How Much Improvisation?

Yesterday I reviewed The Armitage Files, a Trail of Cthulhu campaign setting that supports improvised horror investigations.  The idea behind the book is revolutionary to me, because the investigation and horror genre, with its intricate mysteries and clues, is usually so scripted and plotted.  But it did get me thinking about improvisation and gaming and the curious fault lines I see in the gaming community.

All dungeon masters and referees have to do an amount of improvisation every game session - even a fully scripted adventure requires the game master to take on the personae of the NPC's and antagonists in the scenario and pull dialogue, mannerisms, and narration out of the creative void.

But choosing to portray a scripted character a certain way is quite a bit different than randomly generating game content on the fly and embellishing a wide range of details.  Let's say the party moves to an unmapped section of the setting and the DM consults his or her big book of random tables and starts rolling for inspiration, then quickly cobbles together what it is the group is encountering.  Contrast the approach of the referee that makes stuff up using dice for inspiration, to the DM that just makes stuff up as they go along, completely winging it without the tables.  We're not as far apart in spirit as we are in practice.

Then there's improvisation that happens on the other side of the screen.  Do you allow your players any co-creation in the setting?  A simple way is incorporating elements of a character's background into the campaign - like letting the player create details for their home village, and then making those details important to the ongoing narrative.  Many newer games systematize ways for the players to seize control and enhance the setting with their own additions.  For example, many games might have an "underworld contacts" skill or point spend option, so when the group arrives in a new place, the shady character in the group might already have a fence or a connection to the local black market, and be able to define that contact on the fly.

Using the common D&D sandbox, consider the differences between these three examples - first, the group enters a new hex, the Dungeon Master consults the hex key, and begins describing the village of Thought-Up-Yesterday.  In someone else's campaign, the referee rolls a bunch of dice, consults their random hex content generators, sees that it results in a village, and begins quickly jotting down details for the village of Just-Made-Up, perhaps using his or her village content tables for elaboration.

Consider  a more extreme example:  "As you guys walk through the woods, you start to smell chimney fires and see a small village down in the glen…"  The referee turns to the elf player, whose character is from the area.  "Can you go ahead and let us know the details of this village?"  In this case, the ref completely turns the control over to the player to define a setting element;  "Ah yes", the player says, "this is the village of Just-Made-Up, inhabited by smelly, shoeless, pig-riding halflings.  The reason the elves put up with them this close to the beloved Homewood, is because they look like small, sad children.  Smelly children."

There's another technique of improvisation, too, when the referee is listening to the players and (secretly) incorporates their ideas into the game whenever he or she thinks the player's ideas are more interesting than the original plan.  The bad guy in the adventure is the rich mayor, but the players are convinced it's really the timid butler, and they go through elaborate measures to spy on the butler, to explain how the butler committed the crime, to identify him as the secret power behind everything.  The referee decides that recasting the butler as an international criminal in disguise, is a lot more interesting, and the players pat themselves on the back for ferreting out the ref's "real" story.

The question of how much improvisation you use at the table seems dependent on group expectations - it's a  what-do-we-expect-out-of-gaming kind of question.  Are the players expecting an immersive world to explore?  Knowing that content is generated on the fly or improvised can impair immersion or belief in the setting.  Are the players creative types that see the campaign as a joint venture, and want the opportunity to put their stamp on the story?  The village of Just-Made-Up, with its pig-riding smelly halflings, might become a lasting fixture in the campaign and the butt of ongoing jokes, enjoyed by the group for years later.

There are cross cutting concerns with improvisation, like its effect on player agency or whether it leads to illusionism, or a rail road.  These concerns are orthogonal ; improvisation is a tool, and like any other tool, it can be misused or misapplied.  For instance, I won't fudge dice in dramatic situations, but I have no problem improvising non-player characters and then incorporating them into the ongoing campaign.

Seems like a good time for a new gamer poll - how do you use improvisation in your games?  There's a new gadget in the upper right with the poll questions.

A Review of The Armitage Files

As I embark on a series of Pelgrane Press reviews over the next few months, The Armitage Files is a good place to start.  It illustrates Pelgrane's reputation as a risk-taking publisher willing to break new ground.  I had never encountered a game book like this one.

Consider this premise:
A pair of bizarre, disturbing letters arrive, in Professor Armitage's handwriting, describing an apocalyptic future in which he failed to avert a monstrous tragedy.  The unbalanced writer behind the letters claims they're being sent back through time, in the hopes that investigators receiving them in the past will be able to stop the coming horror the writer himself couldn't prevent.

BAM!  There it is - the type of elevator pitch that could launch a whole TV series - or at least keep a role playing campaign going for a long time.  Handwriting analysis and other tests seemingly prove the authenticity of the letters, and the player characters are approached as trustworthy outsiders that can investigate the disparate facts and clues revealed in the letters and solve the mystery.  The clock is ticking, and more documents materialize from the future as the situation worsens.

In case you didn't know:  Professor Henry Armitage is the protagonist of Lovecraft's tale "The Dunwich Horror".  In the years after dispelling the Son of Yog Sothoth, Armitage has formed a discrete group of professors to investigate the Mythos.

Here's a sample of what one of the letters looks like - this one is later in the timeline, when the author's coherence is diminishing:

And the readable version:

The new sanatorium on the outskirts of town. When I was there, I sensed that something had gone awry. Yet I was distracted by my fruitless attempt to find men who had been at the circus that October night. That is a dead end, I am sure, or at the very least a counter-productive one. The circus may figure into it, but October is a blind alley. Or rather a trap. It is your minds you must preserve above all.


IF YOU SEE THE RED BOX, DO NOT OPEN IT. The contents will permit you a brief advantage, but you will pay in the end. IT IS THE RED BOX THAT ALLOWS THE HORNETS IN.


I am sorry. They are at me, making me think of them, preventing me from writing what I must write. EVERYTHING I WRITE HERE MAY BE A DECEPTION. RELY ON THE NOTES TO COME

The handouts are spectacular.  Each full letter is a sheaf of pages, revealing a handful of plot hooks and clues.  I've used the term "target rich horror gaming" to describe my goal of building a sandbox that gives the players many options, and every letter of this campaign supplement provides numerous clues, plot hooks, people, and locations to investigate.  It's the ultimate horror gaming sandbox.

But there's a massive caveat; The Armitage Files is presented as a giant toolkit for running an improvised horror campaign.  It includes write ups for many people, organizations, places, tomes, and magic items, and each one comes with an option for being used as an ally, enemy, or innocuous bystander - but the actual structuring of the campaign is very much left up to the referee and the vicissitudes of player choice and inspiration.

There is a lot of advice on running an improvised game, guidelines on how to structure an improvised narrative, and tips for encouraging the players to take the reigns in the sandbox.  There's a section on the pacing of a traditional horror investigation, how to improvise scenes that lend themselves to the structure.  There are also plenty of 'actual play' transcripts in the book.  If you ever wondered about running an investigative scenario sans script, this is the book for you.  But my own anecdotal observations lead me to believe that many referees adopt a hybrid approach to the campaign, letting the players guide the sandbox action and improvising along the way, using the time between sessions to embellish some the potential upcoming challenges in the traditional "prepared beforehand" style.

The physical book itself is excellent.  It's a 152 page soft cover, with glossy heavy weight magazine pages, and that beautiful dark sepia art by Jérôme Huguenin that's come to characterize the vintage look of the Trail of Cthulhu line.  There are 10 letters from the future in The Armitage Files, and you can download nice looking color versions of the pages from the Pelgrane site (you need a copy of the book to unlock the file).  Long time Call of Cthulhu players are familiar with the ubiquitous hand outs and clippings that accompany most scenarios, and this product takes the handout concept and turns the dial up to 11 with these spectacular props.

The book is written by Robin D Laws, Gumshoe designer and a long time Pelgrane author.  Robin has a list of credits around game mastering advice that encourages players to co-create the game world, so an improvisation heavy campaign is a logical extension. The Wise Google tells me this The Armitage Files book won an Ennie award.

So, how would I rate or recommend this book?  Let's step back and think of the many famous campaigns or illustrious adventures that are published for my favorite games; we've played Ravenloft, but haven't made it to the Vault of the Drow; I've run Shadows of Yog Sothoth and Beyond the Mountains of Madness, but just haven't gotten around to running Masks of Nyarlathotep.  That kind of stuff.  I put The Armitage Files in similar standing, a paradigm-changing campaign that redefines what's possible on the table.  It's gone on my "Must Try" list, too.  The gamer bucket list.  I'll see where our upcoming Trail campaign goes; even though I've done some improv theater, the thought of an improvised campaign is still daunting.  It's not an approach for the faint of heart, or slow of wit, or something to do on a night when the tank is half empty.  But I'm looking forward to the challenge.

The All Father - an insane overlord for the Black City

I used yesterday's post on generating your own mad alien super computer to create an overmind for the Tower of Astronomy.  Note:  the overmind actually doesn't live in the tower, it inhabits an unmanned geostationary orbital platform that controls a series of alien telescopes.

Rolling 1,1,3,6 led to clairaudience, megalomania, seeking knowledge, and typically appearing as a myth entity.

Here's my story for it - the Tower of astronomy has been sealed for centuries, but the overmind that interfaces with the tower machinery uses clairaudience to listen to the pink, fleshy bipeds that have been exploring the city of late.  In this way, it learned a bit about their primitive mythology, and calls itself "All Father".  It uses a holographic image reminiscent of Odin and refers to it's home in the night sky as "Asgard".

The unblinking eye of the All Father has sat in the heavens above the earth, watching the rise and fall of civilizations, waiting for the chance to interact again with the world.

As the All-Father, it will start by offering modest pieces of information to parties that perform services.  For instance, it can dangle topographic maps of the archipelago, or highlight key locations in the ruins.  As referee - consider the kind of information a modern spy satellite could provide, and think creatively.

It’s first order of business is to have a connection restored to some of the most important sections of the old ruins, like the bunker section of the old Central Command facility.  This could be a multipart quest, first finding the right kind of fuse crystals to fix the connection in the Transit Tunnels between the tower and the bunker, and then gaining access to the bunker and restoring the systems.  This provides access to some of the city's slumbering defenses and also give the All Father the ability to gain some additional rolls on the Mental Powers table by adding mental capacity.

It's long term goals are to gain a physical body, leverage the manufacturing facilities below ground to build an army, its Einherjar, and then begin a conquest of the known world.

BTW, I finished off the Tower of Astronomy write up; there's a teleport disc on the top floor that connects to the geostationary orbital platform; it gives characters the ability to visit "Asgard" and view the starry heavens directly over head.  The overmind's holographic projection can take on matter and form on the observation deck, interacting with characters in a larger than life manner, and drawing on the station's energy reserves and matter transmuters to perform godly feats of creation.

There's something about an alien computer, masquerading as a Kirby-esque Norse god to a bunch of skeptical Vikings, that brings me great amusement.

Overminds of the Black City

Build your own Brain-in-a-Jar or Alien Super Computer!

I was working on the Black City manuscript and finishing up the Tower of Astronomy section from the other day (the entrance hall is here:  Tower of Astronomy, first floor), and when I completed the upper area of the tower, came across one of the city's myriad "overminds".

The overminds are alien computers, artificial intelligences, installed in key facilities throughout the city to oversee delicate processes that required  both creative decision making and docility.  Overminds control the deep earth manufacturing, regulate the Warrens of Decay, supervise the science lab, and one even controls the geostationary observatory that relays star patterns back to the holographic displays in the Tower of Astronomy.

Millenia of idleness and boredom have driven all of these alien intelligences completely insane, and they've used the intervening epochs to circumvent their original missions and generate their own agendas.  The overmind of the fabricators on level 3 creates plastoid Roman Praetorians patterned after the captured soldiers of the Lost Legion, who landed on the island centuries ago; the overmind of the science lab in the deep sections sends up specimen gathering automatons, seeking examples of surface life for experimentation and vivisection; the overmind of the astronomy tower has spent millennia  gazing into the cold depths of space and looking down on the city, and now sees itself as one of earth's gods.

All overminds communicated with their alien masters via telepathy, and can adjust their telepathic frequency to communicate with terrestrial life, such as the Northmen.  Overminds manifest a holographic avatar near their main terminal.  Their intelligence is housed in a fragile crystal matrix, but this is protected behind sheets of metal, often deep in the stone and impossible to attack without high level magic.   The minds are vulnerable to mental magical attacks, and save as level 10 magic users with +4 to the saving throw vs mental effects.  They often exert physical control over their local environment, locking doors and activating defenses; these abilities are noted in the room text.

Here are additional attributes to generate your own overminds.  These would be fine for Brains-in-a-Jar creatures, too.

Mental Powers*
1  Clairaudience
2  Clairvoyance
3  Domination
4  Empathy
5  ESP
6  Mental Attack (see sub table)
7  Mind Switch (magic jar)
8  Telekinesis

Mental Attacks Sub Table*
1  Ego Whip
2  Id insinuation
3  Psionic Blast
4  Psychic Crush

Personality Disorders
1  Megalomania
2  Paranoia
3  Schizophrenia
4  Homicidal Mania
5  Manic Depressive
6  Schizoid

Motivations of the Overmind
1  Worship
2  Escape
3  Knowledge
4  Temporal power
5  Sadism
6  Revenge against another Overmind
7  Obedience  to programming, but perverted
8  Sheer insanity

Holographic Appearance
1  Floating Brain
2  Pillar of Fire
3  Burning Bush
4  Blinding Light
5  Disembodied Alien Head
6  Mythological Entity (Zeus, Thor, etc)
7  Abstract Concept
8  A Dog

*I like the simple psionics in Realms of Crawling Chaos, but the DM could easily substitute standard magical powers for any of these abilities.

I made a sample alien super computer when finishing the Tower of Astronomy location, I'll get that guy up in a day or so.

We Choose You, Trail of Cthulhu

We're planning to start an episodic Cthulhu game sometime next month, so we discussed choice of system at the end of last week's D&D session, weighing the pros and cons of Call of Cthulhu versus Trail of Cthulhu.  The players are more enthusiastic and familiar with Trail, so that's where we're starting.

Trail of Cthulhu's clue system works really with my proposed campaign setting, a home brew built around a special investigative unit in the NYPD, the Special Crimes Division (the SCD).  I've been re-reading my backlog of Cthulhu books, and I was delighted to see that Arkham Detective Tales has ideas for running a police-heavy Cthulhu game.  Pulling the campaign together will be a cinch.

Trail of Cthulhu shifts much of the action to the players to choose how to push forward and when to spend resources, but it also demands more improvisation by the referee as well - I'm looking forward to the challenge.  It's a perceptual adjustment to stop thinking of the game as a simulation (the way we use D&D to simulate a fantasy world) and instead consider it a recreation of a certain style of fiction, in this case, a blend of pulp detective stories, film noir, and Lovecraft horror.  Kind of a less campy version of the HBO movie Cast A Deadly Spell.  I'll continue to log some notes here as I build out the setting.

Pelgrane Press is an active publisher turning out  a lot of high quality supporting material, so there's no shortage of scenarios to steal.  I'd rather adapt published stuff than create whole cloth, since it lets me put more time towards writing my Black City D&D setting.  I've got a Black City post in the queue next, but will  start doing some regular Pelgrane reviews as I re-read many of the Trail of Cthulhu books for scenarios that play well in The Big Apple.

I'm also scanning the Chaosium backlog for adventures that are a good fit; I found an overlooked gem in the book Fatal Experiments called "The Lurker in the Crypt".  It's exactly the kind of adventure structure I love; it describes a corrupt cemetery and mortuary in the heart of NYC's East Side, managed by a powerful sorcerer and various undead assassins, with ties to a Great Old One and a massive infestation of ghouls in NYC's abandoned sewer sections.  But there's no real plot; the adventure basically describes the myriad forces associated with this extremely powerful conspiracy and their plots and machinations.  I imagine the lack of a linear plot and the huge danger presented by this cult have contributed to it's obscurity, but it'll be spectacular in a 1920's Badges and Guns campaign.  It's a super dangerous situation to plunge into blindly, so this would have to be the capstone to a campaign.  I'm always delighted to encounter a published horror scenario that omits a linear bread crumb of scenes, instead presenting the inhabitants and their motivations sandbox-style for insertion into a campaign.

Taking the Long View - in High Gygaxian

The mantle of referee requires enrobement in such varied guises as tactician of melee, grand strategist, architect of cunning traps, engineer of puzzles, and inventor of myriad enigmas.  As you join the ranks of those forebears who also assumed the storied title of DUNGEON MASTER, embrace this role with élan and engrave your vision boldly across the milieu!  But be forewarned, even the practiced referee may find himself confronted by the circumstance in which the players, through dint of forethought and application of luck or skill, are discovered in a superior position vis a vis a carefully formulated encounter.  The natural tendency of the inexperienced referee in such surroundings would be to alter the deployment of forces arrayed against the players, in devotion to an ideal formulated on a requirement of balance or appropriate test, but this view is incorrect.  You must resist this urge.  THE ROLE OF THE REFEREE IS TO ADJUDICATE SUCH SITUATIONS WITH IMPARTIAL NEUTRALITY AND PRACTICED INDIFFERENCE TO THE RESULTS.

The experienced referee has already seeded the dungeon environment and surrounding milieu with a myriad assortment of challenges,  each amenable to one pattern of solution or another.  When the players have successfully ferreted out a resolution to a given difficulty, allow them to enjoy their fleeting moment of success, but gird yourself for the upcoming confrontations.  Continued success requires adaptation, and the players will soon learn that yesterday's successful techniques hold little water with tomorrow's new challenges!

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Chris over at Hill Canton's announced International Write Like Gygax Day, and I couldn't help but join in the fun, especially as we're using the 1E DMG actively at the table right now.  This was going to be a simple post about "you win some, you lose some, it all balances out in the end", but it seemed like too good an opportunity to spout some High Gygaxian.  Happy Friday!

Tharizdun Part 3

Game report 58, and our third session involving the entrance battle to THE FORGOTTEN TEMPLE OF THARIZDUN.

Let me tell you something I've observed.  You can solve a lot of problems with a wand of fireballs.

Take my players for instance... they find themselves facing a near endless horde of norkers, ogres, and other monsters.  BLAM, fireball.  BLAM BLAM, fireball fireball.  Oh no, more monsters, whatever are we to do?

Last game session was all about ramping up the pressure, as I tried to make the players dig deep...  for more fireballs.

Mister Moore used an Ice Storm to obscure the battle field and create a slippery mess, slowing the assault down.  This allowed the group to successfully pull everyone back into their fighting formation, dropping the trolls with magic missiles. A crew of norkers came double timing up stairs, carrying small casks which they dropped near the top of the stairs - unfortunately, these were casks of oil.  The monsters had a strategy around carrying up casks, and then the next waves of monsters were ogres, which would throw the casks on the party.  It didn't work out so well for the monsters.  You're going to see a little white disc in a lot of pictures, that's what the players used for targeting their fireballs.  I use a grenade type rule, so they're sometimes off center, but the players usually err on the side of "not accidentally frying their front line by missing a mark".

By the time the large group of ogres had arrived, the norkers carrying casks of oil were all gone, the casks failed their saves vs fireball, and there was a bit of a roaring fire off to one side of the stairs.  Most of the ice from the Ice Storm was gone, but it served its purpose.  For the remainder of the battle, the combat was a lot more "traditional".  The four fighters formed a front line - Shy, Leonidas, Phat Kobra, and Forlorn (he usually casts spells, so we often forget he's a 5/5 fighter/magic user).  The clerics stood behind the front line healing, and other characters went farther back, either using missiles against the large opponents or digging for more spells.

The stairs rattled and the place shook as a titanic bellow let out from downstairs - something big and angry was on the way.  First came a pair of hill giants:

A round or so after the hill giants joined the fight, the leader of the temple's forces, a massive 80hp mountain giant, emerged from the level below.  He barely noticed the fireball coming his way and charged on through.  (I think the mini is from a 4E earth titan; it was one of the bigger giants I had in the box).

When the mountain giant charged the front line, things got dicey for the party.  Shy, on one end of the line, was dropped to zero hit points by a hill giant blow.  The mountain giant charged Leonidas, clubbing the paladin for 30 damage.  The group tends to anchor their front lines with the paladin, so everyone up there is shielded by protection from evil and gets -2 to AC, so bringing down the paladin makes everyone quite a bit easier to hit, and crushing the paladin was the mountain's top priority.

While Moore continued to wash, rinse, repeat with the wand of fireballs, Konstantine had been thumbing through the scrolls until he got to Polymorph Other.  He decided their best chance was to attempt to polymorph the mountain giant into something small - a snail or toad.  It was a big saving throw on the monster side of the battle; the giant needed an 11 or higher to shrug off the spell:

Dang.  The mountain giant was gone, but four more ogres were still coming up the stairs a round or two behind him.  Miraculously, the monsters didn't fail their morale, and kept fighting, but at this point it was pretty much over except for the DM's crying.  Moore softened them up with, yawn, another fireball, before they made it all the way across the room.

The fight ended soon after a few more inconsequential waves of foot soldiers tried to charge the party, with an 80hp snail slinking around the center of the floor, and only two ogres remaining later into the fight.  The party soon won.  Many jokes were made about how they drained the dungeon of inhabitants and hadn't even made it past the first room.

Here's the final tally:

74 Norkers
24 Gnolls
10 Ogres
6 Trolls
2 Hill Giants
1 Mountain Giant

We ended there, but left with an excellent teaser for the next game session.  The party was originally seeking THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH, but they got sidetracked by this quest to help out the gnomes (and entered THE FORGOTTEN TEMPLE OF THARIZDUN).  For their part, the gnomes agreed to patrol the area near THE LOST CAVERNS OF TSOJCANTH.  The party was afraid one of their enemies, a powerful witch, would find it first.

At the end of the game session, a messenger pigeon arrived from the gnomes, explaining how the witch found the caverns the day before and was met by a contingent of gnomish infantry - but we left the actual result of the battle as a cliffhanger, so they don't know if the witch entered the caverns or not.  We're going play the battle out this week with Delta's Book of War skirmish rules.  We'll see how that goes!