The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
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Here is the link to James S.A. Corey’s Website.
Here is the link to Ian Eller’s book.
Here is the transcript:
Speaker A
00:00:04.240 - 00:00:44.280
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next great tabletop role playing experience. I'm your host, Eric Jackson, here with three new game masters, Alex Jackal, Ian Eller and Sean Murphy, to explore the new universe.
Penned by James S.A. Corey,
the creator of the Expanse, the Mercy of the Gods, the first book in the Captives War series pits the human like engine against the hive like technologically superior, militaristic and authoritarian who come to conquer them. This book proved to be a real challenge to bring to the tabletop space. But Alex, Sean, Ian and I did an admirable job if I do say so myself.
Let's get into the conversation.
Speaker B
00:00:45.340 - 00:01:14.992
Hi folks, my name is Eric Jackson and this is the Game Masters Book Club. A place where great fiction becomes great role playing experiences.
I'm here with some fabulously awesome game masters and I'm going to have them introduce themselves to you. Before we talk about our book this week, which is the Mercy of God Odds, we're going to start off with Alex.
Alex, do you want to tell the people who you are and tell them about the time that as a game master you changed a failure into a success?
Speaker C
00:01:15.176 - 00:02:59.774
Right, so. Hi everyone, my name is Alex jackel. I've been GMing for about 42 years. I which is far too long.
I have built my own role playing system and I've played dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of different kinds of games. I'm also competed as a GM in the Iron GM competition and have won it twice and am excited to be in this conversation.
Early in my career as a gm, I did a sequence where I tortured a character horribly. I got them very emotionally invested in the character and then I just did horrible things to them on screen in play.
And that I thought I was being edgy and really sophisticated as a gm. Instead I was just, you know, causing mental damage to my friends. So I would call that one of my biggest failures as a gm.
However, one of the things I learned in that is how much little details when used can really impact the game. And I started having a practice where I would add life moments.
But instead of torture, which is the lesson learned, it would literally be things like you wake up and you get dressed and just little tiny things that would be boring if you spent more than three minutes on them.
But just add something to every character in the game, every run that's like that, that's about them, that's part of their daily life, whatever that is for that character. And it really added something to the emotional reality of the game, if you will.
And so that's a place where I took a massive failure and learned from it and turned it into something that has improved my game over the last few decades.
Speaker B
00:02:59.902 - 00:03:05.960
Okay, fantastic. Thank you. Let's move on to Ayan Ayin. Do you want to introduce yourself to the folks?
Speaker D
00:03:06.150 - 00:05:02.140
Ryan Eller. I am a writer on the side.
I occasionally do some freelance work for Savage Worlds mostly, but a little bit of Starfinder here and there and that sort of thing.
And I am one of those people that, like the vast majority of us of this age, I started with that red box that came out for D and D and learned how to GM buy that thing and slowly but surely developed a love for all things RPGs, not just D and D.
As far as a failure becomes a success goes, I would say that a very good example of that would be when I was establishing a new campaign way back in Geez. Had to be 95, 96 because I was living in Savannah at the time. This is a campaign that lasted 20 years, by the way.
But when I was just starting that I had set some ground rules, I said I did not want any elves and I did not want any ninjas. I mean, this was second edition.
And immediately one of my players, who is also one of my, became one of my best friends over the years, decided he wanted to play an elf ninja. Of course he did. Why? Why wouldn't you? As soon as the GM says that those are the two things that are not allowed.
But the failure was, is I failed to hold on to my session zero my rules. And in so doing, what happened was that I had a much richer world.
We had to come up with a reason that I hadn't thought about yet, of why there was this elf ninja in this place where there were neither elves nor ninjas. And that lore became a integral part of that campaign that lasted three game systems and 20 real world years. Four generations of player characters.
So we ended up with the Far east inhabited by elves and that going all the way to the modern superhero era of that D and D campaign. So yes, you can fail setting ground rules and still come out with something really cool.
Speaker B
00:05:02.480 - 00:05:04.300
Awesome. Sean.
Speaker E
00:05:04.960 - 00:06:52.474
Yeah. Hi everybody. I'm Sean Murphy. I've been gaming for probably the same time as Alex. 40 some odd years. I didn't learn on the Redbox.
I Learned by scrounging D6s so I could play tunnels and trolls with my friends and roll a lot of D6s. Since then I've played also in a variety of gaming systems through the years and run lots of different types of gamings.
And I'm currently part of the Skype of Cthulhu podcast group.
In terms of failures, this is one where I was running a campaign and I thought, I'll put out two perfectly good choices and then we'll just go with whichever one they pick. And instead of picking one, they split the vote. And half of them wanted to go to the Midwest United States and half wanted to go to Iceland.
And it wasn't a situation where I could do the normal like, well, you're over at the this part of town and you're over here this part of town. They were geographically separated. And I kind of.
I just called the game, I said, I got to think about this, which I should have been prepared for that.
I will say it ended up being a success because we ended up figuring out how to do it in a way that people didn't feel like they were wasting their time. Basically, Oklahoma was the first hour of or so of the session and Iceland the second.
People could listen to both, and by going from eight players or down to three or four, there was a lot more character interaction than there would have been otherwise.
And it got me open to the idea of letting players go where they want to go and not trying to push them in any particular way because they'll have more fun that way. They'll have more agency. At the end of the day, it doesn't really change all the things they might experience.
Speaker B
00:06:52.642 - 00:09:14.010
There we go. Fantastic. I'm Eric Jackson and I've been playing for, let's see, that's 20, 25, three, carry the one 40. 43. Yep, 43 years.
I started with blue box and the colored in dice that you get with that blue box. And since then I've played a whole bunch of different games. I've been at different cons and I've met all kinds of gaming people.
But my story of failure to success basically is a continuous one. Continuous failure and continuous success of. I love to world build and I love to come to the table with as much lore as possible.
And every time I come to the table, I fail to have that one critical piece of lore that my players ultimately want. It doesn't matter how much I prepare, they're always asking for the thing I didn't prepare for.
And what I've learned, the success from that I've learned from that is that the most fun things that I've ever created have been things that I've created with my players as opposed to failing to create them myself. Ahead of time. Because if I were going to do it all by myself, I'd be writing a book, which is a nice transition.
To talk about our book today, we're going to be talking about Mercy of Gods by S.A. cory. The Mercy of Gods by S.A.
cory follows the people of Anjin's first dreadful contact with the Carrax, a hive, hierarchical, technologically superior, militaristic and authoritarian alien race.
Specifically, it follows Dafyd and his academic lab colleagues who are forced to adapt and serve the Carrax on an alien prison planet far from their homeworld. This is the first book in the series and it begins by telling us that David will be the instrument of the Carax's destruction.
But book one is all about how impossibly powerful and inscrutable the Carax are. Without that first ray of hope and the knowledge that this is book one, the story would have been way too brutal.
But the mystery of how does this regular person take down these terrible, mighty beings is what drives you through the story. And that's my take on the Mercy of Gods. Anyone have stuff to add?
Speaker D
00:09:14.630 - 00:09:33.514
I think it's important to note for people that may or may not be familiar with the book, but this science fiction novel centers around characters that are primarily, primarily scientists, not soldiers or other like, action hero people. And that really colors the discussion we're about to have, I think.
Speaker C
00:09:33.682 - 00:09:57.292
Yeah.
And the other thing I would add is that for me reading the book, I was less carried by the prophecy that he's going to destroy them and more like, wow, they're all screwed. This is hopeless. Right.
And I thought that was actually one of the interesting themes of the book because it's not your usual space opera with a brilliant hero destroying the aliens that are 10 times smarter than he is.
Speaker B
00:09:57.396 - 00:10:00.060
All right, also fair. Sean, anything to add?
Speaker E
00:10:00.180 - 00:10:02.828
No, other than obviously spoilers ahoy.
Speaker B
00:10:03.004 - 00:10:27.666
All right, so with that general overview of the book in mind, Sean, why don't we get started with you and let's talk about. Based on that description, if you wanted to run a game that gave the same feeling as the Mercy of Gods, what would you pick and why?
And what particular mechanics of that system would help support the theme of this book?
Speaker E
00:10:27.818 - 00:12:14.770
Sure. So I had thought about the Smallville game, which is designed by Cam Banks, which is in turn based on Margaret Weiss productions Cortex drama system.
And the reason is that game focuses on characters and their values and their interrelationships.
And a large part of this story is not just the interrelationships with the alien captors, but also with the small group and the larger group, the inter human relationships really drive some of this story in an interesting way. But at the end I thought if I was gonna run this, I don't know how long I would run it for. Smallville is definitely designed for a longer period.
So I decided I think I'd want to run it under Gumshoe, which was designed by Robin Laws and is currently published by Pell Grain Press. I think it's a better fit because one is this is a game that involves players having modern day jobs. It's not a fantasy setting, it's real jobs.
I think the compelling elements for me in terms of making this into a role playing game would be the investigations, both in terms of the experiments that they're individually doing and understanding the aliens and even understanding what the other humans are doing. Gumshoe is a game that supports finding clues and I think just as importantly, interpreting them.
I think we rely a lot on the narrator to sort of make leaps for us that we as people who are in that same situation might not.
And I feel like a system that provided for that intuition to understand how things fit together would be a useful way of keeping the story going forward.
Speaker B
00:12:15.180 - 00:12:22.452
Awesome. That is a great recommendation. Ayan, do you want to go next and tell us about how you would run this game and what system you would use?
Speaker D
00:12:22.556 - 00:12:44.134
Sure.
But real quick, before I do that, first I want to say to Sean that I hadn't thought about that bit about the intuitive leap that is necessary sometimes for characters, especially when they're writing characters that have a certain specialty that certainly as a player you wouldn't have unless you just happen to be a microbiologist working on two branches of life. So that's a good point, Chad.
Speaker E
00:12:44.182 - 00:12:59.030
I like that there are other systems that give you those mechanics for figuring out what's going on, but Gumshoe specifically allows people to spend points to really get the underlying background of what they're hearing or seeing or just encountering.
Speaker D
00:12:59.190 - 00:13:03.846
There is a sci fi Gumshoe game, right? One of them, I forget which one.
Speaker E
00:13:03.918 - 00:13:23.272
I haven't encountered it. I've encountered, you know, junior detectives.
I've encountered, obviously Trail of Cthulhu, which is something else I thought about, but I veered away from. But I haven't heard of a sci fi one, although it's a system you could easily adapt to whatever it is you want to do.
Oh, and nice Black Agents where you're Jason Bourne fighting vampires.
Speaker D
00:13:23.416 - 00:14:49.076
So when I was thinking about this, I decided that the game that would be useful for Me is Gurps. And that's an old school choice.
And it's a very toolkitty game, which is why I thought it would be useful because what we have here amongst these characters are normal people that have specialties. And one of the strengths of Gurps is that it can model that pretty well. There's also the scaling of the.
Just the absolute ridiculous threat that the Carrick present physically. And you'd want a game where that felt bad to decide to go Poncha Carricks. Right.
Like you absolutely do not want that to be a part of the game because it doesn't make sense from that perspective.
Even though little minion races like the blade footed dog things and whatever and you want those to be scary and Gurps is a good game for scary if you create normal human characters. And I think that has value. In addition though, because it's a toolkit game, you can bring in the kinds of things and make this stuff important.
That's important for a game like this. It doesn't have the narrative tools that Powered by the Apocalypse does or even the intuitive leap thing that Gumshoe does.
But what it does have is a very granular skill system.
And I think when you have a cast of eight normal people that are all essentially have the same profession, it's actually useful to have that granularity to differentiate those characters.
Speaker B
00:14:49.188 - 00:14:51.796
Anybody else want to do feedback on Gurps?
Speaker E
00:14:51.988 - 00:15:37.890
Well, the thing I like about Gurps and it's kind of why I went for Gumshoe and Nod Trail is it's agnostic in terms of the setting. The players coming into it don't know what they're getting into necessarily.
You know, you see their character sheets, they'll know but that it's a sci fi but sort of the other things that happen unlike, you know, there are other games out there that the Telegraph this is the kind of experience you're going to have. I do think Gurps is really good for that. And also for a GM to switch like this game ends on a cliffhanger. We don't really know what happens. It would.
Personally I think it'd be interesting for GM to be able to interpret it based on the feedback they got from their players. And Gurps would allow you to go in any direction the players seem to think was the right answer.
Speaker C
00:15:38.050 - 00:18:49.210
Alex, first up, I think both of those are great ideas. I love the Gumshoe idea.
I think this book in particular has a lot about discovery and investigation and Gumshoe is perfect for that and actually allows people to apply in game skills to do that.
I love the GURPS because of both the idea of being able to model aliens and pool kitty aspect of it and create aliens and the radical scaling compared to the humans. I think all of that's good and would make it very useful. I was thinking Call of Cthulhu and that was mostly Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium Games.
I thought that mostly because one somewhat thematically the idea of relatively normal people. I mean, these are very smart scientists in the book, right? They're.
They're the best of the best kind of people, but they're still humans with just highly advanced training.
And Call of Cthulhu has that basic thematic component of you're a normal person up against something so much greater than yourself that you really don't have a choice. It's not like you're going to punch Cthulhu in the. In the face, right? And that's sort of the situation that the humans find themselves in the novel.
So I thought Call of Cthulhu would be particularly good.
And also for some of the same reasons that we talked about, you know, Gumshoe and Gurps is that normal people with skills and normal skills and the ability in Call of Cthulhu you can create different science skills. It's not as granular or as. Or as sort of toolkit y as Gurps is, but it does allow you to give people specific skills and let them run with it.
The other mechanic of Call of Cthulhu that I thought would be really interesting to use is there is that character in the game that is sort of another type of alien that infests other people and other species and has sort of a Cthulhu and horror aspect to it.
And the sanity rules in Cthulhu I thought could be leveraged to play with that and play with the degree to which the player falls under the influence of such a thing, or even if one of the players was that creature, how it interacted with both the NPCs and other PCs. The other thing I thought would make Call of Cthulhu good again, more thematically than system wise, is the fact that people are gonna die.
That's part of the. You sort of walk into a Call of Cthulhu game knowing that going insane.
There are worse things even than dying and sort of, you know, dying might be a good end for your character in the game. And in this game, it's a little brutal. This is not a happy space opera.
You know, I'm Gonna become the king of the universe after I, you know, beat all the bad aliens. At least not in the first book. Maybe it goes that way. I haven't read the second book yet.
Maybe in the second book or later it does that, but it doesn't in this book. And so I think that's also good.
If you tell people it's Call of Cthulhu, they're right away more prepared that, oh, this is going to be brutal and I might end up going insane or dying. And I think that might be a good way for people to walk into the game. So that was my thinking on that matter.
Speaker B
00:18:49.590 - 00:20:12.788
So just a quick note. The Mercy of Gods is actually the only one that's out right now. The second and third book are not out. So nobody knows how it's going to wrap up.
There is apparently a novella called Live Suit which takes place shortly after book one. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I was just doing a quick check on that to see what was happening.
And I'd also like to make a comment because I'm going to jump on what Alex said in that my choice for the system I was going to run in was also Chaosium game. This is my fairy tale fantasy person showing in a sci fi novel on the relationship of these horribly alien thinking creatures to the fae of old.
And Chaosium just recently put out a book that runs on the Call of Cthulhu system that's based in the book series Rivers of London, which has a lot to do with fairies and creatures who are greater and stranger than humans are.
So combined with the sanity rules and the idea that people are gonna die and the fairy and the fact that the Rivers of London books are generally police procedurals, there's that mystery solving aspect that's also inherent in its theme. So I was very close to what you were picking, Alec. Like half a step off to the side.
Speaker C
00:20:12.924 - 00:20:17.556
No, I think that'd be great too. And I actually would be interested in reading that game.
Speaker B
00:20:17.708 - 00:20:38.774
And if you haven't read the Rivers of London series, absolutely fantastic series. And if you can listen to it, the actor Holdner Colebrook Smith, you could listen to the man. Read the phone book. He's just. Gorgeous voice, Absolutely.
Always worth listening to. Anyone have any additional game mechanic concepts that they want to throw in there that we haven't already discussed?
Speaker E
00:20:38.972 - 00:21:15.644
No, other than the notes that for both of you, Call of Cthulhu and Rivers of London are really actually based in the brp, the basic role playing system. And the thing that's interesting about that is that you can add as many skills as you want on the Call of Cthulhu sheet. They have others.
Rivers is the same. You can sort of customize it a little bit.
So that's another one where if you wanted to sort of dial down some of the Call of Cthulhu cosmic horror type things or dial them up, you could do that pretty well with that system.
Speaker B
00:21:15.812 - 00:21:17.452
Excellent piece of advice. Yeah.
Speaker C
00:21:17.596 - 00:21:42.340
The other thing I was going to say was to run this novel as a game. And I know you wouldn't maybe run exactly the novel. Right.
But if you were to run this thematically as a game, I think a session zero, that'd be a really important to have a really strong session zero conversation with the players about whether you're running a game where players can turn against each other. It doesn't have to.
Speaker B
00:21:42.380 - 00:21:42.532
Right.
Speaker C
00:21:42.556 - 00:22:30.040
You could run this game with a cohesive. You know, we're a band of people that are sticking to each other no matter what. But it would lose some of the flavor.
And the theme, the conflict theme. Right. That's in the book.
And so you have to either prepare players that they're going to be involved with that and they're going to have the option of doing that, or you have to slightly change it to allow for a run where it's against the rules to turn on each other, which some people really want that. I mean, some people hate interplayer conflict. And so you just have to.
I think it's just important to establish it up front which way it's going to go. And if you're going to be true to the. I think the themes and the design of the novel, you would actually have player conflict as an allowed option.
Speaker D
00:22:31.250 - 00:23:16.390
Well, one of the things, though, that we do when we talk about a novel in the form of a game is that we are deciding in our own heads, even if we're not doing so explicitly, which of the characters are PCs and which of the characters are NPCs. Right. And so Gafit is definitely a PC, but the people that are betrayed could just as easily be NPCs. Right. From the.
From the perspective, if we're going to talk about whether or not you want to allow betrayal and whether that would work for this setup as a game. Right. We're kind of deciding that all of these people, or any of them, not all of them, but any of them, are player characters.
And when you do that, you do end up in a different feeling situation than you would if only the nice ones in the book. Are the player characters. Right.
Speaker E
00:23:17.730 - 00:23:25.754
I wanted to ask that question. Do you think that Elsie the Swarm, would you make that a PC or an.
Speaker D
00:23:25.842 - 00:23:28.070
I would absolutely do that to a player.
Speaker C
00:23:29.340 - 00:23:33.588
I would too. I would make that a PC, if that. I think that's a fascinating character.
Speaker B
00:23:33.684 - 00:23:48.900
I think the idea of a doppelganger character like that who has their own agenda, particularly in this sort of situation, like you folks have already pointed that out a couple of times, that this idea of folks having their own agendas and having those play out is an important part of this book.
Speaker D
00:23:49.020 - 00:24:38.880
Right. And it's not like a doubleganger from the perspective of like, this person is there to slit their throats at night.
Like, that's not a fun thing to do. Nobody likes that. But as a secret agent, effectively inside with their own agenda, that's a kind of cool thing to have.
And it brings a little bit of the science fiction into the realm of the player characters. Because this setup is essentially all. The science fiction is all external. Like it's a.
Yes, it's a different planet, but it's essentially our time period or slightly later than our time period as far as technology goes. I mean, these are just. These are people on a different Earth. That's really all it is. Right. In essentially our period of time. Time.
So having that character amongst the PCs brings in, into the realm of the players some of the science fiction elements that are otherwise just sort of surrounding them.
Speaker E
00:24:39.660 - 00:24:52.068
So I'm gonna disagree on two fronts. One, seventh grade Sean loved the idea of a doppelganger killing the people. Love that when you say, no, only.
Speaker B
00:24:52.124 - 00:24:54.436
Seventh grade edgelords, but they do count. Yes.
Speaker E
00:24:54.468 - 00:25:36.944
Okay, fine. The other part I was going to disagree, though is my concern about bringing the Else. And I didn't get.
I really came in neutral on it until you guys started talking, is that Else has information that the other players don't have unless the player doesn't hear about it until, as we, as the reader do, sometime in. They have to go in knowing that. And I'd be really concerned that they don't know. Drop it too soon.
Plus, one of the reasons for doing this as Call of Cthulhu, which I think is a great choice, is the sanity mechanic. There's no sanity roll. If you're the swarm. That player doesn't get that thing that can happen to them, which is, you.
Speaker D
00:25:36.952 - 00:25:45.740
Know, but the Else part of that character does. Right? Because that's. Remember that there is a. There's a competing set of personalities in that space.
Speaker E
00:25:46.200 - 00:25:59.834
Right. But the Else character has been inhabited for some time. Unless you start them with sanity loss before they even get there.
That I think Gillette might have to suffer sanity when they get invaded by the swarm.
Speaker C
00:25:59.882 - 00:26:31.176
Well, it all depends on your strategy. Right. By the way, I agree with you.
But I would probably have the player be playing Gillette and fighting an alien entity, and then she would start playing the alien entity once it won. Right. Or something like that. And then, because there is always.
With doublegangers, the problem is if you're sitting around a table or in a zoom room, however you're doing or discord. Right. You can't really play a full doppelganger thing.
Because if all of a sudden the same player is playing a different character, everyone's like, what just happened?
Speaker B
00:26:31.208 - 00:26:31.352
Right.
Speaker C
00:26:31.376 - 00:27:35.070
You know, so you have to deal with that.
And one way to deal with that is you would have to create a storyline maybe where you're introducing new characters in and so characters that have been infected. And then where the species jump to another character, that character would die and you'd have to replace it with another character.
And that character should have special knowledge so that it's not as hard that they don't have to pretend to not know. And then they can make decisions on their own.
And the new player that just got infected, they then get read in and then they're fighting with the entity for control. And then they can role play that as good or as badly or as however they want to roleplay that. But that's probably do something like that.
And so it would probably change the story a little bit. Like, it would be hard to exactly mimic what happened in Mercy of Gods, but in that world you could do that.
You just have to work out a strategy for managing both the players and the characters.
Speaker E
00:27:35.490 - 00:28:20.922
Yeah.
I think the other problem with the alien creature, though, is that we started off by saying we'd want to do a zero session and talk about player versus player. The player versus player. It doesn't happen as overt violence.
It's one player turns in the other humans and says, by the way, they're doing a conspiracy. And that's brought about because the swarm character, it thinks it's the best thing to happen for their mission.
So if you have a zero session and the players say, well, we don't want player versus player. It gets tricky once you start introducing this other element.
Because remember the group that starts off together and working, one of the people that breaks off, the woman who's despondent and she goes and joins the other group. Any player I think you guys are.
Speaker B
00:28:20.946 - 00:28:56.280
Starting to drift a little bit into our next section, which is I think we could be looking at the Else Swarm character as not only thematically within the Mercy of God's game, but in any game that we were using.
And you're talking about some of the mechanics that you would use in order to have a entity that exists in hiding and how would you run that in a game? So I think we can safely say, unless anyone's got any really important last minute question, what things would you take from the Mercy of Gods?
And we can start with Else. How would you run that in any game that you were running?
Speaker C
00:28:56.780 - 00:30:57.992
I have two thoughts on that. If I can go first, if you don't mind. I would definitely steal that character and that idea.
However, I might change one fundamental thing about it, which is the other host dies, right? It could be. It's like joining a club, right? One person is infected and is the Elsie character combined with Gillette.
And then the next person also gets infected and it's almost more like the hive splits instead of it causing the other character to die. You could have characters slowly joining the Swarm club. And I think that could be an interesting dynamic.
It would probably reveal itself pretty quickly, two or three people in, you know, at least. But I think that would make for some interesting storytelling.
I think the other thing I would take about that the Swarm mechanic is maybe not having people know that they've been infected the way like they would have intuitions or they would sense things, or they would. They were sometimes unclear and that they were fighting internally in their heads between the two.
I might have them run the character and then the way I use the sanity mechanic would be they slowly become more and more aware of the fact that there's someone else in there with them that's actually moving them and having them make decisions, which also is a little bit of a departure from the book, because the book was a little more absolute about it. Right? She sort of took over and won. And then the other personality was there and pretty strong, but definitely the secondary personality.
I would maybe keep the character's personality as the primary for a while and slowly erode it and eventually have them flip over to the Swarm.
But they would get to say a lot about the personality of the swarm and the argument would be just like in the book, that the Swarm gets very impacted by the personalities and minds that it inhabits. So that. That's what my thinking was.
Speaker B
00:30:58.096 - 00:31:05.300
Awesome. Anyone else want to talk about Elsa or this doppelganger kind of character? The swarm character and how it would work in your game.
Speaker E
00:31:05.840 - 00:31:57.578
So what I would say is I don't generally like having some players have something that's different than the other players. I'd like sort of as much as possible sort of a level playing field. I do think this is an intriguing idea though.
I think this is a way that could work.
What I might suggest is I recently was involved in a Call of Cthulhu game where people needed to decide if they were going to let a shagai inhabit them or not as part of an ongoing war between another being. And we just weren't sure whose motives were better. And it did produce interesting dynamics when, as expected, half the group said, yes, I'll do that.
And half the group said, no way am I letting that thing inhabit me. But it was a choice that the players made and debated amongst themselves before they did so. So that might be interesting.
Speaker D
00:31:57.754 - 00:32:44.660
I have used the doppelganger as a tool in other games, particularly that same long running D and D game that I was talking about. And what I find to be true is generally speaking, you gotta have the right player to be that thing.
Otherwise they just work as NPCs and villains and stuff. You really need the right player.
And even if you think you got the right player and they're excited about it, you don't know if two sessions in the jig is up. And it was sort of all wasted effort in the first place. Now to comment briefly on what Alex said.
Alex, my friend, I love you, but you know you're talking about people that play role playing games, right? If there is even a slightest stat bonus or boost for. For them being members of the Swarm, it would take the party all of seven minutes to decide.
Why don't we just. Why don't we make everybody. It's.
Speaker B
00:32:45.230 - 00:32:55.494
That is a comment on our culture for sure. Anybody have other thing that you found in this story that you would want to steal? Scenes, Creatures, technology in a game.
Speaker D
00:32:55.582 - 00:32:59.530
Yeah, I am totally going to set up those blade footed dogs. Man, those things are cool.
Speaker C
00:33:00.110 - 00:33:59.254
Yeah, I was going to say the aliens, particularly the. What are they called again? I'm sorry, I forgot the Carnac characts.
One of the things I struggle with is I tend to humanize everything, even the monsters. And one thing I like is that sort of theme of how alien they were and inscrutable.
Like you really couldn't tell what their motivations were much of the time.
And I think having an authoritarian sort of race that seems to make what could be illogical decisions but there seems to be some underlying logic, but you can't quite see it.
That was very intriguing to me and I would love to infest some of my alien races, whether it's in the fantasy campaign or sci fi campaigns, with that inscrutable but seems to be cohesive alien ness and working on how to create that with the players and have people. Players have that experience that that's what they're interacting with.
Speaker E
00:33:59.422 - 00:34:56.702
So for me, it would be the scene when there's a crowd of people in what essentially works out as a large holding deck. Some of them know each other. The author does a pretty good job, I think, of having us experience both the physical stresses of the situation.
These are people that they don't really see their captors, their clothes are sort of breaking down over time. They're not. There's no hygiene.
But also the social dynamics, like what groups form together, what groups decide that they're going to make a play to get out of here.
And I think it would be interesting to try to find a situation where player characters were in a group like that and needed to sort of figure out the vampire, the mask type, you know, social connections between the groups and objectives between the groups and sort of have that interaction while still having to handle their physical needs and meeting those needs.
Speaker D
00:34:56.726 - 00:35:20.870
Yeah, that scene on the spaceship when they're being transported is. I don't know how you do that in a game, to be honest with you.
That's the kind of thing where we're going to start our campaign with everybody in prison, you know, and that's how your D and D campaign starts. And that lasts for 15 minutes before people just feel locked in. And that makes sense. I guess that's how you want them to feel.
And then they start doing dumb stuff, you know, just like I guess they did in that scene. Oh, it works fine. Never mind.
Speaker E
00:35:22.130 - 00:36:02.494
Well, you know, to Alex's point, we're dealing with an alien race. Their motivations aren't the same.
And I think that scene there does a pretty good job of setting up really early on that this is not a situation where you can do a persuade role to get the guard to let things go a little bit. It's a whole different thing and it's a whole different social situation.
And I agree it wouldn't be a long time, but I think there's a place of starting off. I'd still have them living their everyday lives before they ended up here.
Because setting the scene for them being trapped is pretty much how the rest of the game is going to go to a certain degree as well.
Speaker C
00:36:02.582 - 00:36:12.910
If you follow the theme of the novel. It is a game about failure and alienness and being trapped. You're in prison the whole time, basically. It really is a thematic element.
Speaker D
00:36:12.990 - 00:37:14.040
How do you convince players to accept the inevitability of that failure instead of just really doing everything they can to not move forward with the game?
What I'm thinking of is if you start this game off and everybody's a scientist and they're doing their science things and then aliens invade, all of my experience is screaming in my head that the players are not going to lay down with their arms spread out in the middle of the square the way they're supposed to, right? That's gonna move to the game, to the next thing. That seems the hardest part because once they're at the.
The clerics homeworld and they're doing the thing, there's agency there. And what players like is being able to make choices. And there's not a lot of choices before they get there.
And I'm just wondering, can you start a campaign that way and have it actually succeed before they blow themselves up? Because they just absolutely refuse to do anything that's going to get them on that ship in the first place. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker C
00:37:14.990 - 00:38:43.748
I think there's absolutely a narrative way to do that. I think the key is don't give them. Because one of the things about that scene is they don't have any tools, they don't have anything, right?
And they try a bunch of stuff. They actually do try a bunch of stuff. I think they acted in some ways those players acted like player characters, right?
They kept trying stuff and then they got smashed. And some of the characters didn't try stuff and some did. The ones that did are probably going to be like our player characters.
They're going to, oh, I'm going to try and pry the panel open or I'm going to try and fool the guard or I'll try and seduce the guard. Right?
You know, whatever they do, the key, I think is to one, resolve those things quickly so it doesn't become a dragged out, depressing grind for the players. And two, beat them down quickly, right? Like have the plans fail the way they did in that scene.
Now, obviously I don't think you can run a campaign that way. It would be depressing and I don't think people would like it.
Some people might, I guess, but it does set the theme of the campaign, if that's how you're gonna play. And it gives People the sense, okay, don't go punch the alien. That's not the answer.
It's like almost like a session zero in game thing that you teach them not to punch the alien because it's not gonna help. And then they have to come up with other ways to survive to get around their situation.
And it sets the stage for it to be more of the political role playing, problem solving thing rather than the smack em to do some kind of thing.
Speaker E
00:38:43.884 - 00:39:40.138
I hear what you're saying, I really do. I think that it's two things. It's one, it's a session zero where you make sure players know they might be heroic, but they're not necessarily heroes.
As this goes forward, the way forward is not a punch it. And then the second thing I would do is NPCs. I'm running a scenario right now. I want to make sure the players know the monster is bad.
All the NPCs now are dead. They've all been killed off by the horrible monster. And the players have learned, oh, we shouldn't just go looking for this thing and fight it.
We should really figure out what we need to do to take care of it in a more final way than the characters that are disappearing. The NPCs are all armed and they're still not making it. You could have them try to do a break right away. The door opens and those NPCs die.
The players go, oh, oh, oh, never mind.
Speaker B
00:39:40.274 - 00:39:55.338
Yeah, oops.
All right, so I know everybody wants to put the night drinkers in their game, so I won't talk about them because who doesn't like aggressive feather haired monkeys that throw things at you that that's just the best. Anything else anyone wants to add in?
Speaker C
00:39:55.394 - 00:40:44.202
I do add one thing, which is that how I would run the inscrutable alien conflict.
So if you can build the politics like some kind of a rational structure for the behavior of the aliens that you do not reveal, like you're not even allowed to reveal it to the players, but that helps you guide what they do. That'll help it not just be okay, I'm going to have the alien act in some random way to produce the inscrutability. Right.
It allows you to then have some kind of pattern that is discoverable by a player that watches carefully or pays attention eventually. Right. And allows you to build a longer campaign.
Not that won't work for a one shot, you know, a convention run or something like that, but for a campaign you could really build that way. You just have to be disciplined as A GM not to tip your hand.
Speaker E
00:40:44.306 - 00:41:10.584
We keep saying campaign. I could not run this for a long period of time.
For me this is a maybe eight to 10 sessions, depending on how long your sessions are and then I'm done because it's too depressing.
And unless you're gonna let them find a spaceship and go explore the galaxy at the end of it, I don't see it getting better if you're on a prison planet anytime soon.
Speaker B
00:41:10.672 - 00:41:44.392
Yeah, we'll have to realize the actual remainder of the trilogy which doesn't currently exist. And there'd have to be a way they would break free and be able to defeat them.
And I'm not clever enough to guess what our authors here are planning on Daniel Abram and Ty Frank. They wrote like nine books of the Expanse. They've written giant long running plots. So I have faith that they'll eventually get to that point.
But I don't know where they're going right now. And I agree anything more than a couple of sessions in this sort of thing without a potential payoff later would not be fun to run for.
Speaker D
00:41:44.496 - 00:42:46.272
Well, one thing that's interesting though. First of all, we got a little hint because they call it the Captives War trilogy and the word war is in there.
So I'm going to guess that there's going to be some and stuff happening. But what's actually fun with this idea and this could go for anything.
You could do this with a Star wars or whatever, but having just the first book as your foundation and then being able to go wherever after that.
Like imagine you ran this campaign, right, and say it took you a dozen sessions to get to this end of the book, as it were, right to that same spot in the story. You don't have a second book. The GM doesn't have a second book.
The players are free then based upon all of this foundational information to do the next thing. It would be like running a Star wars campaign where you say only a New Hope is canon. And he. And here you guys are. Go.
So that's an actually interesting idea to have just the beginning established in a situation like this and then be free to build it out as the GM and do whatever you want as the players, you know.
Speaker E
00:42:46.296 - 00:43:01.584
And I suggested something like that when we were talking about system that GURPS would be a great way of being able to go whatever they want. I just don't think I personally could do a game this. There would be a tonal shift when we left the book in the rear view mirror for me.
Speaker B
00:43:01.672 - 00:43:11.520
Yeah, I think there would have to be, unless you had a very particular group of players who really, really enjoyed being brutalized and that was something they wanted to work with as a group.
Speaker C
00:43:11.640 - 00:43:14.620
That's a different kind of role playing. We're not talking about.
Speaker B
00:43:17.050 - 00:43:22.642
Everybody. Everybody has their own thing that they want to do. And I'm not going to yuck anybody's yum. It wouldn't be my thing.
Speaker C
00:43:22.746 - 00:44:53.550
I do want to say, though, about that, I think there is something, and it's hard because I think the role playing genre is sort of oriented around I'm Conan the Barbarian, I can be nothing, and then I'm going to be the king of the Empire at the end of my run. Sometimes you can play characters that they don't become the president. Right. They stay a detective in New York.
They stay a one wizard among a hundred in a particular city state. Right. You don't have to become the archmage of the world. And sometimes you're just a. You're not the main character of the heroic saga.
And that still can be amazingly fun. It is a different trope than the stereotypes and the most of the templates we have for how games go. And this could be like that.
I don't think it's ending up that way. It's.
It's like you said, the clues are hinting that that might not be the case, but they could just be people observing these amazing events and having cool adventures along the way as they do. Right. So that's just a.
I'm just saying that to throw in that it doesn't always have to go the way that the characters become emperor or the best fighter in the world. They can sometimes just be people that have a profession and have a thing and they have cool adventures. I'm not committed to that.
I'm just saying that I have seen games run very successfully like that.
Speaker B
00:44:53.930 - 00:46:52.828
That's a great place to end our discussion about stuff we'd be stealing and using from the book. And let's move on to media. What other media, books, TV shows do you think would be similar enough to this or would have aspects of the Mercy of Gods?
I'm going to start this one because I think I have the least to say. This book is very much outside of my usual reading, so thank you for making me read it. I would not have picked this up as a usual thing. I'm.
I'm not as much of a hard sci fi guy to start with, and it was very hard to sort of be in this world, but I did get stuff out of it. So that. That was really cool.
As I mentioned a couple of times, I think I found a way to sort of relate this to other things that I've read where I related the completely amoral, weirdly thinking aliens to the fae, which brought me to Rivers of London, which they're fair, a little bit more human. Ish. There's some elves that exist a little later in that series that have this feeling. So it is loosely related.
I just also read a short story called A Matter of Execution by Nicholas and Olivia Atwater which has fae in it that are terrible and powerful and had something to do with a now defunct empire. But this was in a fantasy slash, kind of steampunky with airships setting. And this was after they had been either banished or left.
It's only the first novella, so I don't know a whole lot of how it's going to eventually. But it did make me think about what would be the after effect of those creatures who were there.
Because many of the characters, whenever they were asked about these fairy characters, had this deeply terrified feeling about them. Which is what we definitely got from the Carricks here. So those are my recommendations.
The Rivers of London series by Ben Aronovitch and A Manner of Execution by Nicholas and Olivia Atwater. Sean, you want to give us your recommendations next?
Speaker D
00:46:52.934 - 00:46:53.296
Sure.
Speaker E
00:46:53.368 - 00:47:35.914
I thought Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. The lead character there, Piranesi is in this world. He doesn't really understand there are dangers there that he's sort of figured out.
But there are always new ones. When he meets somebody, some of them, he starts off thinking that they trustworthy and then over time sort of that erodes.
And it had that same sort of stranger in a strange land type feel to it, but with a little bit of who do you trust thrown in on the side. I don't know if it would work great as a setting for a future game, which is what's going to throw it out here.
It had some interesting parallels to the feeling I get of the humans on this alien world.
Speaker D
00:47:36.002 - 00:48:41.800
There is no shortage of alien invasion television shows and things. But I think the one that's probably the least well known because it didn't do great, but that feels like. This is called Colony.
It's very much like in Falling Skies they basically obliterate the planet and then it's all post apocalyptic. And in V they want to eat us and stuff. But Colony is. This is about control and integration, forced integration and is very imperial.
And I think that feels more like the mercy of Gods. At least the general attitudes of the aliens.
But as far as great aliens in space opera in general, because I think one of the strengths of Mercy of Gods is it's really interesting aliens and really interesting alien minds. Mindset that we've talked about is Adrian Tchaikovsky has created some very, very interesting alien species and peoples and societies.
And in particular for this purpose I would go with Shards of the Earth. It's the final architecture book number one.
It's got some very strange aliens in it that reminded me a little bit about of the Carracks and their servant races.
Speaker B
00:48:42.860 - 00:49:01.568
Another really great book that has really great aliens. I would recommend the Tinkered Stars series by Gail Carrick. The first book is called the Fifth Gender.
They have some really great aliens in there, a little bit of romance on top of all that, which makes everything really interesting. But that's a really great set of aliens. Alex.
Speaker C
00:49:01.664 - 00:50:45.208
I have two thoughts on that. One of them is Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. It's one of the books of the Southern Reach novels.
And those set of books are basically, if you don't know them, a set of books about something alien impacts our world. I don't want to do spoilers on it, but it's. There's an alien environment that appears on our planet and it's about people investigating that.
And the feel of it is very cosmic horror ish.
But it's also very much normal people struggling with extraordinarily alien things and having to make difficult decisions in the face of that alienness. And so I like that set of book as has a parallel for me thematically.
The other thing is the later books in the Rendezvous with Rama series with author C. Clarke. I'm not sure how great they are. The first book is amazing, right? But the.
The latter books though have very much a case of humans who are completely out of their element, dealing with entirely formed cultures and alien species that have motivations that are very obvious to the aliens and you slowly learn about those things. But they're alien to the way humans think of things.
And the humans end up just being guests, slash, prisoners, slash caught up in a giant war between these aliens. And so I thought the Rendezvous with Rama series is very good. Overall. It's just a. What Arthur C. Clarke is just brilliant.
And as you start to get introduced these, this interstellar civilization, the humans as sort of bit players in it I think is a very fascinating aspect.
Speaker B
00:50:45.384 - 00:50:52.760
Everyone's done a fantastic job. Does anyone have anything that you're doing game wise that you want to tell the people in the audience. You want to plug something?
Speaker C
00:50:52.880 - 00:51:22.138
Several of us are involved with Rising Phoenix Gaming Con, which is a gaming con really by players, by GMs, for players and for GMs. We really love the art of playing. And it's this year we're doing April 25th to 27th.
And if you go to rising phoenixgamecon.com you can get the link to register and sign up. And we'd love to see everyone there. It's going to be really fun. And we also have some amazing panels on topics like this.
Speaker B
00:51:22.194 - 00:51:23.162
Yeah, excellent.
Speaker D
00:51:23.226 - 00:51:32.950
You can always go to my Amazon page. I've got a couple. I've got a short story collection and a novel up there and I'd love it if people would read those things. That'd be great.
Speaker B
00:51:33.980 - 00:51:35.332
I was gonna say, how would they.
Speaker D
00:51:35.356 - 00:51:41.000
Find Author page for Ian Eller? I bet we. I bet I can give you a link and you can put it in the show notes.
Speaker B
00:51:41.980 - 00:51:47.508
That would be fantastic. Sean, you said something about working with another podcast?
Speaker E
00:51:47.604 - 00:52:03.110
Oh yeah, no, I'm on the Skype of Cthulhu podcast. We have a thousand plus episodes in the bank. But I. I'll also be at Rising Phoenix.
In fact, Alex and I are giving a freewheeling presentation, just the two of us screwing around. So it's worth the price of mission just for that.
Speaker A
00:52:05.330 - 00:53:09.120
And that's our discussion of the Mercy of gods by James S.A. corey.
You can find a complete transcript of today's book club discussion as well as links to our podcasts@k squareproductions.com GMBC and you can follow the Game Masters Book Club on blue sky at gmbookclub bsk.social, on Facebook @gamemasters book club and on YouTube @gamemasters book Club. Just a quick note. Thanks to my slowness as an audio editor, the Rising Phoenix game convention mentioned in the podcast is already passed.
But fear not, it will return to Massachusetts next April. Stay tuned for details. Thank you to this week's Game Masters Ian, Sean and Alex.
Look for them to return when the book club analyzes the Black God's Drum by Pjeli Clark. Continued, thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our music.
Later, gamers, and to paraphrase the great Terry Pratchett, always try to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.