Rowan Tree and Red Thread

Tonight's game included wingless griffins with the temperaments of cats, a library with a secret door, headless badger spirits intent on mischief, a caldera lined with ice, tobogganning down a sheet of said ice on the rib cage of a steer, mighty magics sufficient to turn an entire caldera of ice into a lake - incidentally freeing the trapped heart of a primal dragon entombed beneath the ice - and for one character at least, being bent over a chamomille bower and rogered by the king.

In short, a good night.

Wordle takes a bunch of text and makes a pretty word cloud from it. For example, the recent sessions of our new ftf role-playing game look like this:



Looking at the result I think Urhiteshub is going to have to make a come back. He's too much fun to dump after one adventure.

Try it yourself, with whatever text you have to hand.

My order for the slipcase edition of D&D 4e arrived just now. In a bloody great sack. Honest. I picked it up from the Help Desk at work where it was delivered and felt like a dungeon crawler already, sneaking out with a sack full of treasure.

Luckily the red dragon who lurks on the 4th floor of the Science Building wasn't around to burn my arse off.

Arr! Swag!

Or is it more plasticy?

I was up at chefted and mizkit's place yesterday to lend a hand moving a wardrobe up the stairs preparatory to their fleeing the bustling Cork metropolis for the greener charms of the midlands.

A lot of my time there was spent not lifting wardrobes but rather geeking with chefted over the new Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. It seems he not only has the new books and the introductory adventure, but also a huge (no, bigger than that. No. A bit bigger again) collection of D&D miniatures too. I learn this when he has less than two weeks left in town.

Sigh.

Reading iamnikchick's LJ I saw the sad news of Erick Wujick's death. It's been a bad year for the great names in our hobby, and he will be missed.

Erick's Amber Diceless Roleplaying provided me and my friends with possibly the best and most fondly remembered campaign of my gaming career. Thanks Erick.

Last night we finished up our Dungeons & Dragons campaign, after about 16 months of play. We offed the vampire mage at the heart of the tomb, hit 7th level and returned to the tavern for ale and whores.

We're wrapping the campaign now, giving PMcH the GM a rest as I take up the GM's reins again to try something new. We haven't really firmed up the setting yet, but I'm leaning towards a Diana Wynne Jones A Sudden Wild Magic style multiple worlds with the PCs all wizards and magic workers from different traditions and worlds. It's pretty undefined so far.

In other news I am, once again, feeling sick as a dog.

Warning: game geekery at its worst follows.

Last night's D&D game had some fun moments. First our party met a pair of Shadow Mastiffs who promptly scared the armoured pants off our fighter and sorcerer, leaving only Fidd the rogue and Grann the cleric to fight.

And fight they did. Aided by a Daylight spell the two smacked down the naughty doggies after much wacking.

Next the party encountered a group of 4 Xorn, whose bizarre appearance put the wind up the rogue something fierce. Nrel the sorcerer webbed the lot and proceeded to execute a text book Baleful Transposition and Cleric of Farhlanggan trick. Swapping Grann the cleric for the nearest Xorn, the group beat the living pebbles out of the Xorn while Grann, using his god-given power of Free Action ran out of the web unhindered. Rinse, repeat, exit 4 Xorn.

Best quote of the night:

Nrel on Grann's vital role in the Xorn swap: "Hah, a trained monkey could do this."

Grann, aggrieved: "Hey, a trained monkey of Farhlanggan, maybe."

We also have to thank the GM, whose lousy saving throws made all this possible.

In other news: still sick, but now armed with antibiotics to stop this spreading to my sinuses. Or so I hope.

This thread on RPGnet is really hot. That is all.

I've recently raised the idea of taking up the GM's mantle again for our Thursday night face-to-face group. We've been playing for about 15 months now in a D&D 3.5 game (as previously mentioned here, here and here) and are thinking of moving to something new. There's also the possibility of switching the current characters to True20 and carrying on with the campaign more or less as it is, only with me in the GM's chair. If we go with this, the players can expect to see not too subtle rehashes of some or all of the following ideas in play.

What follows then is more or less the email I sent to the group with the various campaign ideas I had knocking round my head at the time.

The Wolf Age - a sword and sorcery style game, probably set around the Mediterranean in a history that never was, before the Flood/Ice Age/Collapse of the Euro. Characters are freebooters, heroes and villains set to leave their mark on the world. System could be In A Wicked Age, which I'd like to try but doesn't bind players closely to a single PC each, Reign, the fantasy game of rulers and heroes based on the system we used for Godlike and the earliest games of Tudor Talents (the dice pools of d10s), or a modified Pendragon/Runequest/True20. This appeals to me from the world building perspective and the ease of using some of the traditional fantasy staples (dark sorcerers, tempting demons, deep jungles and ancient ruins, that sort of thing) but not having to worry about an established canon to kick against.

Search, Retrieve, Squirrel Away - a fairly light-hearted game of a Warehouse 23 extraction and retrieval team collecting various interesting things from the weird occult and conspiracy world. Allows for extra-terrestrials, inter-planar travel and alternate worlds, cools powers and all sorts of stuff. Can be played light for laughs, or dark with a threat to humanity and the Earth to be taken very seriously. The player characters are troubleshooters and finders, tracing down rumours and leads to get their hands on the choicest and most dangerous sorceries, dread spells and items, and magically charged knick-knacks from multiple realities. System to be decided.

City of Sorcerers - A city-based campaign, drawing on the Musketeers and other swashbuckling staples with flashy magic thrown on top. Competing schools of sorcery - Vancian fops and duelling rapiers - and the players are all involved with one, maybe two, of the schools, trying to get ahead and compete and all that. Roistering, duelling and the occasional outbreak of demons are all de rigeur. Inter-PC rivalries encouraged but not required.

Finding the Words - A game set in Le Guin's Earthsea (or something similar with the serial numbers filed off). Imagine a disaster of some sort at the Namer's Tower in Roke, the wizards school. A huge number of scrolls and records are lost or destroyed, and it is up to a team of young wizards to travel about the archipelago, dealing with dragons, warlords, and hermit mages and wise women to rediscover the missing true names. (This idea is lifted from some forum post I saw some time ago and I'm sorry I can't remember the original author.)

Nexus City Stories - I'm going to keep flogging this one until someone bites. Nexus City sprawls across the multi-verse, grabbing new neighbourhoods now and then and mixing them all up in the ultimate melting pot. PCs are likely fixers and finders, scouring the worlds connected to Nexus for valuable goods, rare spells, high-tech devices - anything they can sell for a profit. Plot could work round a local business or neighbourhood the PCs are trying to keep afloat, or following the adventures of four top-class finders selling their skills to the highest bidder. System would probably be Nexus by default, but I'd be open to other ideas.

Specifically systems I'd be keen to try out include:

A Wilderness of Mirrors - a spy caper game designed to keep the planning short and the drama/action high. Group would be a Mission Impossible-style team taking on a variety of missions designed to showcase each PC's speciality. Missions deliberately go pear shaped with entertaining consequences.

Everway - High fantasy world hopping adventurers and heroes, card-based mechanics and picture-inspired character generation system. Quite different from the usual sort of dice rolling thing.

Over the Edge - Played straight, a collision of conspiracies on a weird, weird Mediterranean island, using the simple d6 based system we used for the Mindy the Vampire Slayer game.

Truth and Justice - a super-heroes RPG that stays true to the comics. Simple system close to FUDGE, with a clever mechanic for connecting the fallout of fights with the PCs relationships and skills (Basically, damage comes off traits, so you can take a hit to your 'Loving Aunt May' relationship as easily as to you 'Tough As Battleship Armour' trait.). Played straight as street-level heroes or bigger scale as Justice League/Avengers style four colour world-defenders.

Given the recent unpleasantness with Jonathan Tweet's public pronouncements I'm less comfortable about Everway and Over the Edge, although they are both excellent games.

Initial discussions with the players have also suggested a Mage-like game, with multiple different systems of magic in the game world. I never really liked the Mage setting in the first and second editions. I know nothing of the reboot setting. Anyone out in LJ-land have any experience of the new Mage?

The responses from the players so far are a little mixed. One player quite likes the idea of the Nexus City Stories and/or the Search, Retrieve and Squirrel Away, another player really doesn't like Nexus City Stories and would probably shy away from an extended run of Search, Retrieve and Squirrel Away. I may have to take a leaf from brianrogers' book and have a vote. Time to go look at Wikipedia and look for the most zany proportional representation system I can find.

At Gameplaywright, Jeff Tidball discusses an interesting idea for a serial campaign. In short, one person sets up a single adventure for one GM and one player, finds another player and runs the adventure. Then the player sets up an adventure, using the same character and runs it for the erstwhile GM. Repeat until you find more friends, or get bored with it.

I like this idea, and wonder if anyone has actually tried it out. There are similarities to Vincent Baker's In A Wicked Age with the passing of GM responsibilities between one session and the next, and with round-robin storytelling. It strikes me as tailor-made for couples, as well as being appealing to someone like me who wants to try out a lot of different systems.

Last night we had our splendid friends, mizkit and chefted over for a light-hearted game of Cat, by John Wick. For those who don't know Cat is a game of playing cats, defenders of humanity, furred warriors against the fear-feasting Boggins, elegant victors of the Contest, and sadly distractable kitties partial to a bit of paper on a string.

In our game, Smoke and Damsel (known as Bandit and Bagheera to their 'owners') were new arrivals on the street, fond protectors of the Levitt family, and young Connie in particular. They had recently made friends with Hex (known as Alicanti to humans), a local street-cat, and had given themselves the task of finding a suitable playmate for Connie. The only obvious candidate on the street was Billy, 8 yo boy in the Austin's house next door to the Levitt's.

Problem was Billy had a Heavy. One of those creeping, binding Boggins who spin web upon web, sticking and clinging, pinning you down to the couch, ignoring the sunshine and the big world outside. Billy was stuck to the couch with his Playstation and barely knew Connie existed.

This fine morning the big humans were both at home ("It's a 'weekend'", said Smoke knowledgeably), with Mr Levitt swearing and banging in the garage and Mrs. Levitt unpacking boxes and testing smelly paint in the living room. "We're going out," Smoke and Damsel agreed and left through the cat flap.

In the garden they met Hex and decided the absence of a car next door meant it was a good time to go investigate the Austin's house. Looking in the front window they could see Billy stuck on the couch, playing his games again. To their catty eyes, the room was filled with cobwebs, hanging in great, dusty ropes from the ceiling and furniture. Damsel's keen eyes spotted a Boggin's nest high up in the corner of the room, with many malevolent spidery eyes glaring back at her from the knot of webs.

Hex went round the back to the kitchen window and waited for Billy to take a soda break. Eventually, the lethargic lad peeled himself off the couch and slouched into the kitchen to the fridge.

Up against the kitchen window Hex let out her loudest miaow. It was very loud. Even Billy in his Heavy stupor couldn't ignore that and turned, startled, to the window. Hex did a little dance of 'I'm so pretty' and persuaded him to open the window to say hello. She hopped down on the kitchen floor and distracted Billy while the other two slipped into the house.

Billy's distraction didn't last long. After patting Hex on the head he sloped off to the living room again, back to his couch. Damsel, something of a fraidy cat, gingerly followed him into the living room, only to be surprised by a huge spider dropping on her from above the door. She managed to spring away on her powerful legs (aided by her general nervous disposition) and left sharpish, letting Hex bound past her and onto the Boggin, spitting and clawing.

Hex's first attack was a good one, and she got her fangs into the horrid spider and bit deep. Smoke sprinted along the hall and round through the other door to the living room to charge the Boggin from the rear. Tag-team kitty mayhem ensued, with Smoke and Hex taking turns to bite and claw at the spider-thing. It was not without its own fangs, however and chewed Hex badly on the face.

As the howling rose, Damsel reasserted her cat pride and, spying the Boggin's offspring stirring from the nest, sprang into action. With a wall of death approach to the furniture, and a boost of magic from her mighty tail, she made a circuit of the room and propelled herself off the top of the couch into the air and across the whole room to land smack in the middle of the nest, clawing and biting like the champions of old. The nest shredded, the little Boggins faded and melted under her attack.

Back on the ground, Billy finally noticing the racket, turned to see the two cats, Hex and Smoke, combine their efforts in a flurry of cat fury, apparently fighting each other, but not actually touching one another.

They did more than touch the spider Boggin, however. Cut and bleeding an oily dream substance, it succumbed to the relentless attacks and collapsed, rapidly fading from the world with only a horrible stink to testify to its presence.

Victorious the cats all had a quick clean. Damsel then went to get Connie who was doodling outside her house. The other two lured Billy outside with clever food begging antics. Smoke, who was something of an escape artist, nipped behind Billy and deftly pulled the door shut behind him.

"Aww! I'm locked out!" cried Billy anxiously.

But soon he was distracted. Connie, cajoled by Damsel, leaned over the fence and shyly said hello. "I've got some chalk," she said, "wanna share?"

We agreed that the final shot, if it were a film/TV show, would show the two kids drawing on the sidewalk and, as the camera pulls out, the drawing resolves into a chalk drawing of three cats in mortal battle with a huge spider.

The three heroes sat on the fence and felt quite pleased with themselves, the natural state for any self-respecting cat, I think.

brianrogers here asks us to reminisce about our first encounters with role-playing and/or D&D, in tribute to the late Gary Gygax.

Unlike many gamers of my vintage I suspect, I didn't find gaming through D&D, at least not at first. We'd just moved over to Paris from Dublin as my father's job took him to the Irish Embassy there after a spell at home (1978-82 in Dublin). This meant I was taken out of secondary school at home after the 1st year and ended up in an American-style high school 9th grade in St. Cloud, outside Paris. It was all a bit confusing and all I really remember of my first year at school was loneliness, reading books at lot during breaks and finally discovering friends through gaming either late in '82 or early in '83.

My very first exposure to role-playing games, I think, was in a games shop in a shopping arcade (remember them?) off the Champs Elysees in Paris sometime in late 1982, where I saw, and wheedled my parents into buying, SPI's Dragonquest. Shortly afterwards I also bought Universe, also from SPI, and was hooked. Basic D&D followed within the month, and through that I met the friends who saw me through high school: Sean Crowell, Phil and Sean O'Connor and later Phil and Matt Shedlick.

We played D&D and Runequest, dipping our toes in lots of other games in the glorious mid-80s explosion of games, but always coming back to our two old favourites. I was GM for the most part, and don't really have any 'favourite PC' stories of my own to relate, though I remember the exploits of many of the PCs with fondness. It's something like 25 years since those early games, and I don't know if I'll ever capture the thrill and excitement of them in role-playing again. I've discovered other aspects of the hobby that appeal to me, and other ways of role-playing that never occurred to me all those years ago, but those early experiences set me on a path I've happily trod ever since.

Like brianrogers said: "My job is what pays me. Gaming is what I do."

Last Thursday we had the second session of our brief Vampire Slayer in 1985 Arkham game using Over the Edge rules. It was something of a rushed affair, as I wanted to get some sort of resolution this session and not leave things hanging when we switched back to our regular D&D game the following week.

This meant that after the first session's set-up of the odd love/hate polygon between the various protagonists, this session the PCs got stuck straight into fighting baddies and disturbing sacrificial rituals.

Kevin (Pete's character) hung out at the university for a while, and figured out something was up between Gary and Ramona, who left the LARP/SCA practice session in a bit of a state. Vanessa the vampire tried to put the teeth moves on Kevin when he followed Gary and Ramona, but came a cropper when Mindy the Vampire Slayer and Jac the odd fae showed up. Vanessa's appearance did let Gary get away with Ramona and into the steam tunnels for a bit of good old fashioned human sacrifice, but luckily for Michelle (and Ramona who was backup sacrifice of choice) Mindy and her Scoobies tracked them down and disrupted the ceremony. Mid-fight one of the gargoyles turned up to try and retrieve the stolen hand of its partner (a gargoyle's hand being an important part of the ritual). Mindy was only too glad to toss him the missing hand and avoid going toe-to-toe with a big rocky bruiser.

She made the right choice, unlike Abraham, the cult leader who attempted to flee only to be brought down with a cross-bow bolt from Kevin. It's funny the things an exorcist keeps in his gym bag. With his leg injured, Abraham was just too slow to get out of the gargoyle's way and was thrown hard against the wall of the steam tunnel. Kevin helped stabilise him until trained help arrived, and the emergency response medics couldn't understand how a guy could be hit by a train in the middle of a college campus.

So we wrapped with the sacrifice averted, but a question mark over Vanessa's fellow vampire and Ethan Rayne's role in all the fun. Overall it was okay as a filler, but I should have kept the relationship map simpler and got the PCs stuck into it right at the beginning of the first session, and worried about filling in the background as we went along.

Well...

Gary loves Ramona. Ramona loves Henry. Henry loves Michelle. Michelle loves Abraham. Abraham loves Lului Urarti. Lului Urarti loves sacrificial victims.

Doug hates Dieter. Dieter hates Vanessa. Vanessa hates Ramona. Ramona hates Michelle. Michelle hates Henry. Henry hates Abraham. Abraham hates Slate. Slate hates Lului Urarti. Lului Urarti hates waiting for sacrificial victims.

It's all pretty much a normal day for Mindy the Vampire Slayer.

Our gaming group has started a brief Buffy-style game set in Arkham in 1985, using Over the Edge rules and a large dose of the seat of my pants, and came up with their very own Scoobies and Slayer.

Mindy the Vampire Slayer, brainy college girl studying German and Japanese at the Arkham School of Modern Languages. She's smart, trusts her instincts and has a great singing voice

Jack, burnt-out hippy fairie, singer-songwriter known round Arkham's coffee shops and head shops. Often mistaken for a vampire (souless, avoids churches and religious paraphenalia).

Kevin O'Riordan, unorthodox religious scholar, library assistant and barista at Witches' Brew, the local coffee shop where it all happens. A sympathetic ear to Miskatonic U. students and staff alike.

Damn but there are a lot of vampires and other demons with shoulder pads, shiny suits and big hair in Arkham.

We're in a long-running, well slow-moving, D&D campaign, currently working our way through The Forge of Fury. To be honest the PCs are a bit overpowered for the adventure and it hasn't been too difficult for the most part (we'll leave one irritating troglodyte sorcerer out the reckoning however) but that all changed last night.

We were lucky with an Allip, my cleric Grann turned the incorporeal bugger before it had the chance to suck wisdom from our crew. Next however we met a lovely, raven-haired prisoner, languishing in the dungeon and oh so grateful for our help in rescuing her.

A bloody succubus! I know I said we were overpowered for the level of the dungeon but I mean, really. Luckily for us a combination of dysfunctional wheedling at the GM and the threat of having to use the grappling rules save our sorcerer Nrel from a negative level. I think it worked in play too, as for all his 16 Charisma Nrel has a face only his mother would kiss and we've already established she was a half-draconic crossbreed with odd tastes in men.

Last night we had a sub-quorum but nonetheless entertaining session of daftnewt's campaign of Firefly fun and frolics using the Dogs in the Vineyard mechanics.

We managed after some negotiation and a little stunt flying to get our lovely vessel, The Easy Virtue, down onto the planet of Larine[1]. We've probably made enemies of both sides of idiots in the local brushfire war by not landing at their landing pad, but after one of them chucked a missile at us it's hard to worry about the social niceties of the situation.

My favourite thing so far is Archie Yip, the lecherous, stupid mechanic on board who lied to the crew, attracted a bounty hunter on board, and generally got up everyone's nose. Whenever he speaks up everyone, and I mean everyone, shouts 'Shut up Archie!'

[1] Larine, known to one and all through the 'Verse as Latrine, famous for exporting mud. I'm not seeing profit.

Mongoose have an open playtest document of their new Traveller rules available. (Thanks to mytholder for the pointer.)

Following on from the last post, I looked at puritybrown's blog and spotted this.
Dara O Briain faces a tough gig in the form of an audience of LARPers (part two, part three).

Dara joins our tribe, if only for a weekend. Love the ears.

Just this evening I met up with an old school friend whom I haven’t seen since a holiday in Canada back in 1988 (that's nearly 20 years ago for those of you counting), and whom I haven’t seen regularly since I graduated from high school in 1986. He’s now working in Leamington Spa and holidaying in Ireland for a couple of weeks with his girlfriend. It was great to see him and chat again after all this time, and pleasantly nostalgic to share old war stories from our gaming youth. He’s living the dream and now works with a computer games company designing games for a living.

I'm feeling all warm in the glow of role-playing memories from the distant past. The couple of pints of Guinness help too, I guess.

Last night's roleplaying was off as Pete was sick with food poisoning. alaimacerc came along to boardgame anyway, and we played a two-hander of San Juan. We chatted a lot about D&D, feats and prestige classes in particular. I'm surprised by just how much alaimacerc has taken to the fiddling and tweaking of D&D, and how much all of the players in the group have warmed to the "JUST HIT IT" school of role-playing. I've obviously been wasting my time with characterization (shut up, my NPCs do have personalities, honest!) and plot.

We did manage to play the card game too. I think I screwed myself right from the outset by building a Tower just because it was the only feasible build I had in hand. It did pay off, but much later. I probably would have better served by waiting a build turn and trying to secure a second production building then. Ah well, hindsight is a lot sharper than my fuzzy real-time vision. I did pick up a City Hall late on that was an easy 8 points.

End score was 40 to alaimacerc, 35 to me, and he had the Palace and the Guild Hall for a bonus of 18 points. The Guild Hall was his last build too, so it was pretty tight in the finish.

Good game, and we more or less decided that Versatile Spellcaster is the feat for Nrel, alaimacerc's sorcerer. Now all we have to do is figure out what prestige classes my cleric and sammywol's rogue should be working towards.

and all we got was this potion of Dog's Breath. Sorry, Flame Breath.

( Cut for spoilers for The Sunken Citadel )

Who knows where our adventures will take us next?

Thanks to mytholder for pointing me at geek-archaeology, a series of articles by Robert MacDougall on the history and pre-history of the gaming hobby. I particularly like the most recent post, which draws together the RAND corporation, war games and The Compleat Strategyst: Being A Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy by John D. Williams (a book I've read and enjoyed), as the fertile environment in which the earliest role-playing experiments began.

My favourite bit from the article:

After a few years, the RANDies moved away from gaming, finding it too time-consuming and intense. “Even short periods of game activity elicit a considerable drain on intellectual capital and resources,” read one 1956 report–which is code, judging from my own experience, for “eventually, the RAND analysts got girlfriends.”

It was ever thus.

Prompted by eyebeams' tribute to his gaming group, here's our motley crew from one of the last sessions we had where we were all in the same place. The mug of tea in the foreground doesn't actually play but has a crucial role in our sessions nonetheless. From the left it's Alex, Marie, me, Sam and Pete.

From Gamers

The four mighty Dungeon Squad heroes finished their quest for wagon wheels last night. ( Down the mines again... )

And blinking in the light, the four exited the abandoned dwarven mine victorious, with the four wheels they needed to get the caravan back on the road. Now it was time for ale and whores!

Your 1920's Name is:

Pierce Archibald

Feared throughout the underworld, Pierce Archibald the Piebald Assassin is a dapper gentleman with a natty line in black and white pinstripe suits, perfectly tailored so that the pistols he carries holstered under each arm don't spoil the line of his clothes.

Bang, bang, and then a gimlet and cards at the club.

I said recently that our gaming group's current run with Dungeon Squad would probably wrap up this session, as the bold adventurers push on into the depths of the dwarven mine to recover the stolen wheels from their caravan. Alas no, it was not so. Last night's session was almost entirely taken up with one big fight between our heroes and the goblin chief and his elite(-ish) guard.

( Adventuring behind the cut... )

So the group only cleared out a single room this week, but took out the goblin chief and the rest of his minions. The question now is: where are the remaining two wheels? And what is that eerie wind that blows along the branch of the corridor they haven't explored yet? And how did P'ing, the 1/16th Orc warrior woman ever get that dwarven helm to fit on her head?

Our gaming group has come to the end of a long-running campaign after about four years of play. We wrapped our Tudor Talents game, one of Elizabethan super-spies and superheroes. I hesitate to call the PCs superheroes, as they were definitely not in the heroic mould. Anyway, the campaign wrapped with fighting off not one but two alien invasions and beginning a rapprochement between England and Spain to pave the way for a less volatile 17th Century Europe.

So with that campaign finished we needed something to play last Thursday night, and I pitched a short one-shot game of Dungeon Squad, a game by Jason Morningstar that is available from 1000 monkeys, 1000 typewriters, an excellent collection of free RPGs.

Dungeon Squad is a really simple, easy to learn, rule set designed to provide a dungeon crawl experience for young players without the complexity of Dungeons & Dragons. It was ideally suited to a group looking for a quick game of dungeon delving and bashing things. This was, I believe, sammywol's first dungeon crawl of any sort.

The initial set-up involved the four players, Sam, Pete, Marie and Alex, creating characters. We ended up with

• Leaky the Snurker - Sam's character is primarily an Explorer, which is a polite way of saying she's a Rogue. Which is itself a polite way of saying Leaky's a thief. None of this modern politically correct class names for us.


• Dan - Pete's character is the combat magic user. He's primarily a lightning bolt chucker, with a sideline in sneaking about.


• P'ing - Marie's character is essentially big on thews. She's got a sword called Mr. Sticky, and some skill in healing, which proved useful later on.


• B'ert - Alex's character is also a magic user but one focused on defensive and buffing spells. He's not bad with a sword either.

( Their adventures are recounted behind the cut... )

I was pretty happy with the session. The rules are dead simple but capture much of the fun and rewards of ingenuity that early dungeon crawls provided, the two butt kickers in the group got to kick butt, but all the while all the players got to chew the scenery and pitch in with the problem solving. It was easy to come up with a scenario. I trawled the 'net for some maps, wrote a couple of pages of notes, mostly brief stats for the goblins and their dispositions with the mine, and away we went. The rules themselves are silent on the matter of scenario design, but in 4 pages (plus a page for a character sheet) what could you expect. These are clearly aimed new players, but with a more experienced GM to get things together.

Dungeon Squad is an excellent little game from Jason Morningstar, the author of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach and Drowning and Falling, and regular podcaster with the Durham 3, which I also highly recommend.

This crawl will probably last another session, but after that I'll be looking for another short-run game. Any ideas from the peanut gallery?

Just a pointer to this place, GameCraft, a new role-playing forum specifically aimed at the craft of role-playing, techniques and approaches, and discussion of same. It's put together by Levi Kornelsen, a thoughtful gamer actively working to improve his craft, and helping others do the same.

GameCraft is young, but it's growing rapidly and seems to be attracting an impressive quality of posters and discussion. Recommended.

Rumsfeld is out. The Dems are in. I had Peking duck for dinner. I'm getting into a new PBEM rpg. It's a pretty good day, so far.

On RPG.net Paka has been asking about long-term campaigns.

( RPG campaign discussion follows )

Okay, all my gaming group have to try this one!

You scored as Storyteller. You're more inclined toward the role playing side of the equation and less interested in numbers or experience points. You're quick to compromise if you can help move the story forward, and get bored when the game slows down for a long planning session. You want to play out a story that moves like it's orchestrated by a skilled novelist or film director. </td> Storyteller 75% Tactician 67% Method Actor 67% Butt-Kicker 50% Power Gamer 50% Specialist 50% Casual Gamer 42% Law's Game Style created with QuizFarm.com

Sam and I watched "I Heart Huckabees" last night. We came away highly entertained and bemused. It's rather hard to explain the film, as it's a surreal exercise in existential angst, the interconnectedness of things and "cruelty, manipulation, meaninglessness". Suffice to say we laughed and boggled as we watched.

During the credits I pitched an idea for a "I Heart Huckabees" role-playing game. I had this image:

Group of players, round a table. Character sheets are scattered about, some blank, some covered in closely written, cribbed handwriting.

Player One: What's the project for today?

Player Two: We're looking at the links between the petrochem business, big pharma and the works of Albert Camus.

Player One: Oh, yeah. We'll start at the local ice hockey rink then?

Player Two: Damn straight!

exeunt omnes

On Wednesday night we had our usual session of Tudor Talents, a superheroes and spies in Elizabethan England game, played with variant d12 HeroQuest rules. This time I proposed a scene framing technique lifted primarily from Primetime Adventures, where each player, including the GM, takes turns to set the scene. We frame each scene with a location or setting, the characters present, and, most crucially, the agenda or goal of scene, really the reason for having that scene.

I think it worked reasonably well. We'll all need a bit of practice to get the hang of it, but I felt that the tighter scene framing, particularly making explicit what the scene was attempting to achieve, helped keep the game moving, avoiding a lot of the general wandering and waffling that we're prone to as a group. I'll suggest it again next week and see if we can improve with practice.

Our group is playing in in a variant HeroQuest game involving Elizabethan super-spies and superhumans in the 1580s, as the newly emerged 'gifted' begin to change the shape of Europe (as mentioned in an earlier post).

( Brief session write-up )

The players all seem to be expressing interest in expanding their characters' powers and range of abilities, which suggests that they're interested enough in the game to be thinking of future play. This lifts my spirits, but leaves me having to figure out what difficulties to throw their way next. I'm sure they'll come up with a few choice ones of their own, though, so I'm not too worried.

Got this from mind_of_richard, and I'm delighted that it accurately predicted my favourite die.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

If I were a small polyhedral made from plastic, the d12 is what I'd be.

This is primarily aimed at the players in my Elizabethan Superspies role-playing game. We're using a variant of the HeroQuest rules, thought up by Alex Ferguson (aka alaimacerc). I've wondered about going a step further and making it entirely 'roll and add' rather than the 'roll under' system used in the published rules and Alex's variant.

Conversion

You have a rating in each ability on your character sheet. These ratings can run from 1 whatever, the higher the better. To convert current ratings multiply the number of masteries by 10 and add the target number you currently have. E.g. You have ‘Impressive Whining’ at 5M. That’s 10 x 1 mastery plus 5 = 15. If we were still using the basic rules each mastery would be worth 20 points.

Resolution

Roll d12 and add your ability and compare with the total rolled by the opponent, or natural resistance (also d12 + ability). If you roll an ‘11’, roll again and add 10 to the result. Repeat as necessary. If you roll a ‘12’, roll again and subtract 10 from the result. Repeat as necessary.

The higher roll wins. Beat the opposition by ≤ 10 points, marginal victory; ≤ 20 points, minor victory; ≤ 30 points, major victory; greater than 30 points, complete victory.

Improving abilities is as before. I think we're using something like: 1 hero point to increase an ability by 1 point. 2 hero points to add a new sub-power to one of your powers, and 6 hero points to add a completely new power.

Our role-playing group got together for another session last night. We're in the middle of a long-running campaign based on the misadventures of a group of superpowered spies working for Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's spymaster and member of the Privy Council. It's set a few years before the Spanish Armada, and involves a lot of unsavory work being carried out by the PCs in the name of the Queen and the security of the realm.

Currently the PCs are embroiled in a meandering plot revolving round the actions of a necromancer who's attacked and destroyed the Ghost Watch, a group of spirits recruited by one of the PCs (himself a ghost) to defend the grounds of Hampton Court and the person of the Queen when she's in residence. This fellow has also slain two clairvoyants working for the spy ring the PCs are involved with, and attacked an Italian sorcerer the PCs hired to track down the necromancer.

This whole storyline seems to have gone on too long to me, but I'm finding it difficult to reach a satisfying conclusion. There are certain facts established by the play so far that make it difficult to wrap things up with a big fight (the traditional ending for many a long-running baddie in RPGs), as the fellow is damnably hard to hurt, or even lay hands on. There are some crucial links to another villain, who's been lurking in the background for ages, that I thought were well flagged but don't seem to have registered with the players. I'm afraid I've made the players gun-shy, as their early encounters with him were threatening and dangerous, so now they tend to flee whenever he makes an appearance. I like to let the players' preferences lead me as a GM; I try to encourage them to narrate, to suggest and to direct things, but for this storyline at least, they've ended up being almost entirely reactive. What do I need to do to shake them into action, I wonder?

Working from some sort of resource management mechanic (like MURPG or Nobilis, or even D&D 3.x) we'd have some central resource that benefits everyone, like a pool of hero points, or whatever, that is available to all, but does not recover from the expenditure or does so only slowly. This leads to the Tragedy of the Commons, and the dilemma of a common resource being exhausted by the short-sightedness of those who benefit from it. Also raises question of “Who Watches the Watchmen”, if some sort of policing structure is created to insure the longevity of the scarce resource. I could see plenty of player inter-play arising from the negotiation over the use of those points.

This is, however, a mechanic (or the germ of one) in search of a game. I'm not sure if the players' negotiations could be tied back to anything specific in the game world. That is, what is it to the PCs when the players break to discuss the use of the common resource. Metagame mechanics like hero points have their appeal but they are always intrusive to some degree. The player has to stop and think about using them, breaking from character as they do so.

If you can put up with hero point mechanics, you could tie particular game-roles or plot related events to specific hero points from the pool. e.g. if you had a pool of stones to represent communal HP, most could be black, but one or two could be white, or red, or green. The white ones might mean that PC gets the spotlight for a subplot next session, the red one means the player gets a life/death choice to make (not necessarily for their PC), the green one allows the player to create a completely new campaign element (character, setting, plot twist, etc.). I'm all in favour of getting the players to do the plot work. If only I could encourage more of it with my current group.