The investigation scene

I've been thinking about my games and how much investigation plays a part in them. And since I try to emulate the "feel" of movies and television shows in a lot of my games, I find myself comparing our investigations to how it goes on TV.

So I'm thinking specifically of Dark Angel right now. Often our heroine goes to the "scene," pokes around for thirty seconds and finds some interesting gizmo or bit, and then leaves. Sneak, forced-entry, poke about, leave… thirty seconds or less. Don't want to bore the audience by lots of prowling and poking that doesn't turn up anything interesting. And when that interesting thing is found, that's usually it… one clue per story location. Even CSI doesn't spend vast amounts of time combing for clues… the scene is condensed to make it fit the TV show length.

Now turn to my game, where the clue-finding takes twenty minutes. I have some general information for them, and two simple clues, which are found in the same location… some sticky strands and an unused auto-injecting hypodermic on the skylight of the museum. Of course, there is inspection of locks, inspection of security system, inspection of video system, inspection of the floor, walls, ceilings, roof, exact details of the skylight, etc, etc. And I think this is pretty normal… I'm not knocking how my players conducted the investigation.

But it's kind of frustrating, because the way players normally go about this kind of thing and my desire for how clue-finding scenes ought to operate don't match up. This was the kick-off of this sub-plot, and there wasn't any need to dwell on it… the characters needed to know only what was stolen, that there were sticky strands on the skylight (the obvious point of entry), and an unused injector of some unknown substance labelled "Biotechnica C792". These provide character impetus, foreshadowing, and a clue leading to the next scene. This was the "teaser" shown before the show's opening credits, and for pacing purposes, it shouldn't drag out.

In a TV show, nothing is wasted… every bit of action and dialog reveals something about the characters, the setting or the plot. In a roleplaying game, there can be a lot of "thrashing about," trying to sift the important details from the unimportant surroundings. What I'm wondering is how can I reduce this "thrashing about" and streamline scenes like this so that they don't take up a big chunk of my game time?

My big concern is the role of player creativity. I don't think the players want to be "handed" clues, but expect it to be more like an easter-egg hunt. They want to have to be clever to find the clues. The problem with that is when the clues are necessary to further the plot… and if the players aren't clever enough to find the hidden clues, the plot stalls. Maybe they go back and look again and then find them, but the pacing suffers even more.

My philosophy on clue-driven plots is that the characters must find the clues, even if I hand them to them on a silver platter, because the game cannot advance if the characters are stuck at some stage without the right puzzle pieces to move on to the next stage. (I consider redundant clues all pointing to the same thing to be essentially the same as making sure the characters find your "one" clue.) I don't believe in letting a story end anti-climatically because the characters got stuck. (Others may choose differently, I just find it dissatisfying.)

So what to do? I really don't know at this point. Maybe I'll bring it up at the next Wichita_Roleplayers meet-up and see if I can drum up a discussion there.

Gaming podcasts galore

Seems like two months ago, I couldn't find a gaming-oriented "podcast" to save my life. (Sometimes called "audio blogs," "podcasting" is poorly named after the brand of technology that seemed to lead the demand for such offerings, the Apple iPod. I prefer "audio blog" for blog-like material. I'm not sure about more polished shows… "radio program" sounds right, except there's no actual radio involved. Kind of the same problem with the term "podcast"… a radio program without a radio is poorly named. Maybe just "audio program," like "audio drama" has replaced "radio play" since audio drama seems more common on the Internet than on actual radio nowdays.)

Anyway, all of a sudden, there are gaming-related audio programs popping up left and right… here are the ones I've found so far:

• "Have Games, Will Travel"
• Capsule reviews
• "All Games Considered"
• Reviews, news bits, chatter
• "Dice Make Bonk"
• Chatting about games
• "Starting Now"
• A D&D group recaps their gaming session
• "The RPG Publishing Gauntlet"
• RPG publisher advice from Louis Porter Jr
• "Ogre Cave Audio Report"
• A game store owner and the editors of Ogre Cave talk about the biz
• RPGMp3.com
• Included for completeness, RPGMp3.com isn't really the same class of audio program.. instead of someone telling us about something, they're primarily recordings of actual game sessions. They've been around for awhile and have twenty-some sessions of The World's Largest Dungeon recorded.)

Now, I'm a big audiobook and audio drama listener. I've got a subscription to Audible.com, and I listen to shows off the net where I can find them. So gaming audio programs have to have something "real" to offer if I'm going to take a break from a riveting audiobook to listen to someone gab about gaming.

So far, what I've listened to has been a rather mixed bag. Some of these programs have a very clear idea of their audience and their purpose, others just gab about whatever and have no message or target audience. It seems like, "We wanted to do a podcast, so here we are, gabbing about games." They might be funny, but funny doesn't hold my interest for week after week.

There's a wide range of production value… some do almost no editing (including not editing out the "we're going to edit that out" comments), while "Dice Make Bonk" spent two months, with over four hours of recorded material to produce their first twenty-minute show… and with all that time spent, it still had the "we recorded it in the kitchen" echo to it, and was nothing but talking about how they got started in gaming.

I want to say that the best in terms of knowing what it's about is "The RPG Publishing Gauntlet," except that Louis just spent the last two weeks telling us about his experience with Haven: City of Violence getting optioned by a Hollywood producer. Not exactly the kind of advice small-time RPG publishers are likely to need. But Louis is fun to listen to, and aside from the Hollywood rabbit-trail, his program has been informative to the relatively small audience. But at least he knows his audience.

I've been thinking about doing an audio program myself. I've had an interest in recording audiobooks and audio drama for some time. An audioblog would be fun to do… but I don't know what my message or audience is. So I'm not doing anything at this point. It's all about content. I'm not sure what I write in my blog is worth getting out on audio. I know what I'd do if I could fly around the world and do recordings with other people. But that's just not in the cards.

One thing I'd like to see someone else do is create a comprehensive industry news program. Something that would let me stop reading GamingReport.com and let me listen to it instead. But that's not the one for me.

The Secret Ingredient

Over on Shining Dodecahedron, Jay Loomis [[http://bigd12.blogspot.com/2005/08/poll-time-your-best-games.html|asks us]] to find the "secret ingredient" to our best games.

Jay's secret ingredient is engagement… everybody's focused and involved, with little non-game chatter.

I'm tempted to say that this isn't a secret ingredient, but evidence that the secret ingredient is present. Engagement isn't a cause, it's an effect… the players will be engaged when the right elements are present in the game to hold their interests. But what secret ingredient creates that kind of engagement?

Looking back on my favorite game sessions and campaigns, from both sides of the GM's screen, I'd say my secret ingredient is great characters.

As a player, my absolute favorite campaign was CHROME, "comic book" world in which all the superpowers were cybernetic. I played the MarkS-MAN (Mark S Mechanically-Aided Normal), a walking weapons platform with a computer replacing half of his brain. While he could kick butt in combat, it wasn't the combat that defined the game for me.

It was MarkS-MAN's relationships, self-doubt, and doubt in his "creators" that really drove my enjoyment of the campaign. He was afraid that his creator/employer had planted hidden programming and maybe even false memories in his head. He was afraid that his wife wasn't really his wife, but an agent planted to keep him under control, all of his "memories" of her supplied by the computer in his head.

His best friend, one of the field support agents, nearly died while saving his life. Then that friend was suspected of being something other than he led people to believe. Later, that friend, in an apparent betrayal, shot MarkS-MAN in the head with an armor-piercing round. It turned out he did it to protect him and his own cover as a double-agent, knowing that MarkS-MAN would survive having the computer half of his brain destroyed.

To me, MarkS-MAN and his complicated relationships were what defined the campaign. It defines a lot of my attitudes toward PC death… I'm not sure I could have played in CHROME with any other character. It would be like killing off Buffy and replacing her with a stranger. Yeah, you could do it, but it wouldn't be the same.

That's the kind of thing that really drives me as a player, but I find it's hard to give players that kind of experience. They have to create a great character, I can't force it upon them. Sometimes I think some of my players get annoyed at my probing into their characters backgrounds, private lives, thoughts and values… but to me, those are the things I, as GM, feel I need to know in order to create situations and NPCs to interact with them that will bring out the "greatness" in their characters.

Characters do such unexpected things

On Sunday, we played another session of In the Shadow of the Blood-Red King. It sure was interesting.

In the previous session, we'd ended on a cliff-hanger. Our heroes had been investigating a museum break-in and found a hypodermic injector on the scene. Tracking down its manufacturer, they managed to get the address to which this unique compound was delivered. That address turned out to be a "sub-station" managing supplies for some other location. Fastlane, the time-manipulator, sneaked into the back of the out-going delivery truck and Stalker and Magma followed in their big panel truck from a discrete distance. (Magma transforms into a rocky body and throws lava. Stalker is a big, 800 pound suit of battle armor… which is why the heroes drive around in a big panel truck. :)

Two-and-a-half hours later, the delivery truck has led them deep into the mountain forest, to what is apparently a hidden military base. And that's where the previous session ended… the door of the truck rolls up and Fastlane sees more than thirty soldiers doing drills and other activities… and many of the soldiers do not appear entirely human. Roll this episode's credits.

In between sessions, I talked with Karen, my wife and the player of Fastlane, about Fastlane's powers. He's a time-manipulator… including the ability to stop time (from his perspective) and shift himself partially between the infinite threads of time. In Champions terms, he had Teleport (stop time, walk over there, start time), Desolidification (shift into a time thread in which the wall doesn't exist and walk to the target destination) and Invisibility (um… I'm not sure how this was justified, something similar to the desolid bit), among other powers.

It was this combination of powers we were discussing… mostly me asking how I was dumb enough to agree to a desolid/teleport/invisibility combo. I'd been GMing Champions for years, and I knew better than to allow this. Might have been that "GM's Girlfriend" thing. Anyway, the discussion centered on the fact that this power set would allow him to quietly walk away from the middle of a heavily armed military base. In effect, it allows him to walk away from nearly any conflict… which means he can walk away from very interesting stories. Like this one. It also means that, before he walks away, he can wander around and find all the secrets without much chance of getting caught.

So we agreed that the invisibility was a bit much, and wasn't very well justified anyway. He hadn't used it too much so far in this campaign, and we could retcon it out without much trouble. And it had the desired effect… he couldn't stop time long enough to make a clean getaway, so he had to take his time and look around a little. Of course, in this looking around, he found the high-tech armory. And decided to blow it up. I knew I shouldn't have put an ammo dump so close to the other buildings.

I'd been so focused on figuring how how to keep him on the base long enough to look around and maybe get caught, that I forgot he'd have easy access to the heavily-guarded armory. Nor had I considered that he'd decide to set off several grenades inside it.

But it works for me. The weapons aren't that important, and the event is going to set of a chain of events that will show our heroes just what they're dealing with. Up until these last two sessions, I'd been having trouble getting the heroes hooked on the right trail. No more… trouble's going to come looking for them.

Less editing, more writing.

I was recently looking for an article stub in my big pile of ideas and introductory paragraphs on my hard drive. I found what I was looking for, but I also got to thinking about this pile… I've got stuff that's four and five years old that I've been sitting on, never getting around to finishing, or sometimes really even starting.

I haven't finished a whole lot lately. "[[http://www.fudgefactor.org/2004/04/department-13.html|Department 13]]" is already over a year old. The "Just Fudge It" article in the new Fudge 10th book is actually over four years old. I've got another article that I submitted to [[http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/darkplaces/|GURPS Dark Places]]… also written over four years ago, and DP has been "in production" ever since (they lack an editor, and now it doesn't fit their "big hardback" publication model, so it'll probably never be more than a PDF). I was writing a series of brainstorming ideas articles ("The Idea Factory") for RPG.net a few years ago, but that didn't last very long… and I have two unfinished articles for that series on my hard drive.

I suppose one of the reasons I haven't finished much lately is it's been disappointing to put my nose to the grindstone and crank out a couple good articles, just to have publishers sit on them for years. (I have to give it to Ann, she beat GURPS Dark Places to press with F10.) I've often been tempted to pull both those articles back and publish them in Fudge Factor.

Nowdays, my writing time is taking up with managing FF, most of that just plain editing. I like the job… it's fun and satisfying to work with authors to help them improve their work, and to see the finished product out the door. But it's more fun to write my own stuff and see it published. I don't see getting FF off my plate any time soon, so that means I need to focus more on getting some of my own writing done. I have no shortage of ideas… there are tons of them collected and started over the years sitting on my hard drive.

Maybe I should take that bit of advice that says, "Write every day, even if it's only a little." Except I do write daily… email and blogs, every day. :) Just not enough game writing. I usually want a couple hours to settle into that. I can't get much done twenty minutes at a time. But maybe I need to start taking those twenty minutes and see if I can learn to be more productive with smaller chunks of time.

Of games without names

Some time back, I [[http://raven.phoenyx.net/mutterings/20040905.html|started up a superhero game]], but I could never come up with a name for it. And this caused more than a little frustration, because being unable to come up with a name tells me that I didn't have a good handle on what the game was about. And if you'll recall, I've been struggling with trying to figure out [[http://raven.phoenyx.net/mutterings/20050326.html|where it's going]].

Well, last week I finally came up with a name for the "season."

In the Shadow of the Blood-Red King

At last, the game has a direction and I know, more or less, where it's going. I'm still having some trouble with some of the details, but this helps a lot. And letting my players know the name is fun foreshadowing. :)

I don't know what the "series" name is, but that's not so important… superhero comics are generally named after the hero or the team name, and our team doesn't have a name yet.