How A Little Player Preparation Goes A Long Way

Generally, Game Masters spend a fair bit of time on preparing for games while a player's preparation for game generally revolves around snack purchases and leveling up their character sheet. This is the custom but it's not always a good idea. A little preparation can bring your play skill up from good to excellent and boost most games from fun to fantastic.

Now, I'm not saying that there's no place for plug-and-play gaming where you do little to no preparation. In casual gaming, where the Game Master spends very little time in preparation, is also not really the place for anyone to spend time outside of the games thinking of the game. Even in more complicated games with detailed game worlds, you can certainly get away with a good game that you only think about while you're there. Hey, some Game Masters run just fine by the skin of their teeth. Or they just simply prefer it. The same can be said for players.

But hear me out.

If you're playing a game with a supportive Game Master, you'll get more mileage out of your game with a little preparation. This could involve (articles to come):

Creating compelling characters,

Goal lists so your character has adequate motivation and things to do,

Writing and reviewing the clues and leads you had from the last session,

Writing up plans and then running the ideas past other player characters,

Research your character concept and skills (for example, researching about WWII for your newly Embraced vampire or about how a police officer's day works out),

Learning the rules beyond what's on your sheet,

Knowing your canon (where it applies).

Knowing yourself, what you want, what you enjoy, and what you dislike so you can communicate that to the Game Master.

As a player, I've found I get the best out of games when I actually put a little bit of preparation into it or out-of-game details. In the Camarilla LARP, I created a forum based around a play house and sold trivial boons for access to it. I also went around recording all the information I could find out about them in a document. These things really helped in my experience - especially compared to the times when I didn't use them. These tricks have also helped in the solo Demon game I'm playing which has a strong political and investigative element so it doesn't have a LARP-only benefit.

The truth is that in most situations, with most Game Masters, a little preparation - even ten minutes before a session - can make a lot of difference. Look to the series of articles to come.

Kanban Encounter Method

I haven't tried it yet but it looks good. Take a look over at Justin Achilli's take on the Kanban Method for GMing in this article and this one. Basically it involves keeping track of whether your encounters / adventures are still in the Planning, Foreshadowing, Ready to Use, or Re-Visit stage. Perfect for those more sandboxy adventures!

Me, I normally just sit down and list out the grimy Left Overs from the campaign to date (always best to clean them off the plate early before I get distracted by new stuff) and the too cool Hooks that have already been foreshadowed (some of which haven't been fleshed out but seemed a good idea at the time). In most sessions of an open-ended sandboxy campaign, I write them down to ensure that there's some closure from the Left Overs and some more juicy progress on the old Hooks. In my more episodic Demon campaign, I do it ever so often when it's getting backed up or when the players have done something that's too full of delicious repercussions.

My Gripe With nWoD

I started playing old World of Darkness so, of course, I turn my nose up at a few things that the new World of Darkness does and I generally do so because it's different to what I liked about the original game. I actually liked merits and flaws because it gave the players a chance to have a say in the sort of game they wanted to play (Haunted, Hunted, and Infamous). I also liked the added realism that the severe wound, healing times, and movement penalties gave.

Over time I've come down off my white horse and accepted that a lot of the changes do make a sort of sense.

But my other gripes are more because while they made the game more player-friendly they pulled away from the Horror Genre. Take a look at Justin Achilli's article on how the rules used (and skills given) are the designer's way of encouraging the use of certain skills and abilities. It's like Chekhov's gun, if you put it in the game, expect it to be used.

In the same way, if you make combat less lethal and more player-friendly, they'll turn to it more often.

In oWoD, you had merits and flaws but very few of them involved combat. There was a Strong Right Hook which gave you a slight damage bonus, but that was mostly it. Different gamelines doubtless had a few more but there weren't oodles of them. Now there are more Fighting Styles in the various core books than Social OR Mental Merits. While I approve of the complexity this can give combat in the game, I disapprove of what such a focus on these styles indicates to players.

Also, long healing times can irritate players so I understand why they massively reduced them. It's not very player-friendly. Of course, most supernaturals have a way to heal themselves so you can continue your more brutal vampire-vs-vampire or werewolf-vs-spirit games but also, in a real horror game, players should be trying to avoid their characters taking damage. Health points just don't cut it. Especially when there's nothing backing it up.

It's hard to say "that really hurt" when the characters are otherwise unaffected by losing, say, four hit points.

I've seen a player about to charge his character in to combat on a -2 penalty with two health points left in oWoD. When I told him that his character would be crawling at three yards per turn, he changed his mind and decided that the injury actually was too grevious.

Also, more lethal games mean characters have to be clever about avoiding damage and taking out their targets at range. Why do you think most successful Call of Cthulhu characters are the ones with Dodge who know how to use Explosives?

Of course, the downside is that Horror games are more constricted and less accessible to players. Most players want a chance to feel Awesome. They're attracted to games that allow them to feel that. Most 'horror' players generally want to take part in dark fantasy games, nasty thrillers, or action with a backbone of hi-octane nightmare fuel. They don't want to spend their whole time running from bad guys, looking for clues, and getting themselves killed all the time.

nWoD catered more to that style than oWoD and kept threatening to give my players bad habits. But even so, I stopped bitching about nWoD's changes with Armory Reloaded and it's wonderful Combat Hacks. Now it's quite easy to make the game as Wire-Fu or brutally horrific as I'd like to be. In truth, I like it somewhere between oWoD's One Shot Can Incapacitate and nWoD's You Can Take Three Shots With Little Effect But The Fourth Will Kill You!

On the other hand, nWoD's three tracks of damage is pretty awesome. Fill up on Bashing and you start filling up on Lethal. Fill up on Lethal and you start taking aggravated damage if anyone hits you or simply fails to heal you. Nothing raises the tension like having your character pass out from damage while there's still time to keep them alive!

So yeah, I guess that after three years of playing nWoD, I can put the banner down and accept that with a few tweaks (many provided nWoD itself), I can have my cake and eat it too with an updated rules set that does iron out a lot of kinks.

Rant over!

Interview with a Keeper: Mr. Handy

Well, I've always wanted to learn more about how different Game Masters / Keepers, etc. do it so I figured I'd just go track a few down and ask them. The first interview is with Mr. Handy, a Keeper from http://www.callofcthulhu.org.uk/ who is currently involved in running (and playing) several Call of Cthulhu and BRP homebrew settings on that same Play-by-Post forum. Here we go...

Shannon: "So, I’ve been playing in your Zombie Apocalypse play-by-post game for a few years now and I remember that it was originally run by somebody else. Tell me what inspired you to take it up and keep it going for so long."

Mr. Handy: "That's right, Zombie Apocalypse was originally created by Welsh, who was the first Keeper. It began on No Mutants Allowed, a fansite for the Fallout series of computer games. This was actually not his first attempt to run a game like this, but like any good zombie, it refused to stay down. Unlike his earlier attempts to run it, this one really took off. I started out as a player at the very beginning in June 2006.

In October 2006, Welsh no longer had time to continue running the game. Rather than see it die like its previous incarnations, he asked me to take over as Keeper. I loved the game and wanted to keep it going too, and we both knew that none of the other players would have been able to do it. Over the next couple of months there was a transition period where both of us ran the game together. I started out writing smaller parts of the game that gradually increased.

When Chapter 2 started in 2007, I was flying solo. Welsh created the new characters for Chapter 2 between chapters, and he still had creative input and helped with some of the new characters for Chapter 3, but since then I've been running the show.

Zombie Apocalypse has always been a labor of love, and there are several reasons why I've kept it going all this time. The game is a lot of fun both to play and to run. I love games with apocalyptic settings, and I enjoy Romero's zombie movies, which are one of the inspirations for this game. The characters are great too, and even when ones that I've grown attached to die, I can always bring in new ones. I also like the complexity and the sheer chaos of the game, and the possibilities of where it can go are limitless. It is a lot of work, but it's definitely worth it."

Shannon: "In Zombie Apocalypse, you have several different zones in play at the same time. For example, in Chapter 6 you had a variety of simultaneous locations ranging from a school to an army base to a ranger station to a barn with different characters in each. There is also an element of travel involved with characters in cars passing several locations. How do you keep it all straight in your head? Are the locations based on real life places? And, if so, do you use Google Maps or some other program to identify where things should be?"

Mr. Handy: "Zombie Apocalypse started out in a very small area, in a truck stop in southwestern Nebraska and its environs. It remained there for the first two chapters, though there were references to events in different places and communication with some of them. The game started to spread in Chapter 3 as the characters were split up, though most of it still took place around the truck stop at that point.

It isn't easy to keep everything straight, but everything important is written down somewhere. I use one thread to keep track of the locations and weapons of the surviving characters, along with hyperlinks that allow you to trace each character's story. This is helpful to the players as well as to me.

Only some of the locations are based on actual places. Warren Air Force Base is a real place. The cities and towns that characters pass through and visit are real. Most of the locations in the story are ones that I make up. I make them up as needed, but the major buildings and areas are typically designed between chapters, when I have more time to work on them. Minor ones that I wasn't expecting to be used I can create on the fly. I have used an actual house layout for one such house in the game. In a play-by-post game, there's enough time between posts that this isn't a problem. I do use an online map site called Site Atlas to figure out where things should be. Welsh had given us a link to it at the beginning so that we could see where the game took place, and I've found it very useful for the various road trips and helicopter flights."

Shannon: "Us players can also pick up to three characters from a largely pre-generated list, often in different locations, and run them with all the risk of death that entails. I'm guessing that's why you have so many NPCs so players can take them over. What surprises me, though, is how you roleplay them until a player takes them over. You have literally dozens of NPCs at any one time. How do you keep them all straight? Their goals and their personalities? Also, how do you create so many differing personalities?"

Mr. Handy: Actually, you are allowed a maximum of four, though three is the recommended number. Any characters not played by players are NPCs and are usually available for a player to take over. It isn't easy to keep them all straight, but I do have details (including secrets, which often suggest goals and motivations for a character) written down for each of them. Each character also has a one-line quote that is a helpful reminder of each character's personality.

It's not easy to keep them all straight, but the play-by-post format helps with that. In fact, this game probably wouldn't work otherwise with so many characters. It would be nearly impossible to keep everything straight in real time, but when you have hours or even days to think before you post, it becomes managable.

Another trick I use is to have many characters fade into the background. The Omaha section has by far the highest population of any part of the game. I created nearly fifty characters in Omaha alone for the start of Chapter 4, expecting many of them to die. However, the players did such a masterful job that there wasn't a single character death in Omaha for the entire chapter, and only one death in Omaha in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 changed all that. However, most characters only have their moments in the spotlight before stepping back and letting others come forward.

Throughout Chapters 5 and 6, the vast majority of characters spent most of their time in the school cafeteria eating dinner and then dessert, only being brought into play as appropriate. Amelia Delacroix, the cook, was in the kitchen for a long time but came out late in chapter 6 to do something important (and likely saving the life of one of the PCs as a result).The Sword section is a lot easier to manage, as it has always had the lowest population, so each character gets frequent opportunities to shine and they all see a lot of action. Sword has also proven quite deadly, which has kept its numbers down in spite of me adding new characters. It almost didn't exist. The fairly large Under section of Chapter 3 experienced a near Total Party Kill, with one character who only barely survived to brought into Sword when I started it in Chapter 4.

Creating many different personalities and keeping them distinct isn't easy. I have plenty of ideas for character concepts, and I'm not sure where they all originate. Many of them are inspired by characters in books, movies, and TV shows, though I give all of them some original aspects. I also often mentally cast them as actors, sometimes even putting pictures of those actors in their character sheets. For example, Emily Montrose is inspired by Madeleine Stowe's portrayal of Dr. Kathryn Railly in 12 Monkeys, and I used a picture of her from that movie in her character sheet."

Shannon: "So what made you choose the Call of Cthulhu system for it?"

Mr. Handy: It was Welsh who chose the Call of Cthulhu system, but I agree with the reasons he gave. The Sanity mechanic was the key reason he chose it. It reflects very effectively the downward spiral into madness that would be common in an apocalyptic scenario such as Zombie Apocalypse. Sanity increases are very few and far between in this game. I awarded a 1d10 increase for characters who survived Chapter 1, but there are only a handful of those still alive at this point.

Characters also get a 1d10 increase when reaching a "safe haven" location for the first time, though "safe" is a relative term. Generally, Sanity tends to decline more and more. A few characters have clung to high Sanity, but most of them have taken significant hits as the horror keeps mounting. The lethality of the game does mean that it's rare for characters to live long enough to go completely insane. Only a few have made it down to single digits. One of them was hovering at 1 Sanity for a very long time. He did eventually hit zero and go permanently insane as a direct result of the player's own choice of action. I have one NPC at 3 Sanity. While he is quite, quite mad, he has some important things to say based on what he has seen and his insane insights. Players will need to filter out the signal from the noise when interacting with him.

Another advantage of Call of Cthulhu is that the rules are simple and very easy for new players to learn. Zombie Apocalypse has introduced a lot of players to Call of Cthulhu for the first time. When I joined, it was the first time I had played CoC in about ten years, but I was able to pick it up again quickly and even get to the point where I could run the game myself. Welsh was already familiar with CoC, as he was running a game at Play@Yog-Sothoth at the time and playing in others. It was he who introduced me to the site and encouraged moving the game there.

Also, combat in Call of Cthulhu is very quick, realistic, and deadly, which makes it fitting both for the medium and this particular game. Play by post games are slow enough as it is. Lengthy battles can really cause them to bog down, so it's good to keep it moving fast. Combat versus zombies is even easier, as the zombies don't even try to defend themselves and cannot attack unless they're close enough. The realism and lethality are important to the theme of the game. Characters are ordinary people, not superheroes. When they engage in battle, death is a very real risk."

Shannon: "So what advice would you give someone hoping to start up a play-by-post of their own?"

Mr. Handy: "I'd say start a lot smaller than I did. Use a shorter published scenario (such as The Haunting) to get your feet wet. Once you've got that under your belt, then you can move on to larger and more complex scenarios, including those that you write yourself. Zombie Apocalypse is massive and difficult to run, but well worth it.

You'll also need a lot of patience, as play-by-post moves very slowly. A scenario that could be played in four hours around a table may take months or even a year to run as a play-by-post. Your players will also need long attention spans so that they will stick with the game.

However, play-by-post also gives you advantages that are hard to achieve with tabletop games. You have plenty of time to think of a response and plan things out. You can also increase suspense by limiting player knowledge. When the party splits up, make separate threads for each group and do not allow the players to read the threads of those who are not in their group. This way the players won't know if something horrible has happened to the others, and if something horrible happens to them, they won't know if the others are in a position to help them. Spoiler buttons and private messages are a good way to give information to one player without the others knowing. Take full advantage of these techniques. Play-by-post also allows you to add to the experience by posting images, videos, and sound files, not just raw text. Even text can be formatted and displayed in different colors and sizes. All of these things can enhance the game for the players."

Shannon: "Thank you for doing this interview with me, Mr. Handy."

If anyone would like to view Zombie Apocalypse, you can find it here but if you don't have an account with the forum yet, you'll need to register and get your account activated by posting in one of the visible threads. (Blame the spammers!) Activation happens pretty quickly, though, and it's well worth the look.

So there you have it, my first Keeper interview. I'll aim to have one up weekly (ideally on Wednesdays) but it'll obviously depend on who I can get and when. Next week I should have a D&D tabletop Dungeon Master. After that, I'm hoping to get a few different Camarilla Live Action Roleplay Storytellers of different genres. If I'm lucky, I might even get to interview a Player or two. We Game Masters, etc. love to talk. It'd be interesting to hear the views of a player about their side of the fence.

Stay tuned!

How To Host A Dungeon

This web-site actually looks pretty neat. Basically, it's a web-site for a solo game where you construct a dungeon over the years and see what happens to it, who moves in, and so forth. It's not the kind of thing I'd personally get into but I think it's kinda cool, kinda unique, and one of you guys might like to try it. Take a look!

The 90 / 10 Rule of Weird

Well, I was reading in Justin Achilli's blog about this nifty thing called the 90 / 10 rule (which he gave credit to another blog and so on and so forth). Anywho, what it basically means is that the best way to make things weird is to keep it 90% familiar and then twist it 10% of the way. I really like that. It's good because it acknowledges certain tropes that we've come to love and expect and that subverts them to make us sit up and take notice. It's also cool because often when you try to come up with a 100% new idea you either come up with nothing, come up with something hopelessly ridiculous, or just plonk down a trope from another genre that really shouldn't be there.

The 90 / 10 rule can also be used for horror - especially weird horror. If everything is too different, too terrible, too cruel, then it loses a lot of its impact. Often, some of the scariest things are 90% mundane, expected to be there or even beneficial (or appears to be) and then just have that 10% of scary. Oh, look, what a cute little girl playing on the playground ... wait, why is the swing set made of bones?

A pet shop full of toad stools is weirdly creepy and totally unpredictable. Who'd expect toadstools ina pet shop? A pet shop full of pets (predictable) that are sprouting toad stools due to an infectious fungal disease that can spread to you ... well, that's a lot scarier. It's easier to put yourself there and envisage the familiar turned hostile and that clash catches our attention quite nicely.

Anywho, bear it in mind when you're GMing. Heck, Justin's examples include a lot of Fantasy Generic turned into Fantastic, so if you're more of a Fantasy Fan, you'll find some neat examples over at his blog article.

4: Using Maps and Apocalyptic Logs to your Best Advantage

Ha! I may not have posted the 4th installment last Monday but I just slipped it in just before Tuesday this week. I did it. I managed to do a post just after spending the day after the day after New Years with my family. And just after a four hour bus ride home in a bus that had no air conditioner on a 40 degree day. Boy were all of those curtains quickly shut over the bus windows. You gotta worry when the emergency hatches are all cracked open to allow in some warm air just to ensure that something is circulating other than sweat-based humidity. Whoo boy! But my troubles aside, onto the article.

Well, we all know what a map is (hopefully). So what's an Apocalyptic Log? Well, TV Tropes describes it well over here but the bare summary is that it's something written by a person now dead that documents either their reactions to something terrible killing them off or simply detailing their life leading up to the catastrophe (sometimes ending mid senten

These are often used by scientists detailing their life's work up to the fateful incident but can also include astronauts documenting their take off through a tear in space (Event Horizon) that ends with flashes of horror that are only decoded later on in the piece.

An Apocalyptic Log is a good way of introducing the plot to them as it gives a bit of a before and after shot of the terrible incident. It's also a fun way of getting across exposition. Nothing encourages players to read little tidbits of pseudo-science then the hints of something terrible about to happening. It's like a mini-story with its own pacing. They can lend themselves to some very good props, too, if it's written, though remember to keep it relatively brief and snappy. Each hand out should ideally be no longer than five paragraphs. If the entire log is handed out at once, that's five paragraphs of hints and growing terror. If it's handed out piecemeal, then you can have multiple pages of up to five paragraphs but try to include something juicy in each one. The longer each page and the more pages they have to get through, the juicier the details. In truth, though, short and sweet tends to be key here. The moment the players feel bored is the moment all your hard work is wasted.

You can also do audio-logs or video, though unless the author is reading off a script, try to ad-lib it. It's just like roleplaying any NPC only this time it's an NPC that doesn't react to the players' actions (which should make it easier). If they talk, and don't pause it, then continue on your talking. If they miss the juicy bit, that's their problem. It's a good idea to keep a cheat sheet of important dot points, though, in case they want to re-watch it and just hand over the dot points rather than attempting to re-create the entire thing. Don't worry. It won't break the fourth wall to go to dot points. It's basically just like when you skim a car trip and give them the bare essentials before moving on.

As for maps, if you're going to make one for yourself, see if you can justify making one for the players and then finding a way for their characters to get their hands on it. That way they can cross off locked doors, indicate left behind treasure or puzzles, and point out doors that do open or walls that are broken down. It also helps cut down on the 'how big is this room?' and 'how many doors were there again?' This is vital in any sort of tactical game where barricades may be an issue. The best use of a map I've seen is in the videogame, Silent Hill, where it indicates in red ink all of those details. It helps you figure out which doors you've tried and which you haven't, which really cuts down on the to-ing and fro-ing.

So, hope that was helpful to you. Ever used an apocalyptic log in your game? How'd it go down with your players?

And also, whoopee! 4 minutes to midnight. Hooray for broken sleep patterns!

Oh yeah, you can find a list of the other articles in this series here.