Happy Sunday! Great show as ever. Love Lance’s Senile Sorcery game. Would love a print and play version, and certainly would be great to see a let’s play. I do love games which involve any kind of spell-crafting/manipulation of spells.

MICROSCOPE

When it comes to worldbuilding I can thoroughly recommend the game Microscope. It is a co-operative game where a group of people create a world, and gradually zoom in on points in the timeline and roleplay key events. At the end of it, you have a world which you can then use for full-blown roleplaying if you want. One of its very strong features is an agreement on must-haves and total-bans (e.g. must-have robots, ban vampires). The players agree on this list at the start, and the constraints help get everyone on the same page and give some focus as you refine things.

GM vs PLAYER INPUT

When talking about GM vs Player input for world creation, I think it is a spectrum, and there are pros and cons at each end. At the totally GM controlled end, players can feel a lack of agency, and frankly, the GM is under a lot of pressure to fill in the creative energies of everyone else in the group. The positive side of this (which I have experienced both as a GM, but especially as a player) is a true sense of wonder and integrity. When you can’t influence the world as a player outside what your character can do, then when something happens it can feel very real, that world is solid, it is what it is. In the purest sense, this can feel like the GM isn’t even in control, they are just telling you what is happening in this very real feeling world.

At the opposite end is total freedom for players to create whatever they want and a “never say no” approach. This shares the creative burden, and for sure you will get cool interesting ideas, that one player will spark with another and the world will be richer for it. However, it will also feel less real, less a sense of wondrous adventure, because when you see too much behind the curtains, it’s not magical anymore to explore the world. You start to recognise the set dressing, the props, and it can start to feel a bit fake. Or at least, it could change at any moment, so lacks substance, and therefore meaning.

A great compromise, I’ve seen Will Wheaton use is where he will be total GM control, but then in a scene, he will hand-over a specific thing, possibly to a specific player and say “full freedom, describe what this is”. I think this works quite well because the world continues to have its integrity but players get to share in and certainly enrich the creative process.

CAMPAIGN BUILDING

When it comes to world-building, or at least, campaign building, I really like to focus on the motivations of NPCs. I want to feel like I know the key NPCs in the area where the game takes place, I know what they want, why they want it, and what they are doing to achieve it. I think if you understand that, then whatever the players do, you’ll know how the NPCs will react. It’s important that the world feels living and breathing, NPCs should be carrying out there plans if the PCs don’t interact with them. That idea of world integrity for me is key here, like once things are set in motion, I’m not even in control anymore. The NPCs are going to go and do what they are going to do, lets the player run into that sandbox and see what happens.

It’s also important to distinguish between in-session collaboration and out of session collaboration. Microscope can work great prior to a campaign starting to let players feel like they had a massive hand in creating the world. You can then still retain that sense of integrity if its more GM controlled once you get into actual sessions. The GM is still bound by the world that the players created.

Downtime/Bluebooking is another area where more freedom can happen without damaging integrity. Discussing in-between sessions what are a character’s goals, players writing short-stories that describe what their character is doing during that downtime. All of that I have found is a great way to include player creativity.

GAMES IN WORLDS WITH EXISTING IP

Canonical worlds can be a problem (e.g. running Star Wars), no matter how much research you have done (and you should do a lot) there will be a player who knows more or at least knows something you don’t about some particular planet or race. Running TTB was a bigger issue for this for me, as I was not as steeped in Malifaux Lore (despite reading all the stories from all books, including the Wyrd Magazine short stories) as some of the players. The way I get around this is I say at the start of the campaign, this is a parallel world that is almost identical to the one you already know, but a few small things might be different. The world has to feel like the IP of the world you are in, so it isn’t a licence to ditch everything that makes that world what it is. However, if you say the Mended drum is on the Rimward side of Filigree street, and someone says actually in a short story collection it was Widdershins, you can say with confidence that in this case, they are wrong (or at the very least a Stibbons led experiment in the High Energy Magic building has temporarily caused it to appear to be Rimwards).

VOICES vs 3RD PERSON

Voices can be great, they can also be tiring, and you might not be very good at them, or remembering all the different voices, or you might be worried you’ll offend someone (or in one particular demon voice I did for an extended campaign, hard to understand what you are saying). The fact is third person descriptions for both GM and Player can add a lot to the scene.

e.g. “She stalked into the barracks, her cape whirling around her like living smoke, reverberating with each angry footstep as she confronted Commander Hjorn, demanding an explanation for why the expected back-up had never arrived”.

A player can say that, and the appropriate rolls and responses can follow, and I’d argue in a lot of cases that will work better than trying to do a voice which shows anger, or saying precisely what she says to the Commander.

OBLIGATORY DENEB BIT, THIS TIME ABOUT WORLD-BUILDING

When I created the fantasy world for Deneb, I had a few key tenants I wanted to form an origin point in history and how the physics/magic of the world worked. Once I had those key touch points though, I went to geography, I imagined the landscape, and then let the civilisations rise and fall within that landscape. Again I used motivations for keys characters in each society and in each place, to drive certain changes. I wrote a very detailed, and in many ways very boring history (complete lineage of La’Certa Royalty for example), but one that helped me make the world feel real, at least to me.

One of the key things for me was “no chosen ones”, there is no prophecy, no fate, no destiny, no special select few people. Anyone can learn magic in Deneb, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy or without cost, and for sure some people have more natural aptitude than others, but that is the limit of it. The nation of the Draco Republic, for example, is a representative democracy that after some poorly controlled magic used by teenagers led to some deaths, debated and voted in strict limitations on magic. There are political organisations lobbying for an outright ban, and others for the limitations to be loosened. Other parts of the world see it differently. The Draco Republic have dragons in their army, so the lack of magic for military ends is not such a big issue for them.

BOOKS FOR INSPIRATION

Some Books that are fascinating world ideas, I am sure there are others but I can’t think of them now.

Name of the Wind – the magic system fascinating.
The Oaken Throne – very Burrows and Badgers-y but quite dark.
Ubik – Corporations competing for psychically powered individuals.

WORLDS I’VE PLAYED IN

I played a Discworld RPG, using the Discworld GURPS books. The trouble was one player wasn’t a Discworld fan, and for him, it was hard to feel out where it differed from traditional fantasy. Another player though, he made a wizard, who had a sapient pearwood staff, the staff’s name was Helio. The staff was as pessimistic, sarcastic, bitchy and witty as the wizard was deadpan, serious and optimistic. That one player had some brilliant exchanges between effectively the two characters that really made that game for me.

Others, too many to remember, but some I recall fondly at this moment, I’ll curse myself for forgetting some others later.

Star Wars
Forgotten Realms, many times
Firefly
Highlander- with a twist
WH40k a few times
Lord of the Rings
Malifaux – Through the Breach
Player Created – Fantasy Post-apocalyptic mechs, which led into a much bigger universe late in the campaign.
Player Created – Anglo-Saxon England
Player Created – Time travelling in a modern-day European city (but didn’t know until 2nd session, and had to undo what we had done in session 1).
Player Created – Square Enix inspired city, working as an assistant to a great artist.
Player Created – South America just before the conquering of the New World (but we didn’t know it)

Sorry, I know I already wrote a crazy long post, but just wanted to share this as well. Have been spit-balling some ideas with one RPG group about potential future campaigns. Just throwing stuff out and seeing what sticks. Thought it might be nice to share some of the high-level ideas here. Nothing is truly original (and the influences are pretty obvious), but still nice to think about how these might work as RPG campaigns. Put all this in a FB messenger group, and got tons of great ideas from players on refinements tweaks, and so on, for what they found cool, what they didn’t, and what they would like to see in these worlds.

IDEA 1

US Government agency spooks, probably using D20 modern. Play say Homeland Agents, who might be investigating a serial bomber who has been targeting NYC.

Twist: There will be a supernatural element, but players and characters have no idea what. Several sessions play vanilla spycraft/crime-drama, then gradually supernatural elements reveal themselves. Could be Cthulhu, could be vampires, could be demons, could be aliens, who knows?!

Character Archetypes:

– Tactical Field Agent, an expert in 9mm pistols, MP5 SMG, Anti-materiel rifles, CQC and covert-ops. At home escorting a VIP motorcade as well as assassinating a fortified terrorist.

– Forensic Agent, trained medic and expert at collecting evidence at a scene and processing it at the lab. At home staunching blood-flow mid-firefight as looking up DNA matches in the lab.

– Investigative Agent, Expert at witness interrogation, trailing suspects, stakeouts and pulling clues together. At home playing good-cop-bad-cop as well as sitting in a car all night watching a dive-bar.

– Technical Agent, Expert at computer forensics, drones, hacking, electronics and mechanics. At home cloning a targets mobile phone whilst disguised as a cable repairman as well as disarming a bomb.

Bottom line: Jack Bauer meets Dana Scully.

IDEA 2

Trying to survive in a fantasy-cyberpunk city that is actually a 150-mile long ship floating through what for lack of a better word we will call space. The people that live here are collectively known as “The Dammed”. Living in a pocket of the ship known as “The Labyrinth” full of violence, drugs and shitty bars. Plenty of different places on the ship, but at its heart the “Shining City” a place with perfect climate controls, fancy office suites, and where the elite species control the ship from. The “superior species” are known as demons and are led by a demon prince. The idea is to try and survive and perhaps carve out some real change on this megapolis-ship and the universe at large.

Twist: This is actually a time near the end of time when a few warring empires are left. They “resurrect” bodies from all of history to find those they can utilise for their purposes. Might feel like an after-life, or maybe it is? They dump the poor resurrected souls in the part of the ship known as “The Labyrinth” and let them fight, cheat and scrape their way to survival and escape to figure out who will be useful to them.

Archetypes:

– Exiled Gunslinger: Former demon, kicked out of the Shining City and hellbent on getting back at those who got him here. Now much like any other dammed, but an ace with his two pistols, and able to use his Runearm to both imbue his bullets with hellfire as well as hack the computer-controlled gates that separate the different ship districts.

– Purged Quint: Once a fleshy-construct of the vampire-like empire of blood, now free-thinking and stranded on a demon-controlled vessel. A master of magnetic and electrical forces. At home using necro-tech nanites to re-animate corpses to fight for him, as well as shattering an enemy into their component atoms using his mastery of the strong nuclear force.

– Lost Warden: Woke up in the Labyrinth with a memory of living as a stay-at-home dad, and no idea how they got here. Desperate to find a way home, if such a thing is possible. Able to wield an Aegisarm creating a burst of shielding-energy to deflect swords and bullets as well as knocking enemies back. Likes to carry a shotgun as a sidearm for up-close work.

– Dreaming Hunter: Woke up in the Labyrinth with no memory of who they were before. Occasionally experiences flashes of many lives, some mundane, some fantastical. Riding the corridors of the ship on their trusty holo-panther. Wields a sniper rifle at a range, and a dagger up-close. Excellent and stealth, infiltration and mapping.

Bottom-line: Badasses dammed souls fight across a hellscape space-city to fight future-demon megacorps.

IDEA 3

Planet in ruins in post-apocalyptic future. Pollution so bad that everything was utterly corrupted. Outside of safe-zone settlements, there are basically tons of mutant monsters, from cannibalistic zombies to giant acid-spitting ant-monster hives. All vegetation, meat and water are poisoned and unsafe to consume. Life revolves around an element (called Asgardium) that can be extracted from various locations. In its crystal form it’s used to provide power for technology, in a powder form it can be used to fuel flame-throwers and jets, most importantly in its liquid form, it can be used to purify food and drink. It’s a world where everyone drinks alcohol because a tiny drop of Asgardian liquid can be used to purify a barrel of moonshine, but purifying a glass of water requires 1:1 ratio, so more expensive than a pricy champaign. Players play freelancers working for a settlement to go out into the dangerous wilds to kill dangerous mutants, collect raw Asgardian ore and ancient lost tech. All in exchange for various refined forms of Asgardian. They do so from inside they diesel-punk battle suits. Gameplay is an even split between “dungeon” crawling and crafting upgrades or new battle suits and their various components.

Archetypes;

– Scout: Light, agile, fast suit geared for recon, scanning and identification. A pilot with fast reflexes and at ease controlling a suits jump-jets whilst free fall in a strange terrain.

– Titan: Heavy, slow-moving suit, designed to withstand punishment from hive-queen ant monster and give out as good as it gets with heavy-weapon mounts like Gatling guns and flame-thrower. A pilot with the constitution to take some heavy knocks and not lose their bottle when up and close with all kinds of nasties.

– Warlock: Ultra-light, high-tech suit geared for using exotic “lost-tech” to alter the battlefield to advantage his allies and to unlock strange, wondrous and dangerous powers of ancient tech. Likely a scholarly pilot with an understanding of unusual lore and curious geometry. Possibly a little bit mad.

bottom-line: Survive and craft cool mechs in a harsh post-apocalyptic world.