The Gaming Outpost

  The last three installments of this series have been based, one way or another, on playing solitaire.  Some of you might be thinking that I spend all my free time playing this electronic card game on my computer.  It’s not true.  I also play Minesweeper, and I’ve learned a few things from that, too.  Interestingly, one of the things I learned involved my brother Roy, whom I mentioned last week.

  Roy is no intellectual lightweight.  He had a graduate level fellowship in philosophy for a while.  Long before that, there was a moment when I said to Roy and our common friend David (whom I know I mentioned in the article called David, and probably since then as well) that one of them, and I wasn’t certain which, was the smartest person I knew.  It wasn’t just my opinion; David at that moment said that indeed, he thought the same of Roy and me, that one of us was the smartest person he knew.  Roy indicated that he, too, thought that either David or I was the smartest person he knew (although he adds to his telling of this story that thereafter he thought perhaps we were not so smart as he had estimated if we thought he might be as smart as that).  Roy is sharp, and he studied logic, so he knows how to think.

  He also plays Minesweeper.  I think he was the first person to suggest to me playing it without the flags, the markers you use to show yourself where the bombs are and prevent accidental detonation.  I always play without flags on the beginner and intermediate levels, although usually use them on the advanced level.  It’s an interesting added level of challenge to the game.  He also called my attention to the game functions that were accessed by pressing both mouse buttons at once, a technique that improves game play time significantly.  In talking about playing this electronic solo game of inverted battleship, he speaks of running out of logic.  By this he means coming to the place where there isn’t any information from which you can determine whether any unknown space on the board is safe or mined.

  One day he was watching someone play the game, not to tell them what to do (that annoying practice we recently noted in Togetherness) but merely because he happened to be talking to them while they were playing.  The player then started making moves Roy had not previously noticed.  Looking at groups of blocks, this player would note that one known block indicated that one of two adjacent blocks had to be a bomb, and that another known block indicated that one of three blocks had to be one, two of which were the same two previously noted; from this he would conclude that the third block of the three could not be a bomb, and would mark it as safe.  Similarly, but perhaps more surprisingly, he would note that one square required one of two blocks and the other two of three, and that meant that that third block had to be a bomb.  Even more interestingly, when one of three blocks was a bomb and two of three blocks was a bomb, and those two sets of three blocks overlapped by two blocks, the player deduced that the third block of one set was not a bomb and the third of the other set was, since in that circumstance the two remaining squares had to contain exactly one bomb between them.  The same techniques worked with more squares and more bombs, as long as the number of non-overlapping squares was not sufficient to account for all the unidentified bombs.

  If you’re a Minesweeper player, I’ll leave those for you to unravel.  I’m not sure from the story which of them he had not adduced for himself, and it was certainly clear that as soon as he saw it done he knew how it was done.  Yet those techniques (at least one of them) opened new approaches to play in the game.  They demonstrated that it was still possible to draw information from the data which he had never drawn before; that when he had thought he had “run out of logic” there were still ways to bring logic to bear on the game, to find answers to the critical questions.

  I use those techniques when I play, and win fairly often.  I carry it another step as well.  If I truly am entirely out of information from which I can find the next move, I apply another sort of logic to the problem.  I could, I suppose, hit a random unknown square and hope for the best.  Yet in general there are two things true about the squares on the board which are still unknown.  The first is that some are more likely to be bombs than others.  If I’ve got ten unknown blocks and three bombs, that means each block seems to have a thirty percent chance of being a bomb; but if I also know that two of those four blocks at the bottom edge have to be bombs, that means only one of the other six can be, and I’m safer choosing one of them than one of those four.  The second truth is that some of those blocks, if they are not bombs, will give me more information than others.  If I pick a square next to exactly two of those four unknown squares along the bottom, and it proves safe, it might just tell me whether I can eliminate those two squares and make the other two the bombs.  I don’t have enough data, enough logic in Roy’s terminology, to know which squares are safe; but I do have enough to know how to pick a square that’s more likely to be safe and more likely to give me the information I need to proceed.

  One of the great logic problems shared by those of us who love such things is known as the Napoleonic Hat Trick.  Although there is a simpler version, the more difficult is attributed to him.  He wanted to appoint a commander, so he brought three candidates into the room, blindfolded.  He explained to them that he was opening a case in which he had three black hats and two red hats; that he was going to place one hat on each man’s head and then close the case; and that once the blindfolds were removed, the first man who could correctly tell him the color of the hat on his own head without seeing it would be his chosen commander.  You need to know that at the moment the blindfolds came off, no man knew what color hat was on his head because no man saw what he needed to see.  After that, the second level of the logic is that everyone knew that no one else saw what he needed to see.  At the third level, one of the men knew what color his hat was.  He could not know that from what he saw; he could not even know it from his companions’ failure to answer.  He could only derive it from recognizing their thoughts before they recognized his.

  Whatever puzzles you must solve, take your logic to the next level.

  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 country doctor and I drove in his Model T toward Harbour Point where according to local legend the Nixie lived and screamed. It was also the place where the Sketcher’s girlfriend had fallen into a coma, and could well die which would likely have the Sketcher facing a bullet. At worst, I would have called it negligent homicide, but the locals in the small Maine coastal town were not, in the main, what I would call fair-minded people.



The dirt road ended alongside a barbed wire fence, and I wondered if we had to hike toward the booming crash of the waves I heard. Instead the doctor put on a pair of old leather gloves, and pulled the wire down, and told me to drive across the rough ground and the wire. Nervously, I did so, and it worked fine. He got back in.



“Must not have Model T’s where you come from, Sir.” He said with a smile that mixed reverence and good humor. The doctor still thought I was some sort of angel. That was impossible for two reasons. One, I’m a verser, a human extradimensional. Two, no magic worked in this world, I knew because I had tested it, and in order for an angel to physically manifest, a lot would have to work.



Although maybe an angel could be subtle, and sneak in? As long as it did not reveal itself that might work. I’d have to ask the Martian Terraformer or the Alchemist what they thought of this next time I saw one of them.



I saw what the doctor meant as we tore across the pasture chasing cows out of our way. Rocks, minor gullies, brush, we powered over or through them with our high wheel base. I did make a mental note as we jounced up and down almost floating out of the car a few times to explain the concept of seat belts to the doctor.



Over the top of a steep hill, we crested and halted to look down on a commonplace sandy point reaching out into the Atlantic. We watched the Sun go down.



“That’s Harbor Point, the furthest extension into the Atlantic for over a hundred miles of the coast. Its barred by law.”



I studied it, and saw the rock spine with black spots which had to be the tiny holes which made the howling noise I’d heard in the Kraken Restauraunt.



“I need to get down there, and examine the crime scene. See if I can figure anything out. You don’t have to go. No need for you to get in trouble with the law.”



I was hoping for signs of cocaine usage. Maybe, the waitress, Sketcher’s girlfriend, had suffered a coke overdose. That did not explain the green pus which welled from cuts. And it did not explain the rash of coma victims through the past couple years the doctor had told me of, but I was fresh out of theories, and grasping at straws. Life is like that pretty often; you never really find out the whole story.



“Sir, I’m the local doctor; the only doctor for fifty miles around. Also the most educated man in town. As long as I don’t kill too many influential clients, I can do pretty much what I want.”



I nodded, and we got out of the car to face the chill breeze. We trekked downhill, and I kept a wary eye out for the sherriff or the bully boys lingering outside the waitresses’ home.



Then I looked up and saw the tall and too thin form of the funeral director standing down below us on the sandy point. He turned and seemed to see us, and he turned again to flee. So I gave chase right into a tiger trap. Before I could do more than bounce back to my feet, a large weight landed on my skull.



Woozily I heard someone speak to the doctor.



“Go home, doctor. Its not safe to be alone out here tonight.”

“Listen here, Kyle Morrison. I know you under that mask. I spanked you once when I brought you into the world. I’ll make you wish I’d tossed you into the harbor if you don’t at once…”



It was magnificent and useless. I could see it in the stance of the bully boys who waited respectfully on the edge of the pit above me. They’d listen, and then they’d try to tote the doctor away. He’d fight, and they’d hit him.



“Doctor, go, remember, they have no clue what they are dealing with.” He thought I meant that I was a Power of the Light. The doctor left, and the funeral director came to lean over the edge. Right before he dropped another stone on my head, he spoke.



“Untrue, Mr. Tadeusz Worldwalker. We know exactly what we are dealing with. It is you who is ignorant.”



The lights went out.



I woke with a throbbing headache, and the crashing of waves seemed to accentuate the pain. My arms and legs spread-eagled, and tied across a damp, slick rock the size of a dining room table increased my ill temper.



Opening my eyes, I saw a ring of black robed figures circled around me. Great, just great. I was to be the sacrifice to raise magic power in a world without magic. It made me want to laugh. So, I did, and regretted it instantly as my vision doubled, and my stomach heaved.



The funeral director came up, and poured something into my mouth which instantly numbed it. I spat it back out into his face from several feet away. It not one of my favorite skills, but I’ve been tied up enough to get some good practise on spitting into people’s faces.



He accepted the insult with a preternatural calm. In the moonlight, I could see his pupils were over-expanded. Atropine or some other drug gave him bedroom eyes which looked sickening in his pallid face.



“Its to see the Nixie better as it breaches near the surface.”



I shook my head in disgust, and we waited while my headache eased. Isometric exercises kept me from cramping up, and let me subtly test the ropes’s strength. No good; these guys had done this before.



They began a low atonal chant which was genuinely creepy, but I ignored it, and began to fake a snore. I expected to get a knife in the face, and a threat but nothing.



“They are the Nixie’s children. Filled with the awe and the power and the determination that I feel that lets one surmount the petty bonds and trials of humanity to reach for godhood.”



The funeral director walked up, and began chanting in some gibberish off key with the chorus from a pale book. In one of the odd pauses that jolted the listener unpleasantly and left him hanging wondering about questions that could not quite be focused on to bring them to resolution, he spoke again.



“It took me years of practise to get this far. Ever since the dead first spoke to me, and began to tell me the secrets, I have been making this book. Being funeral director was most useful. It let me get pages for the book without the effort most Seekers have to face.”



I looked at the book, and resolved to burn it at my first opportunity.



“You know, you’re insane.” I said conversationally.



“Yes. Sanity is a cover for the raging cesspool that is reality. Power is the only cure for the deep pain that is life.”



I remembered the pastor reccommending a hobby. Now this freak wanted power to cure his depression.



“What about love?” I asked instead hoping that he could be redeemed, but without any real hope.



“Love?” He said in a strange voice that set my hair on edge. “How strange to hear Tadeusz, Hammer of Tyrants, murderer of billions, assasin speak of love.”



“My deeds are accepted in the court of the heavens, and I’ve murdered none. I made lawful war, and I dispensed justice.” I defended myself from the insult with something bothering me.



The director began to chuckle oddly, and the chanting ended.



“Magic does not work here. It only works in places like the Aztecan pyramid, and the battlefields of Kharigen.” The director said in that odd voice that he twisted further to make a mimicry of mine. The “Nixie’s Children” got to their knees, and began to bang their heads on the sand, and flail their backs with whips. Green goo ran from the stripes.



Things were happening too fast for me to process especially with my concussion, and the way this world seemed to burden my thoughts.



Kharigen. How could the director know of Kharigen? The endless battlefield which housed the skirmishes, some said, that would lead up to the Final Battle was in another universe altogether than this.



Perhaps, he had read my mind. That would explain his following. He was a lunatic psi who thought the Dead spoke to him, and his powers gave him control over the others.



But that left so much unexplained. I knew it but my logic seemed to be in a permanent fog.



“Poor Tadeusz. We’re going to have fun with you.”



They began to chant again, and after about ten minutes, I saw a bubbling mass break the surface. At first I thought it bubbles, or jellyfish in a clump, but as it oozed onto the shoreline, and gathered mass to loom above the tallest man with a glimmering phosphorescence of green that highlighted each bubble that made up the mound, I felt the urge to scream.



The Nixies Children all bowed to the director and then to the Nixie. A tentacle formed out of the mass of the Nixie, and touched each one. Each bullyboy wiggled and flowed, and I saw the tentacle slim down as it pumped more mass into the bullyboys.



“The waitress, and all that fell into a coma are metamorphic duplcates.”



“True, and soon you’ll have one too. And it will be a verser. It will go out into the worlds, and in your name it will wreak havoc, betray friends, and destroy the good. In the end, the name of Tadeusz will be cursed on hundreds of worlds.”



“I’ll stop it.”



“I think not. For you will be here. Inside the Nixie providing, the RAM to run its unstable intelligence on.”



The RAM to run…The words and the concepts behind them came to easily to the funeral director. Even if he had read my mind, he would not be using my words to describe something he understood. I looked at him more closely, and he leered back.



“Took you long enough, Tadeusz. I swore, I’d pay you back for that insolent attitude you bag of pus, you, you corporeal being you.” His hate caused him to trip over his words, and the choice of insults combined to remind me. I’d stood in the battle line at Kharigen, and seen a monstrous snail ten stories high approach from the Enemy. So, seeing everyone else with me was afraid, I stepped up and spoke the words of power taught me by Lady Winterblest, elven captain of paladins. I did little to hurt it, but my attack broke the ice, and the others joined in to rain fire, and more exotic attacks upon it.



“The Snail; you’re the Snail.”



“The Great and Terrible Destruction of the Physical in Awesome Detail is my name. You see me as a giant snail because your puny brain needs to assign a form to my glories. The shell is my invulnerability, and my path is full of things I will crush in good time. Like I have almost crushed you.”



I thought about it for a moment. The director seemed to be possessed by a spirit being which should be impossible.



“Not at all. You stand in a world under the Powers of the Outer Dark, the strangest and most terrifying of all the Gods Who Stand Free. What use have they for prayers to cure, or to lift depression? In fact, what use have they for self-understanding among you disgusting corporeal creatures? Or even for the banal sort of magician who toys with magic without offering allegiance to any greater power. But they do desire those who worship power, and lust to touch the infinite. If they are willing to take years, even a decade in study in dark arts, and great consecrations, then they can gain power such as would shock the idiots that populate this world.”



I understood at last, and I smiled.



“What’s to keep me from speaking those words of power again, O Fallen and Mighty?”



“Please do. Your brain can barely keep a straight thought together. Cast a spell that will rend space. If it goes awry as it is likely to do since you are not skilled in its use, unlike my host who is eminently skilled, why I will be here to ensure that it goes awry in the way I wish it to. You will rend a gate open to the Outer Dark, and allow in some Great Ones.”



My choice seemed clear. Risk magic or have the Nixie enslave me, and a pawn made of me. Then I looked more closely at the Nixie as the tentacle unwillingly, driven by magic enhanced commands from the director’s mouth, advanced on me. I saw it, and suddenly I wondered.



Maybe it was not a creature of magic? It seemed natural enough, if dreadfully alien. My hairs on the back of my neck did not warn me of magic so maybe?



I reached inside myself, and pushed aside the pain and the confusion to feel my hands, and to feel the blood flow to them, and to curve them into cups with my fingers held in the Vulcan’s salute. With an intolerable, almost, itching my hands shifted to three-fingered claws that cut the ropes with ease.



I lunged forward, and plunged a claw into the director’s chest as he scrambled madly back. Then I fell face first on the sand breaking an ankle, and spraining the other since they were both still tied. My fingertip claws lacked the cutting edges all along the edges of my hands, and would have been useless.



The Nixie touched me on the back of my neck, and flipped me over with ease taking my legs loose as well. Oh, well, I’d bleed out in under minute I thought and waited for the mind-rending pain of having my legs removed which never came.



The Nixie touched me gently on the lips, and my mind was inside it watching the mass flow down into my lungs.



I wanted to scream, but instead I shouted at it to stop.



It ignored me.



So I demanded. It paused, and continued on. I set my will like steel, and pushed. The same determination which had let me do things which any normal individual would have avoided came into play. I rarely let it out because it tended to result in damage to myself, but it was hard to see how I could hurt myself worse than the Nixie intended.



Our wills clashed in that mass, and I saw that I had a disadvantage. Everyone that it had stolen was a spare brain, a spare will for it to use against me. Still individually, none of them were equal to me, and I fought slowing the absorbtion as it covered my body on the beach.



I felt the waitress as a tiny flicker when I wondered where she was. I appealed to her, and suddenly strength ran out of the mass for a moment as her natural personality asserted itself.



The moment of confusion as I greeted her, told her to fight, and attacked myself with every bit of force I could muster despite the confusion was a turning point I thought. The Nixie was even more confused than I, and for a long minute, I had it on the run. Then it started to push back in the type of see-saw that war often is. One side pushes and overextends itself, and then the other side pushes back.



Eventually, one or the other breaks. We went back and forth as I struggled to free the greater mass of people inside the Nixie. It fought me with a killing hatred that knew no bounds. The thing was wholly evil with a purity rarely found outside of vampires and demons.



Still we managed to free some more when an unexpected presence came to my aid. I felt the Sketcher in astral form assault the Nixie.



Some of the director’s coven fell free of the Nixie, and I felt a lessening of the intensity of hate. In its place was…nothing. I gave the fight over to Sketcher for a moment as I pondered.



The Nixie was not evil. It was a blank template. Without human brains it was not even intelligent.



Words I had spoken about love came back to me with an odd clarity that I thought meant they were from Above. So, I needed to show love to the Nixie. All it knew was the hate and despair that the director had taught it.



I began to replay fond memories, and stories, and songs. I told it of Milos and Kyra, and finally I heard it speak.



“This love is not for me.”



And it paused its attack. I needed to show love for this globular mass of bubbles, an alien entity from the outskirts of the solar system I assumed remembering what I had seen earlier.



The only things that came to me terrified me.



“If you sample my blood, you may find a weird subatance in it. Let this ‘scriff’ be in you, and you may walk other worlds, and find some place for yourself.”



The idea of letting the Nixie free to wander the verse scared me, but I had to show it trust.



It paused, and I heard echoes of my own worries come back to me.



“That might not be such a good idea. I am not really in control of myself. But thanks.”



“Then take me.”



“Alright.”





A long time blurry with odd dreams passed, but they seemed to get brighter and brighter as time went on.



Finally I woke back to myself.



I hung inside the Nixie on the surface of a cold moon of Jupiter. I could tell this by the Red Spot I saw above me.



“Tadeusz. I die now, but I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course.” A sense of profound peace followed his words, and I looked out to see a field of Nixies all making a glowing green cross glow inside their mass. My nixie had become the first missionary to his people.



I wondered how long it had been that I slept, and my only answer was to see human cities glowing brightly on the dark side of the Moon.



Then the Nixie dehydrated, and cracked apart, and I stood unprotected in sub two hundred degree weather. I versed out very quickly, but I got to see a landscape few humans ever see. The stark elegance and grace were inhuman, but beautiful.



Tadeusz

In Mark’s article Contingencies, he talks about the importance a gaming group’s Plan B. It always seems that the players have alternate plans available and ready to go if they need them, even if some of them aren’t very good. Regardless, it’s tough for a GM to cope with Plan B if he’s not ready. It’s difficult to react quickly to something that you have no idea is coming.



Even though the players don’t have the luxury of understanding the entire campaign plot or, in most cases, even seeing what’s around the next bend in the road, they can still can come up with a Plan B faster than the GM can react – Even though the GM knows everything about the adventure. What does the GM do to work things out and keep the game interesting?



In looking at this situation over the years I’ve determined that the reason player’s are always ready with a ton of different Plan B’s is that they are able to act in the short term while the GM must think about long term effects. The players have the ability to do anything they want to because they don’t know exactly what the future holds for their characters. They can even change their minds right in the middle of Plan A and suddenly jump to Plan B for reasons known only to them. As they can only guess at the future, or piece together bits of the plot puzzle, the players are free to act as they want to.



The GM, on the other hand, needs to pay attention to not only the present, but also the future. If X happens now how does that affect Y later on in the adventure? If the party doesn’t bite on your plot hook to go visit the Tomb of Nasty Evil Dead what does that do to your campaign plans, not to mention it’s effects on that evenings game session? The GM just can’t implement his Plan B as fast as the players because he doesn’t know what they’re going to do and it’s impossible to plan for every contingency.



But there has to be a way for the GM to modify his well developed plots after the players put Plan B into effect. As I learned over the years in martial arts: Every counter move has a counter move.



One option is to wing it. Just all out improvise the whole thing. While that’s something I’ve been known to do, I also know that it’s not going to work for everyone. Some GMs don’t like improv, aren’t good at it or just don’t want to do it because they prefer more structure. Another option I use is to take a time out.



The idea is that at the proper time you tell the group: “Ok, we’re gonna take a short 10 minute break while I go over my notes.” During the short break review what has happened (“So… they didn’t take the bait and put the ring on yet…”) and make a plan for what you are going to do next. Use your overall plot as your guideline for what options make sense.



When is the proper time you ask? I’ve found that there are times in every game where a short break fits. Just after a “big” event works the best for me. After a big event, like a massive combat, there is a brief cathartic feeling that washes over the group. That’s a great time to take a short break and let everyone collect their thoughts before moving on. Big events are also where the player’s Plan B gets thrown into action more often than not as they scramble to adapt and overcome the situtaion. This also means that while you go over you plot and notes the players all have something to discuss themselves (“Are you sure we should have done that?”) and that will help keep them busy while you work.



Remember that combat isn’t the only big event item. Any time the players have a discussion with an NPC, or themselves, that leads them to get the “wrong” idea into their heads and go off in a direction you hadn’t planed so is also good times for a quick break. Just remember to keep it short. A 10 minute break works well for me, but maybe 15 or 5 would be better for some folks. You shouldn’t expect to re-tool your whole plot in your break either, just figure out what you need to do to accommodate the player’s decisions for now.



The other tool I use is to know when to call it a night. If the players are headed in a direction that you are totally unprepared for the 10 minute break may not be enough. You may need to re-tool the whole campaign. You might also have to tell the group that “This looks like a good place to stop for tonight. What your heading into next is a big step and I want to be totally prepared for it.”



Not only does this give you some time to work on reacting to Plan B, but you also set the stage for the players to anticipate the next game. When you tell the players that where they are headed is a “big step” it’s like the TV show that ends a tension packed episode with To Be Continued… Anticipation for gaming is always good because when the group shows up for the next session they arrive ready to game. No waiting around, they want to see what comes next.



I’ve found that these tools work well for me, but I’m certain others have ideas or different takes my thoughts. So, follwoing my own advice, I’ll leave things as they are. This seems like a good place to stop for now.





I’ll see you in the Forums!

  As I was writing that first column about playing solitaire two weeks ago, where we talked about how to Wait was an important strategic choice, I wrote something that gave me another idea.  Last week’s Togetherness was also based on things learned from playing solitaire.  I’ve actually learned quite a bit from playing solitaire over the years; I mentioned elsewhere a few lessons gleaned from the pastime, in Faith and Gaming:  Devil’s Game.  I’m apparently mentioning a few here now.  So we’ll note that we’re having a miniseries on lessons learned from playing solitaire.  It sort of brings back to mind a very early entry in this series, My North Wall, where we looked at mugs and furniture and a painting and drew from them ideas for games.  I said then that you can get your ideas from everywhere, and joked about how everything in my life is tax deductible as research expenses.  I’m back to finding ideas in the most mundane of places, the solitaire game that runs on my computer desktop.

  In the last paragraph of that previous article, Wait, I observed that it’s easy to get trapped into answering the question, what do we do if?  I said then that those were important questions to consider.  I’m back to that now:  the idea that it’s important to have the sort of alternatives which we generally call contingencies.

  I can’t imagine that I’ve written a hundred seven articles averaging about fifteen hundred words each, and never mentioned my brother Roy.  I suspect I have mentioned him; I just can’t think of when or where.  Roy is a mere few days less than two years younger than I, shared a room with me from the day he came home from the hospital until I went to college and then on weekends and summers until I got married, and always impressed me as one of the most intelligent people I have known.  (Convenient, that.)  I have only two memories of life before Roy, the clearer of those the moment I figured out how to climb out of my crib, the other an earlier instant of looking at things through its bars.  He, in addition to being quite bright, is also fond of witticisms.  He often mentions that there are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide all the people in the world into two kinds and those who don’t.  One I know he wrote himself, cleanliness is next to impossible, probably deserves a place on my office wall.  I have enjoyed his well-phrased insights.  One in particular, quite relevant to this topic, I liked so much that I placed it in the mouth of one of the characters in my (dare I say first) novel, Verse Three, Chapter One.  Confronted by the news that the original escape plan is being scrapped in favor of the contingency plan, high tech thief Tom Titus gets rather upset.  “It’s Plan B,” he’s told.  “It’s a good Plan B.”

  To this he replies, in my brother’s words, “There are no good Plan B’s.  If they were good, they’d be Plan A.”

  Tom is right; that is to say, Roy is right.  You always want to have your best plan in place.  Yet even perfect best plans can go awry, because the perfection of the plan cannot account for the imperfections in the situation.  Something can go wrong, not because it’s a bad plan, but because someone failed to execute part of it successfully, or people got out of rhythm with each other, or there was some unknown detail in the way, or something quite random interferes.  In the recent season of Monk, the captured criminal, a pilot who has murdered his wife and employed a double to impersonate her while they leave the country together, asks the detective if it is true that this was his first time on an airplane.  When this is affirmed, the villain observes, “One cannot plan for everything.”  The best plan is the right way to start.  It’s also important to have something else in mind, something you can do if what you’re doing doesn’t work.  Obviously, it’s not as good a plan as the one you’re following.  If it were, you’d be following the wrong plan.  But it is the plan that provides an answer to the question, what do we do if?–particularly if if is the good plan starts to fall apart.

  I suspect most of you are thinking of this in terms of player tactics; it’s another M. J. Young gamist tactics article.  Well, it is–but it also isn’t.  It’s also about scenario design.  When you’re building a scenario, you need to ask the same kinds of questions.  Here’s your starting point, and here’s your hook.  But what do you do if the players don’t take the bait?  Maybe you need another bit of bait, something that will lure them in the direction you want to head.  But then, what do you do if they see it and don’t want it, if they don’t want to go to the VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH or wherever it is you’re trying to lead them?  In that case, you might need some other adventure on hand, a contingency plan to keep the game from getting dull if the players don’t want to do the only interesting thing you’d devised.  So you set up something else to lead them somewhere else.  But what do you do if they don’t want to go anywhere?  You probably need to have at least a fundamental idea of what will happen if they stay here.

  You can sometimes make the bait so big it’s hard to imagine anyone not taking it.  There aren’t many players who when confronted with the world is going to end unless we stop it, and you’re the only person who can will say, the heck with the world; do you think I’m going to be the only person who dies so everyone else can live?  It’s not a good story, it’s not a fun challenge, it’s not even terribly realistic for the character to say that.  But what do you do if your players don’t want to do that?  Do you let the world be destroyed?  Do you bring the destruction closer, and then offer them another way to prevent it?  Even if you can’t imagine them not doing what you hope, have Plan B ready.  It won’t be a good Plan B–there are no good Plan B’s–but it will have to be something.

  So ask the question, and give yourself an answer.  In fact, give yourself multiple answers.  Plans C, D, and E can all be at least identified, if not prepared.  They’re not good, but having them in place can save a lot of aggravation, because you’re ready for the possibility that things won’t work the way you expected.

  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 hostess of the boarding house in the little seaside Maine town had just told us with a vicious enthusiasm about the Sketcher being arrested for breaking town laws. Nobody went to the extreme of Harbor Point at night, and yet, Sketcher’s girlfriend had, and now lay near death.



I scraped the thin and lumpy bowl of porridge dry, and washed it out in a line of other men alone with lye soap and bone-chillingly cold water that we hand-pumped out of the ground.



The hostess gave me a mean eye because I did not share her joy, and the others kept their eyes downcast in weariness.



“You going to see that no-account murdering rat?” She asked me blocking my path from the kitchen even though the answer must have been obvious in the sadness of my face. Her pushy manner got on my nerves, and the way she stared at me annoyed.



“Excuse me.” I said and stared into her eyes for nearly a minute until she ungraciously stepped aside. I walked past.



“Don’t think he’s not going to fry, the woman of this town won’t put up with that type of scum. Why we might engage in some justice ourselves.” Her taunt and threat grated, and I turned back to look at her with a cold fury.



“And the coyotes said to the wolf better be wary, or we’ll eat you.” Then I stared at her until she turned away.



What with my slow start, and the single bath in the house, and the way our hostess dawdled making breakfast, it was near ten before I walked away from the dank, hateful boarding house.



It was strange, I’d seen people who could have cooperated and gotten things done quicker, but instead they persisted in trying to grab everything for themselves first, and spilling the porridge onto the table so that a good third of our breakfast was wasted. There was something disturbing about this world, and I seemed to be having an unusually hard time figuring it out. And my spirits flagged so that in walking across town in the clear, gray light, I found myself staggering a bit toward the end not from true exhaustion, but from a malaise that made sleep seem more attractive than not.



With a lurch upright, I remembered some of my dreams of last night. Chants and drowning in salty seas while others with human faces but no hearts in their chests looked on impassively. I shook the dreams off, and began to focus a bit. Something was bothering me. I needed to figure it out. I sat down on a wet bench by the roadside which caused some laughter by some idlers, but a glare stifled their humor.



I welcomed my ill-tempered mood. It gave me energy, and a defense against whatever was wrong. I spotted a church steeple, and walked toward it.



Inside, I began to pray and think. It could not be magic because magic did not work here. A psi influence was possible, but unlikely that anyone would have the skill to affect me so subtly and everyone else as well. Nevertheless, I put up a mental barrier, and immediately I felt some relief.



Startled, I sent out my clairvoyance despite the extreme difficulty. And a pastor came up to me as I sat on the splintered pew.



“Son, why do you come here?”



I pulled back my clairvoyance with some effort, and saw a weary man with black bags under his eyes. The pastor of the local church slowly set down on the pew in front of me.



“For relief against the depression that seeps from every doorway, and pollutes the air.” I said with a touch of theactricality which surprised me.



He grinned for a second.



“A fellow thespian, well met. I played Hamlet at Harvard.”



I decided mentioning that I had shared a beer with Will was probably not the thing, and so I grinned back. We chatted for a bit about plays and he showed me a copy of his favorite play. “Hamlet” of course. The writing seemed dull, the sharp edges worn off, and the keenly cynical knowledge of humanity had fled. This was not the Shakespeare I knew. This was a poor copy without insight or wit.



“Son, in answer to your question. The only relief is what I have shown you. Find a hobby that in your darkest moments you can immerse yourself in. God is still in his heaven; I do not doubt this, but Satan is Prince of the Earth. Our duty is to persevere until sweet death takes us to glory.”



Full of pity, I saw his kind face, and I wanted to weep for him. He knew nothing of joy or happiness, just duty. And I saw that he truly wished for death to “end his vale of sorrows.”



He left me alone, and I turned back to the clairvoyance, sparing a moment to pray for blessings on the poor pastor of this benighted town. I sought the source of the force that shadowed my life, and my watching eye turned toward the sky.



Soon, a blackness of space caused me to change my vision to draw in more light because it seemed oddly dim out here. I nearly lost it as I altered my sensitivity. The effect nearly spiralled completely out of control which would have left me so sensitive to light that moonlight could have stunned me.



In that wavering moment, I saw mirages in the Outer Planets. Crawling things, and collections of bubbles infested the moons of Jupiter. I put it down to a defect of vision, and sure enough when I had corrected my senses, the mirages were gone.



I looked about, and saw a pattern in the stars. Curious, I tried to decipher it. With a sense of forboding, it snapped into place, and I looked into the face of Madness and Evil. It leered at me, and I fled focusing my awareness back to my body.



A rising scream in my throat competed for my attention with a lilting voice that kept saying “Tadeusz.” It would pause, and repeat itself. Shuddering, I came back to full awareness.



I must have looked across a dimensional boundary, or maybe Things of Horror swam in the Outer Dark, but could not reach Earth. This explained things to a degree though. The God of this world might not be Satan, but It was definitely one of his buddies.



Still shaking, I walked out into the week sunlight, and headed to the courthouse. Nearly one, and still nothing done, I groused aware that it might not be a just criticism. But my thinking patterns seemed to be damaged in this world.



I had to wait three hours to meet the prisoner. Some of the local woman had come by to sing him doleful hymms that fluctuated between “woe, is me” and “God is going to stomp on you real hard.” The vultures came out of his room chatting gaily and well-pleased with their afternoons work at “soothing a tortured soul, and winning him back for the Kingdom, which is no doubt where he is going soon.”



I went in, and saw him with an apple. My stomach growled, and he laughed, and offered to repay me for the meal of last night. Accepting, I sat down on the foot of his metal-framed bed and waited for him to explain what happened while crunching down the large and good apple.



Even if an evil god ran this world, he seemed to have missed one detail.



“Great news. I saw the Nixie last night.” He seemed wired.

“So you were breaking the law.”

“Err, not exactly. Look, the point is, I saw it. It seemed to have broken bits which is probably why it was slow enough for me to catch sight of it.”

Something nibbled at my mind, a faint memory, and I let it continue to rise to the surface.

“And your girlfriend?”

His face fell.

“I ah, brought her to Harbor Point later that night. But it was not my fault.” He hurriedly added the last bit.

“I was possessed.”



I looked at him with my mouth hanging open, and then I noticed the ways his eyes were not completely tracking.

“You’re higher than a kite, aren’t you.”

“Just a little cocaine. Nothing serious.” He scooted back, and crossed his arms over his folded legs. I got up, and walked over to the door, and gave it a good kick.



The sherrif came.

“Make sure he doesn’t get anymore cocaine.”

The sherrif examined Sketcher, and growled like an awakening bear. Then he stomped off to yell at his assistant. The deputy did not seem to see anything wrong with it, but he soon shut up as the sherrif kept yelling at him.



My theory was that Sketcher got drugged out of his mind; thought he saw the Nixie, and dragged his girlfriend up to see it even as his better sense told him to stop.



I went to see the waitress at her home to check up on her. A large crowd hung around in her front yard, and I realized with a sickening feeling that I needed an excuse to see her. The unfriendly looks from the waiters who hung out by the doctor’s horseless carriage emphasized how stupid I had been to think I could waltz right in.



I asked the crowd where the doctor was, and then walked away with their objections hitting deaf ears. Inside the house, I went up to the doctor who had his black bag open, and was I’d say reading a book inside it. Probably trying to research the problem for what looked like an influential family that he would not want to fail.



“Hello, Doctor. I have some experience dealing with exposure, basic medical practises, emergency surgery, and physical rehabilitation.” The training in exposure I had first come by the hard way. Versers often land in desolate spots. Later, I had systematized my training because of the usefulness of these skills.



He looked relieved, and despite objections that I was a friend of the “murdering scum”, he brought me into the room with the sick girl. The mother sat by the bedside and gave way begrudgingly.



She lay in a mildly delirious trance, and a sweat kept coming off her despite the maid continually sopping it up.



“Dehyrdration, doctor. The patient needs fluids.”



“She just spits it up when I try to pour it down her throat.”



The doctor went to stand by the mother, and tell her to please do as she is told, and not drown her daughter. I needed a plastic bag, and a hose and a needle. I had the needle, a penicillin mix held with stabilizer so it would last for years ready to use.



Slipping it out, and injecting the patient in the calf through a blanket was not hard with the ultra-sharp needle. But it came back with a bit of green on its tip which I cleaned off. I’d get to that later.



“Do you have some muslin fabric, very clean, and a small glass bottle?”



They boiled the muslin per my instructions. And they boiled the water adding a bit of salt and a bit more of sugar to the second pot I had them make.



The boiled bottle, I took aside, and somewhat surreptitiouslyu extruded my titanium fingernail claws. A slight shave, and then two soft pushes into the shave a fraction of an inch apart, three millimeters were followed by a tap from the inside. The tiny hole in the bottom of the glass was smooth, and just what the doctor would have ordered if he really knew what he was doing.



I stuffed the muslin into the hole, and then poured the cooled liquid which had been stored in the icehouse into the bottle. The end of the needle came off with a flick of my index finger’s claw. The doctor saw this, and stared in shock, but he kept his mouth shut.



We gently led the mother aside who chose that moment to have a fit protesting that we were not going to hurt her daughter. One of the hanger-ons came in, a big brute who came up to my size, and he started to try to slam me against the wall, and slap the bottle out of my hand.



A parry to the inside of his wrist, and a pinch on the nerve just above his elbow made for an arm lock that should stop him, I thought. Instead, he acted like he felt no pain for several seconds until the doctor threatened to brain him with a lamp if he did not get out of the sick room at once. Then he winced, and backed off. I barely saved my primitive intravenous kit.



We inserted it into her left elbow, and again a spot of bright green welled up. I scraped this off, and examined it frightened for the girl, and for the townfolk. The only thing I could think of was some sort of mad variant of Ebola virus which ended with the body structure collapsing, and blood spewing across the floor. Granted we were too far out of the tropical zones for most diseases, but that was the rule in most worlds. Maybe viruses liked the cold here, or something.



The doctor stationed a sensible aunt by the girl with instructions, and we watched the IV work. Drops ran down the muslin, and into the open top of the needle, and into her body. She seemed easier in minutes which surprised me.



I rigged a screen around the muslin so that people wouldn’t cough on it. It was not the best, but seeing as I thought the girl was terminal, I’d try anything.



The doctor and I walked out, and to his car. He had to shoo a bunch of aggressive grown-up brats away from it before he could leave with me.



“I need to see the Nixie.” I said not really meaning it literally since the Nixie was just wind and water scouring a cliff.



“You’re one of them, the Powers of Light.” The doctor burst out as he turned off his car by the side of the road.

I gaped at him.

“I saw the claws, and the medical knowledge you had is astounding.”

He had a point about the claws, and my medical knowledge was not all that great. Its just he knew next to nothing. I temporized.

“I have been so hoping that one of you would come and help. So many people have suffered these comas.”



My head jerked up, and I studied him with growing fear. What was going on here?



“Drive, doctor.” And he did heading toward the Nixie.

“There’s no magic.” I muttered to myself.

“Hah. I thought as much when I got out of college. All superstitions. Why God does not seem to hear me when I pray, so I became an atheist. A proper cliche’ I was, the educated and suave country doctor ministering to the bumpkins. Thing is, I started seeing things I could not explain.”



I kept my mouth shut. With the state of medical science in the the 1920′s most things were such that he could not explain them.



“And in all the darkness, I got to see that we were still alive, and if the darkness had not ate us already, and it surely craved to do so, then the Powers of light must exist.”



“So you think I’m an angel?” This made two worlds in a row.

“Something Mysterious and Wonderful.” He said, his courtly and practical voice transformed by reverence.

“Stop that. I don’t think you are totally wrong, except for that part about me being an angel.”



We drove toward the Nixie as the sun went down.



Tadeusz

Mark’s latest article, Togetherness, digs into some of the reasons that people like to be a part of a game that is being played around them. Be it solitaire, chess, what have you – if you’re gaming and there are others around who are not, chances are they’ll be interested in what is going on. There’s a certain amount of wanting to belong to a good time that comes into play here I think. If there’s a group that is having fun, its natural to want to have fun with them because fun is so… Well… Fun.



As I read Togetherness I started thinking of a few different things. One of them is the ability of a GM to pull a party of adventurers together who have almost no reason to be together. Another thought I had was the ability of the GM to read the players themselves, seeking for ways to try and make sure that everyone at the game table has enough to do so no one feels left out. Then I thought about the player’s side of things and how it connected with my previous ideas. That’s when I had my article idea:



It’s not the GM’s duty to be the only connecting/driving force for group fun.



This may not seem like a new or ground breaking statement, but I’d like you to think about it for a second. How many players have you met who feel they should be able to make whatever kind of character they want (within the rules, or bending them sometimes) and it’s the GM’s job to make it work in the game? Or those that feel he’s out of bounds if the GM requests that only certain types of characters be created, or limits character creation? Even if you don’t have these players in your current game groups, I’m sure you’ve met them before.



Fun is the goal of our games and it’s not fair to demand or expect that one person should be the only one responsible for it. True, a good GM can and will make a game more fun with their skill, but we can’t expect that he’s going to be able to pull it off without help from the players. Gaming is a team sport.



Just about every piece of advice for how a GM should tool his game for his group’s enjoyment can be applied to the players and their characters. Take a look around the group and see what kind of gamers you have amoung your fellow players. Is this group all about killing and looting, or do they enjoy the finer points of diplomacy and romance in their RPGs? Neither one is better than the other, but it’s important to know what your fellow players are like if you want to work with them.



Ask the GM what type of adventure he has planed, or at least what his suggestions for character types would be. It may seem like it, but you’re not limiting your choices by doing this. If you know what characters the GM thinks will work, you’ll have an opportunity to come up with variations on those themes that are more to your liking. Also, if the character fits into the adventure, there will be a lot more for your character to do. Doing stuff = fun.



Another step is to take it upon yourself to encourage other players to make characters that will fit nicely into the chosen game. If you’re adventure is to delve into a lost city in the middle of the South American jungle during a 1930’s pulp adventure setting, encouraging the players to stay in the spirit of the game will help make the adventure more enjoyable. Talk to the players and think about the types of skills that you think will help you be the most successful. Help your fellow gamers come up with cool character ideas and variations. Doing this shows interest not only in the game itself, but that you care about your fellow players and that you want them to have a good time.



Don’t tolerate rude or destructive behavior from other players. If your group has a player that’s being obnoxious, the GM isn’t the only one who can suggest he cleans up his act. The players can step up and inform the offender that rude play isn’t appreciated nor accepted at the game table. Again, almost all advice on how GM’s can deal with problem players works for you as a player as well. Just remember you may have to work with some players on correcting their actions. Not everyone can change bad gaming habbits overnight.



Gaming is a group event. Everyone has to hold up their end if the group is going to have fun so remember that just because your not the GM doesn’t mean that you don’t have any control over how much you enjoy the game. We’re all in this together.







Well, that’s enough out of me for now. See you in the forums!

  At the risk that someone has already taken this tack, let me expand on last week’s article, Wait.  We were talking about something learned from playing solitaire, particularly from having people tell you what you should do.  I said then that there were several things this brought to mind; this is another of those things.

  It came to me to wonder, as I was writing about people looking over your shoulder during your solitaire game, why they do it.  After all, you’ve dealt yourself a hand of solitaire, and you’re playing it quite fine on your own, thank you, and someone comes along to tell you how to play.  Why don’t they just mind their own business, or at least keep out of yours?

  It occurs to me almost immediately that it isn’t just with solitaire games that we encounter this phenomenon.  In the movie The Last Starfighter, there is that moment when little brother Louis Rogan is all over the Starfighter video game telling his brother Alex what to shoot, until Alex has to ask him to move his head out of the way so he can see.  What is most interesting about this is that it seems so real, so true to life-we have all played video games and had someone sitting near us pointing and shouting about them.  Why do people do this?  Obviously they are not playing the game–you are.  What prompts someone to tell you how to play the game you are playing entirely on your own?

  This sort of thing happens even when we aren’t playing alone.  Who has never been playing in a friendly card game with a few people and had someone who isn’t playing come around behind him to look at his hand, and even to make veiled (or not so veiled) comments about how it should be played, or whether it’s any good?  Oh, yes, play that; oh, that’s good.  What about chess?  It seems that somebody is always interested in giving you his (or her) detailed advice regarding how to play.  People insist on becoming involved in games in which they are obviously not involved.

  Part of that may be the excitement inherent in watching a good tense game.  Certainly if we see an exciting moment, we want to be part of it.  Like spectators rooting for a ball team, we feel a part of it merely by watching, and often we think we know the best thing for the team to do.  Hardcore fans of various sports are always yelling their advice toward the players on the field, or cursing them for not doing what from the stands appeared so obvious.  Yet this doesn’t sufficiently explain the phenomenon.  It seems clear from the interest people take in the rather dull game of Solitaire that there must be some other motivating factor at work, some reason spectators are drawn into a game in which they are not players.

  The answer that comes to me may be almost too obvious.  Spectators want to be involved with you because you are playing a game.  Games are social activities, and are perceived as such even when they are designed to be played alone, or when they are being played by others with others.  So the person on the video game or playing with the cards or otherwise involved in an exclusive game is involved in an activity the rest of us perceive as social, and we want to be part of it.  From a psychosocial perspective, this is rather interesting; the person who deals himself a hand of solitaire or picks up the video game controller may be attempting to communicate to others that he wishes to withdraw from interaction with them, but because he is playing a game and we understand games to be social activities, he actually encourages us to interact with him.

  There is a sense in which that interaction is superficial.  If I tell you which way to go in your video game, or warn you of incoming enemy fighters, or suggest what strategy to follow in your card play, I’m not even really playing the game with you.  I’m certainly not sharing anything deep or meaningful with you.  Then again, those who rise in the stands and perform their rituals in support of their teams feel like they’re part of the game despite the fact that there’s no rational (and even precious little irrational) reason to think they’re connected to what is actually happening on the field.  I read recently of someone who genuinely believes not only that his presence in front of the television set helps his favorite team win the game, but that he has to wear the right pair of shorts for it to be truly effective.  He’s not socially involved with anyone at that moment; but he feels as if he is, as if he’s part of the team pushing on to victory.

  That superficial connection may be enough.  It is at least the starting point for a relationship.  Games ultimately are about playing together, and through playing together sharing time, and through sharing time sharing ideas, and through sharing ideas coming to know each other, and through coming to know each other building solid friendships which may last for years.

  So get together with a few people this weekend and play a game.  Call some old friends whom you haven’t seen for a while and invite them over.  Ask a few co-workers or fellow students what they’re doing later.  It doesn’t have to be a role playing game, but it could be.  You don’t have to invite them over for a role playing game specifically even if that’s what you have in mind.  Don’t make the distinction; maybe don’t even make the commitment.  So, what do you guys want to play?  We’ve got Monopoly™, Mille Bornes™, Dungeons & Dragons™, Multiverser™, Clue, pinochle, Legends of Alyria, and a couple of others here.  Any game will do; just spend time with them.  It’s a great way to get to know each other.

  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.

  At the risk that someone has already taken this tack, let me expand on last week’s article, Wait.  We were talking about something learned from playing solitaire, particularly from having people tell you what you should do.  I said then that there were several things this brought to mind; this is another of those things.

  It came to me to wonder, as I was writing about people looking over your shoulder during your solitaire game, why they do it.  After all, you’ve dealt yourself a hand of solitaire, and you’re playing it quite fine on your own, thank you, and someone comes along to tell you how to play.  Why don’t they just mind their own business, or at least keep out of yours?

  It occurs to me almost immediately that it isn’t just with solitaire games that we encounter this phenomenon.  In the movie The Last Starfighter, there is that moment when little brother Louis Rogan is all over the Starfighter video game telling his brother Alex what to shoot, until Alex has to ask him to move his head out of the way so he can see.  What is most interesting about this is that it seems so real, so true to life-we have all played video games and had someone sitting near us pointing and shouting about them.  Why do people do this?  Obviously they are not playing the game–you are.  What prompts someone to tell you how to play the game you are playing entirely on your own?

  This sort of thing happens even when we aren’t playing alone.  Who has never been playing in a friendly card game with a few people and had someone who isn’t playing come around behind him to look at his hand, and even to make veiled (or not so veiled) comments about how it should be played, or whether it’s any good?  Oh, yes, play that; oh, that’s good.  What about chess?  It seems that somebody is always interested in giving you his (or her) detailed advice regarding how to play.  People insist on becoming involved in games in which they are obviously not involved.

  Part of that may be the excitement inherent in watching a good tense game.  Certainly if we see an exciting moment, we want to be part of it.  Like spectators rooting for a ball team, we feel a part of it merely by watching, and often we think we know the best thing for the team to do.  Hardcore fans of various sports are always yelling their advice toward the players on the field, or cursing them for not doing what from the stands appeared so obvious.  Yet this doesn’t sufficiently explain the phenomenon.  It seems clear from the interest people take in the rather dull game of Solitaire that there must be some other motivating factor at work, some reason spectators are drawn into a game in which they are not players.

  The answer that comes to me may be almost too obvious.  Spectators want to be involved with you because you are playing a game.  Games are social activities, and are perceived as such even when they are designed to be played alone, or when they are being played by others with others.  So the person on the video game or playing with the cards or otherwise involved in an exclusive game is involved in an activity the rest of us perceive as social, and we want to be part of it.  From a psychosocial perspective, this is rather interesting; the person who deals himself a hand of solitaire or picks up the video game controller may be attempting to communicate to others that he wishes to withdraw from interaction with them, but because he is playing a game and we understand games to be social activities, he actually encourages us to interact with him.

  There is a sense in which that interaction is superficial.  If I tell you which way to go in your video game, or warn you of incoming enemy fighters, or suggest what strategy to follow in your card play, I’m not even really playing the game with you.  I’m certainly not sharing anything deep or meaningful with you.  Then again, those who rise in the stands and perform their rituals in support of their teams feel like they’re part of the game despite the fact that there’s no rational (and even precious little irrational) reason to think they’re connected to what is actually happening on the field.  I read recently of someone who genuinely believes not only that his presence in front of the television set helps his favorite team win the game, but that he has to wear the right pair of shorts for it to be truly effective.  He’s not socially involved with anyone at that moment; but he feels as if he is, as if he’s part of the team pushing on to victory.

  That superficial connection may be enough.  It is at least the starting point for a relationship.  Games ultimately are about playing together, and through playing together sharing time, and through sharing time sharing ideas, and through sharing ideas coming to know each other, and through coming to know each other building solid friendships which may last for years.

  So get together with a few people this weekend and play a game.  Call some old friends whom you haven’t seen for a while and invite them over.  Ask a few co-workers or fellow students what they’re doing later.  It doesn’t have to be a role playing game, but it could be.  You don’t have to invite them over for a role playing game specifically even if that’s what you have in mind.  Don’t make the distinction; maybe don’t even make the commitment.  So, what do you guys want to play?  We’ve got Monopoly™, Mille Bornes™, Dungeons & Dragons™, Multiverser™, Clue, pinochle, Legends of Alyria, and a couple of others here.  Any game will do; just spend time with them.  It’s a great way to get to know each other.

  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 eerie screaming of seagulls woke me from the verser transition madness. I lay alone like a discarded toy atop wet, black rocks overlooking a grim seashore. My stuff lay about me, and in the distance I could sense other of my things which had been stored long miles away at the detective agency I’d worked for in the metropolis of Straits City.



Reeking seaweed got me up, and moving to gather my stuff. I decided to test things as I scooped them up. My horse pistol I dry-fired, and my M-5 after I flicked a switch to shift it to subsonic(gas vents opened in the side of the barrel shunting off much of the propulsive force), I shot a hole into the narrow beach forty feet beneath me down the slanting cliff of black, jumbled rocks I stood on. My Lekostian Star Empire cyberware’s expert system plainly refused to come on.



A test of clairvoyance worked, but it was so hard like pulling taffy after you’ve done it for ten minutes already, that I passed on the other skills. It would be nice in this cold, windy place to have a pyrokinetic campfire, but I’d have to do without.



I made a small tipi of dry tinder from my backpack, and spoke a few words while aiming my hand like a gun at it. Nothing. Feeling cold and depressed, I prayed for warmth and a lifting of my spirits. Nothing again.



Lastly, I checked my body related skills. A warm-up stretch used by some minor league baseball players of the ’20′s, the Green Sox, followed by Tai Ki taught me by Master Wau Lei in an alternate Hong Kong where Communism had never existed, and I went on to a vertical handstand followed by a fingertip handstand which was almost my toughest trick. I avoided going berserk because of its aftermath and the fact that I had no enemies needing to be mangled nearby. I also knew how to shapeshift my hands into claws, but it was a skill I rarely used seeing as it was easier to just pop my fingernail extenders and have a shining three-quarter inch of titanium alloy slide out from underneath my fingernails. Lee Press-on Nails (r) had nothing on me.



So the technological skills bias was medium to upper medium(I couldn’t narrow it down without more testing), and the psi was about Earth level which means really low. Magic was flatter than a pancake; possibly even negative because a prayer for relief from depression will often work on Earth which is notoriously flat in regard to magic. My Arts Magica firestarting spell had not worked, and neither had a prayer. The body area of skills seemed to be just fine; in fact better than Earth because I could not stand on my fingertips on Earth.



I threw on my gray medieval style cloak, and my backpack, and set out hiking. The landscape opressed, but the fun of climbing and the chill, clear air had me enjoying it all the same. My goal was my other supplies.



After a bit, I noted that they seemed to be moving. A check with my innate direction sense left me beaded with chilly dew on my forehead, and the certainty that I was right.



The tide came in just as I was considering walking on the beach because the rocks had not given way to easier terrain like I expected. Mile after mile I trudged, and it seemed harder than usual to keep up my spirits. Night fell quickly, and that confirmed that I was in the extreme latitudes (Northern or Southern) if this was a globe-shaped planet which it very, very likely was. I’d heard of places where the planet was flat, or the Sun and the Solar System orbitted the Earth, but the vast majority seemed to have a basic similarity of design. It was worth assuming this was likewise as that saved energy.



Finally, I came to a thin gravel road between hills of unforgiving rock that sprouted black shapes of pine trees to overshadow the road. A few scrapes, and I got down to the road. An eerieness had me looking over my shoulder at the suddenly frightening height I had come from, but I pushed this childish fear away, and hiked on.



Another mile uphill, and unusually tired, I came to the outskirts of a small town in the hollow between a hill and a harbor. Walking down its varying cobblestoned, and bricked and gravel winding ways which never let me have a clear line of fire for a great distance, I felt heavy and sad. Dead flowers nearly strangled the only live one in a box hung by a window, and the living one smelt like irises in a horrid, cloying scent. Trash floated like ghosts in the cold wind and flung itself violently down the occasional wind tunnel formed by the taller three story houses. If anything, it seemed colder in a still, bone-chilling, and merciless way inside the city than outside.



It occurred to me that such trash might well be a paper, and I could use it to find data, but now none was to be found now that I wanted trash.



A spot of light coincided with my scriff sense, and so gladly I headed toward it. The low murmur of exclusive conversation halted when I stepped into the door of the bar-restauraunt. The Kraken was filled with hard men in black and brown felt jackets and hand-knitted caps, and men in thinner clothes who looked worn-down, and a few woman serving, and a few with family who looked pious and respectable. In the middle of the room, a bulky man with a sherrif’s badge and gun conversed with a couple other notable sorts, a tall, thin man with burning eyes, and an outlandishly overweight man in a fine black broadcloths suit. Nearby another nervous and young fellow hovered intensely curious he sketched in his notebook with a fervid energy alien to the room which seemed composed of hard, metallic sorts of people. The waitresses were copper and easily bent, and the fishermen were wrought iron with the pious being brittle cast iron, and the inner circle being steel.



I had to walk up to a waitress even though I was in plain view of the whole, nearly filled room, and so I did, and grunted.

“What?” She asked hostilly looking blank on what I could want.

“Could I have a table, a menu, some Coca-cola?”

“Well, yes.” She said reluctantly after pausing to see if there was any reason she could think of to deny my request. I resisted the impulse to bellow at her. I just gritted my teeth.



“Coke, that’s bad stuff. Why don’t you know it has cocaine in it?” The sherrif said with false bonhomie which still felt like warmth in this room. The fireplace at each end of the long box-like room labored hard, but still it was too cool where I stood by the door.

“Cocaine isn’t bad; its got a lot of good medicinal properties, begging your pardon, Sherrif.” The sketcher in the notebook said.



“Ayup.” A few said, and I placed myself on the Northeastern coast of America.



“I know some of you use it to soothe your aches, and that’s okay, but some of those city folks and them Southerners drink it in all the time.” The sherrif placated, and virtuous nods of self-approval rippled around the room.



“Its just like me using laudanum to keep my little girl from crying at night because she’s scared of the Nixie. You only use it if you need it.” Someone in the crowd said with an air of pride at their restraint and good judgement. I ground my teeth.



Laudanum for children and cocaine instead of aspirin and IcyHot (r)!! Are these people nuts? My historical knowledge kicked in, and I remembered that laudanum had been used to get children to sleep. Considering the thirteen child family possible back then, and the way moderns doped their boys with Ritalin, I could maybe understand it, but I did not like it one bit.



I walked past the middle table set on a raised platform six inches above the floor. Someone said something to me, but seeing my plasma cannon, and most of my other stuff laying there spread out on the Queen Anne table caused me to gulp.



“I say stranger, anybody home, that’s a mighty peculiar cloak you got there.” The banker said as he knocked his knuckles on my scalp. The crowd laughed, and I barely restrained the snarl, and the wrist grab that would have flung the fat cat onto the floor. The sherrif noted my irritation, and eyed me more closely.



“Don’t mess with the do.” I said taking refuge in obscurity. Across the table the sketcher jolted, and looked up at me.



“What’s this stuff?” I asked pointing at my items. I checked to make sure they were not about to do anything really silly that would blow themselves up, or summon a demon or rend space-time. Most of the items required proper knowledge to use, or had safeguards. I did see an incendiary grenade laying there. Pull its pin, and very few of the people in the room were getting out alive. I gulped.



“This is obviously a weapon, a gun of some type. I think a blunderbuss, its so big.” The sherrif patted my plasma cannon which did indeed look weaponish.

“I’m not sure what it is,” The sketcher said, “My Astrological Studies revealed the Coming of this Great Moment of Change, but I think its some sort of Talisman of the Outer Dark, and we should destroy it.” The sketcher really did talk that way when he got going. That melodrama plus the fact that I knew the magic was flat or subzero let me know he was a charlatan or a deluded flake.

“We should Destroy It.” He finished.



I considered the likely consequences of opening a magnetic bottle containing half-a-million degree plasma by some Maine fishermen armed with axes if they managed to disengage the safety locks which they might. You’d be able to see the flash from space.



“No, its obviously valuable.” The banker said running a covetous hand over the smooth metal curves of my gun. “A genuine piece of art suited to add to my collection, Sherriff?”



The sherrif nodded. I pointed out the grenade, and the sherrif agreed with me.

“It looks like one of Kaiser Bill’s potato mashers to me, only different. Not something to play with.” The sherrif said, and then looked studyingly at me. How did I know about this, he wondered.



I walked on, and chose a booth near the fire, but not right next to the fire like my waitress wanted to give me. I ignored her huffiness.



Eating my clam chowder and drinking my black coffee, I considered. I really needed to get my stuff back, but the authorities were going to want proof, and what proof I had I did not want to share. Besides, I did not want to attract attention. That might be a lost cause, I decided as I looked around the room of people obviously related to each other, and with a preponderance of dark, lanky hair to contrast with my blonde-brown, but I could choose to be the Stranger rather than the Stranger with Really Odd and Frightening yet Valuable Stuff. I might have to just leave it until I versed out of here, and then hope it came with me.



The charlatan, the sketcher, came over, and seated himself with some trepidation across from me.



“This is an Important Moment in my Studies of the Unexplained and the Inexplicable. I have finally placed my hands on items that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Alien Creatures reside Here and Now.”



I made some polite noise, and the waitress came to refill my bowl. The sudden quiet of my companion made me aware of how thin he was, and that he did not seem to have a seat other than across from me. Probably, being a researcher into Things Unknown (drat, he had me doing it now) did not pay too well.



“Some for my friend as well.”



“You got money?” She asked harshly, and I again noted to myself the severe need to replenish my monetary resources. My pirate treasure was gone, except for the pearls which were sitting on the table in front of the sherriff. I pulled a string on the inside of my cloak, and extracted an ounce stick of gold. I had one more there, and some other bits of currency and silver, and a few other hide-outs, but I was heading toward practically broke. I doubted my twenty-five hundred in Union of Yukonia plastic bills would get me far here and now.



The gold stick I produced, and waved it in front of her too eager hands. She hoped to take the whole thing for the meal.



The banker was brought over, and he was quite willing to give me, at a discount as he acknowledged, a hundred gold redeemable bills backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America and redeemable for three-fourths of an ounce of gold anywhere in the world. He said this all in a rolling and fruity voice that extolled the virtues of money and the holder of the money. In the banker’s eyes, I had been upgraded from Unimportant Stranger to Rich Man. And everybody knows how close the Rich are to God’s throne, or at least, so the banker thought.



I gave the waitress more than she deserved, and with shining eyes she whispered in Sketcher’s ear about going out for a date later in the week. There was more to the surly waitress than I thought if she dated someone her father probably disaproved of. We had more than enough food and service for the rest of the night.



I let the Sketcher entertain me with his wild tales which always happened to a friend of a friend who broke a vow of silence on his deathbed, or were recounted in a book destroyed in a fire, or were the reports of a raving madman.



Finally, full of chowder and hot bread and jam, and sugared coffee(I’d finally rated sugar), he looked disapointed at me.



“You don’t believe me. I thought you were more open-minded than the rest. You don’t see that there is magic in the world.”



“I’m sorry friend. At one time, yes there probably was magic.” I thought back to stories of people who had lived in a world for centuries and seen the amount of magic possible go down as the technological possibilities went up. I’d taken a class on this, in part, at an alternate Menlo Park run as a college by versers, extradimensionals.



“But not now. You’d be better off writing stories, or researching archeology.”



Hurt and sad he looked at me for a long moment.



“Okay, I’ve seen things. I’ve told no one else this, not even my girlfriend.” He whispered, and I felt sorry for him. He was not a charlatan, but a deluded flake. Magic did not work in this world. And here, I was, a near-complete stranger who had offered him a polite hearing and some food, and he was telling me his greatest secret.



“Seen things with the help of some pharmaceutical aids?” I inquired in a soft voice with the gentleness of a scalpel. He paled as if I had slapped him, and then looked indignant.



“Fine. Goodnight, Mr. Tadeusz.” He stood up, and nodded with stiff courtesy as I wished for some word to take the pain away, but still bring him back to reality. He walked out. I did not see the waitress after that.



After a while, it began to occur to me that I might have been too rough on the kid. If I closed off his last hope, then he might do something horrible. Hurriedly, I scraped up the last of my chowder, and arranged for a room in a nearby boarding house.



A scream from far away and outside jolted me, and to a lesser extent nearly everyone in the room. Heading to the door, I was intercepted by the sherriff.



“It’s just the Nixie, the wind and the water have carved some really intricate holes in the rocks out by Harbor Point. Purely natural, and its not human although it sure sounds like it.” The sherrif’s hand and his mass blocked my path, and his explanation relaxed my urgency a bit. Still I needed to go out into the dark.



“I’m still a bit worried.” I said and the people nearby chuckled at my confession of cowardice, or so they saw it. Tilting my head back toward my table, I tried to signal my fears about the kid.



“Alright, we can take a walk outside. Look around. Ease your worries.” The sherriff said, and we walked outside where he asked me what was the matter.



“I was a little hard on the kid with the notebook. Trying to bring him back to Earth. I’m afraid he might do something unthinkable.”



“I heard you, and believe me, many others have tried, and been far harsher, but sure let’s take a look.”



We walked and the sherrif gave me the usual “this is a small town, and strangers need to get accustomed to its ways” speech. We passed a shrieking bedlam, a small house at the north edge of town, from which the most awful cries were heard. I shuddered remembering my time in a more humane mental asylum which had still been a horror.



Beyond, and up a muddy track in between dense pines, we came to a lighted house of clapboard, and knocked on the door. The sherrif kept his hand on his gun as we stood on the porch.



“The city folk don’t believe it, but I think there’s wolves, and I know there’s bears in the Darkwood.”



The Darkwood, curious name for it, I thought, and then the door opened to show a welcoming Sketcher. He brought us in and showed us his astrological studies. Evidently, he had forgiven me, even if I was now down-rated from Open-minded Searcher to Nice Guy.



“I’ve just discovered something new. Look.” He showed us his proof that something he called the Hero of the Thousand Masks would come and fight/transform Pisces. But his new theory smacked strongly of making it up to fit the facts, and it explained nothing except after being interpreted through the use of dozens of books in a highly obscure fashion.



We left, and the sherriff chuckled.



“Smarter than a whip, no doubt, and not fit to be tossed in bedlam either, but not quite right in the head is he? But a nice kid for all that, and he sure can talk your ear off which is a nice change from all my fishermen who think ‘Ayup’ is an explanation.”



We walked past bedlam again and I heard shrieks about the pieces of the world being broken and shattered. End of the world stuff. I’d been at the end of a couple of worlds, and usually its either a quietly awesome thing, or pure chaos. These guys seemed to expect pure chaos and the triumph of evil.



My bed in the boarding house was filled with bugs, and so I slept in the unheated room on my cloak on the tongue and groove floor. I went downstairs to the communal table, and felt like being monosylabbic myself.



But the hostess bustled in, all excited, and told us bachelors, her boarders, the latest news.



“Did you hear? The waitress whose fond of that kid with the notebook was found near dead this morning near the Nixies. The sherriff is arresting the kid for taking her out there which is against town law because its not safe. If she dies, it may be manslaughter.”



She served the rest with bubbly enthusiasm over the fate of “that worthless boy”, and I forced myself to eat the lumpy porridge, needing the strength.



Tadeusz

Last time, I talked about changing people through gaming and games. It was, I hope, an interesting article. My natural evolution from that question is the simple struggle to please folks in your game. It is a struggle, and as a GM, you don’t always succeed.



Let’s take a normal campaign of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. First, you have probably have a number of players that are different. They have different goals in life, different interests, and even varying opinions about politics, the world, and the human existence. Then, you add in the fact that through the game you have different characters which are designed to handle problems in unique ways. You know — the barbarian whacks things with his sword, the mage blasts them with his magic, the thief sneaks up from behind, and so on. A campaign that does not appeal to a player on a personal level and on a character level can be a waste. I don’t know any players that would keep going to a campaign if it sucks. Eventually, the commitment and time wasted will rise to a level where it just is not worth it.



Knowing that players can be hard to come by, it is important then that a GM do his best to engage his players and make their characters important in the campaign. Let’s cover each aspect.



Before I do though, I want to mention a simple warning. You won’t always succeed. In fact, some weeks may be better than others. Some weeks you must simply hope to have a trade off. One character may be a bit more important than another that week. Some story lines are not going to appeal to certain players. Your hope is that by mixing up the elements you will have enough good sessions that all your players will be willing to forgive a few bad ones.



On A Player Level



Here is a quick rundown of some of my friends who game with me. First, I have a couple that drive about 30-45 minutes into town to get a session in. David is a computer science student and in the Army Reserves. He knows thousands of things about the military, guns, and roleplaying games. Michelle is his wife, and she is a freelance roleplaying game author. She writes for Wizards and Guardians of Order among others. Both are way cool.



Also, I have a friend John, who just got hired at a funeral home. He is a criminal justice major in college and is very rational and serious (most of the time). He loves comic books. Next, I should mention Tai who is a music major and a bit of perfectionist. He has a great sense of humor however. Occasionally, I have a few other folks who drop in here and there. For now, this is good enough to go on.



As you see, they are all different. I have players who are well-versed in the rules of the various games we play. I have some who don’t give a damn. I have some who enjoy telling jokes more than spewing heroic speeches. I have some who want to get deep in character.



How do I bring them together?



First, humor is the best tool to bring different folks together. If you can warm the group up with a humorous moment or some ironic pun early in the game, walls melt, and the action gets going. Some folks aren’t going to laugh as hard at certain jokes, but making sure folks have plenty of opportunity to insert their witty line between game events is a key to a good time.



Second, make notes about each person’s different knowledge from what you know and include a chance for that to come out in the game. I could use Tai, for instance, by including some sort of musical scene. I could ask him for advice before the game session or in the middle of the game let him explain a certain instrument or musical piece. It sounds corny as hell, but it does work.



Third, encourage your gamers to share their interests with each other. You may have to get things going by announcing, “Hey, John just got hired by a funeral home.” Again, this could be corny, but if you are genuine, no one cares. Your gaming group doesn’t have to be best friends, but if you are regularly spending 4 hours a week together, it’s great if friendships do develop. People cannot walk away from a game session unsatisfied after making a new friend.



Fourth, be aware of your group’s weak spots. This is the hardest. Don’t bring up anything in the game that could be offensive or uncomfortable for the group. Sometimes, this is not a big deal. Sometimes, it is. If some of your group has little children, don’t run an adventure about how little children are being stolen out of their parents’ homes and ritually slaughtered. Not cool. Try to run adventures that appeal to themes that the group responds to. An adventure revolving around healing children from a mysterious illness might be a better session all around, especially if your group likes kids.



This is, sadly, not a rocket science. The key is to simply find what your players are interested in and make them feel useful. Make them feel like they aren’t just another seat filled. One of the other subtle methods I use to make players happy is to pay close to attention to what they talk about. I listen to their comments of the game session and use their ideas to make things better. Often, players will be vocal about what they like about some aspect in the game or what would be cool to happen. Then, I use it. It happens. They love it.



On A Character Level



Your first step in appealing to the players on a character level is to insure that you have them write some sort of background. It doesn’t have to be long. It doesn’t have to be written necessarily. It just gives you some idea of what their character is about. This is important for story purposes. It is also important to know what direction the player wants to take the character.



Your next objective is to make sure your adventures include a variety of activity and challenges. If you are really good, you will design the game in mind with a challenge or puzzle for each character to solve. It can get tough to do this, especially if a few of the characters have overlapping abilities. Have a rousing scene where the thief must unlock the door before the goblin cleaning crew scrapes them out of the hall. Have a scene where the wizard’s deciphering abilities allow him to discover the cryptic password. You get the drift. If a character has a chance to shine and be the hero for that scene, it does wonders for the player.



Finally, give each specific character a subplot of their own, involving their background that helps build them up as a separate entity — not just another arm or leg in the party. In my Briarwood campaign that was going for a while, I had a sorcerer (who wanted to be the most powerful spellcaster ever) come across and befriend another powerful sorcerer in the forest. The two became friends and began training together during downtime. Another character, a thief, began to be contracted out to do various espionage like activities by the local government. Another character, an elf cleric, began to work on a cure for a terrible disease wiping out the local elven population. All of this while the group adventured and began to uncover a great plot to destroy the world.



When a character is being developed and is important in the game (not just another sword swinger or spellcaster), the players have a much better time themselves. They get excited about the possibilities. They look forward to what is coming next. As a result, they aggressively are involved in the game.



Concluding Remarks



Again, this is not a science. It is not a formula that is going to win every time. In fact, I can definitely see that getting into politics or certain interests of some players could be detrimental to having a good time. Play it by ear. Pay attention to the way your players are responding to the game. Is it frustration, anger, contentment, feigned interest, or what? If all else fails, take the player out to lunch. Find out why they are unhappy.



The key to being a good GM is letting the game appeal to your players – on both a human and a character level. You have many tools to work with — humor, story themes, interests, and game mechanics. Sometimes, it is also knowing when to let go and just laugh. Let your players run wild a bit and see where they take the game. You may be surprised.



Until next time, good gaming!