This scenario for Magical Kitties Save the Day is designed to be run in 20 minutes as an ultra-fast introduction to the game or as a fun micro-game for any occasion.

For players new to Magical Kitties Save the Day, you’ll want to prep a quick introduction to the system and give them a system cheat sheet. The scenario can be played with pregen characters, but character creation for Magical Kitties Save the Day is so quick and easy that you can easily include character creation in a short session.

If you’re comfortable with a little improvisation (or want to do a little extra prep), you can expand this to a 30-minute scenario by playing out the kitties discovering their missing human and tracking them to Dewberry Park.

THE PROBLEM

Pick whichever kitty’s Human is most likely to be kidnapped by an evil Witch. A young child is thematically most appropriate, but the following text can be easily adapted to the particulars of any given Human and their Problem:

Your Human disappeared while on their way home from school. You’ve been worried sick about them. After speaking with some squirrels over on the 7^th Street, however, you’ve tracked them to a small copse of trees that lies on the far side of Dewberry Park.

The land sort of dips down back here. You’ve probably been down here dozens of times, but this time it’s different: Huddled into a little clearing near the center of the trees is a quaint little hut. It has a thatch roof and a chimney from which a thin stream of smoke is drifting out. A raven perches at the top of the roof.

THE WITCH’S HUT

A witch has kidnapped the kitty’s Human. This is her hut. The raven is her familiar and he’s looking for trouble; he’ll squawk and raise the alarm if he sees anyone approaching.

GETTING IN

• There’s a door on the front of the hut and a shuttered window on the back wall.
• Generally speaking, make it a Difficulty 4 task to get into the hut without being noticed. (Even on a failure, the kitties might still get in, but get noticed by the Witch or the raven.)

INSIDE

• If not disturbed, the Witch is stirring a big, bubbling cauldron of some purple liquid.
• Nearby, the kitty’s Human has been tied to a chair and gagged.
• A fire is burning in the fireplace. There’s various shelves with books and animal skulls and cobwebs and everything else you’d expect a witch’s hut to have.

THE WITCH

• Cute Defense: 4
• Cunning Defense: 4
• Fierce Defense: 5
• Owie Limit: 3

Reactions:

• Whack: Causes 1 Owie
• Turn Into a Frog: The kitty’s Attributes are all reduced to 1 and they cannot use magical powers until turned back or the spell wears off (at the end of the scene). However, they do gain the Talents of “Jumping” and “Slippery.”
• Other Hexes: The GM should improvise any other spells as appropriate.

THE WITCH WITHDRAWS

When the kitties have successfully thwarted the Witch’s schemes, the doors and windows on the hut slam shut and it grows four bird-like legs. The legs lift it high into the air and then the whole hut goes sprinting away. If appropriate, the Witch cries out with a hideous, cackling laugh, “I’ll be back, my little kitties!”

This scenario for Over the Edge is designed to be run in 20 minutes as an ultra-fast introduction to the game or as a fun micro-game for any occasion.

For players new to Over the Edge, you’ll want to prep a quick introduction to the system and give them a system cheat sheet. The scenario can be played with pregen characters, available on the Atlas Games website, but character creation in Over the Edge is so fast-and-furious that you can easily include character creation in a short session.

If you want to give the scenario a little more room to breathe, you can expand it to a 30-minute scenario by playing out the mission briefing and/or the team’s survey of the site.

MISSION BRIEFING

You are working as a Cloak – a secret agent in the service of one of the many conspiracies crawling over the surface of the Edge. Perhaps you serve many masters. Whatever the case may be, you have received a mission from the Order of the Inverted Compass: A clockwork capsule that slips into your ear, plays a mechanically recorded message (like a music box; any digital medium would be insecure), and then vaporizes (which creates a weird, ticklish, buzzing sensation in your ear canal and which you have been assured will probably not give you cancer).

At 2pm sharp today, a semi-truck belonging to the InMech Corporation will drive west down the Boulevard de Lis in the Flowers District. Hijack the truck by many means necessary and deliver its cargo to Dropoff Alpha B21 Blackjack.

You know that the Flower District on the west side of the Edge is pretty vanilla: Lot of burgers (newcomers) find it comfortingly normal. A little poking around identifies the Boulevard de Lis as lying north of the Plaza of Flowers: It’s one block long, lined on both sides by three-storey tall brownstones, and terminates in a T-intersection on both ends.

BOULEVARD DE LIS

At 2pm sharp, an interdimensional portal opens at the east end of the block. The truck drives out of the portal, down the length of the Boulevard de Lis, and (if it is not stopped) through a second interdimensional portal that opens at the opposite end of the block.

THE TRUCK

• The InMech Corporation logo is blazoned across both sides of the trailer.
• The cab windows are so heavily tinted that you can’t see inside.
• The truck is driven remotely: A robotic lump sits in the seat, with a camera on a tripod jutting up and swiveling around.

THE BACK OF THE TRUCK

• There’s a big padlock securing the back of the truck. (Difficulty 1)
• Inside the back of the truck is a cryogenic coffin containing the offspring of one of the Roswell aliens. You can see her through the window on the top of the coffin: She’s wearing a “Britney Bitch” Britney Spears t-shirt from 2007. (She’s the cargo, in case that wasn’t clear.)

HIJACKING

• Whatever plan the PCs come up with to hijack or stop the truck is probably Difficulty 2.
• The truck defends itself by popping a laser gun on a waldo-like extension out of a concealed compartment from the side of the cab (just above the rear view mirrors). Difficulty 3 to avoid getting shot, but only Difficulty 1 to knock it out of action.

PDF EDITION FOR PATRONS

A couple weeks back, when I was chatting with Baron de Ropp for Dungeon Masterpiece, we had a fun little idea for a unique (and slightly kooky) way to think about roleplaying characters, particularly if you’re a GM who needs to roleplay a bunch of different characters in every session.

Before we can dive into that, though, I want to have a quick word with the people reading this who are looking for the One True Way™ of roleplaying games, because that’s an attitude that can create a lot of cognitive dissonance here on the Alexandrian, where my philosophy is much more about finding the Right Tool For the Job™. There are lots of different techniques you can use while playing a character, prepping a scenario, or running a game, and I’m far more interested in adding new tools to my toolbox and learning new ways to use the tools I already have than I am in trying to raise one of those techniques onto a pedestal.

Nevertheless, I still see people trying to use node-based scenario design for everything and getting frustrated when it doesn’t work. Or getting confused when I talk about how to structure a linear campaign, because I’m “supposed” to be the Oracle of Sandboxes. Or deeply angry with me because I know that Once Upon a Time and Eclipse Phase can’t be played in the same way.

The reason I say all this is that I’m really hoping you can approach this article as a fun little way to think about roleplaying. I think there’s some cool stuff to discover thinking about roleplaying this way, but I really doubt that’ll happen if we get stuck trying to think of it as the One True Way™ of roleplaying our characters.

SPELL COMPONENT ROLEPLAYING

The Universal NPC Roleplaying Template is a tool for efficiently describing significant NPCs in your campaign, organizing the information in a consistent format that (a) makes it easy to pick up and quickly start playing the NPC, while (b) making sure you don’t miss any details that are essential for the current scenario.

One section of this template is literally “Roleplaying.” I recommend including two or three bullet points here, each describing a distinctive trait of the character that you can use to bring them to life. The idea is that each trait provides a “hook” that you can very easily reach out and grab, giving you a quick grip on the character.

For maximum effectiveness, I further recommend that each trait be significantly different from the NPC’s other trait. A distinctive physical mannerism, for example, is great, but three different mannerisms may be more difficult to use or they might turn into a bit of a muddle compared to, for example, having both a physical mannerism and a unique accent.

This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, of course. But it’s a useful guideline.

But how can we know if two traits are sufficiently different? And is there anything that could help us brainstorm different roleplaying traits?

Well… An accent would be a verbal trait. A nervous twitch, on the other hand, would be a physical one. Or, instead of “physical,” we could say somatic.”

… can we classify roleplaying traits as if they were D&D spell components?

Of course we can.

VERBAL COMPONENTS

When we talk about roleplaying, we often default to the verbal components. Since we’re all sitting around a table (or in a group call) talking to each other, this makes a lot of sense.

Furthermore, a lot of attention — probably too much attention — is given to accents and other “funny voices.” Obviously, though, if you can affect a wide range of distinct vocal personalities, use those as appropriate.

You don’t need to be able to do full-blown voices or accents, though, to vocally distinguish characters. You can often create a very distinct and memorable voice for an NPC by just focusing on a single vocal character, such as:

• Pitch (a voice deeper or higher than you normally speak)
• Speed (slower or faster than your normal speech)
• Volume (e.g., always speaking in a raspy whisper)
• Vocal tic (e.g., rolling your R’s, a lisp, or stutter)

A distinctive pattern of speech can also be useful. A classic example of this Yoda is. Alternatively, you might have a character who:

• Almost always responds to a question with another question.
• Yells when they’re lying.
• Says, “Don’t you think?” whenever they finish speaking.

This can bleed over into having an actual catchphrase or unique turn of speech. For example, I played a pulp detective named Jack Hammer who liked to refer to his punches as jackhammers — e.g., “Have a taste of my jackhammers!” On another occasion, I had an elf noble who said, “Let the wizard speak!” so often that it became a running joke in the campaign.

Alternatively, you can boil this down to a single, distinctive favorite word. Pick something exotic or esoteric — perhaps even something from a foreign language (e.g., a Russian who always says “Nyet”) — and then find every opportunity you can to drop into the character’s dialogue. Distinctive epithets are great for this. For example, if I say, “By Crom!” you likely instantly know who I’m talking about.

SOMATIC COMPONENTS

Even though we’re just sitting around the table talking, there’s still a wide range of physicality you can use to embody a character.

The most basic somatic component is a physical gesture:

• Stroke your chin
• Pull on your earlobe
• Tap you nose
• Wink
• Tug your braid
• Drum your fingers on the table
• Scratch your elbow

The possibilities are almost endless! And take note that the gesture doesn’t have to be large or gaudy. Subtle gestures, in fact, can be even more useful because they can often be repeated more frequently without becoming tiring.

Another option is a physical tic, which is similar to a gesture, but is usually involuntary.

Posture can also be a powerful option. Think about how you’re sitting in your chair, where you hold your hands, and the inclination of your head.

I really like having a distinct somatic component for each NPC, because it not only provides a clear signal to the players for who’s talking; it’s also a great way for you to jump into character: Just hunch your shoulder like Rodrigo or give Roberta’s sly wink and you’ll instantly slip into the role.

If you’re struggling to come up with a somatic component for a character, think about each part of the body – head, face, neck, torso, shoulders, arms, legs, etc.: How could you use it? Move it? Touch it?

MATERIAL COMPONENTS

Material components probably the last thing most tabletop gamers think about when roleplaying, but they can pack a big punch when you can figure out how to use them. For example, when running Trail of Cthulhu games set in the ‘30s, I’ll often buy a pack of candy cigarettes. Invoking the ubiquity of smoking really brings the time period to life, and cigarettes offer a huge range of characterization — from femme fatales gracefully asking for a light to gambling addicts with nicotine-stained fingers to a nervous witness who can’t keep the cancer-stick steady in their hands.

You probably don’t want to haul around a huge chest full of objects and need to go digging through it every time a new NPC pops up, of course, but small, handheld props can provide a great touchstone for a special character: The henchmen who rolls a coin across his knuckles. The nervous damsel in distress clutching her rosary.

Keep in mind that you don’t need the perfect prop: Proxies are perfectly acceptable, whether it’s a modern quarter standing in for a fantasy gold piece or a convention lanyard serving as an ersatz rosary.

Similarly, when improvising characters, be aware of the props and proxies and you’re already carrying: Got a wedding ring? Great! The witness can be nervously spinning theirs. Wanna smoke? Light up a pencil. The archvillain should be peering at the PCs through a ruby? Pick up a d20 and pretend!

The other major category of material component is costumes. These probably need to be used with even more caution than props, and I’m certainly not suggesting you do full-fledge quick-changes at the gaming table. But one or two items you can quickly affect can have a large impact. (I once carried an eyepatch around a convention and roughly half my PCs that weekend used it for impact.)

Even better, don’t forget that you can use the clothes you’re already wearing for effect: The Picard maneuver doesn’t require you to be wearing a Starfleet uniform. Taking off your glasses and slowly polishing them can be a wonderful character affectation, as can be loosening your own tie, tugging at your collar, or snapping the band of your watch.

As a final note, if you’re comfortable doing it, mime can be a great way of invoking material components even if you don’t have any to hand: You can smoke with out a cigarette, tighten a tie you’re not actually wearing, or even gesture with a sword made out of air.

Because, after all, when it comes to roleplaying, the only true limit is your imagination.

Mephits & Magmin is the introductory scenario included in So You Want To Be a Game Master.

By page 45 of the book, if you’re a first-time GM, you’ll have learned everything you need to know for your first session. Then I recommend that you actually do that: Put my book down, get some friends together, and run your adventure adventure. Mephits & Magmin provides the scenario you need to get the ball rolling.

The cartography for the scenario, as you can see above, was done by Fernando Salvaterra.

Four versions of the map can be found below:

• Standard provides a print-able copy of the map for easy use.
• Large is the same map, but at the maximum resolution possible.
• Player is a text-free and secret-free version of the map.
• Player Secrets is the same map, but with the secret Area 06 depicted on the map.

MEPHITS & MAGMIN – MAPS
Standard
Large
Player
Player – Secrets

Most RPGs have a specialized combat system, and most of those have a formal method of transitioning into the combat system. This usually means triggering some form of initiative system:

• In D&D 5^th Edition, everyone makes an initiative check that determines the sequence in which they take turns declaring and resolving their actions.
• In older editions of D&D, side-based initiative determines whether the PCs go before or after the bad guys. (And, during their side’s initiative, the PCs and bad guys can take their turns in any order they want.)
• Infinity and other 2d20 Systems always have the PCs go first (in an order of their choosing), but the GM can spend Heat to have an NPC jump their initiative and take their turn before the PCs’ finish resolving their actions.
• Feng Shui features an initiative check which places each combatant on the shot clock. The clock is then counted down, with characters taking action each time their shot is reached. The action taken reduces their position by a specific number of shots, determining a new position on the shot clock where they’ll take their next action.
• Games like Technoir and Apocalypse World, on the other hand, don’t have a system for determining character order. But when a confrontation occurs (to use a term from Technoir), we enter a formal scene in which a character can’t take a second action until all other characters in the scene have taken an action.

And so forth. Regardless of the particular details, the simple “trigger initiative, start combat” procedure tends to very quickly run into a conundrum during actual play: What about an ambush?

Whether it’s the PCs wanting to ambush some bad guys or the GM wanting to have the bad guys ambush the PCs, this is both a pretty basic strategic consideration and a very common dramatic trope, so it’ll usually pop up pretty quick in the combat-drenched pulp adventures of a typical RPG campaign.

As a result, it’s pretty common for RPGs to also feature a system for surprise, which will determine (a) whether or not a group has achieved surprise and (b) what effect that surprise has.

Once again, there can be a lot of variation in the specific mechanics here, but a pretty typical combination is:

• Making a surprise check (e.g., an opposed Hiding vs. Spot Hidden check).
• Surprised characters being unable to take action during the first round and/or suffering a penalty to their actions or defense during the first round.

Depending on the system (and sometimes circumstance), surprise might be determined for either the individual or the side, but regardless, these two systems – initiative and surprise – are where most RPGs stop.

And, therefore, also where most GMs stop.

STANDOFFS

But it’s not where we’re going to stop.

Let’s consider the classic standoff from cinema: Everyone has drawn their guns. Everyone has their gun pointed at someone else. But no one’s pulling the trigger yet. Tension hangs thick in the air. Maybe there’s a hostage. Maybe one of them is trying to convince the other to join their side.

And then somebody decides enough is enough and they pull the trigger.

Chaos erupts.

But how should we resolve this in the game?

A couple bad solutions that I recommend you avoid:

• “Everybody can see everybody else, so no one is surprised. Therefore we just roll initiative normally.” …and somehow the guy who literally took the initiative by firing first ends up going last.
• “The guy who shot first took initiative, so we should ignore the mechanics and he just makes an attack roll.” Is that fair, though? Everyone was literally watching everybody else with a hair trigger.

The truth is that we already have the structure for resolving this action, because the person breaking the standoff trying to get the drop on everyone else: By taking the first shot they are trying to surprise them.

Therefore, we can use the surprise, then initiative structure that our chosen RPG has probably already given us. The only difference is the nature of the surprise: The shot-taker has already been seen by their opponents; they aren’t trying to physically sneak past them, but rather to surprise them in a different way, so we’ll probably want to use a different skill or ability or when making the surprise check.

In D&D 5^th Edition, for example, I’d recommend using Insight as the key detection skill (since you’re checking to see if they realize the shot-taker is about to pull the trigger), probably opposed by the shot-taker’s attack proficiency.

Similarly, in Call of Cthulhu, you might use a Psychology or Spot Hidden roll vs. the shot-taker’s weapon skill.

If you wanted to flesh this out a bit, you could also do stuff like:

• Encourage characters to get into standoff situations by giving characters who DON’T have a weapon drawn during a standoff disadvantage on their initiative check if hostilities break out.
• If one character has another character at weapon-point, the unarmed character can attempt to draw their weapon by making a Stealth or weapons-skill check. On a failure, the character who has them at weapon-point can initiate combat while automatically gaining surprise. On a success, they now both have their weapons drawn and the standoff continues.
• In a standoff with multiple characters, you must indicate which opponent you’re training your weapon on. You are at disadvantage for noticing anyone else trying to take the first shot. (This encourages the “swapping your gun from target to target” thing you see in the movies.)

But the core point is the simple shift in the known action resolution structure that allows us to accommodate a completely different situation.

Extra Tip: A common complaint about standoffs in D&D is that, unlike a gunshot in real life, a single attack usually doesn’t carry lethal implications. This is true, but is mostly a question of genre. There are films where a standoff has lethal implications, but also plenty of action films and superhero comics where no one in the audience thinks the direct outcome of “guns bared” will be instant death. (And then one step further to the point where the characters are aware themselves that no fight is likely to end in a single shot/blow.) Depending on edition and level, D&D tends to slide along this scale. And that’s OK.

THE LONG KNIVES

We can find another variant by considering a scene in which the PCs are engaged in tense negotiations… but the negotiations are a trap! In the middle of the scene, the NPCs suddenly draw their weapons and launch a surprise attack!

(Or vice versa. PCs can be a wily and untrustworthy bunch.)

Once again, everyone in the scene is aware of everyone else in the scene. They may even be aware that the other side is bearing arms. But they’re not necessarily aware of the imminent threat.

What I’d recommend here would be an Insight vs. Deception check.

If hidden weapons are involved, we could easily prelude this resolution with Spot Hidden vs. Conceal checks to notice that our scene partners are unexpectedly armed. (Perhaps allowing us to take preventative action and/or gaining advantage on our Insight checks.)

By altering the scene a little bit, we can also consider a situation in which we might use multiple action resolution structures simultaneously: For example, if the NPCs have agents sneaking into position on the shadowy balcony above the negotiations so that, when the moment to attack comes, they will draw their hidden weapons at the same time the archers attack from above, then we might test both Insight vs. Deception (against the negotiators) and Perception vs. Stealth (against the archers) to determine surprise.

DUEL

Yet another variation might be the classic duel: Two gunfighters facing off from opposite ends of a dusty road. A pair of fencers formally squaring off. Two aristocrats firing at ten paces.

Surprise, obviously, is not a factor here, so we can discard that structure.

But what about initiative?

We certainly could use a generic initiative check (e.g., opposed Dexterity checks), but is that the best fit for this specific situation?

For example, might it not make more sense for the gunfighters to make a Shooting vs. Shooting check to determine who gets to take the first shot (i.e., wins initiative)?

We could even use this variant in systems that don’t typically use initiative checks. For example, I mentioned that in Infinity the PCs always go first, although the GM can spend a point of Heat to seize initiative. That might not be satisfying in the case of a duel (since it largely boils down to GM fiat), but there’s absolutely no reason we couldn’t use a face-to-face Ballistics test for this.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The central GM tip here is the alternative structures for resolving:

• Standoffs
• Long Knives
• Duels

But there’s also a deeper truth to be explored here in the universal nature of this advice: That the tip isn’t the specific mechanics, but rather the structures for resolving these actions. These are more universal techniques and skills that allow you to apply your skills as a GM across many different systems.

Not every technique will be useful or applicable to every system, of course. But the reverse is also true: Every system gives you an opportunity to learn new mechanics, and then look for the opportunities to vary and leverage these mechanisms to accomplish even more. (Including, often, more in completely different games.)

Once you start thinking in these terms, you can take it one step further by creating a multitude of sub-variants that reflect the specific actions and intentions of the PCs. For example, I suggested that we could use Insight vs. weapons proficiency to determine surprise in a standoff. But:

• “I’m going to take my finger off the trigger and start putting my gun down, but as soon as they relax, I’ll take the shot!” That could be Insight vs. Deception instead.
• “I’m going to create a distraction so that Sasha can take the shot.” That could be Perception vs. weapons proficiency.
• “While everyone’s focused on the gun I have pointed at James, I’m going to pull my hidden pistol and shoot Jason!” Perception vs. Sleight of Hand.

This flexibility within the structure encourages creativity and specificity from the players as they engage with the game world; it makes the mechanics more accurately reflect the game state; and it creates fun variations in how different scenarios play out.

Are there other ways that combat could start? What ruling would you make? How would you resolve it?

FURTHER READING
Random GM Tip: Collecting Initiative
GM Don’t List: Not Writing Down Initiative
Miss-Initiative