DSA: Act 4 is written

Time. Time is always the issue. As you grow older, time becomes a very valuable resource. I end up setting myself aims such as "Once I have time, I will do xyz." Once the time comes for me to have "time", I cannot set my arse down and do whatever I wanted to do and squander the precious little time I have by watching the same youtube videos over and over again.

I accepted that, because I know me well enough now to understand that it is part of my recovery process. I need that "time", too. Time to sit and look blankly into space and not think about anything at all, while going through a routine that I have done millions of times before. It is just part of my rhythm.

It then feels all the better, when I actually achieve something with my time. In this case, I finished Act 4 of 5 acts of my roleplaying campaign. 57 sweet pages of a plot that I was worried would never see the light of day. I have no idea about the quality of the storyline or whether my players "will dig it", but it feels good having finished it.

There are many ideas floating around, but very rarely one comes to complete fruition, because people are not willing to put the time in. There we are again with time. Just too little to go around. Finishing something is just as valuable as starting it.

This 4th Act took me a damn long time. Why? In my mind, I already told the story. The fun process, the one where the story is made up, where the sheet is blank and you do not know what it will look like in the end has been over for more than a year now. The only thing I still need to do now is fill in the blanks with details. I hate that part. I hate drawing up maps of houses, I hate describing the interior of a room, I hate thinking up reasons why a particular guardsmen happens to be on a 30 minute rotation. It just does not interest me.

The reason why it does not interest me is, because the players tend to fill this space up with their ideas while playing. They may not always do this knowingly, but when a player says, he would like his character to do something in particular and I think it would be cool, I just let him, by conjuring up the necessary prop out of thin air. It makes the process interactive and fun and you spend some quality time with your old friends from school who you do not see often enough, because we're all going through the daily grind.

So as I said, I dislike the last part. I let it drag on. Then you lose track of where you were exactly and 4 months later, it is even harder to get back in, since I did not know where to start. Well, I finally did it. I wrote little letters that will tell the characters what they need to get. I wrote shitty little maps that I stole partially from video games (not that I will ever publish this stuff), hell I even wrote descriptions of rooms (oh god how I hate that part). It feels good. 57 pages of good. I am sure, I will notice some logic holes or things that I left out, but I will fill those as I go along. It is the easy part. Making things up wildly as I go along.

Now onto Act 5. The one that is not yet written... Apart from the Ending. I wrote the ending at the beginning so that I know where the characters should end up...

Circumstantial RPG Writer's Block

Anyone who follows this blog knows by now, that I am playing a The Dark Eye ("Das Schwarze Auge") Role-playing game with a group of friends. To round it all off, I happened to be the GM for the game.

When I started this, I had loads and loads of ideas for telling a story and helping the players to develop their characters and only the twelve higher gods, their countless demi-god children, Rastullah, The Nameless God, the demons of the lesser hells, the archdemons and some god-like giants know what else. Due to my recent long-term unemployment (that has finally come to an end) and my current surroundings, I seem to be unable to muster up the inspiration and enthusiasm to carry on writing on my campaign.

It pisses me off, in fact. I know what needs to be done. I have been doing it successfully for quite some time. It's just that when I sit down to do it, I seem to be unable to connect the dots and fill up the grey areas with life. This came to me so easily only a year ago. Now, whenever I try, I end up thinking about what needs to be done for the new job, insurances, my wifes impending PhD defense, making sure the car is alright etc. etc. you get the picture.

It is just not a good mindset for creating a story in a medieval fantasy setting with magic where the heroes of the story need to rescue an innocent elven child from a catatonic state with the help of a long lost divine artifact that they need to find by following the almost forgotten trail of four noble knights who hid it from the clutches of a mad demon-summoning empress a thousand years ago.

If someone knows a cure to this ailment, I bid them inform me of it. I tried all my previously working recipes. Listening to Power Metal and bard's music, reading fantasy books, hell even playing fantasy RPG videogames doesn't help.

Using fear in a pen and paper role-playing game

Wow... it has really been almost 2 months since I last looked at this blog here. As usual the reasons were many, why this has not come to pass. Mostly lack of time and enthusiasm, but also lack of things to write about.

It is a Saturday morning. On Friday, my wife and I fell asleep in front of the TV at round about 8 o'clock in the evening and apart from a brief shuffle from couch to bed at around midnight, I slept all the way through until 7:00 am. 11 hours of sleep that speaks volumes, I needed it, but what to do with this much time now so early on a Saturday. Yep, writing an update in my blog seems like a fine idea.

I initially wanted to write about my experience reading and recording Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, but that is not complete yet, so I will write a bit more about role-playing :) Last weekend, we had a role-playing session after a rather long hiatus (almost a year) and it was awesome!

We are currently in a demon infested area and it opened up some surprising avenues for me. The one I wanted to talk about here is fear. Yes, fear. In role-playing, I think there are two types of fear. The fear of the character, but also the fear of the player for their character.

The latter is an interesting phenomenon, it lets the player act quite unlike what the character would do. Thankfully, I, so far, have shown enough sense to not let the player get into such a situation, but I also know that the players are role players enough to accept the fate of their character if it may come to pass.

There were a couple of close calls, especially with our viking like player character. He plays him just as suicidal as you would expect and it needed some tempering, otherwise there would have been no reason for the character to logically stay with the group... or in fact, the rest of the group wanting to have him around. With the player (a really reasonable fellow who just had a specific idea of the character in mind) we shipped around this problem with some very near death experiences. He was shown that he can't kill everybody, when he got involved in the drug trade of a city without the knowledge of the other players. He was addicted to a weak stimulant, but didn't have the money. In the end the drug bosses made him do their dirty work and when he wanted out he was completely destroyed and left for dead. As a good measure, in case he survived, they made him addicted to one of their worst drugs. It was interesting to watch. The player knew one false move and he would have to make a new character so he was surprisingly tentative throughout the process. Usually playing him very boisterous, loud, arrogant and violent, the viking was suddenly rather more... tame, let's say.
Then he had to go through the drug addiction. That took an entire all-day session (several weeks in playtime). It got the other characters to kind of respect him again, I felt.
Then lastly, he was taken and tried for his crimes. He once diffused a frightened villager mob situation, by throwing an axe into the crowd and killing the baker. That sort of injustice can't stand. As a consequence, he was tried before the sun god (and god of justice) in his holiest of chapels. Everyone expected him to be executed (including the player himself), but strangely the god through his priest decided that instead of execution, he was to guard a fellow citizen for a very extended period of time (thus introducing a new character). This was the final step, that made the character a gods fearing man again and more in-sync with the rest of the group, without really completely overhauling the concept.
I write this as if I planned to do this, but it was more of a work in progress. I just reacted to things that happened.

What has this to do with fear? Well, the player really didn't want to stop playing his character, so he always took the way that let the viking live in the end leading to a gfantastic compromise and acceptance of the character in the group.

Now, in the last session, I was inadvertently able to play with the fear of the characters, not necessarily the fear of the players. If any of my players reading this, hopefully they don't lose all respect. It may have appeared as if I planned this, but the effect came about due to my forgetfulness and just going with the flow. But let's start from the beginning.

The heroes (yes in this game we are heroes) were looking for someone in a demon-infested forest. They find the person who broke a leg because a wild boar attacked his horse. The guy had a horse with him and I actually wrote down in my notes: "They find the horse shortly after grazing on a clearing." For good measure, I thought: "What the hell! Let's make this a bit more atmospheric." and I let the horse be found as a carcass entangled in vines that seemed to have choked it to death.

Of course, I chose that moment to let the wild boar with two of his friends attack the group of four players in a frenzy (Split the party up and all). The first two attacks by them were rather devastating to the characters endeavor to survive and as an afterthought I read out loud what the boars are like. I didn't mean to startle the players by saying that it was 250 kilos. In fact, I was as surprised as they were. I just concealed my surprise.

While the players were going through the motions of organising the rather complex fight system, I read through the scene again. Bear in mind, I wrote this more than 2 years ago and 3 rounds in I realized that those vines were supposed to actively hinder them. So I started to weave that information into the game. The look in the players faces was interesting. It went from "Oh this is a hard fight." to "What the...!!!" and then while still playing, the same happened again. Suddenly, the wizard who thought he was safe from the action got hit by a tree branch since I just read what I wrote 2 years ago. That is, I read: "The trees will at intermittent intervals attack a random player".
The effect on the fight was a constant build up of the situation from bad to worse. The players were quite busy with the fighting system, but it dawned on some of them that their characters should really be frightened now, because they are encountering something that they have never seen before and every time they think, it can't get any worse, it heaps on another shovel.

At the end of that fight, most of them were worse for wear and one had a near death experience. What happened next, was something that I had not planned but seemed like a good idea at the time. One player had a new character and we decided that the old one, a hunter/ranger type strong with a bow, would become possessed by the demonic arch enemy of the god of the hunt. I didn't know what to do with him at the time of doing it, but it occurred to me during the session that the characters won't rest until they knew what happened to him. So, I had to show him once more for them to realise that he is not a player character anymore.

So, I let him stand atop a hill, clearly to be seen and shoot an arrow at them and let him miss. All the characters knew his skill with a bow so they knew he wanted to miss. The arrow had a note saying: "The hunt begins...". Again, the players were strangely quiet taken in by the atmosphere but not scared for their character (strangely), but were realising what their characters are experiencing and tried to weave this into a reaction and they all came to the conclusion that this is effing scary.

Finally they had to camp in that forest for one night and that was the final point where I noticed that they all were quite interested in the situation so I did some face to face discussions with each player making him aware that this is an extraordinary situation for their character and what his reactions are. Not necessarily visible to the other characters, but also emotionally. I didn't bother with courage checks or the like as I thought it would take away from the situation if one of the warriors who had been in tense situations like these suddenly pisses his pants in fear due to a badly failed courage check.

All in all, I felt it was a cool experience all round creating some nice atmosphere for the players and letting them explore the less heroic side of their heroes. If any of my players read this, I would be interested how they felt this whole ordeal went along.

Rollenspiel: Meine Erfahrungen als Meister

Nach den Irrungen und Wirrungen unserer Jugend- und Studentenzeit haben meine alten Rollenspielkumpels (dazwischen waren sie "nur" Freunde von mir) wieder den Drang verspürt eine Rollenspielrunde zu starten. Da das Ganze damit anfing, dass ich vorgeschlagen habe an einem Weihnachten mal für einen Abend "der guten, alten Zeit willen" eine Runde zu leiten (diesmal in DSA4). Das rannte dann bei allen weit offene Türen ein, weil die sich auch schon wieder mit dem Gedanken beschäftigt haben.

Auf Grund dessen war ich auf einmal Spielleiter in einer sehr rollenspiellastigen Spielergruppe (Erfahrungspunkte sind irgendwie egal, kein Regelnerd weit und breit, Kämpfe sind eine regeltechnische Katastrophe :D). Meine Erfahrungen und Schlussfolgerungen, die ich daraus gezogen habe, sind recht interessant.

1. Das Alter der Spieler macht wirklich einen Riesenunterschied

Ich dachte mir, ich fange mal mit einem offensichtlichen Punkt an. Das letzte Mal als wir gespielt hatten, waren wir zwischen 16 und 19. Heute ca. 10 Jahre später hat sich der Fokus unglaublich gewechselt. Rollenspiel war bei uns schon immer sehr stark vertreten, aber mittlerweile erscheint es mir wirklich so, als ob den Spielern die Erfahrungspunkte eigentlich wurscht sind :D Mir soll es recht sein. Die haben es tatsächlich geschafft eine Reunion von einzelnen Charakteren mit den anderen in einem stinkenormalen Wirtshaus über 3 Stunden (ja, DREI STUNDEN!!!), also fast in Echtzeit, auszuspielen. Womit wir zu meiner nächsten Beobachtung kommen.

2. Je mehr Spieler desto weniger Plot

Wir fingen diese Spielrunde mit 6 Spielern und einem Spielleiter an. Danach haben wir auf 8 Spieler aufgestockt aus dem simplen Grund, dass wir alle einen festen Job haben, die meisten eine Langzeitpartnerin, manche schon Kinder und generell alle mitten im Leben stehen, also um regelmäßiges Spielen zu ermöglichen.

Mir ist nun aufgefallen, dass je mehr Spieler es gibt, die sich rollenspielerisch austoben, desto weniger Plotelemente kann man einbauen. Als Beispiel, mit einer Gruppe von damals 6 Spielern haben wir es geschafft einem gesuchten Mörder bis zu einer Mine zu folgen, seine Leiche zu finden, einen Mineneinsturz zu überleben, Ausgang in den Bergen finden, weg zurück finden, ein Orküberfall mit schwer verletzten und dann über ein Dorf nach Hause. Beim Dorf stoppte die Show. Ich finde das recht viel.

In der letzten Session gab es besagte 3 stündige Reunion und alle waren so sehr damit beschäftigt ihre Chars auszuspielen, dass es wirklich kaum vorwärts ging. Mir als Spielleiter machte das nix aus, weil ich habe nur zugeschaut. Das hervorragendes Theater. An dem Abend haben es die Spieler in derselben Zeit geschafft zu einem Sumpf zu reisen (eine Tagesreise), sich von Affen verprügeln zu lassen und eine Hütte zu durchsuchen. Wir spielen generell von 15 Uhr bis 5 Uhr morgens...

3. Personal Quests für Spieler lohnt sich ungemein

Das ist etwas, was mir unglaublich viel Spass gemacht hat. Ich wollte das Spiel ein bißchen vom klassischen linearen Plot wegbringen und mehr zu einem offen hin, ein bißchen wie in den Spielen wie Baldur's Gate, dazu habe ich zwei Sachen eingeführt: Seitenquests (davon später) und Personal Quests. Die Personal Quest ist dazu gedacht, dass der Spieler sich mit seinem Charakter mehr befasst und ihn nicht nur als Mittel zum Zweck sieht. Darin wird er fern der anderen in Situation gebracht, die nur er lösen kann.

Es ist unglaublich, wie viel man zurück bekommt, wenn man so etwas startet. Es gibt einfach Momente, wo man nicht jeden Spieler mit einbeziehen kann. Durch diese personal quests hat jeder Spieler jedoch immer etwas woran er unabhängig von den anderen Spielern herumbasteln kann.

Ich habe als Beispiel unsereren etwas leicht Rauschkraut abhängigen thorwalschen Seesöldner zum Leibwächter für Drogendealer werden lassen. Dadurch hat sich ergeben, dass er noch süchtiger wurde und einen Erzfeind hat. Das mag schlimm und schlecht klingen, aber es gibt dem Charakter Tiefe und Wiedererkennungswert. Der Spieler hat das erlebt und kann den anderen "seine" Version erzählen. Das ist seins und er findet das toll. Ich könnte noch alle 7 anderen erzählen, aber der Platz reicht nicht und von manchen anderen wissen die Spieler noch gar nicht.

4. Nebenquests sind toll

Diese Nebenquests waren nie etwas tolles bei mir, sondern dienten hauptsächlich dazu, den Spielern mehr Geld zu geben. Das Abenteurerleben ist gefährlich und teuer, da brauchen sie auch mal einfach Aufträge. Dies kann vom Sammeln der Tannenzapfen der Salamandersteintanne bis hin zum Säubern von alten Gemäuern alles sein, wofür es eine Belohnung gibt. Es hält die Spieler bei Stange und gibt ihnen oft auch das Gefühl, dass sie es ein bisschen drauf haben.

Jedoch muss man vorsichtig sein, wenn man zu viele Nebenquests einbaut, geht der Spielfluss verloren und die Helden kommen nicht vorwärts... Besonders wenn man 8 Spieler hat.

5. Forme die Welt, um die Spieler

Ein Aspekt, der mir unglaublich viel Spass bereitet, ist das erstellen von wiedererkennbaren NSCs. Das habe ich soweit getrieben, dass ich irgendwann beschlossen habe, diese wiederzuverwenden. Falls meine Spieler das hier lesen, werden sie sich ein wenig wundern, wovon ich rede. Noch ist es nicht passiert, da wir noch das Fundament bauen. Es wird jedoch passieren, das manch ein NSC in der Welt auch herumreist und die Helden an einem anderen Ort wiedertrifft. Seinen sozialen Status verändert aber trotzdem noch derselbe ist. Nicht immer muss man sagen, das ist <Name Nachname> aus XYZ, man kann auch nur Gerüchte und Andeutungen fallen lassen, über ein Ereignis, das irgendwoanders stattgefunden hat und an dem eine Person mit einem besonderen Merkmal teilgenommen hat.

Dieses Stilmittel hat zum Ziel, dass die Helden merken, dass diese Welt lebendig ist und nicht aufhört sich zu drehen, wenn sie an einen anderen Ort wechseln...

6. Der Glückswurf bringt Abwechslung für den Spielleiter

Es gibt Momente im Spiel, da will man einfach eine Variable einführen, weil man keine 08/15 Situation erzeugen will. Dazu habe ich mir von einem befreundeten Shadowrun Spielleiter den Glückswurf ausgeborgt. Dieser besteht aus 2W6. Je höher desto besser (Vorteil Glückspilz 3W6, Nachteil Pechmagnet 1W6).

Ein simples Beispiel, dass die Benutzung illustriert. Der Spieler ist in einer Scheune und sucht eine Säge. Warum sagt er nicht und du als Spielleiter hast keine Ahnung, ob in der Scheune eine Säge ist. Generell kann man sagen, es kann schon sein, muss aber nicht. Also lässt man den Spieler 2W6 würfeln und ihm aber nicht die Schwelle zu seinem Glück sagen. Diese behält man für sich und entscheidet dann, wenn man das Ergebnis sieht. Ist das Ergebnis durchschnittlich hat er es entweder gefunden oder nicht (je nachdem was die Schwelle ist). Ist der Wurf besonders hoch (10-12), dann kann er auch noch andere nützliche Sachen finden. Ist der Wurf besonders niedrig (2-4), dann kann der Spieler beim Durchsuchen eines Heuhaufens in eine Bärenfalle treten, die dann auch prompt zuschnappt. Die Falle hat genauso wenig in der Scheune zu suchen wie die Säge, weshalb es dem Spielleiter auch ein bißchen Spontaneität erlaubt in Situation, die eigentlich potentiell nur lahm sind.

Aktuell fallen mir nicht mehr Sachen ein, werde aber einen weiteren Artikel schreiben, sobald ich mehr Erfahrungen gesammelt habe.