tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48580292479619315872024-02-21T12:19:55.956-05:00High Trust, High DramaMy blog about roleplaying and other random neuron firings.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.comBlogger284125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-16630581401978411002018-04-01T14:04:00.003-04:002018-04-01T14:04:35.761-04:00Breakout 2018 Convention Debrief (Part Three)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Day three! The final, bleary-eyed day of the con! (If you missed the first two parts, you can find them <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2018/03/breakout-2018-convention-debrief-part.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2018/03/breakout-2018-convention-debrief-part_28.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)<br />
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After a late night of horror playing BLUEBEARD'S BRIDE, we were ready for something a little lighter, and luckily, we had just the game. We were lucky enough to have <b>Epidiah Ravachol</b> on hand to run a traditional Sunday morning game of SWORDS WITHOUT MASTER, his very clever swords-and-sorcery storytelling game.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Like his spouse Emily Care Boss, Epi is one of the nicest and most friendly people I've met in the roleplaying industry. (Our immediate reaction to both of them was that they were people we would love to just hang around with, have over for dinner, share a bottle of wine - that kind of thing.) SWORDS WITHOUT MASTER was just about the right speed for two tired con-goers, with fairly light but evocative mechanics which emphasize the flavour of the genre. We ended up telling the tale of a group of rogues who were travelling through an icy northern sea, menaced by a strange leviathan that preyed on ships. That was tremendous fun.<br />
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You can find SWORDS WITHOUT MASTER in issue #3 of WORLDS WITHOUT MASTER (it's the one with the yellow psychedelic cover), Epi's awesome swords-and-sorcery-and-games magazine, <a href="https://gumroad.com/epidiah" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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After lunch, Megan and I parted ways for a few hours. She played a game of VELVET GLOVE with Sarah Richardson (which she later told me she enjoyed a lot, despite being very, very tired) and I played CIRCLES OF POWER with Canadian designer <b>Jason Pitre</b>.<br />
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I had been wanting to play a game with Jason for some time, and Megan spoke very highly of his GMing skills after getting in on a game of CIRCLES OF POWER during Breakout 2017. C.O.P. (hmm, ominous acronym!) is a game that he's been developing for some time, a roleplaying game about "social justice wizards" battling a repressive society.<br />
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Our group didn't do a lot of actual gameplay, but focused more on discussing new setting material Jason had been developing for the game. There was a heavy flavour of old Quebec City in the setting, which I liked a lot, and I've been champing at the bit to play a fantasy game set in something like North America.<br />
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A game that treads into such serious subject matter obviously has to tread carefully, and we had a lot of spirited discussion about how certain ideas were implemented and whether they went far enough into the themes they were exploring. I thought the game was mechanically very elegant, with a boffo magic system, and an excellent way of building the idea of intersectionality into playbooks. Jason had astounding energy and enthusiasm, especially for the last game of the con (and considering he'd probably been working harder and staying up later than any of the rest of us), and he clearly has a lot of love and hard work invested in this game. I have no doubts that when it's finished, it will be a milestone game and a must-buy for anyone who wants to see RPGs that explore challenging subject matter.<br />
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You can find the "Apprentice Edition" of CIRCLES OF POWER and Jason's other excellent games <a href="http://www.genesisoflegend.com/product/circles-of-power-apprentice-edition/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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All too soon, it was over. We collected our bags and staggered toward the doors of the Sheraton, and feasted on pizza before sadly climbing on the Greyhound back to real life. Breakout 2018 was a tremendous experience, and anyone who's in the area with a love of roleplaying (or board games) should really consider coming out for the 2019 con. The people are friendly and supportive, the games are tremendous, and it will leave you spent but aching for more.<br />
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It will be a long twelve months until Breakout 2019.<br />
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Footnote: <b>THE SWAG!</b><br />
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One of the great things about Breakout is that the convention manages an indie game store for their designer guests, so that they can devote more of their time to running games and enjoying themselves instead of selling their wares. As usual, I spent a lot of money there. This year's swag included:<br />
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<a href="http://cavalrygames.com/ten-candles/" target="_blank">TEN CANDLES</a> by Stephen Dewey<br />
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A game of tragic horror played by candlelight. I've been wanting to play this one for a long time.<br />
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<a href="http://www.genesisoflegend.com/product/sig-manual_of_the_primes/" target="_blank">SIG: MANUAL OF THE PRIMES</a> by Jason Pitre<br />
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Poor Jason was getting some teasing about a spelling error on the cover of the new edition of his splendid Planescape-esque fantasy game, but it's still a splendid volume, one of the prettiest RPG books I've purchased in a long while.<br />
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<a href="http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/228224/The-Watch" target="_blank">THE WATCH</a> by Anna Kreider and Andrew Medeiros<br />
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Our favourite game of Breakout 2017 was something we happily Kickstarted, and we're currently playing it at our table, but we were very happy to get our hands on a hard copy. If you don't own this game already, you really need to.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-36684661650615752372018-03-28T10:50:00.002-04:002018-03-28T10:50:20.746-04:00Breakout 2018 Convention Debrief (Part Two)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today I'm writing about our big day Saturday at Breakout. (If you missed Part One, it's <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2018/03/breakout-2018-convention-debrief-part.html#more" target="_blank">here</a>.)<br />
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I didn't get a great night's sleep on Friday, which is pretty normal for me in a strange bed, but especially after a day of great games. I had the momentum from playing ROSENSTRASSE to carry me through the low-energy bits.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Our first game of the day was MISERICORD(e) with <b>Emily Care Boss</b>. Emily has written a lot of terrific games, and while we weren't able to play in her Ere Camlann game (that went down at the same time as Fate with Ryan Macklin), we had a lot of fun playing this personal favourite of hers. MISERICORD(e) is a storytelling game about the people living in a medieval town, using Tarot cards to structure the story and insert twists and turns the players can't see coming. In this game, my wizard character's lover -- a brave knight with the city's army -- convinced him to help her overthrow her superior for the good of the city. There were many entertaining shenanigans about using a potion that would cause uncontrollable diarrhea, a mind-switching villain, and a sexy hobo.<br />
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Emily Care Boss is one of the nicest people I have met in the game industry, and she makes wonderful games about relationships (which are right in my wheelhouse). You can find MISERICORD(e) and other excellent games <a href="http://www.blackgreengames.com/shop/misericorde-pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. She is also a huge fan of the NBC time travel adventure show <i>Timeless</i>, and if you like that show -- or you want someone to talk you into why you should be watching it -- she often enthuses about it on Twitter.<br />
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We had planned to go to a few panels in the afternoon, but after my Friday night adventure, I said Megan really needed to give LARP a try. I knew that <b>Moyra Turkington</b> was running another game that afternoon, and as of the night before there were still empty spaces. We both signed up as soon as we could, and found ourselves in an afternoon game of MODEL PROTECTORATES.<br />
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This game (which can be found in the WAR BIRDS anthology) is about a family living in Nazi-occupied Denmark. The family is in a bad place when the story begins, with the mother having died a few years ago and their grief-stricken father increasingly retreating from the world. Their daughter is an idealistic young nurse who wants to do more, and their son is a firebrand teenager who is stirring up trouble in the streets. The household is managed by an aunt who has a background of revolutionary activity. When the daughter brings home an injured spy waiting for a radio message on an illegal receiver, the family is forced to make hard choices that sweep them into the war.<br />
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I played the grief-stricken father and Megan played the aunt. Unlike ROSENSTRASSE, this game played out in a series of long, tense scenes that included all of the characters at once (and a few games played by Moyra as the facilitator). That was really interesting, because often scenes were playing out simultaneously in different places in the room, meaning no one could hear every line of dialogue spoken. In the first scene, which played out over 45 minutes(!), there were long moments at the end when no one was speaking -- but we weren't bored. It was tense as hell!<br />
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Megan was very happy to get to share a LARP experience, and I'm so glad she had the opportunity to try it. You can find more information about MODEL PROTECTORATES (and a link to a page to buy WAR BIRDS) <a href="http://www.unrulydesigns.com/model-protectorates-by-moyra-turkington/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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We headed out for a lovely dinner with her sister at a local Indian restaurant and a little down time before our late-night game: BLUEBEARD'S BRIDE with <b>Sarah Richardson</b>.<br />
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I was a very enthusiastic supporter of BLUEBEARD'S BRIDE when it Kickstarted a while back, because it's the kind of unusual, boundary-testing game that really pushes the medium forward. It's creepy as hell, and my reaction when I read it -- like many, especially men -- was that it was awesome and I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to run it. It was so dark, so disturbing, and most of all it was <i>feminine </i>horror. A part of me said that I didn't have the <i>right</i> to tell that story. But listening to a few actual plays convinced me that Sarah Richardson was a master of telling that story, and I was both eager and a little wary about placing myself in her clutches.<br />
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I wasn't sure if it was a good idea for Megan to play this game or not, because she's more sensitive than I am to heavy subject matter like sexualized violence and cruelty, and I was wary about the game myself. But I had every confidence that there would be safety tools (and an open door) to help us through the experience, and Breakout is a welcoming enough environment that we felt safe to try something that pushed our limits as players.<br />
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In case you haven't read it already, the game places all the players inside the mind of the title Bride, as she explores Bluebeard's mansion and faces the horrors within. It's not a traditional roleplaying game, because there's really only one character and everyone plays different facets of that character's identity. The object of the game is to play through several scenes where the Bride encounters evidence of what kind of man Bluebeard is, and must choose whether or not to open the door to his forbidden room -- the act that seals the fate of the character in the fairy tale.<br />
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For this game, we were playing a variant of the game where The Bride is instead The Showgirl, a new face exploring the various tents of Bluebeard's Dark Carnival. We were playing with Duan, someone we played some great games with at Breakout 2017, Lexi (someone I know a little bit from online interactions), and another player whose name I don't recall. I think we were all a little nervous going into this game, and that helped -- we were in it together.<br />
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Sarah Richardson is a terrific horror GM, and I learned a lot from watching her work. She makes wonderful use of her voice, speaking in a slow, measured way that really drags out the tension sometimes. And she's so great at telling the initial Bluebeard story, which always opens a session of BB. That really sets the mood, and I'm a huge fan of fairy tales.<br />
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The game took us some pretty dark places, and I did end up using the X-Card toward the end of the game. My only regret about that is that someone didn't use it earlier, which would have made it easier for others to do so. None of that is on Sarah, who had a long and serious conversation with us about safety during the game beforehand. As she said, if you think the game might be too much for you, then it probably IS too much for you, and you shouldn't play it. She pulled no punches as a GM, and I admire that a lot, although I probably can't see myself ever going quite that far. Megan got to play in her game of 70's girl gangs, VELVET GLOVE, the next afternoon, and I'm sorry I missed it.<br />
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You can find BLUEBEARD'S BRIDE <a href="http://www.magpiegames.com/bluebeards-bride/" target="_blank">here</a>, and VELVET GLOVE <a href="http://www.magpiegames.com/our-games/ashcans/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<i>To be continued...</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-30566317021374463912018-03-27T15:06:00.001-04:002018-03-27T15:06:17.860-04:00Breakout 2018 Convention Debrief (Part One)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been a while since I've written in these pages regularly, but every once in a while you just have to gush a bit about something awesome. In this case, it's our second trip to Breakout, a gaming convention in Toronto.<br />
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We had a really great time with our first visit to Breakout, where we got to play great games with wonderful designers and enthusiastic players, so our expectations were high going into this year's con. Megan said she was trying not to get her hopes too high, in case it wasn't quite as good, but we were both delighted to find that this year's convention was better than ever. Two of the organizers warmly welcomed us with a hug in the first few minutes we were there, taking in the swanky new digs in the Sheraton Toronto. That kind of warm atmosphere was what we loved about Breakout 2017, and this year's model was the same thing in a bigger space.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Breakout does a great job of creating an atmosphere that is both welcoming and safe for players and GMs. Their policies for appropriate behaviour are clear and well thought-out, and there are people willing to offer support to anyone who needs it. Every table has an X-Card, and every GM I played with talked about it beforehand.<br />
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This year we had scheduled our weekend a little loosely, so that we could enjoy some time with friends and also not wear ourselves out. That strategy kind of fell apart by the end of the first day, but we didn't regret it.<br />
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Friday afternoon, we kicked off the con with a Fate game GMed by <b>Ryan Macklin</b>, a gaming luminary I've admired for many years, and it was a real thrill to play at his table. Ryan ran a Fate game with zero prep, and after we'd had a few minutes to talk to him, he turned the players loose to create a setting for us to play in. We chose a steampunk Mars, teetering on the edge of revolution to overthrow its Earthly colonial overlords (leaning toward the "punk" part of steampunk). We had a lot of fun with that, and Ryan both kept the action moving and shared a lot of expertise about running Fate generally. It turns out that we run games that are fairly similar -- I have been running a fairly loosey-goosey version of Fate for years, and frankly I have always worried that I was doing it wrong, but if it's good enough for Ryan it's good enough for me.<br />
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You can find Ryan's many excellent games <a href="http://ryanmacklin.com/publications/#mg" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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After that, we went out for a delicious dinner with our friends Liz and Matt (who had played Fate with us that afternoon). We went to a restaurant named the Queen Mother that had me expecting pub fare, but actually served amazing southeast Asian fare. I had a very tasty pad thai and a couple of beers, and Megan had chicken in a yummy peanut sauce over coconut rice. After dinner, she and Liz headed off to spend a little more time together while Matt and I returned to the con. I had intended to just spend the evening relaxing, but on a whim I decided to see what games were running that evening. I had the time, and who knows - you never know what great game or new friend you might discover. Boy, am I glad that I did.<br />
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Something we'd wanted to do at this year's Breakout was try our hand at LARP, something I've often thought would teach us a lot of new things we could use at the HTHD table. We ended up not signing up for anything because they were conflicting with other things, but I discovered that Friday evening <b>Moyra Turkington</b> was running a game, and lucky me, there was still an open spot. I signed up immediately, happy to get the spot but also knowing that it was going to be heavy material and new territory.<br />
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Moyra's game ROSENSTRASSE ended up being the best of the con for me, and that's saying something -- all the games were terrific, but this was next level. The game is about several families in Berlin from the years 1933-1943, each family having a Jewish man and an Aryan woman. As time unfolds and the Nazis tighten their grip, the families must endure awful pain and sacrifice, culminating in the Rosenstrasse protest when the women of Berlin rise up to demand their husbands' release. The game plays out in a series of intimate, difficult two-person scenes, prompted by a facilitator with a deck of cards (Moyra herself in this case, with Brand Robins helping out in a number of scenes). As the game moves into its second and third acts, the facilitator starts several scenes by presenting a particular player with a "Complicity card", which forces that player to make a heartbreaking choice for someone else's character. After we saw the first cards passed out, we all dreaded them, and it was certainly a gut punch when I had to make the choice myself.<br />
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It was a powerful and moving experience that I won't ever forget. Moyra made us all feel safe and supported throughout the game session, preparing us with a workshop beforehand and giving us a debriefing afterward, with breaks and checks to make sure everyone was okay as the game unfolded. I went up to bed at midnight spent, but exhilarated. I told Megan "You <i>have</i> to try this."<br />
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ROSENSTRASSE is still in development, and I think it's going to be Kickstarted sometime in the near future, but you can find Moyra's WARBIRDS anthology of LARP games about women in WW2 <a href="http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/War-Birds-softcover-Print-PDF.html?page=1" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<i>To be continued....</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-32556112253808431572017-10-27T14:17:00.004-04:002017-10-27T14:17:47.455-04:00Welcome to Prepville! Population: YOUShout out to Alex, who suggested this topic. Thanks Alex! I don't know how I've been writing this blog for several years and not directly addressed the topic of prep, but it's a huge one.<br />
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We started chatting about prep because I was talking about having just finished preparing for the first session of the new game I'm about to start running, MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. It's a big change of gears after wrapping up NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE, which was a small-cast, high drama affair. MRD is a more traditional game, running on a traditional (even retro, in a lot of ways) rule system, with a lot more demands on the GM side of things.<br />
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I think the two games will provide fruitful points of comparison in terms of what was required to prepare for both of them.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>First, let me say that a lot of prep is about figuring out where there are gaps in your personal GMing style and doing work ahead of time to compensate. For me, that's often on the rules mastery side of things, because I often have difficulty remembering all of the details of a complex rule system. That's likely why I gravitate toward lighter rules systems as a general practice, because that means I have to devote less energy to the mechanical side of the game and I can turn that attention toward the players and their experience.<br />
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To kick off my new game, I've devoted as much time to building handouts that summarize all the important rule systems as I have to writing the actual adventure -- and the "pilot episode" is written like a very traditional adventure, with maps, detailed notes, and monster stats. You have a special obligation as a GM when you're starting a new game to <i>teach </i>the game to your players, and if you're confused by how things work, you can get them <i>really</i> confused, because it's very likely they haven't personally read the rules. The GM is their only touchstone for the game, so preparing handouts that sketch out the high points means everybody has common ground and a place to go to make sure we're doing it right, the first couple of times. Making handouts also gets you thinking about the rules, which is helpful for people with shaky memory on such things, like myself.<br />
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I also almost always build custom character sheets for each game. Taking the time to understand where all the moving parts are on the characters and figure out a way of representing that which is as clear and accessible as possible means your players will see things clearly too.<br />
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NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE was much less work on my side of the table, although I ended up putting in some time figuring out how I was going to hack together several rule systems to make the game do what I wanted but fade into the background the rest of the time. In the case of that game, when I came to the table for the first session I hadn't nailed down a lot of specific details about it except that it would take place in a haunted house. So my job as GM was to facilitate a detailed conversation that would create a situation in the game that would build drama. I discussed several possible story frames featuring haunted houses, and we settled on one that appealed to everyone (sprawling family drama) before discussing player characters.<br />
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In a game like NOGOA, it's explicitly about the player-centric stuff, so I was really trying to help the players toward a strong starting point, building conflicts and a family history.<br />
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Once MRD is underway, I'll continue to have the work of sketching out adventure locations and populating them with monsters, as well as overseeing character progression. The interesting part will be a subsystem I've written for player-driven investigations, which sort of formalizes the idea that the players can drive the campaign in any direction they like. This is the ideal of the traditional "sandbox" adventure game -- go anywhere, do anything-- but I've found that in practice, players often find that much freedom a little overwhelming. So I've given my players a concrete way that they can move the game toward elements they find interesting. Once that starts generating feedback from the players, I'll have to adjust what I'm doing to incorporate their ideas on a regular basis, which should be a fun collaborative thing that leads toward novel adventure elements and pushes play toward player character backstory and goals. That's the theory, anyway.<br />
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NOGOA was a different dynamic. Since a significant portion of play was about the main cast of characters interacting <i>with each other</i>, my job was to facilitate that by using NPCs to push drama forward and also create a compelling backdrop for the story (by painting in the details of the haunted house setting). For an average episode of NOGOA, I'd take two pages of my notebook (side by side) and write down a short list of scene ideas for each character, places I could push them, snatches of NPC dialogue, and bits of ghostly shenanigans that were both backdrop and pressure for more drama.<br />
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My wife Megan often says of theatrical training that it carries you through during performances when you don't have a lot of personal energy or you're not at the top of your game for some reason. GM prep is much the same kind of thing. I may not need my list of ideas for scenes, if the players are really hot, I may just be able to sit back and react to them. Knowing I've got at least a few ideas to bring to the table means that if any of us are low energy, I have at least a starting point. Sometimes that's not enough for a <i>great</i> session, but it's usually enough that you get your session in rather than hanging it up partway through. And sometimes having the right kind of thing ready is the difference between a good session and a great one.<br />
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Of course, a GM always has to hold those ideas lightly, and go with the flow of whatever the players are bringing to the game. Ultimately, it's not a game that's about your ideas, it's about the friction that's generated by grinding them up against the players.<br />
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I have more general tools that I often bring to a game, especially when it's an improvised affair or a one-shot. A list of setting-appropriate names is pure gold, because inevitably you're going to have to manage a player character interaction with some bit player in the setting who you're making up on the spot. I especially make an effort to put a little cultural diversity into my list of names so every NPC isn't named Joe or Mike or David. I also try, in games where combat is featured, to have the ability to quickly improvise a combat when necessary. Sometimes a session needs a little jolt of adrenaline, and a fight can fit the bill. For my SHADOWRUN Fate game, I put together a little template that would let me quickly create some baddies or even improvise a short "run" to pick up the pace. Knowing I just had to pull out that sheet meant I was ready to roll when I needed to.<br />
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For NOGOA, I had a stack of index cards listing a dozen or so locations in and around the haunted house that we could use when someone was looking to start a new scene. Rather than have to invent a locale on the fly, they could pull out a card and say "Ah, let's play a scene in the conservatory" or maybe ask themselves what compelling location hadn't been featured yet.<br />
<br />
For one shots, my favourite thing to do is to put together something that's basically all setup -- create a charged situation, then let the players decide how it goes, and make interesting fallout out of that. Most of the best games I've played in have flowed from important player decisions, so I try to frame the game around a few meaty ones; the rest writes itself, and it makes players feel like they are at the center of the game (which is as it should be). Yes, this is basically drawn from Ron Edwards' idea of a "bang"; it's a classic for a reason.<br />
<br />
So, to sum up, for myself prep usually takes one of the following forms:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Handouts and character sheets to help teach the game, and make it more accessible</li>
<li>Tools to provide ingredients that can be added to a scene (names, props, locations)</li>
<li>Traditional stat-driven prep (adventure notes, monster stats), if necessary</li>
<li>Flexible tools that help me improvise elements on the fly (simple encounter prep)</li>
<li>A list of general or specific ideas for scenes, usually tailored to the characters to drive conflicts forward or introduce ideas into the fiction</li>
<li>An idea for a charged situation to center the session on</li>
</ul>
<div>
To be honest, I feel like "what's the <i>right</i> thing to prepare for a session" and "<i>how much</i> prep is necessary for a session" are questions that I am always wrestling with. If I can come to the table and feel relatively comfortable diving in, and supporting the players so that they can do the same, I feel like I've done my job.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What kinds of things do you guys do to prepare for a scene?</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-89525688928602418782017-10-13T14:13:00.004-04:002017-10-13T14:13:51.142-04:00Maybe We Haunt Ourselves: NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9OjrO_OCW47kbUK0fJYRQWdxfDP5NYwGKnsDkOutjjSZzOysOE2xzgjOsDOj6Lmc0-VqFIIp9ILQvOx7jcrhQaWvFQ-vsp0V6pzyY146Lgz7YCl3iQBoVRrcLa5y0lXMVL4F43Uw4iaOb/s1600/Strathclyde.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="611" data-original-width="980" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9OjrO_OCW47kbUK0fJYRQWdxfDP5NYwGKnsDkOutjjSZzOysOE2xzgjOsDOj6Lmc0-VqFIIp9ILQvOx7jcrhQaWvFQ-vsp0V6pzyY146Lgz7YCl3iQBoVRrcLa5y0lXMVL4F43Uw4iaOb/s400/Strathclyde.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Strathclyde House. Whatever walked there, walked alone.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Last week, we finished my haunted house campaign NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE. It was a strong finish to a game that had a lot of powerful stuff in it.<br />
<br />
Everything about this game was an experiment, really, and it's probably lucky that it came out as well as it did, but I had great players and good tools to play with. The objective of the game was to play something that was focused on going deeper, playing harder than we had for a while, even in games that had a lot of good stuff in them. We were playing with a slightly smaller group, three players and a GM, which had important implications for play down the line. As far as mechanics go, we were using the dramatic petitioner-granter rules from DRAMASYSTEM, with the 2d6+Trait mechanic from Powered-by-the-Apocalypse games to serve as our procedural rules.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>I started with a very broad canvas to work with, my love of ghost stories and haunted houses. You could tell all kinds of different dramatic stories against that backdrop, and I suggested several models we could work with (including one that was investigators in a haunted house, like THE HAUNTING), but the one we settled on was a sprawling family drama. After the death of the family matriarch, the relatives come together to deal with the will, and secrets and sins start to boil to the surface. It took us two sessions to create characters and a suitably complicated family tree to satisfy everyone, but it was time well invested.<br />
<br />
In a nutshell, the McBride family has been in the distillery business since the 1920s, but now <b>Michael Ross</b>, the "good son" who's been working as CEO to hold things together, has resorted to fraud to keep things afloat until the company can be sold to a Japanese firm. "Miss Maudie" McBride, who has been living alone in the decaying island mansion Strathclyde House for years, leaves a will behind that includes a sibling the McBrides didn't know they had -- <b>Lisette</b>, the daughter of the groundskeeper, who also has McBride blood in her through one of Miss Maudie's indiscretions. Michael's wife <b>Jo</b> is wary of Lisette's return, because she remembers Lisette and Michael were boyfriend and girlfriend as teenagers... until she put a stop to it, with Miss Maudie's help. Jo has been having an affair, but is still quite prepared to defend her family "turf" against all comers, including Michael's sister Diana and his brother Matthew, who have been draining the family coffers for years. Now, Diana is demanding to see the family books, at the worst possible moment for Michael, threatening to expose his bookkeeping fancy footwork. Then there are Madeline and Tyler, Michael and Jo's children, who may be pawns or leverage in the crumbling Ross marriage...<br />
<br />
...And all of that is before the supernatural shenanigans begin.<br />
<br />
I told the players early on that ghosts were all about "weaponizing the past", and I made sure that each player character had a dark secret to draw on. I mentioned Michael and Jo's above, and Lisette's was substance abuse. I also asked the players to <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2017/03/have-game-plan.html" target="_blank">go into each session with a game plan</a>, a concrete, actionable goal for something they were hoping to do that session, and rewarded those who accomplished them. I think the game plans helped a bit, as did the group's mission statement to play harder, go deeper.<br />
<br />
The first session I did very little other than describe the house as they saw it, and occasionally interject small moments with side characters like the kids and Michael's siblings. I like to be an active GM, so it was stressful to just sit back and let things play out, but I'm a big believer in letting people "kick the tires" on new characters and explore them a bit before putting any serious pressure on.<br />
<br />
I knew going into the game that ghosts were capable of so many things that I needed to place some creative constraints on myself, or I could create situations that were abusive -- the player characters would literally have no defence against that kind of opposition. My solution was to create a "timing" mechanism for when the supernatural elements would begin to manifest, using the "clocks" from APOCALYPSE WORLD. I wrote a list of "triggers" that would fill a clock segment, and left it up to the players whether they would know what they were. (I figured that it was an open question whether they would want to know, so they could push harder to make things happen, or whether they'd prefer to be surprised.) We compromised, and I told them one of my list of eight-ish triggers, but kept the rest secret. I planned them to be things that were likely to come up in the first act of a drama (such as deliberately lying to another character or avoiding looking into the past, or refusing a petition); I think I planned them well, because 2/3 player characters filled their clocks by the end of the first episode.<br />
<br />
With their clocks filled, the players then got to pick from a series of cards with evocative phrases on them ("The Whisper", "The Door", and "The Mirror" were the ones chosen). These cards corresponded to "ghost powers" that I could use in the game, after they'd been unlocked. This both created a calm first act before the supernatural began to manifest and gave the players some agency in what the rest of the game looked like, although they didn't know what the cards meant. The cards they chose gave me the ability to create hallucinations / illusions (The Mirror), voices speaking to them to drive them apart (The Whisper), and the ability to move objects and people around in space -- what ghost chasers call an "apport". These turned out to be perfect choices, because they created a very particular kind of ghost: one that was focused on fucking with people's perceptions, toying with existing conflicts, driving the characters apart.<br />
<br />
The following three episodes were much higher-pressure. As I mentioned earlier, having only three main characters in a drama-focused game has serious implications for play. It meant that practically every scene had two of the players involved in it, giving players very little "down" time where they were just observing other scenes and recharging their cells. The sessions tended to be on the short side, between two and two-and-a-half hours, but they were pretty demanding for the players, and I'm not sure we could have played longer if we'd wanted to. The best sessions seemed to demand a half hour afterwards to cool down and talk about what had happened, which felt an awful lot like a LARP style debrief to me. (Megan and I also made a practice of going for as long a walk afterwards as we could manage, because we knew otherwise sleeping would be hard.)<br />
<br />
The last episode was the most demanding for me, with the characters all at each others' throats and the stakes very high (Michael and Jo's son Tyler had vanished, and Michael was reeling from having pushed his brother Matthew off the roof the previous episode). I pushed the supernatural elements hard, dividing the characters and pushing them against each other. That session was a lot closer to the way I run traditional horror games, with quick cuts between scenes and much of the tension building from characters having imperfect knowledge or skewed perceptions of what was happening around them. I went into that episode with my own game plan written at the top of the page: everybody's dark secret is revealed. So a phantom cell phone call revealed Jo's infidelity, a ghostly re-enactment of the brother's death revealed Michael's culpability, and mysterious pill bottles tumbled out of Lisette's pockets at the worst possible moment.<br />
<br />
I enjoyed that episode a lot, and I hope the players did too, and one particular thing that was a pleasure was that I wasn't entirely sure it would be the last episode when we began it. I knew it was possible, and intended to play hard, but it could have turned out that a fifth episode was required to wrap everything up nicely. I didn't decide until about twenty minutes from the end that this was the time to pull out all the stops, play for keeps, and see if anyone would survive in defiance of the game's title. As it turned out, of the main cast, only Michael survived the fire that destroyed Strathclyde House at the end, living to be accused of murder by his daughter and likely face prison for cooking the family business's books. It was an awful, painful ending, and it felt entirely earned. Maybe even inevitable.<br />
<br />
Megan has written long, deep recaps of the sessions here, at her excellent blog, and if you're a bibliophile who doesn't already know about it... now ya know:<br />
<br />
Episode One - "<a href="http://smorgasbook.blogspot.ca/2017/07/the-week-in-stories-no-one-gets-out.html" target="_blank">The Drop-Off</a>"<br />
Episode Two - "<a href="http://smorgasbook.blogspot.ca/2017/08/the-week-in-stories-no-one-gets-out.html" target="_blank">Another Midnight</a>"<br />
Episode Three - "<a href="http://smorgasbook.blogspot.ca/2017/09/the-week-in-stories-no-one-gets-out.html" target="_blank">Inevitability of Death</a>"<br />
Episode Four - "Here in the Dark"is <a href="http://smorgasbook.blogspot.ca/2017/10/the-week-in-stories-no-one-gets-out.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://smorgasbook.blogspot.ca/2017/10/no-one-gets-out-alive-final-character.html" target="_blank">here</a> (in two parts, including a little bit about the backstory from me).<br />
<br />
And, for the completists, about <a href="http://smorgasbook.blogspot.ca/2017/05/the-week-in-stories-no-one-gets-out.html" target="_blank">character creation</a> too.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-45626821052059102722017-09-05T08:52:00.006-04:002017-09-05T08:52:56.132-04:00Review Omnibus<i>August's flurry of RPGaDay activity has me wanting to post material more often, so I thought I would re-share some older material that might still be of general interest. Today, here's a collection of game reviews I've written in the last couple of years for some pretty awesome games. Maybe you're still thinking about buying them...? Read on.</i><br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2017/05/review-veil.html" target="_blank"></a><br />
<a name='more'></a><a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2017/05/review-veil.html" target="_blank">THE VEIL</a> by Fraser Simons<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2016/05/beyond-wall-and-other-adventures-review.html" target="_blank">BEYOND THE WALL AND OTHER ADVENTURES</a> and <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2017/03/review-further-afield.html" target="_blank">FURTHER AFIELD</a> by John Cocking and Peter S. Williams<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2016/03/after-action-report-golden-sky-stories.html" target="_blank">GOLDEN SKY STORIES</a> by Ryo Kamiya<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2016/03/review-masters-of-umdaar.html" target="_blank">MASTERS OF UMDAAR</a> by Dave Joria<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2016/01/review-silent-legions.html" target="_blank">SILENT LEGIONS</a> by Kevin Crawford<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2015/11/review-icons-assembled-edition.html" target="_blank">ICONS - ASSEMBLED EDITION</a> by Steve Kenson<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2015/06/review-tianxia-blood-silk-jade.html" target="_blank">TIANXIA - BLOOD, SILK, AND JADE</a> by Jack Norris<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2015/04/review-night-witches.html" target="_blank">NIGHT WITCHES</a> by Jason Morningstar<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2015/02/review-monster-of-week.html" target="_blank">MONSTER OF THE WEEK</a> by Michael Sands<br />
<br />
<a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2015/01/review-ken-writes-about-stuff-voodoo.html" target="_blank">KEN WRITES ABOUT STUFF: VOODOO</a> by Ken HiteAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-44740630285730719392017-08-31T11:12:00.002-04:002017-08-31T11:12:05.771-04:00Bittersweet Farewell to #RPGaDay2017<b>31. What do you anticipate most for gaming in 2018?</b><br />
<br />
I have to echo Rob Donoghue -- I'm looking forward to DUSK CITY OUTLAWS and SHADOW OF THE CENTURY a lot. I'm also looking forward to seeing what the revised edition of STARS WITHOUT NUMBER looks like.<br />
<br />
But, to be honest, I'm also looking forward to catching up on a couple of 2017 games I haven't got my hot little hands on yet -- DRESDEN FILES ACCELERATED and BLADES IN THE DARK are definite must-gets for me, when I've got the cash. And I'm looking forward to getting some play time with a few games I've Kickstarted, especially THE WATCH. And if I'm very brave, maybe I'll get a chance to play BLUEBEARD'S BRIDE.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-36012776811902184522017-08-30T12:49:00.004-04:002017-08-30T12:49:45.252-04:00Well Mash My Potatoes! #RPGaDay2017<b>30. What is an RPG genre mashup you would most like to see?</b><br />
<br />
How about Jazz Age space opera? Spaceships and fedoras. Glamourous intergalactic speakeasys. Private eyes walking the mean streets of giant art deco space stations. Gangsters disposing of their inconveniences by tossing them into a black hole.<br />
<br />
Or a steampunk game where it's steampunk + NOTHING. I really don't care for adding magic to my steampunk Victoriana, but it always seems to weasel its way in. How's that for an anti-mashup?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-12297616833891809472017-08-29T09:34:00.002-04:002017-08-29T09:34:09.617-04:00Ain't That A Kick in the Head? #RPGaDay2017<b>29. What has been the best-run Kickstarter you have backed?</b><br />
<br />
Hmm, this is a tough one, because I'm a relative newcomer to backing Kickstarters at all. Not for lack of wanting to, but because I mostly don't have the extra cash. I've only backed a handful of things, and most of them have delivered quite nicely. I've never backed anything that didn't produce a product at the end of it, luckily.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>I was very pleased with MONSTERHEARTS 2, which didn't make gigantic changes to the original game, but felt like it both expanded and contracted in excellent ways. The final product is very polished, and I was very happy to give Avery Alder my cash.<br />
<br />
I also recently backed HARLEM UNBOUND, a Call/Trail of Cthulhu sourcebook for the Harlem Renaissance. That was an amazing read that adds an entirely new dimension to a fairly well-trodden segment of the gaming world, and maps out a world I would love to explore in a game.<br />
<br />
I also backed BLUEBEARD'S BRIDE, a fairly unusual twist on the familiar PbtA formula, and it's been a little slower with releases, but then again I think their stretch goals went way above and beyond the basic materials of the game.<br />
<br />
You may have noticed that these three have something in common: they're all small press books, even by RPG industry standards. I usually don't feel obligated to kick in money for a project that's coming out of one of the larger presses (like Pelgrane), because I'm pretty sure those games will already happen without my support. I want to make sure that the little guys doing interesting stuff get a chance to get their stuff out there, so that's where I put my modest amount of cash. I haven't been disappointed yet.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-14147931193318064702017-08-28T10:28:00.003-04:002017-08-28T10:28:34.670-04:00Three Answers and a Baby #RPGaDay2017<b>26. Which RPG provides the most useful resources?</b><br />
<br />
FATE provides an incredibly robust set of tools that can apply to practically any genre, and they're tools that the group can "tune" to their own tastes. FATE is such a staple of gaming to me, though, that I feel like it's almost cheating to use it as an answer.<br />
<br />
So here are a couple of other games with great tools, just to keep it all above board.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Kevin Crawford's STARS WITHOUT NUMBER and its spin-off games, OTHER DUST and SILENT LEGIONS are jam-packed with awesome tables for building your own sandbox game. Any GM who gets a little thrill when they see random tables should be buying these games. Straight up.<br />
<br />
The sourcebooks for ECLIPSE PHASE are nothing short of stellar, no pun intended. They provide you with a world that's rich, deep, and complex. Absolutely inspirational.<br />
<br />
And the game I'm spending the most time with lately is Jason Vey's AMAZING ADVENTURES, a pulp adventure variant of CASTLES & CRUSADES that really takes apart its parent game and shows you how to use it to play all kinds of different things, from Nazi-punching Indiana Jones action to Steampunk or Weird West or whatever floats your boat.<br />
<br />
<b>27. What are your essential tools for good gaming?</b><br />
<br />
These days, I'd say my essential tools are:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>My spiral-bound notebook, where I write down ideas, flesh out scenes, and scratch out notes during sessions. I try to keep one of these for each campaign, but I need to be more vigilant about keeping them up.</li>
<li>3x5 cards to write essential elements down where everyone can see them, during a session.</li>
<li>Spotify, so that I can have a mood-appropriate playlist going in the background.</li>
<li>A diverse library of games that I can read for inspiration.</li>
<li>Good communication with my players. </li>
<li>Pretty dice. Because you can never have too many. </li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>28. What film / series is the biggest source of quotes in your group?</b><br />
<br />
Uh. <i>The Simpsons</i>, I guess? Even though it's many years past its prime, that show is still the cultural touchstone of our times. I can't even remember the last time I heard a <i>Monty Python and the Holy Grail</i> quote at our table, but someone tenting their fingers and hissing "Excellent" like Monty Burns happens on a regular basis.<br />
<br />
And, as promised...<br />
<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-53578479966868399112017-08-25T11:06:00.001-04:002017-08-25T11:07:22.207-04:00Tanks a Lot #RPGaDay2017 <b>25. What is the best way to thank your GM?</b><br />
<br />
Say "thank you".<br />
<br />
OK, slightly less sarcastic answer incoming.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>There are a lot of great ways to show your appreciation to your GM. The best is probably by being an enthusiastic participant in their games, putting as much of yourself in them as the GM does. That shows you care in a way that bringing pizza doesn't, although pizza and beer never hurt.<br />
<br />
Being a GM can be a lonely job, so seeing commitment and energy from your players is very energizing. It shows that they're on board, they're digging it, they're bringing stuff to the table that makes the game better.<br />
<br />
It's always helpful to hear people talk about the game afterwards, or at other social gatherings, because it's a nice ego boost when people say nice things, and constructive criticism or ideas about where the game could go next are always helpful. Honestly, sometimes it's like pulling teeth to get any feedback at all, and specific feedback especially. Communication helps everybody.<br />
<br />
The basic responsibilities of a player -- showing up, knowing the basics of the rules, paying attention to the game, the GM, and the other players -- are essential to the health of a good game, and doing at least those things is something every GM would be grateful for. Going above and beyond to make special contributions to the game -- now we're talking about stuff that really makes a game memorable. That could be doing a piece of art, or making a playlist, or writing detailed recaps, or volunteering to make a meal or dessert or something extra special.<br />
<br />
And it's always lovely when people bring a bottle of wine or snacks.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-25534792299880106602017-08-24T08:24:00.003-04:002017-08-25T11:07:34.774-04:00You're Worth It #RPGaDay2017<b>24. Share a PWYW publisher who should be charging more.</b><br />
<br />
Evil Hat offers a lot of quality products on a PWYW basis, funded by their Patreon. They are usually high quality, and could easily go for at least a nominal fee.<br />
<br />
But I'm sure everybody already knows about them.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheiUjHdW4-TnXSAIdcRBZ3JfzHR91V27bcj8IiB_w016nehyphenhyphen1boONT7Rtsk6U0Ma4yuljmEnfbo9VTybgH9F47sBjyowkxTvHUVLF_0a2u30s-dNJvJPBCJ9BvmYM9-XmxylgJWMJRJVAO/s1600/photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="203" data-original-width="360" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheiUjHdW4-TnXSAIdcRBZ3JfzHR91V27bcj8IiB_w016nehyphenhyphen1boONT7Rtsk6U0Ma4yuljmEnfbo9VTybgH9F47sBjyowkxTvHUVLF_0a2u30s-dNJvJPBCJ9BvmYM9-XmxylgJWMJRJVAO/s320/photo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I want to tell you about <b>Flatland Games</b>, the guys who do <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2016/05/beyond-wall-and-other-adventures-review.html" target="_blank">BEYOND THE WALL</a> and its excellent supplement, <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2017/03/review-further-afield.html" target="_blank">FURTHER AFIELD</a>. I reviewed both of those games here, and loved them. Both of these games are <i>not </i>PWYW, but they're so inexpensive they may as well be. But all of the wonderful supplementary character playbooks, adventures, and threat packs are <i>gratis</i> -- not even PWYW. That's right, straight up FREE.<br />
<br />
I truly think BEYOND THE WALL and FURTHER AFIELD would be a bargain at twice the price, game books full of great writing, quality art, and playable content. Flatland Games could and should absolutely make their supplementary stuff PWYW, or charge a small fee, because I tell you, they're like CRACK. Or Pokemon. Or Pokemon made out of CRACK. Once you start reading those playbooks, you want them ALL.<br />
<br />
John Cocking and Peter S. Williams, I love your stuff, and only wish there was more of it that I could give you money for.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-14119938705881401172017-08-23T09:18:00.005-04:002017-08-23T09:18:44.957-04:00Apropos of Recent Celestial Events #RPGaDay2017<b>23. What RPG has the most jaw-dropping layout?</b><br />
<br />
I think ECLIPSE PHASE gets the nod for me. I picked up a bunch of supplements recently, and they're all just gorgeous. The art is amazing, and the books look crisp and modern.<br />
<br />
Evil Hat also does consistently good-looking, clean books, with nice artwork and very readable layout. ATOMIC ROBO is just a knockout. What a gorgeous book.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-74303464961788435272017-08-22T09:46:00.003-04:002017-08-22T09:46:51.130-04:00Take It Easy #RPGaDay2017<b>22. Which RPGs are the easiest for you to run?</b><br />
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I can dive into a FATE game with very little prep work, especially if I've got pre-gen characters for the players ready to go. This is something I used to do when I ran regularly at local cons -- set up pretty, accessible character sheets for running various things in Fate, so all I'd need to do was have a vague idea what the adventure was and I was ready to go. My pre-gens look like characters about 3/4 of the way done, and with a couple extra aspects/choices they're ready to play.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>I also recently re-discovered the joy of running OVER THE EDGE, a game that I have loved since the first moment I heard about it on Usenet news groups back in the hoary days of yore. These days I've been running a playtest of the third edition rules, which are slick and play fast, but it's really the setting that makes my brain crackle with possibilities. A few wild ideas (or scene set-ups) and some input from the characters, and off we go.<br />
<br />
I guess I should broaden my answer a little bit to say that the games that appeal to me most as GM are ones where I have to engage with the mechanics myself the least, giving me extra space to listen and pay careful attention to the players. That would include CINEMATIC UNISYSTEM, a game we played the hell out of a few years ago, and the whole family of PbtA games, although I've only actually run them a few times myself. It makes all the difference when I can spend my time listening rather than worrying about what die I have to roll next. The extra bit of energy and focus goes into thinking about how to pay off what the players are doing.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-38832227991754521472017-08-21T10:16:00.002-04:002017-08-21T10:16:50.535-04:00Hold On, I'm Comin' #RPGaDay2017 <b>19. Which RPG features the best writing?</b><br />
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I don't really look to RPGs for <i>elegant</i> writing, the same way I look to literature, and I'm often put off by games that insist on including fiction with their text.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>What I really want in a game book is clear, concise prose that helps me understand the game and gives me the ideas and tools I need to run great games. For that, I don't think you can beat Avery Alder's MONSTERHEARTS (and MONSTERHEARTS 2, the recent update).<br />
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It was MH that helped me really get my head around the "Apocalypse Engine". I could easily call Vincent Baker's original AW text "the most provocative RPG writing", but I didn't really <i>understand</i> the game until Avery explained it to me. And the revised game is <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2017/07/review-monsterhearts-2.html" target="_blank">all killer, no filler</a>. If you haven't got it already, what the heck is wrong with you?<br />
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<b>20. What is the best source for out-of-print RPGs?</b><br />
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I don't think there is any substitute for the serendipitous pleasure of stumbling across a game book long-sought but out-of-reach on the shelves of an obscure second-hand book store.<br />
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PDFs make a lot of the old stuff accessible, of course, and you can occasionally find a deal in the dusty depths of eBay or at a garage sale, but used book stores (and bins of second-hand games at your FLGS) are where it's at.<br />
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<b>21. Which RPG does the most with the least words?</b><br />
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Hmm, I don't read a lot of micro games, but Graham Walmsley's CTHULHU DARK is pretty awesome stuff.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-41067709288173846132017-08-18T13:49:00.002-04:002017-08-18T13:50:22.310-04:00You're The Most #RPGaDay2017<b>18. Which RPG have you played the most in your life?</b><br />
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I suspect, like most people who started playing RPGs in grade school, that there is no real contest for this question.<br />
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It's got to be ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.<br />
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We played AD&D a lot when I was a kid in grade school and in high school too. That's not necessarily because AD&D was the greatest game in the world, but it was pretty much the only RPG I was exposed to until high school. And we played it a lot because we were kids, and we may not have had a lot of money, but we had plenty of time to spend doing whatever we wanted. We would regularly play all day long, and on occasion play all weekend. Eight hour sessions were the rule, not the exception.<br />
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In high school, we found some other games that we liked too, including my beloved VILLAINS & VIGILANTES, TWILIGHT 2000, CYBERPUNK, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES AND OTHER STRANGENESS, and BEYOND THE SUPERNATURAL. All of them hold a special place in my heart, but we always came back to AD&D.<br />
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In university, it was pretty much second edition D&D and some smatterings of V&V, with summer expeditions into CALL OF CTHULHU.<br />
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More recently: We played a lot of D&D 3rd Edition when that was the new hotness, and I had a long multi-year FORGOTTEN REALMS campaign that I enjoyed quite a bit. We also played the hell out of MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS first edition, and SHADOWRUN. Later, we played a lot of CINEMATIC UNISYSTEM, FATE, and PRIMETIME ADVENTURES.<br />
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Recently, I've been reading through CASTLES & CRUSADES, and it hits a lot of sweet spots for me, despite the fact that dungeon crawls have kind of worn themselves out for me and most of my players. And if you asked me why, it's probably because it reminds me a lot of that game I played a lot when I was young and the summers were endless.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-91283489610421630372017-08-17T08:57:00.001-04:002017-08-17T08:57:23.789-04:00My Oldest Nemesis #RPGaDay2017<b>17. Which RPG have you owned the longest but not played?</b><br />
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Oh, it's like <i>that</i>, huh? This month-long conversation just got a little too real.<br />
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I own an awful lot of games, and I have enjoyed them all (even if a number of them I've only read). I was happy to realize, after staring at my shelves for a while, that the vast majority of books I've got as a hard copy I've played at least once over the years. I had to compare copyright dates to see which of the contenders was published first.<br />
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I think it's WEREWOLF: THE FORSAKEN.<br />
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Somehow, over the years I've purchased a number of (New) WORLD OF DARKNESS books but not actually played them very much. I got the core book when it came out, then WEREWOLF, then CHANGELING, and I have most of the first edition EXALTED line on my shelf. Since I've actually played in an EXALTED game, I'm counting that as "played", even if I didn't run it myself and even if it was actually adapted to another rule system.<br />
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Looking back on it, I'm not sure how it is that I've managed to not play WEREWOLF for so long. It's probably because I found that the WoD system is a bit patchwork, with an elegant (if vanilla) core rule system that has all these extra parts spot-welded on top of it. There's also the fact that the werewolf lore is pretty deep, and without players who are really into learning it, it's a lot of info to "dump" during sessions. I wrote up a draft of a werewolf hack of CTHULHU DARK called FURY (in search of something that was a little less heavy lifting, rules-wise) that was pretty sweet, but I've never played that either.<br />
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I don't know. Maybe it's just that my players were never into werewolves as much as I was. I love everything about the concept, I love that they're monstrous but still heroic (as opposed to vampires, who don't appeal to me at all), I love that they have a developed and interesting society that still has enough macho posturing that it would appeal to a lot of players (who, it must be said, often prefer politicking with a side of punching people in the face). I can very clearly imagine any number of tasty werewolf campaign set-ups that would work well, from a <i>Sons of Anarchy</i> style crime drama to a WWII commando unit of (Allied) Uratha, to a tense Southern Gothic in a town full of werewolves.<br />
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Still on the bucket list.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-68278804952505988032017-08-16T09:03:00.002-04:002017-08-16T09:03:33.204-04:00There's Always Vanilla #RPGaDay2017<b>16. Which RPG do you enjoy using as-is?</b><br />
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Hmm. This is a harder question than which RPG I tinker with, which is a lot of them (in small ways). Again, it feels like cheating to say FATE, because that game is designed as a powerful and flexible toolkit that is <i>intended</i> to be adapted to whatever subject you're playing, and it includes explicit assistance to help you do it.<br />
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It also feels like cheating to answer using a vanilla ruleset like CALL OF CTHULHU uses, despite the fact I've been playing it (and by "it", I mean the 5th edition rules, from the early 90s) with virtually no changes for a long, long time.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>A lot of "indie" games would work, but to be honest I've read a lot more of them than I've played. FIASCO is a masterpiece of simple, focused design that does exactly what it needs to and doesn't require any tinkering.<br />
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I'm probably overthinking, but I feel like the spirit of the question is "which game has flavourful mechanics that you like as-is", and I guess the answer that springs to mind is SAVAGE WORLDS.<br />
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Sure, SAVAGE WORLDS is swingy, combat-centric, and you really have to be in the mood for a RPG that emphasizes the "game" part, but if that's your groove it's a heck of a lot of fun. The "exploding" die mechanics are super fun, and it does a great job of stripping a traditional RPG down into the smallest possible space.<br />
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I don't know what it would be like playing a SW game long-term, but for a one-shot where there are a lot of baddies to be whomped on, it's pretty much in my sweet spot.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-21400091143080596572017-08-15T09:01:00.004-04:002017-08-15T09:01:27.962-04:00Adaptation #RPGaDay2017<b>15. Which RPG do you enjoy adapting the most?</b><br />
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This one's no contest. Definitely SHADOWRUN.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>I've run SHADOWRUN with a lot of systems over the years -- most recently, using FATE ACCELERATED, but also with SAVAGE WORLDS and even MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS. Pretty much anything hits the sweet spot for me better than the original system, which I find baffling and arcane (even having played it for several years in a long, good campaign in Kingston).<br />
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It's funny -- there are a lot of things about SHADOWRUN that should chafe, but it somehow works for me. Despite the bum mechanics, the fairly absurd premise, the focus on "dungeon crawls with guns", and the fact that it's <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2014/04/buttwyth-magick.html" target="_blank">Cyberpunk Buttwyth Magick</a>, I've found it engaging and inspiring for a long time. Maybe since I first saw that epic Larry Elmore cover, above. I've run two long-run campaigns with very different tones that I felt were very successful. Whether it's high-powered corporate intrigue or dirty crime stories you want, SHADOWRUN can scratch that itch.<br />
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I had a little hope that the rumours of a "Shadowrun Lite" that were making the rounds might finally mean that I'd be able to play the game in something like its native system, but SHADOWRUN ANARCHY wasn't "lite" enough for my tastes.<br />
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But no worries. There will always be another system I can hack to do it.<br />
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Say, NIGHT'S BLACK AGENTS would probably be pretty sweet for this too...Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-17122084689496943022017-08-14T14:02:00.005-04:002017-08-14T14:02:52.328-04:00Endless Highway #RPGaDay2017<b>14. Which RPG do you prefer for open-ended campaign play?</b><br />
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I do <i>not</i> prefer open-ended campaign play, to be perfectly blunt.<br />
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In my experience, I've had much more productive play at my table by changing my focus to a <a href="http://hightrusthighdrama.blogspot.ca/2013/07/the-short-campaign-model-part-one.html" target="_blank">short-game model</a>, where every player at the table knows that they've only got (x) episodes to get their character issues on the table and they'd better play hard to make that happen. I know that in some quarters, this is seen as weird, but it's meant that in the last decade our games have been exponentially better. As an adult, I need my game time to be focused and for shit to get done.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>FATE seems like the lazy man's answer to this question, if I were to speculate about a longer-run (but not exactly open-ended) game, because it's a big, flexible toolkit that can easily model all kinds of games. If you've read this page before, you probably already know it's one of my favourites, and I wouldn't hesitate to use it for a lot of games because I have confidence it would work.<br />
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CASTLES & CRUSADES would be my pick if I was planning to dive into a long run game in the classic fantasy style, because it does a good job of capturing those traditional D&D feels with a sleeker modern engine. BEYOND THE WALL would be my choice if I wanted less combat and more atmosphere, and generally a feel that's more intimate rather than epic.<br />
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If I wanted this hypothetical game to be in space, it would probably work well with STARS WITHOUT NUMBER, a modest game that manages to capture the classic TRAVELLER vibe in a lighter package.<br />
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I imagine I could run an ongoing OVER THE EDGE game for a long time, if I was inclined to do so, and not run out of material, but it almost works best as a short-form thing. A strange little confection to cleanse the palate.<br />
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I would love to run an ongoing GODLIKE game that played through a substantial chunk of the war, in the style of NIGHT WITCHES, going all the way from boot camp to Berlin.<br />
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How's that for a lot of speculation about games I probably won't run?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-65855745374168287282017-08-13T13:39:00.004-04:002017-08-13T13:39:48.562-04:00Where the Art Is #RPGaDay2017<b>12. Which RPG has the most inspiring interior art?</b><br />
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There are lots of excellent RPGs out there with top-notch production values. I've been reading Monte Cook's NUMENARA recently, and the art in that game is very high quality for a not-WotC-or-Paizo production. Especially when that game sets out to describe a science-fantasy world that's pretty different from your standard D&D-style world. The vistas are different, the characters are different, and the creatures... well, they're way different. ECLIPSE PHASE is another game that has out-of-this-world artwork and production values. I feel like that's almost expected for "bigger" games these days, even when they're not from a big publisher. Evil Hat has always set the bar very high for their books.<br />
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The game I want to give some love isn't one of the big ones, though there are a lot of worthy candidates. It's a smaller game (in terms of publisher size, not content -- this bad boy is almost 700 pages in the core book! staggering!) but the quality and consistency of the artwork is nothing short of inspiring. I'm talking about <b>ZWEIHANDER - GRIM AND PERILOUS</b> by Daniel Fox. This game was intended to be a retro-clone of early editions of WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY, but it grew into something that is distinct despite its clear lineage. The artwork thus follows in that established tradition of artwork, detailing a dirty, Renaissance-era Europe full of scuzzy looking individuals and freaky looking mutants and demons and monsters, oh my.<br />
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Like I said -- this is a massive tome -- and I wouldn't have been surprised or upset if it had either a shortage of artwork or perhaps a number of pieces of art repeated several times. That isn't the case here, though. There are a very large number of high-quality black-and-white illustrations throughout, which set the tone for the game in a very real way. Kudos to Dejan Mandic and Jussi Alarauhio for the tons of beautiful artwork to be found here, some of which I've shown.<br />
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<b>13. Describe a game experience that changed how you play.</b><br />
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Hmm, although I tend not to write in these pages all that frequently (notwithstanding August's RPGaDay hijinks), this is the sort of thing that I often talk about in these parts, so it's hard to come up with a specific example that I've not already talked about.<br />
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Why don't I mention how I've been running the haunted house game we've been playing this summer, NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE, since that's my current jam and I have indeed been paying careful attention to how I run it as a GM.<br />
<br />
The first session of NOGOA I mostly sat back and let the players do their thing. I gave them a short introductory scene where we saw the player characters approaching the island together, and I interjected a few moments of setting detail / exposition, but mostly I spent the session letting the player characters begin to flesh out their conflicts and how they were going to play them out. I set myself a task that I was paying attention to -- in addition to watching the (entertaining) drama, I was keeping track of a set of "manifest clocks" for each character, in the style of APOCALYPSE WORLD harm clocks. I had a set of conditions listed (one of which I told the players about, the rest I kept secret -- by their request) which would fill up a section on the clocks. It was easy for players exhibiting classic "early in a drama" behaviour -- not agreeing to petitions, lying to each other -- to fill several sections of the clocks in a single scene. I let them know that when their clocks were full, the haunted house would begin manifesting phenomena aimed at them, and even let them choose which one (I had a set of cards with evocative but not exactly descriptive names). That created a nice out-of-character sense of ominous threat to the first session, which worked well because, like in a traditional haunted house story, although the weird phenomena didn't start right away the audience (in this case, the players) knew it was coming.<br />
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The second session, all three characters had hit their triggers by the end of the first scene, so I could play a much more active role in confronting them with eerie (if mostly minor) events that mostly served to escalate their conflicts. I also played the supporting cast of characters more aggressively, to give the main characters extra pressure.<br />
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Although I very deliberately set out to run the game this way, I think this general approach would work for a lot of character-and-drama-centric games. Listen and pay careful attention early on, while the players "kick the tires" on their characters, then use the ammunition you accumulate in that first session to really take things up a notch.<br />
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We'll see if I can continue to escalate things in interesting ways in the next session. I expect this will be a short-run game, which is fine (especially if people are playing hard and we get all the good stuff early). I'm still considering whether I want to use more clocks to play out a "third act" mechanic in the game where we model the doom that hovers over the characters the same way I made the presence of the supernatural in the game a "timed release".<br />
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After all, I wouldn't be living up to that title if the player characters emerged unscathed...<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-36052136018075399492017-08-10T09:56:00.003-04:002017-08-10T09:56:37.265-04:00Sometimes They Come Back #RPGaDay2017<b>9. What is a good RPG to play for about 10 sessions?</b><br />
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Somewhere around 10 sessions is the usual sweet spot for <i>all </i>of the games we play at our table, and we rarely go beyond that (except for games that have multiple "seasons").<br />
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I think the typical PbtA game tends to come to a boil by about session 8, though, so maybe play APOCALYPSE WORLD or one of its many children. Or you could play a game like PRIMETIME ADVENTURES with a pre-established number of sessions in the season "arc". (The longer series arc probably pushed us toward our current sweet spot of ten sessions, TBH.)<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>10. Where do you go for RPG reviews?</b><br />
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Wherever I find them. Often, it's from friends or designers on G+ who are sharing their impressions of a new game they're playing, but sometimes I'll seek out reviews of specific games that have caught my interest before buying in. I don't really go to a specific place to deliberately read a bunch of random reviews, but if I did, I suppose it would be RPG.net, where they have a vast archive of them.<br />
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<b>11. What "dead" game would you like to see reborn?</b><br />
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I feel like this is a premise I don't really accept, first off, because there are just too many brand new games for me to possibly play them all, and I don't spend my time pining after old games. Life is too short, and there are a limited number of hours in the day that you can spend playing.<br />
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That said, I suppose it isn't any fun if I don't name something old that I really enjoyed back in the day, so we can all be nostalgic and shit. Since Jeff Dee and Jack Herman's VILLAINS & VIGILANTES, a game that I played the hell out of for years, is already being brought back in a new edition, I suppose the game I remember the most fondly from the old days would be this one...<br />
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I loved the Ninja Turtles in high school, when I was just beginning to get into comic books that were outside the mainstream (although that distinction didn't matter so much when the TMNT became a media sensation). The RPG came along at the perfect moment, and hit exactly the right notes, allowing me to play the mutant raccoon commando of my dreams years before Rocket Raccoon conquered the movie world.<br />
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That sweet, sweet mutant animal generation system was a real gem, and I would love to see a modern successor that is wedded to a modern game system. FATE or M&M or ICONS would be awesome. It seems like a perfect fit as a Fate World, so I'm not sure why somebody out there hasn't done a TMNT-with-the-numbers-filed-off game by now...?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-82477159722224961492017-08-08T09:00:00.000-04:002017-08-08T09:00:18.956-04:00The Catch-Uppening #RPGaDay2017 <b>5. Which RPG cover best captures the spirit of the game?</b><br />
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Ken Hite's <i>Day After Ragnarok </i>nails it for me.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>6. You can game every day for a week. Describe what you'd do.</b><br />
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We have actually been talking about doing a gaming retreat lately, so this isn't too far off what we were thinking about -- although we would probably be doing a retreat over a weekend, rather than a whole week.<br />
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I think you've kind of got two ways to go. Either you use the time to play a single, long-arc adventure in a condensed period of time (say, something like the seminal MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP) or you play a number of one-shots over that time to try a bunch of new games (or revisit old favourites). My tastes often skew toward novelty, so I'd probably lean in that direction.<br />
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So my "new games" lineup would probably include: SPIRIT OF '77, TREMULUS, THE VEIL, ECLIPSE PHASE, and Dan Bayn's great noir game SECRETS AND LIES.<br />
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<b>7. What was your most impactful RPG session?</b><br />
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This is a tough question, because we've had a lot of strong sessions over the last few years. Maybe, for me personally, the session of APOCALYPSE WORLD a couple of years ago when everything really fell apart for my character Fox, leaving him with nothing except his love for the unreliable Driver Gremlin. I've played a lot of games that were a "downward spiral" before, but never one where I struggled so hard and failed so utterly, costing so much. By the end of that game, we were truly desperate and alone.<br />
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<b>8. What is a good RPG to play for sessions of 2 hours or less?</b><br />
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I think you can probably have a decent game of FIASCO in 2 hours, if things are going smoothly and everyone knows the game.<br />
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Lately, though, we've been playing my haunted house game NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE, which has been a three-player game (not including me as GM) of intense drama. Those sessions skew toward the shorter side, and it's a good thing, because with only three players there are often 2/3 characters "on screen" at any one time. So that doesn't give anyone a lot of time to sit out and catch their breath. It's good, because we get a lot of stuff done in two hours, but also demanding. Last session we decompressed for about half an hour afterwards, chatting, and I think we all needed that.<br />
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So my real answer to this question is: if you're playing a drama-intensive game, 2 hours is a good time length.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-87921582964821592032017-08-03T09:21:00.002-04:002017-08-03T09:21:36.971-04:00The New Hotness #RPGaDay2017 <b>3. How do you find out about new RPGs?</b><br />
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Generally through social media. I follow a lot of game creators, and so I've often heard about something new they're working on (or something one of their friends is working on) long before it's actually available to purchase. Twitter and G+ are my platforms of choice, and to a lesser extent, Facebook. And, with Kickstarter casting such a big shadow over the industry, I often get to be among the first who play a new game, sometimes even before the books are completely done.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>It's one more thing that makes the "too many games, too little time" problem so difficult. Not only are there all the existing games I've sunk money into waiting to be played, there are all the adorable baby games waiting for love and affection...<br />
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<b>4. Which RPG have you played the most since August 2016?</b><br />
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Probably <b>BASIC ROLEPLAYING</b>, the venerable percentile-based RPG I've been using to power my postapocalyptic online game, NOD. It's old fashioned and perhaps inelegant, but it gets the job done with a minimum of fuss. And it has an very good one-page character sheet on Roll20 that makes my job a lot easier.<br />
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At our table, we've played a fair number of PbtA games over the last year. A few sessions of <b>MASKS</b>, some <b>URBAN SHADOWS</b>, some <b>MONSTERHEARTS 2</b>. (There are probably others I'm forgetting.) Last fall, we were winding down my Fate-based immortals game <i>Not Fade Away</i>, so we only got in a couple of sessions of that in the fall before it wrapped. Rob has been running a few sessions of his powered-by-Cortex Plus version of <b>TIMEWATCH</b> this spring and summer, and I've run a couple of sessions of my haunted house game <i>No One Gets Out Alive</i>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4858029247961931587.post-47264462714524781512017-08-01T10:20:00.001-04:002017-08-01T10:20:15.336-04:00I Wish I May, I Wish I Might... #RPGaDay2017<b>1. What published RPG do you wish you were playing right now?</b><br />
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I've got a long list of RPGs that I've purchased (and love) that I haven't yet been able to convince a group to play. That includes plenty of games that were a "hard no" for my players and a large assortment of games that we simply haven't made the time in our schedule yet.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>I guess if I had to pick one game that particularly tickles my fancy, though, I'd say it would be Ken Hite's Magnum Opus <b>THE DRACULA DOSSIER</b>. A sprawling, open-ended spy thriller where you hunt the King of the Vampires across three eras, with the greatest RPG handout/prop of all time -- DRACULA UNREDACTED, a draft of Stoker's novel with marginal notes from three generations of British intelligence officers(!!!) -- that's totally my jam. I would rock on that as a player or as a GM, no question.<br />
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Oh, baby.<br />
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<b>2. What is an RPG you would like to see published?</b><br />
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Selfishly, MINE. I would love to get my game LOST PINES in shape and see it in book (and card) form, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon. I may release it here as a free thing that people can play if they want, using my crude playtest materials.<br />
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Realistically? Hmm, I'm not sure. I guess I'm not that interested in seeing yet another licensed game of some media property, which is probably the typical answer to this kind of question. Those often seem to fade very quickly, even when they're excellent (like the exquisite <b>SMALLVILLE</b> and <b>MARVEL HEROIC ROLEPLAYING</b>).<br />
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I would like to see more roleplaying games that aim for the kind of play that we see at my table and enjoy the most, which is to say dramatic play. We have gotten a lot of mileage out of things like <b>PRIMETIME ADVENTURES </b>and <b>DRAMASYSTEM</b> over the years, so I guess I'm most looking for the next thing that's going to give us new tools to approach the game as we play it.<br />
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I suspect that the answer may be to read and play more LARPs. But that's a discussion for another day.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922028067291750836noreply@blogger.com0