GM techniques; brief asides

Alexandra

Alexandra

The black-eyed cousin
After tonight's gaming session, I thought to share it with people.


We took a brief break from the regular campaign, where we play a band of monster hunters. As we've been playing for a couple of years, the group is rather high-powered; magic weapons have been found, knighthoods given, and the attentions of people in high places have been attracted. None of us are "normal" mortals anymore.


This session, however, we played those normal mortals. Everyone met up early, and did up completely different characters, and embarked on a once-off session based miles away from our current characters, at a section of plot marching inexorably towards them.


Naturally things ended up quite tragic; three characters killed outright, two forever changed, and one managed to escape to warn the nearest city.


We decided it was a resounding success :)


Has anyone ever tried this technique before? This is the second game I've been in to employ this technique, and I think it's wonderful.


Too often the GM has to force situations where the PCs are present for pivotal moments, thereby destroying the suspension of disbelief. If the campaign is far-reaching, with lots of things happening, I think this approach can give the players room to experience something rather special and immersive in the true scope of things.
 
No, but I like the idea, it makes it more fun I would think, to have the players play different characters to see who information gets to the city and the band of magnificos so they can save the day.
 
I have had extremely positive experiences with asides during campaigns.


I don't know how familiar you are with the Vampire the Masquerade metaplot for the end of days, but years back during a loooong campaign that ran through to Gehenna, asides were used to bring home the scope of the destruction that was going on. There were multiple ancient vampires rising, and it was unrealistic to have the party come into contact with all of them, so the asides provided windows into the rest of the story.
 
I've never used that per se, but I have seen the idea of different characters in play after a long campaign. Nothing like having a new character and hearing stories about the old character being passed on. That was fun.
 
It was used in a scion game I played in. It was done at a game soc in uni so knowing it would only last a year at most and still wanting to bring the characters through all three books (hero-god) he gave out a lot of xp each session. Needless to say we quickly went from the usual better then mortals to stupid awesome in short order. So for one session when we were at demi-god level (army of one and some of the shadow abilities is so much fun) without warning the storyteller handed out stats for a small human mercenary group and gave us a little while to add some actual character to them.


The group had to break into a facility and acquire random item for our employer. Everything went smoothly and more importantly normal until we got the item and tried to leave. It was really interesting to come up against creatures that the whole group had to work together to hurt when my actual scion could probably have taken it out by simply rolling over in his sleep.


Basically ended with 3 of the 6 strong team being forced to retreat to the roof of a near by building only to see rio de janeiro in chaos and what could only be described as Mecha-Cthulhu (created by one of the evil scions our group had been fighting). This was the cue for our scion guys to reappear, one of whom obviously brought Christ the Redeemer to life so that Mecha-Cthulhu and Kung-fu Jesus could have a face off (it was just that type of game).


Having played as the mercenaries it felt really good to have saved some of them, and it was a great way to remind us all that while we could survive storms of bullets and whatnot the people we were fighting for could not.


So yeah thanks to that I am a big fan of this type of thing. I do think it is something that you can only use once in a blue moon to get the real effect.
 
Definitely a successful session, definitely a successful item in the GM toolbox. Don't know if it would translate well to PbP, but it'll certainly be something I'll put to use in future tabletop. I've rarely seen my players so enthused after a session, and its proven to be a great way to both drive home the stakes and remind the players how dangerous their enemy is.


Not to mention at least a couple of them hate the final boss now.
 
It is great when you can make people hate the villains as much as they should be hated. It's why I like One Piece so much, it does have a ridicules amount of flashbacks and what not in each arc but they serve to really show how much a bastard the dig evil really is so that when Luffy finally turns up and beats the crap out of them for all the people they have wronged you just can not help but love it.
 
This sounds intriguing. I'll have to give it a try when I get far enough into a long term game again.
 
I ran a Clan Wars era L5R game once, and had characters doing the reverse of that, occasionally hopping into the shoes of some very high powered and influential characters. Two of my players absolutely shined as Bayushi Shoju and Kachiko, playing their classic fall better than canon sources.


Of course, this technique can fail massively with either inexperienced or jerk players. The former has never played such movers and shakers before, and are inadequate at properly portraying them. The latter will take advantage of their character's power and Metagame knowledge to turn things into their own direction. Unfortunately, when that happens, safety nets and plot railroads are required, and neither are a good choice.
 
Great idea for world immersion. Often players are so character focused they can lose track of the larger plots or story lines you are offering them.
 
It's also useful for showing them that the universe doesn't revolve around their characters but still helping them experience some of the awesome parts
 
We've run a three-and-a-half year long Warhammer fantasy role play campaign that is actually still ongoing at some extend. It was originally a group of a dwarf, an elf and a human just running around getting pushed in to one thing by another by our GM and his beloved vampires. After about a year, we had another little campaign on the side happening about 50 years before that one starring two great heroes, an epic Bretonnian grail knight and an Emperial Charlatan with a knack for feigning dashing heroics. In the long campaign we began hearing stories about those two heroes and their actions in one campaign affected the other. Later after two years more, the other characters had died, been revived, changed out, thrown 200 years into the future of Warhammer where industry ruled, witnessed the fall of elves and the disappearance of orcs, the reign of man supreme. The heroes died and we are now playing their descendants 30 years after the last battle. A group of scared teens with no real talents living in their ancestors shadows, being pushed around by people with great expectations that they have no chance of fulfilling.


It's a really interesting timeline consisting of several campaigns that have an impact on the others. It has really helped us having a clear idea of what's going on around us and so that we never get the feeling that we're above the rest of the world.
 
It works well, fantastic really, in tabletop. Not so much in PBP when clutter comes into effect. It's why I do Interludes and the like--used them extensively in my last huge Exalted game. But around the table? Fucking gold. In the Golden Age of Deland RPGs, before my time, the original group's Star Wars GM (who was apparently like unto a god with Star Wars mythos) used to run sessions all the time with one-off characters for big plot pivotal moments. It's hugely effective and engaging for the characters. Also ultra-rewarding. I posit that it could be golden for PBP if the GM can prepare a slate of characters or even personalities for players to use in a thread.
 
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