• I on the other hand got published on 365 Tomorrows. This is actually slightly relevant to this blog.

• On the other other hand, I noticed that the copy of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook I ordered on Amazon.com is not actually coming. They seem to have cancelled the order without telling me. Darn.

We started with Dungeons and Dragons, as a continuation of the previous adventure which my players had mastered without any killed enemies at all. I foolishly had expected that we’d be in the dungeon a bit longer. Unfortunately they managed to find a viable way to find a way to the plot MacGuffin (an altar that raises the dead without the interference of all those pesky priests). They killed a few troglodytes (the neanderthal kind) and then managed to get themselves close to the altar without killing more than a few revenants on the way. Technically they were supposed to find the altar after dealing with the tribe of troglodytes. Instead they killed two of the trogs outright, then blamed their deaths on the undead when they met the next group of the tribe, got rough directions to where the undead were coming from, and the used then goblin cleric’s turn undead power to determine where exactly that particular wave of undead was coming from, herding the undead the right direction. Then they found the place and decided to get the hell out of there. Did I mention that these are the most careful adventurers I have ever played with?
I thought I had a few more hours of play in that dungeon, so I didn’t have anything prepared for the rest of the night. We played a bit more with them trying to get out of the city quick before the questgiver noticed that the altar he had them find was mostly resurrecting undead, and then they went on their way as caravan guards towards Thunderholt.

Well, yeah. It was nice as long as it lasted, but I should have thought a bit more what to do if they managed to solve the adventure too fast. I had thought about using another adventure I wanted to play for a long time, but I didn’t get to lay the quest hooks because they decided to leave town too quick. I have to make this work a bit better next time.
The rest of the night we tried out Over The Edge, which my players got rather enthusiastic about once I had explained the free-form character generation to them. After a short while they had three nice characters that I thought had some promise for an OtE game: a mage from a vanilla (anime) fantasy setting with the tendency to get transported to places he did not really want to be, a post-adolescent middle-eastern commando turtle (like a teenage mutant ninja turtle, only older and geographically confused), and a reporter with an identity problem and coffee addiction.

It went over surprisingly well, or maybe less surprisingly so, considering that my players are rather fond of roleplaying anyway. So far they tried to get the mage back to his dimension, but did not really get so far in that endeavour.

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No, I don’t have a clue about Amber Diceless Roleplaying. Still had to make that joke. The beer is decent but nothing really special. A bit too bitter for my taste and not very pronounced otherwise.

But yes, Over the Edge seems to be going OGL under the name Warp (Wanton Roleplaying System).

It’s not like I am really so excited about it, OtE is a system that is so freeform it might be hard to properly play it (still have to try it though), but the freedom of the character generation system allows some really interesting characters at least. So let’s see what the future will bring.

Over the Edge (game) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For Christmas my girlfriend gave me an Amazon giftcard. She only figured that out the day before Christmas, which makes this the first time in four years when I had her present earlier than she had mine. Now such a giftcard is a nice idea, normally, it just met two roadbumps: it was a giftcard for the American Amazon (which meant that the postage would cost A LOT of the amount from the card), and of course the fact that many things I wanted would not be delivered to me.

I live in Poland, and even if Amazon shops claim they deliver to Poland (which they do, because I checked it multiple times) I always got the message that one or another item could not be delivered to me because of my location. As my current wants were mostly concerned with roleplaying games, and there mostly with the OSR, this was a bit annoying. (Specifically I wanted to have a copy of the Fiend Folio, but it just did not seem possible to get it from any shop that delivered here).
In the end I went with some classics: Call of Cthulhu and Over the Edge.
Now, I have the rulebook for the first one in Germany. The only problem with it being: it’s in German. And while most of my players at least know some German we still are playing in English.
The second one is another interesting case. I once had a copy of that game. I know the game. I have been looking for that game for years, and then I finally got it after years, looked a bit into it and proposed it to some people. But all the players I had back then said: thanks, but no thanks.
So it went back on the shelf. And then disappeared.

No, I don’t know how. The same thing happened to a few other RPG books in my collection that I distinctively remember having, the other one of note being a book with CoC one-shots I was desperately looking for at one point. They just remain gone.
Hmm… an Over the Edge rulebook that just disappears? How fitting…
Over the Edge is a game with an interesting history. It came out of a project between game designers Mark Rein*Hagen and Jonathan Tweet. Both had worked on Ars Magica before, now they were working on another project. Mark’s variation of the project was what later became Vampire: The Masquerade, while Tweet’s became Over the Edge.

While not really that similar both use a dice pool mechanic, and both deal a lot with conspiracies and dark secrets.
Now I guess it won’t be necessary to write about Vampire: The Masquerade, anyone involved in roleplying has heard about that game before (my opinion of it just for completeness sake: neat mechanics and nice background, smothered to death by metaplot). Not so about Over the Edge. While it had some modicum of success, with an host of scenarios and supplements, and even a second edition, it never really went mainstream. Nowadays it’s mostly known as a good example/inspiration for indie rpgs.

So, what was so special about it?

2 things: the rules and the setting. Both made the game a bit of an acquired taste.

1. The Rules

The Over the Edge rules are so lightweight it is hard to go more light without playing freeform rpgs. Nevertheless they are functional and easy to grasp. Characters are defined by a variety of traits and flaws which one is encouraged to chose specifically for the character. And in game one can role on these attributes.  It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s a nightmare for every simulationist.

2. The setting

Al Amarja, the island that is the setting of the game, is heavily inspired by the Interzone in Burroughs novels. Actually Burroughs always comes up as an inspiration. As do David Lynch, Franz Kafka, a lot of other literature and movies in the same vein: Al Amarja is a hotbed of spionage, mystical activities, mad science, and political activism. And did I mention conspiracies? There are conspiracies. Lots and lots of conspiracies. Even the existance of the island has largely been hidden by that, the island being just south of Sicily (and with that rather close to the real life Interzone…).

Frankly it was the setting which attracted me to the system. It sounded like so much fun. Of course there is a problem with that on might find out when trying to run a game there: do you know how much stuff changed the last twenty years? One has to think very deeply about how these changes affected the setting before being able to run proper adventures there. Oh, I could tell the players: you cannot investigate on the internet, but how much sense would that make? Especially to people who use Wikipedia as a second brain.

There is another problem in that vein as well: the game was written from an American perspective, and it shows. So we have the assumption that everybody wants to have guns. Or that the university has greek fraternities. And a lot of other small but significant things. This of course is designed that way for a reason: Tweet was writing the game for Americans. It jst makes it rather grating for Europeans. Still, not too bad. Most of the stuff can be justified somehow.

Of course I read someone’s comment on a forum once who said he had made up Wikipedia pages for the island and the most important features there that were so good his players started to assume it actually was a real place they were going to. That actually sounds like awesome props for such a game. I think I will plan a one-shot in the game and not tell my players what sort of game it will be.

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The Land of Nod’s Beastmaster class. There is a large part of fantasy/adventure literature that gets short shrift by us roleplayers because nobody ever thought about putting that particular character concept into a class. Well, here’s for all those wanting to play Tarzan.

The Land of Nod’s Scientist class. I might not actually use this in all my campaigns, but it is an archetype that could be seen as quite universal. Also I was wondering if I wanted to have a more technology centered class in the setting, but so far all variants i looked at (Alchemists et al.) were a bit lacking. This class has some beautiful ideas in there.

And the Bard from there. Seriously, The Land of Nod has some awesome stuff, just as I would like it in my own game. The kicker about the bard? The class doesn’t have proper spells. For some reason I never thought it a good idea to give access to spells to most of the characters possible. The class DOES have some spell like abilities, but not the usual spell lists that for some reason really don’t fit. (The Barbarian from the same article doesn’t really fit in my opinion)

The Yogi:  a pacifist cleric variation that does not get experience from violence. Sounds like an interesting challenge to me.

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… and now you are driving a dirty Ducato.

No, seriously. It’s even a bit creepy. In Poland Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is THE roleplaying game. This comes from the time when Poland finally opened up to the west and the first proper game that was published was WFRP. It gelled perfectly with the Polish soul. And if you don’t know what I mean with that you have never seen vendors sell candyfloss and balloons on a Polish cemetary.

This of course poses a certain problem for me, as I have a profound dislike for Warhammer.

It’s not that I really hate the system. I will not go and tell lies about it, I will not try to make it worse than it is. There are even some nuggets in there that I really like (e.g. Skaven). But in my opinion the whole Warhammer background is needlessly gauche and over the top.

Warhammer is… how shall I say it? Like a Manowar album. It’s nice listening to their songs once in a while, singing along with these ridiculous lyrics, trying not to break into laughter when looking at them in their videos, all earnest and proud. But how am I supposed to deal with that all the time?

Of course the problem so far only came up in discussions about roleplaying. In my English language group I have two players who do play Warhammer, but I don’t. And so I don’t need to play it with them. And I don’t speak enough Polish to play in a game yet, so that option will not even come up.

The infuriating thing comes when someone tries to tell me that Warhammer is the top of the evolutionary ladder for RPGs, and that D&D must be for kids because it has all these ridiculous monsters. Completely unaware that playing Warhammer and telling people that their game is kids’ stuff comes across… rather like a bratty teenager, desperate not to be seen as a kid anymore.

Well, hello, we are playing games in which we are wizards and thieves and elves and whatnot. Not trying to seem like kids should not be the top of our priorities!

Of course I met other people like him before. The same arguments I heard in Germany about DSA. Maybe that is why it annoys me that much. Because I thought I had these discussions behind me already.

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For a bit of background: I was an amateur thespian for a long time, mostly just doing some drama stuff in school and university, sometimes when working with children and adolescents. So I was not actually doing anything really close to real acting, even if a lot of effort went into it.

So it was kind of natural for me to use some of the techniques from acting for my games.

Now, both are not the same. As other people do as well, I tend to get a bit annoyed when someone tries to go full armchair thespian, acting out everything, hogging all the spotlight with his one character. But I noticed that it sometimes helps me as a DM, especially when doing adventures with a lot of different NPCs. I normally try to give every one of them an at least marginally different voice, most likely due bad experiences with some DMs who could do exactly two different voices (one funny, one earnest).

Leading by bad example: you don’t want to be THAT DM, do you?

One of the main ‘tricks’ (well, it’s not really a trick) is to warm yourself up before the game. You will be playing something akin to improvisational theatre for three to five hours, and the DM is the one who has to get into multiple roles. Yes there might be a lot of dice rolling involved, but even then fights will be with NPCs (…hopefully).

So why not get yourself in the mood for that before?

Now, warming up sounds terribly proactive, but I am not talking about going out, doing some stretching and some laps on the track and then sinking to the ground with a heart attack. That actually might be bad considering your players would be waiting for you while you are so selfish to die somewhere on the race track when you should be dungeon mastering.

No, I am talking about some basic things that help you to get into the mood for acting. Something like making funny voices, twisting your tongue around so it doesn’t feel like it was glued into your mouth anymore, and, maybe, even getting up and stretching yourself in a few ways.

That’s not too hard, is it?

I noticed that doing a fifteen minute warm up improves my performance in the game quite nicely. Sure, at one point during the game I might reach that level of ability without a warm up, but it will take time, and when working a full workday before a game it will end up with me already falling into this dark hole of braindeadness that follows 13 or 14 hours of thinking on my feet. (player: “So, I am attacking the orc.” me: “huh?” player: “I am attacking the orc!” me: “oh, right… right… I need to roll for that orc, don’t I?”)

The idea about warming up exercises and games before playing theatre is simple: getting people out of their comfort zones into a mood that allows for quick thinking on their feet, getting voice and body ready for acting. This of course means that in many cases it is not necessary for DMs and players to do a full program of exercises before. When I was playing theatre it was about 30-45 minutes of warming up, and that was before practice, with basic exercises, and then going to short impro pieces and, yes, even some roleplaying. According to professional actors it is not really possible to really act without these exercises, but of course, no matter what people think about the artistic merit of roleplaying: It would be too involving to do all of this just for a quick session of D&D. But at least a few quick exercises help me as a DM if I get myself out of my comfort zone and into a mood to do a spontaneous goblin impersonation when need arises.

Further information (theatre-related):

Some nice videos about this from the Royal National Theatre: Breathing, Resonance of Voice, Opening up the Voice, and Articulation.

A short guide with more explanation on how to do a Physical Warm Up from the British Theatre Guide.

Improv Encyclopedia has a whole lot of Warm Up exercises. These are mostly for real theatre groups though. I think there might be a bit of sense in doing a short teambuilding exercise as is described here, but which group is seriously going to do that? In my opinion it might help people to gel with each other a bit better. Maybe I should think about some similar ones that can be done in 5 minutes around a table. Short session of Mafia before the real game maybe?

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