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And what does he wish he was playing?

Civil War: Allies

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***Spoiler Warning***

My group and I are playing through the Civil War event book for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, from Margaret Weis Productions. While the course of play may not follow the event book – or the comic books – precisely, there’s going to be a certain amount of stuff that does conform to the adventures and comic series.

In short, if you don’t want to know what happens in Civil War, don’t read these posts. Or the comic books.

***You Have Been Warned***

After a four-month hiatus ((Summer is always difficult for scheduling games and this year was worse than most.)), we finally got back to our Civil War campaign this past Friday night. Because there had been such a gap in play, I made sure to reread my blog posts about the game, the Civil War event book, and the MHRPG core book. In doing so, I found a couple of little things that I had missed in the rules and decided to implement.

One of these is the rule that, if a character fails in a reaction roll but has a larger effect die than that of the action roll, the action roll effect die is stepped back one. This didn’t have a huge effect on play, but did add another level of strategy to the dice mechanic.

The other rule, though, I think is going to cause significant change in the way things have been going. That is the rule that you cannot use a plot point in the action that earns you that plot point. You can use other plot points, but not the ones you just earned by taking a d4 on a distinction or by having the GM buy off the opportunities you roll. This seems like a little thing, but it changes the flow of the plot point economy, and invalidates some of the tricks my players have used to pump up their totals and effect dice.

Now, I didn’t set out to nerf things for my players, but I’m not that sorry to see it happen. I’ve been finding it difficult to confront them with challenges that they can’t just walk over, and a large part of that has been how good they are at managing the plot point economy. That said, I’m feeling a little guilty ((Not guilty enough to relent, though.)) about taking away that bit of mechanical mastery they’ve acquired.

Anyway, I introduced these rules in this past session, and the gang ((Well, most of the gang. Erik wasn’t able to join us.)) had a chance to come to grips with them.

But on to the actual play.

We picked things up with a recap of the previous session, and then I had Spider-Man call the gang and ask for help. They had previously tried to recruit Spidey to their cause, but had been unable to do so. Still, the Doctor had given him a little token that he could use to contact the Guardians should he need them, and that’s what he used now. The Doctor was unavailable, being on a shamanic inner journey assisted by some very special mushrooms he grew himself ((If this doesn’t work for you Erik, we can retcon it.)), so the other Guardians were drawn to the Doctor’s room to find him catatonic and a hologram of Spider-Man’s head shouting to see if there was anyone around listening.

Spider-Man was concerned that, as Captain America knew who he was, and he was living in Avengers Tower ((“Spider-Man is living in Avengers Tower? Isn’t that place overrun with S.H.I.E.L.D. agents now that Stark has gone anti-SHRA?” “What, you think that S.H.I.E.L.D. will let him live anywhere else until he registers?”)), with two people that he wanted to keep safe ((M.J. and Aunt May, of course.)), he was going to be the first hero outed, with his loved ones arrested and imprisoned, unless he caved in, registered, and unmasked. He wanted some assistance in getting the two civilians somewhere safe ((Like Volcano Island, f’rinstance.)), while he distracted his guards.

The Guardians agreed to help out. Mega Joule, Jumpstart, and Cyber headed over in the GX-1 in stealth mode, while Volcanic prepared an underground escape route nearby. Spidey burst out of the tower while the GX-1 hovered invisibly over the landing pad, which was full of Cape Killers. The Cape Killer took off after Spidey, as did a number of Thunderbolt agents, including Venom.

Our heroes took the GX-1 up to the window that Spider-Man had departed from and found M.J. and Aunt May inside, surrounded by another unit of Cape Killers, Lady Deathstrike ((Who’s healing factor really pissed the players off. “Man, that’s no fair!” “Can’t you do the same thing, Mega Joule?” “Well, yeah, but…”)), Taskmaster, Jester ((Man, Jester just could not catch a break in this battle. Every roll he made, he screwed up, doing more damage to himself and his team than to the good guys.)), and Bullseye. The good guys had the element of surprise on their side, thanks to the GX-1’s stealth technology, and stormed in with some decisive opening moves. The way things fell out in the action sequence, however, the heroes wound up sucking up some nasty hits while they got M.J. and Aunt May out of harm’s way.

But they managed to rescue them, and with Volcanic’s escape route ((He’s set up an asset of Foolproof Escape Plan d12+.)), they got away clean. Spider-Man, unfortunately, was captured and outed.

The action scene ran a little slower than usual, partly because we were rusty, and partly because the new rules took some getting used to, and partly because the battle was harder with the new rules. So, with the game at a good pausing point, I ran a couple of follow-up scenes to lay some pipe and reward the characters.

First, Luke Cage contacted Mega Joule, whom he had made a connection with way back during the Stamford cleanup, and signed on with the Guardians, along with Danny Rand. Then, Iron Man tapped into the Guardians’ base communications net, and told them where they could pick up a shipment of Stark-tech to help the fight.

Everyone was in a pretty good mood about how things had turned out. Except for the bit about Spider-Man in custody.

But they plan to do something about that.

Firefly RPG Demo

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Here you are, on the raggedy edge. You’ve been eatin’ nothing but protein paste for the last week, runnin’ low to spare your fuel cells, and hangin’ on for dear life whenever Serenity’s engines start to creak and groan. This last job for Badger should pay enough to get back into the sky, but not much more. Fortunately, Badger says he’s got another job for you soon as you touch down at the Eavesdown Docks. The way he’s smilin’, you know it ain’t gonna be good. But it pays enough to keep you flyin’.

Come try the new Firefly RPG from Margaret Weis Productions on Sunday, September 29, from 1:00 to 5:00, at Imagine Games and Hobbies here in Winnipeg. Play a member of Serenity’s crew, and brave the black on a job that’s sure to go smooth ((Not a guarantee that things will go smooth. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that they won’t.)). There are nine slots in this game demo, so odds are good that you can just show up and play, but if you sign up at the store, you can reserve your favourite character on a first-come, first served basis.

GenCon 2013 Wrap-Up

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Those of you who follow this blog ((I know there are a couple of you out there.)) may have noticed that I kinda pooped out on posting during GenCon this year. The fact of the matter is that I just got too tired, and too busy, to keep it up regularly. So, I figure that I owe you folks a wrap-up post, talking about what I saw and did at GenCon this year.

The Pagan Publishing/Dagon Industries booth just before the doors open on the first day. Note the looming presence of Scott Glancy.

 

Overall, it was a fun show. I got see a lot of my GenCon friends, and see a lot of neat games, and eat some good food, and stuff like that. There are a few things I want to call out specifically as being awesome ((Or at least interesting.)) at the show, though:

Kickstarters and Preorders

I have said previously that some of the joy of GenCon has evaporated now that game companies don’t feel the need to launch their big, cool stuff at the show. With the advent of web sales and preorders and Kickstarter, it’s not as vital a push for a company to have the new hotness launching during GenCon. Last year, I already owned pretty much everything I was interested in getting before the show.

This year started to seem to be the same, but then a number of companies started sending out e-mail, offering the option of picking up preorders ((Including offers to prebuy show exclusive books.)) and Kickstarter rewards at GenCon. I jumped on board with that idea, and the first day of shopping, I wound up with a respectable stack of books and games that I had already paid for – it was like a free shopping spree.

This did a surprising amount to redeem the feelings of excitement and expectation that had been cooling over previous years. I really hope the trend works out well for the various publishers who did this, because I really liked it.

One of the Kickstarter rewards I picked up at the show was the Travels book for Shadows of Esteren. I left the book at the booth when I picked it up on Thursday, and the good folks there said they'd get is signed by everyone. When I finally remembered to pick it up again (I left the show without getting it, and if I hadn't had to come back to drop off Scott's keys, I might not have remembered it at all), I found that Gawain, the artist, had done a sketch for me in the book, as well! Those Esteren folks rock!

One of the Kickstarter rewards I picked up at the show was the Travels book for Shadows of Esteren. I left the book at the booth when I picked it up on Thursday, and the good folks there said they’d get is signed by everyone. When I finally remembered to pick it up again (I left the show without getting it, and if I hadn’t had to come back to drop off Scott’s keys, I might not have remembered it at all), I found that Gawain, the artist, had done a sketch for me in the book, as well! Those Esteren folks rock!

Games on Demand

I talked a bit about this last year, but I’m going to talk about it some more this year. I think this may be the single greatest thing on offer at GenCon, for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it gives folks a chance to try a bite-sized piece of games that they ordinarily wouldn’t get to ((Or, in some cases, want to.)) play. I spent Thrusday, Friday, and Saturday evening hanging out there, playing some great games, and the folks running it did yeoman duty in the face of high demand, confused participants, and the whining of entitled gamers. I cannot praise them highly enough for keeping things running, and keeping their spirits up.

They had a new priority system in place this year, where people could stop by a little early to pick up a boarding pass, then come back just before the session started and pick their preferred game from the offerings in the order of the boarding pass they had ((I think it’s a perfectly functional system, but this is where most of the whining came in. “But the game I want is full!” “But I’ve got actual tickets for this slot, so I should get to pick my game before the people who have been waiting here for two hours!” I never had a boarding pass in the top half of the range, and you don’t hear me complaining. Suck it up!)). Then you find your table and you play.

Demand was much higher this year than last year, and there was always a crowd around the table long before the boarding passes started getting called. Only once did I make it into my first choice of game, but there was always something interesting and fun to try, and even right at the end, there were a couple of choices open to most folks.

About to play a game of Leverage at Games on Demand.

About to play a game of Leverage at Games on Demand.

Atomic Robo RPG

My first night at Games on Demand, I got to play in a session of Atomic Robo The Roleplaying Game, run by Morgan Ellis, one of the designers. He offered us two choices of scenario, and we chose the 1950s scenario, whose title was something like The Abominations That Ate Albuquerque ((The other scenario sounded pretty cool, too, set in modern Japan, where we would play Science Team Super Five)). I actually got to play Atomic Robo himself, and it was pretty awesome.

Edit: I received word from Morgan Ellis that he is NOT one of the designers of ARRPG. He is listed on the product page because he produced some of the stat blocks used in the game. I apologize for misunderstanding. Still, getting stat blocks in the game is not nothing, and he did run a great game.

The game is Fate-based, but tweaked to emulate the action science and comedy of the comic books. We had pregen characters, but looking at the sheets, character generation seems pretty quick, picking a number of roles – like Action, Science, and Banter – and prioritizing them on your sheet, which then grants you ranks in various skills. There are, of course, aspects and stunts involved, too – this is a Fate-based game, after all.

Now, I’ve run an awful lot of Fate games, but this was actually my first time playing one, and it was great. The system nicely captures the mix of comedy and action that drives the comic book, and gives the same importance to science that makes the comic stand out in that regard. I got to use my Fancy Robot Eyes to analyze cow carcasses, wrestle with giant wasp larvae, crack wise with the ranchers, ride a horse, and blow up a Buick dealership to kill the queen wasp.

One especially neat innovation of this game is the brainstorming mechanic. This often happens in concert with other scenes, and is where the scientists try to figure out what is going on. It is, in essence, an extended declaration, where players get a chance to spin a theory based on evidence gathered, and roll to see if it’s true. It cycles through this idea a few times, allowing you to refine your theory and build a plan based upon it, and, in the end, you wind up with an aspect based on your theories that you can invoke ((Possibly multiple times, if you roll well enough on the brainstorming.)) when you put your plan into action.

This means that, though the GM will have a default plan for what’s going on, the brainstorming session by the scientists may, in fact, change what’s true. And I think that’s awesome, both as GM and as player.

Here's a glimpse of the Atomic Robo character sheet. Note my poor attempt at drawing Robo's head on my little tent card.

Here’s a glimpse of the Atomic Robo character sheet. Note my poor attempt at drawing Robo’s head on my little tent card.

Firefly RPG

The show saw the release of Gaming in the ‘Verse: Firefly Gen Con 2013 Exclusive. This is a teaser product, giving people who are too excited to wait for February a chance to try the new Firefly RPG early. I picked a copy up, and got to play in a game on Saturday night, run by Rob Wieland, the line developer on the Echoes of War series of adventures for the Firefly RPG.

The book is very well done for its purpose. You get enough rules and material not only to run the two adventures included in the book, but also to create your own characters and run a campaign. There aren’t as many resources and options as are going to be in the core book, but there literally is enough here that you could play for an extended time without needing anything else. Balancing that is the fact that, the way things are presented, the exclusive makes you want the core book, not because the exclusive is lacking stuff, but because the cool stuff in the exclusive promises even more cool stuff in the core book.

And that’s the way to hook a customer with a teaser product.

As far as gameplay goes, this game rocks. Several years ago, I ran a short campaign using the Serenity RPG which, while fun, kind of petered out. Part of that was the size of the group, and part of it was the system. The original Cortex system ((Though I don’t believe it had a name back then – I think the name Cortex was applied some time around either the BSG or Supernatural licensed games. And now it’s Cortex Classic.)) was completely serviceable system, but it was somewhat bland and took a long time to prep for sessions ((Well, part of that is the weird way I was trying to run the game, and the less said about that, the better. But the system certainly didn’t speed things up.)) ((The campaign also wound up going to a really, really dark place, which was not what I wanted, despite it being totally my fault.)).

The Cortex Plus incarnation of gaming in the ‘Verse is tighter and cleaner, while at the same time being more open and freeform. If you’ve played games like Marvel Heroic Roleplaying or Leverage RPG, you know what I’m talking about. It’s easy to build scenarios and it’s easy to improvise in play. The game setup is fluid enough to incorporate character actions and whacky schemes almost effortlessly. And everything flows pretty quick.

I had a blast playing the game, and chatting about it with Rob afterwards. And, now that I’m home, several of the folks in my home group are interested in giving it a try. So, that’s a win in my book.

I got to play Wash in the Firefly game. He survived! Also, he drove a boat. It was a life-changing experience.

I got to play Wash in the Firefly game. He survived! Also, he drove a boat. It was a life-changing experience.

The Noteboard

Okay. Go take a look at the Noteboard.

I had no interest in this product. I mean, I’m running fewer and fewer games that require a battlemap ((Just the Storm Point 4e game, right now.)), and I already have my Tac-Tiles and Dungeon Tiles for that. So, when I was picking things up at the Pelgrane booth, the incomparable Beth Lewis practically had to browbeat me into buying one. And, when I came back a couple of days later to buy four more of the things, she sat behind the cash table, mocking me with her knowing smirk.

In the time between when I reluctantly bought one Noteboard and when I came back to eagerly buy four more, I had seen them used for so many things at the gaming table. My favourite function was using it to substitute for sticky notes or index cards in Fate and Cortex Plus games, both of which generate a lot of extra little paper bits with stuff written on them. So, extra aspects or distinctions or assets or complications can all be written on the Noteboard, rather than on a bunch of sticky notes that get thrown away.

And you can use the bag to erase it. Then fold it up and put it in your pocket.

I decided that I needed a spare or two, and that the other GMs in my group needed one, as well.

Seriously. For a simple, inexpensive little accessory, it has so many applications. You need one. At least one.

The Noteboard. Seriously, you folks need one of these. At least one.

The Noteboard. Seriously, you folks need one of these. At least one.

Saladin Ahmed

Saladin Ahmed is one of my favourite authors. His first novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, is a marvelous sword-and-sorcery story set in a middle-eastern-derived culture, and is a ton of fun. His short story collection, Engraved on the Eye, is full of fun short stories, sprinkled with a couple of stories that really made me think about some things. Following him on Twitter ((His handle is @saladinahmed. DO NOT follow him if you’re not interested in having your ideas about race, politics, and equality challenged.)), he’s been friendly and gracious, and has helped me really expand my reading of non-white, non-male authors.

I also used Throne as fodder for part of my Storm Point game, which seemed to tickle him.

Mr. Ahmed was attending the GenCon Writers’ Symposium, and I had the chance to sit in on a reading he gave ((Though not on the world-building panel he was part of. I regret that – his insights into building a non-European-centric world would have been interesting to hear.)) ((Also present at the reading was Joel Shepherd. I hadn’t heard of his books before, but his reading convinced me to go pick up the first book in his Cassandra Kresnov trilogy.)). Afterwards, he signed my copy of his book, and took some time to chat with me one-on-one.

This is, I think, the mark of an author who appreciates his audience. He was tired, he was hungry, and he had a bunch of stuff he still had to do that day, but he took the better part of a half-hour being friendly, welcoming, and gracious to a fanboy. Authors don’t owe us that – they have lives and are people and need food and sleep and all that stuff. Mr. Ahmed’s took his time to talk with me, and that makes him a class act in my book.

If you haven’t read his stuff, you should do so. Now.

As I said, Saladin Ahmed is a class act all the way. And the book is very good. Go buy it.

 Food Trucks

I think they started showing up last year, but this year there were tons of food trucks just outside the main exhibitor hall. And they were there until late at night. This meant that I had the chance to try a few of them, though the pickings were pretty slim when I was heading back to the hotel after gaming until midnight. Still, I got to eat some good perogies, a nice pulled chicken sandwich, and a Cuban sub. The food was awesomely good and terribly unhealthy, and that’s not even touching on the four or five cupcake trucks that were in the mix.

It looked to me like the trucks had time slots they were booked for, and had to leave after a few hours to let someone else in. Given the huge crowds lined up in front of EVERY SINGLE ONE of them ((Except at midnight. Then the crowds were only big, instead of huge.)), I imagine they were going through their stock pretty quick, anyway. The downside of this is that I didn’t make it to some of my favourite eating establishments this year. I will have to budget my meal consumption more carefully next year.

Randomness

So, yeah. Turned off the interstate to get some gas. There was a big, pink elephant at the gas station, advertising the liquor store inside.

We’re back in the Crowne Plaza, the old train station hotel with the weird ghost statues. This one was odder than most, lying as it was on the roof of a train car. Found that the hotel is under renovation, and the two statues that stood beneath this one, reaching up to be hauled aboard, were temporarily taken out.

There was a lot of good cosplay at the con, as usual. Most of the costumes, though very nice, don’t really get me excited. But there were a few that caught my eye for various reasons.

Dot Warner, of the Animaniacs. Awesome.

Dot Warner, of the Animaniacs. Awesome.

Bob Ross, from The Joy of Painting. This costume thrilled me so much that I called Scott over to see it. Right in front of a very attractive, scantily clad woman who turned out to be a professional cosplayer. I felt that I had been very rude, afterwards, and I'm sorry about that. But still - Bob Ross cosplay! Right?

Bob Ross, from The Joy of Painting. This costume thrilled me so much that I called Scott over to see it. Right in front of a very attractive, scantily clad woman who turned out to be a professional cosplayer. I felt that I had been very rude, afterwards, and I’m sorry about that. But still – Bob Ross cosplay! Right?

Two generations of Rebel pilots. Welcome to the Geek Alliance, little space pilot!

 

 

GenCon 2013 – Day Two

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GenCon day two is done. A slower day at the booth, so I was able to get around the hall and finish the shopping I needed to do, plus a little extra. I wasn’t able to get everything, but I was able to confirm that the stuff I couldn’t get just wasn’t there.

I missed seeing Thomas Denagh when he came by the booth ((I was out at the time, checking out the Mayfair booth to see if I could spot Thomas Denagh. I don’t expect anyone to believe that, though.)), and Cam Banks was terribly busy when I visited the Atlas area, so I didn’t bug him. Hope to catch up with both tomorrow, just to say hello.

I also tracked down where Saladin Ahmed is making his appearances. I was too late to get in on the panel he was on discussing world building, which would have been awesome, but I did get a ticket for the reading he’s doing on Friday. I’m looking forward to the reading, and getting a chance to say hello in person.

Tonight at Games on Demand, I got into a Leverage game. I got to use the line, “I get d6 for the pornography, right?” so I count it as a win. It was a fun game, run by Bob Smith, who did an awesome job getting everyone through the adventure in the two-hour time we had available. Next time I play, though, I think I should take the Mastermind, because I kept stepping on the toes of the poor gentleman who was playing our Mastermind. I tried not to, but obviously I’m just a pushy control freak.

Now to bed. Long day tomorrow.

GenCon 2013 – Day One

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So, the first day of GenCon 2013 is done.

It was a good day, despite the fact that it started early, because of the VIG ((Very Important Gamer.)) early admittance. Things were busy, but I managed to get a lot of the stuff I was supposed to pick up from various Kickstarters, as well as a most of the things folks at home asked me to get.

Highlights of the day include seeing folks like Amanda and Clark Valentine, finally meeting Christy Cardenas in person, seeing Ken Hite and Robin Laws, and chatting with Beth Lewis ((Who is scary good at upselling at the Pelgrane Booth. Seriously. Fear her.)). And then, in the evening, I got to play in my first-ever Fate game ((I’ve run plenty of Fate games, but never got to be a player.)) at Games on Demand – and it was the Atomic Robo Roleplaying Game!

I even got to play as Atomic Robo, and bash giant insects with Buicks.

It was a lot of fun, but now it’s late and I’m going to bed. Thanks to Morgan Ellis who ran the session for us tonight, and to the other folks who played.

And especially, thanks to Games on Demand, which is one of my favourite things about GenCon.

Good night, all.

Dungeon World: Starting Three Times

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Okay, so I’ve been talking a lot about Apocalypse World lately, because I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. Last year at GenCon  ((The gamer geek version of “One time at band camp…” )), I got a chance to try out both AW and Dungeon World, and came away very fond of AW, less so of DW. A large part of that is simply my experience at the table – Trevis, who ran AW, was awesome, the group was small, and I was playing with my buddy, Clint. With the DW game, the group was twice as large, the GM was obviously tired, and the whole thing was a more scattered, confused experience.

I don’t want to run down the GM – whose name I didn’t get – he was doing a great job with a large group of people that, not to put too fine a point on it, I probably wouldn’t have chosen to play with. I don’t want to run down those players, either – they were having fun, and if their fun is not the kind of fun that I enjoy, well, it’s still fun for them. I was the odd man out.

Really, though the point I’m trying to make is that I was not as impressed with DW as I was with AW.

And then I played it.

I put together a kit for running Dungeon World some time ago, simply because it’s one of those great pick-up games that I want to have ready to run with little-to-no preparation. And a few weeks back, the opportunity came up to try the game out with a couple of friends.

I had a few days lead time, so I got the players to pick out characters and answer a couple of provocative questions via e-mail leading up to the session. We rolled out with a Barbarian and a Ranger, standing outside a jungle ziggurat, and then they started rolling dice.

That’s when the game took off.

See, the guys started rolling badly. Really, really badly. Like, stunningly, appallingly badly. And so the vines attacked them, and stole the Barbarian’s sword, and bashed them up, and then they started hearing things in the jungle, and finally they just dropped through the collapsing side of the pyramid into a cave.

I was tap-dancing desperately, working to come up with interesting ideas for the moves I could make against them when they missed a roll, and it took me a little while to realize that I was enjoying this game even more than AW. When I did notice this, I started to wonder why, but then had to stop wondering about it because there were more bad rolls coming my way.

Our heroes took a little breather down in the cave, then crawled out, fire-bombed the vines, found an ossuary inside the pyramid, had their fingers bit off by ghouls, and woke something dark and dangerous down in the pits before fleeing to safety. It was the most fun I’ve had running a dungeon crawl in a long, long time.

And, after the game, I got to figure out why I enjoyed DW more than AW: I’m simply more familiar and practised with the tropes. I’ve been running fantasy games for about thirty years, and read a lot of fantasy, seen a lot of fantasy, and created a lot of fantasy. It’s easier for me, steeped in the fantasy tradition that I am, to come up with ideas that fit a fantasy game than for a post-apocalyptic game.

As far as post-apocalyptic stuff goes, well, I’ve run some Gamma World, watched Jeremiah and Jericho and the Mad Max movies and… nope. That’s about it. It’s not a genre ((Or sub-genre, if you prefer.)) that I’m as familiar with. That means that running AW is more work and therefor not as much free-wheeling fun for me. It’ still an awesome game, but requires more effort on my part.

We had enough fun with the game that I ran it again a week or so later, adding a Bard and a Fighter ((Played by a couple of players who hadn’t been able to make the previous game.)) to the group. I didn’t handle the addition very well – I brought the new characters ((Who had links to the old characters and to the major NPC in the rudimentary backstory we came up with.)) back at the little jungle village close to the pyramid temple.

In the intervening time, I had written up adventure fronts for the temple and for the jungle ((Including the village.)), as well as the beginnings of a campaign front, and I figured I’d give the new players a little time to dig around on their own rather than just throw everyone together. I gave them some minimal prompting, and had them arrive at the village, so they could poke around, get used to their characters and the system, and stuff like that.

This was an error.

What I should have done is thrown them into something a little more high-pressure and dangerous to get them making moves and building that ever-important feedback loop. As it was, they could wander around and ask questions and generally take it easy and feel safe, which didn’t help advance things ((That’s not entirely true. It helped build the feeling of the world being alive, and provided a little more background information, but it didn’t move this along, story-wise or pacing-wise.)). It would have been far more fun to have them attacked by bandits, or jungle cats, or whatever, to make for a more exciting start.

I mean, this way worked, but it wasn’t as cool.

That said, we got the party together, and they had some fun talking to the locals, and learning about the Brotherhood of the Heights ((Bandits who live in the rainforest canopy.)) and the corpse spiders ((Okay. The corpse spiders aren’t my fault. I let the group name the jungle, and one of them named it Corpse Spider jungle. So that meant there had to be corpse spiders. Totally not my fault.)) and wound up fighting some jungle cats and swarms of savage apes.

And then the Akon, the Ape God ((One of the dangers of not reading your work aloud: I hadn’t realized how much Akon (ah-kon) sounds like King Kong until I said it at the game. Sound test your names, GMs!)) showed up and everyone retreated. The Ranger managed to shoot out Akon’s eye, and that drove him off, but not before he smeared a big, bloody, ape-god handprint on the village palisade ((I don’t know what that means, but the Bard spouted some lore, and it didn’t look too good.)).

At that point, I was completely sold on this game. I was in love with it. It became my go-to fantasy game. And then I had a third opportunity to run it.

I had a small group – only three players – show up for the Storm Point game. Normally, that would still be enough to run with, but the three who showed up were not keen on playing the characters of the folks who couldn’t make it, which is our default system. They opted instead to try Dungeon World.

Now, the three who showed up are really just casual gamers. This is not to imply anything wrong with them; they just don’t get into the rules mastery as much as the other players. I was interested to see how they would react to DW – I figured they would either love it or hate it.

I had learned from the previous session, and started our heroes – a Templar ((From this collection of alternate classes.)), a Wizard, and a Thief – in the middle of a rock bridge over a deep chasm far below the ground, with a mob of skeletons approaching from one direction, and ominous flickering lights showing in the other. So, they had to act quick.

That led us to skeleton battles, death-defying leaps into the chasm, desperate swimming attempts, scaling sheer walls, magical traps, hungry goblins, and finally an ogre. We only played for a couple of hours, but more happened in that session than in the previous three sessions of the Storm Point game.

They loved it. They were excited, engaged, and active, laughing and talking and debating things and just generally enjoying the hell out of the game. The fact that I could pull this rather… distractible group of players together and get characters made and that whole adventure run in the short time we played is a real testament to the power of the Dungeon World.

So, in short, DW delivers everything I want right now from a dungeon-crawling game, and does it in a manner that makes running the game a breeze. It is, in my opinion, the king of fantasy RPGs.

You should definitely try it.

Apocalypse World: The Beacon

By | | Apocalypse World, What's he playing?
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Man, I am waaaaaaay behind on my blogging. The reasons why are numerous, but I’m hoping to get back on track with a couple of posts leading up to GenCon, and then my usual GenCon daily report. So, thanks for bearing with me.

This first catch-up post is pretty sparse – enough time has passed that my memory of the game session is worse than usual. It’s just going to be the skeleton of the session, and I’m hoping that the players ((I know Elliott will be all over this, because, well, Elliott. 😉 )) will jump in on the comments to add any important bits that I’ve missed.

When we got together for the last session, I decided to jump time forward again, just a few weeks. In contrast to the last time I jumped things forward, I took stuff away from the players ((The Take Their Stuff move.)). This time, I gave them stuff – a point or two of barter each. Then I gave a couple of them a chance to exchange the barter I gave them for a different benefit – refilling an angel kit, getting an ATV, stuff like that. ((For those keeping score at home, this is the Make Them Buy move.))

In the interim between the last two games, I had the players start thinking about what they wanted for their characters in the game. The campaign is limited to twelve episodes, and this session is number seven, so I wanted them to start thinking about the endgame for the campaign. A couple of the characters had nicely intersecting goals that we picked up this session, and it kept us busy for the session – and probably for at least one more session.

This is one of the things I like most about the *World games: the game is driven by and shaped by player/character desires and actions in a wonderful, strongly reinforced feedback loop. Even the way the default Apocalypse World campaign starts – just following the characters around on a normal day – lets the players set the agenda, and their actions ((Especially their failed rolls – this is a topic big enough and interesting enough that it’s coming in its own post in a couple of days.)) shape the story in an action-reaction loop.

Anyway.

The intersecting goals were Snow wanting to find his way back to the cryofacility he woke up in some months before, Magpie wanting to get her hands on Snow’s tech for her hoard, and Nils and JB mainly wanting to figure out where Snow had come from, and what they could get out of that information. ((I’m ascribing motivations to Nils and JB that never came up in play, so it’s just my impression of the way they acted and responded to the suggestions to go find the cryofacility.)) In a previous excursion into the Ruins, Snow had spotted one of the marker beacons that should lead him to the facility – his memory of its exact location is somewhat fuzzy, thanks to his first encounter with the Maelstrom and some time wandering through the maze of the Ruins.

And so, back into the Ruins, scouting for the beacon. They had some trouble finding the beacon, allowing me to make some moves from my various fronts to fill in the time and make the world seem dynamic and alive. Our heroes found hints of the very polite, ghillie-suited  soldiers that they’ve taken to calling Canadians, and carefully avoided an interesting event that they might have witnessed, but instead wound up happening off-screen. ((It still happened, though, because the world keeps moving even when the characters aren’t there to see it.))

In the end, the team found the beacon and reactivated it, though they had some difficulty with the elevators in the abandoned building. There was some scrambling, some climbing, some jumping, some falling, some shooting, and in the end, they made it back to the safehouse that Nils had set up in the Ruins, where they could start using the beacon to backtrack to the cryofacility.

That’s where we wrapped things. The next session was supposed to be this past Friday night, but I wound up sick as a dog, and had to cancel. So, I’m really looking forward to the next one, in about three weeks.

Second Apocalypse: On the Road to Paradise

By | | Apocalypse World, What's he playing?
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It was pretty short notice, but another part of my extended gaming group decided they wanted to game last Saturday, and I volunteered to run something, since Clint – the other GM ((Although Fera is starting to think about trying to run something. Clint and I are being as encouraging as we can, because getting someone else into the fun of GMing is a great way to grow the hobby. Also, GMing is awesome fun.)) in that part of the group – wasn’t getting to play that much. I sent out a list on Monday, I think it was, with a list of games that I’d be willing to run as a one-shot, put it to a vote, and Apocalypse World was the narrow victor ((Ashen Stars was the runner up, only a single vote behind.)).

One of the beautiful thing about Apocalypse World is that you can be ready to run a game in almost no time. I sent out the available playbooks so that everyone could choose their character before the game, the idea being to cut down character creation time ((Which doesn’t take all that much time, really, but the more time we have to actually play, the better.)), so everyone had their character type picked out by the time we got together on Saturday.

Things were a little delayed because of some transit issues in getting everyone together, and then by ordering pizza, but we finally got everyone settled and we got down to business.

The first question I asked was whether people wanted the option of revisiting the game, or if they wanted it to be a true one-shot. That was an important question to start the session off, because the answer to it would shape everything else I did as MC – how hard I would work to force things to conflict, how much energy we would devote to building the world, the amount of freedom I was going to give to backstory, all that sort of stuff.

See, my first experience in playing Apocalypse World happened last year at GenCon, where our fantastic MC, Trevis, ran the thing like a Fiasco game, pushing things into conflict and disaster. I figured I could run something like that if people only wanted a one-shot, or I could invest a little more of everyone’s time and energy to build something bigger if people were interested in the possibility of the games continuing beyond the single session.

Folks opted for the potential for continuation, so we devoted a little time ((Well, actually it turned out to be more than a little. Factoring in character creation and world creation, it was close to two hours before we actually started playing.)) to building the world. I’m not going to go through all the rigamarole of questions, answers, discussions, and drawings that we went through, but we wound up with the following characters ((There are a few secrets that the characters have that aren’t reflected in the list below. Deal with it.)):

  • Rain is a Touchstone. She’s an older woman, and has a legend in her family ((Possibly with a vision she’s had herself.)) of a place beyond the wastelands where people can live in peace and plenty. She’s gathered a small group – around forty or so, when the evening begins ((Less when the evening ends, sadly.)) – to seek this paradise. So, the game is set in a traveling camp of refugees, something right out of Exodus.
  • Crille is a Gunlugger. He’s a scarred, stringy survivor of the wastelands, a mercenary who has joined up with Rain’s group for the barter. He’s not a believer, he’s not even much of a follower. He’s just a hired gun, trying to keep everyone safe for as long as they’re paying him.
  • Sundown is a Brainer ((And is there any Brainer out there that doesn’t take the violation glove?)). She ran into Rain’s group just a few months ago, and decided that they were fun to play with, so she’s attached herself to the group. Rain lets her stay because she’s come in handy a few times, rooting out information from the brains of people who didn’t want to share it.
  • Doc Tersey is an Angel. She’s been with Rain’s group for a long time, and doesn’t know if she believes in the paradise Rain promises. She hopes it exists, though, and dedicates herself to keeping the people in the group healthy.
  • Rack is Faceless. He’s a big, hulking, seven-foot mountain of scarred muscle wearing a Japanese demon mask. He’s been with Rain pretty much forever, and has always been a loyal and devoted follower, though his attitude has changed a little in the past several months.

With that settled, we started play. We’d built a map as we were fleshing out the world, with a ruined city, a tangled jungle, a desert wasteland, a volcanic rift, a range of impassable mountains, and a fortified city called The Redoubt. Rain was sure that Paradise was on the other side of the mountain range, and that’s why they were moving into the area.

We opened with Rain getting a rundown on the area from two scouts she had sent ahead, Nero and Littlebit. After hearing the lay of the land, she gathered her inner council ((That is, the player characters.)) and they talked about where they wanted to head.

After some discussion, they decided to head into the ruined city – called Willow Lake – to see if they could scrounge some good stuff to use for trade at The Redoubt. They figured they’d need supplies and any information they could get about getting through the mountains.

In Willow Lake, things started getting interesting. One by one, people – including the PCs – started vanishing ((Well, they were wondering why the city was abandoned and left to the ruins and a new city built less then fifty miles away. Guess they found out.)). Eventually, I got them all.

Then, of course, I had to figure out what the hell was going on.

So, I had the characters wake up, one by one, trapped in a weblike mesh made of what looked and felt like human flesh and skin. Hilarity ensued as they got free, tried to rescue the other captives, and escape. Eventually, they managed it, though Sundown got used as a brain puppet while I talked horta-talk through her ((I didn’t quite resort to NO KILL I, but it was close.)), and I had the opportunity to lay a little pipe ((Yes, that’s a euphemism, but not a sexual one.)) that may or may not be useful in later sessions.

So, they escaped, having lost just about a quarter of Rain’s followers, and we wrapped up for the evening. Everyone said they had had fun and wanted to play another session. Maybe more than one. The set-up they’ve given me is nice in that it has a built-in end-point ((Winner of the most hyphenated words in one sentence for this blog post!)), when the group crosses the mountains ((They’re called the Devil’s Teeth, by the way.)) and reaches Paradise, whatever it may turn out to be.

One thing that this session highlighted for me ((Highlighted? Really, it threw it into stark relief.)) is the fact that this game is really driven by the failed rolls of the characters. Yes, the MC gets to make moves at other times, and gets to steer things a little through the information given when someone successfully Reads a Charged Situation and such, but the most interesting moments come through the hard moves made when someone misses a roll. That, and the ugly choices offered when someone gets a 7-9 result.

Why did this session make this obvious? I think it’s because, for the first session of an Apocalypse World game, you go in cold as the MC. You don’t have any fronts, yet, and so everything comes from spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants improvisation, and you need to mentally run as fast as you can to keep your feet under you. I’d been through one first session before, but at that time, I was still trying to figure out all the moving parts of the game, so concentrated more on that than on the structure that was emerging. This time, I was more confident with the system and mechanics, so I was able to pay more attention to the effects they were having on the play experience.

It’s just one of the things that makes Apocalypse World a fascinating system to run.

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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***SPOILER ALERT***

I’m running Tomb of Horrors for this leg of the Storm Point campaign – indeed, for the rest of the campaign. You may not want to read on if you’re playing the game yourself.

***SPOILER ALERT***

We picked up the Storm Point game in the middle of the combat where we had left it last session. It looked for a minute like we were going to have a full house, but at the last minute, Mark decided that the birth of his daughter took precedence ((Congratulations, Mark!)). So, we lost the cleric’s player, but gained the ranger’s player, as Paul was able to make it this time.

I let Galvanys roll initiative, plugged him in to the order, but did not let him put his mini on the board just yet. When his turn came up in the initiative order, I let him pick a square to appear in, using his Fey Step ability to get him into the battle. I then let him make a Wisdom check against a DC of 25, telling him that by every 5 points he missed the roll, he’d deviate one square from the point he’d picked. But he nailed the roll, so he appeared right where he wanted.

The momentum of the battle had started to shift in the last session, but the addition of another character caused the swing a little more dramatically, and they wrapped up the combat fairly quickly, though I think a few of our heroes were badly injured, and down on healing surges by the time we finished.

After they patched themselves up, they headed into the abandoned tomb. What followed was a wonderful, frustrating, old-school treat, as the party ran made their cautious way through the tomb, trying to find the information they need to track down Acererak’s last infernal machine, and end him once and for all. At one point or another, pretty much every member of the groups said something along the lines of, “Fucking Tomb of Horrors.”

The bit I enjoyed most was the maze of tiny rooms with doors and secret doors – very old school, designed to confuse the mappers in the party, and frustrate the players. The cautious way they had to proceed through the little maze, made gun-shy by the traps they’d run into in previous adventures in the Tomb of Horrors adventures, was delightful.

They finally made it to the twisting tunnel that led to the chapel, and spent enough time cautiously exploring it that the caller in darkness arrived. It was getting late by that time, so we wrapped up. We got to open next session with a combat again, which is fine.

I’m looking forward to it.

Apocalypse World: Sway’s War

By | | Apocalypse World, What's he playing?
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Finally getting my feet back under me at the day job after my vacation and subsequent overwhelming amount of work. This post is a little late – like, two weeks late – but I’m finally getting to it. The upshot of this is that my memory of stuff may be a little worse than usual ((And, as Elliott will attest, my memory is not great at the best of time.)). So, I’m gonna try and keep this brief .

Bear with me.

We picked up the game with the characters meeting up with Calico and the posse coming out from Roosevelt. Our heroes had captured sixteen of Sway’s Boys, and had them all chained to the captured trucks. The plan was to interrogate them, find out where the rest of Sway’s Boys were holed up, and go rescue the stolen food ((Also free the captured slaves from New Ogden, but those were a secondary objective in Calico’s eyes.)).

I was, frankly, a little surprised at how quick JB, Snow, and Nils ((As I recall, Magpie participated, but not as… enthusiastically.))  jumped right into hardcore torture. We had some cultural clash, here, mechanics-wise. See, in Apocalypse World, there’s an expectation that you make a move and that resolves the outcome of the situation of the moment. In other games ((Like, but not exclusive to, D&D.)), there’s an expectation that a check resolves one attempt to overcome a challenge and, if the challenge is static, you can try again if you fail. What happened here was that the players kept wanting to escalate the torture if the first roll didn’t produce the results they wanted, and I kept trying to explain that, no, the Going Aggro roll they just made covers the entire interrogation attempt.

There were also a number of attempts to create situational bonuses ((“I loom threateningly.” “I shoot his buddy.” Stuff like that.)), which just doesn’t work in the same way as in other games. If you’re trying to help someone do something, you use the Aid move, and describe it however you want. In this way, it’s kind of like a Cortex or Fate game – you need to do something active to create a bonus. Nothing gives you an automatic bonus, the way some things in, say, D&D do.

Now, I want to be clear that I’m not talking about this to show off my players’ errors – there were no errors, just a lack of familiarity with the very different game paradigm of Apocalypse World.  And that’s what I want to highlight: the game paradigm, the basic assumptions of play, the mechanics, and the play experience are all different from more traditional ((Whatever that really means.)) games. There is a learning curve here, both for players and MC. Both have to come to terms with using the dice more as seasoning for the game fiction, rather than the base. At the same time, the dice provide the pivot points of the narrative ((A bit of an aside – I ran the first session of a new AW game last night with a new group, and it reminded me once again that the narrative, direction, and challenges are really shaped a driven by the misses on the players’ moves. I’ve said it before here, but it was thrown into stark relief with the first session, when I had no fronts, no prep, and had to fill a game session based on what happened at the table. It’s challenging, but kind of exhilarating.)), meaning you have to walk a bit of a fine line as MC, trying to get enough dice rolling to keep a story building itself with unexpected twists and setbacks, but not so much that it overshadows player agency or taxes MC invention ((Yeah, if people are rolling more, they will be missing more, and that means the MC has to improvise more. Too much is too short a span and you’ll run out of good ideas, then out of bad ideas, then out of any ideas.)).

Anyway, our heroes eventually got information on where Sway and the rest of his gang were holed up – some caves in the old quarries south of Roosevelt. Someone ((I think Magpie? But I’m not sure. Elliott? Do you remember?)) tapped into the maelstrom and got a vision of a secret back way into the caves, so Calico decided that the group should split, with our heroes and one of her men sneaking up to the top of the quarry walls and down through the secret entrance while Calico and the rest of the Roosevelt forces attacked from the front.

The night trek across the open fields to the quarry and the assault on the quarry were a lot of tense fun for us. The upshot was that our gang was victorious, wiped out Sway’s Boys, freed most of the slaves, recovered most of the food, and salvaged a bunch of weapons and vehicles from the now-defunct slaver gang.

Everyone was beat up to some degree, so they went back to Roosevelt, and that’s where we wrapped up the game. Have to think about where/when we’re going to start the next game, now. It’s coming up this Friday.