Rubble Runners vol 1 & 2

[StephenMcG]

Decided to insert some social/political sessions into my Pavis game, remind the players of the reasons they have been running around delivering for their patrons and cults by pushing artefacts in the Rubble.

I prepped lots of people, potential storyline, rumours and actual facts for them to discover.

What actually happened was that they half picked up on a thread, ran with it in entirely the opposite direction, deepened it by looking for people who did not exist as far as my prep was concerned.

Thank goodness for Jon Turner's Rubble Runner books. I don't know if Jon is on these forums but they saved my life last night, such an easy reference. I found two characters I could use right away, though one suffered a sex change, and provided the players with foils that had connections and depth.  Made it look like I knew what was happening.

Their position is now more nuanced, they are not sure they are 100% committed to their role as the Grey Company in the Real City because of other social commitments and Benderath has become less a trusted patron (actually due to a terribly timed insight fumble) as they think he might be playing a double game.

Great fun that would have been less so without Jon's books.  Well worth the cash.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/browse?author="Jon Hunter"

Stephen

Edited February 3 by StephenMcG

[StephenMcG]

I have been gaming since 1977 and pretty comfortable at running an adventure, telling a story and managing combat.

I am clueless though at running an urban campaign, managing the social situations, laying down the mosaic of politics in a way players can negotiate, get involved and find things out.  So last night was pushing my comfort levels quite substantially.

Now, I work in the managerial class and, in my time, have been at a LOT of training courses. The best significantly improved my ability as a manager and the decent ones delivered insight.

I know I would pay to be trained in how to GM an urban campaign but never really heard of such things. It would probably be an interesting day out and it would enhance my hobby.

[Joerg]

Just now, StephenMcG said:

I have been gaming since 1977 and pretty comfortable at running an adventure, telling a story and managing combat.

I am clueless though at running an urban campaign, managing the social situations, laying down the mosaic of politics in a way players can negotiate, get involved and find things out.  So last night was pushing my comfort levels quite substantially.

Much like with Glorantha as a setting, running an urban game in a fantasy setting (like Glorantha) should start small and expand from there. It takes some buy-in from the players, and having a stock of NPCs, ideally with some sort of portrait, and an idea how to run them helps a lot.

Encounters (single or multiple NPCs) or neighborhoods with more color help, too.

In modern era games, urban scenarios are way easier to run as the players will know most of the context. World of Darkness, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Dresden Files, Rivers of London and of course Call of Cthulhu are full of urban scenarios and encounters, and having played some of these will help when facing the added complication of running a completely fictional setting where a lot more has to be explained the further the setting is away from lived-in experience or familiarity from movies or TV-series.

 

You can learn and loan a lot from the Gloranthan freeforms when it comes to characterization of NPCs or contacts. (Freeforms tend to have few GM-played characters by design, but the GM can use the freeform PCs as NPCs with little extra work if any.) Unfortunately, there is currently only one of these in print, the Life of Moonson (unless you count Sartar High Council in Wyrm's Footnotes - 7 or 8, IIRC). Also, many of the freeforms concentrate on the who-is-who in the Gloranthan publications, aiming at a power level that is far from the grass-roots.

 

In my experience, it helps when the player characters and a bunch of NPCs have a common history in the city. Depending on player buy-in and tools offered to the players, you might start out with a bunch of friends, rivals, patrons, friendly resources, reserved or even hostile resources created by the player group. Harald Smith's "Nochet - Queen of Cities" offers some mechanics towards this turnout.

 

There are a couple of Gloranthan and non-Gloranthan iconic urban settings with different approaches.

I had good experiences as a player and GM in the German translation (and world adaptation) of City of Carse by Midkemia Press, which offers a very useful shorthand to describe its plethora of NPCs. The amount of names and detail is overkill, but still handy to have. Tulan of the Isles and Jonril also use the outcome from the Cities Book which was also published as RuneQuest Cities by Avalon Hill, and scans of the early 1980ies publications are available at around five quid, and well worth it. If you want to test whether that format does anything for you, check Towns of the Outlands which is available as a free download. Another, sadly out-of-print city detailed using the Cities Book was Sanctuary (or Refuge?) in Chaosium's Thieves World box.

Two AD&D city descriptions managed to impress me (and my GMing) back in the days - City of Lankhmar, and Irilian (from Best of White Dwarf vol. III). Lankhmar came with a "make it up as you go" approach which is good advice if you can pull stuff out of your head at a moment's notice, and if you have a framework of factions or associations you can integrate your new areas and encounters in, just like Rubble Runners does.

 

Official Glorantha has the city of (New) Pavis with a cast of NPCs and a few scenarios and encounters. To a lesser extent, Jonstown has received a short treatment in the Starter Box.

Harald Smith's Nochet - Queen of Cities and its companion offer a start in a metropolis, and it comes with guidelines and mechanics for integrating characters grown out of Harald's experience running games there. Nochet is huge, and while there are about 1000 buildings that gain a description, those are only a few places sticking out of the multitude.

Simon Bray's Furthest - Crown Jewel of Lunar Tarsh presents a near-metropolis on a level a little more remote than Pavis, but with a few examples to be used for a neighborhood.

Chris Gidlow's Citizens of the Lunar Empire shows how a living place can hold all manner of minor and greater mysteries, and provides a whole lot of memorable characters whose real world not-quite-parallels by Victor Hugo help memorize them. The Rough Guide to Glamour can provide some of the greater overview over the Lunar capital, and the freeform characters in Life of Moonson offer a lot of ideas for metaplot if you want to play there at a more grass-roots level. Citizens of the Lunar Empire can be transplanted to Furthest if you prefer your Lunar madness a little less overpowering.

The upcoming Home of the Bold freeform will likely see a new edition of the Rough Guide to Boldhome, hopefully including a bit of the Who is Who from the character cast in this year's upcoming run at Chaosium Con.

Beer With Teeths Dregs and Cups of Clearwine introduce two small neighborhoods in the very small tribal city of Clearwine with their own dynamics, leaving the greater "urban" who-is-who to the Colymar Adventure Book in the GM Screen package.

 

Urban adventures differ in a number of ways from the expedition type scenarios where player characters come well prepared for havoc and crisis. That's one of the points where you need player buy-in - nobody appears fully armed and armored in the typical everyday situations that make up a lot of the urban gaming. You come across information or threats while performing every-day activities, like shopping in the market or hanging out for a drink or a meal. That may mean that your characters are vulnerable when a crisis comes. When investigating a criminal gang in a bath-house, I had a character of mine voluntarily spend half the adventure session in the nude (pretending not to have resisted their sleep drug) without any equipment (even the essential towel was taken), hostage situation and all that resulting...

 

City encounters with more than three player characters involved from the start are possibly the exception, most of the time you are lucky when there is more than one person involved in such interactions. This can be handled in a play-by-post or play-by-mail environment more easily than in face-to-face games with a single GM, as the GM can give their full attention to every such expedition or encounter.

In a face-to-face game, a small GM team could handle these separated parties (or indeed separate parties encountering one another) with some preparation, but to pull that off for more than a one-off event might be impossible. (Early on in my GMing days I created a semi-ruined city for several parties, each with their own GM, and a GM table with locations and encounters to take away, and leave their name when another GM's party approaches the same item. We somehow pulled that off as a tournament game for a convention I organized.)

Having more than one GM also helps giving the NPCs more depth - you can have them in different voices. If your players are up to that, you could give encounter NPCs to players whose characters are not involved in that encounter with a short "how to play this NPC in this encounter" sheet. Rubble Runners is almost there with its NPC descriptions.

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

In my experience, it helps when the player characters and a bunch of NPCs have a common history in the city. Depending on player buy-in and tools offered to the players, you might start out with a bunch of friends, rivals, patrons, friendly resources, reserved or even hostile resources created by the player group. Harald Smith's "Nochet - Queen of Cities" offers some mechanics towards this turnout.

When I started my Nochet campaign, what I found I needed was: 1) a common "cause" for the characters (in Nochet, it's the House, the urban equivalent of a clan, which is effectively the character's patron), and 2) a set of known NPC's (if you're in an urban setting, you know people).

For your House/clan/family, it helps to map out some basic relationships. What neighborhood are they in? Who are their allies, rivals, and foes? (Citizens of the Lunar Empire has some nice ideas on that based on your city block and its immediate neighbors.) Setting that up gives you some immediate context, and it's really not that different than looking at the clans of Sartar, just much more concentrated. (E.g. in the Colymar, the Orlmarth ally with the Ernaldori, they hate the Greydogs of the Lismelder tribe, they are rivals of the Taraling because the Ernaldori are rivals, they are friends with and marry the Hiordings, they think the Varmandi are poor, troublesome, pains in the @$&, and of course like most Colymari they hate the Malani.)

In my Nochet books, I have a concept of a Cast of Characters (NPCs). These are about 100 "stock" characters (took the idea out of old Commedia dell'Arte characters). For each PC, you roll to determine their Best Friend, Current Mentor, Primary Contact, Love Interest, Main Rival, Worst Foe, and Biggest Pain in the @$&.  

That gives each player/PC a set of 7 people they immediately know besides the main figures in their House/clan. And with a group of PC's, there will be overlap which allows you and the players to put together some back stories about these figures, and that interlinks with the relationships your House has in the neighborhood and city. 

Once you have that, then you can draw on a lot of standard soap opera narratives. Your Best Friend is being shaken down by your Rival from the neighboring clan, and they need your help. What's up with that? Time to investigate and help out... And you can interweave these sandbox situations throughout a larger campaign arc (e.g. House Marele is now suffering from loss of wealth during the Siege and is suspect among the great Houses because they remained neutral and did not choose a side among the major alliances. They need new allies and new wealth - and send the PC's on various missions to help restore their reputation and position.) 

 

 

 

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, StephenMcG said:

I am clueless though at running an urban campaign, managing the social situations, laying down the mosaic of politics in a way players can negotiate, get involved and find things out.

Trying to get players to follow the intricacies of high-level city politics (and remember them from session-to-session) is a challenge. That's why I find it easier to start "local". Let the players take "ownership" of a set of figures they know and develop some backstory about. That gives you some framing to add some "politics" around the relationships they've established. Much easier to know that your Biggest Rival lives in that neighborhood, and that neighborhood belongs to the Ingilli's, so when your rival challenges you, you have to wonder whether it is personal, or if the Ingillis are up to some scheme.

[Joerg]

1 minute ago, jajagappa said:

Trying to get players to follow the intricacies of high-level city politics (and remember them from session-to-session) is a challenge. That's why I find it easier to start "local". Let the players take "ownership" of a set of figures they know and develop some backstory about. That gives you some framing to add some "politics" around the relationships they've established. Much easier to know that your Biggest Rival lives in that neighborhood, and that neighborhood belongs to the Ingilli's, so when your rival challenges you, you have to wonder whether it is personal, or if the Ingillis are up to some scheme.

High level politics are likely to be part of the underwater portion of the icebergs that are the initial encounters and antagonists faced by the player characters. Whether you have an investigative game or your players act as troubleshooters for hire, as you play a campaign you will learn about the people backing or controling your antagonists or possibly your patrons or your community.

Sometimes your economical struggle is the result of House rivalries above your own community, and those House rivalries in turn may be influenced by the greater politics. Sometimes your players might work toward resolving a conflict by negotiation and compromise, at other times they might be involved in the decisive victory of one of the parties (and it may well be possible that they work for the losing side in that outcome, possibly losing a patron, possibly being introduced to some other deeper scheme).

Other than houses (or clans or tribes) there will be guilds (similar, but not identical), temples (and temple factions), secret societies and civic associations, and factions and organisations operating outside of the law (smugglers, thieves, ransom hunters, spies, unlicensed slavers and slave-catchers), foreigners or outside the species (troll connections, dwarf contacts, elf agents, ducks, beastfolk, merfolk, newtlings, magisaurs, dragonewts).

[StephenMcG]

@Joerg and @jajagappa, I appreciate all the help and advice, there are a LOT of words and all of them useful.

My group is a long-standing one, we have been playing together for almost 25 years.  We have played a multitude of different systems.  It was playing Blades in the Dark that made me want to try a bit more urban and social.

I think a lot of the things mentioned are where I have been walking.  What I need are the tools to plan and run the session. 

As you guys say, there needs to be trust that just because they are not equipped for fighting, I won't take advantage.  They need to trust that I have enough depth that when they dig they will find interesting things.

In essence, what I am looking for is guidance on how to build stuff, layer things up, deliver interesting and satisfying twists and conflicts. I am sure there is a great seminar to be run teaching folk how to do this. 

Stephen

 

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, StephenMcG said:

What I need are the tools to plan and run the session. 

That's why my Nochet work includes a Sandbox session generator. It takes time of year and current location as inputs, where PC's may be going, then let's you roll for an event (which might be common, uncommon, or rare) and an encounter (i.e. who - which might be a significant figure, a local personality, or someone the PC's know well), plus resulting attitude and motivation (which might include following up on some rumor) of the encountered character. And options for engaging the PC's. 

As you interweave specific set scenarios and sandbox events, and take the PC's actions into account, you begin to get those layers you note. But the layers are only roughly there at the start in the form of passions for your PC's, passions for the House/clan/patron they are interacting with, and perhaps a set of goals identified by PC's, their patron, and possibly a villain/rival that you want as part of the plot line.

 

[StephenMcG]

41 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

That's why my Nochet work includes a Sandbox session generator.

And when will you be running your seminar?

 

[jajagappa]

13 hours ago, StephenMcG said:

And when will you be running your seminar?

Maybe I should propose one for ChaosiumCon? (Or maybe @Joerg and Ludovic would find it interesting as a topic for their God Learners podcast?)