Fandible Actual Play Podcast

Fandible Actual Play Podcast

An RPG actual play podcast, with geek and pop culture commentary

Creating Nightmares: Theft as Inspiration

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Cartoon of a thief caught in a spot lightWhen I used to decorate in Star Wars Galaxies (it was a fun game, I swear!), people would always ask me where I got such amazing designs for my house, and I would say I stole them. The greatest authors steal ideas. Now, this doesn’t mean stealing something and not making it your own. Nothing is lamer than having a fun time RPing only to find yourself facing off with Michael Meyers from Halloween. It’s like a bad fanfic! However, judiciously stealing elements from various sources and altering them to your liking is absolutely a good idea.

In this case, look at the game Time After Time. Honestly, this is one of the few episodes that I wished I delved deeper into what the monster was just because the players never really got a sense of why it was important to the villagers and why it needed them. The Plant Monster was merely me stealing the Thorian from Mass Effect. Of course I decided to dump the thing in water, have people get connected to it via a root, and then added a holodeck into the mix. By the time I was done with creating the monster, it was my own. People might be able to say “Hey, did you get motivation for this or this?” but no one could say the idea wasn’t mine.

During college, a professor of mine told me that every story had been told and everything that follows is just a reboot. And while at the time I thought he was full of it, the more I’ve grown the more I’ve understood what he meant. In truth, the story has been told be it Man vs Machine, Man vs Nature, Man vs Man, and ect. That is why it is so important that we add our own, individual touches of creativity in order for people to truly appreciate it as original content.

Straight up theft is a poor idea for anything. When it comes to creativity, however, borrowing a basic idea and reforming it into something of your own is never a bad thing. Hell, it’s damn well encouraged!

So now that you’ve just accepted your thieving ways, where can you look? Well, don’t keep your ideas only to other roleplaying games and sessions. Movies and games are a huge thing for me — Honestly, one of my favorite thing to do is watch the not popular horror movies of the 90s. While most of them aren’t terrible, they’re not memorable due to the story and characters. However, they sometimes have ideas for monsters that are a ‘good start’. But don’t even look to other things for ideas on monsters! Do it for your story as well.

Time After Time was merely me wanting to have a reason to do a Groundhog’s Day show. Sure I added the horrible death and the 80s music but dammit, I wanted a day that wouldn’t stop repeating! Congealed Happiness came around just because I got done watching Super 8. And while the movie wasn’t awesome as I had hoped, it still reminded me of the ET spirit. Thus, I made our protagonists children. Shady Hills and Buried Memories? Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes! Just keep your eyes peeled while out and about! You’ll never know when you’ll find motivation; seeing Picard and his crew not sleeping inspired me to make a horror game about sleep deprivation!

So, go my monkey fliers! Fly and steal!

The children of Founder’s Falls faced off against the Ink Monster. The students of His Holy Light University found themselves face-to-face with the Glass and thus themselves. A douchebag and his two friends found terror in the Plant of Honey Branch. We witnessed the horrors of the Meat Doctor as he tortured our poor inmates at a mental asylum, and we got to meet up with a group of despicable ghosts stuck in a cycle of revenge. Creating Nightmares is a series of articles sharing some of my tips and tricks for crafting the psychological horror New World of Darkness games featured on the Fandible podcast.

Historical RPGs

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There is one fact that most writers and GMs need to realize: our imaginations are nothing compared to the twists and turns of history. Games based on certain points in history, whether realistic or with some fantastical elements, allow for an opportunity that no GM should pass up: the chance to do research.

Admittedly, not the most exciting moment in a GM’s career, but if the GM does it properly, it can bring more depth to a campaign and make it feel even more immersive and real to the players, even if it has elves and dwarves in it.

Fortune’s Fool is a prime example of this. One of the first non-Warhammer 40k games I have GMed, it is set during the Renaissance, which, as RPGs go, is very different from the usual fantasy or scifi tropes we are used to. As such, it brings your players into a type of world they are not necessarily familiar with.

My decision to actually study the Renaissance was not just for curiosity’s sake, I must admit. I always aim to give my players a unique experience with each game I run. So, for the first time, I went into a library to study history. Of course, the last time I went to a library to look at history books, I was doing a class project for high school, so I was admittedly a bit rusty.

Through my research, I learned a plethora of information about the Renaissance period I wasn’t aware of. Struggles for powers, incestuous romances, religious persecution. It was a horrible and beautiful period in history and it was a great breeding ground for a GM’s imagination. Fortune’s Fool turned from the simple monster of the week bash I had originally planed into a story of political power, dark arts, and a bit of Cthulhu mixed in just to spice things up.

Unhallowed Metropolis is another example. The game takes place in a future victorian society in a hellish wasteland of death and decay. I will admit, the game’s sourcebook is a great source of material for anyone to game with. But, I wanted something a bit more. To give it more of a Victorian vibe that resonated with the past. I thought the best way to do this, since this was a game of monsters, was to modify one of the existing creatures. I chose the anathema, which in Unhallowed Metropolis, is any created monster, like Frankenstein. I then looked at history and viewed what the Victorians viewed as monsters. I quickly found a example that fit perfectly: Whipping Tom.

In history, he was just a man. A disturbed man who was scorned by a woman and thus decided that all women must be punished… with a whipping from his whipping stick. But before he was caught, he was reported as a monstrous being with a giant face out of proportion with his body. Similar monsters of that time, like Spring Heeled Jack, had a similar format. A human body but with something slightly off.

Thus, my anathema became Whipping Tom. Like Victorian monster stories, he was a man of unusual proportions, but that wasn’t enough for this setting. Neo-Victorian society is an even more dark and disturbing setting than history allowed. Whipping Tom had to became a more bestial and powerful creature as a result. And as for his urge to smack a woman’s behind, it had to become a bit more sadistic. He was a monster who would grab women and beat them to death with a metal rod. This was a monster of Victorian legend brought to un-life in a future Neo-Victorian London, and my players had a hell of a time trying to kill it.

Historical settings can lead to a depth that not only your players will appreciate, but you yourself will enjoy messing with. All it really takes is to crack open a history book and look for the really interesting bits. Trust me, it’s never hard to find.

Creating Nightmares: Revealing Your Hand

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The children of Founder’s Falls faced off against the Ink Monster. The students of His Holy Light University found themselves face-to-face with the Glass and thus themselves. A douchebag and his two friends found terror in the Plant of Honey Branch. We witnessed the horrors of the Meat Doctor as he tortured our poor inmates at a mental asylum, and we got to meet up with a group of despicable ghosts stuck in a cycle of revenge.

New World of Darkness Logo

Great monsters are key to any successful horror game. Great characters are equally important. But so are setting, theme, and style. Each one must blend into the other in order to keep your game tense, without it falling to overly obtuse and cliche. It isn’t like I haven’t fallen into these traps before when running earlier games and I’ll probably fall into more later on in life, but, there are a few things that people can do to keep from failing when running or creating a horror story.
Over the next several weeks, I’ll be sharing some of my tips and tricks for crafting the psychological horror New World of Darkness games featured on the Fandible podcast.

1. Revealing Your Hand

If you look back at one of my first horror games for Fandible, Shattered Memories, the characters aren’t given a clear explanation of what exactly they are facing up against. At one point, a Glass in the guise of Alex tries to explain it but can’t go beyond saying “You won’t understand. Just accept this.” The characters understood that they were fighting people from outside their reality that could reach into the character’s own doubt and use it against them.The characters understood that these ‘Glass Beings’ wanted one of their own that been hidden in our reality. They had a vested interest in helping this runaway and thus, an explanation wasn’t important for them. They were going to help the girl regardless.

A lot of times, I am ripped out of a book or a movie because they have the scene. You know the scene — the scene where they pretty much grab the audience by the collar, lean in nice and close, and shout out “THIS IS WHAT THE MONSTER IS AND WHERE IT CAME FROM! YOU ARE WELCOME!” And it’s so jarring. Maybe there are some underlying assumptions about the intelligence of the audience and their desire to understand everything, but, I’ve always found it more important to ask ‘does it matter?’

Let’s examine Silent Hill, a video game for those of you who haven’t looked at the genre since the day of Mario. Our protagonist crashes, loses his daughter, and goes off searching for her. He faces horrors, he faces darkness, and he faces the twisted reality of the Otherworld. He does all these things without an explanation of what exactly is going on. And while he does get a vague idea of the history and darkness that he’s up against, it doesn’t matter to him that this all doesn’t truly makes sense. And as a player enjoying the game, it doesn’t matter to me because while the situation is beyond our reality, the character’s reaction isn’t. He’s out to find his missing daughter and he’d march through Hell to get her back.

The most important part of a horror game is not worrying about explaining everything. That’s what is truly scary about horror – the unknown. You give them a vague idea what something is, but it’s just enough for them to have more questions. In our game of Congealed Happiness, the Ink Monster simply informs them he requires experiences from others. He likes happy ones – like from a child. His actions, and the characters’ reactions to them, prove that he’s powerful.

Show don’t tell. And when you do have to tell, don’t tell it all. Leaving a mystery for your players to figure out later is the best thing you can hope for.

I am a Wonderful Liar

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In the real world, I am constrained by a moral code. It was ingrained in me by parents who wished for me to understand the value of honesty. That truth is a weapon that can dig into the heart of any problem and clean a corrupted soul. When I talk to people, I am the avatar of truth. When I attempt to lie, my voice cracks, I begin to sweat, and I fidget. My mind and body fight against me and anyone who speaks to me wonders whether I am having a stroke. This curse of honesty has followed me my whole life, but I have found a loophole. I have found a way to lie that free me.

I remember the first time I Game Mastered. I was a lowly 20 year old and I attempted my hand at a simple game of Warhammer 40k using Cyberpunk 2020 rules. The players, their faces full of trust as I held their fates in my hands, looked at me as a storyteller. I felt I didn’t deserve that trust.

I came into the game with a plan. They destroyed that plan in five minutes. Now I just had a series of events. All of them unfortunate. What was I to do. Then, the moment happened. A player had taken a hit. I looked at the damage roll and realized that hit would kill. That is not a crime, but the death was low and had no meaning. Some random mook with a gun while the player was already weakened by a greater threat. This was not a game of call of cthulhu where random death is a possibility. This was warhammer 40k, where death comes fighting hordes of monsters or similar heroic ways. So, I did something that came so naturally, I almost believed it came from another mouth. I said, “ barely misses you”. My player looked upon me and spoke the most powerful word I have ever heard, “Cool”. Such simple words, but those simple words could barely contain the truth before me.

I have lied. I have lied so convincingly that my players didn’t notice. I realized then that the lie was a white lie. It was a lie that protected the player from a fate worse than death, a crappy ending. For the betterment of the game, I lied, and it was GLORIOUS!!!!!

When I game master, I lie. Truth is simply a convenient veil hiding the various deceptions my characters will face. What will they face is never planned, but the enemy always seems to be just right. I had written out an army of new enemies, but my players are already broken from the last encounter so I lie and say the enemy were weakened in a previous battle. My player is having an epic moment, but the dice will not yield to the players awesomeness, so I let things pass my gaze. My dice scream at me but I deny them, for the players story matter and not its simple six sided truths.

I lie for great games, I lie for great podcasts, and I lie because sometimes, its fun to lie to see a smile on your players faces.

Episode 50 and thanks for the listening

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With episode 50 up in the ether, it has become  close to a year that we have started the Fandible podcast. That first game, “Dark Heresy: Heart of Ambulon”, was the first gaming session of the core fandible group. I was always thankful that I decided to record that session. That I wanted to try to podcasting and hoped people would enjoy our idiocy online. As far as I can tell, you all do, which helps my dark heart beat every once and awhile.

Of course, great roleplay doesnt work without great players and I have to thank Billy, Angela, Daniel, David and James for bringing thier own talents to the games and making each gaming session both fun and memorable. There are so many lines in our games that still make me giggle( but in a manly way).

As for future plans, I still plan to try new games and bring them out for podcast listeners to listen to. Still need to get back to the great games Fortunes fool & the Laundry as well other RPG’s I want to try. I wont forget my first love of course, warhammer 40k. My main long running campaign, Rogue Trader, will continue. As for Dark heresy, we ended in a good place (which you will hear in the next 2 Dark Heresy sessions we post) and I think it needs a bit of a break before I put my creative muscles back into it. Don’t worry, those inquisitorial acolytes will return….. those poor poor fool.

Angela will continue her awesome hollowed earth game, trying to kill us in the depths of the earth. For someone who hasn’t GM’ed much, she is quite adept at making us run for our lives. She learns quickly.

 

Billy still has more New World of darkness ideas in his mind. It always worries me when he smiles when he describes his games. I also think the evil cackling is just overkill.
 Daniel of course has more plans for the dresden files and sees it as his duty to make all our plans turn to dust when they smack into reality. No truer symbol of the dresden files series than that.

David has plans of his own and when his life allows is  willing to show us by tapping into his GM mind to bring us into the world of Geist. I’m getting my Geist ready. Im thinking of calling him Bob.

Thank you all for listening and hopefully you will be around at episode 100 when I give you guys another thank you post. Hopefully less sappy but I make no promises.

Future Steampunk

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Since I haven’t done it in awhile, I would like to thank the listeners who can listen to us talk like idiots with bits of roleplaying in between. Unless I get hit by a bus at some point, I plan to continue on to the future.

Next Game on the Docket:

Angela takes her first forays into Gming as she takes us into a Steampunk America a few short years after the Civil War. All with a supernatural twist.

New Geeky Podcast

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Angela and Billy, the wonderful Geek couple who have brought you the deep and insightful characters Barsher the Barsher and Ratt, have started their own geek podcast. Give it a listen and give them your support.

A Couple of Geeks

The Jesus Rodriguez GM process

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A selection of game master screensSome people have asked me how I GM games. I have a few steps for any future GM’s who wish to partake of the Jesus Rodriguez school of Game Mastering.

The Jesus Rodriguez GM process

1)      Decide which game to play.

2)      Spend days learning the system so you don’t get caught with your pants down.

3)      Have some idea of where you want your game to go.

4)      Set up your place to have the proper roleplaying ambiance.

5)      Get your core group of friends together.

6)      Watch in horror as you realize as whatever plans you had are destroyed in the first five minutes.

7)      Try to make stuff up on the fly while assuring the role-players think you had planned it all along.

8)      End the session with explosions and or some type of character revelation.

9)      Whisky! More than 3 shots may required.

Next game on the docket:

Billy brings his GMing skills to the fore as he brings us all to NYC in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse using the New World of Darkness ruleset. Expect laughs, tears, and the odd disembowelment.