Specifically, I got together with my RP group a few days ago (we do Sundays now). It was a really good session, and I look forward to doing more like it. For now, let's have a recap.
~
It all started with a friend's dream. We talked about it, and tried to find the salvageable gameplay. It's a soul-reapy kind of deal, with the players taking on the roles of spectres. But, of course, it's bad form to start them that way. How did they get there? Our answer was a Halloween party.
The party was chosen for a couple of reasons. For one, the imagery. In Mexico, the last day in October is the Day of the Dead, a very serious holiday. This was foreshadowing, to an extent. Neither of us expected anyone to pick up on it, it just seemed like a funny thing to do.
It also helped to start things domestic. We didn't give any clues as to what the nature of the story was, only where it begins- at a Halloween block party. Our character creation was: Name, costume, price of costume, day job, age, any significant history. The grunt of the group made another ex-marine, but it didn't really matter- everyone will wind up in the same position, anyway.
The characters were pretty robust. Derek is a creative designer at Blizzard, dressed as a Warcraft character. Camille (real life gamer), is a bartender dressed as a white mage from Final Fantasy. Breaking the pattern is Julie, who took on the appearance of a pirate.
The first ten minutes of the story was partying. Literally. Booze, bad karaoke, and a jackass named Jared ragging on everyone. We, the GMs, thought it was best if he drunkenly hit on the girls, and just generally made fun of Derek. He's supposed to be extremely hateable, so we just characterized him a little bit.
I needed someone to direct the flow of the party atmosphere, so I invented Ned. Ned is dressed as Elvis, and does the accent. He mentions the party is moving to the roof, and there's a pool- so get your butts up there! On the way up, I gave the players an option to "accidentally" kick Jared in the stairwell. Jared is drunk as hell by this point, so he's incapable of standing. No one took the option, which did slightly surprise me.
Derek enlisted some help, and chose to dunk Jared in the pool. People laughed. Camille got a very exotic drink from the bartender, and Julie mostly enjoyed the party atmosphere.
The other GM and I both knew no one was going to leave the building alive. We needed to turn the living characters into spectres. I decided a fire would be a good way to go about it, and it fit with the villain from the dream.
It started with an exhaust vent spitting a few sparks, and belching flames onto Ned's nylon pants. He screams, and everyone starts to panic. Let the fun begin.
(Just a note. I don't know ass about building fires. I made everything up, and took a few things from my Artistic Storage Space. If anyone with real knowledge about this is reading... I'm so sorry.)
Smoke, and cracks was the first way to go. Smoke billows up the stairwell, and a fissure appears in the pool (thus draining the only large water source). People that I've been introducing for the past 15 minutes start to panic, and the players debate the response time of emergency services at 11:00 pm in an unidentified city.
A hole forms in the roof, and someone crashes down. He lands on a coffee table, and breaks something sensitive. Derek is helping Ned with his burn (technically a melt- Nylon), so Julie and Camille decide to lower a water hose to him. He's in no position to tie it off, so Julie climbs down to tie him up.
From scraping against the roof, the hose cracks in half. Julie and injury-guy take a tumble onto the fourth floor, and Derek tries to help. Julie throws the rope up to him, and he grabs it. Everyone pulls, and the weight causes the room to cave in more.
(Spot the plot device to keep the party together)
Injury-guy is a goner. He cracked his head on the table. The carpets are beginning to smolder, and the floor caves in. I believe everyone chose to just climb down into the third floor, figuring that "down" was better than "stay put."
More carnage and building destruction. The central stairway cracks, buckles, and takes out a chunk of the wall. It's a quick way down, but it's also a fiery tornado of an updraft. Camille spots the bodies of a few people they met an hour ago- apparently a dash down the stairs is NOT a good idea.
There's a couple of back-drafts, and everyone makes their way to a fire sprinkler in the hallway. It's refreshing. Hot, but it blasts the smoke away and keeps everyone moist. It sputters to death as the pipe cracks somewhere down the line.
Floor three has no terribly good options for getting down, so the group settles on going from balcony-to-balcony. Derek starts tying curtains and bed-spreads, Camille sacrifices some of her costume for reinforcement. Julie goes down second, Derek (by far the heaviest, even out of costume) goes last. The rope breaks, he lands on Julie and breaks her arm. :-(
Second floor is absolute hell. Structural members are twisting and bending, and there's virtually no intact sprinklers. Only equitable way down is the elevator shaft, so Derek tears up hot carpet (NOT a double-entendre, I promise) to make a ribbon down the shaft. He opts to go first this time, in case it breaks. This way he can at least catch Julie and Camille.
At the bottom of the makeshift ribbon, the heat causes the elevator cables to tear and snap. The counterweight plunges into the basement, and the elevator itself starts to groan down the shaft.
The rope snaps, Julie lands on Derek and breaks a few of his ribs (dramatic irony wasn't completely lost on me in high school). Everyone scrambles out of the elevator shaft, to the front door in the lobby. The gas line to the fake fireplace is making a hell of a show, but it's bypassable.
The elevator slams onto the bottom floor (heat distortion fragged the brakes, for anyone still reading), and the concussion knocks anything still standing over.
After the absolute end of adrenaline, the three are out the front door of the burning building. I remember describing it. "Cool air fills your nostrils, and you find yourself face-down on the asphalt road. You feel great. Not at all fatigued or in pain. Just the right temperature, too. Julie- your arm is healed."
At this point everyone's alarm bells go off. I'm not M. Night Shyamalan- it's really easy to tell what just happened. In a confused haze, the players try to talk to the paramedics. The EMTs pull out a stretcher, saying they found some guy in an Elvis costume who might make it. And, someone sits up from the stretcher and greets them. He's wearing a dapper suit, gloves, and is immaculately tidy.
Cut to ten minutes later. He's explained to them that they died, and he's a reaper. "Not the Reaper, but I do know him. I'm here to handle this unfortunate act of terrorism. Not the domestic kind, it's... it's complicated. We have an off-site contractor with us, he can explain more."
~
That's the end of part 1. We got about halfway through part 2, but I'll write it up tomorrow.
What I wanted to focus on was an idea I had as part of a conversation. The player of Derek and I were having a conversation, about the depth and breadth required to make a successful roleplay. My argument was that significance was the only important thing. "A truly great GM could make an RP about... bloggers. You'd spend the whole time sitting in a chair, using a computer. But if you put enough emotion into it, it could be truly gripping."
From there, my thoughts cascaded into something- an RP about Malaria in Africa.
On the surface, that sounds horrible. Terrible. Why would I do that? I realized it's because I feel obliged to. Almost all of the RPs I've done so far are cheap, disposable entertainment. Like violent movies, they're just there to entertain viscerally. Easy violence, cheap action thrills... burning buildings. I wanted to do something with more impact, and a more personal effect on the soul.
I also felt it was necessary for peace of mind, after a fashion. I want to know that I've used this great medium for more than just entertainment, that it can be used to inform about something truly disastrous. This is not going to be an easy project. This is going to be very hard to do as a GM, and finishing without crying will be nearly impossible. Nonetheless, I'm taking on this challenge.
The rough idea I have goes as follows: The players are bloggers, facebookers, and other social media jockeys. The RP only takes place in the hours they're online, at their jobs. Their job is to highlight a fictional Malaria chrisis (or another nasty disease. AIDS is the linchpin of this, but a little obvious. I really don't know enough about Africa to make a call right now, but I'll definitely look into it). The gameplay, to me, is still a little bit up in the air. The idea I've got so far is that they can divert their funds to publish ads and articles on certain websites, claim corporate sponsorship, and bring attention to the average American as their daily task. Either they can successfully contain the outbreak, or it overtakes the entire country and the Red Cross aid has to withdraw for safety reasons, dubbing the area to hostile (both biologically and physically) to operate in.
Regardless of what the gameplay is, one thing I'm adamant about incorporating is props. Specifically, the Red Cross will send them emails highlighting their work (which can be used to gain attention electronically). If the players make good calls, the red cross volunteers will be starry-eyed about the good work they get to do, and very thankful for all the help the bloggers have wrangled. If things go sour, it's basically going to be te opposite. "We're in the shit. We'll hold on for as long as we can, but we fear the worst."
It's not, by any means, a challenging scenario. I am planning on incorporating a dice mechanic, but it's not meant to be intellectually difficult. It's supposed to choke the soul, and work the players over emotionally. I want them to tremble every time they realize they doomed several thousand innocent people, by not Facebooking hard enough. Of course there's a central message about the power of the internet, and the empirical presence of American apathy. But, for now, I need to sleep on it. There is absolutely no way in hell I'm going to rush this- I'm going to do it right.
