There is something going on in the world around you, at all times, and you must really pay attention to catch the nuances that involve these things. Do you do that? I doubt that you do, on most things, but you may catch something now and then. Granted, you are not an investigator, on a job, researching something that may or may not affect you for the near future… but you should still be paying attention. Why? Well, we expect our RPG characters to pay attention, why wouldn’t you want to practice that a little in real life?

This column is going to be all over the place, I’ll be honest. I’m squeezing in writing here and there and I don’t really have a lot to talk about at the moment because I’m between games. I am interested in testing out Fate but I will be running WoD in the near future. I have a potential online group to run with and I’m investigating groups in my NEW local area. Yes, that’s right, I’ve moved. No more terrible winters for me!

I wanted to start out with the “taking notice of things around you” because we often think our characters are always catching the little details that we’d like to think that we are. Think, though. You went grocery shopping this morning and I guarantee you saw at least three people. What were they wearing? How many earrings did the old lady have in her ears? If this were an RPG, you’d be able to roll and figure that out but when you rely on just your memory, I bet you don’t realize how much you’re missing.

As a game master, I shouldn’t be making things too nuanced, either, but I also expect a lot of buy in from my players. That’s why I require backgrounds… and from here on out, failure to provide a background before play will result in said background being created for you… meaning I’m going to create something that you may not like but will serve the story DIRECTLY. Yeah, that’s the whole point of a background.

Gaming is about getting out of our normal lives and doing something more interesting… what about doing that more interesting thing just outside our normal lives? For example, Fantasy Flight Games has released a series of apocalyptic adventures designed for you… no, YOU. Not “your character,” you. These would be interesting to play, especially if you were getting someone new involved in the hobby. I think they’d be interesting to get to know your fellow players a little (in a realistic situation where they’re playing themselves) and might also help coalesce a group that has never played together before into a nice little unit.

Now you’re interested in checking those out, aren’t you?

I showed up to write this knowing I didn’t really have a topic. I think you should pay more attention to your surroundings, where you’re going, what you’re doing, and what kinds of things are around you. I also think you should check out those adventures, if for no other reason than to try something a little different.

I’m going to.

Game on.

When you sit at the table and grab your dice and look at a character sheet, what is it (exactly) that you’re looking to get out of a game? I’m here to mention some of the things I see, or think I see, when I sit down at a table and hopefully I can attract the types of players (or GMs) that I’d like to play with in the future by doing so.

First, let me talk about the types of people I see with the types of games that I associate them with. Stereotypes are such for a reason, kids, so don’t hammer me for being stereotypical.

D&D players tend to want to roll as many dice as possible, have very little interaction with each other on a roleplaying basis, and essentially just have a “video game experience” by battling for loot. Warhammer players tend to want to do as much math as possible while pretending to call what they do something other than wargaming… they don’t have any interactions with a roleplaying nature and if they aren’t moving actual pieces around on an actual board (or landscape simulation), then they aren’t really playing. World of Darkness players, the ones I’ve encountered, tend to be D&D players who think that all WoD is can be boiled down to “fill in the blank” superheroes (i.e. Vampire superheroes, Werewolf superheroes, etc). Fate players I don’t have an opinion on because my only experience with Fate is listening to the Knights of the Night.

What are YOU looking out of roleplaying?

Are you interested in a competition between yourself and the GM to see who can “one up” the other in the best way? Are you interested in tons of loot, some number crunching, and a butt ton of dice rolling? Are you interested a skeletal story structure that has little or nothing to do with your background and character? Well, if you answered “yes” to any of these things, then you’re the type of player I seem to run across the most and are NOT the type of player that I’m interested in playing with.

When I craft a game, I include your character’s backgrounds. Why? Because if you’re going to put effort into the backgrounds (and if you’re playing in one of my games, you MUST put effort into it) then I’m going to tie you into the story. How better a game could I present than one that directly involves your character on a deep level? Well… you’d be the first to enjoy that.

I understand that there is a market for Warhammer games. I understand there is a market for D&D games. I don’t really feel like I’m being considered when I want to sit down at a RPG table to play because I can’t seem to find the players I’m interested in playing with.

So, the question comes back to you. What are you looking for when you sit down to play a roleplaying game? Are you looking to war-game? Are you looking to compete with the GM? Or are you looking to actually ROLE play?

Game on.

I didn’t know what to title this column, so all of those things might not be contained in this tome of knowledge, but I wanted to give an idea of what was contained within… so let’s just all not really pay attention to that and move on with the column, shall we?

As a game master, or GM, I create a wonderful story that I want my players to interact with to reach the final destination. Using the old saying, though, that story “doesn’t survive first contact with the players.” Normally, that’s true. What I’ve discovered through two decades of playing is that if the players aren’t involved in creating the scenario then you really don’t know what they’re after when they want to play. That’s where a system like Fate is good to use.

Stealing a page out of Fate, I am going to run through a way to get the story I want to tell out with including what the players want from the game. I’m going to use the scenario of World of Darkness.

I, the GM, have come up with the idea of a power grab for the city of Mount Frost, controlled by the Invictus Prince and barely holding on to power. There are three players that will be playing and the first one wants to see combat… well, that turns me off but he lets me know that he just wants to make sure that is SOME combat, not loaded with combat. Okay, I can handle that… the political power grab will be a bloody coup attempt now, rather than just political machinations going on behind the scenes. The second player states they would like to be able to rise through the ranks a little… okay, well, then that means that the players are actually probably the driving force behind the coup OR they’re the ones tasked with taking out the old Prince. I can handle that AND it still gives the combat and political intrigue the first two of us want. The third player states that he wants to be seeing a spy thriller theme, something that will really get everyone’s blood pumping. That one is a little tougher, but I go with the theory that there is a third faction involved in what I had originally envisioned as a faction vs. faction.

So, from the scenario above, the Invictus Prince of Mount Frost is tenuously holding on to power as the Carthian Movement have hired the players to start taking down the Prince’s infrastructure for an easier coup. Cornered with the idea that their personal secrets will be brought out into the open, the Ordo Dracul have entered the picture and have manipulated the players into taking down the Prince AND the Carthian Movement… so the players are either double agents or playing all three sides. Could that work?

One of the things I’ve had a problem with in the past is creating a sandbox world for the players to play in. I don’t want to railroad them on an adventure but when my players want to sandbox, they almost completely forget about what the plot was in the first place doing their own thing. I’d like to tell a story. This almost always leads to me trying to subplot their sandbox adventures while hooking them constantly back into the main plot. The above scenario, the fictional meeting of the minds to plot out the game, would keep everyone interested from the get go… so I’ll actually be trying that when I give Bob and company their Vampire adventure…

Aren’t I a nice guy?

Game on.