Boom! I guess the game is over ...

I have a cautionary tale for those of you thinking about allowing some of your players to play NPCs in a crucial point of your game ...

Many years ago, early in my role playing career, a friend of mine decided to introduce a group of us to the Star Trek RPG. I was certainly hip!

We all rolled up our Federation characters and chose a name for our ship: USS The Far Side. Wish I was kidding ...

The scenario went that before the Khitomer Accords, a Federation ship is sent to a planet in the Klingon Neutral Zone. The planet is about to explode and there are humans that need to be rescued. Unfortunately, the colony is illegal. To complicate matters, the Klingons also have an illegal colony on this planet. So, as the Federation ship arrives, it detects a Klingon ship.

Both ships establish communication and determine that they want to rescue their colonists but, of course, neither trusts the other. The GM decided to allow a couple of players to play the Klingons during this negotiation. I was one of the Klingons.

So, here's Klingon logic as I understood it: if my enemy is dead, there is nothing to fear, defend against or negotiate with. Sound about right?

In our negotiations, we "Friendly Klingons" (Sure!) bravely offered to risk one of our shuttles. We would fly over to the Federation ship, pick up the Federation representatives and pilot them down to the surface so that they could observe that all the colonists got off the planet. (Sun Tzu sez: "Never accept anything the enemy offers you.")

The Federation players bought this! Geez!!!

The shuttle landed in the bay on the USS The Far Side. A specially chosen warrior (we had LOTS of volunteers!) steps out from the shuttle. He holds up his arm, displaying the remote device he is holding and yells "For the Glory of the Empire!!" Then he presses the button. The shuttle is, of course, jam-packed with explosives. (Sun Tzu sez: "All warfare is based on deception.")

BOOM!

The Federation ship is no more and the Klingons pick up their colonists and a bunch of human slaves.

The End.

We could have rolled up new characters, but, it was late into the evening and we didn't. Nor did we ever get together to play Star Trek again. True, the GM was a bit of a prat, but it would have been nice to play a different scenario.

The lesson learned: unless you are willing for your game to go totally off the rails, be ready to counteract your player's actions to keep the game rolling.

Not all Mecha are created equal!

This site has seen a few recent walks down memory lane. Some comments on a previous entry brought up some old memories of a group I hadn't thought of in years. That group, more than anything, taught me many lessons on what NOT to do as a GM.

I ran Rifts for this group. I was a big fan of Palladium after having played Heroes Unlimited. I became more excited about Palladium because they were attempting to build a universal system; a system where one could play any genre without having to change rule sets. Later I would discover a product that did this much better: GURPS.

Rifts, for those that don't know, took the next step. Rifts brought all genres into one game. Sci-Fi Aliens and Demons existed next to Mutants with super powers, medieval warriors and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. I was impressed with the concept. I bought all the books as I could afford them; I bought many of them for the art alone. It was impressive stuff.

What wasn't impressive was the game system. For all intents and purposes, Palladium was the first D20 game; it was a reworking of the AD&D game rules and, frankly, not a very good one. But, I didn't know it at the time. At the time the only other game I had played was D&D. So, Palladium seemed normal, simple, easy to understand.

I got a group together and I began a game. I won't go into details of the game I put together, even though I am still impressed with myself for bits of it to this day. However, I would like to share some of the things I did wrong centered around one player.

I don't remember the guy's name. He was, as the rest of us were, a geek. Today, I would describe him as an "otaku" - he was very into anything Japanese. The guy was rail thin and tall, kept his hair long and bone straight. He wore only black. And, frequently, he walked around with a katana in his belt. He was quite a piece of work.

A member of the Rifts group was a friend of this Otaku and asked me if he could join. Sure, I said, no prob. The Otaku was of course interested in playing a Mecha Pilot from the Robotech game produced by Palladium. This was Rifts. A Mecha Pilot would fit right in, right? Wrong. My first mistake was not thinking "This character will have a huge war robot. No one else in the group is armed with a large war robot."

So, the Otaku rolled up his character and picked out a Mecha. His character arrived via one of the rifts local to the players. All was good.

I decided to make a challenge for the group. I sent in a mecha and two war robots. I honestly thought the group would take this threat without much trouble. My second mistake was not verifying this as fact. Had I bothered to read the Robotech book instead of just buying it and staring at the art, I would have seen that the best weapons in that game did half to a third of the damage done by Weapons in Rifts. And as to armor, well, there wasn't much!

So, most of the group went after the two war robots. The Otaku took the bait and went Mecha to Mecha. The shooting started, the Otaku got an early shot and hurt the mecha he was battling. A bit later, the bad mecha took his shot. I rolled for damage and gave the number to the Otaku. He looked at me in horror. I didn't understand what was wrong. He explained to me that the damage I just gave him was about double what was needed to destroy his mecha. Oops!

(Later, I bought the Rifts Conversion book. They state plainly that the mecha in Rifts were much tougher than the Robotech mecha. They recommended beefing up the numbers for the Robotech mecha to allow them to compete in Rifts. Wish I had this information sooner!!)

The Otaku made his roll and punched out of the mecha to relative safety. The rest of the party did its job and killed the other two war robots and I had the bad mecha retreat. However, when the dust settled, I had a mecha pilot without a mecha and all the replacement mecha were in another dimension!

So, the Mecha Pilot was running around without a mecha, which was frankly a bad deal for that character. The player, the Otaku, was a loud ass about the deal. He didn't take it in stride at all. I discovered as we went along that this was the core of this person: bitter, annoying, difficult to please. My third mistake was that I should have had some type of mecha fall into this character's hands. However, the guy was such a jerk, I remember thinking that maybe I didn't want him to have so much fire power. This was about the moment I looked at the rest of the group and realized my first mistake: no one else had a mecha.

Later, this and other issues brought this particular group to a screeching halt. But, the lessons I learned were: A) verify, don't assume, B) read the books, C) new players should come in at the same power as the current players, D) work around previously made mistakes.

There was some fun had in that group, but not as much as there could have been. There were a lot of battling egos and mine was not innocent. However, the lessons learned were valuable and I like to think I'm a better GM for having had that experience.

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.

Another throw away plot.

You all might remember that I gave away a good plot a few months back - well, at least I thought it was a good plot. You can read that here.

Well, I have another one for you. My Star Wars group is talking about switching to the new Saga rules for the Star Wars RPG. Might be cool. We're still talking. I won't have to buy any books as I got my books for Xmas.

See, a friend of mine got a discounted core rulebook, got excited and wanted to play. As you can tell from my entry there in November, I was hot to play anything. So, I told the guy, I'll run anything you want after Xmas - I'll put the books on my list with high priority. My wife feels pretty safe buying me gaming books - especially if I point them out on Amazon. Cool. He wants to play something before the movies, something like Knights of the Old Republic and he wanted to play a Wookie Jedi.

Oh! Was I ever hip to that?! I dove into Wookiepedia head first! Before I knew it, I had floods of great ideas.

I told him to build a first level Wookie, best to be a Fringer type or a Scoundrel. (I hear the classes are different now, I didn't know that then.) But, I didn't want him to actually be a Jedi yet, just be Force Sensitive. And that's all I told him, other than the fact that I was setting the game before KotOR.

Matter of fact, I intended to set it WAY before KotOR! Something like 20,000 years before KotOR!

My thought was this: a Rakatan ship carrying wookie slaves crash landed on a planet in the middle of no-where. The ship was never found. The wookies freed themselves, and the Rakatan technology got loose and did to this planet what it did to Kashyyyk; namely, terraformed it.

A few thousand years later, the wooks were happy, healthy and unaware that their planet lay between Hutt space and Xim the Despot's empire. Xim and the Hutts fought a terrible war - and I thought it would be fun the make this poor little wookie planet one of the battle fields. I could just see Xim's giant battle droids taking on Klatoonian soldiers and Hutt droid tanks! All the while the PC would be in the middle, trying to save his home world. How epic is that?

I figured I would give the PC a phrik Rakatan sword. Sure, it pulsed with the Dark Side, but if the PC pumped enough Light Side energy into it, the weapon would change and become as good as a light saber in many ways, maybe even better. I thought I might get a Force ghost to act as the PC's mentor on the ways of the Jedi and the Force. I also figured there might be a Rakatan Star Map lying around that would point the PC to a non-hyperdrive fighter, like, oh, this one!

In the end, the guy in question was just too busy. He never even finished making his character. Too bad - I think this could have been a fun game. As before, it's yours to use - enjoy!

Must be jonesing ...

It's been a while since I have played a game. This time of year, adultitis kicks in and all my gaming buddies begin to have a lot of work and family obligations that deeply cut into game time.

Today, I bought a pot pie for lunch in the cafe' at work. I began cutting little hex maps in the landscape of the pie crust with my fork!

I'm currently reading Betrayal (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, Book 1). I'm spending most of the time I'm reading with thoughts like "Hmm! That's a neat Jedi trick!" and "Oh! I'll have to use that move in my next starship dog fight!"

It's very sad how a gamer can be reduced this low - all from lack of playing!

The adultitis has gotten so bad that I proposed putting together a game with a group of friends - most of whom don't have a regular group. They had to be jonesing worse than I!

They didn't seem very interested. I thought it was a fun idea. So, I thought I would share with you all - feel free to steal.

I gave the group a tease along these lines:

The Federation lost 40 ships at Wolf 359 to the Borg cube.

Eleven thousand crew were presumed dead or assimilated.

What if a few crew survived?

If you are a fan of Star Trek the Next Generation and a Role Player - I figured this would get you ready to stand up and cheer. No such reaction from my would-be players!

My thought was that the players would have been masked from the Borg, and later the Enterprise, by warp core breeches or radiation or some such. Eventually, the players could reestablish contact with each other and begin to rescue one another and gather someplace they could establish life support.

At this stage, pirates would show up to raid the remains of the fallen ships - some good hand-to-hand combat would follow. *Cue Amok Music!*

Next, the PCs would probably try to resume communications with Star Fleet. Between the radiation from the wreckage and other issues - they would have no luck.

I was figuring that someone would start looking at the fact that they were not going to get rescued - but, there might be enough bits and parts in the field of wrecked ships to allow them to assemble a ship and escape.

I was willing to give them all the time in the world to do this. I came up with a list of bits; saucers, nacelles, engineering sections, etc. I figured I would make up a set of funky photo copied pieces and allow the players to puzzle together what ship they wanted. All the the bits have strengths and weaknesses, one saucer had a working computer core but non-functioning phasers, etc. Some of the bits also had surprises. A few bits had deactivated Borg who were there to gather intel and act as booby traps. One computer core had gone insane - all kinds of fun!

I figured the next challenge would be to drop some Ferengi into the area. They would want the salvage rights to the ruined ships - even if they had to take it by force. If the crew had built a simple ship, they could choose to fight or simply warp out. A more complex or heavier ship would have to rely on whatever it had ready to go at that moment to defeat the Ferengi - who probably wouldn't put up much of a fight anyway.

Once the ship was finished, or finished enough, they could warp to a new area and call Star Fleet. Star Fleet would inform them that they had been declared dead. They would also tell them that they didn't trust them to not be a trick by the Borg. If pushed far enough, Star Fleet would tell them that their signal was corrupted and looked like a Borg comm signal. The only way they could prove they were not dead would be to show up in person for a full medical exam.

At this point, the players could choose to do as the Federation requests or go rogue. I imagine they would stay with the Fed just because it's easier. But, I'd leave the option open.

Next, I'd drop a couple of Klingon Birds of Prey on them. The Klingons think they are Borg. The group will either have to talk their way out or fight.

Once they get to a Fed base, they are checked out and confirmed to be alive and they are reinstated with promotions all around. They will need those promotions as they will be given back they're refitted "Wolf Class" starship and given missions appropriate to that ship's capabilities.

Not a bad little plot, eh? Well, it's your plot now - my potential players didn't bite!

Dice Part 2 ...

I want to make this a regular segment! I love dice! I want to see pictures of your dice. Please take a (really good) picture of your collection. Put it up somewhere I can have a look at it, a web site, MySpace, LJ, Yahoo Briefcase or whatever. Leave a comment below telling us where to find the picture and a little about your collection. I'll put the best pictures here on the site.

Today, we'll be looking at my new Purple collection.



No die in this collection is more than 5 years old. The collection started with the mini-dice. I bought this set several years ago as I was about to start gaming with a new group. I had never met them, ran into one of them on-line somehow. They invited me to play D&D.

I bought a (very) used 2nd edition DMG and PH. All I had was those two books and a notebook. Normally when I go gaming, I'm the GM, and I arrive with ten books, a huge bag of dice and pencils and paper for everyone. So, since I had such a small load, I thought a new set of tiny dice would be great. I was right. It was easy having just the dice I needed.

Unfortunately, the group and I differed on gaming styles. Week one, we wrote up characters for D&D. Week two, we began to set up characters for a game system one of the players was writing, but instead we watched Dogma. Week three, they decided they wanted to play Mage - I went out and bought more used books. We didn't get through character creation before a couple of guys in the group started fighting. Old friends! I don't remember week four - I may not have gone over. And, well, that was that. I like character creation as much as the next player - but then I like to PLAY those characters.

This dice set has something of a curse in that direction. This set grew up about a year ago. A friend decided to run the Serenity role playing game. I took my wife (a non-gamer) to several different game shops, looking for the book, hoping to avoid the wait for delivery. No book. However, as I said last post, I like to buy a little something if I go into a game shop. By the time I was done, I had two sets of polyhedrals, three sets of d6s and a dice bag - all from different stores. In the end, I bought the book from Amazon, paid $13 less than cover, paid no shipping and it arrived in about three days. And we all wonder why the Friendly Local Game Shop is vanishing from the landscape?

I got prop crazy with that game. I found a site with prop Serenity money. So, I printed out hundreds of thousands of credits - in color no less! Then we decided that we needed coins to represent what was traded outside the Federation. So I went on a quest for plastic coins. In the end, I had a zip-top freezer bag filled with silver Mardi Gras "throws" and gold Chinese New Year throws from two different on-line stores and some gold "pirate chest filler" coins from a local party store.

That group got together twice. I showed up with a character fully written up with pages of back story. I was the only one. The rest of the group began writing. The next time we got together, the rest of the group was still writing. This was the week I showed up with the printed cash and a couple of cheap poker sets (for the poker chips) - we also decided that week we should have the coins. We got in about an hour of gaming, maybe.

In the year since, that group hasn't figured out how to get back together. I still have the zip-top bag of coins. I think I may take them out this coming Marti Gras and throw them at random people. Might as well get some fun out of them ...

Killer GM ... or not so much ...

For whatever reason, I have ended up doing the DM/GM thing for most of my gaming career. I rarely get to play. Right now is one of the few exceptions - I am a player in a Star Wars d20 game that a friend is running. But, that's coming off about two and a half years of my running games for that group.

I am not the world's best Game Master. I have played with several better GMs. I think it comes down to supply and demand. My friends have a demand: they wanna play! I'm willing to supply my humble talents. In the end, we usually have fun.

However, I know I have two weaknesses.

My first weakness is that I always underpower my enemy NPCs. The mooks I throw at the players are REAL mooks - a waste of time, easily disposed. The actual bad guys are usually just as easy to foil. Heck, half the time the PCs turn the bad guys into allies. It's no wonder I nearly stand up and cheer when I can get the PCs to run from a fight! I do believe my players have run from a few fights they could have won just to soothe my ego!

My second weakness is nearly as bad. I can't kill player characters. Can't do it. My players put a ton of work into their characters, I give them XP incentives for back story and good role playing, so I know they are invested. I can not just throw that work away - it's a waste of time. Maybe this is why I make the adversaries so underpowered.

I ran an AD&D game in high school. One of the players, Jess, was a complete ass! Okay, I'm a geek and I surround myself with geeks. Most of my geeky friends are computer nerds who get along better with machines than people. But, there is a certain type of geek - he is born with no social graces what-so-ever. This was Jess. We all liked the guy. He was our annoying little brother, even if he was older than some of us. But, there was many a night that playing began with the words "Shut up, Jess!" spoken in unison by the entire group.

Jess played an infuriating fighter character, I think its name was Brak. Between Jess' lack of social graces and his skills as a rules lawyer - Brak was nigh invulnerable. I so wanted to kill his character. Perhaps it would be enough to piss him off and then he would leave the group. I wasn't brave enough or mean enough to tell him to just go away. (I can do that now - this was the valuable lesson Jess taught me. Thank you!)

For example; Brak and the group got into a fight with an entire heap of goblins. As per usual, the group more than bested the underpowered little whelps. Jess, as Brak, decided to teach the goblin chief a lesson. He strapped the poor thing to his shield. Brak then finished the rest of the dungeon, feeding the goblin just enough healing potion to keep it alive. I came up with some stupid way for the goblin to escape when the adventure was over. I needed Brak to die!

I decided finally to grow a spine and wipe out Brak - and the rest of the party if need be! I set up a trap. The group found an injured ogre, but, unbeknownst to the group, the ogre wasn't alone. I sprung the trap! Ogres fell out of the nearby trees and jumped out of camouflaged holes! They were armed with huge cross bows and mancatchers! They fought well, but, in the end, I had the group!

Of course no one died! Are you kidding?

The ogres rounded up the group. Brak shouts out a challenge! He will best any one of them in one-on-one combat for the freedom of the group. I had him! I could kill off Brak and allow the rest of the group to live - perfect! I was so happy, stupidly happy! The ogres allowed Brak to choose weapons. Brak, being Jess, chose the most annoying thing he could:

A belching contest.

Beer was produced from saddle bags and backpacks. Both Brak and the Ogre Champion drank far too much. Brak made his Constitution roll - he was able to drink one more mug than the Ogre. Jess was pleased, the group was amused, so far so good. Finally, it was time. The ogre strode forward, aimed himself at a tree and let loose! I rolled. The ogre rolled quite well, better than Jess could ever hope to roll with Brak. I said that the ogre did so well, burped so loudly, he shook the mighty tree and scared all the birds away. Jess was DIS-pleased, the group was amused, so far ... so good!

Brak stood and aimed himself at the tree. I told Jess that the only way he could win was to throw a natural 20. He argued that he had more beer, thus more ammunition. I told him, no matter, the ogre had rolled that well. Roll a 20 or lose. Lose and you forfeit your life!

Jess warmed up his die and let fly ...





Brak let go such a walloping burp, it not only moved the tree, it uprooted it, scaring away a group of raccoons burrowed underneath. Further more, in places some of the bark was missing along with half the leaves.

Jess had been lucky and played the game well. I try to be a fair GM, so I relented and admitted utter, ego bursting, brain frying defeat! Foiled by the biggest dufus I knew! Brak had won the belching contest on an epic scale! The ogres fell about, laughing their fool heads off - even the defeated champion was laughing uncontrollably. The group stealthed away while the ogres were busy laughing and retelling the event they had all just witnessed.

Brak lived to fight - and annoy - another day.

To this day I can't kill off characters. Maybe it is a waste to throw away all that work. Or, maybe I fear being humiliated in another burping contest-like incident.

Maybe someday I will find a way to clear away the horror of Jess & Brak and become a Killer GM!