GURPS Cabal: How Mailanka Designs a Campaign: Part 2b: the Rules Continued

As I discussed in the previous post, when I tackle a campaign, I tackle it in the GURPS Action model, which involves thinking about my rules, what I want my game to be about, how I want it to play, and then I use that to design my templates.

So what do I want my GURPS Cabal to be about?

Well, let's imagine what a typical GURPS Cabal game might be about.  First, something happens.  Perhaps a creepy mummy slips out of its coffin at a museum and kills a dude and steals some artifacts, or perhaps someone inherits a creepy reality-shard journal that speaks of things that never happened but will, or perhaps your passer dies.  Something happens, and being an occult game, you need to investigate what happened.

We already have a game that makes heavy use of investigation: GURPS Monster Hunters.  Of course, the premise of GURPS Monster Hunters is that  you're out to kill the monster while in GURPS Cabal you are the monster... but on the other hand, is it really so different?  What's the difference between a group of Black Ops soldiers hunting down that mummy to put a stop to his rampage, and a Cabalist hunting down that mummy to ask it a few questions and/or gain access to its dark secrets?  Or perhaps to put a stop to its rampage because it's growing inconvenient.  So we simply rip those rules wholesale from Monster Hunters.

 Once our Cabalists have uncovered the truth to the mystery, the conspiracy begins.  We need to marshal Cabal resources to do something about it.  We need to hide it from the prying eyes of the public.  We need to manipulate those black ops soldiers to slow their progress and let us get to that mummy first, and we need to convince that mummy to join our side.  At its heart, once you get past all the dry bookishness of the cabalists, they're spectacularly social people; they have to be, they secretly rule the world.

So where do we get the rules for that?  Well, conspiracy comes in three, distinct elements.  The first is about understanding power structures, their interconnectedness, and how a conspiracy needs to play out.  Our go-to resource for that would be GURPS Illuminati, but that doesn't help us too much.  Mostly it just offers GM advice and setting suggestions.  Conspiracy is a mode and it discusses that for us.  Otherwise, Action offers some suggestions regarding convincing organizations to do things for you ("Pulling Rank"), and we just toss in some rules about Administration and Politics.

 Next, we need to persuade others to help us.  GURPS Illuminati has some suggestions on what that will look like: You might manipulate people directly, but generally you're going to get someone, an agent, and he's going to do the manipulating for you.  You manipulate one guy, and leverage him to manipulate someone else.  For example, if we want to convince the Black Ops soldiers to back off, we could ask them nicely.  Some Diplomacy or Intimidation checks might do it, but they're going to be really tough and they have an entire organization backing them.  A better strategy might involve getting the organization itself to pull support for their mission.  If we can control someone in their organization, that's much more powerful than confronting the soldiers themselves.

To do this, we turn to GURPS Social Engineering, which discusses dealing with organizations (surprisingly irrelevant, though could be useful for running a lodge), manipulating people (alright), recruiting people (there we go), blackmailing them (bingo!) and brainwashing (Do tell!).  When I was finished researching this bit, I think that was the first time I really began to be afraid of the cabal.

Finally, we need to hide evidence of the supernatural.  Deception.  Remember how that mummy murdered someone?  What if it got caught on camera? What if the police begin to investigate the murder?  This could expose more of Cabalistic influence than we would like, thus we need to dispose of the body, alter the camera evidence and send the police off in some other direction.  Monster Hunters has a sparse discussion of this, to my surprise, but Action 2: Exploits, always my hero, rides to my rescue.  It has an entire section on "cleaning," hiding evidence, faking evidence, making up cover stories, disposing of bodies and etc. I could probably go into more detail, but this will do.

Now that we've hidden our mummy from the world and pulled the black ops team off the trail, we can walk right up to the mummy, help him with whatever he's doing, and get him to join the cabal.  Easy.  As long as everything goes smoothly, we'll have a new ally to the cabal and no muss or fuss.  But when does anything ever go that smoothly?  No, at least one black ops soldier is still on our trail, the mummy isn't interested in cooperating, and somehow the mafia got involved.  What would a good game be without some pulse-pounding action? 

The mode of our action will vary.  We could treat this game as full-on horror, but I think if players are the monsters, they'll want something pulpier.  We could go full-on action heroics, but that strikes me as overkill.  Do we really imagine Cabalist assassins as charging a room full of enemy soldiers while firing round-after-slow-motion-round into their midst and back-flipping out of the way of bullets?  I don't.  They seem grimmer than that: Snipers, thieves, knives in the dark.  If it comes to a fair fight, it's bloody and terrifying, and the only things that can do ridiculously inhuman things are inherently inhuman: Super-fast vampires, super-strong werewolves, and so on.

I didn't turn to anything for this, though both Monster Hunters and Action have some good rules on combat.  I'll use more of Horror's rules, though, and I've been running combat-scenarios for awhile now, so this requires little investigation.

But those three parts together put together the core of how a game will play out, leaving only one last thing to worry about...

Magic.

GURPS Cabal: How Mailanka Designs a Campaign Part 2a: The Rules

The best supplement ever written for GURPS was GURPS Action 2: Exploits.  Technically, the Dungeon Fantasy series got the ball rolling, but Dungeon Fantasy is too self-contained (witness all the DF fans whining about how there needs to be a "serious" version of DF, or how they need "official" monsters).  GURPS Action 2: Exploits created a set of cohesive rules that could serve as a template for any similar campaign, and indeed, I think one of the reasons it isn't "better supported" is that generic support (like Gun-Fu or Martial Arts) work perfectly well with Action in a way that could suit a variety of campaigns.  I used it as the basis for G-verse, for example.  And it serves as an inspiration for how Cabal will work.

Let me take you aside and talk about how GURPS really works, for most people, and how Cabal was clearly designed, before I get to how I'm doing it and why.  Most people approach GURPS as a vast whole.  They grab the book, say "Like, make a character or something.  Oooh, here's a few ideas!" And off you go.  For example, GURPS Cabal lists the Scion template thus:

Scion

Within the Cabal, old blood will tell; families steeped in
occult knowledge and raised to fight the secret wars have
guided the Cabal for centuries. The scion of such a family
may be an eager blueblood or a once-carefree student who got
a big surprise on his 21st birthday. Either way, you can’t
resign from your family.

Advantages: Heir, Secret True Name, Status, Wealth;
your family may have (or be) a Patron or Ally Group; if your
childhood was really strange, you may be Unfazeable or possess
Racial Memory (at the 15-point level).

Disadvantages: Almost anything, from Laziness (“The
Black School has to take me, I’m a legacy.”) to a grim Sense
of Duty.

Skills: Leadership, Savoir-Faire; depending on the family
tradition, History, Occultism, or even Politics.

That's not a template, that's a suggestion.  Kenneth Hite clearly just thought you'd build "I dunno, something kinda magey." And then gave some additional suggestions: Build your mage with things like Heir, Secret True Name, Wealth, some Laziness, Savoir-Faire, and conjure up a back story of hoary, creepy old bloodline that has worked for the cabal for ages, like the Malfoys from Harry Potter or the Dresdens from the Dresden Files.

And that's fine, but it's not what I want.  The above creates situations where people might end up with skills and advantages that never get called upon (like what if Politics is never an issue in an exploration-happy game?) and frankly, that's how most campaigns work anyway, especially in GURPS (which tends to rely on players leveraging their talents rather than passively waiting for the GM to call for them).  But I prefer something tighter rather than a sprawling mess of "Sure, you can do that too." It works, but it's not for me.  I want Action.

So what makes GURPS Action work? Despite the fact that GURPS Action 1: Heroes came out before GURPS Action 2: Exploits, I think the second is what defines the first.  Sean Punch carefully skimmed over all the rules, skills and advantages, and pondered what sort of game he wanted to create, and then based on that game and the rules he devised for it, he created a list of appropriate skills, advantages and disadvantages, and from those, he derived his templates.  This means that every last character only has skills and traits directly useful to gameplay in a way that Sean Punch (and anyone who reads his books) understands.

I'm going to do the same for Cabal (just as I did it for G-verse and for Cherry Blossom Rain).  Is it overkill?  Perhaps.  I know plenty of people who run games the Hite way, and given my enormous respect for Hite, you'll never hear me criticizing that approach.  But my approach not only works well for me, but it generates material that lets it work well for others too.  My take on GURPS Cabal will let people hit the ground running.

GURPS Cabal: How Mailanka Designs a Campaign Part I: Inspiration

As inevitably happens with me, as school wound down and work eased up, all my suppressed creative energy comes bounding forth, and I suddenly had to run GURPS Cabal.

For those of you unfamiliar with GURPS Cabal, it is Kenneth Hite's masterpiece of hermetic magic, secret history, conspiracy and weirdness.  Imagine Mage: the Awakening, only rife with rich details to its magic, and the actual oddities history would likely throw up at you, plus a very dark edge: You are not heroes fighting in the shadows to protect mankind, you are the puppet masters pulling on the strings of mankind while you delve into dark lore to expand your power.

So I know what I want to run, more or less.  As usual, I have visions in my head about interesting characters: a bratty young witch with a cruel twist to her smile; a gentleman in a brown suit, cigar in hand, as he leans back in an overstuffed chair behind which rises shelves full of arcane tomes; an angel hidden inside the body of a man walking down a busy city street, the glass reflecting his hidden glory and expansive wings as he carries apocalypse behind him;  forbidding, Sumerian runes full of the letters of their dead language and hints of a darker, cthonic reality lurking beneath the edge of the world;  maggot-fleshed Molobrians, with their needle-mouthed squeals echoing off of the insides of a sewer.

But images alone won't get my game up and running.  That'll take time and work and thought.  Time and work require attention span, and attention span, especially with my ADHD, requires a way to deal with my constant distractions, and the best method I've found is to surround myself with things that constantly remind me of my task, and inspire me to do it.  Thus, wherever I turn, I am distracted by things that bring me back to my course, and focus my attention, laser-like, on the campaign I want to build.

A soundtrack helps.  I was initially inspired by Florence + the Machine's No Light, No Light

I've added more to my personal playlist, but whenever I need to think about my game, I just turn on my playlist and already I can feel myself flowing in the right direction.

Art helps a great deal too.  When I have nothing better to do, I'll start hunting for artwork.  Some pieces are pure inspiration, and some pieces are characters that I might use in the game.

Then, of course, books.  Lots and lots of book.  GURPS Cabal is, naturally, my bible, but no matter how deeply you dig into a book, it's never enough.  It gives me a single template on demons, but mentions that there are dozens and dozens.  It talks about lost magic and ancient eras, but it doesn't really give them more than a paragraph.  It discusses the importance of Cairo and London, but there's no discussion of what interesting places or who you might find there.  You can suck the marrow dry from a book, and still be hungry.  So I must look elsewhere.  GURPS Horror will give me more than enough help for fleshing out my monsters. GURPS Thaumatology will help me give my magic even more detail and depth. GURPS Magic will help me with Alchemy and Enchantment, and I'll use it to flesh out the magic a little more. Suppressed Transmission (and the second one, and the many pyramid articles I have) will help me ramp up the weirdness, occultism and historical depth.

Oh but we're just getting started.  GURPS Illuminati and GURPS Social Engineering will both help me work out the conspiratorial angles to the game.  GURPS Action and GURPS Monster Hunters will help me work out some of the rules, so we'll set them aside for now.  And we'll dig out some fiction to read through, like the House on the Borderland, or the Dresden Files.

When I grow tired of reading and want a break, there's always the TV: the Dresden Files miniseries, the Craft, Nightwatch, Constantine, and whatever else I can find.

The idea, right now, is just to sink deep into inspiration, to soak it all in, and turn it into an obsession, because I'll need that energy for what comes next.

The Three Things an RPG System Provides

RPG.net another RPG communities abound with commentary on the "real purpose" of RPG systems, which are "good" and which are "bad," and what one needs to craft a well-designed RPG system.  Many of these arguments, it seems to me, stems from not just from conflicting views, but conflicting definitions and conflicting needs.  After all, what Mary Sue gets out of an RPG might be different than what Bob gets out of a game, which might explain why she thinks D&D 4e is great, and he thinks she's mad.

After years of listening to the commentary and studying different systems, I've found three elements that an RPG system can (but doesn't have to and doesn't always) provide, and I think the arguments between the unknowing proponents of these three things explain many of the contradictions found in RPG tastes.  Before I begin, I want to make a few things clear.  First of all, these elements are provided primarily by the system.  RPG settings and fluff play a distinct role too, but for the purposes of this discussion they're of secondary importance, namely providing a support role to the system. Any well-established publisher can tell you about the importance of excellent artwork, marketing, layout, editing and writing in the selling of his product, but we're just discussing game-design here.  Second, unlike some other theories, this isn't about "flavor," and these three elements are not mutually contradictory.  Some games place a greater emphasis on one or another, and not every game has all three, but games can certainly contain all three if they wish, and not every gamer needs all three.  This is not a case of "Which sort of gamer are you?" but "Do you like this element? Yes or no?"

1. Systems provide a social contract.


Social Contracts have become a bit of a buzzword among RPG designers, but I think that's appropriate, as they're a key element of game design.  A social contract is an agreement, unspoken or otherwise, on the appropriate behavior between the players (including the GM) and the game.  These might include elements like:

• "The GM's word is law"
• "Let the dice fall where they may"
• "No PC will die meaninglessly"
• "The story matters more than anything else"
• "Everyone brings a snack."

These can extend quite broadly, and where an RPG's social contract ends and a group's social contract begins is often hard to define, but (for example) few RPG systems will dictate that every player should bring a snack, but they might dictate that PCs will not die meanginlessly.

In this context, I mean that an RPG system needs to help the players define their setting, characters and rules of play in clear and well-defined terms so that everyone is on the same page.  When RPGs say things like "Rules are a conversation between players and their game master," or "the rules are there to prevent arguments about who shot whom when and who would win a fight," they're referring to social contracts.  In a well-designed system, if I define my character as "the greatest swordsman in the world," then he should be the greatest swordsman in the world.  This fact should be clear to me, to the rest of the players, to my game master, and in the narrative.  If this sort of design isn't possible (for example, it violates the premise of the game, which might involve relatively simple people, or a setting where swordsmanship isn't particularly important), a well-designed system will make this clear to me, directing me in a more useful direction.  In a poorly-designed system, I may discover that, in fact, my "world's greatest swordsman" isn't all that great, or the GM and other players might not realize what I'm doing and be utterly surprised when my character devastates a group of enemies that the GM thought might be a challenge.

I've stated that all of these elements are optional, but this one isn't.  A game without a well-defined social contract always falters and creates a toxic environment for players trying to create a shared imagination-space.  While few players actually discuss "bad" RPGs as failing in regards to a social contract, such games inevitably create controversy and strife.  Such games can be enjoyed, but only when a strong game master or group replaces their social contract for the one provided in the game.  Arguably, every group should be willing and ready to provide their own social contract on demand, and thus a flawed social contract often goes unnoticed, but a game should still try to provide a clear vision of its goals and premise, and it should stick to said vision.  It must remain consistent throughout its execution, to prevent arguments amongst players.  While a game master can replace such a social contract, doing so puts extra stress upon the GM and suggests that the book itself might not be worth the money paid for it, while a well-defined social contract has no downsides.  Often, when you hear people complain about roll-playing vs role-playing, or complaining about "twinks" or the like, they've often had a bad experience due to a poorly-crafted social contract system.

Nobilis exemplifies a system with a top-notch social contract system.  The core of the system revolves around writing out the rules of how you see your character working down on a piece of paper, and manipulating those social contracts to achieve your ends.  The entire game, from character creation to the evolution of the story, revolves around discussing the implication of the rules set forth explicitly by players and game-masters.

Vampire: the Masquerade is a fine example of a system with a broken social contract system in that it has rules and attributes that violate their stated premise.  The Conscience mechanic, in particular, creates a contradiction between what it says it does and what it actually does: In principle, a character with a higher Conscience refrains from committing wicked deeds because he has a good heart, according to the description of the trait.  In practice, Conscience acts as a savings throw against losing one's Humanity when committing vile deeds, and thus characters low in Conscience are punished more harshly for committing wicked deeds (and thus less likely to do so), while high Cosncience characters are punished less harshly for the same, creating the exact opposite effect: Conscience is defined as a trait possessed by those unwilling to commit wicked deeds, but is best taken by those willing to commit wicked deeds.  This sort of mismatch between description and mechanic captures perfectly the problem with broken social-contract systems.

2. Systems provide inspiration

Game-masters and players have but a limited scope of creativity and imagination.  RPGs provide a unique experience by combining the creativity of the players, the GM, the vision of the developer and the emergent properties of the system to create a story and a sequence of events that none of the above would create on their own.

RPGs can provide inspiration in numerous ways.  Dice and cards provide random outcomes.  Systems encourage and punish certain behaviors, thus shaping play.  The interaction of simple systems and small choices create unexpected, complex results.  Beyond that, a well-written and a beautifully illustrated RPG can inspire stories and character concepts that might not have arisen from the group without outside assistance (thus blurring the line between fluff and system in this case, though the system needs to reflect said fluff, but see point 1 above).  More directly, some RPGs even offer charts filled with events, brutally descriptive attack results, or random characters, or even write your stories and characters for you.

Unlike social contracts above, this element isn't strictly necessary, though most RPG systems include at least a random element to encourage unexpected results that surprise everyone involved.  A system that provides a great deal of inspiration saves the game master a great deal of creative effort and can surprise everyone involved, for good or for ill.  This means such systems can have the drawback of unpredictability, taking some control out of the hands of the GM or the players, or creating unexpected results.  Most games get around this by making such randomness optional and giving players and the game master the ability to impose their vision over random events, if they see fit.  On the plus side, a very inspiring system can make up for weaknesses elsewhere.  Many of the most broken games I've seen have a steady following based on the sheer beauty of their artwork and the way in which the character concepts or the setting speaks to the players.  An inspiring system can be a powerful tool, in the right hands.

When players discuss systems with poorly-implemented or absent inspiration, they often use terms like "boring" or "front-loaded."

Maid exemplifies inspiring systems.  It has random character creation, random events, random story seeds, and charts and charts and charts of random tables for just about everything. As a result, one can sit down with absolutely nothing and have a game up and running in 10-30 minutes.  In another direction, Exalted offers a distinct and evocative setting and character concepts, with elements like Limit Breaks, Willpower and Stunts encouraging unusual behavior, unexpected events and descriptive gameplay that might not have existed without the rules within the book.  Everway represents a relatively simple, diceless game that nonetheless manages to create unusual situations and inspires with its Fate Deck.

Opinions will differ hotly on uninspiring systems, but I find Wushu and nWoD's combat system particularly uninspiring.  In the former, your skills and character descriptions matter little beyond the bulk of your word-count, and you simply roll until you're done rolling, meaning that neither the dice nor the rules do any of the heavy lifting when it comes to telling a tale.  The new WoD has a similar problem in combat, with most choices and tactical options representing a waste of time, and most combat boiling down to the superior combatant winning, the randomness of the dice changing nothing except "by how much did he win?"

3. Systems provide gameplay

This element provokes the greatest contention between different views on RPGs, in my experience, particularly since the word "game" is nebulous and poorly defined.  Many people use it to mean a pleasant and unpredictable pastime, which RPGs certainly are, but in this context I'm referring to specific scenarios with win/lose conditions and a sequence of interesting, varied choices that shape your ability to win or lose, where the quality of the game is often determined by the scope of the options you can explore.  Simple games, like tic-tac-toe have a narrow scope, quickly mastered, while complex games, like chess, have a much wider, and more "interesting" scope.  In this context, gameplay is a celebration of system for its own sake.  Gameplay explores the options and abstract ideas laid out by the system.  When players discuss "min-maxing," "game balance," "crunchy," and "builds," they're usually referring to the gameplay element of the system, most often combat (which is usually the core "gameplay" element of most RPGs).

To be explicit: This element is not necessary for a good RPG.  One can have an inspiring game with a very clear-social contract where one player takes on the role of an elite swordmaster, and the other takes on the role of his halfling man-servant, and it's quite possible for both players to enjoy themselves.  You include this element explicitly for the enjoyment of people who like messing with gamplay.  It's a genre like any other, and as such is subject to tastes: Some people like romance and some people do not; by the same token, some people like crunchy, detailed gameplay, and some people would rather just tell their story.

The most abused and misunderstood aspect of this element is the term "game balance."  Game balance exists to ensure that the many options offered to achieve win conditions have equal applicability, provided one uses them correctly.  If a game has only one or two winning strategies, then the game quickly loses its appeal.  Game balance ensures that multiple perspectives and approaches allows for a dynamic and unexpected experience, thus maintaining the interest of the players.  Said differently, "game balance" is about balancing alternative gameplay strategies against one another.  It's not about anything else.  

For example, game balance does not apply to "inspiration."  The elements in a random chart do not need to be balanced against one another.  There's nothing TO balance, since their sole purpose is to provide interesting ideas to the GM and player.  Balance might be required in the sense that everyone gets to draw from the same deck, roll on the same charts or roll with the same dice, but this returns us to our gameplay concern of ensuring that gaining access to the "right" deck, chart or cards doesn't short-circuit the gameplay that the players are exploring.  

This applies to social contracts too: Some would-be designers argue that "game balance" is about equal air-time, but a moment's reflection shows this isn't true: Nothing in a system regulates how much of the plot revolves around a character, or how often a player is allowed to speak.  Some argue that it means that all PCs should be equally awesome, but if the "awesomeness" of various character classes is clearly defined, then players might willingly choose "lesser" character classes because they wish too.  All a well-designed social contract needs to do is carefully outline what the player is getting himself into.  Moreover, "awesomeness" generally applies to the "core conflict" of a system, the win/lose conditions as outlined in the gameplay, and thus this returns us once more to our "Systems provide gameplay" concept.

Likewise, when players discuss how "broken" or "imbalanced" a game is, they often mean this element, referring to poorly-designed gameplay, though "broken" can sometimes refer to a lack of proper social contract.

A game with well-designed gameplay has a clearly defined set of win/lose conditions, not necessarily in the classic sense of "if you lose, you're out of the game," but in the sense that players will have a goal that they're trying to achieve with the design of their characters.  Moreover, such a game will have multiple, alternative strategies to achieve this win-condition, and will provide "interesting" choices.  This final is, necessarily, subjective, as good game-design is an art, not a science, and is thus subject to taste, as any art is.  Some people prefer simplistic gameplay, while others prefer complex.  Some prefer resource management while others prefer playing the odds.  This article is too brief to go into the full depth of game design theory, but a good primer might be a Theory of Fun by Raph Koster.

D&D 4th Edition exemplifies the sort of game that centers itself around gameplay.  It establishes as its core win/lose condition "killing monsters and taking their stuff," and centers all the player's choices, from their class to their race to their feats to their choices in the midst of battle, around this central conceit.  Arguably, it does this to the exclusion of all else (particularly inspiration, as it provides precious little support for events or ideas outside of dungeon crawling), but such games don't have to work that way.  Legends of the Wulin has a similar laser-like focus on combat (in this case, on kung fu duels), but provides considerable support and inspiration for evocative games via its Secret Arts and Lores systems.

Scion might exemplify a game with terrible gameplay, depending on how you interpret its design goals.  If one views it as a game about super-heroes of modern-myth fighting Titanspawn, then its gameplay elements quickly fall down, with certain strategies far outshining others, with gameplay elements existing (seemingly) solely as traps for the inexperienced, and with advancement dictated by one's willingness to spend experience on a single trait (Legend).

Bringing it all Together

What makes up a well-designed system necessarily varies from user to user, depending on their personal tastes, but I think most of the best-designed RPGs contain the above elements in some degree.

• A well-designed system must have a clearly defined premise and it must remain consistent throughout its explanation of its rules.  Traits and mechanics should do what they say they do, and the game must clearly communicate with its readers, so that all the players of the game have a similar understanding of what to expect from teh game.
• A well-designed system often provides inspiration to the game-master and player, usually by creating emergent gameplay through a mixture of tactics including randomization (dice, cards), a system of rewards and punishments to shape player behavior, and an evocative and inspiring setting.
• A well-designed system may provide unique gameplay centered on a series of interesting choices that a player makes in an effort to achieve a win condition and/or avoid a lose condition.  These choices should be sufficiently varied and balanced to maintain the players interest throughout (at least) the extent of the campaign.

These three elements are distinct, and while they can help one another (well-explained and consistent rules are a boon for explaining complex gameplay as well as establishing a social contract), they require different things and each pursue different goals.  Other than well-written social contracts, none are strictly necessary, but neither are the elements mutually exclusive, allowing a skilled game-designer to include all three, should he wish.

Organic Gaming: Thoughts and Refinements

Because Justin Aquino seems determined to continue to drive my blog with his interesting posts, I find myself compelled once again to respond to an idea he's put forward.  Here, he's talking about Organic Gaming, an interesting idea that sounds a lot like sandboxing to me, and I thought I'd share my own thoughts and offer some refinements on his idea.

Finished reading yet?  I'll wait a moment.  Done now?  Ok.

First, naturally, my thoughts turned towards Metzgerburg, my setting for Slaughter City (City details here, mortals here, ghouls here, vampires here), which I think is pretty close to what Justin is talking about.  Building Metzgerburg taught me some things that Justin (and others) might find useful.  In the very least, you can use my material as inspiration for your own.

"This game takes a lot of prep."

Yes it does.  I spend two or three months putting together Metzgerburg and I only got three sessions out of it (less because I did something wrong and more because my group self-destructed.  It was scheduling conflicts and personal issues, rather than a lack of interest in the setting or the game, that sunk it), but I still found the design fairly enlightening.

My concern, as I read Justin's post, is that he's putting too much work in the wrong places, or for the wrong reasons.  You can see elsewhere on his blog that he's looking for a gaming personal assistant because the work-load of his games is so heavy (in addition to his work).  However, the point of the prep-work is to save you time.

Allow me to explain: The hardest part of running a game, in my experience, is the pre-session crunch (and getting the session started, but more on that later).  Suddenly, the next session looms large, it's coming tomorrow (or today!) and you need to get the story done. In a normal gaming-situation, this involves cramming plans together for four hours or so, asking your players for more time and generally panicking.  In a sandbox environment, it consists of looking at your notes, looking at what the players had done previously, and then just adding a couple of ideas on top of that, and showing up.  The game's inertia does the rest for you.

As an example: By the third session, the bloodthirsty nosferatu PC had managed to get his murderous mitts on Danny Devlin and killed him.  Given that Danny Devlin was intended as one of my major villains, this was potentially problematic under a more mainstream gaming model, but I actually found, after a moment of thinking, that I didn't have a problem at all, and if you peruse the notes, you'll see why (dramatic pause...).  You see, Angus Devlin has been angling to take over the family business for quite some time now (and he's even more ruthless and better organized), and Jack Devlin, the cop, would want to know who killed his uncle and probably won't accept the pat story that Angus is going to weave for him, which will put Jack in the sights of both Angus and the vampires, much to another PC's consternation.  So all our muderour nosferatu really managed to do was make the Irish Mafia leaner and meaner and hand more drama to the group.

This sort of thing happens all the time in mature, well-established games (which is why a game that's been running for a year is more popular than a game that's been running for only a few sessions).  What you're trying to do with all that prep-work is create that sense of maturity as quickly as possible, so that your players have a sense of stepping into a mature, complete game world as quickly as possible.

What you're not trying to do is give yourself even more work.  The ultimate purpose of all those notes is to provide on the spot inspiration. Justin talks about managing all the NPCs all the time.  The problem with that approach, as realistic as it is, is that a single person doesn't have that kind of processing power and the players won't appreciate that level of realism anyway (and I'll get into why in a bit).  I'm not saying that you can't track what the NPCs are doing and what they want, but you do it in very broad strokes, and you only go into a great deal of detail when the game demands it.  Our nosferatu murdered Danny Devlin, so suddenly lots of drama erupts in the Devlin family, in the criminal world and among the police, but David Wang does not find out that Mei Zhi is stepping out on him and moonlighting as a prostitute.  That's not important and that's not where the story is going.  If we did that outside of the PCs view, we've removed some of the inherent drama in the game.  We can create more drama, add more hooks as time goes on, but again, the purpose of this is to save work, not create more.

What you'll want to do is create hooks within hooks within hooks.  Every NPC has an interesting hook that might tangle a player in some local drama.  But every NPC hooks into other NPCs, so the deeper you mess with one NPC, the more you get tangled in the lives of other NPCs.  It's like a grand maze of human emotion and relationships.  But you don't trigger drama when players aren't looking.  At most, I'd suggest that once every few months (say after 3-6 sessions) you do a quick update-sweep over your characters, especially the ones who haven't changed, and adjust them to keep them up to date, or possibly improve them just in case they come up.  Other than that: Don't track people that don't come up.

"...characters need an in-game motivation for their character (not a meta-game like xp, cp, levels etc...)..."

That's not really the point of those meta-game-like motivations.  What you're trying to do here is not "punish players for bad roleplaying, reward them for good," but rather you're trying to simulate the inherent irrationality of the human mind and the capriciousness of fate.  In short, you're giving people choices.

Let me give you an example: A GM sits at his desk staring at his computer.  His session is tomorrow.  He needs to plan.  But he's just received a free copy of Skyrim!  He wants to play it.  What should he do?  The obvious answer is: Work on his session.  In the long run, that's better for him, and Skyrim will wait.  But we know, in reality, that it's going to require considerable strength of will to actually do that.  In real life, the character has a hard choice, and we must do our best to simulate that difficult choice for the player.

In Metzgerburg, Granya Weschler was a good representation of a meta-game element that, in fact, served as an in-character motivation.  First, allow me to explain something that isn't clear in these notes: In my vampire games, I have a house rule to simulate the fact that vampires gain more strength from drinking from more potent vessels, and to also simulate the pickiness some vampires have: you gain "blood experience" (which can only be used to improve Disciplines and Blood Potency) for drinking from particularly savory vessels.  Thus, a virgin woman of high breeding is generally more desired among vampires than some drunk lout beggar in an alley.  Granya, due to her suicide-girl nature and her ghostly heritage, granted the maximum "blood experience" possible for drinking from her.  One of the players discovered this and nearly frenzied on her.  He was also in love with her.  Naturally, he grew possessive of her, both because he loved her and because he wanted her.  Because of all that blood XP, because she was his meal-ticket to power, he intuitively grasped why a vampire might grow territorial about a mortal, and began to panic when his sire began to show interest in her as well.

Arguably, with a really good role-player, you could just tell this all this and they'll play their character this way, but a more visceral reward drives the point home.  Thus, you use meta-game concepts not as "punishment and reward" but as a way of aligning player motivation with character motivation.  Things like "Well, you can violate your Code of Honor, that's ok, but you'll lose XP if you do," or "If you punch that guy in the face, I'll give you a Willpower point due to your Wrath vice."  Then the PC is given a choice: What matters more to him?  What does he need?  Is he willing to swim against the stream of his own nature, or will he succumb to his baser (or habitual) nature?  Then it becomes a choice, an interesting choice, and that improves the game.

"A special trait of the organic game is that: "The world does not revolve around you", in fact it doesn't revolve around anyone."

 I talked about this a little above when I discussed prep-work and not tracking every NPC all the time: the story does, in fact, revolve around the PCs.

Now, let's take a quick step back.  Note that Justin does not use that phrasing.  He never said "the story does not revolve around you," just that the world does not.  This was, in fact, a key point of Slaughter City: There was the world of vampires, which rather revolved around the PCs, and the mortal world, which totally did not.  I explicitly set out to give the vampires the impression that the daylight world had dramatic things happening when they weren't around.  Boyfriend and girlfriend would break up while the vampires slept.  Cute mechanic girls would be kidnapped during the day while the vampires could do nothing about it.  Votes were tallied and politicians elected during the day.  Vampires would sleep, wake, and find the world changed with them unable to do anything about it.  The mortal world moved on.  I even went so far as to use different sorts of descriptive elements when among mortals than when among vampires, to give the impression that players were walking from one world to another.

But the game itself must center on the players.  Ultimately, because of your human limitations, you're weaving an illusion.  Since you can't track everything, you'll want to track the things the players interact with the most (or you'll go crazy).  It's a bit like quantum uncertainty: When the players are looking at a part of your world, you bring it into sharp focus.  When the players aren't looking at a part of the world, it's fuzzy, uncertain and hand-waved.

But more importantly, the players just don't give a shit about stuff that doesn't interest with them (I mean, it's tautalogical).  The more attention you focus on things the players don't care about, the less attention you're focusing on things that they do care about.  And since your world must be large to accomodate all this sandboxing, there's always far more stuff the players aren't interested in than what they are interested in.  A practice where everything is given equal attention means that you're spending more of your time dealing with things the players don't enjoy than the things they do enjoy.

The nature of a sandbox is in its possibilities.  We create all this material because we don't know where the players will go, and to accomodate where they might want to go.  This remains as true ten sessions in as it did in the first session, thus it is worth your while to pay SOME attention to the other elements.  In Slaughter City, nobody did shit with the Clarks, but that doesn't mean they never would.  Thus it's worth my time to keep them up to date and watch over them, but it would be a waste of my time to give them as much attention as I was giving the Devlins or to Granya.

Finally, a world that doesn't give a shit about the PCs sounds a little too much like the real world, and we game to get away from the real world, not to recreate it in miniature.  Oh, sure, we value realism, but we value drama and verisimilitude more.  Thus, ultimately, you'll want to track things not with an eye towards how it would really go, but towards an eye on how it will impact the players.  You can say "It doesn't revolve around the players" as much as you want, but ultimately, it should.

Let me go back to Jack Devlin: His uncle has just been killed.  The DA declares it a robbery gone horribly wrong, has some guy arrested as a fall guy, the pieces don't all fit, but the case is closed.  Jack attends the funeral and then he... what?  Realistically, he should simply appreciate the fact that the world is a safer place.  Realistically, people overlook crimes all the time.  Realistically, he has his own career to worry about, plus a budding relationship with Granya.  He could just shrug his shoulders and move on.  But he could obsess on it.  The missing pieces to the puzzle could really bother him.  His sense of family could push him to investigate what's really going on, potentially alienating Granya and upsetting her greatly, and bringing him closer, inch by inch, to the reality of vampires.  Both are potentially realistic, but which impacts the players more?  The latter.  So we choose that.

"The purpose behind Organic Games is that there is no railroading"

This is a mistake.  Oh, well, let's start with a good definition first: If we use "railroading" to mean "You vill follow my story, unt you vill like it!" then no, it's not a mistake to argue against railroading, but this sort of railroading is so despised that it's practically a strawman.  If we instead use "railroading" to mean GM-driven plot, rather than PC-driven plot (as in "Then this happens to you, then this,"), then I have to disagree.  There should be railroading, at least some.

See, players are idiots.  GMs are idiots too, but they do their homework. They've got gobs of notes, they know the setting and they take the time to work up material hours in advance of the session.  Players don't.  They usually couldn't, even if they wanted to, and generally they see it as a form of entertainment.  Frankly, you're lucky that they remember their character sheet and dice, and you're even luckier if you can extract a background from them.

The greatest mistake I constantly see sandboxers make is the "So what do you do?" line.  So you're in Metzgerburg.  What do you do?

"I dunno," replies the PC, "What can I do?"

"Anything you want!" says the GM, terribly excited, looking at all the potential in his story.

"Uh.... I watch TV?"

And then the game begins to go downhill from there.

But there's a solution to this. Think back on most of the successful sandboxing computer games you've seen, like GTA or the Elder Scrolls.  They give you a whole world to play with, but they give you an introduction to the world first.  You're on rails at the start, looking around, seeing what the GM has laid out for you, getting an idea of the world.  In Slaughter City, the players had to fight Belial's Brood and bring a gift of a handsome young vessel to the Prince.  These two things dragged the characters along for a session or two, but as the players became more and more familiar with the world, they had more and more things they wanted to do, and at this point, the sandbox kicks in.  Then you sit back and let them do what they want to do.

"So, you just finished fighting the monster and rescuing the cute mechanic girl from its evil clutches.  Now you need to..."

"Oh, I was hoping to revisit that one guy we met the other day."

"...Oh really?  Ok then."

"Seriously?"

"Sure!  So, how do you want to do this?  Just walk up to his door and knock?"

"Well, actually I had this idea..."

And then we're off!  The idea of the "rails" is something I call sparking: like striking flint and iron over tinder, you're working again and again to light the fire of your player's imaginations. Once you've got it lit, you still need to toss elements onto the fire every once in awhile to keep it going, but once they're off, you can sit back and enjoy the ride.  However, getting their imagination lit in the first place is a lot of work, and that starts with a more traditional "mission-oriented" style of play.  Once the players begin to buck the rails... you let them because your rails accomplished all they needed to, and you can  let them rust.


"I'm pro-making mistakes. My favorite thing about RPGs is that I allowed to make mistakes without the severe consequences of the real world. In a Table-Top-RPG I get to do it in a fabulous, catastrophic, tragic, poignant and sometimes gonzo way."

Yes.  The advantage of a sandbox game is that it's fault-tolerant.  If the players murder your villain, well, you weren't too invested in that storyline anyway and even if you are, you have other characters that can take his place.  Justin isn't wrong, it's just that his idea could use some refinement.

TL; DR:

• Sandboxing is great for all the reasons Justin outlines.
• You can and should still use scripts to get the players up and running.  After that, let them play until they run out of ideas, then go back to scripts if necessary.
• Use methods that save you work, not create more.  Don't track anything unnecessary.
• The world may not revolve around the players, but the story does.
• Use meta-game traits to create difficult choices, not punish or reward role-playing.

My GM Merit Badges

Found a neat idea here, and I thought I'd share my own philosophy here.

My games have combat, and I reward clever play whenever I can, and I will attempt to use clever tactics against you as well.

Part of the above is a love of player wit over character capability.  I do think character stats matter, but more as a tool for the player than as an iron writ about how someone should play.

My game, my rules.  It's very important, for the above, that the rules remain consistent, but in the heat of the moment, I'll improvise before I look something up in the book.

Ultimately, I'm trying to create an interesting story.  I feel the tactics and the player-actions will feed into that to create something special, but they are secondary to this concern (hence why some dice fudging does happen).

Part and parcel of writing that interesting story is feeling larger than life.  After all, we RP to escape, right?  I do love some deep simulationism, but I'd rather run a game about epic romances and tragic failures than the banality of evil (though that can have its appeal at times).

Because really, at the end of the day, this is about you.  It's about an amazing exploration of people, and how they interact with one another, how they love and how they die.  It's not enough to fight, you need a reason to fight, and that means relationships, and relationships mean drama.

But I like really dark themes, often very disempowering themes.  I can enjoy the "walking barefoot over broken glass" phase a little too much.  I tame it as best as I can, but it'll leak out eventually.  You can't really get the most out of my games if you're easily bothered by certain themes.

Wabi-Sabi

Probably one of the most neglected elements of storycraft is that of theme.  People love to talk about characters, settings and plots, but they often neglect to discuss or decide what a story is really about, or what it's really driving at.  I'm guilty of this too: Why worry about what a story is about when I'm in love with characters or a particular setting element?  But even so, I've found that themes serve as a strong foundation for a game, helping to shape my characters, my plots and my sessions.

If I had to pick a single, driving theme for Cherry Blossom Rain, it would be that of wabi-sabi.  The sentiment is similar to the Western concepts of "Seize the day!" or "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die," but decidedly less uninhibited or optimistic.  Wabi-sabi is noticing a wrinkle on a beautiful, young woman's face and seeing a hint of the grandmother she is to become.  It's watching the autumn leaves fall from a tree.  It's noting the ding on your favorite sword and finding that it has more character now.

Part of wabi-sabi is noting the effect time has on things.  Cherry Blossom Rain has a deep background: The legendary blades aren't just magical, but they have stories.  The clans and this war was already in motion.  Many games treat the history of a setting as a sort of eternity: The good king has always ruled the righteous kingdom, the evil empire has always threatened the freedom of the world, orcs have always rampaged at the borders.  If there is history, it happened thousands of years go.  In Cherry Blossom Rain, it happened yesterday, and it's still in motion.  The players find themselves not in an eternally unchanging world, but in a world that was the result of heaps and heaps of small changes over time, and that's changing still, changing around them and changing with them whether they want it or not.

But the main thing most people take away from wabi-sabi is the concept of fleeting beauty, the knowledge that you might have seen something beautiful, something worth cherishing, and now it is forever gone.  I've tried to steep my game with this notion: My game is not an endless parade of samey duels, but distinct moments that the players will never be able to get back.  First, wild adventures through the sinister Kamurocho and a unique opportunity to serve tea to their enemies and get to know them better.  Then, a moment of camaraderie in a hot springs.  Now, they stand on the precipice of war, frantically sharing their last moments with the ones they love, struggling to preserve what they have, knowing that tomorrow it'll all be gone.  I've complained before that my game has slowed to a glacial pace, and it's not because the players have nothing to do, but because they're doing so much.  Part of this, I think, comes from their growing awareness of the how fleeting the moment is.  They're grabbing onto these last few days and holding on tight, because tomorrow their beloved NPCs won't be there.  They might not be there.  Raoul in particular feels this keenly, as he sees himself as the most likely to die on Sword Mountain. Even the name "Cherry Blossom Rain" speaks to the concept of wabi-sabi, because I'm explicitly trying to evoke the image of cherry blossoms falling from trees, a moment of beauty caught just as it ends.

I really can't think of a better medium to show the principle of wabi-sabi than in a role-playing game.  A picture freezes the moment forever.  A recording or a video can be played over and over again.  But nobody will ever have a chance to play Cherry Blossom Rain again, not this way, not with these people, not this story.  It's behind us and done, a stream of fleeting moments, enjoyed and now cherished, but forever gone.  I find this the most poignant element of role-playing: My art is an art that's lost as soon as its shown.  No matter how wonderful a session, future generations will never have a chance to marvel at it the way they might marvel at one of Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings.  In that, a session's beauty is even greater precisely because of its fragility, the very essence of wabi-sabi.