The DM
of the Future
January 17th, 2011
Hello, and welcome to Dark Designs. In case you weren’t already aware, the future is now. It is, after all, the 21st-century, and I have it on good authority that that’s when everything changes. I guess what I’m trying to get at here is today marks the beginning of Sci-Fi Week here at Necromancers of the Northwest, and we’ll be spending the whole week working our dark, design-y magic on that beloved genre of fiction and gaming.
I should probably be upfront, both to disappoint the hopeful and assuage the concerned, that we won’t be playing with any unusual systems this week. Though the flavor will be decidedly science-fiction, the mechanics will be solidly Pathfinder (with the exception of Foursaken Feature, which will still be 4th-edition centered). There are a couple of reasons for this, and this seems like as good a place as any to explain them, as I can only imagine that at least some portion of you are disappointed by this choice. Firstly, don’t be too crestfallen: we do have plans to devote future weeks to exotic systems that we wouldn’t normally get involved with. In the realm of science fiction, Traveller springs eagerly to mind, and there are a number of other systems which sound intriguing but which I haven’t actually gotten around to, well, playing, and so I wouldn’t know the first thing about doing design for.
In fact, general unfamiliarity with science fiction roleplaying games (at least, of the tabletop variety) contributes in large part to our decision to stick to Pathfinder (mechanically, anyway) this week. Everyone in the office has played a very small amount of Traveller, as well as a single afternoon of Cthulhutech, and that’s about it. Some of us have flirted with d20 modern a few times, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has actually sat down for a game. As such, it seemed unwise to try to do any design work for these systems.
Luckily, sci-fi is about a lot more than game mechanics (although, admittedly, these can be very important for making sure that your game flows the way that you want it to), and just because we haven’t played many sci-fi tabletop games (well, that may not be entirely fair: after all, I played a lot of Amoeba Wars in my youth) doesn’t mean that we don’t know our science fiction. Everyone in the office is a fan of the genre in one way or another, whether it’s games like Starcraft and Master of Orion, innumerable books on the subject, or fond memories of the days when the Syfy channel played anything worth watching, instead of an endless string of half-baked direct-to-TV movies. I know that Justin is really excited about this week’s From the Workshop, and I think we’re all looking forward to a week of doing things a little differently. In a way, it’s sort of like a vacation… in the future.
Of course, given the nature of Dark Designs, not having played many tabletop sci-fi games creates a bit of a handicap this week. I briefly considered extolling the virtues of Traveller’s character creation system (which, by the way, was a major inspiration for The Book of Beginnings, and, in fact, the “choose your own adventure” system was an attempt to recreate that system as closely as possible for Pathfinder), but ultimately decided against it on account of the fact that it’s not really sci-fi related, just something that happens to show up in a sci-fi game.
I considered talking about the wide variety of different science fiction subgenres and settings (of which, believe me, there are many), as that is one of the major differences between science fiction and fantasy which intrigues me the most, but honestly I don’t think there’s really that much for me to say on the subject. It can basically be summed up as “Fantasy media tends not to vary as much from setting to setting, and prefers to stick closer to the genre’s core precepts, so as to have a stronger resonance with the reader and feel more like ‘fantasy,’ while sci-fi, by its very nature of being alien and vaguely futuristic, has more freedom (or, perhaps, is in fact compelled) to be more wild and innovative, moving away from what is accepted for the genre and into strange new horizons.” Beyond that, it doesn’t really have that much to do with either game design or with DMing.
One thing that does have to do with DMing, however, as well as sci-fi, and which I feel I am able to provide some kind of intelligible insight into, is a major stumbling block in “modern” and “futuristic” settings which has caused me problems on a few occasions, and which, I imagine, often serves as a deterrent to DMs interested in running a game in these settings. I’m talking of course about logistics.
In your average fantasy game (by which I am excluding “modern fantasy” and “magic-punk” by default), all matters of logistics generally work towards the DM having greater control over the flow of the game. Don’t want the players to take the road to Lategameton? The road is blocked, the river’s flooded, the bridge is out, there are bandits in those hills, and maybe the king’s army is there, too. Or maybe it’s just really far away. Of course, determined players can and will find ways around these obstacles (especially as the game progresses and more and more powerful magic becomes available), but usually, if nothing else, the unprepared DM can stall with a few on-the-road encounters and prepare the destination in question before the next game. What’s more, in the average fantasy town (especially outside of metropolises and major cities), there are only so many shops and things for the PCs to visit, which helps keep the DM from feeling overwhelmed.
By contrast, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of businesses within a 1-mile radius of where I’m typing, right this minute. What’s more, assuming I have the funds for a ticket, I can get to any major airport in the world in under 24 hours, and to even relatively remote sections of the world in under three days. And if all I need is information, instead of actually going somewhere, well… I think you can see where this is all headed. This can, perhaps understandably, be a little intimidating to neophyte DMs. While games like D&D give you the opportunity to start with a relatively small area and slowly zoom out (or pan in one direction, depending on the style of game), with modern conveniences, the whole world is at the players’ fingertips from the beginning.
In futuristic games, this can be even worse (although, depending on some settings, such as post-apocalyptic wastelands, it’s actually much alleviated). If you think it’s bad that your PCs can drop everything and go to Paris in only a few hours, think how bad it would be if they could get there in a few seconds with teleportation or whatever handy sci-fi convenience you can think of. Worse still, they can probably get to Mars in a few hours, or maybe they can reach the next galaxy, instead. Now you don’t just have to be ready for them to visit any city, you have to be ready for them to visit any city on any planet. Talk about overload!
The more I’ve found myself DMing “on the fly,” however, the more I’ve come to realize that these things aren’t really as daunting as they seem. I talked a lot about this previously, and, generally speaking, these tips all apply here, though it does bear mentioning that, depending on the nature of your game, you may still need to increase the amount of initial world-building you do, just so that you have a rough idea, at least, of what things are like in the Glorbinthal Sector, before the PCs show up. If you absolutely have to, you can always go with whatever pops into your head at the time and make sure that it works out later, but if you can even give yourself a few broad brush strokes to draw on, it can prove immensely helpful in the long run.
As for the conveniences of the modern day, they’re a lot less daunting than they initially seem. While it’s true that there are dozens of businesses within 10 minutes’ walking distance of where I’m sitting, few of them offer anything unique or particularly useful to the average PC. For all intents and purposes, every 7-11, Wal-Mart, and photo-hut are basically identical, and you may as well treat them as such. You don’t really need to have a fully detailed map of the city in order to have a good idea of what your players have access to. Of course, if you really want a fully-detailed map, and you’re playing in a setting that resembles our modern earth, I can’t recommend using Google Maps as a playing aid highly enough. In addition to the maps, the street views can give your players a good idea of what they’re looking at, and, what’s more, finding places is pretty quick and kind of fun.
Well, that’s all for today. Join me next week, same time and place. In the meantime, live long and prosper.