Chances are, if you’re reading this, you know I’m a big fan of table top role playing games. You might have listened to my old podcast, Shark Bone, or you follow me on Twitter. Most of my online presence has to do with table top RPGs. Initially, this blog was supposed to be apart from them, but they are such a huge part of what I like, I found that trying to separate them was short-sighted, and not very true to who I am.
Besides, they are stories. And if this blog is about anything, it’s about stories.
In my gaming group, there is one story that is something of a white whale: Orpheus. I’m talking about the role playing game published by White Wolf in the early 2000s about ghosts. It is a story that spans 6 books and is rather epic in scale. I had the opportunity to play in a game, almost from start to finish, near to the beginning of my gaming career. It was intense and amazing. I created and played two characters for the game, experiencing their tragedies, learning about myself, and working through personal issues through their eyes and actions in the story.
As far as I’m aware, that’s the only complete run-through we’ve had in my circle of friends. Actually, I do believe there was one more, but I was not part of it. The other attempts have all fizzled, for one reason or another.
I have committed to run Orpheus for my game group. Two of them have played through it once. The other two have heard all the stories we tell and are excited to experience it for themselves. Honestly, I’m not sure I can do it justice. That may just be personal insecurities popping up, at least I hope it is, but it’s a very real concern and one I’ll have to resolve if I want the game to be the most fun I can make it.
A big part of my issue is the system. It’s an old game, and uses an old system. This system, the Storyteller System (as opposed to the Storytelling system), is not one I particularly love or am even very versed in. When my friend ran it for us, he modified it heavily, updating it with newer system design ideas (from the New World of Darkness Storytelling System) and making it run smoother for him, and us. That was fine, then.
I don’t think I want to do that. At least, not exactly how he did it. I know that I don’t really want to run it with the original system. I know that I do want to run it with a system that fits my Game Mastering style, and has the tools needed to tell its story. And, what kind of story is it?
- Horror: It has ghosts and the characters explore a new world, with new rules, scary baddies and enemies on all sides. Parts of the story features helplessness and being on the run.
- Power Fantasy: The characters get super-special, magical ghost powers they can use when they are out of their body. They’re cool and the players love using them.
- Intrigue: There are many factions who are working towards their own ends, and they may be friends, enemies, or both, of the characters during the story.
I’m not an expert on Orpheus, so there are probably (definitely) additional themes. But, these are the big ones I remember from my playthrough. With those being the main themes I want to concentrate on with my run-through of the story, the question becomes this: What system will support those themes, while giving me the ease of running that I want? I have played around with porting the game to the Fate RPG in the past, as well as the Cypher System. Both of those would work, but my group doesn’t like Fate much, and I’ve realized I don’t want to put Orpheus into a level-based system. I thought about trying Modern AGE, but ultimately abandoned it, as I didn’t want to put any work into a hack I was never going to use, and it uses levels.
Recently, I’ve begun running Scion 2e for my online group and I think I like the system. We’ve only had three real sessions, so we’re still muddling through the rules, but it has quite a few things going for it. The Storypath system is a fork of the Storyteller system. The Antagonist templates are easy to use, and the whole system for enemies makes it easy to create baddies on the fly. Because the bones of the systems are similar, it would probably not take overly-much work to convert things into Storypath. The system has a nice mix of rules and fiction support.
It has Powers. It has Intrigue. Can it do Horror? I think it can. When I think of horror, I think of dealing with the unknown. The unknown is scary. The game has rules for investigations, that it calls Procedurals, so we can play through finding the unknown and working to understand it. I also think of big scary baddies, things that are tough to deal with. The game has a rule for Scale, which gives bonuses to something that’s larger than the characters. That could make those baddies harder, or even impossible for the characters to deal with. So, like I said, I think it can handle the horror.
Those are my three themes, and my concern for ease-of-use, as far as running the game goes, taken care of. So, what else holds me back? I’m really not very good at game design. I really wish I was, because tabletop role playing games are so much fun. I love playing them, I love running them more, and I love thinking about different stories to run at the table. But, customizing a system to run a story is not my strong suit. I wish I was better at it, but… The big issue is honestly, probably, me getting too much into my head and wanting to get it “right” the first time, instead of making something and tweaking, changing or iterating the rules as the story goes.
That process is something that drove me absolutely nuts in my early gaming career. The system is there for a reason, the rules are there for a reason, for us all to agree on their use, and for us all to understand how things work. But, many times, the rules didn’t work. Which is why they got changed or tweaked by my friend who ran so many of the games we played, back then. Having a rule change between weekly sessions made me feel like I never had a sure understanding of how things worked, and that was very frustrating.
I’ve come to the point where I understand this need on more than an intellectual level. I’m open to it, I am eager for it. But, I don’t know how to do it. Again, I think I already know the answer: Just do it, then iterate. But, finding the motivation to start, then continue, then test it, is hard. Of course, it’s doable. Of course it is.
And, doable by me.
I wouldn’t be doing it alone, of course. In the initial stages, I’d likely be leaning heavily on my friend who ran the original Orpheus game. He’s got more than a decade of experience in tweaking systems, and he has a mind for them. His feedback will be invaluable. And, of course, the players at the table would be the ones using the system I put together, so their opinions will be extremely informative.
And, throughout it all, I’ll have to keep in mind that, this is for fun. The point is to entertain and be entertained by the wonderful story we all are making together. So, maybe I will start working on a Storypath hack of Orpheus. Or, maybe after I think about it more, I’ll use something else. I’m a huge fan of Burning Wheel, especially the Mouse Guard 2e simplified version. I’m just not sure it can satisfy my themes.
It’s hard to find the perfect way to tell an individual story, at the gaming table. There are so many systems, so many different likes and dislikes, so many things that could go wrong and need to be fixed. I do believe, though, that it could be very satisfying, in the end. Even if it doesn’t work the first time, I’ll just have to try, try again.
