Review: Left-Hand Path

Originally published November 14, 2012

One of the few items that I feel has been missing from the Mage: the Awakening line is a book on Left Handed Legacies, those legacies that touch upon things forbidden by traditional Mage society. The recently released Left-Hand Path finally delivers on this.

First off this is not a traditional Legacy book like Legacies: the Sublime or Legacies: the Ancient. Left-Hand Path does not contain a catalogue of twisted legacies. Rather it is more like an Order book, discussing the major factions of Left-Handed Mages, their history and their beliefs. This includes the thus far barely mentioned Mad, the Order Heresies, the Scelesti, and the soul thieves such as the Tremere.

We start with the intro fiction. Thankfully this is short and sweet. It comes off as a bit disjointed due to the fractured viewpoint of the main character, a mage in the Legacy known as (Legion) (parentheses intended) who uses the souls of others to take on their identities. The intro fiction not only introduces this legacy but also connects other stories we have heard throughout the Mage: the Awakening line from the cannibal mages in the Adamantine Arrow, the Secret Concord from Boston Unveiled, and the Red Word cult from the same work.

The interior artwork is recycled from earlier work. It is not a major point for me as I am more interested in the text. The art does fit well with the subject matter and doesn't distract from reading.

The book consists of 5 chapters: Introduction, Heretics and Apostates, The Mad Ones, The Scelesti, and Reapers. The Introduction, like in Imperial Mysteries, includes what might be considered a storyteller section and is much more than a synopsis of what the other chapters will discuss.

The Introduction chapter does a nice job of pointing out the difficulty in pinning down what constitutes Left-Handed magic. The label is simply a matter of social convention. What is evil and wrong differs depending on the society or mage in question. Even using the Wisdom chart as a guideline is fraught with challenges. Is hurting someone with magic Left-Handed? If so someone should tell the Adamantine Arrow. We might agree to put the line further down: soul theft, trafficking with the Abyss, and the like. But taking someone’s soul is a valid (if rarely used) punishment for dangerous mages.

Does that mean some Left-Handed magic are tolerated to maintain the status quo? The book tells us yes. This ambiguity is great for using Left-handed mages in your chronicles. They are not just lone wolves at the edges of society or secret cults hiding within the concilium. They might be recognized by the local society of mages but kept at arm's length and watched carefully. This gives you more options for interactions with these individuals as enemies, allies, or even mentors.

Left-Hand Path does something interesting with the typical lexicon by expanding each term into a short series of paragraphs. We learn the old term for Left-Handed mages, Nefandi, and how it was once used to refer to the group that would become the Free Council. Thus it is rarely used now. In addition to some familiar terms, we also get a new term, Reapers, those who steal souls.

The book also brings back the tier system to show how Left-Handed mages interact at different scales. Nothing amazing here but still good stuff. They also discuss the task of finding and dealing with Left-Handed mages. That section is a bit dry.

More useful are the story hooks and examples for how Left-Handed mages exist either in normal mage society, as tolerated outsiders or secretive subcultures, or outside it as outlaws and insurgents. The story hooks for either case are great and illustrate cool ways for putting a cabal in a position where they might work with the Left-Handed mage or with enemies against a Left-Handed mage. All in all this is my favorite section of the Introduction.

The second chapter, Heretics and Apostates, covers most of the Left-Handed legacies in general (at least those not dealing with soul theft or the Abyss). We get a discussion of the various motives one might have to join a Left-Handed legacy. This is useful for making a fully developed Left-Handed character.

The means for obtaining a Left-Handed legacy is also discussed. What is interesting about this and later sections is the name dropping of legacies that are not detailed here or elsewhere. In the end we get a half-dozen legacy names with some hints of their powers like the Alienists who remove souls to study insanity or the Shadowbinders who bind ghosts to their souls. More of them can be found in the Reapers section.

We also get a bit more on the Lower Depths. It seems where the Abyss could be described as impossible things that never were, the Lower Depth is more of a hungry absence, twisting creatures and objects to feed it more of the Fallen world. This ties into the full legacy given in this chapter: the Cwn Annwn. The mages of this legacy have built a paradise in the Lower Depths from mana and phantasms. They use their powers and Lower Depth hounds bound to their souls to destroy objects in the Fallen world to feed and fill their paradise. It is interesting in that we see several motivations and goals within the group. The older members seek a permanent solution that does not involve feeding the Lower Depths part of the World of Darkness while their impatient students are set on collecting (i.e. destroying) those things they think would be nice to have in their paradise. Like fine art. Or people.

This chapter also includes the various Order heresies. These include groups that either bend or break an Order’s ethos. There are a lot of good ideas for heresies here. One in particular is given some more space: the Iconclasts. These are Diamond Order mages who believe Sleepers are to blame for the world’s problems.

Lastly we get some new crunch. There are new flaws for Apostates and Heretics to reflected the added difficulties they have. There is also a new spell: Inscribe Daimonomicon, for making a book that holds a legacy. We also get new merits. The Nameless Order merit seems particularly useful as a guide for creating groups of apostate mages who work together.

The third chapter, the Mad Ones, deals with mages who have lost all Wisdom, either through heinous deeds or by shattering their soul with poorly considered magics. The Mad are not intended to be playable but to provide a serious and frightening challenge to mages while warning them of the dangers of immorality. The Mad gain occultation and a strange powers as the magics within their soul leak out and form independent spells called Tulpa.

It is crucial to realize that the Mad are not merely insane but are also completely sociopathic. They care nothing of the feelings of others if they consider them at all. All that matters is their particular fixation or Fault. This is a Skill, Arcana Practice, Spell or act that they need to use or complete again and again. If they don’t their Tulpas grow in power and arrange for circumstances where they can satisfy their fault.

The Mad are roughly classified into three groups: Savants, who focused on a particular talent; Malefactors, who engage in violent and murderous behavior; and the Walkers, whose madness is so extreme that their conscious mind has been ejected from their body and exists are a sentient spell.

All in all the mechanics are intriguing and likely lucrative in term of Arcane experience if your character survives. The Tulpa and the Mad One's natural occultation allows a Storyteller to easily foreshadow the building pressure on a Mad One to satisfy their Fault. The Storyteller advice is well written and the sample characters presented are excellent.

The fourth chapter deals with the infamous Scelesti. It starts with their version of history, twisted and at odds with most other group’s stories. The Scelesti, unsurprisingly present themselves as the heroes, working to overturn creation and return the world to its original primordial chaos. Personally I don’t buy their story. We get a breakdown of the general philosophies of the worshippers of the Abyss. There are generally realistic and helps to paint the group are more interesting than just a group of Nihilists.

I really like the example characters they provide. We have a religious serial killer, an Archmage willing to sacrifice Shadow to make a world without a predator prey system, and Angrboda from the Mage: The Awakening. As part of this we also get an abyssal cult serving the Archmage, the Gardeners of the Shadow Angel. This also demonstrates the use of the Nameless Order merit from Chapter 2.

We also get a breakdown of the loose knit society of Abyssal mages. The rules in this section are recycled from Tome of Mysteries but we do get a better view of how the Scelesti themselves view it. We also get a lot more detail on the Abyssal Watchtowers. We also learn about the rivalries between the two major factions: the Autarks, solitary mages who have built their own legacies; and the Shedim, who worked their way up the steps of an established Abyssal Legacy cult. We also get guidelines on building new Scelesti legacies, including cool ideas for the Abyssal Channels to teach them. The highest rung of Scelesti society are the Baalim, the lords of the Scelesti, who are crowned by Old Man (also known as the 11th Aeon). They gain strange powers over paradox and potentially odd ailments as part of their bargains with the Old Man.

The final chapter deals with Reapers, mages and legacies that deal with the theft and use of Souls. We get errata that clears up confusion about soul loss. We also get greatly expanded material on the Tremere Liches: their beliefs, their history, and their goals. It seems the mad Tremere siphoning souls on the edge of the Concilium are the equivalent of street corner drug dealers living in their parents’ basement. The real leaders of the soul trade belong to special houses. In addition to being at the top of the soul trade pyramid, they gain additional legacy powers stolen from other Reaper legacies the Tremere exterminated centuries ago.

We get a new monster, the preta, which is a Tremere whose initiation rites went wrong and now is a soul sucking horror. The Tremere gain new powers like the ability to go into a torpor like state like vampires or to hide their true nature using a soul they are devouring.

We also get two other Reaper legacies: the Cloud Infinite and (Legion). The Cloud Infinite is a Free Council Left-Handed legacy based on the idea of using the minds and souls of others like a server. They steal mental processing from others for their own purposes. (Legion) on the other hand is a psychic illness affecting Guardian of Veil mages who use Masks too much. They gradually lose their own identity but can steal the souls of others and use them to take that person’s identity.

Overall the Left-Hand Path is excellent. The legacies are intriguing and work well for inspiring adventures and new enemies. The material for joining or advancing as a Scelesti or Reaper seems great for use either as a player or a Storyteller. The Mad look to be excellent antagonists. The myths and history can be a bit dry and are perhaps my least favorite part of the book but are useful for providing context to the Left-Handed beliefs. I think this is a great book to have as a Storyteller or as a Player who is interested in pursuing a Left Handed Legacy for his or her character.

Campaign Journal 5: Setting Design, Part I

Originally published October 31, 2012

So with our basic planning and preludes done, we now need complete our initial setting design. In a sense much of this should already be done. We know what city we will be in and what the characters will be doing. Now we just need to fill the world with nonplayer characters (NPCs), secrets and mysteries.

Specifically we need to add a political dimension so the setting expands from the basic quest or dungeon linear format. I’ve had it remarked to me that I seem to know how to build political chronicles: games filled with secrets, backstabbing, and shifting allegiances. The secret I believe is to create NPCs who want something and who will change the setting to achieve these wants.

The first step is to identifying your necessary NPCs. This goes back to the idea of a minimal cast. You don't want to create too much at once.

For my current game, I plan to be very minimalist. I know each adventure will bring their own NPCs and thus my population of characters will grow rapidly. After the preludes, I already had three new NPCs in the form of the survivors of the sniper PC's old SEAL squad.

I see three main categories or uses for NPCs in most games. They can serve as hooks for future stories or adventures, they can serve to bring out the themes of the game, and they can serve as antagonists. NPCs can fill more than one of these categories as we will see.

A warning to my players. There are spoilers here. If you don't want to spoil yourself stop reading now.

In terms of hooks for my chronicle, I'm mostly looking at possible connections to the larger mysteries and conspiracies. To this end most of my NPCs will focus on the various compacts and conspiracy groups of Hunter: the Vigil. These groups might employ the group in their monster hunting activities and possibly try to recruit them. Of the various groups established in the game system, the ones most fitting the style of the chronicle and the nature of the group's hunter cell are Network Zero, who gather evidence on monsters in hopes of posting it to convince others of the truth; Null Mysteriis, who study monsters using science; Chieron Group, a nefarious corporation which harvests monsters for their organs; and Task Force: Valkyrie, funded by the U.S. government to hunt down monsters.

So my initial set on NPCs should include members of these groups as potential contacts and patrons. One, Mr. Gray has already made his appearance in the prelude. Mr. Gray is a younger, fitter version of Agent K from Men in Black. He's an experienced hunter who is looking to recruit Vito, the ex-SEAL sniper, for the organization.

A new character will be Lisa Peterson, an executive of Keystone Pharmaceuticals, which is owned by both the Cheiron Group and the Pentex Corporation. Pentex, in my game, is a massive multinational corporation that owns Verdant Technologies, another pharmaceutical company, that employed Dr. Sorenson, one of my player characters (PCs). They are using monsters as sources for new drugs. She will tie in the evil corporation to the local events of the chronicle.

I also want to play with some of the players' expectations. So I intend there to be a lot of graffiti with the tag VI. This is a shout out for the vampire players in the group. VII in Vampire: the Requiem is a reference to a mysterious rogue clan of vampires that hunt other vampires. Hopefully this will make them just a little more paranoid.

The character behind these tags is Victor Isaacs, a brave street level member of Network Zero. He has a number of connections with local hunters and should serve to get them involved with more "normal" hunters should they decide to go that route.

A final hook character is the mystery hacker from the prelude. This person or persons was able to hack the investigators computers and print a cryptic message on their printer. He or she definitely knows about the supernatural, directing them toward weird phenomenon. They also know about the Frank's condition (see below) and seem to want to help. I plan to use this individual to direct the action as needed. As to the true nature of the character, they are actually a monster, specifically a Promethean. The character hopes to use the group to find a secret in Seattle, a secret she hopes will allow her to become something more than she is right now.

NPCs can also be used to reinforce themes. My chronicle is based on the original prospectus The Abyss Stares Back. So one theme is that hunting monsters is detrimental to one's sanity and health.

The obvious example of this Frank, the founder of the private investigating firm. He went missing for a period of 3 weeks and when he returned he was suffering from "delusions" and dementia. Every scene with Frank should reflect that loss, either through flashbacks showing him prior to the incident or with him at the asylum, damaged and insane.

Mavis, his wife, also reinforces this theme. Though she is technically the retainer of one of the PCs, she is also an example of those hunters leave behind, unsuspecting mortals who have to pick up the pieces of a destroyed life. Mavis also helps to keep Frank relevant since not every session will involve visiting him. She is the company's secretary and they will pass her desk every time they visit the office.

The final use of NPCs is as antagonists. For my minimalist cast, I'm looking for reoccurring antagonists. One has already been mentioned by Frank in his mad ramblings. The Silent One and his minions, the sandmen, represent the primary threat of the chronicle. These strange undead subsist off the memories of others. The Silent One in particular is able to manipulate memories and thoughts, thus tying him into the theme of madness. I'll have more to say about him in my post detailing planning the first adventure.

Another character I decided to add was a focal character for the brain spiders that one of my PCs uncovered. These parasites live inside the heads of living humans, potentially causing fatal brain damage. They are based loosely on the Abyssal Spiders from Intruders: Encounters with the Abyss. I wanted to give them some more agency than just a disease though. So I've created the character of the Dream Widow which steals some material from the Azlu, the spider-human hyrbids from Werewolf: the Forsaken. The Dream Widow as her name implies can affect people's dreams. In the real world she looks like an inhuman cross between a spider and young woman (unless she disguises herself) but in dreams she can look like anything from a giant spider to a young girl. I expect her to play with the characters for a while, wearing them down before any real confrontation. And all the time she will spread the brain spiders hoping to make more of her kind.

That it is for now. Next time we will discuss how much detail you need for your initial set of characters.

Campaign Journal 4: Preludes

Originally published October 17, 2012

My Hunter: the Vigil game finally had its first real session. Like most White Wolf chronicles, we devoted the first session to the character's preludes.

Preludes are essentially a short session dedicated to roleplaying out the backstory of a character prior to the beginning of the official game. It is primarily used White Wolf games where the Game Master (GM) or Storyteller runs through several scenes for each character to determine how they got to the current point. But you might use it in any game where the characters' have some backstory. It gives the players a chance to get use to their characters and the rules before there is any threat of permanent harm to the character.

I find it to be a useful tool for getting into the mind of each character, learning their personality and inclinations, as well as fleshing out their past. The other aspect I like is there is an explicit lack of risk involved. Your character can't die before the game so you are free to check out the haunted house on your own, chase that mysterious wolf, or jump across roof tops to escape vampires. This also makes it handy for explaining the combat rules.

In planning the preludes, I saw I had a large cast of characters and the potential for some bored players. These were important factors in determine what scene we would focus on and how to handle them. I now had 5 players with diverse characters:

• Lillian Shaw, an ex-police officer turned famous detective
• Robert Mill, a jack of all trades and former office assistant, turned detective
• Vito, an ex-Seal sniper who saw too much on a mission gone bad
• Dr. Trevor Sorenson, a psychiatrist trying to take down the evil corporation
• and a last minute addition whose character might be a former crime scene investigator

I needed to highlight each one’s past while at the same time keeping everyone entertained. Balancing these would require some work, even ignoring the issue that one of the players hadn't even given me his character sheet yet.

Looking over the information I did have, there were several key scenes I needed to include:

Job Interviews: Vito, Robert, and possibly the new character were employees of the firm (now named One of a Kind Investigations). As such I wanted to run through the job interviews to remind them of this. In particular I wanted to have Shaw do some of the interviews to reinforce the fact that she owns the company.

Frank: I also wanted to do a scene where we saw Frank, the company's founder, prior to the incident that claimed his sanity and memory. This would serve to highlight what was lost and motivate the group to pursue the supernatural forces behind this. In actual play we ran low on time and I had to cut this, but I hope to run several flashbacks to cover this aspect of the chronicle.

Turning Points: There were also several tent pole events that changed the course of each character's life. There was the psychiatrist finding out about the inhuman experiments his company, Verdant Technologies, was up to; the last mission where Vito saw his team torn apart by monsters, Shaw's rescue of a kidnapped child that propelled her to fame, as well as the firm's first brush with supernatural.

The Message: One final scene I wanted to include was the introduction of a mystery informant, a Deep Throat, who passed along clues to the greater mystery of the chronicle. This character would send them cryptic messages that would lead them to strange phenomena. Identifying who or what this informant is will be an important part of the chronicle.

Lastly I had a few other concerns I wanted to address. I had several players who were new to the new World of Darkness and I wanted to make sure they knew the rules.

My solution to this issue and the concern about spending time on other characters was to expand the scenes with Vito in Afghanistan. The other players were given simplified character sheets for other characters on his squad, the ones who either died or went insane. This allowed all of us to participate as well as experiment with the system and the new madness rules.

I also allowed players to jump in and play minor characters in other character's preludes. This happened quite a bit in Trevor's prelude as he interacted with his colleagues at work and had a run in with a security guard.

In practice this worked very well. The players were able to become comfortable with the rules as well learn the house rules on madness. Everyone had a lot of fun. We learned how the character's came together and how they interacted. Playing with the madness rules and seeing what experiences they had also gave us the ability to gauge how Hardened the characters were to different stresses.

All in all, the prelude session was a great success.

Review: Looper

Originally published October 4, 2012

I went to see Looper last weekend and was pleasantly surprised to find a science fiction film that did not have glaringly bad science.For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, Looper stars Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a Sci-Fi thriller about time travel. In the film, Loopers are specialized assassins in the year 2044 who kill people sent back in time from 30 years in the future. They dispose of the body so that the criminal cartels of the future can get away with murder.

Things go bad when Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character Joe find that he has to "close his loop", meaning kill his future version. Besides the moral implications of this act, his future self is Bruce Willis which means he isn't going to have an easy time of it anyway.

Spoiler Warning!

What keeps this movie from being just a run of the mill action movie is the entire second plot. Older Joe has come back in time for a reason. There is someone he needs to kill in 2044 to save someone he loves in the future. And nothing is going to stop him. That doesn't just include himself and the criminal cartel that wants him dead but his own ethical code. Because his target is currently just a child.

An additional element of the movie that was interesting was the widespread but nicely underplayed telekinesis. Basically 10% of the population has pretty feeble levels of telekinesis. I like how it was genuinely portrayed as crap ability which only becomes relevant when the child, Joe's target, turns out to be the Rainmaker, the most powerful telekinetic the world has ever seen.

End spoilers.

I think they do an excellent job of portraying the conflicted natures of both older and younger Joe. Both are deadly killers but at the same time there are lines they don't want to cross, lines they painfully do through the film. There is a real question of how far will you go for what you want or the ones you love.

All in all I would heartily recommend this movie. There is action, drama, believable characters, and cool special effects. If you want to learn more scientific stuff about the movie you can read my other blog over at Wolfram|Alpha.

Campaign Journal 3: Planning & Character Creation Session

Originally published October 3, 2012

As my campaign design process for my upcoming Hunter:the Vigil game, Corrupted Transmission, slowly steams towards its first session, I gathered the players together to answer some very basic questions about the game: what will they be playing and what stories we will tell.

I started by reviewing people’s responses to my prospecti. The responses were pretty varied ranging from loathing to chomping at the bit to play.

The votes were:

• Take Back the Night: 4, 2, 5, 4, -2
• String Theory: 1, 5, -3, 2, 5
• The Abyss Stares Back: 3, 3, 2, 3, 3

Looking over the responses it was clear the “The Abyss Stares Back” was likely to be the winner but I wanted to know what people liked and didn’t like about the various concepts. Partly I want to avoid those elements that were disliked when we play the actual campaign but I also wanted to insert in those aspects of the other plots that were popular.

In talking to them in detail, some of the answers were quite surprising. Two players were interested in mystery and less in combat giving “Take Back the Night” low scores. That I expected. The negative (and low interest) responses to “String Theory” were more interesting. For one player (who unfortunately was unable to join the game) it just seemed too esoteric while another, my wife, felt there was a risk of backstabbing. This later comment helped me realize that I need to be clearer about such matters in my prospecti. String Theory’s betrayals were always going to be external to the group. I firmly believe group trust and cohesion is crucial for an enjoyable game.

With the core themes established, I then brought up some house rules. As I’ve discussed before I dislike the standard Morality system for World of Darkness. This time I decided I would replace it wholesale with the Madness rules from Unknown Armies. As quick overview, in Unknown Armies there are 5 kinds of madness stresses: Violence, Unnatural, Helplessness, Isolation, and Self. For each there varying levels of that stress called ranks. Killing someone might be a Rank 4 Violence stress while watching someone you love be tortured to death would be Rank 10, which is the highest level. As you succeed in checks against a certain stress, your character eventually becomes hardened against it. If you have four hardened marks against violence, killing someone no longer bothers your character. Conversely if you fail, your character freaks out, either running away, freezing or blindingly attacking. Your character also becomes unbalanced, slowly sliding to true madness.

I like the system because it allows for multiple axes of madness. You might fail a series of checks as the stress breaks your character's sanity. Or you might just slowly succeed and become a sociopath as violence and other stresses no longer matter to your character. After all, if you can watch a loved one be tortured to death without being bothered, how sane are you?

The group approved of the house rule and we moved on to deciding on how the group came together. For this I let the players discuss the possibilities while using the questions in FearTheBoot’s group template and questionnaire to steer the conversation to how the group became established and what purpose and shared history binds them together. I recently discovered this idea and I think it is an excellent way to ensure that you have a unified group at the start of the game. After decades of herding disparate characters together in game through somewhat arbitrary means, I enjoy the idea of the players doing that work for me. The questions in the group template help your players to better flesh out their existing relationships.

My group tossed around several ideas including a group of Federal Agents and the employees of a small private investigation company. Eventually they came to favor the PI’s because they wanted to start small but have the potential to expand into the wider conspiratorial world of the chronicle.

With that in mind they turned their attention to location. Some players wanted to be familiar with the location while others wanted to avoid any cities that were too large. I personally dislike running games set where I currently live. Since my players are from the West Coast, this limited us to a few mid range cities. I decided on Seattle from the ideas we came up with.

After this talk moved on to the history of the company and what roles people would play. My wife wanted to play the company’s owner with the idea that one of her detectives went missing and returned in a fashion that suggested something supernatural. One player wanted to play an ex-SEAL whose unit was eaten by monsters in Afghanistan. The group decided he might be a recent hire, brought on after things started to get weird.

Another player was thinking of playing a doctor or psychiatrist. After some more discussion, the group decided the missing detective was the company’s founder, Frank (last name to be determined later). The doctor was brought in to determine what happened to Frank and from there became attached to the company as a consultant. His own reason for being involved is the desire to learn the skills of the trade so he can gather evidence on his old employer, a nefarious pharmacology company which was doing something with possibly alien fetuses.

The final character is a jack of all trades, sort of an intellectual drifter who was hired to do office work but turned out to be too useful. He is also a second character who remembers the old (sane) Frank and thus has a vested interest in finding out what happened to his old boss.

After that we went to the standard character creation. As they were fairly experienced characters already (an ex-SEAL, a crack detective, and a skilled psychiatrist), I decided to given them 20 experience points to start with to help fill in the missing bits of their characters.

So after the first session we ended up 4 (fairly developed) characters:

• Shaw, an ex-police officer turned famous detective and owner of the agency
• Dr. Trevor Sorenson, a psychiatrist trying to take down an evil corporation
• Robert Mill, a jack of all trades who started as office help
• An ex-Seal sniper whose unit saw too much

We also created a short history of the company:

• Around 2003, Shaw and the jack of all trades character joined Frank at the company, as a partner and assistant respectively.
• Shaw has a big break, rescuing a kidnapped child in 2005. She becomes a minor celebrity.
• Business booms and Shaw takes over the firm.
• In 2008, Frank goes missing only to resurface a few weeks later, driven crazy and prematurely senile.
• Sorenson is brought in to check him out but no natural cause is found.
• A mysterious message appears referencing some of the crazy things Frank has been saying.
• Directed by message the detectives investigate some occult phenomenon.
• As things get dangerous Shaw becomes more hands on and hires new employees such as the ex-SEAL.
• In early 2010, the official chronicle begin.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this all turns out. I'm also curious to hear how you deal with bringing a group together.

Campaign Journal 2: Website Obstacle Course

Originally published September 21, 2012

In my first podcast, I discussed my work with campaign websites. I also mentioned that I wanted to try out Obsidian Portal in the near future. With my Hunter: the Vigil game going forward, I decided to take a more serious look. This week’s blog is one part review and one part advice.

On the review side, after going over all the features I found that Obsidian Portal’s free service is only worth it if you are a player. The major limitations of the service compared to other wikis are more limited options for customizing the look of your site, minimal storage space for uploaded graphics, and a lack of the extra features that make Obsidian Portal so attractive. If you want free I would suggest using Wikidot.

On the other hand if you are willing to pay for more features, Obsidian Portal is well worth it. Membership is $40 a year and buys you unlimited campaigns (compared with Wikidot’s 5, unless you spend more money than I just mentioned), a gamemaster (GM) secrets area on each page (hidden from players but with sharable sections for specific players), a built-in calendar with email notification, a campaign forum, and no advertisement (as well a couple extra odds and ends).

Lastly note only the gamemaster needs the membership. The players can access all the advanced features on the GM’s site. For the price of a large rulebook a year, I find the service quite reasonable. The key for me is the number of campaigns combined with the GM area. In earlier games I would need a separate wiki for my game notes and this quickly was exhausting my free supply on Wikidot.

Now on to the advice. Or rather a minor complaint with a happy ending. The wiki in Obsidian Portal is fully customizable though the documentation put up by the staff does warn you what areas not to modify. Frustratingly, the forums seem to be filled with people who don’t believe you can modify as much of the layout as you can.

For example, the background color. I saw no examples and there was nothing on the forums about changing the background color on a global level. Everything involved hacks like placing a colored block behind your text. It took several hours but I eventually taught myself enough CSS to make the modifications I wanted. You, my readers, will can now learn those secrets.

Basically what you need to do is modify certain classes which define the various components of the website. A class might define a column containing the text, the style of a title, or how a particular font type rendered. The definition format is straight forward:

class {attribute1:setting1;attribute2:setting2}

In my case I wanted to create the effect of folder with papers in it. You can see the end result here: The Abyss Stares Back. The way I got this effect was by adding some class alterations to the Custom CSS section under the settings for my website. Specifically I added:

#secondary-column {background-color: #FFFFFF} #main-column {background-color:#E6DD93; margin: 10px 246px 10px 0px; padding: 0px} #campaign-banner-container {background-color: #FFFFFF; padding-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 0px} .tabnav {background-color: #FFFFFF; padding-top: 10px} .tabnav a:visited {background:#E6DD93;color: #000} .tabnav a:visited.active {border-bottom: 1px solid #E6DD93; background: #E6DD93} .page-title {color:#E6DD93;font-size:10%;font-family:"Courier","Courier New",monospace;}

So #secondary-column is the column behind the pods on the right hand side. Here I changed the background-color to be white (which in hex code is #FFFFFF) since it lies over the #main-column which has a background-color like a manilla folder. The margins and padding are to ensure that the color doesn't extend outside of the folder area, you might leave that out if you like. #campaign-banner-container is the code that contains your banner and .tabnav contains the tabs. I made some adjustments to ensure that the colors were right there as well.

Lastly .page-title is set to make the normal wiki page titles tiny and the same colors as the background (essentially invisible). This is because I have that paper background where all my text occurs.

The code for the background is part of each page and calls an image I uploaded:

url('http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/141911/whitepaper.jpeg');width:95%;padding:10px">
your text goes here
</div>

You can learn more about CSS at w3school.com.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you know any interesting tricks or other website possibilities.

Campaign Journal 1: Writing Prospecti

Originally published September 7, 2012

With my D&D campaign over, I am now launching full steam into developing a new campaign. There is some mixing up of the group as one player might move away and two more may join. As I go about the process, I plan to document it here. As I always recommend I am getting player input into the design of the game. To that end, I'm using the idea of a campaign prospectus.

My current concept is a Hunter: the Vigil game focused on mysteries and horror. There is a secret element, a NPC "ally" who influences their course and offers cryptic aid. This is part of a much larger plot arc I hope to explore over several different chronicles.

My players and especially my wife have mentioned that they are interested in investigation based games where the characters are surrounded by mystery and might not discover the full truth. I had considered several different games and at various points was prepared to run any of them. But now I feel drawn to the World of Darkness and specifically the conspiracies and weirdness that crop up in Hunter the Vigil.

Hunter: the Vigil concerns itself with mortals who have discovered the existence of monsters in the world and take it upon themselves to hunt and exterminate them. It can run the gamut from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to X-files but tending to a darker and more grim setting.

With a system firmly in mind I have turned my thoughts to creating a series of prospecti for my players to vote on. The first step, brainstorming a list of adventure elements and ideas, was pretty easy. I have a wide variety of books filled with adventure seeds. I combed over these to pick out the monsters, NPCs, and stories that sparked my imagination.

My next step was to group them according to theme. Not all stories can happen in the same game. In a campaign of occult book hunters, an encounter with an extraterrestrial would be jarring and possibly break the mood. It is also true that I had several different visions of what obstacles and problems the PCs might face.

Two ideas that came out early were the seeds for a conspiracy theory focused campaign and a game of psychics and madness. The conspiracy theory concept emerged from my continued fascination with an evil mega-corporation from my earlier Promethean game as well as the God Machine fiction from the core World of Darkness book. As I intended to have the Hunter game touch on some of those events this seemed a natural fit.

The madness and psychics came from various story ideas that suggested themselves as well as my plans to replace the World of Darkness morality system with the Madness rules from Unknown Armies. The idea of fighting psychic monsters and slowly losing one’s mind at the same time was intriguing to me.

Of course I always like to give my players at least three choices. I cast about on this part for a bit, toying with a story tied to the interference of angels and demons before discarding it. The final concept was a battle for control of a small city where the characters were involved in a gang war style conflict with supernatural horrors.

Here are the final prospecti:

Take Back the Night

This chronicle is about normal people trying to protect the ones they love by freeing their city from the monsters that lurk there. The community they live in has a long history with the supernatural and the monsters have carved out territories, hunting grounds, and areas of control. Dark forces permeate its alleyways and sewers, prowl in its city halls and boardrooms, and hunt amid its factories and quiet neighborhoods. Defeating them will be a long and bloody struggle and there will be loss (in life or innocence) along the way.

The chronicle would focus on combating the various supernatural monsters that have claimed sections of the city and wresting control of the city back, one block at a time. Stories might feature fighting deformed monsters in the sewers, exorcizing demons haunting a slum, and tracking the source of drugs that are leaving the minds of the city's children addled and broken.

While it is possible they might gain help from other hunters, the focus is on themselves and their immediate allies. Also this is a chronicle focused exclusively on a specific city to be decided during character creation.

String Theory

The truth is out there, hidden behind a web of coverups and conspiracy. There are puppet masters, some human, many not, who pull the strings of this web. One pull and hundreds die of an alien disease. Another pull and a handful of people are twisted into man eating mockeries. You might be trying to expose the truth to the world or perhaps you work from the shadows (or within the conspiracy) trying to save the world while keeping it blissfully ignorant. But you must be ever watchful, because “They” have eyes everywhere and no compunctions about killing to protect the secret.

The chronicle focuses on unraveling the secret plots of the conspiracy and following the threads from one evil scheme to the next. Possible stories include discovering the true cause of alligator sightings (and attacks) in the sewers, finding the secret of an ancient Egyptian tablet and why it is worth killing over, and infiltrating the mysterious company Verdant Technologies to uncover the unholy experiments they are conducting with inhuman DNA.

The scope and scale of this game would be larger than most. The stories might be spread across the United States and beyond, though it will be initially limited. Various high level conspiracies (including potent government agencies and multinational corporations) will be important and characters might join them.

The Abyss Stares Back

Some say there is a thin line between sanity and madness, a line that doesn't exist for monsters. You hunt not just inhuman creatures but also once human things: serial killers, cultists, and former hunters like yourselves who went mad. In their madness they have surpassed human capabilities. A serial killer takes three shots to the head without flinching. A cultist can set things on fire with his mind. Your character may share this dark gift thanks to experimental drugs or brushes with the supernatural. Can you hold it together or will you join the monsters.

The characters are investigators into the supernatural. They may be federal agents sent to investigate mysterious phenomena or paranormal investigators who actually find what they are looking for. Either way they cannot unsee the horrors. Adventures focus on maddening horrors: tracking down a serial killer who leaves well dressed dolls at the scene of the crime, investigating a slum where people are slowly losing their memories, or stopping the spread of parasitic spiders in people's brains.

Characters would likely belong to a larger organization though they might have little backup from it (for example, a small department in the FBI, members of a loose association of researchers). Scope would encompass an area larger than a city but still be limited such as New England, Southern California, or the Tri-state area around New York City. Finally characters will have the possibility of starting or gaining psychic abilities.

I asked them to vote on a -5 to 5 scale where -5 was loathing and 5 was wanting to play now. The results were much more varied than I expected from previous experience with several highly negative votes. Take Back the Night fell first due to a negative vote and a dislike for its more martial tone. It wasn't until a week later at our planning meeting that The Abyss Stares Back finally emerged victorious.

On Endings

Originally published August 24, 2012

I recently ended my D&D campaign, the World of the Goddess, which has made me think about endings and why a good ending to a game is important.

There are many reasons why campaigns end. Sometimes it is because crucial players or the game master are no longer available or some other crisis forces the game to end. Other times the story you are telling simply comes to a natural end or you might have a good ongoing game but you or your players want to try something new. In these cases it is often better that the game comes to a definite end rather than slowly peter out.

But as we all know games can have good endings and bad endings. Sometimes when players or GM leave it leaves the story in a lurch with a campaign stopping midway through an adventure or dungeon. Other times a given adventure might be done but there might be major story lines left unresolved.

The issue is how much time one has to wrap up a game. A great comparison is with how TV series often come to an end. If it is abrupt, the writers have no room to write an end and viewers are typically left with a season cliffhanger (or worse) instead of a true ending. The story is left incomplete and unsatisfying. But if the writers (or GM) have more time they can craft an ending that, if bittersweet, is at least satisfying.

So what makes up a satisfying ending? Crucially you want to tie up major loose ends and give the players a sense of where their characters are going at the end of the story.

The first thing to do is understand how much time you have. If you are moving away in a month and you play every other week, then you have two sessions to resolve things. That should be taken into account when plotting. In this example where you are looking at a quick ending, then it is better to plan for less time than you have rather than risk getting cut off partway by events outside of the game. On the other hand if you have no time limit, only a desire to change things, you can take it slower. But even so it can be good to set yourself a limit (such as ending the game in 6 sessions) so that you can properly build to the finale.

Once you have identified how much time you have to work with, the next item is determine what plot elements need to be resolved. For this you need to listen to your players. Talk to them and find out what things they most want to see happen in the game. Perhaps there is a villain they have come to hate and they want to see him pay for his evil deeds. Or maybe they have some goal they are trying to accomplish or some secret they want revealed. Since you typically have multiple players expect to have several different plot elements to explore.

The next step is to figure out how you can resolve these elements in the time you have remaining. In some cases it is easy: kill the villain or recover a tape containing the secret. Other times the goal will be beyond the scope of the time you have left. For example perhaps a character is training to defeat a tyrant in his far off homeland. Logically he is still nowhere near powerful enough to accomplish this. What you might do in that case is see if you can’t leave the character a step closer to reaching his goal. Rather than take down the tyrant, perhaps he gains some ally who promises to help him in his crusade. The ally does not sweep in and take out the tyrant, since that steals agency from the player character. Instead you just establish how he gains this ally in-game and leave it at that. You do not deal with the dethroning of the tyrant.

The vitally important point is that not all plot elements have to be resolved in the game for it to end satisfyingly. Some elements the players might not find important, like who was the bandit leader who they failed to capture in an earlier adventure, and others you can just indicate how they are going to progress without filling in the details. As long as the elements are addressed you will often find your players to be fairly happy.

Now that you know what your players want and have determined how (to whatever limited degree) they will be satisfied, you can build your adventure. Again when planning endings it is often better to write less material than you have time for. This is especially important when the cause involves someone moving away as free time can quickly vanish as the move date approaches (I speak from frequent experience). For those of you with more time, what you might do is begin hinting at this final adventure, introducing new characters now and building up to that final story.

However just because you are building up to a climax does not mean you need an epic conclusion to a campaign. While that can be fun, you can just as easily end the game with a simpler struggle. Several times I have seen games end well, not with final battle, but with the characters coming to understand what the story was about and making a decision on what course their characters will pursue from then on.

This brings us to the final part of the ending, the denouement. After the action of the game has come to an end and the last die has fallen, it can be really enjoyable to go around and talk out where the characters went after the campaign ended. This is a great place to discuss any plot elements that could not be resolved in-game like the tyrant in my earlier example. You might discuss how that player’s character travels with his allies to take down the tyrant, while at the same time other characters, because their goals and actions, may be drawn into politics or other courses.

Feel free to let your players have a free hand with the story at this point. In my previous uses of denouement, I have let players establish kingdoms, challenge lingering enemies to single combat, seek atonement, and change world religions through their final narration. This game is as much their's as it is yours. Let them have the ending they want.

Using Music

Originally published August 10, 2012

In episode 6 of the podcast, Jared, Mike and Rob talked about the benefit of using music in your games and gave some recommendations on albums and artists to use. I also believe music can be of great use in setting the mood and building excitement for your players.

There are however a few rules I apply to any music for a game. First I avoid any music with lyrics. For me, hearing someone singing can make me focus on their words and steal focus from other things, such as the game. It doesn’t always happen but when it does it can ruin the effect you are shooting for. There are some exceptions. Songs with foreign languages can be ok since unless your players happen to know said language there isn’t the risk of them focusing on the words over the game. The key is we want to maintain immersion and keep the music in the background.

Another related problem is music with strong associations for your players. A classic example is the Imperial March from Star Wars. If you are not planning to have an evil empire make its presence known when this plays it can derail the mood. It can be hard to judge which songs have strong associations for your players but any music from popular shows or movies should be watch out for. Not that this is always a bad thing. For example, I used to often use Furious Angels from Matrix Reloaded in my combat music and my players at the time instantly made the connection. Thus when that song was playing they realized it was time for them to kick ass. One class of music that I have found not to work in general (at least with my current group) is video game music. It just seem to pull them out of the game and leads to them mocking the music.

For horror games and games with horror elements I recommend Midnight Syndicate, Nox Arcana, and the Resident Evil movie soundtracks (particularly the first and fourth films). Midnight Syndicate and Nox Arcana are bands that specialize in horror themed soundtracks. Both are excellent, though Nox Arcana tends to have a number of tracks with people talking.

Midnight Syndicate also is responsible for the Dungeons and Dragons album which is obviously useful for fantasy based games. I’ve also found Unearthed by E.S. Posthumus to excellent for this genre.

Unearthed by E.S. Posthumus

For general action games and music in general, Two Steps From Hell is an excellent source. This group basically creates music for movie trailers which tend to be chock full of good exciting music for combat and other dramatic scenes. Also good for action, assuming modern music is reasonable, are the soundtracks for the Matrix.

For more science fiction or modern settings, I find the soundtracks for Tron: Legacy and Inception to be very helpful. I also frequently use Crystal Method and other electronica as background for any science fiction setting.

Review: Victorian Lost

Originally published July 27, 2012

Cover for Victorian Lost

Victorian Lost is the latest Changeling: the Lost supplement. As the name implies it is focused on Changelings, people who have escaped the True Fae, in world of Late Victorian Britain.
On the plus side the setting is inherently evocative. The image of a changeling disappearing into the heavy fogs of London or a goblin working on some steampunk device is compelling. On the other hand this is more an aspect of Late Victorian Britain and the steampunk image it summons up for me and less any work by the authors.

What the authors have done, and done well, is to fit the Changeling setting to the culture of the period. Victorian Britain was a very class conscious society and that is reflected in the Lost society described in the book. The position of the various Seemings is described with the Wizened forced into the role of the humble servant (or disruptive anarchist) and Fairest holding a position similar to the noble class of the era. These ideas are well described in Chapter 3 of the book which is the strongest chapter in my opinion.

There are decent mechanical changes as well, discussed in Chapter 2. Two new Kiths are introduced, the Wizened Inventor and Darkling Lurker (though one wonders how many Jack the Ripper style foes the World of Darkness really needs). There are also some nice updates to the existing Contracts to allow for the lower level of technology and the Identity Merit for the weaker state of identity documents. Two new Goblin contracts allow new tools for Anarchists of the era (though sadly I feel this aspect of the period is only half heartedly discussed).

There are some serious shortcomings to the book. The worst is Chapter 1 which describes London and the culture of the period. While the material is fine, it is entirely transmitted via a series of letters by a Changeling to his sister. This makes it is hard to read and digest and worse makes it useless for referencing later. If you like reading the fiction you might find it enjoyable but for anything else I would ignore it and do some online research instead.

Another issue I have is with the book is the very limited scope. As I mentioned it is focused on Britain at the end of the 19th century. While this period has been focused on many authors (following in the steps of Dickens and Conan Doyle) it is singularly focused on that location and time. The material is much less useful if you are interested in the United States, Ireland or Paris during the same period, which had considerable differences in class and culture. While it discusses the wilds outside of London briefly there seems to be a strong discouragement of Changelings moving out to the country.

Chapter 4, is devoted to Storyteller advice and has much to say on theme and mood. Nothing here is spectacular though some good hints are given on highlighting a character’s alienation. A third of the chapter is given over to discussion of using Victorian Lost in a LARP. The ideas seem sensible though I personally have little interest in LARPs.

From Hunt Clubs and Rookeries

Two sample chronicles are provided. The Blackthorn Club involves a group of ne’er-do-wells of the upper crust trying to save Victorians from a True Fae trying to make everyone proper and mannered. It is up to them to lure the corrupted agents of the True Fae into scandal and giving in to temptation. Hunt Clubs and Rookies on the other hand follows the dredges of society as they investigate and attempt to stop a group of fetches and privateer Changeling nobles from killing them and their allies. Both are intriguing and well done with special rules to highlight the more magical aspects of the setting. I’m disappointed that there are only two. While a third chronicle might have made the book too long, I would have liked a page or two of story seeds like in Glimpses of the Unknown.

Master of All Men

The last two sections of the book present a sample adventure, Master of All Men, along with a set of characters called the Back Stairs Mob. The adventure is interesting and somewhat epic in scale with a bridge burning Changeling who decides to send a train (passengers and all) to Arcadia to destroy the True Fae. The characters are evocative and deep with lots of hooks for future adventures.

All in all the book is pretty good as long as you expect to run a Changeling chronicle in Victorian London. Outside of that the Back Stair mob and the adventure could be repurposed to a different city and the Mechanical changes would be useful throughout the time period. Outside of Changeling however I would not recommend buying this. The Victorian specific information is quite limited and describing an irritating manner and the ideas inside are hard to adapt to a different aspect of the World of Darkness.

Review: Glimpses of the Unknown

Originally published June 22, 2012

Glimpses of the Unknown is a short (48 page) e-book put out by White Wolf in 2011. As I was snatching up Victorian Lost, I decided to grab this long delayed purchase as well. The book is essentially a gathering of story seeds and plots for all the major lines of World of Darkness in addition to World of Darkness:Innocents. It also adds onto some of the story ideas in World of Darkness: Mirrors.

A Storyteller, you can never have too many sources of inspiration and adventure ideas. So in many ways this is a no brainer. The ideas in this book are broken up into two categories. There are the seeds, little ideas that might lead to a larger story or just add that creepy wrinkle to a current plotline. Also presented are roughly mapped story ideas with several scenes worth of ideas.

The ideas themselves range from the imaginative and intriguing (everyone they meet begin to work “she lives” into their sentences) to some that seem uninspired. In particular I found the last section for Mirrors to be uninteresting. Perhaps it is just that Mirrors itself focused on major changes to the setting like the apocalypse or True Blood-like outings of monsters, but the ideas there just don’t grab me. Overall however the ideas in Glimpses of the Unknown are pretty good and I expect to use several of them in my next World of Darkness game.

One theme throughout the work is that not everything can be categorized into vampire, mage, werewolf or so forth. There are creatures that fit none of the established groups perfectly, like all-knowing talking cats, magical gardeners, and mysterious men in black. Are they angels, agents of mages or spirits, or something else entirely? I think this concept is a good one to keep in mind in any game with a well established background. Fundamentally a game is how the game master and the players define it. If you want to ensure well read players are surprised from time to time, it is useful to put creatures and objects in the game that are not in the established rules. This might be a change in the established monsters, like vampires that are immune to sunlight or a contagious form of lycanthropy, or might be just an original tidbit, like a spell no one has seen before.

Throughout the book there are several little extras for each of the major groups: a rote for Mage, a ritual for Sineaters, an Athanor for Promethean, a rite for Werewolf, a goblin contract for Changeling, a new merit. These crunchy bits are tied into some of the presented story ideas and seem fairly balanced. They are not worth buying the book on their own but are a nice addition that dovetails with the theme I just mentioned.

The art is largely recycled from earlier books but at least seems to be partly matched up with the material.

All in all it is an interesting collection of ideas and certainly worth adding to your collection if you are a storyteller who is on the lookout for new ideas.

Morality Revisited

Originally published June 9, 2012

I've discussed morality before, but recently in my Mage: the Awakening game, I had some issues with World of Darkness's morality system. I had presented the characters with several options each of which had moral consequences to varying degrees. Specifically they had the option of killing several children to save a community or stealing the souls of the children (temporarily) and destroying a piece of magic to remove the problem. Either way they would need to make rolls to avoid losing a dot of their morality trait (Wisdom in this case).

In the end they went with option #2, deciding saving the children was worth more than the cost to their own souls. In this aspect the moral quandary was fine as several characters anguished over the decision over the course of the game session, seeking out their mentors for advice and praying for guidance (the characters are mainly practicing Catholics).

The problem arose at the end of the session, where having saved the children, they then needed to roll to avoid the loss of Wisdom (due to soul theft and the hubris of destroying an artifact to repair a soul). One of the characters, who had been particularly portrayed as feeling very guilty throughout the session, failed her roll.

Now the difficulty with this is that if you succeed in a Wisdom roll (i.e. do not lose Wisdom), then the character is supposed to feel guilty and depressed about the decision while if they had failed their morality is eroded and they no longer see that act as such a bad thing. But the way it played out and plays out in general is often the exact opposite. Losing morality is seen as a bad thing while making the roll tends to lift the mood of the players and the game as a whole.

There are a number of ways to handle this, such as replacing the morality system. I intend to experiment with this in the future. But one idea that the player brought up was to make the morality roll when a character commits to plan that would require it. So if a character plans to kill someone, they make the roll then, before the murder. If they succeed, they can then play their character as reluctant and apprehensive of killing someone. If they fail then they can go ahead with it but do not lose the point of morality until they actually commit the deed.

The concept is a little more relaxed than the default and adds to morality as a roleplaying tool. I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts.

Setting and the proper number of NPCs

Originally published May 27, 2012

When building a setting there is a careful balance between too much material and too little. This is particularly the case when running simulationist or sandbox style games where the expectation is that the players can go anywhere and do anything. Too little and your setting seems empty and undeveloped, while too much and your players will be unable to follow all the plots and characters.

Specifically I’m interested in the upper limit for important non-player characters (NPCs) for a game. How many is too many? Obviously if there are too many, then players will begin to forget or confuse some of them and the gamemaster (GM) might do so as well. Just as a large group of players limits the focus in a game for any single member, a large cast of NPCs means that the GM will be unable to spotlight them all. If the NPC isn’t in the spotlight from time to time, then they will fade away from the story and from your player’s memories. At that point you might ask yourself why you created that character in the first place.

It is rarely an issue of having too few NPCs in my experience, as long as you are open to creating new ones of the fly. Players are always looking for experts, merchants, and sources of information and by their very nature they attract enemies. As long as you put the effort into establishing some guideline for what exists in your game you should be able to create an appropriate character with a little bit of time.

The problem of too many characters is a common one for me in White Wolf games where I feel that I need several dozen fleshed out and important characters for every city. I don’t have this issue in other systems, likely because the expectations are different. In D&D, I might make hundreds of monsters and dozens of NPCs for combat but most never survive contact with the party and thus are unimportant over the course of a campaign. Only a few allies and recurring villains make up the permanent cast. Likewise in my GURPS and BESM campaigns, I rarely felt the need to create more than a half-dozen personalities for any adventure and recycled them as much as possible.

In terms of finding the correct balance I think my Amber Diceless and my current Mage: the Awakening campaigns have come closest to finding the correct upper limit. In my Amber game, I had 7 players and about two dozen NPCs at the end, of which perhaps a dozen were important at any one time. With my experiences there I found that the players could generally keep the characters straight and I usually could remember to bring the action back to each NPC from time to time. I was certainly near the upper limit (both on the NPC and player side of things) but it seemed manageable.

My Mage game has a much larger cast and I feel suffers from the flaw of too many NPCs. However there are a few groups within the setting where I think the cast of characters is sufficiently small to not lose focus while still large enough to give the right feel of a serious organization. Specifically the group called the Adamantine Arrow in my game seems to be the right size. It consists of about dozen members split between 3 groups, or cabals.

What helps here is that each group has a face or leader which can be used as a shorthand for the cabal as a whole. The Iron Hand is represented by the criminal Black Dog and the other members are the lieutenants (loyal or otherwise) and soldiers of his gang. The Inner Monastery is led by Lealtad, and her companions are fellow warriors on an ill thought out quest of heroics and glory. Finally Quick, an ex-cop, leads the Fist of Talos which works to protect normal people from the supernatural threats of the city. By focusing on these leaders and the characters of the groups as a whole, I find I can better manage the cabals and reduced the overwhelming number of NPCs for the players.

An important aspect of this idea is that each group or character should be compelling on their own. You want to make sure each of your key characters suggest stories and have hooks to push the game forward. Black Dog’s criminal activities could easily make him an enemy of the players while Lealtad’s impulsive leadership can lead to tragedies that the heroes must clean up. This keeps your game moving and evolving as the players interact with the various NPCs of your world.

So based on these experiences I think a dozen important NPCs is probably a good upper limit. While you will certainly add many more minor NPCs who are important for a particular adventure, by focusing on your main cast while ensuring they are compelling and interesting you can hopefully ensure that your audience (the players) are able to easily remember them. Ideally if they are interesting enough and a sufficient history is established by focusing the story on them, it will be your players that reintroduce the NPCs to the story again and again after a while.

Niche Protection

Originally published May 11, 2012

This week’s podcast concerns character advancement which can be found here. What I want to talk about today is a subject tangentially discussed in the podcast, the idea of preserving a character’s niche. By ‘niche’ I mean the area where a character excels compared to the other characters.

The rationale behind this is very simple; we want to balance the amount of focus each player character (PC) gets during a game session. By ensuring that each character has his or her own niche, it makes it easier to manage that spotlight. If character A is the know-it-all and character B cleans up in combat, we can build an adventure that mixes research and intellectual puzzles with battles with thugs and villains and be sure to satisfy both PCs. By giving time to each character’s niche, we get to focus the game on them in a simple and easy fashion.

Fundamentally this idea is behind class and organization selections in many games. In D&D you have the iconic group of the warrior, the magic user, the thief, and the healer. In many White Wolf games you have several racial groups and political organizations which yield similar results. While more freeform creation systems like GURPS or FATE do away with these categories, you still retain this notion that PCs should specialize. This is often wrapped in the language of having a group able to cover all their bases but fundamentally is about giving everyone their time to shine.

However as brought up in the podcast, there can issues when two character both focus on the same thing. This can come up in character creation as well as later in play.

Character creation is where one most often sees this conflict over niche. For example, two PCs both decide to focus on being occult experts or master swordsmen. There are two basic approaches to dealing with this problem. First you should always discuss character concepts with your fellow players and gamemaster (GM). See if one of the players is willing to alter the focus of their character (or if you are a player, perhaps you can change your focus in some way). Even little changes can make a big difference. In the case of the swordsmen, perhaps one can focus on big swords and massive damage, while the other goes the route of the swashbuckler. Or perhaps one works on using two weapons at once while another portrays herself as a knight adding horse riding and the lance to her character concept. With the occult experts, perhaps one can take the role of the debunker while the other is a credulous parapsychologist. Other alternatives could be conspiracy theorist, UFO researcher, demonologist, or secret Vatican exorcist. While mechanically they might have similar skills, how they use them in play will be very different.

Another idea for dealing with this overlap of abilities is to emphasize the similarities. Perhaps the characters are rivals, each trying to outdo the other with their shared talent. Alternatively they could combine their skills to excel at things no one character could accomplish. Combined with the earlier idea of variations on a theme, this allows each character to be different while at the same time not feeling like a fifth wheel.

But what about the idea of a character choosing their advancements (in terms of levels or XP) in such a way that they overlap another character’s niche? Here many of the same ideas still work. First off, talk to the person and find out why they are moving into that niche. Perhaps they don’t realize that you are covering that area or perhaps it is part of larger change in the concept of the character. Ideally you can find some compromise such that one character is not diminished relative to the rest of the group.

As a player there is a lot you can do to preserve your niche . In many cases you can focus on a skill or aspect of a character, like raising your occult to ever higher levels. In many games however there is a sense of diminishing returns. For example in World of Darkness, skills cap out at 5 dots and the difference between a master (5 dots) and a skilled professional (3 dots) might be seem fairly small. One thing to keep in mind however is that often such systems can and do invoke large penalties for particularly hard tasks. 2 extra dice looks a lot better when faced with a minus 4 dice penalty.

Beyond that however there comes point where you should broaden your own concept. Continuing with the occult expert, as you move to the higher ranges of that skill, you should begin to branch out into related abilities. You might raise your character's Intelligence to indicate the result of all of his studying. Perhaps he gains a library advantage from all the books he has acquired in his research or possesses artifacts that he has investigated. Perhaps the character invests in contacts and allies among the occult underground, people he knows because they come to him to get their difficult questions answered. Even raising other skills can work to expand on the character's master of hidden lore, particularly if you augment them with specialities. For example: Persuasion (bargaining with spirits) or Science (fringe science).

While some of these options don’t directly feed into the character’s skills, they do feed in his niche. They keep the spotlight on the character by making his expertise important to the story. Ultimately that is what niche is about and the idea that there is another character might be almost good at a given task somewhere in the world doesn’t matter if the focus is on your character and what he can do right now.