The Splatter Affect

Originally published in Crusader Journal #2.

I’ve gamed since the mid ‘70s. My brother Davis was a huge comic book fan and really into that scene, so when he heard about Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) he started pestering my mom about it. Well, it just so happened that one of my father’s soldiers was shipping out on a hardship tour - though I don’t think they called it a hardship tour back in those days - to Korea I believe. Knowing of Davis’ desire to play D&D, this noble soldier, in possession of three or four little brown books (no box) offered them to my mom, as he wouldn’t have any need for them. I happened to be in the parking lot when she stopped by the barracks to pick them up. I remember it well for some reason. Its become one of those snap shot memories for me. I don’t know why. But that launched Davis and my older brother into the world of D&D. I joined later and I’ve played ever sense.

 I began running games in Heidelberg Germany in the early ‘80s. I would get together with my pals and run endless hours of games . . . in between making out at the movies and listening to music at the park. This really started a lifetime’s worth of game mastering. I ran games almost every week from 1980 until I joined the army in 1991. Sometimes, during my college years I ran three games a week. We played a lot. When I got out of the army I picked up where I left off and ran games until very recently. About a year ago I yielded the chair to Chris and Davis - the latter of whom had just recently returned to the hobby after years of wandering in the west, living in tents and drinking slop off of bar mats!

Yielding the chair was good and bad. I hadn’t played any characters past third level since 1979, when Davis was the master of the game. I was the consummate Game Master. I knew the players. I knew the game we played. I changed or altered rules so regularly that the books were almost useless. I knew the tricks of roping them in, firing them up, calming them down, pissing them off. We were really like an orchestra, and I was its conductor. Or so I thought. 

At some point in the late 90’s, I knew my game was slowing. I was losing my “game” so to speak. It was harder to keep them interested. I could get it together for a few sessions, and then I would lose them again. It was frustrating. It was in conjunction with the growth of TLG, so I ascribed it to no sleep and little thought to getting ready for the game.  Davis wanted to start running the new Castles & Crusades (C&C) game and Chris had some cool adventures he wanted to try out. I had originally learned to game from Davis. In the old days, he ran the game while I played. Reluctantly I gave up the chair. I was tired and really didn’t have the energy to sustain anything. That was obvious.

Chris ran the table for several months, 1^st edition. Then as C&C took shape, Davis took over and ran the table for about a month. The two of them switched on and off for the better part of a year. Both started new games, with new characters. Eventually Chris converted his game to C&C (it really is that much easier). Davis ran us through Assault on Blacktooth Ridge and what is shaping up to be Slag Heap and the Wicked Cauldron. Chris threw us into epic settings in the far west of Erde (soon to be renamed: Aihrde) entangled on the islands of Mogrl Lords.

Both Chris and Davis are exceptional Castle Keepers, but they both have markedly different styles from each other and me. Without going into particulars about how much treasure, role playing, etc. they each do, I’ll quantify their styles by simply saying the following:

Davis is so impartial to the actions of the character that he is indifferent, the perfect adjudicator. If your first level character accidentally kills the demon lord of the snake pits, he doesn’t utter anything, but tallies up your experience. If your 15^th level rogue slips off of a 20 foot wall into a pit of spikes he doesn’t react, but tells you to roll up a new character. Davis offers no sustenance in the desert. You live or die according to your own actions and the roll of the dice. It’s a hard game of life and death.

Chris, on the other hand, wants you to feel the impact of the game. He wants you to be a part of the story, to cut the rug of history. As with any good writer, he develops and molds the storyline in tune with the development of the characters involved. When the character changes, there are subtle changes to the script and the story. He would not allow the demon to die, nor would he allow the rogue such an ignominious death. Chris offers you aid in the desert and guides you down the road. It’s a complex game of interaction and reaction.

I could see a little of my own style mirrored in the ways they were running their games. I tended to create scenarios without end, letting the players unravel the story and adapt their solutions as endings to the finish the game. I wouldn’t directly aid characters, but on the other hand I would change the roll of a die, the affects of magic or spells, reaction of monsters or other happenstance to fit the arc of the story. Death comes easy in my games, but too, accomplishment is not at the discretion of chance. I thought I had found the perfect mix of interaction with chance and play to make the story unfold for any and all at the table.

But I had long since grown torpid in my chair, unreactive to the players and what they might be thinking or going through.

Once I gave up the chair, it didn’t take me long to really warm to playing a character. I played a romanesque fighter in Chris’ game. I blended with Chris’ style and game quickly and was really enjoying it. We stepped into a simple canopy and before long it had grown into an epic in the making. He is generous with experience and treasure and we advanced to second and third level  pretty quickly. I was really getting into it.

We switched to Davis’ game soon thereafter where I played another fighter. The pace of this game was much different. Entering the environs of the Blacktooth Ridge, there was no immediate goal and we had to forge one for ourselves. We failed to get cohesion but did cross the Hrueson River and assault the ridge. Davis has a fearsome reputation as a Castle Keeper and we were very slow to attack the enemy we did find. But once we got cohesion as a party, the game picked up and we were having a blast.

We skirted back and forth between the two games. I was really into playing the characters and hadn’t really thought about getting back behind the screens in a good long while when two events occurred.  They happened almost in tandem, one in Chris’ game, the other in Davis’, that made me look on my time in the chair very differently.

Chris found us frustrated one night. We were, as a group, very tired and the past couple of sessions had played witness to some great role playing and a bit of the mysteries of the storyline being revealed. These sessions were really cool, and revealed Chris’ true gift in telling a story. But the role-playing was far from finished, and we were far from a cohesive group with any kind of plan. So on this particular night we were all a bit hungry for some combat. It was long in coming. Chris had to work through some themes to get us on the right track. He subconsciously took control of some of the characters, mine being one of them, and began moving them about the field. This rankled a bit with me and the other players and we objected.  Chris was thrown into a quandary and he began looking for role playing patches to get us on track. This heightened our growing frustration and we reacted poorly. We didn’t do Chris’ game justice nor give him much room to move. He was forced to continue manipulating the circumstances in order to keep the arc. By the end of the evening it was a slaughter fest. Anything, including Davis new character, was fair game for us all, and we did not bother to role play in situations or try to figure things out, but rather we killed monsters on site and fled from one situation to another. I was much to blame for this, as I tried to role play my character regardless of the story arc. This caused more confusion. Chris tried to keep us on track by revealing the epic themes and other material, but it just caused confusion.

We ended the evening with much joking and cussing and promised that next week we would give everyone a break and pick up the assault on blacktooth ridge.

Davis’ game suffered a similar fate. Our characters had left the ridge and become entangled in the problems south of the river. We had no maps at the start of the game and were far from human habitation, deep in enemy territory. The player who played the ranger, Mac, wasn’t there and Davis did not NPC his character. So we were in the trackless waste, pretty much on our own. We wandered and wandered. For 18 days of game time we wandered in the woods, meeting almost nothing, utterly lost and without purpose. Davis, true to form, let this unfold as if it were real life. And as in real life, we were pretty much done for and lost. We all became a little frustrated and just as in the previous week, I noticed the players (me and Todd in particular) getting antsy and start to react to everything. When we did encounter something the ferocity of our pent up rage stunned even Davis as we all recklessly fought to get into the fight!

That is when I had my game mastering epiphany. It wasn’t about Chris’ style or Davis’ style, or even my own. It wasn’t about the way the games evolved or were evolving. All of us are past masters at this craft and our good games far outweigh our bad game. The epiphany concerned the players.

I found that I was thinking, for the first time, like a player. I had finally shed that arrogance of mastery that comes with riding people’s emotions and plundering the wealth of my imagination to enwrap a group of gamers in a world of tremendous make-believe. I was now a singular entity trying to unravel someone else’s world of make-believe. And I was bored. Twenty years of running games tumbled before my eyes and I thought that here is the answer to the riddle. To quote a history professor I once had “to truly understand them, you must step out of your own shoes - imagine a tall, mustachioed, white hair gentleman stepping out of his shoe - and put yourself, put your feet, into their shoes - imagine him stepping back into his shoes.”

What frustrates the player? Its not the big things. The themes, the direction of the game, the whole host of concerns that you, as a good Castle Keeper have, that matters most. Though these matter, what matters more is what frustrates, what guides and what drives the player in the game. The small things matter: hitting in combat, finding your way, or healing your character. Having enough treasure to re-equip. These are things that keep them in the game and allow them to endure the unfolding canopy that is your game.

For me the greatest example of this can be found in the specialization ability of the fighter. It always confused me. Why would you allow your character to become dependent on one weapon? In my game, combat is so brutal and fast that if you dropped your weapon, its best to not worry about it, but pick up or pull out the nearest thing to you and batter away at your enemy. Life comes to the bold. I never thought much about the probability to hit or what that +1 might mean to the player. That is, not until I played a fighter who could have really used a +1 on any number of occasions. The frustrations a player can feel from not hitting repeatedly can build up to a crescendo and leave them so frustrated that they are doomed to doom the game. I came to understand that after a year of playing a character, (fighters to be exact), and now it is always in my mind . . . particularly when I’m behind the screen.

Keeping the Castle is a skill much akin to the feudal lord. And as was true with the ideal of feudalism, is true in the game. The Castle Keeper must never forget what is most important to the characters, to the players themselves. Though they may love to unravel the great mysteries, solve the riddle, overcome traps and slay the demon lords, what they are most concerned with are having the basic tools to accomplish the job. This is not to say that you must give them what they want in order to keep them playing. On the contrary, doing that would only frustrate them into boredom. It is to say, that as a Castle Keeper, you must be aware of what your players’ characters need to actually play the game.