#just to get a feel for running a session and playing npcs and such

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

My gf is the GM of a cool little ttrpg group I'm in, but she's been busy this week and the session was going to be cancelled

I couldn't deal with losing the weekly game night, so I asked if I could GM a "beach episode" (which ended up being a holiday episode actually since I've now written it)

I've never been a GM before. I want to, desperately, but it's daunting. So I figured a holiday episode would be a really good start!

It's two days before the session. I've never been a GM. Never planned a session. I got the idea while procrastinating my job and immediately asked my gf if I could. I didn't think it through.

Consequences of my actions

But I actually kind of wrote down what I want to do and it's been very fun, and I have another day to finalize this plan

[unsettlingcreature]

i miss playing d&d........................

[ragsy]

[placid smile of someone who is seconds away from going apeshit with Big Feelings] my monster of the week game has only two episodes left before it's over

I'm fine I'm normal about this

[maximumzombiecreator]

I've seen a lot of posts recently where people say they can't find players to play non-5e TTRPGs with. As someone who moves countries every few years, I've had to rebuild my roster of local TTRPG players from scratch a number of times. Here's how I do it.

Caveats first: while I've done this in small cities, I have always done it in cities. If you're in, like, a rural environment, you might just not have enough interested people around. You can always do it online in that case. I'm not really going to cover finding players online, except to say you should probably look for communities for the specific system you want to play. Most of them are enthusiastically looking for new participants. Especially game masters.

Okay, first things first, you gotta find people. I generally find I get better results if the search is location first. That is, rather than using city-wide or regional Looking For Group type internet groups, I look for physical locations that host gaming groups. Local game stores, public libraries, gaming cafes/bars, etc.

Being location first helps avoid some common bad behaviours. Online LFG groups often have a few shitty people hanging around who can't find long term groups because they're shitty. They'll jump at the opportunity to join new groups where people don't know them, because everyone else knows better than to game with them. But location-based groups are better at filtering this. Someone who harasses people at an LGS can be banned from the store, but decentralized online groups struggle to handle these situations in my personal experience.

Being location first also solves the next problem, which is giving you a location to play. Eventually, when I have a long term group, I'll host games in my home. But there needs to be a level of trust before that feels safe, and we're looking for randoms, so for now we need a public gaming venue. If, for whatever reason, there aren't dedicated gaming spaces where you can do this, I've had the most success gaming in cafes or restaurants during off peak hours. I've run a bunch of games in restaurants from, like, 2pm-5pm on a Saturday, and as long as you're buying drinks and some snacks or something, and being polite and non-disruptive, it's typically not too hard to get permission.

Now, if that local group has enough interest in a non-5e system that I'm interested in running, I'll happily do that, and it's pretty free from there. Most people who are willing to play one other system will gladly try others if they find they like playing with you. But even in big cities, I feel it's pretty often the case that postings for local games of other systems don't wind up actually finding successful groups.

So, here is the bit where, unfortunately, finding people to play non-5e games with involves playing some 5e. Community groups are always looking for more GMs to run games, so I will set out to run a number of short 5e adventures, each with different groups. These are typically oneshots that I have the option of extending for another 1 or 2 sessions.

I always run adventures that I've written myself for these, because I want my particular GMing style to really come through. Looking for players is a two way street. I'm looking for people I like GMing for, but I'm also looking to make sure they know what they're getting. Especially if I'm going to ask them to play a system they've never tried, they should know that there's going to be something they enjoy. So, these short adventures are full of the types of silly but sincere NPCs I tend to run, the open-ended scenarios I prefer, the tropes I favour, etc. If someone isn't going to enjoy playing with me, I want them to know it from this adventure.

I structure the adventures to give me a lot of flexibility in terms of how long they run. They're nearly always mysteries, but with some active component to the mystery, so that if things drag or dawdle I can have the villain show up and force a final confrontation. They're also structured to have a natural "next thing." You find and defeat the villain, but there's an implied next villain you'll be going after. That way, if the group is working well and I want to continue, it's easy to present the option to the group. But if I'm not interested in continuing with the group, the next thing can just serve as an "and the adventures continue" implied epilogue, and the game still feels complete.

I don't like players just bringing their own character sheet to the table. Someone who brings a disruptive character can ruin a session without me getting much useful information out of it, other than that I don't want to play with that person. And if it ruins the experience for the other players, I'm often out the opportunity to game with those people, through neither of our faults. I've experimented with both asking players to submit their characters in advance or making them choose between a collection of premade characters. The former is a good check for whether people will put in a basic amount of effort and follow instructions, but it can dissuade people who are just looking to dip their toes into playing for the first time. The latter can turn off players who are into crunchy games and are excited about character building. As a result, I'll usually choose the approach based on what non-5e system I'm currently most excited about running. Do I want to get together a group for a rules-light game? Premade characters it is. Looking to run some PF2e? Please submit your character sheet in advance. Some locations also do more drop-in based games, in which case it's premades all day.

As I'm running the game, I'm observing the players. There's a simple vibe check, obviously. Do I like playing with this person? But I'm also looking at how they play. What are they here for, what's exciting them? Are they struggling with finding optimal turns in combat, or do they like mastering a system? Are they curious about the world, or do they glaze over when the spotlight isn't on them? Do they light up in dialogue scenes? Do they want to try crazy things outside of their on-sheet abilities? Remember, later, I'm going to try to persuade this person to try to play a game they've never played before. I need to know what specifically is going to excite them.

I have (always with permission) recorded sessions before to go over in making these choices, but honestly even just a few small reminder notes will help me unravel things later. If a session goes well, I'll ask at the end for people to give me their contact information if they'd be interested in playing again. Non-committal, at their comfort, and it doesn't single out people that I don't want to play with. I can always just not call them. Usually I find I'm interested in playing again with a little more than half of the players I meet this way. In my experience, it's fairly rare for a player to say they're not interested in playing again, TTRPGs rule and there's a DM shortage.

What I usually do is keep running these until I have enough people in mind to run something else, even if it isn't the system I'm most excited about. Probably it would be better to spend more time in this starter phase building up more connections, but after running like 4-5 5e adventures, I'm usually more than ready to run anything else, and if I have to shelve my Lancer ideas because I've mostly found crunch-averse players, I'm usually fine with that.

So, next comes the invites. Now, most players I meet this way will eventually be open to playing most games, but listen: you can put people well out of their comfort zone for their third TTRPG, but you gotta be real careful with their second. Most of the time, the game I'm inviting people to will be their first real exposure to a non-5e TTRPG. If they don't like it, they will run back to the safety of 5e and you will never get them out of it again. So I am very careful in picking the right system for the players I am inviting.

Whatever the new system I want to run is, I will set up a pilot session for it. I am very clear to players that I will teach them the system at the session, they do not need to know it in advance. Eventually, when I have a reliable group of TTRPG people to play with, I'll expect them to be able to pick up systems without a ton of help, but for players that are only used to the complexity of 5e, the idea of learning a new system is daunting. I rehearse the teaching of the game session. It's the only thing for TTRPGs I ever rehearse, but I want to know down pat how I'm going to quickly teach a new system and make it feel approachable and non-threatening. I'm also very clear that this will be a single session, with the possibility of turning into a campaign if we like it. All of this is structured to feel very safe. No initial learning required, no long term commitment, with a GM you already know you like.

But even as safe as that is, you still have to pitch the system. Why should the player be excited about playing this new game? Don't go all TTRPG nerd on them and explain all the details of the system, or use a bunch of jargon. Give them one or two things to be excited about with short, detailed anecdotes to back them up.

"We're going to be playing Blades in the Dark. It's a game where you play a gang of criminals in a haunted, steampunk dystopia. Every session you'll do heists, but instead of meticulously planning them, you start right in the action, and when you need to have planned for something, you can do a flashback scene to explain your preparation. One group I ran this for got busted by guards during an early heist, but used a flashback to create a scene where they had gotten a buddy of theirs a job as one of the guards, and he helped them out of the situation. And for some reason they fell in love with this bumbling goof I improvised to be the buddy, and then on a bunch of future jobs they kept using flashbacks to get him jobs wherever they were robbing. So this one idiot was just a de-facto crew member who worked a dozen different inside jobs despite being about as sharp as an eraser. And eventually they fucked up and got him killed, but they brought him back as a ghost, because you can do that in Blades in the Dark."

I find using a specific example of play really helps get peoples' imaginations going, which is what is going to help them say yes. And that example is tailored to what I know that player vibes with, what it is I think that makes them a good fit for this game.

The last detail about the invites is that I'm telling them, not asking them. It is not, "Hey, are you interested in playing this new game?" It's "I'm going to be running this new game. If you're interested in playing, please let me know what times work for you." If you're asking, you're going to get some "well but can it be 5e?" If you're telling, then they can choose to learn a new game in order to keep playing TTRPGs with a GM they know they like, or they can choose not to play at all.

Once you get enough yesses for a game, you run it, and then from there you're on your own. I think those are basically just friends you have at that point, and I'm not gonna tell you how to have friends.

Hopefully at least one person finds all that useful!

[theresattrpgforthat]

Mint Plays Games: Changelings, Trauma & Gaming

Over the course of October and November, I returned to one of my favourite ttrpgs of all time with @thydungeongal and my girlfriend: Changeling the Lost. About once or twice a year, I get the itch to run the 1st edition of this lovely, lore-heavy game, and every year I come away from it thinking about its potential. This is meant to be a quick break-down of my latest Changeling session, as well as a reflection on the parts of Changeling that really touch my heart.

The Game.

This game happened over three sessions, involving a character creation session, and two sessions of play. We had one character who was a Darkling Gravewright - folks who dealt with the dead in their time in Faerie (and can also see ghosts), and another who was a Fairest Flamesiren, whose entire deal is about burning bright, but also burning out quickly.

I decided to give these girls a murder mystery, with a mortal body found just outside a gate to a Goblin Market, and a missing changeling to track down. We’d talked about themes of grief and addiction prior to my planning stage, so I figured dealing with both a death and a place that offers your wildest dreams (for a price) might be a good place to start.

I don’t like planning out specific plot beats in my games, so instead I tried designing the Market like an adventure location, with various vendors to tempt the players with their wares, while dotting the landscape with NPCs in various states of distress. I figured the Changelings would pick something that resonated with them, and we could go from there. This process also generated a few different villainous characters who could be responsible for the murder, which I’m glad I did, because as usual, what the players decide to do always falls outside the bounds of what the GM plans for.

The story ended up being about saving a kidnapped changeling from a hungry Fae, and bluffing through a group of Privateers (read: mercenaries) and bringing the victim to safety. However, they didn't escape completely unscathed - coming face to face with a True Fae caused a cascade of terrible memories coming back to visit one of our characters right after she thought she'd made it to safety.

Our session was an introduction to the world and lore of Changeling, and I feel like I did a pretty good job on that front. On the other hand, I felt like it was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the things I think Changeling can be about.

The Potential

When it comes to the World of Darkness in general, I think Changeling: the Lost has a relatively sleek amount of lore regarding the various Courts, Seemings, and faerie characters. Each Changeling’s durance can be typified, but ultimately what they went through can be up to the player who designs them, and the Hedge is limitless in its weird and strange creatures, which gives the GM license to create all kinds of goblins and monsters to fit what they want their game to be about - and the players aren’t really expected to know what’s going on in there anyways. Most Freehold history exists in rumour, because talking too openly about it feels like you’re inviting the Fae to your front doorstep, and in the same way, the true nature of the Fae is left up to rumour and superstition, allowing your group to decide what they really are, or leave their nature forever a mystery.

That being said, the toys that you can play with are still more numerous than anything that you can fit into any one campaign, even if you’re playing that campaign for 4+ years. You can very easily play Changeling as a magical urban fantasy game (and I’ve done this fairly regularly with my group), but C:tL also has a lot of poignant themes that can delve into themes about trauma, addiction, and mental health.

Disclaimer: CtL is not always graceful in the way it represents mental health. There are antagonists presented in the books that come across as “madmen”, some pretty gross Merits you can take that can feel bad to play at most tables, and characters that have lost what makes them human, becoming threats to the players. However, I think that the Clarity system does have some interesting ideas in it that, if treated with care, can still provide some interesting depth to the game.

Clarity

Clarity is meant to be a measure of how well your character can tell truth from Fiction - a high enough Clarity score, and you can sniff out a Fae even if they’re trying to hide themselves; a low enough Clarity Score, and you have a hard time differentiating colour and smell, and might even start seeing an overlay of your Durance infiltrating your weekly grocery trip.

Your Changeling moves up in Clarity if they’re able to keep a stable life with elements that help you ground yourself and give you a sense of identity - and mechanically, once you spend Experience points. Your Changeling moves down in Clarity when they suffer “sins” - moments that disrupt that hard-won stability. This sins could be something we’d consider morally fraught, such as stealing, assaulting someone, or murder - but they could also be significant life changes, like losing your job, buying a house, losing a friend or getting married. You also always suffer a Clarity sin when you come in contact with a reminder of your durance - particularly a True Fae.

The higher your Clarity score is, the harder it is to keep yourself there. Smaller and smaller things can trigger a Breaking point, like going a day without human contact, starting a new college course, or using a Faerie token. Furthermore, the lower your Clarity score, the more difficult it is for you to tell truth from fiction - think of the scenes in Mockingjay where Peeta has to ask Katniss “real or not real” and try to trust her answers.

It doesn’t help that so many pieces of the Changeling experience after getting out of the Hedge seems designed to Fuck You Up - like the doppelgänger that’s been living your life ever since you left, or the fact that mortals can’t seem to notice the ways that Faerie has changed you: you can feel the horns on your head, but all they touch is a well-coiffed hairstyle. In many ways it feels like your whole experience with Faerie is invisible - and you’re fairly certain that even if you told a mortal the truth, they’d never believe you. If they did believe you, they would never treat you the same again.

I like this system because it doesn't really measure how "good" or "bad" your character is - instead it's a representation of how your lived experiences can often trigger symptoms even if others get lucky enough to survive those events with their mental health intact. I'm not a bit fan of derangements - but I think dropping in Clarity is an excellent time to ask characters about pieces of their time in Faerie that haunt them, and perhaps saddle them with Frailties instead - what personal rules do you have to follow in order to navigate the world when you have a hard time telling friend from foe?

Other Themes & Metaphors

The Fae themselves are also exquisite boogeymen, mercurial abusers without the familiar human emotions that we might feel more equipped to understand. They act on their whims and follow their appetites - and while real-life abusers often have very human reasons for being that way, we need not feel such compunctions from the Fae.

We might have to feel some compunctions about their right-hand Loyalists however, changelings who have agreed to work for their Fae Masters in exchange for some semblance of freedom. These are enablers: giving the Fae a step into the mortal realm and throwing mortals and other Lost under the bus, just so the True Fae won't turn their abuses back onto them.

Much of the ethos of the seasonal courts in the first edition has to do with different strategies for preventing a day where you find yourself back under your abuser’s control. Do you pretend that everything is fine, because they won’t recognize their victims if they’re happy? Make yourself physically stronger so you can tell yourself that you’ll win next time? Amass magic rituals in the hopes that learning just the right order of steps will keep you safe? Or do you make yourself as un-interesting as possible in the hopes that they give up on you for other prey? (Yes, I think the Winter Court could totally be all about grey-rocking).

On top of that, the Changelings that your characters embody (and interact with) are far from perfect. They have vices, fears and trauma responses that pull and push them into a dance of backstabbing, power-grabbing politics, full of seeking the upper hand and possibly even selling out their fellows in a gambit meant to keep the Fae focused on someone other than them. (A political game or LARP with these themes in mind feels so juicy to me.)

Next is the metaphors of power and/or addiction. The higher your Wyrd is, the more Glamour you can hold, and the more powerful your magic is. At the same time, the more Glamour you can hold, the more you need to hold it: what starts as a fun magical resource can grow into an addiction, if you lean into it hard enough. Sure, your Contracts become easier to activate and you can Incite Bedlam if you get powerful enough, but are you willing to chance withdrawal if you can’t get your daily fix of goblin fruit? How much are you willing to play with human emotions in order to get that sweet sweet taste of anger or grief?

Then there’s the seeming-specific traumas. Beasts struggle with wondering whether they can be human after giving in to animal instinct; Darklings fell into Faerie because they crossed an invisible or moral line and have had to make morally questionable decisions in order to survive. Elementals are used to being treated as part of the scenery, moulded to fit the whims of their captors; Fairest are constantly pressured to be the prettiest or the best with the threat of terrible terrible things should they fail. Ogres have undergone terrible physical hardships, including physical mistreatment and deprivation, while Wizened have been told time and time again that they are only worth something if they are useful. Stepping out of Faerie doesn’t magically “fix” any of these complexes, and as a result each Seeming has to wrestle with stereotypes even amongst their own: if you need someone murdered, go to a Darkling, If you need something made, go to a Wizened. If you need a hot piece of ass, a Fairest is sure to oblige - right?

Lastly, there's the Fetch: a copy of yourself that was made to replace you when the Fae took you away. This other-you is often so much better or so much worse than the person they used to be - they can act as a foil to your character, haunting you or making your life difficult, reminding you of who you used to be, or never letting others forget how badly you may have screwed up. In Changeling society, killing your Fetch is at the very least a regrettably convenient way of tying up loose ends, and at the most, a rite of passage. But it's also a surefire way to risk losing Clarity. Kind of a catch-22 situation, isn't it?

My Experience So Far

Past Changeling sessions I’ve run have included NPCs getting kidnapped by misguided friends, stumbling across characters who were at an all-time Clarity low, trying to save other Changelings from their Faerie kidnappers, cannibals, Fetches, and antagonists who are set out to betray one or more factions of the Freehold that is supposed to protect them. It’s always bits and pieces of what feels like a bigger picture.

On the one hand, I think that's to be expected. There's so much in this game, and I doubt that any campaign can really dig in to all of its systems and complexities. On the other hand, I’m not sure if I’ve been able to really dig into the themes of Changeling: the Lost in the way that I’d really love to be able to do.

The subject matter can be so close to real struggles, that I’m nervous about making those struggles too bare-faced at my local table. Gas-lighting, torture, hallucinations, drug abuse and cannibalism are so very easy to drop into a Changeling game, but are also so very easy to hit uncomfortable moments for someone who's unprepared.

At the same time, I think that playing a game like Changeling with a high-trust table that uses robust safety features has so many interesting stories that can give power to players, even if the setting is technically a horror one. I’ve been having conversations with @psychhound about a lot of the themes that folks try to explore in ttrpgs, especially in response to this post he commented on back in April. To summarize that conversation: TTRPGs are a great way for folks to tackle personal struggles and traumas from a safe place, in ways that can give them a cathartic experience or that can give them a fresh sense of identity. Changeling has been a significant part of those discussions.

I came to Changeling: the Lost as a fairly new GM the first time I picked it up, and the more I learn about Safety Tools and a culture of care, the closer I feel to getting to that game that lives in my head that lured me into TTRPGS in the first place. Every time I come back to It, I think I'm closer to pulling together a Changeling game that sinks its teeth into the themes I’m interested in and hit some of the grime beneath all that glitter. So every time I come back to it, I’m going to create funky little goblins and design weird Fae bars and take the characters’ memories and ask them why they hurt - figuring out how I can twist the knife just enough to peel back the glamour, without opening any wounds that we’re trying to keep closed.

[aaronsrpgs]

The Quickstart. The Home Game.

My biggest enjoyment of RPGs comes from running games for people who have never played before. It's what I did for years before covid, and it's why I started designing games. It's something I'm actively starting to do again after a long hiatus. So it's time to make a new home game.

USE CASE The home game is not the perfect game. It's not my desert island game. It's something I am primed to run with minimal friction for new players, where we start playing fast and get a lot done in 60-120 minutes. Some key factors for that:

no rulebook or other external reference needed

basic rules fit on one side of one sheet

customization fits on a small selection of cards, which can be chosen, dealt randomly, and/or traded

rolls lead to interesting choices and big changes

THE SCAVENGING The home game isn't a game I designed. It's a game I stapled together from Apocalypse World, The Veil, and some of my own work. Here are some of the big features and why they were chosen.

- Feelings as Stats: Before every roll, the players have to decide how their character feels. One might worry that this slow things down, but in practice, I've never seen the decision take more than a few seconds. Encourages players to think about the situation emotionally.

- Plain Language: As much as I love powered-by-the-apocalypse games, "moves" and "+1 forward" and other language that lives in the genre isn't very intuitive. So I took a page from Belonging Outside Belonging games and just put "You Can Always…" above the basic moves. And I tried to give them clear, plain-language names.

- Limited Starting Choices: I love playbooks, but passing them around, choosing one, reading the whole thing, and choosing a playbook move can take a while, especially with anxious players who struggle with choice paralysis.

Here there are only 19 moves (mostly called "specials," more clear language), and I tried to pick ones that appeal to the main player types I see:

emulates a trope (warrior, wizard)

asks NPCs for help

befriends animals

chaos monster

And if the game goes past one session, you can add more moves, including from other games, to zero in on a genre. (Someday I'll write a long post about how PbtA doesn't NEED a genre and that it actually rules to mix and match playbooks and moves from different games.)

FINISHING TOUCHES People like cards and little gewgaws, so the specials all fit on cards, and I bring along character cards from Shadowlord!, an old Parker Brothers game, for players who struggle with picking a name or vibe. The leftovers become my NPCs. If I were doing sci-fi, I'd probably find a cheap copy of Coup; I always thought those character cards were beautiful.

A WORK IN PROGRESS I laid this out and printed it the other day, but I've already decided to cut two basic moves (Sway and Ultimatum) because they can get a lot of that info from Read a Person. And I'm going to turn the money move into something closer to Blades in the Dark's quantum inventory. ABC (always be changin) your home game (YHG).

MORE MORE MORE Check out The Ostrichmonkey Hack by Josh Hittie @ostrichmonkey-games and Home Game by Adam Vass.

Get PDFs of my home game from this Google Drive link.

This whole thing is probably related to my Worksheet Manifesto.

What's your home game?

[shmuel-ben-sarah-kcd2]

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is just a dnd campaign we have a full table of 8 players, but not every player can make every session, because scheduling conflicts are just Like That. the pcs are

(and all information is pulled from the dnd5e wiki)

Henry of Skalitz: Oath of either Vengeance or redemption paladin depending on player choice, Artisan background

Hans Capon of Pirkstein: Fighter, Arcane Archer, Noble

Father Godwin: Cleric Hermit

Samuel: Haunted One Inquisitive Rogue

Dry Devil: Pyromancy Sorcerer, Criminal.

Kubyenka: Way of the Drunken Master Monk, venmoed the dm 20 bucks with "dibs on the drunk monk" a week before session zero. mercenary.

Adder: Path of the Beast Barbarian (specifically snake-vibes) Mercenary.

Janosh: School of Gastronomy Wizard (from Valda's Spire), Mercenary.

Janosh and Adder's players also sometimes play Istvan Toth and Erik, a Mastermind Rogue with the Knight background and an Oath of Vengeance to Oathbreaker paladin with the acolyte background.  NPCs

Brabant is the dmnpc charlitan swords bard. the table instaclocks that this guy cannot be trusted but he just keeps passing insight checks.

Katherine and Musa are both healers because Godwin both cant keep up and keeps picking combat spells. Jan Zizka is a Folk Hero Banneret Fighter.

gonna go through and actually make charictar sheets for these dumb kids eventually. Also, gonna properly adapt the main quests into a rundown like those XP to level Three lotr but DnD parodies.

Janosh and Adder’s players are dating IRL, every crude comment they say to each other irl just becomes cannon. Henry and Hans (but especially Hans) have the most overly detailed lore, and they are both really into the roleplay. Samuel’s Player just learned about their family trauma and is trying to work through some generational shit (it’s me hi im Samuel’s player) by making an obviously and not even sort of subtle Jewish allegory for this fantasy setting. The dm just sighs and rolls with it since she was planning on adding a religious schism to the world lore at some point so why not have smaller faiths as well. Father Godwin, Kubyenka, and Dry Devil all show up to the table completely hammered. Dry Devil will cast fireball on a room his party members are in. Dry Devil and Kubyenka are actually murderhobos, while Janosh and Adder’s players are just being very in character. After all, Janosh at least can have restraint enough to scheme as Istvan. (The two get teased for only playing couples in every game)

the DM is never going to run a party of this size again

please feel free to share your ideas if you have an idea how a build or a bit could go

[agentgrange]

I saw this post and couldn't stop thinking about it, so here is the answer I gave after some consideration-- I'll tell you when I find out. Sometimes it really feels like it depends on your Agents, and what they're accustomed to. I have two groups that I play with, one is mostly serious with a handful of gallows humor quips while the other one is absolutely clown-shoes-goof-goof-times. You could lovingly craft a deeply unsettling body-horror scene or run a tried-and-true encounter straight out of an established campaign and your mileage will greatly vary depending on your audience. That's not *necessarily* a bad thing, a handlers job is to guide a narrative in a way that's first and foremost fun for the players. If they want to take it seriously and buy into the horror they will, but if they want a bit of levity then there's nothing wrong with playing to the crowd. But I do really, really empathize with struggling to convey the awesome and terrible might of some cosmic horror with nothing but your words in a group of people that (hopefully) instinctively feel at ease and jovial while fooling around playing games with their buddies. Here's a few practical pieces of advice I can give you.

Try to cultivate an unsettling environment for your players. This one seems obvious but is actually really hard to get down right, especially when people mostly play online these days. But you’d be surprised how much regularly providing good visual aids, a Discord bot playing ambient music, and a good playlist can really set the tone for your session. Don’t just provide visual aids for the money shots of alien greys and deep ones either, running a campaign based on The Conspiracy era gives you ample opportunity to post a ton of weird, liminal 90s photographs to set the vibe for everyone even during otherwise mundane scenes.

Make a point of explaining to your players the difference between what they are experiencing and what their characters are experiencing. Yes, facing off against a 8ft tall fish man with a crossbow is inherently ridiculous as a fictional abstract. Its an entirely different experiencing actually being there, face to face under an incredible amount of stress seeing something that should not exist. In a lot of ways your players aren’t their characters so much as they are mad gods guiding their characters’ fates. THEY can laugh from the safety of this higher dimension we all exist in, that’s part of the fun. Hell their characters might even have a passing thought or two about how absurd the situation might be—but that entire time they’re fighting their lizard-brained instincts just to stop from mentally imploding. Let them laugh, but then tell them how their characters' hands might be shaking, or how any clever quip they wanted to say just comes out as a mumble as their body betrays whatever thoughts their rational mind tries to convey.

Know the rules of comedy. Comedy usually needs a straight-man, so if your players are goofing around don’t be afraid to give them a straight-man NPC to react to their antics in a way that makes it feel like you’re in on the bit but keeps the narrative going. Better yet, try to get ahead of it. Set up designated low-stakes areas in your story that are designed to add a bit of levity. They say comedy comes in threes, so you should structure these segments to let your agents to do some dumb shit about three times before they get all the sillies out and are ready to move on. And the emotional highs during these side quests will just make the crushing lows in the main plot feel that much more horrifying.

Building off that last one I have one more secret, forbidden technique. Buyer beware on this one honestly, but I cannot overstress just how much. Players. Love. Silly. Characters. And as David Lynch has proven, you can have silly characters that are still deeply unsettling. Try adding a few characters in that flip the script on your players and make *them*  want to play the role of the straight-man reacting to what your NPCs are doing every once in a while. If done right, it can kind of trick them into taking things seriously or feel like the eerie out of place comedy is at their character’s expense even if the players are in on it.

I hope some of this was at least partially useful. Good luck out there.

[artsavi]

god. uh. myhouse.wad, huh? I have, frankly, way too many thoughts about this entire mod. Please bear with me as I try to ramble my way through them, I ended up going off under the read more.

I’m going to be honest, this game felt like an extended, emotional fetch quest for me until this point. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that all the items had emotional and memorial impact, but...this one got to me. This moment hit me like a fucking truck.

For those of you who don’t play Dungeon and Dragons, sessions get long. On average they can run anywhere between 4-6 hours, but I myself have played longer, with the longest taking the cake at almost a half day, or roughly 11 hours. A lot can happen in a session, and most of it is just...joking around. The phrase “roll for intercourse” is a reference to an age-old running gag of players trying to seduce an NPC for whatever reason. It’s funny. It happens so often it’s a meme.

But finding it here...it really hit me. This isn’t just a reference to a well-known meme. Tom and Steve sat down and played D&D together, spending multiple hours in a day to play sessions, likely with other players but always with each other. And this phrase? It stuck out, it’s a moment that stuck with Steve for one reason or another, and my only guess is to say it’s because it‘d become an inside joke. And...you can’t help but wonder what it was. If Steve had been DMing, or if he’d been the one trying to seduce the NPC much to Tom’s chagrin, or...what.

And that at the core is the devastating part of myhouse.wad. The more I sit and think about it, the more I think about it, the more I realize this map is chock full of inside jokes, and we as players will never understand them. Because it’s not meant for us. These are things we’ll never have context for because one of the people involved is gone now. And the more I think about it, the more the realization hit that this entire map is not a game and really, truly is a memorial.

Do you remember when we played with Legos together? Do you remember when we played video games? Drinking milkshakes in the basement, sharing a pop? Our inside jokes? Roll for intercourse. Pumpkin Rick. Shrek chasing after you. Do you remember when we got married? I do. The house does. The house loves you. I love you. I miss you.

This map reads like a conversation, someone reaching out to someone else. You can’t help but wonder who is reaching out to who, though.

You know, I was talking to some friends on Discord about this map, and one of them brought up something interesting that I agree with. myhouse.wad draws clear inspiration from House of Leaves, but there’s a distinct difference between them. They both have heavy themes of grief and closure, but where House of Leaves is mysterious because of the layers and layers of unreliable narrators, myhouse.wad is mysterious because of you’re only ever hearing one side of the conversation. House of Leaves makes me feel like I’m intruding on something that no human should ever know. myhouse.wad makes me feel like I’m hearing part of a conversation through a wall.

Either way, there is one thing that both works share: This is not for you. It never was.

You know, I kind of wonder what their D&D campaign was about, if this moment was enough to stick out as an inside joke. I wonder what their sessions were like. I hope they had fun.

[utilitycaster]

I'm curious about your judgement of the success of the various format experimentations in Campaign 3. If you feel like saying a bit more, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on which are the most and least successful, and why.

Sure! So as I said earlier today, I think a big problem is that the format experimentation and the moon plot are directly at odds. Pulling off the moon plot, with all the NPCs from past campaigns and payoff of various canonical setups requires a pretty firm hand on what the current canon is, and also really did require a firmer hand in the character creation than there was. On the other hand, the point of experimentation is to let other people play in the space and introduce their ideas. This comes together in what I have referred to in the past as "Not Now." Like, the Crown Keepers showing up just as the party was grappling with FCG's death? Not bad as a concept, but Not Now. Abubakar playing Corellon? Incredible performance, but the fact that he was given free rein in a plot that's already shedding viewers left and right for its lack of direction? Not Now.

On an individual level:

I think EXU Prime either needed to be fully standalone, or Matt needed to provide a slightly more rigid direction to Aabria and therefore really couldn't play Dariax. If it's going to get woven into the main plot of Campaign 3 it needs to set that up (including giving Liam and Ashley a heads up beforehand). My personal vote would be for the former, to allow Aabria to tell her own story without it having to serve like 20 different functions, but what's done is done. If I recall, Liam and Ashley had the option to play different characters for Campaign 3 and I do wonder what would happen if they had decided differently, because you could still have Dorian pop up as a guest but I wonder if the Crown Keepers would have shown up in the same way.

Similarly, as stated, the general concept of the Crown Keepers interlude during the campaign as a means to bring in Dorian? I'm not opposed, though I think this is by far the hardest thing to coordinate generally and for a plot as demanding as Campaign 3 probably not a great idea. But it's hard to judge because the timing was truly the worst timing possible given the events of episode 91, and even delaying by like an episode or two would have at least solved that to the point that I don't understand why they didn't just...do that. (and, just to head off this particularly stupid argument at the pass, this would not have in any way affected Sam's ability to take time off for cancer treatment; it would have just shifted things around, and a lot of this experimentation was planned WELL in advance). [sidebar: I haven't listened to the WBN interlude yet but I do have thoughts because I think interludes from different GMs can be done, but the premise of Campaign 3 is particularly hostile towards them unless the main GM has a very heavy hand in their creation or unless they are light on things relevant to the core plot and mostly for the purpose of worldbuilding a la Song of the Lorelei.]

Solstice split was excellent and I think it's because it was not actually anything you wouldn't see in how people frequently play D&D at home. You have a few players who won't be available for a few sessions in a row? Great, find a reason to split the party, bring some other guest players in, and run some side quests!

Downfall was great because it was diagetic. It was a story within a story that Bells Hells was seeing and responding to, and because it took place so long ago with such specific characters, while it may bleed into how Laura, Taliesin, or Ashley feel in game (impossible to prevent, people bring their own feelings to the table), Matt still has room to decide how the Raven Queen, Wildmother, or Everlight feel a thousand years later. I also feel this had the most direction from Matt, which the other things really needed.

As said, bringing in Abubakar to DM as Corellon is something that again, this plot simply doesn't handle well. It makes for a fantastic scene, but within the 107-and-counting episodes of this story, giving the reins to someone else after you finally have a clear plan and letting them throw another curveball is a terrible idea narratively. I think this again would be fine in a story with a looser plot.

Echoes of the Solstice and presumably the upcoming Vox Machina Malleus Key/Mighty Nein Weave Mind concept is again pretty good. This also fits into things that D&D home games have been doing forever - run a one shot or mini campaign following different characters but DM-ed by the same person that have an impact on the current plot but aren't too closely interwoven. Basically this is like the solstice split in concept.

Essentially: I think playing around with the format within a campaign but having the same GM is pretty easy to do. Once you introduce other GMs acting within the world concurrently (rather than as a story with a foregone conclusion a la Downfall, or for that matter Calamity) you need to be extremely careful if you are trying to tell a specific story with a lot of moving parts, as Matt is with Campaign 3. It's one thing to improvise based on things your players do or say; it's another to do so based on improv by a major NPC or someone doing extensive worldbuilding mid-game that you now need to incorporate. This wouldn't be an issue in a more sandbox-style game; Campaign 2 might have been able to withstand it more gracefully, though I'm still not sure. But Campaign 3 was the wrong place to do it. Again, it's trying to converge in some places and diverge in the others and as a result it's just kind of flopping around in place.

[blankd]

DM/GMing Tips

(aka what I learned with my campaign which ran for about 4 years, totaling 131 sessions, so I must have been doing something right)

*these tips are NOT exclusive to DnD, more than one of these is bound to help in running a TTRPG, if you have a specific question, feel free to hit up my askbox

Session 0 is important for setting expectations for everyone involved as well as establishing your safety tools if desired (every table is different).

The game's story is not exhaustively penned by the GM but by the players who will tell the story after the session sends. If you want to tell a specific story, you'll be more fulfilled writing a book.

Have a start and an idea of what the end could be, the rest will be sorted in play. (If you're using a module, read ahead and make notes that are useful for yourself.)

The job of the GM is to put the players in Situations or Throw a Grenade.

Hooks are opt-in and more passive, "I heard there's a dragon", Situations/Grenades are direct and require player input immediately, "there is a dragon attacking RIGHT NOW". There are pros/cons to both, use them to create tempo and tension.

The moment you ask the players what they want to do, the proverbial pen is in their hands. NEVER take away a Player's agency. If logic/mechanics would make that action impossible, present it as such, and let the consequences play out where applicable.

Reward curiosity, if a player asks a question, have an answer, even if it's just flavor. You're also only human, if you need time for the answer, give what relevant info you have in the moment and give a more detailed follow up later if it needs ones. (This is a skill, don't feel bad if you start off with more blanks than answers.)

Provide in-game feedback for actions players take. Not everything needs to have far-reaching repercussions but there should be some kind of cause-and-effect to make the world and the beings living in it feel reactive.

NPCs should have an immediate, but simple purpose and an additional aspect to give them a little meat. If the players take interest in that NPC, you can build them out further through conversation. This will become easier as you get a grip on improv.

Have a list of names or a randomizer if you find you're at a loss for NPC creation.

Have an idea toybox. Players don't know NPCs or encounters they never meet, if they 'miss it' you can turn it into an opportunity to meet them later. There is no science to it, but you'll get a feel for what can be repurposed or upcycled, sometimes that change in context makes them more memorable. Sensibility creates believability, exceptions create curiosity. A 'missed' merchant ending up displaced in a weird location can expand into a better hook than simply being found in a bazaar.

Player cleverness and diplomacy should be rewarded, if they say something convincing, roll with it the best you can. However never forget that the more important/powerful an NPC, the stronger their convictions. Certain NPCs should be beyond convincing and it's up to you to convey that.

Don't forget the spirit of the game! RP can get pretty intense, but at the end of the day this is about COLLABORATIVE imagination and expression. Make the best memories you can.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not telling my friend I don't want to play DND with her?

I (17M) am a player in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign (NOTE: it is not actually DND, I am just saying it for simplicity's sake. If anything sounds off, that's why. Either way, it's TTRPG, and both games have the same system, although they aren't anywhere near similar to DND gameplay-wise. It's very roleplay focused.) with a few of my friends (all 17-20F: Viola, Korrina, Valerie, and Olympia). Viola is our DM, and I have so much fun every time we play, with no intents on quitting because of this.

Olympia just like... fucking sucks though, to be honest? Like, I just hate playing with this chick. She's always asking for extra bonuses on rolls because she's just such a good player (no one else does it, Viola allows it though), she actively started PVP with me, she physically disabled my character in said PVP and I had to do chaos control (I did not want to have my character be disabled, if I did I would have a disabled character, but I failed a roll against her in this fight so I had to have my character go on a side-quest to fix it: I would be more fine with it if it was Viola, but another player? Really?), and she's just not really funny when she talks about the campaign outside of the sessions (I know, it's a little personal). She gets really upset when we mention this one thing we all like to the point of taking inspiration from it for characters and NPCs because she doesn't get it but she refuses to try the thing so we just have to not talk about it with her, and overall she just... isn't enjoyable to be around.

I know I'm gonna have people in the comments say "just tell her that you don't like her now! You sound awful, you should quit," etc etc, but hear me out. I am a player. Since the DM is Viola, and Olympia and Viola are having fun, I don't feel like I should say anything. It's the DM's story, and as a mere character in the story I can't have any say in the format, especially since I was the one that invited Olympia to the group (I made a casual offer to my whole friend group over a school group chat and both Olympia and Korrina responded, so I had to include both of them), and we've been playing this campaign since August.

One of our players had to cancel on us a week ago as of writing this, and so I decided to run a oneshot based off of a campaign I've been wanting to do (first time DMer, I wanted to try it out). The players were Viola, Korrina, and Olympia, and it was actually really fun! I wanted to wait for Viola's campaign to end before I actually started playing my campaign, but that wasn't going to happen in a while, so I had decided to run it then.

I don't want Olympia anywhere near my actual campaign, though. I'm planning on letting my friend (Drasna, 18F) join, as well as anyone else who shows interest, along with Viola, Korrina, and Valerie. But as you may know, Olympia is insufferable to me, and as DM I feel like I have the right to deny her from playing with me.

She still played in the oneshot though, and was... very excited for it. I am aware I am the only one with beef here. Olympia keeps on PMing me about her character, asking about the world, and she's really interested in the world and the format of it. Her character's nice even if a little similar to one of the main plot NPCs I have, but as I've mentioned, I really want to cut her out when the campaign gets rolling. The only reason I couldn't for the oneshot is because we are actively in the middle of a campaign and everyone would think I'm being weird and things would be tense for the rest of the campaign. I can't just tell Olympia to her face "hey, I hate playing with you actually. Go home, fuck off."

I feel like I treated Olympia fairly when we played (she didn't do anything drastic, at least), but I don't know how my negative feelings on her are going to impact the campaign. I don't want to have an inbalance in the characters and how they're treated.

AITA for leading her on to make sure things don't get awkward during Viola's campaign, even though I have no intent of changing my mind on not having her as a player?

What are these acronyms?

[cozynerdreviews]

5 Cozy Games from Steam’s Autumn Sale 

It's the coziest time of the year- so grab a mug of tea, wrap yourself up in a warm blanket and settle in for some cozy gaming sessions. These are five cozy games that are currently on sale over on Steam! (Have I said the word 'cozy' enough for the algorithm?)

Fields Of Mistria

Developer: NPC Studio Sale: 20% Off

Just one look at the art style of this farming game is enough to stoke the flames of Sailor Moon nostalgia.

Visit the beautiful village of Mistria to start your dream cottage core life. Filled with farming, cute cows and magic, the game is both beautiful visually and with wonderfully written characters who help flesh out this world.

Fields of Mistria is truly a gem amongst the absolute mass of farming games that has invaded Steam since the rise of Stardew Valley.

Spiritfarer

Developer: Thunder Lotus games Sale: 85% Off

If you haven't played this cozy management style game yet, now's your chance to get your hands on it. The game features a beautiful hand drawn art style with incredible lands to explore and fantastically designed characters to meet.

You play as Stella, a bright young girl working to maintain both your growing ship base and the relationship with your passengers. You work to guide them through this world, helping them make peace with their lives and staying by their side till the very last moment. I also cried so hard over a hedgehog, I accidentally injured myself.

Touhou Mystia's Izakaya

Developer: 二色幽紫蝶, Re零同人社 Sale: 39% Off

From what I understand, this is a stand alone game in a much larger, existing Universe. I don't really know much about it, what I do know is that you get to play as an adorable Sparrow Spirit who runs an Izakaya in the beautiful fantasy world of Gensokyo.

You can either buy ingredients of spend your mornings travelling the world to forage though that may take up precious time. The main game of cooking and serving customers can feel a bit chaotic but it's also easy to lose yourself in the groove as you play.

Reka

Developer: Emberstorm Entertainment Sale: 25% Off

In Reka, you explore the gorgeous woodlands as an apprentice to the Baba Jaga of folklore. Journey through the world, learning about the animals and spirits that also inhabit it whilst uncovering mysteries and secrets.

You can even build your own Baba Jaga home complete with giant chicken legs that help you move from place to place. The world is procedurally generated so each experience is always a new and fantastic one.

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Developer: Edelweiss Sale: 50% Off

You play as the titular Sakuna in this game, a spoilt harvest goddess who gets herself kicked out of Heaven- who must now work with mortals and tend paddy fields with your own hands.

Yet another game with absolutely gorgeous art, the combat and platforming in this game is buttery smooth and super satisfying to play. The rice growing mechanic is surprisingly involved as well, with you watching over the field through the seasons- tilling the ground, controlling the water level and dealing with the weather before finally milling and refining the rice after harvest.

That's it for this list. There isn't a ranking system here- just a few games that I think are worth the time, money and care.

If you do decide to give any of them a go, do let me know your thoughts!

Written by Lucine Zhang

[hbyrde36]

Life is a Game (and True Love is a Trophy)

ao3 link

Chapter 1

*Eddie  - 1986*

“That was amazing, Eddie!” Will exclaimed, with a wide smile.

They’d been playing for over 10 hours and Eddie was exhausted. He was only a few years older than the other boys, so he knew it was a poor excuse, but he was getting too old for these marathon sessions. Where he felt dead on his feet, the other boys looked like they could go for another 10 hours, no sweat.

It was well past curfew for the younger boys but since it was Saturday, and spring break, it hadn’t taken much convincing to get all the kids' parents to agree to the late session, as long as Eddie got them all home safe. 

The small group said goodnight to Mike and Mrs. Wheeler before walking Lucas next door to his house. Then, Eddie, Dustin, and Will piled into the van. Technically Dustin’s house was closer but Eddie drove Will home first. He liked to drop his cousin off last, so he could stop in and say hello to his aunt if she was home. 

Eddie was a little distracted during the drive. He’d been trying to keep busy for the last few days, anything to help him forget about the fact that it’s the anniversary of Steve Harrington’s disappearance, but today that had been impossible. How could he not think about the guy who inspired one of the main characters in a game they had just spent all day playing?

When it's finally just him and Dustin in the car, he allows some of his thoughts to spill over. 

“It’s one thing that we use ourselves in this crazy story but do you ever think it’s fucked up that we kept Steve as an NPC after his disappearance?”

Dustin shrugged. “I don’t know, I mean, I didn’t know the guy. Mike always said he was an asshole, so, who cares?”

Eddie almost slammed on the breaks, it’s only for the sake of his beloved van that he didn’t. He can’t believe the kid would say something so insensitive.

“Dude he’s like your best friend, how can you say that!?”

“In the game, Eddie. He’s my character’s best friend, in the game . You always take it too seriously.”

An uncomfortable silence fell over them when Eddie didn’t respond, too upset and lost in his thoughts to make conversation. He pulled his van into the driveway behind his Aunt Claudia’s car and shut the ignition off. 

“Mike was wrong, y’know. Steve wasn’t an asshole, not really.” Eddie said, as he followed his cousin up the path to the front porch.

Dustin stopped abruptly, turning on his heel to look at Eddie. “Wait. Did you know him? Were you friends?”

Eddie sighed. His feelings about Steve Harrington had always been…complicated.

“I knew him my whole life. We were in the same grade till I got held back, and it’s a small town. We were never friends, exactly, but I saw him almost every day in school. We talked sometimes in the halls, on the bus. Maybe he was a bit of a dick to people occasionally, but who isn’t? That’s what kids do. He was always nice to me.”

Dustin stared at Eddie like he’d never seen him before.

“I'm sorry, man.” He stuttered. “I didn't know. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

It was Eddie’s turn to shrug. “I don’t really know. I guess I was trying to keep the real Steve and the game Steve separate in my head. I always thought he’d turn back up eventually. That maybe he’d just run away from home, and someday he would come back when he ran out of money or something.

“It could still be that. It's not like they ever found a body.” Dustin offered, not really sounding like he believed it, but wanting to be supportive.

“It’s been 2 years, almost to the day. The Harrington’s have more than enough money to hire fancy private detectives and shit. If he was alive, they’d have found him by now.”

*Steve - 1983*

Steve Harrington had just started dating Nancy Wheeler when Will Byers went missing. Later, he would be embarrassed to admit it, but at the time he was a little pissed off that she wanted to ditch their date to join in the search for the boy. The kid was probably just out playing and lost track of time or something. Everyone knew Joyce wasn’t exactly the most stable person in the world. He knew Hopper only humored her with this search to get her off his back. 

When he told Nancy as much, she called him an asshole and stormed out. After sulking about it for an hour after she left, he realized she was right. He didn’t want to be that guy. He didn’t want to turn out like his dad. So, he threw some sneakers on and set out to join the search party. 

He walked through the woods looking for Hopper, or anyone else who could assign him an area to search. It started raining before he could find anyone, and he was just getting ready to head back to his car, when he heard rustling in the bushes off to his left. He turned in the direction of the sound, squinting in the dark to try and see if someone was there. He thought he saw movement and then a twig snapped. It sounded loud in the quiet of the trees.

It was so dark out here, he wished he had a flashlight or something. 

“Will?” Steve asked, taking a tentative step forward.

The only response was a quiet gasp from the dark. There was definitely someone there.

In a stroke of pure luck, the moon chose that moment to come out from behind the clouds. Her soft light illuminated things just enough for Steve to make out the shape of a small child with a shaved head, wearing a gigantic yellow t-shirt. This was definitely not Will Byers, but the kid sure did look like she was in trouble. 

“Hey there, I'm Steve. Do you need some help?”

The girl stared up at him with wide eyes. She didn’t answer, but she hadn’t run away from him yet either.

He tried again.

“Do you want to get out of the rain? My car isn’t far from here.” He didn’t step any closer but held his hand out to her to take, or not, whatever she chose.

The girl studied him for a long time. She looked into his eyes like she was trying to read his soul. He didn’t know what she saw there, but it must have been enough to convince her that he was safe. She nodded, pushing her tiny hand into his, and the two of them walked together back to the warmth and safety of Steve’s car. 

-

It wasn’t ideal, bringing the girl back to his house, but at least his parents were out of town. Once he’d gotten her into the car he had tried to take her to the hospital, or at least the police station. She’d shaken her head slowly, ominously, and uttered the first words he’d heard her speak. 

“Bad men.”

Steve didn’t know what to do, he was in way over his head. He needed help. He needed people much smarter than him to tell him what to do. The idea occurred to him to take her to Nancy’s. She was smart, and a girl. Surely she'd be better suited for this, she’d know the best course of action to take. But, the girl refused that too. She seemed to only trust Steve.

Tired, and out of options, he went home. 

He gathered some dry clothes for her, old sweatpants and a Hawkins High swim team t-shirt from his freshman year, and sent her into one of the guestrooms to change. The clothes would be huge on her but it’s the best he could do for now. 

It was late and he kind of expected her to just go to bed once she changed. They could always figure things out in the morning. But, a few minutes later, there she was, standing in his doorway, looking around the room curiously.

“It’s okay, you can come in.” He said, as he shut the closet door. “In fact, why don’t you come sit down. I think we should talk about some things.”

She looked hesitant, but joined him, cross-legged on the floor. She still hadn’t said more than those two words to him but clearly she could speak, and she understood him fine, so he had to try. They’d start small.

“What’s your name?” He asked, voice gentle as he could make it.

She shook her head. 

Somehow he knew it wasn’t a refusal, but more like a confusion on her part. 

He pointed to himself. “Steve. People call me Steve. What do people call you?”

She pressed her lips into a thin line and held her shaking wrist out to him.

He was confused at first, until he noticed the small writing there.

011

“Eleven?” He asked.

She nodded vigorously, a hint of a smile playing on her lips.

That was, well, it was so not good. Shaved head and a number tattooed on her arm. Steve wasn’t a genius but even he knew that something was seriously messed up here. Who would do this to a little girl? Where were her parents?

“Is that what your parents call you?”

“Parents?” She sounded the word out slowly like she was saying it for the first time.

“Yea, like your mom or dad? Mama or Papa?”

“Papa" She agreed, nodding. "Bad man.”

O..k. Well that certainly answered some things.

“Is that why you were in the woods tonight? Were you running from Papa and the bad men?”

She nodded. 

That was enough for tonight, he decided. They were both tired and he really needed some time to think, to make a plan.

“I think we should get some sleep. We can talk some more in the morning. Okay?”

She blinked at him and nodded again. She definitely preferred non-verbal communication. It didn’t bother Steve, he could roll with it. 

“You can sleep in that other room, the bed in there is really comfy.” He said, rising up off the floor as she did the same.

“Where do you sleep?” She asked.

It was a little jarring, hearing her string together a full sentence like that. It was stilted, the way she spoke. Obviously talking wasn’t something she did very much.

“Here.” He answered, motioning to his bed. “This is my room. So i’ll be right across the hall if you need anything.”

She looked over her shoulder at the doorway and then back at Steve. She made no motion to leave.

“Would you rather stay here?” He guessed and there was that little smile again.

“Safer in here, with you.”

Steve’s heart broke. He kind of hadn’t thought about it until that moment, the night had been so full of weird things and it had all happened so fast, he hadn’t realized how utterly terrified Eleven was. He wanted to fold her up into his arms and squeeze her tight. Promise her that he’d keep her safe from the bad men of the world.

But he couldn't do that. He couldn't promise anything when he had no idea what was going on. He wasn’t sure if she would welcome his embrace either, so he held himself back. Instead he got into bed, scooching all the way over to the wall, and then patted the big space he’d left for her. 

She crawled onto the bed and almost immediately curled into a ball. He watched her as she settled on the pillow. She looked so small. He vowed to himself that he would do whatever he could to protect her. He’d hide her in this house forever if that’s what it took. He didn’t yet know what she’d been through, but he knew it was bad, and something no little kid should have to go through.

The rain had turned into a storm while they talked, and it raged now on the other side of his window. A loud crack of thunder startled them both. Eleven was shaking again. Steve laid his hand out, palm up, on the bed between them. An offering of comfort he thought she might accept, since she had taken his hand in the woods.

She hesitated for only a moment before placing her hand on top of his.

Chapter 2

[drakeanddice]

After eight sessions of Burning Wheel, we decided that it wasn’t clicking for our table. It had a bunch of neat tech baked in, but wielding the system was not a joy for us. It felt like we could either dedicate ourselves absolutely to the infinite Swiss watch design or else abstract down toward the core resolution forever without ever doing more than scratch the surface and in general neither of those felt…y’know, good. So we decided to drop it.

Which kind of sucks. I feel a little defeated by the book. Like, I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time plumbing through the obtuse and confusing self-referential and esoteric prose, trying to get to the heart of why so many of my favorite designers cite it as a seminal work in the TTRPG field, but all I got was the feeling that the inheritors of its ideas did a lot to clean them up, sharpen them, and make them infinitely more fun to engage with.

I’m left with a feeling I’m getting pretty used to. I missed that moment when this thing was “cool.” I missed the Forge, I missed G+, and I missed Burning Wheel.

But also, I’m given to understand the Forge, like Burning Wheel, had problems, so I’m not taking it too hard.

We decided to play Mausritter this Friday. In a complete 180 from the rule-heavy interlocking gears and levers of Burning Wheel, the 300 pages of character creation, we decided to roll 3d6 3 times, and then 1d6 twice and take our little adventurer mice into the great big world to face danger and find treasure.

I’ve been having a recent problem where I play games for the wrong reasons. I’m looking for inspiration, for pilferable game design thoughts, for experiences outside of my comfort zone. I’m running games as work, as research. I’m slavishly adherent to the rules as written because I feel as though I owe that to the designer, because they clearly knew what they were doing and were doing it for a purpose. It’s a mental weight.

So I am attacking Mausritter from an entirely different angle. It’s an OSR game, very light and fast and abstracted. The rules are loose and few. It’s very minimal mental overhead. So I don’t have a lot to worry about getting “wrong” in the way that I’ve been secretly fearing I’ve been doing for Burning Wheel these past eight weeks. I’m playing this one for fun.

I’ve told my table that I need them to keep me honest. This is not work. My Friday night table is often abused as a play test group, often treated as an extension of my job as a game designer. I design games so I must play them. But this one’s just for fun. Don’t let me think to hard about it. Because I’m not in a mental state to do that right now.

We’re going to be mice. It’s going to be fun.

Anyway. I’ve done a thing I haven’t done in forever and prepped for a game. I’ve got a cool hexmap (adorable), have created some factions out in the world (portentous), named some NPCs (wholesome), and home brewed up some interesting spells and items to sprinkle around (fun as hell). I have not sat and just played DM by myself in a while. Still not something I want to do every time, but a welcome break from conducting atop a surfboard in front of a disaster wave.

I’m excited about this game. Can’t wait to report back.

[heybiji]

hi!!! i just wanted to say i really love all of your MASKS stuff. i'm something of a newbie when it comes to the TTRPG community, but MASKS seems to be not very well-known and i think that's a real shame. i'm a huge fan of old-school superhero-adjacent stuff, especially the silver- and bronze-age ones!

by the way, i was wondering if you'd be willing to share some tips for a first-time GM? you don't have to if you'd rather not! i just figured i'd try asking since i was planning on GMing a MASKS campaign for some of my friends later, but despite my decade's worth of roleplaying experience i've never been in a TTRPG campaign nor a GM (or similar) role before

Thank you so much!! I was just lamenting about how I felt bad for the MASKS tag because it is now flooded with all my npc nonsense hahah so this is really nice to hear.

It's awesome you're planning on running a MASKS game for your friends!! There is an indispensable post on twitter I saw that has a LOT of great tips for running MASKS that I recommend checking out. But for my own personal tips that are just me things, here's what I got. Sorry it's gonna be extremely long-winded, it may take a few months to read through it.

(Note: I am also hugely into RP and probably put more into it than what is necessary, especially with MASKS which is meant to be able to be played out of the box. It was definitely not played out of the box in our case because I require a lot out of myself and everyone else to feel good about running something. if anyone else wants to continue seeing me as a normal human being please don't click the Keep Reading)

Since you're running it, make the world interesting to you. If the world runs around themes you're personally interested in then you'll have a much easier time coming up with answers on the fly. For me, themes I'm interested in that lend themselves well to a superhero world: money, power, family, celebrity, media, the 24 hour news cycle and the desensitization of violence. Because I'm interested in this stuff anyway, wrapping a world around them makes it much simpler for me to figure out how the world ticks and thus how the characters fit into it and how the world reacts to them, and I am DESPERATE to find out how the characters react to all the questions and expectations the world is imposing upon them.

Make sure your players have a good grasp of the tone of story so they can make characters that gel well within it. For me the tone is a lil more adult because I'm not personally into younger morality tale stories in tone, it's pretty grounded, and I think comedy and tragedy work hand in hand so I lean into them.

Talk. A lot. Talk about the characters, talk about the world. MASKS is fun because it's a LOT of talking and figuring out the narrative together. It's not a lot of crunchy mechanics, it's all around seeing how the characters react to the world narratively, all hurt and comfort and emotions which (for me) requires people to have a good grasp on their characters and the world. I like to give my players "homework" where I ask them a question involving their characters in some way like "what hero did your character look up to as a child?" so they get to come up with past heroes, or "How does your character feel about _____?" etc etc. The only fans are gonna be your table and fans love to talk so be the biggest fans of the PCs!!

Figure out your framing. I know in MASKS they suggest framing it like a comic book, and basically talking about the frames on screen. For me, because I'm more into movies and tv than comics, I frame it like that. So I have an active "camera" in play during sessions and will ask things like "would anyone like to grab the camera?" to encourage the players to put the character into a scene or "what does the audience see as the camera focuses in on your character in this emotional moment?" There is a LOT of playing up to the camera and framing the sessions as episodes of a show, so it's like, okay, you have several options but what is going to be interesting for the audience to see? I find this encourages the players to have their characters take bigger swings and feel comfortable letting us into how their character is feeling because it all looks GREAT on camera. The camera loves it. The PCs are the story after all.

Because I frame it a show, I also like to play individual ending songs over the "credits" at the end of each episode. So I asked my players to make playlists for their characters so if I feel an episode had a lot of emotional focus on one character in particular, I can play one of their songs at the end of the episode! I also made a general MASKS playlist with a bunch of songs from the era we set it in (2004) to pull from. It's a fun little addition that I really enjoy and that I hope makes it all feel more special.

The Dino Donut Effect: create landmarks in your world. (OK THIS IS GONNA BE LONG BUT WORK WITH ME HERE) They don't have to be locations, more solid landmarks of the story that the characters can refer back to and lean on to make the world feel more "real." I call it the Dino Donut Effect because in our world the thing that made everything click into place was talking out the backstory of one of the PC's figuring out they had the power negation ability. We were talking one night trying to figure it out; we wanted the character to fall out of a building and be caught by a flying superhero and accidentally turn off their powers, so they toss the kid to another flying supe whose powers also get turned off. But we were like... holy shit what is the height of a building needed that can handle this much action in the air without them hitting the ground in 3 seconds. So after a long night of talking about terminal velocity and looking at Splat Calculators we figured out the height of the building, and we needed them to crash into something that wouldn't fuckin kill them. The first suggestion was a truck full of bananas. Nah. We landed on a giant balloon that could take the impact. And the balloon became a giant T-Rex holding a donut that was the mascot of the city's beloved decades old donut shop Dino Donut. And so we decided that one of the two flying supes grabbed onto the kid and the other and flew into the giant balloon to try and keep them all alive, which destroyed the balloon, which was a city institution, and there was a crowd of children there that day that saw their friend Dino Donut die. Killed by a superhero. The balloon deflated loudly so it sounded like Dino Donut was screaming in agony. All the kids were traumatized (screaming crying throwing up), the city was furious because everyone loved Dino Donut, it was constantly in the news cycle, and it ruined the career of the supe that "killed Dino Donut." AND THEN THEY REPLACED THE DINO DONUT BALLOON WITH A LAME "UPDATED DESIGN" DINO DONUT STATUE which everyone hates and people consider to be a memorial to the old Dino Donut. ANYWAY, the Dino Donut effect is that now all the PCs have one single incident to refer back to that they all have feelings about. A couple of them were there that day and heard Dino Donut scream, one is now the protege of the disgraced superhero that killed Dino Donut so she feels uncomfortable talking about it, there's the kid that was saved that day but was sworn to secrecy by the supe so no one would find out about his power negation ability, and then there's the kid that wasn't there because she's an alien that just arrived to earth and now the kids have to explain the incident to her with all their varying opinions. Now the PCs' meeting spot is at a Dino Donut. Having this one solid incident that is both funny and kind of goes into the themes of the world has been an absolute treat. Creating "landmarks" like that in the world has done so much and now I'm like okay I'm gonna try to do this moving forward with any other thing I run.

anyway these are my extremely specific to me tips. my RP standards are kind of high which makes me a bit of a terror but also when the flowers bloom from it it feels GREAT. i'm not sure if this will help but hopefully there is something there that can be useful!

MASKS is fun and simple once you get the hang of it, though, so I'm sure whatever you do you and your players will have a lot of fun! especially if you're someone who is into RP which is the background I'm coming from too; MASKS is extremely narrative! i'll be looking in the tag for your game hehe

(The Day Dino Donut Died art by JD)