Divine Divinity?

Well, I'm not really sure how this relates to gaming, but I'm sure some enterprising mind will find some way to work it into a game. As I have an interest in both Greek and Norse mythologies, I sometimes think about what the two seem to have in common. One of the things that interests me is that both pantheons seem to have a tendency towards the mortal - at least, in their ability to die and their tendency towards emotional outbreaks. Both Norse and Greek pantheons have gods with very human features, which I find interesting.

In fact, from what I know of other mythologies, most cultures of the world tended towards having deities that had distinctly human characteristics. They were mortal in the sense that they could die - it seems only later religions used a deity or deities that were immortal and eternal. Why did these cultures have gods that could die? Did it mean that mortals who acquired sufficient power could ascend to the realm of the gods, if they could only destroy those who came before them?

I suppose that if you combine this with my previous entry, you could come up with an interesting story. What if the stories of our current deities, the immortal, eternal, unchanging powers who live in the heavens, aren't true? What if people of ancient cultures had gods that seemed mortal because they had once been mortal, and had proved themselves somehow, or gathered enough power to displace the previous occupants of the home of the gods?

Now, that knowledge is closely guarded, by secret societies and groups that come from both where you'd expect (like the typical Illuminati) and where you wouldn't (various churches - who wouldn't want this known because their churches would then lose power). Every now and then, someone finds out, and tries to gather the amount of power from the secret places of the world that is needed to ascend to godhood, and these societies either help or hinder them, fighting a secretive war for the path to deific power.

I'm not really sure where this idea came from, but then it is an idea I am coming up with as I write this, on too little sleep and too much caffeine. So take it or leave it, as you will.

The Dark Reign of Urban Horror

In the last decade or so, it has become a staple of both science fiction/fantasy writing and horror sections of many bookstores: the urban horror/fantasy novel. Characters like Anita Blake, Harry Dresden, Mercy Thompson, and many more have become common in the shelves of bookstores. With it has come a resurgence of urban horror gaming, and White Wolf has long been the king of that particular niche.

White Wolf started the old World of Darkness back in 1991 when it released Vampire: The Masquerade, where players took the roles of vampires hiding from human society and carrying on their own culture, (un)lives, and conflicts away from mortal eyes. It was hugely popular, and several more games in the World of Darkness were released; Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Make: The Ascension, Changeling: The Dreaming, and Wraith: The Oblivion, among others. In each, you played a member of the titular group, hiding from humanity and trying to accomplsih your goals without ever revealign yourself to a world like ours, but much darker. In time, the games interacted with each other, with consequences both cool and disastrous, and eventually, in 2004, they came to an end with a huge, climactic finish.

That same year, the World of Darkness was reborn, darker than before. It started with the World of Darkness core book, which allowed you to play a normal human with some vague inkling of the horrible things going on, trying to survive in a world of supernatural creatures and terrible things. Then came Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, Mage: The Awakening, Changeling: The Lost, Hunter: The Vigil, and most recently, Geist: The Sin-Eaters. As before, you play a member of the titular group, but this time, the creatures are less organized, their opponents worse, and overall, the horror theme has become more important for every game. It is an interesting exercise finding out what a werewolf is afraid of.

I've been a fan of the World of Darkness games for a long time, though Vampire has never been a favorite; I leaned more towards the visceral nature of Werewolf. I have run several successful games in the World of Darkness, and I am starting to do that again, albeit with fewer players this time. So I thought I'd share a few of my favorite resources for a game of urban horror.

Wikipedia: Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, is a great source of information. If you want to check the population or big businesses of a city, or look up an obscure entry on a historical figure, here is always a good place to start. Be warned, though; the entries can be altered by almost anyone, and while the Wikipedia people make efforts to try and keep things correct, they can't fix everything.

Fortean Times: A magazine published and devoted to events referred to as Fortean, this publication tracks down and finds all sorts of weird and interesting events, which are great to use as fodder for urban horror games.

Weird Science: No, not the old TV show or movie; this is a site devoted to discussing odd happenings in science, and has some really great information and links. I don't understand a lot of it, but it still makes for interesting material.

TV: TV has some great shows that are goldmines for urban horror games, though some are likely more useful than others. For an investigation game, you can try the X-Files or the more recent Fringe; for a Vampire game, think about looking up the Vampire Diaries or True Blood. A light-hearted take on Wraith? Try Dead Like Me. There was even a short-lived Dresden Files TV series from the Sci-Fi Channel.

Books: Obviously, there are plenty of these. Go look in a bookstore like Borders and you will find numerous urban fantasy/horror series; the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, the early Anita Blake books by Laurell K. Hamilton, the Felix Castor books by Mike Carey, the Weather Warden series by Rachel Caine, and any number of others. They vary in quality and in amount of fantastical elements they bring to the picture, but they are porbably one of the best places to mine for good material - and some of them are just damn good books, period.

Want more information? Feel free to ask.

Devil in the Details

Lately, I've been playing Diablo 2 again online with a friend, and I have been remembering how much I like the game. It's not a terribly complicated game; you make a character, and then just wander around and click on things to kill them in various ways. But I have always loved the setting and the ambiance of the game. I have thought at numerous times about using D&D to run a game in the world of Diablo 2, and I think it could be pretty easily done, especially with 4th edition.

For one, all the characters available in Diablo 2 are human; while there has been some evidence of intelligent non-human beings in the world of Sanctuary (where Diablo games take place), they are always portrayed as evil. So humans all 'round, though you could probably reskin some of the D&D races to be different human groups.

Second come the classes that characters play. In the original Diablo, the classes available (including the Hellfire expansion) were Warrior, Rogue, Sorcerer, Monk, Bard, and Barbarian. Warrior could pretty easily be a fighter, and a sorcerer from Diablo could easily be either a Wizard or Sorcerer in D&D. The Rogue could be kind of a D&D Rogue, but was really more like a ranger, and they were female, members of a women-only group called the Sisters of the Sightless Eye. The monk (who apparently will also appear in Diablo 3) seems like it could be used with the relatively new Monk class, and the bard in Diablo could be subbed in by the D&D bard. The barbarian gets covered in Diablo 2.

In Diablo 2, there were more classes available: the Amazon, the Assassin, the Barbarian, the Druid, the Necromancer, the Paladin, and the Sorceress. The Amazon is much like the Rogue in Diablo 1, and would most likely fit in as a ranger in D&D. The Assassin, luckily, could be covered by the new Assassin class released to D&D Insider subscribers - not terribly tough, but deadly in a fight. The Barbarian fits very well with the new D&D Barbarian, a damage-focussed combat machine willing to take damage to give more out. The Druid, with its shapeshifting and summoning skills, fits in with the D&D Druid, while the Paladin fits in as a D&D Paladin, though he doesn't receive auras, sadly. The Sorceress, like the Sorcerer in Diablo 1, could be covered by a Wizard or Sorcerer in D&D. The Necromancer has yet to find a place in D&D, but hopes are high that it will become a new class in the future.

Diablo 3, while unreleased, has shown several classes from the game. Two are old favorites, the Monk and Barbarian, while two are new, the Wizard and Witch Doctor. Wizard is an obvious use in D&D, and Witch Doctor, while a difficult fit, might be best served by the Shaman class, though until the game comes out it will be difficult to say.

The setting might be one of the easiest ports to D&D. With access to the Diablo wiki, and possibly either some of the novels or the manuals from the games, you've got most of the outline for a decent setting. The demon-beset kingdom of Khanduras, the desert port of Lut Gholein, the jungles to the east where the corrupt Zakarum religion holds sway, these are all great area for players to adventure in. With the cool thematic information for the various places, but few specifics, it leaves most of the world for a DM to create. The variety of monsters in the world of Sanctuary make monster use easy, though many of the typical D&D monsters will have to be renamed or fit into Sanctuary thematically.

A D&d game set in Sanctuary shouldn't be just about killing monsters, but about the perils of evil, and how it is very easy to lose your way. Many of the greatest heroes of Sanctuary end up corrupted by the Burning Hells; the great mage Tal Rasha took the soulstone of Baal into his body, and lost the fight with the demon lord's spirit. The Dark Wanderer, the victor of Diabo 1, defeats Diablo only to later become his reincarnation. The path is long and dark, and there are many dangers on it, but if you remain true, you can triumph.

At least, that's how I see it.

Finding a Game

I've always been pretty much an introvert, so I have trouble finding games. Traditionally, my best games have come from getting my friends to try out a game I'm interested in, and running with that; it has ended up in some very memorable games, though sadly, those times are beyond me at the moment.

In my time in St. Louis, I have had at least two total failures in finding a game; I'll try and relate them with as little vitriol as possible. First, we have a game whose participants I met through a fairly big gaming website. We set up a meet at a local bookstore to confirm none of us were crazed killers, then we set about getting together for a game. Initially, I was told that we would be playing Everquest d20; this is a game I had never played, but that I picked up and made a pretty cool character for. Unfortunately, when I got there on game night, one of the players was missing, and the other players declined to start without him; instead they introduced me to the Illuminati card game.

I like Illuminati, but after three meetings of nothing but this while we waited for the final player, I was getting discouraged. Then when he finally showed up, he decided he didn't like Everquest, that it was too computer-gamey. So he demanded that we play something more 'old school', and so TORG was decided on. Another new system for me, but it looked cool, so I rolled with it. Sadly, after the missing player's initial appearance, he spent another 3 weeks not showing up, and apparently, when missing another session, called the DM to say that after thinking about it, TORG wasn't what he wanted to play. I decided that this was a bad fit for me, because one player who was absent most of the time was dictating what we played and whether we played, so I bowed out.

I spent a couple years out of gaming after that; I made some attempts at online games that didn't get off the ground, and was otherwise indisposed. Last year, though, something came up again; I was contacted through a gaming network at my university to maybe play a game of Mutants & Masterminds, a superhero game run using the d20 system. I responded enthusiastically, and tried to set up a meeting with the prospective DM, but after a couple of cancelled meetings, he e-mailed me and told me he didn't think things would get together.

Currently, I'm in something like gaming limbo. I play a couple MMOs, but they really don't get me the involvement I am looking for, and I haven't been able to drum up the support in my MMO guilds for an online chat-based game that I would like. I'm a member of several online gaming communities, but none of them have really proved very helpful in this regard, at least not lately. My locan gaming stores are good places, but most of the frequent customers are comic buyers, not gamers, so it's a bit hard to get a game going from there, and in general, I tend towards the introverted. So my gaming life is pretty stagnant; I guess I should just be glad that there is plenty of good gaming material to read.

Just Relax

As a guy who has spent a lot of his gaming time GMing, or preparing for GMing, I know how much stress it can induce. You don't want to have your players walk away at the end of the night thinking the game sucked, and so you want to do everything you can to make the experience fun. The key to this?

Just relax.

There are some easy tools you can use to make your workload much smaller, and to make it seem like you spent days or weeks preparing for a game you whipped up in a few hours - if not less.

One of my favorites is simple - a name generator. I keep a short list of names I've pre-generated in the notebook where I keep my campaign notes, and if the players meet an NPC, I just make a note of that by the name I use. Using a variety of names helps, because humans and elves and dwarves and such don't all have similar-sounding names. This can go for taverns, shops, or other businesses, too - I have a half-dozen or so names to use for inns, merchant stores, or even temples.

Also, learn to keep a game face. This sounds silly, but it helps. You need to be able to react to things your players do the way you want to, not they way they expect. If you react predictably all the time, they will catch on, and it will be hard to surprise them. The caveat to this is, of course, the fake-out - react just the way they expect until the very last minute, and then fake it. You lead them along and surprise them at the last minute, and if you pull it off you will earn both their hatred (not really, of course) and respect.

Be willing to be flexible with the rules. I've been guilty of problems like this many times, but while the rules are written out for a reason, they are not the final arbiter of the game - you are, especially in tense situations. Nobody wants the GM to start looking through a rulebook when their PC is trying to launch himself off an ogre to stab the giant in the face.

To go along with flexibility, improvisation. With games like D&D, it can be easy to get bogged down with tiny details, but some things can just be hand-waved. When you throw the PCs against a group of standard human cultists, you don't need a precise total for hit points - they are just cannon fodder. In one game recently, the first fight I threw in was against cultists who were minions (a special designation in D&D, where one hit will kill a minion), and I did it just to make the players feel cool. With the big bad guys, you may want to have a bit more info, but with lower-tier guys, you can wing it for a turn or two while you find the right info - or, you could just put it all in your notes.

Above all, remember - RPG means role-playing GAME, and you play games to have fun. As a GM, you shouldn't be killing yourself or driving yourself nuts to try and provide an absolutely perfect gaming experience; you should be having fun. If it isn't fun anymore, take a step back and re-evaluate, or let someone else take a turn at the wheel.

5 Games That Will Change The Way You Play

As I have noted before, I've been playing for a long time; I'm 30 now, and I've been at it since I was 13. I think dumb luck is all that holds my old AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook together. And I have a fairly extensive collection, both actual and PDF games. I could probably hold a fairly decent sale out of just my personal collection, though I wouldn't do that - I collect stuff almost compulsively.

I picked the five games from the title out of fairly recent games, all within the last year or two. They're games I thought were the most likely to get people, players of GMs, to change the ay they played - or at least see things differently.

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: This is certainly not a new game; if anything, D&D is the granddaddy of RPGs. But 4th edition is something new, and it does not pretend otherwise. It is the first edition I have seen to try and equalize the power level between the classes, and the way they have set up encounter creation is a DM's dream. But most of all, I think this is a great edition because it is the first edition that makes me want to play every class.

Hunter: The Vigil: A game in White Wolf's New World of Darkness line, Hunter is different from the others because you don't play one of the monsters in the night - you play a normal person who belongs to a group who hunts monsters. This game is unique because of the Tier system it sets up; it gives three separate tiers to play at, depending on how far-reaching you want your conspiracies to go. Unlike Hunter: the Reckoning from the old WoD, you actually are essentially a normal human, and this does a lot to help out the feel of the game.

Greg Stolze's Reign: This game, written by Greg Stolze, is run using the ORE, or One Roll Engine, where one roll can tell you everything about whatever action you take. It is a fantasy game set in a very unusual world, and it takes some very interesting ideas and assumptions and runs with them, making for a very extraordinary world. One of the best features of the game, though, is the Company rules system; essentially it allows the PCs to be part of a group, whether a small group like a neighborhood watch or a massive group like a kingdom. Even if you don't play Reign, it is worth picking up just for the Company rules.

Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone: I'm a big fan of greek mythology, and as a typically geeky guy, I love Star Wars for its space opera qualities. Hellas manages to combine the two, and do it beautifully. Essentially, the setting is what would result if every faction and sub-group in ancient Greece were, instead of a small area, a planet, group of planets, or entire solar system. The Pan-Hellenic League covers not a country, but most of a galaxy. Greeks fight with powered armor and laser spears now, and follow the gods, and the game is assumed to be generational - that being multiple characters, presumably related to one another. I loved the idea, and I wish I could run it.

3:16: No, it isn't a Bible verse, it is an RPG by Gregor Hutton. In its simplest form, you play a space marine in the elite human 3:16 Division, going from planet to planet, kicking alien ass and taking names. Well, probably nto from the dead ones, but they're dead, so who cares? The game is very simple, but it doesn't try to be anything else - which is why it is so cool. I could probably talk about this for pages, but really, if you want to know more, head to the website and check it out.

Link-tastic

As a long-time DM, I've amassed a fair amount of resources that I find useful for when running a game. Some of them are very game-specific, but many are not, and that's what I thought I'd try and share today.

Obsidian Portal: Wikis are a new big thing, and the ability to have a source of information that people can alter if they note an omission or a mistake is great. Whether it is for a favorite RPG or a video game, they can be very handy, since they are most often created by fans who tend to provide more useful information than not. Obsidian Portal provides the ability to make your own personal game wiki, and let your players alter it as they want. How cool is that?

Encyclopedia Mythica: I have a fascination with mythology, and I like to make use of it in my games. My knowledge of mythology is mostly limited to Western mythologies, and the Encyclopedia Mythica expands my available knowledge by a great deal. Fun to use for modern games, like those taking place in White Wolf's World of Darkness.

Roleplaying Tips: Johnn Four has an immense amount of knowledge, and he sends out some of it, on various topics, on a weekly basis - and his archive goes back almost 9 years. If you're looking for some advice on a particular topic, you could do worse than checking the archive here for help.

Greg Stolze's Reign: While I love Greg Stolze's work in general, Reign is a great game in particular. But why I provide this link is because, while the main book is for sale, all the supplements are available for free from his website, and they have some great and unusual ideas that make great places to grab some new ideas.

Name Generator: When running a game, thinking up decent names for NPCs is something I often find to be a pain, which is why I keep this link around. This site has general, specific, theme, and location-based name generaotrs, making it easy to come up with names that won't throw your players for a loop. I like to keep a short list of names around just in case PCs talk to people whose names I haven't plotted out.

Treasure Generator: I have trouble sometimes in D&D thinking up interesting treasure to provide for the PCs; magic items are OK, but items like art and created valuables aren't easy for me; I also like to use Bad Axe Games' Book of Unusual Treasures.

4E Tools for DMs: This link is to the storage area of a Google group that provides a number of useful files for DMs of 4th Edition D&D; initiative cards, condition cards, and power cards, all available for free.

Gametable: A tool for running RPGs online; it has the ability to roll dice, a map to see character movement, and a chat function. I was going to run my own game with this when complications came up, but ti still makes a good, and fairly uncomplicated, way to run a game online. If you want voce chat, I would suggest Ventrilo or Skype.

Critical Hits: A blog with a number of contributors that is devoted to trying to inform other gamers about what they see as big successes in not only RPGs, but also video games, movies, books, and other things related to geek culture. There are some great articles here; I've been trying to comment on some of the newer ones.

Dungeon's Master: Another blog devoted to gaming, while this one says it is for both players and DMs, it seems much of the advice and articles are meant to be useful for DMs, which makes them particularly helpful for me - especially when they go over parts of 4th Edition that remain unclear to me, like skill challenges.

Gnome Stew: "Written by nine veteran GMs, Gnome Stew is the most widely read game mastering blog in the world." That is how Gnome Stew describes itself, and who am I to argue? Good GMing advice, though you have to register to comment on anything.

Chasing the DM: This blog is a chronicle of a 4th Edition game in progress, and is interesting to read through just to see the kinds of situations and problems that both players and DMs can find themselves in.

At-Will: This blog says it provides inspiration, techniques, and other helpful stuff for 4th edition, and it also goes over the events of each week as they relate to D&D. If you want to keep up-to-date on what is happening in D&D, you should check here.

Have Dice Will Travel: This is the chronicle of the adventures of Keith Baker, the man who won the setting creation contest for D&D and gave us Eberron as a new setting. It's a travelogue of his travels around the world playing D&D, which makes for an interesting read - and lets me keep up on how he's doing with his latest works.

James Wyatt's Musings: James Wyatt is the Design Manager for D&D, which means he has a fair hand into how things work, and does his fair amount of writing for the line. This is his personal blog, and while it is a bit behind on entries, it does provide some interesting insight on what he has brought to the game.

The Keep on the Gaming Lands: This is the blog of Mike Mearls, who is one of, if not the, chief designer for D&D currently. Considering his work on both 4th Edition and the work he did previous to it, I find his ideas very informative and often helpful.