When one thinks of the defining games of the tabletop RPG hobby, D&D of course comes immediately to mind. And it should, for good reason. But it isn't the only decades-old game that has had a profound effect on the hobby, shaped minds, and ushered in new eras of creativity and collaborative storytelling. There are a few others. I'm going to blog about one of my favorites right now.
I was 16 years old. A sophomore in high school. After weeks of scrounging for loose change and shamelessly begging parents and friends alike for cash, I finally had enough to walk into our town's one little hobby shop and walk out with my very own copy of Vampire: The Masquerade. Unlike other childhood staples like D&D, the old West End D6 Star Wars, or Palladium's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG, I didn't just tear into Vampire and start looking at how to make characters and run adventures. No; I took my time reading the book, a then unheard-of practice for a teenage boy like myself. I read Vampire: The Masquerade like a novel, cover to cover, and let the secret world of vampire clans just wash over me. I wrote pages and pages about the chronicle I was going to run in Boston, about the Tremere prince who was rapidly going insane from his studies of forbidden lore, the Toreador mafia don who was eyeing his power; the Nosferatu crime-fighting vigilante who thought nothing of shattering the Masquerade and slaying vampires he felt deserved that final death; the Gangrel with an army of rats in his sewer fortress, plotting to take over the city. I called it "When the Demons Clash."
Vampire: The Masquerade was, like many, my first foray into the World of Darkness. Two years later, for my birthday, I would receive Werewolf: the Apocalypse. Over that summer, I would go on to blow most of the paychecks of my first job as a cart-jockey at Wal-Mart to purchase Mage: The Ascension, Changeling: the Dreaming,Wraith: The Oblivion, and Hunter: The Reckoning. I even picked up Trinity and Aberrant. I remember at one point, I just laid all of the books around me in a circle, like some pagan geek ritual. It was glorious.
(following this blog entry is a short, vague history of the World of Darkness games, for those of you new to the hobby and unfamiliar with the system and its many iterations).
For all the money I spent on those books and the time I spent learning their systems and settings, I had disproprtionately less time actually playing them. I only played Vampire and Werewolf a scant number of times. I was in a Wraith campaign, but I wasn't the one running it. I never even played Mage, Changeling, Oblivion, Hunter, Trinity, or Aberrant. You know what, though? That's okay. Those books were such good reads that when I look back at my time spent with them, I don't consider it wasted.
That's the thing about the Storytelling System, the engine behind the World of Darkness games. It truly lives up to its name in the fact that the nuts and bolts of the system are never, ever in danger of usurping the focus from the story. That's a good thing. It can a bad thing, too, though, because the system is decidedly un-sexy, and it gets clunky really fast when you try and put it to real hard use. Comparing even the latest iteration of the system against other "story-first" RPGs like Fate Core usually leaves the game at a disadvantage. But it always comes back to the story, the setting. It's pretty obvious to me that that is why the system has been in circulation for over 20 years.
Much like D&D for fantasy, the World of Darkness is an unavoidable giant in horror role-playing, particularly supernatural/urban fantasy horror. Whether you like the system or not, that hold has only gotten stronger over the years, stretching to gothic horror (Vampire: Dark Ages) and, most recently, cosmic, existential horror (The God-Machine Chronicle). World of Darkness is also the system that put LARPing (live-action roleplaying, essentially playing an RPG completely in character the whole time, like an adult version of make-believe) on the map with it's live-action spinoffs of Vampire, collectively referred to as "Mind's Eye Theatre."
I'm bringing all of this up because I just finished reading The God-Machine Chronicle. It, like Vampire: The Masquerade, I read cover-to-cover. I usually just skim through new RPGs, learning the details as I play. I suspect many GMs are the same way, possibly fueling the indie scene's notion of "play to find out" and "figure all that shit out yourself!" But there is something to be said for a good, well-written book. Obviously you don't need to read it cover-to-cover (many RPGs aren't even designed to be read that way), but that, to me, is part of the lasting value of role-playing games. They aren't just games that collect dust when they aren't played. They are stories, ones that you can pull off the shelf and read just for the glory of reading. So I don't know if, or when, I'll get to revisit the World of Darkness at the table. But it's a hell of a read, and time I absolutely do not regret spending.
And now, a brief history on the World of Darkness. If you're already familiar with the history, or you don't care all that much, you can stop reading now. I'm writing this mostly for those of you who may be new to role-playing games, and not be aware of this horror RPG empire of which I speak of:
White Wolf Publishing released Vampire: the Masquerade in or around 1991. It was a roleplaying game about, unsurprinsgly, being a vampire. This was way, way before Twilight or The Vampire Diaries or any of that, so the game took itself quite seriously, and was much more about pure supernatural horror than romance or drama or anything else. It used a system of dice pools consisting of ten-sided dice, similar to Shadowrun (which, incidentially, also came out around this time. The early 90's was a GREAT time for role-playing games.)
White Wolf wasn't done yet, though. In the following years, it would release several other games that followed the structure of Vampire. In each game (Werewolf, Wraith, Mage, Changeling), the players played as the titular beings listed on the cover. In each game, there was an epic global event (Gehenna for vampires, the Apocalypse for Werewolf, Oblivion for Wraith) and the players were typically anti-heroes fighting to stop that epic thing from happening. The various supernatural beings had their own organizations (clans in Vampire, tribes in Werewolf) and they fought against "evil" organizations (the Wyrm in Werewolf, the Sabbat in Vampire). Each being had incredible powers with different mechanics (Vampires had to acquire blood and used it to fuel their abilities; Werewolves had rage and gnosis to channel their powers; mages had to walk a tightrope of not disturbing reality too much with their spells). Though the games had a similar structure and explored similar themes (almost every game had something to say about the nature of humanity), they played very differently, and were not designed to be played together (werewolves and vampires and mages all hated each other and fought fiercely against each other; wraiths and changelings existed literally on other planes of existence and had little to do with the mortal world as we know it).
Perhaps it was this purposeful disconnection that became a problem for White Wolf, or perhaps they had a longer, meta-game all along, but they cancelled all the lines a few years after all of them came out. They each got their own "end of the world" sourcebook and that was that: White Wolf officially said goodbye to the entire old World of Darkness. Then they said hello to the new World of Darkness. In 2004, the World of Darkness core rulebook came out. This book stripped the rules out of all the other "storyteller" games, and made it into a generic system, called, appropriately, the "Storyteller System." White Wolf (which around this time merged with another company, Onyx Path Productions) then released "reboots" of each of the game lines, with new themes, mechanics, and organizations. Vampire went from "the Masquerade" to "the Requiem;" Werewolf went from "the Apocalypse" to "the Reckoning;" and so on. The new World of Darkness was made to be faster and more flexible than the old one, and more capable of crossover events. Though it did achieve this, it also got a lot of criticism for what many people thought was a homogenization of the game worlds and an attempt to make the World of Darkness more "game-y" than it's previous iteration.
Last year, White Wolf/Onyx Path released The God Machine Chronicle, and with it, a new iteration of the World of Darkness. This wouldn't be a completely new game like they did in 2004; rather this would be a single, mega-sourcebook that changes and streamlines many of the rules and ties in the lore of the world more carefully. This new system was designed to give players the flexibility they want to reshape the World of Darkness in their own image, but also provide enough structure to re-create the living, breathing, epic worlds that the old World of Darkness had created. Later that year (or maybe it was earlier this year, whatever), they released the first "post-God Machine" game, Blood and Smoke: the Strix Chronicle. This is the new vampire RPG, built from the ground-up with the innovations from the God Machine in mind. How will this new-new World of Darkness be received? Only time will tell.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Schlock Doctor
One extremely difficult hurdle that comes up in the craft of adventure writing is that you can't tell a story. Not a real one, anyways. In a role-playing game, a story is the byproduct of the fun had from players and GM alike playing the game. Almost like a souvenir of the good time we all had during the session. When it comes to prepping an adventure for an RPG, I can't create a story. A story is what happens.
At the same time, though, an adventure does need to have direction. "Sandbox gaming" has become a big buzzword in today's roleplaying games; this idea that the players can just do whatever the hell they want, and the GM can roll with it, and everyone has a great time. Maybe there are role-playing games out there that can do that (my own RPG, World Gone Mad, was actually built with it in mind), but the vast majority of them are not. And so those games need a direction, a clear path from beginning to middle to end. When it comes to those sandbox-style, direction-less games, a rigid structure is in place to faciliate direction where there wasn't any. Games like Fiasco have no direction, but do have certain rules in place to make sure the end product...a story...happens by the end.
Here's an example of how NOT to do any of that. The World of Darkness game that I wrote about yesterday? I did it on Sunday. The idea from the start was to have a central mystery (a shooting at a high school where something is not right), and several threads to follow (the principal is acting suspiciously and wasn't present during the shooting; a hiker has disappeared into the woods; the players who were present at the shooting witnessed that the shooters were not human).
All these disparate threads were supposed to lead into the central mystery and unravel into a final conspiracy (I won't reveal what it is yet, in case I ever go back to this). What I wanted to happen was for the players to pursue leads however they wanted, then I would gradually steer them into the conspiracy. The overall effect, I conceived in my head, would be an adventure that plays out like an episode of Game of Thrones, where each character is the center of their own plotline, and these plotlines weave together into a greater story.
It didn't work out that way. Instead, it was a mess where some players did a lot of stuff, other players did almost nothing, and after about three hours of play, no one really was any closer to figuring out what was going on. What happened?
Well, to be fair, there were some logistical problems. I had six players...a massive number for a World of Darkness mystery game. Thinking I could juggle all of them, was, on my part, pure hubris. Also, I had dental surgery two days before, and was high on Vicodin during the game. I knew I would be going in, but I had GREATLY underestimated the effect it would have on my brain as we played. Particularly, that whole "steering them into the conspiracy" bit proved particularly difficult, as I could barely focus on what I had prepared, let alone the improv skill necessary to bring it all together.
But even if I had four players, and even if I had been stone-cold sober, I think the game would have gone poorly. The reason ties back to the beginning of this post...adventure writing is all about structure and direction. This adventure had neither. Look at the main plotline...a school shooting. What is mysterious about that? They know who the shooters were (even if they didn't know what they were), the dead had already been identified; what was left to understand? I gave the players no compelling hook to look into this. I did drop some hints, but there was no central problem to be solved, no driving force to move the story along. And all the minor plotlines...none of them had their own resolution, their own beginning and middle and end. All of them were to funnel into the main story. This sounds great on paper...but when one of my players spent nearly the entire session discovering what was essentially a minor facet of the mystery, it led to frustration, on his part and mine.
Now I get it. Now I see the strong connection between "B-List" shows like Buffy or Star Trek or Babylon 5 or all those police procedurals, versus The Sopranos or Breaking Bad or even Game of Thrones. All of those former shows? They're heavily structured. They need to be, because the characters aren't the only focus; the world they inhabit is, too. Whether it's exploring space or a courtroom, there is a structure in place to facilitate that exploration, and the story becomes the byproduct of the structure being followed. The latter shows have structure, too, but not as rigid, because they're not sharing screen time with the universe. They can afford to be character-driven. A roleplaying game is character-driven, but it also has its own unique universe, and the exploration and discovery of it is very much a part of the game. And so, to facilitate that discovery, there needs to be structure and direction.
I get that now. So I shall return to the drawing board with my Shannondale High shooting mystery, and develop from it not a great story, but a great adventure.
At the same time, though, an adventure does need to have direction. "Sandbox gaming" has become a big buzzword in today's roleplaying games; this idea that the players can just do whatever the hell they want, and the GM can roll with it, and everyone has a great time. Maybe there are role-playing games out there that can do that (my own RPG, World Gone Mad, was actually built with it in mind), but the vast majority of them are not. And so those games need a direction, a clear path from beginning to middle to end. When it comes to those sandbox-style, direction-less games, a rigid structure is in place to faciliate direction where there wasn't any. Games like Fiasco have no direction, but do have certain rules in place to make sure the end product...a story...happens by the end.
Here's an example of how NOT to do any of that. The World of Darkness game that I wrote about yesterday? I did it on Sunday. The idea from the start was to have a central mystery (a shooting at a high school where something is not right), and several threads to follow (the principal is acting suspiciously and wasn't present during the shooting; a hiker has disappeared into the woods; the players who were present at the shooting witnessed that the shooters were not human).
All these disparate threads were supposed to lead into the central mystery and unravel into a final conspiracy (I won't reveal what it is yet, in case I ever go back to this). What I wanted to happen was for the players to pursue leads however they wanted, then I would gradually steer them into the conspiracy. The overall effect, I conceived in my head, would be an adventure that plays out like an episode of Game of Thrones, where each character is the center of their own plotline, and these plotlines weave together into a greater story.
It didn't work out that way. Instead, it was a mess where some players did a lot of stuff, other players did almost nothing, and after about three hours of play, no one really was any closer to figuring out what was going on. What happened?
Well, to be fair, there were some logistical problems. I had six players...a massive number for a World of Darkness mystery game. Thinking I could juggle all of them, was, on my part, pure hubris. Also, I had dental surgery two days before, and was high on Vicodin during the game. I knew I would be going in, but I had GREATLY underestimated the effect it would have on my brain as we played. Particularly, that whole "steering them into the conspiracy" bit proved particularly difficult, as I could barely focus on what I had prepared, let alone the improv skill necessary to bring it all together.
But even if I had four players, and even if I had been stone-cold sober, I think the game would have gone poorly. The reason ties back to the beginning of this post...adventure writing is all about structure and direction. This adventure had neither. Look at the main plotline...a school shooting. What is mysterious about that? They know who the shooters were (even if they didn't know what they were), the dead had already been identified; what was left to understand? I gave the players no compelling hook to look into this. I did drop some hints, but there was no central problem to be solved, no driving force to move the story along. And all the minor plotlines...none of them had their own resolution, their own beginning and middle and end. All of them were to funnel into the main story. This sounds great on paper...but when one of my players spent nearly the entire session discovering what was essentially a minor facet of the mystery, it led to frustration, on his part and mine.
Now I get it. Now I see the strong connection between "B-List" shows like Buffy or Star Trek or Babylon 5 or all those police procedurals, versus The Sopranos or Breaking Bad or even Game of Thrones. All of those former shows? They're heavily structured. They need to be, because the characters aren't the only focus; the world they inhabit is, too. Whether it's exploring space or a courtroom, there is a structure in place to facilitate that exploration, and the story becomes the byproduct of the structure being followed. The latter shows have structure, too, but not as rigid, because they're not sharing screen time with the universe. They can afford to be character-driven. A roleplaying game is character-driven, but it also has its own unique universe, and the exploration and discovery of it is very much a part of the game. And so, to facilitate that discovery, there needs to be structure and direction.
I get that now. So I shall return to the drawing board with my Shannondale High shooting mystery, and develop from it not a great story, but a great adventure.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Snobbery
It's been awhile, but now I'm back. I've been pretty busy, doing a lot of reading and writing for a World of Darkness game I want to run. So all of my creative energy has been getting funneled into that, with nothing left over for a blog entry. Honestly, I don't even have much to say right now; I'm just going to force something because I don't want to fall onto the "off ramp" of not writing...you know, where it's been a few weeks, and you're like "Well, I don't have anything to say," or "I'll write tomorrow," or, simply, "Fuck it." This blog has never been about writing well; it's just been about writing anything. That being said, apologies if this post is especially bad.
One of the many obstacles I face in my never-ending quest to become a good GM is that I'm a snob. I tend to look down on TV shows, movies, books, or games that are anything less than great. When I'm searching for a new story or gaming experience, usually the first place I go to are awards webpages to see who's been winning what accolades, and I work from there. My standards drop just a little with tabletop gaming, because my love of the hobby makes me less choosy, but even then, just a quick look at my bookshelf will show that I'm a big fan of games with little stickers on them saying they were Such-and-Such of the Year.
The specific problem for me is when it comes time to develop adventures. As a GM, my source material is a little tough to pull from. How do you make a good adventure out of Breaking Bad? Or The Sopranos? Or Six Feet Under? What kind of plot seeds can I sow from reading The Known World by Edward Jones, or Richard Russo's Empire Falls? Sure, I could throw together plenty of adventures about the mafia, or a funeral home, or historical pieces about pre-Civil War America, but those stories aren't just about those things, are they? They're about the human condition. They're about the hypocrisy of society. They're about death! How do I tell a story on that level, without being able to control the main characters, without hogging the spotlight with NPCs, and without railroading the players into my own singular, cohesive vision of the adventure?
I wrestled a lot with this idea as I wrote material for my World of Darkness chronicle. I wanted to do something a little loftier than a gritty Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I wrote dozens and dozens of pages about an evolving mystery, and scenes where characters have to struggle with some really difficult decisions that will change the way they look at things. An awful lot of work...and I won't even know if it'll even pay off until I get it to the table. That's assuming I ever do actually get it to the table.
But I guess that's the point, right? If it were easy to do, then anyone would do it. And fantasy/sci-fi stories have a doubly hard time with it, because they don't even have the familiar backdrop of normal life: in addition to telling a good story with believable characters, they need to create an entire world to serve as the setting.
One of the many obstacles I face in my never-ending quest to become a good GM is that I'm a snob. I tend to look down on TV shows, movies, books, or games that are anything less than great. When I'm searching for a new story or gaming experience, usually the first place I go to are awards webpages to see who's been winning what accolades, and I work from there. My standards drop just a little with tabletop gaming, because my love of the hobby makes me less choosy, but even then, just a quick look at my bookshelf will show that I'm a big fan of games with little stickers on them saying they were Such-and-Such of the Year.
The specific problem for me is when it comes time to develop adventures. As a GM, my source material is a little tough to pull from. How do you make a good adventure out of Breaking Bad? Or The Sopranos? Or Six Feet Under? What kind of plot seeds can I sow from reading The Known World by Edward Jones, or Richard Russo's Empire Falls? Sure, I could throw together plenty of adventures about the mafia, or a funeral home, or historical pieces about pre-Civil War America, but those stories aren't just about those things, are they? They're about the human condition. They're about the hypocrisy of society. They're about death! How do I tell a story on that level, without being able to control the main characters, without hogging the spotlight with NPCs, and without railroading the players into my own singular, cohesive vision of the adventure?
I wrestled a lot with this idea as I wrote material for my World of Darkness chronicle. I wanted to do something a little loftier than a gritty Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I wrote dozens and dozens of pages about an evolving mystery, and scenes where characters have to struggle with some really difficult decisions that will change the way they look at things. An awful lot of work...and I won't even know if it'll even pay off until I get it to the table. That's assuming I ever do actually get it to the table.
But I guess that's the point, right? If it were easy to do, then anyone would do it. And fantasy/sci-fi stories have a doubly hard time with it, because they don't even have the familiar backdrop of normal life: in addition to telling a good story with believable characters, they need to create an entire world to serve as the setting.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Firefly RPG, Episode Three: "Humped" (Pt. 2: Commentary)
Seizing the opportunity Cortex Plus' flexibility gives me, I have tried to do something different with every episode. Episode one was all about starting at the ending, then trying to get there over the course of the adventure. Episode two had a meta-game puzzle the players had to solve (discovering Q's kill switch) while they dealt with a problem onboard the ship. And now, episode three was a "sandbox" style adventure where I gave the players a straight-forward goal (get the keycard and get out) and a static setting for the whole adventure (the mining complex), and just cut the characters loose to accomplish the mission any which way they wanted.
In some ways, this seemed like the most successful episode yet. There was a great contrast between the pseudo-railroad adventure of the second episode and the "by any means necessary" approach to this third episode. I think all of one or the other would get old quickly, but changing it up so dramatically in the space of two sessions keeps the players guessing and makes every adventure feel like something completely different, yet still connected by character and story. This has always been one of my biggest problems with running a campaign-length game: after the honeymoon period of learning a new game ends, I'm left a little bored and listless just running adventure after adventure. Here, though, I'm always trying something new. Whereas in other campaigns I would feel like prepping an adventure was like doing homework, here I'm actually excited to see how I can change things up next time!
There is still some homework involved in this, though, and, slacker that I am, I didn't do it. If I had taken the time to fully stat out Commander Austin, she would have been a worthy nemesis to Jack. Instead, as I wrote about in my superhero RPG entry, Commander Austin was just another living obstacle that a particular character had to hurdle himself over to get to the adventure's end point. Jack's player deserves better than that. I will endeavor to do better with that next time. Likewise, a more fully-thought out plan about what the Alliance capabilities were in the facility, stats for the soldiers, gunships they brought out, etc. would have made the adventure more challenging and thus more fun. I didn't do any of that; instead, I simply relegated the entire Alliance presence down to one big environmental challenge, no more dynamic or interesting an antagonist than fire in a burning house, or a storm for a ship at sea. It was still fun and exciting, of course, but it could have been more.
It's also time for me to hit the Firefly RPG corebook again and practice some of the rules some more. Though I still fully understand the general concepts of the game, little stuff like ship combat and how to handle certain situations were just being winged. I'm pretty sure I was doing it well enough, but I'd like to have the system down a little more cold next time. Due to scheduling conflicts, the Firefly season will not continue till June 8th, so I should have plenty of time to prep!
I continue to really enjoy the flashback character mechanic. It serves as a great way to control the pacing of an adventure. Jack had four shorter flashbacks, as opposed to the doctor's three, but it still worked out fine in the end. Since Jack and Sally had the smallest roles in episode two, they got more spotlight in episode three. Jack had some of the most dramatic moments in meeting Commander Austin (and ultimately killing her); and Sally's player did a bang-up job roleplaying as Commander Austin. Kitt and Enzo now seem on the dimmer side of the spotlight, but they'll get their moments, soon enough...
So now Firefly is on hiatus for three weeks. In the meantime, I will run some one-shots of a couple of other RPGs. Stay tuned for details!
Firefly RPG, Episode Three: "Humped" (Pt. I: Synopsis)
Yesterday was the third episode in our Firefly RPG, "Humped." Our heroes arrived at the Bostonian Mining Complex, a joint venture between the Alliance and the Ghost Rock Mining Company. The complex was a cluster of asteroids, linked together by rail lines. Trains traveled along the rails to ferry minerals from the asteroids to the space station.
The mission was simple: go to the habitation asteroid where Mark, the Alliance soldier the crew rescued in the pilot episode, lives, get the keycard he hid in his room, and get out of there. Only problem was the Alliance was ready for 'em. The crew had to figure out how to sneak through the complex and escape with the card.
Heading up the Alliance trap was Commander Martha Austin....Jack's former fiance and commanding officer when he was a spy for the Alliance during the Unification War. This episode's flashbacks revealed the story: Jack gave valuable Alliance secrets to Martha. They planned on getting married after the war. Jack had doubts about what he was doing. In the second flashback scene, the leader of the Browncoat cell he infiltrated...Kitt...discovered Jack was a spy. But rather than just put a bullet in his head like she would anyone else, she took Jack to the aftermath of the Browncoats' biggest defeat...Serenity Valley. Jack saw the full extent of what he and the Alliance had done. Jack then renounced his ways. He tried to turn his fiance, too...she agreed, only to later stab her former love in the back. Using the rendexvous information Jack gave her, Commander Austin launched an ambush on the Browncoat cell. Every rebel there was captured and executed, except Jack and Kitt, who escaped and have been on the run ever since.
(this also gave insight into Kitt's love/hate relationship with Jack...she loves him for his heart, but hates him because he was ultimately responsible for her cell getting killed by the Alliance).
Jack knew that his presence would be a danger to the mission, so he slid into a vacuum suit and hitched a ride on a train bound for the habitation area. Meanwhile Kitt and Q tried to board the train the ol' fashioned way. They ran into an Alliance security checkpoint. They didn't know what they were going to do, so Q decided to create a distraction...she kicked some poor dude in the back of the head and caused a ruckus. A few soldiers left the checkpoint to handle the situation, and Kitt slipped through.
She wasn't unnoticed, though. She got about halfway across the asteroid cluster when the train came to an emergency stop. The Alliance decided that due to the checkpoint breaking down, they were going to conduct an ID check right there in the middle of space. A tense scene ensued: Jack tried to break into the operator's car to get the train moving again, while Sally, onboard the Serenity, tried to hack up some falsified credentials for Kitt. Both tasks succeeded: Jack got the train moving again, and Kitt, with the papers of a mining foreman, got away clean.
Jack wasn't so lucky. When the train arrived at the station, a bunch of Alliance troops were waitin' for him, and took him into custody. In a hilarious and unfortunate coincidence, Dr. Montgomery found his own way across the station and ran into Jack as he was getting captured. Dr. Montgomery used his Blind as a Bat trigger to fail to recognize that Jack was in a bad situation and he should stay away. Jack then used his Guilt By Association trigger and Dr. Montgomery ended up getting arrested as an accomplice.
Meanwhile, Enzo headed over to the supply depot on the space station and began getting parts for the Serenity. He talked Jack through how to wire the train door open. A couple of miners overheard that, and brought him into a secret compartment beneath the station. Turns out the miners have had it up to here with the Alliance and their pushy policies, and they were ready for a revolt. Noticing Enzo's ability to wire that door, they "enlisted" his help in getting him to rig a series of explosives across the rail lines. This would cut the Alliance off from the rest of the complex and make the conditions right for some good ol' fashioned anarchy.
As you may expect, it all ended in a heapin' helpin' of chaos. Jack got a face-to-face with his former lover. Jack had a shoe bomb that Enzo built for him. He threw it at her, blowing off half of her face. The bomb's radio frequency also matched the frequency of the bombs Enzo was planting on the complex, so those all went off at once, plunging the whole complex into hell. Kitt got into the soldier's room, got the key, and fought her way out of the trap and, with the help of some rebellious miners, got back to the dock. The doctor snuck into the communications room and masked the Serenity from the facility sensors, allowing Sally to fly the ship around the facility and pick up the crew as they returned from the mission. At the very end, the crew raced across the dock and had to leap onto a moving Serenity as Alliance guards were bearing down on them. Jack was carrying a wounded Commander Austin with him, holding her hostage against the Alliance. ?Before he jumped, Jack shot dead his former lover, his revenge for her treachery fulfilled.
Everyone made the jump...except poor Dr. Montgomery, who landed in a heap on the dock and got captured by Alliance troops. Looks like next episode, a resuce operation's gonna be in order...
The mission was simple: go to the habitation asteroid where Mark, the Alliance soldier the crew rescued in the pilot episode, lives, get the keycard he hid in his room, and get out of there. Only problem was the Alliance was ready for 'em. The crew had to figure out how to sneak through the complex and escape with the card.
Heading up the Alliance trap was Commander Martha Austin....Jack's former fiance and commanding officer when he was a spy for the Alliance during the Unification War. This episode's flashbacks revealed the story: Jack gave valuable Alliance secrets to Martha. They planned on getting married after the war. Jack had doubts about what he was doing. In the second flashback scene, the leader of the Browncoat cell he infiltrated...Kitt...discovered Jack was a spy. But rather than just put a bullet in his head like she would anyone else, she took Jack to the aftermath of the Browncoats' biggest defeat...Serenity Valley. Jack saw the full extent of what he and the Alliance had done. Jack then renounced his ways. He tried to turn his fiance, too...she agreed, only to later stab her former love in the back. Using the rendexvous information Jack gave her, Commander Austin launched an ambush on the Browncoat cell. Every rebel there was captured and executed, except Jack and Kitt, who escaped and have been on the run ever since.
(this also gave insight into Kitt's love/hate relationship with Jack...she loves him for his heart, but hates him because he was ultimately responsible for her cell getting killed by the Alliance).
Jack knew that his presence would be a danger to the mission, so he slid into a vacuum suit and hitched a ride on a train bound for the habitation area. Meanwhile Kitt and Q tried to board the train the ol' fashioned way. They ran into an Alliance security checkpoint. They didn't know what they were going to do, so Q decided to create a distraction...she kicked some poor dude in the back of the head and caused a ruckus. A few soldiers left the checkpoint to handle the situation, and Kitt slipped through.
She wasn't unnoticed, though. She got about halfway across the asteroid cluster when the train came to an emergency stop. The Alliance decided that due to the checkpoint breaking down, they were going to conduct an ID check right there in the middle of space. A tense scene ensued: Jack tried to break into the operator's car to get the train moving again, while Sally, onboard the Serenity, tried to hack up some falsified credentials for Kitt. Both tasks succeeded: Jack got the train moving again, and Kitt, with the papers of a mining foreman, got away clean.
Jack wasn't so lucky. When the train arrived at the station, a bunch of Alliance troops were waitin' for him, and took him into custody. In a hilarious and unfortunate coincidence, Dr. Montgomery found his own way across the station and ran into Jack as he was getting captured. Dr. Montgomery used his Blind as a Bat trigger to fail to recognize that Jack was in a bad situation and he should stay away. Jack then used his Guilt By Association trigger and Dr. Montgomery ended up getting arrested as an accomplice.
Meanwhile, Enzo headed over to the supply depot on the space station and began getting parts for the Serenity. He talked Jack through how to wire the train door open. A couple of miners overheard that, and brought him into a secret compartment beneath the station. Turns out the miners have had it up to here with the Alliance and their pushy policies, and they were ready for a revolt. Noticing Enzo's ability to wire that door, they "enlisted" his help in getting him to rig a series of explosives across the rail lines. This would cut the Alliance off from the rest of the complex and make the conditions right for some good ol' fashioned anarchy.
As you may expect, it all ended in a heapin' helpin' of chaos. Jack got a face-to-face with his former lover. Jack had a shoe bomb that Enzo built for him. He threw it at her, blowing off half of her face. The bomb's radio frequency also matched the frequency of the bombs Enzo was planting on the complex, so those all went off at once, plunging the whole complex into hell. Kitt got into the soldier's room, got the key, and fought her way out of the trap and, with the help of some rebellious miners, got back to the dock. The doctor snuck into the communications room and masked the Serenity from the facility sensors, allowing Sally to fly the ship around the facility and pick up the crew as they returned from the mission. At the very end, the crew raced across the dock and had to leap onto a moving Serenity as Alliance guards were bearing down on them. Jack was carrying a wounded Commander Austin with him, holding her hostage against the Alliance. ?Before he jumped, Jack shot dead his former lover, his revenge for her treachery fulfilled.
Everyone made the jump...except poor Dr. Montgomery, who landed in a heap on the dock and got captured by Alliance troops. Looks like next episode, a resuce operation's gonna be in order...
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
"... and I'll whisper "no."
This morning, I had a revelation. I finally broke the enigma of the superhero RPG. I think I can run a fine superhero campaign. I'll talk about it more later, in case my players are reading this...but I'm pretty sure I just stumbled across an idea that's going to be really awesome. And it solves both of my problems with the superhero genre and RPGs.
You see, I have always tended to avoid the superhero RPG. I felt like truly capturing the spirit of one would be difficult, for two reasons. One, my favorite superheroes...Batman, Superman, Spiderman...all work alone. Yes, they have more than their share of affiliations and team-ups, but the fundamental, defining image of these heroes are as outsiders, those who work alone against armies of villians and their henchmen. For me, this is hard to emulate with a group of players, all of whom should ideally be sharing the spotlight together.
The other problem I always run into when thinking about a superhero RPG are the villians. In the comics, a villian serves as the mirror to the hero, more often than not just as complex and formidable a character as their hero arch-nemesis. The Joker. Lex Luthor. Doctor Octopus. Many villians, such as Magneto, are so three-dimensional they even cross the normally-uncrossable lines of good versus evil and can become anti-heroes. This is seldom the case in my role-playing games. In most of my RPGs, the villians are little more than living obstacles the heroes must overcome to succeed at the mission. In my games, usually the prime reason to build a villian up is so that their inevitable defeat at the hands of my players is more gratifying.
I think, in my own heavily-biased opinion, this is why so many superhero RPGs are all about the four-color, "Silver Age" of comic books. Things were simpler then. Heroes were all around good people who worked together with others to beat villians who were all around bad people (or not human at all!) That era of comics gels well with role-playing games. The modern era, with heroes like Spawn and Witchblade and Deadpool, does not work as well. Even the most iconic superheroes that I mentioned above have developed in a different way now, and seeing them getting together with other superheroes to foil some ridiculous, dastardly plot seems anachronistic.I am a fan of the modern comic. I never really cared much for the Golden/Silver/pulpy age of superhero. I like the darkness. I like the moral ambiguity. When asked about their favorite comic, the "gateway" comic that started their love, many comicbook fans will talk about their first time as a kid picking up an old Spiderman or Superman comic. Me? My first real "holy shit this is AWESOME!" moment was when I was about 27 years old. I spent an entire day in Hastings, reading Watchmen. THAT is the comic I think of when I think of comics. THAT is the game I want to run.
And, pretty soon, I may just get that chance...
You see, I have always tended to avoid the superhero RPG. I felt like truly capturing the spirit of one would be difficult, for two reasons. One, my favorite superheroes...Batman, Superman, Spiderman...all work alone. Yes, they have more than their share of affiliations and team-ups, but the fundamental, defining image of these heroes are as outsiders, those who work alone against armies of villians and their henchmen. For me, this is hard to emulate with a group of players, all of whom should ideally be sharing the spotlight together.
The other problem I always run into when thinking about a superhero RPG are the villians. In the comics, a villian serves as the mirror to the hero, more often than not just as complex and formidable a character as their hero arch-nemesis. The Joker. Lex Luthor. Doctor Octopus. Many villians, such as Magneto, are so three-dimensional they even cross the normally-uncrossable lines of good versus evil and can become anti-heroes. This is seldom the case in my role-playing games. In most of my RPGs, the villians are little more than living obstacles the heroes must overcome to succeed at the mission. In my games, usually the prime reason to build a villian up is so that their inevitable defeat at the hands of my players is more gratifying.
I think, in my own heavily-biased opinion, this is why so many superhero RPGs are all about the four-color, "Silver Age" of comic books. Things were simpler then. Heroes were all around good people who worked together with others to beat villians who were all around bad people (or not human at all!) That era of comics gels well with role-playing games. The modern era, with heroes like Spawn and Witchblade and Deadpool, does not work as well. Even the most iconic superheroes that I mentioned above have developed in a different way now, and seeing them getting together with other superheroes to foil some ridiculous, dastardly plot seems anachronistic.I am a fan of the modern comic. I never really cared much for the Golden/Silver/pulpy age of superhero. I like the darkness. I like the moral ambiguity. When asked about their favorite comic, the "gateway" comic that started their love, many comicbook fans will talk about their first time as a kid picking up an old Spiderman or Superman comic. Me? My first real "holy shit this is AWESOME!" moment was when I was about 27 years old. I spent an entire day in Hastings, reading Watchmen. THAT is the comic I think of when I think of comics. THAT is the game I want to run.
And, pretty soon, I may just get that chance...
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Not Legit Enough
Hearthstone is all the rage across the internet/gaming community these days. If you don't know, Hearthstone is a free-to-play collectible card game by Blizzard, the good folks who made World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. In fact, Hearthstone takes it's theme from World of Warcraft, with characters, abilities, and monsters from that game running throughout play. Even many of the iconic sound effects, like the gurgle-roar of a murloc or the metallic clunk of a warrior settling into a defensive stance, are used to great effect in Hearthstone. If you take even a few minutes to play the game (which is free to play, a small download on your computer, and turn-based so almost any machine can run it), it's easy to see the appeal. Like all its other franchises, Blizzard has managed to take their chosen genre...this time, turn-based card strategy...and make it simple enough for casual players to wander into, but deep enough for hardcore gaming veterans to sink their teeth into. Combine this with an attractive presentation and silky-smooth, fast-paced gameplay, and you have an accessible, hyper-addictive gaming experience that even the most cynical hater won't be able to talk trash about until they've sunken in a few hundred hours of gameplay.
Yet, I'm not that into it. Sure, I've played a few dozen matches, unlocked all the decks, tried the Arena mode...but it unfortunately gets the stamp of doom from me: Not My Thing.
I fully admit it's not at all the game's fault. No; the fault is entirely my own. You see, I'm a quitter. This is something I really dislike about myself, but in my older age I have come to reluctantly accept it as a part (albeit a darker part) of who I am. I'm not a sore loser; in fact, I pride myself on being gracious in defeat. However, my morale is a fickle thing, easily broken by even the smallest setback. Of all my many losses, both in Hearthstone and every other competitive game out there, I'd say at least half, if not an overwhelming majority, of them can be attributed not to fate, not to the opponent's skill, but instead to my crappy, defeatist attitude in the face of a setback.
I remember once, many years ago, I was in a Magic: The Gathering tournament at a local hobby shop. My opponent was an experienced veteran, and I was just returning to the game from a long hiatus. As he put down awesome card combo after awesome card combo, I looked at my meager, pathetic layout and figured I was done. I said as much to my opponent, and just went through the motions, awaiting defeat.
"Nah, man, play it out, play it out," he said. I did play it out, not out of any expectation of winning, but because I didn't want to sully his victory with my surrender.
Then, I pulled a card that took out one of his threats. I managed to survive what was supposed to be my death blow. Then, I pulled another card to stop another threat. Then I put down a threat of my own. And just like that, several turns later, I defeated this seasoned opponent. And it felt even worse than losing, because I knew that without my opponent's encouragement, I would have lost that game.
I love all forms of gaming, so for a long time, I considered having a character flaw that can directly affect my enjoyment of games...or worse, the enjoyment of others...to be unacceptable. But I feel powerless to change it. As soon as that minion gets inflated to some huge attack number and I've got no minions with taunt in Hearthstone, my gut reaction is to pack it up and say "good game."
Thankfully, being a quitter doesn't spoil all of my game experiences. Team-based games, for example. I never quit in a team-based game, no matter how badly my side's getting trounced. Maybe it's the solidarity of knowing I'm not screwed alone, or maybe it's the ego-sparing knowledge that I can't be the only reason we could lose, but I am quite capable of getting over myself and fighting to the bitter end when I'm on a team. That extends to cooperative games, too. I don't care how many outbreaks have happened in our game of Pandemic, or how many civilians have been lost in a game of Legendary; if a fat lady ain't singin', then I ain't stoppin'!
I'm fine with games where I have no idea how well I'm objectively doing, too. Dominion, for example. Yeah, it may look like someone's winning, but you never know until you start counting up the victory cards in your deck. Cosmic Encounter, too. You might have four colonies, but then someone goes on a tear and just like that, it's over.
And, obviously, games where winning is ambigous or not the point, such as roleplaying games, I'm fine with.
It's been a painful lesson I've had to learn over the past year or so: that not only am I not perfect, but I'll never be perfect, and that I have little choice but to accept that sometimes, my worst self cannot be avoided. I'll probably never like Hearthstone the way the rest of the world does. I'll probably never get back into Magic, and I'll probably never get into those cool-looking LCGs like Netrunner or Game of Thrones. And I can tell myself excuses, like "the game isn't balanced," or "it's too random," or "it's not random enough," but the fundamental truth is, I just don't have the competitive spirit necessary to enjoy those games. So while millions of my peers dive into Hearthstone, I'll more likely be back on Azeroth playing the game that it takes its theme from.
Update (5/1/2014): I spent a pretty considerable chunk of last night playing Hearthstone. I'm getting my ass handed to me, repeatedly, but I keep going back. Perhaps that's further testament to how amazing of a game Hearthstone is. Win or lose, it's so much fun to play that you just keep going and going! Perhaps Hearthstone is going to be that one exception that proves the rule with me...
Yet, I'm not that into it. Sure, I've played a few dozen matches, unlocked all the decks, tried the Arena mode...but it unfortunately gets the stamp of doom from me: Not My Thing.
I fully admit it's not at all the game's fault. No; the fault is entirely my own. You see, I'm a quitter. This is something I really dislike about myself, but in my older age I have come to reluctantly accept it as a part (albeit a darker part) of who I am. I'm not a sore loser; in fact, I pride myself on being gracious in defeat. However, my morale is a fickle thing, easily broken by even the smallest setback. Of all my many losses, both in Hearthstone and every other competitive game out there, I'd say at least half, if not an overwhelming majority, of them can be attributed not to fate, not to the opponent's skill, but instead to my crappy, defeatist attitude in the face of a setback.
I remember once, many years ago, I was in a Magic: The Gathering tournament at a local hobby shop. My opponent was an experienced veteran, and I was just returning to the game from a long hiatus. As he put down awesome card combo after awesome card combo, I looked at my meager, pathetic layout and figured I was done. I said as much to my opponent, and just went through the motions, awaiting defeat.
"Nah, man, play it out, play it out," he said. I did play it out, not out of any expectation of winning, but because I didn't want to sully his victory with my surrender.
Then, I pulled a card that took out one of his threats. I managed to survive what was supposed to be my death blow. Then, I pulled another card to stop another threat. Then I put down a threat of my own. And just like that, several turns later, I defeated this seasoned opponent. And it felt even worse than losing, because I knew that without my opponent's encouragement, I would have lost that game.
I love all forms of gaming, so for a long time, I considered having a character flaw that can directly affect my enjoyment of games...or worse, the enjoyment of others...to be unacceptable. But I feel powerless to change it. As soon as that minion gets inflated to some huge attack number and I've got no minions with taunt in Hearthstone, my gut reaction is to pack it up and say "good game."
Thankfully, being a quitter doesn't spoil all of my game experiences. Team-based games, for example. I never quit in a team-based game, no matter how badly my side's getting trounced. Maybe it's the solidarity of knowing I'm not screwed alone, or maybe it's the ego-sparing knowledge that I can't be the only reason we could lose, but I am quite capable of getting over myself and fighting to the bitter end when I'm on a team. That extends to cooperative games, too. I don't care how many outbreaks have happened in our game of Pandemic, or how many civilians have been lost in a game of Legendary; if a fat lady ain't singin', then I ain't stoppin'!
I'm fine with games where I have no idea how well I'm objectively doing, too. Dominion, for example. Yeah, it may look like someone's winning, but you never know until you start counting up the victory cards in your deck. Cosmic Encounter, too. You might have four colonies, but then someone goes on a tear and just like that, it's over.
And, obviously, games where winning is ambigous or not the point, such as roleplaying games, I'm fine with.
It's been a painful lesson I've had to learn over the past year or so: that not only am I not perfect, but I'll never be perfect, and that I have little choice but to accept that sometimes, my worst self cannot be avoided. I'll probably never like Hearthstone the way the rest of the world does. I'll probably never get back into Magic, and I'll probably never get into those cool-looking LCGs like Netrunner or Game of Thrones. And I can tell myself excuses, like "the game isn't balanced," or "it's too random," or "it's not random enough," but the fundamental truth is, I just don't have the competitive spirit necessary to enjoy those games. So while millions of my peers dive into Hearthstone, I'll more likely be back on Azeroth playing the game that it takes its theme from.
Update (5/1/2014): I spent a pretty considerable chunk of last night playing Hearthstone. I'm getting my ass handed to me, repeatedly, but I keep going back. Perhaps that's further testament to how amazing of a game Hearthstone is. Win or lose, it's so much fun to play that you just keep going and going! Perhaps Hearthstone is going to be that one exception that proves the rule with me...
Monday, April 28, 2014
The Kill Switch, Pt. II: Analysis
Perhaps the single greatest thing about the Firefly RPG, and the Cortex Plus system as a whole, is that the flexibility of the system really gives me the freedom to experiment with my GMing. Last episode, I cold-opened on a crazy en media res situation, then started back at the beginning of the story and challenged myself and my players to get ourselves into that crazy situation. In this week's episode, I wanted one of the players to be the main antagonist, and I wanted to interweave flashback sequences into the episode as it unfolded. Here's how I did it.
At the end of the first session, I asked every player to send me some detail on their character's background. The first person to give me anything was Dr. Montgomery's player. Because he was first, I got to stew on his story the longest. I had already decided that each player was going to be the "focus" of an episode, and so I decided the good doctor would be the focus of this one.
So the doctor's story, about rehabilitating Alliance soldiers, was his idea. So I rolled with it and originally thought of a Sopranos style sequence where he conducts talk therapy with a dangerous Alliance asset in an attempt to get information. Then I realized, well shit, we've got a dangerous Alliance asset on the ship already with Q! So I stole an idea from the Serenity movie, altered it a little, and bam! Episode ready!
That was the scary part about last episode, and it was the scariest part about this one, too: the general lack of prep. By nature of the game and the story, I had to keep things loose and flexible, improv on the fly, and hope that the players can provide enough material to keep things going. And just like last episode, it worked. When everyone showed up, I took Q and the doctor's player aside, I explained the story to them, and asked them if they could do it. They both agreed. Q's player was especially excited about being the villian! I told her, of course, to go hog wild.
For Dr. Montgomery's flashbacks, I settled on three scenes. Those three scenes, I decided, would be my pacing mechanisms throughout the adventure. The first one would happen within the first few scenes, to help establish the situation; the second one would mark the half-way point, and the third one would be trigger the episode's climax. When did I know we were at the halfway mark? When I felt like things were starting to lag. I had to adjust plans for the third flashback, however, when Enzo blindly stumbled upon the kill switch. So the third flashback became a resolution of the entire plotline rather than a trigger for the episode's climax.
To keep the flashback scenes lively and fun, I tapped Kitt to roleplay a minor recurring character during the scenes. This worked really great, and it off-set the fact that Kitt herself had relatively little going on in this particular episode.
I knew going in that focusing an adventure on one character's backstory would naturally create some asymmetry amongst the players. As I said above, having Kitt's player roleplay during the flashbacks partially offset this. Having Q be the episode's antagonist also help offset this. That left only Jack, Sally, and Enzo without a significant bit during the session. They all managed to find great spotlight moments however: Sally had an awesome fistfight with Q, Enzo somehow managed to guess the kill switch (it was really awesome how that happened; Enzo's player wasn't really engaging at all with finding the kill switch, preferring to tinker around with the ship; then right when things are looking grim, he just blurts it out!) And Jack had a great stunt where he swung himself across the cargo bay on a line while the air was being vacuumed out of the ship in a desperate attempt to kick Q off of the airlock doors. It failed, resulting in a spectacular crash against the door, but it was sufficiently convincing for Q to give up on the door before he came up with another crazy idea. (Oh, and upon discovery that Q's mother was a companion, he made a lot of whore jokes. A lot.)
The good thing about the asymmetry, though, is I now know where to focus the next adventure's energy on. So everything is flowing really well and I think the third episode will continue to carry the game's momentum. I'll end this analysis with some random notes:
-I gave Q total control over his own actions during the entire episode, though I frequently took breaks to pull Q's player aside and discuss plans of action. I portrayed the Kensington Protocol as a simple d10 asset Q's player could use for any roll involving messing with the ship or the crew. It worked great. I also, of course, let Q's player come up with her own kill switch.
-Up until Enzo's amazing stab in the dark, I was afraid discovering the kill switch was going to be too hard on the players. If I ever play this adventure again, I'll have to come up with a couple of hints I can feed the players. The best I could do in this game was, as Peaches, help steer the topics of conversation a little towards topics around the kill switch (for example, the players were barking up the wrong tree for awhile with a series of questions about Q's pet cat)
-The adventure ended at 2 1/2 hours. That's just a hair short for my liking, but better short and good than long and drawn-out. Besides, we had a blast playing some boardgames afterwards!
-For the extra heavy lifting involved, I gave bonus advancements to several players. Everyone got the episode, The Kill Switch, as an advancement. I gave Dr. Montgomery a second advancement in You Can't Save Them, representing his flashback sequences (the phrase comes from Colonel Kensington himself, during the third flashback scene where Dr. Montgomery discovers that the rehabilitation project was to be shut down, and all sleeper agents executed). For her particpation, I gave Kitt a second advancement, Rosalie Lynn McCready (the name of the recurring extra she roleplayed). And I gave Enzo the bonus advancement Deus Ex Machina, for miraclously coming up with the kill switch. I fully plan on shining the spotlight on Jack and Sally in the next adventure so they get a chance to earn a bonus advancement, as well.
At the end of the first session, I asked every player to send me some detail on their character's background. The first person to give me anything was Dr. Montgomery's player. Because he was first, I got to stew on his story the longest. I had already decided that each player was going to be the "focus" of an episode, and so I decided the good doctor would be the focus of this one.
So the doctor's story, about rehabilitating Alliance soldiers, was his idea. So I rolled with it and originally thought of a Sopranos style sequence where he conducts talk therapy with a dangerous Alliance asset in an attempt to get information. Then I realized, well shit, we've got a dangerous Alliance asset on the ship already with Q! So I stole an idea from the Serenity movie, altered it a little, and bam! Episode ready!
That was the scary part about last episode, and it was the scariest part about this one, too: the general lack of prep. By nature of the game and the story, I had to keep things loose and flexible, improv on the fly, and hope that the players can provide enough material to keep things going. And just like last episode, it worked. When everyone showed up, I took Q and the doctor's player aside, I explained the story to them, and asked them if they could do it. They both agreed. Q's player was especially excited about being the villian! I told her, of course, to go hog wild.
For Dr. Montgomery's flashbacks, I settled on three scenes. Those three scenes, I decided, would be my pacing mechanisms throughout the adventure. The first one would happen within the first few scenes, to help establish the situation; the second one would mark the half-way point, and the third one would be trigger the episode's climax. When did I know we were at the halfway mark? When I felt like things were starting to lag. I had to adjust plans for the third flashback, however, when Enzo blindly stumbled upon the kill switch. So the third flashback became a resolution of the entire plotline rather than a trigger for the episode's climax.
To keep the flashback scenes lively and fun, I tapped Kitt to roleplay a minor recurring character during the scenes. This worked really great, and it off-set the fact that Kitt herself had relatively little going on in this particular episode.
I knew going in that focusing an adventure on one character's backstory would naturally create some asymmetry amongst the players. As I said above, having Kitt's player roleplay during the flashbacks partially offset this. Having Q be the episode's antagonist also help offset this. That left only Jack, Sally, and Enzo without a significant bit during the session. They all managed to find great spotlight moments however: Sally had an awesome fistfight with Q, Enzo somehow managed to guess the kill switch (it was really awesome how that happened; Enzo's player wasn't really engaging at all with finding the kill switch, preferring to tinker around with the ship; then right when things are looking grim, he just blurts it out!) And Jack had a great stunt where he swung himself across the cargo bay on a line while the air was being vacuumed out of the ship in a desperate attempt to kick Q off of the airlock doors. It failed, resulting in a spectacular crash against the door, but it was sufficiently convincing for Q to give up on the door before he came up with another crazy idea. (Oh, and upon discovery that Q's mother was a companion, he made a lot of whore jokes. A lot.)
The good thing about the asymmetry, though, is I now know where to focus the next adventure's energy on. So everything is flowing really well and I think the third episode will continue to carry the game's momentum. I'll end this analysis with some random notes:
-I gave Q total control over his own actions during the entire episode, though I frequently took breaks to pull Q's player aside and discuss plans of action. I portrayed the Kensington Protocol as a simple d10 asset Q's player could use for any roll involving messing with the ship or the crew. It worked great. I also, of course, let Q's player come up with her own kill switch.
-Up until Enzo's amazing stab in the dark, I was afraid discovering the kill switch was going to be too hard on the players. If I ever play this adventure again, I'll have to come up with a couple of hints I can feed the players. The best I could do in this game was, as Peaches, help steer the topics of conversation a little towards topics around the kill switch (for example, the players were barking up the wrong tree for awhile with a series of questions about Q's pet cat)
-The adventure ended at 2 1/2 hours. That's just a hair short for my liking, but better short and good than long and drawn-out. Besides, we had a blast playing some boardgames afterwards!
-For the extra heavy lifting involved, I gave bonus advancements to several players. Everyone got the episode, The Kill Switch, as an advancement. I gave Dr. Montgomery a second advancement in You Can't Save Them, representing his flashback sequences (the phrase comes from Colonel Kensington himself, during the third flashback scene where Dr. Montgomery discovers that the rehabilitation project was to be shut down, and all sleeper agents executed). For her particpation, I gave Kitt a second advancement, Rosalie Lynn McCready (the name of the recurring extra she roleplayed). And I gave Enzo the bonus advancement Deus Ex Machina, for miraclously coming up with the kill switch. I fully plan on shining the spotlight on Jack and Sally in the next adventure so they get a chance to earn a bonus advancement, as well.
The Kill Switch (Pt. I, synopsis)
Yesterday I ran the second episode in my season of the Firefly RPG, titled "The Kill Switch." All the same players playing the same characters showed up as from my last session, right here.
In this episode, while Enzo was working on the compression coils, he accidentially triggered the intruder alert alarm on the Serenity; a routine problem, easy fix. The whoop whoop! of the alarm, however, turned out to be the subliminal activation code for the Kensington Protocol inside Q's head. Turns out what the Alliance did to Q, in addition to making him a killing machine, was they implanted this biological programming into his brain that, when he heard the trigger sound (in his case, a ship intruder alert signal), his programming would override his brain and he'd have to complete his mission.
His mission? Disable whatever ship he's on, including all crew within, then signal the nearest Alliance vessel to board it. If he can't disable them, "plan b" is to kill them and destroy the ship. Q's own survival was secondary to the mission.
So Q hears the signal, jump kicks a flustered Peaches, then disappears into the access chutes within the Serenity. The rest of the crew conduct a manhunt to find Q and bring him to heel before he can knock out the ship (and everyone in it).
Dr. Montgomery knows all about the Kensington Protocol. As revealed in three flashback scenes about his past throughout the episode, he used to work for the Alliance on a project to undo the Kensington Protocol from sleeper agents who were no longer needed after the war, so that they could live a normal life again. Dr. Montgomery knows that, in the event the Kensington Protocol is accidentially triggered, it can be deactivated through a "kill switch," a phrase of emotional significance about Q's childhood. All doc had to do was discover the kill switch, and the problem's solved.
As a failsafe for people to discover the kill switch, Q's brain has been altered so that he must truthfully answer all questions about his childhood. So while the crew is trying to hunt down Q and fix the ship as he damages it, Dr. Montgomery is communicating with Q over the intercom, learning about his childhood growing up and trying to discover the kill switch. Q couldn't say any of the words in his own kill switch, so Dr. Montgomery and the rest of the crew had to pay attention to any words Q was talking around and going out of his way to not say while answering the questions.
Like a good episode of Firefly, it came down to the wire. Q tried to enter the cockpit and fly the ship to the nearest Alliance cruiser, but in a spectacular fight scene with Sally, he escaped back into the vents. He was flushed out of the vents by a coolant spray that Enzo used to flood them, where he then donned an atmosphere suit, threw the other suits out into space, then evacuated the ship through the airlock. There, Q proceeded to use makeshift explosives and tools to blow off both airlock doors, which would have caused the Serenity to lose all of its oxygen and kill everyone inside. Without space suits, the crew had no way to reach Q outside the ship. All they could do was desperately assist Dr. Montgomery in discovering the kill switch before it was too late (they could still communicate to Q through the suit's comm system).
When a desperate plan by Jack and Enzo stopped Q from blowing off the airlock doors, Q then made his way to the outside of the cockpit and went to work on the cockpit exterior hatch. He was about to blow it off when Enzo, of all people, blurted out the kill switch "You are not a mistake!" Q snapped out of the Kensington Protocol, and they all lived happily ever after...for this week, anyway!
In this episode, while Enzo was working on the compression coils, he accidentially triggered the intruder alert alarm on the Serenity; a routine problem, easy fix. The whoop whoop! of the alarm, however, turned out to be the subliminal activation code for the Kensington Protocol inside Q's head. Turns out what the Alliance did to Q, in addition to making him a killing machine, was they implanted this biological programming into his brain that, when he heard the trigger sound (in his case, a ship intruder alert signal), his programming would override his brain and he'd have to complete his mission.
His mission? Disable whatever ship he's on, including all crew within, then signal the nearest Alliance vessel to board it. If he can't disable them, "plan b" is to kill them and destroy the ship. Q's own survival was secondary to the mission.
So Q hears the signal, jump kicks a flustered Peaches, then disappears into the access chutes within the Serenity. The rest of the crew conduct a manhunt to find Q and bring him to heel before he can knock out the ship (and everyone in it).
Dr. Montgomery knows all about the Kensington Protocol. As revealed in three flashback scenes about his past throughout the episode, he used to work for the Alliance on a project to undo the Kensington Protocol from sleeper agents who were no longer needed after the war, so that they could live a normal life again. Dr. Montgomery knows that, in the event the Kensington Protocol is accidentially triggered, it can be deactivated through a "kill switch," a phrase of emotional significance about Q's childhood. All doc had to do was discover the kill switch, and the problem's solved.
As a failsafe for people to discover the kill switch, Q's brain has been altered so that he must truthfully answer all questions about his childhood. So while the crew is trying to hunt down Q and fix the ship as he damages it, Dr. Montgomery is communicating with Q over the intercom, learning about his childhood growing up and trying to discover the kill switch. Q couldn't say any of the words in his own kill switch, so Dr. Montgomery and the rest of the crew had to pay attention to any words Q was talking around and going out of his way to not say while answering the questions.
Like a good episode of Firefly, it came down to the wire. Q tried to enter the cockpit and fly the ship to the nearest Alliance cruiser, but in a spectacular fight scene with Sally, he escaped back into the vents. He was flushed out of the vents by a coolant spray that Enzo used to flood them, where he then donned an atmosphere suit, threw the other suits out into space, then evacuated the ship through the airlock. There, Q proceeded to use makeshift explosives and tools to blow off both airlock doors, which would have caused the Serenity to lose all of its oxygen and kill everyone inside. Without space suits, the crew had no way to reach Q outside the ship. All they could do was desperately assist Dr. Montgomery in discovering the kill switch before it was too late (they could still communicate to Q through the suit's comm system).
When a desperate plan by Jack and Enzo stopped Q from blowing off the airlock doors, Q then made his way to the outside of the cockpit and went to work on the cockpit exterior hatch. He was about to blow it off when Enzo, of all people, blurted out the kill switch "You are not a mistake!" Q snapped out of the Kensington Protocol, and they all lived happily ever after...for this week, anyway!
Friday, April 25, 2014
Ponno Nyarlatho
And now, the rare videogaming blog entry...
I have recently begun playing Funcom's new(ish) massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG, or just MMO), The Secret World. It is, in a word, amazing.
Set in our modern day, in The Secret World, you play a member of one of three secret societies: the Illuminati, the Dragon, or the Templars. These three groups have been manipulating the world around us for hundreds of years, and have also kept us blissfully unaware of the world's true evils. Monsters, dark magic, and sinister cults rule the shadows. These organizations keep them in check...but they are also constantly facing off against each other for true control of the world.
I have played many MMOs. Few other than World of Warcraft have held my attention for long, and I'll even admit that a lot of World of Warcraft's appeal to me might be more emotional than anything else. The thing of it is, I am pretty fickle with my gaming tastes, particularly when it comes to videogames. I am like a woman of ill repute, fluttering from game to game, never settling down with just one. So it is a pretty big deal when I fall so hard for one game. That's why Cortex Plus has been such a big deal for me on the tabletop end of things. And that's why The Secret World is such a big deal now. I implore you, Dear Reader, if you have a PC with even modest gaming capabilities, to make the small investment in picking up The Secret World and giving it a try. Here are some reasons why you should do so:
1. The story is actually really good. Writing/story development for most MMOs is pretty awful. And understandably so; few stories can be told skillfully over hundreds of hours, featuring unpredictable human players as their protagonists. The resources that could be spent on making believable dialogue and decent quest writing could also be better spent on squashing bugs and gameplay imbalances. So the fact that The Secret World can deliver quality storytelling so effortlessly is quite amazing. The NPCs in The Secret World are not just quest-spewing robots; they're real characters, with personalities and backstories. There are several stories hidden in chunks throughout the world that you'll uncover as you explore, piecing these fragments together to get an entire narrative on one of the three factions, or the backstory behind the zone you're exploring. Quests have cutscenes that you actually won't want to skip through because you'll want to see the story unfold! And although the writing is good, part of the reason you'll not want to skip through those cutscenes is because...
2. Quests are more than errands. Quests in The Secret World will frequently have you solving puzzles or answering riddles to progress. To accomodate the more cerebral atmosphere, The Secret World brilliantly has its own web browser so you don't even have to leave the game for hints (although this browser isn't all that great, and a decent smartphone or tablet is probably a better bet). Don't think you'll just spoiler your way to victory, though; the community, in some kind of unspoken agreement, are often cryptic with clues. That's not to say you can't find the solutions out there; but on the more direct sites like the game's forums or wiki page, you can safely visit them and have a reasonable chance of not having too much spoiled for you.
3. Quests are also convenient and smartly-designed. You never have to run back to the NPC quest-giver to finish a quest in The Secret World (unless doing so makes sense in the story of the quest, such as bringing supplies to a safehouse being besieged by zombies). Typically, a simple click of the "send" button on your in-game cellphone finishes the quest. Quests in The Secret World also don't follow the annoying "series" pattern of many other MMOs. You know; do this quest, now do this quest, then do that quest. Quests in The Secret World are complete stories, and each connected task is broken into what are called "tiers." For example, in a lesser MMO, you might have to go to Point A and get item X, then return to the quest-giver, turn it in, then get a new quest connected to the old one that has you going to Point B to get item Y. In The Secret World, you'll receive just the first quest, usually with a cutscene by the giver explaining the whole situation. Then going to Point A might be "tier 1", getting item X when you're there is "tier 2", going to Point B is "tier 3", and so on. This, combined with the sharp writing that gets you invested in the story, combined with the ability to simply finish the quest rather than running back to where the quest originated from, makes questing one of the most fun aspects of The Secret World, rather than the weak single-player filler that bridges the gap between PvP, raids, and dungeons that it often feels like in other MMOs.
4. Advancement is constant, and addicting. There are no classes in The Secret World. Instead, like Guild Wars 2 and the more recent Elder Scrolls Online, skills and abilities are tied almost exclusively to the weapons your character uses. As you gain experience points, you earn "ability" points that you spend to unlock new weapon abilities. Where things start getting wild is here: you can only have seven abilities and seven passive skills equipped on your character at a time. AND, you earn ability points at a constant rate, not at an exponentially sliding scale like levels in other MMOs. The more powerful abilities simply cost more points to unlock. So when you start playing you'll immediately dive into this crack-like experience of acquiring points to unlock new abilities to mix and match with other abilities to create the ultimate shadow world badass! The resemblance to a collectible card game is clear; in fact, loadouts of abilities are collectively referred to in-game as "decks."
I could go on and on, but every word I write is one more second I could be playing this game. So I'll see you in The Secret World!
I have recently begun playing Funcom's new(ish) massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG, or just MMO), The Secret World. It is, in a word, amazing.
Set in our modern day, in The Secret World, you play a member of one of three secret societies: the Illuminati, the Dragon, or the Templars. These three groups have been manipulating the world around us for hundreds of years, and have also kept us blissfully unaware of the world's true evils. Monsters, dark magic, and sinister cults rule the shadows. These organizations keep them in check...but they are also constantly facing off against each other for true control of the world.
I have played many MMOs. Few other than World of Warcraft have held my attention for long, and I'll even admit that a lot of World of Warcraft's appeal to me might be more emotional than anything else. The thing of it is, I am pretty fickle with my gaming tastes, particularly when it comes to videogames. I am like a woman of ill repute, fluttering from game to game, never settling down with just one. So it is a pretty big deal when I fall so hard for one game. That's why Cortex Plus has been such a big deal for me on the tabletop end of things. And that's why The Secret World is such a big deal now. I implore you, Dear Reader, if you have a PC with even modest gaming capabilities, to make the small investment in picking up The Secret World and giving it a try. Here are some reasons why you should do so:
1. The story is actually really good. Writing/story development for most MMOs is pretty awful. And understandably so; few stories can be told skillfully over hundreds of hours, featuring unpredictable human players as their protagonists. The resources that could be spent on making believable dialogue and decent quest writing could also be better spent on squashing bugs and gameplay imbalances. So the fact that The Secret World can deliver quality storytelling so effortlessly is quite amazing. The NPCs in The Secret World are not just quest-spewing robots; they're real characters, with personalities and backstories. There are several stories hidden in chunks throughout the world that you'll uncover as you explore, piecing these fragments together to get an entire narrative on one of the three factions, or the backstory behind the zone you're exploring. Quests have cutscenes that you actually won't want to skip through because you'll want to see the story unfold! And although the writing is good, part of the reason you'll not want to skip through those cutscenes is because...
2. Quests are more than errands. Quests in The Secret World will frequently have you solving puzzles or answering riddles to progress. To accomodate the more cerebral atmosphere, The Secret World brilliantly has its own web browser so you don't even have to leave the game for hints (although this browser isn't all that great, and a decent smartphone or tablet is probably a better bet). Don't think you'll just spoiler your way to victory, though; the community, in some kind of unspoken agreement, are often cryptic with clues. That's not to say you can't find the solutions out there; but on the more direct sites like the game's forums or wiki page, you can safely visit them and have a reasonable chance of not having too much spoiled for you.
3. Quests are also convenient and smartly-designed. You never have to run back to the NPC quest-giver to finish a quest in The Secret World (unless doing so makes sense in the story of the quest, such as bringing supplies to a safehouse being besieged by zombies). Typically, a simple click of the "send" button on your in-game cellphone finishes the quest. Quests in The Secret World also don't follow the annoying "series" pattern of many other MMOs. You know; do this quest, now do this quest, then do that quest. Quests in The Secret World are complete stories, and each connected task is broken into what are called "tiers." For example, in a lesser MMO, you might have to go to Point A and get item X, then return to the quest-giver, turn it in, then get a new quest connected to the old one that has you going to Point B to get item Y. In The Secret World, you'll receive just the first quest, usually with a cutscene by the giver explaining the whole situation. Then going to Point A might be "tier 1", getting item X when you're there is "tier 2", going to Point B is "tier 3", and so on. This, combined with the sharp writing that gets you invested in the story, combined with the ability to simply finish the quest rather than running back to where the quest originated from, makes questing one of the most fun aspects of The Secret World, rather than the weak single-player filler that bridges the gap between PvP, raids, and dungeons that it often feels like in other MMOs.
4. Advancement is constant, and addicting. There are no classes in The Secret World. Instead, like Guild Wars 2 and the more recent Elder Scrolls Online, skills and abilities are tied almost exclusively to the weapons your character uses. As you gain experience points, you earn "ability" points that you spend to unlock new weapon abilities. Where things start getting wild is here: you can only have seven abilities and seven passive skills equipped on your character at a time. AND, you earn ability points at a constant rate, not at an exponentially sliding scale like levels in other MMOs. The more powerful abilities simply cost more points to unlock. So when you start playing you'll immediately dive into this crack-like experience of acquiring points to unlock new abilities to mix and match with other abilities to create the ultimate shadow world badass! The resemblance to a collectible card game is clear; in fact, loadouts of abilities are collectively referred to in-game as "decks."
I could go on and on, but every word I write is one more second I could be playing this game. So I'll see you in The Secret World!
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Pobody's Nerfect
I have been heaping tons of praise onto the Cortex Plus system over the past several blog entries. Today, to help balance things out, I am going to offer a criticism. Here it is: The Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide was a terrible idea. Okay, maybe "terrible" is a strong word. But this is the internet, so go hard or go home, right? Anyways, yeah; I think the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide is a mess, and quite possibly one of the weirdest RPG products I've ever seen.
I'll start by admitting that all of this might be my own problem. You see, I bought The Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide cold, with zero experience in any of the games it is derived from. I bought it with the understanding that generic versions of all three games existed in the guide, and that the guide was essentially a core RPG rulebook with some extra essays and hacking ideas thrown in. So I have approached this guide the way a role-playing gamer would approach a new role-playing game. I understand this was not Margaret Weis Productions (MWPs) intention. But why not? Could they not have it both ways? Would it have been so hard to make a role-playing game that is both a commentary on hacking a favorite system AND an actual, playable system? Pelgrane Press did it with 13th Age. Evil Hat did it with Fate Core. I'm frustrated because I love Cortex Plus more than either of those games, yet the book...dear God, that book...
On the surface, the guide seems innocous enough. People like to hack Cortex Plus games, so why not take collected advice about hacking from notable game designers and put it into a book, right? Well, in my not-so-humble opinion, the better approach would have been to make a generic, genre-less system out of Cortex Plus and ship that as a book (they did kinda-sorta do that, which I get to next paragraph). Take Fate Core, for example. People loved to hack Spirit of the Century, so what did Evil Hat do? They took the core system, took it apart and put it back together again, streamlined and revised it, then presented it in a crisp, clean book. MWP could have done that, but instead, they published this bizarre collection of essays about people doing it on their own, rather than just giving us a generic version of the system to begin with.
There are three system reference documents (SRDs) within the Hacker's Guide that offer generic equivalents of Cortex Plus' Action, Dramatic, and Superheroic systems. But these are, indeed, SRDs. They read very dry, they assume full comfort and familiarity with the game they've been pulled from, and all the important concepts are front-loaded into the first few pages, hitting a newcomer to the system such as myself like a double-barreled shotgun. Using these SRDs as standalone role-playing games is like jumping into a collectible card game with just booster packs; sure, it's doable, but if you're new, why not just start at the start?
Building off of that, "starting from the start", a Cortex Plus vet would probably say to pick up one of the Cortex Plus games...Smallville, or Leverage, or Marvel Superheroic (and, more recently, Firefly)...and become familiar with those first before jumping into the Hacker's Guide. The problem with that is, you've got guys like me who weren't terribly interested in any of those three franchises, but did want to know what the system was all about. Now that I've clawed my way through the book and love the system so much, I did go back and grab those three RPGs, but why make this book so unnecessarily exclusive? Again, why not just present the three core systems as complete standalone games, like Fate Core or even World of Darkness? Instead, we've got this book with these SRDs added in, literally an afterthought to the essays (I heard that the SRDs being added to the book was a Kickstarter unlock, so the original plan for the book didn't even have a game in it!) with some ideas for hacks kinda sprinkled in.
So if you're interested in getting into Cortex Plus (and you should be, because it's awesome), don't do what I did and run right to the Hacker's Guide. This book is a meta-game supplement to other Cortex Plus games, not a standalone book, no matter what anyone else tells you. Start with any of the four Cortex Plus RPGs first and read them. Then, and only then, go back and grab the Hacker's Guide.
I'll end this post with the normal slew of disclaimers:
-I'm nobody special. I don't publish or design RPGs; I just play them. I get very little traffic to this blog and I don't work especially hard to increase the circulation. MWP is not going to lose money from my words (especially because all my words basically boil down to "buy the other Cortex Plus games before the Hacker's Guide," so theoretically I'm helping MWP make money, but I digress);
-I love Cortex Plus. If that wasn't clear from the three or four positive blog posts about the game, here it is, again.
-I have nothing but respect and admiration for all of the talent and hard-work that went into, and continue to go into, Cortex Plus and Margaret Weis Productions. I offer these thoughts as constructive criticism, a critique, not a condemnation. If I come off as petty or outspoken in this post, I'm sincerely sorry.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
There's No Way I'm Goin' Back
This coming Sunday is episode two of my seven-episode run of Firefly. Like the pilot episode before it, I am going in with little more than a few ideas and then just putting my faith in my improv skills, the players' collective imagination, and the rulebook to do the rest. It turned out really well last time, and I am confident that it'll be good this time, too...
Earlier this year/late last year, I was in a very different place. I wanted to have meticulously-detailed games. I wanted to do vast amounts of prep and make this big production out of role-playing games. My repeated attempts to get a D&D campaign off the ground. My plans for Numenera. My Warhammer fantasy game. I wanted to kick it up a notch, and not do what I felt was half-assing a game. In attempting to do so, however, I think those games were more half-assed than ever. My heart just wasn't in the details. I just like to build off of the energy of the moment and create a story. I know many people don't have a problem with that at all. In fact, there are many indie RPGs out there that are banking on it. But I wanted to go in a different direction. I wanted to have a deep, sophisticated, detailed gaming experience, within the context of a fantastic story.
What happened? Where did it go wrong? I have my theories, of course. My main theory is I got caught up in the hype of new and popular RPGs. I wanted D&D to work because, well, it's D&D, the premier brand, the big show in the hobby. I didn't want to play it because I wanted to play it; I wanted to play it because everyone else wanted to play it. That was kind of the case with Numenera, too; it came out and made such a big splash, I had to dive into it, again not because I wanted to but because I was trying to follow a trend. Warhammer, I think, was the exception that proved the rule; though I do love that system and will probably go back to it when I feel like doing fantasy again, I pushed it before I was actually ready to run it, and so it fizzled.
This makes me a little sad. I would love to be the kind of GM who has these pages and pages of notes, and knows the rules inside and out, and has been running the same campaign for years. But I'm not that guy. The most ambitious I can hope for, I think, is this seven-episode run of Firefly, which, at two episodes a month, will run about four months. And I'm not even guaranteeing I can do that!
Over 2013, there were three games I consistently got to the table: Fate Core, using my custom-made Call of Cthulhu conversion; World Gone Mad, both as a Fate Core campaign setting and in its current form as an Apocalypse World hack; and tremulus. The trend here, for anyone familiar with these games, is obvious; I lean towards more story-first systems with low prep and an open campaign setting. Firefly aptly fits this mold, as well, and so (though, again, no promises) it seems very possible that this campaign will span much longer than my prior attempts.
I'm growing tired of this whole "game of the week" thing I've been doing the past several months. I was so excited by the prospect of so many different games, I became obsessed with the question of what to play, and ignored the question of how do I play, and what game best complements my own style. I'm not sure if I'll feel this way next week, or even tomorrow, but today? I'm ready to settle down.
Earlier this year/late last year, I was in a very different place. I wanted to have meticulously-detailed games. I wanted to do vast amounts of prep and make this big production out of role-playing games. My repeated attempts to get a D&D campaign off the ground. My plans for Numenera. My Warhammer fantasy game. I wanted to kick it up a notch, and not do what I felt was half-assing a game. In attempting to do so, however, I think those games were more half-assed than ever. My heart just wasn't in the details. I just like to build off of the energy of the moment and create a story. I know many people don't have a problem with that at all. In fact, there are many indie RPGs out there that are banking on it. But I wanted to go in a different direction. I wanted to have a deep, sophisticated, detailed gaming experience, within the context of a fantastic story.
What happened? Where did it go wrong? I have my theories, of course. My main theory is I got caught up in the hype of new and popular RPGs. I wanted D&D to work because, well, it's D&D, the premier brand, the big show in the hobby. I didn't want to play it because I wanted to play it; I wanted to play it because everyone else wanted to play it. That was kind of the case with Numenera, too; it came out and made such a big splash, I had to dive into it, again not because I wanted to but because I was trying to follow a trend. Warhammer, I think, was the exception that proved the rule; though I do love that system and will probably go back to it when I feel like doing fantasy again, I pushed it before I was actually ready to run it, and so it fizzled.
This makes me a little sad. I would love to be the kind of GM who has these pages and pages of notes, and knows the rules inside and out, and has been running the same campaign for years. But I'm not that guy. The most ambitious I can hope for, I think, is this seven-episode run of Firefly, which, at two episodes a month, will run about four months. And I'm not even guaranteeing I can do that!
Over 2013, there were three games I consistently got to the table: Fate Core, using my custom-made Call of Cthulhu conversion; World Gone Mad, both as a Fate Core campaign setting and in its current form as an Apocalypse World hack; and tremulus. The trend here, for anyone familiar with these games, is obvious; I lean towards more story-first systems with low prep and an open campaign setting. Firefly aptly fits this mold, as well, and so (though, again, no promises) it seems very possible that this campaign will span much longer than my prior attempts.
I'm growing tired of this whole "game of the week" thing I've been doing the past several months. I was so excited by the prospect of so many different games, I became obsessed with the question of what to play, and ignored the question of how do I play, and what game best complements my own style. I'm not sure if I'll feel this way next week, or even tomorrow, but today? I'm ready to settle down.
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