The prospects for my two-part LARP idea are looking promising; I have received some enthusiastic reactions from potential players and also an offer from someone to act as co-storyteller. For now, I will keep the volunteer's name a secret... but I'm quite excited about the game and how it may work.
At the same time, I want to do more pen 'n' paper role-playing in 2015. I've mentioned before that I miss tabletop games, especially running one of my own. The biggest hurdle seems to be people's availability. My friends have such busy lives at the moment that signing up to a campaign of tabletop games is just too heavy a commitment, especially when any campaign that I come up with would be competing for a regular time slot with all the other ideas for campaigns, LARPs and regular social engagements that my friends have.
However, Dom's one-shot Cthulhu game has given me an idea. He ran a single scenario three times for different groups, and he was able to do this because he had a large base of interested players, but each with limited availability. Dom explained that he usually runs Call of Cthulhu as a campaign, but with players unable to commit to a regular campaign, he developed a one-shot adventure that lasted for about eight hours, and played with three groups of five.
We have a large pool of players in the local area, but all with a lot of commitments. I don't propose to have a single scenario that I run multiple times, but I have a game - Leverage, which I deeply want to run - that is designed for episodic play. Each game is supposed to be a stand-alone job lasting for a few hours of play.
What if I also have a pool of players, and each one has a character. When I come up with a game, it is designed to stand alone, for any five of the players in that pool depending on their availability. I can then design other one-shot games that are all part of the same campaign, but completely different groups of players could come together on each occasion to tackle the scenario.
This allows the game to cater for players' availability. Some overlap could exist between the different player groups, because some players would be more available for games than others. In concept, that would be fine, and could even create some continuity between episodes, even though no player would be required to attend every installment or even more than one installment. Another advantage of this approach is that I would not have to run the same game twice.
I think I should refer to this idea as the "Suikoden" model of forming a player base for a pen 'n' paper game. It reminds me of the Suikoden computer RPGs; the player in those games takes the role of an army's leader, and his castle can have over one hundred named characters in it. However, for the "adventuring-party" sections of the game, the player travels around with a party of up to six of those characters. What Suikoden provides is the ability to swap out members of the party and field a team that could be different every time.
This could easily gel with the concept of an episodic game about neo-pulp outlaw heroes. Imagine a network of numerous vigilantees, including thieves, masterminds, con artists, hackers and fighters, and - every so often - a call for help goes out, and a short-term Crew is assembled to deal with the problem from the available members of the network. I think that the Suikoden model may be the best option that I have for running some tabletop role-playing in 2015 that fits into other people's social calendars, and also lets me role-play with a greater variety of people.
Monday 15 December 2014
Tuesday 9 December 2014
Fear of the Unknown
On Saturday, I participated in the third run of Dom Camus' Call of Cthulhu one-shot game. This is, I think, the only "tabletop" game* that I have played all year, and my biggest regret of 2014 will probably be that I didn't get to role-play nearly as much as I would have liked.
The game was truly excellent and a lot of fun, and had an interesting pre-amble. I'm used to the gamesmaster explaining the background and setting of the story at the start of the game, but Dom gave a quick briefing about Call of Cthulhu's literary history. What I had not realised previously was that so much of the material that I recognise from the role-playing game and Arkham Horror comes not from HP Lovecraft's books, but from the work that Sandy Petersen did to fill in the gaps. I can understand why this was necessary for a role-playing game; gamers need insight into the material if they are going to create their own stories in the Mythos. However, this got me thinking about whether filling in the gaps meant sacrificing part of what makes Lovecraftian horror so effective - and whether the rules of role-playing games might have this effect on other types of horror.
Part of the scariness of Lovecraft's works comes from gods and monsters that are incomprehensibly alien. They not only play on fears of monsters and the existential terror of an uncaring universe, but also on fear of the unknown - more than that, the unknowable. Part of the artistry of Lovecraft's creatures is that they remain mysterious even after they have been witnessed directly and investigated closely. However, when a game inevitably must give numbers and rules to those creatures, it seems to take some of the scariness out of them.
Only some of it, of course. Lovecraft's monsters certainly have the advantage that they are terrifying on multiple levels; they're still vast, powerful and hostile, and they inhabit a merciless cosmos in which humanity's insignificance is utterly apparent.
For a more solid example of role-playing rules detracting from horror, I would probably refer to White Wolf's vampire games - Masquerade or Requiem. The more they codified vampires, the less scary they became. I'm not surprised that - after 1st edition - Masquerade progressed from a game about personal horror to being about the politics of super-powered immortals. Having rigid definitions about who can do what is useful for creating divisions, but useless for fostering a fear of the unknown. Vampire books invite participants to know the source material - to read about what the various clans can do and what varying capabilities vampires have. As a result, the setting doesn't deliver shocks to the players, even if it should to the characters. To achieve that effect, a storyteller would probably need to cast a lot of source material to the wind.
The unknown seems to me to be a vital tool for cultivating a sense of immersive horror for players - so that they are actually daunted and not just affecting fear for their characters. The most success that I have had trying to make a game scary was a session of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space - an episode I called "Dead Memories". I think that it worked because the antagonist was not a familiar monster or alien from the Doctor Who television series; I came up with an alien that fed on nostalgia and induced hallucinations to trigger memories. The players had no frame of reference for what they were facing, and I think that this made them respond with more authentic trepidation.
Threats for which we have no frame of reference seem to work well as sources of horror in other media as well. I think that one of the most effectively scary aspects of Silent Hill was its lack of familiarity. It provided no clear details about what was happening; players could only really figure things out by experiencing them. Similarly, I found that Time was a very eerie antagonist in Sapphire & Steel, due to ambiguity about its capabilities. It certainly helped to give a science fiction show the feel of ghost stories.
One thought that occurs to me is that some heroes in science fiction and fantasy have ambiguous abilities. The Doctor is a good example, but pulp heroes sometimes fit the bill too. They are often able to pull off incredible feats, but the audience is not expected to think too closely about how they managed those feats. Characters that have great power but loosely-defined limitations can be fun or scary, I suppose, depending on whether they are on your side or not. Perhaps the Doctor, for instance, is an eldritch horror because of his ambiguous capabilities - from the perspective of a Dalek or a Cyberman.
*Granted, I spent most of the game sitting on the floor.
The game was truly excellent and a lot of fun, and had an interesting pre-amble. I'm used to the gamesmaster explaining the background and setting of the story at the start of the game, but Dom gave a quick briefing about Call of Cthulhu's literary history. What I had not realised previously was that so much of the material that I recognise from the role-playing game and Arkham Horror comes not from HP Lovecraft's books, but from the work that Sandy Petersen did to fill in the gaps. I can understand why this was necessary for a role-playing game; gamers need insight into the material if they are going to create their own stories in the Mythos. However, this got me thinking about whether filling in the gaps meant sacrificing part of what makes Lovecraftian horror so effective - and whether the rules of role-playing games might have this effect on other types of horror.
Part of the scariness of Lovecraft's works comes from gods and monsters that are incomprehensibly alien. They not only play on fears of monsters and the existential terror of an uncaring universe, but also on fear of the unknown - more than that, the unknowable. Part of the artistry of Lovecraft's creatures is that they remain mysterious even after they have been witnessed directly and investigated closely. However, when a game inevitably must give numbers and rules to those creatures, it seems to take some of the scariness out of them.
Only some of it, of course. Lovecraft's monsters certainly have the advantage that they are terrifying on multiple levels; they're still vast, powerful and hostile, and they inhabit a merciless cosmos in which humanity's insignificance is utterly apparent.
For a more solid example of role-playing rules detracting from horror, I would probably refer to White Wolf's vampire games - Masquerade or Requiem. The more they codified vampires, the less scary they became. I'm not surprised that - after 1st edition - Masquerade progressed from a game about personal horror to being about the politics of super-powered immortals. Having rigid definitions about who can do what is useful for creating divisions, but useless for fostering a fear of the unknown. Vampire books invite participants to know the source material - to read about what the various clans can do and what varying capabilities vampires have. As a result, the setting doesn't deliver shocks to the players, even if it should to the characters. To achieve that effect, a storyteller would probably need to cast a lot of source material to the wind.
The unknown seems to me to be a vital tool for cultivating a sense of immersive horror for players - so that they are actually daunted and not just affecting fear for their characters. The most success that I have had trying to make a game scary was a session of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space - an episode I called "Dead Memories". I think that it worked because the antagonist was not a familiar monster or alien from the Doctor Who television series; I came up with an alien that fed on nostalgia and induced hallucinations to trigger memories. The players had no frame of reference for what they were facing, and I think that this made them respond with more authentic trepidation.
Threats for which we have no frame of reference seem to work well as sources of horror in other media as well. I think that one of the most effectively scary aspects of Silent Hill was its lack of familiarity. It provided no clear details about what was happening; players could only really figure things out by experiencing them. Similarly, I found that Time was a very eerie antagonist in Sapphire & Steel, due to ambiguity about its capabilities. It certainly helped to give a science fiction show the feel of ghost stories.
One thought that occurs to me is that some heroes in science fiction and fantasy have ambiguous abilities. The Doctor is a good example, but pulp heroes sometimes fit the bill too. They are often able to pull off incredible feats, but the audience is not expected to think too closely about how they managed those feats. Characters that have great power but loosely-defined limitations can be fun or scary, I suppose, depending on whether they are on your side or not. Perhaps the Doctor, for instance, is an eldritch horror because of his ambiguous capabilities - from the perspective of a Dalek or a Cyberman.
*Granted, I spent most of the game sitting on the floor.
Wednesday 3 December 2014
Streamlining
Over time, the live-action games that I run seem to be getting shorter and shorter.
LA Confidential lasted for five sessions, as intended. Upwick Manor hadf a three-episode length. Now I have a plan for a game - The Last Day of Babylon - that is only two sessions long.
Perhaps the end point is that I will start writing one-shots. Or will I end up with games that are shorter than that, if even possible?
In a way, planning LARPs seems a little like designing a training package for work. The more practice I get delivering it, the more streamlined the product becomes.
I think that this is the result of developing as a planner for LARPs. A lot of storytellers in both live-action and tabletop have had games that run down to a close without reaching a proper finale, myself included. Past experience suggests to me that wrapping up is better than fading away. Also - since friends and acquaintances have increasingly busy lives - a game with a fixed finale seems a far less daunting commitment than one with no clear end-point.
LA Confidential lasted for five sessions, as intended. Upwick Manor hadf a three-episode length. Now I have a plan for a game - The Last Day of Babylon - that is only two sessions long.
Perhaps the end point is that I will start writing one-shots. Or will I end up with games that are shorter than that, if even possible?
In a way, planning LARPs seems a little like designing a training package for work. The more practice I get delivering it, the more streamlined the product becomes.
I think that this is the result of developing as a planner for LARPs. A lot of storytellers in both live-action and tabletop have had games that run down to a close without reaching a proper finale, myself included. Past experience suggests to me that wrapping up is better than fading away. Also - since friends and acquaintances have increasingly busy lives - a game with a fixed finale seems a far less daunting commitment than one with no clear end-point.
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