Lasers & Feelings & Game Night

Last week my Open RPG Night played Lasers & Feelings (PDF Warning), the latest single page RPG from John Harper/One Seven Design. It's a swashbuckling, Star-Trek-esque game inspired by a song by The Doubleclicks. As is usual for one of Harper's games, it is an RPG boiled down to only the most necessary elements.

I became aware of the game the day before and I knew that it would be perfect for our open nights. I wasn't expecting to play the game so soon after learning about it, but when several of the players called for a space opera game I knew what had to happen.

The game really is very simple. You make a character by combining two archetypes described as Style and Job and then you choose a number between 2 and 5. How high or low that number is determines whether you are better at Lasers or Feelings and all tests are handled by trying to roll above or below the number. Direct hits allow players to ask questions about the world and get true answers. There are a few other wrinkles, but I'll let you read about those yourself rather that type up the whole game here.

Space Pirates - Build - Ancient Space Ruin - Destroy a Solar System

One thing that I always love to see included in micro games like this is a quick and dirty way for a GM to generate an adventure. L&F has that in spades and in just a few rolls I had generated the scenario bolded above. What does it mean? For the most part that is left up to you, but it's amazing how just a few words can provide enough to jumpstart a few hours of role playing.

Our night of gaming went like this:

• Character creation and rules explanation - 5 minutes
• Character introductions - 10-20 minutes
• First act: in which the crew discovers the space pirates - 30 minutes
• Second act: in which the crew infiltrates the space pirates - 40 minutes
• Third act - in which the crew sabotages and escapes the space pirates - 40 minutes
• Epilogue - in which a planet is accidentally imploded - 10 minutes
• Chatting about the game - 30 minutes

All said, a pretty good time.

Oh, what's that? You want to know how a planet was accidentally imploded?

Since you asked...

The space pirates were trying to restore a piece of ancient, yet advanced, technology on a forgotten desert planet. This piece of technology was capable of collapsing entire solar systems and when the heroic crew learned what its purpose was they tried to shut it down. Unfortunately nearly all of them, save a single psychotic doctor, had specialized in Feelings. They were incapable of saving the day by turning off the machine or subtly sabotaging it. No, instead they drove a vehicle into its power core. They escaped the planet just in time to avoid being destroyed with it. Why did it implode? I don't know. The workings of super-advanced ancient technology is beyond me.

A basic character sheet

While L&F is as simple an RPG as you are going to find, I am always looking for ways to speed things along on our open RPG nights. Prior to game night I invested a little time in laying out a basic character sheet for the players. I'd have also liked to do one for the spaceship, but in the end I didn't have enough time to do so. If I whip out L&F again I may do a ship sheet to add to the package.

click image for download and second page

Categories: Free RPG, John Harper, Lasers and Feelings, Open RPG Night, Science Fiction, session report

No good deed goes unpunished.

I recently mentioned how I had started an Open RPG Night in my city and that each week a random assortment of gamers assemble to play an arbitrarily chosen game. Last week that game was Dungeon World and this week a group of (mostly) different people chose to play Apocalypse World.

This time around I wasn't in the GM's seat and I got to flex my player muscles for the first time in, oh, about six months. And boy did I ever flex those muscles. In less than ten minutes I had put together a chopper named Domino, a man that was best described as a greasy, overweight "leatherdaddy". What can I say? There's just something about Apocalypse World that makes me want to play a sadistic gang leader.

While I was busy bringing Domino to life, the GM had whipped up a zombie apocalypse scenario and the other two players had finished making their Battlebabe (Jayed) and Brainer (Sin). The other two players didn't have a clue how nasty a character Domino would turn out to be. For that matter, neither did I.

Domino and Jayed got off to a bad start before the game even began, with Jayed ending up with some Hx (history) with Domino that had placed them at odds in the past. Domino has a good memory and like any gang leader, he holds grudges. Jayed, on the other hand, was a wasteland hero. You know, the kind of guy that helps people out and has the everyone's best interests in mind. The kind of guy whose naivety gets someone killed. Sin, well what can you say about a Brainer? Domino and Jayed knew nothing about him and he knew everything about us.

Things started rolling with Jayed returning to town after having found a farm, a farm riddled with undead. Where there is a farm there is a food and Sunset Mall, our little community, was desperately in need of food. So where does Jayed turn to get the firepower he needs to clear out those zombies? None other than yours truly, violent gang leader and all around bastard. Domino bargained hard, but Jayed was eventually able to convince him to lend his muscle to cleaning out the farm for a sizable portion of the food. Domino fully intended to keep the farm for himself once he and his gang had occupied it, but Jayed didn't need to know that.

Come the next day things got bloody. Domino had a hard time convincing his gang to travel to the farm and leave their motorcycles behind while they moved through rough terrain. He had to crack a few heads and even kill one rebellious upstart before the gang started moving. From there it went smoothly until the gang got to the farm and Jayed decided he knew better than Domino and started issuing orders to the gang. Domino told him to piss off and Jayed ran off to help Sin.

Sin's story was happening alongside everything else. He was nearly always there, hidden and watching and someone had hired him to dive into a specific zombie's brain to find out the location of their child. That zombie was on the farm and when Jayed found him he was grappling with that zombie and about to go down. Ever the hero, Jayed jumped into save his life. Unfortunately there were too many zombies for the two of them to fight and Jayed had to call for backup. Domino heard the call, walked in, blew the zombies apart with his shotgun and walked away to continue overseeing the destruction.

Once the zombies had been cleared out the gang grabbed what food they could and wanted to head back to Sunset Mall. The farm was away from any roads and the gang wanted no part in actually controlling the farm so Domino was willing to let the farm go. Jayed challenged his leadership a few more times, demanding that they leave guards and build defenses. Neither was done and instead Domino started plotting on what to do with Jayed, who had challenged his authority one too many times.

That night Domino visited Sin and convinced him to use his Brainer powers to walk Jayed right into a trap. Sin agreed, perhaps too eagerly, and a deal was struck. The following morning Jayed was captured and beaten within an inch of his life. He put up a good fight, but on one man is no match for fifteen no matter how tough he is. The game ended with Domino dumping Jayed on the outskirts of Sunset Mall and telling him never to return.

Observations

• I was worried that playing an aggressive character like Domino could ruin the night; however, the group I played with made it work and there were no hurt feelings. I think it helped that I didn't push the inter-character conflict until the end of the session so that it didn't distract from the other events.
• Apocalypse World was a hit with the two players that had never tried anything beyond D&D. This doesn't surprise me, but it is always nice to see players open up to something unfamiliar.
• Everyone wanted to play AW again and with the same characters. Jayed's player wanted an opportunity to get  his revenge, so I think we will run AW again in the near future with myself as GM and Domino as an NPC villain.

Categories: Apocalypse World, Open RPG Night, session report

Experimenting With Wild Magic in Dungeon World

Last session we playtested a class that I have been working on for Dungeon World, the Wild Mage. A friend from out of town is taking on the role for a couple of weeks while he is visiting and he ran with the idea. Without further preamble, here are the wild magic highlights from the session.

Capturing Mist

The first major use of wild magic in the game came early on. The adventurers were investigating a mysterious blue mist that originated from a well in the centre of town. The poking and proddings of a certain halfling caused an explosive release of the mist to blast out of the well and start to cloud over the town.

In response to the outbreak of mist Enkadash the Wild Mage used his Arcane Conduit move, which works similarly to a Wizard's ritual only it results in unpredictable drawbacks and twisted results. Enkadash managed to use his magic to gather up and confine the mist in a sphere, but in the process was hideously transformed into an orc and magnetized. This ultimately lead to some hilarious role play between Enkadash and Joln the Cleric where they argued about how magic was supposed to work.

Inadvertent Gate

Joln is a cleric of The Nameless One, a mysterious deity that collects secrets. All of The Nameless One's listeners (clerics) carry a glass orb that they use to collect information for their god and Joln couldn't pass up a chance to learn about Enkadash's unusual magic. He had Joln channel his magic into the orb, but the magic surged and proved much more powerful than expected. So powerful, in fact, that it expanded the link to The Nameless One into a full blown gate into the god's domain!

The Nameless One's power leaked from the portal and townsfolk were called to it like rats to the pied piper to spill their secrets. The group tried to keep townsfolk away for as long as possible, but it was a losing battle. Joln, either out of heroism or spiritual curiosity, stepped through the gate with the orb and closed the link between the material world and The Nameless One's domain. This was a completely unexpected turn of events, but I think it will lead to a very interesting adventure in the near future. Unfortuantely, it also means that the group is without a proper cleric for the time being. Joln's player has taken control of a follower for the time being.

Light Surge

Wild Magic surged once again as the group explored a dungeon accessed from the town's well. This time it happened when Enkadash tried to cast a simple light spell and it instead summoned an unseen servant. The players just handed a torch to the servant, so it all worked out more or less the same.

Boom, Headshot!

In a battle with some subterannean zombies Enkadash unleashed his Arcane Conduit again. A pulse of energy blasted out from his person and exploded the head of every zombie in the room. The drawback this time? Enkadash became blind to everything except magical energy. This proved to be only a minor inconvenciece as he was able to use the unseen servant as a guide through the rest of the dungeon.

Wild Mage Isn't Ready Yet

I need to weaken the Arcane Conduit move. At this point the drawbacks are not making it the risky, last resort choice that I had intended it to be. The Wizard's Ritual is balanced by allowing the GM to place restrictions on it. Arcane Conduit as currently written can be used whenever the Wild Mage would like and is balanced only by drawbacks. I think I will need to make Arcane Conduit less reliable even on a 10+ result by giving the GM license to twist results in the same manner as a genie would twist a wish; the trick is getting the wording right. I also need to play around with the drawbacks, there isn't any rhyme or reason to them at this point.

Categories: Dungeon World, fantasy, Magic, session report, Wild Magic

Dungeon World - Session 4

This week we added a new player. He will be taking on the role of a stoic dwarven fighter and already has a rivalry with the halfling fighter and some trouble brewing with the bard. An interesting piece of trivia for our new player, he's a professional DM. I don't know how well he does because, well, I was too afraid to ask. I was a bit worried he would be snobby and critical of my skills, but he either kept it to himself or had a good time. I'm going to go with the second one if it is all the same to you.

Planning at The Sideways Stallion

The game began, as these things often do, with all of the PCs sitting around a table at The Sideways Stallion discussing where they would go now that they had finished their business in Sandover. The group argued for a little while before deciding that their destination would be Lambatar, a large city to the north. Their reasons for heading to Lambatar were twofold: a rumour of a beast terrorizing the countryside and an unlabled treasure map they had looted from the ruins might have something to do with lost vaults of treasure in the region. Very few adventurers can resist the lure of riches and fame and so the decision was made.

Preparation for their perilous journey (as Dungeon World puts it) took a few days and lead to the party putting the word out that they were hiring a quartermaster to look after their animals and traveling supplies. While there were a few interested parties, the group couldn't agree on who to hire and were just about to give up when none other than Jaim Sandover (Lord Sandover's youngest son) approached them in secret. Jaim wanted to join on as a way to escape his father and the dry future planned for him. After a brief argument the group decided to bring him on, a choice that I will surely exploit sometime in the near future. The next day the party sallied forth, heading north through hills, scrub and later into the rocky wasteland that surrounds Lambatar.

Bard Song: The Beast of Lambatar

I have this habit as a GM that whenever a player declares that they are singing a song, telling a bawdy joke or otherwise performing where I put them on the spot and ask them what song they are singing or what the joke is about. So, when the Bard declared he was singing while they traveled north, you can be sure that I asked what song he sang. His answer? The Beast of Lambatar. The song was a bawdy tale that reimagines the mythical beast that terrorizes the city as a kind of unstoppable Casanova.

Elf Facts

Another habit I have as a GM is answer player's questions about lore with questions. This came up for the first time in our Dungeon World campaign during this session when a player asked if elves had a better sense of smell than humans. My answer? You tell me, you're the elf!

I like to let players influence game lore as we go and this is a good example of one of the ways I do it. From this point on in our game elves will all have an excellent sense of smell instead of infravision.

Justice, Fire & Disagreement

Eventually the road to Lambatar hit a fork and the players, they took the road less traveled. Unfortunately, the road less traveled lead straight into the waiting ambush of the notorious highwayman The Scorpion.

The Scorpion opened with the classic line, "Your money or your lives." The party, however, was having none of that and made short work of his petty band of thugs. They evaded his nets, his poisoned arrows and even his six bandits. The Dwarf and Halfling fighters worked together to take down the majority of the thugs, but the Cleric stole the show when he clubbed a thug to death using his crystal orb/holy symbol.

When the dust cleared three bandits had broken and run for the hills only to be stopped with the Bard used his handy new Amulet of Rhissel to summon a wall of flame. Things then took a turn for the worse as the Dwarf and the Bard argued about what to do with the remaining bandits. The Bard wanted to give them Rhissel's justice and have them walk through fire to purge them of their crimes. The Dwarf thought that was violence and not justice and to prove his point he walked through the flames and feigned death. The Bard was unfazed and promplty pushed the bandits after him. One died, while the others suffered burns and were healed by bard song and then sent on their way with Rhissel's pardon. Something tells me this won't be the last time that the Dwarf and Bard butt heads.

The Maiden in the Cliff

A few uneventful days of travel later and the party was now working their way through the wasteland proper. Just when they were about to die of boredom they stumbled across a mysterious dwarven woman carved into a rocky cliff. The carving took up nearly the entire cliff and could be described as gigantic. This lead us to a quick round of...

Dwarf Facts

• Dwarves live beneath the rocky desert that makes up the Lambatar region.
• Dwarves have a patriarchal society.
• Female dwarves have beards, but only as maidens. Upon marriage they begin shaving and their husband wears a matrimonial beard clasp. (That's how they knew the carving was of a dwarven maiden.)
• Dwarves have many secret societies.
• Dwarves build funeral statues.
• Dwarves have darkvision.

Desecrating a Secret Dwarven Tomb

Further inspection of the cliff maiden resulted in discovery of a secret entrance, a place wear one could wade through the stone as if it were a kind of thick water. The group found that they could "swim" inside of the cliff and when they headed down they landed in a pitch black chamber. It was a good thing we established earlier that dwarves can see in the dark!

Inside the chamber were eight stone tablets with dwarven writing on them. The party tried to take them from the chamber, but found that as soon as they were exposed to sunlight that they started to turn to dust. They quickly returned them to the dark and the dwarf translated a heartbreaking tale of forbidden love and the death of an unlucky dwarf's wife-to-be. The Cleric and the Dwarf new from clues in the tale and the secret entrance that this place must have been constructed by a member of the semi-secret society of stonewhisperers. This, of course, lead the Cleric and the Dwarf to want to learn more about the place. The Cleric because he serves a god that collects and deals in secrets and the Dwarf because he was just plain curious.

Searching the chamber lead the Halfling to a secret door and the Bard to a trap. The trap was a nefarious one where ordinary stone would allow someone to pass part of the way through it (or all of the way), but once in the stone was unmoving leaving them sealed indefinitely. The Dwarf and Cleric argued about the secret to getting free from such a trap and the Cleric had the right answer, so it's a good thing he was the one the Bard listened to. Nearly drowning in stone was enough for the Bard and he retreated to the surface along with the Halfling to have an angsty conversation with Jaim Sandover while the Dwarf and Cleric continued to explore.

A few narrowly avoided stonemeld traps later and the duo have found their way to a stone room, filled with stone furniture containing one very dead dwarf. The dwarf rested in a stone chair with his head submerged in stone, an apparent act of suicide by stonemeld. The long dead dwarf didn't stay dead for long, though, and he was very angry at having both his lady love's memorial and his own rest disturbed. In a fit of poltergeistic rage he flung objects around the room and then possessed the cleric to use him as a channel for potent stone magic. Stony arms reached out from every stone surface and attempted to strangle both Cleric and Dwarf, luckily the Dwarf managed to evade the grasping hands long enough to keep both himself and the Cleric safe while the Cleric regained control and fired off a Turn Undead. The ghost returned to his corpse to cower in fear while our heroes hastily looted the small room, finding nothing of interest except for a small sphere. The sphere was carved with ancient dwarven runes and set off the Cleric's "secret detector".

The Cleric and Dwarf escaped the tomb only to stumble out into the light and find that the dwarven spirit had regained its senses and taken physical control of the stone maiden. She was swinging her chiseled arms out of the cliff face and trying to both smash everyone in sight and claw herself free from the cliff. The Cleric saved the day by casting the small carved stone into the light and watching it turn to dust. This seemed to appease the restless spirit and the party distanced themselves from the killer cliff as soon as possible. Nobody realized that the Cleric had enough time to use his orb to "scan" the stone sphere and send its secrets off to his patron.

Finishing Up

We went through the XP checklist and a couple characters leveled up. The Cleric asked me about the secrets of the sphere and I may allow him to get a compendium class out of it (Stonewhisperer). We'll see.

Alright, that's it. This little recap turned into a gigantic one. I hope I'm getting better at writing these session reports as I go, but I think next time I will aim for something shorter.

Categories: Dungeon World, Dwarf Facts, Elf Facts, fantasy, session report

Dungeon World - Session 3

Our third session of Dungeon World is complete and it was our best yet. The party returned to Sandover Ruins and cleared out the rubble blocking their path deeper into the dungeon. I adapted Dyson's recent ziggurat dungeon to fit with the established game lore. This went over very easily as we had already determined that the ruins were part of a temple to an old, forgotten deity. I kept the traps, replaced any and all undead with lantern goblins and updated the stats for DW as needed.

Things started off with a bang, with the PCs discovering the remains of a would-be looter. They took the coins and sword off the bones, to my delight, and I got to mark two of them down for future Endure moves to fend off the poison whenever I decided it would kick in. It kicked in a few minutes later and like the good GM I am, I laughed maniacally as one of them got a 6- on their Endure. The traps didn't stop there, when the party next came upon a room full of statues they argued about entering for a while and were promptly attacked by the reanimated bones of the robber they had just looted. He was powered by the mysterious lantern goblin flames, but the group made short work of him in any case. Unluckily for them, the battle took them into the statue room and nobody said their morning prayers which meant they now had several alabaster figures coming at them from behind.

I decided to up the danger factor in the statue room and gave the statues high enough armor that the group would have a difficult time defeating them in a fair fight. It was a good thing the cleric is anything but a fair fighter, while the rest of the party kept the busts busy he puzzled out a way to deactivate them by forcing the symbol of the forgotten deity (a rising sun) to set. In other words, he covered the symbol up with some extra clothing he had in his bags. Of course, there was no easy way to keep that holy symbol covered as it was carved into a stone wall. Someone had to stand holding the fabric in front of the carvings. Normally this would not have been too much of a problem, but the halfling decided to go and trigger another one of Dyson's traps and unleash some knockout gas into the room. I was saddened that the character holding up clothing was unaffected by the gas; you can't win them all, I guess. My spirits soon recovered when that same halfling decided to loot a bunch of cursed gems and distribute them among the party.

Eventually the party made it out of the statue room and continued to explore. They made their way through a couple of rooms uneventfully before discovering the anointment chamber. It was here that the bard decided to anoint himself, everyone else was too fearful of traps at this point to touch the glowing liquid. This is important because the trap that was about to be set off could have been avoided if they had been a little braver. I know I am making it sound like the group went stomping through the dungeon setting off every single trap and, to a certain extent, that is true. I should probably mention that the Cleric did keep being made aware of danger thanks to some great Discern Realities rolls and a few hints from his deity, unfortunately he was having a very difficult time convincing the rest of the party to tread as carefully.

Anyways, next on the list was the magnum opus of the dungeon's traps: a mosaic that, when stepped upon by one that was unanointed, would summon a wall of flame, blind everyone and conjure an invisible stalker do what it does best. This created a dangerous little fight that took a sizable chunk of life off the fighter. I'll say this for Dyson, he certainly isn't lacking in ideas for cruel ways to whittle an adventuring party down to size. However, in this case the party carried on without losing any members. The characters searched the room thoroughly, but for some reason avoided opening the black stone sarcophagus in the middle of the chamber. I wonder why? In any case, they found the secret entrance Area 6 (secret tomb) and the Bard managed to sweet talk the apparition of Rhissel that appeared into giving them an amulet and a stack of gold. Things took an unusual turn here because the Bard decided that he might be interested converting to Rhissel's faith and, even more surprising, the Cleric encouraged this! Why, you ask? It turns out that the deity the Cleric worships is the last of the old gods and despite his deity's differences with Rhissel, it is in his god's interests to assist another old god return to power. I smelled campaign fodder in that explanation and you can be sure that I will be building upon it as we progress.

With the visitation of Rhissel's apparition gone, the party decided they had seen all there was to see and they returned to the surface. A visit with the Sandovers later and they had collected their reward for clearing out the remaining monsters and were well on their way to drunk at the local tavern. We ended the session and went through all of the end of game tasks, such as assigning XP and having tangential conversations.

Sadly, this session also marked the death of the planned Deck of Fate campaign. Since that campaign hinged on the PCs getting involved in a race to collect the pieces of Fate's deck while fending off various interests, it pretty much fell apart when the Wizard character ran off in the night along with the macguffin and the player in control of it. I could have salvaged the campaign, but the players happily latched onto the idea of forgotten gods awakening and I am just as happy to indulge them with a campaign built around that idea.

Categories: actual play, Dungeon World, fantasy, session report

The Deck of Fate: DW Session Report #2

We sat down for our second of Dungeon World a little while ago, but due to a very busy December I have just now gotten around to writing about it. For this session we were short both of our new players. One couldn't make it due to an exam, the other just never showed up. We didn't let being without both Wizard and Cleric get us down. The remaining players were happy to don their adventuring boots and leave the warm glow of The Sideways Stallion.

It was a role play heavy session, which is a nice contrast to the straight up dungeon crawl we had last week. Things started out with Bard trying to find some leather armor in the no-horse town of Sandover. After his brush with death in the ruins to the north he was determined to get a little protection. There is no armor shop in Sandover, so our hero had to make do with the local leatherworker. It was here that Bard learned he didn't have enough cold, hard coin to get some leather armor made for himself. He bartered away his pipeleaf for a heavy leather apron with a number of alterations to make it more armor-like.

The rest of the adventuring day was spent chatting up locals and putting on an impromptu performance in the town square. The Bard worked up a great tune and the Halfling got into the spirit of things with some tumbling, when he wasn't busy chatting up locals going about their business. Their performance caught the eye Jaim Sandover, youngest son of the area's ruling lord and the party earned themselves a dinner invitation to Sandover Manor.

That evening the party met the rest of the Sandover clan and, for reasons I can not explain, they all had cheesy southern accents. Dinner was short and sweet, with a little bit of role playing before we got into the meat of things: a request from Lord Sandover for the party to return to Sandover Ruins and delve deeper. It turns out that the local ruins have long been the lifeblood of Sandover, supplying the town artifacts and metals that are its primary trade. The recent monster infestation has changed that and Lord Sandover, being an example of a responsible feudal lord, was keen to get things back in order. This exchange between the players and Lord Sandover ended up being interesting to me (mechanically) as it marked the first time that the Bard used his various social Moves. It was a bit clumsy at first as we read over how things work, but it was not a bad experience at all.

Dinner closed with the party striking up a deal to clean out the ruins so long as some locals acted as guides and porters while they make their way through the ruins. We decided to end the session at the entrance of Sandover Ruins in hopes that we would have a full group again in the new year after holiday madness leaves.

As I said above, this was a nice counter to our first game of Dungeon World as it focused on a completely different side of the game. While the night could easily have become a wash out we were able to soldier on and have a good time and I think it is a testament to DW's good design that it doesn't require a full party of four to get things done. Speaking of design, the Halfling Fighter's player told me that he thought a Paladin was much more appropriate for the character he had in mind and that he was disappointed that it wasn't an option. I'm pleased to say that it is now (and so is my player). Thanks to Dungeon World being nice and open I was able to go onto Github, grab the Paladin Playbook and add some additional options to it. The whole process didn't take me longer than twenty minutes, but it does require a copy of Adobe InDesign. The good news is you can get a 30 day free trial to work your homebrewing magic if you don't have it at your disposal.

Our third session of Dungeon World is scheduled for next week and after a month without any role playing I'm  itching for a chance to roll some dice.

Categories: Deck of Fate, Dungeon World, Homebrew, Paladin, RPG, session report

The Deck of Fate: DW Session Report #1

Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After having been ravaged by lost players and conflicting schedules my regular group finally got together again last Wednesday. While we had been getting together regularly and playing all manner of board games and one shot RPGs it wasn't until last week that we were final in a position to start a persistent campaign again.

We picked Dungeon World as our engine to run this latest campaign and I must say that the first session went rather swimmingly, with the exception of a few minor hiccups which I will talk about a little bit later. For now let's talk about character creation.

This was our table's first time with Dungeon World and character creation went as smoothly as I have ever seen with an RPG. Each character class has its own character sheet and players go down the sheet checking off and circling the options they want. Had we not all been new to the game I think more of the players would have opted to write in unique bonds and descriptions to make their characters a little less by the playbook, but everyone seemed satisfied by what was available this time. I was initially worried that players would fight over the character classes and I only had so many sheets to go around, but that turned out to be a pointless anxiety as everyone settled into a persona without any fussing. Once the dust settled we ended up with a Fighter, Wizard, Bard and Cleric. There will also be a Ranger or Druid joining us later on in the campaign (played by my wife), but she was unable to stay through character creation due to some things that came up.

I wanted to start our very first game of DW off with a simple dungeon crawl. I find crawls are a great way to get a feel for new games and new players, which were both present for this session. I slapped together a quick adventure using one of Dyson's maps and a nasty little monster called a lantern goblin which I found on the Dungeon World blog. I did make a few minor changes to those lanter goblins, though. The first was to change them from having glowing eyes to flaming eyes and the second was to have that light/fire also light up torches and braziers found throughout the dungeon. I whipped up a new move to use with my fiery new friends called Revenge of the Lantern Goblin that was used once those torches lit up. It looked like this:

Revenge of the Lantern Goblin

1d4 damage, targets one except on 7-9.

10+ the torch launches a gout of flame at a nearby PC.

7-9 the torch launches a gout of that hits a monster and a PC.

            6- the torch launches a gout of flame and then sputters out.

All I needed to complete my dungeon was a reason for the player characters to visit there and thanks to some character bonds and cooperative players that was soon supplied. My players had decided that they their characters were mercenaries hired by the Wizard PC to help him collect a rare material component for use in a ritual. Who would have thought that rare material component was found in this dungeon I had prepared? What luck!

The party delved into the dungeon and soon discovered its unusual inhabitants. This is where one of the players threw me my first curveball: the Cleric managed a 10+ on Spout Lore on the goblins and decided to make them undead. I rolled with the punch and the party continued winding through the dungeon, fighting off goblins and extinguishing torches as fast as they were lit. This is actually where we bumped into our first hiccup. You see, one of my regular players has a somewhat... let's say offbeat sense of humour and he thought it would be funny to have his halfling fighter try and put out a torch with urine. One of the new players at the table was less than impressed by that turn of events, but we glossed past it and no harm was done. Clearly nothing that anyone can fault DW for, but a common problem when integrating new and old players.

When the party eventually reached the final section of the dungeon, an altar room with four braziers and an empty frame, I made my first mistake with the rules. The fighter ran into the room to attack the group of goblins guarding the altar and failed all of his Defy Danger attempts miserably. I hadn't realized that monster groups attack as a single unit and slew him outright. When I looked up the death rules to see what happened next I realized my mistake and had to do some retconning. That minor emergency out of the way, we played out the rest of the battle and the simple puzzle of the altar and the empty frame. The solution was, as you have probably guessed, to light all four braziers with goblin fire. This required some quick thinking from the party since Revenge of the Lantern Goblin made this a little more difficult than lighting torches would normally be.

The party's prize for solving the puzzle and slaying the goblins was a magical tarot card titled Trial by Fire, one of the cards that makes up the god of fate's personal tarot deck. Think of Fate's Deck as a deck of many things that was broken up and scattered because it was too powerful for mortal hands. I'm planning to build the campaign around the idea that these cards are resurfacing and all kinds of people want a piece of them, including the party's wizard and patron. I have had the idea to do a campaign like this bouncing around in my skull since this blog post got me thinking about the infamous deck in ways that I never had before.

Obtaining Trial by Fire marked the end of our first session and things should start moving along at a steady pace in the coming sessions now that we have our footing. I'm looking forward to wreaking chaos over the fantasy lands using the magic tarot cards and I don't think my players have a clue how seriously I'm planning on taking those impending doom sections on the Campaign Front once we get going.

Categories: actual play, Dungeon World, fantasy, session report

Zombie Clocks vs. Attitude

Troll in the Corner is hosting this month's RPG Blog Carnival and, for once, I have something to contribute. This month's topic is horrible gaming sessions, and Ben makes it clear he means both game sessions that did horror right and sessions that went awry. Fittingly, I have experienced both extremes with the same game: Shotgun Diaries.

Success

My very first time playing Shotgun Diaries was a screaming success. I took on the role of the GM and two other players took on the roles of survivors in a zombie outbreak. It was also my first time meeting the  other players and I had recruited them from my local board and role playing games club specifically for a one shot game. None of us had played Shotgun Diaries before, but this was at the peak of the zombie fad in popular culture and we had all been keen on giving the game a shot.Once we had settled around my table, potato chips were placed in bowls and coke had been poured we were ready to start.

I decided to start the game off in a cabin at the tail end of a week spent fishing. I hadn't planned anything beyond that because, in my mind, zombie apocalypses are a bit like investigating eldritch horrors: they can only end badly. I knew that I could easily play off genre tropes for improvisation and that's exactly what I did.

The players encountered their first zombie at the hunting cabin and it turned out to be a tense affair. Both of the players played up the "what the fuck is going on" angle as they searched for weapons and tried to figure out how to kill the zombie. They showed considerable restraint by playing their characters straight, neither of them were genre savvy and that made for a stronger session. The adventure continued with gunshots attracting more zombies, the PCs scrambling for car keys and an eventual escape down the highway only to end up in a car accident. They stumbled on across several farms, encountering a mix of suspicious survivors and walking dead until they eventually stole a crop duster and flying it out of the zombie afflicted area. It  surprised me that they ended up with a "happy" ending, and perhaps they shouldn't have (I'll go into this a bit more in a second). Even with a good end to the adventure the session went well. It was played straight, which went a long way in reinforcing the mood of the game. I was also able to keep a good hopeless tension going, partly thanks to a great mechanic in Shotgun Diaries called the Zombie Clock. My night playing Shotgun Diaries with two strangers was the most successful night of horror gaming I have had yet.

I should go into a little more detail about two of SD's mechanics that played a big role in the game. The first was the player journals. The paragraph that briefly outlines the events of the session doesn't really capture that in game about five days had passed. Shotgun Diaries uses a journaling mechanic where each day the players can write something in their journals that becomes a "fact". It's through these facts that players can write things into the game or advance their characters. In the case of the above game one of the players wrote down that they had been an Air force pilot and this was what ultimately allowed them to escape via plane. I could have vetoed it and forced a bad ending, but what purpose would that have served? The other really important mechanic is the Zombie Clock. The Zombie Clock has the GM increasing a number every ten minutes and they can use it as currency to make bad things happen. When i ran the game I used zombie miniatures from the Zombies! board game. It really adds to the game by showing the players how the zombie hoard is piling up.

Now that you know about my most successful game it's time to talk about...

Failure

Several month after my successful game of Shotgun Diaries my regular group found itself short two members on game night. I suggested we give Shotgun Diaries a try, remembering how well an improvised game went last time, and pulled it up on my Kindle.  I had no idea I was in for one of the worst sessions in my gaming career.

This time around I had four players total and we went with a scenario involving people living in a trailer park. It started out well enough, with each of the players introducing their characters and some minor trailer park drama. The problems started when the zombies reared their decaying heads. The first problem was that these players, unlike the successful group, were unable to buy into the zombie premise. They knew exactly what to do to deal with zombies and things went more in the direction of Zombieland than Dawn of the Dead. This, by itself, would not have been a game killer. The game killer came in the abuse of the journaling mechanic of Shotgun Diaries. Players would write in that they had found weapons caches or other useful items. They would write in that there was a cure or that they had found a critical weakness of zombies. In other words, they gamed the system.

As you might imagine the combination of players not buying into the premise, metagaming and flat out abusing the rules as written made for a rather poor game. It turned into a slapstick affair with the catch phrase, "and suddenly... zombies." It was Dead Rising with four swaggering war correspondents intent on placing cones on zombie heads. I could have been more heavy-handed as a GM and vetoed things, but instead of salvaging the game it would have made me look like an asshole. There's a limit to what any GM can do if the players aren't cooperating.

When game was wrapped up and the dice were put away the players exclaimed that the game had been bad, but I knew better. I knew that the fault was not with the game; the problem was with all of us, and that brings me to the final heading...

Zombie Clocks vs. Attitude

What my experiences with the Shotgun Diaries illustrate is that successful horror gaming all comes down to attitude. It doesn't matter how many fancy mechanics or gimmicks the game system uses to build tension, reinforce the setting or make the game deadly. All of the players that sit down at the table need to approach the game with the right attitude. Horror gaming, more so than any other genre, requires this initial buy-in from players. So much of what makes horror horrific is the mood and the way characters react to the things that they encounter. It only takes one player goofing off to break that mood and spoil the game.

Attitude will trump mechanics every single time. There's no contest and it's the same across every game and genre. It's just that horror is more delicate than most genres. If you're not into it then you need to speak up and if you are the GM it's your job to make sure that everyone is on the same page before you play. Learn from my mistake.

Categories: Rambling, RPG Blog Carnival, session report, Shotgun Diaires, Zombies

Technoir Session Report (Hong Kong)

Over the last few months I have supposed to have been playing/running a Dresden Files RPG in which the player characters uncover a conspiracy involving John Murray Spear's "God Machine". We play weekly, but have only played three or four actual sessions due to player illness, thesis demands and a variety of other commitments and events that just plain got in the way. Since we have been regularly short one or more players we have been filling out game nights with board games and Fiasco. Last night we decided to mix things up and take Technoir for a spin.

 Technoir is actually the very first Kickstarter that I backed, way back in June of 2011. I have since received the physical book along with all of the other rewards as well as the stretch goals that Jeremy Keller has been pumping out. More than a year after I read the beta PDF I have finally gotten around to actually playing the game. I had a blast.

I picked up the Hong Kong transmission, one of the backer rewards, and fleshed out what was happening in a cyberpunk version of Hong Kong while my two players built their characters. The actual feeling of building up the adventure felt a lot like the first phase of a game of Fiasco. I rolled up three "plot nodes" to get things started: a motorcycle grand prix, clear weather (unusual in future Hong Kong which is normally a nightmarish haze of pollution) and a location called The Peak. The Peak is an elite part of the city where a bunch of humans specially augmented to survive in the pollution live and is a pristine, gated community. I connected these plot points and decided that the race is going to draw out the elite into the dirtier parts of the city. I couldn't think of much to do with the clear day, so it was mostly ignored.

While I built up the adventure my two players were hard at work building their characters. One of them built a hacker, Jack, that was decked out with cybernetics that allowed him to jack into The Interface (future Internet) and hack like nobody's business. The other player built a courier, Pad, with cybernetic legs and a lot of shady contacts. Both of the player characters were indebted to a variety of major players in the city due to taking out loans for their augmentation.

Once we had the characters finished and new their connections I was able to add them and their associates to the plot and determine how they linked into the existing plot points. This is how we ended up with a black market cyberware dealer that had sold faulty augmentations to the elite living on The Peak (known as The Clean). Since The Clean were going out for a day on the town for the HK Grand Prix he was understandably worried about what might happen when they found out their lung-scrubbers didn't actually work. This is when the cyberware dealer decided to call in a favour that our resident hacker owed him. The Grand Prix wasn't the only event going down that day, though. A heavyweight title match was also happening and it was being broadcast as an Immatrix production (Interface users can "ride along" and feel as if they are the boxers in virtual reality).

How does that title match factor into things? Jack was using some, let's say experimental, cyberware while enjoying the match and when he was interrupted by a call to hack The Peak it glitched out the Immatrix broadcast and inflicted seizures on everyone experiencing the broadcast. Oops. Now it just so happens that the producer of that Immatrix broadcast happened to know Pad quite well and since the courier is well connected (and owed him money) he contacted the courier and asked him to find the responsible party.

That's the setup. One player needs to hack The Peak and prevent The Clean from leaving so they don't discover they faulty augmentations. The other needs to track down the first player and bring him to justice.

Things took off from there. Jack was riding high and managed to worm his way past all of the high level ICE protecting The Peak's systems. While Jack was deep in this project Pad was chasing down leads. Using his connections he is referred to one of the best "Interface Guys" in the city, a hacker that goes by "Jack" that works out of a motorcycle garage.

Pad headed to the garage and tried to meet with Jack, but due to his previous engagements was unable to meet with him. Not to be discouraged Pad tried to convince one of the mechanics to get him a meeting and ended up on the wrong side of a wrench. Meanwhile Jack finishes a flawless series of hacks on The Peak successfully locking in all of The Clean and diverting communications. He even managed to install a backdoor to allow him easy access in the future. Jack's job finished he leaves the back room to grab a drink and comes across Pad. Pad then hires Jack to find the culprit behind the Immatrix incident.

Jack was unaware that they had inadvertently caused the seizures, but soon realizes that they were the source. Thinking fast, he tampers with the evidence and frames a rival hacker (Mei Mei). He then packages everything up with a bow and delivers all the evidence that Pad and his employer need to escape the inevitable media shit-storm. Pad, unfortunately, is unable to get the hacker's fee expensed and ends up with a pair of broken legs.

Afterthoughts

The game played out really well and very quickly. All three of us had a great time, even the player of Pad who had been unlucky enough to not succeed at a single challenge throughout the entire game. The actual game play was fast and light with minimal fuss, even though none of us really knew the rules. Everything played out in a kind of Fiasco meets Shadowrun kind of way, which is fine by me. I am enamoured with how the transmissions fit things together and I hope to play Technoir again soon.

I'll probably put together a more formal review of the game in the coming week. This, by the way, is my first time writing a session report for my blog. I hope you found it entertaining.

You can get Technoir from DriveThruRPG for $10 and you can take a peak at some the player handout and a transmission for free on the official website.

Categories: actual play, cyberpunk, session report, Technoir