I've been playing a bunch of Torchbearer with the Monday crew, which has been great fun. After a second session total party kill, they've got a second party adventuring to some success. We'll soon have someone at level three!
So far they've dealt with the introductory dungeon in the book, a bandit lair in a ruined dwarven hall, and looted an ancient magical library for one character's enemy (long story). Next up is a lead on a sealed tomb, which I am sure will go just fine.
What makes the game work is a very finely tuned approach to old school D&D. In particular, the rules for light, encumbrance, time, and deteriorating conditions manage to evoke the tension of exploring unknown caverns full of danger in the hope of loot. However, unlike the original, these are fun. It's some combination of the abstractions they use (and thus simplicity) and the fact that the whole system is well tuned, so these constraints matter quite a lot.
I also got in a game of Life on Mars when there were some absences. This is meditative, thoughtful game. It reminds me a lot of The Quiet Year, although many details differ. Life on Mars covers the first expedition to Mars, and we got to know our crew very well along the way. It manages to convey the close quarters with your crewmates, the loneliness and distance from Earth, and also the day to day operations and potential disasters of the mission as you go. I was pleased that our mission returned home safely, and that we in fact discovered life on mars in the last months there (which was my crew member's obsession). Great fun, recommended. Probably not that much replayability, although I expect that playing with a different group of people would be very different. The mission parameters and allowed actions remain the same (although there's some randomness in there too).
Showing posts with label actual_play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label actual_play. Show all posts
29 March 2014
23 January 2014
Kapcon 2014 review
Kapcon this year was mainly games on demand for me, plus two rounds of adventure squad, the new family event run by me and another parent/gamer.
Round One: Torchbearer (Three Squires). Pitched as "D&D but with a focus on packing," I got a keen group. They got about halfway through the intro adventure, getting some decent loot and closure from the place. Everyone was interested and engaged, and it was a lot of fun.
Round Two: Black Stars Rise beta (Renovation). This was good. A little slow to start but once I had a handle on the weirdness and everyone had their character's sorted, it rocked. The slowly growing awareness of the alien weirdness that had targeted them really worked. Top marks for our doctor, who tried to burn down the building a couple of times in the middle of the game. Finally everyone else came around to his point of view and they blew the whole place up (they worked out that the place had been built as a beacon/summoning portal). Solid, but needs more GM advice - a bit of guidance about how to approach each set and also more about building interesting weirdness. Watch this one.
Round Three: The Quiet Year. This was not my first choice, but the game left for the final three people in games on demand. It was a quiet and thoughtful game, without any post-apocalyptic weirdness. Just people in a hard place trying to get along. I still love The Quiet Year.
Round Four: Torchbearer (Skogenby). One returning player, and a bunch of others keen to try it. It was a crazy ride as they managed to score a fair bit of loot until finally meeting their match with one the big bad under the hill. They left the dwarf underground, possessed. Still fun! I think I might be getting the hang of running it.
Rounds Five and Six: Adventure Squad. Games for families (specifically 5-12 year old kids with their parents present) was a bit of an experiment but went well on the day. I ran a homebrewed Hogwarts game in the first sub-round, then returned to it for the second half. Next I did a homebrew/streamlined D&D game with J V West's adventure Howler, which is short and admirably creepy and weird. The kids generally enjoyed themselves, and I hear that one wants to run his own games already, so the experiment was definitely a success. I did find that running games for kids was both different to what I'm used to and much more tiring! Also played were Hero Kids, Golden Sky Stories, Mice & Mystics, and King of Tokyo.
Round Seven: The Regiment (Mission Boston). An energetic final round as we played this awesome SNAFU of a mission. We didn't do too badly, destroying a few German positions and one bridge with the loss of only a few of our own squad (all the PCs survived, although separated at the end).
Overall, a fun and relaxed Kapcon this year, and I was pleased to get in some play of Black Stars Rise and Torchbearer. I would have liked to play Sagas of the Icelanders and Life On Mars (I got my copy from a group kickstarter at the con - looks lovely!).
Round One: Torchbearer (Three Squires). Pitched as "D&D but with a focus on packing," I got a keen group. They got about halfway through the intro adventure, getting some decent loot and closure from the place. Everyone was interested and engaged, and it was a lot of fun.
Round Two: Black Stars Rise beta (Renovation). This was good. A little slow to start but once I had a handle on the weirdness and everyone had their character's sorted, it rocked. The slowly growing awareness of the alien weirdness that had targeted them really worked. Top marks for our doctor, who tried to burn down the building a couple of times in the middle of the game. Finally everyone else came around to his point of view and they blew the whole place up (they worked out that the place had been built as a beacon/summoning portal). Solid, but needs more GM advice - a bit of guidance about how to approach each set and also more about building interesting weirdness. Watch this one.
Round Three: The Quiet Year. This was not my first choice, but the game left for the final three people in games on demand. It was a quiet and thoughtful game, without any post-apocalyptic weirdness. Just people in a hard place trying to get along. I still love The Quiet Year.
Round Four: Torchbearer (Skogenby). One returning player, and a bunch of others keen to try it. It was a crazy ride as they managed to score a fair bit of loot until finally meeting their match with one the big bad under the hill. They left the dwarf underground, possessed. Still fun! I think I might be getting the hang of running it.
Rounds Five and Six: Adventure Squad. Games for families (specifically 5-12 year old kids with their parents present) was a bit of an experiment but went well on the day. I ran a homebrewed Hogwarts game in the first sub-round, then returned to it for the second half. Next I did a homebrew/streamlined D&D game with J V West's adventure Howler, which is short and admirably creepy and weird. The kids generally enjoyed themselves, and I hear that one wants to run his own games already, so the experiment was definitely a success. I did find that running games for kids was both different to what I'm used to and much more tiring! Also played were Hero Kids, Golden Sky Stories, Mice & Mystics, and King of Tokyo.
Round Seven: The Regiment (Mission Boston). An energetic final round as we played this awesome SNAFU of a mission. We didn't do too badly, destroying a few German positions and one bridge with the loss of only a few of our own squad (all the PCs survived, although separated at the end).
Overall, a fun and relaxed Kapcon this year, and I was pleased to get in some play of Black Stars Rise and Torchbearer. I would have liked to play Sagas of the Icelanders and Life On Mars (I got my copy from a group kickstarter at the con - looks lovely!).
06 February 2013
hollowpoint review
I've played two games of hollowpoint recently - one at Kapcon games on demand, the other with my regular group.
It's a great system for one-shot action. Both games ran at a breakneck pace, with crazy action scenes quite naturally developing out of the conflict mechanics.
The games were fairly different in detail: at Kapcon, we had a mob revenge/reprisal scenario. This week, I had a team of anti-terror agents working for a mysterious organisation in 80s action movie style.
Despite the rather different feels (albeit both action), the system handled both with ease. For the anti-terror mission, I changed two of the skills from the default (which suggest 100 Bullets or Reservior Dogs in feel) to give the agents a more military edge. This is suggested in the book, with a fair range of examples to give you ideas.
The system is simple enough to explain quickly, but has a few emergent effects that mean there's rarely an obviously best choice about how to approach a conflict (for the agents, is it worth asking for help - with the possibility of rebuff?; for the GM, do I introduce a principal character and split up my dice pool?). That makes the mechanics of the dice a bit more interesting than many simple systems, especially those intended for ease of play as a one-shot.
Another nice feature is that players choose if and when their characters die. If your agent takes two hits, you can choose to "move on". If you take that option, you reinforce the shared teamwork dice pool, and make a new (higher ranked) agent to come in and fix up the (obviously screwed up) mission. It's very fun to have the new character come in with the explicit requirement that they take time to chew out the rest of the team for their failures!
Highly recommended for nasty, violent action games! If the slogan ("bad people killing bad people for bad reasons") can fit the action scenario you have in mind, hollowpoint will almost certainly fit the bill. I'm sure I'll be taking to conventions as a reliably fun, easy to run option.
Additionally, I made myself some reference sheets to cope with the rules in these first games, which you are welcome to grab if you think they'll be useful. There's a GM summary, an agent summary, and cards with the agents' special abilities by rank.
It's a great system for one-shot action. Both games ran at a breakneck pace, with crazy action scenes quite naturally developing out of the conflict mechanics.
The games were fairly different in detail: at Kapcon, we had a mob revenge/reprisal scenario. This week, I had a team of anti-terror agents working for a mysterious organisation in 80s action movie style.
Despite the rather different feels (albeit both action), the system handled both with ease. For the anti-terror mission, I changed two of the skills from the default (which suggest 100 Bullets or Reservior Dogs in feel) to give the agents a more military edge. This is suggested in the book, with a fair range of examples to give you ideas.
The system is simple enough to explain quickly, but has a few emergent effects that mean there's rarely an obviously best choice about how to approach a conflict (for the agents, is it worth asking for help - with the possibility of rebuff?; for the GM, do I introduce a principal character and split up my dice pool?). That makes the mechanics of the dice a bit more interesting than many simple systems, especially those intended for ease of play as a one-shot.
Another nice feature is that players choose if and when their characters die. If your agent takes two hits, you can choose to "move on". If you take that option, you reinforce the shared teamwork dice pool, and make a new (higher ranked) agent to come in and fix up the (obviously screwed up) mission. It's very fun to have the new character come in with the explicit requirement that they take time to chew out the rest of the team for their failures!
Highly recommended for nasty, violent action games! If the slogan ("bad people killing bad people for bad reasons") can fit the action scenario you have in mind, hollowpoint will almost certainly fit the bill. I'm sure I'll be taking to conventions as a reliably fun, easy to run option.
Additionally, I made myself some reference sheets to cope with the rules in these first games, which you are welcome to grab if you think they'll be useful. There's a GM summary, an agent summary, and cards with the agents' special abilities by rank.
21 January 2013
Kapcon 22 Games Played
I've been posting quick accounts at NZRaG. Rather than typing them again, I'll just leave the link there. I've still got Sunday to fill in as I write this.
I'll post reviews of The Quiet Year, Hollowpoint, and possibly some of the other games played. Quick version: they're both great, as was my game of World of Dungeons/Dark Heart of the Dreamer.
Durance remains great. It was interesting to see similarities and differences between yesterday's game and my previous one.
I'll post reviews of The Quiet Year, Hollowpoint, and possibly some of the other games played. Quick version: they're both great, as was my game of World of Dungeons/Dark Heart of the Dreamer.
Durance remains great. It was interesting to see similarities and differences between yesterday's game and my previous one.
10 December 2012
Game Review: Durance
I backed the Durance kickstarter, on the strength of Bully Pulpit's previous work (especially Fiasco). I was a little dubious based on the very specific focus of the game, but after reading and playing it I feel like it will have a fair amount of replay value.
The very specific focus is that you'll be telling a story about a space penal colony where things are going bad. It's a SF take on the Australian first fleet and the early days of Sydney (in fact, there's a chapter on using the game for the historical scenario, if you want to try that).
You can see that the system is closely based on Fiasco, with most of the game being free narration and roleplaying. However, there are plenty of extra bits that give a particular spin on things.
To start with, you define the planet and colony. There are six features that initial surveys said were beneficial. You take turns picking one to be true, and another to be false. Once you have defined all those, you can look up your specific world and colony in the rulebook: each possible result has details listed to use in your game. Then you pick what drives your colony - there's a list of six possible drives, and you take turns deleting one until there's only one left.
Then you create two notable characters to play. One will be a convict, the other a free person or agent of the Authority. Your two characters must also be of different ranks - each side of the colony is divided into a ladder, from the top dog (colony Governor, or the convict bigwig the Dimber Damber) down to the lowest of the low (convicts who have served their sentence on the free side, and the lowly political prisoners and ruined convicts on the other). Each notable also has taken a solemn oath, which may be picked by another player for you - that is done turn by turn as well. A final discussion about relationships and implications of the notables picked finishes up the colony setup.
Play then begins, with no one GM as you might expect. Instead, you take turns as scene guide. The guide's job is to pose a question, like "I wonder how Freesh the bolter [an escaped convict] is surviving out in the wilderness?" or "I wonder what the governor does when he finds out his captain of marines was murdered in cold blood?". The other players then set a scene exploring that question and play out what happens (possibly with a few more questions asked along the way). In general, you aim to include your notables in the scenes as much as you can.
Uncertainty in the resolution of a scene is worked out via a choice (after a dice roll by the guide) of which of the colony drives is used in the situation. The choice is between "servility", "savagery", and the particular drive you picked for your colony in setup. The die roll provides some randomness, restricting which drives may be chosen. When the resolution method is picked, the actual resolution is played out by the group.
I've played only a single session one shot, but we had a great time. The setup gives you both an unstable, failing, colony and a bunch of characters with various issues and relationships that push them into action. The oaths, in particular, very naturally push your play of the notables into certain patterns - especially some of the crazier ones (I had a character who had sworn "to never keep a promise"). We wrecked the colony - the senior Authority notables and the Dimber Damber were all overthrown, and a republic declared. But with my promise-breaking convict in charge, we knew that it would not go well.
The resolution mechanics and story guidance are just enough to get things going the right direction - it shares that light touch with Fiasco. The individually generated planet and colony also assure that each game with have its own particular flavour. For example, our planet was so hostile that none of the colonists left the town. Only the wretched bolters attempted to live out in the wild, fighting off the natives and scratching for alien moss to eat. Most of the game took place indoors to avoid the harsh climate.
Overall, recommended. Especially if you're a Fiasco fan who is interested in exploring and even darker story.
Links: Durance at RPGNow or IPR. Fiasco at RPGNow or IPR.
The very specific focus is that you'll be telling a story about a space penal colony where things are going bad. It's a SF take on the Australian first fleet and the early days of Sydney (in fact, there's a chapter on using the game for the historical scenario, if you want to try that).
You can see that the system is closely based on Fiasco, with most of the game being free narration and roleplaying. However, there are plenty of extra bits that give a particular spin on things.
To start with, you define the planet and colony. There are six features that initial surveys said were beneficial. You take turns picking one to be true, and another to be false. Once you have defined all those, you can look up your specific world and colony in the rulebook: each possible result has details listed to use in your game. Then you pick what drives your colony - there's a list of six possible drives, and you take turns deleting one until there's only one left.
Then you create two notable characters to play. One will be a convict, the other a free person or agent of the Authority. Your two characters must also be of different ranks - each side of the colony is divided into a ladder, from the top dog (colony Governor, or the convict bigwig the Dimber Damber) down to the lowest of the low (convicts who have served their sentence on the free side, and the lowly political prisoners and ruined convicts on the other). Each notable also has taken a solemn oath, which may be picked by another player for you - that is done turn by turn as well. A final discussion about relationships and implications of the notables picked finishes up the colony setup.
Play then begins, with no one GM as you might expect. Instead, you take turns as scene guide. The guide's job is to pose a question, like "I wonder how Freesh the bolter [an escaped convict] is surviving out in the wilderness?" or "I wonder what the governor does when he finds out his captain of marines was murdered in cold blood?". The other players then set a scene exploring that question and play out what happens (possibly with a few more questions asked along the way). In general, you aim to include your notables in the scenes as much as you can.
Uncertainty in the resolution of a scene is worked out via a choice (after a dice roll by the guide) of which of the colony drives is used in the situation. The choice is between "servility", "savagery", and the particular drive you picked for your colony in setup. The die roll provides some randomness, restricting which drives may be chosen. When the resolution method is picked, the actual resolution is played out by the group.
I've played only a single session one shot, but we had a great time. The setup gives you both an unstable, failing, colony and a bunch of characters with various issues and relationships that push them into action. The oaths, in particular, very naturally push your play of the notables into certain patterns - especially some of the crazier ones (I had a character who had sworn "to never keep a promise"). We wrecked the colony - the senior Authority notables and the Dimber Damber were all overthrown, and a republic declared. But with my promise-breaking convict in charge, we knew that it would not go well.
The resolution mechanics and story guidance are just enough to get things going the right direction - it shares that light touch with Fiasco. The individually generated planet and colony also assure that each game with have its own particular flavour. For example, our planet was so hostile that none of the colonists left the town. Only the wretched bolters attempted to live out in the wild, fighting off the natives and scratching for alien moss to eat. Most of the game took place indoors to avoid the harsh climate.
Overall, recommended. Especially if you're a Fiasco fan who is interested in exploring and even darker story.
Links: Durance at RPGNow or IPR. Fiasco at RPGNow or IPR.
18 February 2012
Rather Late Kapcon Report
This year at Kapcon, I was running the games on demand room again. That meant lots of playing stuff.
Monster of the Week - Zombiefest 2012: I took some people through one of my draft mysteries that's going in the collection for fundraisers. It's a zombie outbreak at a death metal festival, and went just great (it got played twice more by other groups over the convention). The team had a Snoop, and they had a Ghost Facers style youtube show. A Wronged, Flake, and Mundane rounded out the team. For some reason they immediately decided one of the metal drummers was behind events, which led to much hilarity but little mystery solving. A fan set them right before the end, and they even enchanted a baseball bat for the drummer from Celestial Laceration to help them fight off the undead.
FreeMarket: By request, FreeMarket came out. The MRCZ was a little unfocused at first. Then there were some hijinks with a guy hired to death one of them, which they spun into a popular blog that swept the station by storm. For a little while anyway. We had a lot of fun with smileys and frownies, too.
Fiasco - De Medici: I really wanted to play this set, and got a group of people who were keen to join me. We had a lot of fun with our five terrible characters. We were all terrible, and the tale involved blackmail, assassination, a bastard babe, adultery, a fake relic trade, and the Inquisition. It ended well for nobody. I did have a lot of fun with my dashing mercenary captain, who died in perhaps his only selfless act (trying to rescue a soldier of my company from the Inquistion's dungeon).
Psi*Run: Uneven, but basically fun. The runners caused an immense amount of carnage and discovered some unexpected details about their pasts. In future, I plan to approach this game with a much stronger GM style than I am used to these days.
3:16: Kapcon Sunday morning is usually a time when I need to go for something crazy and easy to run. 3:16 is a natural for these situations, and the marines kicked arse on one operation before being almost TPKed in the second: if only the corporal didn't have a strength left [shakes fist]. But he did, so he saved the day and the 3:16th in the final battle. Pity about the rest of the squad.
Monster of the Week: Sophie and I ran our double feature that got cancelled for Fright Night. The games played great and the hunters used the parallel stories to create some neat bits. I got one member of Sophie's team for a while, and the Divine teleported back and forth a few times. Plus there were some great phone conversations between the hunters: one I recall had a hunter in my group phone one in the other team. I called across the room "Hey, Expert, your phone rings" and we interrupted some kind of fight aftermath. In between them fighting ghouls and vampires off, and saving someone from bleeding out, we got the reply "it goes to voicemail". And both teams defeated their respective big bads, so huzzah! But the Divine on my team also destroyed the wall between life and death, to begin the Apocalypse (this was his mission on Earth). Everyone was a little deflated when he did that.
Fiasco - Fiasco High: Last session, after the prize giving, and everyone was strung out and crazy. We played with six, as there was an extra player who didn't get into any other game. This was my most hilarious and disturbing game of Fiasco yet. We had sports rivalry between Chad and Brad, murderous identical twins, an out of control Chess Club, and various shenanigans to ensure that there was way too much beer at the party after the prom. In the end, we ruined the prom and most of the characters ruined their lives too. Fantastic!
Monster of the Week - Zombiefest 2012: I took some people through one of my draft mysteries that's going in the collection for fundraisers. It's a zombie outbreak at a death metal festival, and went just great (it got played twice more by other groups over the convention). The team had a Snoop, and they had a Ghost Facers style youtube show. A Wronged, Flake, and Mundane rounded out the team. For some reason they immediately decided one of the metal drummers was behind events, which led to much hilarity but little mystery solving. A fan set them right before the end, and they even enchanted a baseball bat for the drummer from Celestial Laceration to help them fight off the undead.
FreeMarket: By request, FreeMarket came out. The MRCZ was a little unfocused at first. Then there were some hijinks with a guy hired to death one of them, which they spun into a popular blog that swept the station by storm. For a little while anyway. We had a lot of fun with smileys and frownies, too.
Fiasco - De Medici: I really wanted to play this set, and got a group of people who were keen to join me. We had a lot of fun with our five terrible characters. We were all terrible, and the tale involved blackmail, assassination, a bastard babe, adultery, a fake relic trade, and the Inquisition. It ended well for nobody. I did have a lot of fun with my dashing mercenary captain, who died in perhaps his only selfless act (trying to rescue a soldier of my company from the Inquistion's dungeon).
Psi*Run: Uneven, but basically fun. The runners caused an immense amount of carnage and discovered some unexpected details about their pasts. In future, I plan to approach this game with a much stronger GM style than I am used to these days.
3:16: Kapcon Sunday morning is usually a time when I need to go for something crazy and easy to run. 3:16 is a natural for these situations, and the marines kicked arse on one operation before being almost TPKed in the second: if only the corporal didn't have a strength left [shakes fist]. But he did, so he saved the day and the 3:16th in the final battle. Pity about the rest of the squad.
Monster of the Week: Sophie and I ran our double feature that got cancelled for Fright Night. The games played great and the hunters used the parallel stories to create some neat bits. I got one member of Sophie's team for a while, and the Divine teleported back and forth a few times. Plus there were some great phone conversations between the hunters: one I recall had a hunter in my group phone one in the other team. I called across the room "Hey, Expert, your phone rings" and we interrupted some kind of fight aftermath. In between them fighting ghouls and vampires off, and saving someone from bleeding out, we got the reply "it goes to voicemail". And both teams defeated their respective big bads, so huzzah! But the Divine on my team also destroyed the wall between life and death, to begin the Apocalypse (this was his mission on Earth). Everyone was a little deflated when he did that.
Fiasco - Fiasco High: Last session, after the prize giving, and everyone was strung out and crazy. We played with six, as there was an extra player who didn't get into any other game. This was my most hilarious and disturbing game of Fiasco yet. We had sports rivalry between Chad and Brad, murderous identical twins, an out of control Chess Club, and various shenanigans to ensure that there was way too much beer at the party after the prom. In the end, we ruined the prom and most of the characters ruined their lives too. Fantastic!
11 September 2011
Quick Game Review: Blowback
The regular game had one missing and one sick but present, so we did a one-off of something we hadn't tried. It was Blowback, which is an unofficial game of Burn Notice.
We quickly put together a couple of ex-spies and their civilian friends, and I threw together a pretty basic plot. Character generation is simple, but I think we went a bit too quick. Additionally, two players isn't really enough for the game. I suspect the sweet spot is 3-5 players plus GM. Maybe we should have gone with a single professional and single civilian with just the three of us there.
The mission worked well, although we stumbled on a few of the rules. I really liked the way that you do a section of preparation and intelligence gathering, then make a plan and execute it, quite separately. The four skills the game uses even have totally different effects in each phase, which adds a lot to the feel of things.
One of our rules errors was one that made things a little easy for the agents, so I think we didn't get quite the feel of things going out of control on the operation that I suspect is what normally happens.
Overall impression was positive, but that we picked a bad way to try it out. Recommended if you want to play a game like Burn Notice or find the idea of the innovative preparation/operation mechanics intriguing.
We quickly put together a couple of ex-spies and their civilian friends, and I threw together a pretty basic plot. Character generation is simple, but I think we went a bit too quick. Additionally, two players isn't really enough for the game. I suspect the sweet spot is 3-5 players plus GM. Maybe we should have gone with a single professional and single civilian with just the three of us there.
The mission worked well, although we stumbled on a few of the rules. I really liked the way that you do a section of preparation and intelligence gathering, then make a plan and execute it, quite separately. The four skills the game uses even have totally different effects in each phase, which adds a lot to the feel of things.
One of our rules errors was one that made things a little easy for the agents, so I think we didn't get quite the feel of things going out of control on the operation that I suspect is what normally happens.
Overall impression was positive, but that we picked a bad way to try it out. Recommended if you want to play a game like Burn Notice or find the idea of the innovative preparation/operation mechanics intriguing.
04 February 2011
Time & Temp
I've played a couple of one-shots of Time & Temp over the past few weeks, enough to have some stuff to say about it.
Firstly, it is a fun and funny game. The combination of characters who aren't really good at anything with difficult to solve problems and time travel is just great. The system works smoothly, although it takes a few minutes to get into the swing of it (and I did make one major error in the first game, although it was easy to correct in hindsight, and it didn't detract from the game).
Coming up with scenarios is fun too! As the GM (General Manager) you really just need a time and place and something anachronistic to go on. My two games have been about the Dodo Liberation Front (eco-warriors going back to defend the wildlife of Mauritius from sailors) and a Norwegian supremacist who had gone back to the 13th century to create a high-tech Norwegian world empire. In both cases, the temps made good use of their "skills" to prevent both problems.
As GM, you do need to look over the paradox and challenge rules very carefully - there are a few things that aren't described very clearly. Check out the game's website - Ravachol has written an FAQ and some examples that help a lot in the understanding. I recommend checking those out too before you run a game.
Overall, great game - I really look forward to playing some more (and seeing what happens in an extended run).
Firstly, it is a fun and funny game. The combination of characters who aren't really good at anything with difficult to solve problems and time travel is just great. The system works smoothly, although it takes a few minutes to get into the swing of it (and I did make one major error in the first game, although it was easy to correct in hindsight, and it didn't detract from the game).
Coming up with scenarios is fun too! As the GM (General Manager) you really just need a time and place and something anachronistic to go on. My two games have been about the Dodo Liberation Front (eco-warriors going back to defend the wildlife of Mauritius from sailors) and a Norwegian supremacist who had gone back to the 13th century to create a high-tech Norwegian world empire. In both cases, the temps made good use of their "skills" to prevent both problems.
As GM, you do need to look over the paradox and challenge rules very carefully - there are a few things that aren't described very clearly. Check out the game's website - Ravachol has written an FAQ and some examples that help a lot in the understanding. I recommend checking those out too before you run a game.
Overall, great game - I really look forward to playing some more (and seeing what happens in an extended run).
20 December 2010
Actual Play: Lamentations of the Flame Princess/Tower of the Stargazer
In my Monday group's usual holiday season tradition, we are trying a few one off in the lead up to Kapcon. Last time it was a Monster of the Week playtest, this week we did a bit of old school renaissance with Lamentations of the Flame Princess, using the introductory adventure Tower of the Stargazer.
The game certainly brought back a lot of nostalgia, and I thought that the rules lived up to their promise from reading through - everything was fairly streamlined and intuitive (at least compared to actual old school D&D or the old school rulesets that pretty much just recreate the old rules. It also had a lot more flavour in the character classes than Dungeonslayers (our only other recent foray into this style). Dungeonslayers is a fine lightweight set of rules, but it felt a little flat to us after a few sessions.
Anyway, we got some characters rolled up - one player taking two after I mentioned that multiple characters and/or hirelings might be a good idea. The fighter also bought a dog - obviously a terrier given its low rolled hit points! So we had the Pants siblings (cleric of the Mist Goddess and specialist - that's a thief to the rest of us), a halfling and the fighter and dog. No hirelings, as they ran out of money but maybe there'll be some next time.
I basically set them up with the beginnings of a Western Marches style game, with a small village and nearby military fort on the border of The Empire, with only rumours and ruins beyond. The key rumour (given to the two siblings played by one player, because he put his hand up when asked "who has a wizard as a parent?") was a story about a place constantly hit by lightning containing lots of treasure and magic. This is about the most obvious lead in to The Tower of the Stargazer that you could have.
I'll hold off on anything spoilery about the adventure, but we had fun as they explored. They searched and tried this and that, finding lots of weird stuff, some treasure, some odd magical things, some monsters and a fair chunk of the story behind why it is all there and like it is. We got about half of the place explored in the evening, with a natural cutoff as they needed to retreat back to town in order to (a) heal up and (b) flog off some loot. I was happy to see the dog get the first kill of the game, and they narrowly avoided any of the party being killed (there were three or four chances that someone could have died, and the halfling only made it by 1 hit point on one of them).
Good fun, overall. Not sure if I'm ready to commit to a full on old school campaign, but I certainly want to see them explore the rest of the tower and maybe we can come back to the characters for some of the other adventures later on. Death Frost Doom also looks pretty cool, and Hammers of the God too. I should mention that I really respect Raggi's adventures, because they provide places that (from reading) look really cool to explore, they're really dangerous adding a big sense of caution, and for the GM there's a good story as to why the place is there, why things are like they are and how all the little elements fit in. The sense of logic to each place really makes them work for me, and gives you a good base to improvise extra details off when you are running it. They're fun to read, and this one was more fun to gradually reveal as they explored it.
The game certainly brought back a lot of nostalgia, and I thought that the rules lived up to their promise from reading through - everything was fairly streamlined and intuitive (at least compared to actual old school D&D or the old school rulesets that pretty much just recreate the old rules. It also had a lot more flavour in the character classes than Dungeonslayers (our only other recent foray into this style). Dungeonslayers is a fine lightweight set of rules, but it felt a little flat to us after a few sessions.
Anyway, we got some characters rolled up - one player taking two after I mentioned that multiple characters and/or hirelings might be a good idea. The fighter also bought a dog - obviously a terrier given its low rolled hit points! So we had the Pants siblings (cleric of the Mist Goddess and specialist - that's a thief to the rest of us), a halfling and the fighter and dog. No hirelings, as they ran out of money but maybe there'll be some next time.
I basically set them up with the beginnings of a Western Marches style game, with a small village and nearby military fort on the border of The Empire, with only rumours and ruins beyond. The key rumour (given to the two siblings played by one player, because he put his hand up when asked "who has a wizard as a parent?") was a story about a place constantly hit by lightning containing lots of treasure and magic. This is about the most obvious lead in to The Tower of the Stargazer that you could have.
I'll hold off on anything spoilery about the adventure, but we had fun as they explored. They searched and tried this and that, finding lots of weird stuff, some treasure, some odd magical things, some monsters and a fair chunk of the story behind why it is all there and like it is. We got about half of the place explored in the evening, with a natural cutoff as they needed to retreat back to town in order to (a) heal up and (b) flog off some loot. I was happy to see the dog get the first kill of the game, and they narrowly avoided any of the party being killed (there were three or four chances that someone could have died, and the halfling only made it by 1 hit point on one of them).
Good fun, overall. Not sure if I'm ready to commit to a full on old school campaign, but I certainly want to see them explore the rest of the tower and maybe we can come back to the characters for some of the other adventures later on. Death Frost Doom also looks pretty cool, and Hammers of the God too. I should mention that I really respect Raggi's adventures, because they provide places that (from reading) look really cool to explore, they're really dangerous adding a big sense of caution, and for the GM there's a good story as to why the place is there, why things are like they are and how all the little elements fit in. The sense of logic to each place really makes them work for me, and gives you a good base to improvise extra details off when you are running it. They're fun to read, and this one was more fun to gradually reveal as they explored it.
05 August 2010
More about Apocalypse World
I have begun another Apocalypse World game, this time as a player rather than MC. It's interesting that the experience is very different, more distinct than I had expected.
This is probably partly because I'm out of practice at just playing games, these days, almost always running things for my regular group. It's partly, too, that I built my character thinking mainly about what would be awesome but didn't spend any time thinking about who the character was and how he got there. That made positioning myself a little harder, although now I've had time to digest the game and think about it, I have a better handle on him and most importantly a plan that will almost certainly lead to chaos.
The game was shaped right from the beginning by some significant, and missed, rolls. The characters are me with a Battlebabe, a Hocus and a Brainer. We live around a bar that existed under the protection of a bike gang.
The first play-driving failure was on the Hocus's session start move, with a death and a desertion (specifically, a break with his brother) in the cult. Later, I managed to aggravate the entire bike gang and only ended that by killing their leader and taking another one hostage to walk out alive. Oh, and the brainer failed a puppet strings roll that ended with another gang member dying. So, overall it was fairly undirected chaos.
I think we maybe stepped into play a little soon, but the chaos - especially the local power vacuum - leaves us in an interesting place for the second session. We've been throwing some ideas around, and I suspect that the second game will work a bit better for all of us.
Looking forward to session two.
Regarding Apocalypse World, my high opinion stands. Very good game.
This is probably partly because I'm out of practice at just playing games, these days, almost always running things for my regular group. It's partly, too, that I built my character thinking mainly about what would be awesome but didn't spend any time thinking about who the character was and how he got there. That made positioning myself a little harder, although now I've had time to digest the game and think about it, I have a better handle on him and most importantly a plan that will almost certainly lead to chaos.
The game was shaped right from the beginning by some significant, and missed, rolls. The characters are me with a Battlebabe, a Hocus and a Brainer. We live around a bar that existed under the protection of a bike gang.
The first play-driving failure was on the Hocus's session start move, with a death and a desertion (specifically, a break with his brother) in the cult. Later, I managed to aggravate the entire bike gang and only ended that by killing their leader and taking another one hostage to walk out alive. Oh, and the brainer failed a puppet strings roll that ended with another gang member dying. So, overall it was fairly undirected chaos.
I think we maybe stepped into play a little soon, but the chaos - especially the local power vacuum - leaves us in an interesting place for the second session. We've been throwing some ideas around, and I suspect that the second game will work a bit better for all of us.
Looking forward to session two.
Regarding Apocalypse World, my high opinion stands. Very good game.
19 July 2010
Adnan's Junkyard: Apocalypse World first session.
I pre-ordered Apocalypse World a while back, and got the pdf. I have been really wanting to play since then, as this game is damn good. I've been meaning to write a review, but I didn't feel like I could do it justice without a bit of play.
Which has now been done - we did the first session of a game about a savvyhead and his assorted helpers and strays. Aside from Adnan the savvyhead, we have Jackson (brainer), Keeler (gunlugger) and Lavender (skinner). We generated quite a bit of detail about the world around them, although interestingly nobody volunteered anything about exactly what had happened to the world. There's a bit that's implicit given what came up in the session, of course.
Two of the characters had particularly interesting histories (by which I mean fuel for future complications). Adnan used to live in Grome's holding, but a year ago moved to his junkyard to be an independant operator selling his services to all comers. Jackson used to be the right hand of a hocus, from the sounds of it mind controlling recalcitrant followers and the like. But there was a coup, and after killing the rest of the leaders they threw Jackson in a river to drown, but instead he washed up at the junkyard. As the session went on we found that he'd taken in a few other random wanderers too.
The day in the life as suggested from in the MC's First Session instructions was pretty fun, as they all had a turn with the more appealing moves they had. Jackson spent a lot of time doing violation glove powered in brain puppet strings on anyone he could, for later. Lavender did similar with hypnotic, and now has hold over Adnan and Jeanette (a raiding gang member). They also uncovered a mysterious buried thing - they hoped it was a crashed, buried plane but it turned out to be a weird tunnel full of strange fungus-like stuff, and goo. They decided to seal it back up but I have a feeling that stuff is not gonna stay dormant any longer. Plus, they killed a bunch of dudes from another nearby group in the process of claiming it.
So, plenty of stuff to work on for building fronts going forward. I look forward to thinking that stuff through. We have the final chapter of our Trail of Cthulhu game to get through before we get back to this.
So, on to the game. The thing that I really like is that the character classes are filled with colour, and that the individual character books are the only background you need to read (as a player, anyhow). The MC (gamemaster) in this game... well, it's a way I've run games before, but here everything about the rules reinforces it, something I've never seen before. The style's what I think of as a sandbox game - where the player characters do their thing and the gamemaster lets things play out however seems natural based on what the other characters would do, following whatever plans they have.
Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but I've run games like this using rules like GURPS, and having everything built to support it makes it run really smoothly. The player characters have special moves to differentiate themselves, but the MC has their own set of moves that they use to make sure everything works naturally based on what's happening. And it does work, so that's good. Really nice for the person who wants to run a game without a whole lot of prep - you need to do a bit, but nothing onerous.
So, if you want to run a game that has that sort of sandbox play, I really recommend it. The post-apocalyptic setting is good too, but the game's pretty easily hackable if you want to do something different. In fact, I'm currently working through a re-write of Monster of the Week to use a bunch of the ideas from Apocalypse World there (there turn out to be some things that deal with some specific issues I had with that game design).
Which has now been done - we did the first session of a game about a savvyhead and his assorted helpers and strays. Aside from Adnan the savvyhead, we have Jackson (brainer), Keeler (gunlugger) and Lavender (skinner). We generated quite a bit of detail about the world around them, although interestingly nobody volunteered anything about exactly what had happened to the world. There's a bit that's implicit given what came up in the session, of course.
Two of the characters had particularly interesting histories (by which I mean fuel for future complications). Adnan used to live in Grome's holding, but a year ago moved to his junkyard to be an independant operator selling his services to all comers. Jackson used to be the right hand of a hocus, from the sounds of it mind controlling recalcitrant followers and the like. But there was a coup, and after killing the rest of the leaders they threw Jackson in a river to drown, but instead he washed up at the junkyard. As the session went on we found that he'd taken in a few other random wanderers too.
The day in the life as suggested from in the MC's First Session instructions was pretty fun, as they all had a turn with the more appealing moves they had. Jackson spent a lot of time doing violation glove powered in brain puppet strings on anyone he could, for later. Lavender did similar with hypnotic, and now has hold over Adnan and Jeanette (a raiding gang member). They also uncovered a mysterious buried thing - they hoped it was a crashed, buried plane but it turned out to be a weird tunnel full of strange fungus-like stuff, and goo. They decided to seal it back up but I have a feeling that stuff is not gonna stay dormant any longer. Plus, they killed a bunch of dudes from another nearby group in the process of claiming it.
So, plenty of stuff to work on for building fronts going forward. I look forward to thinking that stuff through. We have the final chapter of our Trail of Cthulhu game to get through before we get back to this.
So, on to the game. The thing that I really like is that the character classes are filled with colour, and that the individual character books are the only background you need to read (as a player, anyhow). The MC (gamemaster) in this game... well, it's a way I've run games before, but here everything about the rules reinforces it, something I've never seen before. The style's what I think of as a sandbox game - where the player characters do their thing and the gamemaster lets things play out however seems natural based on what the other characters would do, following whatever plans they have.
Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but I've run games like this using rules like GURPS, and having everything built to support it makes it run really smoothly. The player characters have special moves to differentiate themselves, but the MC has their own set of moves that they use to make sure everything works naturally based on what's happening. And it does work, so that's good. Really nice for the person who wants to run a game without a whole lot of prep - you need to do a bit, but nothing onerous.
So, if you want to run a game that has that sort of sandbox play, I really recommend it. The post-apocalyptic setting is good too, but the game's pretty easily hackable if you want to do something different. In fact, I'm currently working through a re-write of Monster of the Week to use a bunch of the ideas from Apocalypse World there (there turn out to be some things that deal with some specific issues I had with that game design).
08 May 2010
Parsely!
Another recent game purchase has been ACTION CASTLE! and JUNGLE ADVENTURE, using Jared Sorensen's Parsely system.
These aren't really role-playing games in any normal sense. They're based on 1980s text adventure computer games, with one player as the parser (and the map and descriptions of everything), and everyone else as the person typing in commands. Each player takes it in turn to type in a single command.
I played in ACTION CASTLE! at Kapcon, and enjoyed it so much that I picked both it and JUNGLE ADVENTURE up last month.
Running the games as parser is at least as much fun as being on the other side (you get the fun of knowing what they should be doing, which is usually not obvious to the others). I've run both games at lunch hours at work for a few interested colleagues, and that was a fantastic venue for it. Silly, and short, the games were a lot of fun.
Recommended when you need a short, silly game for any number of people (my experience suggests that the more people playing, the better).
ACTION CASTLE! doesn't have much room for replay - once solved, it is pretty much done. JUNGLE ADVENTURE is a bit longer and much tougher. My colleagues managed just 50/100 points when they finished, and there are more variations available. I suspect that you could happily play this 2-4 times before you discovered everything.
These aren't really role-playing games in any normal sense. They're based on 1980s text adventure computer games, with one player as the parser (and the map and descriptions of everything), and everyone else as the person typing in commands. Each player takes it in turn to type in a single command.
I played in ACTION CASTLE! at Kapcon, and enjoyed it so much that I picked both it and JUNGLE ADVENTURE up last month.
Running the games as parser is at least as much fun as being on the other side (you get the fun of knowing what they should be doing, which is usually not obvious to the others). I've run both games at lunch hours at work for a few interested colleagues, and that was a fantastic venue for it. Silly, and short, the games were a lot of fun.
Recommended when you need a short, silly game for any number of people (my experience suggests that the more people playing, the better).
ACTION CASTLE! doesn't have much room for replay - once solved, it is pretty much done. JUNGLE ADVENTURE is a bit longer and much tougher. My colleagues managed just 50/100 points when they finished, and there are more variations available. I suspect that you could happily play this 2-4 times before you discovered everything.
15 March 2010
Fiasco: Actual Play (Prog Metal Hell)
We played Fiasco tonight, using the "Rock band on tour" playset. It was awesome, with our three characters - the guitarist, bass player and drummer - all in the shadow of the singer/songwriter. Things almost instantly went off the rails (mainly due to the 'minimally trained grizzly bear'). The tilt let latent hatreds out and everything kept getting worse. Ultimately we were all left destroyed.
Game play pretty much delivered as promised. We finished quick with just three - I'd definitely suggest adding a few extra dice to keep the scenes going longer if you have three. Some of the scene setup and resolution was a little sketchy, as we got used to the way the game goes. This was very temporary, and by the end we were scooting along just fine.
Definitely up to play again, several times.
Game play pretty much delivered as promised. We finished quick with just three - I'd definitely suggest adding a few extra dice to keep the scenes going longer if you have three. Some of the scene setup and resolution was a little sketchy, as we got used to the way the game goes. This was very temporary, and by the end we were scooting along just fine.
Definitely up to play again, several times.
26 January 2010
Kapcon 2010 After-action Report
This year I spent all 6 official and 1 unofficial sessions in the games on demand room. Here's the games played and the good and bad of running them like this.
Bad Family. Steve Hickey ran this, with me playing. It's the newest version of his long in-development game of dysfunctional family sitcoms. It was absolutely fantastic, with the only bump being one player who was quite out of sync with the tone the rest of the table. The game itself is significantly polished compared to my previous experience of it, although (as I told Steve) I suspect that there's still rather more structure around each scene than is actually required.
FreeMarket. This game is hard to pitch to a group. I find that I can explain what's cool about it if I have a chance to talk to one or two people for a few minutes, but to get a quick pitch to a room of expectant gamers, not so much. In any case, I managed to convince four to give it a go and they created some fun characters and a great MRCZ concept: guerilla redecorators. The first thing they did was make over a public cafe (they scrounged some junk, and recycled the cafe and junk together to change the cafe from tags: "Ephemera, Cafe, Utilitarian" to "Ephemera, Cafe, Luxurious"). Once this was done we got into the flow of it and the rest of the game went pretty well. They managed to generate enough flow by the end that we had time to have a virtual second session beginning and run through a MRCZ promotion round, which they won. Not without issues in a three hour round, but overall a success.
3:16. As expected, fun all round. Not the best game, though. I found that the players seemed in a more reactive mood, which doesn't suit 3:16 well. If they are all just waiting for the next encounter, it drags a bit. I was somewhat to blame as well - beginning to run out of creative energy as the afternoon wore on. I wasn't pushing enough for cool narration too, looking back. Despite all that, everyone enjoyed themselves so that's the main thing.
ACTION CASTLE! I played in this one. Hilarious! If you get the chance, play it.
Ganakagok. Played late on Saturday. Suffered from general tiredness of everyone and the short time we had to play it. The game still generated some great myth, and I had a great time (I think ACTION CASTLE! got my creativity kick-started). After this, though, I think Ganakagok really needs at least 3-4 hours to work. That we everyone can get their head around the mechanics and there's time to get several rounds of play in, rather than just one or two.
Lacuna. Sunday morning, I was so tired that I pushed Lacuna as matching my mind's state perfectly. I used the tactic of basically not telling the Mystery Agents anything, and it worked well. Mood was perhaps affected by a very loud game of 3:16 also in the room, although the random shouts and sound effects probably contributed well to our game's nightmarish aspects. Afterwards, I had a conversation with a couple of players about the game's form and structure, how the incomplete aspects fitted into the setting and play, and how Jared Sorenson likes to mess with basically everybody.
In A Wicked Age... Played by popular request of some people who had played it the previous day. We used the "God-Kings of War" oracle and had a good game with a clash of two nations, complicated by a devil-worshiping cult, a jealous god, and a mischievous djinni. My favourite moment was when I offered "The devil kills and eats you" as a post-conflict negotiation and was accepted (the character happily continued taking part in the story as a ghost). The epic battle between the wild tribe huntress and the city-state's general was also neat to watch.
The Shab-al-Hiri Roach: OVERLORD. I grabbed three players for this in the last session. We had a good session, although it took a little while for everyone to get the hang of setting up scenes to position themselves for reputation gains - not helped by a weak first scene on my part, which was really only rescued when another player jumped in to create some good adversity for me. Interestingly, this was the lowest body count of any Roach game I have been involved in, despite being set in a commando training camp and with all characters trained soldiers (this does not hold true if we include German soldiers during the D-Day event, however).
Games on demand as a whole was great fun this year. We ran a little more smoothly and got games going more quickly. There are still a few places for improvement, of course, so hopefully will be even better next year. I enjoy that a lot of people like to come in between rounds to chat about the games we have, as well. There's a relaxed, sociable atmosphere that I enjoyed - although sometimes I was a little tired to actually contribute much to conversation.
Bad Family. Steve Hickey ran this, with me playing. It's the newest version of his long in-development game of dysfunctional family sitcoms. It was absolutely fantastic, with the only bump being one player who was quite out of sync with the tone the rest of the table. The game itself is significantly polished compared to my previous experience of it, although (as I told Steve) I suspect that there's still rather more structure around each scene than is actually required.
FreeMarket. This game is hard to pitch to a group. I find that I can explain what's cool about it if I have a chance to talk to one or two people for a few minutes, but to get a quick pitch to a room of expectant gamers, not so much. In any case, I managed to convince four to give it a go and they created some fun characters and a great MRCZ concept: guerilla redecorators. The first thing they did was make over a public cafe (they scrounged some junk, and recycled the cafe and junk together to change the cafe from tags: "Ephemera, Cafe, Utilitarian" to "Ephemera, Cafe, Luxurious"). Once this was done we got into the flow of it and the rest of the game went pretty well. They managed to generate enough flow by the end that we had time to have a virtual second session beginning and run through a MRCZ promotion round, which they won. Not without issues in a three hour round, but overall a success.
3:16. As expected, fun all round. Not the best game, though. I found that the players seemed in a more reactive mood, which doesn't suit 3:16 well. If they are all just waiting for the next encounter, it drags a bit. I was somewhat to blame as well - beginning to run out of creative energy as the afternoon wore on. I wasn't pushing enough for cool narration too, looking back. Despite all that, everyone enjoyed themselves so that's the main thing.
ACTION CASTLE! I played in this one. Hilarious! If you get the chance, play it.
Ganakagok. Played late on Saturday. Suffered from general tiredness of everyone and the short time we had to play it. The game still generated some great myth, and I had a great time (I think ACTION CASTLE! got my creativity kick-started). After this, though, I think Ganakagok really needs at least 3-4 hours to work. That we everyone can get their head around the mechanics and there's time to get several rounds of play in, rather than just one or two.
Lacuna. Sunday morning, I was so tired that I pushed Lacuna as matching my mind's state perfectly. I used the tactic of basically not telling the Mystery Agents anything, and it worked well. Mood was perhaps affected by a very loud game of 3:16 also in the room, although the random shouts and sound effects probably contributed well to our game's nightmarish aspects. Afterwards, I had a conversation with a couple of players about the game's form and structure, how the incomplete aspects fitted into the setting and play, and how Jared Sorenson likes to mess with basically everybody.
In A Wicked Age... Played by popular request of some people who had played it the previous day. We used the "God-Kings of War" oracle and had a good game with a clash of two nations, complicated by a devil-worshiping cult, a jealous god, and a mischievous djinni. My favourite moment was when I offered "The devil kills and eats you" as a post-conflict negotiation and was accepted (the character happily continued taking part in the story as a ghost). The epic battle between the wild tribe huntress and the city-state's general was also neat to watch.
The Shab-al-Hiri Roach: OVERLORD. I grabbed three players for this in the last session. We had a good session, although it took a little while for everyone to get the hang of setting up scenes to position themselves for reputation gains - not helped by a weak first scene on my part, which was really only rescued when another player jumped in to create some good adversity for me. Interestingly, this was the lowest body count of any Roach game I have been involved in, despite being set in a commando training camp and with all characters trained soldiers (this does not hold true if we include German soldiers during the D-Day event, however).
Games on demand as a whole was great fun this year. We ran a little more smoothly and got games going more quickly. There are still a few places for improvement, of course, so hopefully will be even better next year. I enjoy that a lot of people like to come in between rounds to chat about the games we have, as well. There's a relaxed, sociable atmosphere that I enjoyed - although sometimes I was a little tired to actually contribute much to conversation.
19 January 2010
Ganakagok - First Game
To prepare for wanting to run it at Kapcon, I ran a one-shot of Ganakagok last night.
The short version is that the game worked great, play ended up pretty much as the text implied it would. Perhaps more so, as the constant turning of cards to inspire narration kept giving us ideas in keeping with the setting.
The characters had perhaps a little weak construction (in terms of building Truth-vision, Change-hope and Change-fears that prompted immediate action), but the world building meant that as soon as play began stuff began to happen.
It turned out that we had a very small number of stars, so a short game. That was fine as we have a fairly short session anyhow (especially with all the preparation). The action fairly zipped along and the characters quickly fell into a love-triangle (square?) feud rather than attempting to deal with the coming changes.
Still, it gave us a good story and lots of fun alliance breaking and so on.
I suspect that the myth we made would be told by the descendants of the Nitu as the last sins committed under the old ways, before the new ways gave them a better way of life.
The short version is that the game worked great, play ended up pretty much as the text implied it would. Perhaps more so, as the constant turning of cards to inspire narration kept giving us ideas in keeping with the setting.
The characters had perhaps a little weak construction (in terms of building Truth-vision, Change-hope and Change-fears that prompted immediate action), but the world building meant that as soon as play began stuff began to happen.
It turned out that we had a very small number of stars, so a short game. That was fine as we have a fairly short session anyhow (especially with all the preparation). The action fairly zipped along and the characters quickly fell into a love-triangle (square?) feud rather than attempting to deal with the coming changes.
Still, it gave us a good story and lots of fun alliance breaking and so on.
I suspect that the myth we made would be told by the descendants of the Nitu as the last sins committed under the old ways, before the new ways gave them a better way of life.
21 December 2009
Play: FreeMarket
The Monday group took FreeMarket for a spin tonight. It certainly delivered the gameplay promised by the text - I certainly had great fun and everyone else seemed to as well.
The initial round of running a pretend challenge seemed to confuse everyone as much as it enlightened them. Then we got into the basic character generation stuff, which was all fine.
MRCZ creation was a little tougher, as everyone tried to come up with something that their disparate skillsets could work together for. In the end they didn't really manage, but everyone was enthusiastic about "My Little Special Friend" MRCZ, who create customized and weaponized pets. So far they printed up a dayglo stripy cat to pay someone's gambling debt and have got themselves a request for a weaponized cat, too. They acquired the raw materials for it but we ran out of time before they got to build it.
The situation generation was effective and fun. Every character has some memories written on their sheet, and you go and grab elements from each of these to make up things that can happen - so one guy from this character's memory wants an item from another person's memory to blow up a statue that's in a third character's memory. This sounds confusing, but it worked really well. I tied them into the whole custom pet theme of the MRCZ and we just went from there.
Filling up the station with oddball types is fun too. Just finding out about their neighbours was quite fun (a metal band on one side, a mobber with tentacles on the other). I quite enjoyed a courier who delivered them a couple of things. There's going to be more to him than they have yet realised, I think.
The challenge mechanics are pretty fun, although the card draws distract a little from remembering to narrate what you are doing. It's one of those games where I'm going to have to keep reminding myself & others to narrate what happens. The card draws give you a lot to work with, though! Just things like drawing a geneline and hazard give you something to work with (i.e. your narration should incorporate your natural talents but have something go not quite right as well).
Looking forward to playing more! The next session for My Special Little Friend should be epic - they have to build their weaponized cat to give to one guy's Dad. Nobody asked him what for yet... but hey, I guess they don't need to know. What could possibly go wrong with arming a cat with a miniature flechette cannon?
The initial round of running a pretend challenge seemed to confuse everyone as much as it enlightened them. Then we got into the basic character generation stuff, which was all fine.
MRCZ creation was a little tougher, as everyone tried to come up with something that their disparate skillsets could work together for. In the end they didn't really manage, but everyone was enthusiastic about "My Little Special Friend" MRCZ, who create customized and weaponized pets. So far they printed up a dayglo stripy cat to pay someone's gambling debt and have got themselves a request for a weaponized cat, too. They acquired the raw materials for it but we ran out of time before they got to build it.
The situation generation was effective and fun. Every character has some memories written on their sheet, and you go and grab elements from each of these to make up things that can happen - so one guy from this character's memory wants an item from another person's memory to blow up a statue that's in a third character's memory. This sounds confusing, but it worked really well. I tied them into the whole custom pet theme of the MRCZ and we just went from there.
Filling up the station with oddball types is fun too. Just finding out about their neighbours was quite fun (a metal band on one side, a mobber with tentacles on the other). I quite enjoyed a courier who delivered them a couple of things. There's going to be more to him than they have yet realised, I think.
The challenge mechanics are pretty fun, although the card draws distract a little from remembering to narrate what you are doing. It's one of those games where I'm going to have to keep reminding myself & others to narrate what happens. The card draws give you a lot to work with, though! Just things like drawing a geneline and hazard give you something to work with (i.e. your narration should incorporate your natural talents but have something go not quite right as well).
Looking forward to playing more! The next session for My Special Little Friend should be epic - they have to build their weaponized cat to give to one guy's Dad. Nobody asked him what for yet... but hey, I guess they don't need to know. What could possibly go wrong with arming a cat with a miniature flechette cannon?
08 December 2009
Gaming Update
Well, look at that. The experiment with Dungeonslayers finished after another couple of sessions. We had fun but I felt that the game didn't have the legs for a longer campaign to work well. Basically the simplicity of the rules worked against itself there - in combat, everyone soon homed in on their one or two best things to do every round, so the fights got less interesting (the advanced combat rules option on the website might help with that). Plus, as a GM, there's no real guidance as to how tough the monsters are, so stocking an adventure is hard. The only clue are the raw stats and the xp listed. I'd like to see something more structured for creating your own critters as well.
I still think it's a great game, but probably best suited to short campaigns or one-off sessions.
After that I've done a few Monster of the Week playtests. The rules are coming along pretty well, and this is steadily getting polished into something that I can can give out to closed beta testers soon (i.e. in between 1 and 6 months). Play gets a nice Supernatural style build from mystery to tracking the monster to final showdown, with a few character scenes along the way.
Then the regular group (with one person left for England and two new faces) hit the next chapter of our ongoing Trail of Cthulhu series. This time they were exploring a site off the coast of Greenland - mainly by remote control, as only one of the divers was a player character. I wanted a short, intense mystery for this one, and it seemed to happen that way. They defeated that evil below the ocean amnd now it's investigators 2, Cthulhu 2 with one more qualifier before their final chance to stop things at R'lyeh. The plan is to move on with more of this, so chapter five will be next, with a trip to the Amazon.
I still think it's a great game, but probably best suited to short campaigns or one-off sessions.
After that I've done a few Monster of the Week playtests. The rules are coming along pretty well, and this is steadily getting polished into something that I can can give out to closed beta testers soon (i.e. in between 1 and 6 months). Play gets a nice Supernatural style build from mystery to tracking the monster to final showdown, with a few character scenes along the way.
Then the regular group (with one person left for England and two new faces) hit the next chapter of our ongoing Trail of Cthulhu series. This time they were exploring a site off the coast of Greenland - mainly by remote control, as only one of the divers was a player character. I wanted a short, intense mystery for this one, and it seemed to happen that way. They defeated that evil below the ocean amnd now it's investigators 2, Cthulhu 2 with one more qualifier before their final chance to stop things at R'lyeh. The plan is to move on with more of this, so chapter five will be next, with a trip to the Amazon.
15 September 2009
Old School Dungeon Gaming Time!
To take a break from playtests of Monster of the Week, we've been playing some Dungeonslayers.
It's a nice old-style game, and appealed to me because it had a fairly basic, consistent core system. That's in contrast to many of the old school rules I've looked at that attempt to replicate old style D&D warts and all.
I sat down with How to Host a Dungeon and ran through one to build up some background for the game, which was fun in itself and gave me some maps and a general history of the area that provided me a lot of ideas.
First session had only two players, and I set out to run them through the starter dungeon in the main Dungeonslayers pdf. We managed to get through that in one session (with one fatality) and that left those two characters at a decent level. The system works pretty well and provides a good framework for that sort of adventuring - in our case, not taken very seriously. There was a tendency for some fights to get a little tedious as bad rolls led to things taking a long time to die. We got some creative use of tactics to split up one huge group so they could take it out piecemeal. That's the kind of cool stuff I want to encourage, so I was pleased when that happened.
Next session had a couple more players, who had to join on as basically the expendable henchmen of our higher level elves. I had planned to take them through the second sample adventure from the Dungeonslayers website, and indeed when we left off they were nearly about to begin it. The maps derived from my How to Host a Dungeon game really came into their own here, with their journey to find the bandits they're hunting full of sidetracks, getting lost in a swamp, amusing townsfolk, legends about the devilish swamp dwarves and last but definitely not least, a juvenile owlbear attack.
I'm looking forward to next time, when they actually assault the bandits (and begin to uncover clues about how much stuff they are walking over the top of).
It's a nice old-style game, and appealed to me because it had a fairly basic, consistent core system. That's in contrast to many of the old school rules I've looked at that attempt to replicate old style D&D warts and all.
I sat down with How to Host a Dungeon and ran through one to build up some background for the game, which was fun in itself and gave me some maps and a general history of the area that provided me a lot of ideas.
First session had only two players, and I set out to run them through the starter dungeon in the main Dungeonslayers pdf. We managed to get through that in one session (with one fatality) and that left those two characters at a decent level. The system works pretty well and provides a good framework for that sort of adventuring - in our case, not taken very seriously. There was a tendency for some fights to get a little tedious as bad rolls led to things taking a long time to die. We got some creative use of tactics to split up one huge group so they could take it out piecemeal. That's the kind of cool stuff I want to encourage, so I was pleased when that happened.
Next session had a couple more players, who had to join on as basically the expendable henchmen of our higher level elves. I had planned to take them through the second sample adventure from the Dungeonslayers website, and indeed when we left off they were nearly about to begin it. The maps derived from my How to Host a Dungeon game really came into their own here, with their journey to find the bandits they're hunting full of sidetracks, getting lost in a swamp, amusing townsfolk, legends about the devilish swamp dwarves and last but definitely not least, a juvenile owlbear attack.
I'm looking forward to next time, when they actually assault the bandits (and begin to uncover clues about how much stuff they are walking over the top of).
28 June 2009
Trail of Cthulhu: Play update.
We finished another chapter of our big Trail of Cthulhu game this week. It was a narrow victory, with one PC fatality in the final hours of their attempt to prevent something bad being awakened.
My impressions of the system are less rosy after playing it this long. It's still an enormous improvement on Call of Cthulhu, but I'm not sure that the 'design what doesn't matter' approach is really what I like when running a game. A few times I wanted the system to be something solid I could lean on (as it were), but there just isn't much there.
Partly, I think, it is the sanity system at fault. I can appreciate what Hite was trying to do with this, but I don't think it quite works. Maybe Unknown Armies spoiled me for this. In any case, the erosion of sanity doesn't seem to match the way I would like it to.
The drives also seems to have fallen flat in our game. Most of those chosen have ended up leading to few interesting compels, and not really driving the character the way they are supposed to. This might be because we didn't know how the system played when we started, of course, but it seems more than that. Maybe it is that the drives are too broad? In Spirit of the Century, part of the fun of Aspects is that you have a whole bunch of them pushing you in different directions. Here, it's just one big one always pushing you the same way.
Overall: still the best system I've met for Lovecraft roleplaying, but not perfect. Tweaking the rules would probably solve most of my problems, but I don't have much patience for tweaking rules these days.
My impressions of the system are less rosy after playing it this long. It's still an enormous improvement on Call of Cthulhu, but I'm not sure that the 'design what doesn't matter' approach is really what I like when running a game. A few times I wanted the system to be something solid I could lean on (as it were), but there just isn't much there.
Partly, I think, it is the sanity system at fault. I can appreciate what Hite was trying to do with this, but I don't think it quite works. Maybe Unknown Armies spoiled me for this. In any case, the erosion of sanity doesn't seem to match the way I would like it to.
The drives also seems to have fallen flat in our game. Most of those chosen have ended up leading to few interesting compels, and not really driving the character the way they are supposed to. This might be because we didn't know how the system played when we started, of course, but it seems more than that. Maybe it is that the drives are too broad? In Spirit of the Century, part of the fun of Aspects is that you have a whole bunch of them pushing you in different directions. Here, it's just one big one always pushing you the same way.
Overall: still the best system I've met for Lovecraft roleplaying, but not perfect. Tweaking the rules would probably solve most of my problems, but I don't have much patience for tweaking rules these days.
23 May 2009
Actual play report: GHOST/ECHO
Last game night there were only three of us, and I decided to try out John Harper's mini-game GHOST/ECHO. You might as well go read it before the rest of this report - it's only two pages long.
It was a good game - taking the starting situation "your crew is sold out in the ghost world," we established that they'd been on their way to score some metal (drugs), specifically one that was used when channeling the ghost field. They fought back, were captured, escaped and then tooled up and started tracking down whoever had sold them out for revenge. By the time we'd finished, Grip and Vixen had left quite a trail of bodies behind them and were basically sorted. There's an outstanding question about whether their fixer Venom was in on the betrayal or not. That is something that will be established if we go back to the game, I expect.
The very basic resolution system was enough for the game, so if the text seemed interesting on a read through, I'd recommend you take it for a spin some time. Not sure how well it would go for a longer term game, but there's enough inspiration for a one-shot or short run in there.
The system also seemed to encourage crazy action and filling out more details about the world. The way that things in the world are specified also brings out a lot of good stuff as you fill out details in play - as GM, I mainly did this by asking what things were rather than deciding myself.
It was a good game - taking the starting situation "your crew is sold out in the ghost world," we established that they'd been on their way to score some metal (drugs), specifically one that was used when channeling the ghost field. They fought back, were captured, escaped and then tooled up and started tracking down whoever had sold them out for revenge. By the time we'd finished, Grip and Vixen had left quite a trail of bodies behind them and were basically sorted. There's an outstanding question about whether their fixer Venom was in on the betrayal or not. That is something that will be established if we go back to the game, I expect.
The very basic resolution system was enough for the game, so if the text seemed interesting on a read through, I'd recommend you take it for a spin some time. Not sure how well it would go for a longer term game, but there's enough inspiration for a one-shot or short run in there.
The system also seemed to encourage crazy action and filling out more details about the world. The way that things in the world are specified also brings out a lot of good stuff as you fill out details in play - as GM, I mainly did this by asking what things were rather than deciding myself.
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