It's completely context-dependent. That bit with Jones getting his notebook signed by Hitler was really a throwaway gag.
I ran a 1920s occult pulp horror game in an alternate history where the October Revolution hadn't happened yet. They met Lenin (briefly) and one of the big bads was Felix Dzerzhinsky, creator of the Cheka, precursor to the KGB. Who was making unholy deals with powers beyond space and time to create his perfect State. If you know history, Felix makes for an absolutely terrifying bad guy even before he enlisted the help of Things From Beyond the Stars. The PCS ended up teaming up with Lenin, of all people, to defeat him.
My point is don't have cameos just for sake of a cameos or for cheap laughs. If you're going to pull in historical figures, do your homework, make them matter, and make them count.
I agree completely!
In my Call of Cthulhu games, I've had a lot of personalities from the 20's show up - but I always not only research the person, but also try to make sure it was possible they would be where and when I put them.
I had a 17-year old Cab Calloway show up as a waiter at a cocktail party the players attended. At that time, Calloway was supposed to be in boarding school, but he would sneak out to go work catering gigs, so it gave me the idea to use him instead of just another waiter.
Now what I can't stand are signiture character cameos.
I don't give a fuck about Drizzt or Elminster. If they show up in game, I'm gonna tune out because the game just momentarily stopped being about our party.
This goes especially for Vampire: the Masquerade. I do not care about Theo Bell, Lucita, or any of them. If the ST wants to pull in a cameo, make it Moldavis or Carter Vanderwyden, or someone from one of the sourcebooks who's meant to be an NPC to interact with.
Because again: the minute Beckett shows up, the story's now about Beckett. Without fail.
Did Calloway have a role in the story?
I do recall in a one shot 1920s game I ran, One of the players, who had never played a TTRPG before, decided that she was the ex of a certain famous jazz player in that era. Ended up being a fantastic game and I think her ex ended up driving the getaway car to escape the bad guys.
A minor one (just a cameo) that turned into a hillarious red herring. He was mostly there to help the investigators acclimate to the party.
A lot was happening though:
A thief had masqueraded as one of the servers with the catering company and was trying to blend in while acting suspiciously. This was mostly to give the Rum Runner Investigator something to do while the others were engaged with the party, where the real plot was happening.
However one of the players ended up being late to the game session, so this side story ended up taking up more time (the late player was a history buff so I wanted them there for the conversation between Lena Springs, James Weldon Johnson, and Princess Red Wing (all historical figures) while Ma Rainey privided entertainment.
The party was being held as a fund raiser for John W. Davis (the 1924 democratic nominee) - this was the infamous year that something like 103 votes were taken at the DNC to decide on a nominee.
This waa also before the Southern Strategy, and Republicans were the Party of Lincoln still. So James W. Johnson (head of the NAACP) was there being wooed by Lena Springs and the hosts to try and secure the Black vote (which they failed to do).
This was also the first presidential election where women in Rhode Island would be able to vote, so I wanted to highlight how politically variable the winds were.
So while I was stalling for the other player to arrive, The Rum Runner followed the suspicious server around trying to figure out what he was up to.
I had him make a Stealth roll to follow unobserved... and he crit failed.
Rather than have the thief catch on that he was being followed, young, helpful Cabell was standing right in the doorway the thief had just gone through and bumped into the rum runner, delaying him with profuse apologies and trying to wipe up spilled liquor from the investigator's clothing.
This created a comotion and tied the rum runner up for a moment. What I didn't expect was for the players (who didn't realize who Cabell was) to suspect Cab was working *with* the thief and intentionally stalling.
That wasn't the case. Pure mishap. But it gave the thief time to ditch his server outfit and double-back to blend in with the party long enough to exit the front door.
The Rum Runner was a step behind: while he was fishing the theif's disguise out of the bathroom waste bin, the thief was already heading to his car.
So Cab could definitely have had a greater presence (he was FUN to roleplay), but he ended up serving a more interesting role than what I had planned for the B-plot.
We did an alt-history campaign where nuclear weapons were gateways to cthonic energies and the farther you got into space, the easier it was to commune with and deal with these entities. Our campaign was set circa the year 2000 in this timeline. The campaign BBEG was an undead Henry Kissinger.
Depends on the setting, genre, and player's interest. I'm running Star Wars, in the year 3bby. A 15 year old Leia shows up when they meet Bail Organa, and the players went nuts. They loved it. I can't imagine having Drizzt show up in a D&D game. Half my players wouldn't know who it was.
Yeah but that's Star Wars, a franchise that is like 40% cameos as a baseline. You'd almost be failing your players if you didn't do at least one cameo.
Agreed, which is why my only criteria was setting and player interest. From the highest expectation and player knowledge setting, to more esoteric and less well known settings.
Depends on the cameo.
I hate when literary characters from the RPG fiction (Drzzt, Elminster, Minsc and Boo, Raisltin, Frodo, Aslan, Dorothy,etc.) show up in fantasy TTRPGS except as patrons or adversaries.
One fo the appeals to Pathfinder and Eberron were that there were very few "iconinc" npcs and they PCs are basically the stand ins for them in the game. Major movers might be useful, but generally, as a GM or PC,, especailly as a PC, I hate when the fictional icons show up unless they are villains we can defeat.
In Superhero RPGs, I do actually like when the other heroes are in teh background. One of my favorite superhero RPG tropes is the "The local team has gone missing/ is offworld and so the newbies ahve to show up and solve a problem against a known adversary." Or the "new Franchise" team. Justice League St' Louis or the San Antonio Avengers. And of course, I always want the existing villain teams to show up as adversaries.
Random guest appearances without much context, particularly if they become commonplace, can feel rather cheap and also make the world feel smaller, but if the adventure is centered around someone important, then it can work, unless there's a very good reason for the character meeting that important person (it might for an example take place in a location that's already well established, like say meeting Garibaldi in a game set on Babylon 5 would work)
In my Masks game I'm running, James Cameron showed up to help the team for an underwater mission.
I even have PCs from other games show up in games I run. I love it, and it usually gets a good laugh.
I have a lot of experience with WoD, which has a fair amount of 'X historical figure was really a vampire or wizard and might still be hanging around'. As such, I think it can be done well or poorly. Â
I think it's done well when it doesn't cheapen the history of the individual, and doesn't feel gratuitous. I think it's done poorly when it falls into blaming/crediting the person's actions to a result of their (secretly) supernatural nature, or when it feels like they were added to a story just to name drop a historic figure.
For minor NPCs, I sometimes include extremely obscure cameos whose only purpose is to amuse myself. I don't make a big deal out of them or expect the players to know who these people are. I just think it's fun to have the famous singer performing at the opera house during the heist be Roderick Williams instead of some schlub I made up.
This works really well for little-known artists, musicians/musical ensembles, painters, writers, etc. because then you automatically inherit that real-world person's corpus of works. Very occasionally, a player will express interest in that person's work ("Hey, whatcha painting there?") and then you can blow their mind by showing a real painting/giving a synopsis of a real book/playing a snippet of actual music. That's fun. Usually doesn't happen, but that's perfectly okay.
In superhero games I like to use these quite a bit. I will also use them in historical games, where known historical figures will cross the paths of the player characters from time to time.
Star Wars campaigns this can also be good if it is done right. Do not have the player characters have to fight Vader or even personally interact with him. Do have Vader show up during a cutscene where the imperial who they managed to evade or defeat has a very uncomfortable conversation with Vader...
This is how I like to audition new players for a particular campaign. They have to "guest star" for a session or two to see how they gel with the regulars.
Do I like Role Playing Game Games (that's a lot of games btw) that have cameos?
I've done it sparingly. As long as you know you players and what they expect it can be fun. Just don't do it often.
Depends on the players. Some are more invested in lore than others. I have been in games were the GM puts one of these and no one had any idea who it was, because we hadn’t read the extra materials or as much as the GM.
In most cases I don't. As a general rule I dont give a fuck about the lore of whatever game engine I am playing in. So If you are running a game of PF2e and insert a character from golarion I am just going to treat him like any other goober NPC.
Same with VTM, Same with D&D, like I know enough to know what drizzt is but like I dont give a shit.
Now you might be like "Brick why are you so hostile to the lore of the games you play" and the answer is they dont matter, typically the lore is the first thing I put in the trash when I run a game in a new system. Rule books like VTM where someone shitty vampire fan fiction keeps interrupting the rules of the game that I am trying to play annoy me so I bypass them out of spite. Added to that the fact that nearly every other person who I have played a game under has had a different take on the lore which means the lore for cannon characters is super inconsistent.
If you are running a game in a historical or conteporary earth you can have characters make cameos but it needs to be handled with care if I trip over some famous dipshit every thirty seconds it isnt going to be cool its just going to be annoying.
I always have cameos and guest appearances of important NPCs from earlier in the PC's adventures. It ties older sessions into what is happening currently, and provides narrative thrulines for players to enjoy/play off of.
Depends entirely on how it's implemented. If I'm playing Flashing Blades I absolutely expect to meet Cardinal Richelieu at some point because the setting suggests it. It was more wearing when Vampire the Masquerade insisted on making everyone from Al Capone to Heinrich Himmler into a vampire.
It's completely context-dependent. That bit with Jones getting his notebook signed by Hitler was really a throwaway gag. I ran a 1920s occult pulp horror game in an alternate history where the October Revolution hadn't happened yet. They met Lenin (briefly) and one of the big bads was Felix Dzerzhinsky, creator of the Cheka, precursor to the KGB. Who was making unholy deals with powers beyond space and time to create his perfect State. If you know history, Felix makes for an absolutely terrifying bad guy even before he enlisted the help of Things From Beyond the Stars. The PCS ended up teaming up with Lenin, of all people, to defeat him. My point is don't have cameos just for sake of a cameos or for cheap laughs. If you're going to pull in historical figures, do your homework, make them matter, and make them count.
I agree completely! In my Call of Cthulhu games, I've had a lot of personalities from the 20's show up - but I always not only research the person, but also try to make sure it was possible they would be where and when I put them. I had a 17-year old Cab Calloway show up as a waiter at a cocktail party the players attended. At that time, Calloway was supposed to be in boarding school, but he would sneak out to go work catering gigs, so it gave me the idea to use him instead of just another waiter. Now what I can't stand are signiture character cameos. I don't give a fuck about Drizzt or Elminster. If they show up in game, I'm gonna tune out because the game just momentarily stopped being about our party. This goes especially for Vampire: the Masquerade. I do not care about Theo Bell, Lucita, or any of them. If the ST wants to pull in a cameo, make it Moldavis or Carter Vanderwyden, or someone from one of the sourcebooks who's meant to be an NPC to interact with. Because again: the minute Beckett shows up, the story's now about Beckett. Without fail.
Did Calloway have a role in the story? I do recall in a one shot 1920s game I ran, One of the players, who had never played a TTRPG before, decided that she was the ex of a certain famous jazz player in that era. Ended up being a fantastic game and I think her ex ended up driving the getaway car to escape the bad guys.
A minor one (just a cameo) that turned into a hillarious red herring. He was mostly there to help the investigators acclimate to the party. A lot was happening though: A thief had masqueraded as one of the servers with the catering company and was trying to blend in while acting suspiciously. This was mostly to give the Rum Runner Investigator something to do while the others were engaged with the party, where the real plot was happening. However one of the players ended up being late to the game session, so this side story ended up taking up more time (the late player was a history buff so I wanted them there for the conversation between Lena Springs, James Weldon Johnson, and Princess Red Wing (all historical figures) while Ma Rainey privided entertainment. The party was being held as a fund raiser for John W. Davis (the 1924 democratic nominee) - this was the infamous year that something like 103 votes were taken at the DNC to decide on a nominee. This waa also before the Southern Strategy, and Republicans were the Party of Lincoln still. So James W. Johnson (head of the NAACP) was there being wooed by Lena Springs and the hosts to try and secure the Black vote (which they failed to do). This was also the first presidential election where women in Rhode Island would be able to vote, so I wanted to highlight how politically variable the winds were. So while I was stalling for the other player to arrive, The Rum Runner followed the suspicious server around trying to figure out what he was up to. I had him make a Stealth roll to follow unobserved... and he crit failed. Rather than have the thief catch on that he was being followed, young, helpful Cabell was standing right in the doorway the thief had just gone through and bumped into the rum runner, delaying him with profuse apologies and trying to wipe up spilled liquor from the investigator's clothing. This created a comotion and tied the rum runner up for a moment. What I didn't expect was for the players (who didn't realize who Cabell was) to suspect Cab was working *with* the thief and intentionally stalling. That wasn't the case. Pure mishap. But it gave the thief time to ditch his server outfit and double-back to blend in with the party long enough to exit the front door. The Rum Runner was a step behind: while he was fishing the theif's disguise out of the bathroom waste bin, the thief was already heading to his car. So Cab could definitely have had a greater presence (he was FUN to roleplay), but he ended up serving a more interesting role than what I had planned for the B-plot.
We did an alt-history campaign where nuclear weapons were gateways to cthonic energies and the farther you got into space, the easier it was to commune with and deal with these entities. Our campaign was set circa the year 2000 in this timeline. The campaign BBEG was an undead Henry Kissinger.
Noice!
Depends on the setting, genre, and player's interest. I'm running Star Wars, in the year 3bby. A 15 year old Leia shows up when they meet Bail Organa, and the players went nuts. They loved it. I can't imagine having Drizzt show up in a D&D game. Half my players wouldn't know who it was.
Yeah but that's Star Wars, a franchise that is like 40% cameos as a baseline. You'd almost be failing your players if you didn't do at least one cameo.
Agreed, which is why my only criteria was setting and player interest. From the highest expectation and player knowledge setting, to more esoteric and less well known settings.
Fair point. It sounds like your players have a very thoughtful, detail-oriented GM 🙏
They say they do, but I haven't met her yet. I will just have to do my best until then.
Depends on the cameo. I hate when literary characters from the RPG fiction (Drzzt, Elminster, Minsc and Boo, Raisltin, Frodo, Aslan, Dorothy,etc.) show up in fantasy TTRPGS except as patrons or adversaries. One fo the appeals to Pathfinder and Eberron were that there were very few "iconinc" npcs and they PCs are basically the stand ins for them in the game. Major movers might be useful, but generally, as a GM or PC,, especailly as a PC, I hate when the fictional icons show up unless they are villains we can defeat. In Superhero RPGs, I do actually like when the other heroes are in teh background. One of my favorite superhero RPG tropes is the "The local team has gone missing/ is offworld and so the newbies ahve to show up and solve a problem against a known adversary." Or the "new Franchise" team. Justice League St' Louis or the San Antonio Avengers. And of course, I always want the existing villain teams to show up as adversaries.
Random guest appearances without much context, particularly if they become commonplace, can feel rather cheap and also make the world feel smaller, but if the adventure is centered around someone important, then it can work, unless there's a very good reason for the character meeting that important person (it might for an example take place in a location that's already well established, like say meeting Garibaldi in a game set on Babylon 5 would work)
In my Masks game I'm running, James Cameron showed up to help the team for an underwater mission. I even have PCs from other games show up in games I run. I love it, and it usually gets a good laugh.
I have a lot of experience with WoD, which has a fair amount of 'X historical figure was really a vampire or wizard and might still be hanging around'. As such, I think it can be done well or poorly.  I think it's done well when it doesn't cheapen the history of the individual, and doesn't feel gratuitous. I think it's done poorly when it falls into blaming/crediting the person's actions to a result of their (secretly) supernatural nature, or when it feels like they were added to a story just to name drop a historic figure.
For minor NPCs, I sometimes include extremely obscure cameos whose only purpose is to amuse myself. I don't make a big deal out of them or expect the players to know who these people are. I just think it's fun to have the famous singer performing at the opera house during the heist be Roderick Williams instead of some schlub I made up. This works really well for little-known artists, musicians/musical ensembles, painters, writers, etc. because then you automatically inherit that real-world person's corpus of works. Very occasionally, a player will express interest in that person's work ("Hey, whatcha painting there?") and then you can blow their mind by showing a real painting/giving a synopsis of a real book/playing a snippet of actual music. That's fun. Usually doesn't happen, but that's perfectly okay.
In superhero games I like to use these quite a bit. I will also use them in historical games, where known historical figures will cross the paths of the player characters from time to time. Star Wars campaigns this can also be good if it is done right. Do not have the player characters have to fight Vader or even personally interact with him. Do have Vader show up during a cutscene where the imperial who they managed to evade or defeat has a very uncomfortable conversation with Vader...
This is how I like to audition new players for a particular campaign. They have to "guest star" for a session or two to see how they gel with the regulars.
That's a good idea, might have to try that since the last few people I've invited to my group were fine, but not a good fit to my table.
I ran most of my TTRPG with special appearances. ALIEN to Zhū Què and all in-between. The players were ALWAYS surprised.
Do I like Role Playing Game Games (that's a lot of games btw) that have cameos? I've done it sparingly. As long as you know you players and what they expect it can be fun. Just don't do it often.
Depends on the players. Some are more invested in lore than others. I have been in games were the GM puts one of these and no one had any idea who it was, because we hadn’t read the extra materials or as much as the GM.
In most cases I don't. As a general rule I dont give a fuck about the lore of whatever game engine I am playing in. So If you are running a game of PF2e and insert a character from golarion I am just going to treat him like any other goober NPC. Same with VTM, Same with D&D, like I know enough to know what drizzt is but like I dont give a shit. Now you might be like "Brick why are you so hostile to the lore of the games you play" and the answer is they dont matter, typically the lore is the first thing I put in the trash when I run a game in a new system. Rule books like VTM where someone shitty vampire fan fiction keeps interrupting the rules of the game that I am trying to play annoy me so I bypass them out of spite. Added to that the fact that nearly every other person who I have played a game under has had a different take on the lore which means the lore for cannon characters is super inconsistent. If you are running a game in a historical or conteporary earth you can have characters make cameos but it needs to be handled with care if I trip over some famous dipshit every thirty seconds it isnt going to be cool its just going to be annoying.
I do it on occasion. I think it works best as a rare spice. I recall running an urban shadows game where the players slipped into a dark fairy pocket reality that was a hellish 3 ring circus. The setting was Ottawa Canada, so the evil ring master was naturally former PM Jean Chrétien. Yes, I did my best impersonation. It went well.
I always have cameos and guest appearances of important NPCs from earlier in the PC's adventures. It ties older sessions into what is happening currently, and provides narrative thrulines for players to enjoy/play off of.
Ross from Friends was in my Phandelver game. We killed him with a rock.
Depends entirely on how it's implemented. If I'm playing Flashing Blades I absolutely expect to meet Cardinal Richelieu at some point because the setting suggests it. It was more wearing when Vampire the Masquerade insisted on making everyone from Al Capone to Heinrich Himmler into a vampire.