Part IV – Starting a game session - RPGs inner workings.

‘Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.’
- Shakespeare – “Julius Caesar”

 
A group of people, usually called a ‘troupe,’ gathers around a table, each representing a different character – except for one – that will take the most important part of all – usually known as the Gamemaster.

1 - Elements required for RPG playing.

All these elements are essential for a RPG game session. They range from the people involved in the role-playing, to items without which would be impossible to play. Only the essential elements will be referred here, although there are many others that can be used during a RPG session. They don’t affect the game directly, as they only contribute to enhance the mood, like background music, or props to make things more realistic, such as a model fingerprint-filled handgun.

a) HUMAN FACTORS

 
- The Gamemaster - the Gamemaster (also known as Storyteller or Dungeon Master) is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most powerful person of the game. It is him/her that builds the scenario on which the players’ characters will have their adventures, and s/he has also to lead the characters throughout the story, s/he created. The Gamemaster is similar to the banker in “Monopoly”, only with even more responsibility – s/he is also the referee in the game, his/her word is final. The Gamemaster is like God in the universe of that game s/he is leading – she has in his/her hands the final fate of all the characters. It is also him/her who decides what events occur, and when they occur. In some occasions, the Gamemaster will even decide if players fail or succeed in an action – although such decisions are usually left to the element of luck.

 
- The Players – of course, it would be impossible to have a game without players. The same happens with RPG games: here, players create characters that they will interpreter in the story created by the Gamemaster. They determine whether the characters stay or flee, talk or charge, turn left or right. The players have an important role in the game – they can even decide the outcome of the story – for, although the Gamemaster creates the story and its background, s/he cannot decide the outcome of every events, s/he can only guess the probable reaction of the players, and develop the story accordingly. Gamemasters are often forced to improvise when players take unexpected actions, for which the Gamemaster was not ready. For instances, let us consider this possible situation:

The characters have just left an abandoned city, where the treasure that they are looking for is. The Gamemaster (ironically) has given them clues showing that the treasure is there, but is expecting them to overlook the obvious and to follow the other clues – one telling them to go to a temple to the East, and the other telling then to go West.

No matter what their choice is, after facing a few enemies, they will discover that the treasure was actually in the abandoned city and will return there. But, to make things a little harder, by the time they arrive at the city, the king’s army (which is pursuing the characters) will be waiting for  them.

A Gamemaster knows that an entire army cannot simply materialise out of nowhere – factors such as distance and velocity count, and a good Gamemaster has to take them into account. Therefore, the false clues will draw the characters away, buying the king’s army enough time to arrive at the abandoned city in time to confront the characters. The Gamemaster is only expecting the players to decide whether the characters go West or East.

If they go West, they will cross paths with a bunch of thieves. After the characters defeat them, the thieves will admit that they were going to the abandoned city because the treasure is there. If the players decide that the characters should go East, they will find a priest possessed by an evil demon. After destroying the demon, the priest will thank them for releasing him, and will inform them about the whereabouts of the treasure. The characters will return to the city and face the army, no matter what choice they make. At least, that is what the Gamemaster is expecting.

But it is always possible that one of the players realises what the clues actually mean, and the characters decide to return to the city at once. The Gamemaster knows that the king’s army will not arrive in time, so s/he will have to improvise something to keep the characters occupied until the army gets there, like a few (weaker) enemies for them to battle with.

 
The players have total control over their characters’ feelings, thoughts and reactions, and no Gamemaster has the right to take away that control, unless it is a lousy Gamemaster. In the situation mentioned above, the correct reaction was to improvise something to delay the characters, but it would be possible for the Gamemaster to claim “no, you cannot return to the city, you either go East or West”. However, players resent having the control over their characters being taken away, and would probably start suspecting  that there was something nasty awaiting them, either if they go East or West. Paranoid players are dangerous, since they tend to hesitate too much and often avoid doing things which are crucial to the development of the story.

Basically, the players are the actors in a play sketched by the Gamemaster, and it is them who will flesh out the details of the story.

b) STATIC ELEMENTS

- The Books – books are an essential part of RPGs, specially concerning the creation of the story that will be role-played, since they describe the universe where the story will occur. It would be nearly impossible to role-play an “Vampire: the Masquerade” session, if one just had an “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” book.

There are many types of books, and each has its own part.:

* the more important books are the called ‘core books’. They contain general information about the most important aspects of the universe where the story will occur, as well as the rules for combat, construction of characters, and so on. These books alone contain enough information to create an endless amount of stories to be role-played.

* the called ‘supplements’ add extra information to the one given in the core books. Supplements can range from information for Gamemasters only, about enemies, cities, etc., to special information for the players, to help them to better understand the workings of certain aspects of the determined types of characters, like magic compendiums, clan books, etc. For more advanced players, supplements allow to introduce something new to the game, elements that usually are not mentioned in the core book or which the rules do not contemplate, like different eras, clans or creatures that are considered too powerful to be played by normal players, and that are usually used as opponents and enemies of the characters.

- The Character Sheets – character sheets contain the character ‘stats’, i.e. what the characters can or cannot do, how well (or badly) they do it, and often other information, such as their physical appearance and even their personality. In the character sheets, elements such as health, humanity and sanity ratings are also included, depending on the RPG. Character sheets usually vary from RPG to RPG, although, for example, “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” and “Ravenloft” have the same rules and character sheets, in spite of their universes being different.

The character sheet also determines how the character will be created. In some games, like “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”, luck is part of the construction of the character – the player decides which type of creature the character will be, then will roll dice, and the results will decide the rating of each trait. In other games, such as “Vampire: the Masquerade”, the player has already a set amount of points and will distribute them as sees fit: the character can be stronger or more intelligent, can be a genial hacker, but with little ability to do anything else, or a regular person who knows a little of everything.

- The Dice – when we were children playing “Cops and Robbers”, the ‘I shot you!’ ‘Did not!’ ‘Did too!’-problem arouse. This also happens in RPGs – there are certain situations that must be solved, whose outcome is necessary for the story to proceed. How is it possible to know when the characters fail and action or not? In some cases, given the difficulty of the action, the Gamemaster can decide the outcome, like for instance, that there is no problem for a character to get dressed in the morning, or that it is impossible for a normal human character to jump 10 meters up into the air. However, not all decisions can be made thus. Let us think on the following situation:

The characters are running away from the king’s men. Suddenly, they find themselves in a dead end, with a 3 meter wall in front of them.

One of the characters is not all that good in athletics, so the likely result of his attempt to climb the wall is that he will fail and fall into the hands of the king’s men. But one never knows – there is also the possibility that the character will get lucky and manage to climb the wall – the so called ‘dumb luck’. How can we know when it happens? That is when the element of ‘luck’ is used: by rolling dice, there is always a fair chance of succeeding in an action… or failing. Of course, the higher the ratings one has in a determined trait, the better chances one has of succeeding in an action related to that trait. Nonetheless, no matter how good the character is, there is always the possibility of failure – nobody is 100% perfect. The dice also determine how well or badly the character did in an action – it can be a complete success or a total failure, where the action has real nasty repercussions – the called ‘botch’: for instances, a character fails a shot and instead of shooting the enemy, shots a friend.

2 - Preliminary work

a) CREATING A STORY – only the Gamemaster is involved in the process of story creation. After it has been decided which RPG game will be used, the Gamemaster will sketch a story, that will be fleshed out later by the players decisions. The Gamemaster has to leave a lot of manoeuvre room to the players, so that they fully enjoy their role-playing, by giving them the possibility of letting their characters do what they want. Of course, there are some events that the characters will not be able of escaping, events that lead to the development of the story, and the Gamemaster is should also always keep something up his/her sleeve, in case s/he has to get the players back in line, without taking away their control over their own characters. In this stage of creation, things like enemies and eventual allies, who will be role-played by the Gamemaster, are also created.

Description is also an important part of role-playing – it helps setting the mood, and, in the more crucial moments of the story, the Gamemaster should have already a ready description of what the characters are facing, whether it is an enemy, a treasure or a monster, so the players can feel the full impact and the true importance of what (or who) they are facing.

b) CREATING A CHARACTER – this is a joint effort of both the player and the Gamemaster. Usually, the player is free to decide how the character will turn out in the end, but in some cases, the Gamemaster can add some restrictions to the process of character creation, like, for instance, lot allowing the character to be part of determined races and/or clans. In most of the cases, however, the player is utterly free to decide how the character will be.
 

Example of a character creation process:

Ana plans to participate in Sónia’s new “Vampire: the Masquerade” chronicle. Sónia simply informs her that the story will centre around a mysterious vampire. Since she adds no further information, Ana will have a lot of manoeuvre room when creating her character. Firstly, she will gather some ideas, then start the process of turning those ideas into a full-fledged character.

Step One - Concept

Ana’s first responsibility is to come up with a concept for her character. She is feeling like playing someone who is carefree and good-humoured, but also extremely straightforward, someone who does not give a damn about the political games of vampiric society, so, she decides to role-play a female vampire, whose lifestyle did not change much after being turned into an undead. The obvious clan choice would be the Brujah clan, the violent, in-your-face vampires. But to add a twist, Ana chooses the Gangrel clan, the nomads, nature-lovers, and independent vampires. However, she soon decides that the character will not be an average Gangrel – the character does not really care about nature, and has a city life, opposing to most Gangrel vampires.

Recently, Ana has been reading a book about the adventures of two female bounty-hunters from Chicago, and one of them suits the character perfectly – so, Ana already has a name for her character – May Hopkins, also known as Minnie-May.

She decides to adapt the book character to her own character: so she considers Minnie-May’s Nature and Demeanor. She decides that Minnie-May is someone who enjoys all the pleasures of life, so her Nature will be Bon Vivant. At the same time, those who know Minnie-May see her as someone who loves danger in every form – that’s her Demeanor – the face she shows to the world. Thrill-Seeker is the perfect choice. And since Ana has definitively adopted the Minnie-May from the book to be her character, the character’s concept is already chosen: Bounty Hunter.

Step Two – Attributes

 
At this stage, Ana has to choose what Attributes (physical, social or mental) are more important. Since Minnie is a Bounty Hunter, Physical should come first – she will have to face thugs and all that. So, this is her Primary Attribute. She gets 7 points to distribute as she see fit. All attributes start automatically with one dot, so Minnie will have a total of 12 dots in her physical attributes. Minnie is still young so she’s not that strong – Ana only spends one dot in Strength, increasing to two – Minnie has average raw strength. However, Ana boosts Minnie Dexterity to the limit – Minnie is agile and nimble. Finally, the last dots go to Stamina, increasing it to three dots – it is important that Minnie is resistant to pain and damage. Her Secondary Attribute is Mental – Minnie does have to be clever and intelligent to solve the complicated situations a bounty hunter has to face. She has 5 dots for this attribute – two go to Wits and other two to Intelligence (in the book, Minnie-May is an explosive specialist, so Ana has already decided her character will be like just the book – and it does take some brains to handle explosives). The last dot goes to Perception – how Minnie will perceive the world around her – it is just average, but it suits Ana just fine. By default, Social Attributes are Tertiary. Ana has 3 dots. Minnie-May is a cute girl, so Ana spends two dots in her appearance, increasing it to three – more than average. With a bit of luck, Minnie’s looks will help her distract the thugs while she kicks their sorry behinds. The final dot goes to Charisma (Minnie is a nice girl), and although her Manipulation is unusually low, Ana doesn’t find it very important, since her character does not care about politics and sweet-talking at all – it suits Minnie’s personality perfectly.

Step three: Abilities

 
Now, Ana has arrived to the point where all the important choices are made, where her character starts emerging from the crowd. Like in the Attributes, Abilities can be Primary, Secondary or Tertiary. Ana ticks the abilities she considers more important and in the end she realises that Minnie’s Talents will be the Primary Abilities. She has 13 dots to distribute. She places 3 dots in Alertness, since she feels that a Bounty Hunter should never be caught unaware, and that alertness will also prevent her from falling into traps or ambushes. Then, two dots go to Athletics, as Minnie is in shape. Since, in combat, both Dexterity and Brawl count, and as Minnie has an incredible Dexterity (5 dots!), Ana thinks that one dot in Brawl is enough. However, Dodge gets three dots, for Minnie is small and agile. Ana has four dots left, so she puts two in Streetwise (it will help Minnie finding her prey) and Subterfuge (it represents the ability of deceiving, and it is useful to compensate Minnie’s low Manipulation abilities). The next ability are Skills, and she has 9 dots to spend: two dots go to Drive, one to Etiquette (Ana suspects that the mysterious vampire is an Elder, so a little etiquette will save her a lot of headaches), two dots go to Firearms (a girl has to know how to defend herself, and a gun is easier to find than explosives), likewise, she puts one dot in Melee (stabbing weapons are not as effective as guns, but sometimes they come in handy). Security is important as it is what allows Minnie to disable alarms, pick up locks, open vaults, and all those things are useful for a Bounty Hunter. She puts the final dot in Stealth, the ability of going undetected – also very useful for a Bounty Hunter. Finally, the Knowledge ability, it has 5 dots. Immediately, Ana spends four dots in Science and adds the speciality – ‘Explosives’ – after all, Minnie is an explosive specialist – she has to know what she is doing. The last dot goes to Investigation – Minnie needs to know how to track down her prey.

Step four - Advantages

 
Now, these are the traits that will make a vampire out of Minnie.

Disciplines , the mystical powers vampires possess, come first. As a Gangrel, Minnie can choose between Animalism (the ability of controlling and communicating with animals), Protean (shape-shifting abilities) and Fortitude (super-human resistance). Usually, Ana would only have three dots to put in disciplines, but Sónia tells her that she can have four dots. Ana then puts all dots in Protean – Minnie can now see in the dark, grow claws, meld into the earth and transform into animals.

There are five dots to spend with Backgrounds. Ana chooses only two of the many available possibilities: three dots into Resources, which make Minnie quite wealthy – bounty hunting does give a lot of money -, and two into Generation – by default, vampires start at 13th generation, but the lower their generation is, the stronger they are. Minnie is now an 11th Generation vampire.

There are seven dots to distribute among Virtues, plus one automatic dot on each Virtue. In spite of being a vampire, Minnie is still kind and human, so she gets two dots in Conscience, raising it to three – more than average. Ana does not want her having fits of uncontrolled rage, to which vampires are prone to, so Minnie gets two dots in Self-Control, increasing the rating to three. The last three dots go to Courage – Minnie is a brave girl – she has to, to be a Bounty Hunter.

Step Five – Finishing touches

Now, Ana has the chance to round out her character and add it a spark of life.

Firstly, she calculates Minnie’s Humanity rating, by adding Conscience and Self-Control. The result is six dots – Ana finds it a little too low for someone as Minnie, so she makes a mental note to increase it later. Willpower equals the Courage’s rating, four. Ana makes another mental not to increase it – it is also too low. If Minnie is going to face Elder vampires, she will need to be strong-willed, not to succumb to mind-controlling.

Next, Ana will spend the freebie points that are given to increase her attributes, abilities and advantages as she sees fit. She spends a dot in Knowledge, Linguistics (the story is happening in Portugal and Minnie is American – she has to know how to speak Portuguese, otherwise she will have a lot of communication problems, which will make the story too difficult). Then she decides to put another dot in disciplines, this time, Fortitude – Ana wants her to be able of resisting to damage. Instantly, Minnie has an extra health level, which Ana indicates, by adding another square to the initial seven. In order to make her even more unique, Ana adds two dots to Minnie’s Generation, four dots in the total, making her a 9th-Generation vampire – as a result, Minnie’s Blood Pool has four extra levels, added to the initial ten, and Ana writes Minnie’s Generation in correct box. One dot is added to Minnie’s Courage – she is supposed to be real brave – that adds automatically one dot to her Willpower rating, which is now five. It is still too low, so three dots increase the rating to eight – which is now high enough. Another dot increases Minnie’s Humanity to seven – enough for what Ana has in mind. The final point goes to Skills, Survival.

Now, the character is ready. Ana hands the character sheet to Sónia, the Gamemaster. After looking at it, Sónia decides that the character is okay, and even decides to give Minnie another bonus – 2 dots in Potence (supra-human strength), since it is a very physical character. And thus the character creation process ends.

3 - Let's play!

The troupe gathers around a table: the Gamemaster with his/her story, the players with their character sheets, plus books, dices and a healthy amount of junk food – now they are ready to start playing.

a) TIME – over the course of the game, time is presumed to pass normally – Tuesday follows Monday, February follows January, and so on. However, there is no need to role-play every second that passes. There is some difference between the speed of the game time and the real time. For instance, a four-hour session can contain events that occurred during a year in the game setting. During special actions, such as combat, time can be ‘stretched’, in order to make things less complicated.

In order to maintain a sense of passage of time, but without making the game tedious, there are six basic units to describe game time:

 - Turn – the amount of time necessary to take a simple action, like throwing a punch or picking a book from a shelf, it can range anywhere from three seconds to three minutes.

 - Scene – like in plays and movies, a scene is a compact period of action that takes place in a single location. It can be a conversation in a park or the investigation of a murder scene.

- Chapter – an independent part of a story, usually played in a single game session. It consists of a number of scenes – essentially like a chapter in a novel or a play.

- Story – a full tale, complete with introduction, rising action and climax. Some stories can take several chapters to be completed while others may be finished in just one.

- Chronicle – a series of stories connected by the characters themselves and their own personal story, possibly even by a common theme or plot.

- Downtime – time that is spent through a description, instead of being role-played turn by turn and scene by scene. If the Gamemaster says “the characters wait in the dungeon for four hours before being taken to the King”, instead of actually letting the players role-play their wait, the Gamemaster is considered to be invoking downtime. Downtime allows trivial or tedious passages to go by quickly.

 
b) ACTIONS – Over the course of the game, a character will do many things. Some of them will be considered ‘actions’, while others will not. Speeches and conversation are not considered actions – but just everything else, from throwing a book at the guard’s head to trying to decipher a code, is probably an action.

 
It is easy to attempt an action – the player simply has to tell the Gamemaster what the character is trying to do and how the player is planning to do it. Loading a gun or crossing the street , for example, are easy enough to be considered automatically successful. On the other hand, if the character is trying to reload while he’s hanging from a fire escape by one hand, or trying to cross a highway full of speeding autos, there is the chance the character will fail the action. When there is the possibility of failure, the player has to roll dices. The Gamemaster will decide which is the minimal dice result that the player will have to achieve, so the action can be considered successful. For instances, loading a gun poses no difficulty at all. However, loading it while hanging from a fire escape poses a difficulty. Trying to reload the gun while hanging from the fire escape, while being attacked by enemies is even more difficult.

C) ROLE-PLAYING! - The following excerpt will be a scene from a “Vampire: the Masquerade” chronicle, with Sónia as the Gamemaster, and with Ana as the player of the character “Minnie”-May Hopkins, a 9th-Generation Gangrel vampire.

 Sónia tells Ana that, when Minnie-May returns to her apartment, she finds it in a complete mess, and in the centre of the living-room is her housemaid’s dead body, lying in a pool of blood. Minnie also realises that her little brother is missing. Since Ana told Sónia that Minnie’s little brother means the world to her, Sónia asks Ana to roll dice for Minnie’s Self-Control, to see if Minnie-May can control herself and not go berserk out of pure rage. Ana does as she is told and has one success – Minnie is controls herself – barely.

Ana decides that Minnie will investigate around the house, so she informs Sónia that Minnie will start that action – Sónia tells Ana that before that she has to roll for Alertness, without telling the player why. Ana gets three successes – more than enough. Sónia informs her that Minnie is hearing sirens outside her house. Ana realises that someone is trying to frame Minnie-May – she remembers the housemaid’s body in the living-room - so she tells Sónia that the character will run to the back of the house, and look out a window to see if there is someone in the alley behind the building. Sónia tells her no, so, Ana says that Minnie will jump out the window. The Gamemaster is surprised and remembers her that Minnie lives in the 3rd floor. Ana insists, and Minnie crashes painfully three floors below. She is severely wounded, but since her generation is unusually low, she can heal herself in just a few turns – no more than five minutes in game time - and she escapes without being caught.

As a vampire, Minnie-May has supra-developed senses, so Ana has her tracking her brother by scent. Since it is a Summer night, the trail is easy to follow, though the kidnappers escaped by car, so Sónia adds no special difficulty to the tracking action. The trail leads Minnie-May to a warehouse in Matosinhos.

Ana is prudent, so she has Minnie investigating the warehouse before barging in. When she looks through the window, Sónia informs Ana that Minnie sees her little brother being tied down to a chair. Ana hesitates, since there are several armed men inside the warehouse – it is a trap, without a shadow of a doubt. She wonders whether she should have Minnie backing out and go call the police. But this does not suit Sónia’s plans at all – she wants Minnie to engage in combat with the thugs. So she tells Ana that the boy starts crying for his sister, and one of the men hits him. This calls for a Self-Control roll with a very high difficulty and – too bad – Ana fails the roll miserably. Minnie-May enters a state of uncontrollable rage – and storms into the warehouse.

Ana tells Sónia that Minnie will activate level two of the Protean discipline, which enables her to grow the “Wolf Claws”, two-inches long claws, and Minnie charges. There are four men in the warehouse, and since they are caught unaware, Sónia informs Ana that Minnie-May killed the first one instantly. However, the second man is running away, so Ana will have to roll Minnie’s Dexterity + Brawl to hit him. Ana scores four successes. Sónia, taking the role of the man, rolls his Dexterity + Dodge – the man is trying to get away unarmed. He gets two successes – Ana had more successes, so the man falls to the floor with his throat cut open by Minnie’s claws. But the remaining two men have already recovered from the initial shock and are ready to strike back, so they are threatening Minnie-May with shotguns: Sónia rolls the first man’s Dexterity + Firearms and he gets three successes. Ana will have Minnie dodging, so she rolls her Dexterity + Dodge – one success only – the action was not successful – Minnie is hit. The damage caused by such a weapon would usually be enough to put down most vampires, but since Minnie has Fortitude, she is more resistant than most – Ana rolls Minnie’s Stamina and gets two successes – Minnie is standing. Barely, but standing nonetheless. Ana tells Sónia Minnie will attack the man at once, trying to take him down before he can shoot again. However, (without Ana noticing it) Sónia rolls Dexterity + Firearms for the second man, who Ana totally forgot. The man gets 2 successes, and Sónia informs Ana of what happened – Minnie gets hit from behind by another shotgun pellet, and this time it is too much even for her to stand. Minnie-May is down for the count – she is now lying unconscious on the floor.