Pirates vs. Vampires

I week from tonight I hope to commence my first play-by-chat game in over two years. I don't yet have a fancy name for the campaign, but the working title right now is "Pirates vs. Vampires". I have not, as of yet, done a lot of preparation. In fact, the game will be something of an experiment in build-as-you-go world-building. In addition to cranking out content for this blog, I am already running two face-to-face games (a Gurps 4e Steampunk/Pulp/Dimension-Hopping mash up and Slaying Solomon). I simply won't have the luxury of detailing the world to any great degree of detail.

What I do have, however, is a simple and compelling premise. The campaign takes place in a fantastic (horrific) version of our own Golden Age of Piracy (early 1700s). The hook is that vampires rule the world from the shadows. Our heroes are privy to this terrible secret and have taken to seas for their own survival and to strike back against the commercial interests of the undead aristocracy.

For inspirations, I'm obviously going to rely heavily on the recent Pirates of the Caribbean movies for look-and-feel. I also like the aesthetic of Brotherhood of the Wolf, though it is slightly anachronous. Literary sources for swashbuckling goodness primarily include On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers and The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson.

For the vampire elements I'm going to be mostly traditional. The whole reason the characters will take to the seas is that most vampires will possess stereotypical gothic vulnerabilities. Moving water and the high seas (not to mention the sunlight of the tropics) will be problematic for them. While (named) vampires will be complicated characters with a whole host of motives, they will not (by and large) be sympathetic. No Twilight-style sparkle vampires here! Vampires have to be scary to be effective antagonists. I'll save the rest of the vampire details for a spoiler-filled post later.

Back to my lack of time to prepare...

I have various tools to help me in this. For creating fully plotted adventures, I hope to use Dr-Rotwang's Adventure Funnel (first mentioned on this blog here). Once I figure out my spoiler policy, I hope to actually post my funnels as I come up with the. Additionally, the pace of play-by-chat games make me think that I'll be able to use the Mythic Game Master Emulator to assist in running free-form sessions. It's not so much that I'd have difficulty improvising from scratch, rather I might enjoy running a character next to the players and being surprised by what happens. The Mythic GME also has some wonderful tools to help move a game in unexpected directions. When improvising on my own, I often fail to consider the really interesting cases that might otherwise arise from the Mythic approach.

I forgot to mention the most obvious tool for a GM with minimal time to prepare: Risus! Can't beat Risus for whipping up a game in a hurry.

Music as Inspiration

Towards the tail end of my thirteen hour flight yesterday, I was too uncomfortable to sleep and I was too tired to do anything useful. After exhausting the videos that I wanted to watch, I just sat back and listened to music. It was actually wonderful. I almost never just listen to music anymore. I'm always listening to music while doing something else and it just sinks into the background. Actively listening made me remember that I used to draw so much inspiration from artists that I love.

This is relevant to this blog because I look back over the years at the games that I have run and realize that music has been an inportant source of inspiration for many of them. I'm not talking about coming up with a cool soundtrack once the main idea has been developed (though I do that as well). I really mean that music informed the campaign development from the start.

Unlike in visual media, the inspiration that one receives from music might not be entirely obvious. Sure, there are lyrics that inspire me. I did run a Rolemaster epic adventure based on the song "King of Pain" by the Police (I used the song lyrics as prophecy). I came up for the name and themes of a long running cyberpunk/vampire campaign from the lyrics to a My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult song ("The Velvet Edge", which you will note also is my domain name). But the true value of music as a source of inspiration is that can evoke specific moods and feelings that are entirely personal. When I listen to Peter Gabriel's Passion, I am specifically conjuring up images and feeling that will be completely different from yours. I never saw The Last Temptation of Christ, so I place the music in an entirely different context. For me, I hear Sword & Sorcery. I hear desert caravans and vibrant bazaars. Listening to it along with Lorenna McKennit's An Ancient Muse (and some Dead Can Dance) makes me want to run a campaign set along a real or fictional Silk Road.

Music also inspired specific characters. In college, I took a music appreciation class. As our final assignment, we had to write up our thoughts and feeling about a small handful of classical pieces. Being the procrastinator that I was, I waited until the last possible moment and shut myself in a darkened room, laid on the floor, and blasted the music. Given that Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was one of the pieces, it kind of freaked me out. Ever since, I've had a thing for the piece and decided to make the riots surrounding its debut central to the backstory of my child vampire, Moondancer.

Since I now have readers that check in regularly, I'm going to invite some participation. Have you ever been inspired to run a particular campaign, adventure, or character primarily through music? Drop a comment and let me know.  

Stitchpunk Goodness

One of the advantages of a long flight is that you get to catch up on movies that you should have seen when they first came out. Today I saw 9 and District 9 (what's up with the number nine?). With nothing else to do on the flight, I naturally starting thinking of how they might inspire gaming material. With District 9, I started thinking about the Kafer of Traveller 2300/2300 AD and how I might do a Risus adaptation of that game. That post will hopefully happen when I return home and have access too my rulebooks. With 9, my thoughts were much less specific and therefore perfect for a quick post before I try sleep off my jet-lag.

9 is not the best steampunk movie that I have seen. That honor goes to Sherlock Holmes (which may or may not inspire a post in the near future). But to someone who loves the steampunk/retro-future aesthetic (as I surely do) 9 is undeniably gorgeous. It's also pregnant with gaming possibilities.

The concept is pure one-shot gold. The players characters are creations that wake up into a world barren of humans. They can solve the mystery of man's undoing, fight other (more hostile) creations, or establish some kind of new society. A series of adventures can do all of the above in an epic quest.

The stitchpunk characters of 9 are not particularly deep with respect to other films but they make great character sketches for a game like Risus. Due to the circumstances of their creation, each little homunculus represents an iconic and complimentary personality archetype with a unique and interesting shtick. 1 is the Cowardly and Stubborn Old Leader; 2 is the Fearless Gadgeteer-Explorer; 3 and 4 are Twin Voracious Scholars; 5 is the Big-Hearted Engineer; 6 is a Sensitive Artist-Prophet; 7 is the Fiercely Independent Adventuress; 8 is the Magnetism-Addicted Muscle; and 9 is the Courageous and Honest Hero.

I also love how the small scale of the stichpunks turns ordinary objects from the ruined world into incredible props (e.g. a scissor blade for a sword and flash-light bulb lamps). And the crumbling post-apocalyptic building become incredible locations for staging action sequences.