GM Excuses VII: So That's What An Invisible Man Looks Like

 <-Previous

GM Excuses, Part VII

If you’re new to this blog thread, I’m following the Writing Excuses master class on writing, and transmogrifying it to be about adventure design. In Part 2, I mixed up ideas from Part 1 to create a mash-up, an adventure based on Drood, the novel by Dan Simmons and  World Without Tears, a song by Lucinda Williams. In Part 3, I auditioned NPCs for the lead role in the adventure and let the blog readers vote for their favorites. In Part 4, I sent three of these NPCs to do a dead-drop.

Homework Time! Who Are All These People? Have a listen.

Writing Prompt: Pick one of the dead-drop characters  and turn them into a secondary character. Now take one of the characters with whom they interacted, and write the same scene again, but from this new character's POV with the characters focused on the other NPC.

I'll pick Anton, Nalo's brother, as they had the only dead-drop with two characters. Last time Anton was unseen. Again, I'll do it as Read Aloud text in an adventure.

Anton In the Market

Read the following aloud, or paraphrase it in your own words.

You cast your spell to make the invisible visible and the silent heard, then search the crowded marketplace. Sure enough, when Nalo D'Costa enters the market, her invisible brother fades into view right there at Nalo's side. Unlike his sister who is well dressed, Anton wears threadbare clothes and is shackled, dragging a chain behind him.

They are only two black skinned people in the market, but others only see one. 

"You hear these English talk?" Anton asks his sister. "They hate you. You are too smart, too pretty, too well dressed, and most of all, too black. They will kill you like they did me. See how they stare?"

Nalo struggles not to look at him. Under her breath she hisses "Yes, I know they are looking at me. Always me, and not you. Why don’t you make yourself useful and create a distraction?”

Anton smiles. "Only because I can't hold the bag myself. Stick it in that barrel while I overturn the fat man's fish cart."

---

Aha, so this is a big change from the scene in Part 4. While it relies on a spell, I like this one better as far as getting the action going. The other one distanced the character watching. Now that they see and hear Anton, they are more in the game. I think in games with mystery, you can wait too long to really engage the players, where only the GM has a clue what is going on. The players are so lost they don't know what to do.

And why can he overturn fish carts but can't hold the bag?

Interesting when you try a scene where the PCs are spying on Nalo, then try it again, when they spy on her invisible brother Anton.

GM Excuses VI: Win or Lose, Still Fun

<-Previous -- Next->

GM Excuses, Part VI

Following along Writing Excuses' master class in writing, we get to a very interesting discussion on the magical 1%. As in Star Wars, the Jedi are the 1%, all that matters to the plot. And then comes Han Solo. Great stuff, have a listen.

The homework is going to have to be reskinned:

Writing Prompt: Think about the last time you lost at a game. What was the process of thought that led to your loss? Now, replicate that moment in the dramatic structure of the story, except the story isn't about games.

What a wonderful fiction prompt, but for a RPG adventure, how can we use it? The last game I lost was Carcassonne, a Euro Game. Hmm, how to create an adventure out of my blunders in cathedral and farm placement...

What are some of the reasons I like Euro games? They are fun even if you lose. The entire time you are playing, you're usually make progress, building things, and racking up points. Even if someone edged you out, you were building your own empire.

Now, let's apply that to an adventure. While RPG players can always lose, they don't usually lose while making progress, getting stuff accomplished. They walk in a door, find something awful, roll badly, make bad choices, and either flee or reacquaint themselves with the character creation rules.

Adventure Writing Prompt: Create a scenario where the players can make progress, accomplish great things, have a good time doing it, and still lose. 

The goal is create a key out of parts found inside an underground temple, rescuing prisoners and destroying evil shrines along the way. Then take the key to the final encounter and unlock the imprisoned avatar of good. So, besides ending up on the sacrificial altar, how can they lose? They can lose to a second adventuring group that finds it's own key and rescues the avatar, putting the PCs in second place. "Nice try..." But the big rewards are for first place.

Let's make three keys that will work, bronze, iron, and steel, each made of three parts. The temple is an inverted pyramid. The fourth, lowest level, holds the door to the imprisoned avatar. The third level has three chambers, each of which has key pieces of different colors. The second has six chambers, three with different colored key pieces. The top level has nine chambers, three with key pieces. Frightful guardians, prisoners, and evil shrines are scattered throughout.

Bishop Beesir is the patron, and sets the two teams in motion. The NPC team, the "Silver Shadows" includes NPCs the PCs have run into before, either as rivals or allies. There are two known entrances, the front door and side entrance. The PCs pick their entrance. The clock is ticking, as the avatar can't survive much longer in it's extra-dimensional prison.

While it may be possible to get to the goal in four encounters, the evil complex is warded against abilities that show either party what is where without looking. It's not wise to skip freeing prisoners and destroying shrines, because these actions give the avatar respite. Sprinkle clues to the keys among shrines and prisoners.

To keep things abstract, we'll measure time in encounters the PCs face. All things being equal, the Silver Shadows will free the avatar in 10 encounters.

Headwinds: If the PCs are racing to an easy win when they hit the third level, they find the Silver Shadows have already looted a key piece they are looking for. The PCs will have to find the other group and arrange a trade, or switch to another color key.

If the PCs are lagging behind, one of the surplus key pieces they have picked up is needed by the Silver Shadows. The NPCs backtrack and find the PCs, offering a trade. This adds 1d3 to the number of encounters the NPCs need to win.

Treachery: If the PCs attack the Silver Shadows to rob them of their keys, they hear a thunderclap as their deeds feed the evil complex, adding to the difficulity of all future encounters. Plus they find themselves applauded by an evil priestess who offers them a deal if they bring her Bishop Beesir in chains.

---

A nice change of pace adventure. What about you, can you think of an adventure where the players would feel like they are doing good, even if they "lose" in the end?

<-Previous -- Next->

GM Excuses V: Lovecraftian Horror

<-Previous -- Next->

GM Excuses, Part V

And the 3rd will be 5th. Somehow we jumped over the Lovecraftian episode of Writing Excuses. Perhaps our broken minds blocked the show out. And now, it's back, more terrifying than ever!

And it's a great episode, with guest speaker Cherry Priest. Her latest novel is Maplecroft: Lizzy Borden with an ax vs. Cthulhu! Hello?

Take a listen, then let's do our homework.

Writing Prompt: Take a character, and from that character's point of view, describe their reaction to something horrific and awful, but do so without describing the thing itself.

OK, great fiction writing prompt. How can we twist this for gaming? If we use an npc, when would the players ever hear about it? If we take a PC, how would you describe something to them without describing it?

Here's my shot. It's a PC, and here's the READ ALOUD text addressed to ONE character:

As you step across the obsidian floor, white glyphs flare into existance across the surface and twist and turn. The rest of the party watches in horror as you vanish.

You fall to the floor in front of your friends, covered in a foul caul of mucus. How long were you gone? Thankfully you don't remember, until, then you do. Just bits and pieces. Being on a stone table as surgical implements held by what? Pincers? As you were cut open? There was a lot of screaming. Yours.

And they put you back together. But not quite the same as before. And didn't they add something? Cold and wriggling? Can you feel it now wrapped around your heart, or is this some delusion?

You hope it never happened. But you know better. There is no hope, and it's only going to get worse.

So the poor player doesn't really know what took them away, nor what they looked like. What all the players know, is any of them can be taken at any time. And unspeakable horrors are hovering.

<-Previous -- Next->

GM Excuses IV: What Do You Mean My Main NPC is Boring?

<-Previous -- Next->

GM Excuses, Part IV

Because of my hiccup, I've gotten behind in my homework! Time to file for an extension and get back to work.

If you’re new to this blog thread, I’m following the Writing Excuses master class on writing, and transmogrifying it to be about adventure design. In Part 1, I came up with five adventure ideas. In Part 2, I mixed up the ideas to create 4 new ideas. One of them is a mash-up of two of my ideas from Part 1, an adventure based on Drood, the novel by Dan Simmons, and one based on World Without Tears, a song by Lucinda Williams. In Part 3, I auditioned 5  NPCs for the lead role in the Drood/Williams adventure and let the blog readers vote for their favorites.

Take a listen to the Writing Excuses Podcast, What Do You Mean My Main Character is Boring? (only 15 minutes, and time well spent).

Today's Homework: Take three different characters and walk them through a scene. Convey their emotional states, their jobs, and their hobbies without directly stating any of those. The scene in question: walking through a marketplace, and they need to do a dead-drop.

Cool! We'll take Nalo D'Costa, Robert McTavish, and Elizabeth Dixon. You can see their biographies in Part 3. I haven't created hobbies for them yet, unless you count looking damned suspicious. We'll do these as Read Aloud text from a published adventure.

Nalo D'Costa:

You hear a hubbub from the city marketplace in front of you. Shoppers and stall owners comment on an unseen woman. You hear a lot of "Who does she think she is?" and disparaging remarks about the woman's dark skin color. You spot a fidgety brown woman dressed in a teal day dress wearing a deep bonnet that prevents you from seeing her face unless her head points straight at you. The fingers of her left hand are stained with ink.

She seems to be arguing with someone, but you see no one walking with her. Her accent is both educated and Jamaican. "Yes, I know they are looking at me. Always me, and not you. Why don't you make yourself useful and create a distraction?"

A fishmonger's cart collapses, but you can't see the cause. Cod spills across the cobblestones. While all eyes are on the fish, you see the woman stuff a brown sack into a barrel, close the lid, and walk away.

Robert McTavish:

You enter the city market and are surrounded by the calls to buy fresh fish, produce, and the like. An old gentleman with long sideburns and a mustache hurries past you. You meet his watery blue eyes for a moment, then turn away. There's an intensity about those eyes that is unnerving.

The gent marches up to a grocer and points to turnips. When the grocer turns to grab the turnips, the old man looks around, then puts his hands on the lid of a barrel. He stares across at a fishmonger's cart, where a woman calls out "Snakes! Snakes under the cart!"

You see the old man stuff a brown sack into the barrel, close the lid, and walk away, turnips forgotten.

Elizabeth Dixon:

You enter the city market and are surrounded by the smells of fresh fish, poultry, and the like. A bespectacled woman, perhaps in her 30s, rummages through a cart selling old books. A black ankh pendent graces her neck. She's talking to a corpulent Turk, fez and all, and they seem to be arguing. She points at a fishmonger's cart with a folded hand-fan, and says something sharp to the foreigner.

The Turk nods, and ambles over to the display of cod and mackerel. He stops, closes his eyes and falls into the fish-cart, hands flailing and grasping. The cart tips forward, spilling fish and causing a scene.

You see the woman stuff a brown sack into a barrel, close the lid, and walk away.

<-Previous -- Next->

GM Excuses: Audition Your Lead NPC

<-Previous Next->

GM Excuses, Part 3

OK, class is in session again, and we have more homework. If you're new to this blog thread, I'm following the Writing Excuses master class on writing, and transmogrifying it to be about adventure design. In Part 1, I came up with five adventure ideas based on the homework assignment. In Part 2, I mixed up the ideas to create 4 new ideas. One of them is a mashup of two of my ideas from Part 1, an adventure based on Drood, the novel by Dan Simmons and one based on World Without Tears, a song by Lucinda Williams.

Check out the latest (15 minute) podcast from Writing Excuses, Q&A on Ideas.

The podcast is well worth a listen, but instead of dealing with the very interesting questions the cast answered, I'm jumping right to the homework:

Take one of the ideas you're excited about, and then audition five different characters for the lead role NPC in that story. Make sure they're all different from each other.

I changed the idea from the lead role, to the lead NPC because your player characters, lovable idiots that they are, are already cast in the lead roles. The question is who do they get to bounce off of? It could be the antagonist, an ally, or a another important person, perhaps one around whom the adventure revolves.

Looking over the ideas from the last GM Excuses, I'm going to go with Drood meets World Without Tears. Everything revolves around the famous writer, Charles Dickens. I'm going to mix it up, and replace Dickens with a fictional writer, but we'll say they are a famous and successful Victorian author.

Elizabeth Dixon Liz is a popular writer who has an aura of scandal around her. She's been seen traveling with another man while her husband stayed home with the children. Somehow the scandal has only increased her sales. She's taken a bizarre turn since a railway accident, and can now be found wandering graveyards and dealing with foreigners and other odd people. She's the daughter of a wealthy shipbuilding family and something of an expert in Egyptology. Secretly she believes she is the reincarnation of Hatshepsut, a woman pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty.

George Kingsport George is a popular speaker and writer on occult topics. He's known for his seances and being able to make contact with those who have past beyond the veil. A happy charlatan, George has been milking the naive since he was a teen, but now thing have taken a turn for the strange. For the last few months, George's fake powers have started to work. He speaks in tongues, recites ancient Egyptian poetry, and has the power to bend people to his will. Which would all be great, but for the blackouts. George wakes in odd places and has no recollection of how he got there.

Nalo D'Costa Nalo is a Jamaican woman who has burst onto the literary scene in England. Aided by a following in the upper class, she has transcended racial and gender barriers and gained a popular following. One worry is her belief that she will be fashionable only for a brief moment, and then the English will find another "exotic" author to pay attention to. The other worry is Anton, her fraternal twin who died at birth. Nalo sees and hears Anton, and while she used to believe he was a harmless hallucination, recent events have proven him neither.

Connor Synge is a celebrated Irish playwright and poet. Intense and brooding, he's a bit of a walking contradiction -- often seen in bars, he never drinks; popular with the ladies, he never marries; said to be gifted in Irish, he only works in English. Connor has recently been frustrated in his work. The play "The Droods" just will not write itself. He's torn up more versions than he can count. And each time he stops writing, he sees a pale face in the window. When he looks, he sees a figure vanishing down the block. He follows, and then finds himself lost in the most peculiar places. He's been talking to himself, and his friends are worried.

Robert McTavish was unknown outside of his Scottish landholdings until he reached the age of 70. He claimed he found a Pictish burial site and vanished for three days. When he came out, he began writing at a furious pace, and soon started on well attended speaking tours. He has watery blue eyes that force people to avoid his glance. He's also taken up poetry, and his latest poem is entitled "Before Man, Serpents." His dark writings have embarrassed his offspring, and they are looking for someone to rein in the old man.

[polldaddy poll=8613997]

<-Previous Next->

I Have an Adventure Idea; What Do I Do Now?

<-Previous Next->

GM Excuses, Part 2

Last time on GM Excuses, we followed along with the master class in writing being offered by the awesome podcast Writing Excuses. And we transmogrified the slant to be about writing roleplaying adventures. Take a look at what we came up with.

Well, the writing class has moved on, and so should our GM class. Take a listen. Our homework this week: Writing Prompt: Using last week's five story adventure ideas (or five new ones): 1: Take two of them and combine them into one story adventure. 2: Take one and change the genre underneath it. 3: Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it 4: Take the last one and have a character make the opposite choice. 1. Combining Drood and World Without Tears: The players are Victorian occult investigators, and they get put on the case by a friend of Charles Dickens. Dickens is on a speaking tour, and terrible things are happening to the audiences. They arrive in good health, but leave covered in bruises and scars. It seems every reading is interrupted by a madman with a gun. And the always charismatic Dickens is spellbinding when he speaks, almost magical. When the PCs tail Dickens, they find him sleepwalking at night. Visiting graveyards and vanishing into crypts. Following, they find a passageway down from the crypt to an underground maze where shadowy figures lead Dickens on, always just out of reach of the investigators. Hidden in the maze is a strange temple with Egyptian style markings, and it is there the Demon of Misery holds court. Can the investigators defeat the demon while rescuing the greatest writer of their time? 2. Move the Invisible Protagonist story from Urban Fantasy/Horror to Space Opera Science Fiction: While exploring the new planet Hykloksia, the xeno-archeologist player characters find a dormant power source still powering *something.* Their instruments start to fail, which triggers an automatic teleport back to the ship. Except now, nobody can see them. They search the ship in vain for a way back into the real world, then realize they are not alone. Alien forms slither away every time they comes upon them. The aliens seem to be making changes to the ship's warp drive. When they enter the drive chamber, the aliens become hostile. The creatures are trying to create a warp gate *inside* the character's ship. Not a good idea. Can they save the ship and find a way back to the real world? 3. Change the ages and genders of everyone in my frp group goes to oz adventure. I had already changed the good/evil axis last time. So why not change the rest? In fact, we can change it up so much that the players might never guess I started with Oz at all. Which is great, I get a great world to riff from, but they think it's all my brilliant imagination. So The Great and Powerful Oz becomes the Dread Sorcerer Tally. She's only six years old, but she was born with such power she wiped out her home village while being born. She's been a terrible force ever since. A road made of violet mounds of flesh leads to the Towers of Tally, a city populated by her minions. Glindor, a handsome and powerful old witch, finds the characters soon after they reach this world. He professes to want to help them, and says that the way home can be found at the Towers of Tally, where the benevolent Empress Tally is sure to help them. He vanishes before the characters can question him further. Mombik, a six year old green (goblin?) boy also born with similar powers to Tally reaches out to the characters, and warns them against Tally and her forces. Mombik has a small force of flying lizard men that protect his castle from Tally. 4. Take the Great Filter adventure idea and have someone make an opposite choice: What if humanity made a different choice about replicator nano-bots? We decided to keep them off of earth, in case anything bad might happen. But it's fine to bring them to someone else's world. They can help with terraforming. After some fixed number of generations, they stop making copies of themselves, and start making things more Earth like. But this planet has seen replicator swarms in it's past, and has defenses. First it takes out the player's starship, but they make it to the surface in a shuttle. Then the planet starts constructing a weapon to deal with the source of the replicator bots. Can the characters stop the weapon from attacking Earth? Can they reason with an intelligence that sees them as an invading species? And with good reason? Try this with your own ideas. Come up with anything fun and exciting?

<-Previous Next->

Roleplaying Game Design Excuses

Next->

GM Excuses, Part 1

First, I want to point out a fantastic podcast for writers, which you might already know about. It's called Writing Excuses. This year, the 10th season, is a master class on writing. WITH HOMEWORK! Second, I'm going to do the homework here, on my blog, but not the way the presenters intended. Instead, using my transmogrification ray, I'm going to make the homework not about writing a fiction piece, but about writing a roleplaying game adventure. Let's start!

Class 1 is Seriously, Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

And the homework is: Write down five different story adventure ideas in 150 words or less. Generate these ideas from these five sources:

1. From an interview or conversation you've had
2. From research you've done (reading science news, military history, etc)
3. From observation (go for a walk!)
4. From a piece of media (watch a movie)
5. From a piece of music (with or without lyrics)

1. (I was talking with Alison, my wife and editor, and she said, "What about a Dark Oz?" Alison is a big fan of the Wizard of Oz, and we have a collection of first editions.) The player characters in a fantasy roleplaying game find themselves brought to the land of Oz, but not the Oz we know from the books and the movie. In this Oz, good and evil are reversed. Glinda still looks and talks like a good witch, but she stays young and beautiful by stealing the life force of others. Players have to contend with munchkin assassins, a man who seems made of tin, but is really an adamantine plated killing machine, and so on. The Wizard of Oz is a Lich. If they want to get home, they'll need help, and the green hag of the North is their only hope. How can they get to her with the forces of Oz on their tale?

2. (Online article: Habitable exoplanets are bad news for humanity) In a space exploration game, the PCs are astronauts on the first manned expedition to an exoplanet that unmanned probes have found to habitable. They have also found what appear to be ruins. When the PCs awake from deep sleep, they are greated with the news that the great filter struck Earth just after they left. A nanotech facility in India imploded and nano-biobot replicators were released that turned organic material into copies of themselves. The living world was drowned in a gray goo of nanobots. A few tiny space colonies survive in the solar system, but are not tenable long term. Can the PCs find a solution on the alien world that will give humanity a second chance? Or will they unleash the alien version of the great filter and destroy themselves?

3. (Went for a walk. The woman behind the bakery counter filled coffee, moved inventory around, and left. Like she couldn't see me.) The player characters trigger a trap that takes them outside normal life. They can move around, see and hear people, but no one can perceive them. While they struggle to find a way home, they find other beings are also out of phase with reality. These being are spying on the world, up to no good, and they notice the PCs have slipped into this voyeur side world. Can the PCs thwart the threat from this extra-dimensional source? And can they find their way home?

4. (Media: Drood by Dan Simmons) The player characters are occult investigators in Victorian England who meet a popular writer, Wilkie Collins, who claims that Charles Dickens has been possessed by an Egyptian demon. He says that Dickens is now a cannibal necromancer with a cult to carry out his mysterious and unholy wishes. While there are plenty of reasons to distrust Collins, the characters keep running into evidence that is consistent with his wild accusations. Are the thieves breaking into the characters' flats robbers or cultists?  Can the characters be seen to be spouting lunatic libels about the most popular writer of his time? Can they restore Dickens to himself?

5. (World Without Tears, by Lucinda Williams) A misery demon has come to town, and it doesn't mean to leave. Bruises fly in packs, searching for faces to lie upon. Scars hunt for skin to etch themselves into. Guns load themselves and find unstable hands to slip into. Occult investigator PCs need to stop these manifestations, and track them down to the source. Can the PCs find the demon before its manifestations cripple them? Can they find the means to banish it so it won't come back? What drew it here in the first place?

That was fun. Try it for your own game.

Happy Gaming!

Next->

PS, want to see what a real writer does with this homework assignment? Let's snoop on Christy Shorey. Here she is, coming up with cool story ideas. And you know, a cool story idea is often a cool adventure idea, so this snooping is Dread Unicorn approved!