Judging the Game
Composer of the interactive symphony of imagination that is a role-playing game, its Judge performs several duties necessary for play to proceed. A Judge codifies the scenario in which the game will occur, acts out the role of every character as they appear, aside from those controlled by the other players, and serves as a referee when actions are required while the game is afoot.
Players wishing to serve as Judge require a willingness to entertain their fellows. Sure, the other players' characters get center stage, but someone has to adjudicate what happens when they act, describing these results in vivid detail. These are the masterminds that set events in motion, move the plot forward based on the actions of other players, and provide the very personality of the unfolding adventure.
While every game requires a Judge, it is vital to note that the Judge is not the most important person at the table. Everyone playing the game is participating for the express purpose of having fun, not necessarily to stroke someone else's ego. Furthermore, most of what one needs to serve as Judge is available elsewhere in the rules, as they are presented such that anyone who wishes to can know precisely how everything works.
Thus, all the material presented in Judging the Game can be considered recommendations, not guidelines. The rest of the Costumed Adventurer Simulation Engine covers all of its mechanics, so the goal of Judging the Game is to provide enough information for aspiring Judges to plan an adventure for their fellow players - and then to enjoy it with them once play begins!
Judging the Game may be read by all of the CASE's players. Sure, it's primarily useful for those who wish to take on the role of Judge, and some players may not get a lot out of it, but there's nothing 'secret' included that would prompt Judges to forbid non-Judges from peeking. If anything, it might help non-Judges understand the effort their Judge must exert to help make their game night go!
On The Structure of Reality
A CASE Judge's first job is to determine the scenario he or she is staging for their fellows' costumed adventurers to play through. The CASE is designed such that its players can engage in adventure literally anywhere in existence, given enough thought and preparation. Narrowing down exactly when, where, and how it will occur, though, requires a basic understanding of the structure of reality the CASE recognizes.
An Infinity of Infinities
...or Even More Than Anyone Can Imagine
Characters in the Costumed Adventurer Simulation Engine experience reality in the same basic fashion as the players behind them. They typically perceive the universe around them as one comprised of three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension. This is generally more than enough to quantify one's basic, continuing existence, not to mention that of everyone and everything they interact with.
However, there are more facets to our actuality than most can readily account for in their day-to-day life. This primarily comes into play when one considers the nature of causality, which is comprised of an infinitely large probability field that represents every possible outcome of every possible event. This boundless field forms an impossibly complex matrix of possibilities that sums up the here and now.
This infinitely large collection of previous results, present states, and future probabilities are what comprise a timeline. And for every possible outcome of every possible event at every given moment of time, a divergent timeline buds off from this first sequence, where one or more of those events transpired differently. In other words, an infinite amount of variant timelines are generated every single moment.
Over billions and billions of years, this process has continued unabated, generating a transfinite array of universes both hauntingly familiar and frighteningly alien. Known to ancient philosophers as the Aperion, this 'absolute everything' is a ceaseless divergence of timelines that occurs in a second temporal dimension, what we would consider the fifth.
This would be enough, if not for links between timelines being forged after travelers bridge the vast gulf separating them. This occurs in a third temporal dimension, an axis where the probability fields of two or more timelines can interact and become inextricably linked to one another. But this axis also provides a structure for additional universes to exist coincident with the one we know.
These coincident universes are often adjacent to our reality, but have their own crosstime variations just as we do. Every timeline where people find themselves worshiping the Aesir will have an associated Asgard, for example. And this can lead to numerous instances where the only difference between two timelines is how events transpire in one of these earth-adjacent planes.
Finally, there is an even further dimension we experience - or, more accurately, countless more - that defy classification by mere human logic. Consider this (these) to be the seventh dimension, a coordinate of concept whose vast reaches overlap with all others in one way or another. This is where 'locations' such as the astral plane and the mindscape occur, and events there can touch all times and spaces.
Genre
...or What To Do With All Of That
The grand tapestry of existence as described above offers a truly boundless playground within which to adventure. After all, an infinite number of timelines branching off an already infinite number of timelines upon the elapsing of each temporal Planck unit means one can set up stakes and act out scenarious literally anywhere or anywhen they can imagine!
But for the most part, players aren't going to visit literally everywhere possible, and Judges shouldn't have to plan for a countless number of possibilities. They literally can't! So, when pondering their use of the CASE, prospective Judges need to figure out what it is they intend to do with it. Once this is determined, the when and where one's scenario will play out typically falls into place by itself.
This starts by determining the genre of the game the Judge wishes to indulge in. Genres are categories of performance, literature, or other art that primarily conform to a series of conventions that define it in comparison to its counterparts. In other words, genres are a sort of big tent within which one's adventures will take place, a few of which are vastly more popular than others to roleplay within.
A few of the major genres explored in role-playing games include the following:
Adventure: "Professor Zaccardi had emphatically assured you that she had disarmed all the traps in the room, but she was an unrepentant drunk while afield, today more so than usual. Assuming her sullen indifference to your personal safety was at play, you cautiously poked the chest with your walking stick, narrowly avoiding a rusty dart trap as a result. Who says you don't pay attention to your peers?"
It doesn't matter if the protagonists have special abilities, equipment, or even knowledge. What matters is the journey, whatever manner of such is being undertaken, and how those undertaking it avoid the many pitfalls eager to waylay them. And those pitfalls are always ready to strike, because those who adventure for a living tempt fate as a general matter of course!
Fantasy: "As awareness of the world slowly returned, you felt the stinging burns from the explosion that unhorsed you. Before long, the blunt force trauma caused by your fall from Old Bitey reminded you of the bruised ribs and cracked teeth. Getting back on your feet, you eyed the source of that ruinous blast, the mad wizard cackling in the middle of her firenado, and pulled a knife."
Fantasy tales hinge on magical elements, whether they be enchanted objects, fantastic creatures, and/or literal sorcery. They can occur on present-day earth or at any moment in the past, or perhaps on entirely different worlds (or universes) entirely! These mystic elements shape the larger than life adventures of the larger than life characters trafficking in one or more larger than life matters.
Heroics: "Having failed to step out of the way, you saw stars as the hulking brute uppercut you several stories into the air, barely getting a handle on the situation before your ascent finally ceased. Falling face-first towards your assailant, you smiled while charging up your own attack, hoping to take her with you when your electrified body eventually collides with her."
Performing flashy deeds with flashy super powers while wearing flashy ensembles, the life of a hero usually seems great from the outside. Whether doing so as legally authorized operatives, marginally tolerated crime fighters, or even distrusted vigilante outlaws, heroes fight to their fullest to support their cause, whether that be justice, vengeance, or anything else!
Horror: "The zombies skulked about the warehouse floor, scattering at random in seeming disdain. Hiding in the rafters above the shelves was the right idea, considering the sheer number of the monstrosities that invaded the store after you pried the door open, but now there were thirty of them between you and what you came for: the last pallet of Slim Jims ™ on earth!"
The best way to describe horror is humans having an encounter with a malevolent something or other that comfortably rests above them on the food chain. Unlike heroics, these stories showcase the frailty of humanity in the face of overwhelming terror, and such tales rarely have a happy ending. The ultimate reward of horror stories is survival, often on the backs of one's fellows.
Science Fiction: "Steadily stalking up the pitted starboard hull of the smugglers' craft, your magnetized boots keep you from spinning off into the inky black void of space. Intent on breaching the criminals' mobile base of operations, you fail to notice it making the leap into hyperspace until it's too late, and barely avoid being peeled off its pock-marked surface and forever lost across countless dimensions."
Forward-looking in nature, science fiction tends to speculate about one or more concepts of the future, taking place anywhere between the current day and age to the end of time. Its characters invariably have to deal with conceptual innovations to come, most often involving technology and the changes wrought by it, whether it has been freshly introduced to their world or has shaped society for countless eons.
War: "Corporal Jackson silently signaled back to us with his hands, the point man indicating that he had seen the enemy. As we all crouched in place, his body was riddled with bullets from seemingly everywhere. Though he bought it, and bought it hard, Jackson saved all our lives. Raising our poodle shooters in response, we returned fire to avenge the poor slob - and to save ourselves!"
Everyone has known someone with their fair share of war stories. Games taking place in this genre thrust its characters into such conflicts, whether they are organized or otherwise. When telling the tales of either those fighting such wars or those touched by their consequences, war stories are often brutally realistic and typically feature a high character body count.
Subgenre
...or Narrowing It Down Further
Some games take place entirely within one genre, often one of those described previously. Fantasy in particular holds a massive chunk of mindshare amongst gamers, and actually counting how many role-playing games are completely devoted to fantasy is likely a fool's errand. But fantasy isn't the only game in town, and sometimes even fantasy writers get tired of playing their genre straight.
This is where subgenres come in. A subgenre is a subset of a larger genre, which varies from what folks consider the 'standard' by dint of when or where it takes place, how much it overlaps with another genre, or by the tone of the setting it is used within. Sometimes, the only thing holding a genre together is all the subgenres used to explore its 'parent' themes.
But how a subgenre is explicitly defined doesn't really matter. What makes subgenres great is that they often provide a fresh take on their parent genre, whether for a single foray into the unusual or as an overall facet of one's story. A given genre can house any number of subgenres, some of which hew closer to their base genre than others, only a few examples of which are showcased here:
Crime Wave: "Jimmy Jamboree bypassed the hotel room's door lock, allowing Frankie Five Toes to slip in with the sniper rifle. Frankie didn't have to kill anyone today, but it was his job to pin down the casino guards with indirect fire long enough to let the boys take care of business inside. And they wouldn't see it coming, because usually people try to rob casinos - not blow them up!"
This subgenre (or others like it) turn the typical adventure on its head, by allowing players to serve as the villains in the story. Their aim is to engage in some illicit activity that only they can perform, founding or maintaining a criminal conspiracy or organization, or merely the acquisition of vast amounts of wealth. These player character criminals can be ordinary folks or have fantastic capabilities.
Cyberpunk: "Howling as her foe's robotic fist smashed her ribcage, Alana's Black Heart implant activated, sending megavolts through the offending appendage on contact. As the first thug flew backwards amidst a blinding electrical discharge, she glared at the other three while collecting herself and clenched her vibroblade, daring the hired goons to come get more of the same."
Set in a nebulous, near-future era, cyberpunk explores the blurring between man and machine as society evolves past respecting either. Both are only as useful as the power and influence they can earn for the powers-that-be, and cyberpunk tales can involve its protagonists navigating the awful realities of such a world, or alternately their efforts to escape its many, many constraints.
Post-Apocalyptica: "Though it filled his mouth with the unique flavor of diesel, Oil Can Ollie managed to coax about a quart of fuel from the abandoned tractor trailer. And just in time, too, because the Fleshrenders were out in force, seeking fresh leather to cover their war chariots' upholstery. Collecting his prize, Ollie hopped into his house bus and raced down the cratered Interstate highway."
The kind of horror that happens when the world ends, post-apocalyptic tales explore the aftermath of whatever it is that ended society as we know it. The cause of the world's demise need not be especially unusual, or even out of the ordinary, because other people are invariably the greatest threat the players will encounter. Everything else is usually just window dressing, whether animate or otherwise.
Space Opera: "Turning on a dime as he passed the tumbling rock, Marvin pulled up against it and powered his ship down. Watching the royal police race past as he drifted through space next to his cover, Marvin saw them warp away upon losing his trail. Thus, the space cops again returned to their system precinct without having captured him, letting him live to seek out his home another day."
Space opera is science fiction that generally plays fast and loose with the 'how' of futuristic gear, emphasizing other elements over the nuts and bolts of their settings' equipment. By avoiding a need to explain every development in exhaustive detail, space opera can focus on a narrative that features the familiar trappings of science fiction, but often emphasizes adventure or war story tropes.
Urban Fantasy: "Jackhammer scowled as he hotwired the lousy elf's box truck. The foolish git lost his keys in that Goblintown warehouse when they were jumped by security, and he didn't have a spare. As a dwarf, he preferred his people's works to this janky human technology, but in a pinch he was happy to run the guards over on his way to safety if they hadn't already got the hint."
Sliding the typical time scale of fantasy to the here and now, one can add the trappings of that genre to tales taking place in the present. It can be fun to play an elf with a gun, after all, especially if they get to use it against similarly armed orcs. This style of story takes place in a near-future time just as often, adding assorted sci-fi tropes to the mix as well as magical beings and spellcasters.
The War on Terror: "Cow Catcher absentmindedly polished his new nametag, having just earned his place in Anti-Terrorist Group Omega, colloquially known as the Bullet Sponges. It was his first mission, and though he'd been fully briefed about the occult terrorists of ABBREVIATION, seeing their half-golems in person gave him pause. Nonetheless ready to prove his mettle, Cow Catcher charged right at them."
A subgenre of war stories popularized in the 1980s, the war on terror features patriotic soldiers (or possibly mercenaries) mobilizing in a conventional manner against decidedly unconventional foes. And 'unconventional' can mean any number of things, from asymmetric warfare against traitorous revolutionaries to a struggle against cult-like organizations determined to rule the world.
House Rules
...or making it your way.
As written, the Costumed Adventurer Simulation Engine is designed with customization in mind. There are optional rules for the handling of numerous situations in the game, which means that one group of players using the CASE may not be playing the exact same game as others. And that's fine, because it stands to reason that differing timelines might function under somewhat different physics.
For instance, everyone should know whether their characters only use primary abilities or if they may split those abilities into secondary scores, which fatigue system if any is in use, whether damage is rolled on each attack or assumed to always be the same, and whether or not one or more power paths are not to be allowed when generating characters. You know, all the rules through which their timeline functions.
The choice of customizations a group of players adopt can be made for numerous reasons. Most often this is for the sake of simplicity, as things like split ability scores and damage rolls do add to the complexity of the CASE, to be sure. But these options may be chosen to further a given atmosphere, such as imposing fatigue rules to maintain a 'street-level' vibe.
Perhaps the most important customization that may apply to the CASE is the power level ceiling of one's campaign. This is an upper limit of sorts that the Judge may apply to other players in the game, meaning that their adventurers cannot hold a rank that is higher than this level. And this power level ceiling may be utilized by the Judge in a number of creative fashions.
For one thing, it doesn't apply to their own characters. Non-player characters of all stripes are unbound by a power level ceiling, which allows the Judge to throttle the difficulty of their adventurers based on how much challenge they wish to apply to their plots. If all your foes are of equal or greater prowess, that can make for a desperate struggle from start to finish!
Furthermore, a campaign's power level ceiling can be leveraged in several ways, depending on how much slack a Judge wants to give players. On the more stringent end, player characters can be limited such that they may only have one ability score or power rank at the ceiling, with everything else being lower. Conversely, players can be allowed to bypass their ceiling using limitations.
And all of this, this is just what is provided within the scope of the CASE corpus! The very existence of the CASE is proof positive that gamers will always tinker with the rules of whatever game they're playing, modifying them to better suit their purposes. Some of these changes are minor in scope, while others are so severe that it may feel as though one is playing a different game entirely.
No suggestions for such house rules are provided, as players will invariably find some changes to the CASE that increase their collective enjoyment of the game. And as long as everyone agrees with these changes and enjoys the CASE better with them in it than out, great! After all, the whole point of fiddling around with the CASE is to have fun, so lean into that as much as possible.
While it is recommended that all rule customizations be in place before the start of play, whether they come in the form of official options or home-brewed changes, this isn't always practical. Something might otherwise be missing or malfunctioning over the course of play, and an upgrade is required to keep things rolling. And if everyone is cool with this running change, go with it!
Genre Rules
...or Legislating Flavor
Perhaps the easiest way to emphasize the narrative style of a group's chosen setting is through the use of genre rules. Genre rules are additions to or mutations of the Costumed Adventurer Simulation Engine's mechanics that work to enforce the essential tenets of a milieu. Think of them as guardrails that keep players from veering too far out of character for the game they're in.
Designed as an open-ended role-playing system, the base state of the CASE lacks genre rules altogether. However, as the system readily welcomes modifications to itself, rules to induce narrative cohesion when desired are perfectly reasonable. One system option that can be repurposed into a genre rule involves Mental Health, which is described more fully in the Life and Death portion of the rules.
As an aside, the game the CASE was based upon featured its own genre rule. Sure, it was removed as part of the process of making the CASE genre-neutral, but there's no reason one couldn't make use of it still, should a group appreciate that game's tropes. As such, should you wish to more closely emulate the experience of the old system, here is the Four Color Comics Code genre rules.
Sample Genre Rule: The Four Color Comics Code
(workin' on it)
(this is basically going to be the Karma rules from the old game, you know where you always lose Karma for committing a crime, and then all of it if you bump someone off. valid for that game and/or setting, but not necessarily for whatever someone else is doing with the CASE. I'll get this finalized once I also finalize the Karma rules at the end of this thing you're reading here)
On The Generation of Characters
While players generally only have to choose the setting for a given story once, weird changes of venue notwithstanding, they invariably have to make characters for said story more often. The cause of this can range from character death, where the course of events irrevocably remove them from play, to player boredom, the mind behind a character simply getting tired of roleplaying them.
Judges have the worst of this, as they usually have to generate, in part or in full, a countless array of characters. Most of these may defer to boilerplate descriptions prepared for generic character types, such as attorney, soldier, or costumed minion, while others have a lot more effort put into making them as important to the plot as is necessary.
The rules in the CASE's various generation references explain in great detail the mechanical considerations of creating characters for use in the game. When generating characters in a given scenario, however, players might want a bit more context than mere mechanical considerations when attempting to do so. This context may help with the creation of both player and non-player characters.
Starting Points
...or How Much Players Can Get Away With
No matter what kind of character a player is making for use in the story at hand, they'll generally begin with the same amount of points as everyone else. Each origin of power provides one or more bonuses to this base amount, ranging from positive column shifts applied to extant ranks to altogether free powers. Other than this 'flavor', though, players start out at approximately the same level.
Throughout the CASE's character generation guides, the recommended point allotment for players is listed at fifty (50). This allows players to create truly heroic characters, giving them a wide berth while crafting the folks they'd like to explore in the Judge's story. Within the declared power level ceiling, this can allow for characters who generalize all-around or excel in one or two specialties.
As are most things of this type, the listed point allotment is a recommendation that encourages a certain style of play over others. If a group of players are looking for a more 'cosmic' style of game, this can be increased accordingly. At the same time, action with more of a 'street-level' vibe can be fostered by allowing players less starting points when they generate their characters.
Another important consideration is that some power sources are inappropriate for a given genre. For instance, a campaign utilizing cyberpunk themes would likely feature high technology protagonists for the most part, perhaps allowing for some transnormal folks in a few special circumstances. However, such a millieu wouldn't see wizards, psis, or immortals as a general matter of course.
Finally, the Judge may declare one or more abilities to be completely off-limits to other players. These most often include those that are loosely balanced by giving them a high point cost per rank, such as opposition, learned invulnerability, roulette, or whatever. Powers a Judge simply feels uncomfortable adjudicating fairly might fall into this category, precognition in particular fitting this description.
Characters that players concoct which fall within whatever mechanical limitations a table has agreed upon beforehand, at least on paper, should be allowed into play. As long as a player's math adds up in the end, and the agreed upon rules haven't been stretched beyond recognition, there shouldn't be any reason not to. Assuming, that is, the player's new character meshes with the others.
Those characters built by the Judge, of course, can cheerfully ignore all of the previous. He or she is setting the stage for play, after all, and those characters they create will have a vast array of differing capabilities, depending on their role. Perhaps a dependent is built on a net total of zero (0) points, while the lead villain is afforded twice (or more!) the point values they started out with.
Personality
...or How Characters Behave
Characters in a role-playing game aren't just a collection of statistics. Oh sure, those statistics are what allow characters to function within the game, but what brings them to life is the player behind them. Whether they're a player character or someone controlled by the Judge, their role is what makes them more memorable than a mere collection of quasi-random benchmarks.
And a role can be as simple or as complicated as it is required to be. Need a fussy bureaucrat to mildly slow down the protagonists? That's enough of a short-hand to run with in a pinch, even if you hadn't plotted anything else in advance about, say, the accountant the player characters need information from. And if said accountant leaves an impression, they can always appear again!
In games where their characters suffer a high mortality rate, players may stick with an equally sparse level of initial characterization. War and horror stories often see players cycling through characters as they are killed in action or become that which they struggle against. After all, if you know your avatar in the game will be gone within hours, you don't produce a detailed psychological profile.
Those characters who appear regularly, however, ought to be developed into more than a basic stereotype or punchline. Whether they be player characters or members of the supporting cast, recurring folks should have more to them than a boilerplate summation of powers and items. This isn't at all difficult, however, especially where player characters are concerned - even when they actively resist the process.
This is because, as their stories unfold, characters receive numerous opportunities to reveal who they really are. Their interactions with others prompt various choices which help to proclaim their, well, character. This is relatively straight-forward with characters that are well-defined in advance, their behavior primarily consistent with what has been previously established about their personas.
When the actions of poorly defined characters are improvised, the Judge should take note of what they do and why, should it become important later on. That accountant mentioned earlier may become a recurring support character or even a hero's contact down the line, for example, so tracking how decent or awful a person they happen to be helps the Judge make their tale more consistent over time.
Players can define whatever characters they bear responsibilty for as broadly or as specifically as they initially deem necessary. Sometimes a lightly delineated personality allows a character room to grow into whatever a group needs. Or maybe the player behind those characters doesn't focus on their psychological profile as much as, say, their backstory. Which is fine, as the two are intertwined.
Backstory
...or What's My Motivation?
A given character might be an ill-tempered brute, ready to pounce upon and bludgeon senseless anyone that irks them. Another might be a veritable saint, seemingly compelled to spend every waking moment making the lives of those around them better. A third might care for nothing other than pursuing whatever obsession drives them, eschewing all else of import in their lives.
These capsule descriptions of random individuals' personalities do a great job of describing their potential behavior. But what it doesn't do is explain how they came to be the way they are, why they behave the way they do. That's where a character's backstory comes into play, a summation of their life that consists of equal parts background and history.
A character's background is basically the point at which their tale began, both when and where fate brought them into being. It sets the stage for who the character will ultimately become, showcasing the various hindrances and advantages they were subject to in their formative years. Sometimes, components of one's background can be encapsulated or enhanced by background talents.
History, on the other hand, details what a character did with the hand that causality dealt them. Did they take full advantage of the opportunities afforded them, or were they waylaid by the disadvantages arrayed against them? Did they grow in the face of their life's great tragedy, or did it crush them into a shell of their former self? That sort of thing.
An important backstory consideration is the origin of the character's powers. Generally falling somewhere between background and history, one's origin details where their super-abilities come from. An origin is often just an after-effect of one's tale, while occasionally their origin has an effect on a character's very personality, or possibly even marks them as an enemy of society!
Both background and history can greatly contribute to the depth of a character, informing their persona as well as their choices. This may be done whether or not one or both of these are determined in advance. If making up backstory for one or more characters on the spot, or over time as a campaign progresses, the player behind said characters can better shape them to fit the current narrative.
Judges can use backstory to powerful effect when the players encounter multiple characters sharing the same background and/or history. If all of the non-player characters have similar backstories, the Judge has another great short-hand, since he or she only has to choose how each person deviates from that basic template when determining how they will interact with the player characters.
Party Cohesion
...or How Well Characters Play Together
Save for a few, rare exceptions, stories involve the interaction between two or more characters. Sometimes these characters get along and sometimes they don't, and this interplay may entirely drive the plot or simply flavor it some. But whether it's one person struggling against their environment or a sextet of friends bickering about nothing much, conflict is a feature of virtually every tale.
A role-playing game is no exception to this general rule. The whole point of this exercise, this adventure if you will, is that the player characters will overcome some problem or other through conflict. Their resolution to the problem at hand can take a variety of forms, whether the players' ultimate course of action comes in the form of careful negotiation or physical violence.
Where this can become a problem is when player characters come into direct conflict with each other. While players may be accustomed to using non-player characters as punching bags, and player character on player character violence may very well be normal in some scenarios, it can often lead to bad feelings if players are especially attached to their in-game avatars.
This is not to say that conflict between player characters should be banned, of course. But the simple truth is that a role-playing game isn't intended as a competitive endeavor, and squabbles between player characters need to stay between the players' characters. Such characters coming into conflict should only come about as dictated by their backgrounds, personalities, and interactions.
Assuming a group of players wishes to sidestep easily avoidable conflicts between player characters, there are a few things they can do to preclude such occurrences as much as is reasonably possible. The first of these is to generate player characters who are team players. A band consisting entirely of sullen loners probably isn't going to have an easy time finding a reason to stick together!
The second thing players can do is create all their characters together, that way any potential conflicts can be averted even before one or more problematic characters are finalized in their players' minds. This also helps players in more immediately obvious ways as well, since they can plan their characters' strengths and weaknesses around those of their fellow adventurers.
Finally, perhaps the greatest way to guarantee cohesion amongst a party of adventurers is to complete a prequel adventure. This serves as an introduction of sorts to the characters, one which may even detail how they initially band together. With the Judge's approval, some character hiccups may be corrected after this 'session zero', reflecting what is often referred to as 'early installment weirdness.'
Memorable Characters
...or Attempting Indelibility
Most of the time, generating player characters is relatively simple. Some folks roll the dice or spend points to come up with something functional in the game, then fill in the blanks with personality, backstory, and all that jazz. Others go the opposite route, conceiving a character then following that up with the determination of ability scores, talents, and other assorted benchmarks.
The creation of most non-player characters is even easier to resolve, as Judges may assign whatever qualities they desire to whatever characters they choose. Furthermore, the level of detail they are required to invest in non-player characters varies based on how important they are to the plot in both the short and long term, especially when developing memorable characters for players to interact with.
When assembling faceless crowds, a lot of these decisions can be made for the group as a whole. Whether contemplating a gang of costumed minions or a herd of voracious dinosaurs, the behavior of a group's constituents will generally be consistent until interrupted by circumstance. Only then will the Judge have to begin making choices about individual members of such a collective of characters.
Minor, yet named individuals will typically require a bit more effort before fielding them in the CASE. Sure, some Judges prefer to wing it to the bitter end, but NPCs of this caliber should have at least a small amount of thought put into them before they enter play. This need not include comprehensive backgrounds or personality profiles, but broad strokes knowledge of each definitely couldn't hurt.
Primary non-player characters ought to be thought out enough that their mechanical benchmarks, personality, and backstory are all determined beforehand. After all, the plot will typically turn on their actions (or inaction, as the case may be), so their choices should be informed by who and what they are. Otherwise, players may have a hard time caring about them - and fail to understand why they should.
Despite everything that can be put to paper about a character that players will interact with, there's always a question as to whether or not they'll even connect with said players. This primarily depends on how their actions are portrayed by the Judge, not to mention how they go about their business. And yet, whether or not a character resonates with players is almost completely up to random chance.
But one way to help to tip the scales in this regard, ultimately making for more memorable encounters, is to give certain characters unique qualities through impromptu (and likely improvised) characterization. Maybe one of those faceless goons showcased comical cowardice, a ravenous dinosaur was enthusiastically clumsy, or the arch-villain possesses mannerisms that no other character utilizes.
On The Nature of Adventure
Once a group of Costumed Adventurer Simulation Engine players determine wherever and whenever it is they will be doing whatever it is they intend to do, and have completed generating whoever is necessary to populate the intended story, play can finally commence. In other words, it now falls upon the Judge to craft an adventure for their fellow players, from start to finish!
Plotting Adventures
...or What Are You All Doing?
So yeah, what are you all doing? Maybe the player characters have a mystery to solve, or a strange location to explore. Perhaps they need to secure funding for something, or must locate a special requirement for an invention or ceremony. Alternately, the protagonists might want to rescue a kidnapping victim, or protect someone or something from criminals intent on stealing or breaking them.
That's it. That's your plot.
As the Judge, it's your job to plant an adventure from this seed, growing a sentence-long plot nugget (or whatever random notion you had) into an entire story. While pondering this process, let us consider an adventure seed in the form of a strange, mutagenic spore that the player characters hear may exist in an even stranger, remote mountain enclave.
Over the course of planning (or improvising) an adventure, Judges should consider a beginning, a middle, and an end to the players' current endeavor. The beginning is a prologue of sorts, setting the stage for the story at hand, in both its content and it's flavor. An adventure's first act, it essentially provides the motivation required to get players off the couch and on the job.
This can come about in any number of ways. In relation to our hidden mountain fungus plot, perhaps a friend or contact has been altered, and this supposed mutagen could be a potential cure. Maybe a contact warned the player characters about the looming threat the fungus' cultivators poses. Alternately, this rumored fungus in this rumored kingdom could be a great boon for Science!
The middle of an adventure is everything the players do that isn't covered by the beginning or the end. Depending on the length of one's story, this may consist of one encounter or one thousand, and generally serves to steer events from their current state towards the finish. Of course, if the players are waylaid sufficiently, their actions may ultimately have a lesser effect on the overall plot.
Continuing to ponder those sample beginnings to our sample plot, this notion can progress in several ways. The heroes needing the spores for medical purposes might face opposition from the enemies of their altered friend. Those worried about the spores' threat may face down their cruel cultist cultivators. Those seeking the spore for research purposes may face industrial or alchemical competition for it.
Once they have completed enough of the requisite steps along the way, for good or for ill, players have finally come to the end of their current adventure. Hopefully our heroes have proven victorious in the end, but failure is always an option. Either way, the climax of each adventure should be consequential. It should also move the needle on the overall story, unless the plot was somehow lost along the way.
Back to those fungus-laden plot examples, perhaps it is discovered that the spores serve no medicinal purpose, but clues leading to a more reliable solution are found. Surviving a vengeful band of subterranean warriors, our cult-battling heroes destroy their stores of spores. Those scientists seeking the spores find them, and learn that they could potentially be a special catalyst in numerous inventions!
Ultimately, what the ending of a given story means depends on whether or not it lies within a grander narrative. If this was issue thirty-five of the Galileian Dispatch, we may follow up this adventure with the further tales of our two-fisted science journalists next time. If this was a one-trick tale, on the other hand, players will move on to new characters and stories in their next session!
Subplotting Adventures
...or What Is Everyone Else Doing?
When showcasing an adventure for a group of their fellow players, a Judge needs to know more than just what the player characters are doing. They should definitely understand what those that immediately interact with the player characters are up to as well. Further, it behooves Judges to be aware, at least on a small level, what any pertinent characters of theirs have up their sleeves any given time.
No, this doesn't mean that Judges need to track the movement and actions of every character in the continuity their imagination has populated. No, that's more than a little bit of overkill. However, they should have a broad notion of what characters vital to their story are up to at any given time, because this is a great way to involve them in subplots with the players' characters.
When picturing subplots in your head, think of serial dramas. There's the basic story, you know, what the main characters are getting up to during that episode. Then there are other scenes, those that detail what additional characters less relevant to the current story are doing. Sometimes, these just bolster the primary storyline, but other times they tee up events in a future episode.
These are subplots.
In a role-playing game, subplots are things going on with folks adjacent to the player characters. Their characters' contacts, their rivals, their family, their fan club, and so on. Each protagonist will have a story, and elements of that story should occasionally collide with the Judge's narrative. That's where the whole 'collaborative storytelling' aspect of role-playing comes from.
Judges are encouraged to invoke at least one of these every session, if reasonably possible, related to at least one player. Maybe a player character is following up with an expedition they hired to find, say, mutagentic spores. Perhaps their siblings have fallen under the influence of mysterious forces, and matters are coming to a head between the protagonist and their family's new 'friends'.
It's quite possible that none of the player characters will 'bite' on these subplots as they manifest, and that's fine. These subplots might just bubble along whether or not the players manage to trip over them, which gives Judges the opportunity to spring them on their characters some other day. The idea is to create, at the very least, the illusion of the passage of time.
This allows Judges to present a continuing narrative. Sure, there may be an overarching mission the players are up to, but sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees when you're in the middle of an epic. Elements like subplots allow Judges to indirectly weave events from different sessions together, since various subplot elements can work to fill in the seeming holes plaguing one's plot.
Additionally, using subplots in this manner is a great way to sock it to players who accept character points for one or more levels in, say, the dependent or enemy quirks. Sure, many players have such characters in their life, but not all of them who do are in it for the character point bonus. And for those who are, well, this is where they pay for that additional power in the game.
On a macro level, Judges can use this principle to determine the actions of large groups of characters. Knowing their plot intimately, they are aware what characters need to be where and when, assuming that level of plotting was attempted, which is another great way to bring your story to life. When players jump ahead in the plot, after all, it always pays to be ready for that!
Subplots are discussed after adventure duration instead of after plots directly because in a short enough adventure, you're not likely to acknowledge all that many subplots. There's so little time to get to the meat of the matter in a one-shot, after all, that you're not likely to dwell on minor aspects of one character's story. If you want to feature supblots in one-shot adventures, make them count.
Adventure Duration
...or How Long A Given Story Lasts
Once the Judge has decided what kind of story they wish to tell, they must determine just how long that story will take to unfold in the form of an adventure. The duration of adventures are typically measured by session length, a session being the amount of time it takes for people to gather, sit down together at the table, and run through an evening (or afternoon, or whatever) of play.
Depending on how grand a tale the Judge has in mind, it may unfold over one play session or several. A story that can be completed in one sitting is often called a one-shot, and can be likened to a movie in scope. The characters and setting are introduced, the plot unfolds from beginning to end, and then everything should be tied up with a bow once the dust has settled, for good or ill.
The overwhelming advantage of a one-shot adventure is that players can experiment with new characters and genres without committing to either. Even better, one-shots generally require less work for everyone involved, as only the plot elements required for the adventure to function need to be worked out in advance. Furthermore, if one or more player characters are lost, there's no harm done.
On the other hand, a story which will unfold over several play sessions is usually considered a campaign. Whether it takes place over two nights of play or two hundred, a campaign should include the exact same components that a one-shot would. The benefit of additional time allows the story to breathe, however, providing an opportunity to explore the Judge's story in much greater detail.
Furthermore, players can more fully develop their characters as a campaign unfolds, watching them grow and change over time while they progress through the Judge's scenarios. This character development can dovetail with the Judge's efforts to tell their stories, in fact, their narrative growth influencing a campaign's progress in a fashion that makes each gaming session a truly unique experience.
Of course, a group need not rigidly adhere to such absolutes, mixing and matching as they see fit. A more flexible structure for a campaign would be to rig it up as an anthology series. The setting remains the same, but player characters are swapped out from one episode to another. Unless some of those characters survive the adventure that is, which may allow them to guest star another day!
Alternately, players might mix and match their campaigns, playing several at once but switching stories every session. Then again, they may play out a limited series of sessions detailing a completely different adventure, mostly as an extended break from their primary campaign. Or they may break up a continuing narrative using these techniques as occasional secondary plots that may bubble back up to the primary.
Players can also use these alternate techniques to either bolster an existing campaign or as a fresh breath of narrative air. Perhaps one's campaign hit a good mid-point or has become a bit heavy, and everyone might enjoy a one-shot tale before resuming their main story. Or perhaps those ostensible one-shots grow into a secondary campaign, because everyone liked the characters and/or story inherent to them.
As always, go with what's the most fun at your table.
Describing Adventures
...or the Judge's First Duty
So you've come up with a plot, assuming you're not just winging it, and you have generated all the characters that you feel you could be bothered to. All that remains is to wrangle up a bunch of people with which to sit down for a session of the Costumed Adventurer Simulation Engine, and you can bring your thrilling adventure to life for them!
Whether you're engaging in a one-and-done adventure or a component session of a larger tale, you have to start somewhere. Judges can set the stage for every scene in every adventure they wish to shepherd by simply describing the current situation for the players. This falls under the first duty of a game's Judge, that of codifying the scenario in which the game will occur.
Players won't know how to reasonably interact with the Judge's story until they have some understanding of the world around them, after all. When the Judge wishes to pass along information they feel is important enough to determine in advance, there are two basic means through which they can do so, and Judges may rely upon whichever of the two comes more easily for them.
The first of these is a prepared text block, encapsulating everything a Judge feels important enough to convey in a concise, well, block of text. By literally writing out everything they need players to know upon the beginning of a given scene, Judges can read it aloud to ensure every word is delivered as intended. The following is an example of a text block:
"His eyes lingering skyward as long as he could tolerate the soul-crushing gray haze, Enrique returned his view to the subjects of his watch, the silicone supermodels of Generation 666. Forced to watch the diet-chromed sociopaths curbstomp their quarry while waiting for the signal to open up on them with his nailgun, Enrique found he was more than ready to perforate them all when it finally came."
Of all the tools a Judge has to conduct a game session, creative description is possibly the most important. Sure, a short-hand description of a situation or environ can be used in a pinch, especially when everyone present is genre savvy. But the details a Judge reveals with even a sentence of flavorful text almost always trumps "the suprisingly pretty cyborg gangsters are criming across the street."
That's not to say a Judge needs to prepare a wall of text to read at people. There's nothing quite so immersion-breaking as one pausing for a short speech before resuming play, after all. But a quick and concise blurb like the cutscene above, or perhaps something as short as a single sentence the Judge can memorize immediately before reading it aloud, can make really effective use of this technique.
If you get good enough at this, you can project the illusion of spontaneity, even with a text block!
Instead of preparing a block of text to read, however, Judges can dole out information pertinent to a scene that was prepared in advance as the actions of players permit. After setting the stage in broad strokes, for example, maybe the Judge lets one player know something based on their detailed detective work, and another acquires further data based on, say, being in just the right place at the right time.
Here's an example of a more dynamic exchange, made possible as the various other players' characters arrive on the scene:
"How many of the glamborgs are there?"
"There's six of them, four of which are just standing around, looking impressed with themselves."
"Which chucklehead looks like they're in charge?"
"The ugly one of the bunch, the one with the lantern chin and the slightly torn skinthetics over his eyebrow, is the curbstomper. The distressingly gorgeous woman, the one revealing no chrome at all, is simply leaning against the wall, watching."
"Is there anything special about the neighborhood?"
"Not particularly. It's an old, Serious-Doh block from the '90s, like every other dirt poor block around it, printed on the New Bedrock they poured after the ice caps melted. Mostly a mix of that weird, extruded concrete simulant with bits of plastic hammered on after the fact. The bar the Generation 666 goons are hanging out in front of does belong to their rivals, though."
This is just a simulated example of how such exchanges might occur between the Judge and the players behind the protagonist characters. It's a powerful way to draw players into the narrative the Judge has in mind, because it brings at least some of the tiny details they've concocted to the fore. That and it helps to keep the players guessing as to what's important and what's not.
While dyamically dispensing vital pertinent and/or background information via descriptive text describing events to players to dispense is incredibly immersive, it doesn't work if players don't ask the right questions. When herding cats is easier than helping a particular group of players find a hint, no matter how obvious it is, perhaps waiting for them to do so isn't necessarily a winning bet.
On the other hand, as is often the case with such things, perhaps a happy medium can be acheived. One technique can be used for critical stage-setting, while the other can be used to handle the finer details of a narrative. Judges are encouraged to dispense information using both methods despite their personal preferences, if only to learn how to make such tools work better for them over time.
Animating Adventures
...or the Judge's Second Duty
Strictly speaking, everything the Judge utilizes in a role-playing game is just a prop used to tell their tale. Cars, guns, houses, statues, stadiums, cities, whatever, it's all the same. Non-player characters are no exception to this rule. They're just like things, in that in-game benchmarks are used to describe them, but NPCs also operate under rules that are quite often unique to just one being.
The second duty of a game's Judge is to act out the role of every character as they appear, whether good or evil, sapient or not, human or alien. Aagasdifb
(this is mardukawful. do over)
(keep folks internally consistent)
(getting into all the characters, and how)
(workin' on it)
Judging Adventures
...or the Judge's Third Duty
(this is where actual rule wrangling comes in, as opposed to wrangling of character or circumstance)
(workin' on it)
When Adventures Go Awry
...or hooba hooba hooba
(workin' on it)
(subplot stall tactics)
Whatever it is the players are up to, whether the Judge is steering them in that direction or events have pointed in that direction naturally, can be considered the plot. Oh sure, the Judge may have had a wildly different session in mind, complete with a totally different progression of events, but players are a crafty and unpredictable lot, and will do whatever it is they're going to do.
(workin' on it)
Just Adventure
...or hooba hooba hooba
(go for it)
(think of it as writing a story that features a bunch of protagonists who each have their own creator, and each gets a say in what they do, and TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THAT FROM SECOND TO SECOND. get that and you're in)
(maybe watch live plays if you need, or read 300 other books on this stuff)
(workin' on it)
On The Consequences of Action
...you know, karma rewards, advancement, popularity changes, all that jazz.
(workin' on it)
Um.
It may not shock you to realize that I am nowhere near completing this work. I'm still bending my head around everything I want to describe, which is a lot more in depth than the ten or whatever pages the old books provided. The trick is to include everything without losing everyone, which is, you know, tricksy. Here's hoping I can actually pull this keystone of the rules off!