Matt Colville: On Being an Evil Character

The Real Central Tension to Your D&D Game

I've been listening to Matt Colville for a long time. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8&list=PLlUk42GiU2guNzWBzxn7hs8MaV7ELLCP_) In case you aren't interested in skipping over to YouTube, he has a great series on running Dungeons & Dragons games (and tabletop RPGs in general). He's got about 30 (40?) years of experience running games and it's a subject he's obviously enthusiastic about. It's a joy to watch.

Matt talks about how to scale monsters to match your player characters(PCs). How to coordinate conflicts between players. The central conflict of a setting. The merits of reviled things (4th edition) and the flaws of beloved things (3.5 edition). Those topics each have their time in the sun, but they also bleed over into one another to create a tapestry of Matt Colville's Philosophy of Running a tabletop RPG.

In that tapestry, there's a deep conflict. One thing Matt talks about is how the dice are the dice. Players' characters take their chances in a dangerous world: and if a trap would deal more damage than their hit points, or a non-player character would execute them, or if a card from the Deck of Many things would randomly make a player's character unplayable, then that character--and their years of experience and adventuring--would be gone. There are real stakes to the events which happen, and to some extent they are "natural" to the world that he, as the Dungeon Master, is creating.

The other thing is fudging dice rolls and drama. He regularly covers how bad guys can choose to affect less vulnerable characters in combat and how the events of the world occur in ways that are dramatic and centered around the characters. Players are playing to have fun, not to get a Sopranos cut to black ending because of an enemy who kills them with no foreshadowing via a completely unknown mechanism.

Both are good, but they are in conflict. It's a razor's edge for any Storyteller (Dungeon Master, whatever you want to call it). Players want rules with real chances of failure to feel like they've accomplished something, but they also want to have fun. For some people, the feeling of accomplishment is synonymous with fun. I believe most of us see ourselves as being that type of person.

I'm not sure you can have it both ways. You can't overcome the indifferent clockwork of a universe that runs on dramatic narrative conventions. If you fail at the drama, it's because you were railroaded. If you succeed despite the drama that's ludonarrative dissonance. 

It's no surprise that gaming has these terms to hand--railroading and ludonarrative dissonance--because they represent conflicts which come from the tension of smushing consequential game decisions into traditional, satisfying narrative structure and saying "now kiss."

Neither one of those things is bad--not even railroading. Players can pull the old improv standard of "yes and" to a good railroading and have fun with it just as easily as they can get disgruntled. The same applies a character who is bad at lying rolling a "20" to deceive the Prince of Lies. Lots of characters would have fun with that, but some wouldn't.

Y'know, your mileage may vary. Talk with your group before playing. Ensure your play group understands what each person wants outta the yadda yadda yaddah. 

I'm not sure if it's possible.

Obviously, everyone can sit down at a table and have fun with their friends. You can play Cards Against Humanity or gin rummy or...I dunno, Crack Cocaine Chess and have fun with your friends (as long as your friends can keep it together when the cops come around).

Is there any real story if nothing matters? Copy that previous sentence and replace "story" with "accomplishment." Fictional events can affect us and make us feel very real emotions. The illusion of overcoming a problem, like solving a puzzle, can be satisfying. 

On the crust of slow-bake planet, between the vacuum and the magma, in the stellar film upon which we live like the universe's black mold, human feelings are the only things that matter, the only things that are real, I mean, after you get over the food, shelter, and water stuff.

The delusion of story and accomplishment are real, yeah.

I talk this as it relates to video games, too. I'm sorry, but there's no accomplishment in defeating a video game. There's not anything remarkable about getting video game achievements. You're supposed to win. That's how video games work. Even if there's a bell curve of people who can master a video game and people who can't, huddling under the proficient arc of that curve means diddly squat. 

You were supposed to win and all you mastered along the way was...reflexes? memorizing a level? a moveset? reading a wiki? following an instruction like a dolphin who can sort shapes?

Whoopty fuckin' doo.

This is a bit of a self-roast. If you follow me on twitter, I've been humblebragging on my fell-off-the-wagon Stellaris run for a few weeks under the thin veneer of poking fun at the game. It's just a distraction to learn and interact with the rules of a completely false, contrived world. 

D&D is that same kind of masturbatory exercise with some token challenge and a few consequences waved around like a drunk with empty gun. Even if the consequences are real, they aren't. If your character dies and their belongings are scattered towards the winds, it doesn't matter; you'll get up tomorrow and go to work.

Or maybe your DM is creating a world with consistent, discernible rules which you master and then they'll give you a few extra virtual shekels for your dolphin-like obedience. 

The truth isn't that you need to balance story or challenge; it's that you can't really have either one. Not with conventional tabletop RPGs. Not without some delusion. 

And that's fine. Delusion is, debateably, essential to how we live. Refusing to consider existential dooms and living as though they aren't present helps to focus on the present as it is instead, of considering the many things that might wipe this algae out.

I've been leaning hard into FATE these past few years, because the story is the challenge. What you overcome is the blank page in front of you and your own reticence to accept other peoples' ideas.

Ideally. I haven't overcome shit while playing FATE and as I'm writing this I realize I've always been a bit too comfortable blaming other player's lack of enthusiasm.

For someone who felt I needed to define "dungeon master" a few paragraphs back, I'm comfortable blowing past was FATE is. FATE is a tabletop roleplaying game like Dungeons and Dragons, but whereas D&D game mechanics include status effects, ranges, spell components, and the linear probabilities afforded by a single 20-sided die, FATE's mechanics are about drawing broad characters, using drama as a currency, and creative a story collectively.

I've also thought about picking up Microscope. Another tabletop RPG--which isn't a game, so 'Another tabletop RP'--where players agree upon the theme of, ground rules of, and events which will bookend an era in a world's history. They then take turns adding periods, events, and scenes in the era of that world. The game is the creation of the world itself, with players roleplaying historical characters during specific scenes.

For the past few years, I've told people "I haven't been in the right headspace" for roleplaying. I wasn't before I started saying it, but then I didn't realize why I wasn't having fun with it anymore. I don't feel like throwing on the skinsuit of an elven ranger and listening to Important NPC from a generic fantasy world talk about Task to Retrieve/Discover/Destroy the Notable Item/Person for STAKES and then accomplishing that Task via overgrown tabletop wargaming mechanics and negotiating reality with the DM. Worse, it's actively aggravating.

You might say, "VanVelding, you have depression." Obviously, reader-slash-listener-slash-watcher. Obviously.

That tension isn't a gamebreaker for most players. Players show up and appreciate a little bit of story, a little bit of gameplay, and a little bit of...what I can only see as trolling the world out of genuine curiosity. Even when they love it, in a lot of ways the DM's world is set in opposition to the player. The combination of our world's DNA and the need for basic conflict makes no part of that world come into sharper focus than when it's set against them.

No one asks the color of the tickertape when they're throwing the heroes a parade.

It's the Storyteller who is shouldering most of that tension. They create not just the story (usually) and the game challenges, but they're also engaged in worldbuilding that's satisfying for every Storyteller I know. And if they're doing it in Dungeons and Dragons, it's all built on the caprice of a 20-sided die.

Have I bitched about that before in this essay? Probably, but it's a flawed system and one that 5th edition's advantage/disadvantage system really improved.

The Storyteller is often saddled with the additional burden of keep up the delusion--pretense?--of events being relevant. Now, that might be baked into "making a story that's good" and "making gameplay events which are good," but it's more than that.

There are plenty of stories which are just fine without pretense. NBC's Community snarked its way through six seasons kind of aware it was a TV show and subverting TV show tropes. Garth Marenghi's Dark Place is sublimely self-aware. 

There are games which are satisfied with saying, "this is a game." The Stanley Paradox.

But for players who are playing characters, you're telling their story, and you can't schlep it out or turn to the camera and wink when they're doing things they enjoy. The point of playing a cool character in D&D is to play a cool character. DMs don't say, "You reduced the dragon to 0 HP. You've won Dungeons and Dragons," then shake everyone's hand and end the campaign by reading the credits of the adventure module.

So the Storyteller keeps the story, pretense of relevance, worldbuilding, and game part of the game going. It's a lot and it's a lot to put on the shoulders of one person. So while we're doing that Session 0 talk to your group set expectations rigamarole word salad, maybe consider not playing D&D?

Do your friends want to spend time together while killing dudes and comparing builds? Path of Exile is free and fairly fun.

Do you want to explore an interesting world that your DM friend has created? Just fukkin' ask them about it.

Do you want to collaborate to make an interesting story? Microscope is fine, but so is just chillin' out and making a world. 

Or maybe you all want to work together to build a world with some ground rules and play through some challenges. Maybe play D&D, but instead of showing up once a week and dropping 2 quarters into your DM so they amuse you for a couple of hours, you can heckin' talk to them and start picking up some of the storytelling. Maybe offer to run or co-run a few sessions. Pitch in on worldbuilding so you're familiar with it.

If you're trying to wrap a story around a game, there's always going to be tension there, but unlike the tension from Matt Colville's Politics 101 primer, you don't want that tension to boil over and snap into a big, cool, fictional war. You want to acknowledge it and build around it to ease it. The best way to do that is to share it.

My shot at the holy grail of gaming: Magic the Gathering RPG

So I ran a Magic roleplaying game by straight-up tacking Magic: the Gathering onto FATE. We had a good time. 

I should've stopped at bridging the gap between FATE and Magic: the Gathering, but I didn't. This thing is a sprawling, 32-page document that creates a new set of Magic concepts and systems which absolutely do work as roleplaying background, but are fucking impenetrable. But hey, it's 17k pages so I'm gonna share it with folks.

The real conflict in creating a Magic RPG is making the cards work in a roleplaying setting. I did that by instituting a set of power tiers--called moxes--which allow spells to scale in power with the planeswalker (or creature) casting them. In the lowest mox--Mox Alpha--most spells take on a benign form. Tapping down a creature can make them drowsy, a burn spell can provide light, and a creature might become confused or addled if you make it discard a card. At Mox Unlimited, a planeswalker can cast spells which annihilate whole armies.

The FATE integration isn't that strong, but one of the options is non-combat casting. Five skills (Will, Investigation, Deceive, Rapport, and Athletics) are aligned with each of the five colors. Players may discard a card to invoke an aspect for a skill check instead of spending a Fate point. One of the colors in the card's color identity has to correspond to that skill.

The Tempest is basically a way to rationalize the randomness of a player's deck. 

Planeswalkers channel their Tempest which provides them with a channel of aether which they can shape into spells. When a planeswalker runs out of ways to turn their Tempest into spells, they must revert to Mox Alpha or die by decking out. The Primer focuses a lot on reconciling these things.

Planeswalkers have fetters, which exist to explain some planeswalkers having higher "starting life" and to give players a potential ways to connect to planes. As is, fetters are just a way for powerful NPCs to be even more powerful. It's a bit much, but it's not like anyone has to use it.

I'm especially proud of the three-page "Life, the Multiverse, and Everything" appendix at the end which conjectures on how planes are formed.

(Link)

FATE Inspired by Battletech, Part 2

On Monday I covered a FATE system inspired by Battletech. 

Still doin' that.

So right before Skills, Aspects are the most important part of FATE. Like characters, 'mechs have aspects. They have two by default--a high concept and trouble--and more, depending on their tech level.

High Concept - Of course High Concept. "Trash can with an autocannon," "Gauss Rifles with a 'mech attached," or "definitive zombie 'mech," are all good examples. What did the engineers think when they went to the drawing board on this one? What were the generals who ordered it hoping for? What reputation does it have amongst enemies or allies? How does it serve on the battlefield? The answers to all of these questions can make a good high concept for a 10m tall humanoid war machine.

FATE Inspired by Battletech, Part 1

So there was a 75% off sale at the local game store. Some of those books were Battletech books. Specifically the closure-inducing "Jihad Hotspots: Terra."

So like a...let's say an "addict" who has what we'll call a "relapse," it got me thinking a lot about Battletech. Now, Battletech is a roleplaying game with an overgrown chapter for combat, which naturally make me think of FATE, a system for telling stories that barely has any combat.

That sounded better in my head.

I wouldn't make a complete transfer of Battletech; none of my friends know or care very much about the setting and Battletech has its own elements that only fit within it (jump jets? what?).

The conceptual heart of FATE are aspects, but the systemic core are the skills. How does a 'mech attack? How does it take a hit? How do you represent electronics skills? 

Edere Vir: WoD Implementation

So a few weeks ago I started talking about a monster type I made called the Edere Vir. Originally envisioned as a part of the World of Darkness, they were humans that preyed on other humans for power and advantage within society. I'm still turning the idea over.

As a WoD monster, there'd be a point value assigned to each body part which they could use to power their abilities. Eyes would cost something like one, legs would cost four, etc. An Edere Vir would only be able to store 10 or so points as a starting character unless they got a meta power.

Edere Vir: D&D Implementation

So a few weeks ago I started talking about a monster type I made called the Edere Vir. Originally envisioned as a part of the World of Darkness, they were humans that preyed on other humans for power and advantage within society. I'm still turning the idea over.
 
As a D&D monster, they wouldn't be a monster so much as a template applied to a species already found in the Monster Manual. A few regeneration abilities, a severe bite attack limited to members of their own race, and an attack or two that induces a status effect would probably be enough.

Edere Vir: Powers

So two weeks ago I started talking about a monster type I made called the Edere Vir. Originally envisioned as a part of the World of Darkness, they were humans that preyed on other humans for power and advantage within society.

What could the Edere Vir eat and what could they use those body parts to do?

Edere Vir Part 2

So two weeks ago I started talking about a monster type I made called the Edere Vir. Originally envisioned as a part of the World of Darkness, they were humans that preyed on other humans for power and advantage within society. I tried to adapt them to a D&D mileu without success.

Initially. In D&D, the Edere Vir would be the town baker who finds a wounded traveler with a broken leg and is overcome with a taboo desire. They give in and find their old bum knee is healed. Much to their own horror, they feel neither revulsion nor remorse.

Time passes and their small village sees travelers savagely attacked. The local mayor--a former baker--reluctantly calls the party in. The adventurers eventually discover the baker-cum-mayor has been quietly trying to cover the entire business up. That the limping baker is suddenly more than fully ambulatory is a surprise. That they can bite through the fingers of their fellow elf as though they were made of butter[1] is downright shocking to the party.

The party triumphs and the baker is publicly hung by the neck until dead and interred with all appropriate rituals. The party calls it a side-quest and rides off into the sunset.

Edere Vir Part 1

So last week I put some some Magic card based on some monsters I made up called the Edere Vir. Well, not monsters. Monsters in the sense that anything from White Wolf's World of Darkness is a monster.

 

The Edere Vir are based on a very simple idea. You ever hear something on the other side of a glass door, look over, and see nothing? The Edere Vir are based on the monster that's invisible until you open the door to see what's out there.

It was just a little concept until Terry ran a mixed supernaturals, classic World of Darkness campaign. I wanted to use the Edere Vir. Good monsters represent parts of the human psyche. Werewolves are our primal instincts. Ghosts are the summation of our deeds undone and wrongs unavenged. Vampires move around a lot, but they're done everything from repressed sexual desires to the thin, empty veneer of civilization to doing the whole "mutant and proud" message True Blood tried for.

Trusty Lord: Trust in RPGs

So, as you know, I've been running a roleplaying game (if I had my stuff just a little more together, you'd be reading about that right now instead of this). I originally wanted to do a 26 part series on roleplaying theory, the FATE system, and the specific Steel, Sand, and Sunsets game I'm running. Life happened and now I'm running that game instead of theorizing about it.

Trust. When you think about it (or mistype it like I just did), it reminds you of the word "truest." Generally, players do want characters that are true, as it's a virtue. Having a player that's trusting is considered a drawback. Earning trust is a sign of power; giving it is a sign of weakness.

The Joys of Spellbook Ownership

So, I have this thing where I don't usually play D&D (or Pathfinder, which is D&D). It's not my thing, but whenever I do play D&D I often like to do it as a wizard. A specific wizard. The best wizard. Lucio Pavlec.

Now, Lucio is my go-to wizard because I kind of grok him better than most of my other characters. If this seems familiar, there's an older blog where I go on about him at length. I never know which particular version and level of D&D I'll be using Lucio in, so I've prepared an exhaustive, if not comprehensive, collection of them.

If you've played D&D before, you know that spells are kind of a big deal for wizards. Now, I like the plethora of D&D spells as much as any other reasonable human being but it's a constant struggle to keep up with what spells I have and what they do exactly.

Conventionally, a player would just copy-paste the spells from an online source and make a reference document. I did that, but then I realized I could take it a step further and found a parchment image from the internet. An hour's worth of working with Microsoft Office and a lifetime's worth of cursing later, I opted to just give my reference document a quadruple pass through the printer to make:

A spellbook. 

Star Trek Homebrew RPG

Intro
Guys, I love Star Trek and roleplaying. In the past, I've been unimpressed with the complicated system used for many Star Trek (and other ) RPGs. They possess a certain technical fidelity, but suck in general. My dissatisfaction stems from the belief that Star Trek is a morality play set in a science fiction universe, not a cohesive, hard science fiction setting. I would love to play a Star Trek RPG, but I can't; anyone else running Star Trek would get it wrong. This leaves the creation and execution of a Star Trek Roleplaying Game in my hands. 

Pitch
If you've ever run a roleplaying game, you know that roleplayers are dickbags who generally don't get Star Trek (or at least my very narrow interpretation of the franchise). I've adopted an approach which accepts that players are dickbags who at least want to learn how the Star Trek universe works. Keeping that in mind, the best pitch I've got is: Ten years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis, aka Star Trek 10, aka Star Trek: Franchise-Killer, the human race began vanishing, removing the backbone of both The United Federation of Planets and Starfleet.

Job-A-Rama

So, I've got to line up some stuff for the job I'm not enthusiastic about tomorrow, drop by the job that isn't enthusiastic about me tomorrow, and send some stuff in a the job that doesn't really want me but is willing to make it work.

Played some of the Star Trek: CCG this weekend because I'm apparently incapable of separating nostalgic reenactment from fun. Also watched a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation, played some Magic, and roleplayed a lot. It was good times. Thanks everyone.

Real blog tomorrow.

Maybe.

Field Manual Kris: A Certain State to the West

I spent a week in Texas. Since I'm not working now, I'll be moving out of my apartment and over there with Terry and Katie when either my lease is up or my roommate finds a new sucker to take my place. This trip was definitely a dry run for that. I mean, once I live here, everyone's going to need more space than we usually get for a week-long visit, but that's an issue for March.

I also introduced Terry and Katie to Zombies!. Terry suggested that we begin playing Pandemic and only only get around to Zombies! if we lost the game. I tried to explain that the length of Zombies! precluded mixing it with anything else, but when it comes to zombies, the only substitute for experience is experience. Eventually (all Zombies! games finish in the time frame of "eventually"), because I had a lot of nothing to do the next day and didn't want to miss any of it, I helped Katie to the helicopter so we could all get some sleep.

The Game’s The Thing: Collective Settings

So, raise your hand if this is familiar: You’re running a roleplaying game. You’ve put a lot of work into the setting. It’s not modern day Earth or a popular franchise everyone is familiar with. Your characters don’t know where they came from, have no idea where they are, and don’t @&$^ing care either. They don’t engage the setting and since in most roleplaying games, you can’t go too far wrong by rolling initiative against the guy with the thinnest mustache, they make a habit of driving the razor blade industry and wenching with Dwarven women.

Not their fault. No one wants to play the political game and get tripped up on some nuances they missed because either the storyteller didn’t make it clear enough or because they forgot, what with having a life, family, job, etc..

But what if players got to help make the setting?

Timewalking Archive Trap: The End of Aberrant

Like anyone whose desire to say something is matched only by their desire to waste time saying it on the internet, I've been blogging for a while. Timewalking Archive Trap is presents select treasures (for very liberal definitions of "treasures") from yesteryear for the sole enjoyment of my readers. This one is dated 2006:

So it's over. The plot twists, the character development. The plot holes and character deconstruction. The puerile secrets, the highs, the lows, the intricately detailed non-player extras who were both the recipients of a great destiny and one of so many nameless bodies thrown on an indifferent pyre, the other non-player characters with hastily-hatched names and concepts to match ideas that were quickly constructed, vaguely defined, and much loved.

The best parts of life are the ones we do not plan for. We hope in those irregular occasions and events that we anticipate, but somewhere between the honest satisfaction and honest disappointment we lie at the end of a rainbow, under a continued hype that keeps us believing things were as good as expected--or at least better than they were--if not out of the simple need of hope for a varied, exciting, and worthwhile life, then out of a plain refusal to believe in failure.

In boredom.

In a daily regularity not worth sharing.

Not worth remembering.

Not worth telling.

Not worth living.

Not worthy.

It is the irregularities that make life more or less than this. It is the unusual which makes one's life special or miserable. It was the unexpected that found us in Aberrant. My controlled chaos, my friends' chaos and control. I have, at times, seen myself as a Disney villain. It fits the toothless acrimony of my villains and make them particularly suitable for portraying comic-action villains. I monologue, I underestimate my players, build superweapons that disable the heroes' superpowers and forget that Warlock carries a shotgun and a flack jacket.

In fact, I don't think Warlock's done much non-dramatic warlocking in a while...

We had characters that were complicated, and some that were simple. A bravo driven to overcome any opponent; one of the most powerful beings on Earth, who when he hears that an experimental compound has exploded in Nebraska calls his parents in Denver to see if they were safe, then flies out to cauterize a giant's knees off.

A redeemable Irish kid who made Spiderman look about as lucky as a millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. He gives up, but when history gives him the opportunity--the hope--to change things for the better, he steps up like a hero.

It wasn't perfect--nothing is--but it was good fun. The adventures were too big sometimes, the tasks too easy, the separation between honest roleplaying and self-insertion was thin at times (on both sides of the storyteller's screen), but we had fun. That's what we were there for, and that's what we left with most days.


"Death is not the end of a character, it is the final piece of character development."