Because the state of the world, and specifically my nation within it (for those just catching up, I use the actual definition of nation, not the radicalized "proposition nation" which attempts to turn the word nation on its head. There's a reason why the words nation and natal resemble each other so closely, after all.) I'm going even harder into hobbies, to distract myself from the discouraging reality that is current events. Of course, in good times, as opposed to looming, imminent catastrophic times, like we live in now, I'd do the same thing, because I wouldn't be worried about what current events foretell, so why focus on current events? Whatever. Either way, hobbies are a great way to at least maintain some sanity.
I've discovered the Dungeon Craft D&D channel on YouTube. The guy is a guy who likes plenty of modern iterations of the rules, including 5e, which I believe makes up the core of what he plays, but he's—like me, maybe—old fashioned if not necessarily old school. His playstyle borrows a lot from early "hardcore" gaming styles, Call of Cthulhu and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying. Maybe his rules don't exactly, but his playstyle certainly seems to. Now, there's a lot of ways in which he and I don't seem to be on the same page too; he seems really enamored of minis and terrain. While I like minis and terrain for their own sake, I actively hate them in RPGs, and think that they have no place in a game that I would want to play in. You wanna give me a miniatures skirmish wargame that's fun to play? OK, that's fine, but let's not integrate it or adapt it into use as the combat systm for my RPG. This is probably one of my very top objections to "old skool" type D&D, and is related to probably what are my other two top objections; 2) the abstraction of the entire game to a "dungeon" that is about pixel-bitching, puzzles/traps and combat, and 3) add-on rules that don't feel native to the system and don't work like the core mechanics. In not any particular order for those three things.
Anyway, with that context out of the way, let's talk about two of his videos in particular that I want to expand on just a bit more than the comments under the YouTube video would really allow. These aren't necessarily newer videos, but they're ones that hold a particularly keen interest to me at the moment. First, music and ambiance at the table:
I actually kind of like the understated "soundscapes" of people like Michael Ghelfi. It's a perfect option for that type of approach. I've had, for a number of years, some other stuff that I got as a free giveaway from DriveThruRPG years ago, like Sonic Legends and stuff. While you can buy Ghelfi's stuff at bandcamp, and it's pretty cheap, you can also just play it off of YouTube for free. It looks like at least some of his stuff is on Spotify too. And it is a nice tool, which can increase some immersion in the game. HOWEVER... in terms of emotional resonance, it's NOTHING like actual music.
I think the Professor DM's dissonance with exciting music vs. the banal reality of players sitting around asking where their d20 went and stuff like that is something that few players will be bothered by. I also think the idea of having to make sure that the exact mood and emotional beats of the music need to match exactly what's happening in game is a red herring. Music at the gaming table is a kind of impressionistic thing, like the art style in painting. You don't look at individual brush strokes for beauty, you look at the overall impression from a higher level; further away from the painting, where the individual brush strokes disappear into the overall impression.
In this sense, I've never had a problem with using movie soundtracks at the game, and it's still my preferred system for creating ambiance. You play something that's not too iconic—if you're playing the Star Wars soundtrack, for instance, everybody knows exactly what's happening in the movies at every moment in the music, which is distracting to say the least. He recommends Beowulf, which I saw once years ago, but I certainly wouldn't recognize the soundtrack. My personal favorite is the Danny Elfman 2010 Wolfman soundtrack, but you mix that up with other darker, creepier tracks from a variety of other movies that don't have quite as much of an iconic sound that everyone will recognize and hum along to.
The key is to make sure that it's in the background. Keep the volume low and understated. If you have to compete with your own music to be listened to, then you're obviously doing it wrong. Ideally, if you have apps on your phone or elsewhere that allow it, you could play some Michael Ghelfi type stuff and some music simultaneously, so that the sound effects and the music both can be heard at the same time (you'll have to be careful which Michael Ghelfi-type track you pick so you don't have harmonically dissonant stuff that sounds like two songs playing at the same time. It needs to sound like music and sound, not music and competing music.) But honestly, I think that that's overthinking it, and I'm not sure that I think that it necessarily an improvement. In general, I think that music is something that's easy to overthink. You're not scoring a movie, so don't think that you need to be so detailed as to modify the mood for different scenes, necessarily. Just get a mood that fits the campaign overall, and use it quietly in the background.
That's how I do it and how I prefer it, anyway.
The next one that I thought was interesting: TPKs.
TPKs are an interesting concept. In general, I think the problem with these types of discussions is that people just talk about what they like most of the time, and then attempt to apply that indiscriminantly to every situation and every group. In worst case scenarios, the discussions are little more than people looking for justification and validation for what they want to do but which their group obviously doesn't, or they're looking to evangelize what they think of as some kind of One True Way to everyone else, who must be a heretic of some kind if they disagree. Certainly not saying that Professor DM is doing either, because clearly he is not; he's expressing his preference and talking about why that is his preference.
Ultimately, the question shouldn't be "what should I do about the possibility of TPKs?" which is an honest question but a misguided one. The question should be "What are various ways of handling the possibility of a TPK, what are the pros and cons of each, and what are some scenarios where one approach would be more appropriate than another approach?" Because the reality is that it depends greatly on 1) the specific scenario that it happens in, 2) the type of game that you're running, and most importantly, 3) who you're playing with. Let me address each in turn.
First, what is the specific scenario? PDM above mentions the chance of the PCs being "killed" but then waking up realizing that rather than being left for dead, they were captured. They might be tortured, have their stuff taken or even destroyed, and left to try and escape in a desperate situation. This is, obviously, not a TPK. So clearly, there are situations where he thinks that a better alternative to a TPK is to move the PCs from one where they are in control to one where they need to desperately struggle to regain control. In general, I'd suggest that this is often a better alternative to a TPK no matter what kind of game that you're playing, but you need to be skilled at reading the table and the mood at the time to decide how to react. This is one of the under-rated and often unstated skills that is crucial to being a good GM; knowing your group and knowing how to read the table at any given moment and see how they're reacting to what's happening.
Second; there's certainly a very different approach if your game is one that focuses on drama, character development, and relationships much more than one that's "grimdark" and features a cast of disposible characters dying frequently in a dark hole in the ground full of monsters. Even within the same genre, you've got the approach of Vampire: the Masquerade vs the approach of Call of Cthulhu. For one, TPKs should be almost inconceivable, and even character death should be exceptionally rare, while in the other, TPKs could be (relatively) common and player death could be frequent. And I'm not making a value judgement about one vs the other, although obviously I have my tastes and greatly prefer one to the other. However, it's obvious that the type of game has a major impact on what approach to take with regards to the possibility of a TPK.
Thirdly, and lastly, you have to know your players. Most players; most mature players, anyway—can handle player death or even TPK without it being a terrible experience, even if maybe they don't like it. There are some players who will find that experience so frustrating or disappointing that they literally will lose interest in the game, though. I think it behooves a GM to know his players well enough to know how they're likely to react to stuff like that. And I think it's also a thing that people, even people who otherwise get along and like each other, may have to decide that what they want from the hobby is so disparate that they're better off not playing in the same game. When we were kids, me and my brothers all decided that we shouldn't play Risk together after a while, because it was always too frustrating for us, and we never had a good experience. It's too bad; we all liked the game, and obviously we liked each other and did all kinds of other games together, but we couldn't do that one. It just didn't work. Sometimes, that's the decision that RPGers need to make too; either not to play with certain players who just want something too different from the experience, or not to play certain games or types of games together, because they would reliably lead to conflict, frustration and a bad experience.
A final reaction; I like this system to replace initiative. My games have initiative, because it didn't occur to me not to; I've played with initiative in pretty much every game I've ever played. But I don't necessarily love it, and I think that this system sounds both faster, easier and more fun.
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