Games Blog

You may be familiar with Jack Chick’s infamous badly drawn loopy fundamentalist tracts (such as the infamous Dark Dungeons). Now it looks as if something unspeakably horrible has happened.

The 20′ By 20′ Room is a new group gaming blog, featuring some familiar names.

Game WISH 71: Unwritten NPCs asks:

For GMs : when you plan or play your NPCs, do you intentionally leave out some of the story for each? Do you hold something back and let the Players imagine the rest or do you present NPCs from the core of who they are? Is time a factor; a short game or one-shot not allowing much character depth? Does NPC expertise shine through? Or are there character foibles that cloud the better qualities of the NPC? Are there short-cuts to get this across?

I’ve very develop-in-play when it comes to NPCs. In pre-game planning I’ll often come up with large numbers of NPCs, all of which are defined by little more than name, race, profession and a couple of adjectives. As the game develops those that become more important get fleshed out; nobody starts out with either a detailed back-story or a full-blown character sheet. I tend to add details to individual NPCs as and when they start becoming important to the story. I probably have two many NPCs in the game, which results in many of them becoming little more than cyphers. If you need a database to keep track of them all, them perhaps there are too many!

Saying that, there are a few NPCs in Kalyr with extensive back story who have never actually come up in play; sometimes writing NPC back-stories becomes a form of solitaire play. I don’t think I’ve ever used the story of Lendor Tyr, former heir to the Tharn (City Lord) of Calbeyn, who had vanished into exile, accused of murdering his father. Neither have I made any use of the eight hierarchs of the Academy of the Mind. Maybe their time will come.

Let’s look at the active NPCs in the game at the moment. In one thread a party from the Technology Guild, consisting of two PCs, Karogeth and Luanu, plus an NPC, Vovir, have encountered a group of four street toughs, blocking their exist from the bad part of town. I made up the gang of toughs more or less on the fly, except for their leader, ‘Ug’, who had appeared in the arena as a gladiator much earlier in the game. A combination of a conciliatory approach by the PCs and some good reaction rolls have turned what were going to be opponents in a fight scene to potential sources of information, so instead of defining their combat statistics I’m now giving them some more knowledge and personality. They may well reappear as street contacts in the future.

The PCs are looking for a missing guild member, Batendal. Although he’s yet to appear in person, I’ve had to flesh him out quite considerably to explain why he’s disappeared, and why the PCs are looking for him I cannot reveal any more because the players might be reading this!

One of the PCs, Luanu, started life as an NPC. When the game went down to three active players, I put out a call for recruits, and suggested some NPCs that could become PCs, and Harald volunteered to take on Luanu. I sent him my GM’s notes and he came back with an extensive back-story which also happened to flesh out another NPC, Luanu’s street contact, Kal.

Vovir, the final NPC present, started out as the father of a now defunct PC, Narluis. He’s got something of a backstory as a man who’s alcoholism has destroyed both his once-promising career and his marriage, but who’s now given up drink and is trying to rebuild his life. I developed him during the period Narluis was a PC, and dropped him into the present thread because he was hanging about with nothing better to do at the time. It’s always better to reuse existing NPCs rather than continually creating new ones.

Game WISH is back. WISH 72: Character Interruptus asks:

Talk about a few characters you had to stop playing before their stories felt finished. Where do you think they would have gone?

Most of the longer-running RPG campaigns have folded before reaching any kind of conclusion; sadly it seems par for the course, especially for online (PBEM or PBMB) games. I’m not really an immersive player, so I tend not to play characters with deep, dark secrets or unresolved psychological issues. Instead when a game folds I’m disappointed in not finding out how the story was supposed to end. For instance, the Castle Falkenstein game running on the late lamented RPGAMES forum we never solved the mystery of what the Prussian baron in Zwickau was up to, and missed out on the masqued ball, in which my character, Arthur Trevithick, was to attend dressed as a bear. (Does this mean I’m a closet furry? Oh No!) Similarly, we never reached the final showdown with the lich archmage in the epic Spelljammer Vikings in Space game when the campaign suffered Death by Opera (it’s a long story). But I can’t say either character was unfulfilled; both had a long enough run, especially Mudgard the Norse Paladin, since Vikings ran for several years.

Of games that ended too soon, I’ve already mentioned Karl Tolhurst of Ümläüt several times before, as well as the fact that I resurrected him for another, quite different game. Two other characters I’d really liked to have played for longer were my two characters in different In Nomine games, Jack the Cherub of Jean, and Ed Cragentinny the Ofanite of Jean. Sadly both games folded before I could really develop either of them. Jack was about to cause trouble in New York by summoning his superior. There were plenty of other games that never really got started, such as Traveller Sword-Worlder Þorkell. One real disappointment was Lucanus, one of my early online PCs. I joined an established Runequest game in which I’d been lurking for some time, only for the game to fold almost immediately when two other players dropped out.

I could also mention a few player characters in games I GMed where their players faded away. From my Kalyr games, I had a lot of plans for Lan, the escaped human gladiator sold into slavery after having an affair with daughter of a powerful kandar noble. This including a reunion scene with the now pregnant young noble, herself exiled due to her disgrace. Similarly I had quite a bit planned for Karela the noble assassin, and Kolath the somewhat mentally unstable legionnaire. I find dealing with dangling plot threads when players drop out to be a major headache for an online GM, one reason some ex-PCs such as Iodeth and Kylar continue in the game as NPCs.

GURPS Planet of Adventure is the latest in a long line of licenced GURPS worldbooks based on science fiction novels, based on a series of four novels by Jack Vance, City of the Chasch, Servants of the Wankh, The Dirdir, and The Pnume, later collected together as Planet of Adventure.

Steve Jackson Games have never gone for any of the really big licences like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or Dune, presumably because they didn’t want to bet the company on something that they don’t control. Instead, they’ve chosen lower profile works, usually literary rather than TV or film. Past licences have included Andre Norton’s Witch World, David Brin’s Uplift novels, E.E “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

Planet of Adventure comes from the “Sword and Planet” sub-genre of SF. The four novels follow the adventures of the Earth Scout Adam Reith, the first man from Earth to visit the planet Tschai, after his starship is shot down and he’s the sole survivor of the crash landing. Tschai is typical of Jack Vance’s creations, a picaresque planet filled with strange baroque cultures and larger-than-life characters. The dominant powers are the four warring alien races, each with their own races of human servants, who share the planet with a wide variety of human cultures. Adam Reith encounters many of these in his efforts to build or steal a starship to get back home.

The GURPS adaptation presents Tschai as a setting for further adventures. The first chapter gives an overview, starting with GURPS game statistics for the planet’s animal life, including the dangerous Bombardier Birds (who dive-bomb their prey with stones) and the feared Night-Hounds. It goes on to give some details of the history and geography of the world, as well as a synopsis of the four novels.

Chapter Two, Masters of Tschai details the four alien races who dominate the planet through higher technology. There are the scaly xenophobic Chasch, The inscrutable frog-like Wanek (who in the novels were called The Wankh!), the man eating hunters the Dirdir, and the enigmatic insectile Pnume, the original native inhabitants of the planet. For each race we get GURPS racial templates and a description of their physiology, psychology and culture. The chapter also covers the human servant/slaves of each of the four in much the same way.

Relations among the various races of Tschai can be summed up fairly simply: Everyone hates everybody else!

Chapter Three, Humans of Tschai details the human inhabitants of the planet living in those regions not controlled by any of the alien races, descendants of Earth humans brought to Tschai by the Dirdir millennia ago. We meet the nomadic steppe nomads the Kruthe, who ride lorries and electric motorcycles. At the other extreme there are the decadent city dwelling Yao, obsessed with status games and petty intrigues. We get all we need to know about the daily life, religion, technology and economics of the human cultures.

Chapter Four, Characters and Equipment is the rule-heavy chapter, showing how to represent Tschai in GURPS terms. It gives plenty of character templates for various archetypal characters, both Earth visitors to Tschai, and locals. It also covers the available technology, including weapons and vehicles.

Chapter Five, Campaigns and Adventures puts it all together with advice on how to run games set in Tschai. It gives various campaign frames; the obvious one being the player characters as Earth Scouts in better armed and better briefed followup mission to that of Adam Reith. It also suggests a number of ideas for parties of Tschai natives such as from merchants and pirates. Finally we have four adventure scenarios, some for Earthmen, some for Tschai natives, some suitable for both.

The last chapter gives a glossary of people, places and terminology.

Overall, this is one of the better GURPS licenced worldbooks. It takes a very rich setting and shows the potential for adventure. The inclusion of some sample adventures demonstrates the things player characters might expect to do, something a few GURPS worldbooks of the past have neglected.

Board your starship and go there now!

The Non-Euclidian Staircase discusses Rolling Dice, with a growing comment thread, on what makes a good RPG dice mechanic, and what doesn’t.

The Wave Magazine lists the ten dorkiest hobbies. I’m please to see Railway Modelling isn’t on the list. Interesting there’s something lower than Furries….

My PBMB on Dreamlyrics is underway again after a slightly longer hiatus that I’d planned, following my holiday and the recruitment of some additional players. Follow the adventures of Karogeth and Luanu, Hollis and Jorlak, and of Marlith.

There’s still one more opening, for anyone considering joining Dreamlyrics.

Just what do today’s 12 year olds make of the computer games our generation used to play?

On Tetris

Tim: Which button do I press to make the blocks explode?

EGM: Sorry, they don’t explode.

Becky: This is boring. Maybe if it had characters and stuff and different levels, it would be OK. If things blew up or something

Space Invaders comes off even worse….

Tim: This is nothing compared to Grand Theft Auto III, because you can’t steal a taxi cab, pick up somebody, then drive into the ocean with him.

Kids today, I don’t know….