Horrifically late Tron related post regarding virtual worlds

I saw Tron last night...last week...a few weeks ago...all right, a while back, and I enjoyed the movie. It was a fun film with some stunning special effects, and Daft Punk's musical score was a joy to hear. And it gave me some thought on how virtual reality and related environments might be employed in your campaign.

Virtual reality can be handled in two ways. You can go the route of The Matrix and have the characters' bodies held in some suspended state while their minds roam in the alternate environment, or you follow the Tron route and have their bodies and minds both enter the new realm. It is entirely up to you and how you want to handle things. What is important is you create a set of rules for your alternate reality and adhere to them so your players do not feel as if you are deliberately pulling the rug out from under them when they seem to be getting the better of you.

Now, you might be running a fantasy campaign and might be thinking virtual worlds would not work for you. But what is a virtual world? It is an alternate state of reality, which could also describe a dream state, or actions on an alternate plane. Or perhaps you are running a gritty noir-ish game involving cops and criminals and figure virtual reality is way outside your genre. Well hang on there! Perhaps the virtual reality is a drug induced state. In the television series The Prisoner, Number Six was subjected to a combination of drugs, agents in Wild West period costumes and props in order for him to think he was a former sherriff trapped in a small town. It was through sheer will that he was able to break through the facade. Many of the elements of the story resembled a virtual reality environment. Perhaps the PCs have found themselves in the grip of a villain who wishes information from them and would trick them with his artificial scenario? Perhaps the PCs are to be delayed until the villain can accomplish his aims?

There is one twist to the virtual reality concept and that is introducing it in a way where they players are unaware they are in a virtual environment. And this is fine, this can be fun. But it can also be tricky. For example, what if the players discover early on that they are in a virtual reality? I have often found that players can be very clever and see right through to the truth of things. If this happens then you must be prepared to alter your game to suit. The players must have some method to escape otherwise they will feel trapped and helpless. The methods can be varied; perhaps there is an exit they must pass through, perhaps there is a quest they must complete. Perhaps they must die in the virtual world in order to return to the real one? However the method the players must somehow be made aware of it either through investigation or a helpful NPC.

If this option is chosen then you must handle the how of it; how did the PCs wind up helpless and at the mercy of whomever if "VRing" them? If you are running a long term campaign and have earned the players' trust and respect then they are probably going to be willing to accept the idea that somehow their characters were rendered helpless. But if the campaign is in the beginning stages, if the players are mostly new, then I would advise caution. Players do not like to be jerked around. They do not like having their characters manipulated in such a ham-fisted manner. Players love their characters and do not wish to see them abused. The only exception to this would be if this is the hook of your game, the manner in which your players have met. Giving the players an obstacle to overcome in the very beginning is a staple of role playing going back to PCs being dropped into a prison and being forced to escape together. An idea might be they are in a virtual prison and discover a glitch in the system that might be a key to their escape. I recall a TNG espiode where Will Riker was trapped in a virtual world and in some manner managed to break free (and there is The Prisoner episode mentioned above where he too broke free without outside interference). If you do go this route bear in mind players hate being rescued by NPCs. A little NPC aid is always appreciated, but outright rescue rankles.

Using virtual worlds within your worlds can be fun if handled properly, but only if you plan well in advance for player ingenuity and bear in mind the feelings of your players. If you do neither then disaster is...ah...virtually assured...

My new toy...

I just received a new toy, a cam corder (a ten year gift from FedEx. Thank you, FedEx.). My first pics, of course:

So you throw a party...

First off, thanks to Dave for becoming follower number three. :)

So you decide to start a game, great! You have some initial plots in mind, have created NPCs, you have amassed a tremendous amount of background information provided on your message board, mailing list or web site. You now proceed to advertise at a variety of message boards and mailing lists.

And...No one is interested. No bites, no queries, nothing. So, what is wrong? Why isn't your game generating any heat? Here may be some reasons.

Bad Idea: You might think your game is awesome, but it is possible it sucks. When coming up with a game it might be a good idea to field the concept to some friends. You might not always get an honest response but a little feedback never hurt. And it is not a bad idea to discuss the idea on game message boards to refine your concept.

One example of a bad idea that generated virtually no interest whatsoever was one I saw ten years or so back, when PBEM.com was still around. That was The Place to post your ad. There was a guy who kept advertising the same game concepts over and over again, where he would play this principle character and everyone else would play the supporting cast. It reminded me of the lame Indiana Jones RPG where one player was to play Indiana, and everyone else would play Sallah, Short Round, Marion, etc. I think you can imagine how popular that game was. This guy did not seem to get that players do not want to play subordinates to GMPCs...Well, let me clarify that. In Star Trek games most of them have the captain is run by the GM. Players do not want to play characters who are so obviously inferior to GMPCs. In a Star Trek game even if the ship is run by the GM's character their own have plenty of opportunities to shine. This guy did not seem to get that no one wanted to play a mere mortal in his super human's world.

In situations like this it might be a good idea to simply ask the advice of others. Ask on message boards and mailing lists if your idea is a viable one, and if they do not think so ask them why. Do not be afraid of constructive criticism and do not take any potential personal attacks personally. It is the internet, trolls abound.

Bad Ad: Presentation is key and if you are unable to produce a well written, coherent advertisement then likely no one is going to play your game. Spelling and grammar are still important, and a clear and exciting ad is needed to sell your game. Edit yourself carefully before you post your ad, and bear in mind that you do not need to spell out your game's every little detail. People often have short attention spans and if they see your ad is twelve paragraphs long they will likely skip most of it. Specific details can be addressed on your web site or you can answer questions fielded to you via e-mail. It also could not hurt to have a friend of yours proof read your ad as well.

An ad can be best served by a good, catchy title, one that can give a prospective player the gist of your game right off the bat. For example, for my Star Trek: Vixen game I believe I used the tag line "Star Trek meets Firefly" as it was about a merchant vessel and her crew in the 'Trek universe. Right away it suggests the theme of the game, and it might draw the interest of Firefly fans. In the body of the ad I fleshed out the concept a bit more.

Finally, what is very important is you provide the e-mail address you will be using associated with the game as well as the web site, mailing list or message board associated with the game.

Bad Reputation: And this leads me to how you are perceived by others. Your actions have consequences and if you have a reputation of being a poor role player or a troll, these things could haunt you. The gaming community is not all that large and word can get around. If you have proven to be a difficult person to get along with or have a reputation for being vindictive and cruel then these things could harm your chances for running a game of your own. Now, I suppose you could fix this by altering your name and e-mail address, which of course means your entire game and subsequent relationships and friendships with your players will all be based on a lie. But hey, if running a game is so important to you that you want to deceive your players in perpetuity, who am I to stop you?

So to sum up, make sure your concept is one that players want to invest their time and effort in, possibly tweak accordingly or scrap the idea altogether and start over. Make certain that your ad is presented in a coherent and exciting manner to generate interest. And above all else, keep in mind that the internet has a memory and your actions can have consequences down the line that can possibly sabotage a game before it starts.

When characters become unplayable

I read some of my earlier posts, and man do I need to edit myself more better. :/

Sometimes you might discover that there is something...wrong with your game. Something is constantly cropping up and is making it difficult to generate effective and compelling plots. Something may be causing player friction. What could it be?

Perhaps it is a character.

Your player might be a great guy. He may be a great role player. But is his character monkeying up the works and ruining your campaign? Maybe. Here are some signs that a character may be the source of your problems:

Too Powerful: This character makes the rest of your team look like scrubs and it feels as if he might be able to solve all the problems singled handedly and is only holding back to spare his team mates' feelings. Superman might have days like this. Too powerful does not necessarily mean raw might, it could also mean too versatile. Hi tech, cosmic and magical characters could both suffer from a little too much versatility where their power sets are concerned. I used to game with a guy named Nick in my Champions RPG days, he ran a character named Quantus. I inherited this character from a previous GM who allowed Nick to abuse the character creation rules to such an extent that Quantus was a nightmare. His ridiculous speed and power set meant I kept having to create more and more powerful bad guys to give him a challenge, which meant the rest of the PCs suffered as a result. In the end I gave up when Quantus single handedly stopped the main bad guy and his entire team of badass minions single handedly.

Too Weak: Are you handling a PC with kid gloves? Do villains inexplicably leave him alone during combat? Or is he/she constantly getting hurt or kidnapped and placing the other PCs in peril as a result? Maybe the character's power levels are too puny for the campaign world. Batman makes keeping up with demigods look easy, but when your writer is Grant Morrison that is only natural. Not everyone can pull off being a powerless or low powered character in a campaign world where everyone else possesses god-like might.

Genre Incompatibility: Your player approached you with a novel idea, a character that was going to be refreshingly different. Perhaps he/she is a mage in a wild west setting. Or is a steampunk scientist serving on board a Starfleet vessel. Maybe he is the only character in the Potterverse packing heat. Initially it sounded like a neat idea, only now...

Well, this neat character that would have been great in a novel is just driving you nuts. Heat packing Potterverse character just put a bullet in the head of your principle villain, or Steampunk engineer is useless on an away mission. For one reason or another the character's way-cool weirdness is making thing difficult for you.

Too contentious: Conflict in a game is not always a bad thing. Characters who get along all the time can be boring. So when a player wants to play a character who does not play nice with others that is not a bad thing. The player wants to role play and that should never be discouraged.

But maybe his style is a little too...passionate. He adheres to the letter of the law too literally, or is a casual killer in a team of law abiding heroes. He/she hates another character and cannot resist an opportunity to needle his nemesis whenever possible. One way or another, the character is harshing everyone's mellow.

So, what do you as the GM do? If you let the player run this character it is partly your own fault. That does not necessarily mean you are a bad GM. You did not want to say "no" to your player, or he/she was a great salesperson, or your blood sugar was low that night when you wrote that e-mail agreeing that yeah, Starhammer The Undying would be a great addition to your wild west campaign. Or you were desperate to fill out your ship's roster and were willing to let the guy play Anything, even that Q/Borg hybrid, to swell the ranks. Whatever the reason, you have a problem on your hands and must fix it.

If the character is too weak or too powerful, you either work with the player to adjust their power levels. You could make the power change an adventure in itself; perhaps the uber powerful character has to sacrifice a measure of his might to stop the bad guy, or the weakling adopts the weapons of his fallen enemies to augment his abilities? If the character still has potential then work with the player to keep him. If the character's idiom simply does not work in regards to your game's tone/theme/setting, then it might be time to get rid of them altogether. If a player is contentious to the point of distraction, then they need to adopt some sort of in game reason for them to start playing ball with the other characters. It could even be an amusing reason; years back in Justice League megajerk Guy Gardner was knocked out by Batman and when he awoke he hit his head. This resulted in a complete personality change.

But perhaps your player is sticking to their guns. Your player insists their character is fine the way it is and they refuse to change or retire them. They are refusing to work with you and might even go so far as to say they will quit if they cannot play their character. When that happens, it is time to either stop the game or fire the player. Remember this; you are not being paid to be a GM (If you are, please let me know how. I would love to get in on that action), you are running your game on your own time because you want to, because it gives you pleasure. If this character and his player is making the game feel like a job then it is time to reassess your relationship, game wise.

Finally, as I said in an earlier post, it is very important to hold your temper. If things get heated then take a step back, calm down, find your happy place again. You never want to say something that might damage a friendship.

This, that...

To everyone reading this, I wish them a happy new year.

To Rafe, thanks for following my blog.

If anyone is interested, my New Years resolutions are to try and lose a little weight and to write a thousand words a day.

Finally, Red Letter has a new review up here:

http://www.redlettermedia.com/sith.html

When villains are too super...

First of all, a big shout out to my first (of many?) followers Kelty. :) Now, on to the post...

I am a fan of the television series House (although not as much as I used to be. The fact that Olivia Wilde is no longer on the series may have something to do with that, or it is just that the formula has gotten pretty old), but I almost stopped watching it during season three. For those of you who don't watch House, it is about a brilliant doctor with a Vicodin addiction due to his messed up leg, or at least he was addicted until last season. Anyway, he used to horde lots and lots of pills. This bit him in the ass when he ran afowl of a detective named Tritter. It seemed the producers of House felt he needed an arch nemesis and they created this guy.

I hated him.

Don't get me wrong, I think it was a good idea to give House someone to butt heads with. Chi McBride had been a bit of a thorn in his side back during season one, I think it was, and it was refreshing to see someone in House's universe that he could not bully.

But where Tritter was concerned he was given amazing super cop powers. He had no superiors to report to, he could whip up any warrant he needed, and he could even move right into the hospital and usurp office space so he could terrorize the doctors with interrogations. It felt fake and forced and perhaps police do have some latitude in investigations like this, but it did not ring true to me as I watched it (and House refusing to get a lawyer was just idiotic; if a cop threw me in jail overnight you are damn right I am retaining legal counsel!).

This brings me-finally-to the point of the post. A GM has to be careful not to make his villains too powerful. Yes, the villain needs to sometimes be a major, seemingly unstoppable presence in the game (for example, a lich king in a D&D Ravenloft game) but there should be a feeling that ultimately, given time and experience, he can be brought down. That is one of the (many) reasons I dislike X-Men games because more often than not the players are unable to change the world. There will be Mutant Registration Acts, Mankind will hate and fear them. The players are always going to lose in the end, or at the very best break even.

So when designing the bad guy for your epic tale think long and hard about how powerful he is. Will he be so strong as he is unstoppable, unbeatable without considerable NPC intervention? Will that be a constant source of frustration for your players? Be careful that you do not create a Tritter.

Random Star Trek thoughts

I dropped out of a Star Trek game recently and was a little bummed because frankly I think my dissatisfaction with the game sprang from two things. The first was, I did not ask enough questions. One of my Vindicators players is running the game and offered me a position and wanting to game, I jumped in without seeing if the game was for me. Had I done my homework I think I would have taken note of some of the characters being run and I probably would have backed out. The second thing is, the player running the game did not really tell me anything about the game.

What I jumped into was a romance novel thinly disguised as a Star Trek game. I am serious. I think every single player had a significant other, and many posts were devoted to characters calling one another pet names like "Bella". Occasionally something would happen that looked vaguely 'Trek like but they passed by so fast they were over before I knew it. Why? Because some players would furiously post over a short period of time and by the time I had an opportunity to reply, it was all over. This was partly due to some players running two characters.

Now, what did the GM do to help me fit in? Tie an NPC to her that would become her love interest. I was not really looking for a love interest but that is what I got saddled with.

Finally, I was playing a former civilian who was volunteered during the Dominion War and stayed on afterward, going to the academy and eventually becoming a lieutenant. I liked being a lieutenant, the lieutenancy fit my character's background and my temperament. I do not need to be a senior officer to enjoy playing Star Trek and frankly I find any game where everyone has three pips on their collar to be boring. So what did the GM do without consulting me first? Promoted my character two grades to Commander. Not only did I find this to fly in the face of any and all logic, but I discovered later on there were two 24 year old Commander department heads in the game, which really rubbed me the wrong way.

So, what did I learn from all of this? And what can you take from it (and do not assume this is exclusive to Star Trek; it can apply to any game)?

1) Homework is key. Make sure the game is for you before you join. Ask questions, explore the web site/forum, read other character bios. If you are joining late then read older posts to get a feel for what the game is like.

2) Likewise, if your game is fundamentally different from others in the genre it is only fair to warn your players of this. Do not present them with one thing then blindside them with another. Do not present your game as a gritty cop drama and then make it turn out to be a slapstick comedy. It's like saying your game is NYPD Blue and in reality it is Sledge Hammer. Yes, Star Trek has always had some romance or sex but a majority of the themes involve action and exploration. If your game is (fill in the blank) with a twist, then let your prospective players know!

3) Beware of player bullying. It does not always come from snide comments and the like. It can be something as innocent as some players delivering numerous posts and having them responded to without other players having an opportunity to respond themselves. It can make players feel impotent and useless. This is especially true if some players are running multiple characters, they can all but take over a game and turn it into something resembling fan fiction.

4) Be aware of what your player wants. If your player created one type of character and you try to force them into a role they did not ask for then you are only going to make them miserable. Consult them before making any major changes to their character backgrounds or introducing new elements to their character.

5) Try to make your game make sense. One thing that really annoyed me about Star Treks Voyager and Enterprise was how they handled promotions, which led to Harry Kim being an ensign for seven years. Likewise the same thing happened to Hoshi Sato, who when the series had their finale some seven years total had gone by and she too was still an ensign. Forcing someone to remain the most juniormost officer rank is just stupid and showed how little the producers understood how a military functions. One the other hand, TNG and DS9 both attempted to be a bit more realistic with occasional promotions during their runs (leaving out the whole Riker deal where they remained a Commander for fifteen years). And a jump from lt. Commander to full Commander was considered a big deal. If you are running a game that is employing a military structure of some sort then try and make it look realistic. I have seen all too many twenty five year old admirals over the years.