Games Night: Otherpool, Session 1

Patrick has already done a great job of summarising what happened in last night's game. So really all I want to add are a couple of thoughts about playing Marvel FASERIP and then I thought it might be interesting to share my character's stats.

There are, I think, three things that jump out at me about the system. First of all, the random character generation really works. It might be spread out over a number of pages, and a lot of them are text heavy, but it is nicely directed. There is a good flow to it. I'd be interested to know what influenced some of the weightings with the random tables (particularly in the initial character class). Since this blog was initially set up with at least half an eye on the maths of tabletop RPGs, I'd also be curious to know just how many possible heroes one could roll up - or what the likelihood, say, of a person rolling the stats for Thor or Wolverine is.

Secondly, I found the dice rolling refreshing. Don't get me wrong: especially after this year of so much OSR and retroclone goodness I am a fan of d20s and having a gaggle of various Platonic solids in front of me each with their own place and time. But there was something neat about just using two d10s to get everything. And while the big table on the back of the book looks complex at first, in reality it isn't. It just works. Roll d100, compare the roll (row) with your ability level (column) and the colour in the box tells you how well you succeeded. Maybe look at another little table to tell you whether or not there is anything special. Done. Fast. Great.

Finally: I like the way little things about the system really support it being "comic book-y". Health is recovered, in general, very quickly. The class benefits and disadvantages are simple, but really strongly support the character types that you're trying to be (for example, mutants always increase one power by one rank, but they have to start with popularity of 0). Karma is a great way of steering things, and declaring the minimum spend required to use it works too - no abusing the system.

I've said a lot about the system there, and virtually nothing about the setting. We're planning to play on G+ next week, so assuming Patrick summarises the second session in a style similar to his first (please please please), I'll write something about the setting next week.

But after the jump... Sergeant Shoxx!

Somewhere South: The Plots Thicken

Previously: Patrick and David's characters hired some new staff for their bar, The Grotesque Cudgel, and spotted someone tailing them. Gorble of Corg, who is also blackmailing them, says he needs them for a job, and that he will be in touch. Orchard the magic-user kills a man in the street, but the party evade consequences by turning the dead body into gingerbread and distributing it to people... Later, they magically disguise Rowntree the Elf as a gingerbread man and sneak him into the house of a rich immortal. Destroying the painting that keeps the man eternally young, they then throw him out of a window with a fake suicide note in his hand, and "rescue" a former guest at their inn.

Somewhere South: Two Uses for Gingerbread Curse

Previously: the party (Patrick and David) killed Arvik Bleeve, the thorn in their side, and dumped his body in the river. Bleeve's relative attacked others in the party, but were then killed themselves. A retainer of the party ended up dead, and so they held a great wake in her honour. Towards the end of the street party an urchin approaches one of the party with a note from someone who saw the party dump Arvik Bleeve's body into the Weth...

Somewhere South: Living, Dying and Mourning in Wetham

The last few months have been quite patchy for gaming; fortunately I have only one week coming up when I won't be around to run/play something - until I become a father in September, and who knows how that will effect things then. But 'til then, let's see what sort of things have been happening recently in Wetham, shall we?

Patrick and David went to sleep after their trip to the warren of the Dread Rabbit, and woke to find themselves in a strange sugar-coated nightmare world - Lamentations of the Gingerbread Princess. Despite the machinations of evil stuffed toys and dastardly cherubs they were able to escape, bringing back some items with them that would probably prove useful...

Games Night: Veins of the Earth

So last night I rolled up a couple of characters to take through a dungeon based on Patrick's Veins of the Earth setting/sourcebook. This was kind of a playtest I guess - I don't know if I'm the first person to encounter some of these creatures and situations in the wild - but it was all new and different and weird to me.

Flaming Chess

In the last session in the city of Wetham, the party wanted to do some gambling or gaming, and found themselves at The Cup & Beaver - a gambling den where high-born nobles play Flaming Chess. Looking for money and information they agreed to play a game of doubles Flaming Chess with Tyrnus Von Vrogle and Nena Bleeve. At stake: the party's traitorous magic sword and Tyrnus' jewelled chainmail.

"But Nathan," I hear you say, "How does one play Flaming Chess?"

I'm so glad you asked...

Actual Play: Somewhere South

Last night Patrick and I were the only ones available for games night. After a quick discussion we decided to play something as a bit of a oneshot, and so I used Tales of the Scarecrow as a starting point for an evening's adventure...

Patrick quickly rolled up a party for himself; while he generated four sets of stats, I used Vornheim NPC tables to create some people to populate the world, and pulled some names out of the air ("Usher Beak, who is a herbalist, has asked you to take a chest to a friend of his in the nearby city of Wetham; you've been on the road a day..."). Patrick used Vornheim to name all of his characters - including pulling the detail that Vaskin, his fighter, was in fact two goblins standing on shoulders. Awesome.

PROBABLE SPOILERS FOR TALES OF THE SCARECROW BELOW!!!
But I'll try to keep as many details out as possible.

Actual Play: Somewhere North, session 8

Previously: Kulk and Joonas arrived at the Palace of the Perfect Moon, a minor underground castle of the Dwarven Lord Strangeli. They investigated a few areas, finding magical darkness (that temporarily blinded Kulk), skeletons and giant mechanical spiders. They sustained a few injuries, but mostly did will with just finding treasure. Resolving to delve deeper into the lower levels, they venture into the palace again...

Actual Play: Somewhere North, session 7

Previously: our heroes Kulk and Joonas (Patrick and David W) took their merry band of retainers and hangers-on to a Dwarven tower (a silo effectively) and battled through a minor Pug warband and avoided undead threats, before escaping with the head of a Shiner (mechanical? man made by Dwarves) and treasure.

They head off with the artifacts that they have found, and despite finding themselves adrift in a blizzard they make it back to the Hentunen nomads. They make a trade of hotstones for a large covered sled, and the following day head off on a new quest. They have heard of the Palace of the Perfect Moon, a minor Dwarven base that has fallen into disrepair; it lies to the north-west and may contain more artifacts, maybe even the materials necessary to repair PeMem, the Shiner head that is acting as their guide to all things Dwarven.

Finding the Ahtisaari nomads, who speak a bizarre language, they are eventually able to communicate their need. Given directions, they set off the next day with a new friend, the massive Magnusson Monsterslayer, the favourite son of the Ahtisaari (however, he does not easily pick up words, and communication problems ensue...). On their journey they avoid a Hate Bear, which by reputation they have not gone near.

Arriving at the Palace of the Perfect Moon, which legend says was magically built in a single night. Entering carefully they scout around and find rooms that are smashed up, odds and ends of silver but nothing much really. Until they find strange gold Z marks that emanate a faint heat. After Kulk sets off an explosive runes trap with the same marking, and has his hands branded for the effort (with a gold Z across them) they start to come around to the idea that Zinternik, the toymaker, must have been here once before. Indeed, when encountering skeletons or giant mechanical spiders they notice clues that point to him having been in the palace, possibly delving and researching years before.

The group are strong, and in each encounter they don't seem to be in danger. After all there are a lot of them. In reserve by their sleds are two academics who have travelled with them, a cleric and two halflings; their dungeon-crawling force comprises the two PCs (a fighter and a specialist), three regular cannon-fodder fighter-types, Magnusson and the head of PeMem (strapped to Joonas' back "like C-3PO on Chewbacca").

Kulk is temporarily blinded by a magicked corridor, but that only knocks him off front line duty for a couple of hours. The party are kicking in doors in the seemingly abandoned palace, fighting off the occasional skeletons and metal spiders, but being cautious all the same. They know that part of the palace contains a Muurahainen nest, and while they have not seen a Muurahainen swarm they have heard enough to be worried. With half of the main level mapped and a clear route through the magicked corridors, they now intend to head down into the lower levels...

Notes
Too much XP: Seven sessions in, and I'm trying to get the balance between possibilities for earning XP and the likelihood that PCs will find stuff that is XP-worthy. In the last two sessions they've picked up way too much stuff that has given them a boost. In this session they earned over 5000XP each; although, if the XP were split between more people, this wouldn't be as big an issue. Something to think on.
More danger needed: Maybe. I was chuffed that Kulk got blinded by the corridor. There was a table of possible effects (some of which were far more permanent than temporary blindness). The physical threats have appeared and been less than severe - perhaps there are just too many in the party for anything other than a seriously big creature or a massive horde to be much of a threat? I don't know. The deeper levels of the palace are more dangerous, and from what they've heard a nest of Muurahainen could be pretty lethal if not approached carefully.
XP Watch: Joonas jumps to level 3 (hello Fighter combat bonus) and Kulk continues his journey to level 6.
Magnusson: I have a table for generating nomadic families who live out on the snow and ice. These are large groups of around 100 people, and mostly subsist off what they hunt and fish. I have some subcharts for flavouring them, so for example, a particular quirk or detail of the clan, and a detail particular to their favourite son. I rolled up half a dozen before play, and last night rolled the Ahtisaari as the group that the PCs would meet. The bizarre language presented a nice bit of role-playing as the players tried to communicate. And the favourite son being a monster-slayer added an intriguing possibility - especially with the language factor. A 6'8" muscle-bound killer with a giant club and an eight word vocabulary. A joy to play.
Sharing Stats: I'm hoping that the PCs do meet some of the residents of the palace (Muurahainen, the contents of the menagerie) in the next session, as then I'll be able to share them here without fear of spoilers!

Actual Play: Somewhere North, session 6

Previously: Külk (Patrick) and his party (two fighters, a reformed bandit, a cleric and two halflings) flee the region around the town of Rovaniemi, having annoyed large numbers of people. After seeking guidance from a retired hero they head north and stop at the last village for a long time, Sirkka. There they thwart the schemes of a group of slavers, slaughtering them all.

The next morning: Külk has found a new ally in the form of Joonas (David W, rejoining the group after a seasonal absence!) - a fighter who was captured by the slavers. He agrees to join them on their journey north, and they connect up with a couple of academics from the northern city of Zelman. Safety in numbers. They leave the town with what supplies they can get (not many) and hope that they will reach one of the nomad families that live on the snowy, frozen plains.

Actual Play: Somewhere North (session 3)

Yesterday I met up with noisms and Patrick to continue their adventures Somewhere North... Actual play report, and then some notes/thoughts at the end.

Previously (at the end of session 2, which I forgot to mention last time), Kolk the Artifex (Patrick) and Esa-Pekka (noisms) had really ticked off a greedy toll-levying village by cursing the village and surrounding area to silence. Forever. Hastening to the town of Rovaniemi, they set about installing themselves in some digs (above that wonderful drinking establishment The Knife & Cousin - thanks Vornheim!) and going for a lookaround. Esa-Pekka took a seemingly blank book to the grotesque and diseased Ungrall the Unctuous (a bookseller), who made a big noise about wanting to keep it. The contents could be revealed and read only under the light of a full moon. Ungrall sent his hulking servant Jonas after Esa-Pekka, but despite accusing him in public of being a thief, Esa-Pekka was shrewd enough to worm his way out of it. Meanwhile Kolk had acquired the services of Helvi Ritva, a cleric (NPC) of the spirit Ritva; the PCs planned to take her with them when they went to explore the tomb of the long-dead Dwarven King Oddli. Oddli's burial place is rumoured to be filled with treasure and undead monsters. The PCs know that some reindeer thieves are camped out there as well.

So, session 3!

Actual Play: LotFP, Somewhere North

December has gone by in a flash, and I've not written on here at all! I disagree with noisms describing me as having an irregular blog - I just haven't written in the last month. I was pretty regular before then. But no matter. I'm writing here and now.

And it seems appropriate to write about the campaign that I seem to be running for Dave and Patrick. It started in the week before Christmas, when I offered to run a festive weird horror setting for them; I had just recently received LotFP (taking advantage of the 50% print discount), and created "the Lodge of Zinternik" - an evil red-dressed toymaker, who delighted in putting life of all kinds into things. The local villagers had heard that he had recently died, so his house on the mountain, and more importantly the conternts, were ripe for the taking...

Patrick rolled up a Specialist (or as he prefers, Artifex), a young adventurer named Kolk, and Dave created a Magic-User, the older gentlemen-rogue Esa-Pekka. Both had to be careful, as they had low STR, and Esa-Pekka also suffers from having a Charisma of 3. But they have their wits and creativity to keep them going.

Zinternik's Lodge was a mix of monsters and traps, and NPC "baddies", some of whom the players turned really quickly. They convinced a pair of halflings hired by "Zinter" to labour in his workshop, and turned some elves against each other; they avoided Dolf, the animated evil stag with a blazing red ruby for a nose and and tractamorphic tentacle antlers, firing at him from the roof of the lodge. And finally they left the Lodge with some mysterious (probably magical) items, and with a promise to Mumble and Crumble (the halflings) that they would help them return to their home in the far frozen north.

And that was that... Or so I thought...

When we mentioned playing again in the setting I updated the map, a few more villages (generated with help from noisms' own random village generator) and a handful of details about the nearest large town. I googled One Page Dungeons and had a quick look for something that could be modded easily. I statted up a few more creatures and things. And I thought about what had happened before, and noted a few interesting things that could be good. And that was it.

In the second session the players decided that their characters needed answers, and set off for a nearby village where someone was said to be very wise, perhaps someone who could tell them what they had found at Zinternik's Lodge. The old man, Hannes, gave them some ideas of the artefacts that they had found, and they set off across country for Rovaniemi, the nearest large town. They were looking for provisions and gear to head on the long road north, back to the home of the halflings.

After a run in with a banshee wolf, and a night of talking with some nomadic reindeer herders, they found the road and kept on for the town. However a small village stood in the way; the village was built in a narrow pass between rocky cliff faces. To go around might take a day or more. To go through they would have to pay a steep toll. This did not sit well with the PCs.

In Zinternik's Lodge they had found a magical scroll of incredible power. A one use Scroll of Indefinite Silence. If the nine syllables on it are read aloud then a permanent silence would fall in a sphere with a mile radius. Everlasting silence. As far as they know this can never be removed.

So, what do you do when some toll-charging villagers have hacked you off? You curse their village to silence. Forever. And off you ride to the town you're headed for...

In town they set about trying to recruit retainers for an expedition to a Dwarven King's Tomb, filled with the undead, Kolk sleeps with a young woman (noisms asks "Does she become pregnant?" The DM rolls and makes a note...) and Esa-Pekka of the Low Charisma ticks off a shady bookshop owner, calling the attention of the town guards. As they make their way back to the tavern they are staying at, one of the halflings runs up and says "I was down by the gate, and a posse of a dozen men from that village have just rode up shouting and asking if anyone had seen you!"

Oh dear...

Tomorrow I'll collect some thoughts about what I'm using and how I'm doing this, and what the setting is like. Anyone interested in seeing stats and descriptions of weird creatures that lurk the frozen north?

Games Night: GHOST/ECHO

Yesterday's games night was great. We played GHOST/ECHO with me GMing, and Patrick taking the role of GRIP, and Steve playing COIL. One minute these characters were just names on the page, and soon they were thieves on a job-gone-bad, armed with origami guns and brain hack knives, stealing information from the Ghost World and running from men and wraiths in a future-China of seemingly endless night...

Game Night: Murderous Ghosts

Last night Patrick and I played Murderous Ghosts. The short version: it's amazing, really quite a remarkable, fun, scary and plain good game. We had time to play two games, so both got to play as MC and urban explorer.

Some thoughts:

• It works really well as a role-playing game for two people. The playbooks are helpful and not intrusive - it provides you with steering but leaves things up to the imagination of the people playing - and prompts the MC to be as scary as possible.
• Playbooks are really good: each person has their own "choose-your-own-adventure" book.
• The general set up is just great: the MC is the abandoned place and the ghosts, and the other player is an urban explorer who has lost their way. Each moves according to what their place in the playbook says.
• Randomness is in the form of each player drawing cards from a regular deck. The mechanism is somewhere between blackjack and the Apocalypse World under-7/7-9/10+ dice-rolling. It really works. It's a little tactical: if you ace one situation, you will not succeed as well on the next one (statistically).
• It didn't matter that we died (on both occasions). The horror and scares were really satisfying. Dying felt inevitable, surviving was great while it lasted.

Also: Patrick is good at weird scary stuff. My character found himself in an abandoned and haunted animal testing lab. The next forty minutes were terrifying.

Final Thoughts: I wonder how the blackjack/AW mechanic would work in other settings... And I wonder how simple it would be to fashion a "haunted house" game from the basic structure, i.e., a game for more than two players...

Dogs Thoughts

As I mentioned last week, due to work commitments I've had to take a few weeks away from regular games nights and Dogs in the Vineyard. Dogs is the first campaign that I've run, and it's been really enjoyable. It is a system where there are so many different directions that a game can go in. Even with the simplest of backgrounds and a handful of NPCs rolled up you can get an intriguing game going.

I read the final section of the pdf a few days ago, and there were some neat thoughts that have helped steer my thinking a bit more as well. Vincent Baker describe it (paraphrased badly by me) as a noir investigation that happens to be set in an alternate West. And with several factions possibly at play, none of them exactly in the right - but one or more of them probably very much in the wrong, it gives the Dogs something to do.

In the first and second sessions the Dogs set up a town meeting, so that the guilty/sinful could confess in front of the whole town and hopefully get rid of any bad blood that existed. This worked really well, a solution that I didn't see coming at all. Quite a facilitated solution in fact, the Dogs didn't immediately pass judgement, but brought out into the light everything that was going wrong. And they were happy with how things ended up.

And yet in the last town they were deeply unhappy with the situation as they arrived in the town of Jewel: daily sundown services where people confess the wrong they have done so that the demons are kept at bay. Leaving aside the demons (whose existence wasn't proved until the last session), they did not like the Steward leading these public confessions. And then one of them said, "Is that different from what we did?" - which was a great realisation. It was in no way planned by me (the setting detail of the sundown service had been made before the start of the campaign), but was a neat thought. The Dogs do have a final say: I don't judge their choice of actions, and there is no higher authority in the game that says they can or can't do something, other than their own thoughts/beliefs.

If the Dogs start to doubt past actions perhaps that leads to something interesting - as I plan for possible future sessions - can I exploit their doubts somehow...? Present them with situations where they might really disagree? Can I devise a situation that's not "on-rails" but which is a kind of Kobayashi Maru? Not so that I can say "that was a bad decision" but so that THEY can't see a way out, but have to act all the same. And when they do act, how will they respond to the consequences?

(lots of half-formed questions there! Apologies)

Dogs in the Vineyard, Session 5

Last night the Dogs assembled as "Three in Authority" and brought deliverance to the town of Jewel. Brother Paul arrived in town just as Sister Basemuth (Patrick) tried to hold the Steward back from killing a woman who was strongly suspected of being a witch; Brother Caleb (David) meanwhile was in hot pursuit of a man - the witch's brother - who had staggered away despite being tied up and shot in both legs.

After sessions of solving town squabbles and disagreements with local tribes, this was a full tilt into horror, action and exorcism. Brother Caleb tracked down the tongueless brother, Alex, and had to fill him full of lead as he transformed into an unspeakable monster, all triple-jointed fingers, razor teeth and deformed skull. The dice went with Caleb, but it showed up that when it comes to dealing with demons it really pays to have more than player acting against them. Demons/monsters can have a lot of dice in physical conflicts...

Dogs in the Vineyard, Session 4

Tonight was a great session. After a week's absence the Dogs (two out of three of them) returned to their duties and straightened things out in the Hope Mission. That didn't take all that long, and they set out for the town of Jewel, hot on the heels of a woman that they suspected of being a witch.

They quickly started making other plans when they found her dead body, strung up in a tree and with the symbol of their faith carved into her flesh...

Games Night: BRING IT!

We couldn't get everyone together to play Dogs In The Vineyard last night, so once again Patrick offered to run a Lamentations of the Flame Princess session for me and David. As with our previous session we were playing with Charley (Specialist), Chastity (Fighter) and Aleph (Cleric of Namco, God of Idle Pursuits) but there were two big differences:

1. We decided very early on that we were going for treasure and XP rather than out and out exploration.
2. My characters had silver to spend and more levels than the last time they had met Aleph.

The first thing that we did - after meeting a crazy skeleton with roses for eyes - was to spend some money and really try to get some crazy weapons. We had a mission: to go and kill a vampire, who was by all accounts very old and powerful. We needed something to tip the balance in our favour, especially since we were going into a dungeon with rumours of undead creatures.

Dogs in the Vineyard, Session 3

After a week's absence we return to the small, isolated Hope Mission. The Dogs had arrived at the end of a day's riding to find that people were scared: the Steward was holding some of the Mountain People in the basement of the Meeting Hall; one of the hunters was claiming he had been stabbed by a Mountain Person days earlier; events had snowballed before they even arrived, and now it seemed like they had only hours before a war party would descend on the town and take back their people by force. What could the Dogs do???

Quite a lot actually...

Games Night: Joining the Teens

I was able to squeeze in an extra gaming session this week, and decided to join up with Patrick's regular game that he runs with the Teens. One of the Teen's, Teen1 in Patrick's AP reports, is my nephew. In fact some months ago I introduced him and his friends to Patrick when they happened to be at our local games haunt, and as I was the only person who had turned up from the proposed group they joined in with us.

I played for a few weeks, but then couldn't keep up with two regular games nights each week; I've dipped in and out of playing LotFP with Patrick when we were available, and really enjoyed hearing about how they were getting on - or more often getting in to evermore insane situations (usually with some choice dialogue ensuing).