devilsjunkshop

Question 9: How has a game surprised you?

In recent days, the original TSR produced Marvel Super Heroes roleplaying game has been a revelation.

Designed by Jeff Grub and first released way back in 1984, it has surprisingly turned out to be exactly what I’m looking for in terms of running a superheroes game right now. Considering the number of alternative systems I went through looking for the one*, how useful this old box of tricks turned out to be is quite Remarkable. Or possibly Amazing.

It’s simple, clear, concise. Like most games from the 80s the rule book is short and packs a lot in. Attributes and Powers are rated by ranks. Feeble, Poor, Typical at the low end of the scale; Monstrous, Unearthly and beyond as you ramp up towards the cosmic power levels of the Marvel universe.

You roll your percentile dice, and check your result against a universal table of the various ranks. Green, Yellow and Red results determine you level of success. A White result is a failure.

There’s a few more things to consider in the Advanced Rules and the Ultimate Powers Book; but it doesn’t really get much more complicated than that.

For character creation it’s hard to beat, and whilst I’ve only run a couple of sessions of it so far this time out, I suspect it’ll remain my go-to system for superhero games from here on. Excelsior!

*Villains & Vigilantes, Guardians, Superworld, Aberrant, Golden Heroes, Super Squadron, Champions, Heroes Unlimited, The Authority, and many, many more…

Another alternate question, so I can skip the ‘how to get more people playing’ original. I can’t really think of anything beyond be more diverse and open and engaging, and encourage people to enjoy games, whatever games they like, because it’s all gaming.

Anyway, onto the alternative:

Question 8: How do you prepare for extended campaign?

In general I prepare for most creative endeavours exactly the same way.

Germ of an idea or image, somehow it links to something else or expands into a neat concept all by itself, and then I build on that with characters and places, objects and incidents.

Like if I imagine a wasteland of petrified forest, carpeted with human teeth, at some point I have to come up with a vague notion of why that nightmare might have happened and what sort of folk could survive in a world like that.

If it’s a short story or a novel, I’m looking at beginning, middle, end; side plots and tangents; opening lines and showdown endings.

If it’s a game I’m coming up with Things That I Want To Happen; NPCs likely to appear; at the same time–in discussion with the player group–characters we’d like to throw into this world/planet/universe.

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Question 7: How can a GM make the stakes important?

I’m not sure we can.

Players have to been engaged with their characters, committed to the conceit of the narrative, the ‘contract’ of gaming where we all agree to show up on time and pretend we aren’t just shuffling paper and moving dice.

We’re having adventures and telling tales and building history, right?

If we’re not doing that then it becomes a board-game and the stakes are pretty much just win or lose.

I mentioned this last year, I think, the realisation that I didn’t have to kill player characters to have an impact, because if the players were fully engaged then even the threat and risk of death would suffice, whilst if the players were detached–just rolling dice and moving markers–then even character death would never trouble them. Roll up a new random collection of stats and move on. All surface, no feeling.

If the players are tangled up with the setting, involved with the characters, then everything matters. If they aren’t, then nothing ever will.

I believe it was E.L. Doctorow who wrote:

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

So, if there’s a trick, I believe that’ll be it.

Somehow, at some point in the preparation process for the game or in the playing out of the story that you’re creating, the players have to become immersed in the world-as-real, partly by you as GM building a world they’re inclined to be a part of and explore. If you can do that, and if they’re of the correct mindset, great. But you can’t make them feel the rain. They have to want it too.

Question 6: How can players make the world seem real?

By taking what you have built for them and running away with it, by going left when they should have went right, and often by totally misunderstanding a verbal hint or random clue that sets them on a course you weren’t expecting.

I vaguely recall reading–as a teenager–the novel “Job: A Comedy of Justice” by Robert Heinlein, in which the hero character, Alex, is thrown through a series of ‘world changes’ implemented by Loki, acting with God’s permission.

There’s a moment when Alex realises that these aren’t whole worlds being created one-after-another all around him. Each world only exists as far as he can see, as far as he can readily interact–this hotel lobby, this street of shops, this cabin on a ship–the rest of it is emptiness and void, unformed.

So, the players make the world real by acting like that’s not the case. Acting like the entirety of this particular planet exists, and not just the shabby space-port and the three or four random staff you created just before the session started.

The world is real if the characters can see the farthest mountain and imagine they can walk there.