A Tale for Every Dungeon

If you’ve played a role playing game, be it tabletop, video, or pen-and-paper, odds are you’ve adventured in a dungeon. We all know, essentially, what those things entail: various rooms, random monsters, the odd trap, and heaps of treasure. You and your intrepid buddies tramp around these places methodically, as though shopping at the mall, hoovering up whatever gold and silver and so on you can lay your grubby mitts upon, and then leave satisfied. It’s like an Easter Egg Hunt, except with more magical swords and many fewer dyed, hard-boiled eggs.

In general, I find the average dungeon experience lacking. I’ve discussed this before when describing one of my personal favorite dungeons of my design. To quote myself:

Dungeons have a problem. They are, in their most commonly encountered form, a concept much better executed in a video game than in a pen-and-paper role-playing game. The reason for this is pretty simple: there is no conflict. That’s right–no conflict. There is no doubt that the PCs are going to scour the dungeon for all the wealth they can find. There is no doubt that the monsters encountered within are going to try to kill/eat them. Everybody is equipped to handle the problem, on both sides, and their tactics are mostly already in place. Everybody knows their job, is ready to do it, and the only thing that really matters is how the dice fall.

As mentioned in that article, I like dungeons to have some drama to them. In order to have that drama, they need a story.

Who built this? Why is it here? These questions need answering.

When putting together a dungeon, I try to make everything fit within a certain set of themes or motifs, sort of like a wedding planner, but with knives and poison gas traps rather than doilies and name cards. The worst thing to do in a dungeon is to just slap something in there for the hell of it. You aren’t making a video game level when designing a dungeon (and one of the reasons I generally dislike video game RPGs is because of the following); you are placing a ‘real’ structure inside the fabric of a ‘real’ world and it needs to mesh with and fit into that reality. If the dungeon is infested with hordes and hordes of giant rats, you need to ask yourself the question “why are there so many rats hanging around here, anyway?” This should be followed up by “what do the rats eat?” and “how did they get here in the first place?”

These questions may seem immaterial to you, but they really aren’t. In the first place, your players are probably going to ask such questions at some point, and having an answer is infinitely better than saying ‘they just *are*, okay?’ Furthermore, exploring the answers to these questions adds to the depth of the dungeon itself (and I mean depth in the dramatic sense, rather than the physical one) and can give you much more compelling and interesting things to have your players encounter and do when within them.

To state more directly what I’m getting at, we can probably agree generally that dungeons are made up of four elements: rooms, traps, monsters, and treasure. Let’s take a look at each one and discuss the storytelling potential inherent within them.

Rooms

By ‘rooms’, I mean ‘the physical layout of the dungeon’. Is it underground? Underwater? At the top of a mountain? In the sewers of a major city? Is it an old castle? A new castle? A not-yet-finished castle? Whichever of these things you pick has a profound impact on what can reasonably be found within its confines. It is extremely unlikely, for instance, that you’ll find a dragon living in a city sewer or a tribe of cannibals living in a sky-castle. Why? Well, how did they get there? What will they eat while there? Can the dragon even manage to leave?

Furthermore, you won’t find a lot of secret passages made of stone inside a wooden tree fort, just like you probably won’t find a lot of death traps in places where lots of creatures actually live (seriously, why would you make a home in a place where poison darts are likely to shoot you at any time). The type of place and when it was built indicates the kind of technology that will go into the building. Ancient ruins won’t have the latest elevator systems (unless they’re one of those super-sophisticated lost civilizations), while it would seem odd for the evil vampire’s state-of-the-art floating fortress to not use any kind of waterwheels to run its internal systems.

Figuring out the physical design of the dungeon is the starting point for your story surrounding that same dungeon. Why was it built? How did it get here? Is it still fulfilling its original purpose? If not, why not? How has it been altered? Why? What effect has that had on its layout?

Traps

Traps should be based upon the nature of the layout and rooms, as described above. They also should be used sparingly (there are only so many traps players want to spend time evading, and they never really want to solve the same trap more than once) and should be bound by some reasonable laws of physics. If you’ve got dart guns, can they reload themselves? How? Can that be interfered with? How is a trap set off? Why was it put here? Remember: traps are dangerous things for more than just the players themselves and, in most cases, the people or things that designed this dungeon didn’t expect the players to infiltrate specifically (well, it’s possible, but unlikely). That means the builders had reason and rationales for putting in the traps they did. If this is a vault, they obviously would want a way to bypass the traps so they can access said vault. If this is a tomb, they aren’t going to build in a self-destruct device (the tomb is a holy place, after all). Nobody’s going to put a firebomb trap in their fancy wooden villa. Nobody’s going to shell out the money to put a shark pit in the middle of a desert pyramid without a very good reason.

Traps, also, should be used as dramatic elements in some way. They should complicate the plot by introducing tension or conflict either among the players themselves or between them and some enemy. If you don’t plan on using a trap this way and rather merely intend to make it a simple physical obstacle to roll dice at, then why include it at all? If you set up a land mine, the intention of that land mine is to injure or kill a member of the party (likely injure) so that the rest of the party will need to make a decision on how to deal with their injured friend (this kind of trap, incidentally, works best in systems where there are penalties to action for being injured).

Monsters

To my mind, dungeons should usually either involve traps OR monsters, and seldom both. If it does involve both, the monsters should have some kind of reliable way of avoiding the traps because, as mentioned above, few creatures want to live in a place where they might die in a deadfall trap if they roll over while asleep and, furthermore, if they aren’t intelligent enough to care, most of them will probably be destroyed by traps before the PCs ever need to stick swords into them.

With the possible exception of the undead, golem, and other non-living constructs, keep in mind that monsters are alive. As such, they need food, water (probably), a place to sleep, and mostly won’t be content to remain trapped within this secret dungeon forever and ever. This means that either the design of the dungeon needs to be altered to accommodate the creature living there (dragons need a big door, for instance), or the creatures need to be designed to fit with the dungeon. Also, monsters should behave in keeping with their intelligence. The aforementioned giant rats, for instance, will likely be disinclined to fight with armored humans for long, if at all, and particularly not if they start waving around scary magicks. That doesn’t mean they can’t provide dramatic complications (a squealing rat stampede, for instance, could start a fire or wake up an actually nasty monster), but nobody is going to have their legs gnawed off by twenty pound rats.

Intelligent creatures, conversely, won’t be content to stay in their ‘room’ to wait for the enemy to come to them, necessarily. It’s their dungeon–they know their way around, probably. They’ll move. They’ll set ambushes. They’ll avoid trouble. The frost giant in his ice castle probably has a pen full of hungry polar bears he can release at intruders and he’s likely to go and release them, if he can, as soon as he hears humans trashing his foyer.

Treasure

Finally, treasure should be comprised of those things that would actually be kept in the dungeon in question. In some cases (sewers, for instance) there will be precious little of value. Nobody foraging through a sewer should expect to find the crown jewels; if they do, there’s a story there. The GM should pursue it somehow.

Treasure is valuable, and most valuable things belong or belonged to someone. Someone fashioned it for a purpose, put it here for a reason, and so on. This is partially the reason why cursed items make no damned sense (why would you keep the sword that stabs *you* instead of the bad guys?) unless set up for a reason, often as a kind of trap (think the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).

There’s a lot of dramatic potential in treasure, and it shouldn’t be squandered.

Conclusion

Overall, there is enormous dramatic potential in dungeons, but it is too often not exploited because we GMs are too lazy to bother making something cool out of it. Give the place a story, set up plots related to the dungeon itself, create conflicts that reveal character rather than render it irrelevant. Mix the procedural with the dramatic.

The Crunchy Bits: External Conflict and RPGs

It seems to me like much of the role-playing universe these days is gravitating between two poles. On the one hand, you have things like D&D and its relatives which follow the standard ‘kill things and take their stuff’ dynamic on one level or another, emphasizing the ‘G’ part of RPG far over the ‘RP’ part. I’ve complained about these games already at length. There are, however, the games on this spectrum that occupy the other extreme, emphasizing the ‘RP’ far and above over the ‘G’. In this we can probably include games like Fate, Hillfolk(which I had the fortune to help playtest recently with John Perich), and some others.

Now, by and large I prefer ‘RPgs’ over ‘rpGs’ (if you see what I did there). Story is of tantamount importance to me, and RPgs produce great stories. They deemphasize external things, like stats and equipment, and emphasize character and roleplaying. This is good, and I’ve explained my reasons why in various places on this blog (here, for instance). I also feel, however, that these games can become too extreme. 

Call me old fashioned, but I feel like this rocket launcher is important.

Pointless Gear

For instance, in Fate, there is no significant advantage granted someone with a weapon over someone without. Their reasoning is that it ultimately doesn’t matter–what should matter is the emotional content of the fight, the ‘riddle of steel’, essentially. While there is much to be said for emotional content and character building, to say ‘guns don’t matter’  is ridiculous. Of course being armed matters! What kind of crazy idea is it to have unarmed idiots charging battle tanks and punching them apart? Many are the RPG gurus running about who might say ‘but if your players think this is cool, what do you care?’

Well (and how can I put this delicately?), I care because the activity is objectively stupid.No, you may not punch that tank to death. You can maybe find an access panel in the back, pry it off, and pull out some key wires or tubes or something, but kung fu Vs tank is a losing prospect. In a game I run, I want rules to make it clear that such behavior doesn’t fly. Does this restrict player choice? Yes, it does. It forces players to come up with alternate solutions to their problems beyond saying ‘I defeat them with my (insert idiom here)!’

The Player is Always Right

This brings me to another problem that I have that I keep running into: there is a sentiment that is permeating role-playing from Vincent Baker called ‘Say Yes or Roll Dice’. The upshot of it is this: if nothing is at stake, the GM should say ‘yes’ to whatever it is the players want. If something isat stake, the GM should never say ‘no’, but rather ask them to roll the dice to see if they can do what they want.  

What do you mean I can't invent the hydrogen bomb? You suck!

First off, there is a lot of wisdom in this philosophy–more wisdom that foolishness by a mile. GMs are in the business of giving players what they want, on some level, and they should definitely say yes far, far more often than they say ‘no.’ There are, however, limits to this idea that are important and should be recognized. Coming back to the ‘punching tanks’ example I provide above, there are instances where ‘no’ is an appropriate response.

For instance, say I’m playing some kind of barbarian and I decide, suddenly, that I want to build a jetpack. Out of sticks. For no reason. The Baker philosophy would require that I set some absurdly high target number for their die roll, reducing their chances of success down to .01% or something, and then let them roll. This, I feel, is a charade. It is obvious to everyone, or should be, that Thag the Barbarian can’t build a jetpack; the player is being a jackass for even suggesting it. Rather than waste time parsing dice modifiers, the GM should just say ’that’s ridiculous–no’ and move on.  

This can come up more often the more ‘realistic’ the game setting is. In Frontier: 2280, for instance, I’m running a fairly ‘hard sci-fi’ game, in which actual scientific concepts exist, matter, and are important to plot and gameplay. Characters can’t violate physics, because physics is a real thing and you don’t get to selectively interpret it. If someone asks me if they can dodge a bullet fired at close range, I can say ‘no, you can’t’. Do you know why? It’s because it’s physically impossible. Yes, I could set an absurdly high target number for them to roll, but why are we spending the time? I don’t want it to happen because it violates the environment of the game. I don’t want that environment violated just because you don’t want your character to be shot. Get shot; deal with this new obstacle and resolve it. That’s what the game’s about.

I feel that overindulging the Baker philosophy is going to allow players to have great choice, yes, but also fails to challenge them to work with what they are given. If you are an unarmed, normal human and being approached by tanks, there are a wide variety of innovative and interesting solutions to the problem I am totally willing to entertain–a huge number, really. There are, however, a narrow sliver of options I reserve the right to deny. This doesn’t hurt anybody; it safeguards the functional reality of the game. It also pushes you past the first idea to pop into your head; that first idea isn’t really your friend, anyway. Push past it to ideas 2, 3, or 4. You’ll come up with something more interesting, anyway.

Internal Vs External Conflict

Nah, you're right--I'd much rather see this guy chatting with his former squire over his daughter's hand in marriage...

As a final note, I’d like to react to a tendency among indie RPG enthusiasts to emphasize internal (or, as Robin Laws puts it, ‘dramatic’) conflict over external (or ‘procedural’) conflict. As a general rule, internal conflict is immensely important, often de-emphasized, and leads to fantastic storytelling. That does not, however, mean external conflict is somehow boring or uninteresting. Some of these games tend to sideline external conflicts, getting them over as quickly as possible, so we can get back to hashing out our relationships with the other characters.

Sorry, but when did RPGs become soap-operas? Has George RR Martin had such a monumental effect on the gaming Zeitgeist? Guys, fights, chases, traps, and puzzles are cool. They’re fun. They’re why we liked Fantasy and Science Fiction to begin with! There is a certain delight I get in a game at having a well-oiled, realistic, dramatic combat system. Almost every coolest RPG moment I’ve ever had as been in reference to an external conflict, rather than an internal one. I by no means wish to belittle the importance of internal struggle and character development–they are necessary for action to even work, as I’ve said before–but they don’t replace external conflict as a means to generate conflict, fun, and excitement. The two ought to work in tandem and, as it happens, the external stuff is the stuff that needs more rules associated with it, hence why most games have most of their rules in that vein.

Granted, there are fine games that do the soap opera thing (Hillfolk seems to be one of them, and I’d gladly play it again), but let’s all fess up and say we all love a good car chase or rooftop swordfight. We do, don’t we?

Conclusion

Anyway, this has already gotten longer than I intended for it to be. Suffice to say that I like my game with a good balance of crunchy bits (external conflicts, gear, game limitations) and fluffy flavoring (internal conflict, strong relationships, player freedom). Too much of one or the other and we’re playing less than what I’d consider to be a ‘perfect game’.

Killing Things, Taking Their Stuff

Can I confess to you something? I don’t like what most people think of when they say ‘role-playing game’. I have run dozens of RPG campaigns, GMed probably thousands of sessions in my lifetime, and I feel that I have settled on what I consider to be the ‘true’ definition of a role-playing game, and it is not the same thing as what appears to be the common definition.

What is this common definition? Put simply, most RPGs are some variation of the theme ‘Killing Things to Take Their

Look! It's a pot of gold wearing a dragon suit. ATTACK!

Stuff.’ That is, your objective is to group together with your buddies, find a bad guy, kill it with your magic/guns/swords/giant robots/ninja techniques, and thereby acquire its gold/technology/experience points/chi/karma etc, etc.. Essentially every video RPG does this (MMORPGs do this to the virtual exclusion of all else), D&D is built around this mechanic, and most games inspired by or based off of the D&D structure do something similar, if not precisely the same. Even games that claim to be something else are still based off the same basic idea. The point of an RPG, to the wider world, is to go into a fanciful world of some kind, portray some kind of hero, and kill something for the purpose of acquiring X so that you can become more Y.

I hate this.  

I hate this because it is completely antithetical to what I think an RPG should be. An RPG is all about the RP part, and less about the G part. To you uninitiated (and kudos for still reading this, by the way), that is to say that the Role Playing portion of the RPG takes precedence (or should) over the Game part. RPGs should always be about telling a story more than it is playing a game. The game should act as arbiter for disputes and should also function to enhance the story somehow, but it always, always, always takes a back seat to story. This underlying philosophy is why I rankle at complaints regarding ‘game balance’ in certain systems and why I rarely use the same system twice across campaigns.

Why is story so important? Well, let me answer that question with a question of my own: why is the game part important? What is it supposed to do, if not what I have thus far laid out? RPGs are not ‘competitive’ exercises, really, and they aren’t about moving spaces on a board and planning out esoteric strategies within the confines of the rules. If you want those things, play a strategy game–they do it better and they are just as much fun without having the added complications of plot and character hanging around to foul things up. This is part of my problem with the current iteration of 4th Edition D&D, which has essentially been degraded to a video game played out with miniatures and gridmaps; story is a trapping laid over top of what is basically a simplistic strategy game and a number-crunching engine. Boo!

There is so much potential for RPGs to be really, really memorable collaborative storytelling exercises. Allowing game mechanics to take precendence over story is mind-boggling, as is running a game without careful thought to how game mechanics are going to interfere with the story and addressing those concerns before play begins. The acquisition of imaginary stuff is boring, for the most part (I go more in-depth regarding my thoughts on PC gear here), and combat has nothing interesting going for it without story backing it up. At some point it stops being heart-pounding action and starts to become work.  The verb ‘to grind’ is used in reference to leveling up in video games not because it’s lighthearted fun, you know, but because it’s mind-numbingly boring, repetitive, and soul-killing. I want things to be interesting all the time, or at least as much of the time as I can manage it. I want combat to be tense. I want players on the edge of their seats. I want people to cheer when they survive a deathtrap, to sigh when they make a narrow escape from the palace guards, or to grind their teeth while the villain laughs at their folly. None of that stuff happens without a focus on story; all of that stuff can be easily messed up by an over-emphasis on game mechanics.

I played an MMORPG once–Age of Camelot. I played a Dwarf named Durglethok. I spent hours and hours, more or less alone, wandering through the wilderness killing giant ants and selling their carapaces for pennies in some mountain village. I was, in essence, an exterminator who could throw lightning. After a while of this, I got bored and took a horse (which in that game was a lot like a train or a flight) to some other village. This village was surrounded by larger ants that kept killing me. I ran out of money to get another horse out of town and wound up sitting in the streets, literally begging for change. After an hour or two of doing this, I stopped myself and asked ‘why am I doing this?’ I put the game down, never played again, and have never been tempted to play another MMPORPG again. There was no interesting story in which to involve myself–I was a peon in a world very much like our own, except without a functioning welfare system. The designers had the audacity to request money from me for this privledge. Ugh…

It’s much the same feeling I get when I watch friends of mine spend hours and hours playing Morrowind or now, I suppose, Skyrim. It’s the same grumble I feel in my gut when I hear that there are D&D ‘tournaments’ where they apparently crown winners and losers of some kind. It’s an offense to what this genre of entertainment is capable of. They’re taking the opportunity to let the players star in their own personal movie or adventure story and degrading it to basic exercises in probability and economics. On the whole, I’d rather play Axis and Allies, if that’s the way we’re going. Those of you who know me know just what a damning admission that is.

Favorite PCs: Helmut Dauben Kohb

So, a week or two ago I mentioned I should tell you folks about Helmut. Now seems as good a time as any.

Helmut was a character in a 7th Sea campaign I ran from 2001-2004 or so (give or take–don’t remember exactly). He was a landless Eisen (German) knight with a stain of honor on his family, a grim demeanor, and a tendency to be a little *too* patient (he had the ’Indecisive’ flaw). He was played originally by my friend Mike and then later by my other friend Will after Mike moved to San Francisco (the character was too integrated into the plot to simply delete at that point).

Helmut was also a member of the ultra-secret Kreuzritter organization and a warrior of the Eisenfaust style, which involved a broadsword paired with an armored gauntlet. The style emphasized defense while waiting for an opponent to make a mistake, and then raining down horrible misery upon them with one massive swing. When Mike first made the character, we had no idea the Eisenfaust school either (A) actually worked as described or that (B) its patient style would dictate Helmut’s character from then on.

The first time Helmut ever used Eisenfaust as intended was in a duel against a man who saw Helmut’s family as cowards. This guy was almost Helmut’s mirror image and the battle was brutal. In 7th Sea, you can take as many Dramatic Wounds as double your Resolve before being rendered helpless. Helmut took 4 in the first two rounds of combat…and then proceeded to score 6 unanswered wounds to knock his opponent out. It was amazing–we hooped and hollered and cheered at Mike’s good fortune and at the awesome comeback. What we didn’t realize at the time was this: This was not a fluke.

Impossibly, and beyond all probably likelihood, Helmut was quite literally invincible. The funny part was that he always, always got his ass kicked in the opening rounds of a fight. If he had 8 wounds to deal with, he’d get 4 (i.e. become crippled) without doing much in return. Then, however, was when Helmut got serious. That was then the magic happened.

Sorely injured, often disarmed, flat on his back, exhausted, broken, battered, covered in grime, looking up through half-closed eyes at his foes celebrating over him, Helmut would slowly pull himself to his feet.

That was when I’d cue up this song.

We then sat and watched Helmut kick more ass while half-dead than he ever did while fully alive. He struck down an evil master swordsman and sorcerer after being tortured for months on end; he wrestled a giant bear-demon on the bottom of raging river (while drowning, mind you) and strangled it to death with one good hand; he’s get shot with an entire squadron of muskets only to grimly advance after the volley and slaughter every one of the bastards as they ran. There was, as far as we could tell, literally no limit to what Helmut could do if you gave him time. He was like a glacier–shoot him, stab him, run him down, but it didn’t matter. He was coming for you, and there was no escape.

What made the whole thing even stranger is that it was in no way tied to any one person’s luck–Mike and Will had the same luck with the guy; people who subbed in playing him from time to time would report the same phenomenon. Bad luck until crippled; incredible luck afterwards. The guy was magic.

Gradually, his character morphed from a young, serious, stalwart man to a grim, scarred, terrifying specter of death. His mysterious Kreuzritter training came more to light as we went along; he’d disappear at odd times, kept his own counsel, and you could never quite tell if he was friend or foe. He was the one guy nobody in that campaign wanted to mess with. His arch nemesis? The villain of the campaign–Gavin Fell, assassin and traitor to the Kreuzritter. Fell was quicksilver where Helmut was lodestone–he fought with knives, blazing fast and deadly accurate, cutting a man to death with dozens of blows before you could ready your defenses. Helmut, though, in the end, fought Fell on a narrow bridge over a bottomless chasm and took those knife cuts over and over and over, nearly bleeding out. Then, when he was on his knees, his throat cut, crippled and near death, he stood up.

Then we played the song; then we watched the magic.

When people ask why I play RPGs and wonder how I can get so excited about the things that happen, Helmut is who I think of. Yeah, he wasn’t real, but he felt real–every bit as real, anyway, as any character in any book I’ve read or movie I’ve seen. He was awesome, no bones about it. He wasn’t the only one, by any means–there have been others. Perhaps I’ll tell you about them, too (like Ruin or Galdar, Hool and Lord Edward, Finn Cadogan, Carlo diCarlo, or the Crew of the USS Lionheart), but I wanted to start with Helmut–the most badass character I’ve ever seen.

The Soundtrack to Your Game

Since I’m on an RPG-design kick, let’s talk music in RPGs. I’m fairly certain that, in this age of custom playlists and easily accessible music players, most modern GMs try to incorporate some kind of background music into their games. If you’re one of the ones that don’t, I’m going to try and convince you to. If you’re one of the ones that do, I’m going to suggest some ways you may be able to enhance its use and give you some pointers for tracking it down.

I’ve used music in RPGs ever since I returned to GMing regularly, which was in the early 2000s after a general hiatus in college (the odd one-shot here or there, but no campaigns). I started using it because RPGs always seemed to run like movies in my head, anyway, and a soundtrack made sense. Also, I found it added a nice flair to the mood of the game and, furthermore, I could even get my players on edge or get them to relax depending on the music I played. In a 7th Sea campaign I ran for years, everytime I played the theme music for the main villain (the nefarious ex-Kreuzritter, Gavin Fell), my players would literally shudder, and that was awesome. As the campaign wore on, certain player characters also earned theme music for particularly awesome feats (Helmut Dauben Kohb, for instance, basically owned the theme music to Conan: The Barbarian; remind me to tell you about that character sometime–absolutely most badass PC ever). It became a thing, and I made it a point to do similarly in all my campaigns. All you really need is a playlist and some kind of music player that can play a single track on loop (that’s important, mind you–a single track on loop). Being well behind the times, I still burn CDs; you, I suppose, could use one of your newfangled digital music whatsits or doohickeys.

What Makes Good RPG Music?

Well, in my opinion, there are three things to consider for any given song you want to use in an RPG–an appropriate style, a consistent mood, and a useful theme.

Style: Pick songs that fit with the kind of game you’re running. If you’re doing medieval fantasy, stay away from jazz or techno music; if you’re running a cyberpunk game, lay off the slow classical and opera. Western games should sound like western soundtracks, space opera games should sound a bit like Star Wars, and Cold War thrillers should take a cue from the James Bond flicks. This general style umbrella gives you plenty of different moods and themes underneath them (or they should), so it ought not limit your selection by much. It does, however, make the game sound like it ought to play.

Mood: A song should create a certain mood, and that mood should remain consistent throughout the song. Most songs are somewhere between 2 and 6 minutes long and the vast majority of RPG sequences are at least two or three times that long. So, if the song starts creepy, you want it to stay creepy the whole time. Nothing kills the usefulness of a song more than having the nice, quiet, pastoral sound change, suddenly, to frightening military music. Suddenly your touching reunion on the farm is being broken up by goblin invaders! Booo! This why, incidentally, you want to be able to loop a single track.

Theme: A song should themed to be useful in certain situations. I usually split my music into action themes, creepy themes, and environmental themes. The first is usually the easiest to find–fast paced, loud, exciting, dramatic. The second it the next easiest–slow, menacing, spooky. The last is the hardest to find, since it can vary dependent upon the kind of environments your campaign is going to spend time exploring. If the players a riding across the plains, what kind of music do you have? Sailing pirate-infested archipelagoes? Walking through a crowded marketplace in a foreign city? Try to cover as many bases as possible, since your players will often surprise you. I find myself frequently without appropriate music, despite my best efforts, and some tracks I thought would be useful are almost never played. Ah well…

In addition to this, it isn’t a bad idea to have an array of basic soundeffects you can play on loop. I got a sound effects CD ages ago and have used the campfire, rain, noisy tavern, and howling wind sounds a lot. When I ran a Star Trek campaign, I tried to get the general roar of the warp engines to be playing in the background whenever on the ship, and also tried to get the hum and beep of the bridge computers when players were sitting on the bridge. It made the whole experience that much more immersive and fun. 

Know Your Score

It’s not only important to get good music, you also have to know that music very well. You don’t have a lot of time to remember which song is which on your playlist when the action is about to start–you should know which one fits and play it immediately. Furthermore, if you really know your music, you can cue certain reveals or certain moments in play to certain dramatic crescendoes in the song. There are a few songs I know really well, and if I detect a big crescendo is coming as I’m explaining something, I’ll try to drag it out a few seconds so I can time the reveal to coincide with the big BOOOM of the drums–this kind of stuff nets you major brownie points from your players (it’s not always possible, sadly, but I always try).

Also, if you’ve got a battle that’s really dragging itself out, it’s a good idea to shake the music up from time to time or even just turn it off entirely. The same song on loop for 90 minutes is going to drive people nuts–throw in some variety. Furthermore, if the campaign is running very long, consider shaking up much of your music, as well. Keep it fresh as best you can.

Some Suggestions

What follows is a list of movie soundtracks and bands that I’ve found very handy for producing useable RPG soundtracks. Check them out:

Fantasy Campaigns

• Braveheart Soundtrack 
• Kingdom of Heaven Soundtrack
• Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Soundtrack (and the others, too; careful, this one is very noticeable and so robs some originality from the game)
• Conan the Barbarian Soundtrack (big time awesome–one of my all time favorites)
• Gustav Holst’s The Planets
• Music from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
• The Score by Epica
• Gladiator Soundtrack

Swashbuckling/High Seas Campaigns

• Master and Commander Soundtrack
• Pirates of the Carribean Soundtrack
• The Red Violin Soundtrack (super creepy; great for horror games, too)
• Cuthroat Island Soundtrack
• The Score by Epica

Science Fiction Campaigns

• Any Star Trek movie soundtrack
• The soundtrack from any Metroid Prime video game
• Most techno music
• (A lot of the fantasy stuff works here, too)

Modern/Cyberpunk Campaigns

• Underworld Soundtrack
• Blade Soundtrack
• The collected works of The Offspring
• AC/DC
• Most Techno
• Whatever else floats your boat

There’s more, besides, but this is a lot of it.

If you haven’t tried music in a game, try it. If you have, keep it up and I hope some of my little tricks are helpful! Good luck! (Oh, and please give me suggestions myself–I’m always looking for new tips)

How to Make RPGs Scary

There are a lot of horror RPGs out there and around this time of year is when all the GMs out there start breaking them out. I’ve run more than a few in my day (I ran a whole Ravenloft campaign way back in the day), and I’ve had my mix of successes and failures. By success, of course, I mean the games were actively freaky and frightening. By ‘failure’, I mean everybody merely had the same good time they had during all other RPGs. That’s okay and everything, but let’s face it–if you’re playing or running Call of Cthulhu, you intend for it to be a frightening/thrilling experience.

There is a colossal hurdle to overcome, however, when trying to make an RPG scary. It is, quite simply, this: your friends are not afraid of you. They just aren’t, and they particularly aren’t while sitting back on your couch, popping Doritos, and googling stuff on their iPhone. Ain’t gonna happen. You can write the creepiest module in existence, practice your Vincent Price impression for years, and place the PCs in the most intolerable peril ever and they won’t bat an eyelash. Why? You aren’t scary.

So, what to do? Below, I have a set of simple rules to follow that will help. The thing that will help the most, however, is to be a good storyteller and a good performer–commit to your creepiness and don’t let up or break character. The more engrossed you are in the adventure, the more engrossed they will be. This doesn’t just go for horror games, but it is a place where it is especially important. Beyond that, you have the rules, as follows:

Rule #1: Silence, Please

Horror RPGs don’t work without everybody cooperating. Since everybody, presumably, wants to be freaked out, this shouldn’t be a problem. The idea here is for everybody to be quiet when not speaking for their character and to remain focused on the action. No googling on their iPhone (in fact, turn the phones off!), no chatting about their days, no having a sidebar about the kind of pizza to order. Quiet. Silence. Focus. Nothing is scarier than playing with volume in a game–lower your voice to draw them in, to have them straining to hear the words, and then shout the climax to their utter surprise. You can’t do this if Bill is in the corner watching YouTube videos.

Rule #2: Setting and Mood

Try to play somewhere dark and, preferably, quiet (as per Rule #1). Candlelight or a fireplace is best. Music should be creepy and should fit the mood. If you’re going to order food, make sure it is done and the food is there before the game starts. It’s okay for folks to eat while you are playing, of course, but don’t get interrupted by the pizza guy–it breaks the spell, as it were, for everybody to stand up and fumble around for cash (plus you’ll probably have to turn on the lights). Setting the mood helps Rule #1 actually happen and gets people into the zone. The more they play along, the better things will go.

Rule #3: Screw Mechanics

Horror RPGs work best with very, very simple rule systems. Roll one or two dice and have done, move on. Don’t ever break the flow of action to handle rules, and never stop a scene to roll dice. Roll dice before or after the scary, never during. If possible, don’t roll dice at all. Dice don’t make things scary and they break the mood to pieces, so use them sparingly. If you can handle it, have the GM roll the majority of the tests him- or herself and describe the results. Horror RPGs aren’t about your awesome dice rolls–they are all about the story and the mood. Of couse the PCs should get to make some rolls, sure–this is a game–but don’t let it interfere with the scary.

Rule #4: Show don’t Tell

A venerable rule for writers, but not necessarily so venerable for GMs. In a Horror RPG, a vampire is not ‘a vampire’. A vampire is a pale, handsome man with a plastic smile and eyes so dark they seem like pits. His handshake is cool, hard, and with no sign of a pulse–like shaking the hand of a store mannequin. The zombies that are chasing you? Describe their smell. Describe the sound of their bloody feet spattering against the pavement as they shamble closer. Your gun doesn’t do ’7 points of damage’, it rips a bloody hole through the fleshy part of the alien’s bat-like wings, releasing a stale odor of something cold and ancient that tingles at the back of your throat. Now, its beetley head and compound eyes swivel from the child half-eaten by its gory mandibles and, in a way that chills your bones, you know that it sees you. And it hates.

Get the idea?

There are probably other rules I’m not thinking of, but these are the main ones. Folow them, and I guarantee your game will be creepier and your players will have a great time. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it.

Big Fish, Little Fish: The Foodchain of RPGs

A lot of role-playing nerds are obessed with ideas of status and power. They ask their GM’s questions like ‘how many of us would it take to slay an Ancient Red Dragon?’ or ‘how many kobolds can each of us kill ourselves?’ Speaking for myself, I usually answer something along the lines of ‘depends on how you go about it,’ but when a player is asking that question of his or her GM, the question they want answered isn’t ‘can I kill x’, per se. What they really want to know is ’where do I stand in the foodchain of this RPG?’

In a completely fictional world where the rules often don’t imitate reality well, there can be some very real anxiety among players regarding what will and will not get their character killed and what kinds of tasks they can and cannot succeed with. Some of this is due to unfamiliarity with the rules (and, since I switch systems constantly, I get questions like this a lot), but a greater part has to do with unfamiliarity with the campaign setting or the GM’s style. Some RPGs set the foodchain up for you so you don’t need to think about it (D&D 4th ed, for instance, with it’s level system and rigid encounter creation guidelines), and others leave you to guess on your own entirely (Shadowrun, for instance). In any case, it is up to you, as the GM, to make certain the PCs know where they stand. This will make everybody have more fun, since they will know what is expected of them and what to expect, and they will become more comfortable with taking risks (and risks, always remember, are where are the fun lies).

Above and beyond any system-based cues regarding the difficulty of opponents (level systems, the Brute/Henchman/Villain set up in Wick’s 7th Sea, etc.) , a GM should consider and inform players where their group will fall on the foodchain of the campaign. For me, I separate campaigns into one of three strata: Little Fish, Medium Fish, and Big Fish.

Medium Fish Campaigns

Somewhere between badass and harmless...

 Medium Fish are the standard, so I’m going to start here. Basically, if the PCs are meant to be ‘medium’, it means that, while they are generally quite capable, there are a lot of big baddies in the world they can’t handle. Your average thugs and minions aren’t much of a problem, the elite guards of the enemy should pose a significant health threat, and the big, big baddies should be beyond their capabilities until they either find a clever way to defeat them or grow in power somehow.

‘Medium Fish’ campaigns I refer to as the ‘default’, since it is where most D&D campaigns spend most of their time (anywhere from levels 5-15, arguably, and even broader if the GM gets clever). Since most RPGs take their cue from D&D on some level, this is where everybody lands. The advantages of the medium fish campaign are obvious: the PCs have enough power so that they feel awesome, but not so much power that the GM feels like he or she might lose control of the party (which, in itself, is a concern better addressed other ways, but I digress). Medium Fish are a good way to keep a campaign on the rails, so to speak, and to give PCs both a keen sense of mortality coupled with some fun opportunities for derring-do and frontal-assault type heroics.

My only problem with Medium Fish campaigns is that it sets a kind of arbitrary cap on what PCs can do. This is fine in many contexts, but not in all of them. Furthermore, you run the risk of making your game ‘formulaic’ in the sense that PCs always know what to expect all the time. Medium Fish campaigns don’t always require the GM or players to think outside the box (we beat up the henchmen, we outwit/outlast/outnumber the big villain, we go home and party!). They are often great fun, granted, but they can get old after a while.

Little Fish Campaigns

These three scare nobody...

 

 Little Fish campaigns have the PCs controlling characters that are either novices, apprentices, or other kinds of low-status individuals in the world in question. This means the scope of these campaigns is either fairly small-potatoes (you are doing jobs intended for novices) or they are exceptionally dangerous (i.e. Call of Cthulhu).

The advantage of such campaigns is that, because the players aren’t very powerful, the standby frontal assault tactics don’t work anymore. This requires the players to think harder and come up with plans that are outside the box, which makes things more interesting. Furthermore, more deadly opposition means players are more worried about their impending demise, which can also up the tension in the game and make things more fun (so long as everybody is on the same page, of course).

The drawback of these games, of course, is that there is only so much the PCs can realistically accomplish and the GM has to be constantly aware of this. Unless playing a Cthulhu-type game where the death of all PCs is acceptable, the GM has to pay close attention to how fairly he’s balanced the obstacles to PC success to avoid bitterness or frustration on the part of his players, which is a big no-no, obviously.    

 Big Fish Campaigns

Look out, evildoers!

 

Big Fish campaigns involve the players using characters at the top of their professions–they are tough, smart, fast, and all-around super-badass. They can kill any enemy, cut their way past any army, conquer any castle, defeat any foe. They are supermen, pure and simple.

The big advantage of this campaign is that it frees up PCs to do whatever it is they want. They are allowed to be creative just for fun, without the worry of dying due to a lousy roll or looking foolish. The world becomes their playground, and this is good.

The problem with Big Fish is, of course, the GM can’t really control them. They will do whatever they please and he has to bend over backwards to make things challenging enough to give them pause. Since the GM needs to create challenge to make things fun (no matter what the players believe), things get hard for the GM. Essentially, what he has to do is think outside the box, himself. Challenge needs to be internal rather than external; the PCs need to fight their own character’s demons as much as real, actual demons coming to eat their souls. Also, even though they are super powerful, they can still be outsmarted–GMs need to be clever and they need their villains to fight with intelligence rather than raw force if they hope to be a challenge for the PCs. 

In the end, there is no one type of campaign I prefer to the other–I like to shake it up. Of the three, I think Big Fish campaigns are the hardest to manage, if for no other reason than you need to try so very hard to keep things interesting for the good guys (though there are a number of tactics I’ve developed by this point). So long as everybody’s having fun, however, it doesn’t really matter. Make sure you know where your PCs stand and make sure they know, as well, and things should be fine!  

 

 

The Idiot Ball: NPCs and challenge

In RPGs, there is always the question of just how much of a challenge any given NPC should be. Ultimately, most GMs want to see the players succeed in their mission, but they also don’t want to make it easy for them. If something is too easy, it isn’t any fun–there’s no tension, no suspense, no mystery whether or not success is iminent. Likewise, too hard is just as much of a bummer–nobody likes getting their butt kicked. Oh, and then, just to make things more complicated, nobody likes everything to be a challenge all of the time–it makes the game exhausting, and underscores the ‘awesomeness’ of the PCs which is the bread and butter of so many RPGs.

Then, of course, there are the GMs concerns regarding story. As anyone who has played in one of my games will tell you, I am really into story. Indeed, I think story is more important than almost everything else (well, except ‘players having fun’). I want things to make sense, push the plot forward, create conflict, and be believable. This applies to my NPCs, specifically. If the players are up against the King’s spymaster, he should be a pretty sneaky guy. As my improv training taught me, I want to behave ‘at the top of my intelligence,’ and therefore I will make him as sneaky as I can, since the King’s spymaster is probably going to be a very capable guy. It makes sense, it fits with the story, and it will give the PCs a wonderful sense of accomplishment when they finally defeat him.

That is, unless they don’t or can’t. There have been many times when PCs haven’t seen the traps I’ve laid out or have shown remarkably little curiosity regarding the doings and capabilities of rival NPCs, and, as a result, find themselves blindsided, outmaneuvered, or even killed. This has occasionally resulted in players being disappointed or even angry with what happened, and this is a terrible thing–people should be having fun. This is a game we’re talking about, after all.

So, what to do?

The Idiot Ball

In fiction, there’s a device called ‘the idiot ball’. It’s primarily a derisive term for inconsistent plotting, and it refers to the times when various characters in a work behave more stupidly than they should for the purpose of moving the plot along or enhancing tension.

Perhaps the best and most obvious example of the idiot ball is the Galactic

Don't worry--he's going to miss.

Empire of Star Wars. So long as the stormtroopers aren’t shooting at people with names, they’re pretty damned dangerous. As soon as they start blasting away at Han or Luke or Leia, they’ll be damned lucky if they score a glancing hit. The reason for this is obvious–you can’t have your main characters getting blown away every time they run into tons of Stormtroopers. The entire Death Star escape sequence in Episode IV would be impossible were that the case. Rather than make Han and Luke and Liea more intelligent, however, they make the Empire stupid. While this is happening, the Empire is said to be ‘holding the idiot ball’.

In RPGs, the idiot ball is what a GM uses anytime the players don’t seem to be capable enough to handle the foes they are faced with. Orcs suddenly make foolish tactical decisions, giant robots carelessly step on volatile chemicals, and the unholy hosts of Hell suddenly have an awfully hard time searching your average elementary school for hiding investigators.

This guy should be as nasty as he looks.

While it isn’t very good for fiction, the idiot ball can be very useful for a game. It ought to be used sparingly, though, as making the party’s foes too stupid (especially when it is contrary to their nature) makes the game too easy and gives the GM a reputation of being a softy (which reduces the tension inherent in the game). The idiot ball ought to be given the henchmen and underlings–the guys the PCs are supposed to be able to outwit and beat up without fear. It should not be applied to the big villains, since they should be a significant challenge. Heck, it shouldn’t even be applied to the big villain’s elite bodyguards since, again, you want to keep things tense and give the PCs that sense of accomplishment.

But what happens when the PCs just aren’t up the challenge? What happens when they encounter a guy they just can’t figure out how to beat? Well, first of all, this shouldn’t happen all that often–they should have the capacity to defeat anything they are supposed to be able to defeat. Secondly, if it does happen, you should consider this question: Why can’t the PCs lose? Now, if the answer to that question is ‘they all die and the campaign ends’, you ought to pull the idiot ball out of your back pocket, hand it to the All Powerful Necromancer, and have him do something stupid. If the answer, on the other hand, is ‘the PCs are stripped off all their stuff and sold into slavery in a distant land’, that sounds pretty goddamned awesome to me and I say go for it. Have them lose. Let them nurse the bitter seeds of hatred and revenge; have their ordeal temper them into a much greater force than before and, when they return, have their victory be that much more sweet.

To me, that sounds like a lot more fun than ‘Queen Bavmorda spills the

Bavmorda goes long to catch the Idiot Ball

sacrificial blood on herself and dies’. How stupid is that?

Remember: the PCs are in your game to have fun, and having fun means overcoming obstacles and conflicts and winning despite all odds. Everybody wants to pull a Die Hard and wipe out all the terrorists with a mixture of luck (dice), skill, and sneaky planning. Let them pound on the underlings, but make them earn the big kill. Throwing Alan Rickman out that window wasn’t easy, and your PCs don’t want to defeat their villain as easily, either. The PCs should only have a 60% chance of success against the big baddie. They either step up to the plate or die.

In this regard, I must say that D&D 4th Edition, a game which I conventionally find very dull and flavorless, has mastered this. They have a built-in system for creating challenge. I think they do so at the expense of story, myself, which is it’s own problem and a topic for a different day, but any given GM can pick up their system and put together a challenging, easy, or moderate encounter with just a calculator and a monster manual. The idiot ball only rarely need be applied. Of course, since story is generally less important, the use of the idiot ball is correspondingly less egregious.

Anyway, I digress. My point is that GMs should be tough on their players and consistent with their characterizations of villains (some of whom will be plenty stupid, obviously). That should only change if and when persisting with undermine the fun had in a game. That should always be paramount–it’s a game, and games are meant to be fun.