Sagas RPG.com

I am an avid NPR listener. I listen for about 2-3 hours a day while taking my daughter to and from school (she is in a magnet program so we have a way to travel). Earlier last week I listened to stories concerning a world AIDS organization’s difficulty in fighting the AIDS epidemic in Africa due largely to rape. This got me thinking. This is not the first time that the issue of War Rape has been brought to my attention. Honestly, the concept is disgusting and horrific to me. The overall idea is horrible, but what is worse is the way it is handled, and must be handled, by the victims. What suddenly occur ed to me is that we have, in general, ignored it. Now, I don’t mean we should be addressing it as a subject. What I mean is that we, as gamers and game developers, may want to have horror and horrific war like themes. However, I think we, in general, gloss over the true horror of humans at war. If anything we should not be ignoring what evil truly occurs. However, there is a line between being honest and exploitative. I hope that in my next sidetrack the issue is tackled and seen honestly and with the intent I explain here, meanwhile not opening the door for people to feel alright with doing work that is exploitative.

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This week I am coming off of a short little vacation, mostly of the mind. In essence, I needed to take a few steps back and look at some issues from a mind that was not dragged down with progress. I escaped from the constant grinding away at the code and design elements and did next to nothing for several days in regards to working on DPnP, or E-RPG as a whole. It paid off.

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Chances are you are gearing up for you Halloween game that will play out this weekend. Chances also are that you will use some kind of horror theme, or even a horror game. Now, I haven’t played horror games like Call of Cthulu or much of White Wolf’s games, but I have run some very successful horror themes before. I gave on player nightmares for at least that night. The gaming group was equal parts creeped out, horrified, or afraid of what was happening in the game. However, these are GM story telling devices that I use that don’t translate well to an article. What you can do is apply some mechanics that are easy to use and fairly universal that do work very well for horror games. 

There are some basic ideas in horror. One is a sense of risk, which the character could come to harm or die. Desperation usually kicks in when risk is high and the opposition weighs heavily against the character. For instance, an injured character in a movie limps desperately to safety as a horde of slavering zombies slowly overtakes him. The desperation lies in the dwindling hope that the character will make it. They are slow, the distance not closing fast enough. In fact, the distance between him and safety is closing much more slowly than the distance from him and zombies is closing.         

Hindrance is the best way to hold a character down. If a character is hindered through  the actions or failure of the player, or that the dice just didn’t roll in his favor, the player is more willing to accept it rather than a GM who throws amazingly obscene challenges at the player. The player always has to feel like there is a chance of escape, no matter how bleak, not that the GM is there to destroy each hope.

Then there is the character point of view. Stay with me as these things will merge together. Now, you, as a player, may not feel much of a sense of fear the first time your new character sees, for the first time, some supernatural horror like a zombie. Think about it, does your character become nervous, fearful, or any natural emotion, or do you start attacking? This is a sticking point for me as our Meta knowledge sometimes overshadows our ability to play our characters properly.

Here’s how it comes together. As a GM you can add a new element to your game that reflects your character’s first impressions of a situation. Now, I am not talking about some kind of insanity check or restriction on how your characters are role-played. I am talking about a modifier that actually will change the way a player plays the character. 

Try this: the first time a character sees a new horror, such as a zombie (for this example) make them roll a Wisdom test, or a Will save or some kind of mental defense test (whatever your game requires). The difficulty is based on your world, but lets assume that zombies aren’t something that is pretty common. Lets also assume the test is high enough for all players to fail. Now, take the number that they should have rolled, and compare it to what they did roll. The difference is now a modifier to any test requiring thinking, perception, etc.

 In Sagas this changes quite a lot. It alters initiative, spell casting, tactics tests, etc. You could also affect attack rolls, suggesting that the character is more concerned with defense (i.e. protecting him as a natural instinct) to the point that finer combat ability is suffering.

Now, this seems a little rough. However, we are not trying to kill the characters. You may have to point out that your characters are afraid, and that because of this they are not themselves. The best thing for the player to do would be to play defensively, maybe even retreat if things are bad enough. Are one character’s modifiers so high that it seems safe to retreat alone than stand with the group, i.e. running in a panic?

What will begin to take shape is the characters actions. Start describing the lousy die rolls. “Your character hacks desperately at the thing before you” or “You can’t seem to focus on your spell, what are these things? What are they going to do? You’re not sure what you should do!” or “You desperately fumble to reload your weapon and drop the clip on the ground.” Describing the characters actions for the players may help them to get the picture of what is happening to their characters. Fear, desperate, confusion, all of these elements should be present in the descriptions and moods conveyed.

Now, imagine it from their point of view. The players actually start to get the picture. Their characters are in a desperate situation. They could die because they are rolling badly. They are rolling badly because they are hindered with a penalty. Their penalty is caused by fear. The characters are afraid and could die because of it. Now, the player is actually hindered by what has become an overwhelming force. Sure, the group should have been able to kill the zombies with ease. However, fear changes the environment, hindering their ability to think and act clearly. Now the player has a weaker character against a force he isn’t so sure he can beat anymore. Now the player starts looking for a way out too. 

As in every situation you usually have a character with a more level head than the others. You will likely see that character cover a retreat or come up with a plan that allows the other characters to help with easy tasks. Eventually they will get away or defeat the encounter.

If they defeat the encounter it is likely that their fears will go away. You can choose to try this again, but lower the target levels significantly to reflect the new confidence. You may have one or two characters nervous, and hinder because of it. However, the overall group should handle things much easier.

Ultimately it feels like a cheap trick. Some players may hate the new test, but it will always work better than throwing overwhelming odds (i.e. higher level monsters or much more monsters than the characters can really handle) at the characters. That message is generally received as “The GM doesn’t want us to win here so run away” rather than any kind of sense of fear.

Give it a try this weekend and let me know how it works for you. It generally works better than “Your character has suffered from dragon fear and runs away”, or even “900 zombies come at you.” These things seem like contrived mechanics and don’t offer any real sensation. However, the contrived mechanic of adding modifiers that cause a change in behavior very well could.

The DPnP system so far is developed primarily for two purposes: creating and managing campaigns, and creating and managing characters. One of the first future expansions to the suite will be to create an adventure creator. However, I have found that DPnP is still quite useful in the creation of adventures out of the box (per say as there is no real box).

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I decided to write about this as I am working on two related projects. One is some sidetracks I will be releasing after they are edited, and the other is a return to a weekly campaign I am running. The weekly campaign adventure is a bit different than writing adventures for published projects. The general approach is the same for me. However, writing for weekly adventures is much more easily handled as it can be done in weekly episodic installments rather than as a collective whole. This being said, the adventures I play, as run by a wide range of GMs, have had some glaring issues within them that are easily corrected with a rather simplified approach, while being aware that there are pitfalls within any adventure plan that should be avoided with extreme prejudice.

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As promised in last week’s post I will be expanding on what you will be able to accomplish with DPnP. Today we start with the most obvious: Campaign Building. (more…)

There still seems to be some confusion about the exact roll DPnP will play in your gaming. I am going to try to lay that out quickly here. I will also be compiling a PDF on all of the features concerning the release products and the potential of the system.

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I know I have been a poor blogger. I have not kept up these past weeks as I should. There are some good reasons for it, but the main reason is not important at all. You see, I found twitter not long ago, and I have been updating very frequently through there. This leaves me with very little to actually blog about. Not much of an excuse, but there it is. Anyways, onto thing you really want to know.

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It seems like forever since we released anything new. Its an unfortunate side effect of being a small company with a huge amount of ambition. Unfortunately there must be a focus somewhere, and currently that focus is DPnP. But when will we get back to the business of creating and release game content? Soon, I hope. And the flood gates should open wide!

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So, last week’s game did not happen. However, a week has gone by and things are looking great for today. So far, the weather is good, we have 4 players and one GM (me), and the possibility of two campaigns going to be happening. So, I think that although disappointing, last week’s loss may have been helpful.

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