During High School, my brother introduced me to D&D, the white box version. And I introduced it to my friends and we played our own homegrown highly modified games until college. So, I GMed for about 10 years. Most of those games were dungeon crawls. My games matured from random roll up charts and encounters to more theme-based dungeons, but they were all still dungeon crawls. Characters did evolve from the "character funnel" (start with 1st level characters and see who survives) to I let you make anything up as long as you have a good enough backstory. Then I stopped playing as college and work (real life) interposed itself. Fast forward 10 years, I attended a local gaming convention and signed up for my very first LARP and had a great time. That group of Vampire LARPers used the convention game as a way to find good players for their table top RPGs. They mainly ran a homegrown version of GURPS. From them I learned a totally different gaming style, a story based game vs min/max kill things and taking their stuff game. I think I've been playing and running this new style of game for almost 20 years.
As an experiment, I decided to run the Freeport Trilogy using D&D 3.5. I had bought the D&D 3.5 books and they sat on my shelf for over 10 years. I had an idea for an Epic Level Campaign, but I could never get my LARPer friends interested in it. So I was excited to run a game of pirates and an award winning campaign.
What could go wrong? I found that a co-worker and his partner were looking for a D&D game, so I invited them to my gaming group to fill seats. They were D&D game lawyers and my co-worker created a reasonable character and from play, I could tell he was more interested in character interactions and story, but his partner was a min/maxer and had created a Half-Orc Barbarian tank.
I found the clue trails in Freeport a bit weak and some clues were only available on the bodies of assassins sent to kill the PCs. A bit on the weak-sauce there. Yeah, lets send an assassin and the assassin would have incriminating evidence on them pointing to who hired them. What type of hit man would do that?
The Freeport Trilogy had various excuses for combat and I was happy to have the min/maxed Barbarian in the game. He killed everything in one or two hits, so combat mercifully ended quickly.
So, I learned that D&D wasn't my game anymore.
I tried D&D 4.0, 5.0 and Warhammer Fantasy 3.0. Didn't like any of them. I liked Warhammer Fantasy 2.0 better. Warhammer Fantasy 3.0 seemed like it was trying to sell special dice and cards that were game aids and tried to replicate a video game experience (just like D&D 4.0).
p.s. I'm currently playing in D&D 5e, The Curse of Strahd. I'm really enjoying the game, so never say never. My vote is for leveling milestones instead of experience points and limiting the amount of combat.
So what do I like to GM or play (in alphabetical order)?
A Penny For My Thoughts
A mostly GM-less game. The GM acts as a player. Diceless.
My favorite pickup game. You only need a few slips of paper and some tokens like pennies. The players are amnesiacs trying to recover their memories in an asylum. The story unfolds with the help of the other inmates.
I dislike some of the ritualistic aspects of the game, so I drop that when I run it. Here's a link to an article I have written about it and Dread.
Call of Cthulhu 7.0 Edition
Investigating clue trails, history, and a game where combat will get you killed. Lots to love in CoC. Amazing amount of published scenarios and support material.
The game is in the horror genre, based on the Cthulhu Mythos created by HP Lovecraft and added to by other contemporaries and modern authors. One of the best TV shows to tap into this was the first season of True Detective.
Don't Rest Your Head
Players enter a very imaginative dream world when they fall asleep. As they learn to manipulate the dream world, they lose their grasp on reality.
I've never run this as I've only played in it to explore the nightmare landscape. I'm a bit intimidated about running it as dice management requires a deft touch for the GM.
Dread
This is great for a horror game. The Jenga tower completely matches the ups and downs of horror.
Here's a link to an article I have written about it and A Penny for My Thoughts.
Feng Shui 2
Lots of Kung Fu madness. Great for John Woo and Jackie Chan fans.
Settings are white rooms where players get to use whatever elements they can dream up (that makes sense) to help in their over-the-top combat scenes.
Fiasco
I'm a fan of Coen brothers movies and Guy Ritchie's movies: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; Snatch; and Revolver. And Pulp Fiction.
This is a GM-less game. The GM acts as a player.
Another great pickup game, but you need to have various playbooks already printed in order to play.
Game is best with people who are comfortable making up stories and character situations on the fly. Also a sense of dark humor is required.
Godlike 2
WWII with soldiers with super powers, but they can still get shot in the head. Gritty and deadly. One of the best simulations of chaotic combat available.
This game requires 10d10 for each player and handfuls of d10s for the GM. Lots of crunch, but it uses ORE (One Roll Engine) which uses one die roll to determine initiative, action result, hit location, damage.
When I run this at a convention, I always have on hand lots of backup characters because you never know when a Nazi gets lucky and shoots a PC in the head.
TimeWatch
Time travel and fixing history. Lots of fun and thinking out of the box. An investigative game where you keep on travelling back in time to find the pebble that got dropped in the time stream (or the butterfly who flapped its wings).
I've run and played in a lot of games as you can tell by looking through my blog posts. Those are only my convention games and they don't include my regular weekly games.
So, what makes a Great Game Session?
Great games for me were games that flowed well, that was fun and exciting, and the players brought their brand of crazy to the table that made everything memorable, games that I remember fondly many years later.
I've discussed this with Shannon M. and we came to the conclusion that it was a combination of 50% GM and 50% Players. A great GM could have bad players and bring the game down a notch. A bad GM could have great players bring the game up a notch or even save a horrible game.
So a great gaming session is a combination of a great GM with great Players at the table.
What makes a Great GM?
Preparation
The GM needs to know the rules. Or enough to fake it, but if you fake it and have a player that's a rules lawyer, it'll kill the table. Ezra D. won the title of Big Bad GM one year and he was vaguely familiar with Fate, the system used in the contest. Luckily, no players rules lawyered him.
The GM needs to know his or her scenario. You don't have to memorize everything, but you need to know the flow and why things are where they are. If you do, then you can move things around on the fly and not interrupt the flow. If things are going wrong, you can always call for a break. And while everyone else is going to the bathroom or getting a snack, you can go over your notes and figure out what to do.
If you don't have a good memory, then a short one page outline that you can reference would be very useful. You can also use different colored highlighters to color code various things (an old college note taking trick).
Flexibility to say, "Yes," and Improvise
If you understand your scenario, you would understand what would break it and how to weave changes into it. A game is a collaborative process. If the GM is the producer of a play providing the scenery (world system. e.g. 1920's CoC), the set (smoke filled speakeasy), the lighting (gritty and non-pulpy), the spear carriers (NPCs, bar employees and drunks), and the conflict (the drama and instigating action. e.g. a nun gets chased into the group of PCs by cultists), the Players are the improv actors providing the dialog and action and emotional content.
So, if a Player wants to do something that's reasonable, within the PCs abilities and doesn't break the world's rules, I'd let the PC try the action even if it was totally out of the box (unexpected, not covered by the scenario if a published scenario or you if you wrote the scenario). It is up to the GM to provide the target numbers and to determine the side-effect of failure. If the action is interesting enough, the GM can allow a success, even on a failed die roll, but add a setback or condition due to the bad die roll. e.g. PC wants to swing across the room on a chandelier and kick a bad guy into a pit. Instead of just failing, and not even being able to swing across the room, the GM can ask the Player, "Do you want to succeed with a setback?" If the answer is, "Yes," then the PC could succeed, but the bad guy grabs onto the PC's leg and now the PC is hanging off the edge of the pit and the bad guy is clinging to the PC's leg.
If you understand your scenario, you can move scenes around without damaging the pacing or flow. I was in a game run by Mike Mason and when the party broke up into 3 groups, he gave each group something to do, even the group that went to the library to do research (which generally is a die roll and a snore-fest). It was a published scenario and after the game, I read the scenario and found out that Mike cut-and-pasted various scenes, giving each group a scene even though they hadn't followed the required clue trails. It was masterfully done.
Pacing
Give players things to do. And try to even out each player's screen time. This is more important at a convention as you want everyone to have a good time. At a home game, you get to understand how much screen time each player actually wants. For long homebrew campaigns, one trick I use is to make each session or short scenario about one PC, so the focus is on that PC only for that session, but the focus over various sessions rotates through all the players. I ran a Ghost in the Shell game and each mission was tied to a different PC. I got this idea by watching Star Trek. There were Spock episodes, Kirk episodes, and Bones episodes, etc. So, why not have game episodes based on a specific PC? Rotate for fairness.
When a group breaks off to do research, it generally is just a die roll and then they wind up sitting and waiting as the other group goes and investigates a haunted location or follows a bad guy. The screen time becomes uneven. Unless the library group just wants to sit back and be safe, you can add some urgency by giving them some critical information or as Mike Mason did, make the adventure come to them. Have some bad guys lay a trap or follow them in the library. If I were an evil cultist, I would have someone watch for people researching ways to kill my cult.
I got some training from various schools of fiction. So, I'm a fan of a cycle of rising tension, periods of calm, and more rising tension going towards a climax. It's good to take a pulse of how the players are reacting, whether they are engaged or being bored.
Sense of Drama
If you have a good sense of the current pacing and the current tension level, you can then crank up the tension level, but how do you do that? You'll need a good sense of drama.
If the PCs are going to face the big bad, are they worried? Or do they think it's a piece of cake? If they're worried, maybe you don't need to do anything else. If piece of cake, maybe add some doubt. Do they have the right ritual? Do they know how to perform it? Are their ingredients correct? Are they being followed? Is the big bad mocking them? What do they not know? How do you signal this to the PCs? Have them notice they're being spied upon or attack them in their place of safety by some assassins (natural or supernatural). This will generally force the PCs to act sooner than later. They can't turtle up if their places of safety are compromised.
If the PCs are on the run, you want to make it more desperate, more hopeless. Why not add complications. Have someone be hurt, possibly from a side-effect of combat. Or give them some innocents that need to be saved. Do they take them with them? Or let them die? Are resources like ammo or food running out?
If the PCs are reluctant to face the climax, how do you make them invested in the climax? The best games give the PCs a stake in the outcome. If they don't face the big bad, something horrible will happen. In CoC, it's generally the end of the world, but that is too generic. But if the big bad starts affecting them or their loved ones in subtle ways first, and as the scenario progresses, they realize it's getting worse, then that'll get their attention. Threat to them and their loved ones always gets their attention. Eternal Lies does this beautifully by attacking the PCs sources of stability and pillars of sanity throughout the campaign (my favorite Cthulhu campaign). Not only do the PCs face danger, but between scenarios, their loved ones are affected either subtly or attacked directly, so they must return and face the danger. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more."
Understanding Human Nature
If the GM understands human nature, the GM can use that as examples during a game. When a PC makes a notice roll or a psychology roll, I love to give telling details about an NPC. It's great when the player understands what tell I'm giving them without having to explain it explicitly. e.g. "When he was answering that question, his hands were shaking as he was lighting his cigarette, it wasn't before." "He keeps on secretly glancing over your shoulder, as if he's expecting something, but you notice that he's doing that." "The nerdy bookseller didn't even flinch when you pointed the gun at him, something's not right." "Her voice changed, suddenly, her voice is more confident, you're not sure if earlier it was an act all along or if she suddenly got more courage." "He has his hands in his bathrobe pockets, holding something that's pointed at you, and you can tell he's very calm and not nervous at all, this is not what you expect."
These little tells, makes the game more interesting, it engages the mind of the players, makes them try to figure out what's going on. I played in one game where the GM had us explain what we were trying to do such as "I want to seduce a tourist" and he just had us make the die roll and told us, "You did it." I didn't like that game style. I prefer to at least role play some of the dialog or action before doing the die roll. Or even having a hidden difficulty level, so maybe you might have actually failed because the person being seduced is really a NPC plant that's going to betray you later.
What makes a Great Player?
Understanding the Game
A player needs to understand what game they're playing. Is this a min/max game? Is it an investigative game? Is this a humorous game? Is it serious? Is it a story telling game? What game are you in?
When you understand what game you're in then you can act appropriately. If it's a gritty spy game that's realistic, don't jump in guns blazing and be surprised when the Russian guards gun you down and then hunt and kill the rest of your team. Yeah, that'll ruin the game for everyone.
Flexibility to say, "Yes," and Improvise
Think if interesting things to do, but don't nerf the whole game for everyone else. If someone wants to infiltrate an enemy base by disguising themselves, how do you help them? Don't just say, "No. I want to just blow it up by tunneling underneath the bunker and planting explosives. My character lets everyone else do their thing and I'll do mine. As a side note, I blow everyone up including the other PCs." Why are you playing a RPG with other players if you're not going to interact with them? Maybe you can use your explosives skill as a diversion or you can put a suicide vest on the person infiltrating. Add to the plan, make it better, be flexible.
Able to Work with Others
Again, why are you playing a RPG with other players if you're not going to interact with them? Maybe if you think their plan is stupid or lacking, you can bring up your own plan or improvements. Figure out how you can make the game more interesting for yourself and everyone else too.
Sense of Drama
Sometimes people get into the D&D mindset of winning and losing. I think having interesting situations makes the game more memorable than killing that 3rd dragon and taking his loot.
Some people try to avoid conflict, but conflict makes things more interesting. In a KAP game I'm playing in, one of my PCs defeated a knight most of the PCs hated. They wanted to kill and torture him, but since I captured him, I got to decide what to do. The PC who captured the bad guy really didn't have a grudge against his captive, so I ransomed him and let him go. I got a lot of player grief because of it, but it was better drama and of course the big bad knight stayed as a major antagonist in the game and added more plot twists and side adventures. I went for better story, not for the easy win. You're on the run and you run into some fleeing NPCs. Do you just let them try to survive by themselves or do you try to save them? Well, letting them die is the easy solution, but if you try to save them, it ups the drama and makes the game more interesting. Maybe they'll have a clue to help you? Maybe the injured will slow you down and let the bad guys catch up? Maybe they're bad guys in disguise? Maybe one of them is a replacement PC? Lots of options and more drama, making the game more interesting.
Paying Attention to the Game and to Details
In investigative games, it helps to keeps notes if your memory isn't that great. I have a pretty good memory, so I like to be in the moment and play. Taking notes takes you out of the moment. You need to keep engaged and watch what's going on. I've been in a game where other players are either drifting off or paying attention to their smart phone, then when it's their turn, they ask, "What?" Then the table has to go over again what's happened. It kills the pacing and wastes time. Everyone's time is valuable, so don't waste other people's time and let everyone get more playing in by paying attention. If your attention is focused, you'll pick up telling details and the game will be richer for you. Nuances will be lost if you're totally not focused and maybe when it's time to do that ritual, you'll suddenly remember a detail that'll help you succeed, instead of wondering why it failed spectacularly.
Here's two great articles on being a better player (links are below), language is a bit harsh though:
Fact: 1936, a special list of people were made to determine who would be put into internment camps, as ordered by President Roosevelt.
Fact: 1942, 110,000 to 120,000 people of Japanese Ancestry were put into concentration camps. 62% were US citizens. The people were forced to sell their property and put into camps.
Fact: Holocaust. 1941-1945, 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews (communists, gays, political opposition) were murdered. So, 11 million people were exterminated in 5 years.
Fact: 2017, President Trump ordered an immigration ban based on country of origin and religion.
Fact: 2017, Steve Bannon is President Trump's Chief Strategist.
Fact: 2017, Bannon said there's going to be a war in the South China Sea with China in the next 5 to 10 years.
Fact: 2016, Bannon said there were too many Asian tech CEOs in Silicon Valley.
Fact: 2010, There's 3.8 million people of Chinese descent in USA.
Opinion: If there's a war with China, they can round up 3.8 million Chinese-Americans and put them in internment camps. It is not unimaginable. When the Jews were being put into freight cars, more than a few thought they were just rounding up "bad" elements initially, but why would they round up doctors, scientists, lawyers, politicians, business men, who contribute to society? It was unimaginable. Well, the excuse is terrorism. The result might be new internment camps.
Opinion: Why is the immigration ban important? (yes, there's arguments about what it's called, but the immigration ban is what media calls it.) For me it's a litmus test to see if a stronger Executive Order can be signed that would allow rounding up any possible terrorists. If this immigration ban succeeds, then a stronger Executive Order can be signed that will repeat Executive Order 9066, but for Chinese Americans. And from our experience with the Japanese internment camps, citizenship does not exclude you from being taken to an internment camp.
Opinion: "3.8 million people are a lot of people, it'll be impossible to round up that many people." During WW2, the Germans and Axis powers rounded up and killed 11 million people in 5 years. Not impossible. With computers, social media, and modern transportation, it'll be even easier to make a list of names and put people into concentration camps. Hey, to move so many people, the trains and buses will finally run on time.
I find that these are two of the more interesting independent RPGs around. I love using Dread for survival horror games and running A Penny For My Thoughts as a quick ad hoc pickup game.
Both systems have their flaws and both do not use dice. Dread uses a Jenga tower and A Penny for My Thoughts uses pennies.
Both are setting agnostic.
Tips for running Dread
1. Know how many pulls are required for your tower to go down.
My Jenga set typically takes 25 to 35 pulls before the tower goes down. One of my friends custom made an acrylic Jenga tower with led lights beneath the tower, unfortunately took 50 pulls before it would go down since the blocks were too smooth. Another friend of mine had a cheap knock off version with a rough finish and it took 15 to 20 pulls before the tower went down. Another painted his blocks and it made them too tacky. You get the idea, each tower has their own personality and quirks.
But why do you need to know how many pulls before your tower goes down? For pacing your game properly.
2. Continuously gauge the stability of the tower. Try to keep your game's plot in sync with the tower's stability.
As a GM, you must be cognizant that the stability of the Jenga tower and your game plot/tension need to be in sync. When the Jenga tower is stable, it should be lull period in your game. When the Jenga tower is unstable, that is when the tension should be ratcheted up. When they are out of sync, your game will suffer for it.
I played in a game where an inexperienced Dread GM had us meet the Big Bad Climax right after the tower had gone down. Well, of course, we defeated the Big Bad easily since the tower was newly rebuilt. Anti-Climatic? Completely.
3. If the tower is too stable for a climatic scene, throw in pre-set encounters/scenes as filler to destabilize the tower.
Always have several filler scenes or encounters for the players that you can throw in that requires pulls from the tower. Then you can use them to destabilize the tower before a climatic scene.
Pre-set encounters can be monsters or a challenging event like a fire or flood. You can also allow the players to re-equip themselves and make them pull for equipment. An example would be a supply locker underwater that requires pulls to retrieve equipment.
4. When the tower goes down, make the death interesting.
If the character dies during a climatic scene, then describing the character death would be easy, but if during a lull period, when the tower is extremely stable and the tower unexpectedly goes down, having the character die from a paper cut is a bit lame, unless you're going for humor. So, when there's a character death during a lull period, come up with something interesting. For example in the underwater supply locker, instead of just drowning, have something grab them and drag them under. 5. Have replacement characters for a convention game.
Don't tell the players there are replacement characters, but during a convention game, if a player dies early it would just suck to sit out the rest of the game. You can either delay the death til later or give the player a replacement character. The Dread questionnaire can be a bit long, so I'm more of a fan of quick character generation.
6. Plain vanilla Jenga is good, but sprinkles and hot fudge on top is great too.
I have a Throw 'n Go Jenga with colored blocks and a die which limits which blocks you can pull. Some people write numbers on the end of blocks and make people roll dice to determine which blocks can be touched. One of my friends painted his blocks with security clearance colors from Paranoia and the character's security clearance determines which blocks can be pulled. People have also written messages on blocks that can't be read until the block is pulled. Lots of cool things to hack your Jenga tower.
I've written and run two highly customized Dread games: Dread of Winter Horrible Invitational The Carnival Magic - A Haunted Cruise Ship (details on the hacks, but unfortunately this was before I had spoiler sections and fully detailed info on the builds of my games, I'll write a separate blog on how to recreate this game).
Tips for Running A Penny for My Thoughts
1. Agree upon a tone for the game.
If some players want a humorous game and others something serious, then it'll be a problem and unsatisfying for all the players. There are questionnaires online which set up a Cthulhu horror story, a secret agent adventure, or a murder mystery, those help in setting the tone of the game.
I like to pick a movie whose trailer has come out, but no one has seen the movie yet. That sets up the tone, the characters, the genre, and ideas for scenes and gets everyone on the same page. I've played our own version John Carter of Mars and Inception before the movies came out.
One great thing about Fiasco is that the tone is baked into the game.
2. Don't force the merging of story lines, let it happen organically.
The individual character story lines always seem to merge and collapse into a cohesive timeline by themselves. There's no reason to force it. I've played in several games where the odd-man-out wound up being the villain at the end of the game.
3. Keep two 2-minute hourglass sand timers handy.
Some people take too long. One way to rein them in is to tell them everyone is limited to two minutes of narration. When the sand runs out, their time is out. Why two timers? It takes a while to reset the sand timer, while one is running, reset the other one. You can use a digital timer, but I like seeing the sand running and having a visual indication as to how much time is left, and how much has been used.
4. I dislike the ritualistic phrasing and drop most of it.
I just feel like it's too cult-like. So, I drop most of the phrasing and keep only a few phrases:
"When I think of ___, I remember..."
"What did I do or say next?"
"Or was it?"
5. I use glass beads instead of pennies.
Used pennies are filthy. So, I use glass beads instead. You can get a bag of them from any dollar store. They're sold as decorations and for putting in a vase to help hold flower stems in place.
I attended the first Dead of Winter in 2009, an invite only horror convention. It was held at the Brookdale Lodge in the Santa Cruz mountains. It was an epic event. The hotel was rundown, the weather was bad, the gaming was great. This convention happened before I started blogging about the convention games I played in. I started blogging about the games because at a certain Mini-Con, I played with a very terrible GM and I forgot his name and I wound up signing up for another game of his. So, this was a way for me to remember the good games and the bad games (and bad GMs).
I decided to write up the experience because one day, I'm going to forget...
Welcome Sign, I like how the NO is covered up
Exterior of Brookdale Lodge
Exterior of Gaming Cabin to the right of the Lodge
Brook Room, with real brook
Dirty Chandelier
Bar facing Brook Room, note missing panes in stained glass
Interior from Brook Room to Cabin
Stairs from cabin to Brook Room
Giant Fireplace in Cabin
Exterior of Rooms
The Brookdale is in Santa Cruz and after several hours of driving through winding mountain roads during a storm, Shannon M. and I arrived. We had booked one of the "improved" rooms. The price was some outrageous $107/night. The room wasn't up to code. The mattresses were saggy, wall plugs didn't work, electrical plates were missing, lamps in the room didn't work, the toilet handle didn't flush, and the bathroom window was permanently painted open with no bug screen to keep the bugs out and it let the cold air in.
In the morning, I took a tour of the grounds. Crows feasted on overflowing garbage from a dumpster, an adjoining building had burned down. The Brook Room was still beautiful (with a brook running through the middle of the room), but rundown and deathly cold. Dust covered the stained glass chandeliers and the facing bar area had stained glass with missing panes of glass. Rain entered through the holes and the carpets were wet and soggy. Buckets were on the floor catching any rainwater that dripped from the ceiling.
Dumpster, my presence scared the crows away
Burned Down Rooms
Mermaid Room (picture I found on the internet)
Portions of the building were off limits and sealed off, but at night Ralph W. and I took a flashlight tour. In the off limits area, past two sheets of plastic, hung up as a barrier, was the mermaid room. A glass window looked into an algae infested swimming pool. The glass was dirty and moisture streamed down its face. Clumsily drawn murals of a man in a diving suit and Humphrey Bogart decorated the walls. There's supposed to be an entrance to the Gangster Tunnels, but bricked up and hidden inside a cabinet. Something like a playhouse was to the side of the Mermaid room and we went up the creaky rotten stairs, afraid that the floor would collapse beneath us, we left quickly.
The only thing still open was the full bar where pictures of famous people decorated the walls. President Herbert Hoover, movie stars like Marilyn Monroe, and gangsters like Al Capone used to frequent the Brookdale Lodge. Across the hall from the bar was the public restroom; one of the urinals was missing, there's just some plumbing sticking out of the wall and missing tile, but no urinal. Next to it, was a functioning urinal. I think in one of the stalls, the toilet was missing or disconnected and on it's side.
During our lunch break, sandwiches were provided in the bar area (not the full bar) that overlooked the Brook Room. Buckets captured water dripping down from the ceiling and water blown in through the missing panes of the stained glass window. The carpet was squishy.
Tree Trunk in Hallway to Cabin
To get to the cabin, you have to traverse some stairs and in the hallway, there's a tree trunk growing through part of the building.
The cabin has a "cold" spot and if you sit over it, it's definitely chilly, much more chilly than the unheated cabin. We started a fire in the giant fireplace, something out of Orson Well's Citizen Kane (it's actually a bit smaller, but you get my drift), but someone forgot to open up the flue and smoked out the cabin. That evening, the power went out. When we returned from dinner for our evening session, we wound up playing by candle light.
The Brookdale Lodge has several ghost stories associated with it. I eventually constructed a Dread game using our experiences and the Lodge's history as a setting. Link to game here. I was going to run it at the Brookdale, but it had been shut down by the fire department just that year and DoW was moved to the Oakland Airport Hilton instead.
I think only Badger experienced some ghostly apparition. Ask Badger about the visitor in his room.
I played in great games run by great GMs. It's been so many years since then that I'm not going to bother about creating a spoiler section. Assume minor spoilers below.
Saturday, Dec 12 10am-4pm
Title: Silent Night
GM: Gil Trevizo
This game was based on the movie: Bad Santa. I got to play Billy Bob Thornton and Shannon got to play Bernie Mac. Lots of high jinks ensued. In addition to trying to rip off the mall, there were zombies, penguins, doberman pinschers, Delta Green, disintegrations, sex with animals, and STDs.
Saturday Dec 12, 6pm - 1am
Title: Partners
GM: Badger McIness
I got to be a cop that was a serial killer. I only killed lowlifes and prostitutes. We investigated a construction site and the other PCs decided to kill my character instead of the alien infected PC -- go figure. I actually got out of the construction site first, disabled their vehicle, and fled back to my townhouse to get some stuff (serial killer victim trophies) before leaving town. They actually called a cab, hunted me down, and shot me to death as I clutched the trophies to my chest. And the alien got away.
Sunday, Dec 13 10:30am - 4:30pm
Title: Communicable
GM: Kristin Hayworth
My introduction the Dread. OMG. Kristin thought the game was a disaster (her words, years later), but it was the most amazing game ever. The first mistake she made was to announce before the game started that there are no lines in this game, that this is a horror game and anything goes. In this game was Mike M, Matt G, Matt A, Matt D, Shannon M, and Morgan H. (I think Mike G might have been in the game too, but I'm not sure.) Well for those who don't know, when you get Mike M and Matt G in the same game, the combination is a bit explosive, um, nuclear. So, during character creation, Mike M rolls 1d6 and says his character's had 4 abortions and asked how many I've had. Then I pick up a 1d20 and roll a 12. On our character sheets, we write down various character backgrounds. When I handed mine in, Kristin crossed a line out on my character sheet and shouted, "NO!" So much for no lines cannot be crossed. Then of course everyone wanted to know what was on my character sheet. I wrote down that I have so many abortions because my boyfriend liked to make me pregnant and collect the aborted fetuses in jars.
Matt D accidentally kicked the table early in the game, knocking down the Jenga tower, and Kristin let him live until the alien burst out from his body.
At one point, one PC repeatedly slammed a car door into another to make her spontaneously abort.
Another time a PC put mattresses to block a doorway to keep alien infected humans out and also leaving other PCs stuck outside.
We had to choose between running over a little girl in the middle of the street or crashing our car. We would have run the girl over except Kristin added that the girl would cure cancer in the future.
At one point, if we reveal a dark deep secret, we would get a bennie, a small skull which you can turn in instead of pulling from the Jenga tower. I think we were, as a group, watching aliens crawl out of the ground and the Jenga tower was very unstable, so that was when I decided to tell everyone that my character had AIDS. There was deep silence as all the PCs did the relationship math and realized they all had been exposed to AIDS.
In this game, we were the most horrible people and we all deserved to die. I think Matt A and Matt G made it out alive.
Sunday, Dec 13 6pm - 1am
Title: Northwest Passage
GM: Matt Steele
Up in Alaska, there's coldness and darkness, and strange things that Eskimos are afraid to talk about. Very strange things started happening like dinosaurs rampaging in the snow, so we holed up at a ranger station. I think my character was the town's dog catcher. At the end, some PCs ignited a big tank of propane and I jumped to cover Matt G's character (or maybe Mike M's? I don't remember now. See? My memory is going.) and saved him from the explosion. My character was a big guy and was able to protect him from the blast, but alas, my dog catcher died.
This year's DoW was the 2nd best DoW; the best being the first one I attended in 2009 where I was introduced to Dread by Kristin S. and had the legendary way-over-the-top game with Matt A., Matt D., Matt G., Mike M., Shannon M., and I. As a side thought, the first DoW happened before I was blogging about my RPG adventures and it was such a memorable experience, I should write it up before old age sets in and I forget everything. DoW? What? Who? Eh? What that you say?
This year, I didn't run a game, but decided to try for the Player lottery. DoW GMs automatically get a seat, but the remaining seats are filled in a first-come, first-served basis and are generally filled right after registration opens in the first day, if not the first few hours. All the games I was in this year were excellent, not good, or fair, or bad, but excellent, like three Michelin stars excellent, a gourmet gaming experience bonanza. So, in this article, I'm going to focus on the GM chef tricks of the trade that I noticed which contributed to the experience.
I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked.
Dec 10, Saturday 11am
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 7th ed.
Scenario Title: And For My Next Trick
GM: Aaron Vanek
Number of Players: 6 (Mike G. / Alexis G. / Bill L. / Josh C. / Shannon M. / Morgan H.)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: In the 1920's, Scientific American magazine offered a reward of $2500 to anyone who could definitively prove they possessed psychic abilities. Their investigative team included: Dr. William McDougall, a founder of modern psychology; Dr. Daniel Comstock, the inventor of Technicolor film; Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, an Episcopalian minister; and Harry Houdini. The magazine rescinded the offer after internal strife regarding “The Margery Incident” and the team went their separate ways. But the managing editor of SA, J. Malcolm Bird, is putting the group back together for one more investigation. Pre-generated characters are these historical figures, including Houdini.
I really enjoyed this game due to the interaction between the players and the nice buildup of tension and action.
Trick 1: Do research, but use it as a jumping off point, not as the template for the game.
This game was very well researched. But the research material is only the jumping off point for the game. Some GMs make the mistake of using real history as the template for the whole game and try to railroad the players into playing out the historical events. That is a big mistake. Instead, Aaron started with the historical events having already happened and the game starting afterwards. The other thing Aaron did was to tell us, that though the characters are historical, once the players get their hands on them, we can do as we want and ahistorical events could happen. e.g. Houdini can die early.
The famous historical event that already happened before the game started was Houdini and Margery. You can read about it in the links below (I dug this up after the game):
Matt S. uses a technique for hidden die rolls. He has players roll a series of 1d100 for hidden rolls and have them written down on a sheet of paper. For instance, instead of asking a player to roll a Spot Hidden, he just looks it up on the sheet and crosses it out. This prevents the players from meta-gaming a roll when they fail a roll. How many times has a GM asked a player to roll a Spot Hidden and after a failure, the other players ask to make a Spot Hidden also? Well, Aaron has a nice variation on this. He had each of us roll a series of ten 1d100 and have us write it down on a single shared sheet of paper that's handed to the GM. Then instead of going through the pre-rolled numbers top-down, he rolls 1d10 and selects that pre-rolled number, so if a player had memorized their rolls, it's now randomized. Nice.
Trick 3. The third technique he used which I want to talk about is in the Spoiler section.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The game starts off with "getting the band back together again." After the falling out between Bird and Houdini, another psychic medium is found and Bird invites the old Scientific American investigative team for dinner at a posh restaurant. His task is to convince the team to investigate and if possible certify the medium as genuine.
Of course, there's history between all the characters and that provides some role playing opportunities as they hash out their old differences and colors their interaction.
What I really enjoyed was that we were able to do two seances: One at the medium's place and one inside our control location.
The first seance followed the standard darkening of the room, candles, holding hands, and contacting the spirit, the ringing of a bell by a ghostly spirit, and asking the medium questions from the spirit world. Other than the possible manifestation of a shadowy rat thing, everything we noticed could have been a sham.
The second seance was where Aaron shined. We did a seance in our own controlled room. Supernatural things happened. When the "spirit" took over the medium, he grabbed my hand tightly which reflexively caused all the other players in the circle who were holding hands to do the same thing, creating a wave of clutched hands, then he did a great booming "transformed" voice. This made us all jump. It was a well done piece of theater.
Trick 3: Know how people react physically and use it well in game (squeezing the hands tightly and a shocking loud voice). Another example of this is how people react to the Jenga Tower in Dread.
The players were convinced the event was real and the medium took the prize money to pay off a strange Oriental gentleman to get an urn of ashes. She then proceeded to summon a "demon" which the players were unable to stop which gathered her up in its arms and flew away.
The build up of action was good, except I found the start a bit too slow, we took an hour getting ready for our first scene. We had to read 3 pages of character background and also another 2 pages about the tiff between Bird and Houdini (for those who knew about the details). Then there were numerous GM / Player meetings. So, when Aaron asked if he should take into account a lunch break or we would just power through, we voted for powering through. We wanted more play time. I think that's one of the dangers of too much research, the GM wants to show the players all the wonderful work he's done and some of it isn't necessary for the game.
I did like that the scenario ended the way it did. Too many scenarios ramp up to the ending of the world and the players trying to stop it. It did look like it was headed that way due to an opening vortex above a high rise apartment building. This time, it was just a disturbance that went away, but the investigators got to gaze deeply into the unknown.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Dec 10, Saturday 7pm
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 7th ed.
Scenario Title: The Road
GM: Aaron Teixeira
Power Level: US Army Engineers
Number of Players: 6 (Bill L. / Morgan H. / Matt R. / Mike E. / Chris O. / Skylar W.)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: February 6th, 1942, the US Army, with authorization from Congress and President Roosevelt, approved plans to build a road from the Dawson Creek, British Columbia through the Yukon to Delta Junction, Alaska. Ten thousand men are cutting their way through the frozen North where the muck and mire reach up to swallow their tractors and eyes watch them from the darkened forest.
Again really good research into the dark history of WW2 - pun intended. The character interactions were great and there was a really good buildup to the spectacular ending. A minor spoiler, but it's a reveal in the first ten seconds of the game, the engineering group we're playing belongs to an all black battalion.
Here are links to the historical event that I found after the game:
Trick 1: If you want to build camaraderie, put them in a situation that they must work together.
Aaron was able to create camaraderie between the characters through shared hardship. It all started with man vs nature, not man vs man, so we had to band together to beat nature and our initial man vs man issues.
Trick 2: Know when to ignore game system rules.
Aaron doesn't play by the rules. One of the main rules of most RPGs is that the GM decides which rules to apply and which to ignore. A lot of GMs forget this number one rule. Aaron lets players push and burn luck at the same time to avoid critical failures (a big no-no in CoC 7th rules), just so they can survive and be a band of brothers to face the finale together.
Trick 3: Understand your game and what serves it best. Not all games must run in real time.
Between set pieces, Aaron was willing to let days if not weeks go by for the characters. More about this in the spoiler section.
Trick 4: When a PC is going to die, give them a choice as to how they want it to end.
Sometimes PC death is unavoidable. But when my character was going to bite the big one, Aaron gave me a choice of Everywhere, Down, or Up. I picked Up. So, instead of just dying in some horrible way and just becoming a blood splattered corpse which I expected to happen, I got to choose, which was very cool.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The characters are members of the 97th Engineering Battalion responsible for building a road through the frozen north in Alaska. The issues they face are not only the elements, but lack of equipment and discrimination as an all black battalion.
We had various Mad-Lib forms to fill out to create some Man vs Man connections between the characters (there are friend and foe connections). So we start our characters with some Man vs Man issues.
The game started with a lot of save throws against the environment such as the cold and insects. As things went from bad to worse, we wound up having to work together to survive and by the time it was ready face the big bad, we were a cohesive team.
Aaron had various set pieces and the standouts were: Building a bridge and it's failure. Stealing bulldozers. A group that commits a crime together sticks together. :-) And of course, the finale.
Trick 3: Characters went to the hospital between set pieces because that served the game best.
After characters got hurt, they went to the Army hospital and rested until they're ready for active duty - which made sense. But you still needed to survive the set piece in order to get to the hospital. What was important was that the characters bonded and faced the final terror together, so allowing the characters to heal up served the story better than just grinding the characters down and making them suffer which is a different type of game. So, the GM trick was to understand your game and what served it best. In this instance, letting the characters completely heal, served the story verses having some battalion commander order them out into the field while injured to face more danger.
We were bulldozing a stand of Aspens, and of course, as we headed towards the heart of its creation, we found a ritual tree with a protective circle. "Tree got Freddie" and Tree got bulldozer.
One of the best moments was in the finale when the team attacked the big bad, a Dark Young, with bulldozers, gasoline, and dynamite. After the gasoline and dynamite went off (which we were so ready to see the thing die and the game end. "Game Over Man, Game Over!"), nothing happened to the big bad which was immune to those things. Yes, Aaron gave us those things at the beginning of the game and of course, we thought that was what we needed to kill it. There's some gleeful GM cackling happening somewhere.
We did finally manage to kill it with the bulldozers and that big bad fight was incredibly satisfying.
Shaking hands over the final link of the highway.
Trick 4: Everywhere, Down, Up.
I think Everywhere is being in the explosion when the dynamite went off. Down is being thrown with the bulldozer like a rag doll and becoming an impact weapon against the white road building team. And Up, which is what I chose, was to be taken up into the bosom of The Mother, Shub-Niggurath, and turned into some abomination to survive for all time.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Dec 11, Sun 11am
Game System: Nemesis | ORE
Scenario Name: The House that Jaeger Built
GM: Jack Young
Variations: Modern day, no Madness Meter, minor hacks
Power Level: Experienced special agents and consultants
Number of Players: 6 (Jill S. / Matt A. / Aaron V. / John C. / Jason M. / Morgan H.)
Characters Provided: Of course
Description: New York occult author Lucy Kane is missing. The Psychological Crimes Division of the FBI handles cases of an occult, serial, or unusual nature and your team has been called in to aid in the investigation. Will a decrepit Bronx hotel give up its secrets . . . or its dead?
I'm a big fan of Jack's games and I had heard great things about this game, so I was excited about playing in it. The thing about Jack's games is that they never finish on time. They always run long. So, this time, Jack worked on speeding things up and kept the meat of the game. Afterwards, someone who had played in this game before told me this game should really be a 9 hour game. But kudos to Jack, we finished in 6.5 hours.
Trick 1: Don't be afraid to tell players things and emphasize it is not a GM trick.
To cut various investigative leads out and to save time, Jack told us, these things were already done and by trusted people. Just to give us a flavor, the asked us what we would look at and just narrated the fruitless dead ends that we ourselves ran into. So, we shortcut to the House that Jaeger Built where our adventure really begins - and it's no secret since it's in the game title and game description.
Trick 2: Don't be afraid to shorten combat to save time for more important scenes.
At one point, Jack was going to let one of the major bad guys get away and extend the combat, but we were already short on time, so he was brave enough to ret-con himself (which a lot of GMs are afraid to do) and said, "Let me change this. You actually shoot him in the head and he's dead." Which was ok since the PC did do a head shot, but it was a tie between the bad guy and the PC. Initially, Jack was going to rule that the bad guy got away (probably with some reduced damage), but changed his mind. There was still going to be more major action to come, so it was a trade off between lessening the events at this point, but allowing time for the finale. What would be worse would be running out of time and having to narrate the finale.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
In this game, our only existing lead was to a rundown hotel in a bad neighborhood and two names. We find one of the names on the mailboxes in the lobby and proceed upstairs.
No one answers the door and as we discuss the legality of breaking and entering, a person with groceries shows up. After some questioning and no legal cause for entry, we get ready to leave when a cat slips outside the apartment with a "Help. I'm being held note" tied to its collar.
So, we break in and start a gun fight. Which leads to a secret room with Nazi paraphernalia and our kidnap victim, an occult hunter looking for ghosts. But we find out too late that something bad has happened and the whole building has been transferred edge-wise to a different dimension and we find out we need to find and kill an old ghost that is the anchor to this reality. (It's actually more complicated than this, but you get the picture.)
There are also ghosts sprinkled throughout the building and we had researched their histories and hauntings earlier. In the finale, we get help from the ghosts in defeating the big bad and we succeed and also windup freeing the ghosts in the building. As players, we can tell we probably should have spent some time interacting with some of the ghosts earlier on in order to get their help, but as this was a quick version of a Jack game, we never got to do that. We did talk to some kids playing in the building and got some clues as to where some of the ghostly behavior was occurring, but once we broke into the apartment, all the investigation stopped.
This game was very well constructed with clues sprinkled throughout the game and some tough puzzles and issues which we somehow with our top notch team of investigators (and good players) figured out. The ending was very satisfying and we only wished we had the full 10 hours to play this game in its entirety.
I got to play a doctor and wanted to do a different spin on it. He took his Hippocratic oath seriously. Even though he had a gun, he only fired it at supernatural creatures, and spent most of his time playing coroner and healing people. During the gun fight, he called NYPD and notified them that the PCD of the FBI was in the building and that shots were being fired and to send an ambulance. When faced with a person who seemed supernatural, but he wasn't sure, he zip tied him instead of shooting him. I got to dig through garbage bags and check dead bodies. Good times.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Dec 11, Sun 7pm
Game System: The Veil (Evolved)
Scenario Title: Meat
GM: Matthew Grau
Variations: Splatterpunk
Power Level: Transhuman (of a sort)
Number of Players: 6 (Aaron T. / Lis H. / Morgan H. / Frank F.)
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: Fall in the Midwest. What a wonderful time to go camping with your friends! The leaves are just starting to turn, the crisp air is invigorating, and the summer bugs are gone. You’ve got your tent, your flashlight, and a cooler stocked with cheap beer and meat for the fire. The venison burgers are already smelling good. Yup, this is just about as good as it gets. This is a Body Horror Splatterpunk-style game, which means lots of violence and gore. I’ll do terrible things to you, and you’ll do terrible things to others. I’ll be making custom characters based on who is playing, so that the horror can be a little more personal. This game is also diceless, so you’ll be actively participating in crafting the narrative. Just want to be up-front in case any of this isn’t your cup of tea.
OMG, I laughed through all 6 hours of this game. Lis and Aaron were amaze balls in this. I don't think I can describe any part of this game without getting into trouble (I'll put some of the more tame stuff in the spoiler section), so the only thing I can say is that it was definitely xXx-Rated for sexual content. Lis and Aaron carried most of this game and I was happy to watch the most amazing game ever.
Trick 1: When great scenes eat up your time, let them run, don't cut them short, but steal time from follow-on scenes or throw scenes out and only keep the essential ones.
Matt had a lot of scenes and encounters and I think he threw out at least half of what he had for us and only kept the bare bones. We finished in time and had a great time. I think letting the narrative flow go until a natural stopping point worked very well. Instead of cutting a scene short, Matt just threw away scenes he probably spent a lot of time working on to adjust for the time we were taking in each scene.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Game starts with us at a DoW reunion beach camping. I suggested playing Flaming Dread with giant 2x4 pieces and having Kristin run the game for us.
Well, after finding a weird body on the beach, we all wound up getting killed and we wake up with our bodies modified in an alien lab.
So, the whole game was about escaping the lab and running into alien weirdness and mad science.
As the game progressed, we got to upgrade our bodies.
The game was brilliant. To get out, we kept on putting on more and more extreme body modifications.
Lis and Aaron become a symbiotic creature that seemed like a Dark Young / Shub-Niggurath creature. Frank and my character became a Master Blaster team. I was just a head and Frank was the Frankenstein-like creature. But my skills started to evolve into hyper-scanning and speed. Eventually, the body modifications allowed me to actively scan and send out x-rays and other energetic particles to scan for things and my gaze could start to unravel matter and my speed increased so fast it could reach the speed of light and effect time travel. Yes, I was starting to be a proto-Azathoth whose gaze destroys all and bends time and space.
The person responsible for our changes as this mad scientist who looked human. He said he had great power, but after the game, I'm convinced that he was Nyarlathotep.
Mike M. missed the game and he was supposed to start as a proto-Shoggoth.
Highlights:
Jet propulsion via ram jetting sewage through Aaron's orifices.
Glow fetus on umbilical cords as light source.
Vagina dentata as a weapon.
Aaron's description of how his 5 stomachs processes DNA for re-insemination.
Call of Cthulhu 7.0 Edition
