Så här skulle jag göra det. Inte bara det, så här har jag gjort det. Från Generica (jag ber om ursäkt för att formatteringen är lite skum, men jag har inte tid att fixa den just nu...):
13 Game mastering
13.1 Overview
For a newcomer, the task of being game master may seem enormous. It does not have to be like that, but it does require some tricks and quick thinking. This chapter will give some insight into game mastering. It’s by no means an exhaustive guide or absolute rules, but it will give some hints. Experienced players will develop their own ideas, but this will help you get started in the right direction.
The following quote, uttered by Naomi Klein about Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas, describes pretty well how a good game master should try to be: “The world has a new kind of hero, one who listens more than speaks, who preaches in riddles not in certainties, a leader who doesn't show his face, who says his mask is really a mirror. And in the Zapatistas, we have not one dream of a revolution but a dreaming revolution.”. If there is such a thing as a Zen of game mastering, that quote hit the bullseye. A good game master should be humble and constantly evaluate his view of things. He should speak only when it’s needed, then clear the stage to give the players space for their act. He should be sketchy in his descriptions, allowing the players to fill in the blanks with their imagination. He should draw from experiences, both his own and the players’, to create a world that seems close and real, even if it’s fantastic and looks little like reality. He should not push his vision upon the players at all cost, instead letting the game to take on its own life and see where it leads. It is a good quote and it may be good to keep it in mind when questions arise.
13.2 The game
There are some practical issues to consider for the game. Preparations should be made, things need to be handled and so on.
13.2.1 Before the game
To get the game running smooth, some preparations are helpful.
The game master should have a scenario ready to play. Sometimes, this also means that the game master will have to prepare characters for the players, but often the players can make their own characters. Make sure you have the blank character sheets needed.
Agree on a time and a place for the game session. If possible, clean up the game table, unnecessary stuff lying around is very distracting. If you use snacks or other food while playing, make sure you are well stocked. Some groups prefer playing with music, candles, and other mood enhancing aids. If that is the case, make sure you have what you need.
In short, make sure the basic requirements for a smooth running game are in working order.
13.2.2 During the game
If the players are not familiar with the rules, the game master should give a brief explanation of the central concepts. The game will flow a lot better if questions about how to make skill rolls or how injuries are recorded can be avoided. If the players have not played with the characters before, a brief introduction to get people acquainted is a good way to start the game.
The game master has many tasks during the game. He will be a referee, a storyteller, an improvisation artist and a secretary. He should keep the game flowing and interesting, listen to the players react to their actions, weave a captivating plot and generally keep the players on their toes. He should also have a decent understanding of the rules and handle them with as little impact on the game tempo as possible, preferably as a background task that is not even noticed by the players. During the game, there will be many details the game master needs to remember, so taking notes is a good idea.
The game master will sometimes have to settle disputes between the players or between players and the game master. The best is of course if everybody can agree, but sometimes the game master will have to use his role as a referee and just make a decision, which is final.
During the game, it is a good idea to avoid distractions. Too much out of game discussions, building of die towers, snack throwing, comic reading and so on can wreck the game completely. Under no conditions should a TV be allowed to be on during the game. If mood music is used, make sure it is still possible to hear what people are saying, especially if someone has hearing problems.
Keep the game flowing, give the players a nudge if they are stuck, and throw in some challenges if it is too easy. Make things happen, keep up the feeling.
13.2.3 After the game
Discuss what the characters will be doing until the next game session if applicable. Sometimes you end with a cliffhanger; in that case, this will not be an issue.
Gather the character sheets and store them in one place, preferably by the game master. If each player handles his own character sheet, someone will forget to bring it.
If possible, decide a date for the next game session.
After the players are gone, the game master takes care of any in between session activities the characters may be doing. Then it is time to start planning the next session.
13.2.4 The players
In most cases, there is very little the players must do to prepare before a game session. Usually they just have to bring some snacks and a sense of wonder and adventure.
During the game, the players should think and react as their characters would. Of course, some rule considerations may have to be made, but don’t let the rules become the point of the game. React as if it was real and let the rules simulate reality.
The players will be expected to handle some book keeping and basic rules, for instance keeping track of their injuries. They do not have to know the rule book by heart, in fact it is perfectly possible to play without any knowledge of the rules at all if need be. This is especially important if there are people in the group who have never played before, in which case you could just start the game and explain the concepts as you go.
The players should also respect the rulings of the game master. They may not always agree, but in most cases, it is better to keep the game going than to end up in rule discussions. Remember that the game master may have more reasons for his decision than he is able to tell at the moment.
The characters have been put in prison. Their escape plans fails because the guards found their tunnel despite the fact that is was so well hidden that they should not be able to find it and it was in a place that the guards never visit normally.
The players feel that they have been mistreated and complain.
The game master stands by his decision and the tunnel is still found. The players should not pressure him to explain, they should assume he knows what he is doing. In this case, perhaps a snitch told the guards, something the players know nothing about.
The game master should not abuse this privilege. He rules because the game needs it and because the players have accepted it, much like a referee in any other sport. If the players really don’t agree, they should handle that discussion after the game or during a break. If it happens too often, they should consider game mastering themselves, showing by example.
The players should also take care so that everybody gets a chance to take part in the game. Sometimes a loud or active player can dominate the game to a point where the other players don’t get any attention and just sit silently. This is not necessarily done consciously; sometimes people just get caught up in the action. Avoiding this situation is the responsibility of both the players and the game master.
The most important task for the players is to have fun. If they are having fun, everybody will have fun and the game will be enjoyable.
13.2.5 The rules
It is sometimes easy to lose track of what is central to the game and get stuck in the rules. A good rule of thumb is that if it takes more time to look up a rule than to improvise, always improvise. Even more important, if a rule don’t agree with common sense, common sense is always right. If a situation is not covered by the rules, just ask yourself what is reasonable and what suits the situation. Rules should be used as a drunken man would use a streetlamp, for support rather than enlightenment.
Many disadvantages have in their description rules regarding suppressing the disadvantage. These are typically along the lines of “a successful check against MENTAL STRENGTH at +5 difficulty is needed to ignore the disadvantage”.
While it may be possible to make these die rolls at every occasion, a much better way to use them is as a way of getting the players to play their characters. Tell the players that as long as they play their disadvantages, you will let them get away with ignoring them sometimes without making the roll.
What effect will this have?
It will speed up the game by removing many die rolls. It will give the players a closer connection to their characters, since it is actually the players who play the disadvantages, not the dice. Most likely, the threat of having to make the die rolls will make them take the disadvantages much further than they otherwise would, giving the characters more personality. Most important of all: it will be more fun.
Know when the best use of a rule is to ignore it. If it works fine without it, it is of no use to you and you should drop it.
There are many reasons for wanting to change the rules. There may be something you don’t like, your world may have special requirements, you want to alter the style of the game, or you just want to do it your way. Whatever the reason, as long as you know why you are changing the rules, go ahead! There is no right way to play the game; you can play it your way.
Perhaps the most typical reason for rule changes is the need to vary how combat works to handle different styles of games, from dirty realism to cinematic action. If you want to play a game of rough war realism, wounds are dangerous and healing a slow process where infections are a constant threat. On the other hand, if you want some typical heroic fantasy, healing magic should be available, wounds should not be likely to permanently maim characters, and healing should work more or less automatically given time. You may also want to stack the rules in favour of the players in some types of games. Zorro or James Bond are never in any real problem or real risk of injury when fighting the average henchman; at most, they are a diversion and a chance to show off in front of the ladies.
Useful tweaking points for this kind of changes are WOUND LEVELS, the rules for diagnosis and treatment, permanent effect of injuries, criteria for determining when a character is dead, healing rate, and the access to healing technology or magic. We will examine these options one by one.
- By increasing WOUND LEVELS for the characters, they will be able to withstand more damage.
- By ignoring the rules for diagnosis and treatment, injuries will be less crippling, which is suitable for an action campaign with lots of fighting.
- Reducing the risk of permanent injuries and increasing the possibilities to get rid of the disabilities combat becomes less intimidating. Most fantasy games treat the character as a lump of clay, which can be put back together again as long as he is still alive. While not realistic, it is more or less a necessity when you are fighting monsters all day.
- The number of WOUND LEVEL LINES crossed before you are considered dead can be changed or even removed. If removed, you will still die if someone kills you after you have been rendered helpless. This will drastically reduce the risk of dying, as well as giving greater control over life and death to the game master, reducing the risk of someone dying due to a bad die roll. This is very useful if you want a long campaign with persistent characters.
- Healing rate can be lowered to provide a more realistic recuperation or increased to provide flow in a campaign where fighting is central and you don’t want the characters to spend most of the time in hospital.
- The access to healing magic and technology is a variation on several of the above methods. By giving easy access to healing, injuries and disabilities will be much less dangerous and much less permanent.
You may have noticed how we have left the most powerful method of tweaking out of this list. This is done because it is not really a rule modification.
So, what is this great secret of tweaking the game?
It is the power of interpretation. The big difference between a role-playing game and a computer game is the common sense found in the game master. The game master can choose how he wants to interpret the result of the rules, dies, and tables based upon the needs of the campaign.
A knockout blow in a saloon brawl is probably a chair over the back of the head, while the same blow in a karate action game is a perfect jump kick to the jaw sending the opponent flying across the tables. A serious gunshot wound to the arm in a realistic Vietnam scenario would probably be a bloody mess with the victim screaming in pain, while the same wound in a Zorro swashbuckling adventure would hurt the hero, forcing him to withdraw and hide the bandage to protect his secret identity. A wound that would kill a henchman in a James Bond scenario would probably only result in a knockout when Zorro did it.
It is all in the interpretation. The rules give an indication of how serious it is, but the game master decides what serious means in practical terms in his world.
The rules are just one of the tools at the game master’s disposal. Don’t overlook the other tools and do be afraid to modify, replace, or discard tools as needed. Remember, the important thing is not which tool you use; it is getting the job done.
13.2.6 Adding rules to achieve an effect
Sometimes things don’t always work out automatically. You don’t reach the result you want. Most of the time, a talk with the players will solve the problem. Sometimes that’s not enough and you need to resort to adding a rule. That’s all right and part of how role-playing games work. Some typical examples:
- The players don’t make characters that form the tightly knit group that you’d prefer. This is a common problem, where each player have their own idea of how their character should be and those ideas just don’t fit together. One possible solution is to assign a bunch of points for advantages and disadvantages, outside the normal points for the character, for the entire group. These are used to select advantages and disadvantages that affect the entire group. Of course, many are not applicable, but many works nicely, such as resources, enemies, dependents, contacts and so on. This creates a common theme that they can gather around.
- Disadvantages seldom come into play. The natural tendency for a player is that a disadvantage is a problem and therefore avoided. In other words, you need to put some sugar in the medicine. You could, for instance, allow a player a free reroll of any skill roll when they have brought a disadvantage into play in an interesting way. To maintain some balance and to avoid things getting silly, you should probably not allow them to have more than one reroll stored at any time.
13.2.7 Game balance
Game balance is a very popular topic in the role-playing community. Usually, there will be two typical standpoints, either that it is important or that it doesn’t matter.
Let’s start with finding out what game balance actually means. The term is usually used in two different contexts, the first is balance among the player characters, and the other is balance between the group of characters and the opposition the game master throws at them. In a situation like this, there is no wrong or right, it is just a matter of personal preference. If you like everything to be well balanced and fair, go for it. If you want to play a fun but useless character in a powerful group, it is just as fine. At least as important as considering how good a character is, is considering how fun a character is to play. Being the most powerful is not always the most fun way to play; adding a few disadvantages, useless skills, and personality quirks to the character makes it much more interesting. This is most apparent in the rules for psionics, where the psionic powers are as much of an obstacle as they are beneficiary. This is not primarily done as a way to balance them against, say a long sword or a gun, it is done because it makes them so much more challenging, interesting and rewarding to play.
Balancing the opposition should always be done, but it is a bit different depending on if the group is balanced or not. So, let’s go on the see how to make the game work in balanced and unbalanced mode.
13.2.7.1 Balanced group
To keep the game fairly well balanced, the main thing to do is to make all player character using the same amount of CHARACTER POINTS and to keep character progress at a similar pace for all characters. Since no point system can take into account all the different combinations and all strange worlds of role-playing, some game master intervention or at least supervision is usually necessary.
When it comes to balancing the opposition, the best bet is usually to make it a little bit tougher than you think is necessary. It may seem cruel, but it is actually very practical, since it is easier to weaken the opposition on the fly than it is to make them stronger. The players also tend to be more resourceful than the characters’ statistics suggests, so it is always good to have some extra trick up your sleeve.
Still, the most important thing to remember is that the rules is just a framework for support. They can not be expected to provide perfect balance in every situation, so use them for support but keep careful watch over the with your own judgement.
13.2.7.2 Unbalanced group
It may appear very difficult to run a game where the characters are very different, but if you just use common sense, it is actually very easy. Just think of it as a real situation and act accordingly, and in most cases it will work out fine. Once you accept that the different characters will fill different roles, balancing the opposition will become simple. The main pitfall to avoid is to think of the situation in a fairness perspective.
A group of three characters is attacked by three bandits. The characters are a big knight in shining armour, a sneaky thief, and an old lady who bakes good cookies and occasionally get strange visions.
Will the attackers split up, one on each character? Not likely, they will perceive the knight as the big threat, the thief as a potential threat and the old lady as harmless, so they’ll probably gang up two on one on the knight while the third handles the thief. Even if the old lady should start to bash one of them over the head with her umbrella, they’ll probably not bother killing her, just push her aside, and continue to fight whom they perceive as the main threat.
This way of thinking allows for a mix of characters. It will put a larger load on the tough fighters, but that’s what they are there for, while it will allow weaker character a reasonable chance of survival. This does not mean that the weaker characters will be boring and have nothing to do; they probably just have some other specialisation or are personalities that are fun to play even if they don’t get much done. In fact, it even gives the weaker characters more room to play around, since they will not have the same heavy responsibilities and face the same serious threats that the others do.
When the big bad guy walks into the room, the big good guy have to fight him and fight for his life, while the spoiled girl can just grab an object close at hand, perhaps a bunch of tulips, and bash him with it. The big bad guy will not focus on killing her, since his main adversary is the big good guy, so he’ll probably just throw her aside and continue towards the big good guy. The spoiled girl can play her character as far as she wants, phoning dad, throwing easily breakable objects towards the big bad guy, whining about her messed up dress and so on.
The big good guy probably accomplices more, but who has the most fun?
As you can see, balancing the opposition with an unbalanced group of characters is mostly a question of balancing the opposition based on each character, rather than on the entire group. The opponents will be smart; they will go after the biggest threats with their biggest guns and they will probably avoid killing someone they perceive as harmless. This is also realistic and makes for a more interesting game. There is absolutely no reason to be afraid of mixing powerful characters with weaker ones in the same group, quite the contrary; it often makes a better and more varied game.
13.2.8 Some tricks to keep the game interesting
It is very important to keep all players active. If the characters split up, jump between the groups frequently. If a character does something by himself, like going shopping with his part of the loot, try to involve the other players in some way. You could even let them temporarily play the roles of the various merchants and other non-plot people that he encounters. This will also make the encounters a bit more varied.
The players should also feel that they are participating and that they have input on the story. Use their imagination as an asset, not a problem. Encourage them to participate in the creation process. If a player walks into a casino and says, “I walk up to the beautiful woman by the roulette table.”, do not respond, “I never said there was a beautiful women at the roulette table.”. It is perfectly reasonable that there should be a beautiful woman there, so just go with it and weave it into the story. It will not detract from your game mastering, quite the opposite. It will enrich it.
Encourage the players to add colourful descriptions of their actions. Instead of saying “I roll for BIOLOGY to see if I find something that can cure Bob. I succeed.”, encourage them to say things like “My BIOLOGY skill (rolls die) tells me that this mushroom, the speckled tree mushroom, can be boiled in water and the water can then be used to prevent infection.”. It doesn’t matter that the game master or world description has never mentioned either the speckled tree mushroom or its healing properties. The player made a roll where it was reasonable that he finds something useful, and if he can give a description of what he finds, it will actually extend and deepen the world. A good game master will not only allow this, he will encourage it and use it to give the world more life. Perhaps the local healers will sell speckled tree mushroom based medicines instead of generic infection stoppers?
This can be taken one step further, by allowing players not directly involved to temporarily play unimportant NPCs. If one player is going to buy camping equipment at the local outfitter and the other players have nothing to do, let one of them play the shopkeeper and the others play Jim and Bob, who you just invented for the other players, who pull up in their pickup to buy some ammunition and lots of beer. Of course, the game master has the right to veto anything that he thinks goes too far or is out of character. It gives everybody something to do, minimizing the damage of an attention hogging player. It creates loads of interesting NPCs that can be brought into play at other occasions, creating a richer world. Basically, it allows for more fun and a better game.
Be alert and remember what’s important. If you want the players to end up somewhere, keep your focus on that goal, not the road there. If they do something unexpected, don’t force them back on your road. Instead, follow their path and try to find some way to make it end up somewhere near where you want them to go. Don’t do it at all costs, however. If you need to push too hard, the players will feel like they have no control and lose interest. Sometimes you just have to accept it and explore their path instead, which often proves to be just as interesting.
Make sure you keep the pace. It is more important to keep the game flowing than to get every single rule correct. The players will have more fun if the game keeps moving and they get things done than if the game moves as slow and secure as a snail. This is much like a professional wrestling match, where the referee sometimes has to ignore some rule violations to keep the action going and interesting. This is especially important in games that contain a lot of action and combat, where the characters should not have time to think about things too much anyway. Always give priority to speed over correctness, with one possible exception when the life of a character is on the line.
Don’t let the players to get stuck for long. If the players get stuck in a situation where they don’t know what to do, it will slow down the game and frustrate the players. This does not mean that you should guide them around, just that sometimes a small nudge is needed. A good trick is to encourage them to go after their personal goals, as this will give them something to do, as well as giving you more opportunity to weave in the threads of the main story again. Another method is to have the story come the the characters, for instance, letting the bad guy go after them instead of the other way around.
Focus on what you want to achieve. Don’t nitpick about details that are not important. In a modern scenario, you can ignore such details as food and if the character has a spanner or a cigarette lighter at home. They are not central to the game, in fact, nitpicking about such details detracts from the game, as they divert the attention of the players from what is central and bogs them down in pure bureaucracy. Can such details always be ignored? Of course not, sometimes they are very central to what’s going on. If you are floating around in a heavily damaged space ship and expect to have to wait a long time for resque, the food is suddenly vital to your survival and the spanner and lighter may be exactly what you need to MacGyver a repair of the emergency beacon that will allow requers to find you. In this case, the difference is that these details are what creates the drama, what conveys the feeling of having to ration everything and be careful about what you waste. Know what you want to achieve and use the most effective means at your disposal, while removing distractions.
Don’t punish initiative. While the results of player initiative may not always be beneficial for the characters, they should be interesting and encouraging. A side effect of this rule of thumb is that heroism should be rewarded. If a wounded character decides to stay behind and slow down the zombie hordes with only a pistol and a stick of dynamite, don’t just let the zombies overrun him and kill him to no avail. Sure, he might die, but his sacrifice should be meaningful and leave the player with a feeling of having achieved something. Remember, we are not necessarily talking about tangible rewards and encouragement here, it’s the feeling that is important. The players should feel that they have influence and that they accomplished something.
Quit in time. This should be obvious, but is too often forgotten. If people are getting tired, it is time to quit or take a food break; otherwise, the game will quickly go downhill. It is better to play short quality session than to play until everybody is too bored to continue.
13.2.9 How to make combat interesting
Most gamers, luckily, has no experience of real combat, though some may have experience with mock combat or have trained martial arts as a sport. Their main source of information is often movies, and movies are not a reliable source of good information. Handling combat in a way that makes for a good game takes some planning and thought. Some things to keep in mind are:
- Combat is confusing and messy. Do not give the players too much information, keep it fragmented and sometimes even inaccurate.
- Combat is fast and focused. There is no time to carefully discuss strategies, there is no time to make elaborate plans, there is no time to carefully examine the surroundings. If you hesitate, your enemy kills you. If you take your eyes of him, he kills you. Don’t give the players too much time to think. In fact, most of the time they should not get enough time during the time the other players act and during the game mechanics. When it is their time to act, demand a quick response.
- Combat is scary. It is not a laid back sports event where the worst thing that can happen is that the other team wins the trophy. People get killed. Try to impress the seriousness of the situation on the players. There is no room for a relaxed attitude in combat.
- Combat is not well ordered. It is not a matter of taking turns chopping each other with swords until someone is cut down to size. Combat is hacking, kicking, gauging, headbutting, shieldbashing, stomping, strangling or whatever you can do to hurt your enemy. When the someone attacks, describe it. Don’t just say “He hits you with his sword, take 3L3D damage”, say something like “He locks your sword with his own and slams you against the wall, the punches you in the face with his other hand, take 3L3D damage”.
- If you are outnumbered, you are screwed. Forget Hollywood, if you are up against two or more opponents, your chances are slim. Stage a mock fight with a couple of friends and you’ll see what happens. Make sure the players understand this.
- The object of a fight is not to be the winner, it is to not be the loser. You can win many fights, but you only lose one. If you can’t win, it is almost always better to flee or surrender. Hint this to the players, and don’t let their opponents fight a hopeless fight to the death. Opponents are people too, they want to survive.
Of course, depending on what kind of game you play, some of these guidelines could and should be ignored. Zorro always has time to carve a Z and blow a kiss to senorita Escalante. Judge Dredd is never scared. Ogami Itto can single-handedly beat hundreds of thugs. Even so, keep these hints in mind.
Try some mock combat or paintball, and think how you would feel if the stick was a sword that could kill or maim you or the paint balls were real bullets which could end your life in a screaming pool of blood. Then remember that what you experience is just a very weak hint of the real thing.
13.2.10 Using staredowns
Staredowns are a great way to increase tension and drama, as well as making key scenes last longer and be more emotional. Don’t get locked down in traditional fighting, there are many ways to break that pattern, and staredowns are one of the most potent tools for doing that.
- Use them to add variation to combat and to vary the pace. Staredowns makes it harder for the players to rely on a single tactic and makes it harder to make characters that are unbeatable tanks in combat. It forces them to use their heads instead of just relying on impressive stats, providing varied challenges.
- Use them to add drama. It’s not a coincidence that so many movies use this device, especially in fights against the big bad guy boss. It makes the final confrontation last longer, and as such helps giving the scene the emotional impact and weight it deserves.
- They are a neat device to use when you want a nemesis to survive. After all, a good nemesis should come back for revenge.
- Combat is fast and strenuous and gives little opportunity for conversation. Staredowns, on the other hand, are perfect for talk. Megalomaniac monologues, psychotic ramblings, witty exchanges, cool one-liners, nervous ramblings or just the silent stone face stare. Take your pick, and give your NPCs some attitude.
- You can change the fight from an all guns blazing free for all to a locked stalemate, thus completely altering the scene, the pace and the challenge the players are facing.
- It allows you to put the players in a situation where they can get captured instead of killed if they lose. Sometimes, capture is a useful plot device.
13.3 Non Player Characters
Non Player Characters, or NPCs for short, are all the other people that live in the game world and they are played by the game master. They may be friends, enemies, lovers, victims, or just bystanders.
This section contains guidelines for streamlining the use of NPCs and for making them more alive and special for the players.
13.3.1 NPCs are simple people
Since we don’t want to go through the entire character generation process for most of the NPCs, a simplified way of handling them is needed. Very important NPCs should probably be created as normal characters, but the average innkeeper or henchman can be handled with a much simpler model.
13.3.1.1 NPC skill levels
First of all, decide how competent the NPC will be. The following table has guidelines for determining skill levels. Expert skills are the skills central to the NPC, usually professional skills. Good skills are skills that are at the fringe of his area of expertise, but still connected to it, or skills that carry some other importance to the NPC. Beginner skills are anything else he may have snapped up along the way.
Competence Expert skills Good skills Beginner skills
Total loser 5 3 1
Bad 8 4 2
Average 12 6 3
Good 15 8 4
Excellent 18 10 6
NPCs better than this should probably be created using normal character creation rules, and in many cases this also applies to NPCs of excellent competence.
You may write skills down before play, but you can also make it up as you go. Most likely, your players will never know the difference.
13.3.1.2 NPCs in combat
In combat, NPCs are treated just like any other character, using DEFENCE and manoeuvres just like everybody else.
The only difference is how injuries are handled. To avoid bookkeeping, NPCs only have three levels of injuries: healthy, injured and down.
- Healthy. They may have smaller scratches, but are not hindered by them.
- Injured. Wounded, having a +5 difficulty on all skills and –5 on DEFENCE.
- Down. The person is helpless, dead or has surrendered, at the game masters discretion. Either way, he is out of the fight.
A NPC’s condition decreases one step on this scale for each damage die he receives that is higher than his STAMINA. To get some additional information about the health of the NPC, look at the type of the damage dies according to the following table. The table assumes the NPC has received enough damage to be down.
Dark dies Result
0 Knocked out
1 Knocked out and Injured, but not critical
2 Critically injured
3 or more Dead or dying
Three bandits attack the characters.
After some fighting, one bandit receives a hit, scoring 5, 10 and 16 on the damage dies. His STAMINA is 14, so he is wounded but can still fight. The other takes a harder blow, scoring 12, 17 and 18. Even though he is slightly tougher (16), he is down. The 17 is a light die, so he will be alive for questioning later.
The bandit leader is an important NPC and therefore uses the ordinary rules for injuries. However, seeing his henchmen defeated quickly, he decides to flee. The wounded henchman, suddenly drastically outnumbered decides to surrender.
13.3.1.3 NPCs in other situations
There are many other situations where a lot of work can be saved by treating NPCs at a statistical level instead of as individuals.
Let’s say the outlaws ride into Macho Grande and have a big gunfight with the sheriff and his men. Everybody will be shooting, bullets will fly everywhere and the action is fast and furious. Does the game master really want to slow down the game by keeping track of how much ammo each outlaw have? Of course not! Instead, do it the simple way. The outlaws have six-shooters, which mean that they have to reload once every sixth shot. After each shot, roll a D6. If it is a 1, that was the last shot and that outlaw has to reload. Sure, one outlaw may have to reload twice in a row, which probably meant he didn’t have time to do it completely. Another may fire ten shots without reloading, which probably means he picked up a weapon. Either way, will someone notice? Of course, if a player explicitly waits until an outlaw has fired six shots before popping up and returning fire, start counting shots the correct way.
In many ways, this handling will just add some of the confusion that is present in a real combat situation. People are running everywhere, bullets scream past your head, people are wounded and killed. You don’t count how many shot everybody has fired. You probably have to be fairly experienced to even count how many shots you have fired yourself. Did you fire six shots or only five?
A similar approach could be used in situations where the game master is unprepared. The players unexpectedly decide to rob a magician. What is his current MANA TALLY? The game master had not planned this encounter; he thought the players should get some clues from the magician and leave. He has not thought about his MANA TALLY or recharge rituals. The solution is simple: roll a suitable die. If his SAFE MANA LIMIT is 50 it is a fair assumption that he does not want to get too close to 50, so 2D20 should be a reasonable choice. If the game master feels that the players should not have robbed the magician and wants to give them a slap on the wrists, there is also another choice: give him a MANA TALLY of zero.
The important lesson here is that you should not be afraid to sacrifice some accuracy for speed and feeling. The important thing is to keep the feel of the situation, not to do a perfect simulation.
13.3.2 Making them special
As a rule of thumb, the shorter time a person has to make an impression, the more drastic he has to be. The main character in a movie has lots of time to develop the role in a subtle way, while the people who just pass by has to be stereotyped into angry taxi drivers, kissing couple, kid crying after a lost balloon, puking drunk and so on.
Remember this when portraying NPCs. Don’t be afraid to overdo them, make them caricatures. They need to be that way for the players to notice them and to remember them. Subtle NPCs are quickly forgotten.
If possible, try to put a personality even on persons who are normally faceless. The players may have no trouble sneaking up on Prison Guard #1 and Prison Guard #2 and killing them. However, they overhear them talking and hear Prison Guard #1 complain about how rambunctious his four children are and Prison Guard #2 replies that he should be happy, he and his wife has been trying to get kids for years. Perhaps they will try some less bloody solution now?
Some help in creating ad hoc NPCs with some personality can be found using the following table. Roll as many times as you think is necessary, discarding weird results.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 Tall Egoistic Nonchalant Slob Abusive Sad Open Naïve Introvert Cool
2 Altruistic Honest Negative Bald Insecure Brutal Clingy Fat Educated Loud
3 Annoying Loving Trustworthy Bright Stubborn Ugly Cuddly Old Bombastic Bully
4 Long hair Greedy Submissive Joker Peaceful Coward Clean Kind Mysterious Tough
5 Insidious Curious Experienced Short Reliable Inventive Helpful Young Dominant Nosy
6 Beautiful Flirting Intimidating Clumsy Innocent Frank Slim Boring Energetic Cruel
7 Unreliable Scarred Nasal voice Liar Focused Insecure Lazy Petite Aggressive Brave
8 Ordered Happy Short hair Silent Sinister Positive Slow Talker Muscular Cold
9 Sadistic Listener Confused Drunk Hothead Nervous Bold Weak Laughing Dirty
10 Generous Squeaky Competitive Leader Scared Sexy Neat Cute Inquisitive Loyal
11 Technical Feminine Manipulative Crazy Smooth Criminal Lofty Rebel Confident Dim
12 Stutters Morose Chauvinistic Hoarse Moody Stressed Stupid Deep Masculine Scary
13 Monotone Pondering Singleminded Sullen Forgiving Whining Lisps Slick Fast talker Busy
14 Depressed Reflective Deep voice Alert Attentive Musing Frantic Surly Frightened Bitter
15 Cheerful Watchful High pitched Angry Twisted Pitiful Mean Jovial Exhausted Fiery
16 Passionate Insulting Commanding Blunt Reserved Bashful Easy Rash Thoughtful Quiet
17 Improbable Pitiless Concentrated Shaky Secretive Twitchy Nimble Proud Gentleman Plump
18 Egocentric Romantic Exaggerated Helpful Hissing Squints Slimy Sly Enigmatic Bored
19 Protective Energetic Reasonable Fanatic Paranoid Analytic Violent Cynic Gracious Social
20 Articulate Carefree Vengeful Loving Nervous Ranting Tired Vain Resigned Polite
Don’t be afraid to overdo it. It is better to have persons that are a bit extreme that the players notice and remember than to have subtle, grey persons, which are never noticed.
13.4 The world as the characters know it
The game world is the only world the characters know and it is the world you want your players to experience. It will have to make an impression, it has to be exciting, and the players must be able to immerse themselves in it.
This section will discuss how to build the game world.
What do you need to think about? What makes a world playable? What makes it suitable for adventures? How will it work? What people will live in it? What is their life like?
These and other questions will be examined and hints and guidelines will be given.
13.4.1 What makes a world suitable for playing
A good world has to have a mix of several things. It cannot be too simple, or the players will quickly see through the illusion and see the game data. It must have some sort of conflict of interests, or there will not be anything around for the players to do. It also has to be familiar enough to the players for them to relate to it.
13.4.1.1 Complexity
The world has to have a certain level of complexity to seem real for the players. If it is too simple, it will look more like a stage and less like a world.
Complexity is also needed if the world is going to last more than a few gaming sessions. A simple world quickly runs out of adventure seeds.
Closely related to the complexity is concept. Concepts are what makes a world unique and gives it a special feel.
A good world should have more than one major concept or it will become single-minded and boring. It is equally important that is does not have too many major concepts or it will lose its direction and become a hopeless stew of non-related stuff. A good balance is probably in the vicinity of three or four major concepts.
Just major concepts are not enough. They provide the overall direction, but we also need all the interesting twists and turns. In this context, we will call these minor concepts. Minor concepts are usually things on the same scale as the characters, while the major concepts define the world, although this does not necessarily have to be the case.
You can have lots of minor concepts and they may change over time. You may add minor concepts as needed to slightly alter the direction of the world.
The popular TV series X-Files is based upon the major concepts of investigation, conspiracy and the supernatural. These, while interesting, have little immediate effects on the main characters, so some minor concepts are also used. These vary as the series progress, but include the relation between the main characters, Mulder’s sister, Scully’s child, the black oil, cigarette smoking man and so on. These minor concepts are what draw the characters into the story and deep into the major concepts. Without them, the major concepts would just be a distant background.
13.4.1.2 Conflict
Face it; utopia is not a place for excitement and adventure. Every good world needs conflicts. It may be huge conflicts concerning the entire world; it may be lots of small conflicts or any combination of large and small conflicts.
What is important, however, despite the size of the conflict, is that there must be a place where the players can fit in and make a difference, even if it is just on a local scale. It does not work well to put the players in the trenches of the First World War among thousands of other soldiers and subject them to random shellings. They will have little or no influence on the outcome. This does not provide a good start for good gaming.
There are several solutions on how to best involve the characters.
- Have smaller conflicts. This involves changing the world a bit, so it may not be appropriate in all cases.
- Put the players in key missions in a larger conflict. Put them in special operations attacking key targets.
- Put the players in some kind of command position. Let them command a star ship.
- Have smaller conflicts within the large conflicts. Let them play resistance members in the Second World War instead of frontline soldiers.
Don’t be afraid to have a larger conflict in the background. It provides a good setting and incentive for the players as they go around doing their small part. Just make sure you have a place where the players fit in.
A good idea in some cases is to have many smaller conflicts between smaller groups or countries. That way, you can easily allow the conflict to evolve and even be won or lost during the game without disrupting the entire game world.
Conflicts do not have to involve wars. They may be smaller fights or contain no violence at all. Classic examples of this is power struggles, economic conflicts, two men who wants the same woman (or two women who wants the same man), theft, espionage or just general dirt flinging.
Whichever way you go, make sure that your world has plenty of conflict in it.
13.4.1.3 Familiarity
The players must be able to relate to the world. It does not have to be exactly like the real world, but if it gets to weird, they will lose contact with it.
It is important at this point to examine the concept of realism. Realism can be many things at many different levels. It can be that a big gun hurts more than a small gun; it can be that even a hero dies sometimes; it can be that there are no ghosts. It is not, however, a requirement for familiarity.
So what does it take for the world to feel familiar for the players? There is no definitive answer, but some tricks may help.
- Don’t make the world too alien. If it is just weird, the players will not get it.
- Even if the world is different from reality, let some things work as in real life.
- Take time to inform your players about the world. Spend some time in the beginning of a campaign to introduce the world.
- Use a familiar world. Borrow a world or concepts from a movie or book that the players are familiar with.
- Drop in things the players can relate to. If a player has pets, drop in some animals that can be used as pets. It will make the world feel closer.
- Don’t complicate things if you don’t have to. Don’t call a fireball spell an orbis de ignis spell unless you know the players all speak Latin.
- Make the story about the people, not the surroundings. People are more or less the same everywhere, so they will be understandable. Look at good movies; even if they have star ship battles in them, the story is about the people.
- Respond to the initiatives of your players. If they find something interesting, use it even if you originally didn’t plan for it. If something does not work, do something else. Let the players assist you in detailing your world.
Of course, familiarity cuts both ways. Once the players start to know the world and feel at home in it, something weird or out of the ordinary is a perfect way of making them nervous.
13.4.2 Level of development
The level of development in the game world makes a huge difference. It could be club-wielding cavemen or it could be an interstellar civilization with antimatter bombs.
13.4.2.1 Technology
The technological development has an enormous impact on the game world. Wars have been lost and won due to inventions such as steel, stirrups, gunpowder, aircraft, and nuclear weapons. The impact of everyday life is even larger. What would life be without telephones, running water, television, cars, houses with heating and all the other things we take for granted?
So, technology has a huge impact. What do we need to consider when designing the game world? There are many things that could go wrong with improper application of technology, but these are the most important issues.
- Try to have the right technological level for the world, the level that the world needs.
- Try to have a consistent level of technology, or at least a good explanation why some areas are far ahead or behind others.
- Watch out for technology that creates shortcuts in the game. Mind reading technology can totally spoil an investigation scenario; cell phones can destroy a horror scenario based on isolation.
- Try to think through the consequences of technology. The players would not be the first to think of the idea of using a teleport device to drop a strike team behind enemy lines or deliver a bomb at the enemy base, so either make sure the world has thought about this, remove the technology or create a counter technology.
- Beware of computers. If you don’t create some artificial barrier for their development, they will be too good in a Sci-Fi campaign. It’s no fun solving every problem by asking what the computer thinks.
- Have some kind of theory about how things work. Eventually, the question will appear and you should at least be able to answer it with some pseudo-technical jargon.
- Consider the technical infrastructure needed to manufacture and use the technological gadgets.
- Consider the limitations of technology, not just the possibilities. What can go wrong, under what conditions will it work, how long before it breaks down, will it plug into another gadget and so on.
- Availability of potentially dangerous technology will probably be limited by legal means.
- Don’t make the technology too far out. If the players don’t understand what’s going on, they will lose touch with the game world. Try to keep advanced technology along the lines of “like this gadget today, but it can also do this” instead of totally new devices.
The main focus is not to create a perfect technological framework; it is to support the game. This sometimes means that realism may have to go in order to make the game world more playable. If you make a game world based on the works of Jules Verne, you’ll have to accept some things that are not strictly realistic in our world, but fits nicely within the concept of the game world.
13.4.2.2 Social development
As much as technological development has affected society, it can probably not rival the effect social development has had. There are many things that we in modern society take for granted, even though they were very different just a century ago. We consider such things as slavery, death penalty, torture, or treating people badly because of their sex or race barbaric, even though they still exist in less civilized countries. These factors have a huge impact on the game world, and their effects should be given very careful consideration.
You should probably consider the following issues:
- Most importantly, do not try to create a utopia. A world for excitement and adventure need conflict, needs tensions. This means that you should not be afraid to include things that are considered wrong in our world if they create the result you want.
- What is the ruling structure? The man with the biggest weapon? A king who inherits the title? An elected leader? A feudal society? Powerful families? Who is controlling whom? There are many choices, consider the effects it will have on your game world before making the choice.
- How stable is the ruling structure? Is there an emperor who is considered god who rules supreme or is it a fragile construction of scheming and backstabbing? Who is moving upwards and who are going down?
- How is the wealth distributed? Are there a few rich people and many very poor people? Is there a middle class? Is the value of a person considered the same as his economical status?
- Is there a legal system? Is it fair and equal for everybody? Is it corrupt? How powerful and effective is it? How harsh are the penalties?
- How big is the influence of other organizations? Trade organizations, religions, the military and so on.
- How are different people treated? Are people of some nationalities, races, religion, or sex mistreated or considered better?
- What is the bottom of society? Slaves, beggars, workers, or other? What does the society do to help them?
- Does the society have a working infrastructure? Clean water, food, transports, healthcare and so on.
- Are there wars? Are the wars big or small? How common are they? Do they affect ordinary citizens?
Give careful thought to how socially advanced your world is, it will put its mark on the entire campaign.
13.4.2.3 Travel between worlds
While travel between game worlds can be done in a generic game system like Generica, most of the time it requires very careful planning and handling to work. Even though it may be tempting to throw modern characters through a rift in time and space to a fantasy world, most of the time it does not work.
With careful planning and under special circumstances however, it can be very successful. Some genres handles this easier than others. A pulp hero may very well find a valley with dinosaurs and amazons in the jungle, the space explorer may crash on a planet with a prehistoric culture, a shipwrecked crew in the Bermuda triangle may find themselves in the lost city of Atlantis or a time cop may travel through time to stop aliens from destroying the history.
- Do not build an entire scenario around the only concept of the shock of being transported to another world. It is not enough; you need more for it to be a working scenario.
- Carefully think about what the players should know before the characters are flung into another world. Should they know about it?
- What harm can the characters do with their knowledge, which is most likely alien to the world they are in now? Does it need to be limited in some way?
- Should they be able to bring equipment to the new world? What would the effects be if the equipment were used in the new world?
- If time travel is involved, how will changes in the history affect the future? Make sure you have your temporal theory figured out or it can and will get really messy.
Most important of all, take a long, hard look at what you want to achieve. In most cases, you can achieve the same effect in one world, just using different places, with different technological and social development, different customs, different religions, different cultures, and different nature. You can do a lot with such changes; just look at all the different cultures existing in our world today. Stay focused on what you want to achieve, not how you want to achieve it.
13.4.3 Society
Running around alone in the world isn’t much fun. There need to be other people to interact with and these people will most likely be organized in some sort of structure. Giving some thoughts to how society works is not only essential to interesting games, it also gives many opportunities for exciting side tracks.
13.4.3.1 Structure
The first thing to consider about society is the basic structure. What drives the society, who is in control, how stable it is, what is the level of personal freedom and so on? Perhaps the most important question here is where the characters are intended to be in this structure.
The best way to start when creating a society is probably by modelling it after a real world society. Building a society that works and is believable is not as easy as it may look. Starting with a known working society, then making alterations in a controlled manner will make this a lot easier, as well as giving the players a setting they can find familiar points of reference in.
The structure of the society is very important when creating a feel for the society. If the secret police is very powerful and there are cameras and obviously plain clothed police officers everywhere, the players will notice it and will get the feel of an oppressed society. Add some random identity checks and let them witness some more or less random arrests, perhaps even let one of them be arrested, blindfolded and taken away and interrogated for a couple of days without the others knowing where he is until they find him released in a nearby forest. They will get very careful very soon.
13.4.3.2 Laws
In most campaigns, eventually the characters get in contact with the law, one way or the other. It is a good idea to at least have some basic ideas about how the legal system works.
The basic factors about a legal system can be divided into these groups: effectiveness, fairness, restrictiveness, and severity.
Effectiveness is how efficient the legal system is in detecting, capturing, and convicting criminals. This depends on factors such as the resources available to the police, how much power they have, how competent they are, level of corruption, what power the courts have and so on. Increasing the effectiveness does in most cases decrease fairness while increasing restrictiveness and severity, so it is a difficult balance.
The fairness of the system is determined by factors such as equal rights for everybody, fair courts, police that follows the laws, fair laws and so on. In most societies, even today, this is not the case, at least not completely. Typical examples from unfair systems of our world include systems where suspects are considered guilty until proved innocent, rich people are above the law, certain races are treated differently, the police make the laws, or the court rulings are done arbitrarily.
Restrictiveness is both a matter of what is considered illegal and a matter of how much personal freedom is restricted due to law enforcement reasons. It would be easy to eliminate crime if personal privacy was also eliminated, but who would want that? Typical forms of restrictive laws are when the laws have little or no practical reason, or when the laws are there just to keep track of the population.
The severity concerns how suspects and convicted are treated. Extreme examples of severe laws can be found during the infamous witch trials, where torture was common and the end result was almost guaranteed to be a painful death. Once you were accused, you had no rights and you were considered guilty; anyone speaking on your behalf was considered an accomplice. Another example in medieval societies was mutilations for small crimes like petty theft.
You should consider these issues when designing a legal system for your game world. They will decide if the players will look at the police as saviours or a frightening dark force. It will also decide how they will be treated if they should get into legal problems.
13.4.3.3 Customs
Not knowing the customs of a foreign culture could be anything from embarrassing to life threatening. There is an enormous spectrum of different customs in our history and they can easily be extended in a fantasy culture or alien culture.
Some examples are:
- Eating customs. In some cultures you are expected to eat everything you get to show it was good, in some cultures the host hasn’t provided enough food if you manage to clean the plate. Strange food can be an endless source of confusion. Table manners vary a lot, it is considered polite to burp while eating in some cultures, while using the wrong fork is a major mistake in others.
- Seduction, marriage, and sex. Is sex before marriage accepted? Sex outside the marriage? Marriage outside the race or class? Is it the woman or the man who is supposed to initiate contact? Do you have to convince the family before you try to seduce your intended spouse? Is prostitution accepted? Do the families arrange the marriages? There are endless possibilities for confusion and embarrassment in this area.
- Religion. Religious taboos, strange festivals, and weird rituals. Is gambling allowed? Are other religions tolerated?
- Social customs. Different ways of greeting when you meet someone. Should presents be opened when they are received or in private? Should economic transactions be handled discreetly? Different styles of clothing can be confusing. Just think about a Victorian lady stranded on an island where grass shirts are the only clothes, or the elven traveller who comes to a city where green is the traditional colour of clothing for prostitutes. What is considered the appropriate garments for an important person?
- Values. How are animals treated? What is considered important? Are outsiders welcome?
These are just some of the possibilities. Don’t be afraid to use strange customs to make the players feel away from home when their characters are travelling. If the game is slow, just have a character offend some local custom to get things rolling. If a character tries to seduce someone in a foreign culture, use every chance to confuse and complicate things.
If the characters wanted everything to be like home, they should have stayed home.
13.4.3.4 Religion
Religion is a big subject that can affect the campaign a lot, especially in campaigns where the gods play an active role.
The first question to sort out is if the gods are going to actually intervene in human affairs or not and to what extent. In historical religions, we have everything from gods who constantly meddle in the affairs of men all the way to a supreme being that is more a principle than a person. Gods can be effective if used carefully, but don’t let the players feel that they can rely on divine intervention whenever they get in trouble.
Another question is the number of religions. How many religions are there and are they all right? What is the relationship between the religions? What is the relationship between their deities? How large are the religions and how fanatical are the followers?
If several gods exist, do they work together or are they fighting each other? Which aspects of the world do they represent? What are their goals and how are they trying to achieve them?
Why does the gods bother with the human world? Do they need worship to remain gods? Do they want to guide their creations?
What are the followers like? What rituals do they have? How tolerant are they? Do the followers receive any concrete benefit from their worship?
Are there any gods at all in the religion? Are they just spirits or powerful creatures worshipped as gods? Maybe they are only mortal men, like the ancient pharaohs?
An interesting religion is a very useful tool to spice up the game, regardless if it is fantasy, horror, science fiction, or modern day. Just make sure it is believable or the players will see through it.
13.4.3.5 Politics
The politics of the game world is a good source of intrigue. It does not have to be the high level politics of kings and emperors; it could just as well be the local gossiping at the pub. Either way, the basic principles will be more or less the same and could be sorted out by answering the following questions:
- Who is in charge? It is important to know who the leader is, regardless of his level. What is the base of his power? What is he prepared to do to remain in power?
- Who is really in charge? Most of the time, the one who looks like the leader is just a figurehead for someone else. The important thing to know is who pulls his strings. Which strings is he pulling and how is he pulling them?
- Where does the real power lie? Sometimes, the real power does not li
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