Observations of the Fox

I've said any times that I love the idea of one-on-one GM-to-Player sessions, but the only game that I've really read through which is specifically built to facilitate this sort of play is the Ghost Dog RPG... I know that there are other "duet" games out there, but I haven't really had much chance to play with them.    Tonight's session of the unnamed "Warhammer 40K/Sceletus" remix gave me the chance to see if this game would work in that format, and it actually worked pretty well. However, I had actually been told that there would be more players for tonight's session, so running a solo game wasn't expected.  The last week has seen me researching the various WH40K Tabletop games further, ad I did find something which I thought was interesting in the various games. So I adapted it. I'm pretty sure it's the Cubicle 7 games that build characters using a combination of their planetary homeworld, their cultural upbringing, and their role ...

So, I'm running a series of games at the local gaming store. A string of mini-campaigns, each 5 sessions long. Each session 2 hours. Each string of games will be a different system and setting.  The first  mini-campaign was Cyberpunk 2020/Red, and the setting was the Bronzewing tower complex, just over 100 stories tall, 50000 people living in the tower.  This time I offered to run a Warhammer 40K experience, and told the players it would be an investigation by the Inquisition. I like running with systems that promote the type of story being told, and really thought something like Gumshoe (2009-2013) or Cthulhu Dark  (2023) would serve the purposes I needed...then I looked at the various games that were focused on the Warhammer 40k Inquisition. I generally hated them. For theae purposes anyway. Every system seems to be filled with fiddly details and multiple systems that worked to cross purposes, or which sruggled to maintain elements of the tabletop battlegame, but ...

 I saw an interesting post on one of the many RPG related Facebook groups I'm a part of...   ...it really made me think about the three-way tension that forms the basis of my understanding of the hobby.  It basically states that this sort of things is full of red flags and there IS going to be tension forming as a result of the choices made before the game even begins.  For those who aren't familiar with the concept, it basically works like this.   The session, in the middle, has three types of tension on it. The GM/Narrator influences the session, so do the players, and so do the rules. As soon as one of these sides exerts too much influence on the flow at the heart of the session, there is the potential for things to go awry. (A couple of fairly comprehensive posts on the concept can be found here and here ) Where do I see the red flags... The homebrew....  ...no.  The high fantasy...  ...that says heartbreaker to me in combination with homebr...

That's basically it for the folder, except for a couple of key things that I do include, but forgot to add at the beginning of the series. One of the things I like to do is prepare for the unexpected to a limited extent. I've already mentioned that I do this with fragments of maps, and story hooks, but I also do this with random encounters, monsters and NPCs. If I'm playing a heavy game like D&D, Pathfinder, Rolemaster or Warhammer FRP, I'll find a random character generator, or visit one of the SRD websites for the game and download some potential folks and critters for the characters to possibly encounter in the area. For creatures I  might use one of the card sleeve sheets and file away nine typical creatures in the area. I'd roll a pair of d10s and use the lower of the two results to determine what might be encountered in the area when things in the story are getting slow or monotonous (this way I can assign common creatures/encounters to low numbers and rar...

I'm doing two parts with this post because we're getting to the end, and there isn't really a lot to say here. I figure a quick game is a good game, as long as things are fast flowing, you can get away with a lot of hand-waves and plot holes, and it's only later that players will ask "What about this bit?" or "What happened there?" Sometimes the players will forget things, and we can just skip over them, sometimes those things can be addressed as a plot hook to be picked up in a later session. As long as enough storylines see closure at the end of a session, there's an overall feeling of a satisfying story. However, this often means making sure plenty lof quick notes are taken along the way...a few scrawls here, a modification to the relationship map, a word or two describing a sigil or sign that might make a useful plot device later. For tyhese reasons I'll try to make sure there's half a dozen lined sheets, half a dozen plain sheets,...

In the time since I've started this sequence of posts, there's a few interesting things I'd like to observe and critique (like this , which I've been waiting 30 years for). But to avoid disrupting the sequence I'll get to those developments once I've finished this run... ...so, for the moment, back to part 7.

I've got a thing for maps ...all of the top few posts I've created over the years have been about helping people to draw better maps and understand how maps can be better incorporated into their games (for examples, see here , here , and here ).  Sure, there are heaps of Virtual Table-Tops (VTs or VTTs) around these days, but this series is analogue, and I like the feel of making marks on a page with a pen or pencil in my hand.  When I include maps in my gaming folders, I like to make sure to start with things that are immediately relevant for the players. The immediate buildings and landscape around the point where they start, the local region including places they might be able to travel to in the first session, then maybe a wider map of the country/continent/world. If it's a sci-fi game, this might be swapped out for a star system chart and possibly a sector chart. Half a dozen maps to start things off usually covers the "needed" preparations.  Once a map hits ...

Here's where things might go a bit differently to what other people would put in their folders. I've discussed relationship maps on the blog before (also here and here ), because they're a really useful tool for quickly seeing how different factions and individuals react to one another. Relationship maps can really help to establish the structure and politics of a setting. Vast factional maps can give ideas of what different kingdoms/countries/empires/corporations think of each other openly. Detailed maps can provide the specific favours and grudges that might drive the motivations of specific characters. I like the consider them to be working documents that are subject to change depending on how the actions of the characters impact the world around them. If player characters are included in the relation ship maps in some way, I'll only include the reactions and attitudes of the NPC/Supporting-Characters on the map, because the player will need to decide their attitud...

As a teacher, I'm used to students leaving their workbooks at home, the same applies to players in a game campaign...not as often, because players usually want to be a part of the session's activities, but it still happens.  A player without their character sheet is problematic, especially in complex systems, or  if there's a lot of moving parts in the game. Over the years (decades) I've been playing and running games, I can think of several times where different players have come to a session without their character sheets, and inevitably the player says "I know my character so well that I don't need my sheet" . The first few times, I figured that this was reasonable, but invariably every time something would come up in the narrative, and the player without the character sheet would mysteriously have just the right skill or piece of equipment that would quickly overcome the issue. "No, honestly, that's on my sheet at home. I'll make sure I br...