How Fantastic Roleplayers kill my Roleplaying Games

By T.R.S. Burns

I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since 1998 or so and once we got past the teenage hack and slash that our particular group didn’t enjoy and waded into the political webs that would be our later life gaming we encountered the issue I’m writing about today.

I’ve had the privilege over the years to game with some truly phenomenal roleplayers and it saddens me that at the time of my life I’m writing my most intricate plots and stories the people who could truly benefit from them are no longer available to play for one reason or another. However, straying back to the point at hand, each and every one of these people brought to the table deep, rich and nuanced characters.

The distinction here  between my roleplayers and the rest of our groups is that each time they came to the table they brought a _new_ character, not a re-badged or rebuilt version of their previous character and this made them terribly unpredictable. I will go into some examples in a moment.

In my current game one of the players decided that the Eberron setting would lend itself well to playing a Wizard/Academic working out of Morgrave University, the rest of the group had settled on an expedition to Xen’Drick motif so his character fitted fine. As is his penchant he intentionally wrote a character who was less useful in combat than he was out of it and yet, the more sessions we play the more the plot and the other players linchpin on his decisions and now three sessions in _his_ goals have become _their_ goals because his compelling and skilful portrayal of his character has convinced the players and thus their characters that he is right and just in his goals.

Which he is not. His character is a bastard whose only real goal is finding something in Xen’Drick which will get him either a position with the university or a transfer to another university with a better reputation. He has absolutely no care for the other characters goals and needs and is willing and able to walk away at the first sign of trouble. But the other players have no idea, why?, because he is hiding it all behind fantastic roleplay.

Will it kill the game when it comes out? Will the interest in his goals fade? Is it just a phase at this early stage in the campaign?

I don’t know. I honestly believe it is possible to play your character too well.

From the diary of Sir Charles Banks “An Expedition into Deepest Xen’Drick”

Day 1

Today is the day we set out for Xen’Drick. A new untouched land, with a history older than any other on Eberron.

We sail aboard the elemental galleon Windspear under the able captaining of Aren Lyrandar.  I note that another team of explorers also travels with us aboard the Windspear.

Led by an old school chum of mine Cornelius Rutledge and his ravishing research assistant Naomi Watts they seek to uncover the truth behind mysterious local legends of a great winged beast residing somewhere in the vicinity of Stormreach. Also traveling on ship is the scion of house Cannith and his retinue.

Day 2
I have come into possession of some interesting notes regarding the potential location of a “forge” located in the jungles of Xen’Drick.

Perhaps this would be a worthy target for our researches? In unrelated news most of Rutledge’s team have been teleported home in disgrace; perhaps this will be the last we see of them.

Day 3
I am engaged in designing several devices that may prove of much use to us in Xen’Drick. I have read of a potential impediment to our journeying known as the Traveler’s Curse.

Apparently strange and twisted magics endemic to Xen’Drick warp time and space. I aim to resolve these issues and will not write again until I have.

Day 8

Dramas. Some Sahaugin have ambushed the ship, slain the captain, and kidnapped the scion (not psion!!!) of house Cannith. I drove the beasts from the ship fairly easily. We shall make a daring attempt to rescue the scion in the coming days.

Rick Barry stands 5’11” and weighs 230lbs and is 42 years old. He has thick dark brown hair that reaches down to his shoulders. His hair is in complete disarray with various parts braided and matted together using beads and other inexpensive jewellery. What hair is not braided or matted is dreadlocked or clumped together by a combination of wax, blood and dirt.

Rick Barry is short in comparison to the average Half-Orc and hence has a very wide frame with broad shoulders, a wide neck and thick arms and legs. He is of a thick muscular build, which is a result of repeated heavy strain on his body. His eyes are a deep and muddy brown. His jaw line is long and wide, he has a wide and thick brimmed nose and coarse eyebrows. His ears are slightly mangled in comparison to human ears. This is a result of two factors: the method by which he makes his living, gladiatorial combat and mercenary work, and his Orc lineage.

Rick Barry’s armour is an immaculately crafted suit of Gorgon Hide Armour. It in essence is various parts of Gorgon Hide stitched and strapped together so that they fit around Rick’s body like a long-sleeved shirt would. On his lower half he wears a pair of loose but thick black cotton pants. Rick wears a pair of steel thigh guards. Below the thigh guards he wears a pair of knee high brown leather boots. On top of it all he wears a brown leather coat that reaches down to just above his knees.

Thrown over his back is the most extraordinary hammer. The hilt is silver in colour and is adorned with various etchings in numerous languages and markings illustrating various creatures and tales.  These etchings and markings are a combination of crimson and gold. The head of the hammer itself is modelled as a jack-in-the-box. A jester making various poses in crimson and gold attire is inscribed into the sides of the head of the hammer. The top and bottom of the head of the hammer contain the same pattern. This pattern is a crimson circle followed by a gold circle, each one engulfing the last one until there is no more space.

Standing at attention, Haptash Ka-Nala looks somewhat taller than he is. While on his identity papers it reads 5′8″, many would place him as being more, perhaps not six feet tall, but you just get the feeling that there’s… more… of him than 5′8″. His hair is partly to blame. It is untidy, though not unkempt, and several of the dark brown spikes seem determined to point upwards, no matter the treatment given to them. Another factor is his boots. Large, heavy and durable, they protect his rather small feet from the rigours of his job. Tucked into these boots are Haptash’s pants; dark green and not too tight as to be impractical but tight enough not to get in the way. They, much like most of his clothing, are practical.

A tough leather belt is wrapped around his waist, with various pouches and canisters attached. Each of these is filled with different substances and tiny, seemingly useless items. A tan coloured, short-sleeved shirt covers his body while over that he wears a brown sleeveless coat which hangs down almost to his feet, though it never touches the ground unless he is stooping or sitting. Hanging loosely around Haptash’s neck is a pair of thick-lens goggles with an adjustable leather strap. His hands are protected from the elements, as well as the more dangerous of his alchemic tools, by a pair of large gloves, covering most of his forearms. These are well-worn at the fingers, as if he wears them almost constantly.

Haptash’s eyes are bright green and they shine like emeralds amidst the strangely pale-skinned face, making him look younger than he is. His delicate features are sharp and well defined, including his sly half-smile, which comes upon him whenever he isn’t deeply concerned about things. Haptash wears only one piece of jewellery, a single golden stud in his left ear.

A second belt hangs about his hips, but attached to this are his tools of war. A crossbow, a small knife and various vials all neatly tucked in and placed where they can be most easily accessed.

So this past weekend I got together with my long standing gaming group and we wrote characters for a new campaign set in the world of Eberron. I wanted to try and capture the dark noire feel that the author of that setting intended as well as the pulp flavour of our usual games (which he also intended) what I got is not exactly what I was after, but close.

Over the rest of this post I’ll detail the characters that were created and there tie-ins to the setting. This will require some Eberron knowledge on your part. I’ll also touch on the method we used to ge there.

I had the players each take a scrap of paper and write down five interesting things about their character, anything at all they felt was relevant was fine and then they handed those scraps back to me and I read them over and handed them back. I had them flip their scraps over and write four interesting things that happened in their character’s past and hand them back to me.

I took those four things and factored in the original five and used those events to tie the characters together. You know bill because you were a mercenary during the war and bill was a forward scout whose platoon you were assigned to type stuff.

The characters we got are;

Charles Banks – Geologist, Botanist, Wizard

Charles Banks is a rising star of House Vadalis, having been sent to Sharn to study at Morgrave University he return with high accolades in both Botany which was immediately useful to his house and Geology which would only prove it’s worth in the years that followed when he invented the Sonicprobe.

Harnessing his magical ability to make sonic blasts into a technology he could use to detect caves and pockets of air below the surface of the ground. Armed with his prototype he made a lengthy and dangerous geological and botanical survey of the Eldeen Reaches and began to compile a system to chronicle botanical samples by family and strain. It was on this survey that he uncovered Naan.

Naan – Warforged, Cast-Off, Druid

Naan was a relic of the last war a fiercely loyal and trusting Warforged and a perfect example of House Cannith engineering and so when she was ordered to Guard a forward camp in the Eldeen Reaches late in the last war she did and when her unit did not return she stayed in place, unmoving, un-breathing for more than a decade, lonely but loyal.

It was here she was found by the Gatekeepers a circle of Druid’s dating back to ancient times who saw more in the Warforged’s mossy rusted form than a weapon and trained the highly intelligent living constructed in the ways of their circle. Naan became the defender of the grove she had been set to guard and stayed there until she encountered Charles Banks on his survey and agreed to accompany him on his survey of the Reaches, when the survey concluded Naan continued on as Bank’s Assistant.

Perrin d’Thuranni – Thief, Would be Assassin, Dragonblooded Heir

Perrin is the half-blooded son of the offshoot house of Thuranni and operated out of their secret holding in the Lhazaar Principalities where he served as a guard at one of the houses fronts topside. He is as he knows highly expendable to his pure blooded house and works hard to make himself an asset to the family.

He recently capitalised on seemingly unrelated events when he thwarted the framing of a travelling artificer who murder attempt had gone awry and left the Principalities with that Artificer. Having overheard the previous night artificer’s intentions to visit the lost continent of Xen’Drick Perrin saw the opportunity to make a name for himself in the house and a small personal fortune besides.

Haptash Ka-Nala – Kalashtar, Dreamer, Artificer

Haptash was born a Kalashtar in the nation of Adar. Beset on all sides by the Riedran forces led by the Inspired intend on blotting out all of the Kalashtar Bloodlines. He fled the monastery forts of Adar as soon as he was old enough to understand the threat posed by so many Kalashtar close together and carefully made his way out of Sarlona. In Khorvaire he discovered his gift for Artifice and became a well respected Artificer serving a short time with the House Cannith Tinker’s Guild before the agents of the Inspired made an attempt on his life and he fled to the Lhazaar Principalities.

Haptash had been working in Lhazaar as a general purpose tinker for almost two years before they found him again and uncovered his secret nature as a Kalashtar. A battle was fought that that spilled bloody and terrible into the street with his magic beset by Inspired steel resulting in the death of his opponent. Haptash was taken into custody by the dark cloaked authority and was set for a short dirty trial and hanging as a troublemaking outsider when a local captain spoke in his defence. The same captain was charged with escorting him out of the principalities and continued on with him afterwards.

Rick Barry – Mixed Blood, Wrestler, Barbarian

Rick is a half-orc born into a human family who prized martial accomplishment and spent his youth as a prominent star in the greco-roman wrestling community. His family took his mixed heritage in their stride taking into account his lack of a particularly orcish appearance and his feats of strength and cunning which brought honour to the family. When he was old enough Rick marched off to fight in the Last War and fell in with the House Deneith Blademark’s Guild.

Serving as a Mercenary in their employ Rick fought for more than a quarter of the last war and served under the banners of all five nations. He was left suddenly jobless and destitute when the war ended and found himself wandering back to the Blademarks hoping that there would be more work for mercenaries in the broken kingdoms that were recovering from the war. He was in luck, JackBox Maul in hand he set out for House Vadalis to protect the travelling son Charles Banks as he undertook his research.

So there you have it, these are my players and soon I will reveal their story. I will post up an appendix to this post which includes their original notes from the character creation session and their descriptions and Biographies as I get them but for now I leave you to ponder.

This is my first attempt at writing for Eberron so bear with me;

The Khorvaire Courier

In the wake of the last war Houses Kundarak, Vadalis, Sivis and Orien banded together to form a company called the Khorvaire Courier.

In essence a newspaper controlled by its contributing houses the Courier holds a distinction over all other newspapers because of the nature of its patronage. Distribution. The Courier is created in mass quantities by House Sivis who move it into customised House Kundarak vaults which have been enchanted by House Orien to move their contents to identical Vaults in every major city on Khorvaire. From these depots the Courier is collected by the local agent of House Vadalis and delivered to its target audience by couriers on Magebred mounts.

The advantage here is that from the moment that the Courier is printed it can be in a city on the otherside of Khorvaire in seconds and delivered to the local populace within the hour. It also implies that the Courier has informants and information gatherers inevery major city on Khorvaire to keep the information relevant to all readers.

For those of you out there reading this, and I hope someone is I thought I would touch briefly on the future of this site and my own machinations.

ImberCorvus.com and its sister site GatheringStormPodcast.com are about to go through some changes. In order to create the community I am striving for I am splitting the content up between a number of Sub-Sites.

As follows;

ImberCorvus Blog – This is the page you are currently reading where I will blog my thoughts and excerpts from what I’m writing and generally share my news and progress with the reader.

ImberCorvus Press – This is where I will co-ordinate my print on demand store and advertise the various products I have created so that people can read about them. It is also where I hope to list the products of other people who have decided to let us co-ordinate their print on demand thus releasing under ImberCorvus Press.

ImberCorvus Wiki – This is my answer to an ever more restrictive copyright scenario. This is where I will post for free all of the game specific information that is requested to accompany my IC Press work. Stat blocks and Class summaries or the like.

GatheringStormPodcast – This is a project which is requiring more capital than the others for the initial set up. It will be when it is finished a theatrically styled podcast which tracks the progress of a group of adventurers through a fictional universe. Possibly Eberron, we will see about the legality of that.

That’s all for now, any questions hit me up at blog@imbercorvus.com!

Before I begin I will re-state my original point which was that everyone should at least once volunteer at GenConOz because it is an experience I cannot compare to anything else.

We arrived on Wednesday and threw ourselves into unloading the trucks over at the convention centre and I set about the mammoth task of making the conventions network speak to the venue’s network. It took considerably less time than last year and I was able to get over to the pub for dinner by nine.

Thursday brought us the first half-day of the convention and the RPGA/Pathfinder room opened. I didn’t have any Thursday events as I saw complications on the wind with the event registration system. I got what I wanted in that regard but the timely arrival of the man who configured it allowed us to bring it back online in record time. This is also the first day I got to hang out with Jason Bulmahn and Keith Baker where we took it upon ourselves to take our most esteemed American guests to an Australian pub.

Friday was the first day I worked with the guys out the front weapons checking Cosplayers and checking wristbands, it kept me within shouting distance of Event Registration and Customer service which were the hot spots for trouble with the IT systems. I also got a chance to play my first game of the convention Michael Wenman’s Quincunx. Michael is a friend and it was the first time that the game had been run anywhere in the world so I was honoured to play in it. He told us on the last day that the game had undergone some pretty substantial changes since we played it so I’m looking forward to catching it again.

I also did most of my shopping this day I bought a Fox hat, a Rabbit hat, a copy of Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters and a copy of Peter M Ball’s novella Horn which I understand my purchase of put the book into profit. I also bought my copy of the Eberron Campaign Guide which Mr Baker had recommended the night before and kindly signed for me and a copy of his novel the Queen of Stone. I’ll try and knock up some pictures to the post later.

Saturday was the biggest day of the con and left us scurrying like madmen to try and take the throughput of the extra attendees in our stride but the volunteer staff did not falter and I would like to commend them for that. We held up largely due to the work they were doing in event registration. Those guys need medals I swear. I got to play my second and third (and only other) games of the convention. I ended up in my much anticipated Exalted 2e game where I played a (pregenerated) brash and persistant hothead with a black mark against his name and an attitude problem. It was an awesome game made more awesome by the gamers I played it with. I also got to play in Nathan Russell’s Lady Blackbird game which is a free RPG set in a wonderful steampunk setting where I played the role of the bodyguard.

Sunday was the slowest day for the convention and the day I got the most done for myself. I bought some 4x oversized dice and then hit the seminars. I caught the Warstories of Self Publishing, Eberron through the Ages and Professional Writing for the Gaming Industry seminars before the convention wound down and I helped herd the public out of the venue. The exhibitors took longer and many of them were very kind to those of us who had broken our back for the convention in a volunteering capacity over the four days.

When it all wound down the Event Organisers, the volunteers and Mr Bulmahn hit the town and we visited three or possibly four pubs before we settled in a nice one in south bank where Jason and I traded stories until I remembered I had a flight at six. I will note here that Peter M Ball of Horn infamy is an awesome dude who volunteered to take me to the airport at 5am.

So thats my experience of GenConOz 2009 as a Volunteer and I will be headed back next year.

Its been some time since I last posted here and in that time I’ve been far from idle.

I spent a night in the hospital, got a new gaming group, organised my trip to GenConOz 2009, attended a funeral and lost all of my inspiration. Its coming back to me slowly now and I’ve decided to work on some short fiction.

The new gaming group necessitated the creation of a new fictional world for those self same characters to inhabit so I’m working on an island nation for that and its all in the “in my head” stage currently. I’m tossing up chronicalling my worldbuilding on here for all of you so that you can take something away from it. I’ve been looking at Campaign Cartographer for my mapping recently but it looks too… generic for me at the moment.

I’m trying to light a fire under my creativity by doing some short fiction work and some character development. There are a few stories I need to tell and I’m working on easing those out. A steampunk tale of gearworks and blood magic, a samurai tale with a twist and the rest of my Gillis Svend story.

I’m flying to Brisbane a week from now for GenConOz 2009 and I’m getting more excited about that for every day that passes, it’ll be good to hit up some writing seminars and bury my head in the joy of volunteering at a convention that large.

Till then I’m out.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long while now and I think its not enough to just turn up at the Con play some games or whatever it is you came for and then wander on home.

The GCO staff are going to put on another awesome Con just like last year in less than two months time and I figure its up to us to pack the place out. So my challenge to everyone who reads this is, come to GenConOz 2009 but more than that, bring a friend, or two friends or fifteen friends, bring everyone you know who might be interested.Because the bigger this years convention is, the better NEXT YEARS convention will be.

Register for your Event Badge soon so that the GCO staff know that we are coming and then descend with me as a black cloud over Brisbane and show the Organisers, the Exhibitors and the Community that we support our Convention and that It and Us are here to stay.