Making Race Important to the Game

Over at Roleplaying Tips they're hosting a nice little blog carnival, centered on the concept of races. And… I must say that I don't normally play with race too much, or at the very least- not today. But it doesn't mean that I don't have anything to bring to the table. I did run a year or two of campaigns centered on races and our prejudices surrounding them, back in the day.

John asks for tips and ideas about making race an important factor in the game. For me, the number one trick, the first tip that I offer for GMs who come to me with the same question, is to lead by example.

Think about the GM-player relationship in most traditional games- the GM sets the stage, decides what is important and what not, and the players (at least to a certain extent) internalize those themes and ideas, and then bring their own versions of it. That's how we explore themes in RPGs.

But it also means that the GM has to set the stage. If the GM will make race an important factor in her games, like having some racist NPCs or handing a prejudices index (just like we can find in every WOD race book), sooner or later it will become a major factor in the game.

If, for the sake of example, I bring to the table a Dwarf NPC who hates Elves and think that they just stink, suddenly it is important to know if Lucy plays an Elf or if she plays a Halfling. If I'll continue this stage-setting and the next NPC will think that Halflings are not real men, Mr. Halfling will have to find a way to show his manliness.

In other words- making the concept of races important to you, as GM, and playing to this concept, will make it important for the whole group. Before you'll know it you'll have Dwarfs who don't like Gnomes and Orcs who want to be Elves.

And that's the whole truth, actually. Make it important to you, stress it through your portrayal of NPCs, through your descriptions ("you see an Elf. She…"), through handouts... If it is important enough for you to stress it, it will become important enough for them as well.

Or you can just go and play Vampire. I "heard" that they've done it right.

How about you? What tips and tricks do you have for making race an important factor in your games?

Pulse- In Horror, Nothing Really Happens

So… yeah, Pulse was nice. Or at least, it was nice in the beginning. Somewhere after the first 30 minutes or so it just lost its mark, and what followed was a mediocre film. The acting level went down, the dialogues became clanky, the metaphors became way too much for a normal movie. I left the screen disappointed, way too much disappointed.

In short, though, this movie is a metaphor for the way that the internet changed our society, driving us away from each other due to the internet. It is pretty easy to see that by the time we reach the end, the director practically says that the internet will destroy us all in one way or the other. But the ending just feels a little bit over-the-top, and is a little too happy for the tone of the movie up to this point.

But it doesn't mean that there's nothing to learn from this movie. True, it is located in the first 30 minutes of the movie, but this lesson is there nonetheless. In the first 30 minutes of the film, almost nothing happens. And that's one of the most important secrets in the horror genre- nothing really happens, but it is still scary as hell.

The trick for doing it is to say to us quite early that this is a horror movie or game. After stressing that, we're always on the lookout for those horror moments, because we first of all wanna be scared, and second of all we wanna be brave. This combination makes us far more stressful and jumpy in horror films and games.

A great GM can utilize that. After stressing that his is a horror game, and giving something to chew early on, it is only a matter of raising questions in most of the time left for the session. How to do that is what all those other horror posts are for. But firstly one needs to understand that in horror, being gentle and graceful in the use of the tools is the trick. Nothing really happens, or is it? The room is empty, or is it? There are marks on the floor, but do you really wanna know what thing left those marks? Nothing really happened here, but the feeling went out of my keyboard and (hopefully) entered your minds. Because in horror, just like in real life, nothing really happens. We just think that it does. And hope that we are wrong.

How about you? What have you thought about this movie? And what have you learned from it?

Salò- Horror through Beautiful Scenery

I want my time back. Like seriously I want my time back. This film is supposed to be a controversial art film, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just not ready for films like this, or maybe it is just a matter of me being close to this subject matter. OK, not this exact subject matter, but I think that you know what I mean.

Anyway, it is a movie about 4 sick fascist libertines, in the North Italian region, and the ways they torture 18 teenagers, 9 boys and 9 girls. It is suffice to say that it is not a movie for those with a light stomach. For 120 days, the fascists torture them in about every dreadful way imaginable and finished with a Waltz and no punishment. Pasolini wanted it to be a social commentary. For me it is a sick flick that shouldn't have been made.

But, being made, and held to such a high regard by some directors and film critics, and being a part of my October Horror Movie Challenge (number 24), I have to pick a lesson from it. And what can I say, it is quite hard to pick one because there aren't many things to pick from this movie. But I picked one anyway.

When the film opens, we quite early get some glimpses of Northern Italy. We see some beautiful houses, some nice skyline and rivers, and we even see some nice small and big trees. The scenery is just beautiful. Way too beautiful. Even the house where the teens will spend their next 120 suffering for no reason whatsoever, even this house is beautiful from the outside, and has some merits in the inside.

This is made by purpose, because through this beauty of the outside world, and its contrast to what lies and happens within, we get a feeling of an evil world that doesn't care for those teens at all. Even the huge amount of statues, all of them religious statues, is there to advance this world. "The world is sick", Pasolini tells us, "and even though such horrible things are happening in this house, no one in the world cares, the world just continues with its usual affairs".

When we GM horror games, especially cosmic and other fifth level horror games, this contrast can add so much to our games. Because the power of this level comes from the realization that the world is an evil, uncaring and cold place, using this contrast can help us so much. The beauty is just a façade, terrible things lie beneath, and the world doesn't care, it continues to be beautiful, it continues to do nothing to prevent it.

Have you watched this move? What have you thought about it? And what lessons did you take from it?

Hellraiser- How Not to Use Gore

Ok… yeah… emm… I'm trying to think but words fail me. So I'll just say it plainly: "Hellraiser was shit." How shiity was it? Well, Ebert said it best, when paraphrasing King's remark about Clive Barker: "…but I have seen the future of implausible plotting, and his name is Clive Barker." True, Ebert did make a few mistakes recounting the plot, but it doesn't really matter, it doesn't make the plot any better, and the pace is bad no matter how you look at it.

It is a movie about a man who made a deal with a Rubik cube or something, and due to this pact he dies. Then his ex-lover kills people so he'll get his flesh back. Also- some ugly demons who were supposed to look interesting or something, especially the something part. One of them looks campy, with his sunglasses, but that's as close as it gets there.

Truth is, most of the lessons to learn from this movie have already been covered, only here we learn them as things not to do, as common pitfalls or whatever. But there is something that we can learn from this movie that I haven't covered: Appealing to the disgust factor.

 You see, this movie is just disgusting. There's no better way to phrase that, or even to describe it. It ain't scary, ain't anything else. It was a disgusting movie, plain and simple. And one couldn't even say that it was being disgusting with a purpose. It was disgusting for the sake of being disgusting. It had a man that eats insects. Why? God knows. We later see him return and we learn that it was supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing or something, but it was a lazy kind of foreshadowing. It was the kind of foreshadowing that leaves you with a sour taste. And this one was the one with a "purpose".

Stephen King once wrote that if he can't terrify he horrifies, and that if he can't horrify he goes to the revulsion side of the spectrum*. I say something else: If you can't terrify and you can't horrify, please don't do horror, it might be better to all of us.

And I think that I'll leave this movie here, alone and (hopefully) forgotten. Maybe one day I'll find the way to get my time back, or just thee opportunity to ask Barker (or King) what crossed his mind when making this movie (or complimenting Barker).

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What have you taken from it? And what have you learned?

* I can't say that I like King's terminology, but it is a topic for another post, for another day.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death- The Powers of Clothing

Some movies hold to their title, others do not. Too bad that this movie belongs to the latter group. Let's Scare Jessica to Death is an interesting movie, its soundtrack is creepy like hell, and it knows how to play on the audiences fears. Each and every element works perfectly when looked at separately. But when combined? They overshadow each other. And that's the main problem in this movie for me.

In a nutshell, it is the story of a woman who just got released from a mental asylum and who now tries to readjust to her new life, in a house far from town, nice and cozy and quite morbid. She hears things in her head, many-many things, and she tries to deal with it.

What struck me the most about this movie is its use of clothing to tell us about the characters. Especially when looking at our two leading ladies in this film. Emily is dressed in red, which puts her in the sensual realm, as an adult woman. She knows what powers her sexuality possesses.

Jessica, on the other hand, starts the film dressed in violet, and her clothing grows darker in tone with each passing day. I mean, she "chooses" darker clothes with each passing day. And that's interesting, because we can see through her clothing the naivety being broken, we can see how what she hears makes her older, forces her to grow.

And this can be used in our games too. Clothing is such a powerful tool to convey feelings, to convey characteristics, to shed a light on the inner feelings and workings of the characters, it is useful to show social differences. In other words, we can say that "show me what you wear, and I'll know who you are".

All I can say is that maybe, just maybe, one should try to use it. I know that I do, and it works magic for me, why shouldn't it be the same for you?

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you think about it? And what have you taken from it?

The Fog- Silence is Scarier than Sound

I think that by now most of us horror filmgoers are pretty accustomed to the usual run of the mill horror monster. You know the ones- whether it's the devil, or an alien, a vampire or a werewolf, we pretty much know those monsters. But john Carpenter did something unique- he made a natural thing, a bank of fog, something scary. That's the work of a true horror genius.

The Fog tells of a small town called Antonio Bay, which celebrates its 1100^th birthday the day the movie takes place. We get to know a few of the inhabitants of the town, and we get to know of the curse put upon the town a long time ago, a curse that lays a deadly and scary fog on the town. True, the fog has some zombies in it, but they're not so scary, and the fog does work pretty much on its own as we could see with the electricity lines…

Anyway, what makes the fog so scary is the silence. It is a deadly killer, this fog, and it works toward achieving its goal, but it does all of these in silence. We never hear the fog, we never hear the zombies inside the fog (except when they knock on the doors). The fog moves silently, kills silently, avenges silently. And silence is far scarier than sound, because we know sound, and if we hear the danger we can run. But when it is a silent killer like this fog? We won't hear it come, we won't be able to run, and it will kill us.

And it can be incorporated into RPGS. Let the PCs witness this silent killer unleashes its power on some NPCs in this dreadful silence, and the players will be scared as hell. Why? Because they'll understand a simple truth- when the fog will go for them, they won't know about it 'till it's too late. And this thing is scary as hell, knowing that there's something that is ought to get you, but you won't know about its presence until it will be far too late.

But the silence isn't there only when the fog comes, it's also when the fog attacks. True, the fog knocks on the doors to announce its presence, but if one doesn't open the door, the door will be destroyed in silence, and then the fog will enter in silence, and the zombies will come out of it I silence and kill you while still don't making a sound. Silence by itself is scary and unnatural. Silence accompanied by a certain sound signaling your doom is even scarier.

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you think about it? And what did you learn from watching?

Inferno- Treating the Discoveries like Art

I never was one of Argento's greatest fans. True, only last Saturday I recommended Suspiria to someone, but only due to those amazing 15 minutes. Inferno, on the other hand, doesn't have this amazing quality to it which enables me to recommend it even though I don't really like the movie. Inferno is not a bad movie per se, it is just not exactly my style of horror it seems.

If I had to describe its plot in a few sentences, I would describe it as a religious kinda-slasher, with three goddesses as the slashers. I mean, there's more to that, but it will be too much of a spoiler. Let's just say that if you know what an Argento's movie looks like, you'll probably know what Inferno looks like.

And still, there are things to learn from this movie. After all, he may not be my cup of tea, but he is still one of the masters and this movie shows that. For me, the greatest takeaway from Argento's movies was always the horrifying discoveries of the bodies. Argento made them into a sick tour-de-force, showing us the monstrosity of his monsters through the way they let others see their work.

It can be said, and it won't even be too farfetched to say that, that Argento's monsters take their victims as canvases for a new painting, for a work of art. Maybe this is the reason that in some of his best movies the victims are also of artistic upbringing, as maybe they will be the ones who will best appreciate it. Anyway, though, the discoveries of the bodies are usually more sick and frightening than the killings themselves, and that's hard as they are usually presented to us almost exactly one after the other.

And this gives us a glimpse to the monsters' psyches, and adds a little bit of morbid horror, taking Shakespeare's comment that life is but a show to the extreme, up to eleven. And we can use that in our games also. We can make those discoveries like sick jokes, or like the climax of a movie or of a theater show.

Treat those discovery scenes like the pinnacle of your movie, Argento says to us, and actually it might work. It might work really-really well, if we'll give it a chance. True, most of his death scenes (and as such the bodies discovered) are pretty gory, but if we'll limit the gore to these scenes like he does… it may prove far more frightening than one would think. After all, he does know what he's doing.

And that's it for today. How about you? What did you think of this movie? And what did you learn from it?

Invasion of the Body Snatchers- When Knowledge Destroys the Fear

I think that by now it's three great films in a row, if I include this last movie I've seen. And I have to confess, I expected a lot more of the campy side of the genre in this project. I don't know, some of the names sound so campy, like Braindead (which was) and I Walked with a Zombie (which wasn't), but I guess that that's the beauty of it all, right? But today I watched, or should I say finally watched, the movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". True, it was the 1978 remake, but I haven't seen the original also (yeah, I know, shame on me). Anyway, let me just say that I was amazed.

To those who are like I was, this is a movie about a deputy health inspector of San Francisco who finds (with the help of one of his workers, and some accidents…) that some creature from space has come to Earth and it starts to spread in the city, creating duplicates of the townspeople. A lot of conformity and paranoia ensues. I didn't do it justice here, but honestly I didn't want to. You just have to watch it yourself.

The movie is great, and one truly becomes paranoid at a certain point (quite early, I must say), and some of the moments are just heartbreaking or utterly terrifying. But the first part of the movie is the most effective part of it, if you ask me.

You see, in the first part, all we have is a few crazy people, and the lead heroine, telling us that something is amiss (we also have a little feeling ourselves that something is amiss, but they pretty much dispute anything like that in the first hour of the film). We slowly begin to understand that there's something bigger in here, something far more horrifying than we thought, and the sense of conspiracy grows. We get the most effective fear of all- that the world itself is evil. As the film goes on, we start to get some info about how and what are those things that do the body-snatching job.

And that's the problem of the film. It shows us the monster, and it will ever be far less terrifying than what we have thought about. True, it gave us hope and then smashed it in the last scene of the film, but even so, it was less effective because at this stage we knew how those aliens work.

And that's a mistake that we can avoid in our games. In horror games, if you don't have to show and explain the monster- just don't! And if you have to explain it? It might be wiser to change the monster to something that you don't have to explain, that you don't have to describe. Because glimpses of something bad, just like we had in the first half of the movie, will be far scarier than any monster we can create ourselves, far more dread-inducing than what our players can devise. Because no one knows how to scare someone else than that someone and this person only needs some glimpses to get the engines to start rolling and to scare himself/herself.

And that's it for today. How about you? Have you watched this film? What did you think about it? And what did you learn from it?

Cronos- Making the Curse Feel Like a Curse

There are those horror movies that you see and immediately forget, and there are those that you'll take with you onward and maybe even forever. Cronos is one of them. A debut feature film by Del Toro, yet you wouldn't feel that when watching it. It is made with so much thought, devotion and emotion that you can't find anything bad to say about it. It is one of those movies that one hardly could make any better.

It is a story of an old man, who owns an antique shop, and becomes a vampire. It is a story of the relationship between a young girl named Mercedes and her grandfather. It is a story of the fear of the death, of the price of eternity. It is a film about life and living. It is mostly sad, sometimes even a little bit terrifying. I can't find the words to describe this film, to do it justice, not in English nor in Hebrew. It is this good.

And to find something to learn from it is so hard and so easy, takes so much energy and so little an amount. Watch it because it is a good movie, and then watch it again to analyze it. I don't know what else to say.

Right… lesson! I think that the moment in which I understood that I was watching something unique was the bathroom scene, the scene in which our vampire drinks blood from the bathroom floor. It is so powerful, so sad, and so pitiful. From this scene I knew that I was in good hands.

And this scene can teach us something about our games. Quite a lot to teach, actually, but I'll focus on a single thing. In most personal horrors games, the characters are very powerful, very strong and tough, with a lot of magical power. They call this state of theirs a curse, but here it usually ends. This scene can remind us of what it means a cursed state. This vampiric state of his made him do so many heartbreaking things, from drinking the blood from the bathroom floor to almost drinking his granddaughter's blood. And this can happen in our games too.

It is not enough to describe the life taking moment, the enjoyment of the act. It is not enough to say "you bite him, his blood is drawn to your bloody, his heart starts to beat faster and faster, and then slowly picks down the pace. The blood starts to run day, but it doesn't matter, the feeling is wonderful, amazing, and good like you've never felt in your life, better than the feeling of seeing your first child born. And when he dies, and the feeling's gone, you know that you just want more." No, it is not enough, not even close to it. Because it doesn't feel like a sad thing, like a sad act. Maybe it's better to not do it both ways at the same time, but by reminding the players that this is a curse, we help to bring the horrors back. We help to make them want the pain away, the feeling gone, and the horror will use this moment to strike.

Because there's another type of personal horror, besides "oh, what have I done"? This other type of personal horror is so close to the known one, yet so different from it. It is the type of "oh, what did it make me do? To what state have I been drawn?" And by reminding the players that this state is a curse, we bring them closer to the second type's embrace.

How about you? Have you watched this movie? What did you think about it? And what have you learned from it?

"I Walked with a Zombie"- The Power of the Voice over

Sometimes I start to think that maybe, just maybe, this genre isn't for me, that all those horror movies that I really like- it is all an accident and nothing more. And then comes a movie like this. I Walked with a Zombie might have a really bad name, but truth is that this is a descent movie, a good movie, even outside of the horror scope. It is even respectful for the minorities, considering that it's a 1943 movie, but even today it is far more respectful to the Voodoo than most movies today.

It is a movie about a nurse, who comes from Canada to an island in order to try and help to cure a woman who is in a coma. She tries her best, mainly because she's in love with that woman's husband. But the woman is far from being sick- she's a zombie, made like this because of a combination of voodooist magic and a desperate mother-in-low.

Like most Lewton movies, though, we don't really remember the director. Lewton's movies had such a distinctive style, and they were that good, that they surpassed the campy names given to the movies by the RKO studio executives.

But enough general movie talks, let's look at the movie, and especially what we can learn from it, shall we? For me, the main magic of the movie is the voice-overs in the beginning. They have dreamlike vibe to them, they're as mesmerizing as can be and they present has the character of Nurse Betsy Connell quickly and effectively. And I think that it can be useful in RPGs too.

Think about it for a sec- a scene has just ended, and before moving to the next scene, we have a break and one of the players gives a monologue, in voice over, showing what goes in his/her character's mind. Wouldn't it be wonderful? This opens to us a new world of possibilities for reflection scenes.

But it can be driven further that this- a character is facing a moral dilemma. Instead of just choosing, the player can do a voice-over, detailing the way that the character thinks, showcasing the thinking-machinations in the character's head. It can be used to explain changes of thinking, growth of characters and so much more.

I don't know, maybe I'm just optimistic, but if there is one thing that this movie showed me, is that it can be made in any stage of the game, and it carries so many benefits as a way to present characters, to showcase them, to create identification with them, to understand them. Most films during those times used voice-over to present motives, not to convey feelings, after all…

How about you? Have you considered using voice-overs in your games? How did it go? And what else have you learned from this movie?

Not Describing the NPCs

Some of my NPCs don't get a description. It's not that they get less love from me, as I do love them very much. I portray them to the best of my ability, some of them are even really important- the main villain, the main ally. They just never really received a description, not from me and not from my players.

It is an experiment that I've conducted (ok, I conducted retroactively at first), and I really like its results. It is no secret that people care more for the things that they create, and I wanted to take that to the extreme.

You see, a great lesson that I've learned from horror GMing was that one should describe as less as s/he can the monster, so the players will feel the balks with the things that frighten them most. So I thought to myself- "why should I keep this trick only for the frightening stuff?"

My rational was quite simple- if each player will create for himself/herself the image of the NPC, each and every one of them will care for the NPC more. After all, it is (at least to a certain degree) their creation. And I must say that it worked.

So I still give all of my NPCs distinct voices, and I adopt certain postures for each NPC, and some of them I still describe. But some of them I just don't describe. Sometimes it is just because I forgot or because there was no real opportunity for it, but most times I do it with a purpose. I just really enjoy this bond.

Besides, it gives me more time for other things, like portraying them and stuff…

How about you? Have you once tried not to describe your NPCs? How did it go?

Red Scents and Sound-Seeing

I wanna talk a little about descriptions. I talked about it quite a lot, up until now, but mainly because I do believe that it is one of the most important tools in the GM's arsenal. Together with portraying the NPCs, it is the most important tool in the arsenal.

On Wednesday I GMed a game, a D&D game. It was something that I haven't done in a long time, perhaps a year and a half, maybe even more. I used there quite a number of descriptions' techniques, from using references to my "3things in 20 seconds" rule. I even let my players describe things.

But there was one technique that for some reason I didn't use. And it got me thinking. Why haven't I used it? I'm still thinking on that, and I think that I know why I didn't use it, but firstly I want to present it.

The technique is quite simple: mixing the senses a little. I got the inspiration for this technique from the Bible. When Moses goes up the mountain, it is written that all of the people "saw the sounds". Seeing sounds wasn't something that I was used to. It is not a common way to describe things. But it does make it seem larger than life. It makes the event seem grandiose, important, and alien to what we can comprehend.

So I started to describe some of the things in my campaign this way also. I started to use it in horror games, then continued to the climaxes of fantasy ones. The players were shocked at first, asking questions about how it is possible and what do I mean by that. Today they feel the power of it also, and try their hands on it from time to time.

After all, when you can listen to the dark, smell the yellow scent and see the spicy taste, everything is quite different. Everything is quite alien, unnatural, and even uncanny. And this, of course, is only the beginning of the possibilities.

Then I came back to the game, to my analysis of it I mean, and started to ask why I haven't used this technique also. I think that it was because of the comedic tone of that game. After all, when even dragons are nothing but a joke, there's no need for the red scent, or for the green sounds.

Bu I think that it is also because it is a far more complicated way of describing things, one that needs it's proper time and place, and it just didn't feel right for me at the time. I don't know for sure, and I will probably never know the truth, but it doesn't matter. I do know that I felt this technique missing, and I want to use it again, because its rewards are far too great and many.

How about you? Have you used this technique or something similar in your games? If so, how did it go?

Letting the players invent

It's hard to believe, but it has been more than a year since my last post here. Quite a number of changes took place in my life, which I might get to write about them eventually. But not for that I wanted to come back to the blog. I wanted to write about RPGs again, 'cause it's a kind of passion that I still have. In the past year I've moved to "RPG Stack Exchange", where I was amazed by the sheer amount of knowledge going on in there.

I guess that some of the new posts in here will be renditions of some of the answers I wrote for questions that were asked there. But others, like the one that I'm writing now will be completely new., completely original. A word of caution, though: I don't know yet in what schedule I'll be updating here, in the blog. It might be every few days, or once a week, or who knows. But I'm back and hopefully for good.

With that said, it's time to start. Well… I'm reading right now a book, written by our beloved Gary Gygax , called "Master of the Game". It's part of the reason that I came back, but anyway, Gygax talks there quite a lot about the creative role of the GM. He all but says that the players are there for the ride, w=and it is the sole responsibility of the GM to create content and invent things about the imaginary world.

And here I must wholly disagree. Part of the magic in the RPG world is that the story is created together, by the entire group. It is true that by deciding to knock on the dungeon door (for example) the player changes the fiction of the story, thus creating something of her own accord, but is it the only way that a player can use to invent something?

In rule-systems like Fate there are tools, mechanical tools, which the players use to invent things. But I must say that I don't think that it went far enough. The players need more than a limited amount of facts to invent about the imaginary world. If you ask me, a limited amount of facts to invent is far too limited for most groups.

I, for once, use a different system. Whenever I'm stuck without an idea, I ask my players for one. "So, you found the truth about the murder- what is it?" When I'm stuck, whatever my players will bring will be far better than what my stuck mind can bring to the story.

But even this is not far enough. It is a known fact that a great way to bring the players to care about something is to let them invent it. So nowadays I let my players invent and/or describe my NPCs, invent barrels and cats and other parts of the scenery, and much-much more.

For me, it has always been the shared creation of the story and of the world. This was my thing, the reason that I came back to the infamous seat of the GM. It is not groundbreaking. Hell, it's a technique that even I use for at least six or seven years. But nevertheless, it is one of those things that I wanna see more- GMs who let their players create and invent the world as equals to them [the GMs].

And somehow, just somehow, when I GM to new players, I see the players try to invent more. Has the social contract changed us so?

What do you think? Do you let your players invent and/or describe things in the imaginary world? And if so, to what extent?

6 Reasons to Describe the Weather

"It's a sunny day, the clouds are rolling like babies in the sky, and the sun shines like a 24 Carat gold bar." Look at this little bit of weather description. What atmosphere does it create? Does it give hope for the day? Think now on an opposite weather description, of a lightning storm. Wouldn't an adventure seem desperate now?

Weather descriptions can give quite a lot to the game. Far more than I can write about in this post. Yet, it's one of the most overlooked bits of description. So, here are a few reasons for why you should use weather descriptions in your game:

1. Weather descriptions can help to make the world more realistic. If the sun is always at the height of the sky, not moving, not changing, the world doesn't feel alive- it feels frozen in time.
2. It can help to create and maintain the atmosphere of the game. A stormy day can detract hope from even the bravest hero, and if the storm will suddenly be broken, there will hope. Fog can bring paranoia, storms can bring horror...
3. It can bring the people of the world something to talk about. There's a reason that conversations about weather are a kind of ice breakers...
4. It can be used as a way to signal what you want from your players. If done lightly enough, weather can be one of the most cunning ways to say what you want from your players. "I will go and destroy the goblin village. -As you walk, the nearer you get to the village, the foggier the surrounding is..."
5. It can add little bits of colour to the game.
6. It can be a reason to important conversations. A woman runs during a rainy day to get cover, and a man suggests to her his umbrella. Suddenly, we have a meeting between the persons who can be the centre of the plot...

How about you? How do you use weather in your games?

Eleanor Opens a New Campaign...

Eleanor continued to look in her memories, searching for another tricks, for another ways that her old GM used to open campaigns with. She looked at the players, a little bit nervous, a little bit sad, but it soon changed. She decided to continue no matter what.

She was sitting there, her GM starts the adventure, and the picture emerged back. Her old GM knew when to read from the papers and when to improvise scenery. What was so wonderful, was that she did both of this things overly dramatic, and it was way too hard to discern when she did which.

The session started, her old GM stops before an important message, before terrifying scenery, before...

Eleanor always felt that she sees the world, but more than that, she smelled the world, she touched it, she heard it, she tasted it, the world was around her and within her and... Beatrix smelled the roses in the fields. She went to the bar, leading her group. Although she knew what was there, although she was in the bar a moment before she was in the roses garden, she didn't feel cheated. She felt it was justified. It was a flashback, this scene, and she led the group to where they begun...

Eleanor came back to the present, her group looking at her, waiting to see and to hear what she's gonna do. Less than a minute has passed, and she knew right away what to do. She described the surroundings, the world, the where and what and when of the game. She continued to a little bit of the whom of the story, those that were at the bar anyway, and she laid the ground to the PCs. 

The PCs were there, her changing voice, volume and tone, drew them near, drew them in, her descriptions created the living picture that she tried to create...

The group sat in the bar, looking at the commoners and at the few nobles who were there. They suddenly were asked about their history by the barman, who looked interested to hear how they have met, and what have they done in the past few months, and if they are adventurers. 

The group started to describe, telling about coincidental meetings and about first-look loves and about family-bonds and about event-bonds. The barman listened quietly, asking one question there, another one then, suggesting ideas when they were stuck.

It wasn't a clean way, she knew, but it was useful, and it was in character. "Get this thing in the beginning and it will continue 'till the end", her old GM used to say, and she was right, of course... Before she knew it, she had a group with history, with a background and a few deeds, and with a goal. She was happy with what she had. It was a great beginning...

And so, Eleanor continued with her GMing. A few things that were pointed here:

• Descriptions: All five senses.
• Voice: Changing all the time. Not monotonous or anything, but a changing vibrant voice in both volume and tone.
• If there's a contradiction to a thing that was said, it's better to give a quick convincing explanation. Flashback was great in this example- it used the contradiction to explain how they arrived at the bar, but it can also be solved in another ways (dreams are a favourite of many...).
• It's best to ask the group how they met. Not how their characters met, but how they as the characters met ("Beatrix, how did you and Robert met?" As opposed to "Eleanor, how did you and Bobby met?").
• If the group is stuck, suggest ways to continue. It doesn't have to be crystal clear, as with the example of the barman, but a little leading question there, another small one a short time afterwards and you've got something...

5 Quick Tips for Your Descriptions

"You see in front of you the entire city, trees full of green leaves watch the city. Many people go from place to place, making the city seem full of life and unresting. Large red areas fill the remains of the surroundings, as the enemy siege towers grow bigger and bigger as they come closer to the city..."

So, today I wanted to talk about a thing that was overlooked by me for many a years, and I'm still seeing it in many GMs' description: Exciting all the senses. Every literary character, and PCs are included there, has 6 senses: Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste and the sixth one. A mistake that is commonly used is to forget about the last four, and to go almost solely for sight with a little help from the hearing sense. The description from above is an extreme example of this: Only sight.

Tip 1: In every description, excite at least 2 different senses.

Tip 2: Don't go for the same 2 senses every time, make as much movement in the 2 you go for as you can.

The sixth sense, which deserves a paragraph of its own, is the feeling sense: "A dreadful feeling fills you..." This kind of things. It's a sense that should be used, but it needs a special consideration. It's always better to say that this place makes you want to puke than terrifies you. It's even better to say that "it seems too easy", or "too silent", etc... Go for the sense, but don't state for the players how their characters really fill, make the players do this "dirty job".

Another thing, that is often overlooked, is the description of how someone speaks: "She speaks with anger as she says this", or describing an atmosphere of tension. It's far better to give it through the voice. Talk angrily for the first example, or squeak for the second, and the tone and atmosphere will reach the character quicker and far more powerful.

Tip 3: You can use your voice to convey anything that you want it to convey, including contradictions to what you say, use it.

Lastly for today, is "how many details should I include in a description". Truth is, there's no definite answer. It's usually better, though, to make descriptions short and to the point. Don't be afraid to give just the surface and to expand the description according to the players' questions: "A smell of blood fills the room. -From where is it? -You go after the smell and you find, behind the table, the body of Sir Lancelot!"

Tip 4: Make descriptions short and to the point. 3 things in 20 seconds should be enough.

Tip 5: Don't be afraid to expand and/or to wing things on the fly according to the players' questions. It seems much less of an overdose...

You Need the Tower In Order to Destroy It...

There's a world around us, full of flowers and kittens and people and bandits and guns and nukes and... But there's a world first of all. I think that you've already know that I don't believe in a vacuum. You probably know that for me, the now matters the most. The now is the thing that matters, and the world is the thing that we fight for and strive for. 

The world is there waiting for us to make it bigger, richer, fuller, all in the goal of making it come alive. If we're supposed to fight for the world, the world should well deserve it, isn't so? Making the world come alive can manifest in many ways. It can manifest with our descriptions and with our mood and atmosphere and tone and... But it can also come alive from the single most overlooked element: Normal life of the world's habitats. If Ms. Lucy and Mr. Robert are there, doing what a normal newly-wed couple are doing, if on the other side of the city the lord Radolph is there giving a speech and if in the dark corners of the alley a little girl is stealing money to save her dying little brother from his death, the world will be much fuller and will naturally come alive. 

Look for example on the movie Paranormal Activity. It starts really slow, with the presentation of our 2 protagonists, and they're not fighting monsters when we first see them. They have, and that's important, a normal couple conversation. They fight about what a normal couple will fight about and talk to one another the way a normal couple will talk to one another. This is the whole thing we see in the beginning, and this is the most important beat in the story at this stage and many stages afterwards. You can go bump in the night if your characters aren't real (you can, actually, but it will be very very shallow and uninteresting...).

Truth is, these are the little details that matter the most; these are the things that deserve fighting for; most of all, this are the things that make an imaginary world come alive. Too bad they are mostly overlooked, don't let them be forgotten again, they need you as much as you need them...

"He Pulled a Lion from his Hat..."

A little trick for the day: When improvising something, think about a normal thing and then bring to it a little twist. "You get to the show, almost too late. The magician is at the end of his show. He shows to the audience the hat, which is empty of course, and then he puts it on the table and his hand circles all around the hat. When he pulls it out of the hat, there's a lion's mouth held in his hand. He raises the hand, 'till the entire lion is out..." Not spectacular, just a normal magic trick, 'till the magician pulls not a rabbit or a bird out of the hat but a living lion. In a moment, with a little addition, we have a unique magician with a unique magic trick.

    It can be used, of course, to more than just portraying NPCs. It can be used to paint the scenery (the clouds look like tears, only painted green"), to make a building stand out ("The west wall has 43 windows in different sizes"), or even to pitch a game ("it's like Star Wars, only you play a group of Chubakas...").

5 Reasons to Describe Clothing in Your Games

Each one of us has spent at least sometimes a lot of time trying to figure what to wear for the day. It can be for work, or for a date or even for a coronation. What is important, though, is that we spent this time, to pick the right clothes. This can also be used in gaming.

1. Fashion can help to establish cultures. A culture in which women are covered from head to toe will be looked upon differently than a culture in which women can wear whatever they like. Cultures in which every Sunday all are wearing green; cultures in which everyone goes to work wearing everyday clothes (and not ties and tuxedos, for example) will be looked as much more strict and formal. This is a cheap way to establish a culture.
2. In addition to the first thing, if the characters went to a mission and returned to find the people of the place wearing entirely different clothes, the time that has passed will be felt, and a smell of change will be smelled.
3. Clothes can help to differentiate between characters (PCs and NPCs alike). Will they meet the knight who wears green, or the one that always goes with pink armor today? Isn't it more colourful than the knight who wears silvery armor?
4. Clothes can help to show feelings or hidden truths. A character that wears black will be seen as a vile or depressed character, while the one that goes with white clothes will be seen as formal or naive. Think about the character that goes with the ripped off clothes in contrast to the one that goes with the colours of the enemy state...
5. Clothes can help to create and express the character's personality: "Remember that wizard fellow who used to wear brown shoes every day? Today I've understood why: An oracle told him that he'll meet the love of his life wearing brown shoes..."

So, how about you? Do you pay attention to what your NPCs or PCs are wearing? How do you use it? What purpose does it fill in your game?

Recurring Motives and Improvisation

A little late thought for today: When improvising a game, using recurring motives makes the game feel more sophisticated and better planned. It helps to create foreshadowing for the continuation of the game, while also creates a way to bring the story back to normal when internal consistency is broken. Motive also has the connection to higher degrees of prepared storytelling, and using it while improvising helps to create the illusion that the game is not improvised.

It doesn't have to be complicated or fancy or anything, though. It can be as simple as a kobold army that brings the forsworn doom, which comes whenever the characters failed in something and as sophisticated as a knight in rotting armour who says "the time is coming" whenever something bad is gonna happen that has an influence over a major NPC.

What about you? Do you use recurring motives when improvising? How?