A Bit From Column A and .....

   I am happy to be a part of two, very fun and very different role playing groups. One is online and one is a real life table top. Group A enjoys playing different rule sets and different settings. They enjoy painting the picture of what is happening and are more interested in cool stories and outcomes then they are in being successful or ethical (the two are practically synonymous for me). Group B enjoys the tactical side of role playing and trying to overcome the opposition within the rules as they are provided and slightly modified in advance. It is a utilitarian approach that focuses on numbers as a representation of real life events.

   I myself enjoy both styles. But what I am learning about myself is that I enjoy neither in exclusivity. In fact, I rather abhor both styles the less they rely on the other. Group A is very good about getting into an accent, a character, a personality, a moment, or a theme. They tell the GM that they want to "reach back, and with all my might, swipe at the demon's head with my blood drenched sword." Problem is that the rules call for a modifier for an attempted head shot and the sword is unfamiliar to the character. The minuses to the attack role, according to the rules, would make it practically impossible to hit. So they miss. Then the demon plows through them in spectacular fashion and we all have a laugh and roll up new characters, or worse, pick up a whole new rule set we aren't gonna learn or get good at.
   Group B, in the same scenario, says "I swing at the demon, but I brace first to get the plus 2, then I will abort to a defensive posture to increase my defense." After consulting the charts and the calculator, the hero misses but so does the demon and we move on to the next phase; rinse and repeat.
   Group B is very good at mowing down GM opposition. We are a SWAT team. Well trained, cooperative, and thorough, we move through agents and bosses with precision; bland though it may be.

  Like my best friend always says, the truth is somewhere in the middle. All role players everywhere would benefit from finding where they fit on this scale and add a little from the other column. I wish Group A was more tactically minded. I wish Group B would add some flavor to the combat.
   I think I have a solution. Both groups could (IMO) improve their experience and success by following this rule: Be tactical in what your character is doing within the rules, THEN describe the results with colorful, descriptive, and dramatic flare.
   The above event would instead go like this. "My character wants to do an offensive shot on the demon. I'll use my Holiness power to give me a +1 this round. (rolls) I hit! My sword draws back and glows with Divine light, as it comes down I see the fear in the demon's eyes. Is it his impending doom or the presence of the Almighty that scares him. It doesn't matter. I wipe the blood from my blade."
   Now isn't that more fun.    
   Meh, whatever...... where are my dice?

Introduction: Newbie

Hello hello. My name is Wendy. I'm the newest, and least experienced of the group. I've only been playing for about a year now, and I've been here with Cup of Head for most of that.

When you ask most people how they got into Role Playing, they talk about their dad, or their uncle, or some kids from school, showing them an old D&D game, and getting them hooked. I had a very different introduction to role playing. AOL chat rooms (oh the 90s). I discovered a Star Wars RPG room when I was about 14. Once I realized it wasn’t one of those rooms where the only thing people cared about was A/S/L, I fell in love. Of course, this wasn’t a traditional RPG. I think the only rule was who ever typed the fastest got their attack in. In fact, those chat rooms are probably the only reason I can type as well as I do today.

I’d spend all night online, talking and playing with anyone who’d talk to me. X-Men was my favorite of course, and I played the same character with the same people for the next 5 years. And then we all got college homework, lives, and jobs, and I didn’t play for a good 10 years. I missed it though, and went looking for something I could get back into. I had exactly zero tabletop experience, and “role playing chat rooms” is a dark and scary Google search…

Thankfully, Roll20 exists exactly for people like me. After searching forever, I found a few groups, gave them a shot, didn’t like them. A few more, kinda liked them. Eventually, the wonderful folks here at Cup of Head decided to take me under their wings, and show me the ropes. They haven’t kicked me out yet, so I guess I’m doing something right.

We've played so many different games, it's hard for me to pick a genre as a favorite. And although I do seem to prefer the supernatural and hero type games, I just want a good game, engaging content, and great players. All of which I've found.

The rules are what get me though. While most people have years going through books and taking what they've learned in one game and applying it to the next, I'm still calculating my attack roll and trying to figure out which dice to roll. Which is why I'm reluctant to run a game. Maybe someday though. Until then, does anyone know if I can slingshot the gumbo while flying, and does shouting obscenities at the bad guy give me an attack bonus? 

Noctum signing in..

Greetings and Salutations,

I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to Cup of Head's blog readers.
You can call me Noctum. I go by many names, but this is the only one you should concern yourselves with.

I've been roleplaying for twenty years off and on. I'm in my early thirty's, so I got hooked at a young age. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was my first poison. The idea of creating your own epic stories and it's almost as if you are reading the story as it's created. That concept blew my young mind. It was like a Choose-your-own-Adventure book, but coop with your friends.

Everything changed when I got my hands on Vampire: The Masquerade in the mid 90's. I remember one of the next few days after I got the book I faked being sick just so I could stay home and read it all day. I was hooked. It was smart, sexy and violent. Those were themes that I didn't experience in D&D. Ehh.. maybe I was accustomed to violence from my previous games.

From that point forward, I considered myself a Storyteller. No longer a Dungeon Master or Game Master, I was the weaver of Stories. Most of my tales took place deep inside the World of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade's setting. My collection of WoD books grew through the years. Werewolf, Mage, Wraith, Hunter, Mummy.. the only game I didn't get mildly in to was Changeling. The concept didn't really blow my hair back and none of my friends showed interest, so I never picked it up.

Many years go by. Tabletop groups come and go. Then Roll20 came along. I joined a few online friends for a Dark Heresy game. The game lasted about a half dozen sessions, but that was enough to get me wanting more. Jumping from group to group, I didn't really seem to find the right one. Then I took and chance and joined a Only War game with another group of internet randoms. I had no idea what I was in for..

Saving worlds. Busting jokes. Frying some alien scum. Throwing out sweet catch phrases.

We all seemed to click rather quickly. Now granted, the group wasn't perfect, and through the years we've gained and lost members. But the condition our group is in now inspires pride in our gatherings. We've got some of the most fun and skilled roleplayers that I've ever met. I'm glad I took that leap a few years ago and decided to join up with the Imperial Guard, because it's been one of the best decisions of my life.

The memories and adventures that myself and my Cup of Head friends have taken is indescribable. So before I begin rambling about cool shit we've done and will do, just let me leave you with a parting thought..

Don't be afraid to step outside your roleplaying boundaries every now and then.. because you'll never know what lessons or insight you might glean from the experience.

Much love,
Noc

Sleeping to Dream/Game

Today, many still research about sleep and it's role in our lives. Hypothesis, Anecdotal evidence, studies constantly come to light to support, or even reject, the existence of "creative dreaming." Like all sciences, findings sometimes conflict with theories as research continues. With this in mind, I propose we move pass this and discuss what the majority of studies conclude: sleep facilitates creativity.

Current science claims we all spend about 20 years, on average, sleeping. Furthermore, we spend 6 of those years dreaming. If you're like me, you're probably thinking "Well that's a lot of wasted time." I would much rather be spend those 20 years "alive". It's very easy to be frustrated by it, especially when science hasn't definitively explained our need for sleep. Why can't we just come up with a synthetic method of sleeping?

Fortunately, this is not the case. Sleeping, and dreaming, is far from a waste of time. Dreams happen when the brain reboots, every 90 minutes in sleep. It's the moment when our brains are just as active as they ever can be, but are "detached" from our body. This is why we see, hear, taste and feel when nothing is actually there. In a sense, our brains create a temporary reality for us to live in. So what, then, can we accomplish with "Conscious Imagination?"

The following is a list of human accomplishments derived from dreaming:

• Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the plot of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde during a dream.
• Paul McCartney discovered the tune for the song "Yesterday" in a dream and was inspired to write "Yellow Submarine" during hypnagogia.
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was inspired by a dream at Lord Byron's villa.
• Otto Loewi, a German physiologist, won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936 for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. He discovered in a dream how to prove his theory.
• Giuseppe Tartini, a composer, gained inspiration for his Devil's Trill Sonata in a dream where the Devil appeared to him and played the melody on Tartini's violin.
• An alternate interpretation of The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters considers Francisco Goya's commitment to the creative process and the Romantic spirit—the unleashing of imagination, emotions, and even nightmares as made possible by the unconscious.

How does this relate to gaming?

Pen & Paper games are fundamentally creative. Not only on the GM's part, but also the players. In some way, we are capable of creating an imaginative story that is collaborative. Amazing! This alone is a credit to our approximately 3 pound brain/universe generator. Thankfully these games are not as vivid as our dream worlds, otherwise the experience of Sam and Mile's fighting and crashing out a 3 story window would be most uncomfortable.

But let us dissect this a little further. Some of us may have had an experienced playing with someone, in the past, who was incapable of emerging themselves into the narrative. Try as you might, you cannot get them to see or hear beyond the little metal figures and dice on the table. Instead of picturing the barbarian leaping across the bar room table and lodging his greataxe into the bar tender's sternum, they have trouble even articulating moving their metal figurine across the battle map. Have you ever asked a player "what do you do?" and they respond with "I don't know." or "What is going on again?" It may be that these players lack the fundamental creativity for gaming. For what ever reason, they are incapable to "surrendering" to their imagination. For those who can surrender to their imagination, I whole heartily applaud you. You are a boon and a joy to play games with. You inspire your GMs and immerse your fellow players.

Finally, what does dreaming specifically have to do with gaming?

Perhaps GMs have the most to gain from dreaming. Creating a world is a time consuming task. Committed GMs spend more than just a few hours before game time each week preparing and defining their world. On any given game, the players swim a metaphorical line through a sea of possibilities the GM may be prepared for. With so much time and care put into one's campaign, it's not uncommon for a GM to go to sleep thinking about their campaign. This thinking process doesn't stop when the GM drifts to sleep. It's for this reason I propose that each of us, GMs & budding GMs, keep a notepad near their bed. If ever you wake up from a vivid dream, write it down before the memory fleets away. If Mr. Hyde & Frankenstein are truly creations of dreams, then what can our own dreams create?

Has anyone ever GMed a game inspired by a dream?

Did I fail the game, or did the game fail me?

  As far as the CoH group is concerned (and I suppose gamers in general) I would be considered by most to be a cynic and a skeptic when it comes to what constitutes a good gaming system. My friend has his own blog on game mechanics and design that handles this subject thoroughly and I agree with most of it. But at the end of the day, the question I ask my self is "Did I have fun?" Nine times out of ten this has to more to do with whom I am playing than what I am playing, but most games IMO leave a lot to be desired regardless of my company.

  Blame it on mechanics, genre, style, or what have you, I find myself looking inward for the answer. As I often do in my real life, I look for my shortcomings first. Did I fail this game? Let us, for the sake of this entry, leave mechanics at the door. We will all agree to disagree on this subject for now, and from what I have experienced, I will disagree with a large majority of gamers as to what constitutes a good game mechanic and rule set. Rather let us focus on the feel of the game. I break this "feel" down into two separate yet dependent categories: genre and feel.

 Genre is simple. I like superheroes, fantasy, pulp, detective, cyber punk, western, sci-fi, and other few genres. I dislike vampire, werewolf, horror, zombie, WWII, war game, apocalyptic, and other few genres. A game can, in and of itself, make me feel the genre and thus get me halfway to where I want to go as a gamer.

 Feel is complex. It is the ability of the game to replicate that genre. The best example of this I ever played was Deadlands. I had serious problems with the mechanics, but put a poker chip in my hand, show me that custom western character sheet, and let me pretend my visa-vis is a cigar and I am having some fun. I wish I could tell you it was anything other than the game doing a good job of replicating the genre, but there it is.

  My friend recently got me involved in two super hero games (by far my favorite genre). Sentinels of the Multiverse and the recently released Dice Masters. One has fictional heroes in a card game that has each hero represented by a single deck as are his teammates, villain, and location of conflict. The latter is comprised of dice that represent a character and are rolled to see what that hero is capable of. Both captured the genre, but in different ways. The former played great. Each card played wrapped me up in the fantasy of my hero displaying one of his many abilities and which card I chose let me adjust to what the villain was doing or what my team needed. The later played flat to me. The collecting of cards and dice with my favorite Marvel and DC characters was fun, but when we got to playing, the dice representing the heroes were hard to get out. Not to mention, they did straight damage. No real powers or hero abilities to speak of.

 So here is my where my question comes from. When playing Dice Masters recently, the heroes were attacking robots and came from behind to win. After winning, we narrated how that would have looked in a comic panel or on a movie screen. The imagery was epic. The game was epic. But they were different. The game was epic because we barely won. The recap was epic because we added the feel to the genre that the game could not. So, is that the game's fault or mine? Is it incumbent on me to add the feel to the genre? Am I spoiled by games like Deadlands and Sentinels? Those games are able to provide genre and feel without me forcing my imagination into overdrive. Or, should I expect to have to add that imagery myself to get the full experience?

 I think it is a little of both but more of the responsibility should be on the game. Any good group of gamers, actors, or improvisers can bring the feel to any genre game. But the truly great games bring the genre and the feel. I watch some of our group members do a great job of playing bad games and making them fun. That is because our group is fun and imaginative. I just wish the games we play would help bring that genre and feel out more and games that are able to do that are more likely to draw me in. Sure, I can help, but I shouldn't have to help some of these games so much.

  Having said all of that, can someone get word to Dice Masters that I want the Nightwing version of Dick Grayson and not the Robin one? I need it for my collection.  Thanks.

Goodbye Jack

On Father’s Day, I lost my brother, John “Jack” Oliver Rutherford. I, like most people, simply called him Jack Jr.. I had lost people in my family before, but this by far hit me the hardest. His passing away was a shock, but not a shock. You see, my little brother lived his life on the edge. When you live on the edge, there is always the inevitable falling down on the wrongs side. He did, and now he’s gone.

The memorial service for my little brother was this past Wednesday. It was a sad goodbye. As an older brother, I will always wonder if there was more I could do to bring him out of the darkness. My duty, as the eldest, was to look after him. I failed. That’s about the way I am right now. I can handle his passing, but I’m not sure I’ll ever handle my failure to him.

There was another way I wanted to remember my brother. This Saturday, I was able to bring him to the rest of my group in my New World of Darkness game. I changed his name slightly, giving him my mother’s maiden name of Eckert instead of his father’s name of Rutherford. The picture was his, as was his profession, a painter, and the way he treated the character he interacted with.

In this New World of Darkness game, I made Jack a werewolf. There was no other way. In the New World of Darkness, werewolves are beings of two different natures. So was my brother, good yet dark. The wolves also experience a bit of rage, as my brother so often did. When I read the description of how werewolves are in the Werewolf: The Forsaken, there is my brother.

At one point, he’s talking to this character, who is playing someone new to being a werewolf. He relates that sometimes it’s hard to handle your nature. It’s a constant fight that we too often don’t win. My brother lost that fight. The craziness, the rage, the hopelessness finely caught up to him. It’s like a werewolf who loses itself to rage.

It’ll be the last time anyone will see the werewolf named Jack Eckert in any of my games. It’s just something I had to do. My goodbye.

So goodbye Jack Jr.

I love you. 

Prep music: Themes of Darkness and Horror

I've found over the years of my gaming experience that mood is everything. If you're playing an epic fantasy story, you want to feel like you've been teleported in some sort of mystical land. For sci-fi, you may want to get a feeling of out-worldliness. Every genre of role playing that's out there has its own mood, a flavor that is unique to its nature.

The job of bringing the mood of the RPG is the job of everyone at the table. Players have as much of a responsibility to atmosphere as the game master, because how they play their characters greatly affects the other players around them, and can inspire the game master whose primary job is to keep the players entertained and keep the game moving. That being said, the main keeper of mood and theme is the, in fact, game master. If players are doing a sub-par job of playing their characters in relation to what the theme of the game is, a game master could still pull off giving the game that sense of atmosphere worthy of the genre. If a game master, on the other hand, is doing a sub-par job of giving the table a sense of theme, it has a greatly larger affect on the game as a whole.

Sometimes, at least for me, I need a boost to get in the right kind of mood for a game. Knowing that setting the tone for the game is my responsibility when I'm running, I try to prepare myself mentally and get motivated for the game. The way I do this is through music. About a half hour to an hour before game, I'll listen to different kinds of music to get myself juiced to run. Just as there are different moods for the kinds of games that are out there, so too are there different kinds of music that can better prepare you for playing the theme of your choice.

Right now, I'll talk about running a game with a theme of horror and darkness. I'm currently storytelling for a World of Darkness game for the Cup of Head group on Roll20. For a game setting like the World of Darkness, it's only fitting that the mood is one of gloom and horror. Now, I don't spend my pregame warm-up listening to depressing goth and lulling myself into a sense utter despair. That's not the point. But I do try to listen to music with a darker theme to it. My goal is to almost transport myself, or my imagination, to the World of Darkness. The WoD, where monsters are real, and things are like our world but with a dark twist.

Here's a list of some of the music I try to listen to before game.

Nine Inch Nails: Mostly The Downward Spiral album. NIN, out of all the crazy dark music that's out there, is to me the most disturbing of them all. I'm sure plenty of people would disagree with me and feed me a whole plethora of music that's supposed to be darker than Nine Inch Nails. My argument is that Trent Reznor's music doesn't try to use gimmicks to be dark and horrifying. The music coming from him is just naturally disturbing and dark. No make up. No gimmicky videos. Just a lot of disturbing symbolism mixed with disturbing lyrics. Nine Inch Nails, for me, is the the theme music for the World of Darkness setting.

Rob Zombie: Rob Zombie is the face of horror music. He builds almost his entire reputation as being scary, but a scary that's supposed to be cool. Unlike Reznor, his music is chalk full of gimmicks, make up, and an almost carnival atmosphere. As much as his music is dark, it's also fun to listen to.

Godsmack: Mostly their song 'Voodoo'. This is actually a song I've been listening to a lot because of how much it reminds me of what I'm about to put my players through.

Demon Hunter: Yes, the Christian hardcore band. What Demon Hunter represents for me is that there is hope in the World of Darkness. But even hope and goodness has an edge to it.

Classical Music and Soundtracks: There are lot of them out there that are just dark and create an even more fantastic atmosphere of dread and horror than the rock inspired themes above. Here are two samples. The first is Gustav Holst's masterpiece, Mars: Bringer of War. It might not inspire horror in some people, but for me it's a powerful theme that radiates doom and destruction. The next is Wojciech Kilar's 'The Vampire Hunters' piece from 1992's Bram Stoker's Dracula. That piece pretty much speaks for itself. 

That's just a tiny sampling of the kind of music that I use to prepare myself for a horror themed game, like the World of Darkness. The trick for me is, however, not to listen to that kind of music all the time. There are a couple of reasons for this. 1. listening to horrifying music over and over again is like watching a horror flick over and over. Pretty soon is looses it's power to scare you. Sometimes it's best to wait for that music until you're ready to use it, so it can motivate you to horrifying extremes. 2. I'm not the kind of person who actually likes to dwell on darkness. At the end of the game day, I like to turn that kind of emotion off. Life is full of wonderful people and things. Dwelling on the dark often times puts you in a dark place. That's not something I'm prepared to do. I have to much good in my life for that. 

Anyway, there it is. If you have a dark, horrifying music selection you like to listen to before game, link that song in the comments section!