On Writing Styles ...

Last post I remarked that when I began running D&D, about 20 years ago (Crom!!) - I often sat around and wrote up NPCs that were never used.

This led me to thinking about the various writing styles I have tried and rejected as I have gone along.

When I began, of course I had no idea what the heck I was doing. Thus, the PCs surfing through dungeons on magic ax heads with flails made of magic pearls, etc. I had no life outside my room, so I sat around rolling up characters just for the fun of it. Yes, I was a boring little geek who should have been learning something that would be useful later in life - like how to talk to a girl! Or how to play drums!

By the time high school came along, I still had no life. So, I spent many hours writing exhaustive notes. I'd start off with a yellow legal pad and fill in story lines and NPC stats for pages and pages. I used a .05 mechanical pencil and wrote four lines of text to every one college ruled line (try it - it's hard to read. I was an idiot.) And, of course, any night that I showed up with tons of notes and everything I wanted to do planned out - the group would decide to go off on a tangent and I was required to think on my feet.

This thinking on my feet thing seemed to happen more and more often. In certain groups, when I did have notes, I was accused of "strong arming" the group to follow what I had written. I'm sure the accusations were not far from wrong.

In college, I went the other way. Since I had a job and homework and classes that I sometimes attended (I even sometimes talked to girls!) I didn't have excessive time to write up game material. Instead of pages of notes, I'd have half a page of notes and winged the rest. Flying by the seat of one's pants can be fun. There are no restrictions for tangents and very little chance to "strong arm" a group. However, when I do fly without notes, I tend to give more stuff to the players. They walk away with bags of money and high powered items that later come back to haunt me. In one game I ran, I got around this by constantly dropping the players into a new game world every week, naked, JOB style. As you might imagine, the players hated this!

Since college, as my life has become busier and busier, I have had to refine what I do. Half of the enjoyment I get out of running and playing an RPG is writing up background material. A few of my games could easily have been expanded into novels and someday, a few might! I just don't have time to write entire legal pads full of material. My older, more sophisticated players know when I'm off my notes and exploit those moments to get more cool junk or quickly solve riddles or get rich.

There has to be a compromise. I do still write long histories of particular characters or events. Then, I take those histories and use them to make sketches of the main NPCs and add some stats. I don't waste time building full characters - my players will never care what the gardening skill of a given PC might be. They will want to know who they know? How rich they are? What information they might have access to? Super Powers? Et cetera. If during play it is required to know exactly what an NPC can or cannot do in a given area, I quickly decide and add that information to the NPC's sheet later.

I also commonly make NPC webs. Thus, we have NPC A - The Mentor. Almost every game I have ever run, I have used an NPC to mentor the PCs. He can be a teacher or a patron or a boss or what have you. NPC A has allies and enemies. I usually like to map out six to ten secondary NPCs. These NPCs also have allies and enemies, but I try not to map too far out - the players won't care unless I write a story line that makes them care.

Good players, IMHO, come to me with a background of their own. This is excellent fodder for NPC webbing. Certainly one of their friends or enemies knows or has crossed someone in my web. It doesn't take long to have a rich supporting cast, each with only a few notes on what they are best at.

Random NPCs that don't end up dead become reoccurring contacts for the PCs. That shop owner on planet Forgettable might become a connection to a local crime lord who has a connection to suppliers and pirates and mercenaries and scary cults that worship the inherit evil of the walnut! I think you can see my point: I allow the material I have already written to write material that will be used later on. With minor characters becoming contacts and sometimes major contacts, this adds a sense of continuity that I have found no other way to provide.

And, in the end, when I show up to a game with little or no notes, I am pretty good at the pants-flying routine. Those sessions are usually the best time to let the PCs have a shopping/gambling/bar room brawl trip while I sit back and sketch notes of the NPCs they meet/offend/assault for later use!

Mix up your writing style - you might find a useful tool!

Size Matters ....

The first D&D game I ever ran was just myself and my cousin. I had received The Red Box for Xmas and I was eager to run. Needless to say, the game was insane and out of control. The main PC had a He-Man style breast plate with a removable double ax head that could be ridden like a surf board. Weird.

But, there were bigger problems than our unrestrained imaginations. It was only the two of us. I knew what was going on in the game and played all the NPCs. My cousin played his character. So, it came down to me trying to entertain him. Actually, I spent a lot of time not doing homework and rolling up NPCs that would never be used - but that's another story.

A few years later, I had graduated to AD&D. I ran a group of my high school friends and their friends and family. I've referred to this group before. At one point, I was DMing for at least eight regular players and another six to ten random drop ins and irregular no shows. One night, it was twelve players all at once. Ever play on a really slow WoW server? That's what combat felt like that night. Awful!

Before I left STL, I was in a group of about six that played in multiple games. This was a pretty tight group and we functioned rather smoothly. This seemed like a rather perfect size. Not too small and none too large.

My current Star Wars group is right at that magical number with five total people. Again, we function rather well and we've taken turns GMing. None too big or small. One can miss a session and the group can continue. We could probably add a player or two, but the attention we get out of the various GMs has been rather lavish.

I'm involved in a World of Darkness game and I warned the Storyteller early on that he was dicing with an unfriendly random encounter table. First, he is mixing the whole of the WoD together. For anyone that has ever tried to move their Vampire into a game of Werewolf or any permutation possible within the WoD, they will quickly discover that White Wolf has built several quality games, but, they have not built a consistent, cohesive universal system such as d20 or GURPS. So, strike one there.

Strike two comes from the fact that he has a group of seven including himself and has talked about adding extra players. He's right at the point of having too large of a group. Add in all the issues of running a game of Vampire/Werewolf/Mage/World of Weirdness - he's bitten off quite a chunk. To his credit, he is doing a pretty good job chewing what he doth bite. But, I have seen the beginnings of problems. I don't blame him, it's a lot to handle. He has a large group of creative players who all want attention. We're a bunch of brainy puppies, chasing each other's tails and tromping all over this poor Storyteller. I hope he yet proves that he is the exception to the rule.

So, to sum up, if your group is starting to drown in its own success, think about pruning it down. Two groups of five, in my opinion, will do better than one group of ten.

To involve the players ... or not?!

The last post is something of an object lesson.

A lesson I will never learn.

In the last post I asked for feedback from my readers. I know I don't have many readers. I have a couple of ways of measuring my readership and they all tell me that I don't really have a readership. Mostly, I have a few friends who check this site because they are bored or the RSS feed tells them there is something new or a search engine brings me yet another hapless victim.

But, I asked for feedback anyway. In eleven days I got a total of one reader, my best friend, Max, telling me he reads the site. That's it. The other 5 to 10 of my readers couldn't be bothered to put up a "Me, too." It's the holidays and this isn't the most popular site in the world. So, I got about what I expected.

But what the smeg does this have to do with gaming?

Aha! You didn't think I could pull this back to topic, did you? Never underestimate my power to follow a trail of bread crumbs in the exact direction I want it to go!

Several times in the past I have made the same mistake. Either I am starting a game or am already running a game, and I turn to my players and say: what would you like to see in the game? Where would you like the game to go? I can run just about anything (except Super Heroes) here are dozens of options, choose what you want.

In nearly every case, my players looked back at me with blank stares. They had no clue. Wasn't I, as the GM/DM, supposed to do all this creative stuff? They were in no way prepared to add to my creation, other than to play it.

Now, none of my players were stupid. Most were highly creative people. But, it seems like most of us see RPGs as entertainment and we are all so used to having our entertainment pushed to us, from the page or the monitor or the screen, that we feel we have no creative bond to the work in front of us.

I have a very large collection of game books. Most are GURPS, but there are several others and it grows every year. A few years ago, we got a group together. The thought was to play D&D, but, it was agreed that we would entertain other ideas. I showed up, laid down a GURPS Basic Book and about twenty different, wild and interesting world books. I said I would happily run any of those worlds, or any combo of those worlds. No picked up a book, even to just look at its cover. The group opted for D&D. It ended up being a great game, but it just amazed me what a grip the known has on us. Everybody knows D&D. No one was prepared for me to run GURPS Ice Age Mecha!

Yet, I have been able to get groups to play other games, things that were not D&D. But, my trick was that I showed up with a game already ready already. No input from the players.

What happens to us? We had this co-creative ability as children. I have seen many people compare playing RPGs to playing that classic children's game "Let's Pretend". I disagree. In Let's Pretend, the game was about co-creation. Everyone involved added to the world. Sure, it was disorganized, the rules changed at a whim, but it was fun to see where it went. A game might start out as Astronauts in the Planet of the Sand Box, change to Astronauts at War and end up as Astronauts in the ER. But everyone participated.

So, my goal these days is to show up with a game in hand and give the players only limited creative room. If you play in a well known setting, say Star Wars, you don't have to give the players much creative room at all.

And, yet, with all of this in mind, I recently found myself plotting a possible Star Wars game, giving the players a ton of options up front. I can't seem to learn the lesson: players want to be entertained via push. Anything else is a waste of the GM's time.

So, I didn't really want or need your feedback. I will do with this blog as I wish and I hope to entertain you all. I also encourage you to go out and find new games, new worlds and every now and then, go out of your way to entertain your GM!

Helloooo - oooo - ooo! Echo - ooo - oo!

So, this little blog has been around for a bit over a year and I have gotten around to writing less than *cough*30*cough* entries.

At this time of year, one is often led to look back over the last year and measure one's achievements.

I enjoy writing out here, I plan to keep writing out here. I want to write more often. I have several ideas for things I can put out here.

However - I'd love to know one thing:

Is anyone reading this blog?

Just curious. Is anyone using the materials I've presented? Have you been inspired by anything you read out here? Do you like what you see? Would you like to see anything else?

Talk to me! Comment!

I need the feedback ... obviously. ;)