Mastering The Game: Building A Setting

I've been playing Pen and Paper RPG's for a long time. I bought the starter pack for DnD Third Edition more than ten years ago. I've been playing at some capacity since then. The vast majority of that time has been spent Dungeon Master-ing (Or Game Mastering, if you prefer less Wizards of the Coast branded settings). Frankly speaking, very few of my friends actually liked DMing, and even fewer had experience doing it. I basically became the default (Notable Exception: EJ is an exceptional DM. Props to him.)

However, it's been a fairly recent development (within the last five years) that I've been trying to actually write my own campaigns with any regularity. Most of those have been either 2-3 session affairs, conducted online with sporadic attendance, or in some way or another been non-standard campaigns. So, when the Dresden Files RPG came out, and knowing that I had a grand total of two friends who enjoyed the Dresden Files, I figured that it would be another lark that I would read in a bookstore, put down, and forget about (much the way that my Exalted and World of Darkness books have fared.)

How wrong I was.

The first thing that struck me was how not-important the actual system was. Literally, the majority of the 'player's guide' is devoted to character creation, not complicated mechanics. (Curse you Polearm Chart! Curse you Grapple Rules!) Even better, the majority of the character creation doesn't come down to number crunching, but instead, building a genuine character with a back story and a personality. I genuinely approved of this from the start, even if the system only required paltry 6-sided dice.

The books also make a big deal about the setting for your campaign, and how much of an effect that it has on the kind of game that you're running. Having come directly off a fresh viewing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and knowing that my two potential players were huge Buffy players), I decided to set the campaign in good old Sunnydale – a decision that I ended up...not quite regretting, but not entirely agreeing with, in hindsight. I'll explain.

Sunnydale is a town in which crazy things can happen without major note being made of it. The students at their high school openly talk about class mortality rates and things like that. It's literally situated on top of the mouth of hell. It's a place where there's really no need to justify things like 'why is all this stuff happening here?' It seemed like an easy out.

First problem I hit was the obvious one. What about the characters from Buffy? There's a host of very capable defenders in Sunnydale, not the least of which is Buffy herself. There was a simple solution to this as well – Buffy doesn't exist in this universe. This is an alternate universe. The players aren't going to have a huge support network to call on.

The second big issue I had was a case of conflict between the two systems I was trying to use. One of the first lines in the Dresden Files is that 'players have choice, and monsters have nature.' Demons are evil, because they are predisposed towards it, and have no free will to counteract that inclination. Buffy turns that on it's head. We have high-school werewolves, evil Slayers, and most obviously, an angsty en-souled vampire. Angel's own series (set in the Buffyverse) argues the 'good demon' issue probably a half dozen times. These two settings are not very kind towards their monstrous antagonists.

There needed to be a solution to this too. Some kind of common ground. Around this time, my players (now bolstered to three, adding in a friend who had no exposure to either Buffy or Dresden) were starting to make characters. Armed only with Sunnydale as a setting, and Dresden as a setting, I ended up with three characters and a wild card.

1. Aya Brea – A Swat Team member, based on the character from Parasite Eve, with a significant twist: she's been chosen by the Egyptian God Bast, and can grow cat-claws aside from being supernaturally stealthy.
2. River Lethe – After vetoing River Tam, and River Styx, this character was ultimately based on the anime Avatar: The Last Airbender. She's an ex-military specialist with Water/Ice Magic and a rather naïve disposition.
3. Drake Adams – (Pseudonym: Bryan Gates) River's older cousin. Entire family was murdered by vampires in his youth. Now exceptionally rich through banking practices, he's basically Batman for Vampires.

Three characters, all with some kind of in to the supernatural world. Easily workable, at least as plot twists go. Furthermore, as part of her character, Aya's player decided that she had a younger sister with latent psychic powers, named, predictably, Eve. (When this was decided, there was an outside chance of a fourth player joining, so we decided that I would run the character as an NPC until such time as she was needed.)

Having set up the chess pieces on one side of the board, I needed to start writing a plot. It needed to be the kind of plot that would flow well in both the Buffyverse and Dresdenverse, and one option screamed out to me. In both settings, Dark Wizards – regardless of what they're called – are extremely dangerous. The corruption from misuse of magic is heavily explored in both worlds, and it seemed like a great place from which to draw my motivation for the antagonists.

Unfortunately, I'll admit that I slacked a lot at this point on the campaign writing. Our groups had been really bad about regular meetings in the past, so I figured that I would have way more time than I did before the first session. When I got the text message telling me that we were going to session one evening, I literally had “Dark Magic” written at the top of a page of a moleskine notebook, and that was it.

As any experienced GM can tell you, this is significantly less than ideal. I had less than three hours to plan far enough that the players wouldn't start seeing gaps in the story early on. I relied on my natural ability to bullshit (any good GM's highest ability score!) to put together enough plot hooks that the players wouldn't find out anything significant early on. They'd get hints and morsels but NOTHING concrete.

Here's the plots that I came up with:

1. Aya is called in to investigate a mysterious theft at the local magic shop. A piece of the Temple of Jerusalen has been stolen by an armed gunman. A mysterious man at the scene feigns ignorance of the whole situation.
2. River and Eve both receive letters of acceptance to a school on the outskirts of town – named the Calvieri Institute for the Gifted (Two points to you, Dr. Who fans!) They've been invited to an open house.
3. 
   

You may notice that number 3 is blank. That's because I never came up with a plot for Drake in time. I ended up involving him in the first session by having him attend the open house with River. Aya tagged along too, giving me the chance to get all the characters into a room together, which worked well, except we started running into a problem.

I didn't have this school planned well at ALL. I knew it was important to the plot. In fact, I was fairly certain that it was the plot at this point. Sadly, my players and their keen metagame sense were able to figure that out as soon as they read 'for the Gifted'. Aya's player immediately laughed and went “So, when do we meet Professor X.”

So, it wasn't a well hidden ploy. I'll admit that. I'd like to think I eventually worked past it.

Now, there were two NPC's that were already established this early in the campaign in relation to the school. The first was Mistress Calvieri herself, whom I knew was special in some way, but no idea how. She was very deliberately not at the first play session. My initial idea was that she would be a vampire (hence the name), however, I almost immediately decided against that. It was too obvious to me, and everyone was ready for it, so the big reveal would have no impact. I shelved 'What is Calvieri' to be determined at a later date.

The second NPC was a face. The school needed someone that the players could interact with on a regular basis. It turned out to be a British girl named Victoria who may or may not have been intended to be a lesbian. (She's almost certainly bisexual at this point, but it was an interesting twist I could throw in that my players would WAY over think. It killed almost twenty minutes when I didn't have anything else planned.)

The first session left some questions, none of which were terribly pressing. The investigation into the theft seemed the most important, and it would become so, but I needed some way to get the rest of the plot kickstarted. Where were my evil dark wizards? Where was the actual excitement? Well, in the first session? There wasn't much. In hindsight, I could've had Drake go hunting, or had Aya run into something to fight briefly, but I was still hazy on the combat mechanics (again, I'd procrastinated). In the end, we ended up starting slowly, but next session, things got a whole lot more exciting.

You'll find out about that one next time I write on this topic. Keep your eyes peeled! Another post should be coming tomorrow sometime.

On that note, what do you all want to hear about? One comment from over 100 views? Get talking down there. There's a comment box for a reason!