Tag: Game Master

RPG Setting Rumours: street brawler edition

adult-ancient-armor-289831.jpg[NOTE: This post sat in my drafts folder for over a year. No, I don’t know why.]

There are two things I like to do when developing RPG settings:

First, I love to populate settings with rumours and local legends. These give a feel of being living places, and also you never know when a rumour will spark a plot hook that leads to a fun new adventure.

The second thing I love to do is crowd source ideas so that a) I don’t have to do all the work and b) I end up with a more varied and interesting range of possibilities to work with.

This post contains a series of ideas shared on twitter in response to this post:

Continue reading “RPG Setting Rumours: street brawler edition”

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Expectations and trust in RPGs: Or ‘Why GMs have an obligation to follow the rules’

Note: This is version 1.1 of this post, following feedback from various sources. Also, this post begins with one massive assumption – that people who play RPGs do so for the sake of entertainment and enjoyment, and that games are more entertaining and enjoyable when conducted within positive interpersonal relationships (as opposed to hostile or conflict-oriented relationships). If you disagree with this basic premise, you’re probably not going to find much value in the post that follows.

I decided to write this post after a brief conversation following this tweet:

 

Though in reality I was also responding to many other instances that I’ve seen this sentiment expressed in much angrier and more confrontational ways in different forums about gaming.

It is a sentiment with which I strongly disagree.

While every published RPG will likely include a statement that “these rules are just guidelines, change them as you see fit”, this does not grant a GM carte blanche to mix things up on a whim, or to do so at the expense of the rest of the players of the game.

This post is not about the freedom of gaming groups to modify the rules as they see fit. This post is about the mindset of some in which the GM is distinct from the players in a group, and believes they are not bound under any obligation to recognise the published rules of the game, or even, it seems, abide by unwritten social rules.

I’ve played in games with GMs who take the “GM is god” attitude, and on the whole found them to be utterly unenjoyable – not least of all because of the underlying conflict between people that this attitude fosters. I also took this attitude to being a GM at various times, and can also say that it was some of the worst GMing I’ve ever done, because, again, it fosters interpersonal conflict, but also because it transforms a position of responsibility into one of authority and power over people who are, otherwise, friends.

(and I want to note that while I identified Graham Warden’s tweet as an inciting incident for this post, in no way do I ascribe any particular intent or meaning on Graham’s part. He quite generously chatted with me for some time via twitter and even provided some feedback on an earlier draft of this post. Perhaps unfortunately, his tweet reminded me of a range of negative aspects of the gaming experience which I’m responding to, and I don’t want that negativity unfairly ascribed to him.)

The question of whether or not a GM is obligated to follow any kind of rules comes down to the GMs role in establishing and managing personal and player expectations within the game, the impact of individual expectations on the gaming experience and the role expectations may play in inciting conflict within a gaming group.

Expectations and emotional reactions

Have you ever heard it said that managing your expectations is an essential part of part of being happy?

Or what about the role that expectations play in creating humour, which says that humour is created when you violate an expectation the audience holds (either an expectation you create through the ‘setup’ of the joke, or an expectation commonly held as part of societal norms) in a way that is ultimately safe for the audience member.

There’s also a significant relationship between one’s expectations and feelings of safety and, consequently, anxiety.

Expectations play a significant role in the way we go about our lives, our state of mind and also our interactions with others.

Use walking as an example: when you expect the ground in front of you to be stable and flat, you step forward, almost unconsciously, confident in your expectation that the ground will take your weight and allow you to take another step. When something happens in contradiction to that expectation – maybe your foot hits an obstacle you hadn’t expected, or the ground was less solid that you expected – you might feel a range of emotions.

If you stumble slightly, it might be mild surprise. If you stumble in public you might feel embarrassment and even a bit defensive. If you suspect someone else has played a part in your stumble, you might feel anger or betrayal or humiliation, depending on your predisposition. And if you stumble and start to fall, you might even feel momentary panic at the possibility of imminent physical harm.

We form expectations based on past experiences that we extrapolate into the future, and it is the relationship between those expectations and our experiences that have such a significant impact on our state of mind and capacity for action.

What is important to note about this function of human psychology is that while you can attempt to apply conscious control over your expectations, the forming of expectations and their influence on your emotions and behaviour happen unconsciously as an ongoing process. It is entirely possible to experience an emotional reaction on behalf of an expectation you didn’t even realise you had. As such, you can’t always control your emotional reactions to things, but you can seek to exercise some control over your behaviour in response to those reactions.

You can see examples of this in just about every area of human activity. Every seen a professional sportsperson go absolutely berserk at a referee? Chances are the referee made a call that seriously clashed with the players’ expectations about the validity of their actions in the game. Or in a domestic setting have you ever felt frustration, or seen someone get frustrated or even angry when a household item isn’t in the place it was expected to be in?

That’s someone acting on an emotional reaction to expectations not being met, regardless of whether or not those expectations were reasonable.

So what does this have to do with RPGs and gaming?

Player expectations and rules

Just as humans go about their lives with expectations based on their past experiences, a player engaging in the fictional reality of an RPG decides on the actions of their character based on their expectations of the fictional world in which the game is being played.

So what informs those expectations? First, like in real life, past experiences of playing such games, but secondly, and possibly more importantly, the published rules of the game they are playing.

A player who has read the core rules of the game, even if they’ve only read the rules as they pertain to their character, will have formed a set of expectations around how the game is played, how the fictional game world works in accordance with the rules, and what kind of actions their character can take.

If, for whatever reason, the players expectations are broken, they are going to experience exactly the same kind of emotional reaction as a person would in any other circumstance. As with any other situation, it is entirely possible for a player to have entirely unreasonable expectations. Maybe their expectation are being informed by a misinterpretation of the rules, or maybe they expect to always succeed without factoring the random element of dice rolls into their expectations. Nevertheless, broken expectations will provoke a response.

The nature and severity of someone’s reaction will be modified by the circumstances in which the expectation is broken, much as with the example of an unexpected stumble while walking.

When a player wants to perform an action during a low-risk, relatively calm moment of the game, only to be told “the rules don’t quite work that way”, then their reaction is likely going to be similarly calm – especially if the player is then able to reframe their proposed action according to an updated understanding of the rules.

If, however, a player seeks to perform an action during the climax of a significant moment of conflict during which the stakes are high and possibly the character’s very life is on the line, only to be told “you can’t do that”, then the emotional reaction is likely to be more significant.

In a perfect world all people would have the level of self control necessary to be able to process such a reaction, filter it through an analysis of their own expectations before reacting in a measured way (“I’m sorry, I thought rule X meant I could do Y, could you explain?”). However, humans are wonderfully irrational creatures at times, and an outburst of “That’s bullshit!” is just as likely, if not moreso.

It’s entirely likely that such a reaction from a player will violate an expectation of the GM who initiated whichever interpretation or the game rules the player was responding to. If nothing else it may contradict the GMs expectation that they were correct or justified in their initial behaviour. Expectations and reactions are complicated, overlapping, and sometimes circular things.

This is where the behaviour and attitude of the GM come in to it.

The inherent authority structures within (most) RPGs

While there are a range of ways for a group of people to engage in a TTRPG, the most commonly encountered is one which has an individual as Game Master, and everyone else in the role of Player, controlling one or more characters within the diegetic game.

While the players control their character(s), this structure places the GM in the position of being the author of the universe in which the characters are acting. There are many different approaches to the role of GM, from being the ‘lead storyteller’ to the ‘primary arbiter’ to the ‘GM is god’ – regardless of how authoritarian a GM is or is not in their approach to the role, the GM still defines the way the world works around the players.

But while the GM has authority, they also are ultimately responsible for meeting or violating player expectations about that world in the context of the game.

Whether or not a GM adheres to the rules of the game, or discusses rules variations in an upfront manner, plays a significant role in their ability to gratify or violate the expectations of a player, and, more importantly, it informs the very process of forming expectations about a game that a player may have.

This is where trust comes in. People form expectations about each other, and react accordingly, based on past experiences, and trust is the name generally given to positive expectations of another person.

If Players have the expectation that the GM will follow the rules and identify specific rules variations ahead of time, then there will be greater trust, and players will be more willing to take risks within those rules and engage more actively in the game.

Trust is an essential resource that GMs need for those times when they want to defy the rules to serve the story – one example includes the characters being stripped of their powers or equipment, forcing them to deal with challenges that were once beneath them. If there is trust between Gm and players, then such a situation is more likely to be accepted. However, if a player feels that the GM ignores the rules on a whim, breaking expectations and jeopardising the player’s enjoyment of the game (and their character’s life), then trust is diminished and the player approaches the game more hesitantly, and the focus shifts from diegetic action to resolve challenges in game to interpersonal conflict as a way of addressing matters of character action.

Like with the very forming of expectations and reactions to them, this relationship exists whether people are conscious of it or not – and it is an unfortunate reality that it is much easier to damage and destroy trust between people than it is to build it up.

So what does this all mean?

RPGs are a unique form of entertainment that blend free-form action with rules-defined play structures, and they are also an inherently collaborative social recreational activity, which means that there is no real separation of the game from the people who play it. As such, I believe that any approach to playing a game needs to include an awareness of the people playing it.

Ultimately this boils down into two sets of advice for players and GMs:

Advice for Players

  • Be aware of your expectations, and what is informing them
  • Be aware of your reactions to expectations being broken
  • Try to be aware of the expectations of others at the table, including the GM (session 0 is a good way to address this)

Advice for GMs

  • Be aware of your expectations about being a GM, and what is informing them
  • Recognise that the rules of the game play a critical role in the forming of player expectations and enjoyment of the game, and that you have primary authority and responsibility over the exercising of those rules in high stakes, high conflict game situations
  • Discuss variations to rules upfront, in a manner timely enough to let players shape their expectations around them
  • Recognise that disagreements about rules are often more about the expectations formed around those rules, and consider your own role in informing and breaking those expectations.

Some final thoughts – Session 0

One of the most popular strategies for managing expectations in an RPG is to have a “session 0” – before gameplay actually begins, have an open discussion about the style and approach to playing the game that everyone can agree to. While I think this is a good idea, I’ve never really engaged this strategy explicitly. Instead, I try to be open about matters of rules and game management as the game progresses. We will have fairly open discussions about relevant sections of rules as they pertain to an upcoming scene, and then play through that scene.

Regardless of how you go about it, transparency is at the core of these strategies, and a consistently transparent approach will, over time, become the platform on which people in your group will build their expectations and trust in each other, and this is an essential part of a collaborative social activity like TTRPGs.

Night brings the sun (a tale of heroic sacrifice)

[Image: ‘Night brings the sun’ by Jen]

I’ve been running an Exalted 2E game for about 2 years, in which time we’ve managed 14 sessions.

A recent session included the culmination of several plot lines and resulted in a large battle between the PCs, who were leading a militia of a few hundred hastily trained refugees, and a force of spider-like beastmen created by a sorcerous second-circle demon. The beastment were led by terrestrial exalted who were bound to love and serve the demon by mind-bending sorcery. However, the beastmen were only distraction from the army of war ghosts marching up from a nearby shadowland to overrun the refugee township the PCs were defending.

The fight with the beastmen took a hard toll on the PCs, with most of them drained of essence and suffering a few injuries, but one PC (a night caste martial artist) was crippled in the fight. As they were assessing the outcome of their narrow victory over the beastmen, the PCs became aware of the army of ghosts marching from another direction.

As the army of ghosts approached, the PCs – having recently gained access to a salt mine – tried to build a salt line around the village, but realised they wouldn’t have enough to do so, so instead they built a defensive salt line between the village and the army, planning to use some of their various travel charms and magic to encircle the army of ghosts with salt once they drew closer, and then just wait for the sun to rise.

They didn’t consider that the demon would be leading the ghostly army, and one casting of Magma Kraken (a powerful spell that summons tentacles of molten rock from the ground to fight) was able to disrupt their defensive salt line and gave the PCs the problem of dealing with the tentacles before they did any real damage.

This was when the crippled night caste decided to act.

Previously, the night caste had been having troubled dreams, which had led to learning the first few charms of the Quicksilver Hand of Dreaming martial arts style.

For those unfamiliar, the first couple of charms of this style include the ability to give people specific visions or dreams, and then another charm lets you pull those dreams out of people’s heads and manifest them in the real world. The night caste had not, up to this point, really explored the possibilities of this combo.

Realising the likelihood of defeat at the hand of the ghosts, which would mean a terrible end for the village and its 5000 occupants, the Night Caste PC gave a stirring speech in which he called for a volunteer willing to give their life in defence of their home and family.

Then, using an ancient artifact (Wings of the Raptor… a magic cloak turns into giant wings), the night caste flew high into the midnight sky, and with their last remaining essence used a combo of Martial Arts charms charms to give the person a waking dream of the rising sun that burns away the undead.

Then, knowing full well what it would mean to touch the surface of the sun, he plucked out that dream, letting the sun shine brightly for a fraction of a second before it incinerated both the character and his volunteer, but also destroying the entire army of ghosts in a blinding flash.

Between the player first proposing the idea and the final execution, we had a bit of discussion about the implications of the action and the ultimate finality of attempting to hold the sun in the palm of your hand. After considering some alternatives, the player decided to commit to it and we played out the final moment which brought a quick end end to the character and the battle. To background this event, we used the soundtrack from Sunshine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_b6C0PHXkQ

The final serendipity of the moment was the fact that the group had only just recently learned of the fate of the character’s first age incarnation, who had similarly died when a solar circle spell he had been casting to slay a horde of demons had been disrupted, and he similarly exploded, taking many of the demons with him, but ultimately killing himself and a circle-mate.

Heroic sacrifices are rare moments in roleplaying games – and need to be rare moments in order to maintain the weight and impact of the decision by the character/player – but when they come up in an appropriate moment it can be a real highlight to a game session, and even a whole campaign.

This moment was a great example of the collaborative storytelling of roleplaying, and one of many examples of why I love this hobby.

The GM & the tarot: 2 – Framing a campaign

<<<Previous: 1 – Why tarot?

Next: 3 – Devising a session>>>

“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random” – Ken Robinson.

As stated in part 1, the primary reasons to use a tarot deck to devise RPG stories is because of the elements of randomness and variety it brings, and the creative challenge that comes from trying to fit random elements into a story. As per the quote at the top of this post, the random draw of the cards provides a new idea, and then you give that idea value in the context of a story.

When starting a new campaign, a random draw of tarot cards can be used to quickly create a landscape of NPCs whose conflicts, goals and motivations will be played out over the course of your campaign.

The steps of this process are detailed below, along with an example from a Shadowrun game devised using this method.

Note: This approach is based on a couple of assumptions about the way people run and play RPGs; primarily, that people engage in ongoing ‘campaign’ style play with a continuous set of player characters, and that campaigns are made up of a series of sub-plots and stories (each usually representing 1-2 sessions of play) that fit within a larger, overarching narrative that develops throughout the course of many sessions. Later posts will detail a variation of this process for devising stand-alone or one-shot story ideas.

Game Concept

First, come up with an overall concept for the game/story you wish to run. This provides some indication of the kinds of characters and scenarios you’ll create and a lens through which to interpret cards drawn as part of the process.

Example: After a few years of running ‘specialised’ games in the Shadowrun universe (all PCs are gang members, elite military, a magical circle, etc), I decided to run a game that went back to the original setting of the game. The characters were to be runners navigating between the big players at the top, and the gangs and hard life of the streets.

For the sake of something different, instead of using one of the mega-corps to be the immediate representation of the ‘big players’, I wanted to focus on the corp-run security and military services of the 6th world.

Initial draw – creating primary NPCs

The first use of the tarot cards is to define the landscape of the campaign, the pattern of key NPCs who will feature in your stories and who will return as primary allies and antagonists for your player’s characters.

Extract the 22 major arcana, shuffle them and randomly draw around 8 cards (more or less depending on the scale and scope of the story you wish to tell). Keep in mind that you can always add to this at a later date if you wish to expand your story.

Each of these cards is used to inform the creation of a major NPC who will feature in the game/campaign. Take time to devise a concept for an NPC based on each of these cards, as appropriate to the overall game concept you’ve chosen.

Example: As I was only expecting to run this game for a handful of sessions, I limited myself to 6 cards.

The cards I drew to start the game were The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Chariot, The Hanged Man, Death,  and The Devil (presented here in their numbered order within the deck).

As NPCs, I interpreted these cards as follows:

Card Suggested Meaning NPC
 The Emperor Wisdom and power, top of the hierarchy, male ego A community leader/organiser with significant influence in one of the slums of Seattle.
 The Hierophant Knowledge & education, studying higher values, accepting discipline A senior researcher in a corp-military R&D division.
 The Chariot Adventure and risk, mental and physical journeys, desire for victory A smuggler who brings things into and out of Seattle.
 The Hanged Man  Transition, limbo, taking a step backwards in order to move forwards A crime boss whose efforts to grow influence have been stalled.
 Death Change, beginnings and endings, getting to the gritty details The ‘agents of change’ – an elite squad within the corp-military that works alongside The Hierophant.
 The Devil  Thirst for money or power, obsession, addictive patterns of behaviour, manipulation by others The crime-boss’ second-in-command, a heavily cybered warrior.

Determining NPC motivations

The next step of the defining the landscape is to determine the prime motivations of each NPC in the context of the story. To do this, once again take the 22 major arcana, including the ones you’ve already drawn. One card will be drawn per NPC, which will inform their objectives and/or motivations.

This time, when shuffling the cards, lay them face down on a table and swirl them around so that the direction of each card is randomised as well as its order. When a card is drawn upright, that indicates that the character’s goals are a part of their public persona, while if it is inverted (upside down) that means the characters goals are hidden or secretive.

For each inverted card, you may also choose to draw another card to identify what kind of public face the character puts forward to mask their hidden intentions.

Example: For the NPCs identified above, I drew the following cards to define their motivations:

Character Card/Motivation
Smuggler The High Priestess
Community Organiser The Hierophant
Crime Boss Temperance
Crime Boss’ Lieutenant The Fool
Elite Soldiers The Magician
R&D Agent The Tower (inverted) + The World

I interpreted this card draw as follows:

Character Motivation
Smuggler Seeks to uncover secrets – believes there is a secret plot connected to some of the jobs they carry out.
Community Organiser Seeks to build a traditional, somewhat nostalgic, community to support people in the slums.
Crime Boss Is seeking to achieve a sense of harmony, and heal themselves. At this point, the interaction between The Hanged Man and Temperance provided the idea of a Crime Boss inflicted with a mental illness. This is what was responsible for their stalled empire, and their current motivation was to overcome those problems in order to get business running again.
Crime Boss’ Lieutenant Seeks experience – is a hedonist. Seeks new challenges and to overcome them. In this case the combination of The Devil and The Fool provided the idea of a figure who revelled in confrontational approaches to building power, yet was unaware of the implications of their boss’ health issues. In the context of Shadowrun, I translated this idea into a fledgling AI that controlled various drones and humanoid forms in the physical world.
Elite Soldiers This unit seeks to elevate their skills and unit tactics. For reasons connected with their past experiences, they volunteered to work with R&D so they could test better equipment & tactics.
R&D Agent This character’s hidden motivation is to transcend humanity. Having worked on cybernetic development for his career, this character wants to move beyond cybernetic enhancement of individuals and create a genuine hybrid entity. The character’s public motivation is to improve military cybernetics in accordance with company policy.

Determining relationship to PCs

Once you have you list of NPCs, take the cards that represent them, shuffle, and lay them out in a row from left to right, which represents the relationship to the PCs that these characters will have in the game.

Those towards the left are the ones with whom the PCs will be most closely aligned, and those on the right are the antagonists whose machinations will be driving many of the plots and forcing the characters to react.

Example: In this instance the cards came out in the order of: The Chariot, The Emperor, The Hanged Man, The Devil, Death, The Hierophant.

So the primary antagonist of this game will be the military R&D agent, followed closely by the soldiers working with them. The crime boss and their 2IC are more neutral, though the lieutenant is slightly more antagonistic. Finally, the Smuggler will be their greatest ally, and the community organiser will be generally, though not universally, supportive of the characters.

With that process, the social landscape of the campaign is defined and some tensions between characters as well as potential story lines start to emerge. As you progress to develop individual plots and session outlines, these NPCs and their motivations will play a role in interpreting additional cards drawn as part of your story.

Note: As stated in the introduction to this blog, one of the primary elements of my approach to creating RPG scenarios is to create conflicts of values and motivations that the players need to navigate. For this reason, I leave it to last to determine the NPC’s relationship to the players, letting conflict arise out conflicting an overlapping motivations rather than any predetermined concept of being heroes, allies or villains. This way the interpretation of cards to define NPCs and their motivations are free from expectations base don the characters role in the story.

If you wish to run a game that is more closely defined by the genre conventions of the game’s setting, or in a style that requires a more definite sense of heroes and villains, you can complete this step as part of the initial draw to identify NPCs. That way you are interpreting cards knowing what role each characters will play in your story.

<<<Previous: 1 – Why tarot?

Next: 3 – Devising a session>>>

The GM & the tarot: 1 – Why tarot?

Next: 2 – Framing your campaign >>>

I find tarot cards to be an invaluable tool for generating interesting RPG stories, or even individual session plots. The idea of using tarot cards as a way to generate story ideas or as a mechanism in RPGs is hardly new, however the purpose of this series of posts is to detail some of the ways I use tarot cards as a GM, particularly to help quickly generate new and interesting story ideas for characters, campaigns, stories, individual sessions and even single scenes.

‘The GM & the tarot’ series

Why TAROT?

The primary reason I use a tarot deck is for randomness and variety.

When writing stories for a game session you can create interesting and unexpected subplots and scenes by allowing an element of randomness to determine key story elements. Responding to that randomness by incorporating a new ideas into your game’s story can also be a fun creative challenge and break you out of those personal patterns of style or story structure that you may not even be conscious of.

Then there’s the variety of ideas represented by the number of cards and their various interpretations. Once you move past any ideas of mysticism, most tarot decks-which originated as playing cards before being co-opted by fortune tellers-are built around representations of human experiences and struggles, with cards and images imbued with symbolism to depict many aspects of those struggles. With 78 cards (usually) made up of 22 trump cards plus 56 cards divided into 4 suits, there are more possible card combinations to generate ideas than you’ll ever be able to incorporate into a lifetime of games.

This makes them a handy way to quickly devise interesting and original characters, motives and plot hooks for role playing games, or to add additional depth and nuance to an existing story line.

For those unfamiliar with tarot cards, here’s a quick summary of the way most decks are structured:

Major Arcana: 22 cards (also known as Trump cards) – each card depicts an archetype or ideal, and when taken in sequence the cards tell a story of the journey from innocence to worldly experience. Even if you do nothing else, these cards provide a structure for milestones of an extended campaign.

Minor Arcana: 56 cards divided into 4 suits-common suits are Pentacles, Cups, Swords, Rods/Staves-and each suit has 10 cards plus 4 court cards-Page, Knight, Queen, King.

Each of the suits has its ‘traditional’ meaning and associations, but if those don’t work for you, you can give them whatever meaning is appropriate to your game in order to make individual cards more relevant to the stories you wish to tell. For example, in games with a more Eurocentric mythology, you may wish to associate each suit with it’s primary elemental association, or associate suits with significant factions, houses or families within your game.

Finally, while purchasing tarot decks can be a costly exercise, there are plenty of free online resources including random card selectors, or sites with full decks and card meanings. You can even buy tarot deck apps for phones and tablets at a fraction of the price of a physical deck. I won’t link to any directly as many of them are associated with attempts to sell online tarot readings, so if you find such a site, I would encourage you to use of what free resources they have and view with extreme scepticism any other offers or promises they may make.

Next: 2 – Framing your campaign >>>

Little Demons on the Prairie – an encounter

This encounter was devised for Exalted, 2nd edition and was originally posted here. Presented here is the outline of a single encounter, which can be inserted into a game by itself as just an odd moment that raises the question of the nature of good and evil, but in my game this encounter formed the basis of a longer story which ran for two sessions. I will post that longer story outline in a future post.

Main themes and scenario objectives:

This encounter ultimately revolves around questioning the nature of purity and corruption on a micro level, and forces the characters to consider where their thresholds are on the scale between the two. The characters ultimately have to decide, on behalf of others, just how much ‘corruption’ is acceptable, and at which point suffering or death are preferable options.

The elements of this encounter might seem a little specific to the setting of Exalted, so I have included some suggestions to help swap out exalted specific elements for things suitable to other game settings. Continue reading “Little Demons on the Prairie – an encounter”

“…but at least he’s MY demon” – an encounter

This scenario was originally written for an Exalted, 2nd Edition campaign (if you’re not familiar with Exalted, read more here and here), and has been previously posted on the Onyx Path Exalted forums, here.

Main themes and scenario objectives:

The point of this encounter was to prompt the characters to explore the boundaries of their sense of right and wrong, all in the context of ‘how far would you go to survive’. There is no  right or wrong way for this scenario to play out, as it ultimately forces the characters to make decisions about who they are and to express those qualities through their actions. Continue reading ““…but at least he’s MY demon” – an encounter”

Tales of Grey-introduction

I’ve been playing table-top role-playing games (or pen-and-paper, if you prefer) for a little over 20 years, and for most of that time I’ve been in the role of Game Master, creating stories, settings and conflicts for my friends to navigate with their characters.

The storytelling aspect of RPGs has always been my favourite part of the hobby, and as a GM I most enjoy devising stories and scenes that (hopefully!) engage players and make the game a more story-driven experience.

The title of this blog is in reference to my preferred approach to devising games, which is to create morally ambiguous situations in which the focus is more about the choices the characters make and the consequences of those choices than just on the results of dice rolls. This can work in different ways depending on the genre constraints of each specific game, but in general I find it an effective way to approach each game session that can result in extended engagement by the players.

This site is a combination of a blog about Roleplaying games and related resources, and a place to collect and publish some of the scenarios, characters and gaming resources I develop along the way on the off chance that anyone else finds them useful.