Casting Shadows

This is the eleventh day of #RPGaDAY2025 which sits deliciously between the tenth and twelfth days like a favorite filling inside light and flakey pie crusts. The prompt is flavor and is another one which, in terms of working through the formation of a campaign pitch from the GM to potential players, can be easily turned toward that GM in regard to what they might like to help evoke. Let’s not do that, though. Instead, let’s take some time to consider how we can explain what that GM might like in terms of flavor coming from the descriptions of the players for the actions, reactions, and interactions of their characters-to-be, to see if everyone is interested in that sort of contribution to play.

It’s one thing to tell a group that you want to run a game about vampires and a very different thing to say, like Badham’s Dracula, or like Coppola’s Dracula, like The Lost Boys, or like Blade, or like Dracula: Dead and Loving It. That conversation, importantly, is not just about what types of events might happen, or what we might undertake as characters. In this case it’s about the ways we speak to each other and what that can mean about how we play. The greater and the more subtle shifts in how to play in such different conceptions of a basic premise can end up mattering a great deal – particularly in a campaign. Part then of a useful pitch is to explain what you would like to do, but part is also to share what you hope that will and will not draw from the group in collaboration.

Day 11: Flavor

Leagues of Cthulhu, like all of the Ubiquity games, has a default setting for how its mechanisms help realize your intentions for what play feels like. This governs things like how much shock and horror affects them, what reserves of grit they might draw upon, how their experiences mark their souls, and ultimately how tough they are in the face of violence.

How bleak or how heroic do the players wish to go?

The source material is rich in magic, deceit, natural and supernatural threats, ancient and alien technology, and even weird science – but rarely if ever all in one tale.

What mix of elements mundane and macabre works for the group?

In horror and investigative games, it is often necessary to consider the source and objectivity of certain truths about the situations imagined – even if that consideration is just to recognize it will be outsourced to the procedures of the game. How do we conceive of the world the characters occupy? How do we conceive of the characters both as constructs for a game and as frameworks of imagination? Most importantly, how do those conceptions, and the dynamics of interest and ability within the group have us shaping the conversation which is the medium of play?

How will the players converse with each other as play?

Each of these choices matter a great deal and are the secret herbs and spices which determine the flavor of the meal about to be eaten and hopefully savored.

See you tomorrow for Day 12: Path