An Assassin s Advice. Ariel Segall. March 27, 2015

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1 An Assassin s Advice Ariel Segall March 27, 2015

2 Talk Outline Roles and Characterization Runtime GMing From the perspective of an Assassins Guild GM

3 Vocabulary and Disclaimers Assassin Standard terms used in this talk: GM Game Master; person writing or running the game. Runtime GMing The skill of running (rather than writing) the game Mechanics Game rules and other mechanisms for interacting with the environment Cheese To violate the clear intent of the rules using corner cases in the letter of the rules. I write primarily plot and character driven games. The contents of this talk are solely Ariel s opinion, and should not be treated as the opinion of the MIT Assassins Guild or any other member of it.

4 Characters: Why Bother? They re fun They give the GMs control They can give players a chance to shine

5 (Some) Joys of Roleplaying Be someone else for a day Try new social skills risk-free Play out fantasies Tell someone else s story Make-believe is just plain fun!

6 Can I Skip Characterization? You might think letting people play themselves is easy. No characters to write! Everyone knows how to play themselves, right? 1 Players introduce huge numbers of variables. Awkward questions that invite arguments Why don t I have my (gun/friends/ham radio/...) with me? I knew I was walking into a dangerous situation. Unexpected skills Factoring six-digit numbers in their head? Military training? Computer hacking? The phone number of top government officials? Unexpected items Multitool? IR camera? Electronics kit? Lockpicks? Complete hostile-territory survival kit? 1 Actually, very few people know how to play themselves in life-or-death situations. Some of the ones who do are traumatized by it. Use caution.

7 Characters and GM Control Characters let you define your initial game state and limit surprises. Why are these people here? What do they want? What do they know? What do they have? What can they do? Choose player skill impact when designing mechanics. Lots of player skill use: high satisfaction on success, low predictability Low player skill use: High predictability, low player feelings of accomplishment

8 Characters in a Nutshell If your players can answer the following questions for their character, you ve made a good start. Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here? What can you do? (Meta-question) What makes you awesome?

9 The Importance of Awesome Very few people want to play out incompetence fantasies. Very few people want to play someone boring. Good rule of thumb: Each player should think their character is awesome. Awesome comes in many flavors; different people like different kinds. Awesome trope ( I m James Bond! ) Awesome backstory ( I m a Gryffindor who s secretly working for the Death Eaters! ) Awesome reveals ( I m not just the janitor, I m a shape-shifting alien terrorist! ) Awesome powers ( I can fly! And throw fireballs! ) Awesome needs to be visible to players to count

10 Roles Three related problems: How do we make each character feel awesome and useful? How do these characters work together as a group? How do we give each player time in the spotlight? Roles can help us answer all three of these. What s the difference between a character and a role? A character is a person. A role is a job. Roles are not required but they re a useful model for games with quick-start characters and a strong group dynamic.

11 Classic Roles: The D&D Party Thief Magic User Fighter Cleric

12 Classic Roles: The MMO Group DPS Tank Controller Healer

13 Classic Roles: Shadowrun Face Decker Mage Rigger Thrud

14 Creating Relevant Roles: Useful Questions What actions do you expect players to be taking? What opposition do you expect them to be facing? How do you expect them to interact with the environment? How do you expect them to interact with each other? What skills do you expect them to need?

15 Creating Relevant Roles: From Questions to Answers What would make someone particularly good at these? Skills? Items? Extra information? Extra time? Group the results into approximately your number of players Try to keep them thematically coherent Sometimes you get a jack-of-all-trades Sometimes it s good to have two of one skill set but keep in mind they both need a chance to show off Sometimes you can give players a choice For each one, give it a schtick and a mechanical effect

16 Creating Relevant Roles: The Ideal Party Approach An alternate approach to the same problem: Imagine a group who d succeed at your tasks with flying colors. What do they each do? What makes them succeed where someone else might fail? Make those traits define your roles.

17 Dangerous Roles and Group Dynamics One of the obvious roles: The Leader Leader roles are dangerous Chances are, at least one of your players will be a natural leader In a conflict between the natural leader and the leader role, no one wins In high-adrenalin situations, people tend to follow loud and confident Quiet, non-assuming people often get ignored Even if they have the right idea and the loud person is wrong! Including people is a leadership skill not everyone has A good role can give a quiet player a chance to do things and be heard

18 Roles and Characters: Summary Characterization is fun and useful Roles can give your players a clear sense of what they can do and where they fit in the group Characters and roles help GMs predict what players can and will do Remember the five character questions: Who am I? What do I want? Why am I here? What can I do? (Meta-question) Why am I awesome?

19 Talk Outline Roles and Characterization Runtime GMing

20 Runtime GMing Basics Running a game is stressful! (Even if you love it.) Things will go wrong. You ll have screwed up somewhere. People may get upset. This is perfectly normal. Most problems can be fixed or mitigated. Players will always surprise you. They will ask questions you didn t anticipate. They will do things you didn t expect. They will fail to notice what you think is obvious. As long as the players have fun, the game is a success.

21 Useful Runtime Rules of Thumb If you re getting stressed or frustrated, step outside and take a breather. Let me think about that and get back to you is almost always an acceptable answer. If there s a timer ticking, Use X for now, but I ll get back to you with a long-term answer in a few minutes works. Whenever possible, consult with your fellow GMs. In a rapidly written game, you won t all know everything. You may have different impressions of the obvious answer. If you make a ruling, always tell your fellow GMs immediately. Otherwise, players may get contradictory answers!

22 Handling Player Requests (1/2) Players will often ask you for things. Best first response: What do you expect that to do for you? or Why do you want that? Adversarial school response: Default to saying no. Assumes the players are out to trick the GMs; saying yes will give them an advantage. Can alienate players, encourage them to never go to the GMs. Reduces insight into how game is running or breaking. Ally school response: Default to saying yes. Goal is for players to have fun; give them what they need. Can unbalance game, incentivize asking the GM instead of trying alternate solutions.

23 Handling Player Requests (2/2) Ariel s approach: Yes, but, No, but, or No, because Think about the consequences of the ruling. Think about what the player says they want. Ask: Could this unbalance game for other players? In a purely cooperative game, probably not! If there s competition, quite possibly. If you approve the request, don t give open-ended answers; tailor them for the player s request. Don t cheese this! is an acceptable constraint if you don t see the exploit but suspect one might be there. If you deny the request, ask: does the player have a reasonable problem? If so, is there a less dangerous way to solve it? When possible, address their real concerns. If that s not possible, at least tell them why. Either way, you stay an ally, and they ll keep providing you feedback.

24 Player Questions and Requests Summary Remember, you can always consult with other GMs! If you re feeling pushed into an overly quick decision, the quality is likely to be low. Step back, slow down. Your players are your runtime feedback mechanism: keep them on your side and you ll be able to notice problems in real time. Just be aware that some people may try to take advantage.

25 Handling Runtime Problems (1/2) The worst has happened. Something broke, badly. What now? A puzzle or mechanic is proving impossible to get past, and players are frustrated. Drop them a hint, if you can. Provide a deus ex machina, potentially with a cost. (e.g., The box shudders and explodes! The contents are now accessible, but you ve all taken some damage. ) When possible, plan ahead for this. If a player can trigger the hint/deus ex machina, they get to feel cool, and the players feel like they made a rational tradeoff of time for resources. When the GM triggers it, it can feel like the players lost and the GMs are throwing them a bone.

26 Handling Runtime Problems (2/2) Your mechanic just isn t working. This most commonly happens with tech toys. When possible, have a backup plan. If you can t fix it fast, give the players credit and move on. The players thought your hard challenges were easy and blew through them. Congratulate them! Give them the win. If pacing is critical for other places in game, try to have extra challenges on hand to fill time. If you don t have extra challenges, consider telling them they re ahead of schedule, let them slow down a bit for the rest of the game.

27 Useful GM Mantras It s only a game; if a GM or player is getting seriously upset, step outside or halt the game and let everyone calm down. A game is never finished; it merely runs, then dies. The players don t know how you meant the game to go. They won t be disappointed by what didn t happen. They don t know you changed puzzles midway through. They ll only know what they saw. As long as people had fun, the game was a success.

28 Questions? This talk: web.mit.edu/ariels/public/guild/gamejam.pdf

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