Not Quite Book Review Corner: Proactive Roleplaying

Proactive Roleplaying: Guidelines and Strategies for Running PC-Driven Narratives in 5E Adventures by Jonah and Tristen Fishel, Media Lab Books 2023 

I mentioned this a short while back and I finally got my hands on a copy.  

Short version: It’s a breezy read and I’d recommend it to anyone starting their RPG journey. 

Long version: Well … 

This is a first effort and a fine one from the Fishels. You can sense their enthusiasm. It’s spilling off the page. They do make some egregious clangers but I’d chalk that up to inexperience and, if this first effort is anything to go by, I expect future efforts to be much better.  

I could have lived without the constant pop culture references. If you mention, say, Dune, to me, I no longer know whether you mean the books by Frank Herbert, the ones by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, the 1984 film, the 2021 film, the 2024 film, the various different television series, the graphic novels ... Particularly these days when there are more streaming services than fleas on a fat dog’s arse, and other creators line up around the block to create fiction in a dead writer’s style, I do not pretend to keep up with all the pop culture all the time. Nobody human could.  

Those who try come away … changed. By their strangeness ye shall know them. 

That said, I think this is a brilliant book for anyone new to the hobby trying to run a D&D game. Its advice is commonsense. The base idea is that, as DM, you should make your 5E game more player-facing by allowing them to pick their own path through the narrative.  

Some of you may feel a slight twitch at this point; a certain spasm in the spinal column. 

That’s because this is exactly the same argument that Trail of Cthulhu had with Call, sixteen years ago. The argument that led to Trail taking dice out of the equation, allowing the players to pick the direction of the game by allowing them to piece together the threads of the narrative without resorting to dice rolls. Dice rolls when failure is interesting? Absolutely. Dice rolls when dice become gatekeepers preventing players from accessing story? No thank you. 

Later this became systems in which the players were allowed to pick the direction of the campaign, not just the game. The big two are Dracula Dossier and Armitage Files, but truthfully it applies to pretty much any GUMSHOE product. The base argument there is exactly the same as the base argument here. Give players some control over the narrative and you strengthen the narrative.  

The big difference being, this time, we’re talking about 5E D&D. Dungeons and Dragons gave birth to the RPG genre but it also gave birth to the DM-driven narrative. The linear path, carefully scripted by one person. It drives a lot of DMs down that same road, even now.  

With dice. Lots and lots of dice. And charts. God. O Lord. The charts. I see the Fishels still love ‘em some charty goodness. Best of luck to them. Some people’s creative style differ from mine. I found myself wishing for the bare simplicity of GUMSHOE towards the end of the book’s example scenario section. It was beginning to feel like eating an entire cheesecake in one sitting. The first slice? Goes down easy. Second slice? Mmm. Slice eight? O God …   

It does feel at times as if D&D folks drag the mechanics of the game along with them like damned souls hauling chains and weights from now until salvation. As if they don't see the chains as chains, somehow. jhj

Honestly, I’d like to see more DMs make player-facing games. Particularly player-facing D&D games, which often tend to be anything but. I think it can only add to the hobby. This is one of those times when you can see the authors taking their first steps down that path and I wish them well.  

If you’re looking for a birthday present for your DM or hoping for some tips on how to make your 5E game a better experience for everyone at the table, I highly recommend this book.  

See you next week! 

New York O God The Books

Well.

My wallet has two hernias but I'm not sorry.

Let's review. 

Bought at the Mysterious Bookshop we have two Crime Classics from E.C.R. Lorac, aka Edith Rivett, a novelist I highly recommend to anyone interested in crime fiction. I've read them both, which given that I got home Monday should show you how highly I rate them. Especial recommendation to Bookhounds of London Directors, as the London she writes of is wartime London. That's a little out of the usual Bookhounds timeline but not by much, which makes it good source material. Plus, there's a wealth of historical data here, because Rivett lived through it and knows wherof she speaks. Also Deadly Isle: A Golden Age Mystery Map. Because I'm not a heartless monster. I see the same publisher does maps for Los Angeles, Agatha Christie's England, and the Hardboiled Apple. Hmmmm ...  

Bought at the Strand we have Boys from Brazil, The Borrowed and The Midnight Washerwoman and other tales of Lower Brittany. Boys should need no introduction. The Borrowed is a series of tales about a detective nicknamed the Eye of Heaven, who makes things hot for Hong Kong criminals. Midnight Washerwoman by Francois-Marie Luzel is the kind of thing I go to the Strand for; their Mythology section often has treasures like these hiding away.

Bought at Barnes & Noble on 14th - highly recommend this big box store, it has damn near everything including a well-stocked selection of Criterion blu-ray discs - I got a Thomas Ligotti and an intriguing reprint of an old horror novel, the Auctioneer. I haven't dipped my toes into either pond just yet but am looking forward to it.

Bought at Tannens - everyone who visits NYC should go to the oldest magic shop in the Western hemisphere - we have Steinmeyer's book on the old illusion Pepper's Ghost, and an encyclopedia of cigarette tricks. Because if you're going to write about period things you need to have an understanding of how these things work, and while cigarette tricks are a bit old these days, they were all the rage in the 1920s. 

Bought at the Argosy, and anyone who has any interest in the written word needs to pay the Argosy at least one visit in their lifetime. Its collection is a must-see. Oddly, the first time I tried to visit I couldn't get in because they were filming a Goosebumps film. So, if you should see it on the small or big screen sometime soonish, well, that's why. The Tim Powers needs no explanation. The Toy Boats book is very relevant to something I'm working on. I think I read it before, in a library; now I have a copy. The other two are creaky real-life crime collections. As I've said before, if you want to work within a historical period, you need to know what they were thinking even if what they were thinking is ludicrous.

Bought at Forbidden Planet. Also bought at Forbidden Planet, a Shaw Brothers collection and a blu-ray of the old 80s horror, House. Again, I'm not a heartless monster. 

Bought at the Compleat Strategist. It was a tough decision between this and Old West Cthulhu, but I'm not sorry. I haven't had a chance to more than skim the first few pages. I'll have more to say about this later. 

Shows I would recommend to any lover of the stage:

Stalker! No lie, my plane landed at 4 and I was in my seat by 7. This mentalist act is an absolute joy to behold.  Brynolf & Ljung are masters of the craft and by God do they let you know it. I was up on stage with them getting utterly foozled and I don't regret a second of it. The concluding performance (I hate to call it trick) is an absolute brain-buster and I shan't spoil, but I kinda wish I had been the target ...

Twenty Sided Tavern! This was my Tuesday joy. I've seen similar setups at improv before but this is something in a class of its own. I don't know if you've ever seen anything like it? Twenty gives you an improv D&D session in one evening, where our heroes - a plump Holy Turkey, a Wild West Dead Man Walking and a Wizard with a Switchblade (lover of fresh kidneys) - took on a chaos mist that threatened to destroy the weave. I like to laugh. I had plenty of chances that night.

 

The staging was very effective. That back wall? One big screen. Once the action started that screen showed everything from landscapes to hit points. When the audience intervened with their own choices, the screen showed the result. Pro tip: if you go, try to get seats close to the front row. You won't regret it!

That's it for this week! Next week: ahhh, why spoil? ;)  

Forgotten London: Dead Man's Chest (Bookhounds)

Last sleep before the flight. No post next week.

In the days before Army and Navy pensions were instituted there was no fixed and national provision for wounded and mutilated soldiers and sailors who were discharged after serving their country in the wars. 

The substitute in the Navy was a chest kept at Chatham. The idea is said to have originated with Drake after the Armada in 1588. Our seamen eventually agreed to have certain sums docked from their wages to make a pension fund for poor and disabled ex-Service men. 

The money collected soon reached a considerable sum, and the Keeper of the Chest was often, not without cause, suspected of dipping his own fingers into the savings ... [the original chest] is believed to have been captured in one of the vessels of the Spanish Armada and to have been presented by Sir Francis Drake for the purpose to which it was afterwards used until as late as 1802. As much as three hundred thousand pounds in Consols was in the possession of the chest in 1817 ... London Cameos A.H.Blake

A Consul, as far as I can work out, is a Government security and they were issuing those as far back as the 1750s. 

According to London Cameos the chest found its way to Greenwich, where Blake took a picture of it in 1930. As far as I can make out from that picture the chest Blake saw is not this one though it is similar, and probably of similar vintage.

Blake doesn't specify but I presume when he mentions Greenwich he means the Naval College which, in the 1930s, would still have been training the British Navy. These days the buildings are open to the public but that wouldn't have been so when Blake was writing about them. If you didn't have an invitation or know someone on the inside, you'd have to sneak in. Not impossible, but tricky.

All of which brings me to:

The Last Resort

The Hounds are suffering hard times. Bills and debt notices are flying like a blizzard, and Rough Lads are staking out the Hounds' home and shop pressing them for payment. Without an influx of cash it may be time to padlock the place for good.

If only they knew a way to make money quick ... but there is someone who claims to know the secret. An old sailor who remembers the days of sail and now lives in a shack in the East End supposedly knows how to raid Drake's old pension fund; it's how he keeps himself in drink money. A number of people have tried to get him to spill the secret but he's always held firm ... until now.

The sailor, former Lieutenant Dalton RN, is old, frail, and an opium addict who's seen all the world and every nation in it. He frequents the Grapes in Limehouse and if the Hounds can't find him anywhere else they may find him there. 

He knows how to get a handful of cash through Rough Magick, but if the Hounds can get hold of any document written by former Navy clerk Samuel Pepys (or plausibly forged to seem as if it came from Pepys) he says he can raid the box for thousands of pounds. Can the Hounds organize a burglary of the Naval College armed with Pepys' papers to raid Drake's pension fund?

Option One: Bad Lieutenant. Dalton does know how to raid the Chest but up till now his magical ability only netted him a few pounds at a time. He intends to keep all the cash for himself and has hired a few Rough Lads - those same Lads who are on the Hounds' heels - to delay the Hounds while he gets away with the loot. 

Option Two: Good and Faithful Servant. Dalton is telling the truth. What he doesn't appreciate is that the chest has a guardian. Up till now that guardian hasn't been active because Dalton only ever stole a few pounds at a time, and after centuries of people dipping their fingers in the till a few pounds' theft isn't worth the guardian's effort. However, attempting to nick the entire pension fund will rouse the Spanish Don whose chest this was, and the dead man isn't at all happy about it.

Option Three: College Japes. Whether or not the chest can be raided isn't the issue. The issue is that there's a small branch of the Cthulhu Cult at the Royal Naval College, loosely affiliated with the Brotherhood. This Cult, made up largely of officers and men who served in Egypt, isn't going to be pleased about a bunch of outsiders breaking into their premises and casting spells. Direct action is called for ...

That's it for this week. See you soon!

Moving Goal (posts) (RPG All)

 

Sourced from Ginny Di

I think this is a fascinating idea.

I haven't read the book (but I will). That said, the first thought that popped into my head was, 'this would work brilliantly in Gumshoe.'

Why? Because Gumshoe has Drives. 

The whole system is practically already part of Gumshoe's DNA.  

Altruism: You got into the game to protect innocents from terrorists, or disease, or war, or tyranny. (NBA, Trail)

Thrill-seeker You joined up thinking of Rambo or James Bond. (NBA)

Greed: You know what’s wrong with poverty? Everything. (Bookhounds)

Fraternity Man is born to serve his fellow man, an effort best carried out through collective action. (Dreamhounds)

It was honestly a little surprising to see Gumshoe settings (Mutant City Blues, eg) that don't explicitly have Drives. Even in those, there's usually some reference to Character Concept (a cynical philosopher from ancient Greece, Timewatch, eg) which fulfil the same function but aren't as clear-cut.

But! 

Consider: the Drives system is basically there to encourage roleplay in a certain style. You're Altruistic; that's why you want to go on the adventure. Or down that dark, dank hole. Or this, that and the other. This idea is proposing that you use the Drives system to establish Goals for your character - short term, medium, long - which you, as Keeper, then weave into the narrative. 

Let's say that the drive is Altruism. The player then specifies three goals - short, medium, long - connected with that drive. It doesn't matter what those goals are, so long as they're reasonably achievable and narratively appropriate. 'Destroy Cthulhu' is probably off the menu; 'destroy the Cthulhu cult' might not be. Those goals then become plot.

Remember: conflict creates plot. God knows I've said it often enough. Except here it's the player deliberately creating conflict by saying "this is the kind of conflict I'm seeking out."

Or, as the video mentions, "I no longer need to worry which path they'll pursue because they (or their stated goals) tell me where they're going."

I've talked about Rome and said:

The cultist, the innocent victim, the peculiar item - all those roads lead to one Rome. Make sure that is forefront in everyone's mind.

What does this idea mean for Rome?

It means that, to a certain extent, the players choose what Rome is going to be - or perhaps more accurately, they choose which road they take to get there.

Rome is the end point. It's where all this madness is going. That's the bit that lives in your head until the magic moment when you make your reveal. In the Bookhounds example that I've used before:

What is Rome?

Cthugha

“For this shape was nothing less than that which all the world has feared since Lomar rose out of the sea, and the Children of the Fire Mist came to Earth to teach the Elder Lore to man.”

Through the Gates of the Silver Key

From the Trail main text: Cthugha is a neutral force, a repository of energetic information. The race known as “fire vampires” established their own caches of Cthugha on many worlds, including Earth. Under the guise of the Magi, the ancient fire-priests of the Aryan Persians, they created the Elder Lore of fire-magic, the infrastructure to access Cthugha on our world.

Additional Stability +3 Additional Sanity +1

Keywords: energetic information; Magi, the ancient fire-priests; Elder Lore of fire-magic.

I then divided it up by Arabesque, Technicolor and Sordid because those are the three plot types that Bookhounds uses. I shan't go over that old ground.

What I will say is this: if Rome is Cthugha, then this new idea is the road (or one of them, at least) by which you - and the players - get to Rome. 

You already know that there are Four Things connected to everything in the game environment. The Three Bucks Pub, say, is identified by Four Things, and one of them is the Fourth Thing that links to Cthugha - Rome. Same for everything else in the setting. Those are the highlight points and, as I describe in the Many Mansions post:

Four things. Four leads to chase up. At this point you don't need to know a great deal about any of the four beyond the details given above, since the whole point of the ground-level OPFOR is to delay the characters and give them something to think about before the characters encounter the primary movers-and-shakers ...

[ground-level OPFOR] The Rowdy Yates gang of loafers and bullies have a hate for [pick a character] and follow them around like wolves haunting sheep. What is their problem, and is there anything [character] can do about it?

But if there are Four Things and one of those things is chosen by you as the Rome marker, then there are three other things to consider. Under normal circumstances you, as Keeper, would identify those things.

With this idea, what's basically happening is that the player gets to pick one of those remaining Things and make it their own, through their Drives. This, they say, is the Altruistic thing that I shall use to access plot. The In The Blood thing. The Revenge thing. Whichever. For each of those things they define short, medium and long-term goals.

Those goals can then be adapted as one of the Four Things that define, say, the Rowdy Yates gang. Or the Three Bucks Pub. Or whatever.  

You might respond 'but that means dropping one of the things that I designed.' Yes! Yes, it does. So what? Nobody's ever going to know it but you. Moreover, if doing this gets the players to pay more attention to the other bits that you designed, that can only be a good thing. A benefit to the campaign as a whole.

Let's say we were talking about a character defined by the In The Blood Drive, which says:

Quite frankly, you’re not sure why you keep coming back to the moldering graveyard, or poring over those antique texts. But queer behavior runs in the family, apparently. Outsiders wouldn’t understand.

That character then defines, say, a short-term goal as 'I want to honor my family's memory by cleaning up the family tomb.' Fine. Why is the family tomb in disrepair? Because the Rowdy Yates gang has claimed it as a clubhouse. Or using it to store bootleg whiskey. Or one of the gang is related by blood to the character and hates the family connection, so the gang takes every chance it can get to harass the character by damaging the tomb. 

That player goal becomes one of the Four Things that defines the Rowdy Yates gang. This in turn drives the character into conflict with that gang, and conflict, (sing along with me now, folks) creates plot. 

By using that goal to get the character involved with the Rowdy Yates gang, the character then discovers what connects the Rowdy Yates gang to Rome - Cthugha, in this instance. What element of the Rowdy Yates gang links up with the keywords energetic information; Magi, the ancient fire-priests; Elder Lore of fire-magic? 

In short, by using Drives as suggested in the Ginny Di piece, you're saving yourself a lot of work by allowing the players to plot out one of the Four Things that you were going to use anyway. You already knew what the Fourth Thing was - Rome - and now you know what one of the other things is. 

You just need two more. 

Easy. Right?

That's it for this week. Enjoy!