GM Wednesday! - Setting Creation: Sci-Fi

the following series of posts was inspired by the fine folks over at Savage GM Hangouts who have decided to broadcast how they build campaign settings. Since I have run out of things to talk about, and since I work well under pressure, I've decided to go step by step through my own process of creating a setting. This will either give you a front seat to my nervous breakdown, or it will be really cool.

If it is neither then I think we will all be very disappointed.

First up...what do I want?

In other words, what kind of game setting will I have fun with. What sort of playground is going to hold my interest long enough to run a game beyond four or five sessions. What place will I create that I will want to keep coming back to, over and over again.

No pressure. 

In my case it's something like Star Wars with a dash of Red Dwarf. I'm looking for Sci-Fi that doesn't take itself too seriously. So I'm settling on Soft/Fantasy Sci-Fi, "have-blaster-will-Smeg" kind of fair.

Why? Because sci-fi used to be fun. Then Blade Runner came along and it seems everyone has been trying to out-do its dark and depressing tones. I loved Blade Runner, but the new BSG can go Smeg itself. It's time to take the pretentiousness down a notch.


Refining the Genre

Just saying Space Opera (or Space Fantasy) isn't quite enough. There are different feels of Sci-Fi fantasy, yes even the dark depressing feels.

• Dystopian - Waaaaaah! I have a rocket pack but I've lost my soul. No thanks.
• Transhuman - I can be a dolphin one day and a file in the Cloud the next. Who am I? Who are you? Are you sure? Not the feel I'm looking for.
• Sword & Planet - It mostly takes the Fantasy genre to heart and adds guns and sky-ships. Cool but not what I'm looking for here.
• Flash Gordon - This takes pulp down to its roots. I loved the movie from the eighties because it really captured the outrageousness of the original pulp. However it's a bit too outrageous for my tastes.
• Early 1970's-1980's (I consider a genre unto itself) - Big hair, one-piece jumpsuits, space vixens, evil robots, starships that go "roooarrrwhooosh" in the vaccuum of space. Oh, hell yeah! I want this.

Now that I have a style in mind, it's time to examine the tropes that figure into my chosen genre. In other words what sorts of things would I like to see or happen in my little universe. For instance in this one I'll likely want...

• Lawless frontiers
• Overbearing government
• Evil plans involving super-science
• Science too dangerous for dimwits to wield.
• Hives of scum and villainy
• Alien monsters
• Criminal syndicates
• Rubber foreheads (the aliens aren't too alien)
• Lost civilizations
• Pirate rivalries
• Space Vixens
• Silly robots
• Deep philosophical discussions about what was really in that bar glass that result in a three week long bar-brawl that migrates to other bars and....

Sorry, my mind was starting to get a little too detailed there.

One thing to remember is that Fantasy Sci-Fi derived from pulp tales of other genres. I can borrow tropes from Westerns, Fantasy, and Pirate movies and integrate them quite easily. And because I am not taking things too seriously, I can pull in sitcoms and teen PSAs if I want. Nothing is forbidden. I can even do a musical episode.

And finally I should figure out what the characters will be doing.

There are a couple of ways to approach this. One is to pitch the idea of running the genre by your players and discuss what they'd like to do there. Are the players more interested in...

• ...playing spies working for a secret agency in the empire
• ...rebels waging war against the empire
• ...free traders just getting into general mischief
• ...barhopping tourists with really bad luck

Depending on your players they could find a cool angle for themselves in your campaign that you hadn't thought of.

Another way is to just decide for yourself what type of jobs the heroes will be doing and hope your players will dig it. The players I have had in the past were never too picky as long as I was running the game, but when asked they usually went for the Free Trader option.

Since I am prepping this in a vacuum, I'm going to go with the Free Trader angle. However, that means there will be a lot of "finding the job" scenes that could become tedious and repetitive. What if I went with the idea that the heroes are Free Traders, but they are also contractors for a private troubleshooting company. Whenever someone seeks out the company for help, the company acts as an employment agency, hiring out the contract to the right group in their files to tackle the problem. That means that the jobs can find the heroes even if they aren't looking in the right place.

What's more, this troubleshooter bureau isn't official so the local authorities won't recognize or aid these mercenary agents. In fact they'll likely do everything they can to hinder the agents. Maybe the reason that people flock to hiring troubleshooters is because the local authorities are so corrupt that they are charging exorbitant prices from the victims before they start investigating, thus the authorities are only interested in helping the rich. That fits with the oppressive government trope.

So to sum up...

• I have a space fantasy setting involving cool starships, strange aliens and blasters
• It will have that light-hearted, near comedic pulp adventure feel
• And the heroes will be travelling around, solving problems with blasters and bombastity while dodging the corrupt and oppressive authorities, criminal syndicates, star zealots, and power grabbing secret societies

Next week we'll take a look at what I will need to make this setting a reality. What elements of Sci-Fi will I keep, and what am I going to toss?

GM Wednesday! - Temporarily out of things to say.

Seriously.

No, I mean it.

If there are any topics you'd like me to weigh in on, shoot me a pm or a reply.

In fact, if there's anything you'd like to see on the site, shoot me a pm or a reply. That includes art.

In the meantime (totally not game related)...

I've been preoccupied with my girlfriend and household improvements. We've got most of the rooms painted but we a craft room that needs kitting out and then there's the loft. The loft that I get to choose how to decorate.

Originally I thought it would be a great man-cave, but unfortunately it doesn't fit the bill. A man-cave is aptly named - it needs to be a windowless environment with a door to seal away the outside world. Our loft has four windows and three walls (so no door to shut). Hasta la vista man-cave.

It will primarily be used for video games and I want a sci-fi theme. Do you have any idea how hard it is to decorate a sci-fi theme with store bought furniture. It's next to impossible. Ooohhh there's a lot of designers who post designs that would be perfect, but those designs have either no identifiable way to purchase them or cost $5000 for an end table.

The style I want is "retro-modern" or "retro-futuristic". Think 1960's-1970's idea of what sci-fi furniture would look like. All of the good images off of Google are copyrighted so I can't re-post them here. I want to avoid "square" furniture as much as possible and if it's made of plastics then that's a bonus.

We were considering decking it all out like a starship interior, but the windows to the outside world would destroy that illusion and my gf didn't want the windows covered up. So now I'm shooting for a sci-fi lounge.

Unfortunately it looks like we'll have to build some of the furniture ourselves and save our pennies for the stuff we can't build. Ikea isn't going to cut it for this job.

Mojo Ramblings - Play Unsafe!

I just reread Graham Walmsley's Play Unsafe. It's helping soothe my fractured Mojo.

I recommend it, but if you figure the worth of a book by its page size and count, you will be disappointed. As noted by the first reviewer on DrivethruRPG- the pages are digest-sized and there's only about 80 of them, and the product is $8.00. 

If however, you choose to judge a book's worth based on its content then it might be for you.

Are you GMing, but find yourself dreading the next game?
Are you fighting to keep your players on your storyline?
Do you love reading books about game mastery because your as weird as I am?

Then this book is worth your time.

GM Wednesday! - Public Speaking

A good GM has a grasp on the rules and the plot-line of the adventure.

A great GM can present the game in a manner that energizes and focuses the attention of his/her players. This skill in public speaking is invaluable.

Like any form of communication, information can be hard for the listener to follow if it isn't clear or if it becomes jumbled by white noise. In this case white noise is the words "uh" or "um". 

Example from a game I played last week:

"So..um..so you guys see a statue and it's...um... two...hundred feet tall. Uh...hmmm..you can tell that...uh...the head used to have a crown... but the...uh..crown...uh.... has been worn away by time."

That's hard (at least for me) to listen to. Here's that same info again without the white noise.

"So you guys see a statue and it's two hundred feet tall. You can tell that the head used to have a crown but the crown has been worn away by time."

Yeah, I know. It's easy to type this out versus actually saying it. However I have trained myself to avoid the white noise words whenever I talk. Every day. No matter who I am talking to or what I am saying. Sure they occasionally slip out, but they don't punctuate a sentence more than once.

But the above examples should illustrate how these white noise words can suck the momentum out of your game. So what can we as GMs do about it?

The biggest step would be to enroll in some public speaking or even acting classes. If that's not an option then consider this. White noise words slip out to fill the gap between our mouth and our brain. The remedies for this are knowing what we are going to say before we say it, and confidence.

When the heroes come to the clearing of the statue, I know that I am going to give a description of the statue and this is the description. After that is clear in my head (it really only takes half a second) then I begin speaking. A lot of the white noise words are generated when a person starts talking but then stops because they haven't thought that far ahead or they don't have a clear idea of how to present the information. So don't rush yourself. Take that second or two to compose the thought before rushing in.

As for confidence, it's not just the confidence in talking in front of other people. It's the confidence in what you are saying. It's knowing that what you are saying is what needs to be said and that you will say it correctly. I know that sounds strange but it's true. 

As long as you believe in what you are saying, you can deliver it clear and with an intensity that your players will pick up on and feed off of. A lack of confidence in the words will give rise to white noise words and/or you will sound bored as you read it, which is another thing that can kill player momentum.

So go forth! Practice! And believe me that this one skill will make a huge difference in how players enjoy your games.

Allons-y!

Thursday's Child Is Full Of Advice

Always eat the Fortune Cookie first, ...

...because assassins like to brag.

GM Wednesday! - The GM PC

I can hear fingernails scraping across desktops right now. Their are few things that a bad GM can pull on his players that are worse than the GM PC. When players see one, they want to kill it with fire.

I'm here to say that a GM PC can work....wait for it!.....under a very specific set of circumstances.

First, for those of you unaware of why a GM PC can be a bad thing, I'll explain.
A GM PC is a character played by the GM and is a part of the party. However, when done wrong (as it usually is) the GM PC is an annoyance because he literally has god on his side. God will fudge his rolls, make rules exceptions, and give plot protection to his beloved character resulting in the GM actually stealing the spotlight from his other players.

This type of character should be murdered on sight.

So why am I advocating that a GM PC can work?

Rule #1) The GM PC should only be considered when there is an apparent weakness to the party dynamic, where the lack of that knowledge or skill will result in the death and failure of the party. 

And before adding that GMPC, make sure to try and get one of your players to fill that roll first by adjusting his character.

Example: In D&D, a party needs a cleric or someone that can cast healing spells. It's a necessity for the PCs to be able to survive the multiple encounters they are likely to face. However, not every player wants to be a Cleric. Most often, this is the GM PC I end up playing.

Rule #2) The GM PC must ride at the back of the pack. 

That means he isn't there to be the star, or even to share in the glory. The GM PC can and should only exist to shore up a weakness in the party, and that weakness should be a supporting roll. The GM PC should never, ever be the one casting offensive magic of great power or standing on the front line with his mighty battleaxe.

Example: Using the example above of the cleric, healing and other clerical abilities that no other party member can do are the only things he will be good at. He must never outshine a PC in a skill that the PC is capable of.

I will say that the only times I have really felt obliged to use a GM PC was in class-based games where PC roles were strictly defined and segregated. This is because these game almost always require a good breadth of character classes to make a survivable party.

Classless games like Savage Worlds typically don't require a GM PC under any circumstances, only the occasional Guest Star who exists only to provide a specific and obscure knowledge skill need for the adventure. And in the event of combat, these "academics" usually run and hide. If the are combat capable, then a player controls that PC during combat, not me.

So in short, a GM PC can work as long as he stays in a supporting role.

BTW, I suggest reading DM of the Rings to see what a GM PC (Gandalf) looks like.

GM Wednesday! - Deleted.

I was letting my stupid do the talking.

Have you ever done that? Basically this post was written a couple of weeks ago and it seemed like a good idea. I reread it this morning and realized that what I had written was insulting and patronizing.

They can't all be winners and if anyone felt insulted by what I had written, I apologize. Sometimes I'm too busy thinking I'm clever to realize that I'm being a jerk.