Collateral Damage Issue #1: Electric Ninja Boogaloo, Part 1
Welcome true believers to a series describing the antics of the newest super hero team: Collateral Damage! I hope you’ve caught our special pre-launch issue where we showed you the nitty-gritty aspects of our creation process. Now get ready form pure raw action and laughs as only the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game can offer you!
Setting the Scene
The Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game supports many playing style, from the more traditional “Game Master describes stuff, players react” to the Writer’s Room approach where the Gamemaster (called The Watcher) acts like a comic book’s editor and the players are as much the writers and artists of the whole series as the voice of their own characters. I really like this approach. Thus, while I get to set and run scenes, I encourage players to butt in and propose cooler ways for things to go down. It’s one of those “Shared Narrative” experience that jargon-laden game designers like to write about. Trust me, it’s a lot more fun than it sounds.
When we finally were ready to start playing, my heart started pounding as I had ABSOLUTELY no plot prepared for the session, having decided to trust the setting elements we’d create earlier in the session and our combined creativity. I picked the index cards unto which I copied the setting elements we created earlier (see previous post) and picked the following (with ideas I got while reviewing them):
- The Circus: Something happens at the show (Nightcrawler and Tsunami are working there. This would let Tsunami shine with her water powers)
- Sharon S: The S.H.I.E.L.D. liaison to the yet-to-be-formed team (She brings the other 2 heroes to introduce them to form the team).
- The Obsessed Scientist: Hired thugs to try to kidnap/coerce Tsunami back to Japan (Opposition!).
I had a scene. I just needed some supporting characters above and beyond Sharon. I started looking through my list (in the Breakout Mini-event that comes out with the Basic game) for an appropriate super villain. I kept going back to the Silver Samurai and that clinched it for me.
The Nipponese scientist pays Clan Harada huge sums of money to send a band of ninjas in LA to track Tsunami and apprehend her. The scientist INSISTS that the Harada himself be there to oversee operations and get involved if necessary.
I stated a large group of ninjas (the game has mechanics for mobs of identical minor characters) within seconds and I was ready to start. [Read the rest of this article]
Collateral Damage #0: The Making of a New (Marvel RPG) Series
I have a gaming group that meets monthly on Sundays. It is composed of my close friends Yan, Franky, (Ubisoft) Alex and PM.
Not too long ago, they approached me to let me know they wanted to go back to classic campaigns. We spent most of the last 2 years playing one-shots of mini-campaigns of various game systems. When I asked what game they’d like to tackle, the answer was unequivocal: Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. They wanted to play with heroes they’d make from scratch and participate in home brewed adventures.
This request brought quite an interesting challenge for em. You see, the Marvel game is principally presented to play out specific events set in the Marvel Universe using pre-established heroes. These events will be based on published plot arcs like the upcoming Civil War or Age of Apocalypse. The events will mix events that occurred in the official storyline with ”what if” elements where players make decisions that may send the story in directions not covered by the original stories.
Thus, what my players requested was not something that I felt entirely comfortable doing right off the bat. Thankfully, I wasn’t without options. The basic rules provide plenty of guidance to make/adapt characters and create your own adventures. But I wasn’t sure I could pull off what they expected: a structured campaign based on my own ideas and my (still) limited knowledge of the Marvel Universe.
(Game designer aside: With over 70 years of history and 9000 characters, I’m not ever going to be a Marvel expert. I joined the team as a Game Designer and as the token “13 y.o boy who played FASERIP“)
Then it dawned on me, I have the tools I need. All those different game systems I’ve been playing these last 2 years give me a lot of options. much like the stuff that Dave and I blogged about here. The Marvel system itself doesn’t inhibit telling my own stories.
Thus I hatched the following strategy to prepare my first RPG campaign in over year.
Character Generation
First, we’d take a whole session making characters. The game provides clear guidelines to create/adapt your own hero but they do require a certain level of rules mastery to get exactly what you want. We spent a few hours individually then together at the table picking Distinctions (personality traits and catchphrases players), Specialties (skills), Power Sets and, more importantly, Special Effects (ways to use powers that bend the rules of the game, like Captain America’s area attack). Getting special effects right was what took us the longest as we wanted to go beyond those found in the book and tweak/create effects that went perfectly well with each hero’s powerset.
We ended up with the following four characters:
Nightcrawler (Franky): Using the available rules, we were able to create a faithful rendition of our favourite swashbuckling mutant teleporter. We established that the character was not being held to canon unless Franky felt it was fun and didn’t constrain his creativity.
The One Man Army (Yan): Inspired by Multiple Man, the self-duplicating mutant seen in X-Men 3 (and X-Factor), He’s a wisecracking troublemaking ex-con who’s idea of problem solving is throwing more manpower at it until the problem vanished under a pile of clones.
The Great Gregory (PM): Inspired by Nick Cage’s character in Next, Gregory is a jaded low-end stage magician and casino cheat with the ability to see one minute into his future. I must say that making a precognitive character was quite a challenge but as you’ll see in Issue #1, the game’s engine can support it much better than I expected.
Tsunami (Alex): A water elemental-like creature that looks like a Japanese idoru. Ami Tsun used to be a physicist who got caught in the Fukushima nuclear reactor in last year’s catastrophe. She got caught in one of the flooded reactors and developped Water Controlling powers.
Player Generated Setting Elements
In order to have something upon which to build our campaign world, I suggested an overarching setting based on the Marvel Universe. Using my recent research for the upcoming Civil War event books, I proposed that the players could be one of the federally-backed supers teams assigned to a specific American state (very loosely based on Marvel’s Fifty State Initiative). They agreed and we chose California.
Borrowing from my own “party generation template” and Dave’s excellent Gammarizer, I asked each player to come up with one setting element (places, recent events and minor characters) linking their character to the setting. Here’s what we came up with.
Sharon S.: S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and former actress. She was to act as the team’s liaison to her organization.
Tow-Wing’s Garage and Halal Fried Noodles: The One Man Army’s work place. I apologize if you find the name culturally offensive, but Yan’s PC is named “Mohammed Chang” a Muslim born from a Sino-Arab union. We all assumed that the business was named by a socially incompetent person… Which kinda fits TOMA to a T.
Hiroito Takashima: A crackpot scientist conspiracy theorist (or is it terrorist?) obsessed with the origins and powers of Tsunami. He has been diverting his own research grants into tracking her to America.
Thomas Redgrave: A Paranoid Casino Security Consultant who once caught Gregory slipping from his usually disciplined casino cheating routine (win slowly and quit before being noticed). He lost many jobs in various Las Vegas casinos trying to convince people of Gregory’s threat. The man is on a vendetta.
Father O’Reilly: Kurt’s Irish confessor and local community leader. Recovered alcoholic, of course.
Le Cirque: A seedy ripoff of Le Cirque du Soleil featuring a pool and scantily clad acrobats. Tsunami works the show’s controls and mechanical sharks. Yes, you read that right.
The Circus Act: Nightcrawler makes occasional guest appearances at the circus in a cheap Houdini act featuring an iron coffin covered in chains, dunked in a pool and stabbed by sword-wielding acrobats. Of course, when that happens, Kurt is safely reading magazines in his dressing room.
Your Mutant Past Will Bite/Help You Someday: In TOMA’s recent past, he dealt with Magneto and Mystique in some undefined way. There’s a good chance they’ll be back to follow up on that.
This setting element brought another one that Franky didn’t want to assume initially but he chose to go with Canon.
Nightcrawler’s Parents: As established, Kurt was born of Mystique and Azazel.
That’s so much material to pick from to create a game.
Milestones
The last element that we needed to establish before the game started was to give character milestones (the game’s experience system based on rewarding specific actions). According to the game, players get to choose 2 from an established list of event or character specific milestones. We took the time to generate one character-specific milestone per hero, agreeing to make setting specific ones in later sessions. I won’t go into specifics as they”ll likely change with time but here’s a summary of each.
TOMA: Dealing with his criminal past. Bring criminals to justice and get his record clean.
Nightcrawler: Being a devout catholic. Putting himself at great risk or even exposing himself in order to save ordinary people. Possibly becoming a priest even.
The Great Gregory: Deal with his boredom by choosing ways of putting his allies in trouble and letting villains escape for a later confrontation. Might even go as far as putting a friend or himself in mortal danger.
Tsunami (To be further defined): Retain her link to humanity or chose to forgo humanity altogether.
Armed with all these, I was totally ready to start a campaign. And let me tell you, it started with a BANG!
Up Next, Issue #1: Electric Ninja Boogaloo!
Chatty’s Fort Wayne Adventures: Tales from the Elemental Chaos, Part 1
I attended the 2012 Dungeons & Dragons Experience convention in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I couldn’t afford to fly there so I decided to drive my dirty blue Hyundai Accent to a place near Buffalo, NY -a 7 hour drive from my native Montreal- to meet up with fellow Critical-Hits writer, WotC freelancer and all-time superstar Shawn Merwin. He drove the rest of the way and much fun was had.
The convention was awesome, I got to see many friends again, made new ones, ran my own adventure, and, of course, played a few games of D&D Next, the very early prototype of what the next version could be based on.
Like so many other bloggers and freelancers, I’ve signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement so I can’t discuss specific rules. Rather I will do what I like doing best: tell stories of the games I ran, sharing highlights and special DMing and player moments during that 4 day long event. Up first, the genesis of new heroes. [Read the rest of this article]
Our D&D Greatest Hits: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition
Last week, Chatty DM told you about his experiences in AD&D (aka “First Edition”) as the edition that he started in. Many of us founding members of Critical Hits got our start in RPGs a bit later in the same game group playing AD&D 2nd edition. Now, that game group has expanded, split, mutated, split again, expanded, and changed a lot since then. However, we all still have some fond memories of those early days.
Like in Phil’s experience, we didn’t necessarily know the real rules (or particularly care). Some of the game play issues that would later come to bug us would be several campaigns down the road before they really became impediments to play. We played with a DM that liked to use 4d6 in order drop lowest, leading to playing fighters with 13th strength and paladins with 4 intelligence.
It was also the system that I would first run campaigns in. First, my utter failure of a campaign that mashed-up the video game Doom and D&D, or my much more successful followup that featured such unique NPCs as Lord Dort Invader, his Twelve Penetrators, and Gigantor the Great Big Robot.
From these memories of our early days, we’ve assembled a few of us who were in those games together to pinpoint what made those days of D&D so great. [Read the rest of this article]
Our D&D Greatest Hits: Chatty’s Advanced Dungeons and Dragons
The recent annoucement that D&D was going to get a new iteration has garnered a lot of reactions on the web. I decided to refrain from early judgement but, much like when 4e was announced, I take an optimistic approach to it. I happen to respect and even quite like the work of the three main designers working on it so that helps my somewhat positive outlook.
I was very intrigued with Mike Mearls vision of creating a “D&D’s Greatest Hits.” It evokes a plethora of images about modular designs and piecemeal “build your own game” elements that inspires the writer and budding game designer in me. This gave me an idea for a series of post here at Critical Hits. Some of the bloggers here have been playing various editions of D&D for the last 4 decades, I thought it would be interesting if we shared our five DMing Greatest Hits for some or all of the versions of D&D we played as dungeon masters.
Let me start with my first foray in RPGs:
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1e)
- Age Range when played : 10-16
- Nostalgia Factor: Very High
- Rules Mastery: Moderate
As I mentioned in my RPG DNA post a while back, I discovered tabletop RPGs when I was 10. A schoolmate invited me over to show me a made-up game based on what he had played with his cousin (the original Red Box) over a weekend. We played for hours with hardly any rules more complex than “Roll a d6 to fight, you die on a 1, you kill the monster on a 6, we roleplay the inbetweens“. [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty’s 2nd Anniversary at Critical-Hits: The Enthusiastic Storyteller
Can you believe I have been with Critical-Hits for two years already? A lot has happened since July 2007 (when I started blogging) and January 10th 2009 (when I merged my blog with Critical-Hits). Yet, as I’ve discussed a few weeks ago, my passion and my drive to write content for the website has now collided with various other priorities. They range from my freelance assignments to reorganizing my life in the light of a recent separation and adjusting to the violently joyful upheavals of love found anew.
In that time, I’ve further thought about what gets my blood boiling and sends my brain in a creative frenzy. As I seek to find this feeling anew among all the clutter that accumulates in my existence, I realized what makes me tick as a writer. I found it while reading a book.
A while back, I was reading Wil Wheaton’s Just a Geek while I was waiting for Dr.C to finish work. I came upon his story about trading his Death Star playset vs a landspeeder and 10$ back in the 80′s and it just dawned on me:
Will was lousy at trades. Oh wait, that’s not it. 
Much like Wil realized that he was a born storyteller, I realized that was also one of the things I liked doing most: writing stories about what my experiences with RPGs. If you look over my previous 2 posts (here and here), my series on becoming a freelance writer (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) or all my posts about playing with my children, you can feel the energy being poured into these articles. Yet, as I recall, they required minimal effort to write. I enjoy sharing my experience through a (slightly) fictionalized account of what occurs in my geek life so much that it doesn’t feel like work to me… at all. [Read the rest of this article]
Instant Dungeon Crawling, Trial by Dragon
Last week, I posted about a formula I devised at the New York Comic Con to play an improv randomly generated dungeon crawl.
At the time, I had no idea how successful the experience would be. As it turns out, things went quite well indeed. Read on for the “storified” highlights of this two hour game.
Puzzling it Out
In one room I rolled “puzzle” on my trusty chart. The map showed two pools, one silver coloured and one gold. So I devised the following “simple” puzzle. The players had to take a container made of silver to transfer water from the silver pool to the gold pool OR take a gold container to do the reverse. Doing either popped a secret latch in the wall and uncovered the treasure.
I let the players experiment for about 10 minutes, answering questions, helping them learn about skill checks to obtain hints and figure things out. They eventually caught on but no one had a silver or golden container.
Rogue: Hey wait (throws treasure token from a previous encounter my way), I have this magnificent silver liquor flask. I pour out the content and use it.
Chatty: What was in the flask?
Rogue (smiling evilly) Fine Dwarven spirits…
Dwarf: No!!!! [Read the rest of this article]
Instant Dungeon Crawling, The Formula and the Setup
Earlier last fall I was at the New York Comic Con as a volunteer DM for Wizards of the Coast. I asked to be assigned to the “Learn D&D” activity. The organizers asked me to provide an improvised adventure using the material available in the D&D Red Box (the 2010 version) rather than play the adventure found in the box.
I played 3 such games and they each were incredibly entertaining. I recounted one of them here.
In the last game I played, I wanted to create a dungeon crawling experience with absolute minimal prepping in advance. More importantly however, I wanted to be able to play without floundering for ideas whilst in the middle of running the game. As I pondered my options, I came up with a formula for running a quick 2 hour game. I’m sharing this with you because I think you might find it useful.
I started with the Red Box , including the dungeon battlemap packaged with the game. I then took a fistfull of glass beads (which I dubbed “treasure tokens”) and wrote the following table:
Roll a d10
1-2 Empty Room, Treasure out in open
3-4 Trap
5-6 Puzzle
7-0 Monster
The idea was to have the treasure beads distributed in various rooms of the dungeon and roll on the table whenever the party entered one such room. I’d make up an encounter based on the result using nothing but the list of monsters in the Red Box’s DM’s booklet and the mini-Rule 42 found on the booklet’s last page (the DC for level 1 adventurers and a damage chart for hazards). If I rolled “monster” I’d make a level 1 encounter on the spot based on what made most sense or was cool.
With only a 40% chance to face monsters (combat not being the only outcome even then), I thought this distribution to be ideal for fostering exploration and creating the classic “poke with a stick” experimentation that I fondly remembered of my early D&D games as a tweenager.
Turns out I was right…
Armed with these, I got a group of 4 players and we created the setting for the game by having them answer these questions:
You are adventurers that banded together recently. Tell me what your last adventure was about. More specifically, tell me one good thing that happened to you and one bad thing that requires you to return adventuring in dungeons.
The wizard player (sensing an exploit) said “I found a very powerful staff”
I answered “Ha! Sure, no problem… But since this is a one shot level 1 game, please work in your ‘bad’ stuff how you lost that staff… even if only temporarily.”
The Dwarven Slayer piped in: “I know! I spent all of the party’s loot from our last adventure on ale and whores… I even pawned the wizard’s staff! I’m so sorry guys, I’ll make it up to you!”
Everybody was laughing their heads off, the game was already a great success.
Chatty: Okay then, well the dwarf knows this Goblin “Bookie” called Groo that specializes in booking high risk, high paying, no-questions-asked forays into vaults, catacombs and other subterranean locales in exchange for a very fair share of the spoils.
Dwarf: Oh yeah, he’s the one who spotted me the money for the staff.
Drow Ranger: You are so not leaving our eyesight, ever again!
Dwarf: Oh come on, I told you I’d waive my part of the treasure until I paid you all off!
(The guy was so funny…)
Chatty: Okay so Groo tells you that the thieve’s guild has had one of its minor vaults run over by monsters from the Underdark and were ready to sign off the valuables stored as a “business loss”. Groo bought back the “content” of the vault at 1 silver piece to the gold crown and wants you to recover as much from it as you can… he promises to let you keep 50% of whatever you recover.
I pulled out the Red Box’s Dungeon map and handed out a pair of glass beads to every player.
Chatty: Okay each of these beads represents a small generic treasure pile whose worth you’ll evaluate once you leave the dungeon. You’ll alternate turns placing these tokens onto the dungeon map, representing in what room treasure can be found. Whenever you enter a room with one of those beads, I’ll play on my little table here to see what you meet, it won’t necessarily be monsters.
The players started placing the beads commenting on some of the features appearing on the map, like braziers, pools and ominous runes on the floor. It reminded me that these were all new players or players who hadn’t played in decades. It dawned on me that I had a very important job here: present one of my favourite games to these players so they could taste how awesome playing D&D is.
Chatty: Okay, before we start, here’s one last thing about the beads. Since they are generic treasure, it’s possible that they could be useful for you in a given situation. So at anytime that you need a particular tool or object, you can “spend” a token and tell me “Oh but I have this doohickey that’s great for disarming traps” or “Oh look, here’s the key to that locked door” or better yet “Hey guys, what does a “healing potion” do?”
They loved it.
In hindsight, they mostly used them as healing potions as things got HARD, but I love this mechanic and will use it for all the “unattributed treasure parcel” I keep struggling with to this day.
The game was a huge success, Up next, I’ll share the highlights of the game. It turned out to be among my great D&D games and certainly one of my most successful convention games ever.
One Hour Blog Post: Don’t Need To, Want To!
Every year, in December, when I get out my fall seasonal funk, I’m overflowed with the inevitable introspection that comes with all light depressive states.
As awesome as 2011 started (getting published ROCKS), the second half of the year has brought turmoil and uncertainties beyond what my strengthening psyche could manage without help. Brutal changes have rocked my life leading me to move into a new apartment, deal with the always unsatisfactory compromise that is shared custody of my children and deal with the unbridled joy (and distractions) of newly found love.
All this, coupled with keeping up with my client’s projects, has led me to slip out one of my best established habits: blogging. As I let this slide, my “need” to write online receded and I stopped rationalizing why I didn’t feel the old compulsion to write as I have for so many years.
As I write these lines, I realize that “needing” is fed by the act of doing.
As I floundered in moving boxes, struggled with deliverable and dove into awesome dates with the one I have been affectionately calling Dr. C, I realized that I more or less sat on the achievements I worked hard to unlock after implementing the plan I successfully hatched, nearly 3 years ago, redirecting my life. As a result, I need to take back control of my creative life. I need to start writing again.
Scratch that. When I hear people around me bemoaning their life, my inner coach wakes up. “I should” and “I need” are poisonous inertia-fueled guilt-trips. I need to think and speak action words!
Let’s try this again shall we?
I want to take back control of my creative life. I will start writing again.
Okay Chatty… how are you going to do this then? How about this? [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty’s Quest : A Twitter Adventure
On October 2011, I started my move into my new apartment and was sitting alone and dejected, waiting for people to deliver my new furniture.
(Yes I am recently separated. Everything’s fine now, including the kids.)
I picked up my smartphone and sent a call out on Twitter for some entertainment.
Chatty: Spending day alone in new unfurnished apartment, awaiting for new furniture and services. Keep me company plz?
That’s when my good friend FDL, sent me this completely unexpected response:
FDL: Ok. you see a grue. What do you do?
(I was thinking: “Hey cute joke…. Let’s see how it plays out.”)
Chatty: Wave torch
FDL: As you wave your torch, you set your furniture delivery guys on fire. Game over. Restart? [y/n]
(I fell down my flimsy beach chair onto my hardwood floor laughing. This could become fun.)
Chatty: LOL yes. Talk Grue.
FDL: The grue says she’s your upstairs neighbor and she hopes her noisy Angry Birds parties won’t bother you too much. What next?
Chatty: examine exits
FDL: There is only one exit, a hangar bay door.
Chatty: kick door
FDL: Door says “Ow!” and kicks back. Grue looks at you in disgust.
(Very funny man… At this point it was clear we had a Parsely text game going. The fact that it worked so well on Twitter was awesome. People had started reading it and reacting to it. I was having fun, my woes forgotten.)
Chatty: Apologize door.
(I was still playing it old school with 2 words)
Chatty: Inventory
FDL: This game uses the Diablo II inventory screen, so assume that you can’t find anything useful, ever. Assume your hands are empty.
(Har har har…)
Chatty: Exit room
FDL: The grue locks the door behind you. It is very cold outside. And you forgot to say “wear pants”, didn’t you?
FDL: It’s Friday. You never wear pants on Friday. Lord knows you said so on Twitter often enough.
(Smartypants, stop reading my Tweets.)
Chatty: Scoff about need for pants.
FDL: As you exit the apartment pantsless, you run into your other new neighbors who wanted to welcome you. All of them.
(*Facepalm*)
Chatty: Do dance of pantless pride
FDL: Neighbor’s kid takes a swing at your pantslessness with +5 Vorpal Steeltoed boots. Rolls a natural 20. You’re in ER.
(That was a low blow FDL)
Chatty: (ouch…) summon nurse
(There was a missing, untagged tweet here about a nurse casting Cure Critical Wounds and an Orc lying in the next bed, a Battleaxe embedded in its forehead, smiling at me.)
Chatty: Examine room
FDL: Well, it IS an examination room, so you sorta have to do that, yeah. BTW, the Orc says: “You pretty!”
FDL: BTW, the grue called and said you missed your cable guy. He rescheduled your appointment for March 14th, 2177.
(Sigh, it’s funny because it’s almost true)
Chatty: Ask orc for battleaxe
FDL: Orc smiles (toothlessly), hides battleaxe behind his back and says: “You no say magic worrrrd, pretty one!”
(Sigh… time to test the parsely engine.)
Chatty: Smile sweetly and tell orc “give me the (censored) battleaxe you (censored) or I’ll (censored) your (censored) (censored) please.
FDL: Orc hands you the battleaxe and says: “You not gotta be big meanie, hurt Ogg-Bogg’s feelings!” Nurse frowns at you.
Chatty: Kiss orc on forehead and say “I was speaking Bromantic Orc you dummy” then find pants… Any pants.
FDL: You put on clown pants. The clown you take them from looks pissed, until he sees your battleaxe and your Orc.
Chatty: Search clown pants pocket for clown car keys and go out into parking.
FDL: 12,000 evil clowns pile out of the car and squirt unholy water at you with their lapel flowers. Roll saving throw.
(I gotta hire this guy for my next adventure)
Chatty: I’m wearing a gown, clown pants, a battleaxe and an amorous orc with a splitting headache; I make the damn save.
FDL: OK. Just in the nick of time, the Orc dives in front of you to take the Unholy water blast. He dies with a smile.
(Nooooooooooooo…… Ogg-Bogg, our bromance was too short.)
FDL: And then the grue swoops by and steals you away from the angry clown mob. You’re back home, safe. You win. 5000 XP!
That was a great little game. It helped me pass the time and I thank FDL for having taken some time and invested significant creative effort in doing this. So you see, Twitter can be used for parsely games after all (and others too). Provided both parties are willing to play some give and take for entertainment value.
Also, if you haven’t tried them yet, give Jared Sorensen’s Parsely games a try. They are a great way to pass time in between games.
Special thanks to Dr.C., the new special someone in my life, who safeguarded this exchange so I could make a post out of it. Also thanks to Tangent128 who made the TwitRPG logo back in 2008 when I played my first RPG game on Twitter.
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