David Berg's RPG Journal

2/3/10 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

Weird session. Having done something noteworthy in an interesting and accessible location, and having put out a call for visitors, it was only natural that they got some. Each visitor I prefaced with, "You don't have to play through this if you don't want to," but they saw opportunities for gain or for fun in each one.

Unfortunately, bargaining with the useful visitors only added more tools and options onto their already mammoth new pile. This in turned lengthened their list of activities that basically amount to prep: storing valuables in a safe place, figuring out the workings of new items, making tools out of a metal now that they knew how to work it, comparing notes and diagrams on procedures they'd been told of, etc.

Planning -> investigation -> action is great.
Planning -> investigation -> more planning -> more investigation starts getting old.

Also:

Planning -> act on plan = satisfying.
Gathering knowledge -> just knowing stuff for whenever it might come up = unsatisfying.

More generally:

For a good overall session, it seems best if the more leisurely activities lead into some sort of dramatic action.

Why is this still an issue? It's because of all the meaningful decisions that we're not comfortable skipping over. What do we want to make out of our limited supply of unbreakable metal? How much secret knowledge are we willing to share with our creepy pseudo-ally to gain his cooperation?

Two ideas to possibly help:

1) Help the players get better organized. Hand them a grid to fill out with all the stuff they'd like to be doing during down-time. With less play time spent figuring out "What do we accomplish in 3 months babysitting the castle?", forging alodite and verbally sparring with Elericus will be more welcome.

2) Try to enforce "worry about it when you need to". Encourage responsive problem-solving, and discourage pre-emptively milking maximum advantage out of every opportunity "for later".

Basically, "either put in the work between sessions to track your thoroughness, or just don't be thorough." I dunno. #2 isn't really viable, it's more of an argument for the necessity of #1.

Over-investigating

With plenty of ideas in the works, chores listed, and plans in waiting, Dan and Merlin were ready to get to it, but John wanted to work on establishing yet another contact. For no specific purpose. Just because, who knows, it might be useful one day, probably for money. Fortunately they shot him down and I gave him a five-second answer and he let it drop.

Adding yet another opportunity to a field full of them just seems like it would add to indecision.

I told John:
"Write it down so you won't forget it. But don't investigate it until (a) you're hoping to do something about it right away, or (b) you need more options of things to do, or maybe (c) everyone's ready for some down-time in between exciting fights."

More magical unpreparedness

When we tried to rush through alodite-carving at the end of the session, I was only mentally prepared to fast-forward through to the end results. When we got down to the details, I screwed it up big time, describing a phenomenon (gets soft in moonlight) that would logically allow them to make whatever they wanted out of this super-hard stuff. We left things hazy, and after the session, I thought up a solution and emailed them, "The stuff doesn't get SOFT in moonlight; instead, it CRACKS."

This is what they get from a playtest, dammit.

I also had NPCs offer them all sorts of vague knowledge about rituals, alodite, demon-binding and commanding, and the use of a magic scepter. Not having figured out the details of any of these, I was very vague. I subsequently designed the means of operating the scepter, but I still haven't figured out how it's function will manifest in play. It's supposed to "lend guidance and control to a teleport effect". Basically I want it to help them get some (as yet undecided in my head) level of use out of the teleporter door.

More and more I'm thinking that this is the game I need to give to people. This campaign is my opportunity to create, tweak, and integrate a variety of magical devices and processes. On the plus side, the end result will be incredibly valuable. The bad side is that "build your own" will be impossible, at least based on my process. When creating magical secrets, I've done a whole lot of responding to where the players are at and what would be good to learn next. What connections are they primed to make if I lay the pieces in front of them? What new power would add a relevant bit to their toolkit without getting them much closer to being superheroes?

Could I really offer enough help to enable your average GM to do that?

Maybe some pre-built items plus some advice about their interactions would be a nice in-between. "This is what to reveal. The order is yours to decide. here's how you might decide."

Character frugality

The players came up with some really cool ideas about recruiting followers. However, the empire refused to subsidize this, leaving the players with the choice of paying some unspecified amount from their own pockets. Rather than see how little they could spend, they just gave up. Huh? My post-game calculations came out to about 20 shillings. That's been a ton of money for them up until now, but they were just given 100 shillings!

In my post-game email I advised "spending is probably more fun than hoarding". We'll see what happens.

1/30/10 -- me GMing for Matthew, Sam, Seth and Rich at Brooklyn gaming convention.

Fun session, but we got nowhere close to finishing. Everyone seemed to agree that the game did what it was supposed to do, but play got a little slow during the info-gathering phase. I didn't have the heart to break up all the expressive intra-party banter; after all, I'd been emphasizing color and detail and roleplay. In retrospect, though, I probabbly should have at least been more diligent about reminding everyone, "We're running out of time to complete the mission!"

I got to discuss the game a bit afterward with Matthew and Rich, who has clearly done some thinking about this kind of play, so that was great.

Logistics

One person who signed up never showed up. While we were waiting, we found an alternate, but he and another player wanted to watch other games during the wait. Eventually we said, "Screw the no-show, let's play," but realized that our location in the middle of a very loud room was really going to hurt the vibe. So, we moved to the back area, and assembled some tables and benches, with some folks helping more than others, and checked to make sure this was okay... and then it was cold, so we fetched coats. By the time we were all there and ready to play, we'd lost a substantial chunk of our 4-hour timeslot (already shortened by the con organizers from my request of 4.5).

Character creation

There was no confusion, and there were no complaints about inefficiency. The reorganized character sheet was clear. However, I still felt that this took forever. I'm really considering hurrying players through it next time, saying, "Write the first thing you think of! Quick!" just to save more time for actual play.

Interestingly, no one really took off with the visuals. They were content to use the racial defaults I'd grayed in. Seth even forgot to write in a "most noticeable thing". On the other hand, everyone did a great job coming up with values and personalities. Character type (background + skills) plus Life Goal & Path plus Open/Grounded seemed to account for the broad strokes, and some of the Tendencies helped make those more specific and real.

Rich said he was briefly thrown off by my "play yourself" recommendation, but that he was able to parse it as "play someone who's basially normal" and do fine from there. Maybe I should elaborate more on what I mean the next time I say that.

When we began play and I asked for descriptions, I was expecting visuals, but everyone went off about attitude. I almost admonished them for describing stuff that couldn't be perceived, but since it was clear that they were getting pumped to play these guys, I stopped myself.

Cool mix. The do-gooder healer (Rich) looking to cleanse out evil was a nice contrast to the more money-minded characters, especially the kid (Matthew) with a compulsive con artist streak and the leader (Seth) looking to cheat the imperials out of extra reward money.

Naming the party was also neat.  They disdained all the grandiose party names and went with "The Cunning Men of Hub Town".

Investigation - Pacing, Detail

They attacked each scene with gusto, but also with an over-abundance of thoroughness and speculative banter. So, big chunks of play time went by with minimal progress. It reminded me a little of the first scenario I ran with John, Dan and Merlin. In the future, I should probably have fewer threads to pull on, so the players more quickly get to "we've learned all we can". Or perhaps I should put some action scenes in the way of known info sources.

Perhaps John, Dan and Merlin have just come to trust my process. They know I'm not going to do the C.O.C. Crap thing and say, "Well, you didn't search the one key spot and find the one key clue, so you never found out what to do."* Cursory investigation is good enough, and even the most thorough investigation can be fast-forwarded through to save game time.

There was one nice moment when Seth threw the pacing dial into Summary mode to cover a tangent his character was committed to covering (interviews to establish whether the mnmonster victims could actually have simply fled to avoid creditors etc.).

For checking out the monster attack sites, though, they went through every little detail. And, y'know, a lot of that effort was wasted. If I've got one simple reveal for a scene, poking at it further just lends more color, but not more useful info. Maybe the color encourages them to poke further?

This could have been helped by me butting in and saying, "Should we just assume you're very thorough, and I'll tell you all the relevant findings?" But they seemed to be enjoying themselves, so it didn't occur to me. The disappointment only came later, when all that effort hadn't addd up to much.

Perhaps I should pre-empt this whole situation by announcing prior to the first investigation, "failure to meticulously cover every base will not screw you," as well as, "start on any investigation you want; if it's a dead end, I'll tell you via FFW."

Another option would just be to drive home the players' pacing options with a demo of a hypothetical FFW through an investigation. Seeing that the game's basic resolution logic ("GM relates certain outcomes, dice determine uncertainty") applies at any scale might open some eyes.

Random thought: in Trail of Cthulhu, "I use my Investigative Ability" = "cut scene"?

The Supernatural

Everyone did a great job of treating the idea of a giant snake as unlikely. Seth's skeptic character went with a "hoax" theory until he actually saw the thing.

Unfortunately, I somewhat killed that headspace with a teleport effect. I knew we were running out of time, so I tried to hand them the creature cave location with a quick, "Do you check the garden? Okay, it looks, uh, somehow fake. Dig? You hit stone. Dig more? It's a rune. Touch it? You disappear! Now you're in a cave!" Alas, this broke Rich's immersion (as he later told me), as his gamer brain switched on and said, "Ah. A teleport square."

The sudden ramping up of the level of supernatural from "subtle" to "extreme" was one problem. The cliched nature of the effect was another. The lack of unique color might have been a third.

In the future, if I want to set up a tactical situation, I should probably make as many of the moving parts non-magical as I can (e.g. hot spring instead of fire rune).

Practicality and Death

I gave Seth warning after warning that a giant monster was coming to eat him. He kept poking at the prisoners' cage, trying to engineer a solution to get it open. Finally, the monster arrived, cutting him off from his one escape route. In my opinion, this then became a certain death situation. I asked Seth, "I hope you don't feel like I sprung this on you; I tried to give notice." He responded, "Not at all! You gave me plenty of notice! I just couldn't abandon those people! Despite his cynical exterior, my character's a good guy!" Which is cool, but makes me wonder if he's just trusting me to keep him in the game by finding ways to not kill his character.

Yet another thing to possibly announce: "It is not that hard to die in this game, and I won't warp the fiction to save your ass if you do something suicidal!"

"Adventurers?"

My current "Tales of Adventurers" blurb may not cover everything that needs to be covered. Talking to Floyd from the Thanksnerding game, he said that he was unclear about why one would become an adventurer, and also on what was expected of adventurers.

It would be nice to get a strong group agenda going like the companies in InSpectres or FreeMarket, but that's probably a project for another time.

I also wasn't sure whether the characters would have an imperial note from the pre-play mission or not. Probably makes sense to say "yes" and add that to the starting haul.

Perception Powers sheet

Rich also mentioned that the powers grid also put him in abstract, board-gamey mindset. Some less mechanical presentation would be better. Maybe a journal, reflecting experiences & surmises prior to play?

Contrivance

Some combo of searching without payoffs, plus the awkward garden-teleport-cave, triggered Rich's C.O.C. Crap radar. My post-game explanation of the card spread just reinforced his sense that "find the GM's plan and follow it" might be in effect. Another reason to get them all the info more efficiently, so they can proceed to the more empowering planning and deciding phase. When I introduce the "potential solution" card positions, I need to be really clear that those aren't the only solutions.

Reward & advancement

Rich said that, for him, a major selling point of the game would be that advancement is not a matter of racking up points that make you badass, but rather the thing I'm doing. I wasn't quite sure which part of "what I'm doing" is the part he's most drawn to, though. I hope to follow up on that. Perhaps he's just talking about in-setting growth as opposed to abstract mechanics.

One-shot frustration

I might have to sacrifice character development time (and other color scenes) for progress. I might have to sacrifice my player-directed pacing innovation and instead dictate the pacing to ensure a chance at mission completion. I might need simpler scenarios with fewer components... and that might mean an 8-card spread is unfeasible. Gah.


*characteristic of many bad Call of Cthulhu games (thus "C.O.C. Crap")

1/27/10 -- me GMing for John, Dan and merlin at John's place

This session was all about what the players did with their victory. How they presented it to local peasants, nobles, and govt reps. What favors they'd ask, what demands they'd make, what lies they'd tell. What loot they now had, and what it was good for. What new options were opened to them, and which they'd like to pursue.

In pre-game emails, they'd agreed to head for Delsiford and begin attacking their smuggler enemies and reaching out to their cultist contacts. But when we sat down to play, they kept busy for 4 hours just dealing with the local people -- deciding who to invite to the victory feast, who to check for demonic possession, etcetera. Even fast-forwarding through their interrogation of a captive and their wait for reinforcements to man the castle, simply re-formulating their plan for Delsiford in light of new info led us up to the end of the session.

These "aftermath" sessions may be some of my favorite. I have few details to track, and I get to be the audience and see where the story goes next. These are also fun sessions for the players, as they get to revel in NPC esteem and use that to push their character concepts forward. Dan's guy acts scary and crazy to get compliance, but then gets drunk in the party and eventually winds up with one or more girls. John's guy mostly skips the party to obsessively search for traitors. Merlin's guy charms everyone and boosts the Shadow Hunters name.

Then there's also all the cool plans that get tossed around. Take the keep for ourselves! Hire staff loyal to us! Train the beginnings of a private army! Feel out the neighboring criminals and political powers for alliances!

At the end of the session, Merlin asked me if, having beaten the toughest challenge on the map, they were effectively done. I said, "Don't worry, you guys still have plenty of enemies and demons to kill," which seemed to satisfy him. (Plus, I know Dan's very driven by revenge.) I was surprised at the question, though. In Merlin's shoes, I suspect I'd be saying, "At last! I now have the power to exert influence over the setting in a much broader scale! Now things can really get rolling!" I think that's been John's reaction. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. These ignorant peasant characters have come a long way.

1/20/10 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

Hesengard Keep. Announced during the first session as "toughest mission on the map". They'd practiced, gained skills, powers, and knowledge. They'd surveyed and investigated and planned and purchased supplies. They'd figured out the way in. Now, finally, they tackled the beast. They nearly died, and they needed every ounce of the protection they'd brought with them. But, in the end, they kicked ass. In the end, they removed the curse. In the end, they set off their stone tablets like stage smoke machines, appeared atop the castle walls, and raised their (just created) flag, to a jubilant roar from the gathered throngs.

At the end of that, they also knew what was coming to them -- ranks in the imperial government, more money than they'd every seen, and horses.

Prep and lack thereof

It was an awesome session, but man was I drained. I'd carefully thought out the steps to removing the curse. I'd carefully mapped those to the card spread. I'd scripted a back-up information source, in case the players didn't solve the puzzles in time to avoid death by wearing down from combats. I'd drawn the castle layout. I'd written down 4 key NPCs and figured out the basics for another handful. However, there were a few things I hadn't done. I hadn't written combat stats for the badguys. I hadn't scripted when which badguys would appear. I hadn't finalized the Wrestling mechanics, which came up.

Note: what happens when one PC tries to immobilize an opponent so the other PCs can gut him?

Pacing the players' progress

Once the players failed their first go at the cauldron puzzle, I knew that hitting a wall was a real risk. They needed to get to the back-up info; the sooner the better, before the tension led to panic and frustration. So I used their trusty NPC sidekick to say, "Wow, now that we know Nat was evil, we can't trust what he said!" Which was all it took for them to realize, "If he wanted to keep us out of the library, maybe we should go there!"

If there's one skill that GMing this campaign has taught me, it's how to feed a good clue.

Pacing the players' adversity

As for the enemy combatants, I tried to have them use sound tactics, but only as sound as I could come up with while devoting most of my mental attention to the players. Early on, while they were still deciphering what to do, I threw the weaker badguys at them; once they had a solution in sight, I hit them with the veteran adventurer undead, who out-classed them man-to-man. After 3 PCs went down, I eased off. Fortunately, they had enough minecoil goop left to heal themselves.

Once they figured out how to stop the undead with holy water, their path seemed clear for a moment. Then I threw the King and his curse powers at them. I'd let their curse-protection breastplates work against every other curse, but man, that would have been an anti-climax to just ignore the big badguy. His power was that, when he gave an order, the opposite would happen. While the group hurriedly worked to complete the curse-removal structure, Dan charged the King and threw a sword stroke, with a holy water flask hidden behind his shield. In the instant it took the King to call out a command to stop the strike, Dan splashed him with the water.

Not having known that they'd beat the King so quickly, I hadn't timed that encounter with the completion of the structure. Again, it seemed an anti-climax to just say, "Okay, a few minutes later, you finish the wall." The Failure demon itself needed to do something. I ad-libbed a trembling castle, so at least I was able to have that suddenly stop when they finished the structure.

I also hadn't thought through the weird doors, so after the dust had settled, I described them having fallen off.

Whew. Just writing that all makes me tired.

Post-climax

It was late and I didn't have the brainpower to tell them what loot they found in their subsequent search. We called it a night. The next day, John emailed out a list of 45 things to do, questions to ask, and options to ponder.

1/13/10 -- me GMing for Dan, John and Merlin at John's place

( How much challenging, abstract puzzling? )

This goes beyond superficial matters of taste, into the basic intent of the game. Challenges have their place, but are not in themselves sufficient for Delve's style of fun. Color, drama, new experience, moving the fiction forward -- these can't be set aside for too long. One of the optimal Delve experiences blends player puzzling with character striving with environmental color to build up to a "we did it!" that resonates on all levels. Yay, I'm clever + yay, in character I achieve something cool + doing so was a vividly imagined experience = jackpot.

We didn't quite achieve that this session, but we wound up pretty close! The puzzling process was kinda frustrating, but it occurred early in the session. Also, they'd sought it out, so it wasn't interrupting any action. When they finally solved the puzzle, they were really excited, and then they went ahead and opened the door they'd been studying, providing a perfect "ta-da!" moment to end on. So it wound up being a very fun session.

GM Puzzle Help

Accordingly, I ad-libbed some magical feedback (basically, "you're getting closer" phenomena), and used NPC Einarr to remind them of some on-the-right-track ideas they'd had earlier.

When Merlin brought up, "Hey, we have that dust..." I prompted them, "Where else was the dust mentioned?" When they couldn't remember, I had Einarr mention the screaming monster. Merlin looked back through his notes to where he (and his character) had written the monster's chant. "With dust and heat, he caged me." I then prompted them, "And where was he caged?" They then remembered the burned-in runes of the demon's prison. Finally, they hit on the solution: "Maybe we should try burning the dust? Maybe draw runes with it and burn them?"

So I let them figure things out for themselves as much as I could... But I also helped them whenever they seemed to get bored or stuck, either (a) trying to think up new options and failing, or (b) trying tons and tons of random things just in case one might happen to work. I think that by helping with prompts rather than actually giving solutions, I maintained an experience of them feeling challenged rather than just slowly and painfully following the GM's lead.

( Specifics of the learning process )

Magic Diagnostics

The magic dust was a (realtively cheap) part of a system that Al and I invented to do accomplish the following:

"Read" a magical item, to determine how it may be activated, altered, and what it does.

Then a second, more precious substance (alodite ink) was to be used to alter those items that could be alered.

Finally, there was no mention of making your own magic items.

Well, I deviated pretty far from that. Tveimurrheim gave them each 8 vials of dust. Each vial can do one alteration or 5 diagnostic "pinches". Burning the dust enacts the alteration; it also makes permanent any non-permanent magical sentence (i.e., one drawn in Minecoil goop).

Allowing them to draw runes with Minecoil goop opened up a can of worms with settable characters. If I let them do settable characters, they could try making ALL the positions settable, thus creating "do anything" items. However, they just wanted to make "protection from [settable]" amulets, so I let them. Maybe I should rule that no magical sentence has multiple settable characters...?

Minor Secrets adding up to Major Secrets: plan vs ad-lib

My decisions of what new magical secret to throw at the players in each scenario has been based largely on what they've already discovered and determined, and only vaguely on an overall pyramid of secrets. I mean, a rough hierarchy of "useful secrets" exists in my head, but I haven't been looking at any diagrams. I certainly haven't used the "secret types" I created before the campaign. My charts remind me to make sure each scenario has a magical secret, and my understanding of Lendrhald magic informs my specifics, and that's all I need.

Must ponder the design implications...

More and more it's seeming like if I just hand GMs what I've come up with, I'll be giving them something invaluable. It's less creative for them, but I have no idea if my attempts at creative assistance would help. Need... beta... playtests.

1/6/10 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

Their powers and investigations had told them that the door knocker name plates were relevant. And they didn't draw the connection between their vision that included naming and the recent adventure wherein badguys sacrificed people to imbue objects with their names. So they spent a while throwing random names, herbs, runes, and sunlight (focused via prisms and filtered through the smoke of various herbs) at the name plates, hoping something would work. It didn't make sense to me that any of this would open the doors, but I ad-libbed that the rune-writing sort of "woke up" the plates and sent them cycling through letters, briefly spelling out "name". I figured that was a plausible hint.

It's tough trying to walk the line between "GM tells the players what to do" and "players spend hours experimenting and tackling a puzzle instead of creating good fiction". My grail lies in between, where players get the satisfaction of putting pieces together and solving puzzles themselves, but get through it fairly quickly to move on to the next discovery or action.

In post-game chat, Dan had a few good observations. He said that part of the urge to throw all their magical methods at stuff just in case something works is because he never developed a clear understanding of how and why a given method worked last time. He knows what one method does to one specific magical item, but can't guess what it'll do to a different item. Uncovering some underlying logic behind these interactions would help. This led me to think that some way to relate magic items to each other might help. The item-reading dust would be a step in that direction, albeit one with a big learning curve.

This whole situation is due in part to my ad-lib rewarding creative use of magical methods. Sunlight through smoke was a natural antidote for a starlight-through-smoke magical effect, but using it to erase the names imbued in magical items was more tenuous. The basic logic of "sunlight rays erase evil magic" probably needs some clear parameters, and then I need to help the players discover those.

Another point Dan made was that, if a method didn't work on a given object, perhaps it could at least produce some effect -- opposite to that desired, or in a different direction perhaps. In general, I agree that more color and more feedback is good. Weird side effects are at least more entertaining than "nothing happens", and anything hinting at the situation's logic could only help.

I was reminded somewhat of the Thanksnerding session, where there was a bit of "I use my perception power on everything!" going around. Faced with a non-obvious situation, players seem to fear they're missing something, and become boringly thorough in covering their bases. Maybe this is why Trail of Cthulhu uses that awkward "whoever has Skill X gets this scene's Clue" system -- the meta level signals players that they can move on. Now I'm thinking again of my clue-task trails, where every action is supposed to propel the players toward another one. In addition to operating at the scale of an adventure scenario, it seems ideal if that pattern operates at the level of any complex tasks as well. When trying to open a magic door, free info leads to some task which produces a lead to some other task which accomplishes the goal.

When stuck on something magical, I guess there's always the option to do a reading and have a dream, both of which will suggest a new action to try. For these to be appealing, though, I need to make it clear that the dreams don't just show "source" but some more fuzzy "more info this way" promise, that translates to "info you can use" as opposed to "irrelevant background" or some such. And the reading needs to be clear on what scope it maps to. The players were reading Hesengard's spread as if it would tell them how to get in, when in reality I had it mapped to the situation they'd need to solve inside the keep.

Can you do readings on individual magical bits of a magical problem scenario? It might help the players, but it would be a nuisance for the GM. I'm inclined to stick with "one magical problem in area", but if so, I'll need to remind players of that.

11/21/09 -- me GMing for Weiyi, Meehan, Aaron and Floyd

GM Prep

I looked at my notes for all the sessions I'd ever run, plus a few I hadn't. None of these notes were fleshed out, but I remembered how things took shape in the games I'd run.

Adventure creation

After the players filled out questionnaires detailing what types of activities they'd like to play, I took about 7-8 minutes to stare at their answers, stare at my notes, envision a scenario, scribble some new notes; and to find a similar card spread, lay it out, tweak it, and write it down.

In a time slot that was 3.5 hrs at absolute maximum, I knew "complex physical set-ups" wasn't going to happen. Especially because that requires more prep for me to get it right. I should have crossed it off the questionnaires. The players didn't seem to agree on much, except for "diplomacy", which was a sigh of relief for me, as that's the easiest thing for me to ad-lib.

Character creation

As with JiffyCon 8 months earlier, I pre-generated the skills, attributes, advantages, hometowns, and meanings for 6 perception power stimuli. I also added fathers' names, plus an extended list of shire, county, and nearest town / fort. I also took care of age, birthday, and backpack contents. I meant to list money, clothing, weapons and armor, but ran out of time.

My plan was to leave a manageable amount of "just color" creation for folks to enter into their characters' headspace. It seemed to work in that respect, but took too long. More on that in post-game discussion.

In addition to color, there's also Goal, Path, and Name, so it does add up.

Situation set-up & summary

No one complained during my narration of "here's what you've done and what's happened", but in retrospect, I think this added significantly to folks' desire for "less set-up, more play". Choosing a name and a mission were nicely meaningful, so I still want to provide some foundation for those... and everyone took interest in the weird items acquired... but getting the items, cards, and dream roots to them could probably be done more efficiently. I just need to streamline my script a bit, and resist the temptation to embellish things like the seasonal ritual and the Firewalkers.

Quick-Start GM Script

The guide I've written isn't really "quick start", it's more "fast forward through the beginning of a campaign". Which might have its uses, but it sucks for a one-shot. I can see it being pretty valuable for groups who have time constraints or have no patience for building situation through play, but still do want to play something resembling a campaign.

I'll do an entirely new version for one-shots.

Investigation

As with JiffyCon 8 months earlier, the players latched onto the scenario augury and the characters' perception powers and dove into solving the mystery. Answering "What's going on here?" and "What can we do about it?" were the focus and primary activities of play. I think perhaps this is "Delve as it will be experienced at conventions". It's a medieval detective game where you solve supernatural mysteries using arcane info-gathering techniques.

I like that and think it's cool, but it's missing so much of the game's value -- the campaign-friendliness, GM help, immersion help... I'll have to ponder whether I can live with that.

It's also a potential problem that the perception powers themselves aren't perfect. There are so many states/desires/uses/histories that can't be on the charts -- I need a better way to come up with and report "nothing unexpected here". On the plus side, my brand new power (sensation type = history of object) and chart (stimulus next to meaning for each power) both worked well.

Drama & pacing

Drama was in short supply in this session because we were running out of time and I had to keep feeding the characters things to help them progress toward an ending; along the way, I lost track of the Steps of Doom and never advanced the village's predicament. Perhaps a checklist for "number of tasks done by characters" would help me remember this vital feature... or maybe it's a simple rush issue.

I handled pacing, so the dial got ignored. Situated between people, and not too close to anyone, I think it was hard to read. Needs more space, bigger text, less text, thicker lines.

Learning

In this session, as in the JiffyCon one-shot, I failed to provide the "learning" experience that's become so key to my long-term game. We came close when someone encountered a new stimulus with a perception power, but we couldn't spend time on them trying to identify it. Magical tools are probably a safer bet, stuff like rune dust or smoke tablets -- anthing flexible, which, once figured out, gives the players a new tool going forward.

Immersion

The char-gen, plus the detail-filled first scene in-character*, did establish some nice character identification. My portrayals of NPCs as reasonable people helped, as did my (relative) lack of contrivance. The fiction was plausible, but it was not always very rich, as we rushed through things to make progress.

It wasn't bad on the scale of immersive RPG sessions, but it certainly wasn't anything worthy of a "Delve is immersive" claim. My intro spiel about, "Let's all try to immerse, and to make clear when we're speaking in- vs out-of-character," and everyone's buy-in to that, was pretty much the total of the immersive technique. Well, and of course the lack of abstract mechanics to fiddle with. Maybe "rules that get out of the way to let you roleplay" would be the best description.

Note: The characters split up several times. The more socially-skilled and presentable characters went off to talk to the manor staff while the scruffier characters went into the village center. This made sense, but still produced that "out-of-character audience" situation that really isn't ideal. Maybe I ought to add to my instructions, "Try to stick together. It make sense anyway, because the culture digs Adventuring Groups, and you represent yourselves best as a unit."

*must remember to add to QuickStart instructions, & possibly general "starting play" instructions for all sessions

Immersion and Perception Powers

Character POV was weakened a few times by the player-to-GM-to-group communication of perception power results. Since the stimuli are so simple, next time, I should write them on paper scraps and hand them to the players.

From an "immersion in place" standpoint, it's probably worth noting that the players didn't always ask about the details of a person/place/thing before using their powers on it. So "scrutinize with a power" doesn't inherently mean "scrutinize in your imagination"; it just means "give me the vital info". Additional GM description preceding the power effects is subject to the usual pacing concerns -- sometimes lots of detail, sometimes none. I could force players to get more sensory by requiring them to pick an "aspect" on their target on which to focus... but I'm guessing that would only be fun when already moving slowly, and would be annoying when trying to move fast.

Show, don't tell

One player talked about regularly pushing his red hair under his hat. I loved this.

Another player started talking about his character's attitude towards another character. It was nice that he was really getting into his character's personality. Plus, it was only fair, after all my situation set-up babble about "what's happened". Still, the reports on the insides of his character's head lasted a little longer into play than I was comfortable with. I wanted to say, "Cool that you think that; now show us!" So, next time, maybe say, "Try to show, not tell," as part of the instructions.

Post-game chat

At session's end, everyone seemed energized and to have enjoyed playing. (Well, except for Floyd, who spent a lot of time looking at his watch as we approached the end of the time slot, and left instantly thereafter. I don't know whether he was simply in a hurry, or bored. Some of the other players were more proactive about grabbing the spotlight, and I hope he didn't feel left out.) They were also all eager to tell me to trim the set-up time.

Weiyi's friend, who'd been watching, suggested written instruction on the character sheets, explaining how to fill them out.

Aaron suggested putting everything on the character sheets in "to be filled out" order and making a flow-chart.

Everyone seemed to like the idea of using the Tendencies and Appearance areas for one or two big ideas rather than 5 or 10 specifics. I might pre-gen the appearance basics myself next time, covering height and weight, for example.

Folks expressed interest in chatting more via the NerdNYC web forum, so I didn't try to collect email addresses. Alas, my forum post has yet to yield any responses.

Saturday, 11/21/09 was NerdNYC's Thanksgiving version of their quarterly mini-convention, Recess. Dubbed "Thanksnerding", it was a full day of gaming, food, trivia, and hanging out.

I played a fun game using the Fortune's Fool system.

I started my day by playing Fortune's Fool, a game in development by Jay Stratton for Pantheon Press. FF uses a full tarot card deck as its fortune resolution device, and Jay's come up with a nice list of special character powers involving reshuffling, moving certain cards to he top, etc. The system is unique, nifty, and functional as far as it goes. In the end, though, the session succeeded largely from the energy Jay brought to the table with his superb NPC portrayals. Running around the table, licking his lips and staring us in the eyes as the Marquis de Sade -- it was impossible not to engage with the fiction. He also had a dry erase board and markers, which proved to be an immense time-saver, clarifier, and agreement-facilitator for several fight scenes. Maybe I'll reflect on the immersion takeaways of this later, but I'd have to say that for this con-style session, the mapping was almost definitely a net positive.

After the game, Jay said he'd been talked into running a second session. My first thought was, "Wow, doing that twice sounds exhausting." Delve isn't supposed to work like that, but in a con session, any single-GM game runs that risk. In my previous con session, I pretty much managed the whole experience from beginning to end. I am left jealous of the shared-GMing indie games, which seem much less daunting to beta-playtest.

Afternoon fun:

Fortune's Fool began at noon and ended around 3:30. Not having slept much, and somewhat stressed about running Delve later, I spent a while sitting on the floor, doing my best to relax while surrounded with friendly people. Nerd trivia soon followed, which was quite fun, and then it was time to grab food, set up my table, and wait to see who showed up to play Delve at 7:00.

Dan went to China for three weeks, and now John is beginning his medical rotations.  No playing Delve has meant little inspiration for me to think and write about play.  Instead, I've been working on getting a usable file into the hands of the people at Dexcon who expressed interest.

I'm trying to present everything simply and graphically, without a lot to read through.  I'm doing my examples in comic book format (perhaps I'll post a few pages online, I think they're neat and folks might dig 'em).

It was working well until I got to character creation.  There are a lot of options to list, a lot of numbers and finicky rules to be clear on, and a lot of relevant observations and guidelines to offer. 

And, in the end, character creation is only as important as the players want it to be.  If you're content to be exactly average at everything, you have a vague idea of what it's like to grow up as a medieval farmer, and you can contribute color via roleplay, then you don't even need a character sheet to play Delve.  You just need scrap paper for bookkeeping, so you don't forget how many vials of acid you have or who owes you money, or what color aura the traitor had.

I also don't like doing the math and weighing the trade-offs in spending character points.  Not that I dislike it, it just isn't the fun part for me.  I wonder if it's optimal to have a number-crunching char-gen process in a game where there's no other number-crunching.  I like the results it produces, but maybe there's a more apt-feeling process...?  Ah well, unless someone wants to convince me that printed aesthetics of char-gen procedure are a key to delivering the play experience, I'm going to say "screw it" for now and just lay out those point cost tables.

Speaking of layout, Matt Snyder had a tremendously interesting blog series started on that subject.  Planting that link is my reminder to myself to go check it out.

7/02/09 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

No work the next day meant we could play late.  We got in a solid 4+ hours and managed to complete an entire scenario.

Having just come from a Burning Empires game, I had no time to prep, and drew up the scenario in a few minutes while waiting for Merlin to arrive.  I gave really short shrift to the card spread and tasks list, instead just forming a nice, multi-part, multi-step Evil Plot. 

Badguy brings corrupted roots from Nasty Place and buries them near three Objects.  The three people nearest the buried roots become afflicted with dreams and urges leading them to ritually sacrifice their neighbors near the three Objects, imbuing the Objects with a nasty power.  The power is "transport you to Orc lands".  If all three Objects are imbued at once, the whole town will get sucked into Orc lands -- this is Badguy's ultimate plot.

That was all I needed to ad-lib a decent set of people, events, and things to do.

Oh, and the goal of revealing the scenario's secret: the ritual of transferring Names from sacrificial victims to magical objects.

The session was fun, but had an old-school vibe for me, with a lot of GM "It would be cool if THIS happened now!" action.  My ad-lib had all the usual pros and cons: some nice dramatic moments and cool color, but some unexpected fallout that rendered some tasks perfunctory, others lethal, and others decision-free go-through-the-motions.  The final showdown consisted of me zapping 2 PCs with an immobilizer spell, leaving one left for a nice showdown with a monster; timing two remote sequences so that a teleport triggered in one place saved the characters in another place just as certain death approached; running a fight with only an approximate idea of what the monster's stats were, delivering one big-deal wound before the thing fell.  Dan and John had to be clever enough to realize the importance of remaining within the teleport area, and Merlin had to be clever enough to drop everything and reverse the teleport effect without delay, using Einarr for help.  But beyond that, it was pretty much just me and the dice managing the climax.  In fact, I'd already been working toward a similar climax, when Dan surprised me by not dodging the initial teleport; so, I just decided in my head that it could be reversed, and adapted my climax accordingly.

This GM approach still works for me, and produces certain cool things that no set of GM instructions could accomplish on its own.  Still, it demands a lot from the GM, gravitates toward disempowering the players, and is a good way to accidentally wind up giving the players something that's busted balance-wise.

Evil-Eraser Tool's Limits?

The players could have vanquished the scenario by stopping the sacrifices, digging up the roots, and tracking down and killing the Badguy.  Actually deactivating the Objects' powers was not essential, and not something I prepped.  It became obvious during play, though, that it was quite important, and when the players came up with a reasonably clever deactivation method, I judged that it would work.  This worked out very nicely for this session, but I fear I may have created a monster tool.

They take the herb associated with purity and purification (baby's breath), place it on any of the stone tablets that causes herbs to smoke, hold the smoke up in front of the sun or moon, and use one or more crystals to focus the light through the smoke and then onto the evilness they wish to erase.

It made sense that it would work on the Restindale soft spot, as it's the inverse of what was used to create the spot in the first place.  Now I've also allowed it to erase the runes/names given to 3 objects that needed to be named to "turn on", with the name-erasing turning them "off".  Which isn't un-logical, but isn't very specifically united.  I need to avoid a situation of "every time we see something evil we do this" -- I need a limit with a logic that can be learned.  For more fun experimenting, the "baby's breath purification" element might be the one to restrict.  Needing to use some limited resource instead of something you can find easily (baby's breath) might also be sufficient.

Limited "Heal"s are Handy

The players clearly value their limited supply of Minecoil goop, and it's a big deal when they have to use some of it.  They used it to save Merlin's leg; if they hadn't had it, it would have been much riskier for me to throw such a nasty monster at them.  Nast monsters and would-be-lethal wounds are fun.

6/29/09 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

After last session's visions, the PCs decided to go introduce themselves to the local imperial commander.  I played the commander as an older guy with a somewhat fatherly manner.  The conversation was friendly as the players tried to figure out how best to segue into their exorbitant demands for payment (they'd decided to ask for looting rights, horses, and 100 shillings).  The commander looked over their list of previous accomplishments and thought, "Wow, these guys are effective, I want to keep them alive and in business instead of wandering into that death trap at Hesengard, it sure would be nice if they'd tackle some smaller local problems instead!"  So he told them about a village with children disappearing down a well, and a trade route plagued by bandits, and argued that these were both urgent while Hesengard wasn't.

I had figured that the players had their hearts set on Hesengard, and would just respond with some bluster about their own prowess and how glorious it would be to finallt conquer Hesengard... but they surprised me and said, "Sure, okay, tell us the deal with the well and the bandits."

I had not prepared either scenario.  Oops. 

Merlin had to leave in an hour and a half, so I figured I'd churn out a short bandit encounter, consisting of a little bit of searching and stealth and positioning, followed by a fight. 

The PCs were brainstorming what kind of payment to ask for the bandit job, and Einarr said, "Bandits are no threat, we could clear them out for free!"  The players seized on this and decided to basically do this one gratis to impress and befriend the imperial commander.  That would nicely prepare them for their Hesengard payment requests.

We also had a nice bit of roleplaying as Merlin's character befriended the roughest thug among the roadhouse soldiers and recruited him to watch the party's stuff while they were away.

The short fight scenario was fun.  I basically gave the opponents similar armor to the PCs, but with one or two fewer ranks in weapon skill and agility, except for the big boss, who was one rank better than the PCs.  The guys strategized well, rolled well, and basically dominated the fight, taking lots of very minor injuries.  We knew we were racing the clock a bit, and the fast pace and abundance of action was a fun departure from our usual style. 

Loot Value

After victory, the players took all their opponents' gear, which I realized after the fact was a friggin' gold mine.  Killing 5 guys in chainmail effectively nets you 100 days' pay worth of goods.  I really need to figure out all the relevant limits on damage and use affecting re-sale value.

5/20/09 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

Immersion warm-up worked well. First scene that was played through, I cranked up the color and description, and asked the players to describe how their characters appeared at this moment. Everyone got into it. Two things going in favor of this:
1) it had been a LONG time since they'd described their appearances
2) the impression they gave off was pertinent at this moment, a scene where they were recruiting
I'll have to try starting next session the same way and see if it's as much fun.

Great player-dictated content. Once they decided to tackle the biggest challenge on the map, they came up with all sorts of interesting ways to prepare for it, and all sorts of ideas for rewards they'd demand. Even though we finished the session without them having accomplished anything besides recon, they were still psyched about the problem to be solved and the rewards to be reaped.

The fact that Hesengard Keep is a big deal and old legend to so many folks has imbued it with a lot of excitement for the players. Other adventurers covet it. Other adventurers have died attempting it. Accounts vary on the kind of threat it poses. It's a key strategic point for the empire. The curse goes back decades or centuries, and there's lots of history here. Their attempts to use their powers on the place gave them POV visions from the initial victims, teasing with uncertain meaning. Dan tried something really interesting, chewing vision roots WHILE focusing his power on the Keep, hoping for a sort of lucid dream. I opted instead to give him a hint at how to get in, couched in personal terms (vision of his parents naming him + glowing door-knockers = hint that you must name knockers to open door).

They came up with the idea of getting honorary imperial ranks! Just a few days after Al and I agreed that would be a cool thing to offer them!

They decided they might need some extra fighters, which I hadn't expected, and this led to the coolest part of the session, as they auditioned 3 of Seacrest's men to be their apprentice. It was really cool seeing what qualities they valued. They dismissed the stealthy archer for being too practical and danger-averse, and barely chose the agressive, eager kid over the stoic, rule-abiding pro.

This kid Einarr gives me a perfect tool to poke at inter-character dynamics, asking questions like who's the leader and who to protect most in a fight. Einarr's naivete also gives the players great opportunities to show off their expertise by correcting him, admonishing him, giving him orders, etc.

Have to resist using Einarr to hint at potential solutions the players miss, an old habit of mine from school days... Running Delve, I tend to have enough on my mind that I forget any NPCs that aren't key to a scene... especially when OTHER NPCs are in play... poor Thor SuvSven effectively disappeared once the Firewalkers showed up.

Questions:
- Can a plant-reading power work on anything derived from plants? John wanted it to work on a poison... I said no, under the logic that he can't read wooden chairs either... but where to draw the line?
- Can you prophetic-dream about a supernatural thing more than once? If so, PCs can track a demon as it moves around by having dreams that point to its new locations...

5/11/09 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

We began this session by handling character advancement. 

( Combat Maneuvers, ad-lib vs balance, point cost logic )


There aren't a wide array of skills that matter in Delve, so I really should be able to list them all, finalize some costs, and be done with it.  Just not as high on my priority list as other parts of the game...

Constructing a mega-plot

Having established a connection between the Knowledge Eater, the Crimson Scythe, the reappearing Rodokandris ghoul, the Wizard of Werville, and the four guys in Earl Duyker's employ, I've given the players a lot of threads to pick at.  Before this session, I sat on the train thinking about how they'd connect, and I came up with something good.  Shortly, I'm going to go write up some backstory, cuz it'll be fun and it'll inform my future decisions on who's where doing what, and why.  This is the sort of thing I used to do to kick off a campaign... and those campaigns always consisted of me leading the players around to the next thing I had in mind for them to do, showing them the next cool thing I wanted to reveal.

This time, something feels different.  The Impostor demon isn't the source of every problem in the campaign, and defeating it won't end the game.  I hadn't planned on even making it easy for the PCs to find the thing... but then Merlin had an encounter with it, and, being a smart guy, John fed him some vision roots... so now they know where it is.  Of course, it doesn't have to stay there...

Cursed PCs

The Impostor controls humans.  Pres-session, I hadn't settled between possession vs abduct+clone+replace.  But a cool scene idea came to mind, and the last possessed guy killed himself, and then the Impostor got into Merlin.  And a few hours later, it took over and had him attack Earl Duyker, just to screw with the PCs and mess up their relationships.

I had in mind all along that Merlin could easily be cured.  They just needed to use up one more goop bubble and draw another healing rune on him.  But they had the brilliant idea of using the "protection from ___" breastplate instead.  They tried protecting him from curses first.  I thought about it.  Was he cursed?  By some definitions yes, by others no.  I decided that curses generally worked differently from this, and since "command" was a better match, I'd just go with that.  And indeed, they tried protecting him from commands, and it worked.

Unfortunately, the curse is now the sort of urgent "you must deal with this" situation I try to avoid... especially bad because I gave Merlin absolutely no warning that this could happen from approaching a suicide.  But he doesn't want to have to live in a breastplate forever, so now they're heading for the Impostor ASAP.  We'll see if anyone resents this or if it's just pure awesome motivation...

Which association per rune?

It turned out that Dan didn't want to draw the "command" rune, because he'd previously drawn that same rune on the breastplate to get protection from fire.  Crap.  Well, now it does both.  Magical items with settable properties pose that quandary -- which of teach rune's various concepts, forces, effects, animals, etc. do they apply to?  Does a given item just affect effects?  Just animals?  Some animals and some effects?  All animals and all effects?  The more it covers, the more the PCs can come up with clever ways to use it in new situations, which rocks.  But it's also harder for the GM to create an item and have a handle on how badass it is.

How many card spreads?

Earl Duyker has a cursed, demonic amulet around his neck, and a cursed, demonic statue on his desk, and some agents of the Impostor in his house plotting to help the Impostor possess him.

So, if the PCs do a card reading outside his manor... what do they get?  Should the deck have some way of telling them "multiple problems"?  Should I pick one at random?  Should I create a spread that describes the entire situation as best I can?

Separate problem:
Let's say the PCs get the chance to do separate card readings for the amulet, the statue, and the agents.  If I'm going to be prepared for this, I should prep 3 spreads.  And for each card position in each spread, I have to actually have to make some decisions to inform which card I should select.  That is a lot of prep work.

...or at least that's what I was thinking while prepping.  Now I remember that the cards read the "magical problem" of a general area.  So I just need to decide what's up with the agents, necklace and statue, roughly... and then the card work will be quite manageable.  Again, I am reminded: don't drop magic stuff into the game without forethought (or at least fairly immediate afterthought).

4/29/09 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

Awesome session.  The players entered the big showdown with the Knowledge Eater, I was all set to have a crazy battle of soft spot rune effects vs nothingness devouring one cardinal direction at a time, nervous about how it'd come off...  And then Merlin decided to look at the Crimson Scythe's True Name in the soft spot. 

Trying to figure out what would happen, I put "runes here are automatically active" together with "this was part of how the Scythe was summoned" and "this soft spot basically is a bound demon"... and figured that this was a big deal.  So the Knowledge Eater backed off; and, seeing that, Merlin went for the gusto, leading the PCs in a chant of the Scythe's True Name.  So they basically summoned a demon into the midst of another demon.  And, it made sense to me that this binding was only big enough for one of them.  So, massive drama and upheaval, chant goes off with a bang, the Knowledge Eater is shredded by the Scythe, the soft spot spits out the PCs and vanishes, leaving only the Scythe and the binding container the Knowledge Eater had been hiding.  The PCs know Scythe wants to be freed and banished, so the conflict is over.  They celebrate, burn the container, and Restindale is normal, remembered, and demon-free at last.

Takeaway: when in doubt about how magical principles and effects interact with each other, "strongly" gets you neat places.  As long as the PCs can't simply duplicate the interaction later, give 'em good bang for their association/convergence buck.  This is why soft spots are great... you can do some cool and useful stuff inside, but they're incredibly chaotic and dangerous.


Magic items should stick to the point

I wanted to show the PCs "make smoke" quickly in the place they were exploring, so I decided, "Those tablets you found have herb residue on them."  Putting the right herbs on the right tablets caused smoke to pour out.

Unfortunately, I also added some color of "the rune corresponding to the herb lights up on the back of the tablet".  Which was sweet while they were hurrying to pick herbs, but then they tried using the tablets as detectors/sorters... which was okay at first... but then they started viewing them that way primarily, and almost forgot about the smoke-making... and the detector thing kinda duplicated their perception powers, making those less special and cool.  Gehn.


Fruitful metaphysics

Simply knowing some secret things about the magical properties of the gameworld is a great help to:
1) thinking up a good scenario, task, clue, asset or reward
2) filling in blanks or color with ad-lib

Simply having "starlight = good for magics/demons" and "sunlight/moonlight = bad for magics/demons" in my memory banks allowed me to look at the cards I drew for creating the Restindale Soft Spot scenario and go, "Ah, the nasty device that uses stars for evil is a smoke machine that filters and focuses starlight.  The starlight grew the soft spot.  And if the PCs were to use the smoke on sunlight instead, it would shrink the soft spot."

I need to consider ways to give this to GMs in either or both of two forms:
1) easy-reference workhorse principles
2) searchable specific facts (either in appendix or as part of pre-made adventures)


Designing specific magics

- Lord Seacrest was best buddies with the PCs. 
- Then the Knowledge Eater ate the memory of the PCs, and Seacrest saw them and had no idea who they were, and spoke to them as strangers. 
- Then the PCs killed the Knowledge Eater, and then Seacrest remembered them.  But how did he remember the interaction he had with them when he hadn't remembered them?  Did he remember it as if he himself had been acting crazy?  Or as if the PCs' identities had been obscured?  This resulted in some tricky ad-lib for me, as I portrayed Seacrest just being vague and confused.  This is the kind of info I'd like to give to anyone who runs this scenario.  I'm not sure of the best way to organize that... whether in a description of Magical Effect: Knowledge Theft, or Spell: Knowledge Theft, or Monster: Knowledge Eater.


Losing a superstar

The Knowledge eater was so great, I'm sad it's gone.  I wonder if I could have turned it into a large-scale, long-duration threat.  Ah well.

This late in the game and I'm still working to establish that Big Bad by pulling together bits of things that matter to the PCs.  I think I'll nail it eventually.  Usual pros and cons of prep vs not prep apply...


Keywords / Ritual phrases?

My memory is a little fuzzy, so forgive absent details.  At one point Dan asked me how heavy something was.  I asked, "Do you pick it up?"  It was something he was afraid might be magical or dangerous, so he said, "No!"

This comes up a lot: a player asks for info, and it isn't clear what the character is doing to obtain that info.  So sometimes the GM incorrectly assumes what the character is doing, and other times the GM asks a question that gives away a concern the player hadn't thought of, etc.  In this group, we're all good at avoiding such problems, but hey, maybe our informal system could benefit from a little standardization... and maybe I could pass that on to others.  It was with this in the back of my mind that a particularly apt response occurred to me:

"How do you determine that?"

That's the perfect GM response to any player query.

4/20/09 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

I ended last session with the arrival of Ryvenskorkevilthrixathalas, The Crimson Scythe, unstable, fragmented, spacetime-puncturing demon who'd already trashed the PCs once.

So, before getting in-character for this session, the players did a ton of planning.  This strategizing was much more fun at the beginning of play, as a prelude to a session, than my past experiences breaking the flow of the fiction to strategize.

They wound up concocting this plan: draw a fire rune on a movable object (Dan's sword), project the rune with a crystal (resulting in a beam of fire), cover the monster in something visible (flour) and/or flammable (oil), and hit something explosive (barrels in storage room containing oil, wine, and flour) with the fire blast with the demon in range.

This forced me to do a lot of adjudicating.  Does the crystal project any depiction of a rune, or only a magical depiction drawn in the goop taken from the hide of the monster Minecoil?  How many runes can you draw with one bubble of Minecoil goop?  How sticky and flammable are oil and flour?  How explosive are they when blasted with fire while in containers?

The physics of granary fires and mill explosions were a matter of group agreement, and I have no interest in creating a GURPS-style book or ten to cover all these real-world contingencies.  "Plausible to the players" is good enough.  For stuff like goop usage and projected rune range, however, I really needed to make some balance-relevant decisions and track them.  I actually screwed up once, telling the players that they could only draw one rune per goop bubble, when I'd previously allowed them two per.  We argued a bit on this, as I was suspicious of them just trying to milk their precious goop reserves, but when they all agreed on it I conceded that my memory must have been at fault.  I trust Merlin on these things -- he cares more about internal consistency than John and has a better memory than Dan.

Anyway, if I put Minecoil in a book, I'll need to spell out how many runes his bubbles are good for; and if I put Minecoil-creation rules in a book, I'll need to instruct GMs to do likewise.  I'm thinking it might be wise to construct an all-purpose "resource" table, depicting the particulars of whatever resources the characters wind up with.  A sufficiently portable format could cover how much meat you get in a day of hunting as well as how many kill shots you can pour from your vial of acid.


Garbled communication: nice hook

Despite it being badass and having tried to kill them twice, the players were only too eager to run after the demon in hopes of talking to it when it started spouting intriguing gibberish.

I wrote a rhyme for the thing to repeat, describing how it was brought into the world and how to let it escape from the world.  Then I broke it into bits, reversed the bits' order, and repeated the result in a loop, starting in the middle.  Just enough sense came through that the players gathered that the demon had a master it didn't have fond feelings for.  That was enough to motivate them to track it (after they'd wounded it and driven it off with fire blasts), approach it, and decipher its rant. 

They then made a deal with it where they promised to free it, and gave it some of their blood in exchange for its True Name!  Sweet.  Now I have True Names on the table for future use... 


We know this!

There's something very functional about picking up pieces of knowledge that aren't vital at the time... but then it's vital later, and wow, awesome that we know it!  It feels more like clever puzzle-piecing than simple memory & repetition if it was less of a big deal the previous time.  So, a good thing for GMs to do: grant tangential knowledge in scenario 1; then, when building scenario 2, make that knowledge a key to victory! (This point wasn't specific to this session, but it's come up since, and will again when they need True Names to enter Hesengard Keep...)

4/6/09 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

Signaling Benefits

Yet another instance of the need to attach clear signals to hooks arose. Something I intended as a catalyst for later discovery (augury powders) was mistaken for a solution to the current predicament.

This makes total sense from the players' POV. Investigate a forgotten city, crawl into a weird dimension, steal some keys, crawl back out, find that the keys have transformed into powders... it seems like the powders ought to help you solve the city mission somehow. I don't think I ought to combat that initial impression; but I do need to make it easier for the players to conclusively determine "we aren't simply missing how this helps us".

It comes back to "what this is good for" signals. It's good to convey that, at least roughly... "this helps you determine magical patterns by describing their constituent runes' properties" probably isn't necessary, but "this helps you analyze spells" is.


Cards as Chaos Dimension

Lacking a real rationale for how the characters ought to progress through Tveimurheim, I just put the cards in order, and each time they left a space, I looked up the next card to make up the next space. Having an end in sight allowed me to pace the coming of the Knowledge Eater just right, forcing the players to risk it all in order to get to Room 12, containing the real key to the mission.


Riddles

I don't have it in front of me, but it went something like "with you, I hold your shape; without you, I collapse". This doubled as a hint on how to get out. The correct answer (getting Dan's leg back): clothing. The way out: get naked and you'll drift up. The players figured these out pretty quickly and it was pretty satisfying. Takeaway: nothing wrong with easy puzzles.


Campaign arc of discovery

First there were perception powers. Then there were more informed perception powers, with more data. Then there were card spreads. Then there were situations (magic doors, Orc rituals) that associated the powers with each other and with the cards. Then there were individual runes. Then there were series of runes. Then there was a tablet mapping runes to the types of things that cards and perception powers covered. Now there's dust for info on series of runes.

The sequence has been pretty key to maintaining the voyage of discovery. Starting with dust and tablet might allow you to get to one cool thing (pattern analysis) faster, but as long as the process of working up to dust & tablet is cool, this campaign might be a good blueprint.

Throwing a GM a bunch of options and letting them pick randomly seems clearly suboptimal. Maybe lay these out for the GM in sequence and let them pick where along the sequence they wish to begin...?


Thematically-Apt Enemies

In a game where you progress in part by becoming famous, a monster that devours the world's memory of you does in fact rock in play. The Knowledge Eater might be a near-required demon for any Delve campaign.

The process of going through places the PCs had been, talking to people they knew, and not being recognized, was just great.  Especially since they'd seen this effect take an entire town off the map; they knew this was serious, and potentially permanent.  They also had an idea how to fix it: Room 12 in Tveimurheim had given them a bottle containing the memory of the vanished town.  They're now on a mission to share that memory with as many people as possible, hoping to shrink the "soft spot" that's overtaken the town.  And, they're considering going back into Tveimurheim in search of a bottle of their own memory.  Of course, now the Knowledge Eater is waiting for them...

I need more demons that generate cool situations like this.  (I've heard this is a strength of Dread: tFBoP, which I still mean to check out at some point.)


After-the-fact rationale for apparent demon

In fact, I wanted to show the players that the Knowledge Eater wants the town to stay forgotten, and their efforts to rekindle its memory are working, and the demon's pissed.  But I hadn't thought this through, and ad-libbed a humanoid apparition accosting them and attacking them... which is now forcing me to think of an explanation for how that came about... is this guy the demon's master, the demon's minion, or something else?

The way the game's unfolded since has given me some ideas, and now I think I can forge a coherent whole here.  In terms of passing my process along to others, though, I can't think of a better offer than "try to achieve X, Y, and Z... how? just be clever."  So, planning and forethought still seems like the way to go in terms of design.  Although some sort of help for the prep-averse would be nice...

3/25/09 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place

SCENARIO LINKS

I did almost zero prep. I knew it was time to give them leads to new missions, so I looked at the Pyramid of Secrets sheet I wrote up at the very beginning of the game. I saw Tveimurheim, the "soft spot" in reality where the PCs could go to muck around with magic, and learn stuff that would normally be expensive to learn in normal reality. At least, that was the original plan. I'm not sure if giving them the "rosetta stone" of correspondence info renders that superfluous.

Since the players came up with a great way to get in good with Earl Duyker, I knew I had to provide some opportunities to do missions that he cared about. Okay... a soft spot ate his revenue stream. Why hasn't this been corrected? The monster that created the soft spot is a knowledge-eater, meaning no one remembers the town that was once there. (I wound up having to ad-lib whether written records of the town survived. I picked "yes" on instinct. We'll see how that plays out...)

I had also previously established something supernatural about Duyker (no aura). Combining that with my desire to begin establishing "large-scale menace", I decided "inflitration". Some sentient, strategic demon has replaced some of his guards with doppelgangers, and given him some demonic items, one on his person, another a creepy statue in his office. I need to concoct the demon's mast plan right quick!

It also seemed only fair that the imperial outpost up here in the north, far from the PCs' starting point, would have some new jobs for hire. So I looked at my Pyramid of Secrets sheet again, said, "Well, the Cursed raiding party with the ghoul would be newsworthy," and dropped that in.

The Secret of the ghoul was that it would spout verbal commands the PCs would want to learn, but only when compelled by the Barrier piece from Ethelthorp. This was on my mind when the PCs decided to also hit up Lord Seacrest for missions, so I had him mention "metal growing in a fairy clearing" to bring alodite (last seen in Ethelthorp) back into the picture.

Finally, the PCs went and had visions about all the weird shit they'd seen recently. All the stuff relating to the wizard in the Kidium mine, I assigned to Werville (having previously established that a wizard had been there years ago). A few things I assigned to places far away, which continues to illustrate to me how the "vision guides you to a location where the dream-object came from" logic might need improvement. Maybe there are feedback options, and "last place it was before here" is one of them?

I'm glad I'm writing all this now before I forget. I'll have to go look at John's notes to see where all the dreams pointed. Some visual organizational tool is probably called for here. (Reminder: NPC list for full campaign!)

Somehow the results of all this satisfied me less than the batch of leads I came up with for the Boston playtest. I think the big difference is the "here's what you stand to gain" teaser. Still need to find an elegant way to insert that into to course of finding and poking the supernatural...


TOO MUCH ACCOUNTING

By the time we were done accruing leads, Dan was more than ready to go adventuring. Alas, we'd established that the PCs had 2 weeks to kill while waiting for their armor to be finished, so John wanted to track all the useful stuff he was going to do during that time. This drove Dan nuts. The only real solution would have been to say, "Okay, we'll work out what you accomplished some other time. For now, let's move ahead." Of course, that only works until something in the mission comes up that forces you to answer whether you still have a shovel in your bag or not... which is why we tend not to do it.

Dan also pointed out that John can't really be faulted for his constant looting and selling of loot, because the PCs are all poor enough that any metal they find is of significant value to them. Dan suggested I track weight for everything so John won't pile unrealistic amounts into his bag, but I'd rather save myself the effort and do what I've always done, instructing the players to think about what will and won't fit when they look at their equipment lists. Really, what I need is a super-fast way to calculate "here's how much cash the armorer of a small keep will pay you for the blade of a halberd".

"Internal cause is king" can be a bitch.


WARPED REALITY

The PCs dived into the soft spot. I know how I want these places to work: dream-like, with metaphorical logic, like Alice in Wonderland but with some touch of danger or nastiness. However, ad-lib was insufficient to translate that concept into description. This has the potential to be really cool if I do it right, but doing it right is a whole new design challenge.


DISAGREEMENT ON WHAT HAPPENED IN GAME

"The sword was facing your ear!"

"No it wasn't!"

John told me he was drawing a rune on his sword. Knowing this could be catastrophic, but not wanting to give away info that John's character didn't have, I asked, "Can you describe this so I can visualize it?" John went and picked up one of his boffer swords, and traced on it with his finger. I watched, looked at the angle, and saw that the traced area was facing his face, but not directly. It looked like it lined up with his right ear.

"Okay," I said, "as soon as you finish, a blast of blackness shoots out and takes off your right ear." John was outraged, and claimed he'd been pointing the sword away from himself. Later, he claimed he has bad spatial perception skills, and had simply been holding it differently than he intended for his character. If he'd said "I'm facing it away from me," that's all I would have required. But he didn't say it, and I saw something different, and John's been prone to arguing for advantage before, so I saw this protest as biased revisionist history rather than mere clarification.

The worst part is the interruption of immersion, where we argue about what happened, going from an "as it is said, so it is" mode of interaction to a much shakier provisional mode. I think the rule of thumb here should be "act in good faith, assume good faith from others, all clarifications are accepted and play continues". It's just hard to do that when someone interrupts the flow and you've seen reason to doubt their motives.

3/16/09 -- me GMing for John, Merlin and Dan at John's place

Great chunk of player planning, deciding on best ways to (a) turn the hide of their defeated monster into cool armor and (b) get in good with Earl Duyker via their triumph. Allowing this guy they hate to take credit for their victory is really a great commitment to milking this NPC for all he's worth and killing him eventually.

I began introducing Al's magical puzzles via a resettable breastplate, which offers protection from the damage type of whatever rune they trace on it using the corresponding plant. I gave them 4 runes.

I also gave them the "rosetta stone" of Al's big table of magical meanings in preparation for giving them the ability to ask questions soon.

This scenario really was perfect for this purpose, being the ex-lair of a powerfull wizard.

They also fought a monster I'd come up with a great aesthetic for, but I hadn't designed any weaknesses. They hacked away in futility until they were close enough to dead that they had to run away -- this would have been a perfect encounter to produce "takeaways to use next time". Ah well, maybe I'll shoehorn in some evidence in the place where it had been locked up before they let it out.

I'll update this post with real English shortly. For now, some notes to serve as a palceholder in case anyone comes here to offer response:

3/21/09 2pm-7pm w/ a few short breaks
demo char-gen
demo segue from one scenarion to another
scenario

Players: Emily, Zeke, Wei-Yi, Teddy

Prep: referring to questionnaires while constructing Tasks was a good call.

Char-gen:
- "near-contradicitons" worked, but I need to spell out the instructions MUCH more clearly
- elaborate descriptions of Background skills were good for some players -- for those who care, these need to be really tight and thorough, especially the goods/services rates/values

Physical gesture (hand on forehead) to denote "out of game" speech.
- this was used mostly for metagame commentary, but some players also used for ALL OOC speech, including environmental questions to the GM
- when it was about "what's going on now?", it struck me as weird
- when it was about "what did we see earlier, that didn't get played through?" it struck me as good

Immersion: it seemed that the combo of the following was quite sufficient:
- ITG/UFA distinction made explicit via whatever method (e.g. hand on forehead)
- thought put into character personality
- description of character looks
- description of character attire (perhaps I should move this info to be next to "looks" for simultaneous reference)

Perception Powers half-filled with freebies + card spread = cool toy for new players.
- other design goals aside, this is a sufficiently unique & functional thing to advertise & offer at cons
- scenarios come off like puzzles
- strong correlation between Solution and image on corresponding card helps provide "we solved it!" satisfaction
- in this rushed-through scenario, threats & fights served mostly to pace the discovery of info -- their role of adding drama seemed easily-filled and non-touchy

Scenario design: when in doubt about how to get players necessary info, make it free.

NPCs: as GM, my range of of voices works great for new players. (I should give tips to GM on how much color is needed per NPC. My old list is overly thorough.)

Hooks: telling them "what this special object is good for" and then making them wait/look for that situation rocks.
- this time, I didn't have to think up HOW "this prism works on books of monster lore" would be conveyed in a non-contrived-seeming manner, something I'm still nervous about

Option to choose where to go next: everyone agrees that if players found out that all choices led to same senario, and GM just slightly altered it to include their choices, the choice wuldn't feel meaningful.
- just like my home group, they chose the option with the most concrete reward -- Lord Oakcrest just personally told you that he'll like you if you solve Carrindale

Attribute tests: list number of dice on character sheet next to attributes
- when to roll dice? I did it in this session to heighten "what's gonna happen?" experience (can we dodge spikes randomly shooting out of walls while we try to bash box free from ceiling?)

Physical game bits: Zeke suggested doing spreads via magnetic board & mag-tape on cards

3/1/09 -- me GMing for Dan, John and Merlin at Dan's place

Last week, Dan told me that all the phases of my scenarios were fun, the problem was just that we'd have one session of low-drama info-gathering, and then another session of high-drama fighting and rushing. Having things build up and climax during a single session would be more satisfying. This made sense to me, and we both bemoaned the fact that we only get 3 hrs at a time to play, and 6 hrs would fix everything.

Well, yesterday proved that theory correct.

We nailed the "thoughtful planning followed by frantic implementation" formula that has been a source of fun in other games in years past.  The players started with a little info, gathered some more, got in trouble, ran away, formed a plan, came back, and executed the plan well enough to win the day.  We finished the session with the PCs bringing the monster's head to the center of town, hyping themselves, and then going to relax and wash off in the nearby river (cue arrival of groupies).

Designed Scenario Aspects

Having an idea of the monster's mission and how it went about it was extremely helpful.  It allowed me to focus on the fiction in the moment without taxing my brain by simultaneously troubleshooting stuff for consistency.

Having an idea of the keys to victory was also helpful.  As with the monster's doings, I drew and interpreted cards from my tarot-ish deck for this.

Having a Clue-Task flow chart of Clue A -> Task B -> Clue C -> Task D and Clue W -> Task X -> Clue Y -> Task Z also allowed me to get by without the more time-consuming prep process of drawing some maps and labeling their contents.  The flow chart was constructed largely by referring to the monster's mission, victory keys, and general physical properties of the situation (it's in a cave).

Having two connected tracks on the flow chart, such that Task D led back to Clue W with an extra dose of certainty and urgency, enabled me to "slow play" the hints without worrying that the players would ultimately flounder.

Having the tarot spread ready for the players was a huge help.  It was both a springboard for them to try stuff, a reference point for when they got stuck, and a satisfying reinforcement of "we are going the right way" or "yes, we should try that last idea we had."  They did the reading early and left the spread on the table for the full session.  Maybe some "do readings early!" reminder in the eventual game text would be wise...

Worth noting: the players were inclined to focus on different aspects of the cards depending on tehir positions in the spread.  The default seems to be to focus on the human figure, but in the "key to" positions, the players took more note of actions, elements, and objects.

Ad-libbed Scenario Aspects

The reason ad-lib was necessary is that too many of the Clues in my Clue-Task tracks were non-obvious in terms of how they propelled the players from one Task to the next.  For pacing reasons, it might be wise for me to make the first Clue in each track very non-obvious, the third Clue very obvious, and the second Clue in-between...

When the players interpreted a Clue in a way other than how I had decided it would work, I ad-libbed how their attempt told them about the correct answer.  My ad-libs performed their function well enough, but this was yet another example of mediocre color and non-vetted functionality in Delve magic from my ad-lib.

( Example: Fire Glyph )

Puzzle-Solving as Major Play Activity

Sometimes adventuring and seeing wierd new stuff just hands you a series of obvious pieces and shows you clearly how they fit together.  Cumulative understanding becomes a fun augmentation to whatever else is going on in play, much like the way curiosity augments missions.

Other times, you need to wrack your memory, scour your notes, read the cards, form theories, draw connections, debate, and run experiments to correctly put together a puzzle that cannot be ignored. 

It's a weird feature of Delve that a game not primarily concerned with win/lose nevertheless provides some real challenges.  You can, of course, opt out and just charge ignorantly into danger... but that is more likely to get you killed.  What I need to strengthen here is the option to engage with the fiction (go somewhere, talk to soemone) to get more information in a way that choosing that option is non-trivial (costs, obstacles, time pressure, etc.).  Something like burning a gold piece to get a hint from god, except not lame.