GM Screens are one of the strangest products in this industry, and one of the trickiest to review. Think about it: the product is called a GM Screen. But nobody really wants to pay $20.00 for a long piece of cardboard, no matter how glossy it is. So they include extra material along with it. In the case of the BTVS Director’s Screen, that’s 54 pages of extra material. So the added bonus contains all the meat of the product…and yet, the customer is still buying this primarily for the screen. Or are they?
Either way, it’s a bitch to evaluate the product as a whole. So let’s do it in parts.
The screen itself is exceptional. It’s four panels of very rigid A4 that will stand most impressively and implacably on your gaming table. I spent about five minutes throwing D20s at it as hard as I could (ah, the trials of an RPG reviewer) and I couldn’t make it fall over, so it gets my vote for sturdiness as well. The front cover –the side facing the players - doesn’t do a lot for me, but then I’ve never really found such an image that does. I don’t think designers themselves know what people want to see there, while they’re playing the game. Something non-distracting would be top of my list, but also setting the mood and showing an example of the kind of action I want out of my team.
That’s the flaw with this particular image – it’s very static. Only the vague outline of Buffy with a crossbow, shaded into yellow sun-pattern in the centre, shows any signs of action. Over her, is imposed the shadowy face of Spike (why Spike, of all people?). Surrounding them and completing the two centre pages is a collage of all the big stars of Buffy over the years, including Cordy, Oz, Riley and Dawn. Willow has series five hair, for those who care about such things.
On the side panels are two full page pictures of Buffy. The right has her peeking around a blue wall and the colour scheme jars with the rest of the panels (all black background), but at least shows her ready to kill, even if she’s only going after that big, bad wall. The left panel has her getting all winsome and sexy with a gate. This last image is the most atmospheric, in the sense that it would not look at all out of place on the cover of one of the Buffy novels or comic collections. The centre panels also follow this theme. So while it lacked some punch for me, I can see exactly why they went with the images they did – they don’t so much scream “time for more Buffy butt-kicking” as “another fine piece of Buffy merchandise”. In other words, just like the core book, it’s targeted to appeal to the people who buy Christopher Golden novels first, hardcore roleplayers second. And that’s a good thing.
Of course, this is just my reaction. You can see the picture and judge for yourself here: http://www.btvsrpg.com/6001.htm
Flipside time: the side facing the GM has seventeen tables printed on it. By my count, that’s every table in the entire book, and then some. Here’s the list:
The centre panels have the most important of all – the big combat tables. Damage is listed for every weapon in the game, including notes on special effects, likewise for armour. No need to scurry to your books if your players pick up something you hadn’t expected. Combat manoeuvres are on the other side of this, again, every one listed in the rulebook. No scurrying necessary once again. With this baby, you will be devoid of the scurry. In between, a table not in the book appears, covering all the modifiers for things which aren’t manoeuvres, like attacking from behind or ganging up on people. This same table has entries for how to make a hacking roll, or a research roll, and how far you can move in a turn. It’s the ultimate rules cheat sheet, and it’s very impressive. It’s accompanied by a roll modifier table too, should you want to increase the difficulty.
Running combat is also helped by including a full list of ranged combat mods, a turn-order summary, a table of how many additional actions you get, then one for the penalties associated with them, and an injury effects table. On the left panel, we have all the necessary tables for spell casting and fear rolls, and the right is finished off with the all-important success-level table and a summary of drama point usage.
I thought a few things were missing at first, then I just looked harder and realised they were in the rules summary table all along. If you can find something they left off, you’ve got a lot more levels in Notice than I have, gungadin.
So, the screen gets the job done and gets it done well, making the world’s most playable game even more easily playable. Now, let’s turn to the bonus material that comes with it.
This 54-page booklet is designed much like the main rulebook – lots of stills, good art from Ginger Kubic, plenty of funny quotes. The only change is its all black and white, which is understandable, but still a bit of a disappointment after the gorgeous colours of the main book. The pages contain a three-page overview, then four episodes. Episode Zero is a guide to GMing, Episodes 1-3 are adventures.
All of these were written by Mr Paul Chapman. Mr Chapman is not, alas, CJ Carella. In fact, it’s pretty hard to get away from the fact that nobody is CJ Carella except CJ Carella, and thus every Buffy book is going to suffer in comparison to the core rules. So those of you hoping to see the standard of writing in the main rule book continue will, once again, be unavoidably disappointed.
In isolation, however, Mr Chapman is certainly sufficient and readable. It’s just that, as I mentioned in my review of the main rule book, writing Buffy-style is all about walking a tight-rope of post-modern kewlness, where you’re constantly at risk of being too pandering, too self-referential or too silly. Carella is good enough to make sure he never teeters too far into this territory. Chapman is not. So there will be more times (although they will undoubtedly be at different points in the text) where you will make the ugh-face at the turn of phrase or childish pandering. The worst example is when he feels it necessary to explain that the NPC stat boxes all look like the one below, except since they’re about different NPCs, they have different stats in them. Quelle surprise.
But it’s not all like that, and there are moments of insight and wit that are highly redeemable. And part of the problem is the subject matter of the first chapter. GMs advice is always a potential minefield because every tip you provide is going to be new and revelatory to some people - and pathetically old hat to everyone else. The effect is twice as bad, of course, when the product is specifically tailored to people who have never picked up an RPG before. So given that Mr Chapman is walking a tightrope through a minefield, he comes out rather well.
As a seasoned veteran, it’s difficult for me to evaluate the usefulness of the advice in the first chapter; other seasoned veterans will certainly find nothing new, however. Unlike the tightly Buffy-specific advice in the main rulebook, this is purely generic stuff, and all the old chestnuts are rolled out again – like using all five senses to describe scenes, and when to fudge rolls, and how not to kill people because of a dice roll, and how to use local information in your games. The worst suggestion of all is the use of what theatre-sport players call “blocking” to keep players following the plot (if the players want to fly somewhere out of the plot, then all the planes in the entire area are grounded in fog, or whatever). This is a terrible idea that just teaches people to railroad and should never be suggested ever again in any book. Or else.
Again, it’s not all bad news here. For starters, there are plenty of fun ideas that are often left out of guides for beginners, like using dice as misdirection, using props, music and lighting and writing cut scenes. And wonder of wonders, Chapman even manages to include stuff I’d never seen in a GMs guide before. His overarching theme involves knowing your players, and he takes this up to the point of discussing how to read their body language and understand their moods in real life, to better GM for them. Did Bob have a rough day at work today? Then go easy on his character, or centre the plot around him…or, if he’s worn out and just wants to kill things, centre it on someone else who would is more eager and ready for the spotlight that day. All too often, guides to understanding your players focus solely on examining how they play RPGs. Kudos to Mr Chapman for reminding us that this is just a drop in the ocean, and we need to look further afield.
All in all, it’s not the worst GMs guide I’ve read by a long shot, and all but the most grizzled of veterans shouldn’t find it a chore to give it a quick read-through. But don’t worry if you do skip it, because the book improves greatly once we get to the adventures. Each one is broken down into four acts (much like the show, excluding the pre-credits teaser) and each act has three parts: a summary, the action and troubleshooting notes should it all go pear-shaped. It’s simple and effective, and the inclusion of summaries at each stage and at the beginning is most appreciated (and sorely lacking in most adventures), as is putting troubleshooting all in one place instead of bogging down the action with too many possibilities.
Episode One presents “When Giants Clash”. This is (like the two that follow) a refreshingly short and simple adventure, with just four scenes, and could easily be wrapped up in a con session or one night of gaming. The tale involves two vampires who have their wishes granted by the Djinn (more on him later). They ask for more cinematic vampire powers – real super strength, and high powered hypnosis, respectively. On receiving these gifts, they decide to do the only logical thing – re-enact West Side Story. They divide the town in two and start spray-painting their gang colours on every building they can find. Eventually, gang warfare breaks out and risks damaging the norms. The players will have to put these boys down before Bernardo shoots Tommy or Maria sings “I Feel Pretty” and it all gets way out of hand.
Why they chose to enact gang warfare is never satisfactorily explained, neither is why people follow the super-strong vamp so readily (the hypnosis guy mind controls his minions, of course). Easily remedied, though, and if the action stays fast, the players will likely never thing to ask. Scene one has your Scoobies encounter a minor rumble between posses, and ends with the two leaders making their abilities known, and then (in a dash of railroading, alas) escaping into the night. Players hit the books and the streets for a bit and work out that there’s gang warfare going on, and that a big rumble is coming that night at the mall. Players hit the mall and try to stop the norms from dying while the bad guys show off their seven years of classical tap on each other. Some vamps kill each other, the Scoobs do the rest, and our two friendly villains slip away (again) and run down into the sewers to ask the wishmaster to crank up their power levels. Foolishly, the moment of transformation leaves them helpless to avoid a quick slaying, and the adventure spends much time telling you how to deal with this ending – and none on how to avoid it. Assuming you have the good sense to skip that part, the players get medieval on Mr Big (now Mr Very Big) and Mr Hypno (now Mr Your-Puny-Mind-Cannot-Resist-Me-Ha-Ha-Ha). Their powers make for a fun and interesting combat, but nothing that’ll tax your players that much.
In short, this makes for a good, light-hearted episode of Buffy, with lots of potential for gags. Indeed, the highlight of the adventure is the opening scene, in which the Scoobies face the ultimate horror of attending a rally with Eric the All-American Eagle, who wants to tell them that wearing gang colours isn’t cool, and spray-painting things is just downright Un-American. The potential for amusing your players is high, and more importantly, the potential for them to amuse you is also at a premium.
Some may find it too simple, but I’ve always preferred my adventures simple, if only because it’s so much easier to keep the players on track. Still, if you want something more than A-B-C, this isn’t it. The only other flaw in this adventure is that it contains one of the worst pieces of boxed text I’ve ever read (outside a D&D module, that is). It isn’t boxed, thank God, and it is only suggested as an option, but I fear that there are newbie GMs even now reading this drivel to their players instead of finding their own voice. The cut scene is equally unappealing, and will need rewriting. Still, a nip and a tuck here and there and this ends up looking stylish, simple and full of the funny. And the funny is good.
Appearing in this adventure, and the other two, is the Big Bad from the main rule book adventure, the Djinn. Basically, he grants wishes, and those who get them get his mark on them somewhere. He appears in this adventure as a funnelly whirlwind which blows over bottles to make noise. Terrifying. If you wish, he can threaten the good guys at the end, but it’s fairly cheesy and about as scary as a Ferengi invasion. The Djinn certainly is a good explanation for the powers provided, but light-hearted episodes don’t typically deal with Big Bads, so you may want to have another explanation ready.
Episode Two is “All A-Buzz”, and tells the heart-warming tale of a mother insect trying to raise her young in this harsh modern world. Of course, this being Buffy, she’s an eight-foot long demon insect who eats human spinal fluid, and it’s up to the Scoobies to put a stop to it.
Once again, this is a masterpiece of simplicity. We start with a body, and the players hit the books. Scene two provides more kills and more clues. Chiefly, that the bug is attracted to red lights. I think, for once, this is made obvious enough that almost all groups are going to get it, which is such a rare and wonderful thing in published adventures. Scene three occurs when the players figure out a way to fight the bug, with the text striking a good balance between covering some options and pointing out that it’s basically up to the players. It’s quintessential Buffy, really: the beastie seems undefeatable because she has huge stats (this is one bad-ass bug, have the body bags ready if they go mano a mano) and can buzz them at super speed – but as soon as somebody comes up with something like a bazooka (or, this case, a really good net), she’s history.
Scene four is also a nice Buffy tradition of mixing things up. Assuming the momma bug is squished, all the players have to do here is squish all her larvae and destroy her nest in some clever fashion, with the only risk being that they get very slimy and icky in the process. Not much of a climax, you say? But wait, as they say in infomercials, there’s more.
This episode also pays homage to the Buffy formula by encouraging it to be a big subplot episode. As the monster lacks personality, that can instead be drawn out from some deep personal crisis or school event hovering over your PCs. The book of course can’t really know what these are going to be, but instead of copping out or being vague as a result, the text picks four possible examples and shows how they might be developing during each act. It’s still not going to be easy to make it all come together, but if you and your players know the show’s format, the guidelines provided should go a long way to helping you pull it off.
Once again, this adventure features our friend the Djinn. Once again, his sign turns up at the end, and once again he offers one of the lamest villain taunts ever written. My first reaction to the Djinn turning up each time is that it breaks the rules of Buffy writing – the Big Bad should never appear in EVERY episode. Of course he is easily removed, but this episode demonstrates that the Djinn is not quite like most Big Bads. His power to grant wishes, in this case, allows the bug to have a whole brace of larvae and thus need to kill a lot more people; normally they only hunt two or three every fifty years. In other words, the Djinn turns small bad things into big bad things rather than enact his own evil plans. In this respect, he works more like a Hellmouth than a Big Bad. This makes him perfect for any campaign which lacks such a thing, and approaching him as such will make for a better campaign. Take out the taunting and run your series like the first hour of Ghostbusters: every beastie (or every second one, perhaps) gets turned up to eleven, until the PCs realise there has to be some force making the metaphorical Twinkie be suddenly so much larger.
Right about then, the PCs are going to start wondering whether Gozer the Gozerian is coming back to spray them in marshmallow, and if anyone can tell them how to cross the streams. Cue Episode Three, and the man with all the answers: The Bricklayer.
Well, actually, not many of the answers at all. In fact, if the players have been doing their research, there’s little that Raphael Taylor, the principal NPC in this story, can add, and even less he will add. Which means they have even less reason to trust him, or care about his actions. And unfortunately, this adventure is one of those that requires the players to follow the NPC’s plan, right until the moment they realise he’s betrayed them all. This is always a difficult concept for an adventure, because players are naturally distrustful, and tend to keep their distance from NPCs. Getting them hooked into the story is hard enough; getting them to suddenly become best buds with the new kid in town is even harder, and it’s damn near impossible when you’re also trying to drop hints that he isn’t quite all that he seems (so the players don’t feel cheated of having a chance to figure it out).
Act one has the players running into our Bricklayer trading blood for magical talismans with a vampire. When questioned, Taylor explains he comes from an ancient order called the Bricklayers who work to keep beasties outside the universe where they belong. He’s come to town because something is about to happen, and he needs to perform a ritual. And this is ALL he says. If they mention the Djinn, he gets a bit more talkative but the general feeling is that he has to handle this one alone, please stay out of his way.
Now, players are not stupid. They know the plot hook when they see him. But as soon as he becomes stand-offish, they’re going to wonder whether they’ve missed something. A plot hook needs to make the characters care, and the players interested, and a tight-lipped British person telling them to get out of their face does neither. If, by some chance, they continue to pester him and prove their mettle (oh, please, let us help, please mister, please please please), he’ll generously let them go shopping for him – thrilling. If your players don’t want to be monkey boys for some guy who won’t even tell them what he’s doing there – and who can blame them – then the plot suddenly derails, Fugitive-style.
Scene two involves the players shopping for Taylor, tracking down all sorts of weird stuff which could lead to a lot of roleplaying fun. Unless they didn’t care about the guy, in which case they just see him about town, doing his shopping, but there’s no suggestion of what events to be running the players through while they observe this. Too much of your own stuff, and the players might think Taylor is not important this episode. Too little, and you get those sessions where the players wander aimlessly for hours until the clue-meter hits the red zone and only then does it actually get entertaining. Horrible.
Scene three has Taylor bursting in all bleedy and injured and claiming to need help clearing out the vampires who have taken over his ritual site. Players come along and help dust them, then help set up the ritual. Whereupon Taylor reveals they are to be sacrificed, and forces them to step into magic squares to hold them still. He does this by having his vampire goons grab one of the PCs dependants beforehand. Then it’s up to the PCs to find a way out (several clever options are listed) and distract their friendly bricklayer, so that things end with a whimper instead of a bang.
The problem here is that even assuming the players care to begin with, they can rumble Taylor at any point in the proceedings. Of course, he has contingency plans for this, but players are going to feel railroaded if they rumble (or ignore) the bad guy, with time to spare, and still end up being his pawns – no matter how many Drama Points they get for playing along. But without this direction towards the fireworks, this could end rather early and rather anti-climactically. It’s not much of a story if the heroes run the bad guy out of town halfway through
The only saving grace is the presence of the vampires, who need to be dusted regardless. Taylor brings in a large amount of tough vamps to secure his investment (at least twice the number of PCs), so as long as the players reach the ritual site before fixing Taylor’s little red wagon, there will be enough carnage to stop things from fizzling.
In short, while not critically flawed, the Bricklayer will require the most work before the game and the most mental gymnastics during the game to keep it from imploding. When Giants Clash will also require some sweat and contingency plans to get over the two somewhat forced plot-moving events (bad guys slip away). All A-Buzz is probably the best of the three in this regard - although it is still going to require some tinkering to tailor that subplot to your characters. But it’s easier to have your bad guy lead you on a merry chase when said bad guy has wings, I guess. Note to GMs: make sure your players have no ground-to-air missiles. Nor can steal any.
Apart from needing a bit of work, however, they’re very solid. None of them is likely to win adventure of the year, sure, but that’s possibly a good thing. Such awards tend to go to big, thick adventures with scads of background that require hours of prep and months of play. These adventures are short, simple and easy to play around with, plus they can be picked up and run very quickly. This makes them the perfect resource for the harried game master who already has a campaign going on. Best of all, it achieves this without sacrificing plot, drama, roleplaying opportunities or sheer fun.
Indeed, too few adventures are this well balanced. Most on the market are either drowning in excessive background and detail (that the players will never fully find out) or are so generic or sketchy you have to do all the work yourself fitting them into your world. Similarly, plots tend to be either weighty tomes of precisely designed hints, rumours and events paired with a complex network of NPCs for you to cast in a gossamer web of dazzling plotiness, or, far worse, a pathetic exercise in vague hand-waving, as if simply listing a few events and NPCs somehow creates a useful plot form. The problem is that they are often trying to do the impossible: fit your campaign, when they don’t know what your campaign is. So they either go totally generic, or do the total opposite so as to define what your campaign is for you.
I tend to be very harsh on adventures, because I’ve seen far, far too much of the above extremes. But these three adventures walk the line between like good adventures should, managing to be flexible yet directed, well documented but not over-detailed. Yes, some may find them too simplistic. Yes, they occasionally suffer from some lame boxed text, but these are ignorable. Yes, the plots have a few holes, but these are fairly small and easily mended. Yes, they have occasional moments where a GM will have to fix it so as not to require a choice between railroading and anticlimax, but these do not cripple them.
What’s more, all of these flaws are far and away balanced by their strengths. They capture the feel of the show perfectly. They keep the action moving. They include lots of opportunities for jokes and good roleplaying. They go out of their way to cover any problems and prepare you for players going in strange directions. They focus on what the players need to do at each point more than on what the rest of the world might be doing. They strike a great balance between letting the players come up with whatever gets those things done, and providing lots of examples and framework for the GM to adjudicate whatever they choose to do.
And most importantly – and I can’t stress this enough: they’re short. They’re simple. They’re easy. They’re plug and play. Which makes them fun to GM. And they should be a lot of fun for your players. Although Mr Chapman may not be Mr Carella, the same ethos that ran through the core rulebook is present here: the emphasis is on the adventures being as useful as they possibly can be, with the minimum of effort.
In fact, I have not often seen adventures that combine this much simplicity with this much quality outside of a Cthulhu book, or Mistaken Identity for WFRP (still my vote for best adventure ever written). If you also enjoyed Mistaken Identity, this book is for you. If you thought it was too simple and too linear and thought Shadows Over Bogenhafen was far better, this isn’t what you’re looking for. This is for the GMs out there who like it short and sweet. Because these adventures are very clearly short, and very definitely sweet.
Screen:
Substance 5
Style 3
GM Advice:
Substance 3
Style 2
Adventures:
Substance 4
Style 3
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