Human Slaves Of An Insect Nation Part 3-your Players And You!

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The story you can reach out and touch by Serhat Bayram

Human Slaves of an Insect Nation, part 3-Your players and you!

Part 1 was a rant and part 2 was gaming advice, but part 3 aims to cover the best and most precious aspect of your campaign:

Your players

“I'm the cream of the crop, I rise to the top
I never eat a pig cause a pig is a cop”

They might not be world class thespians, character actors or even mattress actors, but they’re your group and they’re the meat and bones of the entire campaign. They’re the buddies who will help you get your panties out of a rules twist and they’re the fuckwits who will cut open dogs so they can wear them as hats. They’re the glorious champions but they’re also the people who “look like Kakashi, only without the eyepatch.”

They’re your joy and your burden.

Your wafer-thin sociopaths.

But above all, they are your friends. Because let’s face it: you aren’t going to be investing nearly 80 hours a month into running a game for a bunch of smelly strangers you only talk to during game-time and only address them through their character names, are you?

“Hey um, Stev-ooohh…Grodnar? Pass me the beer will you dude? Of course I know your actual name, dude! It just slipped my mind, gametime and all. I know that you aren’t a barbarian all the time, dude, just…please stop crying, Steve, wasn’t it? No? Well fuck you then, strange man who plays a Viking on Sundays!”

During the course of the campaign, you are going to spend a whole lot of time with your players. Even if you only play once every two weeks, you are going to be with those guys for four to five hours at a time 

 Or an upward of ten, if you’re in college and/or unemployed

Which means that you’re going to get to know these people, whether you like it or not. You’re going to tell nerd jokes, scat jokes, bad jokes, trade character optimization tips and possibly get into a fistfight over which was the best Doctor and whether or not midichlorians ruined Star Wars.

Of course they did Dave, you fucknugget.

Now, if you are versed in the art of social interaction you’ll know that prolonged exposure to strange people you don’t know might not sit well with you and spell social disaster, especially when you discover that a bunch of them could be socially inept mouth breathers that come to the table to play out their power fantasies.

I should know, I met a few.

The table isn’t the place where you’ll make friends and it sure as shit isn’t the place where you’ll get to know people. Jumping into games or running stories for people you don’t know might also turn into a maelstrom of awkwardness.

What’s also important is that people will serve to flesh out your idea and give it the flair that your original concept was missing. They will also cut you the necessary slack when you’re stuck and offer their own tidbit of nerdy merriment when things look rough

And when they one up you, you’ll know exactly where they live so you can make them pay.

So without further ado ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

SHAPESCAPES’ GUIDE TO FINDING ADEQUATE PLAYERS OR OH GOD, NOT ANOTHER FURRY!

Because Patrick Stewart was made for better things.

PHASE ONE:

MAKETH CERTAIN THOU CANST HANGETH OUT WITH THEM

If you’re just starting off on RPGs, then welcome to the wonderful, wonderful world of imagination, fantasy and adventure (with a dash of political intrigue, where available). You’re about to pick a chosen few to embark on an impossible quest for the future of mankind, the lives of every man woman and child in their hands.

And then it turns out that they keep stopping the game because they just need to talk about how awesome their character is.

      In order to avoid this, do the following: 

1.         Try to approach them in a nerd-friendly setting and engage them in conversation

Game shops, video game retail outlets, even heated debates on Skype on the intricacies and superiority of D&D editions are the best places to see what is up with your players. Nerd Rage brings out the worst in people (I should know, experienced it myself recently) and it will show you exactly how far one is willing to go to one up his team players.

You should not, however, go trolling. You shouldn’t purposely prod and poke your possible players into a fit of rage just so you can check them out, mostly because you’re not an asshole.

Or maybe you are: quick, count how many days you find yourself thinking that, along with a self-serving feeling of superiority over everyone else. If it’s more than 5 days a week, then you pass!

Us Nerds tend to be territorial (God knows I was, once) and this sort of test kept me both away from problem players and kept me out of games where I would have been a problematic little whiner as well.

            2.         Go out for a couple beers.

The key word is alcohol. Chugging down brewskies doesn’t work if the guys you’re with aren’t even tolerable. Besides, alcohol speeds up the process of  ‘excrement expediting’ (i.e. shooting the shit’) which pretty much lets you veer off the campaign matters and talk about regular, boring stuff.

This might seem like a silly process, but it really isn’t. If you can drink with your players, then you can hang out, talk and even cry yourselves to sleep as you’re reminiscing over how Matt Smith is the worst fucking Doctor ever

Or the non-necessity of Spiderman in comics.

Also, you might get some great friends out of the deal.

PROTIP: If any of the guys drinks too much or starts crying and/or won’t stop crying until he’s drunk, subtly avoid him. Trust me on this.

3    3.          Play the goddamn game

You done frollicking, son? Had your chugs, shot your shit, excluded the sociopaths? Good! Now find a place and fucking play cause honest to God, I’m tired of your bullshit.

I wonder why the fuck I even bother with you people…

PHASE TWO:

RESTRAINETH THINE WHINERS

The whiner, most bountiful of roleplaying creatures.

Sit down in that chair son and let me tell you the tale of the whiner:

It is said that in the olden days, before man was man and woman was woman and everything was pretty much a huge pile of sludge sloshing around on the face of the planet, there was a single cell that, while otherwise being a very cool dude, would occasionally stop and scream at the brine for no reason.

So the other organisms tried to console him and to find out what was wrong and soon found out that the lonely cell would not cease its racket until it got what it wanted (which was usually something silly and unimportant). But the more they gave it things, the more it asked for, until his buddies got sick of him, grew arms and smashed his goddamn head in with a rock.

But his progeny remained and it crawled out of the sludge and it made its way through the aeons and now resides in your gaming table AND HE WON’T SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Oh, it starts subtly, at first. Perhaps it starts with a well-placed argument about character levels or character wealth, or attack bonuses. But if the whiner’s given in inch, he grows and so does his whining. It expands and it expands its grubby claws and its big mouth and screams and asks for more, until you find yourself having to stop everything just so you can calm him down and keep on going with the story.

But by that time, it’s already too late to kick him out, so you have to put up with his shit for the remainder of the campaign, while assigning one of your buddies to kindly ask him to shut his voice-hole every 30 minutes.

And the worst part is that you can’t avoid the whiner. Sure you can avoid the PARTICULAR whiner, but there’s so goddamn many of them, you’ll always have one at the table at any given time.

Like spiders, they crawl into your mouth as you sleep.

The secret is to learn how to identify the whiner and stop him before he reaches critical mass. Here’s how:

The first step requires a firm grasp of the rules, the story’s tone and a solid, but brief introduction into your campaign policy. Tell your players exactly what you have in mind and tell them that you’re going to bleed them like pigs. Notice their reactions. The whiner will make his first move then, by starting an argument that continues long after everyone else has let it go.

The second step requires vigilance. It requires an iron will and a strong stomach. It is the point during which the whiner will begin his assaults on your nerves and it will last for the entire campaign. You can stop it by simply denying his silly requests. If logical counter-arguments do not work, then a simple “NO” will suffice.

PROTIP: DO NOT YIELD DURING THE SECOND STAGE. YIELDING DURING THE SECOND STAGE BEGETS STAGE THREE.

The third stage involves long sessions of cock-fencing with the whiner, during which he will waste your game time looking through rule books and gaming articles. If you maintain your position of logical counter-arguing, then you’ve already lost.

The fourth stage involves party wrath. It’s the point where the entire group turns against the whiner and they either fling accusations against his mother’s marital conduct or threaten him with bodily harm. It is important to note that this stage is entirely your fault.

In short, the whiner needs to be indentified and quelled before he even begins. Delay that step for even a single session and you’ve lost. 

Strike the whiner down, lest he return as something more powerful than you can ever imagine!

PHASE THREE:

FIND THINE RULES BUDDY

I mentioned during a previous article the evils of rules lawyering.

And their subtle evil that seems so coldly logical and infallible…

But the truth of the matter is that, unless you’re a rules lawyer yourself, you’re still going to need someone to advise you on rules disputes and to guide you out of any dire gaming straits.

Oh yes, you do have a very firm grasp of the gaming system, but having a player who’s even better at it can help turn that fuck-up into a possible victory and your spontaneous fit of malice into a carefully staged and challenging encounter.

The Buddy is a player who is a rules lawyer and who you trust implicitly with both helping you run through the campaign, as well as with any of your coming ideas. Now, this sort of trust is not one to be taken lightly. You could find yourself divulging need-to-know information to a guy who’s going to use it for evil and then where would you be?

Answer: not in a happy place.

The rules Buddy is the guy who will help you put your foot down in an argument, but also someone who will point out when and where you’ve fucked up so you can make up for it and fix it before it gets out of hand.

PHASE FOUR:

SCHEDULETH

I don’t even know what that is, just picked the first image that Google picked up when I typed schedule.

Scheduling is probably the most important part of the entire campaign. If you’re like me, then this means that you’ve a very busy week (and sometimes weekend), which leaves you only a day to devote to gaming and that’s if you’re lucky and some other shit doesn’t come up.

If your gaming group is a bunch of college kids, then they can just play whenever the hell they want (or whenever you want them to), unless they get jobs and/or girlfriends.

Or, in a worst case scenario, the girlfriends have their own campaign and steal your group away from you.

But if your group is comprised of busy, married people (like mine currently is) who will pretty soon have kids of their own (which will seriously hurt our game time and also make me feel alone and unloved) then that means that scheduling is fucking EVERYTHING.

Campaigns are like teaching yourself how to smoke: you need to do this shit often and with a steady pace, until everybody’s addicted and they act like a bunch of nicotine-starved bitches come game night. This means that you need at least one session per week for at least ten weeks.

Sounds terrible doesn’t it? It actually is, mostly if you factor in everyone’s job. Which means that you’re going to have to negotiate on days that work for everybody, as well as gaming hours. Here’s a tip: no matter what you do, do not exceed 4-hour stretches. If you’re busy people but also friends, then that means that you can agree to play first, then act like nerds later and not be too tired for work the following day.

Also, four hours is a perfect time limit for a group that’s grown used to working together. You can start off the game, play out your session and still have time to grab a bite to eat.

I know that this bit of the article presents gaming like something way too stressing to look like it’s fun, but you should remember that I’m in a gaming group full of working adults and that we love our hobby enough to look for ways to get the most of it out of the time-consuming black hole that our working lives have become.

PHASE FIVE:

I, STORYTELLER

Diridiii-dooroodoododooo-duuuummm

You got those sons of bitches together. You made the story, isolated the whiner pathogen and found an ally. And you might just fuck up yet, in more ways than one.

It’s important to note that, despite the group’s best efforts and immersion, this entire hobby venture rests on you. No matter how much your players want to help you, you’ve still built the world, populated it with characters and come up with a narrative. And you’re going to be running that narrative for months to come and possibly not see it come to fruition.

You should keep in mind that, no matter how wonderfully creative this hobby is, it’s still tough to maintain and that it rests on your shoulders. You don’t need to be the new Homer and come up with Iliads, but the mere process of having to mind everything might tire you out.

You might also make the mistake of blaming yourself, if things do not go as planned. Hell, I did and I had trouble coping, thinking I should just give it up. So here’s my bit of advice, for you:

You are already doing the best you can you’ve just gotten a bunch of adults who are going to be acting like manchildren for the next few hours get round a table and play through your story.

You are going to keep doing the best you can because this is the story you made up and you’re going to see it to fruition, because you fucking deserve it

You sexy storytelling savant, you

You’re working with an audience you know and therefore can work your strengths with them these people are your friends. You don’t need to prove jack shit to them. Provided you don’t break down and start acting like a whiny little bitch, they’re going to love it.

And last, but not least:

You could always just fucking do it and get the best campaign you’ve ever wanted to run, ever I should know, I’ve been there. Wanna know what happened? I stopped gaming for 6 months, because I had burned out, faced with the thought that no other game I was ever going to be in was going to be that great, ever. 

But goddamn did it make me feel like a million bucks, cash.

What I Think About Stuff-columna Cerului (in Collaboration With Voltech)-part 1

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                                                          Title Card by Saimin Boykinov
 

Columna Cerului or The perfect RPG (as imagined by Voltech and Shapescapes)

Thank God for the internet. We live in an age where people from across the world can trade ideas, rapidly exchanging themes, images and stories with the mere click of a mouse in seconds. 

A glorious side effect of this marvelous invention (apart from the ready accessibility of porn for virtually free) is the fact that you sometimes get to stumble on people who are willing to help you in forming an awesome idea you have in your head from a maelstrom of explosion and tits into a narrative.

The spirit animal which aided me in this little dream quest was Voltech. And what you are about to read is the end result of essay-long PMs laid down into a pitch for an RPG.

You might wanna write this down, rich people who will be immediately interested in funding this.

But first, an Introduction:

Columna Cerului is a game that is very much thought out by two people who both grew up on a diet of JRPGS (before they went bad and turned into a huge mess of spiky hair and Prada), meaning that it is a thematic game, focused on certain elements which drive the narrative. According to our research…

Research as in constantly reminding each other that we should refrain from high-fiving each other the whole time and instead focus on a story

The themes that are prevalent in most successful RPGs are both epic in scope, while at the same time allowing the player to relate to. These themes are:

·         A love story

  

Yes, I know Final Fantasy 8 fucked that up and turned the ‘love story’ focus into a horrible contrived mess, but this time the love story will not be a focus, but instead a recurring theme that will affect the narrative.  

What does that entail, you ask? Well, instead of having the plot revolve around saving someone who wouldn’t have the brains to open a cereal box, love can be an underlying motivation -- a thought that impels characters to action, but never demands it.  Why drag the plot to a halt to save some girl drifting through space when you can ride eagles through the sky?

·         A Cosmic Disaster waiting to happen

Does it have to have the razzamatazz of the usual JRPGs? No. It can be something more down to Earth and not immediately world-exploding, but if we can make you care about the protagonist, then it could be just as effective.

A threat to the character -- a conflict, either from another person or a force of nature -- breeds action by that character.  Action breeds plot motion.  Plot motion breeds enjoyment.  You’d think this is something JRPGs would have down by now, but…well, here we are.

·         A deep, meaningful world

We’re not just talking broad and breathtaking. We’re talking about a world that’s immersive and makes you give a damn. We’re talking about Shadow of the Colossus and Planescape, as opposed to oh…

This shit.

Every world, regardless of medium, needs to have a certain character -- not just a mish-mash of concept art or NPCs that only exist to give you time-eating busy work sidequests.  There’s nothing wrong with a “save the world” plot -- but it certainly helps if that world matters.  The people you meet; the folklore therein; the little moments that make you stop and stare at your surroundings.  Give me that in an RPG, and I’ll gladly give you my whole wallet.  

·         A story that shows you what it’s all about as soon as possible, with a very clear focus on its themes.

We’re talking about a story that doesn’t drag its feet or jump around or shift final bosses at the last minute.

Y’all motherfuckers know which story I’m talking about.

The villain and the heroes are presented at the very beginning and the final boss payout is there at the very end. It’s called narrative continuity and we’re bringing it back, since most game developers seem to have forgotten about it these days.

·         A story that, even with meaningful themes and powerful moments, remembers that it’s a game -- and therefore, fun.

Games from both the East and West, regardless of genre, seem to have a certain problem lately: the developers have all formed a conga line where each team member has his head firmly lodged in the ass of the person ahead of him.  On one hand, we have games sacrificing their character to look cinematic and gritty; on the other, we have JRPGs that end on THIS:

Look, there’s nothing wrong with going for a particular style, or working deep ideas into the story.  But there are two important factors. 1) Those themes should be WEAVED into the narrative, not shot in your face with a cannon.   2) You need tonally-different moments to balance them out.  Make us laugh.  Make us go “ooh” and “ahh.”  Make us cheer and shout. 

JRPGs take a lot of flak for being loaded with melodrama.  I say that a shot of fun is just what this dream game needs.  

And now, let’s move on to brass tacks.

THE WORLD

Image by StickerSticker

In the setting’s case, we need a world that feels huge, but is not a sprawling mess of designer landscapes without any function. We need cities that are divided by great geographical features, though spaced moderately far apart. We need a certain flavor to the world, preferably one that says fantasy, but in a good way.

What I’m saying is, we need consistency. And consistency means a world that is based on a single theme/power source/historic period with some deviation between regions, but not enough so it hurts the eye and you sensibility.

Personally, I’d go with a 16^th century feel. Why is that?

‘Cause bitches dig 16^th century.

Because this century is the century that marked a turning point in art, civilization and technology in mankind’s history. It was the age of Great Discovery, it was chock-full of conflict and because it was essentially the peak point of the Renaissance.

Also, the 16^th century was the age of alchemists and occultists riding side by side with scientists. It was the age of batshit-insane theories walking side by side with the theory of gravity. It was the age when people had a pretty clear view of how the world worked, but hadn’t yet agreed on the details.

Also, the Age where uncharted waters with fickle weather conditions meant ‘here be sea dragons’

The world is divided into four great nations (the land nations) and the Sky Nation.

Each Nation is defined according to its characteristics and its main source of power. Their division is based on metals, in an attempt on our behalf to try and get all Moorcock up in this bitch.

Word to your mother, yo.

Ferrum: The nation of Iron is the greatest military force on the planet and the homeland of the story’s main antagonist. It’s a land run mostly by its military, its economy and politics based on aggressive expansion.

Ferrum’s aesthetics are mostly based on Victorian England, though parodied so it can be represented as both a nation possessing a current technological advantage, but also bloodthirsty to boot. So far, its attempts to conquer neighboring nations have failed due to their combined strength.

Ferrum intends to change that pretty soon.

Cuprum: Cuprum is a nation of magicians, its power source mostly based on the exploitation of spirits and magical constructs. Granted, its power once rivaled (and even exceeded) Ferrum’s but they appear to have gradually degenerated.

Cuprum’s aesthetics are mostly based on Renaissance Italy. They are a center of knowledge but also dwell in the shadow of a once great empire. They are also reminiscent of Byzantium, in their way of foolishly adhering to their older, less advanced ways.

Cuprum wishes not so much to rise in power, as to eliminate the competition.

Argentum: Argentum is a nation in between, a nation of merchants, diplomats and engineers. Its power source is mostly its mediation, as the nation set between Ferrum and Cuprum, mostly responsible for handling their relations. Argentum is also the main character’s nation of origin.

Argentum is very much like 16^th century Spain, a mediator in the affairs of other nation. Their power lies behind the scenes and would be helpless in a direct confrontation. Which is the reason they choose to sabotage the conflict since the beginning of the story.

Argentum wants things to remain as they are and will do anything in its power to make sure it is so.

Brunzus: The nation of Bronze is a recently born nation, fuelled by illusions of grandeur. It is comprised of people from Cuprum and Stanoum (a lesser nation), recently liberated from the collapsing Cuprum Empire.

Brunzus is a miniature replica of 16^th century Europe, with its mismatch of styles, politics and technological differences. Granted, it is the greatest center of learning, but it lacks focus. It tries to center on spiritual magic, while at the same time attempts to replicate Ferrum’s technological superiority.

Brunzus wants to be the next great nation.

THE SKY NATION:

Made almost to order by Wanbao

Though not technically a nation, it is inhabited by people who are indigenous to the game’s world (and also natives from other worlds, though the exact details are never quite explained).

The Sky nation is a great landmass that rotates through the material world, through the Spirit world and into other material worlds in an arbitrary fashion. No one is exactly certain how this rotation takes place, but the four nations have noticed that the Sky Nation materializes in their world every 4 years.

But what does it have to offer to them, besides a bitching tourist attraction you will ask? Well the Sky Nation is the one place in the world where the spirits are indigenous to it and can appear willingly, without any need for summoning processes or binding.

It is also the home plane of the Padisha Emir Daiphel, the great Iphrit.

Image shamelessly used from the gallery of Wen-M

Of their number, he is the only one with the power to grant wishes able to affect the history of an entire world. But to gain that advantage, one must compete in a great tournament for his amusement, with his spirit companion by his side.

Only the champion of a nation that manages to reach the feet of Daiphel’s throne will be allowed to speak their one true wish, a wish that can (and will) affect the world’s history, until the next one appears.

The previous champion was a spirit binder from the Argentum nation, who wished for the status quo to be upheld and wished great fortune to befall his country and himself.

But this time, the Ferrum decides to play for keeps. Argentum on the other hand, secure in its previous victory, does not pay the proper attention toward both choosing its champion and his spirit companion.

Enter…

THE MAIN CHARACTERS

To start listing every character would be a waste of your time, so instead we are going to focus on the protagonists and their companions. First, our main character:

Ren, the unlikely hero:

Perfectly fitting image by Angerkitty

 

Ren’s a fanboy. He’s the son of the previous champion, he’s been looking up to his father his whole life and he’s wanted nothing more than the chance to be him.

The problem with Ren is that this is his only purpose. The other problem is that he lacks the resolve. His head is in the clouds and he has lived the last four years a pampered existence, during which he has solely focused on this one purpose.

But with the death of his father, the frailty of both him and his family becomes apparent. Ren, who had been the sole focus of their lives loses the backing he needed and everything begins to fall apart in his little world. His older brother, freed from their father’s affectations toward his younger brother, becomes a bitter old rival to him and his mother, who has lived her entire life supported by the champion husband, finds herself lost.

Ren’s original purpose is to get to the Sky Nation, enter the tournament and wish that his family returns to the way it was, without once realizing that he is the glue that holds the family together and that this crisis could have been averted by his personal intervention.

Ren gets his wish (halfway) granted, when he is chosen to compete in the Sky Nation’s tournament by the spirit…

Quillo:

Quillo given form by BlackPassion

 Quillo is a Rakshasha, a shapeshifting trickster spirit and Ren’s companion. He chooses the child because he reminds him of himself when he was a lesser spirit, a creature that had no priorities, was short-sighted and foolish.

Quillo doesn’t help Ren in the beginning of the story. Instead, he showers the child with abuse and enjoys his failings, showering him with the abuse he thinks is good for him, the very thing he went through when he stuggeld to survive in the spirit world.

That is not to say that Quillo is all powerful now. He is still a struggling spirit without purpose, lacking a moral compass. Together, Ren and Quillo complement each other, yet fail to truly learn anything in the first part of the game.

It is in this part that we meet their counterparts of the Ferrum nation and antagonists…

Nauna:

 

Nauna given form by Burari 

Nauna is Ren’s complete opposite: unlike Ren’s little fanboy motivation taken too far, she has been trained since birth by the Ferrum nation for this purpose: to compete for the wish of the great Daiphel and wish for her nation to grow strong enough to crush its neighbours.

Unlike Ren, Nauna was never raised for any other reason and her training was her sole focus in life and the only way she could hope to earn her parent’s affections. Also unlike Ren, she hates this tournament with all her heart and wishes to end this in the vain hope that turning her country into an expansionist giant will somehow earn her their love.

Her spirit companion is…

Ogun:

 

The Trickster Ogun is shaped by KlakKlak 

Ogun is a rakshasha-born, a spirit that was born of the union of two greater spirits and had her entire existence planned out for her. She was also one of Quillo’s bitterest enemies in the spirit world.

Ogun was bound by Nauna’s masters to train with her for the tournament for years and has grown tired of the material world. She will fight dirty so she can both get rid of her cruel master and get back home.

She will also go to lengths so she can pound that uppity little upstart Quillo into a fine thin paste.

Due to the article's absurd size, I'm breaking it down. Awesome ideas continued in part 2!

Voltech is the electronic projection of the man called Rhamy Payne, who was used in a secret government experiment concerning digital immortality in the 90's. Having evolved past his flesh-form, he has decided to keep a blog and use his digital superiority to take games and movies apart and post his opinions on the internet. You can find his greater self/dream projection blog at: