A Further Thought On "Compliments Of The Season"

What is your character doing for Christmas? (Or Hanukkah, or Ramadan, or their birthday, or their S.O.'s birthday, or their anniversary, or Wookiee Life Day, or the Prince's Embrace night?)

I've prattled on at some length about GMing Christmas Specials before, but this can be a more general question for any time of celebration.

Buying presents can be an adventure in and of itself. (I say this as someone who managed to get both my parents books they already had this year. In my defence, my mother had dropped hints about Sir Terry’s Snuff and then went and bought it herself after I did...)

Then consider all the tradition and symbolism of such events. What do you do, what do you eat, where do you go, what games do you play, what do you wear, where did that whole mistletoe business come from?

And how do PCs from Culture A deal with the traditions of Culture B? What’s a good gift for the Ambassador of Barsoom?

Compliments Of The Season

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Feliz Navidad! Joyous Yule! Mazel Tov! It's Doctor Who Tonight! Select as applicable.

And what did you get for select-as-applicable?

No game stuff for me directly, as I am generally the giver of game stuff rather than the receiver. I did have a go at the Black Lion FLGS raffle and got GURPS Who's Who 2 (and if Hitler, Churchill, Napoleon and Nelson are only in 2, who's in 1?) among other things. Expect a Whoblog post about opening it at random soon.

Vampire: In The Bleak Midwinter

More vampires mark the winter solstice than the mortal celebration of Christmas four nights later. The long night is their time, and Christianity has been a plague on vampires down the centuries. And very few of them have loved ones with whom to share gifts and good company.

And yet, painful as it may be, some cling to the reminder of hope and forgiveness that the story promises.

To follow: practical considerations about the season, a decent-sized adventure hook, and two sketchy ones, one about a vampire showing very poor taste which I hope will not offend despite the vampire's attempts.

Strange, Dead Love author Monica Valentinelli on how, and if, vampires love.

Fringe, and the resolving of mysteries in games

I am now more than halfway through all available Fringe.

It's pretty much "What if The X Files answered a decent number of the questions it raised?" - The Series.

"Mad scientists did it!" being the main answer, including the "mad scientists From Beyond!" subset. It explains vampires, werewolves, ghosts and the like in the first season alone, like aliens in Doctor Who. Their clearup rate is higher too - if guest stars don't die in the pre-credits they actually stand a fair chance of surviving.

Something like The X Files is a good model for a game - I tried running it once, in fact - but I'd say Fringe is better on balance because of this. The characters more often get to (a) find out what's actually going on, (b) definitely stop it and (c) help people caught up in the episode's threat. It would be a lot less frustrating than an accurate simulation of Mulder and Scully's adventures. Players might let you get away with "you'll never find out..." once or twice in a series, but not once or twice a week.

There are plenty of suitable RPGs, notably investigation games like Gumshoe which already has paranormal and mutant-chasing variants, as well as post-X Files paranormal-hunting games like Conspiracy X, or if you want to go another way model-the-TV-show games like PTA and Smallville. Indeed, I wonder why someone like MWP hasn't licensed Fringe itself.

Would you like some folkloric British monsters?

SFX are nice enough to give away their Paranormal Special's article on the subject.

Nessie, the Great Grey Man of Ben MacDhui, the Lambton Worm... Ten in all, enough to fill a British supernatural adventure show, turn out to be aliens in a series' worth of Doctor Who or cryptids in Primeval, inspire fantasy beasts or horror monsters and more.

Are the Owlmen the Strix from Vampire: The Requiem in their natural form? Is the story of the last Cottingley Fairy picture being real the truth? Is the Black Dog a friend or an enemy?

The Nine Companions

To celebrate my ninth follower here - presumably also my 20th over on The Door, hello!

How significant are numbers in your game world?

Is it bad luck to have thirteen at the table, or in the adventuring party? Is three the magic number, or is it five, or seven? Which number Shall Not Be Spoken?

And how do you apply this when you have an uncertain number of PCs?

Of course, you can make just about any number, or phrase, or physical characteristic, hugely significant in a game world. Omens and pattern recognition have presented us with plenty of examples.

"Five there must be, one for each finger of the hand!"

"2001 is actually the start of the new millennium!"
"Nobody likes a math geek, Scully. "

"Ahh, you have green eyes, you cannot enter by the front door!"

So if you have six players, they could be connected by a prophecy relating to the six senses, the days God worked on Earth, or the luck of a normal die.

And since most RPGs run off numbers and their random generation, you could even throw number symbolism into the game itself. In Nomine, the game of angels and demons secretly battling over the world, is built around the d666.

The Fellowship of the Ring came out ten years ago.

In some ways it doesn't seem that long ago, in others (where it connects to very early memories of the books) it seems like it's always been there.

It's why I don't generally run or play standard fantasy - I know I can't GM like Tolkien can. I'd love to have a hand in something like that, but so much standard fantasy is just about fighting through Moria rather than grieving over Gandalf, getting up the mountains rather than the importance of fellowship.

The One Ring goes towards building this in, but I think it might make it too planned out. Really, you need a group who can throw themselves into it.

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful

As I write this, the amusingly nicknamed Hurricane Bawbag rages outside, disrupting plans and causing much consternation. This time last year, of course, we were two weeks into six and a half weeks of being snowed in, so I suppose a storm isn’t such a big deal.

So... the weather in games.

Mostly it’s scenery, with dark and stormy nights aplenty, rain most often falling on noirish PIs, vampires threatened by the bright morning sun.

Sometimes it’s a dramatic device that forces adventurers to take shelter in the inn where the murder happens, or miss a vital train due to leaves on the line, or travel through Moria rather than over the mountains.

Sometimes it’s actively involved, under the control of superhuman powers for good or ill.

Games that tend more towards the dice falling where they may and the likes of random encounters might well include random weather, with a roll of the dice always waiting to screw up plans.

But a bit of strange weather could change a regular encounter even if it doesn’t fit the weather’s usual dramatic uses.

Consider a typical battle with a troop of Orcs/brigands/vampires/Stormtroopers and add enough rain to turn the ground to mud as the fight continues. Compare Agincourt in Branagh’s Henry V to Olivier’s to see the difference it can make to a standard narrative.

Strange, Dead Love preview

Over at Flames Rising

An observation caused by the Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar

The Yuuzhan Vong are the Tzimisce.

For various reasons, but most of all because, for me, neither of them feel like they fit in the universes they were brought into.

A Buffy Season boxed set

0: A Buffy Season Introduction
1: Season Premiere
2: Monster Of The Week
3: The Metaphorical Menace
4: The Big Bad
5: With Great Power Comes Great Inconvenience
6: The Spotlight Episode For Somebody Quiet
7: Love Makes You Do The Wacky
8: Buffy In Pain, Show Better
9: The Horror Episode
10: The Funny Magic Episode
11: The Two-Parter (Part One)
12: The Two-Parter (Part Two)
13: Format, Schmormat
14: The Special Occasion Or Holiday Episode
15: Whoa, Our Lives Are Really Weird
16: The Genre Standard
17: Inconvenient Issues You Can't Just Hit
18: The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character
19: A Whole New World
20: The Big Bad's Big Bad Plan
21: The Build-Up
22: The Season Finale
22+: Season Roundup Special Feature

A Buffy Season: Season Roundup Special Feature

Right then. That's ten thousand words.

And I haven't touched on the use of information NPCs like exposition guys, shady underworld contacts, untouchable human villains like Wolfram And Hart lawyers, weird occult things that speak in riddles.

Or much on the practicalities of casting your show - I always stayed within budget, and got into the habit of looking for up-and-coming British actors as well as occasional stunt casting. Strangely, "Casting by The Watch House" became a semi-regular feature on my LJ due to things like Sophia Myles starring in Moonlight, James McAvoy playing a psychic Oxbridge student and then the young Professor X, Emilia Fox as a mystical Big Bad from Arthurian mythology (albeit a different one) in Merlin, and Henry Cavill going from Captain Rugged to Superman.

Or about Buffy's occasional prophetic dreams, dream logic and surreal high fantasy episodes.

Or...

So. Questions, comments?

A Buffy Season: 22: The Season Finale

The Big Smackdown. The End Of The Season-Slash-World.

The dénouement of the season is, as a rule, pretty heavy on the fight scene.

This is for the title, so make it big. Failure will lead to an apocalypse and possibly cancellation of the show.

Of course, Buffy being as weighted in favour of its heroes as it is, this isn't really a concern. Individual characters may fall, if it's dramatically appropriate. Generally, however, evil is going to have its ass kicked and it's all about how.

I don't like to restrict the narrative-y flow of fight scenes with maps, but sometimes the tactics get involved enough that it's necessary and this may be one of those times. And if not, then do have some interesting environmental features to throw in, like a collapsing building, shafts of sunlight when fighting the king of all vampires, a horde of zombies in the way, anything that either side can use to their advantage.

But while the monster mash is the main focus, if this isn't a one-session double feature with the Build-Up there may still be time for making plans, joking about the failure to make plans, resolving character plots, pointing out the lack of resolution in character plots, foretastes of next season, last-chance sex, gloating by the Big Bad, extra gratuitous violence like clobbering an underworld contact or casually staking a vampire on the way to the main event... That kind of thing.

--

Example: Rock Hard

The city is slightly in ruins and the Siren now commands a giant sea monster planning to eat everybody.

Fighting her will involve getting into the ruined, still-quaking arena, or chasing her through the cracking, flooding streets and over collapsing rooftops to get high enough.

Are we gonna let this go?

I don't think so.

A Buffy Season: 21: The Build-Up

"Are you ready to be strong?"

The final phase of the Big Bad's plan, and the Cast's attempts to thwart it.

Allies, enemies, possibly a really cool stand-up fight with a lieutenant of the Big Bad, planning, arguing about plans, relationship issues coming to a head with all the stress and the "You're proposing to me 'cause we're gonna die!"

And the terrible omens of doom and the panicking citizens running for cover and the noncombatant supporting cast expressing their entirely understandable fears and...

Often a good idea to run this in a single longish session with the Season Finale, unless you really want to play on a cliffhanger, because most of the finale's runtime is given over to (a) dénouement and (b) extreme violence, so it's good to keep up that momentum.

Either way, this is the time for late-innings moves - like kidnapping PCs so rescuing them becomes part of the final session and they don't miss a few sessions chained to a wall.

And for the side of good, lost lore is found, allies return (possibly to die to prove the scariness of the Big Bad) and enemies betray their side, providing vital clues and real hope of victory to contrast with the otherwise relentless rush of bad news.

And any personal plots are resolved as well, at the best or worst possible moment. Love, heartbreak, uncertain power development, quests for souls, stuff like that.

And someone should deliver a rousing speech. Just not too many: "The other day, I gave an inspirational speech to the telephone repair man."

And just time for one last plot twist.

--

Example: Shake The Earth

The storm has come, and is surprisingly earthquake-y. And sea monster-y.

A Buffy Season: 20: The Big Bad's Big Bad Plan

The Big Bad makes a decisive move, advancing towards their ultimate probably-apocalyptic goal. Acquiring a magic item, sowing chaos, raising the first of an army of monsters, that kinda thing.

This is about as bad as things get. But also a glimmer of hope.

Because now, after hints and threats and possibly some violence, the Big Bad's plan is revealed. And that also reveals how to stop it.

Because if they're doing that it means they're planning to do that so therefore if we do this...

It's impractical, crazy, dangerous, probably all of the above and then some. But. It. Just. Might. Work.

Oh, and the Cast need a few bits and pieces. And so does the Big Bad. And some of them might be the same things.

And even if they aren't, this is probably the Big Bad's last opportunity to taunt from a position of safety. Use it well.

This could be a series of arc story scenes throughout preceding episodes, or all put into the third-last episode of the season, depending on how much weight you want to put on the Big Bad. A whole season could be made up of arc episodes, but that can get pretty wearing.

Take a look at previous episodes and see which plot threads could become Chekov's Guns. That troll hammer comes in handy weeks after being left behind in an apparent MOTW episode.

Any allies the Cast can call on in their hour of need? Any of the Big Bad's camp likely to betray the cause?

--

Example: On The Rocks

The Siren plans to destroy the city, draining the life from her victims and extending her lifespan by a thousand years. For this she needs the remaining pieces of the Stone of Fire, so that she can call up the storm she needs. And she's already arranged a captive audience, as her first show has sold out completely...

A Buffy Season: 19: A Whole New World

In which a spell, dimensional portal, time warp, or some other kind of phlebotinum drops the Cast into, yes, A Whole New World.

Like The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character (which despite the order I'm putting these up, you should not run right next to this) A Whole New World takes advantage of the flexibility and kitchen-sinkiness of the Buffyverse so you can take a break from the regular game while still playing it.

It lets you spend a week in an evil mirror universe where half the Cast are vampires, a future cyberpunk dystopia, a visit to Greyhawk Pylea, a Descent into the Underworld, a world without monsters, a world without shrimp... a Days Of Future Past post-apocalypse nightmare the Cast then have to stop, a House Of M world where everyone is happy but somehow they know it's wrong, a historical costume drama with the Cast fighting knights or punching Nazis or saving Dickens from The Ghost Of Christmas Future... and all kinds of What If? stuff that you can't get away with in some games.


The Cast might be mentally fitted in, making this One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character as well. That can be fun to play, particularly when it doesn't affect everyone and the one or two sane PCs have to make the others see sense. And if they're up for it (generally best to check in advance) some of them can play the alternate PCs all the way through, even acting against the heroes trying to set things right.

They might also have to dress the part, particularly if it's embarrassing and/or likely to turn heads. Oh, and if you cast your characters, now is a chance to use a photo of a given actor which totally does not suit the character they're cast as. Indeed, sometimes I've been tempted to do A Whole New World episode because of such a picture.

And if you want to add a maudlin element, one or more of the PCs might find the Whole New World appealing, especially if the real world is treating them like crap at the moment. Harder to do with the post-apocalypse-Hell world than the everybody-gets-what-they-always-wanted world, obvs, but even there what if you fall in love with someone who might never be born if you put the world to rights?

--

Example: Friendly Neighborhood Vampire Slayer

Heading out on patrol, Billie finds herself being followed by reporters. Who all want to ask her about slaying. Then a little girl asks for her autograph. Then the crew from that paranormal investigation show come over to get a piece to camera. Then she gets a call from the Mayor's office about getting the key to the city tomorrow.

Some of the band seem unfazed by suddenly being as famous as the Ghostbusters, like it's been this way for ages, while some are aware that they never used to have a police liaison and the news stories of their heroic exploits which go back months didn't exist last night...

(This could also happen gradually in a world-changing development, as partially happens in Season Eight.)

Alternate version which is way too close to The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character example: Fame At Last

The band suddenly find they're at number one, scheduled to appear on the MTV awards, being covered in a special episode of glee, mobbed by fans everywhere they go...

A Buffy Season: 18: The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character

Possession, body swaps, misfiring magic, curses, amnesia, evil twins, an existing alter ego like the demon inside an ensouled vampire taking over, de-evolution beer, everybody turning out to be an actor in a TV series...

The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character is a staple of the genre, often done every season or two to give the actors and fans a bit of fun.

They can be completely different beings from the regular PCs, or warped reflections or exaggerated aspects of their true personalities. Magically-Paranoid Buffy is different from Vampire Buffy is different from Possessed Buffy.

Whatever the cause, The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character lets you play a different game in the same setting with the same players and sort of the same characters, which can be a lot of fun if the players are so inclined.

Warning: Do not do The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character in the first few sessions of a game. We need to get to know these characters so we know they're acting out of character. One Cast Member acting out of character after a couple episodes is fine, and easily hidden. But doing The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character as your second regular episode will just confuse people. I'm looking at you, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Despite the name, The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character need not involve everybody acting out of character. Having one or two sane PCs in a world gone mad is often essential to stopping the effect.

The new personalities can solve the problem as well - like the ghosts in I Only Have Eyes For You who just need a chance to talk, and so they possess superhuman bodies that won't die while they argue. But that makes the normal PCs into bystanders, so don't make a habit of it.

To be properly playable, the alterna-selves need their own agendas as well as fun shticks to mess around with.

Besides how and why Everybody Acts Out Of Character, the main question to consider here is whether to tell the players, or some of them, in advance.

If they have to be sly about things, prep them - so if one of the Cast has been replaced by a doppelganger with a dangerous secret agenda, tell the player in advance and work out some plans for how this can revealed at a suitably dramatic moment.

If you're not sure they'll go for it, ask ahead. I find asking "do you want to be mind controlled and attack the party?" gets better results than saying "you're mind controlled and attack the party" does.

If the new personalities reflect or reveal secrets about their real selves, discuss those in advance.

If you want showboating scenery-chewing performances, generally best to give them time to rehearse.

If you want to throw everybody in at the deep end, this can work, but generally works better with the same characters in a different setting.

--

Example: Creative Differences

The band signs to record an album... and their style isn't quite what the producer wants... so the producer starts to change them.

(Yes, it is the plot of Josie And The Pussycats. If you haven't seen it, consider it research.)

A Buffy Season: 17: Inconvenient Issues You Can't Just Hit

As the Cast plan a move against the Big Bad something else comes up, often a reminder of how the Cast have to straddle the normal world as well as the weird one.

Grounded on your way to fight the monster? Stopped chasing a monster by the Principal? SATs

Moved along by police while staking out a lair? The vitally important artefact has been sold at auction?

Or similarly, the Cast could be attacked by a force of good (or good-ish) like the Initiative or the Knights of Byzantium, because they're supernatural and therefore suspect.

Or, horror of horrors, you could be surveyed by the Watchers.

A slightly demented example from the start of TWH Season Seven - the typical "archaeological dig unearths ancient evil" plot was complicated by the film crew from Time Team.

As well as a reminder that the Cast generally have to operate in the "real" world and maintain secret identities and the like, it widens the setting.

Mundane(ish) inconveniences can lead to recurring characters, often thorns in the Cast's sides that they can't do anything about directly.

Meeting other good guys - possibly including the classic misunderstanding leading to a fight between superheroes - can make the fight less lonely than being the only heroes in the entire series. And it gives you someone clued-in to kill off to show how scary the Big Bad is.

--

Example: Wrong Direction

The band's van (by which the band mean Zora's van) is impounded. With the Stone of Frost, the only thing that can neutralise the Stone of Fire, inside.

A Buffy Season: 16: The Genre Standard

Into every genre show a few familiar stories must fall.

Because it's almost been a year, might as well look again at six staples of SF/F series.

The Bodyswap

The Time Loop

Ascension To A Higher Plane Of Existence

Alternate Dimensions

The Doppelganger/Double/Duplicate

The Dream Episode

I'll be addressing a couple of these later on. For now, note "I only did three of them in the course of The Watch House and the Bodyswap wasn't actually my idea. Mostly because I was sticking with the Buffyverse and there had already been high-profile Ascending, Dream and recent Time Loop episodes."

Still, there's fun to be had in letting players loose on a well-known fictive structure, seeing how a particular bunch of characters deals with a familiar problem. So I'll throw in some other tropetastic options, like...

Descent Into The Underworld. (There was some talk of doing this at the start of Buffy season six.)

Crossover. (With Buffy, with Angel... or Bureau 13 or Grimm or Pirates Of The Caribbean or any other series that looks like it could happen in the Buffyverse without changing much.)

The Hero Loses Their Powers. (Helpless, of course. And Angel in I Will Remember You, where it's totally awesome for him until it almost kills him. Also the less common flipside, The Hero's Powers Go Into Overdrive. Which I did to Jake the psychic in The Watch House, a bit like Earshot. And which latterly Buffy sorta-kinda did in Season Eight.)

Days Of Future Past. (The Wish is almost like this, but with the present rewritten to allow a villain already safely slain to win.)

Protect A (Possibly Vitally Important) Child. (Buffy never did a babysitting episode - Dawn doesn't count - but Angel had to save oracle children from a killer Daredevil-wannabe and defend a pregnant woman from weird knights after accidentally killing her champion, and had plenty of trouble with his own son to boot.)

Amnesia. (Buffy and Angel did this in the same year!)

--

Example: Power The Hero's Powers Go Into Overdrive. First applied to the slayer in SteveD's Elvis Buffy season. Pursuing a vampire, Billie throws a mailbox at him. And I mean a street mailbox, not a house one.