Chatty Plays: “Last Night on Earth”
I met her at Gen Con, she's nice.
With no ongoing RPG campaigns going for my gang at the moment, I find my font of inspiration to be somewhat drier. But I can write about other things right? Like boardgames!
Guys? You still there?
Hello?
Last Friday, PM and I were hanging out looking for good 2 player games. We usually defaulted to Last Night on Earth a zombie-themed board game by Flying Frog Productions. Turns our I won 2 games back to back… but as you’ll see later, it was more luck than anything.
What it is? Shambling Review
Last Night on Earth is a 2-6 player board game that simulates a small-town zombies infestation movie. Half the players control non-infected character archetypes while the other half share a fluctuating pool of slow-moving zombies. [Read the rest of this article]
Ghoulish Mailbag: Handling PC Death
For the last 3 years, I’ve had the habit to write Halloween themed posts:
- 2009: in the wake of the H1N1 scare, I tackled a Zombie Apocalypse micro-setting for a Modern RPG.
- 2008: in the grip of rising depression symptoms, I concocted a creepy post about the Nightmare fuel trope.
- 2007: I started the tradition (so to speak) with a Trope post about mixing it up in your campaign by putting costumes on common mechanics to make new, strange monsters/treasures.
This year again, I’m sitting at my kitchen breakfast counter while the kids (now 8 and 7) are out terrorizing the surroundings for some sugar-cane based spoils of war. Once again, I’m the guardian of the dungeon, sitting over a chestful of delicious Coffee Crisps candy bars, bags of Trans-fat free 95 calories chips and fiendish sour gummy-zombies packets.
In the mean time, what better topic on All Hallow’s Eve than tackling a recent letter by a reader inquiring about dealing with the ever throny issue of character death.
Dear Grim Reaper…
My name is Tom. I’ve been reading your blog quite a bit over the last few days, and I’ve found it to be a really useful source of information and inspiration. You also seem like an approachable sort of guy, so I thought I’d, well, approach you with a question.
I’ve been running my first campaign for a few sessions now, and in this particular campaign, there’s no resurrection when a PC dies– something we all agreed to going in, as it seems to add a meaningful sense of risk.
This has made the few combat encounters– the focus of the campaign has really been more about exploration, puzzle-solving, and character interaction– pretty intense, with some characters coming close but narrowly escaping their demise. Which has also made it very exciting and a lot of fun for me and my players.
So far, none of the characters have actually died, and I’ve given the characters a magical item that can help save another character from their fate.
What I’m worried about is when, eventually and inevitably, someone’s character does die. It’s not that I’m worried about how they’ll handle it– they’re all a pretty mature bunch, so I don’t expect any tantrums. It’s, what if a PC dies half-way through an adventure, with two or three hours of dungeon or character negotiations or puzzles left?
I don’t want anyone to just sit there being bored while all the others are having a ball, nor do I want to abruptly halt the adventure. I’d like to keep the deceased character’s player entertained and engaged in some way. Do you have any suggestions?
Of Death, Drama and the value of one’s Free Time
Among the recurring themes of RPG forum and blog posts, setting the lethality level and handling the death of PCs is way up there. I’m willing to bet there was at least one article about that in the first few issues of Dragon magazine.
Now the range of answers to Tom’s inquiries are about as large as there are pundits and writers pondering this, here’s mine.
It all comes down to how much the free time of your players is worth to them and how much you value it when they sit at your table. Dear GMs, in the unlikely chance that you still haven’t learned that fundamental lesson, in this day and age of MMORPGs and Skype remote playing, players don’t have to be unilaterally grateful to have a spot at your table, it goes both ways. I wrote a post about that way back when that’s still very relevant today.
So while loosing one’s PC in the middle encounter of a long night of playing is a likely outcome of any RPG, having it occur in a game where making a new PC takes a long chunk of time (and possibly the DM’s attention if electronic tools aren’t available) can put a serious damper on everyone’s fun.
Of Death and other Inconveniences.
So Tom, my first suggestion is to ask your players what they expect in the likelihood that character death does occur mid-encounter, with plenty of time remaining to play out other encounters? Maybe they’ll tell you that they’d rather stop the game until their fallen comrade builds a new character, opting to play a quick card game like Dominion or Three-Dragon Ante.
Assuming Tom plays D&D 4e, I also suggest that he has the D&D character builder (or equivalent software tool if you play Pathfinder, Savage World or any other OGL-based RPG) installed on a nearby computer and hooked to a printer. Thus, that gives his down-on-her-luck player the best tools to come back as fast as possible.
I would also question the finality of death in your game. If you play 4e or Pathfinder, a game where character creation is a complex process, requiring the player to make a lot of choices and invest significant energies, you may want to rethink your initial decision. There are other ways to create that sense of risk that you are trying to simulate by making Death final.
For instance, I’d consider making the success or failure of certain ‘turning points” of your story hinge on key PCs not dying at all during the adventure. Maybe the cleric bears a divine mark (needed to complete a ritual in a dungeon) that will dissipate if she dies, regardless if the Shaman raises her after the fight. Maybe the Paladin needs a flawless reputation to gain the trust of the local lord and can’t afford to be slain by dishonorable Wererats (leading to a great RPing moment, should the fallen and raised LG paladin lie to achieve the party’s goal).
Follow the Other Light…
Alternatively, If death is so final in your game, you should explore or create story reasons for that. Is it possible that the realm of the Dead (e.g. 4e’s Shadowfell), where souls can be plucked for resurrection, is closed for some specific reason? Is it possible that the soul of a deceased character remains on the material plane but slowly dissolves over the next few minutes (like Terry Pratchett’s recently deceased characters)?
What if, during those next few minutes, a slain heroic soul could still help its comrades? What if it could play in some sort of combat-based skill challenge, with a ghost figurine on the board, that can interact with the challenge at hand? In fact, what if the Arcane, Religion and Nature-based PCs could perceive the ghostly PC and share action in a new etherial challenge?
For example, what if the deceased PC could yank the souls out of monsters by grabbing them or cutting them loose with an appropriate skill check or Weapon attack? Maybe if the Ghost PC fails 3 times… it dissipates. Thus, even though the PC’s dead, there’s still a stakes at play. The living PCs sensing the ghost could support it with minor action rolls of the appropriate skill.
The Road More Traveled
Otherwise, if that’s too far fetched for you, turn the table and give the control of the monsters to the players who just lost a PC, involve them in your story. Listen to their suggestions and try to work them in your campaign.
Or just give him the keys to your car to go and get the pizza, or allow him to leave the table to go play with the PS3 or flirt with your significant other… 
What about you guys, how do you handle death. Anyone has used clever tricks to make the experience less of a drag while still making it a significant stake in the game? Is it an issue in your game or did you address it up front? Let us know!
When the Bad Guys Win: Chatty’s Gamma World One Shot
D-d-dance p-p-puny Humanoids!
One of the two pieces of Swag I got from being a volunteer DM at the New York Comic Con was a set of Wizards of the Coast’s new Gamma World adventure game. After reading through the (very familiar) rules, I decided that I wanted to try it out with my buddies as a one shot, among the growing list of different role playing games we’ve been trying out these last 2 months.
This post is a recap of our experience with the game rather than an actual play report. Since I used the PAX prime adventure written by Logan Bonner, you can follow the story in more details in Dave’s excellent DC Game Day game report.
Character Generation
Char Gen is a much simplified version of 4e’s process. People randomly determine 2 origins (each a class/race hybrid) and mush them together to create their PC concept. That part can be either the most boring or awesome part of the game. If you just accept that you have an Hyperconscious Android and move on to select your skills then you skipped on the awesome.
Case in point, my ever brilliant storyologist Franky rolled Telekinetic and “Swarm of Rats.” When I saw he was struggling with the concept, I shared the game’s core assumption: “You are expected to re-skin anything to suit your needs.”
Franky: So can the swarm be made of spiders?
Chatty: Absolutely!
Franky: And can I hold my body in humanoid form through my telekinesis and webs so I can blend in?
Chatty: Awesome, no one will notice!
Franky later chose weapons from the list of generic choices. He picked a bowling bowl embedded in his PC’s body, swinging it, web-flail style. He also chose to shoot actual web spurts (like Spiderman). His concept was rich and very vivid. Along with Yan’s Seismic Radioactive (a depleted Uranium shooter called Boulder Dash), Franky’s character stood out among the concepts I remember most.
From experience, I know that character creation can be a huge pain with only one rulebook and 4-6 players. So in order to bypass that, I used Alphastream’s very useful Gamma World add-ons that feature PDFs with description of each origins and various Gamma World cheat sheets.
Heck I cut these all up and had players pick two for their origin, so we had no overlaps, perfect for a demo game.
Seriously, even if you hate Wiz Book, hop on just to get the tools (and thank Alpha on the way), it will help you maintain momentum in your Char Gen session.
The Wonders of a Game’s Exploration Phase
Char Gen was fun for most of us (See below), I distributed weird/antique tech cards around (again from Alphastream) and we started playing the first scene where our soon to be heroes were lounging in the ruins of the Seattle Convention Centre and got attacked by a technophobic hippie hunter that turns nearby docile robots into robo-killas.
(Aside: I must give huge props to Logan Bonner who managed to not only write a good, 3 scenes adventure that showcases what Gamma World does, but also by adding several funny and clever remarks that made reading it all the more interesting… if you aren’t already doing it, go support his 4e Open Design Project!)
As players got into their powers and the slight rules changes of the game (no more Healing Surges, Minor Action+ 1/2 HP for Second Wind, etc) we experienced what I call “the exploratory phase” of a new game. We had lots of fun and the fight went rapidly.
When we reached the second scene, with the Warbot named “Dancebot 1986″ blocking the way to the Space Needle, some players reading this here site recognized the adventure. Yet, as much as I was looking forward to this part of the adventure, all players completely aced the challenge and danced, dodged, snuck and flipped around, over and under this fully armed Droid of Groove. So while it was cool from a success point, it felt a bit anti-climactic.
Stumbling Down the Hill
In the last encounter, the players squared off against another of those bow and arrow back-to-basics tree-huggers, a laser-gaze flying monkey-lion and some porcupine-dervish-bushes-from-Hell. The combat was longish, players started dropping left and right, Mutant powers some useless, some too powerful cycled through the hands of the players. Those bushes were LETHAL…
Yan: Math! Gimme that Plasma Gun of yours.
Math: But it leaks radioactivity man, I can’t survive shooting it.
Yan: I’m made of radioactivity, I can soak it in!
Chatty: Ohhhh dear…
Yan: Booya! Dead Lion-Monkey-thing and I got a nice greenish tan from it!
In the end, one character died, 1 or 2 others were dying and the Sentient chunk of Space Earth villain that had crashed in the Space Needle was able to make all technology permanently inoperable over what used to be the Greater Seattle area while the PCs tried to save their friends from dying.
Math: My iPod…
Mike: My turkey carver…
While we enjoyed ourselves, the evening ended in a some kind of a bummer. I believe that people tend to remember the last emotional imprint of an experience and apply it to the whole thing itself. Thus, our game of Gamma World felt more meh than awesome.
You really have no idea what it feels like to know EVERYTHING do you.... ahhhh don't bother.
Dr. Chatty and the Hypercounscious Paranoid Android
In classic Chatty DM fashion, I decided to explore the why of this and how this can be circumvented in the future (or in your very own groups).
Character Dying Mechanics
One of the killjoys of the evening was that some players spent a lot of time not knowing if their dying character would feed radioactive worms or not. While Gamma World, especially at level 1, is faster than D&D 4e, dying PCs still have to wait 10 to 15 minutes each round, just to roll a d20 to make sure they don’t die.
Since the PC might recover, or a friend might come over and help you out, the player and GMs don’t necessarily realize that the player should spend this time making a new PC.
Since I don’t believe that Gamma World was created to be a serious, deep story RPG, I’d suggest re-instating the oldest of Old school rules of them all: your PC dies at 0 HP… period. Then, just allow new adventurers to join as soon as the new PC is ready. Thus, players always do stuff at the table.
Alternatively, my buddy Dave suggests having the player work on a new PC while he rolls death saves and when the new PC is ready, make a call with the GM about the fate of the fallen one.
Reintroducing the Randomness Element
This may come as no surprise, but some of my players were completely turned off by the randomizing aspect of the game. While the selection of character origins was fine, Math started grumbling when he had to roll his tertiary stats.
Chatty: You know what Math, I just realized that since 1986, you AlWAYS hated rolling for stats, that why you jumped on Unearthed Arcana’s alternative methods.
Math: You’re damn right!
Chatty: And if memory serves well, you loved to roll 13s because they mysteriously turned into 18s over the next few sessions right?
Math: Is that the door? Pizza’s here!
Also, players motivated by tactical choices, planning and playing specialist roles can be turned off by the randomness. There were several moments where Yan grumbled that his Mutations and Omega tech were useless (and lets not talk about the antique crap) and I can see on the character sheets that some people were NOT inspired by their PC hybrids.
Math: Okay so I’m a Giant that’s real intelligent… woop de doo!
Chatty: But man, you could be this huge Brain in a Jar, floating around and bashing people with mechanical tendrils.
Math: Have you forgotten to take your meds again Phil?
This makes me think that Gamma World is especially well-suited for casual butt kickers, making it a GREAT one-shot/short campaign adventure game.
If you want to play this game and you have Yans and Maths in your group, consider letting players choose their origins (or at least one) and, if you don’t play with the “Players make their own deck of cards”, look at the PC and have the PCs pick their first piece of Omega tech from a selection of useful cards you picked for them.
Underneath It All, It’s Still 4e
That’s more of a personal thought here. As many know, I feel like I need a break from D&D in its various incarnations and I was reminded of that as I was running the 3rd encounter. I felt the weight of the numbers, the mind-numbingly slow (to my distorted perception) rules-exception based process. As the wonders of exploration wore off, I started seeing the Matrix again, the wire-frames of monster stats and combat mechanics underneath the otherwise awesome fluff…
The main reason why I’m currently tired of the WotC engine is because I can’t stop seeing the Matrix, and ironically enough, I no longer find this to be my main motivation for RPGs.
That’s why I need to stop DMing it and start playing it!
Dave, Enrique, Logan, Chris, Tracy and all you reader/bloggers/DMs/designers, I wanna play in your games when next we meet, I’m done DMing it for the time being but I loved playing it at Gen Con, and maybe I’ll stop seeing the wires and start seeing the rubber suits covering them again.
And that’s how Chatty sees it.
Apocalypse Short: The Siege of Shanty Town (Part 5)
(I’m knee deep in seminar season again, and I’m several game reports behind. To catch up, I decided to write a series of short 500-ish words posts about the highlights of each).
A few weeks ago, we concluded our Apocalypse World mini-campaign. See this post to catch up on the story.
Dramatis Persona (reminder)
Thunder: Male Chopper (Cycle gang leader, played by Eric)
Raven: Female Faceless (Masked semi-mystical Brute played by Franky)
Smith (Absent) : Male Brainer (Psychic Mindfucker played by Mike)
Eternity: Female Battlebabe (Waif-fu Kill-Bill-esque badass, played by Math)
Game Summary
Colonel Allison and “Sarge” Thunder were planning to defend Shanty Town which was surrounded by several dozen Hummer-like vehicles and a pair of Armored Personal Carriers. Just as Thunder returned from his aborted raid on Fortress city, two of his lieutenants (including the treacherous Phil) and 2 of Allison’s tried to capture him to deliver him to Sun, the leader of the invasion. Being the total Badass that he is, he reminded everyone who was the Alpha Wolf of the pack and got the traitors groveling (at best) or dead. He then focused on more important stuff… like saving his little corner of Hell he calls home.
Allison and Thunder mobilized their gangs and grabbed initiative to take hold of Ambush Hill before the invaders from Fortress-City could. They succeeded admirably but when they tried to push their advantage and capture the command-centre APC, they found themselves at the business end of a Rocket Propelled Grenade. When the smoke cleared, there was one APC less and a lot of gang member body parts strewn all over the place.
Then the shelling of the city by Fortress-City’s grounded battleship began…
In Thunder-City, right after Smith collapsed into a strange Coma, Raven used her mystical powers to seek out Eternity. As Raven tapped into the Psychic Maelstorm, she felt Smith’s glee and exaltation at being one with the Storm. It remained unclear if Smith’s influence helped or hindered the 2 women that he had been interested in. Even plugged in the ether, Smith managed to mindscrew his colleagues.
Raven made it to the ship by crashing through everything that stood in her path (Oh Yeah!) and teamed up with the Battlebabe to start serious trouble on the ship, taking out the gun batteries for good right before it hit Shanty Town’s Factory. They eventually confronted Sun, the leader of Fortress-City and massacred his honour guard… when Eternity went aggro on Sun for him to stand down, the gold-painted psycho leader forced the Battlebabe’s hand and found, to his post-mortem dismay, his brains painting the bulkheads of his former ship.
And thus, shanty Town was saved, but there would be consequences now that open war had been declared between both towns.
Game Highlights
After 4 sessions of Apocalypse World, I realized I had grown quite used to the whole “the players make the moves and roll dice / the GM answers and prompts them for more” method of play. I had an easier time calling the moves to respond to player input and I felt the game flow more naturally.
I also experienced with dishing out damage to the PCs more (which is done in response to players dishing it or failed dice rolls/soft successes). I even went too far and crushed Franky’s Faceless PC underneath an I-Beam toward the end of the session.
When all said and done, the element of Apocalypse World I prefer is the Front structure which I discussed here. It’s an awesome framework to build adventures and campaign on without resorting to scripting scenes and events. By giving clear, step by step objectives to NPCs, groups and places, the GM gets to truly create a dynamic world that reacts to the player’s significant choice.
When my players told me they’d play again, with different characters to try something different, probably more Mad Max like, I knew the experiment was a great success.
Oh and mad props to Vincent Baker for naming a Faceless power after a Kool Aid ad. That’s made of win.
Up next, our last Mouse Guard game. Then, Gamma World.
P.S. Let me know if that format works for you or if you prefer the 1.5k word format (I prefer the longer one BTW).
Chatty’s New York Trip Highlights, Part 2: Queens is Burning
Earlier this week, I described some high points of my New York Comic Con experience as a D&D Dungeon Master and how I liked that.
But NYCC was only half of the reason why I got to the Big Apple that weekend. My friend Luke, designer of the Burning Wheel Fantasy roleplaying game and Free Market, was celebrating something akin to the 10th anniversary of the publication of his game on the weekend of 10/10/10 (like he did in 5/5/05). He had generously invited me to join the celebrations and I accepted.
Welcome to Fortress Astoria!
On Friday night, right after my Comic Con shift and armed with a Google map, I made my way to the New York subway to grab the Q express train to Queens to join Luke’s kickoff party. At first, I thought it would be in some sort of restaurant that Luke had reserved… but I was greeted by Luke in his apartment’s kitchen! It was already filled to the brim with Burning Heads and various hipster east coast game designers like Jared (Action Castle, Inspectres and Free Market) and Vince (Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World).
(Indie endorsement plug: Vincent is having a huge sale of his games in PDF form. You can buy all six of his games for 25$ or a limited time. I’d do it just for Dogs and Apocalypse if I was you)
I’ll spare Luke’s private life but I’ll say that his apartment (or Fortress Astoria as he likes to call it) was like a photo montage of my 30 odd years as a gamer. We’re both the same age and I saw toys, games, books and movies in that place that mirrored the ones I had possessed at various points in my life.
As I arrived, Luke said “ahh, here’s our celebrity guest” which made me all awkward, but I’m forced to admit I got to meet actual fans that gave me praise for my work as a blogger and gaming advocate. A few tried to get me riled up about D&D but I failed to take the bait, resorting to my Multi-Spectrum gamer argument: “You GM it, I’ll play it”.
One among those fans was Rafe, an active member of the Burning Wheel forums and author of Realm Guard, a Mouse Guard hack that follows the adventures of the Middle Earth Rangers of the Fourth Age (I only barely know enough of TLotR to know that this is after Frodo chucked the One ring in Mount Doom). Rafe and I had quite a few discussions on gaming with kids and he presented me with fascinating task resolution engines for kids from toddlerhood to Tweenagers for this new game he was designing. I’m looking forward to hear about that, especially now that my own projects are currently on ice while I focus on my health (losing weight) and my seminars (starting again next week).
A great party all in all and I was honoured to have been invited. I got back to my hotel in Midtown in one piece, happy.
Harvey Pewter and the Burning Frog
On Sunday morning, free of my volunteering duties at the Con, I took the train again to Queens, got lost a bit and found the site of the legendary Burning Con that had been going since the previous Friday afternoon. Games got set up on time and started while gamers ate cheese pastries and Greek lamb omelets for breakfast.
I hung in the back to let the official con goers join their games of choice, I was an unofficial guest who was running a game in the afternoon. I finally joined a Burning Wheel game of whose Game Master, a swell guy named Guy, had flown from Britain to attend the con. Guy’s game was set in the Frogwarts School of Magic, where Harvey Pewter, his friends and (junior) professor Falderal teamed up to find the whereabouts of Professor Mallowick, the Defense against the Dark Arts teacher somewhere in the secret dungeons of House Snakejaw.
Yeah, I found that funny too…
This game was a hilarious classic dungeon crawl. The game was enhanced by Guy’s low British-accented voice and his absolutely maddening MC Escher dungeon structure that, while giving the illusion that we had too many paths to explore, eventually lead to the same areas, but from vastly unexpected directions.
Best moment: I’m squaring off against the Draco Malfoy equivalent while his goon is trying to send Lucy LeSud (i.e. Hermione) down a well by cutting the cord she’s holding on to with a rusted shovel. As I realize that my opponent is way more competent at fisticuff than I am, I use my only spell named “Call of Iron”, point toward the Well and shout
“Accio Shovel!”
It failed miserably… so I had to run around the cave like a Benny Hill skit to distract Malfoy while Randall was shredding the Professor Snape-equivalent into comatose hamburgers. We got out scotts free because we managed to pin the death of the assistant professor PC (he failed a Sorcery roll very badly, dying on the spot) on Snape.
Yay!
Al-Chatty el-DM gets a full dose of Burning Wheel
In the afternoon, many participants had left so I found myself without any players at my Mouse Guard Game. I wasn’t too disappointed as I expected this to happen and was also rather tired of my weekend.
Chance smiled upon me as a very nice GM named Alexander offered me a spot in an Tales of a Thousand Nights-inspired Burning Wheel game. The game was Phenomenal. It sold me heart and soul to the Burning Wheel system for sure, at least for story-heavy one shots (I’ll soon post a review of the Revised game which I bought and read on the train ride back home).
Here’s a short recap:
An imperial princess and her party made of her female Magi advisor, male slave (and forbidden love) and scheming female desert guide (that was me!) travel into the desert. There, they find and enter the sunken legendary Library of Worlds to uncover a cure for the Empress’ wasting disease. In it, the Guide leads the party to the Book of Knowledge where the Magi supposedly sets out to study for a remedy (she instead researched an immortality spell for her).
During that time, the Princess flaunted her forbidden love by freeing her body slave and (ugh) reading love poems to him before setting out to research a herbal remedy for her mother as a Plan B should the Magi fail.
With 30 days to burn, the Guide and the Slave set out to find the fabled Djinn of the Library. Being unable to read, she failed to understand that she had to part with something written from her inventory and give it to the script-covered librarian-guardian paper golems or risk getting cursed.
Thus, she got touched by one and contracted a curse that turning her into one of them in as many days as she’d lived years (i.e. 22) as her life story slowly engraved itself on her skin.
As she and the slave approached the Djinn’s demesne in an enchanted garden, the slave touches her growing mark and contracted the curse… but was violently “cured” as the Guide, in a flash, cut his fingertips with her hunting knife.
Slave player: Duuude, now you’re really scaring me now!
Me: Don’t you realize that this is the first time my character showed any sign that she cared about you?
GM: Now you are scaring Me! That’s something my wife would say!
The Djinn, while gracious, refused to grant any wishes unless the Guide found one of his unused names (Oh the irony of games where reading is a skill) within the next 22 days. While she initially wanted to become the true princess and be named heiress to the empire, at that point she mostly wanted to get rid of the librarians’ curse and live.
As they returned to their studious colleagues, the guide threw down the gauntlet at the princess and demanded that research for the cure stop so that she may get the required help to find a name from the djinn and wish herself cured.
(Breaking out of character)
This is where I got a face-full of Burning Wheel’s Duel of Wits. I got to go head to head vs a PC that had great social skills (mine had NONE) controlled by one of the most experimented BW players around. (In fact, he’s part of the Burning Wheel HQ, Luke’s inner sanctum of designers and GMs). I had no chance to win, but I could go for a compromise if I scored a few points before conceding defeat.
Have you ever had one of these few moments where you were so immersed in a game that Roleplaying comes out of your pores like you were born to do it? This was such an occasion. I went to town with all the In-character info I had gathered during the game, the sadness of the librarians collective mind, the forbidden love of the princess, my PC’s hate for the Magi and the Slave’s longing for freedom and fear of my character.
Hell, I managed to squeeze aid from the slave player (even though he kept repeating “I disagree with her goal, but she’s right” and even from the GM who said “I know it’s campy but she has really exploited the princesses’ belief”. Even though I was severely handicapped by my character’s lack of skills… I managed to wring a minor compromise.
Princess: We shall not help you find the Djinn’s name, but I will find a herbal remedy that will slow your curse.
Guide (Trading 16 days for 16 months): Fine, I shall remain in the library, teach myself to read with the help of the librarians and find one of the Djinn’s name myself!
Roll Credits on my PC’s story. (I think the empress got cured too, but my character didn’t care… for now)
Mind… blown.
I played my PC to the core. Most of her beliefs and instincts came into play. Hell it’s only later in the train, where I started reading the game manual for the first time, that I learned what a big deal it was for the GM to give me an “embodiment” award after the session.
Epilogue
My train ride home was 13 hours long. During that time, I read the new D&D Essentials DM kit, the basic Burning Wheel rules and the Character Generation rules. I will return to Burning Wheel in a later post as I have many thoughts on it, some stark raving positive and others quite less so.
Oh and I also got a box of Gamma World. Can’t wait to inflict that baby on my players!
All in all a great weekend in one of my favourite cities!
Peace out!
The D&D Essentials DM Kit: An Editorial Review
Caveat: This is one of my most critical posts about a D&D product so far. As usual, I’m willing to have open, frank and cordial discussions about the subject, but I will brook no rudeness nor will I allow any baiting/trolling for an edition war. Thanks!
Jumping right into it…
I’ll go right off the bat and say that this review will not be fair to the product nor to the efforts made to produce it. That’s why I’m also making it into an editorial. While I want to share the content of Wizards of the Coast’s latest product in the D&D Essentials line, a product that is actually very well done, my early, negative reaction to it was strong enough that it merits being approached differently.
Also, bear in mind that I’m NOT the target audience for that product, I got it as swag at the New York Comic Con as thanks for my volunteer DMing services.
Capsule Review (Where we stick to facts)
The D&D Essentials Dungeon Master Kit is a boxed set that’s said to contain everything needed to run a game of the current edition of Dungeons & Dragons (minus dice). Starting off right after the Red Box Starter Set ended, it contains a 270 pages paperback booklet, a DM screen, two 32 pages adventures as well as the tokens and battlemaps to run these adventures.
The Dungeon Master’s Book is divided in 6 chapters: Playing the game (basics), The Dungeons & Dragons world, Running the game, Combat encounters, Building adventures and Rewards. It covers all the rules needed to run the game, including the grand majority of combat rules.
The 2 adventures are lushly illustrated adventures taking PCs from level 2 to 3 and then to 4 respectively. It involves a well laid-out plot featuring human-centric urban, wilderness and dungeon encounters with several non-linear approaches available for players. It also includes supportive text and tips to walk DMs through the process of running the adventures.
The two tokens are on the same sturdy cardboard as the one used in the Starter box and, while featuring some reprints of PCs, present normal and bloodied sides for all of them… even the two warhorses.
The 2 full-size, double sided battle maps feature dungeons and outside areas made with pre-existing dungeon tiles as well as some showing original art for a keep and a village.
Finally, the DM screen features the same art as the original D&D 4e DM screen, contains similar (adapted) game info but is made of the flimsier, flexible, non-glossy thin cardboard reminiscent of the Paizo D&D 3.5 screen from Dragon Magazine.
Chatty’s Soapbox Editorial
I opened the boxed set on my way back from New York and while I immensely enjoyed the new maps and appreciated that all tokens now had bloodied sides (instead of 2 different monsters on each side), a few things started bugging me. As I read the guide from chapter to chapter a sense of dejà-vu was rapidly replaced by disappointment, followed by rising annoyance.
Here’s my beef with the product: taken alone as a product, this boxed set is extremely useful to new DMs, but as a product line, D&D Essential lost a lot of its new shine when I realized that this book reprinted, word for word, large swaths of text from the Rules Compendium and Heroes of Fallen Lands!
While the Compendium generally covers rules in more details (like improvising scenes and skill checks), both book contain the same “World of D&D” chapters, the same combat rules (with a handful of differences) and the same section on the default gods of the default D&D world. Also, both have overlaps on Skill challenges and a few other things like exploration, lighting and overland movement.
In many cases, the Compendium has more rulesy stuff and the DM’s Book focuses on what a beginning DM should know… but I had the exact same emotional reaction to this overlap as I had when Steve Jackson Games published those 5$ Car Wars Booklets that repeated the game mechanics in each product in the early 2000s.
This overlap, while surely a conscious decision on the part of Wizards of the Coast is a head scratcher for me. It blurs the lines of who should use which book when…
Now my theory is this:
D&D Essentials is first and foremost a rebranding exercise that rides on a needed rules update for the printed game books. In fact, you will notice that absolutely no direct references are made to prior D&D books and nowhere will you find any reference to the game’s current edition number. Trust me, I checked when my auditor’s instincts alerted me a few weeks ago.
While the line’s first intent is to bring in new players, it must also cater to the existing player base that want/will buy new D&D products. In that sense, the Red Box is intended for new players (along with a sizable alternate market of nostalgic 1980′s gamers or geek parents). With that in mind, the DM’s Kit is therefore likely intended for new DMs who want to progress from the Red Box but not jump into the full “updated current edition” yet.
Pretty much like Car Wars existed both as a simpler boxed game and a full Deluxe set in the early 90s.
So that kinda makes the Rules Compedium a product targeting D&D 4e players who want to keep using non-essential material but without all the errata baggage. In fact, I’m convinced that there’s a marketing initiative behind the Rules Compendium. While it does update all the rulesy stuff, it also has those one page teasers on the Planes of Existence and the published D&D settings without actually saying that you should go out and buy the books. Yet, those teasers don’t give you any usable material to play in them.
(A waste of space in the Compendium I find, but that’s another story)
Seen like that… I can understand the overlapping material. The actual Essentials player books are for players, the new DM gets all the rules in his Guide and the Compendium is a natural, if overlapping extension of both categories of Essentials books, much like the D&D 3.5 Compendium was back then… only this time, it was written at the launch of the line, not its end.
And underneath all this is the not so secret assumption that the original Core books (and the 4e “brand”) no longer exist but live through the ethereal Library of Worlds that is D&D Insider. Many players that use it have abandoned their physical books anyway, except to brush up on the fluff… in such case, the Rules Compendium book becomes the only “must have” if you still peruse rules at the table
Please don’t get me wrong… I love the Essential line so far, especially the new PC builds, yet I fear that many customers like myself are going to have similar, negative reactions when they go through the books. Yes, I know some will tell me its not that big a deal, but I feel Essentials comes out at a critical time for a franchise that’s already taken enough, often well deserved, PR beatings, that overlap could have been avoided… or better yet, explained in a sidebar or something.
On the brighter side, based on the little I read so far, the two adventures in the Kit, written by Rich Baker, look absolutely incredible. Both simple and open at the same time, they may very well be the models of adventure I would like to see more of in the Essentials line.
If you take the starter box and the recent D&D Essentials Gameday adventure (ask your FLGS for stray copies) and the DM kit, you have a full level 1 to 4 campaign path ready!
Conclusion
The D&D Essentials DM Kit is an excellent, high quality product for new DMs that graduate from the Red Box. Combined with one or both of the Essentials Players books, the upcoming Monsters Vault (or D&D Insider subscription) and a few sets of dice, gaming groups will be fully equipped to tackle the world’s most popular Role Playing Game.
It is not however directly destined for established DMs moving on from the “as released” printing of D&D to the latest version of the rules. That is, unless they want to lay their hands on some world class D&D adventures, new maps, a new screen and a handy booklet, regardless of the overlap with the new Rules Compendium and flimsy cardboard screen.
See, some might not find this to be a such a bad deal after all…
Peace out.
Chatty’s New York Trip Highlights, Part 1: NYCC and D&D
Boy, I feel like I haven’t been writing in ages. I spent the last few days in New York and my “stuff to write about” pile is so humongous now that I don’t know what to work on first. I’m relying on good old “last-in/first-out” so I’m going to share my main highlights of that weekend in the Big Apple.
New York Comic Con
The con was… immense. I have not seen all of it, I didn’t even try. I was too focused on my tasks as a volunteer DM that I never strayed too far from the gaming area. Walking the external area adjoining the halls was quite a journey in itself.
Still, I got to meet one of my favourite webcomic artists: Tom Siddell, artist and writer of Gunnerkrieg Court, a very cool chap who signed the 2 volumes I bought from him. I was too timid to chat with him more… I know, I know, hard to believe but I’m bad with strangers.
The con was full of high quality booths from A-list companies like Archaia, Intel, Games Workshop, Ubisoft, Marvel, Darkhorse and, of course, DC comics. I spent little time looking at people’s costumes but I was completely blown away by 2 couples walking around in full “Sword of Truth” regalia, the guys in Richard Ralh outfitss and 2 gals in tight-fitting, dyed full-leather Mord-Sith armour…
I’m still recovering…
I also got to meet with Seamus (writer of the RPG Musings blog) and his lovely wife Suzanne (pronounced à la française) and we got to hang out at a cool Midtown Irish Pub with my co-volunteering DMs Sarah Darkmagic and Alex. There I got to do my usual Mouse Guard pitch and we got into some pretty awesome discussions about an old game I played a few years ago where all players had to share one body.
In fact that idea is spawning some dangerous concepts in both my brain and Dave’s.
Being a Con Dungeon Master
I ran one “Encounters” adventure and 3 ‘Learn to Play’ sessions. Most of the new players had never heard of tabletop roleplaying games and all of them weren’t born when 2e came out (I easily had 20+ years on all of them). Still some very interesting quirky games moments occurred, my all time favourite being the following:
(Warning, Red Box adventure spoilers)
Party enters the Red Box’s Dungeon and meets with the White Dragon after having killed some of its minions. The Human Slayer and the Stabby Halfling Rogue are smack dab in front of it as it leaves its lair to advance on the party.
Dragon (Deep Wheatonesque voice): How dare you invade my demesne?
Slayer and Stabby Rogue: Charge of the Jewish boys!!!! (I love New York!)
(2 round later)
Chatty: The Dragon is shaking the now unconscious rogue like it was a broken mannequin in its frigid jaws and threatens the bloodied fighter with its claws.
Elven Ranged Rogue: Can we talk to the dragon?
(The Warpriest and Wizard, played by a 13 year old boy, were hiding around the corner, mopping up kobolds, The kid was sitting beside me and I was showing him my DM notes so he could see how the Monsters worked)
Chatty: Sure, it drops the dying halfling and says “What do you want… elf?”
(Aside: By sheer coincidence, Kieran, the D&D Brand Manager had taken a seat at our table at this exact moment!)
Elven Rogue: Can I join you?
Chatty (choking on his Diet Coke): What?!? Huh… the Dragon says “You’ll need to prove your loyalty to me first elf”
Elven Rogue: I shoot the Halfling.
Halfling & Chatty: You what?
(Clatter Clatter)
Chatty: You killed the halfling but the Dragon isn’t quite convinced of your loyalty yet, it’s not like you’re taking any actual risks here… (I was being creative with the scripted skill challenge).
Chatty (To the other players, who were, surprisingly, all laughing): So do you do anything about the elf rogue?
Warpriest: Nah, I wanna kill the dragon, I want to score his lootz!
Wizard: I wanna wait to see how this turns out, magic missile on kobold!
(2 rounds later)
Chatty: The Warpriest falls, the dragon is bloodied and breathing heavily.
Elven Rogue: I shoot…the warpriest!
Chatty: Whaaaat! (Clatter) Ok he’s dead. Now what?
Elven Rogue: I run out of the dungeon!
Chatty: Wizard?
Wizard kid: I ask the Dragon if I can become one of his minions! Maybe later he’ll let me ride him.
Chatty (Reminded of his early games with his son, and invoking rule 1 of Essentials: “Make them roll for it”): Huh sure, you have the diplomacy skill?
Wizard kid: I have a spell called “Suggestion” that lets me use Arcana instead of Diplomacy.
That kid was a fast learner…
(Clatter… 19)
Chatty: He accepts! Welcome to Dungeons & Dragons!
Epilogue: Later in the day, I see the kid’s mom, she’s lugging around a huge plastic bag filled to the brim of D&D Essentials and Gamma World products. I look around for the kid… and there he is, gleefully playing in a Dungeon Delve.
Mission accomplished.
Photos: Robin LeBlanc (Thanks for the coverage!)
Up next: My experiences at Burning Wheel and the joys of being a minor celebrity.
Teaching RPGs, a Quick Retrospective
I’m off to New York City in a few hours to attend NY Comic Con. One of my main activities over there will be to participate in the “Learn to Play” D&D experience at the Wizards of the Coast booth using the newly released Red Box.
Since I’m going to teach D&D to new (or returning) players, I thought it would be appropriate to do a little retrospective of the posts I wrote on the subject and those I found on the net. Enjoy.
Teaching Role Playing Games to New Players
A guest post I wrote for Johnn Four’s legendary RPG newsletter. I discuss various crucial elements a GM must take into account when teaching a new RPG to players. Mostly: get into it as fast as possible and keep things moving.
Cross-Class Training: GMs, Teachers & Managers
Here I discussed how the professional skill sets of good teachers and managers were identical to those of good Game Masters. More specifically: Organization, Communication Skills and Assertiveness.
The original Playing with Nico Trilogy
Probably the best stuff I ever wrote as a blogger, These are the interactive bedtime stories I did with Nico back in September 2008. This experiment taught me more about what RPGs are supposed to be and how to best let people use their imaginations to create stories. If you haven’t read them, do so now!
The rest of my RPG with kids posts can be found here.
The BlogSphere on Teaching RPGs
Before there was an Ennies Award Winning Gnome Stew, there was a Treasure Table. In it, Martin Ralya and some of his readers wrote a ton of excellent GM-focused posts. Among them were:
Introducing RPGs to New Players, Part 1
Introducing RPGs to New Players, Part 2
…Where a Gurps GM explains his methods for starting a new RPG group.
At exactly the same time I posted about teaching Roleplaying basics to my oldest son, Ken Denmead of Wired’s GeekDad posted an excellent post about Teaching Kids to Roleplay. He breaks down children’s ages in categories and suggests gaming styles and actual published games for each.
In fact there is quite a lot of RPGs that were published for kids (or can be easily adapted to them) right now. Among those feature NewbieDM’s RPG Kids, Stargazer’s new Warrior, Rogue & Mage seems simple enough to be adapted too. John Adams was also there a few years ago with the old school, simple as heck Kids, Castle & Caves.
The Game’s the Thing podcast had an interview with Ronin Publishing’s Chris Pramas where he discusses Dragon Age and entry-level RPGs.
Did I miss any?
Surprisingly, I’ve found few teaching role playing games articles that were “must reads” on the net. It’s possible that at 4 AM, my Google-fu skills aren’t as good as they usually are, so please don’t hesitate to share whatever you’ve seen or written on the subject, especially stuff from forums I likely missed.
I’ll see you next week!
Re-examining the Dungeon: Section, Factions and Fronts
Do you remember those guys?
A few times a year RPG discussions and recent gaming “tech” converge on my radar to present a completely new insight as to how I perceive the game could be played at the table.
The 8×8 Combat Room Issue
Yesterday, Robert J. Schwalb, one of D&D’s most prolific writers, wrote a transcendent piece that may very well be the most thought out, “hammer meets nail” critical deconstruction of D&D 4e’s encounter design yet:
When writing adventures using this format, there’s less room to develop story content because every expected combat must fall in the one or two page encounter spread.
… Without a doubt, the encounters I hate the most are the 8 x 8 rooms with one creature per PC. These fights drag. Everything interesting about the encounter lives inside the monster stat-blocks. And, it is rather upfront about what it’s there to do: let the PCs mine for XP/treasure.
…What it seems is happening now is that the designer/DM creates a warband to throw against the PCs. They duke it out. The PCs win. The PCs get their reward. The PCs move to the next room and face the next warband.
…This system works and it works well, but its structure has replaced the familiar game play elements that existed in prior editions. Exploration and roleplaying exist in the lulls between encounters. And, when the challenge presents itself as monsters spoiling for a fight or a complex skill challenge, game play shifts toward a mechanized procedure, wherein resources are spent and, at the end, recovered.
This rings so damn true it’s scary. I recall saying it a few months back, I think that one of reasons the 8×8 room fight with 5 monsters has become so ubiquitous is because DMs have become complacent with the DM toolkit 4e offers. They keep to the basic templates instead of trying to be creative.
Now I’ve dabbled in the writing world enough to know that the average freelance writer can’t afford to re-invent the wheel when he’s paid peanuts and works under crashing deadlines. I think that pressure becomes too strong a temptation not to default to the average encounter formula. The same applies to the typical DM who only starts prepping a few hours before his game… the urge to default to the templates (or steal from Dungeon mag adventures who have similar designs) becomes very strong.
I think one of 4e’s problems is that DMing tools are now so structured, it becomes a hindrance for people with creativity issues to push through the proposed models and discover “new tech”. I know I’ve been having a hard time selling some of my weirder ideas like “Trap-Monster hybrids” and “The whole party stuck in the same body” because it seems people can’t see it done (or can’t afford the effort to squeeze the concept) in their 4e games.
The Solutions?
Rob then presents a solution which is completely elegant in bringing back some lost aspects of dungeon crawling like exploration, to the forefront:
I propose going back to the older model. Then, divide the dungeon into multi-room sections I’ll call sectors for lack of a better term. A sector might be a large single room or several smaller rooms linked by corridors, staircases, and so on. Each sector exists for a reason. There is something the characters must do, find, or survive before the sector can be “completed.” We’ll call this the victory condition…
Next, populate the sector. Use the standard XP budget, but for one or two levels above the PCs. Use the XP to by monsters of around the PCs level. This should give you more critters to play with. You don’t have to link them to each other, though you do have to link them to the sector.
The “tactical encounter” begins when the PCs enter the dungeon sector. The PCs don’t roll initiative yet as they are in exploring mode. As they move through the sector, they might encounter the smaller groups, at which point they could roll initiative and fight, sneak by the enemy, or talk their way through the monsters.
So in essence, divide a dungeon level in areas which have mini/minor-quests linked to them. Then populate those areas in loosely linked encounters (with a few unrelated ones thrown in) and then let the PCs decide what to do when they meet sub-parts of each: Sneak, Parley, Fight and so on…
I love that. And I really wanted to share Rob’s ideas with you.
But nowI want to build on his idea because I feel it’s not enough. We can push this boundary further.
Neo-Gygaxianism and Fronts
One of the things that the “collectible warband game” mentality of D&D 4e has hindered is the recreation of old Gygaxian factions in dungeons. Those were environment where an Ogre hermit lair, complete with chained Owlbear, kept a warband of Orcs and a Goblins’ den from going at each other’s throat, allowing the Necromancer to work in peace in his laboratory.
In 4e, with challenges properly balanced to allow a party to (narrowly) defeat all encounters, there’s no clear incentive for characters to try to convince the kobold Lord living close to the northern entrance that the Goblin Shaman and her tribe are trying to oust them from their strategic raiding camp.
Much like the DM toolkit gives incentives to the harried DM to colour within the lines of pre-established encounter models, players expect to gain more XPs by slaying every encounters AND they get a more rewarding mechanical experience when they get to use their powers… which, when taken literally, are mostly good in combat only. (They aren’t if you are a flexible DM, but that’s another post).
So Rob’s proposal is great to recreate just that: dungeon sections populated by one main factions (plus associated beasts and/or “natural fauna”). Yet, those who’ve followed my Apocalypse World post may see me coming with a way to make those Sector/Factions come ALIVE and become true dynamic dungeons.
We could make the whole dungeon (and it’s underlying plot) into a Front.
In Apocalypse World, an improv-driven Sci-Fi RPG of conflicting loyalties, all NPCs and places are named and associated “emotions/states” (Envy, Ambition, Hunger, Ignorance, Fear, etc) that could become threats to the PCs or the things they chose to defend.
When the GM builds an adventure, some of those NPC/places are regrouped in “Threats” according to how they could share a dark agenda, a common nefarious goal. A “countdown clock” is then established, a series of steps/event to bring the agenda to its conclusion.
Then you take a few of those threats (the dungeon being one of them) and you unify them into common higher level agenda, and you get a Front, a unified wall of trouble for the PCs.
Well, reading Rob’s post crystallized an idea I’ve had for a few days now:
A dungeon is a perfect element for a D&D Front.
See, a classic 3 encounters + a finale dungeon adventure could be divided into 4 sectors, each populated with a faction that represent a different Threat, for example:
- The Orcs: Establish a permanent raiding camp to reach nearby villages, will eventually destroy the local economy.
- The Kobolds: Snatch humanoids from the surrounding countryside (including unsuspecting orcs) , burn them in sacrifice to bring back spirit of the Dark Dragon God into this world.
- The Mad Wizard (there’s always one): Who’s scouring the temple for that one last element to complete his wand of Very Painful Domination and then test it on whomever is close by!
- The Dungeon: An old temple dedicated to the mad ones and their 5 dimensional dreams of conquest and destruction. Filled with wards that brings it closer to full sentience whenever it catches someone in them.
Each faction would have an agenda… and killing the PCs should not be in any of them, except maybe the Dungeon’s. And yes, it does bear an uncanny resemblance to another approach to adventure design I talked a few months ago.
Players should receive full XPs for dealing with the faction if they manage to thwart their agenda. In practical terms: add the whole XP budget of the monsters/Threats/Skill Challenges of the sector to the Minor/Major Quest that’s linked to the threat. Use that as a pool to hand out XPs as usual, but empty the pool and distribute the remaining points once the threat’s agenda has been nullified, regardless of how it was done, as long as PC choices and action were key in derailing the threat’s plans.
For example, if the PCs convince the orcs to storm the Mad Wizards and they end up all killed by the Temple’s traps, they win all the remaining XP in the “Orc Threat” pool because the villages are safe. Of course, the Temple’s agenda will then be nearly complete.
So you’d design the dungeon as before but you would then add a new layer over it by creating the factions, their agendas and their “countdown clocks”. During play, whenever there’s an occasion in the story (extended rests, key PC choices, long negotiations with one faction, PC captured, etc), you could push some “Countdown Clocks” further and re-imagine the dungeon’s organization in function of what happened, taking all opportunities to have PCs react to those when possible with generous use of “What do yo do”?
And use those agendas to keep things moving if players get stuck in apparent story dead ends. Players are captured by the Orcs? Well maybe the Kobolds spring them out and give them back their equipment if they accept to deal with a problematic Temple Ward that screws their Divine link to their deity. The Dungeon nearly reaches it’s last countdown clock step and the PCs are down to their last Healing Surge? Well maybe then the bumbling Wizard drops by and disintegrates the newly summoned Gibbering Mouther when his wand misfires during its test run. He then invites the PCs to join his mad quest, providing a short respite of safety for an extended rest.
Explorations, diplomacy, double crosses, twists, complications… all things that this model of adventure should be able to support.
I think it’s a dangerous idea worth exploring.
Thoughts? Ideas?
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
