A few days ago I rolled up a Tunnels & Trolls character so I could play though and review some solo adventures. Being an Old School type game, I knew that having good equipment (weapons and armor, primarily) was going to be important. Sadly, I rolled really, really poorly for starting gold. Now, I could have cheated and just given myself more gold, or good gear, but I’d know even if no one else did. I also figured that anyone who saw the character would figure I was cheating anyway, due to a couple of amazing attribute rolls (I got triples twice — three 4’s both times, netting me a 25 and a 26 total; I also got a 15 and 16, which I put into STR and CON, which doubled because my character was a dwarf, so I had STR 30, CON 32, INT 25 and WIZ 26. I could have put the 25 and 26 into attributes that doubled and had STR 50 and CON 52, but I wanted a dwarf rogue rather than a warrior, and I’m the kind of idiot that won’t tweak a character concept to fit the numbers even if it means missing an opportunity to min/max).

T&T also being much like a story game, I figured I could “cheat” creatively by coming up with a useful Talent. With those rolls, I got a 2nd level character so I got a Talent other than Roguery. What I came up with is a Talent called “I’ve Got One”, which works like this:

I’ve Got One

The character is a packrat, and tends to have useful items stashed in their stuff. Affiliated attribute is Luck. When in need of an item, make a LkSR. The SR level is the cost of the item divided by 100, minimum 1. If the item is magical, add 2. If the item is large (i.e., a two-handed weapon), add 1. If the item is small and concealable (i.e. easy to have stashed in a loot bag), subtract 1. If the save is successful, the character has the item. If the save fails, he doesn’t.

Now, to offset the fact that this might still be seen as cheating, consider that my character had a starting Luck score of 7. I wrote to Ken St. Andre to ask if Roguery could be substituted for attributes in Talent saving rolls, but as of press time I hadn’t heard back, so I assumed no. I rolled by d6 and got a 4 (these dice like 4’s), so the Talent rating is 11. I made saving rolls for armor and weapons I liked (getting my 4th and 5th choices), and viola, my character was equipped even without money.

As a gamemaster, I probably wouldn’t allow this Talent to be used in gearing up. Then again, I’d probably assign the player characters a base level of equipment so they wouldn’t have to sweat it. Where I see this Talent as being useful is when the characters are deep in a tunnel and suddenly need something. “Oh crap, vampires, did anyone bring garlic?” “Hold on, let me looking in my bag.” Roll dice. “Yup! I’ve got some!”.

One of the greatest things about this hobby of ours is being able to take source material from disparate places, smash it together, and come up with something greater than the sum of its parts. I’m currently putting together a campaign I want to run, which I’ve mentioned in passing a few times, that mashes up some wildly different things.

The working title “Houses of the Ironcrags” comes from two of the campaign’s primary sources: Houses of the Blooded, and Dwarves of the Ironcrags. I’ve described it to people as “Song of Ice and Fire, but with dwarves”. The player characters are from important families within important clans — not common adventurers. It’s a game about political intrigue, but there will be combat as well. I’m using elements of the Ironcrags settings, with its alliance of dwarven city-states, or cantons. They player characters will work together on a common goal presented to them, but they’ll also have goals for their cantons, their clans, and themselves which will, of course, conflict.

My vision of dwarven cantons is to have them partially above ground, partially below. The deeper you live, the more affluent you are. The above-ground portion is for trade with other cantons and other races, and where the farmers who grow the food live. Dwarven cantons would thus look pretty unimpressive above ground; a lot of farmland, a small walled town or village, and a marketplace. Of course if you go too deep, you run into other issues. Like deep-dwelling monsters. I said there would be combat.

For those marketplaces, I’m using the Ironcrags’ gypsy-like humans, but I’m also stealing Goblin Markets from Changeling: the Lost. Yes, all of the marketplaces outside of the cantons are Goblin Markets, where literally anything, from goods and services to concepts and ideas can be bought and sold. I want to really bring that level of dangerous fantasy into the game, and it really works with the political intrigue concept; what are you willing to trade to get what you want?

One of the cantons in Ironcrags used to be an Elven city. It’s also the largest of the cantons, so I’m making it the de facto capital. It will be the most impressive looking above-ground, with its ancient elven architecture and such, and I want to put an elven ghetto in it just because I like the idea of an elven ghetto. Elves are always portrayed as noble and aristocratic, I really want to have fun by inverting that and making them a poor, downtrodden minority (at least in this particular city). It gives me a source of sympathetic villains, plus a potential internal security issue as it could be a source of espionage, terrorism, and a hot political issue when dealing with elven nations or city-states.

For religions, I’m using the pantheon from Book of the Righteous. Best fantasy pantheon ever, in my opinion, because it gives you connections between the gods and their religions, how each religion worships, and ways religion affects non-cleric characters. If I’m doing a political intrigue game, there have to be religious conflict as well.

While they may not have an active role in the campaign and will likely just be there for color, the orcs in the surrounding mountains will be John Wick’s (sadly out of print) Orkworld orks. Relatively pacifistic, nomadic, reindeer-following tribal people. It’s more likely that how they should be treated will be an issue, with the orks never appearing “on screen”.

Tying this together I’m using Tunnels & Trolls as the system, with some house rules. It’s simple and easy to run, allowing me to focus on story and not rules. T&T’s Talents system can be adapted to reflect as Aspects system Houses of the Blooded lifted from Fate. Conflict winners will narrate the scene. I plan to allow players to make wagers by betting Adventure Points (10 points per die), so the players can add facts and shape events.

A number of things keep running through my mind as I put together my campaign notes.

Batman

When running a supers game, I think of roleplaying game sessions more as the equivalent of episodic television than a comic book-style story format. It’s definitely easier to plot adventures that way for Adventures Into Darkness. Adam West’s Batman, which I referenced in a prior post, may be goofy and campy, and owes a lot to 1960’s pop culture, but it’s also very close to the way the character was portrayed in comics in the late Golden Age. If you set aside the camp and look at the episodes in a serious light, the villains were utterly insane, as were the heroes. You can tweak it to be very, very dark. A guy who thinks he’s King Tut? Potentially very Lovecraftian. A man who telegraphs his crimes through Riddles? That can be twisted into the Mythos, especially if after figuring out the answer you realize there’s nothing you can do about it. Vincent Price with an egg fetish and a girlfriend who commands Russian cossacks… okay, I know there’s got to be a Mythos angle in there.

Superman

In addition to the Adventures of Superman television series, also cited in a previous post, I’ve got a book titled “Superman from the 30s to the 70s”.  It reprints a ton of older comics stories, giving me a feel for how supporting characters were used, what Golden Age dialogue was like, and how sets and locations were designed and used. It will help me get a Golden Age “feel” to the game. It also shows me how the main character and his supporting cast evolved over the decades. This provides me with some insight on how I can take more recent source material and “retro-fit” it into Golden Age form.

Dick Tracy

While I don’t currently own any anthologies of the old strips, I used to own them and read them voraciously. I read the strip in the newspaper as a kid, up until Chester Gould retired and a couple of years in to the Max Alan Collins run. In addition to lifting story beats and plot ideas, I’m particularly looking at the “Moon Maid” stories. Gould worked science fiction elements into a crime strip, with varying degrees of success. I want to keep the fantastic, well, fantastic, another reason to keep the campaign rooted in weird mobsters. There’s a lot of learn from Tracy’s history.

Delta Green

There is absolutely no way I can run a post-Lovecraft game that involves weird science, crime, and government agencies without touching the Delta Green books. I don’t plan to get into conspiracy, but there are ideas to be mined and exploited.

Adventures Into Darkness offers up a plethora of villains either lifted from or inspired by Lovecraft’s original works. The one that’s setting the tone for my campaign is Devilfish, a Deep One mobster. He sets the tome for a couple of reasons. First, the Golden Age comics seemed to have heroes battling gangsters more often than supervillains. Second, I really like the trope of the grotesque villain as expressed in Dick Tracy and Batman, the former of which were almost always organized crime figures of one sort or another. In the one-shot adventure I ran at RinCon, I dialed it back and had mobsters with the Innsmouth Look, rather than flat-out fish men, controlling the docks and by extension all sea-based smuggling in the region. Having all of the mobsters be full-conversion Deep Ones was too over-the-top, and I felt it detracted from having the singular, super-powered villain.

It fits with Lovecraft, where dark ambitions twist one physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Being a criminal is a corruptive force, and the sins of peddling drugs, operating prostitution rings, and committing murder are as foul as any Mythos corruption — assuming, of course, that those activities aren’t Mythos inspired to begin with. Anything that degrades the human spirit and eats away at the human soul feeds the powers of the Mythos, whether wittingly or not.

Going with grotesque gangsters also allows me to make villains more personal. I can do Communists, Nazis, Mad Scientists, Cosmic Horrors, but all of those types of villains are generic, with nebulous goals that don’t tend to affect the heroes’s lives directly. Yes, I know that Lovecraft’s point was that the universe is a cold, impersonal place and that the human race, let alone individual humans, barely register as a blip if they register at all. I find it’s hard to engage players in those sorts of no-win scenarios. It’s not really in keeping with my scheme of “supers with Mythos influence, not the other way around”, and in Lovecraft’s tales most people went mad because there was some personal impact.

That’s not to say those other forces won’t come into play. A strong inspiration for me is the Adventures of Superman television series from the 1950s. As a kid, I never understood why Superman was always fighting gangsters (answers: 1. Golden Age trope, 2. low budget). Invariably, though, someone close to Superman was placed in peril by gangsters, usually Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen, but sometimes Inspector Henderson or my favorite “NPC” on the show, Professor Hamilton. When weird science did show up, it typically invovled organized crime figures stealing it, or attempting to steal it, so they could either use it to commit crime, or eliminate Superman so they could commit crime without interference.

So, instead of a mad scientist, we have a mobster using a weird gadget he doesn’t really understand. Or a strange artifact. Or engaging in a weird ritual he thinks will benefit him. For their own perceived gain, mobsters will team up with Commies, Nazis, and cultists. They’ll have to place the player characters and their loved ones in danger to do it.

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My decision to set my Adventures Into Darkness campaign in 1953 came to me in a dream, eerily enough. It’s an obvious enough choice. The House Un-American Activities Committee was on the rampage, with McCarthy’s metaphorical witchhunts. Frederick Wertham was causing a stir with Seduction of the Innocent, which can easily be transferred into criticism of how actual superheroes are conducting themselves. The first Hydrogen bomb tests were going on. Stalin died, sending the Cold War to new levels. The world was changing rapidly, and having the heroes deal with those changes offers up a lot of story fodder. Superheroes are coming under scrutiny, yes, but in a lot of ways they’re just not needed, or at least not particularly effective. You can’t punch your way through a Cold War without triggering an international incident and potentially triggering a nuclear war. Nazi scientists are now working for the American Government, and it would make sense that a lot of home-grown mad scientists and other villains would get rounded up and recruited as well. Scientific accidents that give people superpowers just don’t happen with government oversight… or at least, they’re no longer accidents. There’s a moral ambiguity that wasn’t there during World War II. A lot of heroes who became active in the late 1930s and early 40s have retired, if they weren’t killed in the war. Heroes who put their lives on hold to fight Hitler and the Axis are getting married, moving to the suburbs, and raising kids just like other veterans and ordinary citizens.

By setting it late in the Golden Age, the player characters get to be older and more experienced, but they’ve also had more exposure to the Mythos, the horrors or war, and the potentially corrupting influences of their powers. Here’s the example I give: imagine that Adam West’s Batman is the grim and gritty Batman, but after he’s lost his marbles facing down cosmic horrors. Everyone’s at least a little shell shocked, a little screwed up, but not without their moral compass, their patriotism, and their desire to battle evil intact.

In looking to turn Adventures Into Darkness into an ongoing campaign, my first consideration was location. Nowhere other than Arkham fit my bill, with Miskatonic University right there to provide all the weird science and strange magic a gamemaster could ever need. The problem is, a sleepy New England college town just doesn’t cry out “superheroes” to me. Since we’re already dealing with alternate realities here (hello, superheroes!), I decided that my alternate Arkham must be a bustling metropolis more akin to Boston than Salem, and that other Lovecraftian locations like Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport are either nearby towns or suburbs. Some may call this geographical tampering blasphemy, but that’s only appropriate to a Cthulhu Mythos game, right?

To illustrate that we’re in a superhero world, Arkham at some point in history becomes Arkham City. So many places in the Golden and Silver Ages had “city” in the name, from Gotham City to Midway City, Star City, Coast City, and more. It just feels superhero-y to me.

Other than Lovecraft’s map of Arkham (above), which I’m using as a downtown/historic area where the University is located, I’m using a map of Boston, turned sideways. Boston will exist, as a much smaller city.

As I’m playing with history, I’ll be moving historical events from other Massachusetts locations to Arkham City. This gives me plot hooks to play with. This Arkham was important to the American Revolution in the way Boston was in our world. Here’s a three-word hook for you: Innsmouth Tea Party. Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, is about the Arkham Witch Trials and will have “King in Yellow” overtones to its performance.

Never forget, it’s a superhero game with Mythos influences, not a Mythos game with supers. At least, not the way I’m running it.

More to come.

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Monster management in Tunnels and Trolls 7.5 is incredibly simple. Monster Rating (MR) is both how much damage the monster can take, and how many Adventure Point you get for killing it (or outsmarting it, if you’re clever and have a generous gamemaster). Half the MR is the creature’s Combat Add. Divide MR by 10 and add 1, and that’s how many Combat Dice it rolls. Easy.

This simplicity also makes it possible to round up a ton of free monsters for your game. Yes, free! How? Convert them from That Other Game! Let me how you how.

First, get a copy of the free System Reference Document (SRD). You don’t even need the whole thing, just the monster bits. You can also use the Other System Reference Document if you prefer. Each monster is going to have a bit fat block of statistics, as well as some description of what they can do. We’re going to ignore most of that.

Second, find the monster’s Hit Points. Every monster has an average, pre-rolled hit point total. Using my favorite monster from that game, the Bugbear, as an example, the SRD says it has 27 hit points. Ican have more, it n have less, but on average a bugbear has 27. Use thats the Monster Rating. Every thing else follows suit. A bugbear has MR 27, and rolls 3d6+14 for Combat Dice.

Third, figure out Special Abilities. You can use a similar special ability from a T&T monster, or use a T&T spell that sounds close, but I advocate winging it. When in doubt, use Spite Damage as your fudge factor. For example, a Rust Monster doesn’t do any damage to characters, only metal weapons and armor. When rolling in combat, add up al the 6’s the rust monster rolls and apply that Spite Damage to the metal weapon that struck it (or tried to) or the armor of the nearest character. If a monster has a special ability dependant upon a grapple, use Spite damage to indicate that it grappled, then apply the special effect.

Of course, this not an apples-to-apples conversion. My story, and I’m sticking to it, is that the monsters will get discombobulated crossing the mystical veil from Dungeonworld to Trollworld, and their power levels will be affected as well. It’s not meant to be an exercise in mathematics. What it will do is allow you to use monster books from that other game to stock your tunnels with and give your players new and interesting things to kill.

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Because someone, invariably, will make a stink and call my professional ethics into question, here’s as much as I feel obliged to share.

When the RPG Bloggers Network (RPGBN) board initially made their announcement about stepping down and passing the network on to others, network boss Dave Chalker approached me and asked if I’d be interested in submitting a proposal. While initially interested, I withdrew when certain members of the network found my pitch… controversial. I felt it needed to be run as a business, in order to cover costs of operation and upgrades to the existing back end, rather than a free co-op. I also felt that the buck needed to stop with someone, with one person taking personal responsibility for making decisions albeit with input from members. I also withdrew because based on feedback from members, what many were looking for was a community that was inclusive of media and content providers other than just bloggers. To that end, I created the Role Play Media Network (RPMN) , intended to compliment, rather than replace, the RPGBN.

Duane O’Brien has asked me to be on the advisory board for the RPGBN going forward. While I am flattered, I am going to decline. First, although I had no input into Duane’s proposal and didn’t even know that he had submitted one until the announcement that he’d been selected, I do have a previous business relationship with him. I do not want him to be saddled with any allegations of impropriety. Someone has already suggested that I was secretly behind another candidate, and that that person would essentially be my “sock puppet”.  I also do not want to saddle him with the shadow of my “controversial” status, as he will have enough work addressing the network’s existing issues.

In the end, while I think Duane was a good choice and I’m confident that the future of the network is in good hands, I’m still disappointed that it came to this. That the four men who started the RPGBN had to withstand personal attacks is shameful. That it all came down to bullshit politics is distressing. Go play games and have fun. For my part, I will continue to express my passion for this hobby, and this community, simply by running, playing, and writing about games.

To kick off this month’s RPG Blog Carnival, the topic of which is “community”, I want to congratulate Duane O’Brien on assuming the stewardship of the RPG Bloggers Network. For those of you who just said “who?”, I completely understand. Duane is relatively new on the scene, but you may be familiar with his work. His site, A Terrible Idea, used to go by the name Chaotic Neutral Network. He’s the voice of Friend Computer on the frequently hilarious Alpha Complex Twitter feed. And he’s the author of one of my favorite games to come out this ye (and my absolute favorite zombie game), Shambles.That’s a decent body of work.

This month UncleBear is once again the host of the RPG Blog Carnival. What is a blog carnival? It’s where bloggers mutually work on the same theme or topic for a month. The topic I’ve selected is Community: in-game and in real life. There’s been a lot of talk about community lately, with the changing of the guard for the RPG Bloggers’ Network and the creation of the Role Play Media Network. What does a roleplaying community mean to you? What do you expect out of a community? And how the the concept of community translate into a game setting?

Join the Carnival!

How do you get in on the carnival? Just write a post around this month’s theme, then leave a comment on this post with a link back. At the end of the month, I’ll round up all the entries in another post. Then the carnival will move again! That’s all. I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

News

UncleBear is hosting the RPG Blog Carnival for November. The topic is “Community: in-game and in real life”. What does community mean to you, as a player, and what do you want from a community? How does the concept of community factor into your game setting?

Office Hours
Because I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment, I’m now keeping online office hours from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mountain Time, Monday through Friday. That is the only time I will be checking email, RPMN, Twitter, and Facebook. It doesn’t sound like much, but that’s three hours a day, 15 hours per week checking messages, and that’s the limit I’m setting. If you’re trying to reach me, please be assured that I will do my best to get back to you within one business day.

Site Redesign
The current goal is to have UncleBear.com transitioned into a gateway for all of the activities below by the end of the year. Rather than having to remember or bookmark a variety of URLs, I want people to have one place where they can go to find out what’s going on with UncleBear (the company) and Berin Kinsman (the person).

UncleBear

http://UncleBear.com
http://twitter.com/unclebear
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Uncle-Bear/103866327040?ref=mf
kinsman at unclebear dot com

UncleBear is a company dedicated to producing content for and about tabletop roleplaying games. It operates the Role Play Media Network, FandoNM, a small press publishing effort, and offers consulting services to aspiring game designers.

Role Play Media Network
http://RolePlayMedia.net
The RPMN is a social network for anyone who creates content for and about tabletop roleplaying games, including bloggers, podcasters, writers, designers, and gamemasters, as well as their audiences. It offers free blogs, forums, groups, and chat.

FandoNM
http://FandoNM.ning.com
FandoNM (Fan Do, “Way of the Fan”) is an organization created to promote fan-related activies in the state of New Mexico. It is currently in its infancy and seeking officers and volunteers. While it is currently being operated as a private venture, the goal is to spin it off into a 501(c)3 non-profit organization once it finds its legs.

Publishing
In 2010 UncleBear will move into small press publishing, offering systemless game mastering, world building, and setting material. This material will be available via DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, Lulu, and other reputable vendors.

Game Consulting
UncleBear offers affordable consulting services to aspiring game designers. These services include proofreading, editing, ghost writing, and confidential private reviews. Previously offered directly by Berin Kinsman, in 2010 UncleBear will be adding additional consulting staff so that each game can be assisted by an experienced consultant who is the right “fit” for the game’s genre and style of play.

Berin Kinsman

In addition to operating UncleBear, Berin Kinsman works with other organizations to help promote roleplaying games as a creative and healthy hobby.

Phoenix RPG Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7705-Phoenix-RPG-Examiner
While the focus of this Examiner.com column is on the Arizona gaming scene, the material is of general interest and includes game reviews, interviews, and the popular Twitter Follow Friday 5.

OneBookShelf Featured Reviewer
http://DriveThruRPG.com
http://RPGNow.com
Going into 2010, Berin will be a featured reviewer for the OneBookShelf family of online retail sites.

Southern Arizona Gamers Association
http://SouthernArizonaGamersAssociation.com
The Southern Arizona Gamers Association (SAGA) is a non-profit organization whose charter is to promote a culture of family gaming and to foster a closer relationship between the community at large in Southern Arizona and hobby games industry. We promote the social and developmental benefits of gaming. Many of SAGA members are published game authors, hobby games industry insiders, working professionals, distinguished military and accomplished students.

SAGA operates two monthly game days, Ides of Gaming and the Tucson RPG Guild meetup, as well as seminars and convention events, including RinCon. As a SAGA Marshal, Berin helps to promote SAGA and its events.

RinCon 10
http://RinConGames.com
At the close of RinCon ‘09, it was announced that Berin will be Communications Director for RinCon 10.

Podcasting
A former regular on the Pulp Gamer Out of Character podcast, Berin is currently preparing to launch a brand new tabletop roleplaying podcast in the near future.

Web Presence
http://BerinKinsman.com
http://direking.wordpress.com
http://twitter.com/berinkinsman
http://facebook.com/berinkinsman
http://www.flickr.com/photos/berin_kinsman/
berin dot kinsman at gmail dot com

BerinKinsman.com is currently a personal blog covering mostly non-roleplaying game topics. By the end of the year, that domain will redirect to UncleBear.com, and Berin’s “personal space” will completely transition to a hosted space.

To keep life manageable, Berin’s Facebook page and Twitter feed are restricted to friends only. You can send a request, but don’t be offended if it’s denied or you don’t get a response. If you don’t know Berin personally, in “real life”, the best way to contact him is via the UncleBear accounts.

“If you haven’t messed with the printed rules and made at least a couple of changes, you aren’t really playing Tunnels and Trolls” - Ken St. Andre, T&T v7.5 rulebook, page 4.

This is why I love this game. Because even though the game is incredible as-is, if you know me or have read this page for any length of time you know that I’d find a way to tinker with even a “perfect” system (if such a thing existed). So here are the house rules I’ll be using for any future T&T games I run.

Talents and Specialists
In my game, you don’t have to roll triples in order to be Specialist. I like the flexibility of the class too much, and the options for customization it presents for players. The only prerequisite is a rolled attribute score of 15, prior to modification by Kindred.

If you’re playing a Specialist from the written rules (Specialist Mage, Ranger, Leader) you don’t get an additional Talent. You Specialty is your starting Talent. Custom Specialists pick a Talent, and that becomes their Specialty. The benefit is that they always make save for the Specialty at Save Roll Level 1.

Let’s look at some examples, using the Talents on page 32 of T&T 7.5 as Specialties. Zam the Bony would normally take Thievery as a Talent, but the player rolled a 15 (or better) and assigned it to Dexterity. The player decided Zam will be a Thievery Specialist. When Zam engages in Thievery, the player makes a DEX SR at Level 1.

Fang the Delectable would normally take Swordplay as a Talent, but his player rolled a 15 (or better) and put it into STR. The player decided to make Fang a Swordplay Specialist. When Fang engages in Swordplay, the player makes a STR SR at Level 1.

So, why play any other type of character? Specialists are one-trick ponies. Fang is absolutely amazing at Swordplay, but isn’t nearly as versatile as a Warrior. Zam is an outstanding thief, but doesn’t have the advantages of, say, a Rogue with Thievery as a Talent. Players should carefully consider whether the benefits of being a Specialist outweigh the limitations, as should the gamemaster before agreeing to allow a Custom Specialist into his or her game.

Where Specialists are useful are as non-player characters. A Specialist Blacksmith will shoe your horses in record time and mend that otherwise irreparable sword. A Specialist Chef will prepare amazing gourmet meals. A Specialist Gambler is going to take the player characters for every gold piece they have.

Starting Gold
According to the rules, starting gold is 3d6 x 10 gold pieces. I like the random factor, as not all characters will come from equal backgrounds. Some will come from wealth families, some from poor families. Some will have saved since childhood, some will have stolen the money, some will have worked odd jobs or even begged for it. To encourage roleplaying and help develop the character’s background, I will give Adventure Point equal to the 3d6 roll if the player tells me a story about where the starting money came from.

Rolling 3d6 is a random factor, and you could consider that a function of Luck. So, rather than multiplying starting gold by 10, players should multiply it by the character’s Luck score. If the character has high luck, it stands to reason that they’d have more starting gold, right? An unlucky character would have less gold.

Poker Chips and Adventure Points
Something I’m considering is using poker chips over various denominations to dole out Adventure Points during the course of the game. I like poker chip and token mechanics in other games, and there’s something exciting about getting a physical representation of your reward. Players can cash in the chips when they modify their characters, and at the end of the game session can write down their total so the gamemaster (or chips owner) can put them away.

Using chips can also help encourage roleplaying. If someone does something particularly interesting or entertaining, toss them a chip. I would go so far as to allow the players to reward each other for roleplaying. If I’m a player and you spout off a good one-liner or your character comes up with an incredible way to bypass a trap or solve a riddle, I’ll give you a chip. The value is entirely up to the giver — if you want to give away your adventure points because you think another player deserves them, that’s your call.

Disclaimer: I’m talking out of my hat here. These are purely my opinions, not backed up by any sort of education or expertise. Many grains of salt are prescribed.

Games are largely technical. Whether you’re talking about tabletop rules or the engines that power video games, there is technical expertise and execution there. Art is emotional. It’s about making human connections, evoking feelings and memories and other reactions. This is where a disconnect can occur, as technical prowess and artistic vision don’t always mesh. This, I think, is where some of the problems lie when analyzing reactions to a game like Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. It is very technical and precise, and some have used the phrase “tactical miniatures game” almost as an epithet or slur, implying that there’s no inherent roleplaying in it, none of those personal connections, no “art”. Others defend that there’s plenty of roleplaying, plenty of “art”, it’s just that the technical and creative aspects are separated and not tightly (or at all) intertwined. Roleplayers, not the rules, make it art. The rules don’t encourage art, but they’re designed in such a way as to get completely out of the way of the artist.

My feeling, when looking at roleplaying games as creative endeavors, is that rules are merely tools. Canvas, paint, and knowledge of technique do not make an artist. There has to be some creative spirit, some desire, some talent that’s engaged to use those tools. It’s what makes, or can make, a roleplaying game so much more exciting than a board game or video game. A good gamemaster will get players invested in their characters, make them care about the world and its inhabitants. It’s more than just the technical action of moving pieces on a board or consulting statistics and rolling dice. It’s a human connection to what’s going on that makes it art.

For art to work (for me, at least) as art, as something emotional rather than a mere technical rendering, it needs two things. The first is context. I can look at a beautifully painted full-page piece in a game book, and it can mean nothing to me because I don’t relate to it. There’s a fight scene between wildly armed and armored warriors. Sure, looks cool, but I don’t know who they are, what they’re fighting about. If you don’t know who George Washington is, and you look at Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, it’s just a bunch of guys in a boat. If you know the historical context, what that painting represents, there’s now some conveyed meaning. You can critique it on more than technical skill, you can review the emotion behind it and how well that aspect has been captured. This is one of the reasons I employ gamemaster techniques such as asking why; if the players understand the series of events leading up to meeting in a tavern and being hired to guard the caravan, they start to become invested, and the adventure starts inching up on art.

The other element of art (for me), is consequence. Obviously, this is not a universal constant. When considering the Russian Impressionist painting from World War II that Cameron Goble writes about in his piece on video games and art, part of the power comes from consequence. We can look at scenes of war and have an idea of what that means. People dragging large guns through a field means they’re going to use them. People will die. Towns and cities will fall, or be liberated again. Again, it’s context that allows us to see consequence. This is also why, when I look at gorgeous painting in a game book of a heated battle, I can’t become emotionally involved. I don’t know who those people are, I don’t know the consequences of one side winning over the other, aside from loss of hit points and a gain in experience point. It’s merely a technical representation of a technical function. It’s why I don’t like these sorts of pictures in games; I don’t find them inspirational. If the art is part of a setting book, however, and an illustration shows a mighty diety falling before the power of an evil wizard, an event that forever changed with world and has consequences that I can tie into my character’s backstory or the metaplot of the campaign I’ll run as a gamemaster, then it has meaning. Then, it inches up on art rather than mere technical illustration.

That judgment, of course, depends on the skill of the artist to emotionally engage me. I can draw stick figures, or positions on a map grid, depicting a scene. A good artist will be able to use lighting, body language, facial expressions, and other techniques to draw out the emotion of a scene. The personal connection you’re making, in addition to a connection to the events and characters, is with the artist. As I told Cameron, when I lived on the east coast I used to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spend hours sitting and looking at Renoir’s painting Two Young Girls at the Piano. Yes, I brought my own context to the painting, because it’s a scene from real life, two girls seat at a piano. It could be evoking memories of a sister, a daughter, yourself. No, there really was no consequence to the painting, but again it could evoke memory, when you took lessons, when you were young, the girl you know who takes lessons. It was communication between myself and Renoir, over a hundred years dead, via what he was “saying” in that painting. With over 30 years of roleplaying game experience, I can make some of those connections with artists, the “yeah, I remember the time our party fought a red dragon, that’s when Bob’s paladin died” and things like that, pulling my own context and consequence in.

The bottom line, for me, is that game art doesn’t pull me in because, well, it’s not real. My emotional involvement with fantasy art is, at best, superficial. The feeling evoked by the painting of the red dragon don’t invoke the way I felt when Bob’s paladin died; they invoke the feelings of how the actual people sitting around the table reacted. Yeah, those are good memories. But the dragon is one step removed from that emotional context for me, if that makes any sense. The “art”, if any, happened on that day, around that table, in the interactions between those people. It was a beautiful thing, joyful, sad, everything art can be.

My friend Cameron Goble of Long Tail Gamer wrote a beautiful piece about art and video games, which I highly recommend. We ended up having a long, philosophical conversation about art in games and games as art. It got me thinking about my feelings toward art in roleplaying games, which feeds into how I feel about roleplaying games.

First, I generally dislike a lot of art in roleplaying books. Yes, I want to know what this type of monster looks like, or that type of weapon, the useful types of illustrations, but I don’t have a need for pages and pages of full-color, glossy “flavor” art. Aside from the fact that it jacks up the price of books, I think it stifles imagination. As a gamemaster, my job is to paint word pictures. As a player, it’s my job to describe my character and what he’s doing. I have an unlimited special effects budget. When there are pictures to point to, my budget’s just been cut because I’m now limited by what’s in the picture, and even how well the picture was executed.

It’s the same phenomena one experiences when you read a book, all in prose, and then go see a movie. Yeah, sometimes it translates well and it’s neat to see it on the screen. A lot of times, it’s lame. The book was better. The actor that got for a certain role didn’t quite fit what you’d imagined. The fight scene wasn’t as epic. It goes the other way as well; Cameron said he can’t read the Lord of the Rings any more without seeing Elijah Wood.  The visual has replaced the imagination.

This is a mostly dreadful film, which I was dragged to for the Gerard Butler factor as he is apparently considered “dreamy” by some. It’s an action-thriller posing as a science fiction film, shot in my current city of occupation (Albuquerque, New Mexico) using the latest SeizureVision techniques of shaky-cam and flashy lights.

The films main premise is that in the future video gamers will control actual people rather than digital avatars. There’s a Sims-like game called Society, where you pick your character’s outfits and make them do stuff, quite a bit of which seems sadistic and unpleasant (but it’s okay, because people volunteer to do this; it’s a job). There’s also a game called Slayers, where your human avatar is a convicted felon and you make him run around and shoot other convicted felons on seemingly arbitrary combat missions. This is all made possible by nanotechnology that replaces a chunk of the avatar’s brain. Yes, it’s a sick subject, and while it acts like it wants to be a social commentary on becoming desensitized to violence and how a whole bunch of stuff is dehumanizing on a while lot of levels, it’s really just about non-stop kEwl viOlenc3.

The concept had potential, but at every decision point it makes the predictable choice. Michael C. Hall, as inventor of this nano-mind-control texchnology and of course the main villain, would have been awesome if given better material to work with. As it is, the best scene in the whole move is him dancing and lip-syncing Sammy Davis Jr.’s version of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” while his retinue of mind-controlled thugs dances with him. If the rest of the movie had been that creative and over-the-top, it would have been more enjoyable. Mostly, though, it just gave me a headache.

Now, as a tabletop roleplayer, what are my useful takeaways from this flick: First, I’m using Michael C. Hall as a villain in something. I need to re-think the potential uses of mind control not just as a psionic power but as technology. I need to work a “Running Man” scenario into some game, where the player characters get in trouble and have to run a gauntlet (maybe a dungeon) and survive to the end to earn their freedom, while magical aristocrats watch via scrying devices. Most importantly, I’m going to be thinking about how we, as players, treat our player characters and how that reflects on us as human beings.

Over the weekend I  had the opportunity to run a game for someone who’s never roleplayed before. It’s been a long time since I ran for a brand-new player, let alone any sort of one-on-one game. I was a bit nervous, because I didn’t have any other players to back me up and it was entirely up to me to make a solid first impression of our hobby.

To keep things as simple as possible, I decided to run Tunnels & Trolls. My player was a non-geek but geek-curious, and had asked about Dungeons & Dragons, but the only iteration of that game that I had available to me was Pathfinder.  As cool as that game is, I was afraid that plopping that massive core rulebook down on the table would permanently frighten her off.  T&T is easy to learn, easy to teach, and best of  all for me, easy to run so I could focus more on the storytelling and less on the crunchy rules bits.

I started by describing the basic concept — the world is full of monsters, and there are people who go out and kill monsters for a living. You keep the world safe, and you can make good money and acquire magical treasures along the way. This led into a version of my “why” technique: why would  your character go hunting monsters? Why would your character take (possibly fatal) the risks? Why would your character want the money? We ended up with a good idea of who her character was, and some story hooks I could work with. We decided her character would be human, to keep things simple.

Only after we had an idea what the character was about did I introduce the crunchy bits. I decided that while pregenerated characters are good for experienced gamers, it would be easier to explain concepts by walking her through character creation. I didn’t hand her a blank character sheet, but had her hand-write things down on a 3×5 card (again, I love the simplicity of T&T!).  I named each attribute and explained it, Then I had her roll numbers, explaining the ranges of good, bad, and average, and let her assign them where she wanted. Working with her character concept, she used the numbers to flesh out her character a little more, coming up with reasons why she was better at this and not so good at that. She caught on really well.

Then we went over character classes. Rather than going over all of them, I picked a couple that suited the concept and background she had, and explained those. By talking through character ideas, she’d already filtered out options, which made it easier to focus in. Then we went over Traits, and she was excited that she got to make up her own (T&T is very story-game in this area).

We started out having her working a non-adventuring job, and dreaming of finding work as a monster killer. This gave me the chance to teach her the system with some non-combat challenges. She was trying to make money to buy weapons and equipment, while at the same time looking for a sponsor or patron who would set her up with gear. Yes, I made most of an adventure out of gearing up. She heard that a merchant was having trouble with a monster hijacking his caravans (hey, it’s cliche to us but new stuff to her) and was going to hire some other well-known adventurer to deal with it. She had to find a way to get in to see the merchant, then negotiate with him to give her a shot because she’s do it for less money.

I build up tension around fighting one monster. This entailed gathering some information about the monster, talking to survivors, asking a wizard about its powers and weaknesses, so she could properly equip with the paltry budget she was given. When she finally tracked it to its lair and killed it, it had become the most epic quest a 1st-level character had every undertaken. Tremendous fun.

This approach worked because in the conversations that led up to her agreeing to play she was interested in story and characters. Yes, I roped her in by telling her about my paladin. By staying with the story, and showing how the rules support the story, I kept her interest and drew her in further. Had she initially expressed interest in tactics and crunchy bits, I would have gone a different route, probably with a pregenerated Pathfinder character and an explanation of each of the character’s abilities.

We’ll be playing again on an occasional basis, because she wants to see what happens to her character next. I think I have her hooked. I’ve offered to try to get her into a group with me, but she doesn’t think she’s ready to go public yet and game with other people. For my part, I’m happy to have helped create a new gamer, or at the least to have given a non-gamer a good time and left her with a positive impression of what this quirky hobby of ours is all about.

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