Women In Gaming

Originally published July 2001, at The RPG Times Vol. 6, Iss. 7.

Last month I went through the first two steps for creating a pbem game -deciding who much time I’d be willing to spend on the game, and what setting I would be using. As a recap, here’s what decisions were made:

• I would probably need to spend three to four hours a week doing game-related stuff once the game was underway.
• the game would be a horror game and set in our world, but with a few changes.

This month I will be going through the results of the work on the background of the game, then move on to the next two items on the checklist (choosing a game system, and deciding what kind of pbem game to run).

Setting

Okay, I’ve settled upon a horror game, set in our world (with a few minor modifications). What I need to do know is find a way to describe it in a sentence or two, at most a paragraph. Here’s what I start out with:

The world is a dangerous place, far more dangerous than most of us know. Sure, we watch the television shows where there are vampires walking the streets at night, and movies where the heroes battle flesh eating zombies. It’s all fiction. Or is it?

There is a whole other world out there, hidden from sight. A world shrouded in shadows and half-known truths, where the Things That Man Were Not Meant To Know live. It is called?

Hmm? What am I going to call it? World of Darkness is taken, as are most of the similar titles. And those that aren’t taken sound really clichéd. So, what do I do? I pull out the thesaurus!

Not having my huge, large rodent-killer-sized thesaurus handy, I resort to the one that comes with Word. Let’s look up evil. Nothing there that’s inspiring. Let’s try darkness. Same again - nothing interesting. How about nighttime. Hmm? Eventide. That sounds promising.

Let’s try this again:

There is a whole other world out there, hidden from sight. A world shrouded in shadows and half-known truths, where the Things That Man Were Not Meant To Know live. It is called the Eventide. A realm where the creatures from our myths, legends, folklore and nightmares live, it exists alongside our own. It is the source of all our dreams and inspires poets and writers. It is the source of all our nightmares and drives murders and lunatics.

There, that’s a good start. Yeah, so it expanded to two paragraphs. Who cares. They’re good paragraphs.

So, those two paragraphs should give everyone a very good idea of what to expect in the game, and is a jumping off point for you, the GM, to come up with the rest of the world.

Next, I need to decide what kinds of nasties there will be lurking in the shadows, just waiting for the unwary PC to turn down the wrong alley at night. From the descriptive paragraphs, I’ve already given myself a foundation for that, and given myself a very wide range. Also, I haven’t limited myself to one settings’ “rules” for what a vampire can or cannot do. I can base them on whatever I want, or even have hundreds of different types of vampires.

No, don’t start thinking that I’m crazy. There’s no way that I can detail each and every type of bogeyman that might appear in the game. That’s not my job. I’ll worry about them when the PC’s are getting close to encountering them (that will be part of the weekly work to be done while running the game).

Now that we have the setting defined, we need to decide where the actual game will be taking place. Since it is happening in our world, I could use an existing city. Alternately, I could create a town or city from whole cloth and use that. I think I will go for the latter option - a fictional town.

Let’s call it Gryffendell. Sounds occultish and mysterious. Where is the town located? To make my life easier (mainly because I know a lot more about Canada and the US than I do the UK), let’s make the town be somewhere in North America. Hmm. I think we need to be more specific. Let’s go with somewhere in the US. Massachusetts works. After all, that’s where the Salem witch trials happened. Gryffendell, MA. Sounds good.

There, I’ve set up the basic setting for the game, set the mood, and done the basic groundwork for the game.

Next I’ll need to come up with the basis of the first set of adventures. At this point, it can simply be a basic outline of what’s going to happen. One of my favorite things to do is to take a story from the genre and modify it to fit the game. For this pbem game I’d do a bit of research and find a horror story that can easily be modified to suit the player characters I will eventually be running a game for.

At this point I may need to decide if I want all the characters to be of a specific type (such as monster hunters, government agents investigating the supernatural) or a bunch of strangers drawn together by circumstance. That could really depend on the story that I choose, and will be addressed later, when I go to look for players.

I’m also going to have to decide if I want the game to go beyond this one adventure, or if I want it to be an ongoing game. If it’s to be an ongoing game, I’ll need to come up with a couple of adventure ideas. They don’t all have to be fleshed out now, as a lot of it will depend upon the PC’s that you get. The players are often the best source of adventure seeds a GM can find.

Also, if I want the game to continue, I probably ought to come up with at least a basic map and description of the town of Gryffendell. A basic rule of thumb is the longer you want the game to run, the more details you’re going to need. But don’t think you have to do it all now, before the game starts. Jot down a few notes, and then as the game progresses you can come up with stuff as you prepare your scenarios, or as you need it (when the PC’s say they want to go to the Puce Pagoda Chinese Restaurant and Laundromat).

Now, on to the next two questions.

What game system are you going to use?

Because of the setting, there are any number of game systems that I can use. At this point it really becomes whatever the GM is most comfortable with. For me, it’s the Hero System, so this pbem game will be done using Hero System mechanics.

What kind of game are you going to run?

I have found that the most successful games I have run and played in have been “rules transparent”. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, it means that “rulespeak” (that is, game mechanics) are rarely, if ever, mentioned during game play. The game really looks (and feels for the players) very much like a freeform game, but there are rules for how success and failure are determined.

In a rules transparent game, once the character sheets are created, the GM takes care of all the rules - all the dice rolling and so on. There are times, however, where rulespeak does happen, and it is usually done OOC (Out of Character). For example, when a player states a specific skill they are trying to use (i.e. Can Joe use his Electronics skill to figure out how that lock works?), or when it comes time to spend experience points (i.e. I’ll spend two xp’s to increase my knowledge skill of Things I Should Run and Hide From).

Since I have had good results with this kind of game, that is how I will run it.

I will also need to figure out how many turns per week I’d like to try and do. This is really based upon how much time you think you will have for the game. I know would probably be able to put out at least one move per week for the game. However, this can really slow a game down if only two or three players are posting. A way around that is to have me post a compiled move to the game list, then have the players email each other (and me) with their reactions. I will then (at least once a week), compile what the players have done, add in stuff, then put that move out and start the process again.

I am using this method with all my pbem games right now, and it seems to be working. Some of the games are still slow, but they could be a *lot* slower if we had to wait for me to do everything once a week.

Next month I will look at how I plan to get the information to my potential players, and how I will run the game?

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