If there's anything that makes me feel like an Asshole Storyteller, it's when a rules issue comes up in the middle of a session and I have to make a ruling against a player. Especially when they're following the rules, but it turns out that that rule is just broken, stupid or overpowered. No one likes to be nerfed and being nerfed in the middle of a fight is the worst. It can easily make the players feel like you're working against them instead of just trying to run a good story.
As an avid World of Warcraft player, I follow a lot of posts from the developers and every time something has to be changed, there's a lot of back and forth in the community. The developers are in the unenviable position of having to decide when taking advantage of rules breaks the line between "creative use of game mechanics" and an abuse of the system. In an RPG, the storyteller is in the same position. The situation is further complicated because abuse of the system isn't always intentional or malicious. It can just be noticing something that gives you an advantage and taking that advantage.
I do not set out to limit my players' creativity or victimize them. I try to the best of my ability not to fudge things in favor of NPC's. That brings me directly to my first rule of rules changes: wait until it's over.
Should one of your players get into a situation and suddenly blindside you with a reading of the rules or some specific power that turns out to be unbalanced in their favor, let them run with it provided it isn't going to destroy the world. They get one 'freebie'. At the end of the scene or the session, take a short break and say "Ok, that worked this one time, but it's not going to work anymore. We're changing how this functions because that is whack, yo." Let them have the one victory because it almost certainly wasn't something they planned out in advance. A lot of mechanical problems won't be discovered until they're tested in play. Once the issue is revealed, fix it. But don't stop the narrative, break the flow of the game and waste time fixing it on the spot. Especially if doing so is going to take something away from the players.
Rule 2 modifies Rule 1: Sometimes shit is broke as balls and you gotta fix it. If one of your players figures out that using Ability X in Situation Y under Rule Interpretation Q will let them one-shot the primary antagonist of your entire chronicle, that's time to call a halt and work something out. It's a fine line to walk, but my guidance is basically to avoid making immediate changes unless the imbalanced power or rule is going to negatively affect the overall quality of the story. Is a long-running villain going to die in a really anti-climactic way? Fix it. Are the PC's going to lose out on a bunch of interesting plots? Fix it. Is there some challenge that is made easier for the PC's but you can adapt to and work with? Let it wait.
You should always strive to have every single power and rule in your game balanced, sensible and elegant. They should work together well and mesh into a perfect system of awesome. That's probably not going to happen, ever. Still, it's a good goal! Shoot for it. On the way, you're going to find the flaws hidden in the system. In Scion, they're not so much hidden as littering every paragraph and page of the books. You will need to fix things. The important thing, the most important thing, is to fix things in a way so your players understand you're doing it not to rob them of victory or weaken them, but to make sure that everything remains balanced.
They wouldn't want that broken rule turned around on them, after all.
Showing posts with label Storytelling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Storytelling. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Telling Stories: The Art of War
There have been several very good Storytellers who give advice on how to build antagonists and NPCs that are suited to the power level of your PC's. You don't want to curbstomp your PC's into the dust, but you have to challenge them so they don't just steamroll over every opponent that crosses their paths. This can be a big problem for a lot of ST's. You can't rely on the NPCs printed in the books because all of them are terrible. Hardly any of them have any Epic Dexterity, few of them have useful powers and basically they're just a huge mess.
So what's an ST to do? I can only give the same advice that you'll have heard from other people who pontificate on such problems. You check the capabilities of your PC's and create antagonists based on those. Design the enemy's DV to be just high enough to require above-average effort from your players to hit. Set their soak to shave off damage from when the players do hit. Their damage should be enough to punch through the soak of your players.
I want to be clear about something: Don't try to build your NPC's as if they were PCs. Don't try to give them however much XP and spend it. Don't even bother with full-on character sheets. Not even ones as rough as the examples in the Scion books. All you need to do is rough out their stats. Designate how many dice they roll for attack, how many they roll to activate powers. Give yourself a general idea of what kind of powers they should have access to. Make notes like 'God-level Darkness' or 'minor abilities with Fertility' and stick with that.
Why do I say this? Because otherwise you are wasting your time. A player has one character to deal with. Maybe two or three if they have Followers or Creatures that they control sheets for. As a Storyteller you have dozens of major characters and just buttloads of incidentals. You don't have time to devote as much effort to the sheets of each character as a player does.
So what's an ST to do? I can only give the same advice that you'll have heard from other people who pontificate on such problems. You check the capabilities of your PC's and create antagonists based on those. Design the enemy's DV to be just high enough to require above-average effort from your players to hit. Set their soak to shave off damage from when the players do hit. Their damage should be enough to punch through the soak of your players.
I want to be clear about something: Don't try to build your NPC's as if they were PCs. Don't try to give them however much XP and spend it. Don't even bother with full-on character sheets. Not even ones as rough as the examples in the Scion books. All you need to do is rough out their stats. Designate how many dice they roll for attack, how many they roll to activate powers. Give yourself a general idea of what kind of powers they should have access to. Make notes like 'God-level Darkness' or 'minor abilities with Fertility' and stick with that.
Why do I say this? Because otherwise you are wasting your time. A player has one character to deal with. Maybe two or three if they have Followers or Creatures that they control sheets for. As a Storyteller you have dozens of major characters and just buttloads of incidentals. You don't have time to devote as much effort to the sheets of each character as a player does.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Telling Stories: Secrets Don't Keep
A lot of my so-called 'advice' for Storytellers comes down to treating your players like collaborators. You're all working together to write a story and while your job is world-building, supporting cast and antagonists, their job of being the stars of the story is just as important.
Quite recently, something came up in the Lost City of Atlanta game that gave me quite a fit, and it was all my fault. I learned from it and I wanted to share the experience in case it helps anyone else, player or ST. Let me give some background first, so the situation makes sense for those who are not familiar with my game world and cast.
Johnny is the Drama Mama of Lost Atlanta. Literally true: he's given birth to the most children of anyone in the cast despite being male most of the time. Everything crazy and shitty happens to him and mostly, it's all his fault. He dives in without thinking and gets himself into terrible situations. He always had a rocky relationship with his father, Lugh, and their mutual distaste escalated into dislike and then outright hatred. Johnny eventually was speared through the chest by his father and left for dead, but saved by his pet dog going to fetch a healer. He then embarked on a huge quest to break all his links to Lugh and succeeded. Despite that, his Irishness forms a core of his identity and he sacrificed a great deal of time, effort, comfort and sanity to remain one of the Tuatha de and be accepted among them.
He turned down one offer from Cernunnos to jump ship and become a Nemetondevos and the Horned God's adopted son because he didn't want to give up his heritage and position as a Bard. Various things happened and events transpired. Cernunnos became Johnny's foster father and the only positive paternal influence in Johnny's life. When Cernunnos died, he left behind instructions for two of his biological sons to succeed him, one as the Fist of Cernunnos and another as the Wisdom of Cernunnos. Johnny is closely tied to both those sons: one is his beloved foster-brother and Johnny has been Guiding him for years. The other is actually Johnny's biological son, since Cernunnos is like that.
This is where things get tricky. Cernunnos didn't want either of his sons being the new Chief of the Gaulish Gods. Aside from neither of them being particularly suited for them, he had his own reasons (some of which Johnny's player suspects and others he does not) for wanting an outside party involved. So he appeared to Johnny in a vision and asked him to become the Tongue of Cernunnos, the figurehead of the trio of his sons who could take the place of Chief.
Quite recently, something came up in the Lost City of Atlanta game that gave me quite a fit, and it was all my fault. I learned from it and I wanted to share the experience in case it helps anyone else, player or ST. Let me give some background first, so the situation makes sense for those who are not familiar with my game world and cast.
Johnny is the Drama Mama of Lost Atlanta. Literally true: he's given birth to the most children of anyone in the cast despite being male most of the time. Everything crazy and shitty happens to him and mostly, it's all his fault. He dives in without thinking and gets himself into terrible situations. He always had a rocky relationship with his father, Lugh, and their mutual distaste escalated into dislike and then outright hatred. Johnny eventually was speared through the chest by his father and left for dead, but saved by his pet dog going to fetch a healer. He then embarked on a huge quest to break all his links to Lugh and succeeded. Despite that, his Irishness forms a core of his identity and he sacrificed a great deal of time, effort, comfort and sanity to remain one of the Tuatha de and be accepted among them.
He turned down one offer from Cernunnos to jump ship and become a Nemetondevos and the Horned God's adopted son because he didn't want to give up his heritage and position as a Bard. Various things happened and events transpired. Cernunnos became Johnny's foster father and the only positive paternal influence in Johnny's life. When Cernunnos died, he left behind instructions for two of his biological sons to succeed him, one as the Fist of Cernunnos and another as the Wisdom of Cernunnos. Johnny is closely tied to both those sons: one is his beloved foster-brother and Johnny has been Guiding him for years. The other is actually Johnny's biological son, since Cernunnos is like that.
This is where things get tricky. Cernunnos didn't want either of his sons being the new Chief of the Gaulish Gods. Aside from neither of them being particularly suited for them, he had his own reasons (some of which Johnny's player suspects and others he does not) for wanting an outside party involved. So he appeared to Johnny in a vision and asked him to become the Tongue of Cernunnos, the figurehead of the trio of his sons who could take the place of Chief.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Telling Stories: Xena is my Guide!
AKA: Using Fictional Characters to Address the Historical Gender Gap
One of the great things about Scion is that its based in ancient mythology and history. You can draw from all the stories of the world's hundreds of recorded cultures to give your stories depth and character. Your PC's can tap into this richness with Guides, Followers, Creatures and Relics that are drawn right from the pages of epics. Enkidu can be the Guide of your young Anunna Scion, or Primarily we're going to focus on Guides in this blog.
So, where's the issue? Well, think about all the heroes of myth and legend and try to come up with the commonalities. Hint: they're almost all dudes. Very, very rarely does mythology have a surplus of strong female figures. This is one area where you may wish to do a bit of padding to the chronicles of history. Envision with me, if you will, a strong-willed daughter of Ares who leads an army across ancient Greece, pillaging and burning. Eventually she retires from her life of war and death, becoming a wandering heroine who defeats monsters.
Sound familiar? Probably. Why couldn't Xena fit into Scion? She easily could have been a Scion of Ares in the distant past whose Legend was distorted and twisted by the male storytellers of the time to re-cast her as a man? Or maybe her Legend simply fell by the wayside as less important because of cultural prejudices?
There are going to be some gnashings of teeth at the idea of introducing fictional characters into Scion when there's a whole world's history (literally) worth of authentic ones to pull from. No denying that, and I'm not saying that you should focus on fiction over history, but I think you can successfully use fiction to augment history when history falls short of delivering the specific thing you need. You might have to work a bit to integrate the fiction into the rest of the material, but by drawing on established characters you can often find that has already been done for you.
I want to be clear about something: I am not suggesting using the character of Xena in Scion. It sounds like it, but I'm not. Xena as a character gets really weird with the pressure points and the throat-stabbing and the made-up Gods and then the later seasons where she becomes an angel or something. All that is just a big mess, and even the early seasons are a lot more concerned with telling a cool story that would succeed on TV in the 90's than in being mythologically accurate. The idea of Xena, though, is a cool one and totally possible to bring into Scion. The idea of an ancient daughter of Ares who was cast by the wayside of popularity for her gender, despite her great deeds. She would make an awesome Guide to a young Greek Scion.
You can apply this idea to other genres, other characters. Fairy tales, urban legends, TV show monsters. You can bring in creatures from X-Files or Are You Afraid of the Dark or the stories of the 18th century American frontier. You can have Hidebehinds, Squonks, Boo Hags and Chupacabras right there next to Black Dogs and Benu Birds. They can be Titanspawn antagonists or servants of the Gods, maybe even creations of older Scions that have been naturalized into the World.
Mythology is an incredibly rich source to draw from, but Scion is at it's core a game of Modern Mythology and Urban Fantasy. You can bring in those elements without feeling bad. Sometimes mythology just doesn't have what you want and if you don't want to make something up whole-cloth, there are a lot of places to look for inspiration. Don't be afraid of them just because they aren't from eons past. They can still become part of a vital and thriving world ecology of awesome.
One of the great things about Scion is that its based in ancient mythology and history. You can draw from all the stories of the world's hundreds of recorded cultures to give your stories depth and character. Your PC's can tap into this richness with Guides, Followers, Creatures and Relics that are drawn right from the pages of epics. Enkidu can be the Guide of your young Anunna Scion, or Primarily we're going to focus on Guides in this blog.
So, where's the issue? Well, think about all the heroes of myth and legend and try to come up with the commonalities. Hint: they're almost all dudes. Very, very rarely does mythology have a surplus of strong female figures. This is one area where you may wish to do a bit of padding to the chronicles of history. Envision with me, if you will, a strong-willed daughter of Ares who leads an army across ancient Greece, pillaging and burning. Eventually she retires from her life of war and death, becoming a wandering heroine who defeats monsters.
Sound familiar? Probably. Why couldn't Xena fit into Scion? She easily could have been a Scion of Ares in the distant past whose Legend was distorted and twisted by the male storytellers of the time to re-cast her as a man? Or maybe her Legend simply fell by the wayside as less important because of cultural prejudices?
There are going to be some gnashings of teeth at the idea of introducing fictional characters into Scion when there's a whole world's history (literally) worth of authentic ones to pull from. No denying that, and I'm not saying that you should focus on fiction over history, but I think you can successfully use fiction to augment history when history falls short of delivering the specific thing you need. You might have to work a bit to integrate the fiction into the rest of the material, but by drawing on established characters you can often find that has already been done for you.
I want to be clear about something: I am not suggesting using the character of Xena in Scion. It sounds like it, but I'm not. Xena as a character gets really weird with the pressure points and the throat-stabbing and the made-up Gods and then the later seasons where she becomes an angel or something. All that is just a big mess, and even the early seasons are a lot more concerned with telling a cool story that would succeed on TV in the 90's than in being mythologically accurate. The idea of Xena, though, is a cool one and totally possible to bring into Scion. The idea of an ancient daughter of Ares who was cast by the wayside of popularity for her gender, despite her great deeds. She would make an awesome Guide to a young Greek Scion.
You can apply this idea to other genres, other characters. Fairy tales, urban legends, TV show monsters. You can bring in creatures from X-Files or Are You Afraid of the Dark or the stories of the 18th century American frontier. You can have Hidebehinds, Squonks, Boo Hags and Chupacabras right there next to Black Dogs and Benu Birds. They can be Titanspawn antagonists or servants of the Gods, maybe even creations of older Scions that have been naturalized into the World.
Mythology is an incredibly rich source to draw from, but Scion is at it's core a game of Modern Mythology and Urban Fantasy. You can bring in those elements without feeling bad. Sometimes mythology just doesn't have what you want and if you don't want to make something up whole-cloth, there are a lot of places to look for inspiration. Don't be afraid of them just because they aren't from eons past. They can still become part of a vital and thriving world ecology of awesome.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Telling Stories: Pray The Day Away
My PC's not-too-long-ago reached Legend 9 and underwent Apotheosis, becoming Gods in their own right. Since then, one of the bigger challenges I face as the Storyteller is keeping a balance between appropriately epic challenges that can seem to realistically stress even Gods and allowing the players to really feel like Gods. There should be this huge sense of accomplishment that your character has reached Godhood and is now not just some hero or super-mortal with awesome powers. They're actually a Figure of Legend with an entire religion (or religions) built around them. There are thousands of people who, every day, pray to these characters for guidance, help or pray to avoid their notice and displeasure.
You can't just let new Gods steamroller over everything, they've still got Legend 10, 11 and 12 to advance to, after all. They're not at the top of the foodchain by a long shot, and even Legend 12 Gods still have to face other Legend 12 Gods, Titan Avatars and Greater Titans. So, you do have to keep challenging your new Gods with ever-increasing levels of world-smashing calamity, Machiavellian scheming and politics, etc. There just needs to be times when they can say to themselves "Holy crap, I'm a God now! People are totally praying to me and expecting things! And I can do them!"
My solution to this was something called Prayer Sheets. They're open documents (we use GoogleDocs for just about everything) where anyone can post prayers to the God in question. The player sets up a brief list of 'typical' prayers that they expect to receive based on their God-role and various Fate Expectations, which serve as a guideline. I might add some extra prayer categories based on what I think, as the ST, they might have forgotten or not even considered.
Then, prayers! Generally, prayers are short little snippets and tagged with very basic information about who and where they're coming from. Here are some examples of prayers that our characters have received so far:
You can't just let new Gods steamroller over everything, they've still got Legend 10, 11 and 12 to advance to, after all. They're not at the top of the foodchain by a long shot, and even Legend 12 Gods still have to face other Legend 12 Gods, Titan Avatars and Greater Titans. So, you do have to keep challenging your new Gods with ever-increasing levels of world-smashing calamity, Machiavellian scheming and politics, etc. There just needs to be times when they can say to themselves "Holy crap, I'm a God now! People are totally praying to me and expecting things! And I can do them!"
My solution to this was something called Prayer Sheets. They're open documents (we use GoogleDocs for just about everything) where anyone can post prayers to the God in question. The player sets up a brief list of 'typical' prayers that they expect to receive based on their God-role and various Fate Expectations, which serve as a guideline. I might add some extra prayer categories based on what I think, as the ST, they might have forgotten or not even considered.
Then, prayers! Generally, prayers are short little snippets and tagged with very basic information about who and where they're coming from. Here are some examples of prayers that our characters have received so far:
Friday, November 9, 2012
Telling Stories: I Don't Wanna Grow Up!
It's been two hundred years since your Scion was Visited. They've battled Titanspawn, weathered the challenges of Heroism and Demigodhood, and finally climbed to the Heavens and earned their place among the Gods. Whew! Not only that, but they've established themselves among their Pantheon and become a true God, a divine being venerated and worshipped by thousands on Earth. They've worked their way into History and become a true Legend.
They can't possibly be the same person they were all those years ago, can they? You'd be surprised.
Gods don't grow up. Not ever, really. They stay basically the same, their personality and little personal twitches remaining static through their entire existence, for the most part. Their personality tends to be pretty fixed because it's part of who they are, which is what their worshippers venerate them for. When changes do occur it will probably be small ones, or only in specific stories, or they might develop new divine aspects as new cults form and merge. We'll talk more about that later, but it's important.
Ares is never going to mature out of being a rash, violent, chaotic dick. Zeus will never see the error of his ways and stop sleeping around on Hera. Nergal won't ever decide to settle down and stop blowing shit up when he gets bored. Thor isn't going to decide that book learning is awesome and study up on his philosophy. Thoth won't ever get tired of learning and decide to start kicking asses and taking names. That would break their Legend and totally shatter their entire identity.
They can't possibly be the same person they were all those years ago, can they? You'd be surprised.
Gods don't grow up. Not ever, really. They stay basically the same, their personality and little personal twitches remaining static through their entire existence, for the most part. Their personality tends to be pretty fixed because it's part of who they are, which is what their worshippers venerate them for. When changes do occur it will probably be small ones, or only in specific stories, or they might develop new divine aspects as new cults form and merge. We'll talk more about that later, but it's important.
Ares is never going to mature out of being a rash, violent, chaotic dick. Zeus will never see the error of his ways and stop sleeping around on Hera. Nergal won't ever decide to settle down and stop blowing shit up when he gets bored. Thor isn't going to decide that book learning is awesome and study up on his philosophy. Thoth won't ever get tired of learning and decide to start kicking asses and taking names. That would break their Legend and totally shatter their entire identity.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Telling Stories 1: Plans and Players
It's often said that no plan survives contact with the enemy. In Storytelling, your players aren't your enemies, but they are equally destructive to your plans. It's generally not worth trying to set up elaborate schemes that arc across months. Sometimes, it'd not even wise to plan out a session too closely. Your players will do something. They'll kill a key player in your conspiracy, or expose a plot too early, or solve a problem in a way you didn't expect. Something will always happen.
Quite recently, the Atlanta Band entered the Mayan Underworld to locate their hearts. The only reason their hearts were missing is because one of the Band members, Johnny, used Out of the Frying Pan to escape another bad situation. He dropped the entire Band (except Boris) into the Lair of Camazotz, the Avatar of Ritual Sacrifice. In the few seconds the Band was in his Lair, Camazotz stole their hearts and replaced them with obsidian.
Was that planned? No. I had no way of knowing that Johnny would dump the Band into Camazotz' lap. I didn't plan for the Band to encounter Camazotz until they had already achieved Godhood. But when they ran into his lair, I either had to kill them instantly (lame) or do something fun with it. And since he's an Aztec figure all about death and sacrifice, I went straight for hearts. The exact plan that Camazotz has for the hearts isn't relevant here, but suffice to say that the Band is not in favor of Camazotz having their hearts.
Quite recently, the Atlanta Band entered the Mayan Underworld to locate their hearts. The only reason their hearts were missing is because one of the Band members, Johnny, used Out of the Frying Pan to escape another bad situation. He dropped the entire Band (except Boris) into the Lair of Camazotz, the Avatar of Ritual Sacrifice. In the few seconds the Band was in his Lair, Camazotz stole their hearts and replaced them with obsidian.
Was that planned? No. I had no way of knowing that Johnny would dump the Band into Camazotz' lap. I didn't plan for the Band to encounter Camazotz until they had already achieved Godhood. But when they ran into his lair, I either had to kill them instantly (lame) or do something fun with it. And since he's an Aztec figure all about death and sacrifice, I went straight for hearts. The exact plan that Camazotz has for the hearts isn't relevant here, but suffice to say that the Band is not in favor of Camazotz having their hearts.
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