The Gaming Outpost

Inside Stalinist Russia, my team had just iced a political kommissar about to send us off on a suicide mission because we were politically unreliable. Guess he was right about that, after all.



Captain Fyodorov, the Gypsy Anya, Lieutenant Goldstein the Cabbalist, and the zombie-raisers Misha, Valentenin, Vladimir, and Gregory joined with me, Taduesz who they called the sorceror for lack of a better name for what I did.



It was not an inaccurate name. I could summon spirits which I had demonstrated against a vampire in another world across the dimensional boundaries. The thing had gone to tears however, and the vengeful revenants turned on me, and killed me. This is how I eventually ended up here. Die, verse-out, in one world, and wake in another. Different rules, different history, maybe even different species.



Here, it was 1955, and America was Brendansland, a colonial area split between Britain and Ireland.

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were locked in a death struggle for the last almost twenty years. But instead of guns and planes, it was fought with summoning spells that tore trolls loose from their rock, and raised the dead to shamble forth into the world again on a mission to slay the summoner of trolls.



And I landed into this mess, a modern civilized American surrounded by barbarians. But all things considered, I liked the Russians slightly better than the Nazi’s. And I liked the guys in my unit, drunk, poetic, chess-playing, sentimental and all that, but they were some of the best friends I’d ever had.



They called me a sorceror, but what I truly was was a verser. A very long time ago, at least two hundred years ago, I think(I’m suffering from partial amnesia), I was an ordinary guy who sat down to use a new-fangled piece of technology. A “scriff-enabled” computer. Supposed to be the “next great thing” in computing; what it was to me was something far different. While my wife and child were shopping, and I was surfing the Internet, it shorted out. What with the horrible electric wiring I have in my house, this should have come as little surprise.



I became “scriff”-infected, and I died in an electrical shock, or versed-out in our(us versers, no, I am not the only one) favorite euphemism. In another world, and another time, I persevered until bad luck and laziness caught me in a snowstorm in January in Utah on horseback alone. You could add foolishness to that indictment as well, if you like.



Another world, and eventually another world. And my memories blur, and I see myself preparing to kill a trillion strong army by turning a star into a black hole. I think thoughts that even now, it hurts me to try to remember. My guilt is mostly dead. It was a righteous kill, and it seems pathetic, but true that my concerns are not for the dead or my soul right now. On a more personal level, ignoring those hordes I killed, I remember being smart, so smart, super-intelligent even, and now I remember certain things I thought then, and I cannot understand what I meant. And it hurts my brain to remember those things.



But one thought, I do understand. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Burke’s wisdom has saved millions of lives from tragedy. It had served me well then, and it would serve me here and now.



Here we stood, outlaws in the totalitarian Soviet society ruled by one of the worst monsters ever to bedevil the human race, and we could flee or we could fight. Even though, I loved my unit dearly, I wanted to fight. In ways, because I loved them so. It would dishonor us and our sacrifices for the Rodina to allow Stalin to continue on. Besides, and this was the clincher, it well might be safer to attack than to flee.



We dumped the dead body of the sadistic commissar in a deep hole, and spread about spells to make it harder for his spirit to be summoned up to bear witness against us.



Then I put it to them.

“Unless we flee Russia, we are not safe. Or we can strike the head of the snake, and during the ensuing confusion deal with any records of our deeds.”

They were startled.

“Anarchy is dangerous.” Captain Fyordorov offered. This was the typical Russian fear. A tyrant is better than anarchy to them. They might well be right, but Stalin was different.

“And Stalin isn’t?” Anya asked skeptically.

“If you had a half-decent leader, even Lenin who was a monster himself, I would say let it be, and flee. But Stalin is about as bad as it is possible to get. It would be hard to be worse. Not only is he a tyrant, but he is an incompetent military leader.”

“You can take Stalin? Kill him?” Goldstein asked. It startled me a little bit that they were worried if I had the gumption to kill a madman. The first person I killed was an insane military leader who had helped destroy my America, and replace it with a one-man dictatorship. Stalin was far worse than that former shoe salesman.

“Sure.” I said confidently. They looked at each other, and then nodded. They were in. We were going to Moscow.



We took the commissar’s car back to the nearest town which was about fifteen miles away over roads that once spring came, General Mud would make impassable. To me, they were already impassable with the white snow drifts, and the gaping things that you had to call bathtub-holes, rather than mere potholes. But, we were not planning on using this car any further than the town. It was like extreme mudding, but instead of a nice four-fifty horse American truck driven by some beer-swilling idiots, we had a two-wheel drive Lida which is an underpowered junkheap when it is brand new driven by some vodka chugging idiots.



We arrived somewhat bruised, and laughing our heads off at a river a mile short of town. Gregory raised a zombie, and compelled it to drive the car very fast into the frozen river. Luckily we cracked the ice enough for it to sink through. Hopefully, the superiors of the kommissar would be fooled into thinking he had crashed here. All we needed was a few days.



Walking around the small town brought us to the railhead and we jumped on as the cargo train puffed slowly up hill. It was cold, but we had plenty of vodka, and lots of stories. They particularly liked my stories of warm climates. They made me tell them six times about a deserted tropical island that a friend of mine, the Firechild, had been marooned on for about six

months.



A day and a half later, we were approaching the edge of the combat zone. Vladimir saw troops coming out to check over the train. Paranoia is another one of those Russian character traits. A simple spell of Improved Invisibility(r) shielded us as we sat still and quiet while a couple guards smoked some cardboard tubes they considered cigarettes in our very boxcar.



Another hundred miles, and we ran into a problem. We were parked at a railhouse, and put to the side.



So we kept very still all day, until night fell. Then we slipped out into the badly lit(The rail guards could not spare the electricity or the lights to really guard themselves.) railyard. Misha warned that there would be dogs, big dogs, German shepherds, and half-wolves trained to kill.



The Cabbalist did some computations with numbers to find the best time for us to sneak across the yard. He redid it a number of times, but with an unhappy whisper to the Captain, suggested a five minute and thirty-two second wait.



It was a nervous group while we crouched in the dirty snow alongside the stranded boxcar. The time came, and we moved as one. The last month had welded us together. As an effective combat unit I would put us up against five times as many newbies, and expect us to win.



No dogs seemed to be about, and we almost got to the gate where a rail car waited on the outside since it had come in to late for the yard operators to bother taking it in. There had been no high-ranking officer about to threaten to shoot them to get them to do their job.



A rustle of feet behind us, and we turned to see whining with eagerness, German shepherds charging in a pack across the snow toward us. They did not bark which probably meant their vocal cords had been cut by some ham-handed surgeon.



I chose Speak with Animals(r) courtesy of Waterdeep, and Wildsmell which a Native American shaman taught me, and in my mind I readied Doom’s Cloak which I had learned myself. The first was a tossing of a figurine on the ground, and a magic word, the second was a howl raised in honor of the wild spirits in the land, and the last was a simple mental focus, and a pantomime of putting on a cloak.



I whimpered in friendship, and the pack skidded to a halt in confusion. The alpha male growled at me, and I put on the mental cloak which made me terrifying to myself and others.



Instead of succeeding, the magic infuriated the alpha wolf, and he dove at me with flashing jaws and massive weight that bore me to ground.



A scuffling behind me, and then Misha dove on the wolf with his dagger flashing. Misha won and lost. The wolf staggered, and died with black blood spurting out of it as it fell apart. Spooked, the other wolves ran from their erstwhile leader.



Fyodorov cursed.



“A Frankenwolf. Very dark, very bad magic.” He said crossing himself. Then Misha moaned, and in the darkness we crowded about to see his wounds. The blood and guts of the Frankenwolf had splattered him, and now it ate away at him with astonishing speed. There was nothing we could do. I could see his thigh bones dissolving.



“I’m scared Captain, I don’t want to die.” The Cabbalist and Anya and I looked at each other to see if we had any such spells that could restore a man who was already half-dead. The only reason he was not already was that it went so fast and so smooth.



Fyodorov came over to him to helplessly stand by.

“What will happen to me?”

“You’ll, you’ll …” The Captain sputtered since he knew Misha was an unbeliever in anything but the Power of the State. And the State said nothing about his fears except for granting award medals.



I had a choice to make, but it was no choice.

A quick flick of my pocket knife on the palm of my hand, and I held a palmful of blood.



“Drink, Misha.” I said as I put my closed hand above his mouth. “And you too will walk worlds in which you can find the faith you need to find the end, but it will be a long time coming if you but drink.”



So he did, and I sensed him in front of me with that sense for scriff that we versers have. He sagged and before the goo could finish disintegrating him, he was gone leaving goo, and a small pile of dust on the snow. His backpack was gone as well.



“We need to talk.” Captain Fyodorov said, and then he turned to the remainder. “Let’s go.”



We slipped out the gate with the open lock which Misha had picked while the Cabbalist cried to himself.

“I was the one who was supposed to die. He shoved me out of the way.”



Now we could not hide aboard the engine that waited outside the gate because they would search everything most thoroughly in the morning. Or so I said. The remaining zombie raisers smiled grimly, and working together, they raised something inside the gate. The Frankenwolf lived again. We hid in a cold boxcar all the rest of the night, and well into the morning until the half-drunk engineer came out to get his engine started.



Once we were on the way, the Captain quizzed me in front of everyone. So I explained in detail what I had only brushed on before. If they had not just seen their friend become a verser I think they would not have believed me.



I offered to make them versers, and they just sat there and thought about it. The air of distrust hurt me.



It turned out they were mad about two things. One that I had this wondrous gift, and I had not offered it before. Two, that I was not risking my life like they were. But they understood to a degree why I did not gift them before this, and they all had seen me in the thick of battle. So relations underwent a detente, but their was still some coolness.



A wandering Cheka officer gave us a fright, and then we gave him a gift. I spoke words of nonsense syllables into his ear for five minutes, and his memory of the day, of finding us and determining to slip away to warn others faded under my spell.



I used his clothes and gear as a prototype for summoning more clothes. It was like reaching into a closet in another space, and my hand would come back with the desired item. This was a more precise version of my normal clothing spell, and more trying on the energy level as well.



So I slept until we reached the outskirts of Moscow. We dressed in our Chekist uniforms, and wandered off at the guardpoint outside Moscow. A too attentive guard challenged us, and a Charm(r) spell, plus some nasty bluster from Captain Fyodorov got us past and into the city.



People were naturally wary of us as we walked in a group down the street to a subway station. The dreaded Cheka, ancestor in my world to the KGB, made generals quake in their boots. Normal citizens just froze, and looked down, and prayed for deliverance as we walked past.



We arrived in Red Square, and instantly I could see a problem. The Kremlin had ancient runes dating back to Viking runecasters dotting its walls. The spells looked like the type that accumulated power so that they only got stronger as the centuries wound onward.



We walked around a crowd of schoolchildren chanting their devotion to the Great Leader. They sounded sincere.



“Little brown-nosing brats; they get a day off from school for kissing up to the political officers. I always hated them in school.” Vladimir murmured.

“How many of them do you think turned a relative in to the Cheka to get here?” Gregory asked. At first I thought he was making gallows humor, but he seemed serious.

“Probably about five to ten percent of them, say forty of them.” Goldstein replied in ill-concealed distaste.



An idea occurred to me, and I signalled a huddle.

“Last chance, fellow soldiers. I have a plan. You want to be a verser, drink this cup.”



Gregory, Vladimir, and Goldstein did. The others refused. I had Vladimir drink again, and again until I could sense him. For some people, it does not take very well.



Then I led a walk up to the reviewing stand where the children’s teachers and local Communist Party officials stood directing the idolatry. They smiled to see us because these were the True Believers in Communism. A bigger bunch of drips, lackwits, nerds, and pompous nutcakes would be hard to find.



I hushed the children, and they stood staring up at me, the Big Bad Chekist with sappy adoring looks on their mind-numbed faces. It was creepy.



“All right, Children,” I said in my best imitation of the Barney voice, “You want the Great Leader to come out here, right now, so you can see him, and talk to him, and give him a great big hug?”

They nodded, and so I instructed them to wish for it with all their hearts,and close their eyes and chant “Come Stalin, Come Now.”



They did, and we gave the slightly worried teachers lying grins that said “Yes we know what we are doing.”



Then as they chanted in a booming cry, I began to work a magic that I thought would work. It tapped me into the energy of their wishes, and then another spell to summon the monster himself.



The defenses of the Kremlin were strong, but so was the abused faith in the heart of five hundred children.



Stalin appeared before us. The crowd went wild, and I fished out a prepared dagger from my sleeve while Stalin blinked in shock.



It had been the one Valentenin used on the commissar, and an hour long ceremony had converted it to something magic that would seek the heart of this madness from which the commissar sprang.



I thrust it into his back, but before it could land, it spun out of my hand, and was lost. Of course, I intuited, a paranoiac would have serious personal protection spells.



He turned, and I put my hand on his heart.

“Do not pass ‘Go’.” I said in English as I projected my ectoplasmic self, my aura through my hand. It knocked me down on the rebound, but I got up expecting to see him with a hole in his chest.



His jacket was mussed, but he stood unharmed. He starting looking around, and I prayed for the strength of Samson.



“Guards, kill this man.” He ordered the Chekists. They pretended not to hear him, and started ushering the children out of the way.

“What is this treachery?” He asked one of the teachers who babbled witlessly. Crushing her skull to shut her up served notice to me; Stalin was a lot stronger than he looked. Well so was I if the Lord Jehovah chose to grant me a miracle of superhuman strength.



I strode forward, and grabbed him about the neck. It felt slimy over a hardness. He laughed, and then I lifted him, and shook him like a rat. Hopefully his neck broke, I thought.



Then he smashed his hand down on my right arm, and when I dropped him, he booted me off the stage so that I landed ten feet away on the cold, hard ground.



The kids and even the teachers were out of the way. Hundreds of feet away some guards were rushing toward me. I had plenty of space.



So I pulled out the sulphur, and I chanted words. A small ball of flame arced past him, and then the fireball bloomed. It knocked him down, and set his clothing on fire.



He laughed. Then he leaped off the stage and began to walk toward me.



“I will find out the source of this treachery if I have to kill half the people in the High Command, but I must admit, you are proving enjoyable with your weakling spells. Where are you from? You will teach these to me, or I will have you served to my pet in bite-sized pieces.”



I did not say anything. The sheer evil evident in his face and his aura made his death or mine the only two choices.



Lady Winterblest had taught me words that were terribly dangerous. But I needed more space for them to say them all. So I ripped up a chunk of Red Square, about five hundred pounds worth and chunked it at him. My right arm where he had pounded me nearly seized up.



It crashed into him, and knocked him down and back a few feet. And then he started pulling it off him.



“I am Stalin, you filthy German assasin. Man of Steel.” His voice and aura were terrifying, but worse was my realization of what he really was. Stalin was a golem of osmium steel. I could see his shirt and jacket ripped, and the makeup falling in shreds from his face. Whatever spell had held it together was failing.



But he did not seem worried as he stripped his coat and shirt and wiped the pancake makeup off his gleaming face.



This was my time. I spoke the words of power. Shockwaves reverbrated in the air at every syllable, and then the ground started to shake. He looked fearful, and I grinned. Tired, I continued. The ground started to steam, and the Kremlin Guards across the square stopped, and then faded to dust before the impact of my words.



I nodded in cheerful malice as he saw that.



“Your turn, now.” I said in Russian, and he responded with an incredibly crude suggestion. Then at the appropriate moment, I said the last syllable.



A wave of dust popped from the ground, and a shudder shook the city ever so lightly. Thunder and lightning flashed across the sky. But this was all preparation, side effects even.



Absolute destruction arrived in the Square. I saw the end of a chunk of the universe about fifty feet across. Blazing lights in colors not meant for the human mind to understand assaulted me, and I fell to the ground while I felt the smell of strawberries, and heard black light.



Finally, after the gravitational field of the planet restabilized, I stood to my feet. My team, and the children were staring at me from across the square in the safe zone with a collective set of gaping mouths. It was almost comical if I had been in any mood to laugh to see over five hundred mouths hanging open.



Weak, and tired, but not as badly done in as I expected, I stood there and regained my breath.



“Is…that…the…best…you…can…do?” A strained voice said from the crater, and in pure disbelief and terror I saw a bloodied and mangled creature of steel and dark magic pull itself over the edge of the pit in the midst of Red Square.



He was missing three fingers on his left hand, and a thumb on his right, and he had a great amount of other wounds that would have killed a man.



I backed up, and he started to stagger toward me. His turned into a run, and mine into a sprint away from him. Again it would have been almost comical if it had not been so terrifying. And the spectacle of what he would visit on his poor nation in vengeance for my attacking him hurt me.



Crossing my fingers, I took out my Mac-10, and unleashed it to no effect other than to amuse and interest him. I spent half the rounds before it jammed. In this reality I could probably fix it. I considered my plasma cannon. But if Destruction could not kill him, then what would several million degrees of plasma do. And I had not a clue how to fix it if it went critical and exploded which it was more likely to do in this universe because it was way past the technical level of the universe.



“Tell me what you are. This magic you work I have not seen before.”



I sang a chorus of a Black Spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” And a fiery chariot with an angelic driver and a similar horse appeared for me to leap on. It bore me across the square to my team.



“What should I do? What should I do?” I asked them and the angel.



“Appeal to the Nation.” He or was it she, said before vanishing. I looked at the crowd of kids who stared at me with a mixture of awe and hate. It seemed hopeless, but I spoke to them.

“He, Stalin, is a monster. He kills millions. He is crazy.” They hissed at me, and covered their ears not wanting to know what anyone with half a brain could see. It was hopeless.

“I failed, guys. I’m so sorry.”

“Why sorry?” Fyodorov asked me with a grin as he raised me back to my feet. “Of course, we were going to fail. God hates us for our crimes, even as He loves us for our poetry. Of course, you were going to fail. You are in Russia now. Nothing good ever happens to us. But we endure.”

The others nodded in agreement, and I for my part was awed by their stoic courage.

I wished I had that kind of bravery.

And then I felt it welling up inside me, a mocking, depressing, we are all going to die horribly, but let’s smell the tea and play a game a chess while we wait anyways kind of attitude.



“Come on boys, let’s do it one more time for Mother Russia.” I said, and without a word except for a cheer they got up and followed me to their deaths I supposed across the square toward Stalin who was marching toward us. He slowed and stopped. Perhaps he was afraid, or hurt worse than I knew, or he simply felt that the peasants should come to him.



Zombies rose, and mudshapes slipped from between the bricks of the square to march forward. More and more came, and I noticed that these were more than I had ever seen my friends raise before. With excited grins they kept raising and shaping as an inexhaustible energy supply filled them.



Stalin laughed at the pitiful force, and then the mudshapes attacked him. He plowed them under with bored ease. And then the zombies piled on, and those he destroyed as well. It was obvious that they were not hurting him at all.



But soon he was in a pile of greasy mud and zombie bones and zombie goo, and he fell to his back, and with zombies thronging him, he could not find the traction to get up. My team laughed as they summoned more and more, and I studied the situation.



I wondered what to do.

*Wait* I heard a woman’s voice in my head. *Wait*. It was calm and soothing.



Finally, Stalin roared to us.



“My personal wizards will come and slay you for this insult.” And he called their names, and each of the thirteen appeared before us clothed in power and majesty.



Oops. We stopped out attack.



And then words came to my lips, and in a female tone which was pretty icky.



“Stalin, mad dog, you have afflicted me, and tortured my children. Let me show you what I have seen, and I see.”



Stalin, I, and the female shared a moment of vision. We saw my enchanted dagger that would strike the heart of the evil fly from my hand, and soar across the ground searching for something. We saw a spirit of a nation reach out, and tease the dagger into a false path. We saw Stalin summon his greatest magicians including the one that held fast the spells to guard his heart in the jar where he kept it. We saw the spirit blow the spells done since no will opposed her, and we saw my dagger turn onto the true path once more.

*You cast a better spell than you knew*

“With your help, I assume.” I replied, and the spirit just grinned in my mind like a young girl in mischief.

As Stalin screamed denial, we saw the dagger pierce the jar, and his living heart. The monster was dead.



I came back to myself facing a sticky situation. Thirteen high wizards wanted to kill us.



“Two points, mighty wizards, if I may?” They paused to give me a chance to speak before they killed us all.

“One, you see that hole in the ground and the universe. That was me.” They looked a bit worried at that.

“Two, who is going to stab you in the back while you are trying to kill me?” With that the wizards started backing off from each other trying to keep their eyes on everyone, and their backs to none.



We backed up, and I summoned the chariot once more. As I was flying away with my team, I thought to the girl, I’ll call Rhodie.

*Used by a god again.*

*I, I am not a god. Far from it. I am bound in time as you are, and far weaker. No, I am simply the spirit of a nation created by the magic of dreams as the centuries rode onward.*



We landed, and found a place to sleep the night. I fell asleep, and sheer exhaustion took me to the next world. I had cast most of my mightiest spells, and been used by the Rodina as a power source, and I simply did not have enough energy to keep alive.



So I woke in another world.



Taduesz







Add to that, some usage of charm spells which my opponents were not expecting since most of their native magic seemed to be summoning monsters, and the brutal willingness of my comrades to slice throats as needed, and we got to Moscow in one piece.



We surveyed our target, and as I looked at the glyphs inscribed in the wall about the Kremlin, my stomach sank.



Taduesz

  When I was in seventh grade, my history class was a riotous place.  Everyone, including the teacher, made open jokes about all the things we were studying.  History was enjoyable.  Then when we took the tests, I remembered all the jokes, and so remembered everything we had covered in class.  Humor can be a great part of the experience.

  Sometimes people laugh during games.  That should be good, shouldn’t it?  After all, isn’t the point of the game to have fun?  And if people are laughing, they’re probably having fun.  Yet for some reason, a lot of gamers don’t want you to laugh during the game.  They don’t always know why.  Maybe I do.

  Some will say that it’s because laughing spoils the mood.  Yet that’s not really always true.  After all, some of the most frightening scenes in movies are sandwiched between good laughs.  The laughter breaks the tension, offsets the expectation, and leaves the viewer unprepared for the scare that a moment ago he was anticipating.  This can work quite effectively in that medium.  Could it really be that laughter in a game session will destroy the mood?  Obviously sometimes it does; but sometimes it doesn’t.  What’s the difference?

  I’d like to distinguish several types of humor which arise at game sessions; perhaps if we can understand what they are and how they differ, this will help us get to the bottom of this confusion.  After all, laughter is sometimes bad, but sometimes good, and that’s true in nearly any game situation.  So what is it about humor that makes it bad or good?

  Before the confusion arises, this isn’t about kinds of humor in a comedy analysis sort of way.  I’m not talking about slapstick versus puns versus satire.  All of these are valid kinds of humor; and all of them can be funny in a game situation.  I’m not looking at what kind of joke is made.  I’m looking at a different aspect of the joke altogether.  I’m interested in how the joke relates to the game.

  First, there is humor at the game.  This is the sort of disruptive stuff like Monty Python gags and stories you heard at work or read in Knights of the Dinner Table.  At that point, you’re definitely in the social level, out of the game entirely.  This kind of humor is the most disruptive in a game play situation.  It’s very difficult to maintain the mood in a tense moment if every time we get there, George says, A polar bear walks into a bar, orders a Minnesota Blizzard or A Chihuahua walks into a bar, orders a Tequila Sunrise, and so on.  Maybe everyone is having a good time, maybe they all think this is hysterical, and they’re rolling on the floor in hysterics–but it’s likely in this situation that they are not having a good game.  The humor is completely outside play, and is disruptive.

  In a case like this, it may be that this is the wrong night to play.  Or it may be that you need to take a break, run down to the pizza place for an hour to get supper or something, tell all your latest jokes, then come back and settle in for a decent game.  No one wants to say that we don’t get together to tell jokes or have a good time or spend time together.  That’s exactly why we do get together:  to spend time together, sharing things that we find significant or interesting or even funny.  Part of that is supposed to be that we play a game.  If the humor and the game are in each other’s way, they need each to be given their own space and time.

  There is humor about the game.  This happens when someone starts to see absurdities in the setting or the system and making fun of the whole thing.  I’ve got an innkeeper in one of my game cities who speaks with an Irish brogue.  Only once has anyone noticed that there’s no Ireland in my game and he’s the only person in the world that has that accent.  But it’s the kind of thing that could disrupt a game if someone suddenly starts picking at it and finding the absurdity.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyed by some of the players; but again, it’s out of the game.

  Game play can withstand a little of this once in a while.  Some games can withstand more than others; there can be a lot of fun in fiction that is self-aware, and a game can be a lot of fun precisely because everyone at the table is satirizing the game while playing it.  Some games seem to be written to do exactly that.  However, some games can’t progress as intended if this happens.  If the mood is important, or the tension is desirable, and everyone is stuck on the absurdity of some fragment of the system, the game can be crippled.  So, how come I’m perfectly fine until I lose that last point, and then I’m completely dead?  Why is it that there’s a famine in the land if there are thousands of clerics who can all create food and drink a dozen or more times a day?  If we went back in time by traveling faster than the speed of light, does it really make any sense for us to go forward in time by traveling faster than the speed of light in the other direction?  Once these questions dominate the game session, it’s probably time to get a new game.  Your disbelief suspenders have snapped completely; you need a new pair.

  There is humor from the game.  We tell a great story of one player character who attempted to save himself by using one of two psionic teleportation skills he knew to move his spaceship out of danger.  The thing was, one of the skills had already been shown to move ships without contents, and when he chose the wrong one in his haste he dumped his entire crew in space–a moment about which we still laugh (and which made Dice Tales, which regrettably seems to be no more).  Those funny stories are still a bit disruptive; but they’re something of a metagame humor, something that is funny because we’re both participants and observers.

  In fact, this sort of humor can be very much part of the fun of play.  At this point, we’re probably talking about the moment when someone says, this reminds me of the time, and brings back to everyone’s memory some moment in the past of their characters that is like this, and which was, at least in retrospect, very funny.  It can even be made part of the fourth kind of humor; but I’m getting ahead of myself.

  There is humor in the game.  One of my player characters is very gamist with an occasional narrativist drift.  His character married a non-player character, a very spunky princess he’d rescued.  It is part of the world now that he is married to her, and she is the one person who can always see through his bluster and who knows that for all his posturing and projecting and appearance of confidence, he hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing or how to make it work.  A simple uh-huh or yeah, right from her has the entire table in stitches (including the player) because she bursts his illusions about himself.  She is more than just a comic foil, but she is still a comic foil, giving his stories that humorous charm.

  I’ve had players whose play is inherently fun because it’s funny.  It isn’t that the player is making out-of-character jokes, but that the characters are making in-character jokes and playing in character when they are funny people.  That is not at all disruptive.  It is no more disruptive than the one-liners Bruce Willis spouts in his action films during the fight scenes, or those momentary calms in horror pictures when you thought the killer was going to jump out and he didn’t, and then he did.  In-game humor can be very entertaining.

  In the novel Verse Three, Chapter One, one of my principle characters is of this sort.  He’s very serious about what he does, yet at every turn there are funny things happening.  To try not to spoil anything, near the beginning he’s met three people who go through this long elaborate explanation of how they have to go on a quest to free a djinni from a bottle, because their ancestor captured it and they can’t restore their family home until it’s freed.  After all this, the character says, But, when you free a djinni from a bottle, don’t you get wishes?–to which the teller replies, Well, yes, there is that.  It’s funny; it’s part of the story.  That’s a good thing; generally, it is not disruptive, as long as it is funny, and part of the story, and appropriate to the character and the situation at that moment.

  It is also here that the third and fourth kinds of humor can merge.  It’s one thing for the player to say, remember when this happened?  In a sense, this can disrupt play, as everyone reminisces about the earlier events.  However, it’s entirely different if the character says, this is going to be just like when, and all the other characters are reminded of some fiasco or moment in which the ridiculous dominated their lives.

  That notion of appropriate can mean many different things.  For some characters, a joke at the moment when the villain is about to execute them is the perfect in-character tension breaker, and if the player can pull it off it makes for brilliant and exciting play–particularly if the character can then pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat and turn the tables on the would-be executioner.

  The humor can also be written into the game world.  Bob Newhart is a master at juxtaposition, the art of making ordinary things seem absurd because they are completely surrounded by the absurd as if it were ordinary.  If you can create this kind of humor within the game world, it entertains, particularly if the players get it and the characters don’t.

  For those who are interested in game theory, you might think that humor in a game is a narrativist idea.  It has absolutely nothing to do with whether the game play is narrativist, gamist, or simulationist.  These are all viable possibilities.  Toon makes humor competitive, as the player who makes the referee laugh gets points for it.  In the right world, humor would be very simulationist, because it would be the right color for the situation.  Humor has nothing to do with such concepts.  It only has to do with whether the characters in the game are funny people in funny situations and the players can carry it off effectively.

  The right kind of humor, far from being disruptive, will make for a more enjoyable and more memorable game session.

  I still remember some of the moments of that seventh grade history class.  That was nineteen sixty-seven, more than three and a half decades ago.  I remember little else of that time in life.  Humor made it come alive, and kept it memorable.

  Quite appropriately, I remember the moment the teacher said, When I was a little girl, and one of my fellow students interrupted in the pause to say Were there people then?  So I even remember the jokes–and yes, there were people then.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

When Mark talks about CharGen he brings up an interesting way to make characters. While not exactly the same, it brought to mind the Amber point bidding system. This brought me to the realization that Mark’s article is a great way for a GM to have PCs fit in the game world. And that’s something that I can always put to use.



The idea of getting PCs that fit the game world got me to thinking about one of my GM failings: I have a hard time putting a limit on the types of characters that I allow players to use.



If a players wants to play something, no matter how out of the ordinary, or how much trouble it might be, I tend let them do it. Sure, I try to talk them out of their idea, giving them some alternative suggestions that I think they might like, but I don’t tell them “No. I don’t allow that in my game.” I rationalize this to myself by saying if I do limit them then I would deny the players their fun.



The reason I think this is a failing is that it’s part of the GM’s job to make sure the PCs are playable in the world your group is building. While I don’t shy away from PC vs. PC conflict in my games, there are some PC types that are just don’t fit into the world well. If PCs don’t fit in the world well, then my rationalization is foolish as it will only cause more harm than good. Limitations are necessary to make sure the PCs fit.



For clarification, when I use the words “fit” or “work” in connection with PC types, I’m talking about how the PC would operate in the game world. If one of your PCs is an assassin who kills anything (women, children, dogs, hamsters, small shellfish, etc) for money that might not fit/work if most of the other PCs are non-military investigator types in a Diskworld like setting.



We all know that characters that don’t fit are a problem. The player of such a character normally has nothing to do while all the other players are having fun with their characters because his skill aren’t useful or his design isn’t compatable (assassin doesn’t mix with a party of pacifists). Not fitting in causes arguments at the table and rash, unrealistic actions taken by the bored player who only wants to get into the game with his friends.



(I agree that some players are contrary by nature, and they actually seem to enjoy not fitting in, but that’s a topic for another day.)



As having fun is the reason we play RPGs, we need to find a way to make sure that the characters in our games work with the setting and other PCs. Mark’s idea of getting the players to help create all of the characters can help you have PCs that fit. Unfortunetly, that type of character creation isn’t going to work with everyone. Some players enjoy the die rolling or the point spending privately (i.e. without direct input from the other players) so let’s see what else we can do to help.



We could simply tell the players “No, you can’t have that type of PC,” but that’s not easy and can cause other problems. Most players in our groups are friends, and it’s hard to tell people they can’t have a character that they like. Doing so can cause the players to feel that the GM is trying to stop them from having fun, or that the GM is being too controlling. One of the things I’ve adopted to try and combat this and fight my failing is to communicate directly with the players on what I’m looking for.



The first thing I do before I begin a new campaign is to tell the players what kind of setting I’m planning on, and what kind adventures I’m looking to set up. I don’t tell the players what type of PCs they need to make – I infer that in my descriptions.



By telling the group I’m looking to set up some “old fashioned dungeon crawling 1st ed AD&D style adventures” the players will pick up on the fact that in order to have fun they will need to make PCs that fit. They will want to have PCs with the skills and abilities that will fit that setting. If they don’t they won’t get the most out of it they could, and they can’t complain that they have nothing to do or that their character isn’t involved enough.



Describing the world and the adventure styles you are planning is only the first step. The next thing is to tell the players that they can swap out characters after the first couple of adventures. That lets the players have an out in case they find, for any reason, that their character just isn’t what they wanted it to be.



Yes, it can be a bit of a pain to have characters jump ship in mid campaign. That’s why you only allow that to happen after the first two or three sessions. After that, they can’t swap out unless their PC dies.



By the time you have a few sessions under your belts the group will have gotten into the groove of the setting, and you’ll all know how things are working out. The setting may change slightly, or the adventures may take a twist that you weren’t expecting at the outset of the campaign. Such is they way of RPGs so it’s good to give players a chance to adapt.



When you give the players a chance to re-tool their character choice, you allow them a chance for a PC that works better in the setting and with the other characters in the group. This also allows you as the GM to re-tool your adventures and setting if necessary.



Some players may need a bit of coaxing to swap out characters. Some folks don’t seem to take a hint so you have to be prepared to talk to such a player about doing something different. Perhaps not a total swap, maybe just a re-tool of the character they started with. Kindness goes a long way, so don’t be hard on the player, work with them and see what you can do to come up with a compromise solution. Just do it sooner rather than later. Changes to PCs later in a campaign are harder to work with than if you do it within the first few sessions.



That’s it for me. Let me know what you think and I’ll see you in the forums.

Before we jump back into this timeline we have to address some holes that need to be plugged in order for it to be a reasonable timeline. When we left America for Europe we stopped off at the Indian Land and Rights Act. The bill reinforced a new round of Constitutional amendments and rather bluntly stated that all land that Native Americans sat on was theirs and no one was going to move them from it. I now present the revised consequences of these actions.



Though dissent toward the law would be high, the odds were against it. Any interest the Southern States had in arguing against it was muted. OTL the infamous bigotry of the former Slave States was, after the Civil War OTL, largely fueled by their defeat. It was a desperate attempt to achieve former glory as much as it was a railing against non-whites. That attitude had little place in a far less scathed and far wealthier region where peace had been made with neighboring States.



The more populated (middle) Western states also had less interest in supporting dissent, though a bond with their Western neighbors they might have had. They had little concern about tribes that had been wiped out or dismantled decades earlier.



Christianity also started pumping some sanity into the people who professed it. Abolitionist preachers were not a favored sort, but with a new peace they didn’t have to be lynched every time they tried to prevent a slave from being beaten to death. This gave them the opportunity to preach in town squares and local churches about what the Bible said about race and slavery. People learned that the Bible only condoned a time-limited form of slavery for paying off debts and that it wasn’t race based, along with all the things about the Church being a tapestry of many threads. It got through slowly.



The last nail in the coffin was a vastly changed political climate. Four million slaves were quickly gaining their own economic and political influence and we now had another group of States [PP: I capitalize States, consistent with “the several States” mentioned in the Constitution. It is interesting to note that in later amendments States is no longer capitalized (13th, 14th, & 15th Amendments). I believe this is because the States were later viewed as subordinate to the Federal Government, instead of a co-equal tier of government.] frothing over with ethnic minorities (there are twenty two right now OTL). There were quite a number of vocal supporters who gave the political equivalent of a standing applause for the bill.



Nonetheless, people resisted it. The resistance took place between February, 1867 and May, 1868. The first attempts were overt attacks against Native Americans, used also to test the Army’s resolve. It had about as much success as the Whiskey Rebellion. The strategy changed as wealthy ranchers and some railroad barons wanted tribes off of certain lands. A rather secretive cadre assembled over several months to decide what to do about the issue. What came out of the cadre was a clever plan, one that had already been used earlier in our history. They would hire able-bodied and skilled men in considerable numbers to dress as Native Americans and attack selected communities in raids to draw the wrath of the Army.



They recruited men from like minded communities to attack communities that had trade and friendly relations with tribes. The first raids went well. They inflicted casualties and considerable damage. They were also able to convince the public that it was Native Americans doing the attacking. Lee wasn’t so easily convinced though, as unpopular as his actions were at this point. At this time several units had been harassing tribes after attacks, believing they were responsible. He replaced most of the command structure out West with officers he trusted, many of which had served under him. This also drastically reduced the general corruption that had seeped into the higher ranks. He also tightened punishments for dereliction of duty and abuse of power by signing several executive orders that gave the death penalty for such crimes.



Native Americans also joined the Army in record numbers to protect their reputation. This tightened state of affairs didn’t allow for any margin of error. Unfortunately, the attackers traveled outside of that margin. Several were captured and the ploy very quickly burst open. Public opinion turned to rage as yet another group perpetuated war. Those responsible were hunted down and dealt with accordingly. The backers were arrested on conspiracy, treason, and sedition charges. The actual hired troops quickly surrendered without backers, but they had already done their damage.



Vigilante groups had struck against tribes and tribes had struck back. Thousands were dead on both sides. However, it almost was a perverse irony for the criminals that both Whites and Native Americans set aside their differences to demand justice. This was the beginning of a collapse of distrust between the two cultures.



Jumping back into Europe, with a German victory in WWI Germany more or less inherited French and British holdings. It put most up on the auction block by forcing the countries to sell their holdings in the Western Hemisphere and keeping the rest that were closer to them and easier to control. The problem with the African holdings was that there was a regime change in the colonial governments that were formerly French and British. This gave European-educated Africans and African veterans of WWI time to plan revolution. The influx of black market British and French weapons also helped their cause. The Afrika Koloniekriege (Africa Colony Wars) of 1921-1922 were ultimately unsuccessful, but it forced the Kaiser to raise yet another force to put it down, which cost him in both public support and money.



The Kaiser was also taking too much of a liking to Divine Right. It used a lot of reparation money to build palatial estates and what little public projects he did spend the money on were badly muddled. They ran rampantly over budget and were never done on time. Of course Germany had also taken on the loan debts of Britain and France to U.S. banks, as well as her own burdens to our financial institutions (much like OTL). If you account for the hyper-inflation caused by printing currency to pay off debt, then you have one troubled economy that wouldn’t be able to sustain itself in another five years.



And so we still see how Hitler came to power through the NVB. Mussolini came to power about the same time. Hitler recognized the opportunity and seized upon it. He now had four major European nations in his control and another like-minded dictator was in control of a former WWI ally and Aryan state. He proposed a formal trade and military alliance to accelerate economic development. In 1926 the Convenzione Nazionalista Romana (Roman Nationalist Convention) convened to discuss the idea of an alliance. From that convention emerged something even more ominous, a new nation, the Confederacy Romano (Roman Confederacy). It stunned the world.



From 1926 to 1930 there was a total integration of military and industrial infrastructure. Hitler built his Autobahn from Austria to Italy to France and tied the rail systems of all the countries together. By spending horrendous amounts of money and importing dynamiting techniques from the U.S. they were able to create to rail tunnels under the English Channel in 1932. Hitler also marched on nations like Czechoslovakia and Poland and absorbed them in due time.



The U.S. suffered from much the same pacifist attitude that Britain did OTL. The U.S. had had its own economic revolution of sorts. The Southern Gulf States had realized early on that their days of ranching and land wealth were numbered and that industry was their future. Wealthy land owners cleared tracts of land and imported equipment from the East Coast. They started with textiles, but expanded into other industries. They sold their goods in the populated Eastern States and started expanding their operations their. Of course, without a foot hold, they had to essentially franchise out their business to local business men willing to take the risk of running a factory. This local autonomy meant that they started encroaching on Eastern markets even faster, and to attract workers away from the bigger firms the first increased wages. When Eastern firms increased their wages they created better working conditions. And so the competition went back and forth until formerly horrid jobs and working conditions became quite reasonable. Factories, during the competition, had sought to avoid it and expand into more open labor markets. The beneficiaries were Western States, who experienced much earlier industrialization than OTL.



The only attracted more immigration and much more uniform expansion Westward. Over crowding in cities was less of a problem and where there was crowding immigrants could now afford better housing and private services like trash collection and private schooling, which were started by entrepreneurial spirits who saw a market. Immigrants became much more affluent, far less exploited, and far more integrated into a varied American culture.



So what does this mean to its relations with Europe? It means that the U.S. viewed herself as a bastion of peace and freedom away from caustic European politics. She wanted nothing to do with WWI and really didn’t feel like doing anything about the Roman Confederacy. The turning point came with the Spanish Civil War in 1935. Fascist forces were backed by the Roman Confederacy and the Democratic Spanish forces were losing ground. Many of the Spanish speaking U.S. States (many had relatives in Spain) didn’t like what was going on and lobbied Congress to do something about it. We reluctantly sent over military advisors (remember what I said about Native Americans passing on war skills?) to help the Democratic Spaniards. That lasted until March of 1936. Fascist forces came upon Democratic forces and took them by surprise. They “interrogated” them to a rather bloody end and left the bodies to rot. A pro-Democracy unit with a U.S. military advisor attached came upon the bodies. The U.S. military advisor became very pissed and spent his energy over the next several days tracking the Fascists down. He captured the CO and tortured him until he confessed, then shot him and several of his underlings. The survivors (enlisted men) tolled their commanders and it traveled up the chain of command until it reached the leaders. Word got back to Hitler. He saw it as a chance to scare the Americans out of Europe. He declared war and marched on Spain…



Our military wasn’t nearly as small as OTL, but it was still at peace time readiness. The few thousand troops we sent over were able to fight a fierce guerilla war, but German forces pushed the Democratic Spaniard forces to back farther and farther. The intervening months were an example of what some have called a “man-made miracle.” U.S. industries re-tooled in record time to build and convert ships for troop carrying. We were able to move fifty thousand troops into Spain in three months and stop RC (Roman Confederacy) forces, who hadn’t expected the reinforcements.



RC forces were also marching North, closer and closer to Scandinavia. We quickly backed them with fresh supplies of weapons and ammunition. We moved another 200,000 troops into place in Scandinavian nations by December of 1936. We had multiplied our standing forces ten fold to two million by this time.



And so we have come to 1937. It wasn’t trench warfare this time around. Germany struck with its feared blitzkrieg several times and inflicted heavy losses. We also suffered at the hands of German subs as we sent ships to re-supply our troops. Advanced fighters and bombers struck our airfields. Hitler’s wonder weapons found testing grounds along our lines. 1938 was a better year. Our industry hit it’s stride and starting pumping out troops transports every four days. Experimental fighter designs were rolled out and put into service. We moved troops into North Africa.



Apparently Japan thought were too busy. They struck Pearl Harbor in September. Next time, the Divine Wind strikes…

Chilled and frostbit, I woke in a snow drift while intermittent gusts swirled bits of ice masquerading as snow past my face. Sitting up, I saw a dark pine forrest surrounding me. It was poorly visible in the night, but at the moment my concern was heat.



I fumbled in my back pack for my campfire lighter which had come with me the whole distance from Earth, and still survived unhurt. An axe made of memory metal first appeared as a belt, and then after bending it in the appropriate fashion to trigger the transformation, it curved itself into a serviceable, even if not great hatchet. My shoes were used to kick clear a spot on the ground not underneath a pine tree laden with snow ready to fall on my life-saving fire.



A quick shaking to release snow, and a follow-up attack on the tree cut me down several branches. The drier, and browner needles near the center were my kindling. My backpack served as I did in the function of a wind shield.



Soon, I was warm enough to start feeling tingles in my fingers. It was that cold out here. In the few minutes after I landed in this reality, and lay in that snow bank, and sorted my brain out, I had contracted a mild case of frostbite.



I rose to get more branches, for I was still fearfully cold. And then I saw him, mounted on a huge wolf, maybe a dire wolf. The gray trenchcoat, and the helmet, and the upright line past his shoulder, and the instinctive caution mixed with resolve spelled ‘soldier’ to me. He seemed bipedal, and so I called out a welcome.



Like water flowing down a hill, the wolf and rider came toward me. Not wanting to stand there because I had a warm fire, I turned back to it.



He called out from thirty feet away a word or two which sounded questioning. I replied, and he stopped, and seemed to be talking to himself. He seemed human, so I relaxed. The man seemed to be conducting a trial by error conversation with himself as he tried to figure out what I was.



Then he kicked his dire wolf in the side, and drew a stick from over his shoulder.



“Die Jew Sorcerer!” He shouted at me in German. Well. I try to be kind to the first people I meet in a verse. You never know what might be normal around here. I still remember killing that poor sentient who thought he was saving my life by stopping me from opening a bottle of water. But anyone with a black cross on their helmet, and such sentiments as he expressed “needs killin’ ” as country folk would have it.



I reached out psionically to create an invisible ramp between me and him that curved off to the left so as to do a kind of psionic judo. It would convert his momentum into a splash into a tree twenty feet off the ground. Or not, I decided as nothing happened.



I scrambled back around the tree for my life with little hope of saving it. The wolf would be upon me in seconds. But nothing happened. So I recklessly almost levitated, or swam up into the snow full tree by sheer main enthusiasm.



Once high enough, I looked down to see him chanting. Hands of stone and rot lifted out of the ground as he sang a dirge to the trolls promising them a chance to drink a sorceror’s blood. All through this he held his rod high above his head. Occasionally, he reached out and touched the tree’s needles. I could feel the tree shrinking back from the unclean touch which drained its life from it.



So, magic worked, but no psionics. Well, I could show him magic. In this very strange and cosmopolitan city named Waterdeep(r), I remember learning a most useful spell. So I dug in my pocket of my parachute pants, and came up with a bag of holding(r) full of items needed for these useful spells.



The sulphur came first. Soon I chanted while he screamed threats at me, and his trolls, eight to ten feet tall monstrosities pulled themselves loose of the soil. He told me it was too late for me to summon a golem, his good, clean, German monsters would kill me first.



I laughed after I unleashed the small ball of flame toward him. It was about the size of a walnut. But that would soon change.



Monster summoning and creation is a fairly common sort of magic, but there are others.



The ball raced past him, and he laughed. Then if expanded in a brilliant burst of flame accompanied by a thunderclap. The fireball maxed out at twenty yards across, and utterly consumed my opponent and his trolls.



I had a second to close my eyes as the snow on the ground and the nearby trees sublimated straight into super-heated steam and raced like a wall of doom straight at me. Now I know how broccoli feels.



Falling out of the tree and hitting the ground hard enough to drive myself unconscious was a mercy. I fully expected in the minor part of my brain that was operating to wake up in the next world. Instead, I woke up surrounded by a half-dozen concerned faces inside a dark hut.



“You are safe, friend.” A man said in Russian while a Gypsy woman tended to my wounds with some soothing cream. I groaned anyways because I knew where and when I was. The soldier’s leader raised his hand to punch the Gypsy for her clumsiness, but I protested, and he relented.



“The Germans invade Mother Russia led by Hitler, eh?” I asked for confirmation feigning clumsily at knowledge of something everyone knows.

“No, Rommel leads the invaders, and Kassel, the weakling puppet of his masters succeeds Der Fuhrer in his quest for domination of the world. Thank all the spirits, but Der Fuhrer finally went to his death from a drug overdose six weeks ago. Sorceror, you must have been out of contact for a long time. We shall probably have to have a political officer come by to recertify you as ‘politically reliable’.”



Right next to my fear of the SS would be to fall into the hands of them men from the KGB who practise the art of knocking on doors at night.



“Surely not, after all, I just killed a powerful soldier of the German Army.”

“True, that devil has mangled my squad for the last month with his troll sendings. The mudfaces and zombies we can summon are no match for him, but we know the woods, and the winter.”



The Gypsy muttered something which I just barely caught not being very fluent in the language.



“And you have me to heal you.”



I thought and decided to take a desperate chance.



“Look, Kapitan, I do not favor this invasion, after all I am an American…”

“What’s that?” One of the other squad said, and for a long moment I looked at them hoping for a joke or a stupid person to have said that remark.

“The New World, the Western Continent.”

“Oh, that, Brendansland, well the Brits and the Irish have that pretty thoroughly divided up. They hate each other, but they join in this one thing, they are willing to let us bleed ourselves against the Nazi’s as long as we Russians and Germans keep it off the seas.”



There was no America in this world to straighten things out or to show people a better way to live. I was well and truly in deep. Surrounded by barbarians for hundreds and even thousands of mile about me, the vast majority of people were either suffering peasants, or barbaric hordes. No matter that they dressed half-decent, at least some of them. In their hearts, where it counted, they were worse than Genghis Khan. At least he had the decency to accept surrenders when you surrendered quickly enough.



But in the moral scale of things, the Russians had a slight advantage or two. One they were the defenders, and two they were not so raveningly enthusiastic about Final Solutions for the Chosen People.



And I looked at the crowd of soldiers that filled the small hut, and found myself liking their rag clothed faithfulness to a very unfaithful country. Whether, I could support the vile leadership or not, I could support these guys. Which made it harder to do what I was doing.



“Kapitan, I can be your friend, or I can be your enemy. Do not turn me over to the Politicals. I’m sure they would be interested in hearing how you go to Gypsies for healing.” I made my threat calmly, even if I did not intend to carry it out.

“It is illegal after all.” The Gypsy woman said with a smile, and a wink of an eye only for me.

“I could kill you.” The captain said as suddenly weapons were in everyone’s hands all across the room.

“Probably, but how many of you do I get?” I said from my bed to the Kapitan who stood three feet from me with a magic rod held expertly in hand.

“This is ridiculous. You will go to the politicals.” He said.

“Remember, I killed a tough opponent of yours, I am not so easy as all that. Besides, I think you are pragmatic Kapitan, you want to win however you do it. I can help you.”



A soldier in the back of the cabin spoke up.

“Kapitan Fyodorov, perhaps we should listen. I keep coming up with the strangest numbers for him.”

The captain looked back in inquiry, and I saw past him, a dark-haired man expertly using an abbacus.

“He is less than a day old, and he will die within the year, but he will never die for as long as my numerology can figure, and worse, he was born in the future instead of now, in 1955.”



It was magic, Kabbalism I believed. Numbers have certain powers. I wondered if he could do a golem.



“Can you create a golem?”

“No, only a mudface which is like a golem, but they only last minutes and are hardly as strong.”

“But they do slow the trolls down, so that we can circle them with the zombies.” Another said loyally sticking up for his comrade in arms.



“How about some clothes?” I offered the captain.

“We already know you have some in your backpack.” The captain said, and I froze for a second realizing that I might well get “nationalized.”

I shrugged, and slowly started to cast a spell. A knife appeared at my throat, and I continued doing my best to make it obvious what I was doing.



A set of U.S. Army fatigues, with the words scripted on it changed to Soviet Army of Defense, appeared in my hands. Then I started again. By the time I was finished, they were outfitted in boots and fatigues, and I had a splitting headache. But I also had a set of friends, and I had joined the Red Army which was not something I would have ever thought possible.



Over the next two days, as I recovered from my steam-cleaning, I discovered something. This may be of note to the scholarly in this world, because no Americans existed here, but we Americans in my home world had prided ourselves on being friendly people. We used first names, and talked easily with others. But it is a shallow thing in many ways.



Here, in two days, I made bonds of friendship which might have taken two years or longer to make back home. The whole crew were effectively blood brothers.



This brings up issues about national stereotypes. There is something to them. They tended to do certain things, but there was often one or two dissenters who went the other way.



They drank like pigs eat slop. Part of their problem in battle was that they were often half-drunk when they went into it. true that they could hold their liquour, a potato vodka, to a surprising degree. Basically, they were all, except for Misha, alcoholics. Misha never touched the stuff.



And the level of sacrifice they were willng to put up with for their beloved country was really moving. The Rodina was their mother. Of course, it helped a lot that the Germans tended to think organized slaughter was the best way to deal with peasants.



Most of them were peasants, but we had a university professor, and a grand master in chess for a captain. And of course, the Jewish kabbalist was well educated.



Captain Fyodorov, Valentenin, Misha, Goldstein, Gregory, Vladimir were people I loved, and some of the happiest memories of that horrible time was sitting in Anya’s hut while they played chess with each other, and sipped tea hot from their samovar.



I got nicknamed “Big Gulp” for my habit of drinking too much tea, and drinking it too fast so as to burn my tongue.



Finally, at the end of a month’s operations against the Germans in the deep winter, we got word that we should be prepared to move forward. A glorious attack was on the way.



Captain Fyodorov did little to disguise his disproval. We were stronger on the defense, and the snow favored the defender, and time was on our side. He expressed his points in exasperation, and Val was impolitic enough to let some of this show through when the political officer came by for his followup checkup.



I was hidden nearby as was Anya. The overfed man in his black leather trenchcoat stood and examined my friends who stood in a line in the snow in front of him. He had a number of pointless criticisms to make. As far as I could tell, he made them to assert his own authority over these wolves. But they accepted it until Val said.



“Why this attack? Why now? Why us? This is a bad idea.”

“You want to tell Comrade Stalin this is a bad idea for he authorized it?”



Anya whispered a number of derogatory comments about the idiocy of the “Comrade”. She seemed to believe the kommissar’s statement. Then she started praying for Valentenin’s soul.



“It is you, because certain elements have determined that certain among you might not be completely loyal, and need a chance to prove your loyalty.” The kommissar continued while Fyodorov’s face turned red.



Then the kommissar almost tauntingly drew out his short rod which was edged with gold, and held it in front of Valentenin’s face.



“For state treason, I execute …”



I never heard the rest because I was standing, and shouting words of power. Electricity arced from hand to hand, and I thrust the lightning bolt at the kommissar with a deep sense of rightness. Justice and order were being returned to the universe.



He fell twitching, as cries of ‘get him’ and Fyodorov’s cursing sounded about the clearing.



They disarmed him, and then tied him up with his own necktie.



“Why?” Fyodorov shouted at me looking like he wanted to punch my lights out, and then beat me for a while afterward. But then he turned, and walked a few steps away.

“I know, Tadeusz, you are not Russian, you lack the sense of the tragic which would have helped you stay the course, and saved some of our lives. Instead you have killed us all.”

“Let’s just ice him, and dump his body in a bog. No one need know.”

“They will summon his spirit if need be.” The Kabbalist instructed me. Oops, was my feeling, but yet I would not take back my action.



A long pause held the clearing as Anya walked forward. The Valentenin asked his question again, this time with a knife gouging into the kommisar’s cheekbone.



“Ask your beloved captain.” The Kommisar said bitterly. The captain nodded with his shoulders slumped as we looked to him.

“My grandfather was a general in the White Russian Army that fought the Red Army. So I am considered suspicious.”

“And when you succeed as well as you have for this last year, but especially this last month, then you start to worry your commanders. You might be getting too popular, creating a cult of personality.”

“So if he had lost more troopers, made more mistakes, his superiors would like him better?” Goldstein the Kabbalist asked with a quiet clarity which made the real issue clear to all, but the nodding kommissar who was immune to anything but doing his job.





“If you let me go, and turn over this weird magician, ” The kommisar pointed at me, “And turn over your captain who betrayed you to the justice of the state, then I think I can save you.”



The captain and I looked at each other, and we knew that we would willingly go if the others suggested it. They looked at each other, and they made their decision without words. Valentenin shoved the knife through the base of the kommisar’s brain.



We were now officially ‘counterrevolutionary elements’, and probably ‘running dog lackeys of the bourgeise. What we really were was wolves who had slipped their leash. In many ways, at least to me, it was a relief.



Taduesz

  It seems to me that character generation systems ultimately are limiters; they are designed to be limiters.  In every case, they have the function of establishing the minimums and maximums for characteristics of a player character.

  Dice-based and other randomized systems do this essentially by determining the possible range for each ability.  In a well-designed system of that sort, player characters will predominantly be better than the average bear, as it were, and the degree of difference between them will be sufficient to make play interesting without causing one character to dominate every situation.

  Point-based systems, in the main, achieve the same outcome by limiting the total power that can be purchased for a character, and allowing the player to spread that power in whatever generalist or specialist manner is desired.  In most such games it pays to be a specialist, because there aren’t enough points to be “good at everything” and being “above average at everything” doesn’t play well.  Thus the differences between characters arise from the choices made to prioritize one aspect over another, because prioritizing is essential .  I have more than once played characters who were generalists, whose objective was to be at least competent at everything and then to get better at everything over time.  In a point-based system (indeed, in almost any game) there always is the temptation to create the superb generalist, the jack-of-all-trades who could do everything, and do everything well, the character we only meet in fiction, such as The Great Leslie (in The Great Race) or The Dread Pirate Roberts (in The Princess Bride).  The limitation of points prevents this character from being created, and so prevents one player from dominating the game because his character can do it all.

  Ability pool systems are similar.  If everything the characters need to know how to do is dropped into a pool and then divided among the players equitably, you again prevent anyone from dominating the game.  You can’t have something if someone else has it.  Some call this niche protection.  This is a particular sort of play balance that in essence means that whatever your character’s strengths are, they will matter in play because they are relevant and no one else has them.  Generalist characters are the enemy of niche protection; on the other hand, if niche protection is pressed too far, the loss of one character can cripple the group.

  Even modern “narrativist” character creation games have these built-in limiters.  A game will often say something like, “give your character five descriptors”, and think that this has eliminated the limitations.  What it has done is shifted the limits to those descriptors.  I can now use those descriptors either as a generalist or as a specialist.  If I use them for specialization, I’m going to be very good in a limited area; if I spread them out, I’m going to be adequate in more things.

  At first blush, Multiverser would seem to have ignored all of these limiters.  The rules start with the idea of creating yourself as a character, and thus the limitation for most characters is whether they adequately and accurately define the players.  If you declare yourself equal to an Olympic medalist as a swimmer, the referee might well challenge you to provide some sort of evidence that you’re that good, whereas if you merely say that you’ve got professional training as a life guard and were a member of the swim team in college you’ll probably get professional, but not expert, level in this.  But then, the rules allow you to play the not I character as well.  At this point, the player is imagining what he wants to be.  If he takes a character from elsewhere, such as playing James Bond or Luke Skywalker or My elf fighter/magic-user from the D&D game we use to play, the limitations carry over from there.  But if he merely says, this is my character idea, it could be absolutely anything, and there are no mechanical limits on that.  Yet there is a subjective limit included:  the player has to clear his character with the referee.  Personally I can barely imagine a character I wouldn’t approve; but then, I can always bring the level of the game up to match the level of the character.  Multiverser’s design is freeform; that is, character creation is about defining the character in game terms, not about creating the character through game mechanics.  As it’s usually played as an I-game, it comes down to trying to represent yourself as accurately as possible in the game; but in those cases where you are playing someone else (or the referee is creating non-player characters) it is the same process:  understand who the character is, then put him on paper as you’ve imagined him.

  I would like to look more deeply at other methods of character generation.  Random systems and point-based systems both have much to commend them, and much that is problematic.  This week, though, we’ll just expand on this notion of freeform character generation by looking at another way to do it.

  Have each player take a piece of paper and write up a character concept.  He should include the name of the character, any description he thinks important, and an idea of who the character is including what kinds of abilities he has without reference to system mechanics .  Thus for Flash Gordon‘s Dr. Zarkov, we might write

Brilliant scientist whose theories put him a bit outside traditional scientific circles and thus forced him to develop skills in a vast array of technologies in order to continue his work building equipment to explore space.

  For Flash himself, it would read

All-American football player in the handsome hero mold with plenty of physical prowess coupled with an intuitive sense of strategy, but not a lot of emphasis on education.

  To stay with this group, Dale Arden could say

Stunning college beauty with strong moral principles and the will power to stick to them against all odds, with an inner strength that keeps her going.

  Now once those papers are written, everyone passes his paper to the player on his left.  That player reads over the paper and considers, if I had to translate this character into game terms, how would I do it?  He converts the character to game stats, and gives it back to the player who wrote the concept.  Obviously the Zarkov character will have a high intelligence and a lot of appropriate skills in the sciences and technologies, and the Gordon character will have high strength, agility, stamina, and maybe personal skills.  At no point did we require a die roll or a point count.  Everyone gets the character he wants, within the ordinary expectations of the game.  The evaluation on what makes a balanced character for the game ahead is determined by one of the other players, whose interests are in having fun and making sure all of the characters are good members of the team, including the one he hopes to play.

  We’ll have more to say about character generation systems, and ideas for improving on them; but not this week, and not next week.  After all, that would go against what we always say.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M.  Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

I fell out of the previous world with a push from a god, and landed on my feet next to a small table in a cafe’. Staggering, a bit, I was helped to a table by a dark-haired man in a suit.



He and I shared the same table, and after thanking him, I waited for the inevitable questions. The screams of “Police!” or “Burn witch!” or something other than the blase’ slurping of coffee from delicate cups oddly made so as to be quite shallow was also expected.



It felt weird to be sharing a small table with a man I did not know. With much heming and hawing, he did get around to questions for ‘the honoured extradimensional visitor’. It turned out he was a nationally sydicated reporter for the Paper of Record.



Eep!



Then I heard some shots fired, and my reporter friend had to excuse himself to go to the bathroom. He claimed proudly, it seemed, that fear affected him strongly. A very sensitive fellow.



I wandered over in the direction of the shots with an invisible TK screen up to block the small calibre bullets, or so I judged them from the sound of it.



A man was holding a woman hostage with a .22 pointed at her skull. Above them floated a heroic figure in pink and green with an orange cape that fluttered in the wind. About a dozen teenyboppers came out of a nearby store to gawk at this eyesore. They swooned in excess of admiration, and I shook my head in shock. But it was only teenyboppers who are not noted for their good judgement.



“Fear not, good malajusted citizen, we shall see you repaired of the damage done to you.” It seemed a strange way to talk to the woman hostage until I realized that the hero was talking to the criminal.



“I’m sorry, so sorry.” The woman sobbed. “I bought the gun to protect myself, and look what I have done. I have caused an innocent lawbreaker to consider violence for which I am only to blame. If only I had listened to the public service announcements.”



One…two…three…four…seconds while my mind just stuttered. Then I reached out with my tk, and wrenched the gun from the bad guy’s hand, and for good measure crumpled it into a ball.



“What type of self-hating tripe is this?” I shouted to the gathered crowd.

“And what should we do, fellow superhero from another world?” The hero in pink asked with a gentle desire to help me. Something about him seemed familiar, but I could not place it.

“Smack the bad guy.” I said calmly. The crowd tittered, and the hero smiled condescendingly.

“Ah, from one of those dimensions.” And the crowd laughed low and scornfully.

“The notion of good and evil is simplistic. Violence only begets violence.”

“You know he was using violence.”

“She started it with her gun purchase.”

“OK, ok, you say ‘good’ is outdated?”

“Yes.”

“But you used ‘good’ in calling the thief ‘good’.” I expected a line of malarkey about it being a figure of speech.

“No, I did not.” The hero said positively.

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.” And the crowd nodded in support of his obvious lie.

“Whatever.” I said, and turned to walk away into a lamppost. Klang.

“Violence only begets violence.” The hero said, and the crowd laughed at me without a trace of pity.

I went back to the coffee cafe’ to sulk and eat pastries. The reporter showed up with some ridiclulous story about wrapping his tie around the water faucet, and nearly not escaping. He looked familiar for some reason.



Seeing as I was new to the society he offered to take me on tour. I accepted.



My first place was a museum of history which held a number of important documents proclaiming inalienable rights, but no one even bothered to maintain the lock on these cracked glass cases. But they revered their history I was assured.



My guide chose the next place. We went to the local chapterhouse of the Illuminati by various and cunning disguises which we tested by skipping out on our lunch bill, or that small portion of it that we actually had to pay. Of course, we left the tax money for it which was more than the bill because one did not, most emphatically did not want to cross the Revenue Service.



In the sacred and secret hideout with the big sign out front announcing “Real Beeswax Candles made by the Bavarian Illuminati”, I was escorted into a dark chamber where a thirty-second degree personage told me my real name, and the last four worlds I had been too, and explained how they had manipulated the gods to bring me here for a purpose that they could not reveal, but it was very important to Master Plan #14 which was a sub-set of Master Plan #5 which was maybe just a diversion for the real Master Plan #18.



The thing is they sounded like they made sense until I remembered that a secret held by three people is not a secret. I laughed and pointed this out to them.



They escorted me out to the sidewalk, and invited me to question anybody as to the whereabouts of the Illuminati. None knew even though I stood next to that sign. Then the Master told me the names of the next twenty-three people to walk around the corner, and he invited me to pick the corner for a second demonstration which he easily passed.

“Nothing happens in this city that I do not control.” And then he jumped into a stretch limo that I had not seen drive up, and he sped away to blow up in a ball of flame.

“Don’t worry, he’s fine. That was not really him that got in the car.” My guide said.



Wavering from my left to my right, I was led down the sidewalk. A nice restauraunt seemed the thing. The waiters were nice, and the food was superb, and I decided to reward them with a nice tip. This was returned to me with the waiter saying I had lost my money.

“No, its for you. You did a really good job tonight.”

“Thanks, but I could not accept it. It might make all the other waiters feel bad. Besides, I am well taken care of. My needs are few, and my skills are great.”

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.?”

“Exactly.” Said the cheeful man who had worked much harder than the others who were also good, but not as good as he. “I feel guilty about being so talented. I make up for it by doing extra community service on four of the five weekend days.”

“Don’t you ever feel slighted, jealous, envious, petty?” I asked him, and he laughed and got his crew together, and asked them my question. For such emotions seemed to go with their system in my understanding.

“No, group hug.” Said one girl, and they all hugged each other with a genuine warmth that baffled me.



I left with my stomach’s churning adding to my headache. Maybe I was wrong, a simple-minded idiot. Then I noticed a man in a black trenchcoat pointing a device at me that looked like a psi projector. I chased him into an alley, and he was not there. Pulling out all the stops on finding the secret door did no good. It was unfindable even though I literally tore the alley to pieces.



The whole thing made no sense. I sent my guide away. And I lay down to sleep in the ruins of my alley. Only to be awakened by a crowd of fifty social workers, television reporters, and the President of the Nation come to ask me how they had failed me in that I was forced by inescapable bonds to sleep in the alley.



“You are in denial.” I was told when I said I just felt so depressed by the oddness of the world that I could not muster the energy to go to a hotel. I had thought they would like that one, but apparently there was a new hot theory making the rounds, and they needed examples.



It was just too much. I summoned up a forcefield to push the crowd back, and then I floated into the sky.

“You know why I slept out last night? Because I am evil. I wanted you to have sleepless nights racked with guilt about it.”

They ate it up, and called me an artist. So I went one better, I thought.

“No, you puny mortal fools, I shall take your world away from you, and you will be my slaves!!!” Boomed out with help from my Lekostian cyberware. Everybody bowed in surrender including the President. This just was not working. One last try I decided.



“You know what sickens me the most? The lack of reason or a standard of morality by which all are judged. Certain deeds are good, and certain are bad.”



They gasped, and I noticed that my favorite newsman was not in the front row anymore. The pink hero, so strangely familiar, showed up again, and without mercy proceeded to pummel me out of the sky, and to beat me to death accompanied by the wild cheers of the crowd.



I versed out of that world with gratefulness.



Taduesz

Ok, I’ll admit it, Mark lost me with this last one. It took me four times to get through Bridge. I just kept zoning out. I could get up to:



“Let us suppose that you’re holding the Ace, King, and Jack of Spades, but you know that one of your opponents has the queen; and let’s suppose that…”



…and that was it. My mind wandered off and before I knew it I’d skimmed to the bottom of the article without really reading a word of it. Determined to read through it I tried again with the same results. Fourth time was a charm and I was able to get through it. After I finished it, I tried to look for an article idea. That wasn’t working at all.



As anyone who visits GO can tell I normally like Mark’s stuff. I’ve built my series around Mark’s articles. However, that doesn’t mean that everything he does is golden in my eyes. That, plus my experience with Bridge, lead me to my idea.



In fairness to Mark I’m sure that if he and I were discussing Bridge together over lunch I’m certain he would notice that I wasn’t with him. My blank stare would give me away. I’m sure he would either abridge things (a pun I couldn’t resist), or he’d find a different angle to approach his point from. When writing you can’t always tell if you’ve lost your audience or not so I don’t blame an author when this happens. It’s much easier when we’re in the same room so I cut authors some slack when it happens.



Occasionally I’ve lost my players. Not just one or two, all of them. And with as many as 13 players in one of my groups that’s a lot to loose at once. We’re all having a good time gaming and a great session is being had by all when suddenly they’re gone. I’ve lost ‘em. Eyes are glazed over, the focus is on making dice pyramids or fighting over who gets the last of the chip dip. At this point I shift my focus to getting the players back into the game and wondering what I did wrong.



It does seem that there’s something about RPGs that blocks us from noticing we’ve lost our players even though we’re in the same room. I notice it most when GMs read from scripted text in a published adventure, or when a GM has unwittingly belabored a point they are trying to make (e.g. mood, setting, feelings).



With scripted text I find the root cause is that not many people read well in public. Reading in public is a much different skill than speaking in public. I’ve been to poetry readings where some of my favorite poets have read their work and witnessed this fact first hand. It was a tragic learning experience for me to learn that Carol Arnet is a terrible public reader who can’t seem to add the passion to a public reading that I get from his work. Scripted text can work the same way in RPGs.



“You see a large 30’ x 60’ room. The walls are covered in a rich tapestry which betray a hint of neglect as if they had not been tended to for quite some time. The floor is covered with a thick layer of dust and debris and you can see small piles of concentrated rubble in the corners. It is apparent that no one has been in this room for a very long time. The ceiling…..”



When we read these scripted texts for the first time they can sound good to our internal reading ears. The descriptors sound nice and seem like something that will help envoke the setting or mood, but when we try and read them aloud it seems to come out in a monotone voice that puts everyone to sleep.



The problem with the traditional shaded text in our adventures is that it is difficult to write a description which is meant to be read aloud. We want to get out the details – the room is 30’x60’, is dusty and has old tapestries on the walls – but we feel that some flavor text is needed for the GM to use to help spice things up. We want to make sure that the GM knows what kind of setting/mood we had in mind when we wrote the adventure so they can share that with the players. From what I’ve seen over the years at game tables, this flavor text doesn’t work well.



I think the best thing for a GM to do is to improv a bit. This is a very easy way to work on your improv skills, or to try it for the first time so don’t worry if you’re not a big improv person. Take the basic idea from the description and setting/mood – 30’x60’ room with tapestries and dust that’s very old – and make it your own.



Every GM has their own style of describing things so use your style and make the description yours. Just because it’s written a certain way doesn’t mean you have to read it that way. You will not be judged on your accuracy to the original text. By making the description your own you keep the tempo of your game up, and your players will be more interested in something that doesn’t sound like your reading from an auto repair manual.



The other problem I’ve seen, and that I’m guilty of as well, is to belabor or force a point or description. Anytime a GM tires to force mood, feeling or setting we run the risk of over doing it.



Two years ago, while running a horror game, I thought I noticed some of my players weren’t in the right mood. I tried to explain it to them by restating the setting and mood of the moment in different ways. I did this four or five times. It was obvious to everyone but me that I was trying to force it.



Finally, one of my players looked at me and said: “We get it.”



At first I was a bit hurt. After all, I though I was doing what I should be doing – I was getting them into the game. Once I realized I was forcing it I could see that it appeared to the players that I was talking down to them. I was acting as if they couldn’t get into the game without my holding their hands.



As a GM we do what we can to get the players into the mood/setting/etc, but sometimes we can’t quite make it work the way we want to, or the players may not give us the visual or verbal clues that we are looking for. When you see the eyes glaze over, hear the heavy sigh, or even if your just not sure if it’s working, move on. You can try again later. This won’t be your last description of mood or setting so you’ll have plenty of other chances to grab them.



That’s it for me this time around. Let me know what you think and I’ll see you in the forums!

  This is another game idea about strategy.  If you’re not interested in strategy, come back next week for something different.

  I enjoy the once popular card game known as Bridge.  I don’t play it well, largely because I don’t play it often.  It is difficult to find people interested in play.  My parents play, but my wife finds the game too complicated so we don’t have a foursome.  Still, I read Bridge columns whenever I see them, play out the demonstration hands in my head in search of how the contract could be achieved, and think about the various strategic lessons involved.

  There is one lesson I’ve read that has stuck with me.  I don’t know whether I’ve read it more than once, or whether having read it once years ago I’ve always remembered it.  It is a critical bit of advice for all strategy games in which there are any elements unknown to the player:  If you can win only if the cards fall one way, play as if that’s how they fall; if you can lose only if the cards fall one way, play as if that’s how they fall.

  Let us suppose that you’re holding the Ace, King, and Jack of Spades, but you know that one of your opponents has the queen; and let’s suppose that you absolutely must make that Jack good to make your contract.  One way to do this is called a finesse.  You lead a low spade from the other hand (in Bridge, the person who is trying to make the contract plays both his hand and his partner’s hand, called the dummy and laid on the table face up for everyone to see) and wait for the player on your right to follow suit.  If he plays the Queen, it’s all over–take it with the King, and your Ace and Jack are good.  But if he plays a low card, this is where you can finesse:  you can bet that he’s got the Queen, and play the Jack.  Of course, if the player on your left has the Queen, you just lost the Jack, and you went down; but if the only way you could win was to make that finesse good, if the only way you could win was to play the player on your right for the Queen, then you had to play as if the Queen was there, because otherwise you would lose.

  Of course, this cuts the other way as well.  If the only way you can lose is if the player on your left has that Queen, and there’s a way you can force him to give it up, do that.  One way to do that is what’s called a free finesse.  This is a lot tougher to manage.  You’ve got to keep play going until you know that the player on your left has nothing left in his hand except Spades.  Then you’ve got to give him a trick, so that he has to lead to the next one.  This means he will have to lead either the Queen or another Spade.  If he leads the Queen, you take it with the King.  If he leads another Spade, and the player on your right doesn’t come up with the Queen in his turn, you can take the trick with the Jack, since you’re the last to play to the trick.

  There is a subtle difference between a lay of the cards that affords you only one way to win and one which threatens you with only one way to lose.  If you can recognize which any particular hand presents, you’re a long way to playing Bridge well.

  This is not a Bridge column.  It is a role playing game column.  Role playing games rarely use cards, and in those that do strategic card play of the sort envisioned by Bridge is not usually included.  Yet there is something in the analogy of the lay of the cards, the deal of the deck, that relates quite well to what we do during play.  As a player, there are always bits of the situation that I don’t know.  There is a level at which the game is a challenge, a puzzle to solve, an obstacle course to overcome.  As I face it, one of the steps to which my mind will frequently return is examining the options, considering what the unknowns might be.  For everything I don’t know, there are a limited number of possible realities (fictionally speaking, of course).  It may be a much greater list than the possible lay of the cards in Bridge; yet it is still limited, and even if I cannot identify every possibility I can with care and thought find the major ones, and prepare for them.  This, then, is where the advice finds its home.

  It is easy to come up with examples from card play to illustrate the concept; it is more difficult to illustrate in the more complex world of role playing strategy.  But perhaps the abstract can be clarified by translating to the abstract.  That is, if the idea of the lay of the cards has not inspired you, perhaps we can put it another way and bring it across.

  If you have ever heard yourself say, the only way we could lose is if, you needed the second half of the instruction presented above.  That if could be anything.  It could be that the villain has a secret weapon, or a contingent of guards within hearing.  It could be if there is a magic spell protecting the treasure, or a security device you can’t defeat with what you’ve got.  It could even be if the weather might turn against you.  The point is that that one if is the weak spot.  It is the one thing that can cause you to lose.  If you can spot that, if you can see the one potential flaw in your plan, the one point which would cost you the prize if it happens to be a certain way, know that the referee certainly has seen that, too.  Before you move, you should either determine that that which you’ve identified as potentially fatal is not the way it is, or determine how to counter that one problem, to shore up that one weakness.  You need a defense against the weapon or a way to stop the guard, a way to overcome the magic or security system, a contingency plan for foul weather.  Don’t leave that one hole in the plan without at least making an effort to patch it.

  On the other side, you might have heard yourself say, we can’t win unless.  That’s the first half of this Bridge column advice.  Again, the unless can be as diverse as finding the villain alone, or that the treasure is in a particular room, or that the guard on duty will be someone you know.  If you can’t win without a certain fact being true, then you have to play with the hope that it will prove to be true.  In this regard, most referees don’t create impossible quests, so unless you’ve missed something you should have noticed, it’s probably the case that things will be the way you hope, if you’ve analyzed the situation aright.  Perhaps you will be wrong; perhaps the villain won’t be alone, or the treasure will be somewhere else, or the guard will be a stranger.  In that case, you lose.  Note, however, that your alternative was to give up without trying, and that is a loss in just about anyone’s analysis.

  So as you analyze your options, keep in mind these two principles.  Those things that if true will defeat your plans must be rendered impotent; those things which if false will prevent your success must be made true.  Your odds of winning will increase significantly as you cover these.

  Next week, something different.

—–

M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.

The nightmares that go with every verser transition to another universe fade, but never quick enough for me.



As I wake, the murmur of vehicles and machines surrounds me like a warm bath. And the taste of the foulest beer I have ever tasted passes my lips.



Now, I am no connoiseur on beer being practically a teetotaler, but I would sooner drink the liquid in the bottom of a garbage can than that dreck again. Naturally, I spewed it to the acompaniment of complaints and the ensuing hacking coughs of my benefactor.



The alley contained dozens of garbage bags in decrepit condition, and a wreck of a man. His body-shaking coughs kept my view in the dim light of a city night down to a clean-shaven head, bald as a rock, with visible bruises and bad teeth. His clothing was of uncertain color under the grime, and I think his shirt was a burlap bag modified for its current use.



He stopped coughing, and I inquired if he was okay and where I was.



“Sure, sure I’m fine. Just a little TB-7, not very contagious. Most evenings I can get up to manage the dumpster diving.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“It takes skill to do it. You gotta know how to disable the incinerators in the dumpsters, but not permanent like, or they’ll set out poisen for you. Even still sometimes the corpers put delay tricks in the ‘ciners which ain’t very nice. Louie Cool Jel got toasted last week by those meanuns at Varitech.” He stopped for more coughing, and a couple swigs of that ghastly stuff he drank.

“Where are we?” I said as I prayed for healing, and then bent my mind to healing him by strengthening his life force, and then by killing the things that were ‘not him’; and then I pulled out an amulet of bones I got from I know not where. I shook it to drive off the evil spirits. Nothing helped, but at least he did not blink an eye at my strange behavior. I suspect he was very tolerant of eccentric behavior.

“North end of Appa, the Appalachian Line, NorthAm, you know Earth.” He added bits of data impatiently in response to my look of non-comprehension.



It turned out that a single city ran from Montreal to Miami and Nashville to Savannah. It was a Line. And there were many other lines on the planet.

Off-planet was not so crowded.

“Must be beautiful to see empty space without any people cluttering it up. But it makes them crazy, the Angels it does.”

I nodded, and thought.

“So there isn’t any medicine for this TB-7?” I asked as I figured out how to approach someone with some capital aobut setting up a lab to invent a cure. We would all do well by it. The patient, the venture capitalist, and me.

“Sure, but I do not have the 5k creds to pay for it.” That spoiled my plan.

I asked him where I could get the meds, and he volunteered to take me there.



We walked, I strode and he staggered, down a road, then an alley, followed by a curving staircase where he payed a tribute to be let pass, and then across a rickety passenger bridge high over a major business street thronging with cars and people who looked hip and wealthy.

“The meat market. They hope some corper comes along and wants a toy.” The man said contemptuously.



In the midst of the next squatter run and trash-strewn building I passed a yellow line painted on the floor and the walls.

“You are entering a Governed Zone. You are not citizens. Remember, be polite to citizens.” A concealed speaker said in very kind tones, but the message was chilling.



Things looked decidedly nicer on this side of the line. Someone made an effort to keep things up. My compatriot relaxed his hold on a cane he held as a weapon.



A dozen more yards brought us to the front door of a small shopfront decorated with holograms of cadueces and blood drops. We walked in.



The counter screen was not help as it dispensed only the most basic medicines. And I did not have any creds.

A well-dressed in a wimpy sort of way guy came out to see us, but he never got closer than ten feet.

I explained the need, and he explained the policy of Health and Happiness Megacorp of which this shop was a fully protected subsidiary immune to prosecution under national or state laws. He rattled it off just like that.

“WE do not do charity.”

I somewhat agreed with that. Charity can be debilitating to the recipient.

“I’m sure he would be willing to work to pay for his drugs. Perhaps you have something you need done.”

He snorted. I shrugged, and pulled out my pirate treasure. I showed him a little bit. Gold pieces-of-eight, a strand of pearls several feet long, a silver brooch with emeralds lined up like a sword was what he saw.

“Obviously acquired. No proof of ownership I assume. Since it is hot; probably hotter than the Sun I can give you only a percent of its value. Five hundred creds.”

The bland viciousness in his face accompanied by the astonished choking of my new friend told me all I needed to know.

“No.”

“Take it or leave it.” He said carelessly. Something was wrong here, I decided, and turned toward the door.

“No, I mean leave the coins. You have infiltrated this shop with a viral carrier. This is against clearly stated store policy. It will require a great deal to clean this shop up again.”

He pointed to the window, and a section glowed around some words painted on the window.

“No carriers or infected may enter. Clean zone.” I read the reverse words. Thing is I was pretty sure those words had not been there when we walked in. Even if they had been; what sense did it make to have a clinic where the sick were not allowed to enter?

I just looked at him, and he avoided my glance.

“He could have had someone else come in for him.”

“And if a sick person had no one then what?”

“Just leave the money on the counter and get out.” His suppressed shout and the way he hardly could look at me let me know that he knew he was wrong. But greed was riding him, and he thought he had a fig leaf of respectability.

Robotic autocannons popped out of the wall, and bracketed both of us. Even if I had left my Lekostian cyberware on after the last trick it played on me, I do not think I could have saved both of us.

“Leave the money, Angel-lover.”



His victorious sneers followed me out of the shop as I pumped my hands, ground my teeth, and fought back tears. A half-dozen bored and menacing armoured police waited outside to make sure we were escorted out of the Governed Zone.



The voice at the zone edge informed us that we were both persona non grata for one month. Trying to enter would be fatal. Have a nice day.



My friend was upset with me. The best dumpster diving was in the Governed Zones.



“You called me an angel; that twerp called me an angel-lover. What’s an angel?”

“They live in orbit, and they are like totally nice and sweet.” He went on for a while in a mix of paranoiad fantasies about how the angels experimented on the Mudfeet, and dreams of their utopia. He held a peculiar mixture of love and hatred for them.

One clue that stood out for me was that he held only a mixture of tolerance and hatred for the corpers. I was curious to meet an angel, but still worried because often utopias turn out to be the most hellish places possible.

“Let’s go meet an angel.”

“We can’t. The bottom of Jacob’s Ladder is in the punks zone. I live in the Quiet Zone where nothing much is worth anything. The punks’ll kill you as soon as look at you. It’s too noisy for me.”

“Sounds good, I am in a mood to make some noise.”



So saying, I slipped out my plasma cannon, and my needler, an uzi and strapped them on. A pair of bagh nakhs, tiger claws, followed with the curare poisen injectors operational. I was immune to that poisen due to an operation that inserted a gland in my chest.

Then with misgivings, I switched the Lekostian cyberware back on by thinking the correct code at the proper spot in my head.

It came on smoothly, and suddenly I was stronger, faster, and the equivalent of a master of martial arts.



My friend tagged along behind coughing as he went. I gave him some of my cough drops.



The street gave way from trash to an occasional sleek car amidst wrecks. Bully boys began appearing in alleyways. Girls in leather mini-skirts kept their hands near their purses as they walked out to party the night away.



A jittery energy touched the scene, and I suspected that most of the heavily armed individuals were doped up on something or other. The thought of facing someone armed with an incendiary shell automatic shotgun high on the late 21st century’s equivalent of LSD made me fearful. But no one bothered us with more than a glance.



We went down another long road, and clubs appeared with beautiful people waiting for the party to start. An occasional corper surrounded by hulking bodyguards would show up to do whatever they did. We got offered all sorts of things by the people in the lines.



My face was like stone, and I cautiously, but courteously studied everyone that came by for a hint of a threat. And my finger was on the trigger of the cannon. Nobody threatened us.



Suspicions were confirmed when we came to the base of a black cable that stretched up into the low-hanging clouds. It was a skyhook. A skyhook is an elevator cable stretching from Earth to geosynchronous orbit. The cable is longer than twenty-three thousand miles.



The street seemed peacable and calm.



“Sir, would you please put up your weapon.” A robot rolled up to me and asked the question. I looked around.

“You will not be molested, sir. You have the guarantee of the L5 Collective on that.” The slightly fruity tones of its voice held assurance and respect based on my humanity, or so I interpreted it.



Putting up my cannon, I considered the word ‘collective’. Inherently not bad, but so often a danger signal.



“My friend here is sick with TB-7. We have little money.”

“That is a problem; readily solved in orbit.” The robot said from its waist height level. It rolled back a little bit on its treads.

I tried to fish for more data about this collective, but the robot refused saying I could not understand until I actually saw it.



I consented after consulting my friend, but I resolved not to go into a concentration camp without a fight.



We rode up the cable in an elevator box. My friend was confined in a ‘breathing bag’ of clear plastic which supposedly kept him from infecting the others. The crowd was half mudfeet and half starborn.



The starborn seemed similar in many respects. They were all healthy, and secretive, but bubbling over with enthusiasm for the Collective.

I might have joined a cult which was often not that different from joining some sort of radical political movement. Still they assured us we could leave at any time.



Hours past, and I slept. Even a very fast elevator takes a long time to go twenty-three thousand miles. It got up to a top speed of five thousand miles per hour.



We arrived, and disembarked into a huge conical garden space. The roof was green and blue and over a half-mile away. I think it might have been the biggest enclosed volume I have ever stood, er, floated in.



The docking had been at the central axis where gravity was microgravity, or zero g.



The Lagrange Five O’Neill Space Station was beautiful, spacious, and like a taste of Heaven, or at least a taste of an ice cream sundae after being forced to eat liver. The people were taller from better nutrition and from the lower gravity. Flocks of birds flew past, and I recognized the passenger pigeon.



Our guide had come up and waited on us newbies who were frankly gawking. I had seen more marvelous things than this, and so I recovered first.



“Very nice. I had thought to find a cult or a totalitarian dictatorship.” I blurted out the first thing that came into my mind to the attractive female guide.

She smiled and approached.

“Well read and with a deep understanding of history. We should be able to offer you any number of jobs or even a chance to start your own with those skills in use.”

I noted that there was no mention of finding me a job; only offering me opportunities to make use of. This subtle emphases calmed me.



“Why, why?” Someone said, and then started to cry.

“Why can’t we bring this glory to the suffering people of Earth?” The guide said.

“There are a number of reasons. Most of your fellows do not want a change enough to really change their lives. They want to be the same, only better. When you got on the skyhook; you showed courage, great courage considering the rumors the megacorps spread about us. You chose to be different.



And the megacorps do not want us to interfere. And as strong as we are, they are terribly strong as well. If we freed the people of Earth it would require bloody war. And despite our wealth we are only a few hundreds of thousands against the billions the megacorps could persuade to fight us.”



Someone started cursing the corp, and the rest except for me joined in. The guide noticed.

“You are different.”

“I think he is a creation of a genelab. He just appeared out of nowhere. I think they FreezeBrained(r) me, and tossed him away.” My friend proposed his theory for how I had come into the world. I merely smiled.

“Not quite, but I am a friend.”

“We know.” She said with a peculiar calm authority. “We do not pry, but we can see that.”



Puzzled, I looked around. Perhaps, a hidden biosensor detecting moods?



“There is another reason we cannot do this there as we can here. We are a Collective. Or should I say We/I is a Collective, but not to fear the I is the dominant part of the Collective.” The guide non-explained. Looks of fear showed on people’s faces as the expected shoe began to drop.



*I think it is better explained this way* We heard her whimsical voice in our heads. *On Earth, there seems too much ‘static’ is our best theory. The Powers of the Mind that connect all of us do not work down there.*



Fear and joy bloomed as other voices in the hundreds welcomed us into the Collective. The fearful were assured of their privacy and of their own autonomy. It was only that one always had a friend ready to offer aid unless it was explicitly not wanted. And the brilliant visionary with the lack of precision in his speech had the help of a noted speaker in explaining himself.



I could see it making the computer revolution a poor second-best in the advancement of technology. These people could create their own dreamworld, and in concert design almost anything not limited by the inadequacies of speech.



I spotted something.

*Yes, we are building a starship. How did you catch on to that so quickly?* The guide asked, and suddenly around me were a dozen bright, shining, clever, courteous, and cautious minds.

*If you wish to go back; we would have to supress the memory.*

“No, that would be wrong” Our guide said out loud, and suddenly I realized that she was not some lowly one, but one of the key moving spirits of this place. The others assented even though they risked greatly with the corps finding out about the starship. The corp would not want them developing independently.

*So, can you do telekinesis?* I asked.

*Only a little* An image of penny experiments was suddenly there in my mind like I was actually present at the experiment.

*That’s all that is needed* I thought as I drifted off the ground and flew down into the “gravity field” which got as high as .8 g.



A general silence fell in the mental hum of the warm ocean as they first waited for me to go splat, and then even more profound when I rose back up to the docking point.

*Here’s how you build a telekinetically administered stardrive. It requires very precise controls of dozens of variables, but luckily you can do that with the ‘penny pushing’ force you can exert.* And I showed them in my mind a design used by the non-physical Varinaxz species I met in the Confederation of Species. (Their favorite question had been. “What are you?” They asked it in incredulous tones that seemed to imply that I was some sort of raging impossibility to their science. Us physical based lifeforms get no respect in some corners of the multiverse.)



A delicate pause, and then a very bright mind said.

*That does require a motive force, telekinetic, able to push with megatonnage power.*

I laughed, and the world laughed with me as they saw my point.



So that is how I got a job as Main Drive for an interstellar starship. I trained others up to my level. And we ended up colonizing and terraforming a planet in a star system far away.



On it, the psi did not work, and the technology did not work either. So they thought the landing party was in trouble.



So I prayed, and miracles happened.



Decades later, the new planet was fully usable, and the psi powered starships were coursing the galaxy, and the megacorps with our subtle encouragement filed for bankruptcy which let the nation-states and their allies the cyberpunks turn loose a flood of technology which transformed the Earth.



Bitter old men drank coffee by a river that once had watered the eyes just to stand by its polluted horror, and schemed. They had ruled the world, and truth and justice had triumphed. So they sought a symbolic victory. Luckily, they chose me.



The old megacorps were subtle and devious beyond any of their competition. Even their enemies had conceded that they were better spies than we were. The thing was that even if they found our secrets; they could not understand them. It was not only that we were dealing in what they considered to be pseudo-science, but that the Darkness could not comprehend the Light.



But the Darkness was up for one last pointless act of rebellion despite the mercy we had shown them. Or at least a few of them were.



I still do not know how they did it. I fell over in my office above Earth, and four cackling old men watched me die. I hope it gave them nightmares when I versed out. I expect they were firmly and forcefully psi-inhibited against harming anything, even a fly, ever again.



But I enjoyed my decades in that universe with its differing rules of reality. And I was glad to see virtue rain down on a fortress of evil to melt it away.



Tadeusz