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May 4th, 2007
03:28 pm - Thoughts on Romance
So a few thoughts on romance in games. I played in another session of the Berkeley Call of Cthulhu campaign GMed by Janyce Engan (cf. The Stars Are Right Wiki). In this past session, we went into the English village of Bailey with its cult-like people, and disrupted a ritual by its spiritual leader known as The Lady. We ended up summoning the guardians of her former prison, who took her back to where she was formerly kept prisoner at a remote spot in the Faeroe islands.
Along the way, though, one of the PCs was drawn into a pagan orgy with the villagers, and I got further into the romance that my PC Henrik has been drawn into. He has fallen for an NPC, Rebecca Hopkins, who has been the girlfriend of one of the more established PCs, Auda Abisi. This last session, he decided to admit this to Auda, which lead to an awkward conversation.
Romance in General
A few months ago, Brand Robins posted on A difference between online and tabletop play, noting that cybersex is a real phenomenon in online play, but the same is almost entirely absent in tabletop play. He has also posted a Romance-in-games Survey asking about best and worst experiences and similar, which I answered.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) immlass had also posted some Observations on relationships in roleplaying, where she suggests that romance/relationship stories work best when there's tension over the relationship -- either external forces set against characters in love, or external forces trying to get two reluctant characters together.
Edited to add: One more addition for the links on romance that I forgot -- the_tall_man's August 2006 post The Immersive Romance.
So I'm pondering notable role-played romances that I've been involved in:
Manfred's fling with Virgil
This was the most recent, but it wasn't all that deep. I had been playing a flamingly gay character, Manfred, in an Amber Diceless campaign, game-mastered by Madeline. After several sessions, I found he hadn't run across any romantic potential. I was somewhat concerned that his gayness would come across more as stereotyped effeminate behavior rather than actually liking men, so I requested a romantic subplot from the GM in a private email. Following this, the NPC Virgil showed up and immediately fell for him, and came up from time to time in the remainder of play.
I don't think there was a lot of tension in this one -- it was a happy, if somewhat one-sided relationship. Manfred would tend to say "Oh, hey babe" to Virgil's adoration.
Dot and Max
This was one of the highlights of the three-year Buffy campaign, Silicon Valley Slayage. Max was a senior programmer and witch, a very out lesbian loosely based on Max from the movie "Go Fish". Dot was the web designer and Slayer, a younger woman and only ambiguously bi-curious. Early in the First Season, Max at first mooned over Dot. Their romantic tension came out over our in-character blog entries besides in play -- like these: They eventually got together, and their relationship deepened in Season Two, and midway through they decided to conceive a child together by sorcerous means. In Season Three, the baby was born and it played a central role in an apocalyptic prophecy.
There was a lot of tension over the two of them during Season One. Then once they became an item, it changed. The relationship lost a little steam in Season Two because I became a half-time GM, so there was simply less time and less continuity for keeping up relations. Still, there was a lot of good stuff in there. In particular, there was tension over having a baby and the choice that meant. Then the twist in Season Three was that Max invented a duplication spell to allow Dot to split into two halves: her mommy-self and her Slayer-self. Max struggled with communicating with Dot -- plus there was some tension with the in-laws.
Borgny and Skallagrim
This was an interesting romance in the Vinland game where I was GM. Borgny the Sharp-tongued was a character who came up in the game, and Skallagrim the Dark was an unmarried PC played by Jim. A dozen sessions after her showing up as an NPC, Skallagrim spontaneously decided to approach her family about arranging a marriage. (Session #20: Skallagrim's Proposal) Actually, all of the initial PCs got married over the course of the campaign, but Skallagrim was the only one who arranged his himself -- since his parents were dead and he began as a huscarl. Borgny was a widow with a grown daughter Vagnhild, who was the quintessential surly teen.
There was some external resistance to this in the form of Borgny's family. Her parents didn't object to the marriage, since Borgny wasn't about to catch anyone of higher status. However, her father Vigfus the Proud clearly looked down on Skallagrim. Also, Vagnhild hated it, but that was no surprise. I think that this was the most sheer fun to play, because Borgny was a hugely fun character who was quite active through their courtship and marriage.
Silksif and Melnir
This was another of the romances in the Vinland game. I was GM, handling the NPC Melnir while Silksif was a PC played by Heather. Melnir was established early on as a militaristic warlord of the Raudarbank clan (in present-day New Jersey), and an ally of the PCs. Silksif was a reknown prophetess. At some point, he got into his head to propose to her. He saw her as a prize, but also as unique from other women. She, on the other hand, had huge troubles with her family situation -- and needed money and power to try to fix it. So to her, he was a way to handle her problems.
There was certainly tension in this relationship, but it went in many directions at once. Melnir was a tough warlord, and he proposed by coming with all his men armed to stay at the longhouse of Silksif's family, and then announcing his proposal. That's tension-producing, but it's not clear what direction. Also, I though the relationship was hot in the way that both of them were using the other.
Rook and Madam Sossostrich
This was an interesting one. I was a player in a campaign game-mastered by Chris Lehrich and Alex Dent-Young. The short form was that for a time in this campaign, all of the PCs came under the spell of an NPC, Madam Sossostrich -- who was channeling a goddess such that we all were in love and awe of her. Major Rook was not a PC that I had invented, but rather was created by another player. He was essentially a retired secret agent. Years earlier, while working undercover, he had ended up killing the woman in Egypt he was having an affair with, because she had found him out and was going to tell her husband.
Then at some point, Madam Sossostrich lost her channeled identity and powers. Suddenly she was just a mortal woman who had no power over us. As that was described to us, I suddenly knew that Rook had fallen in love with her.
The disappointing part was that in the subsequent adventures, nothing much happened with this -- and no one paid much attention to it. What I belatedly realized was that even though I was clear that Rook was interested in her, the others (including the GM) interpreted it as a shallow sort of lust. I couldn't exactly explain it at the time, but it was important to him, and I think it was fed by the guilt over killing the woman in Egypt. So he had this romantic ideal of loving and protecting this helpless woman.
Reflections
One of the key things that I note is that relationships have never worked as well if they were designed as relationships. Of the above, Virgil was created as a love interest for Manfred -- but the others all were relationships that arose from already-established NPCs or between PCs who weren't created as having a relationship or attraction.
The examples I found less successful -- Manfred/Virgil and Rook/Sossostrich -- were opposite in how they were handled. In Rook/Sossostrich, the GM and other players weren't clear about what I was thinking. On the other hand, the Manfred/Virgil was explicitly negotiated, but didn't have much depth.
I think I lean towards taking seriously and putting some attention to any romances, but not explicitly negotiating them out-of-game.
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March 28th, 2007
01:29 am - End of the Golden Dawn campaign
I had two Call of Cthulhu games over the weekend. I'll talk about the first here, which was the finale of the Golden Dawn campaign which I had been game-mastering since last June.
I think it was one of the better campaign ends which I've been in. There were a few ways in which it felt forced, but in general it went very well.
( Long details ahead, slight spoilers for some published adventures )
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February 21st, 2007
12:22 am - Cthulhu Meetup
More Cthulhu to report. As I mentioned last time, I played in a CoC game-mastered by Janyce Engan -- whom I had found through a meetup group she had set up, The Stars Are Right.
We chatted over email, and discussed a character before play. The campaign was currently in 1931, and I had been reading up on stuff about Nazi Germany based on the Amber campaign we had just wrapped up. Thus I decided to make another German character, though quite different from my Amber PC Manfred. I envisioned an artist who was a veteran of the Great War, whom I called Henrik Mueller. I think the source I had most in mind was All Quiet on the Western Front for his experiences in the Great War, and I had also recently been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and skimmed some other texts.
We met up at their place in Berkeley at 11 on Sunday, though the regular players came a bit later. They had a nice table with cheese and bread and other snacks, which various people brought. (I brought garlic pistachios which went over well.)
( Details cut for those not interested )
Most (90%+) of the game was in discussion between the characters. There were several times when the group split apart to do two simultaneous conversations, with other PCs discussing plans as others were involved with the GM. This mixed in with various philosophical and cultural discussions between the characters.
The highlight for me was when Henrik had a long talk with Rebecca as she went with him as he did sketches. She talked about herself as a soldier within their mission, and Henrik talked morosely about a "good soldier" quite possibly being a contradiction. They talked a fair bit about life, learned about each other (and Rebecca's mission), ambiguously flirted, and it ended with Henrik asking to join them (sort of).
It was a little slow for my tastes, but in general I thought it held together well. John's pulp horror stories were funny without breaking character or mood, as was Jack's pontificating. There was a lot of information, which we dragged in. I would hope that main plot events move a little more quickly in later sessions, now that the new characters are introduced and brought up to speed.
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February 20th, 2007
06:01 pm - Call of Cthulhu and Horror GMing
So I've been doing horror gaming recently. My Call of Cthulhu campaign continues apace towards its conclusion. In addition, the weekend before last I played in a new campaign of CoC with a group I met online, via the game-master Janyce -- who apparently has been running CoC since 1981 fairly continuously. Lastly, the one game which I played at this weekend's DunDraCon 2007 was Catherine Klikoff's All Flesh Must Be Eaten scenario, "May I Take Your Coat". I had never game-mastered a horror game prior to starting CoC seven months ago. It took some definite adjusting to get into, but I'm having fun with it.
Here I'll give an update on my own campaign. I last talked about it specifically in my July post Cthulhu Campaign Report. Naturally, I also have a web page for it that includes session summaries, campaign documents, and so forth. As I mentioned earlier, it is centered on the Pagan Publishing supplement "The Golden Dawn", and adapting in material from John Tynes' adventures "The Room Beyond" and "Sheela-na-gig", Kevin A. Ross' "Signs Writ in Scarlet" and "Plant Y Daear", and Fred Behrendt's "Sacraments of Evil".
A vital part of this campaign is that it is in many ways a reversal of the stereotypical Call of Cthulhu tropes, since the PCs are closer to cultists in many ways than investigators. They are involved in a secret magical society, whose focus is engaging in occult practices.
( CoC Adventure Spoilers )
Last session, the second PC died -- though he is still around for the moment due to a twist. It is one of the few games where I have PC lethality based on die rolls with no hero points or similar options to prevent it, nor fudging. In my experience, PCs rarely die and then often from explicit player buy-in.
Even further, though, is that I have messed with many of the players' characters. - Jim's PC Coneybeare found out that a magical ceremony that he had done months earlier to make an magical ankh actually invoked a fertility power (the ankh being related to the symbol of Venus and femininity), and is changing him into a hermaphrodite. This was interesting because his PC was reading the book by himself, but Jim was reading the handout (De Vermiis Mysteriis) aloud to keep everyone informed. However, I think he only realized as he was getting to the lines what they implied about his character.
- David's PC Dr. Norton has started receiving letters which another side of his personality has apparently written in his sleep. They appear in the mirror inverse of his handwriting. The notes have thus far been rather innocuous, but they know there will be issues.
- Dennis took a new PC after his earlier PC Shankley died, choosing to play a curious 19-year-old who had featured as an NPC in a prior episode -- Nathan. In the adventure, they learned that Nathan is descended from a debased serpent people. (So really, Dennis chose this explicitly by chosing Nathan as a PC, which is different than the others who had things done to them.)
- Daniel is played Dr. Woodsworth, a coroner who died this last session but was then temporarily raised from the dead by an ally of the PCs. I would have been fine with him simply dying, but given that I already had prepared background about raising the dead, I found the idea of an undead coroner irresistable.
The deal here is that I am messing with the PCs to a far greater degree than I have in most games. I did ask after Coneybeare found that he was becoming a hermaphrodite whether I had gone to far, but Jim (the player) at least loved that twist and has eagerly picked up on it. One point is that this connects to something which appears in a number of Lovecraft's stories -- where the narrator finds that his ancestry has tied him with horrors, such as The Festival, The Rats in the Walls, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and others.
I am struck by a contrast with what I listened to recently in The Durham 3 podcast #30. They were discussing high-trust and low-trust gaming, responding to a message from James Jeffers. ... I think that system can really support that kind of open, high-trust interchange.
"Here's the thing about D&D when I was playing it that was always a little scary is that if the GM suddenly decided to screw me, he could -- and I didn't have any real agency outside of my stats and equipment and such with which to battle back against that. Whereas in a game like PTA, if the GM decides to screw me, it just gives me more kindling for my character to move forward. It's like literally there is no way to lose in a game like that, or even in The Shadow of Yesterday, where the harder you get beaten down, because there are certain things which are simply off limits of the GM's power, or the Producer's power -- they can't kill you unless you want that to be a part of the game. They can't take from you everything that's important without checking with you first. That stuff makes it a much more solid base on which to build those trusting exercises."
This is an odd contrast with my campaign. Note that the campaign is highly non-linear, and many things flow from their choices and die rolls. My rule of thumb is that it will always turn out bad, but the way it turns out bad depends on what they have chosen. So I can and do screw with the PCs, and the players don't have any agency in that. However, they all are quite liking the campaign. I would tend to call that high trust, but it seems to clash with what Jason, Clinton, and Remi are saying.
This may connect to Meguey Baker's post on "More Alphabet Soup" -- about the two ways to treat other players' boundaries: "Nobody gets hurt" (NGH) versus "I will not abandon you" (IWNAY). However, I think the different kind of trust we are talking about is rather different than her dichotomy. In practice, I am edging up on the players' lines slowly. I was fairly certain that Jim would be fine with being changed to a hermaphrodite, for example. Still, I think it is pushing things to go there, and it is pushing by the means of my ability to do things like that as GM.
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October 25th, 2006
12:40 pm - Cthulhu Survey and More Thoughts
Some more thoughts on Call of Cthulhu. So, via princeofcairo post on "My Weekend", I found that simonjrogers had set up a Pelgrane Press' Call of Cthulhu Survey for the new Call of Cthulhu system -- using Robin J. Laws' "GUMSHOE" system.
I've compiled a page of the CoC Survey Results (held pending conclusion of the survey), since the automated framework isn't good at showing the text answers. It's interesting to browse. There are a lot of contradictory answers in what people would like changed, it seems.
For what it's worth, here are my thoughts.
I have two big issues with Call of Cthulhu. I had played CoC several times before, but the only long campaign was a major variant (The Ripper Game). A few months ago I started running a by-the-book game using 6th edition. I have two big issues with the rules, and a number of minor ones. The worst is organization. When I'm trying to find a rule, it's still enormously difficult. (Interestingly, Ken Hite suggested that this was an edition issue, noting "I consider the 5th edition rulebook a triumph of organizational clarity, or at least rather better than 6th.")
Also, spell learning and psychiatric treatment take times in weeks or months -- but there isn't a good model for how to play out such downtime. A better model would be something like seasons in Ars Magica, where you have defined periods of downtime and everyone can get something from that. However, CoC has broken-up periods each with different lengths (2d6 weeks for spells, 1d6 months for indefinite insanity, or month-by-month treatment, etc.). It's a pain and means that some characters will be sitting on their hands, while others are doing things. There should be a fixed period like a month or a season, and everyone should have an opportunity to do something during that period.
Beyond that there are a host of minor issues. The problem of perception rolls is well-known -- basically that randomizing the clues in a mystery makes it very difficult to have a coherent challenge. This is generally solved by giving a workable amount of information automatically, with a roll allowed to get useful but minor extra details. Ideally, being less skilled should allow you to still get into trouble, while greater skill should give vital clues to increase your odds of survival. This is a fairly basic principle, but it can be tricky to implement in practice.
I'm not entirely satisfied with combat. As mentioned, the organization sucks but it is fast. It's also highly random, which I like for the feel of grittiness. However, I'd wish for more of a level-of-success system, since the median result is often no effect, but with the strong possibility of a dead PC.
Right now my Call of Cthulhu campaign just finished it's eighth session, and is ramping up towards a climax. The PCs have just now started on the path of lugging guns and dynamite. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm adapting material from several published Victorian CoC adventures. The best stuff to steal, I find, is the imagery. The first adventure was the introductory adventure for the Golden Dawn, John Tynes' "The Room Beyond" -- which I ran mostly by-the-book and went well. However, the players expressed interest in a longer, more connected campaign. So I'm weaving together background from a number of adventures plus some of my own.
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October 13th, 2006
12:36 am - Cthulhu News
So an intriguing bit of news which I have missed until now. First of all, via simonjrogers, back in July Robin Laws submitted the final draft of a game called The Esoterrorists. Simon's post briefly covers how they replace the old Call of Cthulhu "one failed roll and the mystery grinds to a halt" syndrome with a resource management system. The system has been dubbed the GUMSHOE system, and somehow I missed about it before.
But now, Simon announced in a post called "Recall of Cthulhu" that Ken Hite (aka princeofcairo) will be producing a new version of Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu using the GUMSHOE system. Ken posts about it, asking "...Is there a Killer App?".
So, now I'm definitely curious. I'm running a Call of Cthulhu campaign right now, The Golden Dawn -- centered on the Pagan Publishing supplement of that name, and adapting in material from John Tynes' adventures "The Room Beyond" and "Sheela-na-gig", Kevin A. Ross' "Signs Writ in Scarlet" and "Plant Y Daear", and Fred Behrendt's "Sacraments of Evil".
I also recently tried out the ORE system in the form of NEMESIS -- a free Lovecraftian horror RPG by Dennis Detwiller, Greg Stolze, and Shane Ivey. I was using it for a straight historical WWII game about paratroopers in Normandy after it was recommended in a Story Games thread, "High lethality war genre game?". Since ORE was also used for the gritty WWII superhero game Godlike, it seemed like a natural fit. However, after a few sessions of play I was unimpressed with ORE for the straight war-genre game. There were some neat ideas -- I liked using the Madness Meter for getting shot, killing others, and other horrors of war. However, the execution felt clunky in these circumstances.
Since width is almost always 2, damage was very uniform which didn't feel very gritty. For example, a rifle head shot always killed, but a pistol head shot never did. And the characters weren't well differentiated, being all mostly-average conscripted soldiers. By comparison to Call of Cthulhu, the dice pool resolution was slower without being noticeably more realistic. On the other hand, I also have a bunch of issues with CoC now that I'm game-mastering it.
All of which is to say that I'm interested in GUMSHOE, but I'm somewhat wary.
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July 7th, 2006
04:40 pm - Cthulhu Campaign Report
So, report on my Call of Cthulhu campaign. We had our third session last weekend, and I just put up some campaign web pages.
Pretty much by coincidence, two of my new campaigns are set in London -- CoC in 1893, Amber in 1943. The CoC setting was driven by the sourcebooks I was using: Cthulhu By Gaslight and The Golden Dawn. As I mentioned before, once we settled on CoC as a group, I offered three choices based on books I had and what interested me: 1890s (Cthulhy by Gaslight plus The Golden Dawn), 1920s (standard CoC), or modern (Delta Green).
The first session included character creation, but we created characters and started on the first adventure. I used straight the introductory adventure with the Golden Dawn sourcebook: "The Room Beyond" by John Tynes. This is a take-off of "From Beyond", though the material is well written and evocative. However, I was disappointed in the quality of the player handouts, and the notation of the creatures was unclear. Also, the adventure as written suggested having Yeats, as their superior and patron, lead the players by the nose. I kept the rest of the scenario more-or-less as written, but substituted Florence Farr (a more ambitious figure in the GD anyway) as their superior and had her simply turn the problem over to them and walk away. There's a feminist impulse here as well: Florence would be running the Isis-Urania temple within a few years, but the scenarios suggest Yeats, Westcott, or Mathers as the tie-in.
In the second session, we wrapped up the introductory adventure. We were missing one player, but it went well. The PCs left Lord Pellgraine's estate after studying his claim. They woke up the next day with horrible side effects, and returned to the estate to find a bloodbath. They fought some horrible beings, closed the gateway, and burned the building down. It was uncomplicated and somewhat railroaded, but set the mood nicely, introduced the players to the system, and got the horrors started with a bang. I discussed requests, and it seemed they were interested in a longer, more epic adventure.
So at this point I had to really sit down and think about adventure design. It has been 13 years since I GMed a horror campaign, longer since one I really designed myself. I've played in horror games since then, including one set in Victorian London -- the Ripper game GMed by Chris Lehrich and Alex Dent-Young. I also had The Golden Dawn sourcebook, the Cthulhu By Gaslight sourcebook, and a book of Victorian-era adventures, Sacraments of Evil. So I have a lot of potential material to mine from.
I started by writing out the PCs and the historical Golden Dawn members: Westcott, Mathers, Yeats, Farr. This is a simple sort of relationship map, similar to what is done in White Wolf modules for clan politics. (A different sort based only on blood and sex relations is suggested by a Sorcerer supplement, but this is a more casual one.) I wanted to bring in other characters as well as monsters, so I mined for appropriate ones in my sources.
Then I hit at the core of what I wanted for the nihilistic feel of Lovecraftian horror. Ultimately, what I wanted to do was to destroy the things which the PCs believe in. So, "The Room Beyond" was an attack on the aristocracy in its horrible portrayal of Lord Arthur Pellgraine and his grandfather Thomas Pellgraine. But to be thorough, I want now to attack more: church, state, science, universities, and family. I want to show them as rotten, hollow, and meaningless -- either through example or symbolically via the supernatural. I'm not posting details on how yet to avoid spoilers.
After the traumatic violence of the second session, the third session was more low-key setup as we established more of the characters and relations. Tension was maintained by police investigation into the death of Lord Pellgraine. Meanwhile, they saw hints around about different connections out of what happened to Lord Pellgraine. Mostly, though, it was introducing characters and establishing relationships. Coneybeare talked more with Inspector Craig, and got along well with Mathers and Northcote. Shankley deepened trust with Florence Farr, but pissed off Mathers. Dr. Norton worked with Dr. Fotheringay-Phipps. Though in retrospect, Woodsworth is a little left out.
So next time will be when the torture implements come out again.
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June 14th, 2006
05:18 pm - Three New Campaigns
So I'm starting on three new campaigns at once: Amber with my former Buffy group (GMed by zdashamber), Call of Cthulhu with my former HârnMaster group (GMed by myself), and Dogs in the Vineyard with my former HERO System group (GMed by myself).
The former two are long-standing play groups. The last are a group of guys who contacted me from my GURPS player-finder listing in March. I played when one of them ran a Gamma World adventure ("Famine in Far-Go") using the HERO System, which was silly fun but bogged down after a while. The GM seemed to feel so as well, so yesterday we took a break and I started them on DITV. This group are all completely unaware of indie games or RPG theory -- they've been pretty narrowly GURPS players. Everyone took very well to Dogs, and we made characters and got about halfway through a town in the first session. I went with Judd's "New Gidea" which Carl Rigney had run for me at End Games April Mini-Con.
The former HârnMaster group wanted a change of pace and we collectively agreed to try something else as a change of pace. Four of us have been playing for years, but over the past few months we added players Daniel (last October) and ewilen (in February). For the next campaign, we've been talking about doing Burning Wheel, but neither I nor Jim felt up to GMing it yet -- too much work. Someone else suggested Call of Cthulhu, which I agreed to GM using a bunch of prepared material I had. I took a vote on which of 1890s, 1920s, or modern (using Delta Green) that we wanted. It was a close vote, with most people split over preferring 1920s or modern. I went with the least controversial, which was 1890s. This was the setting of Pagan Publishing's sourcebook The Golden Dawn as well as a former campaign (The Ripper Game), so I had a ton of material. I went with using the Golden Dawn as a center, and will be adapting adventure material from the sourcebook. This weekend, we made characters and started on a brief introductory adventure.
Our long-standing Buffy campaign had its series finale in late April. We had a brief break and then had a session to jointly create our series and characters this weekend. As you might guess from her handle, zdashamber is an Amber diceless fan. She also introduced me to AmberCon NorthWest which I tried out last November. Unfortunately, druidsquirrel bowed out of Amber game. However, we added vito_excalibur. We held off any email debate, and instead came to the first session to brainstorm in person what the campaign should be. We went around a few times, but then eventually came up with one we were all happy with. We start in a Shadow similar to Earth, but in 1946 of an alternate history where the Nazis conquered England due to American hold-off and also rumored help from mystic artifacts. Our characters are all members of the resistance in England and unknowing Amberites (perhaps arranged to be together by some elder).
Not a whole lot in common here -- except that, as I've noted, I'm playing more by-the-book than I have in earlier years as part of my heightened interest in game design.
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