Theatrix - The best game I never played

One game I keep coming back to is a game called Theatrix. While I never played it as such (and I don't know if I would want to), the entire game is a splendid Gamemasters Guide.

It's a completely dice-less game, which means that you as a player can't rely on your luck to defeat an opponent. It also means that the game has plenty of advice on how to make things interesting without the randomness of plastic platonic solids. For instance, if the players discovers that a certain enemy is to tough for them, then they are BOUND to come up with a way to tip the battle in their favour. Player creativity, not luck of the dice, becomes the winning factor.

Theatrix also added in a strong degree of player created content and player meta-input (that is, the players could, with the help of Drama Points (I think it was called) rewrite/add facts into the scenes and the story). The book also had a couple of interesting examples of how to do this

Finally, the game contained a very nice introduction to the three-part story-structure, which has helped me quite a lot in my game mastering (even though I'm drifting more and more towards situational gaming nowadays).

So, if you find it, pick it up. While it may not be the best game out there, it is definitely one of the better Gamemasters Guides.

Everway - A humble praise

I've propably played over 50 different roleplaying games over the years.. some of these just end up as another book in the book-shelf. They were nice enough, but didn't bring anything new and notable. Then there are other games.. games that grab you.. that you learn to love.

One of these games is Everway. It was designed in the early 90's, but with ideas that can be considered modern today. It's focus on storytelling and drama is still one of the best I've seen.

I won't try to write everything I like with it in this blogg, but I will lift up a couple of highlights.

• Everway is one of the few games that uses a truly qualitative system
• You build your characters with pictures!
• Adventures always has something at stake. The actions of the heroes changes the fate of many.

Finally, one of my most beloved characters of all times was an Everway-character. His name was Fourclover, and he was a storyteller and a fairy-tale dwarf. Always cheerful and with a pipe in his mouth, controlling the smoke, so that it formed pictures to follow his stories. He was a great little man, and he is the one that gave this blog it's name.

So, here's to you, Fourclover, and to the game that gave birth to you

I'm HIT!!

Let's see

• In A New Hope, not one of the main characters are hit in combat. The only exception is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and that is when he is killed by Vader
• In the Empire Strikes Back, Luke loses his hand.. and that's the only real hit (although one could argue that his is slightly hurt by flying crates, sent by Vader)
• In the Return of the Jedi, Luke is hit once with a blaster (on his cybernetic hand), Leia is hit once with a blaster (and is almost out of the combat for it). Then there is the final combat between Luke, Vader and the Emperor.
  

See? Very few actual hits, and those that are tend to put the character out of action.

Now... roleplaying game... for instance: Star Wars Saga.. yupp, I can take numerous hits without going down. Actually, not even when I'm hit by a light saber am I in any real danger of going down with a single blow.

I'd like to see more games that focus on the maneuvering, the parrying and riposting, feinting, taunting. Any single hit would end the fight, so make sure you don't get hit!

Lose your temper, and lose the fight!

The way I see it, you could perhaps have a system with "combat advantage" points. You can reduce the opponents combat advantage, or spend a maneuver to increase your own. When you have reduced him to 0 points, he is at your mercy, and you can deal with him as you please.

Just make sure, you don't get hit yourself...

Don't be reckless, overconfident... don't overextend yourself..

Move those feet.. taunt your opponent... make him attack you! You can avoid his angry attacks..moving out of the way. Then, you got him!

You got him right where you want him... now what do you do?

Mapping out you adventure pt 4

In the previous posts, I've been looking at a way how to design an adventure using a relational diagram. This is a snapshot of the situation so far, but it's still not a playable adventure. We are almost there, but I'd like to add some more seasoning and presentation.

First of all, the main conflict here is of course if the wizard manages to perform his ritual or not, but there are other conflicts. For instance, will the dwarves let the player characters investigate the theft of the crown?

Before trying to run this, I'd note down a few things more. One of these things are key scenes. What can you do to kick-start the module? Look for a situation that seems filled with drama and excitement, and have that as your adventure starter.

Then try to find other situations as well to use as exciting scenes. These scenes are key-points in the characters discover of the situation as a whole.

That leads us to the next point: Add clues!

Using the word "clues" implies that this is a mystery, but in this context, it's all things that shows more of the situation as such. There is a tendency among GM's (at least from my experience) to be rather sparse with clues that reveal the inner workings of his plans.

Believe me, that is a mistake! My advice would be to include 2-3 clues for each relation that isn't completely obvious (but add some there as well just for the sake of it). Looking at the diagram, we see a number of different relations that can be discovered. We can include an old bard that sings about how the wizard was defeated the last time by the guardsman, we can give the guardsman a scar over his face from the last battle and we can say that he patrols the area where the wizard had his tower last time a lot.

More clues doesn't equal a more boring or predictable world, it means a more rich and living world.

So, finally, with the diagram, a bucketful of clues, some exciting scenes (including a few combats), we are ready to go.

And, one last thing: Don't forget to use player input. Sometimes they come up with ideas that are a lot better than your original idea was.. in that case, go with that idea and toss your own out the window.

Mapping out your adventure pt3

The next (and almost final) step is to fill in the blanks. The map from last post is decent as a starting point, but to build a more complex module we need to fill it in a bit more.

For each entity, I tried to add so there's at least 3 arrows to or from each entity (if possible), and to make sure that there are no "unconnected" groups in the map. In this step, I also try to add some more drama and interesting connections. In this case, I decided that Joanna (someone I added without knowing her purpose when I put her name down) was in love with the guardsman, and that gave her a weakness that the wizard might exploit. Another question to answer was WHY the wizard wants to cast the ritual. Revenge is always a nice motivator, so let's add that. Let's say that the guardsman stopped the wizard before.

So, I for each entity I added some more relations, adding more depth and drama to the story.

Looking at the diagram when I feel ready, I see the following situation.

Many years ago, Helvith the Tall thwarted the plans of the wizard Thuluman the Red. Thuluman went away, but didn't forget. Years later, he slowly returned, armed with the knowledge of a powerful ritual. He needed a very rare metall, secretium, for the ritual. This metal can be found in the crown of the dwarven clan. Therefore he exploited the weakness of a dwarf of the clan, Naug Grim, and put him into a gambling debt. Naug Grim then stole the crown, intending to hand it over to Thuluman.

The ritual also needed a sacrifice of someone who is emotionally attached to the victim. Joanna is a young woman who is in love with Helvith the Tall, and Thuluman used that to lure her into believing that the ritual will make Helvith fall in love with her.

There's still some things to fill in, but we now have a fairly solid framework with greed, revenge and romance from which to improvise an adventure together with the players.

Mapping out your adventure pt2

So, with the basic story written down, and the different participants and entities written down in cmaptools (or on our sheet of paper).

The next step is to draw lines between the enteties. Each line represent a relation or an attribute. Naug Grim, for instance, is a member of the dwarven clan. The wizards wants to cast the ritual etc.

We do this by either drawing a line between the enteties and write down what the relation is, or in cmaptools, click on the arrows above each entity and drag it to another entity.

If you look at the example above, moste enteties now have at least 1, but sometimes 2 relation-arrows going to or from it. We can already see a few things of interest (the crown is lost, the wizard is trying to make the ritual etc), but the map is still a bit lacking. The next step will be to fill out the diagram to make it more dynamic.

Mapping out your adventure pt1

My latest find is a tool I wanna share with you all, together with a way to use that tool to design modules and adventures for RPG's.

Now, mind you, the tool in itself isn't necessary for the method, but it's handy and it's free. Can't get better than that, now can it?

The tools is called cmaptools, and it's a tool for drawing relational diagrams. In short, create a map of "enteties" and their relations.

The image attached to this post is an example of how it can look after you have added a number of enteties.

In this particular case, I as a GM brainstormed a couple of things. I have Naug the dwarf, who is a member of a dwarven clan. It is run by a chieftain. Not far from the hills where the clan lives is a human-populated village called Outskirts. In the village we have the Rangers, a group of able bodied men protecting the surrounding area from harm. In a tower not far from the hills, a mighty wizard lives. He is currently researching a powerful ritual.

This short story resulted in a list of things that I added to the work area in cmaptools. Now, mind you, all of these things could be done manually.

Excel at relations.

Sometimes it's fairly important to keep track of relations between different persons and factions within an adventure or a module. This can be done in different ways, and one of these ways are a relational matrix.

A relational matrix is a grid with columns and rows (as matrices tend to be). In both the leftmost column and the top row you enter the participants of the adventure or story.

The way I usually do it is to have the column as the "active" part. That is, in the cell where a column meets a row, it's what the person in the column thinks about the person in the row.

So, in the example picture, you can see that Andy is afraid of John, for instance. In the cells where the person "meets himself" I just write down what he thinks about himself or his state of mind right now.

One of the uses is if course as a reference, I can have it in front of me when running the module. However, it's just as helpful when planning the module. I can start with the known relations, and then fill in a sufficient number of empty cells. It makes my work a bit more structured.

When I'm done, I can also try to see if any interesting scenes grow out of it naturally.

The example below was done in just a couple of minutes, but it didn't take me long before a semi-comples relational structure started to show up on the screen.

You can use basically any tool that has tables or grids on it for this. Many word processors have tables or you can use a spreadsheet like Excel to use it. In my example I used the spreadsheet function in Google Docs.