High Level Games
High Level Games
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Store
    • Storytellers Vault Products
    • Fantasy Adventures
    • DMs Guild Products
    • Snowhaven
    • Army Men
  • Podcasts
  • Video
  • Trusted Resources
  • Join The Team
  • About
  • Contact
    • Star Trek Adventures
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Store
    • Storytellers Vault Products
    • Fantasy Adventures
    • DMs Guild Products
    • Snowhaven
    • Army Men
  • Podcasts
  • Video
  • Trusted Resources
  • Join The Team
  • About
  • Contact
    • Star Trek Adventures

Welcome to the High Level Games Blog, News, and other stuff to take your games to the next level!

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com

6 Issues With Various Genre Role-Playing Games

14/10/2016

2 Comments

 
Picture
It’s not easy to run an RPG. There are so many pitfalls, you’d think it was a 3D topographical map of the Moon. Every game is different, though, and I have found that different genres have their own issues. Here are some main ones:
 
1. Superhero –
From the Avengers to Batman, who WOULDN’T want to play a superhero? To defend the weak, or to fight the good guys, try to take over the world?? Superhero games are insanely fun. The main issue with it is balancing. Look at Marvel, to pick one publisher. You have the street level heroes, say your Daredevil. Then you have your mutants, your X-Man. And then you start to get people like the Phoenix or Franklin Richards. And then there’s Galactus. (If you don’t know any of them, think in sequence, superpowered human, REALLY superpowered, able to change reality, God-like).

Now most people would like to have a really effective power that could be really good in a fight. But what if someone chooses to say control water, and someone else just wants x-ray vision? Without making them change their choices, how do you balance out your team?

In a couple of words, with difficulty. Try and have your players see that it’s in the interest of the team to get powers that complement each other and work well together. And fine, get someone with a silly power; just make sure it doesn’t bring everyone down. 

2. Fantasy –
D&D being the juggernaut that it is, the main issue about fantasy games is one of clichés. If you want to be in a dungeon for aaaaages, by all means. I’ve read narratives where people spent YEARS in the same dungeon, exploring room after room, of what turned out to be a couple of hundreds of them. Left to its own devices, a lot of fantasy games end up being very similar, the escort, the exploration, the killing. It is both the party’s and the GM’s responsibility to clean this up and come up with games that are really exciting. Traitors. Weird creatures. Things not going according to expectations.  Mix it up! 

3. Horror –
Horror is really difficult to transmit in a RPG game. The players can’t see your monster, so they won’t necessarily be really scared by it. So how to convey the impending sense of doom? Different people have different techniques. The Cypher system rolls a die, and if you roll a 20, something dodgy happens. Then you roll it again after a few minutes, now you only need a 19 or a 20. And next time, 18, 19 or 20…. Doom is coming.

My favorite is using a Jenga tower. There’s a whole game based around it (Dread) but you can just use the tower. Every time someone wants to do something, pull a piece. When it tumbles, something horrible happens. Doom is coming indeed. 

4. Sci-Fi –
These issues are similar to those described above for Fantasy. After so many sci-fi series, it is easy enough to fall into stereotypes, the logical alien, the warrior species, the evil imperial civilization. The solutions are pretty much the same as with Fantasy as I said, shake it up, don’t fall into clichés. Maybe your warrior species loves flowers. I don’t know. Could happen. 

5. Police/Detective/Clue-hunting –
A lot of games will have a search-for-clues aspect to it. Say Call of Cthulhu, there’s a big component of clue-searching. But then the problem is always the same: what if the players roll badly and they don’t figure out where the things are? How do you manage your players not finding an object that will drive the narrative forward?

Different people and different games run it differently, of course. There’s a dedicated system for clues (GUMSHOE), and most GM’s play it loosely. Like, you’ll ALWAYS need to find the relevant thing, if it’s part of the narrative; it needs to be there. This aspect needs to be handled delicately, as players might feel like they’re being cattle-driven, and that their choices don’t matter. Alternatively, make them come across the clue in a different and less informative way, if they fail all their rolls, make them pay for it. 

6. Cyberpunk / Steampunk –
Sometimes hard to pin down for the totally opposite reasons of Fantasy. These genres are so open ended that it is easy to get bogged down, as in, what CAN we do next? You need to spend some time building the universe, before your characters know how little or how much they can do. Is this a Blade Runner-type cuberpunk, with androids and spinners, or is it based on a human city in an alien planet, millennia into the future, where humans can freely fly and turn into energy? This goes also for Steampunk, you need to be careful and establish what your Universe is all about before you start, otherwise your players with find themselves lost in the story. 
 
Do you agree with these? What have been the genre-related issues you’ve found?
 
Rui is a Portuguese scientist that, after a decade doing odd things in labs, became a teacher. Then, 20 months ago, RPG’ing came into his life and he is now happily juggling the two. He is currently working on a Cypher system space/superhero adventure and a Fate-based Cyberpunk one (with a dark, secret twist). He lives in England with his partner Joana, an ungodly number of potted plants and at least 3 to 4 Adventures across as many rule systems, at different levels of completion. He can be reached at @atomic_rpg


Savage Worlds: Fast, Furious, and Fun! - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
2 Comments
William Keller
14/10/2016 11:42:46 am

"The Cypher system rolls a die, and if you roll a 20, something dodgy happens. Then you roll it again after a few minutes, now you only need a 19 or a 20. And next time, 18, 19 or 20…. Doom is coming."

Intrusions happen on a 1, then a 1 or 2, then a 1, 2, or 3.

19s and 20s are "special effects", which means something good happens.

Reply
Keeper Nyarlathotep link
15/10/2016 11:49:48 pm

I run Call of Cthulhu, and the way I handle tense stuff is by making hidden rolls, especially Luck rolls, at 50%. These can be either good or bad Luck rolls - as in, is it just your luck that you're in the right place at the wrong time, or is bad fortune creeping up on you? I variously modify this depending on how the game is going, or what the actual circumstances - say, a roll against 40% or 70% depending. One scenario I ran had an accruing 15% chance of a Bad Thing™ happening, every hour the gang spent in these old mine tunnels. I collapsed the shaft out on them, forcing them to stay there, and thus making sure they would, eventually, encounter the Bad Thing™.

I also like to slowly enforce countdowns by "round". I start a countdown on my hands, usually one hand. I then let the group as a whole do a couple things or say a few things, then after they've all done something/said something, I lower one finger. This enforces a "time limit" and makes players move quicker. I'll also interrupt players, do unexpected things, get in their personal space, or draw out how gosh-darned "normal" it all is. Too normal. ABNORMALLY normal... Does wonders for increasing tension and paranoia.

Another big thing in horror games. CONTROL. THE. ATMOSPHERE. You control the room, you control the mood, you control your players' emotions. It's kind of this little mind-games type thing. If you can make your players physically and mentally uncomfortable, they will get more into character, and the creeping dread becomes more palpable. Sound effects and ambient music do a great job of this.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    All blog materials created and developed by the staff here at High Level Games 

    ​

    Picture
    Click here to support our community for as a little as $1.00 for exclusive content, free downloadable stuff, and even discounts on role-playing game items.

    Archives

    April 2023
    February 2021
    November 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All
    13th Age
    2d20
    2nd Edition
    3.5 Edition
    3Deep
    4th Edition
    5th Edition
    7th Sea
    Acquisitions Inc
    Actual Play
    AD&D
    AdventureLookUp.com
    Adventurers!
    Aether Sea
    A+ Fantasy
    After Collapse
    Alignment
    Amazing Tales
    Amazon
    Anima: Beyond Fantasy
    Anime
    Apocalypse World
    Atomic Robo
    Australian
    Award Winning
    Basic Fantasy
    Belly Of The Beast
    Big Eyes Small Mouth
    Black Lives Matter
    Black Void
    Blades In The Dark
    Blood Pangea
    Board Games
    Book Of Exalted Darkness
    BrigadeCon
    Burning Wheel RPG
    Call Of Cthulhu
    Capers RPG
    Casual Roleplaying
    Changeling: The Dreaming
    Chaosium
    Character Arcs
    Character Creation
    Chris Spivey
    Cinematic RP
    Classics
    Comic-books
    Conventions
    Corvus Belli: Infinity
    Crawl
    Creators
    Critical Role
    Cthulhutech
    D100 Dungeon
    D20
    D&D
    D&D Beyond
    Deadlands
    Defenders Of Tokyo
    Degenesis
    Detako Saga
    Discord
    DMsGuild.com
    Dnd
    Dndbeyond
    Doctor-who
    Double-cross
    Dread
    Dresden-files
    DriveThruRPG.com
    Dr. Who
    Dungeon Crawl Classics
    Dungeons
    Dungeons And Dragons
    Dungeon Slayers
    Dungeon World
    Dystopia Rising
    Encounters
    Era: The Consortium
    Era: The Empowered
    Esper Genesis
    Evil Hat
    Exalted
    Faith RPG
    Fandom
    Fantasy-age
    Fantasy-flight
    Fantasy Grounds
    FATE
    Fate Accelerated Edition
    Fate Core
    Fate Rpg
    Fate-rpg
    Final Fantasy
    Forgotten Realms
    Fragged Empire
    Free League Publishing
    Furries
    Game Design
    Game Lore
    Gencon
    Ghosts Of NPCs Past
    GMTips
    Golden-sky-stories
    GoodmanGames.com
    Grognards
    GUMSHOE
    GURPS
    GURPS Lite
    Halloween
    Harlem Unbound
    Harry-potter
    Hero Builder
    Heroes Against Darkness
    Heroes-unlimited
    HERO System
    High Level Games
    Historical Fantasy
    HLG Con 2018
    HLG Reviews
    Homebrew
    Humble Bundle
    Indie
    Interface Zero 2.0
    Interview
    Invisible Suns
    Japanese RPGs
    JRR Tolkien
    Kickstarter
    KoboldPress.com
    KULT
    L5R
    Lankhmar
    LARP
    Lasers And Feelings
    Legendlore
    Legend Of The Five Rings
    LexOccultum
    LOTR
    Low Magic
    Mage
    Mage: The Awakening
    Magic And Steel
    MAID
    Mayhem
    Mazes And Minotaurs
    Meikyuu Kingdom
    Mekton Zero
    Mental Health
    Middle Earth
    Mighty Narwhal
    Mini Six
    Modern Adventures RPG
    Modiphius
    Monarchies Of Mau
    Monsterhearts
    Monte Cook Games
    Morra
    Mummy: The Curse
    Mutants And Masterminds
    Mythender
    Narrative Games
    Nechronica
    Night's Black Agents
    Novel
    NPC
    Numenara
    Odyssey Of The Dragonlords
    One Shot
    Online Gaming
    Orun
    OSCRIC
    Osr
    OVA
    Palladium
    Pathfinder
    Pathfinder 2.0
    PbtA
    PDQ
    Pire: The Masquerade 5th Edition
    Play By Post
    Player Tips
    Podcast
    Powered By Apocalypse
    Power Outage RPG
    Preview
    Promethean: The Created
    Pugmire
    Pulp
    Puzzles
    Questlings
    Ravenloft
    Ravnica
    Red Markets: A Game Of Economic Horror
    Research
    Review
    Review Article
    Rifts
    Risus
    Role Play
    Roll20
    Romance Of The Perilous Land
    Ryuutama
    Satanic Panic
    Savage Rifts
    Savage Tokusatsu
    Savage Worlds
    Seeds Of Wars
    Setting
    Settings
    Settlement Building
    Shadowrun
    SIGMATA
    Snowhaven
    Social Combat
    Social Systems
    Solo Play
    Standard Roleplay System
    Star Trek Adventures
    Star Wars
    Storytellers Vault
    Suited RPG
    Summerland
    Supplements
    System Design
    Table Top
    Tabletop Simulator
    Tales From The Loop
    Tales Of Equestria
    Talislanta
    Tariffs
    Teenagers From Outerspace
    Ten Candles
    Tenra Bansho Zero
    The Dark Eye
    The End Of The World RPG
    The Great Long Dark
    The One Ring
    The Very Important Task
    Titan Effect
    To The Temple Of Doom
    Trial Of Cthulhu
    Trinity Continuum
    TSR Marvel Super Heroes
    Ttrpg
    Twitch
    USTR
    Va
    Valiant Rpg
    Vampire: The Masquerade
    Video Games
    Villian
    Volo
    Vs Ghosts
    Warhammer
    Warhammer 40K
    Werewolf: The Apocalypse
    Westbound RPG
    Wild West
    World Building
    World Of Darkness
    Writing Tips
    Year Zero
    Zweihander

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly