Playing in a Weird War II savage worlds game. I modeled my character after my great uncle. We recently blew up a cult ceremony with an emerging old one and are now in some weird purple sky land trying to get back to earth.
Playing the Atomic Robo RPG, where my adventures as Luke Knight, Theoretical Geographer and World's Foremost Atlantis Expert continues. I think over time I have accepted that ARRPG is my favourite Fate implementation.
Over on the video games front, my brother and two friends and I are putting a lot of hours into Ghost Recon: Wildlands. It's not perfect, but it is such a great 4-player co-op experience. Last night we stumbled across some sicario's helicopter parking lot, so we each grabbed our own attack chopper and hummed "Flight of the Valkyries" as we idiotically blundered into the next mission. It was terribly ineffective and every second was hilarious.
We're halfway through playing Alas Vegas now, and our amnesiac protagonists are starting to remember bits of their previous lives. My flashbacks actually fit into a fairly coherent life story, unlike those of some other PCs.
Just returned to my Edge of the Empire campaign excited about that. This episode is a sandbox for the PCs to explore with many potential friends and enemies to make.
Also, I can't afford Mass Effect: Andromeda so I have restarted Mass Effect 1 instead. It's looking a bit old but it's still fantastic.
I'm running Blades in the Dark and 5th edition D&D right now. Blades thematically brings in gothic horror, steampunk, and conflict with the apparatus of oppression, all of which I like to work with. Mechanically, it's a delight of a system that really sings with people who can balance the ability to take risks with the deep investment and care it encourages players to have for their characters. It also has a faction turn, which I adore. I feel like I could run or play it every day.
I'm not the world's biggest fan of D&D, but I like the Eberron setting that I'm using. 5th edition is really very easy to run, especially over Roll20 where I play it. The first games I ran outside of a generic western medieval fantasy world were in Eberron, and I have the familiarity that comes from having loved something obsessively as a teenager. The people are what make me want to keep coming back to that game, though. I'm trying to get them to try out some stuff that I like better but still is well integrated into Roll20, like Fall of Magic, Quiet Year, Blades, something like that.
Adam D I, too, adore Robo. It is probably my actual favorite Fate implementation, though it'll never be my claimed favorite which will always be Diaspora.
Playing and running 5e D&D, a total of three separate campaigns. I may add in some Beyond the Wall, but scheduling is so hard now.
Of the two campaigns I'm PCing, one is about reawakening the gods... which is only the least worst option, and the other is about dungeon crawling. (It may eventually be about other things, but right now it's a more interesting dungeon crawl than I thought possible to run).
The campaign I'm running is about exploration, civic duty, and the pressures of solvency in a time of revolution.
I'm in a Savage Worlds Deadlands game. We're a posse sent out after some escaped mad scientists (they were experimenting on other people, not themselves).
The world can be entertaining and I love seeing the people involved. It's really a way to socialize and keep in touch.
I'm running a Pathfinder module but we only get to play once a month. Again, it's mostly for the social aspect. This month we're playing Mermaids instead as one player can't make it and our host has been promising his daughter another session of Mermaids for ages.
John Dornberger I would love to hear more good things about Blades in the Dark! I've tried it a couple of times, and it never quite jelled -- even with pbta MCs all around the table. It felt a bit more like a board game than an RPG.
And I get returning to things we know and love. The nostalgia factor is great. That's probably why I keep returning to Star Wars and its cousins.
Brandes Stoddard three campaigns is a lot! I've barely got one, which meets almost weekly. Then the mostly one-shot Thursday nights, where we alter what we play pretty regularly. What's exciting about those campaigns?
William Nichols I take notes during the game. When I'm running, I just note what they've done, who've they've met, and anything notable (pun unintentional).
I also have the list of encounters and I check off what's been done. This module came with a deck of 'mission' cards, that's been very helpful. I keep the ones they haven't seen yet and they keep the ones they've completed and the ones that are ongoing.
William Nichols Yes, Edge of the Empire is Star Wars. Specifically it's about the explorers and criminals who are trying to make a living on the fringes of the War. It has a very fun system with dice pools made of seven proprietary types. Each roll can provide many different entertaining results.
Mass Effect is fantastic. The gameplay across the trilogy varies from good to stunning to great while the story is Epic space adventure, then fun episodic space opera, then apocalyptic space war. The setting ties it all together though. Bigger and better than any TV SF. I love it all. Recommended.
I've been considering setting up a once a month campaign but I've never tried it before. I was thinking of running six hour sessions so that we could get more done between interruptions. Also four hours never feels like enough.
Arlene Medder That was my plan exactly, and i figured that with six hours i should be able to play through an entire 'chapter' of a game or at least wrap up on a big, memorable cliffhanger.
I'm mostly playing "hide and seek" and "can I get the children to eat dinner" with occasional excursions into Forbidden Island/Desert and two-man Wizard.
William Nichols I've heard that criticism a couple of times, but I don't understand what seems boardgamey. For my own understanding, could I ask you to expound on that?
But for saying nice things, I have a lot of nice things to say, probably too many. There are two aspects that stand out to me: the way the game is broadly designed to encourage a cinematic, participatory narrative flow from all the players, and how the game uses mechanics to buttress the limits of personal trust.
The game has a cinematic feel, which is expressed in a few ways. You can flash back in time to show how clever your character was to prepare for this, but only once it becomes interesting to find that out, avoiding potential hours of tedious planning. It feels like the scoundrels in heist movies, or the end scenes in the Ocean's movies, where all is revealed.
The divided phases of play mean that when you've moved through the character play (which is not insubstantial) and want to get to the action, you can jump straight there. All you need to go from "Maybe we could...[x]" to "We're in and doing it!" is one detail of a plan. If you want to slow down, great! Do all the planning or character play that fits the story, and there's a reward for doing some, but it's just as fun to jump into the action and worry about building the plan around one detail as you make it happen. The players can be surprised along with each other, like the mutual viewers of an action film.
You make your character with a supporting cast. The sheets have a set listed, but you can swap them out as you please as with all the pbta names and looks. When you do something with your supporting cast, you get little benefits that make the hard life easier. Because we're in a fiction first system, you get them to help you by saying "So I'm going to head off to Quellyn's stall in the market where she brews up curatives. We're going to make a special one for me..." or "I need help blowing off steam, but I know my buddy Marlene always has my back when I go drinking." You have to bring them on screen, describe them, and enrich or enliven the world.
Building slightly on that, when you bring your friends onscreen, we learn more about them. When you want to get xp in Blades, you do that by showing everyone around the table more about your character. Your xp conditions are: Show how and what your chosen playbook does (don't like what you chose? Ok, sorry that happened, but let's make up a cooler one!), show us about your character's background and beliefs, and show us how your character's vices and traumas affect and trouble them. Your incentive is to show, not tell. At the end of the session, you recapitulate and make sure everyone could see what you were doing, make it clear if it wasn't, and help the other players know how push/show off what makes your character cool. This builds the cinematic feel (show, don't tell), but it also helps bring the group together and make the whole fiction richer by sharing these important and defining moments. It creates a sense of trust at the table, which is the other part I wanted to say nice things about.
The mechanics of Resistance are a favorite of mine. Bad things happen, that's part of gaming and random chance. Having bad things you didn't expect or want to happen can strain trust at the table and take players out of the fun. There's an instinct to say "But I would've..." or "I'd be ok if it was like [x] but not [y]". In Blades you can do that. Instead of a consequence for a bad roll, you can tell everyone how it didn't happen because of how your character overcame that. It might take some of your stress, and it doesn't make the action a success if it wasn't before.
This makes me feel trusting, both as a GM and player, when dealing with things that are uncomfortable. I can press as hard as the fiction demands as a GM, and the players never fully loose control of their character's narrative. Even when things go terribly, there's some control. Similarly, when your character reaches their maximum stress and has to leave the action, you describe how they're taken out. You used that stress to do cool things, so you get to decide how it all just became too much.
With many rolled actions, any player can propose a Devil's Bargain that flows from the fiction for the acting player to get a bonus die. These are complications that will occur whether the roll succeeds or fails. They aren't always punitive, but they should always be interesting. They could be the loss of some resource, but only because it will be interesting to see if there's a sense of regret or guilt when that resource would otherwise be needed. It can also be more complicated, like falling in love with the person you're trying to manipulate, or getting more of what you want from your allies but only by abusing their trust. Because this can come from anyone, including the acting players, it encourages a sense of common responsibility and connection to the game world. It can be accepted or rejected by the actor, so it's never imposed, but it gives everyone a chance to think about what would be fun, and interesting to happen next. This builds a sense of community and trust.
Trust in the game and your fellow players is hard to manufacture. It can take years. With these as explicit tools, I feel like I can build a reasonable amount within a single session. Trust gives you room to ask more intimate questions of your characters. It gives them room to grow and fail.
Running: Urban Shadows and a mashed up FAE-lite science fantasy thing.
Playing: The Sprawl and Apocalypse World. Soon: Sorcerer.
Cool story from Urban Shadows:
Our Spectre was a gulf war vet who came home, got into gambling, and ended up getting shot over some debts. His Link to reality is his daughter, who doesn't know he's spectrally around. He protects her, though. I hit a 7-9 roll once that became a "you can protect her, but you'll have to reveal yourself".
This was a downward spiral. The daughter began seeking out some of the villainous NPCs, and we eventually learn she's trying to learn necromancy. She wants to ressurect her dad.
Eventually she draws him into her sanctum, telling him that she figured it out. He tells her she's insane, etc. "But every girl needs her daddy..." she says, "...and I don't need your permission"
The Spectre turns to me (the GM) and says "can I willfully give up my Link to this world and fade away into oblivion?" Fuck yes you can! Rather than have his daughter go down a dark path, he chose to die.
Aaron Griffin This I like. I'm not sure if I'd have him play the daughter, or hand her off to someone else, but its cool that she's now a PC. I like seeing that sort of transition. I'm guessing she's The Aware?
William Nichols we talked about it before hand. The daughter is a wizard (she was learning necromancy already, had a tutor, and an apartment with a handful of sanctum-like features). We're coloring the wizard just a bit necromantic, but she DID abandon that path.
And I totally get BitD feeling board game-y. It feels that way to me, from what I've seen on APs. Not sure it's my bag, despite loving the source material.
Just RPGs?
ReplyDeleteWhatever excites you, Adam D
ReplyDeletePlaying in a Weird War II savage worlds game.
ReplyDeleteI modeled my character after my great uncle.
We recently blew up a cult ceremony with an emerging old one and are now in some weird purple sky land trying to get back to earth.
That sounds delightfully strange, Matt Widmann! What excites you most about it?
ReplyDeletePlaying the Atomic Robo RPG, where my adventures as Luke Knight, Theoretical Geographer and World's Foremost Atlantis Expert continues. I think over time I have accepted that ARRPG is my favourite Fate implementation.
ReplyDeleteOver on the video games front, my brother and two friends and I are putting a lot of hours into Ghost Recon: Wildlands. It's not perfect, but it is such a great 4-player co-op experience. Last night we stumbled across some sicario's helicopter parking lot, so we each grabbed our own attack chopper and hummed "Flight of the Valkyries" as we idiotically blundered into the next mission. It was terribly ineffective and every second was hilarious.
William Nichols My GM is a History major and really knows the material. Plus the players. I'm not a savage worlds fan. The people make it good.
ReplyDeleteAdam D I want to play Atomic Robo some day.
ReplyDeleteWe're halfway through playing Alas Vegas now, and our amnesiac protagonists are starting to remember bits of their previous lives. My flashbacks actually fit into a fairly coherent life story, unlike those of some other PCs.
ReplyDeleteJust returned to my Edge of the Empire campaign excited about that. This episode is a sandbox for the PCs to explore with many potential friends and enemies to make.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I can't afford Mass Effect: Andromeda so I have restarted Mass Effect 1 instead. It's looking a bit old but it's still fantastic.
I'm running Blades in the Dark and 5th edition D&D right now. Blades thematically brings in gothic horror, steampunk, and conflict with the apparatus of oppression, all of which I like to work with. Mechanically, it's a delight of a system that really sings with people who can balance the ability to take risks with the deep investment and care it encourages players to have for their characters. It also has a faction turn, which I adore. I feel like I could run or play it every day.
ReplyDeleteI'm not the world's biggest fan of D&D, but I like the Eberron setting that I'm using. 5th edition is really very easy to run, especially over Roll20 where I play it. The first games I ran outside of a generic western medieval fantasy world were in Eberron, and I have the familiarity that comes from having loved something obsessively as a teenager. The people are what make me want to keep coming back to that game, though. I'm trying to get them to try out some stuff that I like better but still is well integrated into Roll20, like Fall of Magic, Quiet Year, Blades, something like that.
Running a Savage Worlds game where the characters are a minor Gotham City organized crime family, and a Shadowrun Anarchy game.
ReplyDeleteAdam D I, too, adore Robo. It is probably my actual favorite Fate implementation, though it'll never be my claimed favorite which will always be Diaspora.
ReplyDeleteI don't know anything about Ghost Recon!
Matt Widmann Cool. Good players plus a knowledgeable awesome MC make for a great game!
ReplyDeleteNick Wedig I'm not sure my actual lifestory is particularly coherent.
ReplyDeleteBrian AshfordCool. Is Edge of the Empire a star wars sort of thing? I've heard good things about mass effect over the years!
ReplyDeletePlaying and running 5e D&D, a total of three separate campaigns. I may add in some Beyond the Wall, but scheduling is so hard now.
ReplyDeleteOf the two campaigns I'm PCing, one is about reawakening the gods... which is only the least worst option, and the other is about dungeon crawling. (It may eventually be about other things, but right now it's a more interesting dungeon crawl than I thought possible to run).
The campaign I'm running is about exploration, civic duty, and the pressures of solvency in a time of revolution.
I'm in a Savage Worlds Deadlands game. We're a posse sent out after some escaped mad scientists (they were experimenting on other people, not themselves).
ReplyDeleteThe world can be entertaining and I love seeing the people involved. It's really a way to socialize and keep in touch.
I'm running a Pathfinder module but we only get to play once a month. Again, it's mostly for the social aspect. This month we're playing Mermaids instead as one player can't make it and our host has been promising his daughter another session of Mermaids for ages.
John Dornberger I would love to hear more good things about Blades in the Dark! I've tried it a couple of times, and it never quite jelled -- even with pbta MCs all around the table. It felt a bit more like a board game than an RPG.
ReplyDeleteAnd I get returning to things we know and love. The nostalgia factor is great. That's probably why I keep returning to Star Wars and its cousins.
Brandes Stoddard three campaigns is a lot! I've barely got one, which meets almost weekly. Then the mostly one-shot Thursday nights, where we alter what we play pretty regularly. What's exciting about those campaigns?
ReplyDeleteArlene Medder Once a month games are really hard for me. I lose track, and don't remember anything. Do you have strategies to not forget?
ReplyDeleteMermaids is not a game I've heard of! I get playing for the social aspect -- gaming is a great way to see people and still knowlingly wear a mask.
William Nichols I added more meaningful detail to my initial response. Each of these games plays, at most, once a month.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I take notes during the game. When I'm running, I just note what they've done, who've they've met, and anything notable (pun unintentional).
ReplyDeleteI also have the list of encounters and I check off what's been done. This module came with a deck of 'mission' cards, that's been very helpful. I keep the ones they haven't seen yet and they keep the ones they've completed and the ones that are ongoing.
William Nichols And Mermaids is a child-aimed game. It's a simple system and much of it works on description so pre-literate people can still play.
ReplyDeleteBoth of my weekly groups wrapped up simultaneously and now I have no idea what either is going to do next! How about that?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Yes, Edge of the Empire is Star Wars. Specifically it's about the explorers and criminals who are trying to make a living on the fringes of the War. It has a very fun system with dice pools made of seven proprietary types. Each roll can provide many different entertaining results.
ReplyDeleteMass Effect is fantastic. The gameplay across the trilogy varies from good to stunning to great while the story is Epic space adventure, then fun episodic space opera, then apocalyptic space war. The setting ties it all together though. Bigger and better than any TV SF. I love it all. Recommended.
I don't know how people keep once a month gaming straight. You guys have my obvious envy, Brandes Stoddardand Arlene Medder
ReplyDeleteJason Morningstar Might I recommend Space Wyrm versus Moonicurn? Its pretty dang hot.
ReplyDeleteOr, ohhh, The Watch.
I've been considering setting up a once a month campaign but I've never tried it before. I was thinking of running six hour sessions so that we could get more done between interruptions. Also four hours never feels like enough.
ReplyDeleteWe have a Moonicornista who is considering offering it in one group.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford Our monthly game is on a weekend day so we can have 6 hours of play time (plus time to eat and socialize)
ReplyDeleteArlene Medder That was my plan exactly, and i figured that with six hours i should be able to play through an entire 'chapter' of a game or at least wrap up on a big, memorable cliffhanger.
ReplyDeleteI'm mostly playing "hide and seek" and "can I get the children to eat dinner" with occasional excursions into Forbidden Island/Desert and two-man Wizard.
ReplyDeleteNot where I'd like to be, but hey.
playing one burning wheel campaign where all pcs are adoptive demigod siblings.
ReplyDeleterunning one great wolf burning wheel game thru hangouts
Adam McConnaughey Two Burning Wheel games?!? JELLY!
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I've heard that criticism a couple of times, but I don't understand what seems boardgamey. For my own understanding, could I ask you to expound on that?
ReplyDeleteBut for saying nice things, I have a lot of nice things to say, probably too many. There are two aspects that stand out to me: the way the game is broadly designed to encourage a cinematic, participatory narrative flow from all the players, and how the game uses mechanics to buttress the limits of personal trust.
The game has a cinematic feel, which is expressed in a few ways. You can flash back in time to show how clever your character was to prepare for this, but only once it becomes interesting to find that out, avoiding potential hours of tedious planning. It feels like the scoundrels in heist movies, or the end scenes in the Ocean's movies, where all is revealed.
The divided phases of play mean that when you've moved through the character play (which is not insubstantial) and want to get to the action, you can jump straight there. All you need to go from "Maybe we could...[x]" to "We're in and doing it!" is one detail of a plan. If you want to slow down, great! Do all the planning or character play that fits the story, and there's a reward for doing some, but it's just as fun to jump into the action and worry about building the plan around one detail as you make it happen. The players can be surprised along with each other, like the mutual viewers of an action film.
You make your character with a supporting cast. The sheets have a set listed, but you can swap them out as you please as with all the pbta names and looks. When you do something with your supporting cast, you get little benefits that make the hard life easier. Because we're in a fiction first system, you get them to help you by saying "So I'm going to head off to Quellyn's stall in the market where she brews up curatives. We're going to make a special one for me..." or "I need help blowing off steam, but I know my buddy Marlene always has my back when I go drinking." You have to bring them on screen, describe them, and enrich or enliven the world.
Building slightly on that, when you bring your friends onscreen, we learn more about them. When you want to get xp in Blades, you do that by showing everyone around the table more about your character. Your xp conditions are: Show how and what your chosen playbook does (don't like what you chose? Ok, sorry that happened, but let's make up a cooler one!), show us about your character's background and beliefs, and show us how your character's vices and traumas affect and trouble them. Your incentive is to show, not tell. At the end of the session, you recapitulate and make sure everyone could see what you were doing, make it clear if it wasn't, and help the other players know how push/show off what makes your character cool. This builds the cinematic feel (show, don't tell), but it also helps bring the group together and make the whole fiction richer by sharing these important and defining moments. It creates a sense of trust at the table, which is the other part I wanted to say nice things about.
The mechanics of Resistance are a favorite of mine. Bad things happen, that's part of gaming and random chance. Having bad things you didn't expect or want to happen can strain trust at the table and take players out of the fun. There's an instinct to say "But I would've..." or "I'd be ok if it was like [x] but not [y]". In Blades you can do that. Instead of a consequence for a bad roll, you can tell everyone how it didn't happen because of how your character overcame that. It might take some of your stress, and it doesn't make the action a success if it wasn't before.
This makes me feel trusting, both as a GM and player, when dealing with things that are uncomfortable. I can press as hard as the fiction demands as a GM, and the players never fully loose control of their character's narrative. Even when things go terribly, there's some control. Similarly, when your character reaches their maximum stress and has to leave the action, you describe how they're taken out. You used that stress to do cool things, so you get to decide how it all just became too much.
ReplyDeleteWith many rolled actions, any player can propose a Devil's Bargain that flows from the fiction for the acting player to get a bonus die. These are complications that will occur whether the roll succeeds or fails. They aren't always punitive, but they should always be interesting. They could be the loss of some resource, but only because it will be interesting to see if there's a sense of regret or guilt when that resource would otherwise be needed. It can also be more complicated, like falling in love with the person you're trying to manipulate, or getting more of what you want from your allies but only by abusing their trust. Because this can come from anyone, including the acting players, it encourages a sense of common responsibility and connection to the game world. It can be accepted or rejected by the actor, so it's never imposed, but it gives everyone a chance to think about what would be fun, and interesting to happen next. This builds a sense of community and trust.
Trust in the game and your fellow players is hard to manufacture. It can take years. With these as explicit tools, I feel like I can build a reasonable amount within a single session. Trust gives you room to ask more intimate questions of your characters. It gives them room to grow and fail.
Running: Urban Shadows and a mashed up FAE-lite science fantasy thing.
ReplyDeletePlaying: The Sprawl and Apocalypse World. Soon: Sorcerer.
Cool story from Urban Shadows:
Our Spectre was a gulf war vet who came home, got into gambling, and ended up getting shot over some debts. His Link to reality is his daughter, who doesn't know he's spectrally around. He protects her, though. I hit a 7-9 roll once that became a "you can protect her, but you'll have to reveal yourself".
This was a downward spiral. The daughter began seeking out some of the villainous NPCs, and we eventually learn she's trying to learn necromancy. She wants to ressurect her dad.
Eventually she draws him into her sanctum, telling him that she figured it out. He tells her she's insane, etc. "But every girl needs her daddy..." she says, "...and I don't need your permission"
The Spectre turns to me (the GM) and says "can I willfully give up my Link to this world and fade away into oblivion?" Fuck yes you can! Rather than have his daughter go down a dark path, he chose to die.
Now he's playing the daughter.
John Dornberger I can try!
ReplyDeleteWhat you described, with the explicit phases? That's part of what feels like a board game.
Also, that the crew is explicitly trying to gather more resources and land and influence, that feels like a board game.
The how difficult versus what sort of repurcussions also feels like a board games.
Its been over a year since I've touched it, and we had a couple of sessions. These memories are foggy.
Aaron Griffin This I like. I'm not sure if I'd have him play the daughter, or hand her off to someone else, but its cool that she's now a PC. I like seeing that sort of transition. I'm guessing she's The Aware?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols we talked about it before hand. The daughter is a wizard (she was learning necromancy already, had a tutor, and an apartment with a handful of sanctum-like features). We're coloring the wizard just a bit necromantic, but she DID abandon that path.
ReplyDeleteAnd I totally get BitD feeling board game-y. It feels that way to me, from what I've seen on APs. Not sure it's my bag, despite loving the source material.
ReplyDelete