Author Archives: Mage Mistress
Picking Up The Pace
Possibly the most difficult thing about running a game at a convention is pacing the adventure. When you’re running an ongoing campaign you have the luxury of “next session”. You can let the players mull over their options, argue about why things went so horribly wrong for them so far (if you’re doing your job as GM properly things have gone horribly wrong for the PCs at as many points as possible), blaming each other for things that you did to them (another sign of proper GMing), using Post Cognition on the player who can’t remember what he decided his PCs True Name is (which is written on the character sheet), or causing each other public embarrassment like that time my Guardian of the Veil made a Mid-Town NYC Starbucks crowd think he was in the bathroom getting busy with the Acanthus Mage. Good times!
At a convention you don’t have the option of just sitting back and enjoying the fact that you already have enough material planned for the next session since they didn’t do anything but bicker with each other this session. At a convention you have to make the entire story fit into just that one meeting. Complicating this is not wanting to ruin a good “Role Playing” moment. If the players are having fun you want to let them run with it a bit, but at the same time you need to be aware of time constraints so that they don’t wind up disappointed by not finishing out the story. There are, of course, multiple different ways to approach this problem.
The Railroad:
Typically, I am not a fan of this type of game. When done very, very well the players don’t even realize they are ‘on or close to schedule’. When done not so well, the players feel like they have no impact on the game. When the players are faced with a series of hallways that only have one door, or their character has some strange disease that can only be cured if they quest to location X (which is to say, they have no choice but to go to location X), or their research rolls always yield the same results the game just doesn’t seem very challenging. It’s way too easy to do this poorly, and overall I’m not a fan. Of course that doesn’t mean I won’t lay some tracks if I need to, but I try to avoid it whenever possible. Naturally, in a convention session there is some railroading going on. The PCs have to go on the mission. If they don’t there is no game!
The Sandbox:
The sandbox is my favorite way to run a game. I have a location with an assortment of triggered events all laid out, and the players can wander about the setting in any order they choose. Yes, they need to go to the location, but beyond that I let them pick up the story threads however they want to, and piece together the information as best they can. This is the way I wrote “Asylum”. The PCs are a TV film crew making a 2 hour pilot episode of the paranormal history show “Truly Terrifying Tales”. They get to decide what locations to film in, what they will do in each location, what they will say about the location, and they will find different clues as to the asylum’s past depending upon which site areas they visit. There is a definite end game, but there is no specific action needed by the characters to make it happen. That scene is being set by something other than the PCs, and it’s on a time table. That time table happens to be the end of the convention time slot, but it doesn’t feel that way when it’s happening. So far I’ve had completely different sessions each time I’ve run the game.
The Sectional:
The sectional module is a great convention tool! It combines the structure of a railroad, with the flexibility of a sandbox. Tomb raiding missions (dungeons, ruins, and things of that sort) are wonderful candidates to become sectional adventures. The key to a sectional adventure is to have an assortment of challenges (traps, encounters, puzzles, etc) that the players can face, but that the GM can skip if time is running short. Just because I know that I prepared 15 rooms for the ruin doesn’t mean that the players have to get through all 15 before they reach the toy surprise in the final chamber. If they get through a few and it takes longer than I thought it would, I have the freedom to just skip a couple in the middle. As long as I didn’t set up any crucial item that they need to obtain in one challenge to complete the next challenge it’s all good. The Mage adventure that I debuted at RetCon this year, “The Naos of Serapis”, was designed as a sectional. As the GM I have the freedom to decide which challenges I will run at the table for a given group of players. Think of it like the original Diablo game, in which the monastery at Tristram had many more rooms and challenges than you would see in one play. The game would randomly generate that maze of corridors for each run, giving you a great deal of re-playability. That dungeon was a sectional!
I’m sure there are many more ways to structure the pace of your one-shot adventure, but these are three great ways to get you started.
If all of these fail just whip out the dragon mini. You can always count on an elder dragon to end your session with a satisfying crunch!
@#$% ACANTHUS!
I had a perfectly good game session planned for last weekend, and once again my players ruined everything. Also once again, it was that damned Acanthus Mage who ruined everything the most.
They kept telling me that their plan for this session was to be a direct assault on the Seers of the Throne. I was prepared for this. In fact, I’d been prepared for them to come to this decision (or at least stumble into it blindly) about 6 months ago. It was, admittedly, a very bad plan. Also admittedly, this is what made me like it all the more. Their good plans always leave my poor Seers at a loss. Their bad plans make me giggle. I was giggling a lot last week.
But nooooo…
The Acanthus Mage had to decide to cast Divination to decide whether or not ‘storming the castle’ (so to speak) was a good idea. Then, just to add insult to pain in my ass, she had to cast Interconnections to see if she had any Fate ties to the location in question that might indicate that her allegedly kidnapped sister was there. When she discovered that she had no connections to the “Seers HQ” (alleged), and after her divination brought to mind Gimli’s thoughts on storming the gates of Mordor, she convinced the rest of her Cabal to call off the assault.
So what do they do instead? They decide to call a meeting with a woman they strongly suspect to be a Seer of the Throne, who they know as Hannah (AKA: Damien’s ex-wife (See Here: Hook, Line, and Sinker )). She accepts their meeting. After all, she isn’t unreasonable. She just wants to serve her Exarch and get on with her life just like the rest of us. She has nothing in particular against the Cabal… well except maybe her douchebag former husband who cheated on her multiple times with whoever didn’t say no. Even under the circumstances she was willing to be the better person and have a rational conversation with him. She lets him choose the place. She lets him choose the time. She asks up front if this will be a private meeting, and when he says to bring one other person she does. She gave him everything he wanted. She gave him the best years of her life! What does she get in return?
She gets pushed into a waiting portal so that his Cabal Mates can beat on her as soon as she materializes, that’s what!
Poor Hannah botched her WITS+EMPATHY roll to sense his cruel and underhanded motives. She trusted him again, and again he betrayed her sacred trust. So she materializes in a place fortified by Damien’s Cabal, and immediately everyone starts beating on her. They magically punch her in the brain, they root her to the space she’s standing in, they try to counterspell her magic shields. She has done NOTHING to them! All she tries to do is leave. That’s it… just leave. Hannah is no joke of a Mage, and so she weaves a Time spell to shunt herself backwards in time a bit. She isn’t looking for anything huge, just enough time to teleport herself elsewhere (the Space anchors wouldn’t be in place yet) and then jump herself back to her normal time frame in a place where this Cabal of jerks is not laying in wait to beat her face in for no apparent reason. Is that really so much to ask?
Meanwhile, back at the meeting place, her agreed upon companion realizes that she has disappeared. Her agreed upon companion also realizes that the new skank her ex-husband is hanging around with is still there. As such, her companion (being no fool) decides to turn the air around the skank’s head into chloroform. Why? It will do no lasting harm, and this purple-haired tramp might give leverage if needed. Also, by casting on the air around this lady she gets no defense bonuses or resistances to the spell. The plan is simple and effective. Or so it would seem.
The purple-haired tramp twists Fate to get out of the affected area of the gas before passing out completely, and then jumps through the bloody portal! Discovering that she has just missed Damien’s ex, who cast some kind of spell to get outta Dodge, Aenaiyah (AKA: The Purple Haired Slut) scrutinizes the area. Aenaiyah realizes that this is the work of Time magic (she is an Acanthus Mage after all), and decides to ritually cast a spell to throw herself backwards in Time after poor abused Hannah. She can’t make it back as far as Hannah did, but does make it back far enough to leave herself a message (in the past) to use Time magic to prevent other Time spells from being cast in this area for a while when they are fortifying everything. She is smart enough to not give the messenger a specific reason why (because if this works that reason would now not exist and my brain would explode), beyond that it is a good idea to do it – and that afterward she should maybe pop back and tell herself it would be a good idea to use Time magic to prevent other Time spells from being cast in this area because otherwise she might forget to do it.
Honestly, can’t you just stick to Post-Cognition?
I hate Time Mages.
Mine is a World with Many Paisley Curtains
It has recently occurred to me that some of the folks reading this blog may be of the impression that I have some great wisdom to impart. Some of you may have convinced yourselves that by reading my blog you will become better GM’s. You may be right about that, but not because I have any idea what I’m doing.
The most important thing to remember about GMing is to make it look like you know what you’re doing. When a player asks what color the bad guy’s curtains are you can:
- stammer because you never considered that antagonists might have curtains
- yell at the player for being a royal pain in your ass
- smoothly tell your player how their character was hit by a meteor that happened to sail through the window just as they were walking over to get a closer look at the lovely paisley pattern on the curtains.
- Both 2 and 3 (not necessarily in that order)
It’s easy to get caught up in planning a thousand niggling details for every session in case the players happen to ask. I have found that if I do that much planning not only will the players not ask those questions, they will ask other questions that are far more annoying and niggling! This problem is compounded in a game like Mage by the player’s abilities to interrogate ghosts, talk with the animals, and use Post-Cognition. For example, you you might have every member of a victim’s family and workplace fully statted out and given a personality, and instead of actually trying to make contact with any of these potential leads the PCs will instead wander around aimlessly on the college campus where this victim was a teacher, poke their head into a classroom full of students this teacher didn’t teach, and ask if any of these hundreds of students that never met the victim in question have supernatural markers in their auras. They also might ask you what the foundry marking on a bell is… or the ISBN number of a book. It doesn’t matter what detail you didn’t bother to come up with, the players will find it! They will find it, and they will ask it, and you WILL hate them for it. You will hate them all!
I have often found that the best thing to do in these situations is really to do nothing at all. Practice the slow spread of an evil smirk in the mirror while you’re getting ready to head to the game. There is nothing that will freak out your players more than a nice long pause after a question that they have asked… if it is accompanied by that evil, maniacal grin. They will assume that they have just stumbled onto an important fact. They will say something like “Oh noes.. there is no ISBN number on that book!” Whatever is the worst possible thing that they can think of in that moment will come flying out of their mouths, and if you’re smart you will just sit there and keep grinning at them. Let it sink in. Let them say more. Don’t try to stop them! Whatever they are saying right now is probably their worst fear come to life!! And you didn’t have to come up with any of it.
Well played!
The downside of this is that the players will think they were so smart that they figured out what you had worked so hard to plan. They’ll convince themselves that they have outsmarted you and maybe get a little smug about it too. That’s OK though. We know better. We know that in reality they were dumb enough to do all the heavy lifting for us. Let them have their moment of glory.
If they get out of hand you can always whip out the meteor. Then they’ll know who the smart one at the table is.
Hook, Line, and Sinker!
Role Players fall into one of two categories: the kind that give some thought to the lives their characters had before the campaign started, and those that don’t. Those that don’t have given the GM a blank slate, which of course tells me that I can feel free to populate that person’s past with whatever I feel like laying on them. I’m not saying you should have that PC’s twin brother who can mind control said PC without a die roll show up at the start of every session and take over the PC’s actions every session. That gets old rather quickly. (Believe me, I know. I had one of those GMs) What I’m saying is that when you want the PCs to consider actually doing some incredibly risky or stupid things, and for some strange reason this time they aren’t, you should feel free to up the ante by imperiling an aged relative, former lover, or beloved pet that the player didn’t know their character had until you mentioned it during the session. This, if you have even semi-decent players, can add some spice to the session!
It can also ensure that you receive a back-story from said player at the top of the next session.
Then you have the players who provide you with some background information. This can be in the form of a list of people the character is related to, a short blurb about some memorable moment in their life, or a 1,000 page thesis on the character’s motivations. Some players are kind enough to actually bait those back-story hooks for you. Others are sure to tell you how they have no relatives, lived their entire life in a dark tunnel, and have never met anyone before the campaign started; or alternately give you every last detail about every person their character has ever met, including the doctor who slapped their butt at birth, and what all of these people’s motivations are. I have no doubt that those others have mind controlling twin brothers in their pasts. The thing to remember here is a key element of any story: Point of View.
It is important to let your players know, up front, that the events detailed in their back-stories are the events as seen through the eyes of their characters. They can feel free to give you motives for these events, but unless the character performed the actions those are possible motives. The character can’t possibly know what the actual motives for actions they didn’t perform were unless they happened to have been Awakened on the Mastigos Path at the time of the action.
Let’s take for example one of the characters in my Mage campaign. Let’s call him, oh, I don’t know… how about Damien. Yes, let’s call him Damien. Damien’s back-story says that somebody stabbed him in the chest in the middle of a New York City street late one evening. This near death experience caused his soul to Awaken. Damien is now determined to use his new found abilities to find out who tried to kill him, and why they left this odd looking brass knife sticking out of his rib cage. As GM, I’m perfectly fine with this element of his story. As a matter of fact, having read his story, I can come up with any number of people who might have been inspired to attempt to stab him to death. All the same, I caution him that the events in his history are described as they were seen through Damien’s eyes. It’s always possible that things are not quite as they appeared to Damien. Damien’s player actually seems happy about this (he didn’t know me very well back then), and tells me to go ahead.
This was his second mistake. (Joining the campaign happened first.)
I now have a free hand to decide that the stabbing was… an accident? Maybe there was some parasite on his chest that he couldn’t see because he wasn’t a Mage at the time. Maybe this unknown assailant was trying to save him! Maybe it was a case of mistaken identity. Poor Damien really isn’t some twisted Fae creature trying to hunt down poor innocent Changelings, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time! Maybe someone thought it was time for Damien to Wake Up!
I can take what he thought was a case of someone trying to kill him, and totally twist it into something he never suspected – as long as it makes sense to the rest of the back-story. If it doesn’t make sense you’re cheating. In the context of the other events in this character’s story, and in the rest of the campaign world, does this motive make sense? If yes, go with it! Blow minds! You’ll be glad you did.
Hunter: The GM’s Friend
I’m finally taking some time to read through my “Hunter: The Vigil” book. I have to say, I wish I’d read this one sooner!
Yes, this is partially because I might have decided to run Hunters instead of Mages and as a result saved myself a large quantity of sanity points. Mostly though, it’s because Hunter works so well for any World of Darkness Chronicle. It’s possible for Hunters to have unique abilities based upon what Hunter conspiracies they belong to (if they belong to one at all), which allows them to be powerful enough to go up against a group of supernatural PC’s as effective antagonists. They can also wind up with the advantage of numbers if your PC’s have been running amok in your setting and causing all types of weirdness like, say, casting “Platypus Whirlwind” in the heart of mid-town Manhattan. Not that a Mage PC would ever think to do something like that, of course! I speak purely hypothetically.
No matter what skills they bring to the table however, Hunters make great antagonists because when you come right down to it, they’re just ordinary people. Once upon a time they were normal folks just looking the other way and trying not to lose their minds – to quote “A Shoggoth On The Roof“. They are the people your PC’s might have been had their own encounters with the supernatural gone only slightly differently. Wielded properly this can lead to all sorts of mayhem for your troupe.
Take for example a recent session of mine in which a Cabal of Mages and a Pack of Werewolves, who have become friends despite my best efforts to the contrary, wound up almost TPKing the entire campaign! All my co-GM and I needed to do was allow them to capture one poor, defenseless, unconscious Hunter. Some PC’s shout “Kill him! He’s a Hunter! He’d kill us if he was conscious!” Other PC’s say “But wait! He’s just a squishy mortal person, you know, like we used to be. He doesn’t know any better. One day he might become one of us!” It isn’t long before a knife gets thrown, an Acanthus Mage starts bleeding (even before she can suggest using Post Cognition to find out why he became a Hunter in the first place), sides are drawn… we haven’t gone near any of the GM’s carefully laid plans (which in this instance is fine because the GM’s got to kick back and eat chips for a change) and people are calling for initiative rolls on each other.
This, loyal readers, is what I like to call “GM Win!”
It doesn’t happen often enough.
And then there is the glorious entire section of the book that tells you how Hunters trick out their homes with booby traps. I found this section most inspirational! (Yes, that is a tear of joy sliding down my cheek as I type this.) Of course, I like to go the extra mile and dump a few dozen acid-spewing zombies on my PC’s to go along with the traps, but if you’re looking for some decent rules regarding pit traps and the like “Hunter: The Vigil” is an excellent resource! In fact, I have to admit that it’s an excellent resource for pretty much everything in the World of Darkness. It’s well organized, well edited, and clearly well thought out. As a GM or a player I highly recommend it.
Mage Mistress 