It Slices! It Dices!

As I've mentioned earlier, I am a meddler. I can't leave well enough alone. [I try. I try hard, but my heroes are all tricksters.] It's just not in my nature, even when it's in my best interests. One of the ways I meddle in gaming is taking the unexpected thread and making it fit into the common weave of the world.

I wrote in an earlier column about having corporate kobolds with laser weapons in my AD&D game. That's probably a fairly good example; the unexpected, but still quickly absorbed and not game-unbalancing "little difference." Moving my Shadowrun characters from the 6th World to Middle Earth's 3rd Age of the Sun was another good one. (Ents are _nasty_... and Balrogs? [shudder!] Even without the Vindicator Miniguns.)

What exactly makes such a mixture work, besides patience on the part of your players?

OK, not "besides." Listen to your players.

Let me state for the record that I generally consider the idea of "game balance" to be a fairly flexible rule-of-thumb based on the comfort level of your players. Let's be honest; as much as I fight hard to remind players that they share equal responsibilities towards the enjoyment of a game, it's the GM who is ultimately in charge of knowing when the players aren't happy.

It's my own opinion, but I think "Rule Two" when GMing is to get feedback on what your players feel about the game. If they're quoting their best bits for weeks on end, you're probably in fair territory. If they're saying, "But man, that bit. I mean, the porch ate my HORSE!" you might want to ease up a little bit. (Actually, I loved the scene where the porch ate the horses. And not just because my character was an, "I told you so," type.)

"Rule One" is still under dispute.

The first guideline in changing your RPG recipe is to know the portion size. This is really a way of measuring how much change your campaign can take; are you running a pure fantasy-genre? Is it a political game or an adventuring scenario? Remember, if the flavour is too different, it can be hard to swallow.

Foreshadowing (important literary device appropriate to gaming plots) can be a handy way to slowly introduce a twist. You can think of it as gaining a subtle immunity to iocane powder if you'd like, but just a little sprinkle each session to add a new idea can work wonders. Besides, it never hurts to stroke a player's ego; if you can make it purr, "Oh, so THAT'S why the banana peel kept getting mentioned..." the player will share a keen sense of satisfaction with you.

Surprise, however, is an important factor in humour. If you are looking for the humourous addition, you can't make it the immediately-logical conclusion. It has to make sense, without making obvious sense, if you know what I mean.

Let's use the Shadowrun in Middle Earth adventure as an example. I started introducing the players earlier in the campaign to add some subtle Middle Earth terms. Finding 'mithril' selling better than orichalcum was a good example. Sure, they were familiar with the term, but figured it was an easy addition to the background. An adventure for a Ring that led a popular dwarf leader to believe he could be King of the Dwarves. (Or Dwarfs, if you insist.) Hacking into the "Palantir" video-matrix. At first I kept it subtle; the players heard and responded to the names without immediately making the connections.

It was when they were thinking of using grenades to blow up a bridge and the ent tapped on their shoulder that things suddenly "clicked." That was the humour in that situation; the "gotcha" when it wasn't an 'ordinary tree spirit.'

Familiarity is an important piece of any kind of design. The corporate kobolds worked fairly quickly because so many of the group had done their time in cubical neighborhoods. {The lasers worked because they were magical items in technological clothing.} Ordering from a snooty elvish restaurant and putting it on the troll's tab was a little unnatural, but some of us have had corporate accounts.