Game = Life

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...

Over the holiday (which was somewhat gaming parched), I played another Living Dragonstar scenario, and it was everything that its sibling wasn't.  While the story was fairly linear, I felt that we had some flexibility to be creative in how we resolved the story's issues.  I think my favorite moment was when my mostly-non-combatant/support character (a retired combat medic, now a priest of the Father) confronted the minions of the Big Bad (lizardmen, essentially). 

"I am a powerful shaman, and if you don't bring us our missing friend, I will have to hurt you."  (holding out a "tangle" grenade).  GM says: roll intimidate -- dicebot (for once!) is my friend and a 20 comes up.  The lizardmen quiver, shake, wet themselves and flee in terror...

:: chuckle :: Aiden may never get over himself after that one...

In other play... our Friday night home campaign met again after our holiday break (withdrawal, major withdrawal), and the GM did something that I found very interesting.  He presented us each with a survey, asking questions about what we like, dislike, want more of, want less of, etc.  I found it hard to answer, because I'm so essentially happy with the campaign.  Still, I thought it was a courageous move on his part, and it only cements my respect for him as a GM.

On the down/depressing side, the Tuesday night Adventure! game is cancelled on accounta Real Life(tm).  *sigh*  Rick's a great GM and our last session rocked... but they changed his hours at work, and with players all over the country there really isn't a time when he could run it for us and still be able to function at work. At least he hasn't been off-shored yet, and maybe we'll be able to do something via PBEM.  But I'll miss it -- I was just starting to feel like I had some connections to some of the other characters.

It is a hobby, though, and Real Life(tm) still gets to take priority.

Padawannabes is off to the bosses in Renton. Unfortunately it took me two more evenings than I had hoped it might. Ah, well... time enough to sleep when I'm dead.

Tonight we play Adam's home campaign again after a week off for the holidays. We ended on a cliffhanger, as, on returning from a dungeon foray with resources depleted, we opened the door on complete and unnatural darkness... (Uh oh)

I play Eren Willowburr, a young halfling wizard in that game. She grew up near a wild magic zone, and has a profound fascination with all things magical. This is the team that meshes so well together. Our motto: Teamwork, Magic and Luck!

A phrase sure to send people scrambling for the doors! But... since this is my gamer blog, I'm going to post things like this here, so if ya don't wanna read it, don't! I'll do my best to be entertaining.

Though I somewhat cordially loathe D&D and D20, I am nonetheless playing in two D&D Home campaigns. Go fig. It's what the GM's (both men I respect enormously) and the other players want, and I am having a great time.

On Sundays, I play in a Forgotten Realms campaign. I have two characters in this game currently -- for story reasons the group of characters split into two groups, and for the players whose primary character wasn't in the group, we created lower level characters. The GM suggested at the beginning that our 2nd character might, in time, be a cohort or henchman for the primary character. So, we alternate weeks -- one week we're with the Southern group, cleaning out baddies from the Spiderhaunt woods to make travel on the road safe again; the next we might be with the Northern group, negotiating with refugees from Zhentil Keep to get them to side with our patron, Randal Morn, in the fight to take the Dalelands back from the Zhents.

My secondary character is Adrian Montrose, a Sembian rogue/mage (mostly mage), a younger son of a successful mercantile family. He's also a devotee of Sune, and practices her tenets to the best of his ability as a lay worshiper, especially that part about "perform a loving act every day". The group has been negotiating with a group of Tempites driven from Zhentil Keep (seems Cyric wants to be the only god in town...).

The visit to the Tempite camp has been very trying for Adrian; most of the women there are perfectly capable of snapping him in half with one hand. (I made some very poor rolls when creating Adrian -- 7 str, 9 wis.)

However -- he discovered in the course of the negotiations that a Tempite cleric/soldier named Sergei was deeply enamored of one Deacon Lt. Catherine, and so Adrian became determined to see if he could smooth the path of true love. This led to things like sneaking around tents at night spying, as rumor had it that Catherine was seeing someone on the sly. That turned out to be Catherine sneaking out to spend time with the Monseigneur/Commander -- her father! (Which had to be kept secret as that sort of nepotism -- children serving under parents -- is frowned upon. Adrian, btw, has kept that secret from his companions -- he didn't see that they needed to know, and felt he should respect the lady's privacy.)

In part as a result of the negotiations, the larger group split into two. Both Sergei and Catherine went the group that is going to ally with Randal, so Adrian figured he'd take a shot. He maneuvered the two of them together around the evening fire... and Catherine turned nervous as a cat, like a schoolgirl terrified of her first date. Thinking that he might be able to get her to relax, the following evening Adrian plied her with wine and turned on the charm. Unfortunately, that worked too well, and Catherine began flirting with him. Which, of course, Sergei saw. So now, instead of helping the lovers to get together, Adrian managed to drive a wedge between them. He extricated himself from Catherine (managing to offend her in the process) and went out to drink, think and pound his head against a tree. Finally, he decided he needed to come clean with Sergei in desperate hopes of saving the romance.

Sergei, understandably feeling betrayed by someone he'd thought a friend, wasn't overly welcoming. (Did I mention that I made some horrible diplomacy rolls?) Adrian made every argument he could think of, growing increasingly desperate, and finally gave Sergei his last bottle of fine wine, with instructions to use it in his pursuit of Catherine. He went away sad and discouraged, convinced he'd done a disservice to the Lady of Love (and his two friends)... but wait -- what should he hear later but that Sergei and Catherine are off taking a walk together, hand in hand! It seems that Sergei took his wine and advice, and now the two are on the road to a relationship.

Score one for true love!

Evidently Lady Firehair was pleased with Adrian's efforts, because he managed to charm one of the other women into a very energetic dalliance. (Good thing he's got a good constitution, and my dice finally decided to be kind to me, or she probably would have inadvertently killed him. Ah... but what a way to go!)

A side note: Silveran (an elven monk) seems to have absolutely no sense of decorum whatsoever when it comes to discussion of intimate matters (he offered newlywed Carenza a potion of Enlarge with the suggestion that it might improve her marital relations). He spotted Catherine flirting with Adrian, and concluded that the charming rogue was, well, being a charming rogue. He was prepared to read Adrian the riot act (but couldn't find him at the time).

I can't remember the exact circumstances, but when Silvaran found that Sergei and Catherine were together after all, he concluded that Adrian had been noble and spurned Catherine in favor of Sergei. So, instead of a lecture about his profligate ways, Adrian was treated to a somewhat bizarre lecture of congratulations upon his rising above his baser nature. Adrian was unable to completely stifle guffaws of laughter; I laughed so hard it induced an asthma attack -- always a sign I am laughing well and long.

Since I as the player in the persona of Adrian had been working all summer to get Sergei and Catherine together, it was indeed triumphant.