I think names are surprisingly important — they establish the atmosphere of your world just like background music sets the tone of a film.
I generate random words using an online tool (recently I've been using donjon.bin.sh). For my world, the fantasy names are too "tropey", so I use the Markov Chains generator (Markov Chains use source text to structure the random syllables it generates—if your source text has no Zs, nor will your random words).
In general (but not always) I figure that short, one syllable names are most suitable for nicknames, or for common, lower class names. Two syllable names tend to be typical, ordinary people, three syllable names are more well-to-do, four syllables names are more high-class (or pretentious) and five or more syllable names are very exotic—probably foreign dignitaries, wizards or sages. (They'll probably have shorter names that friends actually know them by—if they have friends!)
Place names are just as important—in fact, even more important! Often place names contribute to someone's name, or a historic person's name can become the name of a place.
Similarly, the names of Gods and Goddesses are vital. Get them wrong, and it'll skew the whole vibe of your setting.
If you like, you can get creative, and make name words for particular regions have a particular character. Grab a source text for your Markov Chains that has the forms "kn" and "gn" in a lot. Okay, that's one particular area. Use the combos "dz" and "dj" for another area.
Maybe have one area where everyone who's male has a name ending in o, and everyone who's female has a name ending in a. And, of course, the residents of that area will add o or a to the characters' names—because that's the rule for names!
When the PCs meet someone then they should, eventually, be able to guess their approximate social status, the region their family comes from, their religion, and maybe even their current place of residence—just from their name!
And yes. People's names can change over time! Part of them will stay the same, but part may be to do with their profession, their home or something they're famous for.
I tend to find my "hit rate" on suitable names is only about 2%. Most random words aren't easily pronouncable, or just don't feel right. So sometimes I'll spend a half hour just generating names and saving them off in a list. I don't know what the names are for yet, I just have them on the side, then slot them into game sessions as appropriate. Yeah. I almost never use more than 25% of my name lists. So I generate more!
And pro-tip: some regions may have default names. In medieval England, loads of people were just called John—meaning, "You! Unimportant person!". John Smith, John Miller, John Farmer, John Wheelwright… And even if that wasn't their actual name, if that's what his Lordship calls you, who are you to argue?
As a GM, I tend to think about encounters in quite a different way. First, if I have a location which I require the players to go to, for an adventure to happen—typically at the start of a campaign—I'll start at scene one, "Okay, you're there!" then ask the players why and how their characters have decided to go there.
This is no different from making sure that adventurers ARE adventurers, or wannabe adventurers, not shopkeepers or farmers or blacksmiths. Sure, you can have a "fish out of water" scenario, but, in general, you want the premise of each character to be compatible with adventuring.
In the case of encounters, I tend to think about the landscape, the ecosystem, and the logic of the world.
If there are ogres about, what do they eat? Where do they get their supplies? What other ogres or other creatures do they interact with? Once you start tracking the activities of the monsters and the rest of the world, then the whole thing starts to feel a lot more logical.
Smart players will start to make logical conclusions, from the evidence of their presence, that encounters may happen. Even if they never actually encounter an ogre, they'll see the overgrown roadway, and wonder why the road is not in use. They may find the deer guts, and wonder who gutted it before crrying it away. I let the particular flow of the story emerge from the logic of the world, and what the characters do in it, rather than focusing on "narrative beats".
What this means, of course, is that you have to design the context carefully, so that it's both coherent and challenging. And you have to operate the active parts of the world, even when the players don't interact with them.
Hard sci-fi, you say? Excellent features could be battling cancer thanks to cosmic rays, and the disintegration of skeletal mass and deteriorating vision thanks to zero gravity. Punishing and crushingly repetitive schedules of medical therapy and physical exercise, plus batteries of psychological tests could add to the excitement of an expedition!
Or are the crew going to be far more fit for space travel than early humans?
Will their bodies be entirely synthetic, and their minds simply transmitted to the exploration craft after it arrives? Or will they be genetically engineered, proof against the rigours of interplanetary exploration? Will they be human at all?
Or could they be disposable human workers employed by an unaccountable interplanetary corporation, who are holding their nearest and dearest hostage to ensure their compliance?
Short version: if you want to go genuinely hard sci-fi, things may look very, very different to how they're depicted in TV space operas.
I tend to be sceptical about unrelenting grimness—because I try to make my game world logical.
"The world has been enveloped by a fog of doom for a hundred years". Okay, all people are dead from starvation. The last cannibals died decades ago. Next world!
The world has to be—has to be—sufficiently benign that children will, on the whole, survive into adulthood. Think about the hazards you put into your world. A 10% chance of killing each inhabitant each year? The population is now plummeting.
I think the way to evoke the setting you want is to have good areas and bad areas, benign conditions and crises. It's the contrast between the two that'll evoke the feeling you want. Happy kids, educated populations, active trade and thriving farms will just serve to highlight how grim things get when the systems of society break down.
A war, plague, fire or flood, a bad ruler, a subversive cult, or a band of wandering murder hobos become unutterably grotesque when your characters see its effects on ordinary people.
Has anyone mentioned the card game Boss Monster? https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131835/boss-monster-dungeon-building-card-game
I totally agree—but why don't players like an adventure? It only maybe because the adventure is poorly designed. (In fact, back in the days of Judges Guild I and my friends ran a whole bunch of incredibly poorly designed adventures, but still had loads of fun!) It could be about poor group dynamics. It could be about a disconnect between expectations and actuality. It could be about poor GMing techniques. Perhaps it could be about something else.
If the aim of a game designer is the help GMs and players to have the best possible experiences, then it surprises me that game designers don't attend more to the processes of preparing for and playing the game, of recruiting and selecting the right players, and giving them the right expectations.
Then again, maybe there are other factors that motivate game designers. Or perhaps people buy games for reasons other than to have a great play experience. (Both of these things are at least a little bit true!)
Some thoughts about System Mechanics and Game Worlds.
When you buy a TTRPG, essentially, you're getting a bundle of two (or perhaps three) things.
I'm going to put aside the third one, for now, and just talk about what I think are the big two in terms of page count: System Mechanics, and Game World.
Lots of people who are keen on system mechanics seem to feel that game world can pretty much take care of itself.
As long as the game master has a rough idea of what they want to present ("Hey, generic fantasy medieval! D&D-ish. Warcraftish. Lord of the Ringsy. Sorta like The Witcher maybe. Man, you know what I mean!") then the main bulk of the game book is preoccupied with what dice to roll in what circumstances, refering to what game system. To make things simple, adventures are often geographically isolated—an underground complex, a mountain pass, an unexplored island, an abandoned fort. Aaaand with that, we're ready to roll!
In the opposite corner, there are folks who feel that background is vital. They're happy enough with a rules-light system, just as long as the game world adheres to a particular canon. That means EITHER that the game refers to other media—films or books or comics—that the GM really should be familiar with before they get started, OR the bulk of the game book will be dedicated to conveying game world lore.
Okay—so the proposition of many rules light systems is, "rulings not rules"—in other words, the GM can develop detailed or specific rules systems on the fly, to cope appropriately with the particular path the players take.
And the proposition of many open world, or "sandboxy" systems is that the GM can develop the game world as appropriate, often according to complex tables (AD&D wilderness amd random encounter tables, I'm looking at you!) responding both to what the player charaters do, and to the development of the players' skills and objectives.
I suggest that it's quite possible to have a great deal of RPG fun in either circumstance —rulings not rules, or exquisitely defined system mechanics… emergent game world, or fabulously detailed canon. Or anything in between.
Right then. So, if we buy that, we've just established that NEITHER system mechanics NOR game world is vital to a great game. In fact, games can do without either… so can they do without BOTH?
The very existence of one-page, ultra-light RPGs suggests the answer is yes!
Okay, so if that's the case, then why do we sometimes have disappointing game sessions? We can deduce that it must be the case that the disappointment of a poor game session is simply not addressed by EITHER the game world OR the system mechanics.
So what does address the problems that result in poor game sessions? And why isn't that the main focus of game books?
I'm not working on anything, I'm playing with a theory. The core of the idea is that people to their best, most free-flowing, most imaginative GMing when they don't really know what they're doing. When they've first taken up the hobby, when they are running a new game that they don't really know well, or when the player characters go so far off the prepared plot that the GM has to improvise wildly.
This is outside a lot of people's comfort zone—but I think there's an element of truth to it. What if, the more you study how to GM, the more you work at it, the harder it gets?
Were this to be the case, it might explain why many GMs are in an endless quest to discover that cool new system/background/adventure that'll REALLY create an immersive experience.
Again, were it to be the case, what would be the best rules system to get back to the improvisatory state of gaming naivety that makes the magic happen?
I'm toying with the idea of running a campaign with no game system at all—to force me, as the GM, to improvise on the spot!
Late to this party and I have to agree to Ian M Banks, Ursula K Le Guin, Philip K Dick (very weird, discontinuous, but free-floating and fascinating) and many more. Just to add a couple of things that HAVEN'T been mentioned, that really may get your sci-fi juices flowing: Brian Aldiss's expansive "Helliconia" trilogy is a cracker - and I think you may see echoes of it in the premise of "Game of Thrones". I'd also like to plug John Brunner - his work "The Shockwave Rider" is dated now, but essential reading. It is the first book to ever feature the idea of a computer virus. Also DO follow up on "The Machine Stops" by EM Forster - full text available online for free. If it doesn't BLOW YOUR MIND that it features social media overload, and was written in 1909, well, nothing will.
In new wave sci fi, you might also want to check out J.G. Ballard - too weird and hardcore for many, but the missing link between Moorcock-style sci-fi and mainstream fiction - think 1960s to 1990s Black Mirror. One last recommendation. If you have time and interest, check out the much neglected and ultra-weird work of C.L. Moore. Her "Northwest Smith" character is the prototype for Han Solo for sure, (Space Pirate and smuggler with a concealed heart of gold, flies a deceptively fast ship with just one crewman, who's an alien. Carries a "heat blaster" which is also configurable as a energy sword. Too many coincidences!)
RPGaDay2023
Okay, so I didn't do one answer a day, I did all these answers in the last few days. But what the hell, it's done now. #RPGaDay2023
First RPG played this year:
None. I haven't played an RPG this year.
First RPG Gamemaster:
My dad, for about an hour. I think in 1977. I rolled a character—an elf, as I recall. He invented a dungeon, using the light blue dungeon geomorphs.
I entered the first room, through an entrance which looked like a huge, monstrous mouth. When I entered, it snapped shut, trapping me inside the dungeon with its metal teeth.
I said that was unfair and refused to play any more.
Little did I know, I was hooked! I never played with my dad again—something which I hugely regret.
First RPG bought this year:
None. I haven't bought an RPG this year.
Most recent game bought:
Barbarians of Lemuria, Mythic Edition.
Oldest Game Played:
D&D Basic. Diplomacy. Metamorphosis Alpha. Traveller Edition 1.
Favourite game you never get to play:
Barbarians of Lemuria, Homebrew Edition.
Smartest RPG you've played:
I can't answer this question. They're all smart, or they're all stupid, depending on how you play them. But as to the smartest RPG mechanism in a game, it probably is the Traveller 2d6 plus/minus modifiers to get 8 for success system. It's so simple, and so well balanced, to accommodate modifiers of ±0-3 or at an extreme, ±0-5. Barbarians of Lemuria's core mechanic is similarly elegant.
Favourite Character:
Daryl Dyte, the Thief with a Black Country accent. I played him weekly for years. It must have driven my fellow players crazy!
Favourite Dice:
D6s. Yeah, I know that there are all these other cool dice types, but, practically, D6s simply work best. Rectilinear, make nice bell curves, can generate wide ranges of numbers. If I get to choose one other type, It's D10s. With D6s and D10s you can do everything that every other dice type can do.
Favourite tie-in fiction:
No thanks. I don't like tie-in fiction. I like every game-master's world to be their own thing, for the players to discover. I can't stand debates about canon—the point about a game-master's world is that it should be undiscovered, unique and surprising, not conformant to some other vision.
Probably the only fiction that I've read that fits in with a game is HP Lovecraft.
Weirdest game you've played:
Maybe Numerera? I've only played it once. Maybe Call of Cthulhu—weird in a way that the question probably doesn't mean!
Oldest Game you still play:
I'm up for playing any game, however old. However, I'm starting to think that the key to good gaming is simplicity. Some early game systems (AD&D I'm looking at you!) are needlessly complex. Were I to go for a D&Dalike, it'd probably be a BX retroclone.
Most memorable character demise:
Not mine, but a friend's. The party surrounded an iron golem and started bashing the hell out of it with magic weapons. It quickly succumbed, after bashing various party members down to a low number of hit points. The DM ruled, "The giant, iron figure starts to collapse, but which way does it fall? 1, North, 2, Northeast, and so on." My friend's character was West of the golem, and started chanting, "Not seven! Not seven! Not seven!" The DM rolled a D8, and inevitably, it came up seven. Failing a saving throw to dodge, the character, who was wearing plate armour, became known, in death, as "Mr. Toothpaste".
Favourite Convention Purchase:
Absolutely no idea. You're assuming I've been to a game convention less than 30 years ago, aren't you?
Favourite Con Module/One Shot:
Again, barely qualified to answer. I guess Tomb of Horrors.
Game I wish I owned:
The original Empire of the Petal Throne?
The Yellow King RPG? Maybe Tales from The Odd? The thing is, when I buy a game I'm almost always disappointed. I like to play, but I don't have a hankering to constantly buy new games.
I also have an issue with artwork—if it's too specific, too detailed, has the wrong vibe, or just reacts awkwardly with the pictures of the game world I originate in my imagination, then it can block my ability to imagine the world of the game in the way I want to.
Funniest Game you've played?
Paranoia
Favourite game system?
I like WHFRP's career system. I like Traveller's resolution system. I like Barbarians of Lemuria's core mechanic. I like the simplicity of Dragon Warriors. I like the creeping terror of Call of Cthulu.
Favourite published adventure?
Ravenloft. Masks of Nyarlathotep.
Will still play in 20 years time?
Liberally homebrewed derivatives of Barbarians of Lemuria.
Favourite licensed RPG?
West End Games's Star Wars RPG.
Best Secondhand RPG Purchase?
I don't think I've bought an RPG second hand. Hah! Actually that's not true! I bought copies of books 5 and 6 of Dragon Warriors on Ebay, to make my set complete. Book 6 was appallingly expensive—around £60 (it should have been under £10!) but I had to have it. I went on to run a 2 year campaign, weekly, in the 2010s.
Coolest Looking RPG product/book?
It's cheating to say Art and Arcana, isn't it? I really like anything featuring the work of Erol Otus. It's good because it's evocative, gonzo, fantastical, gritty, heroic, scary, bizarre, but also kind of primitive, almost cartoonish, like tatoos. So Dungeon Crawl Classics, The Arduin Grimoire, and AD&D's Deities and Demigods. (I have the early version which includes the Cthulhu Mythos!)
Complex / Simple RPG you play?
Simple is the way to go. Barbarians of Lemuria. I like the sound of Into The Odd. I haven't got time for complex, but, for the record, I have GM'ed Aftermath—so complex your character's movement rate may change as you expend ammunition. Each bullet fired makes you less encumbered!
Unplayed RPG You Own?
Dungeonworld—I thought I'd find it really inspiring, but I don't. In particular, it attempts to conjure up exactly the tropes I don't like about D&D.
Noir—The Film Noir RPG
Favourite Character Sheet?
Homemade AD&D Character Sheets, made by me in the 1980s with a typewriter.
Game I'd like a new edition of?
No thanks. Really, I don't hanker after new editions—I play with what I've got.
Scariest game I've ever played?
Call of Cthulhu. A homebrewed D&D adventure by one of my friends, called "The Tomb" in which two thieves, in pitch darkness, were trying to escape from catacombs that proved to be much more extensive and more hazardous than they expected.
Most memorable encounter?
When playing: our characters interacted with an NPC—a powerful wizard, and took him through our reasoning as to why literally the only person in the city we were absolutely sure hadn't done the series of gruesome murders was him. Later it transpired it was him, of course!
When GMing: The evil cult had assigned their most expendible member—a young hybrid snakeman—as a guide for the party, who would, unwittingly, lead them (and himself) to their doom.
As the characters debate whether or not to do away with this grim abomination, I described him using his claws to play a flicking game with a collection of buttons. All of a sudden, they stopped seeing him as a monster, and started seeing him as a child—after which they hadn't the heart to execute him. He ended up becoming a PC's henchman—the perfect sidekick for a mysterious, and somewhat frightening, wizard.
Most obscure RPG that you've played?
Published game, probably Chivalry & Sorcery. Even more obscure is the unpublished Persyl—my own, teenage attempt at a "Rulings not Rules" D&D derivative.
Favourite RPG of all time?
They're all great, and they're all flawed. In terms of game most played, it has to be Traveller. In the 80s I ran an Edition 1 campaign which lasted, in weekly sessions, for more than 4 years. It was vastly expansive.
Now, though, I can't do science fiction. Technology has changed the world so much since the 80s that I seriously doubt that the notion of humans with discrete, individual identities and will even exist in successful future societies.
Call of Cthulhu is great for one-shots and short adventures. I haven't kept up with the latest editions, though.
Barbarians of Lemuria is my current preoccupation—it may yet become my all-time favourite, if I'm able, successfully, to work out how magic works in my world.
Compare your answers with those from the first #RPGaDay.
They exist! I didn't do the first #RPGaDay.