First Time Game

Last night a very good friend of mine decided to run a Dungeon World game, I believe this is the first time he has ever run a game with our group and he had only run a couple of games previously, a World of Darkness game with some college friends and I think some PDQ stuff at some point. We had spent a while talking about him running a game of some description and yesterday afternoon he was batting the idea around, I think in the end he just decided to bite the bullet so to speak.

What ensued was pretty fun, I ended up being Rurgosh The Cleric, a dwarf and member of the cult of Cyrnbul a god who's cult is bent on using the structures of civilisation to their own ends and who gain favor by discovering secrets. We also have Kenta The Fighter, a warrior of fierce personal honor who has taken it upon himself to watch over Rurgosh until his debt to him is repaid, Kenta is distinguished my the massive, sharp and bloody sword the hangs by his side. Finally there is Qotho The Druid, a member of the roving tribes of the vast desert, he is searching for something in the Ancient City and does not trust Rurgosh but for some reason which is unknown at this time is travelling with both he and Kenta.

Our party were sat about a campfire in a library towards the centre of the Ancient Ruined city, reclaimed by the sands of the desert some 250 years ago. Our brooding silence was broken by a sound in the darkness, Rurgosh, unnerved by the broken remains of civilisation surrounding them jumped to his feet and armed himself, stepping forward to the edge of the campfire's light, Kenta stood and peered into the darkness, listening for some other sign of movement while Qotho sat implacable and still by the fire. A cat jumped out of the darkness and wound his way about Rurgosh's legs. Being frightened and fearing an imminent attack Rurgosh punted the cat into the darkness, only to hear a much louder thud as something man sized hit a wall in the direction of his kick.

This quick exchange eventually devolved into a messy fight between some shape-changing denizens of the city who claimed to be of Qotho's people. This left 4 men dead, smashed and gutted by Rurgosh and Kenta and their leader running screaming into the dark, terrified and bloody. Our GM, my friend, a man who has done his fair share of good-natured trolling in games for all of the regular GMs sat and looked about at us, unsure, shell-shocked and apologising. We wrapped the game up there for the night and told him we'd like to play again, it was great fun, we had built some very atmospheric stuff into our world, out friend had chanced his arm at GM'ing a group who between them have upwards of 25 years of GM experience at this point, if some of our other members had been there this would have jumped to 40 years between us. He took on what I can only imagine was a fairly daunting task and managed it pretty well.

I barely saw the panic in his eyes.

Campaign: London Calling

Last night was Dresden Files RP night, we use the Dresden Files FATE game for this published by Evil Hat Productions, I very much recommend it. This is the first FATE or FUDGE game we have played as a group, it uses those nifty little fudge dice with the pluses and minuses that I had often seen in gaming stores over the years but never knew what they were for. We've did a faltering Dresden Files Dublin game a few months back but to be honest the GM wasn't up to snuff. As in I was pretty bad at GM'ing this particular system. It's not the system's fault though, it just didn't seem like my GM style gelled well with the system itself and especially the prep end of the system centering on the player's aspects. I will probably give it a whirl in the future but to be honest I am very much enjoying just playing this game at the moment.

DFRP uses a very cool and well thought out process for developing both the world you will be playing in, usually a CIty, and character creation. It took us about 2 1/2 sessions to pull all of this together, about 8 hours in total, but it was great fun. The City for our game is London, a London a little different from the real thing but very cool. We have an active police unit involved in supernatural affairs who unlike the Black Cat or S.I. units in the the Jim Butcher books have a direct connection with the White Council of Wizards. We have the fairy courts struggling for a power with each other, including the waning Autumn and Spring court, a combined court of transition. The White Council themselves are a bit on the prideful side and don't supply London with much by way of Wardens, after all it's in their back yard, who would stir up trouble there? London itself has a very haunted feel mixed with that of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere series, there's a sort of London Below. We've hit most of the clichés, but that's the fun in playing these games, the clichés are grounded points we all can connect to, they then get twisted up in play in interesting and new ways.

Our cast of characters is a nice mixed bunch, we have the Autumn Knight, Danny, freshly minted and previously mostly unaware of the supernatural side of London; a White Council reluctant librarian, Eames, he wanted nothing more to join the army but his family's business keeps him locked down; a Minor Talent, Liesel,  she suffers from Cassandra's Tears but is also a walking font of knowledge; a Shinto Priest Whitechapel Police Officer, Megumi, a Champion who can leverage her faith into action; a Pure Mortal, Leon, he's a Whitechapel officer who has a habit of finding the Autumn Knight in awkward circumstances; and a Punk White Council Wizard, Drury, a throwback to 1970s London. It's a nice colorful cast of characters who have plenty of scope for growth and development but also have great character traits for the GM to work with and creating interesting scenarios out of.

So what has happened to our little troupe so far? Well we've had Danny at no less than two major crime scenes, the first after being semi-tricked by a Sidhe friend of his into finding the body seconds before Whitechapel arrived in the form of Leon and Megumi, the second was at what could only look like a terrorist attack after a Warlock summoned a whole heap of specters into a crowded market. Drury has dragged Eames and Liesel into a fracas with the Jack Frost a Sidhe noble, he now owes Lord Frost 2 favors in return for some information given. Finally the whole group ended up knee deep in specters in a crowded marketplace, leaving the Punk in some considerable distress having thrown himself into the middle of the fray to counter the ritual that had drawn the specters there. We have but one real casualty and some information to work with: our Warlock friend was having his mind worked over magically by some form of Necromancer, also London is becoming more haunted by the hour.

Yay!

Don't make any plans!

Who remembers their first time GM'ing a game? I found it kind of terrifying. It was like laying myself bare, like I was all raw nerve endings and the slightest rub was going to be agony. I planned and planned and planned, I think I sunk about 20 hours into just planning that first game, I went into my first session of my first ever campaign with everything planned out, I mean everything.

This was my downfall. My plans fell apart at first contact with the other people at the table. It was a nightmare. See I had made a pretty fatal error in how I planned my adventure: I thought of it as *MY* adventure. I had not actually planned a roleplaying game, a share myth for myself and my friends to explore, I had planned a book I wanted to read to my players and that they got to make minor choices in, but choices that ultimately wouldn't affect the outcome. This isn't how I think roleplaying games should be played. Maybe you disagree, if you do it's fine, tell me why I'm wrong, I'll learn something.

I think this is probably pretty common for first time GMs. especially teenagers, but I don't have any backing evidence of this so I'll just present my experience as a sort of case study. I felt at the time that I had to provide a great epic story, something that mixed Conan, Druss, Lord of the Rings and at the time various Anime and JRPG cliches I had a love for. I though I had to craft this great baroque thing, this sprawling narrative into which the other player's characters would fit and become the heroes of the story. I had applied all that I knew about writing at the time, not very much then, only a little more now. My story had a beginning, middle and end, themes were lovingly hammered into place and concepts were primed for ramming.

Upon contact with my story the players decided to attach to some throwaway line about a city in the south that seemed interesting. It was just some fluff in the background I had pulled out of thin air, it had nothing to do with the story. So I laid down the railroad tracks and how. I think about it now and see the almost literal battle that was happening between my story and the much more interesting shared mythology that could have developed. I was proud and petulant, so I let the game die. I don't think I intellectualised it very much at the time, I think I just did what was pretty typical of teenage me, I took my ball and went home, without telling anyone. I never ran another session of that game. I was dejected and horrified by what had happened to my poor story.

In the end I ended up running my next game some 5 years later in University, I was covering for a friend who had been slated to run a very cool Ravenloft one-shot based on pirates. I took his game, and seeing as I didn't have a full grasp of his story or the ideas he was trying to present I just used it as a framework around which to allow the other players to play and for me to react to. This felt so much more natural, I had fun, the other players had fun, we shared a story in which the only survivor was the innocent and damaged young pirate who rowed out of the mists to his freedom. My friend's reaction to this? "I was not aiming for that at all, but it sounds cool" Cheers John, that one line set me up to GM again and again, it was pretty formative in the way I game.

So what's the point of all this? Well I guess if by some magic you're a starting GM and you're reading this, I would like to be so bold as to offer you the one piece of advice I would have loved to have heard when I started: Don't plan anything, react and build your myth collaboratively.

Maybe that’s two pieces of advice?

Rivenhold Campaign: Rising Tide

Aziz and Selena lay in their bedding beside the fire, Loughlan was on watch; Thorn sat beside him and stared into the darkness of the cavern. Two days travel and a further day of clearing out this cavern system of Goblins had left them too tired to travel back to Mayhill immediately. This probably saved them. A complete lack of any golden Dwarven armour, said by a local merchant to be in the hands of the Goblins, had dampened their spirits. Suddenly Thorn growled, something was moving in the dark, something had entered the caves. Loughlan heard it then himself, the sound of guttural, broken Elven, he only barely recognised it.

He woke the others, who were to their feet and armed in seconds. They peered into the tunnel that lead to their camp site. Selena recognised some of the speech, it was Pale Elvish, a group of Elves, cavern dwellers, from far lands. Still it did not seem like the words were right somehow, but she couldn't be sure. Between the grunts and speech of the Elves they heard the sounds of men begging, two maybe, begging for their lives.

Aziz took the initiative and transformed himself in a small wave of constriction that rose from his feet until he was but a small serpent, a milk snake of the Sapphire Isles.  He slithered his way down the tunnel to the crossroads, there he found a grim sight, Pale Elves, naked and covered in some sort of ugly growths. They were feasting upon what was left of two guards, employees of the local Goldenroot merchants in Mayhill. Sharp, sharklike teeth crunched on bone and tore through soft flesh. Aziz made his way back, relating what he had seen to his companions.

Selena now took the lead, moving quietly and carefully through the shadows of the tunnels until she was in striking distance. Loughlan stood further down the tunnel training two arrows upon the crouched forms of the Pale Elves. Selena struck, diving forward and plunging her rapier into the base of an Elven skull. The Elf slumped forward to the floor, Selena had slipped back into the shadows unseen in her grace and swiftness. The Elves cast about for their attacker, spotting Loughlan as he loosed the pair of arrows into the back of another Elf.

The Elves charged forward, exposing the growths, the outcroppings of yellowed fungus the marked their forms. Aziz burst into a spring, shifting into the form of a great Gorilla as he grabbed one of the Elves by the head and smashed him it into the wall. Their eyes, their eyes were gone, replaced by a cluster of fungi and mould. The final three Elves were dispatched, Aziz's great strength smashing the twisted Elves as Selena darted in and out of their view, taking what she could and felling another Elf.

After searching the bodies of the fallen guards, relieving them of their coin and seeing the spread of fungal tendrils from their bodies, they made their way to the cavern mouth. Selena pulled herself free of the cavern first, looking out across the outcropping in which the caverns were set. Across the marsh ran groups of the twisted, fungus infected Elves, five or six to each and a count of twenty groups at a glance. They ate almost everything in their path, tree, root and man. Some animal or men were being dragged away, to some unknown fate.

A tide was rising.

Gone Adventurin'

Last night myself and three of my friends tried out Dungeon World. Normally Wednesday night is either Dresden Files (FATE) or Firefly (Cinematic Unisystem); on alternating weeks. This week our very,very busy DFRP GM wasn't available, he's all artsy and has a killer job, and our Firefly GM didn't have prep done, so a quick couple of texts and a late bus journey from work later we were sitting around my kitchen table looking at the character sheets, everyone deciding what they were going to play and me starting to take some notes of things people were saying, just idle chat; and draw the start of our simple map.

Three and half hours later and we were finishing up, what for me at least, has been one of the most satisfying high fantasy GM'ing experiences of my gaming life. The whole night was whirlwind of ideas coming from all corners, during character creation we established some fantastic stuff about the world, a list of some of these ideas is below:

• There is a kingdom ruled by the coastal city of Rivenhold
• Rivenhold has an army that employs assassins and spies in it's ranks
• Ironhill is a keep which provides protection to the village of Harren
• A river runs by both Harren and the town of Mayhill on the way to Rivenhold
• Mayhill has cornered the market on a root called Goldenroot, used in medicines and poisons alike
• Mayhill is situated on the edge of the marsh where this root grows in abundance
• There is a swarm of shark toothed, fungus infected, psychotic elves moving from the hills in the northeast to the southwest, following the river
• These elves eat anything living, humans, trees, roots, animals
• They sometimes drag prey away, to some unknown fate
• There is a Rite that can control the currents of the sea to some extent

These facts all came out of questions I asked the players, just their answers created all of these lovely details. This is the result of my friend's boundless creativity married with the Apocalypse Engine, which Dungeon World runs on. I've run both this and Apocalypse World and in both cases a vivid living world of moving ideals, people and environments just pops out, it's really very satisfying.

In our party we have Selena The Thief (possibly Catwoman inspired), Loughlan The Ranger and Aziz The Druid. They have already through play established some very cool facts about themselves and behaviours, Selena is adept at hit and run tactics, poison and fighting the enemy unseen; Loughlan is very protective of his do Thorn, he put himself in danger to save the dog rather than running, he's also something of a marksman with his bow and a little bit of a conman; Aziz is almost nature incarnate, he took the form of a Gorilla, an Albatross, a Turtle and a Milksnake, flitting from one form to the next as naturally as one breathes, he also has a deep hatred of the unnatural.

This all came so naturally, flowing from questions and moves, with mechanics rarely actually breaking the flow of play. Two of our group had already played Apocalypse World, so were pretty familiar, Aziz's player took to the game like a duck to water despite not having played the style before. I found that with no prep per se and little control over the direction of the game I was free to focus on the immediate and play to the themes presented naturally. In giving up control I got to enjoy it more.

What new myth will we create?

Rules of the Game

I've said before that I'm a big fan of games, pen and paper roleplaying games are my game of choice, though boardgames run a very close second. I've run through my gaming history before so I won't do it again here, I'll get sick of hearing myself speak on the same things. Recently I've made a somewhat seismic shift in how I play roleplaying games in terms of being a PC and a GM.

It started about 18 months ago when I started listening to two podcasts, the first is The Walking Eye and the second is The Jank Cast. Up until I started listening to these casts I had played in an almost completely mechanical sort of way, nothing wrong with this per se but it wasn't what I nor what my regular group of friends and gamers were looking for. We were playing all sort of different games, mostly of the non-indie and non-story driven variety, but we were always looking for a good story. Now I have to say that two of the regular GMs in our gaming group are masters of the epic yarn, very good with prep and great a weaving our characters into the narrative of the prep they've done. They're really great at working with the awful wrenches PCs tend to throw into plans as well. A third GM I've only had the pleasure of playing in a couple of her games but she's exceptional at building atmosphere into her scenarios through lots of research and prep beforehand.

Despite my relatively academic nature I suck at prep for roleplaying games, I've always found that the more I prep the more stilted a session will feel, I also suck at weaving big stories for people to inhabit. My strength has usually been in dealing with unexpected ideas and letting players take the lead, introducing and reintroducing vague overarching antagonists for my group. I've always felt more comfortable with this sort of GM style, I also used to love simulationist-ish games as well or gamist games with lots of balance. My need for emergent story and my love for these sorts of rulesets didn't gel overly well. I GM'ed my share of 3.x D&D and 4e, I liked the combat in 4e quite a lot in fact, but I couldn't do the prep necessary for these games to float. I GM'ed a Planescape game using Mutants and Masterminds 2e with the Warriors and Warlocks content, it worked sort of but I ended up letting it slide away, much to the chagrin of the people playing in it (sorry by the way).

Then through the above mentioned podcasts I found two pretty awesome games, the first being The Dresden  Files game using FATE, where your background and history inform the themes of the game, the group work together on world building and your traits as a character can be compelled in game to affect them. I thought this was awesome! The whole game works toward weaving a narrative inside the themes that you as a group build. Neat stuff this, but the prep side brought me down again, I love playing this game but running it doesn't really fall in my skillset as a GM, one of the other regular GMs has it down though, his game is great!

The other game and indeed system I suppose is Apocalypse World and the attached engine, basically zero prep beyond a few between game notes, pickup in an evening and begin playing inside an hour and importantly the rules and role of the GM are defined in such a way as to be an engine of creation for emergent story. The shift for me has been from trying to balance and simulate to simply pushing and prodding players into making the story for themselves. This game has already produced what have been some of the most memorable moments of GM'ing for me. I'll probably do a post on those moments later this week in fact. 

I've run over word count by quite a bit...

Shared Mythologies

I've been asked by a good friend and relation of mine to run a game for him and his group of friends. Turns out that back in the day, that's the mid '90s, they played a lot of games together. This friend, my cousin's husband, who was fairly instrumental in getting me interested in the idea of roleplaying games; I jumped at the chance to run a game for them.

This will be their first time playing as a group for a while, I've never ran a game for them before. It's a tiny bit intimidating. They were AD&D players, I don't think they got into D&D3.x which is the bulk of my D&D/D20 experience. I'm a huge fan of Apocalypse World Engine games and I've heard really great things about the AW-Hack Dungeon World, it's old school style which is good for this group but new school rules, in fact a mechanic set I'm very familiar with and really enjoy. So I'm hoping they'll be on-board with the whole idea for their game. Not least because I don't want to have to relearn THAC0 rules and percentile scores for STR-18 characters...

I'm quite looking forward to this game, I haven't GM'ed high or dark fantasy in a couple of years, I actually stepped out of the long running Dragon Age game that my friends play when my son was born. This gave me a chance to get out of fantasy for a good long while and I feel I'd like to go back to it now, with this new and interesting ruleset and mechanics.

If you've never played roleplaying games you probably wouldn't get the idea of something like this I guess. I really didn't get my own interest in the whole hobby myself until I happened to speak of my love of it to a gent I met at an education conference. He put me onto the idea of shared narrative in oral education and mythology, his own love of horror and especially zombie movies and our conversation evolved over the course of several glasses of port to the point that I finally understood what I loved about roleplaying games as a hobby for all those years; those things aside from the social aspects that keep me playing.

I suddenly discovered that roleplaying games to me were the same as the mythologies I loved as a child, things I would often add to when I retold them. These games are a chance to develop our own shared mythology, sometimes fleeting and ephemeral; dying at the table in a one-shot game. Sometimes more solid, played over the course of years, like my friends' Dragon Age game, a rich tapestry of characters and players.

I think these games are my myths and legends now. I think I see here the Dagda, Nuada the Silver Hand, the Fomorians, Lug, the Fir Bolg. All those beautiful and fierce and imaginative things I loved as a child, things I hope to share with my children as well. I think these are the natural extension of my imagination that was cultivated in these legends when I was only 5 or 6.

It's wonderful to share these legends.

Social Glue

I'm a gamer, I like to play games, all varieties of games in fact. I enjoy card games, board games, pen and paper roleplaying, computer games and even the occasional wargame though it's a rarity thanks to the fiscal and time costs. I play games for a variety of reasons, escapism, decompressing, creativity and simple enjoyment. I'm lucky enough to have a group of friends who are also gamers and for at least one of my kids to have developed an enjoyment of board games, we can play together from time to time.

The games I play most nowadays are pen and paper roleplaying games, like Dungeons and Dragons and the plethora of other games out there. I've been playing these since I was about 14 or 15 years old. It started with a wargames club I had joined in school, turns out a couple of the guys, from Australia, were D&D players. Specifically Ravenloft. I was a huge fan of fantasy at the time and have always been a horror fan, I read Bram Stoker's Dracula at quite a young age, it was pretty formative for me, so this looked like just about the most amazing thing I had ever seen.

Being teenagers these games were sputtering at best, I don't even remember much by way of details connected to these games but I do remember the feeling that creating something with my friends gave me. It was exciting and fun and simple. After those friends, whom I still miss, moved back to Australia when I was about 15 or so, another friend of mine had found his way into another social circle, which I became part of over time. This social circle also happened to be gamers, mostly computer games, but they were huge fans of Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dale. Between that and the fact that a few of them were into online play by post gaming we ended up going through a phase of making our own games, back-engineering the rules of D&D out of these computer games, adding our own twists and ideas. Some were successful, most weren't, but we had fun all the time.  

My friend, the one who introduced me into this social circle, calls these the Lost Years, on account of our lack of funds for buying actual gaming books and just cobbling what we could together. I prefer to think of these as the years I really found myself and the people I would be friends with to this day, nearly 15 years later. We still game together, even with jobs and marriage and kids, we find the time to game together. We play as reluctant heroes, smuggling goods between planets; as wizard detectives in modern London, desperately working inside a deadly political system; as hardened survivors of a psychic apocalypse, trying to make our way in world out to kill us; and as sword swinging adventurers, employees of a swarthy rogue. We do other things as well, obviously, we still have get togethers in each other's houses, drinks and chatting, our non-gaming friends and families hanging out, but I think games have definitely helped keep my circle of friends cohesive.

I'm pretty thankful for this.