Chatty Plays: Freemarket Part 3, Ghost’N'Breakin’
This post chronicles the second half of our Freemarket game. You can follow my post on character creation here and my recounting of the first half here. Let’s conclude our David vs Goliath story of stolen sex toys designs, covetous enlightened blanks and subtle revenge.
Quick dramatis personae reminder:
- Jack Knife (Yan): Jack of many trades and Body-Artist.
- Paul Demetrios (PM): OCD Investigator, think “Monk”.
- Coleco (Franky): Recycler and builder, “the old fashion way”.
- Flint (Mike): Decked out Enlightened Interface Fetishist. Think Cyber-Jesus
Challenge 3: I’ll Know What I Want When I See It.
Mike: I want Flint to infiltrate the Grindstone Cowboys compound, do some snooping around to find where stuff is, find the guy he doesn’t remember and get his Interface!
Chatty: Yeah, you’re familiar enough with the way the Station works that you suspect your memory was altered since yesterday. That’s a good challenge. After that you guys will do something about the stolen toy’s designs?
Franky: Exactly!
(Total Transparency: I’m taking significant artistic liberties with the actual dialogues. I tell an accurate true story but I will fictionalize the details… because I can, he he he)
A note on team challenges and the task resolution system I alluded to in the last post. In order to initiate a challenge, a character is better served by having the proper skill or one Geneline tags fit with what they wish to achieve. In our case, Flint had the Ghosting skill (Stealth + Thievery) while the others had Genelines tags that could help. For example, Paul’s “Investigative” and Jack’s “Creative”.
Pixel-bitching aside: Yes, that means that there’s going to be some sort of “tag” whoring going on at the table… at least, I expect some because it’s part of what I consider part of the “entertaining your GM’ experience.
Chatty: So are you joining this challenge or not?
Player X: I don’t know… I don’t see anything relevant…
Chatty: Oh come on, you aren’t allowed to be boring, entertain me! (/Aside)
Thus, Flint and Paul infiltrated the HQ (the game suggests to always handwave the “getting there/getting in” parts of ghosting challenges and focus on the actual jobs). The other PCs monitored things remotely, ready to jump in if things became violent.
It’s also worth mentioning that generating NPCs in this game is wonderful. You either assign stats on the fly or follow a fast series of card draws from the GM’s deck to generate Genelines, Experience, Interface and Technology (always relevant to the challenge at hand). You then assign a Flow score, name the character and you have a NPC to keep for the rest of the campaign.
Anyhoo, with a series of awesome hands (and a crappy one on my side) the players aced the challenge yet again…
Chatty: Okay you found the guy you were looking for and tailed him to a “blind” corner of the HQ, now tell me how Flint’s going to rip a piece of interface from him!
Mike: Hmmm, how ’bout it’s a brain chip with a very particular design?
Chatty: Cool, so you knock the guy senseless and rip it out of his skull! Good job, next challenge!
Challenge 5: Buggy Forbidden Pleasures
Franky: We want to hack the Cowboy’s protected systems to corrupt the design of the sex toy they stole.
Chatty: That’s going to be a great finish to end the game, let me generate the security expert of the system. He’ll represent the HQ’s overall security, the systems counter measures and the protective layers of software between you and the designs.
(i.e. mechanically that just means the NPC’s stats, the game makes no true difference between stats/tools/setting when representing opposition)
Once again, the players won by a large margin. I drew badly again (there are times like this). Just so I don’t sound more like a broken record, here’ s an example of how narration and the mini card game interacted.
While Coleco was busy hacking the system, Flint was sneaking in the compound, looking for places where he could weaken security and cause diversions.At one point he met a burly guard and Mike (Flint’s player) drew point scoring cards, which usually translated in successful mini-scenes. Looking over Mike’s character sheet I saw that his Geneline is “The One” and has a whole cult thing going, so…
Chatty (As the guard): It’s…. YOU! I can’t believe it!
Mike: Huh?
Chatty: The guard shows you he wears a pendant of the cult of the New Order.
Mike: Awesome! Can I ask his help?
Chatty: Fire away!
And thus Mike sent the guard to pull a general alarm, emptying the MRCZ’s huge compound while the rest of the party finished their job. At the end of the challenge, Frank decided to change just one tag of his original design to make it slightly less interesting than his own revised one and not overly awaken suspicion. This also gave them enough “victory points” left to spend on full Flow rebates, putting everyone well over 30 each and scoring them a piece of “data”, the game’s other currency (data can be analyzed, gifted, injected as memories, etc).
And so I give you:
The Toy: Ephemeral, Inconvenient, Pleasurable
Yeah, my players are still shy about the game’s possibility. In a world where death is a minor inconvenience at best (often only making you miss your next appointment), I would have LOVED to see “explosive” or “infected” as a tag instead of “inconvenient”.
And thus was our game completed. We managed to play 1 challenge per player which is an average session and the game lasted about 3-4 hours which factored in some book digging and general goofing around.
Are we to be Freemers?
I’ll let the players chime in if they feel like it, but based on the feedback I got, my players were willing (and some even eager) to keep playing next month. I really would like to see how the game evolves over a few session.
More specific feedback:
PM thought the game played out a LOT better than his expectations. While initially confused about the skills and actual “mission” of the game, the relative smoothness at which everything meshed together delivered a very satisfying experience for him. He got to act out mini-scenes as an hyper-focused OCD character and we all enjoyed it.
Franky was blown away at the sheer madness of the adventure hooks and the fast pace of the game. He NEVER expected that I would choose his “Sex Toy” memory to drive a session, much less have it generate hours of fun and mirth. He did have some trouble “getting” the mechanics of the game from how scoring worked to how each experience could be used. His was a good example where what a player thinks a skill should do, and what the designers decided it would, can clash.
Yan liked the mechanics of the game. He was intrigued by it and I saw his tactician’s brain engage into furious activity a few times, confirming that he grokked the game fine. He did mention that he felt the setting was far too constrained for what the game’s engine could achieve. In that he felt he could tweak the skill list and general assumptions a bit and make this into a full blown “British Sci Fi” game capable of emulating the stories of Vernor Vinge and Peter Hamilton.
(I think it would take more work as the game system is a lot more interconnected than what they experienced so far… but I consider it a good sign when Yan’s dormant designer genes wake up)
Mike didn’t offer direct feedback, but he’s become my “mine canary” to detect a game’s “frustration pocket”. I saw his steam level rise when he played bad hands over several challenges. That’s why I’m happy that the last 2 challenges that featured him on the front line turned out nice and that he got his spotlight time. He does seem to have some trouble finding ideas and ways to create a narrative with the game’s mechanics… but I think that’s a challenge of story-driven game themselves and I know he’ll warm up to it…
Hell, he did blow us away during our Fiasco game.
And me? I love the game. I’d totally play a 2-4 session mini-campaign like we did with Apocalypse World before moving on to either Burning Wheel, Leverage or possibly that new game I’m working on.
Props:
- The game is one sweet piece of play tested integrated clockwork engine with a simple yet rock solid setting
- The pace is perfect and answers my current needs as a time-pressed gamer.
- The ways you can screw with players even when they “win” is sublime and I can’t wait to turn the “evil” dial a few notches.
(Slight) Cons:
- The rule book’s landscape format and layout, took the “easier to learn, harder to reference” approach that makes for more page flipping hunting for Flow costs and the like (Index is very solid though, I need to tab the book with posts it)
- I’m still unsure about a few things about running challenges (like using bugs, and what to do when running out of options when you have no bugs) but one or two sessions more and I feel I could run the game at cons without any problems.
I hope you enjoyed this little series. Don’t hesitate to ask questions! I’ll do what I can and I’m sure the designers aren’t too far. 
Chatty Play’s: Freemarket Part 2, The Steam Stallion
We finally got to play the Freemarket characters that we made a few weeks ago. The game was supposed to be a 1 session demo as we have been doing during our Pilgrimage of new games these last few months.
Well, the session turned out a LOT better than most of us expected given how alien some aspect of the game appeared to us before playing it. Chances are this may become a short campaign instead of a one-shot.
Let’s dive in.
Dramatis Persona:
Jack Knife (Yan): Multi-Talented Body-Artist. Experienced creative printer, ephemerist and interface designer (hard/software Implants) who’s been around the station a few times.
Paul Demetrios (PM): OCD Investigator. Hacker and Thin-slicer that NEVER lets something go unsolved (unless made to forget it, an apparently common occurrence).
Coleco (Franky): An Old-World Tools Replicator. A cultivation and recycling expert, can create tech pieces of unparallel beauty with discarded scrap.
Flint (Mike): An Enlightened Interface Fetishist. Illuminated by the sayings of the Prophet of the New Order, he seeks perfection through Interface!
Welcome Home Bros!
The game strongly encourages the GM to introduce the setting by describing the PCs new digs. As a Tier 1 MRCZ (an archaic acronym from the Station’s construction era, pronounced “Mercy”), the characters get an upgrade from capsule pods and communal areas. They get to share living and working areas with another Tier one MRCZ in a wagon-sized cargo container.
The game also urges the GM to create tension right off the bat by making the other MRCZ into something completely different (and possibly at cross-purposes) from the players’ own. That why I made the neighbours into a small Krishna revivalist cult using their songs and millennial manipulation techniques to create a second coming of whatever they thought Krishnas were supposed to be about.
I didn’t have to do anything else… Jack Knife was already sick and tired of the endless droning chant and dove for the matter printer on their half of the pod.
Challenge 1: What’s that Smell?
Chatty: So what’s your goal here?
Yan: Jack wants to create a soundproof partition.
Chatty (Thinking aloud) : Hmmm, is it enough of a stake to make it into a challenge? Hells yeah! You’re all broke Flow wise (the Station’s influence-based commodity) and I want to drive you nuts with this shtick! Let’s do this.
Freemarket’s task resolution system is called a Challenge. You only do them when players (or key NPCs) want to bring about change to anything on the Station and there’s someone at the table opposed to that change.
In our case, all the players chipped in some Flow to create a bitchin’ flexible soundproof partition out of the dog-sized matter printer. This was a team challenge, with all players playing against me. I represented the flaws in the badly maintained printer and some hidden viruses left by playfully malicious ex-occupants of the cargo pod.
Challenges are performed by having players play a narrative-splashed card-scoring mini-game using the decks packed with the game (explaining, in part, its 60$ price tag). Going into the details of this mechanic would derail the whole post away from its purpose, but suffice it to say that once we grokked it, everything became a fast-paced, engrossing risks-vs-benefits scoring race against the opposing team.
In our case, I brought the printing challenge to an end by conceding a Minor success to the PCs. After describing how everyone got the printer to work semi-correctly, I explained to Yan that their margin of victory was so slim that all they could do was impose one of three tags to the freshly printed partition… I’d get to set the other two.
I also indicated that nobody’s Flow would be reimbursed, sending some players into negatives and putting them in danger of being voted off the Station.
(You read that right, Freemarket has some Reality TV elements. The actions of all MRCZ are, usually, public and subjected to going viral, becoming trends or subject of intense scrutiny.)
Chatty: So what tag are you…
Yan: SOUNDPROOF!
Chatty: So, that leaves two… lets make them…. Smelly (all players groaned) and… Inflammable!
Aside two: I made a mistake here. I forgot that all pieces of technology built in the game must have one tag corresponding to one of the 14 “skills”… I’ll fix it here. The partition stats are thus:
NullNoise MRCZ pod partition, Tags: Ghosting (that’s Stealth), Soundproof, Smelly.
Interlude 1: Family Memories Pileup!
While hilarious, that last challenge didn’t really create a lot of hooks to start the adventure, so I dug in my Memory Mashup notes (the process I described at the end of my last post) to pull a few hooks to get things started.
Chatty: Franky, Coleco’s brother Miro, who you thought was somewhere else in the Solar System just pinged your PC. He needs your help with some piece of old tech he ‘found”.
Franky: What the hell? He’s on the station? Let him come…I guess.
Turns out Miro had a piece of ancient motherboard that he wanted the players to hack and extract data in it. When the players realized how much Flow it would cost them to do that, they all balked! They all had low balances, some only barely above zero by having friended (yes, like in Facebook) most of the MRCZ’s members.
Seeing that they would likely have to postpone this task, I dug back into my pile of Mashed Memories (I had 3 more) and pulled the next one. It ended up being a boring dead end (It was too vague and had no fun leads) so I picked the next one.
Miro: Yeah so, I don’t know if it’s any help, but have you guys heard about the Grindstone Cowboys MRCZ yet? They apparently got their hands on a new “Sex Toy” design and have started mass producing them. They’re going to gift them all to a 2nd Gen dude named Korg who makes wild experiments with Blanks (i.e. Printed, artificial humans).
Mike: Hey, Korg is Flint’s creator!
Franky: WTF!?! I made that toy yesterday and it was supposed to be discretely delivered to a member of the Ambassador MRCZ. I wanna ping her!
Chatty: She says she never got it and she’s about to “frown” you for reneging on a contract.
Franky: What’s frowning?
Chatty: Oh, a frownie is a formal token of disapproval…it’s worth -3 Flow.
Franky: Crap no, I’m at 1!
See that? That was all done with the players long/short term memories. It took me about 10 minutes before the game to come up with these hooks. So awesome.
So what the players decided to do was to handcraft the Ambassador a new, better toy. In order to generate the needed flow to undertake this endeavour, Coleco gave his Retro-Phasor gun to his brother (everyone knew he was a no good, two timer… but hey). Thus Coleco gained an instant 10 Flow.
Yup, you gain Flow in Freemarket by friending people, gifting them stuff, filling contractual obligations and winning team challenges by a large margin (the central computer, in its programmed socially-driven benevolence, rewards cooperation). Flow is then used to start all challenges (or survive challenges against you) and to petition the Central Computer for a MRCZ tier upgrade.
The other players exchanged more friendship requests among themselves and braced for the challenge.
Challenge 2: Are Those Brass Keys or Are You Just Happy to See Me?
Chatty: Okay, what’s your goal?
Franky: We want to create a better, sleeker sex toy for the Ambassador. Something made of Clockworks and Brass!
Others: Yeah!
Chatty: A Steampunk Dildo huh?
After we recovered from generalized hilarity, we agreed it was a good challenge. By then, everyone had huge stupid grins. The game’s mission was accomplished, Freemarket had been adopted.
The challenge pitted everyone in the party, helping Franky hand craft his “masterpiece” by merging together (i.e. Recycling) two different pieces of tech, namely pieces of the busted matter printer and knick-knacks of dumb material strewn here and there in the pod.
My side of the challenge represented the material’s low grade, distraction caused by the partition’s smell and the challenge of achieving Franky’s vision with so few good parts. They won the challenge by a landslide, each scoring a lot of Flow.
Chatty: Well done gang, you now get to give it three tags, one of which must be one of the 14 skills. I’d saw that a sex toy is definitively “ephemera”.
(Sniggers)
And I give you:
The Steam Stallion Mk I, Tags: Ephemera, Filling, Orgasmic.
Yes, we’re a bunch of 13 year olds… sigh.
Interlude 2: Plowing and Plotting
Coleco gifted the toy to the soon to be very happy Ambassador. Bolstered by all that Flow, the group set out to plan their next move on those thieving Grindstone Cowboys.
At that point, I had noticed that Mike had had a very unlucky card streak so far and had been, more or less, the only player yet to have some spotlight time. So I nudged the group so he got involved in the next scene’s planning. Oddly enough, according to his recent memories, he had a very good reason to visit the Grindstone Cowboys… He wanted to obtain someone’s interface. Except he couldn’t quite exactly remember which one… and on whom.
Did I tell you I really like this game?
Up next, Ghosting and Breaking challenges within the Grand HQ of the Tier 6 Grindstone Cowboys MRCZ!
Tales of the Apocalypse, Part 4: Bloody Sunrise
With my prep done, I was ready to start this week’s game, not knowing how it would turn out.
Previously on Apocalypse World:
In the desert settlement of Shanty Town, Colonel Allison reigns as chief of a weapons factory, making her the de facto lord of the local economy. With the cooperation of cycle gang leader Thunder, she organizes lucrative raids on the nearby, much richer Fortress-City. Along with bodyguard Eternity and her sinister director of Security Smith, she runs Shanty Town as a relatively safe and profitable corner of apocalyptic Hell, She also keeps a close eye on masked newcomer, Raven.
After a successful raid on Fortress-City, Thunder’s gang was ambushed by a bunch an unruly squad of misfit commandos from the very town they raided. While the skirmish distracted everyone, an explosive charge blew up in the factory. As the various badass heroes of Shanty Town rose up to the challenge, they celebrated and decided to launch a retaliatory strike, once Allison made sure it was properly planned…
Dramatis Persona (reminder)
Thunder: Male Chopper (Cycle gang leader, played by Eric)
Raven: Female Faceless (Masked semi-mystical Brute played by Franky)
Smith: Male Brainer (Psychic Mindfucker played by Mike)
Eternity: Female Battlebabe (Waif-fu Kill-Bill-esque badass, played by Math)
Future Badness derailment
Before we get in the whole game report, please note that none of the scenes were pre-scripted. I had “Agendas” and “threat countdown clocks”, but pretty much everything was shaped by player choices/input.
We start the game with the PCs getting ready to leave for the counter raid, setting objectives for it and making seating arrangement on cycles. Thunder got himself a new recruit from Shanty Town’s dregs, a female hardass named Nutcrusher (complete with the crude joke this name generated).
As they started the 2-3 hour trek to Fortress-city on very bad roads, I made the “announce future badness” move and described how something to the north of the Shanty Town raider was raising a hell of a lot of dust and sand. Thunder ordered his men to rustle up their saddle bags and lo and behold, A pair of binoculars were found in Rot’s things!
After an ineffective use of the unfamiliar object by Rot, Eternity snatched it away and marched northward to get a better vantage point. She was able to inform the gang that a column of all terrain vehicles and what looked like armoured vehicles were headed towards Shanty Town!
Of course, as she relayed that info, a huge gust of wind struck them and Eternity lost her crew! (i.e. I imposed this because she got a soft success for the “spot check” and I made the “Separate them move” as my retaliatory action). She was “saved” by a friendly masked biker who rode up to her and asked her if she needed a ride back to the City. She accepted gratefully and got on the bike.
NPC: I’m Franky BTW, what’s your name?
Eternity: Uh… Gill.
Frankie: Right. You think we can become good friends?
Eternity: I’m sure we will!
And so my “Dark Agenda Countdown clocks” started ticking.
Plans crumblin’, Loyalties frayin’
At this point, the players really got into what Vincent Baker told me Apocalypse World was all about: Loyalties in the face of crises. With the column of Hummers and APCs heading for Shanty Town, Thunder ordered his whole gang around to go defend the home base. Raven, sitting behind Thunder on his Hog, didn’t see it in the same light and we were subjected to a spat about the importance of protecting the many against going to help the truly meaningful.
It ended up in an awesome stunt where Raven got up from the still moving cycle, jumped and side-kicked poor Drim (the one giving Smith a ride) off his bike, taking control of it before it fell down and turning around toward Fortress-City.
Since she got a soft success on that roll I gave her 2 choices for a worse outcome (as established by the move she used: Act under Fire) and I offered her to either arrive too late in the City to help Eternity directly (we already knew she was in trouble by then, see below, I’m reordering scenes for readability) or get there in time but cause Thunder to fall from his bike because of her jump.
Raven chose to get to the city late.
Danger in the City… I call thee Eternity.
During that time Eternity rode into Fortress-City and noticed immediately that a group of rag-tag thugs, wearing military uniforms with a Sun emblem on them, were following them, getting ready to ambush them.
Frankie (getting his helmet off, revealing a mask made of stitched flesh of many colours): So Gill, you feel like, ummm, having a coffee or somethin’?
Eternity: Sure luv, but do we invite all those other guys along?
Frankie: Huh? Hey! I told Sun that if I were to separate her from her gang, she was MINE!
Eternity: Of course I am!
As Eternity got ready to cripple 6 or 7 people, she was unable to overtake everyone and got herself captured as Frankie was sent away, cursing. Of course, Eternity saw him slunk behind them, a scalpel in hand.
Eternity finally found herself on the battleship wreck adjoining Fortress-City, finding herself tied to a dancing pole in the ruins of a shipboard bar. After a short scene, (including her player performing a mimed pole dance) she managed to free herself by cracking the skull of the last standing thug with her thighs… (you read that right)
…as the ship’s gun were loaded and fired a test salvo that shook the much damaged structure.
Go Wolverines!
Thunder reached Shanty Town before the armoured column did and staged a guerrilla ambush on it, sending Nutcracker to act as Sniper to create confusion up front while he and his gang assaulted the last Armoured Personnel Carrier at the tail. Succeeding on his “Seize by Force” move, Thunder managed to capture and hold the vehicle, losing a few of his gang members, including his new Sniper.
He thus moved the captured APC into Shanty Town as the confused column reformed and spread to block all the roadways into Allison’s compound.
That’s when they all heard the Battleship shooting its first salvo…
A Loaded Smith & Raven, a shooting (big) gun
When the unlikely duo reached Fortress city, I offered them to make a custom Move I created for the Fortress (which is another “Threat” mechanic) where they got to try to sneak in the city without being spotted. They got yet another “soft hit” and I announced that they were “spotted” while sneaking in, and that they were now being followed by a weird, patched up guy yielding a scalpel.
At that point, I noticed the Raven and Smith duo had had limited camera time so far, it’s always hard to properly spread “action time” in a game that assumed the party is split most of the time. Not knowing what to do, I voiced the question “what would be needed here to make Raven happy?”
(I must confess that I had not quite realized at that time that Smith had done even less).
Raven: I need to fight! I want to kill stuff soon!
So that’s how Frankie the Grotesque (Skin Collector) got distracted from chasing Eternity and focused on the much more mysterious Raven
Frankie (Off Screen): Ohhh, I must find what she hides behind that mask… NO! I must HAVE it!
And so when Smith and Raven chased after Frankie, who sent some of his skinned dolls after them to slow them down, I managed to disarm Raven (who went Berserk) and separate both PCs. Frankie managed to corner Raven in his skin studio (using the “Expose the content of the Grotesque’s environment” move to freak Raven out) where multiple skin suits were shown like a “Galerie Macabre”. Poor, unlucky Smith was forced to climb the building Frankie had barricaded himself in with Raven.
Player comment: Man, this game is really for those who like PCs to be in deep shit all the time!
Of course, that’s when an unarmed Raven opened a can of whoopass, went for the scalpel, got a nasty scalp wound and turned Frankie into pulp with her fists, knees, floor and walls. When the red mist parted in her mind, she heard Smith calling her urgently from the top of the building.
As she climbed, they saw the wreck’s gun turret rotate slowly and the guns fired, sending a shockwave through the city. As the smoke cleared, they noticed a man all dressed in gold standing on deck, surrounded by tough looking men and women.
Smith: That’s got to be Sun…
Chatty: The boat’s main deck is a few hundred yards from where you stand, you feel you’d be able to hop over the roofs to get there… but that’s going to be for the next session.
I decided to end the session there (at barely 9h30 PM!) so that Yan (Allison’s player) could participate in the next seesion which would focus on Shanty Town’s defence.
Post Game Analysis
What the players liked:
- The Quick and Dirty (literal and figurative) approach to gaming
- Succeeding in some key conflicts (taking the APC, Eternity freeing herself)
- We can do so much in so little time
- The evocative post-apocalyptic imagery we were able to muster.
What players liked less:
- Complete lack of control on situations where they “fail”
- The vagueness of what constitute a move and how much one can accomplish in one
- Unequal camera time (more vocal players get more attention, story as old as RPGs)
Lessons Learned
- Improvising rocks when you have the proper tools to drive it like a unified front of threats (NPCs, Places and agendas)!
- Putting PCs into trouble is really fun, cheering them to pull out on top becomes more awesome.
- Fundamental: I’m starting to feel that this game does not allow me to interact with it’s crunch. I roll no dice, I make no outward combos (except “story combos by setting up narrative moves”)
Last Words
Did I mention I don’t get to roll dice? I like doing it so much so that this will shorthen my planned AW mini-campaign. I recognize my need as a gamer and I want to be able to interact directly with certain aspects game’s engine to revel in its crunchyness.
While Apocalypse World is a crunchy game, it isn’t in the parts I seek as a gamer, not like I have it in D&D or Mouseguard for instance. That’s why I’m going to wrap up this story by concluding the “Sun Rise” front.
Also, I must say that this series is getting abyssal levels of feedback compared to when I write about 4e. I know that less people are interested in Indie games and I expected as much when I embarked on my “tour of the indies”. That however means that if I likely won’t write more posts about this game if I don’t get more active motivations from you guys to do so, except maybe a short wrap up of the story.
So yeah, I’m totally fishing for comments here… I don’t do it often, but here I am.
Cheers!
Image taken from the Romantic Apocalyptic Webcomic
Tales of the Apocalypse, Part 3: Prepping the Game
Last Friday was our second Apocalypse World game. I could see from the email chatter that the players were getting excited about it. This time, Yan was not going to join us so Colonel Allison wasn’t going to be part of the action.
Before I get into the actual game report, I wanted to share some of my prep for that session.
While Apocalypse World is a low prep RPG, it is by no means a no prep one. The game/author reminds us in no light terms to refrain from plotting out a story. Instead, the book provides a series of structured tools to build what’s called Fronts, templates of linked threats that loom around the PCs, trying to forward specific dark agendas the PCs may decide (or have no choice) to go against.
The game offers 2 sets of tools to create a front:
The First Session Worksheet
This sheet is a legal-sized of paper available as free downloads here (I got a full set of those sheets as a Gen Con bonus). You write down the name of each and every (living) NPC or places that interact with the PCs. Each named NPC or significant emplacement is placed on some kind of 2 dimensional matrix that list various threats categories they can represent toward the PCs. Examples of threats are ambition, hunger , ignorance, fear and decay, all of those can be either literal or figurative.
To that list, you add resources that each NPCs (or group/emplacement) has that the PCs might not have direct access to. This creates opportunities for some interesting conflicts and PC-NPC-PC triangles.
For example, in our game, I put Forteress-City (a place) between the “envy” and “ambition” threat as either the party or Fortress-City itself expresses those feeling toward the other entity. The Fortress has a bunch of resources like walls (defence), Living space, strategic position and (why not) books.
Finally, there’s a space on the worksheet for unanswered questions you have asked yourself during the 1st session. In my case, I had the following questions:
- Why is there a rebellion theme developing in Shanty Town
- Does the reprisal from Shanty Town’s raid a normal occurrence or is this one special?
- Can the Factory fall?
Those questions are the fuel on which the fronts can be built.
The Fronts Worksheet
A Front is where you create new NPCS and places or pick them from the 1st session sheet and bring them together in 3 to 4 organized threats from a list of Apocalyptic-themed templates.
For instance, I created a “dictator” leader for Fortress-City called Sun who’s some sort of psycho-paranoid Louis XIV warlord raving about any affront to his rule over the desert. I created an agenda for him focused on wiping out Shanty Town and broke down, as instructed, his plan in steps that I’d cross out as completed or thwarted depending on how the PCs reacted to their changing environments.
Then I I brought together 2 members of Allison’s gang and 2 more from Thunder’s and called them “The Traitors” whose goal was to bring down Thunder. I also created a new NPC called “Frankie” who was a skin collector that wore suits of patches of sewn-up human flesh who was fixated upon the female PCs of the group.
I also created the actual Fortress-City, based on the image you can see in the post’s heading (click to enlarge) and gave it a clear agenda to start shelling Shanty Town with the ship’s guns if the PCs didn’t stop it in time.
So these 4 threats came together in a Front I called “Sun’s Rise” which explained Sun’s intent to crush Shanty Town once and for all using all his resources. You’ll see how it started panning out in part 4. What I really liked about the approach was that I had no scenes prepared and I had no idea what threats the PCs would face and which they’d ignore… because they can’t deal with everything at once.
But they sure tried!
Image taken from the excellent and funny Post-Apocalyptic webcomic Romantic Apocalyptic.
Tales of the Apocalypse: Part 1, Character Creation
A few weeks ago, I reviewed Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World role playing game and found it very well written and intriguing enough to give it a few session’s worth tryout. I brought the whole crew back together and we sat down to create characters.
(in spite of what transpired earlier this summer, we ended up talking about it out and decided to stick together and try a new approach)
Character generation in Apocalypse World is in many ways peculiar to the traditional Role Player. The Game Master (AKA Master of Ceremonies) drops a pile of playbook for about 10 different character classes and each players get to choose one, no duplicates. Then follows a series of choices for names, look, stats, gear and class-specific moves (powers) directly from the playbook.
Through this process, the MC asks all kinds of questions regarding the PCs to help create better defined characters. This process results in some very colourful characters…
Shanty Town’s crew (Dramatis Persona)
All the story/background elements were created through players answering my random questions or interacting amongst themselves. It was very cool.
Allison, female Hardholder (owner/leader of a populated compound), played by Yan.
Always dressed in combat fatigues, she’s insists on being called Colonel Allison by her 75 or so citizens although the title is meaningless since no organized armed forces have existed in the last 50 years. She rules a rickety settlement called Shanty Town made of corrugated iron panels too rusted to be recycled and thousands of yards of plastic tarp centered around an old, well-preserved car factory turned into a weapons plant. Its economy runs on recycled metal that her citizens scrounge/raid from the countryside and turn unto weapons.
While rich and very lucrative for Allison and her lieutenants, Shanty Town remains an undefended shit hole of trash and pestilence.
She also has no current partners, leading me to jokingly refer to her gigantic Magnum .44 handgun as “Allison’s Boyfriend”.
Quote:
Calm down, let’s do this right you bunch of savages.
Raven, female Faceless (masked, supernatural brute). Played by Franky, who literally wears a Raven full face mask whenever he’s in character.
Raven wears leather and spiked fetish wear weaved all over with black feathers and, of course, a black raven’s mask. She was a member of a nomadic “murder” of similar clad savages who got wiped during a disastrous raid (possibly involving the Thunder’s biker gang, see Eric’s PC below).
After the massacre, guided by the spirit of her Mask’s, she followed a caravan back into Shanty Town and currently hangs at the edge of the settlement near Ambush Hill, scrounging a living meager living under the watchful eye of Smith (Mike’s PC, see below).
The last thing that people see when Raven decides to kill them is her gigantic, gleaming machete.
Quote:
Nothing escapes the Raven.
Eternity, female Battlebabe (The name says it all). Played by Math.
Exceedingly sexy gal wearing a skintight bulletproof latex-like bodysuit complete with front zipper. When asked what she applies to her skin to keep it that splendid, she answers “sweat, and lots of it”.
Her signature weapons are a custom humongous brainsploding gun and a long, very sharp curved sword with cute spindly drawings on its handle. She “got” that blade from a very insistent client who got too friendly in her past life as a stripper.
She travels around by renting the services of a driver or from Thunder’s crew (Eric’s Chopper). She’s also currently employed full time as Allison’s bodyguard.
Quote:
Its so sad you have to die, you were this close to getting me in the sack.
Thunder, Male chopper (Biker gang leader) Played by Eric.
Thusder is large, shaggy and none too bright, but he’s one mean motherfucker. His boys call him Sarge even though he doesn’t want them to. This diseased and dirty gang is made up of 15 14 or violent motorcycle bastards. They get their fuel and food from Allison as part of the payment they get from the lucrative raids they perform on surrounding settlements.
The last guy Thunder killed was during a recent raid where he got too excited using his crowbar on a poor schmuck, doing his signature “working up” move by breaking all joints from ankles to shoulders.
Quote:
You had shit at the end of your machete, I smelled like gas. We fucked. End of story (Actual game quote).
Smith, male Brainer (Think psychic brainhacker). Played by Mike.
Wears a dirtied but valuable three-piece suit. Bony faced and sporting dead eyes, Smith is Allison’s Director of Security. He walks calmly around town, making sure everything is under control, scaring the shit out of everyone, or reprogramming anyone who isn’t.
A Lone Wolf to the hilt, Smith’s idea of calling for backup is getting his knives out when his violation glove fails to do the job.
He has a secret desire to one day meet someone’s who’s worth his time instead of the rabble he has to keep in check. It’s uncertain from Smith’s behaviour via Eternity if she’s a likely candidate or not.
Quote:
Don’t ever dream of stirring trouble up, I’ll brainwipe you so hard you’ll need diapers again.
Apocalypse History X
The last part of character creation is a somewhat convoluted roundtable where people set the value of their “History” stat (called Hx) with every other PC. That stat, represent “how well a PC knows”/”how intense recent history was” vs each other PC. It comes into play when characters interfere with one another and is one of the drivers of character improvement.
Beyond the mechanics though, some fundamental PC-to-PC relationships get created during that process. Here’s what transpired in our case.
- Raven appreciated that Smith was unafraid of her upon their first meeting.
- Smith has secretly been observing Eternity but she does not trust him.
- Eternity and Raven did something terrible once (jokingly refereed to as “very bad lesbian sex” which may stick as canon).
- Smith observed Raven sleep once without Raven knowing about it.
- Raven stole something from Allison’s settlement, and Allison knows about it.
- Raven finds Allison pretty.
- Allison and Thunder go way back, having worked together before all this.
- Allison also once stood up to Thunder and his gang and Thunder isn’t sure what to think of that.
- Although she hired him as her Director of Security, Allison quietly dislikes and distrusts Smith
I was highly satisfied with the results, Apocalypse World does not require the PCs to be friends, just start as allies. The game very much revolves around loyalty and some players were already bonding with their characters and the outbound links they created.
I was curious to see how the story would unfold but was highly nervous that I would have a hard time mastering that game. Stay tuned for the play report of that first session.
Mouse Guard Chronicles, Session 2, Players’ Turn: The Spurce Connection
You can see this session’s GM’s turn here.
Player’s Turn Summary
The successful but banged-up patrol hobbled back to Lockhaven to recuperate from their injuries under the ministrations of the Guard’s healers. On their way, they stumbled upon 2 surviving Scent thugs caught in the Flashflood and Jasper ran to their help, rescuing Garrow the Merchant and the huge Thug otherwise known as The Big Cheese.
Once in Lockhaven, Edgar delivered a report to one of his guard captain uncles and asked about his enemy’s recurring involvement with Scent smuggling. Finn tapped into many of his war buddies, now turned Inn keepers to try to find a contact involved in storage and transport of Scent and he found one in Sprucetuck.
Malcolm also tapped into his contacts to to find his old friend the Tavernkeeper, known for his many shady dealing. As luck would have it, that contact was last seen in Sprucetuck too.
And so was Edgar’s enemy…
Table Chatter and GMing highlights
Retcon for great justice!
As we set up and started to roll for condition recoveries in the player’s turn, I realized that there were restrictions about the order of conditions a PC could recover from. Thus, a mice must recover from Hunger/Thirst before Anger before Tired and so on for Injury and Sickness. So a player can’t decide to keep the less problematic Anger to focus on healing an injury.
That meant that all my players had to spend 2 checks each to attempt to recover from their more serious conditions and success was NOT guaranteed. I could see that some of them wanted to take the story in new directions and were disappointed with that state of event.
So I invoked rule 1 of RPGs (fun over rules) and retconned my earlier call, making Edgar/Finn Injured and Malcolm/Jasper Angry. I dropped the second imposed condition and the group’s mood instantly bounced back! (I even got some positive feedback for that call the next day over IM).
Yay!
Northland thawing
You might recall I mentioned that Maze froze up a few times during the GM’s turn. Well he thawed up nicely during the player’s turn where he set up a great scene and got to rescue 2 of the NPCs who bullied them to spew out the positions of other guard patrols during the GM’s turn. This, along with a discussion I had with blogger Sarah Darkmagic about agile and comfortable DMs who freeze up when they become players gave me an insight.
In the Players’ turn, the only problems to resolve are mostly created by the players, who likely have the solution worked out, much like if the player was his own GM. I’m beginning to suspect that what really breaks minds in Mouse Guard is that constant dichotomy between being a classic player (choose a skill, roll for success) and being co-GM (describe the scene, including the elements needed to make the skill you use make sense) at the same time.
I’ll be watching Maze’s journey as it unfolds over the next few session. He’ll likely post his thoughts on his blog as well.
When the GM gets Fiasco-ed.
As the turn unfolded and players told me about the scenes they were setting up, it became evident that they were pushing to send the game toward a new plot. Alex sought his friend out, an old tavern keeper with the same criminal background as his. He tried to locate him on the map of the territories and I asked for a Circles test to allow Alex to set where he was. I also explained the Enmity Clause of circle tests where a failed test allows the GM to create a new enemy instead!
Yan: Really? Oh man I wanna roll a Circles test too!
Malcolm located his friend and placed him in Sprucetuck, home of Scent manufacturing. We had a potential ex-con in the city laying the first brick of my players’ fiendish plans.
PM played out a scene in Lockhaven where Edgar informed his uncle about the Scent dealings (thus accomplishing his goal). He then totally pulled an awesome, plot-defining quote on us that blew my brains out:
Edgar: Uncle, have you had news of that weather watcher scum (Edgar’s enemy) we’ve been chasing for so long? I think he’s once more involved with Scent smuggling!
Priceless!
When PM tried to place his enemy in Spructuck, I decided to gently stop him, judging he’d held to the narrative long enough for his turn.
Of course, that’s when Yan made the finishing move. After moving the party to Sprucetuck (I allowed liberal moving over the whole territories during the player turn) he had Finn and the patrol go tavern-diving through his old war contacts to find someone important involved with the shipping and storing of the Scent chemical. His circles test provided him with one such mouse, a mid-power mouse in charge of overseeing shipping of the Scent to Lockhaven and other guard patrols .
Phil: According to the rules, you get to name him now.
Yan (Making a very French “I have no fucking idea” facial expression): I don’t know… huh, Liam I guess.
PM: No way! That’s my enemy’s name.
Chatty: You guys are shitting me!
Yan: Absolutely not, I had no idea!
Chatty: Well then it’s settled, Finn’s new contact is Edgar’s enemy, that ought to be interesting!
So that the next adventure is obviously going to be about elucidating who’s stealing the Scent powder and why. I’d be a complete jerk to do otherwise. But that doesn’t mean I have to play it as straight as they are driving things to be now, right?
All in all, that was a great Players’ turn and an awesome game. Once again, a 10 minute prep session delivered a very satisfying 4 hours adventure.
We should pick the game up again after Gen Con. Chances are this Summer campaign will become the monthly geekout day game once fall rolls back and I settle on a new RPG/campaign with the new gaming group.
Thanks for reading.
Mouse Guard Chronicles, Session 2, GM’s Turn: Scented Storms
Prologue:
Guards Malcolm, Finn, Edgar and Tenderpaw Jasper are sent to find the whereabouts of a lost patrol. Failing to reach them on time, the patrol made the gruesome discovery that a predator ate most wayward guards while they were trying to trace a path through a new stream. Before our heroes could react, a fox jumped them but was fortunately chased away.
The guard then found the source of the stream, a newly built beaver dam over which they negotiated safe passage for all mice of the territory. Noticing the increased numbers of beaver families nearby, the patrol surmised that another dam had likely caused a stream to deviate and wash away part of the Scent Border to the Wild Country.
The patrol travelled to Port Sumac where Finn tapped Malcolm’s criminal contacts and secured some additional Scent chemicals…
Mouse Guard Canon Caveat
I accidentally and purposefully changed aspects of the Mouse Guard universe, particularly that pertaining to the Scent Border actual physical form in the comic books. My stance on Canon is very loose (pun intended) and echos my friend Chris’ so bear with me.
GM’s Turn Summary (for those who’d rather read about the story, not the whole game)
The Patrol left port Sumac with a shipping of Scent chemical with the firm intention of locating the breach in the northern border and sealing it up before more predators entered the territory. Before they could find it, they were waylaid by a group of thuggish mice who wanted to get their paws on their shipment of powder and learn the whereabout of other Scent-laying patrols.
After a heated but peaceful argument, the patrol, hyper focused on its mission, left with their precious cargo but informed the thugs where to find other patrols, letting the ruffians learn the hard way that not all guards were as sociable as they were.
The patrol managed to discover the spot where the border had been washed away and proceeded to spread the concoction while the weather turned nasty. Sadly, when they finally managed to complete their task, the whole patrol was caught in a flash flood sweeping two of them away. They were recovered by their comrades but were badly hurt in the process.
Fortunately, the newly applied scent, spread over high ground, held perfectly. Mission accomplished.
Table Chatter and GMing highlights
The Prologue
As we started the game, I knew something was wrong with my friend Maze. He offered to prologue the last session, a game mechanic where a player summaries what happened in the last session in exchange for a tangible reward (in his case, recover lost points of his Nature ability).
However, he froze up (here and later during the game) and delivered what I must sadly describe as a half-assed summary of what happened in the game 3 weeks before. Mark my words, I don’t expect a Toastmaster’s performance from the exercise, but I couldn’t help but think (wrongly so, I know) that Maze didn’t feel like making the effort or that it wasn’t relevant enough for him to do so.
Mouse Guard requires a lot more effort from players than D&D and it’s spiritual offshoots. I’m beginning to think that it is a strong factor in establishing the game’s learning curve depending on any given gamer’s background tackling the game. Fortunately, the exercise alternates from game to game, so I’ll see how others go at it. I suspect it’s a classic case of Chatty’s inhuman expectations again.
The mission and goals
This time around, the mission was dead simple: Re-establish the broken Scent Border
The players chose the following goals:
- Malcolm (Alex): Don’t let the patrol get caught by predators
- Finn (Yan): Re-establish Scent Border
- Edgar (PM): Send word back home that scent chemical is being traded by the underworld
- Jasper (Maze): Help at least one mouse in distress near Scent Border
All great goals including one that would end up leading the game in a direction set by the players during their turn.
The Argument Conflict
As planned, the PCs were supposed to track the beavers’ dam and deal with its effect on the environment. When the PCs failed to find the disrupted Scent Border (I ruled that it was invisible/subtle to find precisely, contrary to the comic) I went with one of my planned twists and had “scent pirates” waylay the party.
While Yan was ready to fight the band of mice thugs, Alex pipped in to address the situation diplomatically. I made the conflict into an argument, which is one of the hardest conflicts to run for everyone because you have to roleplay, usually in character, based on the actions you chose.
I divided the teams in 4: Two teams of guards (Finn/Edgar, Malcolm/Jasper) and 2 of thugs (Merchant/Bandit, Muscle/Bandit) and everyone chose different goals:
- Finn vs Muscle: Who keeps the powder?
- Malcolm vs Merchant: “Tell us where the border is” vs “Tell us where the nearest patrols are”
The conflict went better than last session but introducing the “Roleplay arguments as a fight” mechanics gave my players a few headaches. Working out the difference between a feint and a manuever were in the context of an argument was already hard enough… having to find roleplaying descriptions for each action was quite exhausting for many.
I had the time of my life! At one point I even delivered a good enough line that some players looked at each other and said “huh, I’d agree with that”.
In the end, Finn’s team won instantly (My feint killed by their attack) while the Merchant nearly completely beat Malcolm’s team.
It’s Science!
I think that the scene that broke my player’s mind the most, but also opened the way to what the game is really about, was when I described the last obstacle: laying down the scent chemical. I announced that it would be a Science obstacle.
At that point Maze dejectedly said “but what does science have to do with pouring powder on the ground” and Yan, engineer that he is, explained that the way he saw it, the job should be about working the soil to prepare a proper binding matrix for the powder and then working out how much powder to pour and fixing it to the matrix and so on…
(Or something engineer-sounding like that, don’t ask me, I’m a Microbiologist-Project Manager)
That’s when I smiled.
Chatty: That’s EXACTLY what I meant about a science roll!
Yan: (Cough) asshole (cough)
See, the game is all about the players telling the GM how things are going to be done. Succeeding means that’s what happens and the game world grows a little bit. The greatest thing though is that failing doesn’t automatically mean it doesn’t grow… it just means it doesn’t grow as the players planned.
As simple as that!
Swept Away!
The science roll was failed, but by then, I wanted to finish the GM’s turn soon so I introduced the game’s last twist and described how the Mice made sure to finish the job properly, even though a huge Spring storm struck (a weather-based twist). The storm triggered a flash flood and everyone had to roll to resist being swept away. That’s when both Yan and PM decided to go all out for failure to score extra checks on the player turn. Both ended washed away, crashing into trees and rocks.
Since all PCs shared help in the challenge that sent two of them in the soup, I called for Edgar and Finn to become Injured and Tired while I made the other 2 Hungry/Thirsty and Angry. I’m still at the level of establishing how much pressure you need to apply on PCs and I clearly recalled Luke gleefully telling me how broke, hurt and exhausted he left his players’ PCs after Burning Wheel games… this is echoed, to a lesser extent in the Mouse Guard rules.
Turns out that was a bit too much… stay tuned…
Freezing up.
As mentioned earlier, Maze, usually a very creative and social person, froze up several times during the game, at loss with how to interact with the game’s mechanics and how to grab narrative control and yield it effectively. The game ground to complete stops a few times while he became more and more flustered about how to play a given action or how to describe helping out with a given skill check.
I noticed that we didn’t help much because some of us soon swooped in with advice and pressured him to “unfreeze”. Luckily, it just so happens that Rob Donaghue posted a blog article about dealing with player freeze which basically boils down to telling other players and GMs to:
- Shut Your Pie Hole.
- A Little Patience Won’t Kill You.
- Back Their Play.
- Don’t Assume. Ask.
This one is a must read, go NOW! Heaven knows I’m making it my session’s Lessons Learned and shared it with all players.
Up next: The Player’s take ownership of the game!
Mouse Guard Chronicles, Session 1, Part 4: The Players’ Turn
See Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Here’s the plot, have fun with it.
Mouse Guard has a very peculiar play structure I have not seen in any other games yet. The game is divided in 2 “turns” that each last 1 or 2 hours depending on how things go. The first one, the GM’s turn is what classic RPGs call the adventure and I covered it in detail in parts 2 and 3. Once the mission is completed (or failed), the GM’s turn ends and the Player turn starts.
Each player then get to do either of 2 things: 1) Attempt to recuperate from a condition (like Injured, Angry, etc) or 2) Set a scene to accomplish a goal, push the plot forward and/or create new plot/setting elements. Of course, there’s a trick. In order for players to get more than one ‘turn’ during that period, they need to earn them by playing against themselves during the GM’s turn. There are, of course, mechanics where you can impede/hurt your character’s chances to give yourself extra turns in the Players’ turn.
Convincing your players to gain such additional turns (called checks), especially those focusing on success/fearing failure, can be a challenge. But it’s a self-rewarding process that players usually grok after a few sessions. Since all PCs are likely to have at least one negative condition by the end of the adventure, they need to get themselves more turns if they want do something beyond recuperating.
Slummin’ it in Port Sumac
In this, our first session of what was to become a campaign, the players poked with their turns, not quite sure what to do with them. Malcolm healed his injuries while Finn found himself an artisan for some new skill he didn’t have (Armorer IIRC) and asked him to show him the basics. The NPC, somewhat annoyed to be interrupted by a Guard gave Finn a task that no newbies could achieve. Finn (helped by veteran armorer Edgar) managed it (using the “Beginner’s Luck” rule) and got closer toward learning a new skill.
Finn also tapped into Malcolm’s underworld contacts to secure enough Scent to reseal the breach, setting up the next mission nicely and opening a meta-plot element: “How come criminals have access to a supply of Scent?”.
Edgar roused the city’s population and gave a well-felt speech to calm the local population, promising that the guard was on top of the predator issue but that the Territories should still be ready to mobilize should it become necessary. Malcolm used his deceiver skill to disguise himself and act as a member of the crowd and shouted “It’s true! I believe in the guard, we’ll be safe” over and over again.
It worked… I blame the writers.
Finally, Jasper, wanting to impress his mentor (Malcolm), crafted a good luck charm with a tuft of Fox hair. All other PCs chipped in to help, but none of their “dice” helped… yet he succeeded in spite of that! Which made for a funny anecdote that all the advice Jasper got was wrong.
Thus was our first session concluded. A great success. As the next session will show, we all got much better with the game itself and the players literally drove the campaign in a new direction.
Thanks for reading!
P.S.: Next posts will be shorter. Likely 2 parts per session, outlining the highlights of the GM and Players turns respectively and the main GMing calls that I made in each.
Mouse Guard Chronicles, Session 1, Part 3: The Unarmed Hero
After character creation and playing through the first (failed) obstacle of the evening, we started our first Mouse Guard conflict.
The conflicts mechanic is the game’s most complex, involved element. It brings together everything the game can do and is, at time, very counter intuitive. For example, in a chase conflict, if you are the team trying to get away from the chaser, you need to use the “Attack” action to go after your goal (escape) instead of “Maneuver” which would be used to set your team up for a better escape route on later rounds.
Add the necessity of splitting the party in teams, the helping out rules, bonuses from “conflict tools”and Fate/Persona points… Things become about as complex as your favorite fantasy crunchy game. The hardest part of that combat remained how to establish the interrelation of multiple teams playing simultaneously. I won’t go into the details of it, but you have to follow a certain set of rules if 2 teams choose actions that would lead each team to play opposed dice checks vs their common enemy.
Fortunately, the rules are VERY well written and within minutes, Yan and I found rulings and agreed on interpretations. So after spending a good 30-40 minutes of false starts and going over the combat rules we finally settled in for a fight.
Foxy moves from the kid.
Combat involved 3 teams, Edgar/Finn committed to chasing the fox away, Malcolm/Jasper played defense and opted to protect the party and the fox sent out to eat one last morsel before moving on deeper in the territories.
The details are a bit fuzzy since the game was more than 2 weeks ago, but I recall the fight was over really fast. The fox and the Edgar/Finn team fenced a bit to no major effect while the fox disarmed Jasper’s bow, leaving the poor tenderpaw weaponless.
As luck would have it, the next round saw Jasper needing to attack without weapons. Maze was really flustered and out of his comfort one at this point. He was playing a non combative PC (designed a little to close to his own personality he later told me) and he had a very hard time “getting” that the game encouraged making stuff up on the spot beyond rules.
Maze: But I don’t have a bow? I can’t attack?
Phil: Dude, you are a Guard, a freakin’ ranger! Pick a piece of wood and fight man!
Maze settled on picking up a sharp stick and had his PC stand his ground, helped by his other buddies. Thus, Jasper took his improvised spear and set himself for the fox’s charge. Maze rolled amazingly well and racked up enough successes to seriously tap into the fox’s disposition (Mouse Guard’s hit points) Just as the crafty predator thought he was pouncing a defenseless, scared-to-death mouse, it realized that it got things only half right and had a nice punctured palate to show for it!
The combat’s last round was a classic Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard conflict moment I’m sure. All 3 teams chose actions that were a perfect triple “Rock/Paper/Scissors”. Edgar/Finn chose “Attack”, the fox chose “Feint” and Jasper/Malcolm chose “Defense”.
This meant that Edgar/Finn tore directly into the Fox’s remaining hit points (with an awesome “jump from a shield into the fox’s face” move) without any chance of the fox defending. Unfortunately, the fox’s feint also negated Jasper/Malcolm’s action as it tore into their own disposition.
After the dust settled, the fox was driven away, yelping in pain and Jasper/Malcolm’s starting disposition was more than halfway gone. That meant that the fox and the Jasper/Malcolm team had to reach a compromise. Edgar/Finn got what they wanted: The Fox was driven away. Jasper/Malcolm wanted the “party to be unhurt” which I had to honor to a certain extent. Since the Fox’s goal was to kill one mice and run away, I ruled that Malcolm would be injured in the fight (instead of both team members as required by the rules when you impose a condition to a team). Thus the fox and the defending team’s goals met halfway.
Finishing the job
After chasing the predator away, the party discovered the source of the unexpected river: a beaver dam. The PCs managed (i.e. succeeded ) to inspire an implicit trust in mice from the otherwise semi-sentient aquatic rodents and persuade them to allow the patrol to create a new mice path over the dam to finish the lost patrol’s job.
As the patrol pushed further toward the edges of the mice territories, they learned that many beaver families had moved in the areas. One such family had diverted a stream over the Scent Border, a mice-applied chemical barrier that prevents predators from entering the Territories, wiping it out and letting in the more adventurous predators in. They finally ended up in Port Sumac, a northern port city, ending “The GM’s turn” (i.e. the GM-controlled adventure).
GM’s thoughts, Session 1 GM’s turn
This game saw me get a better grasp of the Mouse Guard mechanics and trusting Yan with them to help me find relevant rulings when needed. I was amazed at how easy it was to move around adventure elements (i.e. obstacles) based on twists and player input during their actions. Mouse Guard adventures, while based on an otherwise flimsy mechanical frame, can grow rapidly into fully fleshed epic adventures…
… provided your players make the efforts required. Efforts that many other RPGs don’t require.
Getting into the conflict was a headache, but I’m happy to see how it went once all players had goals they were comfortable with and once everyone started to “get” how the system worked. I hope to get rid of that “dead time” that comes from setting up conflicts, I trust that with experience, it will be significantly reduced.
I remain worried that some players won’t be able to go beyond the “get introduced to a situation, inspect the tools available, find solution” model of classic RPGs. I noticed that Eric and Alex often looked on their character sheets to find things to do instead of finding an idea and trying to fit it to their characters and bullshitting me to get a bonus dice or set an awesome scene.
Based on comments from the players after the game, my fears could be set aside for the time being.
Up next: Players timidly explore their own turn.
Mouse Guard Chronicles, Session 1, Part 2: The Lost Patrol
Prelude to the Mission
We spent half of the afternoon creating the Mouse Guard patrol. After that, I called for a break to play a game of the Battlestar Galactica board game, during which one of the players promptly fell asleep at the table!
We gently offered our overworked friend to go downstairs for a power nap and we reset the game. As usual, I ended up completely mucking things up without being a Cylon and the fleet ran out of fuel far short of Kobol. I love that game, but I don’t think I’ll be allowed playing it again anytime soon.
After we ordered and ate our evening meal I asked if they wanted to play a Mouse Guard session now that the PCs were made and that we’d had some time to take a break from char gen and do something else. All players were willing to start playing…
Quick! Get the mission parameters!
…So I actually had to prep an adventure, like right now!
Now here’s the fundamental secret that makes Mouse Guard so cool to GM for: an adventure is only really just 2 obstacles with 2 likely major story twists if the party fails. And the obstacle are actually a magical formula in which you pick your ingredients from a choice of 4:
- The wilderness
- The weather
- Animals
- Other mice
So armed with that and an idea spark I had had a few days ago, I took out a piece of paper and I wrote down something to that effect:
- 1st Spring Mission: Seek what happened to lost patrol in charge of Pathfinding in second ‘tier’ of territories
- Pathfinder check Ob 6
- Success: Lost patrol stuck on tree in middle of “new” river, fox trying to catch them
- Failure: Lost patrol killed by fox, fox attacks PC’s patrol
- Find new beaver dam causing floods in inhabited territories
- Play it by ear based on player input
- Success: Mission over
- Failure: Impose condition(s) on PCs
- Play it by ear based on player input
- Pathfinder check Ob 6
Design time? 10 minutes!
The Lost Patrol, Scene 1, take 1, action!
The game started in Lockhaven, the fortress-town of the Guard and nexus of the mouse territories. The party was summoned by Gwendolyn, leader of the Mouse Guard, to receive their orders for their first Spring mission. For the last few weeks, mice patrols had been moving outwards in the territories to re-establish post-Winter contacts with the various cities and towns, creating new paths where the weather and the wilderness had wiped them.
The party, a veteran patrol, was sent a bit later in the season to tackle the more complicated missions that arose from less experienced patrols getting into serious trouble. The PCs were tasked in retracing the steps of a patrol that was sent out pathfinding to connect a key town from the middle territories with those near the north east frontier.
This lead to a short goal setting session. Here is what the players chose for themselves:
Malcolm (Ex-con and Patrol Leader): Keep the team in good shape
Jasper (Desperately Helpful Tenderpaw): Impress the Patrol Leader
Edgar (Reluctant Guard Mouse): Find the Lost Patrol
Finn (Brazen Veteran Patrol Guard): Find the reason why the patrol was lost
Now Mouse Guard abstracts a lot of things by more or less fast forwarding between the mission’s briefing and the first obstacle. That’s what I did. I described how the PCs got to the last known position of the lost patrol and let the PCs deal with the obstacle: a Scout check vs a lvl 6 obstacle. That meant that a PC (whose average skill-level was 3 dice) had to roll 6 4s or more with whatever dice pool he ended up with after all bonuses were accounted for.
Now I forget what were the exact bonuses for that roll but it turned out that the party failed that scout check. As I’ve said before, the game is often more fun when failure occurs. This failed roll lead to the first “animal” twist of the game session. A new “river” had caught the lost patrol by surprise and, while trying to figure a way to cross it, were assaulted and killed by a fox.
I surmised that the fox wasn’t all that hungry but it still prowled around, wanting to wreck havoc with any other mice it met.
You are a guard, fighting is what you do!
I had set up the first twist to be a fight against a fox while the PCs could see a downed guard from the lost patrol lying on the river’s edge. Mouse Guard conflicts are, like much of the rest if the game, about specific goals, but like our last game, we all got confused between what type of conflict I had chosen (a fight) and what goals players wanted to choose for their paired-up PCs. Alex and Maze’s characters (Malcolm and Jasper) wanted to sleek away from the fight while the the other two (Edgar and Finn) were all for fighting it out.
Now if one thing Mouse Guard does not do well it’s conflicts about widely different goals. The rules are pretty clear that you can’t mix and match conflict types like combat and a chase and our previous experience pointed that out. The closest I saw to what the players wanted to achieve was to have Edgar and Finn fight out the fox and then, if they lost, have the fox chase Malcolm and Jasper.
That’s what Maze and Alex wanted to do but that solution, from a gameplay perspective, was less than ideal because 2 players would need to sit out a conflict while the other two would face a large threat with less resources. That’s when a rules heading popped up from the opened book and gave me the solution out of this:
Fighty Goals for Fighting Conflicts
Phil: I’m sorry guys, I’m asking for a fight conflict here, one fight that can lead to the death of one of you. You are of the Mouse Guard, you stand above other Mice in terms of courage and duty. You don’t run away from a predator, fighting them is one of your core missions, you have to choose goals compatible with combat.
Alex and Maze emmed and ahhed some but I uncharacteristically put my GM foot down and asked them to figure out a combat-related goal that worked within the confines of their beliefs and instincts.
In the end, the following goals were chosen:
- Fox: Eat one more mice before slinking away
- Edgar/Finn: Make the fox retreat (Mice can’t kill foxes unless they invoke a military or science-based conflict, they are too high on the “Order of things” scale)
- Jasper/Malcolm: Ensure that no Guard are killed in this fight
After some book flipping (Burning Wheel games require constant book reference, fortunately it is rapid)we were ready to start the fight!
Up next: An unlikely hero wins the day!
Image Credit: David Petersen
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