Now, the Antihero scenario has a main character – the Hero – and four secondary characters: the Sidekick, the Elder, the Villain and the Coveted. The main conflicts of the game build on these five, and each player will control one of them. But these are not the only characters. And this brings me to an idea that I want to incorporate into my scenario: that each main or secondary character has a supporting character who is his antithesis.

Lemme explain what I mean with antithesis. An antithesis

“ is a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition.” [link]

Thus, the antithesis character is one who is a counter-proposition to a main/secondary character, and who by doing so makes that character more sharply defined.

For instance, the Coveted is not impressed with the hero’s appearance, and will not bend to his will. This makes him interested, and he must strive to win her. Her antithesis is a village girl, who falls head over heels for the hero, and is blinded by his flashing smile and his heroic exterior. Similarly, the Sidekick is not fooled by the hero’s appearance - he helped create it. He is old and cynical. His antithesis is a young boy, who looks up to him and wants to be him when he grows up. His heart would be crushed if he knew the truth about the Hero – and I predict it will be crushed when the hero’s bluff is called at some point during the scenario.

Now, the question is how to use these characters. Should a character control his antithesis himself, allowing him to sketch his own counter-proposition? Should it be controlled by the characters opponent (on the two axes I talked about last time), allowing him to help define the opponents position, and cause a bit of trouble for him? Should it be controlled by someone on the other axis? Or the GM, maybe? Maybe you’d want joint ownership – or maybe just a common pool of all of them, so that anyone can use any character?

I should note that “control” does not mean  ”play.” Control is all about who has the right to define and use that character. Whose character-sheet is he on? That person might ask someone else to play him, but even then, they have final say in the matter.

I think I tend towards having joint ownership between the two people on the axis. The problem with that is that you can risk a fight over the characters – or can you? Is that even a problem? Maybe communal ownership would be better, allowing anyone to use them – with the risk that no one will.

I’m also debating whether to give the Hero one. He could have a failing local guy who thought he could be a hero, and who’s intimidated by the hero. On the other hand, he’s likely to get loads of screen time anyway – he doesn’t need help.

What do you think? What will work? Do you have experience with this kind of thing?

This made me stop and think of those of her many (around 100, it would seem) novels I’ve read. I’ve of course hit the Pern books, first with the Danish translations of the “Harpers Hall” mini-series (Dragosong, Dragonsinger and Dragondrums), later with some of the books about dragonriders, including the first book, Dragonflight, and later on a number of the others – it’s been more than ten years since I read the last Pern book, as far as I can remember, and I can’t remember exactly which ones it was.

I’ve also read some of her books that are more obviously sci-fi: The ship that sang, about a girl with birth defects who is stuck in a tank and destined to end her days as the brains of a spaceship. Think HAL, but there’s an actual human brain in the middle of the circuits. The Crystal Singer books, about a woman who goes to harvest some special crystals on a special planet. The crystals are crucial to  interstellar communications and transport, and are thus very valuable. Finally, I read The Rowan, about a girl who turns out to be one of the strongest psychics in the known universe, and thus asked to take care of transporting goods to and from her solar system.

It seems I’ve only dipped my toe in the ocean that is Anne McCaffrey’s opus. I’ve enjoyed reading her books -but I also enjoyed the DaVinci code, the same way I also enjoy eating greasy McDonald’s food, so that’s not necessarily a criteria for reading, and certainly not for recommending, a book.

I also feel like she is a woman who wanted something with her books. The Pern books particularly are full of lessons about the codependence of humans upon each other, one group needing the other, and each individual having a worth in themselves and a need for others. Similarly in The ship who sang, in which, firstly, the ship is actually a disabled person, and where, even though

she’s a genuine spaceship, she still needs something – a Brawn to her Brain, someone who can walk around inside of her and take care of fiddly bits that require hands.

But at the same time, I have a few troubles with her – like the fact that she regularly states as a natural thing that her protagonist is bound by a lifelong debt to some company. Like Cillashandra from the Crystal Singer series, who racked up a massive dept from training and initial outfitting, and who then accumulates more debt every time she needs a new service from the company.

But there’s something else – something I find far more worrying and which leaves a far worse taste in my mouth: the way all of her heroines seem to end up in very, VERY conservative patterns. Basically, with two possible exceptions that I can think of, the heroines I’ve encountered in her books all end up playing second fiddle to a man. Often a younger man, but certainly a man they’ve somehow helped create, and then they realize that they are much better off being his adoring and supporting number 2. Like [spoilers galore] Killashandra, who finds a pretty young boy in book two, who comes to join her at the crystal planet in book three and end up leader of the guild. Or the Rowan, who is the strongest telepath they have, and who then discover a wild talent on a far away, forgotten planet, who is even stronger and who end up on top of the telepath hierarchy with her as number 2. Or Lessa, who risks her life traveling through time so that she can be a housewife and her husband can be a real, dragon flying, hero.

In short, I think Anne McCafrey has done a lot for sci-fi, and she has written many great books. I’d just wish they didn’t leave me with such a bad taste in my mouth.

The story of Muktuk Wolfsbreath starts when our first person protagonist is approached by a dame (or broad). She has a problem: someone has taken her son. She needs Muktuk to rescue him. He finds out a  nasty fella called Birdbutt is behind it, and demands that she explain how on earth the lady got such a powerful character on her back. But, after a little bit of “persuasion,” Muktuk goes after Birdbutt to get back the lady’s son.

The catch: Muktuk is a Sibirian shaman, and Birdbutt doesn’t have the boy’s body, but his soul.

At the url appropriately titled http://hardboiledshaman.com/ Terry LaBan has unrolled the tale of Muktuk Wolfsbreath, a travelling, hardboiled shaman-for-hire. The way LaBan transplants the traditional noir hardboiled detective to the Siberian tundra is quite sublime, and makes for great reading – and at 77 pages, it’s not terribly long, either.

It also makes me think the same method can be used in writing roleplaying games or scenarios: take a particular kind of story, move it to a completely unrelated setting, and watch the fun unroll. Sherlock Holmes in the stone age? Sir James of Bond? Why not!

There will be five characters. One of them is the clear central character, while the others represent poles around him. All of the pole characters want something with the central character – the (anti)hero, and that wish is in someway opposed to what at least one character wants with him. So, the five characters in short:

The (anti)hero: the protagonist of the story. A con man, who makes people believe in him, uses these trusting people, then leaves before they call his bluff. That is not to say he isn’t a capable character, nor that he is all evil – he probably does good things for many villages. But mostly, he does it to help himself. However, there is a part of him that longs for something more. A part of him that wants to settle down, to gain a true life, instead of living a comfortable lie.

Two of the pole characters represent the outer struggle, and two of them represent the inner struggle that the hero faces. So, first I will present the outer struggle, then the inner.

The Village Elder: On one side of the outer struggle is the Elder of the village. At the beginning of the scenario, he enlists the hero to help defend the village against the plans of the Villain. That is not to say that the Elder is a saint, quite the opposite: he is manipulative, a coward, and he wants everyone to dance to his pipe. He is a very conservative person, wanting the status quo to be maintained.

The Villain: Opposite the Elder is the Villain. The villain wants to do something to the village, making life difficult for the villagers. Please note that it is not simply a matter of wanting to destroy the village. In fact, I think it is important to make it so that is it possible for the villain’s plan to be at least partially achieved, while still counting as a victory for good. The Villain represents a dynamic force, a force for change, but also an arrogant force, who wants to change the world according to his whim.

And thus, the outer struggle is the struggle for the fate of the village. The probable outcome is probably that status quo is not upheld, but that the villain does not achieve his plan either.

Then, the inner struggle:

The Sidekick: Every hero must have his sidekick, every Don Quixote much have his Sancho Panza. Also in this tale. The Sidekick is manservant, manager, squire, spy and spin-doctor, all in one. He cooks for the Hero, looks after him and his equipment and runs his errands. At the same time, he’s in on the scam, and he finds out who’s not convinced, and tries to make sure they ARE convinced – or at least that they don’t say their suspicions out loud. He tries to make the Hero stay with the same lifestyle they’ve been living together, and to make him stay the same.

The Coveted: Just as Don Quixote has Sancho Panza, he’s got his Dulcinea: the girl he pines for, and the girl he wants to commit heroic acts for. The girl, of course, is hard to please: She alone in the city is not charmed by the Hero’s antics, and is not charmed by his advances. He will have to win her over, somehow, and the only way to do that seems to be to (gulp) reform. He’d better shape up… thus, she is a force for inner change, challenging him to either become a hero, or to admit that he is none. Of course, she also needs to change: she needs to accept that there might be room for a man in her heart after all.

She’s to a large extent inspired by the woman here, the first four minutes of which display my idea of the Hero’s first approach, and of her initial attitude to him. She’s also inspired by the character Bean from Rango, the film that inspired the scenario in the first place.

And thus, the inner struggle is, in many ways, the real struggle of the game, though it needs the outer struggle as its battleground: can the Hero find a true life for himself, or will he forever live a lie?

These are the main players. Next time, I’ll write something about the main secondary characters – cause each main character will be matched by a secondary character that will act as their mirror. Also, I am planning to give the whole thing a framework that will give the GM a) something to do and b) a way to prod the players in a direction if needed.

Zombies in inner Copenhagen, and Werewolves in Miller’s Hollow

Tuesday, they played Geiger Counter. Turned out we had just about enough time to do it, then talk about it afterwards.

One group started out with a great idea: to convert Werewolves of Miller’s Hollow into a Geiger Counter game. That group had most of the strong players in the class, so I left them to their own devices, and they seemed to do pretty well.

The other group consisted of mostly inexperienced and weak players, so I decided that I needed to nurse them quite a bit. In the end, I was faced with a dilemma: to what extent should I coach and coax them into playing the game how I thought they should play it, and to what extent should I allow them to play on their own, and experience the game on their own. I think I was rather controlling; on the other hand, I feel like it was my duty to make sure everyone was having fun, and when  someone fails at setting a scene in Geiger Counter, they risk taking the story down a road that’s unsatisfying for someone else, and can leave a story thread hanging unresolved and unresolvable. So I felt justified at the time, though I have since been wondering whether I was doing it wrong.

New hope

For Thursday, I had asked three of the more promising students to prepare three different short scenarios: Averheim Averessen by Johannes Busted Larsen from Imperiet, and Hendes Mørke Skønhed by Morten Greis and Under my Hive by yours truly from Imperiet 40k.

Hendes Mørke Skønhed went very well, as I knew it would. First of all, I had given it to the strongest of the GMs: a guy who’s big and mature, and is doing a performance line here – so I knew he could do both the whispering and the screaming, the two things that, to my mind, makes the scenario great and lifts it over a mere dicefest. It’s a scenario that uses some cheap tricks to great effect: though it is not really a “semi-larp,” it assigns in-game effects to how you act at the table. At times, you need to be quiet, or more aliens will arrive, at other times, you need to scream and make gun noises to get dice. It makes for a great effect, and I wasn’t particularly surprised when all my students seemed to have enjoyed it.

Averheim Averessen went pretty well as well. This scenario lives off of stress and confusion. It should be played as semi-larp, with everybody doing something all at once. The scenario instates real-time limits to its scenes, and asks for hectic activity within these time limits. Add to that that the action is often completely ridiculous, and it is a sure comic hit.

And finally, Under My Hive. I have a very ambivalent relationship to this scenario. As far as I know, it only got played once at Fastaval that year. On the other hand, that group apparently really enjoyed it. I have run it once myself, last year at around this time, when Hyggemester David asked me to put it up as an intro scenario for Hyggecon. I think people enjoyed it, but I didn’t get a whole lot of feedback. My group certainly went ok.

So, it was with mixed feelings I gave it over to a student to run. And unfortunately, he didn’t quite get it – and his first group of players didn’t, either. Under my hive is a story telling  game. The game revolves around a Russian roulette motif, but the real game is the memories the players have to tell every time they get the gun, asking them to explain why this town is worth fighting for, why they hate their opponents, or how they have made the town less attractive to the opponents. It’s a rather cerebral exercise, and if you aren’t used to telling stories in roleplaying, it can be difficult. And so, the first group played it as a Russian roulette game, and were done within half an hour.

The second group, however, got it. They didn’t finish within the hour and 20 minutes they had – which means they must have been telling a lot of stories. This second group contained some of the stronger players, and I’d made that group from the people I thought would appreciate the game. It didn’t play in the third round, because there weren’t four people who hadn’t tried it yet – the others were played with three players instead of four, something which is not ideal, but which is doable. That is much more difficult in this scenario, where you are supposed to have two pair sitting across from each other.

Anyway. Hurrah for the two Empire anthologies. There are a couple of scenarios that I’d like to try myself, and some I’d like to run with these kids – and it’s great to know there’s a backup plan available.

Ps.: If you wonder why I skipped Wednesday, we had only half a day, so we played games. One group had something to finish up, while the rest played Shadows over Camelot. They didn’t have a traitor and won comfortably, so they need a traitor next time to keep them humble, methinks…

This is a quick list. I look forward to seeing more of the scenarios. And yes, I CAN be hired as a proofreader, in the right circumstances.

Oh – and it’s in Danish:

- et komediescenarie på fire-fem timer for fem spillere og en fortæller.

Kan en svindler blive den helt, han udgiver sig for?

Scenariet kort: En svindler lever af at udgive sig for at være en stor helt. Men da han kommer til en ny by, må han finde ud af, om han kan gøre sig livs løgn til sit livs sandhed.

Scenariets idé: Scenariet er bygget op over en klassisk historie: En svindler møder en ny flok, han vil svindle, men ender (af den ene eller anden grund) med at måtte stå ansigt til ansigt til sin løgn, og må ofte gøre sin løgn til sandhed. Rango, The Music Man, Dragon Heart og Brothers Grimm er alle eksempler på denne plotstruktur. Dette scenarie er et forsøg på at genskabe denne slags historie i et rollespil.

Scenariet er bygget op over en struktur med kapitler med et fast, men abstrakt formuleret, hændelsesforløb, som spillere og fortæller i fællesskab fylder ud. Scenariet tilstræber en høj grad af åbenhed, så den enkelte gruppe kan beslutte det præcise resultat – bliver svindleren for eksempel til en helt, eller finder han ud af, at han netop IKKE kan være en helt?

NB: Scenariets fiktive univers ligger ikke fast endnu. Det væsentligste i scenariet er strukturen – og den kan udspille sig lige godt, om universet er Weird West,  Westeros eller Mars.

Hvad laver spillerne: En spiller spiller (anti)Helten – historiens klare hovedrolle. De andre har et par roller hver: for det første én vigtig biperson, der har en bestemt funktion i forhold til Helten (Væbneren der fastholder helten på løgnen, Øvrighedspersonen (borgmesteren/den ældste) der narres af helten, Skurken der modarbejder helten og Den Attråede der udfordrer heltens selvbillede) og som hver er katalysator for et subplot. For det andet en eller flere mindre bipersoner, der kan levere kolorit og som evt. kan fungere som kontrapunkt til en anden biperson (den tåbelige lakaj er kontrapunkt for Skurken; pigen, der falder hovedkulds for Helten, er kontrapunkt for den Attråede).

Hvad laver Fortælleren: Fortællerens rolle er i høj grad at samle trådene og sørge for, at scenariets struktur holdes. Spillerne skal i vid udstrækning være autonome, men fortælleren skal alligevel være med til at sørge for, at spillet bevæger sig, at spillets milepæle nås, og at spotlightet fordeles tilfredsstillende for alle. Derudover er Fortælleren ansvarlig for scenariets rammefortælling: scenariet iscenesættes som en af de medvirkendes fortælling til sine børnebørn (spillerne, der alle har en ultrakort børnerolle sammen med sine almindelige roller). Hvert kapitel startes med et klip til rammefortællingen, hvor der opsummeres på sidste kapitel, og hvor næste kapitels tema slås an. Som sidste scene i fortællingen, afsløres fortællerens identitet, bestemt af den enkelte histories forløb.

Scenariets struktur: Scenariet er lagt til rette over fem kapitler med en prolog og en epilog. Inden for hvert kapitel er strukturen fri, men kapitlerne er faste. Et udkast til kapiteltitler er:

• Prolog (i hvilken Vor Helt forlader en by lidt forhastet, og i hvilken en anden by viser sig at være i vanskeligheder).
• Kapitel 1 (i hvilket vor helt ankommer til en tilsyneladende stilfærdig by, imponerer visse personer i byen men til gengæld absolut ikke imponerer en vis ung dame)
• Kapitel 2 (i hvilket Vor Helt intet gør for at løse byens problemer, men til gengæld forsøger at imponere en vis ung dame)
• Kapitel 3 (i hvilket Vor Helt forsøger at løse byens problemer, men fejler grumt; en vis ung dame er ikke just imponeret)
• Kapitel 4 (i hvilket Vor Helt synes fortabt, men finder sin vej i nødens sorteste stund; en vis ung dame er imponeret)
• Kapitel 5 (i hvilket Vor Helt står ansigt til ansigt med sin modstander og fejler; hjælp kommer fra en uventet kant, og dagen reddes)
• Epilog (i hvilken vor historie når sin ende, og Vor Helts, byens og en vis ung dames skæbner afsløres)

“What’s so unusual about that? You talk about Role-Playing Games all the time on here!”

No, no – I didn’t say Role-Playing Games. I said RPG’s.

See, the term RPG (or rpg) no longer refers to Role-Playing Games. Sure, it used to, and some people would still use the two interchangeably. Many Role-Playing Games have RPG elements, and some RPG’s have role-playing elements. But the two have become very, very different.

I believe this all started with computer “role-playing games.” I know some people who would deny that you can have a role-playing game in the computer; certain muds and  MMORPG’s have made good attempts at doing so. But one thing is certain: a computer is not good at understanding language and human thought. Thus, it cannot easily adapt the game’s story to the player’s response, something a human GM can do intuitively.

What it can do is react to logical, concrete things. Which option did the player choose? Which way did he go? How many enemies did he kill? So this is the kind of things a computer can comprehend, and thus, for which the player can expect a response.

This can be implemented in many ways. Baldur’s Gate, Knights of the Old Republic and the other games in the Bioware family have done this exceedingly well, creating games that make you feel like there’s a reacting world there, creating a feeling of being an active participant in the unfolding story.

But most games don’t have the resources to do so. Instead they look to Role-Playing Games and they see the part of role-playing games that fit right into the computer paradigm: The numbers. Stats. The “character sheet.” Abilities, hit points, mana* and – XP.

* By the way, it seems to me that mana, while very popular in computer games, doesn’t appear in that many pen-and-paper games. Something I would guess has to do with the difficulty of managing too many large numbers.

The irony is that as role-playing has moved away from this kind of stats, they have become ubiquitous in computer games. Role-playing-like games like Diablo and the early MMORPG’s started the trend, but today it has spread to all manner of games. Particularly online, adding some sort of progress bar seems to be an easy way to prolong a game by making you repeat certain content in an attempt to achieve the numbers required to “grind” some more advanced content.

And the introduction of this grind is what definitively sets RPG’s apart from role-playing games. Grind shows the player that his actions have no effect on the world of the game. He is not part of an unfolding story, but is merely in a game of skill and numbers in a pretty packaging.

Another move away from role-playing is the detachment from a character. Many games have more than one character that the player controls, many others have an abstract, impersonal “commander” or similar, or simply ascribe certain stats to the “team.”

In short, these games have developed away from their role-playing heritage. Now, they are focused on capturing the player’s attention with many small rewards leading to new rewards to strive for. As opposed to many other games, these games usually have no discernible end, but keep you hooked to go on and on and on (World of Warcraft and Farmville are both good examples).

And so, these games can no-longer be termed “Role-Playing Games.” Instead, I would “retcon” the acronym, and call this type of game a “Rewarded Progress Games”. In this way, the “grinding” games can keep calling themselves “RPG’s,” and role-players will know that this kind of game has little in common with what we play, sitting ’round the table.

So, I had a first half of the year with relatively little in the ways of roleplaying and other things fit for this blog. I did play a bit, but not consistently, being a teacher at a school without any significant game playing presence and far away from other roleplayers. I did play one (semi-successful) round of Geiger Counter and one pretty good round of Venetian Tragedy. I, of course, also went to Fastaval’s amazing 25th anniversary, but I was mostly engaged in the organizing team, and not so much in the creative group. I did get to run Brabrand (which was a very enjoyable experience, though I was unfortunately kindly asked to sacrificed the great blockbuster of the year, Fifteen Men, to do it) and play a very intense and thoroughly enjoyable game of Venetian Tragedy, playing the lecherous cardinal opposite Johanna Kohljonen’s grand old Venetian dictator, with my girlfriend playing a very gleeful Spirit of Revenge, nudging us all towards the place we were all heading anyway: towards a very nasty and horrible end (Hurra!).

So, anyway. I had a bit of a roleplaying draught. And thus, I had very little to put up here.

That’s changing. I can now see a decent amount of stuff to write about here, which means I’m reopening the blog. This stuff is, amongst other things:

• That I have moved closer to… everywhere, but particularly Copenhagen. This means I can now join stuff happening in Aarhus and Copenhagen, and would even feel like I could invite people down here to Slagelse for a night of gaming (and offers for both are welcome).
• That I have moved to a school with a significant contingent of roleplaying students. These guys are keen to play, and we are in talks about making a mafia LARP at the school. I am also teaching a roleplaying subject, in which I am including a lot of boardgaming – not least because I’m alone, and I want to be in charge of showing the students new games, so I need to be in charge for a lot of the games – and thus, I need to split the group.
• That I want to write a Fastaval Scenario. There, I said it. I will hand in one, maybe two, synopsees, and I haven’t decided what I’ll do if they don’t accept it. Give it to another con, possibly. I have two ideas, one of them an old, but never realised, idea about an anthology-scenario (no, not scenario anthology, but a scenario composed of short scenarios) about Søstrene Grene, the other a scenario about a fraud who will be required to get real.

A linear representation of something non-linear that will unfold into something linear

A text can generally unfold into two dimensions: space and time. A temporally oriented text is, by it’s nature, linear: you cannot go back in time, you can only follow it along. As a matter of fact, this is often one of the desirable qualities of such a text: a piece of music progresses, and from the progression from one sound to another arises the song we like to listen to.

A spatially oriented text, on the other hand, will not be linear. Think of a painting or a sculpture: you can go back and forth, viewing the same part of the text again and again, and no part necessarily comes before another.

Many spatial text are oriented in a way to emulate linearity, though. Think of a book: You open at one end and read it from one corner to the one exactly opposite – but you might open it in the middle, and let your eyes go in circles around the page. You’d miss some of what the book is though: the book is meant to capture language, and language is temporal.

Right. That was very scholary. I’ll try to cut it out, and talk more about roleplaying games.

A roleplaying game is, by definition, temporal. You start when you sit down at the table, and end it when you get up again (LARP and semi-larp aside). This is part of the enjoyment: your story progresses in a linear fashion, with high points and low points. And part of the enjoyment is seeing it unfold, not knowing what comes next. In other words, a roleplaying game is a linear thing.

So is the scenario document. The game master will receive a document, consisting of pages of texts. These are ordered in a linear fashion, starting with part one.

But the scenario itself is NOT linear. It contains several separate elements, and you will often have to go back and forth between different of these elements. For example, let’s say there’s a description of a scene in the game. The scene contains an NPC; the NPC is described in the NPC section. This NPC will react in one way if the PC’s did one thing in another scene, and in another if they did something else; this scene is described elsewhere. And the PC’s are of course described in the character handout – most likely at the back of the document. Finally, if there is a conflict involved, there might be some rules for handling these, just as there may be general guidelines for how the GM should run the scenario.

In some ways, portraying a scenario as a regular old text with a beginning and an end is not the optimal way to present it – and the best way to read the text is certainly not from beginning to end. Instead, a scenario is a hypertext, each section referencing and drawing upon several others. And in the reading, the GM must create a mental image of the scenario, so that he can guide the players in the creation of the linear text that is the actual game.

I think this is important to stress to someone who is not used to reading scenario’s: that reading from beginning to end is not the way to go at it. Instead, your reading should be goal oriented, going back and forth in the order YOU need in order to get a good feel for how the game is supposed to work. Of course, this will probably start with the beginning, looking at the table of contents and the scenariowright’s introduction. But then, it might be wise to skip to the description of the characters – either the handouts, or the GM’s description of them.

Am I right? Do you read scenario’s from the beginning to the end?

Also, can any of you come up with an example of a roleplaying game that is NOT linear?

And is there a way to present a scenario in a form that is non-linear, while still being able to communicate an entire scenario in enough detail for someone to run it?