Interesting OSR article

I found this article today. Nothing Earth-shattering here, but some points with which I agree.

Been a while...

Ye gods, has been really been that long since my last post? Fear not, gentle reader, I haven't taken a plunge into the Abyss or a tour of the outer planes. I've just been busy, mainly that good sort of busy that involves both paid projects for other publishers as well as a big project of my own. (Sorry, can't really talk about either yet.)

One good bit of recent news: It appears Wizards of the Coast is selling PDFs again! Hooray. I wasn't terribly happy when they stopped. I understood the reasoning, but I felt bad that an easy way for some players to get exposure to some classic modules and such had disappeared. So this is a good development, methinks.

I promise not to wait 2+ months before my next post!

Ooo ... Scary!

October is a good time to talk about scary RPGs.

Perhaps it's a reflection of the maturing gamer population or societal trends as a whole, but I've noticed an increase in the amount of horror elements present in traditional "fantasy" RPG scenarios.

This fascinates me. I love the horror genre, particularly horror short stories (both the venerable Lovecraftian as well as the very new). I do think there are more than a few RPG designers that share my tastes, so horror probably filters into what they do. Paizo has shown more than a fair amount of horror or gothic elements in their adventures, particularly in their adventure paths. (The Runelords AP is brimming with it.) Certain respected designers, such as Richard Pett and Nicolas Logue (mostly Paizo) and Adrian Pommier (Goodman Games) display an obvious affection for the genre, so again, it probably seeps into their work and if they are aware of this—and I'm sure they are—I doubt they mind. More and more, I read newer adventures and see little gory bits or frightening details; it's truly a groundswell of horror vibes within fantasy roleplaying.

Yet for all this, traditional horror RPGs still flounder. Call of Cthulhu attracts a passionate, but still fairly small group of devotees in comparison with popular fantasy RPGs. Despite the huge resurgence in zombie-related movies, shows, and literature, games such as All Flesh Must Be Eaten still seemingly hold red-headed stepchild status in the industry. But why?

It's my pet theory that much of this is about expectations. Fantasy campaigns are very open-ended, and generally players can expect to "win" by completing adventures, punishing the bad guys, etc. When players think of a horror campaign, many probably envision a campaign in which their characters are more helpless or overwhelmed, and one where happy endings are not promised. Many regular players may be put off by this, and the powergaming crowd, now more numerous than ever (in part, IMHO,  because of a tacit encouragement of powergaming stemming from the emphasis on character customizing and stronger PCs in latter editions), may hate the idea. Recent editions have focused more on a player-has-more-control and a rules-heavy/DM-lite approach, which is usually the opposite of that in horror RPGs.

Horror RPGs and campaigns can also go flat if not run properly. A campaign centered around a singular "monster" such as zombies or vampires can get old quick if variety is not introduced. Other, more broad horror RPGs, such as World of Darkness or the venerable Chill, can fall into a sort of monster-of-the-week pattern which is likewise undesirable. I think these common pitfalls haven't done horror RPGs much service.

Lastly, running a "scary" campaign is tough. It's quite one thing to be scared alone in your basement late at night and quite another to be frightened or even have the proper mindset for horror when sitting around a table in a brightly lit room surrounded by joking friends woofing down Doritos.

So what to do? How can we rescue the poor horror campaign?

1. Mix elements. The Ravenloft setting does this well. Find a group that doesn't mind some horror in their fantasy campaign—a bit of peanut butter in their chocolate, if you will—and amp up the horror elements. Introduce short horror-adventures or settings based within the larger world. If nothing else, it's a good change of pace.

2. Encourage them to embrace the implied hopelessness. Playing PCs in a horror game doesn't mean losing, but the victories are more fleeting. Even in Call of Cthulhu, infamous for its lethality and PC insanity, characters can hold the forces of evil at bay for yet another day, even if the rise of the Old Ones seems inevitable.

3. Allow the more powergaming folks some good battles. Most zombie movies involve a lot of zombie-stomping, even if one bite from one of the sluggards can fell a hero. Let your games be no different, and make it clear that playing horror doesn't mean running away 24-7.

4. Be creative with your campaigns. If the RPG focuses heavily on one monster archtype, introduce variants, power groups and secret societies (the Vampire game always excelled at this, I feel) and other non-monster challenges. 

For example, although the walkers—zombies in all but name—are the only fictional threat in the Walking Dead universe, they are certainly not the only villain or "monster." Just ask a WD aficionado about the Governor sometime! A focus on one monster type should not mean a boring campaign.

Next time: What makes an adventure truly scary?

A good turn

I'm an iPad owner, and I've gotten hooked on the Ticket to Ride app, the app version of Days of Wonder's popular boardgame. If you haven't checked it out, you should—it's a perfect example of a boardgame port, done right. In fact, I enjoy it more than the boardgame because all the score-keeping is done for me and I can square off from opponents from all over the world.

I once played this train game onboard an actual train headed for Washington DC, my opponents being from Berlin, England, and Chicago! I still can't wrap my head completely around that. But I digress!

Recently I downloaded the Carcassonne app. I've been a meeple mover for some years, so I thought it was time to give that port a try. It's another well done app, though it wasn't completely intuitive in all respects.

My first opponent was patient as I blundered through the system, and I soon confessed it was my first online game. My opponent beat me soundly and fairly—not just a beating but a thrashing. And then, after a game of quick responses, after the last turn, when my fate was obvious, my opponent left the game even though that granted the victory to me by default (something my obviously experienced opponent had to know). My experience with these online games is that winning players rarely bail unless life intervenes, and never on the last turn. Was I so bad I drove him or her away? And then it struck me: My opponent, knowing it was my first game, handed me a victory rather than sour my first experience with a sound drubbing. 

I'm a big boy, and a drubbing (probably my first of many) wouldn't dissuade me from playing future online games. But this act of kindness touched me. So thank you, my anonymous opponent. I hope we meet again so I can thank you and perhaps give you more challenge the next time around.

Accepting the New

After reading countless posts by 4e fans complaining about D&D-Next (hereafter Next), I'm getting worn out. 

I hate to say it, but the majority of the "complaints" simply boil down to "Next isn't 4e." I've got news, folks, it ain't supposed to be. Now take a deep breath, 4e fans. I enjoy the game too. But if you want Next to be a very slightly modified 4e, a 4.5e or 4.25 if you will, it just isn't going to happen. Without having access to private sales data, I can say with some confidence that if 4e books were roaring off the shelves, WotC wouldn't even be discussing Next right now. We probably wouldn't have heard talk of a new edition for several more years. But they are, ergo 4e probably isn't doing as well as hoped and they're probably trying to do something about it.

 A huge portion of have abandoned 4e (or never tried it) in favor of Pathfinder. Other folks stuck with 3.5e. Another segment has gone old school with retroclones, the DCC-RPG, or simply returning to their old 1e and 2e books. This is a problem for Wizards. They're apparently trying to do something about it, via Next.

Let's accept the obvious: This is a new edition. It isn't supposed to be 4e, anymore than 4e was supposed to be 3.5e. If you expect it to be 4.5, you're going to be disappointed. I appreciate that 4e has many fans, many of which would probably rather see a 4.5e. Facing the fact that the official owner of your preferred game is no longer going to support your preferred game edition, well, sucks. I've been there. (Indeed, it's not without some cruel irony that I recall the many people telling 2e fans, "Well you still have your old books!" when 3e came out and took the game in a new direction. And then the 4e fans telling the 3e fans the same thing. It seems we all get our turn at bat.)
There seems to be an urgent attempt by the 4e players to push WotC into making Next as 4e-like as possible, which really diverts the whole purpose of a new edition. The danger is that the WotC boards are mainly full of 4e players, whereas players who abandoned 4e for PF are probably on the Paizo boards or elsewhere, etc., so the designers are hearing more criticism because their active posters in the company boards are happy with the current edition. It's like walking into a Star Wars convention and saying that you're adding Klingons to the official SW universe—the complaints will fly because of the forum you've chosen. I only hope WotC is paying as much attention to the voices outside their own forums as to those within, because otherwise they're getting a skewed sample.

The 4e fans (and not all of them, mind you, some are very open-minded) aren't the only ones demonstrating this style of "I want Next to be the edition I already enjoy" behavior. I purposely went to some of the more popular old-school boards to get the reaction to Next, given it's 2e flavor, and I was both surprised and somewhat disappointed. A number of folks there, the ones that didn't simply refuse to talk about it at all, made comments akin to, "Well next has Rule A, which isn't exactly the same as Rule B in 2e, so I'll never try it." Again, insert a big sigh here, it's a new edition, folks! It isn't supposed to be 2e.
A lot of great, common sense innovations came about in the last twenty years—replacing THAC0 with a target's AC as the target roll needed to hit, for instance?—and it would be foolhardy to abandon those. If Next was supposed to be 2e in every way, shape, and form, WotC would simply reprint the 2e books and save themselves the effort. (Although there's a lot of 2e "feel" to the Next playtest rules, the majority of the rules actually seem 3e-inspired.)

At this point, for better or worse, the D&D market is dreadfully splintered. Getting everyone under one tent is impossible, methinks. It's my own personal belief that WotC should, despite the splintering of R&D staff resources and ad budgets, try to support two editions. And by that I mean actively support them via regular new adventures and supplements (though I loudly applaud their reprinting the 1e books this month). They should make a true 4.5e, to keep the hardcore 4e fans happy, because ultimately that's all a good portion of those folks will accept. And they should make a real old-school D&D, a 2e with some important (but not flavor changing) innovations culled from the newer editions.

Alas, that is a very doubtful scenario. So instead we must accept that Next is a new edition. What we get from it and how we shape it depends on us.

Player Knows Best? - Part 1

One of the more interesting things that has emerged, IMHO, from the recent D&D-Next playtests are the opinions about DM power—that is, the amount of “say” a DM has over the game and the players’ actions.

I’ve been playing D&D in one form or another for a long time, since 1977 in fact, so it’d be foolish to think that my experience with older editions hasn’t had an effect. It has. Some things in the recent playtest, like getting back all hit points after an overnight rest, seem ridiculous to me because I was “raised” on a system in which you got back one hit point per day (which now strikes me as equally ridiculous). But I digress. (More comments about ‘Next to come soon, perhaps after the next playtest packet later this summer.)

The complaints of a return to “Mother, may I?” are a frequent one. The attitude seems to be: I don’t want much unknown. I want to know how fast I can run, how far I can jump, whether I can leap from the balcony and grab that chandelier before I do it. I want to have a good sense of the odds.

These folks also seem to be of the opinion that the DM is there strictly as an atmosphere provider and bad-guy die roller, but little else. The DM is not only neutral, but his job is to be the road the players drag race on. Not much more.

I agree in spirit at least with the idea that a character should have some idea of their own capabilities and the odds. In real life, even if I’ve never jumped from the rooftop of one city building to another, Walking Dead style—and I certainly haven’t—I could probably stand near the edge and have a decent sense of whether attempting the jump was crazy or a decent risk. I know roughly how far I can jump. In RPGs the referee is describing the scene, a scene the players can rarely see first-hand unless illustrations are provided. And the players are playing characters that are probably a departure from their real life form, and guessing the ability of an imaginary person can be hard. This would seem to make a good argument for a DM objectively calling the shots, yet shouldn’t those players, if they are expected to play their characters well, know what the characters themselves would know? The character would have a good sense of their ability, just as I do standing near the edge of that rooftop, so a good player should share in that character’s knowledge.

This is a solid argument. But like many points of view, I fear it is often presented simply as a means to an end. If a DM is consistent with their DC or skill-type rulings, assigning similar levels of success for similar actions, the players swiftly learn the capabilities of their characters. No, I fear many players are using this as a means to an end, the end being overpowerful characters that fail at little. 

I don’t blame newer players for this, because game editions have moved in this direction. Characters now have more hit points, they have more abilities (especially at-will type abilities), and they heal much faster than in earlier editions. In addition, dying is much harder. In 1e, a failed save versus poison meant you were dead, kaput, pushing up daisies. Whereas in 4e a PC with 50 hp might actually have to be reduced to negative 25 just to drop. The advent of monster CRs in 3e also led to more balanced encounters, and the idea of characters running from an encounter to save their hides is more a rarity these days. It’s a big difference from games of old, and it leads to a different player mindset.

I don’t want to wield the wide brush and say newer/younger players are all videogame-influenced, but I think that is also a factor. A proliferation of RPG-style and FPS videogames has led to many players being used to a gaming experience that often involves running and shooting things with impunity (at least until you discover online multiplayer for the first time and are swiftly humbled) and quick resets when things go wrong. Many RPG players are also videogamers, so it’s foolish to disregard the influence one style of play might have over the other. This isn’t denigrating the player, merely acknowledging the way they were “raised.” If you grow up in a 40-room mansion, a Cape Cod style house will feel small, whereas if you’re raised in a one-room shack the reverse will no doubt be felt.

For me, much of the fun and fantasy aspect comes from the unknown. This can certainly be taken too far, as in DMs or games that throw a constant stream of “weirdies” or needlessly modified monsters at the PCs for sake or surprise alone, ruining any chance to establish a more natural, known setting. But some unknown is absolutely needed. If the players can beat everything and know everything, where is the challenge? Whether most players realize it or not, the pleasure comes from those difficult challenges. It’s fun to mow down lackeys with your +5 sword, but that gets old faster than you’d think. The memorable encounters are when you take risks with your characters and manage to beat difficult enemies by the narrowest of margins. Those are the times my players remember years later, always.

Planning Versus Reality

As I've mentioned in this column, years ago I used to jock a blues radio show. Being a disk jockey is a type of performance art, like being a DM, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised when I see similarities between the two.

One of the things I used to experience as an on-air jock was the oft-disappointing difference between planning and reality—that is, what I hoped for my show versus how the show actually went. Because the station was small, I used to do my own engineering—cue up music, set levels, run sound beds, talk with listeners, record calls, etc.—and it made for a crazy show. I used to arrive with a grand idea in my head of a perfect show: perfect song transitions, no dead air, good recordings, yada yada, but as you might expect, things rarely went according to plan. The reality was that I might have 7 minutes and 43 seconds before the top of the hour ID and needed to find two songs to perfectly fill that time slot, that went together, the first from the 80s and the second one current, picked from the limited rotation list, and I needed to do this while taking a listener request call and making hand gestures to the news talent through a window. My ratings were good and the listeners seemed happy, but I often left a touch disappointed that things didn't go exactly as planned.

Well and good, you say, but what does this have to do with RPGs, Rick? Well, you can probably see were this is going. My DMing has turned out similar in practice to the radio show. Feverishly written notes, scribbled directions, drawn maps, Post-It reminders ... but in the end it comes down to what direction the players go, what they do, and how well I go with the flow. A part of good DMing is ad-lib and performance in the face of the unexpected. Sometimes I'm good, and can even make lemons from lemonade, but other times... In a recent session, a dreaded city session, the players asked about some folks in town and I needed a name and simply came up blank. That naming part off my brain, after spinning out a lot of names already that session, now had a BACK IN 10 MINUTES sign hanging where a nifty NPC name should have been. Most embarrassing, to say the least. I want every session to be killer, and it's damned hard to settle for less, especially when the responsibility is 95% mine.

I'm now finally coming to terms with the reality of game performance. Those NPCs probably won't be voiced perfectly. I may not have a great name or new townsperson waiting in the wings for every occasion (though now I keep a list of names at the ready). But I've learned to be happy with my best effort, even if it doesn't live up to those pre-game aspirations. Keep your aspirations, honor them in play if you can, but if at the end of the day your players are raring for more and you had a good time, that's reward enough.