Improving Game Mastery: Reflective Storytelling

Choo!  Choo!

            The only type of Game Master or Storyteller that I really think is bad is the one who has no interest in improving his GM skills.  From the very first time that I ever ran a game until now, I have always looked for ways to improve, and I think that is true of every good game master.  I suppose that’s why I never look down on a new game master who does a bad job.  He or she is trying their best and things didn’t work out, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  My first attempts to run a game were awful.  Learning from your mistakes and failures is the key in the growth of any skill, especially a skill such as cooperative storytelling.  As long as that GM has learned something and applies it to the next he or she runs a game, then I think it was a good session.  However, learning to improve your GM skills is a skill all its own. 

            I am never satisfied with any game that I have run because I know that it wasn’t perfect, but no game that I run will ever be perfect, and that’s not a bad thing.  What it means is that I can always get better by honing my craft and studying my mistakes.  I can also look to a lot of sources for improving my skills.  The internet is glutted with sources of information for game masters:  blogs, podcasts, chat rooms, forums, v-casts, free books and PDFs, etc.  With a quick Google search, you can find just about anything you need. 

           

The best place to begin your quest to become a better GM is to simply talk to your players.  Ask them what they thought of the game, but don’t ask them “Did you like the game?”  You should avoid questions that can be answered yes or no.  Instead, ask open ended questions such as “What did you like about this session?” or “What part of the session didn’t you like?”  Asking open ended questions will allow your players to give you better feedback.  When they tell you something, write it down so that you can refer back to it when you are preparing the next session.  Also, no matter what your players might say, don’t become defensive; instead you should accept their criticism because it’s what they really think.  Don’t take the criticism personally, the players want the same thing that you do – to make the game better.   

            The next thing to do after a session is to think about what you think you did well and what you did poorly.  Reflect on your mistakes.  What rule did you not know and had to spend time figuring out?  Maybe you could write it down on a note card to have it nearby.  Did you have a hard time coming up with names for random NPCs that the players stumbled across?  Maybe you should write down a list of names for NPCs for future use.  Reflect on your successes.  The players really enjoyed that chase scene, but can I make it better?  The players really liked that NPC’s personality, could I make him/her more important to the story. 

            After that I would start to look elsewhere for advice.  One thing about GMing an RPG is that the skills you need to run a Vampire the Masquerade game and the skills you need to D&D or GURPS are pretty much the same.  Whatever the system, you need to be able to create an adventure, populate it with NPCs and encounters, and run it effectively.  So, you can read other RPG books and look at how they suggest that you GM.  The advice for running a dungeon in D&D is a great framework for running an adventure set in the Nosferatu warrens beneath your city.  The advice for running the court of Emperor Hantei XXXIV in Otosan Uchi in Legend of the Five Rings is going to be equally as useful for running the prince’s court in your Vampire City.  All of these ideas transfer relatively easily.  More importantly, running new systems will help you get new ideas for your game and may help you break out of a rut.  If you switch from something combat oriented like Dungeons & Dragons to something more political or social oriented like Vampire, you might find that new ways of approaching adventure construction and ways to challenge players who have seen all your tricks already.  Playing a whole new system can offer you a new perspective and approach for your own game. 

            Probably one of the best books on improving your GMing skills is Robin’s Laws of Good Game Mastering.  While this book was published by Steve Jackson Games, it is not specifically for GURPS.  Instead it has suggestions that are appropriate for any game system.  Laws divides players into several groups based on what they want out of a type of game from the Power Gamer to the Method Actor to the Casual Player, and he explains how best to involve each of those archetypes in your game.  If you can find a copy of the book, I highly recommend that you get it.  It can be found on Amazon.com. 

            Obviously, I would remiss if I didn’t also suggest a few podcasts and vid-casts.  Probably the most entertaining v-cast is Spoony’s Counter Monkey series on The Spoony Experiment.  Spoony is infinitely entertaining as he tells stories about his many adventures as both a player and a GM in various games.  He also offers some great advice on running games; his best piece of advice is “All Jedi or NoJedi” as a rule for running the Star Wars RPG.  

My favorite podcasts are Underdiscussion and Happy Jacks RPGPodcast.  I love Underdiscussion because it reminds me of my friends sitting around a table after a game talking about games and having a good time.  Underdiscussion is laid back and fun but still offers plenty of good advice; although they do have a tendency to go way off topic.  Happy Jacks is a great podcast that offers a lot of laughs and plenty of advice.  They answer questions from listeners and typically tackle one new topic each week.  For people interested in a World of Darkness focused Podcast, you should try Darker Days.  All of these podcasts are available on iTunes as well.  Darker Days covers both classic and new World of Darkness games as well as some of the other White Wolf properties such as Trinity. Darker Days is a one stop podcast for everything White Wolf related.  

            If you've found my blog, I'm sure you'll find others.  However I do read a couple of blogs such as Aggregate Cognizance.  I loved his article on Wandering Murder Hobos, and I am going to post a reply to that article very soon.  I frequent the RPG.Net Forum frequently, and usually I'm the one asking for advice rather than giving it.  It's a great place to ask for some help when you're stuck on a problem or you need to locate some obscure piece of trivia that will help you with an encounter or adventure.  There are lots of other websites out there if you need advice or help with GMing, and these are just the ones that I use.  I'm sure there are better ones that I haven't found yet. 

            The one thing that I hope that all of my readers take away from this article is that GMing is a skill that requires constant maintenance.  Every session is learning experience and a chance to improve.  Whether you are an experience GM who has been playing since D&D first edition or a brand new GM who just opened up his first RPG book, you can always find a way to get just a little bit better.  And I'll end this article with a question:  What pod casts or blogs do you go to for advice and help when you're GMing?  Leave a comment below! 

The Missing Mentor

This is the lamest image I could find on Google.  You're welcome

            Populating a city for a Vampire the Masquerade chronicle is a matter of filling in all the relevant positions within the city’s bureaucracy.  The Prince, the Primogen Council and a Sheriff along with a few other NPCs usually round out the population of vampires in the city.  Including a few oddities such as a Lasombra-antitribu or a Ravnos or even a clique of Caitiff in the Barrens will give players a few interesting characters to encounter and potentially overcome.  The Storyteller has worked to give each of these NPCs a role and place within the story, but this approach serves the need of filling out a city’s stat sheet.  While filling out each of those positions within a city’s hierarchy is important, the storyteller also needs to have NPCs who serve the story and the player characters. 

            Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with aThousand Faces” is probably familiar to most readers as an outline for storytelling where the Hero completes a heroic journey helped along the way by a mentor and other characters to overcome a great antagonist or solve an overwhelming problem.  Star Wars is probably the most famous example of the Hero’s Journey in modern cinema.  Luke is initiated into a new world when he meets Obi-Wan Kenobi (his mentor) and begins learning about the Force and becoming a Jedi.  He travels from his small homestead on the backwater planet of Tatooine to the Death Star where he saves the Princess.  From there he joins the Rebellion and saves his new allies from destruction by blowing up the Death Star by relying on his nascent understanding of the Force. 

This model can be easily applied to storytelling in RPGs such as Vampire the Masquerade.  The Player Characters are initiated into a new world filled with supernatural creatures and given new rules that govern their lives.  They confront terrible creatures and evil machinations to save themselves and their city from the Sabbat, Werewolves, or various other monsters.  The World of Darkness allows these battles to be waged in the shadows and in the grey areas of morality where the absolute good of the “Light Side” doesn’t exist. 

Does this really need a caption?

However, when looking at storytelling in the World of Darkness and RPGs in general, the Mentor is one of the most under-utilized character archetypes.  Typically in Vampire the Masquerade the mentoring of a character in the Camarilla or Sabbat or whatever Sect is hand-waves as part of the character’s prelude.  The character’s sire is assumed to have fulfilled that role and the player is left to his or her own devices as the plots of the Elders run like clockwork around him or her.  Conversely, the introduction of a trustworthy Mentor will provide the storyteller with an avenue to give information to players as they progress through a story.  The same is true for a stereotypical fantasy style game such as D&D.  The characters begin the game with knowledge of the world and their skills already learned.  New skills are acquired through leveling up rather than a process of learning.  The characters rarely rely on a mentor to assist them in learning about the world. 

One of the most difficult parts of running a game is that the Storyteller or GM has the story in his or her head, but he/she must convey that story to the players without dragging them through the plot.  The mentor provides a way for the Storyteller to impart information without just giving it to the players because the mentor can act as the voice of the storyteller during scenes where exposition is necessary.  The mentor can also provide information about the setting that players may not know such as the disposition of other cities in world and whether or not other supernatural creatures are operating within the city where the players live. 

Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything

The mentor can give the players information about the history of the city or the clans or sects as needed.  The mentor can act as a repository for all the necessary exposition that the players need as they explore the world.  Without a mentor the storyteller may need to just give the players information.  By putting the exposition into the mouth of a mentor, the players become more immersed in the story and setting rather than being pulled out when the storyteller just gives them some important information about the setting. 

For example, the Players need to know whether or not the Prince strictly enforces the traditions in the City.  The Storyteller can just tell the players the answer, or the Storyteller can use the mentor to give the players that same information.  By having the mentor answer that question, the players are no longer just asking questions to the Storyteller but are interacting with the world.  Also, the information is not coming from the omnipotent, omniscient narrator but from a character in the story.  The omniscient narrator is never wrong, but an NPC can have outdated information. 

This guy is named Mentor.  Does this count?

I have found that having a single mentor for all of the player characters is the simplest approach.  The players will rarely split the party for any reason, and they approach all NPCs and situations as a group anyway, so having one mentor for the party works well.  The single mentor must then have the knowledge to give each player what he or she needs to understand the world and the story being told.  In a game like Vampire the Masquerade where every NPC and PC is a self serving bastard, it’s important the Mentor be above the fray and he or she can never work at cross purposes to the players so long as he or she remains the players’ mentor.  Of course, there are plenty of ways to turn their mentor against them, but that’s for another article. 

By incorporating an NPC mentor into your game, Storytellers will be able to give assistance to players and an in game method of helping players grow in their skills and acquire new skills as well.  The mentor can provide both helpful advice and new knowledge that the players will need to overcome challenges. 

Late Review: Clanbook: Tzimisce

Clanbook:  Tzimisce

By:  Robert Hatch

1995, 68 pages

             Tzimisce was always my second favorite clan after Toreador.  For some reason I was attracted to their utter disregard for their humanity and instead they embraced inhumanity and change.  They were not bound by the confines of their flesh, and instead, they modified and changed themselves through the use of their clan discipline Vicissitude.  Of course, this is a romantic view of a clan whose nickname is “The Fiends.”  The Tzimisce are probably the most frightening clan in the Sabbat.  They are its spiritual leaders and provide some of the most terrifying antagonists for a Camarilla or Anarch centric game.  Vicissitude provides a multitude of ways to terrify or interrogate Player Characters. 

Interior Art Example

Clanbook:  Tzimisce is a digest of the horrors that the clan can visit upon its enemies.  It is filled with stories of terror and the twisted images of sick minds.  What is most striking about the book is the deceptive nature of the cover’s art when compared to the art inside.  Bradstreet’s cover is of a beautiful woman, stretching out, but as soon as you open the book you are confronted by heavy line drawings of grotesque creatures of indescribable anatomy surrounded by horrors.  The interior art maintains a consistent theme of horror as if someone were looking into Rob Zombie’s imagination and pulling out the most disturbing images they could find.  I’m not opposed to this kind of art, but I think that it only shows one side of Clan Tzimisice.  This art portrays the grotesque but not the alien beauty of the clan. 

Later images of Tzimisce show a strange beauty that taunts us to love it while we are being reviled by the alien nature of that beauty.  I believe that art does a much better job of represent the clan.  However, these images come during the transition from First Edition Vampire the Masquerade to Second Edition, and one must remember that even in the Second Edition core rule book the Tzimisce were not included as a playable clan until the release of the Player’s Guide to the Sabbat. 

Corine Marcon will make clothes out of you!

As with other clanbooks, Clanbook Tzimisce is divided into five sections:  A introductory story to set the tone, a history of the clan, a description of the modern clan along with some mechanics for your game, a selection of pre-generated templates for PCs, and finally an appendix which describes some famous or infamous Tzimisce that can be included in a Chronicle.  While Clanbook:  Toreador and Clanbook:  Ventrue provided lots of really good templates for PCs to use and that section was my favorite part of those books, Clanbook:  Tzimisce’s templates were disappointing.  The Torturer, Tattoo Artist, and Fallen Surgeon are kind of obvious choices for Tzimisce NPCs.  Only the Carnivorous Carny stands out as an interesting character to play, and I think that may be because I have wanted to read Midnight Circus, a World of Darkness Adventure about a traveling Carnival.  The Monster Maker is just silly and shows how a character can go off the rails by indulging in all the terrible archetypes of the Mad Scientist.  Supervillain cape and old Carpathian castle are included.  This guy shouldn’t be a Tzimisce; he’s a member of Cobra in today’s episode of G.I. Joe who will be defeated and forgotten by tomorrow’s next episode at 3:00.

A "modern" Tzimisce:  More Elegant in its horror

The Appendix of (in)famous NPCs is also a let-down.  The most famous Tzimisce, Vlad Tepes AKA Dracula, is given the shortest entry and a quick note that more information can be found on him in Who’s Who Among Vampires:  Children of the Inquisition.  Corine Marcon, the fashion designer who weaves her clothes out of strands of the still living flesh of ghouls , is interesting and provides a few great adventure ideas because these “clothing ghouls” are able to report back the secrets of their wearers through telepathy.  However, Doktor Totentanz is another character who embodies all the body horror fears that should be intriguing but all that is lost because the writers needed a Nazi character to complete the roster of evil. 

The mechanics section provides some new Merits and Flaws along with a handful of Disciplines for character who are lower than Eight Generation.  The Servitors section is interesting in that it provides some great ideas for Tzimisce Revenant families and the strange ghouls that are bound to the Tzimisce.  Of course, these lack stats, which is appropriate because it allows the Storyteller to dream up monstrous creations that can challenge the coterie without being bound to a particular block of stats.  Also, I doubt that a “normal” or “average” Tzimisce ghoul exists. 

The best section of the book is the introductory story which sets the stage for a true understanding of the clan as the Sire discusses his beliefs that clan Tzimisce is the highest evolution of the Kindred race while the childe is drawn further into the dark but inviting horror of the Tzimisce’s terrible knowledge.  The reader is witness to the childe’s loss of humanity as a former acquaintance gurgles her name and she looks in on confusion and amusement.  Above everything else in the book, this demonstrates what it means to be a Tzimisce more so than the images of grotesque bodies and Monster Makers and Nazi Doctors. 

WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE!!!

The focus of this clanbook is body horror and revulsion.  However, Clan Tzimisce is more than that.  It’s not horror for horror’s sake, but rather it’s the Tzimisce search for a transcendent beauty that both attracts us and disturbs us.  That is the essence of body horror and this clan.  The loss of humanity and empathy is all wrapped in the Tzimisce’s transcendental need to be more than human and more than vampire.  Clanbook:  Tzimisce fails to capture that. 

Nevertheless there are some good moments when you get this book.  When I bought my original copy, it came shrink wrapped with a piece of card stock covering the back cover. I unwrapped it and chuckled at the image of a vagina with teeth which had been sculpted to replace a person’s mouth.  Inside there are some great quotes, including one from Dr. Seuss’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and most appropriately a quote from Transformers:  The Movie:  “Human Germ!” attributed to the Decepticon Shrapnel.  

Clanbook Tzimisce is available in PDF Format at DriveThruRPG.  You can also purchase an original printing on Amazon.