Joseph Erwin – Freelance Dungeon Master

Once again we stand upon the field of art-gushing! One should never underestimate the power of visual art in creating effective inspiration for RPG sessions. Without further ado, let’s get into it!

Something which pops up a lot in my games: technology so advanced and powerful that it appears as magic. And yet, the players or the characters (or both) know that it is more than just “magic sparkles and earth energy.”

We’ve all heard the Arthur C. Clarke quote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” At this point its a little overused as a concept, but it can still create a feeling of awe and excitement when used properly.

Because here’s the thing; I think that being able to impose a sense of order on the world is very helpful for people! We seem to forget that the reason why the civilizations we base fantasy off of used “magic,” “witchcraft,” and “deities” because they fit inside the frameworks of prior understanding. It is a form of empirical reasoning, though certainly based more on culture, religion and personal belief than objective reasoning.

The worst magic systems are ones which have no logic or meaning at all, no sense of power or effort involved, and which value all effects equally arbitrarily. A world where seemingly anything can be done with magic is one where there is no consistency. It invites open-ended questions of the lore and story (“why don’t they just ‘magic’ themselves a solution?”) which prevent immersion in the narrative, and when you deal a death blow to immersion, the story, no matter its form, falls apart.

So let magic and tech overlap! This argument of “magic vs tech” is based more on old Tolkien-fantasy value systems anyway. Yes, LOTR is great, but it is a very specific setting, and it idealizes returns to simple living rather than using technology to make life better. Magic, like technology, can be used in countless ways to improve live and create diverse aesthetics beyond the dreams of anyone who has come before!

I recall something I heard about Matt Mercer of Critical Role: he once asked his players where they would like to go in a massive city. “The Bank,” they said. Whereupon, Mercer produced a fully detailed map of the bank’s layout. When they asked how he knew they would go there, he said, “I didn’t, so I just planned out the whole city.” Cue awed gasps and praise.

I’m thankfully not alone these days as someone who sees this as setting a bad example for how RPGs and DMing go. Critical role is fine, it’s perfectly ok if you’re into that sort of thing, but it is more performance than actual play, more now than ever.

Planning a session has become a pretty streamlined process for me these days. From the extended campaigns I planned out in late high school, to the rapid-fire middle-school groups I have been running lately, I have felt an increasing need to think on my feet, to plan out only the broad strokes, what the rest of the world is doing while the characters are running around, and that’s enough for me.

And that’s why Mercer sets a bad example. Not that his style isn’t entertaining if you like that sort of thing, but seeing it as a rule of thumb is probably setting oneself up for disappointment.

Players are the best possible storytelling tool. They will come up with amazing new ideas and twists to the narrative, they will question your assumptions and poke holes in your assumed behaviors (only last week I had the party react to a soviet-punk war machine phasing through the wall by giving the crew potatoes), and they will fall in love with characters and ideas you have given almost no thought to.

And you can’t plan for that. Even in my most reliable group, whose behaviors I know very well, I have had to pivot and change where the story is going due to unprecedented behaviors.

Plus, the back-and-forth dynamic of player input and GM output is what keeps the game interesting! If I wanted to run/play a linear story with a set outcome regardless of choice or build, I would play a video game, and at least those will run all the calculations for me!

In a world of make-believe, anything can be done, within reason. As such, I’ve used RPGs to provoke meaningful questions. It’s amazing what a bit of context can add; a question or situation is more compelling when it’s someone’s character in that situation.

For example, in a sci-fi game I ended up proposing a question about life, death, and continuity of consciousness. When confronted with an unknowable alien artifact, the party’s psychic realized they could push their way in with the help of another psychic to help them. Except I neglected to mention one thing to the party: the device was created with extreme quarantine measures, and was designed to disintegrate and reconstruct anyone who requested entry.

I told the player privately so they wouldn’t think they were totally dead, and then, well…

And the NPC psychic on hand confirmed it: their mental signal was snuffed out in an instant of agony. They died. Cue chaos.

However, as I mentioned already, they were not dead, merely reconstructed. Everything was the same, barring some minor differences in vein and muscular formation as a result of the rapid-produced clone biology. A question we then had to ponder, once it was revealed what had happened:

“Was the character the same person, or were they killed and replaced?”

And yes, the game SOMA asked this same question.

Seeing as how their neurons were perfectly copied, there was certainly no termination of consciousness, merely an interruption. When it resumed, nothing about them had changed. It was an inspired little moment we all shared, and is right up there with the “bag of holding: bellybutton edition.”

The added context made it resonate so much more, which I find helps immensely in philosophical questions. It’s a little too easy to get bogged down with broad ideas like “is a person with no eyes or brain alive???”

Posts may slow down a little as things get busy, but I’ll upload when I can.

What with all the discussion surrounding brand and copyright of familiar creatures (yes, the OGL has been restored, but let’s not forget just because one battle has been won; many elements of the hobby are still tied to The Brand, and WoTC won’t back down forever), I thought it would be prudent to cover something which I find greatly important when it comes to creating a satisfying game: surprise when it comes to creatures.

Now obviously we shouldn’t treat RPGs as only a protracted combat simulation (though it’s fine if that’s your bag), but it’s a little hard to escape the fact that combat tends to be an exciting part of most games, even intrigue-based ones like most eldritch horror RPGs. Combat, like good drama, is an easy way to use high risk and physicality to create effective tension. And to create the best tension, you need cool things to fight.

I’m reminded of something Tim Kask said in an interview years ago; that he creates his own unique stat blocks for creatures because he got sick of people walking into rooms, knowing exactly how the creature operates, and removing all challenge as a result. “Ah, you may think you know how a hell-hound works,” he said, “but not at my table.” Usually he would design his creatures around specific weaknesses and strengths which were not so easy to intuit as “vulnerable to fire” or “resistance to poison.” A philosophy I have adopted in the years since.

Because really, who wants to play a game where everyone knows everything about every creature and danger before they get a chance to interact with it?

So in an effort to encourage breaking from traditional creatures and brand ideas, let’s try reinterpreting some classic creatures.

Some of my favorite moments in recent games have been watching as players are forced to come up with new and unique ways to deal with a creature they cannot simply whack until it’s dead or know everything about it because they have committed the “Official Licensed Creature Compendium Volume VII™” to memory.

How about some art again? Life may be busy, but there’s always time for inspiration for RPG sessions!

Refer to the first post for my general criteria for how I collect and judge pieces in general. Now on to the specific examples!

This is a hard topic, because it is pretty variable (to a point) and is up against a pretty steep challenge. To put it simply, this is hard because:

RPGs are one of the hardest art forms to get immersed in.

It’s not impossible, and it can be great when you get there, but it is more of an uphill battle.

Movies, if properly edited and shot, can grab the attention of a viewer and hold it tightly. Books, though they require more mental effort to progress the story, can get very absorbing very quickly (few can claim to have never found a book which interests them by the first page). Video games are a personal and engaging experience with immediate feedback and a presentation which does everything it can to pull the player in.

RPGs are different. There are few visual aids, and when they are there, they are usually more impressive as a miniature tableau as opposed to tools for immersion.

Not everyone has access to complex modular tile sets, or complex lighting setups. Most groups are lucky if they have a GM with two dozen miniatures of random creatures and heroes. Most of the immersion of RPGs is taking the raw elements of human interaction (speaking, storytelling, drawing, etc.) and trying to get immersed with little more.

And honestly, it’s not easy.

Having to keep in mind everything, from your character’s personality and abilities, the location of the action, the larger goal (easier to lose track of than we assume), and when to jump in to contribute, is a task which is incredibly difficult

I’ve got thousands at this point; artwork running the genre gambit from High Fantasy all the way to Hard Sci-Fi, and back again, hitting all the spaces in between. I organize and cultivate them by genre and subject.

And I use them to inspire my games.

Usually, I’ll just pick a genre generally matching the setting of my story, and I’ll just scroll. Like my RPG collection, I only collect art which is in some way unique, even if it is something small like color choice or line work.

Then I ask questions about the art, elaborate on hints in the piece about potential ideas, and let my mind wander.

Examples are best, as always.

I have a ton of art like this, so I think I will do another post discussing (or ranting about) my criteria for what artwork I like to keep for inspiration. I’m very visually-minded, so I take a lot of inspiration from good art.

Like all art forms, RPGs have elements which make the experience unique from other art forms. The one I am referring to (taking advantage of the storytelling dynamic that exists between GMs and players), is what allows for some really special moments.

This ability to play with the narrative expectations of the audience is not exactly unique to RPGs, nor is a new, but it does work in a very particular way. The human mind is geared to expect some sort of resolution when it comes to storytelling. If you ever wonder what it feels like to have that sense messed with, just think of how one would feel if one of these happened in a story (movie, book, game, etc.):

• A sympathetic hero(ine) is established as an idealistic but directionless protagonist. They lose everything when a marauding villain kills their family, and they spend the next five years training and learning maturity from a wise mentor figure. Then, after years of training, they go to the town where the villain lives, intent to defeat them after years of waiting. Then suddenly, a passing cart loses control at the top of a hill and comes crashing down, crushing and killing them without even any dramatic emphasis.
• A story about a happy village of cartoon bears takes a tone shift mid-way through and becomes a story focused on dealing with one of the bears succumbing to a prolonged illness, while still maintaining a chipper lightness of tone despite having many tearful bedside scenes.
• Or perhaps an action film which follows all the usual beats, save that it fades out to credits after the final “gearing-up” montage before the final shootout. Try this with any typically-structured film, and something deep in the brain reacts poorly.

Though admittedly there could be strong merit in the above examples if they were non-interactive mediums like books and movies (which are more about “presenting” a story than “creating” one), in gaming one tends to abide by the rules ancient human storytellers followed: we trust the storyteller to weave something, perhaps alongside our input, that will be satisfying.

I would argue that one is more likely to get a negative reaction in “live” storytelling when a story is not resolved in an expected way. There is an element of trust in RPGs where the players assume that the GM, unless they are purposefully being vague, will be at least slightly honest. Not all GMs are totally honest, but even the trickiest GM has to be truthful and consistent or else players will lose their minds. A GM can’t just lie about what the likely consequences of actions will be; such GMs tend to not be GMs for much longer.

And THIS is where we mess with players; that they assume you are telling the truth when you say something in total earnestness. This is a fine line to walk, and can’t be done all the time, but it is a neat trick in certain cases.

The campaign where I tested this was one where the characters were (unbeknownst to them) being subtly mind-controlled by a mummified mind-mage.

The secret lay in a specific type of interaction:

Player: “What about the passage ahead?” (or other possible direction of progress)

GM: “You feel it’s probably the right way to go.”

or

Player: “This situation feels suspicious… is it supposed to be?”

GM: “You don’t think so.”

The assumption that the GM is an arbiter of universal “truth” in the game, rather than an interpreter of the characters’ perceptions, is where the subtle game can be played. Players can be tricked into assuming that the GM is being totally honest, when they are really expressing the biases of the characters.

And this went on for many sessions, until the players began to catch on that all the actions I was suggesting were putting the characters in danger, despite their characters expressing desires otherwise. Once they noticed, I let them play around with how their characters were noticing that their goals were not coinciding with their feelings, and eventually they broke the control.

So long as the balance is maintained between railroading and allowing the freedom that the medium calls for, then you can get some really great moments out of (light) betrayal. Just drop enough hints that you can claim it was “foreshadowed.”