I welcome you, fellow gamer to the newest column on everybody’s favorite Gaming Outpost. In this biweekly foray into the dark & dank belly of gaming I will seek to give a fresh perspective on the fundamentals of our hobby. Before long I hope to provide you with sparks of insight that will change the very way in which you slaughter dragons and charm princes (or become a mid (summer) night snack for great Cthulhu).
In my first few installments of I.M.O., I will take a closer look at styles of play. With style I refer to the very basis of any campaign, the underlying superstructure around which every aspect of the game is woven. IMO there are four basic styles, two major and two minor: Heroic, culture (the major), horror and comedy (the minor). Below I will take a closer look at each of these styles and then comment on mixing them.
In my first column I will attempt to tackle the most popular style of play: Heroic gaming. To understand what makes gaming heroic I will first try to understand what makes a hero a hero. IMO the most prominent feature of the hero is his (in our culture the hero is virtually always male, in fact he tends to be the ultimate macho) ability to succeed. A hero will succeed in any quest he sets out on. The opposition may be great and he may suffer a thousand setbacks, but in the end he will succeed or at least have a very good chance of doing so. Whether the quest is of the hero’s own devising or the devising of fate or higher forces matters little. It also is completely irrelevant if the quest is about saving the world or assassinating the good king. What is more, heroes know of this ability. They struggle ever-onward full of confidence. Certainly, some heroes will be plagued by doubt and fear, but these will only be further obstacles to overcome. A hero never gives up.
Another important ability that all heroes possess is the strength to act according to their desires. A true hero will neither let laws, social pressure, pain nor fear stop for from doing what he wants to do. A hero is truly free, much more so than any real person could ever be. This means that heroes frequently act against the law. They may do so for a higher cause or simply to cater to their desires. ”Good” heroes (a rather modern concept) however always uphold the spirit of the law.
Finally, one must consider that heroes do not simply appear out of nowhere, they must be made. It often takes quite some time and plenty of self-doubt before a normal person can become a hero.
Now let us convert all of this information into guidelines for heroic gaming. IMO the most important feature of heroic roleplaying should be the ability of the players, the heroes, to change the world. I also strongly believe that the players should be the ones to choose which changes their characters will seek to accomplish. Fate works fine for stories, but it tends to be an absolutely unnecessary restriction in roleplaying games. Every story in a heroic game should have some visible and real impact on the game world. Do not be afraid to change big things, a world is usually only good for one campaign anyway. IMO a good heroic campaign ends with a world that is vastly different from the one it started with; and the players can point to each change and tell the story of how they brought it about.
Before I continue I will explain what exactly I mean when I say world & change. With world I do not seek to imply a planet, although that can be one meaning of the word. Instead I mean campaign world, that is the area which the game takes place. This could be a city-block, a city, a county, a nation, a continent, a planet, universe or even hundreds of dimensions. No matter what a world’s size the heroes should be able to change all of it. (This tends to imply that larger worlds require heroes that are more powerful). Change should likewise be seen as a highly flexible term. Character should be able to change politics, social conditions, military matters, progress, economics, science, religion, the physical make up of a world and even (in some games) reality itself.
When mastering a heroic campaign one should avoid regulating the player characters and instead fully focus on the game world. Heroes are free and the same should be true for your player characters. If a player’s action is within (or slightly outside) the boundaries of the reality set by the game world you should roll with it. If it screws with your plot or bends the game’s rules to their breaking point, then so be it. Nothing and I mean nothing ruins a heroic campaign faster then a control-freak or power tripping game master. OTOH the game master should always be ready to manipulate the world around the characters to ensure that they can succeed, they’re heroes after all. Never kill characters off if they do something stupid. Instead, let their stupidity lead them into yet another challenge to be overcome. The only point at which a hero should fear death is when he faces the object of his quest.
Another absolutely vital caveat is that the player characters should be the buffest heroes in the entire game world. Everyone who is more heroic (this includes villains, see my definition of hero above) than them should die sooner than later, preferably by their swords (villains) or out of hubris (other heroes). More skilled individuals than the heroes can certainly exist, but these NPCs should be limited to that one skill. A grizzled sword master (as mentor) or a frail maker of potions would be good examples. A perfect example of how not to do things is, IMO, the Forgotten Realms setting for AD&D. Here hundreds of heroes (Elminster and Khelben to name only two), far more powerful than the players can hope to become in any reasonable amount, of time prowl freely, needlessly downplaying any heroics that the players might undertake. Even if these mighty NPCs never meet the player characters face-to-face their deeds and raw power will always dim the glory of the PCs, making them appear far more normal than any true hero should ever be.
What a game master should do when running a heroic campaign is to provide the players with plenty of opportunities for heroism and to make the world come alive. Providing opportunities for heroism is as simple as it is vital, a hero who only confronts mundane problems is no hero worth speaking of. To make a situation heroic simply take any mundane situation and:
- Make one or more elements of the situation fantastic.
(Make the weapon of an antagonist a legendary and ancient blade (or gun or whatever) which drinks the blood and spirit of those it wounds. Make the parking lot (or castle) where the action goes down a place in the clouds) - Add a real villain to the situation, someone who resides firmly in the black (of black and white morals) and not even close to the gray.
(Change a politician’s personality from simply misguided and power-hungry to hell-bent on screwing over the world) - Make the situation dramatic & intense.
(Add a couple of high explosive (also see below) barrels to a gunfight. Give the situation a clear time limit (perhaps till the cops, no the government cyborg assassins, arrive); then reduce that time limit so that it ticks to 0 just as the heroes clear the area) - Romanticize violent (dirty) situations.
(When an enemy dies never have him scream and beg, let him go down in stony silence, preferably cursing the heroes as he does so) - Raise the stakes of the situation.
(Instead of threatening to teach the hero a lesson let the crime-lord threatens his entire family. If a virus is about to leak out of a secret bio-weapon depot make sure that that virus can wipe out a nation and not just cause a bad case of cold) - Completely focus the situation on the hero.
(Have the hero disarm the thermonuclear device in a small lab separated from a whole crowd of anxious viewers by a Plexiglas wall. Somehow incapacitate, terror probably being the best method, all characters except the hero.) - Make the ability of one of the actors in the situation superhuman.
(The hero’s lawyer isn’t just good, she can orate like Caesar and has the looks of a super model. The kid that comes to the heroes rescue knows every last nook and crook in the city.) - Set the situation in a strange locale.
(Let the big showdown take place in a fog-shrouded forest full of pagan statues, dangling masks and impaled heads. Have a new contact meet the heroes in an eerie circus at night) - Add exotic or just plain weird elements to the situation.
(Make the drug dealer the heroes finally caught up with an Inuit shaman who has a pet polar bear. Make the bar the heroes investigate a dirty hole with lots of Aztec imagery) - Add special effects (preferably explosions).
(If you don’t know what I’m driving at, watch the latest action flick five times in a row)
Making the game world come alive is a little bit more difficult than coming up with heroic situations. However, it is at least as vital. Heroes need an engaging world around them to both make them stand out and to make them seem real. Even more important, only an interesting and dynamic world is one worth changing. This does not mean that the world need be “realistic” and “gritty”. Far from it, it should be fascinating and easy to change via heroics. Hopeless situations, cynicism and ultra-powerful political lobbies have no place in a heroic world.
Characters for a heroic campaign should, of course, be true heroes. This implies that they must have become heroes at some point. You should consider whether you want your players to take this step during character generation or during the first few sessions of play. If you choose the latter option make sure that the transition suitably dramatic and interesting.
Furthermore when creating heroic characters you should be far more concerned with the “fun-factor” of the characters than with their personalities, backgrounds or party-coherency. If someone wishes to play the unstoppable combat monster let him. A hero primarily defines himself through his actions (the way he changes the world) and not inner values.
