Downfall, an RPG by Caroline Hobbs

February 24, 2016 Tomer Gurantz

I've funded more than a few RPGs through Kickstarter in the prior years. However, I have played few of them, thus far.

One that I just received was Downfall, which was originally released here as a Kickstarter. It is described thusly:

Downfall is a tabletop role-playing game that explores the collapse of a society, a cataclysm brought about by a fatal Flaw at work within it. First you sit down and build your world, then you destroy it. You tell the story of a hero who tries to save their home. But in Downfall, the hero fails.

I got my copy in the mail just over a week ago, and got a chance to peruse the 70 page manual, and I really like what I've found.

I'm a big fan of a few of the narrative story (aka "hippy") games I've played, such as Microscope, The Quiet Year, various postworldgames, and The Fall of Magic. Most of these games don't even have a randomizer. They're basically story exercises that are fun to play with people who aren't assholes.

Downfall is very similar. It's quite specifically a 3-player game, where the players equally help create the society, as well as the 3 main characters (a protagonist "Hero", an antagonist "Fallen", and a third character, the "Pillar". One aspect central to the game, and the very first thing you define, is The Flaw, around which the whole scenario rotates. Six Traditions will also be defined, which come up in various parts of the game.

The players will take turns playing these characters throughout the game, as the society slowly collapses. Play time is variable, but I suspect a 2-4 hour window would work.

Haven't played just yet, but it's on my short list. I hope to write again about it once I've played. Fortunately for me I've got a work gathering with some gamer friends in a few weeks, and it's magic number: THREE of us. This'll be on top of the pile.

Downfall can currently be purchased from <3 Games.

Fallout Shelter RPG: Creating Objective cards

February 21, 2016 Tomer Gurantz

Creating objectives for the Fallout Shelter RPG

One thing I wanted to mimic from the Fallout Shelter game, and inject into the corresponding RPG, was the concept of Objectives and rewards.

A common objective screen from the phone game.

Normally, these start out very simple, with objectives such as "Collect 50 water", or "Level up 1 dweller". These are very easy objectives that get you into the flow of the game, and are almost a training exercise the first few times you play. Additionally, they give you some needed, albeit random, bonuses.

I thought this would be a fun element to add to the RPG to give it the look and feel of the phone game. And so...

The first iteration: Random objectives

I started with a look at many of the generic objectives from the phone game. Things like:

Stop # incidents
Kill # <various creatures>
Rush # rooms
Collect # resources

As you notice, these are all fairly mechanical objectives. What's nice about these, even as they are just mechanical, is that they provide some impetus for the player to drive towards, even if they are fairly metagaming constructs. "Do this thing to gain a reward of money or items."

I took a screen capture, and then created a generically looking graphic that was blank, to use as a template. I also modified it slightly so that it fit on a 3x5" Word template, so that they could easily be printed on index cards. A la:

I added text boxes around the objective areas, so that I could easily type and create my own. However, wanting to keep the same font style as the game, I needed to find what font was being used.

Introducing the What The Font analyzer. Simply plug in a picture with a font, and it will attempt to tell you what is used. In our case it was Dom Casual, for example downloadable here.

I made about 8 of these with the intention of using them in the game, but because there were so many things still in progress during the first playtest, I completely spaced out and forgot to use them!

Good thing I was having a good long conversation with Howie, one of my players, after the game. I showed him the cards, and he had some thoughts around these being used to inject a little more role-playing and such into the game.

And so...

The second iteration: Narrative objectives

I took Howie's feedback and played around with it, and came up with personality-based objective cards. As an example, here are two, for Ambitious and Brave:

What you'll notice is that the objectives themselves are themed. Those on the Ambitious card are all things having to do with being ambitious. This means that choosing this card, or set of objectives, gives the player a way to play the character in a manner that runs with that personality.

Additionally, not all objectives are purely mechanical. For example, on the Brave card we have the objective "Do something brave". That can be anything, and knowing that there is a mechanical bonus (in this case 30 Caps) the player has more drive to act according to that trait. Another example on that card is the "Take an injury for someone else". This is nothing like the objectives in the phone game, but provides a way in the RPG to play "brave" for mechanical bonuses, but with some risk.

The little circle bubbles are there to assist the player in tracking how many of these things they've done to complete the individual objective.

In total, I made 16 of these. Because this is a 4 player game, my intention was to give each player a random selection of 4 cards, and then have them choose the 1 or 2 that they fancy. This gives the player some choice into their characters personality and bonuses. This also provides me, as the GM, a wide variety of character combinations that I get to play with, as I run this game over the course of the year.

Leveling up

Now, I also planned to tweak the game, from the initial playtest, to provide a level-up functionality. Originally I planned to have this timed, so that 2 hours into the actual game (which should last 4 hours, at a con), all the players would level up. Then again at the 3 hour mark. The level up would have some bonuses to die rolls, hit points, and even a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat upgrade.

After showing these new objective cards to Howie for feedback, he contributed another 2 excellent pieces I incorporated:

Call these "Narrative objective" cards (and maybe even label them as such on the back), since the personality trait is a narrative-based objective. I liked that.
Make the level up mechanic tied to these objectives. If the player completes all 3 objectives on an individual card, they level up! That was perfect, as I planned at this point for each player to have 2 level up possibilities, and 2 cards. Additionally, this makes them work that much harder at trying to complete the objectives given.

I got to test these new cards and mechanics at Orccon 2016 for 2 game sessions, one for adults, and one for kids. It worked brilliantly both times, and I'm really happy with how this all came out. I also love that if I get inspired, I can easily create more at a later point in time, which has no strict impact on the game, but could very much influence inter-party conflicts and narrative directions for the game.

Fallout Shelter on the PC; a near-sighted affair

February 18, 2016 Tomer Gurantz

OK, so recently I've been getting over playing Fallout Shelter... I mean, you can only go so far with it, despite it's yumminess. I did have a slight resurgence playing in the relatively new "Survival" mode, but even that only holds my attention so.

That said, I found this PC Review article by Ian explaining how to go about installing the BlueStacks Android emulator on your PC, so that you could play on your laptop. (You can also see some hints at the Bluestacks website; good marketing, that.)

So, I installed and started playing it on the PC, which breathed a little more life into this process for me. A few days later I'm quickly over it, but I just thought it was strange that both vaults I've created are extremely near sighted. Seriously, almost everyone has glasses. Including the raiders!

So, how does this game stack up on the PC? Well, it's the same in general, obviously, since this is just an emulator. However not having a touchscreen PC, it's a little annoying in various ways. Zooming out is not well controlled. You use the CTRL and plus (+) or minus (-) keys, but they work haphazardly. Also, zooming all the way out doesn't give you a full view of the vault as it does on my iPhone or Android tablet.

I've played this game on the iPhone, where it is seemless. On my Android tablet, the game is a little finicky; it's hard to grab people in a timely manner. On the PC I found it somewhere in the middle.

It is nice seeing it all BIG, so that's the main positive. And I suppose if you don't have a smart phone, this would be the way - maybe the only way - to go!

EDIT: Time hack!

OK, so this may also work on phones, but with other unintended consequences...

You can use the Bluestack settings to move your virtual phone back and forth in time. THIS IS THE ULTIMATE hack for Fallout Shelter. Send someone into the wasteland... now move the clock forward 24 hours. Boom, found 24 items. Tell them to come back. Move the clock forward 12 hours. Boom, returned. Similarly you can accelerate training. The nice thing is that moving the clock back has no negative effects.

The method I've found is to setup your vault, then close the Fallout Shelter app in Bluestacks, then go to Settings and change the phone, then open the Fallout Shelter app. Done... it registers the new time just as if that much time had passed.

Strategicon Orccon 2016 (Feb 12-15)

February 17, 2016 Tomer Gurantz

Con startup

The usual: stay over at Howie's place Thursday night. The morning brings a fresh green juice to pump up my body with all the nutrients I'm definitely not going to get at the con.

After the "running of the nerds" for RPG signups, Howie and I find ourselves decently positioned for games.

The game packaged and ready to go. I love how heavy this box is. Feels like a portable nuke.

Fallout Shelter: Finding The Descenders (Fri 2-6pm)

GM: Me.
Players:

Lori as Pamela Smith, Wasteland Orphan
Jim as Franklin Webber, The Immigrant
Andy as Mike McMahan, Wasteland Explorer
CA Dave as Ed, Food Engineer

This was my scenario and system built around Fallout Shelter, the phone game. Getting to the room I already had a few alts waiting to play, and lucky them, cause Bob was stuck in traffic (unfortunately for him). That meant that both Andy Salazar and CA Dave joined Jim and Lori Sandoval for this little adventure.

Background: I tried to build a system that both celebrated the resource management and mood of Fallout Shelter, but: role playing. I settled on a Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) hack, but based on Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats and a d10 (simplifying Fallout Shelter's percentages). Oh ya, and Lego. I play-tested this a week prior, which gave me enough time to refine some props and tighten up some mechanics.

During a pee break; you get to see a little behind-the-scenes.

What game doesn't benefit from an initial journey through the wasteland.

I came into the con hoping the game was ready for prime time, and from the players comments, it didn't disappoint. Of course as the GM you are always looking at the bad, and there is definitely more than a few things I can fix, especially around the scenarios (of which this game can handle many and various).

Here's a clip from the Happy Jacks RPG podcast (live from Orccon) from the next night, with CA Dave and Jim Sandoval talking about the game. I do it partly to brag, but also because it means much to me that people enjoy it so:

Full podcast episode can be found on Happy Jacks RPG Podcast website.

Hell House (Fri 8pm-midnight)

GM: Tyler Spahr
Players: Tomer, Howie, Dimitri, Andy, Nick, and his girlfriend (each playing themselves, roughly)

The description read: Six friends gather at a rental beach house once a year for a private weekend of tabletop gaming. This year they are playing a game for their lives. You are put to the ultimate test of survival with 5 of your closest friends.

This scenario felt very reminiscent of an escape room, where the room is trying very hard to kill you. Everyone came into it ready to play, and the role playing was fun. Tyler has scoped out the house, full of traps and interesting puzzles. The biggest problem was that an escape room relies on visual cues, and although there were some available (pictures and other props), we would get stuck and need to ask for clarifications on views, rooms and layouts.

Some of the really cool parts was that each player had his or her own tower. Additionally, certain game effects would have physical impacts on you as a player. If your eye got poked out, you'd need to wear an eye mask while pulling. A few fingers chopped off? You'd have to wrap those fingers in a gauze and not let them touch the tower. Loved it.

Our general feedback was that the game could benefit from a few more props, including picture / map layouts of the rooms, to better facilitate questions and ensuring all the players were roughly on the same page in regards to the very important physical locations in this game. Talking to Tyler later in the week, he created such props for the next night's game, and to great effect. I would highly recommend checking this out.

Dead World (Sat 9am-1pm)

GM: Sam Carter
Players:

Tomer as Rose ("Thorn"), The Calamity
Howie as Eave, The Preacher
Andy as Russel, The ?

Normally I make it a point of playing in Sam's Saturday late night Dread games, having done maybe 5 times in the last few years. This was the first time I've got to play in a game by Sam that wasn't Dread. The system is a PbtA hack for something like the gritty western Deadwood series.

As in most PbtA games, we did a bunch of character and party bonds and definitions at the onset. Eave The Preacher was travelling, and preaching the gospel of Eve. I played Rose, who everyone else called "Thorn", a dour, cool killer. Russel was an ex-slave, and the two of us traveled as hired ons for Eave's traveling road show. We ended up getting mixed up with the local preachers, who didn't take kindly to us, and as it turned out, weren't preachers at all... they were wanted men hiding out in the town. Shit went sideways, but in the end we wrecked shop, and settled down in various ways. Eave, it turned out, was not a male as many thought she was (which is perhaps why her sermons always captured my ear), and I opened a bar called the Tumbleweed Rose, and served up my lovely drink, the Whiskey Thorn (a thick-cut slice of bacon in a shot of whisky).

All in all, the game captured the mood well, and if you want a somewhat pure western game (i.e. not the Deadlands fantastic variety), this suits very well.

Dog Day Afternoon LARP (Sat 2-6pm)

GM: Aaron Vanek (and Kirsten Hageleit)
Players: About 7 of us, including Sasha, Howie, and more

The description read: "Inspired by the classic eponymous movie based on a real NYC bank robbery in August 1972. What was supposed to be a simple job turned into an unforgettable examination of the human condition. No familiarity with the film or the real incident expected."

This was definitely one of the highlights of the con. Aaron and his wife have run LARPs of one sort or another for some time, and this was something Aaron wanted to test out. He basically setup 2 rooms, one as the bank, and one as the police-type room. A phone connected the two. There were effectively 3 factions: The Robbers, The Hostages (bank employees / customers), The Authorities (police / FBI). Him and his wife played all sorts of NPCs, like the media, crank callers, the crowds that gathered that day, the mayor's office, etc. I got to play young Sal, the young partner in crime.

They setup the scene so that it is effectively the start of this real historical event, and then just let it play out. Everyone had certain restrictions: The cops couldn't shoot the robbers if they had hostages. The hostages couldn't overpower the robbers, but could try to escape. In a confrontation between the robbers and the cops, the robbers would lose.

It was fascinating to watch it all play out, and what was excellent was the work done in providing the social and historical background around this situation.

If you are interested in the story, feel free to read the plot (spoilers!) here on Wikipedia. I haven't yet seen the film, but it's on the to-do list.

The Happy Jacks RPG Podcast, LIVE (Sat 8-11pm)

I've been coming to Strategicon for 3 years, in large part due to this podcast, and yet I've never attended their 8pm Saturday live 'casts. I've always wanted to, but Saturday at 8pm is the time for some of the best games, including the likes of Cthulhu and Dread. I didn't quite mean to make this an underhanded insult to the crew, but succeeded immensely!

The podcast was excellent fun, entertaining, and drinky. I got to meet weasel_creature and wife, good salt of the earth. I got to hear people talk shit about my game. Good shit. One more check on the bucket shit list!

Fall of Magic (Sat 11:30pm-1am)

Bob Q as Ellamura, Golem of Ravenhall
Tomer as Caspian, Knight of Stormguard
Howie as Fawn, Swineherd of Barley Town
Sam C as ?

Time for some late night hippie smoking! I had a number of different game, but we settled on Fall of Magic, by Ross Cowman of Heart of the Deernicorn. Fall of Magic is a narrative-heavy game played on a scroll. There are minimal mechanics, and if you are looking for dice and miniatures, you are in the wrong place. If you are looking to play a game with index cards... JACKPOT!

The premise is extremely simple: Magic is dying, and the Magus is dying with it. We travel together to the realm of Umbra where magic was born.

Three of us started the game at Ravenhall, the starting point. The path is a bit of a railroad for the first few locations, as we are just starting to explore our respective characters, as well as the Magus, which everyone can help define. In this game I was the first to grab the Magus, and decided to make it a group of 15 little 2-foot high gnomes that traveled in a group. After a few locations go by, we get to a crossroads. There are more than a few of these in the game, so it definitely has replay-ability just in that respect.

A few scenes in, Sam swung by, having completed his 8pm-midnight game, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to just insert him into the game mid-flow. My friend Howie had to leave about an hour and half in, and I was also surprised at how easy it would have been to continue the story without him, if we wanted to. However being 1:30am, we decided to call it quits.

It's definitely not a game for everyone, but it's also definitely a game I want to play again and again, with different folks. As with many of these narrative-heavy mechanics-light games, I highly recommend people try them out. This one is a great one for a relaxing mood. Which isn't to say you can't make it narratively brutal!

Picking up the kid (Sun morning)

The morning involved breakfast and then navigating through LA Marathon traffic to get my daughter to the con. We proceeded to swim at the pool for almost 2 hours, and then wandered the halls for a bit. Lunch was a walk up 13 flights of stairs (the elevators sucked), and teaching the kid how to play poker (first regular, then Texas hold 'em).

Fallout Shelter: For Kids! (Sun 5-9pm)

GM: Me
Players: the kid as Coca and Cola; Anakin as Vlad and Sam

Originally we were supposed to be joined by two other kids, but as it turned out, it ended up being just the kid and Anakin. I tweaked the scenario more than bit, to give it a more kid-friendly feel (although it still involved betrayal, vault dwellers imprisoned and some cyborged into evil guardians). All in all though, these two little gamers (respectively 7 and 9 years old), were able to easily handle the mechanics and the story.

One funny thing was having Keith, Anakin's dad - who sat in for the last 30 minutes or so - tell me how great it was that I created this game "for kids". I had to dissuade him of such thoughts, as Friday's game and my prior playtest were quite more intense and horror in style, than kid-friendly. But it was great to see this could be a kid game too!

The late night King of Tokyo tournament, meant to dissuade kids from playing. 9-year old Anakin still won 2nd place, suckers!

Monday and out

The next morning was climbing 13 flights again, this time for breakfast. Then some swimming, hanging out with Anakin and family, and a quick look at the auction.

There was also the second Splendor tournament. Unfortunately couldn't play since I was on babysitting duties, but I did take some quick peeks, and it looks like the caliber of play has increased.

Splendor "mega" tournament with 36 participants!

I did a quick search for The Mook, but found that his normal Monday morning game had been cancelled due to sick.

And so it ends, until next time...

Fallout Shelter RPG: Play test and feedback

February 5, 2016 Tomer Gurantz

Coming into it...

I definitely didn't feel quite prepared with a few of the props, background music, and some of the possible storylines, but I knew I had enough that it should run as a game that shouldn't totally suck. So with that, yesterday I ran a playtest.

The scenario is called Fallout Shelter: Finding the Descenders, and is a one-shot convention game built on top of parts of various systems including some PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse engine) as well as some weird cobbled together mechanics that are a hack of things that happen in Fallout Shelter the phone app. Some of the "moves" include Punch, Shoot, Heal, and Rush. There aren't too many proper moves because I want to emulate the game in may ways and have it provide a lot of the flavor.

However because this is an RPG, there is also a move called "3-D", which is a catch all for anything you want to do that isn't a two dimensional app mechanic; you know, like convince that super mutant over there that you're an ally.

Players included Howie, Sasha, Jenny, and Tyler. Three of them consist of my regular crew, but I haven't played with Tyler before. He has a background of D&D including the newer 5E.

The verdict

The game went well enough. Everyone had a pretty good time, but there were definitely some things that need to be tweaked. Feedback and fixes include:

The game took just over 5 hours. I want this to fit nicely into a 4 hour con game, so some cutting will have to occur.
The original version borrowed from Dread and had a questionnaire for each player. Although at least one player said this helped with initial game immersion, the questions and answers got lost in the game. It didn't seem to serve a story purpose, and to be honest, I'm just not GM enough to manage the questionnaire with all the other moving pieces.
I created little Objective cards (with the intention that each player have 3 objectives, similar to the game), and completely forgot to pass them out. Again, there was so much going on that adding that to the game felt overwhelming. However, in discussions with one player, it was suggested to replace the questionnaire, and instead have Objective cards, where the cards are specific to archetypes. For instance, an Objective card labelled "Bloodthirsty" where all the objectives are combat related. Removing the questionnaires should buy about 15 minutes.
The initial Wasteland part took too long. Instead of having 4 separate scenes, I'll probably take it down to 2, however I'll incorporate random encounter roles from each of the 4 players to still provide the "wealth" of goods and encounters. Also, I needn't spend as much time as I did in the wasteland section, but it did provide some tone and mood. Probably shave about 20 minutes from this part.
Everyone liked the RPG elements, so although I found it took a bit away from the mechanical component of the game, that wasn't a loss.
Everyone liked the pacing of Caps collection in the game. Felt like you could do and buy things with it, but it wasn't too fast or too slow. I initially felt like I was handing out caps too easily, but as a player I think they enjoyed that pace.

Onwards!

Fallout Shelter RPG: A Hand With The Speaker System

February 3, 2016 Tomer Gurantz

Crunch time! Tomorrow is the game test for the Fallout Shelter RPG game, and I'm quickly scrounging together parts and mechanics. Getting nervous, but hoping everything will go fine. I mean, what could go wrong, really?

And with that, here is my little helper for tomorrow... my little X-mini Kai capsule speaker (per here):

Crossing fingers, or mechanical appendages as the case may be.