jaegamer | Entries tagged with inspiration

Listening to music while I work reminds me that I've always taken a lot of inspiration from songs. From movies as well, but in this case I was listening to "Land of Confusion" by Genesis, and it struck me that it's a perfect anthem for a modern superhero game. Or a game where the players are fighting the established order, trying to make right what's gone wrong.

In particular:

I won't be coming home tonight
My generation will put it right
We're not just making promises
That we know, we'll never keep.

and

Now this is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth fighting for.

This is the world we live in
And these are the names we're given
Stand up and let's start showing
Just where our lives are going to.

I've been itching to run a Heroes-inspired game, but haven't found the time yet. This would make a good basis, perhaps along with Mike and the Mechanics' "Silent Running".

( Read more... )

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Land of Confusion, Genesis

Ok, GameCraft is fantastic. I've put it in my link list, and will be checking it out in greater depth from home. Please credit GameCraft if you pass this along.

Getting Feedback - Repeat, Clarify, Probe

First, ask specific questions. Were the scenes and encounters too hard? Too easy? Too long? Did they feel railroaded, did they feel 'adrift'? Stuff like that.

Second, repeat what they tell you. When they answer a question, put it in your own words, and ask if that's what they meant, just to make sure you're understanding clearly.

Third, probe for details. That is, ask about various little bits of what they said that seem to be leading somewhere. The dragon wasn't too tough, just a bit simple. What struck you as "simple"?

Fourth, clarify. Recap everything you've learned by asking. Thank the players for their feedback, and pay attention to it. The players are telling you not only how their priorities were served, but what those priorities are. Try to look at their answers in light of what they are telling you is important about the game.

Current Mood: productive
Current Music: Gene Newton - Safe Passage

This, by Levi, an admin at GameCraft, is so simply perfect that I'm quoting it entire - please credit GameCraft! I don't mind when people quote from my LJ, but it's only polite to credit. In this case, this is NOT my original content, but it's so very good that I want to share it. While you're at it, you might want to check out GameCraft in general.

1. Come For A Good Time
If your primary goal at the table is something other than having an experience you enjoy, and that others can enjoy with you, you should be doing something else. Generally speaking, that means having fun. Sometimes it might be more specific - crafting a satisfying story together, or having the experience of seeing things from the perspective of your character, either in addition to or instead of classically fun stuff. But if what you want when you sit down at the table on any given night isn’t enjoyable to you, or does not allow enjoyment for others, do not sit down at that table. Not gaming is better than bad gaming.

2. This Is Your Gamespace, These Are Real People.
Accept and understand that the players around you are real people that are also here to have fun. Nobody comes to the table to watch one player discuss their personal character’s stuff with the GM when it could wait, or to watch two players crack inside jokes at each other and exclude everyone else. Nobody comes to the table to be treated to the personal aroma of another player, or to closely observe their food being chewed. Nobody hosts a game hoping for a marathon cleanup session at the end. Nobody comes to the table to be the ego-boosting kick-toy of anyone else. Never, ever, forget that you are playing the game with real people.

3. Accept Responsibility
Taking the same point as #2, and bringing it into the game - what you do at the gaming table is your responsibility, and you should accept this. What others do is their responsibility, and they should accept that, too. This absolutely includes what you decide that your character does. This absolutely includes the actions of the GM as world. If playing your character as written could very well interfere with the fun of others, you need to decide where to go with that – it’s your call, though; excuses are lame. If you ruin the game by playing your character or the world ‘correctly’, then you still ruined the game.

4. Give Feedback
Anything from telling the GM “I had a good game tonight” to “here’s ten specific moments of play I really liked, and ten moments I really didn’t”, can help. For the GM, telling the players what they loved about their play, and what they found dull, works the same way. The GM can’t read the minds of the players here (or anywhere else), and the players don’t know what’s going on internally for the GM either. Unless they tell each other. This doesn’t need to be formal – in fact, it seems that it often works best if it isn’t. But the clearer it is, the better; and it’s often good to get a quick idea of this stuff before you start.

5. Share Creativity
No one person at the table has full control over what happens in the game. If someone does, you get some really boring shit. At the very least, a player generally controls most of one character in the game. There are an infinite number of little variants on how the GM and the players share control over who gets to put stuff in, and things work best once the group hits a level of input from each person at the table that they’re comfortable with. Find that level. If you’re looking for ways to muck about with that level of input, there are quite a few ways to do that.

6. Seek Consensus
The people at your table have, if your game is actually running at all, a consensus. The ideas in their heads of what the game is and does match up well enough to produce good play. Sometimes a group will hit on little moments when their ideas just don’t match up, and they’ll need to talk about what this specific thing looks like in their heads and agree on one way to go about it. Once in a while, one of the people at the table will want to bring something in that they aren’t sure will match up with what the others have in their heads, and it’s a good idea for them to mention that before they do.

7. Negotiate Honestly
When problems come up in your group, the first step is to make sure that everyone at the table is onboard with at least the basic ideas of the first five things here – they don’t have to be “skilled” at these things; being onboard is plenty. If they aren’t, I don’t really have any good advice for you – for myself, I likely wouldn’t play with them for much longer. If they are, and you still have a problem, then it’s time to sort that out. Now, my own recommendations on doing that are below, but they aren’t really ‘polished’ and they’re kind of artificial; if you’ve got any ideas on that, I’m really interested. But here’s another standard saying that ties into this – it’s usually a very bad idea to try and solve out-of-character problems with in-game events. That’s dishonest, and doesn’t generally work. Also, using the rules to ‘punish’ your players or ‘get back’ at your GM? Same thing.

8. Consider Your Options.
When someone makes an attempt to alter 'your part' of the fiction - the world if you're the GM, your character if you're a player, you have choices. You can simply agree, or disagree; you can put it to the mechanics, you can modify what they’ve stated and give it back to them. Limiting your options in this case is silly; most advice to limit these options in a ‘positive’ way comes from a desire to keep the energy of the game high, or allow for trust between players above and beyond the basic average; those are good goals, but instead of using limits on yourself and others to achieve them, simply remember that your decisions will affect those things as well as the specific matter at hand.

9. Watch The Spotlight.
At any given instant of play, someone has the spotlight. This doesn’t just mean ‘one person is talking’. It means that if there are a whole string of scenes, one person is usually “center stage”; the scene revolves around their stuff, whether that’s world stuff or character issues or whatever. If that person isn’t you, then you’re a supporting character in that scene; try to play good support, whether that means keeping quiet, offering support or advice, playing up the effects the setting has on your character a bit, whatever. If that person is you, then fill that scene; it’s there for you to step into. If nobody is sure who should have the spotlight, then act as support for each other, until the focus hits. But watch that spotlight, too. If you’re getting more than a fair share, work to make more scenes about other characters. If you’re getting less than your share, then when a scene doesn’t really have a focus, step up and take it. Now, sometimes the players will think that different people are getting too much, or not enough spotlight time – we’re people, it happens. Talk about it; most of the time, whoever’s being a hog or hiding away just needs to know about it - and on those occasions when that isn’t true, work it out.

10. Play the Game At The Game
This is a close partner to sharing creativity. Sometimes, you’ll have an idea about the game before you sit down at the table, about something you’d like to see happen there. Sometimes, you’ll have a whole string of them. That’s good stuff. But when those ideas start to look like a whole storyline, you need to be careful with it. A storyline like that is great raw material, but don’t get too attached; if you get too attached to that storyline, you’ll find yourself pushing to make it happen, and ignoring or working against all the other good ideas and creative input at your table. Remember, at all times; raw material is good. But don’t play the game before it starts – play the game when you’re at the game.

11. Show Your Stuff As You Go.
Almost everybody wants to feel like the fictional world, and the characters in it, are real to them enough to imagine. This is, of course, achieved by describing things. But nobody wants to be bored by drawn-out description, or huge whopping chunks of detail. If the GM rattles of ten facts about the place the characters are standing, only the first few will sink in; likewise if a player does this when describing their character. So, the key is to describe as you go. If a player wants us to know that her character Jill is a graceful woman, she shouldn’t simply tell the group that at character creation; her character should ‘glide’ and ‘move nimbly’ in play – her description at creation need only be a single, vivid image, that she can build on by describing not only what the character does, but how. This works in the same way for the GM; when the characters walk into a abandoned study, it can simply be an old, dusty study, smelling of books; as the characters interact with it, the GM can note the thick books, the puffs of dust as things are moved. One key to a good description that’s often missed is that it starts simple and vivid, and grows as you go, so that it’s never boring.

12. Learn To Speak The Same Language.
This is an ongoing effort that every group needs to make together. Every single person thinks that different phrases and wordings imply slightly different things, and this is one of the biggest things that can knock down even an honest attempt at talking to other people. Your group, to communicate both well and quickly, will sometimes need to hash out things related to this; accept that it’s going to happen and try not to get too serious about a problem until you’re sure this isn’t it.

Feel free to add to this list...

Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: The Marquis Ensemble - Echoes of Tuscany

I've meant to comment on this one for a bit, but have been swamped with other stuff... so a bit behind the curve, Game Dream #4.

To wit:
What is the role, if any, that movies and books play in your campaigns? When entering a new genre, how important do you feel seeing (or reading) a good genre example becomes? Have you ever been assigned a "mood" book to read by the GM, or gone to a group movie viewing? How do you feel about game-based fiction, whether "pulp" novels or movie attempts?

Not so much books, but movies have always been a significant source of inspiration for me. I think that I'm more visually oriented, and movies seem, to me, to lend themselves more to role playing scenarios than books. An attempt to weave in the manipulative psychiatrist from Dean Koontz's "False Memory" failed abysmally; perhaps in books the relationship with the protagonists is too intimate (and too linear) to work for a role playing troupe.

I'm currently writing a scenario for the Living Death campaign inspired, initially, by "The Ghost and the Darkness", the story of the Man Eaters of Tsavo (a true story). I'm taking some liberties, of course...

I ran a monthly Chill gamefor many years, and my best scenarios were inspired by movies. Character update was a relatively complex process, and while I worked with each player to update their characters, I'd have them watch a selection of two or three movies that were inspiring the next scenario. I never 'ported anything directly into my scenarios, so they'd drive themselves nuts trying to figure out what parts of which movies I'd be using. Not only did the movies inspire me, they got the players in the right mind-set for the game. When you're running horror, atmosphere and attitude are everything.

I think my best misdirection was "Candyman". They were sure I'd pitched them into a faithful rendering of the movie when one of the characters woke up covered with blood, next to a butchered body. In the end, though, it turned out they were dealing with a recurring possessing entity, known, among other names, as "Jack the Ripper". The players actually headed to the library between sessions, reading like mad and forming their own theories as to who Jack the Ripper really was.

Another time, they pursued a killer creature across the country as it skipped from victim to victim, corrupting the purest souls it could find. They watched "Fallen" in character, and were scared out of their wits till they figured out that the creature they pursued was not quite as powerful as the subject of "Fallen". Mythology is like that -- there's often exaggeration in the telling.

I wrote a convention scenario, Don't Go In the House, inspired by a combination of Ghost Story, Legend of Hell House and The Changeling (all excellent movies). It's December 21st, and a documentary director is filming a "ghostbusting" parapsychologist as he tries to prove that the persistent haunting of an isolated house is explainable by science. As the sun sets and the snow begins to fall, the characters realize they are trapped in the house, and the hauntings may not be quite so easily explained away.

Music also frequently inspires me. A friend and I (Hi Jason) wrote a two round Shadowrun/Earthdawn crossover scenario inspired by David Crosby's "Hero" and Yeats' "The Stolen Child" (which is performed admirably by the Waterboys on their album "Fisherman's Blues". The story revolved around a team of shadowrunners bereft of their charismatic leader ("The reason that I loved him was the reason she loved him too; he never wondered what was right or wrong, he just knew"), called back together to rescue the ward of the Lord High Protector of Britain. A child, if the report is to believed, stolen by fairies.

I launched an 18 month campaign centered around the family of a character who was a concert pianist inspired by David Lanz's "Christofori's Dream". (Christofori invented the scale exercises that pianists use.) The pianist character had a vivid dream involving the song, her mother and missing -- presumed dead -- father (and a narration I provided), and the other characters were pulled into the dream as well. When a frantic call home revealed that the mother had disappeared, the characters began a race through central and eastern Europe to save her before it was too late.

Someday I swear I'm going to write the scenario that's screaming to get out of Jim Steinman's "Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young"

Specifically:
I've got a dream 'bout a boy in a castle
and he's dancing like a cat on the stairs
he's got the fire of a prince in his eyes
and the thunder of a drum in his ears

Okay, that's enough for now... I need to go listen to music and see what it inspires me to write...

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Halleujah, Rufus Wainwright

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Game = Life

Roll for Initiative!

Entries tagged with inspiration

Musical Inspiration

GMS - How to Get Useful Feedback

How to Have A Good Game

Game Dream #4 (so, I'm a little behind...)

Profile

March 2013

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags