Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a novel written using the English language. It was written by J.K. Rowling, who has also written several other novels.

As far as the novel goes, it has a nice cover featuring a picture of Harry Potter on a broom. It wraps-around fully and even goes onto the inside flaps. It’s rather whimsical and is one of the reasons that I bought the book. The book is a 6″ x 9″ hardcover with a glue binding. The type is very legible in 12-point Adobe Garamond. The interior art is all pencil drawn and of decent quality. I have seen better in other books, but it’s not bad. The margins are fairly large and the type is widely spaced. I did not notice any problems with proofreading.

On the contents. The inside covers are blank and navy blue in color. The first page contains the title, then there’s another page with title, author, and illustrator. The third page contains the copyright notice followed by a table of contents. There are seventeen chapters.

On page 9, the action starts. Harry Potter is a young boy who has been orphaned. This goes on for 17 pages, then we skip ahead a decade or so. Things proceed in a linear narrative from that point forward.

At the end of the book, there’s a couple pages detailing the type font and various other credits.

Overall, the novel was quite good. The format is a bit worn (young hero does heroic stuff), but there is a good mix of mystery and magic to offset this. It is supposed to be the first in a series of novels focused on Harry Potter, so the characters should see some much-needed development in the future.

I recommend this novel and await the next installment.

There are quite a few science fiction franchises out there (notably Star Trek) which feature progenitor species which “seed” planets with their genetic code, resulting — millions of years later — in a bunch of intelligent humanoid species who can all interbreed with each other.

That is not how evolution works.

But I’ve figured it out: Whenever a progenitor species talks about “seeding” their genetic code, what they’re actually talking about are mitochondria. We don’t realize it, but mitochondria are actually heavily designed pieces of biotech with significant subspace extrusions undetectable by modern science. They are specifically designed to tweak bipedal humanoid forms to Progenitor-style intelligence. When Progenitor-style intelligent species mate, the mitochondria are also responsible for making sure that viable offspring are possible.

Hmm… that’s technobabble? Yeah. Welcome to Star Trek.

True roleplaying — in which you pervasively portray and deeply immerse yourself into a character who is not yourself — is a difficult art. There are people who literally spend years studying and mastering improvisational acting. And quite a few of those people would look at the challenge of performing at a dining room table while simultaneously rolling dice to be a very high hurdle to clear.

On the other hand, I’m not a big fan of drenching this sort of thing in mystique. Plus, even untrained high school students can climb up on stage and perform. Just because you can’t consistently produce material like Matt Damon does in Saving Private Ryan (the entire story of his brothers was improvised) doesn’t mean you should just throw in the towel.

With that being said, I usually don’t worry too much about this on Day One with new players: If they want to play an avatar of themselves, no problem. If they want more than that, then a properly constructed set of rules, the example of other players, and their own creativity will lead them into it.

But when you come to second day of roleplaying, you might want to reach for something a little more daring. And that’s when you might discover that capturing the totality of a personality which isn’t yours can be a daunting task. It may seem too immense or you may not know where to begin. Even if you do manage to get a grip on the character, it can be easy for it to slip away once you actually start playing the game (and that can be really frustrating).

When that happens, this is my advice: Instead of jumping into the deep end and getting overwhelmed, start with a small, concrete checklist of “touchstones” that you can use to connect with your character.

Pick three touchstones. Focus on those.

For example:

1. Pick a single personality trait. (Think of it in concise terms, but you may benefit from not making it completely generic. For example, instead of just saying “greedy”, you might say “greedy, but will always give a coin to a child in need”. Focus on finding opportunities when you can make active choices based on that personality trait. Also focus on never acting contrary to that personality trait.)
2. Pick a physical mannerism. (This shouldn’t be flamboyant and it doesn’t have to be particularly fancy or complicated. In fact, the simpler the better. Something like “he drums his fingers” or “he scowls when he has to think hard about something” or “he likes to wink while giving a thumb’s up”.)
3. Create a catch-phrase. (It doesn’t necessarily have to be a specific phrase (which could easily get worn out and boring), but perhaps make it some core concept. For example, Conan often swears to Crom. He doesn’t do it all the time and it often takes different forms, but it’s a persistent element of his character. As a bard, you could pick some famous songwriter or storyteller who inspires you.)

While keeping those touchstones in mind, just keep doing what you’re doing now. But whenever it’s appropriate, hit one of those touchstones: Drum your fingers on the table. Or demand the choicest share of treasure. Or mention that “a beast like this was described in the song s of the legendary bard Moranth”.

Of course, don’t feel as if your character has to be limited to those things. But these are your touchstones: Focus on achieving them and let the rest take care of itself for awhile.

It won’t be long before you start to feel the character “settle in” around those touchstones. Over time, the character will become deeper and richer. But whenever you feel the character “slipping away” again, simply reach for one of your touchstones to find your way back.

This was originally posted as a response to a comment by Pasquale, but I thought it might interest a larger audience.

Transhuman Space has earned a reputation as a rich and magnificent setting… which is also almost completely impenetrable to players and incredibly difficult for GMs to run. Pasquale asks whether or nor the Between the Stars campaign structure could be used to crack open Transhuman Space.

The primary problem with Transhuman Space is that the complexity, depth, and density of the setting requires a heavy upfront investment from the players.

To give a basis of comparison:

My open table OD&D campaign relies almost entirely on common knowledge. If a player knows what an elf, dwarf, halfling, and wizard are, I can provide a functional basis for understanding the game world in about 60 seconds.

My dedicated 3.5 campaigns set in the Western Lands are a bit more involved: I have an 8 page handout (half of which consists of practical lists like “gods you can choose”, “languages you can choose”, etc.). It probably requires about 5-10 minutes from the players, with another 30 minutes or so dedicated to character creation.

Transhuman Space, on the other hand, doesn’t have a lingua franca of common genre tropes to fall back on. It is a very specific, very complex, and very deep setting. In order for most characters to function coherently in such a setting, the players need to have a specific, complex, and deep understanding of the setting.

Basically, a setting like that often requires that the players read most of the setting book for themselves. That requires hours of investment, and I’ve found that most players won’t commit it.

To make things worse, Transhuman Space was primarily designed to be an interesting setting for the sake of having an interesting setting, without any real consideration or focus given to the types of stories/games that can be told in that setting.

So, to answer Pasquale’s question at long last: Yes. I think you could use a structure similar to “Between the Stars” as a solution to both problems.

It’s been about 10 years since I read Transhuman Space, so take any specifics with a grain of salt, but the general approach I would take would look something like this:

(1) Set the PCs up as the crew of a tramp freighter. These vessels, due to their relative isolation and the difficulty of maintaining network connections and advanced tech on a mobile platform, end up being a lot more culturally conservative than the rest of the solar system. (In other words, their crews cleave a lot closer to early-21st century norms, so the players don’t have to “reach” as far to understand their characters.)

(2) The scenario structure needs to be tweaked somewhat to accommodate interplanetary travel instead of interstellar travel, but the basic principle of “key to the voyage” should still work.

(3) I would key each voyage to reveal some specific facet of the Transhuman Space setting. (Over time, therefore, the campaign would slowly introduce your players to its intricacies one chunk at a time.)

In terms of keying, this can actually be quite liberating. Flipping through the setting book randomly and just grabbing stuff off the page, for example, gives me:

A large group of executives from Nanodynamics is travelling to a base in the outer system to inspect the installation of zero-gee nanofabrication tools. But they’re being targeted by pro-union terrorists from the recently acquired Exogenesis Systems Technologies. (see page 95)

A poorly secured microbot swarm breaks loose in the ship’s cargo hold.

The crew is hired to make the long haul out to Miranda with 3HE mining supplies. There’s a spy onboard trying to figure out what China’s real intentions are for the Miranda colony. (see page 48)

A Felician combat bioroid sneaks onboard in an effort to escape her contract. A corporate hunting team, however, is trying to track her down. And since the Felician killed their captain, they may be more interested in vigilante justice than fulfilling their contract. (see page 116)

And so forth.

It might also be useful to check out “Getting the Players to Care“, which is primarily about how to parcel and structure exposition so that it’s not boring or overwhelming.

Something I’ve spent literally years struggling with as a GM is transitioning from one scenario structure to another within a dungeoncrawl.

Let me see if I can clarify that:

I find it really easy to switch scenario structures at the same time that the venue of action is being switched: If the PCs enter the dungeon, we swap to dungeoncrawling. If they seek out a specific character in a tavern we roleplay that conversation; if they exit the tavern and then start hitting the streets looking for information we handle that a different way.

After a few false starts as a neophyte GM, I also eventually found it relatively easy to switch scenario structures within most venues: Renting rooms at a local tavern is handled at one level of abstraction, but when they wake up in the middle of the night to find the tavern haunted by ghosts we switch to a different structure.

These days, this sort of thing is pretty much automatic for me. But swapping structures in the dungeon still routinely thwarts me.

The type of structure I’m talking about is mainly the one found in adventures like Night Below or Thunderspire Labyrinth: A large, underground complex in which there are isolated pockets of “interest” which are designed to be run as a room-by-room crawl.

For awhile, I thought it was the difficulty of presenting meaningful navigation choices to the players in these environments. But once I came to think of them as “underground wildernesses”, this wasn’t a problem any more.

No, the primary problem was the transition from the room-by-room crawl to the underground wilderness (or vice versa): When the PCs enter a room with three exits and two of them lead to another room but the third leads to the more abstract labyrinths of the wider complex.

I mean, it’s relatively easy to just do it. But it’s more difficult to do it effectively.

Partly it’s the difficulty of finding a smooth narrative description of the shift. Mostly, however, it’s the damage to roleplaying and immersion caused by the imposition of the metagaming structure on the decision-making of the characters.

See, in most other circumstances it’s either the passage of time, the changing of circumstance, or the decision of the characters to do something different which smoothly transitions us from one game structure to another: But not so in this case. Circumstances remain unchanged and the PCs are making the exact same type of decision they’ve been making for the past twenty rooms… but suddenly the scenario structure is changing.

And, like I say, this can be handled pretty simply by saying to the players “we’re switching structures now” (or some equivalent thereof). But that has consequences on the decisions they’re making. (As a simple example, if I didn’t tell them “all the rooms beyond this point are empty, so we’re going to be switching to underworld exploration” then they might waste time searching those empty areas… which might have an impact when they return to the occupied rooms.)

In a lot of ways, this is all a mountain out of a molehill because it just doesn’t come up that often. But it’s something that my recent discussion of using multiple scenario structures has brought to mind.

Recently, though, I had an interesting discovery in my Ptolus campaign. Part of the vast megadungeons beneath that city are immense labyrinths built by the warlord Ghul. Ghul’s Labyrinth is filled with a number of bluesteel doors which are extremely difficult to bypass (being resistant to knock and lacking any normal lock to pick).

And these doors have proven to be ideal transition points between dungeon scenario structures because they’re natural transition points within the game world: Not only do they require a significant decision on the part of the PCs in order to pass through them, but they were actually built by Ghul to logically divide his demesne.

All of this, of course, ties back into the larger issues of making sure that your players’ decision within a scenario structure are associated with the decisions of their characters: Something I not only aesthetically prefer, but which is absolutely necessary if the scenario structure is actually unknown to the players.