Author Archives: Rick Neal

It Is Accomplished: The End of Broken Chains

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Seven years ago, I started running a D&D campaign with the brand new D&D 3.0 system, called Broken Chains. I wrote a 90,000 word game world, and designed a campaign arc with a beginning, middle, and end. From the very beginning, it was created to be a finite campaign, with a storyline that ran through the entire thing, and an actual, planned ending.

Last night, it ended.

And I think it ended well.

I was worried about how to wrap it up in a satisfying manner for the players, all of whom had devoted years of their lives to playing their characters and contributing to the game. I didn’t want it to just fade away, nor did I want to force it into my vision of what the appropriate ending was. After all this time, I needed it to end in a way that worked for me, and that worked for them. They had to feel that the story was over, and it was okay to walk away from their characters.

I think we’ve all run or played in campaigns that didn’t end the way we wanted them to. Sometimes, that’s fine, if the ending is still satisfying, or if an unsatisfying game just dies under its own weight. The latter situation is far from ideal, but sometimes you just have to shoot a sick dog. I’m willing to bet that a number of us have had campaigns end in ways that are deeply unsatisfying, either because they fade away, or the ending that comes doesn’t work for us.

I really, really didn’t want that for this game. We’d all spent too much time in this world, with this story, to let it end in a way that was unworthy of all the good stuff that had gone before.

I thought about this for a long time. I literally agonized over it. After all the work we’d put in, I wanted the ending to be perfect. And I couldn’t figure out a way to do that.

I knew what the final confrontation was going to be: helping a small group of ancient heroes from the dawn of the current age of the world finally defeat a proto-god that was rising to depose the God and Goddess who had given birth to the world. I had stats for everything worked out, and it was going to be a tough, tough fight. But that’s the way it should be, because this was for all the marbles. And I kept having these horrible visions of dice, and how they can turn on you and betray all the careful story building you’ve done.

Finally, I decided to do the last session narratively, without dice.

This was a huge step for me, because I tend to hate diceless games. I ran an Amber game for a time, and it was a nightmare for me as a GM, though it produced some of the greatest roleplaying I have ever been privileged to be part of.

My main complaint about Amber is that its system pretty much isn’t one. I felt that there just wasn’t enough to the game to support me as GM, to give me the tools to build and adjudicate play sessions well. I know that people with disagree with me, but that’s the way I feel. Maybe one day I’ll devote a post to my philosophy of game system as storytelling toolbox, but not today.

Anyway, I knew that, if I was going to go diceless, I needed to build in some sort of structure. So, here’s what I did:

  1. I got a piece of graph paper and wrote out a list of possible outcomes, everything from the slaying of the big bad, to the deaths of the heroes, the shattering of the world, the deaths of gods, the destruction of magic, etc. Some were positive, some were negative, and some were simply collateral damage that might occur.
  2. Beside each of the outcomes, I outlined a number of empty boxes commensurate with how hard I wanted it to be for that outcome to be achieved. So, for the death of the big bad, I outlined 20 boxes, while for the death of each individual PC, I outlined 6 boxes.
  3. I gave each player 6 poker chips to use as narrative interrupts, and I gave myself 12. By spending a poker chip, a player could forestall and interfere with the narrative of the enemy, or assist an ally. I could do the same with my 12 chips.
  4. I explained to the players that I would describe a scene, and then go around in a circle to let everyone describe the actions of their characters. When they did something that advanced one of the outcomes on my sheet (which I didn’t show them), I would mark off a box beside that outcome. If it affected multiple outcomes, I would mark a box beside each. When all the boxes beside an outcome were filled in, that outcome was accomplished.
  5. I told them that they were in the Godtime, and not to be worried about mechanics or what was on their character sheets, but to stay true to their characters, and do the kinds of things they would want to be told for millennia, and written down in holy texts, and discussed by anthropologists, and turned into action movies.
  6. I also told them that they could, at any time, decide that their character would make an heroic sacrifice, dying to achieve an important end, and that would trump pretty much anything else.

And that’s the way we ran it.

It took a little while for them to get into the spirit of it; it was hard to explain exactly the kind of thing I was looking for without influencing them too much. I needed the encounter to reflect what they wanted, not what I wanted.

It worked.

They destroyed the big bad in very unexpected ways, first splitting the composite 5-in-1 deity into it’s individual parts, slaying three parts of it, forcing one part to bow to their mastery, and allowing the final part to try to redeem herself.

They almost killed the Father, god of the sky and sun, by calling on too much of his power. They did kill six saints by invoking their power in the battle.

They destroyed magic utterly.

They broke the protective bubble between their world and the multiverse, allowing controlled planar travel for the first time in the history of the world.

They saved the heroes that had held the godling at bay, though just barely and only through sacrifice.

And at the end of things, when they had fulfilled the prophecies of the Weirds and become the Redeemers of the Land, Mother Earth and Father Sky passed their power to the characters to dispose of as they wished.

I wasn’t sure what the characters would do then. They could have elevated some of the surviving saints to godhood, or given it to the near-god hero who had held the 5-in-1 godling in check for 15,000 years, or they could pass the power to others, or they could take it on themselves.

In the end, after some interesting roleplaying debate over the decision, they decided to take on the mantles of gods themselves.

We finished the evening with them ordering their pantheon, describing their focus as gods, deciding on their objectives and values, rebuilding magic and psionics, and establishing their relationship with other beings of power in the world. And then we collectively described the new world a thousand years down the road.

It was a good world. Not perfect, but a good world.

And we closed the curtain on the game.

I think it was a good ending.

My thanks to all the players, past and present, who helped to make this experience one to remember. Chris, Penny, and Clint made it all the way through; Erik left but returned; and Michael and Sandy gave us a good start, but couldn’t stay with us to the end.

It has been a pleasure to share this world and game with you.

Fill to me the parting glass
And drink a health whate’er befall
I gently rise and softly call
Goodnight, and joy be with you all

No Roles – Board and Card Games

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A friend of mine dropped off a new board game with me tonight. He bought it, but he doesn’t have time to work through the rules and figure out how to play so that he can teach the rest of us, so he’s leaving that to me.

I don’t mind. I like board games. And card games. They’re a fun diversion when you want to game, but you can’t get the whole group together for an RPG, or you don’t want to devote the energy to an RPG, or you have non-RPG-players in the group, or you just want something different.

It got me thinking about board and card games that I like, and why I like them. Here are three of my favourites:

Arkham Horror

This is probably the most popular game in my collection. It has a great mix of strategy, random surprises, and truly fiendish challenges. It also gets played less than it’s popularity would seem to indicate; it’s a long game, it takes a long time to set up, and it takes a long time to put away.

Especially the way we play, with all three supplements.

It also looks rather intimidating to newcomers. Having said that, it’s really a pretty simple game, once you get the basics down. The turn sequence is easy to pick up on, and the rest is just reading the cards and rolling the dice. We played a couple of weeks ago, with a player who was completely new to the game, and she picked it up pretty fast.

Co-operation rules in this game – if you don’t work together, you lose. Talking to each other, parceling out tasks, and carrying them out is central to victory.

It also does a nice job of capturing some of the feel of the source material, with horrific monsters, impending doom, rampant insanity, and the advent of an Elder God to worry about.

It’s not perfect, though. The aforementioned set-up and pack-up time (I’ve got it down to about 20 minutes each, which is not bad for over a thousand different pieces) is a barrier: I don’t set up for less than two other players, because it’s just too much work. Play time is also a factor; I’ve finished a game in under an hour, but that was really a fluke. Generally, I figure on about 5-6 hours for a complete game. That’s long. And in the last game, we found a nasty little quirk with one of the characters that makes her pretty much invulnerable as she spirals down in madness and maimings.

One thing we found was very useful for speeding play was to have one person, who is also playing a character, act as a sort of referee and timekeeper, calling the different phases and keeping everyone on task.

Still, every time we play, everyone has a blast. It’s worth the effort and time, but not every day.

Fury of Dracula

This is another fun game from Fantasy Flight. And every game we play, my friend Clint and I are amazed once again at the complex, delicate balance of the thing. It works best with five players: four hunters and one Dracula, and it really comes down to a question of strategy and skill between the two sides.

I’ve run the game as a demo at stores and conventions, and I’ve seen how easy it is to set Dracula up for a loss just by placing him in a sub-optimal starting position. But even the optimal starting positions don’t make his victory a lock. Using his powers, choosing his route, timing his attacks, placing his traps, all these things are vital to his success.

On the other side of the table, the hunters have their own strengths. Each has his or her own special ability which, when used wisely and creatively, can really turn the game around.

Dracula’s hidden movement system is beautiful, and is one of the interesting balance items. So is the order of player turns, the arrangement of event cards, the mix of cities and their locations on the board, and the mix of encounters Dracula can play with. In fact, everything about the game contributes to the game balance in interesting ways. From a design perspective, the game is beautiful.

It also generally plays in under two hours, and sets up and tears down in a total of about twelve minutes, which makes it good for a spur of the moment game.

The one thing that seems a little out of place in the game is that there are a couple of event cards that come up randomly that give a big, big boost to one side or the other. Now, the balance between the two sides with these cards is fairly equal, but it seems like a real blow when Dracula gets to relocate for free, breaking his trail on you, or the hunters get to reveal Dracula’s current location.

The only other downside is the combat system is a little convoluted and arcane. Until you play through it a couple of times, it doesn’t make much sense. Once you’ve got it down, though, it’s slick and interesting.

Still, a fun game.

Deluxe Illuminati

If you don’t know this game, I’ve really gotta ask you what you’re doing reading a blog primarily devoted to gaming.

Illuminati’s been around for decades, and is one of those nasty little games that just grabs you and hooks you. Play is generally quick, schemes abound, and backstabbing is pretty much required. Everyone loves it, everyone gets into it, and everyone gangs up on me.

Every time.

And still, I love it.

When you throw in the expansion sets, the game gets pretty strange, but that’s what you want with this game. Finding out that the Boy Sprouts are a front for the Colombian Cocaine Growers, who are controlled by the UFOs just makes too much sense some times.

What’s great about the game? All the groups, the mechanics to let you mess with other players, the good-natured betrayals, the quick changes of fortune, and the mass of deals struck and rejected.

What’s not so great about the game? Well, some of the cards are kind of dated now. And everyone gangs up on me.

Every time.

But I’m not bitter.

Anyway, it’s a great game. You should be playing it.

And there you have it. I’m going to talk about a few more games I like next time. Check back.

We’re All In This Together

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**Warning** The following post is a lot more rambling than a lot of my other posts. Caveat Lector.

Lately, I’ve become enamoured of co-operative world-building for games.

As an idea, anyway.

I’ve been reading Mortal Coil, and listening to the That’s How We Roll podcasts about building the setting for Faith, Faces, and Fingerprints. When my friend Clint started his new D&D campaign, he threw it open for the players to create chunks of the setting. And that was fun.

My long-running D&D campaign is wrapping up next weekend, and another game I run is going to be wrapping up in a few (3-4) months, so I’m starting to think about the next game. And I’m toying with the idea of building the world collaboratively.

I’m torn, though.

Here are the pros, as far as I’m concerned:

  • Real buy-in from the characters. If they make something up, they’re going to care about it.
  • Ideas I could never have come up with. Other people are going to think of things I never would have, and that’s going to create a world with a different flavour than I would have on my own.
  • It shows me, as GM, where the players want the focus of the game far better than just getting them to tell me.
  • The players will have a better knowledge of the world they created than if I create something on my own and expect them to read it. ‘Cause I know that some of them won’t.

Here are the cons:

  • I’ve got to live with the results, even if I don’t like them.
  • Fewer surprises for the players.
  • Players need to make a bigger up-front investment of participation than they may be used to. They have to want to do it.
  • Some may create more than others.
  • I’ve never done this before, and I don’t know how it’s going to work out.

In the middle is the question of verisimilitude: Which way makes the most real-feeling setting? The one with the single, unified vision or the one with the wider range of input? I don’t have the answer to that question, and I probably won’t until after I try the collaborative method. Maybe not even then.

Different approaches address the issues in different ways. Mortal Coil uses a co-operative set-up of a Theme Document to set the generalities, and then a chip-buy process in game to add facts during play. With the resource-based way to add facts, it means that each player has the same ability to influence the world, and those who jump in first wind up with less ability to jump in later.

The question method used in the Faith, Faces, and Fingerprints makes sure that each player (including the GM) is forced to contribute a certain amount. This gets everyone’s input, but it can put some players on the spot, and it means that certain players may not want to take part.

In my friend’s game, he threw out a large number of pieces that we could take and flesh out, if we wanted, and provided some rewards to encourage us to do so. This led to pretty much everyone doing at least a little creation centred around our characters, though some did more and some did less.

I think that it’s fairly necessary to come to a collaborative session with a foundation to build from; Mortal Coil builds this with the Theme Document, while in the other two examples, the GM brought the basics and others embellished. Clint had a much more solid world built, leaving a number of niches to the players, while the Evil Hat folks had much less of a filled-in structure to start with.

Of course, depending on the rules set you use, you may find some of the particulars of the setting dictated by the rules. If you’re building for D&D, you either fit in all the D&D stuff, or you have to explain why it’s not there to (or with) the players. A more open rules set, like FATE or Mortal Coil, lets you build the rest of the game on top of the setting, without having to worry so much about that.

I’m greatly enamoured of the Mortal Coil world-building, but I absolutely hate the resolution mechanic. If I were to marry the world design with FATE, possibly using FATE points in place of Magic Tokens, it might work. The one downside to the Mortal Coil world system is that it’s hard, really hard, for the GM to prep anything before the setting building, because there’s nothing to work with yet.

On the other hand, if you design too much of the setting, and the campaign story, before hand, it limits the meaningful input for the players. So, another dichotomy to resolve.

We did some collaborative setting building in our DFRPG playtest, producing Magical Winnipeg. It was quite a success, though we did it mostly by e-mail, with me collating and parsing all the input.

We’ve also really embraced collaborative character creation, in pretty much all our games, to make sure the character types work well together, and decide why we’re together, and to help each other with our ideas and concepts.

I realize that the right way to create a campaign is whatever way produces a fun game. I know I can build the standard kind of campaign and have it work. Now, I’m toying with the idea of building a collaborative setting to see how that works out.

I dunno, though.

Any input from you folks would be welcome. What do you find good/bad about collaborative setting design? What methods do you use? How much of a foundation do you start with? What rules sets do you game with? How does it work, or not? Talk to me.

My Left Footloose

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So, every year for the past eight or so years, I go down to GenCon and work at the Pagan Publishing booth with Scott Glancy. I’m not affiliated with his company outside of that, but we’re friends, and we have a mutually beneficial arrangement going, so it all works out fine. I get a cheap trip to GenCon, he gets a booth slave to help him out.

Anyway.

It’s always a blast going down, spending time with him and, on occasion, his charming wife, Jane Brooks.

That’s where I learned The Movie Game, and it almost broke my brain.

Now, Jane and Scott have sent me this email that I feel compelled to share with all of you:

Hello, friends! Jane Brooks and Scott Glancy here!

Many of you have been victims of our obsession with The Movie Game, in which you combine one or more movie titles to make a new, more hilarious meta-movie. Terms of En-Deer Hunter. Gandhi in Sixty Seconds. My Left Footloose. You get the picture. If you’ve shared a long drive, a dinner party, or a hotel room at GenCon with us, you’ve probably heard the schtick. This game has the amazing ability to crush even the most lighthearted small talk with its obsessive genius. The Movie Game is evil… and now it’s coming to the Interwebs.

Scott and I are happy to announce the birth (well, public beta) of our new brainchild, My Left Footloose. Please join us in celebrating, beta testing, and creating a community around our game.

Go check out the site. Play. Have fun.

Though, for the full effect of the game, you have to be completely exhausted, lying on a hotel room floor at three in the morning, trying to get to sleep, and having various voices pipe up, just as you’re starting to drift off, with things like, “A Few Good Men In Black,” or “The Thin Man Who Wasn’t There,” or “There Will Be Blood and Donuts!”

Anyway. The link is here, and it’s going over in the sidebar, too.

Tell ’em I sent you, and they’ll be sure to treat you right.

“I’m Sorry, But That’s What My Character Would Do.”

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Good god, I’ve come to dread that sentence in games.

Most of you recognize it, right? The cry of the dedicated roleplayer when a character choice causes problems.

“I have to be true to the character.”

No matter what the cost. That’s what being a true roleplayer is all about right?

Once upon a time, I would have agreed with that. But after several years (Hell, who am I kidding? After nearly three decades!) of gaming, I’ve come to a different conclusion.

Let’s look at the evolution of me as a gamer, because I’m going to assume I’m pretty typical for gamers in my age bracket. Yeah, that’s a big assumption, but I’m trying to make a point here. How about we suspend judgment for a bit, and just go along for the ride?

When I started gaming, back in high school, it was all about the hack ‘n’ slash. Kill things, take their stuff, repeat until you collapse. It was fun, and I still run one of those games today for a group of beer-and-pretzel gamers.

But after a while, I wanted something more out of gaming. In the heady days of the ’80s, I delved into more and more complex systems, looking for more realistic simulations. While this held my interest, the more complex rules meant I had more problems finding people to play with.

So, things turned around again with the publication of Vampire: The Masquerade. Simple system, strong emphasis on storytelling and characterization. And that’s the way I went. Right into the heart of being a completely dedicated true character roleplayer.

And that’s where the problems came in.

See, another character in the game did something that infuriated my character, and passed it off as, “Sorry, but that’s what my character would do.” This led to my character (who was a bit of a prick, truth to tell) retaliating in petty little ways. And her character would retaliate. And so on.

By the time the campaign wrapped up, we had been playing the last several years with the GM and the other players and even us going through these bizarre contortions to get the entire party together in the same place, or working on the same problem. When really, they should have killed each other off long before.

I swear to God, it was like the A-Team. Every week, you wonder how they’re going to get Mr. T on the airplane, and the methods get crazier and stupider.

And here’s my point:

It’s a game.

You’re there to play. With other people. Who also want to have fun.

Now, I’m not trying to say that people shouldn’t play their characters, or that the experience shouldn’t be immersive, but you gotta keep your eye on the prize, and the prize is for everyone to have fun.

Everyone.

Here’s why I’ve been thinking about this the past couple of days.

I’ve started playing in a new D&D campaign with my group, and one of the players is the one who played the character that my character feuded with all through the Vampire campaign. Saturday night, we butted heads again, our characters pushing each others’ buttons, and getting into a situation where, for a while there, I thought that I was going to have to retire my character or face a repeat of the whole Vampire campaign.

(“C’mon, BA, just drink the milk. We didn’t drug it this week!”)

But I made my character make a gesture of conciliation to her character. Then she sent me some e-mail the next day, saying, “Let’s figure out how to make this work between our characters so that we don’t go down that road again.”

And you know what? We did.

Over the course of a few e-mail exchanges, we turned a potentially disasterous encounter into a bonding experience for our characters.

How?

We communicated. We explained where we were each coming from in playing our characters the way we had. And then we did a few in-character conversations via e-mail. And now, our characters are closer and more loyal to each other than they were before the incident. They respect and understand each other more. And they’ve each grown in interesting ways.

Notice I said that the characters have grown, not that the characters have changed. Nothing about how we see our characters has been invalidated; if anything the whole experience really reinforced our concepts. But they’ve expanded and deepened, in ways that work.

We met each other half-way, and turned what could have been a really souring experience into a positive one. I can’t wait for the next session.

So, I’ve come to see the cry of, “But that’s what my character would do!” as a bit of a selfish grab for the spotlight. It only gets said when the culprit has brought a problem into the gaming experience. Notice I didn’t say, “Into the game.” Complications from character actions in-game are fine. But the phrase is usually only trotted out when there’s a real impact on the fun for the players or GM.

It’s a lame excuse.

Be true to your character, but be truer to your friends in the real world. You’re there to have fun, and so are they. Keep that in mind when you make choices for your character, and consider what the impact will be on the play experience for the rest of the people sitting around the living room with you. Roleplaying is a co-operative endeavour; make sure you do your part to make it fun for everyone.

And when problems crop up, as they will, as they did for Penny and I on Saturday, work it out. Communicate. Compromise. Co-operate. If you meet each other half-way, you can turn a potential problem into a real nice moment for both characters.

And now I’m getting down off my soapbox.

Deep Gratitude

By | | Dresden Files Playtest
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Now that our Bleeding Alpha Playtest phase is winding down, I want to thank my players for their dedication, willingness to try new things, good feedback, and just being great, creative players.

  • Thanks to Sandy, and Anne Carriere’s iron filing packed snowballs.
  • Thanks to Kieran, and Lucky Firth’s eagerness to sell his mortality to the Bramble King.
  • Thanks to Chris, and Paul Roman’s surly and world-weary acceptance of all the crap he had to go through.
  • Thanks to Clint, and to Christian Manger’s tug-of-war conversations with Madelein de la Neige.
  • Thanks to Penny, and Rowan Aurelian’s willingness to blow up her own head to make the magic work.
  • Thanks to Vickie, and Elaine de la Roche’s remorse over using the shotgun on the Mad Cowz.
  • Thanks to Fera, and Gerhardt Rothman’s trick with the car antennae.
  • Thanks to Tom, and Elias “Legion” Thorne’s willingness to throw himself into any physical threat he could find.

It wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun without all of you.

Thank you all.

Game On VI: The Final Friday Game

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Characters

We rejoin our intrepid heroes outside the Legislature, having followed their now-functioning magical compass to the building after leaving Mad Cowz territory. The compass has stopped working again, and is just spinning in circles*, so they can’t get a good pinpoint on their quarry, the warlock Demissie. There follows some discussion about whether to go in immediately, or to wait until after nightfall, when the civilians will have cleared out.

In the end, they decide that it’s too dangerous to wait, and need to go in now. But how to bring all their hardware with them past the metal detectors and sheriff’s deputies guarding the entry? After significant debate, they decide that Rowan will veil herself and carry the weapons in, after the other three have already entered. This works fine, but shorts out the metal detectors and crashes the computer at the security station because of the magical interference. Not a huge deal, but enough to make the characters nervous.

They meet down in the washrooms in the basement, near the cafeteria, and gear up. Rowan tells them that the building was constructed according to mystical principles, and lays out a few of the big ones – the giant statue to Hermes on roof, the sacrificial star pit, the main stairs with three sets of thirteen risers, the statues of Hermaphroditus, the use of the golden ratio in the structure, the statue of Moses with horns…** They decide, based on what they know of Demissie and his flavour of magic, that the most likely place to find him is in the star chamber with the Hermaphroditic pillars at the bottom of the sacrifice pit.

They don’t find any sign of him down there, but Gerhardt notices that the urns by the pillars have been moved slightly, and people seem to avoid walking through the centre of the star. They do some more investigating, but don’t find anything else of note, and start attracting the attention of one of the security guards when Rowan starts moving the urns around.

Faced with this, Rowan decides to risk using the Sight. She finds a bench near the wall, sits down, and opens her third eye. She sees the place as an ancient temple to the power of Hermes Trismegistus, the Thrice-Great God of Magic, and manifesting the union of the male and female, divine and mortal, in the form of Hermaphroditus. She also sees a tortured ghost, wrapped in barbed chains, bound to each of the twelve pillars in the place, and magic gathering at a bloodstained altar in the centre of the star, presided over by a dark, malevolent shadow.

She closes her third eye and blasts at the centre of the star, deducing that the black shadow she saw was Demissie. Unfortunately, her blast isn’t powerful enough to break the veil and ward that have been set up. Demissie responds with a mental attack, sending the shrieking ghosts he has slain into her head, and rattling her a fair bit.

Taking his cue from Rowan’s attack, Legion launches himself at the middle of the star, but is blocked by the ward, formed out of tortured, bound spirits, which wrenches at his brain. Gerhardt uses his kinetomancy to smash all the urns, thinking to break the circle that way, and Elaine starts clearing the civilians and security guards from the room.

Rowan, already very taxed by the magic she’s been throwing around, pulls out all the stops and tears away the wards and barriers around Demissie, revealing him and his small table of ritual implements in the middle of the room. He responds by loosing the twelve bound ghosts and sending him at the heroes. Gerhardt tries to topple the pillars of the room to break up the magical flows, but loses control of his kinetomancy, sending a destructive pulse of force out in a broad splash rather than a focused blast. This topples a couple fo the pillars, splits the marble floor, and tosses everyone around a bit.

Legion and Elaine make short work of Demissie once his defenses are down, and Rowan drives herself almost to collapse banishing the ghosts. The threat ended, our valiant heroes run for the hills before the security guards get it together enough to detain them.

And they all lived happily ever after, because it’s just a playtest.

Comments:

  • While there are detailed rules in the playtest package for hexing equipment, they’re pretty involved. The author suggests instead to just wing it, which I did, and it worked fine.
  • After three sessions, the two spellcasters were getting pretty good at figuring out how to do off-the-cuff magic, including tapping into the power of the Hermetic Temple to power their stuff.
  • The minion system from Spirit of the Century works nicely for things like the twelve ghosts attacking our heroes in a very cinematic vein, but I’m not sure it’s got the entirely right feel for the books. Then again, I sure wouldn’t want to run the final battle from Summer Knight or the zombie-stomp from Dead Beat without it.

So, those are the six playtest sessions done. I’m taking a bit of a break from Dresden Files now; just writing up a report for Evil Hat, and then taking a breather. Six sessions over three weeks is a lot, and I need to put it aside to avoid burnout. Besides, I’ve been pushing a number of other games in our group off the schedule for this one, and we need to get back to them.

Having said that, my group has expressed interest in a continuing game, so we will be back again.

And I’m probably going to start talking about the other games I run or play in on this blog, so you may find something of interest.

Don’t be strangers.

 

*Thanks to Demissie sensing the destruction of the decoy doll and throwing up a veil.

** All of which are real.

Trail of Cthulhu

By | | What's he playing?
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I got my copy of Trail of Cthulhu this week. It’s a new implementation of the Call of Cthulhu game, using Robin D. Laws’s GUMSHOE system, and it was written by Ken Hite.

I like it.

Now, I like the original game, too, a whole lot. But in many ways, I think I might prefer the new one. I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know after I play a session or two.

Let’s talk about why I like the new game, though.

  1. It’s written by Ken Hite. If you aren’t familiar with the name, then you really need to pick up Nightmares of Mine, Suppressed Transmission, and Suppressed Transmission 2. The man knows his weird stuff, and builds it into supremely gameable constructions. He’s been a hero of mine since I started reading his column in Pyramid Magazine, and he achieved godlike status with the coining of the word “speleo-herpetologist.” There’s a pretty short list of folks I’d trust with a new version of a Lovecraft game, and he’s on it. Near the top. At least twice.
  2. No more missed clues. The GUMSHOE system of Robin Laws removes the bane of investigation-based games: you can’t get stuck with no way forward because you missed the roll for the vital clue. In the game, if you’ve got the right ability, and you use it, you get whatever clue it might provide automatically. The game becomes less about finding the clues and more about interpreting them.
  3. The Great Old Ones. Ken’s take on them is great. First of all, he doesn’t give them stats, very reasonably treating them as plot devices. When one of the big boys – Cthulhu, Hastur, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, etc. – show up, it either means that you’ve really got to hurry with the ritual to banish it, or you’ve already lost and should just embrace your new role as mindless servitor or dinner. Beyond that, he gives five or six different interpretations of each of them, some wildly contradictory, that characters may find in their research. Because these beings are essentially unknowable by humans, I think that works very well.
  4. The creatures. Lesser beings are nicely statted up, and include a great little section on what sorts of clues they may leave behind, which is immensely helpful for a GM. They are, all of them, nasty in the extreme. As it should be.
  5. The fun little sanity games. The book includes suggestions to get the other players working with the GM to make the player whose character has gone insane feel confused and disoriented, not just the character.
  6. Tons of good GM advice. Specifically for running this game with this system, but a lot of it is just good, solid advice for any horror or investigation game.
  7. Campaign frameworks. Three ready-to-use setups for ongoing play, talking about who the characters are and why they do what they do, and what they tend to run into. They include one fairly standard Lovecraftian framework, one proto-Delta Green framework, and one very interesting one involving shady rare book dealers in London.

The book also has an introductory scenario, but I haven’t decided how much I like it. On the one hand, it’s a great little mystery that shows Ken’s ability to mix real-world history with mythology and deep weirdness. On the other hand, it doesn’t deal very directly with any specific aspect of the Cthulhu mythos, though it does talk about what may be behind the whole mess. As an adventure, I like it a great deal, but I think I would have preferred a more standard Cthulhoid example.

All in all, I think this is a very interesting, well-done game, and I can’t wait to try it out. I’ll post the results after I have a chance to run it.

Right now, though, I have to get ready for the final Dresden Files playtest session tonight.

Game On V: The Last Monday Game

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Characters

We pick up back in Assiniboine Forest, just after nightfall, in the killing cold, after killing another ogre. Christian and Paul have a heart-to-heart about how Christian’s a FRIGGIN’ GHOUL! While this is going on, Anne spots shapes moving in the shadows, surrounding our heroes.

Paul conjures some light, catching all the wyldfae in their furs, feathers, and beads stalking through the dark winter forest. They freeze for a moment, then Crazy Tomcomes in and extends the invitation of the Bramble King to join him at his court for an audience, as Christian had requested. They agree, and follow the fae company to a mound of brush in the middle of the forest, and through a stone doorway into the Bramble King’s hall. Along the way, Anne warns the others about the dangers of faerie food and drink, and how fae cannot lie or break a promise.

It’s a cross between a faerie mound and a native lodge, with a huge central fire-pit and blankets and tapestries hanging on the wall. There are scores of fae inside, dancing, drinking, and eating, and they all go silent when the characters enter. Crazy Tom announces them to the Bramble King, a two-foot-tall, porcupine-like little man seated on an antler throne on a little dais carried around by a troll. He invites them to sit with him around a sumptuous feast, which none of them touch.

The war council doesn’t go very well. None of the four wish to pledge themselves to serve the Bramble King (except Lucky, but he doesn’t want to swear anything until he hears the reciprocal pledge), and the Bramble King doesn’t seem to want to offer anything unless the oaths are made. He even tempts Anne with a cure for her sister, but she doesn’t trust him enough to bite. Finally, the Bramble King sees that he’s not getting anywhere, calls them all cowards, and vanishes along with his court and hall, leaving our heroes sitting in the snow and dark.

Now they’re pissed.

They retire to Archangel Fireworks to talk about their options and to load up on supplies. They decide that they’re not going to walk away from a battle between the faeries, internal matter or no, and that they really want to show up the Bramble King. So, they go off to First Folio to see if Artemis Black has a copy of the Unseelie Accords and the Covenant of the Consecration of the Two Waters. The Unseelie Accords fill roughly a hundred volumes, too much for them to get through in one night, so they go looking through the Covenant to see if they can find a loophole.

And find it they do. The actions of the Winter Court constitute an external invasion against the Assiniboine Ramble, one of the protected powers of the Consecration of the Two Waters, and the mortal casualties show that the engagement is spilling over onto other protected parties. With the proper invocation and sacrifice, it is possible to gain the blessing of the Two Waters to act as champions and intercede in the matter.

With that idea, everyone goes and gets some money for the sacrifice, warm clothes, and weapons, and they all meet at the Forks, where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet. Out on the ice at the confluence, Paul conducts the ritual sacrifice and asks for the blessing of the spirits. He gets it, and uses his Sight to confirm that the Two Waters spirits are pleased.

Then it’s back once more to Assiniboine Forest in the cold and dark, to the closed portal to the Nevernever. Paul tears it open with only minor problems for him and his companions, and they troop through into the stronghold of the Winter Court noble leading the attack. After a desperate run through the snow while being chased by rimehounds, they get to the lodge of the noble, and demand entry. When the doormen are a bit too slow to respond, Christian takes the decision out of their hands, and the door off its hinges.

Inside, after a little conversation, they are faced by a very angry Sidhe noble and his two ogre guardsmen. Things go rapidly to hell, and Lucky winds up putting a bullet through the noble’s forehead with the single shot he manages to get off before his gun stops working*. In the ensuing astonished pause, Christian pops the head off one of the ogres, and Paul demands that the Winter Court leave off its invasion in the name of the spirits of the Two Waters.

With the fae thus cowed, our heroes beat a hasty retreat back to the mortal world and warmth. The cold snap breaks, and each of them receive an amulet from the Bramble King. Three of them reject the gift, but Lucky seeks out the Bramble King and pledges himself to his service**.

And everyone lived happily ever after***.

Comments:

  • It is incredibly fun to GM conversations with the fae. I made it a game to see how few of their questions I could answer, shifting the topic, responding with questions, and turning to new people to speak to. Throw in a few straight answers to keep ’em guessing, and it’s a hoot.
  • Nothing moves a story forward like a pissed-off PC.

* I believe he spent five Fate Points on that little trick.

**No mechanics on that, because it happened essentially out of game.

***But only because this was the last playtest session.

Game On IV: The Second Friday Game

By | | Dresden Files Playtest, What's he playing?
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Characters

We rejoin our heroes in the aftermath of their little excursion into Mad Cowz territory, as they decide that, to speak to someone who can give them the name of the warlock conjuring the shadow spirits, they will need to speak to the Council of Ghosts. Midnight finds them at the door of the Vaughn Street Jail, trying to talk their way past the guardians to speak to the Tribunal. When that didn’t work so well, Rowan used a secret word entrusted to her family to gain an audience – a one-use phrase that was technically her father’s.*

Inside, they made their case to the Tribunal, who agreed to help them in exchange for a single favour from each of them. After some waffling, they agreed, and the Tribunal brought out the ghost of one of the warlock’s victims. They persuaded him to tell them the name of the warlock (Demissie), and the fact that it was a man, before the Tribunal declared the audience at an end.

On the way out, one of the ghosts solidified enough for Legion to see that it was one of the muggers who had murdered his girlfriend. The dead man told Legion that their story wasn’t over, yet, and that he knew where to find Legion.** Legion kept his cool and headed outside.

Out on the street, our heroes were attacked by more shadow demons – Rowan had said the warlock’s name, making sure she knew it well enough to use it for magic, and he apparently heard her. She was almost torn apart by the first demon, while another kept Legion tied up. Rowan barely managed to get a shield up around her in time to keep the thing from tearing her throat out – it still savaged her shoulder – and Gerhardt used his kinetomancy to pull the antennae off all the parked cars in the area and pin the thing to the ground long enough for Rowan and Elaine to take it out. He then unloaded with both his shotgun and pistol on the one fighting Legion and put that one down, too.

They decided to spend the night behind a threshold, and Rowan didn’t want to invite a half-vampire and a guy full of demons into her parents’ home, so they all camped out at Gerhardt’s place.

In the morning, Rowan went off to do some research and perform a Thaumaturgic ritual to find the warlock, while Gerhardt and the Operation Clean Sweep folks started canvassing Mad Cowz territory with a written copy of the name. By the time Rowan had her locater compass, Gerhardt had narrowed down the area to a single block. They picked up Elaine and Legion, and went to take care of business.

Using the compass, they were able to identify the correct house, but Rowan was very leery about using the Sight to check for wards. She knew enough about the magic from Demissie’s part of the world to know that the wards would need fetish bags buried at each of the four corners of the house to protect it.*** They dug the bundles up, and she used the Sight on one to determine the nature of the wards, which left her vomiting on the ground, and knowing that they were designed to tear the soul out of people.

At this point, several of the others noticed that the streets were starting to fill up with a couple dozen Mad Cowz with baseball bats, and time started to become important.

Rowan tried to use her Thaumaturgy to deactivate the wards, but couldn’t control all the power they contained, and it splashed out****, tearing at the minds of everyone in the area. Our heroes weathered it fairly well, but nearly half the Mad Cowz collapsed. The rest started charging at the characters, who decided to charge the house.

When they burst into the house, they found a magical circle scribed on the floor in the front room with a doll in the centre. Rowan figured that this was what her compass was focusing on, and spent a few moments to examine the circle, seeing that it was created in haste, and that if the doll was acting as a decoy for the name, it would also be a good magical link to Demissie. By this time, the Mad Cowz were battering on the front door, and trying to climb in the windows while Elaine and Gerhardt held the door closed and Legion kept others from climbing in the windows.

Under the time pressure, Rowan didn’t spot the magical trap in the circle, which caused the ceiling, floor, and doll to burst into flame when she smudged the circle to break the decoy spell. Now trapped in a burning house with angry gang members at the front and back, having lost the doll, they decided to cut their losses and run for it.

Elaine fired her shotgun through the door and she, Rowan, and Legion made a break for it, while Gerhardt laid down covering fire. Legion took out the three remaining gang members at the front, and they made a clean getaway.

They followed the compass, now pointing (they hope) to the real Demissie, and it led them right to the Legislative Buildings, and the secret Temple of Hermes it contains.

Next week: Boss fight at the Leg!

Comments:

  • As the players gain familiarity with the system, they’re willing to try some neat things. It took a while for them to start getting used to the co-operative narrative aspects of invoking for effect and making declarations and using Fate Points to add things to a scene, but once they got it, they used it.
  • Magic use gets faster with practice. This is a good thing.
  • Everyone is worried when combat starts. This is also a good thing.

*Mechanically, Rowan’s player invoked her Heir to Secret Knowledge Aspect for effect, and said that her father had a special password that would – once and once only – allow the person who used it to obtain an audience with the Tribunal. Now there’s a good follow-up story hook.

**Mechanically, I compelled Legion’s Marked Man Aspect – not terribly functional in the short playtest sessions, but I wanted to see how it could be used to set up longer term stories in campaigns.

***She used her Lore skill to make a declaration to that effect, and pulled it off.

****Thanks to a compel of her Wizards’ Mistakes Are Big And Messy Aspect.