This weekend, many of my friends and fellow Gauntleteers will be at Metatopia. I have gone the last few years myself, and I’m sad I can’t make it this year, because it’s a really enjoyable convention.Metatopia, for those who don’t know, is all about playtesting in-development games. It’s a place where many folks from the indie ttrpg scene gather to hang out, swap ideas, try each others’ games, and network. It has been a launching pad for the careers of many folks in the indie scene and, overall, I consider it a convention people should try to get out to if they can.
Gauntlet Con: Test Fire is directly inspired by Metatopia, except, like the original Gauntlet Con, it’s entirely online. I’m envisioning something smaller in scale than Metatopia, and laser-focused on indie rpgs, story games, and the OSR. We would have a slate of diverse designers for each edition of Test Fire—say, 15-20 from outside The Gauntlet, and 10 or so from inside The Gauntlet—each of whom would have their game (or part of their game) rigorously playtested by Gauntleteers and other attendees. It would all be coordinated through a Discord server (just like Gauntlet Con), except there would be channels and chat rooms dedicated to that year’s featured games. The selected game designers would also sit on panels moderated by members of The Gauntlet community, and participate in workshops and playstorms. In short, it would be an opportunity for the selected designers to interact with, and get feedback from, the most active, vibrant, and dynamic indie ttrpg community there is—and in a really deep, productive way. I want to be clear that Test Fire would not be positioned as an alternative to Metatopia. It’s no secret that I, personally, have had some unpleasant interactions with the people from Double Exposure (the company that puts on Metatopia), but Test Fire has nothing to do with that. I truly believe that Test Fire could help expand the conversation about what it means to be a playtest-focused convention. In fact, if I didn’t think Test Fire could legitimately benefit the wider ttrpg community, I wouldn’t be proposing the idea. So let’s talk about some of those potential benefits, because I think they are key to understanding where my head is at with this. Here is a bullet point list (I’ll say a bit more about each below):
Test Fire would be an ideal space for game designers (and fans) from marginalized groups. This is my personal Number 1 reason for wanting to put on a convention like this. Meatspace conventions are expensive, often prohibitively so. This is especially the case for people from marginalized groups. The sad fact remains that the roleplaying game industry, like every other industry, privileges people who can afford to network. When you consider the overwhelming whiteness of the industry, and why it’s that way, you have to acknowledge the major role that access plays, and much of that access comes from being able to attend conventions. Test Fire could help balance that out a bit since it would be free or, at the very least, inexpensive. Attending Test Fire would require some basic tech stuff (internet access, a computer, a mic), but certainly not airfare, Uber, hotel accommodations for 3 nights, and meals at restaurants. Test Fire would be an ideal space for international game designers (and fans). All the things that would make Test Fire ideal for game designers from marginalized groups would also apply to game designers from outside the United States. I recently reached out for feedback from folks vis-a-vis Metatopia and I was inundated by international folks lamenting that it was extremely difficult for them to attend. There was a sense of international designers being completely left out of the indie ttrpg design scene because of their inability to attend Metatopia. Test Fire could certainly help remedy that. Test Fire game designers would receive very rich, useful feedback. Gauntleteers get to attend Gauntlet Con for free, which means the people helping playtest the games at Test Fire are steeped in The Gauntlet’s famously strong play culture. On Gauntlet Hangouts, our day-to-day gaming platform, we schedule nearly 150 sessions per month. Gauntleteers game all the time, not just at conventions, and that means Test Fire game designers would have a very deep pool of energetic, experienced indie gamers to rely on for feedback. Also, because the slate of games selected for Test Fire would be relatively small, they’re going to each get a lot of attention. Test Fire game designers would benefit from close association with The Gauntlet. The Gauntlet is becoming an increasingly important place to promote indie ttrpgs. When our podcast hosts, game runners, editors, and community organizers are looking for games to engage with, the Test Fire games are going to be near the top of the list simply because we have been exposed to them in the context of the convention. Test Fire games would have to be ready for online play. I’m somewhat biased, but I think playing ttrpgs online is the future (and possibly the now). Game designers who aren’t thinking about how to make their games easily played by Twitch streamers and communities like The Gauntlet and Roll20 are behind the curve. Test Fire would force game designers to start thinking in terms of online play. Test Fire would minimize social anxiety or feelings of imposter syndrome. First of all, you’ll probably be sitting in your room or office the whole time during Test Fire, so you won’t have any undue pressure to socialize. And hopefully the fact that your game was selected to be part of the Test Fire slate would minimize any feelings of imposter syndrome. For now, Gauntlet Con: Test Fire is just an idea. I still need to bring it to The Gauntlet and let everyone in the community have their say. If we decide to go forward with this idea, the first edition of Test Fire probably won’t be until early 2020, so there is still plenty of time to figure out the exact contours of what a playtest-focused Gauntlet Con looks like. Do you have any thoughts for a convention like this? Let me know in the comments!
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by Jason Cordova I am coming off the two most insanely busy months I have ever experienced with regards to my work in The Gauntlet. The stretch from September through October of 2018 will be remembered as one of the most important times for the growth and development of our community. I want to use this blog post to talk a little bit about the two most important things that happened, the Codex Volume 1 Kickstarter and Gauntlet Con 2018, as well as speak a bit more generally about the importance of our community in the ttrpg scene. The Codex Volume 1 Kickstarter First of all, we funded, which is a relief. Some people will say “Well, of course you funded,” but I don’t think it was a guaranteed thing. The Codex Volume 1 book was a very difficult pitch. In roleplaying games, and especially on Kickstarter, people want simple things, things for which the value proposition is quickly understood. Codex is not that. If we had launched the Volume 1 Kickstarter immediately after Volume 1 was complete in PDF (over a year ago), the KS campaign would have been, at best, a modest success, and likely a failure. “Back this collection of a weird zine you have never heard of and, btw, is only available in hardback,” is an extremely difficult sell. Instead, we decided to take an extra year; we needed the time to continue to develop Codex as a product, to build up the Patreon, and to help people understand what it is. I’m not convinced we have even accomplished that last part yet, but we have done so enough to get 720 backers on Kickstarter, and that feels great. (Mercifully, our next KS project, Hearts of Wulin, will be a very easy pitch: “PbtA Wuxia drama.”) I do want to express my gratitude to all the people who backed the project and/or helped spread the word on social media. This project saw almost no benefit from Kickstarter traffic; almost all our pledges came from members of The Gauntlet community or people they know. Without the support of our community, this would have been a disaster, and so I want everyone in The Gauntlet (or Gauntlet-adjacent) to know they are seen; I realize how important you were to the success of this project, and I’m going to do my best to deliver a book that is worthy of that effort. Even more than just spreading the word about the KS, The Gauntlet community did a lot to support me, personally, during the 28 days of hell that was the campaign. There were some days, especially in the beginning, where I was definitely absent, and probably unbearable, but people in the community cared enough to give me the space to deal with that stress in the way I needed to. I never felt judged, only loved, and so I’m grateful for that. Many people sent me encouraging messages or made awesome celebration videos (like the ones embedded below), and that kind of stuff definitely kept me going. I want to extend particular thanks to Kyle SImons, Fraser Simons, and Mark Diaz Truman who each, in their way, advised and mentored me on the campaign. I also want to thank all the amazing people who volunteered to run games in support of the campaign, as well as our exciting stretch goal authors. You are all truly spectacular and I love you. Gauntlet Con 2018 Gauntlet Con 2018 also took place in October. Overall, it was a great success, but there were also a few lessons to be learned from our sophomore outing. I was very pleased with the overall number of games that were run. Not including canceled games, we had about 180 sessions, which is a huge increase over last year. As best I can tell, most people were really enjoying the games they got to play in, and the vibe around the Discord was very positive, very caring, very Gauntlet. I saw people discovering what I call “Gauntlet nice,” and that made me happy. The Help Desk was doing a fabulous job fielding questions and directing traffic. Gauntlet Games Now had a very successful launch. The games I ran went very well, probably some of my favorite sessions I’ve ever participated in, and the games where I was a player were also lovely. But there were also some critical lessons to be learned from Gauntlet Con 2018 that we will hopefully apply to next year. Mainly, I think Gauntlet Con was simply too big this year—too big and too “external.” We had something like 50 guests which, in hindsight, was too many. I’d like to redefine “guest” next year so it has more meaning. This is especially the case because a number of games that got canceled with little or no notification were games being run by guests. In some cases, we never even heard from the guest, and I can’t express enough how disrespectful that feels. But, overall, it was a very successful second year. My impression is that most attendees had a very positive, even joyous, experience, and that counts as a win. Big thanks to Kate Bullock and her organizational team for pulling off a great Con. The Time for The Gauntlet is Now So here we are having just gotten past an extremely busy period, but we have so much more to come. As the principal organizer of the community, it’s my job to always look ahead. Things going on in The Gauntlet right now are things I anticipated 2, 3, 4 years ago. I am a long-term thinker, and that quality helps me (and us) navigate the vicissitudes and petty dramas of the tabletop roleplaying game industry so we can focus on what’s important: playing games and making The Gauntlet truly special. For example, when we first began restricting Gauntlet Hangouts with what is, effectively, a paygate, many people thought that was going to be the death of the platform. “No one will want to pay to play games,” “I feel uncomfortable charging money to have fun,” “Are we just a money-making venture now?”—I heard variations of all these arguments and more. But I was looking ahead: the long-term health and dynamism of the community depended on 1) revenue and 2) people taking what we do seriously. Giving away the shop for free was not a good way of accomplishing either of those things. It was the same with Codex: “No one will understand this,” “It’s too expensive,” and “What are we, a publisher now?” But, again, I was looking around the corner. Codex was, and is, my Trojan horse to move The Gauntlet into publishing. And why publishing? Because I think, for the most part, the current ttrpg publishing model is garbage and we have a chance to fix it. And why do we need to do that? Because I want a fundamentally different hobby and industry for our members. You see how it works? I’m always looking ahead, and always with an eye to what I think is best for Gauntleteers, or to facilitate conversations about what is best for Gauntleteers. But I certainly don’t have it all figured out. Sometimes the community surprises me, and those surprises are the reason why I keep doing this. A certainty: I know what I know. But also: there are things I don’t know or can’t anticipate. And it’s those little blind spots of mine that the community fills in to make The Gauntlet the best fucking gaming community there is. One of those blind spots is just how important Gauntleteers are to each other right now. And this leads to my main thought in this post: no matter what we’re doing for the future, the time for The Gauntlet is right now. The world is, increasingly, garbage. We need good spaces—spaces that help you feel supported and sane and whole—more than ever. We need community more than ever. And here I’m not talking about a forum, or some game designer or Twitch streamer’s fan groups, or some passing association at a convention. I’m talking about legit community. People come to The Gauntlet through lots of different ways: podcasts, Codex, Gauntlet Hangouts, Gauntlet Con and, this month, Kickstarter. Often they hear about the community through a friend. However they get here, they instantly realize that we are a group of people who really cares about each other. We play games together, we encourage each other, and we love each other. When Trump was first elected, The Gauntlet helped me get out of the pit of misery I found myself in. Brazil just elected its own Trump, and one of our Brazilian members was despairing in our Slack, and I was impressed by how many people reached out to him with total kindness and love. Another example: in the middle of our insanely busy October, the Trump administration leaked a memo outlining how it intended to erase the legal existence of trans people. Many people in The Gauntlet were distraught over this, myself included, and so we set about doing something amazing to both lift the spirits of our queer community members and to show the ttrpg world that we stood behind them. Over the course of a whole day, we used the #QueerGauntlet hashtag to simply celebrate the accomplishments and existence of our queer members, and it was wonderful. It was the power of real community, the power of a group of people who care about each other to spread light during a dark time and to love each other. That single day of unapologetic, loving support for our queer members makes me happier than anything else we did in October. This blog post has been going for too long already, so I’ll just wrap up quickly with this: the last two months have been crazy (and occasionally hellish), but I am leaving them feeling more confident in The Gauntlet’s purpose than ever before. Gauntleteers fill me with inspiration, and I always hope I am returning it back to them.
 Greetings, and welcome to the weekly Gauntlet Hangouts video roundup! Don't miss any of the great sessions in the updated playlists and video links below. For Gauntlet Con 2018 videos, don't miss the special Gauntlet Con 2018 YouTube playlists for recorded games and panels from Gauntlet Con 2018. Hope to see you there next time! At the time of this post, we are in the final few days of the Codex RPG Zine Volume 1 Kickstarter campaign! Your chance to get in on this gorgeous hardcover collection will end on October 28. The project is funded, and you can help crush the final stretch goals. Check it out and back it today! TGI Thursday
Orun (Session 2 of 2) Lowell Francis runs for Larry S., Micki Bradley, Rich Rogers, and Walter Our Djali split their efforts: running a heist on a corrupt pleasure-palace owner to secure a lost civ-matrix while Mobo flies in a deadly orbital asteroid race. Gauntlet Hangouts Masks of the Mummy Kings (Session 2 of 3) Jim Crocker runs for David L., Jeremy, Rachelle Dube, and Robbie Boerth This time, 4 Rogues battled magical Senet pieces, a lake of maggots, man-eating plants, and the Second Mummy King himself! Avatar 1%er: Agents of Balance (Session 2 of 4) Luiz Ferraz runs for Josh DeGagné, Kyle Hodnett, Rich Rogers, and Taylor W. Our insurgents see the consequences of the Fire Nation's campaign, both good and bad. They then decide to take on the visiting Fire Prince himself. Masks: Shadows Within (Session 2 of 3) Maria Rivera runs for Darold Ross, Joshua Gilbreath, and Leandro Pondoc The Sword, The Crown, and The Unspeakable Power: The Blood on Our Hands (Session 4 of 4) Maria Rivera runs for Agatha, Leandro Pondoc, and Phillip Wessels Zombie World (Session 4 of 5) Yoshi Creelman runs for Bryan, Chris Wiegand, Jim Crocker, and Noella H Zombies are still present outside the hospital. Everyone is tense and getting a little stir crazy. AND food has gone missing. A plan is made to clear the Psych ward and to get a camera. They will find out who has been taking the food...but what will they do when they find out? Content warning:pregnancy and abortion discussions. Zombie World: More Braaiins (Session 2 of 2) Lowell Francis runs for Larry S., Robert, Sarah J., and Steven Watkins After the chopper crashes and living dead close on the police station, our survivors escape with meager salvage and a high death toll...not all of it due to zombies. Warning: The GM screams into the mic at about the midpoint. Monsterhearts 2: Kingsport 1962 (Session 3 of 4) Catherine Ramen runs for Agatha, David Morrison, Jesse A., Seraphina Malizia, and Simon Landreville As the world reels towards nuclear annihilation, newcomer Dennis makes a play for both Xanthus and Mal; Bev's and her sisters discuss the gender balance of their family; Lucca is drawn into the Hunter family intrigues; Mal begins to see the dark side of K; and Xanthus makes a sacrifice. Veil 2020: Eurotour (Session 2 of 3) Fraser Simons runs for Asher S., Darren Brockes, J.D. Woodell, Lauren, Ryan M., and Tony H The gang teams up with two other 'punks in order to find Jack Entropy in the UK. Veil 2020: Eurotour (Session 3 of 3) Fraser Simons runs for Darren Brockes, J.D. Woodell, Kurt Potts, and Lauren As the 'punks are overtaken by the police they must make a choice: flight or fight. Apropos of nothing much at all CW: graphic violence to police. Monster of the Week: Fetid Waters of Marais Loup (Session 4 of 4) Tyler Lominack runs for David Morrison, Leandro Pondoc, Noella H, and Skyler Nelson As the Apocalypse manifests in Marais Loup our band opens their arms in compassion, a tentacled Demon rises from the swamp, and the Angel of The End Days has a very hard choice. Check out all the great videos on The Gauntlet YouTube channel and be sure check out the playlists to catch up on all your favorite games. If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Hangouts Google+ Community where new games are announced! To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon at https://patreon.com/gauntlet. All are welcome to play Gauntlet Hangouts games, and Patreon supporters have extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Hangouts games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events are announced like Gauntlet Games Now. Enjoy, and everyone have a great weekend! The Microscope Palette, Its Usefulness in One-Shots, and a Dungeon World Starter Discovery10/22/2018 By Tomer Gurantz, Keeper of the Squamous Beast Below
One Shots with World Building The majority of the games I play are one-shots. I don’t have a regular gaming group, and until recently did the real bulk of my gaming at conventions. In the last 2 years, I’ve also been an organizer for a fairly active story game meetup, and an active GM and player in The Gauntlet online community, so I run and play games constantly and consistently. However, they are still one-shots, for the most part. One of the issues with many of the games I love, is that although I love the build-at-the-table nature of many story games and indie RPGs, the process can be time consuming, and eats into the 3-4 hours allotted to the game. This isn’t a problem when you can spend “session zero” of a campaign doing world and character and backstory generation, but for a one-shot game? It’s an issue. One solution is to come to one-shots with pre-generated characters or world settings to save time on world building. However, after asking many of my players after these games, almost all agreed that they wouldn’t want to sacrifice the world building due to the collaboration and unique gameplay that resulted. GoPlayNW, ET, and The Microscope Palette I recently went to Seattle’s GoPlayNW game convention, and got to play a game of The King is Dead, run by my friend ET. Instead of doing world building as a conversation, they used the system of the Palette from the Microscope RPG. Although I’ve played Microscope many times, I have to admit I was completely dumbfounded and in shock with how easy this was to use in our game, and how quickly we were able to establish a unique setting that all of us players were both responsible for making, and invested in. For those not familiar with Microscope, it is a world and history building game written by Ben Robbins, and can easily be used to create an amazing unique world or setting for any game, or just for the sake of doing it. However, the game itself can take hours. That said, the Palette, which is part of the initial setting creation, is a process of adding and banning elements from the game and takes only minutes. It’s a quick round-robin, where players get to add or ban one item during their turn, until we’ve gone around a few times and someone has decided to “pass”. At that point there is a final round, and we’re done. We now have a list of things we want to see (or avoid) in our game. After seeing how excellent it was in this use-case, I decided to steal the process and use it in one-shots that I was running over the next months, and it has yet to fail. I used it for The Quiet Year and Atlas Reckoning, two extremely different RPGs, and it worked fabulously each time. It turns out that there is some consensus that this may be an excellent idea, as a Google search, which I just performed while writing this article, revealed a Gnome Stew article with the title Steal This Mechanic: Microscope’s Yes/No List written by Martin Ralya. It effectively says this very same thing! Keep in mind that many games might already have a strong established setting (such as Urban Shadows), might have their own system for generating content (such as Dialect), or may make use of a pre-generated list of questions (such as The Warren and Dungeon World starters). In some of these cases there is no need for this procedure, or the GM may want to run the game in a specific setting. However, for games where you want to build the setting at the table, you can easily benefit from this procedure. Using The Palette To Create A Dungeon World Starter I didn’t really plan for what came next, but was so happy with how it turned out, so I knew I had to share it. It was our 2 year anniversary of our Story Games Glendale meetup, and I decided to run Dungeon World, which I hadn’t done in maybe 6 months or so. To establish a fun custom setting, I pulled out the Palette procedure, and we went around the table adding and banning things (myself included), and ended up with this list: ADD: Planar Gates, Unicorns, Martial Arts, Magic Fabric, Underground Villages BAN: Aliens, Future Tech, Children (It is important to establish here that in clarification, the player wanted to ban children - the last item in the ban list above - from being around in the society of this world, and not to ban them from being in the game itself.) The players next chose their playbooks, and started filling out their sheets. As the GM, I was sitting there wondering what to do to run the adventure, and then had an idea… create a bit of a “Dungeon Starter” by listing a series of questions that they could choose to answer. And for inspiration? The lists above! I ended up with the following question:
It took me less time to write up these questions then it took them to fill in their playbooks. When they were ready, they each chose two questions, and after answering these, also filled out their bonds. It was fantastic! We had devastating unnatural storms that had decimated the above-ground, forcing our people underground in recent generations. We had teleportation portals powered by blood, but that would only stay open 12 hours (after which no one had ever returned). We had a curse upon the people that stole the children 20 years ago, and a “unicorn” that was being searched out to try and lift that curse. Magic fabric had been found, and was a key reason why Salamanders now had enhanced powers (and hence: one of our PCs was an elemancer). And we had a party, and in fact an entire society, that was actively trying to find the children (some few of which had been recovered, including one of the PCs). As a GM, this was magic. I no longer had to create some generic adventure, and didn’t have to create everything from scratch. Instead we all collaboratively came up with a unique set of elements via the Palette, and that gave me, as the GM, something I could react to, by making those starter questions. The players answered those questions, so that again I had something I could react to: their answers spawned some good adventure directions. I don’t know how useful this will be to others, but I know how I’m going to run my next Dungeon World adventure!  Greetings, and welcome to the weekly Gauntlet Hangouts video roundup! Don't miss any of the great sessions in the updated playlists and video links below. Also, don't forget that Gauntlet Con is taking place right now, this weekend from October 18th through the 21st! The Gauntlet Con online gaming convention features tons of games, panels, and special guests. Find out all the details at the Gauntlet Con page. Finally, be sure not to miss out on the Codex RPG Zine Volume 1 Kickstarter campaign! Your chance to get in on this gorgeous hardcover collection will end on October 28. The project has already funded and crushed many great stretch goals, and the final stretch goals and reward levels have been announced. Check it out and back it today! Special Feature An impromptu game this week turned into an ongoing series of videos featuring Gerrit and ANNA ! First, Gerrit and ANNA played this game of Murderous Ghosts (German language). Then, ANNA compiled this "best of" supercut of the game (German language with English subtitles). Then, ANNA also filmed this additional short continuing the character's story, Blair Witch-style (German language with English subtitles). Finally, Gerrit then recorded this reaction video along with this son (German language). Quite a saga! Super Tuesday
The Ward: EXTRA (Session 1 of 3) Jim Crocker runs for Greg G., Marissa C., Robert, and Sam Z. Beachboy is hot, a reporter wants a tour, and old soldiers never die. TGI Thursday Orun (Session 1 of 2) Lowell Francis runs for Ary Ramsey, Larry S., Micki, and Rich Rogers Our Djali are dispatched by their Oluru patron to rescue a ship of refugees trapped in a space station in the midst of a civil war. Gauntlet Quarterly Hearts of Wulin: Book One (Session 2) Lowell Francis runs for Maria Rivera, Noella H, Patrick Knowles, and Sherri Jade Sabre Lan's demonstration offers an opportunity to catch the villains, but it goes awry with Daughter Bird's double betrayal and Perfect Mist's apparent turn to unrighteousness. Gauntlet Hangouts Masks: Shadows Within (Session 1 of 3) Maria Rivera runs for Darold Ross, Greg G., and Leandro Pondoc Avatar 1%er: Agents of Balance (Session 1 of 4) Luiz Ferraz runs for Kyle, Rich Rogers, and Taylor W. Our daring resistance fighters are brought into existence, and a night raid on a Fire Nation outpost takes an unexpected turn. Content warning: physically scarred children - heads-up given both times it comes into focus. Masks of the Mummy King (Session 1 of 3) Jim Crocker runs for David L., Owen Thompson, and Rachelle Dube 3 Rogues enter the Ziggurat of the Zodiac Emperor to grab whatever treasures they can lay their hands on! PbtA Changeling Quarterly: Month 1 (Session 2 of 4) Tyler Lominack runs for Chris Newton, Matthew, and Patrick Knowles A lady from the past reveals a horror and our Motley reaches out to protect her. As the Motley tries to discover the darkness she is fleeing, they come face to face with the Devil in the White City. Monster of the Week: Fetid Waters of Marais Loup (Session 3 of 4) Tyler Lominack runs for Aybars Yurdun, David Morrison, Leandro Pondoc, Noella H, and Skyler Nelson Our party splits as some go to the village priest to learn more of the past, while the others go to investigate a missing families plantation house. Revelations are made, our Angel is tempted, and a beloved figure goes to her final reward. The End of Days draws nigh...will a new dawn break? The Sword, The Crown, and The Unspeakable Power: The Blood on Our Hands (Session 3 of 4) Maria Rivera runs for Agatha, Leandro Pondoc, Phillip Wessels, and Stentor Danielson Zombie World: More Braaiins (Session 1 of 2) Lowell Francis runs for Larry S., Robert, Sarah J., and Steven Watkins Six weeks after Z-Day a new wave of "Chompers" forces survivors out to secure supplies from a police station, while the future US President hijacks the medichopper for his own ends. Zombie World (Session 3 of 5) Yoshi Creelman runs for Asher S., Chris Thompson, Chris Wiegand, and Jim Crocker Martha the Scientist needs more supplies, so a scavenging mission is developed. Sarah wants desperately to help... but no one has told her the truth about Brad. On the helicopter survey they find signs of another small enclave. Will the new folks be friendly or hostile? Will they get more people? Is there enough space here, privacy is already a concern. Will they get the supplies they need, will Sarah figure out that those caustic chemicals... probably aren't going to save Brad? Monsterhearts 2: Kingsport '62 (Session 2 of 4) Catherine Ramen runs for Agatha, David Morrison, River Williamson, and Simon Landreville In episode 2, Mal tries to help the Traveler fit in, new kid Xan joins the drama club to put on "The King in Yellow," Lucca plays with hexes, Wendy tries to find her pelt, and President Kennedy announces that missiles are in Cuba. Special guest star: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States. Check out all the great videos on The Gauntlet YouTube channel and be sure check out the playlists to catch up on all your favorite games. If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Hangouts Google+ Communitywhere new games are announced! To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon at https://patreon.com/gauntlet. All are welcome to play Gauntlet Hangouts games, and Patreon supporters have extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Hangouts games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events are announced like Gauntlet Games Now. Enjoy, and everyone have a great weekend! by Gerrit Reininghaus, Keeper of the Voice of the Silent Emperor Summary Recently, I put together a template free to use for everybody which can serve as an actionable guideline for facilitating online RPG sessions, laogs (live action online game), GM-free and traditional set-ups alike. This article shall explain each step in the guideline and give a bit of background and lessons learnt. This guideline is not about technical aspects like how to set up a session or how to handle last minute drop-outs, etc. This would be worth an extra article. Here, we solely focus on the social dimension, on how to facilitate the conversation on a universal level. The guideline is my attempt to combine the best practices on how to introduce a game to players and how to structure a session. But more so, it contains my take on sharing responsibility roles, a concept I first saw in Jason Morningstar’s Winterhorn, and which I adapted to online play. Finally, it contains a proposal on how to do a proper debrief which I consider especially relevant in games with higher emotional impact (and believe me—that can quickly become the case even in your standard dungeon crawl). The template can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/OnlineGamingTemplate Simply make a copy if you want to make use of it. CATS & Safety CATS stands for concept, aim, tone, and subject matter. It’s a procedure which was once an entry for the 200 Word RPG contest. It has been described elsewhere in greater detail, so I will only quickly talk about why it’s a structure I consider worth being in this guideline. When you begin a game session, specifically when playing online with new people or a game new to you or them, it helps tremendously to take some time to get everybody on board. You might already have covered parts of the CATS discussion when inviting players to your session. Actually, following CATS when announcing your game session is good practice, too. So, giving some thoughts pre-game and making a few notes about what concept you have in mind for your gaming session, what your aim with the session is and which tone you strive for, gives you a great starting point when entering the session. Don’t hesitate to share the text you wrote and simply read it out loud. Five minutes in - everything goes smoothly After having gone through CATS, you survived already the first five minutes of your session and probably feel already more at ease with guiding several other people through the next hours. CATS serves its purpose of bringing everybody on board directly but also indirectly serves as a warm up for you as the facilitator. Don’t forget that subject matter is an interactive step: other players should be asked to bring in subject matters they would prefer being treated with care or exclude altogether. Responsibility Roles Responsibility Roles is a way to reflect the many aspects the facilitator of an online game usually has to consider while running a session. Reflecting on these responsibilities serves two purposes: keeping them in mind and honouring that they all require work and partly a different mindset. Secondly, that in some of your games it might make sense to share some of these responsibilities with your players. Aspects of facilitating an online game The template provides a table with the standard tasks a facilitator usually has to handle: keep track of time, check-in with players who possibly don’t have a good time, explain what the game is about and how the session will proceed, answer rules questions, support others and take action in case of technical difficulties, and moderate a debrief or feedback section at the end. There might be more things depending on the game. In some games, people like to have an image board or a map of an area where the characters move through, for example. Then it’s good to have somebody responsible for keeping these up-to-date. Same goes for taking notes for specific events in the game, tracking counters, updating a list of NPCs, etc.  Share the burden
So before you start the session, consider if you as the facilitator would like to source some of these tasks out to players. Ask a player directly if they would take over a certain task or ask openly if anybody is interested to share some of the work you as the facilitator usually would have alone on your shoulders. Some things like having a specific person responsible for checking-in with players not having a good time (if possible on a private channel) shouldn’t be understood that everybody else would be allowed to ignore their responsibility in doing so. From my experience though, it helps a lot if you have somebody having their mind fully on such a task. This lowers the imposter hurdle (‘should it really be me pointing that out’) and encourages action. Handing out the debrief moderation is something I can personally highly recommend. I’ll talk more about further below. Keep what you prefer to keep Surely, sharing some of these tasks is not everybody’s taste and doesn’t have to happen at all. I would still recommend taking a look at everything that you as the facilitator are balancing while in a game—helping you to understand how much work you are actually doing in a session you facilitate. Tools By now, there are so many different ways and practices people have while playing online that there isn’t a set of tools that will for everybody and every play culture. Some people stream live on Twitch with audience interaction, others play voice-only but with battle maps on Roll20. So the list of tools the template provides is just reflecting one of many different play cultures. It is the one most common in the Gauntlet community, although even in the Gauntlet many different styles are present. Managing information The tools listed here are all browser based. I strongly recommend to have each tool in a separate window so you can easily switch between them. You will probably have the video window, a dice roller, a character keeper, a picture board, personal notes and a search engine open. Additionally, you might have one or two PDFs with the game text open (full rules / reference sheet). That’s already three to eight windows to move between and hence a lot to keep up with. Take a moment to think about how you can manage all these tools efficiently for yourself. Ask the other players to check if they have access to all tools before the game starts and if they feel comfortable in using them. For dice rolling, it’s always an option to have people roll their real dice on their own table. Some people though prefer the excitement of sharing the dice result in a tool and our own Shane Liebling has given us rollforyour.party as a wonderful gift. It’s an open source dice roller without registration and provides tools for many different games. It also has a built-in X card and other safety tools. The Play Aids folder of the Gauntlet community has character keepers and play aids for over 100 games ready to be used. Character Keepers A character keeper is one of the amazing things online play has to offer which works (from my point of view) better than in face to face groups. A typical character keeper is a spreadsheet shared among participants with all information about your characters on one page. So no matter if you want to look up the player characters’ aspects in Fate or check which Bonds somebody has in Dungeon World or which Skin Moves the Ghost has picked in Monsterhearts, it’s all there and instantaneously updated when changes are made. How to end a session / Debriefing Early ending An online session often goes between two and four hours. My preferred length is three hours. We are sitting on a chair watching one or two screens and although we will have breaks sessions which go longer can have a tendency to not being fun anymore. Reading other people’s emotions, listening through not always perfect connections and controlling several tabs and windows with information is work and we will be exhausted (but hopefully also excited) at the end of the session. So most importantly, end the game when you don’t feel comfortable anymore with going further. In the end, it never pays out to continue beyond your limits. ‘Life is more important than a game’ is what my son (6) always tells me in such situations, giving me a hug, and so should you be good to each other if one does not want to continue any longer. When the game is over When the game is over, the template recommends to switch off cameras and mics for a moment and to stretch your body. Since our hobby is mainly an intellectual exercise we tend to forget what our body needs. We had an exciting times, were totally immersed in our story—so now be gentle to your body. In intense games, this is also the opportunity to de-role. Remind yourself and your players that the game is over and you are not the characters any longer you incorporated. Don’t use character names anymore and talk about your character and NPCs in third person. Begin the debrief It’s then time to hand over to the debrief moderator (if that is somebody different than you). The template provides people with different options and a text they can read out loud if they want. One proposed option is to focus on appraisal and excitement, the other focuses on emotions and reflections. There are many other possibilities, so these are just examples. It’s nice to shuffle your procedure up a bit every other time and to find out for yourself which procedure works best for you. It probably isn’t directly the first one you tried. In the case you are recording your session for others to watch, make a decision as a group if you want to record the debriefing as well or not. People who enjoyed your Actual Play, might be very interested in the debriefing, too, and we can all improve play culture by making debriefing a visible part of our online play. However, people sometimes have good reasons why they don’t want to do debriefing publicly. Then stop recording, no questions asked. Debriefing does not equal feedback Most importantly, debriefing is not the same as giving feedback. From a work context, many people have learnt to keep feelings out and feedback procedures in the workplace context focus on rational pros and cons, stuff which worked well versus what didn’t. Feedback is good to get. But this isn’t the kind of debriefing we might need after intense roleplaying sessions. We are allowed to have feelings and we shall have space to express them. (Side Note: that this should also be the case at work is my strong opinion but not the topic here). My proposal therefore for debriefing is to keep debriefing and feedback conceptually and as agenda items separate. It depends on your preferences how much space you offer to each of them. It’s alright not to have a debriefing in some games or not to ask for feedback at all. Debriefing emotions Debriefing should therefore focus on personal emotions experienced in a game and explicitly offer them a space. Pick a moment in the game which stood out in reference to your play experience. Talk about it. If possible, focus on emotions, on what you felt. It’s tempting and indeed we are trained to hand out positive feedback and compliments to other players. If that happens, that’s ok but try to focus on your own experience. Keep the celebration for the feedback time. Debriefing reflections back into real life A second and equally important dimension is to allow players to talk about how their play experience connects for them to their life. The game session was just a three hours slice in our lives. Our life is what happened before the session, while the session was going and after it ended. We came in with a state of mind, business to do, emotions we worked through (aka bleed in). We related to a fictive world, with the escapist dimension of a game while playing but we also related to real people who we might know well from ‘real life’ or had never met before the game. When the game is over these relationships continue to exist while the characters we played become just a memory. But still, although our story, the world and the characters were created by us, they might still mean something (aka bleed out). Maybe the old grandmother I incorporated reminded me of my recently deceased grandma. Maybe the oppression our group of rebels suffered is something my sister had to suffer. Use the debriefing to reflect how the game related to your life. It’s totally ok to discuss something light-hearted—if you found a game design element super interesting and this is what you want to talk about—do so. No need for strong emotions To emphasise the last point, a debriefing shall not turn into a show-off of how emotionally impacting the session was. It’s alright to have no strong feelings, nothing serious to add. A simple state of happiness or just feeling not moved at all by the game even if everybody else said so, is as good as talking about how life changing the game was for you. Both can stand next to each other. You might also not feel anything you like to talk about but in a couple of hours after the game, after a discussion with your partner or a good night sleep it starts to keep you thinking. If that is the case, reach out to someone in the game you trust and do another debriefing when it feels right for you. Feedback When the debriefing of emotions and reflections (or any other form suitable for you) is over you can ask for feedback towards you and between players. You might be interested just in positive feedback or you want constructive feedback about what went sup-optimal. It’s your decision as the facilitator to decide which type of feedback is welcomed. Especially for playtests, you might ask for written feedback or if anybody has time to look in detail about some material. My personal taste is to take positive feedback only directly after the session. I’m often pumped by adrenaline and feel happy to have finished the session. But since I still want constructive feedback on how to improve my GMing, game material or how I facilitated the session, I ask that people come back to me a few hours after the game only with such feedback. I have also already reached out individually to people in such situations. Another recommendation for players who don’t feel comfortable with handing over negative feedback: you could ask the debrief moderator or another player you trust to hand over the feedback they have anonymously. Where to go from here The online facilitator template is just one of many possible ways to structure an online session. I personally look forward to see variants diverging widely from this one and to continue my own learning experience. I especially look out to how I could incorporate more best practise lessons from the Nordic Larp and American Freeform scene who – from my point of view- are several years ahead in terms of how they facilitate good sessions and good aftercare. Finally, with online streaming there is a dimension in online play whose consequences haven’t been thought through yet (by me): how does a live audience change our games, our safety, what structure would work better for an audience, how to do aftercare as part of the audience etc? by Jason Cordova
While at Big Bad Con this weekend, I was struck by how few people knew what The Gauntlet was. I’d estimate only 1 out of every 15 people I talked to had heard of us. This struck me as funny for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that we are in the upper echelons of Patreon creators, and between Patreon, DriveThru, and Kickstarter, we’re pulling in a decent amount of money. Not earth-shattering amounts by any stretch, especially when you consider most of it goes right back out the door, but pretty darn good for indie ttrpgs. How was it possible so few people at Big Bad Con—a haven for that niche, indie ttrpg stuff we’re so good at—knew who we were? I have been pondering this and a few other questions more or less non-stop for the last 24 hours. It is honestly driving me kind of crazy, because it makes me feel like we’re not doing enough to get our message out there. Big Bad Con is all about diversity and inclusivity, and yet The Gauntlet, which has a frankly radical approach to inclusivity, was barely a blip on that community’s radar. I know, to some degree, there is a performative aspect to being inclusive that we have never been very good at (we’re too busy doing the thing), but I feel like there is something deeper going on; that there is something about our basic “pitch” which is difficult for people to grasp or talk about. The difficulty of The Gauntlet pitch has bedeviled us for years. We’re not a publisher, even though we publish a magazine every month. We’re not actual play-types, even though we produce two actual play podcasts. We’re not convention organizers, even though we run an annual online convention and organize literally thousands of game sessions per year. You could say we’re podcasters, but that doesn’t paint the whole picture. The most accurate thing to say (and what I prefer) is that we’re a community, but even that word, “community,” is nebulous. It means a hundred things and nothing. The Gauntlet: The Most Successful Thing in Indie TTRPGs No One Fucking Knows About. That’s us! Gilded anonymity ftw! And maybe this isn’t a problem. Our smallness, our nicheness, is a strength—always has been. I’ll take 100 super-committed, super-active community members over 10,000 Twitch viewers any day of the week. We are able to accomplish a lot because we keep everything small but very high quality. And yet… My ego simply does not enjoy feeling like a nobody, like a joke. And it’s not just for me. I want people to know how awesome The Gauntlet is, how awesome our members are—how kind and generous and talented Gauntleteers can be! I’m not doing all this work so we can be some obscure club on the internet. I’m doing all this work so we can break the fucking wheel of what is possible in ttrpgs and I want people to know about it! But enough of this whiny nonsense. It isn’t my style to get all warped over something like this. (“Oh sadness, I’m not as cool or popular as I thought I was!”) I view what I am henceforth calling the “Big Bad Problem” as an opportunity: there is still a MASSIVE number of people out there who would love being part of our spaces if they only knew about us. It is going to be my job, and the job of all Gauntleteers, to communicate our values and to make sure people understand what we’re all about, because those people might need us, and we might need them. Some solutions: I intend to follow up this post with more posts in the coming weeks and months that explain the radical approach The Gauntlet takes to the ttrpg industry. I think we need to be on Twitch and other platforms so more people can see our play culture in action. And more than anything, we need to start talking about The Gauntlet (mind you, there are many people in the community doing that work already; even at Big Bad Con, folks like Tomer Gurantz and Tor Erickson were evangelizing like crazy). The Big Bad Problem is only going to go away if we start showing people we are proud of what we’re doing over here. And pride is what it all comes down to for me. I love the people in The Gauntlet community, but more than that, I am so damn proud of what we do every day. This place is special. And people need to know it.  Greetings, and welcome to the weekly Gauntlet Hangouts video roundup! Don't miss any of the great sessions in the updated playlists and video links below. Also, don't forget that Gauntlet Con is taking place next week from October 18th through the 21st! The Gauntlet Con online gaming convention features tons of games, panels, and special guests. There's still time to register, and Patreon patrons can attend for free! Find out all the details at the Gauntlet Con page. Finally, be sure not to miss out on the Codex RPG Zine Volume 1 Kickstarter campaign! Your chance to get in on this gorgeous hardcover collection will end on October 28. The project has already funded and crushed many great stretch goals. Check it out and back it today! TGI Thursday
Zombie World (Session 2 of 2) Lowell Francis runs for David L., Joe Zantek, Rich Rogers, and Simon Landreville Following a murder at the enclave, the players deal with a misunderstood scientist, a stolen stash, a hidden dirtbike, and Chehkov's Handcuffs. Gauntlet Quarterly Hearts of Wulin: Book One (Session 1) Lowell Francis runs for Darren Brockes, Noella H, Patrick Knowles, and Sherri Our entangled PCs discover a rivalry between a mysterious bandit and a back from the dead legendary killer, even as loves are thwarted and revealed. Indie Schwarze Auge [DEUTSCH] World of Aventurien: Schatten im Zwielicht (Session 4) Gerrit Reininghaus leitet eine Session für Eike K., Marco, Mathias, Sabine V, und Tina T. Getting good regional cheese seems as important as making a good impression in the philosophical lectures of Silasmund Froheudian before following a trace of make-up into a tornado. Mandatory Fun Club Velvet Glove: Fun in the Sun Jim Crocker runs for David Miessler-Kubanek, Michael G. Barford, Philipp Neitzel, and Robert Gauntlet Hangouts The Sword, the Crown, and the Unspeakable Power: The Blood on Our Hands (Session 2 of 4) Maria Rivera runs for Agatha, Leandro Pondoc, Phillip Wessels, and Stentor Danielson Zombie World (Session 2 of 5) Yoshi Creelman runs for Bryan, Chris Wiegand, Jim Crocker, and Noella H Eliot Arctic is down alone in the psychiatric ward, when zombies are found. Another survivor Opal Ramirez in the midst. A plan is formed to get Sarah, Brad, and the Truck. Will Brad already have turned? Monster of the Week: The Fetid Waters of Marais Loup (Session 2 of 4) Tyler Lominack runs for Aybars Yurdun, David Morrison, Leandro Pondoc, Noella H, and Skyler Nelson A horrible murder, a Lady in White, a wrecked air boat, and a ne'er-do-well cousin...life in the swamp is always exciting! Crossroads Carnival (Session 2 of 2) Lowell Francis runs for Bethany H., Jesse A., and Marissa C. Our supernatural performers find and defeat the darkness at the heart of Hazelton, but it takes a toll on all of them. Check out all the great videos on The Gauntlet YouTube channel and be sure check out the playlists to catch up on all your favorite games. If you'd like to play in games like these, check out the calendar of events and the Gauntlet Hangouts Google+ Communitywhere new games are announced! To support The Gauntlet, please visit the Gauntlet Patreon at https://patreon.com/gauntlet. All are welcome to play Gauntlet Hangouts games, and Patreon supporters have extra options like priority RSVP for Gauntlet Hangouts games and joining the Gauntlet Slack team where special events are announced like Gauntlet Games Now. Enjoy, and everyone have a great weekend! by Jason Cordova The Gauntlet is currently running a Kickstarter for the Codex Volume 1 Hardcover Book. One of the new stretch goals, to be written by me, is Calamity Raccoon’s Good Time Pizza Farm, a small setting for mystery horror games. It’s inspired by my time working at a Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant in high school and, to a lesser degree, the video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. You can check out all the details on the latest Kickstarter update, linked at the bottom of this post. I want to talk a little bit about why this setting is so important to me, how it originally developed in Gauntlet spaces, and what I hope to accomplish with the stretch goal. Chuck E. Cheese’s: Where a Creepy-Ass Kid Can Be a Kid!I first went to Chuck E. Cheese’s when I was five years old. It was in Lawton, Oklahoma (curiously, the town I’m now living in 35 years later) and it’s one of my most vivid memories from that age. The thing that sticks out in my memory most is just how BIG everything seemed to be. Even now, I remember it at five-year-old scale: the Mouse Hole tunnels are labyrinths, the balcony area overlooking the main stage is high in the air, and the animatronic characters tower over everything. I also remember it being scary. But it wasn’t the kind of scary that made me freak out and cry. It was a good scary. I knew the animatronic characters weren’t actually talking to me, but I loved the idea of them doing so. I imagined them turning their heads, saying my name out loud, and telling me secrets. The Mouse Hole tunnels beneath the stage were lit with strobe lights, and crawling inside them was terrifying—there could be murderers or dead bodies in there, after all—but I still did it, because I wanted to see. And while all the other kids were running around playing games, collecting tickets, and being monstrous shits, I distinctly remember wanting to know what happened after the place closed; I wanted to know what happened when you were alone in there. My memories of those early visits are also stuck on two Chuck E. Cheese’s characters who were retired in the early 1980s: Dolli Dimples, a piano-playing hippo, and The King, an Elvis-inspired lion. Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurants used to have smaller, lounge-style dining rooms—separate from the main dining room—which is where these two animatronics performed. When the chain ditched that concept, they also ditched Dolli and The King. But we’ll get back to that in a bit… Years later, my first high school job was working at a Chuck E. Cheese’s. At first I was in one of the shiny, newer stores (this would have been around 1993). They still had the animatronics, but everything was much slicker and much brighter than the dark, cavernous restaurant of my childhood memories. Everything was neon pink and green, and Chuck E. was a cool, friendly dude, rather than the smarmy, pizza-hustling rat jerk of those earlier years. It was a little disappointing. But then I got transferred to an older location. This location was very much like the one five-year-old me remembered. It was always dark. It was a little cavernous (five-year-old me wasn’t completely off base with that detail). The animatronics… didn’t work well. They moved a little funny, a little gingerly. Sometimes their mouths would hang open while the recording just talked. And it had the little lounge dining room with Dolli Dimples, except Dolli was mothballed. They put a partition painted with a Chuck E. skateboarding scene around her so guests couldn’t see her and aired TV shows in that room instead. Sometimes, when I was closing the store, I would boost myself up and look over that partition, and see Dolli just sitting there, frozen forever. It was creepy as hell, to be honest, but also weird and sad in its way. And the urban legends! The cast members at that location (employees were called “cast members”) had a story for every weird detail about that restaurant. Our Mouse Hole, for example, was boarded-up, and the story was that a little person crawled in there and molested some kids, and so it was just safer to close it entirely. That story was obviously bullshit, but there was a part of my brain that loved having all my creepy thoughts about the Mouse Hole validated in some way. Another urban legend involved the walk-in freezer, which had some very distinct scratch marks on the inner walls. As the story went, a cast member got stuck in there over a holiday weekend and froze to death, but not before trying to desperately claw their way out. And every cast member had their own weird story about Dolli Dimples, from hearing her randomly turn on at night, to old Dolli merchandise turning up in weird places, and so forth. I really loved that job. I have always had a fascination with the dark and surreal, and that old Chuck E. Cheese’s really hit all the right notes with me. The Rise of Calamity RaccoonMany years later, in 2014, I wrote a draft for a game called Chuck Eat Cheese. It was inspired by the excellent Dog Eat Dog, a game about colonialism. In Chuck Eat Cheese, a group of employees at a Chuck E. Cheese’s-style restaurant are trying to maintain the unique character of their workplace in the face of corporate “colonizers” sent in to shape the place up. It wasn’t so much a horror thing as it was a magical realism thing. The animatronics could actually talk, they had their own intelligence and personality, and no one acted like it was a strange thing, except for corporate, who wanted to simply put a stop to it. The set-up procedures in the game had players answering questions about the restaurant their game would be set in, and we came up with Calamity Raccoon’s Good Time Pizza Farm. We named the Calamity characters, invented details from the restaurant’s seedy past, created urban legends that surrounded the restaurant, and so forth (many of these details were informed by my own history with Chuck E. Cheese’s). In fact, as we played, a whole Calamity’s mythos started to take shape. The game never really got far out of playtesting, but the idea of Calamity Raccoon’s stuck with me. Two years later, I published "Pizza Time!", a Lovecraftesque scenario set in Calamity Raccoon’s. This version of Calamity’s had some of that basic structure from the Chuck Eat Cheese playtest, but had a much stronger horror flavor: the fortune telling machine gave dire prophecies, video games were filled with over-the-top pixelated violence, long-missing children could be seen wandering around on the evening’s security camera footage, and so on. "Pizza Time!" is a fairly short document (as most Lovecraftesque scenarios are) but the seeds of Calamity’s as a horror setting were planted in my head. Later, I ran a special session of Cthulhu Dark in the "Pizza Time!" setting, and it was fantastic (you can hear me discuss it right here). The players in that session really brought terrific details to the game that not only helped ramp up the idea of Calamity’s as a horror setting, but also fleshed out the history of the restaurant—down to unique menu items, games, and retired animal characters. I was, frankly, in love with our version of Calamity’s and was determined to continue exploring the idea.  Ron Thomas's illustration for "Pizza Time!" Calamity’s Next ActAnd that leads me to the Codex KS stretch goal. It’s going to be in two parts, though they will work together in many ways. The first part is a one-shot mystery called "Calamity's Curtain Call." It tells the story of a group of Calamity’s enthusiasts staying overnight at the restaurant before it closes for good. The central danger will be the reappearance of a long-retired Calamity’s character, Mr. Big Bad the Wolf. It will be filled with tons of creepy details and scene ideas, and will largely revolve around the theme of unresolved trauma. It will be written with rules-light games like Cthulhu Dark in mind, but will contain stats and conversion notes for other systems. I’m also going to include notes on how to either ramp-up or dial-down the horror, depending on the group’s tastes, or to adapt it for new genres, such as kids-on-bikes. The second part will be system-agnostic and contain setting details for the restaurant. It will have historical notes about the chain and its animal characters, descriptions of unique arcade games and attractions, a full menu, and more. The idea here is if you wanted to play a longer-term game using Calamity’s as your backdrop, or if you wanted to do something that wasn’t strictly horror, you’d have all the information you need to make it come alive. For example, I could see Calamity’s being used as the setting for a game of Unknown Armies or Damn the Man! Save the Music!, or the location a team of Call of Cthulhu investigators frequently return to. Calamity's has come to really mean a lot to me. It's an idea that is just desperate to claw its way out of my head and onto the computer screen. When it's done, it should be a fully-realized expression of this dark-yet-kitschy setting that is absolutely infused with my sensibilities and experiences. But I can’t do it unless we hit the stretch goal. My time is so limited, and I need the pressure of a stretch goal obligation to get it done. Also, I'd like to be able to get a bunch of art and graphics made up for it, and the stretch goal will help pay for those things. So please help us get there!  by Ellie Scissortail, Keeper of the Child Dressed in Borrowed Skins
Combat in tabletop RPGs is often boring. It’s a bit ironic. One might think that the point where tensions boil over, swords start swinging, and bullets start flying would naturally be exciting, but I’ve heard many players lament how their games seem to slow to a crawl or lose tension during action sequences, and that the fighting is their least favorite part. This doesn’t have to be the case. Combat isn’t inherently boring. It’s just that games (even ones that are very mechanically focused on fighting) don’t automatically provide the things that make combat scenes interesting or exciting—that stuff has to come from the GM and the other players, and it’s not generally in the rulebooks. This post is about what you, the GM, can do to make combat scenes in your game more interesting. The Anatomy of a Mediocre Combat Scene A boring combat scene starts like this: the bad guys are here, roll for initiative! It can take place anywhere but most commonly happens in a kind of large, flat, mostly empty room. As it proceeds, the combatants approach one another and form little clusters where they stand around taking turns hitting one another. When all the folks on one side (usually the baddies) have all been biffed to death, combat ends. I’ve been in games where there wasn’t really much more to it than that—we went back and forth saying who we attacked, noting whether we hit and how much damage we did, and then at some point it was over. The players spent a lot of time between turns looking at their cell phones. This won’t do. You've gotta spice it up. There are four basic ingredients you need:
Vivid Detail Right off the bat it’s worth saying that while a lot of GM advice focuses on adding vivid descriptive detail, when it comes to combat scenes, in my experience, it’s actually the least crucial of the four ingredients listed above. Spicing up the scene with fancy descriptions of what’s happening in combat only goes so far, especially if what’s happening is still just a bunch of folks standing in clusters taking turns whacking one another. In fact, long descriptions can slow things down even more. If you’ve got all kinds of dynamic stuff going on in your combat scene (which is what the next sections will focus on), you honestly don’t have to go into too much detail about it. If players have multiple things to worry about or consider doing, the picture they form in their head as they evaluate the situation will often be plenty vivid. There are a few techniques you can use to enhance the action or retain player interest, though: Let the players narrate their own actions whenever possible, but add your own detail at the end. They know what they think is cool, and you can tie it into the rest of the scene. Your job is to make things flow by adding the bit that connects the effects of that action to whatever follows it, e.g. by opening up an opportunity for the next character to act. Be creative with what counts as an attack. There are only so many ways to describe hitting or getting hit with a sword. Add physical comedy or irony or a small chain of events instead of basic strikes. E.g. instead of “She winds up and hits you with the warhammer really hard” try “You were expecting her to swing the warhammer but she caught you off guard by just heaving it forward at you. The impact doesn’t hurt, but getting pushed backwards into her companion’s spear does.” Keep the story going during the battle. Sometimes adding to a combat scene means adding stuff that isn’t combat. Let the baddies talk and reveal information, make the fighting uncover clues, tell the players what their characters notice (without necessarily making them roll) and let them ask questions, etc. Some GMs are so good at this that it’s easy to forget that big parts of plot-heavy sessions technically take place during a very long battle. Real Stakes Some of the best writing advice I ever got was this: “Don't write action sequences. Write suspense sequences that require action to resolve.” This point is as valid for GMs as it is for writers. The core of a good scene is an interesting question, and the purpose of the scene is to answer that question. In order for the scene to have any tension, it’s important that the answer isn’t obvious and that it has consequences for how the story goes on. In bad action movies, the question is often “will the main character die?” and the audience already knows the answer. In order for a scene to have emotional stakes, you want the characters trying to accomplish something that they could believably fail at and the story would go on and their failure would mean something. In a boring combat scene, the question is just “Who will win this fight?”, or even “How long will it take us to win this fight?” The worst version of this is when there just happen to be enemies around. “A bunch of orcs jump out of the bushes! Roll for initiative!” In this situation, the player characters either fail and die or they run away or they win. So the story either ends suddenly or goes on almost as if nothing had happened. In a good fight scene, the characters aren’t just fighting, they’re fighting over something. Often the best stakes are medium-sized. The loss of a well-liked NPC is usually a lot scarier than the end of the world. As a GM, there are a lot of ways to add meaningful stakes. An easy way is to establish something that the antagonists want to destroy that the players have an incentive to protect. A town, a caravan, a batch of priceless eggs. Maybe the antagonists are creating a bigger threat or an advantage for themselves. They’re constructing a weapon or waking a demon that won’t end the world, but will make the upcoming fights a lot harder. Maybe they’re trying to start a war or a conflict that will give them a political advantage. Chases and races are great for setting up stakes. Will those scoundrels get away with the artifact they’ve stolen? Will the crooked city guard catch us noble artifact thieves? Who will reach the well of power first? A few more notes about setting up stakes:
Interesting Choices While stakes add tension and give the players reasons to care about how the battle turns out, even a scene with well-developed stakes can sometimes devolve into a bunch of characters standing around biffing one another. That kind of action can get stale pretty quick. For one thing, the situation doesn’t change much from moment to moment - the next section will focus on how to make scenes more dynamic. But another reason why standard combat scenes can grow tiresome is just that there’s not much for the players to consider doing on their turns. Especially in games with traditional combat mechanics, most player characters have a handful of basic attacks or abilities that they can use and many of them are variations on “damage the enemy”. Choosing which enemy to attack, or whether to burn a spell slot for extra damage isn’t going to stay engaging for more than a round or two. Here are a couple ways to give the players more interesting stuff to think about: Make the environment useful or dangerous. It doesn’t matter how much you describe the setting, it’s effectively no different than an empty room if there’s nothing there to interact with. When in doubt, add something to fall off of (or to push an enemy from). Or a river that might sweep you a ways downstream, or a trap to trigger, or more enemies to alert. Put a scene in a factory that has levers that reconfigure the environment dramatically. Make some things that provide cover, or areas that are harder to move through (and put the archers on the other side). Use stored kinetic energy, i.e. ways to accomplish things or change the situation dramatically by interacting with the environment (exploding barrels, an enormous and obviously breakable aquarium, a sleeping giant). Let both sides threaten each other with those dangers. Try to avoid dangers that are most likely lethal, and focus instead on things that tilt the balance of the situation. Falling off a ledge and having to climb back up is better than disappearing into a bottomless pit. Make sure your environment features opportunities as well as threats (many things are both) - a prominent chandelier to swing from is just as good as a banister to fall off of. If a player asks whether something is present in the scene that you didn’t picture, it probably should be - ask them why, because they likely have a cool idea you can run with. Engage with the stakes, present dilemmas and think in terms of risk/reward. Some of the best situational moments are directly connected to the scene’s stakes. Put your characters in a race with inter-vehicular combat, à la Mad Max: Fury Road, and make it clear when there’s an opportunity for a player to board and try to hijack an enemy vehicle, provided they can muster the courage to jump across the gap. Anyone who falls (or gets thrown) off their vehicle isn’t necessarily dead, or even entirely out of the race, but they’re going to have to find a way to catch up. Sometimes dilemmas will come up naturally, but it’s good to emphasize them. A sentence or two of narration between turns can highlight the obvious choices that are available, e.g. “The orc you’ve been sparring with is definitely starting to slow down, but it seems like Wilfred is in quite a bit of danger behind you...” Other times you can use situational or environmental threats or opportunities to create choices with different levels of risk and reward. “Boris’s strike goes wide and he tumbles over the edge - he’s hanging on with one hand. The pirate who took the treasure map scoffs and starts making off across the gangplank toward her ship. What do you do?” or “The paper golems are advancing quickly, and they’ve backed you into the shrine you’re supposed to protect. Their faces are blank in the flickering light of the hanging oil lanterns...” Dynamic Action In boring combat scenes, the only difference between the situation before a player’s attack and after it is how much HP their target has left (and not even that, on a miss). I’ve seen combat where the players tune out when it’s not their turn because they know that when it comes around to them the only noticeable narrative difference in the situation (if any) will be which enemies are still standing. The solution is to make every action in the scene feel dynamic, and there’s a simple principle for how to do that: everything that happens must change the situation in a qualitative way. Keeping that principle in mind (and following the advice from the previous sections) will go a long way toward keeping the action going, but there are a couple more general tips worth bringing up: Focus on the visible consequences of player actions. If a player hurts an enemy (or even tries to), that enemy should react in some way. The riot cop who was handcuffing your friend is trying to point his taser in your direction you after you beaned him with that rock. The giant shakes you off and starts wildly flailing after you poke his eye. The guard is visibly favoring one leg after catching an arrow to the knee. A lot of this can be achieved through narrative detail. In games with crunchier combat systems you may want to throw in mechanical effects where it makes sense and doesn’t feel too much like breaking the rules (e.g. halving the movement speed of the aforementioned guard). Hits can damage armor and disarm or displace enemies. Having people tumble and move around (especially in response to solid blows), or break other things in the scene (e.g. tables and glass) can make it feel like there’s more going on. Missing a dice roll should put the player in a noticeably worse situation: maybe their weapon is caught, they’ve been forced into a place where they’re surrounded or they’ve created an opportunity for the baddies to prepare a more devastating attack. Tick a clock segment and explain how the failure advanced some looming threat. This is basically the PbtA philosophy but you can import it into any game. Focus on how the consequences of what just happened change things for the next player. Player interactions make it feel like the characters are all in the scene together, rather than engaged in separate skirmishes. Change the scenario in broader ways. The fire is spreading and it’s about to cut off half the room! A third party has arrived and it’s unclear who’s side they’re on! The goblins have stopped fighting and are trying to escape with a character that got knocked out! The giant woke up and everybody should probably run away! We tripped the magic security system and everyone’s weapons teleported to the armory! The stakes can change half way through a scene, and so can the threats, opportunities and everything else that affects how the characters fight over whatever it is they’re fighting over. This can happen as a direct consequence of a character action or you can just throw a curveball if it seems like things are getting stale. In a PbtA game, you can use a failed roll with no obvious direct consequences as an opportunity to suddenly flip the script. One Final Tip: Give Peace a Chance? I have one last secret trick that players love: if there’s an obvious way to resolve the scene’s stakes without combat (or without more combat), go for it. Violence is troublingly prevalent in tabletop games, and sometimes it’s presented as the inevitable consequence of disagreement or as the most obvious solution to most problems. Before you start a scene with combat, it’s worth asking if it’s what you actually want. One reason why combat might not be what you want is just that even if you have ways of making it fun, you pay an opportunity cost if there are even more fun or interesting things your players could be doing with that time at the table. Sometimes this means finding sneaky or diplomatic ways of avoiding a confrontation. Sometimes this means getting back to the story that was in progress before the fight started. I’ve been in campaigns where every tense situation (e.g. a pickpocketing incident) resulted in a drawn out, unnecessary fight to the death. If it seems like things are slowing down or the stakes are easy to resolve without further violence, have the enemies give up and retreat, or call for a truce, or have friendly reinforcements arrive and arrest them. Finally, it’s worth noting that a lot of the above advice applies to non-combat scenes as well. Keeping an eye out for opportunities to add vivid detail, real stakes, interesting choices and dynamic action to any scene will add a lot to your game. If done well, you can make every session exciting and action packed, whether or not the swords are ever drawn. Did I miss anything? Feel free to add your own tips or share the best combat scenes in your games in the comments. |
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