Writing Every Day Series: Late Work Night

No update today due to a late night of work. Back to our regular programming tomorrow.

Writing Every Day 11: Goals

During a campaign there can be several different sorts of goals. The first, often most obvious goal is what the party is trying to achieve. Sometimes this is dictated by the story; if the characters live in a region plagued by an undead army directed by an evil lich, a goal of the party might amount to "stop the lich and destroy his army." Other times the goals have little to do with the Game Master's story and more with the party's desires, like, "we want to gather enough resources to buy a sweet-ass boat."

I tend to think of those as major goals. I often present the players with a handful of larger obstacles or situations, with the unspoken understanding that overcoming them or navigating them are their goals, from my perspective. They also present me with major goals, often expressed as, "We want to [achieve some kind of task]." Working the major goals together, theirs and mine, is one of the things I strive to do over the course of the campaign.

There are also minor goals, both from me and from the players. Minor goals run the gamut from acquiring a new weapon or making a new contact, to exploring a new region or trying to earn some finances. The interesting thing about those minor goals is that they help to inform and evolve a PC. By pursuing and achieving them I learn more about how the player views his or her character, what they're interested in doing with the character, and the place the character has in the story, the group, and the world.

To me, major goals are the skeleton of the campaign, while minor goals are the tissue that bulks it out. A minor goal can be the basis of a good night's game within the campaign(provided you can manage the spotlight while doing so). A major goal can be the campaign.

That said I don't think that one type of goal is more valuable to the game, their names notwithstanding. A PC's minor goals have the potential to be just as dramatic and revealing as any major goal. I think of it like a bottle episode in a longer-running series that provides insight into the motivation of a character or two; while it doesn't seem to advance the overall metaplot, it does give the audience a deeper understanding and connection to a particular character.

When we're playing a roleplaying game, we're both the audience and the creators. Sometimes a creator's goal is to provide a big set piece moment full of thrilling action. Sometimes it is to tell a smaller, more intimate story to make the audience engage more with the characters. In any game, I like it when both can occur, sometimes even in the same session.

Writing Every Day 10: Vehicles, man.

With this post I'm crossing over into the double digits with the Writing Every Day series. Hopefully I can keep my momentum up and the series improves over time.

Since I've had some harrowing experiences on my commute over the past two days, I've been thinking about vehicles quite a bit. I thought a brief observation about vehicles in RPGs was warranted.

In traditional fantasy RPGs, the Game Master doesn't often have to worry about vehicles. Sometimes you'll see the players get involved in a high(ish) speed cart chase or take a ship from one port to another, but they aren't often a major component of the setting. There's an exception to every rule, of course. Airships are a recurring trope, and D&D's lightning rail was an interesting way to get trains into the game, but vehicles are far less common in fantasy than many other settings.

Historical, Modern, and Sci Fi RPGs have vehicles by the truckload, and for good reason. High speed chases through crowded city streets are awesome, as are white-knuckle dogfights between fighter planes or spaceships. You can't run a good Akira homage without fleets of motorcycles buzzing around. But vehicles present a challenge to the Game Master. What do you have everyone do?

This issue crops up more in games where all the PCs are on the same vehicle. For a quick example of what I'm talking about, let's consider the scene in Star Wars when the Millennium Falcon escapes the Death Star as if it were an RPG. (Skip to 2:30)



Luke and Han get to man the turrets to fight off the attacking TIE fighters. Chewie gets to fly the ship; admittedly his maneuvering is pretty prosaic compared to later installments, but it's something he gets to do. Leia only gets to say, "Here they come." Poor R2 only gets to put out a fire, and Threepio doesn't get to participate at all.

Of the characters in that scene, who's going to be the most invested and have the most fun? Probably Chewie, Han, and Luke's players. They get the most interesting stuff to do. Chewie rolls to maneuver and evade the fighters, Luke and Han get to blow them away. The Game Master throws R2 a bone by giving him the opportunity to repair damage—his player chose an astromech, after all, and probably wants to do some engineering and repair. Poor Leia and Threepio, though. Their characters just have to sit and enjoy the ride.

Now, not every character needs to have a huge part in every scene, but they should have something to contribute. A player who has no choices for actions to take is going to get bored, fast. You can offer up critical tasks to the other players, like R2 putting out the fire. Leia in the cockpit has access to the scanning and communication on board and can coordinate the actions of R2 and Threepio to deal with critical damage as it occurs. Depending on the capabilities of the Falcon, she might even choose to leave the cockpit and strap on a toolbelt herself, or help with the calculations to jump to hyperspace. Something. Anything.

Some systems have a selection of roles aboard larger vehicles. Rogue Trader has complex rules for each role contributing to the overall result. For Pathfinder, the Admiral of the High Seas supplement does something similar. No matter if your game has a system in place to handle these situations, read through those games to see how they deal with the problem of giving every player something to do during these vehicular engagements. It may help keep everyone's attention during what should be a tense and exhilarating action scene.

Writing Every Day 09: Character and Quirks

I love writing odd NPCs. Many of the games I run involve larger organizations, like government agencies, mercenary companies, military battalions, or even pirate crews. When the game starts, I'll begin to introduce a handful of NPCs by name. Those that get a bit of traction with the players start to move into a prominent role, while those that don't recede into the background. I'll often give a new NPC some quirk or habit to help set him or her apart from the others. These can be straightforward, like an interesting tattoo or scar, or complex, like "enjoys reading books on the history of the Achaemenid Empire."

There are numerous generators online, either presented as sites that you refresh to get a new list of quirks or a pdf with a table you roll on to generate a few. These tools are great to quickly get a handful of quirks for NPCs. I have several favorites that I use from time to time. I do not, though, think that quirks equal character.

Character is, in my opinion, an amalgamation of the NPC's personality, goals, beliefs, and so forth. Quirks are interesting or unique little details about that character. Compare the following examples:

• He is strong and has a stutter. This is a quirk, and a fine one to use provided you don't overuse it.
• His stutter drove him, from an early age, to commit himself to physical training. He believed that, if he couldn't influence people through his speech, he would do so through his strength. He tries to avoid speaking whenever possible, and becomes increasingly frustrated when he's forced to. He prefers to listen instead, dreading the moment when he meets a new person and they expect him to carry on a conversation. This is off the top of my head, and way, way more than a PC should get the first time they meet the character. For the overworked Game Master, this is probably too much to figure out for every desk clerk and street cop. Fortunately, you don't have to.

I picked two random traits off a list of NPC quirks to get the strong + stutter combination above. They're probably not something I would have come up with on my own, but I embraced the oddity of the combination and went with it.

In an RPG, like in writing, you can add detail iteratively. You can go back after a session and figure out how the players responded to a particular NPC, and how you, in that character's role, responded. A minor quirk is a decent starting point, provided you're willing to improvise and build off of it through interaction with the PCs. If you ever end up revisiting the NPC, you aren't starting from scratch; you begin with the quirk you assigned, your memory of how that interaction went, and how it was resolved.

From there, you can build out what the character's personality is. What his or her goals might be. What they believe in or what they don't. You don't have to figure all this out right away, though. Finding one more piece of the puzzle lets you refine how you take on the role of that character, gives you more data to use while improvising. Further on, you add more detail, figure the character out more, and keep building.

The advantage to this is you only begin to worry about it after the game. When the game begins, you pick a minor quirk or two, jump into your NPC's place, and let things begin to evolve. If the players don't bite, you haven't lost anything. If they do, you begin to construct a complex and interesting character that they get to learn more about over time. 

Writing Every Day 08: Fatigue

Man am I tired. Strangely enough, I didn't really do anything all day. Most of my work day involved driving to and from, proofreading text, writing different text, and running a playtest game. None of those compare with the physical labor I've performed at previous jobs, but the end result is the same: I'm exhausted.

Plenty of RPGs have a system to model fatigue. Characters who push themselves too far for too long can suffer from a number of different consequences. In some games, the character suffers from an increasing penalty to his or her rolls. Others have a fatigue track with unique penalties at each step along the way. Some treat fatigue as a kind of damage that whittles away at their vitality. The end result is usually a character that becomes decreasingly effective over time until they are taken out, incapacitated, or even dead.

Several systems I've seen have physical fatigue, but I've encountered fewer that make allowance for mental fatigue. Now, not every system is appropriate for this. Staying up late or being mentally exhausted isn't likely to make me suffer damage—directly. A mentally fatigued character might slip up more, though, or make worse decisions, and get into situations they would normally avoid.

Not every game wants or needs a fatigue system. In fact, it can be a detriment to certain games. High heroic games where the PCs are paragons of combat, magic, et cetera might not need to worry about the bone-deep weariness that comes from an all day march. Other games beg for a good fatigue system, though. I wouldn't want to run a game set in the trenches of the Great War without having something to represent the exhaustion the characters would experience from constant stress and battle.

In any case, I don't want fatigue (or any system, really) to stand as a barrier between the players and the game. Like encumbrance, a subject I might talk about at another time, it can become an irritating hurdle the players have to spend extra time worrying about before they get to the "good parts" of the game. If the system is at the heart of the story I'm telling though, I want one that can easily model physical, emotional, or mental drain on the characters.

For a good idea of a game where I would want a decent fatigue system, check out the Dan Simmons book The Terror. Set in an arctic wasteland, the characters are forced to endure physical and mental strain. If I were to run a game set in the world of the novel, I'd definitely want something that let me chip away at the characters both mentally and physically, though I'd want the system to be shared between the two. Something where the ultimate consequences—freezing to death, starving, going mad—were determined by the source of what finally put the character over the edge.

Sorry if this one is a bit rambling and repetitive. I'm just so damn exhausted. See you tomorrow, when I hope to be a little less fatigued.

Writing Every Day 07: All the World's a Stage

In RPG's, all the world is a stage, but it only has one spotlight.

There are tons of Game Mastering books out there that talk about the spotlight, or the amount of attention that is paid to a single player's character during a session. Ideally, as the Game Master we move the spotlight around, giving different characters equal attention as they come to the forefront. Combat encounters seem to do this naturally, since every character in the combat has their own turn in the initiative order when the spotlight falls on them. Outside of combat, though, the spotlight can linger on one or two characters longer than the rest.

Sometimes this is just fine. If the evening's game centers on a story involving a character's backstory, or it involves some personal goal of that character, it's natural for the Game Master to spend more time on the character's turns. A recent example from a game I participated in was in The Hoard of the Dragon Queen. One of the PCs had chosen a background that involved locating a missing childhood friend that was entangled in the activities of the adventure's villainous cult. When that missing friend arrived on the scene, the PC moved into the forefront for a while.

That's a perfect reason to shine the spotlight on someone. It moves the story forward, pays off a portion of a character's background, and informs the players about the adventure's world. Best of all, it was something the Game Master could expect and prepare for. Our Game Master spent more time with the rest of the PCs prior to the reveal of the friend and balanced the overall time spent among all of the characters. It was a great example of balancing focus on multiple players who all want to play the game and feel like important heroes doing cool stuff.

There are other things that can cause the spotlight to linger on a particular PC though, which can complicate the Game Master's job. Off the top of my head, the shopping scene is one nasty offender. In a shopping scene, a player walks into a shop to purchase some item. The player wants to talk to the shop's owner, bantering back and forth before finally making a purchase. Depending on the player, this kind of thing can take a few minutes or more. While it's immersive for the player participating in the conversation, anyone else who isn't there can rapidly lose interest in what's going on. Others will strike out for their own diversions, compounding the issue and delaying the game.

Is this kind of thing bad? I don't know. Not necessarily. A Game Master can use moments like that to advance the group's understanding of the present situation, backfill information about the world, and drop plot hooks for further adventures. However, care must be taken so the other players who aren't participating in the scene have something of equal value—that commands an equal portion of your attention—to do. For that reason, unless a large number of characters decide to head out together for these undertakings, I prefer to have that activity take place at the beginning of a session before the story gets rolling, or let the players perform it between sessions if the story permits.

I'm guilty of letting single players hold the spotlight for large portions of a session. Duels are notorious for keeping focus on a single player for far too long. So do scenes where a hacker tries to crack security of some computer network. They tend to involve more complex rules and narration and by their nature are performed by single characters. I've seen authors handle these scenes well in the past; check out the duel between Logen Ninefingers and Fenris the Feared in Joe Abercrombie's The First Law trilogy for an example of how other characters can have spotlight moments during a tense and prolonged duel. He sets up a series of challenges, some on the dueling ground and others off it, that give his ensemble of characters their own things to do over the course of the fight. Even characters standing in a circle around the dueling pair manage to contribute meaningfully to the outcome.

I don't know if I have a perfect solution to these moments, other than to suggest breaking up the duel, hacking effort, or other similar attention-holding moment, by presenting the group with other goals that must be achieved in concert. Find dramatic moments to break away from the "primary" action and swap focus to another character. Let their efforts build to the greater success of the group. Remember that everyone at the table is there because they want to be the star of the show and keep the spotlight moving.

Writing Every Day 06: Writing *Every* Day?

The observant among you may have noticed that no posts went up on Saturday or Sunday, which rightfully breaks my chain of writing every day. While that's true and you'd be within your rights to call foul on me, I wanted to take a moment to explain the reasons why.

The first reason is one that any person in any field experience at one time or another: family obligation. No matter what I'm doing, my family has first right of refusal to my time. This past weekend I spent a healthy amount of time with my wife, our roommate, and one of our close friends. Drinks were drunk. Food was eaten. A good time was had by all.

When we're working on something, it can be easy to let our social obligations slip by the side of the road. Rather than let that happen, I intend to temper my work and this ongoing writing experiment with time spent not working. Not working is often just as important as working. It gives you time to rest and evaluate what you're doing. It gives you the ability to learn from the errors in your previous work, and gives you a place to start from when you begin again. This leads to my second point.

There's something known as the creative pause. It is, I think, the basis for many productivity techniques like the Pomodoro Technique. While the real method is much more involved, a key component is that, for every major work that you undertake, you need to break it down into smaller chunks divided by periods of rest. Like organizing writing into coherent paragraphs gives the reader a place to pause between pieces of information, this lets you break away from your work for a moment to digest what you've done and prepare to tackle the next chunk. Trying to steamroll through large efforts can be akin to a wall of unbroken text. Not only is it tiresome to process, you can lose critical information among the clutter.

So, in this "Writing Every Day" experiment, expect there may be the occasional break in the flow. Sometimes I'll need to step away to clear my head and strategize on how to tackle the topics I have coming up. Other times the family will decide for me that I need to be available for them. When I can I'll try to keep these pauses to reasonable times—weekends, holidays, and so forth—and to a reasonable length. And if you haven't, I recommend trying out the Pomodoro Technique or something similar. You may find after half an hour of work, or a full hour, that stepping away for a few minutes gives you the ability to solve issues that previously seemed insurmountable.

Until next time.