Tabletops Blog

“I want to go buy some gear.” Those seven words are like a cheesegrater on the eardrums of every GM. In nearly every case, your player has just said “I want to waste an hour looking through books to find things I want to buy.” This usually causes the GM to pick up a heavy rulebook and quietly ponder whose noggin to pound on (“mine or his, mine or his…”—look carefully next time you go shopping, most GMs really do this.) Of course, the other 10% is normally the equivalent of “I want to magically exchange the money I’m carrying for an item I want without any effort or interest.” Less of the GM’s time is wasted in this case, but it’s no less asinine—inherent to that statement is the assumption that if money can buy it, the player can get it. And that nothing else interesting will happen along the way.

If a character has an inventory, then shopping is something GMs will just have to deal with. Naturally, no GM likes being told “eh, you’ll just have to deal with it”, so here are six ways to turn that in-game shopping time into something fun. And by ‘fun’ I mean ‘more interesting than flipping through pages of splatbooks.’

0. But First, An Important Rule 0!

Okay. Before we go any further, you need to pay attention to this. This is Rule Zero for adding roleplaying value to your party’s shopping trips: There is no such thing as a freakin’ Wal-Mart. Sure, a modern-day RPG can get by with big-box store runs for things like duct tape and rope, but there’s no store anywhere that blithely sells everything, up to and including suitcase nukes, under one roof. If you’ve got such a store, get rid of it—now. Retcon if you must. We’ve all played in games where the lazy GM invents a magical superstore that has everything you’d ever want. All else being equal, this is incredibly boring. (To the credit of my current GM, who does this, he’s using some of the tips I describe below to make his Wal-Mart much more interesting; but you’ll have to keep reading to learn which ones.)

“Wal-Marting” generally encourages every bad behavior we’re trying to prevent and permits very few roleplaying opportunities. Everything at your fingertips with no personality and no reason that this massive economic and magical/scientific powerhouse hasn’t conquered the world yet? Embarrassingly bad. Don’t do it. Ever.

1. Specialty Shops

This is sort of the counterpoint to Rule Zero. Every business naturally has a specialty and a market it caters to. Even the big-box stores specialize; Wal-Mart sells a lot of stuff, but it all falls into the category of “household necessities” (and also NASCAR kitsch and crappy meat, but whatever.) In most RPG settings, individual sellers will specialize much more than they do in real life. Blacksmiths, gunsmiths, wizards selling scrolls, etc.—nobody makes everything and nobody has everything for sale.

What this means, of course, is that unless you’re in a very wealthy and populated area that’s got a wide variety of stores, it’s very unlikely that your players will be able to find a Holy Avenger or grenade launcher in a shop somewhere. This is not a bad thing. It’s the lesson of  The Incredibles—”When everyone’s super, then no one will be.” Having the neat stuff available to everyone cheapens all of it! Not to mention that making your players keep track of who sells what where (and maybe when—and we’ll get to ‘why’ in a moment) keeps them thinking about the world and keeps them immersed in the game.

Incidentally, a lot of games have “availability” ratings for exotic items. Those are sort of a take-it-or-leave-it thing for me—if I’m on the fence about something being available to the PCs I’ll use them, but most of the time I’ll make a quick “you can/can’t find that here” decision based on my idea of where they are. I’m especially wary of ratings you have to roll, though. Your mileage may vary, but don’t think you’re stuck using those and don’t let your players convince you to roll them if you don’t want to.

2. Make Individual Shops and Shopkeepers Memorable

This is one of those things that, when done right and with restraint, can make your game fantastic. Most GMs know to at least give most NPCs some sort of interesting quirk to differentiate them in the minds of the players; accents and speech impediments are the most common (because they’re easiest) but you occasionally get the peg-leg, eyepatch, etc.. Take that as a starting point, and expand it massively for the occasional shopkeeper you want your players to remember. Don’t worry so much about the NPC’s backstory, because players hate stories that don’t involve them; rather, make the NPC as full of life and character and uniqueness as you might make your own PC. This does two things: First, it imprints the NPC onto your characters minds—”guy with the limp” pales in comparison with “Jack the mechanic, who’s got two sons he yells at constantly and who keeps misplacing his tools, but who instantly warms up to anyone that treats him like a Good Ol’ Boy and threw in a free oil change on that account. Oh, and his dog humped the mage’s leg, and that’s now a hilarious YouTube hit.”

Naturally, the stores or stalls that such unique and fascinating individuals do their business in must also be unique. Fantasy games offer a lot of unique opportunities for this. Imagine a basement alchemist who works without light to avoid open flames, or a blacksmith whose forge is kept hot by a fire elemental, or a shop precariously balanced on a cliff’s edge or the top of a tower. Why does this livery stable have the right to do business from inside the local church’s walls when no other such shop exists—an ancestral right? a reward for a heroic deed? a corrupt priest? Be inventive and don’t be afraid to make crazy ideas work—the real world’s a strange place and you have to be stranger. And even if you don’t make the shopkeeper memorable, your players may well remember “the guy who sells potions from the blue barge at the docks.”

One caveat: The Incredibles rule applies here, too. Use this sort of character and location depth judiciously—often enough to make your players excited about the world they’re playing in and the people in it, but not so often that it becomes exhausting for you and your players to keep up with. It’s easy to burn your players out with fantastic descriptions, and constantly trying to one-up yourself will quickly lead you from “fantastic” to “utterly ridiculous”. Again, though, used correctly your players will remember these shops and tradesmen for the entire campaign—and beyond.

3. Things Happen in Stores, Too, You Know

No shopkeeper has a “No pants, no plot, no patronage” sign hanging on their door (well, okay, one of mine now does, but only because he’s a dwarf and doesn’t want to see things at head height and… well, nevermind.) Got your players out shopping in the various stores you’ve come up with? Awesome! Now they’re in a semi-public place that plenty of other people may need or want to go to. Time for things to occur!

When I was jotting this list down on my lunch break, I came up with this list of things that could happen while the players are shopping. And this is just what I thought of while eating half a sandwich:

• The PCs have a ‘chance’ encounter with the servant of a lord in need of assistance.
• The PCs are interrupted by a violent robbery that leads to a fight in a crowded shop filled with fragile goods.
• The PCs walk in to find the shopkeeper being threatened by a creditor or extortioner.
• Enemies of the PCs spring an ambush on them in a shop they know the PCs must visit when they return to town.
• The PCs enter the store to find the shopkeeper dead, and quickly find themselves framed for the crime.

Surely you can do better than what a ham sandwich and I ended up with. Start thinking.

Read it all..

Part one of this little venture can be found in the previous post.

The tricky thing about creating a goblin monster in Unknown Armies is that UA is a very human-centered game. Most “modern gothic” fantasy games—and by “most” I mean “everything in White Wolf’s World of Darkness product line, ever” along with games like Little Fears—don’t actually care all that much about homo sapiens. This is largely because supernatural humanoids are really pretty interesting to explore, and I’ll be the first to admit that White Wolf’s games are very good at this. But Unknown Armies is almost entirely about the things humans do to themselves, to each other, and to the world (and not just through the insanity-driven occultism UA specializes in.)

Which makes fitting goblins into the world a difficult proposition. Fortunately, like so much else, ghosts provide our way out of the conundrum (and give us yet another thread to tie this nasty little creature to Halloween.) So without further ado: Goblins.

There’s no such thing as faeries. And no faerie dropped dead when you read that sentence, because they don’t exist. Stop clapping.

This fact makes explaining a great deal of medieval mythology, especially European mythology, a whole lot harder for those clued in enough to know that demons are real, that magic is real, that the universe is a lot smaller than it appears, and that if you carve your name into a pomegranate and give it to the barber on 7th Street his scissors will whisper the name of one person trying to kill you as they trim your hair. Faeries ought to exist—so much else that seems impossible does exist, and a thousand years of superstition shouldn’t be so incredibly, blatantly wrong about the occult. But faeries don’t, which tends to make those Wiccan wannabes who end up in the Occult Underground a bit embarrassed when they start really learning things. And since goblins are supposed to be faeries, goblins shouldn’t exist either, right?

Not quite. Demons certainly do exist, and there’s a rare sort of revenant that has contributed to a lot of faerie stories. When a young child dies while a parent is punishing them for misbehaving—whether that mischief was real or imagined, whether the cause of death is directly related to their punishment or not—something of that child occasionally remains behind. That’s a goblin. They’re more likely to get “stuck” in the world if the child was abused often enough to start obsessing over behaving “properly”, although compared to the overall mortality rate of children they’re extremely uncommon. This makes for a peculiarly conflicted creature. Because they died in a conflicted emotional no-man’s-land of guilt at their behavior, bestial delight in the cruel or destructive act they were being punished for, and anger at the parent or parents they love, the goblin that’s left is a highly unorthodox revenant.

Usually, goblins repeat the same sort of minor, childish trickery that got them killed in the first place; hiding and stealing trinkets, rearranging things, making a racket (often banging pots, pans or walls), and startling household and barnyard creatures (horses, cattle, and other barn-kept beasts are a favorite target, and goblin tricks have given rise to surprisingly accurate superstitions.) But their obsessive behavior has a more complex goal than repeating pranks: Goblins desperately seek a very different discipline, without the abuse—physical or emotional—that keeps them locked in the world. By repeatedly causing trouble, in their own childish way goblins are trying to get the loving correction they didn’t get in life.

In certain cases, though, this obsessive desire to be loved and corrected without being hurt takes a darker turn. Goblins tend to latch onto families, especially families with children. When a goblin finds a well-loved infant—really, any child too young to start really causing trouble—they can sometimes possess the child, resulting in the classic changeling: A creature who looks just like the ‘replaced’ baby, but whose mind is far too clever, cunning, mischevious, and cruel to be the real child. No adept has adequately explained how goblins actually manage this possession (since revenants have to find a willing host); they never seem to do it when anyone is looking, though it’s suspected to be a slow process involving several visits to the child. The goblin is essentially “riding” the infant’s psyche to leech off of the parents’ love for the child. Sadly, this is a catch-22 for the goblin: By its nature, it continues to “act out”, ending up like Macaulay Culkin in The Good Son, and changing the parents’ emotions from unconditional love to the same frustration and anger that got the goblin where it was in the first place. Such children sometimes manage to expel the goblin from their psyche on their own, and their parents sigh in relief and say “Well, it was just a phase.” Other children never do, or do so after it’s too late and the damage has been done, and they can grow up to be monstrous in their own right.

Goblins are sometimes tricky to see, even to an adept who knows what they’re looking for—children are very good at disappearing when they’re wanted. Once spotted, though, goblins look like ugly, twisted children: Discolored skin caked in filth; an oversized mouth filled with jagged, crooked teeth; and dark clothing (no one’s quite sure why) with a tall cap (this no one can explain at all.) They tend to keep a bestial expression on their face. They also appear to always have their eyes closed, though they don’t seem to be blind in any way.

A goblin’s stats are identical to those of any other revenant. Points: 20 + a percentile roll (1-100); Body 0, Speed 10-40, Mind 10-40, and Soul 40-80.

Up next: Rituals to rid yourself (or someone else) of a goblin, and how those rituals inspired the traditions of Halloween!

In which I throw down with a much better writer

So I was poking around the Internet yesterday (mostly by way of RPGBloggers.com) and came across the blog of one Sean Holland, who’s working on a OGL setting called Sea of Stars. In his most recent post, he announced that his October plans—October being a naturally monstrous month—would most involve monster creation and templates. While promising some undead and something scary in the next day or two, he also put a call out for requests for other monsters his readers would like to see.

I honestly can’t tell you why I somehow took that as a challenge—let’s blame it on the moon being nearly full. Somehow, though, in giving Mr. Holland my suggestion, it turned into a gauntlet being thrown down. (Actually more like a gauntlet being dropped from high altitude, with no parachute.) Mr. Holland, naturally, accepted with equanimity. Our mutual challenge?

Goblins.

No, really.

Here’s the thing. Goblins have a reputation these days as useless, shiftless, uncivilized little humanoids—sometimes dangerous in large numbers, but individually no match for even the lowliest swordsman. While a great deal of this can be laid at the feet of Dungeons & Dragons, J.R.R. Tolkien actually gets a bit of the blame as well; the goblin clan he wrote of in The Hobbit was brutish, living in squalor, and driven only by greed, hunger and cruelty, but very definitely creatures of flesh and blood. (For those not obsessed with Tolkien, you should know that his ‘goblins’ from The Hobbit and the ‘orcs’ of The Lord of the Rings are the same creatures.) Honestly, these days an adventure with goblins (outside of settings like Eberron that aim to put everything you know about D&D on its head) is appropriate for first level characters, and usually only as a quick climb up to second level. Remember the “CR 1/3″ rating goblins got in the 3.5 SRD?

But modern goblins are a long way fallen from their unpleasant, Unseelie ancestors. Monstropedia gives us a glimpse of their real aspects:

“Goblins are pranksters, and are known for rearranging items in the house, tangling horses, banging pots and pans, removing the clothes from sleeping humans, knocking on doors and walls and even digging up the graves to scatter the bones around. Goblins like to borrow horses and ride them all night. If a horse is tired in the morning, it is said a goblin rode it. If a horse is panicking, the goblin is trying to mount it.”Goblin women steal human babies, replacing them with ugly goblin babies (changelings).Goblin changelings are sometimes known as ‘oafs’ or ‘crimbils’.”

Although they are not pure evil, Goblins are traditionally part of the Unseelie Court, and their pranks are never welcome. It’s exactly those sort of pranks and mischievous acts that children threaten (in a much watered-down form) when they cry “Trick or treat!” on your doorstep on Halloween. (Though not the real origin of Halloween, there’s something very interesting about children dressing as goblins (and other monsters) and taking on their aspect for a night.)

So with all of this said, what am I actually going to do? After all, describing the family tree of the conceptual goblin won’t do me much good when Sean Holland pulls out the big guns, right? Well, the answer’s simple. I’m going to turn to my favorite system for modern supernaturalism: Unknown Armies.

Stay tuned. This should get interesting…

“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” This corollary to Murphy’s Law is known as Hanlon’s Razor, and is a rule of thumb a lot of budding GMs tend to forget. There’s a tendency to have a bad guy behind everything; but occasionally, sheer stupidity can set up an exciting adventure.

For example, this story out of the UK:

A UK prison computer system was left in lockdown after jail bosses gave a convicted cybercriminal the task of reprogramming it, the Sunday Mirror reports.

Douglas Havard, 27, an inmate at Ranby Prison, Nottinghamshire, was asked to take over a project to create an internal TV station using the jail’s computer network. Havard is half-way through a six year term over his involvement in a £6.5m hacking and phishing scam (more details here), something the prison governors must have reckoned gave him the requisite computer programming skills.

…

After he was reportedly left unsupervised during the prison programming project, Havard spent his time altering system passwords so that everyone else was locked out. Prison bosses had to hire external consultants to sort out the resulting mess. Meanwhile Havard was put into segregation as punishment.

Another inmate at Ranby Prison recently managed to get a key cut that was capable of opening every door at the jail.

A Prison Service spokesman told the Sunday Mirror that the computer breach at Ranby was under investigation. He denied that lags were given unsupervised access and added: “The prisoner was not able to access records of any other prisoners.”

Yeah.

Of course, take that same stupid decision and apply it to a cyberpunk setting like Shadowrun, and suddenly the PCs are being asked to infiltrate a prison that’s under the prisoners’ control, hack its hostile computer system, help the guards restore order, and keep news of the warden’s stupidity from leaking out before corporate headquarters can get its damage control teams on top of the thing…

We all get spam. It sucks mightily. But for GMs there’s a little nugget of fun to be gleaned from it: The con.

Fundamentally, nearly every spam email is an attempted scam. Fake pills. Pornography. Phishing attempts. The omnipresent “Nigerian prince/ss” scams (more properly called advance-fee fraud or a 419 scam.) Knockoff or stolen goods. It’s all there — a marvelous repository of tricks and goods to flesh out con artists in your games.

Aside from just adding more believable detail to NPCs, there are a couple of things GMs can do with con-men. The first, of course, is to successfully con a character. This often has the advantage of being completely unsuspected by the players — why in the world would they think to check that the potions of healing they just stocked up on actually worked? Many gamers are so used to unexpected events that they don’t think to question them, and anything that seems suspicious often mentally gets metagamed away as “It’ll work out in the end, the GM must be planning something.” Not only is conning a PC a great way to knock your players out of that metagame perspective, it’s also fun. Do they get a chance to pursue the scammer?  If so, can they prove anything? What do they do once the con-man is caught?

Secondly (and this is probably the most common use of the “art of the scam” in RPGs), helping a friendly NPC recover from being cheated is always good for a fun night’s work. It’s simple, fun, can lead to some good investigative adventures, and it’s pretty easy to add layers of complexity to it — other scammed people, a deeper level of criminal involvement, &c. The only disadvantages of this sort of event are the relatively common use of it as an adventure hook (I’ve seen it in a number of published adventures) and the sense of “PC immunity” that it can foster. If the players see a couple of NPCs get defrauded but never encounter a fraud attempt themselves, they’ll start making certain assumptions about the sort of game you’re running.

At that point, you have my permission to cackle evilly and re-read point one.

Lastly — and this is the idea that inspired this whole post — what would happen if one of those obvious scams were true? What if someone really is trying to move an extraordinarily large sum of money out of the country and came to the PCs out of desperation? Who else is trying to get that money? What if that diamond ring the guy’s trying to sell for a fraction of its value is real? Or magical? What if that mountebank selling “love potions” suddenly found his product worked as advertised? Imagine the chaos! Imagine the fun as the party put things right and examined why these things happened!

Could be fun. I know my Eberron game will have an influx of fraudsters soon…

I’ve only once had someone play music at the table, and it frankly didn’t work — they were attempting to replicate a song that was playing in game with a piece of out-of-game music. However, because they had a very specific goal in mind I’m not willing to write the idea off without more evidence that it’s a bad idea.

I understand the arguments against it — poorly chosen music can be extremely distracting and keep players from immersing themselves in the game. Likewise, juggling a playlist distracts the GM and has the same effect on the players. The penchant for rock soundtracks in 80’s sword-and-sorcery movies set some extraordinarily bad precedents that have shambled along, zombie-like, to this day.

However, I do think that if it’s handled properly, music can work to set the mood you want in your game. As I see it, there’s five key points:

1. Low and consistent volume. The last thing you want is to drown out your players! If anyone has to raise their voice at the table to be heard over the music — even if it’s just a crescendo — it’s probably time to turn the volume down or adjust your playlist. If you’ve got a bunch of MP3s that you’re playing, odds are good that they’ll have different volume levels; find some sort of equalizing plugin to level things out (Winamp has several) or be careful in your selection.
2. Don’t change the music too often. Music is directly linked to emotion — which is why we’re doing this at all — so rapid and repeated changes in the style and tone of the music you’re playing will create a sort of mental whiplash in your players’ minds. Only change your playlists when it’s really necessary — significant scene shifts, the start of a battle, that sort of thing. And for all that’s holy, do not give your players their own personal soundtracks to switch to when they take the spotlight. You (and they) will go insane.
3. Different playlists for different moods. Don’t try to do this with one playlist — you’ll be juggling songs all night and you’ll always risk a song ending and jumping to something completely inappropriate. Create multiple playlists, each with a very tight emotional range to avoid the ‘whiplash’ effect I mentioned above. Likewise, keep the ‘voices’ in the music (i.e. the instrumentation) consistent in each playlist to maintain that emotional continuity. Jumping from an emotional piano solo to an emotional rock ballad just doesn’t work, however sentimental both songs may be. With a long playlist, you’ll have more than enough music to keep your players from noticing repeated songs, too. (For the record, “playlists” can certainly mean CDs here if you don’t have access to a computer or MP3 player during games.)
4. No lyrics (that anyone can understand.) Your voices should be the only ones at the table. People automatically follow lyrics because they contain information — it’s a natural reaction to the spoken word. Lyrics are an instant distraction and should be avoided. The only exception here are lyrics no one at your table can understand; because there’s no information to be gleaned from those words, the emotional content remains but the distracting factor is greatly reduced. (In other words, things like Celtic ballads or Gregorian chants are fine.)
5. Keep the controls close at hand. Whether it’s a remote control, an XBOX 360 controller or your laptop, keep your playlist-switching interface at the ready. You’ll want to be able to immediately change between playlists to keep the music changes synched with scene changes, and you’ll want to minimize the interruption of switching playlists as well.

Obviously music at the table isn’t for everyone. It can’t work in my game, in fact, since the game I run is played over Skype and MapTools — even if I could stream music to my players I don’t think I could spare the bandwidth to do it. But if you want to give it a shot, make sure to follow these rules; they’ll involve a bit of up-front work, but that’s nothing new to a good GM, and the payoff should more than make up for it. (Besides, unless you’re crazy like me you’ll be reusing your playlists all the time, so it’s a one-shot investment of your time.)

Looking for inspiration for your next campaign, or for something to help your character break the mold? Tabletops can help!

Peter’s Evil Overlord List – you know how fictional villains always seem to make mistakes? More than a decade ago, Peter Anspach decided to put together a list of things he’d do when he became an evil overlord. It’s not just a hilarious read, though; making sure that your BBEG avoids some of these archetypal pitfalls will quickly teach your players that clever villains are not to be trifled with. Be careful, though – you don’t want to go overboard and make your villain completely invulnerable…

A few favorites:

34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

142. If I have children and subsequently grandchildren, I will keep my three-year-old granddaughter near me at all times. When the hero enters to kill me, I will ask him to first explain to her why it is necessary to kill her beloved grandpa. When the hero launches into an explanation of morality way over her head, that will be her cue to pull the lever and send him into the pit of crocodiles. After all, small children like crocodiles almost as much as Evil Overlords and it’s important to spend quality time with the grandkids.

Marvelous.

Number two: The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches. Console RPGs – especially the stereotypical Japanese RPG – play by certain rules; when laid out clearly for all to see, they’re a bit ridiculous, but definitely funny. If your group tends to play a lot of these games, an awareness of the tropes involved and a willingness to go against them will serve you well.

Favorites:

2. “No! My beloved peasant village!”
The hero’s home town, city, slum, or planet will usually be annihilated in a spectacular fashion before the end of the game, and often before the end of the opening scene.

38. You Die, And We All Move Up In Rank
During that fake ending, the true villain of the story will kill the guy you’d thought was the villain, just to demonstrate what a badass he (the true villain) really is. You never get to kill the fake villain yourself.

54. I Don’t Like Gears Or Fighting
There are always giant robots. Always.

By the way, the folks at Project Apollo have a couple of very good sci-fi webcomics: The completed and delightful A Miracle of Science, and the still-going Afterlife Blues.

Last, but certainly not least, The Laws of Anime. A simple list of the physical laws of most anime universes, but as tongue-in-cheek as the previous two lists. Classic examples:

3. Law of Sonic Amplification (First Law of Anime Acoustics)
In space, loud sounds, like explosions, are even louder because there is no air to get in the way.

42. Law of Juvenile Omnipotence
Always send a boy to do a man’s job. He’ll get it done in half the time and twice the angst.

Anyone have any other suggestions? Great lists to share and enjoy?

Today saw the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. The historical significance of this moment, while unprecedented, has been discussed nearly everywhere today, and it hardly falls to me to add to the clamor. Neither do the particulars of the political positions of any given president have any relevance to this blog – while my own political views are quite strong, you won’t see me lay them out here.

Instead, I wanted to try to spark some conversation about how incredibly rare this moment is, as the 43rd President quietly hands power over to the 43rd individual to hold his office (a typo, you say? Nope – Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms. Tricksy!) The very fact that this transition goes off without a hitch every four years in the United States is remarkable, to the point that despite having happened each time without incident, commentators and pundits still remind us that we ought to be grateful for it.

Most players of roleplaying games live in very stable nations. Tabletop games are sometimes seen as an escape from troubles, but they’re a leisure activity that really don’t have a place in nations with severe political instability. As such, most GMs tend to forget how common unrest is on the death of a king, or even after a nominally fair election. Even the presence of an heir is often no protection against those willing to seize the opportunity presented; and custom may require that the heir be affirmed by some other body (religious or political) – a body that can often be swayed by bribes, threats or the mere appearance of readiness to lead.

GMs wishing to deal with a problematic succession need to read a bit of history. In the United States, European history is sometimes taught as the be-all and end-all of history up until the discovery of the “New World”, but an astute GM should also look elsewhere. Japanese history, especially in the 16th century, is a set of well-documented coups and seizures of power; the saga of the various Chinese dynasties is equally fascinating. While you certainly shouldn’t try to make things too complicated, borrowing the complexities of succession for when your players end up in such a crisis can add a lot of realism, as well as providing opportunities for players to actively change the balance of power in the afflicted desmense and feel influential.