Changeling the Lost and DramaSystem

MASKED DRAMATICS

I posted my FATE reframe of Changeling the Lost, but I’ve been considering other approaches to the setting. CtL hits the kinds of stories I enjoy- mixing of sympathetic character stories and discovery of the strangeness of the world. The personal drama of the setting and the suggestion of PTSD click for me. DramaSystem offers a set of rules to emulate dramas, with HBO series like Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, and The Sopranos as the model. You can use DS to reframe and refocus existing games, especially those with more rp than combat, more interactions than procedural notes- like Changeling the Lost. We’ve seen a number of Changeling-like shows in the last few years- Once, Grimm, and Lost Girl. While I wouldn't use this as the basis of my current campaign switch-over, I can easily see running a DS/CtL campaign. You have a group of people put together by circumstances, “political” interactions with other groups, secrets, built-in personal dichotomies, and a looming threat (the Keepers). Here’s how I would structure a pitch for that.

NUTSHELL

Stolen away from the real world, the characters have survived years of magick, manipulation and torture at the hands of the Keepers. A mysterious figure rescues them from the Hedge, dropping them in the city of Wayward. There these strangers discover the hidden Hollow and a pledge requiring them to restore it. They discover it once belonged to the Court of _______ which mysteriously vanished years before. The players must find a way to work together and recreate the Court to bring balance to the city. To do so they must contend with the agendas of the remaining three Courts, the weirdness of the city, the machinations of the Keepers, and their own nightmares.

GM BRIEF (AND SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS)

Obviously this campaign frame works best with a group which knows the Changeling the Lost backstory and set up. It might make a useful second campaign. This structure hand waves a good deal of the magic, such as the Contracts and Kith abilities. It assumes the players can negotiate the extent of those abilities (with the GM as judge). Interestingly, petitions can become concrete in the form of pledges. Players may struggle with those choices- especially when they have not only personal but magical consequences. I love the idea of a secret pledge creating an extra dimension of pressure in a scene. An obvious dramatic pole arises from the tension between a character’s instincts from their Seeming and their humanity. An Ogre’s gullibility and their drive to use physical force balanced against stubbornness and desire for peace. More generally desire for acceptance in changeling society vs. human society can motivate the characters.

You can have the players develop the city through play (as happens in Hillfolk and similar DramaSystem pitches). Alternately, you may wish to have the players build the city before or after character creation. You could use the urban-variation on Microscope, with factions representing power groups in the city. Alternately, The Dresden Files gives a great framework for collaboratively creating a city and deciding what stories interest the players. Choosing the Court’s also important. Each has its own tenor and feel. If the players will be rebuilding the Winter Court, that makes for a quite different game than if they must found a new Summer Court. That also affects their primary rivals. I especially like the idea of the players collectively coming up with a new spin on the themes of a Court. (My earlier post on Courtly Campaigns may be useful). 

A good deal of the starting work will focus on the internal life of the Court as players test out those relationships. I think generally the other Courts should be a more distant and looming threat. They’re wary of the upstarts, but can’t really critique the concept of returning balance to the Freehold. Eventually one or more of these Courts may become important, especially based on player interests and choices (villains or allies). So what kinds of NPCs might the PCs play around with early on? Most obviously people from their past lives, depending on when each character vanished. I’d encourage each player to have at least one friend, relative, lover, or enemy from their past life as a possible source of interactions. Fetches offer another flip side to that. As a GM you should decide if the players will choose their Fetch’s nature or if you will. I prefer the latter as it introduces some interesting tension and mystery. “Free” changelings offer the other major early bloc of characters. These aren’t affiliated with any of the Courts for various reasons: enemies made, see as unworthy, actually a spy, etc. Some might seek out the new Court looking for aid, some for someone to ally with, others with more nefarious reasons. Eventually the PCs will assemble a community out of these changelings.

The starting point's a tougher question. I think you have two basic choices. On the one hand, you could suggest that all of the characters had the same Keeper, but ended up with different Seemings. Perhaps they were all traded to or stolen by another Keeper. That would allow the players to build some relationships before their escape from the Hedge. Perhaps they forged those bonds in the process of escaping? On the other hand you could start the game with the Changelings in the real world, with those ties established. They arrived a little while ago (perhaps a few weeks) and have made those connections. Early scenes could be called to explore the players past- i.e. a focus on flashbacks and revelations.

Sources

As I mentioned above, we have several recent TV series which offer inspiration. Lost Girl’s probably the one which feels like someone actually played Changeling. Grimm and Once both lift from Bill Willingham’s Fables series. That’s another great resource. The 4400, at least early on, deals with the question of people out of time and returning to a world which has passed them by. Most modern urban fantasy has something to offer, including books like Grossman’s The Magicians. Serial novels usually have more procedural elements to them, but they can easily be borrowed from. In the end the best possible resource is the Changeling the Lost material itself. There’s a pleasure to reading those books and ignoring all of the mechanical stuff.

CHARACTERS

Obviously any kind of kith and seeming could work in this setting. Having a diversity of types will make the game stronger. They also offer some archetypes which everyone can work with and play against. I don’t think I need to offer a list, just flip through the CtL core book- and the Lord of Summer supplement which focuses on the Courts.

SETTING

Having the group build or even just sketch what they want in the city setting gives the richest approach. The city should be big enough to have lots of interesting places, but not so huge that we don’t have a sense of place. Notice how these shows with a static city usually end up returning to key places. The city feels small and we usually cut out travelling times unless they’re used to showcase a conversation.

More importantly consider what the players Hollow looks like. How big is it? Does it have secrets? Perhaps it is in an abandoned museum, hospital, or university. Why did it close down? A mysterious mansion works as well, perhaps with a parallel and reversed mansion in the Hedge. It should be spacious enough that NPCs can arrive and stay. You want to be able to call multiple scenes in different locations over time.

THEME

The starting theme of the game is "Who Am I?" and "Building a Shelter." It depends on how where and when you decide to begin the story (as mentioned above). Other classic stories include:

Not Without My Family

Am I Human?

The High Cost of Living

Avoiding Authorities

The Changeling Seeking Sanctuary

Hints of a Keeper

Rumors of Slavers

The Hedge Goes Weird

Hob Equality

A Fetch Crosses the Line

Who will be the Prince?

Maintaining Sanity

Bargaining for Contracts

Searching for Glamour

Protecting the Innocent

Why Was I Taken?

Dark Secrets

Instincts Take Over

Building a Refuge

Taking on the Courts

TIGHTENING THE SCREWS

Oddball magical incidents and strange events can easily be used to prompt incidents. GMs have access to a variety of magical McGuffins.

Episode Crisis:

• One of the Other Courts Takes Umbrage at the PC’s Efforts.
• A dangerous mortal learns their secrets.
• Another kind of supernatural threatens them.
• Their physical sanctuary comes under threat (redevelopment or the like)
• A comrade turns out to the an agent of the Keepers

Season Threat:

• One of their Keepers returns for them
• A rival Court declares war
• They must venture into the Hedge to save someone dear

NAMES

Abyssinian Max  

Always There                    

Ashwine Klocke                                              

Barnswept

Carpenter Husk

Darling Pitch

Doc Porcelain                     

Easting Eon Rat                                 

Gloriana TwoFold

Haberdash Quinn             

Igiomatic

Katarina Skin                      

King Falling                          

The Larker

Many-Lost-Quills                             

Maven Fellows                                

Mr. Q                                    

Neversung Knots

Noisy 

Old Grummy                     

Oglethumb

Phantom Tom                   

Queen Jitters                     

Roil                                         

Simon Maggots

Sister Coin                           

Squintborne

TenPenny Down                              

Threadbare                        

Unbecoming Tim

Changeling the Lost and FATE

COMING INTO THE HEDGE

This week I wanted to put together some pieces on Changeling the Lost, my favorite of the nWoD settings and possibly my favorite game from WW. In 2008, I took a look at CtL and wanted to run it. But I didn’t want to learn nWoD- I wanted a system I knew for the f2f game. So I worked on a conversion to our Action Cards system. I did a fairly literal hack- making sure I had all the details from character creation. I converted all of the contracts- probably the part which took the longest. The campaign went well, except for a couple of player hiccups. But the system worked in part because the longer we went along, the more I hand-waved concepts. I also ended up wasting a lot of time and energy putting that hack together- trying to keep everything from the original.

Last year I decided I wanted to try to run some more online. I’d developed some ideas I wanted to try in a new campaign context. Running online meant playing with new people and trying to establish an easy baseline. Since most of the players knew it, I opted to run this campaign using nWoD- as much as anything to see what people actually got out of the full system. I believe GMs should stretch themselves from time to time- running systems they might not ordinarily try out.

MY WORLD OF DARKNESS

So I’ve run 20+ sessions of nWoD…well, not exactly. I’ve probably really actually run “Baby’s First” version of the game. I have to admit that. The system has a high rules density, but at the table I play it pretty loose with mostly the basic rules. Those work decently, primarily because I ignore the chrome like lots of modifiers. My problem with the game is the rule density. Everything feels like a strait-jacket. You have wonderful ideas and concepts, but then tons of mechanics and systems to handle those. So you’re left with a couple of options. Either ignore and streamline those, as I’ve normally done or else play with a highly granulated and IMHO highly restrictive set of rules requiring significant referencing.

For the last twenty years, I’ve been running increasingly easier and more streamlined game systems. That’s not to say I haven’t run some crunchier things in the meantime, like D&D 3.5. But in most cases, I’ve set aside complex games I used to invest in heavily: Champions, Rolemaster, and GURPS. In the case of the last two, I’d been cutting out rules and sub-systems for those games- focusing primarily on the core resolution system and trying to make the rest of the game flexible. A chunk of the campaigns I’ve run have been our homebrew rule-lite system Action Cards which is probably closest to FATE at this point. But I also ran a good deal of Storyteller- Vampire, Exalted, and hacks for L5R and Wushu.

I don’t think nWoD’s is necessarily a bad game- it works for aspects of the game that I’m less interested in. I like the core resolution mechanic: skill plus stat to form a dice pool is decent. But the problem lies in how that becomes elaborated in books beyond the core. When I ran ST from the book I worked to become proficient and fast at resolving combat and skills. For chrome elements, I concentrated on cool things the bad guys could do in the system. But the complicated parts- magic, powers, charms, talents, whatever- I left in the hands of the players. I let them use, declare, and explain how these details worked at the table. That reduced the rules competency I needed. I still made rules calls based on logic, primarily based on GMing experience, rather than an encyclopedic knowledge of the game.

But I have an opportunity right now with the online game. We just had a couple of players bag out, but the remaining ones would like to continue to play. We have one previous player who I hope will also be returning, and I may hunt down a couple more to round out the table. One of the remaining players is getting married this month so we have a couple of weeks we’re going to skip. That gives me plenty of time and a good break to consider switching the campaign over to another system. The most likely candidate for the switch would be FATE.

CHANGELING TO FATE

So how would I do things today if I wanted to convert Changeling to another system? Obviously I’d want something simple, where powers and such can be easily described. For the moment the easiest option would be FATE. This time I’d avoid going down the route of writing up all of the Contracts and Kiths. The problem with sticking to those lists and options is t I’d keep two things in mind based on my past experience. First, don’t worry or even bother to translate everything. Too often in the past I’ve wasted effort on full rewrites. These either hogtie my options or simply don’t get used (see my work on Scion, L5R, and my earlier CtL hack). Second, include those mechanics I enjoy even if break some of the symmetry of the system. If it’s going to be a set of house rules, then make it rules for my house.

So…

Aspects: Players would begin with the standard four aspects. One of these would relate to either their kith or seeming. One would be their trouble aspect- essentially built on their character’s Virtue/Vice, whichever seemed more important to them. The other two would be more open ended. If we’re converting from an existing campaign, then I’d ask the players to build one of the aspects based on campaign events. The other they’d be free to choose. If we’re starting fresh, then it depends on the set up. If we’re playing fresh-from-the-Hedge changelings, then the standard Fate collaborative set up might not work as well. Perhaps I’d figure out a way to tie that into the world-building process.

Skills: For this conversion, I’m building on Fate Core, rather than FAE. The latter is excellent and could also be used. I’d likely go through and pretty closely convert the Changeling the Lost skill list over. A few I’d drop, to get to an ideal number closer to two dozen. Where possible, I’d link those to the Fate core list. Those offer simple and tight options, plus there’s the advantage of having the Stunt list already. A bigger question would be whether I’d use the Skill pyramid. That often stumps players when I explain the game. If we’re converting over, then I drop that concept. If we’re starting new, then I’d use it.

Contracts: The “powers” of the game, these make the game mechanically distinct. In the past, I spent time working through all of them. Screw that. Even writing up the contracts lightly, you still end up with a particular read on them and a more limited sense of what they do. As I mentioned above, there’s a break that moment when you tell me my Contract can animate objects and then you read me the full page of rules text limiting that. Instead, we’ll make up a list of the existing contract sets and a one sentence description of what they do.

When players buy a contract, they get to decide how they want it to function. Each contract can be an Aspect, a Stunt, or a Gift. At any time during a scene, changelings may decide they wish to begin using contracts- if they do so they spend a drama point as an overall initial tax. After that, they may use any and all of their contracts once for free for the scene. If they wish to use one a second time, they must either spend a drama point or make use of a catch.

• Contract Aspects are used just like any other aspects. They’re open ended, but require some thinking. For example "Display of Grandoise Might" could be used in several different situations.
• Contract Stunts function just like regular Stunts from the Fate rules: a new action, a bonus to an action, or a rules exception. Generally these represent concepts like heightened strength or dexterity for a scene (general +1 bonus to a skill) or enhanced talent with a narrow use (like machine crafting gaining a +2).
• Contract Gifts just allow you to do a thing. You can glide. You can peer into a dream. You can talk to animals. You can make an animated machine that runs on its own. You can hold an object in place. The GM might require a roll depending on what you’re doing.

Contracts would be generally purchasable- with some restrictions. I’d have to figure out how to handle that. Perhaps they’d need a learning experience to buy a new one or have to do something in game. This approach has several advantages. First, I don’t have to write everything up. Second, two players could have the same contracts but define them slightly differently. Third, it would be dead easy to make up new contracts. Fourth, it brings back surprise and uncertainty to the game. Players couldn’t be sure what powers other Changelings possessed.

Limitations to this? Obviously it requires the GM to monitor the players’ suggestions. The GM would also want to price things such that the PCs don’t simply invest in contracts to the exclusion of all else. A simple restriction like the concept that multiple aspects have to come from different areas could balance this as well.

Standard Stunts: Players could also purchase regular stunts if they wanted, with the normal costs and restrictions.

Glamour: Drama points are effectively glamour. Changelings have a slightly larger pool of drama points than your average person. Regaining drama points could also be done through glamour harvesting, as per the CtL rules. Higher Wyrd characters have a larger pool of drama points.

Stress: Changelings would have three stress tracks: Clarity, Social, and Physical. Clarity covers all mental damage: fear, rage, alienation, and so on. All of the classic nWoD business about phobias and such would be handled with consequences. Social stress would simply be about rank within Changeling society. Manipulations and trials could be more easily be played out. Social consequences might involve making promises, being forced into bargains, or getting the short end of a pledge. Social damage might heal quickly, unless the opponent chooses to permanently reduce the victim’s rank.

For the Physical damage track, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, I appreciate the simplicity of the Fate one roll determines hit and damage system. On the other, I like rolling damage (as I mentioned before). I know it seems weird to add granularity here, but I might try to figure out a method for rolled damage and increase the number of boxes on this stress track.

Everything Else: So what would I need to work out? I’d probably have to figure out how Pledge function if players want to use those. Some elements- like the Hollow and such I’d handle as a collective property for the group, with stress tracks which could be drawn on. If I do a diced combat system, I’d have to work out weapons and armor.

So that’s my first thoughts on that- I have to check with the group and see what they think. We could do a Fate conversion, stick with nWoD, or look at something else (like Action Cards). If we choose a conversion, I want something simple and easy to develop. I want the players to have the chance to define their characters they have in their heads, rather than trying to wrestle that concept into the rules. 

Player Investment: Play on Target Podcast Ep. 17

After a short Gen Con inspired break, the Play on Target podcast returns this week with a pretty practical topic: how to better engage players. While we begin with some general discussions about what engagement looks like, we slide into specific suggestions and techniques. I'm happy with how this one turned out- with a number of ideas that I'll be stealing for my games. As always I have a few additional thoughts about the topic I've put together here. I run a lot and I'm a confident GM, but even so I often find myself falling into cycles worrying about how hooked the players are to the game I'm presenting. 

PLAYER INVESTMENT
Play on Target Episode Roundup

GAMING AND THE UNENGAGED PLAYER

We skirt an important dimension in our discussion: that different people have different kinds of investments in games. Some players really enjoy being active at the table, demonstrating excitement, and working on play details between sessions. Some players don’t. The two may be equally enjoying themselves, but to the GM one appears to be passive and unengaged. I see this question pop up fairly regularly on forums: what do I do with a player who comes, doesn’t rock the boat, but doesn’t seem to do much unless prodded? I’m not sure I have a great answer for that- especially if it is truly a case of that player enjoying themselves. And where the players “passive” play doesn’t negatively impact the rest of the group.

Ideally, we’d like to have a table of fully active and engaged players- so that passivity feels like a problem to the GM. I don’t think it necessarily is one. It does mean the GM has to take a few extra steps. First, recognize and accept that the player’s having a good time- check with them, ask if there’s something they want. Second, make sure that you don’t overcompensate with the player. I’ve seen GMs throw themselves into contortions, trying to hook and entertain quieter players. That can lead to ignoring more self-motivated gamers at the table. Putting crucial or key plots in the hands of those players creates more problems than it solves. They’ll let those drop and the rest of the table can become frustrated. Third, don’t ignore these players. Prepare for them. They will react to things, but they often won’t be proactive. Craft some set-pieces and oddball incidents to throw at them when it is their turn in the spotlight. Give them something they can work through- like having their pocket picked, spotting an unusual character, or the like. If you have a list ready, you can throw that at them when they shrug their shoulders. Perhaps something may stick and you might find a detail that does hook them- and you get to make something bigger out of a throwaway.

ONLINE

I’ve only run two campaigns online so far (a total of about 50 sessions), so I still consider myself a novice on that score. I think the online environment offers new challenges to engagement. There’s a huge difference in the mental space of going to someone’s house or having people over to play and sitting down at the computer. I suspect it’s easier to bail out and skip a session with the latter. That may be a better thing- it might be easier to quit a bad game or bump a bad player. But I suspect it can be harder on GMs who’d like to have the same kind of engagement and emotional feedback they get in a f2f game. I suspect much of what we said in the podcast applies to online- but I wonder if there might be some online-specific best practices? Explicit social contracts? Shorter campaign arcs? Games aimed for player drop in and outs? That’s a topic worth doing more research on.

ON THE FLIP SIDE

I wonder if we might also consider GM investment. I’ve seen some discussion of this around the blogosphere recently. One GM lamented that an unequal exchange existed between the players and the GM. The latter put in tons of effort, but the players rarely if ever even began to match the GM’s effort or work. Myself, I can be disappointed with that, but I think it is the nature of the beast. I’m not sure exactly what we could expect demand from our players: more backstory or session write-ups. I think more likely we’re talking about wanting them to exhibit some system mastery, learn the rules, and keep their characters up to date. I’ve had a few players over the years who’ve never grasped the mechanics, despite many hours of play. That can be frustrating, but I’ve grown used to it. I can’t imagine being angry because players aren’t writing or doing as much as I am at the table. That feels like wasted energy. I mean, I’d like for them to do more, but that’s a matter of hope. I think the closest I come to this being an issue is the jealousy I feel when I see players heavily invested or involved in another GM’s game.

I’ve played with GMs who’ve been desperate for outward and visible signs of player interest and approval. If they didn’t get enough they would often become moody and complain about the group not being interested. More often than not we’d be trying to make it clear to the GM we liked playing the game and had been having a good time. But if we weren’t sending emails and planning between sessions, they felt like we didn’t care. A few times we’d get into cycles where we had to be overly enthusiastic at the table just to make sure things kept running. It put us in a strangely co-dependent relationship, having to constantly reassure the GM for fear of him wrapping the game early. The irony to this would be that the worst offender GM finally got his wish with one amazing campaign. He had a crew of highly engaged people, all of whom sent him emails and played out sub-plots away from the table. They thought about the story and details, to the point that the GM started to feel insecure about the plot. The volume of email and interest wore burned him out and he stopped the campaign- destroying most of his credibility with the players. A couple of times he tried to restart it, but he’d already broken the group’s trust.

That’s more of a question of a depressive personality, but I’ve seen GM disengagement just as bad as some exhibited by players. We used to have a GM in our group who would come up with really great concepts for campaigns- and we’d get rolling on them. Then several sessions in, after we’d be hooked, he start to talk about another campaign he wanted to run or began to grumble about the present game not being exactly what he wanted. Then sessions would get cancelled or tweak would occur, leading to the game just kind of petering out. He rarely overtly ended a campaign, instead he’d just stop caring and let it die. An artist, with an artistic temperament, the next cool thing always caught his attention. It became a running joke for the group, but we still went back to play. A few times we tried to talk to him about the problem but he always acted as if this came as a complete surprise to him. Sometimes he’d say a game was just on “hiatus.” I can’t fault him too much- I recall starting and dropping campaigns in my early days, but I always felt hugely guilty for doing that.

THE JAM QUESTION

Keep in mind, players can’t engage with a game unless they have something to engage with. If you want them to play around in your sandbox, put some toys in there. I remember a Cyberpunk campaign we played in with a really linear, mission-driven focus. Then, when the GM wasn’t prepped he’d go: what do you want to do? But we’d seen almost nothing of the world, had no other hooks, and he’d literally killed off or put in a coma every person we’d met. The blank slate offered nothing to engage with.

On the other side, remember that too many choices and details can overwhelm the players. You might think you’re giving the players a cornucopia of plots, hooks, and options- which you are- but you’re also burying them. They have to dig out from under that- trying to figure out what’s important to you, the GM. Even if you say everything’s fair game, the players instinctually try to suss out where you want them to go. Sometimes so they can go there, and sometimes so they can avoid it. Jim Jacobson, in Blood on the Snow, raises an interesting point, “Sheena Iyengar’s famous “jam study”—in which supermarket customers presented with twenty-four kinds of jam to taste were more enthusiastic, but ultimately chose to buy jam less frequently than those who were presented with only six kinds of jam—presents a situation very much like the choice of a (DramaSystem) series pitch.” I think the same can hold true for dense games- where the GM tries to go for engagement through info dump.

PLAYER INVESTMENT

Play on Target Episode Roundup

If you like RPG Gaming podcasts, I hope you'll check it out. We take a focused approach- tackling a single topic each episode. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes or follow the podcast's page at www.playontarget.com.

Eternal Lies: A Trail of Cthulhu Contest

I’ve been working my way through Eternal Lies, the massive Trail of Cthulhu campaign just released. Pelgrane continues to craft a smart series of larger supplements for the game from the improv campaign of The Armitage Files, to the brilliant framework of Bookhounds of London, to the genre emulation of Shadows Over Filmland, and beyond. Great games often come to be defined by great campaigns and modules. CoC brought us Masks of Nylarlethotep and Walker in the Wastes for example. Just on a first pass-through, I think Eternal Lies deserves to be ranked up there.

Pelgrane Press has generously offered a free copy of this 400 page hardcover as a give-away. Accordingly I've come up with a little contest. My favorite bit from Eternal Lies so far are the “Three Things” NPC details authors Will Hindmarch, Jeff Tidball, and Jeremy Keller present. Like constantly touching those he speaks with; uses an economy of speech when communicating; and old-fashioned haircut. They’re great and easily accessible for the GM. So for this contest all you have to do is leave a comment on this thread, along with an NPC detail. You can also enter by posting in a similar thread you’ll find in the Pelgrane Press G+ Community.

Rules

1. You may enter up to twice: once here and once in the Pelgrane G+ Community thread.

2. You should leave an interesting and evocative NPC detail.

3. The winner will be chosen at (or a little after) noon EST on Friday September 20th. I will make consolidated a list of the entries on both threads and then use an online random number generator to pick a winner.

4. Winners will be contacted via email or the like. If I don’t hear back from the winner within 48 hours, I’ll pick another winner.

5. The winner receives a hardcover of Eternal Lies mailed to them.

I think that’s all the formalities. Thanks again to Pelgrane Press for offering this up. 

Related Material

My Trail of Cthulhu review

GUMSHOE: A System Guide for New Players

Trail of Cthulhu: A System Guide for New Players

Kitten-Induced Delays

I have a couple of posts for this week, but right now I'm facing kitten-induced delays across the board. 

Riddles: Edward Nigma: Consulting Detective

A pitch we (me, Art Lyon, and Gene Ha) did for DC several years ago. We had some interest, but the timetable they asked about was crazy (they wanted it in before the new Batman film a few months away). It doesn't work with the new status quo in the DC Universe, but I think it remains cool concept. I'd love to make it a backstory for a superhero campaign. 

RIDDLES:

Edward Nigma: Consulting Detective

6 issues

IN BRIEF

When old adversaries turn up, detective Edward Nigma, formerly known as The Riddler, flees Gotham City. He sets up shop in Washington, DC and builds a network of connections, assistants…and enemies.

Following the cases of a detective who schemes like Yojimbo and pontificates like Sherlock Holmes, Riddles tours unexpected corners of the DC universe and the many genres of mystery: from noir to technothriller, from conspiracy to locked-room, and everything in between. But, although Nigma excels at solving puzzles, his discoveries may be as dangerous as the crimes themselves.

But is the Riddler just a detective or something more? Stuck solving cases for the underworld he’s so recently escaped, he begins to recruit a team— but to what purpose? Through the course of the series we see the pieces fall into place as Eddie sets up a final showdown…for revenge.

Can a criminal hunt criminals without becoming one again? Will he live to find out? Will he look up from checking stats on his Fantasy Villain draft picks long enough to worry about it?

MAIN CHARACTERS

Edward Nigma: Although he tells himself he's in it for the fame and money, part of him knows that’s a lie. A clean record gives him a chance to go straight, but he needs challenges to keep from going crazy...er. To every case he brings a brilliant analytical mind, a penchant for schemes, a bizarre supporting cast - and a nearly limitless ego. His clients will not always like the answers he uncovers.

Yeager K. Allen: The FBI  liaison to the Washington, DC police who finds himself under Eddie's thumb. Years before, the Riddler supplied him with enough information to make a name for himself at the agency. He’s not corrupt, just inclined towards the easiest path. His debt to Nigma chafes, but he can’t resist access to the kind of evidence only Edward Nigma can turn up – evidence and insights carefully doled out. So, Allen helps him - but he's always on the lookout for ways to take Nigma down a peg.

The Dog: Eddie’s second recruit, a patriotic robot dog claiming to be half-beagle, half-bloodhound - meaning he’s right half the time. Another one of Prof. Ivo’s failures, he made the mistake of turning good to the Power Company and found himself a robo-mascot butler rather than a member. The Dog joins Eddie in the heart of the American capital in the hope he can do some actual good... and perhaps even get to vote.

 “Manny”: A mook’s mook, Manny is the survivor of many super villain henchmen gangs. He brings with him minimal skills and an insatiable drive to be helpful to Eddie, who’s pulled his bacon out of the fire once again.   

Mujinahime: The self-proclaimed Princess of the Mujina—tiny Japanese trickster demons— Mujinahime and her gang of wargrrls control their turf through a mix of skill, superpowers, and cute. While she appears innocent at first, darkness reveals her true colors—making her Eddie’s secret weapon.

The Word: A forgotten dark vigilante who was gritty before gritty was in. Now semi-retired and more smelly than fearsome, Eddie offers the Word one last chance to make a difference—but on the Riddler’s terms.

ISSUE ONE

Edward Nigma’s doing well. He’s managed to build a decent client list, establish an exotic reputation, and gain recognition through a snappy advertising campaign. Besides a few lost competitions against the Dark Knight, he considers his life pretty good. That comes crashing down when he returns to his office to find his staff touched by the grim grinning rictus of Joker Death (tm), from his secretary to his agent to his lawyer. By the time the Major Crimes Unit arrives, Eddie realizes old friends and enemies have made it too hot to stay in Gotham City.  

Landing in Washington, DC Eddie sets up an office and begins his hunt for a capable assistant. The results are unfortunate and in one brief case even disastrous: kids straight out of their origins with no real training, Snapper Carr wannabes, or, worse yet, former sidekicks to villains, including Jewelee and the Body Doubles. After Harley Quinn swears revenge for Nigma's casual use of words like “underqualified,” and “psychotic”, Eddie decides to take a different tack.  

Short-staffed, Nigma's first big case forces him to team up with Oracle in an effort to track down a hacker working the halls of one of the most secure facilities on the planet. She needs him to prevent Accidental Armageddon v 2.0 and he needs her to help solve a domestic dispute between two of DC's strangest villains.

To get in, Eddie twists the arm of his unwilling FBI contact, Yeager K. Allen, whose knack for ducking trouble fails him when Nigma shows up. With Oracle riding virtual shotgun, they discover that a combination of VR “entertainments,” a King Kong fetish, and the unauthorized use of government supercomputing resources may spell doom for Monsieur Mallah and the Brain's relationship, threaten the world, and scar the detectives for life-- physically and mentally.

Later, back at the office, a call from Allen may provide Nigma with the solution to his staffing and safety woes: a potential assistant who's worked with the FBI before— The Dog, an evil robot superdog now turned patriotic crimefighter. With his first recruit, Eddie begins to set in motion a brilliant, intricate revenge plot – one that could very well destroy everything he’s built.

FUTURE ISSUES

Issue 2: A Fistful of Mooks

When former henchmen call on Nigma to solve a mystery before their bosses Mr. Freeze and Scarecrow get back, Eddie has to choose between putting things right and telling the dangerous truth. Of course that's no choice if there's trouble to be caused for former rogues-gallery rivals. Nigma plays the two gangs of henchmen against one another while ferreting out the truth. As the dust settles, Eddie comes away with his next recruit, Manny—a mook among mooks.

Issue 3: City of Sins

A city of sin. A city of lies. A bloody string of unsolved murders. Eddie faces competition in the form of washed-up boy geniuses the Harvey Twins, the less-than-deadly Encyclopedist, and the hyper-professional Nan True. But Eddie’s agenda reaches beyond these mysteries as he recruits another member for his team, Mujinahime whose girl-gang of Otaku-bashers and MySpace-poets rules the streets. Is this seedy burgh of bad men, worse women, and stark lighting ready for the master of double, triple and quintuple crosses?

Issue 4: Twenty-Four in 24

The Penguin, one of Eddie's few remaining friends, calls for help. Now he has twenty-four hours (and twenty-four pages) to reunite a retired supergang to stop a heist before the bird gets caged. Will his plans collapse when they find he's been “flexible” with the truth? How much of Eddie’s plan aims to help his old friend and how much to help himself? A countdown climax answers these questions and brings Eddie another member of his team. Twenty-Four meets The Blues Brothers, minus the Illinois Nazis...maybe.

Issue 5: The Trap Trap!

Washington is caught in the crossfire when Cannon, Saber, Merlyn and other super-assassins come to town. Their target is Nigma! Can he survive when he finds his old death-traps rebuilt and used against him? His team has their hands full guarding Eddie-- but does he have other protectors? And why is he so calm? By the end Eddie reveals his plot to solve a client’s mystery, get his hands on rare super-equipment and incidentally take down a few competitors in his online Fantasy Villain league.

Issue 6: The Red Herring Gambit

The Riddler has carefully accrued debts, equipment and resources through each of his cases—and now the pieces of the puzzle come together as Eddie reveals his scheme. His carefully gathered team of odd-ball assistants must go in Mission: Impossible style. But will they be willing to when they learn Eddie’s objective: Take Down the Joker!

WHY RIDDLES?

*Lacking powers or any shtick beyond being clever, the Riddler is arguably one of Batman's most interesting foes. This series explores that character, what led to his one year coma and why he's decided to “go straight.”

*Plays with and explores popular genres of mystery today—Teen Detectives, Sin-City Noir, Technothrillers ala 24, and so on. Like Planetary, Riddles plays with the look and tropes of these stories.

*Riddles will be done as a six-issue mini-series. Each story will be told “all-in-one.” At the same time, continuity and coherence for the series comes from Eddie’s gathering of his gang and hints at a larger plan. He claims to have gone straight, but can he resist a grand diabolical scheme?

*Jumps off from elements created in Paul Dini's new run on Detective Comics, events of Infinite Crisis, and the continuing themes of 52.

Wyrd Wyrd West: Alternate Western RPGs

ON THE TRAIL

Last week in my "RPG Genres I Wished I Liked" post, I mentioned the Western. A few people came to defend it- but a number of people talked about issues of history that kept them from wanting to run a cowboy game. One solution has been to dress up the genre tropes in other clothing- sci-fi, fantasy, whatever. That has a certain appeal to me- after all I hunted down a copy of Pelgrane’s Owl Hoot Trail at Gen Con, which has been described as a Western with D&D races.

So decided to go through and figure out how many non-standard Western rpgs I could find. I discovered more “Wild West” RPGs and key supplements than I expected. From those I pulled these fifteen games- somewhere between a third and a quarter of the total from the list. I’m sure I have a few games missing here- suggestions are welcome. A notable absence is Far West which still hasn’t actually been published as far as I can tell. I wonder if some good genre-mash ups with the Western remain: a pure detective game? luchador? cyberpunk (like an Etherscope mash-up)? Spies? Faerie tale? Superhero remains open- but only because I left off Arc Dream’s This Favored Land, which really covers just the Civil War. Perhaps a pulp-vigilante game with a Zorro or Lone Ranger twinge?

1. Time Drifters

1990. An early oddball time travelling game. I'm sure most chrono-games have a Wild West component or module. It's easy and evocative. We’ve seen that in plenty of television series (Justice League, Dr. Who). But this one puts it on that front page and actually offers it as the only setting in the book.

2. Deadlands

1996. The great, shambling granddaddy of the Western gone weird. This has gone through multiple editions and remains a classic. Deadlands has a certain brilliance in bringing together horror, steampunk, magic, and crazy simple rules. It doesn’t quite have the same market share as it once, did but remains strong. I don't know if it is true but I always see this game as the logical result of Joe Lansdale's work. His weird Jonah Hex mini-series (with more than a little Cthulhu to them) and his edited anthology Razored Saddles (1989).

3. Six-Guns & Sorcery

1996. The American West supplement for Castle Falkenstein. I suspect you could also include several alt-history settings in this list that have a Western overlap. BRP's Queensguard for example. As I mentioned on my earlier review of this, I like this supplement for its more mixed treatment of the history. It brings the questions arising from the era into the more four color world CF. It also wins for the Wild, Wild West references.

4. Werewolf: The Wild West

1997. An oddball coincidence or enemy planning? This came out the year after Deadlands. I have to wonder what the lead time was? Did WW see the success of DL and make this the next "historical" game they put forward. Or was WtWW already in development and playtesting, making the company sigh that they hadn't beaten Pinnacle to the punch. This game garnered a couple of supplements, but eventually died out. They did produce a number of cross-over adventures for the two games. I wonder if that was the first instance of that?

5. Cold Steel Reign

2004. There's a significant gap between this and the last item, suggesting that the genre of alt-Western had been served well by DL and company. It also suggests that some new media appear that got companies thinking about the Western again. RPG.Net's review describes this as Deadwood the rpg. Why on this list? Because everywhere's a Deadwood arising from an apocalyptic event which happens during the Civil War. That shatters the nation and adds magic and demons to the setting.

6. Fistful o' Zombies

Eden throws its Stetson into the ring, with this Wild West supplement. Notably overseen by Shane Hensley (creator of Deadlands), we get zombie Eastwood on the cover. There's a good chunk of general advice for running AFMBE in a Western mode, and four new settings including a "Singing Cowboy" take on things. I’ve often wondered how many of these Deadworlds actually got run by groups and how many simply served as inspirations for GMs.

7. Dogs in the Vineyard

I've never been sure exactly how to describe Dogs in the Vineyard, except that it feels like it operates in an allegorical Western space. Is there magic? Are the demons real? I suspect that's a decision the group has to come to. But the combination of religious enforcers trying to keep their land pure and the "push your luck" mechanic of conflict make for a striking game. More than many other games, it manages to evoke a feeling about the place and time.

8. Spellslinger

A thin d20-based setting with wizards and wagon-trains. Fantasy Flight's Horizon line reminded me of TSR's Alternity or WEG's Masterbook lines: attempts to make many settings to see which actually stuck. Grimm's the only survivor from this line. Spellslinger combines classic fantasy with the Western, with an emphasis on the fantasy side of things.

9. Serenity

I think we can agree that Firefly's pretty much a Western in space? It has some other trappings, but it plays with and reflects those conventions. That's been a classic trope in sci-fi for years, and its even popped up as a theme in many Traveller supplements (especially on the frontiers). But we hadn't seen a full rpg embrace of that until Serenity arrived. I bet we see more- and I bet I’ve missed some that have come out.

10. Wizards & Gunslingers

I don't know enough about this game from Avalon/Comstar to make an assessment. Apparently there's a Pathfinder release in addition to the original self-contained version. It appears to be more of a fantasy setting with Western bits tacked on.

11. Phaethos

Another fantasy world with Western elements added on. The d10-based game's available for free download online. While the cover and design makes the game look fairly WW, the actually feel of the setting doesn't quite match that. The publisher describes it as a “mix between old western United States, medieval Europe, fantasy, magic, horror and science fiction.” So, you know, pretty much everything.

12. Devil's Gulch

A western location, but one with built in suggestions for how to convert and use it with fantasy, steampunk, and even space-opera. I like that concept- it recognizes that in practice the Western gets transformed more often than not. The cover art certainly sells the non-standard approach, with a gun and spell duel in progress. And, of course a close-up butt shot. I’d like to see more books take this approach- with locations and ideas about how those might get used with slight genre tweaks.

13. Weird West

A tiny, tiny little rpg with highly streamlined rules. Staurt Robertson aims this to cover "weird western worlds of comboys, kung-fu, magic and otherworldy malevolence." All of that in 8 2.75" by 4.75 pages.

14. Woodland Warriors Out West

A supplement for the Woodland Warriors game, offering a chance to run anthropomorphic creatures in a Western game. It offers a new take on the setting, and wins just for the concept of Prairie Dog Cardsharps. Oddly I used to own a copy of Furry Pirates, the fuzzy supplement for another genre I’m not as sold on. I wonder if you could do a version of Mouse Guard with this?

15. Owl Hoot Trail

Six-guns, bounty-hunting Orcs, and gadgeteer Elves. The most recent entry into this genre- offering a slim and pretty cool d20 resolution system. I like the balance of flavor and simplicity here. It feels like a Western setting which has evolved with fantasy races. While some of the other fantasy/Western versions patch together elements, this game comes across as an organic whole. It reminds mea little of later Shadowrun, where the game have finally come to terms with the implications of the races in the setting.  I'll write up a more full read-through in the next couple of weeks, but I'd recommend it right now. It has a fairly extensive campaign in the back, making it a natural for GMs who want to jump in right away.