Gone Gaming

The title of this post refers to an old Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, where an old Indian is showing the little Indians the only piece of the buffalo the Indians don’t use, a joke off of the often repeated bit of myth that “Indians used every part of the buffalo”.  The reason I focus on this is that in a well told story nothing should go to waste. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t waste time having fun, but rather that even the “throw-away” bits can serve a part in moving the plot forward.

It’s part of the reason that I encourage detailed backgrounds for characters, as it allows you to pull seemingly innocuous details out and base plot lines around them, or modify a Non-Player Character you were going to include in the story anyway to fit in with a character from the Player’s back story.  Similarly, when you are going through a gaming session, you will often create extraneous details from what is necessary for the immediate session, such as names for background NPCs, or places the players debated going to but didn’t, or an item that you gave the characters that seemed to serve no immediate purpose, for example. After the session, try to either note down those details or otherwise commit them to memory. You can use them in later sessions to add depth to your campaign, showing that even though the characters might not be focusing on something in the game, it still has a reality of its own that will continue in the background to the story.

Similarly, I try to make sure that every character’s abilities have a chance to shine, no matter how esoteric. It’s a matter of letting the situations come up that will give them those opportunities, and letting those abilities be used in flexible ways. For example, it might not seem that “cooking” would be very useful to a vampire, unless you let them use it to mask the taste of their blood in a drink that will be used to blood-bond someone to them (In White-Wolf’s Vampire games, the blood of a vampire can be used to forge a supernatural loyalty to them if drunk 3 times). Or it could be used to find ways to store blood without letting it spoil, or to spice it up to entertain other vampires at a “dinner” party. When you let these things happen, you allow players to really develop their characters into unique individuals, and customize the story to suit their interests while keeping it on-track with the plan you have in mind.

I find that it’s often a good idea to let hints about planned events come out sooner rather than later, as it builds anticipation, and makes the eventual unveiling more meaningful to the players. It also gives them a chance to become part of bringing it about or averting it, and makes the dramatic pay off much more impressive. There’s nothing quite like the look of dawning realization on a player’s face as they realize that the enemy they’ve been hunting is actually their best friend, who had been replaced by something else… and that the clues were plain as can be all along, just waiting for them to put them together and realize the truth of the situation. You can surprise your players, but you want to do it in a way that does not shatter their suspension of disbelief. Surprises need to at the very least fit in with events retrospectively, and preferably should appear obvious with hindsight, enhancing their believability.

I could go on for a while about listening to the little tidbits that your players discuss about the events going on in your game, adapting your game to better suit the themes and events that they find interesting, but that’s a separate post for another time.

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