So You Saved an Orphan. . . Now What?

Okay, so your heroine has saved the dashing prince from captivity by a fierce dragon (ha!) or your heroes are responsible for freeing a passel of orphans taken captive by an evil lich. Ideally, you've done something heroic, saved lives, gotten a parade, had a statue built in your honor, and you ride off into the sunset. Ideally.

But even if all of that stuff happens, you still have to figure out what to do with your newly saved subject. Exactly what do you do with the fifteen orphans you just rescued? It isn't as though they have a home to go back to. What about the prince who now feels honor bound to marry your heroine? Or heck, your heroes save a bunch of foreign slave girls who can't go home because it was their father's who sold them to the evil pirates, what do you do with that?

Here's the thing: I don't know.

This is where I get hung up, as a player, in taking the next step and my GM is merciless about this. He's the "oh, you just did something awesome and saved a kid? So what do you do with him?" kind of GM. Victims don't just go away because my heroine's heroic moment has passed. They stick around and I have to figure out what's to be done with them. This has, in fact, been the subject of several games wherein I struggle to find a place for these wayward NPCs.

And I'm often given to wonder how other groups deal with this particular issue. What others do with these NPCs in need of further saving. So help me out here.

• What do you do with those your hero has just saved? 
• Is it an issue in your game?

I'd love to hear how you resolve these issues so that next time I can be prepared, rather than shuffling them off on some church or whatever. Or worse yet, adopting them. My characters are terrible about taking in the wayward, homeless child. The absolute worst!

Player Responsibility?

While trying to strike a balance between myself and what may someday be my players, in terms of responsibility, I asked my GM--who also happens to be my husband--what responsibility he felt players have in terms of pushing the game forward? I'm trying to feel my way through campaign design and it's tough to know when to stop planning.

Though I've been gaming with him for 14 years, and the answer should be obvious to me, it just isn't. It's never really come up. We work together to create a gaming experience we can both enjoy. He's the GM, but the weight has never been completely on his shoulders when I'm playing. I actively try to do things that make the game go.

But do all players?

The obvious answer here is no. Some players are content to be lead by the hand down the dark and scary path into the dark and scary dungeon. Some players are happy to work inside the confines of a completely linear story--which most modules happen to provide, step-by-step, no imagination required on the part of anyone. While I'm not one of them, I know plenty.

But what happens when you, as a GM, get a group that's part player's with initiative and part players who look for the linear path? He says, and I tend to agree, that the players with initiative will rise to the top and lead the group for everyone. But then my question becomes this: how much time can a player spend carrying his group along in terms of imagination? Well, there are certainly moments when any player has to think for themselves.

Take this for example:

I was GMing a classic-style "D&D evil campaign" that I had inherited--for a session or two--from another GM (my husband had begun it years ago, but had handed it off to me). Some of the players were imaginative in terms of playing to their alignments while other's had more trouble.

During the course of the game, the players were lead by some bad information to an abandoned Elven village high in the treetop canopy. They were way, way up off the ground when they realized that this place was not only empty, but that it was rigged to blow! Someone was trying to kill them all, which makes perfect sense because these are the kind of characters that have been making everyone's life a living hell. And who no one, not even the local guard can manage to get rid of.

So, I give them one action after making this realization to tell me what they intend to do to get away before they're rendered to ash or take so much falling damage that their "friends" will be scraping them up off the forest floor. I go clockwise around the room, because this really isn't an initiative situation, and give them about ten seconds to cough up an answer before I move on to the next player and they're opportunity is lost.

Every player in a group of four is able to give me a creative answer that will save their lives, and only their lives (most of the time abandoning their "friends" to save their own skin), except for one player. Rather than coming up with an answer, she used her life saving 10 seconds to ask me questions. They were mechanics questions, not really anything having to do with the setting, and eventually she lost her action and, subsequently, her character.

She simply couldn't come to a creative solution when she wasn't being lead by the other players, who were all in it for themselves at that point, as was befitting evil characters. In that case, it was her responsibility to help push her character forward, because there wasn't really any easy answer, and she didn't do it.

So then, we're back to my original point.

• What responsibility should players have to the game? 
• Should it be the GM's responsibility, solely, to come up with solutions and push the game forward? 
• When players do need to be lead, how can a GM show them--nicely--that they need to take the initiative (pun intended ) and help so that everyone can have the best time possible?

What do you think? Weight in on this one and let me know. I'm new to this whole GMing gig. :)

Technology & the Pen and Paper RPG

Lately, I've begun integrating more technology into my gaming experience. I've always been a pen & paper note-taker, but when I got my iPad, I realized that there were a whole host of possibilities I'd been ignoring. I really think an iPad is something that no one really realizes how much they need until they have one. I know that's how it was with me. I have a PC desktop, a Macbook, a Kindle Keyboard, and my cell phone, so I couldn't figure out why on earth I'd need an iPad, too. Then I broke down and bought one, and now I can't remember what I did before I had it. It's my new best friend, technologically speaking.

It's also quickly becoming one of my favorite, must-have gaming tools. Character sheets, dice, my stylus and iPad, and I'm ready to go. Well, that plus drinks and sometimes snacks, you know, gaming staples. But more specifically, we're talking about Penultimate by Evernote. It is one of the most awesome apps available and it's completely free. There's really nothing like it. It allows me, along with my stylus, to make hand written notes and sync them to Evernote so I can see them on my other gadgets later.

Frankly, it's freaking awesome. I'm saving paper, so I don't have dozens of sheets of paper laying around everywhere with notes all over them, and all of my notes stay in one place. It makes everything incredibly organized because I can make multiple notebooks inside the program that keep my D&D notes separate from my, say, 7th Sea notes, etc., all of which I can keep separate from my GM notes and book brainstorming (I'm also an author).

Otherwise, my iPad's iBooks apps allows me to keep my eBooks on hand, all in one place, for handy reference that means I don't have to cart around a ton of books. With gaming books becoming more and more electronically accessible, particularly with such sites as Drive-Thur RPG, I love that I can keep my books on my iPad in full color, something my Kindle doesn't have.

Matt has even started integrating some technology--something he use to be annoyed by, to be sure. Some of the apps he uses include Penultimate for his iPad and an app on his phone that generates names. He's always struggled to come up with names on the fly, so having an electronic name generator has been a life saver for him. Although, I think we need to look for another one because I don't much like many of the names the app he uses summon up.

And frankly, being able to summon up the net via Safari or small bits of information via apps like Wikipanion make reference so much quicker than it was before. Particularly when we're playing 7th Sea because we regularly use my 7th Sea website for quick reference. So having an iPad is helpful for gaming and I'm starting to get to the place where I don't leave my house without it, whether we're gaming or not. It's invaluable and has an amazing battery life, which is helpful because we tend to game for hours and hours on end.

Right now, I'm also thinking that Pintrest (and the Pintrest iPad app, of course) might be a good way to set up props. Boards could be created for each game system, or even every game in particular, that includes images, maps, and the like that will help set the stage. Particularly with a game system like Wolsung, where players may not be completely immersed in the steampunk feel of the game. Giving props and steampunk images, game maps, and gadgets, could make things much easier. It could also make referencing game materials easier to put them all in one place like that.

I'm still always looking for even new ways to use my gadgets for gaming, so how do you use yours? Or do you use yours at all? Is your gaming pretty old school or have you given in to the wave of modern technology and integrated these conveniences into your gaming experience?

Session One. . .

We had our first game today and we actually had fun. . . with me as GM. Unbelievable! And you know, I feel pretty awesome about it. Well, okay, I felt pretty shaky about it, particularly since the game didn't start with particular confidence on my part. I had planned out the game's skeleton--because I read on Gnome Stew that railroading players isn't a very nice thing to do and also because my husband just can't be railroaded--but when it came time to start, I sort of froze up a little bit. I don't think it was so noticeable as to take away from the fun of the game, and my husband was very encouraging and understanding. Ultimately, I got over it and we had a productive session.

There are a few things (okay, more than a few) that I feel like I need to work on, or seek out more advice about, including making the setting richer in terms of "feeling" like steampunk, how to make it more cinematic since Wolsung is a cinematic role playing game, and how to make the system's rule set function inside the story more smoothly. I'm sure, though, that those things will come to me as I get more experience. And, of course, with them resolved will come more questions. Bring em' on!

So, I think I'm going to start working on some more games and see where that takes me. I'm pretty sure this adventure will conclude next session, it wasn't a particularly long or difficult scenario--I'll share game notes after the adventure's over. So, it's planning time and I have more than a few ideas, I have just have to sit down and bring them together. I see so much inspiration for this story in movies, in books, all over the web. I'm loving it!