We Forgot to Challenge

A small thought for the day. We all play with house-rules. Nobody really plays a game to the exact details of the rule-system (or at the very least- almost no one). If there is a single thing that I saw common to all of those house-rules, it was without a doubt the side they favored.

All those house-rules that I've seen through the years? They were all in favor of the player characters. They made their lives easier, they're role-filling quicker. They diminished the challenge.

To put it differently, it's like we GMs forgot that being fans of the PCs doesn't mean letting them succeed without a sweat. It means putting them through a challenge and hoping to see them triumph, believing that they'll succeed. But they do need the challenge firstly. After all, without challenge, there's no real point in winning, or even in playing those things, battles, intrigues etc. And yet, we make their lives easier with house-ruling and with so much more.

I don't know if I managed to say something, if I managed to express what I think. But I do hope that at the very least, I'm not alone in thinking about this, in hoping to see it changed.

NPCs are just Tools

NPCs are just tools. They're not there to steal the limelight, they're not there to give some amazing monologues. NPCs are just tools for the GM to use, to nudge the game a little bit to one direction or the other, to help make an enjoyable evening or something along those lines. As such is the case NPCs don't need complex personalities but a way to affect the PCs and through them to affect the players. When they've filled their roles, they're not needed anymore, they can be discarded, or move to the reserve pile for later scenes and/or sessions.

Drosselmeyer, in Princess Tutu understood this well. When talking to Edel in episode 12 of the first season, he says to her: "Your role is to add glow to the story in my place". Unlike the players, the GM doesn't have an avatar in the game. All the GM has is everything that is not controlled by the players. But, as we know, those things are there to serve the PCs and/or the players. The Gm should forget herself, of course, but for now please stay with me.

 Most problems of using NPCs come from not acknowledging this simple idea. If the NPCs are just tools used by the GM to serve the game and players, then one wouldn’t give them amazing and way too long monologues.  One wouldn't let them steal the limelight either.

But it grows deeper than that, unsurprisingly. It means that trying to give them life and complex personality is a futile intention. A gm should think in terms of how the NPC affects the PCs and through them affect the players. This calls for a simple motive, for example, so it will be easy to grasp. It also calls for something that will challenge the players' perceptions, like am NPC that divides the players and the characters to a few sides.

It also means that one shouldn't get to attached to the NPCs. Once they fulfill their role, they should finish they're part in the game. If the players don't connect to them, they should be left out. And if the players like them enough, make their part greater, make them more colorful.

So how one should use this kind of tool? There's no one true way, of course, but for me it always was about giving the illusion that they're far more complex and alive than they truly are. They should sometimes be busy, or they'll use some fancy words to describe some simple ideals. They will be distinctive, different from one another. And most importantly, they should be made such that I will always be able to bring them to the present scene, if I'll ever need them. Usually, this combination does the trick for me.

What do you think? Feel free to write in the comments.

Winning Is Not Mandatory

Winning in the end is not mandatory. I know, I know, in most fantasy stories, actually in most stories regardless of genre, the protagonists win. They win and save the world, get the princes and princesses and get so much treasure that they can just retire and even their grandchildren will be filthy rich. They always win in fantasy.

But it is not mandatory. It is not mandatory to win in the end and neither it is mandatory to win in the middle. Loses makes the story change direction, makes it fuller and richer, gives place to a huge set of emotions that we don't normally see in our games.

Losing can also change and rewind the game. If the PCs always win, there's no challenge, there's no need for playing. If they will always win, it doesn't really matter that they've chose right and not left, or that they killed the orcs and not the goblins.

When we play for the plot, for the story, losing is what gives us those dark moments in the middle of the third arc, the moments from which we find something in ourselves and rise to the challenge, amazing those around us and even us as we do so.

Losing shows us other sides of our characters, sides that we couldn't really explore otherwise, because we didn't have those moments of loss, of depression, of disappointment from the way the things turned out. We were about to win, and somehow we lost.

Losing gives meaning to a learning curve, losing gives meaning to those hard-earned victories. Because they truly are victories that were hard to earn, scattered between all those loses.

And losing in the end is part of what makes a story into a tragedy. Because in a tragedy, we either lose or lose what we fought for, we can't really win. And tragedy is not the only type of story in which the end is bleak.

Winning is not mandatory. Losing should be part of the outcome list. It deserves its spot there.

There's No One True Way

And we're back to what will hopefully be my normal schedule. I've started to watch an anime called Princess Tutu. I'm yet to say what it is about, as I'm only 2 episodes in it, as of the moment of writing these lines. What struck me so clear while watching its second episode was how good it is as a GMing guide.

In the second episode, we have a rivalry between Anteaternia and Rue-Chan (yeah, I know that Chan is not part of the name but it's easier for me). Anteaternia asked Rue-Chan how she learned to dance so wonderfully, for which she answered with practice. Then Anteaternia said that she'll practice as hard as she can so she'll does as wonderful as Rue-Chan. Rue said that it is not possible.

And that's and amazing thing, because as we watch the episode we learn that Rue-Chan didn't say that from the point of contempt. Anteaternia will never be able to dance as well as she can, because Andteaternia will have to develop her own style.

And that's true for our GMing. There's no right or wrong, there's no true and false. There's no better and worse. Each of us GMs has different strengths and weaknesses, goals and needs. And each group has a different mixture of players with different expectations, needs, goals and abilities. Because of that, this combination, there's no ultimate style of GMing. There's no better way to GM.

There are only two rules for GMing that are right all the time- "don't be a dick", and "know thy players". All the rest is just style. So don't try to copy another GM's style. Instead, try to develop your own. Try to find your inner truth about GMing and go with it, play to it, GM according to it.

Jacob's Ladder- Knowing When to Say Goodbye

I couldn't find a more fitting movie to end this project. Jacob's Ladder is a brilliant masterpiece about life and death, about the things the wars do to ordinary people, about family. It is a horror movie, it is a drama movie, it is a war movie, and it is a surrealist movie. It is hard to explain exactly what it is, just that it is one of the greatest movies of the nineties, perhaps even one of the greatest movies of all time.

The movie chronicles the life of Jacob, a divorced man, a Dr. of the arts and philosophy, a war veteran who fought in Vietnam. It chronicles the way that his mind, his world, starts to fragment after 2 years of war. From conspiracy to feelings of loss, from love to hippies, this movie has it all.

And (and from now on I'm gonna spoiler) it is also a movie about the need to accept one's end, one's death. In the end of the movie, Jacob accepts that he's gonna die, and just lets it happen, smiling, peaceful.

Campaigns and one-shots are going to end too. And we'll have to accept that, acknowledge that. Everything oughta end. Nothing good lasts forever. And as such is the case, we need to learn to let go, to know when something should end and to ensure that it will end there. Not all games need to last 200 years. Not all games need to last even a full single year. Some need to end after a single session, others after 3 or four. We need to accept that, understand that, not to stretch it more than we should.

Because it is better to let go of things, when they get to their natural ultimate ending than to stretch it any longer and let it disintegrate into no more than a thing that was once epic and now is… not.

Ending things is hard. It is not easy. But living isn't easy either, and we don't give on life because of that. We make the hard choices, we choose to live, and we choose to end our campaigns. We will end them on a high note, sure, but they will end. And we'll know, deep inside our hearts that the stories of those characters have ended. That now we do something else.

Because every ending is a new beginning. When a campaign ends, a new ones starts, filling the place of the earlier one, of the campaign that ended. I don't know if I succeeded expressing what I had to say, what I had in mind. But I do hope that you'll understand and take from it what you want.

Thanks for reading.

Black Sabbath- It's All in the Name

It is hard to believe it, but after this movie I have only three movies left. Time moves so quickly, it turns out, way too quickly. Anyway, Black Sabbath. I must say that I wasn't really impressed. Maybe it is because I watched better movies throughout this month, or maybe it is just because after 28 horror movies one starts to feel the dreaded "please no more horror films this month, I had to much" kinda feeling.

Anyway, Black Sabbath is an anthology film. It is made of 3 short films combined together. The first one, The Telephone (this might be the time to say that I've watched the Italian version and not the American one) is a story about a woman, a prostitute, who starts to receive telephone calls from her ex-pimp. Little by little, his threats become deadlier and far more frightening. For me, this short was the highlight of the collection. The next one, The Wurdalak, is a conventional vampire story. The last one, The Drop of Water, is a short film about a nurse who steals a ring and a ghost haunts her.

Now, the lessons from the better shorts, the first and the second, are lying in the posts about other movies in this project. But there is a lesson that is unique to this collection- the lesson of names and their power. You see, The Wurdalak is conventional. Way too conventional, if you ask me. We have a vampire, he kills those close to him, much blood. It even takes place in Eastern Europe, if it wasn't conventional enough.

But he is not called a vampire. He is given a different name. And this gives the movie some sense of originality. Because to a certain extent, it is like discovering and learning about a different, a new, monster. And this can be done in our games too. Give a familiar monster a different name and a description that is only a little different, and you can cut yourself a lot of time creating monsters on the one hand, and on the other the players will feel a certain feel of knowledge and similarity combined with a feeling of freshness. This is good.

As an added bonus, you can go the Troll 2 Way and have a connection between the names (yeah, it is probably the first and the last time that I'll mention something positive about Troll 2, as even this name change is executed terribly). You don’t have to go for the Nilbog kind of name, but you can go the anagram way. When the players will figure it out, they will feel like geniuses, like true investigators. This is even better.

Anyway, that's it for this movie. How about you? Have you watched this movie? What have you thought about it? And what did it teach you?

Dracula (1958)- Adjusting as Needed

It took me quite a while to finally see this version of Dracula. The vampire buff in me stands now in the corner, ashamed of himself. I hope that you'll forgive him… Anyway, this version doesn't disappoints, which is quite amazing to say when considering the bad aging of most of Hammer's Films.

I guess that most of you do know the plot of Dracula, but this version changes the plot of the book on the one hand and of earlier adaptations on the other hand, quite enormously. For once, Van Helsing is young, and for the other Harker is there to kill Dracula and not to sell him anything.

And that's quite interesting. Instead of sticking with the original book, like the opening scene might suggest, the movie quite clearly makes the story its own, changing what it sees as needing a change, a breather, some fresh air.

And that's something that isn't utilized enough. Many of us GMs try to do everything by the book, whether we're talking about the stats of monsters or of the plots of published adventures. We so try to go by the book that we sometimes forget that these things were written as guidance, so we will be able to adjust them according to our needs.

A great GM once said that nobody knows one's group better than this particular one that comes from the group. I know my group better than any other GM in the world, because I GM for them regularly. So do the players in my group. And that's an important truth, because when it comes to this, to GMing for them, or to figuring out what adventure to buy for the next session, or even which parts of the adventure I should stress and which I should eradicate, nobody knows it better than me. And it is true for you and your groups.

So please, when GMing published adventures, or when playing some fight scenes, or whatever else, don't try to play by the book. Instead, adjust it as much as you need to make it fitting with your own group, your real group, and not some theoretical one.

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

Phantasm- Meeting the NPCs in Normal Situations

Some movies leave you with a lasting impression, others just don't. Phantasm belongs to the second group. It's not that it is a bad movie, or that I didn't enjoy it, but it just wasn't that good either. For me, it didn't have anything memorable within its 90 minutes, and even The Tall Man himself wasn't anything inspiring. I mean- after knowing The Slender Man, all I can say in benefit of this movie is that it was a nice inspiration for some great artistry. Too bad it's all I can say for this film.

Anyway, this movie's plot is pretty complicated, and not because of its presentation. You see, the movie twists itself quite a lot, combining gypsies with ice-cream men with heroic sensibilities, aliens and dwarfs, brotherly love and much-much grief over death in the family. Anything beyond that might be a spoiler, and I don't want that to happen.

Our protagonist, Mike, begins as a certain kind of stalker- he follows his brother anywhere, because his afraid of his brother leaving him behind, to leave his life alone. In a scene near the beginning, Mike follows his brother and witnesses his brother doing it, or at least beginning to do it.

And that's a great idea to use in our games. No, not this particular idea, but… one of the greatest GMing tips that can be given about portraying NPCs is that they should be given a sense of life. They should feel alive beyond the scope of their encounters with the PCs. A great way to do that is to have the PCs meet them in normal situations.

Imagine this scene- the PCs are doing their businesses in the city as usual, when suddenly they see the villain in a flower shop. "A-ah, this time we'll get ya!" they'll say to him, for which he'll respond "Can't I just but some flowers for milady?" or something along those lines. Or maybe he collects flowers because this is one of his hobbies? Or maybe because he is lonely and this is his way of escapism?

As an added bonus, try to think about ways to utilize these instances to make the players feel bad. "Look, if I'll try to kill this woman you'll be the first to know about it, and then you'll come and take revenge on me, and then you'll destroy my base (again) and then I'll have to start all over again (again)." Two benefits for the price of one, I'm taking it…

And that's it for today. How about you? Have you watched this movie? What have you thought about it? And what have you learned from it?

Tomorrow I'll cover the last five movies of this project, so I hope you'll enjoy it too.

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.

Re-Animator - Adding Just a Tiny Bit of Humor

I don't like Stuart Gordon's adaptations of Lovecraft. Here, I said it. They are just so bad, so… they're just bad. This time, he does his best, giving us a trashy film done professionally. But that's about all I can say for this bizarre movie, too much for most of us' appetites.

In the movie, Herbert West is transformed into the early eighties, with that time's weird sense of fashion and strange ideals. I might have exaggerated a bit there, but the movie doesn't take itself too seriously either. Herbert messes with the dead, granting them "life" with a strange serum. Then we got much nudity, gore and something that is supposed to be some characters to identify with.

But I guess that I have to say something in its favor, or at least I need to find something to learn from it. After all, if I found something to learn from the terrible Braindead, I must find something to learn from this re-animated dead flick. And what can I say? It got a weird sense of humor.

Humor, from quite an early stage, was associated with the horror genre. When the movie is built around tension-and-release moments, doing the "release" part right is mandatory. And one of the greatest release-mechanisms ever? Why of course, it is the infamous humor.

And that's the lesson to learn from this movie- use humor, but use it well. The reason that the head-on-a-stick is so funny is that it comes just after so much seriousness and villainy, and suspense and so much more. After being serious for far too long for this movie's level, it just comes with a childish joke, breaking the ice, the statues, and our ability to take this movie seriously.

So, I don't know if I succeeded with explaining what I meant. Truth is, this movie's sense of humor is so hard to explain also. But yeah, use humor, it might be what you're looking for your "tension-and-release" cycle.

How about you? Have you found this movie any good? And what have you learned from it?

The Abominable Dr. Phibes- How Not to Use a Pattern

Another campy movie. Sometimes one has to ask himself (or herself) why camp goes so well with the horror genre. But this is a topic for another day (and maybe even for another blog). The Abominable Dr. Phibes is campy enough for its characters to remark about the stupidity of the characters' names. But, unlike with other works of film and television, here it doesn't help the movie to look any better, too bad for this movie…

To put it shortly, the movie chronicles the revenge that a famous and now supposed to be dead organist on a series of surgeons and others of the medical profession for letting his wife die. For some reason he chooses to take his revenge according to the plagues that hit Egypt in the famous chapters from the book of Exodus.

Now, up until now it is a very descent premise, and the list of actors is quite remarkable and promising. The musical score is wonderful and… you get the idea. So why does this movie fail? Mainly because it chooses such a wonderful premise, such a promising pattern, and destroys what it has to offer.

You see, the actions, the killing ways, they're not in the same order as shown in the bible. The film tries so much to be scientifically accurate that it changes the order of the plagues to something else. More logically correct, far easier to believe in terms of causality, but it has a devastating effect in terms of our building dread.

Most of us remember the order of the plagues, at least in broad strokes, enough to understand when the pattern is changed. And when they change the pattern, we don't know what death scene is gonna come now. So instead of looking forward for the death scene, we're busy trying to remember what the Rabi said will be the next one, and we can't because what comes to mind are the original order and the knowledge that it was changed. So we don't look forward to the next death scene, we don't have the anticipation building the right way, and as such it's far harder to dread the upcoming death.

So please, when creating a villain, or a monster, and trying to think about a pattern for the killing, if you'll ever think about using a common knowledge pattern, don't change it. You'll just make it worse.

How about you? What did you learn from this movie? And have you enjoyed it?

Martin- When One Shouldn't Invent the Wheel

I owe you an apology, dear readers. I was to the IICON convention, the Israeli convention for geek culture, kinda like the Israeli Comicon. Unsurprisingly, it took me some days to recuperate, to return to normal. Truth is, I was quite sure that you won't even feel it, having prepared posts for the first two convention days, but personal matters made me unable to cover the following days (the last day of the convention and those days for breath-catching). So I'm in a bit of a delay. For that, I apologize. I do hope that the posts from now on will justify the wait.

And without much farther ado, let's move to the 14^th movie in the project, to the movie Martin.  Martin is an interesting case. It is not a bad movie per se, and even Romero called it "my favorite movie", but for me, it just didn't work.

It is a movie about a person who is sure that he's a vampire, and who challenges through his twisted take on vampirism the myth of the vampire. Parts of these he does through the phone, talking with a radio DJ who understands what great hit he has in his hands.

The movie is very art-housey in its feel, and that's where the problems start to arise. You see, George Romero is a very talented director, and one feels it, and he knows what he's doing. But it just doesn't work. I didn't feel a thing for the character of Martin. I knew that I should have, but I just couldn't. The movie is so filled with art-house tricks that it just loses something in its way to glory.

Romero, and it might be strange to say, is just not Ingmar Bergman or Pedro Almodovar who can make a very art-housey movie and it will still be communicative enough for us to feel something for the characters, for the story. Romero isn't talented enough for the task, although he sometimes can come close to that.

And most of us are Romero-level GMs and not Almodovar- or Bergman-level GMs. It is not bad to be Romeros, but it does mean that we should know our places. We don't have to try and challenge the usual narrative or the basic and universal roles and tropes that make our RPGs. We don't have to conjure a meeting between the PCs and the players every other game, or to go to the meta-level game every time that we can. Truth is, most GMs can make wonders of just the usual party going to the usual dungeon to kill the usual dragon. Hell, I who finished a campaign with a meeting between PCs and players don't consider myself able to conjure a meeting like that again. Sometimes, or maybe even all the times, we just have to know our places, to know what we can achieve and what we can't, what we can challenge and what we shouldn't.

We don't have to invent the wheel from scratch every time, or even every other or third time. Usually, striving for a great experience, for a nice evening of dragon-slaying, sometimes it is just enough.

The Mist- Learning When to Stop

13 years after directing The Shawshank Redemption, Darabont directs another King's adaptation. And I can’t say that I was impressed. It is considered to be one of the greatest and most frightening horror movies of the century so far, but I couldn't agree less. It was one of the most disappointing films that I've ever seen.

On the surface, it has all the elements of being a good horror movie, and also a good movie outside of the genre, the same line that for me holds movies like Casablanca (my all-time favorite), Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, The 400 Blows and so many more. It has some very nice acting, and it has a political sting, and it has some interesting and surprisingly deep characters (well, most of them, if you look hard enough). It has a really nice conspiracy, and it tackles religious fanatics and hubris filled scientists. It has everything that a movie could ask for.

And that's the problem, it has way too much. The mist isn't scary, because there are creatures in there. They aren't scary, because we've got big ol fucking Cthulhu in there. Cthulhu isn't scary, because we got a conspiracy, and this conspiracy isn't scary because we also got some religious fanatics, and we're also told about the scientists, and we see the people going mad, becoming beasts like in Night of the Living Dead, and… I think that you've got the idea. We've got way too much.

And that's even before we look at the movie on the genre level. We've got horror, and then we got a love story (only for the woman to get killed 2 seconds or so later). Then we get into a Christian movie, later turned into a post-apocalyptic film, before finally ending on the melodramatic Hamlet side of the spectrum.

Maybe it's just me, I don't know. But for me it was hell too much to really care for what's going on. I watched the movie trying to understand what's going on at the beginning, and then started to guess what strange twist they'll bring this time.

And that's a lesson to keep in mind when designing and writing your stories, your adventures. Think not only about what to put in, but also about what to put out. Remind yourself that too much of a good thing turns everything into something bad, or at the very least tasteless. When every few minutes the story changes completely, and you throw something too different and too big to handle, you'll just end with people who don't care.

They don't care not because they don't want to, but because they can't, because you put too much for their minds to handle. Because, and that' a thing that one should keep in mind, you as GM's know everything and you had much time to absorb it, to analyze it, to understand what goes where and when. But players? They only have a few minutes. So have mercy on them, or don't be surprised when they can't get what you're doing next or don't care for your uber-impressive plot twist.

How about you? What did you think about this movie? And have you learned from it something else, something positive?

God Told Me To- Stop Worrying and Embrace the Good Enough

The streak had to be broken, right? My seventh movie in the project wasn't that good. It wasn't that bad also, but… it was okay. Just okay. Nothing spectacular, nothing to fancy about, nothing worth remembering from, one of those movies that you just watch and 5 seconds later you don't remember anything about it or from it. God Told Me To was a watch & forget nothing more and nothing less.

It is a movie about a cop who investigates a series of murders committed by unconnected and too ordinary men. Slowly but steadily he learns that there's far more to it than what meets the eye. Yeah, even the plot is a big cliché, but at least the director knows how to do it. ;-)

And after this movie I did learn something. I learned that not every session has to be perfect, or great. In order for those really great sessions to feel great, they have to feel unique, well above the rest in terms of their level and all. If the rest of the sessions are nice, good and enjoyable, the campaign is in good hands.

And for me, that was kinda new. I learned to accept bad days, or sessions that were almost perfect, but sessions that are just nice- that was inconceivable. I expected from each one of my sessions to be at the very least almost perfect. And the sessions just took too much energy from me, and there were days that I came from the sessions depressed because they didn't live to my expectations.

And I don't know, maybe it is just a certain stage in my GMing career that had to come. And yet, this movie ranked better than some perfect movies like Cronos. And it says that maybe, just maybe, sometimes a nice and no spectacular session is better than the most perfect session imaginable. Sometimes "nice" is just enough.

How about you? When did you learn this truth? And what did you think about this movie?

Conflict Is Not Mandatory

You don't need conflicts. You read that correctly, I really did say that you don't need conflicts. Conflicts are not mandatory, are not a must-have ingredient for a successful game or even for a successful story. Conflict is a nice and a very useful tool in order to create enjoyment, interest and to be one with the character, but it is not the only one, or the most important one, or a success guarantee.

Think for example about a nice in-character conversation between a PC and an NPC. Does it have to hold a conflict in order to be interesting? No, I'm serious, does it? I don't think so. I once GMed a game in which for three hours the characters were just gossiping about people not present. No conflict was there, just a conversation about what did this person and what did that one. When I wrote this game for my friends, I thought to myself: "If we have to have conflicts in order to create interest, why do our conversations seem so enjoyable, so interesting, so "worth-our-time?" It went a blast. I was asked to GM this game again.

But this is an extreme kind of game, not much similar, or even close, to what we refer to when we normally talk about RPGs. Things like Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire, PTA. But then I started to read the GENder theory, which is kinda interesting yet kinda flawed. Anyway, the E stands for exploration. It means that one plays in order to explore, in order to be, someone else. And that got me thinking: "In order to feel like [insert a name here], do I need to be in a conflict?" I don't think so, otherwise I wouldn't enjoy play SIMS.

And it all circulates back to what I've said in the beginning: Conflict is not mandatory. It is useful, but not mandatory.

Opinions?

The Players just roll the Dice…

One of the most common problems that I've seen in games is a lack of understanding about the distinction between what the players do and what their characters do. Let's explain this strange sentence with an example:

It is a D&D session, and a fight erupts. Fighter raises his axe and attacks Orc Number 1, while Wizard shoots Orc Number 2 with a magic missile.

Now, let's analyze this scene. What do the characters do? Wizard casts a spell, Fighter attacks with his spell. What do the players do? They roll the dice, and… that's about it. And that is the problem that I mentioned in the first sentence of this post. The fact that the characters are fighting, and have a certain chance to die, isn't relevant that much, because at the end all they do is to roll some dice.

Actually, if you look at it this way, looking for clues in Call of Cthulhu is not that much different: You enter a room, and you try to notice things. The character does that, I mean. You just roll the dice. Or in other words, if we want to differentiate between types of scenes, we should think in terms of what the players do and not in terms of what the characters do. Because if in both cases we just roll the dice, there is no difference. Or at the very least, not a real difference between the scenes.

And that's a distinction that I think one really has to make and hold to her heart. When one writes an adventure, or improvises one, you should always try to think in terms of what the players will do. Will the players just roll some dice? If so, maybe I should find another thing that they'll be able to do, like inventing the adversaries, or giving them as much roleplaying scenes as possible?

After all, we sit with the players, in the real world, and not with the characters in an imaginary one…

Success with a Cost

Another week, another session. We finished the first story arc. None of us really know if the problem was solved or not, but as it seems, we won't tackle laughing books anymore. They came back in time and defeated the villains before the problems really begun, winning the "fight" against them before most of the books left the library. So it is a win.

But you know, winning wasn't the goal in the first place. I mean, maybe some of them wanted to succeed, but I'm not even sure of that. Looking at their favorite scenes' list from the arc, most of them are major plot points, or catalysts for major plot points. No challenge that they've overcame found its way to the list.

So what did we look for? My money is on story possibilities. And because of that, it is no surprise that the "success with a twist" idea is so powerful. The idea is quite simple- when the players roll a failure, they can sometimes still succeed, but it will not be a complete success, because something bad is gonna happen alongside the success.

It's not a new invention by me, but I must say that again and again I'm surprised by the possibilities it presents for me. And most of the times, they are the ones who describe/create the bad happening. They are the ones who bring their doom to join hands with their successes. And I think that this is the reason that this idea is so powerful: because they bring to themselves the bad events that hurt they're the most. And this crates the drama that we're all looking for.

When a group isn't looking to win, but to enjoy creating together a nice little (or not so little) story, it is only fitting that they will look to increase the drama level in the game. And if they can do it through successes also, it is only better. Especially if it lets them escape complete failures when it doesn't fit dramatically, I suppose.

So yeah, this is one of the tools that I use to increase the drama. How about you? What do you use?

Whose Game Is It?

I think that it was just yesterday when I wrote about my MLP campaign. When the session ended, one of the players sent us a drawing of the characters. Apart from the cool factor and the feeling of epicness for such an instant, what struck me more was the conversation that ensued.

Player 1: You should post it on Facebook.

Player 2 (the artist): What should I write?

Player 1: Tag all of us-

Player 3 (interrupting): And write that it's Yosi's campaign.

I immediately said that this campaign is owned by all of us, it is our campaign, and that they created the story as much as I did. A quick conversation ensued, and it got published as "our campaign (but mostly Yosi's)".

I have 4 players in this group. Each one with different amounts of experience with RPGs, with only one of them (quite ironically, player 3) having prior experience in one of my games. The fact that he's a regular player in my groups for about 2 years now is only this more ironic.

The consensus was clear- this is my campaign far more than it is their campaign. And I find it quite interesting. You see, I always use "my campaign/game" in my writing, because I took part in it, making it mine. It is my campaign not because I'm the GM, but because I help to drive it toward a certain dramatic beat. I don't mean here railroading, because I don't railroad (and my players can attest for that), but rather I mean here creating as much drama as I can, while ensuring that as much of the story and drama is created by them and/or for their playing instruments (the PCs) and them.

My players also play this way, and have almost as much control about the plot, setting and the like individually as I do. They create parts of the setting, their findings, they even invented the plot, creating and fleshing it between the sessions to our own amazement. Yet they all agreed that it was my campaign and not theirs.

And I'm confused. If it weren't for them, it would remain just a concept, an idea about a MLP game in which the players play Blank Flanks looking for their Cutie Marks. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have a prophecy, or Sherlock Hooves, or Zombie-like ponies. If it weren't for them, the books wouldn't do anything more than fly and laugh till the end of days. If it weren't for them, the narrative wouldn't move from Canterlot to the Crystal Empire. If it weren't for them, they wouldn't meet Cheese Sandwich. Yet it is my campaign, according to their words.

Looking in forums, theory articles, RPG.SE and other places that I regularly visit, it seemed almost too prevalent, too widespread. I found only a handful of players who didn't gave the credit for the campaign's success, or the credit for ownership, to their GM. And it didn't matter if the game involved a pre-written narrative, a sandbox or a completely improvised game. It didn't matter if the players were active, passive, inventive or questioning for permission before each step on their way towards the end.

And I find it confusing and problematic. We always say that RPG is a type of shared experience. We always say that we create everything together. We always say that the story moved one way or the other because we, each and every one of us, chose so. So why do we still give the keys of ownership to the GM?

I don't have an answer. I have some theories, but not even a single one of them is fleshed out, not to mention able to stand a test or scrutiny. But I know that I don't like this mindset. Am I alone?

Hit Them in the Stats

My MLP campaign got to its second session mark, which means that a, it is a campaign, and b, that it starts to get into shape. We also were joined by a new player, so more fun for everyone.

Anyway, during the session, one of the players (who was also in yesterday's session) told me that this session was even scarier than last one. And that got me thinking. How could a game session where the players play pastel-colored ponies be scarier than a full-blown one-shot horror game?

The Eureka moment has arrived when I brought back the memory of the instance in which he told me this. It was just after I took away one of his character's abilities. "That's interesting", I thought to myself, "it reminds me of something from the past…"

When I played in a 4-year long AD&D campaign, there was a single monster that was terrifying far more than anything else we could think of. It was the vampire. And why were we so terrified? Because it took away levels, hard-earned levels. Think about losing a year and a few tens of thousands of gold pieces work disappearing in a single attack, that's how terrifying it was.

When I was GMing one of my longest D&D campaigns, there was again a single monster that the players fear- the Quasit. This creature, a CR 2 type of monster, took away dexterity points from the characters.

What was common to both of these monsters was a single thing that it took me some time to figure out- it hurt the characters mechanically, in a stat that wasn't supposed to get hurt so easily.

And that's what I did here. I haven't thought about it when I did it today, but it explains so much of the fear factor. What I did do intentionally, though, was to ensure that this condition stands 2 "tests": 1) It doesn't happen as a side effect, but rather as a major plot-point of the session, and 2) The character still has other means by which to help the party and/or to contribute to the story and narrative of the game. Passing these two tests ensured that it wouldn't feel arbitrarily and out of nowhere, while also ensuring that it doesn't make the character fully useless.

So, how about you? Have you ever taken away abilities from the players? For what purpose? How did it go?

My Players Created the Plot for Me

I opened a new campaign last Thursday. It's an MLP campaign, with the players playing Blank Flanks looking for their Cutie Marks, utilizing Erin Palette's wonderful UA hack. It started with books flying out of all of the houses in the city, laughing like villains should laugh.

The players then decided to search for info about this thing in the books. Long story short, they've found the book, and the page with the solution to this problem. Then I asked one of the players: "What's written in there?" and decided to roll with the outcome.

I think that it is no secret by now, fateful (and new) readers, that I love giving my players the power to decide about the way the campaign will unfold. The idea in this incident was that if the players like the story, they will invent something that will keep this "flying and laughing maniacally books" thing going. If they don't like it, they will finish it off.

What happened next kinda amazed me. You see, the player asked for help from his fellow friends (and players) and together they came with a prophecy. A prophecy about rebellious books, a prophecy that explains all that happened up to that moment, a prophecy that puts them as the ponies that will stop the rebellion before it's too late.

Or to put it in other words: they created together, in harmony, the plot of the campaign. Isn't it just pony magic? I don't have any lesson or thought for today except for this: give your players the opportunity, even just once, to decide about a thing like this.

You might end up like me, doing it all the time, addicted to the stories that they create together, with you and/or with the toys that you give them.

So, how about you? Have you ever tried to do something like this? How did it go?