Psychotronic Gaming: The Basics

 

Not too long ago I celebrated the 45th anniversary of me starting an AD&D 1e campaign. I started the campaign before I was a teenager and it is still going as I approach retirement. I also have an AD&D 2e campaign that is almost 20 years odl and a Champions super-hero campaign that is ‘merely’ over a decade old

A frequent question is “Why do you think your campaigns last so long?”, a question so common that a few years ago I sat down and summarized my thoughts on it and named the resulting list “Psychotronic Gaming”. Why ‘psychotronic’? Two reasons - it is a term sometimes used in movie criticism to describe a movie without a fixed genre, which I think applies to games to an extent, and because the list is just a summary of a mental attitude towards gaming. 

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Here’s my list of Psychotronic gaming concepts:

1) Strict Time Keeping of all gaming events
My players sometimes call this ‘the game world clock’. All characters are tracked as to location within the calendar and time of the imaginary game world. If the character Max Steele, Private Eye is in the Empire State Building at Noon on July 4th, 2029 in the game he can’t be in Tokyo at Noon on July 4th, 2029. If the fastest in-game-universe transporation from manhattan to Tokyo is a one hour cab ride to the airport and then a 20 hour flight he can’t mae it to Tokyo in less than 21 hours by the game clock.
Likewise, if the non-player character Stan Devlin, International Assassin, is also in the Empire State Building at Noon on July 4th, 2029 in the game Stan and Max might very well meet each other.
The game world calendar doesn’t have to be tied to the real world calendar but it needs to be internally consistent. If Bob, the guy playing Max, needs to stop play in the middle of a gun fight with Stan because he has to get to work tomorrow then the wolrd clock for Max ‘freezes’ at 12:04 pm July 4th, 2029 until the player can return to finish the action.
Likewise if Real World Monday the 1st of August the character Max takes three days in the game world to get a plane ticket, flies to Tokyo, then takes a 1 week cruise so that in 5 minutes of play his character has travelled 11 days forward on the game calendar. Bob could go home right after that, sleep, come back on Real World the 2nd of August, and start playing Max in Tokyo on Game World July 15th, 2029.
The use of the Game World Clock allows actions in the campaign to have natural repercussions.

2) Verisimilitude within the artificial world of the campaign
The world must make internal sense; the logic of the world must be consistent inside the world. If the gravity is just like Earth, it must remain this way unless there is a consistent in-world reason why not. If werewolves can be harmed by silver then that silver bullet can kill that werewolf. If no one is stronger than Amazing man then, well, no one is stronger than Amazing Man. And so on.
This means that even magic must have consistent rules of some sort. The Arcane Defense spell stops every attacking spell then if you suddenly add the Arcane Annihilator without any warning or fanfare and it kills someone protected by Arcane Defense you broke verisimilitude by changing the rules.
Verisimilitude allows players to make plans within the game world. If there is no telling if a certain device or action in the game can ever work the same way twice planning is almost impossible. More critically it allows players to think of the game world as its own thing, as close to being “real” as possible in fiction. If the rules, the history, and so on are always in flux then your suspension of disbelief is much harder.

3)  Status Quo is the Enemy, change is a natural result of actions
The world must change. If an evil cult brings a plague to the town of Oldbridge that kills everyone in the town then the town can’t be just like it used to be a few weeks later. If there is war and the army buys up all the canned food in the city then the characters can’t buy canned food until it is replenished or they go somewhere else. And so on.
Directly related to verisimilitude, if the game world has rules then the game world must also have consequences. Resetting everything to how it started over and over means that the rewards and risks of actions can never be very great. The campaign must grow and change over the course of play.
This means that things must be going on even when the player characters/players aren’t aware of them. The characters destroyed a massive orcish tribe that (unknown to the players) traded loot to an evil wizard = the evil wizard has to find a new way to get the stuff he needs so he has to make a new deal which might mean that distant goblins suddenly have more support.

4) Characters Can Win or Lose based on their actions and choices
This is an inevitable conclusion of 1,2, and 3. And violating this rule is, in my experience of other campaigns, the fastest way to make players stop caring about your campaign.
This is a lot more than just ‘let the dice fall where they may’, it means that there is no plot, there is no pre-determined anything, and that anyone can die - or live! And any plan, including the player’s plans, can be thwarted.
Here is an example from the 1980’s: A fellow DM and friend named David and I would met and discuss our campaigns and what our NPCs were plotting. This was camaraderie and to help each other get fresh ideas. At that time the major threat to the characters in my campaign was the Hobgoblin King, a “super-chief” of hobgoblins that had an army and all sorts of plans to attack the human nation at the heart of active play. David knew that the plan of the Hobgoblin King was a slow war of conquest culminating with a seige of the human capitol city and an epic tale akin to the seiges of fiction.
Then six characters did something insane and bold, actually ambushed the Hobgoblin King and killed him even though they all died. Before the war even really began the leader was dead. I told David about it and he said,
“You can just have his lieutenant take over and still get the war and stuff you planned.”
But instead I followed the internal logic of the campaign and let the heroic deaths of the characters mean there was no war. In time a new Hobgoblin King arose, but a very different one with very different plans. In short, I let the players change everything. Of course, this applies to characters, too!
With this simple idea the players know that they are very important to the campaign and that they can actually “win or lose”.

5) Multiple Characters per Player 
With a strict Game Clock, verisimilitude, and so forth players will often have characters widely dispersed in space and time. Multiple characters are a must simply to be able to play! Also, I have found that with three or more characters per player the players treat tabletop role playing games less like theater/a stroy and more like what they are, games.
Interestingly enough, it also allows a much broader range of interactions among characters. if every player has one character then the characters must get along and cooperate no matter what they internal logic of the campaign or the development of the characters. If every player has multiple characters each things like arguments, fueds, romances, etc. between characters is poossible - and very likely, as I have learned.

6) Players Drive Action
In its simplest form this means the players decide what their characters are doing. But it stretches much further than that.
I do not tell the players ‘on Friday your 4th level characters will be going to the dungeon because that is all I have prepared/what I planned/the next scene in the story’. Instead i ask them ‘what are you planning to do? Which characters?’ and they are allowed to “surprise” me with last minute changes.
One way I facilitate this is that my campaign is not static (see #3, above) so things are constantly happening “off screen” as the Game Clock ticks ever forward. The various characters in various places are told the various rumors they hear, events they witness, etc. and then the players decide who, what, where, etc. for games.
The other side of the coin is that players also drive inaction!
Another example: in Game year 120 (top of my head) the various characters heard rumors, one of which was that the orcs were more active than usual. The characters spent the next game year doing odd little adventures, leveling up, and so on. in game year 121 they hear many more rumors that many small bands of orcs are very active in the Stone Hills. They spend game years 121 and 122 mapping a remote area, delving into a mega dungeon, and traveling across the sea and back.In game year 123 among a ton of other rumor hear that the orcs have drawn in their sub tribes and that their shamans are sending scouting parties over the mountains and the players finally investigate and realize that the orcs have almost completed the process of getting a new Overking that would unite all five of their nations and start a major war and, because they ignored it so long, they have mere days to stop it.
If they had blown it off again? War!
So - while player drive action the NPCs are not frozen, waiting for the characters to encounter them like it was a video game.

7) Genre is Descriptive, not Proscriptive
Some people are sonfused by this, but I find it very importantly. What I mean is this - Star Wars is science fiction because it has space ships. It is also fantasy because it has magic swords and magic force powers. And that is awesome. Your hard boiled campaign about hard-drinking private eyes in 1950’s San Francisco cracking fraud cases for girls that are trouble can have a vampire in it. Your very period authentic 16th century France emulation of a fantasy RPG can have blaster rifles from a crashed UFO. And so on. As long as you watch out for the other Psychotronic rules AND as long as you want it in it can work and be awesome.

And that’s the basics of why I think my campaigns run a long toime!

Play Report: Skull Mountain, the Dead Level

 Written by Jen, a player.

We first ran into the “dead level” long ago, fairly early on in our explorations of Skull Mountain. It was incredibly scary and intimidating, and we immediately turned back and intentionally avoided that area for years. But we often talked and debated about how we could get through it – and live to tell the tale. Quite awhile ago, we asked a sage about the dead level, and we found out that there was a constant level drain and entropy effect, so that anyone who spends time there would have levels drained, and would potentially age at an accelerated rate. In addition, it would eat away at items and marks, so that it would be impossible to leave a trail. We also found out that there were many traps further inside it, and there was a ghost found at the end of the maze. Further research indicated that a Globe of Invulnerability could protect against the level drain, but we still hesitated to enter. We later found out that it was the original location of The Device, until prior explorers moved it with a misapplied Vanish spell – this is actually what created the dead level. We knew we wanted to put The Device back where it belonged, hoping it would normalize this area of the Mountain. Plus we knew there was a massive loot haul from all who died there. This all made us really motivated to deal with this level of Skull Mountain, and we thought of it often through our years of adventuring.

As we went through the years of adventuring, we found tools and spells and henchmen that we thought could help. Seeker had been agitating to go back for quite awhile now, but the timing and opportunity were just never perfect – and we knew it would need to be perfect. Recently, we realized the best characters to cope with this all had downtime at the same time. Seeker (a mage/thief played by Jack), Greystar (a magic user played by Sam), Owen (a magic user played by Nick), and Ingrid (a fighter played by Jen/me). We spent a week of real time on planning and prep work.

Our plan became thus: we would scry the way with spells, and use a potent scroll of Globe of Invulnerability to protect ourselves as we traveled. Greystar had a cube of force as back up protection, as well as protection against the Ghost’s possession attack. Before we set out, we conferred with a Bishop about the Ghost. Seeker researched the idea of putting the device back with a wish. Owen used contact other planes to gather more information, and it seemed that putting the device back would indeed be a positive change overall. Meanwhile, Ingrid – who has not had a lot of luck staying alive and uninjured in the mountain – was terrified at what could happen. Level drain and age acceleration seemed to be huge potential issues. Ingrid sent a note to Brigid, asking for shelter if things went wrong and she was able to make it out somehow – vowing to never set foot in the mountain again if things went badly. Then, we finally set out through the mountain…

We headed down towards the fifth floor dead level, stopping just before at level four. We staged here before going further.

Greystar cast Divination to try to figure out the threats. This told us that the level had – 1) a powerful undead creature, a Ghost who hates all life and good, 2) a form of corrupted magical tech that spreads corruption across all things, 3) a quasi elemental portal that we had to be aware of, 4) a teleportation trap, and 5) tremendous loot, one of which is a staff of the magi.

Owen conjured an air elemental and asked it to map the level below us. It returned visibly weakened, but it was able to draw a very confusing map that did show the end of the level, and conveyed that some of the walls move.

At the very last moment, Seeker asked his summoner henchmen to cast “find the path”, and then we figured out which of our PCs and henchmen would be best to take with us so we would all fit inside the globe of invulnerability. Then, the moment came, and we entered the dead level.

We followed the path while inside the globe and managed to avoid eight pit traps and encountered three areas where the passages closed behind us. Once we got to the stairs going down, we were outside the entropy field – but where was the Ghost? With a limited duration on the cube of force, we had to be super careful of when we turned it on, and made the decision to turn it on just before we opened the door to the lost control room – and there was the Ghost! We were able to kill him, mostly thanks to Greystar’s new manservant, Filbert. Once we secured the control room, we used a wish to return The Device to its original location.

Doing this ended the dead level’s powers, and it instantly became what looks like a server farm, complete with roomba like cleaning robots, obviously space elf tech, and what felt like air conditioning. We put a feather token door between the main level and the control room which now holds the device – at this point, only Greystar knows the password for the feather token door. We know we need to further secure this area as soon as we can!

We gathered the rest of our party from the level entrance and then explored further, looking for the storied loot haul. We headed back to an octagonal room and come to a shiny black door. Inside is a massive, ragged cavern full of gold and loot – we saw at least one goldbug. We decide to explore the other areas first and come back for the treasure later. We found two secret doors, the first one smelled of ashes, and there is a small rift to the plane of ash – this leads to the Ash Temple, untouched for all these years. We opened the other door into a room with a shadowy form in a niche – then all of a sudden, we were on the pink moon, in the western planes. Guess we found the teleport trap! As we made our way back, we encountered Rupert in the former dead level, protecting and maintaining The Device, like he did before. We didn’t talk to him and quickly made our way back to the octagonal room and into the room we left, where we managed to disarm the teleport trap. We found another apartment entrance behind a secret door, where we found a heat box and a journal with a bookmark – a diary tab. We finally got back to the treasure room and cast detect curse, setting aside the cursed items. And we did indeed find *amazing* loot!

Now, all of us that went on this adventure are rich, leveled up, and ready to set up our domains!