Odd Oracles

I'm working on two issues of A Random Encounter at the moment, and turning some ideas over in my head. I was transcribing my interview with Patrick Stuart for Issue 4, and we talked a bit about blogging and why he started, and it got me thinking about when I started blogging about games. This blog started on 21st March 2012, but on the same day I posted something on a Tumblr that I used to use, about the very first game that I GMed: In A Wicked Age.

I like In A Wicked Age: the Oracles that produce the inspiration and elements work really well, they produce a rich fantasy world at the table with no prep, and I think that playing it a few times gets you in the flow with the dice mechanics. There's a bit of AP in the post, and I was playing with Patrick and David, so it was a good game. There were also a couple of musings about the Oracle idea itself:

[Patrick] mentioned that there were “Oracle hacks” of the game, and I can understand why this would be quite cool to do. Because the set-up is so fast, straightforward and fun, it’s quite a freeing game to play. ... In my head I’m already imagining urban fantasy possibilities, superhero settings and even - dare I say it - zombie game settings…

We hacked together an Oracle or two and played some Tales From Zero Point, which was an element of a bigger space setting that we created collaboratively. I loved that the Oracle could produce a great game with no preparation. We could turn up and really tune in to make a creative story; and at the same time, I still felt that it was a bit clunky with the mechanics, and as someone running the game I wanted something to help support making NPCs and places - even just little possible story threads for the players to explore (I'm not a railroad fan).

For a little while now I've been turning over mashing an Oracle-setting-generator-thing with the Into The Odd resolution mechanics: a strip-downed game that could get people up and running quickly with no prep. Draw some cards to get character and setting inspiration from an Oracle, and while PCs roll dice to flesh out their characters, the GM can roll some dice or draw cards to flesh out the setting in an organic way. I think it's possible to do this in a reasonably small game, that provides a lot of prompts and support for the GM and the players to come up with the backdrop for a great one-shot every time they play, or which could organically create a sandbox-y story - each session being either an "episode" or just the next steps.

And now that this idea is back in my head again... I guess I have one more thing to add to the to do list... :)

Sketch of an idea: Magical Thunderstorms

Just a short thought (it is Sunday after all, and that seems to be the day in our house when everything has to get done). It's also possible that there is something similar to this out there in either an LotFP pubication, or possibly in some great blogpost that I saw recently. I don't know - as I was thinking about this earlier I was thinking "there's something very familiar about this..." but I can't place it. If you can, let me know!

Minor heatwave in our neck of the woods - cue dramatic TV reports "HOW WILL PEOPLE COPE???" Thunderstorm was forecast but then didn't happen - whenever there is a heatwave everyone says "What we need is a good storm to clear the air..."

Weather is influenced/driven by heat in the atmosphere; in especially magically-charged regions of the world in games, it seems possible to me that the amount of magic being used would drive extreme magical weather. So in a "disturbed region" every time a spell is cast or an item used, or if passive items (things that are always on etc) are present, this influences the weather. Chaos bleeds.

Perhaps this could be something as simple as: for every spell cast in a 24 hour period (plus items) roll a d4, maybe stacking for spell levels. Re-roll 4s and total then compare with a chart. For 1-10, nothing happens, up to 30 perhaps some weird Fortean phenomena, and then we hit seriously weird and possibly dangerous territory...

That might work or add some weird to the day of an adventuring party.

Now, back to cooking in the Ryder household...

Making Notes Is Not The Same As Being Creative

Well dur - but that's what I have been telling myself for a while. Blah blah no time blah blah work and life and childcare and hardly even reading anything (apart from Of Dice And Men, which I enjoyed) blah blah.

So: in an effort to get more things done and made and hopefully get playing something again, I'm taking my notes and doing something with them. I keep forgetting, every six months or so, that just because I develop an idea one way, does not mean I cannot do something different with it on a different day.

A year ago I was running a campaign Somewhere North (before I switched in spring to Somewhere South, and that is where we stayed). Had the campaign continued the city of Zelman would probably have been reached. Despite the title of this post, here are some notes that I made about the city but hadn't developed (and now hopefully will):

• Bars are rare and beer is expensive as a result
• The coffee-klatch as a meeting place is extremely popular, and they're everywhere
• Mould wine is popular (NOTE: get translation in Finnish or something to make it sound cool)
• Skilled traders, trainers and artisans practice the animal-husbandry of mega-fauna
• A creature that is a mammoth with some kind of a twist to it
• The study of optiks and lenses is fashionable among natural scientists/wizards
• Make a rumour table about the Elves (who are mistrusted generally in the north)
• Location: The Unbreachable Maze of Someone. A dungeon/elaborate treasure vault protected by the usual traps, monsters and so forth but where certain sections of the dungeon are also time-stopped or time-slowed. The dungeon reclaims the eventual dead, and that's why there are thousands of re-animated skeletons guarding it, but of course the prize at the centre is worth it...

I have very talented friends who are getting things done. And I want to be someone who gets things done too. So enough with "thinking" and "note-making". Time for writing and doing.

Oh, and happy 2014! (he says on the 14th of January)

Generating Pugs

(this is a post written in haste and ignorance and contains thoughts that have not necessarily been taken to any kind of logical conclusion; so who knows if there is anything of value here, or anything that can be taken to a valuable conclusion. Perhaps you will take a chance?)

The other day I was thinking about generating large numbers of Pugs. Pugs are a goblin-y kind of creature that I wrote about when I was DMing the Somewhere North campaign earlier this year. They start as 2/3HD creatures (clerics and chiefs have more 4HD) and are found in various group sizes, from two person scout groups all the way up to 150 strong warbands. And you would not want to look in the old Dwarven Fortresses under the northern hills. Thousands and thousands of them in there.

So. You have two Pugs running from a party. Quickly you roll four d8s and there we go, you can get their HP and know what's what.

But: the Party is ambushed by a Medium group. (dice rolled as I write to illustrate point). They've been lying in wait and are prepared. (6+3d6 leads to 19 Pugs, 6 of them are 3HD, roll for 50% check and one is a 4HD Pug Warlord's Son) So the Medium group is comprised of a 4HD leader, six 3HD Pugs (two of which are Clerics) and twelve 2HD Pugs. That's a lot of dice to roll to stat them up. You can do it, but it seems like a little chore.

Thus: I started thinking, can a reasonable generator be made? Say, roll 2d20 and consult a table that will give Pug numbers, HP values, what they are armed with and so on. Of course, the original conception of the Pug is something that I have put together. There must be a million and one similarly created opponent humanoids.

Here's the interesting thing that was occuring to me as I was sat in Costa: there is something beautifully mathematical about all of this. You create a system to model some kind of objects. It's totally valid to create the objects and move from there too. But in some respects the model is quite complicated in some ways (i.e., if you want to generate a lot of Pugs at once). So can a different model be created (a different means of generating large numbers of opponents) that means fewer dice are rolled, but the result is representative of the larger model?

As I said at the start, none of this is thought through particularly well. I'm just curious.

(and say you had A.N. Other opponent that has 2HD and appears in large groups; if there was a 2d20 table, or something indexed with two d20s or something like it - the result from the d20 rolls in terms of HP would be valid as well potentially, i.e., a group of 2HD zombies might have other features but their HP values could be generated similarly)

(all of this floating around in my head, and partially prompted by Zak S's post about Elegance, which made a connection with the idea of mathematical beauty...)

Mech RPGs

Yesterday afternoon I watched the second Evangelion Rebuild movie (micro-review: I liked it, I didn't understand all of it necessarily, but I liked it) and it got me wondering over on G+ - "are there any good giant mech defending the world RPGs?"

By this morning there were nearly 70 comments and it seems that noisms is going to hack his G+ Pendragon campaign to feature giant robots in a star-spanning feudal future. Yay for asking simple questions.

Meanwhile, I'm still thinking about giant robots saving the world. I have a couple of days of holiday this week, and in between enjoying cafes, reading some fiction and going on a couple of long walks, I think I want to noodle out some giant mech thoughts. Because why not, eh?

Mechanics light on the crunch, hopefully not too heavy on the teenage moping (I'm looking at you again Evangelion). One thought that did come to mind would be to use something of the Dogs in the Vineyard style and attach dice to character traits and mech ability... But that's just a first thought. I don't want 800 different options for mech heads combined with 2000 more different kinds of light railgun. We'll see.

CthulhuTech was suggested to me so I'm checking it out!

Future Spending Spree

Some day soon, the stars will align. On that day I won't have to think about saving for house-moving, or be immediately wondering about how to fund some crazy work idea. On that day I will be free to go wild and buy games! And when I do, these are the ones at the top of my list...

Hot War (link)
This looks interesting. An alternate 1960s, the cold war has gone nuclear - and then things went bad... I love the vibe of the description, and the illustration and design in the preview. Something sinister in 1960s London gives me a hundred ideas all at once for setting and plot hooks.

3:16 (link)
The reviews at DriveThruRPG say it all really. After playing Diaspora a little, I would love to play a sci-fi game, and 3:16 looks like it would comfortably fit the bill. David W, one of the players in our group, has mentioned running something sci-fi, possibly Traveller. Maybe once we reach a suitable pause point with Somewhere North we will head for the stars...

Weird New World (link)
I've only read the description, but from that it sounds like this might give me some neat ideas for what lies beyond the mountains in Somewhere North. The hidden valley of the halflings is not simply going to be ten miles past the mountains. There are Drazils to be sure, but what else is there? Maybe Weird New World can help to fill in some of the blanks.

Tower of the Stargazer (link)
Several things attract me to this pdf; first there is the price, you can't go wrong for a couple of euros. Second is that it is more LotFP goodness, and I'm quite hooked on that at the moment. More importantly, there is the inclusion of the following phrase in the description: "Tower of the Stargazer is a specially designed introductory module with material specifically for beginning Referees, with notes detailing not only what is included in the adventure, but why." I'm really enjoying writing stuff at the moment for the campaign I'm running, but am also wondering if the stuff that I am writing is only usable by me (because I know my own shorthand, I know what I might do with a prompt - would someone else? etc). Seeing some discussion on that might be helpful - especially if I decide to do something with these materials later.

Death Frost Doom (link)
I've read lots of bits and pieces about this, and everything I've read about it leads me to think that it's near a small village, about fifty miles from the city of Zelman in Somewhere North, on the road between the Bridge and the city. I think that on the long road between the Bridge and the city the players might find cause to stop there and to wonder whether they have what it takes to go near the church in search of treasure...

Last Year's Games

Games Played
Cyberpunk 2020
In A Wicked Age
Microscope
GHOST/ECHO
Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Diaspora
D&D
Dogs in the Vineyard
Risus
Blood & Honor
Murderous Ghosts

Games Run
In A Wicked Age
GHOST/ECHO
Dogs in the Vineyard
Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Games/Stuff Bought
Lamentations of the Flame Princess - and Vornheim, Isle of the Unknown
Bought in to the Seclusium of Orphone and No Security settings on Indiegogo/Kickstarter

Games I Still Want To Run But Haven't Had Time/Players Yet
A zombie game, possibly using Dogs in the Vineyard's mechanics
Apocalypse World (most likely will start this in the next few months for nephew and friends, aka, The Teens)
A time travel game (no idea how, but the idea intrigues me)

Least Fun
Being away for work at various points limited gaming options; that's likely to continue this year. Diaspora had great collaborative setting and character generation, but seemed a bit cumbersome to play. I am convinced that with a different roll/resolution mechanic our group would have loved it.

Most Fun
Cyberpunk 2020 was great. Playing a futuristic game in an alternate near-past of where we live was brilliant. I think that we players really hit our stride a few sessions in, and after that we explored so many different directions and ideas in "Soviet Cyberpool 2011" that I wondered each week where we could possibly go next. The GM (noisms) had a great handle on everything, and it faded to black following a terrific gun battle and blowing up a dodgy drug-dealing church.
I've enjoyed GMing a lot! (a few one-shots and now my second campaign)

Human Again

Two weeks ago my slug-man magic user Eki Ulele was killed in our regular OD&D game. noisms has hinted a little that there may be ways to raise characters from the dead in Yoon-Suin but has given no actual hints about how that might be done. That means that tomorrow I will be statting up a new character, and I've decided that this time he's going to be human.

And he won't be a magic user: after five sessions of getting knocked out and several where I've had spells that were often not useful - possibly, this was down to me not finding a use for them - I've decided that it might be best to go down the Fighter route. Our party already has a Cleric and a Magic-User, so I've decided that someone a bit hands on, covered in armour might be good. Playing as a Thief is tempting, but I'm not sure what the benefits of being a thief are in OD&D.

So I think I will be a Human Fighter. And I might play with the George Costanza path to decision-making: whatever my first inclination is, I will do the opposite. A pacifist fighter... Hmm. Maybe not.

Couple O' Kickstarters

Two Kickstarters that have caught my eye in the last few weeks are Our Last Best Hope and No Security.

Our Last Best Hope has a really neat concept, and might possibly tie in to some of the ideas that I've been noodling around with in the background; players take the part of heroes trying to avert a terrible crisis or world-ending event, like in Sunshine or Deep Impact. There's no GM, and it sounds like some of the mechanics might be similar to those in Diaspora (with tokens which allow you to influence story direction). I'm intrigued to see what the game is like, and seeing as it is a potential one-shot game I just might be able to convince the regulars at games night to give it a go.

No Security is a set of resources for running horror games set during the Great Depression. I have never played a horror game before, but there is something very attractive to me about playing a game set in the 1920s. The $20 backing level, which includes a modern day "Great Recession" setting is also really intriguing. Obviously with a horror angle, players are "in the real world only not" unlike In A Wicked Age or Apocalypse World or LotFP; I am very interested in having a look at games which have "real people" in fantastical settings, unlike games I've played so far which explicitly have (to varying degrees) fantastical player characters, who have cyberarms or magic spells.

Games Night: LotFP/Isle of the Unknown

I've missed talking about our regular Lamentations of the Flame Princess game for a couple of weeks. Last time on the Isle of the Unknown, Patrick was DMing us through a dungeon underneath an old keep. We had killed some Cthulu-worshippers, some giant bats and avoided some traps along the way. All was well with the world, and I was enjoying playing my new cleric, Priam, servant of the powerful god Venn. Charley/Henry Shortbread, the specialist, had disappeared into the undergrowth, and Priam had just happened to walk along and find the party as they were on their way to the keep.

Patrick has a nice house rule when it comes to magic; as with many D&D type games, you have your spell slots, but you can also try to cast any spell appropriate to your level, so long as you roll for success. Success is determined according to the Apocalypse World success rules: 2d6 plus or minus any modifier, a 10+ gives you what you want (the successful spell), a 7-9 gives you success plus a roll on a "something bad happens" table and a 6 or less just gives you the roll on the "something bad happens" table.

The Bless cleric spell/prayer in LotFP, as understood by me, means that you get d6+level points to spend/declare for future rolls. So having points like that means I can spend points to attack, to evade, for WIS checks - or even, to try and get future spells using Patrick's magic house rule. So if I get a good Bless result early on, then I have points in reserve for the night. I just needed to make that first AW-style roll.

It worked last week. It didn't last night.

I roll a 9, so get my blessing, but immediately have to spend the points to get favour from Venn again in order to cast cure light wounds on myself. Why? Displeased with my constant requests, Venn placed a small dog in my abdomenal cavity. Yes, that's right: A SMALL DOG. Not warts or boils on my face, or a limp, or blindness. A SMALL DOG. Luckily I was able to perform a caesarean on myself and have enough HP to then invoke cure light wounds (using many of the bless points that I just got).

Phew. I was up on the deal I guess. The dog was out, I had more HP than I had had before, I had some bless points left, and a dog that (rolls for loyalty)... hates me.

Lesson learned: don't try to game your deity.

Despite having the highest wisdom in the group I failed four rolls in a row - which is improbable enough - but then for the first three rolls I rolled a 16 each time. A one in eight thousand chance.

The small dog, Priestly, was eaten by a giant moth, we had our first big toe-to-toe battle with some giant Amber Scarabs (was touch and go), escaped from a crazy trap, got suspicious about the Bandit/Cleric who put us up to the job in the first place and the younglings were shouting at each other so much at one point that I passed Patrick the encounter die and said "You may as well just roll."

I can't make it for a couple of weeks, so have asked Patrick if my character can try to slip out of the dungeon (so that he isn't killed in the background when the others do something incredibly reckless). We'll see what happens. I'm enjoying playing a cleric much more than playing a specialist, so am hoping that I'll be able to get him back into play at some point soon.

Diaspora: Character Generation

There's a running joke in our gaming group that all of my characters are fundamentally the same person: this is perhaps a not uncommon occurence in gaming groups. noisms provides a helpful summary of things that my characters have been involved in (and I follow with a rebuttal of some of them). Given the crazy worlds that my characters are in, their actions seem fairly sane and logical to me!

However, when setting up my character for Diaspora it occured to me that it might be good to steer things from the start so that the character has a different direction, a lifepath that might take things beyond what is typical for my characters. Adding details of this in yesterday's post would have made the post much too long.

I like the way that Diaspora sets up characters; noisms ran it really well, leading us through each part. Essentially, you detail five phases of the character's life up to the present, and from each phase you get two Aspects, defining features, details, locations, weapons or characteristics for the character. We didn't get to any proper play yesterday, but we were told that you essentially invoke these Aspects when relevant in play to help influence the outcome of situations.

So this is what I wrote for my character, Silence Arizona.

New Worlds, New Ideas

Yesterday afternoon I sat down with Patrick and noisms to start world-building and character generation for a game of Diaspora that we will be playing over the coming months. noisms is going to be DMing, and he has the Diaspora pdf so lead us through the generation part. It took us about three hours to get up to the point of having characters, and it was a really interesting process. noisms has already posted about it over on Monsters and Manuals, and one thing that I'm 100% totally behind is his assertions about creativity through constraints. Creativity is not straight-jacketed by constraints, it thrives in them, in the sense that being completely open to all possibilities leaves us swamped and unable to see the wood for the trees.

...I was describing one of the worlds, in one of the systems we were creating, as being a water world, populated by Melnibonean-esque decadent epicureans. One of the players cut in, "Do they live on the surface in big floating cities, or under the water, or what?" And I was forced to think, "Well, where do they live?" And in answering the question more detail was added to the setting: creation by question in action.

There is a lot of power in this, and it applies not just during shared setting-creation type games like Diaspora: it applies in any kind of game...

It's something that I see a lot through work as well: you ask a totally open question and people look really stumped, and inevitably give vague and general answers. Follow up with more focused questions and they say a lot more; having to think about things which are deep beneath the surface can be really valuable. In games - especially story games (I think) and with world-building it can go a long way.

I'll write tomorrow about the character that I ultimately generated (and the process, which has given me a lot to think about), but I'll finish by saying a few words about some of the cluster of systems that were generated. First, I really thought that the random generation (using a Fudge dice system) was great; it's amazing how generating three numbers (relating to Technology, Environment and Resources in a system) can then go such a long way to detailing what the system is like.

Second, I liked how the layering on of details really started the ball rolling - and like lots of creative endeavours, started connections forming. Humans look for patterns. We have no choice, we try to make sense of the world. For example, one of my systems, Feynman, has neighbours which have either better technology or nicer worlds, so as I start to think about the political and social structure there it makes sense to think that they would be jealous of their neighbours. My other system, Temperance, has extremely high tech but environments that are slightly hazardous - which lead me to think that the citizens might be dispersed in artificial habitats throughout the system, rather than mostly residing on a particular world.

Now we have to make the time to meet up and play!

Wicked Wednesday

Mind Blast - you transmit thoughts to others when you want to, shocking imagery, horrible ideas, depictions of pain and cruelty.
The power was something that developed through your life; your family, when they were alive, never told you where it came from.
PCs use with violence; NPCs use maneuvering.

Paralyse - the tips of your middle fingers have venomous stingers in the nail bed that extend and retract.
The toxin, if unresisted, can stop a strong healthy person for at least an hour. You're a freak of nature, it has to be said. If unused you have to milk the venom sacs in your palms once a week. After doing so there is a 4 in d6 chance that the toxin is too dilute for 4d6 hours.
PCs use covertly; NPCs use action.

Telekinesis - following an encounter with an otherworldly power you have been gifted with the ability to move things with the power of your mind. Nothing visible occurs around the object you want to move.
A psychological restriction that your mind imposes on itself is that the object moved must be something you could physically lift.
PCs use for themselves; NPCs use action.

Levitate - a blessing from a djinn means that you can rise from the ground, or slow yourself when falling. You cannot truly 'fly' nor can you express this ability on another.
The djinn embedded this power in your dead grandmother's wedding ring; you must be wearing it in order to levitate. You can attempt to levitate in combat to provide a more difficult target for your opponent.
PCs use for themselves; NPCs use action.

Memory Drain - the ancestors of your people were much sought after for their power to remove unwanted or painful memories. You don't know why you have this power, which last appeared in your people generations ago. You have to decide how best to use it, as there is no-one else to teach you.
You must have physical contact with the person whose memories you are trying to remove.
PCs use with love; NPCs use maneuvering.

Mutate - as a defence mechanism you steal DNA from others, splicing it in with your own. Good for hiding/disguise.
1 on d6, nothing happens; 2-5, you start to resemble the other person. 6, you become them, almost twin-like. You need physical contact so that you can extract DNA.
PCs use for themselves; NPCs use self-protection.

Games Night: Isle of the Unknown

I was supposed to be away for work this week, and so there was no regular games night set up. Instead Patrick suggested that I join in a game he was hoping to run using Lamentations of the Flame Princess as the system and Isle of the Unknown as the source material. A few people were supposed to join us at our regular haunt, but they didn't turn up; fortunately my nephew and a friend of his were there and joined me as fellow shipwreck/piracy victims on a mysterious island...

As I say on my Games I Have Played page, I've only played D&D once really. I enjoyed it, but didn't get a great feel for the game. Patrick said that LotFP is very much like D&D - all I know is that it was great fun as a system, fast and intuitive. I think that the game does require a mindshift from other things that I've played more recently, as your survival chances are pretty slim as a Level 1 anything. The ten skills that start with a 1 in 6 chance of working whenever you use them makes "good ideas" have to be great ideas to stand any chance of working (in some ways you want to minimise the dice roll). As a Specialist, my character class meant that I could add an extra four points in those, so upped the odds in some skills. Sneak Attack worked beautifully. Seeing as I ended up in negative hit points after a failed Stealth roll, perhaps I should have assigned the points differently, but no matter.

Very different though from Cyberpunk, where hurried thinking easily leads to loss of life, and Apocalypse World where the focus on story leads to a level of flexible harm.

Isle of the Unknown is a great setting, and Patrick GMed it really well. He had told me about it some time ago - he was looking for a way to randomise the different island hexes - and that was one of the first things that got me thinking about the relationship between maths and RPGs. The random element lead us on a merry dance, negotiating with slime bear-worshipping goblins, sneak attacking mine owners (it seemed like a good idea at the time) and then holding out in a mine office building against two dozen lizard men, their warlord and a shaman.

We really pulled something together - or so it felt - in that last stand setting. My Specialist - Charley Shortbread, best random character name ever - had the idea to throw lanterns full of oil at the shaman and the warlord while they were outside (which lead to the shaman being killed before he could get a spell off). And then we barricaded ourselves at the top of some stairs to bottleneck the lizardmen attacking us. A supply of pick-axes that were thrown picked some off, and then our magic-user read Patrick's house rules for unmemorised magic (hacked from Apocalypse World) and started casting Sleep like a madman (two failed rolls lead to him being cursed by a storm cloud and cursed to always talk about the moon in every sentence). Our fighter kept the barricade and distraction going, while I tried to sneak out and Sneak Attack the warlord... Which is how I ended up lying in a pool of my own blood. The magic-user cast one final great Sleep spell and all the lizards went down. Close scene with me being put to bed to recover...

All in all a great night!

Memorable Exchanges from Games Night
Me: "Does throwing a lantern count as a Sneak Attack?"
Patrick (DM): "Only the first time - and the burning oil doesn't get the damage multiplier!"
Me: "Awww..."

Patrick: "Why would you do that, why would you stab the mine owner in the back of the neck when he had just finished offering you a job?"
Me: "I'm Lawful!"
Patrick: "...What???"

Two Game Ideas

These are just the seeds of things that I was thinking about over the weekend. Maybe there is something interesting in these; maybe not. I am not sure where they might lead, I'm just trying to capture them somewhere.

Smiley Faces
Law enforcement in a dystopian future where everyone is supposed to be happy. What if there was crime? What crime would people commit? Who might criminals be? What would they gain? And what would law enforcement professionals be like?
I see this as an Oracle-starting game, it's all about the storytelling, filling in the blanks from both players and GM. The dice mechanic should be there to add some spice to things, so that events can go badly sometimes. In principle, I want to see other ways of negotiation dice/player negotiation to resolve things.
There might be a system out there already which would just natively support this.

Starts on a Spaceship
Make it as big or as small as you like. The players are senior crew. What are their positions? What are their responsibilities? (perhaps they don't have a command structure in the same way that, say, Starfleet does)
After twenty minutes of routine shipboard stuff, minor engineering stuff, maybe crew command decisions, the ship is hit by something. Something big. What do you do?
Does the ship crash? Does it reach that small planetoid? The captain is dead. ("HE'S DEAD JIM!") What do you do?
The ship reaches the moon, most of the crew are dead. The engines are fused metal and crystals. Scans of the planet were strange. Possible signs of native intelligence. What do you do?
The ship doesn't reach the moon, and is adrift, venting atmosphere. The captain is dead. ("I'M A DOCTOR NOT THE MESSIAH!") What do you do?
There are strange noises/scans coming from the section of the ship that was hit/Lt Redshirt didn't come back from the perimeter patrol. What do you do?
More importantly: how are you going to get back to civilisation?

The second hints at possible undiscovered life etc, but perhaps it might be interesting to do it as an ultra-hard sci-fi, where it is all about the decisions and consequences of humans in the void.

The "From Dusk Till Dawn" Effect

(this could, I suppose, also be called the "Psycho" Effect)

(inevitably, spoiler alert)

When I was in my teens I watched From Dusk Till Dawn with my mum and dad. We put the video on reasonably late in the evening; by-and-by the film advanced as far as Clooney and Tarantino crossing the border and arriving at the Titty Twister. It was at this point, as it was late, that I went to bed. I hadn't seen the film before, but knew (roughly) what it was about.

What I did not know was that my parents knew nothing about the film. Nothing at all. My nan had cable TV and we did not, and she taped films indiscriminately, giving us a dozen films a month to watch (and then return, she liked to collect them). All my parents knew, at the point that I went to bed, was that Clooney and Tarantino were ruthless criminals, not averse to murder, kidnapping, robbery etc, and that they had arrived at a bar in the Mexican desert. They knew nothing of the plot that was to unfold from that point.

You can imagine their shock (and what they said to me the next day, as it had been my suggestion originally that we watch it).

I was musing on this today, and wondering about how this kind of shock might be put into a role-playing game. I'm not talking about a game of Cyberpunk where a bank job suddenly goes wrong: while you might have hoped that it would go well, it's not inconceivable that it would go wrong. I'm not talking about a game of D&D, where the sorcerer says, "I am your father."

My thought is about genuinely surprising players:

• vampires suddenly showing up in a bar, in a world which to all intents and purposes is completely normal;
• a player taking a shower, suddenly and brutally murdered, after successfully rolling persuade and evade so many times talking to cops and used-car salesmen, travelling across country with ill-gotten loot;
• a group of players suddenly discovering that one of their own has been the secret villain all along, a la Keyser Soze.

Being relatively new to the hobby, I don't know if there are any games that have similar mechanics; I don't know what would work well. I guess the key concerns - as a GM - would be knowing that your players could handle such a huge shift ("the game is no longer about hustling and stealing, it's about getting out of the city before the alien hunter killers find you"), and about setting up game mechanics - and player/character mechanics - that would realistically cover both genres seamlessly.

I have no idea if this would work - and having posted it online, I don't know if any future players might suspect I was going to do it if I got the chance to run a longer campaign. I just have this idea that if it was presented well it could provide a huge but satisfying narrative twist to a campaign.

Enough of me though: anyone out there got any thoughts/comments/ideas?