All posts tagged rpg

Cortex+ Dragon Brigade

By | 8 January 2012 | Role-Playing Games | No comments

Yesterday was my first foray into the Cortex+ system. It was a bit of a hot mess, but that is too be expected given that I chose to run Dragon Brigade Opening Salvo. The problem with Dragon Brigade was that it took a lot for granted, and I think having finished reading Leverage, or reading Smallville would have helped immensely. The game includes the basics of Cortex+, which I was somewhat familiar with. But, as we got into things it became painfully clear that I had no idea how to run the game.

My biggest issue was trying to determine what the correct scale for actions was, and whether or not people were supposed to be acting independently or as teams. The biggest issue for the group was catching the exceptions to the rules, the fiddly bits proved to be a little too fiddly, for example that d4 complications are rolled by the player, but d6 complications are rolled by the GM.

After the game we came to a consensus that the game may be worth revisiting once the full version comes out, but we are going to avoid it in the mean time.

Play a New RPG Month – October 2011

By | 2 October 2011 | General | 2 Comments

October 2011 is Play a New RPG month. A vast majority of the recommendations I have been seeing are focusing primarily on traditional RPGs. So, I ask the question: “are games such as World of Darkness, Eclipse Phase, and Mutants & Masterminds really different from D&D? And, if not are there any alternatives worth considering?”

My argument is that traditional roleplaying games all offer a very similar experience, at least in the rules as written. So, regardless of whether you are playing D&D, Pathfinder, Star Wars Saga Edition, it will have the same general feel. It is certainly true that the games are different, and there are differences of abstraction, and genre. But they tend to have a heavy crunch factor focusing on combat, and task resolution. I am an advocate of “play everything,” so if you haven’t played these games you certainly should. Ultimately, my perspective is that while these games are different they not different enough to get the best bang for your buck.

Rather than switching to another traditional roleplaying game (which would represent a significant time investment for learning an extensive rule system, and the financial cost of purchasing all the required texts) it may be better to look into an story game that offers a novel play experience at a reasonable cost. For the sake of discussion I am going to break these experiences into six categories: transitioning from traditional games, resolution scales, mixed success, alternative perspectives, GMless play, and alternatives to dice. There are a number of different aspects and minutiae, but I feel these are the larger categories.

Transitioning from traditional games is an exercise in trying to find a middle ground between traditional games, and story games. The two primary systems I recommend here are FATE and Solar System. But, since SS features conflict resolution I am going to recommend FATE for this category. There are a number of fantastic fate games available, for venues demoing this month I am recommending Bulldogs! or Diaspora as they both represent good, concise FATE implementations. Many people still recommend Spirit of the Century, but I think it is starting to show its age as FATE 3 has developed significantly since that initial release. For home groups willing to spend several sessions can definitely take a look at the large works, Dresden Files is a particularly good game.

Resolution scales demonstrate alternatives to traditional task resolution systems used in most roleplaying games. For venues running one shots I strongly recommend Lady Blackbird. Its free, light, and always a good time. The only drawback is that the GM should be familiar with the source games: The Shadow of Yesterday, and Mouse Guard. For home groups, the later two options are excellent. The Shadow of Yesterday runs on the Solar System, which features a conflict resolution scale with a special task resolution scale called “bringing down the pain.” Mouse Guard is basically Burning Wheel light bringing in character motivations GM vs. Player turns, and all kinds of good stuff beyond conflict resolution scale and definitely worth the effort.

Mixed success is a novel design feature made popular by Vincent Baker. Focusing on achieving a gray area between success and failure, yes you succeed, but with consequences. The Otherkind dice are great for demonstrating this, but I have found that Otherkind doesn’t always click with people. As a venue, if you have a good GM you might want to look at Ghost/ECHO, which uses Otherkind dice in a cool setting. Otherwise I would look at running Apocalypse World, or Dungeon World (a drift of Apocalypse World and original D&D). Mouse Guard could also be used here, as failure is what makes the game interesting, because it introduces conflicts into the game.

Alternative perspectives is about playing from a uniquely different perspective. Most games traditionally portray the players as paragons of heroism to varying degrees. While it is true that numerous games offer other options, I am recommending My Life with Master for play this month. There is just something that seems to resonate with people playing henchmen for an evil master. This game also demonstrates concepts like predetermined outcomes, shared collaboration, etc…

GMless play holds a special place in my heart. I believe there is something fundamentally dysfunctional about the traditional GM v. Players relationship. There is something about playing gang up no one person, and in exchange you grant them what amounts to Godlike power in the game. Hurray for mechanically enforced artificial social structures! But, I digress. For venues focusing on one shots I strongly recommend Fiasco. Fiasco is dramatically different than traditional roleplaying games, as are many GMless games to varying degrees. Fiasco is a great game though, and can easily be a blast, even with people that have never roleplayed before. For groups, I would recommend something that will last longer, such as Love in the Time of Seid. There are so many good games in this category it shouldn’t be to difficult to find a topic local players are interested in.

Dice are used in nearly all tabletop roleplaying games; they are a bit of a fixture. That does not mean that dice are needed for a game to be good. In fact, the lack of dice is what makes some games great. My pick for the one shot in this category is a no brainer: Dread. Dread is a roleplaying game where the players act out horror films. Each player is given a questionnaire that they fill out, and the GM leads them through the story. Whenever there is a question as to the success of an action in the game players resolve that task by pulling from a Jenga tower. Its a horror game with a built-in tension mechanism, brilliant. Knock over the tower and you’re out. This is one of my first recommendations for people looking to get into roleplaying games, because the rules are simple and accessible for almost everyone. There are many other diceless games out there (many of which use playing cards or a sort of karma system) feel free to dig around and explore new options.

In conclusion, I am advocating that you not only play a new RPG this month, but you play a game that offers a novel play experience for your group. So get out there, grab some texts and learn some rules, its gaming time!

Here is a small list of games I usually recommend grouped in the above categories:

Transitioning

  • Bulldogs!
  • Diaspora
  • Dresden Files
  • Strands of Fate
  • Starblazer Adventures
  • Spirit of the Century

Resolution Scale

  • Lady Blackbird
  • The Shadow of Yesterday / World of Near + Solar System
  • Mouse Guard
  • Trollbabe

Mixed Success

  • Otherkind
  • Ghost/ECHO
  • Apocalypse World
  • Dungeon World
  • Mouse Guard / Burning Wheel / Burning Empries

Alternative Perspectives / Player Agency

  • My Life with Master
  • Montsegur 1244
  • Dogs in the Vineyard
  • Breaking the Ice

GMless

  • Fiasco
  • Love in the Time of Seid
  • Polaris
  • Shock: Social Science Fiction
  • A Penny for My Thoughts

Diceless

  • Dread
  • Mortal Coil
  • Amber Diceless

Other Great Games I Didn’t Spotlight

  • Primetime Adventures
  • In a Wicked Age
  • Lacuna
  • Annalaise
  • Dust Devils Revised
  • InSpectres
  • The Mountain Witch
  • Don’t Rest Your Head
  • 3:16
  • Zombie Cinema
  • Kagematsu
  • Freemarket

Kanker’s Monkey: Fall of the Sorcerer Harish

By | 21 September 2011 | General | No comments

Behold, my entry to Ryan Macklin’s first(?) “Flash Game Design Friday.” It’s restricted to 500 words or less, and uses the principles: two dice that you don’t add together, and a countdown mechanic. 

“On the rise of the fourth moon in shadow of Anok the Sorcerer Harish harvested the souls of all the Kanker’s Monkeys of Malantha, save one.” -Kanker

Monkey Vengeance is a competitive roleplaying game where each player assumes the role of Kanker’s Monkey as he tears his way through Harish’s fortress seeking revenge. Each player needs the following:

  • scratch paper
  • writing utensil
  • six sided die (d6)
  • ten sided die (d10)

Dice

The d10 is a counter that tracks of how many complication points each player has ranging from 0 – 9. All players begin with 0 complication points, more can be earned. The d6 is rolled to determine the level of success of failure for a scene, these rolls can explode.

Monkey Creation

Goal

Each player begins with the partial goal “Harish doomed my species to extinction, therefore I will…” players must complete the goal by defining what they intend to do to Harish.

Limitations

Kanker’s Monkeys have great supernatural powers, you could think of them as something like Neo from the Matrix. The problem is that most of the monkeys never realize their potential. Kanker’s Monkey did. Defining limitations on this power keeps play in check, and allows the players to wind back their complication counter on a one for one basis.

Play

  • Play begins with the player that can most quickly recite the alphabet backwards.
  • Play passes to the left after completing a player’s scene

Scenes

  • Each player’s scene consists of the following:
  • Frame the scene by describing the environment and starting complication.
  • Other players then add complications to the scene by decrementing their complication dice, a player cannot face more than six complications in any given scene.
  • Negotiate the stakes for the scene with other players, and describe how the monkey deals with each complication in the scene.
  • Roll the d6. Success is achieved if the result of the roll exceeds the number of complications in the scene by less than three. Great success is achieved is the roll exceeds complications by more than three; turn back the complication die by one. Fail to achieve the goal if the roll is below the number of complications. Negotiate concessions against the objective with other players based on degree of failure, and turn back the count down on the complication die by one.

Confronting Harish

  • Players must achieve four successes before facing Harish. The confrontation scene varies in that there is no resolution roll: automatic success. Each opposing player introduces a complication to the scene for free.
  • Describe how Harish is deposed in vivid detail accounting for complications in the scene.

Winning

Win by being the first to find and defeat the sorcerer Harish. If multiple players achieve this goal in the same round ties awarded to the player with the best final scene. If the group cannot decide who who won, contested players should play best two out of three “ball in a cup.”

Down the Goblin Hole

By | 11 September 2011 | General | 2 Comments

In answer to a request for additional information about running the Goblin Hole, this post expands on the details provided in the previous post.

The Goblin Hole is an dungeon starter written by Marshall Miller for Dungeon World. It consists of a series of questions, impressions, dungeon moves, custom moves, things, and monsters. The basic GM goals and agenda are also listed for quick reference. Impressions are basically one liners to provide inspiration for encounters, the rest are fairly self explanatory for those familiar with Dungeon World.

When I attempted to run the Goblin Hole, I grabbed the sheet, and decided to wing it. I was playing with a small group of players who were not overly demanding on environmental details. So I was able to string together a loosely defined dungeon based on a subset of the impressions. It worked pretty well, but it missed a few fundamental elements.

The most basic missing element was a map. Granted, a map for this is not specifically necessary, I could have spent a few minutes sketching out my own, which I should have done, but didn’t. Luckily that never came back to bite me. Had I been playing with my normal group it would have because one of my regular players has to exhaustively search every inch of everything.

The bigger issue was basically that the starter was an incomplete front. I am not sure if this was intentional or not, but it stopped this starter from being a good pick up a play supplement. While most of a front is there, its missing grim portents, and faces. Dungeon World is so big of relationships, it felt weird for there to just be an implicit void. I almost wonder if the format would be better if it was organized like a front with some sections intentionally left blank so the GM remembers they need to fill in those details. In the case of the later I can see these supplements are great resources for games. The GM could grab a relevant starter, and fill it in with details from an existing front that the players are engaging with.

My only real complain is not a show stopper, and that is the formatting. I found the layout, and typography difficult to read. I have bad eyes, so this is probably not an issue for other people.

Ultimately, I was pretty happy with it even though I am pretty sure I did not use it as intended. And, I would recommend the use of the dungeon starters to others with the points I made above.

Dungeon World – Don’t Mess With the Paladin

By | 3 September 2011 | General | 2 Comments

Recently I had the opportunity to run two sessions of Dungeon World. First, I ran the adventure starter, Goblin Hole for a small group. And then, ran Purple Worm Graveyard for a larger group. Although both these games were run with different players, there was a common occurrence between the two: the paladin killed another player.

In the Goblin Hole adventure the paladin slew the thief. Granted this was an accident since he one shot her. And the decision was not made lightly as it was the result of a considerable amount of griefing (the thief did not like the precepts of the paladin’s order). In the second adventure the effort was more intentional. As the paladin went charging into a room the ranger attempted to trip him. This lead to a rapid series of events that resulted in the paladin beating the ranger to death. The odd thing in the second game was that no one tried to stop the paladin. They either stood their in shock, or healed the ranger between blows. It was a very strange occurrence.

Aside from this oddity things seemed to run pretty well. Character creation was a breeze, and there were no problems with the “no duplicate classes” rule. We had a good round table Q&A to establish bonds.

None of the players were familiar with either Apocalypse World, or Dungeon World, but this was not a limiting factor because of the focus on character activity rather than rules guiding activity. In fact the more rules the players learned the worse it got, because they stopped focusing as much on what their characters were doing, and starting reading moves as menus.

Really the only major issue I ran into was with the larger group. Players felt combats required “rounds” where everyone was afforded an opportunity for action. This felt most natural from them being primarily traditional gamers. The issue that I had with it was that it was forcing disengaged player to participate in scenes they had no interest in. To me, one of the benefits of conversation actions is that it allows players with investment in the current activity to fully engage the system, while allowing those who don’t to get a breather. I would have much rather the group broken up by their focus so we could have flipped spotlights around, but the notion of “don’t split the party” was too ingrained for the one shot.

Generally speaking I am pretty happy with the system, but I think I would like to run and play in some more games before making a final assessment of it.

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