from. Most of the stories and films that happen in a dream world drive their power from this fear, as does some that are not horror (The Matrix is a great example of this). Living in an Evil World can also mean living in world with no good within it, or discovering that everything we thought we knew about this world is wrong.

And that's it for today. How do you use these fears in your games? To what levels do you strive when GMing horror?

Different Kinds of Campaigns

There are many types of campaigns. Some are big, some are small, some are episodic and some are one long story that stretches for years with no breaks out of it. There are those dungeons who take the characters from level 1 to 15 and then a little more and those campaigns who take the characters from level 1 to 5 with 2 little adventures within it to call it a campaign. 

There are those campaigns in which each session is a complete adventure, with different enemies and goals. "Today, you have to collect the sheets of Amon-Ra", Yesterday they had to kill Shamalanious. The only connection between the adventures in this campaign is the main cast of protagonists. It's the same Spoke and the same Luke and the same Castle. If there's character advancement, it's small and not that grandiose. There are no weddings or childbirths, no funerals of the characters' parents, and the characters need years to advance emotionally.

There are also those campaigns in which each session is a complete adventure, except for a few 2-times to advance the plot even further. There's a clear big bad in the end, but there are breaks from him (or her) every few session to bring anticipation for the comeback of the big bad. The characters advance a lot, getting friends and losing them, getting closer to some ones and losing them and so on. The main cast of Buffy and Angel and many more is suddenly getting the help of Angel who turned into Angelus, they have suddenly the need to confront the big bad Geppetto and so on. Still a main cast, but there's also the main villain.

There are also the campaign that stretches for years, without clear ending, that just grow bigger and bigger in years, with the same big bad in the end, even after so many years, and no breaks to clear the mind have been seen since the campaign started. Neo still has to fight Agent Smith, even after so many years, and since the second age they are still trying to defeat Sauron. One day it may end, but 'till then there's no other choice but to keep getting closer to this end point.

And there are of course many campaigns that fall between the lines, between the walls of imaginary "no-trespassing", maybe parodying or maybe trying to advance those walls to save the games from becoming all too similar patterns. Campaigns in which each act is in a different style, campaigns in which every act has a different director or GM and so on...

How about your campaigns? To where do they fall? Do they have a category of their own?

An Even More Personal Layer

The victory should come with a price. The more important the victory, the bigger the price should be. I've watched yesterday, again, the season 2 final and it just shows it as clear as crystal light. Victory should come with a price. Not a procedural price but a dramatic one: The character has to sacrifice her life, the heroine has to be shunned by society, or even the character has to lose a loved one.

Buffy took it to the extreme. Buffy was way too close to killing Angelus and to close the gate with his blood. Willow, in the meantime, was casting the spell that will restore his soul. A moment before she killed him, his soul came back. Buffy, who throughout the season had to fight her inner demons, knowing that he won't come back to be Angel, who learnt that she has no other choice but to kill him, received the thing she wished for: She got Angel back. On the other hand, she knew that she has to kill him in order to save the world. Buffy had to sacrifice the thing that she wanted the most, in the moment that she got it, in order to save the world.

I think that all of us who watched this episode know what I'm talking about when I say that it's an example, a great example, for drama at its best. This end is both memorable and tragic, and it raises the finale a few places.

We can see it in other series finales, and in movies. In the end of Casablanca, for example, no one got what s/he wanted. Rick wanted Ilsa, Ilsa wanted Rick, and Victor wanted to be with a woman that loves him. In order to save Victor, Rick sent Ilsa with him, lying that she wanted to be with him. Rick knew that without Victor, the war is gonna be much harder. Everyone's happiness was sacrificed for the greater good.

In the end of American Beauty, on the other hand, Lester has to die in order to truly understand how beautiful the world is. In the end of Sunset Blvd, the screenwriter dies in order to get his pool, and Norma kills in order to get her close-up.

What I'm trying to show here, is that finales have to come with great costs, especially victories. The higher the importance of the victory and the more personal the cost is, the greater the drama. Dramatic endings are remembered for a long long time.

In games, it's not that hard to achieve. Going for things like the previous examples is one thing, and an easy one (relatively, of course), but RPGs is the only medium where the audience is also the creators, the storytellers. This enables the GM to come with a different kind of price. From confronting the PCs with their characters to even nastier ones that words can't tell. You've got another layer, far more personal than any TV or movie will be ever able to get, use it. 

Faustian Deals

"I can give you power, a lot of power, but every wish, every gift, comes with a price..."

Today I want to talk about one of the most useful tools in the horror GM's arsenal: The Faustian Deal. Faustian deal, named after Faust who made a deal with the devil, is a deal that gives the person a great amount of power, usually with a just as high (or even higher) price. The most common ones are usually power for the soul in the afterlife. In horror gaming, this kind of deals can be prove useful to stress the point that power carries a cost with it, and the cost is usually high. 

So, how can we use it? Especially since we don't play the afterlife of the characters?

There are a few ways to use it. The first is the one that is used in Call of Cthulhu, the one of mechanical cost. Using magic, alien technology or learning about the mythos costs you SAN. It's an easy way to show the cost, as it starts a death spiral that closes on the character. It's used also in V:tR, where power cots Vitae and without Vitae the vamp starts to go frenzy. It's also not that cheap to raise it back, as it carries dangers and sometimes even humanity roles.

Another way to use it is through descriptions. You don't have to go all gross out (actually, it's better not to) but hinting at the cost, enough to excite the players' minds and you've got something. A machine that will solve the global starving problem but with the cost of a few children every day being sacrificed; A magic spell that can call the power of Cthulhu into oneself in the cost of becoming Cthulhu (after enough uses, or immediately); A gadget that can restore peace to the world (like the one used in Watchmen) with the cost of destroying a city and killing half of its population...

Another way to do it is that things don't always work as planned. I think that a perfect example for this (although a childish one) can be seen in SpongeBob, when Mr. Crab asks to speak with money and as a response has came mad. It can be seen in Buffy also, in the great episode The Wish, when with the wish of Cordelia, the consequences of Buffy not coming to town were that The Master controlled Sunnydale and the Scoobies became vamps...

How about you? How do you use Faustian Deals within the game?

When You Come to the Session Without Even the Slightest of Ideas...

Coming with an idea for today's post was hard; I actually needed a second cup of tea just to find it. Then, it finally struck me, an idea that just waited there to be explored: What do you do when you come to the session without even the slightest idea about what to do?

1) Ask the players to tell what happened the last session

Sometimes we just don't remember what happened, but usually we do, so why to ask for this rewind? Because the players see a picture of their own, that is quite close and similar to yours but not completely. I care more for certain points, they forget others and they'll tell you these things if you'll just listen.

Asking for this rewind gives them the stage and the limelight they need to tell you just that. They'll tell you what they like and what you didn't, if you know how to read between the lines, they'll tell what they want to see more and what not... All of these things will give you heavy doses of inspiration for the session.

2) Let the players run it without knowing it

Using "yes, and" responses, let your players build the "platform" for you. This will give you both a place and a few NPCs and also a routine that you can break. "When we last left you, you were in a bar. What do you do? -Is there a barmaid there? -Yes, and he's showing you his hand waiting for the money for your drinks. -Are there other people who sit in the bar? -Yes, and they have empty glasses and torn clothes..."

From here, it's easy to get a conflict inserted: "The barmaid refuses to get your money, but receives those poor people's money with a cynical smile"; "The poor people draw their swords and they look at you with anger, 'you should have invited us for beer when you had the chance'", and so on...

3) Bring 2 cultists with a gun

You didn't expect me to leave it behind, did you? It doesn't have to be cultists, or a gun (it can be 2, for example, one each...), etc. It can, and should be, a little bit more interesting: "Your sister enters with a gun pointed at you", "Your husband enters with a gun pointed at you" and so on...

4) Someone has been murdered

Another classic. Murdered people are always a way to bump up the excitement and it gives the players something to chew while you think of something cleverer. It can also be used to dramatic effect: The NPC the players wanted to meet was murdered 3 days before they've arrived to her castle; the villain the characters wanted to bring to justice committed a suicide moments before the characters got him...

5) Take inspiration from the last show that you've seen on TV

TV series is just like a campaign in so many ways, that taking a plot from a TV series is a sure way to get something that is appropriate to a campaign (well, almost a sure way...). Because it's the last thing that you've watched, it's the easiest one to apply to the game- it's fresh and new, after all...

If you've watched an episode of Buffy with Adam there, you've got a monster to unleash at the party. If you've watched an episode of Seinfeld, you've got a situation you can apply, and a few NPCs (you can get some NPCs from Buffy also, but they are usually already there, disguised as PCs...).

You can get this inspiration from a movie also, but it will be less appropriate usually to a campaign (and it is also quite longer than a single TV episode...).

And that's it. How about you? What do you when you come to a session without any idea?

Exploding Dolls, Underwater Bar Fights and Flying Castles

"Remember that battle when we were like in the middle of a factory, and all the dolls that were created there exploded?"

"Remember when we fought a bar fight under the water like in that movie, Top Secret?"

There are always this fights that are kept forever, that we look for again and again. Some of them involved great Roleplaying, or a critical at the right time, but most of them were in really cool places. At least in my games that's the situation.

When I GMed action games, I always reminded to myself one simple thing: "Every action movie has a cool, very cool, set-piece for the final confrontation of the movie". In TV series it's right also. Think about the end of season 4 of Buffy, with the fight in the dream, or one episode earlier when they fought Adam in the Initiative Basement. Think about the end of Matrix, where Neo and Smith fought in the train station. That's the kind of battles, of fights, that we remember because it's cool, because it's special and unique, because we didn't see that before.

So, after I have reminded to myself this thing all through the session, saying it to myself again and again like a mantra, I started to use it, and it paid off. I had a fight in a flying castle, where suddenly it fell and they used magic to keep it afloat while still fighting the villains. I had a battle between ships, with PCs and NPCs going from side to side and trying not to fall. I had fights in total darkness, and multi-planar battles. And after the fifth battle that I ran and was this cool and special, they started to look for it, to wait for it, to try to guess where it will be, and some of them even suggested places by themselves.

It's not a lot of work, making something like this, but it pays off, and it makes the games so much better, and the battles so much special.