This week we have a super-sized version of The Gauntlet Podcast for you. Here is a breakdown of Episode 18.
Games We Have Been Playing
-The Greatest Hits of the The Gauntlet Podcast (The Final Girl, Fiasco, Dungeon World, Cheat Your Own Adventure)
-Doyle Tavener’s session of Delta Green
-Grant Howitt’s Regency Ladies
-My hack of Dog Eat Dog, called Chuck Eat Cheese.
Giving Me Life
Dan: Korean Music Videos
Jason: Synthwave
Steve: Bad movies
Steal This Game Mechanic
Hannah Shaffer’s Questlandia
Create A Roleplayer – Star Wars Nerd
Steve: Andrew Medeiros’s Star Wars World
Dan: Epidiah Ravachol’s Invisible Empire
Jason: Paul Czege’s My Life With Master
Community Feedback
Colin Fahrion and Daniel Fowler’s posts re: playing gay characters in games.
This is a really good episode (if I do say so myself). Hopefully people will like the new segments. As always, the comments are for discussion and feedback.
Regency Ladies sounds about as awesome as I expected. I’ve not read any of Howett’s games before Goblin Quest but the rules for that seem pretty much how you described his style; good but maybe one widget too many.
The magical realism of Chuck Eat Cheese sounds cool. I’m imagining a pizza fun place as run by Bryan Fuller during his Pushing Daisies years or in the style of the petrol station in Kelly Link’s Hortlak. I’ve yet to play Dog Eat Dog but it makes me want to play both the vanilla game and your hack.
Regency Ladies sounds about as awesome as I expected. I’ve not read any of Howett’s games before Goblin Quest but the rules for that seem pretty much how you described his style; good but maybe one widget too many.
The magical realism of Chuck Eat Cheese sounds cool. I’m imagining a pizza fun place as run by Bryan Fuller during his Pushing Daisies years or in the style of the petrol station in Kelly Link’s Hortlak. I’ve yet to play Dog Eat Dog but it makes me want to play both the vanilla game and your hack.
ALL HAIL!!!!
ALL HAIL!!!!
A game for Star Wars fans that was omitted – Dogs in the Vineyard, re-themed as Jedi in the Vineyard
A game for Star Wars fans that was omitted – Dogs in the Vineyard, re-themed as Jedi in the Vineyard
What game would be best for Star Wars fans to dip their toes into the role playing and story gaming river that leads to total self fulfillment???? DUNGEON WORLD!!!!! ALWAYS DUNGEON WORLD!!!! And possibly Lady Black Bird which is Steam Punk Star Wars mixed with Firefly.
What game would be best for Star Wars fans to dip their toes into the role playing and story gaming river that leads to total self fulfillment???? DUNGEON WORLD!!!!! ALWAYS DUNGEON WORLD!!!! And possibly Lady Black Bird which is Steam Punk Star Wars mixed with Firefly.
Super-glad you guys had fun with Regency Ladies, and honestly surprised at how good it sounds! I should promote it a little maybe, possibly even release it separately from Goblin Quest seeing as it has fuck all to do with Goblins
Super-glad you guys had fun with Regency Ladies, and honestly surprised at how good it sounds! I should promote it a little maybe, possibly even release it separately from Goblin Quest seeing as it has fuck all to do with Goblins
Star Wars World linkety-link, for those so inclined:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0a_iGRNRo6BVDdld29lY3JhVHM&usp=sharing
Star Wars World linkety-link, for those so inclined:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B0a_iGRNRo6BVDdld29lY3JhVHM&usp=sharing
A few comments on the the CoC section.
– My wife started screaming during our listening “THAT’S NOT THE POINT! GOING INSANE AND DYING IS THE POINT!” I am not sure I disagree with her.
– From a purely forensic, procedural point of view, you guys did figure out the mystery. You went to kill the guy and you found out he was possessed by a Mythos monster. That was the mystery. Success! Twinkies and hot dogs for all!
– Vis-a-vis one solution. I was actually operating closer to Jason’s normal ‘solution’ procedure than the impression I left you with. I noted several ways that the BBEG could have been defeated, I just noted the most explicit one during the wrap-up to the game. I actually count three ways that you could have succeeded , and would have been open to others. (Spoilers)
1. One of the characters had a spell in a book which would have exorcised the thing.
2. The same character also had a elder sign, which you could have placed on the trap door, effectively sealing the thing in the room.
3. You could have trapped it in the room by pouring concrete into the basement or collapsing the building.
I am certain there were others. Initiating a tax audit was a viable solution, through a flawed one, because it would have allowed the thing enough time to escape, but it wouldn’t have been the player’s problem, anymore.
You guys selected the most obvious and worst solution, frankly. If you had attacked it during the day (the BBEG is mostly dormant during the day), you could probably convinced the part of the guy that was left commit suicide via your attacks, but you attacked at night, c’est la vie.
– As for the percentage doubling for easy tasks, it’s an official rule, though obscure. It’s in editions prior to 7th (the newest), even. This is where some amount of skill (or, if you prefer, system mastery) comes into play. If you have had enough experience running CoC (or just read the rules carefully) you would know about the option.
– “Call of Cthulhu was doing nothing to aid that (the story), mechanically…”. That’s correct. It’s not supposed to do anything. It’s supposed to disappear. Success! Feature, not a bug. Oh, never mind, you get it. Blah, blah, blah…
– Guns. Steve’s character did have skill with a pistol, didn’t he? If not, mistake on my part. One-shot kills are deliberately intended.
– I didn’t like the extended planning past the five minute mark, either. Most trad games seem to have this issue (analysis paralysis?), I confess.
– The tradecraft roll is the ‘spout lore’ roll. I should have put the skill (at variable levels) on everybody’s sheet. My bad.
A few comments on the the CoC section.
– My wife started screaming during our listening “THAT’S NOT THE POINT! GOING INSANE AND DYING IS THE POINT!” I am not sure I disagree with her.
– From a purely forensic, procedural point of view, you guys did figure out the mystery. You went to kill the guy and you found out he was possessed by a Mythos monster. That was the mystery. Success! Twinkies and hot dogs for all!
– Vis-a-vis one solution. I was actually operating closer to Jason’s normal ‘solution’ procedure than the impression I left you with. I noted several ways that the BBEG could have been defeated, I just noted the most explicit one during the wrap-up to the game. I actually count three ways that you could have succeeded , and would have been open to others. (Spoilers)
1. One of the characters had a spell in a book which would have exorcised the thing.
2. The same character also had a elder sign, which you could have placed on the trap door, effectively sealing the thing in the room.
3. You could have trapped it in the room by pouring concrete into the basement or collapsing the building.
I am certain there were others. Initiating a tax audit was a viable solution, through a flawed one, because it would have allowed the thing enough time to escape, but it wouldn’t have been the player’s problem, anymore.
You guys selected the most obvious and worst solution, frankly. If you had attacked it during the day (the BBEG is mostly dormant during the day), you could probably convinced the part of the guy that was left commit suicide via your attacks, but you attacked at night, c’est la vie.
– As for the percentage doubling for easy tasks, it’s an official rule, though obscure. It’s in editions prior to 7th (the newest), even. This is where some amount of skill (or, if you prefer, system mastery) comes into play. If you have had enough experience running CoC (or just read the rules carefully) you would know about the option.
– “Call of Cthulhu was doing nothing to aid that (the story), mechanically…”. That’s correct. It’s not supposed to do anything. It’s supposed to disappear. Success! Feature, not a bug. Oh, never mind, you get it. Blah, blah, blah…
– Guns. Steve’s character did have skill with a pistol, didn’t he? If not, mistake on my part. One-shot kills are deliberately intended.
– I didn’t like the extended planning past the five minute mark, either. Most trad games seem to have this issue (analysis paralysis?), I confess.
– The tradecraft roll is the ‘spout lore’ roll. I should have put the skill (at variable levels) on everybody’s sheet. My bad.
I really, really want to play Regency Ladies. I think that there are ways to make the interaction between the lovers more fulfilling but I would want to play the game ‘as is’ a couple of times before I started to tinker with it.
I really, really want to play Regency Ladies. I think that there are ways to make the interaction between the lovers more fulfilling but I would want to play the game ‘as is’ a couple of times before I started to tinker with it.
Doyle Tavener I have been meaning to express some thoughts on your comments re: the CoC game, but got a little busy with Memorial Day weekend stuff.
There was almost no chance of any character going insane in our game. I had a SAN of, like, 84 points, and the most I lost at any one time was 4. To me, that signaled we were supposed to be competent secret agents, hardened to the horrors of the Mythos. Operating under that assumption, I think we were squarely focused on solving the mystery, succeeding at the mission, and not “going insane and dying.”
But we did die. In fact, relative to going insane, dying was extremely easy. That seems like a flaw of the system. Not so much a flaw that we could die easily, but that we couldn’t just as easily go crazy.
As far as CoC’s rules doing nothing to help, I stand by that statement completely. The above circumstance is a terrific example of what I mean. To go crazy, my character would have needed to suffer between 15-20 instances of sanity-busting encounters, but a single bullet or bite from the monster can take her out? That seems a little off to me. Compare that to Cthulhu Dark, in which your character’s death can never be imposed by the mechanics, but in which you are almost certainly going to go crazy by the end. That seems like the right outcome to me in a game about the Mythos, and the mechanics get you there. Bear in mind, you can still die in Cthulhu Dark, but it has to be a result of the fiction; in other words, you can only die if it make sense in the story.
You can’t just say “the rules get out of the way, therefore success.” The rules need to do something. They need to be helpful. If that is not the case, we should all just be doing improv or Vampire LARP or freeform, group storytelling. What is the point of it being a game if the rules have no meaning?
Doyle Tavener I have been meaning to express some thoughts on your comments re: the CoC game, but got a little busy with Memorial Day weekend stuff.
There was almost no chance of any character going insane in our game. I had a SAN of, like, 84 points, and the most I lost at any one time was 4. To me, that signaled we were supposed to be competent secret agents, hardened to the horrors of the Mythos. Operating under that assumption, I think we were squarely focused on solving the mystery, succeeding at the mission, and not “going insane and dying.”
But we did die. In fact, relative to going insane, dying was extremely easy. That seems like a flaw of the system. Not so much a flaw that we could die easily, but that we couldn’t just as easily go crazy.
As far as CoC’s rules doing nothing to help, I stand by that statement completely. The above circumstance is a terrific example of what I mean. To go crazy, my character would have needed to suffer between 15-20 instances of sanity-busting encounters, but a single bullet or bite from the monster can take her out? That seems a little off to me. Compare that to Cthulhu Dark, in which your character’s death can never be imposed by the mechanics, but in which you are almost certainly going to go crazy by the end. That seems like the right outcome to me in a game about the Mythos, and the mechanics get you there. Bear in mind, you can still die in Cthulhu Dark, but it has to be a result of the fiction; in other words, you can only die if it make sense in the story.
You can’t just say “the rules get out of the way, therefore success.” The rules need to do something. They need to be helpful. If that is not the case, we should all just be doing improv or Vampire LARP or freeform, group storytelling. What is the point of it being a game if the rules have no meaning?
Grant Howitt I give you permission to use Mr. Puss Puss in your material. He was the true star in our game of Regency Ladies.
Grant Howitt I give you permission to use Mr. Puss Puss in your material. He was the true star in our game of Regency Ladies.
Regency Ladies and Questlandia both sound interesting.
On the “playing diversely” tip; I’m cishet when I bother to identify as anything, but I did most of my formative roleplaying in chatrooms, and came up playing every possible gender/preference combination. I was never a purple pansexual kitsune, but I still have a picture on my wall of an intimate friend who was a yellow pansexual kitsune, and I was just about every other damn thing, so I’ma say close enough.
I was at a larp festival last weekend where I ended up playing gay or bi characters almost every game, it was kind of amusing in retrospect.
I actually find it’s considerably easier for me to play gay characters in games where intimacy is part of the story, because it’s much less scary than playing a het character opposite another het player. Since I’m not gay, even if the other guy is, nothing’s going to come of it so no risk, right? If I’m playing a romance across from a het or bi woman, then…. maybe? Probably won’t be any bleed, but… what if there was? Or what if I thought there was but I was wrong? Or what if they thought there was and I was oblivious? Or what if both of us thought the other one thought there was but really there wasn’t and now it’s just a hot mess?
So, yeah. Oddly, playing against my preferences actually feels safer to me than playing it straight (pun intended).
Regency Ladies and Questlandia both sound interesting.
On the “playing diversely” tip; I’m cishet when I bother to identify as anything, but I did most of my formative roleplaying in chatrooms, and came up playing every possible gender/preference combination. I was never a purple pansexual kitsune, but I still have a picture on my wall of an intimate friend who was a yellow pansexual kitsune, and I was just about every other damn thing, so I’ma say close enough.
I was at a larp festival last weekend where I ended up playing gay or bi characters almost every game, it was kind of amusing in retrospect.
I actually find it’s considerably easier for me to play gay characters in games where intimacy is part of the story, because it’s much less scary than playing a het character opposite another het player. Since I’m not gay, even if the other guy is, nothing’s going to come of it so no risk, right? If I’m playing a romance across from a het or bi woman, then…. maybe? Probably won’t be any bleed, but… what if there was? Or what if I thought there was but I was wrong? Or what if they thought there was and I was oblivious? Or what if both of us thought the other one thought there was but really there wasn’t and now it’s just a hot mess?
So, yeah. Oddly, playing against my preferences actually feels safer to me than playing it straight (pun intended).