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I once read an interesting blog from game designer Monte Cook about the challenge of pretending to be something that we are not.  As I recall, it hits on some deep and powerful threads of human psychology. (Sadly I can no longer find the article, as the original page has long since been deleted.)

In essence, Monte discusses how we undergo a rapid change of self-awareness right around puberty, when we suddenly stop playing pretend and find the idea of roleplaying to be something of an identity crisis.  This makes sense; it’s an age where everything we know about ourselves is challenged.  Our bodies change, our thinking changes, and we become hyper-aware of how others must see us.  As our hormonal changes incur initial sexual impulses, confusion and shame can add to the experience, making roleplaying – particularly casual, around-the-table-with-some-friends-(and-possibly-strangers) roleplaying – an exercise in extreme vulnerability.  Of course, most of us who started playing roleplaying games during or before adolescence know damn well that we weren’t particular good at the roleplaying part of the gaming experience back then.  Easily attributable to a lack of mature life experience, at the very least.

But for many of us, the power of immersive roleplaying is a palpable experience that we would not trade for anything in the depth of our adult lives.  That same vulnerability is there, of course; once we become conflicted about our core identities, the fears attached to the issue never entirely dissolve.  (Just ask Freud!)  But we come to surround ourselves with people we trust and enjoy sharing that vulnerability with – people who won’t judge us because they are there for the same experience, to one degree or another.  And “experience,” as Monte points out, is the point of the thing.

As a game master, I have a front-row seat to the intimate byplay of subsumed behaviors and enthusiastic involvement that characterizes my weekly game sessions.  Players focus their considerable wills on realizing the hopes and dreams of a fictional personality, experiencing their triumphs and their losses, and integrating themselves in a group narrative that spins a story that none of them will ever forget.  They get to do things that they will never have the chance to do in their everyday lives… leading armies, fighting dragons, experiencing grand romances and dark betrayals, and making decisions that can save the world or let it fall into ruin.  It’s a powerful experience, with the right chemistry.

And because I’m also a psych major, I’ll discuss yet another fascinating aspect of immersion.

As an interesting addendum to the vicarious experiences which drive us to immerse ourselves in tabletop roleplaying, the study of cognitive psychology suggests a stronger relationship between imagination and experience than many of us realize.  It’s plausible, in fact, that the ability to experience actual reality relies somewhat on our “imaginative” grasp of the experience.  That is, after all, the mechanism which allows us to recall the experience in vivid detail.

As an example, neuroscientists have noted that an individual observing the behavior of another individual engaging in an activity the observer comprehends will experience activity in the very same sections of the brain as the other person.  In essence, the observer engages his or her brain as if performing the activity him- or herself.  They refer to this phenomenon as “mirror neurons.”  As a guitarist, for example, I have noted that I will sometimes unconsciously move my fingers in a manner related to the movements of a guitarist I am watching perform.  Technically, as far as my brain is concerned, I may as well be playing the instrument myself if I am truly immersed in the experience.

So… does that make it any clearer?

Over the past few months, I’ve been running a kind of nontraditional fantasy adventure using Savage Worlds on Google+.  It’s been an education in many ways.  As a lifelong D&D enthusiast, it was my first shot at a Savage Worlds fantasy game.   Instead of a party of intrepid graverobbers, the group consists of the officers and advisers at the head of a royal army, and the threats the party has faced have been largely supernatural.  Mind you, these are all consequences of decisions made by my players as we worked toward launching the campaign, and it’s been a blast.  There are, in fact, still scorch marks in my head from last night.

In the story thus far, the action has been slipping and sliding toward a crescendo that involves a hitherto unknown supernatural beastie whose minions have been terrorizing the villages of the eastern wilds of their home kingdom.  Over the course of several sessions, I introduced a few of its more notable lackeys, had NPCs provide (sometimes inconsistent) background on the region, provided the PCs the requisite opportunity to screw everything up by slaying the witch who was protecting the townsfolk from the worst of it, and finally set them on the path to the Big Bad.

Now I just needed a Big Bad.

Jim Pinto’s Post World Games provided me with just the vile critter.  I recently helped fund Jim’s newest Kickstarter for a product called Toolcards, a collection of thematic card decks loaded with thoughtstarter elements that can be randomly selected and combined to extraordinary effect.  This is the fantasy version of the product, and the principal deck can be employed during game preparation – or even during play – to meet a broad assortment of needs.  I’ve always loved thoughtstarter products, like adventure seeds or interesting NPC ideas… most often, ideas that are born of an idle source of inspiration take on a life of their own.  I have taken many a beating from the wayward concept incited by contemplating a character in some oddball indie film that went on to fuel the collective imagination of my players such that it refused to eat its vegetables and the players cheered it on.

Did that metaphor run too far astray?

Well, each Toolcard presents of a list of elements that can represent simple Lego pieces in the creation of your choice.  Any given card provides a name, a location, a monster idea, some sort of magic, even a couple of descriptive concepts.  Need a monster?  Draw two or three cards at random and let your eye wander across the surface picking out words that work well together.  You could end up with a Nightshade Pegasus guarding the amberdrought elixir in a forest the beast has set ablaze.  Or a petulant ash-belching Blooded Warbeast, one of the handful of creatures who escaped the Wizard-King Vale when Rhoden the Geomancer was slain.  Or maybe you just use the Grayskin Halfling  called Elias the Forester, who wants to know why you’re here?  All that from THREE CARDS, by the way.

So I needed a Big Bad.  I knew it was a supernatual creature of some sort, so I reached for one of Jim’s specialty decks marked “Undead” and shuffled out a few cards.  This is what I ended up with:

NAME:  THE CORPSE-KING BUTCHER
Aspects:   Hate and Punishment
Powers:  Nightmarish Mental Illusions
Weaknesses:  Atonement / Holy Ground

The Corpse-King Butcher is believed to be a spirit who haunted the wilds of Eastern Anterrus for centuries.  His origins are a matter of pure speculation, as any dealings with the creature have inevitably led to the researcher’s long and arduous demise.

In the 13^th year of the reign of King Madroc the Wise, the Butcher was seen in the shadow of the Great Wood (now called the Birchwood).  Guardian Loielle DeCanith related the following account:

Witnesses spoke of the haunting of the Mayfair village for years.  His heralds were shades, harmless but to those who spoke to them directly, easy to avoid if they kept to their homes in the darkness of night.  For passing a threshold into the homes of the living wouldst sap the shades of all their strength.  Even the infamous Night Walker was but a shadow of a shadow in the warmth of a family hearth.

A local witch did conjure a ward sufficient to hold the beasts at bay should they even deign to near a woman’s stoop.  ‘Tis a most curious bouquet.

Mayfair is believed to be the name of a small hamlet to the north and west of the Great Wood.  Nothing remains of the village save the remnant of a church and a small cemetery.  A survivor’s account suggests that the Butcher arrives after a group of villagers had entered the wood and assaulted the heralds.

In the 26^th year of King Lorgrim the Just, a contingent of king’s men were sent to the town of Durham in the shadow of the Longwood.  The village had fallen prey to a creature of mist and murder, another herald of the Butcher.  An apprentice Guardian named Calmed wrote:

The massacre in Durham was unworldly.  The king’s men entered the wood to confront the monster, but never returned.  Two nights later, the hanged man was seen on the hilltop overlooking the township, and the Butcher appeared in the streets.  A young herbwoman knew the beast for what he was and bade the villagers flee to the temple and the shelter of their gods.  Many scoffed at the woman’s superstitions and soon fell beneath the Corpe-King’s blade.  Their homes were no sanctuary, and a madness spread through the town that turned one man upon another or upon his family in an attempt to escape.  Only the women seemed secure from the insanity, though they were no less vulnerable to his wicked blades.  Once upon holy ground, however, the Butcher came under attack from the townsfolk, and he was bitten by the knives, and he did run.  The gods truly protected the survivors of Durham that night.

One other account described a holy man who fell upon his knees before the Butcher and bade forgiveness for his sins and was spared, the Butcher’s power unable to bring him harm.

This was basically the information available to one of the PCs – a “guardian,” as mentioned in the text above, who specializes in monster-hunting – when, as the party returned to a village after victorious battle with the Night Walker, he spotted a spectral hangman’s tree in the distance and finally put all the pieces together.  You will eventually be able to hear all about it, and the battle that followed in the streets of the town, in our dramatically-produced Actual Play series The Obsidian Crown.

Thus far, the Toolcards have proven an invaluable resource, and there’s enough material in the cards to easily provide a virtually endless supply of potential material.  In addition to the standard deck, you can pick up a few of the specialty decks to help kickstart or fill out ideas for characters, cults, dooms, potions, quests, traps, undead, and more!  I cannot recommend them enough.  Go.  Buy.  Let your inspiration particles be fruitful and multiply.

Orryn Emrys, the Prismatic Dragon, is the director of the Prismatic Tsunami web community and the host of the popular Metagamers Anonymous RPG podcast. Learn more at http://www.prismatictsunami.com.

If you’ve been following my recent elucidations on Facebook, Twitter, my own website, or the new Prismatic Tsunami VLOG, then you have probably heard me extol the virtues of Green Ronin’s Freeport setting.  Freeport is a pirate city with some Lovecraftian undertones and plenty of room for adventure, political intrigue, investigative play, and lots of piraty goodness.

It first appeared in the adventure module Death in Freeport, released the same day as the 3rd Edition D&D Players Handbook in August of 2000.  The adventure was soon expanded into a trilogy and the company started producing free downloadable content to help expand their city and provide a plethora of tools for the discerning DM  to wield responsibly and with great wisdom.

Or not.

Eventually they released the first actual setting book, and I was quick to snatch it up and launch a campaign.  It was a smaller group that I ran alongside our regular bunch on an alternate game night.  And since it was an investigative game set in a pirate town, all three of my players decided to explore character concepts that had nothing whatever to do with investigation.  Or pirates.  I was a little surprised, to say the least.  But I soon grew to love these characters as much as any who had ever graced my gaming table, and we enjoyed two or three years of on-again, off-again hilarity and profundity in Green Ronin’s ever-expanding City of Adventure.  There really is no way that I could convey the ridiculousness of this particular degree of success, so permit me show you precisely what I was dealing with…

The first character was Argamon the Red.  Argamon was a dwarven multi-classed fighter/sorcerer with a club-footed Dexterity of 5 and a serious propensity for coming up with the wrong answer for any situation.  Having developed sorcerous talents in a superstitious dwarven community, Argamon was effectively ostracized and elected to set out on his own.  Despite his relative inexperience as an adventurer, he routinely entertained his comrades and erstwhile drinking companions with largely fabricated and heavily exaggerated tales of heroic deeds designed to spread his fame and unnerve any would-be antagonists.  Additionally, though he spent considerable effort honing his mystical talents, he had an unusual habit of utilizing them in unexpected ways.  Ever he strove to prove his dwarfishness, and he even took up work in a local smithy to hone his natural skills with working metal.

One of the ruddy-bearded, crimson-garbed dwarf’s hardened compatriots was a monkish fellow named Taermon.  A generally serious and fairly dour individual, Taermon’s player exhibited – through the course of the campaign – an unending series of pretty much the worst die rolls I have ever, EVER seen.  This quickly became a characteristic of the character, and Taermon was widely considered a well of bad luck best avoided at all costs.  He took employment as a bodyguard on more than one occasion, though his potential clientele soon diminished as he failed to keep one employer after another from meeting their doom.  A notable failure was the gentle gnomish bard with a troop of adopted teenage human girls with whom he frequently shared the stage.  The gnome had an unfortunate gambling problem that soon turned quite fatal, and Taermon’s sense of responsibility quickly turned the four teenage NPCs into wards who constantly needed saving from themselves… though the eldest of them quickly became a love interest.

The final member of the trio was a young gnomish woman known as Twinkle the Barbarian.  A diminutive canine-mounted rogue who had learned to tap her inner rage to lend her strength in times of need, Twinkle earned her keep with the development of a specialized courier service that delivered clandestine meeting arrangements, discreet payoffs, and questionable merchandise throughout the city’s underworld for a modest fee.  Though the quietest of the group, Twinkle had a self-satisfied manner and a lust for fun and games that made many of her associates finish their drinks quickly and depart lest they get caught up in another grand scheme.  And of course, you just didn’t want to piss her off.

A more unlikely group of investigators might have been hard to find.  They often stumbled into one situation or another and frequently fell for the red herrings.  But they had a blast doing it, and there was quite simply never a dull moment for any of us in Freeport: City of Adventure.

I recently interviewed Chris Pramas of Green Ronin on our podcast, and we talked about the latest development in this wondrous city’s noble heritage:  a 512-page full-color hardback for use with the Pathfinder game system.  I’m not even a Pathfinder guy, yet I can’t wait to get my hands on this tome.  If you’d like to check it out (and trust me, it’s more than worth it), I encourage you to support the Freeport Kickstarter campaign currently in progress.

And get yerself some booty!  Arr…!

Orryn Emrys, the Prismatic Dragon, is the director of the Prismatic Tsunami web community and the host of the popular Metagamers Anonymous RPG podcast. Learn more at http://www.prismatictsunami.com.

Prior to the end of the year, my podcast was promoting a holiday giveaway sponsored by numerous vendors and publishers.  In early December, I was contacted by a software developer who wanted to get in on the action and offered us a copy of their flagship product to add to our mammoth prize package.  The company was Lone Wolf Development, and the product was a multi-system character generation and management utility entitled Hero Lab.

Fast forward to today, and Hero Lab has become a staple of my gaming diet.  The enlightened gents from Lone Wolf tossed a copy my way so I could check it out, complete with a license for the game system(s) of my choice.  From listening to the show, they figured they could talk me into trying it with Savage Worlds… It required surprisingly little arm-twisting on their part.  I’ve been a laptop GM since around 2002, with a heavy emphasis on D&D 3.5, so I’m no stranger to digital tools at the table.

And to be fair, I’m running mostly Savage Worlds lately, and the one thing I lacked was – you guessed it – a character generation and management utility.

I should probably point out that crafting a character for Savage Worlds is a somewhat less than stressful process under even the worst conditions.  The night I introduced the game system to my home group, characters were effectively written up and ready to roll in less than half an hour.  With a little practice, it takes about 15 minutes.

With Hero Lab, it takes about 5.

The strength of the software is its ease of use and utilitarian features.  It keeps the math straight when you’re selecting your options and provides ready descriptions of every hindrance, skill, edge, or power you click on.  My online group now uses the software to construct and regularly update their characters, and every one of them figured out the ins and outs of the program with little to no guidance and minimal frustration.  As a player, you can even use the software to manage the character in play… it’s like an interactive character sheet spread out across a number of navigable tabs.  If you’re wounded, you check the appropriate box and every statistic affected by the wound is updated appropriately.  You can track power points, temporary adjustments, and even bennies (an invaluable tool for a Google+ game!).

For the GM, Hero Lab provides a quick and easy way to manage NPCs and bad guys.  More importantly, the program provides a tactical console for managing combat, with quick and easy access to every relevant statistic for each combatant.  This is a powerful resource for tabletop gaming not found in many products, and it has always been an absolute must at my gaming table.  The true flexibility of a character manager comes into play when the system provides the means to interact with the character under the most complex and vital circumstances.

So what if you’re not into Savage Worlds?  Well, thanks to Lone Wolf’s unique brand of gamer ingenuity, the same flexibility extends over a multitude of systems.  I’m not kidding…  You can get the same degree of utility I’ve described here for D&D 3.5 or 4^th Edition, Pathfinder, or any OGL-system game, as well as Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu, the World of Darkness, and Mutants & Masterminds (2^nd and 3^rd edition!).  When you buy the program, you let them know what license you’re wanting to pick up… and once you’ve got the program, additional licenses are pretty reasonably priced.

And worth it.

So whether you’re an experienced laptop GM or a complete noob, I can confidently assure you that Hero Lab will be an excellent tool at the table.  If you’re a player just looking for a way to efficiently construct, store, and manage your PCs, you’ll certainly find it a friendly and versatile platform for doing so.  I also know that Savage Worlds and Pathfinder, at least, offer numerous supplementary materials to expand the program’s utility for your games.  And you can expect great things from Lone Wolf in the days ahead… just check out the Realm Works Kickstarter!

*gives you a level look*  Any questions?

Orryn Emrys, the Prismatic Dragon, is the director of the Prismatic Tsunami web community and the host of the popular Metagamers Anonymous RPG podcast. Learn more at http://www.prismatictsunami.com.