Mage: The Ascension Job
It’s no secret that I’ve been a bit Leverage RPG crazy for the past few months- in many ways, it’s a system that just flat out “clicked” with me as soon as I played it. One of the outcroppings of that is my desire to hack it into other settings. I’m a huge fan of modern settings, and while Leverage RPG scratches that itch, there’s lots of room for modern games beyond heists and capers. Enter my early ideas about combining it with Mage: The Ascension, to which I (and as I discovered recently, many other gamers) have very fond memories of.
With two sessions under my belt, with completely different players each time, I am convinced that this is a combination that works. In fact, one player of mine who was a big Mage fan described it as “note perfect.” Here now then, is my combination of Mage: The Ascension and the Leverage RPG. You will need both books for this hack to work, and prior understanding of both. [Read the rest of this article]
Chatty’s PaxEast Highlights: 3 days of Fun Among Friends
Yes, this site is run by insane people, but IT WORKS!
Mere days after the conclusion of the second PaxEast gathering of gaming geeks, I still struggle to reinsert myself in that pre-formed vessel that we call “normal life” (for a given value of normal).
As you may know, Dave and I obtained Media (and Speaker) passes for the event so why not meet the requirements of “talking about the show” by writing about the highlights of the time I spent there?
Thursday night:
After a day-long ride from frigid, stormy Montreal we made our way to the Intercontinental Hotel in South Boston. I had organized an evening of board game in the hotel lobby and, like last year, it was an instant hit.
Here are some of the games I played or recognized:
I ended the night talking to Tavis Allison (long time RPG Freelancer and blogger at of The Mule Abides) where we remade the RPG world from both ends of the Old/New school spectrum. The night was a blast and I already knew I’d spend too little time sleeping.
Friday: Convention Center, Keynote, Q&A and Showroom
The Premise was just plain gigantic and perfect. The Boston Convention Center is light years beyond the one we were last year. I wished there were nearer food outlets, but we made do.
The keynote, by game designer Jane MacGonigal was one of those life changing mind-rewiring events. My mind is abuzz with new game ideas that have real-life, practical applications.
We even broke a world record playing a 5000 players game of massive multi-player thumb wrestling , that was surreal… and plaguetastic!
The following Q & A with Mike and Jerry was icing on the cake, with a roomful of geeks sending waves of admiration, adoration and shameless gushing (and empty calories) towards our Maitre’d.
I mean, what the hell is Irn Bru?
PM: I don’t care if it’s all downhill from here, this was beyond awesome.
We walked the floors of the convention center after and realized just how immense it really was. And there was stuff to do everywhere. As it will likely grow from year to year, PaxEast will be one of those monster events you will never tame, experiencing only a tiny slice of it at every year, much like Gen Con.
I also made a quick tour of the exhibit floor with Yan and PM and we all agreed that it was way better than last year. Yes, there were some very long lines, but we managed to see some very cool stuff.
Friday: Return of the “Be your own Hero” (e)book
During my visit of the expo all, I made my way to the thin slice reserved for indie game developers and met with Neil from Australia-based Tin Man Games. They showed us their iOS-based Adventure gamebook applications. I hope to get a copy in the next few weeks and put up a review but suffice it to say that the 10 year old boy in me was filled with nostalgia and wonder at the sight of that beautiful game.
Highlights:
- Each game has roughly 8 times the number of entries than the 1980′s UK books pioneered by Steve Jackson (no, not that one) and Ian Livingston
- The game has an integrated character sheet that tracks stats, equipment and knowledge acquired.
- Built-in dice roller.
- Gorgeous artwork and a huge game world and accompanying ever updating gazetteer.
Plans are in place to port the game to Android and possibly the PC in the near future.
Friday: It all makes Sense Steve!
I teamed up with Dave and we interviewed Steve Jackson (yes, that one) and Phil Reed about the upcoming releases for SJ Games. Two things stood out for us:
- Ogre Boxed set: A large box set with map tiles, 3D double-sided Ogres and superstructures. The increase in size of the Hex map and the beautiful art of the playing pieces made me want to own yet another version of that game.
- Axe Cop Munchkin…
(Record scratching sound….)
Yes you read that right, Axe Cop, where a cop kills bad guys with his axe and a flute cop gets turned into a gun dinosaur and Unibaby has a horn that makes him super smart and evil Santa turns into…
Yet this addition to the increasingly out of control line of games now makes EVERYTHING make perfect sense… A Dutch accented level 6 Ninja Psionic Thief with a +4 Chainsword and a Cape of Invincibility? Perfectly logical.
This is a refreshing take on a franchise I found was getting a little on the stale side.
Friday: Panel
You can follow the story of it just here (and even listen to it). Suffice it to say that we went from nervous, to terrified, to engrossed, to relieved, to satisfied. 
Friday: Fiasco!
I will never again try to describe a full Fiasco game but here’s the elevator pitch.
“A lesbian couple of Russian Spies decide to wreck vengeance on the small scientific community of McMurdoch Antarctica. They plan to poison everyone with a secret drug that turns people into zombies after death. As the infection spreads, the sole spy survivor leaves on board a Russian trawler, leaving undead ex-lovers and collaborators behind. The station, then the whole world, falls to a Zombie Apocalypse. She dies in the “loving” embrace of her zombified ex-girlfriend, on the front lines of a loosing war to save the fatherland”
I LOVE this game beyond belief. I was officially dubbed the “Craziest player ever” when I had my character say, while standing beside a 55 gallon barrel of urine : “time to remove that catheter Dr. Johnson”
Saturday: RPG day!
Saturday was all about RPGs… I played about 9 hours of them!
Dave ran us through his homebrewed hack of Mage the Ascension using the Leverage ruleset. It was awesome to play modern time reality-bending wizards with such a clean set of simple, yet rich rules. We invaded a tacky run down casino held by a Frank Sinatresque Vampire and brought the whole thing down (as well as one player’s clothes).
Dave (Playing our patron): Nice job…. Hey, what happened to your pants?
End Credits.
Made of win if you ask me.
Mike Shea (of Sly Flourish fame) ran us through a hyper rapid Gamma World adventure where we made characters (I was Le Grey Pupa, Cockroach Giant) and had 4 combat encounters in less than 2 hours. Quite a feat and quite an enjoyable game. I’m slowly warming up to Gamma World. I’m not quite sold but I could be after a few more games with GMs as awesome as Mike was.
My last RPG of the day was a Mouse Guard game with some Twitter friends I made over the last year. The game was my classic “Beavers and Bandit” adventure and it was beyond fun.
My highlight:
During an argument between the PCs and members of the city’s organized crime who wanted them to butt out of their business, I had scripted a Feint argument. I had to go for the throat of the opposing team…
Crimelord (to ex-con mouse Guard): So, your mom still lives around here ya know? She’s doin’ real good, in fact Moe over there just had tea with her last week, such a sweet lady huh Moe? Nice to know she’s still so healthy for an old broad like her…
Player (eyes and nostrils flaring): You did NOT just go there!
WIN!
The whole game was awesome but this exchange is why I GM!
Sunday: Gifts and goodbyes
On Sunday, after a stupidly short night (thanks to spring time and a late late Magic the Gathering game), I did a rapid last tour of the exhibit hall, bought gifts for my family:
- Stone Age for Alex
- Ascension for Nico
- A Skele-Pirate vs Skele-Ninja T-shirt for Rory
- Dixit 2 Extension for Rory
I then said my goodbyes to the awesome people I met and those I had seen again for a few short days. I already look forward to seeing them again in a few short months.
I left Pax with the certitude I’d be there next year. Better prepared… ready for even more fun.
A special thanks
I got to meet some very special fans this year. It was the first time that people stepped up to me and shared, in their own words, their appreciation for my work. While I have not yet mastered the way to gracefully accept praise, especially from shy people, please know that I was truly touched. Your nice words and courage strengthened my resolve to continue doing such cools things in our little corner of geekdom.
For those who could not quite work up the courage, I noticed some of you, know that there’s always next year or Gen Con, I’ll be happy to spend a few minutes talking to you.
Thanks again! All of you.
By The Seat Of My Omnipotent Pants
A Metaphor
This past week’s D&D session was something of an experiment for me. As I mentioned last week, I procrastinated a bit too much. By that, I mean that by about 2 hours to game time, I had managed to be indecisive enough to know several major plot points – just not the specifics or the order in which they would appear. Not having any combat encounters worked out turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I had also invited a new player to the group over lunch that day. At this point, I was more than slightly worried the session was going to be a disaster and that we would wind up playing Snorta! for half the evening.
With the minutes ticking away, I called upon several old friends (and previous DMs of mine), Dante and Kanati, half to ask for advice and half simply just to have someone to tell “haha I’m screwed oh God”. Both told me something that sort of shocked me a little. In the campaigns I’d been in with them, they’d winged it a lot more than I’d ever imagined. “I used to just throw a bunch of bad guys at you and throw more at you if you were winning too easily, and fudge dice rolls if you were dying.” “Most of the human enemies you ever fought were just monsters I renamed.” I could feal fake reality crumbling about me, but yet somewhere in the crumbles there were nuggets of hope. And so, not really having a large amount of options left, I made a decision to leave the plot nice and loose (and the encounters looser.) At this point, I was becoming convinced that this was going to be so bad as to turn my new player off of gaming forevermore, sending him on the dark road to philately or something equally destructive to the soul.
How did it turn out? Well, to be honest, it turned out better than when I’d try to put everything on rails. I haven’t quite figured out exactly what that means yet. [Read the rest of this article]
Pax East 2011: House Rules and Stealing from Other Games in RPGs
Prior to this year’s PAX East, we pitched three panels about RPGs. One was accepted, with the following description:
Most Game Masters do it. Hacking your favourite RPG is as old as the hobby itself. However, one can often get bogged down with rules that defeat their intent and make the game less fun. Others have so many house rules that players and master alike get confused and lose sense of what game they’re playing. That’s why we invite you to join 3 well-known RPG bloggers from Critical-Hits and At-Will to discuss how to design, test, and organize house rules. They’ll also tell you how to explore other classic and modern RPGs to “borrow” their best ideas into your games and give you tangible examples.
Panelists include: Dave Chalker [Editor-in-Chief, Critical-Hits], Phil Menard [Featured Bloggers, Critical-Hits], Quinn Murphy [Editor-in-Chief, At-Will]
We were happy to have our panel accepted, but it wasn’t until we got there that it sunk in how big this was. While we’ve all done panels before, nothing would prepare us for something of this size. Pax has a much more limited seminar schedule, which means there’s more attention on each panel. People lining up in advance is common, as is getting turned away. [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-03-13
- From the Archives:: Interview: Randall Bills from Catalyst Game Labs, Publisher of Classic Battletech http://bit.ly/hTm5ML #charchive #
- Follow @BoardGameGeek, @RPGGeek, & @VideoGameGeek for great updates from Geekdo, and the chance to win microbadges: http://bit.ly/dKqMZt #
- We'll be a bit light on content this week as several of us (@DaveTheGame, @Bartoneus, @ChattyDM, & @loganbonner) are PAX East bound! #
- Boardgamers – check out this Kickstarter for the Going Cardboard board game documentary: http://kck.st/hSTX07 #
RPGs and Fiction: An Interview with Alana Abbott
I have spent the better part of the last three years with my head buried deep in the Forgotten Realms, a game world that lives and breathes at least as deeply through its fiction as through its game products. My background and education are tied to fiction-writing, first and foremost. As I become more familiar with the craft of designing games and adventures, the contrast and the synergy between the stuff of games and the stuff of fiction always leaves me pondering: What game design skills carry over from fiction-writing skills, and vice versa? Can fiction capture the essence of a game system or a game setting, while still working as good fiction?
I have enlisted someone to help me look into those questions. I first met Alana Abbott while writing adventures for the Living Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign, where she was the campaign’s director. Even then, before I knew her well, I was impressed with her chops as a writer. When I heard that she’d written a novel as a tie-in for an RPG game and setting, I was intrigued. I read that first novel called Into the Reach, and I was taken with how much the characters and the story drew me into that world. Despite my love of fantasy RPGs, I was never much a fan of fantasy fiction. The field is no doubt full of talented authors, but the redundancy of the tropes within the genre just didn’t do it for me.
At the time, I was also teaching fiction writing at the college level, so my brain was engaged in a sort of “read and feedback” loop that led me to contact Alana, offer my admiration for the work, as well as providing some (hopefully) constructive criticism. I was surprised and flattered when Alana suggested to her publisher that I take over as editor for the second novel in the trilogy. It was a pleasure to do so.
Alana’s talents have been noticed by many others, and her resume speaks for itself. As long as it is diverse, her list of credits includes the Origins Award-winning supplement Serenity Adventures for the Serenity RPG from Margaret Weis Productions. She was also the writer for the comic Cowboys and Aliens II. (A film version of the original Cowboys and Aliens hits theaters soon, starring Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig.)
The first two novels in “The Redemption Trilogy” — Into the Reach and Departure — are available now available as e-books at DriveThruRPG, and they are well worth the read for fans of well-written fantasy literature. Alana’s vision of the setting, game, and characters is expertly rendered on the page, and I hold the novels up as an example of what can happen when a very talented writer finds a way to turn an RPG into excellent fiction.
I recently got the chance to ask Alana about the intersection of RPGs and fiction, as well as a number of other topics of interest to gamers, fantasy fans, and would-be writers. I hope you find the results enlightening: [Read the rest of this article]
That Almost Sucked
In retrospect, it should not surprise me that my procrastinatory tendencies extent to my DM planning sessions. Last week was a lovely off-week board gaming session with some Give Me The Brain (the original $2 “on pink card stock” version) and Cranium. The latter had been sitting unopened in our closet since Sarah and I got married in 2004. The purple Cranium clay was growing… something on it, so we drew pictures for the “sculpture” cards too. And somehow, a new week snuck up on me and I find myself with only a couple days to plan the party’s next adventures.
I’ve been mulling over in my head how I want the story to go first, because I want the story to drive the encounters I create. I’m sure there will come a day when I make up an excuse to use some cool monster I saw in a book in my campaign, but right now everything is supposed to Make Sense and be For A Reason. I’m certain this is going to come back to haunt me, but I haven’t put my finger on how or why yet. It may simply be that a little organized chaos spices things up. Some of the best battles we ever had were when my old DM would decide to wing it and roll on a random encounter table. I’m reasonably sure a lot of the things we fought over the years weren’t integral to the main story in some way. I think I’d like to provide a little foreshadowing for these encounters via side quests, just so the experience and setting feels cohesive. Then again, a random Owlbear ambush never hurt anybody.
A Brush With The Dark Side
This story-driven approach found me in a place I never thought I’d go. I was developing the character for this new major bad guy NPC, and he’s so full of Proper Villainy that his armor barely fits. I had mapped out what drives him and what he would do, and this led me to start thinking about how he might interact with the leader of the army the PCs had joined and I started coming up with all these story concepts and it was making me all giddy — but I was having a real problem coming up with how I was going to tie this in with the PCs. Technically, what I had in mind eventually made sense. However, there was a 15-step process that happened behind the scenes before the players even got remotely involved. It was at that point I realized the horrible truth: I was planning an adventure in which the PCs were not the main focus. I suppressed my urge to self-flagellate (in the interest of time, of course), and scrapped the idea in favor of something my players might give a crap about.
I don’t think the problem was that the story was bad. I think something marginally worth reading could have come out of this, had I taken the time to develop and write it. I think it just wasn’t right for D&D. I had similar problems as a player when coming up with character concepts. A few years back, I played a necromancer with a heart of gold. His name was Lionel Pureheart, and he wanted to use the black arts for the good of mankind. He’d let you speak with dead relatives, raise skeletons to help plow the fields, and reunite families with a beloved dead pet (at least, whatever parts were still available.) I still think he’s a funny idea, and I’m probably going to write some fiction about him at some point. In practice, he was unbelievably frustrating to play for various reasons. My DM found it appropriate to make the local populace flee in terror and/or attempt to lynch him whenever he would offer his services of Gentle Necromancy. This made sense, but it pointed to other “you need to work with your DM before you come up with this kind of thing” issues. That, and 3.5e wizards specializing in Necromancy don’t have much in the way of attack spells at low level. Or defense spells. They’re just sort of like goth punching bags. Lionel was a good idea. Just not for D&D, at least in that form.
It seems to me that a D&D adventure, when done well, is not a standard kind of story. Regular stories, once written, generally follow a timeline. They often don’t work right in D&D because the DM doesn’t have any idea what the players are going to do. They can kill somebody important to the plot. They can lose an important artifact. They can accidentally polymorph the royal family into weasels, throwing the country into civil war. They can all die, and nobody lives happily ever after. As DM, you can stop all of this from happening to preserve the story — but it’s always been my experience that you wind up with a bunch of grumpy players if they have no real impact on the world other than killing what you tell them to. Ever been in one of those campaigns where the world is incredibly detailed, the NPCs are the stars, the outcome of everything has been predetermined, and you would rather commit seppuku than play one more session of this? If I wanted that, I’d play World of Warcraft. Blizzard does, at least, make an effort to make the single-player experience seem like the PC’s actions have some effect on the world (especially with their new phasing tech that lets the world change only for that player when certain quests get completed.) However, the problem still exists. No player can ever be as big a badass as Thrall. Your PC never appears in any cutscenes. Some super-awesome NPC is doing all the cool stuff. That’s not the kind of D&D game I want to run.
Bullet Dodged, Another Bullet Please
This is all well and good, but now I have to figure out a better way to go. The first session with my new group was, admittedly, firmly on rails. I don’t know what I would have done if they decided to deviate from the plan, so I had a giant mixer-horde of cement zombies chase them back to camp. Effective, but ultimately lame — especially if used again. I have a decent idea of the major things I want to happen from using Dave The Game’s super-cool 5×5 method (the hype is real!). Thinking of things as an outline that you fill in as you go along makes the prospect of changing a future line-item to suit the game that is unfolding considerably less terrifying. At least, as compared to watching lots and lots of meticulous work unravelled by one PC inadvertently pulling the string that will bring it all down. I know it’s possible. I’ve been that player. I bear the scars of being repeatedly bludgeoned by a Dungeon Master’s Guide. (And, since I am using the Essentials paperback books, I do not know if I can produce “learning”-class impact force.)
At least I’m not quite as nervous as I was last time. Even when I dropped the ball, it sure seemed to me like we were having fun. I know I was. It’s good to know everything’s going to be OK even if you fail. Unless you’re a player, in which case you should have your DM come read this article. Damn, I’m good.
Photo Credit
Agents of the Un-Kingdom: Alpha Dogs
“Imagine a dog that’s ALL bite. I mean seriously, look at the jaws on that thing. Funny looking, right? But if that weird little super-pug bites you it doesn’t just break the skin…it breaks down your reality, your potential. The more it takes, the stronger it gets. Eventually all your potential is chewed up, leaving what’s left of you as kibble for dogs.
“What I’m saying is, don’t be an idiot. Whatever that guy did to get the attention of the Nullmen and their hounds is all him; don’t throw your life away. C’mon, let’s go. Yeah, I know the screams suck. Cover your ears.”
The first wave of minions serving the Conquering Dreamer, Nullmen use Alpha Dogs to track and pursue their foes. Alpha Dogs feed on the same forces that cause alpha mutations, gaining strength and powers when it. Their attacks deplete targets both physically and psychically, leaving a comatose shell behind.
Appearance: Alpha Dogs don’t look frightening. Pugs with mottled furred and grossly oversized heads, it’s amazing that they can move at all. The dogs betray their appearance with frightening agility and speed. [Read the rest of this article]
Critical Bits for the week ending 2011-03-06
- From the Archives:: Chatty's Megadungeon: Foundations http://bit.ly/fwAB4Z #charchive #
- Embrace Chaos–the tag line for the 4th of Fantasy Flight's 40K RPGs! Called Black Crusade. http://bit.ly/fkXzhb /via @CharlesMRyan #
- Posted on Roll: Hypocritical Exploding Rat Swarm http://bit.ly/hqSVlA #
- RT @4eBlogs: Robert J. Schwalb: Encounter Alternatives http://bit.ly/hr0Esp #dnd #
- RT @Morrus: Upcoming D&D computer game! http://www.waroftheburningsky.com #dnd #
- RT @James_Hibberd: Huge 'Game of Thrones' news: 'Dance With Dragons' publication date revealed! — EXCLUSIVE http://bit.ly/goXq0v #
- Preview/Interview about the Fiasco Companion over at @gnomestew: http://bit.ly/fifR0J #
- March Fo(u)rth for GM's Day! Be sure to check out @DriveThruRPG's big sale for the occasion http://bit.ly/hIbryg #
- Next Dragon issue to update Warlord to "Essentials" style, and give secondary ability scores to all races: http://bit.ly/hINTqk #
- D&D Alumni: D&D on the Small Screen http://bit.ly/g4TjYe #
- Inherent bonuses in CB at last! RT @Wizards_DnD: A brief look at next week's #ddi update and a #dndvt reminder – http://bit.ly/emgiRo #
The 5×5 Method Compendium
Consistently one of our most popular articles here on Critical Hits (for which I couldn’t be prouder), The 5×5 Method is a planning method for GM’s that sits between giving decisions for the party to make so that their choices matter, and at the same time, isn’t so wide open as to make it difficult to plan ahead for those of us who aren’t as great building adventures on the fly. Just in time for GM’s Day, I give you this collection of links about the 5×5 Method.
Designing Using the Method
The 5×5 Method
The original article outlining the method, as well as a number of great comments on other options. Read this first.
Critical Hits Podcast #18: Planning Your Campaign Using the 5×5 Method Seminar
A podcast recording of a seminar from last year’s SynDCon where I not only explain the method, but using audience suggestions, we build a campaign using it. [Read the rest of this article]
