Curse the GMs!

So for those that are unaware, there's been a fairly tongue-in-cheek hashtag going around the G+ called #INDIEGAMEaDAY2016.  Similar in nature to the #RPGaDAY hashtag that goes around every year, this one tends to poke a bit of fun at a lot of the trends around indie RPGs and try and get everyone to not take their hobby so ultra-seriously.  For an example, here's today's topic:

#INDIEGAMEaDAY2016

16. Are GMs abusers, control freaks, or both? Best story explaining why this is so.

Now if you don't follow indie RPGs too closely, this might not land for you, but a lot of indie games strive for player agency and there's more than a few GM-less systems out there (one of which I've talked about before and will do so again in a bit).  But anyway, I'm not going to discuss the hashtag itself, because I thankfully have no GM horror stories to share.  However, the question did get me thinking about GMing, my style, and why I got started into it.

I think I may have mentioned this before, but I only very recently got into GMing, probably within the past two years or so.  My first real run of it was an online Mouse Guard PbP game with a group of people I've been playing with for years, kind of as a feeler.  I had a campaign idea, and we had a player dropping out, so I asked the person who had been running the game for years if he would mind letting me run the game for a bit.  He was delighted, and I ran a fairly decent campaign, especially for a first time running it, but had some issues.  Primarily, running a PbP game is a completely different animal, and the chief challenge is keeping everybody focused and checking in regularly.  I quickly learned I am very bad at this, as I am not a generally authoritative person by nature.  I ran I think one full year, three sessions, and then burned out from chasing one of the players and turned things back over to the original GM.

The experience did reinforce my own feelings on why a lot of people end up GMing, though:  they want to play games.  If you enjoy a game or a system enough, you want to play it, and it is the eternal struggle of a gaming hobbyist that they don't ever have enough players to play with.  And so in order to play a game they want to play, they have to convince other people to play with them, and the easiest way to do this is to volunteer to do the heavy lifting and run the game for the other players.  Ask your GM if they'd mind you taking over for a bit and watch their eyes light up.  Seriously, do it.

That being said, I think there is definitely a group that prefers GMing to being a PC, and I think I may be skewing more towards this end of things the more games I run.  I have always been a writer at heart from childhood on.  I have never been published and never have really put much effort into that end of things, but I've always written stories if for nobody else but myself.  It's part of the reason I play the video games I do (only massive open world games where I can create a character and do my thang.  Your game doesn't have a story?  Perfect.  I will make my own), and it definitely is a muscle that I enjoy flexing as a GM.  I find I enjoy putting together scenarios and watching players develop over time more than any character I have played.

For the most part, I enjoy improvising when I run games, and reacting more to what the players are doing than anything in particular that I planned, and so I gravitate more to those systems that allow me to do that.  It's one of the main reasons I have issues running a lot of OSR games where there's more prep involved.  But my primary focus with any game I run is simply to make sure everybody is having a good time and enjoying creating stories alongside me.

New Games!

I bought some new games!  Well, one new game and another game I already owned but only in a digital format.  

Questlandia

Questlandia I've written about before, and I already grabbed a digital copy when Hannah Shaffer offered it as a free download for Free RPG Day this year.  The game is so good, though, that I felt guilty having not paid for it.  That and it's typically much easier for me to get into games in physical format.  As I've said before, I really can't recommend this game enough for world building, both just for a fun game to play with friends and especially as a prep session to starting a longer campaign.  Once we wrap up our home Mouse Guard game, I'm planning on running this for a session or two to lead into a Burning Wheel campaign.

Ryuutama

Ryuutama is a game that is completely new to me, but one that I've had my eye on for quite a while.  I almost grabbed it at PAX East this year, which was the first time I had seen it, but thankfully waited and bought the physical/digital bundle from Kotohi direct.  Having both formats is kind of perfect for me, as it allows me to do session prep during my lunch break or slow days at work, while allowing me to get deeper into the game reading before bed.  Plus, I always prefer buying direct from creators whenever possible.

I started reading this one last night, and I really am excited to play it.  The system is kind of brilliantly simple, and it will make a great introductory game for people that have never roleplayed before.  I'm especially looking forward to eventually running this game with my daughter in a few years when she's old enough for gaming, provided she shows an interest.  This and Michtim are going to be my go-to early years roleplaying games, but both are also robust enough to easily entertain players of all ages for years.  If you have kids, or even if you just like cute stuff and also RPGs, you should definitely own both these games.

Getting My Wheels Burning

Busy and productive week this has been!  After months of trying toying with the idea of various different game designs and hitting various walls with each one, I had a random bit of inspiration the end of last week, and put together the early parts of a new game!  It's obviously still very raw, but I'm very excited with the shape that it's taken so far.  I gathered up some additional materials that I'll need, and I think the next step is to actually start some playtesting.  I've never hit this stage with a game before, so this is all very exciting.  Once I get a bit father along, I'll likely try to recruit some additional playtesters to get some more eyes on it.  But still, progress.

Also very exciting is the fact that I received my Kickstarter copy of the Burning Wheel Codex.  For those unaware, the Codex is a sort of rerelease of the original books that made up the original Burning Wheel set but weren't included in Gold - specifically, the Monster Burner, Adventure Burner, and the Magic Burner.

The Burning Wheel Codex

So not that I finally have the complete rules in hand, I've been pouring through everything pretty regularly.  The essays contained in the Adventure Burner in particular have been fantastic to go through, with a lot of great advice on running the game itself and some pretty rad ideas of gaming and GMing as a whole.

Anyway, the biggest upside of all the information contained in the Codex is that now I have better tools for making a setting to run a campaign!  Outside of the people I've played with online, the majority of the people I play (and I think a lot of casual gamers in general) are more likely to get behind the idea of a new game or campaign based on the setting.  So which one is the best to explore with my fancy new books?

Banner Saga
This one is partially on me playing this one recently, or rather Banner Saga 2, but I think from a Burning Wheel standpoint there are a lot of awesome possibilities.  The setting itself is pretty close to the out-the-box Sagas of the Icelanders game, but with enough distinctions that I think there would be a lot missed running in that system.  In particular, I think BW allows for really trying to flesh out the hulking Varl.  Still, pretty niche audience I think for the most part.

Elder Scrolls
In keeping with the northern European but not quite viking high fantasy idea, the Elder Scrolls series provides some great options for running a game I think.  The setting itself is incredibly fleshed out, which is a benefit as well as a bit of constraint, as there's more room for butting up against canon in terms of campaigns.  Not the hugest deal in the world, but something to think about.  The other question in using the Tamriel is settling on the primary province of the game, and how that will affect mechanics.  Skyrim?  At least one person is going to want to play as a dragonborn, meaning shouts will need to be fleshed out.  There's also a much greater number of race options that will need to be determined.  The various man and mer races are likely to be covered by limiting and tweaks various existing lifepaths, but what about the kaihjit?  Or the argonians?  Some heavy lifting would be required here.

Which, I think, brings me to my most likely setting for a future Burning Wheel game.

Witcher 3
I'll confess something here:  I have Witcher 3.  I've played Witcher 3.  I have, as of yet, been unable to really get into Witcher 3.  This is largely to due with the control schemes of the game itself, particularly when it comes to combat.  For whatever reason, the game is very counter-intuitive to my play style when it comes to video games.  However, what is inarguable is that I do find the game world itself incredibly fascinating, well developed, and (perhaps most importantly for my purposes here) open.

There's a lot of generic in Witcher 3 that I think it would be simple enough to try and convert to a default setting like Burning Wheel's, and likely without much fuss.  Are there towns in Witcher 3?  Are there important characters?  Yes, of course.  But while I know many players could tell you there's a character named The Bloody Baron, I would think fewer would be able to tell you what the name of his town is.  I'm a fairly reactionary GM - I plan scenarios, I'm good at interpreting player action and coming up with creative responses to that action, even if I didn't plan anything ahead of time.  Where I am very weak is in carefully planning out encounters and fleshing out the meticulous details of a world.  I'm perfectly fine referring to a town as "that place we went where the duke killed his wife while we were there" in my groups, and I'm much more apt to remember that than the name of the town anyway.

That being said, it doesn't mean there's no work to be done in order to convert Burning Wheel's default setting framework over to Witcher 3.  For one thing, there's a lot of limiting of the available character races.  Dwarves would make sense given their roles in the game, elves would be iffy I think, but no orcs.  Really I would ideally limit the PC choices to human and dwarf.  Then, assuming the players are mostly planning on playing witchers, there need to be some specific traits made up.  Witchers are sterile in game terms, and also have their unique cat eyes that allow them to see the magic secrets in the world around them, so there's some call-on or die traits to be dealt with there.

Where the Codex really caught my eye as it relates to the way magic and the witchers actually tackling supernatural creatures would be handled.  The game is largely based around northern European folklore, so the system works perfectly there with the Folklore skill.  Players can use that to try and discern remedies and charms for combating various ghouls and beasts, very similar in that regard to how the story progresses in the actual game.  The bigger question relates to how the game would handle magic.  The game has witches and the like in it, so there are some spells there, but by and large the witchers themselves have only a handful of magical powers to work with.  These come off less like true spells in the traditional RPG sense and more general skills that happen to be magical in nature.

This, I think, would be something best covered by using the Art Magic rules rather than the standard sorcery rules built into the system.  For the most part, the spells like Igni and such would be covered pretty well by the various functions of the Sorcery skill under the Art Magic rules, maybe with some slight tweaking and interpretation.  The big thing is that, in trying to emulate the game world, the witchers less learn new spells as they do improve their existing powers, which grow in strength as they go on.  In that sense, it seems to me to work better to just have a single skill, broken into different schools of magic in order to allow a bit more customization opportunity and less ability to munchkin as much, and having that skill improve through play as the game wears on.  Plus, then we don't have to constantly remember exact spell names and functions (again, planning and details aren't exactly my thing).

This will take some time and some percolating as far as the specifics go, but I think there's enough here to work with.  Once I get things fleshed out a bit more, I'll try and post some of my tweaks and such for anybody else out there who'd like to run their own Witcher game.

As always, thanks for reading.

Frontiering in Mouse Guard

A topic that comes up quite a bit among the Mouse Guard RPG community is the idea of setting up a new settlement during the game as an ongoing campaign.  People seem to want to run these kinds of campaigns, but tend to find it a bit daunting and aren't sure where to start.  Part of the beauty in design of Mouse Guard is that with the seasons and the turn structure, the game is fairly encapsulated, and that lends itself really well to building campaigns in chunks.  I think part of the issue for most people in approaching these types of campaigns comes down to pacing and trying to do too much in a single session.

I've found that the main starting point for this kind of campaign is answering out three main questions:

• Where is the new new settlement being set up geographically?
• Who will be populating the new settlement?
• Why is setting up a new settlement a better choice than living in an existing territory?

If you start thinking about these questions during your planning and discussions with your players, it will guide a lot of the early play sessions and give a lot of focus, which tends to be where GMs and players get hung up.  A key part of running a successful campaign setting up a new town is to keep in mind the duties of the Guard.  You or your players may want to set off into the woods looking for great beasts to slay, but the new settlement having a place to sleep or a source of food is usually much more paramount to their safety.  Protecting mice doesn't always mean killing things, and in many cases it leads to much more interesting and far-reaching choices for players.  Getting that buy-in from everyone is key.

A map of The Territories

If you start geographically, it can help give shape to the new settlement before the game starts running.  The planning of the initial missions shouldn't be that different than if you were filling out one of the lesser known territories.  In the campaign I ran with my home group, I wanted to make sure that the new settlement bordered a body of water for trading purposes and also for potential threats for future campaigns, so I chose the southeastern peninsula to border the same lake as Burl, Grasslake, and Lonepine.  Where you plan on putting the new settlement can tell you a lot of what predators the mice will have to deal with, and what resources might be available based on the landscape.  A settlement along the shoreline might grow rice, for example, while one on the edges of the Wild Country might harvest a lot of nuts from the nearby trees.

The who and why for a new territory tend to be linked, so figuring out one will likely give you an idea for the other.  Historically, there are two types of peoples who would voyage into unknown lands to build a life for themselves: those looking for fame and glory or those seeking to flee persecution.  If the mice starting your new settlement are frontiersmice, it's likely that they are going after some resource or trade route, which would give you a good idea of what skills those mice will have. More importantly, it'll give you an idea as to which skills they don't have.  Figuring out where the holes in a settlement's skilled labor are provides easy mission ideas, as it gives legitimate reasons or opportunities for the patrol to be involved in the new settlement.

Conversely, if the mice are fleeing some kind of persecution or conflict with another territory, that means they likely lack many of the skills needed for setting up a settlement on their own, and  that can up the danger factor in the ensuing missions.  Just as useful, it gives you a built-in relationship with another existing territory.  In our game, the mice setting up the new settlement were headed up by the daughter of the head of Grasslake, who had been cast out over conflicts with the patriarchial government in her hometown.  She was a capable enough mouse, but many of the mice that left with her were other female housemice who lacked many of the skills needed to survive in the wild.  This meant that the patrol had a large role to fill in protecting and help building up the settlement, and also allowed for many future sessions related to the conflict with Grasslake.

As I mentioned earlier, for me the key in these types of campaigns is looking at the building up of a settlement from a procedural standpoint.  There's a tendency from players and GMs to go the more traditional RPG route of monster encounters, but for Mouse Guard being ill-suited to withstand a flood can be a much greater danger than a wandering animal.  It also, from a mechanical standpoint, provides much more opportunity for skill development.  A new settlement needs houses for the mice living there - Carpenter, Stonemason, Scientist, Glazier, etc. all can be used for great obstacles during the GM Turn.  Mice also need to eat - Hunter is a knee-jerk skill to use, but buried in the Seasons chapter is this little gem: "Planting a field of seeds for later harvesting is an Ob 6 Harvester test."  The goal of the patrol should be helping the settlement achieve sustainability. After all, the Guard is always needed elsewhere, and there's no telling how long the patrol will be able to stick around.

In this sense, you can spread something like maintaining a steady food source across multiple obstacles and sessions.  Our town was in a marshy area, so there were small fish to catch for the short term.  We secured a rice shipment, and planted rice for more of a long-term food source, and then one of our later missions was to build a mill to convert the rice into rice flour for additional food, and paper for trade.  Taking on this line of thinking can help build a lot more color to your game, and can help your players get more of a connection to the settlement as they go, because they can see a true progression.

If you're thinking about running a campaign like this, keep some of these things in mind when designing your missions.  Mouse Guard to me is the perfect setting to run this sort of game, as everything is a real danger, from unknowingly building a town close to a fox's den or trying to negotiate a trade agreement with a nearby settlement that has resources you need.  If you think of everything that you really need to start a town, you can run missions in the same settlement for years. 

Let me know some of your stories of running your own settlement building missions, and let me know if you have any other suggestions for GMs looking to do so.