Showing posts with label sotc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sotc. Show all posts

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Race To Adventure

Racing across the globe to collect stamps from exotic locales and rescue prisoners from the sunken city of Atlantis, Race to Adventure is a fast playing board game based in the universe of Spirit of the Century, the Fate powered RPG from Evil Hat. You play as one of five characters from the RPG and novels, including the gorilla, Professor Khan, and star of the upcoming Young Adult novel, Sally Slick.

Each turn consists of players choosing from a number of items, such as the Jetpack, Biplane or Raygun, starting with the current First Player and proceeding clockwise. Once everyone has chosen, all players do their actions together, simultaneously. Then the First Player token moves clockwise to the next player and the next turn begins.

Race is a very easy to learn game, with a well laid out, clear and simple rulebook, and lovely colourful cards with big, clear symbols for the actions. Honestly, the most difficult thing about Race for us during our first games was learning that the game really does play that fast! Turns flash by. Players move together, reaching over each other to get to their tokens and perform their daring feats. Because everything is so well laid out and the visual design is so clear, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and how it might effect their turn this round. The rules are easy, but overcoming that ingrained board game concept that each player should finish her turn before moving to the next players actions is harder. But once you get it, you understand how the game can be over in 30 minutes, despite a lot to accomplish to claim victory.

The board is made up of tiles that are laid out in a 3x3 grid, beside the heroes base of operations in the Empire State Building that makes up the leftmost column. In a move that is nothing short of genius, each tile has a standard side and a Shadow side. This ties nicely into the setting, where the heroes are Centurions, while the villains of the universe are referred to as Shadows. The Shadow sides offer a higher level of difficulty through greater mission requirements and more impassible borders, requiring more thought on strategy for the current and upcoming turns.

As it was funded through Kickstarter, the copy of the game I received included the expansion, adding more tiles that can be swapped in, as well as new enemies and objectives. That said, even just the base game has a lot of replayability, as the tiles play in a different order every game, making it fresh and new with each play. As well as that, you can play on the standard side, the Shadow side, or a random combination of both. Nigh-limitless variation!

Race to Adventure is another fun, fast game that I love to play whenever we feel like something shorter than Battlestar Galactica! In fact, Race can play faster than some games of No Thanks!

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Thursday, July 22, 2010

When Last We Left Our Heroes

After much soul searching and internal monologuing, with a heavy heart I have come to the decision to Fox my Monday Night RPG (To Fox: Verb, to bring to an abrupt stop usually without resolution). In all honesty, this has been coming a while now. I just haven't been feeling the love for the game that I want to as a GM. Where I used to look forward to Monday nights and gaming, it has been a chore for too long. This has nothing to do with my players. It's not you, it's me.

I've been reading a book from my hero, Sir Ken Robinson, called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. In it, Sir Ken makes the point that when you are doing something you love, then there is no "work" involved, time passes at a different pace, you can adapt and manage change within whatever you are doing with ease and nothing seems impossible. You are in your Element.

All this made me realise that GMing is not fun for me right now. I am not in my Element. In my last Spirit of the Century game I looked forward to each game night. My brain was filled with ideas and I relished the opportunity to be actively creative and exercise my mind on the go as the players repeatedly screwed up my perfectly laid plans. I didn't know what was going to happen next week, but it didn't bother me. The players controlled the flow of the game to some extent, and I simply had to come up with the connecting pieces to join the end of one game to the start of the next.

With my current game, I just don't feel the same ability within myself. I find myself "sending in the ninjas" far too often just to stall things, or to drag out the evening until people go home. I've always enjoyed out-of-game conversations at the gaming table, as I feel that game night is as much a chance for people to get out and hang with friends as it is for them to solve the latest adventure. But when I'm looking forward to just hanging out with my players and having those out-of-game conversations over playing the actual game, I know that something is not right.

In my previous campaign I was happy with the twists and turns I had the story take. I never second guessed myself about how I did something in a game. In this game, I am constantly regretting how I played a scene. "Oh, I should have done this, I should have used him, I could have made them appear, I shouldn't have played it like that." I don't feel the same confidence in my own abilities.

Maybe I made my world too big? In my previous campaign it was just 1920's Earth. Here we have eight other planets and various hidden locations. I had this grand idea for each planet, a system for travelling between them (robbed wholesale from a sci-fi series), at least two important NPCs on each world, and even some threads of what each NPC might want. But it was too much. I didn't know how to handle it, or, maybe, I did, but I just lost interest. I hadn't enough of it written down, or solidly plotted out. But then, I had virtually nothing written down in my first campaign, just single word ideas, a sentence here or there and some stuff bookmarked in Firefox.

In the end, all that matters is that I'm not happy with the level of quality I'm bringing to the table as GM. I hereby hand off our own little Monday Night Gaming to anyone that wants it. We have a set of enthusiastic players who deserve a GM to match.

Right now, I need a cookie.

And so, we end tonights final episode of "Across The Stars" as our heroes dangle precariously from the edge of the asteroid with the villainous Dr. Apathy sneering overhead. From everyone here at KWRYN, we thank you for listening, and remember, always "Shoot for the stars!"

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Insomnia Sucks

Yes, in a revelation that is sure to shock no-one, insomnia sucks. Not only am I wide awake at the ungodly hour of 4am, having had very little sleep since I went to bed a little before midnight, but I can't even muster enough enthusiasm or inspiration to come up with a witty title for this post. Instead, I'm just being blunt and to the point. Also, expect numerous grammatical errors and incorrect spelling.

I'm not usually the one to suffer from insomnia. As soon as I crawl into bed, I can be out like a light in minutes, especially if I attempt to read anything in bed. It's like a Pavlov's Dog effect at this point. Bed+reading=sleep, guaranteed. Usually. This is probably the first time in recent memory that I've been so bad I just had to get up and do something. Normally it's Claire that wakes me from my deep slumber to tell me she can't sleep and is going to get up, to which I do my best Frankensteins Monster impression, reply "mmmurrhhh" and roll over.

So, what's keeping me up this morning? I could easily blame poetic justice. Just a few hours ago, after finishing up playing DS at Robs place, I mocked Neill for his inability to sleep the night before. In response to "I got to sleep at 6am and was awake again at 9", I said "I got to sleep around 11pm and wandered out of bed just before 10 this morning. Hah!" So... yeah. I totally deserve this to be honest.

But based on my erratic, yet speedy, heart rate I'm going to go out on a limb here and blame the Mars bar and one-and-a-half liters of Lucozade I had while playing DS at Robs place for my currently alert but unstable status. Yup. Yeah. That'll do it all right.

On the upside, my sleep deprived state has driven me to insane, yet crystal-clear thoughts. I have decided to entirely kill my attempted Tuesday evening RPG for the time being. I shall have to wait until a far more sane hour to text my players regarding this fact. Chances are, a few of them will read this before they get that text anyway. On the other hand, I am now considering running not one, not two, but three RPGs over not four, not three, but two days!! Yes. That means running two games on one day. Insanity, I hear you cry!! Allow me to explain.

Previously to this early mornings events, I had offered to run an RPG on Monday evenings for Kris, Neill and Gar, though this has yet to be confirmed. Recent Mondays have found us sitting around, twiddling our thumbs, either playing Xbox out of boredom, or watching a movie, also out of boredom. The biggest issues with these are that Xbox ends up excluding some of the people present, and movies are a very passive activity, at a time that I would be much happier doing something with. So an RPG fits nicely. Also, the prospective players have been turning up when there has been nothing of interest on, so surely when there is an RPG on (which will hopefully be interesting), they will continue to be around.

A similar situation has grown around our Sunday afternoon group. Meeting for breakfast in town is great, and I do love getting together to catch up with the weeks news, but afterwords, we've been at a loss with what to do. As with the Monday group, the Xbox has been fired up out of boredom, but it doesn't last long. It seems that everyone apart from myself has grown tired of Rock Band already. Card games and board games got dragged out, but I'm fairly sick of replaying Battlestar Galactica and Fluxx (both awesome games, but I need an extended break for a while), and it's hard to get everyone to agree on a game with just a few minutes notice. So I got thinking, why not run an RPG? I usually think of RPGs as evening events, running after dinner, from seven until late, but that's not really necessary unless it's mid-week. On a weekend, why not start at, say, two, and finish at six. In fact, that would seem to suit my friends better. They still get home nice and early for work on Monday morning.

And that's where the third game comes in. Some of the players from my first Spirit of the Century campaign (have I mentioned before what a huge success that was?!? I have? Oh... well... it was. Huge!) can't really make it mid-week, due to a variety of commitments. But a Sunday evening game might suit them nicely. Say, from seven until half ten, eleven o'clock? That gives me an hour leeway between games, time to grab dinner and re-energise (without Luzoade from now on), and get the two player groups swapped around. Easy.

I think I could totally do it. Yes, it is now creeping towards 6am as I continue to write, so that may have more than a little to do with my hyperactive state, but my games are very much player driven, requiring very little work on my part. Events are moved forward by what they want, expect or make happen. Apart from a small number of special event sessions, my previous Spirit of the Century game (huge!) required almost no preparation between sessions, and I usually only worried about what I was going to do each evening an hour or two before everyone turned up. To quote Mythbusters, I think two games in one day, and three games a week is... "Plausible!" And we all know that it'll only be through scientific testing that we can learn if this myth is "Proven", or "Busted".

The next thing to decide is what game when. Currently, I'm happy to attempt a second run at my Spirit of the Century game, Mouse Guard and Dogs In The Vineyard, three dramatically differing games, but each based on the episodic style of play; adventures are usually wrapped up in a single evening rather than extending over several play sessions. I'd love to run a superhero game, but I find it unusually difficult to come up with an arc, which is usually where I start with my campaigns, breaking it down into sessions, or events. Whenever I try to think of an arc, I just end up with one I've read in comics already. Dammit! Why must I be such a comic nerd?!?

So there we have it. A kind of manifesto against boredom, and in support of creativity and hyperactiveness. Now all I have to do is gauge interest of everyone apart from myself. Unfortunately, I'm not actually around this weekend, which would be the perfect time to start asking, while my excitement towards such a big undertaking is at a high, and my brain has failed to truly realise how completely, utterly, stupidly insane it's being.

Insomnia sucks but it can be strangely productive.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

RPG's And Tangential Learning

Ever since I got back to Cork I've been itching to run a new RPG, using the Spirit of the Century Fate 3.0 system. My last game was a huge success, of completely unexpected levels, filled with action, combat, danger (sorta), guest stars, a growing core cast, and generally a good time for all involved. It was the very first campaign I ran that lasted more than three sessions, and by the time we got to the wrap-up, we had put in 14 episodes, which is the Fox equivalent of a great first season!

With the upcoming release of Starblazer Adventures from Cubicle 7, Brian Caball putting me on to the 1990's setting Torg, my good friend Gar's Traveller available from Mongoose, the brand new Flash Gordon comics from Ardden Entertainment, and the recently started Monday Night Gaming here in Cork, I have tonnes of inspiration, adventure ideas, story arc seeds, characters and more to play with, all swimming around in my head, all battling for center stage.

In fact, I have so much stuff, I actually have three RPG's in various stages of development. I just like the setting of Torg, but haven't come up with much of a campaign concept yet. I really, really want to run an idea I have for a deep space Traveller/ Starblazers/ Spirit of the Far Future campaign but need to flesh out a few opening adventures before I'm happy with it yet, and finally, I have my most prized campaign seed, which, I have to unfortunately admit, Brian Caball inspired/ fully created!

This third one is the campaign I most want to run right now. It's also the one I have most ideas for already, and have started detailed research on. I like my games to be fast and easy, without the requirements of too much specialised knowledge on any areas, but at the same time, I like having hard facts upon which to hang my crazy adventure story.

So off to Wikipedia I went, and there I got lost. Thankfully, I was not alone in the depths of information overload; my wife* Claire was along for the adventure, clicking links on her laptop behind me, and passing back and forth interesting facts that caught our attention. If you have ever spent time on Wikipedia, you know this story already: you search for a subject, while reading that you click on an interesting link, repeat several times until you've forgotten where you started or you're reading an article on wet t-shirt competitions.

In our case, we started researching the origin of one of the English names for this chunk or rock we live on, Earth. From there, we got on to the etymology of the word Earth**, but not really being certain of the spelling of that term (I always pronounced eN-tim-ology, which is closer to a very different area of study), I wikied "origin of words", and discovered this interesting page as the third link! The list includes the obvious, such as banshee, as well as a few that surprised me, such as phoney, slob and Tory! And you'll be surprised where the word kibosh originates from!

I love tangential learning. Leaning things that you have an interest in is so much easier than being force to learning something that you might consider boring. I guess that's why I love to research facts for RPGs. It gives me the chance to learn about so many things that I otherwise might never have looked at. And, in a weeks time, in a months time, even in a years time, I'll still remember these facts. I'll still know who the various religions and cultures that worshipped Mars are, and the names they all gave it. I'll still know where the word galore comes from (it's obvious if you think about it as an Irish phrase).

Thankfully, I don't have to explain anything about the concept of tangential learning, or why it's valuable, not only in RPGs, but for books, comics and computer games. Daniel Floyd, with the assistance of James Portnow, has created a short video explaining the benefits of this method of learning. Click play below, and hopefully you'll learn something along the way.***

Via Rock, Paper, Shotgun; via Edge Online

*- I really need to actually add the post about all that to the blog at some point! If there is anyone out there reading this that hasn't heard that I'm now a married man, I'll try to post something soon!
**- Turns out, no-one knows!! Hah!
***- See what I did there? Yeah. I hate me too...

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Why Do You Need A Testing Facility That Far Into The Desert?

Session Four: Stop That Train!!

Available: Maurice LeBec, Sir Alistair Montgomery, Chloe M, Ares Astral, Hank Scorpio
Guest Starring: Agent Smith, Agent Johnson

The morning after the events at Carnegie Hall, the group were contacted by Atlantic Philanthropies and told to meet at a building in the city. Once there, they were met by two agents from the Department Of Investigation. Someone had stolen a piece of valuable technology and the DOI requested the assistance of AP in it's recovery. The agents were "not at liberty" to discuss the details of the stolen technology, but assured the party that it was in their best interests to help.

And so, off to San Francisco!

They knew that the stolen goods were being transported by train, and the agents had leads as to which one. They arrived at the train depot and began investigating the container storage area. Chloe had to turn on the heat to help get passed the guards at the gates, one or two decided to sneak in, and soon everyone was snooping around. Maurice found a long, office-like building toward the back of the area and ducked in, just in time to see some shady characters handing a thick envelope to a plain-clothes youth. Maurice waited for the courier to leave and managed to pickpocket the envelope, open it and return it to the young man all without being seen. Inside he found and took blue-prints for a one-man jet propulsion device, a rocket-pack!

Meanwhile, the rest of the group had managed to dramatically disable all the Mafia thugs in the depot, even finding a few more on the street behind the offices and interrogating them. Learning that the container with the stolen goods was already well on it's was to Salt Lake City, they quickly decided to give chase.

This was the point where I folded my arms and listened in amazement as the players took the initiative and began a whole scene that I never expected. My notes read "Players learn where train is and race to catch it. Once at the train...", fully expecting to just say "Ok, you arrive in sight of the train as it screams down the tracks..." Instead, the players all took it upon themselves to have an elaborate race to get to the prize first. Ares and Maurice took Gir, Ares' Martian tripod, Agents Smith and Johnson took their Custom Ride, a fully kitted out Stunt, Sir Alistair took his own Stunt gadget, a one-man clockwork helicopter, and Chloe and Hank simply relied on an excellent driving stat, nabbed the mafia car and took off while the others agreed on the "rules". The spontaneous action was hilarious, as all sorts of back-stabbing and shenanigans came to a head! Sir Alistair spent a while fiddling with his copter, thinking he could make it faster, but it would "Need More Cogs". Unfortunately, without Sir Alistairs player even seeing, Maurice's player rolled to pocket a few cogs in order to slow the contraption down. Because both rolled the same, I simply negated the effect of Sir Alistairs tinkering!!

Eventually things got back on track, so to speak. Everyone arrived at the train, though some were shakier than others. Gir put a foot through a passenger window and Ares had to reign it back from zapping the screaming "fleshbags" inside. They checked the containers attached, but the one they were after was nowhere to be found. Searching the rest of the train was fruitless. I threw in the old "Runaway Train" trope here as well to give them something to do onboard, but while they were solving that, Gir detected a cargo container in the mountains. Once the train was safe, they backtracked along the tracks to a split that lead upwards into the hills. Following it, they discovered an abandoned mining facility with several storage buildings and an unusually high number of armed thugs for such a dilapidated area.

Fighting and explosions later, Maurice had explored one empty building and a second with several large cargo containers. The rest of the party arrived in and helped search the containers until they found the one they were looking for. Cracking it open, they recovered the missing technology, as well as the young man wearing it, much to the surprise of everyone involved.

At this point, I threw in more mob thugs and a leader to give the players someone to question and learn more about who was in charge. As it was getting late, we left all the questioning for the next week, but they did they did learn that the vile Doctor Eternity was somehow connected!! Dun-dun-duuuuuuuun!!

Friday, April 18, 2008

I Wee When I Get Excited

When I get all excited about something, I clench my fists, shake them side-to-side, and screech "weeeee" through a huge grin that spreads from ear to ear. Rather like Wallace I suppose. When I get really excited, the screech becomes audible to dogs and kids that can still register that annoying mosquito sound places use to disband hoards of emo and goth kids. What...? You thought the title meant something different?

At the moment, any time I think about my Spirit of the Century game, I find myself shaking and screeching. A lot. Looking back on the last few weeks, things have been going far better than I could ever have hoped (I'm a little behind in my summaries, but hope to post new ones soon), with everyone now rushing head-long towards the endgame. Looking forward, plots seem to be jumping out at me, coming together with very little effort, tying directly into player characters backgrounds. Next Tuesdays scenario was particularly fun to research. (Ack! Just now, even writing that last sentence, I let out a little screech!) Of course, I can't go in to detail now, as some of my players do read my blog occasionally, and I'd hate to spoil anything.

Monday, March 31, 2008

I Prefer Jazz Anyway

Session Three: Music To Calm The Soul
Note: This session was stolen from RPG.Net's Roleplaying Actual Play thread. As such, credit goes to the original author, walkerp. While I'm at it, I took inspiration from the excellent comic miniseries Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way for some modifications to the nefarious villains of the piece.

Available: Maurice LeBec, Sir Alistair Montgomery, Chloe M

After their adventure in Africa, the party were granted some down-time, and offered tickets to the opening performance of a symphony that has swept through Europe to high acclaim. Reluctantly accepting the tickets, the party were whisked away to New York, and the famous Carnegie Hall.

Arriving at the show, Sir Alistair spotted an old acquaintance of his, Doctor Deedes, and wandered off to join him in the parquet. Maurice and Chloe headed upwards to the first balcony area, but did not sit together. Chloe had spotted a well known adventurer, Jack Savage, and pointedly chose to ignore him.

As the music began, Maurice realised he was experiencing something wonderful. His knowledge of the Arts meant that he was aware that this was truly as great as the reports from Europe were claiming. The music was astonishing, and he soon found himself taken away by it all.

At the break, the party joined up briefly in the bar and discussed the show so far, as well as having time to chat to fellow attendees. But, with a mere fifteen minutes for the intermission, they learned little of value save that everyone seemed to be enjoying it in varying degrees.

The second half of the show was a little different. Very shortly after it began, Chloe noticed that people were staring more intently at the orchestra than usual, and some had their heads tilted slightly to one side, while a small few were even drooling. Looking around, she noticed that Maurice has seemingly fallen asleep!! Sir Alistair noticed his friend acting strangely, as well as an unusually strong sensation of calm. Using a handy Gadget he just so happened to have with him, he found that something was producing a frequency that mimicked and caused a state similar to REM sleep in the people who could hear it. It was clear someone was tampering with the audience.

Chloe woke Maurice, who proceeded to scale the walls and head along the drapes and balcony boxes towards the stage. Sir Alistair attempted to awaken Doctor Deedes and some others, but was met with resistance. The music changed and all the hypnotised people began to crowd around him chanting in a monotonous voice "Don't stop the music. Don't stop the music..." At the same time, Chloe spotted men moving through the crowd, hold large sacks. They were dressed in impeccable tuxedos and every one of them wore a small domino mask. As they passed through the zombiefied high society of New York, they simply held out the bags and people put wallets, jewelery and anything else of value willingly into them.

Despite drifting off to sleep again while clinging to some drapes, Maurice reached the stage and leaped down to attack the conductor. Sir Alistair fended off zombies, trying desperately not to hurt anyone, but pushing to get towards the men in the domino masks. Chloe raced down the back stairs to try to get to the stage, and almost ran into some more domino masks who were on the way up.

After dropping the curtains and various other items on the orchestra, Maurice managed to stop the symphony long enough to pound on the conductor. The violinists were firing bows using their instruments like bow and arrows, and the orchestra proved themselves capable of a fight. Chloe spotted someone in the rigging about the stage, and climbed the ladder to investigate, but was almost blasted away by an ear piercing sound. Sir Alistair took down one of the men in domino masks before the hypnotic effects wore off and people began to press towards the exits. He caught a brief glimpse of one of them reaching to remove his mask, and then they vanished into the crowd!

With the conductor beaten and bruised, and himself not much better, Maurice pulled the conductor through the trapdoor in the stage for questioning. Getting only babbling, incoherent phrases and the odd unexplainable apology to an unnamed someone. Heading back up to the stage, Maurice spotted Chloe dangling off the ladder and went to help. Sir Alistair was determined to examine the instruments immediately. Up on the catwalk, Chloe and Maurice confronted a shadowy figure. He was wearing a cape with a high collar, and over his mouth was a piece of grated metal. He roared at the two adventurers, sending them rolling back alone the catwalk, and Chloe almost fell. "You ruined this symphony", he said. "But our Apocalypse Suite goes on! This shall not be the last time we meet!", and with that, he seemed to drop from the far end of the catwalk.

Chloe and Maurice raced back down, but neither could see the enemy, and Sir Alistair seemed to have not noticed anyone moving. Rushing down below the stage, they discovered the body of the conductor, blood weeping from his eyes, nose and ears. Frozen on his face is a look of unnatural horror. Sir Alistair's cursory examination revealed that he was most likely killed by a sonic device bursting blood vessels in his head. Investigating the area reveals a simple pulley lift shaft that runs from the catwalk to under the stage. Going up, a skylight is open, letting in the cool New York night air.

A round of questioning the captured domino masked man, as well as a few of the orchestra, revealed some interesting facts about the symphony and it's creator, though nothing to help track him now. Sir Alistair was intrigued by the devices he found in the instruments that allowed them to be attuned to the frequencies of the human mind, putting it into a trance-like state. Naturally, he pocketed one for further study. Handing all the captives over to the police and spending some time relaying their own findings, the party then called it a night and headed back to their hotel rooms for some well deserved sleep.

Not a bad night at all this one. Everyone got to do lots, and had a ball of a time. The session ran on just enough for the night, feeling neither rushed, nor dragged out. It was interesting to put the PCs up against a non-physical threat, making them role Rapport, Resolve and Arts more than Guns, Might and Athletics. Fun, and funny, and while the original author pointed out that it ran late for him, I found it to be a nicely paced, enjoyably session with just the right mix of action and investigation for my group.

Truth And The Nile

Session Two: Welcome to the Jungle

Available: Maurice LeBec, Hank Scopio, Sir Alistair Montgomery, Chloe M

Called to the Society again, the party were brought up to speed on some missing members, two of the original founding members of AP, Reginald and Sarah, who had been searching for the True Source of the Nile. On Donald Fairfaxs information, the party were instructed to travel to the National History Museum in Cairo, retrieve an artifact, and then travel on to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to pick up Reginald and Sarah's trail.

Arriving in Egypt the party questioned the museum curator, and noticed that some of the shadows in the exhibition hall were unexplainably "off", but the huge overhead skylight washed the room in harsh African sunlight, so further investigation proved pointless.

The following morning, the party boarded a zeppelin bound for Kigali with the required artifact, an ancient Egyptian urn. While relaxing on board, they noticed the headline on a newspaper: "History Museum Attacked. Priceless Artifacts Stolen" and discovered that robed attackers broke into the museum late last night and made off with random artifacts. Most interesting was that they came in through the skylight in the room that had contained the urn! Dun, dun, duuuuuunnnnnnn...

The discussions on the implications of this were cut short as robed assailants attacked the zeppelin, arriving on board via bi-plane. Getting up into the main body of the zeppelin, the party discovered two dead crew members on the walkway that circles the gasbags. Before they even had time to investigate, they were attacked by the robed figures, who flung knives across great distance with stunning force. One acrobatically enriched combat scene later and the attackers were defeated and revealed as (unsurprising to everyone at the table) gorillas!!

In Kigali, they spent some time investigating the disappearance of Reginald and Sarah. In fact, they spent longer than I had anticipated, but came up with lots of ways to track an impossible trail and they discovered that the missing members had been in the company of a pygmy tribe before they disappeared.

While investigating the hotel room Reginald and Sarah had been using, the group were quick to note a lack of any sign of a struggle or forced entry. Questioning the staff, they learned that the missing couple had gone to their room, but were not seen leaving. Only a single burn mark on the carpet hinted at anything unusual. Sir Alistair questioned the nature of the mark, and upon closer examination discovered it was created by a high energy electrical discharge. Stupidly, I made Ray role for this, but when he questioned it, he had the puzzle solved already, even naming his nemesis, Doctor Eternity, as being involved. I should have just thrown him one, if not two Fate Points straight away without a role and confirmed his suspicions, instead he wasted a bunch of Points on rerolls as he just kept rolling minus'!! Ah well. I learned for the future.

Resting over night, the party proceeded into the thick jungle in the morning light and followed Reginald and Sarah's trail toward the Source of the Nile. Before they knew it they were surrounded by a large tribe of pygmy's, bows and spears pointed at the adventurers. After leaving the team to sweat for a little bit, an English speaking voice told everyone to calm down.

A tall figure dressed entirely in purple, with a black domino mask stepped out into view to address the PCs. After some introductions, the Phantom admitted to having met Reginald and Sarah, as well as offering the assistance of some of the native people to safely return to Kigali. After expositing some plot, and answering all he could, regretted that he had other business to attend to for now and vanished into the jungle once more, taking the tribe with him.

Proceeding on to the temple, the party discovered evidence of movement all around the site, as well as evidence of recent movement into and out of the temple itself. Moving into the temple, they were tricked into a trap room. Behind a metal grate in the high ceiling, the imposing face of a bespectacled gorilla looked down on the group. "Give me the urn."

A Brief Tangent: This is the first, and so far only time that I have done something that I completely regret in hindsight. In my haste to wrap up the adventure for the night, as the investigating in Kigali went on far longer than I expected, I had the lead gorilla talk, and express his desire. Looking back, there was no need for him to speak. He could have grunted and groaned, pointed and flailed. The party already knew what he was after. Plus, having him talk made him just another villain, but in a primate suit. Leaving him with just the Language of the Primates would have added something unique to his character. Besides, nothing he actually ended up saying was vital or required.

The party refused to relinquish the urn, and the room began to flood quickly to drown the characters. I had planned on the Phantom showing up at the Last Possible Second to rescue the team, but instead they came up with a great escape plan of their own, and I decided to let them enjoy the fruits of their teamwork. Bursting into the upper room, the party found themselves in a cylindrical room with a domed ceiling, an unopened sarcophagus with a pedestal at the head and beyond that was a finely carved stone chair, upon which the head gorilla was awkwardly seated, surrounded by minions.

Combat wrapped up with the lead gorilla leaping for Hank, getting shot in the chest, crashing into the Unsteady Floor (a Sticky Aspect placed on the room by one of the PCs!) and falling through, into the Flooded Room below. Once things had settled, the body of the gorilla was nowhere to be found! This, of course, lead to chants of You Thought I was Dead, Not All Gorillas Are Poor Swimmers, and Hardly the Last Time We'll See Him from the players. Honestly, I was just writing him off as dead at the time. I was far too tired to be clever, but when my players did the work for me, I knew what had to be done. Oh yes! He will return!!

Only one thing remained. The urn, and the not-at-all-obviously-placed pedestal! Cracking open the sarcophagus first, they found an undisturbed Pharaoh's body, mummified in the traditional manner. Placing the urn on the pedestal, a mechanism activated, opening a small window in the ceiling allowing light to pass through some crystal directing it straight down on the pedestal. Originating from the urn, light shone out onto the cylindrical walls, showing a surprisingly detailed map of the eastern half of the African continent, the flow of the Nile, and the location of the temple. Sir Alistair took some photographs of the strange phenomenon, then, after some further investigations and questioning the GM about various factors, the urn was removed from the pedestal and the party made their way back to Kigali.

In this session, the players used Fate Points far more, and benefited from them as well. I messed up once or twice, as I pointed out above, but over all, I was once again happy with how things went. This game ran a little late, and I had to cut some content to get it done in the session, but the players had a blast, and everyone seemed pleased with the outcome. The urn is important to the overarching plot, while still being an interesting discussion point for that session. After mutated shrewmen and intelligent gorillas, I promised regular humans for session three, and almost lived up to that promise...

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Should We Just Call The FF?

Session One: Adventuring 101- Thrilling Tales and Monstrous Creatures

Available: Sir Alistair, Ares Astral, Maurice LeBec

The groups contact at Atlantic Philanthropy (AP), Donald Fairfax, informed the attending members of trouble in Chicago. Reports were coming through of unusual disappearances and large holes around the city. The party was to travel to Chicago immediately and make contact with an associate of the Society, Professor Harvey Dale.

On arriving at Chicago they were greeted by a Friendly and Talkative taxi driver who filled them in on the large science labs overlooking the city, what little he knew of the Professor and the rumours that were spreading through every district about what might be really going on. Suspicions were firmly on the labs, but there was no time to think them out, as another car slammed into the side of the taxi, putting both through a shop window!

An Elephant Sized badger stood between the party and the remains of the entrance to a hospital. Obviously Bad Tempered and Out of Control, it was thrashing and causing chaos! Two Japanese tourists raced past the shop window screaming something about a mutant dinosaur. After being driven into, set on fire and generally shot at, the monstrous creature was lured up onto a building and onto the tracks of an elevated train, frying itself and shorting out the line! Ares investigated the remains, with the assistance of Sir Alistair, before both clambered down the ruins and headed toward Maurice, who had made it into the hospital.

Maurice had discovered that the creature had come up through the hospital floor with some more unnatural friends, and was seemingly lead by a small, grotesque man who, according to one hysterical nurse, referred to himself as "The Mushroomoid". The hole they came up was already filled in, and the creature dealt with.

As Chicago's finest arrived on the scene, the party chose to beat a hasty retreat instead of having to stand around answering questions. The ventured on to the labs, using a car Maurice appropriated.

Greeted warmly by the staff at the labs, the party was immediately brought down an elevator into a large, advanced lab, and was met by Prof. Dale, who showed them an interesting goo that had been discovered and delivered to his labs some months ago. Only in the last few days have they made any progress with it, as running an electrical current through the goo causes it to move, shift and reach out tiny fingers of goo. However, they discovered too late that their experiments were coinciding with the strange occurrences in the city, and fear there may be a connection.

After some brief talking, the lab began to shake and rumble, and the party, after making successful Alertness rolls, felt as though they were back in the elevator again. The lights went out, and everything and everyone was plunged into darkness. Maurice's excellent night vision allowed him to see strange creatures moving in the shadows, and over the din of the chaos, he heard a high-pitched voice command "The gir*crash*! Take *crash, bang*rl! Pretty girl. So commands the Migh*crash, bang, wallop*manoid!!"

Lights come up, and a hole leading out of the base of the lab into a cavern is found. Once in the cavern, it becomes clear that the labs have been Sunken Into the Ground, and now only the top floor of the building remains above ground. Following some tunnels leading down and towards the city, the party ended up in a huge, deep chasm with a spiral walkway leading all the way down, and several dodgy looking bridges criss-crossing the cavern. Wandering downwards they hear scratching and scraping noises from several of the tunnels leading off this central area. Below, a blue glow illuminates the floor of the cavern from a side tunnel, and strange creatures can be seen scurrying around. Reaching the floor, the creatures turn out to be blind Naked Mole Rats! Huge, blind, naked mole rats! Everyone made Stealth checks, Maurice blending seamlessly into the shadows, while Ares trips on a rock and stumbles into Sir Alistair, both falling loudly onto the cold rock floor. Some mole rats wandered over to investigate, but a quick bright flash of a torch into their faces caused them to reel back in horror and flee.

Investigating the blue glow, the party discovered a smaller cave with a Tesla Coil, a Mysterious Contraption, made of bits and pieces of various stolen things from the city, a pedestal with the goo positioned between the Tesla Coil pylons, and a badger in front of it. Just the regular kind! And finally, to one side of the cave was an impish, ugly man, siting on a rough stone throne, with a female lab technician chained to the wall, as all good Damsel In Distress' should be!

The small figure gestured dramatically, and complained loudly about surface dwellers invading his Subterranean Empire, sacred home of "The Mighty Shrewmanoid"!! Yup. Turns out, the nurse has misheard him, much to his annoyance once the party explained questioned it. This brought howls of laughter from all three players who had been quizzing everyone in the labs earlier about intelligent fungus, and discussing among themselves how to defeat a plant-based opponent!

Combat ensued, someone shot the Mysterious Contraption, Maurice used the shadows to get to behind the Shrewmanoid, Sir Alistair was horrified by a Star Faced Mole, and Ares tussled with a large, but not elephant sized badger! Once the dust cleared, Maurice had a wire around the Shrewmanoids neck and a few rounds of combat was brought to a dignified conclusion. Dragging the villain to the labs, with the rescued lab assistant in tow. Questioning him got all the answers they needed, before handing him over to the authorities.

Overall, the first session went well. Most importantly, everyone had a blast, there were lots of fun moments and laughter, and the players got right into the spirit of the game! None of us really made much use of Fate Points, and I needed to reread combat before the next week. Also, I learnt that I need to be harsher in combat. Characters can take a lot, and don't go down easily. I tend to be cautious in dealing damage as I don't want to remove players from the game. Mechanically, though, that's a rather difficult thing to do, so I need to be more ruthless with what my NPCs can do!!

Friday, March 07, 2008

Let's Get This Party Started

Session Zero: Character Generation
Note: While this first session was going to be CharGen and the start of an adventure to get everyone going, CharGen ran on longer than expected.

Spirit of the Century, for anyone reading that hasn't played it is an awesome experience in and of itself. Rather like the City of Heroes character generator, you can have tonnes and tonnes of fun just throwing up characters and playing with ideas. And that is what happened for this group. Two of the five players were familiar with the rules, while the other three's experiences of role-playing were mostly limited to White Wolf's World of Darkness. It took them a long time to wrap their heads around the freedom SotC's CharGen system gave them, particularly in relation to creating Aspects.

A brief word on the CharGen system for SotC in case you're unfamiliar with it. As it's a pulp style game, character names usually include dramatic, short descriptions, such as Doc Savage, Man of Bronze. Aspects are character traits illustrated through phrases or character quotes, like "First on the Scene", or "Where Did You Come From?" They are completely up to the player to invent. Players tag them by saying things like "Ah! But perhaps Jet arrives early and is "First on the Scene"?!?" gaining additional successes to the role, or affecting the flow of the story. Interesting Aspects should be ones that the GM can compel to put the PC in harms way, by saying "Ah! But Jet arrives early and is "First on the Scene"", before throwing him early into a conflict, now horribly outnumbered and awaiting back-up!

As well as aspects, you then get to choose from a list of Skills. You get one Superb, two Great, three Good, four Fair and five Average, with everything you didn't pick considered at Mediocre. These are things like Athletics, Drive, Pilot, Fists, Science and so on. I'll include the top three each player choose in the character descriptions below. Players then get five Stunts, special abilities related to their Skills.

One of the most interesting parts of SotC CharGen is the concept of Novels. As everyone is essentially a pulp hero, they each have their own novel, the story that outlines their background. However, they also guest star in two other PC's novels, allowing the game to start with everyone knowing some others in the group, if not all of them! This is really handy, as it eliminates the "Why are we all here?" problem most stories have to deal with. There is already a connection between the PC's, and the game starts with them all working for Atlantic Philanthropy, operating out of Boston. The novels all contribute to Aspects that the PC has.

Other than any interesting background they care to create for themselves, they're done. Sounds simple, but the freedom involved leads to hilariously difficult choices to be made and interesting co-operative character development among the group.

So, without further ado, the party as it stands is as follows:

Maurice LeBec, Retired Gentleman Thief (Gar)
Novel: The Man In The Fog
Sample Aspects:
The Man in the Fog; The Style Justifies the Means; So, Your Plan Requires my Death?; Your (Chloe, see below) Sister Stole my Heart
Skills: Burglary, Stealth, Sleight of Hand
Guest Staring In: The Chrono Catastrophe; Lipstick on a Shattered Mirror

Sir Alistair Montgomery, Inventor to His Majesty King George V of England (Ray)
Novel:
The Chrono Catastrophe
Sample Aspects:
If Wishes Were Horses; Never Enough Cogs; Pull it out of my Hat; For King and Country; The Evil Dr. Eternity!
Skills:
Engineering, Academics, Science
Guest Starring In:
The Man In The Fog; Areas Astral Vs. The Ice Queen of Mars

Chloe "The Siren" M
(Stephanie)
Novel: Lipstick on a Shattered Mirror
Sample Aspects:
Old Flame; Exit, Stage Right; Where Did That Come From?; At the Last Possible Second
Skills:
Deceit, Rapport, Alertness
Guest Starring In:
The Chrono Catastrophe; Hank Scorpio in The Mystery of the Blood Medallion

Hank Scopio, P.I. (Tom)
Novel: Hank Scorpio in The Mystery of the Blood Medallion
Sample Aspects:
Don't Lie to Me!; And it all went Dark; Of all the Gin Joints; Dames...
Skills:
Investigation, Rapport, Drive
Guest Starring In:
The Man In The Fog; Lipstick on a Shattered Mirror

Ares Astral, Prince of Mars
(Brian)
Novel: Areas Astral Vs. The Ice Queen of Mars
Sample Aspects:
Things Man was not Meant to Know; Stranger in a Strange Land; I Never Suspected my own Brother!; Ares, my Friend! My Camel is your Camel!; If Only we had More Time
Skills:
Mysteries, Resolve, Guns
Guest Starring In: The Man In The Fog; The Chrono Catastrophe

And there we have it! An interesting bunch that have given me food for thought! They are a great group to game with, and everyone is really getting into the pulp swing of things! Hopefully I'll have some time to write about each of the adventures they've been on so far soon. I'd like to keep a record of how things go, and where I feel I could have improved on it.

For now, though, don't touch that dial! Keep watching for further updates, and more thrilling adventures!

Monday, February 18, 2008

Pulp, Fantasy & Oh So Very British

Six months ago role-playing games didn't even factor in my social calendar, either as a regular or irregular event. I hadn't played in anything for months, and my GMing experiences could be counted on one hand, despite the fact that I really wanted to let people play in some of the fantastical worlds that swam in my head!

But things have started to change in the last few months. I got in on a regular Monday night gaming session with Gar that started off as Spirit of the Century (SotC), in which I played a Gadgeteer. Once it was officially announced that Gar was writing the new edition of Traveller for Mongoose, we started play-testing the mechanics he was working on within the Firefly setting, as none of our group had much experience with Traveller, and were far more keen on playing space-cowboys anyway! In Firefly, I started off as a Rogue, before dieing, apparently completely forgettably, and returning as a Core-Worlds doctor, secretly under the employ of Blue Sun to investigate the origins or Reavers. That wrapped up all too fast before Christmas, and we moved on to something else in the New Year.

Now we're play-testing the upcoming Doctor Who RPG, which is fun, though admittedly, I'm playing it as an SotC game! I play a 1944 RAF pilot accidentally caught up in wacky time-travel shenanigans! Even though I'm not a fan of the Doctor Who series, Gar was careful to gauge our interests and play towards that! Plus, although I dislike the show, I love the concept. I love the time-travel, action adventure, the pulp-styled gadgets and over-the-top fun, the lovable ridiculousness of the TARDIS and the odd creepiness of the Daleks. What I don't like are the cheesy villains (pet hate: living plastic! Whiskey! Tango! Foxtrot!!) and the over use of low budget effects or props. There isn't an excuse for them anymore. The show has both a sizable budget and an endlessly creative crew. Episodes such as Blink, Sound of Drums and Family of Blood illustrate the inventiveness and ingenuity of the crew at all stages of an episodes production, yet despite these few shining moments, we still have to put up with living plastic and gas mask-faced zombies!! If you haven't already seen it, do yourself a favour and watch Blink. It is incredible, and due to the nature of the episode, everything you need to know about the Doctor is explained within the episode, so you could watch it without ever having seen another one!

Sorry... that got a bit rantish there. Well, I guess this is my blog, and I can talk about what interests me, but still. I've gone way off track!! Back to RPGs and the current situation I find myself in.

Um... actually, where was I? *blah, blah, blah* Play-test... *blah, blah* Doctor Who... Oh yes! Now I'm up to my own game! After months of trying to get a group together to play my own SotC game, I finally struck gold and pieced together a stunning and enthusiastic group for a Tuesday night ongoing story. As SotC is supposed to be a "pick-up-and-play" game, I've designed each episode to run within a single night, and there is very little of an over-arcing plot. It's fun, fast and pulpy. Last week was all character generation, which ran longer than expected as three of the five players were new to the system. However, while it officially starts tomorrow, I've spent the last week adjusting some of my stories to fit into characters backgrounds. Instead of Professor Bob, madman extraordinaire, they'll now fight Doctor Eternity, nemesis of Sir Alistair, inventor to His Majesty King George V. Honestly, I've never looked forward to a game more than this one!

And to top it all off, I'm now playing in Claire's D&D game on Sunday nights!! So far, there isn't much to say about this one. We're investigating the spread of a plague that doesn't kill anyone, we have no-one in the party that can heal, and I'm playing a customised version of a WarForged, essentially based exclusively off of RoboCop! This one's gonna be fun.

That brings my weekly gaming experiences up from zip, to three games a week, running Sunday, Monday and Tuesday! Not bad for someone that had lost all interest in gaming not so long ago. I'll try to add various bits of short fiction based on the games as I go along. I enjoy the three settings I'm playing in at the moment, and I love adding to the backgrounds or just general bits and pieces. Keep me bookmarked, and feel free to comment on things, or add your own ideas to my stories!