Anatomy of a Horror Setting #1: Psychic Powers

In working on my psychic horror game there are several considerations I have had to make, and several more yet to be decided upon. In this first article of how many I do not know, I will start with my first point of necessity, and the considerations that it entailed. Later articles will take a look at these considerations as required.

The first requirement was that it was going to be a horror game. I of course set out to make a game with psychic powers so there was the second game priority. While I am discussing my game these ideas in no way need be relegated to role-playing games, they should work perfectly for any short story, novel, or movie setting within the genre. The limiting factor will be the inclusion of psychic phenomena though by no means will it be inclusive to humans for other people's setting purposes or any other settings I might pursue.

For a horror setting with psychics you first need to set out a list of the powers that you want to see. Next you need to look at how these powers will work. This requires looking at how the powers work in the following ways. First, what cost is there to using the powers? It can be none, it can be some kind of psychic points, it can be physical fatigue, and it can be mental fatigue. Next, are there any downsides to using the powers too much aside from any associated cost? The downsides of fatigue are obvious. Certainly sometime the use of such supernatural power has a negative impact, such as nosebleeds, and headaches if the powers come "naturally".

A psychic not need to be born with the powers or have them flourish on their own at the onset of puberty (a common time in fiction). The powers could be granted by a supernatural entity, or they could be the result of experimentation. These ideas alone open up a lot more vistas of possible exploration in your setting than just having the psychic abilities innately. They also express another important facet of a psychic horror setting, how does the rest of the world react to these phenomena and the people who wield such powers? Something for next time.

Mood: crisp.
Music: You Are all That I Need by Twisted Sister and You're All I Need by Motley Crue.

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Weather or Not

Beyond what was discussed last time about the weather in games—and this applies to all story telling—there are other factors to consider. The most visible of these factors in indeed visibility. Whether it is heavy rain, driving snow, or clinging mists, the weather does affect how far away things can be seen. This can be an important factor in game combat or in mood creation in fiction. Additionally in both role-playing and stories this helps determine the feasibility of certain actions as well as precipitates the need of other actions.

In a similar manner, knowing the temperature is one thing, but dealing with it as a force that acts upon your character(s) is something else all together. It can dictate right off the bat what clothes will be required. It can present challenges like dealing with heat exhaustion at one end of the scale and hypothermia and frostbite at the other end. More so than rain, snow, or obscuring fog the temperature in a setting can alter the moods of the characters as opposed to the moods of the audience.

Precipitation can be a part of a larger situations as well as working on its own. Watching the news one sees two big scale conditions caused by rain, or its lack. Too much rain and you have flooding. Also too much can lead to deluging rivers, and mudslides. If there is too little rain then there is drought. Drought affects crops and impacts economies and impacts the lives of everyone. It can also be a mitigating factor in wildfires whether they are caused by careless people, or they are caused by another weather factor, lightning.

Carrying over to snow and there are blizzards. They can ground planes, seal off villages, trap people in places they'd rather not be and create situations where they have to deal with other people they would likely not encounter if not for the storm. Heavy accumulations of snow can damage houses as buildings just as unpredictably and suddenly—if not universally—as a tornado. Then lastly there is the avalanche possibility when the conditions or setting is ripe for it. There is a plethora of ways to use the weather in any kind of tale, be it role-played, rolled with dice, or found static in a short story, novel, or movie.

Mood: brainy.
Music: Going Mobile by The Who and Heavy Metal Poisoning by Styx.

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All Up in the Air

Just a note about last Friday (if you missed the addendum): It was reported that 150,000 people (not just motorcycles, since some ride two people) descended upon Port Dover, a town/area of normally 6,000 people!

I spent the weekend, and a couple days around it, in game writing mode. Most of it was work on my fantasy role-playing game, though maybe as much as ninety percent of it will be useful in any other game I decide to write. First off I was working on information dealing with sound and how far away sounds of certain levels can be heard. I started with a borrowed chart from somebody and then I went to town tweaking it and making it my own. The biggest change I did was to remove the effect of sounds that lessen the distance something can be heard. Then I detailed rules how to add those "distractions" back in.

The fantasy game's setting made for a couple out of the ordinary additions to be made to these sound rules, particularly where distance is involved. The sound chart only covers up to certain distances. The reason for this is the curvature of the planet makes the sound essentially travel off into space, if it's loud enough to breach that distance. That is for horizontal sounds. Once you look at vertical distance the sky is the limiting factor, or rather the air. Past a certain point the air is too thin for sound to travel any great amount of distance. Of course once you run out of atmosphere then you get no sound at all because a vacuum doesn't carry sound.

The second thing I was working on—and still am chugging away at—is the weather in games. Here I have breakdowns of things like wind speeds, amounts of precipitation—that being rain or snow—a look at temperatures around my fantasy world, and numerous things that the Game Master can roll randomly. Specifically for the fantasy game I even have monthly norms and a multiple year weather cycle. Some of this fantasy-setting information is on the wonky side compared to the real world, but there is a method to the madness, and such oddities can and will have a social impact on the game.

Mood: level.
Music: Walk Right Back by The Everly Brothers and Last Train To Clarksville by The Monkees.

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Ideas, Notes, and Progression

I was doing some cleaning last night around the computer. There is a tonne of notes sitting on the second keyboard—for the second computer, which has not been there for a year or more, but may return soon. Each note page was written in various locations throughout the house and sometimes even outside or in the car. Each note is a flurry of thoughts, ideas, and snatches of stories and conversations as they came to me. What are these ideas for? Short stories, novels, role-playing games, blogs, whatever comes to my mind when I'm not at the computer.

I'm slow to transcribe most of them to the computer. They pile up faster than I deal with them. Even when I put them on the computer they are just in files with names that make perfect sense at the time but become ambiguous later. If the notes are related to a project that I am in the midst of, rather than just the brainstorming stage, then I put the notes in the proper files and folders almost right away. Still they can pile up in their proper places.

Some of the ideas can be rather abstract and need solidification before I can take advantage of them. Sometimes—I think these are the most fun—the ideas are actually questions. The questions can be multiple choices, usual either this or that. Or the questions are just something to ponder.

I threw out a bunch of notes already that have been put to complete use. I also collected a bunch of single thoughts from pages that were otherwise put to use so that got rid of some more of them. Still the stack is pretty thick. It's hard to guestimate how many of the notes have been put to use, how many no longer make no sense—like a beautifully written one that I can't understand what project I was supposed to be applying the idea to, and in what capacity. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

There will be no blog on June 19th so check back on the 23rd. Thanks.

Mood: vacationary.
Music: Awake by The Clay People and Wasting My Hate by Metallica.

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Fight, Kill, Roll Dice

I've been thinking again about the math and mechanics of combat in role-playing games. This is of course of importance for me since I am working on at least two games of my own design. It remains to be seen if both will run off of the same system mechanics. Just because I would like that to be so, doesn't mean that it will manifest. I started with the idea that for my fantasy setting I would use easy if not actually simplistic rules. There is no need to model your game entirely after physics and reality. There can be a certain disconnect, through short hand or the quality of being an abstract version of the concepts involved.

The point where I have a problem, both in decision making, and perhaps even in development, comes at the point where one has to move from one sort of combat into another. In particular I am thinking about the transition from unarmed combat to melee combat (hand held weapons with range being only a function of the weapon's own length) to ranged combat. Even within a medieval type setting there are troublesome issues that arise when moving from one form of combat to the next. Then it worsens when you consider modern weapons of varying types. Or, even if you stay medieval you have magic to deal with as another kind of combat. Maybe even psychic powers.

Above and beyond this, which isn't necessarily all that much of a struggle to work with, there is the consideration of movement during combat. Here at first blush you have changing from one form to another, the affect on accuracy of moving and fighting at the same time, and dealing with changing ranges. The faster the movement from either or both opponents the greater the effect it has on the combat and therefore the rules. All of this involves--yet at the same time doesn't take into consideration--the difference between grace or prowess, and hand eye co-ordination, not to also mention the difference in how fast the character is at either kind of combat driven by those factors.

Mood: deep-thoughs thinking.
Music: Cum On Feel The Noize by Quiet Riot and Shoot 'Em Down by Twisted Sister.

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The Void

It’s no secret that I’m working on a couple of RPG projects. One is a fantasy-based game, though really this is a terrible misnomer given the way the definition cleaves. Modern Urban Fantasy might be a closer, but is still far off the mark. The fact is to say just Fantasy means specifically Tolkienesque medieval fantasy. If you step out of those bounds and retain the fantasy “name” you do nothing but draw ire, contempt, and book returns to the store. So, I feel I need a new name for this type of project. I will keep you all, gentle readers, apprised if I come up with something.

What I wanted to talk about today was an idea that I had. To give away some secrets, a big part of the setting I am working on involves the game’s world being an artificial construct. Nothing new there, except perhaps in which of the ways it is explained and what it means to characters, players, and the GM. It’s important I mention this condition because I want to talk about outer space. This idea I’ve had involves what if more than just the planet is artificial? What if it just hangs in “space” but not real outer space, as we know it, but a true nothing? Outside of the planet’s atmosphere there is absolutely nothing, or so this idea goes.

Now let’s further assume that these “fantasy” people have a way of getting up there. What sort of horror would they face upon this realisation? This is of course assuming they didn’t know and I have a very good reason for it, but it’s something I cannot divulge, something I believe to be fairly unique. So… when it comes to the time that the beings of this planet venture out of their atmosphere, they are presented with darkness and emptiness except for their planet’s own, lonely, star.

I’m reminded of an episode of Star Trek: Voyager when they travelled through a lightless expanse of space. Of course they were used to space being full of stars and nebulas and other things. Still I can only imagine what it would be like to go from a place of everything to a place of nothing. What would these fantasy beings think? How would it make them feel? Would they even care? I have to imagine it would be terrifying. Of course I have some additional ideas to truly bring the terror, but they’re secondary to just the conditions of space in this setting. You know I have to bring some horror to everything.

Mood: edgy.
Music: Accident of Birth by Bruce Dickinson and Cemetery Gates by Pantera.

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Mad Skillz

One of the important aspects of all role-playing games, even though it isn’t the coolest, or the most definitive, is the skill rules, and by extension the skill set that each character will be able to have and the player to manipulate to be tailored to who and what that character is as they want it to be. I have been thinking a lot about this ever since Friday when I was reading a discussion on a forum about a particular skill and when to use it. The first factor to consider in writing this section of the game is a matter of play style. The second factor is complexity. As usual both of these factors also have to take into consideration your game’s mood.

Most people it would appear deal with play style all on their own. They buy a game and they develop the way that they want to play it based on a number of criteria that changes based on their current mood, and the composition of the group playing, of course on both sides of the proverbial game screen. A big factor of that style determines how often they pick up the dice. Since it is such a fluid and variable condition things other than the audience dictate the play-style of a given game, except of course in the whom of the who will buy this product. The things it is dictated by are comprised of the set version of the things that the audience changes for themselves, and the aforementioned mood of the game.

Complexity is where I like to let my imagination run rampant. For skills I have this dream, this desire, to take a fairly dice intensive approach. If I were to go with such an approach, throwing mood to the wind perhaps, then I would have to design the skills to be used in a particular way. For example let’s look at using flying power armour in combat. In the complex approach you have to pilot the suit, read the instruments, be familiar with the weapon system in order to optimize your aim, and be able to fight in it. That’s four skills. Now, let’s say the combat computer is broken and aiming isn’t aided. Then you’d have to add in some ability to lead the target yourself, and determine windage to make a shot with any kinetic weapon at range, much like a traditional sniper. Of course usually many of these skills are lumped together cutting down on everything. It’s practically a requirement.

Mood: exhausted.
Music: Hot for Teacher by Van Halen and Stand by for Pain by Widomaker.

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No More Bumpy-Forehead Syndrome

Sometimes you read an RPG and it’s apparent that you are missing some of the information that might be useful in creating the character, and more importantly missing for playing that character. The one glaring example that I always pull out immediately is Elves in the fantasy games. You get a bit of info about them, but a lot of the best information is missing because the game expects, like every other fantasy game seemingly, that you have read all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books so thusly know a tonne about Elves. As freakish as it may be, I read the Hobbit in public school I think, but I don’t recall much about it and I haven’t read the Lord of the Rings, nor have I seen the movies. So all of these fantasy games are lacking some serious information.

Similarly, while reading the Call of Cthulhu 5th Edition RPG they refer to a tonne of different things with a wink and a nod, and generally act like you’ve read everything that H.P. Lovecraft had ever written. What is it with these initial people anyway? I need to know if I’m going to go by R.G. Male. ;) On its own the game seems practically useless to run because you’re not a part of the inner circle. Yeah, I haven’t read a tonne of Lovecraft, though I’ve read some, and I’m not particularly impressed, but that’s another topic altogether.

Cultural information about every different group there is in the game should be paramount to any game that isn’t set in the modern world where info is only a Google away. What’s worse, is some games they will even take an archetypal species like Elves, and do something non-Tolkien with them, and still do not give you the information required to play the character as anything other than a different looking human. Yes, you’ll note I said species. Race should really only apply to differences within the same species. That would include in humans the Caucasians, Negroes, Asians, etc.

It is just this sort of information, that I find missing in a lot of games, that I intend to include it in all of my game designs. It may be something that sets my games apart or it may not, but I believe its integral, and of great importance. Players and GMs should have as much material to work from as possible. It’s better to have and not use it, than be left filling in a tonne of blanks. Given the way people change up their games anyway, if they disagree with my ideas or have a better idea (more inline with their style) then I’m of the mind, “Game on.”

Mood: relaxed.
Music: Night Santa Went Crazy by Weird Al Yankovic and Live and Let Die by Guns N' Roses.

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Choo-Choo Woo-Woo!

Sticking with the RPG themes for a while I decided that today I should talk about something that came up between last night and today. I was working on a move for my Rifts PbE (Play by Email) game. This game has really had me thinking about the differences between an IRL (In Real Life) and a TT (Table Top) game. In gaming there is a rather infamous action of GMs (Game Masters) called “railroading” and it is an absolute boogeyman in some circles. In those dark, damp circles the slightest indication that the players don’t have every single humanly and even inhumanly possible option open to them sends them into a blind rage.

Railroading is when the players are forced to do something, like take the left road only because that’s where the adventure lies. It’s akin to sitting on a train and letting it lead you where it will without your input as opposed to driving there yourself taking whatever road, stopping wherever you feel like it. In a game where everyone is there all at once and can express themselves in words, gestures, body language, and facial expression things run very quickly and its easy to give players millions of choices everywhere. When playing by email though, cutting the options down is a somewhat necessary evil, unless you have the time to turn moves around quicker than my group has been doing.

In this current game I’m really bucking the line between pushing the game forward, letting the players do the things that they want their characters to do, and weaving and swaying between the players to let them get their shine on. It bothers me that I might be stepping over the real line. There are lots of fake lines, at least if you want any kind of game other than a free-form do whatever kind. As soon as you tie yourself down to a plot there is no help from cutting off some options or directions to go.

Otherwise the players would be off doing their own thing and the plot would move on without them. A lack of “reality” hurts the game, and time constrictions are excellent at creating tension and giving the game real punch. The players would realistically miss all the important bits and be stuck in a bad position if they got back to it. They wouldn’t have done necessary things. Villains would have pulled off their evil plots. All sorts of things would be beyond the control the players were supposed to have, and I have to imagine that can only be worse than any gentle or even strong nudging the GM might do.

Mood: critical (eyed or minded, not in danger of dying).
Music: Day Job by Gin Blossoms and Department Of Youth by Alice Cooper.

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