Why did the Gundark cross the road

Something I've wanted to implement more of in my sessions is comedy. Not just funny jokes, but situations where the players end up laughing hysterically due to something about the scene being so ridiculous.

Some of the more serious role players may not appreciate this but let me try justify why I think comedy is important. So often players are focused on building combat machines to somehow kill everything in the encounter as fast and efficiently as possible, and on the other end of the coin the GM is often trying to build awesome encounters that kill the aforementioned players as spectacularly as possible. Another trap I fall into is taking my story too seriously by attempting to put in as much drama and catastrophic plot twists in as possible. I think its time to start throwing all those preconceptions out the box and giving the players and GM a chance to just relax and laugh.

Watching season 2 of The Clone Wars animated series has given me a new outlook on how to put comedy into Star Wars. Season 2 did seem a lot darker then the first season. I think this was due to them trying to capture the feel of old westerns like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Good people did die in the series and the bad guys won a lot. However it's still a series aimed at children so they counterpointed some of these dark scenes with some comedy I felt was brilliant.

Some of the comic things I want to take from the season are:

1. Droids with funny personality quirks. This is often seen in the battle droids which have A LOT of personality in the show. Its sort of become a running gag.
2. Cantina fights. I find these funny because they are such a cliche in any game, however I think players would appreciate a good old bar fight which has plenty of space for comedy.
3. Dying in funny ways. In the show they often have the battle droids dying in rather amusing ways that keep people laughing. Admittedly death and violence isn't something that's supposed to be funny so they do manage to keep death serious by killing off the good/organic guys in a that tugs at your heart. Basically heroic deaths are sad, bad guy cannon fodder deaths are hilarious.
4. Running gags. The show has a few, Obi-Wan failing repeatedly to catch Grievous is just one including when he mocks Anakin for his failures then fails the same way later in the episode. The arguments between Ahsoka and Anakin are another example.
5. Kit Fisto's awesome smile. Nothing seems to phase this guy through the show and we often see him flashing an extremely cheesy grin of big white teeth. It has me in stitches each time.

Can any of you think of some comical situations you ended up in your role playing history? Post it below.

The Exalted Way

I was fortunate enough to go see The Warriors Way on Friday evening and wow what a movie. I'm not going to review it, I'll leave that to SnowPony, but what I do want to talk about is how much that movie inspired me to run Exalted. For those of you who don't know much about Exalted, its a high fantasy role-playing game where your player characters are heroes of mythological proportions given the divine mandate to rule Creation by the gods themselves. These aren't wussy D&D first level heroes. These guys are literally demigods, capable of killing thirty men in under three seconds, stealing the apples of immortality from the heavenly orchids of Yu-Shan, and seducing entire convents of nuns for a single night of pleasure.

The Warriors Way and Exalted seem to draw on similar inspirations, namely wuxia, the wild west, and a slightly anime/artistic feel to the whole thing. The Warriors Way could be a campaign set in the south of Creation, the biggest desert you could imagine. Traditional guns would have to be replaced with Exalted's brand of firearms. These are called fire-weapons and shoot jets of flame a couple of yards. Think like the weapon in Constantine, basically personal flamethrowers. Even the main character of The Warriors Way fits right in with the theme of Exalted. A Solar Dawn Cast warrior who's motivation is to be the greatest swordsman ever.

I've always stayed away from running campaigns in the south of Creation because I struggle to describe desert sands in a way that will give good stunt material, and stunts are very important to the Exalted mechanics. However The Warriors Way gave me some great ideas for encounter scenes, the most important being throw the dust in the air. The idea of invisible heroes cutting through hordes of enemies who are blinded by the swirling sands could lead to some great stories.

I've created a list of five Exalted campaigns I would love to run or play in at some time in the future:

1. Players are a group of fugitives hiding out in the desert far to the south of Creation. They will need to stake out some territory, defend it from bandits and slavers, and form themselves into a force to be reckoned with before their enemies catch up. I feel this one would be a great Lunar or Solar campaign.
   
2. Players are all in their first year at an illustrious high school for Dragon Blooded on the Blessed Isle. While the school offers a standard (but high quality) education, its the martial arts clubs and the fierce competition between them that make it a step above the rest. Players will need to become hardened fighters to win the yearly tournament, all while balancing homework, romance and classes. This is basically Tenjou Tenge for Exalted. This would be a campaign for Dragon Blooded.
3. Players are all part of a ship crew in the eastern area of Creation. Booty, pirates, 1st age submarines, and more booty are all vital parts of the plot. This one is a bit of a personal nemesis because every time I attempt to run it something stops the group from playing past the first session or two. This one would be good for Dragon Blooded, Infernals, Abyssals, or Solars depending on what style the players would like.
4. Players are the recently created Alchemical Exalted for the rogue state in the Pole of Smoke. I'd go for a gritty Film Noir/SteamPunk style to go with the polluted cities of Autochtonia. I'd also attempt to focus on a very nationalised version of communist Moscow as the design of the city. Basically since getting MoeP: Alchemicals I've been desperate to try my hand at the Alchemicals.
5. War has broken out between Lookshy and the Realm and the fighting has been fierce until they are united by the attack of a new enemy. Players are soldiers from both sides of the conflict ordered to work together against this new threat. There would be lots of clashes of armies, commando style raids, and giant mecha facing off against each other in this battle for survival. This would be a campaign for the Dragon Blooded.

Question of the post...which of the five campaigns interests you the most and why would you like to play in it?

Something Wicked This Way Comes

I ran an incredible session of Mage the Awakening (MtA) this weekend. I was lucky enough to
end up with a very competent group who made a mage from each path, and I'm excited to see how it pans out in the long run.

For the readers who don't know what MtA is about, its World of Darkness, and its where all the players create a human who is capable of casting magic and changing reality around them. Spells aren't a limited list like most traditional RPGs with a magic system, although MtA does have many predefined spells in the book. Instead the players can create their own spells based on their mage's abilities and knowledge of certain arcanum. This makes for a very inventive and creative play style.

I have learned a bit about MtA over the years, and each session I run I always walk away with something new. When running MtA you shouldn't be surprised when your players pour over the books looking for cool spells to cast. You should also attempt to encourage the players thinking creatively about how to bypass a situation in an inventive way. The rules allows for a lot of storyteller interpretation and I think one should never say no to anything, just attempt to scale it to fit.

The most valuable lesson I learnt from this session though is how to truly challenge mages, and encourage players to think about casting spells creatively rather then buffing their own stats and turning themselves into combat machines. The trick is to fight them with something they can't see! Being WoD, ghosts fit the mark nicely.

Anyone who's played the Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines will have a good idea of the horror present in the haunted house scene. I attempted to use as much as I could from that, and from some of my favorite ghost movies. That's when it clicked into place, ghosts are so darn terrifying because you cant see them! Even a mage struggles to fight invisible entities and lacking the correct spells damaging them is nearly impossible, especially since they can always run away through walls.

By the end there were a few frightening dangerous encounters with the ghosts, the memorable one being the Spirit/Life mage running away from a rusted upside-down pickup truck. There was plenty of investigation into why the ghosts were haunting the mill in the first place, some of the mages using technology and research skills, others using occult methods to gather information about what had truly happened in the area. The one true combat scene between some of the ghosts and the players happened during a seance and the players really pulled some creative thinking to scare away/kill the ghosts. A final scene of laying the ghosts to rest rounded it all off. I really hope my players enjoyed it as much as I did.

Question of the post...What about ghosts scares the nuggets out of you, and how do you think that aspect of terror could be worked into a rpg game?

Yes, my Master

Today's post is about themes and what it can do for your story. A definition I quite like for a theme is "a unifying idea that is a recurrent element in literary or artistic work" (thanks Google). E.g. The boy gets girl theme. A theme used in your story can be broken up into multiple sub themes. To further the example...Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.

White Wolf published games tend to go bananas over the idea of themes and even prescribe certain ones you should use when running your games. Try reading the books if you dont believe me. J Sometimes its a bit easy to get lost in the game and forget about the theme but I feel that not using them loses a sort of unification to the story. While the plot can remain intact and logical, each session or story within the plot can feel disjointed as if not part of the whole story.

Moving on to actually implementing a theme in the story, I will apply one to my Star Wars campaign. A theme I've really wanted to explore in Star Wars is the relationship between a master and his apprentice which immediately made me think of Jedi. However only exploring the Jedi aspect of this would make for a rather boring game, especially for any non-Jedi. To broaden this and provide more opportunities for diverse adventures we can expand the theme to include the relationships between Mentor and Protégé, Jedi and Padawan, Sith Lord and Apprentice, Commander and Soldier. All of a sudden we have a lot more to work with.

Some of the seeds of this that I want to include in my game are:

• The student/teacher relationship between a Jedi Master and his Padawan
• The authority a commander has over his soldiers
• The tight bond between a captain and his crew
• The evil manipulations of a Sith Lord through his proxy, his apprentice.

The Sith Lord/Apprentice makes an especially interesting dynamic to explore as a villain. Even if the PCs get rid of the apprentice they will still probably have to face his master. If they do it the other way round, the apprentice might want revenge. Also having the Sith Lord berate the apprentice infront of the PCs, and basically showing how mean and bitter the relationship is makes the villains more deep. The Jedi Master/Padawan is an obvious one with a Jedi in the party and the Jedi Master being around as an NPC. Does he treat his padawan kindly? Would he sacrifice himself for her. Would she sacrifice herself for him? What inspires that sort of loyalty? Working all these aspects together can give the overall story a cohesive feel instead of having each adventure stand alone.

Homework for the followers...can you list 3 themes you think of when you think Star Wars. I'm going to shamelessly steal them. For those of you that run games (or are preparing to run games) what do you think about using themes in other systems like D&D? Do you use them or just go with the flow?

Three, Two, One, Fight!

Disclaimer start...
Yes I haven't posted before, but in my defense I've had this blog site reserved for over a year. Firstly thanks to Niki for inspiring me to blog, if she can get three out per week regularly I can too. OK...maybe not three, but she's starting to make me look bad. Another encouraging thing is the amount of role-play related blogs online. Seems people are really into reading about the topic. Hopefully something comes of all of this. Now onto my first post.
Disclaimer finished...

A Star Wars SAGA campaign I have been preparing for a while has just started running, and I attempted to get it going with a bang. This got me thinking as to how the most memorable Star Wars movies have started. The first thing that came to mind is they usually start off in the thick of the action, often in combat. This technique is apparently called In Media Res, or in the middle of things. I've attempted this technique a few times and it can be quite fun to have everyone make characters then when they are finally ready to play you can set them scrambling for the dice by shouting ROLL FOR INITIATIVE.

As a brief summary the Star Wars campaign mentioned above is set in the Knights of the Old Republic era, specifically around the time of the KoToR2 video game. The PCs are a sexy young human female played by my fiancee, who's learning how to be a Jedi from one of the few surviving masters, and a gentlemanly Duelist Elite droid called QX-21 (Quixie for short) that styles himself on Zorro.

I kicked the game off with the PCs being passengers on board the Spoilt Princess, a military surplus freighter that's currently under attack by a Sith warship. The captain of the freighter and the Jedi master were currently off the ship so it fell upon the PCs to rally the crew and defend the freighter from attack. Once they fought off the boarders they needed to make an escape into a nearby nebula where they could hide until they worked out how to pick up their captain and the Jedi master.

After running the session I felt starting off in combat worked quite well and felt very Star Wars. The boarding crew was dispatched fairly swiftly by the two PCs and gave the right sort of tension right from the beginning. It also left a few unanswered questions to use in later sessions. Why were they being attacked? What were the captain and the Jedi master doing off the ship? How will they rendezvous with them without alerting the patrolling Sith warship?

Some of the things that didn't work well was how easy it was for the freighter to escape. I've never run a campaign with PCs in a ship larger then a space transport before and man are military capital ships (even a small one like the Spoilt Princess) tough. The poor Sith interceptors didn't stand a chance. Luckily the threat of a pursuing Interdictor warship did more then enough to scare the PCs into the nebula.

I think I'll end this post by asking you (the reader) how some of the campaigns you've played/ran started? What worked well and what didn't? Leave your messages in the form of a handy comment.