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.

Play-by-Post Roleplay

For those who like to roleplay but can't do it face-to-face, or who want a chance to do a little bit of roleplay several times a week, or who can't get that particular genre going, take a look at Play-by-Post games. Basically, you play (or run) a game on a forum thread where you post your actions / dialogue / thoughts and a Game Master posts the world's responses to you through typing up NPC actions and dialogue, world descriptions, and the consequences of your actions. Often another web-site like www.invisionfree.com are used to roll the results and record them.

If you'd like to take a look, or get involved, check out www.callofcthulhu.org.uk which has a really good assortment of Keepers and Players. Don't worry, though, you can run a game within another genre or world though it's generally expected that you use the BRP system. I'm currently in a Zombie Apocalypse game and running a Silent Hill game and an apocalyptic game that's more inspired by Lovecraft.

Here's the main forum game I'm running at the moment if you'd like to take a look at it. It's called Welcome to Silent Hill.

3: Making Random Encounters Scary.

Firstly, sorry about being a day late. There's no excuses because, in truth, the reason I didn't do it was because I'd forgotten that it needed doing! Oh wait, there's X-Mas and New Years around the corner. It was totally the X-Mas rush. Yeah, that's right....

Well, now that the excuses and rationalisations are out of the way, to business! Those who've played videogames that spawn enemies randomly to keep things interesting or those who've played Dungeons & Dragons when the Dungeon Master rolled a dice on a percentile table with a list of monsters attached know what I'm talking about. Basically, every so often, depending on some random method of generation, a monster turns up.

It might look like this:

10 - 30: A dire tiger.
40 - 60: Three trolls.
70 - 90: Ten owlbears.
90 - 100: Unguarded treasure.

This is often used to simulate the essentially random nature of monster placement, such as when adventurers are trying to pass through a jungle to the city. Yes, there are dangers within the jungle but through sheer luck you might bypass them all. Not only does it add a sense of randomness, but it can actually be quite inspirational to a DM that likes to think on their feet. Where did those three trolls come from? And what are they doing? Basically, random encounters are suggested whenever there's no pre-scripted events or monsters to give the world a big, wild feel.

But is there a place for them in survival horror?

Absolutely!

It fits anyplace which either spits out monsters (Silent Hill-style worlds), is full of roaming monsters that could be anywhere and in any numbers (Zombie apocalypse), or is some sort of labrynthe where mapping out the tunnels is an exercise in madness but you don't want to just string out a line of encounters because YOU want some of the excitement of random chance as well.

Especially if you make the player whose leading everyone roll the dice and thus put the onus of good or bad luck on them.

So how do you do it?

Well, percentile tables reek of High Fantasy so I decided to go with a deck of cards. I basically just cut out card paper into roughly card-like shapes and wrote on them either enemy stats (and numbers - like 5 Shamblers or 3 Walkers) or trap details (Shotgun trap or Rock Fall trap) or curious details (Apocalyptic Log - Little lost girl or Decayed stunted corpses from prior misadventures in the caves) or environmental hazards and their penalties (Narrow Passageway or Flooded Passageway). I then mixed them all up. Then, whenever it felt right and they were moving on, I would produce 7 cards. Whoever was directing them got to pick 3 of them. I would then combine those three cards into what happened next.

It gave me a lot of chances to get creative, increased the dread when they plucked the cards (the card chooser was the most nervy of the bunch of them, by the time this part was done), and also simulated the essentially random nature of their journey through the tunnels.

Of course, I put the cards aside when they reached the pre-set 'dungeon' area which was an old Lancea Sanctum temple. That place could be mapped and set up with whereabouts the enemies, traps, and oddities were likely to be so I did just that.

If anyone would like a copy of the cards, email me at Laraqua_sandgate@hotmail.com with the subject line Cave Cards and I'll scan them all and send them to you in a .pdf so you can see them for yourself. They're not pretty, but they may generate some ideas. I do warn you, though, that X-Mas is coming up so you'll probably get them in January.

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

Horrifying High Fantasy for Dungeon Masters, pt. 2

The other problem is that part of the implicit gaming contract of D&D is that the characters will fight the enemies (and likely emerge victorious). This isn't a bad thing. Imagine trying to run D&D when everyone is acting like investigators in Call of Cthulhu, hiding and researching everything, always finding a way around the monsters or fleeing the besieged town or village. Good for some adventures but that's not exactly the way to slay the beast and rescue the villagers, is it?

So accept that the assumption will be there, especially in an ongoing campaign where the characters themselves are already used to being able to best the enemy or die trying.

And then undermine those assumptions by cluing them in that, yes, full-frontal assaults work with most monsters but This Monster Is Different. Choose something that looks and acts differently than they're used to. If they've slaughtered plenty of undead before, perhaps outsiders or aberrations could become your Super Scary Creatures of Choice.

Use Knowledge skills to pre-warn characters that the enemy is far more powerful than they are in order to encourage them to run and hide (might be worth decreasing their Perception checks as well). Give them anecdotes about the other adventurers who assaulted them and died. If they do investigate matters, hand out the tattered and bloodstained shreds of a wizard's diary recounting the party following the paladin's wishes to attack every foe.

Give clues that there are banes, weapons or other things out there that might assist with the matter.

Oh, and don't throw in too many bad guys. Space them out all the more so each one is a setpiece battle so the players don't grow used to kicking back doors and slaying monsters. Each enemy should feel special. Each one should have hints and build up to them. The moment the monsters start blurring together is the moment that the players won't fear them as much.

Oh, and be sure to get your player's on side first. If they really aren't interested in playing this sort of sub-genre, even on one occasion, then there's not a whole lot you can do about it outside of the Three Bs: Bribe, Blackmail and Beg. (By the way, a recalcitrant player that digs in their heels might be more prone to accepting a brief sojourn into another genre if the other players are selling it for you - so get potential keen players on board first).

2: Resource Management.

One of the big tropes of survival horror involves resource management. You only have 18 bullets so you'd better make it count! In the weeks leading up to the big adventure, I ensured the player characters were quite aware that what they brought would be all they had. So they built guns, sourced ammunition illegally, bought boxes of ammunition where they had the right permits, created body armour (Lore of Forge) though not enough, and decided on what they were bringing.

Since the other issue of survival horror is realising how handy it'd be if you'd brought that one thing (they had three gas masks, only brought one, and it came up), it's important to be firm that they only have what they've stated they were bringing.

To reinforce the importance of this, I actually went to the admittedly anal and perfectionistic lengths of creating item cards and laying it all out in front of them. They could see at a glance what they had on them and what they could use. When they ask me if they might have something, I ask them to check what they had in front of them. Some of them even brought food (which came in handy) and water (which certainly did).

While I don't suggest that everyone turn their player's inventories into item cards (it does take a lot of room and isn't always worth the time investment), I do suggest creating weapon cards (with the rules on them if need be), armor and flashlights that might be traded between player characters. It saves on having to erase it from your own sheet and transfer it onto someone else's.

Ammunition clips or shell pouch cards are even more handy! I printed off some little details on the ammunition on one side, and ammunition silhouettes on the others. I used a lead to shade in how many bullets they had (up to 12 bullets per ammo card). They erased the bullets from the weapon card as they used them, then erased them from the ammo card as they reloaded the gun. Yes, it sounds rather clunky but it worked out surprisingly well and smoothly ... which says a lot since my players aren't the note-taking, pedantic types (like me) and yet they found it all pretty easy to do. I'll be keeping the ammo clip cards for later use.

The other Resource Management thing I did was actually check their carrying capacity (25lbs per point in Strength, items were assumed to be 1lb or more and roughly calculated) and give them all little tokens for their willpower and faith (using the little brain and love heart tokens from the Call of Cthulhu board game).

I didn't give them any health tokens because I was going with the Invisible Health rule from Armory: Reloaded and keeping the health level damage a secret and only telling them the actual injuries and penalties they were on unless they made a Wits + Medicine check to take a look at it.

Wow, writing that all up makes me really surprised that the players took to it so readily! It sounds like it's a lot of effort but it actually worked out very easily. Passing Faith and Willpower tokens back and forth is way easier than damaging your sheet with an eraser and a pencil.

At any rate, they enjoyed it and it really brought out that Survival Horror vibe.

Anyone else done something similar? How'd it go? Anyone planning to do it in future?

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