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Stratton Speaks: Tavernless Gaming
How many campaigns have started like this? Even as I type it, I feel a wave of nostalgia. Suddenly I am back in middle school with my hearty ranger ready to journey into another dungeon during school lunch period! But I am writing to suggest a better way, a more mature way, maybe even a funner way: Tavernless Gaming!
Now this post is not about the virtues of abstemiousness, nor do I mean gaming groups should actually avoid taverns themselves. Personally, I love beer! I also love taverns, (because they have beer there). What I am really talking about is giving the players a better way to invest in the campaign.
Instead of hiring the players to go do something, give them their own reason. If your campaign is about rescuing a kidnapped daughter, cut out the middle man: make one of the PCs the girl’s father! How much higher then, will the stakes be to rescue her?
“Okay, well what about the other 4 PCs, you may ask? They can’t all be the girl’s father!” Totally fair point, my binging friend! There are two ways to handle this. First, you can build relationships TO the PC who is the girl’s father. Could another PC be the father’s brother or sister? Or an old war buddy who owes a favor? Could another PC even be the missing girl’s Romeo-and-Juliet-esque beloved? Sure the father disapproves, but they must set aside their grudge and work together to save her!
Second, you can create concurrent storylines to involve other PCs. Got a dark PC who is a stranger and a foreigner? That character isn’t going to be happy being the brother or buddy or boyfriend sworn to help. So give them another reason. Sure, this PC doesn’t care about the poor kidnapped daughter, but he might be seeking vengeance on the evil mastermind that took the girl. And he knows that he will never be able to exact his revenge without help.
What about character background and freewill, you ask? Okay, this is a totally legit and fair point. Work with the players when they make their characters – solicit willingness. Find out if any of them is interested in being the girl’s father, or uncle, or boyfriend. Often a player with a brand new character doesn’t have a strong idea. They may be grateful for the guidance!
Taverns are good places to get beer, mead, maybe even a cup of mutton stew! But they are poor places to create investment in a storyline. Instead of the tavern, let the campaign start in the lives of your characters!
Recess Recap
Last weekend I, Jason Keeley, ran a small two-session adventure at NerdNYC’s latest two-day Recess, and it was pretty darn successful. There was a minor hiccup when two of the players couldn’t make the second session, but we had some awesome replacement players. In fact, demand was high enough that I added a sixth player for that second session. Luckily, I had made a pregen earlier in the day for just such an occasion.
The scenario was called “The Countess of Blood.” We may be running a shortened version of it at this year’s GenCon, so I won’t spoil any of the plot. Here’s the general synopsis: The PCs are called upon by the Palantine of Hungary to extract a full confession from Countess Bathory, three years after she was placed under house arrest for torturing and murdering over 600 girls and young women. All based on historical fact!
The first day started with character creation, and I was a bit surprised by the characters generated. Given the above description and the fact that Bathory’s castle is in Transylvania, just at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, there wasn’t a Catholic in the bunch. We had two Jewish characters, two Moslem characters, and a wild occult orc from the wilderness. Sure, I never explicit told them to prepare for vampires, but I thought that the location and Bathory’s reputation would have been a giveaway.
Not that I’m saying the countess was a vampire in this scenario…
Also, it was surprising that it took a little less than an hour. Two of the players had made Fortune’s Fool characters before, in an earlier iteration. And another one was Jay Stratton, lead designer. But the other two hadn’t seen the game before and they picked it right up. Since they had copies of the game to look at, I attribute that to the excellent writing and layout of the character creation chapter.
I found it interesting, in particular, to watch Jay make a character, as I don’t think he has sat down to do so (for a game) since the book came out last year. He did pretty well, making a very lucky Jewish dwarf with mediocre stats and skills. He had 14 Fortune Shines! At one point, I was explaining to a first-timer the fact that you can alter your character’s Fate Structure a little by decreasing your Fate Pool or Burning Fortune (see pages 50-51 for specifics), when I heard Jay say, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” He then exercised that option by burning the Empress to increase his Fate Pool by 2, and then decreasing his Fate Pool by 1 to get another Fate Twist. Of course, by the end of the weekend, he had drawn the Empress at least once! I’m sure he doesn’t regret that decision, as those Fate Twists really helped out the group.
In the end, I’m tickled pink that this game still has the ability to delight and surprise us from time to time.
Stratton Speaks: Faery Tales - the Stuff of Adventures
Making faery tales and nursery rhymes creepy? What could I say? A week earlier, Rob’s character had watched Little Red Riding Hood’s Grandmother morph into a hideous wolf creature – which ultimately tore out his throat. Hmmm… maybe this assignment was revenge for losing a beloved character? Logical but not Rob’s style.
To me, Faery Tales work on a subconscious level. We are never so vulnerable as when we are at the mercy of our own darkest fears. We move to a place and comfort and safety, but we know something is wrong – creatures live in the basement of our childhood home, our mother is not to be trusted, and even our bedroom hides some black secret.
Faery Tales work like this. They lure us into womblike safety – then spring a trap. We are sitting on our tuffet about to tuck into our favorite meal when a spider springs. Our trusted old Grandmother is actually a wolf in a nightshift. We get home ready to crawl into our ‘just right’ cozy bed and find a man-eating bear!
Rob wants to know how to make faery tales and nursery rhymes creepy? With a witch in every inviting gingerbread house; a broken crown from an innocuous trip to the well; and our mother replaced by an endless procession of evil stepmothers? I don’t know how to make them NOT creepy…
Stratton Speaks: Why I Killed Rob
I had to.
We were playing Fortune’s Fool; an ongoing campaign I was running inspired by the Grimm Fairy Tales. We were in our 6th session. We had been averaging five players a session. And nobody had died. That’s 30 player character appearances without a death.
When it comes to PC death, there is no magic number, but I could tell the stakes were falling. Playing RPGs is serious business. We tell life and death stories. We have fun til somebody gets hurt. So when that 6th session started, I knew it had to get mean.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t target Rob. I didn’t cheat. I didn’t fudge. And it was entirely possible that everyone could have survived that night. But when his wounded halfling climbed out that window into the night with Little Led Riding Hood’s werewolf Grandma prowling around, I was the one licking my chops. And the cards were on my side!
We were all sad when Rob died. Connor (his halfling) was a cool character and had been with us from the beginning. I felt guilty, but I’ll tell you what. The next session, when Goldilock’s three bears showed up, you better believe folks at our table were sitting up a little straighter.
For mustache-twirling GMs out there reading this as permission for next week’s TPK, I say, “Easy mister! Put the extra trolls back in the box and take a breath.” What we are shooting for is high stakes, not broken spirits. Kill a character once in 5 adventures and everyone will take things seriously. Kill a character every day and nobody will care – they will not be able to invest.
Character death is a valuable GM tool, but it must be used sparingly. A little is good, but too much is worse than none at all… well… almost.
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