Blog Archives
In The Beginning:
I had been playing Role Playing Games for more years than I’d like to admit to, and I had at times played antagonist NPCs. It is not nearly the same thing as GMing your first game though.
My first session as a GM was the first session of the Mage campaign, back in May 2009. There were issues from the start. For one thing, the game formed at my friendly local game store Ravenblood Games. Ravenblood is hands down the best place to play games ever, but the challenge was running for a public group. Because this was to be an ongoing campaign people signed up if they were interested in staying in the campaign for the long haul, not as a group of one shots with different players each week. Some of the people I had gamed with before, some I hadn’t. Unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict, some of the people who signed up couldn’t make it to the first session, which gave me a smaller and more manageable group to start with than the one I wound up with. At least there was that!
So, at the start of the session I had two people who would become Mage campaign regulars at my table, and one person who intended to play a Werewolf, and ultimately wound up taking over as GM for that group. Argus, an Obrimos Guardian of the Veil, and Niels, an Obrimos Free Councillor, were my regulars. Macabre, a Moros Free Council Mage, was being played by the future Werewolf GM.
My idea was fairly simple and straightforward. The Consilium has noticed that a Ley Line is being corrupted. They want it investigated, but quite frankly New York City is a big place and they have more urgent matters to deal with. As a result, they have called on a few Mages who have been deemed reasonably trustworthy (and not irreplaceable) to investigate. The Ley Line lead them to a house that was so nondescript that it could only be deliberately so, and they did some poking around. I had intended that they decide to stand a watch outside of the house, hoping that when they decided to enter it the cabal of Mages using it would be in the midst of their ritual and have all of their protective wards up. It would be a big, flashy battle and ultimately at very least the leader of the cabal would escape by teleporting away.
Naturally, my players decided to break in right away. A little invisibility, and boom I can pick the lock with no one seeing me. Stupid Mages!
I did hit them with a problem once they got inside though. The Mages using the house had bricked over the way to get into the basement. As high powered Mages they didn’t need it. Clearly, this meant that the basement was where all of the action was happening. Now, how do the players get down there? They are new Mages and don’t have fun spells like create portal, teleport, or plasticity just yet. Various ideas were discussed. These ideas included:
- Creating a workforce of zombified rats from the New York City subway system. After all, we all know that NYC Subway Rats are a special breed, and they should be able to dig through the distance between the nearest subway tunnel and the wall of the basement.
The Guardian of the Veil stepped in and said absolutely not. (Good on you, Argus!)
- Calling upon the Consilium to see if they can help.
This seems like a good idea on the surface, but the Consilium sent the players here for a reason: they simply don’t have time to deal with something this trivial and that’s why they sent the PCs. They are supposed to find out what’s going on, not call in to ask the Consilium to do that for them.
- Using the Atlantean Backhoe that the Moros Mage had written on his character sheet under “Merit: Artifact” to tunnel into the basement.
The GM did not approve this artifact, and that player was summarily thwapped upside the head.
Eventually the resident science guy, Niels, decided to use his Mage sight to see if he could detect any existing shortcuts to and from the basement. After all, Mages have all kinds of abilities that tend to support laziness, and so it might be a good idea to have something that triggers a portal into the basement on your second floor so you don’t have to keep bothering to cast the spell. Sure enough he found a full length mirror that did exactly that, and they went downstairs to investigate.
As GM I figured they would take some notes on what they found, maybe pick up an item or two to bring to an Acanthus Mage (the “regular” Acanthus Mage was away that weekend and couldn’t make it to the session) to see what was probably going on down there. That would seem to make sense.
The players decide to camp out down there, invisible (too many Forces Mages dammit!), and wait to see if anyone shows up. So much for my glorious battle!
While they are waiting the Moros Mage decides to zombify the corpses of any rats that might happen to be near by and I have to come up with rules for that on the fly because the average Moros Mage zombifies people, not rats, and I didn’t have any rules for that handy. We figure something out and he gets a bunch of rats, which makes him all happy.
Eventually the Mages who are using the place do wind up portaling into the basement. They portal in because one of them is carrying a young child who is to play a key role in the ritual they are about to perform. First the security guard of the group comes through to make sure everything is clear, but the dimwit carrying the child botches his timing role and comes through too quickly after him. As he is coming through my Guardian of the Veil, who is invisible, blows the head off of the first Mage through the portal.
Having the brains of his cabal mate sprayed all over his face scares the second Mage coming through more than a little, as it might be expected to do, and he winds up dropping the child and heading back through the portal.
It is at this point that the Moros Mage decides to order the zombie rats to go after him through the portal, and then return. Sadly the portal snaps shut as they leap through after the Mage that is running away. Clearly someone on the other side of that portal heard the gunshot, saw the brain-splattered coward leap back, and decided that closing that portal might be a good idea.
The Player Mages try using the rats as an anchor to scry on the location of the antagonist Mages, but this only leads to a severe headache and a confusing image of a rickety building overlapped with a shopping mall.
Upon returning to the ground floor the players discover something near the kitchen door. Just inside of the dog flap is what appears to be an old flyer, being held by a nearly destroyed skeletal rat. The flyer is for a new tourist attraction in Long Branch, New Jersey: “The Haunted Mansion”. It clearly dates back to the 1970’s.
The players have some mysteries on their hands now. Who are these Mages who are powerful enough to portal through Time? And more immediately, what are we going to do with the sleeping little girl they left behind?
NaNoWriMo FTW!!
As you can see at the bottom of the page I have posted a NaNoWriMo win! That means that I have written 50,000 words in one month on one coherent topic. I certainly can’t manage much coherence today having just finished that! After a month of solid writing and deadline meeting I have to admit that my brain is more than a little fried.
I am certainly not destined to be on the NY Times Best Seller list, as my writing here can attest. A large part of my NaNoWriMo participation involves giving myself an excuse to get in closer touch with the NPCs in my campaign. It gives me some pressure to develop plot-lines on a deadline beyond the next game session. I can ‘t guarantee what the player characters in my campaign will do, but I can get inside the heads of my NPCs, and if I’m lucky come up with some things that will make interesting one shot modules.
This year I believe I have somehow managed both.
It is likely that a full NaNowriMo novel will not appear on my blog, though I suppose it’s possible. Much more likely? Well, it’s more more likely that I will post excerpts, and that I will write some modules based upon them. One excerpt has already been posted at my author’s page at NaNoWriMo.com.
I introduced Hunters into this year’s NaNoWriMo, and that is no accident. I plan on running a Hunter module at I-Con 2012, and I haven’t figured out all the details yet. NaNoWriMo forces you to get into the heads of the characters, and do it NOW! You can’t keep putting it off. You have a deadline, and you’ll make it or you won’t. That’s what makes NaNoWriMo great! (Well, part of what makes it great.)
Please consider supporting NaNoWrimo by clicking on my link below. If you can’t donate (and believe me I understand that!) then consider participating next year! It’s a great excuse to indulge the muse.
For now, I will indulge in some well deserved sleep! I haven’t had much of that in the last few days. I’ve had a deadline to meet!
For next week I am planning the first piece in a chronological look at the campaign’s events. With a little luck, by the time I am caught up to now (the December 2011 session) it will be OK for me to reveal all of what has happened over the past 2+ years. It has been a wild ride! I have been chomping at the bit to do so, but I have hesitated on providing my players with spoilers. They are all great players, and completely capable of separating character knowledge from player knowledge, but surprises are part of the GM’s fun!!
Up next: A Critical Look at my Very First Session as a GM!
I Sleep Now
Ain’t No Rest for the GM
Chances are that I’m not the only one reading this who is currently recovering from a failed STAMINA+SURVIVAL check or two during the Thanksgiving festivities. Fortunately I blew some character creation points on the Iron Stomach and Toxin Resistance merits, which helped me to not only handle the pumpkin pie objective, but also to struggle my way through the tryptophan encounter.
Alas, neither merit will help me write something entertaining in the wake of yesterday’s events. (Apologies to the readers.)
Pretty soon I’ll be hitting the checkout button on a large portion of my Christmas shopping (no stores for me! :::shudder:::) and then settling down for a long winter’s nap… or at least a long weekend’s nap. It will be a well earned opportunity to recharge my brain as I ponder what evil things to do to my players next. As it happens I have some fairly big decisions coming up.
The Players’ Cabal is currently negotiating a prisoner exchange with a quite powerful Seer of the Throne. Complicating matters is the fact that Seers tend to let their Exarch make the big decisions for them. How important is this captive the players are holding to the Exarch’s plans? Sure, she’s important to the Seer they are negotiating with (she’s his granddaughter), but to the Exarch? Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. In the sight of The Eye she has already failed in her mission to ensure that Damien is brought into the fold. So when you come right down to it, how much is The Eye likely to approve of exchanging for her?
And then there is the rest of the Cabal’s “To Do” list. I have more than one player looking at various Legacies. I’d like to have that unfold naturally in the campaign, but so much of what they have been doing as of late has been secretive enough that it’s been difficult to have them be approached. Of course, certain players have been less secretive than others, and I have to decide what happens when someone places an object in the Holy Water at the Vatican and that seemingly simple coin sizzles the Holy Water right out of the font in a big steamy cloud. Surely no good can come of that. Fortunately no one brings cameras or cell phones into the Vatican. (#facepalm)
And what of the remaining coins? To date the players have one, and they suspect that they know who has another. Are more of these still floating around? (I’ll give you a hint: the answer isn’t ‘no’.)
There are, of course, other bad things going down simultaneously. New York is a big city. I would like for the players to take advantage of a little character down time in the near future, but they might wind up stumbling into some bad things during that down time. Hell, they may cause bad things to happen during that down time. Come to think of it, they may have already caused bad things to happen during that down time!
To quote a favorite web comic of mine… “Rejoice. For very bad things are about to happen.”
Giving Thanks
Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching. It’s hard to believe that next week I’ll be gorging myself on excessive amounts of turkey, sweet potatoes, stuffing, corn, banana bread, pie, and anything else at hand that happens to be delicious.
In the spirit of the season, there are a few things that I, as GM, feel the need to give thanks for:
Family: No, no, no… not MY family! I’m talking about the innocent and totally defenseless families of my player’s characters. There is a special kind of cheer that only knowing you have your Time Mage’s sister trapped in Arcadia can bring. If you’ve never felt that special feeling then take it from me, you’ve not truly lived. Family, when powerless and in the hands of the antagonists, makes my heart all happy.
Of course, I would be remiss if I did not also thank the player character family that is in fact the antagonists of the campaign. Watching the dawning realization break across the player’s face as he realizes that his character’s own family is on the other side… priceless. And then of course there are the cabal mates who now begin to wonder if they can trust this guy at all. OK, maybe that ship had already sailed, but now they trust him even less!
Thanks Family!
The Gift of Giving: It has been said that it is better to give than to receive. This is never more true than when you’re giving someone a cursed coin that they can use to free their sister from Arcadia if only they can figure out how it works. Knowing that this power is right there in her jacket pocket and that all she needs to do is wield it, and watching her not let herself do it no matter how torturous and tempting a thought it is, now that is the gift that keeps on giving.
No, really, don’t thank me. Thank You!
Home: For some, it’s where the heart is. For a certain cabal of Mages, it’s where the event horizon is. I mean was! Yeah… was… nothing to see here.
Home, I thank thee.
Friends: The Mage game just wouldn’t be the same without them! For one thing it would be a book, and the characters in it would do things that actually made some sort of sense, but I digress. The fact of the matter is that without the fantastic troupe of players I found through Long Island Role Players (see below!) this game, and this blog, would never have existed.
Thanks guys!! (No, really, I’m being sincere this time… don’t get used to it.)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Fudge: It’s Not Just for Brownies Anymore
Sometimes #RPGChat on Twitter inspires me to write about a particular topic on the blog. Last night’s chat was no exception.
To Fudge, or not To Fudge? That is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to say “to hell with THAT!” and give the Big Bad extra hit points during a fight with the PCs?
There are those who will proclaim that it isn’t fair to fudge in the Big Bad’s favor. There are those will will say that it is breaking the rules. But really, what’s the better story here: “our group trounced the monster in the first round before it even got the chance to move”, or “it was an epic struggle, the battle waged on and on, and then I bit Cerberus’ balls off!”?
(Yes, this actually happened.)
You really need to consider carefully before you fudge. Sometimes the PCs do something that is just so incredibly epic that letting them kill that baddie so fast is just the right thing to do. For example, years ago when a friend of mine rolled a critical hit – decapitation instant death and killed a dragon in the opening shot of an encounter (a fight he was supposed to avoid mind you)… as a first level character… that was a pretty big moment and the GM absolutely let him have it. He should have had that moment. It’s a great story!
Other times the fight ending early is just anticlimactic. The first time we brought the Mages and Werewolves together to fight a big bad evil spirit we severely underestimated the amount of damage they could do. When we constructed the baddie we didn’t build a high enough defense for it because we wanted to make sure it was possible for them to hit it. They had ludicrous rolls with all kinds of roll-ups and it wound up totally spent before the end of the first round. Sure it happens to all guys every now and then, but does that mean they want to tell their friends all about it for years to come? Hells no! So my co-GM and I exchanged a quick glance, tripled its original hit points, and continued the fight. The players never even knew. (Well… they know now.) “Cerberus” (we never explicitly called it that, but the legend comes from somewhere!) got to try out a few nifty abilities, the PCs were battered around a bit, and yes… the fight ended when a Werewolf castrated him with his teeth. Two years later we still talk about it!
The fact of the matter is that those stats: the Defense, the Hit Points… they were just numbers we chose. Sure they were based on various other stats, but we made up those stats too! We could just as easily have made up higher numbers to begin with, and truth be told we almost did but wanted to make sure the PCs had a fighting chance. No matter how hard you try sometimes you get it wrong. Sometimes you need to adjust on the fly. What’s important is to remember that everyone is at the table to have fun, and in the case of RPGs (generally speaking) to tell a good story. If you err in the service of those two goals then chances are you’ll be forgiven if you get caught.
Just remember… next time you give that baddie more hit points! And better armor… and minions…
Mage Mistress 