What obsession do you include in almost all of the games you run?

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Imaginos

I am the one you warned me of
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On the flip side of the “never include” thread, what obsessions do you include in almost every game you run?

For myself, corruption, temptation, and power. It normally can even work into a superhero game, thought it leaves 4 color word at that point.
 
Elvis. Because.

Captain Wimby's Monster Atlas. As an in setting book.

Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Spiders. Stolen, also it's "creepy fandom want to have your babies" friendly.
 
Anthropology, low-level sociology, economic organisation — that sort of thing. My world-building and adventure design are pervaded by an interest in how the structure of family, society, wealth, and work form and deform character and shape ideological frameworks of virtue and vice, of ambition and despair. PCs run into a lot of different socio-economic milieux in my games, with corresponding forms of conformity, deviance, and dissent.

I have been forbidden by my players from using any more Nazi clone armies. Also, I tend to fall into a rut of using corporatism (the political ideology, not the mode of business organisation) as a bête noir.

Players sometimes point out that I use a lot of ruthlessly benevolent tyrants as ambiguous authority figures in my games. They are based on the Cardinal de Richelieu as portrayed in Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and played by Charlton Heston in the 1973/74 movie adaptation, and on a character called “Count Jasper” in an adventure novel that I adored as a child (The Black Riders, by Violet Needham). That is, they are powerful pragmatists whom the PCs would risk life and limb and even virtue to support in large things and oppose in small ones. They have ends that the PCs endorse whole-heartedly (usually the prevention of civil or internecine war), but allow those to dictate means that the PCs find unconscionable and will adventure to prevent. In my long-standing interstellar-SF setting, Flat Black, the entire Empire is one of these.
 
Factions. Whether as big as a nation or as small as a married couple.

As a firm believer in the idea that if you lock three people in a room, two will turn on one, I've always built my campaigns with the idea of multi-directional conflict. No big power groups is ever unified. Divisiveness, rivalry, jealousy, strange bedfellow alliances, etc. All of these form the backbone of every campaign I've refereed for years.

Added to player character motivation and random events, it provides never-ending material.
 
A heist that easily goes wrong.

References to multiple Final Fantasy games.

An NPC who looks like Timothy Dalton in my head.

A David Bowie song title.

Smooth-talking, patronizing older women who ruin the lives around them without ever lifting a weapon.
 
I really, really, really like embedding obscure references into things, just for my own amusement. I don't expect any of the players to ever pick up on them, but every now and then someone does. That's one reason I love "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" so much. You can find obscure references to things all throughout that series, at many levels.

I am getting ready to run a side game for a group that have requested something that is similar to a dystopian video game they like. I just finished a really deep dive into dystopian literature and movies, real world fascist/authoritarian/dictator history, and the histories of genetics research, eugenics, utopian communities, etc., all just to gather a lot of obscure references that only I am likely to get.
 
Maps would be the obvious ones, I even sort of nerd out on pencils, like a long time ago it was Berol-Mirado, and right now it is Arteza.
 
I really, really, really like embedding obscure references into things, just for my own amusement. I don't expect any of the players to ever pick up on them, but every now and then someone does. That's one reason I love "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" so much. You can find obscure references to things all throughout that series, at many levels.

I am getting ready to run a side game for a group that have requested something that is similar to a dystopian video game they like. I just finished a really deep dive into dystopian literature and movies, real world fascist/authoritarian/dictator history, and the histories of genetics research, eugenics, utopian communities, etc., all just to gather a lot of obscure references that only I am likely to get.

my-man-my-man-hd.gif
 
Martial arts, self-protection (those are NOT the same thing) and the evolution of combative culture & the culture of schools where one learns those things. Slapping someone in the face might be a very different thing in different societies, with appropriate reactions ranging from...but I digress:grin:!

Also, history in general.

Anthropology, low-level sociology, economic organisation — that sort of thing. My world-building and adventure design are pervaded by an interest in how the structure of family, society, wealth, and work form and deform character and shape ideological frameworks of virtue and vice, of ambition and despair. PCs run into a lot of different socio-economic milieux in my games, with corresponding forms of conformity, deviance, and dissent.

(snipped for quoting purposes)

Players sometimes point out that I use a lot of ruthlessly benevolent tyrants as ambiguous authority figures in my games. They are based on the Cardinal de Richelieu as portrayed in Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and played by Charlton Heston in the 1973/74 movie adaptation, and on a character called “Count Jasper” in an adventure novel that I adored as a child (The Black Riders, by Violet Needham). That is, they are powerful pragmatists whom the PCs would risk life and limb and even virtue to support in large things and oppose in small ones. They have ends that the PCs endorse whole-heartedly (usually the prevention of civil or internecine war), but allow those to dictate means that the PCs find unconscionable and will adventure to prevent. In my long-standing interstellar-SF setting, Flat Black, the entire Empire is one of these.

Factions. Whether as big as a nation or as small as a married couple.

As a firm believer in the idea that if you lock three people in a room, two will turn on one, I've always built my campaigns with the idea of multi-directional conflict. No big power groups is ever unified. Divisiveness, rivalry, jealousy, strange bedfellow alliances, etc. All of these form the backbone of every campaign I've refereed for years.

Added to player character motivation and random events, it provides never-ending material.

I really, really, really like embedding obscure references into things, just for my own amusement. I don't expect any of the players to ever pick up on them, but every now and then someone does. That's one reason I love "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" so much. You can find obscure references to things all throughout that series, at many levels.

(snipped for quoting purposes)
Also, all of those. I've got lots of interests and not nearly enough time to satisfy them all, what can I say:grin:?
 
Coffee. Not just a cup of good, hot, black coffee from the Double R or FiveBucks' to go godawful swill, but after years of doing so incidentally or unconsciously, I now deliberately put something about coffee, trade, and or history into games. From the origins of croissants and coffee to Mountain of the Black Wind Estate in Uganda to a café facing the Sebilj in Sarajevo... mmmm, coffee. :coffee:
 
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"Magic"--by one name other another. If I'm playing a sci-fi game, psychic abilities or some kind of nanotech masquerading as "magic" are probably gonna be a thing. There's been exceptions to this if I wanna play a Cyberpunk game straight (it's been ages), but magic tends to be the only thing I can think of I tend to include in every game, if only so I can play a magician of some kind.
 
It used to be that I would slip flying ships into my fantasy campaigns. Finally I started getting the "not again" eye roll and so I stopped. I love flying ships. The ones that look like old sailing ships, but sailing through the sky. (As opposed to Star Wars ships or something like that.)
 
I find that British pubs tend to feature in all my games regardless of genre or setting. There will be a pub with kelly green wallpaper and nice oak paneling where you can get a decent pint and perhaps work on your headbutting skills.
 
I have two, one of which might not count.

The first is humor. I don't know if it counts as an obsession, because it's just... a broad part of human experience. But I always make sure to include some humor in any game. Importantly, this does not mean not taking the game seriously. Even outside of quippy characters, people just make jokes now and again, even if the world can be kind of a rough place at the time.

(As a minor addendum, I could also add "dramatic irony." Metagaming doesn't have to be a bad thing! Sometimes it means leaning into what your character doesn't know.)

The second, more relevant one would probably be food and drink. It adds immersion, makes locations feel more alive, and can make a base of operations seem more lived-in and homelike. Plus if I make up a random cocktail at the game table, I can work on a real life version for my players at a later date. :smile:
 
Food. I'm an amateur chef. I love cooking and baking, trying new recipes and reading about food history. I will often describe meals the PCs eat in detail. For my Fantasy games I will describe Medieval recipes. I will describe the mix of sweet and savory spice in the rich cuisine of the nobles along with the simple bread, ale and pottage of the peasants.

On a side note I always get slightly annoyed when Fantasy authors mention New World ingredients like Potatoes or Tomatoes.

For Cyberpunk games by contrast, I will describe how very unappetizing the cheap, synthetic foods that most people live on are. As well as the various ways that those on the lower rungs of society have found to make it taste better. For example; in my recent Cyberpunk RED game I described Kibble Nuggets: imitation chicken nuggets made by soaking chicken flavor kibble in water then mashing it into a nugget shape and deep-frying. That way fresh meat or vegetables can be a minor quest reward.
 
I have quite a few obsessions, so usually I can find a way to get it into the game.

A big one is environmentalist themes - if I want something to seem evil or bad I have it corrupt nature. I also like to get really into the nitty gritty of the ecology of a place. My current campaign is focused on a post blue ocean event Antarctica. Before the collapse of a highly advanced human civilization, there was an effort to reduce the negative effects of biodiversity collapse by creating "neofauna", which usually consists of a semi-chimeric animal because it's fun.

I also will incorporate a lot of my outdoorsman knowledge, which is fun because my backpacking buddy is playing with us and often will realize a dangerous situation when the others don't.

Another fun one that can spice up pretty much any campaign is - oddly enough - economics. A huge driver of most real-world historical politics has been economic. For example, much of the drama of late Republican and early Imperial Rome was due to who controlled Egypt because that was the breadbasket of the Eternal City's demense. You can pretty much spontaneously create intricate political drama akin to the good seasons of Game of Thrones just by applying some basic economics and realpolitik.

Lastly, what campaign would be complete without devious traps? My all time favorite (which even made it into the D&D movie) is a corpse suspended in a motionless Gelatinous Cube. The joy I feel when a player willingly walks right into the cube is immense.
 
For Cyberpunk games by contrast, I will describe how very unappetizing the cheap, synthetic foods that most people live on are. As well as the various ways that those on the lower rungs of society have found to make it taste better. For example; in my recent Cyberpunk RED game I described Kibble Nuggets: imitation chicken nuggets made by soaking chicken flavor kibble in water then mashing it into a nugget shape and deep-frying. That way fresh meat or vegetables can be a minor quest reward.
Ha! Oh man, CP2020/Red gives all kinds of opportunity for bizarre and morbid flavor experiences, doesn't it? Conversely, you can really go wild embellishing just how unearthly flavorful and decadent the food that the Corporate set enjoys ("Did you know it takes about 15 of those rare birds to make just ONE serving of what you're eating? Worth it, I say....").

Also, corporate cloned meat....
 
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