Game Translation: Vampire: The Masquerade (Bloodlines)

So here's a videogame that is a translation of a roleplaying game that I'm now translating back into a roleplaying game style.  This should be the easiest damn article I've ever written.  I mean, I could tell you to just crack the spine on the actual Masquerade books, right?  Right?  Well, no.  Not at all, actually.  To be perfectly honest, running a mission-based game in a sandbox style isn't as simple and easy as it sounds.

Firstly this game represents solo play.  You could probably manage it with two players, but you're not going to get the same type of game running the usual group of three to four.  Why?  Because a major part of the game involves a character (you) making key decisions while you move through a society and world that seems strange and unusual to you.  When you have a group, these decisions are made by committee and the world around you shrinks in comparison to the other PCs with which you must negotiate.  This is fun, but it is quite different and distinct to the videogame's style of play.

In the videogame, it's all about how the players interact with the world and so to keep with that vibe, if you have two players they should both be from the same clan and have similar and complementary skill sets so that they can work in harmony.  Most players will feel the urge to take widely diverse skill sets, which is encouraged in most forms of game play, but that also leads to diametrically opposed methods of dealing with the enemy.  In other words, if one PC is a conman and the other a brutal thug, then they can take turns at shining but can only rarely tackle the same problem in the same way.  So firmly advise two characters in the same mould.  Perhaps make them siblings even.

Basically reduce the Player versus Player vibes in favour of Player versus Enemy.  You want the PCs to engage with the world and be threatened by the world, not splitting up frequently to tackle things differently or conspire with their respective clan leaders.  That's a very different game and will pull away from this style.

Secondly choose your favourite elements of Masquerade and jot them down.  Is there a cool vampire variant?  An interesting hunter type?  A few minor clans that really draw your eye?  A Sabbat or Anarch or Camarilla conspiracy plan that you truly love?  Make anything at the conspiracy level the grand plot and all those other details can be the minor plots they can pick or discard more readily. 

Figure out which movers and shakers want which minor plots to be resolved - determine if they clash in their preferred form of resolution.  Ideally a few of them should, but only include 2 or 3 such clashes.  You want to keep things reasonably simple and interesting.  You can draw lines from your plot concepts to these mover and shaker names / motives / ideal resolutions so you can remember them.

Next grab a fresh sheet of paper.  Where will the players meet with these individuals?  Pick a place suitably symbolic - that either contrasts or conforms with expectations.  Bloodlines does it's best to play with stereotypes because it's most people's first encounter with the world.  Therefore don't be afraid of stereotypes, but don't be bound to them either.  You can put your Nosferatu in a Fallout shelter and your Toreador in an art gallery, but feel free to juxtapose these symbols by having the Ventrue in an Armani suit track down the PCs while they're clearing out a sewer because the Ventrue's information is that vital and highly secure.

I'd jot down three potential ideas for every NPC and pick the best of three.  Sometimes the first idea that pops into our head isn't the best one.  Sometimes we need to improvise when the players try to get hold of that NPC again.  Also keep your recurring NPCs to less than a dozen so that the players can form genuine impressions of them.  While there's always a temptation to fully populate a vampire court with NPCs the players can meet, that often just creates a tangle that doesn't suit this style of play.

The minor missions are kept pretty simple in Bloodlines, being a videogame, and there's no reason why you can't do the same in your game.  Your minor plots should focus on a single location (abandoned ship), NPC type (security guards), and objective (search the ship without being seen).  You can throw in a major choice or decision point in each location, where possible, and try to tie it into the various recurring NPCs or the main plot.

Remember also to use more combats that you normally would in a Vampire game but have credible alternatives available in most cases so that those people who play non-combatants aren't slaughtered by your storylines.  If you're going to make combat a guarantee in certain sections, like in the videogame, ensure your players have built their characters appropriately.



Expect most PCs will be Malkavian.
People just love Malkavians.



Ensure feeding is part of the game as well.  Include a few different methods of feeding for them to happen across.  A guy waiting for a taxi by his broken down car.  A homeless guy sleeping rough and out of people's way.  An eager blood doll in a nightclub desperate for a make out session.  A flirty person at a nightclub.  Someone just trying to find a shortcut through an alleyway.

Having some form of Masquerade reader, though perhaps not so mechanically ordained, is also a good idea to dissuade people from being too clearly vampiric on the streets.  If they become too controversial, other vampires will start hunting them down and the police certainly will.  Let them know that running out of points represents the court running out of patience and that they should see it the same way as dropping to Humanity 0.  You might be able to portray the end, but that's it.  Game over.  Campaign finished.  With only one to two players, it's much easier to actually follow through on these threats.

Don't let the PCs become too defensive.  They get a haven, to represent the ordinary aspects of their nightlife, but they're not going to build their way from grunt to manager within the course of the campaign.  It's not a resource management game.  It's not even a political game.  It's a mission-based grunt campaign where you live in borrowed resources.  Heck, don't let them spend in merits like Resources or Haven.  Make them steal what they need or be given it.

Finally pay attention to the pacing of missions.  Most should sit around and wait for the PCs to get around to them, if they even do, but having a few clear deadlines is a good idea as well, especially for major Campaign quests.  Also be sure that after awhile new missions are only unlocked once certain Campaign quests are accomplished, so that they don't get side quest bloat.  We're not going for a Skyrim feel, after all.

The rise and fall of tension should also apply to the major campaign quests themselves.  Place a few social ones at judicious moments to control the energy levels and be sure to include increasingly difficult quests as the end of the campaign approaches.  You want the final few quests to feel dangerous, breath-tasking and conclusive so that by the time they hit the ending, they really feel like they've accomplished something.

Anyway, a campaign based around Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines) or including elements of it, should appeal to -

Communicators who will find that the personal interaction, decision points and social elements with the myriad intriguing and inhuman NPCs keeps them interested.

Explorers will be pleased if you remember to use a diverse range of interesting locations and really characterise them.  They want to see something new, experience something strange, so give it to them.

Action Heroes will enjoy the more videogame-y aspects of the game, though they may find that the action elements are a little weaker than they're used to, namely because most of the events will be rather subtle.  It'd be a rare mission that requires car chases and burning buildings, after all, though they may come up.

Tacticians are always looking for the most optimal manner to complete a task and deal with a situation.  While they could certainly get behind the mission-oriented aspects of the game, they may miss the overarching point which is that this is meant to be an experience the players sculpt with their decisions rather than a series of scenarios with an ideal way to meet all the Win Conditions.

Investigators may find most of the investigations to be rather simplistic, if you keep to the style of the game, and the actual conspiracies between elder vampires may be nothing but frustrating hints and annoying implications.  The missions are generally tacked onto the main campaign to give them a greater sense of breadth and scope to avoid over complicating the central campaign.  Of course, with a few twists you can easily turn this style into a more entertaining romp for them that they can really sink their fangs into.

So if you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here, and a list of tropes can be found over here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Wastelanders 2, Wolfenstein, Dead Space, or Elder Scrolls Online.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.

Game Translation: This War of Mine

Generally its a rare game that goes the full simulationist / slice of life route.  The grand majority of games are plotted.  There is some major conflict that you need to weave your way through, defeating a succession of obstacles of increasing drama and tension to defeat some Big Bad (or more rarely to merely survive and escape).  Therefore I have little experience, but loads of ideas, for how to accomplish This War of Mine through a roleplaying lens format.

In This War of Mine you don't play elite soldiers out to cleanse the city nor do you play rebels seeking to overthrow the government.  You're not even a single Action Hero Father trying to rescue your kids.  You could well be an old teacher, handyman, and sneaky girl from the wrong side of town.

You also don't shoot up bad guys unless you want to risk an easy road to death.  Instead you sneak through abandoned (and not-so-abandoned) locales picking up spare parts so you can spend your daytimes constructing various appliances, gardens, and water purifiers to allow you and your friends to survive a few days while occasionally thugs and desperate civilians make armed raids on your home.

It's a different sort of game.  It's a touch depressing.  And it would make for a very interesting roleplaying game.

If you have Narrativist players, then you probably already  know how you can run this.  You could simply focus on the relationships with some moments of rising tension, perhaps randomly drawn from a deck of cards to represent what is heard on the radio or what occurs during the night or on scavenging runs as a launch pad for ideas.  Players could then interject with what they think would be most entertaining - "I've caught a cold...."  "A sniper wings me...."

Simply watching the various characters interact as things slowly get worse and they struggle to put together enough to make it through the war could be perfectly entertaining for one or more sessions with the right crowd, but if you're a full Narrativist who have played a number of games in this style you probably don't need much advice on that front and as I've never run that sort of game I'm really not in the position to advice you on it.

So what if you're used to running the more common sorts of games with a GM in full control of the world around player controlled characters used to dealing with GM created obstacles while interacting with each other and NPCs in character?

Well you'll need to make sure that everyone plays pretty low-powered and ordinary characters.  So think small, think weak, think hopelessly out-gunned just like if the average office worker suddenly had to survive in an urban environment without proper stores.  Ensure the rules work with that and be sure the players are open to it.

You can play "This War of Mine" with more capable folks, say ex-emergency services personnel, and you can play the setting within a different style - even slice of life it with emergency services dealing with call outs within a besieged city but as that doesn't focus on the style of the videogame, just the setting, we won't be looking at that.  So make sure the players are onboard with creating utterly normal people with one particular specialty - good cook, good craftsman, etc.  I'd recommend each player make three such characters so that they can replace them quickly.

Ensure that wounds won't heal without medical attention and that sicknesses get progressively worse without warmth, food and rest.  When the characters get too hungry, too sick, too wounded or too tired, their movement speeds should be cut to a walk and then a stagger.  Every effort should take them longer and they should no longer be much use scavenging.

As with any good sandbox game you could get a map showing identified locations which they can travel and some basic rumours about them.  Danger levels, likely lootables, and possible NPCs should all be described.  You could even make it a bit of a hex crawl if you like by allowing PCs to spend a night in different blocks looking for places that haven't been revealed to them yet.

Unless you're willing to have a full group traipsing about to every location (increasing the chances of a TPK and reducing the sense of desperation), you'd need to keep the missions themselves quite short and sharp to allow players to guiltlessly split the party.  Ten to fifteen minutes per supply run should generally be enough.  Twenty to thirty if everyone seems enraptured.  Let the players know that they will need to split the party in advance so that they can protect their homes in case of looters.

I'd use a randomised system - like dice or card draws - to decide whether they're attacked.  You can either roleplay the attack or resolve it with dice or simply matching the defences against the attacker's skill and desperation, if you like.

Be mindful the PCs may crave revenge after a successful raid on them.

Inventory management is important as well in any game based on scavenging.  Firstly you'll need to determine the build phases - what they can build and what they need for it - then you can decide what they find.  You could do this board game style by putting tokens on a map and making them navigate the location or you could just decide it on the fly.  It's up to you.

During the build phase, you need to decide how many items they can build and if time will factor into it or simply what they have in their inventory.  Bear in mind how long you want it to take for them to purify water or grow crops.  You won't want this to occur in real-time as it would be very dull to have to get through fourteen days to make things happen so maybe have each phase represent a week of activities.

What they build should also have meaning during the gameplay and roleplay parts as well.  You could assign bonuses or penalties depending on what they have but other than slowing the PCs down when things get too rough I would focus on adding roleplaying pressures.  Describe the aches and pains of sleeping poorly ... describe the taste of dog food when they lack vegetables for soup ... describe the pangs of thirst ... describe the aching cold ... describe a day spent with nothing to read and nothing to do ... describe the maddening lack of information on how things are progressing for lack of a radio.  Each day, no matter what they have got and what they have recently built, describe what they lack and make it ache.

When the characters don't eat, simply progress them through categories that are easy to understand.  Slightly Hungry.  Hungry.  Starving.  Starving.  Dead.  Same thing with a lack of sleep or creeping sadness.  Reinforce the sensations of it most of all by describing the physical issues within each problem.  That will be the most galvanising thing for the players. 

When it gets cold, you could make one of them them draw from five cards to see if they get sick - increase the number of illness cards if they are exhausted, starving or if the temperature has gotten quite low.

So that it doesn't just become a depressing spiral of angst, ensure that there are some moments of levity as well.  People request for help and offer it.  People repay their debts when the PCs help them out.  Some of the locations are open to trade.  Some are robbed.  Some are cruel.  Most are just trying to survive.

Anyway, a campaign based around This War of Mine or including elements of it, should appeal to -

Communicators who find personal interaction and psychological horror interesting may enjoy it quite a bit though anyone who's main desire is for politics may find it sorely lacking unless they can affect alliances and recruit NPCs over to their way of thinking.

Explorers may enjoy the voyeuristic thrill of poking through people's homes and businesses while on scavenging missions so play it up and ensure little secrets are found here and there.  Keep it lively and keep the descriptions full of unqiue moments.

Action Heroes will stick a target on some of the bad guys and want their revenge.  If they succeed, they will love it.  If they fail, or fail too often, they will become frustrated.  They may be able to do it for a session as a favour to other players but this is not a good game for them long-term.

Tacticians will find it irritating because there's no win condition other than base survival.  Every decision they make is as bad as it is good.  Oh you built a cage to trap animals?  Well now we don't have a heater ... or a vegetable garden ... or an upgraded machine shop.  Some may enjoy this, plenty won't.

Investigators won't have much in the way of questions to solve and cases to follow.  They, like the action heroes and tacticians, could enjoy the setting but not the style of This War of Mine.  They may well find it dull.

So if you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Wastelanders 2, Wolfenstein, Dead Space, or Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines).

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.

Game Translation: Deadly Premonitions

Now

this rather wacky comedy horror game where you control FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan through his investigations into the "Raincoat killer" who has been blamed for a murder in small town Greenvale. 

Firstly if you are running this with several players you should have them select one person to play the kooky one.  Everyone else can have mild eccentricties but you really need a mostly "straight man" group.  Too many kooks spoil the plot and will likely cause them to bounce off each other in plot killing ways.  While you can pull off a party of very serious and highly functional York-type people, it would be hard to get the alchemy right in a way that lets the group work well together.  If you've got 2 players, sure, give it a shot - though get the players to comment on how their character's deal with each other's strangeness. 

If you've got 4 - 6 players, well, I wouldn't recommend that player size for this type of game but if that's what you've got then no -- the odds that their issues won't clash and derail the game are very low.  You'd be better off creating a locked room with a few puzzles and letting them spend a session wrestling with each other's unusual behaviour rather than expecting them to semi-sensibly navigate the plot.

Also be sure you talk the kookiness through with the designated player so that they create someone who is highly functional in society.  It doesn't matter if they should likely be kicked off the force (since the FBI have high mental health standards).  What matters is that their off-putting social mannerisms should make them seem slightly unpredictable, make sense according to their own internalised logic, and not completely shut down all conversation with NPCs. 

In other words, occasionally talking to an invisible friend, talking about how you get assistance from someone who isn't there (and that you'll explain more about him later) as well as going off into a slight trance as your lips move (indicated that's what he actually does when he speaks to Zach) as well as telling people that you can find clues in your morning coffee is fine.  Screaming in someone's face, pouring cereal in your hair and accusing random people of being aliens from outer space is not.  Less is more.  Pick a couple traits and stick to them.  Think *functional*.

On that note, reward the one picked to play the York-like PC by giving him the occasional tidbit that makes sense according to his delusions.  Let him hear a hint in the television static or read a vague clue in the coffee.  Try not to use this to generate leads unless they're really stuck - instead be indirect enough that they're likely to only put it together after the fact (or shortly before it).

This game also requires you complete the mundane actions of life which adds a bit more of a human and realistic touch to an otherwise strange game.  The character has a hunger meter and tiredness meter, gets puffed out quickly when he runs too long, stinks out his clothes when he wears them too long and starts growing a beard as the days progress if you don't make him shave.  These little touches keep things human.

They're also easy things to enforce in the game world.  Most systems you could use to run a game has some form of penalty system.  Just whack on a -1 penalty or remove a dice if they go a certain amount of time without eating or sleeping.  Alternatively just keep pointing out how hungry / tired they're getting and if they leave it beyond a certain amount of time you can start stripping health levels.  The latter option is more in keeping with the style of game and adds extra tension.  Just be sure to give them opportunities to eat. 

As for stinkiness and beardiness, they should have no real penalty though the former issue might draw comment from people stuck in the car with you.

When entering the Other World, feel free to have the sensible characters go with the York-style one.  Here is where things are likely to get very trippy as York can adapt quite well to the strangeness (which he only partially believes is real, ironically enough, as seen when he confronts the second-to-last boss at the end).  The normally straight-edged characters get to shine by being out of their depth, confused and confronted.  Their sanity may fray, tempers may snap, and the normally kooky guy they have to guide and assist through the real world can suddenly become a core character able to help them muddle through. 

After the second or third time in the Other World, they're likely to have it all figured out but the first time should allow for some real roleplaying gold.

Pay attention to the time and call it out to the players so that they know that timing is critical.  Know when stores open and close.  Have a vague idea about NPC routines.  Tell the players if it takes them an hour to get to the hospital or that it's 10:30 by the time they locate the park.  Have a vague idea on timelines too.  If they take too long, people die and the plot progresses.  This adds an extra bit of tension.

"Zach, how do I heat up this coffee with my mind?"

As with any investigative game, it's best done with smaller player groups since having more than 3 people interview one witness tends to get pretty crazy and overwhelming for the witness.  You can get around this by having the witnesses surprisingly unfazed by having larger groups turn out *or* if the party splits, get really good at hitting things in a nut shell.  Get the players in tune with it, too.

A good starting point for this is to grab a 10 minute timer and get it going.  The scene ends when the ten minutes are up.  Forgive the absence of any social niceties and think of it more like a movie interrogation.  Things escalate quickly and wasted words are minimised. 

In a split party combat you should certainly do the same with rounds by asking the person on highest initiative what they do and if they don't answer within 5 seconds, go to the next one initiative down.  You don't have to skip their turn entirely unless they take so long that everyone else has their turn first.  If the person on the higher initiative figures it out by the third person in the queue, then they can go first.  Just don't let them interrupt the latest announced action otherwise it becomes it's own power and the players will make a point of waiting (unless that's a mechanic you want to have in your game).

Basically, most folks don't want to sit on their hands with nothing to do.  They're happy to watch if the gameplay is entertaining but long drawn out conversations, heavy with social niceties, and convoluted combat sequences with plenty of book references and umming and ahhing aren't very entertaining.  If you want the long drawn out psychological roleplay, wait until the spots where everyone can be involved.


As for how to plot for this kind of game ... well, go with something strange and esoteric and try not to make it too comprehensible.  It should be overly convoluted with a reasonable number of contrivances and some of the leads should be downright bizarre.  Once they have enough information to confront a witness, if the witness also happens to be on the hit list they should die.

One option (don't tell your players) is to avoid plotting it all out as you normally would do and wing it by swinging the plot in the most entertaining fashion possible.  Flesh out the town, have a map, know the general NPC schedules, but don't decide on the bad guy or their motivations until the moment of unveiling.  This requires a bit of finesse on your part but if you're good at winging things you'll likely find a meandering route to the most logical culprit anyway.  Does this mean that certain aspects won't add up?  Absolutely!  But that's kind of the point.  Things should feel slightly off-kilter in a surreal horror.

Anyway, a campaign based around Deadly Premonitions or including elements of it, should appeal to -

Investigators who will enjoy collecting clues, interviewing witnesses and basically being a cop.  There is a mystery to solve and so long as they can piece it together, they're happy.  If you've got any of these in your team, I'd recommend using both handouts and tapping into their own ideas.  If they want to search the sofa but you had the clue in the garden, is there anyway the dropped clue could be under the couch?  They may also have ideas for other sorts of clues - searching out tyre tracks in soft soil and other details.  Go with it.

Explorers will love the switch between Other World and Real World, as well as the odd and strange situations they will find themselves in with the somewhat eccentric NPCs that live within the town.  Often explorers like to feel like they're really there, so having to eat / drink / sleep / shave will certainly add to that so long as the process doesn't become laborious.  Make the food interesting.  Make when to sleep a choice.  Enrich the story with these requirements.

Communicators will love a game that has such rich psychological diversity within it and that really encourages strong roleplaying with vividly drawn NPCs.  Flash them some intriguing insights into the NPC minds and draw them into kooky conversations.

Action Heroes will probably enjoy it so long as they like their action relatively sensible.  This isn't a hi-octane yippee-kay-aye car chase type of game but plenty of action heroes are happy so long as they get to do something cool.  Stabbing and driving over monsters certainly qualify.  The slightly off-beat nature of everything else will likely keep their attention as well and allow more enjoyment.

Tacticians might not find enough to do here.  They may get frustrated seeking out the perfect use of time and hoard items that are better off spent.  They may also get irritable in any serial killing case if they give themselves the parameter "Keep everyone alive" and then beat their head against the wall trying to come up with a successful plan.  While a tactician may enjoy it, they'll need to relax and go with the flow a little, focusing on immediate tactics and techniques to deal with more obvious problems.

So if you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here. If you want to read up on the TV Tropes you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Wastelanders 2, Wolfenstein, or Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines).  If no one picks anything by next fortnight, it will be the latest Wolfenstein.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.

Game Translation: Outlast

While everyone's opinion on what makes a game scary and tense will naturally vary, in my experience this has to be the scariest game I've ever played.  The mixture of vulnerability in the protagonist - highlighted by little touches like seeing his hands and hearing his whimpers - combines with events that feel unscripted and a seemingly randomised enemy pathing system, made the whole thing very intense.

Since I love horror games I thought I'd let it stew in my head awhile before discussing it which is why it has taken me so long to get to this point.

The game has a pretty simple premise.  Miles Upshur is a freelance investigative journalist who heads over to Mount Massive Asylum in Lake County, Colorado, due to an anonymous tip off from someone calling themselves the Whistleblower.  After finding his way inside, he gets a glimpse of the devastation and is soon eager to get out again.   Driven by the hope of unlocking the electronic EXIT doors, Miles must make his way through the asylum, hiding from the tortured inmates and piecing together the truth behind the asylum while trying to hold together the shreds of his sanity.

The game has some pretty simple mechanics.  You can clamber over low obstacles (i.e. desks), squeeze through narrow gaps (i.e. barricades), run away, shut doors, open drawers, climb ladders, hide under beds or tables, sneak into lockers, slither along ledges, and hoist oneself up into large ventilation ducts.  The only other action you can directly control is whether you rely on your own vision or use your night vision camera that lets you see in the darkness but which drains your batteries.

I list it all out because it points out one of the main difficulties between translating any movement-oriented stealth game and that's the little detail of timing.  It's tense running through a corridor only a few steps ahead from the bad guy and anxiously leaping up toward a vent.  It's nerve-wracking when you crouch beside an open door, wondering whether you should walk out into the darkness or not.

Making a series of dice rolls that all use the same Athletics or Stealth skill is not tense.  So we can't rely on that.

So here's how I would do it.  I would run this game with a single player.  If I had a number of willing players, I would just run the game several times and then have a chill out session where people could discuss their favourite moments.

I would also keep reinforcing the light rather than the darkness and shadows.  It's generally easy to remember what is well-lit and seen than what is unseen so by trying to force myself to think in terms of the unseen or hidden areas, I'd find it easier to remember that some parts of the room can't be seen without a camera.  Naturally light should be more restricted in reality ... the dark should be darker.  One lamp won't cast enough ambient light throughout a large room to provide much to go by.  How else can the PC sneak through and survive?

Naturally I'd use some kind of timer to represent battery power so that the player has a key decision to make - will they use the night vision camera or rely primarily on their sense of hearing?  Yes, batteries last for several hours or more in the real world but perhaps some supernatural aura drains the batteries in this place?

I also wouldn't pause the timer for descriptions.  Yes, I might take 15 seconds on a description, a full minute when answering questions, but it also takes longer for the PC to creep across a room than "I crouch-walk to the door".  Such a rule would also mean that we'd both have to keep things short, snappy and to the point.  If you're a chatty and verbiose GM, use this as a reminder to keep your own descriptions short and tense.  Any lengthy description will make the player cranky as you're eating into their battery time.

I would allow the player to use the environment to their best advantage but I wouldn't encourage it (unless they're a tactician type, in which case, welcome to how the game will need to run).  Why can't they make a barricade of their own?  Yes, there'll be noise and it won't last forever but it could work out if used in the right situation.  If I'm dumb enough to include a hammer, I'll just restrict the nails.   

Definitely do some prep-work on this.  You'll want a map (that you never show them), an idea of what the unchangeable boundaries are (can they break any of the windows?) and some idea of whereabouts the various threats are so that the players believe that the consequences are affected by their decisions and not simply GM whim. 

On the other hand, don't include a running list of all usable equipment in every room.  Just give a broad description of the room and let the PC decide what to do.  They can ask if there's a hammer in that tool shed.  You can decide on the fly if it would work best to do so.  You *don't* want to slow things down to painfully peruse a list.



Horrifying fates worse than death linger longer than mere death.

I'd avoid any form of combat stat.  The player should build a PC who wouldn't fight.  Just as you don't bring a pacifist into a D&D dungeon crawl, so should you not play a brawler in this one.  After all, the only reason why Miles survived for as long as he did was because he didn't fight everyone.  The enemies outnumber you.  Even if you only take one punch per bad guy (unlikely), you will eventually get a concussion and die.

You might want to include a few chips they can use on action scenes whenever they like that they can spend to get a room-length away from a bad guy or out of reach.  This could be used for those moments  like when Miles is creeping across a ledge in front of a prison cell and is grabbed by a patient before pulling loose.

Finally you should avoid making many rolls in general even though you might have a stealth or movement stat.  While combat rolls imply some form of decision making (all-out attack, dodge, move, types of blows which all have their own modifiers), movement and stealth stats are normally a single entity which is re-rolled over and over.  There's no decision to make in those instances. 

Therefore rely on decisions.  Left or right?  Up or down?  Under the table or in the locker?  Then you should make a roll to see where the bad guy checks.  If you use 1d6 you could increase the odds of being discovered depending on whether they've been spotted by that bad guy in a similar hiding place before, if the bad guy is more thorough or if the hiding place is closest to the door.  Once discovered, the PC should have a chance to run.

The main running mechanic could depend on player memory.  Remind your player at the start of the game that human memory becomes very unreliable during high stress situations so they won't get to pick their way via a map while they are running in terror for their very life.  Instead you'll throw out descriptions of what they can see as they're running and they need to choose.  Left or right?  Up or down?  Pass the room with the bookcases or enter?

The PC's health also shouldn't be worn down with randomised damage.  Each enemy should deal a precise amount of damage (1, 2 and 3).  The PC could then have 3 health points and three "lives".  Once they lose one set of health points, something terrible happens to them that they later escape and they then return to the action with another 3 health points and one life less.  Check your players boundaries before you decide on the "something terrible".  In some cases your PC might be able to deal with generalised torture, others are happy with amputation or even (in very rare cases) sexual assault.  Once the third life is "taken", it's game over.  The player doesn't get to see the ending.

Anyway, a campaign based around Outlast or including elements of it, should appeal to -

Explorers who love the horror genre will be the ideal candidates for this type of thing as they will poke into each and every room even when the safest path is directly from Point A to Point B.  They may even trigger events simply to see what will happen.  They're generally harder to scare but can help create truly terrifying tales.

Communicators will find the non-sadistic patients to be interesting figures and will want to have the chance to talk to them.  If they really enjoy horror, you can get a lot of mileage out of this.

Action Heroes will hate it.  Yes, there's room for adrenaline junkies but there's no opportunities for awesome moments.  The most Miles ever does is push someone away from him.  That's hardly an epic chance to shine for your average Action Hero.

Tacticians will potentially enjoy it but will likely feel the confines of the genre to be too confining.  They will want to find ways to crush enemy patients, lock them in rooms or otherwise neutralise them as threats.  They could make an interesting solo player but expect to be more flexible with them lest they grow frustrated.

Investigators would enjoy the slow discovery but they will want plenty of clues and handouts.  If you haven't read any Trail of Cthulhu or Call of Cthulhu BRP adventures, I'd recommend doing so first.  Give them actual physical representations of what they find to keep them keen.

So if you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here. If you want to read up on the TV Tropes you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Wastelanders 2, Wolfenstein, Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines) or Deadly Premonitions.  If no one picks anything by next fortnight, it will be Deadly Premonitions.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.
 

Game Translation: Tomb Raider (2013)

Tomb Raider couples some seriously hard core action sequences with some seriously brutal injuries and general roughing up of the protagonist.  Sullied by a trailer which showed a grope-y murderer try to kill her after feeling her up, a number of people thought the videogame would be simply trying to reinforce female weakness and sexual threat.  I saw her latest reboot as a queer mix between more realistic emotional responses and some crazy parkour through exploding buildings.  A good mix.

The game has a pretty tight focus.  Lara Croft came looking for Yamatai, a storm-wracked island whose strange storms shipwrecks her crew and leaves her battling cultists as she tries to find a way off the island.

The game weaves in the legends of Yamatai, Queen Himiko and the Dragon's Triangle to good effect which adds greater interest to the game as it plays with the history and myth of our world and warps it into something infinitely stranger and more mysterious.  It is this mix of fantasy and fact that I would thoroughly encourage anyone running a campaign in the Tomb Raider mould to aim to do.

Much of the game relies on making use of movement mechanics.  Jumping, climbing, clambering with pick axes, and using arrows with rope attached as grappling hooks are all necessary ingredients of the game which helps make what could be a boring hike into a fantastic adventure.  This is a tricky thing to do in a non-visual medium like a roleplaying game.  Sure you could create a diorama using toilet roles and bits of string but it would lack the immediacy of the videogame.

So use your voice.  Make the descriptions interesting.  Throw dilemmas before the characters, one after another, so that they must take a risk to get the reward.  Take the quicker yet riskier journey rappeling across a rope or take a slower, safer route clambering down.  Don't use instant death as the risk, mind, but the risk of losing time or alerting enemies to the character's presence are all worthwhile.

And use plenty of descriptions.  Make the descriptions count.  Make it exciting.  Short, sharp sentences.  Sudden questions.  Describe the locations richly, the mythic highlights and the dangerous cultists.  Using your voice you can lure the players in and make the simplest die roll seem like the most exciting thing ever.

Think of it this way.  If a combat which largely involves dice rolls and the chipping away of health points can be made exciting through simple description and the risk of death, why not swinging across support struts beneath crumbling buildings strung across a massive ravine.  If you're not sure what to use to populate the game, what sort of obstacles and encounters, I'd mightily recommend replaying the game and jotting down the most inspirational parts.

Some quiet contemplation after the epic action...

This is certainly the type of game that benefits from having unrepentant bad guys who are truly evil.  The ones in this game do terrible torture to keep each other in line and murder any other survivors who end up shipwrecked on the island.  This is important because Lara Croft is a good person and if the cultists were ambiguous, if even one of them turned out to be a reasonable person who just wanted to help, then her resolve to kill so many along the way would be terribly shaken.

While I wouldn't say you couldn't have the occasional good guy, I'd have them be a new person still undergoing the trials or perhaps a bad guy pretending to be kind.  After all, you want them to be able to mow down as many bad guys as they need to do to get through the game.

Anyway, a campaign based around Tomb Raider (2013) or including elements of it, should appeal to -
Explorers and Action Heroes the most.  The former will enjoy getting to all those hard to reach places, picking up artefacts, learning the history of the location and finding out all about the assorted myths; while the latter will adore all of the action sequences and sudden blasts of combat.

Tacticians will enjoy using the terrain to their advantage and surviving the environmental conditions.

Investigators would enjoy a conspiracy or a plot to unravel, even if only to find out how the various survivors came to be what they are as well as what happened to the ones who didn't make it.

Communicators will have a temptation to make camp a lot and deliberate with the other survivors on their best course of action, sowing paranoia or attempting to undo it.  After all, cabin fever and a survivor mentality are fertile ground for the kind of crazed in-group politics that they so often adore.

Anyway, if you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here. If you want to read up on the TV Tropes you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Dracula: Origins, Outlast, Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines) or Deadly Premonitions.   Or a Television Translation in Once Upon A Time or Lost Girl.  If no one picks anything by next fortnight, it'll probably be the Television Translation.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.

Game Translation: Blood Dragon

Sometimes it's good for a game to not take itself seriously. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a shooter which satirises 1980s action films. The setting is a mixture of retro and futuristic and it sprawls across an island filled with those who need a good killing. You play eye-patched cyborg protagonist Sergeant Rex Power Colt.

In a game like this, tropes are the thing. This game has cyborgs, Russian - American nuclear war, rogue agents, zombies, literal blood dragons, rescuing scientists and conquering bases. Naturally there's a hot female doctor who assists you in, ahem, more ways than one.

This is the kind of tongue in cheek affair that many players would love to play, at least once in awhile, and I'd thoroughly recommend horror STs try their hand at it once in awhile. It's a good way to get some escapism, unwind, and laugh at yourself, your hobby, and everything else you're dealing with at the time. The big trick here is to not let it get into cutting satire. You don't want to lambast it as the sorry state of roleplay. You just want to pack so many tropes into a single game that it tips over the border into absurd.

Firstly, remember this is a shooter. The system you use needs to give the players plenty of hit points to play around with and the combat needs to be short, sharp and sweet so that they can mow down dozens of bad guys in between healing up. Pathfinder can work for this, though I'd recommend reducing the hit points of most creatures so that most of them are, at best, paper tigers. They hit hard but they die easy. At least easy compared to the players. There are other systems that would probably work even better (i.e. Tenra Bansho Zero) but that's the most mainstream one I can think of which would work out.

The gameplay should be varied, as well. Throw in some creatures that are more powerful than others! Let them mow down a dozen of the running dead and then throw down with some kind of super-cyborg. And remember to describe all the damage they deal to the bad guys with relish (though not to the point of evoking imagery of pain and grotesquery - think comic book style).

If I were you, I'd recommend including some kind of narrator. The players could occasionally take turns at this or it might be storyteller only. Basically, start each session with a summary that evokes bad blockbuster movie trailers and which drops heavy, yet bizarre, spoilers for the next session. "Last time...." "S/he was just doing his/her job smashing bad guys when...." "Little did they know but things were about to get a lot worse...." "On a mission they weren't expected to survive...." This page will give you some ideas of what to say or, at least, how to say it.

Go Big or Go Home....

To help diversify the bad guys, play around with the idea of called shots. These could be quite narratively done. If you say you hit its eyes, you deal damage normally. Otherwise the damage is halved. No penalty to hit the eyes, though. Of course, if you do use these quirks make them uncommon so that they're entertaining rather than an irritating game of "strike every body part once". Also the players should be able to look at the monster and get an idea of where to strike just by the look of it. In other words, a giant eye or a fleshy mouth that is only open sometimes is just begging for a smack. Yes, it may not be as much of a Blood Dragon thing but it's a pretty big gaming trope anyhow.

Hammy one liners should deal extra damage to an enemy. Make it small but significant so that the players keep making them. If it ends up making everyone laugh, let the damage be a full (but small) damage dice or something similar. Only let each player benefit from this twice a battle, though, you don't want it to grate.

Use the game as an excuse to watch over-the-top movies or shows. Or at the very least, play a trailer of one as the starting ritual to get everyone on the same page. This can also act as handy inspiration for you. As can the web-site TV Tropes.

You should include at least one puns that's really important to the game. It could be a password, a description of a boss, or even a vital clue said by an NPC. C'mon, you know most folks hate puns. Time to get them groaning.

Anyway, a campaign based around Blood Dragon or including elements of it, should appeal to - you guessed it - Action Heroes the most. I could take you through the rest of the list but really most of the other groups will tag along for the entertainment value but probably wouldn't be into it for the long haul unless the satire was really funny to them. Still, that doesn't mean they wouldn't enjoy it as a breather adventure or short campaign. If you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here. If you want to read up on the TV Tropes you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Tomb Raider (the latest), Dracula: Origins, Outlast, Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines) or Deadly Premonitions. If no one picks anything by next fortnight, it'll probably be Deadly Premonitions.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.

Game Translation: Dishonored

Dishonored is a stealth action game that relies on the rather innovative method of teleporting out of sight at the right time.  Sure, it has other powers available to you but that's really the most important one. You play the Empress' bodyguard, Corvo, who was falsely accused of murdering the Empress by the rather corrupt government officials. Luckily a mysterious and threatening entity, the ambiguous trickster 'god?' known only as the Outsider.

While cover is important, really it's all about line of sight. Luckily the NPCs don't ever 'look up' just like real people don't so you can always teleport onto a lamp post or a ledge and go on from there. Naturally there's also hidey holes, vents and holes in the wall, but let's look at the unique difficulties of teleportation.

Firstly, this game lends itself to the basic style of tabletop wargames which field individual units. If you have a lot of terrain, you could give the players a cut down ruler to represent the distance they can teleport and go with that. Unfortunately, since the odds of you having as many terrain pieces as the videogame has levels are quite small ... you will probably need to either make each level so ridiculously complicated that you can get a few hours of playtime from it or take another angle.

The other option is to keep it all to the imagination. Just like in a regular game where you can leap a certain distance, so you can do the same thing here - you just don't physically cross the intervening space. You might use floorplans and miniatures. You might not.

While this method can work to come up with some very unique outcomes, the game will either descend into more purist narrativism (player states they teleport onto a ledge above the cops thus there is a ledge there) or they scrutinise the GM's descriptions for phrases that indicate possible places to go (a more railroady narrativism).

Narrativism, you say? Why not just add in some dice?

You could do that. If you want to randomise the distance the player can actually travel, have a pass/fail system and then explain why they can't re-try the teleport and must instead sit on their bottoms or find somewhere else to go or have a pass/fail system where failure dumps them in plain view of everyone. While all of these work, none of them work well for a reliable system that fits in with Dishonored's style.

Don't worry. As always I have an answer for you. Make teleportation automatic. Give it a set distance. Then make the various places they can use more or less difficult. Imagine teleporting over a ledge and trying to hold onto it without slipping off and falling on your foes? Not as easy as it sounds. Make the players roll Athletics or Stealth or whatever to stay where they are quietly. If they fail, they start to fall and might even grab on (making noise) or teleport elsewhere. Or they hold their position but scare off a bird they didn't see or knock off some pebbles, drawing attention. The player must then select a new landing pad which may not be as beneficial. They might also need to roll a Perception check to ensure that the landing point can even take their weight.

Anyone else get a few too many dodgy PCs?

Floorplans are still a good idea in this, if you have a large enough table. Being able to move miniatures around to show their marching patterns. Demonstrating why certain pieces of terrain are more beneficial landing points then others (i.e. it's right above their head) and being able to model how people change their positions in response to sound are all good things.

This can be especially interesting for the players when they're dealing with 'Weepers' or other such twisted plague-bearing victims who might rush over to the lamp post and seeing them starting to bunch up could become quite an issue.

If there is more than one or two players, you should especially avoid making normal stealth checks for ducking around furniture or creeping along or else there's a very good chance that Stealth will stop being a viable option and the players will start storming places. Leave the stealth checks for the teleport landings and even then don't have it be a pass / fail. Have it be a pass / alert-oh-dear-best-teleport-away.

Anyway, a campaign based around Dishonored or including elements of it, should appeal to - you guessed it - Tacticians and Action Heroes the most.
Wow, a lot of videogames I've been translating have been good for those two groups which is unsurprising. What is surprising is how it's only been my recent of Game Translations that has shown such a bias towards those two groups.
Tacticians will love being able to find the perfect path across the terrain without getting spotted.

Action Heroes may be more prone to assassinations than simply passing unseen, though the adrenaline twitch of a good stealth scene interspersed with outrunning large robots or hordes of weepers should prove a good mix for most. Just be sure they have some patience. Dungeon crawlers and hack & slashers will find it dull..

Explorers will find the exotic yet familiar city of Dunwall to be quite interesting to them. It's so akin to our Victorian cities yet so different. Simply the cultural nuance and the descriptions will pique their interest, especially as they get to sneak into people's homes.

Investigators will likely the little hints and tips as to the grander conspiracy and may become very driven to prove their guilt. Give them the chance to piece it together and make a few physical handouts and you should be able to get them onboard.

Communicators will probably want to spend their time pitting the enemy against itself, driving in wedges, and raising internal paranoia. You could let them, just move it down an action-oriented route. If they steal this thing from this person, they will assume their nominal 'ally' did it.

If you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here. If you want to read up on the TV Tropes you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Blood Dragon, Tomb Raider (the latest), Dracula: Origins, Outlast, Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines) or Deadly Premonitions. If no one picks anything by next fortnight, it'll probably be Blood Dragon.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.

Game Translation: Gears of War

Gears of War is a third-person tactical shooter that heavily relies on a pretty decent cover system.  You play a member of Delta Squad, a military unit who are desperately trying to defeat a subterranean race of creatures known as the Locust. You are Marcus Fenix, a former prisoner and incredibly muscular soldier who looks like he's been popping steroids for breakfast from an early age.


Cover is a vital element of this tactical shooter so the first thing you need to consider when creating your campaign will be ensuring your game system's rules provide enough attention and benefit to using cover. Luckily most systems I've read which are in the simulationist vein have something in there on cover. Best to print out those rules and pass them out to your players. They'll take that as a bit of a clue. Especially if you don't include any other rules in the print out (except perhaps higher ground rules).

If you really want to play a Gears of War-style campaign, I'd come up with some excuse for regeneration (and huge muscles), perhaps involving genetic modification or chemical spills. Then, if you're playing World of Darkness rules you could take the werewolf regeneration rules. If you're using some sort of D20 variant, Fast Healing equal to level should work out fine. Stipulate that the healing factor only kicks in when the character is resting and you'll have players seeking cover so that their characters can hide and watch their health tick up - just like you need to do in the game when that health indicating cog appears in the bottom corner of the screen.

Remember that if you want to be true to the videogame (rather than just playing a game like it), you need to go science fiction but with a very Earth-like setting. I mean, I didn't even know the game was set on another planet (Sera) when I played it because all of the architecture and much of the flora looked pretty Earth normal to me. I had assumed that immulsion had just been found on Earth. Therefore keep most of the descriptive elements pretty modern (rather than futuristic) and ensure that the players know that simply evacuating the new planet is as unthinkable as simple 'evacuating' Earth. This is the characters' homes now. The fact that the characters can be baseball-playing heroes living in homes much like our own (before the Locust attack, that is) should help reinforce the kind of player protectiveness that comes from having your own home world attacked.

This is neither a "Simply shoot things" game nor a "Sandbox game". Therefore ensure the players have very specific, very simple goals, that should generally be broken down into sub-objectives. The first game ordered you to descend into the Hollow within the planet to detonate a Lightmass bomb but between the start and finish there were a lot of other objectives -- some of which only appear once a certain event occurs to the characters. Having a leader speak to them over the radio can help with this as they point out new duties and obligations.

This is a game that would work well with miniatures. Cover, after all, is a big thing. If you're going with this, I'd recommend creating chest-high walls out of paper that is shaped to look like Locust-cover points (metal fences) or rubble. In this way the players' miniatures may be moved up behind the cover, as can the enemies, ensuring everyone knows where the cover is and just how much protection it gives. Since all you need is a printer or, at worst, some folded up coloured paper, this should be easy to do. You could also use fish bowl decorations, doll house furnishings and real world rocks if you want to go all out.

Create an enemy the players don't have to empathise with. This game isn't about the "Horrors of War", in terms of sympathetic bad guys on the other side of the fence dying cruelly. The bad guys are BAD. Making them alien-looking creatures that spend their whole time attacking people with hardly an overhead Locust comment for colour, ensures that the players can gun them down and feel good doing it. If you're using a game with some kind of Morality system, scrap it, at least in terms of killing Locusts.

I like to imagine these guys are watching a Christmas pageant.

This is a game designed to be epic. Use massive setpieces. Have a monster swallow them up and make them tear their way out. Have them rush about on crumbling ledges above a bubbling pool of Imulsion. Have them outrun an explosion which nips at their heels and threatens to blow them through a wall. This is an action game. Go all out.

Anyway, a campaign based around Gears of War or including elements of it, should appeal to - you guessed it - Tacticians and Action Heroes the most.

Tacticians will love the cover system, complicated killing strategies (i.e. that giant worm thing) and focus on teamwork.

Action Heroes will love the explosions, gun play, running sequences and occasionally quite Big Bads that need to be taken down.

Explorers would enjoy the strange places, the apocalyptic wastelands of the cities and the underground places rich with odd architecture and alien beings.

Investigators won't have much to do here so throw them a mystery as part of the through-line to keep them interesting.  Something like "What happened to your wife?" might help if they're still pretty keen on combats.

Communicators won't like this game.  No real chances for social manipulation.  While they might find much to like if they double as one of the other categories, odds are they won't really like it.

If you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here. If you want to read up on the TV Tropes you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Blood Dragon, Tomb Raider (the latest), Dracula: Origins, Outlast, Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines) or Dishonoured. If no one picks anything by next fortnight, it'll probably be Tomb Raider.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.

Game Translation: ZombiU

ZombiU is a largely first-person survival horror where you play a person who is flagged down by the "prepper" while passing a particular subway station. The "prepper" gets you to perform a multitude of tasks for him as do several others during the course of the game. The game's premises centers on the Black Prophecy written by John Dee over 400 years ago which declared that zombies would overrun London in 2012.

ZombiU is a neat zombie romp where you play a variety of zombie survivors during the campaign. When one character dies, you start playing the next. There's no real difference between them except for appearance, name and a couple details on their ID (namely occupation and age). Having to kill your former zombie character is a neat touch, however, and brings with it the added bonus of being able to grab your old loot. There's also the option to just play a single character to see how far you get. If you die in that option, you have to start over.

It's a good idea in any zombie-based pen and paper campaign that the player characters can die and die regularly. I once ran one where all of the characters were pre-generated and randomly assigned. Some were better than others. Some were entirely useless. Some had epic weapons they couldn't use. Others had great weapons skills and a plank. Yeah, the weapons were randomly assigned as well. The players weren't too attached to the characters so it led to some truly interesting events. More of an idea for a one-shot, however.

For a game with longevity, I'd recommend getting the players to create their own characters and put a bit of thought into those character histories. It doesn't have to be heaps detailed. Just 5 - 8 dot points on personality and history should do. Players should, at all times, have two backup characters as though the average lifespan of a character should be 6 - 8 sessions, there may be the odd session where bad luck or a nasty horde slays two characters in the one session.

One element of the videogame won't translate so well, however, and that's the idea of luring a zombie out of a crowd by touching the edge of their perception *sphere* and then backing away. Unless you break out the miniatures, this isn't going to work. If you do break out the miniatures, it will feel artificial and contrived. In most forms of media, when one zombie sees you, the noises it makes attracts more zombies.

Another difference from the videogame is the fact that players will have greater choices in what their characters do. They may choose to hole up elsewhere, approach an obstacle entirely differently, or bypass it altogether. Let them. Part of the fun of a post-apocalyptic scenario is trying to think up ways to survive. If they manage to keep their characters alive for an entire campaign then good on them. Just don't stack the odds in their favour.

This is a game that exalts in a decidedly British locale.

The goals should also lead from one another. Often enough you can just let the characters exist and simply keep track of their dwindling resources. You (or a player) should take note of just how many bullets, guns, knives, cans of food, and hours worth of fuel they still possess. There's nothing to say you can't skip to the chase and briefly narrate their weeks worth of safety before forcing them back outside. Sure you can interrupt their safety occasionally, as safety in a zombie world is illusory, but do so sparingly and dramatically. You don't want to make all their hard work immediately useless, after all. What would be the point in that?

Also give the player characters a chance to bond, joke, converse and have times when the zombies aren't on screen. A dungeon crawl with zombies can get boring really quickly as zombies all have similar stats. It's not like going from a battle with three orc fighters to a battle with an elfen ranger to a battle with a medusa. Therefore provide plenty of brake pads.

Avoid letting the characters get the kind of armour where the zombies can't get at them ever. Otherwise you're forced to either throw a horde at them (which can damage them through sheer weight) or have them attacked unawares. If they do get some nice armour, reduce the armour benefits so that it doesn't render the individual zombie useless.

Funnily enough one of the easiest ways to roleplay ZombiU would be with the neat little Zombicide boardgame which I played the other day.  It would allow people to use tactics to lure out zombies by dropping noise tokens on its square and could be rigged quite nicely alongside a roleplaying system to allow folks to use cover, concealment and other dice-based attacks as per normal.

Anyway, a campaign based around ZombiU or including elements of it, should appeal to Tacticians and Action Heroes the most.

Tacticians will find the need to use interesting inventory items at all the right times (grenades, mines, flares, and guns) and the ability to lure and manipulate the zombies into all the right place.  This would especially be interesting to them if you used miniatures.

Action Heroes will love the chance to blow stuff up, smash down monsters and enjoy thrilling chase scenes where they flee hordes of zombies.

Explorers would get the most out of it if it were a location they recognised, either one that was famous (which you had researched) or from their own neck of the woods.

Investigators will, of course, need something to discover and investigate during the game.  Luckily zombie games are big on treachery, conspiracies and the occasional tidbit about how everyone else died.

Communicators won't tend to enjoy this sort of game.  Yes, you can create a game about in-group bickering, schisms and group politics but that wouldn't really be a very ZombiU game, now would it?

If you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here. If you want to read up on the TV Tropes you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation (which will be in a fortnight's time), you have a choice of these: Blood Dragon, Gears of War, Dracula: Origins, Outlast, Vampire: the Masquerade (Bloodlines) or Dishonoured. If no one picks anything by next week, it'll probably be Dishonoured.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.

Game Translation: The Cat Lady

The Cat Lady is a point-and-click adventure game where about Susan Ashworth, the local Cat Lady, who is suicidally depressed and gains what little joy she has from the neighborhood cats whom she calls to her apartment through piano music.

This is a profoundly emotional game which begins with Susan's suicide. She finds herself in a disturbing Afterworld where a strange old woman called the Queen of Maggots offers immortality in exchange for the murder of five psychopathic "Parasites" who will try to hurt Susan. Over the course of the game, not only does Susan need to deal with these Parasites but she also needs to confront herself and a terrible moment from her past.

Any Game Master trying to ape this style of game would do well to read the last few Friday articles I wrote to do with the necessity of emotional distance in roleplaying games (Disgust, Sadness, Happiness, Hate, and Anger). This isn't to say that you can't do an emotional game only that it is something which shouldn't be done lightly. While people might emphathise with a character on a television screen, experiencing it first-hand through a roleplayed encounter when you have immersed yourself in the character's perspective is another thing entirely. When a person is looking at you and talking to you, it's difficult to divorce yourself from what they're saying without divorcing yourself from the entire game experience as well.

For similar reasons, while I adore the videogame I wouldn't recommend it to everyone due to its themes. Nasty things happen in this game. Not only the shocking cruelties performed by the "Parasites" (human serial killers, generally) but also the very realistic cruelties which a normal life can throw at you. This game deals with situations involving suicide, depression, anxiety and causes of such mental health issues which can be deeply upsetting to play even in a videogame.

So let's assume that despite all that you want to run a game in this mould and your players are happy to tap into the sort of anguish which marks the day-to-day life of such a character. Firstly take each player aside and talk to them about their characters. Spend at least an hour discussing their character's history, needs, loves and hates. You need to get a very good idea of what these characters are like and what they're about. Remind them that anything they bring up now is usable in the game and that they should either prepare themselves for that ... or remove it.

A character who has suffered a miscarriage in their past, after all, can't hope to get through this sort of game without references to miscarriages, happy (or unhappy) families and little children coming up over the course of the game. If they're not comfortable with that, they should really remove that element of the game and introduce a new one.

Sometimes this game becomes a little surreal...

There also needs to be a debrief after each session. Don't simply send them home right after. You should discuss the game for a bit together (yes, this involves talking about those dreaded feelings) and then ideally curl up on the couch together, eat chocolate-dipped strawberries and watch an upbeat movie or something. Shake off the bad feelings with a chat that acknowledges them and then let that negativity seep away. If you send people home right away, you risk them dwelling over something that you might not have even realised would strike a nerve. The last thing you want to do is inspire a night alone crying or a weekend feeling despondent. Hopefully this won't happen. By scheduling in that extra time after a session you increase the chances that it won't happen ... or that it'll at least happen in a way that leaves the player feeling supported.

Remember also that this type of game is about cartharsis. It's about experiencing something dreadful with the chance of coming out on top. While the world of The Cat Lady is pretty bleak with overworked support staff too indifferent to care, police officers who just don't believe you, and a general sense of grime and disillusionment, there is still the possibility of a decent ending. There's even a good ending, though it's harder to get.

Figure out those endings. At the very least, the characters should achieve some sort of closure before the story ends. To get the players invested in this sort of game and then leave the character without closure risks leaving the player without closure as well. A lack of closure leads to dwelling and no cartharsis. Avoid that.

Okay, so what if you just want to play a darker semi-mundane world involving tricky actions to take out the "Parasites" rather than focusing on evoking anguish in your players to help them (and perhaps yourself) achieve the sort of cartharsis people seek in tragedy?

Most of the advice you can get from any good old point-and-click adventure game can come into it here. Rather than successful skill rolls, think of it in terms of decision points. Should someone really have to roll to jump a fence? No. The question isn't "Can they....?" but "Do they....?" In this kind of game where failure (in the form of death) isn't the end you can certainly pre-plan decision points where failing to pay attention to environmental cues and doing something silly like slamming open the door to attack the knife-wielding psychopath automatically ends in failure.

Taking the dice out of it also throws the emphasis so squarely on decision making that players who are liable to throw themselves at things when they get frustrated will instead have to sit up and start paying attention.

Anyway, a campaign based around The Cat Lady or including elements of it, should appeal to Communicators the most.

Tacticians generally like to think their way through problematic situations so they can have a lot of fun trying to figure out what to do to get past their current "Parasite".  Unfortunately some of them have problems with perfectionism and the fact that in a game like the Cat Lady you're bound to occasionally get it wrong before getting it right might not sit well with them.

Action Heroes might enjoy it for a short change of pace if they're into horror games but they will otherwise find it very frustrating to have to play an essentially vulnerable and largely noncombative character.  Even if their character gets a gun they really shouldn't start to rely on it.

Explorers may enjoy the rather gritty and disturbing version of our reality, especially the unusual situation in the Death World.

Investigators will have their work cut out for them discovering the identity of the "Parasite", their modus operandi and the best way to survive their current predicament and take down the "Parasite".  Unlike the Tactician whose focus is on success, an investigator's focus is on discovery so they're a bit less likely to get frustrated.

Communicators tend to come in one of two flavors - the political types who love to play their own little version of Game of Thrones (who won't love this game so much) and the psychological types who just want to crawl down the rabbit hole of their own character's and their other NPC's minds (who will absolutely love and adore this style of game).

If you want to check out the trailer, you can find it here. If you want to read up on the TV Tropes you can find them here.

For the next Game Translation, you have a choice of these: Blood Dragon, Gears of War, Dracula: Origins, Realms of the Haunting, Outlast or Dishonoured. If no one picks anything by next week, it'll be either Realms of the Haunting or Dishonoured.

If you want to see the list of games I've done thus far, you can find the Game Translation series starter over here.