Roleplaying Games I’ve Yet to Play (But Desperately Want To)

After the past week of taking a vacation and stressing over two Typhoons that decided to visit the country one after the other, I find myself struggling with something to write about.  I think this is just inertia at work, and my brain desperately needs to get warmed up before I can start churning out good articles again.

That said let’s do something quick and easy:  Lists!

And for today, let’s take a quick look at Games I’ve yet to play (but desperately want to):

• Mage: the Awakening – But wait, pointyman, don’t you already run a Mage game?  Well yes, but I’m eager to actually be on the playing side of things for once.  I’ve had a chance to play the new Mage once before, but that wasn’t a very long campaign either.
• Changeling: The Lost – Ever since I’ve had the chance to play Changeling: the Dreaming under (the now Canadian) Zugzugtheorc, I’ve fallen in love with the concept of changeling.  The new title’s excellent writing, provocative themes and sheer amount of awesome crammed into the book doesn’t hurt either.  For kicks, I might actually translate my old Sluagh from C:tD to C:tL to see how well it translates.
• Geist: The Sin-Eaters - White Wolf’s latest intrigues me.  With a new kind of supernatural that hasn’t been done before (like Promethean), this “Storytelling Game of Second Chances” strikes me as a remarkably positive tone as opposed to the defaults of some of the others like Vampire: the Requiem.  Definitely something I’m curious to play.
• Spellbound Kingdoms - I was intrigued when I first saw this game, and even now I find the ideas espoused to be original and possibly quite fun… now if only I can get someone to run it for me.
• Deadlands Reloaded! - I’m a sucker for Westerns, and pulp supernatural stuff.  Deadlands is chock-full of both.  I’d play this at a drop of a hat.
• Fantasy Craft - I’ve been all over the system up down and sideways of this game.  All I need now is a GM to come up with a good campaign setting, and I’ll have a character within hours.
• HERO System Supers – 5th edition, Revised or 6th Edition, I don’t really mind either way.  The last time I’ve actually played in a Supers campaign was so long ago that I’ve forgotten most of the plot.  Time to rectify that situation.
• Eclipse Phase - I don’t know a thing about the system of Eclipse Phase, but the idea of Troubleshooters for Transhumanity has my interest piqued.
• 7th Sea – Talk about late to the party. This game came, conquered and went out of print long before this blog even started, but I’m still stoked to trying this game out.

Each and every one of these games offers something different, and something interesting for me as a player.  Each one of them inspires me to build characters (something that I might be doing again soon with more Play This Character! articles on the horizon.)

[nMage] Mage: the Awakening Chronicler’s Guide, Coming Soon!

Mages can do almost anything. Their capacity to create, transform, preserve, and destroy is almost limited only by their imagination. What happens when that limitation is removed? What, ultimately, can a Mage chronicle be if it goes further and stranger than ever before? The answers lie within this new Chronicle Book for Mage: The Awakening, which gives a treatment of Mage as seen through the lens of seven different genres and includes alternate takes on using the magic system to represent entirely new sources of power, expanded information on character design, cabals, Paths, and orders, plus extensive advice and tools for building the perfect Mage chronicle, with numerous sample chronicles to utilize.

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Dammit, this book can’t come out soon enough!

This is definitely going into my wishlist… seven different alternate ways to run nMage?  Alternate magic systems, and sample chronicles? Yes, please.

[Mage: the Awakening, Sample Character] Play This Character! #1

It’s a fact that every single GM wishes to be a player in his own campaign.  Like it or not, the very fact that you’re running a campaign means that you want to be able to experience that setting, in that exact way, as a player.  However, we are forever doomed to run the games that we truly want to play.

I call it the GM Curse.

That said, I figure it might be a good outlet to start putting together all of these theoretical characters and start publishing them in order to let other people appreciate them, and perhaps use them in their own campaigns.

For this entry, I start off with a character I would have played if I was playing in my own Mage: the Awakening Campaign:

A Discussion on Trust

Today we talk about in-game Trust between characters as a “hidden” mechanic in the political/social aspect of roleplaying games.

At its very core, Roleplaying Games have been about the social maneuvering of the Player Characters, as well as their ability to kill things and take their stuff.  Social maneuvering has proven to be a solid aspect of the game, whether it’s haggling with the Mysterious Stranger who walks into the tavern with a map, or the more Byzantine social maneuverings of a local Consilium in Mage: the Awakening.

As such, it’s important to also consider the role that in-game trust plays in a game.  In-game trust is not trust between players, nor is it about the GM and the players.  In-game trust is about trust between Player Characters, as well as between PCs and NPCs.

[Mage: the Awakening] The Long Hard Road to Hell

And so the Mage: the Awakening Season 4 kicks off, with an admittedly fun, if slightly shaky start.  As predicted in my musings, we’re starting to look at all the older players starting to shift into high gear, as the plots and opponents on their end begin their own maneuvers.

One of the highlights of last weekend’s session was the introduction of a new character, Arthur O’Connor, played by Victor, who decided to hop into the Mage: the Awakening game because he was looking for something “different.”  The other, was a knock-down-drag-out fight between Sheimaruen’s character Gil and two enemy mages from the Cult of the Doomsday Clock.

Player Advice: Information Management

Having recently played through the conclusion of Sheimaruen’s Hunter: the Vigil game set in the the fictional city of Roanapur, Thailand (from the anime “Black Lagoon”) I’ve come to consider how I play in this campaign, and I figure it would make a good discussion.

To be perfectly blunt, the one thing that helped in our success in play: Think things through.

I understand and appreciate the fact that rpgs are meant to be fun and enjoyable… but that doesn’t mean that careful planning doesn’t have a place in it.   Being able to project and figure out a likely scenario based on your course of action, is a skill that everyone should learn to apply on any situation.

Playing on impulse seems fun, but once consequences (the GM’s Best Friend) catch up with you, then you find yourself in trouble.  Some players cry foul when this happens, citing that the GM is being abusive or antagonistic, but that’s not being fair to the GM and his sense of play.

When I run a game, I always consider consequences.  The NPCs, the opposition, and even allies all work on the premise that any actions, whether initiated by NPCs or by the players, will result in a reaction or consequence.  The situation is always in a state of flux, and in order to make sure that you’re always on top, you need to be aware of the situation to the best of your ability.

Here are some tips to keep you in a state of being able to make informed decisions:

• Cui Bono – Who benefits?  This is the core of figuring out your next steps, as well as the actions of those around you.  When something happens… who is it that gains the most out of it?  When your character decides to make a phone call to the cops to rat out an NPC who is in the midst of a heist…. just so you can turn around and bail him out later so you win his trust?  Who benefits?
• Be Informed - Get as much information as you can, without implicating yourself.  The more you know, the more options you have to choose from in terms of feasible actions to take.  Furthermore, this also allows you to cross-reference multiple sources.
• Manage your Info – Not everyone needs to know everything for them to perform tasks that you want them do.  Parcel your information, make sure that you tell people enough for them to do their jobs, and trust you, but not enough that you give them something to blackmail you with.
• Take Notes – My best tool in the entire campaign are my notes.  Names, dates, places, events, take it all down, then sort through them when you’ve got time.  Notes are superior to memory.
• Learn to Doubt – Doubt everyone, and everything.  No such things as a free lunch.  Everyone has a motive.
• Learn who to Trust – That said, Trust is a valuable resource, and once you ascertain you have someone you can trust (and to what degree,) then take care of them.  Don’t burn worthwhile and trustworthy contacts.
• Consequences – Everything has consequences.  Your best bet is to take those under consideration.  Apply your Cost / Benefit Analysis, and heck even your SWOT analysis, before your even make a decision.  When the consequences are in your favor?  Act.
• Exit Strategy – Always have an exit strategy, two if you can manage it.  Never be the one caught holding the smoking gun.

In games where Information, Secrets, Politics and Espionage are the name of the game, these can be life-saving tips.

New Players in Old Campaigns

One of the interesting situations I’m looking at for the upcoming Mage: the Awakening campaign this weekend is the introduction of a new player to the mix.  New players are a good thing, but they can also add complications when it comes to planning.  Welcome complications, mind you, but complications nonetheless.

Whenever I have to work with a new player joining an existing group, I find myself consulting a mental checklist:

• What are this players preferences in terms of play? Does he or she like kicking ass and taking names?  Do they prefer political maneuvering?  What sort of plots motivate them?
• How much do they know the rules?  How much hand-holding do I have to exert? Do I give them extra leeway in terms of maneuvering established social / combat situations (ex: “You might want to consider how you say that, you might end up insulting the Heirarch.”)
• Is he aware of the campaign tone / themes? I’ll need to brief them on the tone of the game, and what they should reasonably expect.

I find that this sort of checklist is very useful in terms of helping people hop into an established game and find their legs quickly.  Being inserted into an ongoing campaign is always a little tricky as from a player perspective, you have to sort of feel your way around the game and find out just how things work in the context of the game and it’s players.  For example, going in guns blazing  might not be the preferred method of the other players, and might introduce complications and consequences that reflect badly not just on your character, but on the other players as well.

By briefing the new player, and giving them the lay of the land of the campaign, they can quickly learn their place and operate on a relatively equal footing with the rest of the other characters.  With any luck, this transition will be seamless and organic, and the group will be working together like a well oiled machine.

Counting Down to Mage: the Awakening

With the end of the Hunter campaign’s first season (a campaign handled most impressively by Sheimaruen, and one that I’m hoping to play once again when the second season rolls around,) I’m up to bat with the continuation of the Mage: the Awakening campaign starting this weekend.

Given the fact that the campaign has been ongoing for three seasons already, it’s no surprise that the players are looking forward to getting back into their old characters, and wielding their now admittedly imposing levels of ability on the setting.

I’ve been reading up on some RPG.net threads on Mage lately, and it strikes me as strange how people worry so much about power levels in Mage.  There’s a lot of talk of how it’s imbalanced, how it’s practically a cakewalk after someone hits 4 or 5 dots in a given Arcanum… especially if that Arcanum is Fate or Mind.

Well… to be fair, I have to say that game-wise, if you do manage to hit 4 or 5 dots in a given Arcanum, then it’s pretty much a given that you’re supposed to be able to enact larger, more unnatural changes to reality.  While I have to agree that Mind is pretty dangerous, I’m still of the opinion that it’s not an end-all, be-all deal that most people make it out to be.

Besides, the fun part of Mage: the Awakening is the fact that Mages (and to be more specific) player characters do not operate in a vacuum.  Certainly it might feel that gallivanting around with Mind 5 and making every mortal in the block make a choreographed dance number with you like in the atrocious Moonwalker videogame seems to be a tad overpowered, but there’s an entire Order of mages dedicated to making sure that stuff like that doesn’t happen.

By insuring that the players are aware that the Mage Society polices itself you can actually insure that people don’t just go around abusing their powers.  Mage is as much a game about responsibility as it is about coming to power, so as long as your players are well aware of this situation, I wouldn’t mind terribly about their characters running rampant.

Besides, given the interesting dynamic of my own Mage campaign’s player characters, as soon as one of them steps over the line, the others will have very few reservations about knocking them down to size, or even using more permanent solutions.

[Mage: the Awakening] Working the Tempo

With Mage: the Awakening starting soon, I’m already working on my notes to remember just where we left off in the campaign, as well as what ongoing plots I had for the bad guys.

Given that the player characters have already hit a point where their abilities are no longer readily ignored, it’s only fitting for the Villains to have managed to grow up a little too, whether in terms of sheer Arcane (or other Supernatural) power, or through wordly influence.

Of course, villains aren’t the only thing running through my mind.  Like I’ve mentioned in other entries, I’m also concerned about the tempo of the game, where I try to balance mundane issues with the supernatural ones, hoping to strike a good balance between them.

Mages are people stuck between the Fallen and the Supernal realms, and I want the game to reflect that.  Therefore, I’m turning my focus back from the conflict for reality to the baser concerns of work, companionship, emotion and life in general.

I’ve got a few ideas running about in my head right now, involving their relationships with various mortals, the concerns of having to earn their keep, and life’s little dramas.  It should be interesting how the players adapt to some of this, given that I’ve not really be diligent about following up on this as I would have liked.  Maybe if I make a concentrated effort now, I’ll be able to use completely human situations to urge the characters to evaluate just what they would use their magic for… when tempted to “fix” normal situations.  It’s a victimless crime, after all… nobody has to know, and (usually) nobody has to get hurt.

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As the launch date draws near, I have to confess to feeling more than just a little nervous.  nMage is my longest running Campaign so far, and while it’s earned the respect of my players, and they’ve asked for it to be run time and again, I have to make sure I don’t grow slack, or lose my footing.

I want this campaign to work out, and I want it to be outstanding.

Part of this frenzied blog effort with the Mage: the Awakening tags are a reflection of this.  I put a lot of thought into the campaign… and I pray that it’s enough.

Care and Feeding of Mid-Tier Characters

I’ve been thinking about my Mage: the Awakening campaign a lot since I’m about to run it again in about 3 weeks or so, and one of the main thoughts that have been circulating in my head is the question of how to run for mid-tier characters.

Mid-tier, by my definition, are characters who are:

• Reasonably more powerful than starting characters
• Have begun to affect the setting in significant and lasting ways
• Are still beholden to higher authority / bigger fish.

I know it’s a broad spectrum, but think about it.  With all these RPG books that tell you about how to run for new characters, and specialized supplements that focus on running challenges for characters on the opposite end of the spectrum, GM’s are left to sort things out for themselves when the player characters hit that sweet spot when goblins are a nuisance, but dragons are still bad news.

So, how does one run for characters who’ve hit this stage of their growth?

Acknowledge their capabilities:

Mid-Tier characters are no longer pushovers.  Those in the know no longer regard them as simple pawns, but also potential threats.  There’s a certain amount of respect afforded to them in recognition of their capabilities and their achievements.  This is where they start to see the benefits of whatever reputation they’ve sown in their earlier levels.  No more slay six rats in the basement and come back to me with their tails as proof quests.

Politics start here:

Since they’ve finally become potential threats, cunning NPCs and factions will see them as potential allies as well.  Having NPCs try to get in their good graces, by flattery, gifts, or favors comes in here.  Having a few cash in early would be good to.  Once players catch wind of this and realize what’s going on, they know they’ve stepped into the lovely minefield of favor trading.

Master, Master Teach me Kung Fu!

Henchmen, Apprentices and Students start showing up here.  Whether by reputation alone of by deeds witnessed, people are not starting to see the characters as potential instructors, experts in a given field that could help them achieve the same amount of merit.  This is a great hook since it allows players to feel that they really are moving up in the world, and may give them additional goals (“I’ve got students?  Maybe I should start my own Dojo!”)

Threats escalate…

The threats they face also get consequently bigger.  This is the part that all GMs probably understand.  Still it’s a good idea to mention here that just because the threats get bigger, doesn’t mean they become impossible to defeat.  Enemy organizations are a great fit here, seeing as it’s no longer possible to end it by just stopping a single charismatic leader.  Fighting a group with a shared ideology is an appropriate task

But remember that there are weaklings too

Once in a while, it’s good to send a weakling or two in terms of opponents just so Players can revel in their progress.   Being able to easily trounce something that once would have had you on the ropes is always a good way to feed the ego a bit.

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In any case, I’m already working on plot hooks that will work for my Mage Players.  The characters are already well established, so it’s time for me to move to more complicated stories (or more storied complications, even.)

I’m admittedly enjoying this.  It’s one of the few times that the campaign’s actually maturing, changing in tone and structure into a different sort.  I don’t expect it to abandon all the fun (otherwise it’s not worth playing,) but I am excited to see just how far this rabbit hole goes.

Once I get back to running, I’ll probably throw in a post-run report to see if my current GMing mindset actually survives contact with my players.  But until then, I’m very excited to see how they’ll take to it.