Tales of the Apocalypse: Part 1, Character Creation
A few weeks ago, I reviewed Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World role playing game and found it very well written and intriguing enough to give it a few session’s worth tryout. I brought the whole crew back together and we sat down to create characters.
(in spite of what transpired earlier this summer, we ended up talking about it out and decided to stick together and try a new approach)
Character generation in Apocalypse World is in many ways peculiar to the traditional Role Player. The Game Master (AKA Master of Ceremonies) drops a pile of playbook for about 10 different character classes and each players get to choose one, no duplicates. Then follows a series of choices for names, look, stats, gear and class-specific moves (powers) directly from the playbook.
Through this process, the MC asks all kinds of questions regarding the PCs to help create better defined characters. This process results in some very colourful characters…
Shanty Town’s crew (Dramatis Persona)
All the story/background elements were created through players answering my random questions or interacting amongst themselves. It was very cool.
Allison, female Hardholder (owner/leader of a populated compound), played by Yan.
Always dressed in combat fatigues, she’s insists on being called Colonel Allison by her 75 or so citizens although the title is meaningless since no organized armed forces have existed in the last 50 years. She rules a rickety settlement called Shanty Town made of corrugated iron panels too rusted to be recycled and thousands of yards of plastic tarp centered around an old, well-preserved car factory turned into a weapons plant. Its economy runs on recycled metal that her citizens scrounge/raid from the countryside and turn unto weapons.
While rich and very lucrative for Allison and her lieutenants, Shanty Town remains an undefended shit hole of trash and pestilence.
She also has no current partners, leading me to jokingly refer to her gigantic Magnum .44 handgun as “Allison’s Boyfriend”.
Quote:
Calm down, let’s do this right you bunch of savages.
Raven, female Faceless (masked, supernatural brute). Played by Franky, who literally wears a Raven full face mask whenever he’s in character.
Raven wears leather and spiked fetish wear weaved all over with black feathers and, of course, a black raven’s mask. She was a member of a nomadic “murder” of similar clad savages who got wiped during a disastrous raid (possibly involving the Thunder’s biker gang, see Eric’s PC below).
After the massacre, guided by the spirit of her Mask’s, she followed a caravan back into Shanty Town and currently hangs at the edge of the settlement near Ambush Hill, scrounging a living meager living under the watchful eye of Smith (Mike’s PC, see below).
The last thing that people see when Raven decides to kill them is her gigantic, gleaming machete.
Quote:
Nothing escapes the Raven.
Eternity, female Battlebabe (The name says it all). Played by Math.
Exceedingly sexy gal wearing a skintight bulletproof latex-like bodysuit complete with front zipper. When asked what she applies to her skin to keep it that splendid, she answers “sweat, and lots of it”.
Her signature weapons are a custom humongous brainsploding gun and a long, very sharp curved sword with cute spindly drawings on its handle. She “got” that blade from a very insistent client who got too friendly in her past life as a stripper.
She travels around by renting the services of a driver or from Thunder’s crew (Eric’s Chopper). She’s also currently employed full time as Allison’s bodyguard.
Quote:
Its so sad you have to die, you were this close to getting me in the sack.
Thunder, Male chopper (Biker gang leader) Played by Eric.
Thusder is large, shaggy and none too bright, but he’s one mean motherfucker. His boys call him Sarge even though he doesn’t want them to. This diseased and dirty gang is made up of 15 14 or violent motorcycle bastards. They get their fuel and food from Allison as part of the payment they get from the lucrative raids they perform on surrounding settlements.
The last guy Thunder killed was during a recent raid where he got too excited using his crowbar on a poor schmuck, doing his signature “working up” move by breaking all joints from ankles to shoulders.
Quote:
You had shit at the end of your machete, I smelled like gas. We fucked. End of story (Actual game quote).
Smith, male Brainer (Think psychic brainhacker). Played by Mike.
Wears a dirtied but valuable three-piece suit. Bony faced and sporting dead eyes, Smith is Allison’s Director of Security. He walks calmly around town, making sure everything is under control, scaring the shit out of everyone, or reprogramming anyone who isn’t.
A Lone Wolf to the hilt, Smith’s idea of calling for backup is getting his knives out when his violation glove fails to do the job.
He has a secret desire to one day meet someone’s who’s worth his time instead of the rabble he has to keep in check. It’s uncertain from Smith’s behaviour via Eternity if she’s a likely candidate or not.
Quote:
Don’t ever dream of stirring trouble up, I’ll brainwipe you so hard you’ll need diapers again.
Apocalypse History X
The last part of character creation is a somewhat convoluted roundtable where people set the value of their “History” stat (called Hx) with every other PC. That stat, represent “how well a PC knows”/”how intense recent history was” vs each other PC. It comes into play when characters interfere with one another and is one of the drivers of character improvement.
Beyond the mechanics though, some fundamental PC-to-PC relationships get created during that process. Here’s what transpired in our case.
- Raven appreciated that Smith was unafraid of her upon their first meeting.
- Smith has secretly been observing Eternity but she does not trust him.
- Eternity and Raven did something terrible once (jokingly refereed to as “very bad lesbian sex” which may stick as canon).
- Smith observed Raven sleep once without Raven knowing about it.
- Raven stole something from Allison’s settlement, and Allison knows about it.
- Raven finds Allison pretty.
- Allison and Thunder go way back, having worked together before all this.
- Allison also once stood up to Thunder and his gang and Thunder isn’t sure what to think of that.
- Although she hired him as her Director of Security, Allison quietly dislikes and distrusts Smith
I was highly satisfied with the results, Apocalypse World does not require the PCs to be friends, just start as allies. The game very much revolves around loyalty and some players were already bonding with their characters and the outbound links they created.
I was curious to see how the story would unfold but was highly nervous that I would have a hard time mastering that game. Stay tuned for the play report of that first session.
Toronto Fan Expo: The DM Master Class Seminar
One of the highlights of my visit at last weekend’s Toronto Fan Expo was the one hour panel I had the honour to share with RPG legends Ed Greenwood and Robin D. Laws. I bumped into Robin about 30 minutes before the talk and we checked the room assigned to us. It contained about 100 chairs but neither Robin nor I expected much of a turnout.
…that was us seriously underestimating the attraction of Ed, his stories and the general interest of people for tabletop RPGs. We ended up speaking to packed room of 100+ people. I was impressed!
I wasn’t too sure how things would go but Robin took the lead and proposed that we each introduce ourselves and shared something we had recently learned as a Game Master, given that even the most legendary GMs learned new things.
Thankfully, Robin asked me to go after him but before Ed…
“Hi, ummm, I’m, like, this RPG blogger with a French name you probably didn’t get and, umm, I write stuff and I was a DM for a real long time”
I may be exaggerating a bit here. It got better from there.
New lessons for old warriors
Robin started talking about how he learned that failure in RPGs had to be re-evaluated…
Chatty (Silently): Oh crap, he’s going to say what I was going to say… quick make his head explode with your Scanners powers!
Robin basically outlined that classic, meaningless RPG failures (TPKs, Dead ends, failed spot checks) should not tarnish the players expectations/ time investement in the game. Modern RPGs tend to emulate heroic genres and the GM should make sure that failures fit the kind seen in movies where the heroes get up, dusts themselves up and pick up where they left off.
Chatty (still silently): Phew…He can live, I can add more to what he just said.
I followed about my experiences with Mouseguard and how failures should rather be used as opportunities to make things more interesting, more complicated for players instead of closing doors.
Ed then shamelessly plugged Robin’s new book “Hamlet’s Hit Points”. He said that after making stuff up on the spot for so many years in his games, he was surprised to see that you could still plan emotional rises and falls in your games pretty much like studio creatives and executives do.
Ed: I met these 3 foot tall guys with cigars telling the writers: “No, the hero can’t start caressing the girl until scene 3, that’s when the audience will be hooked!”
I’m paraphrasing here people, I take no responsibility about nor will I even try to quote Ed on anything… ever.
Still, I think I’m going to have a look at that new book.
Robin: How dare you plug my newly published book, available at all fine locations where RPG books can be found!
Q&A about ‘That Guy”
We then started taking questions and it became obvious that Robin and Ed had fielded a tons of those before. What surprised me was that many, many of them were about GMs asking how to make players conform to some ideal they had internalized. Here’s a few I remember.
Question: How do I make this one player come out of his shell and start roleplaying?
Answer: He already roleplays by being there. Maybe he’ll come out of his shell but don’t stay stuck on a narrow definition of roleplaying. Players evolve but not necessarily where or how the GM expects.
Question: I have this guy who always have these crazy plans he wants to trigger at the end of combat, how do I rein him in?
Robin: There we are people, we have the question about “that guy!”
Answer: If you truly are at the end of a session, tell him to keep it in and that he can do it at the next session. If the player wants to do some crazy stuff like shooting a bazooka in a small room (true example from the room), just let him, at least once in a while, and have all the other PCs surf the explosion wave to safety. If it’s cool, make room for it.
Question: How do I convince a player to stop always playing the same kinds of character?
Answer: You don’t. You figure out a way to let them play one.
Ed: I like Cat Ninja Bard girls!
This exchange brought the philosophy all 3 of us shares to the forefront: Focus on delivering to players what they want, don’t force your perception of what is proper to them. Make it work so your motivations and theirs match but be the flexible one.
Question: How do you handle large groups in D&D?
Answers: Play older editions. Impose discipline and skip turns when not applied. Foster a new DM and split group in two, possibly playing in a shared world with PCs switching games.
Question: How do I make my players care about My NPCs/My Stories/My World
Answers: Make them care by creating relationships with NPCs, by being directly involved in the stories and by making them small owners of the world (keeps, inns, etc). Have them make difficult choices about them Foster world creation from the get go by having pre-campaign sessions where players create new NPCs and places and create ties between them and the elements they created.
Great stuff really.
Is the Hobby dying? Ask the kids…
Robin mentions on his journal that the fears of having the hobby die out to video games seem to be unfounded. Most of the room was filled with 20-somethings that seemed to be genuinely excited about D&D! I’ll take this anecdotal evidence and use it generously from now on!
All in all, I had a great time. I loved listening to Ed and Robin share their wisdom and I think I held my own and made a few interesting points myself. I also want to catch more of Ed telling stories, they guy is an awesome font of non-PC, R-Rated stories! I wanna hear more!
Looking forward to doing it again as I was re-invited for 2011.
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]
The New D&D Starter Red Box: A Chatty and Nico Review
Through some obscure manipulation of the gaming industry ether, I was able to secure a pre-release copy of the much talked about new D&D Starter Red Box. Nico and I have been playing around with it and I thought I’d share my thoughts.
Chatty’s Ultimate Capsule Review
The first product of the D&D Essentials product line, while likely to be the target of hordes of people who will complain that it is not what it could never be… is what I wished I opened in 1986.
It is an introduction to the D&D game that goes directly to the heart of things:
Here, let us show you how to make a PC while reading a “be your own hero”story, learn about skill checks and let’s end it with a tactical fight. You liked that? Get 4 more friends, make basic characters and play this level 1 adventure that brings you to level 2. Want more? Here’s material for the DM to create adventures to (almost) bring you up to level 3.
Welcome to D&D!
The Box…
…is beautiful. It features the same Larry Elmore art that featured on the last edition of the Basic Red box (Mentzer edition) from the 80′s and scores a direct hit to the nostalgia part of our gamer lizard brains.
It contains softcovers Player’s and Dungeon Master’s Booklets, a sheet of 2-sided counters (PCs and monsters, including 2 dragons and a Gelatinous Cube) printed on thick cardboard, a set of opaque, white-inked black polyhedral dice, a foldup battlemap, 4 blank simplified character sheets and several sheets of punch-out power cards made of thin cardboard.
Nico, my 8 year old son, had lots of fun punching out the counters while I read the players book intro real fast to start the game. I was so looking forward to this…
The Solo Game
The box expects one player, presumably a kid who got the box as a gift or an adult curious about the game, to create their first D&D PC through reading a “choose your own path” adventure. The booklet guides the reader to make a few fundamental set of choices that will lead to a completed character:
- Class: Fighter, Wizard, Rogue, Cleric
- Race: Elf, Dwarf, Human, Halfling
- A preferred power (or two)
- The PC’s Skill Set
Lets be clear here, as I know this will anger many who clamour for “Basic D&D 2.0″, the starer is what is says on the box, a starter set. It is a complete game, but not a complete game system. Beyond picking among 4 basic classes and the same number of races, a handful of powers and skills, character generation is arguably anaemic (but better than the previous 4e starter set). The task resolution systems (skills/combat) are also simplified while still being very much 4e.
Nico and I played through the players book in 2 sessions. He grew bored a few times as he found we were spending more time setting up the PC than actually playing. He also got frustrated a bit that the skills we choose for his wizard never came into play in the skill-checks part of the adventure.
Nico: Why did you chose these skills if they don’t help me run after the fleeing goblins?
Chatty: Wizards are not very good at running in the wild, trust me, it will get better soon.
I’d suggest parents playing with pre-tweens to make the PC beforehand (with input from your child) and start the solo game with a fully fleshed out PC and ignore the char-gen parts.
Once Nico got to choose the spells (mostly fire-based, as can be expected from a geeky 8 y.o.) and fought against the goblins in their lair, things picked up for him and he loved casting Burning Hands over much of the map.
Speaking of maps, three are supplied: a previously published “monsters lair” from D&D miniatures, along with “‘The crossroads” from the same starter set and an exclusive dungeon map made of tiles reproduced on a full-sized battle map.
Once the lone player has played through the first Player’s playbook, he/she has 2 quests, a basic grasp of the game and a guide to teach it to up to four others (which implies photocopying the power cards if you want to allow multiple players to pick the same classes).
The Full Starter Game
That’s where the second book, the Dungeon Master’s, comes in. It presents the game’s rules, in a simplified form (ex: gone are some conditions like restricted) and with a lot less skill/combat options (ex: no rule 42 charts, no traps, no alternative combat moves like Bull Rush and no skill challenge rules). It also includes a fully fleshed out dungeon adventure covering about 10 encounters featuring goblins, kobolds, drakes, a dragon.
Finally a D&D starter where there is both a dungeon & a dragon in its prepared material!
The book included tips and tricks to run games and does a very decent job to explain what the DM’s responsibilities are. After the adventure, the book provides rules to level up all classes to level 2 (with appropriate power cards). It also describes how to create further basic adventures, including a decent bestiary and dungeon design advice, that can bring PC to the cusp of level 3, including a little DC chart, a list of lvl 2 Treasure parcels and a 2 page gazetteer on the Nentir Vale region, the core D&D 4e setting.
To summarize, the new Red Box is a 20$ starter set that introduces players to the D&D 4e game. The game delivers a 4e-lite experience that most likely should succeed in teasing those interested by the game’s structure of play. It is very much 4e (auto-hit Magic Missile that Nico absolutely loves) with many of the fiddly bits removed.
Oh and there’s a bonus solo adventure you can download by entering a code on the Wizards of the Coast website before the end of the year. That’s a nice little bonus.
Trial by Ice Baby!
I’ve started playing the second part with Nico and my “I’ve never tried RPGs before” wife Alex (Elven Rogue). They both were awesome roleplayers trying to come up with a plan to invade the dungeon by distracting the guards with illusions and trickery.
When my son declared that a halfling wizard’s Second Chance power (monster rerolls attack on a hit) allowed his PC to turn back time a few seconds and dodge a White Dragon’s breath attack, this power’s flavour text instantly became canon.
Later, when Alex’s Rogue attacked the bloodied Ice Wyrm and missed, she triumphantly invoked her Elven Accuracy power and cried “yes!” noisily when she rolled a 19 on her d20. Not bad for her first RPG session ever.
The Blemishes
Some dark spots appear on this otherwise very well thought of product. Some incoherences in the rules appear due to what I assume to be incomplete editing. For instance, the rules on teleportation mention what happens to immobilized and restrained creatures that teleport, but the section on conditions makes no mention of the restrained status.
Similarly, the Magic Missile spell mentions that it can be used against up to 2 targets while my sources informed me that this has already been changed by the recent Magic Missile errata to one.
Nothing major… but these easily spotted editing issues are a continuing trend with Wizards product that can and do annoy customers.
That being said, I’m highly satisfied with this product and I would have bought it had I not been offered a review copy. I feel that it’s biggest shortcoming will be its impossibility to meet the inhuman expectations that the emotionally charged community will place behind it. I predict the Internet will ignore the “Starter” tag on the box and try to compare the new Red Box to its legendary progenitor.
This Starter Red Box is not the first step into a parallel line of D&D products, like the 198os editions of boxed D&D were in regards to Advanced D&D back then. The new box is what you should buy your nephews and nieces after they spend an afternoon playing with your minis in the basement. It’s what you should suggest to your coworker who’s always wanted to try D&D but was daunted by the number of books at the game store.
From there, the Essential line will feed this new generation of customers because, let’s be honest here, while we can all enjoy D&D as a game, it remains a brand that pays the salaries of the designers, writers and marketers that put all of this together.
I don’t know about you, but I much prefer an approach like Essentials, which I can stay away from if I so choose, than getting tricked into another 3.5. But that’s an editorial for another time.
Final Score?
Now Nico wants to get his friend Felix and Charles to join us as we get ready to storm the goblin-infested dungeon again. Hell even Alex is more than willing to give it another try, provided the party has a fighter she can depend on to flank monsters with.
Mission accomplished Wizards. I can’t say anything more.
(Update): It turns out that there is a skill challenge in the introductory DM-tun adventure. It is broken down in simple terms to run it but doesn’t tell the DM how to build more.
Chatty’s Toronto Adventure: Fan Expo 2010
With Nico’s ear surgery out of the way, it so happens that I shall be at the Toronto Fan Expo from August 27 to 29. I’ve been invited as a gaming guest, alongside Toronto gaming luminaries like Robin Laws and Ed Greenwood… Oh yeah, and that gorgeous red-headed gamer Felicia Day…
…
Where was I? Ah yes, the Expo.
I only have 3 scheduled activities for the whole con, all on Saturday:
DM Master Class, Saturday 12 PM room #103A. Join me and fellow GMs Robin Laws and Ed Greenwood.
From the Schedule:
A panel of expert Dungeon Masters with credentials that no one questions.
A group with combined strength, charisma, dexterity and wisdom of one million!
A cast who can defeat a Tarrasque with a wave of one hand… okay, I think
you get the idea. These guys are good.
(I didn’t write that! I swear!)
D&D 4e, Font of Sorrows, Saturday 3h3o-7h00 PM, room #202D
Adventure Synopsis:
A shard of the Chained One’s Obelisk of Madness is rumored to lie entombed with
the remains of a priest?druid of Elemental Evil deep in the Underdark. Rumors from previous adventures have brought PCs to the legendary underground
City Within at the very edge of the Deeps, where it is believed that a cabal of
elementalists are seeking to find the Temple?tomb where the shard may lie. A Level
6 D&D 4e adventure with fully pre?generated PCs from the Players Handbook 3.
Mouse Guard, Deliver the Mail, Saturday 7h30-Midnight, #Room 202D
Game Synopsis
As mouse guards, you are tasked to patrol the Mouse Territories, protect the
innocent, fight predators and, occasionally, deliver the mail that accumulates from
town to town over the harsh Winter season. In this fully developed sample missions
taken from the Mouse Guard rulesbook, players will get to play in the universe of
David Petersen’s Mouse Guard comic books based on Luke Crane’s award winning
Burning Wheel game engine.
For the rest of the weekend, I’m free. I plan to walk the con floor, meet with local fans, get some of that awesome Toronto food (heck, I’ll even try the local poutine if I really must, he he he), and hopefully play lots of off con games around the convention (Like at my hotel bar, I’ll be at the Mariott).
Hell, we should organize some sort of Friday Night noard games like we did at Pax East. Anyone wants to help? PM and I will load the car with board games and RPGs.
I’ll also have a few copies of the Deluxe One Page Dungeon Codex if you want to get your hands on one of the last copies.
The best way to catch me is to email me at chattydm@critical-hits.com or send me a public tweet @chattydm on Twitter. See you soon!
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