Creative Inspiration: The 36 Dramatic Situations

Way back in 1895, French writer Georges Polti postulated that in drama there was only 36 possible situations, and every storyline stems from one of these situations. The accuracy of this statement has been debated back and forth by better men than you or I (well at least than I) over the years but it still remains an interesting piece of work. These 36 situations have been utilised over the years by students and critics categorising works (film, books, plays etc) and by writers looking for some inspiration. It is firmly in the second category that role-players and more specifically GMs come into the picture.

We've all been there at one time or another during our GMing careers (not that we make money from it, but it may as well be a second job at times, albeit a volunteer one.) You have a game coming up in a couple of days but you're fresh out of ideas. One tool in your arsenal is indeed these 36 dramatic situations. 36 is a nice number for gamers, and I'm sure many of you have already considered "hey I could just roll 2D6 to pick a situation and get my inspiration," and that is exactly the suggestion. Roll 2D6, the first one picking the table, and the second one the specific situation.

So without further ado, the 36 dramatic situations. (note that the text shown below has come from Wikipedia.) They are in the format of the title, the required persons or elements, and then a description of the situation. Just pick your game, roll and think how that could apply in your current campaign.

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1-1 Supplication
a Persecutor; a Suppliant; a Power in authority, whose decision is doubtful.
The Persecutor accuses the Suppliant of wrongdoing, and the Power makes a judgment against the Suppliant.

1-2 Deliverance
an Unfortunate; a Threatener; a Rescuer
The Unfortunate has caused a conflict, and the Threatener is to carry out justice, but the Rescuer saves the Unfortunate.

1-3 Crime pursued by vengeance
a Criminal; an Avenger
The Criminal commits a crime that will not see justice, so the Avenger seeks justice by punishing the Criminal.

1-4 Vengeance taken for kin upon kin
Guilty Kinsman; an Avenging Kinsman; remembrance of the Victim, a relative of both
Two entities, the Guilty and the Avenging Kinsmen, are put into conflict over wrongdoing to the Victim, who is allied to both.

1-5 Pursuit
Punishment; a Fugitive
The Fugitive flees Punishment for a misunderstood conflict.

1-6 Disaster
a Vanquished Power; a Victorious Enemy or a Messenger
The Power falls from their place after being defeated by the Victorious Enemy or being informed of such a defeat by the Messenger.

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2-1 Falling prey to cruelty/misfortune
an Unfortunate; a Master or a Misfortune
The Unfortunate suffers from Misfortune and/or at the hands of the Master.

2-2 Revolt
a Tyrant; a Conspirator
The Tyrant, a cruel power, is plotted against by the Conspirator.

2-3 Daring enterprise
a Bold Leader; an Object; an Adversary
The Bold Leader takes the Object from the Adversary by overpowering the Adversary.

2-4 Abduction
an Abductor; the Abducted; a Guardian
The Abductor takes the Abducted from the Guardian.

2-5 The enigma
a Problem; an Interrogator; a Seeker
The Interrogator poses a Problem to the Seeker and gives a Seeker better ability to reach the Seeker's goals.

2-6 Obtaining
(a Solicitor & an Adversary who is refusing) or (an Arbitrator & Opposing Parties)
The Solicitor is at odds with the Adversary who refuses to give the Solicitor what they Object in the possession of the Adversary, or an Arbitrator decides who gets the Object desired by Opposing Parties (the Solicitor and the Adversary).

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3-1 Enmity of kin
a Malevolent Kinsman; a Hated or a reciprocally-hating Kinsman
The Malevolent Kinsman and the Hated or a second Malevolent Kinsman conspire together.

3-2 Rivalry of kin
the Preferred Kinsman; the Rejected Kinsman; the Object of Rivalry
The Object of Rivalry chooses the Preferred Kinsman over the Rejected Kinsman.

3-3 Murderous adultery
two Adulterers; a Betrayed Spouse
Two Adulterers conspire to kill the Betrayed Spouse.

3-4 Madness
a Madman; a Victim
The Madman goes insane and wrongs the Victim.

3-5 Fatal imprudence
the Imprudent; a Victim or an Object Lost
The Imprudent, by neglect or ignorance, loses the Object Lost or wrongs the Victim.

3-6 Involuntary crimes of love
a Lover; a Beloved; a Revealer
The Revealer betrays the trust of either the Lover or the Beloved.

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4-1 Slaying of kin unrecognized
the Slayer; an Unrecognized Victim
The Slayer kills the Unrecognized Victim.

4-2 Self-sacrifice for an ideal
a Hero; an Ideal; a Creditor or a Person/Thing sacrificed
The Hero sacrifices the Person or Thing for their Ideal, which is then taken by the Creditor.

4-3 Self-sacrifice for kin
a Hero; a Kinsman; a Creditor or a Person/Thing sacrificed
The Hero sacrifices a Person or Thing for their Kinsman, which is then taken by the Creditor.

4-4 All sacrificed for passion
a Lover; an Object of fatal Passion; the Person/Thing sacrificed
A Lover sacrifices a Person or Thing for the Object of their Passion, which is then lost forever.

4-5 Necessity of sacrificing loved ones
a Hero; a Beloved Victim; the Necessity for the Sacrifice
The Hero wrongs the Beloved Victim because of the Necessity for their Sacrifice.

4-6 Rivalry of superior vs. inferior
a Superior Rival; an Inferior Rival; the Object of Rivalry
A Superior Rival bests an Inferior Rival and wins the Object of Rivalry.

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5-1 Adultery
two Adulterers; a Deceived Spouse
Two Adulterers conspire against the Deceived Spouse.

5-2 Crimes of love
a Lover; the Beloved
A Lover and the Beloved enter a conflict.

5-3 Discovery of the dishonour of a loved one
a Discoverer; the Guilty One
The Discoverer discovers the wrongdoing committed by the Guilty One.

5-4 Obstacles to love
two Lovers; an Obstacle
Two Lovers face an Obstacle together.

5-5 An enemy loved
a Lover; the Beloved Enemy; the Hater
The allied Lover and Hater have diametrically opposed attitudes towards the Beloved Enemy.

5-6 Ambition
an Ambitious Person; a Thing Coveted; an Adversary
The Ambitious Person seeks the Thing Coveted and is opposed by the Adversary.

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6-1 Conflict with a god
a Mortal; an Immortal
The Mortal and the Immortal enter a conflict.

6-2 Mistaken jealousy
a Jealous One; an Object of whose Possession He is Jealous; a Supposed Accomplice; a Cause or an Author of the Mistake
The Jealous One falls victim to the Cause or the Author of the Mistake and becomes jealous of the Object and becomes conflicted with the Supposed Accomplice.

6-3 Erroneous judgement
a Mistaken One; a Victim of the Mistake; a Cause or Author of the Mistake; the Guilty One
The Mistaken One falls victim to the Cause of the Author of the Mistake and passes judgment against the Victim of the Mistake when it should be passed against the Guilty One instead.

6-4 Remorse
a Culprit; a Victim or the Sin; an Interrogator
The Culprit wrongs the Victim or commits the Sin, and is at odds with the Interrogator who seeks to understand the situation.

6-5 Recovery of a lost one
a Seeker; the One Found
The Seeker finds the One Found.

6-6 Loss of loved ones
a Kinsman Slain; a Kinsman Spectator; an Executioner
The killing of the Kinsman Slain by the Executioner is witnessed by the Kinsman Spectator.

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I will revisit these in future posts on how they can be used in specific games, and I welcome comments from people telling us how they made use of the 36 dramatic situations to overcome that creative block in your own games.

Star Wars RPG: A New Beginning

So as most of you are aware Fantasy Flight Games have announced the newest Star Wars RPG. A hardcopy beta is circulating in many FLGS at a pricey $35. There has been a few pieces of information released about the game now so here's a quick summary.

The new Star Wars RPG will be set in and around the Rebellion era (hurrah!!!!) and will actually consist of three game lines (not unlike the 40K series.)

• Star Wars: Edge of Empire - revolving around smugglers and others who ply their trade on the edge of known space, criminals, explorers and the like
• Star Wars: Age of Rebellion - takes you into the war against the Empire as part of the Rebellion
• Star Wars: Force and Destiny - becoming one of the last of the force users in the galaxy

 FFG have said these are independent game lines that will share a unified system, which must be good news to those of us who bought into the 40K lines with the slightly different rule systems.

 To date only the beta book is available, and only in hardcopy from your FLGS. FFG did give it out and sell it at GenCon this year but they are now out of stock.

 The Beginner Game for Edge of Empire has been announced as coming in Q4 this year. Exact release date to be determined. This is like the old classic beginner box sets we used to love (or perhaps hate) and will contain:

• 32 page adventure
• 48 page rulebook
• introduction sheet
• 4 full colour character sheets (they refer to them as folios)
• a colour double sided map (looking at the images they've provided at least one of the sides is of a YT1300 Stock Light Freighter in a landing bay)
• 14 custom dice (more on these later)
• 8 destiny tokens
• 35 character tokens
• 5 vehicle tokens

 Custom dice. Oh how many of us hate custom dice. Yes the new Star Wars line will be using custom dice meaning ans you either have to buy more dice for the game in some manner, or obtain stickers for your existing dice (or assign a number to each custom effect, but who wants to do that?) FFG have already released an app to be used as a dice roller for both Android and iOS ($4.99 each) so the dice aren't really necessary.

Custom dice. Image from Fantasy Flight Games site, all copyright remains that of FFG

 It seems that the tokens are just placeholder tokens to represent characters and vehicles on maps.

 Beginner Game is to retail for $29.95.

 The core rulebook has also been announced but no word on a street date, size or price. 

Gameline Overview: Deathwatch

There are many RPG gamelines out there, all vying for your hard earned money and more importantly your time. Some gamelines are huge beasts with hundreds of books spread across editions (Dungeons and Dragons, and Traveller spring instantly to mind.) Some are smaller and complete while yet more put up with a steady release schedule and haven't yet made it to the realms of hundreds of books. Maybe dozens of books.

So I'm going to start a new type of posting to give an overview of some of these gamelines so people can see what all is available for them, what kind of material is published and a general overview of what it is about plus any other related information I think may be useful.

So first post, Deathwatch, published by Fantasy Flight Games.

Deathwatch is a game set in the Warhammer 40K universe (Wikipedia is as good a place as any for a primer on the setting,) in which the players take on the role of a member of the Deathwatch a powerful and secretive organization dedicated to combating the fouls xenos that plague mankind. Each member of the Deathwatch is a Space Marine (Adeptus Astartes,) a veteran of their particular chapter who has been sent to represent them in the Deathwatch. As such the players are already powerful at the beginning of the game.

So what do the players do? Mostly they run around and kill stuff, mainly aliens but also with a healthy dose of heretic and Chaos thrown in for good measure. Sounds like it could be boring, and that was my initial reaction to the line until I started reading it. The line is well written, and the published adventures and materials do a good job of making them characters into more than just mindless killing machines.

The default setting for the game is the Jericho Reach, a new front in mankind's continual war to claim all of the galaxy. Using a gate of alien technology the Imperium has launched a crusade into the Jericho Reach, an area that used to belong to humanity millenia ago, in an attempt to bring them back into the fold and the light of the Emperor. The Deathwatch have always been in the Jericho reach watching for threats and trying to put them down when they arise and this new crusade has stirred things up a bit. While the Deathwatch will assist the crusade at times, it is not their objective and at times will cause them to clash with it.

So far a fair amount of material has been released for the line. All items in the line are in a hardback full colour format, and the majority has been released in PDF format on DriveThruRPG.

• Deathwatch rulebook: 400 pages including all the rules needed for play and a starting adventure
• Deathwatch Game Master's Kit: A four panel hardboard GM screen that you could beat a player to death with and a 32 page booklet consisting of an adventure and an enhanced system for generating missions for the players
• Rites of Battle: 256 pages containing enhanced character creation, background and abilities, new equipment, honour and reknown system and an overview of Watch Fortress Erioch the Deathwatch's main base in the Jericho Reach
• The Emperor Protects: 144 pages containing 3 large adventures
• Mark of the Xenos: 144 pages of aliens, heretics and chaos opponents for your games, plus more rules on hordes and mass battles
• First Founding: 144 pages. Details on four more Space Marine chapters for players to come from, details on the traitor Space Marine legions, some specific chapter related equipment and a 20 page adventure
• The Achilus Assault: 144 pages. Information on the Imperial Crusade into the Jericho Reach, the most important worlds embroiled in their assault and finally important NPCs in the crusade
• The Jericho Reach: 238 pages on the enemies facing the crusade, Chaos, Tau and Tyrannids. More details on the three main arms of the crusade and adventuring and fighting inside those warzones
• Rising Tempest: 144 pages. A three part mini-campaign
• Honour the Chapter: 144 pages. Details on creating characters from younger Space Marine chapters, adventure seeds

Review - Shadowrun: Mil Spec Tech 2

One of the more recent releases from Catalyst was the primarily PDF Shadowrun: Mil Spec Tech 2 (available on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow.) I say primarily PDF as it will not be released on standalone sale in hardcopy, but will be included in the soon to be released Runners Black Book 2074.

For your $7.95 you get a 31 page full colour PDF featuring the newest releases by Ares into the military market for 2074. This works out to 34 new pieces of hardware to throw at your runners, most of them illustrated and all coming with statistics for the 20th Anniversary ruleset.

The writing is the usual style for this kind of product, corporate sales speak followed by Jackpointers adding their 2c (or more.) There is even some of the humour you've come to expect, apparently Ares warranties do not cover damage related to user enthusiasm (unless you buy an extra support contract.)

The art is a mixed bag, most of it decent, and it gives a good idea of the piece of equipment in question.

What equipment is included I hear you ask? No, that's just the wind. Well I'll tell you anyway. Inside this instalment we have;

• 4 new drones, including the Tan Dem humanoid security drone
• 2 new APCs, one a vectored thrust vehicle
• 1 new infantry fighting vehicle, also vectored thrust
• A dedicated anti-drone anti-air vehicle with laser and missile
• A mobile artillery capable of using rockets or cruise missiles
• Several aircraft 
• VTOL transport plane
• stealth bomber
• 2 fighters
• Marine assets: Frigate, submarine and destroyer
• Personal weapons: Assaults rifle, light machine gun and portable laser
• Point defense laser
• 14 missiles, missile launchers, torpedo and rockets

So the question is, is it worth buying? If you're planning on sending your runners into one of the many war zones brewing in the Shadowrun world right now then you will definitely find a use for it. On the other hand if you run a straight street level campaign in Seattle, then you're not likely to get use out of most of the contents.  The clue is in the name, if you need military spec cutting edge, then you could do worse than picking this one up.

Kickstarter: A New RPG Record

So a new RPG record was set on Kickstarter. Numenera, a Kickstarter for the new game by one of the icons of the industry, Monte Cook. Numenera is a post-apocalyptic far future science fiction RPG. I must say I didn't know a huge amount about it and a quick glance through didn't particularly intrigue me.

However sometimes temptation just jumps in there, and I suddenly found myself in for the core rulebook and the PDFs of everything. The art looks pretty, there is a lot of stuff coming with the stretch rewards and I just can't resist value for money at times.

Over 4,600 RPG fans were definitely interested with 3 interested retail stores putting in a whopping $1,500 each (to be fair that reward level also got Monte Cook coming to the store to do a signing session anywhere in North America which has got to be good for business.) Someone even managed to put their hands into his (or her) pockets and come up with $2,000 to have a one on one with Monte on game design.

At $517,256 (plus PayPal pledges) it beat the previous record holder Traveller 5 by over $220k (not quite doubling it, but giving it a damned good try.)

Kickstarter is definitely becoming the go to place for exclusive RPG goodies and pre-orders, and this proves that Monte Cook is still bankable even after the failure of his Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure to make funding. It seems Indiegogo isn't as popular with RPG fans as Kickstarter.

Unboxing: Second City for Legend of the Five Rings

Since I couldn't go to GenCon this year, like everyone else I had to wait for all the goodies to hit the streets through the regular channels. One of the items I was strangely waiting to get my hands on was Legend of the Five Rings: Second City Boxed Set. Now when originally announced I wasn't entirely sure I would get it due to the main setting now being in Rokugan but outside the Empire. However being the collector that I am, I felt I had to get it anyway no matter what my logical mind may have told me.

Upfront information, this is not a review but merely an unboxing and overview of the product. I believe the street price for this is $79.99 US, but I managed to get it from 401 Games in Toronto for $68.

So what do you get for what is still an expensive piece of RPG material. Well first off lets start with the box as a package. All 3+ kgs of it (yes, 6.6 lbs of box set). For reference that's over 200g more than the Ptolus book for those that have it. This is certainly the heaviest RPG box set I've ever purchased, and is heavier than many of the modern style board games. It measures 23.5 x 8 x 30 cm and can be seen below.

So, onto the contents. The box contains, in order top to bottom of how it arrived. Unless otherwise noted, the items are regular full paper sized.

• A cloth drawstring dice bag with the new L5R logo on it

• The City: A 98 page plus covers book guide to the city
• The Campaign: 106 page plus covers campaign set in and around the city and the colonies
• The People: 106 page plus covers guide to NPCs and organizations.

• The Journal of Yogo Tanaka: a 16 page digest sized journal, I'm assuming it's a handout for the campaign
• An unlabeled 20 page digest sized pillow book. Not sure if this is just flavour or a handout again.

• A GM screen: A hardboard 2 full panel and 2 3/4 panel GM screen. It is the same GM screen that was released previously from a content and art perspective, but this one is sturdy and stiff unlike the previously released light card one. Very welcome

• A large 8 page sized unfolded poster map of the city

• 6 Premium Character Logs: 8 page plus covers full size high quality character sheets similar in concept to the Travelogs they released for the second edition. I hope these are released for general sale in packs as well as I'd hate for these to be the only copies there are.

• A pad of character sheets: Full colour 2 sided character sheets. 50 by my count. An odd addition in these days of household printers, PDF downloads and easy photocopying, but welcome nonetheless

• Dice: 10 jade coloured D10 with the Imperial chrysanthemum logo replacing the 10 (see above for photo with dice bag)
• Stance Cards: 30 stance cards for the various combat stances, 6 of each representing each of the 5 elements (Full attack, attack, defense, full defense and center)
• School Technique Cards: 140 cards representing the techniques from the various schools in the game, one for each rank technique. I don't know if this represents all of them, but it is at least the core rulebooks including the minor clans and Spider Clan.

All the books are full colour and match the style we've seen in the other 4th edition products to date, there's been no skimping on quality here to bring costs down on the box.

So all in all you get a lot for your money. Once taxes are include this cost me just slightly more than the main rulebook so it was cheap for the content. From a first glance, this is a fabulous box and seems well worth having. Now to get around to reading it.

(Note: next time I think I'll use a white tablecloth rather than those patterned place mats, they're so distracting.)

Review - Shadowrun: The Land of Promise

So recently Shadowrun: The Land of Promise was released by Catalyst in PDF format. I picked up a copy from DriveThruRPG and had a read.

For those who don't know, The Land of Promise is the translation of Tir Tairngire the predominately Elvish country that was established to the south of Shadowrun's default Seattle setting. It's a country that has seen its fair share of turmoil over the last 50 years of the setting (currently in 2074 as of this supplement.)

So what do you get. Well for $5.95 you get a 24 page PDF. The production quality is of the current usual Catalyst standard, that is pretty good and as you'd expect from a RPG product these days. It's colourful, with a good density of text and a reasonable text to graphics/whitespace ratio. 

The 24 pages break down as:

• 1 page for the cover painting, which while nice enough kind of evokes a sensation of Rivendell if it where on Minbar
• 1 page is the obligatory Jackpoint login screen informing you of what is coming next, and some news
• 4 pages are taken up with a vaguely interesting piece of short fiction that sets the scene for some of the action going on in the Tir these days
• 13 pages of information on the Tir (well most of it is your favourite Jackpointers talking about the Tir)
• 1 page of adventure hooks
• 3 pages of NPCs for people the average shadowrunner may encounter during their stay
• 1 page (well half a page really) detailing briefly a magical society, The Moonlight Thorns

What it isn't. This isn't a guide to the Tir, for information on the history of Tir Tairngire, culture etc you'll need to look at The Sixth World Almanac, or the older first edition Tir Tairngire sourcebooks. 

What it is. It is presented as an edited down copy of a delightfully cheesy Tir Tairngire travel brochure for prospective tourists (complete with Grimmy the Grimoire icon telling you all about the Tir. Think that annoying paperclip from older versions of Microsoft Office and you'll have the exact right idea.) When I say heavily edited it means the majority of the would be text in that brochure has been deleted and replaced by commentary by the usual suspect posters on Jackpoint commenting on the realities of what goes on. While this may sound annoying, long time Shadowrun readers know that the real meat and details are often in these posters comments giving the realities (and sometimes completely incorrect information) on the topic at hand, and The Land of Promise is no exception to this rule. In fact the Jackpoint comments make up perhaps 80% of the text of the book outside the opening fiction and NPC section. It should be noted that the single largest topic of conversation here is the princes of the Tir, what they stand for and what they're currently up to in the run up to the next election.

What little art is in the book (other than Grimmy the Grimoire) consist of some character drawings that seem to be representative of princes of the Tir, but its not obvious. The art is adequate, but doesn't seem to be trying to fill a particular purpose as the style doesn't always seem to fit with the descriptions of the princes it's presumably trying to illustrate. It's almost as if they just had a load of spare character art lying around and decided to use it in this book.

One thing I don't particularly like about the book, and Catalyst please take note, is the attempt at illustrating the different sections of the travel guide and which section is currently being read. Imagine images like below

  + Subject 1

  + Subject 2

  + Subject 3

   - Subject 4

 where the Subject 4 item is the section of the guide currently being read. I can see what they're trying to get at and it does give some framework to hanging the sections of conversation off of, but it just serves to illustrate what could have been in the book but isn't, and this could be confusing to someone who doesn't get what they're trying to do. 

So value for money. Well I recently purchased the hardcopy of The Clutch of Dragons (review coming later), a 152 page softcover for $29.99 (that's just under 20 cents a page.) Compare that to $5.95 for a 24 page PDF leaves you at just under 25 cents per page, and that's only a PDF not a hardcopy, and it seems a bit pricey. I'd really expect to pay perhaps $3.95 for this rather than the six bucks, especially given the higher margins (but perhaps lower sales.)

The product does really rely on you being up to date on the Shadowrun background for the Tir and the civil unrest and political upheaval of the last decade to get the most out of it, so if you're not familiar with that and just want a book to give you some information then you should look elsewhere. If you want an update on the political situation and some more tidbits of information plus filling in more holes in the continuing Shadowrun metaplot, then by all means have a look.

If you're planning on having the players run in the Tir during the upcoming election, then there is plenty of information in here to use as plot hooks for what will bean interesting time.

Overall I'm not convinced this is a must buy at the price and for the content. I'm a Shadowrun completist so I'll buy anything they produce for it but your mileage may vary.

You can buy Shadowrun: The Land of Promise from DriveThruRPG.