I ran Electric Bastionland last weekend with an adventure of my own: Verschollen im Archiv des KfK (Lost in the KafKa Archives).
To start with, I kept my (secret, at this point) promise that we’d begin play in less than 20 minutes:
I did a brief icebreaker activity, introduced the world (e.g. its ‘tech level’ and how it’s surreal), said a few words about the rules (e.g. that PCs can die, but rarely do so and then usually as a group) and had the three players roll up characters.
My players were Fred, Daniel and Cooper, long-time friends I hadn’t played with in years, so I included the icebreaker activity to test & time it, not because it was needed.
I brought both the physical book and printouts of the game’s 100+ failed careers in transparent sleeves. The latter meant everyone could read their PC’s career’s description at the same time, including related entries (for different starting scores for hit points and money) for fun. Along with the gorgeous artwork this is an effective way to introduce the players to the setting and its vibes and weirdness, much better than long expository monologue.
I started them off right in front of a huge building: the KfK (pronounced ‘kafka), i.e. the “Konsiliaramt für Kontrollierungsangelegenheiten”, a labyrinthine government agency dedicated to mediating disputes between citizens and other government agencies:
The characters’ creditor provided a lead on a pile of blank, but pre-approved (!) building permits, stored deep within the KfK’s archives, so off they went!
The players debated their approach for a slightly maddening 20 minutes before finally setting foot inside the KfK and realizing the problem at hand: endless lines of petitioners in front of a single help desk open for business as well as an arrogant doorman guarding access to the stairwell and the lifts.
Daniel was nonplussed when it became apparent that I had no solution in mind. No need to worry, though! The players soon came up with a plan and had their PCs enter a storage room, finding work coats and an experimental piano-sized vacuum cleaner. They put it to good use by making one hell of a racket and threatening to ‘accidentally’ suck in people to drive off the masses — their first, if unsuccessful gambit.
I was delighted, especially because I had only created the room to fill a blank part of the foyer’s map with no thought to concrete applications.
Next, they navigated a number of departments to get a lead on where they needed to go. I rolled departments randomly, as they relocate all the time, one of several surreal elements.
Again, I was delighted: They ended up in Information Retrieval first, straight from Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. They saved a “potential source of information” from torture, who then joined the party (1:6 chance they are a murderous psychopath, by the way) but also grabbed some documents to later intimidate a pesky clerk.
After navigating three departments, they were confronted by three gatekeepers inspired by Kafka’s Before the Law. For the last one, they almost decided to use a secret tunnel, another surreal element of the adventure:
There is always a secret tunnel to be found, leading to a known location of your choice or to the next room — but the tunnels get more and more dangerous.
However, Connor had a brilliant idea: Having perceived the macho attitude of the second gatekeeper, his character had entered the room with his hands behind his back and Connor mimicked this approach at the table. He then challenged the gatekeeper, an intelligent gorilla, to a hand-crushing contest: the first dude to wince forfeits.
Perfect, as his character had an industrial strength mechanical hand! Here and elsewhere, unique & weird features of the PCs’ saved the day.
Finally, they entered the archives situated underground, i.e. “beneath reality” and ruled by machines according to EB, i.e. the dungeon proper. This happened after about three of six hours of play.
I randomly rolled for encounters, treasures and reactions on my tables. The PCs found a modified gatling gun with self-stapling staples early which later allowed them to negotiate confidently with a horde of favorably inclined undead clerks.
They did find the permits in the end, though I could kick myself for forgetting to roll the 3:6 chance of their rival turning up just then. The rival’s position is not tracked by the GM, but they have a chance of turning up via random encounter rolls and at special occasions such as this.
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I was rightly wary of a post-game discussion, so I used the “Stars & Wishes” approach: One round of positive feedback, limited to one or two items tops (including stuff like others’ play), and one round of constructive criticism, limited to one item — and no further commenting.
Most noteworthy, the players loved the place’s atmosphere and Connor commented he had felt intimidated by my introductory remarks regarding lethality, quick replacement of dead characters etc.
I refrained from commenting and also (gently) cut some people short. Still, some further discussion while packing things up led to some participants putting on their game designer’s hat. Some frutiful stuff, to be sure, but I could see things becoming a discussion of preferences in general, which I do not find productive at all.
(I want death on the table, for instance – here and with my Nibelungs game, anyway -, so when someone criticizes something as “too deadly”, following up on that leads exactly nowhere and likely makes me defensive to boot.)
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I’m very pleased with the session. I’ve settled on Electric Bastionland for the express purpose of running oneshots at conventions and at the local gaming club. I love the game’s simplicity and especially its quick, yet powerful character creation but did not find an introductory adventure to my liking, hence Verschollen im Archiv des KfK. It’s almost ready for publication, but I plan on taking my time, i.e. running it half a dozen times first (which is the point, really, with publication being icing on the cake).
The adventure’s many random elements combined beautifully with the random character classes and the players’ creativity: I feel very confident that I’ll get very different results in play when running this again and again — and this unpredictability is one of roleplaying’s chief delights for me today (good memories of railroading in decades past not withstanding).
11 responses to “Verschollen im Archiv des KfK”
Hey Johann!
Could you share a little bit more about how you frame challenges in play? The book seems to suggest that “dilemmas” are something that the GM constructs as a reaction to what’s happening in the moment, which is lovely!
My baggage with other OSR/Challenge-Based games pulls me strongly towards a more prep heavy style, though, so I’m trying to wrap my head around what seems to be a slightly different approach towards creating challenges. How did this work out in your case?
I take it you are refering to the following approach (from Chris McDowall’s blog rather than the book, as I only have the German version):
“Work from top to bottom, and when you find a solution to what you’re trying to resolve, don’t go any further down.
1. Can you make this into a Dilemma? If so, do it.
2. Does it make sense for it to just happen? If so, go right to the Consequences.
3. Is it still uncertain? If so, call for a Save.
[…]
Dilemma: Give a clear choice between two desirable outcomes. The players pick one or try to come up with a way to get both, usually by expending a resource or taking a risk. ”
I have to admit that I do not subscribe to this and various other bits of GM guidance in the book. I’ve even wondered at times if I am even playing Electric Bastionland…
My adventure contains very dangerous elements , i.e. several nigh-insurmountable foes, death traps and, above all, random elements which might combine to brutal challenges (e.g. 4d6 monsters, the situation where and when that encounter happens and a reaction roll might get very ugly).
That said, I am making a conscious effort to go with the author’s advice where possible (for my tastes).
For instance, I follow his ICI doctrine, i.e. information – choice – effect, which asks GMs to freely provide information so the players can make *informed choices* rather than act on instinct.
In my adventure text’s sidebars, I call out for its surreal elements to be explained. I think this prudent because surrealism is very subjective and I do not want a game of what-does-the-GM-think.
Hence, the nature of secret tunnels should be explained. In the session, I had an NPC provide that information. In fact, the players had already decided to move past the guy and I insisted on delivering the information (“He explains to you the workings of secret tunnels”) — something I would not have done in other games.
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However, I choose not to “make things into a dilemma”, i.e. I am letting conflict develop naturally from the prep and what’s happening, not adapting the situation.
I did boil down situations to a few options to help the players, but that’s me (reluctantly) doing a bit of chairmanning. I did this in the KfK’s foyer when the players were too slow for my tastes:
“Ok guys, here are your options: You can try to somehow get past the queue to the information desk, you can somehow try to get past the arrogant porter, or you can check out the building’s rear entrance you surmised to exist earlier. What do you do?”
(This is me summing up what the players already discussed.)
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Also, I originally planned to run ‘saves’ as per the book, i.e. in a conflict (a) the party with more to lose rolls and (b) there are no difficulty modifiers.
I managed to do the first (having a lot of practice with Mausritter from the same family of games), but not the second.
I did keep things simple and did not use plusses and minuses, but I spontaneously used D&D 5e’s advantage/disadvantage mechanic (roll twice and take the better/worse die).
This started to happen early on: Fred talked to the arrogant porter and I found that…
(a) I don’t want to decide on automatic success/failure unless it’s really clear to me — I personally need the dice’s input because I hate to decide all this stuff — I feel like I I should recuse myself!
(An as-yet unsolved problem for me: trusting my instincts. I’d rather go hypertransparent & grab the dice.)
…and (b) I do want to have a higher/lower chance of success for plausible, ingenious, outlandish etc. ploys, i.e. give the players feedback with mechanical heft: Sounds cool, great idea, that’s a long shot etc.
I can’t break the habit (or won’t), at least for Electric Bastionland — possibly because it is too close to other challenge-based games I run.
Hey Johann,
I really appreciate you sharing all this. It’s funny, because I think I’m kind of coming at it from the opposite angle! I’m trying (a bit awkwardly) to unlearn some of my prep-heavy instincts and chase after the kind of play McDowall seems to propose, where challenges emerge more fluidly. So reading your take, especially your reflections on letting prep carry more of the weight, is an interesting contrast.
It actually makes me wonder: do most people who run Electric Bastionland end up drifting back toward more traditional prep? Maybe the book’s tone encourages looser improvisation, but the underlying structure still pulls into familiar challenge-based rhythms eventually.
Thanks again.
I found *Electric Bastionland* somewhat counter-intuitive regarding the GM side of things:
Players are ready to go almost instantly: a couple of rolls and they have a unique, flavorful character, including equipment and even a couple of suggested names.
However, the GM is tasked with designing an adventure, ideally also the district where it takes place. McDowall provides plenty of GM tools, but apart from some immediately useful tables (e.g. d6 “street encounters” each by wealth of the district) and examples (e.g. d12 “noble weapons”), there are also many which merely set the mood (e.g. d8xd4 “conversation topics”) or require more detailing (e.g. the traps and hazards such as “a lake of lava with a valuable but half-submerged and red-hot metal idol”).
The “sparks tables” are perhaps the most prominent: They provide useful inspiration … but the GM still has to do the heavy lifting.
There’s not even a starter adventure, though one may separately purchase “Prison of the Worm Queen” separately. I’m not overly fond of it (having played but not run it), though I appreciate the deliberately (visually) simple maps — McDowall explictily pointed out that he wanted to show that you don’t need any drawing skills.
So I wonder about the intended approach and people’s actual practice, too — I think you nailed it with your last paragraph.
I ran (the first part of) my adventure a second time yesterday.
I had created a “route card” as an in-fiction prop, blackletter script and all, to navigate the bureaucracy, as suggested by a player of the first round to provide some structure. The second group of players was much faster and more proactive, though, so it wasn’t needed. Still, a nice flourish.
Once again, *Electric Bastionland*’s failed careers proved delightful. For instance, one character, a failed concierge (“Front of House Host”), had the power to always correctly intuit a person’s name on sight.
What seemed like a weird little detail to us at first, soon proved invaluable for bluffing, fast-talking and impersonating people.
The first round was a mammoth session (about 6-7 hours), the second round a mere 2.5 hours, so the characters have just entered the archives proper.
For cons, I am designing a shortened version, by (1) always providing the full map (rather than a partial map if you fail to reach the help desk at the beginning) plus (2) pointing the characters to a particular location with a helpful NPC who (3) knows the location of the pre-approved building permits.
Still, I very much don’t plan on forcing closure or, God forbid, a happy ending — rather, I’ll have the automata flood the tunnels with poison gas at the end of a con session, warning bells and all, so the characters MUST leave via secret tunnel. Then we can score their exploits (treasure etc.), regardless of whether they have achieved their primary goal.
The more I review this post and what you’re saying here, the more I think that habitual convention play is a bad idea. Which may seem strange considering that I just came back from two conventions in two weekends (one in Edinburgh, one in Göteborg), i..e., I do play at cons too, so what I’m saying is also a reminder to myself.
1. The need to conclude, i.e., to “make it work,” as plot, is a problem. I appreciate that you’re not slotting in a neat arc-ending, but the business about flooding the place with gas to force an action-oriented final bit qualifies as well.
2. The need to entertain, to complete the social contract that you’re going to provide a good time, is also a problem. The basic expectation that you (or I) have done a good job at being ready to play, and to play in good faith – that makes sense to me. The expectation that I’m doing something above and beyond those things, something specially made to be “just right” as their basically-paid entertainment, is bad.
If any of the participants harbor these expectations, that’s their problem; I’m talking about internalizing them myself or accommodating what I guess or imagine them to be expecting.
I’ll address these issues a bit in my posts about my recent play at events (three in three weeks, because there was a local one as well), so there’s no need to drive into them in detail here. I’m commenting mainly to prompt preliminary thoughts. I’m also perturbed by some conversations during the events, not at the sessions, but more general discussions, in which people simply could not seem to break out of the idea that “play,” as a viable thing, had to accommodate these expectations as if convention-entertainment play were the foundational or default mode.
I am currently very eager to play and run one-shots or short projects (i.e. a couple of sessions only) at cons, with new people locally and with friends from my regular group. I want to try out new things and am not interested in joining or starting a long campaign right now.
I and some friends in my regular group of 15 years have formed a splinter group for such projects. We meet about once per month and it’s perfect: I or a friend says “Hey, I’d like to run [game]” and everybody is on board: genuinely interested and supportive, i.e. with no expectations things will run without a hitch (which hasn’t been the case in the regular group where we’ve seen outright sabotage of new projects). It helps that I’m not the only GM and that I’ve brought GMless games several times — these things deemphasize the GM/player split. Also, shorter projects are easier to commit to.
One-shots at cons and with new people locally are a different matter, at least for now, as I have limited con experience and have only a short list of people to tap for projects locally: Frankly, I am worried I might not find players, so I do indeed carefully pitch my game and meticulously optimize everything surrounding play (as evidenced in this thread) so that I can promise “we’ll make characters and still start play within 20 minutes”, for instance.
However, I think I’m fine regarding both my writing process and my play as a GM. Given your response at Arenas of the old city, I have pondered both.
For instance, my adventure has lots of interactions with interesting NPCs and I enjoy playing them very much. I’ve recently added surreal reactions to my reaction table, i.e. every result (castastrophic, unfavorable etc.) has a surreal version. I really look forward to interpreting situations and characters in these terms and coming up with something in the spirit of Franz Kafka (e.g. as in Give it up), something that will please *me*.
Also, I do not compromise when running adventures and feel fine about it. I first noticed this vis-a-vis dissatisfaction when an early round of my introductory adventure for *In the Realm of the Nibelungs* with a fresh one-shot group led to some frustrated players (Dwayne and another player in Two executions, one averted). They were rather unhappy and criticised the game a bit afterwards, but I was … unfazed. The cap didn’t fit – they had first dithered and then blown their approach to the lair – and I wasn’t wearing it. No hard words, mind you, as I could and did empathize. I’m still surprised that I did not get defensive and, in fact, didn’t even feel defensive.
I ran games in the illusionist fashion for a quarter century and don’t want it sneaking up on me from a new angle because I am seeking players. I’m already too much of a people pleaser, so this issue is important to me – so use that cestus!
I look forward to your post on these matters and might go into more detail regarding both writing and playing as the GM then.
The aformentioned need to please is a problem. For instance, when we played another RPG at my place recently, a rare occurence, I cooked dinner. That’s what our two rotating hosts do, too, but typically, everyone else helps set the table, cut the vegetables etc. while the host is at the stove. I did these things myself in advance, and reflecting on this after your response, I realize that’s not really appropriate. I need to be on the lookout for this exact issue regarding the game itself, too.
As for writing, I have had tremendous fun with getting it *just* right — and while I am eager to see others’ reactions, this is very much for myself. There’s stuff that probably won’t ever see play, references nobody will get (i.e. *not* Easter eggs), and an attention to detail that will likely go unnoticed by hypothetical GMs using it. Writing the adventure has felt like I imagine writing poetry does — I seek the perfect wording, seek to express an NPC’s essence in a single line of the layout, create exqusite items to my aesthetic standards and much more. I’m proud and immensely pleased by this even in the absence of any players.
(I take an inordinate amount of care when desiging handouts as a teacher, too. I very much doubt my students give a damn whether the spacing of the lines is uniform across the board but this stuff – including more relevant aspects, of course – pleases me.)
I’ve finished running the adventure a second time yesterday. Some scattered observations:
a) In one encounter with an intelligent silverback gorilla I subconsciously facilitated an approach taken by the first group (appealing to its vanity) because it had been a lot of fun. Fortunately, the second group chose an entirely different approach anyway (leveraging its latent animal instincts) and this was just as much fun. Preconceptions from previously running the adventure are something I’ll have to watch out for.
b) Two players drove the game forward by making liberal use of limited resources (a flash grenade and the aforementioned omnipresent secret tunnels, which get more dangerous the more you use them). In the past, I have often observed players striving hard to preserve limited resources (and I have done so myself). Much better to live in the here and now and get things done, particularly in a game that’s not quite so deadly.
c) One character’s special ability to slowly float towards electric lights trivialized many challenges (because the archives are well-lit). After the game, I had the impulse “Gotta make the traps more robust vis-a-vis the ability to fly” for a second before I quashed that thought: It’s a delightful intersection of Electric Bastionland’s bizarre careers and the player grinned like a Cheshire cat throughout.
In fact, the adventure seems to be rather easy – though we had two deaths across the two groups and about 18 hours of play, one followed by a rare one-time resurrection ability -, but that’s actually fine.
The ICI doctrine mentioned above makes things a whole lot easier and speeds things up … and I enjoy this.
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I’m scheduled to run the adventure a third time next week — for a group of total strangers, including two people only familiar with pen & paper RPGs from watching streamed games on the internet.
Musing about meticulous preparations:
On the one hand, having sharpened pencils, spare dice, a communal dice tray etc. at hand and being perfectly organized facilitates faster & smoother play.
On the other hand, I can see how a single person taking care of these things is slightly inappropriate, particularly in aggregate, and might subtly shift the relationship between GM and players (towards the former being an entertainer, provider etc. for the latter).
When I first read this comment, I reacted with a simple affirmative feeling without much content, and moved on. But it has stuck with me and I’ve been thinking about it every day since.
If I’m presenting material at a social play-together situation, then it makes sense to be prepared for whatever needs people may have. And for a while, I struggled to reconcile that reality with my agreement that the organizer shouldn’t be the primary and only contributor for the basic materials … and I went around and around in my head about it.
Then I remembered how much I like it, at a table of this kind, as player or GM, when someone happens to have an eraser or if they have some dice they’re willing to share. And when I’m not the organizer, I can certainly try to be that person more often, at least for some component of play, not everything.
Which resolves my contradiction, because the solution is to reverse the ordinary assumption that the organizer brings everything but other participants can be backup … whereas instead, I can think of myself as reasonably obliged to bring something useful for others, and whatever we (collectively) did not provide, from the luck of the draw of what we have, the organizer provides what’s missing as backup.
Too rosy and huggy? Probably. And certainly I’d shudder at some policy pronouncement that all participants are expected to bring sufficient materials for themselves and others, for maximum community happiness, praise the committee for making us all happy, do you hear me, happy, you bastards. But nothing stops me from doing it in a small way, just as I see others doing occasionally. I think I will make a greater efffort to make sure that on my part, it’s happening more consistently.