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The 10 Word Adventure Concept Contest


Thanks to all that participated (some a LOT more than others) to the 10 word RPG adventure contest.

I'll let you know how judging proceeds.
May 14 2008

Chatty’s New Partner

In the next few weeks, you’ll see a few changes in the Ad setup of the blog.

After meeting with fellow Quebec businessman Pierre of ZeStuff.com, we’ve agreed on trying a partnership for a while and see how it works out for each of us.

I’m really excited about this!  ZeStuff is one cool Geek Online Store and it’s mere minutes from where I live.  I just bough this coolest of Laptop bags and I’m already in love with it.

Here’s what you will see from this partnership:

  • This blog will be linked to from ZeStuff’s website, replacing the Store Blog
  • I’ll place a permanent banner to the online Store on the blog.
  • I will make periodic reviews of RPG products and various Geek games
  • We’ll try to set up an affiliate program where people can be referred to the store from here.

As a first step to this partnership, I have received a copy of the D&D 4e’s Adventure Keep on the Shadowfell and I will post a preview/review tonight!

Stay tuned!

While we’re at it, for those who haven’t secured a pre-order of the 4e core books, ZeStuff has them for 86,45$.

I’ll be offline all day, I’ll catch you later!

May 13 2008

Mining Tropes for RPG Nuggets: The Truman Mirror Tomato Surprise!

This is a series that explores Tropes and tries to apply them in RPGs. Have a look here, I wrote over 20 of these so far.

So Sorry for the double feed, something happened when I posted this the 1st time and 1/2 the text was eaten!

One of the things I’ve seen GMs struggle with is campaign secrets and big reveals.

Oh, how we GMs like to be full of secrecy about our pet plots and NPC motivations!

Often, we become overprotective of those secrets don’t we? We hoard them and keep them near. Oh yes! Our preciouses!

We tend to think that by handing secrets in X-Files-thin slices, the unfolding multi-dimensional story will grab our players by the throat and the campaign will culminate in a crescendo of coolness followed by an instant Ferris Bueler’s street party where you get to crowd surf and the whole world basks in your awesomeness…

Hum, no. Chances are you’ll get your players confused and/or impatient and they’ll most likely go try to poke into the undefined parts of your neat plot-lines. Worse yet, they may just ignore it altogether and jump the rails.

It happened to me in a spectacular fashion once.

I was playing a Gurps Fantasy campaign game on a world ruled by dragons, made up of the standard fantasy races.

The plot I presented to the players was that they had to bring down a ruthless Dragon prince who was holding the relatively benign Dragon King and Queen of their kingdom in the castle’s dungeons.

Pretty standard fare huh?

What I failed to tell my players was that the dragons came from a Shadowrun-like Earth, had read The Hobbit and found the whole ‘Smaug’ thing to be quite sensible. In order to live that dream, a bunch of filthy rich dragon billionaires built a STL Arkship, stole a huge pile of Human DNA and left for the stars. They later found a planet and terraformed it to lord over a bunch of fantasy races they had tinkered from all that DNA.

Yeah, I used to go for the real simple stories like that all the time.

My campaign’s main plot was to have the players explore/adventure around the world a bit and then get hit in the face with an honest to goodness alien invasion/Sci-fi vs Fantasy mash up!

When I did my Great Reveal® by describing the crash of an alien spaceship near the player’s campsite, my players’ PCs basically blinked, picked up their campaign gear and left the scene to go explore something else.

So yeah, that didn’t work. I humbly came back with a more traditional storyline, leaving the aliens in orbit while the PCs returned to killing Demon Assassins, Senile Undead Dragons and a Wight named Barry.

So what’s the point of all this and what’s the link with tropes?

Well, I think that you can have secrets and big reveals in your campaign world, as long as it doesn’t send the adventure down a path players refuse to walk.

Three related tropes I discovered that are especially well designed for that:

Tomato Surprise

The resolution of a plot by the sudden revelation of some important detail which has been deliberately hidden from the viewer. Had this detail been made known at the beginning of the story, much or all of the dramatic tension would have been missing from the plot. Usually, it hasn’t been hidden from the “viewpoint” character(s). Sometimes, it has been hidden from one character, so the character will be just as surprised as we are.

This is a trope you can use when you wish to have a campaign-level cliffhanger or a game defining plot-twist.

In the RPG version of the trope, the twist is definitively hidden from the PCs and others but possibly not for some key NPCs.

This is especially interesting when you pull this, successfully, mid-campaign and offer the PCs the choice to pursue the story as if nothing happened or take the twist into account and redirect the story (i.e. Take either the Blue or the Red Pill)

Examples:

  • The PCs are serving an aging/sick/senile king/old man that turns out to be a God/Dragon/Demon or to be From the Past/From the Future/their father/the BBEG (this is the Classic, almost Cliché version of the Tomato Surprise)
  • The Ultimate Evil that threatens the whole universe turns out to be an innocent 5 year old big eyed little girl, complete with cute animé puppy, whose nightmares become reality and devour whole countries.
  • The PCs must recover the Seven Whatever from each kingdoms of Gamecubia to stave off a meteor from crashing into the planet. It turns out that the Whatevers were in fact seals that protected each kingdom from a plague and now everyone is dying. Awwww.
  • Two words: The Matrix

My Dragons vs Alien game was an example of a failed application of this trope. For it to have been successful, I would have had to come forth and tell player of the game’s Sci-Fi background and to expect it to become significant later in the campaign.

At the very least I should have planned in advance that the characters might decide to take the other pill.

If you want to pull some really weird crap on your PCs, you may want to explore another trope where the Tomatoes are the actual PCs!

Tomato in a Mirror

Our protagonist is going through a perfectly normal day. Only… something’s wrong. The people around him are acting just a bit off. They keep mentioning a string of words, or are trying to herd him to a certain place.

It looks like the town’s been taken over by the pod people, and our hero’s the only one left. He attempts to either escape and warn the outside world, or find where the invaders are coming from and shut it down. But once he gets there, he discovers the horrifying truth: he’s the fake! A robot, a clone, a ghost, or some other duplicate that forgot he wasn’t the real thing, or was programmed to believe that he was. In an ongoing series, it’ll be a duplicate of one of the main characters. In an anthology, it’ll just be someone who thinks they’re human. Either way, it’s an effective inversion of The Puppet Masters.

This is a trope when you want to make one or all PCs to be something else than what they think they are.

This can be dangerous. If played badly it can change a PC’s core reason of being and totally screw a player’s characterization and possibly ruin the game. Thread carefully.

I beleive that the key to successfully pulling a Tomato in the Mirror reveal is to, once again, give the players to chance to ignore the reveal without major impacts or embrace the plot twist fully!

Another important aspect of this trope is that you must drop subtle hints and sprinkle flashes of the TRUTH so the players start piecing what they are slowly. That’s tricky, but just watch a few hours of Lost or the X-Files and you’ll get the hang of it.

A few examples:

  • Your characters are Cylons-equivalent, and get the choice of turning traitor or sticking on the side of the race they were imitating.
  • One character is in fact a shapeshifter with amnesia sent in the party as a sleeper agent, however, the trigger to recall it’s mission and lift the amnesia partly failed and now the character gets a highly skilled Jason Bourne character!
  • Characters are all Angelic/Fiendish Outsiders sent, memoryless, to the material world in humanoid form to learn the realities of terrestrial life. Later in the campaign, a war between the Celestial and Infernal forces break out and all PCs learn of their true heritage… and get to choose either of the 3 sides.

Finally, here’s one last trope that I used quite successfully once.

Truman Show Plot

Usually a variant on the Tomato In The Mirror, where it turns out that the lead character is in fact the main character on a Reality TV show. Exactly how much of his life is controlled varies: in some cases, every little detail of his life is controlled by the network, while others basically let the main character do whatever he wants, so long as they catch it on camera. It can be a twist ending, or it can be established right at the start of the show.

I pulled a successful version of this trope in my Iron Heroes Campaign.

At one point the players investigated a strange portal found at the bottom of a Sunken Tower and that brought them to a fortress that was sitting right beside a huge force bubble sitting over a ring of mile-high mountains. That was the whole Iron Heroes world… and they had been unwitting prisoners for countless generations.

Their warden were fiends and angels trapped with them, posing as normal people or monsters and such.

I had decided this on a whim mid-campaign and when I revealed that, the face of my dumbstruck players was worth billions!

You should try it… :)

Here’s one last example:

All characters are in fact trapped in Hell in a fake Fantasy world. They are led to believe that they are adventurers exploring dungeons and killing monsters for loot. In fact, the adventurers are part of the eternal punishment of the damned souls there that get reincarnated in new monsters every day and placed deeper and deeper in the dungeons.

The reveal comes when the PCs find a secret exit (perhaps aided by a Damned one) that reveals that the whole thing is the Infernal equivalent of a reality TV show and the Dungeon was this huge divinely morphic stage!

Imagine the Asmodeus, the Lord of the Nine Hells, siting in the director’s chair, clapping slowly, an enigmatic grin on his face.

Yeah!

Can you come up with other examples of these 3 tropes? Have you played any of them?

P.S. Anyone think what the recipe would be to make a Truman Mirror Tomato Surprise?

May 13 2008

Ods and Ends, part Deux

Hey! We made it! We topped the 300 RSS subcribers milestone!

I say we, because while I write the site’s content, it really only runs as smoothly with Graham’s technical assistance (whose apparently saving the internet one site at a time) and all of your participation as readers, Stumblers and Commenters.

Woot! I’ve got my 300 minions! Hoo-HA!

Thanks everyone!

I’m also sitting on a completed Trope post about doing big reveals in a RPG campaign. It’s scheduled to come up at 20h00 tonight. I think I did a good job with it and I hope it will give you ideas.

The judging of the 10 word adventure contest is progressing. All 3 judges settled on picking our personal top 5 in each of the 3 categories (Best Adventure Hook, Funniest Entry and Best Pop/Geek reference) and we’ll debate them once we are all done choosing. We’re waiting on the results of the last judge and we’ll get to the arguing :)

Oh and before I leave, while backtracking all the contest entry’s blogs and website, I discovered Max’s blog who posted the absolute best D&D 4e Monster Generator.

I’m printing it here without the author’s permission, only to show you how brilliant the guy is… GO READ HIS BLOG! :)

One of the highly touted aspects of the new edition of D&D is the ease with which DMs will be able to create and customize monsters to challenge their players. In fact, I just learned the DMs will be able build monsters on the fly, using just a few rolls of a trusty twenty-sider:

1 black blade brute
2 blood blood creeper
3 bone bond/bound delver
4 death claw fiend
5 demon cloak/cloaked filcher
6 doom doom foamer
7 dread fang gnasher
8 flame fiend horde/hordling
9 ghost fire howler
10 grim gaunt hulk
11 ice haunt lasher
12 iron horn leaper
13 night maw racer
14 poison rake reaver
15 razor scale ripper
16 spell spike scourge
17 stone tusk sneak
18 storm warp/warped swarm
19 thunder wing titan
20 wind wrack wurm

With attacks and abilities built right into the name, spelled out in ubiquitous damned adjectival compound nouns, a DM need only decide the creature’s level range and role, and let ‘er rip.

I made me a Thunder Fang Howler… a critter that has a poisonous bite that deals continuous electricity damage and can deal electricity damage and push opponents with it’s Thunder Howl Breath weapon!

See ya later!

May 12 2008

Monte Cook Un-Retires and Joins Pathfinder RPG team.

Well not so much out of retirement as he’s becoming a rules consultant for the Pathfinder RPG.

What was it you said about Paizo NOT being a Google-emulate? :)

Monte Cook Joins the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game™ Team

Co-creator of 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons® to act as Rules Consultant

Paizo Publishing®, LLC today announced that Monte Cook, the co-creator of 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons and author of the 3.5 PHB and DMG as well as the Ptolus™ campaign setting and the recent Book of Experimental Might™, has joined the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game team as a Rules Consultant.

“This is going to be a lot of fun,” said Monte Cook. “Pathfinder is a fresh spin on a rules system that I love and the guys at Paizo are great to work with. They produce nothing but the highest quality products.”

“Monte Cook is a legend of third edition and of the Open Gaming movement,” said Paizo’s Publisher, Erik Mona. “He’s also a great DM, and has the best mind for mechanics I’ve ever seen. To have one of the original third edition designers helping us with the Pathfinder RPG is like a dream come true. With Monte’s involvement, I am certain that the future of the edition he helped to create will be very long and very fruitful.”

“I am really excited to be working with Monte on this project,” said Paizo’s Lead Designer, Jason Bulmahn. “His advice has been a great help to the Pathfinder RPG. When it comes to rules design and knowledge of the 3.5 system, there is absolutely no one better.”

Monte Cook will also be contributing an introduction to the final Pathfinder Roleplaying Game hardcover, scheduled for an August 2009 release.

The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is a tabletop fantasy roleplaying game that will serve as the anchor for Paizo Publishing’s popular line of Pathfinder adventures, sourcebooks, and campaigns. Last March marked the beginning of a year-long Open Playtest of the new rules, which are based on the popular 3.5 rules available under the Open Game License. The Pathfinder RPG is designed with backward compatibility as one of its primary goals, so players will continue to enjoy their lifelong fantasy gaming hobby without invalidating their entire game library.

Well Monte chose his camp as he made clear a few weeks ago by saying that 4e was not going to be his cup of tea.

From Monte’s blog:

And in case you were wondering, don’t expect any 4E-compatible material or conversions of our stuff to 4E. (Even if I wanted to do 4E stuff, and to be honest I really don’t, the morass that the current licensing situation appears to be in is not at ALL attractive to me as a publisher.)

It therefore apprears he went with the continuation of the game he designed and the version of the open Gaming movement he preferred.

I wonder if this will change anything in the paths that Paizo’s 3.75 / WotC 4e chose for themselves. Probably not.

I’m sure this is going to make some people very happy and others to go ‘meh’.

For my part, let’s just say I’m happy to know I’ll have a familiar face going over That Other Game should 4e fail to please me.

Also if you missed them he published 2 Book of Experimental Might, PDFs filled with variant D&D 3.5 rules. I haven’t read them as I’m no longer interested but both are smashing successes.

1st one here and 2nd one here.

What say you?

May 12 2008

Ding! The Stew is Ready. Hope You Like Gnomes.

Have a look at the newest GM-focused blog.

It’s Gnome Stew and it just launched.

I really liked the Short Sessions: How to Cope by Walt Icantspellhislastnamejustnow as it plays directly in our gaming challenges.

I wish a great big welcome to the GnomeGMs:

Looking forward to read more of your stuff guys, Thanks for the early link love and good luck.

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