Author: Eloy C

Eloy’s gaming progress report for February 2016:

WARNING: Suuper long post, rambly and ranting in places. Proceed at your own risk…

1) Just finished Richard Rogers   ‘s Apocalypse World 2E PbP. Fantastic end. Sweet and Sad. Triumph and tragedy.  After 3 months, it needed to end, but as with all good games, you’re kind of wanting it to stop and at the same time, you’re sad to see it go. Did character epilogues and that is really the best thing ever. Epilogues. You get closure and then are ready to move to something else. Very high quality stuff from the MCs and the players. Had the privilege of playing with a group of awesome people. This was a blast.

2) A Song of Ice and Fire game has picked up again. Had a nice fight, and managed to win. The system is interesting and deadly, but does have some failsafe mechanics in place to avoid the game being  too much like GRRM’s writing. I.e. instant death can be avoided. Sometimes, at least. The plot is meandering a bit though (so again, it’s a lot like GRRM). I think we’ve gone a bit too much off to left field. I hope we can get it back on track, as it was very interesting last semester, when we started.

3) Have played 5 sessions of Dogs in the Vineyard, run by Dan Maruschak  . I’ve internalized the mechanics, so that fades into the background . Now I’m struggling with the real meat of the game: the interaction of the character with his religion. How far is he willing to go to do what he thinks is right? Where does he draw the line between what is written in his holy book and what he thinks is right or wrong? How do my own beliefs parallel or contradict what this guy is supposed to believe? Why am I even exploring this? How much do I portray a fictional character in a fictional 19th century and how much do I portray my own 21st century beliefs?  I can see why this game is so controversial. There can be some serious bleed here.

4) Mouse Guard game is now on hiatus, due to GM having to work related travel until May. Dunno if I’ll pick it up again.  I love the concept of MG, but it’s Burning Wheel light. Tastes great, yes, but it’s less filling. The conflict system is nice and simple, but I despise the damage system. The whole Condition track system seems really arbitrary. For an otherwise well established procedure game, this part feels jarring. .. just give them a condition whenever you feel like it… Dunno. Don’t like it.

5) Finished 6th session of Burning Wheel last night. It’s really singing. One player staged a “Red Breakfast”. No wedding, just… breakfast. He poisoned the lord of the keep, made it look like the foreign ambassador did it… then the PC who DID put the poison in the food stabbed the ambassador to death, claiming he was defending the lord of the keep, who prompty expired right there at the table. Bodyguards tried to bodyguard… PC’s intervened. Death and mayhem ensued… 

I love how I prep for 15 minutes, sometimes 30 min, and it all goes out the window within the first 5 minutes of play. 

I keep encountering people who obsess on how hard it is to play Burning Wheel, mechanically. Okay, I’ll grant that Fight!, the combat subsystem, is difficult to understand. Range and Cover, the missile combat/seizing a position subsystem is even more Byzantine. Injury, particularly wound recovery is also obscure. 

But people seem to ignore the fact that you should engage the subsystems infrequently, and that most of the game is the Hub, or core of the game, which is 70-odd pages long, and FREE in pdf format from Burning Wheel Store. The Hub is mechanically super simple.

 

What most people don’t realize is that Burning Wheel is difficult to play because of BELIEFS and Intent and Task and embracing interesting failure. THAT is what drives the game engine. That is the part that is difficult to understand. How to write a belief, what it means to write a Belief, and how does it drive gameplay. That goes coupled with Intent and Task. Articulating what your intent is in a given situation is what helps the GM what the ‘failure’ condition means. Understanding that ‘failing’ can mean ‘success at a cost’, as any good Indie player should, is key. The wonderful part is how easy BW makes figuring out the ‘failure’ condition… it is given to you by a well articulated Intent. 

It took me a couple of years reading forums and listening to podcast of actual play to grok Burning Wheel. It took a friend of mine (an experienced roleplayer, who I also happen to consider one of the brightest people I know) a year playing the game to really get it and internalize it. It is the most fun gamemastering I have ever done. It feels just like being a player. You never know what’s going to happen next. No rails. No rails at all.

So, really. Subsystems too hard? Hell, you can even hack that. I’ve used MouseGuard conflict with BW, with elements of Torchbearer, with a simple tweak to damage mechanics. Simple, fast and works seamlessly. 

6) Got inspired by Paul Beakley  ‘s posts regarding The One Ring, and the replies from a bunch of other brilliant people who’ve hacked the game to make it less… railroady.  I’m getting an urge to read through the published adventures, turn them into a bunch of AW style fronts, and just run TOR sandbox style, improvising just like in my BW game. 

I really LOVE TOR mechanics. Just close enough to Burning Wheel, but the combat system is absolutely brilliant. It also has the Player Turn/GM turn structure, but I prefer TOR’s implementation better than MG or Torchbearer. 

7) Non gaming related (but close)… was conviced by a friend, and by recent internet posts to check out Stephen King’s the Dark Tower novels. I’ve read the prequel comic books (and those are VERY good) and I’ll confess to having read the last chapter of the last book some years ago, out of curiosity (and loved the ending… which a lot of people seem to hate. It seemed perfect to me.) So, on his advice, I’ve downloaded book 4 (Wizard and Glass) as an audiobook and have started from there (rather than from book 1). Having read the comics, and listened to Book 4 synopsis of the first 3 books, I fully understand what’s going on. It’s going fine so far, but I’m just starting. Let’s see what all the fuss is about….

8) Backed WAAAAY too many RPG kickstarters in February. I’m having second thoughts about at least 1 of those… it hasn’t ended. I’ll probably downgrade my pledge. For the rest, I’m confident I’ll be using them sometime in the future.

9) Also reading Everway RPG… Figured a very simple way to add dice mechanics to this diceless game. Probably blasphemy, but hey! I don’t really like diceless games, and it seems to work fine, with no changes to character creation or stats needed!

How about you? What have you been up to?

Diceless games

Curiously, I don’t recall anyone discussing “diceless” games, like Amber, Lords of Gossamer and Shadow or Everway here… I own them, as you can see, and have read them over and over, but still have some reservations, but I think that having played games like Swords Without Master has made me think differently about these, particularly the task resolution mechanics (or lack thereof).

Also, the name is quite a funny holdover from the ’90s… “Diceless”. More like: “Randomizerless” and not even that, as Everway does have the Fortune deck. 

Anyone have any experience with these? Any thoughts? Seems to me that these games share something with StoryGames like maybe Archipelago, or Swords Without Master. (I only have SWM experience, so I may be out of line here.) 

Everway in particular is something I’d love to play. Barring that, Amber, though Amber is more PvP than anything else, and I’m not too keen on that, unless there were a PbtA hack, or something…

This showed up in the mail 2 days ago… I’m sure Dan Maruschak will appreciate this. Also, it made me ridiculously happy that the package address was in handwriting, with the sender being some lady named Meguey Baker … some poor underpaid employee at the lumpley games international corporate headquarters, no doubt.  😛

Still, the personalized service is a fantastic touch. Thanks!

Eloy’s gaming progress report for January 2016:

1) Finished my Swords Without Master Play by Post. Complete success. Thanks to the way the game is written, there is  a specific order and sequence of events that prevents the usual chaos that ensues when you have a regular PbP in which one guy posts 5 times a day and another posts once a day. The structure keeps it by turns. The fact that it’s on PbP means that the posts are well thought out and the resulting story is very good.  My plate is full for February, so I’m taking a break from this, but my players have started a second session. Will monitor that.

2) Still playing and enjoying Richard Rogers  ‘s Apocalypse World 2E PbP. I’ve had to decrease my own posting frequency a bit, due to increased RL workload, but it’s still going strong. I think the story is getting better!

3) Started GMing a new Burning Wheel campaign, planned to be a long term affair. Especially excited about this one, as the players show a lot of enthusiasm, and after years of trying, one of my best friends has finally grokked the Beliefs system. He is really enthusiastic about the game now, where before he was only lukewarm. (No pun intended). I love that prepping for the game takes maybe 15 minutes and that most of the prep goes unused, because the players take things in unforeseen directions. GMing the game feels like being a player in many other games. You’re along for the ride too. It’s the players who drive, not  the GM.

4) Game of Thrones game has restarted after a looong hiatus since November. One of the players left, and our first session was a bit rocky. Trying to get back into it is a bit hard. Cliffhanger ending means next session starts with a big duel in which my character is participating. I hope that a bit of action will rekindle my love for this game, which has seriously stalled. 

5) Have played 3 sessions of Dogs in the Vineyard run by Dan Maruschak  . We’re done with our first town and the game is very interesting. It seems quite focused on the internal struggles of the PCs, rather than events around them. Yes, there’s unrest in the towns, and heresies and some demonic possession, but the real issue seems to be how our characters grow and change. Very introspective thing. I like it. It’s 2 players and 1 GM. Feels very intimate. Learning a lot.

6) 4th session of Mouse Guard 2E should be coming up in a couple of games. We had a scheduling problem with our last session, which resulted in a last minute cancellation, so I don’t know what’s going to happen next session. Trying to build momentum and passion back up once things have cooled for too long is difficult. I have a friend who once told me that the key to running a successful game is to play every week. Don’t miss a session. Keep it going. There’ll be bad days, yes, but commitment and constancy will see you through. I think he’s right. Too bad Real Life sometimes gets in the way. 

7) Declined an invitation for an online Ars Magica game. I really want to give that game a try, but, given my RL commitments right now, I know I can’t devote the offline hours necessary to deal with AM. It requires a lot of bookkeeping and decision making between sessions, which I know I can’t commit to. I need games that require low or 0 prep in my part. Reading the instructions is not a problem, because you do that one time. It’s the weekly expenditure of time that kills me.

8) Enthused watching The Expanse and listening to the audiobook. I really want to play some old school sci-fi like this. My 2 thoughts are: a) hack Burning Empires into a generic sci-fi game or b) try Classic Traveller, which I’ve been led to believe, is really cool. I missed Traveller in the eighties, though I remember reading a module or 2 in Dragon Magazine back in the day and being intrigued. I loved Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Villains and Vigilantes, as well as Moldvay D&D, Stormbringer 1st and second editions, so this should be cool. On advice from Samuel Dillon  , I bought the CD from Far Future enterprises and I am now fully Classic Travellered-up. Now all I need to do is find an online game to join… I know Doyle Tavener  is the Gauntlet OSR official representative, but I understand Stars Without Number is his particular poison (Still, those rules are free, so I picked up a copy too, just in case.)

How about you? What have you been up to?

So many games, so little time!

I’m getting back into the swing of things. Back from a really hectic and complicated holiday break, but things seem to be stabilizing back to a regular routine.

Just played my first ever session of Dogs in the Vineyard with Dan Maruschak and Justice Platt , who were kind enough to walk me through the game. Wrote up my Dog and ran through my first conflict and it was a BLAST!!!  I really like the structure, reminiscent in some ways of Burning Wheel Duel of Wits in that it provides a scaffolding, and a guide to your roleplay, but leaves the meat of it to your interpretation. Looking forward to playing again in 2 weeks.

And speaking of BW, I’m going to be running a Burning Wheel campaign with my home group, which looks to be fun. In early planning stages at this point, but there is much excitement over that in the air.

A friend of mine has also started running his own hack of Fate, which feels very similar to PDQ. He calls it EDGE, and it’s light and fast and exciting. Having fun with that too.

I’m also looking forward to resuming my regular Mouse Guard and A Song of Ice and Fire RPG games, which are scheduled for next week. 

We also concluded our first game of Swords Without Master PbP game last week, and will hopefully be starting a new story this week.

And of course, Richard Rogers  ‘s Apocalypse World PbP is still going strong. 

I also have an invitation for an Ars Magica game… but I don’t know if I can swing the level of commitment that that requires….

2016 is looking like it’s going to be good for RPGing… How’s your year starting out?

EDIT: I feel like I’m reaching Richard Rogers and  Jason Cordova levels of online rpg activity frequency 😛

Lacuna Part 1

I managed to get my first Story Game to the table last night. I had only 2 players, but we had a fun.

Observations:

Character creation was a breeze. Took 5-10 min, tops. 

Game probably works best when the players know nothing about what’s going on. I printed out the character sheets and a nice intro thing and mission briefing made by Lori Watson , which I found on the web.

We stumbled through it, as neither the players nor myself as Gamemaster are experienced at running Story Games. I feel we’ll get better with some practice. A lot of the weight fell on me as GM, as the game really establishes nothing regarding player to player interaction, so most of the game ran with them interacting mostly with me. They did roleplay a little with each other, and we’re great about it. 

Mechanics were very light and unobtrusive. Players liked it. 

Two players is probably too few for the game, I feared they would be unable to complete the mission. Also, we had a two hour window of time to play, so I expedited a few things.  Three or four players would have helped with pacing and would have ramped up static faster. 

Overall, there was  a positive reaction from everybody. They liked the Matrix/Inception/Dark City vibe, and would like to play again. I think I might be able to get around 6 sessions or so, perhaps more, if they get into it. I plan on rounding up more players for next time.

Lacuna is not for beginning GMs, I read somewhere. They’re right. I liked it.

Next up, I think I will be able to round up 3 players sometime this week. I think we’ll do Psi*Run and see how that goes.