So, Game Mastering is like making love to a beautiful woman – Lots of work, but if you do it well and you do a lot of it, it gives you something to talk about when you’re golfing with your divorce lawyer.

Cosmo, GQ and other magazines are full of seduction tips. To be honest, half of the tips are basic human interaction stuff just put into words so that people realize what they are already doing / what they are already doing wrong. The other half of the tips are something that can be used by a good GM to accomplish something in the games they’re running. So, in spirit of these – a top ten list of seduction tips that have their uses for GMs.

10 – Be the Alpha

In social animals, the alpha is the individual in the community to whom the others follow and defer.

- Wikipedia

This neat little tip has two ways it relates to RPG sessions and Game Mastering. First, while it doesn’t necessarily mean that when one of the lower-ranking members of the group gets out of line, you’ll dry hump them against the table until they recognize your superiority, it does mean that you are expected to have some charge of the situation. While there are games where the Game Master isn’t the ultimate authority in the game world, it is a fact that if you’re the one inviting people over to play and organizing the gaming situation, you’re in a way responsible of keeping things rolling. This is an authority position and you should embrace it as such. Someone needs to think of the game first, and that’s sort of your role. If the others think about it as well, that’s good too.

The second thing about being an alpha in a game is that you need to be able to stand confidently behind your words. If you say that something is happening in the game world, then that is happening in the game world. If you constantly have to go about correcting yourself, you appear insecure, and the rest of the pack will a) eat you alive b) leave you behind to the wolves. Depending if you’re carnivores or vegetarians. The most common type of failure in taking charge of your actions is demonstrated best by the following:

Players: “We enter the room”

You: “There are three menacing yeti in the room”

Player 1: “Yeti, sweet. My character has this special ability to make any yeti my friend. I’ll use that.”

You: “You can’t do that, they seem to be uhmn… mind controlled yeti!”

Player 2: “Great, I’ll use my character’s de-mind-control -power to make them not mind controlled. And then P1 can make them his friend!”

You: “Uhmn… They’re robots. They attack! Roll for Initiative!”

If you say they’re yeti, be man enough to keep them yeti even if it that doesn’t lead to the result you were originally hoping for. Don’t let that weakness seep through. The players are most likely expecting you to be the reliable leader that is best for their pack. Act the role. (Note: Being an alpha doesn’t mean being macho or even manly. You don’t need to boast – let the actions speak for you.)

9 – Stay Fit, Have a Life

If you sit in your mom’s basement and just watch TV and eat cheeseburgers, you might get great ideas for your games and your friends might really like the way you run them. But seriously, for a game master, there are two great reasons for staying fit and having a life.

First is that frankly you’re a lot better off when you’re in good shape and have some form of social life beyond your gaming group. Being fit makes you more cheerful and less lethargic. And an energetic game master is a good thing to have. The second, a bit less obvious bit is that having a life and being in shape means you’ll be out and about. Meeting interesting new personalities and getting mugged by yet another generation of street thugs. Experiencing the life outside the four walls of your home. By having a larger social peer group you will not be obsessing about games as much, and you’ll be guaranteed to get some real inspiration out of that. You’ll hear stories that are odd and wonderful. Low key and world shattering to the people telling them. A new person you meet might give you an idea for a new character. Or she might turn out to be the love of your life, for that matter. But the first thing is to get off your ass and go get a life.

Also, there is no shame in dressing in something else than black jeans and the Metallica T-Shirt you bought 15 years ago. Getting a shave and a haircut wouldn’t hurt either. Just saying. Real job maybe?

8 – You Cannot Seduce Someone Who Doesn’t Want To Be Seduced

Sometimes there are players and games that just aren’t meant to work together. Maybe the player has very different ideas about roleplaying than you, or maybe she just doesn’t like you, the fellow players or the game. Maybe she’s going through a rough patch and the game isn’t what she needs just now. Maybe she’s a pretentious bitch who thinks you’re a lowly brute for your interest in 12th century underwear. You just need to set your personal motivations aside and let her slide. The game will be harmed more by the obtrusive player than it will be by her leaving the group.

If you notice a player who is constantly away from your games, or cancels at the last possible moment, or just doesn’t seem like she’s really that interested, be frank about it and offer her a way out of the group. If you can’t say “Okay, this doesn’t work and I don’t want you to come to this game anymore,” tell her a lie – something along the lines that there is a friend who would like to join the game and could take over her character. It gives her a way out that leaves everyone feeling a bit better. Sure, saying to someone that it might be better to “do it” with someone else is painful, but will help a lot in the long run.

7 – Seduction Is As Much About Conceal As It’s About Reveal

The age old wisdom from the TV series Lost is that a good way to keep the audience hooked to a show is to generate more questions than you give answers to. Also, the same show has taught us that if you overdo this, it just gets ridiculous. When you have a good group together and you’re selling your game to them, keep them wanting more – keep them waiting to find out what happens next. And after teasing them for a while, give them a reward for their patience. Reveal to them some of the things you’ve been teasing them with.

You can use this question-answer cycle as a motive for the game to move forward – if you leave something hanging in the air, you can then have the characters go explore it. By doing that they’ll find out things about it, but also new questions. Don’t answer all the questions you have posed with new questions. That just gets frustrating for everyone.

6 – Use Stories To Sell You

This has actually more to do with selling NPCs than selling you. When you introduce a person to the game and want it to be interesting, give it a story to tell the players. By a story I don’t mean a full-fledged narrative, but something that is interesting and tells the players something about the NPC. Could be something like when the new recruit to the team comes in a bit late, she says “Hi guys, check my new gloves – I had to actually tear them from this chav chick’s hands over at the store. They were the last pair and I weren’t going to let some skank have them before me. So, what’s going on?” This is something that will help the players relate to the NPC a bit better instantly. Even if the game is about fighting supernatural terrors from beyond, a character that nearly got into a fight at the H&M will be remembered better and with more personal attachment than some cute chick with neat gloves.

In fact, keep a few different stories around for each character and tell them as the game progresses – to re-introduce the NPCs to the players every now and then. Maybe every few gaming sessions.

5 – Be Interested In What She Has To Say

Interaction is the core of RPGs. This means that you have to pay attention to what the other side is saying. And by paying attention, I mean really paying attention. What are the things that keep coming up again and again when they talk? Which parts of your GMing they react to? When are they being non-responsive? When you’re playing with other people, these are the ways they can and will give you clues of what they want from the game. Sometimes a direct approach helps (asking “What do you want from the game?”) but might also lead them to just bullshit their way out of the situation – telling you what you want to hear. What you want from the game. Thus, being interested in what they say when in actual game situations comes in handy.

Also, this leads to another seduction tip that I have to mention here – Eye contact. Eye contact. Eye contact. Don’t just observe, show that you’re observing. If you’re hunching into your rulebook while the player is trying to explain her ideas, you’re discouraging her. She will think that you’re dismissing her ideas outright and will not go all the way with them. Even if you were actually listening while reading, you’ll miss on content as the other party thinks you’re not interested.

4 – Mirror Her

Now, a mirroring technique in seduction means something where you are copying a person’s movements and gestures and eventually noticing how she starts to mimic you, and you’ll be able to get her bend over backwards for you. In RPGs the techniques are more about you being willing to let the players influence how the game works to get them drawn in and using that to your advantage.  If you paid attention a moment ago when I was talking about paying attention or even bothered to read the player’s character sheet, you already know quite many things about what a player wants to do in the game. And more often than not these wants and needs the player has are in opposition to your own ideas about what the game should be about.

How is it done? Simple. Pay attention when the players are explaining their characters to you and start the game with the players having their characters involved in exactly what they’re wanting. Give them positive things to associate with the game by doing what they like to do and then slowly introduce your own ideas.

The benefit of this is that the players get more excited about games where the things they like are happening. So if you give them a game where the focus is on these things, they’ll be eager for more, even when you start bringing in plot elements that aren’t the ones they were originally interested in.

3 – Learn From Each Encounter

Sometimes things go right, sometimes things go wrong. What is important is to know what worked and what didn’t.

After each game, try to think what was good and what was bad. And then think how to replicate the good in future games. And how to avoid the bad. Much more demanding than it sounds. Players are usually horrible at giving feedback, especially negative. You’ll have to listen to what they say went well and then fill in the holes as “ok, they didn’t say this thing was good. Was it mediocre or bad?” And every time you start a new gaming session, try to fix one of the things that have been going wrong and hold on to one of the things that went well (if you manage more, that’s even better, of course). Eventually you’ll get the hang of what went right and what went wrong.

2 – Don’t Say Things Just To Impress Her

A good player can spot bullshit a mile away. When you try to feed her stuff that is not really you, you’ll get made. Of course, as a Game Master, you will have to create NPCs and tell stories. But try to be something you’re not cut for and you’ll end up with the players rolling their eyes. If you can’t create great action scenes, settle on creating good ones, but make the social interaction great. If you have problems running games with huge complicated conspiracies, run games that don’t have them. And if you decide to make a scene that seems really cool, make sure both you and the players have emotional investment to it so that you’re not just running it to impress everyone while your heart is not in it.

Also, know your shit. The more things you need to pull out out your ass, the more your authority ends up under inspection. If you are playing with a new system, try to know most of it beforehand. And if you don’t know something, say “I’m not 100% sure about this, but is it okay with all of us if we use a variant of this rule here,” at least you’re being honest. And honesty can be a great thing when you’re getting called on doing things differently than the rulebook said.

1 – The Best Way To Get Over a Bad Lay Is To Have Ten Great Ones

And when everything went to hell, and half of the players aren’t talking to you anymore after you tried some experimental Norwegian artsy things they didn’t like, the best way to get back on the horse is to get back on the horse. Play something light everyone likes, don’t try too much. Roll AD&D characters and play a scenario you found on the internet while laughing together at how bad it is. The best way to get over a bad game is to ignore all the fancy things, all the roleplaying game theory you know, and just to hang out with your friends. And roll some dice.

So, second season of Moving Wallpaper has started and with it, thoughts of play-within-a-play type of storytelling. There are a wonderful lot of takes on this, varying from Shakespeare to Tropic Thunder, from Simpsons to Slumdog Millionaire. It increases the complexity of the story somewhat, but with that complexity comes the freedom of exploring things from a different view.

If I had to make a guess, I’d say the most typical story-within-a-story in role-playing games is the exposition story. While they’re not really independent stories, they still fit the profile enough to be mentioned. The more common type is when the Game Master tells the players a story of what has happened before, through the tales of a non-player character. This is, for example, used to frame the quest the characters will set on. Sort of a mission briefing, one might say. The mirrored version of this is the player-character-back-story-revealed, where the player tells the dark history of his character to the rest of the characters (and thus the players). This is most common in games where the players keep their character histories secret from the rest of the group (because of some creative GM agenda, usually). Usually it is done at a moment of dramatic revelation, even Now, usually both of these are quite short “stories”, more valued by the amount of information it reveals than any artistic merits.

Another quite common thing that gets done in RPGs is things like book-within-a-game or play-withing-a-game. Sadly, these are again more likely to be just brief references to what happens “The story on the stage is a doomed love story.” Period. That’s it. “The book tells the tragic history of the castle’s owner’s cat and how it died by eating a poisoned mouse.” Period. Maybe if someone asks a question about it, there is some more details revealed, like “The cat was brown” or “There is some singing in the play”, but more likely than not, it’s just a few or two to provide a backdrop, not really a story. Sometimes they get interwoven with the story if the GM can be evocative enough, GM bouncing the stage action with combat action, for example. But these are very rare situations.

And frankly, it’s usually just great that they’re not explored in more depth than the very surface. While every GM dreams of a game that is a story told by his great imagination and every player wishes their character could be on the center stage all the time, the time it takes to monologue out a proper story is pretty long. And in a game that’s supposed to be interactive fiction, there just isn’t room for that sort of stuff. Also, neither is fully a story-within-a-story, by the standards usually presented.

xkcd's take on this

While playing a game where players are playing people who are playing a role-playing game might be quite interesting (for example, having players play player stereotypes playing a game could provide an interesting commentary on your gaming culture, or at least your view of how you see typical gaming), it might be surprisingly hard not letting the game slide into a friendly parody as you’re bound to be comment on what you’re doing while playing a guy doing the same thing. And parody tends to distract. But things like playing a game where the players are playing characters who are, for example actors, trying to get a play working, could work a bit better, as the play-withing-the-game comments on things that happen on the game (actor) level.

But, coming a full circle back to the Moving Wallpaper thing, the best experience so-far has been on our BtVS-RPG (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) campaign “Apocalypse, Cleveland”, where the game worked on the level of the production crew and then on the actual game/series level. Looking back, I would have wanted to work on that aspect a bit more in the game. There were production meetings pre-game where things got discussed and the audience’s opinions (decided by random dice rolls) and the creative crew’s responses to that explored. There were also some meta-level things planned, like falling out between actors and surprise pregnancies. Sadly, the game ended when the main character’s player left for Sweden and we (read: me) didn’t feel like going the X-Files last seasons route or recast the character, even if that could have been fruitful, viewed from hindsight. This is one of the things I probably miss most about Primetime Adventures RPG – some sort of commentary on how creating that perfect television series isn’t as easy as it might sound, how there are many things that need to be considered beyond the basic story.

But what else could be done as a story within a story, or at least with the lesser techniques present there. Flashbacks have been mentioned and of course lead to flash-forwards. But how about alternate scenarios. Short glimpses of how things could have ended if they had made another choice. Maybe the next time the characters participate in the wedding of a group of NPCs, you give each player a written role in the “main cast” of the wedding, and have a look at how the oh-so-beautiful wedding isn’t really all that beautiful at all. Or the next time the military commanders do another decision that the players find stupid, you have the players fill in for the roles of the generals, maybe even change the outcome from what you had planned. Or if you had last left one of the characters reading a pirate-love-story comic on a street corner, you spend the beginning of the next game playing out that romance, have players create the main characters for it and let the chips fall as they may. Maybe even have some other player GM the game about the pirates and you play there with the rest.

Including the players somehow where normally there is just a moment of stopping and the GM explaining things. That’s where the beauty might be found.

As a quick dodge at the end, from the computer games point of view, I just have to mention a couple of things currently happening in the game world – the Shakespeare plays on Second Life, where people are using their avatars to bring plays to life. While technically it might be more easily compared to puppet shows or something like that, the way the avatars that people are playing differ from who they are in real life makes me want to give out a shout to them at this point. The second thing is the City of Heroes Mission Architect that’s coming up in a few weeks time, where players are allowed to create their own content to the game, that also might result in some “people role-playing heroes in a virtual world, creating stories for a virtual realm inside the game” action. The closed beta is already on its way and some lucky people could be already doing it as the rest of us are just blogging about it.

I’ll leave spikey to expand on the topic of “why on earth do games rely on cutscenes to convey stories” when he gets back online and writing. I know he has much more to say about it than I do.

As Alvan just seemed to dive off the deep end with his post on audio in games, I should include a few words before the next barrage is launched. The ambient soundscape I thought about when including tabletop playing in the mix, wasn’t about communicating individual situations and character moments – it’s way too hard to fashion such mechanics and control them sufficiently. More in the lines of “what sounds tell your mind you’re in a very old forest, even if you don’t pay attention to them?”. Setting the baseline mood. No sounds shoveled in your face, just a carpet of aural information quietly humming to you what’s between you and the horizon. What one does on top of that, is different matter and could either add depth or break things.

Once the players – as characters or audience, whichever works here – are used to the soundscape in the background (read: doesn’t pay active attention to it anymore), a sudden GM-introduced threatening in-game plot moment with sounds suddenly off could be a big impact on how the moment is driven into the lizard parts of players brain. Internally, when we get threatened or get thrown off the normality due to a sudden, completely unexpected event in real situation, we stop paying attention to normal things. Survival mode, attention focus and all that. When the same thing is played on us externally in a situation that’s inherently not real, it’s a good curveball that tips things out of balance. And of course, it’s used in just about any production that’s narrative and has audio in it. And of course, it’s so simple there has to be people using it already in RPG’s, too.

Oh Boy. Talk about gauntlets getting thrown. So, sound-effects, soundscapes. Music versus noise. Carefully arranged notes in a constant form with pattern, lyric, meaning, sometimes good, sometimes plain awful. Themes, especially the ones that repeat, grow and mutate. And then just silence. Followed by a soft echo of footsteps. A noise here, another there. Sound of the ship’s bulkhead bending in the storm. And as you step out, the roars of wind, rain and lightning hit you in the face with the full force of nature. You hear it roar in the distance, and know it will soon be upon you.

There are soundtracks of wonderful music that guide our thoughts and there are sounds that do that as well, forming a soundscape of the environment we’re in. The big difference between a soundtrack and a soundscape when talking of things like movies or RPGs is that the soundscape, the world of sound effects, is something that exists on the diegetic level instead of the extradiegetic world of the typical soundtrack. These fancy words mean that you can assume that the characters of the story are hearing the soundscape, whereas usually a soundtrack is there only for the audience of the story, not audible to the characters inside the story (exceptions exist, of course).

Now, a well-designed soundscape is something that’s very common (one could say, a necessity) in television and movies, somewhat common in video games but pretty rare in RPGs. At least any I’ve participated in. The two things that have come in the way, to be honest, are the amount of preparation of using sound effects compared to music, and the technology that has been evading the typical game master.

Building a proper soundscape for a roleplaying session isn’t as easy as one might think. In movies and television, you don’t need to think of the lasting aspect of your sounds. The scenes will linger in environments for a few moments so you can think very nicely what exact sounds you need and time them to the millisecond. When you’re playing games like Half-Life or Left 4 Dead, the sounds around you get generated by the computer in response to your actions, the actions and presence of other entities, and randomized from a pre-generated pool of environmental sounds to create the needed effect.

In tabletop RPGs, neither approach is fully usable. Compared to TV, there is no guarantees how long a scene lasts, as all description of action is done as speech and there is a factor of the actors having a say to what happens. You might think a warehouse scene lasts for 5 minutes tops, but your players might spend 10 minutes with their characters at the warehouse, or they might take an hour. Having the same 10 minute planned soundscape loop six times gets annoying really soon, especially if the selected sounds are there to provoke a response. They not only lose their effect, but they will turn it against you as the immersion gets broken – suddenly (gasp) the same creepy footsteps are heard for the third time. As they are present on the character level, they will get ridiculed on the character level. Or you will have to explain that they are not part of the diegetic level anymore.

Computer games give a bit better starting point – a video game’s sound director can’t go about thinking beforehand that it takes 5 minutes, 32 seconds for a player to complete the level. He has to build a generic sound base that will give the player a feel of the environment, without invoking specific action. He avoids the repetition by adding some computerized randomization to the base sound pattern and of course avoiding sounds that would require a response from the player on this base-track. Then he moves forward, having something on his side that a standard GM doesn’t – he can combine the sounds with the triggers from specific events beforehand, so that they play when someone fires a shotgun or walks on a metal floor or topples a pile of cans by accident. Or even when the player is approaching a certain situation or location on the map. Automated responses to the actors, and to be honest, the most realistic soundscapes stem from that.

For a RPG soundscape, like for a soundtrack, you’d pretty much need that base that you can play while there is nothing interesting happening. As a soundscape can be assumed to be heard by the characters as well as the players, it requires more attention than a soundtrack. This base-scape will be playing a lot in a campaign, so it would have to be extremely long to avoid the feeling of repetition. In fact, you’ll need a few extremely long, different bases when you’re building a campaign – there will be various situations that need a somewhat distinctive feel attached to them. Besides those you’ll need other sounds. Sadly, what you can’t really do, is to have sounds for the actions that the players have their characters do – you can’t have a sound-effect for every one of their actions as you have no clue what those actions might be. And even if you did, you’d be always firing the sounds of only after the action has happened on the diegetic level, so there will be unnecessary redundancy that doesn’t especially benefit anyone. And in my opinion, most of the sounds made by other actors should be left to imagination and description as well “you hear the approaching footsteps of the scientists returning from their break”, “the guard accidentally drops his soda can on the floor and curses” as you will need to provide the players with information like where the sound came from and in most cases who was making it. On the other hand, using audio samples to play when something breaks the standard ambiance, yet wouldn’t benefit much from emphasizing on it on the level of the story, would work. A strange sound, a scream, a roar, the sound of thunder approaching that would gradually turn into the base sound once the thunderstorm is upon you. Things that predate actual action or are there just as sounds, nothing more. Yet. Echos of the future.

On practical side, for campaign play, I’d probably start building the base soundscape myself from scratch instead of using something fully made beforehand by someone else. Even if getting quality sounds for free can get tedious, it becomes much more personal and the feel is less hectic if you take time to manipulate the material to fit your needs. There are good services like YLE’s Tehosto around that can get you started, but the samples you get from one source are usually too short to be used on their own, so you need to look around the internet to find enough sound bits. And even when you have enough material to fill a nice long soundscape, you’ll notice that when you start mixing from sources, the difference in quality and style can sometimes be audible. And you will end up ditching a good portion of the sounds you have, eventually needing a lot more sounds. If you want to be really personal, you can record a sound from some place by yourself. Getting a good enough microphone to be able to record the ambiance of an environment on your own might be a very costly task, unless you have friends in high places who can borrow or rent you one. But recording an hour-long thunderstorm will really pay off if you use it on the background in a game – it will sound a lot less cheesy than something you stole from a sound effect box. Once you have a large enough library of sounds to play on the base, you compile them together with some sort of a tracker program, I suppose. I haven’t done that stuff since the 90′s, to there might be better ways to do it these days.

For the specific sounds that get played, you’ll need some form of a mixing software that allows you to play multiple tracks at the same time. – a somewhat affordable solution is Virtual DJ Studio, that offers a very nice, fully working trial version for you to toy around with while you wonder if you want to use it. Then just line up the effects you want to play next to your base track and slide them in when it is their time. And there you go, a soundscape. I can imagine it working very well in horror scenarios, where the players are already on the edge of their seats because of the story.

As a counterpoint to all of this, I must admit that I love using a non-story level soundtrack on the background of RPG sessions – partly because I takes a part of the pressure off from me if I try to get the game going toward a certain mood, and mostly because I love toying between the story-level and the storytelling-level of the game. You can create a lot more contrasts with music than you can do with stuff that exists on all levels of play. Using music on the other hand allows you to stop using music, which on its own can be very very effective (as Buffy the Vampire Slayer has taught us). Doing a full campaign where the ambience was fully created with sound-effects is something I probably would never do, but using some ideas from this post might eventually creep into the games.

Sound is half of the experience in movies, they say. Probably even more in other media, such as music video. Or radio, if it still exists – haven’t checked.

Sound is also a key player in how we experience our surroundings, draw context from and get important clues we don’t even realize. Like today, when I was happily exhausting the contents of my bladder the way guys do – standing up – and the blasted light went out. There I was, hands full of a tap that wasn’t going to turn off after all the coffee, and I couldn’t see anything. Blind as a bat. Turns out you can aim by sound rather well, and like bats do,  easily differentiate between different materials by the way they sound when .. Well, eventually, I fumbled my way back into light, in a fresh state of mind of having seen – or heard – things in new light again. Learning is a wonderful thing, and often keeps cleaning ladies getting butter on their bread.  Also, I’ve been trying to figure out what’s the key difference between the car I’m borrowing and my own (..at shop. Thank you, France), as I keep feeling curiously lost with the current car. After my wild mild water park adventure, I realized it’s the sound – too quiet and what I hear is too differently connected to the overall tactile feel, and I’m subconsciously expecting the connections from my own car. All wacko.

All this, in turn, made me wonder about audio backgrounds in games. Half-Life series are excellent in this regard concerning atmosphere, and just about everything from DICE concerning sheer intensity and psychological pressure. If you have a buddy with Battlefield: Bad Company, get him playing it and listen. That’s not a game you hear anymore, if you stop looking at it.

I’d probably get massive (and good) creeps if I was playing some Fringeish/XFilesish/Madsciencegonebad RPG with a soundtrack that took cues from Half-Life – lots of ambient creaks, rattles, scurrying sounds, everything that makes you jumpy of the next corner. How’s about it, Alvan? Ever thought of ditching music in favour of “ambient surroundings” with music coming in only at few key points where it serves intensity and emphasis, and even then on top of said soundscape, not replacing it?

In the bright future, tabletop RPG sessions are built hardcore, with a sound mixer guy who knows GM by heart and adjusts, mixes and changes the aural soundscape constantly .. Be the player group walking from thicker woods to a husky meadow, or surprise ambush by 500ft squirrels that murder light itself — the sound is always there, describing things and changes in local surroundings with language you never realize listening. I said it first.

So, me and good old Spikey over there were talking about how my blog posts tend to be there for a very small audience, because I talk about the slight intersect of RPGs and Television, and rarely about anything else. I came up with the idea of trying to open up the reasons for this a bit, but it came out a bit dull on the first try, so tonight’s solution:

This should help a bit. Notes in italic are written on the morning after.

So, Alvan, television and role playing games, 101. As one might see from the odd blog posts I write, both are a big part of my daily thought process. To be honest, I don’t actively play RPGs these days. It’s almost more likely for me to have a month when I don’t play a single game than one when I do. On the other hand, I still maintain my healthy interest in TV-shows, watching the essentials daily and sometimes popping to the non-essentials in nice big rounds (season at a time, DVD rental these days is awesome). But let’s take a look back in time.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I convinced my mother to buy me the Finnish edition of RuneQuest after seeing the Dungeons and Dragons Red Box in my best friend’s bookshelf. Now, to a toddler like me (I was something like 10 back then), the mechanics of the game were way too hard to understand. My best friend managed to play a couple of D&D sessions with me, but he never got RuneQuest. Neither did I, but kept returning to the book, trying to figure out what the deal with it was. I made simpler versions of the rules and had a couple of games, but to be honest, I spent most of the time just reading the book. By “simpler versions of the rules” I mean something like “let’s roll these dice and if we roll something like X or lower, then we succeed, okay?”, not something that was really thought out – as said, this was when I was very very young.

Years passed, monkeys found monoliths and discovered fire and death. Somewhere around this point I met a lot of the people who are still part of the gaming group I still consider I belong to. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons became the game of choice (and in case you’re wondering: I still don’t understand some of RuneQuest’s rules, and have stopped trying 15 years ago), as we knew how to read English (I blame the computer games and old-school Batman TV series for that). So, back when I was something like 14, the RPGs we were playing were pretty much about a group of good guys (the players’ characters) fighting the bad guys (who were about as 2-dimensional as they get). And the biggest thing that was considered a story twist was that the game master poured a surprising monster or two at the end, or an ally turned out to be a traitor.

At some point, humans escaped the Garden of Eden and the games started getting more mature with the players. There was the Vampire: The Masquerade era when the games moved to a story-focused and more serious direction. Story-focused meant that it was pretty much the game master telling a story where the players were allowed to listen. And serious meant that things were cool. On the outside. The worst of this era was probably symbolized by a legendary game called “Varastoalue”, where the players were so desperate to affect the story (which was bad) they actively tried to kill own their characters.. and failing. All while the Game Master’s “story” went on. With cool ninja bodyguards and whatever else that was supposed to be awesome, but in reality just dreadful. As manatic comments below, Varastoalue wasn’t a full-fledged, planned adventure. But to be honest, not many games back then were. Lots of improvised one-shots that tended to be nearly as awful as Varastoalue. It just has a symbolic value that shines over the other games of the era because of the sheer absurdity of the things that happened in it.

And so eventually mankind blossomed, built pyramids and cathedrals, and we got pissed at it all – the railroaded games, the superficial cool (that wasn’t cool) and the gaming. I think we actually stopped playing for a good while at some point. When we came back the games started to change, something a bit different. (there’s a 10 years or so leap somewhere here in time). And after being so pissed at how things had worked, we started questioning the fun of the games we were playing.

And with the questioning of the games and gaming, we started looking for answers in the other things that we had been comfortable with. In my case, it was television and popular culture in general. To give another example before moving on – one of us has moved towards exploring the games through linguistics and history.

Now, to emphasize the point of loving TV series, here’s a photo I took earlier when cleaning my DVD cabinet (yeah, here only to show off, also, sorry about the quality, cameraphone + bad lights = not a good combo):

Bonus points if you recognize them all. Hint, my Whedons aren't there. And someone's got my Life on Mars season 1...

Whoa, pretentious much, well – I guess when you have taken a photo of the collection, you need to post it somewhere.

Now, what was I saying. Yeah. (the port’s good btw, you should try it someday) I’ve grown with television series. Mostly the geeky stuff you’d expect – Star Treks, Babylon 5s, Batman (the old series), the works. But also other things – Love Boat, Knight Rider, MacGyver, Twin Peaks… Hmm, I guess those are the geeky stuff too. Lovejoy, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Bergerac, The Darling Buds of May and other quality Brit drama. So, anyways, the main point – watched lot of TV, and TV started affecting the way I viewed my games.

And while movies and books are great when you’re talking about a singular story structure that’s maybe played in one session as a RPG, television series (in my mind) provide a way better analogue to story structure of a game that gets split into sections. Sure, it’s not perfect, but quite many problems that come up with TV series also apply to games. And thus I blog. About the problems of television series, and try to create the analogues to RPGs the best I can when they arise.

Now, as said, I don’t actually play that many games these days. I have returned to the phase I was when I had RuneQuest. I try to keep up with the trends of the games and still buy the books that I find interesting, but most of the time, I just read them and think about how they might work. Most of the game design I tend to do these days is when I’ve watched TV. And try to see what’s good, what’s bad and what can be learned from it.

So. The best I can come up with for parting words now that the Niepoort has been working wonderfully are: When you’re reading these blog posts of mine you will hear me talk of role playing games. And if you’re someone who is not familiar with them, there might be some preconceptions that might make you want to just ignore the posts. When that happens, please try to think less of the stereotype (that I might somewhat fit, granted) of sad grown up men in their parents’ basement, rolling dice and talking about Sir Ben Dover saving the fair elf princess from the vile Dragon of Omfgawesomeness of +5. And maybe think about the text more in terms of writing and thinking of television drama – should make the reading experience a bit more balanced and maybe a little less sad. And most of the time it might even make sense.

I’ll take another look at this tomorrow and see if there is any sense in what I’ve written. Now it’s time to go rest and hope I feel better in the morning. Yeah, wasn’t half as bad as I had imagined. I can live with this. As someone commented on IRC – it’s a “this is why we can’t have nice things” sort of a history. Whatever that means.

There are some songs that I will probably forever associate with RPGs I’ve played in the past. Here’s a couple with some commentary on them

Negative: Frozen To Lose It All (youtube / spotify)

The main theme from our Buffy: The Vampire Slayer RPG campaign “Apocalypse, Cleveland”. The song actually is very TV-Theme-esque, and in some regards, surprisingly close to the actual Buffy theme. It was played every time there would be a “title sequence” in the “TV show” that was being simulated. An effect that worked quite nicely, even if the players kept protesting about the song (not many Negative fans on that group). We had plans to cut and mix the song to a TV-sized length, but the campaign ended too soon for us to ever get around to it. One of the players made a note after the campaign had ended, that she had heard the song on the radio and it had taken her a while to remember which TV series theme it was. Every time I hear it, I see in my mind the imaginary credit roll that was described during the game.

The nice thing about having an “opening theme” is that it allows a soft descent into the game. Especially if used in concordance with re-introducing the characters at the beginning of the session with it. You can also use it as an audio transition from a pre-story text (like flashbacks, alternate views and such that help set the game without actually being so “part” of it) to the actual story. Think of the James Bond shtick where there is an action sequence before the credits, then the title sequence, then the actual movie.

Depeche Mode: Waiting for the Night (youtube / spotify)

The ending theme for our very long-running Space Master campaign “Quiet Night” from the nineties. The song was used as a wind-down piece after an action-packed game. It was a custom to let the song play a bit before commenting on how the game had been. What has to be said about the song is that it is wonderfully multi-faceted, to the point that new connections between it and the game can still be found even these days. Latest conversation we’ve had about this was only a couple of months ago with one of the original players of Quiet Night, who now runs 3:16 for us. We talked how surprisingly fitting the song is to that game’s themes, some of which are quite much the same as QN’s were.

As said, having an ending-theme helped with many things. It was easier to bomb the characters with a cliffhanger when there was an audio cue to the end of the session instead of just saying “okay, it’s over”. Also, the “agreement” of listening to the ending theme for a while before saying anything gave the song quite big importance – everything done was reflected through the rose-tinted lenses it provided.

Shinjuku Thief: Waltz of the Midwives (sadly no online source)

The bread and butter of my nineties horror campaigns. One of the most disturbing pieces I’ve heard, ever. Starts slowly and bursts into cacophony and laughter of witches. One of our gaming group still starts very loud protests if I pull the CD out, saying that he doesn’t want to hear the damn song. Ever again. If you manage to get your hands on the song, you’ll understand why

There are these rare songs that get played in different games, without it feeling an attempt to somehow undervalue the other game. Usually when you hear a song in a game you’ve heard somewhere else, it doesn’t work that well. The “Imperial March” example on this is probably the best I’ve heard – when you play “Imperial March” when your main baddie enters a scene, you either undervalue your baddie or the song. If your bad guy is original and awesome, it is now tainted with unnecessary burden of the imagery from the song. On the other hand if your bad guy is not as awesome as Darth Vader, you’re paving the way for a disapointment on the players’ part.

Bobby Womack – Across 110th Street (youtube / spotify)

One of the songs defining my old Rakennus campaign. I don’t remember if I used this in the game that much, but it was a song that I listened a lot to when creating the campaign and toying with the ideas for it. The first games were set in the 70s and it really fit that. And later, when years rolled by, it started being about the nostalgia to the good old days. But, as said, I don’t think this one is one for the players, more a personal piece.

The songs that inspire the campaigns can be really varying. I remember listening to the weirdest pop songs when designing some horror-scenarios. These are the songs that never probably get heard by the players, but they’re the ones that usually have the biggest effect on the games.

Songs from the CoW :

College of War has been the longest-running campaign I’ve ever had, which means there are many songs that I associate with it. There’s the Academy theme from Utena (couldn’t find it on the ‘tube or spotify, sorry) that’s been playing every single time the College has been introduced. There’s the Death Theme (youtube) that’s been there for the various incarnations of Death in the game (he’s really a nice bloke, usually). In the latest campaign, there has been Opening (YT/spotify, YT/spotify) and Closing themes (YT/spotify), and character specific songs and whatnot. The latest CoW has probably been the first campaign where I’ve actively used music with Finnish lyrics on the background – A big step for someone who has regarded Finnish lyrics as somehow uncool or “common” to be used in RPG soundtracks.

The Future

Well, I haven’t been using strong thematic music for Henryn viimeinen iso keikka, and will probably steer clear of it for the next 4 games. I’d love to use some stuff like Cobra Starship, Panic! At the Disco, Paramore and Hey Monday on the soundtracks of some future games, but I think the players would want to lynch me if I did that. Technology has allowed some steps soundtrackwise that haven’t been available before – the use of laptops for music management, mixing tools to help having with the sudden pauses caused by switching from scene to another, spotify to create playlists that are collaborative, sharing the work of finding the right tunes with your friends that way. And there are always the friends who make music who can be exploited if push comes to shove.

So a player from our gaming group asked me to help him get a new tattoo – my job was to compile a composite from his source material to a form the actual artist can work with. He asked me to do that about a year and a half ago. Well, now it’s out of my hands, and as suspected, that’s a good feeling. And kind of weird one at the same time. The stuff I tinkered with will eventually find form on someone else’s skin. There is something near-sacred about that. My own view on tattoos is on some level close to semi-mystical reverence. Things etched on the skin telling a truth more deep than all the clothes and mannerisms out there. My father still wears the “Sailor’s Shallow Grave” tattoo on his arm, even if he hasn’t been sailing the high seas in years. He’s not exactly proudly presenting it to people, but it’s something he’ll have for life and no amount of suburbanizing will take that aspect of his life away from him. Of course there are stupid tattoos (although some behind that link are really awesome), I’d love to think that quite a good portion of people, when selecting a tattoo, attach some meaning to it.

So when in RPGs someone has a tattoo, it’s quite sad for me to see what it’s usually there for.here seems to be three typical possibilities why it’s there. 1) It’s cool. “The mysterious stranger has this awesome tattoo of a thundercloud on his face that is so fetch” 2) It’s magical “The mysterious stranger’s tattoo shoots a burst of salami at you” or 3) it’s to mark the wearer as a part of a group “The mysterious stranger’s thundercloud tattoo means he’s part of the thunderous pasta chefs’ ninja-pirate group”

It’s very rare to see a tattoo in RPGs (both in sourcebooks or actual games) that’s there beyond those reasons. In other media tattoos that are there for the character instead of for the story somehow aren’t that uncommon anymore (Battlestar Galactica‘s the first that comes to mind). But not in RPGs, really. For example, in the d20 Future campaign I’m currently playing, two or three of the characters have high profile tattoos, and if I recall correctly, all of them are of type 2. And any tattoo we’ve come across on NPCs have been of type 3. Maybe some of them have started as Type 1s, but moved to the group identity thing quite fast. None outside that.

I try to recall my own campaigns, but can’t come up with many that had tattoos in them outside the “Look at Me, I’m Important” -sphere. I ran a campaign called Käärmeuurna (Snake Urn) that had a minor theme of body modification in it. I think there might have been a character with a tattoo that wasn’t there because it was important or especially cool. But most likely I’m lying if I’m saying that. I do vaguely recall that one of the player characters getting a non-uniform, not-just-for-cool, non-magical tattoo in that very game, but that might have been something she was planning on getting, not really sure if she really actually got it. Closest to getting a normal, character-based tattoo on any game so-far, I think.

The sad thing is that having a tattoo on a character quite easily falls into the superficial cool side instead of anything else. Might be time to actively change that in the next campaign I run. And in case one or more of the people in our gaming group are reading this, I’ll ask you: Have we had regular, “human” tattoos in our games?

This is almost one of those internet memes, but not really. It’s an NPC building exercise that’s fun to do every now and then. Character creation with some musical influences. Originates from the good old days when I used to GM Vampire: The Masquerade.

Basic rules: Random songs from your full playlist to tie to each of the things mentioned, then improvise, forming a character as you go along. Decide the setting and the primary role you want to build the character into before rolling with this thing.

Well, going with Buffy-esque setting, set in Finland. This one will be a “big bad” character.

1. Character gender/sex

Dead Can Dance – Song of the Nile

A very soft song. Feminine in a way. Some serenity to it. I’m thinking a heterosexual woman who has lost her someone and now in stages of mourning.

2. How is he/she physically

(The Real) Tuesday Weld – Waltz for One

Another graceful song, full of elegance and physical frailty. Dancer maybe, ballet or something like that. Not strong either.

3. How is he/she socially

Gogol Bordello – Super Taranta!

Very outgoing, anarchistic, chaotic, energetic. Maybe not that beautiful, but something raw and wild.

4. How is he/she mentally

Placebo – UneedmemorethanIneedU

Bit lost on her own, come to rely on others for answers. Now has her own way and maybe someone has to rely on her… Generally a bit weak willed.

5. How would he/she be described

John Murphy – The Beginning

The sounds in the beginning make me think of someone in the media. Maybe a reporter. Someone who would be good in front of the camera. Then there is chaos, panic. And the end makes me think of far away things, childish things.

6. What’s his/her “edge” (depends on the setting what that means)

Metallica – Carpe Diem Baby

ok… the lyrics scream a “Lost Boys” Vampire to me.

7. What’s his/her motive

The KLF – 3am Eternal

*glares* A song about “the ancients of mu mu”… I refuse to comment on that.

8. Now put it all together while listening to this tune

The Cranberries – Twenty one

There is the a strong contrast between the serene, cold and the passionate, fiery in everything about this character. She’s been something else than she is now. Maybe due a loss. She can’t cope with things. I really like the idea of a media professional, a reporter. Maybe a documentary maker, who stumbled onto something she wasn’t supposed to. Ok, I’m a bit inspired now by the Witch from Left 4 Dead, but maybe she’s seeing the universe in a completely new light. The whole universe.

So…

Tanja is a frail twentyish media student who was filming a documentary about some old iron age grave site with her fiancé when they stumbled upon something that was left on this side of the world from Beyond. Her fiancé got devoured by the fragment, but she survived. Different. Now she’s half-awake, half-aware, walking the line between the real world and the Beyond. Other things from the Beyond are drawn to her, which is the reason she’s a “big bad” for the story. She’s very energetic personality. Charming even. She’s suffered some physical scarring (frostbite-like scarring on her neck and chin) from her encounter, but her force of personality makes up for such minor flaws.

She is something of a “flower person” now, seeming to enjoy her unique perspective on the world in a way that appears almost childlike to an outside viewer, but she will fly into a wild rage if disturbed, full of new claws and fangs and other sharp things of Beyond producing from her flesh. At first, she’ll be easily swayed by the other Beyond entities to do things they want, but will eventually she’ll develop a sense of purpose and try to open up a rift to the Beyond to bring her fiancé back, which is an even worse thing, since it’ll be the end of the world as we know it.

Probably would play the character more to the “childlike harbinger of doom” direction if I were to use her in my campaign. Have her waltz somewhere and disappear, leaving the things that followed her there wreck havoc on things. Also, since she’s quite dualistic character, almost split personality, would probably keep her as a NPC the players can talk to and interact with, until her role in things would be revealed.

The original thought of Lost Boys vampire got tossed aside in the final writeup, more going with the “split sky, part sea, shake world” -direction from the song.

I fully endorse this and will join the effort of spreading the word about it. Not that I would be buying anything from Arkenstone after the job they did with the layout and general readability of the Finnish translation of PTA anyhow.