Tag: GM

We’re All Individuals!

Fates Worse Than Death
Fates Worse Than Death

Fates Worse Than Death, one of my favourite RPG settings, is based around the gangs of near-future Manhattan. Each player chooses which gang their PC is in, and usually this leads to a group containing several gangs. As it is meant to be a very socio-political game, gang relations are important, and having players from gangs that are actively hostile, or even non-allied, will at the very least produce problems for the players. This concept is not limited to FWTD. Vampire (and other White Wolf settings) had a similar issue, with the player-base usually being a cross-Clan group.

Our latest idea for a game is to have all players be part of the same gang. While this will alleviate the multi-gang issue, it does have its own problems. In FWTD, a PC’s character class is their Gang, and this defines their Skill Costs (similar to how in V:TM your Clan defines what skills and Disciplines you have access to). By having all PCs from the same gang, they will all have the same Skill Costs (e.g. All Crackers have access to INFO Skills at 5xp/rank, compared to most other Gangs paying 10xp/rank. Sexologists pay 13xp/rank for TECH skills, while Boarders pay only 6!). While this helps to enforce niche-protection between gangs, and reflects the lifestyle of gang-members focusing on skills relevant to their gang, it can lead to players all buying the same, or similar skills. The skills are in categories, so one Cracker might buy Cryptography, and another choose Information Smuggling, but neither are likely to pick up much BIO (costing 9xp/rank, compared to a Needle Punk paying just 4!).

Living on the streets
Living on the streets

Part of the idea for a single-gang game was to get away from the finely-tuned adventuring party that can cover all bases (known as “Who’s Playing The Cleric?”) and focus on a group of people who happen to come together, and must use what skills they bring. If the players are Crackers, their BIO skills will be relatively low, unless someone decides to dedicate a lot of XP towards it (lowering their other areas significantly). A Sexologist group will be poor at TECH, and even their specialist will struggle to match a mediocre Boarder without giving up a lot of other skills! This does sound interesting (at least to me, as the GM!), but persuading my players that they are not the bestest-at-everything may be quite an undertaking.

One thing that FWTD does have is Disciplines. Areas of training that any Ganger may take. While learning a Discipline, a PC pays the Discipline costs for skills, rather than Gang costs. e.g. a Cracker may choose to train as an EMT. During this time, they will only pay 5xp/rank for BIO skills, but must pay 10xp/rank for INFO skills (as they are no longer at the heart of the information network, or as closely associated with their comrades). Some Disciplines have a specific list of skills that receive lower costs, and some have requirements for advancing (To begin EMT training a PC must have Driving 1, Emergency Medicine 1, and to gain Level 2 must have at least Emergency Medicine 3, Surgery 2).

So, to allow my players to broaden, and cover some extra skill areas, I am thinking of starting them at Level 3 (notably experienced), with the option to take one of those levels in a Discipline.

Next is to decide which gang to be! With over 50 different options, from homeless street-kids to inked’n’pierced carny-folk to idle-rich extreme sports enthusiasts, what will my players go for? One would like to be a Sat-Jumper; blue-collar workers who are jetted to low-orbit to work on the innumerable satellites that keep the world running. Another likes the idea of Technophiles, each specialising in a different technology. Whichever we end up with, I’ll report on how the game progresses!

What Gang would you want to play? Or how would you deal with the issues of running a single-gang game? Have you played/run a game like this? Why not let me know!

Whose Dice Is It Anyway?

(Inspired by This Thread)

Some GMs are masters of making things up as they go along. Winging it. Improvisation. They are never short of new, interesting locations, and characterful NPCs. Plot lines seem to grow organically as the game moves along.

I am not one of those GMs.

Players will, inevitably, come up with new and innovative ways to side-step challenges, derail story-lines, and chase tangent-bunnies. When they do, I tend to run into the GMing equivalent of writers’ block. Over my many years of GMing, I have come up with coping-strategies to keep the game flowing, rather than stumble through, uming and erring over details.

The first tactic I use is to try to keep the geographic scope of my campaigns quite small. This allows for locations to be reused many times, and detail to build up over time. The NorthHills sprawlzone that I used for my cyberpunk campaigns started as a rough map, and as we played, built up into a well-detailed area. The Mall had shops (with staff) noted, and was visited many times. I ran several adventures using The Crow Bar, and it has built up a history of its own. I particularly like Fates Worse Than Death for this, as it is set exclusively on Manhattan Island. Large enough to allow quite a lot of scope, but small enough to keep coming back to the same places, meeting the same people.

Another ploy is to keep sets of lists handy. People’s names. Business names. Emotions and attitudes. Some of these I pen myself, between sessions. Others I pull from many sources. Particular favourites are Lee’s Lists and Random Generator.  Vajra have some good random creators, specifically for their FWTD setting, but it can easily be used for other games.

Some games produce very good source-books for this, and I particulalry like Shadowrun’s Sprawl Sites. Containing details on quite a few potential locations, plus a whole list of encounters, it provides useful inspiration should ideas dry up.

Also, keep a thesaurus handy. Treeware versions are fine, but nowadays I tend to rely on thesaurus.com for getting good words appropriating superior lexicons.

And, of course, I have my many years of experience to draw upon! I have been known to use ‘similar’ NPCs from game to game, even radically different settings, and tweak locations from one game to fit another. Even plots and adventures are lifted wholesale! Sometimes it is obvious, even highlighted, other times more subtle. (Notable example: When I ran an AD&D campaign many moons ago, one player created character sheets for the 30-40 NPCs in his care (the “We Hate The Dark Lord” club). As they, in turn, inevitably met their fates, they were handed to me, to re-use as ready-made NPCs for that, or any other, game. I still have that folder.)

With these tools at the ready, I tend to spread my preparation thinly, sketching several fledgling ideas, ready to develop the ones that the players interact with, adding detail as play progresses.

So, my improvisation is not about on-the-fly winging it. It is the result of much preparation. Roll a dice on this table. Choose an appropriate item from that list. Pull a character sheet from that folder. All prepped beforehand, ready to be improvised on-the-spot!