The Gaming Outpost

Ed Bartlett of Baen’s Barflies had this to say in an discussion about legality and morality in Germany. The guy who started the discussion was ‘Ulrich’.

Now, it was a good point for the discussion, but an even better point for the creation of alternate universes.

I was stationed in Germany from ’84 to ’87, and unfortunately Ulrich’s position is all too common among his fellow citizens.

This may be a gross overstatement, simplification, or stereotype, but to this day I’m convinced that the overwhelming majority of Germans _need_ to know their place in society. As long as the laws are clearly posted they’ll go along with them, because they know where they fit in the grand scheme. A nice neat pigeonhole for everyone, whether or not those spots are fair, or just, or right. It’s a concept we Americans find mind boggling.

Now, this could be used as a ‘visit the new place’ and they keep saying things slightly off, and you think its a joke…until…uh oh…you realize you’re hip-deep in trouble, and they weren’t joking. It could also be useful for two alternate realities like the Farmland setting. In one, the locals think like the verser. In the other, the locals only appear to think like the verser but on some very important issues they are totally different.

This is part of a rough draft for an article on How to Run Romance in RPG’s.

I can’t remember the name, but she’s the gamer that outbid me for the Multiverser rulebook I think in the 9/11 auction.

She pointed out the use of chaperones.

Chaperones make it harder to get alone with the Desired One. They also make it so you have to engage your mind to come up with some clever way to outwit the chaperone in some comic scheme to dodge the formidable aunt, or they require one to engage one’s poetic imagination as you think of ways to tell your beloved just how lovely she is without activating Censored Function.

All this points to difficulties getting to be with the Desired One as a useful Romantic Device. Its not just Chaperones. Other difficulties include the one in Ladyhawke where the Other is magically transformed into a beast at the opposite moment of yourself. Having the other chained in a dungeon to a wall while the Hero risks life and limb battling through hordes of monsters and across perilous terrain to rescue his beloved works well too–in fact,it works so well, that its a staple of B films.

Which means you as a gamemaster should definitely use it.

This brings up a problem I see in gaming. Sometimes there are dreadfully obvious plot devices such as ‘girlfriend gets kidnapped, and we rescue her’ which I hardly ever see used. Now, in Champions yes, a bit, but otherwise…no. I think its time and past time for a few Prudence Purehearts to be chained to a wall while their Hiero the Herculaens goes on a rampage of rescue.

Maybe I’m just playing with the wrong people, but I don’t think so.

More difficulties include things like the Paladin Lilandra really wanting to get married, but also really wanting to get marriedin a church of her god…which happened to be not worshipped in that dimension they werein.

Now there is a different type of difficulty: If you put on that ugly sweater and walk out in public with your friends because your girl bought it for you….that’s romance. How much are you willing to suffer for her whims?

And every character should have whims.

She’s tired, and asks if you can take her watch tonight.

She wants to go shopping, and your primary job is too look interested, and hold thirty pounds of various clothes for her. Extra points go for offering to buy the clothes, and take her out to lunch to commisserate with her over the very hard time shopping she had (she has no idea! of the agony you suffered as she studied various clothes.)

This brings up another source of difficulty. Tests. A female generally wants to know if her man has gumption, and is going to stick by her. Some might want to see how you do in a fight. Others might want to see if you’re going to leave them teh first time they have an outbreak of acne.

To find out these matters of interest to the female heart, it requires a Test of the Male. Getting a fight started is relatively easy. She smiles a bit too much at some guy at the bar. He has been chosen to be an obvious crude sort. He makes a crude comment…and the Hiero steps up and quietly says “You don’t talk to my lady like that.” Best said in a low John Wayne gravel truck voice.

Most females who do this are 1)Kinda wild. OR 2)From a world in which physical prowess or intellectual skill in turning aside fatal questions is important. The first might be a barbarian princess. The second might be a society lady at a king’s court where if you earn the disfavor of the king, you might end up beheaded.

The second is far more common. One easy way is for the female to indulge herself unreasonably at your expense. See the old Shania Twain song about how her man had better walk the line. She shows up an hour late, and expects forgiveness and sympathy. You’re five minutes late, and you get ripped. She wants to go hang out with relatives she openly describes as pschyotic, and you get to accompany her to ‘keep her sane’ although no one is keeping you sane.

Another source of difficulty is inside her. She, like most people, has multiple facets to her personality. One of those facets thinks you’re a bad idea. This is not a split personality, but she might think you attractive, and witty, and kind, and devoted…but her mother side is thinking about children,a nd wondering what that would be like, and not liking the answer. Or she thinks you’re great and fun, but you blow your money, and her accountant side is wondering what it will be like when her checking account has yours and her name on it.

Another such facet is she may greatly enjoy the life with you, but otoh, it is kinda scary. This leads to various conflicts with her 1)sucking it up. 2)partaking slightly of the terror. 3)wobbling all over the place 4)trying in subtle and not so subtle methods to get you to stop being an adventurer and take up something safe like being a gardener. 5)Tearfully sending you off to battle the dragon while she stays behind.

Now, I may seem a bit sarcastic, but a lot of this is legitamate. If you’re tying your life to someone else for the rest of your life, or in the verser’s case probably going to end up jumping out of the universe altogether and leave everyone you know behind….well, a little caution seems in order.

Other difficulties are her past. If you’re a bit authoritarian, and the last person she knew like that was her uncle who only beat her with a stick only on days ending in ‘y’. Now you’re innocent of such, would cut off your own hand before you did such, but every time you get a little ‘heavy’ or ‘decisive’ she freaks.

Another difficulty is power. It may seem a bit impolite to say, but guys and girls both love to be in charge. And sometimes even though they love the other person, they choose to pick a fight just to get their own way, or to demonstrate that they are the boss.

Another oldie but a goodie is conflict with the family. Usually its with the female’s family. They don’t like you. They see all your faults, and none of your good side. You’re simply not good enough for their darling…you might suspect they intend to keep her at home until she’s gray-headed or the Paladin of Ultracool shows up on his shining platinum steed.

This can take various forms. The mother might simply shut the door in your face, and lock her daughter in her room. Or her seven brothers might seek you out, and arrange for an old-fashioned throw-down….note, if you kill a brother thats going to require a bit more than flowers to make up for…even if he was trying to kill you.

You most definitely should not take one of each, and make Pauline the Perilous Problema. Take two or three…if you look like you’re going to work through those issues, you can add one more as its revealed….

You’ve beaten up her seven brothers (and bought them drinks and befriended them getting one a job in the city guard, and another you helped hide from the legbreakers who wanted their gambling money back) so you’re good there. You’ve dodged and winked your way past Aunt Formidable the Chaperone, palming messages, shooting arrows through windows and nearly skewering a maid to send her a love poem. You took half your available cash and bought the best suit in town, and danced with her while several dozen competing males prayed you trip and fall on your nose. She was impressed. You’ve rescued her from some were-rats, and gotten in a quick kiss before the city guard showed up. You’ve struggled as she wondered whether your adventurous ways would be too scary for her. You knew you’d won when she asked you to teach her how to use an epee’.

Thats your initial set of problems.

Once those are solved we move on to ….she has issues with how you get loud and bossy, but she’s kept quiet about it till now. She wants you to buy a wagon so that when you go adventuring you can carry all her clothes…and perhaps the two of you can stay in town for a few weeks between adventures….

All this said….your character will thrill the first time she cries to a bunch of insolent city guards…”Do you knaves know who you are dealing with? This is Hiero, the great destroyer of the Bogbeast, and the Manticore, and husband of the noble lady So and so of House Grand! If I were you, I’d get down on my knees, and beg for his forgiveness.”

Romance in the real world and the gaming world is worth it. Its just not very easy sometimes.

This is an attempt to gather up some ideas for a How-to article on How too run a romance in an RPG. I’m specifically going to be mentioning two Multiverser characters, and versers, that is player characters. It will probably be a mish-mash.

Rules of Romance for RPG’s
By Eric R. Ashley

1. Let us not forget the obvious–Is the target of affections? A)Attractive B)Interesting. In other words, its generally best to make the Hot Elven Princess actually considerably more attractive than the average girl. However, one does not want to go overboard here. Relations between Demigoddesses of Romance and Beauty and mere mortals fall more under ‘How to Run the Character-Deity Relationship’ as a Deity is simply overwhelming by being themselves.

So, in Multiverser terms make her 2@1 to 2@4 in Charisma or Animal Magnetism with the other one trailing by say three to four points. In old skool AD&D make her Charisma 16 or higher. In Champions 4th Edition make her looks 18-25. In Vampire make sure she has at least four dots in an attractiveness attribute.

2. Make her memorable, but not totally outlandish. Lilandra had red hair, blue eyes, and skin like cream. Memorable means two things: Simple and attractive, but not outre’. You’ve got to be able to remember what she looks like, and you’ve got to want to remember, and you got to not suppress a wince every time you think of the three diamond pins poked through her tongue. Brrrr.

Other good ones include naturally white hair, or purple eyes, or one eye blue and the other green (they’re using that one on Bionic Woman this year). Green eyes, a pert nose, and a dusting of freckles across the nose always seems to be a popular description in a LOT of novels.

Show some class, your players will be grateful. Sure you can mention her ‘hourglass figure’ which is another oldie but goodie. Long, straight hair reaching down to her (insert polite compliment like ‘trim’ or even ‘curvy’) hips works too. But, if you go around describing her bra size…your players will not be impressed. And thats the male players. The female players will be looking to throw things at you. Be suave. Call her willowy, or slender for one type of body structure, and lithe, toned, muscled for another. The players can fill in the rest with their imagination–believe it or not, but a few of them may have noticed what shape girls are before.

Two points: One, there may be some reading this who think ‘three diamonds stuck through the tongue, how great is that!’ I’m happy for you. Really. I think you’re insane, but insanity and a good life are not mutually exclusive conditions.

Two: I’m focusing on how to describe ‘girls’ to the benefit of guy players. Well, I’ve done more of that in games than vice versa. And it seems to me that the girls might focus on the degree of muscles, the hair style, and the height….they are more interested in a witty personality for their invisible boyfriend. This article is more about how to present girls as non-player characters than the other way around. Although if you’re trying to do otherwise, you may find good tips in here.

3. The character needs to be the primary pursuer. This is my intuition. I think most characters would tend to flee the other way if pursued….except, you may want to have the NPC do the initial bit to get things started, because oftentimes PC’s are not even in the mode. That said, I could be all wet, and a garden-dwelling noblewoman could possibly try to charm a PC with frequent invites to parties and the like. It could work.

4. The Other needs to have interesting and valuable skills which the player does not already have. I discovered this with my Lilandra npc. I deliberately designed Lilandra so that she could hold her own in a fight, no, to be honest, so that she could clean the clock of whoever got in her way. She was a better swordfighter than her husband to be. He had a shotgun. He had more subtle thinking compared to her black and white thinking.

This raises a bunch of issues I’ll touch real quick and get back to later.

A. She had BIG skill.
B. He had other Big skills.
C. She had goals and ideas about how to do things–’Bad People need to feel my wrath’
D. She, in modern worlds especially, knew she wasn’t getting everything that was going on. She deferred to the verser to tell her when to kill someone. This kept the focus on teh verser who is after all the hero of the story, and gave her a goal, and gave them a minor conflict they could discuss and move on about. A girl that always agrees with you, and always supports you might be nice in the real world, but in games, its boring. But a girl you can’t win an arguement with is painful in the real world, and painful in the game world. I suspect in the game world, the PC should win most arguements with his Other.
E. This also sets up further conflict down the road when she is really, really wanting to kill someone for example, and he forbids it–”No, you can’t kill the dictator of a foreign country at the United Nations just because they’re an evil, mass-murdering thug. Its simply NOT Done!”
“But they’re wicked! Really, really wicked! Their presence offends my god!”

Conflict of varying degrees ranging from the mild to the serious is a good part of things.

MORE LATER……

2.

I’m working on a slew of different settings.

For Cthulu Aventus, I’m putting together ‘Mountain Home’ which is a setting, a short adventure, and some adventure seeds. Its over seven thousand words now. I’m struggling with organization of the setting material now. Later, I suppose I’ll struggle with expanding what I have on the short adventure.

Right now, I’m also doing research on the Appalachian mountain culture.

I think the whole thing is going to hit more than 10k words easily. Its due by Sept. 28, I hope. I hope its not due by the 21st because then I’m toast.

Project Numero Two: Eden’s Planet needs some imaginative work to make the Morally Superior Aliens both existent and interesting. I know roughly where I want to go; I don’t know how to get there. And right now, my brain ain’t up to imagining the path.

Project Trey: Mary Piper Epsilon; Nursery Rhymes is mostly done. It needs to be put together, and polished off, and I need to see if I’ve missed any major sections. This is the one MJ suggested to me, and I struggled with because I could not see how to combine MP and Nursery Rhymes…but I think it works reasonably well.

Project Quatro: Way too many projects here….I read some of “How to Write Killer Fiction” by Carolyn Wheat, and she gave a very nice description of Gothic romance. Instantly, as I’m prone to do, I wonder how to use this as a Multiverser setting. Flip it around, make the host a hostess, a mercurial, over-emotional Elven Queen….well, I’ve outlined some of the idea, and I’ve put together a personality for the Queen, in large part. I’m not sure its the personality I want, but it is dark and forboding which is Gothic.

I have to say, if I pull this one off, I’m giving myself another @1 on the Game Designer Skill. I think that a Gothic Romance world setting has to rank as waaaaaaaaaay out there for the typical gamer, and yet, I think I can do it in such a way (with lots of random monsters roaming the Near Maze area adn the lawns of the House) that most gamers would enjoy it.

Project Cinco: There is no Project Cinco. I’d like to write a little about the wilderness survival of Jackson Wellington, Worldwalker, but MY BRAIN IS MELTING.

Oh yeah, maybe I got a new player at rpol. The number of players has severely shrunk…not that I’m too unhappy about that. I’m still thinking a bit about closing up shoppe when the game’s posts hits 20,000. I don’t know. My players are very good, very intelligent, and have been with me for a long time.

On the MY BRAIN front…I need to get the Mountain Home thing done, and then maybe take a break from my recent fervid rate of posting. I’ve been trying to get backlogs of past years of work out of my computer and into the public. I still want to get paid. I still want to see this stuff published (and I’m still very bad at publishing), but its better if the stuff is being used than if its sitting on my computer and rotting.

This is a setting for the Multiverser: The Game roleplaying system of dimensional travelling. Its also usable for other roleplaying systems. If you need a writer for your rpg…you know where to find me. Enjoy.

Lady of Aelfheim
By Eric R. Ashley

Alynna de’toLossorian was born in the days when the Lodar still walked on the misty forrests of Aelfheim. For her first birthday, the Lord of Fire lit her glory torch, and the Earthmother burped her when she fussed. To say she had a cossetted childhood would understate things considerably. One of her first memories was the being she called ‘Unca Stone’, holding her in his arms as they walked through the Heavens, through outer space, and asking her what color the new planet he had designed should be.

And then they left.

She still had her playmates, the talking animals of the Near Wood, and her father and mother. But the Powers had retreated from Aelfheim, and the world for a very long time was a cold place even as the tevinrood trees flickered and flamed in the sunset, and the losetta flowers brought tears to her eyes even when they were not blooming.

The difference between being surrounded by completely good and loving and nigh omnipotent beings, and her merely immortal and ancient and wise parents was more than she could bear she decided, and retreated into seclusion on her one hundredth and tenth birthday.

She wove a maze about herself with spellcraft, and in a fit of despair allowed it to unfurl without limit. She sulked for centuries, and when at last she wanted company, she tried to find her way ouf of the maze, but could not. It had grown vast and wild and perilous.

She made sendings, and called for help from her relatives, from the great amongst the talking animals, but no message came back. Fearful of some disaster, she turned to the Powers, but they did not answer her. Violently angered, she turned to her books of magic, and began to tamper with the Major Forces.

Time resisted her, and so she turned to Death. And out of her anger and fear and need, she created something that she thought would have the strength to get out, to bash through all the obstacles. Time passed, and she weakened.

Needing nourishment, she turned to the lowly of the land, and gave them Speech. Now intelligent, the squirrels and the mice and the hawks gathered her food. Some she specially loved, and created for them humanoid bodies reflecting their animal natures.

Now stronger, she began again to cast the spells that made a golem of shadow. And there it stood before her, and there it plunged away, but it did not go far. It did not bash its way through the maze. It just stood.

And then the Powers appeared on to her.

“You have sinned.” They cried. “The Great Laws we gave you. You tossed them aside for your own will. You have made a Power of nightmare, fire, and shadow. Now all the people of this world will suffer for your deeds as nightmare stalks them in their dreams, and fire rages where once it lay tame, and the shadows beckon with sharp teeth.”

Alynna bowed, still heartsore, but sad for her evil.

“Kill me then. Destroy this beast I made. I want no more to live in this pain.”

“We cannot easily kill a Power, nor can we kill you as you are intertwined with the Power. And now you are intertwined with the Land as this beast is so that to kill you would be to kill the Land. The only thing that can save you is a dead man and love.”

Alynna accepted her judgment, and used her magics to try to slow the corruption and the pain her shadow brought. But, decade by decade, it grew stronger. More monsters were found, and the Maze grew not just strange, but corrupt. Alynna opened her house to others, seeking the dead man, and love. For a while she thought she had found it when she met a fascinating vampire from beyond the world. In the village in the center of the maze just down from the scalloped spire of razor-edged stone that was her castle, there were many of many species. Some human, some low elven (that is born in recent days, and lacking true memory of the Gods.)

MORE LATER…

This is a roleplaying gaming setting for the Multiverser (r) alt-dimensions game. Its usable for other alt-dimensional systems as well.

Aelfheim
By Eric R. Ashley

This is going to involve a considerable amount of side notes.

First, the Gothic novel, according to Carolyn Wheat involves some of the following elements: A girl alone without support in a strange and interesting house with a man with extreme moods; his meanness to her only gets her more excited; there are various intimations of something not right in the house; secrets that are feared get shown; the guy tells her he loves her, but can’t have a relationship; light fills the shadowy house, and he brings the servant girl up to his social status. The End.

First, lets flip this around. The guy is a verser, he is alone in the new world without family or friends. There is a strange house of both stunning beauty and architecture and dark forboding. There is a woman, an Elven princess, who might find the verser cute, but he is ‘only a human’. She’s smashingly attractive.

There are loyal servitors who keep telling the human verser to keep quiet, don’t interact. You’re only human. Remember your place.

There is a dread secret of something horrible in her distant past that still troubles her.

For my second side note: You need more in a relationship in a roleplaying game than 1)The stated fact that the girl is pretty. 2)You need some side issue. The girl likes you, but she needs to be married in a temple to her faith…in another universe. 3)You need some sort of barriers for the hero to overcome.

You need her to have some talent, and goals of her own to make her interesting. The girl needs some sort of internal conflict. She needs a reason to say no to the hero as well. She needs to have passions, things that get her excited, limits on her behavior.

I’m still working on my theory of how to run romance in a RPG.