One of my gaming groups plays a mashed up game with three genres: Highschool, Swashbuckling, and Urban Fantasy. We call it Children of the Shroud. In the game we play high school kids in a hidden magic world. As part of our magical learning we are part of the Junior Guardians club. It’s a club for magical students at our high school in Buffalo NY. Due to reasons, we got ourselves involved in trying to stop a magic prosperity cult who are using the in-game currency of a video game called Call of Violence to try and manifest a new primal elemental of prosperity. This in-game currency can be bought with real world money. Prosperity magic is outlawed by the magic cops because it can destroy the magical veil which helps hide the magical world from the normals out there. If those normals found out about the magical world they’d get really torch and pitchforky on the magic folks. 

Our characters are…interesting. My character, Silas, had his girlfriend’s essence bound to his soul when the campaign started and has been trying to make her whole again. Ti is a medusa in a really nice middle class family of medusas. Gunny just figured out he was a wind elemental and his dad isn’t dead, but some big bad criminal, or spy, or both. On top of that we can all manifest magical weapons that let us cast stronger and stronger spells the longer we fight, and two of us are also on the academic decathlon team at school, or the Knowledge Bowl team, as our friend Ti likes to say.

It’s a mashup. So let’s talk about how you can do something similar.

Pick Genres

First, pick three genres. Need a list? You can try TV tropes or here’s a bunch of genre’s to pick from: 

Action, Adventure, Comedy, Crime, Espionage, Fairy Tale, Hard SciFi, High Fantasy, High School, Historical, Horror, Low Fantasy, Martial Arts or Wuxia (It’s Woo-Shhaaa, say it with me, Woo. Shhaaa.) Mecha, Medical, Medieval, Modern, Mystery, Politics, Post-Apocalypse, Prehistoric (who doesn’t love a big old dinosaur), Psionics, your favorite version of the punk genre, Pulp, Science Fantasy, Soft SciFi, Space Opera, Sports (we need more sports RPGs), Suburbia, Super Heroes, Sword & Sorcery, Urban Fantasy, Western, Zombies AKA Hordes of shambling dead people where the shambling dead are the least dangerous thing.

Understand Your Genres

Second, understand what your genres are about. Let’s look at the Children of the Shroud game I mentioned. I’ll be quoting the Cortex Prime rule book for their take on the first two genres:

High School: Teenagers are complicated, and so are the adults that share their worlds, especially when the drama is dialed all the way up because of exams, proms, drugs, and bullies.

Swashbuckler: Icons of this genre are pirates, musketeers, and scoundrels, but it really extends to anything where the characters engage in flashy exploits, daring escapes, over the top swordfights, and perilous relationships.

There isn’t an Urban Fantasy genre in the Cortex book but here’s my best take on it.

Urban Fantasy: often deals with a world of magic in a modern setting. Most Urban Fantasy has a mystery at the center of these stories, leaning on its roots in noir fiction, but the genre is primarily about mixing the magical with a mundane world and seeing how they interact. The PCs should also have one foot in both the magical and mundane worlds.

Fit Those Genres Together – Largest Step

Third, try and look at how the genres can fit together. This examination also lets you take a genre to a different sub genre or lets you add a sub genre. Once again, here’s how we did it with Children of the Shroud.

In our Children of the Shroud game we decided everyone would have a magical weapon of some sort that they manifested, and the weapon would generate mana as it was wielded through different forms for combat magic. That was the intersection of Swashbuckling and Urban Fantasy. It also let me push a bit of the high school magic animes I enjoy into the game.

We decided we wanted ritual magic that took longer to use but was more flexible than combat magic and could produce a variety of effects. This strictly fits the Urban Fantasy genre.

Our GM, and fellow Gnome, Phil, created something called the Shroud, which hid the magical world from the mundane world but it could be strained if magic was used too blatantly. This also meant there was a governing body over magic in the world (the Veil), who helped maintain the Shroud and investigated and prosecuted those who sought to expose the Shroud or use magic in a way that would harm it. This pushed us to a hidden magical world as part of our urban fantasy genre. 

To help make this hidden world, urban fantasy, and high school genre even more poignant and overlapped, we placed the parents of our characters as part of this magical society in some way. On top of that, Gunny’s player decided his mother doesn’t know anything about the magical world, creating some hidden world genre tension.

Next we crafted mechanics that pulled in school cliques to highlight the high school school side of play. We called them Roles. This is a feature of Cortex Prime. Our Roles trait set includes Emo, Geek, Jock, Popular, and Performer. They provided attributes, but also our social standing in different school cliques. This is predominantly a highschool thing, but the mechanics also played into the action parts of our swashbuckling since Jock and Geek were used in our dueling rules.

We also decided our high school would be mostly mundane, but there would be a special club called the Junior Guardians that was a cover for the magical teens attending the school. This club would be where they got their magical education. This hits the high school and urban fantasy genres along with that hidden world sub genre.

Lastly, we have our important relationships. We started with two in the magical world and two in the mundane world to keep up the idea of being in both worlds from Urban Fantasy. Also, because one of the genres is Swashbuckling our GM decided to also do their best to make some of those relationships dangerous in a variety of ways.

There’s actually more to it than that, I just threw a bunch of examples of what we did at you. If you break it down there’s really just three things the group needs to consider and one extra the GM should keep in mind. Time for a sub list.

Setting

Your setting should do its best to find these overlaps. As human beings we’re pretty good at finding the patterns and intersections where these different genres and their setting elements can intersect. Just ask yourself a few questions such as:

• Where are the predominant locations the game will take place?
• Who are the important NPCs and how do they fit into the setting?
• Why are people or organizations doing what they’re doing? What’s their motivation?
• Where is the tension and conflict in the setting and how can it be related to the genres being used?

That’s just off the top of my head. Add questions that work best for your group and creative style.

Situation

An addendum to the setting would be situation. What is the initial situation the characters find themselves in or what is the overall situation the game assumes the characters will be involved in? Some folks think of this as a scenario or plot but it’s a little higher level than that. It’s more of a guideline for the players so they more easily craft characters inside the campaign. It also gives starting tensions, problems, and ways for the GM to provide meaningful hooks for the PCs.

In our Children of the Shroud game we were all a part of the Junior Guardians, which meant we had Junior Guardian missions we had to take part in. On top of that we had personal goals the GM ok’ed as part of the initial situation. Silas had his girlfriend Meseme’s essence bound to his soul and was dealing with the fallout from that. Gunny had just discovered he was magical, and that his dead father wasn’t dead and was also magical.

Mechanics

Your mechanics need to find ways to fit the overlaps. Cortex Prime made this easier because we built a game using the Cortex Legos. It was a little more upfront work but made for a very fun experience.The relationships, the roles, our dueling rules, how magic affected the Shroud, and our magic ritual rules all touched on the genres we chose in some way.

You can look around for a game that just does what you’re looking for. If you want a pulpy weird west with a dash of horror game, you can play Deadlands. But if you’re trying something where it’s not quite as obvious, or there’s not a game that fits what you’re looking for, it’s time to break out some house rules, hacks, and drifts. It’s a whole discussion on it’s own, but here’s a couple ideas for how to go about it:

• Utilize the core mechanisms of the game to build the things you believe you need to make the game fit the genre.
• Adapt mechanics and ideas from other games to the game you prefer.
• Combine the above two ideas.

What I would advise against is excluding rules for things that would be important to the genre and just leaving it up to interactions at the table. Of course, if your table is ok with GM fiat as a final arbiter for important decisions and moments in the game, then you should do that. Every table is different in what they enjoy.

Characters

Your characters should be crafted with the genres in mind, along with the above mentioned situation. Genres have character tropes that fit inside of them and story tropes which help drive character action. Here’s a solid way to come up with an interesting character for a genre mash game. Let’s do an original from Children of the Shroud:

• Start with a character archetype from one of the genres or pick two and mash them together
  • Manic Pixie Girl with sleep magic (High School / Urban Fantasy) She’s very pro Veil (Hidden World)
• Put a spin on it
  • She’s really pretty anxious about talking to people about things that matter unless it’s in her dream space. (High School / Urban Fantasy)
• Pick some kind of story arc you’d like your character to go on
  • Will she still see the Veil as the bastion of order, law, and good she believes it to be after working inside of it? (Swashbuckling / Urban Fantasy)
• Then play to the motivations of the character, the ideas of the trope, the idea of the story arc, and the spin.

The above example isn’t really an original, it’s a character named Bo who’s a much more prominent NPC in our game these days. She’s part of the Junior Guardians which is how our PCs know her, and she went to the Prom with Ti. This is just the story I would envision for her if I was playing her.

Together these steps will give a way to make a character that fits into the game you’ve mashed together.

Scenarios

Lastly, let’s talk about Scenarios. It’s actually the easiest part because you just look at the plots and tropes those kinds of genre stories have and build scenarios utilizing them as foundations. Then you can add some interesting bits from your characters, setting, and situation, utilizing your genre tropes where appropriate, and you have yourself a genre mashed scenario.

Phil did this quite expertly in our 3rd Children of the Shroud story, Smarty Pants. We started with an academic decathlon against a rival school (High School). Silas spied a student on the opposing team, Lowell Thornton, using a magical Altoid to give himself a temporary intellect boost during their one-on-one trivia battle. Thing is, Lowell isn’t magical (Urban Fantasy). On top of that, before we started the story Phil asked us about how we knew our friend Morris who died at a party at Lowell’s house this past summer, drowning in Lowell’s pool (Swashbuckling – Perilous Relationship). I told Phil my character was really tight with Morris, who was the one who introduced Silas to Meseme, my girlfriend whose soul is cohabiting my body (Highschool / Urban Fantasy). We come to find out that the Altoids were imbued with the essence of Morris, who had his soul sucked out of him in a magical ritual (Urban Fantasy). So now our characters are running down who sold the Altoids to Lowell which leads to who tried to kill Meseme in the same way (Swashbuckling / Urban Fantasy). During the entire story Silas is having emotional anger issues. His friends are doing what they can to deal with it, but tensions are high (High School). There’s a running battle in the park with one of the essence dealers, but she gets away (Swashbuckling). Hard conversations are had but eventually Silas’s friends, Ti and Gunny, help Silas commune with Meseme within his soul, which helps calm him down, and three are able to track down and bring some of the people involved with taking people’s essence to justice(High School / Urban Fantasy). This was, of course, in a huge sword fight in an abandoned asylum for the mentally ill in the city of Buffalo, NY (Swashbuckling). Yes, we have one of those here. It’s real.

Now that you have the list, here’s the most important thing to keep in mind. These items aren’t necessarily done in order. You’ll most likely need to bounce around to each of them, getting little bits of information, making choices, asking questions, and filling things out until you have a clear enough picture to proceed with whatever might be the next logical step in your genre mashup.

Session 0 or Session -1

To help this process you might want to gather your game group for this genre mash. Session 0’s are great for this, or even session -1 where you’re just hashing out the above items. There’s a lot to talk about, but here’s a starting list of things to think about when having this discussion.

Genre

• Which genres are we going to use?
• What do the genres mean to each person? 
• Where do the genres overlap?

Setting

• What do the genre overlaps mean for the setting? 
• Is the setting original or something created whole cloth? 
• Who’s building or deciding on the setting? Is it a group effort? Is the GM going to take point and get input from the rest of the group, or will you use some other methodology? 
• What’s the initial situation for the characters going to look like?

Mechanics

• What mechanics are you going to use? 
• How do they fit your genre mashup? 
• How don’t they fit your genre mashup? 
• Are you planning on hacking them to make them fit better? 

It can feel like a lot, but I find this kind of effort to be a fun creative exercise, regardless of whether you’re doing most of it alone or with your group. In my experience, if you just follow the flow of answers and questions as they come up, and refer to the above questions as you find yourself getting stuck, you’ll have a pretty easy time with this.

I will provide one more bit of advice. If you’re the GM and are doing this exercise with your group, I would suggest facilitating this part just like you run the game. Ask a question, get some answers, take some notes. Always do your best to provide and get clarifications on things that are said. Also, don’t be afraid to say no to things that don’t fit together, or ask the group how those pieces that don’t look like they fit together actually do fit together. You should do your best to control the pace and when things bog down, utilize the people in your group to get unstuck.

I just want to say thanks if you’ve read this far. Let me recap the steps I think about when putting together a genre mash game.

Recap

First, pick three genres.

Second, understand what your genres are about.

Third, try and look at how the genre’s can fit together and if you need to take a genre to a slightly different sub genre. When doing this you should think about these things:

• Setting. The people, places, important history, and current events of the game. These should all reinforce one or more of the genres.
• Situation. This is the initial set of circumstances the characters will find themselves in.
• Characters. Player characters that fit inside the genre and can be protagonists in the game.
• Mechanics. Mechanisms and procedures that make sense with and enhance the genres of the game you’re playing.
• Scenario. Build scenarios using the aforementioned elements along with the plots and story beats used in the genres you’re mashing up.

Once you’ve done that you have yourself a genre mashed game.

Now let me ask you. What kind of Genre Mashups have you put together? How did you do it? How would you enhance what I’ve presented?

I like the lore, the gore, and the story of it. Iron shoes stomping lonely travelers and then, just to add insult to death, the Redcap dips their cap in their victims blood to keep themselves sated. Nice and gruesome. So I dropped one into my game, called it The Redcap, capital THE, as part of a dark fey thing going on in my campaign. Thing was I wanted to make the Red Cap part of the Redcap a little more special. So I came up with a mechanic to allow the players to rip the cap off its head. A Descending Difficult Check.

I’m going to give you the example first and then follow it up with the format so you can use this idea in a game where it would make sense.

The Redcap’s cap provides the creature with a bunch of buffs: extra defenses, damage reduction, stronger attacks. The Difficulty Check to pull the cap off the Redcap’s head started at 30. Just about impossible in the game we were playing. Every time someone managed to grab the Redcap’s hat and try to pull it off but failed, the DC was reduced by 2. This meant with effort, in the form of actions taken, the difficulty would eventually be lowered enough so the cap could be taken off the Redcap’s head. Once that was done those buffs disappeared and any damage done to the cap would deal double damage to the Redcap.

Outlining This Process

With the example set up let’s talk about outlining the process for building out a descending difficulty check.

1. Situation. You need a tense situation where effort over a short time would matter. Getting the cap off the Redcap’s head.
2. Stakes. Figure out what the stakes are for engaging with the task. Removing the cap from the Redcap greatly weakens it.
3. Difficulty. Decide the level of difficulty you want to set the task at but don’t tie it to a skill or ability. If someone comes up with an idea that makes sense in some way, utilize the mechanics of your game to give it a chance. DC 30 to remove the hat.
4. Actions. What taking action will do. Decide how much a check will lower that difficulty. You can put levels into this if you’d like. For instance, with the Redcap I could say only a check that was over 15 would reduce the difficulty by 2 and any check below 15 only reduced the difficulty by 1.

With those steps you have a descending difficulty check for your game.

A More Complex Example

Let’s come up with another more complex example with some different parameters. I think I’ll use that well known Dragons with Dungeons RPG.

Situation: There’s a magical ritual that is currently summoning something terrible into the world. Powering the ritual is a head cultist and their allies. 

Stakes: In order to shut down the ritual you need to understand how it works. Once you understand how it works you need to shut it down. The longer this goes on the longer you have to deal with the empowered cult. To make things worse, if four rounds pass a very powerful demonic entity is summoned and then you’ll have to deal with the entity. This creates a two step process with the stakes being an empowered group of cultists and the potential summoning of a powerful demonic entity. Let’s flesh out the first step.

Step 1

Setting the Difficulty

Understanding the Ritual. DC 40 This game has an action economy so I’m going to want to take into account how that affects understanding the ritual. We’re only letting someone try understanding the ritual once per round. They can either use a free action or a bonus action 

What acting will do

• If you try for free. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 2. A roll above 10 reduces the DC by 1. A roll below 10 increases the DC by 2 as poor information has been given, confusing the situation.
• If you use a bonus action. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 5. A roll above 10 reduces the DC by 3. A roll below 10 increases the DC by 2 as poor information has been given, confusing the situation.

I chose this design because it allows for players to take a regular action to do things while trying to figure out what’s up with the ritual. It also has a risk element so that if a character who isn’t competent at figuring out magical rituals tries to help, they could end up interfering with the operation by increasing the difficulty. 

Now that we’ve done it once, let’s do it again.

Step 2

Setting the Difficulty

Shutting down the ritual. DC 30. Let’s up the stakes a little here since we’re acting and not just trying to study and understand something. It’s either use a bonus action or a regular action and we’ll put the rider on here that the PC’s action needs to be something that can interact with the ritual, so magic or some kind of action that messes with the ritual. 

What acting will do

• If you use a bonus action. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 2. A roll above 15 reduces the DC by 1. A roll below 15 causes magical backlash dealing 4d6 damage to the character but still decreases the DC by 1.
• If you use a regular action. A roll above 20 reduces the DC by 4. A roll above 15 reduces the DC by 2. A roll below 15 causes magical backlash dealing 4d6 damage to the character but still decreases the DC by 1.

I chose this design because it ups the stakes by making the players need to use their actions to accomplish the task, which creates choices. Plus, a failure doesn’t strengthen the ritual but causes the magic from the ritual to lash out and harm the character. This feels more appropriate for the situation.

The other thing that can happen here is the Head Cultist can try and put their will against the ritual to try and strengthen it to keep it going. The Head Cultist, instead of casting spells or fighting with the player characters, can take their action to make a spellcasting check to reinforce the ritual. Just use the same what acting will do section but instead of decreasing the DC their actions increase the DC. It’ll put another choice on the board for what the players should do. Interact with the ritual, deal with the Head Cultist, keep the Head Cultist from strengthening the ritual, or deal with the other cultists. Not only that, but handle the ritual in 4 rounds or deal with something worse.

So that’s a more complicated example just to show off some different ideas surrounding the concept of a descending difficulty check. I’m curious to hear if others have tried things like this in their games and how they’ve made it work. I’m always looking to expand my choice of tools to provide the best experience I can for my players. Also, if you have any thoughts or examples of situations this would work in I’d love to see them in the comments.

Links

• WhatdoIKnowJR.com – Jared’s Reviews
• Supergods by Grant Morrison
• Screen Crush Youtube Channel
• Themershard Ornament

Today this isn’t really a surprise. The Between and Public Access have different phases of play which allow for different kinds of actions to be taken. The Forged in the Dark games have their versions of downtime activities. Even D&D has their downtime mechanics where you spend days of time to do things when you’re not adventuring.

This last one, the D&D one, is what I want to talk about because it’s a bit lacking in both presentation and implementation. So here’s a version of downtime rules I cooked up for my D&D game, but realized I could use them in other RPGs. 

Downtime activities

• Most downtime activities have two resources associated with them. Resources and Energy. 
  • Energy is the amount of time and effort you can put towards a task.
  • Resources are the people, money, raw materials, and other such items an activity may need to be completed. Most of this can be abstracted as money, but special activities may need other more specific requirements. For example, if you want to learn an ancient language the GM may decide that you’ll have to gain the services of one of the three people in the world who can teach the language. That means you’ll have to go to one of these people and negotiate with them for their services as a special requirement.
• A character gains downtime energy each week equal to 25 + their character level.
  • A character can only spend a maximum of 50 energy in any one week.
• As soon as the GM declares it’s time for downtime, the PCs can work on downtime activities as long as they have the energy to spend on those activities.

So we have resources and energy. These mechanics are just cribbed from any of those mobile games where you wait to get energy and then spend that energy along with other resources to get things done. Strangely enough, when you just add a little narrative to what you want to get done it becomes a nice little flexible system to show how you can get things done over time inside of a fantasy RPG.

What Are Downtime Activities?

They’re pretty much anything that you can think of that would take time and potentially resources. But this makes the system flexible enough to fit pretty much any situation. Here’s three examples.

Example 1

You want to be proficient with a longsword, but you’re a human wizard and the only bladed weapon you’re proficient with is a dagger? Ok, We’ll say it costs you 200 energy and you need an instructor. The instructor will cost 40 gp. 

Example 2

You want to learn how to speak elvish and another PC in the party is willing to teach you? It’ll cost you 400 energy to have a basic understanding of the language along with 200 energy from your party member to take the time to teach you. 

A basic understanding means you can understand what someone says to you in elvish, convey an intended idea in elvish, or get the gist of reading elvish with an intelligence check. 

To become proficient in the language will then cost another 400 energy plus spending a month living among elves to get a functional understanding of the language. This means you’re now proficient in elvish so you can speak, understand, read, and write the language.

Example 3

You’re the prince of a foreign kingdom of fire elementally infused humanoids that don’t have the greatest reputation. You’d like to have an embassy for your people within the kingdom. First, be a hero with an impeccable reputation. Second, it’ll cost 400 energy. This is to get meetings with the right people, make the proper connections, and go through the process of diplomacy. For every 1000 gold you spend to help smooth the way 25 energy is removed from the total, up to a maximum of 6000 gold spent to decrease the energy spent by 150. 

A Bit of Commentary

The first example is pretty straightforward. It’s energy plus a resource, hire an instructor and pay them. This might change based on circumstance. If you’re in the middle of nowhere, an instructor might cost more. If you’re not a wizard but a rogue who’s trained in the short sword, then the GM might rule that it’ll only take 150 energy instead of 200.

The second example has one PC teaching another PC a language. This has a few different things. The first is the idea of a basic understanding of the language. It’s just something that made sense to me as a GM for those things that would take time and have steps and different levels of competency to learn. So once a character has a basic understanding of a language they have the ability and option to make an intelligence check to understand the language. It felt right as I was coming up with the downtime activity.  

Second, I decided to say if one of the characters wants to help them learn the language then they won’t have to pay for a teacher. The cost is the teaching character has to spend half the downtime the learning character is teaching them.

Last, I decided that to become proficient in elvish would require the character immersing themselves in the language for at least a month. That felt like a fun requirement to put on as it could create an interesting story.

The third example is slightly altered from one of my D&D games. We actually had this activity going on in the background for a while during the game until it was done and an embassy was established. Now, the players sometimes go there and speak with the NPCs that were created inside of the embassy, including a restaurant that features food from the character’s homeland. In breaking it down, this version of a downtime activity allows for the player to throw more resources at a task to get it done quicker.

So now that we’ve seen some examples, let’s put together a pick list structure for you GMs out there to craft your own downtime activities:

• A player says they want their character to do, make, create, or learn something.
• How much energy is the activity going to take? It’s not unfair to keep in mind that between 25 – 30 energy is usually a work week’s worth of effort.
• How much in resources are required, if any?
• Are there any special requirements or resources needed to accomplish the downtime activity that cash can’t handle?
• Decide if this project is one downtime activity or more than one. If it’s more than one, decide what it means when each step is completed.
• Explain the requirements to the player so they can get started on it.

So while I gave three downtime activities as examples, here’s some of the ones I’ve had in my games for your reference, along with the chart I use with the players to track this stuff. I’ll often highlight and move things around to denote that things are done.

This chart can read as a bit of gibberish to those who aren’t playing in the game, but it’s mostly just to show some of the different ways I’ve used the resources and mechanics of my very homebrewed D&D game to let these downtime rules function in a variety of different ways.

A worry that’s been brought up when I’ve talked to other people about this is, “Is this game breaking?” and no, the game has not broken. In fact I’m using this system in two separate campaigns that have lasted over twenty sessions each. The groups have been playing every other week for over a year. Both groups are level 8 and the game system has allowed them to expand their characters and engage with the world in a way that’s a little less hand-wavish and the downtime makes them feel like their actions can and are affecting the setting in meaningful ways.

One last bit of advice for those who try this system out. When a PC accomplishes a downtime activity, take some time to allow for whatever the downtime activity has accomplished in the game. For instance, the grapple gun that’s on that list has been used quite effectively, and the embassy has been a location that’s come up in play repeatedly. Also, allow the players to have input into those parts of the setting when they create things like the Embassy. Do it together at the table. It’s fun, takes some of the work off you, allows them to feel like they’re getting the thing they wanted, and creates investment in the game setting.

I know this is a lot. If you read this and find it interesting, but have questions, please feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to answer them. 

For instance, there are these intelligent Kobolds I use in my games sometimes. The Seven Talons of the Raging Inferno. They trained together for years and are field agents for a dragon who sends them on missions. Thing is, in their years training together they’ve come to care about each other. That means when they’re in a battle they get angry, sad, scared, and talk to each other as things happen. And if one of them falls the rest move to cover them. When they retreat they don’t leave anyone behind. They’re a family to each other which means they’re not just monsters to kill. When they’re in an encounter I’ve put together, it really puts a unique tone to how things play out.

But the real question is, Why does this matter? 

Because it gives me something to play off of beyond the standard, “They’re monsters for the players to kill.” I could have the kobolds snarl, or bark if you prefer the dog versions, but it’s not what I’m looking to get out of my game. If you’re also looking for something a little more from the characters you’re portraying, I hope the following will help.

My NPC Creator Checklist

This is my short list I think about when building out NPCs

• I start with a name and a short descriptor that tells what function this character has in the setting.
  • Harper Coin, an arms dealer

It’s simple and tells me a little about the character at a glance

• I like to know what they want
• • To make money

This is an easy to understand motivation which I can play towards.

• I then desire to know what they need
• • To have a happy family life

What a NPC needs is a little bit more about the character’s subtext. It gives me something to think about when portraying an NPC. This could be insight to what’s actually important to them, a thought about what they’re missing out on in their life, or something else I’ll think of as the conversation is happening with the PCs. In the end it gives me options for how I might want to portray the NPC when they’re in an encounter.

• Give them three descriptors. 
  • Rotund, charming smile, missing part of their right ear

The first two I tend to make more common, while the third descriptor I look for something a little more quirky or memorable. It just helps create a quick picture of the character while leaving a lot of space for the PCs to fill in the blanks. 

• If you have time, give them a quote.
  • “ You won’t find fairer prices anywhere else. Plus you can feel better about putting your enemies into the ground since your purchase will be helping me put my Darcy into a good school. And next time you come back I’ll give ya the house discount. I’ll even throw in this explosive.”

I try to keep the quotes to two or three sentences. I find they help tie together the stuff I’ve already written down, add a little more depth to the NPC, and help remind me of their voice when I start portraying them.

Together, these pieces give you something a little deeper to play with at the table than just a name with a weird quirk. Don’t get me wrong. I love the utility of the quirk and a name to make a quick NPC, but even when I’m improvising at the table I will often work through this checklist, jotting down notes, as I’m interacting with the PCs.

I also find that for NPCs that persist in games for longer than a scene, just having these few ideas helps me play them with a sense of agency. They have wants and needs. Most of us have wants and needs. It’s easy for us to relate to. It also was one of the ways I realized I could get players to stop treating NPCs like props to be used to further their adventures. Helped make the setting feel a little more like a living breathing place and not just a location for the PCs adventures to take place in.

I do have to say I hope you noticed I never mentioned doing a voice or wearing a prop or anything like you might have seen on Critical Role or Dimension 20. I enjoy those shows and the entertainment they provide, but to portray NPCs that have a place in the world, feel unique, and are easy to remember, I find this checklist works for me.

Last thing. The ideas here are developed from the idea of Want vs Need in a variety of storytelling instructional ideology, and Jason Cordova’s Carved from Brindlewood games and 7-3-1 technique. Here’s a pretty good summary of the Want vs Need for a character.

• Want: something your character desires, because they believe it’ll improve their happiness.
• Need: the lesson they need to learn to overcome their inner struggle and achieve true happiness.

Read the blog it’s from here.

I hope you’ll give this a try, and if you have any thoughts or tips for how you make NPCs that you find easy and fun to play at your tables you’ll share them with us. Also, here’s the checklist one more time:

• A name with a short descriptor about their function in the setting
• A want
• A need
• Three physical descriptors
• A quote

It used to be when I was younger. The thought of someone killing you in your nightmares terrified me. Being possessed by a demonic entity who could cause you to projectile vomit was as horrific as it was gross. The thought that a malevolent spirit was haunting my TV gave me a pavlovian response every time that pure white signal appeared. Then Scream deconstructed the slasher movie for me. After that there was Cabin in the Woods which did it again. I started studying storytelling and within that, the tropes of horror movies. Once I got how it worked most of the things I was scared of in media just didn’t affect me anymore.

So horror movies were slayed by horror movies and I moved on. I went to sports media, fantasy, super heroes, Sci-fi. They all became more prominent in what I watched, read, and listened to. Horror was near the bottom of my list. It just wasn’t that interesting.

Then came The Ring. Now that was the first thing to terrify me in years. Something about that movie got me. This new legend about the tape that needed to be copied if you wanted to survive it. It was a modern day Bloody Mary story. But that was 2002 and horror faded once again since nothing else caught my eye. But I was always checking in on these new internet myths that kept popping up. Stuff like The Slender Man and the SCP foundation. Then there was some weird podcast called Welcome to Nightvale. But the thing that cemented my love of weird analog horror stories were four podcasts from Pacific Northwest Stories and the Public Radio Alliance. The Black Tapes, Tanis, Rabbits, and The Last Movie. These four podcasts let me understand what truly scared me. Analog horror. So I looked around for an analog horror ttrpg. I couldn’t find one. So I just kept to myself, ran some weird fantasy stuff now and then, dropped some of these concepts into games where I could, and waited. In 2023 the game I was waiting for popped up as an image that I was instantly drawn to.

So thank you Jason Cordova and The Gauntlet for making Public Access.

Public Access…

…is an Analog horror game. Most of what I’ve mentioned concerning horror media in the previous three paragraphs is in this game. But my favorite part about the game is how it creates horror for the players. It’s not complicated. The game just has you ask the players what they’re afraid of. 

Ok my GM/Keeper friends. Truth is it’s a little more involved than that. I promise I’ll get to it but first, here’s the breakdown of what Public Access will give you if you pick it up and run it.

• A game system designed to terrify and delve into the traumatic pasts of the player created characters
• A campaign structure that’s exceptionally well fleshed out with a beginning, middle, and end
• A bunch of mysteries within the fictional Degoya County in the real New Mexico that’ll give you the people, places, and clues to give Degoya an authentic feeling with true weirdness
• A Big Man to terrify and delight the players
• A bunch of weird tapes from a public access TV station that just vanished one day into the ether
• The nostalgia of a time that’s passed into many of our living memories and is just media history to other younger folks.

Player Characters…

…get to take on the role of one of the Deep Lake Latchkey’s. You’ve come back to Deep Lake, a place you lived for a while as a child. You’re here with some friends you met on a message board that also grew up in Deep Lake. The message board’s primary topic was TV Odyssey, a public access TV station that just vanished one day. You and your friends are young, in your twenties, have rented a house, and are just looking to have some fun for the summer while poking around about TV Odyssey.

Your goal as a player is to look into TV Odyssey and other mysteries that arise in Deep Lake that may or may not be related to TV Odyssey. 

Fear is in the Eye of the Beholder

I mentioned before that the game just asks the players what they’re afraid of. What I’m talking about are the Day move and the Night move. Here they are for your perusal.

The Day Move

When you do something risky or face something you fear, name what you’re afraid will happen – if you fail or lose your nerve, then roll with an appropriate ability.

The Night Move

When you do something risky or face something you fear, name what you’re afraid will happen if you fail or lose your nerve. The Keeper will tell you how it is worse than you fear. You can choose to back down or go through with it. If you go through with it, roll with an appropriate ability.

There’s something about the psychology of this move. By asking a player character what they’re afraid is going to happen after the GM has introduced something to trigger this move does two things. The first is it creates tension for the dice roll. The second and more important thing is the GM doesn’t have to guess what the player is afraid of anymore. The player is helping the GM do it by giving them a target to shoot for. And when the player fails, completely and totally, the GM narrates what happens based on that horrific target, up to and often including the character’s death.

Do you want to turn a Key?

So I just talked about a character dying but I want to assure you this game isn’t short and people don’t just die after one failed die roll. Characters have a resource called keys. They can turn them to bump up their level of success by one step. So if a player character fails a roll the GM can and should narrate the outcome of the roll. After they’re done narrating the player can then choose to live with the outcome or turn a key. This means what happened didn’t happen in this version of reality but may have happened in a different signal and the GM narrates a different outcome.

So what does a different signal mean? The game leaves it up to the GM to decide and will guide the GM to making those choices as the campaign moves along. That’s part of that quality campaign structure I mentioned earlier.

The Keys themselves come in a few different flavors, Keys of the Child, Keys of Desolation, and the Mystery Keys. Each key has a prompt with them that a player needs to follow when they turn one. This ranges from narrating something about a characters past to shifting some stats on a character sheet. It’s all dependent on which key is turned, but the last key of the Keys of Desolation is called The Pure White Signal. Turning that key means your character is “retired”. 

Day, Dusk, Night, and Dawn

These are the phases of play and they help break up and pace sessions. They also let the GM and players know what actions can be taken when. Here’s a few examples:

• There are these weird TV Odyssey tapes but they can only be watched during the night phase, otherwise they just show up as blue screens on TVs. 
• You can only resolve a mystery during the night phase. 
• The questions posed by the mysteries can only be answered during the dusk phase. 
• You get experience points by answering dawn questions during the dawn phase. 

I know that’s just a bunch of static in your ears but I wanted to show that the phases of play have a purpose. They’re also not as stringent as they sound.

In reality the Day phase plays like every other typical investigative RPG you might have played. You roam around to various locations asking questions and meddling in mysteries trying to find clues. 

The Night phase has the catch where you can watch an Odyssey tape, but if you don’t it functions similarly to the Day phase – however, it’s the GMs job to make it more dangerous and when a Day/Night move is triggered it’s more often the Night move. 

It’s worth talking about the Day and Night moves here. They’re really more about when things are dangerous (Day move) and when things are extremely dangerous and you’re probably going to die or have something worse happen to you (Night move). So you can have a Day move during the Night phase and a Night move during the Day phase based on the stakes of the situation.

The Dawn and Dusk phases are more like check-ins where we make sure all the players get a chance to take a breath. During the Dawn phase rewards are collected and things are beginning anew. During Dusk the player characters decide what their next course of action is, potentially throw out some theories about mysteries, decide if they’re going to watch an Odyssey tape, act on an opportunity they’ve discovered from answering a question to a mystery, or if they just want to further their investigations.

If you decide to pick this game up and run it I would say follow the structure of the phases but don’t be afraid to be flexible with them. Your players might want to do something that doesn’t make a lot of sense for the structure but does for the narrative. Go with the narrative. The structure won’t break. 

I Love This Game 

As of this writing I’ve been the Keeper for 16 sessions with two different groups. I’m always excited for every session and I’m blown away by how effective the game is at producing an analog horror experience. Also, it’s a pretty minimal prep game, the mysteries are between 2-3 pages and have everything you need.

If you’re interested in anything I’ve mentioned, feel free to check out the game at Drive Thru RPG here and for more mysteries and support of the game you can check out the Gauntlet Discord or the Gauntlet Patreon. The discord has some excellent chatter and very helpful people when it comes to talking about the game, and the patreon has some extra mysteries you can incorporate into your Public Access games – Void Angels, My Dog Told Me, and The Dream. On top of that if you want to see the game being run by the designer you can check out Signals From the Otherside on Jason Cordova’s YouTube page. It’s just Jason running the game. It’s lightly edited but very entertaining and a great aid in learning how to play and facilitate the game.

If you’d like to see another article or two on running Public Access let me know here. I have a bunch of other tips and ideas for how to help make Degoya County feel like a living breathing place and how to utilize the concepts for locations, side characters, dangers, and the mystery system – which I didn’t really talk about at all, in other games.

Have fun with the weird,

Chris

Game Crush is a conversation between folks who love a game. Sometimes it’s with two people who just enjoy the game and sometimes it’s between a fan and the designer. Today Chris is talking with Jason Cordova for the first ever game crush. We’re talking about his game Public Access, a game of Nostalgia and Analog Horror using the Carved from Brindlewood game system.

We hope you enjoy this game and please feel free to pick up Public Access here.

You can also join the Gauntlet Patreon here if you want these games earlier and at their lowest cost,

Download: Gnomecast#146 – Media Influence

Keep up with all the gnomes by visiting gnomestew.com, following @gnomestew on Twitter, or visiting the Gnome Stew Facebook Page. Subscribe to the Gnome Stew Twitch channel, check out Gnome Stew Merch, catch the Gnome Stew YouTube channel, and support Gnome Stew on Patreon!

Evil Organizations are a staple of action adventure stories. They’re expansive, multi-headed groups that heroes fight against again and again. The villains are many, the schemes are devious, their reach is far reaching. I know. I know. It’s bad but true. And the other truth is their goal is setting domination. The Syndicate in Mission Impossible, The Umbrella Corporation in Resident Evil, and Virtucon Industries are just a few examples found in media.

Here I’ll be going over Evil Organizations as adversaries in your campaigns, what they consist of, why we might want to use them in our games, and how they can oppose our PCs. To start, let’s define some terms to help us all get on the same page. 

The Evil Organization. A vast well-funded group of people with a particular purpose, often to take over the world or end the world as it is currently known. In gaming this is to take over the setting we’re using.

Enterprise. This is a smaller group of people within the Evil Organization that have their own goals. These groups always contribute to the larger goal of the Evil Organization regardless of whether the enterprise knows or doesn’t know what they’re contributing too.

What makes an Evil Organization

With that, we’ll move to stage two of our plan to dominate the world. Or at least let us make and use evil organizations in our games. When I asked the question “What makes up an evil organization?” I came up with seven parts which are now presented in no particular order.

Leadership. This is a person or council that oversees the operations of the organization. They can be highly visible or hidden from the general members of the organization and general population of the game setting.

A couple of examples are Szass Tam of the Red Wizards of Thay and the Light from Young Justice.

Wide reaching. These organizations have a wide reach, with their various enterprises extending to cover the entire setting of the game. 

The Light’s members in Young Justice include Lex Luthor and his various business interests across the world and his global political affiliations, Vandal Savage and his political associations with off world entities and cosmic forces, and Black Manta for a time which gave the Light a hold on the regions of earth beneath the sea.

A Variety of Enterprises. The evil organization has various enterprises within the organization which always have an evil bent to them, or at least plan on doing something nefarious with the enterprises results. These enterprises can range from being terrible on the surface to looking positive to the general population. They always contribute to the goal of setting domination in the long run. Last, these enterprises provide various resources and opportunities to achieve the goals of the Evil Organization.

An international criminal organization would have a variety of enterprises contributing to their domination of the crime world. This could include drug trafficking, smuggling, theft, counterfeiting, blackmail, kidnapping, pyramid schemes, lawyers to help with any legal trouble, and troubleshooters to shoot trouble.

Structure. The way the enterprises are ordered along with how the leadership oversees that arrangement of enterprises provide the Evil Organization’s structure. There are many ways to do this: web maps, the conspiramid, org charts, you could even use an NCAA tournament bracket but that would be a huge organization. On the bright side, and this goes for any version of the org structure, you don’t have to fill out every part of it right away. You can leave some spots blank to fill in later. 

Before moving away from the structure, I want to mention a few things this does for you:

• It gives the players a potential road map for their characters to follow through the evil organization.
• Lets you see the chain of command of the evil organization. Things farther away from the leadership tend to be less important than things closer to the leadership.
• Allows you to see connections between the different enterprises which can spur creative ideas. Just ask yourself how these two enterprises interact if at all.

A Reason. The organization should have a reason for taking over the setting. It could be as mundane as to exert control over the setting because they desire peace and order in the galaxy. It could also be more intricate. Say the organization knows an alien invasion is coming to attack earth. The organization’s purpose in taking over the earth is to provide a united front and save humanity from extinction.

A Set of Ideals. These ideals are crafted and handed down by the leadership. They might not be a part of every enterprise in the Evil Organization but should be in most of them. They can provide flavor for scenes, motivations for NPCs, a foundational piece for you to lean on when building scenarios, and can be used to subvert expectations.

Some of the common ideals evil organizations utilize are: 

• Power through strength
• Advancement through success
• Ambition paired with success is valuable
• Empathy in lieu of moving the organization’s goals forward is considered weakness
• The ends justify the means

A common subversion of the ideals of an evil organization is the concept of honor – honor among thieves and being honorable to worthy opponents.

Minions. Every good evil organization needs minions because you need plenty of people to carry out the grunt work outside of the organization’s leadership group. Plus, you’ll want some minions who are trying to work their way into the leadership group. It also gives the characters people to punch, kick, flip, subvert, turn, talk to, grill for information, and hate kiss along the way.

These are the nameless faceless footsoldiers, cultists, stormtroopers, hordes of humanoids, or whatever comprises the bulk of your evil organization’s forces along with those named minions who play that middle manager role or fill that specialist job. Like your best troubleshooter who shoots trouble or your top lawyer who gets everyone they defend out of a sentence, or that scientist who keeps innovating on your drug production system, creating higher quality processes for your evil organizations drugs. Plus, you know, BANANA!!!

Resources. Organizations of this size have a vast amount of resources, such as weapons, vehicles, bases, safe houses, love nests, websites, and bunkers. Really, if they need it they probably have it, have some way to produce it, some way to get it, or a scheme or enterprise which will acquire it for them.

The Appeal of the Evil Organization

There’s a lot to like here starting with giving us GMs repeatable campaign villains. This is a huge villain group so they can just keep coming back to cause the characters problems.

You can take this huge villain group a step further by giving your organization a theme, like Cobra, and your evil organizations enterprises and minions can be variations on the theme.

Aside from being a huge organization, if you’ve created those seven pieces from above you’ll always have a nice foundation to build opposition from instead of a blank slate. It’ll help you be more efficient with your prep since you’re not creating things from scratch. You’ll also have more consistency in your game because the adversaries are the same while giving you the chance to make them slightly different. A nice theme and variation.

It also solves the problem of putting the bad guy in front of the characters early. If they kill a boss from an organization’s enterprise there’s a bunch more that can show up for any number or reasons.  They could take over the dead guys’ enterprise, seek revenge on the characters, be the next adversary in the chain of enterprises the characters are working through, or be that troubleshooter who shoots trouble – trouble being the characters.

I also believe this set up makes things less contrived than the Baroness von Badass, Baron von Badass’s twin sister, showing up to pick up the BBEG mantle.

There’s the benefit of simplifying things for the players, too. Having that singular antagonist to focus lets them focus in. 

Before moving on I wanted to touch on the Structure again. It provides a nice road map to follow when creating connections between enterprises, scenarios based on those enterprises and the connections between them. It even allows for the campaign to be followed to a conclusion. Once the PCs get to the leadership of the Evil Organization and defeat them, the campaign is potentially over. Of course someone else could step into the power vacuum and assume the leadership role of the organization.

The Evil Organization as Opposition

An Evil Organization makes excellent primary campaign villains. They’re large with multiple members, have a variety of enterprises, and these enterprises have smaller goals they’re working toward achieving, which are all things for the PCs to deal with.

They can have multiple people in leadership roles allowing for a variety of opponents for the PCs to face off against. Then there’s the opportunities for the antagonist team-up. A couple different enterprises get wind of the characters shenanigans and it’s time to shut down some trouble makers together

Because the Evil Organization is so big the PC’s shouldn’t be able to solve everything that comes up. This means the Evil Organization is going to win sometimes just because the characters didn’t have a chance to interfere. These wins for the organization can and should impact your setting.

Because you have multiple enterprises this means you can have multiple story arcs going on at the same time. It provides a lot of options for session creation.

• You can have one-off enemies with small goals
• Short story arcs with smaller groups and enterprises within the organization
• Parallel enterprises within the organization working together to achieve their particular goals

A good chunk of this stuff means the players have multiple avenues to pursue. It also provides an enemy that everyone can unite against.  Even other enemies of the PCs, so you can have those enemy-of-my-enemy moments. But we have to ask one more question. Can this organization be defeated? 

The characters will defeat the various enterprises, minions, and even some of its leaders repeatedly, but it’s worth considering the question of how and can this organization be defeated? This is especially important if the characters decide they want to pursue that.

In the case of GI Joe, they never defeat Cobra. But the Empire is defeated in Star Wars, sort of, well, eventually when the First Order is killed because somehow Palpatine came back. Insert your Palpatine came back meme’s here.

Now that we’re done memeing we can get back to the defeat of the organization. If they’re beat it’s probably the end of your campaign. If you don’t want it to be the end of your campaign then you need to decide what will rise from it. Remember, power hates a vacuum and something or someone will fill it. Someone new will take over the leadership position, or a  former leader will reorganize the structure in some way. It’s a great time to change things up in your Evil Organization.

What you want to do is make sure the Evil Organization is familiar with one or two shifts in it. Maybe their ideals changed, or the reason they’re taking over the world is different, which changes how they operate. It’s good to think about those things and get ready to highlight them when the PCs run into this new version of the organization so they can feel the difference. 

Conclusions

Evil Organizations fit quite well into the primary campaign opposition role. They do take a little bit of work to set up, but once you’ve done it you have a great resource to build out your sessions and scenarios from. 

It’s a classic with a lot of examples in media if you need some inspiration and it can help solve a lot of antagonist generation just by the nature of the structure and the ideas it can help generate, plus, if you’re a fan of the previous Adversary Files episodes of the Misdirected Mark Podcast, they fit right inside this one.

Now tell us what are some of the Evil Organizations you’ve used? What were their seven parts if you can list them in retrospect? We’d like to know over here at the stew. Also, if you enjoyed this you can get a longer conversation about this topic over at the Misdirected Mark podcast. Episode 479, Evil Organizations.

While I did the primary writing on the script version of the Misdirected Mark episode and the conversion to this article, Phil Vecchione, Robert M. Everson, and Jerry Meyer helped with some of the rewrites and edits so I wish to credit them here.

Download: Gnomecast#145 – Steve Kenson on Twilight Accord

Links for this episode:

• Twilight Accord Patreon
• Green Ronin

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