It Slices! It Dices!

Jumping on the WISH bandwagon...

Describe three NPCs (not major villains) that you really liked and what they added to the game.

(The LintKing and I are scratching our head and thinking about other games.
"What about [Crackerjack]'s game?"
"Nah... in ['Jack's] game everyone else got shot... go figure." Yeah, yeah. I should probably talk more about Pikabu sometime... Nah. She was like a very dense Damascus with a gun and an immense crush on Alex Cassel. Erm. OK, maybe there are only surface similarities.
"Jeff's game? The guy with the stealth car."
"Lucien was it?"
"Too cliche.
"What about Dirk?"
"He mostly ran Paranoia."
"I remember Pierre of the Fork, but he was an PC."
"Was there anyone in the Mechwarrior game?"
"Um...Santiago. I was kind of an NPC."
"No, it's no good. We shot everybody."
"What about Em's game?"
"I wasn't in it long enough. There were those people who kidnapped me and I never knew who they were."
"You shot them, you say?"
[Have I ever mentioned to any of you, my dear faithful two readers, that we're a little bit... um... rough on the countryside when we game? Countryside. Yes.]
"And I never really got to know anyone in Roger's game. I trampled them."
"Yes, you did. I shot them, but I had like a 22 with a crossbow.")

As a GM I have a bit of a distinct advantage when talking about NPCs. ["At least, you would if you could think of one who hadn't been shot." -- the LintKing] I have, erm, lots of them. ("Some even without holes." "Yeah, so name three." [sigh])

Llewella in the LintKing's Paths of Blood, Ways of Stone game was really neat. Not only was she Jinx-Jobina's mother, but I remember what had originally intrigued me about her: the story of how she was kidnapped by the lamias of the desert of Rebma, and how she came back...

...wearing snakeskin boots.

Heh heh heh.

I really liked the ingenuity and pure grit behind her, even if she was likely to kill my character (or Malcolm, my character's cousin) for the flirting. She created a shorthand (so to speak) to talk to the Spiderfolk, whom she had a child with (and who worshipped her as a Great Mother.) I liked her even more hearing some of the secrets behind her powers... like the necklace she (and her guards) all wore of eyes, rumoured that she could see through them. [In the LintKing's words, "She probably could, but it was just a rumour."] She was also an elementalist of a strength that probably lubricated (is that the word I'm looking for?) the insertion of Epoch's version of Llewella for G&G. After all, she's mean, and green.

Charl, King of Amber. Charl is the second son of Dworkin and the Unicorn. He can teleport ten feet in any direction. Not nine feet and six inches, not eleven feet, but ten feet, exactly. He has a magical slingshot, and was gifted with a set of bracelets of invulnerability (one of which was given to his wife, Shannon, in the marriage ceremony.)

Charl is a little bit alien. He came onto the scene as a boy, determined not to make the same mistakes as Oberon did. He tries so hard to be human. He observes them carefully. He imitates their ways. He follows his heart. He once asked the fellow with the 300 point Strength and a magical hammer to, "Hit me as hard as you can." He blinked, but he didn't cringe. He went through the ceiling. He teleported back down...after a bit. ["There were just those few seconds of everyone standing around... 'You vaporized him,'" mentions the LintKing.]

He's grown up. He's starting to be a real King, but he doesn't want that to take away his essential liking of people. He thinks people are neat. I think he still thinks he's going to grow up to be a person someday. [Well, except for that bit about turning into a Serpent, but that's another plot entirely.]

Lolth. No, not that one, but named after that one. Lolth was, erm, Eddy's familiar. Which really should say it all, but that's just Eddy's ego coming across. He's a whole 'nother story entirely (and not mine to tell.) Eddy was a sponsored mage meaning in the world of Aipotu, his powers came from his deity. In this case, Sall'Ket, Lord of Plots and Games, of whom no more will be said, other than it left Eddy a raving paranoid lunatic with an engaging personality. (After all, he was our favourite raving paranoid lunatic.) [How would you handle a god who, if you happened to take the same route home twice, showed up behind your shoulder with his finger pointed at you, winking, "Bang. You're dead."]

But I'm talking about Eddy, when I should be talking about Lolth. Eddy's like that.

Ahem.

Lolth, as a spider spirit was granted as a protective guardian for Eddy's home. (Spiders, after all, are sympatico with plots, weaving their intricate traps and webs as they do.) As the mages of the world enhanced their creations with passion, Eddy's monomaniacal efforts quickly strengthened her into almost a sidekick, if not chief cook and bottle washer. She was, however, at heart, the voice of reason, if you can count a delusion as an anchor to sanity. I think I liked the perversedness of a creature granted life by a deity she refused to recognize.

Hmmm. Sounds familiar.

..and this week's WISH is...

Describe two romantic relationships involving a PC you've seen in a game. One should be a romance that worked for the participants and the other should be one that failed, died, or came to an end.

My characters have never been good for romances. I was thinking about this last night, and I think it's because my particular "kink" (consensual corruption) is difficult to come by...so when I am in a game where a romance is possible, I tend to craft things for my own amusement. (Maybe that’s why I play the Fiona I do… hmm.)

For a successful romance, let me tell you about Baran and Aster.

Aster was developed at first as "the painfully typical daughter-of-Benedict," with one note: this was a Benedict who laughed. He laughed loudly, he laughed long, and he laughed because he enjoyed life. That does not mean, for a moment, however, he was anything less than the best at any of his chosen pursuits.

Warfare was her life.

Baran was the crown-Prince of the Lessi, the house of Shapeshifters. His father was growing senile, his mother and one of his sisters were failing from a power that worked on the pleasure centers of the brain, and despite their bodies' ability to cannibalize things for fuel, they were slowly wasting away.

Many years beforehand, his sister had prophesized that in order to protect Lessima from the scourge of Chaos, Baran would have to find the Star, and with her have a son, who would be the Hound who would find the castle "out of place, out of time."

Baran was smooth, polished, everything a prince should be. A master of metaphor, riddling, language, and manners, as well as decent with a sword, and a recognized genius even amongst other phenomena of shapeshifting.

They didn’t have a common language.

Baran had faith in the prophecy. He was risking the entire future of his people on it. He knew he would have to fall in love, and he gave it his all. Aster, on the other hand, may have known how to fillet him, but not how to flirt. She could kill with a flower, but not receive them graciously.

Insert helpful girlfriends, and of course, the bikini.

"Well, it could distract the enemy."

Aster and Baran had one major fight, a question of infidelity of emotions with Baran and an old fling of Baran's. Aster's opinion was pretty much, "I'll either still love him or kill him," when she decided to confront him.

(Baran's prophecy came true. They have lovely children.)

Failed relationships...egads. I wrote to the LintKing with a list of about ten good contenders, but was still hard pressed to choose any one. Most of the failed relationships are due to disparities in the four "P"s of relationships.

The four "P"s are "passion," "personality," "passibility," and "past times." I use them as a rule-of-thumb for character relationships. Passion relates to the pure emotional/spiritual sparks between the characters. The chemistry, if you would. Personality relates to all the aspects of the characters' psyche. Passibility is, in a great part, the sensitivity to the scale, the amount of lenience a character has for a great emphasis on another, potentially conflicting trait. Past Times relate to the activities of the character, including leisure as well as employment positions. I have one character who was an assassin for many years: she conflicted quite strongly with her mate on the 'Past Times' label as he was a pacifist.

(And please note, as a "rule of thumb" measure, there's no hard and fast methodology being used to rate things with this: it's just a quick system I've intuited in my "character matchmaking.")

Most of the character relationships I have spike high in Passion, but then have either little lenience in Passibility or wildly different Personalities or Past Times. Aster and Baran match nicely along all the axes, with a note that part of it is that both of their Passibility is top-notch.

Perhaps the one I'm most concerned about failing is Damascus and Ananke's in B?te Noire. From discussions with Ananke's Player I kind of see them moderately matched in Passion, divergent in Past Times, neutral-compatible in Personalities, but spiking extremely high in Passibility.

For those of you not reading the game, Damascus and Ananke entered into what was intended (by Damascus) as a marriage of convenience, to allow Ananke some measure of safety from an otherwise disturbing arrangement. It was never officially dissolved, and Damascus and Ana took the opportunity to make the best of the relationship, sharing strengths...

...then, "I know who I am. I know what I am. I am fae," Ana wrote, and Damascus wrote her mother, "I'm not a man, and I don't know if she wants someone who isn't exactly always a woman, either." Ana knows what she is, but Damascus doesn't know what she wants. That works with all the various pronouns.

They're separated by tasks, but the connection remains. Damascus is blunt, and she wants to give Ana all the flowers and the poetry that isn't Little D's way. The problem she's really facing (and it's not been underlined in her letters, but it's beginning to surface) is that for the first time, she really has someone to come home to, and that means she can't take the risks she feels she has to take.

We'll see how it develops. It was a happy note in dark times, but the times just get darker, and the shadow develops across relationships as well.

Romances, huh? Well, alright.

For a successful one, I think I'll go with Deliciae and Madrid. Madrid was heir-apparent to an Amber down to its last handful of Elders. Caine was king in that world, and she was his adopted daughter. Deliciae was Dworkin's much-younger brother, born after Dworkin had run off from Chaos... it was enough of a connection to wrangle Deliciae a visit to Amber, but the Amberites of that world didn't *like* Chaosites very much. Especially Caine.

Deliciae started courting Madrid, I think, for amusement's sake; I don't think he expected it to mean anything, especially to him. He realized it did when Caine called him in and suggested he stop. Deliciae politely declined, and on his way out, passed Benedict going in...

Deliciae's not an idiot. He seriously considered popping back in and telling Caine he had reconsidered. He's still not quite sure why he didn't. Fortunately, Benedict declined to kill the upstart Chaosite, and while Caine has never liked it, Deliciae has made himself into a very difficult man to assassinate.

His relationship with Madrid at this point is very odd. Both of them would probably be, by Earth standards, sociopathic at best. Not necessarily psychotic or murderous, but...they don't connect to people the way normal people do. Madrid was experimented on by (or is entirely an experiment of) Dworkin, and has a Pattern-based battle computer built into the back of her mind...when she's directly endangered, she becomes *very* dangerous. In the meantime, her mind is still half Pattern machine. Deliciae is just the kind of Chaosite who meddles and spins off plots more as a hobby than for any great purpose.

Meera and I were talking the other night about the implications if a couple of our Ambers came into conflict, and it occurred to us that Deliciae would probably be behind most of the defense of the universe he lives in, despite being several steps removed from any formal power base. Only one (out of about a dozen) of the major rulers even speaks to him directly, but he has threads going everywhere. He also occasionally thinks about killing Madrid, just because it would be so easy (he knows all her weaknesses, afterall), and because a part of him is curious if he could do it without subsequently being killed by Dworkin.

They still love each other very deeply, though, at least inasmuch as love really applies to either of their mindsets.

On the unsuccessful note, I think I'll go with Unakai and Patricia.

They're both my characters, and Patricia was specifically designed to be Unakai's partner. (Unakai Walked the Pattern and wished very hard to find Mr, Ms, Or Whatever Right. The Pattern LIKES Unakai, so it tried very hard, punching through several universes.) With controls like that, both in game and metagame, they really should have worked.

Unfortunately, as I'm sure anyone who's ever gamed knows, characters change. Unakai and Patricia were quite happy with each other at first, and had two beautiful (albeit not entirely human) daughters, Jocelyn and Oraela.

Patricia, though, was relatively young, and very much out of her element. She had a bit of a nervous breakdown, and fixated on Rhondia, the Captain of the Guard, and incidentally the person in the castle about as different from Unakai as it was possible to get.

Unakai simply isn't the type to hold anyone against their will.

Their separation was a sharp break; painful, but fast, and she let Patricia go hoping for her happiness. Unakai has recovered from it, honestly, better than Patricia has. Things didn't work out with Rhondia, either, for myriad reasons...it probably didn't surprise anyone around them who was thinking more clearly.

WISH #3 asks us to reveal...

Discuss three setting ideas or ideas for elements of settings that you got from movies/books/TV/etc. that you have read or seen recently.

Ignoring the "read or seen recently," because that's fairly irrelevant with my habit of rereading or reviewing older items, I finally figured out three that were decent for use.

Megan Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons is a book that influenced me greatly as a child. It, along with King Rat and Neverwhere are three major forces for the urban faery game I'm considering. [On a tangent, no, while I generally enjoy deLint's work, I don't consider him an influence exactly, although a lot of his stuff is along fairly parallel lines. (Of his books, the only one I could say I flat-out, no reservations like is Jack the Giant-Killer.)] There's a little Emma Bull's War For the Oaks in there, of course, maybe even a lick or two borrowed from Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, but the real question is how much of it is urban versus how much of it is the faery.

They watched him leaping and whirling away, flashing black and silver in the sunlight. "Is dancing all he does?" Wizard had asked Cassie naively.

"Yeah," she said mockingly. "All he does is Dance. And look at derelicts and find out if they're wizards or not. And give wizards the rules of their magic. And keep the bogey-man away from the Seattle Center. Come on, Wizard."

When I was younger, after reading it and giving away (gasp!) a copy to a friend (who still hasn't returned it...but since it's been ten years, I'm not holding my breath) I began to wonder if the magic in the book was hinted at, just a delusion. Upon treating myself to a copy found through Alibris I was pleasantly surprised to find that the magic was intact.

The quoted portion very strongly intimates some of the essentials of the story, but the part that actually has stayed with me throughout the years is Cassie and how she collects children's schoolyard rhymes, and uses it as a barometer for what's happening in the local culture. I've always thought that (in Amber, at least) the fables and the schoolyard rhymes and games would reflect the Pattern, kind of like a circular hopscotch, or reminders of past battles. Benedict and the Moonriders remembered only in a snatch of rhyme, chanted in a sing-song fashion as little Bleys and Brand chase each other into the trees of Arden.

I already talked a little about the now defunct Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon we had been watching. It fits very well into the Feng Shui game as a scenario, but the truth is not that I just liked the story for itself, but because I kept imagining it as having a connection to "The Invisibles" a comic which should probably be a reference in itself... excluded only because I have a paltry two of the graphic novel collections. (And just for another page that amuses me: This has homemade action figures of the team.)

For the category of "movie I so wanted to base a Throne War off of," that wasn't one already, we have, of course, "The Nightmare Before Christmas where we'd do the Pumpkin King throne war. The game itself has been covered fairly well ("Pumpkin Town" comes immediately to mind) as an RPG, but I keep wanting to run it as a competitive situation.

I did base a little bit of the plot of SWtE from La Blue Girl, but we won't go there for now. Needless to say, I was waiting for Thalia to shout out, "My sex craft is greater than yours!" at some point. Erm...

The Fourth Game WISH is about system design.

Describe three systems you have gamed under: one you thought was good, one you thought was all right, and one you didn't care for.

I was going to say that I liked Aria, but that's going to have to be its own discussion somewhere down the line... [grinning]

I have to admit, it's very simplistic, oh, and the art in at least the first and second editions is terrible (meaning, not to my liking) but I've always enjoyed Nightlife's percentile system. (A good review of the game lies beyond this link.) It's easy to master the combat system (initiative, percentile, survival points) as well as design the characters via the creature traits you want. It's amazingly adaptable to all sorts of creatures, and styles. Best of all, as I've raved other places, it doesn't shepherd you into doing "the right thing." You can play anti-human characters, reverse gravity and blast yourself into orbit, and while you can make it cartoony you can also make it very real.

Now, here's the real question: does it support the genre? Well, it makes monsters generic, but they are in that world. Can humans play on the same level? Kind of, which allows for human-monster interaction...and not just by taming the monsters. Does it allow for angst as well as comedy? Yes.

Is Nightlife easy to GM? Yes, and no. As a system, yes. As a genre, not so much. As it's build around the concept of Splatterpunk, you can have things get out of control (and very messy) far too quickly for a GM who's, well, squeamish. As for playing, it's a little too easy to play, as well: the system, again, is simplistic. The plots have to be well developed to really catch one's attention.

For the game I thought was OK but not spectacular, I'll go with GURPS. I love GURPS supplements. They're like candy. I buy them for idea fodder, pretty much exclusively. I've used GURPS to design numerous characters, including figuring it's one of the best for making "myself" in game terms. I've run a couple of GURPS campaigns... but it's not my system of choice.

I ran as a player under a fellow who was a GURPS Savant. He knew page numbers by heart for the charts he needed. So the mechanics went fairly smoothly despite my usual statistically unlikely fortune with the dice. We did discover that a horse trampling someone did more damage to them than a sword, which I believe I used to my advantage.

...and yes, a force-field and a magical shield spell roughly provide the same effects, but I belong to the group that says, "Darn your mechanical evaluation, I want it to -feel- different, nevertheless."

GURPS support is excellent, however, and there are definitely games I will be thousands of times more likely to play once converted to GURPS terms. In Nomine and Deadlands come immediately to mind. There's a tiny little part of me that wishes they'd done Changeling but they couldn't help but improve Mage. GURPS Sourcebooks are the standard by which I measure all other gaming sourcebooks I buy.

Do the rules work? Most of the time. You can get fixes. At high point-levels, however, the stats become fairly meaningless. There is some advantage in its modular style; if I want to run the vehicle bits, I can look up the vehicle rules. If I want to run the magic=fatigue bits, I can grab the magic books. Or I can use just what's in the main book, with the disadvantage of the lack of fine tuning.

A game I didn't care for? Nobilis. I hate saying it, because I know so many people involved in it, but I really just keep ending up feeling like I've already got it on my shelf three times over. Sure, the new edition is lovely, but I keep thinking, "I already do this. I already have this. No one's taken advantage of it, but what's different from this and what I run?"

That eMode IQ test calls me a "Visual Mathematician." I've been using this today as an excuse to buy more miniatures.

I'm tired of games (you can usually tell them because they say they're for "advanced roleplayers") that figure since GMs are going to tweak and twiddle anyway, there's no point in offering much more than setting and plot.

I can go a long way with setting and plot, but I like consistency. I like reasons behind my decision making (even if it's, "The roll was a seven,") and I like to know that any impulse, any whimsical call in a game is being done with the good of the experience in mind. I like a stable foundation. I like my players being able to kick the tires (the figurative meaning) and test the ropes and whatnot and find them strong enough to hold.

A game that makes you rely on that, also suggests that you have to rely on a good gaming group, good communication, good blood sugar... and sets people up for lousy experiences when they're having a bad day.

As for a system I'd really like to try that I haven't? FUDGE. I have given it my eyeballs a few times, but never a fair try. I'm going to run a KULT game someday, with lots of Delta Green added in to the mix. I'm finding myself ambivalent-untolerant towards D&D3e, but I may be an old fogey at this point.

Hm. Well, alright, I'll try...expanding this to systems I've read would be a lot easier than ones I've actually gamed under, but I'll see what I can do...you DO get a better sense of the mechanics by actually playing, which I think I'll expand on a little on the second one, unless I change my mind. (Women can do that, y'know. Little known fact, men can, too. Or maybe we can't. Heh heh.)

Okay, for one that I liked...that, of course, is the hardest. I'm not an anti-mechanics type, but I AM a tinkerer. I tend to see game rules like tinkertoys...I don't always so much make new ones, but I DO tend to build new shapes out of them. I'm just lucky that my GM likes most of the suggestions I make. (Heck, she asks for most of them. "Dear, make the failing rules work." "Hon, when you've got a moment, could you put together a system for mirror magic?" "Take the trash out, dear." Well, okay, the last only applied to fixing Shadowknight, but...)

For one that I liked, I think I'll go with Earthdawn (1st Edition). I have to admit, my actual play-time experience with the game was limited, and I liked the *game* enough that it may be coloring my memories of the system, but I think it had a certain elegance. It was complicated enough to be fun to `play' with, but started running pretty smoothly with only a little practice. A bit clunkier dealing with spellcasting, but I think that would have smoothed out if the game had gone another session or two. It gave us a chance to play with all the funny little dice, but without having to roll double-handfuls the way you do in some games. {I liked Deadlands for the same reason.} The mechanics were absolutely built in to the gameworld...I can't remember now if Meera wanted me to port the Earthdawn system into another world, or if she wanted me to port the world into another system, but she asked me to do one of those, and I couldn't separate them. Their Steps and Threads are too interlocked with the concepts behind the Adepts and their underlying magic structure.

Couldn't tell you how easy it is to GM, though I didn't think it would be too bad. From a player standpoint, we had a little trouble with the GM giving people the choice between rolling our characters up on dice, or using their point-based system; the die rollers *all* came out significantly higher `value' (enough to be frustrating even in a friendly game), and I only suspected a couple of them of cheating...but as mechanics flaws go, that one's almost depressingly easy to fix. We had a roomful of experienced gamers new to Earthdawn, and the system didn't slow us down much at all... except, as noted above, when it came time to cast a spell. Even there, though, while we were going to be referring to the book for a while, we figured it out easily enough it barely interrupted gameflow.

As for indifferent, I'm going to go with In Nomine, and yes, I'm picking it a lot for that point above about playing-experience making a difference. I LIKED In Nomine's rules, right up until I tried using them for anything. The d666 system was cute and sounded functional, but...everything was weighted to the expectation of people playing Angels and Demons. Which would be fair enough, that being most of what the game was for, but they HAD rules for playing lesser beings, and even if they weren't PCs, they were certainly supposed to be around. Bluntly, the rules were broken just among the Celestials. Once a human came within 100 feet of them, the system was irrepairable. It supported the game in a gimmicky kind of way, but not past that.

Character generation was fun. If you think for a moment they gave any thought to having balanced characters, a quick skim through the GURPS adaptation will dispell that handily. One kind of Demon can imitate an Angel's powers...another kind made *really good* lasagna. (Okay, their front story showed a good use for this, but it's still a pretty limited power compared to many.)

I spent some time on the In Nomine list, especially as I was getting partly out of Amber. Time on ANY list is a good way to learn exactly where all the rules were broken. The In Nomine list was very busy. To play or GM... I don't know. I had fun, but I don't mind workarounds, and Meera doesn't mind ignoring the rules altogether. We rolled occasionally to see if there was an Intervention, and otherwise went mostly diceless. One of my all-time favorite characters was for In Nomine, and that game had a bad GM (NOT Meera), as well. But the system was undeniably broken, and broken in ways that broke the world in some places, too. Too simple a system for too complicated a concept, I think...but I have to say, the idea of playing it in GURPS sounds...awful.

As for a bad one... *sigh* I hate to go for the example I think everyone's going to pick, but of games I've actually played, I have to say, Amber. The diceless concept is fine. (Actually, that's not entirely true; I DO have a problem with diceless. Not playing it, but the idea of publishing it. There are several 200+ page books out there that say, "Make it up as you go along." It bugs me. But playing it is fine, especially with some of the GMs Amber's attracted - and I DON'T just mean Meera.) So what's left, of course, is the character creation rules...if you're using points, they should add up. Anyone who's ever played Amber knows they don't.

I like the Attribute Auction concept, actually, and I like the way people use it sometimes for `single-winner' auctions. The attributes you get from it don't work terribly well, and the ones picked for Amber are heavily weighted for a Throne War, but it works well enough with GMs who are using character descriptions more than numbers anyway. I still do like the idea of starting out with a couple rounds of poker even before the Auction, just to make things even worse.

After the Attributes, where the points are officially weighted to mean, "However important it is to the players," we jump to heavily priced Powers, and from there to comparatively underpriced Items, and then on to the completely free skills for potentially very old characters...and you pretty much might as well not have bothered. I suppose the points help people think about their character - maybe having to give some things up, not actually play Merlin. It IS, to me, an improvement over the games that really DO just say, "Ok, describe your character, and if it's OK with the GM, go for it." Amber at least has enough structure that I can sit down and make a character without having to bug the GM every five minutes with, "Is this OK, too?" But if the rules WORKED, then everyone who plays wouldn't have their own. They can't support themselves, let alone the setting...and just don't get me started in Shadowknight.

Okay, and for the final part of the question...um, let's see. I'd like to try Immortals; once I *found* the rules in it (1st Edition), they were interesting, seemed pretty workable, and supported the game concepts much the same way Earthdawn's do (you couldn't use Immortals' dice system without Motes.) I'd like to play TORG, too. (I've been in a TORG game, but it was over a BBS, so I didn't get to use the mechanics much.) Ironclaw, actually, had an interesting way of using the dice - from reading it, I strongly suspect it's broken, but I'd still like to find out. It's tough to get me to say I wouldn't play something, but I'd play almost anything else before Over The Edge. Haven't been able to get hold of 4th edition Talislanta yet, but I know the older versions had great ideas...for *other* games. Otherwise, heck...I even play Amber.

Last week's WISH was one I kind of wish I had no experience with which to discuss it, if you know what I mean.

How do you deal with miscommunications and invalid assumptions as a player and a GM?

Oh, I whine, I gnash my teeth, I scream, kick, shout, and moan. I beg the player to reconsider. I explain why it can't work and then explain it again to someone else (usually the LintKing) because I need to convince myself that I'm really allowed to make that call.

Maybe that's too honest. [grin]

Most of the time the way I avoid it is by letting the player's vision influence mine. Take the G&G move I posted tonight ... which I don't know if I would have ever gotten through without Epoch's handy suggestions of things that "could happen in the fight." While I didn't actually use any of them (actually, in the many permutations that message went through, I did use a couple but they didn't make the final draft as I got a clearer (not necessarily better) idea of what was happening) I did benefit strongly by having some possibilities onto which I could hook things.

That's what I do to avoid it: I give examples. When I get something that's "not quite right" I offer a change or blend it in, or heck, sometimes I just let it go because the game is about the PCs, not "my vision."

Sometimes that's a big mistake.

The truth is, sometimes I feel that the number one thing I can't seem to get across to my players is:

Yes, you can do that.

It's mostly the idea that I'm not always going to work everything someone can do into the plot. I need the players to experiment, to test the world in order to find its boundaries.

I changed my mind. The number one thing I can't always get across seems to be, "Why ask me? I'm just the GM."

Erm. [grin]

There are a lot of places where a failure to communicate on the part of the GM and the players leads to disappointments for the GMs and the players...

Well, my main tact for avoiding such misunderstandings is to mostly stick with a GM who's been with me for more than a third of my life now. This works pretty well, actually - we still have disagreements on occasion, but rarely serious misunderstandings - so I highly recommend it. If you find a really good GM, nail her. Down, I mean. Er. *ahem*

I was in a Throne War at a convention, in which I was, to my shame, the first one killed. I do think this was at least in part because the device I'd based a lot of my character on was a little over-complicated for a Throne War, and required the GM to do a lot of "keeping-in-mind". It had (among other things - I'm not giving *all* my secrets away) the `extraordinary psychic sense' which included sensing hostile intent directed towards my character, and it had the ability to pulse out a variety of negation-style Power Words over a broad area if it sensed such...which, in a perfect world, would have seriously messed with the guy laying in ambush for me. Of course, I don't know that HE didn't have some kind of psychic neutral hat on that kept it from working, but I DO know that what I was asking the GM to keep constant track of was a little hefty for the five minutes you have to explain yourself before a Throne War.

My way of dealing with these things is, frankly, to get over it. In that instance, the GM was a good one (I've been in several of his games, and hope to be in more, which is about the best anyone can say of a GM), and I don't have a problem with his calls...at best, I think of it as the gaming (especially diceless-gaming) replication of a realistic risk of mechanical failure. The more complicated the device (eg. the more the GM has to do, especially without player prompting), the more likely it is to malfunction. At worst, I have an idea how much GMs have to keep track of. I don't GM because I don't have the knack, which leaves me in a pretty poor position to criticize someone who's at least making the effort. Not that I don't think there are some lousy GMs out there, but you know what I mean. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink...er, nevermind, that's not at all what I mean.)

So, for WISH #6 we are to discuss how...

Sometimes the plot of a game requires a GM to keep secrets.

I have a terrible problem keeping secrets because I want everyone to know exactly how clever I and my players are... how deliciously wicked! It's like buying gifts and having to wait for the right occasion.

This is the number two reason I need a co-GM. (The number one reason, of course, being to make PBeM moves for me when I'm terribly busy. The number three reason is pure immoral support. [grin])

I am having to do an interesting balancing act with G&G, wherein all the posts are public. There's been some private stuff going on, and I have done some snips and clips of the public quizzes and the like, but everything is revealed on the surface. Of course, much like any scrying, the trick is in the reading and interpretation, not just the images.

Unlike Nuadha's experiences, one of the very worst things I've ever seen a PBeM GM do is try to "enhance" the game by showing scenes from other points of view. In my goal of creating a place the players can feel comfortable, I don't want to confuse them in giving them information upon which they don't know if they can act.

The source of information is important in the game. While it might seem somewhat trite to reference, of all books, Dream Park, there is the note that I do hold somewhat to having a number of "guides" whose introducing the world to the players has to be true as far as it goes. All other information is suspect (to differing degrees), including what the PCs receive from their senses.

Are those secrets? No, those are the methods by which we dole out plot. Plot is very rich, and can overwhelm in large doses. GMs are careful cooks: we all have our different recipes and methods to flavour plot. Some players are allergic to certain ingredients... [grin] Sometimes GMs have a favourite spice they use a little too much of...(as if you could have too much garlic. Pshaw!)

The LintKing and I joke about the first night of the campaign being the traditional time to let slip secrets the characters have held for potentially thousands of years in backtime. To me it's a bragging ritual akin to a scar contest: "Hey, I'll show you my hooks..." or the opening exposure of cards with a couple kept in the hand so the psychological aspects of the playing is revealed. ("All the better to play you with, my dear.")

Most of the time I don't worry -- I enjoy watching even predictable plots play out at times... like "Eight-Legged Freaks." Normally I'm too obscure for my own good. ("Hey, I telegraphed that betrayal when I told you his name. Everyone knows `Midori' means green, and green is the colour of jealousy, and he smelled like rue... I mean, DUH!")

I did once complain because a GM of mine was a little TOO neat: everything my character had in his inventory was designed against abilities of other players... but "the play's the thing."

Erm. I'm sure that's how it goes.

Joint answer of MT and the Lintking

List three or more maxims/proverbs/bits of conventional wisdom/etc. that you've learned in your gaming career, and explain what they mean and how you've seen them apply in your gaming experience.

Meera uses the Big Three, ("No Plot Survives Contact with the Players," "No Character Concept Survives GamePlay," and "Whenever Meera Has a Dice Giant, She'll Roll All Ones") regularly. The second tier is, of course, "If the game isn't about the PCs, the players should play who the game really is about," "Never underestimate the value of a pointed stick," and "If you can't go through the door, go through the wall." (Actually, we all use that last one.)

So let's look at some of the more personal ones... I suppose, "I had my ballista serviced this morning," is probably a classic Minions line. The maxim behind that being, I suppose, that when the GM asks, the answer is, you've taken care of it. (If someone asks if you're a god...)

Then there's, "...(O, for a regent who knows more about the military than what nice, crisp uniforms they certainly do wear...).." Some NPCs have to be useful. Some of them have to be powerful enough, either to be helpful or to be threats. But careful positioning can make them handy without letting them become overwhelming, and NPCs *can* only help to a certain point. The big decisions have to be the players'. (Has anybody else seen Evil Toons? The bit where the Guide just gives the main character a, "Heck, I don't know," look is hilarious, and nobody else has seen it. Argh.)

"Little magic circles." - DM
"What kind?" - the LintKing
"Round." - DM

Something that some GMs have a problem with, actually, but is an important rule that may tie back to WISH #6. Just because they ask doesn't mean you have to tell them. Probably the most common/important application of this is when players want to experiment with unknown substances, leading to one of the most hated GM answers out there. "What would happen if I do this?" "Are you?" "Um..."

"I moon Benedict." Breaking genre can be very important; it can help avoid assumptions, avoid falling into the classic traps, and, of course, provide good quote fodder. It also helps keep both the GM and the players on their toes - having to respond to something *entirely* unexpected is where you really find out how well you know your character, or for the GM, the world.

"But I've been unconscious longer!" There are a number of systems where choosing `bad luck' is an option to get some extra points. In many games, this comes out being fairly meaningless, because the GM has to maintain a fair standard even in this case. Sure, you can always be picked as the one the trap goes off on, or the one nobody likes when making initial reaction rolls, but the GM literally *can't* make a character completely useless.

"I've got a bad feeling about this..."
"...It's probably where we need to go, then."

This one has good advice under it for both GMs and, even moreso, players. With a good GM, it can be surprisingly easy to completely avoid the plot. It rarely makes for a very good game. Sometimes you HAVE to go into the darkened basement, even if all you're wearing is a bikini. RPGs are inherently a cooperative venture; the GM is expected to do a lot of work making the game, and the players have a certain obligation to suspend their disbelief. Probably the easiest way to avoid problems with this is to make sure your character is oriented to have the kinds of adventures they're supposed to have, whether it means taking "Impulsive" Disadvantages or just mentioning that they have an insatiable curiosity regarding old books with "Necro" anywhere in the title.

We could probably come up with a lot more, but that should cover our dues for the week.

OK, I seem to recall someone saying a WISH response isn't late until the next one is up, so I'd better get this out before the NEXT next one goes up...

Sometimes the plot of a game requires a GM to keep secrets... Where and how do you draw the line as a GM and/or player between what secrets should be kept and which ones are OK to reveal?

I'm sorry, you're not cleared for that.

Okay, I'm tempted to just leave the whole thing at that, but...

The obvious absolute answer, as I'm sure at least a dozen people have already pointed out, is that it depends even more on the game than the players. In a competitive game (like a Throne War, for instance), it's obviously more important to keep players' secrets. In something structured like Ars Magica, where people even alternate GMing, or in a more cooperative worldbuilding exercise like most Letters games, sharing secrets is critical to the continuity of the game.

Personally, I like secrets. A lot. I like having secrets, and I like finding out other people's. I don't like just being told...that takes all the fun out of it. Unless it's by someone who trusts me when they probably shouldn't, but that counts as `finding out'. Several of my characters lie in their diaries. Heck, some of them do it on their character sheets. Frankly, I resent having to tell the GM everything.

In the `public access' games I've been in, I've pretty much always worked with the GM to put some degree of misdirection into the things that go public...or even without the GM, gearing quiz answers and whatnot to be... not lies, to be sure, but misleading. I will admit freely - one of my favorite things in those kinds of games is the added challenge of keeping a secret when everyone sees everything you do...but it's still not my preferred style of game.

I speak mostly as a player. My big attempt at running a PBeM was Paths of Blood/Ways of Stone, a variant-Amber game that was *very* big on secrets. I tried running it as a complete double-blind...even if two people were in the same room, they sent their moves to me alone, and I wrote back what each one saw. This turned out to be the tiniest bit overambitious for someone who still had to work for a living, but I still love the idea.

I can barely fathom sending out little `behind the scenes' vignettes...if I ever did, I can assure you they'd be misleading at best. From a player's standpoint, I don't like them. I'm good at keeping knowledge separate, whether it's something I know or just what different characters in the same game know. But I ALSO know that players figure things out. Sometimes they guess, sometimes they intuit, and sometimes, of course, they're just kidding around and it suddenly makes sense.

But once the players *KNOW*, all that is locked off; the only avenue for the -characters- to know is to have the GM spoon-feed it to them. Bluntly, I see those little tidbits as a form of railroading. If they don't give too much away and cause those kinds of problems, I can see where they have some artistic merit, but I think they should be used very carefully.

WISH number eight...

Pick three gaming maxims that other people wrote about and discuss how you think they have applied, or not, in your experience as a gamer.

Don't take it too personally.

I GM for my husband. There are many good points, but also several bad points with this.

I've discussed previously the laughable idea that I give him preferential treatment. I've found out that I do it in one way: I'm letting him remain in my PBeM far past the point I'd ask another player to bow out from a character, despite his not making any moves. Part of it is because I do know why he has only limited chances to make those moves, and part of it is because his PC is only interacting with one other... who happens to be Our Sweetie. It does, however, limit the interactions that can be made with two series-pivotal characters.

On the other hand, I extend the courtesy to players who have impressed me with their grasp on a character, too. If someone's playing or someone's characterization has really, really grabbed me, I'll leave them in for a very long time... so it's not too preferential.

Some of our longest-lasting spats have been over the acceptance of characters he's made in games I've run. I've made him rewrite characters until I've been willing to accept them. (Over, and over, and over again.) I don't think he necessarily takes advantage of my being the GM (as in, yes, he tries new and unusual takes on characters, but no, that's really open to anyone) it's just that means I need to hold onto a certain vision more carefully.

I have taken some things in board games a little more personally than may have been necessary, but then, you've probably never played Illuminati with him. [grin]

Evil is relative.

I have rarely focused on the difference between good and evil as any kind of plot specific in my campaigns. If there's a choice of sides in my campaign, it is only which motivations you have to reach a certain goal.

The last AD&D game I ran had a little bit of a chaotic nature to it in that the characters were quite willing to ignore the concept of law and what kind of behaviour should be applicable in polite society. (Of course, we had a paladin-thief of Big Mac Daddy as the de facto group leader...) On the other hand, except for some accidental deaths...

With a strength bonus, a barbarian can kill a first level halfling mage simply by knocking into him...

...they were relatively on the side of "good." Some entropy is necessary, after all. (The Liberators in EarthDawn were probably my favourite character class, but then, I kind of like Robin Hood, too.)

When you stop trusting the GM, stop playing.

I've noted before that one should never, ever get into a game where they're directly against the GM. The GM has infinite hitpoints.

The GM does not have to be a fair arbiter. (In fact, most of the time you don't want something strictly "fair.") The GM does, however, have to maintain a certain level of distance between interest in the characters (including his/her NPCs) and interest in maintaining a plot.

GMs are, alas, only human. They can have bad days. They can be annoyed at players. Both will affect the game...the question is more in how the GM "recovers." Frankly, I think I could run a fair game with my ex-girlfriends in it. (I do have a couple of worries against playing with them mostly because if the game ever does come to PC versus PC, I will have a reason to use my 'abilities of immense snarkitude' towards them... but otherwise, I can mostly keep it to myself. [grin])

Abusing trust is very different. It's taking advantage of knowledge. ("The PCs are going to do this...so the NPC enemies are already prepared for it.") It's violating character concepts. ("She's a kick-butt vampire slayer... but she'll find herself as one of Dracula's Brides.") (OK, that last example COULD work... but only very carefully.) It's a number of other GM sins.

Having a GM is a very special relationship, but it still follows the rules: if you're not getting your needs met, or they're being abusive, leave... and everyone's measure of that will be different.

Hmm.

Alright, Julia's, "Go Strider!" touched off a bit of a rant in my mind, so I'll start with that.

GMs have to be very careful with powerful NPCs, *especially* if they're thinking about including them in the party. My advice is, don't. If you want to run a `character' in the game, that's perfectly fair - if I were GMing, I'd do it. But make them, at best, equal to everyone else. Seriously think about running a less powerful character. And keep them the heck out of any kind of leadership position.

GMing is a lot of work, and GMs can end up being somewhat set apart from the players. That can suck. It's a good argument for alternating GMs, and running an (N)PC becomes perfectly legit...but the GM has everything else in the world. The big decisions for the party should be made by the players, and the final showdown should *definitely* be tailored for the PCs. This CAN entail finding out that they were just a feint by more powerful good guys who needed a distraction to get in. Played right, that can turn the PCs against their own side and be great fun. But it's a very different thing to have an (N)PC in the party who `just happens' to be the only one who can win it. Bluntly, while extreme glory-hound players can be a problem, it's not so bad, as long as it evens out in the end... this ties to Doyce's, "Everyone wants to be a star." A glory-hound GM doesn't leave any room for that.

Now, for the actual rant. This was, bar none, the worst GM I have ever gamed under - bad enough that I don't think I've ever really talked about him much, even to Meera. He was the kind of gamer people worry about...suffice to say that having known him for more than a year, I never knew his real name - he went by his character name. Which I won't give, just on the off chance he or someone he knows stumbles across this.

This was his only character. It was a high level, multi-classed character with a fair load of magic items. He ran it in every game, even when everyone else was starting out at 1st level. He'd still use his boots of levitation to get out of fights, and loot everyone else's bodies. When saving throws had to be made, he rolled his behind the GM screen. Can't say I ever saw him miss one. That kind of thing. It was like watching a GM favor their SO, but many times worse.

Outside of gaming, he was a nice guy. Let's call it `quirky', but nice. His GMing almost turned me off gaming, and I can tell you, that's something like disrupting the tides. (OK, I've seen characters that might be able to do that, but...)

That done, I'd like to go with ArrefMak's "So much for Plan A." The maxim goes way beyond gaming, of course (albeit not so critically as the details behind "Dreamguard"), and I know some other people talked about no plan surviving the enemy etc...but Arref said something I hadn't really thought of before.

"If your plan was in shambles, the enemy's plan might be too."

Damn. You ever realize you've been completely blind? I've always figured if my plan wasn't working, it's because the other side had planned better, or seen what I was doing and messed it up...not because *everything* was ruined and they were scrambling as badly as I was. But that makes a lot of sense. Especially if your enemy is someone like Benedict, who was *expecting* your plan. (Benedict's last words, as he's skewered by an invisible assassin: "You're late.")

I'm going to have to remember this one. Right along with Rick's, "Go straight to Get 'Em!" - if getting to Plan B first can win the battle, how much better to kick in the door while your enemy is still working on Plan A?

Finally, I'm afraid I have to go to Tara's "Leave The Boyfriend at Home." I don't WANT to, but there you are. I haven't actually had a bad experience with this; I've seen minimal and even non-gaming spouses do quite well around gaming. It seems to work better when it's at their own home, but I have seen it work fine even without that. Gaming isn't like dragging someone to a football stadium...they can bring along something to do if they get bored for a while, and most of the groups I've been in haven't been so Immersive that they can't handle some out-of-play exchanges that the non-gamer can still have fun with.

All the same...we're about to meet with a new gaming group. I desperately want Our Sweetie to come along. Frankly, I want her to join the game. If it works out, it's going to be all day a couple times a month, and I don't know how happy she's going to be with that.

On top of which, I miss her when she's not around. On top of THAT, when she's in the mood to game, she's a *lot* of fun to play with. (She doesn't entirely understand this. She's not a Gamer, but she's very good at it.)

So of course I want her to go. I don't know if she wants to, though. She keeps complaining that she wasn't there `in the beginning.'

I CAN remember `the beginning' for me - a guy who hung out with me mostly because he had a crush on my sister got me into gaming. He had a homebrew system a lot like Star Frontiers. (Remember Star Frontiers? I almost do. I think the insectile ones were the Vrusk. The ape-guys were something close to Yakusa, and the amoeba guys were..not Drilasi, but that's what I'm getting. Hm. Humans were humans. I'm sure of that. )

Anyway, the point is, offhand, I can't even remember the guys NAME.

Oh wait. Brian. Brian Feiser.

Okay, so I DO remember his name. (And Brian, if you happen to stumble across this somewhere: Thanks!) Fine. The point still stands. NOBODY was there at `the beginning'. Meera came into my life when I'd been gaming (or at least making up stories about gaming) for at least five years. I came into hers when she'd been gaming all her life, and her dad had been a gamer, and her grandfather started doing it for her cousin...

But of course, we both already did it. Our Sweetie has done some, before meeting us, and some since, but if you could slap a label on her, it wouldn't be Gamer.

Which, frankly, is why I so *desperately* want her to come to this new one. New game, new system, new people...as much a beginning as we're going to get.

She seems genuinely interested in going the first time, at least to meet them and help us decide if this is going to work. After that... well, I suppose it's up to her. I'll try to leave it up to her, anyway. I just want her to know she's *wanted*. It's a fine line between inviting and pushing, and I haven't got it down yet.

In the stretch, and into the breech?

Have you ever gotten a significant other into gaming? Those of you in "mixed marriages", where one spouse is a gamer and the other isn't, how did you work this out?

The real problem with this one for me, is not even the gaming, it's the extremist gaming I live. For example, the very nice fellow I was dating before I met my husband-to-be was a gamer.

...just not as much as I was. Am. [hehe]

I have... (counts on fingers) including this one, over half a dozen public gaming blogs on my site....so far. That's not including that we're looking forward to starting a new campaign on Sunday, and I expect I'll put together something for it, as well. (I'm not sure a blog would be appropriate, but I expect you'll hear details here.)

I've been into gaming for a very long time. I don't have many women-in-gaming horror stories I think because I grew into it, and because I had options. I could always play with myself. [grin] I have had men use gaming as an attempt to get dates with me, but I was one of their "kind," and I recognized the strutting, and the showing their colours as a mating ritual. I appreciated the display, even if it was rarely successful.

I understood it to be a fundamental law of the universe that I could only be involved with someone who was into gaming. It's what I do (at least, besides all the other things I do.) My loves are very understanding, in that they know that I will spend time on my PBeMs that takes me away from them. That I will look at gaming stuff, that I need my "fix."

Our girlfriend isn't a gamer.

Oh, she can play, and do it well. Heck, the other night she detailed a dream that she said the magic words about:

"I might have to run a game based on this."

It made me smile.

I can't find the essay I read on Someone Else's Blog about women in gaming. Now, frankly, I stopped reading women in gaming essays after I figured I had the last word on the topic. (Published, even.) It kind of snuck up on me, though, and the good point it mentioned was that it wasn't the games so much as the gamers.

Oh, I try. I try hard. Really, really hard. But Our Sweetie just sighs and says, "You're a gamer." She shakes her head and that's that. I've been put into my place... just because I happen to know that's NOT how Umber Hulks act. Or whatever it is this time.

I am a gamer. I have my own language, my own traditions, my own way of seeing the world, and as sharing a vision is part of a relationship (part of basic communication, darnit) it's hard for a non-gamer to understand me.

I can be taken out into polite company. I'll just make notes for later.

What's the most fun you ever had creating something in a game that changed the game-world? and Have you ever seen or met someone -- in person, on TV, in a movie, or whatever -- who made you think "Oh my goodness, that's my character!" Who was it (if you know), and what were the similarities?

First things first... the first one seems to me to be something along the provinces of the player's input on a game world, because everything the GM does should be, well, a) fun, and b) something that changes the game world (at least to a point.) So in order for the question to pack some punch, it seems to me, like all punch-packing performances, it needs to be something unexpected.

I'm now fishing from a much more limited barrel. This is not a phrase I think I've ever run across, but it ought to be, if you ask me.

I think probably what I've always had the most fun creating are character legends. It was my character Santiago who managed to chase off a battlemech with a pointed stick. Yes, he could have been burnt to a crisp...but it was all about attitude. It was Pikabu who pointed out the usefulness of laser carbines in elevator shafts. It was Princess Krrsed and the newspaper spell. It was Damascus and her launching of her fellow PC Harp... because if he really was in a hurry to the fight, he needed a boost. Heck, I quoted from that game (two ACNW's ago) this morning.

The advantage of character legends is that they're a tool for both player and GM. The player gets the reputation running, the GM has an in-joke that can explain some of the hard-to-buy bits. For example, the pointed stick shouldn't have worked, but...it let the GM keep us alive.

Oh, and it provides for amusing, "No Way! There I Was..." stories. If you can tell them that way.

As for the "character similarity," bit...well, there was Jade from the now-defunct Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon that constantly reminded me of a child-Damascus. The eyes and hair were both perfect, even if Jade was a bit more of a thinker-type. I have a cover for a porno-magazine that makes the world's best Deirdre, IMO. (I should look up the model's name, but if I recall from the rest of the magazine, it's only the cover photo which is perfect. Anyway, I only got it for the stories...erm.) My childhood self could have come from the pages of, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. There are definitely times when I look up at something and say, "That's ____."

Some other examples... The Angel Simon in "The Prophecy" is my "personal Brand." (You know, the example you use to fit a slot in a game until you come up with that game's version of a character.) Ivanova from Babylon 5 often quoted things almost exactly like my husband's character, Aster, daughter of Benedict's point-of-view. I'm a fairly firm believer of the "Nicole Kidman as Florimel" school of thought. Examples in literature are fewer.

Now, as for people I've THOUGHT of making characters for... [grinning]

What do you think about cross-gender characters (i.e., men playing female characters and women playing male characters)? What about GMs playing them as NPCs?

To be perfectly honest, I don't get the controversy. Much of the POINT to role playing is to take on, for a time, the role of something you're not.

Heck, that's where the name derives from.

I'm largely of the school that if a human who's never been off this planet can be safely trusted to play a Vrusk Space Marine, then someone who has known people of the opposite gender *all their lives* can probably handle it.

OK, yes, I can see the point that people are going to have more suspension-of-disbelief problems with something they're more familiar with than with something completely fabricated. It's a little harder to jump up and say, "But Vrusk don't DO that!" (Mind you, Gamers WILL, it's just a little harder.) But you might as well say no one should play games set in the modern world, because we know it too well. (At least, we think we do. "I'm sorry, you say the President authorized shooting down *commercial* airliners filled with *American citizens?* I hardly think so, Bob. That would be political suicide under ANY circumstances - you just can't go blowing up your own electorate." Yes, well, apparently sometimes you CAN, but if it had come up in a game, I wouldn't have bought it.)

To be sure, it could get annoying if someone used it as an outlet for whatever frustrations they may have with the opposite gender. E.g. a man who plays all his female characters as vapid sex-kittens who only think about shopping and gossip, or a woman who plays a string of male characters all as obnoxious beer-swilling jerks who go adventuring in their underwear.

But I get annoyed with tree-hugging elves and dwarves obsessed with gold, too. Even Orcs are being given real personalities these days. There's even a case that RPGs are a better way to get out that kind of frustration than most of the alternatives, but I won't push it - that doesn't make it any less annoying for the rest of the group.

Still, I think that, even on the rare occasion I've seen that actually come up, it can be dealt with without having to throw out the whole concept. This is the first time it's even been suggested to me that the GM shouldn't. Unless you have a male GM and you're playing HoL, it doesn't sound very feasible to me. I think even badly played NPCs would be less distracting to me than a whole world where everyone you meet is the same gender.

One thing I will say is that, when I am playing a female character in a face-to-face game, I do make an effort to minimize the disbelief factor. I'm the only one in our current group playing cross-genders - at least, we're *pretty* sure about Jelica - and I do, for example, make a point of shaving before each session. I don't know if it really makes a difference, but what the heck.

What do you think about cross-gender characters?

This question had me thinking for a while. There are many facets and considerations beyond the obvious...after all, most of the people I know slip with the she/he thing on a normal basis just out of laziness, (and not just because genderbending is a kink of mine or anything. [grin])

(We can't quite remember who played Gerard in that ACNW LARP Todd ran where I did the Worst Rebman Jokes In The Entire World... but she was quite a distraction to me. Whew. [fans self, remembering] Something about the character was portrayed through the player enough... or maybe I have a Gerard fetish. Hmmm.)

I do think it happens to be easier to get women to play with a woman GM, despite the fact that no one's yet taken me up on the challenge of finding anything specifically across-the-board different from male and female players. I do sometimes wonder if men find it easier to play women characters with a female GM or not.

I've really never noted anything that's made me think, "Oh, that's SO unbelievable." Nothing that's made me squick on a gender-bias, but this brings up the chorus: "I play with people who can separate fantasy from reality."

Is it any better to have a woman play a chainmail-bikini-wearing bimbo than having a man do it?

I've never really had too much problem running a "macho" character. On the other hand, it's probably notable that I could care less if the other people in my gaming group thought I was "some kind of dyke." [grinning]

Are you losing something when you don't treat men and women characters differently?

I've seen campaigns where women PCs have been given significantly more potential for power. I've seen campaigns where male characters were (by the system) more likely to advance in level/power. It's still sexism no matter which way it's pointed.

On the other hand, I think that there are valid places for sexism in a campaign. It's another challenge for the characters. (There's a difference, I think, between character 'balance' [for as much as that applies] and campaign plot.)

Does it matter if a man or woman is playing the character, then? Sometimes it does because sometimes it's the GM's set-up that's biased because they know a woman (most often) has joined the campaign. That's yet another aspect.

I think the questions are very different, too, based on the medium in which the game is taking place. While I may refer to myself in the feminine, there are no physical reminders to suggest that it is anything more than a fancy of mine. (Heck, people have thought for years that the LintKing is but an alter-ego. I assure you, he's real and making snarky comments even as I type. Of course, you have only my word for it.) ("And mine," he says. Or so you think.) Similarly, if a man can express himself as a believable woman in an on-line forum, more power to him. Some of the best gay erotica I've ever read was written by women. (Which is not to say, unfortunately, that some of the best and worst lesbian erotica wasn't written by men...)

When asked if someone can play cross-gendered in my campaign, I'm much more interested in if they can play well at all...and no, I haven't been often disappointed.

What role does gender play in general in the campaign? A lot of time, asexuality can be the norm...and the male/female question is mostly a cosmetic piece, part of the description.. As I have run a game where gender and sexual orientation was a [some may say the] significant factor, I think that it's nice if you can treat it like everyone is an adult...and that there WILL be, if you're not running from crisis to crisis (and even sometimes then) attractions and distractions.

The personality of the character, I think, comes through strongest. Damascus, for example, is fairly "gender ambivalent," overall. She's often mistaken for a man, and it doesn't bother her. In the stories I've written for her, however, she's fairly lusty, just not monosexual. Queen Jelica has been known to roll her eyes and mutter, "Women." Marius was quite aware that Paige was a woman...but that doesn't mean he doesn't have issues.

As for whether or not I tend to think GMs should avoid it or not, that's an interesting question.

Frankly, the GM is the voice of "the world." I don't expect every NPC I meet to be fully-fleshed. On the other hand, I do think that what the GM shows of the world needs to reflect the world the GM has built. So if a male GM doesn't show a lot of women NPCs, I'd like to think there's an in-game reason. (I'll be more understanding if it's a matter of comfort level, but frankly, I-as-player think that I should be given a little bit of credit for Suspending My Disbelief As Necessary For Game Plot.)

I won't think twice about it. If it's a guy I'm NPCing it's because his being male is just part of his role. If it's a woman, similarly so. I'll try to portray it just as I will everything else that makes up that NPC's role.

That said, how do you keep the mood? And once lost, how do you try to bring everyone back? Can you? Is it even possible?

This is a question that separates me from the freaky immersionists. (Not that I don't understand the immersion idea, just that I think there's a freaky aspect to it. For someone who dabbles with the concepts I do, creating the scenario for possession just doesn't appeal…)

I understand that mood is a collaborative effort, but as a GM I've felt that it was not unreasonable to rely strongly on the players to make the greater effort to maintain the mood they want. If the players are joking, maybe now's not the time to introduce that treasure chest with all the carefully sliced and drained body parts.

On second thought… maybe it is. Timing is everything.

See, when it comes down to it, I enjoy the perversity of sitting around in someone's house pretending to be exploring a dungeon. Last week's campaign had the LintKing's character noting that there was a "Bloomingdale's" in the city's collection of establishments.

"That's where you get flowers?" my character, Jelica guessed.

"They also sell small valleys," Tanzania agreed.

"Of course! Where do you think they grow the flowers?" Brand the Magnificent added.

(To my fellow Amber players: No relation.)

This could have been distracting. Or, and the way I viewed it, it was a matter of interpretation. We analyze the world around us based on our experiences. I know more about the weight of a motorcycle than the weight of a horse. I have to put my whole measurement of how much Jelica can lift in a medieval world based on my knowledge of how current standards are likely to apply. It's not a "mood breaker." It's a tool.

And what do you do with that one player who is always the first one to crack a joke and break up the tension you've built to so carefully, no matter how many times you've asked/warned him/her not to do that?

See, I don't penalize players for that, because it's true-to-life. If I were investigating a cache of xenomorph eggs, a demon-infested temple, or a bunch of Enron documents, I'd be cracking jokes, too. It's my way. (In some ways, it's my religion.)

Timing and technique are more important than (and different from) tension, and while they are all aspects of mood, some aspects are more important than others.

We laugh a lot in our games. (Right now my throat is a little sore, but my cheek muscles are worse... we laugh a lot.) Frankly, that's a measure of how much fun we're having. I am in this for fun. Yes, there were some serious moments. (I didn't realize Jelica got into nearly-blind rages until she got into her Serious Clothes. Now I realize that she really is scary. It's too easy to play her dumb...)

I was in a group once that wasn't fun. I stopped playing after the GM decided he needed to teach another player a lesson. Now, admittedly, the other player was a bit of a jerk. Not a real bad fellow, just someone who weighed in on the side of obnoxious. You know, the kind of guy who has to roll to see if he makes a critical fumble during his morning ablutions. Who makes the GM roll weather dice. Who is strict to the book but takes advantage of a specialized character class. That sort of guy.

The GM made an elaborate scenario that ruined the mood for me not on a game basis, but on a player-to-player basis. The player strayed on the edge of ruining the mood not because of laughter but because of solemnity. Frankly, I didn't care that his character had regular bowel movements. (No, wait, I did care. I most definitely didn't want to know.)

That was a game-breaker. Was it the mood that kept the game from being salvaged? I don't think so. I think the group chemistry was sour, and the mood was just a reaction to that, not the cause.

Yes, there is a chemistry to gaming. Mood is a part of that, too. Keep opening your eyes to the bigger picture.

The WISH of the Week asked...

How do you like to build character backgrounds?

I dabble with character backgrounds. I need to know my characters before I can play them well, but that doesn't always mean I know everything about them from the start. Characters develop in play for me. I can write down a few things that I know to be true, but until I get a chance to see what my character wants to be like, I'm not going to hold myself to it.

Jelica, my character based off Damascus, in Dave Terhune's "Phoenix Exodus" campaign, is very much an example of putting that process in play. I knew she was ridiculously strong. I knew she was more instinctive than "bright." Her smarts were kinesthetic, an intuitive knowledge of cause and effect rather than, say, being able to tell you how things worked together. I knew she could be a brute. I knew she could have a temper...

I didn't know she had one.

What forces shaped her? To start out, I had no clue. We knew she'd been forced out of her kingdom by a curse and an evil Grand Vizier. Love story? I decided she'd like people to think so - but she turned out too practical for it. She knew he was bad, she just hadn't the political savvy (or, it turns out, the personnel) to oust him. I decided then and there that she was young... if there HAD been someone else, they WOULD have taken over in regency.

She was strong... the GM asked me where her powers came from, saying he'd prefer it to be supernatural. I managed to work this in with learning more of the campaign: since her country was on the borders of the Forbidden Desert, I asked Dave if her family could have been put in place to keep the Desert's creatures from spreading farther... which seemed to work well with the campaign we were playing in, itself.

I can't imagine any character quiz that would have told me so much about her... I can answer character quizzes all day. (Even the ones _I_ design.) I could tell you what she shaves, what she dyes, what colour crayons she'd eat, and if she was an apple, who she'd want to pick her. But who knew to ask for any of the reactions she ended up having: how to handle a dragon-girl who's mad at her? How to wake up with the smell of cheese wafting past her face? Does she cheat at tic-tac-toe? Would she really eat a minion?

Marius, of House of Cards is very similar. I think I decided in taking over the character that all his previous answers were true... but the quiz (as long as it took me) I don't think necessarily asked the questions Marius is struggling with right now. I use the quiz answers to kind of guide the GMs' (love that possessive) view of Marius...and align my perspective.

Now, as a GM, I use the quizzes for G&G all of the time. When there's any doubt as to if someone can do something, or what the consequences are, the quiz is the answer. Same thing was fairly true of SWtE, too. On the other hand, the stories Caine's player has written can override the quiz when Caine needs to do something: that's the benefit of contributions.

I'm writing a diary for Jelica for no points... but it helps me put the actions of the adventure into Jelica's perspective...and I hope it also adds to the GM's knowledge of the character and what I want out of the adventure. That's the important thing for character backgrounds and questioning and the like: where are you as a player coming from? What's your initial premise?

Everything else will change.

What have pets and companions belonging to PCs and NPCs in campaigns you've GMed or played in added? What have their bad points been? How do they compare to sentient magic items in terms of their effect on play (good or bad)?

Why have most attempts at creating a science fiction RPG failed (commercially or artistically)... and what would a hypothetical SFRPG need to catch on the way fantasy has?

MB: It's easy to say, "I flip the switch and the light turns on." It can be a lot harder to explain exactly why the switch works the way it does. That "switch working" is the premise of science fiction, even if there's some steps conveniently assumed along the way. Fantasy does not require the same level of detail or explanation.

Fantasy:
"I cast light."
The switch works in fantasy because the somatic ingredient (the "flipping motion") has been fulfilled, and thus "light" is cast.

Science Fiction
"I hook the battery power lead to the... I've got a large cable connector [rolls for supplies] and the pins connect to..." (Just a clear example of a car light-switch.)

It also relates to my question regarding why we have so many rules for combat, and so little for anything else (unless you have a system specifically designed around, say birthright politics) ... where-in you have to decide what you want to express. Cyberpunk systems (I consider those "science-fiction") were fairly popular for a while... but unless net-running was a combat action, it was hard to keep peoples' attention.

One other aspect of the science-fiction versus fantasy dichotomy may be simply "scale." One might see that while epic, cross-continent fantasy can be done, science fiction is still on a totally different scale. Between space war, interplanetary conventions, and technological issues, the idea is almost too diffuse.

LK: I don't know if it can be done, but I think the question is a little bit skewed. RPGs are dominated by fantasy and horror because those are more fluid, descriptive fields, which RPG-players tend to prefer. Science fiction is harder, more numerically-oriented...and heavily dominates the wargaming market. An SFRPG is caught in the middle - most of the people who really want the science aspect already have a strong genre for it, and likewise the people who want to focus on the fiction. The end result seems to be that people actually interested in role-playing in a more futuristic but still essentially fantasy universe...are a limited subclass.

I don't think it's a failure of SFRPGs. I think it's just more of a niche market than people realize.