Suspense, continued...

The reason I like writing this blog it gets me thinking about things in new ways. On Monday I posted some thoughts about how difficult that it is to adequately engineer situations that actually compel suspense, and some great comments were made that kept me thinking about this topic as the week progressed.

Getting outside the normal

One of our readers, reid, recommended a gaming system called Dread which puts each player's actions and checks in the embodiment of a Jenga tower. This strikes me as an EXCELLENT way to have an evening of fun and appears to be a system engineered for one-nighters and short runs where the gaming area can be left in place.

I love the inherent risk of the tower falling and I can imagine this wrapping very nicely into a horror setting or one that has a lot of physical risks for your characters.

Some more traditional ideas

Several people (including our very own Vanir) recommended obfuscating or eliminating the fear based systems in favor of rewarding roleplaying. I like these ideas, however there will always be those naturally light in roleplaying that will want to have control over some system of determining the fear response.

We have used props in some of our campaigns up to this point to illustrate objects and add some reality to encounters. I've been toying with ways to combine the Jenga suspense with a situation specific prop to heighten the roleplay experience for those people that don't really get into heavy roleplay.

Then I remembered our experience at Nascrag this year... they had essentially a paper diagram describing a puzzle, with a specific time limit to solve it. It wasn't horror, but let me tell you the pressure was on. I imagine this would be equally cool with a real life prop, or a combination of puzzles and real props to add an air of reality to the situation.

Using some creative applications of concepts like this that many of you may already use may help aid in creating some artificial, yet realistic suspense to your settings and encounters.

Good Characters Grow

One secret to good roleplaying is empathy. How would your character, with his background and experiences, feel about what is going on? Once you've decided that, then decide how he'd react.

Crug SMASH!

Let's start with a very simple example: a headstrong barbarian type who likes to swing first and ask questions later. This sort of character is very easy to "roleplay" -- at first. "CRUG SMASH ORCS! CRUG HATE GUARDS! SMASH!" His actions are pretty much set in stone and there's not a whole lot to empathize with (unless you've had a hard day at work). You don't roleplay this character, you follow a rule - CRUG SMASH. However -- as this character continues to survive, he might note that the number of incidences of his rash behavior seem to correlate directly with the number of out-of-body experiences he's had. A player who continues doing this may well "roleplay" his character into a pine box.

An experienced warrior is not just called that because they have more feats and HP, you know. They understand battle and teamwork. They do not typically SMASH until the time is right. They know why it's good to be the cleric's wingman at the tavern -- dibs on the support spells. And the character at the end of the campaign acts a lot differently than the character who started.

Challenge Their Beliefs

That's how you can apply character growth in battle, but what about roleplaying? It's perfectly OK to give your characters strong beliefs. It makes them interesting, and gives them very real reasons to act the way they do. It is also perfectly OK to allow those beliefs to be challenged along the way. In my Nascrag games over the last couple years, I played an aging fighter who hated magic -- and had a sorceror for a son. In last year's adventure, he did nothing but question his son's manhood for not being a warrior and wielding 'unnatural' forces. This year, he still hated magic, but realized he was reaching the end of his life and loved his son. So he was trying to reconnect with him, while still hating magic. I was completely engrossed with trying to figure out how to make my character embrace both concepts, and I had to put myself in his shoes to do it.

Thusly, I found my character encouraging his son and praising his accomplishments, but trying to get him to do things the non-magical way. It made me invest myself in the adventure much more. This character, despite having very strong beliefs, had grown. Nascrag is a little different in that they pre-write your characters' motives from year to year, but there is nothing stopping you from doing it on your own.

If you're tired of playing the same old characters over and over again, let one grow outside the confines of what you've decided he'll be. You'll likely enjoy the results.

Nascrag: First impressions...

As previously mentioned, this year the StupidRanger crew took our initial plunge into the irreverent world of Nascrag. What I will recount to you is my impressions, the others will be along this week to share our vast and varied GenCon experiences.

I really enjoyed Nascrag... the level of crazy that was circulating outside the hall that we were going to play in was so thick you could reach out and touch it. This was not Vanir's first rodeo, so he was there to help guide us through it. If we didn't have a repeat offender there, I can see how the pre-game setup could be a little overwhelming.

It came time to call our team name and give our slogan. We all hammed it up appropriately, and I sent my GM fleeing by advancing on him briefly with my backside. Sometimes I have no shame. :)

I'm not going to divulge too much of the storyline since I've heard that the folks at Nascrag make their module available, but for me the only real downside was the amount of background information you were expected to absorb in a very short time frame. Those that have played previous years have a clear edge in that regard, but the actual game session itself was pretty fun.

The GM that we had was pretty good too... his was something like his 16th Nascrag event and it showed. He took his time describing important things well, listened to our group as we roleplayed and asked questions, and did a very good job making the NPCs fun to interact with. He did a good job of giving his characters a specific voice and attitude and took time to let the group explore areas and try varying ideas. Unfortunately, Vanir and I were doing some good roleplaying but I think it might have been overlooked because the GM tended to spontaneously sidebar with adjacent PCs which grew a bit frustrating as the session went on. Unfortunately, I heard from some other groups that we missed some important areas so we didn't make it to Round 2 (entirely, but the rest of the story is for Vanir to provide).

Great moments for me: trying to maintain a French accent for a considerable time, trying to get a leprechauns drunk, and an unfortunate punk metal battle duet with Vanir. I'll let him elaborate a little more on that, since he tends to do the colorful description much better than I.

In all, it was a fun experience for the first time gaming outside of my own group at a convention. Next year is the start of a new three year story arc, so maybe we'll get a chance to get in at the beginning and do a little better!