Category Archives: World of Darkness
Session Scheming
Tonight on #RPGChat* we were discussing the virtues of session planning, and how some of us like to go about it. This feels appropriate to me for two main reasons, this first of which is that I have a new chapter starting up soon for the Mages (the blog is behind the campaign’s timeline but we’ll catch up to them eventually!), and the second being that RetCon is rapidly approaching and I’m in convention game planning hell.
For reasons too asinine to go into here I committed to running three brand new adventures this year: Innocents, Hunter, and Mage. I have a vague idea of what these sessions will be, which you can check out for yourself if you click through the links. RetCon is in two weeks.
No good can come of this.
There is a lot of flying by the seat of my pants that I do with the Mage campaign. With seven players tossing around god-like powers I’m pretty much forced to. My convention games however are much more solidly put together. There are packets with background info on the characters and their basic attitudes toward life and the current situation to be put together. Naturally the characters all need to be fully statted. The packets also include a brief explanation of certain concepts so that if I have people who are new to the system they will know how things work, for example how the Virtue/Vice selections come into play. I am absolutely a fan of having things to hand out during game sessions and that all has to be put together too.
I like to give my convention players as much of a sandbox environment as I can, but the fact is that I’m running for people I don’t know and may or may not see again. This means coming up with specific goals for them that will keep them in a reasonably predictable area, and then giving them free reign to interact with that environment. I also love to give them free reign to interact with each other. This is where those character “attitudes” come into play. I make every effort to give the PCs things to argue about. Some will totally believe in the presence of the supernatural all around them, while others are skeptics. Some will be bright eyed, bushy tailed, and enthusiastic to learn something new from their team mates; while some of those team mates are just hoping they haven’t been saddled with some brown-nosing, over achieving, suck up. of course having a “Brainey Smurf” around is always good for inter-group tensions. When folks play up those personality types hilarity is sure to ensue.
The story has to be short enough to run in the time allowed, but it can’t run too short either. To that end, I try to plan out things that will be fun for the players to do yet aren’t necessary for the storyline to make sense. I plot out filler scenes. The trick is to make sure they don’t feel like filler scenes. I always give myself a way to trigger the finale in case they don’t get through all of the ‘necessary events’ with at least 30 minutes left in the session. I don’t want things to feel forced, but more importantly I don’t want the players to leave the table feeling incomplete. That isn’t good for anybody.
So, basically, I still have a lot of writing to do, and I have a rapidly diminishing amount of time left in which to do it. It’s all good though. I have my trusty coffee and the day off. I can do this! So, if you’re in the New York area I urge you to check out RetCon this year. There will be chances for me to kill your character! There will be prizes! There will be cake!!**
*It’s a Twitter thing, and if you aren’t there at 9pm on Thursday nights then… well… you should be there is all I’m tryin’ to say!
**The cake is a lie.
The GM Knows…
One of my favorite Mage set pieces has to be an abandoned monastery in Staten Island called St Augustine’s.
In the real world St Augustine’s was abandoned some time in the mid-to-late 60’s and left to ruin. Some of the original grounds have become Wagner College, but some remained as they were. Rumors abound as to what can be found there. Some say that an insane monk set a fire that killed a number of people ranging from none to hundreds. Some say that there are at least a dozen sub-basements, but since the lower floors are flooded below the third no one can say for sure.
Many rumors warn of the cells in the lowest of levels, however deep they may actually be. Those stories say that if one were to be able to swim deep enough, or if the water were to be removed, there is a cell in the lowest level that housed the monk that went insane and set the fire. They claim that his body was never retrieved from his sleeping cell, and that his ghost lingers with it.
When the real life history of a location is this rich it’s impossible to not want to bring it into the World of Darkness. I turned up a wide variety of websites about the place during my campaign research, which means that the players can totally psych themselves out before things really get rolling! These online rumors also persist in my campaign world, and this being the World of Darkness they are not easily dismissed. There was indeed a mad monk in the basement in my world, and he may be there still. He may not be alone. Of course strong emotions attract the notice of the spirit realm, and burning alive does tend to bring on extreme fear… and pain.
I do make an effort to provide some good to go with the bad. This having been a holy place there are sanctified items to be found. The brothers earned the money necessary to sustain themselves by crafting crosses and rosary beads. They also printed bibles at a small hand-press on site, and transcribed verses onto cards and plaques. All of these items give advantage should one need to perform an exorcism, but why on earth would anyone ever feel the need to do that?
There is so much for the Mages to uncover here that I would have been remiss if I hadn’t let my Multiple Mage Murderer have found it to be a marvelous place to hide. Naturally I felt compelled to give him a good reason to feel safe here. You can file that under “The Bad”.
Who knows what the Mages might find hidden in this long forgotten place?
Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad
One of my favorite parts of GMing at RetCon is not having to deal with having a bunch of insane, over-powered monsters at my table. I go into the convention assured that my players will indeed be insane, but at least for two out of three sessions they won’t be able to stop time, summon supernal demons, and change the laws of physics. For two out of three sessions I will be torturing mere mortal humans. It is exhilarating!
I enjoy running Mage, truly I do, but after a while it becomes difficult to find ways to challenge characters that can do pretty much anything. RetCon gives me a chance to scale back a bit. I don’t need a house filled with hundreds of zombies, and a variety of traps, and an over-powered Mage with a ridiculous familiar… a dozen or so zombies and a crazy guy trying to raise a loved one from the dead will suit my needs nicely when the protagonists are a TV Crew.
I also like setting up pre-generated characters for the story. I wouldn’t want to hand out pre-gens for a long-term campaign because I’d rather give the players in a campaign more freedom about the type of character they want to play. This often taxes my brain trying to figure out why the characters are working together. (If they are… sometimes they just try to kill each other randomly which is always fine by me!) It also vexes me when players have things in their back stories that are difficult to reconcile with the reality of the campaign world. For a convention one-shot I build the protagonists to the story that will unfold at the table. I can balance them so that each of the players has something important to do. I can give them motivations to make sure that they stay reasonably on track if they are actually trying to play the characters as written, though I must admit that it doesn’t always work out that way. For example, my previously mentioned TV Crew adventure was run twice. The first time I ran it the players saved each other from near death and walked away with some great footage! The second time around… well the character that had the keys to the van survived. The camera with what little footage they actually got… yeah not so much. Probably a good thing too, since most of that footage was of the camera person and the lighting guy trying to kill the on-screen talent for no reason whatsoever. (Somebody call TMZ!)
Of course, the third session will be Mage. I kind of feel obligated to run it, I am the Mage Mistress after all, so it’s a good thing I know how to have fun with it. I might decide to use a setting that I put my regular group through with a few tweaks to see how the convention crowd fares against my “regular” troupe. Or I may write something entirely new and different. I haven’t completely decided yet. I should probably do that soon because RetCon is less than a month away!
And be warned, pre-registration for RetCon will be closing at the end of the month. Which is to say that your last day to pre-register and save 25% is this coming Tuesday! So what are you waiting for? Run… go… now… get to the preregistration site! http://www.theretcon.com/register.htm
Shameless Self Promotion
If you’re reading this blog, then chances are you like gaming. Do you know what’s better than a reading a gaming blog? I know, there isn’t much in life that’s better than reading MY gaming blog, but playing some games at RetCon: Long Island’s Gaming Convention is… especially if they are games written and run by me. (Games written and run by my good friend Aenaiyah over at Adventurer Misadventures are likewise sure to induce sanity loss.)
Right there at the top of your screen you’ll see some links to my previous RetCon modules: “Asylum”, “The Naos of Serapis”, and “Your Safety Is Our #1 Concern”. This year I’ll be debuting three entirely brand new adventures for “Mage: The Awakening”, “Hunter: the Vigil”, and “World of Darkness: Innocents”. Stay tuned to this page for module teasers!
Registration for RetCon 2012 is currently open, and you can save a sweet 25% if you register online before the end of this month. That’s money you can be spending on dice, T-Shirts, and a vast array of cool stuff in the dealer room! You know you want cool stuff, so come join us at RetCon: Long Island’s Gaming Convention this August. Meet some people, play some games, buy some stuff, fun will be had – THIS I COMMAND!
I’ll kill your character, I mean see you (yeah, that’s it) there!
Mage Mistress 