Organisation – TechNo Prisoners

It’s a Game For Kids!

Well, the one Lucretia has been asked to run is. “Bean” gaming cafe is opening soon, and have been looking for people to run some intro games. Lucretia stepped up to the plate, and we have been discussing what to run.

With a proposed player-base of six 10-13yr olds, and a 1-hour time slot, I suggested to keep everything as simple as possible, and concentrate on the players’ enjoyment.

So, here is what I came up with:

System

Opposed rolls.

The player must beat the GMs roll. The Warrior might have a Strength of d8, and the GM rules that Moving the Fallen Tree is a d10 task (It is a BIG tree!).

Player wins: Task Completed!

Tie = Player Wins.

GM Wins: Task eventually completed, but at some cost.

Costs can be ad-libed, to suit the situation, but can include:

Lose a Health Token.
Add a Minion Token to the Final Battle, or other Encounter (to represent the task taking longer, and the Big Bad having recruited more minions).
Use a Special Token (e.g. a Mage “Spell” Token, or Elf “Nature” Token)
Add an extra Encounter.

Overall, the players WILL succeed, but they will be somehow hindered later (less Tokens to use, more Enemies to face, etc)

Characters

A set of pre-generated Archetypes. The Elf, The Mage, The Warrior, etc.

Each will have an Index Card with their abilities on it, and a space to put some Tokens (more on these later).

Abilities:

All are d6 unless noted.

Strong: Warrior has d8, Mage has d4.
Quick: Rogue has d8, Dwarf has d4.
Clever: Mage has d8

Fighting will usually be a Strong contest, but a player may come up with a way of using Quick or Clever. Losing a Fight roll means losing a Red Health Token (Minions only have 1). Especially with younger kids, fighting should never be “to the death”. Minions are knocked out (complete with stars spinning round their head), run away, or surrender.

Plot

The base plot-line for such a short Adventure is: Follow the clues to find and defeat the Evil “Twirly McMustache”!

The players will need a plot-hook to get them into the action. Some ideas to get kids involved:

Your dumb sibling has been kidnapped
Your Teacher has given you some Homework, but Twirly has run off with the answer sheet!
Twirly has stolen your pet’s favourite toy!

You get the idea.

Players must follow clues, overcome challenges and face T. McMustache in a Boss Fight.

Challenges/Encounters

Suggested Encounters: Image result for meme blocked path

Nature Challenge: A large tree blocks the path. A river or chasm must be crossed. A cliff to climb. A Twisty Forest where you might get lost.
Minions: Usually a Combat Encounter.
Puzzles: Keep to a minimum, due to time-pressures.
Cryptic Old Man: Always an annoyance! He talks in riddles, but does hold useful clues.

Boss Fight

Eventually, the Players will face the Big Boss. he will have a number of Minions, possibly boosted by previous Failed rolls.

At the start of the Encounter, Minion Tokens can be Doubled-Up to create Big Minions, that use d8 instead of d6! (They could be Ogres instead of Goblins). When these Minions lose a Fight, they lose one Token, and revert to a d6.

This should be played up for excitement. Will they defeat him? Will they be in time? Can they come up with clever, fun, interesting ideas?

There will be a load of Minions, who can get in the way, hinder the Boss as well as the PCs, and generally be used for humour value, as well as ensuring pacing (if the players are having it too easy, Minions help the Boss. If the players are struggling, have them comically hinder the Boss, allowing the Players to pull off some cool moves!).

Assuming the players Win (which they should!), give them a big cheer, a bag of sweets, and send them off with stories to tell their friends!

Also, show them the D&D 5th Edition PHB, and wonder if the more advanced players might be interested in the “real”, more complex rules.

Back to the System

I talked about a few Statistics, that can be used for Opposed Rolls.

“Health” is measured in red Tokens, Each player has 3 (Mage has 2, Dwarf has 4). When you lose a Fight Roll, you lose a Token. If you run out of Tokens, you are DOWN AND OUT (for now …)

I also envisage each Character having some Unique Powers, that they can spend their 4 Special Tokens on:

Elf: Green “Nature” Tokens. Powers: Entangle, Talk To Trees, Pass Without Trace.

Dwarf: Brown “Mountain” Tokens. Powers: Soak Damage, Dwarf Bread, Talk To Rocks.

Mage: Blue “Mana” Tokens. Powers Magic Arrow, Detect Minions, Solve Clue

I don’t have all the Powers yet, but so long as everyone has something interesting on their Sheet, it should be good!

Summary

It’s not fully fleshed-out yet, but I hope you can see what I’m intending.

To badly mis-quote an Old Geezer who was there at the beginning of it all:

We’ll make up some sh*t, and hope that it’s fun!

Inspirational Tools

I get by, with a little help from my friends.

So say the Beatles, and who am I to say they are wrong.

We all need a little help now and then, and GMs writing story-lines are no exception. From the names of antagonists to the location of their lair, from Quests to Completion-Rewards, sometimes our creative juices run dry.

So where do we turn?

Dice.

Our go-to source of randomness. Mostly our “Standard Set” of d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 and d100. Very useful for creating numerical values. But what if you need something else?

The more resourceful of you may already own some Other Dice. Amongst my easily-to-hand collection, I found Emoji, Rock/Paper/Scissors,

Body Location, Dungeon Maps and more! There are a large range of dice, featuring Weather, Mood, Grammar, and much more!

But what about when you don’t have the right dice to hand? You need to check for Random Weather, but the only dice you have are Body Location and Who-Takes-First-Turn! This is where we turn to:

Tables!

Lists of possible outcomes, Tables can hold a huge amount more information than simple dice, and can be chained together to produce complex results. They can also shift the probabilities of results occurring. Usually they are designed to roll dice, and compare the result against the entries, or you can just choose an appropriate one.

The Internet is full of these tables, designed for each different Game System/Setting, and lots of Generic ones.

To make life simpler, and avoid having to hunt around for either dice or sheets of paper, or the right page of the Rule Book, we also have

Apps

Loaded on to a mobile phone, or tablet, these tend be be combinations of dice and tables. Tell the App what Feature you are wanting, and it will generate a random result, according to how it is programmed.

My current favourite App is (unsurprisingly) the one I wrote!

Combining Lists of Names, Places, Treasures, Quests and others Features, along with a Personality Generator, and lists of Features of a Fantasy City, The Mad Dwarf Inspirational Apps also allow you to add your own entries to the Lists, and save the results for use in later games.

There are Apps designed around most of the popular Games Systems, providing access to as much inspiration as you can handle!

Summary

Other ways of finding inspiration include reaching for a nearby book, and turning to a random page, loading a random Wikipedia page, or asking your Players to make a decision!

Most people will use a combination of methods to produce some interesting results, and the best way is often to interpret them in a way that fits your game.

When do you tend to run out of steam? What methods do you have for recharging your Creative Juices?

Herding Cats.

When Shall We <Three> Meet Again?

So, the group has decided upon a Game. The setting has been chosen, and tailored to the player’s whims. The system has been house-ruled beyond recognition. Character sheets are produced, dice are procured. Everyone is in high spirits, looking forward to the game. And then someone has to spoil it by asking “So, Friday then?”.

Everyone stops. A hush drops over the room. A draught whips up as if from nowhere, the piano player pauses mid-refrain, and a distant door creaks. Eventually someone breaks the silence: “I can’t do Friday. I have to see my family”. It is as if a dam has broken, and everyone is now able to rush forth!

“Tuesday is good for me”

“I can do this Tuesday, but next week I’m away on business”

“I can only do every other Thursday”

“Most Thursdays, but I might be late – Work, y’know”

“Our band meets on Mondays, but if they cancel, I can come”

Trying to put kittens in a neat row — Herding Cats

And so it begins …

Group One

I am in the extremely privileged position of being in a regular group, with regular players. We meet once a week, every week. We have scheduled our other commitments around Games Night. Even if we are missing players, if we have quorum, we will play our usual RPG. If not, the few who do attend will break out Small World (or occasionally, with much protesting, some other game).

Group Two

The other group I am in, on the other hand, is irregular to the point of collapse.

I don’t think I’ve seen a session where all of the players have attended. We meet every couple of months (at best), and only after a flurry of emails and Facebook posts trying to find a date that enough people can make.

This group has at least three games on the go, and I am only in one of them. One would have thought that they could find a date that at least some players can make, and decide which game from there. But alas, dear reader, it is not so. Some players only want to play certain games. Some want to GM, and some do not. Sometimes, despite the wait, a game is not ready. Another may be drawing to a climax, and need as many players as possible, or be at a crux point that needs a certain player(s) involvement.

And the months do pass …

(There is a small amount of Email Play, where the GM effectively runs a mini Play-by-Post game to fill in some gaps, and prepare for the next session. But this is an aside, rather than a major point)

Group Three

(Yes, I am in THREE rpg groups!)

This group was specifically built to accommodate players not making every session. An old-school D&D game where we take the part of Adventurers, plundering a local cave-system that houses kobolds, goblins, and worse!

At the end of each session, we make it back to the local town to sell our loot, resupply, and see what other brave souls may be interested in joining our merry band!

So far, this has worked well. The DM has every 2nd Sunday of the month free, and will run the game for whom so ever may turn up at the pub. (This month, being Just-after-Xmas, we have postponed until later in the month, due to a lot of potential players having other commitments).

This is still quite a new group (5 sessions?), and we are yet to see how people’s endurance holds up.

Other Groups

One of our players has a mid-week game. I think. And some of our friends run intermittent twice-yearly full-day games.

There is the Demon Games Club (or whatever the Polytechnic Games Soc is calling itself these days), and the yearly Student National Championships. But I have little involvement these days (on account of not having been a student for <cough> years).

Solutions (or otherwise)

One would have thought that Instant Global Communication, the Information Superhighway, videophones, flying cars and all of the other Golden Future sci-fi technology we now posses (ok, I lied about the flying cars) would make arranging games easier.

I (or whoever happens to be GMing the current game) send out an SMS each week, confirming the date for the next game, and once enough players have RSVPed, another to finalise it. My last game, we used our Forum. Groups Two and Three have Facebook pages where dates and attendance are discussed.

And yet Players have turned up on the wrong day, or not arrived on Games Night. We SMS one of our players EVERY week, checking that he is awake, has remembered it is The Game, and is wearing trousers (true story).

Some people think of RPGs as a social meeting, free-form and informal. Others find it a Way Of Life (I hesitate to say Obsession …). When all of your group are on the same page, it can work well, but in a mixed group, it is likely that someone will be disappointed.

Do you have any techniques for rounding up your players?

Or as a player, how do you feel about Regular Attendance?