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Love At First Sight
Some Game Masters will ask you for a backstory because they want to torture you by making you write one. Torturing players is kind of our gig, so you really have no right to blame us for it.
Some Game Masters will ask you for a backstory because they are trying to get a feel for what the table is looking for in a game. If, as GM, you receive a bunch of backstories that basically amount to “I pick things up and put them down” you will probably not want to run a game of political intrigue with this group.
Some Game Masters will actually use and abuse your backstories in the worst ways imaginable. For the record, I am one of those Game Masters.
My campaign had lost two players, bringing us down to a party of 5:
- Aenaiyah: Acanthus Mysterium
- Argus: Obrimos Guardian of the Veil
- Neils: Obrimos Free Council
- Nokoni: Thyrsus Adamantine Arrow
- Rex: Moros Free Council
This was not an incredibly easy group of people to deal with. It was rather like herding cats. My Guardian of the Veil had already been broken by his fellow players: Rex the curmudgeonly old man who is deliberately contrary, Nokoni the Adamantine Thyrsus who can turn into a bird and fly away when the going gets annoying, Neils the mad scientist in the basement, and Aenaiyah the purple haired bane to my existence. Yet, as I lost two players I had two more chomping at the bit to join the troupe, and somehow or other I had already lost enough sanity to agree to this. One of these is someone I have played with before. He is an excellent player who decided that his character is an ex-police officer Adamantine Moros who had seen some bad things and may or may not have gone slightly insane causing him to “think” he can talk to ghosts. (Spoiler: He can.) I had hoped that he might decide to step up and help the Guardian get folks under control. The second new player was a mystery to me. I had never met him, but I had heard good things about his play style… from Aenaiyah’s player. Now, she’s a great player don’t get me wrong… but she lives to make me weep. I am on the fence about this.
And then I receive the backstory of Damien Goetz: Mastigos Free Council.
It is, perhaps, the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen. We aren’t just talking about the two page well written story of his Awakening, I think he may even have spell checked, but the bulleted list of important figures in Damien’s life. For the first time in this campaign I was weeping tears of joy. This guy is a scum-bag lawyer who defends people he knows damn well are guilty as hell for the good of his own wallet, has an ex-wife he cheated on, was a rising star in his ex-father-in-law’s well connected law firm, has parents he doesn’t particularly get along with, and someone plunged an enormous knife into his chest recently and left it there. Oh, and he doesn’t know who tried to kill him or why. I get to make that up. And…and… when I tell him straight up that in the places where he has people’s motivations written down I figure that’s only Damien’s impressions of what their motivations were because at the time he couldn’t have known… he says: “I like that!”
Foolish, foolish, man.
This is a guy who voluntarily took the Narcissism derangement because it fit the character. This is a guy who prefaced various things he did in his early days of joining the campaign by saying “I hope you guys realize that I’m not an asshole. Damien is an asshole, but I swear I’m a really nice guy!” And what a glorious sphincter Damien is! He is perhaps one of the most vainglorious bastards I’ve ever seen.
Yes, over the course of the campaign since then I have had great fun letting Damien’s player know exactly how badly he screwed himself by giving me so much license with his backstory. His fellow Mages trust him less and less with each and every reveal.
It makes that dark little hole where my heart should have been all happy.
Hollow Laughter in Marble Halls
In a long running campaign it’s important to allow the players some time for character development. If you play your cards right they will think you’re being the magnanimous sort of GM who is willing to indulge their frivolous whims. It is important to not let them realize the truth of the matter too quickly. The truth is that you are accomplishing two aims for yourself: not having to come up with plans for the session, and giving the PCs enough rope to hang themselves.
My PCs wanted to play tourist for a session since two of them are newly arrived in America. They wanted to take a group trip to see the Statue of Liberty. I convinced them that they wanted to do this on New Year’s Eve so that they could enjoy the spectacular view from The Torch. Yes, yes, I know that The Torch is closed on New Year’s Eve at midnight, but we’re talking about a group of Mages and Werewolves here so surely they can find a way to make this happen.
The first half of the session was spent causing trouble on Liberty Island. The players made it abundantly clear that they were doing quite a bit of drinking this day. Hello negative dice pool modifier! I’m so pleased you could make it to the party!
This naturally lead to questionable decisions like the desire to scratch the words “Lars Was Here” into the base of The Statue with Steel Rending Claws. Sadly, this effort was ultimately thwarted by the group.
My favorite bad decision of the evening took place inside Liberty’s Arm later that evening however. Tell me, if you’ve broken into someplace that nobody is supposed to be in and you find a magic portal, are you stupid enough to leap through it? If you are I’m pretty sure there is a science lab accepting applications. The retirement benefits suck, but there will be cake!
Also, you might be one of my players.
My players opt to leap through the portal with no concern for where it will spit them out, or how they will make it back. Well played players, well played.
Where they landed wound up being a vast field of happy little warrior corpses. (Where’s Bob Ross when you need him?!) In the distance is a large, formidable keep. As they grow closer they realize that the keep is made of marble, and covered in ancient runes. Much of the weaponry and armor that litters the field is also runed, though the material seems unremarkable. The players have stumbled upon a relic hunt at the site of the final stand of the Dogs of War.
My plan was thus: The Dogs were one of the more extreme factions of the Adamantine Arrow in the days of Atlantis. Of course, in their eyes they were doing what needed to be done to protect Atlantis. In the eyes of the Guardians of the Veil they were reckless war mongering fools who were going to wind up destroying the city if they weren’t stopped. The other Orders were divided on the issue. As such, I had the players roll INTELLIGENCE+COMPOSURE or INTELLIGENCE+OCCULT, which ever they preferred, and if they got at least one success I told them the following:
- If the player is an Adamantine Arrow the Dogs worked tirelessly and without thanks, often giving their lives, in defence of the people of Atlantis.
- If the player is a Guardian of the Veil the Dogs were crazy and reckless and needed to be kept a safe distance from the people they were “trying to protect”
- Anyone else was given both viewpoints.
I then told them that since no one had any way of knowing what the truth was they could make up rumors about the Dogs as they saw fit. After all, they might have heard anything, and any of it might be true. I could then listen to what they came up with and decide whether or not I wanted to work it into the campaign at a later date. (I didn’t tell them this last part.)
Most players offered me nothing to work with. Contrary to what one would normally expect (unless one happens to read this blog regularly of course), the Guardian of the Veil (you know… the keepers of secrets and such) comes up with a wild tale of The Tooth of Fenris.
He, both out of character and in, has no idea that Werewolves have a name for Fenris: Father Wolf.
Always count on stupidity.
*Yes, as a matter of fact I did have Pink Floyd’s “Dogs of War” playing in the background for the occasion.
I-Con 31 FTW!
I-Con was a blast! Not only did I support the economy by spending far more money than I should have, I got to see some people I don’t get to see nearly often enough, met some new cool people, and oh yeah… there was gaming!
There was lots of gaming.
And the gaming was good. Nay… great!
In my Hunter game alone we had a folks bribing their way through the “indigenous inhabitants” of the undercity with pain pills, fun with flamethrowers, the building of a staircase down to the bottom of a sinkhole using accident wreckage and discarded construction materials, an officer of the law shooting someone in the face for trying to prevent his friend from being possessed by an Azlu, a giant demonic creature being attacked by a crazy woman with a wrench, cleansing fire, an ambulance driver who decided to “stay here to keep an eye on the accident victims… in case, you know… they might need help or something” (his Vice was Sloth), did I mention the flamethrowers?… and these weren’t even the prize winning moments!
Though charging the enormous half-human half-monstrosity with a wrench did deserve an honorable mention!
Ultimately though we all agreed that the Paramedic using her knowledge of chemistry to turn her jury-rigged “flamethrower” into a massive ball of explosive, fiery death (GM Approved!) and the Subway Worker who attempted to flamethrower the face off of someone with a nosebleed because it may (or may not) indicate an Azlu possession in the name of the Lord were simply too awesome to not walk away winners!
Although, honestly, the Paramedic deciding that it would be a great idea to try to dig an Azlu out of someone’s head with an epic sized pair of tweezers was also incredibly entertaining! (Brava Paramedic!)
And that was just one game! That doesn’t even begin to cover the Mastigos who twisted up the meanings of “Vulgar Spell” and “Covert Spell” to try to get a Seer of the Throne to unleash Paradox on himself, the Obrimos who turned gravity on and off to slam the guy into the ceiling and the floor, and then the ceiling, and then the floor… over and over again… or the fact that this time I was the Acanthus, and my Acanthus was the GM! Revenge is mine! Sayeth me baby!
Demons were slain, Canopic jars filled with fresh human entrails were hurled out of penthouse windows (sorry pedestrians!), I told my Cabal Mate in the future to leave a note in my wallet so I would have it in the past and naturally didn’t actually flip the card over to see said note until it was too late to be of use (and I still say it was all that purple-haired Acanthus’s fault we wound up three days ago and not mine but the memory bit was absolutely all Lyric’s fault!), and sweet sweet stuff was purchased. With all of the tables of gaming going on around me (had to be a few dozen tables) I can only imagine how many crazy stories unfurled last weekend. A successful con indeed!
Now I’m looking forward to doing it all again for RetCon!
Hope to see you there.
Letting My Geek Flag Fly
It’s been a busy week getting ready for I-Con 31!! I’m very excited to be GMing at this year’s event. In fact, I’m all over the schedule, running events for “Mage: The Awakening“, Generic “World of Darkness” (Humans vs Supernatural), and “Hunter: The Vigil“. So yeah, I’ve been busy. Even the adventures I’ve run previously need to be combed through so that handouts that have been previously handed out are replaced, and of course it’s always nice to refresh my memory as to how the adventure is supposed to run.
And then of course there’s the adventure debuting at I-Con 31: “Your Safety is our #1 Concern”. (See Link Above) I’ve never run “Hunter the Vigil” before so it was a bit of a challenge making sure I had everything together properly, and scaling the challenge to the characters. Of course, this being a convention and not a campaign I only have to worry so much about whether or not there is a TPK. After all, even a party wipeout can be lots of fun as long as the fight is worthy of drunken tales in the hotel bar later that evening. I believe that in that regard I have a winner! (Of course, I may be biased.)
Honestly, the bigger challenge in planning convention events for me is one of pacing. In my campaign it doesn’t matter if they don’t get as far as I figured they would in one session. In fact, sometimes that’s a blessing as it gives me a bit of a leg up on the next session. Conversely, I’m all too used to my players going off plan and I can improvise around their weirdness. I’ve grown used to their weirdness. At I-Con I’ll have all new weirdness to adapt to, which should be interesting!
Of course my bigger concern is that at a convention game there is no next session. You have to make the one session count! It has to have enough going on to fill the time slot without feeling like filler, and you have to reach the final challenge before the session ends. I tend to like planning a bit more than I think we can cover, with modular areas that can be dropped if we’re running short on time without negatively impacting the story’s flow.
One of my favorite things about planning a one-off convention game though is the researching. I’m kinda weird like that. I love wandering aimlessly through internet searches for keywords like “abandoned building”, or “subway urban legends”. I’ve found some incredibly inspiring things that way, that help me give the scenario that splash of reality that I like to bring to the World of Darkness. It may not be exactly like the world we know (especially if I’ve messed up my physics a bit since I haven’t had to calculate breaking distance in… well in quite a while let’s leave it at that!) but it should be close. A splash of realism makes the event hit that much closer to home, which is always creepier.
See you on the gaming track!
I Don’t Feel Tardy
Class was indeed about to begin, but who was about to get schooled? A ranting madman holds Aenaiyah and several others as a captive audience to his lecture on the dangers of city life. Argus stands behind him, invisible for the moment, and a quick switch to Prime Sight shows him that Aenaiyah’s fellow students are Sleepers. Someone will have to get them out of there before anything inexplicable happens.
Enter our second Acanthus Mage and friends. With a quick twisting of Fate she chooses a path that leads to Aenaiyah and Argus. That she has a sympathetic connection to both of them doesn’t hurt any, simply follow the Fate line!
Eventually the others arrive. Argus holds his action, waiting for a good moment to strike (he was smart like that once upon a time!), and eventually it arrives. He steps out of of sight range of the Sleepers present to drop invisibility, as the newly arrived Neils erects a Forces Wall between the lunatic and his victims. Argus steps out with gun drawn, and badge prominently displayed.
“Stop right there, FBI. Get your hands up where I can see them, now!”
(Or something to that effect)
At which point all hell breaks loose.
The madman whirls on Argus, who is standing directly behind him to draw his attention away from the kidnappees, a clever move. His plan works, and more than that it screens the tentacle that lashes out of the man’s chest at Argus’ throat.
Fortunately the Sleeper witnesses blew their WITS+COMPOSURE rolls. Apparently they were distracted by the young girl who wandered over to untie them. They hadn’t been well tied (apparently I roll a lot of rocks) and she managed to get them loose. She then used her Direction Sense merit to lead them back to the platform and away from the fight.
And what a fight it was!
Argus stuck to his service pistol for his first attack so as not to reveal Magic to Sleepers. The Flesh Intruder (though they did not have that name for it yet) lashed out with more tentacles (it has several attacks per round) and did a lovely job of poking holes through our favorite Guardian. Sadly, not lovely enough.
Nokoni was able to patch Argus up, while Neils “I Don’t Need No Stinkin Veil” of the Free Council hurled some Celestial Fire at the creature. Molly the Mastigos punched it in what was left of its brain, while Rex showed off his skill with a nail-gun-walking-cane.
The creature, not one to go quietly, got some more lashes in before finally being subdued by fire. The Mages quickly conferred and decided that burning the body utterly would be best. Before they did that though, they looked for any information they could find as to who this man had once been. There wasn’t much to go on. Rex was able to make brief contact with his ghost, but only enough to know that the man had in fact been a police officer. He was just far too gone to find out more than that.
This will bear further investigation, as soon as Aenaiyah stops screaming at Argus for waiting so long to untie her.
Mage Mistress 