The Gaming Outpost

  One of the projects on which I’m currently working is refining my approach to running convention games of Multiverser.  This is particularly challenging, because the game is so unconventional that it’s really difficult to show it off in a convention setting.  Years ago someone wrote that some games do very well in one-shot demos and others do not.  There is truth in that; but it would be better to say that some games are very easy to introduce through one-shot demos and others require a lot of careful planning to ensure that their strong points are displayed in the short time available.  Multiverser seems to be of the latter sort.  Its greatest strengths show in the campaign, as players move to many different worlds.  I want to thank John Corradin of Delaware’s fine game shop Days of Knights for pointing out to me what should have been obvious:  whatever is the best feature of the game, that’s the thing that has to happen very quickly.

  Thus I’ve been mulling over how to make that happen.

  I’m not totally without ideas on this.  For one thing, I’ve concluded that starting everyone together in NagaWorld, as I would for a campaign, does not make for a good demo.  Experience has shown that whoever is the first player to start in that world will set the tone, and others will fall into whatever that player has decided to do.  Thus in some games everyone gets killed very quickly (there are some incredibly dangerous places to go and things to do in that world) and in others they all settle down and begin to build a new world.  The world builders usually never get very deeply into the wonders of the game, because they can spent many hours getting into the wonders of the setting.  I tried using certain other gather worlds as starting points, but gather worlds in general have too many safe zones, really, and it’s easy for a group to stagnate if you’ve got them together.  Thus I’ve been shifting my approach to running multiple worlds from the start, and that seems to be working a bit better.

  The refinement at this point is about knowing what worlds to prepare.  Each world has to be easy enough to run smoothly without too much attention, because with only four hours to play I’ve got to cover a lot of ground in each without snags.  At the same time, they have to contrast significantly with each other, to show off some of the variation within the game.  Also, since these players will be starting in these worlds, they have to work within the context of characters who do not know what has happened to them–there are a number of wonderful worlds that work much better for someone who already understands that he is a verser, an immortal person who will never age and for whom death is merely the door to the next universe, which fall flat if the player doesn’t have some grasp of this initially.

  Musing on this, I mentioned my ponderings to my eldest son, and he suggested a few worlds I have used to start people, plus one I had never run at all.  It is a world I created for use in the as yet unpublished second Multiverser novel, Old Verses New, and it is one of several rather frightening horror worlds in that book.  I’m going to have to name it; Haunted House will work for now, which is at least completely descriptive.  The rest of this column is going to be about Haunted House, what makes it work in the story, and how to achieve something of the same effect in a game.

  The player character begins the adventure in a bedroom of a modern home; the bed is made up, and the room is warm enough to be comfortable.  It is night, and it is immediately obvious that a storm is raging outside, rain pelting the windows and frequent flashes of lightning.  It is otherwise quite dark, such that very little can be seen between flashes.  The electricity is out; although there are light switches, these don’t do anything.

  One thing that is critical to making the scenario work is that the character does not know he is in a haunted house.  This is a conclusion he has to reach.  It also helps in the book that we are following the character’s thoughts, seeing events through his eyes.  He doesn’t want to believe that this is a haunted house, and tries to explain the evidence as it presents itself.

  To achieve the same thing in play, we need to build the evidence very slowly.  Before the character has managed to look around, the door slams shut; if he turns to look that direction, a momentary glow at the threshold suggests that someone has carried a light down the hall on the other side.  The storm rages, and the wind howls, and sometimes it seems the house itself moans loudly.

  The evidence must also be inconclusive.  The character touches the doorknob, which is as cold as ice, causing him to flinch; but if he approaches it again, it is not cold at all–perhaps it was his nerves.  The shadows play tricks; with one flash of lightning there appears to be a body hanging in the hall between the bedroom and the stairs; an instant later in the next flash there is nothing to suggest what caused the illusion.  He steps on the floor and it creaks, and he immediately hears the sound of a vase rolling on the top of the shelf unit before it crashes to the floor beside him.

  There is a problem that must be addressed.  The scenario has to give the character good reason to want to find his way out of the house despite the storm, while at the same time it must keep him in the house as long as possible.  In the book, it was retrieving his equipment that prompted the character to move (that, and wanting to get out of some stranger’s home); yet that probably would not be a serious problem in the game–players are probably going to move.  What is more of a problem is containing them within the house without making it feel overly forced.  What if the character attempts to open the window and climb out?  Certainly the window would be stuck; but on a strength check, it should open.  Still, getting out through a window is a difficult move, and it could easily fall closed before the character can get any part of his body through it, and once again become stuck.  Smashing the window is certainly a possibility, and there is nothing that can be done about that.  However, there won’t be a fire escape to the bedroom level, and any means of climbing down from the second story window during a raging thunderstorm is going to be forbidding.

  This leads to another complication.  characters have skills and equipment, all of which will be unpredictable before the game begins.  This is Multiverser.  I can’t hand them stock characters tailored such that their limitations fit the scenario–they play themselves, and bring their own gear.  Flashlights, ropes, climbing gear, tools, and many other run of the mill bits of equipment could mess with the scenario.  How do you play games with the darkness when the character brings his own light?  Of course, I’m talking about a haunted house–my ghost can play games with the equipment, subtle games that help build the evidence without giving it away but interfere with the character’s plans.  If the ghost makes a successful roll, the flashlight flickers out, the knot in the rope slips, the piton pulls loose, the nail shifts and bends under the force of the blow, all handiwork of the ghost who has yet to truly prove his presence.

  The only real hole in the scenario is that it’s quite vulnerable to magic.  That shouldn’t be a major problem in a demo game–I’ve only ever had two players claim that they could do something magical when they sat down to the table, and the sorts of magical claims that are made don’t impact this sort of situation.  It would matter in an ongoing game, because once the player realizes he can use magic against the adversary, it’s going to become a fight rather than a fright, and lose the horror feel it’s supposed to have.  That’s not a problem in the demo, but it’s something to consider if the world is going to be written up for publication.

  Of course, eventually everything will escalate; the ghost will get tired of close misses and childish games, and throw everything it has at the character.  In the book, that happens in the kitchen, but with a little thought it could happen in any room of the house.  Once that happens, it is unlikely that the player could escape alive (particularly as breaking a window gives the ghost a thousand shards of glass to use against him).  It needs some detailing, but this could be an excellent little world to use as one of perhaps four running concurrently in a demo game.  It would clearly be very different from what everyone else is doing, and it would also move relatively quickly to the fatal moment.

  You’re welcome to use this, in whole or in part, for your own games.  I’d also love to hear how you’d make it work better, as well as what other worlds you think I should use at the same time.

  Next week, something different.

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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.