Friday Chat, Early Edition: The Geeky Road Trip
In about 24 hours, I’ll be leaving for the Toronto Fan Expo with my friend PM. The Expo is Canada’s largest event for Sci-Fi, Horror, Anime and Gaming fans where they get to meet some of their favorite industry personalities and stock up on merch.
So soon after Gen Con and after having been at Ground Zero for Pax East, I’m not sure how to set my expectations for the Fan Expo. I have no ideas what the show will be like nor what I’ll be doing except game for most of the day on Saturday.
Regardless of what awaits us over there, I still have a 5 hour car trip to plan so I thought I’d reach out and share/ask how the travelling part of the trip should be prepared! [Read the rest of this article]
Barf Forth Apocalyptica! Review: Apocalypse World
What started out as a short review ended up being a 1500 word text where I try to summarize what the game is about so I can run it next week. Feel free to read the Capsule Review and then jump to “So Chatty, what are your thoughts”
The first new RPG I bought at Gen Con 2010 is Apocalypse World by Dogs of the Vineyard designer Vincent Baker. I met him early during the con and he made a great pitch while I was looking for a post-apocalyptic game for my gaming group. Our mutual interests collided and I left with a beautiful, autographed, pocket-sized paperback.
I’d likely play it next week with my gaming group so here’s a chatty style review.
Capsule Review
Not for the faint of heart from both a thematic and playing philosophy point of view, Apocalypse World presents a very clever and apparently engrossing game. It’s main focus is not so much on player accomplishment or setting exploration(although the PCs are complete badasses) but rather the relationships that form between PCs and the constantly mutating loyalties and rivalries between them.
If you’ve started enjoying story games that thrive on failures like Mouse Guard and Burning Wheel but want to explore a darker, very adult theme, Apocalypse World is well worth giving a try.
Buying the book+PDF: Click Here
The Core Play Philosophy
As can be expected from a Lumpley Games RPG, Apocalypse World is first and foremost a Story Game focusing not on collecting whacked out technological gear while fighting mutants. Rather it’s very much about the loyalties and rivalries that form when exceptional, kickass beings (the PCs) band together against a merciless, you’ll-get-screwed-no-matter-what world of decay, scarcity and multiple threats coming from everywhere.
Play focuses on players getting into trouble and how they resolve it (usually by getting into more trouble, leaving behind numerous dead NPCs). The PCs follow their own agendas for survival: performing tasks, raiding groups of NPCs (or even those of other PCs) to gain resources and acting on obligations that often crop up.
Play also follows meta-plots, called Fronts, where events and/or major NPC groups move in the already busy schedules of the PCs to make things more interesting and prevent players from establishing too much stability in the world.
For example, a new cult can move in near the PCs holding, bearing a strange viral plague that reprograms people into new fanatical converts before they die horribly of some form of brain cancer 3 months later.
Finally, the game forcefully tells GMs (called Master of Ceremonies or MCs) to refrain from prepping stories and adventures. Prep focuses on keeping NPCs and organizations created through play straight (there are plenty of tools available online for that) and organizing the game’s fronts.
The Implied Setting and World building
The game’s implied setting starts unspecified yet remains very specialized:
Here be the post-apocalypse and some serious, undefined shit is brewing in some ethereal entity called the psychic maelstrom.
The world takes shape as the players flesh out their characters while the MC innocently peppers the discussion with questions about the PCs pasts, current location, make of vehicles and names of every NPC around them.
The answers of such questions, with healthy doses of “Just make it up” whenever players falter, create the world as the MC notes relevant details on the very elegantly designed 1st session worksheet.
Character Generation
Characters are presented to players as playbooks: a combination character generation rules, character sheet and character specific rules. Each playbook represent an established Post-Apocalyptic badass archetype and two players can’t play the same since each represent a unique exceptional individual.
Some examples:
- The Angel heals people, and has a medical clinic with staff.
- The Battlebabe kills and intimidates everyone with her custom whacked up weapons.
- The Gunlugger is the ultimate killer badass with more guns than shorts.
- The Hocus is a religious leader prophet controlling a cult of NPCs (think Season 4 Gaius Baltar).
- The Brainer screws with people’s brains with her psychic abilities.
- The Hardholder is the leader of an established community of variable size .
And so on.
The playbook outlines all the choices that players make to create the PC, from names, look, equipment, and stat range so it is a clever, self-contained document.
Oh yeah, and thanks to Ron Edwards’ influence (among many other Indie luminaries), the PCs have special powers when they have sex with one another.
Yeah, that kind of game.
The Game Mechanics
Mechanically speaking, the game is an exchange of narrative “moves” where a move describes an action/event/game element with a significant impact in the game’s fiction.
All characters have basic moves like “Going aggro” and “Read a Situation” and character specific ones like the Angel’s “Healing Touch”. Establishing success of such moves (when significant) requires a player to roll 2d6 and add a relevant stat (which usually goes from -2 to +4). A 7-9 is a soft success (i.e. it works but something goes wrong/different than planned as described by each moves) and a 10+ is a hard success.
While the player will use the terminology of their moves (basic and character-specific) to clearly indicate to the MC what they are attempting, the MC will ask the player to fictionalize said move to make it cooler by saying, over and over again: “Cool, how do you do that?”
The Master of Ceremonies
The MC is guided by a set of formal narrative principles like “Barf forth Apocalyptica” and “always respect the logic of the game”. He also has very specific moves like”Announce Future Badness”, “Separate them” and “‘take their stuff away”. In essence, the MC announces that something happens whenever he makes a move and asks players to react with moves of their own. For example:”A bad guy slinks away behind you and loops a steel wire around your neck, what do you do?”
Most everything the MC does in the game is make moves that lead up to the “what do you do” question, the MC almost never rolls dice. PCs get hurt (Shot at, drugged, strangled, etc) when they fail rolls. It’s the move players choose reactively that either gets them out of trouble, lands them into different trouble or leaves them lying in a puddle of blood.
The MC must also makes crap up on the spot (NPC moods, appearances, actions) while narrating. When well done, players don’t notice anything other than an apocalyptic tinged fully interactive story that remains internally consistent with both the rules and the apparent onscreen/offscreen logic…
Things become really interesting when PCs either miss a roll or give the MC a golden opportunity to screw with them… thus the MC is invited to go to town and make the most heinous-yet-interesting-for-the-PCs move he can think about. A bit like Mouse Guard’s failure mechanic… only not G-rated and guided by the MC’s list of moves (and any custom ones that fit the game).
The MC also names everything so that all NPCs gain a semblance of substance… but never so much that he gets to hesitate to get them killed, maimed, destroyed at the players whim.
The game’s fuel is the MC’s questions to the characters (not players). Those questions (and answers) build the world and shape where the action goes. Many (if not most) of these questions should be embedded in the MC’s moves or in response to players Moves/questions (i.e. turning player questions back to the group).
Chatty: You’re reading this awesome review, What does it remind you of? What does it make you feel like?
Exactly like that.
So Chatty what are your thoughts?
After reading the book and going over the game’s forums, I definitively want to try it for a few sessions. This is NOT Fallout the RPG. There is very limited space for armour, explosives and advanced weaponry. What it is about is scarce water, savage gangs of bikers/cultists, warlord raiders, driving through the desert in search of medicines and trying to decipher what the hell is the Psychic Maelstorm before it rots everyone’s brains.
Oh and see if you can get in Marie’s pants before she makes a move on Roark.
I’m completely intrigued by a game with no formal planning and especially by the “you don’t roll stuff, the players do”. It makes me feel the game is hard to master for both players and the MC. There are a LOT of little bits here in there that can be easily forgotten.
I’ll spend the week thinking of some visuals and sub-themes so I can barf forth the appropriate levels of Apocalyptica.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask… this is a hard game to describe.
Buying the book+PDF: Click Here
Chatty's Halloween Post: The 2012 Zombie Apocalypse
This one is for The Maze, Scott, and HermitDave, and is a 100% RPG post inspired by my Influenza article.
I give you the Zombie Apocalypse RPG Trope Post!
Zombies are people, too… Okay, dead people, with poor verbal skills. And the only communication they understand is blowing off their heads.
- USA Network commercial for Night of the Living Dead
Stop being so pathetic! …Humans send robots to Mars. Zombies are baffled by doorknobs.- How to Survive a Horror Movie by Seth Grahame-Smith
The Real Pandemic
In 2010, humanity scrambled and achieved the near-miraculously vaccination (often at gun point) of 75% of the world’s population. The virus turned out to be benign. The conspiracy theorist had a field day… and a lot of science types looked like idiots.
Unfortunately, in mid 2011 the A(H1N1) virus recombined with new mutations of the Swine and Avian flu and a new, very deadly strain arose. A new pandemic started but this time no one wanted to get the vaccine and no government had the courage to impose it.
Things changed when the death tolls rose rapidly. Panic and civil disorder exploded. Mass Vaccination began again, through riots and armed conflicts. However, the conventional vaccine could not prevent infection.
Before the new pandemic broke out, the top vaccine manufacturers, grown fat with the profits made from selling the H1N1 vaccine, fell on one another like crazed jackals. Out of the corporate carnage rose GeneCore now the world’s sole manufacturer of vaccines and gene-therapy.
Faced with the threat of the new Flu virus, GeneCore proposed its experimental, non-FDA approved gene-therapy vaccine. The idea was to infect the body with a benign genetically-engineered virus that would reprogram all of the body’s DNA to protect it against the Killer Flu.
Mass vaccination, at least in the countries that could still afford GeneCore’s price, was started in late 2011. Protesters and conspiracy theorists were silenced, often violently.
Something was in that Vaccine’s virus… Something primeval, something almost evil.
54% of humanity had been vaccinated when it happened…
(fade to black)
In December 2012, 50% of humanity was dead, 30% had mutated into near-mindless cannibalistic predators and 5% were… something else…
Welcome to Zombie Apocalypse 2012.
The Game’s Setup
This 2012 Zombie Apocalypse idea is good for a short Post Apocalyptic modern campaign where most of the humans have become flesh-eating Zombies. What’s left of the world’s population hides in pockets all over the planet, trying to survive civilization’s collapse and the new predators.
PCs are not humans or zombies. They are part of the 5% that were mutated in something far better and worse, Vampires! With intact minds and prodigious powers, they need to feed on human blood…pure, unzombified human blood.
Thus, they must battle the hordes of zombies (and other mutants) and try to find humans to feed upon.
In terms of game system. I’d suggest using d20 Modern or World of Darkness. If you use d20 Modern, I propose you use Monte Cook’s World of Darkness for the Vampire PC Class (it works perfectly for that). You can also generic systems like Gurps or Champions but you may need to build the proper templates for PCs and adversaries. They all work.
Adventure Seeds
1) PCs “wake up” as starved Vampires in an abandoned hospital ward. The place is filled with Zombies. The PCs discover their powers as they fight through the hospital to find the hospital’s Blood Bank (or maybe a few hidden humans”. Great for a one Shot.
2) The PCs are newly created Vampires that have been enslaved by a Vampiric Coven that discovered how to successfully create new ‘members’. They must learn to play their captors against one another in order to escape. Aided by a few heroic human NPCs, they must then evade Zombie guards and Vampire enforcers to reach freedom into the blighted wilderness. This scenario works great for a more storytelling experience.
3) The PCs are virtuous adventurers seeking the ‘cure’ for their condition and must storm the Headquarters of GeneCore, held by a few Vampire Lords and an army of Mutated monstrosity. Great for players who want to play the internal struggle of killing humans to survive.
How about you? What cool ideas would you add to this setting? Adventure Seeds? Some monster concepts? Some other idea or cause for the Apocalypse? You tell me!
Afterschool Trope Special: The Dungeon Crawl, Part 1
This is Post # 600 on Musing of the Chatty DM! To celebrate this and my Dungeon theme week, I decided to write an article in the style that has made me known as a RPG blogger: a Trope post! You are new to the blog and don’t yet know about Tropes? Here’s a handy link to get your started.
In order to celebrate Dungeon Week at Musings of the Chatty DM, and to get your gears going for our little contest, I thought we could explore one of the two foundation Tropes of our favorite Fantasy Roleplaying game:
Dungeon Crawling is the act of exploring a dungeon (or other dangerous area) while looking for treasure or some other important object. The characters must battle enemies (usually monsters) and use their skills and equipment to negotiate obstacles (usually traps.) Usually, but not always, there is a Boss Battle at some point, and a Mac Guffin or Plot Coupon at the end.
(Snip)… it is actually Older Than Dirt, since even old myths feature it (heroes like Orpheus voyaging into the Underworld, for example). However, it was the Cliff Hanger film serials of the early 20th century that defined the trope, and the Indiana Jones movies that made it popular again later.
Dungeon Crawling. The word implies slow progress through damp corridors of an underground complex, carefully checking every square inch for potential death traps. For decades, adventurers have prodded the depths of countless published and home-brewed dungeons, equipped with such classic staples as 10 foot poles (to trigger the traps), Iron Spikes (to stuck doors shut or prevent sliding doors from closing) and a mule-drawn cart to transport treasures.
Of course, experienced players of old school dungeon crawls have found much more creative uses for such staples and anything else that they could their hands on.
Dungeon Crawling can be defined many ways, as each era of Dungeons and Dragons found new ways of staging adventures around the concept of exploring a (relatively) fixed site where PCs discover various challenges and reap whatever material rewards they can find. Hot debates are sparked daily in RPG blogs and forums about Old school gaming and how it differs from the game styles encouraged by later editions of D&D.
My goal is not define what dungeon craweling is, nor to add to the debate. Rather, I’d like to explore dungeon crawling through the lens of game’s history to explore applications of the trope.
The Dungeon as the Campaign Setting
Many early campaigns (and several current ones based on retro-clones of older editions of D&D) were based upon the exploration of large, multi-levels underground structures. Later renamed Megadungeons, these sites were where most of adventures would occur. Partys of adventurers, drawn from gaming groups that could sometimes be counted in the dozens, got together and explored the dungeon, clearing large swats of a given levels before exploring deeper.
One of the core assumptions of such campaigns was that the deeper PCs explored, the harder the challenges were and the higher were the potential rewards. Another assumption was that cleared levels of the dungeon would eventually be repopulated, forcing returning adventurers to deal with new occupants or find alternate, less crowded paths to the deeper parts of the dungeon.
Creating a Dungeon-based campaign
Starting such a campaign is relatively simple, you need to set your dungeon in an area of your favorite game world (or you may create your own world to host it). You don’t need to flesh out the outside world too much. You can usually place your dungeon under ruins of some sort. Popular choices are:
- A ruined monastery, See here for a very recent example.
- Under a Mountain, usually within and under the ruins of some sort of underground city
- Under a City, like Forgotten Realms Undermountain found under Waterdeep or Monte Cook’s Ptolus
- Under a Castle, like the classic Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaigns from the co-creators of D&D
But you can also break out of the classic approach and build your megadungeon in other ways:
- Inside a crashed Spaceship (like the classic Expedition to the Barrier Peaks module which could be grown bigger by adding more floor decks)
- Inside the cone of a volcano (making your dungeon doughnut shaped) like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
- Across worlds/planes of existence (by placing portals that transport PCs from one world to the next)
- Outside! By making the dungeon stand on the various ‘levels’ of a stripped mine or on the side of a mountains with gigantic ‘steps’ carved on its surface.
Its usually a good idea to find a reason for your dungeon to exist. This will help you define the type of encounters found within it, acting like a baseline theme on which to build upon. If you build your dungeon in a desert, you might want to borrow from Egyptian myth to give your campaign an exotic flavor. In a similar manner, if you want to place your dungeon under the ruins of a lost Jungle temple, than you can borrow from Indiana Jones or a plethora of classic pulp era adventure and Sword and Sorcery stories.
Once you have chosen the site of your dungeon you need to chart the closest point of civilization (City, town, village, Frontier Keep, etc) to the dungeon. The further away your dungeon is from civilization, the longer the transit time between forays and resupplying expeditions, allowing more restocking of the dungeon. Large distances may also explain why the dungeon hasn’t been touched by other adventurers before and may play a role in your choices if you are the type of DM that likes to have such questions answered.
Finally, a dungeon far from civilization often makes it more likely to remain the sole focus of the campaign as there is little or no ‘distraction’ to deter PCs from exploring deeper and deeper.
Dungeons that sit closer to civilization are more likely to be plundered faster, with shorter resupplying interludes between forays. It could also make it more likely to have been partly cleared by prior adventuring parties or being explored by ‘competitors. Such NPC adventurers may interact with the party, acting as friendly but competitive support or antagonistic cut-throat jerks.
In my own Primal/Within campaign, I made the City so close, it’s actually inside the dungeon itself!
Once you’ve established your dungeon and the closest point of Civilization, you are free to start mapping your dungeon. The one-page dungeon template is an excellent tool for that!
Such campaigns often don’t have an overarching plot line, the story is the one that the PCs forge through their exploration. In such cases, story arises from the players actions in and out of the dungeon. Planning future forays with other PCs, forging alliances with dungeon factions, buying real estate outside of the dungeon and developing lasting relationships with hirelings are all ways that roleplaying occurred and stories progressed in such campaigns.
DM creating such dungeons can therefore focus more on story hooks than developed storylines. By creating various opposing factions within the dungeon you create opportunities for PCs to discover and exploit the possibilities of such opposition.
Example:
The Orcs of the 4 fingered-Claws have recently invaded the Kobold Warrens of the 1st level of the Great Abyss, a semi-open megadungeon set on a mile-high cliff overlooking the cursed Dagonite Ocean. Many kobolds are now enslaved to the Orcs, the remaining kobolds have retreated to the cliff side network of ledges and tunnels. Hating the orcs above all, they will willingly let adventurers safe passage through their new found lair so they can get to the orcs faster.
The Brotherhood of troll-magi, a group of highly intelligent trolls trained in the arcane arts have subdued a Dragon and taken control of its sizable horde, scattering the dragon’s minions to other, less ‘comfortable’ parts of the dungeon. As the PCs explore the dungeon, looking for the horde, they catch hints that something happened to the dragon and need to prepare to face something mightier what they initially planned.
If you are interesting in capturing the tropes of classic dungeon-based campaigns, here’s an excellent list of assumptions to run an Old School dungeon (mega or otherwise).
Do you have ideas and concepts for dungeon-based campaigns you’d like to share?
Part 2 will be about… I don’t know yet, but definitively about more dungeon goodness!
Under New Management
Good day! I am Vanir the Chatty DM. You probably came here expecting Phil the Chatty DM. I’m sorry to say that Phil has taken an extended leave of absence due to a severe poutine-related injury and will not be back for some time. In the meantime, he has handed his cape and sceptre to me, and now I am the Chatty DM.
Phil’s shoes are quite large, and it will be some time before I am able to adequately fill them. Being a kind and generous former potentate, Phil gave me a practice exercise to run. Here it goes:
I find it best to separate the colors and the whites, because the whites stay much brighter that way. However, you may find yourself out of underwear if you don’t alternate loads. Washing baby clothes is an entirely different story. A person who can keep baby clothes clean probably made a pact with the devil at some point, and I cannot say the payoff would be worth it for me. However, some people are much more into doing their laundry than I, and if for some reason you find yourself at the fabled Crossroads ready to make a deal with Old Scratch, far be it from me to keep you from bargaining away your eternal soul to keep your whites whiter and your brights brighter. I don’t like socks very much. My wife and I threw away all our socks and bought 20 pairs of the same kind that we both wear so that we don’t have to sort. However, the dresser keeps spawning versions of our old socks and sprinkling them randomly into the sea of perfectly uniform socks. I’m not sure if an exorcist would even show up to get rid of this problem but as long as my socks don’t start spinning around and projectile vomiting on me, I think I can make do.
Phil was right, I feel much more competent now. However, he told me that to truly become a Chatty DM, I must discuss tropes at great length. I have just googled that word, and I feel ready. Let us begin.
Tropes are a process of inbred fertilization which employs certain decomposed organic materials– including, but not limited to animal sediment– to blanket an area in which vegetation is desired. The procedure enriches the soil for stimulated plant development while, at the same time, preventing erosion and decreasing the evaporation of moisture from the ground. To properly trope your garden, all you need is some simple household chemicals. I recommend about 1/2 ton of lawn clippings, a can of beer (for the enzymes, which are the catalyst to get all the bacteria going and give your tropes some real kick), 1/8 cup of antifreeze, and a few hefty squirts of Palmolive dishwashing liquid to give those bugs diarrhea. Wrap everything in newspaper over the winter, or your tropes might collapse, taking the foundation of your house along with them. Before you install tropes, you should check your local city or state zoning ordinances involving tectonic shift and/or manslaughter.
Upon further review, it seems that I was talking about something very similar to tropes, but not actually tropes. Please forgive me, I am but a novice Chatty DM. These powers are intoxicating and difficult to control. Please allow me to refocus:
One of the most common tropes in fantasy roleplaying is that every character has underarms. Subverting this trope might seem impossible to the novice, but daily diligent practice will allow you to overcome your limitations. PC’s frequently have heroic (or “good aligned”, as we say in the parlance) underarms, but this certainly does not mean a clever DM can’t speak in private with the PC’s underarms to make them do something unexpected. (Protip: try bribing them with food or diamonds.) Also, the number of underarms on a villain is typically directly proportional to the number of arms he has. (Or she! Don’t forget, girls have underarms too!) If you want to really spice up your campaign, try giving your villain three or four extra underarms. Or just one extra, but it’s a giraffe’s underarm! Now that’s what I call Proper Villainy!
(NOTE: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES give your villain two giraffe underarms. You want your players to feel like they can win at least occasionally. Remember: you’re successful at being a DM when everyone is having fun.)
I think this would be a good place to stop. Phil told me not to lay too much on the audience at once. He said he gave out too many secrets at once this one time, and it killed his entire readership right there on the spot. Rather than undo all the hard work he has done rebuilding his user base and hiding the bodies, I would rather leave you all aching for more. Please don’t cry. I love each and every one of you just as Phil did.
However, I must tempt fate and leave you with one final golden nugget of wisdom: grow a beard, because the evil twin will always beat the good twin at Scrabble.
Good night, Chatty Nation!
Vanir used to write for Stupid Ranger before ascending to this higher plane of existence. His love, like Phil before him, is joy eternal.
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