Understanding our Game, Part One

The session summaries are the “meat and potatoes” of this blog. While it may not be very entertaining for outside visitors, the players and I benefit from having our stories etched in digital stone. As our game grows into multiple story arcs and countless meta-plots a sense of direction is greatly needed. The sessions summaries are summations; they do not record every single event in a session. They do manage to capture the core elements of the story at hand. Let me say that it is very exciting to receive positive feedback from several White Wolf gamers about the presentation of our game. I have posted answers to a few questions here in the blog. Gamers feel free to keep emailing me (eithansmith@gmail.com) with new questions. I had an enjoyable time answering this set. 1. Your stories are very indepth but I was wondering why are specific rolls for actions not recorded in your session summaries? Just wondering. While the White Wolf’s system plays an important part to our Healing Scars campaign, I don’t feel that it is necessary to record individual rolls in the summaries. Doing so might cheapen the value of these tales, by pulling them out of the narrative fantasy into a mix of techno jargon and complicated rules. As a storyteller I constantly challenge my players through simple, extended, and contested rolls, but I do not feel that the specifics of these dice challenges require exact documentation inside of our story. If anyone wants to know the specifics of a certain roll in our game, I would be more than happy to keep a separate log of these numbers. Until the desire for such a thing emulates, expect to see more of the same from these writings. 2. I'm nitpicking here but you have individual sessions listed in the summaries, but nowhere does it list chronicles. Are these sessions all part of the same chronicle or do you even use chronicles or stories to segregate your sessions? To answer both questions: no. I detest White Wolf’s style of grouping gaming sessions together. I have always tried to compare our session format to that of individual episode of a TV show. Each session I write about is very close to that standard in length of time, character development, etc. So, one could assume that about 15-20 sessions equal an entire season. And you could take this a step further and state that each season could be a “chronicle.” Of course that requires a lot of “assuming” and “standards,” two things that I never really cared for. They are many reasons that I like the episodic formula. It is very easy to write stories in this format; I have countless examples of plot development at work to pull from on the television. Considering how popular television shows are, I take the good out of this format and apply it to roleplaying. There is no perfect way to group the sessions of the Healing Scars group. I enjoy this complexity because I think it parallels real life; such events in your world cannot be easily split into categories and often change depending on one’s point-of-view. 3. I am a GM for white wolf and have been for a while and I have this problem. How concrete are your stories in writing? Basically what I mean is do you allow your characters to deviate away much from what you are writing? It really depends on the story I’m writing. For the most part, I write my stories in a loose outline format. One trick I use is that I write down a few themes I want the story to hold to before I start writing. So while I’m crafting my story, the themes are always there and can easily fit into my writings, thus adding more complexity and realism to the game. Characters can, and often do, deviate completely from my proposed storyline. But, unlike most storytellers, I enjoy this when it happens. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the reason someone moves away from the story is due to a major flaw in the logic of where I initially wanted the story to go. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like to TRY to control the outcome of certain events. The difference is that I never force such a thing; I merely test the group with certain challenges and hope for the best. If it doesn’t work out to my design, then it is my fault entirely and I work twice as hard to recorrect my mistakes. 4. Nice site and thanks for the comment on my page. I have a question for you. I was just wondering about what you use (GM stuff) to make the Werewolf:the Forsaken game more fun? There are way too many to name. In fact, expect me to devote a few posts here in the future talking about just that. One excellent technique (a personal favorite of my old GM, Jarrett H.) is to insert various meta-plots that run outside of the session’s plotline. Character meta-plots are priceless ways to really make players feel at home in your world. One example of this, from my game, would be Nail’s confrontations with David Simmons and the Destroyer Wolf. While this is an important part of the story it runs completely separate of the central plot of the sessions. Without good meta-plots characters loose individuality and often get lost in the tasks assigned to the entire pack/group. More questions to come! The dark spiral is a great community and it's given many opportunities to meet great people. Gamers, players, whomever: post your questions here or shoot me email. I will answer new questions in Understanding our Game, Part Two.