Always Believe In Yourself...

This thread on YSDC got me thinking a little about how to portray Real-World religions within the context of Lovecraftian nihilism. Partly because this intrigues me anyway - as I may have mentioned before, I'm a psychologist in training - and also because my current character in my role-reversal sessions of CoC is a Catholic exorcist. Now, my Keeper has specifically stated that religious rituals etc. will have no discernible effect on the world except for psychological effects. That's fine, and especially as he's only running a short game I completely understand the lack of ambiguity. That said, I think there's some wiggle-room for my own game to play with and I'd like to explore some options.

Obviously, some people will take it upon themselves to view this post as some sort of flame-bait. I do not intend to tread on any toes and these are not reflective of my RL views (which are entirely irrelevant to the issue) but my stance on portraying religion in a fictional universe, albeit one much like our own. If you are offended, please feel free to shut the tab and navigate away. Fair warning, I'll simply delete antagonistic posts.

I am working from the standpoint that no major world deities exist as independent deities. This is for two reasons. Firstly it gets very idealogically charged very quickly as you decide which ones are left out or left in, even things like meshing all the Abrahamic conceptions together can cause problems. Secondly, there are too many anyway, from major religions down to Egyptian beings. Incidentally, when there are exceptions to this rule, it is invariably Egyptian gods that actually exist in my game as I have a soft spot for the whole pantheon.

Option 1: The Facade.
This is an approach that is very popular among many writers of CoC scenarios as it is malleable to individual scenarios and situations. It involves treating the deity in question as an avatar or facet of an established Mythos entity (I hesitate to call them deities as they aren't technically in my game). This is typically Nyarlathothep (Baron Samedi in Burning Stars, for example) but could be Y'golonac, Yig or even Yog-Sothoth itself. I understand why it's become such a trope and have indeed invoked it myself, but I do have reservations about this. Firstly it disagrees with my conception of many of the mythos beings. Nyarlathothep especially suffers from this, probably largely due to a certain well-liked published campaign that is based around the concept, and it means he has basically turned into Loki. Who is far, far too human for my tastes. Mischevious and trickster deity is all well and good, but I don't like it when he's too heavily involved. It just smacks too much of anthrocentrism. With the exception of Y'golonac of course who is a deified version of everything that is wrong with humanity born from our basest desires. So fair enough. He doesn't usually use avatars though, preferring followers who join his debased ways anyway.

In this instance, religious folks who appeal to their deity of choice are in fact attracting the attention of a Mythos being. While this can never be a good thing, it may achieve short-term goals. There are likely to be conditions or, more likely, consequences of these appeals though and as the person's faith is likely to grow stronger if she has prayers that are answered the final revalation is likely to be that much more sanity-shattering.

Option 2: The Derleth.
This is a very unpopular approach among many purists in particular. It involves factionalising the various beings into 'good' and 'evil' sets that are at war in the cosmos. The general divide is that the GOOs are fighting for the destruction of the Earth, while the Elder Gods are attempting to suppress their efforts. Thus, again the native gods of earth religions are likely to be avatars and masks of the Elder Gods. The differences are chiefly that these deities are much more likely to be sympathetic. Again though, they are unlikely to wear repeated pestering and smiting shall be visited upon an uppity follower. Under this section would also come the 'actual' deities, such as Bast and Hypnos in the game's canon. These tend to exist as benevolent deities and also work with Nodens if he is around. Similarly, it could be that all benevolent gods are facets of Nodens. While I'm a pulpy gamer, I'm a Lovecraftian purist so I don't like touchy-feely deities like Nodens wandering about in my game world.

Option 3: The Lovecraft.
No being that isn't mathematically summoned using the correct ritual can be interacted with. Prayers and the like go completely unanswered and many will lose their faith in the face of the unholy truths they encounter. Most powerful entities are mere aliens and natural forces rather than actual deities.


I tend towards option 1 when these issues come up. But it varies and as I have said before, I am constantly meddling with my world's canon as much as the rules of my game.

Now, I reckon that there should be psychological implications of religion for characters. These can be both positive and negative of course. To start with at least, the promise of an overarching plan and a guardian would make a seriously religious character fairly hard to shake. Similarly, courage of one's convictions can lead to a persuasive personality and a master of argument. Of course if and when their faith is challenged and found wanting, there is a massive downward spiral from there.

On Predilections and Predications

Normally I don't like to get involved in OSR vs Story Gaming as it invariably leads to nothing good. However this post by C at Hack & Slash. interested me enough to throw my own tuppence at the faceless masses of the internet. (I know the context is set against different ways of playing D&D specifically, but it got me thining about gaming in general).
 
Now I will preface this by nailing my 'Story-Gamer' colours firmly to the mast. (Ironically I do this largely via the medium of one the oldest and least changed games in the industry.) I'm not above messing around with dice-rolls and fixed encounters to facilitate interesting circumstances (the proverbial quantum Ogre). I am upfront about this with my players though and make sure they're fine with it before we start playing. I have only been roleplaying for about 18 months seriously, but I have learned that 99% of problems come from a dischord between expectations. Usually dischord between GMs and Players.

That said, I have only been playing for a short while and the prevalence of the OSR in the blog-o-sphere (is that even a term anymore?) has piqued my interest in that style of gaming too. I like to think (erroneously I suspect) that I am open-minded enough to try some different types of gaming. I have played almost exclusively investigative type games up until this point*, so as clichéd as they might be to everyone else, dungeon crawling is not something I'm particularly familiar with. Now, I can't see much appeal in the genre from a purely mechanistic point of view: kill-monsters-get-treasure-get-power-to-kill-more-monsters. Up until today I thought, 'Why not just play a video game?'. But what I saw from C's post is that so much of this game is determined by the player attitudes. What I had been taking as preachy from a lot of gamers was more honestly just 'Here's why I like what I like'. Unfortunately a rather vocal (primarily forum-based I find) minority are determined to knock all other play-styles.

So, what are my aims in a game?
1) Enjoyment

That's it. It sounds trite but I play not to experience a particular thing or even play a particular thing but to enjoy what I'm doing. Rather more accurately, the specifics of what I'm looking for vary from game to game and even session to session occasionally. Sometimes I want a nice monster-of-the-week game that ends with a shoot-out, and sometimes I want complex and intriguing investigation that culminates in foiling a plot without ever raising a weapon. It all comes down to what the person C was discussing with says:

"...in the OSR having your dude be a meeple isn't a bad thing..."

Both camps have a tendency to take the core characteristics of the other and then use them as insults, when actually they aren't. It's just a matter of disparate opinions. WHICH IS OK. And nobody should need to justify it (though it's probably helpful to be able to of course) it's just how you like to play.

This is why I don't think I'll ever be able to get on with public gaming or con gaming, because I judge a lot by knowing my players and what they may or may not enjoy in the current mood and what I feel like running this week.

Moreover, both my recent revelations and C's above post have shown me that game-selection both in tone and (though I suspect to a lesser extent) system need to be informed choices. Not because any is inherently better than any other (sorry D&D players ;) ) but because they are each focussed differently. It's why I need to play some different games and as I said before, the best way to improve a game is to ensure that every decision is a conscious decision and not a default decision even if that means nothing changes. The game will be better purely for you knowing why you are doing everything you are doing.

Thus, this shall be my mid-year's resolution: I resolve to play a greater variety of games so I can at least learn about why other people like them in practice. I've no doubt there will be at least one game I walk away from and never go back to, but that's ok too. The aim isn't to like everything, it's just not to dislike everything on principle.

Wow, this had a much more positive outcome than I was expecting when I started. I admit I was expecting to sort of dissolve into a dribbling polemic against the internet.

*Incidentally, I would be interested to now how often this sort of game crops up outside of games that are specifically geared towards it (CoC, GUMSHOE et al.). That being detectivery, rather than just investigation in the sense of exploration.

The Transcendent Beauty Of Esoteric Miscellany

I am a rather pretentious person. Who isn't if we're really honest? But in relation to RPGs, I am of the opinion that the GM should be allowed to have fun as well as the players, and perhaps at their expense.

In particular this manifests as a sort of literary ADD on my part. I pride myself on being a fountain of cultural references (it's one of my few useful qualities), and so I enjoy slipping these things into my games. Call of Cthulhu and Kerberos Club are both marvellous settings for this sort of play. For example having Byron Humphrey from The Dreaming Stone campaign enthusiastically rambling about the fantastic research of Dr Cavor, or the detective abilities of Chevalier Dupin is a gleeful opportunity for me. Even such obvious things as having a pub named 'The Winchester', a cult known as the 'Esoteric Order Of The Golden Dawn' or the 'Knights In White Satin' in my RQ games are much more amusing to me than they perhaps should be.

I have no idea what it is that causes things like Alan Moore's famous 'League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen' to have such a profound effect on me, but even if I don't immediately get the reference I'll spend time looking it up and then savour the moment when the penny drops. I've lost count of the times I've lost whole afternoons to the minutiae of these things, giggling to myself hysterically as all sorts of ideas for connections come to me.

It also offers a genuinely connecting moment with a player if they understand the reference, especially if only one of them does. That glint in the eye as you see they understand is an excellent moment and one that should be encouraged often, but not often enough to exclude others of course. I've found this to be a good litmus test for how well I'm going to get on with a player, if they get around a quarter or more of the references and grin when they do, we'll get on fine. Those who are so uninterested in the backstory as to ignore even the references they do get are unlikely to stay a full campaign, either by my instigation or theirs. It's not a hundred percent proof though, so  I try not to make snap judgements on it. This can probably also be taken as 100% proof that I am a story-gamer at heart and will keep coming back to it even in my dungeon crawls....
I guess the point of this post (albeit in a roundabout and unnecessary way) is that one of the best ways to achieve player investment is to have players that are on the same wavelength as you, who have similar humour and interests. And who don't mind you mocking them (good-naturedly) for missing a joke.

On The Heroics Of Laziness (Or The Laziness Of Heroics?)

So, Monday was Call of Cthulhu night but as I'd started the RuneQuest posts I figured I'd let that go first.

Monday's game got me thinking about Pulp and Purist gaming in CoC. Obviously there is a scale rather than a binary distinction but it is an interesting relationship to explore I think. My games tend heavily up toward the pulpy end of the scale. One of my players has pretty much 0 interest in being scared at all but really enjoys the roleplaying focus and theme of the system so a completely purist approach is out from the start. Coupled with the fact that the last few months have been spent in the Dreamlands, which is pretty much impossible to take seriously (Butterfly Dragons?!) as a fearful place, there have been few scares. In some ways I think a general light-hearted tone is useful as it makes the serious bits show up a bit better.

Case in point: During a scene whereby the investigators were fleeing 'Indiana Jones' style before a horde of Lengites. They had just broken free of captivity and dodged various guards in two separate groups and fortuitously met up by their main escape route. Now the entire reason they had come to this place was to rescue a friend, who also had their means of escaping the Dreamlands and some other important artifacts to their quest. As they were fleeing across the open ground around their prison, he tripped and fell. Now the investigators had a poignant choice to make here: They could either grab try to pull him to his feet (around 50% chance of success) or just tear the backpack containing the artifacts from his back (100% chanceof success), leaving him to be likely trampled under the hooves of the Lengite soldiers. This provoked much tension among them as they deliberated, what admittedly should have been a split second decision became a ten minute debate. This I like because it showed that the party could engage with the story on a level deeper than 'we need those artifacts, drop the NPC'. They eventually opted to save him, and there was much cheering and released breaths as he was dragged forward and they made it to relative safety.

It's not entirely this influence that has me running pulp though. I ran a campaign last summer for a different group and that was very pulpy too so it's obviously it is something inherent in my style of Keeperingas well. I know it's partially a result of my influences, I've read much more Howard, Dunsany and Lumley than the master Lovecraft himself so these set-pieces and heroics appeal. But I think another key factor is laziness. It's just so much easier to maintain a harsh tone for a few minutes while the investigators are negotiating with a potential suicide or something and then revert to jokes and light-heartedness once its over. Its so hard to set and maintain a genuinely creepy atmosphere and I just don't know that I have the patience for it. Although I admit, Ive yet to find a group who would be entirely open to the idea anyway.

This is definitely something I need to work on, and in the future i shall be looking for ways to enhance the atmosphere without becoming a self-parody. And I shall be a better GM for it whether I'm being Pulp or Purist, because I'll have chosen the mood and not just be defaulting on it.

An Open Relationship With The Story? (and other quirky questions)

As I'm trying to settle into the routine of posting regularly, my post topics have been all over the place. I'm trying to aim for quality over quantity of course but I think what I need is a project to focus on. By no means will this be the sole focus of the blog but just to warn you that I'm going to start preparing a sandbox world for an MRQII game that will materialise at some unknown time in the future and as such there will be an incoming stream of posts about this, along with the OPD competition entry...

Anyway, here's several meta-questions that are more attitude than mechanic-centric to counter-balance yesterdays post. This was mainly inspired by people bandying about questions about attitudes to gaming on the blogroll, forums and in the Real World^tm, so this gives me some general answers I can direct them too. If it inspires you to think about your style as well then so much the better!

1. Do you fudge dice rolls? The GM in me says occasionally it's ok, the Player says no. In general I don't because it seems to defeat the point of rolling.

2. Do you play with a GM screen? I never have for purely practical (i.e. space-related) reasons but I've never felt like I'm missing out. I'd like to try it though as it's an iconic sort of image...

3.Improvisation or Strict adherence to prepared material? Obviously improvisation has to be a huge part of any game (to avoid plot-train syndrome) but I like to follow prepared material as I am very much still amateurish in my attempts to riff off my players. That said, I like to think I'm improving and that's a large part of what the sandbox project is going to be about. That and my passion for worldbuilding...

4. Roleplaying or Rollplaying to solve problems? This is an age-old question which I think addresses quite a large flaw in mechanics such as searching for traps (in D&D) or Spot Hidden rolls (in CoC). If theplayer specifically states they look where the trap (or clue, item, enemy etc.) is, but fails their roll, do they find the thing? In my book, yes they do. I'm very much about promoting player (as opposed to character) ingenuity as much as possible in my games, so yes they do.

5. Story gamer or dungeon crawler? While this is pretty much a false dichotomy, I tend to do both. Having cut my teeth on Call Of Cthulhu's heavily plot-driven scenarios I have a soft-spot for a good storyline, but I have also been the victim of GMs who enforce their storyline to the hilt, and thats no fun. So I have overarching, background machinations but mostly for me, the players don't need to be restricted. I had this driven home for me, last weekend in fact, when one of the players who was used to a different CoC GM kept asking if the things he was about to do would 'break' the scenario because he'd done them in another guy's game and the GM had flat out said if he did that they may as well go home, the adventure is over. That seems wierd to me...

6. How much random/procedurally generated content do you use? I guess this ties into the previous question, but at the moment not a lot. Many of the blogs I read wax lyrical on the wonders of random encounter tables though so I'm very tempted to implement in a game somewhere. I have an interesting idea for a procedurally generated game bouncing around in my mind, but I'm sort of stuck on how to implement it without it becoming boring after the novelty wears off.

7. Do you actually ENJOY GMing? This is a weird one. I've heard so many people say "I only GM because no one else wants to" that it's become almost my standard assumption, but I find it hard to believe that the people who spend hours preppig for a session are doing so just for the sake of their fellows. I enjoy GMing Call Of Cthulhu very much so, and I don't think being a player in that game is ever going to hold appeal for more than one or two sessions because I've seen too much behind the curtain and I'd miss the little bits of knowledge that make everything hang together behind-the-scenes. That said, there is a particularly sad kind of heartbreak that comes of having players stomping through your meticulously prepared world...

8. How detailed do you want characters? Again, this varies between GM and Player me. GM Malik wants specific details that he can use as plot-hooks and similar devices. Anything else is nice because it gets the player invested, but superfluous for my own purposes. Player Malik isn't particularly bothered about the character history. Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against those who devise whole family trees and so on, but it's not for me. What I like is the personality of a character, the quirks, the hooks, the habits, something that really influences what he does so that other people will be able to almost predict what he's going to do based on his personality not mine and they'll remember him and his actions. That said, these tend to be minor traits as hugely quirky characters tend to clash with the party and the GM. This probably stems from my psychological background I admit. If players want to write up long backstories I'm good with that and it definitely helps player investment, and some people like reasons for their behaviour.  As I'm writing this, Wrath Of A Zombie has written an interesting piece on this exact subject here. An alternative point of view is covered here.

9. Do you use props in gaming? This varies humungously, based on the game. In CoC I do, a lot, because handouts are cool and tangible clues are the best in a invetigative game. Also decipering them shuts the players up for a while. In other games I suspect I won't as much, though the occasional visual puzzle will inevitably pop up here and there.

I've covered worldbuilding before and so suffice to say that I enjoy it immensly but feel it often goes to waste as players ignore half of it anyway. That said, if it makes the world more believable and helps you with your roleplaying NPCs (it does for me) I think it's an excellent idea. (BTW, I know that post and my current sandbox idea are a little at odds, but that was referring to maps in the context of campaigns where there is a specific objective, because I'm a largely new-school story-gamer as noted above, hence why I'm trying to broaden my horizons).

Anything else you want to know about, please ask!

I Am Become Death, Temporary Interruptor Of Campaigns

Death. The greatest theoretical obstacle to any player character. I can't help but feel that it has lost it's sting a little. Granted my main game of choice is 'that one where everyone goes mad and dies' but even so, I have noticed that players are noticeably blasé about the prospect of character death. I think this could be influenced by one of two things, or rather one thing from two different perspectives. Namely commitment, from both me as GM to getting adequate buy-in and from the players to their characters.

Naturally I'm going to start by offloading as much blame onto my players as possible. Unfortunately, I'm not entirely convinced that much blame can actually be passed on this one. Fundamentally, this is a problem of players not caring about their characters. Some people (I fall into this category as a player usually) care about every character they create automatically and spend endless amounts of time crafting quirks and gimmicks both physically and mentally, that have nothing to do with stats, or often even the campaign at hand.

For example, my current Dark Heresy character is a voidborn cleric. With DH you roll for background and quirks, I got 'born on a space-hulk' and 'elegant hands' as my recognisable quirks. Focusing on the first, Akadia became almost tribal in her dedication to the god-emperor due to her uncivilised upbringing, gathering totems and items and using vicious weapons (an eviceserator being her current favoured toy) as the campaign developed. These include the skull of an adopted bird that was eaten and an unhealthy attachment to a lamp which she has an almost maternal bond with. These details (both from the character gen and from the campaign itself) and the anecdotes that accompany them are what make me love a character, the fact she can dual-wield hand-cannons and wave a chainsword almost her own height are bonuses and fun to mess with. So come on players, invest a little in your characters and crucially make these things pop-up in game. Going back to my DH group, one of my comrades plays a pacifistic psyker who refuses to kill people unless absolutely necessary. This is actually quite fun when you get used to it (and as he is easily the most powerful character in the group, get used to it we did) and makes the character memorable.

Memorable characters are mourned and protected, the schadenfreude that drives me as a CoC GM loves the anguish experienced by a player losing a well-developed character, which is one of the reasons I try not to kill my players every session. The guy who's characters die every other session and do so because of his intended decisions is unlikely to mourn character #7 any more than #1, but equally he will not be memorable for the other players or myself and that seems a bit pointless really.

So, what's the GMs part in this? I think one of the other key faults lies with GMs who don't require enough from their players. If you just roll up stats and stick a name at the top of the sheet without anything else and then jump into a game, what message are you sending? That your pen and paper character is like a video game character: a list of numbers that interact with other numbers and when the health bar runs out you get a new one, probably nearly identical to this one. That's certainly how I felt with my first character. A Dragonborn Paladin in a 4e D&D game who breathed poison and could heal people once a day or so. He was just a stat block so I didn't care if he died or lived. And it's the same in my current CoC campaign, when I started I didn't ask for enough detail (I asked basically for occupation, hometown, siblings and a single memorable event from their history). Now a couple of players went beyond and detailed histories but these tend to be the ones who are roleplaying more anyway. The others simply picked a stat, pumped it up really high and then built a flimsy concept to explain it. In conclusion, while GMs can do somethings to encourage player engagement, at the end of the day it's all about engaging your players if you want deaths to be memorable and a decent deterrant.

One Page Dungeon Contest

Think I might try my hand at this, the One Page Dungeon Contest:

http://campaignwiki.org/wiki/DungeonMaps/One_Page_Dungeon_Contest_2012

Fairly self-explanatory really, create an adventure that can be run as written and fits on a single A4 sheet. Around 4 months I started work on a full Call Of 'Thooloo scenario by the name of 'Preacher Man', which stalled and I haven't really had the motivation to restart it. The full version is about 2/3rds complete but adapting it to this format might encourage me to finish the maps and encounters and I can always finish and release the full version at a later date. I'll keep you posted.

*Non sequitur*
An amusing thought also occurred to me the other day. I'm currently reading psychology at university and attempting to establish a basis for my dissertation next year, so I thought why not combine my two loves: psychology and RPGs? I can't see it actually going anywhere, but its a nice little way to entertain myself, especially as I'm particularly interested in language and that's essentially what this hobby is built on...

*Non sequitur*
Even as this publishes, I am running 'The Burning Stars' one-shot. Been looking forward to this all week and it'll be a nice change of pace from my regular campaign to not have to worry about TPKs ruining the flow of the campaign.
Expect a write-up either tomorrow if I have time tonight or Tuesday if I don't. Should be good!