My face-to-face group played Fiasco’s Rat Patrol scenario tonight.
My face-to-face group played Fiasco’s Rat Patrol scenario tonight. These weren’t metaphorical rats either, we played escaped lab rats a la Rats of NIMH. We had a good time with several scenes in the forest, in the nearby mall, and several flashbacks to the facility.
The crowning moment of stupidity was when a rat convinced the others that we needed to set up a blog. To set up a blog we needed to steal a phone. To steal a phone, we needed to break into a Sprint store. We ended up burning down the mall the Sprint store was in.
Friday the Houston finger of The Gauntlet played a one shot that was a Frankensteinian mash-up of three old favorites Final Girl, Dread, and Funnel World. The group played retail employees during the Christmas rush at Houston’s Galleria mall. Using a mall map printed from the facilities website the players chose their place of employment which would dictate their starting positions at the beginning of the game.
Their characters consisted of a single name, place of employment, and one non work related skill. Outstanding examples included Maya the Disney Store cast member and shutter bug, and Ben the mall maintenance guy and renaissance combat reenactor. Each player created 4 of these basic character in the Final girl style and then each set up a scene which the group played out to build bonds. Once each player had set a scene we then took the characters with the fewest bonds and killed them off one by one to introduce the main threat which was a mob of Black Fridyesque Christmas zombies.
For every death the player in control of the newly deceased character had to pull a block from the Jenga tower. Once the chaff had been killed off the remaining “main” characters were chosen from by the players in order until everyone had the same number of characters to play with. These characters were then given stats in the same manner as Funnel World with additional +1s given if an action fell into the arena of the character’s former employment or personal skill.
The players were then given missions to complete for the good of the survivors in preparation for their escape. Every time that a mission was failed or a character died another block was pulled. Once the series of missions were complete the remaining members attempted their final escape. In our session the tower fell just before they made good their escape. The tower fall in this instance was represented by a fire becoming out of control killing any that fell behind. In the end only 3 of the 16 characters survived watching a forth reach out to the ascending helicopter for help as the mall rooftop burned and fell away from beneath her feet.
I really enjoyed what we put together and I only wish we had had more time to flesh out the story a little more. Has anyone else put together a game from quick mechanics from other games in this fashion? I am looking for more opportunities to play around with mechanics for a unique gaming experience.
One of our regular game events on Gauntlet Hangouts is TGI Thursday, run by Lowell Francis, and it now has a dedicated playlist on our YouTube channel. You can check out our two sessions of Cryptomancer right now by following the link.
The Cryptomancer sessions were a ton of fun. If you want to get a good sense of how the game works, or just check out some fun AP, give these a look!
Good evening. I was wondering if there was an online resource with more spells for DW somewhere? (lightning bolt, etc) I’ve asked on the Dungeon World Tavern G+ and they’ve directed me to the Class Warfare book. That’s fine but I don’t want to invest in almost 20$ (I’m Canadian) without knowing what I’m getting. So you people have so interesting pointers for me? 😆
Nothing ever goes perfectly with technology. A short rant follows:
Nothing ever goes perfectly with technology. A short rant follows:
So, I was supposed to play Lacuna Part 1 with Rich Rogers Tuesday night, but that didn’t quite happen, sad to say.
Rich wasn’t there but “Spider” was. He had some kind of accent, kinda British, maybe. Fraser and Kyle were also able to join only this Spider game.
I think what happened was that ████████████████████████ from before the session started. Then, ████████████, but that’s not MY fault. Fraser ██████████████████ and █████████████████ ████████████████████ for a god-damn wristwatch.
But I’m sure that ████████████ before our next session.
So, Richard Rogers talking about his new game got me all nostalgic for the first Apocalypse World game I played (and which he ran), so I started listening to Adam Koebel ‘s season 2 AW game and I really want to play again! And that got me thinking about the different types of Apocalypse which might serve as your setting. Which are your favorites, Gauntleteers?
I’ll start with some of mine, and give some media references. Add more references if you like.
Here we go:
1. Post nuclear desert-pocalypse – the classic that never goes out of style (Mad Max Fury Road, the Road Warrior)
2. Snowpocalypse – Started snowing and hasn’t ever stopped.this was the game I played with the Gauntlet. (John Carpenter ‘s The Thing)
3. Rain-pocalypse – Started raining and only rarely stops.(Adam Koebel’s first AW game)
4. Blackout-pocalypse- electricity failed and hasn’tcome back. (NBC’s Revolution, SM Stirling’s Emberverse books)
5. Toxic Jungle-pocalypse- fungal plants and giant insects! (Nausicaa Valley of the wind)
6. Zombie-pocalypse- “Brains!” (Walking Dead, too many things to list here)
7. Dragon-pocalypse – Dragons rule the earth (Reign of Fire) and it’s cousin, Dino-pocalypse (Jurassic Park franchise)
8. Pacific Northwest-pocalypse- yeah, running out of good names. Basically takes place in mountain/forest terrain (The 100, The Road… maybe?)
9. Robo-pocalypse- Sarah Connor? (Terminator franchise, Fred Saberhagen Berserker books.
10. Alien-pocalypse- they ain’t phoning home… (Independence day, Defiance)
So, there must be at least 21 more flavors. Add your own, or add media recommendations for these!
Reaching out to the Gauntlet collective. I’m a fan of horror, and I picked up the Tremulus RPG to try and run some PbtA horror, and I find myself a bit “meh” about the game. It looks solid enough, but nothing really jumps out and catches my eye.
Is there hidden greatness in Tremulus? Something that sings at the table that I missed in the rule book?
Or should I look elsewhere for PbtA horror (fyi, I’m not looking for monster romance, or monster hunting… I’m looking for “creeping thru graveyards and researching libraries and running from ghosts” horror)
