Orccon 2018: Sunday+Monday - Lean Coffee with RPG designers, Games on Demand Kids Edition, Werewolf, and out

February 19, 2018 Tomer Gurantz

Games on Demand - Half Baked Breakfast and Lean Coffee (8:30am-10am)

So. Prior to this con I set up a Slack channel for Strategicon RPG Games on Demand. The purpose was to facilitate some pre-con communication around this part of the convention, maybe get some more visibility into what people wanted to run or play. Fortunately, it's sort of worked out, and there's been some decent (if very budding and slight) traffic on it. And from those conversations...

Stephanie Bryant suggested maybe a design-focused part of Games on Demand, where maybe some designers can get together and discuss, troubleshoot, etc. Maybe even get some game playtesting going. And hence was born Half-Baked Breakfast. I've learned to avoid Sunday morning as Bob and I found that we were the only ones showing up, however, here we're talking about some more serious motivation.

Stephanie and a few showed up at 8:30am, and some of us a little bit later. I rolled down there about 8:45am. She'd already started a cool little thing by the name of lean coffee. Apparently this is "a structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting was democratically generated." Everyone generates questions, votes on one or more that they are interested in discussing, and a very simple but effective time-tracking system is in place to try and target as many topics as possible.

It was pretty fascinating to see, looked very simple to produce and run, and appeared to create some solid results. This will become a staple of GoD's to come, and perhaps even scheduled in the con book!

I'm Afraid of You playtest (9-10am)

After the lean coffee was over, most people took off, but Chris had a copy of a short-form narrative 2-player game he'd put together, and Bob and I took it for a test-run with Chris' help facilitating. It's called I'm Afraid of You, and is about two characters in opposition: "One a monster that must be appeased. The other a victim who has what the monster wants." The mechanics are super simple card draws from a poker deck, and the success and failures are interpreted and the narrative just plows forward for as long as the players desire.

I suggested a scenario that had to do with human colonists who've landed on a planet, and been mostly wiped out by the indigenous population. The monster was one of these local creatures, and the victim was a young boy who is the sole survivor and has been in the forest for about a month. Bob played the monster, and imagined them as sort of like Predator, but without the tech... a hunter type creature. The kid had what the monster wants: a homing beacon which would likely bring a rescue mission. From there we had taboo lands, little creature pets, and a dramatic showdown.

The part which I loved about this game was that the scenes felt like they developed fluidly, and the feels just sort of crept up on you. It reminded me a little bit of playing Alex Roberts' Tension (which I wrote about somewhere here).

Curious what it looks like? I ended up playing it with friend David LaFreniere in the Gauntlet a week later in an ad hoc game. Here's the recording, which plays out in about 40 minutes:

Picking up the daughter

Next on the agenda? Get the daughter. We played a bit of catch with a tennis ball and velcro catching mitts (no pool this time), and then met up with some friends from cons past, and friends new to the con (welcome Thong and Lucia!)

We did a little bit of miniature painting at the paint-and-take, and then hit the dealer room (another big draw). They're favorite spot is Michael Mirth's booth, which is set up as a sort of kiddie wonderland.

After a little wandering around, I wanted to grab a bite from the room, and we had some time, so we took everyone up to the room (which is also next to the pool) for the kids to get out some of their vast amounts of energy.

The jumping-all-over-the-beds game. Not in the convention book.

Games on Demand - Kids Edition (2-4pm)

Next it was time for Games on Demand for kids. There was a bit of a kerfuffle with the rooms, however I'll readily take some blame for dropping the ball on being organized, combined with some convention mixup. Also the fact that this is the largest of their conventions ever (they broke 2,500 people), and our space was being infringed upon by other areas. We did find a good room to play in, though, so all's well...

There were about 11 kids. I had one or two GM's in the wings, but the games that sold were Goobles and Goblins which Ryan ran for 4 kids, and me running The Deep Forest for a group of 7.

Ryan running Goobles and Goblins. These kids were excited by the game, every time I looked over! — Ryan running Goobles and Goblins. These kids were *excited* by the game, every time I looked over!

I was really looking forward to running The Deep Forest. It's a variant of The Quiet Year, which is one of my favorites of the GM-less variety: a map-making game that's very collaboratively driven, and great for newbies and experienced players alike. In the Deep Forest, you play a group of monsters who have reclaimed their territory from the invading humans. They have some time to rebuild, however the game ends when the humans come back (perhaps with dire consequences).

The creativity of the kids was always great to behold. We had penguin warriors, and gaseous clouds with illusion power, an elf queen riding a griffon, a thingamabob, a strange caterpillar monster, and a little bunny so cute it could mesmerize humans into doing what it wanted.

The game plays in seasons, each contains in a suit of cards. Because there were 7 players, I did one round of cards as one season, which was the perfect amount of time prior to taking a break. Normally each player gets a choice to answer 1 of 2 questions, but I simplified this to just asking them one of the questions.

I made a few other modifications to the game:

I let the kids own their monster (Even though each player creates a monster, the monsters normally aren't owned by any individual. However, I figured there may be some tension in this scenario. It worked out well.)
I stretched my kid-management skills, using moments to close our eyes to imagine things, or close our eyes to vote on how many weeks projects would take (to reduce peer pressure).
The kids wanted to have the monsters win in the end of the game (after I told them it normally has a sad ending), and so I told them that if they played collaboratively by listening to each other and using each others ideas to build upon, then they could win.
I made sure that there were fairly strict limits on their drawing area. This really helped ensure a level of fairness around the table. I think some of them appreciated that structure both as far as being able to set expectations for themselves, as well as ensure that others didn't get to draw more than them.

Discovering new things was popular. Projects weren't very popular, but came up mostly through questions. In the second season some of the kids started getting interested in starting projects. At one point we had 3 going on the map at once.

Discussions weren't popular at all. In retrospect I should've used this action more like the basic game where it's more free form (The Deep Forest has a modified version). Also, in the future I'd make discussion occur as an extra action, instead of one used by the players. For example after each season, or after a very serious event (such as in our case when someone found a hidden village of humans, *gasp*!)

All in all, I felt it went very well, and importantly, I'd run it again in a heartbeat. But after 2.5 hours of gaming, I was exhausted.

One of my favorite parts of the game... 7 kids drawing monsters, in silence.

The kid’s awesome penguin warrior, Tala.

The Deep Forest crew with their map of caves and underground lakes, sunken ships, mysterious footprints, caches of weapons, berry bushes, and glowing rock formations.

Afternoon hanging out (Sunday eve)

The next hours included some general hanging out. We spotted PST Improv doing their thing. The kid and I have checked them out before, and took many of the kids and families from Games on Demand to go have a view. The improv crew sources words and inspirations from the crowd, and our kids were happy to oblige them (especially with the word "cow", over and over again).

PST Improv (Photo credit: Jesse Watrous Photography & Media) — PST Improv (Photo credit: Jesse Watrous Photography & Media)

We also hit the game library (where you can rent one of hundreds of games) and the Open Gaming area down in the lower lobby. I showed some of the kids how to play Lotus (which I picked up in the virtual flea market), and Ann-Marie played Catan Junior with a few of them.

Playing some board and card games with the kids (Photo credit: Jesse Watrous Photography & Media) — Playing some board and card games with the kids (Photo credit: Jesse Watrous Photography & Media)

Werewolf (Sunday 9pm-3am)

This is one of the big draws for the kids. We ended up being in the room full of teens. Apparently some werewolf aficionados aren't as into these games, as there is a reputation for using weird roles in the games (and the teens mostly act like teens, and when there is a lot of 'em... hoo boy).

But, that said, the roles are interesting and we always learn new facets of the game. And once the game gets going, the teens get seriously into it, and seriously fun. The first game went from around 9am to maybe midnight. Lucia was new to the game, and was one of the last 3 players! (And unfortunately the she and the villagers lost due to a silly decision on the part of the other player.)

Of course some of the kids wanted to have another go, and so round 2 commenced, ending before 3am (so a fairly "quick" game). I could only take so much though, and left the kids with Jim and mostly hung out and chatted with various RPG friends.

Oh, the lovely couple attempting to murder each other!

Monday morning

Had access to the upstairs breakfast lounge, something the kid enjoys a lot, so we did breakfast before they shut down (barely).

The rest of the con involved wandering around a bit, playing the "scavenger hunt game" during which we found a few dice around the convention floors, and the kids running around playing tag and such. At one point I showed Ann-Marie and family and daughter how to play Lotus.

And with that, the con comes to a close... this time with possibly more regulars for next time!

Orccon 2018: Saturday with Autumn of the Ancients, Monster of the Week, Happy Jacks RPG Podcast, and The Final Girl

February 17, 2018 Tomer Gurantz

Games on Demand

Ah, Saturday. Time to kick off Games on Demand! This is the part of the con that I'm currently responsible for, and where we get together and pitch games, and it's all very ad hoc.

First off, one success of this con was sourcing players at Games on Demand who were interested in various scheduled games that were short players. We donated 6 players to 3 different games (from memory: Traveler, Jinkies, and Wild Talents; maybe Demigods?)... I say "donated" but really we just pitched those games along with the rest and players chose them. So: bringing players where they were needed... huzzah!

For the morning 9am session, we had a dozen people, including some recurring friends of GoD, as well as some newbies. Four went over to JiB who was running his Bad Streets (gritty cop drama of the '70s PbtA game), and a few went over to Golden Sky Stories as run by Ira. But me, I got a few people to play...

Autumn of the Ancients (Saturday 9am-noon)

My friend Kevin Marshall brought Dan, and together with my compatriot Bob Q. we played Autumn of the Ancients. The game is basically a Fall of Magic hack, but in space. The little intro story should be familiar if you've played the original:

Ancient Technology is dying, and the Liminal along with it. We travel together to The Foundry, the Liminal's homeworld, where Ancient Tech was born.

Of course, just like the original Fall of Magic with the "Magus", the Liminal is undefined. My experience with this game has taught me that a middle ground between 'completely undefined' and 'a discussed and agreed upon known entity' is useful, so we're all on roughly the same page starting out, or at least close. We decided to go with my method of "rumors". Each of us talked about one rumor we'd heard about the Liminal. This gives us a starting framework that is still completely loose and open to interpretation and changes.

So, the current version of the game comes with an amazing space map that is lovely. I will readily admit that using the map provided, on an iPad or some tablet, zooming into each location, would be very evocative and thematic. That said, I couldn't print it out large enough to be visible (and don't have a reasonable tablet), so instead took it upon myself to print each location on 3x5 index cards that I could easily pack and bring and play with. And they worked exceedingly well.

The current version of the Autumn of the Ancients map, as of this writing.

Characters included Dwi the Indigene of Libery's Landing (me), Nebo the Specimen of Eco-Station 1, Wolf the Exile of the Capital (Dan), and Alex the Professor of the Aureate Federation (Kevin).

I'll say this: If you like what Fall of Magic does, you will not be disappointed here. You can easily get a similar sweeping and emotion-filled narrative. We had great flashback moments of conflict and genocide, silly scenes of wonder and also over-the-top professor diatribes, bitterness-filled meetings with an old assistant whose studies were spurned, and emotional scenes with our lovely uplifted specimen both filled with wonder, and innocence lost.

We played a good 3+ hour session, and decided to call it there. I'd happily play this over multiple sessions (and as of this writing I've placed it up on the Gauntlet calendar to run in April).

Feedback: I think the game is pretty solid as written. Playing on a map is difficult unless you are well prepared, but on a tablet with zoom-in and out capability would be great and thematic for the space theme. That said, I printed it on index cards and that worked very well; so well and portable I am considering doing this for Fall of Magic itself. One negative criticism was that many of the flavor text / story cues for locations were repetitive with "The hospitality of the ____." Although of course you can interpret "hospitality" to mean many things, positive and negative, I would prefer to see some variety in these.

A few of the games running in the morning, including Bad Streets and Golden Sky Stories

We finished a little early, which allowed me to complete some of my Strategicon math trade game trades, and also quickly check out the dealer room. I'm glad to see that the indie RPG dude is back and selling all sorts of great games, and I even hung around the booth for a few moments talking up some of these to random buyers.

Lunch with mates

Headed to the room with a few friends from below, ate some bring-it-yourself food, and took one of those nice, short social breaks.

Games on Demand - Monster of the Week (Saturday 2-6pm)

Our second session of GoD had a few folks go up to scheduled games, and a table of Dirty Secrets run by Ira (which uses a really interesting mechanic of one player and everyone else being GMs). I, however, got to play in Monster of the Week, as run by Bob Q! He's run sessions before for Games on Demand, and some of the players of these prior sessions, such as Unique and Even, were playing in this one. This was my first time playing this game, and I've heard Bob run good sessions of it, so I was looking forward to this (and wasn't disappointed):

Most people don’t believe in monsters, but you know the truth. They’re real, and it’s your task to bring them down. This revised edition of Monster of the Week brings that adventure to life.

We had a pretty eclectic group of monster hunters, but interestingly enough, all four of us chose strong magic-wielders. The magic-type stat for this game is called Weird, and all of us had a +2 or +3 in that stat. This definitely flavored the session strongly, and in a way that I think we all enjoyed.

I created Aboud, a half-Ethiopian half-Spanish Jew, but from a strange orthodox sect called Solomon's Key that follows the "real" form of the Kabbalah and wields magic. The sect is strict in laws, and is weary against outsiders and especially "abominations", such as Unique's character, a Succubus. This invited some good tension, and some interesting ways in which the story played out.

The overall adventure was one in the Pacific Northwest (thanks Unique!), and so we ended up with some first nations skinchanger type creature, someone filled with hate so deep that harm to many innocent bystanders was just par for the course.

There was a lot of us going in all sorts of different tangents and directions at the start, not waiting for one another and diving into different hijinx, but as the story went on we started to pull together and some good inter-character drama unfolded, and bonds seemed to tighten. Would've been fun to see where this team would've gone as a campaign.

Super-props to Even who ran character Jae-Chill, a youtube streamer and social media nut with a large following (many of which are part of an arcane user streaming network). He evoked this character sooo well, it was extremely entertaining. Best part of the scenario was that we all worked really well together, and it felt like a good synergy and combination of drama and heroics.

After the game there were some others who were diving into yet another ad hoc game, but I knew I was hitting some energy limits. I am proud that I was able to pull myself away, go up to the room and nap, and then eat some grub before coming back down to find them ending their session.

The Happy Jacks RPG Podcast - Live at Orccon 2018 (Saturday 8-10pm)

From there, I went to check out the live recording of the Happy Jacks RPG Podcast. They do this almost every Strategicon (sometimes missing Gamex due to the Renaissance Faire, although sometimes making that date as well).

The next 2 hours included the usual chit-chatting about games, including up on the mic. I got some props for Ten Candles, and gave some props to games such as Bedlam Hall and A Game of Throne Acquisition. The event gets blurry a bit later on due to alcohol imbibing habits. And then around 10pm, it was time to head down to the last event of the eve.

Some pre-show hanging out and drinking of definitely non-alcoholic beverages

Want to suffer through the chaos? Here you go!

The Final Girl and Games on Demand Late Night Edition (10pm-1am)

Post-podcast it's time for our late night jam. In the past I've run Dread, and Bob's run Monster of the Week, and lean towards other good creepy stuff. In this meetup my friend Sasha from the Story Games Glendale meetup showed up with their own game-in-testing! They ran a table of three, including friend Chris Shorb; can't wait to try it.

My friend Howie showed up after over a year of missing the con (dang children!), and because the rest of the audience didn't volunteer to run something, and because getting a closed room for another run of Ten Candles was an impossibility on a Saturday night, I went with a good standby for a large group of 7 players: The Final Girl.

The Final Girl emulates a slasher flick, and we did some random card draws to see what the fates would try to suggest as a scenario, but they were all weak-sauce. So instead I pitched a scenario which combines two pre-canned ones from the game: "It is opening night of a romance movie about vampires. The characters are all vampires coming to see the premiere, but who are being hunted by a human vampire hunter!"

We made a bunch of characters, and did a few intro scenes. As always one thing I love about the game is having different players play the same characters over different scenes, and seeing how disparate the characterizations are. I was the culprit of one of these, running one of the ancient vampires in a weird slapstick way. Everyone later called that character the Mr. Bean of vampires, which was kind of hilarious, especially as I was just being silly because I didn't know what else to do in that scene.

Oddly enough, our Final Girl was not a vampire, but in fact our human universal blood donor (who gets bitten just before the end, with sunlight streaming into the theater and killing off some of our final characters). He wakes up a few days later, and the story continues.

Off to some late-night sleep, in preparation for getting the daughter the next day (and some early morning GoD loving I didn't expect).

Orccon 2018: Friday - getting there, game of Thrown dice, bedlam hall, ten candles

February 16, 2018 Tomer Gurantz

Getting there

Getting to the West side involved following a pleasant dotted line across the city which included: A few hours working at Tomo Coffee; Hanging out with Howie and Lisa and 1-year old Bei and grandma Kathy, with lots of slam dunks and delicious fish soup; Missing beers with con friends because apparently 10 miles = 1 hour traffic; Loroco Pupusas with Sonia at a newly discovered joint; Late night hot beverages at a churros place with Jeremy and Sonia; Some 3-player Citadels with Howie and Lisa again before the sleepover; Breakfast at Metro Cafe; Early arrival at a con hotel under some crazy construction.

Howie and family... the kid is old enough where Howie was actually able to make it out for some late night gaming Saturday!

From there it was chit chatting with all the various lovely folks that I've come to see at each of these events. Kurt Potts came with a game to playtest, a game that Chris and I like to call...

Game of Thrown Dice (Friday noon)

So, apparently last Strategicon (6 months ago) Dave Kizzia put out a challenge to have people write a game and bring it, and Kurt took this to heart, and wrote a dice game which he currently calls House Rule: A Game of Throne Acquisition.

The game itself was surprisingly easy and fast, but exuded so much flavor of a type similar to a popular fantasy and HBO series, that we were all duly impressed. We had a full contingent of seven kingdoms, including the rulers Kurt, Kurt Jr, Jason, Kurt Hanna, Dave, Chris, and myself.

The various kingdoms you could play included special powers of types that felt flavored by fantasy kingdom intrigue, and there was a sense of balance in that it felt like there were many ways you could win. There were turns were everyone got to act, and then a moment where a new ruler would be voted on (via dice and support) and victory points distributed for the winner, and any supporting rulers. There was an end game component where walkers (of whatever color) would invade, and if we didn't altogether prepare in some manner, we would all perish and lose. But preparing involves making yourself weaker, so who has time for that noise, right?

All in all, fabulous, and if you told me it was ready to be published, I wouldn't blink and I would purchase a copy. Seriously. The whole game took about an hour, and could be played as a simple board/card game, but could easily be role played in silly or fabulous ways. Kudos to Kurt!

Bedlam Hall (Friday 2-6pm)

I've run a game in the first con slot for the last 4 years or so. This was my first time playing in it in a long time, and it was David Kizzia's Bedlam Hall, run by Christopher Grey. Although I'd backed the Kickstarter and recently received the book, I didn't really know what to expect as I haven't read through it yet.

I showed up to the table, which had a clothing prop at each seat (chef hat, chauffeur hat, so on), and I promptly sat at the maid apron (which I got to wear for the next 4 hours). Four players showed, so we had Chamomile the Maid (me), Agnes the Housekeeper, Hobson the Valet, and Gorely the Chauffeur. The cook and butler weren't chosen (and unfortunately friend Stephanie couldn't make it in time join us), so they became NPCs. This worked out well because the missing cook became a big part of our complication, and the drunk butler became a great foil, as played by the GM.

The game centers around us, as staff, needing to ignore as much weirdness as possible and maintain etiquette and composure around the house, all while Lord and Lady Blackwood and their family act bizarre and horror-ful. Other than the parents, there is 18 year old Matilda who hates Meredith the visiting Hollywood actress cousin, Rubric (14 y.o.) who kept digging for dead uncle Agamemnon so he could join us for dinner, and little Violet (6 y.o.) with her stuffed animals. As in, literally stuffed dead animals, which she would dress up (or have us dress up) and play with. There was grandma Dolores, cursed during a trip to the Nile - so she naturally came back from the dead at some point, and Columbine the sister of the Lady (and mom to Meredith).

We started and just dived into the crazy. The family continually asks for bizarre strangeness, and we just helped the best we could. I can't say we played with all the rules as written, and Chris admitted as much, but it was better than that since we got to feel the real flavor of the game. Chris' characterizations and constant stream of weirdness just fed us with a constant stream of tension and silliness.

I remember a moment when grandma comes back from the dead, chanting in old Egyptian and wielding a ceremonial dagger, stabbing the Valet. The chauffeur walks into the room demanding, "Why are you stabbing grandma?" At which point the Valet, flustered: "Well, she stabbed me first!"

There was also the matter of the missing cook, and us having to prepare dinner without them, and a dead body or two, which of course led to cannibalism cooking, all led by the Chauffeur with his blowtorch. There was Lord Blackwood shooting canons on the grounds, and the car ending up a bit of a useless mess, and green goop from the stove used as a face mask for Lady Blackwood, and then later served as the soup course. All the while a combination of weird and sometimes arcane happenings occurring.

Our session ended a little early, and there were various game mechanics that we didn't do much with, but that's the sort of introduction session that I prefer. I have since started reading the Bedlam Hall book, and it just makes so much sense after this session. Mechanics can be learned easily enough.

If for no other reason then getting to wear a maid apron for a few hours

Ten Candles (Friday 8pm-1am)

I've run Ten Candles before, and was hoping to do so some more during the winter, but the plague struck and prevented that. This was the second time I got to run this game. I had five players which included Chris (who ran Bedlam Hall and has run 10 Candles once before), Kurt P, Emily, Aaron V, and Grace (who's played in my Golden Sky Stories long ago; glad she can see the other end of the emotional spectrum here).

We discussed a few of the book scenarios to see if any of them sounded interesting, and went with the moon base. For those not familiar, the premise of the game is simple: 10 days ago the world went dark; no sun, no stars, and in this case, from the moon, no Earth. 5 days ago, They came. The only thing we know is that they fear the light. And They are coming for us. You play with 10 candles, and as characters "fail" conflict rolls, scenes end, one by one, extinguishing these candles and plunging us into darkness. This game is tragic horror, as we all will die.

We had a crew consisting of a security officer, a lab researcher, a pilot, a union engineer, and a billionaire tourist. I won't go into the minutia, but just to say that this system is genius. The GM is not allowed to prep coming into it, and doesn't really need to. The players have almost all the narrative authority early on, and so narrate as they will. But as time goes on, the GM gets more and more narrative authority, and things go from bad to worse. We had a generator in need of repair, missing people on the comm links as they were breaking down, an airless room, Jared Dunbar - another survivor - who locked them out, more "friends" (Shannon and Mattais) found on the way to the rocket, a moon surface jaunt, and a successful moon takeoff. All before madness subsumes, and they turn on one another.

Even among the horrors there was a scene where the engineer exasperatingly explained the blood and bodies to the pilot, after a painful episode, which had us all losing our shit, laughing.

The session ended up going just over 5 hours, but it certainly didn't feel like it. Tense as all, and great little ending. I just love what this system does. It may have to become a staple in the convention repertoire.

Gauntlet: The Rebel Few

February 10, 2018 Tomer Gurantz

Rich Rogers is one of the Gauntlet's staple GMs, running a ton of different games, storylines, and systems, and with a gusto that makes me want to be a better advocate for "the hobby". One recent recurring set of games he's running is Star Wars Saturdays, where he has an open table playing different systems and stories that are Star Wars adjacent.

I got to play in 2 sessions over 2 Saturdays of The Rebel Few:

Hop in a starfighter, join a squadron of fellow pilots, and fly as members of the Rebel Alliance against impossible odds and the tyranny of the Galactic Empire...

The game system Rich was using was The Few RPG, a game about World War 2 fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain. Except in this case we'd be playing X-wing pilots.

First session

The first session started with a bit of character generation. For most of these games I come in with nothing in mind, and like to be inspired by the table and other players. This game was no different. We ended up with a group of 5 pilots, with only one being the token human. This included a Bothan (lion-looking dudes), a Sullustan (like the guy who flies with Lando in the Millennium Falcon), a Nautolan (you see him as one of the many jedi who gets cut down in the early episodes), and me: Sorguc Le. Sorguc is a Mon Calamari (like General Akbar), and in fact is one of his many 100's of children (in my made-up head cannon). She's the only kid to not grow out of being blood-thirsty, and so has become a Rebel pilot. Also, Akbar isn't a general yet, since we're playing around the time of Rogue One.

We start after being briefed with our mission. Being an RPG with a very specific focus (fighter piloting), the route is fairly narrow. We're gonna be given a mission and we're gonna shoot down some Tie Fighters, or die trying. But, before we do so, we did a little bit of scene framing around the base, to establish some of our characters. We have a career pilot, a swoop biker gang leader, a Jedi smuggler, and youngster from a family of performers, and got to see some little vignettes and role playing scenes prior to getting into the "action".

The game itself is fairly simple. Trying to shoot down another pilot is relatively hard (roll 3d6 + your piloting stat, which is probably 2 or 3, and roll a 16+). That said, there is some tactics you can use, like building Advantage (to get a bonus to your roll), or flying on the wing of another pilot (to provide them better defense). The first battle was really about us learning how these different rules work and interacted. Much like the Star Wars Miniature game, it was a lot more fun that I would initially think. I'm not much into war games, but the action and moves are quick enough for you to get a feel for fast-pace battle. Before long we'd obliterated our target with some photon torpedoes (I think that's right... I'm not really a Star Wars expert), and fly back to base without any casualties.

Personally, I love having good background audio playing during games, and was happy to easily find free Star Wars battle music out there that did the trick. Many of us agreed that having that play during the combat really enhanced the experience (just the first track makes you dive head first into the scene!)

We didn't have enough time to do the downtime phase of the game, where we get to do some roleplaying back at the base, which is unfortunate since that's super fun (especially after doing over an hour of combat simulator), but we'd end up saving this for the beginning of the next session (and I was to play in that one as well)...

Second session

I don't often get to play in more than one session in a Gauntlet series, so this was a real pleasure. We went straight into the downtime / base scenes, where each of us pitched and ran a little role playing, in between combats.

For my choice, I decided we needed a Y-cert Vibrokey (some made up Star Wars sounding shit) from someone in the vicinity. Blaise joined me with character Borsk Ov'Ar, and Rich ran with it, and suddenly we were visiting a mafia-style Hutt to negotiate. Of course it turns out this Hutt has one of my compatriots, a Mon Calamari engineer, as a slave / prisoner. Well, this is Star Wars, right? So I pretend to trade our speeder bike for the engineer, but it's just a feint, and we get in a blaster fight, steal the key, and head home. Unfortunately I failed my Soldiering roll, so the way I spun it was so it felt like we saved the day and freed a prisoner... but when we get back to the base it turns out we damaged that Vibrokey during the fight. Now we lost the advantage we needed for some other part of our mission.

After our scenes, we floated straight into the next mission. During this one we were distracting some Empire vessels from our ground operations, which were on the planet surface. We were pretty quickly feeling desperately outgunned. I wasn't rolling too well, and Rich was, so suddenly my shields are down, and I'm pushing some risky mechanics - which resulted in my torpedoes going out of commission. We survive the onslaught of tie fighters, but then make a desperate run for the Empire's big ship. I go in, even though I don't have torpedoes, just to provide more targets for them, hoping it'll help us distribute the damage. Sorguc Le is killed in action... I like to think I might've saved one of my compatriots. The last scene I frame is the Mon Calamari engineer, working on some Rebel vessel, looking up at that moment, feeling the Force, and Sorguc's life departing from it. Star Wars, right?

Roses and Thorns

Thorns: The game is fairly simple, and most of us thought that the limited number of moves was a bit of a hindrance by the second session. We wanted at least another 1 or 2 (or 3) options, beyond "Support", "Tail them", and so on. Hopefully this would also provide more fictional directions to go during combat.

To that end: For story gamers it always helps to tie something of the mechanics into a way to further allow for narrative. As an example, in this game you can use the Force to re-roll any dice, normally once / battle sequence. When you do so, instead of making it just a mechanical thing, it would be great to have the player describe a flashback, or parallel scene, or something related. Don't get me wrong, most of us do this anyways, cause I mean: story gamers, but still, would be nice to make space and time for that in the middle of combat.

This is something that Stras has built into Atlas Reckoning, and I think done in a fabulous way. Resolving "traits" and marking "burnouts", all mechanical benefits during the engagement / combat phase, all have some narrative associations that you immediately take advantage of to frame miniature scenes and vignettes. It feels very cinematic. I think this game could use some of that.

Roses: The game sings well in regards to evoking quick and fluid combat. Combined with the background music (for those of us playing it) we felt like we were in that cockpit, and there was a sense of desperation as you'd expect, being a Rebel with the Empire breathing down your neck.

Rich pulled this off very well, and gave us some of the story elements we were looking for, combined with simple X-wing combat that felt cinematic, and evoked the desperation you find in the movies.

Gauntlet: Red Carnations on a Black Grave

February 8, 2018 Tomer Gurantz

Red Carnations on a Black Grave

Red Carnations on a Black Grave is a mechanics-lite story game that's in development by Catherine Ramen. She's described it as similar to "Montsegur: 1244" and "Witch: the Road to Lindisfarne". I've only played the latter.

She put the game on the Gauntlet calendar and I was able to get in on it. Here's the description:

For just over two months in 1871, the Paris Commune tried to make an egalitarian, socialist state a reality despite disagreement within their walls and attacks from outside it. This is the story of 12 Communards, their messy personal lives and their attempts to create a utopia in the face of impending death. How far would you go for what you believe in? Would you stand firm even if it meant your death?

The game explores a very specific set of historic events set in France around 1871. I get nervous with historical games, because I'm not very versed in much of real history and don't like the pressure of being accurate in that context, especially as this is a game around political ideals that I'm not very familiar with. Fortunately Catherine pretty quickly assured us that bringing in any political knowledge won't be necessary, and the politics just sort of come into play with the context, but to feel free to concentrate on whatever character drama and minutia you find interesting. I wasn't the only one so concerned, and that bit of reassurance was very useful for us.

Characters

Much like Witch: the Road to Lindisfarne, the game revolves around pre-built characters that each have a light framework around who they are. Interestingly, many of them have real historical context, although apparently only one (Louise Michel, a sort of "main" protagonist) has any significant documentation around her. There is total freedom in making these characters your own.

The game is card-based, insofar as choosing characters, and random events that transpire, based on real historic events. Catherine had some help from fellow Gauntleteers in using the ability to draw from a custom deck, using Shane Liebling's RollForYourParty online dice roller / RPG tool.

We started by each choosing two characters from the available dozen in the game. We had 5 players, but from Catherine it sounds like the game is meant for 6, optimally. She's played with 4 and has a hack for that, but we were going into unexplored playtest territory here, and it worked fine. A very useful part of the game is the simple relationship map that quickly illustrates character interplay:

This was a great reference during play and when creating scenes, as you can assess who could be involved for maximum drama and effect. Additionally, fellow Gauntleteer Gerrit helped make a Google drawing of it which we used to fill in additional information during character creation and were able to color to quickly show which player controlled which characters. Super handy!

In comparison, you can see how very useful this version of the map is. Kudos to Jason and others for formatting and simplifying this key piece of info.

The game itself played very similarly to many simple scene-framing games (Fiasco, Fall of Magic, the other games mentioned above), in that a specific player controlled a specific scene in framing and controlling "Action" and "Cut". In general the scene they set should include one of their characters. The game is played mostly over 3 different parts: Part 1 during early days of the Commune’s existence; Part 2 after the attacks by the national army against the Commune, when hopes dims. Part 3 during the “Bloody Week” with the army assaulted and the massacring of many Communards.

The character cards are excellent in their conciseness, and usefulness during play. They each succinctly explain the character and motivations, and are as easy to read as Dungeon World monster entries.

The session

What can I say? There were some few light and touching moments, but we played toward dark. Innocent people got dealt bad hands, and Part 3 is especially rough as you choose one of your two characters to die.

I loved that during each Part of play, there is a set of event cards (placards) that come out that you can optionally choose from. These really help provide a consistent flavor to the game, and are even put together in a way that emulates placards used during that time:

An example of a Placard used in the game

The above example is probably from Part 1, when things are good. They get increasingly dark as times go bad. Even if you don't have a feel for the time period or politics or France or whatever, these gives you just about as much as you need to stay on tone and inspire scenes and events.

There were two of our players who were new to Gauntlet games, and RPGs in general, but I wouldn't have known it if they didn't say anything, as they played beautifully. The table environment was great.

We had drama, romance, and lots of darkness. Most characters came to pretty sad endings (at least half the characters will die during the game), but we did have one shining light: Camille, the young boy, was able to live a decent life. Perhaps that's the story of France moving on after the events.

Probably one of the toughest parts in playing this online was the amount of moving pieces. You can see on my screen that I was trying to take advantage of every piece of real estate: Hangouts window for players, my character cards, the rollforyourparty window in the top right for the game cards, and the relationship map in bottom right. It's a lot, and if it hadn't been organized well, it would've been hard to digest. I know one player had a tough time playing on an iPad, which required lots of switching apps back and forth.

It all ended up working well enough for me, however, and it probably would've been somewhat trivial in a face-to-face game where you have all the cards ready to go, and in play on the table.

Some elements of the game reminded me of another GM-less game I've thoroughly enjoyed called Heaven's Collapse (which I wrote about here). I thought both games were elegantly simple, and could allow anyone to dive into the setting and play without needing any sort of background knowledge.

Definitely keeping my eye out for this one. Catherine has done a wonderful job in creating this game.

EDIT: Looks like the video is posted, and with "production value"!

Gaming in the warm winter of Los Angeles

February 2, 2018 Tomer Gurantz

Hiatus from blogging

So, apparently it's been a while. Well, I haven't been to any game conventions, so that's a possible reason. But conventions are coming, with the next one looming being Strategicon Orccon 2018.

But before I go writing about that, in a few weeks, I just catch myself up here, as there's been more than a bit of gaming. And all the below is just RPGs. My partner has been running board game days about once a month, so to supplement the usual stuff, I've also been playing much more board games, and we went to our friend Unique's birthday, which was basically: game night! So, recent favorites being: Citadels, Secret Hitler, Above and Below, and Shadow Hunters.

But on to RPGs...

Winter 2017 Recap

Oct 24, 2017: Played The Final Girl at Story Games Glendale, as Halloween approached. Only in this case it ended up being The Final Internet Billionaire Tim on a haunted oil rig.

Oct 31, 2017: Among other days, played lots of World of Dungeons run by Tom, with various Gauntleteers mostly from Asia-Pac. In this one we traveled the dunes, and finally got to see to Medved the King Bear.

Nov 4, 2017: Played in a playtest of The Veil: Cascade, run by Kyle of The Gauntlet, with fellow players Lauren and Alex, my Asia-Pac homies. I got to play a little runt Jeet, with Asha the Futurist and Autumn the Mnemologist, visiting Autum's Speakeasy, looking for memories. Mostly it fostered a big desire to play The Veil, which is great for emotional play.

Nov 17, 2017: Got to finally play Monster Hearts in Jason Cordova's Monsterhearts 2: Mercy Falls '83 session. I got to be a Ghoul which is a sort of re-animated Frankenstein composed of four different, previously murdered, geeks.

Nov 17, 2017: Ran The Final Girl with a combo of some of my old RPG crew, and newbie Lien.

Nov 28, 2017: I ran a game of Dungeon World at Story Games Glendale, with newbie Craig as the wizard Avon and David as the bard Florian. They journeyed through a swamp to see a fortune teller, fighting off tree beasts and with a final epic battle against a demon trying to take a little girl.

Dec 9, 2017: Ran Legend of the Elements (aka Avatar the Last Airbender the RPG) for my daughter and Stu Venable's kids. We played a roughly 3+ hour session involving the White Lotus Scouts dealing with forest weirdness, and trying to get badges, trying to tame strange animals, and talking to stranger spirits.

Dec 10, 2017: Went over to new friend Kevin's place to run some Dungeon World with Martha and Candace, who'd I'd gamed with at prior Strategicons this year. I ran them through a similar adventure starter as the one from Story Games a few weeks back. But the players made some cool PCs, including a weird gem-based golem from the wastelands, a druid of the savannas who's adopted it, and an immolator (the first I've ever played with).

Dec 12, 2017: We played The Quiet Year at Story Games Glendale, set on top of mountains in a world with long and inconsistent lighting and flooding (like enough flooding where the mountains turn into an archipelago). And very big goats. And Babayaga. And glowing people.

The Quiet Year on Dave's cool white board cards.

Got sick on two separate occasions, so had to flake out on two proposed sessions to run Ten Candles with two different groups... still sad about it.

Jan 9, 2018: First time officially running a game for The Gauntlet, an afternoon session of Forget-Me-Not:

Jan 9, 2018: After running Forget-Me-Not, headed straight to Game Haus for Story Games Glendale. Many people said they'd show, but due to many flakes, we got one show. We ran a session of Microscope.

Jan 23, 2018: Ran an afternoon session of Murder Hobo for The Gauntlet:

Jan 23, 2018: After running Murder Hobo, went to Story Games Glendale at Game Haus, where we had a good 6+ players showing! David ran the bulk of these guys, while I ran a 2-player game of Dungeon World with Jon, a regular, and Asher, a newbie to the meetup. I had ideas about running something, but after they made their characters I just went with their cool concepts and made some stuff up, crazy cool Eco warriors!

Jan 25, 2018: I got my question (labelled under "Inferiority Complex") answered by Adam Koebel on his Office Hours:

Whew... I think that sums up the bulk of this time period.