New Year, New Games (and Old too...) - State of the Blog III Part One

Hello there gorgeous...

With the turn of the new year, it seems appropriate that I do another State of the Blog post, though this one will probably be even longer and more rambling than previous installments... So, hold onto your dicebags, 'cause here we go!

Party Time - Voltron as Inspiration and other recent Party Building & Character Creation

Or how can a GM trick his players into forming a party that is both this

 and occasionally this...

Thomas insisted that I give the new Netflix reboot of Voltron, Voltron: Legendary Defender, a try, and I'm incredibly glad I did. I have very few memories of the Voltron TV series that aired on American TV in the 80s. I'm certain I saw re-runs in syndication and I had the Voltron figure that combined all 5 lions, though I lost the sword and paladin figures before I started elementary school. Which is to say, I knew Voltron, but didn't have many definite and concrete memories and went into Voltron: Legendary Defender with only hazy memories of what came before.

Now, I won't try to claim that V:LD is high art or ground-breaking for a 'kids show' in the way that I might for Adventure Time, Steven Universe or Over the Garden Wall, but I did find it enjoyable and I'm looking forward to the second season. There's a slow bit in the middle of the series with some rock people and a friend remarked to me that there's a lot of it that revolves around them not being able to or wanting to form Voltron, but what I keep going back too as I think about the show is how it could be an excellent model for a D&D style adventuring party.

In the Lair of the Ginger Giant: Antagonist Relations Podcast Episode 13

Because I've been a terrible blogger, here's another Antagonist Relations Podcast. We bring on our good friend Bob who's recently been making the leap from player to Game Master.

In the Lair of the Ginger Giant: Antagonist Relations Podcast Episode 13 - Sternly Worded Letters

PS. you can leave your complaints here.

In the Lair of the Ginger Giant: Antagonist Relations Podcast Episode 11

I returned again to the Lair of the Ginger Giant a few weeks ago and we discussed RPGs as is our wont.

We discussed dealing with drunken players, 13th Age, Numenera, Monster Hearts, World Wide Wrestling, 5th Edition D&D and more.

Antagonist Relations Podcast - Episode 11 - Good Times, Bad Times (March 4, 2015)

Manifold Regards - Adapting Apocalypse World "Love Letters" for Numenera (or any system, really...)

Apocalypse World was one of the first RPG systems that was opinionated, that is, the designer had an opinion on the 'proper' way to play, instead of just handing over the rules. This translated through in the AW Agendas and Principles:

    Agendas

        Make Apocalypse World seem real.

        Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring.

        Play to find out what happens.

    Principles

        Barf forth apocalyptica.

        Address yourself to the characters, not the players.

        Make your move, but misdirect.

        Make your move, but never speak its name.

        Look through crosshairs.

        Name everyone, make everyone human.

        Ask provocative questions and build on the answers.

        Respond with fuckery and intermittent rewards.

        Be a fan of the players’ characters.

        Think offscreen too.

        Sometimes, disclaim decision-making

These will be useful context for the Love Letters concept, which was introduced in the optional rules section of AW (called 'Advanced Fuckery' instead of Optional Rules, natch). In the AW book, they're not even called Love Letters, just presented as custom moves for "Catching Up, Setting Up", all opening with "Dear Hardholder" (Hardholder is one of the playbooks, so think of it as the D&D Class or Numenera Type), then presenting something that occurred between sessions of play as a Move. For those who don't know, Moves are the basic bit of Apocalypse World system mechanic, where you roll + a Stat, on a 10+ its a success, 7-9 is a success at a price or with a complication and 6 or lower is a failure. And the letter closed "Love and Kisses, Your MC" (MC=Master of Ceremonies, the AW GM title). 

You can see some good Apocalypse World Love Letters written up at No Ordinary Obsession, if you need some examples to peer at. What I want to talk about is why (and how) to use them in Numenera (or any other game really).

Numenera Mini-Campaign, Thoughts from Nowhere

Last Sunday I wrapped my first Numenera mini-campaign, three sessions scheduled to run 1pm-9pm-ish. We took 45 minute to hour long dinner breaks and spent 1-1 ½ hours making characters the first session. So all told, maybe 18-20ish hours of game play? Still, kinda fantastic considering that for the D&D games I was running I’d need to run 2-3 times as many sessions to get that amount of game play.

First part will be thoughts about the System and Setting and then about the plot I ran and getting used to a new group. Also, some of this might be brief if I addressed it in my earlier post about running Numenera.

GM Intrusions - Too Good to Leave in Numenera

I’ve run Numenera 3 times now and one of the things I’m finding most revelatory is the GM Intrusion Mechanic. Succinctly, the Intrusion mechanic is this: The GM offers the player two XP, one of which the player gives to another player, in exchange for creating a complication for the player’s character and the player can refuse the intrusion by spending one of their own XP. Note that I used complication instead of problem, disaster or damage. The intrusion is not there to punish the player or character, but to allow the GM to intrude themselves back into the narrative of the game. In practice, I’ve discovered it allows me to have a mechanic to support something I’ve done before as a GM and allows the players to feel like my taking back narrative control is less arbitrary.

An example:

In D&D if the PCs were crossing a rope bridge and as the last PC got to the middle the ropes snapped, threatening to send all the PCs to the bottom of a gorge, that might feel contrived to the players. A discussion might erupt about how the PCs weren’t all crossing at the same time, or players might try and back track to say that actually they were tied together and finally the situation might just come down to the GM declaring that it happened and the narrative picking back up from there. But with a GM Intrusion the blow is softened as the mechanic rewards the player for going along with the GM instead of setting up a confrontation.

Or a social encounter example:

The party is talking with a local sorceress, trying to wheedle information from her about a nearby dragon. The PC doing the talking is rolling really well on social checks and might be on his way to getting exactly what the party wants. Here a GM intrusion could be the sorceress becoming smitten with the PC and causing complications or deducing that the PCs are interested in the dragon in order to slay it and asking for a specific treasure. Less “obvious” an intrusion that the example above, but still a complication to make a social interaction more interesting than relying just on a few skill rolls.

What GM Intrusions really do is create a compact between the GM and the players that when the GM decides to be arbitrary or create complications there’s a reward for the players to go along with it. This softens the blow of GM choices or narrative changes that might otherwise cause player grumbling. They function quite a bit like moves from Apocalypse World or Dungeon World, in that they are opportunities for the GM to seize the narrative again, and in fact, many of the moves from AW or DW work excellently as GM intrusions (“reveal an unwelcome truth”, “insult, affront, offend or provoke someone”, “put someone in a spot”).
Another nice benefit is the second point of XP must be given to a different player, creating bonds between players. Though I am going to start having the player say why they are giving the other player the XP point.

So what use is this to me? I’m not running Numenera.

Ah, but you can easily port the GM Intrusion mechanic to other games. Case in point, several weeks ago I ran a game of D&D 5E where I used the GM Intrusion mechanic to give out Inspiration points instead of using the default role-playing guidelines of 5E.

GM Intrusions for 5E – 

• Use instead of (or in addition to, if you wish) the default rules for giving Inspiration.
• Give out two Inspiration points to a player when you use a GM Intrusion, just like in Numenera with XP, the player receiving the Intrusion gives one of the points away immediately to another player. 
• If the player does not want to allow the intrusion, they can spend an Inspiration point to refuse the intrusion.
• Unlike Numenera where the XP from GM Intrusions are normal XP that can be spent like any other, I’m leaning towards only allowing D&D Players to keep a single Inspiration point between sessions, to encourage players to use them instead of hoarding them for “boss fights”.
• Some observations on using GM Intrusions in D&D 5E – 
• I like it; obviously, I never really got into the default Inspiration for RP rule as it rewards players who are more into acting/RP than quieter players and/or rewards splashy/flashy and potentially disruptive actions/RP/personality traits than more subtle actions/RP/personality. 
• There is the potential to be giving out more inspiration than usual, previously I feel like I was giving out one or two inspiration a 5E session, the Numenera book suggests one GM Intrusion per PC per session, which would result in 10 Inspiration points given out for a 5 PC party. I’m largely okay with this as I’m fine with PCs having a chance to be awesome (“Be a Fan of the Player’s Characters” as the principles of Apocalypse World command).

Here’s more info about GM Intrusions:

• A podcast devoted to exploring the GM Intrusion Mechanic
• The Art of GM Intrusions

A Billion Years in the Future... Running Numenera

Decanted, a robot with a human head in it's chest.  Pretty sure my players weren't fans.

I ran Numenera last Friday. Originally, I had planned to end my GM break by running an Unknown Armies horror game, but alas events (a surprise evening in the ER) and poor organization (I did not heavily recruit players for the game and so on Monday the even had 1 confirmed player and 2 maybes and it was only on Friday afternoon itself when potential players told me they wanted to play) prevented that from occurring
Instead I ran a Numenera scenario I had been toying with for a while as it was easier to run on the fly and much less emotionally draining than my Black Friday themed horror show. Still plan on running that, so I'll have to just gather up four or five brave souls who wouldn't mind an evening of harrowing, but what follows here are my thoughts on running Numenera for the first time.

What does the Protagonist Want? Because I usually have no idea.

(title of the blog post stolen from the incredibly awesome What Does the Protagonist Want? which is well worth a read)


     Thinking about Numenera character creation, my frustration with D&D 5E backgrounds (and Dungeon World bonds and alignments to a lesser extent) and consider several GM advice books which suggest using sentence pitches for campaign planning and adventure design, I've been thinking about how to apply sentence summaries to more things, like PC motivation.
     Toying around with the idea of running a Numenera one shot sometime in December/January and realized that the Sentence Character creation could be extended ever so slightly to add a character goal or motivation to the current structure.
     As a reminder, Numenera character creation boils down to " I am a [adjective] [noun] who [verbs]." So a former commando turned mercenary who recently discovered that she has a supernatural or technological knack with animals might be "I am a Stealthy Glaive who Controls Beasts". Why not add a want clause, like "Who wants to [motivation/goal]." So then if the former commando woke up as the only survivor of a battle and that's when she had this new connection with animals, perhaps her character summary sentence would be "I am a Stealthy Glaive who Controls Beasts and wants to Discover Why She Has this new Power." Hopefully a compelling character and it certainly gives the GM a few ideas of what the PC can do and what the player would like to do. It also provides an easy reminder to the player for their motivation, ie, their PC should be working to understand or uncover why she has this new affinity with beasts. One advantage of this, is that it forces the player to distill down a few things that they know they are interested in exploring in the game.
Let's try this out with my other PCs, adapting the Numenera character sentence structure to other systems.