Orccon 2014 and what it has taught me about the RPG hobby

It’s time to look back at another great convention. I am pleased to say that despite a handful of challenges, Orccon 2014 was a great success with over 1800 attendees and I hope that everyone who attended had a great time and took advantage of the wide variety of games and events available.  I am not going to go into any of the nuts and bolts of RPGs at Orccon, but what I want to do is go into some thoughts about the games I played and what I learned about our hobby.

I had the pleasure of having two special guests at Orccon this year. John Wick was here running his Houses of the Blooded LARP along with Wicked Fantasy and playtests of his new project Wield. I also had Todd VanHooser showing his Adventures Under the Laughing Moon RPG, based on his Laughing Moon Chronicles. Although, not as a special guest, +Mike Olson was here play-testing his wonderful Thrilling Fate game based on Sparks Nevada, Marshall on Mars a character from the Thrilling Adventure Hour.

James A. Forest interviews John Wick at Orccon 2014

I sat in on Todd and Mikes games and had an opportunity to talk to John and in so doing I came away with some interesting new perspectives and ideas. Not only did I learn some new ways to look at RPG systems but I also came away with a different way to look at success, failure and the way we come to determine these results in games.

I also had the opportunity to run two sessions of Shadowrun 5th edition through the Catalyst organized play model they called “Missions”. This was a unique opportunity for me since I had never had the chance to see any organized play from the GM perspective. I had played in some Pathfinder Society and RPGA games but never had the chance to see what that is like from the other side of the screen.

John Wick and Todd VanHooser, are polar opposites when it comes to RPG design. I have known John and his work for quite some time and actually witnessed a lot of his process in producing Legend of the Five Rings and 7th Sea. This guy is obsessed with roleplaying in the best possible way. I think of him as an innovator and a unique creative force. As such, his games are quirky and thought provoking in ways that you rarely see from more mainstream RPGs. His current success is a game called Houses of the Blooded as well as its systemic derivative, a samurai RPG named Blood and Honor.

These games work on the basic premise that failure is as dramatic as success and the system should guide you in sharing the narrative choice of success and failure. This is achieved by giving the player a choice to succeed or fail by making a roll and the GM the ability to choose between success and failure if the roll is failed. This allows players to “choose to fail” if it is more dramatically appropriate.

As a narrative choice, John describes this as “failing forward” or giving the player the ability to advance a plot by failing. The example he brought forth in the video above is Indiana Jones. In these films we constantly see Indie fail, but the consequences of those failures provided excitement, drama and tension. When he failed to determine the correct weight of the gold statue, it resulted in one of the most memorable scenes in film as Indiana had to rush to escape a giant rolling boulder.

This kind of perspective on storytelling is exactly the kind of thing that I have come to expect from John and it has given me much to think about when it comes to how players and GMs can collaborate in telling a story. Accepting defeat can certainly be counter intuitive to traditional play, but to introduce a mechanic where a player is encouraged to choose failure is even more of a departure from the norm.

Interestingly, my first experience with something like this was in a game of L5R, which was also written by John Wick. In samurai fiction, it is common for characters to exhibit a great deal of sacrifice in service to their lords. In my very first non-playtest game of L5R I had a character intentionally loose a duel in order to preserve face for his lord and his friend. I intentionally chose to take the lowest dice in my result for the roll in order to serve the goals of my intended narrative.

Todd VanHooser’s game, Laughing Moon is based on the fantasy world described in his novels, the Laughing Moon Chronicles. Here, we have a game that is designed to represent a set narrative and mythology. Although Laughing Moon’s mechanics play very similarly to any Dungeons and Dragons type fantasy game, the main draw is the incredibly rich world which it is designed to portray. The beautifully illustrated books make this world come to life in its vivid depictions of the lands, people and unique myth of the Laughing Moon Chronicles.

After talking to John about his games, going over to Todd’s two tables in Open Gaming was quite a shift. There is a large divide between John’s approach to RPG design and Todd’s. John is a game designer first. He is all about creating systems to tell compelling stories and creating interesting characters. Todd on the other hand, is an author first. He has a distinct vision for his fiction and designed a game around simulating the action within that fiction. Todd’s rules are more rigid and give the players less agency than in something like Houses of the Blooded. That is not to say that there is no mechanic for player agency in Laughing Moon, which there is, but it is definitely not the focus of the system. Houses of the Blooded is a game is designed to collaboratively create story outcomes, while Under a Laughing Moon is designed to create a physical framework to determine the outcome of various choices and random results within a set reality. What we are looking at here is two basic perspectives on how people develop RPGs which are both valid but different.

This brings me to Mike Olson’s Thrilling Fate game featuring Sparks Nevada, Marshall on Mars. Here Mike brings a unique perspective on creating a game that is designed to work within an already established narrative style. In Thrilling Fate, players are given the opportunity to work inside a rich fictional world, but are given tools designed to guide them in interpreting the characters style but not necessarily their substance.

Thrilling Fate is a stripped down version of the FATE Core or Accelerated models. It is so stripped down in fact that it’s hardly recognizable as a FATE game. The main mechanic of “Aspects” is the same, but just about everything else is different. The most distinctive difference is something called a "Cue".

In Thrilling Fate a Cue is an action or behavior that is typical and integral to the character. It's a characterization that is emblematic of a characters style or behavior. Whenever a player chooses use a Cue by following its suggested behavior, the player refreshes an Aspect and may invoke it at any future time. Did I mention that a player starts with all his Aspects exhausted at the beginning of the game and has to use Cues to open them up for play? Yep, that's right partner. You better get to acting like your name is Sparks Nevada or your in for a world of hurt.

Here Mike has created a mechanic that not only incentivizes but guides players into playing a character. Cue's give a player a good idea about how a character acts and clues us in on typical behaviors for the character. This creates a system that can allow practically anyone to play just about any character and stay relatively true to his/her nature. It's a game that promotes player agency AND creates a game built around a particular fiction.

Now that I have gone through what I played, let's talk about what I ran. I ran Shadowrun 5th edition for the Catalyst Demo Team. I did this like iron GM style since my first game ran long so it was basically 9 hours of Shadowrun straight with nothing but a measly smoke break. This was the first time I have ever run games for any kind of organized play and I would like to thank the Catalyst Game Labs for fast tracking my application so I could run these games at the last minute.

Here is what I came away with from this experience. I love running games for people that are excited about gaming. I had some people who drove in from as far as Barstow to play SR and everyone was totally engaged in the game. Thanks folks, you are awesome.

Lastly, I learned that I am not a fan of the way adventures are written for these kinds of games. I understand that it's difficult to put any nuance in a game that is supposed to be played in a number of different places by a great many people with the same measurable metrics and results. It has to be almost impossible to make an adventure that isn't a straight railroad and still meet all these criteria.

I have already written a review of Shadowrun 5th edition, but now that I have had a few more games under my belt its time for an update. Which will be forthcoming, but for now I bid you good gaming!

How to deal with the unexpected

Every once in awhile as a role player I have come across some situations where the GM paints him/herself in a corner by incorrectly predicting how a character will act.  This is not uncommon and has a tendency to derail a campaign. This is especially the case when the player is not simply being obstinate  but has come to the conclusion that his characters motivations would lead him in a direction that the GM has not predicted.

This can be very tricky to deal with for anyone trying to run a game. The GM must be careful to not override the player’s creativity or stand the chance of alienating that person. What if this completely changes the course of the story? What if the GM is not prepared for that eventuality and it ends up stopping the game? What if you end up having to deal with conflicts between your players and ultimately yourself because of this choice?  This is probably one of the greatest challenges any GM will face, but just like most challenges, if handled with a little courage and wisdom everyone can come out the better for it.

There are a few things that a GM can do in prep to avoid these problems.  First of all, try to keep your plot points from becoming too linear. Try not to think in terms of “dominoes” try to think more in terms of “pitch and draw.” What I mean by this is to write your plot points in such a fashion that there are multiple ways of achieving a goal so if you are thrown a card you don’t want, you can pitch it back and draw another.

This can be achieved simply by not over planning. Instead of designing specific instances that will drive the plot, come up with NPC’s and clues in the environment that the players can discover and interact with.  This gives you several options which the characters can discover organically. When you have a starting point and a goal, it’s far easier to come up with ways for the characters to reach that goal on the fly instead of having a meticulously designed scene that the characters can avoid or disrupt too easily.

“That boy is our last hope.”

“No, there is another.”

-Obi Wan and Yoda. Empire Strikes Back

Sometimes you will need to plan for the unexpected.  The best way to do this with plot points is to design a way for each character to discover information or interact with an NPC that will get you to your goal.  If one character fails to do so, you can move on to the next until you get the desired result. This will take some thought since character motivations are sometimes at odds.

“Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.” 

-Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

The best thing to do to keep things floating right is to communicate. Having a quick chat with a player whose character has an important role in the plot can save a lot of heartache in the long run. Do not feel like you cannot be in collusion with your players.  This is a cooperative exercise and you will be surprised at how accommodating your players will be if you simply ask them to play along with something. Some might think that is cheating. Just keep in mind that the point here is to tell an interesting story and having the players help you along is never a bad idea.

Here is a good example from a Legend of the Five Rings game I was in a few years back.

The situation:

A samurai is being manipulated by his sensei who just happens to be a member of a secret society bent on destroying the “celestial order.” The GM has basically put this player in a situation where he can

A) Go along with the nefarious plot and loose personal honor but uphold the “face” of his family and clan by keeping some blackmail secret or

B) Stand against his sensei and uphold his personal honor and let the chips fall where they may vis-a-vis the blackmail.

The Conflict:

The player decides that his characters priorities are to his family and clan and cannot force himself to cause any loss in honor to either even at the expense of his own personal honor. This is of course at odds with what the GM believed to be the “Heroic” thing to do, but has to accept that the player has a right to interpret his characters motivations. The GM now has to figure out how to stop the corrupted sensei’s plot and allow his player to retain his characters motivational integrity.

The Resolution:

Amongst the other players are a magistrate (basically a samurai cop) and his personal bodyguard.  They are from another clan. Since one of them is a magistrate and he has some authority, the GM decides to have them find something incriminating act upon it.  So the GM decides to lead them towards the plot and see if they take action.

The other players find things out after a while, but the GM runs into another problem. Since the magistrate is from another clan, this situation is outside his jurisdiction and he could start an all-out war between the two clans if he gets too deeply involved! The magistrate player explains that although concerned about the situation, he cannot see the character risking a war because of it.

The GM then pulls the bodyguard aside and basically deconstructs the situation and asks if there is anything he can think of to fix the situation.  The bodyguard player then confers with the magistrate and after a few minutes come up with the following plan.

Knowing that the blackmailed samurai was being groomed for a very high position within the imperial court, the magistrate had to do something about the situation without causing a war.  The bodyguard also decides that this situation is far more important than their personal honor (a conclusion that the GM originally assumed that the first player would make.)  So the magistrate and bodyguard leave without a trace. They travel to their daimyo’s castle and explain that they must leave their clan and family, renouncing their vows and everything that is held sacred in their culture and religion to become Ronin.  They further explain that they are doing this in order to take actions that are in the best interest of the empire, but cannot be connected to their clan in fear of the repercussions. The GM/diamyo grants them this and excommunicates them from the clan.

The two samurai return with no ties to their former clan, ambush and assassinate the corrupt sensei and promptly commit seppuku.  Case closed.

In this situation we ended up having a fantastic “samurai” ending to the story.  The plot was resolved and everyone ended up in the clear since dying an honorable death is the best thing a samurai can ever achieve.

The GM had to pull out all the stops.  He had to pull characters into a subplot that was malfunctioning and had to basically conspire with characters to get the plot back on track. The conclusion to the story ended up being more spectacular than what the GM had originally anticipated and everyone ended up loving the story overall.

“The price of a Lion Bushi’s honor?

One dark secret.

Ending a Kolat plot in a whirlwind of murder and seppuku?

Priceless.”

-Eli “Yojimbo” Basquez

Our GM never panicked and never gave up on his story.  Sure, things got horribly derailed and there were some arguments in between, but in the end it all working out. Sometimes the GM is the one who has to solve the plot puzzles while the players get to watch.