Greetings, programs, with this post we wrap up Digestif and my Chronicles of Darkness game for now. We may or may not return to one or more of these characters in the future, who knows, but for now we've come to a good stopping point, which is great because I need a brief break.
Unfortunately, we had to wrap this up without John, because his work schedule has been a massive problem and he's basically said he's going to be effectively out for a while. As this plot's been one solid session away from completion for a while (and I've been holding off to try and get the whole group together), with his permission we've moved on to get it over with rather than just tread water story-wise when we don't know exactly when he'll be back.
And on that cheery note, let's get to it.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
RPGaDay 2018, Week 3
Wow, week 3 already? Huh.
Anyhow, I've done a lot better at the post-a-day schedule this past week, with only one alternate question. So here we go!
Day 15: Describe a tricky RPG experience you enjoyed
Honestly, I'm really having to rack my brain for this one, because I've had so many experiences I'd consider 'tricky,' and nailing down one that I enjoyed enough to want to talk about is actually kind of rough. Especially if we're talking experiences I look back fondly on, and not just ones where I was happy to get past it at the time.
That said, one does come to mind.
So many years ago, I ran a 'season' of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG. That one had some particular challenges, some of which I think I've mentioned before, but there was a session I'm particularly proud of to this day.
So in the time between the Buffy Season 8 comics becoming a thing and the Angel comics becoming a thing, there was a lot of stuff up in the air regarding certain characters. I'd already established I was incorporating the Season 8 material (I had a character who was one of the newly-activated Slayers from the TV series finale who hadn't been snatched up for Buffy's army yet), but we didn't know the disposition of any of the characters from the Angel series.
I mention this, because I improvised and had Lorne show up in a session. In my canon, he'd managed to escape LA right before the Senior Partners dragged it to Hell in the series finale, and was wandering the country, parleying his brief Vegas fame into hosting karaoke parties as a cover to track down and help small bands of heroes scattered around. And I'd like to think that I played him as close to perfect as I could have, given the circumstances. But he provided guidance to my heroes, some of which was useful and heeded -- our group's robot, who was tricky for Lorne as the robot didn't have an aura -- and some of it... less so... Y'see, our group's Slayer, whose player wanted a vampire boyfriend and promised she wouldn't do 'the Buffy and Angel thing,' was trying to do 'the Buffy and Angel thing,' and Lorne tried to warn her away from it. He pointed out that Angel did more emotional damage to the people around him with a soul than without one, it wasn't worth the hassle, but the advice just didn't register. That got awkward down the line.
But for that session, playing the character accurately, trying to take it beyond a fun little cameo of vocal tics, was tricky as hell but I pulled it off and I'm pretty proud of how it came out. Even if our Slayer didn't take the hint.
Day 16: Describe your plans for your next game
This is gonna be a little slim, but I don't feel like reaching for an alt question because I do have an answer.
So once my Chronicles game wraps up, I'm planning to take a break from doing any <Whatever> of Darkness stuff for a little bit. I'm gonna pitch a couple of different game options -- primarily Fate and Apocalypse Engine stuff -- and work out with the players what we're going to do next.
When Starfinder wraps up, that'll likely get followed up with another Starfinder adventure path, but we'll see what happens there depending on what options are available.
Day 17: Describe the best compliment you’ve had gaming
Honestly, I just get (and content myself with) the occasional "tonight's game was really good" or some such. Nothing really particular comes to mind other than that. (As someone who writes and posts fiction to the internet, I've developed a really low bar for feedback to my creative endeavors.)
Day 18: Art that inspires your game
This is kind of an easy one: All of it. I keep an eye/ear out for pretty much anything interesting that floats around in my sphere of influence. Art, writing, TV shows -- anything can inspire, regardless of genre. I almost never go out of my way to specifically look at or look for any one thing for ideas. I take in any possible sources of inspiration I can, whether they seem immediately fruitful or not. Some of it winds up in my writing, some of it winds up in my gaming. But all of it's inspirational, and all of it's useful at some point.
Day 19: Music that enhances your game
Admittedly, I don't normally incorporate music into my game. I keep thinking I'm going to try using Syrinscape for my Pathfinder and Starfinder games. However, as I already use both my iPad and phone for managing PDFs and taking notes and what have you and Syrinscape can't be run in the background, anything I could do to incorporate it would just be one more gadget to keep track of. Since I play in a house where I could easily have music playing in the background, I've thought of just having a playlist or something for my Whatever of Darkness stuff but I worry it's going to be a distraction so I talk myself out of it.
That said, I used to build soundtracks for my Aberrant games that I played back in the day. I'd not only just have ambient music in the background but I'd have specific tracks for specific scenes and planned events. This was the early 00's, before MP3 players were casually a thing, so I actually had a minidisc player with a remote that I could set up and plug into speakers, set across the room. I'd have custom discs for different sessions and stories, each track intended for something specific. I got a lot of mileage out of video game soundtracks and movie scores, stuff meant to sit well in the background and/or loop over and over.
Also, when I ran my Doctor Who game, I'd begin each session playing the Doctor Who theme. If the characters were meddling in a specific Doctor's chunk of the setting or guest-starring a Doctor -- a UNIT story that overlaps with the Fourth Doctor's era, or going on an adventure with the Seventh Doctor -- I would play that specific Doctor's version of the theme. For the group's own independent adventures, I'd play the arrangement from "The Light at the End," a Big Finish audio drama featuring the first eight Doctors (with 4-8 played by the original actors with recast cameos for 1-3). I thought that would help set the mood and tone of the episode, and I kept a private playlist on Youtube so I could dial a specific one up as needed. Also, if the game had gone on, it would have been a fun little 'prepare for a surprise' thing when I would start playing a different theme than they're used to.
Day 20: Which game mechanic inspires your play the most?
I'll be honest, I'm not sure there's any one mechanic that consistently 'inspires' me gaming-wise. To me, game mechanics are tools to be applied to various situations. As I don't even have an interesting non-answer for this, I'm gonna hit up the alt questions list.
Alt Question: Share playing a “temporary” character
So I've never quite done this myself, unless you count one-shot player characters at convention games. And as I don't normally get to play, myself, any story I've got about this actually involves someone playing such a character at my games. And two instances come to mind.
The first was in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG I mentioned a few days ago. One of my players, Sean, was playing a robot. The characters, at one point, passed through a portal into history, stuff happened, and they found out about a True Demon that died in the spot where the city was now. Sean insisted that his character stay behind to keep an eye on the place and catch up with the group back in the present, like that episode of Star Trek TNG with Mark Twain or the Area 51 episode of Futurama.
Now, while he'd planned to be waiting for the group on the other side of the portal when they returned, things didn't go according to plan. So his now-ancient robot body was in the hands of the Bid Bad of the season, a vampire mobster, and the group had to get him back. But as for Sean, so he'd have someone to play, I dug him up an NPC. And, if I recall correctly (and I'm not conflating two separate incidents in that game in my mind), I had the Groosalugg in the area, and I think I let Sean play him until they reacquired and reactivated his robot.
Also, a couple of years ago, I was running the Carrion Crown adventure path for Pathfinder, and late in the second module a combat went badly and one of my players -- Sean again, coincidentally -- lost his character. Rather than make him sit out or handwave a way for a new character to catch up with them as deep as they were into the castle they were exploring, I let him take over an NPC who was supposed to get involved with the final encounter anyways -- the Beast of Lepidstadt, a Frankenstein's monster-like flesh golem (we were tracking down his creator and another monster of said creator's who'd gotten loose) and semi-major NPC in the setting. And so that served as a decent way to wrap up that module, until the group could meet Sean's new character at the beginning of the next.
Day 21: Which dice mechanic appeals to you?
Okay, so this is an... interesting one. Namely because I'm a big fan of the notion of different games having different needs and dice mechanics that serve those needs.
That said, in general, I'm enjoying the growing trend of mechanics that allow for success at a cost on a failure, or are even focused on making things more interesting when a roll goes badly rather than just 'you fail and the thing doesn't work.' If you're going to include dice as a randomizing factor, then a failure needs to be a bump in the road, not something that stops the vehicle. Even something as mild as Storypath's 'gain momentum on a failure' still means you get something if a roll doesn't go the players' way.
And that's it for week 3! As I usually do, I'm going to post the rest all at once at the end of the month, rather than do a week 4 and then a 'last few days' post. See you then!
Anyhow, I've done a lot better at the post-a-day schedule this past week, with only one alternate question. So here we go!
Day 15: Describe a tricky RPG experience you enjoyed
Honestly, I'm really having to rack my brain for this one, because I've had so many experiences I'd consider 'tricky,' and nailing down one that I enjoyed enough to want to talk about is actually kind of rough. Especially if we're talking experiences I look back fondly on, and not just ones where I was happy to get past it at the time.
That said, one does come to mind.
So many years ago, I ran a 'season' of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG. That one had some particular challenges, some of which I think I've mentioned before, but there was a session I'm particularly proud of to this day.
So in the time between the Buffy Season 8 comics becoming a thing and the Angel comics becoming a thing, there was a lot of stuff up in the air regarding certain characters. I'd already established I was incorporating the Season 8 material (I had a character who was one of the newly-activated Slayers from the TV series finale who hadn't been snatched up for Buffy's army yet), but we didn't know the disposition of any of the characters from the Angel series.
I mention this, because I improvised and had Lorne show up in a session. In my canon, he'd managed to escape LA right before the Senior Partners dragged it to Hell in the series finale, and was wandering the country, parleying his brief Vegas fame into hosting karaoke parties as a cover to track down and help small bands of heroes scattered around. And I'd like to think that I played him as close to perfect as I could have, given the circumstances. But he provided guidance to my heroes, some of which was useful and heeded -- our group's robot, who was tricky for Lorne as the robot didn't have an aura -- and some of it... less so... Y'see, our group's Slayer, whose player wanted a vampire boyfriend and promised she wouldn't do 'the Buffy and Angel thing,' was trying to do 'the Buffy and Angel thing,' and Lorne tried to warn her away from it. He pointed out that Angel did more emotional damage to the people around him with a soul than without one, it wasn't worth the hassle, but the advice just didn't register. That got awkward down the line.
But for that session, playing the character accurately, trying to take it beyond a fun little cameo of vocal tics, was tricky as hell but I pulled it off and I'm pretty proud of how it came out. Even if our Slayer didn't take the hint.
Day 16: Describe your plans for your next game
This is gonna be a little slim, but I don't feel like reaching for an alt question because I do have an answer.
So once my Chronicles game wraps up, I'm planning to take a break from doing any <Whatever> of Darkness stuff for a little bit. I'm gonna pitch a couple of different game options -- primarily Fate and Apocalypse Engine stuff -- and work out with the players what we're going to do next.
When Starfinder wraps up, that'll likely get followed up with another Starfinder adventure path, but we'll see what happens there depending on what options are available.
Day 17: Describe the best compliment you’ve had gaming
Honestly, I just get (and content myself with) the occasional "tonight's game was really good" or some such. Nothing really particular comes to mind other than that. (As someone who writes and posts fiction to the internet, I've developed a really low bar for feedback to my creative endeavors.)
Day 18: Art that inspires your game
This is kind of an easy one: All of it. I keep an eye/ear out for pretty much anything interesting that floats around in my sphere of influence. Art, writing, TV shows -- anything can inspire, regardless of genre. I almost never go out of my way to specifically look at or look for any one thing for ideas. I take in any possible sources of inspiration I can, whether they seem immediately fruitful or not. Some of it winds up in my writing, some of it winds up in my gaming. But all of it's inspirational, and all of it's useful at some point.
Day 19: Music that enhances your game
Admittedly, I don't normally incorporate music into my game. I keep thinking I'm going to try using Syrinscape for my Pathfinder and Starfinder games. However, as I already use both my iPad and phone for managing PDFs and taking notes and what have you and Syrinscape can't be run in the background, anything I could do to incorporate it would just be one more gadget to keep track of. Since I play in a house where I could easily have music playing in the background, I've thought of just having a playlist or something for my Whatever of Darkness stuff but I worry it's going to be a distraction so I talk myself out of it.
That said, I used to build soundtracks for my Aberrant games that I played back in the day. I'd not only just have ambient music in the background but I'd have specific tracks for specific scenes and planned events. This was the early 00's, before MP3 players were casually a thing, so I actually had a minidisc player with a remote that I could set up and plug into speakers, set across the room. I'd have custom discs for different sessions and stories, each track intended for something specific. I got a lot of mileage out of video game soundtracks and movie scores, stuff meant to sit well in the background and/or loop over and over.
Also, when I ran my Doctor Who game, I'd begin each session playing the Doctor Who theme. If the characters were meddling in a specific Doctor's chunk of the setting or guest-starring a Doctor -- a UNIT story that overlaps with the Fourth Doctor's era, or going on an adventure with the Seventh Doctor -- I would play that specific Doctor's version of the theme. For the group's own independent adventures, I'd play the arrangement from "The Light at the End," a Big Finish audio drama featuring the first eight Doctors (with 4-8 played by the original actors with recast cameos for 1-3). I thought that would help set the mood and tone of the episode, and I kept a private playlist on Youtube so I could dial a specific one up as needed. Also, if the game had gone on, it would have been a fun little 'prepare for a surprise' thing when I would start playing a different theme than they're used to.
Day 20: Which game mechanic inspires your play the most?
I'll be honest, I'm not sure there's any one mechanic that consistently 'inspires' me gaming-wise. To me, game mechanics are tools to be applied to various situations. As I don't even have an interesting non-answer for this, I'm gonna hit up the alt questions list.
Alt Question: Share playing a “temporary” character
So I've never quite done this myself, unless you count one-shot player characters at convention games. And as I don't normally get to play, myself, any story I've got about this actually involves someone playing such a character at my games. And two instances come to mind.
The first was in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG I mentioned a few days ago. One of my players, Sean, was playing a robot. The characters, at one point, passed through a portal into history, stuff happened, and they found out about a True Demon that died in the spot where the city was now. Sean insisted that his character stay behind to keep an eye on the place and catch up with the group back in the present, like that episode of Star Trek TNG with Mark Twain or the Area 51 episode of Futurama.
Now, while he'd planned to be waiting for the group on the other side of the portal when they returned, things didn't go according to plan. So his now-ancient robot body was in the hands of the Bid Bad of the season, a vampire mobster, and the group had to get him back. But as for Sean, so he'd have someone to play, I dug him up an NPC. And, if I recall correctly (and I'm not conflating two separate incidents in that game in my mind), I had the Groosalugg in the area, and I think I let Sean play him until they reacquired and reactivated his robot.
Also, a couple of years ago, I was running the Carrion Crown adventure path for Pathfinder, and late in the second module a combat went badly and one of my players -- Sean again, coincidentally -- lost his character. Rather than make him sit out or handwave a way for a new character to catch up with them as deep as they were into the castle they were exploring, I let him take over an NPC who was supposed to get involved with the final encounter anyways -- the Beast of Lepidstadt, a Frankenstein's monster-like flesh golem (we were tracking down his creator and another monster of said creator's who'd gotten loose) and semi-major NPC in the setting. And so that served as a decent way to wrap up that module, until the group could meet Sean's new character at the beginning of the next.
Day 21: Which dice mechanic appeals to you?
Okay, so this is an... interesting one. Namely because I'm a big fan of the notion of different games having different needs and dice mechanics that serve those needs.
That said, in general, I'm enjoying the growing trend of mechanics that allow for success at a cost on a failure, or are even focused on making things more interesting when a roll goes badly rather than just 'you fail and the thing doesn't work.' If you're going to include dice as a randomizing factor, then a failure needs to be a bump in the road, not something that stops the vehicle. Even something as mild as Storypath's 'gain momentum on a failure' still means you get something if a roll doesn't go the players' way.
And that's it for week 3! As I usually do, I'm going to post the rest all at once at the end of the month, rather than do a week 4 and then a 'last few days' post. See you then!
Behold! (Starfinder)
So as I do my Starfinder posts based more on how far the group goes than strict session-by-session, I'm not going to have the next Dead Suns post up this week.
That said, at the same time, I don't want you guys to have to go without anything. So I've got something to share: Sean has finished painting the mini for the group's starship, the Void-Crowned Queen!
Behold!
There's a couple more below the break, if you're so inclined.
Monday, August 20, 2018
New Writing! (And more boring thoughts on writing)
So let's not bury the lede here. I've got another chapter of Conversion, the cyberpunk story I've been working on too gawdamn slowly these last few years.
Links to previous chapters:
The story as a whole is more or less safe for work -- aside from some swearing, it's nothing that couldn't air in prime-time on network television. (There's some violence, but it's mostly bloodless.) That said, if you have some moral objection to fiction featuring anthropomorphic animal people, you might wanna pass.
Incidentally, I've been considering going back through the stories and picking out a scene or maybe two from each chapter to get drawn by an artist, just for the heck of it. If anyone's got any suggestions, I'm all ears.
And now, for those of you interested, here's a bit more of what I've been dealing with writing-wise as of late. (Some of you may have already seen a version of this next bit or aren't particular interested in this sort of thing, so feel free to check out now, I won't judge.)
I've had a real creative struggle these last few months. A real crisis of confidence in my abilities, and it's been taxing:
I busted my ass on a writing sample to try and impress another RPG publisher, because I've been meaning to expand outwards from Onyx Path for a while. Didn't pan out, and I was really proud of what I sent in so that hit hard.
Another RPG project I thought I was on the short list for, one I thought I had in the bag and really wanted to be working on, passed me over. Fact of the matter is, there's a difference between 'being good enough that people are willing to pay you to write,' and 'being good enough that people want to pay you to write,' and more often than not I wind up in the former category (a fact that I only really came to accept in the last couple of months). So when that project had far too many writers wanting to work on it, they picked the ones they thought would be best and I wasn't on that list.
And this is a big one: In the last year and a half, I've submitted four stories to anthologies. Three of those were accepted for publication (Roar 8 and Fang 8 last year, and whenever it comes out Fang 9 of this year). The stories that got accepted were ones where I only figured out what I wanted to do at the last minute, and/or otherwise had the absolute bare minimum time to work on, and I had to absolutely bust my ass to get them finished -- I didn't even have time to get beta readers for one of them. The story that got turned down is one where I knew what I wanted to do pretty far ahead of time, did some research, was working with characters I knew and liked, and had time to do it at a pace I was pretty comfortable with. I probably put as much effort and thought into that story as the other three combined. And that's the one that got turned down (it was good, according to the editor, just not as good as the others, which is also something I hear a lot). Considering the implications of that has been a real blow to my confidence.
And then, there has been some personal stuff that's made it hard to write or enjoy writing (romantic trouble of my own making and gaming industry drama, mostly), and then the constant onslaught of bullshit news and the effect that has on writing.
This has all combined to hit me with some pretty wicked burnout. And unfortunately, when writing is your usual release and becomes the thing from which you need release, that's not a great situation.
So I've started just relaxing, cutting back on anthology submissions (which is hard, because practically as soon as I decided to take a break, an anthology seemingly tailor-made to me popped up on the radar), and just trying to write more 'for myself' without any plan to publish. (That said, if things line up that said material is something that falls into someone's submission guidelines, what the hell I'll give it a shot.) So that's led to a couple of stories that aren't really furry at all, but that's helped me decompress enough that I'm making progress again. I mean, I got that new chapter of Conversion up and I'm feeling better about the other stuff I'm working on.
I mean, I'm coming out of this, but it's been a struggle and I know some people feel better getting these sorts of updates from me.
Aaaaand, I can't think of a clever or witty way to wrap this up. So I'll see you folks around. Enjoy the story.
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
RPGaDay 2018, Week 2
Alright, doing my best to get this out promptly. Here's days 8-14 of this year's RPGaDay, reposted in a convenient spot.
Day 8: How can we get more people playing?
I think, first and foremost, more needs to be done to emphasize games that aren't D&D (or something built out of its DNA, like Pathfinder). It's to the point where, when trying to explain roleplaying games to someone, you really can't do so without invoking it. There are lots of people streaming their home sessions of lots of games, but the only ones anyone not already part of a gaming circle might notice are the ones where you get a bunch of actors with familiar faces/voices doing stuff like Critical Role. Whenever a TV show does an episode about roleplaying games (more on this in a moment), it's basically always D&D or some clone/parody of it. I'd love to hear about a TV show that does an episode like that where they're playing literally anything else -- Vampire, Call of Cthulhu, Apocalypse World, whatever. But I think we can get more people interested and playing by making sure they know there's more to all this than randomly generated Tolkien fanfic.
Also, we need fewer TV shows doing a 'D&D episode' where the joke is 'these people are dorks for liking this game' or 'this game is actually really ridiculous and the appropriate response is either to take it too seriously and look like a jackass or point and laugh.' Even The Librarians, a show written by openly geeky people and full of references intended to appeal to other geeky people, did an episode like that. (even Gravity Falls' own D&D episode leans this way a bit at first) I mean, yes, often times RPG sessions can get ridiculous, but that's because the players are usually having a fun time with each other and goofing around, not because we're struggling with some secret shame about our hobby. Fewer episodes like that and more like the episode "Monsters & Mana" from the sixth season of Voltron: Legendary Defender.
Day 9: How has a game surprised you?
I'll be honest, I don't really have a good answer for this one. Nothing's really coming to mind, either in those rare circumstances as a player or as an ST/GM. It's not that I'm never surprised, but usually if something does surprise me it's something that a player did and for some reason that's just not feeling... appropriate for this one. So, let's start digging through the alternate questions list.
Alt Question: Most memorable character retirement
Okay, so this is one from a long-ass time ago, and there's a bit of a twist in it.
So, many years ago, I was part of a LARP called 'Night Lair.' It was a Classic WoD LARP (started back when there was only the one Whatever of Darkness), multiple-game line crossover game. To be frank, it was an often-times incoherent mess of twinkery and bullshit above and beyond most stories of such games. So I played a Glass Walker Galliard named Cousin's-Boyfriend's-Roommate, an urban legends expert. One session, in what was meant to be foreshadowing for an upcoming arc, the shapeshifters all got a vision of a recurring villain -- this monstrous cybernetic werewolf killing machine -- guarding a valuable klaive in a cave somewhere. Now, as the vision didn't come with an in-character disclaimer of 'this is a thing to deal with later but this is the Storyteller's best way of setting up this plot point ahead of time,' we all took off to try and get this thing.
It was a harsh fight, and my character died of his wounds after sacrificing himself to save another character and make sure they got the klaive out okay. The villain in question was overpowered and, to be honest, there were a bunch of rules treated as vague guidelines and my character was struck down when his odds of survival probably should have been much better. But I was fine with it, as we were shaking up the lineup of Fera available and I was going to be creating a character of a different breed as part of becoming a Narrator for that corner of the game. So I wrote an in-character post for the game's forum, heavily inspired by (some would say shamelessly ripped off of from) John Wick's "No Regrets" story from Legend of the Five Rings, depicting the character returning to the Glass Walkers' ancestral realm to meet the father who died before he was born and prepare for the soon-to-happen final battles of the apocalypse.
But part of what makes that 'retirement' so memorable is that the Storyteller, racked with guilt over the fact that my character died in such a lopsided fight (again, I was fine with it, as he went out like a hero), retconned a scene establishing that his Mage PC had met with my character in the past and knew him -- so that he could ask another Mage PC, a Marauder played by his brother, to use over-the-top magick to resurrect my werewolf from the dead. Again, he was fine where he was, he didn't want to come back, and I was going to be busy playing a different character anyways, but the Storyteller just had to fix his 'mistake' and thus my character's heroic death was cheapened so I could just put him on the shelf to play something else.
I'll be honest, I don't miss that game.
Day 10: How has gaming changed you?
Honestly, I'd say it's less 'changed' me and more 'revealed who I am.' It's let me explore my creativity and storytelling tendencies. If I've changed at all as a result of gaming, it's likely been through the influence of people I met while gaming.
That said, it's really difficult to self-diagnose this sort of thing, so who knows.
Day 11: Wildest character name?
Well, maybe it's because I was just talking about him the other day, but that would probably be the Glass Walker Galliard I played in that LARP. I'm actually blanking on his 'civilian' name, which was extremely mundane, but his deed name was "Cousin's-Boyfriend's-Roommate," reflecting his interest in urban legends. Also, it let me slip in a Spaceballs reference, which is always appreciated.
(Yes, I know, this isn't that 'wild,' but I generally don't do 'wild' names.)
Day 12: Wildest character concept?
As much as I hate to do so on such a potentially interesting question, I need to go to an alt question for this one. By my nature I generally don't do 'wild' character concepts, and I almost never get to play games (as opposed to run them) anyways. Any characters I'd consider wild enough to talk about are ones that I've thought of but never played, and that just feels like cheating.
Alt Question: How do you prepare for an extended campaign?
I start by sitting down and brainstorming, literally writing stream of consciousness stuff out. I lay out the story elements I want to focus on, and basically have a conversation with myself in which I flesh out and decide what else I need to start -- lists of NPCs, individual smaller story hooks, etc. Once I've identified my needs, then I start doing research, or setting aside time to write up NPCs, or whatever.
Day 13: Describe how your play has evolved
Okay, even if I knew how to analyze that, I couldn't even begin to articulate it. Alt question time.
Alt Question: Narrowest escape?
I dunno about 'narrowest,' but I am reminded of the time I ran an Aberrant game and had the player characters escaping from a facility that was about to explode. Taking a page from something else (I can't remember what off-hand), I decided to distribute dice for the characters' rolls as they tried to flee, set up a song on a music player ("Smash," by Offspring), and explained that basically the music was playing in the background as they ran. They had until the end of the song (just under three minutes) to roll, I wanna say, 20 successes. This was entirely an OOC construct: they could roll literally as fast as they could toss dice, count successes, and pick them up to do it again. (As a test, I did it myself, just rolled an average dice pool over and over again to see how many successes I'd accumulate in the allotted time, and then rounded that up to the next multiple of five to give them some wiggle room)
It was a pretty narrow escape for one of the characters, but all in all it was a very fun encounter.
Day 14: Describe a failure that became amazing
Okay, this is easy, because this one is a story we still tell locally.
As I've mentioned in the past, I ran a Hunter: The Vigil LARP many years ago. At one point, I was starting to run low on plot ideas and was considering a bit of a reboot (namely, people retire characters and start fresh with a more streamlined game faction-wise). But one of my players, Zac (who's still in my games) was playing a Lucifuge and using his powers to try to close up a weak spot leading to the Inferno. He decided to risk a Willpower, which gave greater rewards for success at a much greater punishment for failure (either we'd forgotten that you couldn't do this on an Endowment roll or we didn't care, I can't recall which).
He failed, which became a dramatic failure, which I described as the weak spot being ripped open into a Hellmouth for just long enough for a handful of full-blown demons to escape before they could close it. Those demons escaping and wreaking havoc probably gave us an extra six months of plot before I did the reboot.
Day 8: How can we get more people playing?
I think, first and foremost, more needs to be done to emphasize games that aren't D&D (or something built out of its DNA, like Pathfinder). It's to the point where, when trying to explain roleplaying games to someone, you really can't do so without invoking it. There are lots of people streaming their home sessions of lots of games, but the only ones anyone not already part of a gaming circle might notice are the ones where you get a bunch of actors with familiar faces/voices doing stuff like Critical Role. Whenever a TV show does an episode about roleplaying games (more on this in a moment), it's basically always D&D or some clone/parody of it. I'd love to hear about a TV show that does an episode like that where they're playing literally anything else -- Vampire, Call of Cthulhu, Apocalypse World, whatever. But I think we can get more people interested and playing by making sure they know there's more to all this than randomly generated Tolkien fanfic.
Also, we need fewer TV shows doing a 'D&D episode' where the joke is 'these people are dorks for liking this game' or 'this game is actually really ridiculous and the appropriate response is either to take it too seriously and look like a jackass or point and laugh.' Even The Librarians, a show written by openly geeky people and full of references intended to appeal to other geeky people, did an episode like that. (even Gravity Falls' own D&D episode leans this way a bit at first) I mean, yes, often times RPG sessions can get ridiculous, but that's because the players are usually having a fun time with each other and goofing around, not because we're struggling with some secret shame about our hobby. Fewer episodes like that and more like the episode "Monsters & Mana" from the sixth season of Voltron: Legendary Defender.
Day 9: How has a game surprised you?
I'll be honest, I don't really have a good answer for this one. Nothing's really coming to mind, either in those rare circumstances as a player or as an ST/GM. It's not that I'm never surprised, but usually if something does surprise me it's something that a player did and for some reason that's just not feeling... appropriate for this one. So, let's start digging through the alternate questions list.
Alt Question: Most memorable character retirement
Okay, so this is one from a long-ass time ago, and there's a bit of a twist in it.
So, many years ago, I was part of a LARP called 'Night Lair.' It was a Classic WoD LARP (started back when there was only the one Whatever of Darkness), multiple-game line crossover game. To be frank, it was an often-times incoherent mess of twinkery and bullshit above and beyond most stories of such games. So I played a Glass Walker Galliard named Cousin's-Boyfriend's-Roommate, an urban legends expert. One session, in what was meant to be foreshadowing for an upcoming arc, the shapeshifters all got a vision of a recurring villain -- this monstrous cybernetic werewolf killing machine -- guarding a valuable klaive in a cave somewhere. Now, as the vision didn't come with an in-character disclaimer of 'this is a thing to deal with later but this is the Storyteller's best way of setting up this plot point ahead of time,' we all took off to try and get this thing.
It was a harsh fight, and my character died of his wounds after sacrificing himself to save another character and make sure they got the klaive out okay. The villain in question was overpowered and, to be honest, there were a bunch of rules treated as vague guidelines and my character was struck down when his odds of survival probably should have been much better. But I was fine with it, as we were shaking up the lineup of Fera available and I was going to be creating a character of a different breed as part of becoming a Narrator for that corner of the game. So I wrote an in-character post for the game's forum, heavily inspired by (some would say shamelessly ripped off of from) John Wick's "No Regrets" story from Legend of the Five Rings, depicting the character returning to the Glass Walkers' ancestral realm to meet the father who died before he was born and prepare for the soon-to-happen final battles of the apocalypse.
But part of what makes that 'retirement' so memorable is that the Storyteller, racked with guilt over the fact that my character died in such a lopsided fight (again, I was fine with it, as he went out like a hero), retconned a scene establishing that his Mage PC had met with my character in the past and knew him -- so that he could ask another Mage PC, a Marauder played by his brother, to use over-the-top magick to resurrect my werewolf from the dead. Again, he was fine where he was, he didn't want to come back, and I was going to be busy playing a different character anyways, but the Storyteller just had to fix his 'mistake' and thus my character's heroic death was cheapened so I could just put him on the shelf to play something else.
I'll be honest, I don't miss that game.
Day 10: How has gaming changed you?
Honestly, I'd say it's less 'changed' me and more 'revealed who I am.' It's let me explore my creativity and storytelling tendencies. If I've changed at all as a result of gaming, it's likely been through the influence of people I met while gaming.
That said, it's really difficult to self-diagnose this sort of thing, so who knows.
Day 11: Wildest character name?
Well, maybe it's because I was just talking about him the other day, but that would probably be the Glass Walker Galliard I played in that LARP. I'm actually blanking on his 'civilian' name, which was extremely mundane, but his deed name was "Cousin's-Boyfriend's-Roommate," reflecting his interest in urban legends. Also, it let me slip in a Spaceballs reference, which is always appreciated.
(Yes, I know, this isn't that 'wild,' but I generally don't do 'wild' names.)
Day 12: Wildest character concept?
As much as I hate to do so on such a potentially interesting question, I need to go to an alt question for this one. By my nature I generally don't do 'wild' character concepts, and I almost never get to play games (as opposed to run them) anyways. Any characters I'd consider wild enough to talk about are ones that I've thought of but never played, and that just feels like cheating.
Alt Question: How do you prepare for an extended campaign?
I start by sitting down and brainstorming, literally writing stream of consciousness stuff out. I lay out the story elements I want to focus on, and basically have a conversation with myself in which I flesh out and decide what else I need to start -- lists of NPCs, individual smaller story hooks, etc. Once I've identified my needs, then I start doing research, or setting aside time to write up NPCs, or whatever.
Day 13: Describe how your play has evolved
Okay, even if I knew how to analyze that, I couldn't even begin to articulate it. Alt question time.
Alt Question: Narrowest escape?
I dunno about 'narrowest,' but I am reminded of the time I ran an Aberrant game and had the player characters escaping from a facility that was about to explode. Taking a page from something else (I can't remember what off-hand), I decided to distribute dice for the characters' rolls as they tried to flee, set up a song on a music player ("Smash," by Offspring), and explained that basically the music was playing in the background as they ran. They had until the end of the song (just under three minutes) to roll, I wanna say, 20 successes. This was entirely an OOC construct: they could roll literally as fast as they could toss dice, count successes, and pick them up to do it again. (As a test, I did it myself, just rolled an average dice pool over and over again to see how many successes I'd accumulate in the allotted time, and then rounded that up to the next multiple of five to give them some wiggle room)
It was a pretty narrow escape for one of the characters, but all in all it was a very fun encounter.
Day 14: Describe a failure that became amazing
Okay, this is easy, because this one is a story we still tell locally.
As I've mentioned in the past, I ran a Hunter: The Vigil LARP many years ago. At one point, I was starting to run low on plot ideas and was considering a bit of a reboot (namely, people retire characters and start fresh with a more streamlined game faction-wise). But one of my players, Zac (who's still in my games) was playing a Lucifuge and using his powers to try to close up a weak spot leading to the Inferno. He decided to risk a Willpower, which gave greater rewards for success at a much greater punishment for failure (either we'd forgotten that you couldn't do this on an Endowment roll or we didn't care, I can't recall which).
He failed, which became a dramatic failure, which I described as the weak spot being ripped open into a Hellmouth for just long enough for a handful of full-blown demons to escape before they could close it. Those demons escaping and wreaking havoc probably gave us an extra six months of plot before I did the reboot.
Sunday, August 12, 2018
RPGaDay 2018, Week 1
So between Gencon and post-convention activities, this got a little away from me. But here's the first roundup post for this year's RPGaDay stuff.
Day 1: What do you love about RPGs?
Short answer? The collaborative storytelling, creating a shared experience for a group of people.
Day 2: What is the first thing you look for in an RPG?
Genre, mostly, as well as what sorts of characters are expected. Is it a loose action-adventure where the characters treat the laws of physics as guidelines? Is it a tense thriller where the characters are rugged survivors? That sort of thing. I need an idea of what the game feels like to play.
Day 3: What gives a game "staying power"?
The ability to always have 'one more story' you can tell with it. This could be a setting with lots of possibilities to run different stories and ideas, or a setup that allows for a single group of characters to continuously go on having new experiences for who knows how long. I mean, setting's always going to be a major factor, though sometimes the mechanical realities of how characters advance (does the system stop or become unwieldy at '20th level' or some equivalent) and such apply as well.
Day 4: Most memorable NPC?
This is gonna be a weird one, but the first character that comes to mind when I think of my NPCs is Kranosh, from a game of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I ran so many years ago. He was a demon who could pass for human, with an accent and cultural quirks that could pass for a Greek immigrant if you didn't look too closely. He ran a pizza parlor that became a regular meeting spot for my player characters (despite the presence of a blatant analog to the Bronze). Part of what stands out about him is that I'd initially set up his high school-age son to be an ally and friend to the PCs, but they latched onto the father instead so I ran with it.
Day 5: Favorite recurring NPC?
That's a tricky one. Like, there are characters I've created that would have been great recurring NPCs but didn't quite make it to that point because of reasons like a game ending unexpectedly, or because (and I know this is a really specific example) first-edition Promethean was kind of a road show and thus it became difficult to keep ties with specific characters.
I'm actually kind of having to stop and think about characters I loved to play who were recurring, and -- oh, wait, I got one. Oh yes.
(Also, it occurs to me that I could be answering these questions from the viewpoint of a player, about other peoples' NPCs or what have you, but because of my gaming patterns I tend to think of these questions from a GM/ST perspective first.)
So in my Werewolf: The Apocalypse game, while seeking out the Cave of Secrets that gave the chronicle its name, the group came across a Bone Gnawer Ragabash out in the woods by the name of Roy McMahon, deed name "Don't Dig There." Roy was friendly. He was helpful. He even offered to get rid of the gun and silver bullets they took off a fomor!
He was actually a Nuwisha!
He turned up again on a semi-regular basis over the course of the chronicle, more than willing to help the Garou but also interested in testing them at times. But he was, as a proper Nuwisha, interested in teaching my player character pack important lessons. Lessons like "Don't give a gun full of silver bullets to somebody you don't know well, because even if he isn't a BSD or something like that, he might be planning on letting you find the Macguffin first and then shooting you in the back of the head so he can take credit for the discovery." No, nobody got shot over the course of that lesson, but it did make the group stop and think for a minute. Which is all he ever really wanted.
But yeah. He was aggravating and amusing in equal measure, and deep down isn't that true of most of our favorite characters, PC and NPC alike?
Day 6: How can players make a world seem real?
By really inhabiting it. By giving their characters day jobs, making up friendships with their neighbors, deciding when/how/if their character gives back to the community. Even in a murderhobo game of D&D, it is -- or at least it should be -- possible for a character to adopt a little corner of the setting and make it their own, maybe occasionally sending a few gold pieces back to the down-on-their-luck farmers who let them camp in a barn or something like that. I once played in an Eberron game where my character (a rat shifter) lived in a shifter neighborhood in Sharn (it helped that the Sharn book went into an absurd amount of detail about the city and its inhabitants) and I really enjoyed fleshing out the fact that he was an active part of the community there.
Day 7: How can a GM make the stakes important?
By making it personal. This can mean involving an NPC they've had time to bond with, or even just someone that the group latched onto out of character even if they haven't had the time to interact in-character. In a Requiem game I ran a while back, for a 'shit just got real' moment I had the villain (a strix) kill and possess the corpse of Billy Bricks, a hunter with a long history with some of these players. He'd previously appeared in a Hunter: The Vigil LARP I ran several years ago as a useful and informative ally with his own particular set of skills, quirks, and mysteries. He was literally the first NPC the characters of that LARP met, if I recall. And he'd been a useful contact to the characters in the Requiem game as well -- or so they thought, until a tip turned bad and they confronted him to discover his yellow eyes and the rotting hole in his chest that had been carved out with a shotgun. (I think this was also their first face-to-face meeting with the strix, but I'd have to check my notes as well.)
In case it needs to be said, it got the desired effect.
And there we go for the first week! See you for the next one of these in a few days!
Day 1: What do you love about RPGs?
Short answer? The collaborative storytelling, creating a shared experience for a group of people.
Day 2: What is the first thing you look for in an RPG?
Genre, mostly, as well as what sorts of characters are expected. Is it a loose action-adventure where the characters treat the laws of physics as guidelines? Is it a tense thriller where the characters are rugged survivors? That sort of thing. I need an idea of what the game feels like to play.
Day 3: What gives a game "staying power"?
The ability to always have 'one more story' you can tell with it. This could be a setting with lots of possibilities to run different stories and ideas, or a setup that allows for a single group of characters to continuously go on having new experiences for who knows how long. I mean, setting's always going to be a major factor, though sometimes the mechanical realities of how characters advance (does the system stop or become unwieldy at '20th level' or some equivalent) and such apply as well.
Day 4: Most memorable NPC?
This is gonna be a weird one, but the first character that comes to mind when I think of my NPCs is Kranosh, from a game of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I ran so many years ago. He was a demon who could pass for human, with an accent and cultural quirks that could pass for a Greek immigrant if you didn't look too closely. He ran a pizza parlor that became a regular meeting spot for my player characters (despite the presence of a blatant analog to the Bronze). Part of what stands out about him is that I'd initially set up his high school-age son to be an ally and friend to the PCs, but they latched onto the father instead so I ran with it.
Day 5: Favorite recurring NPC?
That's a tricky one. Like, there are characters I've created that would have been great recurring NPCs but didn't quite make it to that point because of reasons like a game ending unexpectedly, or because (and I know this is a really specific example) first-edition Promethean was kind of a road show and thus it became difficult to keep ties with specific characters.
I'm actually kind of having to stop and think about characters I loved to play who were recurring, and -- oh, wait, I got one. Oh yes.
(Also, it occurs to me that I could be answering these questions from the viewpoint of a player, about other peoples' NPCs or what have you, but because of my gaming patterns I tend to think of these questions from a GM/ST perspective first.)
So in my Werewolf: The Apocalypse game, while seeking out the Cave of Secrets that gave the chronicle its name, the group came across a Bone Gnawer Ragabash out in the woods by the name of Roy McMahon, deed name "Don't Dig There." Roy was friendly. He was helpful. He even offered to get rid of the gun and silver bullets they took off a fomor!
He was actually a Nuwisha!
He turned up again on a semi-regular basis over the course of the chronicle, more than willing to help the Garou but also interested in testing them at times. But he was, as a proper Nuwisha, interested in teaching my player character pack important lessons. Lessons like "Don't give a gun full of silver bullets to somebody you don't know well, because even if he isn't a BSD or something like that, he might be planning on letting you find the Macguffin first and then shooting you in the back of the head so he can take credit for the discovery." No, nobody got shot over the course of that lesson, but it did make the group stop and think for a minute. Which is all he ever really wanted.
But yeah. He was aggravating and amusing in equal measure, and deep down isn't that true of most of our favorite characters, PC and NPC alike?
Day 6: How can players make a world seem real?
By really inhabiting it. By giving their characters day jobs, making up friendships with their neighbors, deciding when/how/if their character gives back to the community. Even in a murderhobo game of D&D, it is -- or at least it should be -- possible for a character to adopt a little corner of the setting and make it their own, maybe occasionally sending a few gold pieces back to the down-on-their-luck farmers who let them camp in a barn or something like that. I once played in an Eberron game where my character (a rat shifter) lived in a shifter neighborhood in Sharn (it helped that the Sharn book went into an absurd amount of detail about the city and its inhabitants) and I really enjoyed fleshing out the fact that he was an active part of the community there.
Day 7: How can a GM make the stakes important?
By making it personal. This can mean involving an NPC they've had time to bond with, or even just someone that the group latched onto out of character even if they haven't had the time to interact in-character. In a Requiem game I ran a while back, for a 'shit just got real' moment I had the villain (a strix) kill and possess the corpse of Billy Bricks, a hunter with a long history with some of these players. He'd previously appeared in a Hunter: The Vigil LARP I ran several years ago as a useful and informative ally with his own particular set of skills, quirks, and mysteries. He was literally the first NPC the characters of that LARP met, if I recall. And he'd been a useful contact to the characters in the Requiem game as well -- or so they thought, until a tip turned bad and they confronted him to discover his yellow eyes and the rotting hole in his chest that had been carved out with a shotgun. (I think this was also their first face-to-face meeting with the strix, but I'd have to check my notes as well.)
In case it needs to be said, it got the desired effect.
And there we go for the first week! See you for the next one of these in a few days!
Digestif: The Blood is Life (CofD)
Hello there, folks. Been a while since we've been able to get our Chronicles game together due to some scheduling wonkiness. As it is, we played this past week and had to do so without John. But here's hoping we can ease back into a proper rhythm and wrap this story up so we can play other things.
Friday, August 10, 2018
What Lies Buried (Gencon special!) [Æon]
Hey there, folks. So there will be a more complete and comprehensive write-up of my experiences at this year's Gen Con in a separate post, but I wanted to go ahead and put together a write-up for the Æon game I ran this year, using the new system.
I'll admit that I know the story title isn't too original or creative, but at the time it was the best I could come up with.
Also, it's worth noting that this adventure is a modified version of a one-off I came up with for a playtest session last year, updated and tweaked for the new rules (with one or two slip-ups in that regard on my part).
Now, as I know this is a new setting and system for a lot of people, if you read this and have any questions, feel free to ask me here or anyplace else where you can find me.
I'll admit that I know the story title isn't too original or creative, but at the time it was the best I could come up with.
Also, it's worth noting that this adventure is a modified version of a one-off I came up with for a playtest session last year, updated and tweaked for the new rules (with one or two slip-ups in that regard on my part).
Now, as I know this is a new setting and system for a lot of people, if you read this and have any questions, feel free to ask me here or anyplace else where you can find me.
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