Long post covering several subjects

First of all, can you smell smoke?  Because my players have been on fire these past couple months.

As the unimaginative title suggests this post is going to cover some varied ground, so I have decided to break the post up into sections so if you wish to skip parts that do not interest you, that will make things easier.

Song of the week:

From the anime Macross Plus, a song composed by the amazing Yoko Kanno and  Gabriela Robin, performed in the Zentran language by Mai Yamane.



Self indulgent trip down Memory Lane and some recommendations

Back during the nineties when I was a student at Oakland University we used to have Anime Night once a month.  Dave Zyn was in charge of it and he would bring in an eclectic mix of stuff. I recall some of his choices were Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, The Enemy's The Pirates, Giant Robo and Macross Plus, among other things.  Sometimes his choices were a little weird and did not take.  Here Is Greenwood, for example, was just...Look, after watching a couple episodes of that anime I have decided I will never, ever understand the Japanese.  Some of Dave's choices were not popular.  One time he brought in one of the Super Sentai episodes that the Power Rangers series is adapted into for American audiences, it was the one with the giant SUVs.  It was fun to see the original product but some people were not amused.  He brought in the new Gamera movies and I recall a couple people just walked out, because damn they were just too highbrow to watch a live action movie with guys wearing rubber suits tearing up scale models of Tokyo.

Me?  I ate that stuff up and came back for seconds.  I loves me the giant flying turtle who coughed up fireballs.

Godzilla is Gamera's bitch.

Gamera, Guardian of The Universe is an outstanding movie.  It was a reboot of the franchise and the production values are outstanding.  But I guess since there weren't any animated tits in the feature some people just couldn't get into it.

So some of Dave's choices were unpopular.  I think Dave was just trying to show people there was more out there than the standard fare some anime clubs were showing.  He was trying to get the casual fan interested in other things.  That is part of the reason I have song of the week; listen to something new, maybe you will like it.

So some members of the Order of Liebowitz decided they wanted to take over anime night, and they pretty much took over.  The Anime Junta, as I called it, kicked Dave out.  I don't know what happened to Anime Night after that because I stopped going and I largely distanced myself from the Order.  Eh, it was time to move on, anyway.

So while some of what Dave exposed me to was not to my taste (man, I hated Irresponsible Captain Tyler) some of the other shows utterly blew me away.  There was the aforementioned Gamera, but there were two shows that were unanimously popular.  The first was the aforementioned Macross Plus:

Macross Plus was about two test pilots and the woman they both love.  When they were teenagers they were all great friends, but now as men and talented pilots, Goa and Isamu, cannot stand one another.  What has caused the rift between them?  What event transpired in the past between them and Myung?  It was a wonderful story combining romance and action, with complex characters.  I remember we were watching episode three and the big show down was about to commence, and the song above, the one that played during the end credits, kicked in.  Many of us cried out in horror because damn it, we were getting this well crafted pay off and we could not stand the thought of waiting a month to see the finale!  We were collectively that drawn in.

And then there was Giant Robo:

Giant Robo is a masterpiece.  In the future Earth's energy problems have been solved by the incorporation of the Shizuma Drive, a clean source of energy that fuels everything from aircraft to cigarette lighters.  In this utopian society there exists Big Fire, a terrorist organization bent on world domination.  Only the United Nation's Experts of Justice stand a chance of defeating Big Fire.  Only now Big Fire has what appears to be a Doomsday device, a weapon that could destroy every single Shizuma Drive on the planet, plunging the world into a new Stone Age.

If you get a chance I highly recommend the Gamera reboot movies, Macross Plus and Giant Robo.  Yes, you might need to know a bit more before seeing Macross Plus as it is a sequel to the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross (later adapted for American television as the first third of the series Robotech) but I think it largely stands on it's own.

The part touching upon PBEMs

What made me think of these anime was a conversation I had with a new co-worker.  He is an artist and I have been loaning him my Giant Robo DVDs, and he thoroughly loves the artistic style of the series.  I mentioned to him Macross Plus and how much he might like that as well, and it got me to thinking about why I love both series so much above others.  I mean sure, I have seen other anime; I own Nadia, The Secret of Blue Water, and I will always have a special place in my heart for Project A-ko, and one of the first series I ever purchased was Dominion, Tank Police.  But I think what sets Robo and Macross Plus above the others was how I looked at them as a GM.  Both worlds possess immense potential for a GM to exploit.  In Macross Plus' case that world is rife for epic war stories.  And what player could resist role playing a pilot strapping on fighters that fly through space and transform into robots with giant guns?

If you don't think this is the least bit cool, stop reading my blog.

And Macross Plus showed how a game can be more than just blowing shit up.

And Giant Robo?  The Experts of Justice is a Japanese version of a super hero team and the "retro futuristic" setting looks awesome.  Players could be other Experts based in other parts of the world taking on factions of Big Fire or other organizations bent on supplanting them.

What we have here are two rich environments for a GM to exploit.   There is plenty of information online for both series if one wishes to do some work and find it.  Both shows are available to purchase on Amazon for very reasonable prices.

But what are GMs (or "moderators") running these days?  X-Men games.  Lots of X-Men games.  Or a Batman game where you get to play one of Batman's many members of his supporting cast or one of the Joker's minions.  In the former you get the same plots: world fears you, someone is likely trying to kill you, you are probably playing a very pretty mutant who bemoans the fact that you have rugged good looks or a nice set of tits as your secondary mutation.  In the latter you are playing a game where you get to play a sidekick in a story with a closed ending.  Where is the creativity?  Where is the originality?  There is an Avengers game that will start up the day after the movie comes out, so you get to play one of the Avengers shown.  No original characters, please.  Only canon characters.  We wouldn't want to challenge your imagination.  And yes, there is an Avengers game out there that gives you the option of playing original characters but according to the "moderator" that got back in touch with me about it you have the option of playing a Master of Evil, and I have all sorts of problems with games where PCs play good guys and bad guys both (and I will be writing an article about that later on), so I have an entirely different set of issues there.

Just this past week someone advertised a Hunger Games game.  What.  The.  Hell.  What, exactly, are people supposed to do in a Hunger Games game, I ask you?  Hunt one another?  Mope around and angst over their fate?  I guess there is a market for that; there are Twilight games out there so I guess the sort of people who play those would love to indulge in that sort of whiny downer role playing.  Oh, right.  X-Men games, I forgot.  Well no, I didn't.  The number of X-Men ads never lets me forget they exist.

If you are running a game then you should be fostering a feeling that the players have options.  Options in what characters they can play.  Not just canon characters someone else created, but encourage them to make their own. There are players out there eager to create their own characters.  I have the extreme pleasure of running games where my players run original characters.  Sure, original characters pose challenges and it can be frustrating, but in the end I find it very rewarding.  Over the years I have been blessed to see some wonderful characters, and to run players playing them.

And what about the world, the environment your games takes place in?  Yes, you want to attract players and do to that it is easier to run a game with an established, well known universe.  But that can also be a trap because not every fictional world works for a PBEM.

Hunger Games?  Really?

If you are running a world make it one that is unique or one that has seldom been seen, and one that provides you as the GM with a wide variety of options in regards to plots and adventures.  So your X-Men game takes place in the future.  Same fucking problems the X-Men face in the present, nothing new.

Are you as a "moderator" lazy?  Is it that you do not want to work at creating your own world?  Or that you do not want to take a risk and choose a world that has not yet been exploited?  Or that you lack the creative juices to create you own world?  Do you think that once you choose a pre-established world that all the hard work is done?  Not likely.  Or are you afraid of all the hard work a unique world would entail?  Sure, that is always a risk.  I ran a game called the D-Police, extra dimensional cops.  I created a lot of background.  The game failed.  Twice.  I was terribly frustrated.  But I chose to take that risk, there were no guarantees that it would work.  I tried, I failed, I dusted myself off and tried again.  It's like the Monty Python joke from The Holy Grail, where the owner of Swamp Castle talks about how every time they built a castle it sank.  Finally he built a castle upon the remains and it was the strongest castles in all the isles!  That's what I do.  I keep building, despite the occasional sinking.  Because it is fun for me to do.

Unused pre-established worlds are out there, you simply have to have the will to look for them and the courage to take a chance and use them.  Unique worlds are difficult to construct but I see them as fun to make.  Canon characters are easy but it is the unique character where the creative payoff lies.

I hope you enjoyed the song of the week, were not too bored by my nostalgic indulgence, found interest in my recommendations and were more inspired than insulted by my observations.  Peace out!

Song of the week

Van Halen.  Man, when I think rock and roll this is the first band that comes to mind.  Yes, I grew up on The Beatles but as weird as this may sound when I think "rock and roll" big hair, wild guitar riffs and screaming vocals all come immediately to mind.

Yes, I am a child of the eighties.

I suppose if I am choosing a Van Halen song it should not be a cover but I love this song for the nostalgia the video produces.  Yes, I know earlier with Florence and The Machine I chose a video that focused on the lyrics.  It's my blog, I can ignore the rules at will.

Quick update...

First of all, I wish everyone a happy and safe Easter.  Second, my output here is going to be slowing down for the foreseeable future.  My Vindicators game has picked up steam and for a short time the Neo Phyters rpg has made a come back.  So with all the player activity I want to focus more on being a GM rather than writing about how to be a better GM.

Song of the week

Saliva, Badass.  I heard this song used in the Lockout trailer, and while I have low expectations for the movie (although Guy Pierce looks like he might be hilarious) I dig the song.

Generating Villainy

If you take a look at my Vindicators web site you will see there are a lot of characters.  You might wonder where all those characters came from.  A majority of them I came up with myself, but I do not want anyone to think I have this unlimited font of creative energy pouring out of my head.  I have short cuts, methods, tricks that allow me to produce so many characters.  And today I am going to share them with you.  In this I am going to mostly focus on super villain teams as the PCs seldom fight solo.

Find a theme.  Many super villain and hero groups are based on a theme.  DC Comics’ Royal Flush Gang (recently featured in the DC animated movie Justice League:Doom) is a great example.  Finding a theme to base your villains around it a terrific short cut and I have done this a few times.  For example, I created a group called Heavy Metal and named each of the villains after heavy metal songs like War Pig, Ace of Spades, Turbo Lover (a speedster), Unholy, Neon Knight.  The problem was the team’s longevity was called into question as many of the songs chosen were old.  I am not a big modern heavy metal fan and I found most of the modern song titles I came across did not work out so well.  It was the same problem Image Comics had in creating a character named Grunge; after a certain point the name alone makes him sound old and dated even though he is supposed to be in his twenties.  Heavy Metal worked when I was running a Champions game way back when, not so much for my PBEM.  The solution was to make them old villains, literally.  For example, Neon Knight became an aging ex-con who wrote a book.  The rest were dealt with in one way or another and were retired to history but did have the benefit of adding some history to the game.  Ace of Spades is the only one around and due to my friend Rafe’s efforts he now has a tremendous back story.  It seems being a vampire makes him both literally and figuratively hard to kill.  So even though the team did not have legs, they served a purpose (Which is another excellent lesson to learn: never throw anything out when it comes to gaming.  You never know when it might come in handy later.).

Games are a good source for a theme but finding the right game can be difficult.  Chess pieces have been used as have playing cards.  What is left, a group of Jenga themed minions?  For me I picked Pool.  Fifteen balls, sixteen if you include the cue ball.  That is a pretty nasty team, they can overwhelm a group of heroes based on sheer numbers alone.  And what powers do you give them?  For me I decided each one would wield a different weapon based on classic super powers; flame thrower, laser, gravity generator, kinetic force generator, etc.  Eight Ball employed a mind control helmet.  And what to call them?  I decided on The Hustlers, in part because I love that Paul Newman film and because it was the only pool term that came to mind that could cover the team as a whole.  So The Hustlers became a good source of cheap muscle being outfitted by a mysterious benefactor with weapons that would self destruct if tampered with.

And why limit yourself to established games?  Why not create your own.  Instead of using Clue, create Suspicion, an obvious Clue knockoff.  You can have fun with names like Lady Cerulean, Major Munsell and Doctor Folly (And yes, that is the name of an actual color).

The Zodiac.  This is an easy one and I have created two super villain groups based on this, a classic team from the past and a current team.  The great thing about this is when one guy dies, the rest of the group can recruit another.  I remember way back when I ran a Champions game one of the main bad guy teams was called Zodiac (Hero Games produced an outstanding supplement).  When Leo was accidentally killed by one of the players I had him replaced by a mind controlled Lionheart (Kate Bush, coincidentally, is a Leo.  I could not have planned that better myself. ).  And using a Zodiac theme is always interesting when you throw in things like fate, and astrology.

The Minotaur is a cyborg.  Doug Shuler, you are a genius!

The nice thing too about using the Zodiac is it is not limited to the super hero genre.  The zodiac can be used in fantasy, urban fantasy or gritty crime dramas for criminal organizations.  And how about Chinese years and their related animals?  What if there was a group that was chosen by the year they were born and they possess some sort of personality trait or power related to the animal sign they were born under?  I did not create a group like that, it just came to me while I was writing this.  They too can apply to other genres.

Color.  I have created two groups with a color theme, The Sisterhood.  That might sound silly, but with names like White Noise and Black Light (And no, Black Light herself was not afro American as you often see in comice, i.e. Black Lightning, Black Goliath, etc.  However, Hard Winter’s Black Ice was and he was not at all happy about the name.) you can see the possibilities.  Tangerine Dream, Orange Crush, Electric Blue, Sea Green. Some were better than others.  I had more fun with the second team in large part because I had to become truly creative with names.  I found out Caput Mortem is actually a color, and the perfect name for a necromancer.  Feldgrau is a German dominatrix, Atomic Tangerine a nuclear powerhouse, etc.

What else?  How about anatomy?  I took four elements from the human body-muscle, nerve, bone and blood-and made a villainous quartet.  There was a brick, a mentalist, a guy in armor (Veshuthru, Prince of Bone, Lord of Marrow.  I loved that guy.), and a vampire.  I could have taken it further but Selene, Sorceress of Spleen seemed to be stretching things a bit.  Oooh, a new one came to me while I was writing this: Alarash, Scion of Skin!  He skins his victims and when he wears their hides he can adopt their appearance as well as their powers!  Damn, I wish I came up with that character earlier.  Well, the word “scion” means the younger member of a family so perhaps I can team him up with a new generation.   That might be a bad idea as for eyes I might make a hair guy and call him Monarch of Mustaches or something. 

Monarch of Mustaches.  Baron of Beards.  Hmmm…

As you can see, a theme can sometimes get a little ridiculous.  There was this dark, horrible period in Green Lantern’s run when he was fighting a group of construction themed bad guys called The Demolition Team.  That was just…It was just a bad, bad time and if there was ever a reason for the editors to want to turn Hal Jordan into Parallax you can just look at lame story lines like that one and it all makes sense.  So a theme can be fun, just don’t let it get out of hand.

Find common ground: An offshoot of the theme is creating a group which has something in common.  Groups like Heavy Metal are comprised of characters with different backgrounds; the only thing they have in common are the names they choose to call themselves.  The Royal Flush Gang?  They picked a name and from there their look and equipment adhered to the. But if you look at groups like Marvel’s Brotherhood of Mutants then you see a different sort of team; that of characters with a common origin in that they are mutants.  DC’s Hyperclan?  They are white Martians.  A good villain group could be comprised of bad guys with a shared past or something that sets them apart from others and hence makes them find value in working together, something like that was a thing they did not choose to have or be.  The necromantic Graves Clan is a good example of this.  While not all of them are related by blood they are by family association and similar powers/abilities.

Speaking of families, one of my favorite groups was The Company of Wolves, four brothers who were werewolves with super powers. In my campaign world people with supernatural abilities cannot have powers from other origins; when they are turned they lose their powers.  So the Hobbes brothers were unique.  I had never gotten around to it but I had planned on creating an Irish criminal family who had a blood feud with the Hobbes, but one of the themes I was going to use for names was, ah, colors.  And I had already created The Sisterhood by that time so using color names like Saffron and Lincoln just seemed, well, lame.  I might come back to the Irish family idea, though.  Banan is a boy's name meaning white, Bran is black.  Those are good names for twins.  Oran is pale green.  Donia is a girl's name meaning dark skinned.

I love the internet.

The Circle of Sorcery and Insaniacs are two (well, three if you count classic Circle of Sorcery) are all characters with magical powers and through that might share common goals (i.e. pursuit of knowledge, power, etc.).   When I ran a Champions campaign (and this is a bit hazy) I either came up with the idea myself or one of the Hero Games writers suggested it but a good super villain group was comprised of all the alien bad guys provided in their various supplements.  In the pages of Avengers Ultron formed a super villain team consisting of the many robots, androids, and artificial life forms floating around the Marvel universe at that time.  The name of the group?  Heavy Metal.

So a common background can go a long way towards developing not only a team theme, but possible motivations as well.

Find inspiration in pictures.  Over the past twelve years I have amassed a tremendous amount of images from the internet (I have a feeling if SOPA gets passed I am going to be in serious trouble. ) and sometimes when I am looking for inspiration I look at some of these pictures and say “Hey, you look like you would make a great bad guy.” You might think “Tom, that sounds like plagiarism or something akin to it”.  And perhaps it is.  And if I were getting paid the big bucks to run a game (And if there is some way to make money running The Vindicators please let me know, I’m all ears.) then I would feel guilty about it.  But my primary purpose in doing that is to entertain my players.  And if I see a picture and think this guy with a halfway decent back story and maybe a little tweaking to his look would make an ideal guy to fight Wolf, then I am going to do that.  I made an extra-dimensional hit squad from a collection of pictures, tossed them together for a quick and fun fight.

All these ideas are great for generating quick villains and even a little bit of back story, but what about depth?  Depth is largely over rated.  If I had the time or inclination I could write five thousand word back stories for every super villain on my site, but what would be the point?  Do we really need to know who the Hobbes brothers' parents were?  Outside of The Circle of Sorcery's Il Spino Rosa being a former Olympic fencer embittered by her magic tattoo do we need to have much more of a back story?  Sure, it might come up if the heroes are attempting to track her down and then you can generate some information, but until then do not sweat it.  I think perhaps part of the reason there are so many canon based games out there is GMs are terrified of the prospect of creating an analog to Lucius Malfoy or the like.  Guess what, people.  JK Rowling got paid lots and lots of money to write those books and generate all that background.  You are running a free game.  Provide the minimum up front, supply greater detail later.  Why else should you not worry about extensive back story outside of the aforementioned not being paid part?

Imagine this.  You have created Thorvir, Lord of Chaoslia.  You have lovingly detailed his family tree, created a back story for his four wives, have figured out the potential political machinations going on between his three sons and h-

And then Ghorr, Elf Slayer, makes a called shot and decapitates him.

I am not saying you should scrimp on details, only you should not obsess over them.  Did we really need to know Darth Vader's mother's name?  Of course not.  The Emperor was a perfectly good villain and beyond knowing he started off as a Senator named Palpantine nothing much needed to be known about him; his past is shrouded in mystery.  And yeah, a quest to uncover some dark portion of that past would make for a great campaign.  But otherwise if the players do not need to know it, do not write it.  If a player wants to know something like a character's family tree ask them why they want it.  If they cannot give a good game related reason then do not provide it.  Tell them they have the tree and no, nothing in it seems suspicious (unless you fully intend for there to be something suspicious in it.  Just because you having written down every little detail doesn't mean you can't be collecting possible plot hooks.  And the great thing about plot hooks is many can be recycled if a character is killed.  Remember: never throw anything out.).  If they get all pissy remind them you have a life and you aren't being paid to amuse them.  If that doesn't work point out what I mentioned before; that what is the point of creating a family tree if at least one of the players is planning on whacking the guy anyway just to put a monkey wrench in your plans?  Believe me, one of the players is thinking of it.

So to sum up; find inspiration in themes, associations and pictures.  When creating character produce some basic information to give the illusion of depth, but do not knock yourself out creating extensive an unnecessary back story.  Remember that you are running a game because it is supposed to be fun for you as well as your players.  Do not make it feel like work.

Song of The Week

My taste in music is pretty varied but if I had to be pinned down I would say I am a classic rock kind of guy.  Van Halen, Queen, Styx, The Beatles(!), AC/DC, Foreigner, Rush, J-Geils Band KISS, and The Police are all bands whose music I love.  And yet despite that very few of them have been represented on Song of The Week.  The reason for that is when I decided to do SOTW I wanted to have one song per band, at least in the period of a year.  And how do I choose which Beatles song?  That is a pretty tall order.

So when choosing songs from these acts I think what I would like to do is choose songs which do not receive much, if any, airplay.  When I chose J Geil's Come Back (Baby), for example, that song gets hardly any airplay on classic rock stations here in the metro Detroit area; if anyone plays J Geils it is usually a song from Freeze Frame or from their first live album (although lately Love Stinks has been playing a lot).  Good stuff to be sure, but it would be nice to hear One Last Kiss to change things up.

The first Queen album I purchased was their greatest hits, the next one was The Works.  I think The Works is one of Queen's best albums with hits like The Hammer To Fall, Radio Ga Ga and Is This The World We Created.  This Song, Machines, was probably my second favorite song on the album and never got airplay, at least, not around here.

Song of the week

Animotion, Obsession.  Hearing this song reminds me of how awesome the eighties could be.  Younger people could mock our fashion sense all they like but we had fun, good pop music and great Star Wars movies.