I moved to the Atlanta, GA area back in March 2007.After becoming a father and settling down, curiosity and a need to have a hobby, led to "meetup.com" and the "Atlanta Gamers Guild" (back then it was the "Atlanta Dungeons & Dragons Group"). I've already discussed Call of Cthulhu in an earlier post, but there have been other games that I've played and ran in the last two years.
First was Pathfinder 3E. This was originally a homebrew take on D&D resulting from fanbase frustration with the fourth edition. It was my return to gaming after the 90s and the first thing I'd played Stateside. It was good to be back and the game clearly has a passionate following. I felt it had great ideas but was too tactical...I thought it was more about what characters had the ability to do rather than who they were. That sparked the return to Cthulhu. Pathfinder is a very good game indeed, just not for me.
One of my Cthulhu players, Michael Bay, was running "Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying" in the same club on a monthly basis. We have a good rapport so I thought it'd be fun to play in a game ran by one of my players...also interesting to try a setting and system I'd never tried before. It was a very rich experience, there's a distinct Germanic feel to the game. I played a Witch hunter, completely got the concept and ran with it.I ended up taking actions in the game though that brought the campaign to an early close..something we still laugh about now! I did learn that as a player I prefer to stay true to what I think my character would do rather than trying to win.
I then played another game ran by Michael, "Apocalypse World". This is a very new game and has a clear improv influence. It puts the narrative more in the hands of the players with the GM playing more of a reactive role. The GM doesn't bring a structured storyline to the table so you never know what's going to happen. It's a superb, rewarding game though very challenging. It requires more of the players than most games and shines when you have a creative group who aren't afraid of conflict with each other.
In terms of GM'ing other games, I've done one-shots of two other systems. I like doing this as it allows me to try different games without laying out a huge plan in advance and also gives a good opportunity for players to do the same. As they're "throwaways", players can takes chances with their characters in ways they wouldn't normally do and really get a feel for the game. I'll do more of these in the future. The first was "All Flesh Must Be Eaten". I did a scenario blatantly pulled from "The Walking Dead" TV show. It's a great game, the players liked it, but it just wasn't for me. Too heavy on combat and tactics. Also, everyone knows what the "bad guy" is before the game has even started. I prefer, as a GM, to have plot twists and surprises to spring on the players. I'm sure another GM would've done it more justice.
The other game I ran was "Unknown Armies". I chose a published scenario called "Jailbreak", written by Greg Stolze. This was phenomenal...I loved the scenario and prefer to system to CoC. I had a group of players I'd never met before and we really nailed the game. The influence of CoC is clearly there but the emphasis is more on personal horror than cosmic. I ran it again at Dragon*Con in 2012, again to great success. There's a strong possibility I'll run this in 2013 depending on interest and my schedule...which is the subject of next weeks post.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Returning to Gaming - the 1990's
In the early 1990's I was very much a part of the Goth and Metal scene in Liverpool,UK. Apart from the music and imagery, it was were I found and made friends that I had a lot in common with..a sense of belonging. Some of them were RPG fans and wanted to get back into the hobby. This marked my return to Tabletop RPG's, both as a GM and player.
My first step back was through my love of horror. TSR had just released a boxed set called "Ravenloft". This was a heavily supported campaign setting for AD&D 2nd Edition. It was the perfection combination really, a system that had broad appeal and familiarity coupled with a setting that I "got". I ran the published scenarios over a year long period with, in my opinion, mixed success, but the players seemed to love it. The high point was a werewolf adventure in which the players really did very little as they were so intimidated. That was the atmosphere I was looking for, and it would eventually lead me back to Cthulhu years later. I was also lucky to have a group who didn't know the rules very well...if I'd been called out on some decisions it would have been awkward as I didn't know the rules well myself!
The next game that I ran was "Kult". It was a very controversial Swedish horror game with a bad reputation.It was extremely dark and gnostic, but the system was very clunky. I loved it though, but when I tried to run a game it just didn't work. I didn't understand the game enough and simply didn't have the experience to do it justice. The players didn't get it either and felt I was railroading them, which I was...again because of inexperience and lack of confidence. I think in retrospect I thought that the game would just "happen" when I ran it. It only lasted one session.
Around this time White Wolf changed everything with their World of Darkness games. I bought "Vampire : The Masquerade", a game in which the players are vampires in a Gothic-punk modern setting. It was exciting and I was sure I'd have success running it. I never got the chance. The main problem was that my Goth pals weren't into tabletop games, the nearest they'd go was the Live-Action version. My pals who did play tabletop were turned off by the Goth angle, which they saw as pretentious. To this day I know that setting inside out without having played it.
I did get to play some other White Wolf games though, "Werewolf : The Apocalypse" and "Mage : The Ascension"."Werewolf" was fun though I had difficulty getting into character. I just didn't connect with the aggressive, animalistic aspect which is core to the game."Mage" on the other hand fit me like a glove..I understood it and really enjoyed it. It must be noted that the GM for "Mage" had a style that I hadn't encountered before, but it was perfect for that game. He had no storylines, just a firm grasp on the game mechanics. He focused the game on our characters and just reacted to what we did...we,the players, made the story ourselves to a large extent. That takes skill to do, and can be seen in some of today's new game systems. If I were to run a World of Darkness game I would call on my memories of his approach. He definitely helped shape my current style.
The last game I played was "Cyberpunk : 2020". The game was plain cool, loaded with attitude and good fun. It was the same GM we'd had for "Mage". Now it's horribly dated..this was in the days before people really used the internet. I did like the whole idea of enhancing yourself with cybernetics, at the cost of your humanity.
So around this time I stopped gaming. I think a large part of it was the time required. I had started working and simply couldn't be bothered with the time and preparation. It wouldn't be until 2011 that I'd do it again.
My first step back was through my love of horror. TSR had just released a boxed set called "Ravenloft". This was a heavily supported campaign setting for AD&D 2nd Edition. It was the perfection combination really, a system that had broad appeal and familiarity coupled with a setting that I "got". I ran the published scenarios over a year long period with, in my opinion, mixed success, but the players seemed to love it. The high point was a werewolf adventure in which the players really did very little as they were so intimidated. That was the atmosphere I was looking for, and it would eventually lead me back to Cthulhu years later. I was also lucky to have a group who didn't know the rules very well...if I'd been called out on some decisions it would have been awkward as I didn't know the rules well myself!
The next game that I ran was "Kult". It was a very controversial Swedish horror game with a bad reputation.It was extremely dark and gnostic, but the system was very clunky. I loved it though, but when I tried to run a game it just didn't work. I didn't understand the game enough and simply didn't have the experience to do it justice. The players didn't get it either and felt I was railroading them, which I was...again because of inexperience and lack of confidence. I think in retrospect I thought that the game would just "happen" when I ran it. It only lasted one session.
Around this time White Wolf changed everything with their World of Darkness games. I bought "Vampire : The Masquerade", a game in which the players are vampires in a Gothic-punk modern setting. It was exciting and I was sure I'd have success running it. I never got the chance. The main problem was that my Goth pals weren't into tabletop games, the nearest they'd go was the Live-Action version. My pals who did play tabletop were turned off by the Goth angle, which they saw as pretentious. To this day I know that setting inside out without having played it.
I did get to play some other White Wolf games though, "Werewolf : The Apocalypse" and "Mage : The Ascension"."Werewolf" was fun though I had difficulty getting into character. I just didn't connect with the aggressive, animalistic aspect which is core to the game."Mage" on the other hand fit me like a glove..I understood it and really enjoyed it. It must be noted that the GM for "Mage" had a style that I hadn't encountered before, but it was perfect for that game. He had no storylines, just a firm grasp on the game mechanics. He focused the game on our characters and just reacted to what we did...we,the players, made the story ourselves to a large extent. That takes skill to do, and can be seen in some of today's new game systems. If I were to run a World of Darkness game I would call on my memories of his approach. He definitely helped shape my current style.
The last game I played was "Cyberpunk : 2020". The game was plain cool, loaded with attitude and good fun. It was the same GM we'd had for "Mage". Now it's horribly dated..this was in the days before people really used the internet. I did like the whole idea of enhancing yourself with cybernetics, at the cost of your humanity.
So around this time I stopped gaming. I think a large part of it was the time required. I had started working and simply couldn't be bothered with the time and preparation. It wouldn't be until 2011 that I'd do it again.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
How I got started in Tabletop RPG's - the 80's
This week we're going back to the beginning...how I got into this hobby in the first place.
Back around 1982 at the tender age of 10, I was the classic bookworm, painfully shy too. My best friend was quite the opposite in manner, very confident and outgoing. He'd found out that a boy in the grade above us, from Canada no less, was started a club at lunchtime to "run a game called Dungeons & Dragons". I had absolutely no idea what this meant, but decided to go out of curiosity.
It was the only session I attended, but I still remember it vividly. The game was a shared story, one in which we created the characters in the story, acted those roles and made decisions. It was a really odd concept at first that I struggled with. The game was played with dice that I didn't even know existed...I'd only ever seen ones with six sides before. I was playing a ranger and befriended a creature called a Centaur...had no idea what either of those things were. I was given a lot of guidance in the game and,as you can see, have strong recollections of it thirty years on. That was the last time I played a group game until five years later.
Over the next few years, the same friend who introduced me to D&D lent me a new book he'd bought. It was called "The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain", the first in a series of "Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks". It was heavily influenced (choosing my words carefully here) by "The Hobbit", but what made it different was that the reader made decisions at the end of each paragraph, which would decide the path of the story. It also used basic dice mechanics that I'd seen in D&D. This for me was amazing. I, the solitary bookworm, could play the games without having to find or join a group. I ended up playing through over forty books. Most were from that series ("Deathtrap Dungeon was probably the best) though there were other series too, such as "Lone Wolf".My personal favorite was "The Way Of The Tiger"..a Ninja book that influenced me to the extent that I joined a martial art club.
Roll forward to 1987, where I was in my teens and in high school. I'd managed to make a small group of friends who were also gamers. One of them ran Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, so now I got another shot at the game. He was a superb Gamesmaster...very patient, excellent at storycraft and knew the rules inside out. I bought the rulebooks myself, but lacked the patience or interest to fully grasp the rules of this system..more on that in future posts. I did enjoy the sessions, with little interest in being a GM myself.
As time passed, we discussed other games they'd played and ones that we were interested in trying. We were all big Star Trek fans, so I took the plunge and bought the official Star Trek RPG published by FASA. That was heavy reading, very detailed, but the character generation was incredible. Players decide what position they want to play and then have to build an entire history for that character. My players loved that aspect so much that we had several sessions creating different characters without ever playing the game...so it went nowhere quick.Still, it was my first experience as GM, primarily as no-one else would run it!
The next game that I had a shot at running was "Call of Cthulhu". I always loved horror, the game seemed like such a novelty too..I'd never even heard of H.P. Lovecraft let alone read any of his work, and I didn't know how to pronounce the name of the game. So I went ahead and ran the classic introductory scenario in the rulebook, "The Haunting". This was a very different experience for me...it was a bare-bones scenario with few rules in which I was encouraged to be manipulative,ruthless and play on the paranoia of the players. This I did very well indeed...one of the player characters fled the scene (the correct way to play this game,and totally acceptable)..the other player stormed out of the game session. He felt that the other player had betrayed him. Granted, we were teenagers then and not terribly mature, but I didn't realize until years later that such a reaction can be common amongst players, especially those used to D&D..a game based on camaradarie and teamwork. "Cthulhu" showed a world were the characters aren't heroes, they're regular people who will flee in the face of supernatural horror..else die or be driven insane by the experience. The fallout from that game pretty much ended my group games until the next decade...the subject for next week.
Back around 1982 at the tender age of 10, I was the classic bookworm, painfully shy too. My best friend was quite the opposite in manner, very confident and outgoing. He'd found out that a boy in the grade above us, from Canada no less, was started a club at lunchtime to "run a game called Dungeons & Dragons". I had absolutely no idea what this meant, but decided to go out of curiosity.
It was the only session I attended, but I still remember it vividly. The game was a shared story, one in which we created the characters in the story, acted those roles and made decisions. It was a really odd concept at first that I struggled with. The game was played with dice that I didn't even know existed...I'd only ever seen ones with six sides before. I was playing a ranger and befriended a creature called a Centaur...had no idea what either of those things were. I was given a lot of guidance in the game and,as you can see, have strong recollections of it thirty years on. That was the last time I played a group game until five years later.
Over the next few years, the same friend who introduced me to D&D lent me a new book he'd bought. It was called "The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain", the first in a series of "Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks". It was heavily influenced (choosing my words carefully here) by "The Hobbit", but what made it different was that the reader made decisions at the end of each paragraph, which would decide the path of the story. It also used basic dice mechanics that I'd seen in D&D. This for me was amazing. I, the solitary bookworm, could play the games without having to find or join a group. I ended up playing through over forty books. Most were from that series ("Deathtrap Dungeon was probably the best) though there were other series too, such as "Lone Wolf".My personal favorite was "The Way Of The Tiger"..a Ninja book that influenced me to the extent that I joined a martial art club.
Roll forward to 1987, where I was in my teens and in high school. I'd managed to make a small group of friends who were also gamers. One of them ran Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, so now I got another shot at the game. He was a superb Gamesmaster...very patient, excellent at storycraft and knew the rules inside out. I bought the rulebooks myself, but lacked the patience or interest to fully grasp the rules of this system..more on that in future posts. I did enjoy the sessions, with little interest in being a GM myself.
As time passed, we discussed other games they'd played and ones that we were interested in trying. We were all big Star Trek fans, so I took the plunge and bought the official Star Trek RPG published by FASA. That was heavy reading, very detailed, but the character generation was incredible. Players decide what position they want to play and then have to build an entire history for that character. My players loved that aspect so much that we had several sessions creating different characters without ever playing the game...so it went nowhere quick.Still, it was my first experience as GM, primarily as no-one else would run it!
The next game that I had a shot at running was "Call of Cthulhu". I always loved horror, the game seemed like such a novelty too..I'd never even heard of H.P. Lovecraft let alone read any of his work, and I didn't know how to pronounce the name of the game. So I went ahead and ran the classic introductory scenario in the rulebook, "The Haunting". This was a very different experience for me...it was a bare-bones scenario with few rules in which I was encouraged to be manipulative,ruthless and play on the paranoia of the players. This I did very well indeed...one of the player characters fled the scene (the correct way to play this game,and totally acceptable)..the other player stormed out of the game session. He felt that the other player had betrayed him. Granted, we were teenagers then and not terribly mature, but I didn't realize until years later that such a reaction can be common amongst players, especially those used to D&D..a game based on camaradarie and teamwork. "Cthulhu" showed a world were the characters aren't heroes, they're regular people who will flee in the face of supernatural horror..else die or be driven insane by the experience. The fallout from that game pretty much ended my group games until the next decade...the subject for next week.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Call of Cthulhu RPG - Two Years of Madness
"Call of Cthulhu" is a tabletop role-playing game by Chaosium, based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
It's a horror game set in the 1920s, the era in which Lovecraft wrote most of his work. The game has been around since the 1980s and is generally considered to be one of the classic RPGs and a forerunner of the horror genre, with the 7th edition of the core rules being released in 2013.
Lovecraftian horror is noted for being very bleak. The horrors faced by characters are so powerful,alien and utterly unknowable that the characters rarely survive...if they do, they are often driven insane.
"Sanity" is an actual game statistic in this game. As the player characters encounter more and more horrific creatures and situations, they lose "Sanity points". This results in mental disorders which players have to incorporate into their characters, eventually reaching the point where the characters are unplayable.
This isn't a game about crawling through dungeons, finding treasure and killing the monsters. It is possible to "win", but winning here means staying alive and keeping your mind intact. Running away is a totally acceptable tactic.
I have been running monthly sessions of the game at an open door "meetup" group since early 2011 and ran my last session of the year yesterday. This is a departure point for me of sorts, as next year I'll be stepping away from the 1920s "Classic era"setting to base the games in the "Delta Green" setting in the 1990s. More on that later and in months to come!
With all that said, I thought I'd make my first blog post about my own experiences and thoughts on how it's played out over two years. I would also add that this game has been a big deal for me. I hadn't roleplayed or GMed since the early 1990s, so I was running a game with a lot of rust, and for people who I didn't know at all.
One of the biggest challenges is the monthly meetup format in which I work. The game is open to anyone to join, so when I'm preparing a session I really don't know in advance how many returning players I'll have versus new ones. The good thing about that is that I have to frame my games in such a way that they will work as "one-shot" standalone scenarios, playable in a single 5 hour session. It keeps me on my toes from a storytelling perspective and makes me a better GM...I have to make my game session playable,accessible and downright fun for a newbie as well as someone who's been with me from the start.
The downside to that is the viability of campaigns...I've tried one and it really didn't work. Too many threads in the game get lost with inconsistent player attendance, and with sessions being a month apart it's hard to keep momentum.
I've recently struck a happy medium between the two. I aim now for games that be done in two sessions, but break the story up into significantly different sections so that someone who jumps in on the second part can still feel they played a distinct game.
In future blogs, I'll talk more about GM styles and what my approach is, the different Cthulhu settings, published scenarios that I've run, published ones that I've "tweaked", stuff that I came up with myself,and the non-Cthulhu games that I plan to run.
But next time, we'll talk about the past and how I got into RPGs in the first place.
It's a horror game set in the 1920s, the era in which Lovecraft wrote most of his work. The game has been around since the 1980s and is generally considered to be one of the classic RPGs and a forerunner of the horror genre, with the 7th edition of the core rules being released in 2013.
Lovecraftian horror is noted for being very bleak. The horrors faced by characters are so powerful,alien and utterly unknowable that the characters rarely survive...if they do, they are often driven insane.
"Sanity" is an actual game statistic in this game. As the player characters encounter more and more horrific creatures and situations, they lose "Sanity points". This results in mental disorders which players have to incorporate into their characters, eventually reaching the point where the characters are unplayable.
This isn't a game about crawling through dungeons, finding treasure and killing the monsters. It is possible to "win", but winning here means staying alive and keeping your mind intact. Running away is a totally acceptable tactic.
I have been running monthly sessions of the game at an open door "meetup" group since early 2011 and ran my last session of the year yesterday. This is a departure point for me of sorts, as next year I'll be stepping away from the 1920s "Classic era"setting to base the games in the "Delta Green" setting in the 1990s. More on that later and in months to come!
With all that said, I thought I'd make my first blog post about my own experiences and thoughts on how it's played out over two years. I would also add that this game has been a big deal for me. I hadn't roleplayed or GMed since the early 1990s, so I was running a game with a lot of rust, and for people who I didn't know at all.
One of the biggest challenges is the monthly meetup format in which I work. The game is open to anyone to join, so when I'm preparing a session I really don't know in advance how many returning players I'll have versus new ones. The good thing about that is that I have to frame my games in such a way that they will work as "one-shot" standalone scenarios, playable in a single 5 hour session. It keeps me on my toes from a storytelling perspective and makes me a better GM...I have to make my game session playable,accessible and downright fun for a newbie as well as someone who's been with me from the start.
The downside to that is the viability of campaigns...I've tried one and it really didn't work. Too many threads in the game get lost with inconsistent player attendance, and with sessions being a month apart it's hard to keep momentum.
I've recently struck a happy medium between the two. I aim now for games that be done in two sessions, but break the story up into significantly different sections so that someone who jumps in on the second part can still feel they played a distinct game.
In future blogs, I'll talk more about GM styles and what my approach is, the different Cthulhu settings, published scenarios that I've run, published ones that I've "tweaked", stuff that I came up with myself,and the non-Cthulhu games that I plan to run.
But next time, we'll talk about the past and how I got into RPGs in the first place.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Welcome to the corner!!
Welcome!!
This is the blog of Paul McBride, known in some circles as "Paulito".
I hail from Liverpool, England and now reside in Georgia, USA.
I've spent a good part of my spare time in the last few years getting back into the world of Tabletop RPGs, both as a gamesmaster and player. I'll be blogging about this subject a lot, along with some of my other interests (expect anything from boxing to philosophy).
Hope you enjoy, and thanks for visiting.
Paulito
This is the blog of Paul McBride, known in some circles as "Paulito".
I hail from Liverpool, England and now reside in Georgia, USA.
I've spent a good part of my spare time in the last few years getting back into the world of Tabletop RPGs, both as a gamesmaster and player. I'll be blogging about this subject a lot, along with some of my other interests (expect anything from boxing to philosophy).
Hope you enjoy, and thanks for visiting.
Paulito
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