Wonko Goes Ghostbusting (c) 1996-1997 Ricardo J. Méndez [insert legal blah-blah-blah here] Boy, have we had threads on AD&D in the past. I'm as glad as anyone, since AD&D is what I've played for the longest time. Not that much, come to think of it, but it should be something on the order of seven to eight years. Now, what surprised me the most from the postings that I had read on the subject is that, for some reason, people get to associate AD&D with just hack and slash and no roleplaying. I can see how things like this can happen, since the fact that the most detailed rules in AD&D involve combat tends to speak about the intentions of the game. But I believe that there are some simple rules that make people start roleplaying almost automatically. Well, maybe not that simple, but worthy of a try all the same. DR. ARMITAGE, I PRESUME One problem that I won't devote a lot of time discussing are stereotypes. Every wizard wants to be Raistlin Majere, and every professor wants to be Henry Armitage. That's fine for a start, but should be discouraged on the long run. If not, they won't roleplay it enough, or each session will be just the same boring deal. I *HAVE* TO REMEMBER HIS NAME, LOOK AT MY INTELLIGENCE STAT This is the bane of most gamemasters: stats-based play. I don't give a damn if a character has 35 out of 20 in his intelligence stat. If the player didn't pay attention to a name, the fact is lost on the shadows of time. Even Einstein and Newton slipped on some things. Another problem with stat-based gameplay is that if a character doesn't have the stats the player believes he needs, he will be discouraged to keep on playing. "Why should I worry about anything? Look at that constitution! I can't even take a bath at night without having to make a constutition check!." Well, if that is so, it should be used for roleplaying, not against it. And if a character has a strength of 19, that is not necessarily a good thing. He might tend to break things, kill people when he was just trying to stun them, or such a range of nice effects. REACTIVE ENVIRONMENTS On any game, the environment should react to what the players do. On Call of Cthulhu that's easier to accomplish, since you can't go around merrily shooting everything in sight. But on fantasy games like AD&D or Elric people feel inclined to deal with anything suspicious by killing it. Whacking it's freaking head off. What if the encounter happens in a town? Indeed, those bandits might have been trying to kill them, but maybe people just heard the poor guy's dying screams as Wonko the Destroyer jumped up and down on him until he didn't even go squish. Did anyone witnessed the 'self-defense act' Wonko just performed over and over on the thief? Every city must have its guards, and those might be interested to find out what's that gray/red stuff on Wonko's boots. Specially if they heard something. Something like an muffled, last 'ugh'. The point is, everything a character does should build a reputation, be it good or bad, just as it is in the real world or as it would be on a fantasy world. Even on those, people don't have teflon memories and things do tend to stick to them. I believe that rule is specially important in Call of Cthulhu. For example, Professor Wonkling might have a reputation that any rare occult tome from a library that falls into his hands ends up missing a page or two. And wasn't that page were the old ritual was written in? Since CoC is even more close to the real world than any fantasy game, you can't just let your characters go around the world feeling that they can get away with murder. They could indeed, but not publicly. And should they try, you should let them think about the consequences and let the world react about it. Which brings us to my second point. THE "TO DO THINGS I CAN'T" APPROACH A lot of players I've run into say that they are playing fantasy games to do things they can't in the real world. While that might be a reason in Call of Cthulhu too (who wouldn't like to go against the Crawling Chaos, huh? What? No one? Hmpf), unfortunately in fantasy games a lot of time that means trying to do whatever they damn well please, and let the world screw itself. If that approach is accepted by the gamemaster without any change on the way the world feel about them, it just encourages the kill-maim-mutilate way of doing things, and roleplaying starts to get lost amidst all the blood and guts. But let me put forward a case I had with one of my players, who is by the way a really sick puppy. The fact that he is indeed pretty screwed up really served us well when playing AD&D, since the things he couldn't do in the real world really enhanced playing. William of Iranon was a fighter. But, unlike most fighters, he had a head on it's shoulders, and wouldn't you know it, a brain inside. But William was also one bloodthirsty mother. Once they were looking for employment. What William was most used to doing was fighting, so the best thing was guard the roads. But things had been pretty quiet, so it was unlikely they could find a job. What's a honest fighter to do? Well, go out and murder someone, so people don't feel all that comfortable. I remember there was a young maiden with the caravan they attacked, a 0 level character. William went straight to her, on horse, attacked her with her bastard sword ... and rolled a 20. Double damage to a character with 3 hit points. As her head rolled off, Harry, who was playing William, jumped up from his chair and let out a blood curling howl. After that, they decided on razing small villages, and left a sign that said "They didn't listen to Vlad the Warlord". The legend started spreading. It was Ravenloft, and the plane welcomed him and sent him a present. Of course that sort of thing can also happen in non-fantasy games, although not on that scale. For example, in CoC there's a player who plays a gangster called Jack Gunn. That's another tricky bastard, who, when things are getting out of hand, uses to trust his two .45. The moment I saw Bruce Willis on "Last Man Standing", Jack was the first thing that came to my mind. But he also believes in kidnapping small-time cultists and snapping their fingers off for information, and afterwards dropping them if at all possible on the police with some evidence, or if not on a river with concrete shoes. Such examples of roleplaying should be encouraged. A REALLY UGLY SON-OF-A-GOBLIN As Hugo mentioned on the Strange Aeons list, NPCs should be characters. Even if you don't want to pay a lot of attention to the average goblin or thug background, they can't just be all the same. If they are, what you'll just end up sending different monsters each time, until you have run out of Monstrous Manuals. But if that thug have something that sets him apart, like maybe a scar right on his throat and he is really silent, the player's might pay a little more attention to him. That way you would convey a feeling of being threatened, even if you don't directly tell them that he has an Appearance of 4. WHAT A SILLY HAT! To finish with this rants, something that can really freshen a party up is moving to another town. Those can, on most cases, look different, and people will behave in a different manner. A perfectly fine example is when running Horror on The Orient Express, when your characters keep going from country to country, each with its own political situation, Another is the Dark Sun campaign setting, where each of the city states is different and reacts differently to outsiders. Until the next time. Iä Iä Shub-Niggurath,