r“;

“(W

 

15:4)...52

:

 

 

 

 

r? .
23...?

v 5;. q. is.
£3.35...

 

 

 

:3
$3,596....
:$4w.. :
_.
. 2L»
1 =wa
‘14..) PI
2.:
a; . a...“
, . . 5-.
.. #59,»?
«9%., 41. .4
A an . ‘ .u 2.9.9:...
a wag: k

. .. o. A
xvii... .b - zm
l ”Mot

i ¢
a

. I» bum:ufio:v...t:fl.u9 . 91m 3&2
X Kin—R] ‘ ’w’ u a
. .. n ‘1
. . , #‘.. ”.3.- .'
Ely-i 02. s

5%... Nu... .

.v 21.4...
Envvfirfi. has.
fit 3.5....
V 9..., a. 1....
.5-.. e... .337}. 3
1.3. fly . . v1.

. I?!
)v .0:- ‘a and.

w . '3‘ ,
v 3.. n1J1xV

r13. Ufa. « ‘

punctidla» .2.

. V. . ,. .

.. Ccvn 09.2....inht 3|}
1... 9 {1.41:

. ,(z I» ‘11312.
Shh-hr! '0. ttuqt‘hvi‘ vlg"
zen-u wnchwtg . I? ..

Int!
1; . 3A.. , s
at. C .u?

15.15::
3.30;

1 i... .21.!
. l'sfiln... VIZ... tlll.

{ t‘ ,isf.3;oa’.i~:ttt
..)xl3$hxa.-A\Is'

 

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

CATEGORIZATION OF INTERACTIVE STORYTELLER
TECHNIQUES IN LIVE ROLEPLAY

presented by

AMANDA FLOWERS

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

Master of degree in Telecommunication,
Arts Information Studies and Media

 

 

%~,0 k

/ Major Professor’s Signature

l‘/iS /Ol)

Date

MSU is an Alfinnative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

LIBRARY
MIChIQi-i State
Universny

 

 

 

o---~—--u---n-s-—------o-n-n------------—--.—.-.---.-.__A.

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2/05 p:/CIRC/DaleDue.indd-p.1

CATEGORIZATION OF INTERACTIVE STORYTELLER
TECHNIQUES IN LIVE ROLEPLAY

by

Amanda Flowers

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, & Media

2006

ABSTRACT

CATEGORIZATION OF INTERACTIVE STORYTELLER TECHNIQUES IN LIVE
ROLEPLAY

By

Amanda Flowers

One of the major challenges in video game writing and in computerized
interactive drama is composing an interactive story that follows an interesting narrative
arc, while allowing user interaction to guide the flow of narrative. This thesis compares
the work of a story director program in an interactive drama to that of the “gamemaster,”
the authority figure at the head of a pen and paper roleplaying game. Four gamemasters
were observed in great detail running roleplaying games in different genres. From these
observations, a taxonomy of storytelling techniques for use in interactive environments
has been developed and categorized. The paper discusses each technique the
gamemasters used, why it works, and gives concrete examples of the techniques in

action, as well as discussing the most commonly observed problems that will cause

difficulty in interactive storytelling environments.

COPYRIGHT BY

AMANDA FLOWERS

2006

With special thanks to Brian Magerko, Carrie Heeter, and Punya Mishra, who provided
support and approval,
The MSU GEL Lab, for additional support and use of facilities
And my subjects, without whom this would not be possible

iv

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

List of Figures vii
1. Introduction 1
2. Related Work 4
2.1. Narrative Theory- - -- - -- - - - - _ 4
2.2. Interactive Drama. ............................................................................................... 6
2.3. Interactive Fiction ............................................................................................... 9
3. Roleplaying Games 10
3.1. Overview of Games and Gamemasters ........................ . -- 10
3.2. Importance of Narrative .................................................................................... 14
3.3. Two Types of RPG Sessions ............................................................................. 16
3.4. Railroading: The Plot Train .............................................................................. l7
4. The Study 19
4.1. Methodology - __ - - -- - _ - 19
4.1.1. Game Versus Metagame ........................................................................... 21
4.1.2. Attractors and Detractors .......................................................................... 22

4.2. Hypothesis ......................................................................................................... 23
5. Observations - 26
5.1. Story Breaks and Gamemaste __ - _ - - 26
5.2. Observed Behaviors .......................................................................................... 28
6. Results: Taxonomy of Gamemaster Techniques 29
6.1. In-Game Attractors ........................................................ __ -- - 29
6.1 .1 . Instruction ................................................................................................. 29
6.1.2. Inverse Instruction .................................................................................... 31

6.1 .3 . Focus ......................................................................................................... 3 1
6.1.4. Character Hooks ........................................................................................ 32
6.1.5. Spontaneous Conflict ................................................................................ 34
6.1.6. In-Game Reward ....................................................................................... 34

6.2. In-Game Detractors ........................................................................................... 35
6.2.1. Presence of Authority ............................................................................... 35
6.2.2. Suspiciousness .......................................................................................... 36
6.2.3. Lack of Reward ......................................................................................... 37
6.2.4. Damage ..................................................................................................... 38
6.2.5. Death ......................................................................................................... 38

6.3. Other In-game Techniques ................................................................................ 39
6.3.1. Fate ............................................................................................................ 39
6.3.2. NPC Action ............................................................................................... 41

6.4. Metagame Attractors ......................................................................................... 42

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6.4.1. System Reward ......................................................................................... 42
6.4.2. Rules Knowledge ...................................................................................... 44

6.5. Metagame Detractors - _ __ - ........ 45
6.5.1 . System Punishment ................................................................................... 45
6.5.2. Hassle ........................................................................................................ 46
6.5.3. Metagame Admonishment ........................................................................ 47
6.5.4. Metagame Expulsion ................................................................................ 48

6.6 Other Metagame Techniques ............................................................................. 48
6.6.1. Knowing the Players - - ................. 48
6.6.2. Social Dynamics ....................................................................................... 49
6.6.3. Making Out of Game Comparisons .......................................................... 51
6.6.4. Rebalancing Challenge ............................................................................. 51
6.6.5. Phrasing ..................................................................................................... 53

6.7 Points of Problem ................................................................................................ 53
6.7.1. Death of Non-Player Characters ............................................................... 53
6.7.2. Antagonist Survivability ........................................................................... 55
6.7.3. Unexpected Abilities ................................................................................. 56
6.7.4. Grief Players ............................................................................................. 57

7. Conclusion 58
7.1. Overview of Results .......................................................................................... 58
7.2. Future Work ..................................................................................................... 61
8. References 63
9. Appendix: Gamemaster Notes 66
9.1. GMl Notes ........................................................................................................ 66
9.2. GM2 Notes ........................................................................................................ 98
9.3. GM3 Notes ...................................................................................................... 126
9.4. GM4 Notes ...................................................................................................... 163

List of Figures

A Sample Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheet

Player/Gamemaster Interactions, Hypothesized

 

 

 

Player/Gamemaster Interactions, Revised

Gamemaster Techniques by Frequency and Type

 

vii

12

24

25

30

1. Introduction
As computer games become increasingly sophisticated, there is a movement to

create a stronger element of narrative in gaming. One of the newest fields in generating
narrative-based gaming is the creation of interactive drama. The goal of interactive
drama is to create an exciting but participatory narrative that can be interacted with and
altered by players in a computational space.

The ideal example of this is Star Trek’s Holodeck. The Holodeck is an irnmersive
computerized, 3D digital world in which the user can see, hear, touch, and even taste. In
Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray focuses her writing about the holodeck
specifically on a type of virtual experience called a Holonovel (1998). These
holo“novels,” as played by Captain J aneway on the series Star Trek: Voyager, are an
excellent example of an interactive drama. In the virtual world, Janeway plays a
particular defined character role, and interacts with other synthetic characters in a
dynamically generated story. She is flee to explore the world, interact with the other
characters, and do anything in that fantasy world that serves to a dramatic arc and a story
that is both interesting, and participatory. The world around J aneway structures itself like
a novel; characters that J aneway meets are woven in to an overall story which both she
and the computer are creating.

The holonovel is an example of what some authors see as a potential direction for
stronger story elements in common video games. Video games frequently depend on
interaction with computer avatars in ways which involve, as Chris Crawford explains,
“precise hand-eye coordination, puzzle solution, and resource management skills” (2005).

Many traditional video and computer games have rich and engaging stories that fit

classical narrative structures. These stories may be beautifully constructed, and gradually
told in the context of user interaction, but the player of the game has very few points of
interaction where the story can be meaningfirlly changed (Glassner 2004). The story and
character development typically occurs in the games’ non-interactive sequences, while
the actual game focuses on matters not related to story such as battle with enemies. In
this sense, there is a strong narrative, but the narrative is being told to the player, while
the actual game interactivity encompasses something else. Crawford disparages this type
of interactive narrative, calling it a “constipated story” (2005). The game provides the
player with a form of story which is pre-written, but interspersed with puzzle or combat
sequences; instead of the sequences adding to the story, they serve as obstacles to access
the next story unit and slow the process of storytelling down.

Crawford defines interactivity as “A cyclic process between two or more active
agents in which each agent alternately listens, thinks, and speaks.” In context, he refers
to the listening, thinking, and speaking, as metaphorical, meaning that a computer
substitutes “processes input” for “listening,” but the results are generally the same. A
conversation is interactive if both participants are listening and responding to what they
have heard. A computer game is interactive if the game “listens,” by allowing player
input, “thinks,” by processing that input, and “speaks,” by showing the results of that
input in a way that is a meaningful response to the user. In order for a valuable
interaction to occur, both agents involved in the interaction must show signs that they are
responding to one another in appropriate ways. In order to provide a “deep” interaction,

the method of interaction must engage the user in a profound way (2005). Narrative,

being a fundamental of human experience, is one way to engage the user, but balancing
both interactivity and narrative can be challenging.

As Young and Riedel write, “A central issue in the development of effective and
engaging interactive narrative environments is the balance between coherence and
control” (2003). The users can have some control over the narrative experience, which is
the interactive part of interactive drama. If the user has too much control, the story may
suffer in coherence. If they have too little control, the interactivity element is lost. A
successful interactive drama such as the holodeck would have to create a good story, and
include the key elements of interactivity, maintaining a perfect balance between the two.

An often-overlooked, but important, parallel to the interactive drama is the “Live
Roleplaying Game,” or Tabletop RPG, genre of gaming. This type of game involves the
participant of a group of players and a leadership figure called the gamemaster, whose
role is the focus of this thesis. The players in the game all choose a character role to
portray; with the gamemaster, they develop a story that involves their characters, aspiring
to create a narrative that is interesting for all participants. This hobby lacks the high
technology aspects of the holodeck or even video gaming, and uses in their stead pen,
paper, dice, and other props such as miniature figures for character representation.
Roleplaying games are sold in print form, using instruction manuals to provide a set of
rules for conflict resolution, and generation of character and story. Players play these
games by sitting around a table; they are part board game, part impromptu theater. The
highest authority in the game is given to the gamemaster. Acting as a referee, the

gamemaster has the final say on all conflicts between players of his or her game. Acting

as a storyteller, the gamemaster also has the highest burden of responsibility toward story
creation and player enjoyment (Wizards 2003).

Many approaches to interactive drama use what is called a story director agent to
mediate story (Mateas 1997). The gamemaster, in tabletop play, is the agent that fulfills a
similar role with regard to story mediation in play. Both a story director program and a
gamemaster have the responsibility to create a narrative path for users to follow and to
guide them down that path. The gamemaster has a particular story he or she wants to tell,
but also has to leave this story open to interaction. The gamemaster and story director
both have the responsibility to keep the story flowing and to have it contain an interesting
climax. This parallel has been recognized by other authors, though a quantitative study
on the techniques of gamemasters at work has not been previously done (Louchart and
Aylett 2003, Magerko 2006).

The goal of this thesis is to examine the gamemaster at work. The methodologies
that a gamemaster uses, in balancing control and coherence of story with the freedom of
his players to interact, has much to teach about how future story director programs can
work together with their players to create richly interactive narrative in games. The
strategies used by a gamemaster in creating interactive story can be categorized and

summarized from the observation of gamemasters during play.

2. Related Work

2.1.Narrative Theory

The exact structure of what makes a good narrative is something many scholars

have analyzed for their entire careers. Many types of increasingly complex stories have

been developed in story and on the screen. It is most appropriate for the domain of
roleplaying games, however, to look at the simpler forms of story, particularly those that
are heroic, resemble fairy tales or folk tales, or transfer well in to science fiction.

Joseph Campbell was one of the first authors to study story structure extensively.
He identified a type of story structure called the “monomyth” which exists in many
different cultures. In his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, he outlined its
underlying principles. These tales almost always begin with the hero being called to
action, and a short initial refusal, followed by a meeting with a mentor to show him the
way. The hero of the story then undergoes a series of trials, before being reborn and
emerging triumphantly. In the monomyth, certain types of story events take place in a
certain order, and there are also a few optional story threads such as temptation by evil
(Campbell 1968). Primarily a coming-of-age story, the structure generally applies to epic
stories and has many parallels in Hollywood and video games as well as classical
literature such as the epic poetry of ancient Greece. Glassner analyzes the monomyth
structure by exploring the overall parallels the structure has to the story of the movie The
Matrix as well as the video game The Legend of Zelda. The monomyth structure is also
frequently compared to the original Star Wars movie trilogy, which fits Campbell’s
outline very well (2004).

A Russian author, Vladimir Propp, did extensive analysis of story structure,
studying the construction of hundreds of Russian folktales. Dissecting each story into its
basic parts, the Proppian structure divided these folktales in to basic segments as well as
identifying the character roles common to the tales, such as the Hero and Villain.

Proppian structure has a good deal of variance, but includes a generally male protagonist

who is sent on a quest. He, or she in some cases, is given helpful items by a Donor
character, defeats a trial with strength or cunning, then returns home to receive a reward
or the branding of a hero. This branding is similar to Campbell’s structure’s
transformation or rebirth. The hero of a Proppian tale may also have to unmask a false or

deceitful hero before getting his just reward (Propp 1968).

2.2.Interactive Drama

An Interactive Drama is a type of computer game characterized by both
interactivity, and a strong dramatic narrative. As opposed to typical computer games,
interactive drama focuses on creating a story with deep character interaction and
development. The experience is much like being a character in a play, save that the
dialogue developed by the player is impromptu and the player does not perform any
particular script.

While technological strides help to made to create more believable and lifelike
computer agents and increase language processing and voice recognition, the story script
itself provides a unique challenge to developers in the medium. The story must be
coherent and adhere to good storytelling principles, while at the same time be flexible
enough to allow a true real-time user interactivity. Finding this balance can be the most
challenging part of ID for a designer. Current successful interactive dramas have varying
strengths and weaknesses.

Facade, developed by Mateas and Andrew Stern, is one of the most advanced
examples of Interactive Drama today (Dahlen 2005). It integrates two artifical

intelligence characters, called believable agents; natural language processing for

interactivity; and a complex story script organized to keep a narrative structure. The
story, designed as if it were a short play, follows the rocky maniage of an arguing couple.
The player controls the actions of an old friend who is visiting the couple, Trip and
Grace, in their home for the first time in many years. Using a natural-language
interpreter, Facade allows the player to interact with both Trip and Grace, the game’s
artificial chracters. The game tracks the player’s affinity toward both characters by
watching how the player reacts to their dialogue. It uses a system of story “mix-ins,”
small sections of dialogue which can increase or decrease tension and be dropped in at
any time; and dramatic “beats,” larger units of story; to keep the pace of the drama,
adding new story elements in a naturalistic way with the flow of the character
conversation (Mateas 2002). The goal of helping a failing maniage is very diflemnt than
the usual video game goal of defeating enemies or scoring points. Additionally, deciding
to work to save the marriage is up to the player; Mateas sees this as only one possibility,
trying to encourage multiple plays of the game and using the dramatic structure as a free-
form environment to create different emerging stories rather than seeing saving the
marriage as a victory condition (Dahlen 2005). This is an interactive drama; the story is
the main focus of play, rather than the goals common to most video games where story is
a secondary concern.

The OPIATE engine, created by Chris Fairclough, takes a different approach, by
utilizing the Proppian narrative system to create a more folk-tale-like are for an
interactive story. The player in OPIATE becomes a protagonist that who meet characters
that fulfill many of Propp’s defined character roles. The system attempts to adhere

closely to Propp’s narrative structure. It redefines which character is to perform which of

Propp’s non-hero roles each time it is played, so the actual events of the interactive story
vary each time. The player of the scenario can do what is immediately asked, or explore
various interactive “subplots” designed into OPIATE’s 3D world (Fairclough &
Cunningham 2004).

IDTension, a drama engine developed by Nicolas Szilas, utilizes a simple
dramatic structure defining characters, goals, and the characters’ obstacles to reach those
goals. Stories developed with this engine are set up around a theme that the author
wishes to develop, in the form of a moral stance on an issue. A sample story involves a
murder, where the protagonist, played by the user, believes his wife may be accused, by a
witness, of being at the scene of the crime. The player can, for example, choose to kill
the witness, or to buy him off (2003).

Several things stand in common among the successful interactive drama systems.
All of these systems have character agents, programs with the purpose of developing
character personalities and controlling those characters in believable ways. An
interactive drama system often also has a story agent, sometimes called the drama
manager or story director as above, which develops a narrative structure around the
sequential events in the game. The story director provides the overall story to an
otherwise unrelated event sequence. For example, in IDTension, if the user tries to reach
his goal too quickly, another obstacle will be generated by the program to intervene
(Szilas 2003). Mateas cites the story director in Facade as being responsible for most of
the program’s narrative decisions, such as when to move on to the next phase of the story
(2002). The story director acts independently of the character agents, but provides them

with instructions, creating what is called semi-autonomy, where characters generally

behave in autonomous or self-guided ways unless the story director specifically tells them
otherwise. In Facade, the interactive agents behave according to their own personalities
and goals, but also get instructions from the drama management program, which
occasionally compels them to act in a way that moves the story forward (Mateas 2002).
The story generation system Universe uses an approach that is very similar to the one
employed by Dungeons and Dragons and similar games, assigning numerical statistics to
the various aspects of agent personality, and having the agents generally act according to

those statistics unless otherwise instructed by the story director agent (Lebowitz 1984).

2.3.Interactive Fiction

An early type of video game created for the computer is the text adventure, or
interactive fiction. The original Adventure, one of the first of these interactive fictions,
was a text-based game where the user made decisions while traversing through a
dungeon-like maze. User interaction was driven by typed commands such as “pick up
wand,” and “go north” (Kent 2001). The game owed quite a bit to Dungeons and Dragons
when it was first produced, evident in its setting which was the standard fantasy dungeon,
and the role that the player played which was an “adventurer” within that dungeon
seeking fortune (Aarseth 1997). Later entries to the interactive fiction genre included the
Zork series. Each interactive fiction endeavored to tell an interesting story with the
participation of the player. These interactive stories told fairy tales that the user
participated in, but occasionally bridged with puzzle-solving in the typical video game
structure.

Text adventure games became less popular when graphics became easier and

more efficient to develop. With that change the emphasis on story was also effected, as

creating games based on simpler interactions was easier for these graphical systems
(DeMaria and Wilson 2002). This change in focus results in the type of video game story
most prominent today, where the user may be fed a complete and interesting story in a
serial method, but that user has very few points where that story can be altered by his or

her actions (Crawford 2003).

3. Roleplaying Games

3.1.0verview of Games and Gamemasters

Live action role-play is frequently characterized by high-fantasy dungeon
settings, as its oldest form is the pseudo-war-game Dungeons and Dragons, abbreviated
D&D, whose original edition was published in 1974 (Edwards 2005). The book was
written by Gary Gygax and Dave Ameson, two authors who had an interest in pen and
paper wargames but wanted to incorporate more story into their hobby. Wargames of the
time, and many similar games still popular today, had the players control a small army of
varying figurines, which did battle with the figurines of an opponent’s army. This
figurative battle takes place in a board game environment, where the success and failure
of armies relies on the rolls of several multi-faceted types of dice. Each soldier or unit on
the field of battle has a set of statistics which govern its actions in play, where the object
of the game is simply to defeat the other player’s unit tokens while losing as few of your
own as possible. Wargames differ from war-based board games such as chess, as the
representation of battle is somewhat less figurative. Soliders on the field of a wargame
tend to be sculpted representations of actual soldiers, and the rules used try to create as

realistic a battle experience as possible. The premise of the original Dungeons and

10

Dragons: what if the player controlled just one, personal character, instead of an entire
army? What would that little soldier figurine do if he were alone, and would he have
thoughts or feelings? The idea of investing personality and motivation into a character
portrayed by the player was the genesis of the tabletop roleplaying hobby.

Tabletop RPGs retain a focus on story because of their ability to engage the
players’ imaginations rather than suffering the same limitations as software. Since there
are no graphics involved, the gamemaster simply tells players what they encounter when
moving in to a new place, describing it in terms of all five senses (Rabe 2002, Brucard el
al 1997). The gamemaster provides dialogue for secondary characters as well, adding in
any role needed for story but not filled by a player character. Each player creates a single
character for which he or she has a statistical sheet. The games are sometimes called “pen
and paper” RPGs, because the players characters are enumerated on ink on paper sitting
in front of them as they play. The sheet may tell the player, for example, how fast the
character can run, how smart the character is, how many skills the character has, or how
many attacks the character can withstand before the character is declared dead and
removed from play. An example character sheet, for Dungeons and Dragons Edition 3.5,
is provided here as Figure 1. As in wargames, dice are rolled to gauge the success of
attempted actions such as attacking. The dice are sometimes different from standard and
include many different sizes for different types of randomization. Dungeons and
Dragons system is sometimes referred to as “D20” to signify the 20-sided die used to
check for successful skills and attacks. Sculpted figurines that signify each character,
both player-controlled and GM-controlled, are sometimes used, though with the detailed

character sheets that are common in the games this kind of physical representation is not

11

Figure l: A Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Example Character Sheet

 

 

 

 

 

 

. ... .. ._..._.. _ *' * -k——..~-‘- T——.—r——e“—-— -. _ ..-_- . . ,
{mums and (uh tuft, 1|.»th Nazis
nu 652:0 "mm (use mu: an his ouzt
5’6 3673?: 13:37:31: 323' it ; LJI— 31:08 '
W3 .4.!
W" ”I-" 1!. KW ”P-41MIILJ- CC. II" 11;! VF. W mu L-(J 24.1.
If in 'x‘: J’Jl Ll 2‘] ma. Q“! .3 D h. ’ U‘EII' .ll “7!”: 'I I'( :'.:I I)“: I “'13. 010.1“? "\1' K\.|x7\ 41:. ,I'

‘0 .95.“ p‘.‘

_.....J C Clh'M “Wit

‘ 1 El”?
_ I J h .5.-" It“
. 701". Inn-10 worn 0L”

 

uau mn- swu-cw mar.
rem u.“ auntie! a... In. lumen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

m _.__-C On.“
-; ‘L J (Inna-rm | Ir, }[ j OAK-aim a. Wm.—u—fiw'—n“~wv_
$1.“, "':'_‘ _._..__.,..._%~.—'T 5'": .1 name .- ___._____.,____.__.____
CHA :' 1' l I MK“ I 1 Ohm. ve- ‘ __r-_-__.__.¢—e_.
Danae. «- ____-.___I - -_....__
use m'rv um our fine "'40 DC-u' m~ _- -J. - -- .°.-. ---‘__.____‘ ........-
“var. "com WIN. M wound num- Kenn Mum mum's 0“..."3‘... ,“ ____.____.______.________._____
-:. :1. .1: 1:11:71: on... _. .-.._--__.- .--. ._. ....-. __-,.,_. - ..
. ..._.__.. DCw-r. __.____ _ _- I 0 ._

m; E H E H I new —- —— -———»————- ~-——-—-
. 1 r—__h———__‘_.__‘ o t..." 'M m m.____a_____¢___s.__

:-- C:] [ : i l l E ‘ , OC'AI-Av O n- .___.-—.—-.‘_—___.°——-——.‘
nth-an CM. er ...__...._-.._...._.‘_...._..‘._.._._._.’..___.._.

w «‘v ' . ',.

A‘1Itl [cum ‘0'“ Mfg-o It :C. with“ . :ra ‘- Iir'lu. ' .1.-:11 ”.3 1:10 11:; 5|") OCH-"n. . C- —-.__-_.__._._
. {-mmfl, __ _- -..... -H __ . --., 1..-.-. . ._._‘ DIE-ll Anul - .._.__P——-——-.———__.'—-__.—O__—
- E H H l x cm- - -——»—»—» .—
mm ,_____. .-l=—-"'~ 11:5 ___ [=21 t“— a... .......... - ._ ——’—-——-———'——-‘—
L——-—J l—J L.__._. L_______J o “"1. h- 1- _____.___e .____.______
ON.- a an __._.'__.°_...._‘.—_.‘—-
It!" 00.01168 ICC-I or new -1 I‘ll" . I on“ a new n 0 an e n- . ________‘- o__o_______o____

-' ‘L n ‘E JE WW * ' ‘--‘—-‘

L.__._J J J D tea-1“ I r- ...___.A...____A - I
—-—J -« —- . .-——---—-—
:r—T-Zf. ‘ o 5.. III . W.____o___~o_____o_____
-. 1M1 n 11 1...“--. ~ - . .____.____
Dunn's-.0 have, It. _‘_°._.___.°_°_.

Glue-Mm uni-son"! I' ~————’ 9 ° '
WIVAPON J . . ' . _‘ : Ottawa-seem..— .0 _____..____o,.______.____.______

Gimme-w m - ' ‘ ‘
D Emma '9 ______-.___.'...__.-._._._'___

Glue-non en ___- 0 I -
Gimme...“ en ._______.________ l__..—_.

OL-ne I an ——————-— 0 a -

O In Yum: I re- . J - - -
[Jo-nun m .___-___-____°___..-_—

0,-0- O c‘ _—p v t__'
DMD-n1! n- - _._...-.__......0 ¢_._._-_.._.._..

DM‘tu'. .- ...._..-.—_.‘ ‘_.—_.‘
Ohm“. ..__..______ __ ._.._._....._.__.‘_._._._- ‘ ‘- m
[3me —— -._———---————'«—-—-~'-—-——-—.'———-
(JO-e1.— m -—----—--——-—-v'--——- __.___,__‘..,_______
D!“ I m ._._.__..-__.._........-.____0.___..‘__...._
a”. .1 ____p._—l____o_—.n_
0 figs- 0 m .__......,- m3 -m‘m‘m
01... Ur!“ C an! ___.__l_____0___‘.___.‘._.
o 5,.“ Int-n" I- ,.__ .l. -.._ ._.,e. ...._.. -.o............,e.... ”-—

ARHU-i. an 01‘; “9"" " "—'—“'—‘

09:00 a —P—._. I
-_— m... «- .__.__.-..__....,_....____..-___
mi. 'ALv-I ma... Dominic 0 7“ 3" ‘ —-=---u-"=-’---—-‘—-—-—-‘-—--‘---—-
0w“.- {Ir-he I- m..-..__‘._m‘_._m‘m..-
OUoFu-e e m __-._.-—_-____t.____
Chime-u Lac 0 an __._-—-._—__.-.____..'_.__.°__._.

5“ "- l 1' { paw us run: r» r , - . g _ l.___A—_.‘—_‘
— . —— —— ———-—-—-‘——---————---———
Huh. "MINI. 0* __ ‘‘‘‘‘‘ ’1'- -'—.‘ "'h-‘u-'_—-I-‘_-h-_..m__.l-_
O _ _'—_’._.‘—‘__.

D__________‘___________ __ _____n _o_______..- .

 

 

 

' lieewee‘re-u' mi a—errnn I no}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.r p - .. v a . u
E j m arr-N mutt (AR: r2; '. - """“ 3‘” “'3' “N ”’“3” ~ “ ‘
a O Ire-wt- Non-u h|.~l-'. Alt-a“
w...— - —. - —... ~ .. .-

1' '1 .. use? Joe-c. .. 3’!“ «won - nemretvn out. Dun-V. : en mm
L Swim-a Zia-r- nmae “mo-amwuejorom-
I 3 Min-e- 1

J IV 0 [ ]

u ‘ "a .._.. H._.__...___._..__.... .‘m I.“ {I'meC-“D'luu Cn‘OD-‘lé 0' M’I‘h’l count-4m a!

 

12

always found to be necessary. In a story element that includes combat or exploration, a
map or board can be drawn with erasable ink on a grid-lined sheet to form as a temporary
game board for the figures to inhabit. In a story element that involves sleuthing,
conversation, or another type of interaction where the placement of figurines does not add
to play, the board is ignored and the only method of play is a conversation among the
players and gamemaster, with the occasional die roll made if the use of a character skill is
attempted. In the current climate of roleplaying games, the hobby now includes many
science fiction, modern mystery, horror, and multiple other dramatic genres as well as the
high fantasy for which the hobby is most well-known. In all of these published games,
the role of the gamemaster may be given a different name, but his or her importance in
creating game narrative remains constant (Brucard et al 1997, Wizards 2003).

A typical setup of a tabletop RPG involves a Gamemaster and more than one
player. Four or five players is a commonly suggested number, though often groups can
be smaller or larger (Rosenburg 2002). Louchart and Aylett refer to the gamemaster as a
“guiding semi-authorial function” that directs the flow of a game’s story while allowing
interaction with the players (2003). The gamemaster provides the world and the story, as
well as controlling any character not controlled specifically by players. Each player
brings only a single character, and he or she guides the actions of that character through
the story world the gamemaster provides by making decisions, adding dialogue and
taking actions that contribute to an interactive plot.

Characters under control of the gamemaster rather than players are called the non-
player-characters, usually abbreviated as NPCs (Wizards 2003). Examples include

antagonists such as villains or monsters, allies not controlled by players, or neutral

13

bystanders. In an article specifically on NPC generation, industry author Lee Gold
advises that NPC creation be done by giving the NPCs a long-term goal and developing a
plan that allows them to reach that goal (2002). An NPC ideally seems like a real person
in the story world to the players of the gamemaster’s game. Under the control of the
gamemaster, the NPC acts in ways that benefit either the character’s goals, or the story

structure itself.

3.2.Importance of Narrative

Though individual Dungeons and Dragons characters can be said to have many
different goals, for example, to win fights, survive traps, or map dungeons, the game
itself has no end which is determined inherently by its rules. In many campaigns, the
game finishes when players tire of it and move on to something new. However, if story is
the aim, a gamemaster can get a chance to end a campaign on a high note that will
provide a much more satisfying conclusion. Game designer Aaron Rosenburg
emphasizes this when he writes about roleplaying games and player expectations. “In the
end, the players should feel that the story was good—that the plot was interesting. . .”
(2003) Generating a narrative rather than a mere sequence of events is a collaborative
challenge for all players and the gamemaster.

The Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master ’s Guide refers to two main styles of
roleplaying gaming, with a continuum in between. On one end of the spectrum, some
players enjoy what the Dungeon Master ’s Guide calls a “kick in the door” approach,

where emphasis is placed on combat rather than story, and the player characters kick

14

down the doors of a dungeon in order to move on to the next big fight. On the opposite
end of this spectrum is the more story-oriented style that the Guide calls “deep immersion
storytelling” (2003). While admitting that the “kick in the door” style can be fun if that is
what interests players, most guides on good gamemastering are about how to enrich the
deep story immersion and narrative feel of roleplaying games. An often-cited book of
gamemastering techniques, Robin ’s Laws of Good Gamemastering, speaks of roleplaying
in cinematic terms, evoking “set-pieces” and “plot hooks” as part of good adventuring
structure (2002).

In most cases, the enjoyment of the players in the game is paramount to creating
an excellent artistic story, but players find coherent story a large part of the satisfaction of
play. As explained by Louchard and Aylett,

“The Game-Master's intervention criterion is what is satisfactory for the players

rather than what plot element comes next. The distinction between the two is may

not be evident in the sense that the goal of the story manager is, by providing the

users with an interesting story, to satisfy them on a narrative plan” (2003).

What this generally means is that the Gamemaster is always flee to judge how much
entertainment the players are deriving from a particular story or actions taking place in
that story. If the story is less than satisfactory or if the players would like to pursue a
different path, this is generally encouraged so that the story is more satisfying to their
participation. However, providing an interesting story is intrinsically satisfying to
players, since story coherency engages them.

Other tabletop RPG authors are quick to identify good, dramatic stories as a

primary cause of fun for many players. Steven Long writes that roleplaying actions

15

which detract fiom the story can become a bad thing for the general game (2002).
Roleplaying games always come with a large rulebook and a concrete set of rules to
which the players and gamemaster are expected to adhere, though often gamemasters
may be encouraged to bend the rules, alter the written rules, or ignore rules if the story is
favored by this action (Rosenburg 2002). Gamemasters may bend the written rules of the

system in favor of unwritten rules or more personalized storytelling techniques, such as

the techniques this thesis addresses.

3.3.Two Types of RPG Sessions

There are two general styles of RPG game play, with the location of where the
game is held being the largest difference between them. One type of RPG is done at
home in a long campaign, and the other type done in shorter sessions at gaming
conventions. In a home campaign, the Gamemaster is flee to ad-lib as she sees fit,
pulling together diverse story elements from previous game sessions and catering to the
styles of specific players. Home campaigns are serial, like a serial television series, such
that one story arc may finish while others continue, and the characters involved are the
same fiom one installment to the next. Convention-style games by necessity are less
personalized than home campaigns. Adventure modules, which are pre-scripted
adventures with specific plots and characters, are written by a central unit and
gamemasters are specifically authorized to play them. One example of such a unit is the
Role Playing Games Association, the RPGA, who runs serial world-wide campaigns.
The RPGA provides the rigid modules to gamemasters and gamemasters worldwide are

expected to run them in similar ways without story deviation. Unlike the standard home

16

campaign, it is far less likely that the gamemaster will alter his given story significantly
(Wizards & RPGA 2003).

Though an RPG campaign can in fact go on for many years, the standard seat-
time at a convention is around three or four hours. One coherent story can occur in that
game session which players can enjoy. Simply due to player fatigue and natural time
constraints a home RPG session lasts about as long as an evening, but no more. In long
campaigns, gamemasters create story arcs which are small stories, like beats of a larger
drama or chapters of an interactive novel. An entire story may take place in one session,
or be spread out over the course of five or ten sessions. Segmenting the story slightly
allows the GM plenty of time between games to prepare for the next story chapter,
evaluate what has worked and what has not worked in the current are of story, add to the

story, and make corrections.

3.4.Railroading: The Plot Train

In tabletop gaming, the act of holding players to a prewritten story is referred to as
railroading. Game designer Ron Edwards defines this term as “the practice of a GM
essentially scripting the majority of plot events and structures within a given play session
or series of suc ” (2005). The term was invented for situations where the plot itself may
seem to be “on rails,” rigid with no real course for movement off of the gamemaster’s
particular goal for the story. Railroading is often seen to be a hallmark of story-interested
gamemasters, but in almost all causes, the term is used pejoratively. Players in tabletop
games do not like to be set down one particular story path, and would rather feel that they
are in almost complete control of the game at all times. This is what is meant by

“fairness” of an interactive story; if the players feel as if their actions make a difference,

17

they feel that the story the gamemaster is telling is fair to them. If they feel that the story
would be the same without their participation, the players consider the story to be unfair.
Complete player control, of course, would result in more of a free-form exercise than any
particular story. The challenge to a gamemaster is how to create a good story while
allowing player contribution to make the difference and avoiding railroading when at all
possible.

Dealing with unexpected story actions is described as one of the most difficult
problems of creating an interactive narrative. The gamemaster has to balance these
concerns carefully. Several documented story structures have become common methods
to deal with this problem. One of these is the “branching tree” structure. As defined by
Chris Crawford, this is a structure that attaches a series of choices to story, and follows
each choice point down all conceivable paths (2004). A Gamemaster running a printed
adventure module has access to what is called “Box text”: a story element described in
detail that is, under optimal conditions, guaranteed to happen. The moments of pre-
scripted coherence naturally sacrifice some control. Running an adventure module
becomes an exercise in guiding players from box text to box text, reading each story
element when appropriate and then setting the players fiee in order to find their way to
the next element. A partial branching structure is employed in many of these modules,
with choice points that lead to one set of box text versus another.

Branching structures can become unwieldy quickly if a gamemaster feels
compelled to design a branch for every potential decision point or outcome before the
game even starts, just in case the players should happen to make these choices. For a

longer story, a branching structure is tedious to develop, and unreliable. Robin Laws,

18

with regards to gamemasters who use branching styles, writes: “. . . Some players seem to
expect adventures which are both prepared in advance and allow a large number of
possible outcomes. . . . players can reasonably expect one, but not the other.” He criticizes
many published modules as being “either very loose or very linear” (2002).

Because of the limitations of pre-written adventures, a home campaign does not
always make use of modules, or may make heavily modified use of modules. The result
is a game which is much more fi'ee-form in nature. The plot structure still tends to be
clear, though it has more and more free form story generation. Descriptions can be quite
evocative if the gamemaster was prepared to give them, but often there is a looser
approach to creating atmosphere in conditions were no printed module is used.

The experience at the game table is provided, ultimately, by the gamemaster. The
gamemaster has many exterior tools available to him such as modules and game books,
but the actual talent and story direction comes from the GM. The gamemaster is central
to the experience of gaming and is the ultimate driver of the game’s participatory story.
While doing this task, he or she must carefully balance the concerns of the player with
the concerns of the narrative. Gamemasters use their own techniques to allow this

interaction.
4. The Study

4.1.Methodology

In order to examine the gamemaster at work, I enlisted four different gamemasters
to assist in an experiment. Gamemasters were initially chosen with no particular

preference as to gender, group size, or their preferred rule set. Two male and two female

19

gamemasters participated, with ages varied from between 20 and 50 years. For the
purposes of the experiment, I specifically chose to observe gamemasters running more
than one genre of game, in order to explore a variety of different stories. Two
gamemasters were running Dungeons and Dragons Edition 3.5. Of the other
gamemasters, one ran Chill, a horror game set in a modern, real-world setting. The final
gamemaster ran Star Wars: Living Force, a science fiction game set in the Star Wars
Universe.

Two of the gamemasters, GM-Goliath and GM-Marlene, were running a home-
style campaign. GM-Len, was running convention-style modules only, running two in a
row during the course of the observed session. GM-Corwyn used a combination
approach, utilizing convention modules but trying to stitch them together in a home
campaign story. All four gamemasters ran a gaming session with a standard group for
their type of play. Three of the gamemasters ran games with the set of players they
usually gamed with. The Star Wars gamemaster, who was simulating convention play,
gamed with a mixed group, though all the players were experienced players that he
personally chose.

The sessions were videotaped, paying special attention to the Gamemaster but
incorporating all the players and their actions in the footage. Then, no more than a day
after the game, the Gamemaster was brought in for a second discussion session. The
Gamemaster and I reviewed the footage of the game session, and specific questions were
asked about moments in the game, what the GM was thinking, and about the way he was

incorporating the actions of the players.

20

Game sessions typically lasted around four hours, the average time of a seated
convention session. One of the Dungeons and Dragons groups played for around six
hours. The post-game recap session tended to take around the same amount of time as the
game session itself, but could be slightly shorter in cases where the game had a lot of
downtime action such as tallying character experience points or purchasing equipment.

After the second interview, transcriptions from the audio interviews were made.
These transcriptions are contained in the Appendix of this document. The transcriptions
were coded, marking what techniques the GM was using any time the GM seemed to be
leading players toward particular story elements. The techniques were matched with
techniques mentioned in literature. Unexpected techniques were also marked and
documented. If the reason for player action or GM intervention was unclear from the
audio interview, the tape was matched with the original live game footage for accuracy.
Any time a GM used a particular guiding technique, the technique was marked and coded
into one of several categories. Notes were also taken as to particular trouble spots that
occurred in multiple game sessions, and how different gamemasters handed different

types of problematic situations.

4.1.1. Game Versus Metagame

Metagame means, literally, the game above the game. Something which happens
“metagarne” in the context of a roleplaying game is that which happens above the world
of the game, and within the real world instead, either in an interaction with the system of
rules or between the real people behind the characters (Squire and Jenkins 2003). During
the course of any game, a player character is expected to make multiple decisions. If a

decision is made based on the knowledge of the player rather than the in-game

21

knowledge of the character he is portraying, that would be considered a metagame
decision.

In the case of tabletop role players, metagame concerns influence the way game
decisions are made. It would be ideal in some ways for metagame practices never to be
included in any discussion of technique. In this hypothetical system, all practices in-
game would be self-contained and no metagame play would ever be required, on the part
of either the gamemaster or any players, in order to achieve the desired result. An
examination of the actual data indicates this is impractical, however. Metagame context
becomes just as important in making decisions as game context, and it would be wrong to
ignore it. Gamemaster techniques below are broken into two categories: game, and
metagame techniques. Techniques include those which gamemasters self-reported that
they were using consciously, as well as any techniques empirically observed by watching

and coding the games.

4.1.2. Attractors and Detractors

An attractor is a way of enticing people to behave in the expected way. Typically,
it is a reward offered for expected behavior. In programming, attractors are used to help
guide an agent toward a particular goal or a particular method for achieving his goal.
These become important in the development of virtual agents, such as those in interactive
drama programs. When agents are developed as characters in storytelling environments,
they are usually given set goals and set upon those goals with attractors and detractors to
provide instruction. This is true, for example, of the agents in the 02 architecture (Mateas

1997). In education, attractors are used to help guide learners toward correct answers. In

22

roleplaying, the gamemaster uses specific attractors to guide players to do wanted
actions.

Based on the data, getting players to do things a gamemaster would like for them
to do is not terribly difficult, in comparison to getting them to avoid actions that the
gamemaster does not want them to do. Getting players to avoid pursuing story threads
the gamemaster is unprepared for, however, is generally the essence of keeping the story
on track. Like attractors, observed detractors work in a combination of in-game and
metagame. Unlike attractors, detractors are more difficult to use and employ, and more
often backfire than attractors do. In some situations, a detractor may accidentally occur
when an attractor was intended, which is discussed in the detractor which corresponds
with that attractor.

Ifthe gamemaster is not using attractors to encourage the players to do something
in specific, it is likely that the gamemaster does not have a specific plan for what he or
she would like for them to do. In those circumstances, the players have free reign to
explore the world, and may dynamically generate story elements depending on what they
choose to explore. The gamemaster may occasionally introduce new objects, people, and

places for the player characters to interact with, and develop story gradually.

4.2.Hypothesis

Based on manuals written about gamemastering and game hooks several types of
wanted interactions were identified before games were observed (Laws 2004, Rosenburg
2002, Wizards 2003, Brucard et al 1997). Most of these interactions had to do with how
player characters (PCs) worked among one another, and how they worked with or against

NPCs. Other actions were about player interaction with places in the environment, or

23

 

 

    

 

 

82m 02 ~00 T

589 632.. T
62 8 seen
.83..— 250 T

:35

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

03m oaooaom
3 030

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

o 82m :35 33 T

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

am
335 on 38 as, T

 

 

 

 

 

82.36 on

 

 

 

       
 

 

 

 

2382 3.8 333$ 2.8

 

 

 

8:38:00 aoufinohuou
30255 325 a; £380

 

 

 

 

 

 

3330

 

24

 

 

 

 

 

$25302 .2328.—
2 3m 02335 8 .. 098% 388 case {an

a . E

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

oo 32 on smog

 

35853.»: £33228:— aoanaaefiawxaomsnm “a 9:3:—

 

 

 

 

 

sen—OM53 r

E

as... :85 33 T

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8E Soon—om
a 36

 

 

  

25 82

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~00 32 On—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25

 

 

.Aobnon .3939 .23
82 on .3an 8
.38 _ 9.3 r,
am 35 £3 38380?
683on 00
\
.agnamoz 326:8

 

 

 

 

 

3.2... %

oaoom ,

 

 

 

3.5m £83228:— aouuafioaawtezai "m 2.5mm

 

 

objects that they might encounter, since people, places, and things can all be used as
different story hooks and general ways of interacting with the environment. During the
study, the list was utilized to compare wanted interactions with the interactions players
demonstrated in play. The hypothesis was that a taxonomy of techniques the
gamemasters used to encourage these actions could be developed from these
observations. Some of the techniques gamemasters use can later applied to programming
story director agents for computerized interactive drama, though certain techniques more

easily transfer than others.

5. Observations

Watching games and speaking to the gamemasters in this qualitative study, I
observed a particular set of trends that related to the thesis. The most important
observations are divided into two sections under this main general observation section.
The first section deals with the techniques that gamemasters use to develop story during
play. Results of this are also shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3 at the beginning of that
section. The second, more generalized observation section deals with some common
story elements observed which seemed to serve as the biggest obstacles to balancing

story and interaction.

5.1.Story Breaks and Gamemasters

A story break in this context is any time a player action interfered with the story
the gamemaster was intending to tell. From observation, almost all story breaks that alter

the gamemaster’s plans are accidental on behalf of the player who took the unexpected

26

action. From video observation it is often easy to see when a clear break has occurred
and left the gamemaster in an unprepared position. He or she may pause, wince, check a
chart or diagram, or stall for time to otherwise come up with a way to incorporate the
unexpected action. Every game that was observed had at least one or more moments
where a clear story break occurred. Large breaks occurred between one and three times
per game.

Solving the problem of story breaks, as it turned out, was not really a matter of
coercing the players into taking wanted actions. Most often, it was the matter of
discouraging the players from taking unwanted actions which makes a difference,
preventing the break from occuring in the first place. If the players take an action the
gamemaster has not accounted for, the gamemaster must either invent an entirely new
story to account for those actions, or find some way of attracting the players back to the
intended story path (Rabe 2002). Though some gamemasters have developed their story
design skills to the point where they can incorporate almost any unexpected action into
their story structures, others rely on advance preparation, and those that do so will lose
the benefit of that preparation if they are unable to detract players from taking actions
which that planning did not incorporate. The difference in levels of preparation was a
key difference among the gamemasters observed. From observation, too much advance
preparation can disadvantage a gamemaster, as the gamemaster who seemed to have the
most advance preparation done for her game also handled story breaks in less elegant
ways than those gamemasters who came with less preparation. Some examples of

observed story breaks in games are included in section 6.7.

27

5.2.0bserved Behaviors

The chart of wanted behaviors was adapted after observation to include only those
elements of interaction which were directly and empirically observed during the
experiment. Removal of elements occurred for one of two reasons: either the actions were
never observed, suggesting perhaps an incomplete sample, or, the actions listed were
redundant. For example, the act of detracting players away fi'om being at a specific
location (as shown empirically in one game observed, Star Wars) was in practice a matter
of simply attracting players to a different location.

When a challenge was abstract, such as a puzzle observed in GM—Goliath’s game,
the gamemaster showed no preference toward how long it took for players to solve the
challenge, as long as they were enjoying themselves. This indicates that puzzles in such
games are entirely separate fi'om story. As long as the players were having fun with a
specific puzzle and it increased their enjoyment, there was no particular reason to attract
them toward the gamemaster’s preferred solution for that puzzle. If the puzzle was too
hard to solve or its placement dragged down story, the gamemasters would introduce a
new story element that focused away from the puzzle. The gamemasters also showed no
preference for how an adversary was defeated, as long as the defeat was interesting to
players.

Most players, in practice, seem to respond well to attractors, even obvious ones or
attractors that are not subtle and seem railroaded. Story breaks rarely occurred, therefore,
as a result of not following an attractor. The most compelling and interesting story breaks

instead occurred when a player took an action which the gamemaster had not anticipated

28

or accounted for in his or her narrative design. This will be discussed further in the

section on gamemaster detractors below.

6. Results: Taxonomy of Gamemaster Techniques

6.1.In-Game Attractors

These are attractors which happen in the game world itself and do not rely on
metagame knowledge. Anything that is directly in-character in relation to the world or
how the gamemaster handles the world falls in to this category, including NPC dialogue
and setting details. These techniques are organized in Figure 4: Gamemaster
Techniques by Frequency and Type. All techniques save one were observed during the
experiment and for specific instances related to these techniques please refer to the coded
notes in the Appendix. In the case of the final technique, Expulsion, it is considered the
most extreme and while two Gamemasters interviewed reported having used it in past
games, it was not observed in any of the four current games. The frequency of
techniques is also indicated, including how many gamemasters used each technique, and

how many total times each technique was used.

6.1.1. Instruction

“He hired them to go look at this keep.” The simplest form of attractor observed
during the experiment is surprisingly common to employ, and was used at least once in
every game session observed. Put simply, an NPC agent under the GM’s control asks the
players to do something for him, and the player characters proceed to do it. That

something may be an order fi'om a figure of authority, a favor asked by a friend or even a

29

Figure 4: Gamemaster Techniques by Frequency and Type

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Technique Type Domain GM3 Used Total
Number
Uses
Instruction Attractor In Game 4 10
Inverse Instruction Attractor In Game I 2
Focus Attractor In Game 4 l4
Character Hooks Attractor In Game 12
Spontaneous Attractor In Game 4 4
Conflict
In-Game Reward Attractor In Game 3 2
Presence of Detractor In Game 2 3
Authority
Suspiciousness Detractor In Game 4 6
Lack of Reward Detractor In Game 4 9
Damage Detractor In Game 4 6
Death Detractor In Game 1 2
Fate Other In Game 4 12
NPC Action Other In Game 3 15
System Reward Attractor Meta Game 3 3
Rules Knowledge Attractor Meta Game 3 6
System Punishment Detractor Meta Game 1 1
Hassle Detractor Meta Game 2 4
Metagame Detractor Meta Game 4 4
Admonishment
Expulsion Detractor Meta Game 0 0
Knowing the Other Meta Game 4 4
Players
Social Pressure Other Meta Game 4 4
Rebalancing Other Meta Game 4 1 1
Challenge
Making Other Meta Game 2 2
Comparisons
Phrasing Other Meta Game 2 3

 

 

 

 

 

30

 

stranger, or something the player characters are hired to do, with payment. The PCs feel
incentive to do this task because they are either fiiends or allies with the person who
requested it, for an offered reward for completing the task, or from the sense of curiosity.
Regardless of whether or not bartering is employed, this attractor is the same. Simply
asking the PCs to do a task is not foolproof, but is so simple that GMs rely on it quite a

bit, mostly to good results.

6.1.2. Inverse Instruction

“The ritual has already begun. You can do nothing about it.” The inverse of
the instruction attractor is to utilize it in combination with a reverse-psychology
approach. When this attractor is observed, the GM has a villainous character, or any
character the players do not like and know is an adversary. That character tells the PCs
not to do something, dares them to do it, or tells them it would be impossible to do.

This works well if the character is sufficiently established as a villain. In the case
of the Star Wars game illustrated, the players know fiom a metagame standpoint that a
character in black robes, appearing on a hologram projector, is bad. In-game, where the
technique is used, they also associate this figure on the projector with someone who has
thwarted them before. His recording tells them there is no way that they can return to the
Jedi temple in time to save their allies, and so they are made aware that going to the Jedi

temple to do this is the next logical course of action.

6.1.3. Focus

Players seem from observation to be typically attracted to the most interesting

thing in the room or scene. If the gamemaster describes one area or person in particular

31

detail, the players will approach that area, object, or person, especially if there is nothing
else interesting to look at or do in the area they have arrived. If the gamemaster wants
players to speak to a particular character, having that character have something
interesting about him, such as a dark demeanor, a particular sigil, a strange eye color,
etc., can fiom observation be a strong enough attractor to entice players to approach. In
many cases, simply describing a character more elaborately than other characters causes
the players to realize this character is important: a slightly meta-game version of this
same concept.

A focus is also introduced with rumor-dropping in NPC dialogue. If everyone in
town is discussing the large caravan leaving by the north gate, the players will be curious
to see what it is that everyone is discussing. If one trail sticks out of a description of
otherwise ordinary trails, the players will take the interesting trail. GM-Corwyn used this
attraction method several times: when asking the players to make a choice as to which of
two trails they would take, she emphasized that one trail seemed more interesting and
dangerous. She was confident it would get their attention. GM-Marlene used description
to focus players by describing the important people at a party in more ornate ways than

the background guests.

6.1.4. Character Hooks

Many narrative-driven gamemasters in observation and self-report concentrate
much of their effort on the motivations of the players’ characters. Gamemasters
fiequently self-reported that their favorite methods involved using information about the
players’ characters to write their story. This involves knowledge of the role the player

has taken up, and how that role is likely to act in specific situations. Often, a gamemaster

32

reports that he or she will ask a player, when that player is creating his or her character, to
give a character some kind of fatal flaw that the gamemaster can use later to propel the
story. The gamemaster will then use character motivations, such as threatening a relative
of the player character, or putting a tailor-made adversary into the game for that
character, to spur that character forward. Even in a short game session such as that in a
convention, a character sheet will typically include some kind of character flaw that the
gamemaster is made aware of before play and can exploit.

GM-Goliath had a barbarian player-character in his game, Arkiro, who disliked
magic. Because of this, putting a magical book into the game and having one of the
villains carry it marked her as a target for the barbarian to kill. A player-character in
GM-Marlene’s game, Leigh, would always do her best to prevent tragic things from
happening to couples who were in love. When GM-Marlene put a dating couple in
danger, she knew that this action would cause Leigh to get involved in the fight and kill
the monster threatening them.

This attractor works because the characters that players portray in roleplaying
games tend to be very well-defined. Even in simpler or more primitive “kick in the door”
style play as mentioned in the Dungeonmaster ’s Guide, characters have a certain
alignment variable that will serve as a gauge to predict their actions (Wizards 2003). A
character whose sheet marks him as Good should be more likely to take heroic actions
than one who is described as Neutral. The more narrative-oriented the game is, the more

well—defined the player character’s role will be.

33

6.1.5. Spontaneous Conflict

In observed game play situations, spontaneous conflict is placed into the game by
a gamemaster who senses his story has gotten boring, and wants an instant way to prod
the players to taking action. The gamemasters self-report adding conflict to keep the
story in motion. Most often, this conflict occurs in the form of a physical attack, such as
having a monster jump in to the characters’ path so that they can fight it. The player
characters will be motivated to do something in response, usually a combat action where
they fight back so that the creature will not kill them. Like other types of roleplaying
conflict, spontaneous conflict is not always physical. It can also include a mystery
dropped in to the game which will provide a new story are for characters and force them
to think or look for clues.

In GM-Goliath’s game, characters who were not engaged in action were attacked
by a Carrion Crawler monster that leapt out of a pit in the floor. In GM-Marlene’s game,
a character got an unexpected phone call, telling him that a fiiend had suddenly died, and
was possibly murdered. Both of these spontaneous occurrences were attractors to

particular actions: fighting back, in the first case, and investigating, in the second.

6.1.6. In-Game Reward

An In-Game Reward is any reward given to players which is not specifically
designed to interest one particular character. These include the more general attractors
such as treasure items, and in-game money, as well as slightly less tangible rewards such
as the favor of an NPC. In-game rewards given by NPCs are usually accompanied by
some form of Instruction as to what the players must do to receive the reward, such as the

NPCs in GM-Corwyn’s game who hired player characters to do favors for them with the

34

promise that they could keep any miscellaneous treasure they should happen to find.
Character Hooks are more common than these general Rewards in games where the
gamemaster has specifically tailored the story to the characters. In Dungeons and
Dragons games, a standard method of payment for a successful adventure is that the
player characters may keep any treasure that they find. This was employed by both of the

Gamemasters who ran the D&D system.

6.2.In-Game Detractors

6.2.1. Presence of Authority

“Kai Adi Mundi walks into the room.” In this detractor observed during play, a
figure of authority that the players respect tells them not to do something. Just the
presence of such an authoritative figure is enough in many cases to prevent otherwise
errant behavior. The players do not want to take unwanted action around an important
authority figure, so they are on their best behavior and are more likely to go along with
suggestions. The players also know that the authority figure is very powerful and could
easily destroy them, so they do not attack him or her.

In GM-Len’s game, a powerful Jedi master, as mentioned above, was used as an
NPC. Player characters know they cannot kill the Jedi Master because he is an irnportant
character, and so, they are humble and careful when he is around. The players were even
observed joking as to how much trouble they could get in if they did not behave carefully
in that character’s presence. GM-Marlene used a similar technique with an NPC. By
having Father Andrew, a church figure that the player characters respect, express his

disappointment that they had killed the villains in a previous adventure instead of

35

arresting them, GM-Marlene made it less likely the player characters would kill in

subsequent adventures unless they had no other choice.

6.2.2. Suspiciousness

“I turn the mirrors against the wall.” If an object looks dangerous, players in
observation will avoid messing with it. This detractor in a way the opposite of the Focus
attractor, and involves using focus in a particular way to explain why interacting with
something may be a bad idea. For example, in GM-Len’s game, an evil-looking table
was avoided by the player-characters for fear of bodily harm should they do much with it.
In GM-Corwyn’s game, a book the characters found was full of evil spells, to discourage
the players from interacting too much with it. A gamemaster may make an object
suspicious if, for example, he or she wants the players to give it away rather than interact
with it.

This detractor can sometimes occur unintentionally if a focus attractor is
employed incorrectly. This happened in GM-Goliath’s game, where a very interesting
room that the gamemaster had prepared to entice the players ended up detracting them
instead. A room full of mirrors faced the players, and they were very intricate, seeming
from prior evidence to be both mirrors, and gates. Supposing the gates lead to areas that
were dangerous or full of monsters, the players turned the mirrors against the wall instead
of using them or examining them closely.

This is one of the most common detractors that seemed to be employed in the
games. Gamemasters seem to understand that if an object they introduce even seems
suspicious, players will be reluctant to interact with it. The fact that the detractor can be

employed unintentionally, when focus or enticement is instead intended, tends to fiustrate

36

some gamemasters. Game author Steven Long refers to this kind of player behavior as

“the demon practicality.” (2003).

6.2.3. Lack of Reward

“You don’t find any useful information.” If nothing happens at all from taking an
intended action, clearly it was not the right action to take, and players in the observed
games would desist. GM-Marlene used this detractor when her earlier spontaneous
phone call threatened to send her main storyline off-track. She had not fully prepared to
handle the murder plot that she had briefly introduced that night, and wanted her players
to focus more on the conflict with the villain she had extensively prepared, a zombie.
Thus, when the detective character, Frank, tried to find security camera footage of the
accident that had caused his fiiend’s death, there was no such footage to be found. This
was a subtle indication that GM-Marlene was not ready for him to follow this lead, and
followed up by a phone call fiom another character that aimed to guide him back to the
story at hand.

Most GMs do not mind if a player spends time on a red herring, however. In
GM-Goliath’s game, the players spent a good deal of time in a room that was trapped, but
lead to no interesting treasure. They spent time in this area because it was elaborate and
interesting, a Focus attractor, but the only detractor in place was a lack of reward for
engaging with it. They gave up eventually as they were not getting any results, but the
gamemaster did not mind the digession from the main story as long as his players were

having fun with the red herring.

37

6.2.4. Damage

“As the spores fly up, you cough and choke. Minus one to your con.” Damaging
the character, often physically, is an immediately effective way to prevent him from
doing that which caused the damage, or at least, continuing to do something which has
already damaged him once. In the above example, the constitution-based damage was a
detractor that prevented the barbarian character in GM-Goliath’s game from moving a
spore-infested couch. GM-Corwyn also used this detractor when she prevented the
player characters from leaving a particular area by striking them with a fatigue-based
spell effect when they attempted to walk away.

Other gamemasters reported that they favor mental or emotional “damage,” tying
this in to the hooks that players provide for their characters. Emotional damage is,
however, a large part of story, and not always something that should be intentionally
avoided. Without some sort of damage, mental or physical, a story has no conflict and is
uninteresting. Like the practicality problem mentioned above, some players will be shy
to walk in to situations where damage of any type may occur to their characters, so
damage as a detractor must be employed in such a way that it does not prevent characters

fiom continuing to act in interesting ways.

6.2.5. Death

The most extreme form of in-garne detractor is killing the character entirely,
during or before he takes a game-breaking action. Gamemasters all self-report being in
situations where a character died during the course of the game, either in a game where
the gamemaster was a mere player or when the gamemaster was in fact the GM. During

one of the observed sessions two player characters were killed. Gamemasters

38

interviewed mentioned they did not like to kill characters, but would not hesitate if the
player had done something that merited it.

GM-Goliath tells a story of when he had no choice but to use death as a detractor.
Two player-characters in a previous game started an argument that could not be broken
up. The fight resulted in the death of another character who stepped in the middle, trying
to break it up. The gamemaster at this point had enough of the argument, and had a spell
misfire kill both arguing characters as well. In the observed game sessions, GM-Goliath
was the only GM who had characters die during his session. The first death that occurred
was unintentional, and caused a visible story break which the GM had to alter his plans to
resolve. The second death was not used as a detractor but happened in battle; the
gamemaster called this death “appropriate” as it served the story. Therefore, while death

can be used as an attractor, it can also be a positive element of story.

6.3.0ther In-game Techniques

6.3.]. Fate

This is the type of technique which Chris Crawford refers to as a “F oldback.” In
a foldback, or using Fate, no matter which choice the players make in a branched
situation, the results are similar to what the gamemaster was already planning to have
happen. It allows the players to make a decision, but that decision is illusory because no
matter what choice is made, the final result is similar (2005). The use of the fate
technique was also observed and self-reported during the experiment.

In the example above, GM-Corwyn used this method regarding the trails the

players chose to take. If her initial attraction method of describing the trail as dangerous

39

and interesting failed to get the players to go down the trail, she indicated that they would
have encountered the same adventure on the less-interesting trail anyway, regardless of
their choice. GM-Marlene also employed this technique to some degree. The player
characters planning a wedding ceremony had to choose which hall they would have it at.
An NPC suggested a venue, but this particular location worked well in to the GM’s plans
of having it be attacked by a zombie monster. If they had chosen a different hall instead
of the suggested one, that hall would have still been attacked.

Despite the fact that using fate removes real consequence from player choice, this
does not seem like railroading at all, if done correctly. In fact, the notion that this
removes a certain aspect of player choice does not really occur as much to gamemasters
who employ it as simply part of generating story. Roleplaying game author Robin Laws
presents one of his ideal game structures with nearly the same diagram that Crawford
uses to display an example of foldback (2003).

This technique does can seem unfair to players if the option of replay is presented.
Using Fate attractors work very well for tabletop games because every tabletop game
session is designed to be played only once by the same group of people creating an
emergent story. If the player realizes that his or her decision did not influence the
outcome, he or she will feel cheated instead of rewarded. This is one attractor that works
very well in tabletop but poorly in a computer-generated system, since most computer-
generated systems are designed to be replayed multiple times to get the full effect. Fate
attractors are sparsely employed in written modules, which tend to use the classical
branching structure of old-style interactive games instead of relying on fate. This is

because game modules are, indeed, likely to be played multiple times, and though they

40

are not designed to be played multiple times by the same group, cross-talk between
different RP groups that have run the same module ensures that the module will be

regarded as poorly-written if it relies too much on fate.

6.3.2. NPC Action

In observation, non-combat action from an NPC may provide attraction or
detraction just by giving the players a small indication what is best to do next. This is
typically observed as a combination of in-game approaches. In GM-Marlene’s game, a
player-character’s NPC sister invited everyone to a party, providing Focus to the venue
and a potential Instruction that they should go. In another circumstance, an NPC putting
herself in danger caused a player reaction. The NPCs will abort their current action if the
GM believes that a different action would make a more interesting story, or, they will
begin action at a time the gamemaster finds it to be dramatically interesting. The
gamemasters report that they use personal judgment if deciding if an action is more
dramatically interesting than the originally planned action.

Many concrete examples of this occurred throughout play. In GM-Golaith’s
game, a situation occurred where players seemed uncertain as to how to proceed. The
gamemaster seemed to feel the story was getting bogged down, and purposely placed an
NPC in a room where the NPC would not have initially have been. Using an invisibility
spell, the Halfling NPC snuck around the area and mysteriously opened doors, giving the
players a reason to follow him and solve the mystery of his arrival in a way that advanced
the storyline. In GM-Marlene’s game, the actions of an impulsive but helpful NPC put

her in the path of a monstrous villain at a dramatically convenient moment. This gave the

41

player characters the impetus to rescue her before the monster killed her or carried her
away, where otherwise they may have not realized that the villain was present.

In observed use, the more important the NPC is to the story, the more personal
autonomy that NPC seems to have to act according to the NPC’s designed goals.
Complicated NPCs may have sheets that enumerate their abilities, strengths, weaknesses,
and other details about their personality and are similar to the sheets used by players.
These primary NPCs are treated similarly to player characters and are positioned by the
gamemaster to act mostly according to their predefined goals. If the NPC is not important
to the story, the NPC has less of his own personality and is instead used as a filter for the
gamemaster’s needs and wishes. Many gamemasters rely on these “secondary” NPCs to

get the job done where voicing the opinion of the general population is needed.

6.4.Metagame Attractors

6.4.1. System Reward

“Good job. Take an action point.” A relatively new system for encouraging
players to play along is to offer a predetermined metagame reward for an action the
gamemaster likes. This is most often a moment of good in—character play or, in heroic
games, a moment of self-sacrificing bravery, which GMs like to reward. Three out of the
four gamemasters observed had some form of this; even if the rules system they were
using did not originally, it was added as a house rule. These were often called “drama
points” or “action points,” and sometimes represented by chips or markers handed out to
players. They can be spent for bonuses to a roll, a special ability, or a re-roll in a tight

situation later, depending on the GM. In GM-Goliath’s game, he allowed players to use

42

them to emulate a feat they did not have. In GM-Marlene’s game, players could use them
to negate the results of 3 “Fear” roll on the dice that would have otherwise forced their
characters to run. The tokens are awarded infrequently and are seen as a strong incentive
if they are given out.

In many ways, offering numerical points for a job well done seems like a step
backward. However, players like to be rewarded, and getting an immediate benefit for
doing something the gamemaster regards as good encourages additional good behavior.
Sometimes these bonus points are handed out for being clever or solving a puzzle
quickly; a metagame reward on top of the in-game reward for a good action. The points
can also be handed out if a player does something that benefits another character with
detriment to himself. This is a way of preventing self-damaging actions fi'om always
being a detractor.

An example of using a self-damaging power for a metagame reward occurred in
GM-Len’s Star Wars game, where a player sacrificed an ability that he could use only
once to bring another character back to life. The system gave him a metagame reward for
this in the form of an action point. This was a particularly interesting example, because
reviving the character who was about to die was not considered in the write-up for the
module; for more on this, see the section on reviving characters, below.

Some gamemasters reported that they felt it was not interesting if a hero fails in
the most climactic moment of an otherwise exciting story; in most tabletop games, the
story is over near the end of the evening’s session. Given that, the ability of the players to
use the action points earned at the start of play in a later situation benefits the dramatic

are near a story’s climax. Those players that earn action points tend to save and spend

43

them near the end of the story, when the stakes are highest and success contributes more

positively toward the narrative.

6.4.2. Rules Knowledge

If a player is aware of the rules of the game, and knows which actions are most
likely to net rewards versus other actions, he will be more likely to take actions which he
believes will provide a reward. The more rules a game system has which are visible to
the player, the more likely this becomes. For example, in Dungeons and Dragons, most
players are aware of all of the rules the gamemaster utilizes, as well as the different
weaknesses and strengths of the monsters. Since combat rules are complicated, it is not
always needed for a player to know every nuance of the rules before playing the game,
and it is expected that the gamemaster will helpfully fill in any gaps in knowledge the
player has. In some cases it is also disadvantageous to story for the player to know the
rules governing his or her actions, such as for example the weaknesses of a particular
monster he or she is fighting, if it is not reasonable that his or her character would know
those weaknesses. The Dungeon Master ’5 Guide warns against showing too much
information to players, but since the information is in print, it is typically accessed by
everyone at the table (2003). Having knowledge of the rules affects the behavior of
players, even if they try not to let it do so. During combat, the players are generally aware
of all the rules that are used to guide their actions. They are likely to take actions which
will net them a good result, as long as they can find some way to justify those actions in
character. The Dungeon Master ’s Guide says that gamemasters should discourage
metagame decision-making when possible. On the other hand, it also mentions that

players need the ability to check rules and charts, particularly in combat situations, and in

order to do this the players need to be aware of what mechanics govern that action
(2003).

GM—Goliath gave a character a choice as to whether a revival spell would work on
him or not. Rather than strictly going by the results of a die roll, he presented use of the
spell as a dream sequence where the character had the opportunity to go into a glowing
light, where he heard the voices of his friends, or to follow the voice of his now-dead
mentor in to a dark cavern. In this dramatic sequence, the character chose to go in to the
light This is in fact a use of metagame as an attractor; since the GM did want the
character to be revived, he relied partially on the fact that the player would, out of
character, recognize the result of either offered choice. Another more typical example of
a metagame attractor in this same game was during a battle with a certain monster called
a pudding. Metagame, the players know that bladed weapons do not damage this
creature. In-game, they attacked the creature once, and then their characters all realized
this was futile. The gamemaster praised them in the interview for being willing to take
an action they knew would backfire, but thought their sudden discovery they were wrong

in using their swords may have happened a bit too quickly.

6.5.Metagame Detractors

6.5.1. System Punishment

Just as action points reward and encourage good behavior, penalty points can be
used to punish and discourage bad behavior. The Star Wars system used in GM~Len’s
game has an element called Dark Side Points which are the opposite of action points. If a

player accumulates more than a few of these points, he may lose his character to the dark

45

side and be removed from play. This bars him from taking evil actions, because the
player does not want to be removed for a metagame reason.

This kind of detractor, if it is point-based, does not prevent the player fi'om taking
an unwanted action once or twice. During observed play the gamemaster offered a Dark
Side point to a player not for taking an action he thought would break the game, but to
see if he would take the action anyway even with knowledge of the penalty. The first
time a Dark Side point was offered, the player took the point, but, the second time he
attempted a more dangerous and unwanted action, he decided not to take further points
and backed down. Like in-game damage, metagame punishment points are a way to

prevent repeated story offenses.

6.5.2. Hassle

In the case of hassle, another detractor observed and categorized during the
experiment, the player is not forbidden from taking an unwanted action, but the player
knows, doing so will result in consequences which are annoying, governed by arcane
rules in the game, or not worth the bother. This detractor is the opposite of the Rules
Knowledge attractor. Using only metagame concerns such as mechanics, the player is
detracted from taking an action.

In GM-Corwyn’s game, there was a ghost in the basement of the keep the player
characters were exploring. The players had the option of killing the ghost with their
magical weapons, or allowing for him to atone for his sins, as he would then cease being
a ghost. Killing the ghost in the keep may have not been the noblest decision, but when
compared to the difficult rules hassle of trying to get him atonement, it was much simpler

and provided larger immediate reward.

46

Three of the four interviewed gamemasters reported that they acknowledge this
detractor but try not to use it. Sometimes a Hassle detractor is employed accidentally,
when the gamemaster would rather see a player take a more interesting action but the
rules for interesting actions are hard to understand compared to the rules for simple ones.
In some roleplaying games, there are minute rules to govern every potential action that
the player may decide to take, while others leave making up such rules up to the
gamemaster. GM-Marlene for example reports that she does not like the rules for
disarming an opponent in Dungeons and Dragons, and tries to avoid using them; she
favors systems with more fluid rules. Some gamemasters try to rewrite diffuth rules, or
reward players for being accepting of a hassle by offering a System Reward like an

Action Point if a player chooses a dramatically interesting action.

6.5.3. Metagame Admonishment

An extreme form of metagame detractor is to simply tell the player, out of game,
not to take the action he is trying to take. This, obviously, is less than elegant. However,
saying something to the effect of “this happens, no matter what you do, so stOp” was
needed in the case of GM-Corwyn’s game to get it back on track when characters were
repeatedly attempting a futile action. The ultimate goal of the other detractors listed
above is to avoid using Metagame Admonishment as much as possible. However, a
quick metagame chat happened once in every game observed, indicating that this

technique is hard to avoid using altogether.

47

6.5.4. Metagame Expulsion

Expulsion occurs when a player is kicked out of a game entirely. Naturally, it did
not happen when observed, though some gamemasters had stories to tell about players
whom they had expelled. Gamemasters report it is best to combine this metagame
technique with in-game consequences, such as a character death, to keep the story

progressing smoothly as well despite metagame interference.

6.6.0ther Metagame Techniques

6.6.1. Knowing the Players

In post-game interview, all gamemasters said something to the effect that it is
crucial to know the wants and needs of your individual players, in order to provide them
with the best experience for their personal tastes. A good gamemaster will try to second-
guess players by their individual natures, at least enough to anticipate their actions (Laws
2004). All metagame leading techniques are derived from the art of trying to predict
human actions, but many gamemasters try to predict the actions of their specific players
rather than simply players in general.

GM-Goliath, for example, knows that one player in his game prefers to play
support characters, and does not like to be put in to situations where she must lead the
group. Another player, he says, can be counted on to take action in the story with only a
little prodding, when others are tied up in cross-player arguments. He can use these
attitudes to his advantage to write his intended story script.

GM-Len tends to run convention games often, and in a convention situation, the

potential attitudes of the players are often unknown, as they sit down at the table as a

48

group of strangers to one another, and to the gamemaster. Some superficial observations
may, however, still be used to predict them. Even in convention play, players oven
reveal preferences, making statements like, “I’ve never played this game,” or “I only play
wizards.”

There is another, slightly less obvious reason for getting to know one’s players
well, outside of simply predicting their moves. As Robert Cialdini mentions in his book,
Influence: Science and Practice, the more we like someone, the more likely we are to
comply with that person’s requests, explicit or implicit (2001). Gaming is a social
activity; those who game together either begin because they are friends who find an
activity that they all enjoy or become fi'iends because they are able to bond over a
mutually-agreed-upon activity. Game groups typically like one another because they all
have something in common with each other, a love for roleplaying games, and they enjoy
each other’s company in that context. “We like people who are similar to us,” Cialdini
writes, and those who play the same game together at least have the love of the game in
common. Therefore, getting to know one’s players both in and out of game can improve a
GM’s performance. The players become, or begin as, the gamemaster’s close associates

and friends, and therefore are inclined to go along with the gamemaster’s suggestions.

6.6.2. Social Dynamics

The game is ultimately a group dynamic of players, and most players do not want
to ruin the good time of other players, and will go along with the story they seem to be
deciding on as a group. By default, that automatically puts authority in the hands of the

gamemaster, since the social norm is that the gamemaster is the leader of the troupe.

49

Friendship between players and the gamemaster increase social pressure for the players to
all cooperate.

The “barfight device,” commonly cited as a cheap way of beginning a long-
lasting campaign by getting a group together, works because of social pressure on the
players (Brucato et al 1997). In this circumstance, the players know out of character that
their characters need to meet up and work together, and a good set of players are not
going to be difficult about this. So, the gamemaster sets up a situation where there is
external in-game conflict on the players, such as a fight in a bar, and the player characters
will typically group together naturally. This is considered very trite in gamemastering
circles, but it works well enough, though the reason that it does work, out of character
social pressure, is never mentioned. Having all of the player characters initially meet in a
bar because they were looking for work is the way that GM-Corwyn originally organized
her party, though she did not resort to the fight device. The effect of social pressure is not
self-reported by other gamemasters, but is more evident in the tapes themselves, when
players look around the circle for cues as to the potential reactions other players will have
to their decisions.

The physical presence of other players not only encourages a player to follow the
rules, it also discourages him from breaking the rules to ruin everyone else’s good time.
Any player that is in a game to have fun with the group may be detracted from a game-
breaking action if they feel it would ruin the experience of the other players at the table.

Players are attracted toward actions that they perceive would strengthen group solidarity.

50

6.6.3. Making Out of Game Comparisons

GM-Marlene used this trick in particular, when describing NPCs or locations; a
fast way of making situations seem familiar to the players on a meta level is by
associating them with a particular actor, genre, setting, or anything else with which the
players themselves might be familiar. If a room in a dungeon, for example, is similar to a
room depicted in an adventure movie, or other media element the players are familiar
with, the players will approach it with the mindset that they are in the same situation
depicted in that movie. The GM uses this technique metagame by referring to carefully
selected metagame comparisons in a way that facilitates the action she would like players
to try.

Working with a published or well-known setting makes this trick easiest to
employ. Since GM-Len used the Star Wars setting, it was implied that he would prefer
things be resolved in a manner that reminded the players, and him, of the Star Wars
movies. This naturally lead to more movie-like behavior in battles, and problem-solving,

since making things feel just like Star Wars was within the players’ expectations.

6.6.4. Rebalancing Challenge

“Failure is usually boring. It is the credible but unrealized threat of failure that is
interesting.” This is a quote from one of Robin Laws’ articles, which GM-Marlene
quoted back almost verbatim during her post-game interview (2005). The philosophy of
this quote is that repeated failures are not fun for players and do not make a good story.
Andrew Glassner, who discusses adaptive difficulty in gaming systems, phrases this
philosophy by saying “Trying and dying is no fun.” (2004) On the other hand, the threat

of failure is very important to build excitement, or else the challenges are too easy, and

51

fail to make an interesting story. The challenge level in every way must be enough to
keep the players engaged. It must threaten their characters visibly, but not so much as
they are failing every turn.

In order to do this correctly, gamemasters report that they are watching their game
carefully on the meta level, taking constant measures of how well the characters seem to
be doing to keep up with their story. This metagame concern then reflects changes made
to the in-game world, often on the fly. A new monster may be added to a future
encounter if the encounter before it was too easy. Some traps may be removed depending
on whether the players can handle them.

GM-Corwyn removed a trap that was originally going to be on one of the boxes in
her dungeon. Since the team’s trap-checking character was absent, having them
encounter a trap when she wanted them to receive the treasure in the box would have
been punishing them for an action she intended them to take, and “unfair,” in the sense
that it puts an obstacle in the way of the story. GM-Marlene added a new power to her
villain to create additional suspense and increase the challenge of defeating it, where
otherwise a particular player action may have made it unrewarding because it was too
easy. GM-Len rebalanced challenge on the fly multiple times during his own game
session, even altering the challenges of different obstacles depending on which player
was attempting to surmount them. “I’m a sofiball GM,” he stated, but he also adds that
pretending to play against the players when you are actually on their side can add to the
players’ sense of enjoyment when they finally overcome the obstacles you have

presented.

52

6.6.5. Phrasing

In observation, the way that questions are worded becomes an important
metagame factor. Some gamemasters reported that they choose their words or tone of
voice carefirlly, and others noticed while watching video of their games particular things
about their styling and posture. When GM-Marlene asks a player if she is going to attack
a foe, she gives her a hint as to her preferred action by the way she phrases her question.
She wants to hint at what she would like to see, so, instead of asking, “Where are you
moving?” she asks, “Are you moving in the general direction of the zombie?”
Gamemasters may also use different tones of speech, word patterns, or accents for
different NPCs to promote their players liking, or disliking, those NPCs depending on

what is best for the story.

6.7.Points of Problem

These are the most commonly observed bad or unwanted behaviors in the sessions
witnessed, and what Gamemasters in interview said about them or what they did to solve
them in garneplay. They deserve special situational mention because they happened more

than once, even with only four games observed.

6.7.1. Death of Non-Player Characters

In two out of the four games observed, a non-player ally was intended to die as a
story mechanism, but the players insisted on reviving the ally using mechanisms
available in the game. The “dramatic last words,” which may be a common device in film
and classic story structure, are a difficult device to employ in a tabletop game, as it can

probably be assumed that if the players can take action to revive an ally or prevent his

53

death altogether, they will do so. Campbell lists the death or passing of a mentor as one
of the key components in a classic heroic narrative (1968). In observed games, this device
was difficult to employ in a lasting way.

The two occurrences of this situation had vastly different results. GM-Corwyn’s
players found a sick and dying elf NPC along the roadside. Ramus, a player character in
the group, immediately tried to use healing magic on the elf, but since the elf was only to
choke out his last words, a warning, and then expire, the GM did not want this intended
action to take effect. GM—Corwyn responded by blocking the player’s action, first having
his ability not work properly, then, when Ramus kept trying, having the elf beg to be
allowed to die, and then, as mentioned above, saying out of character that the action to
revive him would get nowhere. In interview the GM responded that the elf was diseased
and, if left alive, would eventually rot painfully. His asking to be allowed to die now was
not necessarily illogical or out of character. However, the extended attempt to invalidate
the player’s actions caused initial dissatisfaction, and it was clear the player felt
railroaded into leaving the NPC to die, despite his wishes.

GM-Len took a different approach. A Jedi master had been run through with a
blade and was speaking her dying words as was written in the initial module. However, a
player had access to a power that would allow him to revive the dying woman, and he
used it right away. GM-Len decided not to invalidate this action, and instead, let the Jedi
live. Aside, GM-Len remarked to the players openly that the module had not even
accounted for this scenario, which he believed from past experience to be an oversight on
behalf of the module writer. In interview he replied that this action was especially

interesting since the next module in the series was supposed to follow directly after this

54

Jedi’s death, and was a story about getting vengeance for her slaying. Now, she had not
been slain at all, removing the revenge motive and added hooks entirely. In a home
campaign, the GM would be free to alter the tasks of the PCs into something different,
but at conventions, modules are designed to be run as written. GM-Len blamed the story
break here on the failure of the module writer to recognize that some characters may have

revival ability.

6.7.2. Antagonist Survivability

An antagonist is another important part of classical story structure, in particular
the Proppian narrative (Propp 1968). However, a recurring villain can also be a difficult
character to use in a violent campaign. Gamemasters interviewed report that if the
players have the ability to attack to destroy their adversary, most often, the players will
do just that, ending a rivalry long before it really has a chance to start. This being a
commonly recognized problem of the genre, all Gamemasters polled had the same
advice, stating that if a GM does not want his players to kill a villain, he or she will never
let the players get close to that villain.

Techniques in use for this are varied during game observation. In Star Wars, it
became simple enough to establish a villainous character by having him appear in
holographic projections wherever the characters encountered his work. The players knew
that the evil emperor was already one step ahead of them, as he appeared as an image,
taunted them about being too late, then set off some kind of mechanical trap all with the
players never actually encountering him physically.

In Dungeons and Dragons where there is no high technology, magic may be key.

For example, a villain may send waves of undead or minions for the player characters to

55

chop down, serving as shields so he may make his escape. In GM-Goliath’s session, he
gave his villain access to a Dimension Door spell. This magic allowed her to teleport
away from the scene of a fight with minimal preparation if she was injured, though she
was only able to do it once. When the players encountered her again at the end of the
session, she was killed. The GM had intended to use her again at a later time, but he
allowed the players to kill her instead, feeling that they had earned it; he said that to save

her from death at this point may have made the players feel cheated.

6.7.3. Unexpected Abilities

Observably, it can be difficult for a gamemaster to rebalance challenge, as per the
metagame technique, when the advantages the players have in a situation come as a
surprise to the gamemaster. A character may, for example, have an ability written on his
sheet that the gamemaster forgot that he had there, or character may have a useful item
that the gamemaster forgot to account for in his or her scenario design. In this problem, a
player character has an advantage they forgot to mention to the GM, but which cannot be
taken away from the player easily in the logical context of the story. One example of this
was security cameras in GM-Marlene’s game; the gamemaster had forgotten that the
character had access to local security cameras or the ability to check them for
information. If he had been easily able to track the monster with technology, this would
have made it too easy to defeat and disrupted the story the GM was trying to write. In the
case of GM-Marlene, she decided to remove this advantage with a Lack of Reward so the

scene could continue as she had planned.

56

6.7.4. Grief Players

A grief player, or Killer is defined as a player who takes delight in causing
problems for other players — what causes them to enjoy the game most is for others to
enjoy it less (Bartle 1996). In tabletop gaming, the concept of a grief player can extend to
one who griefs not only other players, but the gamemaster. The only goal of a story
griefer is to find the place where the story can be broken, and to break it, demolishing the
work of the gamemaster for his or her own amusement.

Most gamemasters interviewed had past experiences with story griefers they were
happy to share. GM-Corwyn, for example, discussed a grief player in her past that was
infamous for getting kicked out of other gaming circles for stealing magical items and
making a worse time for the other players. In this case, she detracted him by giving him
a cursed item, a Damage detractor, and he was later removed from the game: Explusion.

No story griefers played in any of the observed games, however. Everyone
seemed very willing to show respect to the Gamemaster’s story and follow along with the
plot he or she had in mind, deviating only if it was unintentional or the luck of the dice.
Grief players are typically considered rare, and make up, for example, only around three
percent of the population of an MMORPG (Foo and Koivisto 2004). It was therefore
perhaps unlikely that with a small sample, such as in this experiment, that a grief player
would be encountered, and in the four sessions observed, no player could be identified as
a griefer. All players in the study were aware they were being observed which also may
have contributed to good behavior during play.

Upon further review, the reason why no grief behavior was encountered in the

experiment became perfectly clear: GMs who run games regularly hand-pick their

57

players, and griefers are identified, branded, and simply kicked out, just as GM-Corwyn
kicked her past grief player out. Typically, if a player is shown to be a griefer, that player
is removed from the game after the incidents of griefing occur. Word spreads to other
local gamemasters about the problematic behavior, and he is either shunned from
sessions entirely, or at least unwelcome until he shows signs of changing his method of
play. Roleplaying games are cooperative and are about the enjoyment of the entire
group. The difficult player who is disrespectful to environment or story is ejected fiom

the system, and not given another chance to play.

7. Conclusion

7.1.0verview of Results

The observations of gamemasters at work provided an excellent insight into the
strategies that these directors use to facilitate narrative and player interactivity. Keeping
in mind that the final goal of this research is to transfer gamemaster techniques to a
computer environment, the results of the study showed several techniques that may be
applied to computerized interactive drama. Among these are multiple metagame
techniques such as the use of metagame punishment and reward as well as metagame
fortunetelling. The experiment also showed, however, several techniques which may be
inapplicable to interactive drama programs or at least very difficult to correctly employ.

One of the strongest findings of the study was that metagame techniques are an
equally important factor to in game techniques in order to drive story. Social pressure
seems to be a very important part of what makes tabletop roleplaying work well. Sadly,

social pressure is one of the techniques that is extremely difficult to transfer to a virtual

58

environment, as many of the current interactive dramas are designed for single rather than
multiple users. The pressure provided by an inanimate computer program is not quite the
same as the pressure provided by a human gamemaster, who may also be a fiiend of his
players in the world outside the game. A human intelligence also can look around the
table and easily see from a player expression whether or not it may be time to add a new
story beat, an NPC action, or to involve another player directly in the next decision the
players make. Intuitively gauging enjoyment is something a computerized system has
more difficulty achieving.

Another finding of the study is that several of the categorized techniques are more
common than others. Other techniques are more personally oriented toward the style of
one particular gamemaster; where one gamemaster will only use the technique once or
twice, another may use it many times in the same session depending on his personal style.
Different combinations of gamemaster styles still create games players seem to enjoy,
indicating that different combinations of technique usage can still result in a good
interactive story.

The calculated use of both metagame attractors, and the Fate technique where the
player actions do not influence the story, are very important and more reasonably
transferable observed behaviors. Perhaps the largest variance among the gamemasters
was their rigidity of story; while some remained focused tightly on a particular planned
path, others played their narrative very loosely with little planning. There is always some
give and take between participation and narrative structure and different gamemaster
balance these concerns with difl°erent priority. All of the games observed had solid

narratives even if the players encountered a setback, and this was in part because a few

59

things were already predetermined to occur, one way or the other, before the session was
over. This is not different from how some video games currently handle story elements
(Crawford 2005).

The gamemasters’ universal use of metagame reward and punishment to enrich
the game itself is also an important finding of this study. While most interactive dramas
work toward hiding the metagame systems of punishment and reward as best they can,
tabletop roleplaying still embraces it to some degree, particularly in the rewarding of
beneficial tokens for players who take actions the gamemaster likes. This differing
approach embraces the game-like aspects of the otherwise drama-generating structure to
an effect that all gamemasters found to be positive. The ability of players to utilize their
earlier good choices to cancel later failures, in a purely metagame method, enriches the
dramatic arc of the story near its climax. It is definitely a technique that should be
experimented with by future interactive dramas to see if a computerized, visible, point-
reward system might net similar results.

Despite the limitations that computerized systems still have, the parallels between
the gamemaster’s work and the work of a story director in an interactive drama are very
clear. The work in qualifying the different techniques that gamemasters use should be
beneficial to the designers of interactive story systems in multiple ways; for example, it
should help to design better attraction systems to get players of storytelling games to
follow along with the story director instead of going off on a tangent unintended by the
story. The list of problematic events and how they were dealt with in play when
observed should be useful in showing both interactive drama designers, and role playing

game module designers, what is best to avoid.

6O

7.2.Future Work

A next logical step would be to create a director agent for an interactive drama
based on utilization of these specific categorized techniques. Several of the metagame
techniques employed by gamemasters, such as meta reward, have not been attempted in
designs for interactive drama, but seem to perform well in a tabletop environment.
Perhaps a new computerized interactive drama program could incorporate these systems
to achieve similar results. One possibility would be to experiment with a computerized
version of a tabletop roleplaying module. For example, an interactive drama could be
created from the text of a gaming module, and the module could be ran both in a tabletop
setting, and on the computer, to see how the different medium impacts the delivery and
whether gamemastering techniques still apply when the module is delivered a different
way.

With a list of identifiable gamemaster attractors and detractors, it may also be
valuable to perform a quantitative study on the use of these techniques in a wider variety
of play. Taping and coding another set of different games played along these lines would
be a possible methodology, as would a larger survey of gamemasters to see if they utilize
the above techniques. A larger volume of games could also be analyzed and coded not
from the work of the gamemaster, but from the text of modules that gamemasters use.
Since the modules utilize many of the above attractors, a larger review of modules could
determine the frequency and percent of usage of these different techniques. A potential
way to observe a large volume of games would be at a convention style setting, where

hundreds of gamemasters gather to run modules of many varying types.

61

It may be worthwhile, in the future, to explore the differences between multi-user
interactive dramas and single-user interactive dramas. In addition, the difference between
a known computer entity versus a perceived human entity may cause alterations in a
user’s perception of how he should behave. If the user is told he is being “gamemastered
to” by a human rather than by a computer, does that change his willingness to go along
with what the gamemaster seems to have planned?

Further work and an attempt to program these techniques in a virtual environment
is probably the next best step toward examining these techniques in detail. A broader
examination of the use of techniques across different story genres and at the hands of
different gamemasters with different group dynamics would also be a good indication of
whether or not the techniques identified in this paper are universal, as well as revealing

more about their potential application in interactive drama.

62

8. References

Aarseth, E. (1997.) C ybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Johns Hopkins UP,
Baltimore, MD.

Bartle, R. (1996.) Players Who Suit MUDS. Journal of MUD research.

Blom, K. & Beckhaus S (2005.) “Emotional Storytelling.” Interactive media/virtual
environments, University of Hamburg, Germany.

Brucato, R, Campbell, B., Dansky, R., McKinney, D., Ryan K., & Skemp, E. (1997.)
The Book of Mirrors: The Mage the Ascension Storytellers Guide. White-Wolf publishing
Atlanta, GA.

Campbell, J. (1968.) The hero with a thousand faces Princeton UP, NJ.

Cavazza, M., Charles F., & Mead, S. (2001.) “Characters in Search of an Author: AI-
Based Virtual Storytelling.” School of Computing and Mathematics: University of
Teesside.

Cialdini, R. (2001 .) Influence: Science and Practice. 4th Edition. Needham Heights:
MA Allyn & Bacon

Crawford, C. (2005.) Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. New Riders Games:
Berekly CA

Dahlen, C. (2005.) Who’s afraid of Facade?: Virginia Woolf meets Grand Theft Auto.
Boston Pheonix July 22 - 28, 2005

DeMaria, R., & Wilson, J. (2002.) High Score: The Illustrated History of Electronic
Games. McGraw/Hill.

Edwards, R. (2005) “A Hard Look at Dungeons and Dragons.” The Forge:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/20/

Edwards, R. (2005) “Ritual Discourse in Roleplaying Games.” http://www.indie-
rpgs.com/_articles/ritual_discourse_in_RPGs.html”

Fairclough, C. & Cunningham P. (2004.) AI Structuralist Storytelling in Computer
Games. Trinity College.

Foo, C. Y., and Koivisto E.M.I. (2004.) “Grief Player Motivations”. Other Players:
Center for Computer Games Research, Copenhagen.

63

Glassner, A. (2004.) Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century Fiction.
Wellesly, MA: AK Peters, Ltd.

Gold, L. (2002.) NPC’s — Not Paper Cutouts. Printed in Gamemastering Secrets, 2"“ ed.,
ed. Aaron Rosenburg. Grey Ghost Press: Randolph, MA

Kent, S. (2001.) The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon and
Beyond—the Story Behind the Craze that Touched Our Lives and Changed the World
Three Rivers Press, New York.

Laws, R. (2002.) Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering. Ed. Steve Jackson. Steve
Jackson Games: 2002.

Laws, R. (2004.) “Make it a Gimmie” httn://www.dvingearth.com/pagexxdecember.htm.
Lebowitz, M. (1984.) “Creating characters in a Storytelling Universe.” Poetics 13.

Long, S. (2002.) Genre and Setting Simulation: Perils, Pitfalls, and Possibilities. Printed
in Gamemastering Secrets, 2'“I ed., ed. Aaron Rosenburg. Grey Ghost Press: Randolph,
MA.

Louchart, S., & Aylett R. (2003.) Towards a narrative theory of Virtual Reality. The
Centre for Virtual Environments, University of Salford, Salford.

Magerko, B., & Laird J. (2004.) Mediating the Tension Between Plot and Interaction.
University of Michigan

Magerko, B. (2006.) Player Modeling in the Interactive Drama Architecture. Ph.D.

Thesis, Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MI.

Majewski, J. (2003.) Theorizing Video Game Narrative. Centre for Film, Television &
Interactive Media School of Humanities & Social Sciences Bond University
2003

Mateas, M. ( 1997.) “An Oz—Centric Review of Interactive Drama and Believable
Agents” Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA.

Mateas, M.. (2002.) Interactive Drama, Art, and Artificial Intelligence. Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh PA.

Mateas, M., & Sengers, P. (1998.) Narrative Intelligence. AAAI.org

Murray, J. (1998.) Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Nath, S. (2004.) Narrativity in User Action: Emotion and Temporal Configurations of
Narrative. Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design University of the Arts
London 2004

Propp, V. (1968.) Morphology of the F olktale. University of Texas Press Austin, TX.
Rabe, J. (2002.) “Winging it: The Fine Art of Making It Up As you Go Along.” Printed
in Gamemastering Secrets, 2"“ ed., ed. Aaron Rosenburg. Grey Ghost Press: Randolph,
MA.

Rosenburg, A.(2002) Gamemastering Secrets, 2“d ed. Introduction: Before the Game.
Grey Ghost Press, Randolph, MA.

Ryan, M. "Beyond Myth and Metaphor: The Case of Narrative in Digital Media. " in
Game Studies, Volume 1, issue 1. http://www.gamestudieso_rg/0101/rvan/

Szilas, N. (2003.) “IDtension: a narrative engine for Interactive Drama” Paris: France
2003.

Suits, B. (1978.) The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia: University of Toronto Press,
Toronto

Squire, K., & Jenkins, H. (2003.) Harnessing the Power of Games in Education. Insight.

Wizards of the Coast. (2003.) The Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master ’s Guide, Ed.
3.5. 2003. Wizards of the Coast, Redmond WA.

Wizards of the Coast & RPGA. (2003.) RPGA General Rules. Wizards of the Coast,
Redmond WA. http://www.wizards.com/rpga

Young, R. Steps Towards a Computational Theory of Interactive Narrative in Virtual
Worlds. North Carolina State University

Young R, Riedl M. (2003.) Towards an architecture for intelligent control of narrative in

interactive virtual worlds. In: Proceedings of the Int. Conference on Intelligent User
Interfaces. 2003.

65

9. Appendix: Gamemaster Notes

9.1.GM1 Notes

GM] has a lot of prep notes today but typically plays the game very loose. These players
don’t do a lot of ‘standard’ dungeon adventures, but this adventure is near a close and is
more of a dungeon atmosphere. This is a low-magic campaign. There is some dispute

occasionally over powers and reward, but not much.

Trap rolls weren’t going very well but were important. Sometimes the players take a

long time with a single trap.

Some characters died in this session. The GM doesn’t “shield” PCs from death, if it is
about to happen, he allows it to happen. The villains had a scroll of revival and would
use it on one of their own if he had died. This didn’t end up happening (more on that

later).

The villains might have been recurring villains used again in the game. But since the PCs
went to a lot of trouble to kill them the GM was OK with letting them die. This happened

because of the players’ actions.

The dungeon that was used was taken fiom an adventure the GM found on-line. He

“takes shortcuts if he can.” The original adventure was focused on a demon in the

dungeon. The GM didn’t think the encounters were very well put-together in the
dungeon, but he liked the basic layout of the area and the rooms. So he took the map, but
threw out all the monsters and challenges, changing the traps and making it more

compatable with his style of GMing.

This game started out with a lot of prep-work not related to story, spending points and

such.

The GM used to run Mutants and Masterminds as well. It’s a more fluid system, he says,

but also rather thick on rules.

A previous character in the party was a mute, but even mute characters can communicate

in some fashion.

The GM realizes that pitting players against each other can lead to hard feelings so he

does it very sparingly.

Two player-characters were in an argument at the official start of this session. There was
a ghost, and the ghost possessed one of the PCs, causing him to act differently. This
happened in the previous session, and the player was allowed to roleplay out his character
being possessed. The GM is worried a lot about pitting players against one another, but if

they care to RP out this kind of conflict sometimes it makes an interesting story. At the

67

start of this session some of the PCs were not certain if the barbarian was still possessed

or not. This made for a bit of an argument near the beginning.

GM Action: Letting it go, No action

“It can degenerate really fast.” GM says. He tells a story about an older game where these
two players had a similar conflict in a Dark Sun campaign. A fight that started in game
turned into a physical fight with one character throwing lightning bolts at another.
Another good character tried to break up the fight and ended up dying. He says that the
way he stopped the fight was by having another lightning bolt trigger an avalanche, and

having both of the battling PCs also die. (“Rocks fall, everyone dies,” outcome: GM

classic technique.) That’s a worst-case scenario. It can lead to hard feelings.

GM Action: PC death consequence

In this conflict, he was certain to keep the argument totally in-game. He allowed the

kobold to grasp clues that the Barbarian wasn’t acting like himself, as in, he was speaking

too articulately while possessed.

GM Action: slipping in clues (focus?)

Knowing your players is very important.

68

He’s been working with the same players for a long time. They’ve been friends a while.
He generally knows their playstyles. “For me, it’s a lot easier” to know your players and

what “scenes they’re going to shine in.”

GM Technique: ‘know the players/’ social engineering

The cleric player is very easy to please, and always has fun. She doesn’t like being put in
positions where she has to be the leader or make a decision for the whole party. In a
previous campaign she was a head of the group (a Jedi) and had to make decisions that
put her in charge; she felt uncomfortable with that. She does make a good support-class

player or sidekick and is “more comfortable with doing” that.

He tries to keep turns moving so things are exciting.

Any time the players are taking a while just to do anything, or nothing has happened for a

while, he might roll dice just to increase the tension. He is watching body posture, if

people aren’t engaged, or are leaning back, he may suddenly have them make a choice or

make a random roll to see if they are paying attention.

GM Technique: Reading the group on the meta level

Last session, the players had just killed a carrion crawler. He introduced the monster

because a few players were in a room away fiom the action and not doing anything. He

69

didn’t want them to be bored, so he gave them something to fight and ‘fast cut’ from one

room to another during the combat sequence.

He discusses this encounter a bit later on the tape. Basically, the Barbarian was fighting a
group of villains on another level, but the party had split. The GM didn’t want the other
half of the party to be bored watching a fight they couldn’t reach. So, be randomly
generated a monster at about their level to come out of an adjacent room and attack them.
That gave the PCs who were not occupied with the primary fight something else to do so
that everyone was engaged in the story. Later, he added a few trappings to the
underground room to make it seem as if the monster (the carrion crawler) had been in
there a while. He knows the party well enough to choose how tough to make a monster

to challenge them in case he needs a random encounter to occupy their attention.

GM Action: Forced Conflict

This is something that he says he does a lot. He will spring “mooks and minions” against
a split group in the party, and run everything as one combat. He wants to make sure
everyone is engaged. If there is a situation where only one player really has something to
do, he will, as much as possible, keep checking to see what other players are doing in the
mean time. He doesn’t want to GM for just one player. Even a red herring can be useful

in this kind of situation just so there is story going on all the time.

70

There was a stairwell that led down into the trap room, and then an illusion that the

stairwell continued, where really it only continued down five feet.

There is a trap in the room below the carrion crawler. The Kobold jumps into the hole
right away without looking before he leaps. The GM is very surprised. He knows that
below that, there is a reverse-gravity trap that might kill the kobold if he isn’t carefirl. He
describes the room in some detail and mentions the bones that are on the ground from the
monster. In doing this, he forgot about the reverse-gravity (if the entire room was rev-
grav, the bones would be on the ceiling and not the floor). In a split moment therefore he
decided that the rev-grav only happened on squares of the floor where he did not draw
bones. This ended up giving the player a valuable clue and also helped him avoid the trap
he almost jumped into accidentally. The kobold saw the bones in an unusual pattern and

didn’t go in the room any further (which saved him).

GM Action/Detractor: Suspiciousness

Players are sometimes unwilling to let go of a red herring or book. That was the case with
the trapped room which he introduced early in the night. It took about an hour to clear the
trapped room. He went ahead and ‘let this ride’ allowing them to take their time with the
room until they came to the conclusion themselves it wasn’t working. As long as they

were having fun, it was all right.

71

It’s pretty much so that if a red herring seems thought out or intricate the players won’t
recognize it as a red herring. After a while, he handwaved the time spent, allowing the

rouge to “take 20” on searches in the area and so on.

GM Action: OOC advice to move on

Detractor: Lack of Reward

It’s hard in D&D to have recurring villains the players don’t kill. Tonight’s villain was
someone they had met only once previously. The players were after a spellbook that the

villain had. (The barbarian calls it the “shiny book.”)

The bad guys had just done battle with the players prior to this but escaped, via a
convenient spell called Dimension Door. The DD had been in the GM’s plans; they had

that spell available so they could escape.

“If you want a recurring villain, it’s best not to put them in combat at all.” Have the
villain show up and send minions, then leave. It’s easier with mages who might have a
teleport spell or a contingency. A melee-based combatant doesn’t make a good foe for a
high-level party because if he gets into a fight either he will die or the party will.

(Neither works well for the story.)

GM Technique: NPC Design

72

Arkiro (barbarian) dislikes magic so he chased the magic-using bad guys. This is what
caused him to be captured and later possessed by the ghost. The bad guys sent two
invisible party members down to kill the rest of the party while they were in camp.
However, Arkiro escaped, and attacked the bad guys back. (this all happened in the prior

session and is the backstory behind the bad guys).

GM Technique: Using Character Hooks

The spell-book was an Electrum-plated book.

Last time the players had a very difficult puzzle that took two hours to solve: a language
puzzle with a secret password written on a door. The GM didn’t mind that it took 2

hours, it was better for him to let them figure it out themselves.

Language use: the door puzzle was a cast iron door with “typewriter keys” on it in elven
script. It said “a sword in its sheath is no less sharp,” and given this they had to figure
out to type the keys that spelled ‘open.’ The party couldn’t figure out this puzzle even
though several of them'could speak elven, because they had to guess the code word to
type, and then had to spell out the proper word in Elven. Originally a player said “how
about typing open?” but that clue was dropped when the GM just let them play and guess
as to what to do. They eventually returned to that guess later. The door had several traps

on it; any time the wrong thing was typed it might set off a trap.

73

Rolling for events sometimes means the story will be based on luck.

The kobold’s master was a master trapsman, and the kobold is supposed to be excellent
with traps, but today in the trapped red herring room he made several bad rolls that made
his skill questionable. He would have needed average rolls to figure out the rev-grav
room but wasn’t rolling well for the beginning which slowed him down. A player isn’t
normally allowed to ‘take ten’ on any roll involving traps because there is always the
chance the player will do poorly. If he had encountered one of the reverse gravity fields

he was going to fall up to the ceiling.

GM Action: None

The kobold ends up discovering which areas have rev-grav due to the bones. Everything

the GM draws is “kind of filled-in at the time” so he occasionally randomly chooses

room details.

The kobold hid in the trap room arguing with the barbarian before he found the trap.

During the argument between those two characters the GM turns to other players and

asks what they are doing.

GM Technique: Social Pressure/Engineering

74

There are two Halflings in the party, the cleric and the wizard.

The book the party is looking for is in the backpack of one of the villains.

Sometimes loot is invented on the fly.

“That’s probably one of the last things I really design.” The GM mentions there is a
treasure room in the dungeon that he knows the content of. In the alchemists’ lab he
really was winging it. For example, in the lab, he had a list of various alchemical things
that may or may not be in there. “Improvisational stuff.” He won’t randomly penalize a

player. (He calls that being “unnecessarily punitive”)

GM Technique: Fate (the players would find whatever they needed)

The barbarian is from a flying race. This might cause some unique challenges but “he
doesn’t fly very well.” At this level, the mage spell for flight can also be a concern, so

having a flying barbarian isn’t terribly irnbalancing to scenarios.

The GM says the player has a hard time with the mechanics of his flying race and doesn’t
fly as much as he can. He can glide and can’t really fly terribly well. If he niggers a pit
trap however he will float down with wings and not take damage. He doesn’t take as

much experience from this because it’s no threat to him.

75

Here in the tape the kobold is discovering the rev-grav trap. The GM treats it just like
falling down a pit. The kobold is unhappy with this because the trap uses magic, which is
“cheating” where it comes to making traps. (The player however is having fun.) The
GM almost forgot that there would be a reflex save for not falling up into the trap, but he

allowed the player to have one.

Small Metagame Rules argument here

There was a fake door in the back, where, touching it, would have collapsed the ceiling as
well. This was a mechanical trap and was created by the kobold’s master (as a way of

tying his past in to the story and making him curious about the traps).

GM Technique: Character Hooks

The GM wants the players to see the game as a story and discourages what he calls
“Garnism.” He knows which players have that tendancy and tries to steer them clear of

this way of thinking.

At one point in character the players refer to the “squares” on the floor in-character. It’s
made in to sort of a joking thing. The barbarian gets a little “bit gamey” and says
something about “finishing off the level” (ie, clearing the level of monsters before

moving down). This may not be an in-character motivation.

76

OOC System Knowledge Use to Advance

On the floor directly above the reverse-pit trap, GM makes kobold roll randomly a reflex
save. The kobold doesn’t make it, so the GM says that he just trips over a loose stone. It’s
meant to be a random outcome to show nothing had was happening in that corridor, but
the kobold (and player) took the loose stone seriously unintentionally. He marked it with
chalk and instructed other players to walk around it carefully in case it was a more
dangerous trap. This was a red herring and not part of the story but it did cause some

suspense in an otherwise boring hallway.

GM Technique: Focus (on otherwise unimportant detail)

This tower is an ‘upside down’ drmgeon. The group is now trying to reach the bottom

floor, which is collapsed.

The hippogiff he introduces is treasure, not a foe. If they can figure out how to train it

they can keep it as a pet.

In the previous session when they arrived, the first floor of the tower had collapsed in.
There was a giant wasp nest on the outside, and the wasp arrived carrying the hippogliff
paralyzed. The PCs fought the giant wasp and freed the baby. It was in bad shape but not

dead. In this session it has now woken up and has wandered down to this floor. It doesn’t

77

go any further. It is “loot,” if they manage to train it and find a way to get it out of the

dtmgeon safely, as it might serve as a flying mount or companion.

GM Rewards players for completing objective (killing wasp)

The player of the barbarian (Arkiro) will take action if the story seems bogged down. He
doesn’t like long planning sessions and arguments that go on and slow down the game.

He is not really pleased with his character either.

The GM says he won’t push a player to stick with a character they don’t like. The

barbarian wants to pull in a new party member, a samurai character. The GM wouldn’t

answer if that was Ok or not, because he wants to be able to review the class for balance.

Keeping in mind that Arkiro is dissatisfied lately however affects the game later.

He has this “amazing capacity” to roll well when he needs to.

He very rarely fudges rolls, for his benefit or the players. The players would get

suspicious if all the rolls were hidden and they didn’t think the rolls made a difference.

The GM is known as a “bad roller” if the rolls are in the party’s favor and seems to roll

better if he is working with villains.

78

He uses the screen to hide his notes and his maps, but he rolls combat out in the open.
Sometimes, he says, the players mind, because then he cannot fudge the rolls in their
favor at all. But he doesn’t typically fudge rolls in combat, he says, “rarely.” “Once
combat is initiated, I like to keep it kinda open. If it’s behind the screen and the NPCs

are doing well,” the players (especially kobold) get suspicious.

He thinks that PCs using problem solving and teamwork can handle bigger challenges
than the “challenge rating” actually says. “They have five minds to my one,” he says, so

they have problem solving skills that help them through that kind of problem.

Use of Group Dynamics important

The party hesitates at a door on the next lower floor, after getting past the red herring
room. They are now very cautious because the previous door was heavily trapped. No
one is certain who should open the door. It takes a while and they argue. The barbarian
(player) loses patience at that point and opens the door just so someone will take an
action. (The GM says he can usually count on him to do that, see above) However, he
also dislikes getting hit, and would rather play a character that dodges attacks than one
who “tanks/so ”. Kobold player on the other hand is a bit of “a showboat” and doesn’t

mind taking damage.

Knowing players

79

The party doesn’t have many magic weapons because it’s not as interesting. They do

have master-craft weapons and can get nice ones later.

Sometimes the GM will give an item different abilities in the hands of the villains than in
the hands of the PCs. That way, if they defeat the villain and take the item, it’s not as

unbalancing.

He says he doesn’t give out “nearly enough treasure,” (laughing at this). Not too many
magic weapons so that any that are found are more interesting. He uses the master crafi
rules and lets players craft really nice weapons, they have no magical spells on them but
are still powerful. He sometimes uses a system where a single magic item can gain in

power.

He doesn’t like the standard D&D system that makes even magical items seem a little
mundane. He uses this exarnple, “If you get Sting: you keep Sting!” So instead of
introducing a “Plus one magic sword” that will be discarded for an equally mundane
“plus three” later just because that is a better bonus, if he intros a magical weapon it is
special and named, and grows in power with the wieldier as it “bonds” to him. Makes
magic more cinematic and dramatic. If they get a powerful item from a villain, “it’s not

keyed to them,” and not as powerful in their hands yet.

80

The fish-men the player fight now are a warm-up battle to build suspense. It went mostly

according to plan and was a quick fight to get dice rolling. This fight goes very fast and

isn’t hard.

GM Action: Forced Conflict

(This discussion takes place during combat)

The GM tries not to take things away from the players, unless it’s really bad and not

working out at all the way he intended. He’ll try to make this kind of thing natural and
go along with the story.

Even in D20 however story should come first, GM says. The core mechanic is very
based on many rules. (Fortunately the players know most of the important rules, since

looking up rules slows down sessions.)

Not knowing the rules can actually open up the players’ imagination. If they know all

available mechanics they may not be as brave or creative with their ideas.

Disarming an enemy (and getting them to surrender) is very hard to do with D20 rules.

81

“It’s very punitive to attempt that.” A player that knows the rules won’t do it because it’s
too hard. But a player that doesn’t realize how hard it actually is will probably want to

do it if it’s cinematic enough.

Detractor: Hassle

(It’s probably better not to have your players thinking about the rules, and instead

thinking about the scene and story.)

Third edition is very “rules heavy” on the player side, and forces players to know a lot
about their PCs and how rolling works, etc. Second ed is more rules-light on the player
side and puts most of the rules knowledge in the hands of the GM. It was easier for
second ed GMs to cover a mistake, as well, because only they really had to know all the
rules. Second ed had different rolls for everything, Third ed has a “core mechanic,” but
each feat and special skill adds one more mechanic. New supplements add new

mechanics, etc...

The GM doesn’t want a ‘me versus them’ mentality.

Barbarian “Is particularly vicious against NPCs.” Sometimes he feels that it is an us vs
them situation, and since he also GMs it might be a reflection not of this GMs’ style but

of the player’s style when he GMs. He sometimes tries to play with how he thinks the

GM thinks (which may not be accurate).

82

Metagame behavior: System use

Occasionally the story slows down, outside of a dungeon, for a “shopping mission” or

other downtime. The GM says this is necessary sometimes but can be boring.

After the fight, the players encounter a small lab, an alchemy lab, in the dungeon. The
wizard (Halfling sorcerer) wants spell components so he asks about a few items he hopes
that he will find. The GM decides that the wizard should be able to find what he needs,
but only small amounts of his rarest needed item. GM says on the tape that the shopping
missions are the “most boring” kinds of sessions for him. Not much story happens. He’d
rather give the players the chance to get what they need by a method more interesting
than having to go and buy it in towns. It’s not totally likely that the wizard will clean out
the room and try to get everything in it. He’s betting on him not trying to scour it and
only looking for specific things, so he hasn’t actually officially decided everything that is

on the shelves in the lab (and doesn’t think he will need to).

Attractor: Fate: (this is the lab mentioned above)

The Wizard’s player doesn’t like for loot to be distributed unevenly and thinks all treasure

should be discussed by all party members and fairly shared. He proposed the idea of a

“contract” for sharing loot, and this works well with this group for types of treasure; if

one person finds something someone else can better use, they share it or pass it on.

83

There are “targeted items” from time to time that are designed for a specific class or
player, but it doesn’t happen a lot. The villainess they fight had a magical sword for the

barbarian to use.

GM Technique: character hooks

Arkiro plays a character for “about ten sessions” and then tends to want to shuffle in

8011100116 new.

A treasure discovered in a small offshoot room is an ever—flowing pitcher of water. This
is there because the room was used as a washroom. A handy but not irnbalancing

treasure.

The couch (a couch in one of the sitting rooms) was a pre-placed trap the barbarian
happened to stumble across. It was Yellow Mold right out of the DMG. Even though

the player was still discouraged he let that roll stand as it was.

“Releases spores if disturbed.” The barbarian made the spot-check to see it and it looked
disgusting, but he decided to move the couch anyway. He took a penalty to his con from
inhaling spores though the cleric was able to help. This probably happened because the
player or PC didn’t realize that even though he saw the mold on the couch, it was

necessarily bad enough to harm him.

84

Detractor: Damage

There was an invisible Halfling, an enemy, who was opening doors. That was the

‘strange noises’ that provided the players with some misdirection.

When the PCs hear the strange noises of opening doors in a nearby room, they all run to
the small closet where they found the water jar (the “bathroom”) to hide. But the closet is
very small and only a few of them fit. This caused a rather comedic situation for a

moment.

They don’t know where the strange noises are coming from but when the barbarian
checks it out the Halfling was invisible. So it is still a mystery. The GM added this at
that point just to add another mystery for them to figure out and keep them from standing

still debating which door to take or where to go.

GM Technique: “new beat” or drama injection (type of focus?)

The hall of mirrors was a special circumstance.

When the kobold opens this room the GM describes it in a very interesting way, by first

saying that he sees another kobold, and then mentioning that there are many kobolds. He

says they are all holding a sword in their right hand. (PC holds it in his left hand.) Then,

85

after the player has this impression, he can guess that he is actually looking in to a room

filled with mirrors, when more light is let in to the chamber for him to see clearly.

There were 10 mirrors in this room; they looked ornate and seemed just from a glance
that they might be special or magical. The fishmen that the players had battled earlier
seemed to have come out of this room as there were wet tracks on the floor. These clues

were there to indicate that the mirrors were special.

GM Technique: Focus

This was a plot hook the players were avoiding and didn’t seem to want any part of at all.
The mirrors actually open gates to a ‘mirror world’ where the characters would have
fought mirror versions of themselves. One of their enemies is actually from the mirror
world, a mirror evil version of someone who was an ally at some point before in time. If

the PCs had entered the mirrors this “could have taken the rest of the night.”

In the mirror plane, there is a mirror duplicate that appears of anyone who enters. It is
that person’s opposite alignment, and tries to kill them and take their place. So they
would have discovered evil versions of themselves if they’d gone inside. The GM was a
little surprised they didn’t enter, he expected they might at least try or gaze in to it for a

long time, as a long gaze might have caused one of them to “fall in” to the mirror world.

86

The abolith, the main monster in this dungeon, has a corresponding mirror down in the
underwater portion of the dungeon. He sends his minions through it and in that way they

can travel to this floor.

But the PCs didn’t want to enter the mirrors despite the GM’s plans. They did everything
in their power to avoid them, and eventually turned them against the wall, without really

looking at them too carefully either.

Suspiciousness becomes unintentional detractor and breaks story

The GM tried to introduce another fish-person, a “good” fish person who had come out of
the mirror world. He defeated an evil fish—person, and escaped. This was the GM’s
attempt to get them interested in the mirror world again, but it still didn’t work. He gave
up on the thread for a while; maybe it will be re-introed later. He doesn’t think the PCs

noticed they were missing something or ignoring a book.

The fish-person encounters them on the stairs as they are heading up to see what else may
be in the floor above. The fish-person appeared and walked up to them, but instead of
attacking, he bowed and scraped and said he was happy to surrender. He looked a little
hurt and tired. The PCs let him go on past... then returned to the mirror room again and

made good and sure the mirrors were face down and nothing else would escape.

GM Technique: NPC Creation/engineering

87

The players now encounter a pudding (type of monster) in the dungeon. Barbarian was
discouraged by this monster because it was very hard to kill with weapons. The GM
decided some helpful items would be located in the room to help them defeat it. This
adventure was a module but has been modified a lot, especially the traps and monster
placement. The GM likes for the traps and monster placement to be logical to the setting

so that everything fits and has a reason to be where it is.

The 2 flasks of alchemical fire were put there on the fly. The GM figured if the kobold
got a lucky roll, he’d just pull something “good’ from the pile of flasks. He was doing

this in part to reward his bravery for just trying something new.

He ruled beforehand there WERE two flasks of alchemist fire as part of the overall
dungeon treasure. But they were not on that particular table in specific, in the pudding
room, until the players really needed them to be there to defeat the pudding. (The
pudding will divide if exposed to metal weapons like swords, and is weak to things like

fireballs and fire.)

GM Technique: Fate

The barbarian initially cut the pudding in half with his sword even though OOCly he

knew that it would divide one monster in to two monsters. (Good RP initiative.) The

88

GM says he probably figured this out in-character a bit too quickly afier that happened

once, but was willing to let it slide.

Attractor: Metagame knowledge of monster (F ortunetelling)

Players in this game can use an “action point” to emulate a feat they do not have, if it is

dramatically appropriate to do that.

Attractor: Metagame reward

Room: “old laboratory.”

The actual treasure vault, the GM says, is another level down from here.

In the original module the treasure room was in a different place, but the GM changed the
treasure room to distribute things more evenly and put the vault somewhere else. He put
a few bits of copper in the vault from the original module, as a small reward if they broke
down the super-intricate door that guarded it, but decided it made more sense for the
wizard who used to own the tower to put his treasure in a hidden place instead of an

obviously marked vault.

He says he strives to make the ecology of the dungeon as logical as possible, so there is a

reason for monsters to be where they are. He said that originally there were two

89

manticores in the pudding room, and he knew his players would question the logic of
this. Why would a flying creature be in an enclosed room; what were they eating, why
were they trapped there at all? On the other hand, a black pudding is a useful garbage
disposal because it digests almost anything, and would be a handy creature to have in a

lab setting. Originally it was contained in a small area but after the tower fell apart it

escaped.

Encounter was CR7

This was a very challenging encounter for the players; difficulty—wise, the GM says it
was “just right.” CR7 is about standard for this level party, but because the cleric was the
first PC trapped by the pudding, she was unlucky. Her strength wasn’t very high and she
would have had to roll very high to get out of the pudding. The players didn’t use the
optimal strategy; it might have been wiser to split the pudding in to smaller pieces and
fireball it. The PCs lost some equipment and items due to this attack and the cleric was

badly damaged.

Detractor: Damage

(Later, Shoney goes one on one with the female Barbarian. That was probably a bad
choice; he was 6‘h lvl and could probably beat her but it would have been better to use
teamwork. The GM says that the barbarian should have power attacked during the

encounter, but admits he ‘went a little bit easy on him’ (Shoney).)

9O

He’s had situations where players have gotten frustrated with difficult encounters and

walked away from the game. Tries to keep personality conflicts only on the IC level.

The cleric has a staff from a previous adventure. She finally figured out how to work it in
this adventure. The PCs fought a young (baby) dragon for this treasure. They were
officially discouraged from tracking it back to its lair, since they wouldn’t have been able
to handle the adult dragons. They elected not to pursue chasing down the parents after
some debate, much to the GM’s relief. In this case it seems he had just suggested above-

game that this was an unwise course of action.

GM uses Focus here in describing the unusual reaction of the staff.

Occasionally, mechanic-wise, the GM uses both Damage Reduction and Armor Class
rules for how armor works. Sometimes he tweaks the treasure stats slightly. Either to

surprise players or to make an item better.

At this point I asked all the questions on my sheet, so it was time to watch the last battle

of the session. It took about an hour, hour and half to complete the last set of encounters.

The kobold encountered a save-or—die trap just before the final fight, and didn’t succeed

in the save. The trap was a magical illusion designed to literally scare him to death. He

91

had a chance to disable the trap, a roll he failed, and then he had a chance to save to

survive it, and failed that as well.

System-enabled, ‘dice as they may’ situation. Very little GM interference with the rolls,

other than designing the trap and obstacle.

The bad guys, who the PCs will later fight, at first come in the spirit of negotiation. They
did hire the PCs to get to the treasure in this tower, even if they later intended to kill them
later and steal it from them. As a result, it wasn’t good if the only character capable of
disabling the traps here died, due to one. They used a revival scroll which they bargained

with the PCs about.

Hiring/Bargaining: NPC Technique

A dead character is brought back to life (the kobold). The GM explains that the villains
always had the revival scroll, so this was one way of using it. He doesn’t like for a raise
from dead to be a fieebee so he constructed a scenario where the kobold had a choice, he
could come back, or not. He did decide to come back. He’s now lvl 4. There might be

possible consequences later like a curse.

He digresses to discussing a mystery-type adventure that the PCs had done previously,

where they were investigating an assassination. The GM says that it’s hard for

assassinations to happen in D&D because if someone is noble there is always some way

92

to bring them back. In this case, the king had given the queen (his target) a cursed
necklace that would strangle her, and was exceedingly difficult to remove even after she

had died.

The PCs were really unsure what to do when the kobold had died. It was very sudden.
The GM says he doesn’t like to have a lot of raise-dead happening in the game. But he
also felt bad that the kobold had rolled so badly, because it really interrupted the flow of

the storyline to have him die due to a bad roll.

Here he felt the system had interfered with his story and he had to turn it in to a dramatic

situation. The NPC actions served this even if it was different from their motivations.

“There is always a consequence” the GM says, to reviving a dead character, so making
that choice versus rolling up a new character is not a light one. He always has some kind
of drawback for this, and gives the PC an in-character choice not to be revived. In this
case, it is a dream-sequence-like situation where the kobold is given an option; he can
stay dead if he wants, or move toward the magical light he sees blooming above him. He
could have chosen to stay dead regardless if the player had wanted. The choice was
actually a bit tricky for the player because he was trying to consider how it would

actually have happened in-character. He decided he wanted to live.

Player OOC Knowledge at use

93

The GM describes the kobold waking up just to see the large barbarian woman over him.
The GM also rolled to see if the spell to revive him succeeded in the first place. It did, but
he admits later that probably was a small error. Mechanically, a roll is required for any
such situation (it was a Use Magical Device roll on a scroll of revival), but if the spell
had failed, after he had already gone through the process of giving the player the choice
and roleplaying out his revival, it would not have served the story. Fortunately the spell

succeeded.

Detractor: Hassle

The barbarian still hated the kobold even after he came back, and wasn’t affectionate. (I
thought this was sort of funny, and commented, if this were a movie, he’d have secretly

cared for him and thought of him as a little buddy, but that didn’t seem to be the case in-

game.)

The barbarian makes a choice, after the kobold is revived, to go ahead and pick a fight
with the villains based on their former actions. This seemed a little bit weird and forced

but oddly was within the GM’s plans for a finale encounter.

(It’s unclear to me exactly why this happened in-character after review on the original
tape. It seems mostly like it was a story-timing issue; it was near the end of the session
and the GM says he wanted to have a strong climax and have the players quit that night

on a high note. Also, in-character, the barbarian was very restless.)

94

When the kobold wakes up, he is very confused as to who is on whose side. He initially
sides with the people that revived him, because obviously they did this for a reason. The
player initiated this idea (roleplaying being confused) and the GM liked it, so, he went
with it. On that note the Halfling villain uses this to his advantage and casts a Charm
spell on the kobold, using him as an ally. They probably intend to recruit him. The party
cleric tries to explain to the kobold what has happened. They run into an adjacent library

room and have a separate fight.

Running NPC actions for dramatic purposes

Stays away from railroading as much as possible. “You can ATTEMPT anything,” he
says. But if it’s a very bad idea “I can pretty much tell you what’s gonna happen” to
avoid problems. In a modern game, for example, there are enough laws against killing
people, that there are bad consequences for such things. D&D is a little more open in that
regard. He’s been railroaded in the past, and he doesn’t like it. He says NPCs with a
competing agenda to the players’ is a great way to keep the party together and focused on

a goal.

GM Technique: OOC warning

GM Technique: NPC Design

95

“Sometimes you can do it with them thinking there’s a choice, but there’s not really a
choice.”

“Can you give me an example of that?”

“If I set up something, I could easily make it seem like there were three choices, but,
ultimately, any choice would lead to the same encounter.” Since a DMed game isn’t
designed to be replayed multiple times, this kind of trickery isn’t evident. For example, if
he wants them to encounter an NPC, he can basically make sure that they do so. He
doesn’t know for sure what form the encounter would take, when, for example, he added

the invisible Halfling.

GM Technique: Fate

Halfway through the fight the Halfling did get a break to drink a potion. The potion was

NOT initially in his inventory (it was a healing potion) but he wanted to make him

slightly more of a challenge so he added the slight heal. He made sure the players saw

him drink the potion so they would know that was the only extent of the ‘cheat.’

GM Technique: Rebalancing Challenge

The GM doesn’t think that Speak With Dead or other scrying abilities are irnbalancing if

used properly.

Allies can come with the group to explore but shouldn’t be focus.

96

The enemy the PCs face is a barbarian woman. She has an AC15. He calls her “the

Golia .”

A player used a blinding spell on one of the villains, and it worked, making the villain
much easier. The GM said he really wished that would not have happened, but, since the
player did that cleverly he had to give it to him. The wizard used the blind spell during
the last encounter as well, with these same villains, which the first time resulted in a

retreat.

GM Technique: Reward Creativity (even if it counters your plans?)

The barbarian almost forgot about his rage ability but the GM reminded him. This is what

kept him in the fight. However, he took so much damage while enraged that the character

died. This wasn’t unexpected because the player was tired of that particular character and

the death in battle was appropriate.

GM Technique: Metagame help

The Goliath’s other assistant had an evil dark-magic sword. When she pulled it, it got

most of the PC’s attention because it was very strange.

GM Technique: Suspiciousness/Focus

97

The PCs killed these villains. The GM would have liked for them to have lasted one
more battle, but, he thought that the fight was good and hard and the victory was
deserved. Sometimes villains are not as fleshed—out as player characters because they
may be killed, but they usually have at least a few motivations and a well-designed set of

skills to help them survive.

They have probably one more session in this dungeon. There is still a final “boss,” the

abolith.

In D&D, the melee-focus means that villains can’t run away as easily. In a modern game,

if guns are used, the villains can usually escape.

9.2.GM2 Notes

This is a level 3/4 D&D 3.5 Campaign.

The NPCs are named Corbin the Sorcerer and Stern the Dwarf.

PCs:
Cleric - Victor
Paladin — Rarnus

98

Monk — Sistl'unk

Rogue/Mage (Halfling) - Milo (absent)

The dungeon was somewhere they were sent on behalf of the sorcerer who is

accompanying them.

The players were suspicious that suits of standing armor “statues” were an old trick.

The zombie encounter on the second under level seemed very easy.

The GM says she has years of experience in doing this but this is her first time doing a

long campaign.

This GM limits which books players should get their material from. Many extra
supplements include material she hasn’t had time to review or would find unbalancing.
(This isn’t an uncommon practice. Very few GMs let players get away with just anything

in terms of their character setup, etc.)

Metagame system detractors (so the game is not “Broken”)

This group has been together over a year. This is the first time for this GM doing a long

campaign (so she has 1 year experience with this particular group).

99

She prefers low-power campaigns to hi gh-power ones because powerful characters are
very tough to regulate by comparison. She would rather work with low-power, low-
magic to make players use their brains.

“I believe people prefer or are more inclined to be careful with their characters.”

This is because the characters can’t take too much damage at this level, and it makes
them more inclined to watch themselves carefully or run away if they need to do so.
GM Detractor: Damage/Danger

Also encourages them to negotiate if they can.

Prefers for them to think about it, and use different types of solutions. At 3'‘1 or 5:1: level,

they’ve already got “quite a bit of power,” and the approach is different.

However, this particular group she doesn’t want to remove magic and powers entirely.

GM has also played in horror type games, such as Chill, with lower-powered characters.

The PCs were hired by Corbin, an NPC, to check out this keep. His amulet was

originally in the keep and was needed to unlock many of the doors.

GM Action: NPC Hiring

100

Hired as protection. Corbin found the note and amulet in his uncle’s library. His uncle

was a wizard who Corbin had studied under.

This is a 3.5 module, slightly down-powered for the level of these characters.

“Beginner” level module. Sort of a simple intro module in this case.

All chars were lvl 4. They’ve been playing for 6 weeks now with this particular set.

One of the players is the original DM for the game and handled the previous campaign.

The GM was missing a player this time around; he wasn’t there that night. Usually a

player will announce if he cannot make a session, so she can plan for them “going out”

and doing something else with the downtime when he isn’t present. In this case, however,

they stopped in the middle of a dangerous keep, so she decided that Milo (the missing

character) went off exploring on his own. She keeps a copy of sheets around for this

purpose. Later, she used Milo as a hook to get the PCs to enter a tower.

NPC Action: Focus (happens later)

The party does not have major internal conflicts and generally work together whenever

possible. They sometimes conflict with NPCs that are introduced. The party started out

101

adventuring together; there was no need to bring them together in-play. They met in a

town prior to the game beginning properly.

If NPCs join the party sometimes they are a cause of conflict. Stern, the NPC dwarf that
is a fiiend to the party, came in with one of the merchants that hired the party. Stern
helped them fight off some ores and human bandits attacking the merchants and village.
There were several different encounters in this one village, which is why they were there
for 6 weeks. At that time the players were 3rd level. Stern is considered a good friend to

the party whereas Corbin, who hired them, is not totally trusted.

GM Technique: NPC Design

Corbin is a pre-gen that came with the module that the story is using. He’s only slightly
modified. Stern the GM made up herself a while ago. Corbin hasn’t been totally honest
with the party and only seems to want to be with them for a short time. He seems to have
been established as a little suspicious.

GM Detractor: Suspiciousness

Stories don’t necessarily happen in a linear pattern.

Sometimes things have to happen on the spur of the moment, because a module can’t

cover every possibility.

102

The players chose to continue on with a different mission than following the one
suggested later, which the GM feels may distract them. There are multiple possible

adventures that may happen in the new area.

The GM doesn’t like “line” stories, but handles stories by events and area. Previous

adventure hooks involved groups coming to the party because they had been attacked,

and hired them for help.

The players form their backgrounds together to figure out how they all met. This party
all “met in a tavern,” talking to see if people were asking around for fighters or guards.
This basically happened before the campaign began and it was more or less assumed that

the group had some sort of solidarity by this point.

(Aside: this one is so standard that it borders on cliche, but, it’s quick and effective.)

Social engineering at work here

The keep: belonged to an uncle of Corbin’s. He had the amulet that unlocked the doors
and hired the PCs to investigate the area. The PCs didn’t trust him at first because he was
secretive about the keep. Eventually they confronted him for the backstory, which he

gave when pressed. He had an agreement to take any book out of the library.

103

In the case of this particular adventure, all of the adventurers saw a sign advertising a
need for a small party looking to travel north, and that provisions would be provided,
with later payment discussed. It turned out that “any treasure found” in the keep was the
payment, though Corbin had the right to take any book out of the library if the library was

found.

Attractor: In-game reward

When they did get to the library (later), there was a bit of conflict over this issue, because
the party felt that Milo would want to keep one of the books that they found. It was full of
magical spells. However when the group looked in the book, they saw that many of the
spells were evil, and determined they would not want Milo to have them. Putting evil
spells in the book was one way the GM encouraged the players not to go back on their

word to Corbin, though it may have consequences.

GM Detractor: Suspiciousness

Corbin is not a “good” but “neu ” character.

Full story starts. Players exploring keep. In the keep, the group finds a box under a bed.

In the original module, the box was trapped, so that the rogue would have to get by the

trap before proceeding. However, the rogue was absent and since the GM determined that

104

challenge was unfair to the current group, there was no trap in the box. Otherwise they

would have faced a poison-needle trap.

GM Attractor: Fate

The NPCs are primarily used to drive the adventure though they do not circumnavigate

most of the challenges. The PCs are the ones that face the difficulty which may be

caused by the NPCs.

Corbin is a sorcerer, so there was a spellcaster in the group even without Milo. The GM

doesn’t like to have more than two NPCs in a group. Any more than that and it’s hard for

her to run. She will only add two if she thinks the party will be Shorthanded.

An NPC might jerk the adventure: if the players need to find a clue, he can point them in

the right direction.

GM Attractor: NPC Instruction

The keep was a large area that took a long time to explore.

The party has a “kitty” for treasures but also can separate their individual loot.

It’s important to balance EXP and treasure appropriately.

105

The GM writes the stats for a specific item on a card, so they can hold on to the

information in a convenient way. This is if the items are special or have special abilities.

She can’t think of a time when she’s introduced a treasure that has unbalanced the game.
She balances EXP by encounter; if the battle seemed too easy, the reward is not as high
for them. In high-level campaigns with powerful monsters, you can’t use a lot of them or

they aren’t special, but if you don’t use hard monsters there’s no challenge.

She can’t think of a situation she’s GMed where a single roll meant life or death, such as

might happen in older “save or die” editions of D&D.

This GM doesn’t use any mods to the original rules. She talks about the Living Death

edition of D&D, where there is a “hero point” system to accommodate for bad rolls,

allowing one re-roll per point spent. This seems common in newer systems.

This is mostly used in “cinematic” systems. Living Death is that way and magic is

restricted heavily.

This GM doesn’t use “action points” in her game (No meta reward system)

106

This party has a lot of “holy” type characters which make undead encounters easier. The
GM is strict with Paladins and believes they should follow their deities. Sometimes

Paladin power can be a bit unbalancing and make things too easy.

The GM agrees that the zombies were way too easy. They probably weren’t the right

kind of foe to throw up against this group. But sometimes an easy encounter is OK.

When the group first went down in to the next level of the keep, they saw suits of armor
standing around. They were immediately suspicious about the suits of armor and thought
they may be undead or a trap: they were right. As a fourth level cleric, Victor can turn

undead. In this case, his roll was very high and he killed the bad guys very easily. The

GM says their paranoia about the armor was “pretty much expect .”

Metagame play occurs here (suspiciousness)

The keep’s level was opened with an amulet which Corbin had kept hidden. The GM says
the PCs didn’t know about the magical amulet until almost halfway through the story
because Corbin kept it hidden. The PCs confronted him at last because they had heard
rumors in town about the keep and there being magic involved. For a long time the
amulet was hidden. In addition to being used to open magically sealed doors it also had a

map of the keep within it.

Technique: Focus (rumors)

107

In the rumors, other adventurers went to the keep but couldn’t find the amulet so they had
no way of getting in and finding the mysterious Wizard’s library. The GM also seeded a

few false rumors in town such as that the keep was run by a witch.

A Paladin has an active “always on” Detect Evil ability. The GM finds it difficult to
balance around at times because it means that evil creatures do not cause suspense. Later
in the game, an encounter with a neutral-aligned but hungry animal does not set off his

senses, as a method that works around this ability and allows for surprise.

She’s rarely played in campaigns with Paladins (“Goodie Two Shoes”).

Earlier, the cleric was not able to turn the undead, but now that he can, the GM has

increased the numbers of foes. The party has fought a lot of undead.

To use random encounters, she has a table of “recommended” encounters based on the

local terrain and level of the PCs.

The book suggests what kind of encounters, such as animals, might be common in certain

types of terrain.

108

The group did once (in previous session) run in to a creature that was too powerful for
them to defeat. They damaged it, but then ran away and spent some time healing. They

then tracked down the monster and finished it off.

If Corbin had died in a random encounter or in the dungeon, it’s all right: that would be

OK. If the PCs had killed him or if he had died because they were negligent, the “gods”

of the world might have been angry at them, and hurt their holy powers, etc.

Detractor: Damage/death

In this particular dungeon, static elements, such as a rope ladder that was precarious,

were more dangerous to the PCs than the monsters in the dungeon. The falling damage

was particularly nasty to the NPC Corbin because as a sorcerer he had very little Hit

Points to survive falls. The PCs seemed to tire quickly of healing him from his trip-ups.

Detractor: Damage (forced PCs to rethink their strategy)

The GM says that playing a deity is one of the fun things about her job. She hasn’t had to

be an angry god yet however with this group.

The Paladin must follow the recommendation of his deity, keep justice, etc.

109

The Monk’s player is one of the more quiet players, so sometimes he doesn’t open up as

much as the others.

The GM has been in situations where angry gods caused changes in characters, such as

once when a druid, who is supposed to stay neutral, became “good.”

This GM is fairly loose on the alignments, but she played a druid in a campaign where a
Deck of Many Things, which changes your alignment, was used. It caused her to have to

play the character with a slightly different personality.

She generally doesn’t play clerics. Victor however almost always plays cleric.

The GM mils the /reactions/ of monsters behind a screen to keep up suspense. She rolls

attacks, etc, in the open.

In fighting the zombies the cleric rolled a 20 on his turning. That single roll pretty much

won the encounter, except “cleanup”.

She generally rolls in the open for anything combat related. She has a screen which she
uses for reaction rolls: in this case, by reaction, she means social things like sensing
motive, doing spot or listen checks, checking how much do NPCs like the PCs, and other
things along those lines. She thinks it’s better for players not to see the outcome of rolls

like that, directly.

110

She’ll hide figures behind a screen so that the players can’t tell right away what they are

encountering.

Skeletons can’t be damaged by edged weapons; but this wasn’t a huge problem for this

group.

The GM urges the party not to loot the bodies of the armored monsters, by saying that the
armor is in very poor condition and probably not valuable. They seemed to already be
leaning toward leaving the armor behind so they found this acceptable. She thinks,
however, if Milo was with the party it would have been harder to discourage him from
“stealing everything in sight.” She discourages him fiom too much looting by reinforcing

his weight restrictions. As a Halfling, he can’t carry as much treasure around with him.

GM Detractor: Hassle/System Punishment/Suspiciousness

CR = Challenge Rating = how EXP reward is determined. Varies based on the risk of the

encounter. The zombies were so easy that they may not net much of a reward.

She has the EXP written down for each planned encounter ahead of time. She hands out
the reward immediately after things have been killed. The paperwork, she says, is easier

that way.

111

NPCs develop EXP along with PCs. This is so PCs don’t pass them up in their
advancement. A villainous NPC might not develop as quickly as the PCs, as a way of

showing the PCs are training and getting stronger.

She tracks Corbin and Stern at the same Me as tracking the PC’s EXP after the

encounter.

NPC Design Techniques

The players have never turned down aid just to get a better reward for an encounter.

In one situation, the Paladin missed a session and some EXP. She made up for this by
running a secondary session for the Paladin to catch up, where he helped an NPC with a

small encounter. She fears slightly that Milo will now be behind the group.

The key to the keep was retrieved off of a group of orcs the PCs fought earlier. This was

how the keep, and the orcs later found there, were tied back in to the story.

(Previous session: a group of orcs that the party had killed was going to ambush a
merchant. The key happened to open a secret door in to the back of the keep. This tied
one seemingly random encounter in to the main adventure. The orcs were well

organized, so defeating them was a bit more challenging than a standard orc encounter.)

112

F oreshadowing?

The PCs now find the library of the keep. The GM would have not wanted the players to
keep the magical book that they found. She would have tried to get them to give it up by
other methods. It was fortunate that the very good-aligned characters did not want the
evil book, but if this had not been enough to deter them, there was a treasure later that she

would have had Corbin offer to trade him for the book.

GM Detractor: Suspiciousness

Some of the spells in the book were not evil: they were just standard useful spells like
“Featherfall.” The module didn’t specify which spells were in the book, just what level
they were. She chose spells based on the fact that she knew the wizard was originally
good and developed in to evil. So the simpler and easier spells were basically utilitarian
with the evil spells being the stronger ones, written when the wizard became more

powerful.

The GM was happy that the party had ropes to help them through the dungeon. She has

been in a situation where the party hadn’t had a rope and needed it.

Another common dungeoneering item is the standard lO-foot pole. The GM mentions

that this group doesn’t carry one, but in one adventure she is planning they may regret

this.

113

Unexpectedly, in-game, Corbin took a difficult fall leaving the library level and knocked
himself unconscious. The party Paladin healed him with lay—on-hands. To prevent this
from happening again, Stern, the GM’s dwarf, suggests a different approach to helping

Corbin with steep climbs, than the one that the party was initially trying.

GM Technique: NPC instruction

She was very prepared for the final encounter of the adventure. She did however say that

a lot of the encounter depended on how well the social discussion went in-character.

This group is not big on RP and cross-talk. This GM says she likes to keep the action

going.

She would ideally have some sort of encounter within the first hour or so (by encounter,

she means a combat). She gets bored if there isn’t an encounter near the start. Her group

has had purely social sessions, but she considers that “tiring.”

GM Technique: Forced conflict

The major treasure for this particular module was a staff. The staff had a Daylight ability

if the party had discovered it, which would have killed the last monster in it the keep very

114

easily. However, the players didn’t figure this out. That was OK: there were multiple

solutions to this puzzle.

The GM did a lot of advance prep for this module and tends to do a lot of prep in general.

She has pre-made inn layouts, etc.

Unexpected action: when encountering the last room, the PCs at first decided to leave the
room and regroup, climbing out of the room. Their plan was to throw a vial of burning oil
into the room from the ledge above (since one climbs down a rope ladder to get in to the
room). The GM didn’t like this plan and wanted them to fight the monster directly
instead of throwing down oil. She had them make a saving roll against a spell effect, and
said they felt too “tired and weak” (“from a long fight with the zombies above”) to climb
back up the rope ladder to the top. The players seemed content to pass this off as a
potential area-effect power that was caused by the monster in the room. If the players
had lit a fire in the room, they would not have gotten the staff because the staff also

would have caught fire.

GM Technique: Dectrator: Punishment (damage)

Note: On the original tape, this seems very metagame/socially engineered. It’s a lot like

she’s putting an artificial barrier in their way and telling them what to do here. She did it

because she didn’t want them to destroy the treasure.

115

The final monster in the dungeon was a wizard that made a deal with a devil. The wizard
wanted to become a lich, but the devil tricked him; the bottle that he drank was not a
potion to become a lich, but was poison, and the wizard came back as a Shadow instead.
The shadow was a 5th level wizard. He was resistant to turning, which is a decision that
the GM made and was not actually written out in the module. She thought that being able
to turn the shadow as the zombies were turned would make him too easy, so his turn

resistance was 10th level.

GM Technique: Rebalancing challenge

Running a bad guy with magical abilities can be hard because it depends a lot on what the
players will do. The GM just looks at the monster’s list of spells to see what is

appropriate.

The monster was written in the module as hating light. So since the Paladin had a light

spell on his torch, he was the first character that was attacked.

The players had an option to not destroy the Shadow. They could have, instead, re-
consecrated an altar above, which was higher up in the main keep, and had the Shadow
repent to his god in order to be set free from his burden. This might have been a more
positive, and non combat-related solution. However consecrating the altar would have
taken an extra day to do. The GM said the choice between these two actions would not

have made a difference to her, but since re-consecrating the altar would have taken an

116

extra day, there was “no way they could” do the non-violent solution at this point because
of this extra day. (It seems from the actual game that she was discouraging this solution
by mentioning the extra investment of time for the players, though she doesn’t confirm in

interview that she actively discouraged it.)

GM Detractor: Hassle

When Corbin initially encounters the Shadow, the GM makes a roll to see if he can
convince the Shadow he is his own uncle. She expected Corbin to fail but his roll for
Bluff was very good. This put the PCs in line to get the back-story of the situation, as

well as the potential for the non-violent solution.

Not wanting to drag the sequence out in to an extended conversation between NPCs, the

GM had Stern turn to the party and mention that the Shadow could be attacked as long as

he was corporeal to talk to Corbin. (This was a bit of a nudge to encourage them to break

the conversation by jumping in to immediate combat. Though they got ready for a fight,

they still didn’t immediately jump in to the fight.)

GM Action: NPC Instruction/Hint

The GM will occasionally hide rolls but doesn’t typically lie about the results of rolls.

117

The wizard would have been struck dead by his deity once he asked for forgiveness if the

players had chosen this option.

The group does group initiative for combat. Just one person rolls the D20, all modifiers

are added. The GM uses that rule because it keeps the party together as a group.

The Players kill the shadow and leave the dungeon.

Social Pressure (to work together)

The second adventure module she ran, it was actually her third time running it (just not

with this group). Usually runs 3 or 3.5. 3.5 is an easy conversion. Converting 2'"I ed to

3rd ed is hard. She enjoys teaching new people how to play, because new people haven’t

developed powergaming senses, etc.
She tells a story about a bad player that was a sorcerer but kept wanting to be in the front

in combats. He got “incinerat ” and learned his lesson about being brave at the wrong

time. Her sorceress was smart and standing in the back.

Detractor: Death

Milo would have went after the staff immediately. Milo can use the staff, so this is a fair

deal with Corbin, who gets the spellbook.

118

In an earlier adventure, the Paladin in this group wanted a lance, but they were expensive.
The GM designed an encounter where the group saved another paladin from a monster,
and the NPC offered the PC paladin his lance as a reward. That way the PC had the

weapon that he wanted which otherwise he’d not be able to have.

GM Attractor: Character hook

Afier the combat with the shadow, the PCs probably wouldn’t have explored the last
tower of the keep without the GM placing Milo in that tower (as an NPC) to rescue. (See
above.) The PCs heard him scream and ran in to save him, and in that way they found

the last room of the keep.

GM Attractor: Focus

The characters returned to town. They have a random encounter on the way which is a

short fight.

This party really likes random encounters, because the random encounters provide them
with more experience points and rewards that allow them to level up. The encounters in
this game have been properly balanced so far, but the GM thinks she will make them

harder in the future.

119

Attractor: System reward

The GM says she’s going to design more stealth encounters and more encounters where
the bad guys used ranged weapons. If they stay out of the 60ft radius of Detect Evil their
attack might be a surprise. In this encounter, the monsters were neutral so they were able

to ambush the heroes.

GM Technique: Rebalancing Challenge

(I’ve been with groups that didn’t like random encounters because they detracted from
the story. This group seems to LIKE random encounters because they only get

“standard” EXP rewards which are primarily given out for successful combat.)

The GM allowed the PCs to choose two different routes when they left town again. There
was a short but dangerous route, and a long but easy route. A simple binary option. The
GM says they never would have chosen the long, boring route. They didn’t, of course:
they chose the short but dangerous route. However, even if they HAD taken the “easy”
route, they still would have encountered the adventure, it would just have been on that

road instead. She was confident, however, that they would pick the dangerous route.

GM Attractor: F ate

120

The GM hasn’t had any experience with a belligerent player who liked to break her
modules, in this group. She says in an older group she had an orc assassin who loved to
destroy her stories. However, he also broke a rule of the game, by trying to cast a clerical
spell from a book, so a god appeared and smote him because he did not actually follow
him. This player actually quit for good. He was only a l6-yr-old “munchkin” so she
hadn’t been warned about his tendencies not to play along with a gaming group. The
player always played an assassin, so he was “roleplaying” by engaging in basically

classic grief behavior.

GM Detractor: Death/Game expulsion

Moving on to the next adventure. .. the party is hired by a caravan of merchants to take
that short dangerous path through the woods. Seeing this is the prepared adventure they
accept it openly. The GM knows they want to go to a bigger city, so the merchants

happen to be heading in that direction.

GM Technique: NPC Hiring/Metagame F ortunetelling

As they get on the road the GM tells another old story about a player who picked up any
treasure he could find, so, he encountered a cursed item. When he put it on it caused him
to randomly change sex and size. As a female his armor didn’t fit because he was tiny
and small, and not strong enough to lift up his usual sword. He had to buy additional gear

and the change would also happen randomly. That was a definite way to cure the player

121

of grabbing and stealing everything in sight, since after the curse he was much more
cautious about what treasure he would actually use. The GM kept track of how long

since he had changed, since it was roughly every seven days. Once he even changed in

the middle of a battle.

GM Detractor: Damage

The group sets off on the path to the next city. On the road they find a dying elf.

Back-story: the village that they will pass on the dangerous road was once kept safe by a
druid. Something bad happened to him and the trees and grass are becoming tainted. It
used to be a beautiful meadow, now it is brown and dead with withered greenery. They
sent parties out to talk to the druid but none have come back. They become walking dead

instead, tainted with some kind of disease. The dying elf was a member of one such

emergency party.

When they first see the body they are suspicious. There is a small moment where they
may have killed him altogether, but since the GM describes that the body seems weak but
is still breathing, they go up to it and poke it with a stick. (Lightly. At first the GM
thought they were hitting him rather hard, but, miscommunication.) The elf does not

detect as evil.

122

There are no rangers or druids in the party so the group cannot figure out anything in

specific about the nearby plants (they ask).

The players discuss the situation with the elf. The elf is supposed to die, but the Paladin
has a lay on hands ability that can save a dying person. There is a kind of metagame
argument here where the players would like to save his life. The GM solved this by
railroading fairly heavily; the elf begged to die because he said his curse could not be
healed and the taint/disease would make him turn in to a tainted creature. The players are
fairly insistent on healing the elf. The GM says that healing isn’t working well, but the
PCs are persistent about healing. Finally the elf begs to be killed because of the taint.

The players acquiesce and let the elf die, but don’t seem happy about having to do this as

it’s obvious they would have rather healed him.

Metagame system use/GM just asking as a detractor

Attractor: Character instruction (pleading)

I found this the most interesting scenario point in the game. The GM says the module is
“broken” because it insists that the elf die no matter how well the players heal him. The
players seemed to feel a little cheated by the fact that there was no way, seemingly, to
heal the elf. The railroading was quite visible here. The players were laughing about the
death, and didn’t feel “in the game” at all because of the metagame construct preventing

them from making their own choice in this matter.

123

The cleric also tries to dispel the curse, but the level of the curse is too high for him to

dispel, and not centered in this location.

This disease is called the “Redwood Scar.” The GM says if the elf had not been totally
dead he would have gone back and attacked his family and children. Things created by
the scar disease are different from standard undead. They are a special creature type the
PCs haven’t yet encountered. Knowing the context, the way the GM handled the “please
kill me” encounter makes sense. But not knowing that, as the PCs didn’t, they seemed to
feel dissatisfied. (It might have been better for the bad consequence of the elf returning

home to actually happen.)

The PCs now have to choose: do they investigate the taint, or go on to the city with the
merchant who hired them? Despite the lure of the adventure, the players choose to keep
their deal with the merchant and travel on to the city. The GM says this was because they

were generally good characters.

GM Attractor: NPC instruction (promise)/character hooks

The cleric at first is not sure as to how going one direction or the other will effect the
situation. He casts a spell called ‘augury,’ that will tell him if this is a good decision or
not. The GM rolls a secret roll to see if the spell works or not. The spell does not work
(legitimately), so he gets no information. The GM was glad for this roll because she was

happy not to have to give the player advance information as to the outcome of his

124

decision. She says if the spell had worked, he would have probably been suggested to go
to the village instead of following the merchant. But she would rather they made this

decision on their own instead of using fortunetelling.

GM Detractor: Lack of reward

The players almost decided to split the party. (This is almost always a terrible decision in
RP, says GM.) They came to the conclusion on their own not to do so, so the GM was

relieved.

There is a potential adventure and encounters at the city that might distract them from

this village. They may have to deal with the taint at a later time. GM says that is OK.

In the city there is a temple that is getting poor people, who come to the temple for help,
and kidnapping them to sell them for slaves. The GM says she may have to boost the
power of the temple acolytes because her PCs have leveled up and she wants for this to
be challenging. The PCs will encounter rumors about people disappearing in the temple
at the inn they choose to stay at. There are also temples that are rivals, and there are

people vanishing in the slums.

That decision to move on to the city marked the end of this session.

125

This GM was notable for doing more advance prep than other GMs I had encountered.
She had a lot of very thick notes and adventure detail planned out in advance. In some
way this also made her less flexible when an unexpected game encounter cropped up: an

interesting dynamic between GM and players.

9.3.GM3 Notes

A lot of the talk at the beginning is pre-garne conversation. While the tape was running
there was not necessarily story going on in the gameworld — I make a note when the

“prep” starts and the game story itself picks up around hour one.

The spider on the table is for situations where the game digresses or moves OOC. It is
squeaked or reminded in those cases, to get the game back on track. This was originally
done with a penguin, apparently, the phrase this applied to was, “We’ve gone south, so

far south we’re seeing penguins,” and a small tradition was born.

“Gaming is a very social activity,” GM says with regard to off-topic conversations.

The character who died in this session, Kat, was a former PC. This happened because the

GM was convinced Kat was not returning. (The situation was done entirely off the cuff.

As she states it, the GM just started the phone call scenario, and that was what came out.)

126

This GM says she is very big on player freedom. Because of this she does very little
advance preparation. It is the players, not she, who are really making the story; she is just

directing it.

“There are two styles of gaming.” Tournament style, someone provides a module and
you are to run the story that they have provided. Home campaign style, you can write

your own path.

“If they want to go to Albequerque, I ’ll lay track,” she says. She has no problem with
players choosing their own paths as long as there is a story there somewhere. But with

too much freedom there IS the possibility of losing the story’s coherence.

Even in regular writing, characters will do things that you don’t anticipate.

This GM does not like the Dungeons and Dragons “D20” system as much as other
systems because of its task resolution. She wants a system where players are a bit more
likely to succeed in attempted tasks. She thinks that D20 “slams down” creativity.
Notably she had a small contribution in playtesting on the second edition of the game she

is running, which is Chill.

She want the mechanics of the system and the interface of the game to “interfere as little

as possible” with the story, when it comes to task resolution. With regard to D20, she

discusses the “whiff factor,” ie, the fact that it can be challenging to hit enemies with a

127

weapon makes combat slow. This is why she doesn’t generally run D&D, not finding it
conducive to a “cinematic” experience. She does not use a map and did not roll many

dice during the session.

Hassle

“If you don’t play a game by the rules the designer intended, you’re playing a different

game.” But that’s OK.

Normally when playing this game her players sit around on couches in her living room,
and this was the first time they’d all been around a single table. However, it worked

better than she’d thought it would have.

She has developed a system which other GMs in her peer group also sometimes use,

which is the “action point” system. Action Points are rewarded to players who do

something interesting, amazing, very in-character, or creative. They can also be called

“Drama Points.” An AP is spent if a player wants a bonus roll on a difficult task, or

wants to reroll a new task for a better or more dramatically appropriate result.

GM Attractor: Metagame system reward

This is borrowed apparently item the “Buffy” role playing game in this case.

128

Many task resolutions in this game are done with Willpower or Resolve. Resolve
increases slightly with small successes. This means that at the end of a story, players are
more equipped to face the big bad villain without potential disaster, while still feeling

accomplished for defeating him.

Resolve is actually a second-edition game mechanic that this GM scrapped in favor of the
AP system. She thinks the AP system is more elegant because it doesn’t interrupt play.
Under Chill 2"‘1 ed mechanics, players roll a die to check for how afiaid their characters
are, the “fear check” resolution. It reduces a stat pool they have, Willpower. As the
game goes on, more fear checks are made and Willpower gets smaller, making each
check against fear successively more difficult. This means the characters get more afiaid
over time, which can be good. However, it’s “not satisfying or cinematic” to be so afraid
of the final monster that you can’t fight back at all. If you collapse in a heap at the end of
the story or have to run away from the last boss because you failed your fear check, it’s a

bad climax. However, under Chill 1St mechanics, this happens regularly.

Resolve, in Chill 2““, had players make a second fear check any time they failed an initial
check. The score on that added to a “Resolve” pool they could use later. GM doesn’t
like this mechanic, though, because she feels making a second roll takes them out of the

story, and the Resolve system gave too many points.

Detractor: Hassle

129

Action points are also used to reward behavior.

At this point on the tape the GM was handing out tokens to players to represent their
current AP pools. The players have a pool of AP because this campaign has been going
on for a while. “When they do something that makes me go wow, I give them an action
point.” They can save them up to use later or spend them as soon as they’ve been handed

out. They are given for: roleplaying well, being heroic, or being self-sacrificing.

An AP can increase a skill check by one level. If it is a fear check, the player can spend

as many AP as he/she wants, even making a failure in to a critical success. She feels they

should have some control over whether or not they are afraid.

In situations where cross-player talk is occurring, sometimes it can be difficult to focus

on what players are saying. However, listening is important because it gives the GM an

idea of what their plans are and what is going through their heads.

“I don’t usually have that much cross-player talk.” “You may have noticed I was getting

a little bit irritated.”

Not a lot of prep was done for this session.

“When I sat down,” other than the zombie fight, “I had no idea what was going to

happen.” “For the wedding, not a lot of prep.”

130

The players defeated a cult one session prior to this.

“They had defeated the zombie cult, not the prior session, but the session before.”

This GM does not consider money or resource management a big deal. She feels it gets

in the way of story and doesn’t want it to be an issue.

At this point in the tape players are discussing reward money and how to distribute and
spend some of their current money. They’re talking about buying vehicles, etc. The GM
says “we do not worry about money” in this campaign much. One of the PCs, Reg, has
an advantage purchased which means he has access to a lot of money already. The other
PCs have a good amount of fund from a previous adventure. The GM discusses that

adventure briefly and where the money came from:

She points out, with regard to the cult story, that she always tries to make sure a story

wraps before players lose interest in it. If the story is not interesting anymore, the finale

won’t be satisfying.

Bring the story to the players.

She discusses briefly another mission these same players ran, where they took down a

terrorist cell in Deerbome MI. After this mission, the players received a good deal of

131

monetary reward for the destruction of the cell, which helped her story because they had
to worry less about resources. (However, she still feels that in a modern setting, having
the player-characters have a life outside of adventuring (a day job, family, etc), is

important for plot hooks.)

An NPC that also appears in this session, Ayden, was discovered to be a werewolf. He
had been turned in to a werewolf in Afganistan, which is rather far from the game’s
actual setting in Detroit. However, a friend pointed out to the GM that there was a large
Arab population in Deerbome MI, and perhaps the “lead” werewolf could be there. The
GM came up with the idea of terrorist werewolves. She led the story to Deerbome and
had the players fight an Al Queda cell and a creature from Arabic legend to save their
NPC fiiend from the werewolf curse. To make this more fun she also got the real names

of several terrorists from public FBI files.

GM Technique: Player hooks/character books

It turns out that many of the real people she had the players capture or defeat had large
rewards on them by the FBI, 4 or 5 million dollars each. She thought it would be fair to
give those rewards to the players. She rounded it out to simplify math, to a million
dollars each, and 4 million in a non-profit fund for “fighting the good fight.” The players
kept trying to come up with tax shelters so they could get more of the money, but she just
told them no to that, 1 million each was enough. It seemed like a fair number. It isn’t

irnportant to her that players be poor.

132

The GM has an idea or story to tell but it’s up to the players to make it happen.

Yes, there is an element of fantasy fulfillment to this sort of adventure.

Characters:

Leigh —- anthropologist and professor of the occult
Karen - Archeologist/anthropologist

Reg - Fantastically rich “massive tech geek”
Frank — FBI Agent

Justin — Auto Mechanic

Tony -— Paranoid type

These are somewhat relating to the player’s interests.

The player of F rank was playing “out of type” this time around. He’s usually a

Showstopper and a “challenging player” because he’s very smart and a good actor. The

GM says he’s constantly “outthinking” her. His current character is a bit quieter,

something different from the usual, which is partially at her request.

“It’s not a competition,” the GM says, it’s a collaborative story and she is not the only

author. She doesn’t have a hard and firm idea of where exactly the story will go.

133

The zombie fight itself took a few days of prep before tonight, because she wanted to

make sure that the creature was a proper challenge. It is not important that the players do

fail. What is important is the “credible threat of failure.” This adds suspense.

Note: this is cited in the GM guide as well

She says: she did do prep for the last fight in this session. The reason she prepared was

she wanted to be certain of all the abilities that the creature would have and how to use

them correctly.

GM Technique: NPC design

“Failure is boring -— the credible threat of failure is very exciting.”

“Dead characters are not interesting,” she says. It’s more fun to “torture” them, hence the

reason the character’s IC dependants are called “snack food.”

“Emotional pace” is a very important issue.

A cooldown portion after a big victory is also important.

134

To keep emotional pace going well, you cannot just continually ratchet up the tension, or
else everything will seem the same with no highs or lows in the story arc. Humor can

also be used to diffuse tension.

Horror is about violence and the threat of violence.

“I have a limited number of tools to inspire fear in them.”

Sometimes the game has time management issues with prep work and getting started up

in the story. Gaining momentum is hard at first.

She feels she’s really “perfectly honest with them” (the players) even if using

misdirection. “I don’t hide my motivations but I hide my methods.”

To start the game properly, there is a phone call. The phone call and actions surrounding
it were completely off the cuff. Part of the reason for this is that the GM would rather kill

other people’s old characters than play them herself.

She felt that Kat’s player had lost interest in the game. However, since another character
was getting married, and Kat was in the wedding, how to get her out of the wedding?
She decided that killing her was a fine solution. Originally she thought perhaps she could
be undercover or on a top secret assignment, but death was more interesting and

dramatic.

135

Technique: Forced Conflict (mystery)

Only after coming up with the idea that there was a car accident, did the GM see that the
players suspected murder. Then, she came up with a reason for the possible murder. This
is a case of an action preceding the reason for that action. The GM decided that it was

the fiance of the character, and not the character, who was the target for the murderers.

Adding the death came first. As she was working out the conversation, she came up with

“the why.”

The situation with the bodies found was a lead-up to the fight with the zombie. However,

this was also generally off the cuff.

Sometimes, this GM will drop a detail in to the story just because it is intriguing, and

figure out why it happened later.

Since not everyone was involved in the initial phone-call, she added an additional
mystery. Some mysterious bodies were found, chewed up and damaged. She created a
sort of arbitrary pattern that would get a ‘Wisceral” reaction. Again, she decided why

later.

136

The fiance who was killed was named Jared; he was a “smooth talker” who moved

quickly up the ranks in his job. A supernatural incident got him involved in the story.

She came up with the idea of killing Kat because it made the players realize the situation
was serious. “All bets were off” and one of them could be next She liked the idea of the
contrast between what the players thought of Jared (many of them thought he was a little

slimy) and having to hear him on the phone distraught about Kat’s death.

GM Technique: Character hooks

Frank (character, the FBI agent) has a “paranoia” flaw. He thinks some of the PCs may
be involved in organized crime.
Tony (other character) is calling Frank every 5 minutes asking for details about the death:

has he figured anything out yet?

GM thinks the players probably believe that she’s been planning this murder, but it was

really totally spontaneous.

All of the characters in play have personality traits the GM calls “buttons.” She can call
upon those particular character specialties or weaknesses to produce a reaction, and in
doing this can predict the behavior of the characters somewhat. For example, one

character hates to see harm done to couples in love.

137

Each character has a supernatural incident in their background that got them involved
with the group. Leigh’s character’s husband was seduced by a creature called a Lorelei.
If you are killed by one, you come back as one, and when he came back as one he tried to
kill Leigh also. She prevailed, but now has a “hotbutton” with couples in love; she wants

to see things work out.

Frank’s button she’s been “counterpushing.” Frank is an “outsider” type with paranoia, so
she works hard to instead of play to his outsidemess, play against it, and make him part

of the group.

“It’s all about playing the characters.” The story is written by the characters. That’s a

change to her GMing style recently.

GM Technique: Character hooks
NPC behavior: player characters can’t function in a vacuum; they are not the only
determinates of the story even if it is “their” story in the end. The world accounts for the

Characters and their actions, so NPCs move in accordance with their moves.

How do you get players to feel a certain way about an NPC?

‘ o
‘Behavror.”

138

She discusses an NPC named Father Andrew, an NPC with a troubled past who goes
“way back” in her campaign. Very unsympathetic, except for toward Karen. He has a

soft spot for her. It sets up a conflict in the group.

GM Technique: NPC Design

The game has kind of a Catholic bend because there are several Catholic PCs.

The Polish PC -- Justin -- bought an attribute that makes him likely to run into family or
friends where ever he goes. He also has a negative attribute that says he’s had at lying.

Everything he does gets back to his family eventually. Characters are in their hometown

for most adventures.

Time doesn’t always line up. It might take 2 or 3 months to do a few weeks of game time.
She wants players to think about the “petty details” of their lives, and their ordinary
civilian work. If you’re away from that for too long things might fall apart; people

always have obligations. There’s tension and story to be found in the clashing

Obligations.

ms GM uses a laptop with an intemet connection to grab quick maps and settings.

Since she’s using a “real world” setting, these things are available and she doesn’t have to

make them up on the spot.

139

The players needed a big hall for the wedding, so she let them rent the hall without a lot
of advance notice. This isn’t necessarily realistic even if the setting is realistic, but that
kind of thing it’s OK to overlook realism for story. Even if using Google Earth for the
setting information. They added the large hall because the players and GM realized that
the families involved were very large. The large ball was suggested by the “wedding

coordinator” NPC she had invented.

GM attractor: Focus/NPC design

Karen is also fiiends with a Native American tribe. She sent an invitation, but the GM
decided that meant that the whole tribe would want to come. Since she’s already
determined that money is not an issue, she decided to set the wedding at Kobal Hall, on
the river in Detroit. Printing stuff out from the intemet “books” it in to reality. It makes

it so that these situations feel less like a comic book.

This “superzombie” is part of a voodoo supplement for the game. The original scenario
was actually from an early playtest of the game. The PCs have, in some cases, been held
over from that previous game. In that scenario, there were zombie-humans, who were

not undead, but brainwashed in to behaving like zombies.

In the current scenario, the PCs were informed by a zombie “expert” as to the rather

arcane method of disposing of the “superzombie.” It involved putting the zombie in a

suit, for some reason related to his culture. (This is really weird.)

140

GM Attractor: NPC instruction

“Voodoo” supplement story called “Drums in the Night” changed to “Zombie Jamboree.”

When she was playtesting, she had two monsters, a ghost and a zombie. The players
were fighting zombies. This was during a test, and the zombies were way too fast and
almost invincible. She decided they were too hard to use again later. She had picked up

a book called the Zombie Survivor Guide. The PCs were texted an address and time.

Even playtesting an enemy type she wanted a story. Sitting on the table of the address
was a copy of the Survivor Guide, and a Post-It. The Post-It instructed them to find out if
anything in the book was true. Tucked in the book was an address for them to go. That

was how she got them in to the hook to fight their first zombies. (Simple but effective.)

The zombie cult had 3 different types of zombie. Zombified humans were not really dead,
just brainwashed. Justin’s cousin, a reporter, was looking in to the cult and got zombified

in this manner. She wasn’t dead, and could still be rescued.

There are “spirit zombies,” she hasn’t used those. And lastly there are actual dead,
cadaver zombies. “Toenail zombies.” One has to restrain it, cut off the fingernails of the
left hand and foot, and put the clippings in a bag around its neck. Then the zombie would

die. But there’s no way for the characters to find that out without help. An NPC,

141

however, put them in touch with another NPC zombie expert. She gave them information

and allowed them to do research.

GM Attractor: NPC instruction

What they were facing in this fight was a “Greater zombie.” Any bad-guy can make a
zombie cadaver, but only a “creature of the Unknown” can make a greater zombie. The
researcher told them that, in order to destroy the super zombie, they had to put him a suit,

put him in a coffin with 27 seeds, and bury the coffin.

(At the end of the session the GM decided to hand-waive the part where they put the

zombie in the suit. She figured that after the good fight, this would be dull to play out.)

There is a new bad guy being introduced which is a type of creature called a Loa. If you
want a regular bad guy to survive, this GM says, don’t let the PCs get anywhere near that
bad guy. Once they know someone is really bad they’ll probably be out to get them

unless you take measures to protect the villain. This will seem unfair unless the villain is

just not available most of the time.

The Loa is the one that raised the super zombie. He’s the next, and scarier villain.

Continuing bad guys are a “Very good thing,” and good in horror. There is nothing the

PCs can do about the Loa; he’s too powerfirl for their level. For now she’s not giving

142

them any contact with him directly, they only see his effects. The events involving the

cult were caused by a human, being manipulated by the Loa.

NPC Challenge/Design

“If I let them get close, they deserve — they’re entitled to a shot at it.”

The wedding reception is the bulk of the session’s action. There is some socialization
with various NPCs the PCs know. During the wedding reception, Karen (character) meets
“Edward,” who is her mother’s new boyfriend. She makes a roll to see if she gets any
kind of supernatural impression off of him. The GM simply says “You don’t like him.”
This is misdirecting, after a fashion; there’s nothing supernatural about Edward, but he is
actually a con artist and not as polite or nice as he appears. The other characters don’t
make this roll, so they all think that Edward is just fine. This builds a sort of isolation
around the character that feels “something” is wrong with him; isolation is a big part of a

horror atmosphere.

This idea, she got from a show, “Medium.” Edward is a motivational speaker. She

developed the character to be not supernatural, but just an evil man. By having him just

be a bad guy, she’s misdirected the players in to thinking he’s supernatural.

GM Technique: Focus/Suspiciousness

143

“Horror is about isolation, powerlessness.”

Sometimes she consults with people not in the game, but who know her players, for hints

on how to surprise them.

Knowing players/Social engineering

Moving the wedding to the riverside gave her a chance to tie the story in to place. Since

the zombie could crawl out of the river easily, he’s been collecting body parts, which are

the strange corpses the police have found. The GM wanted the players to think there was

a pattern, but honestly the zombie was “just hungry,” which became apparent later.

GM Attractor: Fate (in encountering the zombie)

The GM digresses slightly at this point and discusses other RPGs that didn’t go as well,

back in the early days, when players figured things out too quickly.

This was a Star Wars campaign; the player characters all talked to each other and

compared notes, and that was a moment when she realized that the players were going to

make the story theirs.

“Make the people that they meet real.”

144

Ayden and Angie are important NPCS. Their involvement in the story was very fluid.
The GM mentions that NPCS need to be vivid and have more than one dimension so
players care about them. These NPCS have their own agendas and get their own EXP,

leveling up a bit with the players.

NPC Design/action

Sometimes she has trouble making sure the NPC voices are different from one another.

But when she’s doing well, the players can always tell which NPC is speaking.

In one case Father Andrew was involved with a group of PCs who were mostly women.
He has a bit of a misogynistic streak, because things don’t always go well when female
characters are involved in these situations. That’s how the character has developed. It

colors his interactions but he will still work with the PCs.

The state police sent Angie to work with the group because there was a bomb threat and
they needed an explosives expert. The GM uses movies, etc, as a way to quickly describe
and develop character personalities the players will recognize. (In this case, she’s very
much like Vasquez from Alien.) She said initially both those NPCS got involved with
one another because adding a romance at that time made for a more interesting story. It

was another case of figuring out “why” later, but it seemed to work.

NPC design/action

145

Sometimes she does have to alter an NPC action to make an interesting interaction for the
players. The more “real” the NPCs are, the truer the reaction will be from the players, so
it’s important to give them multiple traits. Angie made a pass at Ayden and Ayden
accepted it because it made a more interesting story. Ayden was also the same NPC who
was turning in to a werewolf, so adding this amount of tension made the players more

interested in curing his condition. It was interesting for the characters.

Ayden was expecting he might die. He wanted to have one last romance. Angie followed

him to Michigan from New York.

If this hadn’t turned out to be interesting, she’d have dropped it, but tried to make

dropping it interesting as well.

In this setting, once people know about the supernatural, the supernatural knows about

them. She calls it “The talk.”

One NPC is a cop who doesn’t know much about the supematural, and likes it that way.

She helps the players out, and Frank kind of likes her. The GM wants to let the

relationship proceed, until she can “use it to hurt him.”

GM Technique: Character hooks

146

One PC has a Clairvoyant Prescient Dream “superpower.” The dream sequence is part of
a story “arsenal” in a way. This particular dream sequence was something she’d used
variations of before. She reworked it to fit this particular story. She is very familiar with
the background music that she used, so she knew how to time her narration to fit the

song.

This particular dream was a reused story element in her “arsenal,” but it had been used
with different players in a totally different campaign. So it was Ok to reuse this story

element to come up with a dream off the top of her head.

In this dream, Frank and his cop fiiend were dancing. At first it seemed as if they were
dancing in a hall, but then the hall turned in to a graveyard, and it was discovered that the
other dancers around them were zombies. Then the cop woman turned into a zombie as

well and bit Frank, waking him up.

That was how the GM dropped a clue that the zombie was going to attack at the reception

— the dancing. However, it also makes Frank paranoid that his fiiend may turn on him.

GM Technique: Suspiciousness/Focus

“Sphere of Protection” is a tricky ability that projects a 10/20 foot safety sphere around a

character. Supernatural creatures cannot stay in that sphere and their special powers will

drop. This is very inconvenient if a supernatural creature is in disguise. Powerfirl

147

creatures do get to roll a “check” against this power. Anyone “tainted” by the
supernatural can “feel” this sphere even if they are not penalized. That makes its one

useful plot purpose a way of building suspense that helpfirl people might be tainted.

Karen has this ability. The GM thinks it gives the character (not the player but the
character) too much control. In order for there to be horror the players can be in control

but characters shouldn’t be.

A creature of the unknown has to leave this area even if he must dig through the wall.
The power costs a lot of Willpower to use, but since it destroys illusions it’s a
“giveaway.” It only lasts 5 seconds. Cost = 2D10 Willpower, can’t do a lot of those but it
can be sustained. Willpower total would be about 80, or less. Extremely powerful

creatures of the Unknown get a “fear check” to stay in it, a rule the GM added.

GM Technique: Rebalancing Challenge

“Haywire” is the supernatural ability to break down and control machines. This zombie
villain did not originally have this power. However, since it wasn’t scary if video cameras
and other technological devices revealed the zombie before it was interesting, she added
this ability on the fly, knowing the rules accounted for it. She will change a monster
slightly if this benefits the story. The important thing is that the players do not realize a

change has been made; the creature has to at least appear consistent.

148

Greater zombies do not have Haywire. She added it at the last nrinute because she needed

it for the story. She figures, if player characters grow and change, so should characters.

“We make the Unknown.” The more the bad guys are fought, the more they can adapt

and become stronger and learn how to fight back.

GM Technique: Rebalancing Challenge

Ayden was in a situation where he nearly died, in a previous adventure. The GM decided

since it had already been revealed that he MIGHT be a werewolf, that this would activate

his transformation. Normally there might be a roll for this (25 percent), but in this case, it

was a good story, so, it definitely happened. It gave the PCs the goal to kill the head of

the bloodline. (The terrorist adventure.)

GM Technique: Fate

She reads a lot of books on screenwriting to help her set up ideas.

“Never say no.” Take what the other person gave you and build on it, “no matter how

insane it is.” She’d make this a rule of RPing if she could.

The GM does not turn down player suggestions if possible. She wants players to be

creative.

149

Major digression from the discussion occurs here. GM is talking about a campaign
where the villain was Elizabeth Bathory, the “blood countess.” She had the players
beaten up very badly by the end of the campaign but she knew that the bad guy was
hurting. She wanted to encourage them to move forward and finish the story. But they

were all, in character, tired, and decided to go back to town.

She decided that this decision was more important, in this case, than the adventure she

had pre-written. So she let them make the choice not to follow the villain even if that was

where her original notes had planned for them to go.

GM Action: None

“Most GMs” would have forced the players in to the last stronghold to finish the fight.

She thinks that it takes a good GM to not force this kind of interaction.

The players of this old game almost lost and failed, because the bad guy also built up her

resources while they were resting.

Doesn’t like having conflict between different players.

The party planner for the wedding was off the cuff. Reg had made an offer to hire

someone to “direct traffic.” This is the NPC that suggested the large hall.

150

Keep the reality of the game separate fi'om actual reality. Keep the reality of the game

consistent.

In-game, a birthday party is planned for a character (Justin) at this point. The GM didn’t
realize it was the character’s birthday, but when someone mentioned it, she said she
couldn’t imagine Justin’s sister not planning a party. So she decided that the sister had

planned a surprise party, after all, and then she invited the characters to it.

GM Attractor: NPC action/Rewind

A “perfect session” is when they are so lost in the story that there is no digression or

sidebar discussion.

The big house these characters hang out in was a bit unplanned. Initially the GM thought
that they would like a base of operations, and a helpful NPC helped them construct a site
to use. However, they eventually decided not to use it as much, and use one another’s

homes instead, most often using the home of the wealthiest character.

“The Batcave.” This safehouse was set up in a run-down but slowly revitalizing area in
downtown Detroit. The building is a burned-out store, a place to meet for the characters.
Andrew told Ayden to find a place and fix up the inside, but not the outside. Ayden is a

paramedic; his fiiends helped build the interior. However, the players “got difficult,” and

151

didn’t really like the safehouse. Karen has a condo; Justin has a garage where he works
and a fairly nice house. Reg is rich and has his own home. Since everyone has their own
home they don’t all want to live together in this “Batcave,” so it’s almost never used after

the work.

Tony works for a demolition company. Frank’s job sometimes causes him to be called
away. (This is also a convenient reason if the player cannot make a session.) Leigh is

looking for a condo in the area.

A bad guy came to Karen’s place and killed her cat. Suddenly the players are thinking

maybe the hideout is not a bad idea But they may not use the Batcave and may choose a

different place (that would be OK).

At this point the players are checking up information to see who killed Kat. The FBI
agent knows what to look for, but the GM wasn’t ready with enough information; she
hadn’t developed the story that far. At this point, therefore, she wasn’t giving him a lot of
clues. Knowing what she knows about how murderers might hide evidence, these
murderers, who struck Kat and Jared with a car, spray-painted a security camera so there

was no footage of the accident for Frank to find.

GM Detractor: Lack of Reward (for following unprepared story)

152

Lt. Worth, the cop, calls Frank after he gets back from this, telling him another body was
found. The GM did this to remind him of the current story and to “tweak” him; she knew

that he’d find it upsetting to miss a clue.

GM Attractor: Focus (back to the main prepped story)

At the beginning you don’t know players well enough, and their characters well enough,

but you learn this over time.

Tell them what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

GM likes to discuss the “social contract” of the game; what are people’s ideas and

expectations and what do they want to get out of the game?

“Robin’s Laws” (book) talks about this a lot. Give the PCs what they want to do. Try to
make sure the characters all get spotlight time. Sometimes this requires self—assessment

because it’s easy to accidentally miss people when things are moving quickly.

If players don’t pick up on a clue right away, for a while keep forcing it, or leave other
little clues in the background. prlayers still aren’t picking up, move the story forward by
introducing a consequence. For example, it took 3 or 4 iterations of using a nosy reporter

character (a cousin of a PC, Marlene, Justin’s cousin), before the players were interested

153

in a particular voodoo story. At that point, she called one PC and got his machine, but

then disappeared as she was captured by the cult.

Have you ever had players not pick up on a clue?

”All the time.”

Keep feeding it in, seeding it, or change it. May be dropped, dropped to background, or

just altered.

The zombie story above is her example. It was percolating in the background of other

story items. She made periodic notes about its progression.

Marlene was calling Justin because she knew Justin had some information. This was a
core story the GM didn’t want to abandon, so she used the voice mail. It basically said,
“I think I’m on to something! Call me back.” When he called back she didn’t answer, but
the GM didn’t make it seem all that important that she wasn’t home. So the PC left for

the weekend, and didn’t follow up again.

There were two groups, a “gray” middle group and the really bad group. Both, however,

were pretty bad.

When Justin returned from leaving for the weekend he stopped by his cousin’s place, and

only then found signs of a struggle. Now he felt guilty about ignoring her. She had been

154

captured by the “red sect,” the mid-level bad guys. They found Marlene as a hypnotized

zombie, and managed to save her.

Character Hooks/Focus

Sometimes storylines can be totally dropped, if they didn’t affect anything and not much

prep was done. But actions do have consequences.

Having “nothing” happen at the wedding was intentional. It gave the players downtime

for later drama and made them relaxed, so that further drama was a surprise.

Edward is a new NPC at the wedding who may be a villain later. This is the first time the

players have met him, so he doesn’t have a sheet yet.

A lack of followup will lead to consequence but remember players trust you to give them

a fair chance.

When you build trust, the players will allow you to do more with them.

Whenever possible it’s best to have players answer questions in-character.

The zombie encounter: after the dancing and the drinking.

155

Players are happily discussing the wedding and fun they are having. The GM decides to
challenge Justin. Justin said, “If anyone gropes my new wife during the dancing I’ll
punch them.” The GM says, yes, one of your relatives does get a little flesh; do you start
a fight? The player backs down, however, saying he’ll get his character’s sister to
intervene. The GM made the gamble figuring the player would back down. If he did
want to start a brawl at the wedding, he could have, but it would have had different

consequences. She however isn’t surprised Justin chose a more diplomatic solution.

GM Technique: Character hooks

Detractor: Damage

The last fight was partially unplanned. The GM decided it was over fairly quickly,
because game time was running long and also because after the initial blows were made,
the actual slaying of the creature was academic and not a matter of story interest. She
had the NPCs behave as they did so that the players had a hand in their rescue. However,
they retreated because it was up to PCs, not NPCS, to kill the monster. If an NPC died in

that situation, that would have been OK.

Mechanics for fighting: percentile dice. Very simple and doesn’t stop the game from

happening.

Social trick: GM lowers her voice and speaks more quietly when the game is getting

more intense.

156

Technique: Metagame

Phrasing

At this point, when things were basically normal, there were signs of danger happening

outside and an NPC (Angie) had disappeared, gone off somewhere. The players know

they are close to the river and they are suspecting the zombie attack.

Technique: NPC Action provides focus

A good part of the action is spent looking for the zombie, trying to see it, as it moves in

and out of cars and makes sounds. They can’t find it, but they can see lights flashing

whenever it walks by.

Players will try to outsmart you, keep them on their toes.

It’s not a “me versus them thing so much as trying to keep the story twists ahead of them

so they have surprises.” Frank’s player is the most notorious for this with his ideas.

157

She wants to narrate things as if they are on film. The PCs are wearing radio earplugs to
communicate with one another. The women in the group aren’t wearing high heels

because that would be a “stupid movie cliché,” but cinematic is otherwise a good thing.

Reg’s character was tapping in to video cameras to try and follow the zombie around.
This is when the GM added the Haywire power to the zombie’s abilities. The zombie
used this power to shut off the lights, in the parking garage where it was hiding, and jam
a few of the cameras. That way the players were forced to check things out in person.
When she mentioned that cameras weren’t working, the PC said, “Oh, I know what this
is,” and described what he thought about the zombie, even though the GM hadn’t
explained it otherwise. The character has a “manual” that tells him some information
about what he’s fighting, but he’s prepared for it to be occasionally incorrect, and to

adapt to changes.

Attempted PC fortunetelling beaten by GM rebalancing challenge

Lack of Reward

CJ: an NPC who was at the wedding. She was in a car accident when “something”
stepped out in fi'ont of her car, so she arrives at the reception in a wheelchair after

surviving that accident. She’s still in recovery.

158

The PCs decide to try and get everyone out of the reception, safely. In-game it’s about 8
PM. It might have gone all night, but closing the bar was the PCs’ solution to start

shutting down the party so that people would leave and be safe.

The Native American tribe wanted to have a ceremony at the wedding reception also, to
wish the new couple luck. One of them approached a PC about it, but then with the
zombie fight the GM almost forgot to have it. One of the players however asked about
that situation and if she was going to re-include it. Then she remembered, and had the
ceremony go on even though the bar was closed. This didn’t end up being a forgotten or

disruptive thread.

Early in the zombie fight a guard dies. The GM called him Bob, off the top of her head,
and all the players thought that he was a “throwaway” or red shirt. She made them feel
bad by mentioning that he was also married and had children, although this was out of

character knowledge.

Angie: small woman who uses a big gun. The players described it as a “hand cannon” so

she used this as a descriptor and said they heard a “hand cannon” go off somewhere in

the garage.

Phrasing

159

One of them tried to call her phone. It wasn’t turned on. It would have been in—character
for it to be on, in vibrate, “in retrospect.” However, it did make a better story for it to not

be turned on at all, so they couldn’t reach her, despite what she might have ICly done.

Technique: NPC action/Character hook

The GM has to ask PCs what they are doing, not tell them what they are doing (or

feeling).

She describes the scene vaguely and mysteriously at first to build suspense, before they

actually see the monster clearly. At that point it has captured Angie.

9

“I have to be consistent with what I have imagined is the laws of physics in my universe.’

If the GM makes an error in judgment, she’s OK with backtracking.

The PCs have an ability, Perception, which can be rolled for all types of sensory

mechanics. Spot, listen, smell, everything all in one single stat.

The last fight is “pure magic,” everything goes according to plan with the last scene. The
PCs had created “mancatchers” earlier to trap the limbs of the stronger zombie. Ayden is
a pacifist now so he won’t fight; it’s up to the PCs. Sometimes he’s used as a conscience

or voice of the GM.

160

GM Technique: NPC Instruction/Inverse Instruction (he won’t do anything and must be

saved)

Have players killed anyone you thought they would not kill? Sure, 10 out of the 18
zombie cultists fiom the cult adventure, were shot, and blown away. Father Andrew was

not pleased; because of this they’re less likely to kill in more recent adventures.

GM Detractor: Authority figure

She just took people in order of proximity to the target instead of an initiative roll.

Nobody was left out. She moved people’s orders if they shifted positions. Ayden was
last because he was an NPC. If the character would act she will let him act, but she will

delay him if needed.

Has a problem with estimating distances so she frequently doublechecks. As they confirm

it, they “buy in to it.”

A player does a driving roll and does a good job, so she makes it a successful task.

She will lead them a little. For example, she asks a player, “are you going the general

direction of the zombie?” instead of “Where are you going?” She wanted to make sure

she took the suggestion and saw the action, so she could be involved. She also reminds

the player that her character has Akido, but adds, “not that you have to” fight, she’s only

161

reminding her with a nudge. This is the climax of the story so she must push them a little

harder so they can end on a good and dramatic note.

GM Social Manipulation techniques (metagame)

GM telling/reminding

Rolling the dice increases the tension whether or not the outcome actually matters. If he
had failed his second driving roll, he still would have gotten there in time but might have

destroyed other cars in the process.

If she doesn’t like the result, she will lie, but if she’s prepared for any outcome for a roll,

she rolls in the open. She’ll also roll in fi'ont if she thinks they think she’s “padding the

blows.”

During the climax people start spending their APs. She isn’t totally sure she’s satisfied

with the AP mechanic, and would love it if players gave one another APs. However she’d

have to be careful it doesn’t get out of control.

Justin doesn’t earn APs often. He’s “too carefirl.”

The zombie has a scream power that is familiar to the players. When they heard the

scream they knew that it was dangerous.

162

Ayden used a feat of strength to rescue Angie. This did leave him vulnerable however to
the monster. He did this as an independent action because it was in line with his behavior
and motivations. Now the PCs see he is brave and need to rescue him as well as making

sure Angie is safe.

Technique: NPC Design

The PCs fight the zombie by catching its arms and legs in the trap. Leigh rescues Ayden
and they all hide in the van so that Angie can get medical aid. The limb traps took the
zombie down and the other PCs dogpiled on it. The wrap-up of this, after the big fight is

over, will be saved for next session.

9.4.GM4 Notes

Star Wars:

This is a “Slot Zero,” a session run by a lead GM to teach modules to other GMs. The
modules played were both convention-style modules designed to nm in approximately 3
hours each. (We got through two of them in around 4 hours for a basic total of 2 hours
per module; they were run efficiently) The modules were new to everyone in play. The

GM had read the modules in preparation but had never ran them before.

163

During this kind of game there is an object called a cert, short for certificate. The certs
are used in national shared world campaigns and are certificates that say a person has a
certain advantage, disadvantage, power, etc. One of the players going into this game was
carrying a cert that said the GM had to roll to see if he was attacked off-screen prior to

the game. (He wasn’t.)

The Living Force campaign is considered to be part of the Star Wars extended Universe
canon. Sometimes LF has to deal with issues fiom Lucasfilm. For example, Lucasfilm
told the campaign writers to jump the campaign forward for ten years so it would sync up

with the events of Episode Three during the release of the movie.

The cert handed out at the end of the session mentions that the PCs have the attention of

the emperor, which may cause trouble for them later.

The emperor was appearing in the hologram, but Len Marcus is what the name of the
campaign bad guy is. He is the right-hand man to one of the villains in the campaign, and

stole the long rod called the Dark Staff. The players will jump to the conclusion that bad

things are Marcus’ fault even if the GM is really using the emperor.

The Man in Black that the group encounters is a Darth Vader “wannabe” who is a student

to the emperor, but not as powerful as other Sith.

164

“Normally during a game, I would try not to reveal . . .” when a story is broken by a
player action. This time the GM went ahead and told the game players that there was a
story break. That way if they run the module in future, which they may have to, they may

be more fully prepared.

The GM skips a space battle in the module, because he feels it’s not in a good place.

RPGA rules in module design used to say that “Encounter Three” always had to involve
some NPCS being sent out to fight the player characters. This was an “Obligatory Thug
Attack” according to the GM, since even if it was considered a rule of good design to

have a combat at that point; it didn’t always fit the story.

“Encounter” in module terms is any major scene. Normally the format is that the
encounter starts with an explanation for the GM, and a box text to explain the story. This
particular module almost always ends the same way, but there are five difierent ways to
get the clue that will lead them to the end. This module was otherwise very linear, and
did not use much of a branching system. GM calls the branching system a “Matrix
Structure.” You can get clues in any order that you want, but you have to get all the clues

before moving on.

This module story starts with the PCs going through the jungle on a planet, on speeder

bikes. A tree branch almost hits them. Then snakes fall out of the tree which the players

must fight. The GM says that this module provided two different possible fights for the

165

players to encounter, just designed to show them something was strange in the jungle,
since normally they could travel here without difficulty. The other possible encounter
provided by the module was a dinosaur, but the GM didn’t use this for fear it would take
too long to fight. The snakes were very easy for the players to kill; this was intentional.

The snakes didn’t have any statistics.

GM Technique: rebalance challenge (easy)

If he had used the dinosaur, the goal of the encounter is to scare it away. However, he
thought that these players might chase the dinosaur if they used it instead of chasing it
away, and the players going to chase the dinosaur would take them off the track of their
story. The dinosaur is one of the “legends of the campaign,” but is a major red herring

that might detract from the current story.

GM Technique: Focus

On this planet, the trees are a major source of life. The PCs have been to this planet
before, and at least two of them knew that, and the fact that anything dangerous in the

trees was a bad sign.

One of the characters has been previously dead, but had a lucky “cert” that allowed him

to be revived.

166

When the snakes leap down to the speeders to attack PCs, they begin fighting
immediately. Not unexpected, but the fact that they didn’t investigate anything at all still
made the GM wince a bit, since there were bad consequences for accidentally hurting one

of the lifegiving trees.

Snakes were roll 15 to hit in the first round, 13 in the second. The GM says he will lower
the difficulty of an encounter after a round or two if the group is not able to handle it. In
a convention style “Living” campaign you must balance on the go, because you have no

control over what type of balance you will get at your table.

GM Technique: Reblanacing Challenge

There are several classes in this system. This table had two Jedi (There are Jedi who are
warriors, Guardians, and Jedi who are Councilors.) There are also Scoundrels, Force
Adepts (non Jedi with Force powers), Spacers (pilot), Nobles, F ringers, and Soldiers.
The PC who was dead previously was a Soldier. There are almost 100 prestige classes

(special classes) as well because new books have come out.

The “time ghost” was how the player who was dead was revived. At the end of another
story, a roll was initiated because of a time travel incident. The good roll that the player
got meant he had a “time ghost” who was an echo of himself. It would allow him to play

again after the first time that he actually died. The cert “I’ve Got a Pulse” allows you to

167

get up if you are nearly dead (more on that later), and one called “Future Vision” allows

you to avoid one death by being forewarned about it by Master Linneas.

Linneas has the power to see the future but is an NPC. Everything he knows is spelled
out for the GM in the book, so he rarely has to ad lib a future vision. If he does, he should
“vague it up a bit,” according to his instructions, most of the time, so Linneas is more
vague than wrong. He’s been one of the masters of the Jedi Academy in this system and

has appeared in about fifty modules.

Linneas will die in this module. He’s the second of the Jedi masters to die in a module.

GM only read the module twice before playing this. He says it was enough just to get the

story but not a lot of prep otherwise.

The player characters discover that the trees that keep the planet alive are not really many
trees, but all shoots and roots of the same, master tree. This is an enormous secret that
almost no outsiders know. The tree can’t be seen as the master tree fi'om high above,
because it is very wide but its leaves make it appear as many multiple trees rather than
one single tree. The players’ quest is to go to the deepest part of the jungle and try to find

if something is hurting the master tree.

GM Attractor: Instruction

168

The Heart Tree was a planned campaign secret, but the idea that all the trees in the forest
were shoots of it was an original idea that hadn’t been previously discussed in the

campaign.

As a campaign staffer, one has to be careful with what one hands out to players, which
may have consequences that are unforeseen. Powers that allow player characters to revive
characters are particularly powerful, and one has to consider the consequences of rewards

given to other players.

Unknown abilities problem point

The module the group may play tomorrow involves them rrmning in to a clmracter right
as they are murdered. One of the characters is accused of committing the murder. What

happens if the player characters revive the murdered person? That would definitely ruin

the intended story.

View of death problem point

At the tree, the players encounter some evil thugs/aliens who attack them. The GM says
he accidentally made this encounter too hard. The players found it a challenge and had a
very difficult fight. Halfway through the fight, the helpful NPC that is with the players
uses a power to group-heal them all and restore a lot of their hit points. The character did

not have that power. “That power doesn’t exist in Living Force.” However, the GM had

169

it happen anyway because he thought the “thug attack” had been too hard. He’s been
specifically told by campaign coordinators that he is “not to kill characters in stupid
ways.” “If these characters are going to die, they’re going to die heroes.” It’s more like a
movie that way. Heroes can’t die in silly anti-climactic or random ways. What if “Obi-

Wan died falling down a staircase?”

Rebalancing challenge

NPC action

A character in a previous D&D campaign (rim by a different GM) died “slipping in the
shower,” literally. The character was bathing, a dragon landed in town, and the player had
to make a roll. When he failed, “the shower made an attack” and this killed the character.
He considered this a very bad DM moment and would never do this. “I’m considered a

softball GM.” Known for not killing characters.

If a character is well-developed, it’s unfair to kill them with something that may turn out
to be a rules screwup on his part. “We’re coming towards the end of the campaign,” so

he wants the characters to survive to the climax.

Dark Side Points: If DSP get to half your Wisdom score, you make a Will save. If you

fail, you become tainted. Your character becomes an NPC. If you ever get all the way to

your Wisdom score in DSP you are evil, full-on Dark Side.

170

Detractor: Metagame punishment

Players must be good guys, and must fight bad guys. In the end, good must triumph over
evil. By those rules, they can’t write modules where the bad guy wins. Even if the bad
guy gets away, they have to do it with the promise that the bad guy will eventually “get

it ,9

A PC is killing a bad guy in this fight, who he has fought before. The first time he
encountered her, she was on a giant Dark Side artifact that looked like a hand. The evil
bad guys are called Weirds. The Weirds are like witches who use dark side powers. The

PCs have been trying to chase them down to kill them all.

The next module involves the players chasing down the one bad guy who gets away at

the end of these adventures.

Weirds are a cult that exists on this planet, Kularin. They believe that all ofl’worlders are
evil and should be sent off of the planet. “From the Trees” is the module where they first
appeared. A village of wookies was trying to move on to the planet and the Weird

attacked them.

In the movies, you almost never see anyone get actually hit. “Vitality” hit points are the

near misses where someone ducks out of the way. “Wounds” are hit points where the

player is actually hit. In Star Wars, a critical hit goes to the smaller wound pool instead

171

of the vitality pool. You die if you lose all wounds, but vitality is usually chipped off

first.

Comparison to movie

There are a lot more evil force users in the game than there would be in the movies. The
weaponry works well “until you get about 8‘” level,” then the damage is not balanced
correctly. Force powers scale better for high level bad guys.

It’s common to have multiple Jedi at a table. Either 1/3, or 2/3 of the campaign are Jedi.
Most players, their first character is; the second character isn’t. GM says that one day he
ran an entire day where the players were all Jedi except one. Now, players can’t make

them anymore because of events in the story canon. He expects to see a lot less.

There was a small rules debate over an attack. The GM let the player dictate what he

wanted to do so he could move on. The PCs defeat the bad guys. Combat takes a while.

Metagame Fortunetelling

Thugs had around 90 HP: 72 Vit, l6 Wnd. Heroes also had a lot of hit points.

Soldier class is the SW equiv of the Fighter class.

172

Jedi can deflect blasts with their sabers just like in the movies. Sabers scale up. Right

now they are doing 5D8 damage. If the fighting Jedi gains another level it becomes 6D8.

After the group heal, the battle is nearly over.

In a living campaign, there are little surveys at the end of a module, and if the players
don’t like a character or story much they can let the DMs know. The designers may

decide to abandon a plot if players don’t find it all that interesting.

At the end of the fight, Master Linneas shows up “Just in the nick of late.” The module
actually says this, because he would originally show up “just in the nick of time” in other
modules. He can show up earlier, if the PCs are having trouble with the bad guys, as

another way of preventing them from dying in the attack.

NPC Action

There is a Noble in the group today. He isn’t as useful in a jungle adventure. In the city,
he has access to contacts and a lot of equipment. He isn’t as high level as the Jedi
Councilor is. He seems less involved in what is going on in the campaign today. The GM
says he’s six levels under the other characters, so he isn’t as useful, but he can’t lower the
whole module because it will be too easy for the Jedi. He uses a “floating” difficulty. If
the Jedi try to do something, he’ll make it harder for them, but if the Noble attempts it

immediately it will be easier so that he can get something done.

173

Rebalancing Challenge

The Jedi try to leave a bad guy alive to question them but it doesn’t go well.

(The PCs later find a woman chained to a wall. She has a bad attitude and is rude.
However, the GM says that she was answering questions honestly. As a Weird herself (or
an ex-Weird) her powers made her immune to things like the Jedi Mind Trick, and she
“automatically” made any save for a power thrown at her. However, she did answer
honestly if questions were asked, just rudely. There were some “key words” that if the
players used, they’d get information, but they didn’t use a lot of them. The captive would
not volunteer information so she wouldn’t say things if the PCs didn’t think to ask. This
happens later, but comes up now in interview because of the first interrogation also going

rather poorly.)

Lack of Reward (forcing better questions)

The PCs find a map on a fallen body that will lead them to where they need to go, after
the interrogation fails. The map was there because the module writer figured that this

would be what the PCs would need after potentially killing all the villains. It was easier

than asking questions.

174

The PCs go to the hideout of the villains. There are guards outside. The GM decided that
any kind of attempt to sneak past the guards would work, because he didn’t want another
fight. The guards rolled ‘1’ on their rolls to figure out they were being duped and see the
people sneaking by, so it was legitimate that they were really that dumb. This GM rarely
shows his rolls in the open. He will fudge for, or against players, if the story needs one or

the other. He’ll move challenge around.

Rebalancing Challenge

The guards are snuck by and this is quick and rewarding. Some roleplay occurs where
the PCs make noises in the bushes to try to fool them. The GM plays the guards as very
gullible and dumb. He wanted them to get inside successfully so they could examine
artifacts and question prisoners, instead. He believes that this encounter could’ve taken a
long time if a GM was more interested in making the guards smart or simulating them

accurately, but he didn’t find it an interesting part of the story.

NPC Action (guard failure moves story along faster)

There is not a lot of out of game conversation or digression in this particular session.

“Cinematizing things,” is the GM’s phrase for making things move more quickly, by

running them essentially in movie mode and just explaining what happens to get story

175

back on track. He doesn’t think that players should be forced to roll if that would hurt the

story.

Everyone who sits down at a table where the GM has a Living module: “We all know
what we’re getting, when we get in to it.” Some railroading is acceptable because it’s
understood by the players with a module that they have less freedom than normal.

Modules still “go south” sometimes which is a phrase meaning going off-track.

At the end of the module are two XP lines. One is roleplay XP for remaining in-character
and providing good dialogue. The other is adventure XP for following the adventure
correctly. If the players were on the right track of the adventure but ran out of time, they
get half the XP. If there was a special circumstance were they got where they needed to
be, but failed part of a mission, the normal reward is 3/4 of the XP. If the player turns
down the mission very early, as in, during the initial briefing, the player gets 50 XP plus
any RP reward and is sent off. (This small reward means the player cannot do the

module a second time.)

Metagame Reward system

Normally these modules start with a mission briefing of some sorts: an NPC,

government, etc. Then there is an introduction, a Q&A, and they can accept or not. If

they do not accept, they are done with the game, so they just don’t play, and are sent

away from the table.

176

After getting around the guards, just inside the enemy camp the players find a datapad
that has some information on it. The datapad is too hard for the PCs to hack in time. If
they did nothing but hack the datapad they would “lose” the module because it takes too
long. Or, at least, they would not get to do anything. The module can’t actually be “lost”
per se, and will always end the same way when run. However, the GM told the players

they had “won” at the end, even though there was no loss condition!

Lack of Reward

GM Technique: Phrasing

“No matter what, the First Witch will die; Linneas will die; the Tree will survive.”

Also inside the camp is where they find the chained-up woman mentioned above. They
initially debate letting her go. The GM says in interview this would be a terrible idea.
She is too powerful in her magic and would kill them. It’s a good thing they didn’t let
her go. He says if they had really wanted to do it, he would have said “You’re getting a
bad feeling about this.” This would be a subtle urging to tell them to stop doing it. If they
still unchained her, they would probably get what they deserved. She is “untiered”

which means she’d always be powerful no matter who she was fighting.

The other encounters in the story were tiered so they could vary in difficulty depending

on how the players were doing. This includes the last fight in the module.

177

Originally, the First Witch (the main bad guy) was supposed to kill one of her own

assistants to end the module instead of what actually happens (later).

The chained woman will always succeed in Will saves. He rolled a die as a “fake”

however.

This interrogation scene counted as the “real briefing” if they could get the right
information out of the chained woman. If they didn’t get much information then they

were going in unprepared.

A player tries to use another mind-effecting power on the woman, but the GM pretty
much ignores his effect. He wants to get him to talk to the character instead of just trying
to read her telepathically, which isn’t as interesting to him. The woman treats the Jedi
like morons. Affect Mind is a power that one of the players (Patrick) tries to use
incorrectly a lot. This GM doesn’t reward him when he uses the power instead of

thinking to solve problems in other ways.

Lack of Reward (for overusing powers)

Hassle Detractor (for trying a die roll — just use roleplay)

The chained woman was also very hard to intimidate, though the Jedi also tried this rather

than talking with her. The woman becomes ruder, and tells the Jedi that they can’t do

178

anything to stop the ritual that the Witch has already begun. She’s confident enough that
they can’t do anything that she tells them what the ritual, to destroy the tree, is. “The

ritual has already begun . .. you can do nothing about it.”

NPC Inverse Instruction

The ritual itself is being cast by the head Weird named the First Witch. She is casting the
ritual right now. The chained woman tells the PCs they can’t do anything. The GM
however says that no matter what they do, the ritual will not finish or succeed, as long as
they bother to show up at the end fight at all, and even if they lose. “The ritual will not

finish .. . period, end of story.” “This entire trilogy is a severe railroad.”

At the end of the last module in this trilogy, even if they don’t beat the big bad, the

emperor will kill him for failing instead.

There is a holoproj ector included in the room where the woman is chained. The GM says
he likes h010projectors a lot and says they are a great device, because players will always
sit and listen to the entire message. The messages have a tendency to self—destruct after
being listened to once, enforcing the idea that they are very important and have to be

listened to the first time they are turned on.

The man in the holoprojection is Len Marcus. He’s the one that told the Weird how to

perform the tree-killing ritual. He’s “one of the greatest over the top villains” and “Star

179

Wars hokey.” This makes it easy for players to hate him. The last time he appears, he
has a long monologue that he can rant through. The GM has no idea if players will let

him finish or shoot him (either, is possible).

NPC Design/Character book

A player (the soldier) hands the GM a note. It says “I secretly switch my gun to stun.”
Then he shoots the chained woman, so she falls unconscious. The player would not have

gotten a Dark Side point for killing her, so he decided to stun her.

Metagame Detractor works here

The PCs move to the site of the ritual now. A map on the table in this room shows them
the way to the ritual. The table also has a hole in it indicating the Dark Staff has been

there. The players avoided touching the table, but used the map.

Around the site of the ritual is a large barrier shield (a forcefield). The GM says he was
inventing and making up the rules for that shield. His notes said “any projectile thrown at
it will not go through.” The GM decided that a person flying was much like a projectile,
and this wouldn’t go through. The moment that anyone on the inside is seriously injured,
the ritual is broken. One player that rolled a critical success did break through the shield,

because “they wanted it so badly.”

180

Reading the table/Knowing the players

The GM draws a picture of the shield on the whiteboard so players have a visual aid.
Around the force shield was the elite guards. There was also a shield generator, on the
inside of the shield, and around the generator were Weird who were more powerful than

the guards.

The PCs didn’t have to kill everyone on site. They just had to hurt one of the peOple
performing the ritual. The ritual would go for as long as they needed it to. Since it was
always going to be interrupted somehow, there was no set moment at which it would

really be complete.

Fate: Ritual doesn’t finish no matter what

“The feeling of victory, at the end of the day, is what keeps the player coming back.”
“We want players to keep coming back, so I want the player to leave with a good
experience.” “Having them lose the first battle is never a bad idea.” That way they go
from a low point, to the high point where they finally win. This module even has a small
caveat in it that no characters will really die. They’ll black out, and they may lose an arm
or leg instead. They don’t want to kill characters in this module, since it’s the “next to

last trilogy” of a set.

181

Here, a player stuns one of the people doing the ritual, with a stun shot. Technically, that
should have broken the ring automatically. The GM felt this was too easy and he wasn’t
ready, so, he let the combat go on for a few more rounds. This worked Ok since the

players weren’t pre—informed as to the victory condition.

“The kind of unwritten house rule is if you stun an unnamed person, they’re done until

the end of the scene.” “Mook battles in D20 will last forever, because of sheer volume.”

Rebalancing Challenge/NPC Design

A player tries to throw a stun grenade in to the force shield, but rolls a ‘1’. He drops the
grenade instead, and it explodes on to all the player characters, stunning several. The
GM, on tape, laughs at this and seems cheerful that the roll failed. In interview, he says
playing “evil GM” is a “persona” that makes it seem as if he’s not as with them and isn’t
being easy on them after all. He’s not happy to see actual failure, just happy to see silly

consequences or small complications that make things interesting.

Social Engineering/social presence trick/Metagame behavior

The guards outside the force shield are very hard to kill.

The people inside, “once you cause at least four wound points,” -— injury to one of the

interior people, that ends the ritual and the story comes to a conclusion.

182

The GM keeps track openly of how much damage has been done to the guard. That’s an
intimidation tactic because it shows that the guard has a lot of HP and is designed to be

challenging.

Metagame fortunetelling

The shield generator itself wasn’t actually drawn on the GMs original map. He put it on

his drawing because he thought it made more sense.

The First Witch has an evil rod for this particular ritual.

The GM had forgotten to draw a tree root on the map, but it was part of the ritual. This
was an oversight, so he had it appear in the middle of the ritual instead, as if he were
working making the root appear in to part of the ritual. The player didn’t ask questions
about that; if it seemed they were going to he moved the topic of discussion to something

else.

The GM had decided that, every round, that something evil would happen. The rod would
grow bigger, or the skies dark, or something else. The first of these special effects
happened when the first guard died. The players (wrongly) concluded that killing the

guards was feeding the ritual and they should stop doing it. The GM didn’t contradict this

183

assumption. It ended up working out in his favor because it made the PCs more urgent to

stop the ritual instead of killing the remaining guards.

Evocative descriptions provide intensity of climax and Focus to important events

“The mind games are more interesting to me than the combat games.” The GM feels that
the social aspect, and fooling people, is more interesting than the statistics of rolling dice

to beat opponents.

Because in a module in a totally different game, killing the bad guys actually made the
ritual stronger, a player jumped to the conclusion that was the case this time, even though

the modules and games weren’t related.

A PC used a stun shot on the First Witch. She should have fallen down totally stunned,
but that would have not worked with the box text in the module. So, it was enough to

break the ritual, but not to knock her out.

Linneas shows up at this moment, and then does some Jedi counter-ritual and “talks to
the trees.” Then one of the trees attacks him, and he dies. GM calls this a “death by box
text.” The players can’t prevent Linneas’s death. The GM says this is a lot like the full
motion cut scene in a video game. “Most big-name characters” will die like this, in a way
that the players can’t get involved with, so they “can’t screw it up” if the character is

required to die.

184

 

Lack of reward

Metagame Detractor

In another campaign there was a cert that allowed the players to have “any item,” but

they didn’t release it with that text because it may break something later.

“This is where the module goes wrong,” the GM now says. “You are supposed to sit there
and wait while this box text happens.” The players aren’t supposed to take any action at
all. However, seeing Linneas in trouble, one of the players declared he was charging
forward to attack the First Witch. The GM says, as long as there is a hard return in the

box text, it’s Ok if the players do something, when he’s running the game.

What originally was supposed to happen: First Witch sacrifices her assistant by stabbing
her through with her staff

What did happen: the PC charged her, and became the sacrifice instead.

There was no way in the rules the PC should have survived being killed for this ritual. If
it was one of the weird, they would have died. The GM could have said, “You’re dead”
at that point in time. But he thought that it was a very heroic thing for the PC to do, and
wanted to reward him. So, when the ritual was a failure, the PC also was brought back to
life. The Heart Tree used its magic to save the hero while the First Witch died from a

backlash of energy.

185

GM Rewards heroic actions; throws out intended story for a path players like better

Linneas’ spirit joined with the tree when he died. (It was a voluntary sacrifice like Obi-

Wan.)

The players seem very happy with this result, where a player was replacing one of the

NPCS.

P'Wu“ft‘“€f’rraz~rmmm§

“If I had this to do over again, the First Witch would have said something to him.” To

add extra drama.

The PCs are rewarded by giving them access to a cave under the planet. Protected by the
life energy of the tree, they can hide there from people who would try to find them with
the Force. The GM explains that this is so, if they decide to pick up the characters years
later, they can survive the Jedi purge. The players get a cert saying they know the
location of the cave. “The cave to me is a cop-out,” he says, because Jedi are supposed to
die. Also, it’s weird because of the way their knowledge is explained. They forget about

the cave after they leave, but magically become aware of it if they “need it”, which seems

a bit cheap.

In—game reward/instruction/Character hooks for Jedi

Potential future plothook

186

Linneas supposedly didn’t know the cave existed, but the GM says that is kind of a plot

hole for someone who can see the future.

The next module is called “Destruction,” which the GM doesn’t like. It gives too much
away right off the bat. The PCs also can’t stop the bad guys from blowing up the Jedi
academy. The emperor is directly behind this storyline, and he’s the hologram that

appears in this base.

Module title may cause unwanted metagame play

The GM starts this by drawing up the Jedi academy at the beginning and having the PCs
get their briefing. The PCs are sent to a planet to check out an abandoned base. They get

their ships and equipment.

The GM decides to skip over the starship combat in this module. It would have taken a
long time, he says, and not been rewarding, so this was a time when “cinematizing” was a
better idea than having a real fight. The base they were checking out belonged to
separatist droids, but not very smart ones. They would have attacked the PCs with their

ships, while the droids were leaving the base.

GM Rebalances challenge for story

187

Before leaving the briefing, the PCs encounter a monkey-lizard. They all make charisma
checks, and whoever has the highest check, keeps the monkey-lizard for a while. The GM
says the monkey is the “world’s greatest plothammer.” The monkey can provide clues, or

prevent the players from going places they shouldn’t go.

NPC Action (monkey)

The players don’t want the monkey around, however. They’re all hoping they can make a
low check and not be stuck with it. It isn’t used much in this module after it is
encountered. Even when benefiting the party, the monkey can be annoying. Once, the

GM used the monkey to take a dart that would have killed a PC.

The GM doesn’t like this module. He’s letting players digress and talk about the module,

while he considers it.

Metagame social engineering

The starship combat can “eat” an hour and a half or two hours. The last time he ran one,
he sent everyone but the pilot to lunch. The GM thinks the starship combats take just too

long and aren’t as interesting. They look better on screen than on a game map.

“I’m not the world’s strongest on mechanics,” says the GM. He thinks that it’s actually

easier to be more story-focused so you can ad-lib and rely less on the systems and dice.

188

After landing on the planet, they go in to the abandoned droid base.

This base had “DCs of doom,” the GM says, and the roll-related difficulties were
arbitrarily hard. It was difficulty 32 just to open the door to enter, but there were no

specialized repair people in the group, which this challenge was catered to.

Rebalancing Challenge

Destruction of the academy happens no matter what. The difference that’s made is,
whether or not the players witness it, or if they are trapped in this base the entire time

instead.

Fate

Detracting players from one location by attracting them to another (via Instruction)

The GM thinks the design of the base that the PCs encounter was dull and frustrating.
Most of the rooms ended up being empty. By the time the PCs got to the base, they
weren’t clear on the mission objective anymore. Their objective wasjust to go to the

base and get information about it. They didn’t find it an incredibly engaging objective.

189

The GM decided that, when one of the Jedi used a force-sense power, he would pick up a
signal from a room in the base. That got him interested again, and lead him in to that

particular room, which had the most interesting design out of the other rooms in the base.

Character hook

Before getting to that room the PCs encountered some droids still in the hallway. They

killed them without too much trouble.

Within the room are a computer that needs to be repaired, and a holoprojector. The
hologram device has some footage of the emperor, taunting the players. The room locks
down and a countdown begins while the emperor is taunting. The doors of the base
would be locked for an hour. The emperor said three hours, but after one hour, according
to the write-up, someone came to rescue them. If for some reason they had done

something “incredibly off the wall” it would’ve taken them all three hours. Then the PCs

would have returned too late to do anything.

The GM feels he screwed up the last combat in the module.

The battle droids, he feels, were badly placed. They were another obligatory fight, and

were easy to mow through. “More players wanted” the hack and slash style, he says.

The GM doesn’t like that this is a combat which feels like it doesn’t involve the story.

190

Jedi force sense was a useful lure in this situation. In other games, it has been bad and

mined surprises, because it could “detect any life form.” Now it only detects other Force
users instead. The GM likes to use more creative bad guys than Dark J edi/Sith, because

it gets around this problem and is also more unexpected.

Character hooks/NPC Design

7“? rh-k

The GM digresses and discusses the villains in a previous module: a group of villagers

struck with an insanity disease. Believing they were all Jedi, they attack the player

.';“.:Ir l.‘ T lt'l. ..' -’r 5 5.9341! ‘1”qu “'I'

characters with brooms that they think are light sabers, and call them evil force users,
including referring to their leader as “Darth Banana.” This is a silly module, not serious
like the current one, but sometimes silly stuff can be fun. You can have fun with either

“pure humor” or “pure drama” because those moments will be remembered.

The droid combat now ends. The GM says he would have skipped that combat if they

hadn’t already skipped the other.

The force energy turns out to be coming from the data crystal that needs to be fed in to

the holoprojector. The GM made it a force sensitive object as a lure.

The players thought about taking the crystal out of the room and putting it in their

projector back on their ship. The GM wanted them to stay there, so said it only would fit

in the projector in this particular room. The projector however, was broken, so they also

191

had to spend some time repairing it. The GM says he would have done it differently
because having the projector be broken served no purpose. The DC was high (36). If he
had it to do again, stepping in to the room, or just touching the console, would have

automatically triggered the hologram.

After the hologram teases them and begins to taunt them, the doors to the room lock. The
PCs try to unlock the doors. The GM says that he “misran” this; the doors should have
been jammed without any possibility of release after the second failed attempt. However,
he didn’t mind that they kept trying, so he let them succeed anyway. One player rolled a
natural 20 (highest possible roll) and so he allowed it even though technically it wasn’t
enough. The GM believes the challenge level was that high to accommodate players who

were playing high-level repair characters, which this party didn’t have.

Rebalancing challenge (for absentee abilities)

Force Points are expendable points that can be used to help out the players. They don’t

automatically replenish but the GM gave some out at the end of the adventures as a token

of a job well done. They can be used for rerolls, etc.

The emperor counts down, as if something bad is going to happen, but... well, nothing

does. (Even the word “boom” appearing on the hologram projector would have been

good, but, wasn’t in module.)

192

Red Herring

The characters escape, and go back to where they got the briefing. There is Kai Adi
Mundi, who tells them where to go next. The GM mentions that the Living modules are
only allowed to use canon characters in certain ways, so the players will be reverent to

those characters.

Authority Figure

He tells a story about a home campaign where this rule wasn’t in effect, and the players
strapped a thermal detonator to Anakin’s pod-racer and blew him up. That was an
unexpected action! But since the PCs were working for the Hutts, and it was a one-time
scenario, the GM thought it was good and the players didn’t have to worry about the

consequences.

If the PCs had tried to kill Kai Adi Mundi, guards would have rushed and killed them

immediately dead. Kai told them to go to the Jedi academy at “all speed.”

Instruction

The PCs get in their ships and head back to the academy. If he’d wanted to, he said, he’d

have had the starship combat occur here.

193

 

The module had a smallish branching structure here. Either the players arrived too late to
witness the destruction, or they arrived just in time to witness it. Putting a starship
combat here may have negated the need for a branch, since they would have always been
held back and slightly too late. It may have also solved the problem where Zelice, the

Jedi trainer, lived even though she should have died, later on.

Branching story design/F ate design (academy always destroyed)

Some problems with this module could’ve been caught if it were playtested more.

When the PCs arrive at the academy, it’s mostly destroyed already and some bad guys are
here. They recognize the bad guys’ ship. If they’d have blown it up, they would’ve

gotten another one. The bad guy has a double-bladed light saber, the only one in the

campaign.

When giving out player rewards in Living campaigns you have to be careful that they
won’t break later modules. That includes the players getting the double-bladed saber if
they manage to get it. Sometimes players will also play modules out of order, so they
will play part three before part one or two, or something like that. They may even play

the revenge module before seeing the events that cause them to want revenge.

The PCs arrive at the destroyed academy and are attacked by some hired goons and

bounty hunters. The GM says he was just “tired” at this point and didn’t want to run

194

 

 

 

another fight. He felt a fight with goons didn’t allow the players to bond with the NPCS
that were important. Final words from the heroes would’ve been good. However, this
was a fight with random mercs, without names. So, he decided that the random mercs
had their weapons set to stun, and just stunned the players instead of defeating them, then
left. If he could do this again, he’d have developed a bad guy who “got away” fiom the
base, so that attacking them would have been more interesting. He thought maybe the

Weird chained to the wall could have been the bad guy in this scenario instead.

NPC Design
Use of character hooks

Rebalancing challenge (mercs could have been too hard)

Sometimes in the past player characters would kill a bad guy too soon, but sometimes the
GM can use an “out” if he wants a bad guy to recur. For example, if a PC declared they

had the villain’s hand, he could have them examine the hand of his adversary and realize

it was now cybernetic.

The mercenaries stun all the player characters and move on. Otherwise, the GM says, the
fight would have not been interesting. It seemed a bit like a fudge. Some of the players
remark that they thought this was accidental and the mercs hadn’t intended to stun
them/thought they were dead. However, the GM says that the players may have been

ordered to be left alive, so that would be a reason the mercs didn’t kill them.

195

The name of the “Vader wannabe” is Garth. He’s a hanger-on that hasn’t quite reached

the rank of Sith because he’s not strong enough with the force.

A story break occurs here. The GM has “a page and a half of box text” that he doesn’t get

to read.

What was supposed to happen was that the trainer Zelice dies because of fatal wounds.
However, the cert mentioned earlier called “I’ve got a pulse” allows a player to declare
anyone not dead. The cert designer figured a player would always use it on himself but
the cert didn’t specify and said it could be used on anyone. It even gave a Force Point for

selflessly using this on another person.

Story break — NPC revival with unexpected ability

Metagame reward (slightly backfires)

Garth, who has injured Zelice, runs away. He deflects blaster shots that are fired at him.

If the players come up with a plan that forces him not to escape, a ship arrives to pick up
Garth and shoots at the players with ship-board guns to cover his escape. If they manage
to kill him anyway (it’s still possible) they can’t play any further modules that include

him.

Fate in use (if at all possible)

196

“I was afraid of this,” the GM says aloud, when he sees the players use this cert to save
Zelice. The players had previously worked hard to bring Zelice back from the Dark Side

in a previous adventure. It would be worth it to use your own cert to save her life.

Slight metagame break (adrnonishment) but the GM allows the unwanted action

The whole next module in theory is about getting revenge for her death which doesn’t

even happen in this case. The GM will rephrase the next module to make it about

revenge for the academy at Alrnas rather than Zelice in specific. Zelice will accompany

the PCs on the next adventure instead of being dead.

197

   

l“lljlljlltglljllljyjjl