DM vs Keeper

Billy (Goes to Mordor) has written recently about a fun, but unsatisfying, play through of Shadows Over Bogenhafen. I commented, saying that our group's experience - when I ran the adventure - was similar; the players were 'pushed' through the investigation, which allowed them to arrive at the climactic event (and foil the bad guys) without really understanding what was going on. This experience of playing Shadows Over Bogenhafen doesn't seem to be that unusual.

I recently dug out my Call of Cthulhu stuff, for some light bedtime reading (with some distant idea that I might run Masks of Nyarlothotep) and that started me thinking; would I have run Shadows Over Bogenhafen 'better' if I had more experience of being a Keeper? What are the differences between Game Masters who have learned their trade as 'Dungeon Masters' (or equivalent) and those who learned their trade as Keepers? What experiences do people have of DMs running Call of Cthulhu, or Keepers running D&D? 

Building Sandcastles

I was inspired by this post on Monsters and Manuals to bash out some more justifications for my switch to a sandbox campaign for our irregular (new babies do that to you) game nights.

I have been mulling over a range of systems for a co-GM’d fantasy sandbox campaign we have planned. As I have written, I get the distinct feeling that the players in our group are hankering after a bit more of the ‘kill the monsters and take their stuff’ playstyle of D&D and a bit less of the ‘scrabble in the mud, survive, though mentally and physically injured, and go unrewarded’ playstyle of WFRP. This doesn’t mean that the system will be a class and level D&D-alike system. After playing around with A/D&Ds and their retroclones, BRP-derived games, and even small timers such as Dragon Warriors and Advanced Fighting Fantasy, it looks like we’ll be using WFRP (1e or 2e? we’re not sure). However, by letting the players choose their starting career, the range of skills and trappings should create an *adventuring* party capable of a bit of fighting and a little magic. Replacement characters, by contrast, will be rolled randomly the old school WFRP way – but as they will (barring a TPK) be coming into an experienced and better equipped party, these characters will have a better than normal chance of survival. And as WFRP isn’t a level-based system, replacement characters that start at ground level can be far more useful; they needn’t be mere torchbearers. More, the career system of WFRP is the perfect match for sandbox play; your character wants to be a sea captain, a merchant, an explorer, a knight, an outlaw chief? Well, do it, and the system will support that[*1]. All said, the aim is that the game will be much more in the image of the front cover of WFRP1e – grim and perilous dungeon delving – than that of a ‘classic’ WFRP game – in fact, we intend to borrow as much from that other great 1980s Brit-fantasy world, Titan, as we do from the Old World. More Blacksand, less Bogenhafen.

More of this, please.

Now, The Enemy Within starts with a great switch – what begins with a promise of D&D dungeon-delving for hordes of treasure quickly turns into a Call of Cthullhu scenario. But while that is a really nice idea, the players in our group struggled to rationalise just why budding treasure-seeking adventurers would be bothered about the mysterious goings on of a town that they had never before visited. Sure, they were pushed along by the events that force them to leave town rapidly, to travel a certain way up the river, and so on. D, my co-GM for the upcoming sandbox, used his character to rally the party with (frankly delusional) renewed hope of great rewards, even as the riches promised were snatched away from them. But it was all a little ‘forced’; NPCs turn up when needed by the plot, neither the chasing Watch nor the angry mob will catch the PCs unless they do something very stupid – it was all a little ‘forced’, on both my part, as the GM, and on the part of the players.

I should have let the party bog off into the woods, roll up some random encounters, fight goblins, discover an ancient barrow, and then, as they slowly bleed out, die of disease, or gibber insanely, they would have watched the town of Bogenhafen fall into a abyssal portal of Chaos fire.

I should have let… no, I didn’t stop them, but as we all knew we had to play our roles I didn’t have to. We played our roles in the story, not our roles in the game. So I made sure that Guild Master Johann Exposition pops up when needed, as written, and they make sure that, despite being a bunch of lightly armed, poorly experienced ne-er do wells, they maintain the motivation to investigate a possible daemonic cult even as the apparent odds against them mount. We wouldn’t want to ruin a great campaign by not following the trail set by the GM, would we?

Yes, we would. The best parts of the handful of sessions that played out Mistaken Identity and Shadows over Bogenhafen didn’t involve dealing with the cultists – for those bits, the PCs were pushed and pulled along until they got to the right spot for the plot. The best parts of those sessions were the player-driven bits: when the sneering Elf played by S decided to become an Agitator for Human-Elf understanding and had pamphlets printed (at the printers of the fake lawyers’ stationary that had lured them to Bogenhafen); when the illiterate farmhand played by C threw these in the face of anyone who obstructed the party, accusing them of racism; when the thug played by A knocked out the festival boxing champion, and was in turn knocked out by the C’s illiterate farmhand with a spectacularly lucky punch in the same tent the following evening.

I want the players to be excited to play because they get to decide what to do. Not because they are waiting to see what the GM has planned for them. I want the players simply to drive some incidental colour but the adventure itself.

This is all going to go wrong, I fear. But then I remember that it has only gone wrong if we don’t have fun…

[*1] And the career (and skill) system doesn’t support linear ‘plotted’ campaign play in quite the same way. The character actually has to take up the new career in order to advance – it is not an abstract levelling up. Sure, this can be done during ‘downtime’, but even that breaks a ‘plotted’ campaign. But if the campaign can respond to one of the players desires that their character becomes a sea captain, let them do it, and offer them the Isle of Dread, the Gold Coast of Lustria, and the Island of the Lizard King to explore. Player choices with regard to advancement shape the world as it is created in play, and by playing WFRP, even when you offer the players a way for their characters to get what they want, you are sure to leave in plenty of ways for that to end very badly.

Painting in Primary Colours

I have lots of D&D material. AD&D1e, AD&D2e, and my beloved BECM(I[*1])/RC. A cupboard full of the stuff. But I haven’t played D&D in ages. Recently, we've been playing WFRP1e and 2e in our gaming group. And lately, I've been really interested in running RuneQuest/Legend (or OpenQuest) recently. I like the elegance of the d100 system, the bloody death that awaits characters who charge thoughtlessly into combat. I’d been considering it as the engine for a new sandbox campaign, with a world to be generated from the ground up (with some components acquired by unashamed robbery from existing campaign settings, fantasy fiction, and legend – I wouldn’t even file the serial numbers off). To satisfy my desire to both GM and to play, I convinced D to run this campaign as a co-GM, populating the world through a developing array of random tables and a library of stock elements. With no great secret plot driving the action, rather the decisions of the PCs, co-GMing is not much of a problem. And, anyhow, if you are unable to separate player knowledge from character knowledge, you are not going to make much of being a GM anyway.

But what do we come up with? A Viking-based, low-magic, all-human campaign, in which the PCs are tied to their community and culture by 'realistic' economics and a Pendragon-based personality system, with one or two adventures per game year. Giving the campaign an epic, intergenerational scope. I am not saying that is boring. It certainly got me and D excited. But will it excite the players in our campaign in quite the same way? This is a campaign concept that you really need to buy into. I have a strong feeling that, at the moment, some of the players in our group want their game painted in a few more ‘primary colours’ rather than the seven shades of, er… grey that is a well done WFRP or RuneQuest game. And that isn’t just in terms of the game style – killing monsters and taking their stuff >over> scrabbling, unrewarded, in the dirt – but also in terms of game mechanics – I’m a fighter, I’m a wizard etc. lets get to it >over> I have a range of skills that mostly overlap with yours. These things, of course, are a spectrum – skill-based systems have class-like archetypes, and class-based systems, even RC D&D, have skill systems, and campaigns about fighting dragons and clearing out the kobold caves can have gritty elements, just as a campaign that began wrestling in the Middenheim mud with a pox-ridden beggar[*2] might end with a Trollslayer, a Wardancer, a Knight, and a level 4 Wizard facing down giants and chaos warriors.


More than that, there's the structure of our gaming group. My wife and I have just had a second child. The other GM in the group has two children (and a non-gaming wife). This produces play sessions are short compared to what we might once have played - 3 hours is about the typical maximum - and, potentially, irregular. If we’re gaming weekly, we’re doing well. The other players, well, I’ve got a feeling that they would be far more into a ‘killing monsters and taking their stuff’ style of campaign – I am pretty certain that, for all they enjoyed Shadows Over Bogenhafen, for example, the lack of combat and character reward[*3] did not match expectations.

So what game and play-style is geared towards quick, episodic thrills and easy fun? My thinking is a sandbox campaign, with a hex map populated by small dungeons – strongholds, encampments, ancient tombs, sewer systems, caves, and dense forests – with random tables and improvisation generating the world on the fly in order to generate a sense of real player/character freedom. Put aside any worries about the world having a ‘realistic’ economy [*4], ‘realistic’ geography, or ‘realistic’ cultures – in Mystara for example, the Viking analogue culture complete with Scandanavian analogue geography immediately abuts an Arabian analogue culture and geography. So what? There is also a flying Gnomish city, an Empire of 36th level Magic Users descended from extra-dimensional ‘humans’. And if you really want the problem of unlikely neighbours, there is a nation of Halflings living in a late-Medieval rural English idyll right next to a plateau of magical Native American analogues. And all this makes it fun. Not mindless fun, not even cheap fun. Just primary coloured fun.

But what rule set? Well, I can’t use AD&D1e. Why? I can’t make head nor tail of the arrangement of the rules in those books, I never have been able to. I love them, but it is like reading someone’s house rule document out of context. AD&D2e [*5] is a goer, and I’ll be able to make use of the rulebooks that I had shipped from Scotland to the Caribbean [*6] the Christmas of their release. Those books are well travelled companions of mine. BECM(I)/RC is also a goer – many of those books are also the original having assembled all the GAZ/PC series etc. over the years I have endless optional rules and classes to incorporate, and campaign locations and NPCs to steal. Largely, though, I see D&D and AD&D1e/2e as essentially the same game. Alternatives would be Dragon Warriors, or Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e, though the D&D nostalgia, and the weight of the D&D cupboard, bear down on me. The default settings of those two do contain important flavours to stir into the mix – the darkness of Dragon Warriors Legend takes some of the edge off the high fructose corn syrup of Mystara, and a dollop of Titan adds a very British spice. But in the end, this will be a world that develops from player/character action (and overt player suggestion), GM improvisation on top of some sketchy preparation, and random tables – let the dice decide!

*1 I don't have the Immortal Set. I do own one Immortal level module - The Immortal Storm -, and I think I'd have to be in a pretty special headspace to consider running it.

*2 Sorry, I mistyped. You are the pox-ridden beggar wrestling in the mud. And it is fun.

*3 The PCs were all still alive at the end. What more do they want?!

*4 Though I will be returning to my series (currently stalled on part 1) on ‘fantasy’ economics – did you know, for example, that a BECMI Magic User can earn 3,000GP per month for sitting around in someone else’s castle?

*5 What is the ‘problem’ that some have with AD&D2e? It is still recognisably A/D&D, unlike 3e and on.

*6 Releasing the Monstrous Compendium as a ring binder rather than a book was a nice idea, but made it awkward to post internationally in the 1989.

Anti-Climactic Critical Hit!

Critical hit systems are a great way to add colour to combat and leave characters with wounds and scars from a source other that the fiat of a cruel GM. They can, though, kill off villains a little too quickly.

A few weeks ago, our WFRP game reached the climax of Shadows Over Bogenhafen. For all the praise that has been heaped on this scenario, it didn’t play out as well as I’d hoped. The players sent their characters round in circles, making little headway in uncovering the diabolic scheme of Johannes Teugen, and seemed to grow more and more frustrated with each session. They wanted adventure, but ‘every time we thought we were rich, it all went wrong’. Perhaps there was a mismatch between the expectations of the players (only one of the four could be described a properly familiar with WFRP, one had played it a couple of times, one had played D&D back in the day, and one had never played an RPG before) and the tone of WFRP 1e. And perhaps I’m just not that good at running an investigative, combat-light game for characters with few resources in world quite so grim.

Nevertheless, the party saved Bogenhafen. Despite everything, but with more than a little help from the ‘let-me-tell-you-what-is-happening-NPC’, they managed to secrete themselves inside the warehouse-cum-temple. With the party split, hiding either side of the room, I prohibited talking between the different groups – someone was going to have to declare an action.

They leapt to the ambush just before the human sacrifice was made. With surprise on his side, Stanley, the Elven Agitator, managed to loose an arrow at Johannes before his mind was wiped by Gideon’s magic. ‘Exploding’ 6s later, and Johannes is bleeding to death, an arrow in the groin. With Johannes down, with filthy brutish armed men and a woman leaping from the darkness, and with Gideon revealing his true, demonic form, the fight was immediately in the party’s favour. The ordinary cultists were screaming in terror, and the hired muscle waiting outside the warehouse were unwilling to assist a demon, even if they could pass their Cool tests, so the fight was 3 on 1. For all Gideon’s powers, the accumulation of attacks will produce enough d6 rolls for damage to take him down. A failed Cool test or two was all that stopped him being hacked to the ground in a single turn.

An anti-climax. But then, it was an anti-climax to me, as GM. None of the players (much less, the characters), had any idea of just what was at stake as they disrupted the ritual. For all they knew, they simply rescued a young woman and smashed a demonic cult.

Funnily enough, our experience appears to be very similar to the ‘playtest’ of this RPGnet review. Except, at the final moment, ALL the dice all fell right for the player-characters. Which suggests to me that, for all Shadows Over Bogenhafen’s undoubted qualities, it is very often played poorly by players and GMs.

…and every time we thought we’d be rich, it all went wrong

Just when Alfred Molina thought he was rich...

I arrange sessions of our ‘The Enemy Within’ campaign by Facebook. After a long gap between sessions, due to holidays and illness, I asked my players to remind themselves what had gone before. S, playing Stanley, the Elven Seer (and now Agitator for Elven-Human understanding), summed up the group’s previous adventures so; “There was some weird shit going down underground...and every time we thought we'd be rich, it all went wrong...”. Which suggests that we are playing WFRP the right way.

...he realised he wouldn't be in the sequels, and would end up in a downbeat 'dramady' with Dawn French

We ended the last session with the party being escorted from the office of Johannes Teugen, after some frankly incoherent ranting about demons, murder and the Ordo Septinarius from Olaf, the Herdsman who bears an uncanny resemblance to the dead-by-the-roadside-target-of-an-assassin Kastor Lieberung. Quite frankly, I can’t tell whether Olaf’s oddness is the result of good roleplaying by C, or if C is just odd. Whatever, it is certainly entertaining, as is Olaf’s role as a sidekick to Stanley, throwing pamphlets on Elven-Human understanding – which the illiterate Olaf can’t read – in the faces of people who treat the Elf with the culturally appropriate level of suspicion and hostility.

And we’ve also had some PvP violence, at least within the confines of the wrestling ring. After Axel, a Protagonist, fighting under the name ‘Madhead’, defeated Schaffenfest carnival wrestler ‘Crusher’ Braugen two nights running, Olaf volunteered to step into the ring. Adopting the fighting name ‘Meatloaf’ (who am I to veto such silliness – this is a world in which a background NPC is called Von Saponathiem!), and with an unexpectedly good series of rolls, Olaf knocked Axel out, nearly ruining the promoter, who had offered long odds on the farmboy. Unfortunately for them, they’re now relatively famous faces in Bogenhafen (and beyond), which has got them out of a scrape or two, but might well prove a handicap if they need to pass unnoticed anytime soon, anywhere nearby.

A note of playing a game with session-based experience systems: I am a little worried that the characters are gaining experience at too fast a rate. As adults, we don’t play for hours upon end – a typical session being a 3 hour game from 8pm (after baby R is definitely in bed) while 11pm (so we can all shuffle off to bed at a sensible hour) so the per-session suggested EP rewards are probably accumulating at a quicker pace in terms of game time than the designers expected. A long time ago in a far away place (no, really, the 1980s and the Dominican Republic) we would play D&D for twice that length of time (easily) – there was only homework and Nintendo to get in the way. To compound that, as adults, we seem to get through less ‘action’ or ‘plot’ than we did as gung-ho kids – far more time is devoted to fleshing out the little encounters, the incidences of adventuring, than I remember ever doing as a teen (for example, when I ran my mother and A through the Oldenhaller Contract last year they spent a fair portion of the time working as labourers and exploring the city than biting on any adventure leads I presented to them. And they enjoyed doing that). I think that it might be sensible to go for EP rewards at the low end of the recommended scale for future sessions. Gotta keep that grim vibe going.