Chatty’s Fort Wayne Adventures: Tales from the Elemental Chaos, Part 1
I attended the 2012 Dungeons & Dragons Experience convention in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I couldn’t afford to fly there so I decided to drive my dirty blue Hyundai Accent to a place near Buffalo, NY -a 7 hour drive from my native Montreal- to meet up with fellow Critical-Hits writer, WotC freelancer and all-time superstar Shawn Merwin. He drove the rest of the way and much fun was had.
The convention was awesome, I got to see many friends again, made new ones, ran my own adventure, and, of course, played a few games of D&D Next, the very early prototype of what the next version could be based on.
Like so many other bloggers and freelancers, I’ve signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement so I can’t discuss specific rules. Rather I will do what I like doing best: tell stories of the games I ran, sharing highlights and special DMing and player moments during that 4 day long event. Up first, the genesis of new heroes. [Read the rest of this article]
Instant Dungeon Crawling, Trial by Dragon
Last week, I posted about a formula I devised at the New York Comic Con to play an improv randomly generated dungeon crawl.
At the time, I had no idea how successful the experience would be. As it turns out, things went quite well indeed. Read on for the “storified” highlights of this two hour game.
Puzzling it Out
In one room I rolled “puzzle” on my trusty chart. The map showed two pools, one silver coloured and one gold. So I devised the following “simple” puzzle. The players had to take a container made of silver to transfer water from the silver pool to the gold pool OR take a gold container to do the reverse. Doing either popped a secret latch in the wall and uncovered the treasure.
I let the players experiment for about 10 minutes, answering questions, helping them learn about skill checks to obtain hints and figure things out. They eventually caught on but no one had a silver or golden container.
Rogue: Hey wait (throws treasure token from a previous encounter my way), I have this magnificent silver liquor flask. I pour out the content and use it.
Chatty: What was in the flask?
Rogue (smiling evilly) Fine Dwarven spirits…
Dwarf: No!!!! [Read the rest of this article]
Instant Dungeon Crawling, The Formula and the Setup
Earlier last fall I was at the New York Comic Con as a volunteer DM for Wizards of the Coast. I asked to be assigned to the “Learn D&D” activity. The organizers asked me to provide an improvised adventure using the material available in the D&D Red Box (the 2010 version) rather than play the adventure found in the box.
I played 3 such games and they each were incredibly entertaining. I recounted one of them here.
In the last game I played, I wanted to create a dungeon crawling experience with absolute minimal prepping in advance. More importantly however, I wanted to be able to play without floundering for ideas whilst in the middle of running the game. As I pondered my options, I came up with a formula for running a quick 2 hour game. I’m sharing this with you because I think you might find it useful.
I started with the Red Box , including the dungeon battlemap packaged with the game. I then took a fistfull of glass beads (which I dubbed “treasure tokens”) and wrote the following table:
Roll a d10
1-2 Empty Room, Treasure out in open
3-4 Trap
5-6 Puzzle
7-0 Monster
The idea was to have the treasure beads distributed in various rooms of the dungeon and roll on the table whenever the party entered one such room. I’d make up an encounter based on the result using nothing but the list of monsters in the Red Box’s DM’s booklet and the mini-Rule 42 found on the booklet’s last page (the DC for level 1 adventurers and a damage chart for hazards). If I rolled “monster” I’d make a level 1 encounter on the spot based on what made most sense or was cool.
With only a 40% chance to face monsters (combat not being the only outcome even then), I thought this distribution to be ideal for fostering exploration and creating the classic “poke with a stick” experimentation that I fondly remembered of my early D&D games as a tweenager.
Turns out I was right…
Armed with these, I got a group of 4 players and we created the setting for the game by having them answer these questions:
You are adventurers that banded together recently. Tell me what your last adventure was about. More specifically, tell me one good thing that happened to you and one bad thing that requires you to return adventuring in dungeons.
The wizard player (sensing an exploit) said “I found a very powerful staff”
I answered “Ha! Sure, no problem… But since this is a one shot level 1 game, please work in your ‘bad’ stuff how you lost that staff… even if only temporarily.”
The Dwarven Slayer piped in: “I know! I spent all of the party’s loot from our last adventure on ale and whores… I even pawned the wizard’s staff! I’m so sorry guys, I’ll make it up to you!”
Everybody was laughing their heads off, the game was already a great success.
Chatty: Okay then, well the dwarf knows this Goblin “Bookie” called Groo that specializes in booking high risk, high paying, no-questions-asked forays into vaults, catacombs and other subterranean locales in exchange for a very fair share of the spoils.
Dwarf: Oh yeah, he’s the one who spotted me the money for the staff.
Drow Ranger: You are so not leaving our eyesight, ever again!
Dwarf: Oh come on, I told you I’d waive my part of the treasure until I paid you all off!
(The guy was so funny…)
Chatty: Okay so Groo tells you that the thieve’s guild has had one of its minor vaults run over by monsters from the Underdark and were ready to sign off the valuables stored as a “business loss”. Groo bought back the “content” of the vault at 1 silver piece to the gold crown and wants you to recover as much from it as you can… he promises to let you keep 50% of whatever you recover.
I pulled out the Red Box’s Dungeon map and handed out a pair of glass beads to every player.
Chatty: Okay each of these beads represents a small generic treasure pile whose worth you’ll evaluate once you leave the dungeon. You’ll alternate turns placing these tokens onto the dungeon map, representing in what room treasure can be found. Whenever you enter a room with one of those beads, I’ll play on my little table here to see what you meet, it won’t necessarily be monsters.
The players started placing the beads commenting on some of the features appearing on the map, like braziers, pools and ominous runes on the floor. It reminded me that these were all new players or players who hadn’t played in decades. It dawned on me that I had a very important job here: present one of my favourite games to these players so they could taste how awesome playing D&D is.
Chatty: Okay, before we start, here’s one last thing about the beads. Since they are generic treasure, it’s possible that they could be useful for you in a given situation. So at anytime that you need a particular tool or object, you can “spend” a token and tell me “Oh but I have this doohickey that’s great for disarming traps” or “Oh look, here’s the key to that locked door” or better yet “Hey guys, what does a “healing potion” do?”
They loved it.
In hindsight, they mostly used them as healing potions as things got HARD, but I love this mechanic and will use it for all the “unattributed treasure parcel” I keep struggling with to this day.
The game was a huge success, Up next, I’ll share the highlights of the game. It turned out to be among my great D&D games and certainly one of my most successful convention games ever.
Chatty’s Quest : A Twitter Adventure
On October 2011, I started my move into my new apartment and was sitting alone and dejected, waiting for people to deliver my new furniture.
(Yes I am recently separated. Everything’s fine now, including the kids.)
I picked up my smartphone and sent a call out on Twitter for some entertainment.
Chatty: Spending day alone in new unfurnished apartment, awaiting for new furniture and services. Keep me company plz?
That’s when my good friend FDL, sent me this completely unexpected response:
FDL: Ok. you see a grue. What do you do? 
(I was thinking: “Hey cute joke…. Let’s see how it plays out.”)
Chatty: Wave torch
FDL: As you wave your torch, you set your furniture delivery guys on fire. Game over. Restart? [y/n]
(I fell down my flimsy beach chair onto my hardwood floor laughing. This could become fun.)
Chatty: LOL yes. Talk Grue.
FDL: The grue says she’s your upstairs neighbor and she hopes her noisy Angry Birds parties won’t bother you too much. What next?
Chatty: examine exits
FDL: There is only one exit, a hangar bay door.
Chatty: kick door
FDL: Door says “Ow!” and kicks back. Grue looks at you in disgust.
(Very funny man… At this point it was clear we had a Parsely text game going. The fact that it worked so well on Twitter was awesome. People had started reading it and reacting to it. I was having fun, my woes forgotten.)
Chatty: Apologize door.
(I was still playing it old school with 2 words)
Chatty: Inventory
FDL: This game uses the Diablo II inventory screen, so assume that you can’t find anything useful, ever. Assume your hands are empty.
(Har har har…)
Chatty: Exit room
FDL: The grue locks the door behind you. It is very cold outside. And you forgot to say “wear pants”, didn’t you?
FDL: It’s Friday. You never wear pants on Friday. Lord knows you said so on Twitter often enough.
(Smartypants, stop reading my Tweets.)
Chatty: Scoff about need for pants.
FDL: As you exit the apartment pantsless, you run into your other new neighbors who wanted to welcome you. All of them.
(*Facepalm*)
Chatty: Do dance of pantless pride
FDL: Neighbor’s kid takes a swing at your pantslessness with +5 Vorpal Steeltoed boots. Rolls a natural 20. You’re in ER.
(That was a low blow FDL)
Chatty: (ouch…) summon nurse
(There was a missing, untagged tweet here about a nurse casting Cure Critical Wounds and an Orc lying in the next bed, a Battleaxe embedded in its forehead, smiling at me.)
Chatty: Examine room
FDL: Well, it IS an examination room, so you sorta have to do that, yeah. BTW, the Orc says: “You pretty!”
FDL: BTW, the grue called and said you missed your cable guy. He rescheduled your appointment for March 14th, 2177.
(Sigh, it’s funny because it’s almost true)
Chatty: Ask orc for battleaxe
FDL: Orc smiles (toothlessly), hides battleaxe behind his back and says: “You no say magic worrrrd, pretty one!”
(Sigh… time to test the parsely engine.)
Chatty: Smile sweetly and tell orc “give me the (censored) battleaxe you (censored) or I’ll (censored) your (censored) (censored) please.
FDL: Orc hands you the battleaxe and says: “You not gotta be big meanie, hurt Ogg-Bogg’s feelings!” Nurse frowns at you.
Chatty: Kiss orc on forehead and say “I was speaking Bromantic Orc you dummy” then find pants… Any pants.
FDL: You put on clown pants. The clown you take them from looks pissed, until he sees your battleaxe and your Orc.
Chatty: Search clown pants pocket for clown car keys and go out into parking.
FDL: 12,000 evil clowns pile out of the car and squirt unholy water at you with their lapel flowers. Roll saving throw.
(I gotta hire this guy for my next adventure)
Chatty: I’m wearing a gown, clown pants, a battleaxe and an amorous orc with a splitting headache; I make the damn save.
FDL: OK. Just in the nick of time, the Orc dives in front of you to take the Unholy water blast. He dies with a smile.
(Nooooooooooooo…… Ogg-Bogg, our bromance was too short.)
FDL: And then the grue swoops by and steals you away from the angry clown mob. You’re back home, safe. You win. 5000 XP!
That was a great little game. It helped me pass the time and I thank FDL for having taken some time and invested significant creative effort in doing this. So you see, Twitter can be used for parsely games after all (and others too). Provided both parties are willing to play some give and take for entertainment value.
Also, if you haven’t tried them yet, give Jared Sorensen’s Parsely games a try. They are a great way to pass time in between games.
Special thanks to Dr.C., the new special someone in my life, who safeguarded this exchange so I could make a post out of it. Also thanks to Tangent128 who made the TwitRPG logo back in 2008 when I played my first RPG game on Twitter.
Con-Versations: Highlights of The Grand Roludothon
A local group of dedicated gamers worked really hard these last 2 years to foster a local bilingual gaming community that meet on a semi-regular basis to play RPGs and board games. Having dubbed the movement Roludo, they setup a friendly forum and organized a couple of well-received mini-cons .
Over the weekend, they held the Grand Roludothon, a larger gaming convention. I could only attend for the first day so I made sure I packed it with the best I could offer in terms of sharing cool games with fellow geeks.
I GMed 2 games: A session of the Dungeon Reality Show in the morning and a session of The Old School Job, my Cortex Plus Hack, in the afternoon. In the evening, I “rested” by playing a game of Fiasco.
Much fun was had, as usual. Here are the main highlights I recall.
The Dungeon Reality Show: D&D Essentials
This game was a shortened version of the original game I ran a few months ago (Parts 1 and 2). If you haven’t heard about it yet, The Dungeon Reality Show is a silly a strange campaign setting I created where down on their luck adventurers find themselves on the Plane of Games, thrust into a dungeon crawl broadcasted throughout the multi-verse. It’s filled with snazzy one-liners, shameless product placement, freeze-frames, reshoots and a healthy dose of diva-drama.
One character, Elan the Eladrin Mage stole the show, not because his player hogged the spotlight, far from it, but because whenever he had the spotlight, he used it masterfully for maximum hilarious effect. It’s the way the player stumbled onto the concept that was genius. He’d never played this edition of D&D and during his first encounter, he decided to fire his magic missile. As he was looking on his Powers sheet, I asked him:
Chatty: Why don’t you describe what your Magic Missile does?
Player (Looking unsure… then light dawned in his eyes): … Elan, points his target and out comes…. a Rainbow!
From that point on, the player re-fluffed all his powers to paint a powerful, dangerous and angry wizard who had unfortunately been taught magic by Hippy “Flower Mages”. When he vanquished the 1st encounter’s “Boss” he described his Spectral Image spell as being a cute unicorn running and impaling the poor bloodied orc.
Elan: I swear guys, If I ever hear you say anything about the Unicorn, I’ll kill you.
He later made his Spectral Cage spell into an Akira-like giant bear that sits on people.
Elan: I’m a Happymancer. Bitch.
(As usual, I’m taking some artistic licence in how and when quotes were thrown about)
Highlights:
1) The players killed a bunch of kobold:
George Sagging (Halfling Thief): Who shot shit at me?
Kobold Tunneler: It wasn’t me it was (gurgle gurgle)
Saggins: Oops, my bad.
2) They entered a tomb:
Narrator (Deep voice): As you enter this tomb dedicated to valiant heroes…
Cleric of Pelor (In character): Shut up, we don’t care!
Narrator: Screw this, I’m off to lunch!
3) They killed a bunch of Zombies and Skeletons:
Elan: I roll my sleeves stretch my arms, splay my fingers like that and I launch… BUBBLES!
Chatty (Groaning and throwing an Awesome Bead): Oh man! I’ll go smash my head on that hotel partition.
For the rest of that fight, I had all the encounter’s zombies try to grab the Mage, groaning “Buh Buh-les”
4) The final Final Encounter:
Chatty:…
Players: And?
Chatty: Oh right, here’s a dragon, 2 hobgoblins and a bunch of orcs, there’s some shit you might feel like looking at here, here and here.
Cleric of Pelor: Oh right… no narrator.
My friend Charles played a female dwarven Slayer as an ultra-PC feminist adventurer. At one point in this fight, he forced me to “re-film” a scene because the dragon made “an inappropriate and non-inclusive comment” about the sexual proclivities of Elan. GOLD!
Charles wrote this jingle toward the end of the adventure:
They’re Dragon-Killing Bubbles, from the bad-ass Eladrin: Try “Elan’s Burnin’ Bubbles” And you’ll be sure to win. Elan’s burning Bubbles-Death with Sparkles!
Great session overall!
The Squeaky-Clean Job
Let me think about a good complication for you....
In the afternoon I got to play another session of my very own Cortex Plus hack based on the Leverage RPG. I had randomly generated the adventure and, after a bit of artistic tweaking, found myself with the following:
An Ogre-Mage has consolidated and fortified an area of the Monte-Cookus sewers underneath the swanky neighbourhood of ‘nobtown. This causes disgusting sewage flow-backs in the manors of the cities’ richest families. Under huge pressure to provide results, the area’s consul asks the PCs, old acquaintances, to help him out where countless city guards and adventurers of lower statures have failed.
As is usually the game when I run one-shot games, the adventure was silly as hell and mostly improvised based on the scaffolding I had generated. The initial scenes were very good and most players took to the game rapidly.
Some highlights:
One PC was a Gnome G-man summoner. He kept talking with a bad gansta’ accent, asking for the first half of any rewards offered upfront, including the Manor the party was offered for this quest.
Chatty: You want half of a manor, like just now?
G-nome: Sure, why not?
Another PC mixed potions in his mouth hoping to create a fire breathing effect…but got permanent Arcane Halitosis instead.
A scoundrel got hit with the dreaded Red Wizard curse, a growing semi-sentient affliction with a somber agenda. He eventually found a Remove Curse scroll… but it was ALSO cursed. So while half of the Red Wizard curse was nullified… he caught the Blue Wizard’s curse!
Player: Does that mean I have the Purple Wizard’s curse now?
Later, the G-nome whipped out a wand of Earth Digging from their stash (the players totally embraced the ”create your own magic swag” rules) and dug holes to drain some of the stuck sewage… only to meet a grateful, trash-starved Otyugh from underneath.
Trash_Eater: Thanks, I was STARVED man!
Once in the sparkly-clean Sewer-Forteress of the Ogre-Magi, facing a bunch of sleek, groomed ratmen, a character crawled into one of the numerous rat tunnels.
He then took out and cut the Apocalypse Cheese with the Knife of Ancients naming himself the Lord of Filth.
Best.line.ever.
He called to all the rats of the extensive warren to overthrow their germophobic master and join him! Which they did…provided he marry their goddess, a trapped Avatar of the goddess of adventurers.
They managed to escape as PC-generated chaos struck!
A great game!
Based on the excellent feedbacks I got from the game so far, I realized that this Hack is not so much a tribute to Old School gaming than a thrilling and rethinking of the Dungeon Crawling experience. My initial clever joke has been outgrown by the actual experience delivered by the hack. Thus I’m thinking of renaming it “The Dungeon Job” to better reflect its Leverage RPG influence.
Fiasco: Midtown USA
We closed out the evening with a 5 player game of Fiasco. I know from experience that trying to explain a scenario always ends up as a tangled mess so I’m going to keep it short.
I was Stan Merlotte, an aging, bald, paunchy ex-bowling pro and bowling alley hustler. I really wanted to get laid with an old flame of mine: 425 lbs “Maman Denise”. I ended up with my thumbs sawed off by the local dentist.
A friend on Twitter perfectly summarized how things went for poor Stan:
Who got two thumbs and just got laid? Not this guy! (thanks @JBMannon)
A great weekend. I want to thank the organizers who worked really hard to make this con a reality, I had lots of fun.
Photo Credits: Christian Jarry (@sicnaxyz)
The Old School Job, Part 2: The Lich-Sorceress’ Release
In Part 1, I gave a short description of the Old School Fantasy Hack I was doing using the Leverage RPG as it’s basis. I also set the scene for a an adventure I recently played. Now let’s dive back in.
Dramatis Persona Prise Deux
Var: Beastmaster Ranger-acrobat.
Legodrtz Lolthklorian: Lofty Neutral greyish elf Arcane Sniper-Archer
Elvis the Swift: Chaotic Goo revivalist of the Church of the Holy Tentacle
Tue: Chill Neutral monk of the Boot to the Head Dojo
Valoooovia: Chaotic Horny Amazon psychic sex-mage
The Pre-Crawl: Research
Things started out with the adventurers splitting up to gather info on the temple, its background and its newest occupants. I was curious to see how well this would go.
Valoooovia went to look at various records and found out that the temple had had a great many different denominations over the last century, many Good, most Evil. Her presence didn’t go unnoticed as she attracted the attention of a lovelorn spirit that attached itself to her, incessantly flirting with her.
Elvis and Var went to track the temple’s current “landlord”, a minor burocrat who was more than happy to discuss opportunities with the young, charismatic Lovecraftian revivalist.
Real Estate ‘crat: Did you know there are extensive catacombs below the temple? Perfect for dark ceremonies and having “guests” over for extended stays.
Elvis: What about pools? Do you have a pool down there that could house, oh I don’t know, a few cubits of tentacles?
Real Estate ‘cra: Why yes, we do! In fact, if you could help us with the troublesome, late paying scum exploiting such prime space, we’d be happy to rent it to you at a premium rate!
By that time I was completely off script… not that I had much to begin with. I was enjoying this growing story with the bumbling Priest-Bard so I grabbed at the idea and went to town with it.
Real Estate ‘cra: Here’s a map indicating a secret access to the catacombs and the pool in question. Good luck.
Tue and Legodrzt prowled around the temple when night fell, following up on rumours that some hunting “mommies” were out at night. Turned out that there was a group of 6 or so mummified hunters prowling around the temple, coming out from its main entrance.
Tue went out and tried to kick a few to pieces (catching a bad case of “A Mummy’s Touch”, a rotting disease with creepy maternal overtones, in the process). He took down most of them but missed one.
Legodrtz followed the last one from rooftop to rooftop and invoked a magical tracking arrow-head to embed in his quarry. While he succeeded, he got struck by some sort of psycho-necrotic whiplash, opening his mind to some tenebrous consciousness.
Chatty: Just know that “The Dark Heart Suspects”…
Legodrtz’s player: Hum, okay?
He also witnessed the mummy jump on a hapless bystander, rip its heart out and carry it back to the temple…
The Crawl – Short and Tentacle-y
I was now certain that this could be a “split-the-party”-friendly game, as long as I didn’t go into fully fledged combat scenes with a subset of players. This fits with what I recall from my experiences with AD&D 1e, the core inspiration for my hack (sans all the subsystems).
Using the newly found map and tracking the tagged mummy, our characters explored the catacombs, heading deeper toward what they assumed was “the Dark Heart”. I had them roll one simple orientation challenge before reaching their destination. They succeeded so I set up a confrontation (using the newly minted combat rules my friend Yan and I developed ).
The heroes arrived on a U shaped ledge connected to a lower level through a slide-like stone outcropping. The place was crawling with spineless/headless zombies as were two animated snakes-like creatures, each made of a freshly discorporated human spine and skull. There was also a pair of those Tomb Stalker mummies.
At the extreme end of the ground floor rose a ghastly wall of putrid, pulsating flesh: The Dark Heart. This was an undead construct made of the hearts of all the slain souls in and around the temple these last few days which in turn controlled all the mindless undead of the complex (the Bone Snakes and Zombies).
The fight lasted a good 60-80 minutes. Among it’s highlights were:
- Var, going all dual-sword crazy, took down a bunch of zombies in one go
- Legodrtz made his embedded arrow explode just to have the mummy take it out and throw it among the zombies near it… splattering them all over the Dark Heart, earning him “The Dark Heart Beckons” complication.
- Elvis summoning a tentacle pod that embedded itself in his flesh, which kept growing throughout the fight
- Chucking monsters down the ledges onto others.
Once the monsters were vanquished, leaving only the Dark Heart behind, Elvis tried to weaken it by transplanting his increasingly worrisome tentacles from his flesh directly into the Heart.
Chatty: All right man, usually the tentacles would play against you but this is kinda cool and “it” wants that. They’ll help you (hands a d8) BUT for each “1″ you roll, I can make them grow 2 dice levels. Once passed d12, you are consumed… you cool with that?
Elvis’ player: Oh yeah!
He rolled a one… and failed to weaken the Dark Heart enough…
Chatty: One more “growing”‘ and you’re tentacle compost friend.
Elvis: That was a bad move…
The situation was saved by Valoooovia who took out her wand of uncontrollable orgasms (I’m not making this up) and used it to summon the spirits of cheap doxies, slovenly trull, brazen strumpets and all the other shady characters featuring on page 192 of the the AD&D 1E DMG.
She sent them all to take down what was left of the Dark Heart.
Chatty: As the spirit-whore cries of enraptured bliss assault the mass of abandoned hearts, you feel a stony mass in the middle starting to tremble. One that hasn’t known such pleasure and abandon in centuries.
Valoooovia: Wha?
Chatty: Yeah, the middle of the Dark Heart is actually a Lich Sorceress’ phylactery. She hasn’t had “a good one” for so long that it basically explodes in orgasmic shards of sharp stones and pent-up arcane-energy. You win the scenario!
Epilogue
In hindsight, I feel I expedited the end a bit. I could have had the Lich-Sorceress come out during combat and create a race against time where the heroes would have to take the Heart down while the Lich blasted away. Yet, I hit the game’s core goal: successfully entertain a group of players for a few hours, including character generation. I’m quite happy.
The hack is a great success. It feels like a complete RPG. I just need to make a few final tweaks to the draft and it will be ready for editing.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. It feels good to be back!
The Old School Job, Part 1: The Temple-Brothel of Monte-Cookus
In a recent post, I alluded to working on something really cool that I couldn’t really talk about yet. Well I now can… As long as I don’t go into details.
Earlier this year, Margaret Weis Production put a call out for submissions of hacks of the rules appearing in the Smallville and Leverage RPG. Called The Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide, it brings together many game designers contributing to the sheer fun of hacking a game engine that just begs for being tweaked with.
The Old School Job
As I mentioned on Twitter a few weeks ago, my submission for 2 such hacks were accepted. What started as a “Hey wouldn’t it be neat if…” comment dropped by Cam Banks (Leverage RPG co-designer) and Dave: The Game turned into a fully fledged obsession and 8 000 words of playtested material.
I wrote a series of Leverage variants aimed at recreating the classic feeling of dungeon crawling adventures. The first hack, dubbed “the Old School Job” introduces rules for creating fantasy characters and mechanics to recreate my favourite elements of old school gaming (ignoring what I never cared for). The second hack, provisionally called the Dungeon Fixer’s Guide, is basically a Gygaxian dungeon fantasy primer presented through the lens of the Cortex Plus system.
I also presented two more submissions. One is a combat system that embraces the “we each get to fight” aspect that Leverage didn’t do so well (or as entertainingly). Finally, taking a page from the excellent “job generator” from the Leverage book, I wrote a series of tables that generate, within minutes, a fully fledged dungeon quest. I’m VERY proud of that last one.
I won’t go into more details but I can tell you that everyone who played it so far liked it. My players want to start a campaign with the system, how’s that for feedback?
What I can do, is deliver an actual play report of last Sunday’s game, it will showcase what the hack can handle.
Dramatis Persona
Var: Outcast ranger-acrobat possessing the power of befriending beasts.
Legodrtz Lolthklorian: Lofty Neutral grey elf (i.e. 1/2 Dark + 1/2 High) Arcane Sniper-Archer
Elvis the Swift: Chaotic Goo swashbuckling revivalist of the Church of the Holy Tentacle
Tue: Chill Neutral Zen monk of the Boot to the Head school
Valoooovia: Chaotic Horny Amazon psychic sex-mage
(Yes, you read that right)
Establishment Flashbacks
The game started with establishing a bit of the PC’s past. Each player set a short scene that lead to a challenge. Players then attributed a distinction to the character based on what occured.
Tue: Under the tender heckling of a ranting Timothy Leary-like sensei, our Zen Warrior-Monk attempted his final challenge: walking on a tightrope over burning embers whose heat was blown up from below the firepit. While he did fall, he managed to walk the rest of the way on the coals, scarring his feet but leaving him otherwise unhurt. That earned him the “Cold Feet” distinction from the other players.
Valoooovia: At a yearly ceremony where the sex-sorceresses of the jungle temples choose mates from the surrounding tribes, Valoovia decided to take upon herself to console that one male who never, ever got picked, year in, year out. She was “successful” in that he volunteered to become one of the temple’s eunuch… if and only if Valoooovia did it. (Table cringe) That gave her the “Ball Breaker” distinction.
Legodrzt: Having once again angered his step-mom, the High-Queen-Spider-priestess of the Dark Elves, our trademark-dodging satire elf found himself fleeing the underworld. Chased by a bunch of really cool looking androgenic guards, he found himself at the edge of a narrow cliff. He failed jumping to the other side, falling to his apparent death. He awoke, unhurt, on a stone funeral bed, surrounded with valuable offerings. He grabbed some and went his way. That earned him the “Leap before you Look” distinction.
Var: Tracking a sleek, legendary panther, the ranger-acrobat found himself face-to-snout with it and only managed to trade blows (getting a bit bloodied) before it fled. While he lost it tracking it down a ravine, he found a funeral site, with a recently dead greyish elf, surrounded with valuables. He swiped some and went his way, quarry-less. That earned him the “Wounded Pride” distinction.
Elvis: Our neophyte priest summoned an aspect of the Great Old Tentacular One during a revival. As things went awry, and the enraptured cries of bliss of the newly converted turned to the screams and the sounds of crushed bones, he tried to slowly creep away. Stopped by a distracted guard, he used his silver tongue and a hefty serving of Chaotic Goo to slip out of that thorny situation, pocketing the guard’s pouch at the same time. That earned him the “Trust me, I know what I’m doing” distinction.
The Quest
The adventure started in the grand city of Monte-Cookus, a sprawling megapolis so large that it’s almanac is almost 3 inches thick and weighs 6 lbs. Our protagonists got summoned by an old adventuring friends, who, following an unfortunate treasure distribution session, found himself wearing a cursed ring of lust. Never one to shy away from an opportunity, he rented-out one of Monte-Cookus’ innumerable ”pay-by-the-month” temples and established “The Church of Ste-Luscious” (AKA the Holy House of Flesh).
He says it’s a tax write-off
He explained that he recently got chased out of the temple by some strange zombies whose skull and spine seemed to have been ripped out from the back. He escaped before getting hurt but he was ashamed to confess that he left a group of influent wives to fend for themselves within the confines of the temple. He asked the party to clear the temple of this threat.
Elvis: And what is to be our reward?
Pimp-Priest: Hmmmm, well there’s a sizable chunk of my monthly tithes in there, if you bring back my already late monthly rent you can keep the rest.
And so the adventure started…
In part 2: A Dark Heart, A sleazy real estate agent, spirit whores and tentacles with abandonment issues.
Chatty in Washington: Highlights of DC Gameday
I just got back from Washington DC where I spent a great weekend with a bunch of cool gamers where I attended a one day gaming mini-convention called DC Gameday.
Here’s a rundown of the cool bits of this weekend of fun and friends.
Dirty Spot it
On the evening before the con, Dave:The Game introduced us to a simple, quick game called Spot it one of those tin-can games you find in book and toy stores. The game is made of a pile of circular cards, each featuring a dozen or so different images. Each card has one, and only one, common image with any other given card.
There are 4 different mini-games that exploit this. The gist of them is that several cards are going to be seen by all players who must spot 2 identical images, call them and then perform an action depending on the mini-game being played (i.e. taking the spotted card or giving it away) until the game’s winning condition is met.
Now this is where things became more interesting. Spot it is a 100% family friendly where people shout “dragon”, “kitten”, “cactus” and what have you. Dave introduced us to the NC-17 version of the game, which is very simple: “You need to add a cuss or an insult whenever you call an image”.
Add beer and your favourite selection of words from Kevin Smith’s extensive thesaurus of sex and coprophilia and you’re in for a half-hour of uncontrolled laughter and groans.
Beavers and Bandits
On gameday, I ran a Mouse Guard session with a great group: my friend E (from Geeks’ Dream Girl), Sean (Your Sword is Mine on Enworld), Kirin (Creator of the Old School Hack) and his charming wife Sabrina. The adventure was my classic con adventure about beaver dams and mice mobsters.
The action revolved around the guard mice having to obtain specific chemicals on the black market of a city called Port Sumac. The chemicals were necessary to repair a “scent barrier” at the northern borders of the mice kingdom that keep predators out. Like all good “burning” games, the characters were put at odds with their beliefs when faced with the choices they had to make to achieve their objectives.
The game rapidly devolved into an argument conflict. On one side, the guards, led by ex-con-turned-patrol-leader Malcom and the other, Big Louis, the local crime lord that had originally ousted Malcom from Port Sumac.
During this argument, two of the guards managed to negotiate a side-deal with a weasely “merchant” to cough up some chemicals. They achieved it at the cost of revealing the paths taken by the guards around Port Sumac and the Scent Border.
This went much against the beliefs of Edgar, the honour-bound guard, forced to let pragmatism trump the guard’s ethos.
Sabrina: “I’m well aware that Edgar is betraying part of what he believes the guard stands for, but our ultimate mission is to save all mice and we can’t afford the delays to do it otherwise.”
Awesome roleplaying just there; this is what Mouse Guard is about.
At the same time Malcolm and his tenderpaw (read padawan) was going for something much more insidious: attempting to establish the presence of the Guard as much more than what it’s mission called, a civil police force. Kirin was playing Malcom and he was totally going for the “Ex-con forced into becoming a guard to avoid jail yet keeping a criminal agenda” Xanathos Gambit trope.
During his quips vs Big Louis, he brought his tenderpaw (Jasper) down a darker path of deceit and lies which yielded a perfect victory, putting the fear of the Guard in the crime lord’s heart when Malcolm and Jasper convinced him that the Guards could muster a punitive strike within weeks that would wipe out all criminal elements of Port Sumac.
Chatty: Throughout the town, you can hear mice whispering “Malcolm is back”
Kirin (with a huge grin): YES!
The rest of the mission was completed without issues and we started the “Player Turn” which is where players get to set their own scenes to catch up on unresolved goals or, had this been a campaign game, set the story for the next session.
E’s character, Jasper the tenderpaw, organized a beer making festival in the hopes of turning some of the criminal elements of Port Sumac toward other, more legitimate activities. While she failed her challenge, she managed to get one of the named thugs, “The Big Cheese”, to stop being a leg breaker and open up a brewery… at the cost of a bad hangover (i.e. Thirsty/Hungry in Mouse Guard terms).
The ultimate highlight of the session for me was when Kirin wanted to set a scene for Malcolm, who, having seen the heroics and selflessness of his fellow guards, felt torn between his felonious nature and his rising sense of worth and honour as a guard.
Chatty: That’s not really a challenge in itself, you totally are allowed to change outlooks and beliefs between games. What do you want?
Kirin: Hmmm, I don’t know… I’m torn.
Sabrina: He ALWAYS does that.
Chatty: Well, the designer in me would want to explore how we could let the dice decide…
Kirin: Yeah that’s cool, I totally want that!
Chatty: Okay, tell me, what side do you secretly hope will win?
Kirin: I kinda hope the Mouse Guard side to win.
Chatty (Taking a page straight out of Free Market) : All right so you’ll roleplay your case for honour and the pride of being a Guard; you’ll roll your Persuader skill for that. I will play your criminal mind and darker agenda; I’ll roll your Deceiver skill. Whomever wins, sets your outlook. You cool with that?
Kirin (eager): Totally!
Kirin (In character): So In the last few days I’ve seen my comrades stand for more than merely protecting the weak and following orders. They went beyond and even against their own beliefs to achieve their mission, yet they still trusted me though I had sinister, selfish plans.
Chatty (Same): Stop that drivel! You’ve worked that angle too long and played your cards too well to let a moment of weakness bring everything crashing down. You’re better than that, you’re better than them all!
Chatty (Out of character): Oh by the way, since you kinda want to have the honourable side of your internal conflict win, I’m going to use your own cunning trait against MY side of the inner monologue, awarding you an extra die.
(Clatter, clatter) He won… and he was very happy!
Sean’s moment came when he set the scene for a great challenge to prepare the redirection of scent chemicals to anther destination than Port Sumac, such to eventually cut off supply to criminals. The challenge involved blazing a new path while rushing to the Territories’ capital to send more chemicals to the jury-rigged border the patrol had just fixed.
When they failed that particular challenge, I made all mice tired and Malcolm (who led the challenge) injured. That’s where Sean, invoking his goal of preventing the death of any of his comrades, requested to take the injury intended for the patrol leader.
Great moment of roleplaying there too! I really love that scenario as it always plays out so differently.
Spies out of Gassy Waters
In the afternoon, I got to play a game of Blowback, a “spy out of the water” RPG inspired by the Burn Notice TV show. This is a small press RPG where players control two characters. One’s a recently “extracted from snafu” spook. The other is a civilian that’s related to all other spies through various relationship ties (spouses, siblings, children, friends, etc.).
In our case, our spies were shipped off to a Maryland mountain resort shortly after a major snafu where we thought we were invading Bin Laden’s house but instead busted a Pakistani intelligence command post, unannounced and guns blazing.
The adventure got our characters embroiled in a story about exploding trailers, fracking (the methane sort, not the euphemistic one), crooked natural resources bosses, a low level thug and corrupted cops.
I’m a bit conflicted about the game and I can’t spare the word count for a full analysis based on just one session. On one hand, I LOVE having to play civilian characters that interact with spy PCs and makes their lives more problematic. I also find it cool that you can ask for favours, lie or break promises and that such actions are backed by game mechanics to simulate the stress this puts on relationships.
What I liked a LOT less can be summarized in 2 words: Analysis Paralysis. The game has a whole phase called “analysis” where players try to piece together enough info on the bad guys’ scheme to move on to the next phase. I don’t think the game has a fundamental flaw about how it handles investigation and spook-like analysis, I just highly dislike investigation and the pitfalls they create with certain styles of play. Anything that makes the story grind to a halt as players get lost in conjectures and chasing chimeras grates on my impatience.
Fortunately, with the help of the GM who eventually morphed his original plan to allow for some plot holes, we ended up the session with a wonderful takedown of the boss and one main character suffering a pileup of trouble.
Bad Guy (Being turned by spooks) : Okay, I’ll squeal if you guys find a good foster home for my kid
Agent (Whose wife took the child temporarily as a favour): No way! No deal!
Wife (played by me, calling on cell phone): Honey, We have to talk now… I’m seeing someone else, I can’t deal with you being here now. This baby reminds me that I want another one, but not with you.
Agent: What?
Agent’s Son (Texting): Oh Dad, like your friend Alex (my character) told you (I hadn’t), I’m gay.
Agent: WHAT?!?
Great finish. It saved the aggravating middle part of the session for sure. Enough that I want to play it again, but mostly to explore, from a designer’s point of view, whether I want to “hack” it or “fix” it (as coined by Wil Hindmarch)
I want to go back
Suffice it to say that this trip, and all the social activities that occurred before and after made for a very cool, relaxed weekend. I got to play test my Leverage hack once more, finally getting the last bits of advice to cinch my draft. I may describe the game if I can secure permission. I also got to watch both “The Gamers” movies and play some Portal 2 coop with Dave.
I’m going to come back for sure. All this was well worth the lengthy train rides. Thanks to all the organizers and to my friends who lent me their guest bedrooms and provided car lifts at ungodly hours to get me from and to train stations.
I promise I’ll be more insulting and less Canadian next time.
P.S. I didn’t talk about the sights and sounds of Washington and the are surroundings. To quote my host Tom, it’s kinda weird to see all that neo-classical architecture without a bunch of alien ships trying to blow them up. I was glad to see them with my eyes. Washigton is a great city to see… when there’s no traffic and it’s not raining hard enough to drown in.
P.P.S: I may have fallen in love with Alexandria, Virginia.
The Dungeon Reality Show, D&D Essentials Edition, Part 1
In mid January, I followed up on a wild idea and got 4 local media geeks to join me for a session of D&D Essentials. It turned out to be one of the best D&D games I’ve played, one of those sessions where the stars are aligned and everything just works.
The reasons for that are manifold. The players, mostly newbies to D&D 4e or tabletop RPGs, were all very enthusiastic about the game. The energy level was just right. My design decisions were near-perfect for the event and I likely managed to put all the lessons I learned from my gaming pilgrimage of the last months in practice.
Time for another Play Report, Chatty DM style!
The Setup:
Since most players had gigs with specialized Geek TV shows/channels (and associated websites) , I thought this would be a great occasion to revive my old Dungeon Reality Show shtick and adapt it to the scenario at hand, a level 2 D&D Essentials Adventure called “Sunderpeak Temple” featured at last summer’s D&D Gameday.
The scenario was a dead simple “invade and vanquish” 5 encounters adventure about reclaiming a recently destroyed Temple from the clutches of a Black Dragon and his band of humanoid minions.
If you never read about the Dungeon Reality Show and can’t spare visiting the link above, just know that it’s a silly D&D 4e variant where adventurers are desperate participants in a lethal show featuring NPCs as 3rd rate actors, callous cigar-smoking producers and crafty, tightly-wound Chronomancers.
All participating adventurers are given a “sponsored” magical item created from existing Items and adapted to the pre-generated characters I created for the adventure.
I posted about the item on our Tumblog here.
Success Factor Aside: Giving everyone an item that was 2-4 levels higher than their levels makes players happy to have a “cool toy” right off the bat.
I had another TV Show trick up my sleeve I held in reserve for the first fight… yet, I ended up being so inspired by the game that I came up with several more!
Read on!
Dramatis Persona
- Maïwenn Amandil: Elven Warpriestess of Pelor, sporting the luxuriant Divine Boon known as Pelor’s Spray Tan and Facial
- Played by Caro, who hadn’t played RPGs for at least 8 years
- Frank the Tank: Beeraholic Human Knight equipped with Morshon’s Stout shield
- Played by… Frank the Tank, who had never played a tabletop RPG
- Seaendithas Steelfarmer: Halfling Thief of great skill, wearing Dr Stealth’s Orthopaedic Adventuring Slippers.
- Played by Stef, long time friend who plays RPGs only occasionally
- Todd Darkmagic (Adopted): Eladrin Mage yielding the legendary “Jim Darkmagic Showman’s Staff”
- Played by FDL, a freelance writer and regular radio-TV host and guest.
I’m not going to go for a blow by blow retelling of the game… I’ll focus on it’s main highlights and lessons.
Lesson: Don’t Fake freedom when unnecessary
Another lesson I’ve learned from small press games and one shot scenarios:
Don’t ever try to give the illusion of freedom to players if the adventure you play doesn’t call for it.
The chosen adventure required PCs to investigate a ruined temple and clear it. Thus, I told players that
A) They all knew each other from a previous, disastrous adventure, explaining the whole “being desperate enough to participate in the show”
B) They had already accepted the thin plot the Quest Giver (a Dwarf merchant they were travelling with) gave them .
Thus no time was lost on building a premise that wasn’t necessary to our current goals as a gaming group.
Lesson/Highlight: Say Yes and Exploit Details
As the players approached the temple, I offhandedly described bodies of priests and monks strewn about. When Caro asked me if her priest found someone alive she could heal I decided to say yes and find a way to make this cool…
Chatty: Hmmm, sure, there’s a guy standing just over there. He’s really badly injured. If you make a successful difficult heal check you’ll get info on what he saw, if you fail he will die at your hands.
Caro: Gulp…
FDL: Todd will help you.
(Clatter clatter, success)
Chatty: The priest’s eyes open suddenly and he cries “DRAGON!” before falling unconscious.
Good start! Taking a page out of the Apocalypse World playbook, from then on, whenever someone asked me to do something that wasn’t directly covered by the rules, I’d pick a skill and a difficulty, explain what would be gain on a success and what kind of dramatic twist would happen on a failure and asked who was ready to help.
The players liked this a lot.
Highlight: The Knight Does Not Fight to the Music, the Music Fights for the Knight.
During the first combat encounter, Frank the Tank enthusiastically embraced the concept of tabletop RPGs. He kept describing cool moves for his Knight and didn’t bother with realism much. When he activated one of his PC’s Combat Stances, he described that he got a Ghetto Blaster out of his backback, put it on the floor and started going all Technoviking on the baddies.
This was very funny… especially when that was later exploited by Todd Darkmagic (adopted) who created an illusion of another Knight holding a Ghetto Blaster over his head. It was topped off when Frank did a power move to deal lots of damage, describing it as breaking the Blaster over another monster’s head.
I absolutely love it when players create scene elements and then others interact with them. It makes scene so much more lively.
New Mechanic: Advertising for Rewards
Once combat started, I implemented another of my new Dungeon Reality ideas. I had the one at the top of the initiative order (PC or myself for NPC) improvise a short advertisement bit about fictitious products in exchange for a one time bonus during the encounter.
For example, Stef told us about Tylenorc, the pain relief medication of true bad asses. After the laughter died down, I surmised that this message would grant stef’s thief with 5-10 temporary Hit Points for the encounter.
The endeavour was a smashing success, beyond what I expected even! Players jumped on that and even started writing copy during downtime between their turns. Hell, they even started gaming the system and created spots targeted to gain specific bonuses (like doing an anti-aid ad during a fight vs a Black Dragon). Of course, I tried to embrace that…Although, by the end of the evening everyone was running out of juice.
I stopped giving my monsters bonuses early in the game… while I participated in making ad spots, I felt like I was taking away from the players fun and abusing the system by giving my side bonuses when I could just as well play with the numbers like all DMs are allowed to in the spirit of keeping the game fun for all.
Highlight: A Knight and his Beer
Chatty: After combat, you smell something strong, yeast-like coming from the well…
Frank the Tank: BEER! I JUMP in it!
Chatty: All right, the challenge for you will not be how you get in there or how you leave it, that’s boring. Rather I wanna know in what shape you’ll be when you leave it. So you’ll have to roll a hard Athletics check to simulate you drunkenly climbing out at the end of this short rest period.
Frank: okay! Burp!
Chatty: If you succeed, great! You’re out and more or less sober. If you fail, you’ll still get out but I will reserve the right to give you the mother of all “Oh man I HAVE to pee NOW” moment whenever I chose. It will daze until you spend an embarrassing Standard action sighing very noisily… we cool?
Caro: Can my priestess help him climbing out?
Chatty: Sure, what skills does she have?
Caro: Hmmm, Religion?
Chatty: Well…. How about you berate him while he climbs? “Motivating” him to abandon his sinning ways?
Caro and Frank: Yeah!
Caro failed her roll (her first time of many that game, poor her) but in spite of the penalty that gave Frank’s PC, he succeeded.
Frank: As I exit the well, I tell the priestess “Fat loads of help your preaching did dude!”
And so the love story began…
In part 2, I’ll explain the mother of all fun skill challenges (new version) and how the Beads of Awesomeness saved the day.
(Photos courtesy of Stéphane Vaillancourt and Caroline Cloutier)
P.S. Yes, I’m starting to have fun again with 4e… many thanks to all those extra tools I’ve been picking up. Can’t wait to tell you about the rest!
Chatty Plays: Freemarket Part 3, Ghost’N'Breakin’
This post chronicles the second half of our Freemarket game. You can follow my post on character creation here and my recounting of the first half here. Let’s conclude our David vs Goliath story of stolen sex toys designs, covetous enlightened blanks and subtle revenge.
Quick dramatis personae reminder:
- Jack Knife (Yan): Jack of many trades and Body-Artist.
- Paul Demetrios (PM): OCD Investigator, think “Monk”.
- Coleco (Franky): Recycler and builder, “the old fashion way”.
- Flint (Mike): Decked out Enlightened Interface Fetishist. Think Cyber-Jesus
Challenge 3: I’ll Know What I Want When I See It.
Mike: I want Flint to infiltrate the Grindstone Cowboys compound, do some snooping around to find where stuff is, find the guy he doesn’t remember and get his Interface!
Chatty: Yeah, you’re familiar enough with the way the Station works that you suspect your memory was altered since yesterday. That’s a good challenge. After that you guys will do something about the stolen toy’s designs?
Franky: Exactly!
(Total Transparency: I’m taking significant artistic liberties with the actual dialogues. I tell an accurate true story but I will fictionalize the details… because I can, he he he)
A note on team challenges and the task resolution system I alluded to in the last post. In order to initiate a challenge, a character is better served by having the proper skill or one Geneline tags fit with what they wish to achieve. In our case, Flint had the Ghosting skill (Stealth + Thievery) while the others had Genelines tags that could help. For example, Paul’s “Investigative” and Jack’s “Creative”.
Pixel-bitching aside: Yes, that means that there’s going to be some sort of “tag” whoring going on at the table… at least, I expect some because it’s part of what I consider part of the “entertaining your GM’ experience.
Chatty: So are you joining this challenge or not?
Player X: I don’t know… I don’t see anything relevant…
Chatty: Oh come on, you aren’t allowed to be boring, entertain me! (/Aside)
Thus, Flint and Paul infiltrated the HQ (the game suggests to always handwave the “getting there/getting in” parts of ghosting challenges and focus on the actual jobs). The other PCs monitored things remotely, ready to jump in if things became violent.
It’s also worth mentioning that generating NPCs in this game is wonderful. You either assign stats on the fly or follow a fast series of card draws from the GM’s deck to generate Genelines, Experience, Interface and Technology (always relevant to the challenge at hand). You then assign a Flow score, name the character and you have a NPC to keep for the rest of the campaign.
Anyhoo, with a series of awesome hands (and a crappy one on my side) the players aced the challenge yet again…
Chatty: Okay you found the guy you were looking for and tailed him to a “blind” corner of the HQ, now tell me how Flint’s going to rip a piece of interface from him!
Mike: Hmmm, how ’bout it’s a brain chip with a very particular design?
Chatty: Cool, so you knock the guy senseless and rip it out of his skull! Good job, next challenge!
Challenge 5: Buggy Forbidden Pleasures
Franky: We want to hack the Cowboy’s protected systems to corrupt the design of the sex toy they stole.
Chatty: That’s going to be a great finish to end the game, let me generate the security expert of the system. He’ll represent the HQ’s overall security, the systems counter measures and the protective layers of software between you and the designs.
(i.e. mechanically that just means the NPC’s stats, the game makes no true difference between stats/tools/setting when representing opposition)
Once again, the players won by a large margin. I drew badly again (there are times like this). Just so I don’t sound more like a broken record, here’ s an example of how narration and the mini card game interacted.
While Coleco was busy hacking the system, Flint was sneaking in the compound, looking for places where he could weaken security and cause diversions.At one point he met a burly guard and Mike (Flint’s player) drew point scoring cards, which usually translated in successful mini-scenes. Looking over Mike’s character sheet I saw that his Geneline is “The One” and has a whole cult thing going, so…
Chatty (As the guard): It’s…. YOU! I can’t believe it!
Mike: Huh?
Chatty: The guard shows you he wears a pendant of the cult of the New Order.
Mike: Awesome! Can I ask his help?
Chatty: Fire away!
And thus Mike sent the guard to pull a general alarm, emptying the MRCZ’s huge compound while the rest of the party finished their job. At the end of the challenge, Frank decided to change just one tag of his original design to make it slightly less interesting than his own revised one and not overly awaken suspicion. This also gave them enough “victory points” left to spend on full Flow rebates, putting everyone well over 30 each and scoring them a piece of “data”, the game’s other currency (data can be analyzed, gifted, injected as memories, etc).
And so I give you:
The Toy: Ephemeral, Inconvenient, Pleasurable
Yeah, my players are still shy about the game’s possibility. In a world where death is a minor inconvenience at best (often only making you miss your next appointment), I would have LOVED to see “explosive” or “infected” as a tag instead of “inconvenient”.
And thus was our game completed. We managed to play 1 challenge per player which is an average session and the game lasted about 3-4 hours which factored in some book digging and general goofing around.
Are we to be Freemers?
I’ll let the players chime in if they feel like it, but based on the feedback I got, my players were willing (and some even eager) to keep playing next month. I really would like to see how the game evolves over a few session.
More specific feedback:
PM thought the game played out a LOT better than his expectations. While initially confused about the skills and actual “mission” of the game, the relative smoothness at which everything meshed together delivered a very satisfying experience for him. He got to act out mini-scenes as an hyper-focused OCD character and we all enjoyed it.
Franky was blown away at the sheer madness of the adventure hooks and the fast pace of the game. He NEVER expected that I would choose his “Sex Toy” memory to drive a session, much less have it generate hours of fun and mirth. He did have some trouble “getting” the mechanics of the game from how scoring worked to how each experience could be used. His was a good example where what a player thinks a skill should do, and what the designers decided it would, can clash.
Yan liked the mechanics of the game. He was intrigued by it and I saw his tactician’s brain engage into furious activity a few times, confirming that he grokked the game fine. He did mention that he felt the setting was far too constrained for what the game’s engine could achieve. In that he felt he could tweak the skill list and general assumptions a bit and make this into a full blown “British Sci Fi” game capable of emulating the stories of Vernor Vinge and Peter Hamilton.
(I think it would take more work as the game system is a lot more interconnected than what they experienced so far… but I consider it a good sign when Yan’s dormant designer genes wake up)
Mike didn’t offer direct feedback, but he’s become my “mine canary” to detect a game’s “frustration pocket”. I saw his steam level rise when he played bad hands over several challenges. That’s why I’m happy that the last 2 challenges that featured him on the front line turned out nice and that he got his spotlight time. He does seem to have some trouble finding ideas and ways to create a narrative with the game’s mechanics… but I think that’s a challenge of story-driven game themselves and I know he’ll warm up to it…
Hell, he did blow us away during our Fiasco game.
And me? I love the game. I’d totally play a 2-4 session mini-campaign like we did with Apocalypse World before moving on to either Burning Wheel, Leverage or possibly that new game I’m working on.
Props:
- The game is one sweet piece of play tested integrated clockwork engine with a simple yet rock solid setting
- The pace is perfect and answers my current needs as a time-pressed gamer.
- The ways you can screw with players even when they “win” is sublime and I can’t wait to turn the “evil” dial a few notches.
(Slight) Cons:
- The rule book’s landscape format and layout, took the “easier to learn, harder to reference” approach that makes for more page flipping hunting for Flow costs and the like (Index is very solid though, I need to tab the book with posts it)
- I’m still unsure about a few things about running challenges (like using bugs, and what to do when running out of options when you have no bugs) but one or two sessions more and I feel I could run the game at cons without any problems.
I hope you enjoyed this little series. Don’t hesitate to ask questions! I’ll do what I can and I’m sure the designers aren’t too far.
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