[Twilight Time] On Being a Bard, Part 1 of 2

[Heather Grove]

February 10, 2003 - On Being a Bard, Part 1 of 2
Volume 4, Issue 2

This is the Twilight Time zine, the free zine of the Burning Void: 
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Good morning!

We're doing something different this issue. The makers of the upcoming 
"Promised Sands" RPG asked if we'd be interested in running an excerpt 
of the game, and after reading the GMing chapter excerpt they sent, I 
agreed. There's some neat stuff in there, but it's a bit long, so I'm 
breaking it up over this issue and the next. I hope you enjoy the new 
perspective!

In two issues' time we'll be back to our regularly scheduled 
programming. In the meantime, as usual you'll find links at the end of 
the zine to new web site articles.

By the way, I got so many readers' tips regarding prophecies that I'm 
going to run them all as their own issue after I'm done with the 
excerpts. Otherwise this issue would be prohibitively long! So if you 
were thinking of emailing me with a related suggestion, get it in soon 
and I might include it (heather at burningvoid.com).

Have a great afternoon,
Heather


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CHAPTER X: On Being A Bard -- Part 1

[This is an excerpt from the soon to be released game, "Promised 
Sands".  This section is written by Butch Miller.  For more 
information, please visit us online at: http://www.bbrack.com/ and be 
sure to ask your local retailer about "Promised Sands"--the release 
date is May 2003.]


"The greatest status of all the people in this world is given the 
Bard. He is the bringer of hope, the keeper of memories, the 
interpreter of dreams. When a Bard comes into a settlement, people 
gather around eager to hear news of far away places, strange creatures 
and exotic heroes. It is a time of celebration for a village. In 
return, they offer their stories to the Bard hoping that he will bring 
news of them with him on his journeys. Of all the things I could have 
chosen to be, the choice of being a Bard is the most blessed I have 
ever made". -Culrain, Traveling Historian

The Art of Barding

Some would say that the job of the Bard is to tell the tale, pure and 
simple. In his capacity as the storyteller, the master of the tale, 
the game master, in this instance, some would say that his job is to 
craft the story and the setting, the world and the happenings around 
the characters as they react to their world.

Indeed, this is the traditional role for the game master. You will 
weave a tale of drama and action around a central theme and watch as 
the players dance to your music. To a large degree, this is your job. 
Your players expect you to entertain them.

As the Bard, you are the final arbiter in questions on rules, 
descriptions, what can be done, what can't be done. You are the 
narrator of the tale. You are the deciding factor in the world. Some 
would say that this position of control makes you, at the very least, 
a representative of the Creator.

Will you be kind?
Will you be just?
Will your players let you Bard again?

They all interrelate. If you arbitrarily abuse your players, don't 
expect them to welcome you at the table again. But, if you are too 
kind to them, you will create spoiled brats who will run the game into 
a farce.

The best-run games are those that take place with the Bard creating a 
framework around which both the Bard and the players create the tale. 
Let your players define their surroundings and they will help you 
create a better tale than you could ever manage on your own.

You will find that the creative energy in a group of players exceeds 
anything you can capture alone. They will offer ideas and descriptive 
flavor that will enhance and illuminate your world. Often, accidentally!

Allow your players the freedom to describe the world around their 
characters through their actions and their statements of character 
responses. Use their imaginations and creativity to color the world 
and create a more beautiful picture.

Example:
You have designed a scene that takes place in a barn-like structure to 
house grain and straw for animals. The players are in this building 
when they are set upon by a group of ruffians.  One player decides to 
climb to the next level up. As the ruffians converge upon the rest of 
the group, the player on the 2nd floor states, "I want to swing down 
from the dangling ropes hanging from the rafters."

You are now set with a dilemma. You can tell her that there are no 
ropes hanging from the rafters--and squelch her creativity. Or you can 
revise your perspective of the barn, accept that there are now a) 
rafters that can be swung down from and b) ropes that are on those 
rafters and say, "Make a roll against your Swinging skill."


By allowing your players creativity in developing the scene, you give 
them a sense of ownership of the scene and the events. Not only do you 
offload a lot of the descriptive work from yourself, but you expand 
the story from something that you are telling them, to a story they 
involve themselves within.

You will need to let common sense guide the situation, of course. 
Having a player state that there is something that would not fit, 
unbalance the game, not fit into the world, etc. would be nixed by 
you. So long as the player chooses to do something that makes sense 
for the scene, you can run with it. Your players will have more fun 
and you will gain a sense of the unexpected, which will make things 
more fun for you, as well.

Of all the players in a game of Promised Sands, the Bard has the 
biggest job. The Bard is everyone in the world who is not a player 
character. The Bard is the storyteller, the motivator, the archvillain 
and oldest friend. The Bard is responsible for setting the tone, the 
pacing, and the feel of the entire session. Whether serving in a 
single night's play (a session) or an ongoing storyline told over the 
course of weeks or even years (a campaign), the role of Bard brings 
with it a special responsibility to ensure that the time spent playing 
is three things: fun, memorable, and focused.


"The Bards carry with them intricate knowledge of their surroundings. 
We should learn from them, if we ever hope to settle here." -Culrain, 
Traveling Historian

Fun, Memorable, and Focused

Fun is the main reason we humans game in the first place. Gaming, and 
role-playing gaming in particular, is a social interaction with an 
unwritten contract between all the players. This contract states, more 
than anything else, 'We are all here to have a good time.' The Bard is 
the host of this good time, and, unfortunately, is sometimes the 
sergeant-at-arms as well. Everything should contribute to all of the 
players having the best time possible.

This doesn't mean that setbacks within the game can't occur just 
because someone doesn't like it. T'nah is a harsh mistress, and death 
is often the abrupt end of a career. But it does mean that the Bard 
should deliver such setbacks in a manner that the player--not the 
character, but the real person--knows that it's all part of the game, 
and not a petty vengeance for some real-life incident between the 
Bard's player and the PC's player, or just bloodlust on the Bard's 
behalf.

Bards should keep the 'golden rule,' in one of its incarnations, in 
mind. If you were the player and you would feel wronged by a decision, 
then reconsider that decision. Sometimes life just isn't fair and the 
Bard has to deliver the news, but sometimes the Bard can change the 
news without sacrificing the story or events of the world at large, 
and in doing so, provide a better environment for gaming.

Always keep in mind that your storytelling is only successful if all 
of the people playing enjoy the story. The players are real people, 
and even though their characters are not, the players nonetheless 
relate to those characters closely. In one sense they are similar to 
actors who may be attached to the character they play; imagine how 
Bela Lugosi would have responded to a script wherein Dracula is an 
ineffective and unfrightening buffoon, a nitwit incapable of any 
success whatsoever. I think it's safe to say there would be stout 
objection. Can a player be expected to object any less, when a fate 
they disagree with, and find completely outside the realm of the 
likely, comes to their character?

Yet in another sense, they can even be much more closely tied to the 
character than that. Actors have a script; they portray the emotions 
of surprise, shock, pain, and so on, and yet the actor knows what 
befalls the character in the end. Players don't have this mercy, and 
often portray their charges with all the vigor and will with which 
humans cling to life, in no small part because they helped to create 
this character. The player character is, in a larger sense than any 
actor's role, a part of the player, and thus the potential for an 
emotional bond is greater than a role in a play or film.

So bards need to keep in mind that some players will be more sensitive 
to the events of the game than others, and therefore a fun atmosphere 
is not just healthy and worthwhile; it is, to some, imperative. 
Because when the character dies, if they didn't have fun 'living it 
out,' then it was all a painful, futile waste. A heroic death is often 
a fitting end, but a meaningless death is bitter, even in fiction.

But the opposite of fun is not usually upsetting; at least in 
role-playing games, it's more likely to be boring. Boredom is the 
bard's great enemy. When players are stacking dice into little towers, 
or standing to stretch and wander around the table every ten minutes, 
or constantly distracted by talk of work or mundane things over which 
that they'd normally prefer to discuss gaming, it's clear the fun has 
ebbed and the bard has a boredom situation.

Don't take it personally when your players get bored. Everyone has a 
different tolerance for things; Jane may thrive on political intrigue 
while John may snooze through it all, waking up only when he gets to 
leap into battle. Try and balance it for all of your players. Try and 
'read' them, to know when they're interested, to know what specific 
sorts of titillation work on each of them, and then try to provide 
adequately for everyone to stay involved.

Campaigns have to consist of more than combat, because combat is the 
culmination of conflict. It's true that a fight or death can become a 
grudge, which means more conflict and more combat. Yet the more 
reasons there are for a fight, the more interesting, and fun, and 
memorable the fight will be. So try to avoid random combat; the more 
pointed the fight, the better. Granted, creatures will defend their 
water, even if the players don't see the creature or the creature's 
water. But as Bard, try to ensure that every fight is going somewhere, 
that there is possibly more to be found behind the scenes.

This is where it is important to be focused, and to manage a focused 
game. Not every path on the road of probability leads toward a given 
desired end, but in the story of our lives, every path we take does 
lead us toward our end. The game should reflect this, and should 
circulate around the characters, however insignificant they are in the 
'big picture.' The events of any session should be focused toward 
resolving the situations in which the characters are involved. While 
detours or side routes can be memorable fun, they should certainly be 
the exception and not the rule. For example, if every episode of a 
sci-fi television series based on investigating the unknown were to be 
based on old black and white horror films, or if every episode of a 
horror series were to model a Broadway musical, then the very nature 
of the shows would be something different.

This makes focus important, and it also makes rare deviations from 
that focus both viable and potentially powerful.

That is also one of the biggest things leading to the true 
memorability of a session or campaign. Some sort of twist, something 
unexpected. There must be enough normalcy to establish a norm--but 
beyond that, the wilder, the better. Promised Sands has room for 
almost any sort of fantastic, miraculous, inexplicable event, and an 
event like that can launch, or reinvigorate, an unforgettable campaign.


"As the fire dimmed, the Bard strummed his harp and began speaking in 
a low, strong voice. He told of Arywan the Bard bringing songs and 
hope to settlements before finally passing from the world in a song of 
steel. Villagers hung on his every word, feeling every touch on the 
harp stirring emotions within them. They were there as Arywan rescued 
a caravan from Ch'ak warriors. They fled with him through the starlit 
night. They stood with him on the green grass, as the warriors closed 
in and the song ended." -Culrain, Traveling Historian

Descriptive Immersion

Good Bards will have enough of the world described to give the players 
a strong feel for the world. This does not mean that you need to go 
into excruciating detail and describe every minute facet of the world 
around your players' characters-but you should at least tickle their 
senses.

A very good approach is to describe each scene and touch all of their 
senses at least once in the description. Remember, too, that some 
characters may have other senses beyond human norm, so think about how 
the world will look and feel to those senses as well.

World flavor can include the sights and sounds of the world around 
them. It can be the smell of the kamel dung on the ground at their 
feet. It can include the jostling of the crowd as they approach the 
busiest section of the souq. The hot, dry breeze carrying the scent of 
sweating bodies and rank food mixed with the musk of animal dung and 
tang of vomit will tell you more about the place you are in than a 
flavorless description.

If the characters have to shield their eyes from the glare of the sun 
across the pool of open water at the center of the souq, while a 
gentle passing nudge feels their most obvious pocket for a pouch, and 
is then vanished into the crowd, then you have told them a hundred 
things in just one sentence. You have created a web of description. By 
tickling one or two senses with some description, they have created 
the scene around them. They can probably even see the multicolored 
hues of the crowd, the strange and unusual people leading even 
stranger animals through the morass of sweat and grit.

These are the kinds of descriptions that will immerse your players 
into the world. They will see it, feel it, taste it, smell it and hear 
it. And in so doing, you will let your players experience a world that 
does not exist. The more immersed in the world they become, the more 
in-character they will be able to play. Your player's roleplaying 
ability is, in large part, due to your ability to describe the world 
to them and immerse their senses in it.


Coming next issue, in early March: Part 2!


What's Your Opinion?:

Comments on this issue's topic? Suggestions? Tips? Special topic 
requests? Drop me a line at (heather at burningvoid.com). If I pass any 
of your suggestions on (either through the newsletter or the RPG 
resources page), I'll attribute them to you. Be sure to tell me if you 
don't want me to use your name and/or comments!

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SITE UPDATE:

Burning Void Roleplaying Resources:
http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/roleplaying/resources.html

http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/writing/ms/essay/style3.html
Part 3 of the RPG writer's style guide concentrates on rules and 
mechanics.

http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/writing/ms/essay/style4.html
Part 4 of the style guide covers gaming fiction!

Burning Void Writers' Resources:
http://www.burningvoid.com/users/heather/writing/resources.html


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ANNOUNCEMENTS:
(copyright stays with the company; announcements may be edited for length)

Hogshead Returns under New Management

3 February 2003 (London, UK): Hogshead Publishing Ltd. announced today 
that it is under new management and that the company will continue to 
publish role-playing games. Mark Ricketts, the new owner, bought the 
successful RPG company from James Wallis, who started Hogshead in 1994.

The transition to new management for Hogshead will be a smooth one. 
Not only will Hogshead Publishing Ltd. remain at the same address in 
London, the company also retains its full-time production editor, 
Carol Johnson, who has been working at Hogshead since 2000.

Hogshead will have new games out by GenCon US in August 2003. Mark and 
Carol are working out the new production schedule, and new titles are 
likely to be added as negotiations for various popular franchises are 
explored.

Hogshead intends for all its new games to be cross compatible with the 
D20 'open game' license, but useful as a resource any game system. All 
game lines will be fully supported with a dynamic schedule of 
supplements and online material.

Hogshead Publishing will be posting regular updates on our website 
(http://www.hogshead.demon.co.uk/ ) as well as selling surplus stock.

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