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This article is a preview of the show topic for Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 09 Episode 20. The show will be recorded on Friday, May 24th at 8:30pm Pacific Daylight Time. You can listen live at happyjacks.org/live.

As is often said, the plans you come up with as a GM are often thrown out the window once the players sit down to play. It is especially dangerous to give the PCs access to your main villain — even if they don’t yet know he’s the villain.

It’s even more challenging when the villain is a turncoat: a trusted ally of the party who has secretly been working against them the whole time.

Read any Dan Brown book (yes, literally, any one of the — they all have the same story) and you’ll know what I mean. In literature, it’s easy to pull this off: just have the protagonists act oblivious as you drop clues for the reader.

But in an RPG, your protagonists and your readers are the same people. If they catch on too early, your meticulously plotted plan (and your bad guy) might find themselves at an untimely end — and your game session cut short by hours.

Here are a few techniques I’ve had to come up with to successfully pull off a turncoat:

Play it Smart. The players are watching you. Even if they’re not the suspicious sort, once they come to the realization that the person or persons working against them knows too much about them, they’ll start casting about for suspicious activities. They’ll look for the mole, the spy, the saboteur. Make sure your turncoat has an alibi. Put some thought into who else he could deflect blame upon.

Don’t Let the Party Meet the Turncoat. It will never be as personal to the players if they’re deceived by someone they’ve never physically met, but it is a safe way to make sure your NPC gets a chance to betray the party. A patron who only communicates through phone or view screen. A magical sage who speaks with the party through some sort of spell or magic item. A lordly patron who communicates by messenger.

Have More Than One Potential Turncoat. Not the greatest solution, because it almost seems like cheating, but it can work. If the party has a group of NPCs that are close, set things up so that any one of the could be the turncoat. If the party suspect one and offs him, you have more. The important thing to remember is that you need to be consistent. Make sure none of them has done anything that the turncoat wouldn’t do. Make sure they all have times when they are unaccounted-for. Keep the party guessing.

The most important part of a story involving a turncoat is the dramatic betrayal of the trusted ally. For this to work, the party must truly trust the turncoat. It’s best if you can orchestrate things so that the party also likes the NPC. Then when his plan is finally sprung, you’ll have an opportunity for some intense role-playing.

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It’s a common lament:

Once the minis come out, the role-playing stops

And it’s very often true. Many games — GURPS, HERO, Savage Worlds, DnD4e — start life as any other role-playing game, but once combat starts, in-game time slows to a crawl and what we do looks more like a tactical board game.

Is there a way to keep on role-playing during combat?

I think there is, but often it’s an uphill battle, and success needs to be measured in small portions.

Don’t think combat role-playing is going to be at the level of a social encounter. I think you need to set your expectations for role-playing during combat low. Don’t think that you’re going to have an intense and personal role-playing scene in the heat of battle.

Encourage dialogue. I’m not talking about metagaming dialogue, like “hey, Bob, you keep attacking and I’ll go around and flank him.” No. I mean smack talking between combatants or maybe witty repartee. If you, as the GM, do this, it will encourage your players to do the same.

Allow for characterization and tactics to conflict. Don’t forget that your PCs’ disadvantages, drawbacks and hindrances can be applicable during combat as well. If someone has “always protects innocents,” have a bad guy way in the back grab up an innocent bystander and put a sword to their throat. Maybe going after that guy at that moment wouldn’t be the best tactical choice, but a good role-player, depending on the disad, might throw tactics out the window to rescue the bystander. Perhaps you’ve got an overconfident character, with a bad temper. Have the BBG trash talk him from the rear, trying to coax the PC to charge him, thereby cutting him off from his companions.

If your game has an RP reward mechanic, use it to encourage combat RP. If the bad-tempered character does take the BBG’s bate, throw him a benny for playing to his characterization rather than sound tactics. It *is* a disadvantage, right? Bennys and like are a great way to encourage bad, but otherwise interesting choices.

Keep combat quick. At some point, if combat drags on long enough, even the best role-player will descend to the “I swing. (roll) I hit” level of role-playing. You can shorten just about any combat system by having the bad guys give up or run away. If victory looks inevitable to you, it probably looks inevitable to your bad guys too.

The Immaterial Plane is running a sort of informal Savage World Plot Point Campaign using Rory’s Story Cubes. If you’re not yet acquainted with Rory’s Story Cubes, they’re a collection of nine six-sided dice with various pictures on them. You can play several different simple story based games with them. My son and I roll the dice, and take turns grabbing one die and adding a bit to the story. This is a great idea for a contest, and some interesting campaign ideas might come out of it.

Glimm’s Workshop has an article on creating stories with unstoppable foes. Creating a story line that goes from fighting an invulnerable foe, to discovering/defeating his invulnerability to finally meeting him in combat again. It’s a fine example of turning combat into a story — as long as one is careful in designing the villain.

Bat in the Attic has a post that expands on Matt Finch’s Old School Gaming truism of Rulings not Rules which you’ll find in his OSR primer. The Bat talks about using existing rules in a rules-light game (Swords and Wizardry in this case) to help make rulings that will have consistency.

As some of you may be aware, our feed changed. We had to. We should have done it two years ago, but lacked the foresight. So we’ve bitten the bullet and done it now.

As a result, listenership (according to our download numbers) has taken a serious hit — even though we showed up in the iTunes Games & Hobbies/Other Games as #1 and the big Games & Hobbies directory at #10. Go figure. Perhaps that’s people unsubscribing and resubscribing.

Since this change has temporarily (we hope) separated us from many of our listeners, we’re asking everyone to help us out. Please spread the word. Link to this post. Tweet it. Blog about it. Share it on Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, etc.

If you are a podcaster in the table-top RPG niche, we’re asking a special favor. Can you mention this on your show? Listener surveys show that if someone listens to one RPG podcast, they probably listen to several. If you can mention our feed change, we will gladly reciprocate by playing your promo at the top of one of our episodes.

Here’s what we know will help people get back in contact:

1. Within iTunes, unsubscribing and resubscribing to the show seems to do the trick.
2. In other podcatchers manually change the feed to happyjacks.org/feed/podcast/
   (the actual play is happyjacks.org/feed/actualplay/)
3. For the future, please consider signing up for our email newsletter. There is a form for your email address in the sidebar to the right (the same form is on Happyjacks.org and Douicheydm.com). That way, if anything like this ever happens again (though it shouldn’t!) we’ll be able to contact you and update you.

Thanks for your time and support.

In our last episode of Happy Jacks RPG Podcast, we discussed player character backgrounds, what we want from them, what we use them for, etc.

I put out the question: What do you as a GM want from a PC background — what question do you want answered.

The most common response was, “why are you an adventurer?”

And it makes sense. We as GMs are trying to understand the PCs and what makes them tick. More importantly, if we know why the PCs quit their 9-to-5s, left their families and road off into the sunset, we also know what the players are expecting or hoping for from the game.

I started thinking of some reasons why someone would drop everything and go looking for adventurer. Some are common, some aren’t.

1. Revenge. He says with a gravelly voice, “I have no family.” So now our hero is off to kill the man who killed his ma. This is really common, but it doesn’t have to be so final as murder. Maybe someone did something unspeakable to your mother, but she’s still alive — mad perhaps, but she’s a constant reminder that someone’s in store for a comeuppance.
   
2. I ain’t got no where else to go. Probably the most common reason to really leave everything behind is because you don’t have anything to leave behind. Maybe you’re dirt poor. Maybe your middle-aged, don’t have a family and your parents finally kicked it (rather than get murdered).
3. Beats working. Maybe you’re just the sort of person who either doesn’t want to hold or can’t hold an ordinary job.
4. I’ve made some people angry. Sometimes, you drop everything and leave because that’s the safest thing for you (and possibly your loved ones and friends).
5. We’re on a mission from God. Perhaps God (or a god, or a god’s prophet) has spoken to you and told you to go out and do good (or bad) works.
6. It’s the easiest way I know of to make a lot of money. Perhaps the PC turned to adventuring for the same reason others turn to crime. It sometimes seems easier and less boring than working.

I recently ranted on and on about a very late projects on Kickstarter on the most recent episode of Happy Jacks RPG Podcast. The rant began when I heard a recent episode of the Bear Swarm podcast, where a listener mentioned in an email a very late Kickstarter project.

During that episode, several people listening on our live stream began listing in our chat many of the chronically late Kickstarter projects they’ve contributed to.

And there seems to be some misconceptions regarding Kickstarter and a backer’s expectations.

1. Yes, there is risk. You are essentially funding an unfinished project with pre-sales. Because the project isn’t finished, there’s a risk it will never get finished at all. This is a real risk, and we should all be aware of it before contributing. Meliorate that risk. Look at the profile of the Kickstarter creator. Read the comments for other projects they’ve created. Are people complaining about previous projects. 
2. Even with the Risk, This is a Contract.  Kickstarter’s terms of use state this explicitly. If you’ve backed a project you are well within your rights to demand and expect whatever rewards were listed for your funding level.
3. You are NOT an “investor.” Investors contribute money in exchange for part ownership in the project or company. That is their compensation for taking a risk by contributing. YOUR compensation for contributing is your backer rewards.

But with the many chronically late projects, we bear some of the blame. Kickstarter project creators — at least many of them — are trading on their good names to fund their projects. We see familiar names: names we’ve seen in the credits of books on our shelves, on the covers and on the boxes.

Many respected names in the industry turn to Kickstarter as a way to fund and gauge interest in a project. We see their names, we know their work and track record and we feel comfortable contributing.

But there’s another mechanism necessary to make this work: comments. Contributor feedback. Me must make sure our voices are heard when things go right and when things go wrong. We have the ability and responsibility when someone trades on their good name to get us to part with our money to reinforce their good reputation when we are satisfied with their conduct.

And when a creator engages in conduct that makes them undeserving of their good name, we have a right and responsibility as contributors to make our displeasure heard. To do otherwise is a disservice to future backers of these creators’ projects.

Of course, there exists a mechanism to protect those undeserving of a good name: fan boys. Express your displeasure on a popular, but very late, project, and they’ll come out of the woodwork. “Stop being negative.” “He’s doing his best.”

Don’t let these fan boys intimidate you into silence. Argue back with them. Explain that  you are a customer and have rights. It is not okay for someone to take your money and never deliver on their promise. That’s what crooks do.

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Scenes are the building blocks of an adventure. They are those moments when the player characters interact with the setting, be it NPCs, searching a site for clues, etc.

Organizing your adventure in scenes is, to my mind, the most flexible way to craft an adventure, but there are several questions the GM must ask himself in order to keep that flexibility and have a satisfying session.

What Is the Purpose of the Scene?

First and foremost, you need to know what your’e trying to accomplish with the scene. Does the scene exist to:

• Bring about combat or possibly bring it about?
• Provide the PCs with information?
• Allow the PCs to gather information?
• Give time to develop the PCs?
• Make time for PC-to-PC interaction?
• Introduce or develop an NPC?
• Introduce a MacGuffin?

There are countess other possible reasons, I just listed the more important ones and maybe the most common.

Who Is in this Scene?

Who are the NPCs that I intend to be present in this scene? Do I envision this as a scene with the entire party? Just one PC? Have I figured out a way to make it work either way?

You have to know who you intended cast is going to be in order to further develop the scene. This is not to say this WILL be your cast for the scene, but you have to start somewhere. Often the players will turn left rather than right. They’ll completely discount one possible course of action at pointless before they even explore the possibility.

In order to keep things moving forward, you need to be flexible, and this is the first place to prepare for those “wrong” turns.

In order to do so, you need to go back to the previous question: what’s the purpose of the scene? If you intended the  Old Widow Smith to present the party with the MacGuffin, could someone else do it, if for some reason, they choose not to see the Old Widow Smith? Who else could have it? Perhaps they could find it on a slain thief? Perhaps this would lead to a scene with the Old Widow Smith, where she tells them of the MacGuffin’s significance.

Keeping the cast of the scene flexible will help you keep the story moving when the unexpected happens.

Does the Scene Have a Particular Tone or Emotion?

This is often very reliant upon the cast of the scene, but not always; it can be reliant upon WHERE the scene occurs. Am I trying to convey tension, revulsion, dread, fear, panic, satisfaction, contentment, security?

Once I know what sort of emotional tone I’m looking for, I need to bring in elements to elicit that tone.

Perhaps if I’m looking to crank up tension in a potential combat scene, I’ll add a very long drop (place the scene on a rooftop or near a chasm). If I’m looking to create a sense of security, I might describe the castle walls, fortifications and platoons of guards watching every approach.

If I want to create a sense of contentment or satisfaction after a big fight, I might place the scene in a pub or tavern, where food, drink and revelry are plenty.

It’s important to note that if the players go in an unexpected direction, the who and where of the scene might change, and this well might change the emotional tone of the scene.

Having complete knowledge of your setting and your cast of NPCs will go a long way to informing you as to how to fill out scenes on the fly when the course of the story changes.

We have a tendency in this hobby to borrow a lot of terms from other creative endeavors. We borrow terms from creative writing, film, television, The problem is, sometimes we start equating our hobby with those other creative outlets from which we borrowed the terms, when ofttimes our hobby is very different.

RPGs are not Novels

I’ve talked a lot about GMs who mistake table-top RPGs for novel writing, with GMs constantly trying to manipulate the game to tell the story they’ve already decided upon. Some GMs will railroad the party toward the scene they seem hellbent on acting out. Other GMs will engages in the sort of passive railroading, where every action the players come up with leads toward the same destination.

I’ve often said, if you don’t like the players messing with your plans, pour yourself two fingers of Scotch, light up a cigar and start banging away on your typewriter, because you want to write a novel, not GM an RPG.

Storytelling, but Different

We all know that RPGs are a form of storytelling, but it’s very different than the sort of storyteller you’ll see at the public library or Renaissance faire. Those story tellers are almost always one-man (or woman) shows. There’s one story being told and one person telling it and determining how it goes.

Our hobby is entirely different. We engage (or should engage) in a collaborative effort to tell a story or sometimes many stories. Furthermore, in traditional RPGs, our roles are clearly defined as to which part of the story we each control and which we have little or no control over. The GM generally builds the world, the culture — the setting in general. He will create (often with input from the players) the would-be antagonists of the story.

The players create and control the protagonists and their actions. They choose their own destinies. They decided which direction to go and what to do when they get there.

This division of labor sets our brand of storytelling apart from all other forms of storytelling — the closest any of them comes is probably theater improv.

But We’re Not Theater Improv Either!

Theater improv, while the closest relative to RPGs, is still a distant relative. We bring into our collaborative storytelling elements that normally don’t exist in theater improv: game mechanics and setting assumptions.

Before our games begin, we agree on what game system we’re going to play, what the setting and genre are and what the flavor of the game might be. We constraint where our improvisation can go. We limit it, and we govern it with game mechanics.

And What Exactly is the GM?

I wince when I hear people equate GMs to movie directors, screenwriters, etc. We’re obviously not. We don’t possess nearly the power over the story or how it’s told that those in these professions do — nor should we. If you want to write a screenplay, see my advice for novel writing above.

Players are not actors to be directed by the GM. They don’t have (or shouldn’t have) a “script” they need to follow. The point of the hobby — the fun of the hobby — is to explore stories that are unexpected and new to the players and the GM.

I understand why we borrow our nomenclature from other creative endeavors. The RPG hobby is only 30 some years old, and many of these other disciplines have been around much longer. Why reinvent the wheel.

But while we use their terms, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of equating RPGs with these disciplines.

The game mechanics were fairly simple (for games from that era), and the eventual setting was rich in history and adventure possibilities. In fact, from the very beginning, Traveller contained everything necessary to build your own setting.

It had its drawback for me too. It constantly tested my math skills, causing me to regret sleeping through the section on vectors in math class. It had a less than elegant way of dealing with how various weapons and various armor types interacted — it was a table, and a fairly big one that wasn’t easy to memorize.

Enter Traveller 5. Unlike the three relatively thin digest-sized books that came with the original set, Traveller 5 is one honkin’ big core book. It is, if you need a frame of reference, approximately the thickness of Hero 6th Edition Book 1 and Savage World Deluxe Explorer’s Edition stacked atop each other.

But that’s okay. I don’t mind big core books, so I will make the effort to learn the game. That said, I have only read a small portion of the book thus far, so take this “review” with a grain of salt. I do have some observations already:

Organizationally Challenged

Whenever I start learning a new system, I start with character creation. Once I know what numbers go into a character, and what the ranges of numbers might be, I have a frame of reference as I read the combat mechanics, task resolution system, etc.

In the opening character generation chapter, however, I begin getting a fairly detailed explanation of the task resolution system BEFORE I know how to determine my stats. I don’t know if this will continue, but if it does, it makes looking up game mechanics difficult. “Where’s that rule again?”

No Beginners’ Rules or Optional Rules Designations

On my way to the character generation system, I passed what would probably be the most mind numbing complication I think I’ve ever seen in an RPG rule book: “The Personal Day.” That is, what your character’s individual biological day is like (with regards to your home planet’s day/night cycle, your sleep cycle, when you become fatigued, etc). This belongs in an optional rules section — not at the beginning of the book (again, organizationally challenged). I don’t know how integral the personal day mechanics are to the rest of the rules set, but my first inclination is to ignore it completely.

Personally, I think some modularity in the T5 rules was in order here. Perhaps a scaled back version of the game in the first 30 or 40 pages — a basic or beginner’s version — that can be expanded upon in later chapters. I am of the belief that all core books should make an effort to be beginner-friendly. You never know who is going to pick up your book in the game store, and if someone who’s never played an RPG picks up T5 and pages through the first 30 or so pages, they’re going to be met with dice probability charts and complicated rules. Not only will they likely put T5 back on the shelf, but they may just walk out of the store.

No Index?

I can forgive no index in a small book. In a 600+ page book like this, it is unacceptable. With the organizational issues I’ve seen so far, I can see players in fits of frustration as they try to remember in which slightly related section they’ll find a necessary rule.

It’s almost like the book was written as a reference for people who are already familiar with the system and need only look up the occasional rule when their memory fails them. I wonder of Mr. Miller and his play testers might have been so insulated while they were engaged in playtest that they got locked in some sort of groupthink, causing them to lose sight of the fact that some of us would actually have to LEARN this game by reading this book.

But I Will Keep Reading

Marc Miller’s original Traveller provided me with countless hours of fun and entertainment in my youth. Traveller inspired me to voraciously consume as much science fiction literature as I could at the time. It even inspired me to take writing seriously, as I wrote up countless scenarios. It moved me out of the graph paper, dungeons and treasure lists into a game of adventure, intrigue and mystery.

That’s why I’ll keep reading T5. That’s why I’ll one day run a game of T5. Traveller was an instrumental influence on my creativity in my formative years. The organization may leave something to be desired, but I still see things in the book as I page through it that give me hope — armor and weapon designing systems, a hefty careers section for character generation, detailed world creation rules.

I’ll keep readers updated as I make my way through the biggest RPG book I own. I’ll give you the good, the bad and the ugly. It may not always be pretty, but it will be honest.

To be continued.

BEST CONCEPT EVER.

Drinking Quest is a very simple RPG by design, after all, they are expecting you to play while inebriated. The game is designed for two to four players. Everyone starts by choosing one of the four pre-generated character cards. These are all about equal power-wise, and have funny names and powers. I was a little disappointed that only one of the four characters is a very female character, but all the characters are very stereotypical to the point of being crude satire. The characters are really basic, with no armor, low stat numbers, and simple attacks. Again, I assume the designers were trying to keep the math simple for Drinky McDrinkerson and his buddies. After you kill off some enemies you can collect gold to buy some simple items to improve your defense or attacks.

There is no DM/GM, and each player draws a card to see what opponents or challenges they will face. They player rolls against another player who represents the baddy if an opponent is drawn, or the player rolls all three dice if it’s a stat challenge. Combats are simple and usually over in a few hits. It really reminds me of a simplified version of the DnD boardgames, like the Legend of Drizzt. It’s a great little system that doesn’t put responsibility on any one player. Everyone is able to just relax and enjoy themselves.

One thing that is lacking in Drinking Quest is a healing system. The game is designed to have your character die, then you chug your drink to get them alive and back to full health the next turn. It sounds like it would be really fun, however it seems that characters almost never die in Drinking Quest. We played a few times and only a handful of chugging instances occurred. This seemed to be the main drinking component in the game, so we were a little disappointed that it happened so rarely.This isn’t exactly a bad thing, especially if your just looking for something to play when your GM calls in sick, but if you’re looking to get wasted this may not be your game. Try Beer Pong. My group ended up house ruling a healing mechanic that involved taking a big swig and getting a hit point back. (We just weren’t getting drunk fast enough apparently!) This may only be a good idea if you are drinking beer, because a home brewed healing game with shots might kill someone.

The cards are clever and entertaining. They are some real zingers in there that will crack up the whole group. The challenges are amusing and it’s nice that everything is drawn randomly so that every time you play the adventure changes. I was very worried about the “sexual prowess” stat when I first looked at the character cards, but it’s used in an amusing and not a gross way (phew!). The artwork, by Carole Nelan, is well done and perfect for the feel of the game. It requires three dice, the game cards, and character sheets. The game is very high quality, with professional level cards, disposable character sheets on a pad, and a color printed box. The package design is excellent, and all of these items fit into a slightly larger playing card box. Seriously, I have both Drinking Quest and Drinking Quest 2 in my purse right now. I really appreciate that type of compact design in my games and gaming books.

For $22 a pack the price is a little steep in my opinion. We had a good time with the game, and if you think you’d have the opportunity to play a lot, it could be worth the money to some gamers. If you will be playing with the same group over and over again, I’d suggest buying Drinking Quest 2 in addition to the original. It is a stand alone game, not an expansion, but you could mix up the adventures and PCs with the original Drinking Quest deck in order to keep things fresh. And, as always, I am fully behind home brewing the rules to customize the fun for your group.

You can learn more about drinking quest and buy it at drinkingquest.com. Please, drink responsibly… or crash on someone’s couch.