Enough Dweeb Adventures

I have a hypothesis: Wizards of the Coast's 5E adventures are for fucking weenies.

I know, it's a tall claim to make. Let's prove this through rigorous scientific analysis.

[Okay, in all seriousness, I recognize that I'm really preaching to the choir here. But use this article for 1) knowing how not to write dope adventures, and 2) explaining to your friends who are squares what the difference is between dope adventures and mayonnaise adventures.]

The principal variables I want to examine are villains and conflict. They reveal a lot about a designer's sensibilities towards what's cool. Because as we all know, the bad guys are always cooler than the good guys.

You Suck at Keeping your One-Offs as One-Offs

Okay I'm sure that isn't true of all of you. But statistically speaking, it's probably true of you. Because I have never once met another GM who can run a game they say will be a one-shot and then actually finish it within a single session.

I have gotten pretty good at it, though. Pretty good. I still fail now and then. But I'm usually able to pull it off.

Here's my advice:

1. Ask for everyone to commit to a long session length to begin with. Last one I did, I said "at least 5 hours" and everyone braced themselves accordingly. I'm not saying it's impossible to run a short one-shot (people manage it at conventions all the time, I hear). But I just feel like saying "we're gunna have a complete adventure, with a beginning, middle, and end, by the time we all head home tonight" and then only giving yourself 2 or 3 hours to do it is just setting yourself up for failure. You might pull it off, but it's so much safer to prepare for a longer session and assume you'll need that extra time. Nothing wrong with an occasional big marathon session anyway (provided that you let your players take a break every hour or hour-and-a-half).
2. Have as much prep done ahead of time as possible, especially player prep. They should have their characters finished, equipment bought, basic setting info learned, and quest established before you even begin. It is so easy to lose precious time at the beginning of a session to "pre-adventure" gameplay. Regular readers of my blog will know that player-driven, open-world sandboxes are my favorite style of play, but they are optimized for campaigns. If it's only going to be a one-shot, then it's okay to just thrust upon the players your choice of today's quest, and then kick things off as close to the good stuff as you can get. They won't mind the lack of agency regarding that kind of stuff, because they'll be too busy having fun actually adventuring.
3. Have something in-game that escalates the situation and keeps things moving forward. The stuff that tends to bog games down the most is player inaction. People talk a lot about "keeping your world moving even when the players aren't" but that's not just a saying. That's actionable advice. Personally, I like to use a timeline with planned events that make the scenario increasingly dire as the session goes on. I find that when I'm keeping track of time, and I'm routinely updating my players whenever the clock ticks ahead, then that does the trick by itself. You might prefer a more time-independent source of regular pressure application, like introducing more monsters or fatigue or darkness or whatever. Dread has escalation built-in because you're literally just playing a game of Jenga but with a story attached.
   
   Most importantly of all, there should be a natural and visible conclusion to that escalation that will inevitably happen by the end of the session unless the players divert it. Think about it: how does a one-off end up needing 2+ sessions? Because you got to the end of that first session's scheduled time allotment but felt like the players still had more they could do. But if you decide beforehand that "the moon will crash into the PCs' hometown by the end of the session" and make it very, very clear to the players, then you can't be tempted into giving them a second session.
   
   And if they fail? Then fuckit, they fail. Honestly, failure is funniest and most easy to deal with in one-shots anyway. It almost always makes for a better story years later. "Remember when we all got together to play D&D at Bob's bachelor party and we went in the dungeon and the dragon killed all of us?" Fuckin' hilarious.
4. Similarly, you can combat player inaction by giving them lots of shit to think about. You don't just tell them what today's adventure is. You give them rumors, relationships, personal complications, and lots of telegraphed resources and points of interest to seek out. I know it might sound like a lot for just a one-off, but think of it this way: 1) Bro, you should be re-using your one-shots on multiple groups anyway, and 2) Your players otherwise won't have much to invest themselves in knowing that this character they've made won't be seeing any more action after today, so giving them a handful of little things to grab onto can go a long way towards, in a sense, jumpstarting their investment in the game and churning their imagination. In a campaign, it's usually best for those things to emerge naturally over time. Players will befriend NPCs they like, build a mental picture of the world piece by piece, entangle themselves in drama more and more each session, and so on. But in a one-shot... it's surprisingly effective to just skip ahead and say, "alright, here's your character's life. Spend a few minutes catching up."
5. If your game has crunchy tactical combat, then don't plan to have more than one fight in the session. I'm serious. Better to prepare one really cool and dynamic boss fight at the end of a short dungeoncrawl than to deceive yourself into thinking you can run a medium-sized dungeon with 4 or 5 combats in it. Only folks with fast-paced, rules lite combat get to have that experience.

-Dwiz

Computer Hacking in RPGs

TL;DR: here's a link to a rough draft procedure I've made for hacking gameplay

[INTRUSION DETECTED: EPIC HAX0R AVA WAS HERE]

Today I will once again be speaking confidently on a subject about which I am unqualified to discuss. 

I've been thinking about hacking a lot lately. Not "hacking" like hacking a rules system. Not even "hacking" like "exploratory programming." I'm specifically talking about our favorite x-tremely kool 90's heroes who save the world by breaching computer security (and occasionally rollerblading). It's a well-known challenge of game design.

I have never actually played a cyberpunk RPG like Shadowrun or... Cyberpunk. Hacking was in Star Wars: Saga Edition but I kinda bullshitted (bullshat?) my way through those parts because I was like 16 when I ran that game. But I have read lots of different hacking rules and I've read lots of other people discussing their experiences using them, and these are my takeaways for the most common problems:

1. It's complicated and a headache to learn, especially for the GM who has the rest of the system to learn as well.
2. It's usually only for one player to participate in while everyone else waits on the sideline, and in Shadowrun especially is notorious for taking a really long time.
3. Either it's realistic and confusing or it's abstracted and unsatisfying.
4. The GM doesn't consistently integrate it into the game world, treating it almost like an afterthought.

This is really tricky because the easiest way to integrate hacking would just be to tell the players "make a hacking roll" whenever they want to cheese a device, but then there'll be a player at your table who wants to be the hacker, and they need something more in-depth in order to fulfill their fantasy.

So I have some thoughts about how to address this. Partly, this results in me creating my own loose ruleset for hacking gameplay. But also, think of this more as guidelines for how to create your own rules based on your personal design philosophy and priorities. I'm here to spotlight for you the kinds of important questions you'd want to ask and answer if you tackled this yourself. Especially the questions that'll help you avoid the kinds of mistakes that lead to something as unpopular as Shadowrun's hacking rules.

Also, prepare for some semantic satiation.

8 Opinions about Spider-Man

Per the demands of Prismatic Wasteland, I have to write a blog post about Spider-Man. So what do I say about Spider-Man that hasn't already been said?

I decided my best bet would be to just create a shitty clickbait post with no real substance and lots of bad takes.

HeroQuest: The Tourney of Champions

The best thing about HeroQuest is pitting your friends against one another in a vicious deathtrap!

I've just designed my first custom scenario for HeroQuest, which I intend to play with one of my board gaming groups when we meet in a few weeks. It's a big group, so I had the idea of a competitive scenario where you split the players into two teams and have them fight one another in the dungeon. I have no idea how well this will work, if it's balanced at all, if we'll be able to get through it in one session, etc. It makes use of lots of materials from all the expansions because I backed the crowdfunding campaign and got them all as rewards, and I want to try using those pieces finally. I figured I would make the zaniest funhouse dungeon I could, y'know?

-Dwiz

A Primer on Star Wars RPGs

If you've received a link to this article, you may have just asked the question, "what's the deal with Star Wars RPGs?" The first part of this post is a succinct overview of all the major (and some minor) options out there which cover this need.

I decided to write this because in the last two weeks, I've seen at least 4 Reddit posts and a couple Discord messages where people asked that very question, and I get tired of explaining it. So if you see someone asking that question, link them to this article.

Traits of the Mythic Underworld

The "Mythic Underworld" is a term popular in the OSR that was (probably) coined by Trent Smith and then popularized through an essay by Jason Cone in Philotomy's Musings. Cone argued that the rules of OD&D can be interpreted to suggest that the "dungeons" that adventurers delve into aren't really to be understood as real, logical spaces created by normal people or natural processes. Rather, they're more like a surreal, dreamlike, and hostile realm that runs on its own twisted logic, which might be inconsistent. It gives the referee some leeway to make a contrived, game-y, "funhouse" dungeon instead of stressing about accuracy or rationality.

Much of what Cone describes are just traits of megadungeons, or even simply dungeons in general. Things like, "non-linear pathways" and "lots of connections between levels" aren't really mythic, they're just good level design. So, extracting from his original writings on the matter, here are the traits he identifies that are actually mythic (in my view):

1. It's so large it might have infinite levels.
2. The deeper you go, the more dangerous it is.
3. Its layout may change over time.
4. Doors are locked/stuck for PCs by default, but automatically swing open for monsters.
5. Related, it is shrouded in darkness, but all monsters have infravision.
• It should be noted that when a monster is persuaded to join the party, they lose these two privileges! This strongly suggests that the space itself is intentionally rewriting its own rules to oppose the players.
6. Torches and whatnot might be randomly blown out by a strong gust of wind, despite the fact that you're deep underground in, like, a tomb or something.

And... that's it. I always thought this idea was much cooler in theory than in reality. I agree with Cone that this is really the only reasonable way to interpret the rules, but I always wanted there to be more. So I've compiled some:

1. Party incurs fatigue/stress the longer they spend in the dungeon (taken from Basic D&D).
2. Rations spoil once you enter the dungeon (BECMI D&D, thanks to ktrey from d4caltrops.com)
3. When the players open treasure, monsters might pop out of the walls, generated from thin air (taken from the board game HeroQuest).
4. Monsters don't exist until the players first observe them. Thus, exploration should be slow and methodical or else the players will too quickly surround themselves in monsters (also taken from HeroQuest).
5. The monsters cannot set off traps (HeroQuest again but I wonder if this might be encoded in D&D somewhere in its history).
6. The scenery and room features attack you (countless haunted house media, but in this case I was inspired by the 2006 movie Monster House).
7. Stairs turn into ramps, doors start randomizing where they lead to, hallways become endless, secret doors appear and then disappear (no, I don't mean they become hidden again. I mean they stop existing), etc. (more haunted house shenanigans).
8. Weird M.C. Escher gravity rules.
9. Advanced Darkness.
10. Every hall keeps leading back into the same room no matter what, and it's full of horrible doppelgangers (the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks).
11. Doors to rooms that would overlap each other, doors into rather thin walls, windows to the outside world in an interior room, doors/windows/entrances moving which side of the room they’re on, etc. (the Overlook Hotel from The Shining).

It's a start. Now of course, I don't necessarily advocate only using the Mythic Underworld. I quite enjoy "reasonable," well thought-out dungeons. But if you're going to make a Lynchian funhouse, then you should commit. In the Mythic Underworld, the dungeon is a living organism and the PCs are an infection. It has its own natural immune system that wants to drive them out. For the PCs to feel as though they're fighting the environment itself, I think it needs to put up a better fight.

-Dwiz