I have just been chastized by someone who is either a complete stranger or a new identity for a recurring “anonymous friend”.  The criticism is that my most recent Blogless Lepolt post has nothing whatever to do with Multiverser, and of course he is correct.  I may have again to rethink what I post here.

Fortunately, my inspiration for posting today is related to Multiverser.  Some of you will recall that as part of my work on the novels, I was creating character sheets based on the primary characters therein.  Judging from the blog posts, it has been entirely too long that those efforts have been sidetracked.  However, recently in the forums I launched one of my players in one of the worlds from the second novel, one which I am preparing for use in the next Multiverser Triple Play–that is, next after the horror one that is currently in the hands of the art director, the space-based worlds.  I was going to run it mostly by the seat of my pants and the notes and writing I’ve done on the world description–but as often happens in Multiverser games, the player’s character did something that changed things significantly.  He prayed another character into his scenario, and that prompted me to shift the plans to involve the story of that other character.  It also meant that I needed detailed information concerning the particular character from the story, including skills and equipment, so that I could put together events well.

Thus I returned my attention to the novels, and particularly to the character sheets.  In so doing, I found I had nearly finished all the data gathering from the first, and was almost ready to start the second.  I pushed forward into the beginning of the second novel, and the first bits of information about the character already involved in play, and hoping that this will facilitate both the ongoing game and the work on the novels.

I should apologize for my absence yesterday, but an explanation would involve details of family matters not at all related to Multiverser, and would thus raise the ire of people on all sides.

–M. J. Young

  When Multiverser was first going to publication, artist Jim Denaxas suggested that from henceforth everything in my life had become tax deductible.

  My job today is to create worlds, and to find ways to import worlds to games–my games and the games of referees around the world.  Whatever I do in pursuit of that job is a business expense.

  If I go to see a movie, I’m researching plots, stories, and sometimes fantasy or science fiction settings.  If I read a book, it’s the same thing.  The newspaper is a source of world ideas; so, for that matter, is the television.  But those are the obvious things.

  I could go on vacation, and justify it as a study of other parts of the world.  How much more realistic could my development of a Greco-Roman culture feel if I’ve walked the Appian Way, or stood before the Parthenon?  Could I write as convincing an Asian setting without visiting China and Japan?  If we’re setting this in the mountains in the summer, a trip to the Poconos is helpful, but wouldn’t it be so greatly enhanced by traveling to the Rockies, the Alps, and perhaps the Himalayas?  I can visit the beach and learn much; I can visit Historic Gloucester, legendary Malibu, and even the black beaches of Hawaii and learn so much more.

  And no world experience could be quite complete without understanding the food.  Fine restaurants offer the opportunity to understand the culture, my own or any of a hundred other nationalities and ethnic groups.  Concerts, whether longhair in my father’s more traditional sense or in my generation’s reactionary sense, add to my comprehension of a people, a place, a time.  And I could spend hours wandering around museums–natural history, science, art, culture, or technology, all great sources of ideas, information, background.  No matter what I’m doing, I am involved in research, finding ideas for worlds and stories and games.  And since that’s my job, it’s all tax deductible.

  Well, I’ll argue that with the Internal Revenue Service another time.  Don’t get me wrong–I usually win when I’m dragged into court.  I just don’t know that they’d be so willing to accept my definitions of business expenses as I propose.  Meanwhile, there’s another point.

  But in order to get to it, I’m going to wander away from it.

  I took a Creative Writing:  Fiction class back at Gordon College.  At the time (probably 1977), I had no expectation of ever using it in life.  I hadn’t heard of role playing games, and saw my future as a musician and composer, not a writer.  (If you’re in college and you aren’t in some highly technical field that guarantees you a job in a lab somewhere almost before you graduate, the best advice I have is keep your options open, learn broadly everything you can about everything they offer, and keep your books and your notes.  If your degree isn’t something very specifically in demand, it isn’t your primary goal.  Yes, you are there to get a degree; but far more important than that, you are there to learn everything you can, to know what is taught, and to understand how to learn and how to think.  Those are the real things you learn in college:  how to think first, how to learn second, how to find information third, and the lessons themselves fourth.  The degree, a scrap of credential, only shows that you had the opportunity to learn these things.  It’s not the goal, but evidence that the goal may have been reached.)  I took this creative writing course because it sounded interesting, and I wanted to learn about writing; I thought I might one day write the next great fantasy novel, in the far future, but it certainly wasn’t on my list of career objectives.  Yet it has proved in several ways to have been one of the most valuable courses I took.

  One of the basic requirements of the course was the maintenance of a writer’s journal.  We were to carry a notebook with us at all times, and every day to write something–anything–in it.  It could include descriptions of things we saw or people we met; plot ideas or story concepts; dreams and fantasies; drafts of bits of required papers; mental observations; images and similes and metaphors.  I started it because it was required; but I kept it up intermittently for years thereafter, and have three notebooks packed with such writings.  In there you’ll find story and world ideas for fantasies and horror and science fiction.  You’ll find my realization that mysteries have to be written backwards–that the author has to know who did it and how from the beginning, and then unravel it by presenting the clues available to the detective.  You’ll find the original notes which became my Confessions of a Dungeons & Dragons™ Addict article.  I wrote about the technical details of some of the jobs I had; I described landscapes and skyscapes from many times of the year in several parts of the world.  Co-workers were sometimes sketched as potential characters, and conspiracies were hatched.  I wrote a few entire short stories in those pages, and from these taught myself much.  In one, I examined the difference between what a wizard might have done and how his victim might have perceived it, recognizing that magic is less about what the user can do and more about what he can make others believe he did.  And you’ll find the moment I realized that Frank Herbert broke perspective to capture a moment, and the moment I realized that he and J. R. R. Tolkien held my attention by splitting the action in their stories between several stages and moving from one to another.  So much that I learned about people, places, plots, and ideas can be found in the pages of those notebooks.

  And every once in a while I go back through them, looking over the old ideas.  I wrote a few short stories for my sons’ teachers to use in their holiday celebrations in school, and dug through the books for color and descriptives that would make the scene more real.  They have proved quite valuable.

  And that brings us back around to that point I mentioned a few paragraphs back.

  Every minute of your life, every step that you take, you are surrounded by story ideas.

  The clerk at the grocery store–look at her.  Is she young and pretty, and expecting a wonderful life ahead of her?  Is she old and tired, doing this to support her three kids?  You don’t know; but notice her, watch her, make some guesses.

  There’s a gas station on the corner; they just built it last year.  What was there before that?  I drove through my home town a few months ago on my way to visit my parents, and realized that I did not recognize anything familiar but the road itself–if any of the stores were there when I was a boy, I did not notice these.  Each building can be part of your world, or an inspiration for part of it; and in a matter of only a few years, some will be gone, and most changed in some way.  Capture the present.  Make notes on the past, what you can remember of it.  No, I’ve never used downtown Ramsey in any of my game worlds (or, not yet, anyway); but the bits of it that I remember make good fodder for other worlds.

  Look at the sky, the trees, the ground, the roads, the houses.  What month is it?  How many times have you run a game in which the season for the characters was different from that of the players?  Do you really know what summer looks like, smells like, feels like?  How July is different from August?  How summer rain and spring rain differ?  Can you convey that within your descriptions?  Can you convey the difference between December and January while sitting around the pool in June, and make your players shiver from the cold?  Learn the settings.

  I read an interview with a successful French photographic artist.  In it he gave the obligatory word of advice to those who aspired to a career akin to his.  His was quite interesting.  Ignore the standard social convention, he said:  stare at people.  You must see them to be able to understand what they look like.  I would say the same thing:  stare at everything and everybody, at least in a figurative sense.  Don’t think of anything as mundane or insignificant; it is in fact the mundane and insignificant that provides the best color, and often the most interesting ideas.

  Do you need a notebook to do this?  Probably.  Maybe right now you don’t–maybe you can draw from your current experience pretty well, and create things from what you know.  But there are many things I wish I’d written when I saw them.  I would have a much larger base from which to create had I done so.  I have many years of experiences which are faint memories now, good and bad memories lacking the detail for which I could wish.  I suspect no matter how thoroughly you preserve your observations, there will always be things you forget and wish you could remember–the pleasures and pains of life, the family gatherings which seem so routine at the time and so poignant later (”the last time we saw Grampa alive”), the daily activities of school or work that you would rather avoid but which will not be here forever.  Life is packed with these moments, stories, people, places.  You don’t need me to give them to you–you just need to preserve them and shift them into new combinations.

  So in a sense this entry in our series has been about keeping a notebook.  But it’s more essentially about keeping your eyes and ears open, paying attention and noticing things around you, and finding a way to keep those observations for future use.

  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.

Last week’s introduction of the Guilds ran a little longer than I had
anticipated, and so this week, we finish up our look at the occupational
groupings of the UnderWorld. We have three more Guilds to cover-and the
removal of one of the Guilds as well.

First, the removal. After mulling over the topic over the past week
(including some wicked cool suggestions from T.S. Luikart, via email), I’ve
decided to drop the idea of a separate Guild devoted to magic. One of the
factors that goes into making the setting of UnderWorld is the idea of
pervasive magic. I’ve already introduced the idea of the “magical background
radiation” that is everywhere-leading to, among other things, the existence
of the Legendaries. So, bluntly put, magic is everywhere in the UnderWorld.
So, sez I to myself, why limit its use to one Guild? Why shouldn’t everyone
have access?

So that’s what I’m going to do. Magic will be everywhere, and each Guild
will have the ability to touch some part of it. Artificers, for example,
already manipulate it to an extent, through their use of Salvage Tech. There
will be a set list of magical “techniques” (pending a better term), and each
Guild will have one or two of those techniques as their domain. More on this
when I further detail magic (later, I promise).

For now, however, more on Guilds.

In a subterranean setting like UnderWorld, you have to have some people who
are skilled at digging (and more importantly, *repairing*) the tunnels and
caverns. This Guild would be devoted to teaching its members the skills of
both digging new tunnels and shoring up the old ones. Members of this Guild
would know the best way from point A to point B, and if there wasn’t a way,
they’d make one. They’d be experts in structure (both building them, and
taking them down in big, messy ways). Think of all of the nifty stuff that
usually gets attributed to Dwarves in standard fantasy settings, and you
could apply some of that to this Guild. As far as the name goes, I mull
through a few possibilities (Diggers, Miners, Tunnel Men) before deciding
upon Sappers (Sappers were originally the soldiers who dug tunnels from
trenches up to (and beneath) enemy positions-now the name is primarily
associated with anti-mine engineers). I like the term “The Sapper’s Guild”
more than “those tunnel-digging-and-fortifying guys.”

The Navigator’s Guild is the next one that occurred to me-when I was thinking
of a character type like those surly-but-with-a-heart-of-gold Tramp Steamer
Captains of the old pulps-someone to get you where you want to go, and to
watch your back while you’re getting there. Down in the tunnels, there are
rivers (rainwater or sewage-who knows, but I’m not jumping in there to find
out…)-and where there are rivers, there are boats to travel on them (another
image flits across my mind’s eye here: the “Wonketania” -the
oompa-loompa-powered paddlewheel boat in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate
Factory”-perfect for the weird-shit-o-meter! Or hey-what about Morpheus’
submarine in “The Matrix?” -also perfect). Travel, though, is not limited to
the rivers…your characters may have a need to travel down below the deepest
tunnels, further than any Tagger has explored…and who better to take you
there than Captain Quinn and his Leviathan Crawler? Basically, Navigators
are the owners/operators of transit devices (Boats, private subway cars,
whatever), who take people where they want to go. They’ll have access to a
vehicle of some sort, knowledge of the routes, that sort of thing.

The last Guild is devoted to information. They deal in knowledge. Sages,
advisors and specialists of every sort, this Guild keeps the maps, the
records, the books and the files. They know things that no one else
knows-they have heard of things that no one else has heard. The world below
is a huge place, with countless tunnels-and each of those tunnels has a
story. This Guild knows those stories, and countless others. Think of them
as the UnderWorld equivalent of the Oracle, Sage and the Bard of the fantasy
genre, plus the NetRunner and Fixer of Cyberpunk. If they don’t have the
information itself, they know where it is hidden, and how to get it. Initial
inspiration for this Guild came from the character of “Father” on Beauty and
the Beast-with his chambers filled floor to ceiling with books, charts,
scrolls and maps. With that inspiration in mind, I name them The Librarians
Guild. Every game needs an academic class of character, whether that is the
Wizard, the NetRunner, the Science Officer, or what have you. These
characters act as vital conduits of gamemaster-provided information, and
occasionally fill the role of providing keen deductive reasoning as well.
The Librarians will fill this niche for UnderWorld.

So, to sum up the “who/what” paradigm for defining characters in
UnderWorld-we have 8 Breeds: Homeless, Freaks, Junkmen, Mole People, The
Lost, Normals, Legendaries and Nomads. We also, coincidentally (really!),
have 8 Guilds: Bravos, Artificers, Monks, Traders, Taggers, Sappers,
Navigators and Librarians. The unintended symmetry of this works out nicely
for a core book. Perhaps, through play, different Breeds and Guilds will
present themselves, and these could form the basis of a supplemental release
(although I would release them all in one book-I can’t stand the “one
group-one sourcebook” model of things. I much prefer a larger release that
suits the needs of all players than a smaller release that appeals only to a
specific group).

Character creation will work something like this: The player picks a Breed
and a Guild, making note of the special abilities, magical techniques and
skills that each confers. The player then picks three Defining Traits-those
things that are the core descriptors of the character. He (or she) picks one
from the list of Traits available to the chosen Breed, and one from the list
available to the Guild. The third Defining Trait can come from ANY of the
lists (it’s the individualized “wild card” factor, if you will). The player
then can choose three “secondary skills” from any of the other Guilds’
lists-these are skills that the character has learned, but not anywhere near
the level of proficiency that a member of that Guild would have. Additional
secondary skills (beyond the initial three) can be taken, but for each one
taken, the player must pick an accompanying disadvantage (game balance rears
its ugly head).

That’s basically it. Starting equipment will be largely defined by one’s
Guild, and of course, anything reasonable that you can convince the Conductor
(the gamemaster) would be in your characters’ kit.

Having taken a look at Character Definition and Creation, next week I’ll go
into a bit more detail on the “Head Count” mechanics-and, space permitting,
we’ll begin to get into the specifics of combat in the UnderWorld.

Until next week,

Gareth-Michael Skarka

GMSkarka@aol.com

This weeks column is devoted to the second factor contributing to the
definition of characters in UnderWorld. As I discussed last week, characters
will be defined within the “who/what” paradigm-who they are, and what they
do. The “who”, which we covered last week, is covered by the Breeds. The
“what” is covered by the Guilds.

A recent criticism of this column appeared in the Forums, in which it was
said that I gloss over the process somewhat, tending to say that I’ve been
thinking about things and “kinda-bang! There’s some stuff.” I do make a
point to read the forums, and take the criticism contained therein to heart,
especially, as in this case, where the criticism is well-founded. I will, in
future, endeavor to show a little bit more of the process behind the “stuff.”

So-on to the topic of Guilds. The Guilds serve two roles: one, they give
the character his or her occupational abilities, thereby further defining the
character, and two, they serve also to tell us more about the game universe,
as well as the society of the UnderWorld. With that in mind, I set my mind
to the question of what types of character occupations are needed in a game
like this?

Every game needs fighters. They are almost the default class of
characters in almost every game, able to be as complex as the deepest
“in-character” role-player wants, while at the same time offering something
for the combat-monster gun-bunny that lurks within all of us. An environment
where survival is paramount, like UnderWorld, definitely needs fighters. So
we’ll have a fighter-type Guild, who will serve as hired muscle, bodyguards,
assassins, gladiators, or anything else where the ability to deliver physical
injury to another living being is a marketable skill. The term “fighter” is
too generic, though, and definitely lacks flavor. I remember a bit from
Gaiman’s Neverwhere, wherein a hired fighter was referred to as a “Bravo.”
Checking the dictionary, I see that one of the definitions of the word is
“hired murderer or assassin.” Perhaps it doesn’t apply as well to the more
noble aspects of the profession, but damn if it doesn’t sound cool. Bravo it
is. Obviously, this Guild will bestow upon the character all sorts of nifty
specialized combat abilities, not available to mere amateur fighters.

Obviously, I have to have Guilds that specifically deal with the a couple
of the concepts that I’ve already introduced, namely Salvage Tech and Magic.
After all, what’s the point of having those concepts, unless there are
characters who can use them?

In the case of Salvage Tech, obviously I will want to have a character
type devoted to the invention (and repair) of the technology. These
characters will be of the mad-scientist archetype. In fact, a development
that I had been considering for another game (a true Steampunk game that I
had dabbled in earlier this year) might go well here-the idea of a mad
scientist’s skill being directly connected to his mental stability. The
crazier he (or she) is, the better an inventor they are-non-linear thought
actually aids them in their work. The whole idea really clicks in a game
like UnderWorld, where it ties in to people’s ideas of “crazy” homeless men,
as well as scoring very high on the weird-shit-o-meter (the element of the
bizarre that I’m going for whenever possible). This character’s ability to
invent will be tied into their insanity-as they grow more insane, the better
an inventor they become. Starting characters will begin with a level of
ability that equalizes them with other starting characters, and a
corresponding level of insanity (I’ll have to make sure that this is a
playable level-a concept like this could quickly degenerate into power-gamers
coming up with gibbering, non-functional madmen who have the invention
abilities of the gods themselves). In keeping with the steampunk-y feel of
the Salvage Tech, I will give them an archaic-sounding name. A quick trip to
the thesaurus (amazing how useful those things are) results in this Guild
being dubbed The Artificers.

The magic-using Guild is a little more difficult to plan for, since,
honestly, I haven’t ironed out exactly what I want to do with the magic
system yet. I know that I want it to be as far away from standard RPG
“mobile artillery and insta-tech” magic as I can make it. So, until I detail
the magic system, there is precious little I can decide regarding the Guild
governing magic-apart from the obvious fact that they will be the ones able
to work with magic. So, I will leave it at that for now, and red-flag it for
work once the magic system is in process.

On to other Guilds-any gaming world where there is combat is going to
need a class of healers, whether it be the spell-casting combat medic that is
the D&D cleric, something resembling our own world’s doctors. In UnderWorld,
this Guild would be responsible not only for patching wounds inflicted by the
many dangerous elements found in the tunnels, but also to generally care for
the well-being of the denizens therein. After all, in far too many cases in
the real world, getting sick while homeless can equal a death
sentence-exposure leads to a worsening of the condition, and the weakness
brought about by the sickness itself can easily lead to falling prey to
various predators (human, more often than not).

So, this Guild would teach its members the appropriate medical skills, as
well as imparting to them a sense of custodianship for the well-being of
their fellow denizens. This combination reminds me of the role that monks
played during the Middle Ages (I recently caught one of the “Cadfael”
mysteries on PBS, so the thought has been kicking around my head for a bit).
It’s kind of ironic, really-since this makes the idea very close to the ideal
of what a cleric in D&D should be. Hokey, yes-but also sort of noble. I like
the idea of a quasi-religious Guild (gives me a chance to go into their
beliefs, as well), its members wandering through the tunnels, giving aid and
comfort to any they encounter. Ah, what the hell-I’ll do it. We’ll call
them Monks.

Other Guild ideas come from thinking about the society of the UnderWorld
itself. For example, with Salvage Tech being as important as it is, there
would be quite a commodity for “artifacts” from the UpWorld. Since the
Homeless Breed (discussed last week) can move back and forth between Up and
Under as they wish, they’d be the perfect Breed to form a Guild of merchants,
who bring treasures from the surface (old blenders, scraps of mattress
springs, cans, and maybe the occasional firearm) down Below (hence the
ubiquitous shopping cart). Some other Breeds could also be members of this
Guild, but really, this one is almost Homeless-specific. That’s fine-I like
it enough to include it, even though it might be exclusionary. After all, I
do say that the Homeless are the most common Breed. So, like the caravan
merchants of the Renaissance, members of this Guild would be gifted with
languages (all the better to speak to their varied customers), have lots of
connections, not to mention probably a cache of UpWorld goodies that they
keep for themselves. This will be the Traders Guild.

An environment such as the UnderWorld is also going to need Scouts. It
is a labyrinth of tunnels down there, after all, and someone must go ahead to
explore and find the secret ways. This makes me think of Journey to the
Center of the Earth, and specifically of the carved initials of Arne
Saknussemm that Professor Hardwigg and the others discover along their route,
marking where the earlier explorer had been before. Combining this with the
fact that our “Center of the Earth” lies beneath New York City, and I think
about the thousands of graffiti scrawls I have seen down there, many of them
indecipherable to the uninitiated. What if those scrawls (tags, in graffiti
artist slang) were actually markers, giving directions and imparting
knowledge of the UnderWorld? I like it-a Guild devoted to seeking out the
hidden places, and leaving directions for others. Scouts…Explorers…Taggers.
That’s it-I’ll use the slang term. The Taggers Guild.

This exploration of the Guilds is taking a bit more space than I thought
it would-so I think that I will stop here for the week, and continue this
subject next week. Otherwise, this installment could easily go on for pages
more. As always, I welcome your feedback. Feel free to use the forums, or
to email me privately.

Until next week,

Gareth-Michael Skarka

GMSkarka@aol.com