Posted on by Magnus Seter

FAL GM tip: Turning the tables on genre conventions

We go through a lot of roleplaying games in our weekly gaming group. Lately we’ve been enjoying several sessions of Call of Cthulhu, the Gaslight version. Great fun and all that, but as things progress steadily downwards for the PCs, we are once again faced with the conundrum plaguing this classic roleplaying game: why not alert the authorities? This problem is accentuated as one of the players is playing an honest lawyer, who sees the civil authorities as rock solid pillars of the Empire. To him, the casual dismissal of the police force and proper authorities is devastating. While this problem might seem to be limited to this one investigator, it highlights a fundamental problem in Call of Cthulhu:

To get things done, an investigator needs to repeatedly break the law.

 Very seldom does this requirement fit with the investigators being played. We have librarians, lawyers,  authors, accountants, some crooks of course, but still … the logical thing for investigators to do when faced with horrible things should be to go to the authorities. And if we play crooks and bad guys, why should we get involved in the first place? Of course, it is possible to structure a Call of Cthulhu game so that this problem does not occur, for example by isolating the investigators in a backwards mountain area, which I have done on several occasions, or put them on a time schedule, or other such tricks. But after playing Call of Cthulhu for 24 years or so, this becomes a tad bit predictable.

So I’m going to try something different. I’m setting up a campaign I’m tentatively calling Cults of Cthulhu. I’m going to turn the tables on the premise and let the players take the role of cultists. I think this can be as fun as playing investigators, and a real kick to get to think as the bad guys do. And have all the problems that bad guys do, with the authorities, investigators, insanity an rivalling cults. Because just like the investigators, the cultists loose their sanity, they get embroiled in things they know nothing about, the meddle in magic, they take enormous risks … but for them, all this has a purpose, unlike for many investigators who would rather call the police and curl up under the bed, praying to an uncaring and probably non-existent God.

The purpose of the cultist makes their actions seem logical and beliavable..And the premise neatly explains why you can’t call the authorities, and why you must avoid the police, the clergy, the investigators, the enemies of the occult … or of the cult, as the case might very well be. Another great thing is that it is possible to use the same adventures as always, with only minor modifications: the cult is to be protected and strengthened. Find out who stole the artifact from the museum, because you want it for yourself! Who killed the old librarian, your cult mentor? Stop the cult from raising Nyarlathotep, because you want to do it yourself! And so on, so forth.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to try this, so weigh in with with your thoughts and tips in the comments!

/Magnus

Posted on by Magnus Seter

GM tip (1)

When the darkest hour is close at hand, I sometimes feel the weight of the Old World heavily on my mind. If I’m sleeping I dream of floating away from my body, of drifting slowly through the muddy streets of Altdorf. I drift by people living their ordinary lives, or leading extra-ordinary existences, or people dying, or being born. I float over the roof-tops, over the chimneys and into the thick smoke that rises to the wind. And I can see all the people below me, as if I was a great chessmaster. I reach out and touch their lives, I command them and they dance to the tune of my flute. They beg, they plead, they curse and cry. And everything they do changes the life of someone else. And then I realise the chaotic patterns I set in motion. How change begets change. And I hear the demon lord Tzeentch laugh, and laugh, and laugh, as he pulls the strings that move my arms and legs. And then I wake up. At least I believe that I have woken up. And I am again in my tower of the Altdorf University, again staring out into the darkness, gripping the sheets, crying, crying over the forces that shape our lives. That change our lives. Change …

Adolphus Altdorfer
Backertag, Sommerzeit 15, 2522 IC

Sometimes fellow gamers ask me what I do to make my games memorable. Of course, the answer is never a straight “this is how I do it”, but rather thoughts on what I find easiest to work with to build suspense and atmosphere. Recently I’ve had occasion to mediatate on this subject, after running a particularily unimpressive Tomb of Horrors (the infamous D&D adventure) for a group of gamers at a private mini-con.

It was a disaster, but the session of Call of Cthulhu that I ran afterwards was a blast and an unqualified success. So what was the major difference?

NPCs.

For me it’s that simple. If I use a lot of NPCs in my adventures, there are good odds of things getting interesting and fun. I also use a few techniques (unknowingly, I suppose) to ham it up a bit and create memorable NPCs. This is especially important in WFRP, where the grim and gritty goes hand in hand with the dark and humorous.

So here are four things I do to make my NPCs memorable.

1. NPC cards. You’ve seen my NPCs, and if not check them out at once! Anyways, I make an card for every major, and sometimes minor NPC in my campaign. I have about thirty or forty now, and I give them out to the players. It’s a good way of getting them to remember who’s who, and what they do. It also makes it a lot less common for theplayers to invent humorous names when referring to my NPCs, a rather common practice not only at my table, I gather.

2. Crazy people. The people the characters interact with often have questionable sanity and strange motivations, and they perform inexplicable actions. People are people and do the most stupid things, so it feels good to include that. And it throws off the players once in while, makes things not so predictable.

3. Spectacular consequences. Whenever someone fails at anything (be they NPC or PC) I try to use flavourful descriptions of what happens and how the world reacts to this. Since people fail quite a lot in WFRP, this makes for a fun game, and has the possibility of changing the pace of the action. Instead of someone just missing with their thrown dagger, the dagger cuts off a rope which falls on a dwarf troll slayer, who then … and so on!

4. Funny voices. I don’t know what my players think … well, yes I do. But I still don’t know if it makes my game better or not. Still, it’s a load of fun!

All this is ideally juxtaposed to a fairly realistic style (very little fantasy elements apparent in the milieu) and high pace action. Otherwise it easily becomes silly, instead of deadly, frantic AND silly.

My players love it.

Well, they really hate the NPCs, but they LOVE to hate them!

Magnus