The Cartoon series from when I was younger was astounding, even if they really did have to make sure that it was perfectly clear that all the bad guys lived, just because it was a kids show, and they wanted there to be no ambiguity about the fact that it was all in good fun. It was timed perfectly for me as the Batman movies had just been given to Schumacher, and the neon glow reflecting off Batman’s latex nipples really killed that franchise for me. And then there was the current generation console games.

Arkham Asylum and City were masterpieces of storytelling and characterisation that just happened to have a pretty damned solid beat-em-up patched onto it. There was a whole lot there for both fans of brawler games and died comic book nuts too. So many little references that would pass most people by, but got a nerd’s heart all a-flutter. True, they weren’t perfect, and I personally think that Harley Quinn could have done without being so grossly sexualised, but these faults were few and far between. Of course there was Catwoman, but for my feelings on that, then by all means check out my podcast where me and my co-host struggle to get our heads around why Batman doesn’t just ship the career criminal off to Blackgate. It’s that thought that makes me very happy with the idea of a new Batman game coming out. The last flick left me a little disappointed to say the least, so right now I’m looking for another medium to swoop in and show us how it’s done.

You know, apart from comic books themselves. Well today we get another teaser trailer for the latest game. Sad to say, we still don’t get to see any game play, but I just hope it’s on the way.

As the keenly observant amongst you may know by now, I’ve spent a good few months running a Cyberpunk 2020 game. I have spoken briefly about one little addition I have made, but since it doesn’t really change the rules at all, rather the way in which the outcome of a ruling is described, I can’t really include that in this larger discussion. I have changed a few things however, and they fall into two vague categories; things changed before the game began, and things made up on the fly. As for the former of those, it came down to combat.

I like my combat to be quick, involving as few die rolls as is possible, but still giving a nice range of options and probabilities. I think to this day, my favourite combat system comes from a game that a couple of my friends are putting the finishing touches onto now: Orbis. One percentile roll – modified by your opponent’s defense score – lets you know if you have successfully hit, where on the body the hit lands, and how much bonus damage you’ve done as a result of hitting stronger/more precisely. After that, you roll the actual damage dice – modified as mentioned above – and you’re done. Bloody simple, but still gives plenty of room for tactical combat if that’s your bag. I wanted to make CP2020 a bit more like that, but keeping the essence of the system.

Click for image source

As it stands, the rules require a combat “roll off”, with attacker and defender trying to get the higher result. Then hit location, followed by damage. This takes just a bit too long, so I figured out a rough formula for calculating a “Dodge/parry” score based on skill sand stats already in play, wrote that on the character sheets, and combat had one less dice roll to worry about. Not the most all encompassing solution, but it worked for me, and the players seemed to like that combat was less about rolling and counter rolling, and more about trying to engineer the encounter so that their Parry/dodge score was higher than it should be. Now, that’s all well and good, but I think the harder part of the GM’s job comes about when a rule call needs to be made mid-game, and the time it would take to flip through the rule book for a long forgotten bit of trivia is time wasted.

This is when you need to be a games designer in the heat of the moment. The reason for this is that the ruling you make shouldn’t be made for that one situation. If something like this happens again, then you’re going to want to make the exact same calling, and for it to still make sense. If you’re wondering why this is so important, the simplest reason is a complicated word: verisimilitude. You want your players to know that if the world works in a certain way one day; then the next week, it’ll still be the same. So, it needs to make sense in the wider context of the system that exists, and also the way the game is currently being played.

In the past few years I’ve returned to being a GM much more frequently, and I find the challenges invigorating, but I was surprised at how often I was having to make such calls. Years back, I would have had a much higher degree of familiarity with the rules system, and would only really need to make on the spot rulings if a situation arose that simply wasn’t covered by the rules in any way, rather than because I couldn’t exactly recall something. The more I have been doing it though, the more comfortable I became, and the more I was happy to make calls, knowing that they would be consistent and fair. Even things that weren’t really rules calls, such as the price of an item that wasn’t covered in any of the massive shopping lists that are a huge part of the Cyberpunk 2020 game books; I came close to asking my player to hang on while I tried to find out the price, but then a few seconds later realised that most expedient way to continue was to just name my own price, jot it down in the book, and move on!

So, all that said, is this something that other people enjoy, or are you happier to hold off on a ruling and look it up later? I’m not going to ask if you’re happy to pause the game while you look it up, as I imagine that you all know better than that by now.

But if for some reason you don’t fancy wasting valuable mouse clicking energy to visit a superb blog, then I suppose I could just pop the new trailer down here, couldn’t I?

I think that almost all GMs should take some time off every once in a while. There are exceptions to that, and some GMs seem to thrive off it, never returning to play a game except for short bursts. I already know what game I’m going to be running next as a campaign, and I’m really looking forward to it, but it’s going to be over a year until I even need to start pitching it to potential players. So instead of getting myself all excited for about a game that I’m over a year away from touching, instead I’m going to look at a mythical campaign that I have thought about, but never found the time to run.

I want to start a game where the player characters are all children. Orphans in fact in a Steampunk/Victoriana game. They will begin with next to no skill points, and only equipment that they can steal and scavenge, and that no one else has stolen from them. By the end of the campaign, I would love to see at least one them involved in national politics, with the others of roughly comparable power and influence. This is a very tall order, and I’m not even too sure just how it would happen. I do know that it would take an awfully long time to get through such a campaign, and who has that kind of time?

Maybe when I was younger, and my gaming buddies had the free time afforded to them by being feckless students and the unemployed – just kidding guys, it was great, and we all had fun – but these days, even being underemployed myself, I find my time taken up by trying to get some writing projects off the ground and do something that I’m passionate about instead of just to make ends meet. And that is the crux of this post.

The campaign I want to run is never going to happen. Not because I can’t find a system that will work – Age Of Ravens has a whole slew of Steampunk  games listed for me to choose from – or that I have problems finding a group. I actually role play weekly, but the confines of that are that a game can only last a full academic year, and that just isn’t long enough for what I have in mind. Maybe, just maybe, when I’m old and retired, and still gaming (of course I will be, if I haven’t given it up in the last twenty years, I can’t see it ever happening) I might go back to this blog post, get the gang back together, and try and get the campaign finished before one of us dies.

The cover is simple, the adventure is thrilling…

The name De La Poer may be familiar to some of you. He was a real person, who appeared in one of the finest series of steampunk novels I’ve had the pleasure of reading. I liked the name so much, I stole it for an Unhallowed Metropolis game I once ran, and totally planned on turning into a full adventure. I never got round to that for a couple of reasons. Firstly, something that big would need a system behind it, and I have no permission to use the UnMet system for such an endeavour. Secondly, it was a very big undertaking for some one so new to the field of adventure writing.

This doesn’t mean I’ve stopped thinking about doing so, just that I’m changing my methods slightly. Instead of one huge adventure, I will be taking key scenes from the entire story arc, and doing them as stand alone two-page adventure seeds. I have taken one of the final scenes as a trial run, just to see how it works, and will be putting more out as and when I get the idea down to just a couple of pages. They will not be released in order, but when they’re all out there, I will be making them available as a bundle on DriveThruRPG, along with an extra sheet detailing how they all came together.

If the thought of that interests you, then by all means wait a while, and grab the whole lot for a cheaper price so you can take a look at the whole picture. If you’re a bit impatient though, the adventure that takes place in an old abandoned mine is now very much ready for you take a look at. As with all my stuff, there are no stat lines as there is no system tied to it, but the basic idea is totally covered, and I even introduce you to a monster of my own creation in this one. Either click the image to the left, or the following link to head straight on over, and don’t forget that the link in the sidebar takes you through to all of my DriveThru products.

For people who don’t know this, the Cyberpunk 2020 combat system is actually pretty brutal. I have changed a couple of bits of it to give it a slightly more cinematic feel, but it still has the possibility to drop a heroic character with a single round from a handgun. Although I am always happier when the combat is more interesting than that. We’d already seen it happen once, but due to the very high tech medical aid that’s available the character in question got better, and was only out of action for a few days. Still injured when they got back into the fray, so they had some negative modifiers, but future science is almost as good as magic when it comes to healing, or at least, that’s how I see it.

Not actually Diesel, but close enough…

This time, the dice gods were not happy, and the first attempt at healing actually made things worse, meaning that the second attempt failed, and what with time passing, there was sadly nothing to be done.  Diesel died. He died well, and it has created some already kick ass role playing with some of the remaining characters. Mainly talking about Ed Winchester here, but others have really brought their “A” game to the table with regard to role playing.

What a lot of you might not know is that my game is almost over. I had a fixed time frame to run this game, and I expected it to last me until June, and that’s coming up fast. The party – or what’s left of it – have been given an option to get closure on their plot, and the choice about how they want to see it resolved. There’s more than one power block in play, and the characters could end up siding with either, or going it on their own. But what to do with the ex-Diesel?

This close to the end, it seems a bit of a waste of time and effort to create a whole new character, and the player has admitted that she doesn’t really see the point of it. I tend to agree, so instead, I have picked one the main antagonists from the campaign, and since he was at death’s door when they found him, he was no real threat, giving the player free reign for some challenging role playing. All I need to do is drop in a few bits of information that Christ had been keeping from everyone that are crucial in bringing the storyline to its apoplectic finale.

And this is the crux of this article: What do you do when a player character bites the big one? Does your answer change depending on system, or even on when the character dies in the story arc? DO they come back as level one – if the game supports such a thing – or of comparable power to the current characters? Do you feel comfortable handing control of an important NPC to player whose character had been happy to see them die? I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on this, and the comments box is just down there.

A word of warning though, this  – like all of our podcasts – is very much not safe for work. We use bad language is what I’m saying, not that we get naked.

We also put out a call for guests with interesting things to talk about who might want to talk about them with us. Just give any of the episodes a listen before you volunteer though; we have very adult senses of humour. And if you’re looking for all the links to things we discuss, you should join in our Facebook page as we pop them up between episodes to keep people entertained.

For now, I offer a rundown of what is available so far on DriveThruRPG, all crafted at Shortymonster Industries.

System Neutral NPCs. This one pretty much says it all in the title, but the back story is fun, so I’m going to share it with you. When I hit my first big mile stone on the blog, I wanted to thank everyone who had taken the time to head on over and check me out, so I offered to write up one NPC of their choice. Just prose, and based off as little information as they wanted to give. This ranged from “pirate character” to “Star Wars universe trader on a space station”. All of them were fun, and special mention has to go to the father who had me write up his son as a kick ass fighter in a fantasy game. While it is true that you can grab all of these for free by trawling through the comments section on the original post, I just figured that it’d be easier to collate them all together, and correct a few niggling bits of bad grammar and spelling so that they looked good, and package them up for anyone who needed a bunch of ideas in one bundle.

Death at a Funeral. This one has a slightly bigger price tag than all the other stuff, but it took a hell of a lot more work to get it ready. It is a larger adventure, with non player characters sketched out, and even includes maps. And if you’ve been following some of my other posts, you’ll know I suck at maps, and really don’t like drawing them. The adventure is inspired by a tournament game I ran a few years back using the Unhallowed Metropolis system, but since I have no working relationship with the fine folks at Atomic Overmind (yet) a lot of the specifics had to removed, and turned into a generic game of alternate Victorian horror. I think I managed it quite well, and since it has been played about a dozen times in the writing of it, and the tournament, I know the game works. If you fancy the idea of playing Victorian ladies and gentlemen on the hunt for an underground and unknown foe, as you struggle through undead creatures and humanity at its worst, then this might be just what you’re looking for.

The Midnight Priesthood. I can’t actually take 100% credit for this one, as the original idea was a game my girlfriend ran. I liked the basic concept, but thought it would play better in a standard fantasy setting though. The idea itself is of an organisation who effectively take a monthly tax of one child. The settlement it all happens in is happily complicit in this arrangement, and the players take on the role of adventurers knowing nothing of the reasons behind this barbaric practice. There is a reason for the madness, but even the people of the town have no inkling as to the actual dark and terrifying truth.

Murder Incorporated. This one is based on actual historical fact, but massively altered by the addition of some elder gods and Lovecraftian horror. It started with watching an episode of the West Wing, when we discover that one of the main characters’ Father was an hit man for the Jewish mob. I just loved that idea, and it stayed squirreled away just waiting for inspiration to hit. As I started reading more and more Lovecraft, I realised that it was a very good match, and would significantly alter the dynamic of the investigators if they were constantly questioning whether what they were doing was morally acceptable, or even if the methods they were using justified the end result. Possibly the most fun thing to have written so far, but there will be more to follow as I move forward.

Speaking of which, I have two other little bits on the go at present, that should be making a DriveThru appearance in the near future. Another long form adventure, this time in a Cyberpunk world, and a short horror adventure seed set down an old abandoned mine. For regular updates, email subscribe to the blog, or head on over and hit the Facebook ‘Like’ button.

First bit of actual mapping. No grids used, as I don’t tend to worry about running that kind of combat unless the system supports. Flip it over though, and all kinds of hexes and squares are available.

The biggest use far. Keeping notes and initiative in order. Wipe clean makes this way easier than scribbling things out when fluid combat changes the order of things.

This post is a bit late in its arrival, as I’ve been strangely busy this last week, but don’t seem to have actually got much done. Mostly just playing around with the new look home page, and adding some functionality that should make it easier to navigate. One thing I’ve been noticing recently is that the more I have on my plate, the harder it is to locate the older posts when I need them. So, the new layout is to benefit all of us.

Take a look at the upper left for some menu buttons, and they should do things. Not too much at the moment, as I’ve only just started getting stuff sorted, but it should make life easier.

So, a couple of weeks back I got sent a rather nifty little GM aid. I didn’t really get the chance to play with it much on its first outing though, as there wasn’t even a hint of combat during that game. For the last couple of weeks though, there has been a few hairy situations – one of which lead to the character death of my Girlfriend’s psychologically broken Techie and demolitions expert – so I thought I’d take the time to show how useful it was, and really highlight how phenomenally useless I am at drawing maps. My players have now taken to asking for more maps of insignificant places, just to laugh at them. There will be a lot of pictures in this post, and sadly none of them include cats.

And if the combat expands, you just fold out another layer of Noteboard, and keep on adding to the fun.

Interior of the club, used when needed…

That’s mostly what got rolled out last week. yesterday was another day though, and another game in the same campaign.

Club hidden, for people who didn’t need to see it. Maybe because they were dead.

The situation was a direct follow on from the previous game, and luckily, all I had to do was fold the Noteboard back up and pop it into the bag. At the start of the next session, I just o0pened it up, gave a quick recap, and once again reminded people which end of the boat was the pointy one, and we were off. Wonderful extra bit of use though was adding an interior to a building for a couple pf brave souls. I just flipped another bit over, and sketched out the rough details of the inside, and could then easily flip back for everyone who was still outside or dieing from a head shot…

As you can see, it was very helpful indeed, but did nothing to make my map drawing skills improve, Maybe they offer that as an optional extra.

In his novels, he has the time to fully explore ideas and concepts, and for an awful lot of his written work, this is done masterfully. I am not picking out any particular novel though, because when I say most of his work, I mean most of any individual novel. The thing that has effectively stopped me reading novels by Mister King is that he doesn’t seem to know when to end the story. Two examples that I have read in recent years are Bag of Bones and It. Bag of bones may not be quite so well known, and it’s easy to see why. The story is OK, and moves along well, but we don’t get any startling new ground broken. And then, he ends the story well. Maybe not a happy ending, but it satisfied me greatly as a form of closure. For some reason there then followed two more chapters.

Click image for creepy creepy stuff…

“It” is a slightly better known story, mainly due to the stellar performance of Tim Curry as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the movie adaptation. The novel is amazing, and I know of a friend who simply couldn’t finish reading it alone at night. It is a huge read, coming in at a tome like 1300 plus pages, but once again I can tell you that a big bunch of stuff at the back end is almost totally pointless. We get a great resolution to the story, or at least as good a resolution we could expect when dealing with eternal evil. What follows is just uncomfortable and unnecessary padding.

And it’s this kind of thing I want to talk about today. In a previous game I’ve run I ended up having to write a couple of endings just because I wasn’t too sure what my players would do. They had the chance to take the money and run, and the consequences of that action would mean the horror would come to find them. I ended up being in a position to bribe them into taking on the final job, and they got a huge cataclysmic ending at an abandoned country manor haunted by a ghostly child with enormous powers. And that’s pretty much where I ended it.

I then gave them a very brief description of the return trip back to base of operations and what life was going to be like afterwards, but that was all, and it took me less than ten minutes. What I didn’t do was have random encounters on the way back to the City. I didn’t have them role play the meeting once more with the troops that defend the walls of said city from undead incursion. All of this certainly happened, but it would add nothing to the sense of accomplishment that my players were feeling.

Even the stuff I did talk about was largely derived from what they said they wanted, and I think this is the way I’ll be taking it next time my campaign ends. Instead of running through quickly what happened to them, I’ll open it up, and let the players take the time to think about what their characters would do once the dust has settled. Part of my worries that the characters will suddenly become the super awesome bunch of people they have always thought they were but never quite managed to become, but that’s selling my particular group of gamers short. I think that they would relish giving their characters an end that they felt they deserved, and since the tone of the game has been fairly consistent, I know I can trust them to maintain that, even when it doesn’t really matter that much.

What about the rest of you; how have you handled the ending to a long campaign? If anyone was left alive of course…