Hollow Earth Expedition: Stranded!

And yesterday we played a one-shot of Hollow Earth Expedition! 

It's 1936, and an Austrian geologist named Adele Wagner is convinced, based on her seismological findings, that the Earth is in fact hollow (her scientific nemesis is the Danish geophysicist Inge Lehmann, who has recently published findings that the Earth has a solid inner core - nonsense!). Wagner has been searching the world for evidence of her theory, and found a strange amulet in the Galapagos - a stone set in a metal frame, marked with symbols that correspond to no known language. Wagner has managed to attract the attention of one Henry Bright, an American industrialist with more money than sense. He has put this expedition together.

The expedition is mounted using the Jömungandr, a submarine unlike any ever built. Constructed with the help of the brilliant young mechanic Sprockets McCoy, the Jömungandr is long and flexible, with multiple compartments joined with articulated sections of canvas and tempered metal. It is therefore much more maneuverable than any other submersible, though it will take longer to dive and surface since it needs extra time to adjust to the pressure. 

The crew consists of head of security Karl Schmidt, about 50 grunts and crew members, including one Ronnie "The Sledgehammer" Humprhies. Ronnie is a WWI vet, a huge and intimidating presence, a bit of a cocaine addict, and about as sharp as his namesake. He is, however, very, very earnest, and Schmidt has tasked him with a very important job: If the order is given to "blow ballast," he's to turn a key, through a lever, and eject the last compartment of the sub. 

The crew includes a few medics, of course, but one of them is not what she seems. Natasha Pushkyn is a Russian witch, raised by a high priestess after her father killed her mother and then himself, and an expert in the field of Necromancy. She's been searching for a powerful mystical artifact that she believes can increase her power, but has recently found legends that indicate it may be within the Earth somehow. She has some medical knowledge, and conned her way onto the voyage.

Also, Wagner met a young man named Finnegan O'Reilly at one of her conferences. Finnegan (born to Irish parents in upstate New York) claims to have had a pet dinosaur at a young age and has been obsessed with strange creatures - what we would now called "cryptids" - ever since. He's been exchanging letters with Wagner for some time, and she believes that his expertise about bizarre animals would be helpful. Plus, it's not like reputable scientists are clamoring to get aboard an experimental submarine and dive into the Diamantina Deep...

Speaking of that...the Jömungandr departs from southern India, travels a few days south to Australia where it resupplies, and then dives. There's a moment where they pass crush depth that Sprockets holds his breath a little ("that creak is OK...there's a different creak we'll hear if we're all about to die"), and then they descend into the Deep.

The controls show two openings in the sea floor, one large enough to turn around, one deeper but narrower. Mr. Bright defers to Wagner and Finnegan for guidance, and they decide to go into the bigger one. No sooner have they entered it than an immense tentacle flops over the front window!

A squid bigger than any ever recorded wraps around the Jömungandr and squeezes gently! The sub can handle a little of that, but not much, and Sprockets reports such. Karl gets on the comms and tells folks to prepare to deploy weapons, but Finnegan shouts not to - the creature is just curious. If they attack it, it will surely attack back!

Bright believes Finnegan and orders Karl to stand down. Everyone holds their breath, and in a moment the squid lets them go. They continue onward, into the deep at the bottom of the Deep.

Rushing water overtakes them and sucks the sub into a tunnel system! The sub slams back and forth against the walls, and Sprockets takes the controls, expertly piloting the Jömungandr through the caves. Karl, however, in the back of the ship, orders Ronnie to blow ballast, and he does...and a moment later an explosion rings out behind them. It doesn't damage the ship, but Sprockets notes that it means there's no way they're getting through that tunnel again.

The ship rushes to the surface, and Sprockets advises everyone to hold on - and then the sub breaks the top of the water! "That was...faster than it should have been," Sprockets notes, and Wagner excitedly realizes this means they're here! She opens the door and reveals...the Hollow Earth!

They inflate a raft and row across a small lake (how did they surface in lake?) to the shore. Finnegan sees animals scatter as they approach, but not what they are. He peers through binoculars at a flock of birds in the distance, and realizes they aren't birds, they're pterosaurs! The tracks on the beach, likewise, reveal a mix of species, some bovine (but much bigger than anything he's seen), some saurid. Giddy with excitement, he exclaims that there are dinosaurs here.

Bright orders Karl to deploy the vehicles (jeeps and motorcycles) and start setting up a base camp. They walk to the top of a rise and look down into a valley, and see that Hollow Earth goes on forever - there are mountains in the distance, swamps with herds of brontosaurs feeding, herds of other beasts (aurochs and triceratops) on the plains, and deep forests. 

Finnegan, however, is already in one of said forests, trying to track the animals from the beach. He senses something behind him and rolls just in time, as a spider bigger than he is lands next to him! 

The spider is a hunter - he knows that if it bites him, it'll paralyze him, wrap him in a cocoon, and slowly drink his innards. As much as Finnegan loves animals, he doesn't want that. He pulls the pin on a grenade and tosses it under the immense arachnid...

...back at camp, the others hear a boom from the woods. Ronnie and Natasha go to investigate, and find Finnegan sitting against a tree, ears ringing, surrounded by legs. "IT WAS A SPIDER," he says. "So you blew it up?" says Ronnie. "WHY ARE YOU WHISPERING?"

They gather the legs ("we are supposed to get samples") and head back to the in-progress camp. Bright has Sprockets drive a small team - Ronnie, Wagner, Natasha, and Finnegan - down the hill to check out the wildlife and start getting pictures while they set up the camp. Down at the bottom of the hill, Finnegan immediately runs to the herd of triceratops and tries to make friends with one. He notes that the animals don't seem afraid of people...

Natasha starts looking around for some evidence of civilization, something that might lead her to the artifact, and spots a woman behind a tree, peering out. She walks towards her and tries to stay nonthreatening, and the woman emerges, cautiously. Natasha walks to her and offers her a crystal from her pocket, and the woman takes it and tucks it away in a pouch, and then gives Natasha what looks like a seed. Natasha, taking a guess, scoops out a bit of earth and plants it, but the woman takes another one from her pouch and puts it under her tongue. Natasha follows suit (dusting the dirt off first), and discovers that the seed has clearly been roasted, and tastes faintly of licorice. 

At this point Wagner notices the woman and walks over amazed that there are people here. She tries to speak with the woman, but of course she understands no English (or German, or French). Inspired, Wagner holds out the amulet, and the woman puts her hand on it...and suddenly they can understand each other! (Natasha, standing nearby, hearing the native woman speak in her language, while Wagner speaks in her native German, so she understands neither of them.) 

The woman introduces herself as Pohan, and she talks with Wagner about her people and so forth. She also warns Wagner not to set up camp on the rise - they will be attacked at night. By what? The word she uses doesn't translate, and whatever the attackers are, they aren't human and they'll take people away, kill them, and eat them. Wagner says that she'll go and warn Karl, and leaves the amulet with Natasha so that she can talk with Pohan. 

Sprockets drives Wagner back up the hill to camp, but Karl isn't interested in moving the camp. They're almost entirely set up, and he's confident that they can handle any attack. They'll just post extra guards. Bright agrees, and Wagner grudgingly accepts this. But then they hear gunfire!

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the hill, Natasha asks Pohan if there are any plants or herbs that her people use for medicinal (or magical) purposes. Pohan mentions "blue fire," and leads Natasha to a clearing in the woods covered over in a flowering vine with bright blue blossoms. Ronnie follows, still not entirely sure where he is ("I think we surfaced in Russia?"). Pohan says that blue fire - the flowers - can be rendered to a drink that her people use to pep up before hunting, but the pollen in its pure form is too powerful. Natasha collects some, and even the quick whiff she gets is enough to make her jittery. Ronnie doesn't notice this, but picks a flower and gives it a big sniff anyway. 

Ronnie is well acquainted with stimulants, but this stuff is amazing. He feels stronger and faster (and dumber, which is hard), and a second later, his walkie-talkie crackles to life. "RONNIE!" yells Karl "WE NEED ZEH HAMMAH!"

See, the gunfire that the others heard was from the sub! Wagner, Karl, Bright, and Sprockets run back to the lake, and see some men firing rifles at the water. Sprockets yells at them to stop before they puncture the Jörmundangr's walls, but then an immense crab claw surfaces, rips open the hull, grabs something out of the sub, and submerges. "Oh, no," whispers Sprockets. 

Ronnie arrives a moment later with Finnegan on his back, and Finnegan says that blunt force to crack the crabs' shells might drive them away. Ronnie grabs a hammer and runs into the water, smacking down a crab, and it retreats back into the water. The security men drag the sub onto the beach, but it's been torn up. There's no way it's going to be made seaworthy. "We'll have to find another way home," says Sprockets.

Down at the bottom of the hill, Natasha continues making conversation with Pohan, and learns that she came here to pay respects to her friend - he's buried over there. Natasha asks if she would like to see him again, and Pohan is confused, then horrified. She uses the same word for Natasha that she used to describe the non-humans that kill and eat people, and then she runs. Natasha tries to chase her, but Pohan knows the terrain and is much faster.

Back at the camp, the folks discuss their options. Wagner advises talking to Pohan more and meeting the natives; maybe there have been other outsiders here before, or maybe Pohan could help them find a way out. The four of them get back in the jeep and drive down the hill again, and catch up with Natasha chasing Pohan. The others aren't quite sure to make of Natasha's claims of necromancy, other than advising her to cool it since Pohan's people clearly regard it as taboo. They catch up with Pohan (not hard in a jeep), and see her standing in a defensive stance holding a leather strap attached to a carved length of bone. 

Wagner talks her down before she...does whatever she was about to do with that thing. She promises that Natasha is not a cannibal monster, and she's not going to do anything necromantic. She explains their predicament, and Pohan agrees to take them to her tribe. It's a long walk, but in the "beast" (the jeep) it'll be a quick trip.

They ride across the plains and quickly arrive at a gathering of people. They have a few domesticated aurochs, and have set up some hide tents, but they are clearly nomadic. At first the natives brace for a fight, but Pohan talks them down and they receive the characters kindly, give them food, and explain the creatures - humanoid monsters with black fur, sharp claws, and bows that they wield with deadly accuracy. They also tell the explorers that there have been stories of other outsiders, but they come from far way, across the swamps, by the sea. ("There's a sea?")

The characters note that it's getting dark, and they elect to stay here overnight rather than try to get back to the camp. In the morning, the natives start packing up their camp to move on, and Sprockets, Wagner, Natasha, and Ronnie head back to camp (Finnegan stays with some of the native boys to try and ride dinosaurs; apparently it's something young men do for fun). 

When they arrive at the camp, though, they find...almost nothing. The camp has been destroyed. They find blood, but no bodies, and Natasha notes that the tracks indicate the bodies both dead and alive were dragged off to the woods. They find Mr. Bright and a few security men, wounded, inside what's left of the sub, and Natasha patches them up. Bright describes the creatures, and his description matches the one that Pohan's people gave - black fur, tails, feline in aspect, wielding bows and ripping out throats with their claws.

The characters salvage what they can, get a couple of jeeps started, and head down the hill. They pick up Finnegan, who's been (mostly unsuccessfully) trying to ride hadrosaurs with the native boys. Finnegan considers staying with the natives so that he can be near his precious dinosaurs, but decides to accompany the others to the sea, since they'll need to go through swamps and they'll need his expertise ("if you hear something buzzing," says Pohan, "take cover. Nothing good buzzes in the swamp"). Wagner gives Pohan her gloves, and Pohan gives her that leather/bone thing. She says if there's trouble, spin it until it makes a loud noise, and then run - it'll attract giant wasps.

The characters mount up and start driving toward the swamps. Will they ever get out of the Hollow Earth? Will the panther-men chase them down? Can Natasha find the mystical artifact - perhaps in the possession of said panther-men, who clearly also practice necromancy? These and other questions remain to be answered in....HOLLOW EARTH EXPEDITION! 

(Cliffhangers are very much in-genre.)

Failure Is Not an Option

I made a discovery a few years back. I don’t remember what exactly triggered it, or indeed if there was a single event or moment in a game that led me to this realization. I think it’s more likely that I knew it subconsciously long before I ever spoke the words, but the discovery was this:

The players like to win.

I say it a lot now, both to myself and to other Storytellers who pride themselves on chuckling evilly and muttering about how they like to make their players’ lives difficult. Most of the time, when I repeat that mantra they look at me funny, and then say, “But you can’t win a role-playing game!”

Well, the truth is, you can win a role-playing game. You just have to keep in mind what the goal of such games is: To have fun. That said, what I mean when I say “the players like to win” is, “the players like it when their characters succeed at the tasks they choose to undertake.”

And yet, there are an awful lot of games and systems within games that seem to indicate that playing failure is fun, too. In this essay, we’re going to talk about characters with crippling deficiencies, how to interpret failed die rolls, how Storytellers can spin planned failure and avoid having dice bounced off their heads, and the many faces of Pyrrhic victories.

My Character is Lame: Flaws, Drawbacks, and Disadvantages

Most games include a system wherein you can take traits that act to the detriment of your character. They’re variously called Flaws (World of Darkness, et al.), Drawbacks (Chill, et al.), or Disadvantages (GURPS, et al.), but it all boils down to the same thing: Your character is less capable than the “base,” therefore you get a few more points to build her up in another area.

If you presume that player characters represent the base capability of any given person in the game world, the logic behind these traits is horribly flawed. I am not the equal of everyone else in the world, or even everyone else in my age and cultural group. The bum staggering down the street toward me might, if statted as a character, have such crippling flaws as Alcoholic, Mentally Ill, Homeless and Smelly, but that probably doesn’t mean he’s stronger, smarter or faster to make up for it. Indeed, most flaws, in real life, wind up being detrimental to development in all other areas of a person’s life.

The presumption is most games, however, isn’t that the characters are just normal folks. It’s that they’re the protagonists of this story (so right away, it should be obvious that we’re operating on a different level from real life), and thus they are more capable than most folks. Going back to the bum, he doesn’t need to built on the same point base as the characters, because he’s a supporting character at best, and more probably an “extra.” Even when the NPC in question is closer to the player characters’ capabilities (say, in a game of Vampire: The Requiem, the character in question is another vampire), the NPC doesn’t need to have the same “point base” as the characters.

On this premise, the “flaws balanced by extra points” model works a little better. Most games explain taking flaws by saying something about players being able to make their characters a bit more well-rounded, “realistic,” dramatic, and so on. Some games are even honest enough to say something like, “you probably won’t have enough points to build the character you want, but you can get more by taking flaws.” The truth of the matter is, though, that players who take flaws for their characters do so for one of two reasons: Because they like playing characters with flaws, or because they want the extra points.

Now, wanting the extra points doesn’t mean that the player isn’t going to play the flaw, or that the flaw isn’t an important and interesting part of the character, or indeed that the player is some sort of twink. It means that the player is using a game mechanic as presented, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that (I almost always take flaws for characters I play, and I play ‘em to the bone, but I also spend those extra points). Certainly I’ve run into players who sneak in flaws that they assume will never actually deter their characters, just to get some extra points. As a Storyteller, I recommend letting them take these flaws if at all feasible and then using them to best advantage the very first session (pure silliness, like taking a phobia of the ocean in a game set in Utah, should be disallowed, unless you’re playing a game that rewards silliness, like Toon).

But what about the players who like playing characters with flaws? Characters in role-playing games are most often defined by their power, be that by the supernatural or mundane skills and abilities that they possess or simply by the fact that they are powerful in comparison to the rest of the world. Even in games where the characters are the underdogs (like Hunter: The Reckoning and All Flesh Must Be Eaten), the characters are still superior to most of their peers — once again, because they are the characters. Playing a character defined by a flaw, be it physical, psychological, or supernatural is indicative of a player who wants something different out of the game than simply besting opponents and racking up experience points (it could also be indicative of a player who sees himself as flawed in some way, I guess, but that’s rather out of my depth).

So, what does all this have to do with success or failure? Consider this: Flaws and disadvantages in role-playing games should be impediments and character facets. They should be obstacles to be overcome during the course of the story, meaning that as Storyteller, you should present opportunities for characters to recognize, fall victim to, and ultimately overcome their flaws. Players, when you choose these traits, you should expect your character to suffer from them occasionally.

As an example: A friend of mine played a character in a game of Dark Ages: Werewolf with the Lame Flaw. In game terms, this means that the character suffered from a limp and couldn’t run as fast as her packmates, and that’s really about it. But the player took this a step further; the character didn’t tend to get into combat because her packmates usually reached the enemy and killed it before she had a chance. As such, the character was “apart” from her pack during dire circumstances, and even during the few times I ran the game, it was evident that this was having an effect on the group dynamic (I’d have been very interested to see how that dynamic evolved over a long period of time).

Note, too, that flaws don’t have to give you points to be important and necessitate attention during the game. A personality trait that you decide (or discover) in your character can be detrimental to the character or to the group, as long as it isn’t detrimental to the story. Some games, for instance, give point bonuses for traits like “Impatience” or “Curiosity,” and that’s fine; it tends to get the group moving when things bog down. “Honorable” is another trait often listed as a flaw, the logic there being that a character who can’t lie well is going to suffer penalties on attempts to deceive people. From a strictly game mechanics point of view, that makes sense, and if the result of that flaw is such a game penalty, well and good. If the only "effect," though, is "you should roleplay your character as being curious/honorable/etc.," I wonder about that trait's efficacy in the game. Does everything need a number attached to it? No, but my experience has been that folks who don't like rules ignore them anyway, and those who prefer that the rules work get annoyed when they get handwaved. Silver Age Sentinels from the now-defunct Guardians of Order stipulates that Defects are traits over which the character has no direct control — things like nemeses, physical defects, and so on. Personality traits can be fun to play, but they don’t give you extra points.

Another way to run flaws, incidentally (and the World of Darkness system does this), would be for the players to receive experience points or some other benefit when the flaw actually comes into play during the game. This would prevent people from taking ridiculous flaws, and would only reward players who play to their characters in their entirety. Games using the FATE System, including Spirit of the Century and Houses of the Blooded, use something like this; when one of a character's Aspects causes his trouble, the player can accept a Style point for it (or spend Style to avoid it). Ubiquity, which powers Desolation and Hollow Earth Expedition, does something similar.

Another category of flaws that bears special mention are those that have a bearing on a character’s ultimate destiny (you’ll sometimes see positive traits, like “Merits” or “Advantages” labeled Destiny, too, but taking such a thing as a flaw puts a different spin on the idea). If a character has a flaw like “Dark Fate,” this puts a couple of big obligations on the Storyteller. Not only do you have to screw that character over in some hugely dramatic way, but you have to make sure that nothing happens to the character before the boom falls (or if it does, you’d better be prepared to spin it in such a way that it fulfills the flaw’s parameters). I’m of two minds about flaws like this. On the one hand, it can be a cheap dodge of players who don’t want their characters to die and know that very few games ever actually end, meaning the moment of destiny will probably never arrive. On the other hand, it’s cool when players try to work out what their characters’ story arcs are going to be; I had a Storyteller ask me once what my character’s “tragedy threshold” was and then arrange a chronicle event accordingly. Some games ask during character creation what a character's path or story arc might look like, building in the notion that every character has a destiny (though it's typically kept loose; hard to account for everything that might happen during a game).

The Dice Hate Me: Incidental Failure

I talk about dice and when to use them in another essay, but I want to address a couple of points here on the subject of failed die rolls, more for players than Storytellers.

I’ve seen it happen a million times; the player throws the dice, the rolls fails, and the players says, “Can I try again?” with no hesitation. Yes, failure is a bummer, but next time, try considering what a failed roll really means. It might mean that your character doesn’t know anything about what’s being discussed, and, that in mind, might decide to stop thinking about it (especially if you took those extra points for flaws like “Impulsive” or “Impatient”). A failed physical roll might involve a muscle cramp or a sudden loss of steam. A failed social roll might involve a sudden burst of laughter or gas (if you have to ask why such a thing would constitute a failed roll, you need to get out more). Yes, the Storyteller can adjudicate some of this stuff, but she’s probably already overworked. Besides, if you take a little of that responsibility on yourself, you’re contributing to the chronicle and exerting greater control over your character, both of which are usually good things.

Failure can lead to character beliefs and hang-ups, too. I played in a game with a guy who, every time his character tried to use a specific power on were-creatures, failed his roll. After a while, he decided that his character figured that the power simply didn’t work on lycanthropes, and so stopped trying it. Yes, the player knew full well that the power had no such limitation, but the dice seemed to indicate otherwise.

The point here is that even the dice — which don’t hate you, remember, all they do is choose numbers — can provide interesting character bits, provided that you as the player are willing to let go of the mentality that says, “Aw, crap. I failed,” and instead adopt a mentality that says, “I am learning about my character as s/he experiences this story.”

God Hates Me: Setting the Players Up to Fail

I occasionally see pre-written scenarios that include scenes that the characters are supposed to fail. Mostly, these are combats that the characters lose so that they can be taken before the Grand High Muckety-Muck and charged with a quest/given a threat/sacrificed on an altar/what have you. As with most things in gaming, there’s a right way and wrong way to do this sort of thing. Also as with most things in gaming, the right way depends entirely on your players and what their preferences and thresholds are.

Some players, and I have to admit that I’m often one of them, don’t like to lose combats. But, for me at least, it has less to do with the notion of losing and more to do with the fact that if a combat (or indeed, any situation) has a predetermined outcome, I’d prefer not to have the illusion of choice. I played in a Mage: The Ascension game many years ago wherein our characters were ambushed by a bunch of Men in Black (now that Mage: The Ascension is over, that reference isn’t going to make as much sense, I guess) and the Storyteller told us we could each have one cool moment before being overpowered and render unconscious. That, to me, was fine — it made the combat quick because we didn’t each have to get beaten to a pulp (which in that system took forever anyway), and we weren’t under any illusions about whether or not the Storyteller was fudging dice rolls or otherwise “cheating.”

What if your players aren’t of this mindset, and refuse to roll over and let their characters fail without a fight? Well, ignoring the obvious trust issues plaguing such a group, you have a couple of options. One is, of course, to cheat. You let the players have whatever moments or successes they can manage out of the scenario…but your rolls are behind a screen, and you can very easily add in more enemies, a sudden rainstorm or any other wrinkles you need to bring about the result you want. The trick is doing it without being obvious, and the problem is that when you go from a defeat into an obviously well thought out scene, your players are probably going to pick up on what happened (hopefully, they’ll see why it was necessary and not be too put out).

The other option is to make the scenario difficult, but let the chips fall where they may. If you’ve got a sense of what the characters can do and how the players usually react and strategize, you can probably set up a situation that’s too tough for them, let them try and fail, and then continue on with the story. The caveat there, of course, is be prepared. In my essay "Living with Lady 10-Sider", I advise never to call for a die roll unless I’m prepared for failure. The reverse is also true: If you aren’t prepared for a successful roll, better just to stipulate that the action isn’t possible. This doesn’t work at all in combat, of course, but it’s fine in investigation scenes.

If you’re going to set the players up to fail, however, you need to be damned sure that they’ll have a chance to get their own back before the night is over, or at least to see where the action is heading. I love cliffhangers, but a Storyteller-imposed cliffhanger is very different than a player-imposed one. By that I mean, if the characters go marching into the dragon’s mouth and are immediately confronted with potentially deadly repercussions, they shouldn’t be surprised and can’t really blame you. In that case, ending the session with the henchman pointing weapons at the characters (or whatever other danger is fitting) is fine, and will probably have your players thinking about your game all week. But if you lured them in, or forced them in, they don’t have the same emotional attachment to the situation because they didn’t choose it. As such, you need to let them a little farther into the plotline before winding up, otherwise the conversation next session will consist of people saying, “What happened last time? Oh, right, we got our asses kicked and then some other stuff happened.”

A final word on setting the players up to fail: Don’t make it cheap. When I play Dungeons and Dragons, I tend to play magic-user characters. Mages and other spell-casters grow quite powerful with experience, and the sheer amount of power they can throw around is somewhat daunting to some GMs. So, I’ve noticed that as the final confrontation looms (or during any confrontation they don’t want the players to win “too easily”), suddenly magic just stops working. I hate that.

Ignoring the fact that mages in D&D (3^rd Edition, anyway) are completely useless if they can’t use magic, disallowing a character’s special powers because you feel it would make things “too easy” is cheap, lazy and shortsighted. If you feel that the abilities or powers that become available to characters in your chosen game system are too potent, change the system ahead of time and explain why to your players (and be prepared for a player to say, quite legitimately, that you should consider running a different game). Don’t allow the players to purchase traits for their characters that you don’t like and then toss in cheap methods for your NPCs to bypass them (now, when players become over-reliant on their characters’ special powers to the point that they stop thinking, which I’ve found happens often in Mage: The Ascension, then it might be time to arrange a story in which they can’t simply magic their way out of everything, but that’s a separate issue). This applies not just to magic, but any special power that characters might acquire. A fighter in D&D is optimized toward fighting, so you should allow that character to get into fights that are challenging, but not sure losses or stonewalls.

If a character must fail at something that should be his/her forte, try to find some way to work it into the story rather than just saying “Yeah, I know you rolled five successes, but nothing happens.” At least make it experiential: “You cast the spell correctly. You know you did, you felt the power leaving your body toward the target. But about midway there, everything in the room went cold, and your target still stands, unfazed.”

Pyrrhic Victories: We Won, But it Hurt

I like costly victories, myself. I like consequences to actions, and I like the notion that to gain something, you must sacrifice. I also recognize that this attitude might be a by-product of my employment with White Wolf, however.

A Pyrrhic victory, as you probably know, is a victory in the academic sense — you won, but another such “victory” would kill you. In a role-playing game, such victories are rare because normally you’ve got a group of people working toward whatever the goal of the current story is and therefore several minds all working out a strategy. Also, players tend to come with ideas so cool they should work. I tend to side with the players when they come up with great ideas. At the very least, I don’t go adding extra obstacles because I feel the players are having too easy a time of it.

But there’s a difference between upping the difficulty level of a story while it’s still in progress and allowing the NPCs to think on their feet. If I’m running a game of Vampire and I start adding dots of Disciplines to an enemy character while my players’ characters are chasing him down, that’s cheap. If I decide that he recognizes that he’s not going to win this fight and he starts fighting appropriately — that is, takes no prisoners, sets fire to the building, bargains for his unlife, or takes other actions that aren’t normally in character for him — that just means the supporting characters are responding to the situation that the players’ characters have created.

In short, every victory should cost something, but not just because you don’t want to make it easy on your players. Every victory should cost something because they need to know that they earn what they get.

But what about a true Pyrrhic victory, the kind that after the dust settles the characters are thinking, “If this is winning, must’ve been some way we could have lost.”? Here are some ways that victories in RPGs can become Pyrrhic:

• Character death: The characters accomplish their goals, but one or more of their number dies. This is a bigger problem in some settings than others (because in some settings, you can have your dead comrades resurrected), but killing off characters is often a touchy issue. It’s a great way to make the players realize that their situation is serious, but it’s also a good way to piss them off. Make sure everyone’s OK with the possibility of character death during the course of the story.

• Character injury: The characters might not be dead, but they’ve certainly got one foot in the grave. They’ve fought off their enemies or escape from their prison or whatever the case may be, but one even relatively minor fight and someone’s going to die. Now, obviously this has more of an impact in games like Chill or even most forms of Exalted, where healing takes some time and effort, but even in a game like Werewolf enough of the right kind of damage can make the characters (and the players) recognize how perilous their situation really is.

• Depleted resources: Most RPGs have some kind of “fuel stat.” In Vampire, it’s Vitae. In Werewolf: The Forsaken it’s Essence. In Chill, Stamina and Willpower can both rise and fall. In any case, the characters don’t necessarily have to be physically injured, but if they’ve burned all of their “magic points” during the course of the battle, they have most assuredly earned whatever victory they’ve achieved.

• Dead friends: I’ll admit: One of my greatest problems as a GM is that I hate playing NPCs. I’ll do it, but I’d rather they sit in the background and let the players do the important work. But once in a while, I’ve seen relations between an NPC and a player’s character become really strong. What happens, then, when said NPC dies — especially as a result of the PC’s action? While playing Nehemiah (a Vampire: The Masquerade characer, though the game was a weird homebrew quasi-World of Darkness setting), I found myself having to choose between going after my dire enemy or save a character to whom Nehemiah had become very attached. He chose to kill his enemy, for a number of very legitimate reasons. The lady to whom he was attached, however, wound up losing much of her sanity. (And kudos to the Storyteller in question, by the way, for making that decision hard and allowing me to kill Nicholas — that’s what made it a Pyrrhic victory). This only works, however, the players actually have some attachment to the NPCs, and that requires that you play them well.

Ending on a Downer

When players fail at a task, they tend to want to try it again. Some things, though, you only get one shot at. I already recommended never asking for a die roll unless you’re prepared for the results, failure or otherwise. Let’s take that one step further — if you give the players a piece of information, be prepared for them to follow it. Players don’t tend to do well with cryptic warnings of dire danger (because PCs are normally the only ones with enough gumption to go on in defiance of said warnings, so a lot of time when GMs say “Danger! Here be monsters!” players hear “Come on! Here be plot points!”).

If the players follow your cues into the plot points (or ignore your warnings and wind up in the soup) and fail miserably, what then? Ending on a down note isn’t a great idea, usually, but you don’t have to end on resounding victory. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What am I ending? A session can certainly end on a tragic or fearful note. The players will get the chance to right the wrongs next session, and sometimes a week away from the game can be a good way for them to gain some perspective and come back ready to solve their characters’ problems. If you’re ending a major story arc, the characters should be able to point to something in the story as an accomplishment, even if the overall story ended badly for them.

• Can they try again? If the mission was “stop the assassination” and the characters didn’t, then they probably don’t get another chance. If the mission was “retrieve the Golden Whatsis” and it slipped through their fingers, they can probably still track it down. They just might have very little time left, or it might be in their worst enemy’s hands, or something equally dire. If they can’t try the same mission again, perhaps now they must deal with the repercussions of their failure.

• Do they want to try again? My character in a Dark Ages: Fae game ran afoul of a demon in one story arc. During the five years of downtime between stories, he stayed the Hell away from anything that looked like it could be demonic, because he wanted nothing to do with them. “Know thy enemy” didn’t occur to him, because he was scared. If the players decide their characters are letting discretion be the better part of valor, fine. Don’t feel you have to chase them with their mistakes.

In closing, remember that we play these games for fun, but also to tell a story. Don’t worry about “realism,” worry about “drama.” Don’t sweat “balance.” Instead, think about “conflict.” Learn your players’ thresholds for failure, and scale the challenges accordingly. Even if the characters fail, the players will talk about the story afterwards, and consider it a success.

Origins 2009 - A GM's Report Card, Pt. 4

And now, the exciting conclusion.

So, Friday night, we sang, other people danced, we went to bed. Saturday, we woke up, and headed downstairs for more gaming!

Saturday morning, my 10AM game was Edge of Midnight, the second of the games that I ran. I've been running a chronicle of this particular game since December 2008, and I'm really enjoying it. Partly, that's because I've run little else than World of Darkness games for a long time and it's nice to keep the dark but play with a new setting and genre (noir), and partly that's because Edge of Midnight is just an awesome game and it's a hell of a lot of fun. So getting some new people to play it was a good plan, I thought.

The scenario was a murder mystery. Basically, prominent citizen dies at a club, and the PCs have until sunset to figure it out or else the victim's fans are going to riot. Oh, and the victim (and said fans) are gaunts, and a riot would tear the city apart. The characters got a chance to play with magic, investigation, learn about the city of Terminus (much like New Orleans, which is where my ongoing chronicle is set, too) and generally a good time was had by all. If I have one regret, it's that I didn't find a way to work in a more involved fight, but I hadn't set up the scenario to include combat and I didn't want it to feel forced (no orcs, thanks). I think the players dug it, though.

Following the game, Michelle and I headed to the dealer's room again. I scooped up a copy of Ars Magica, Fourth Edition for all of four bucks, and I finally bit the bullet and bought Unhallowed Metropolis. I've played UnMet a couple of times, I've really enjoyed it, and it's the sort of game I should own. And I've got players that I think would really get into it.

[redacted]

And that game was...Hollow Earth Expedition. Last tabletop game of the con, and the one I had the highest hopes for.

See, Hollow Earth Expedition is a pulp game, but unlike Spirit of the Century, it gives you a very specific setting - the Earth is hollow (bet you figured that, yeah?) and there are natives, dinosaurs, Amazons, the whole bit. I bought and read the game last year following GenCon, and I've been very keen to play it ever since. This particular game had a blurb that involved dinosaurs and capturing a tar pit. Awesome.

Warning sign right off: The GM hadn't made characters for the scenario, but had just photocopied the pre-gens from the book, put them in plastic sheets (OK, this is maybe just me, but I think it's cheap when players can't at least keep character sheets from con games), and handed us a great big stack. I picked on at random (the Big Game Hunter), and we started out on our airship in Hollow Earth.

Yep, just like that. No attempt at backstory or group cohesion. No explanation for why these characters were together. Just, here we are, on our airship, and then the air pirates attacked.

Now, at this point it's pretty clear we've into beer-n-pretzels, and that's disappointing, but OK. I co-opt Jonathan's Hyde's character from Jumanji to inform my portrayal of Col. Stanley Admunson (I promptly get a style point for naming my character, which encourages everyone else to do the same) and we get down to the business of killing air pirates. We win, but our ship is damaged badly, so the Fortune Hunter (played by a 16-year-old boy, who seems to have the emotional maturity of, say, 13) puts the ship down. The rest of us don parachutes and bail the heck out.

Splitting the party is fine; I do it all the time. But five to one isn't a split I like, because it puts too much focus on one dude, and that's especially true if the one dude is being...well, a fishmalk. So while the five of us are fighting a T-Rex, he's met a tribe of crazy Amazons (led by a woman named Sinestra) and patching the hole in the blimp with a bag of monkeys.

Things, clearly, are getting out of hand.

Eventually, we meet up with the other tribe of Amazons (at which point the GM makes it a point to tell us that some Amazons remove one breast, but not these Amazons...sigh). The gamer OMG GIRLZ is getting a little thick, especially for Michelle. I remind the 16-year-old that there is, indeed, a woman present and maybe he should be quite so juvenile, but his dad (also playing) is encouraging it a bit. We keep things on track, more or less, fix our blimp and land in New York City with a crew of Amazons (this is a shift from the GM's original intent, but it was the ending we liked).

Now, a little GMing theory: If you've reached the end, stop. We landed in NYC, the blimp burst through the subway tunnels, we're given applause and fame, awesome. That's the end of the story. Except, just then, not only did the Amazons reveal themselves to be the bad Amazons, but the freaking T-Rex jumped out of the hole and attacked. It had been tracking us. From the ground.

GMs, not every game has to end in a fight, even at a con. Here, consider this episode of Dexter's Laboratory.

Note that when DD runs the game, she keeps things exciting, she pays attention to what the players want for their characters, and she doesn't waste words or events? That's good GMing. (Yeah, she needs to learn the rules, but that'll come in time.)

Thoughts on the game: Pre-gens, cookie-cutter story, villains that show up once and never again (what happened to those ors, er, pirates?), gratuitous breast references, and an overdone ending scene? Man, it could have been so much cooler. My grade: D+

After that, I had to rush downstairs to play Rising! Only I didn't really have to rush, because the 10PM game didn't have any players but me. So I arranged to play in the 11PM game, which was a VIP event (and turned out to be all kinds of fun), went back upstairs for a while to watch Michelle sing karaoke. I didn't get to sing; the rotation was insane at that point.

Then, back downstairs for Rising. The VIP event involved them handcuffing us, blindfolding us, and letting us fight our way out of the lab that was doing experiments on us. They even took our pictures and did up little dossiers (apparently, my previous occupation was "cartoonist", which is funny if you've ever seen me try to draw). I played an engineer, which means I got to solve puzzles, and I discovered, now having played all four classes, that I'm happiest with Marksman. Engineer's fun, but I don't really solve puzzles under pressure all that well. Hunter isn't bad, but I like guns. Doctor's OK, but then you can't fight as well and you rely on other folks for protection. Nah, gimme guns.

Thoughts on the game: Rising isn't strictly an RPG. It's a LASH (Live Action Survival Horror), and mostly you don't really play a role as much as play yourself with some weird skills and rules with zombies trying to eat you. That said, Zombie Buddy Productions went the extra mile on the game, so RPG or not, it was bloody awesome. My grade: A

So the scenario ended, I survived, got my swag bag (awesome), and headed the heck to bed.

Sunday: We got up, got packed, took our stuff downstairs, and hit the dealer's room one last time. We (Michelle and I) had originally been scheduled for a game of Eclipse Phase, but that got canceled, and our other choice just didn't happen. So we wandered a bit, played some demos, did some more shopping. I picked up a copy of Agone for $2 (even if it sucks, that's less than a cup of coffee some places) and a copy of Trail of Chthulu, which I'm informed doesn't suck. That brings the total of new RPGs to five; that sounds good. Also bought a cool board game called Gemlok, which Heather enjoyed and wanted to grab.

All in all, lots of fun this year at Origins. Definitely got me in the mood to start serious essay writing about GMing again, so I'll get right on that.

Meantime, next con is GenCon, even if only overnight. We'll see how the grades fall out there.

Character Creation: Hollow Earth Expedition

Inhumanoids! Down to the fiery depths of the earth where nightmares...begin! "Who can stop 'em? Earth-Core, I hope! There's your Gen-X cartoon fix for the day.

The Game: Hollow Earth Expedition
The publisher: Exile Game Studio
Degree of familiarity: I've read it, and it uses the same system as Desolation, but that's about it.
Books required: Just the very beautiful core. 

HEX is, as you might guess, a pulp game of traveling into the dinosaur-laden inner world. Stats for giant boring (as in, "bores into the earth") machines, raptors, etc. Good stuff. Despite the girl on the cover who appears to be using magic, there's no system for it included, sadly. But that's quite all right.

I want to play a character who's down here in Hollow Earth because he figures that the natives (oh, there are natives) have a culture that no one's touched yet. He wants to know about their stories, their heroes, gods and villains, and he wants to see what concepts are truly eternal, truly universal, because maybe then he can learn some truth about the Divine. I think that makes my Archetype either Academic or Occultist, and because my character is so interested in learning about the ur-myths of the world, I'll go with the latter. Motivation: Definitely Truth. He's here to discover, not to have his existing world-view supported (which would be Faith).

Attributes! I get 15 points to split up. I want to make him fairly well-rounded, so:

Body 2
Dexterity 2
Strength 2
Charisma 3
Intelligence 3
Willpower 3

Secondary Attributes! My Size is 0. Perception is 8, Move is 4, Initiative is 7, Defense is 4, Stun is 2, Health is 5.

Skills! (In pulp games, you have to use a lot of exclamation points.) I get 15 points here, too. Making my list:

Academics (Mythology) 5
Athletics 1
Empathy 3
Investigation 3
Linguistics 3

Talents/Resources! I get one (a Talent or a Resource). I'm likely to pick a Talent, methinks. I believe I'll take Charismatic. Raises my Charisma, which I think he'll find useful when dealing with natives.

Flaws! I'll take one, here. Overconfident. He assumes that the natives will welcome the chance to trade stories. He might wind up getting eaten for his trouble if he picks the wrong tribe.

Experience Points! I get 15. I want to be a little tougher, so I'll spend four and up my Athletics, and another four to up my Firearms. I feel like I should have some Skill that trades on my Charisma, so I'll buy two points in Diplomacy. That gives me one point left, that I can't do anything with. Bummer.

I get four languages beyond his native English. I take French and German, but I'll leave two slots open for learning native tongues in Hollow Earth. I note his gun, but I won't bother with other equipment, as that would kinda depend on the nature of the campaign.

A little background: James Hart was a promising doctoral candidate in folklore and sociology, but he started alienating people by looking for truth behind legends of heroes and myths. He finally revealed his theory about the source of such legends - a race of people who were truly godlike. Maybe the nephilim of Biblical myth, maybe the Titans, but something, some exalted race now extinct, but demigods compared to us. James kept going with that theory and subsequently lost his dissertation defense, but then the man funding this expedition came to him with an interesting proposal. He's good with languages, and a natural diplomat - perhaps he'd consider searching a civilization that no one else even knows about? James, obviously, jumped at the chance.