#RPGaDay: Day 5, 6, and 7

As expected I got behind in my posting for this over the weekend. But we're back today to make up for lost time.

Day 5- Which RPG cover best captures the spirit of the game.

Good question, there's a lot of games out there that have covers that really inspires the game within. In recent memory, the one that I feel captures the game the best is Pathfinder. I mean come on, look at that thing; it's got adventurers fighting a dragon amidst the ruins of some castle. The only other one that comes close to such evocative imagery is the cover for Eberron, and that was done by the same artist. The problem with Eberron was that the full artwork got condensed on the cover, so only if you saw the original piece would you appreciate it's full glory. Meanwhile, limiting it to a small piece of it was a disservice to the artist.


Moving right along...

Day Six: You can game every day for a week; describe what you would do.

Good lord, I'm reminded of my college days...

If I was running the game and had to run for a week straight, I'd have a ton of prep-work to do; I can tell you that. Actually, gaming every day for a week actually wouldn't be great if it was limited it to one game; it would be a lot of "game, pause for several hours to plan next phase, game, plan for several hours, repeat".

What would be better is to get six others and have each person ready to run a solid, long game sessions of their game. So seven campaigns in seven days; that sounds awesome. Now, if I could only  still survive that long on gamer food without dying from digestive distress, it would be better.

Day Seven: What was your most impactful RPG session.

Oooph. Yeah, I remember this one. It was a 3rd Edition D&D game back in...2002? An epic Twin Worlds game titled "The Four Aces". The scene was that the heroes were opening at a dimensional opening from the "other world" (long story). They were ground zero for a Yuan-Ti invasion. In my mind, the fight was supposed to be a "present PCs with overwhelming forces and make them run". So there's my group of 8 PCs (ah, the good old days...) and about 60 Yuan-Ti come flooding out of the gate, with more behind them. According to my plans, they turned and ran. This is when I made my first mistake (well, second one actually, my first one came in the pre-game statting for my NPCs, I'll explain in a moment); I had several Yuan Ti teleport in front of them. Not many, maybe a half dozen big ones (abominations?). In my post-game discussions, the mentality of my players turned from "he wants us to flee" to "okay, he wants us to fight; let's do this". So they pause in their escape to take out six abominations while the bulk of the Yuan Ti invasion force comes at them from behind. A grand melee starts, one that would prolong a one hour engagement into a three hour slogfest, and my second (or first) mistake happens.

While crafting up the stats for the lead Yuan Ti warriors, I gave their commander a magic scimitar. It was a Greater Displacing Scimitar, a nice threat for my brother who was playing the Aasimar Paladin. I mistakenly thought to myself "this would be fun if he got hit with it and was forced into another plane of existence", not actually thinking he'd fail the save throw necessary to keep that from happening.  I thought it would be a nice "you feel dislocated for a moment, but snap back to this reality" that would ramp up the threat and tension.

He got hit with the scimitar and proceeded to roll a "2" on his Saving Throw. So the big, bad tank got punted into a hell dimension. This was in round 3; remember how I said this turned into a 3 hour slogfest? My brother ended up going into his bedroom and poking his computer (justifiably) in an angry funk while listening to everyone else at least have the enjoyment of playing out the battle. At the end of the fight, they found a way to open a dimensional portal where they found him standing amidst the bodies of dozens of minor demons (I didn't want to gyp him out of XP). My brother was not happy, my players felt challenged to the point of frustration, and I learned a valuable lesson about tactical management, scene setting, and Murphy's Law.

#RPGaDay: Day 4

#4: Which RPG have you played the most since August 2016?

This may come as a shock to you all, but it's the Star Wars Narrative Dice System by Fantasy Flight Games!

/sarcasm-off

Since August of last year I've ended my Legacy-era Another Longshot campaign, continued my Rebellion-Era Relics campaign, joined my buddy Tim's Rebellion(?)-Era Hay in a Needlestack campaign, and started a Dawn Of Rebellion-era Renegades campaign.

Oh, and I ran a KotOR Era JLA/Star Wars game down at GamerNation Con that people seemed to enjoy.

I have played A LOT of Star Wars since finding the West End Games edition in High School. I've also purchased just about every book there was since the D20 OCR. My PCs have faced clones of Darth Maul and dead Jedi Knights from Geonosis, outsmarted hutts and bounty hunters, and even were the reason there wasn't an At-At at the bunker during the Battle of Endor. They've rubbed elbows with Luke, Han, and Leia, and even been some of them in Alternate Universes. 

You'd think that after...25 years?...of gaming in the Star Wars universe, I'd be tapped out. But I'm not.  I'll keep running and playing as long as the ideas keep coming.  

And I don't feel like I'll be running out of ideas anytime soon.

Hmm...I'll need to do some research for tomorrow's question...

#RPGaDay: Day 3

So, Day 3...

How do you find out about new RPGs.

How else? THE INTERNET!

Typically anything I need to know about new RPGs, or any game in general, I find out through Facebook or Reddit. I'm involved in a few communities that inevitably share around anything I might be interested in. New RPG books from FFG appear on my feed regularly, and anything that comes up like Star Trek Adventures or the Fallout Wasteland Wargame eventually get back to me. The D20 Radio group in particular is a good source for games that I'd be inclined to play.

That being said, I'm not really hunting for new RPGs right now. I've somewhat settled on a system I like and will probably stick with it for some time...

Tune in tomorrow for a completely unsurprising answer to "What RPG have you played the most since August 2016"!

#RPGaDay: Day 1 and Day 2

So here's a fun thing I'll be doing for the next 31 days...

I answered these on my facebook, but figured I could expand upon them here.

1. What published RPG do you wish you were playing right now?

Savage Rifts; I had a lot of fun playing it with Darren West at GNC4. Rifts has always been a setting that I really dug in concept, but the execution has never worked well for me except those few games I ran before the system got REALLY bloated.

The setting is a lot of fun, and adds in a lot of potential. It's got human supremacist nazis, magic tyrants, vicious monsters, and horrible demons. Power armor, techno-wizards, robots, magic users, cyber-knights, cyborgs, and of course; Glitter Boys.

Savage Rifts did a good job of making the game playable. Even so, I'll likely make a Rifts Theme for Genesys...

2. What RPG would you like to see published?

If it wasn't for the fact that I wrote my own hack for it, I'd love to see a Fallout RPG make it to widespread publication (and Exodus doesn't count). Looks like Modius Entertainment has the rights to Fallout for wargaming, and I can only hope that they take their 2d20 system that they use for Mutant Chronicles, Conan, and Star Trek Adventures and make a Fallout RPG.

Still, I've got my own game setting, and am adapting it for Genesys.

This should be fun to do, especially with GenCon 50 coming up...

#RPGaDay

Anomaly - The League Faces Challenges

The formation of the League of Allied Worlds may have brought an end to the Garden Conflicts, but it certainly didn't wipe away a hundred years of prejudice and suspicion. In spite of it's name, the League was never meant to become a unified government for all of the worlds in the Garden Nebula. At best, it was a way for the various planetary and interstellar governments to come together to resolve disputes without armed conflict. 

Those early meetings of the League Council were rough; shouting and posturing was seemingly the preferred method of conversation rather than debate and compromise. There was a lot for the Council to work out; planets that had changed sides during the Conflicts that two or sometimes three governments claimed, a interstellar economy and trade treaties needed to be ratified, and then there was the problem of the Allef Refugees.  These were just the tip of the gigantic stack of bills, legislature, and diplomatic treaties the Council faced.

In the case of conquered planets; those had to be resolved on a case by case basis. Forty three worlds fell into this category; worlds that various empires had controlled during the last hundred years. Each government would have to pour resources into those worlds, species migrated to those planets to not only secure and protect the world, but also cultivate it or look for a chance at a new beginning. Over the years, the fact that a world held both humans and Naguli populations meant that no matter which empire the world was turned over to, there was a considerable portion of the population that could be upset with the change. This led to concerns over riots and armed revolt; and that happened. 

On the world of Barm, the Granos population (about 38% of those living on Barm) objected to being turned over to the Republic of Kel. They protested and formed resistance cells against the Republic government. The resistance groups tried to get the Granos Territories to send help, but the Territories were bound to non-interference by the League Agreement; aiding the Granos take over the world would likely restart the Garden Conflicts. In the end, most of the Granos were offered a chance to leave Barm, and were given a paltry amount by the Republic as a "reparation award". The money barely covered transit expenses, and left those who returned to the Territories with nothing.  Meanwhile, those Granos who elected to stay on Barm reaped the rewards, taking over vast amounts of real estate and holdings.

The interstellar economy was an easier topic to resolve; most empires agreed that they would need a universal currency to foster trade between them. Establishing the currency was easy, implementing it was hard. It took an army of bankers and finance experts from every empire to come up with the exchange rates and treasury indexes that allowed the Garden Credit system to come into being as a legitimate currency, and to avoid the inevitable spiral of inflation. The Garden Credit became the preferred currency across the nebula within 5 years of the inception of the League. 

The Allef refugees became a complex problem for the League. The Allef were always an aloof race, usually preferring to stand alone during the Conflicts, and only entering the war when they had something to gain. The Allef Domains incorporated worlds from the Republic and the Naguli Empire, all of which were lost during the Conflict's final years. While the destruction of Allef led to the creation of the League, none of the League members could really decide what to do with those Allef who had either been rescued from the dying world or where off-world when the disaster occurred. All the League members were trying to rebuild their own worlds, help their own people rebuild or else handle the waves of refugees from their own empires; ex-patriots who elected to come home when their worlds were turned over to other governments. None of the League members formally elected to grant the Allef any relief, citing a need to focus on their own worlds for a time. This led the Allef no where to go; most had no money or holdings to utilize; those were all vaporized or left behind on Allef. A few philanthropists and charitable organizations did what they could to help the Allef Refugees, but many more slipped through the cracks and had to strike out on their own to survive.

In recent years, some Allef have managed to form small colonies and communities on worlds throughout the nebula, but these are small and widespread. Its still more common to find Allef alone or in small packs, wandering the space lanes trying to survive in a League that owes them everything, yet gives them nothing.

Anomaly - The Birth of the League

It started with the end of the Allef.

The war had gone on for a hundred years. Collectively it was known as “the Garden Conflicts”, because at various points in its history empires would leave and later rejoin the fighting. Looking back on it now, no one truly left the war, they merely stopped fighting for a relative brief moment to catch their breath and replenish their losses. But usually within a generation, they would be back looking for justice, or vengeance, or resources, or whatever it was they were fighting for this time.

After a century of conflict, the empires started to get desperate. Many had lived their whole lives knowing nothing but war. Only the Granos and the Narasheem could remember a time when there was no war, back before the empires even knew the others existed. Many of them sought out new weapons and technologies, an edge that could bring this conflict to a close once and for all. The Uranar tried it first with Gesalin Gas, which they unleashed on the Republic of Kel. The death of Iasalo, three hundred thousand humans, drove the Republic into a frenzy. The Narasheem and the Granos weren’t too thrilled with their neighbor either, and formed a truce with the Republic. That phase of the war ended in a stalemate; the Uranar couldn’t use their Gesalin gas on any of their enemies' worlds, and the trio couldn’t invade the Reaches for fear of losing their forces to Gas attack.

The Republic researched “Jump Cannons”, mass drivers that could fire projectiles through localized jump gates. The Granos attempted to create supersoldiers through bio-tech research. The Narsheem sought out the power to weaponize solar flares to bathe fleets and planets in electro-magnetic pulses. Each empire had something that they were working on that could result in the utter annihilation of their enemies, but it was the Allef that made everyone wake up and see what the century had wrought.

The Allef, besieged by the Naguli and the Drakon clans, and abandoned by their allies in the Republic, were desperate. The Allef Domain had shrunk, and they were reeling. The Naguli had conquered most of the Domain’s former worlds, while the Drakons raided the rest until there was nothing left worth taking. With their backs against the wall, and no help in sight, the Allef attempted one last gambit to save their people and stop the war; they succeeded with the latter goal.

On that fateful day, a Naguli invasion fleet appeared over the Allef homeworld. As they approached, the Allef engaged their secret weapon; a gravity singularity bomb. The bomb detonated in front of the Naguli fleet, just as the main command ship was arriving. The gravity singularity formed at the same time as the massive command ship’s jump gate. The two fields interacted, catastrophically. When the blast faded, the Naguli fleet was gone, but most of Allef was gone with it. Over 60% of the planet’s mass, the area closest to the singularity, was drawn in. It was as if a giant entity took a massive bite out of the planet. Allef’s atmosphere destabilized, it’s gravity was thrown off by its loss of mass. What was left of Allef shook itself apart over the next ten days.  

The suicidal destruction of Allef shook the other empires to their foundations. They saw the lengths that a once powerful empire took to win the war and were shocked into action. Rescue ships from several empires headed to Allef to try and save anyone they could. Even so, only ten thousand Allef were rescued from the planet that once held three billion.

The death of the Allef greatly disturbed the other empires. They took a hard look at themselves, their people, and the effects the war had on the entire Stellar Garden. This event prompted the Republic to negotiate with the other empires. The Granos Territories responded first, but eventually the Narasheem worlds, and the Uranar Reaches entered negotiations. Even the Naguli Empire came to the table. The Drakon Clans ceased their attacks as they evaluated what the empires were doing.  After months of arguing, deal making, negotiating, and eventually peacemaking, the League of Allied Worlds were formed.

And all it took was the death of an empire.

Rookies - First Time GMs

So it's Father's Day, and I like many parents in this hobby have the pleasure of sharing gaming with my step-son. He's played in one campaign of mine and is lining up to be in the next one. He's come along as a player.  

In the meantime, he's started playing games with his peers; his own friends from high school and college. Actually, he's started down the path of game-mastering, running games for his friends. Frankly, I dimly recall my own first time experiences running games back when I was his age; another decade...hell, another millennium ago. Not only that, but when it comes to Star Wars gaming, I ran 5 whole systems ago. The West End Games system had different rules, but not really a different vibe. WEG's system was ahead of it's time, it had a narrative core layered on with rules and crunch bloat.

As I said, I don't recall much of specific challenges I faced when I was my son's age, but as an exercise, I realized it could be an interesting experience to talk to Jason about the challenges he's facing as a rookie GM.

So why did you want to run a Star Wars game?

Because I've been playing it enough, I wanted to try being the GM.  It's the game system I've enjoyed the most out of what I've played.

What else have you played?

Mutants and Masterminds, the White Wolf games like Vampire, Werewolf, and those. What's their fantasy game...Exalted?  I think I played one of your Rifts modules, but not in the Rifts systems (likely one of my many attempts to hack it to another system).  

I tried the latest Marvel Super Heroes game, but I found the system too complex.

How many times have you run a game?

Three times so far, and they've been all really small groups; 2 people. I've got 5 players, it's just problematic trying to get them all together, so I run with whoever can show up.

 

Talk to me about your experiences running the game; what aspects are you finding a challenge and is anything coming to you easy?

I've been running adventure modules so far, and it involves a lot of "fleshing it out". They give you a good map to follow, and suggest a lot of stuff for plotlines in between; side quests and things like that. I've been trying to do that, but I've had two problems; the first issue is I've found that fleshing out the book's suggestions is tough.

The other problem is my PCs are relatively new to this, and are more focused on following the main storyline, so some of the side quest stuff is out of their interest.  Like, in Mask of the Pirate Queen, the players are eager to take the bounty contact without doing any background checks on the employer or obtain any information about the target of the bounty. They just want to take the contract and advance the story line.

As far as what's easy?  Combat is really easy, the PCs are all over that, and I enjoy the way the Star Wars system works. It's so open for what you can try to pull off with the results of the rolls.

Rules wise, what's the hardest obstacle you've found?

When I can use skulduggery (laughs) It's really just that you can use a variety of skills for a variety of situations. I'm just trying to figure out which skill you want to use or how to use it given any situation I encounter.

You're running your players through several printed modules. Do your players do what you expect, or are they going "off the rails"? Do you think the books handle that problem, or are you having to come up with your own solutions?

They're not even going off the rails, they're pretty much sticking with them. They straight-line the plot line and don't get distracted with any side topics.  Although they did decide to murder a Rodian shop assistant...

It's like they're playing Diablo; follow the main story and no side quests.

Do you want to create your own adventures?  Any ideas of what you want to come up with for a story or plot idea?

Absolutely, but I'm kinda stuck on what I'd want to do for an adventure with them. Thus far we only have one person in the group who's gamed before. Bringing the newbies through the various adventure modules is a good start. But I'll eventually run out of modules.

Honeslty, I think I'd like to run something similar to Beyond the Rim; find something, retrieve it, have stuff happen in between, and then they discover what they retrieved isn't what they originally thought. 

What setting would you like to run the game in?  Rebellion? Outer Rim?  Force and Destiny?

Probably a freeform game. If everyone shows up we've got two Edge of the Empire characters and three Force users. I think Edge of the Empire is the way to go for this group.

How have your players been taking to the game?

They seem to enjoy it. I mean, they show up, throw some dice, attempt to kill people, and have a good time.

What's their play style?

"Blow everything up". The last game I played that my buddy Everett was running, we had two Hired Guns, two Bountry Hunters, and me as the Demolitionist.  So yeah; "blow everything up".  We had to rescue someone from a building and the other players started throwing explosives through the windows.

I can't image that ended well.

Thankfully the guy we had to rescue was on the second floor.  Everything else got demolished. Anything we might have wanted on the first floor was completely wrecked.

It was all high school guys; no one wanted to be the talker, they all wanted to just wreck things.

I had that phase...

Honestly I'm surprised because two of them didn't go Force Users this time around.

Because they haven't blown stuff up with the force yet.

Exactly!

I'm trying to think of my own experiences, and I'm having a hard time doing it. When I was your age running games, I mean.

When I started playing, I wanted to go straight combat. With your Another Longshot game, I decided not to go full combat. Let's be honest, everyone in my group was a tank or a beatstick.

Right?  Do you find yourself wanting to spread out more?

Yeah, that's why I want to go part mechanic for my next PC. As opposed to maxing out agility and shoot everything off the map.  

But that's fun too.

True! That being said, with some of the mechanics stuff for Rigger, it's really useful.

Any final thoughts on running and being a new GM?

I need to write stuff down if I want to make a game. Otherwise I'm not going to have a clue where to continue games.  I need to write down NPCs, planets, names, backstories; write it all down and keep track of it. I haven't really remembered every character's name when I played Longshot as a player. It's important to do that now that I'm a GM.

I do like using a white board for combat scenes.  In one of your games you did that, and I liked that. My players found it really useful to see where opponents and hazards are. So I'm going to keep using that.

Thanks for participating, Jason!

 

I gotta say, I'm having a "proud papa bear" moment when I think of my stepson sitting down behind the screen and running games. 

He keeps wanting to borrow my books, though...and I need them too.

Finally, a big nod of thanks to my wife for suggesting this topic. She's a real smartie, that one.