Author: River Williamson

Pardon me while I rant a bit then ask for help. Maybe in the other order. Are there good cheat-sheets for Numenera combat and experience? Is there a good story/dungeon builder? I’m at my wits’ end.

Rant ON!

I run a Numenera game, and it drives me batty! Completely batty. It promises to be light weight and easy to use, but it is neither. A novice can make a PbtA character in minutes, but it can take (literally) hours in Numenera. The mechanics are vague not abstract. There isn’t a story-building system in the core book, a problem it shares with D&D and its children.

The worst sin in my mind, though, is how easy it is to read the book and absorb almost none of the mechanics. The numbers nerd of my group sat down and scrubbed the book for ways to make her character more badass. She found damage and leveling mechanics that I’d never seen on my three times reading the book. I expect this sort of nonsense from an older game. Those games at least had the decency to admit they weren’t simple, and included cheat sheets and callout boxes and the like.

Rant OFF.

Sorry

Anyone have advice on how to write up a Play Report or Action Report? I’ve read a few, but I can’t quite figure out what makes the good ones good.

What I do know 

– Edit, trim, repeat.

What I know that don’t know

– The ideal wait period between the session and the write up

– What notes I need to take during the session

– Places to find consistently good examples

Tomorrow night, I’ll be running Monster of the Week for the first time. This will be my first PbtA game, and my players’ first as well. I intend the game to be a one-shot, and as I plan it, it seems more and more like a module.

It’ll be based off the awful song, “Grandma got run over by a Reindeer.” The twists: grandma was a chosen hunter, the grandkid is now the new chosen. The monster is, of course, Krampus.

Should I build the characters ahead of time (does that work in PbtA games)? Am I biting off more than I can chew?

I suck at organizing.  Here’s my current dilemma.  I’m putting together an RP night for my friends in my city (Baltimore), but I can’t find a way to send out invites to all of them.

I’ve done the leg-work, and reached a critical mass of people.  The problem is that they use several different platforms (Email, Facebook, Tumblr, G+).  There simply isn’t a common denominator.

We’ll be doing light-weight games that are episodic or one-shot.  The central philosophy of this is to keep it simple and easy for the players.

What can I do?  Here are the requirements.

– Only have to write one invite

– Can set a maximum event size

– Low barrier to entry (like being able to sign up with different social media platforms, and not email/password)

– Not a Google product (sorry, one of my key people is still on Yahoo and Google ecosystem just doesn’t work for him)

Or do I have to princess up and go multi-platform?