Sunday, March 22, 2009

Someone like that could never be a protagonist...

Today, I read the most recent issue of Naruto (most recent in Japan, in fact). This means I'm up-to-date with the "big 3" of Naruto, Bleach and One Piece. That's triple the goodness of being given a small advance of plot followed by cliffhangers every week. Not that I'm cynical or anything.

Actually, on Friday night at the Naruto game, I was told that natural cynicism is what makes English comedians awesome. Naturally, this means I'm hilarious. Right?

On the subject of Naruto (the game), we're currently involved in a fight which is now rolling into its 3rd session. This is predominantly because we're all very easily distracted, so fighting does take a while, and I'm certainly not complaining, because it's a good fight. But on paper, it sounds awful.

A couple of GMing things I want to talk about related to that, and then I'll shut up about GMing for a while. Honest.

Firstly, how to break up sessions. As someone who got my first breaks into GMing from one-offs, I have an overwhelming compulsion to wrap up every session. I'll sometimes leave cliffhangers, but they'll be really obvious and introduced purely for that purpose. This means that I've learnt perfectly how much content to prepare for each session. *That* means that I'm screwed over by my group's once-in-a-blue-moon early starts. The GMs of both the games I'm running are more the type to be able to break off a session anywhere, including the middle of combat.

Ultimately, this is predominantly an issue for the players to decide. If they don't like having to remember what they were doing to the next week, it is up to you to try to help them not have to do so - remember, rule #1.5 of GMing is to listen to your players. (Rule #1, incidentally, is that everyone in the game should be having fun).

Secondly, missing players. All 3 games this week were missing one player, for different reasons none of which were bad - I've run Scion games with only half the players present before, which isn't something I'd like to do again. There are a few solutions to this, two of which are simply workarounds, and three of which are a source of true dilemma:

-The first workaround is to not run campaigns, and only do one-offs. As much as I like one-offs, campaigns are generally much better. That having been said, in future exam seasons I plan to suspend my Scion campaign and instead run (or let other people run) one-offs in its place.

-The second workaround is a bizarre thing that I call the "campaign of one-offs". Each session of a campaign is its own adventure, with a clear "return to base" at the end of each session. The most usual setting is some sort of (usually mercenary) "adventurers' guild" with a different mission each week, for which the characters of the players present are chosen. In this way, it is perfectly reasonable for the player's character (PC - can't remember if I've explained that one before) to not be present on certain weeks.

-The first true solution is to turn the missing player's character (MPC) into a NPC for those sessions for which the player isn't present. The GM controls that character, and has her take full part in the goings-on. This is the worst option, especially if it leads to character death, or if the GM doesn't understand the player's definitions of what would be "in-character".

-The second solution is to have the MPC take a back-seat, as it were. The character is there, and if there's a situation which desperately calls for her to act, the GM has her take that action, but describes it minimally. Otherwise, it is assumed - and sometimes explicitly mentioned - that she is performing some background activity such as keeping an eye out behind the party, or sniping from afar (kill an NPC at random occassionally, and attribute it to the absent PC). This is my preferred method, and worked especially well for Scion this week as the MPC was far, far slower in combat than the other PCs, and so wouldn't have had a chance to act anyway.

-The third solution, which is preferred by my Vampire GM, is to explain the PC's disappearance in-character. This is almost the same as a workaround, but more direct. Like a workover, if you will. It works with varying success, depending on what the situation was at the end of the last session - for instance, this week in vampire we were just about to start a combat (which never materialised anyway) when the MPC suddenly was called away into the sewers, and scuttled off. However, last year when I had to skip a week of the Werewolf game, it would have been somewhat more difficult to explain away my character's disapperance from the face of Mars.

All 5 solutions have their benefits and downsides, with the possible exception of the 3rd solution (1st "real" solution) - I can't think of any real benefits of that. It is up to the GM to decide (a) which they prefer, and (b) which best suits the current situation.

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