Strategicon Gamex 2017 - Monday

Normally, Monday is a bit of a short con day, mostly involving some shopping, checking out the game auction, and maybe a game with The Mook, who does an excellent outro for Strategicon. Often this is a short post I roll into Sunday. Not this time...

So, the daughter woke up and was really bummed out that she had missed the Werewolf and other late night activities, which is a big draw for someone who normally has a pretty strict bedtime.

We were just wandering around and ran into Tobias and Stephanie Bryant (of Threadbare RPG fame). He had a Star Wars Microscope-type story game he wanted to try out... we didn't have too much time, but thought we'd give it a try. We headed down to the Games on Demand area, and grabbed a table...

That's No Moon

GM: Tobias Strauss; Players: Stephanie Bryant, TobieAbad, the kid, and myself

Tobias (also known as Tobi, but I'll leave it as the full name so we're not confusing him with the other Tobie!), first did the opening crawl:

Episode LXVI: THAT'S NO MOON

The Empire won the Battle of Yavin, crushing the rebellion with one fell swoop. The moon of Yavin IV, the secret rebel base there, and the entire revel leadership are now space dust.

The Jedi were also destroyed. Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, Anakin Skywalker's offspring, died in the battle. Yoda, in hiding on Dagobah, felt the disturbance in the Force and gave up hope.

There is no rebellion. There are no remaining Jedi. There is only fear.

The DEATH STAR, under the command of Grand Moff Tarkin, is now enjoying a victory lap, "addressing" planets that were sympathetic to the rebellion.

But with fear comes hope. The Force demands balance...

First he had us create world names on separate index cards. We each created one, ending up with: Zokbar III, Casis-7, Tobiotic VII and Tobiotic VIII, and the Planetoid of Dree. We drew random cards for the biosphere for each one (swamp, snowy, volcanic, jungle, city), and the government structure (crime lords, theocracy, tribal, monarchy, dictator). There was also another index card with the death star ominously pictured on it.

That sets the frame for the story, but now we dived into a specific planet: Zokbar III, the swampy planet ruled by crime lords. We collaborated on a few things, and decided it wasn't any Hutts, but instead some other competing faction.

We then each got an index card to create one character apiece. The task was simple and consisted of defining 3 things: A name, a role, and a secret.

And then it was free roleplay time! Very similar to a Scene in Microscope, you just start framing a scene and having at it. It was very free form, and what was great was how all the players brought in those totally Star Wars tropes of voices, character styles, and simplistic narrative. And then suddenly there is a moon coming over the horizon! (Tobias did this really well, by showing the death star picture he drew on one index card coming up over another one.)

Whether the individual characters survive or not is up to the players and the direction of the narrative. It's totally possible that some drama plays out and everyone just dies... or that some people jump into an escape ship and take flight just before the blast (again, totally Star Wars).

Also, for each planet in the narrative, there is a chance the death star will be destroyed. The only mechanic consists of rolling a d6 after each planet scene, so see who gets destroyed. The first planet has a 5 in 6 chance of blowing up (and there is inversely a 1 in 6 change of the death star biting it). The second planet goes 4 in 6 vs 2 in 6, and so on. Because there are five planets, there is the possibility that the death star survives the movie, and that the Sith win the day, and a follow-on movie would be required to see this through.

We had such little time to play this, but it's definitely easy to set up, easy to jump into, and easy to run. I'd definitely have this in the back pocket for an easy story game to play with Star Wars fans, or at any RPG meetup. I think I would house rule it that the probabilities are reduced slightly further, where the first planet will definitely die, the second has a 1 in 6 chance, and so on. That means the final planet still only has a 4 in 6 chance of winning. The stakes feel a little more grim, even though you will likely win sometime during the narrative.

From a distance you'd think we were playing Microscope!

Monday 10:15am: Dinosaur Princesses

Paleantologist (GM): Gina Ricker. Players: 4 kids (ages 8, 10, 11, 11)

Because of our friend Anakin's birthday, I originally had decided I'd run a kids game for him, his 2 friends, and the daughter. HOWEVER, my friend Gina was open to running Dinosaur Princesses, a kids RPG I believe is being designed by Hamish Cameron.

Even though we've gamed together, I've never gotten to see Gina GM before, because she's just jumping back on to that particular horse. She was seriously fantastic, both as a GM in general, but also in being able to manage that table of kids. Two were super quiet, two were very loud and energetic. It took some serious skills to keep it flowing so smoothly, and I was very impressed.

The character sheets are dinosaur types (Tyranosaurus, Pteradactyl, etc.) and look like pages from a coloring book. There are a few fill-in blanks for name, role, and skills. It's all very open-ended, and up to the kids imaginations, which is an aspect I immediately respected and approved of.

Another aspect of the game is the drawing map. A huge roll of paper was rolled out across the table for everyone to draw on, and a colorful selection of markers was provided. Each kid got to draw their little home base, which ended up including a volcano, an adventurer university, and a waterfall paradise. And then the GM gets to start drawing things in the middle, that include all the various complications and adventure hooks, many of which are spawned from the minds of the kids playing.

Four corners of dinosaur homes, and a large island in the middle.

A table filling up with complications and problems, including a crazy lava flow heading to the village, yikes!

I didn't get to see the mechanics in play too deeply, but basically the GM throws a bunch of dice that signify complications and problems, related to the number of issues the players have to overcome. The players then get to try and solve those issues using their creativity and the skills available to their character, and gets to add their own dice (up to 4 each) to whomever is attacking the problem. So, for example, if I come up with a creative idea and my character has Creative listed, I add a die. If I try to make a bucket as part of the plan, and that involved me using my flame thrower to melt metal in the process, add a die. If one of the other dinosaurs is Strong and uses that strength to press a bucket shape into the metal, add a die. Basically: however they can relate a skill to the problem, they get to add a die. (That's where the real creativity lies and pushes their troubleshooting boundaries!) 

Player dice ranging from 1-3 looked like complications to their problems, and 4-6 signified successes in overcoming GM issues / dice. I'll try to get more information on this later, as I was also running about, checking out of the hotel, and so on.

One of my favorite parts... Anakin built a dice tower with a spinner on it. Another player mentioned "dicescraper" as a pun (genius!) Gina took all this and ran with it, and Anakin drew a flying skyscraper, which ended up being a focus in them solving their issues.

A closer look at the final map, with complications that arose, and crossed out as they were solved.

The game was awesome. It ended up running just around or under 3 hours, and the kids were engaged the entire time. I am so happy Gina ran this.

I'll also add that she advertised it, at the beginning, as "Dinosaur Princesses", and despite my hesitation that this would turn off the boys (and to maybe advertise it as gender neutral), I'm glad it was advertised how it was. Two of the boys made a comment or two in the beginning to the effect, and crossed out "sses" to make "Dinosaur Prince" on the sheet, and Gina also mentioned that the dinosaur's gender could be whatever you chose it to be. But I'm sort of leaning towards a game that doesn't apologize for the title, and just owns it. 

EDIT: Gina talked a bit about this on the Happy Jacks RPG Podcast (season 19, episode 11).

A great session!

And out...

By game end it was just after 1pm, and after eating lunch with the kids and parents, we said some goodbyes, did a little wandering, and then headed home. All in all, a very successful con, and I can't wait for the next one... Strategicon Gateway 2017.

Strategicon Gamex 2017 - Sunday

Sunday 9am: Games on Demand and Wind on the Path

Bob and I woke up around 8:30am, had a quick brekkie, and headed down to setup GoD. I wasn't going to be able to play or run anything since I needed to get the daughter for con, but was there to help get people going. Turned out there was no need! Who wakes up that early on Sunday at Strategicon? No one! (MENTAL NOTE: The plan for next time: "Games on Demand: Sunday Brunch". We'll make it start at 11am for short-form games that end by 1pm.)

So, the two of us sat down and I ran us through Wind on the Path, a short 2-player samurai battle story game by Jonathan Lavallee, and featured in Codex - Iron, an RPG zine put out by the Gauntlet.

I had some samurai playsheets printed out, and a little Wind on the Path tracker helper I whipped up prior to con, and we went to it. I used my samurai Yashinoki that I had made for my initial game in the Gauntlet's slack samurai battles, and Bob put together his own samurai. We met at a bridge, which featured a fisherman and merchant dragging his wagon and taking a break. Before long we were up on the rocky bridge, exchange harsh words, intimidating stares, with a gusty wind, and then SLASH... we tied. Hmm... not really sure how to resolve that (a question for the game designer). We both were wounded, him across a forearm, me to the bone on my thigh. 

The game plays quickly. About 30 minutes if you are new to it. And the mechanics and movements really evoke a cool little narrative. It was great seeing someone else also enjoy it, and just reinforced that I'll be running this for Jackercon (Happy Jacks online RPG convention), as a sort of samurai league.

Playing Wind on the Path

Sunday midday

Off to pick up the daughter from my wife's work on Sundays, and then back. Although the weekend started pretty cool (especially for LA at this time of Spring), it warmed up by Sunday, and we hit the pool for about an hour. It's something to plan for, as the hotel has one medium sized pool surrounded by 4 hot tubs, all of it outdoors on the 3rd floor in one of the atriums. 

After a little wandering we checked out the dealer room. The daughter used some of her hard earned cash to pick up a set of polyhedral dice in a sparkly deep blue that she liked (and bemoaned the high cost... that's a win in her learning the value of her money). I found a pair of ladies making custom dice bags. It was a pretty cool setup, as they had a selection of fabrics and a sewing maching, and could do a reversible dice bag for you on the spot (assuming you could come back to pick up a few hours later). They made me a bag with a gritty dungeon map on one side, and rainbow space invaders on the other. I'll try to remember to add their business details later when I remember where I put that business card.

We also played borrowed a game of Lotus from the game library, which is extensive at this game convention (you only need to let them hold on to your photo ID). We played a round at open gaming, but then it was time to prepare to run my Sunday afternoon kid game...

Sunday 2pm: Fallout Shelter RPG (KIDS ONLY!)

GM: Me; Players: 4 kids (ages 6, 8, 8, 8)

I setup this game cause the daughter has expressed more and more interest in RPGs at the con (although I can't get her to play at home yet... a quest for another time). She's played in this scenario a couple of times, both with kids and adults, and I knew she could handle all the mechanics and story elements. Two of the other kids had played RPGs before, but I could tell attention spans were of the somewhat short end. The 6-year old had never played before, and he seemed a little shy.

I immediately scrapped a few mechanical elements in the game (money economy, the mechanical end of combat in lieu of short narrative bits), and decided I'd shorten the scenario from the usual 4 hours, down below the planned 3 hours, to 2 hours with a very large break in the middle. This was a smart call, cause it held their attention perfectly. We did lots of quick cutting and simple questions, and very basic story.

They traveled the wasteland. They followed a strange vault dweller in, who tried to cook them in an oven. They went to the medbay and were apologized to by the vault's doctor, and pointed in the right direction to help the overseer. They fought off some mole rats chewing through the electricity, and then saved the overseer, and helped feel the molerats to his pet Deathclaw. The overseer gave them the key so they could leave the vault, and also access to the storage closer with all the rare armor and weapons they could carry (i.e. two each). 

Scenario-wise, I ran it a lot more like I would Golden Sky Stories, than how I usually run this game. Worked well considering the age range and attention spans. I consider that a success.

Weapon and Armor free-for-all; it was their reward from the overseer for saving him and his pet deathclaw.

Showing off their hard earned loot on their character sheets.

The rest of Sunday

We finished earlier than I had planned for, so we hit the dealer room again, I picked up my dice bag, and we eventually had dinner and hit the pool again. Before long it was 9:30 and the daughter wanted to "rest", but still wanted to hit a Werewolf versus Texans game scheduled for that evening. Our friends Cell and Chris would meet us there, and their son, who was having his 11th birthday at the con and has played in my RPGs in the past. Unfortunately, the daughter just passed out, and despite many attempts, I couldn't wake her up later. So it ended up being an "early" night (relatively speaking).

Strategicon Gamex 2017 - Saturday

Saturday 9am: Games on Demand and Atlas Reckoning

GM: Me for Atlas Reckoning, Players: James, Erik, Dayler

After breakfast, I make my way down to the Lower Lobby. This space, in the past, was just a thoroughfare between the main gaming hall / dealer rooms / RPGs on level 1 and 2, and the open gaming and organized play in the "dungeon". It was used primarily by the Werewolf and party game crew, until they were moved to other locations. Now it's our little space to run Games on Demand, and is perfectly situated: relatively quiet, but with lots of foot traffic that gets curious seeing my table of indie games.

Games on Demand gets a decent morning turnout, with about 2 tables worth of players. Morgan Ellis runs Inspectres (which I would love to play, but alas...), and I run Atlas Reckoning (AR). 

AR is Stras' work that is basically "Pacific Rim the story game", and still in beta; I've written about it more than a few times (check the old musty tomes...)  Apparently at this point I have a bit of a reputation for running it a little bit different than most. Instead of asking "what city are we defending?" and assuming a Pacific Rim story, I go more open-ended, and follow the players into all sorts of strange lands. Think Evangelion more than Pacific Rim.

I had 3 players, which means I'll be playing and facilitating (you need an even number of players for this game). Erik brings his friend Dayler, who has very little RPG experience, which of course isn't an issue.  We start talking about prospective settings, and before long we have an alternate past. It's the 1910's, and Earth's industrial revolution is starting to endanger the planet. The fey creatures of the world (elves, dwarves, fairies, whatever), which are probably responsible for most of our myths, and normally invisible to human eyes, have decided to defend mother Earth. Humans find cold iron defeats them, putting it in their weapons and bullets, but the fey start creating larger and larger defenders (which are the Behemoth's in this setting). The human response is to make huge coal and oil driven machinery (our Atlases). 

We are humanities last reserve, down in Antarctica (from which much of the ice has melted away). Barely into the setting someone brings up child labor at the time, and that's when things get really dark. Suddenly we have little children as "computers" and labor within our machinery (remember, no proper electronics at the time), and it got gruesome quickly. It wasn't long before we realized how much the "bad guys" we were in this setting.

We dived into the first Engagement (combat) and I decided we'd ratch up the deadly by fighting what should be 3rd sessions monsters. We fought a giant water elemental we called a Poseidon, and a spiky crystal urchin creature. It was a brutal fight, with lots of mech damage, and a bit drawn out, but the players enjoyed it. We didn't have time for the Downtime session, which is the fantastic part of this game where you normally get to explore the feels. However, we did get some flashbacks via trait recovery actions, which gave us a few hints of what that would look like.

I need to learn how to tighten up the speed so I can ensure that the players get both an Engagement and Downtime at a minimum, but at the same time I'm in love with all the interesting scenarios the players have explored when I've variously run this game.

A bonus: I later ran into Dayler (the one who had little RPG experience) and he came up just to say what a fabulous game it was, so that just made me super happy.

Atlas Reckoning... mid battle in a tough fight.

Saturday 2pm: Games on Demand and The Final Girl

Facilitator: Me; Players: Scooter (aka Martha), Candace, Julian, Paul, Julia

One of the best things about GoD this time around was how many new players we had, who hadn't really heard of these story games or indie RPGs. To wit: A group of kids relatively new to the convention scene showed up and were looking around at my long table (where I set up Fall of Magic and other lovely looking stuffs). I chatted them up, and turns out they were eyeing The Final Girl. A few of their crew and some other stragglers went over to play in Monster of the Week with Bob Quintero running, and another crew joined Brian (aka Weaselcreature) for an Iron Kingdoms scenario that he had brewing.

I decided to facilitate the game, instead of join, as 5 was a pretty good number, and I wanted them to have control of most of the narrative. During game I'd occasionally give examples of ways to role play, or ways to kick things off when they weren't sure or questioning, but otherwise, they mostly took the reigns and ran with it.

We first talked about movies and what sort of thing they were interested in, and before long we had an Eastern European remote village up in the mountains with a gothic cathedral and ruins and an old cemetery. With The Final Girl you decide the killer ahead of time (similar to watching Friday the 13th, or Aliens... you already know who the bad guy is), and they decided to go with demon possession. We discussed this a little bit, and one aspect they were open / interested in exploring was having other characters get possessed and do the killing (which meant the Killer for a specific scene could just start taking over characters temporarily, instead of having an external killer).

They came up with a great cast, including the town wench, the town drunk, the perverted priest, the alter boy (who's name was Sally), a vegan traveler, and many more. Most of the cast was from the village, which I thought worked pretty well. After the intro scenes, First Blood occurred, where all the "boring" characters (aka those that didn't get relationships established) get killed off in one scene. I thought it was great that the traveler, one of the only non-village characters, got killed off. The perverted priest made it far, and was the one who mostly got possessed to perform killings, or at least witnessed them, but in the end it was the town wench and the drunk who survived... and instead of having one final girl, we had the two ladies walk off into the sunset. We even envisioned a great poster for the sequel.

As you get with some of these table, Scooter was a doodler, so it was always fun to also see how her art progressed, and unfortunately I didn't get a shot of her crazy cool unicorn. She also said she may end up doing some character sketches... we'll see if that happens, but if so, I'd definitely post them back here!

The Final Girl

Saturday 5pm: Bob runs another GoD slot with Dread!

By the time I was done, I knew that I needed a little bit of a break. The last convention I ran a middling session in between 2pm and 8pm, and ended up a bit fried. I had learned my lesson.

But kudos to Bob, who just kept on trucking! Another crew showed up around 5pm, and he ran a small Dread game for two. They were also new to these games, and from the feedback, had a blast. It sounded like a bit of a summer camp gone bad type scenario.

Saturday 7pm: Some Happy Jacks lovin'

During my break, I wandered a bit and did some socializing (always a nice pressure valve). I joined some of the Happy Jacks RPG crew and fans over at the bar for a few drinkies and random chats, and went over to see them setup for their live from the con 8pm podcast.

In retrospect, Bob and I have talked about scheduling GoD, and both being fans of the podcast, have decided that future conventions will have a 10pm - 2am GoD slot, which will allow us to go check out the podcast. I've been dreaming about doing late night gaming and building that critical mass for years.

Happy Jacks crew and fans, including Kimi, Will H, Jason, Weasel, two Tims, Dave, and more! (I'm in there somewhere)

Saturday 8pm: Games on Demand and Dread

GM: Me running Dread, Players: Stevie, Courtney, Tawny

Originally I was signed up for an 8pm game run by Sayler where he was doing a Dungeon World and The Sprawl mashup (which sounded amazing), but I ended up running in another GoD slot.

We had enough for three tables, with Morgan running Masks (even though he wanted to play in my Dread game... the sacrifices we make for the people), and Bob running another Monster of the Week session, this time including many of the crew that was in The Final Girl earlier, as well as some of his prior Monster of the Week players.

Me, I had some ladies who had expressed prior interest in GoD, but the timing kept not working... but they returned! And they were very interested in Dread. I ran a space horror adventure somewhat based on the "Only the Food" scenario I've written about earlier. I didn't have a copy of the scenario's questionnaires, so we went with index cards, and ad hoc'd the questions in person.

I also did this lovely thing where I pulled them aside and asked secret questions about each other, and then tied them back to the next person. For example, I asked Courtney (who was playing the Psych officer) what crime one of the other characters had committed, but tried to hide in her record. When I later questioned that player (Tawny), I asked her why she covered that up in her record, and what was the real story behind her police record. It was fun tying all these together, and also bring these situations up in game, where multiple players would get certain connotations. 

We ended up doing a good 3 hour session. And the ladies were very good with their jenga skills. In fact, we had an end coming, and I was certain one of them, in the final moments was about to bite it, but in fact they scraped through... and so we had a happy ending, with all three getting out in escape pods. (Epilogue: They get picked up some time later by a dirty rag-tag crew, with a "Welcome to the revolution..." A story for another time.)

At the top my Dread space crew, bottom left Morgan running Masks, bottom right Bob running Monster of the Week

I wandered a little to check out some other games running, and ran into Jim Pinto running Black Monk 4. The table included Tobie, Ben Woerner, and a few others, and yes, I was quite jealous. Looked fantastic.

I returned to GoD to perform some cleanup, and found Bob wrapping up his game. We had an excellent little chat with the players, and it was so cool to see how they were amazed that RPGs could be so different than their prior experience of D&D. Information was exchanged and hugs were had. The day ended on a very successful feeling note.

Strategicon Gamex 2017 - Friday

Lead up, and Thursday

I headed to the west side a day early to hang with old friends. A nice dinner at the new Sunnin Lebanese restaurant over in Santa Monica, and then off to visit Howie and Lisa, my traditional pre-con haunt. They recently had a son, who is now at the 5 months old mark, so daddy Howie wasn't coming to this con. But we got to see our friend Albert, visiting in the country, and play a game of Tigris and Euphrates!

Some Tigris and Euphrates action... I forgot how fun and elegant this game is. 

Friday morning

After an early bedtime at 1:30am (seriously, pre-baby these guys would keep me up until 3 or 4am),  I got to hang out with little Bei, prior to the drive to the con.

This was the most relaxed I've ever been coming to this con. Why? No sign-up to do. Normally they let people pre-register for games up to the half-full mark, then allow in-person sign-ups (first come first serve) for the second half of the players. But this time around I was running a few games and just managing Games on Demand for the rest of con. Check in, said hi to some folks, and then...

Friday 2pm: Fallout Shelter (Lego and PbtA hack)

This was the lego-based game I ran many times in 2016, and a few times this year. I pulled it out for this convention, with a few planned tweaks. I had a great table which included Keith and Emily (who played in my Star Frontiers game back at Orccon this year) and their friend Steven, who I've met but not really gamed with before. 

One of the main things I changed about this setup was I tried to abbreviate the wasteland journey a little, to provide for more vault time (although I left enough so we had some narrative elements there, including a rad scorpion attack). The poor little vault dwellers took so little food with them, and the wasteland orphan even decided to bring power instead of water, so I knew that aspect would be - ahem - entertaining. They arrive at the vault on death's door, which added that extra little element of tension.

Another twist in this session was them getting captured at the vault door (instead of it hanging open, as I've done many times in the past), and having them wake up in the vault's depths. I wanted to try this method, as this would force them to explore more in-vault and require them to have an exit strategy. I didn't otherwise have much planned, so we just went with some vault dwellers performing experiments on unwilling subjects to turn them into ghouls, and an assistant in the form of Mister Handy.

One thing I had planned on doing was use a real-time countdown for resource use instead of a clock that I had to trigger myself. Some player feedback included that I was inconsistent about moving it and using it with players, and that's totally fair... I think the real-time clock would eliminate some of that issue. 

Carlos "Needles" Juarez, Vault Scientist

The Vault, mid exploration

Friday 8pm: Games on Demand and Feng Shui 2

Friday night I planned to kick-off an initial RPG Games on Demand session. We've been expanding the number of these the last few Strategicons, and this con I was planning on having about 5 or so slots worth.

Ira pitched a few different things including Feng Shui 2 (a new version of a game meant to emulate Hong Kong action cinema). I pitched Atlas Reckoning (a Pacific Rim style story game). There was interest in both, but Feng Shui won out, and I joined in that game.

We did a "tower of death" type scenario, where the story would revolve around us going up a protected tower, getting something important, getting out. As far as the game system itself, it's not for me: Too crunchy mechanics which slow down the play and at times forced some players to sit out of the action due to how the shot clock worked. The parts I enjoyed the most was the collaborative world building around the characters, but most of that had nothing to do with the system, and everything to do with Ira, who has experience with that from PbtA and other games.

GM Ira and players Jerry, Brian and Desmond

Friday midnight: Exit - The Abandoned Cabin

My roommate and fellow GoD muscle, Bob, came over towards the end of that game, after getting out of his scheduled game. We then went wandering and ran into Keith, Emily, and Steve from my Fallout game, and friend Tobie who was visiting all the way from the Philippines (to play, as well as showcase one of his games as a convention "guest of honor"). Keith had a little escape room in a box called Exit - The Abandoned Cabin. He said he heard really good things about this particular version (even though he'd played another one which was somewhat lackluster).

We found an empty room, and dug into it, and it was a bit of a blast. I expected some big ol' box, but it was tiny, which was initially disappointing. I mean, how can you fit an escape room is such a small package. We ripped it open and found a few decks of cards, a pamphlet rulebook / story description, and a few items like a color/clue-wheel.

You have a 2 hour time limit, although score best when you minimize your time. Turned out it was totally worth the time, and the puzzles definitely gave the same feels of an escape room (I've done about 3 of them in the past). It helps to have a crew, as often you just need a different view point to get a specific clue. There are some components that get "destroyed" during the game (cards get ripped, etc.) so this is meant to be a one-shot. This may be difficult for some to imagine, as the box costs $15, and that seems expensive for a one-shot... however, an escape room will easily run $30, $40 or more per person for a 1-hour experience, and here you are paying about $3 / person for a 1-2 hour experience (admittedly without the full escape room 3-D experience, but still). It's smart marketing, if nothing else, and I have no regrets (especially cause Keith paid for it!)

We did it in just under 53 minutes, but most of all, we all played very collaboratively and it just felt like everyone had their contributions to the game. The narrative itself was somewhat weak, but the sequence of clues was great.

Additionally, it was really interesting to see how the card mechanics worked to lead you through a greater meta-puzzle, and how it was built to mostly prevent you from getting lost and from cheating (which would've been VERY difficult due to the safeties they put in place).

Playing Exit

Story Games Glendale - Praxis: Odin's Eye

Time for another SGG meetup. This time it was David, Mark, Kevin, and I. We talked about a few options, and decided to go with Praxis: Odin's Eye, a post world games production. It's a GM-less game by Jim Pinto, but a bit more focused than what you'd expect from a Fiasco game, which has a fairly open-ended start and up-front cost of setup. The scenario boils down to this: While orbiting an alien planet, the crew of Odin’s Eye intercepts a distress beacon of unknown origin, squawking from the planet’s surface.

When I've played Praxis with Jim, my memory is that very little world building discussion is performed prior to the game start. The characters do have a bit of World Building questions on the character sheets, but again, my memory is that we skim that fairly lightly.

I know that our group here has had problems when we haven't set a common framework in some games we've played (such as Fall of Magic) and decided to do a little bit of prior discussion to the game. I think it served us well.

We decided to go for a bit of a Roman Catholic feel... after the galactic empire fell and went through the dark ages, we are now part of the church's exploration arm, tasked with finding habitable worlds... and also converting those that already have inhabitants. Low number of alien species, and some light trans-humanism would be OK.

Praxis starts by having you pick from a number of character archetypes or playbooks (for example: Engineer, Pilot, Captain, etc.). After choosing one of the four given names, you start by drawing playing cards to randomly select some Objectives and Relationships with others at the table.

I chose the Ranger sheet, which is effectively the combat / security dude. I drew a club card for my Objective: "CYA (Cover Your Ass)". Kevin was playing Sloane the Biologist, to my left and drew a relationship with me, and I drew a spade for my relationship with David as Zed the Pilot: Guardian Angel. We decide that he and I have been through a bunch of missions together and I've saved his life more than a few times.

In other words, my character sheet was starting to look something like this:

I went with "Crow", and decided that Rangers were actually a very integral part of the core church hierarchy (and for simplicity, just used the archetype name "Rangers" as the name of the group in the church). Oh ya, and that they are actually gene spliced humans with various animals. I was actually part crow-bird thing, and part human. I liked the idea that it is customary for every exploratory crew from the church to have a Ranger on board, and that was I.

After an opening Vignette (action only, by a character) and Ensemble (a quick session with everyone present), we got into it and started taking turns directing. On your turn you choose a Scene type, and then mark that off your sheet. We had about 2 goes around the table, but the game ended rather abruptly. One of the end conditions is that a character marks off 4 Trepidation, and that was me! I started with 3 due to my special ability, and I just had some bad rolls trying to get things done. In retrospect we could've played a bit smarter to avoid that fate, but hey, live and learn.

The game also has Story Milestones, which are events that occur after a certain number of total milestones get checked off of character sheets. We didn't really get to explore that as the game went so very quickly, and we overlooked the first one, which is supposed to happen after 4 milestones are checked. (That said, I think only 6 milestones were checked in total before the game ended; I think the expected total should normally be closer to 10-12 or more.)

We still had a pretty good time getting into the story, but I think most of us felt a little cheated at how fast it went. Our crew got down to the planets surface. We ran into a quarantine, and some drama. But didn't really get to explore the beacon signal much. 

One of the main things I wanted to get out of this was some actual experience running the system, so that was definitely a positive.

POST-EDIT: Praxis has a number of alternative ending rule, which I didn't really understand or take advantage of during this game. One is called the Plot Twist, and it extends the game by giving the character who normally would trigger the endgame a few bonuses (a plot point and an extra power), and then allows further play until the second player triggers the end game. Although recommended for players who have experience with the system, it would've been put to perfect use in this session.

Dungeons and Dragons Junior

Meetups. I've had mixed luck, and like possibly many folks, I'm a part of a few that I've never attended. One of those is the Boyle Heights Dungeons and Dragons meetup. It's not terribly far from where I live, but they meetup on weekends, and weekends don't often work for me. But you know, I've kept it in my back pocket, just in case a Saturday opened up and I was looking for something to do.

And it's through the meetup that I got a notification for a sub-meetup in the same venue: D&D Junior. They have a great tagline ("The Family that slays together, stays together!"), and it's targeted for kids. I asked the daughter if she was interested, and we decided to give it a go.

It's held at Boyle Heights Art Conservatory, which has a number of after school programs for kids in the area, and also runs a number of workshops for adults and teens around art, neighborhood empowerment, and even a jujitsu class on Saturdays.

We can't make it every week, but we do when we can. We've been three times now, and the daughter's made a few friends, and even joined in the Minecraft programming class that they've got going just beforehand. 

Minecraft programming

The GM so far has been Myles, who has learned to play and run during their weekend adult games on Saturdays. And he is fantastic. Could use a bit more child management skills at the table, but his patience and dedication is exemplary! So far they've played a few introductory combat sessions, using some starter kid material that Wizards of the Coast puts out for D&D. They even get cool sticker awards at the end of each session.

Some of them have started to do some character generation, but the kid doesn't seem that into it. Honestly, she seems to mostly do it as a means of just hanging out with her friend there, so it's still to be determined if she's into the D&D sessions themselves. 

They've started to get a bit of a critical mass of kids in the last few times, with upwards of 8 at the table. It becomes a bit of a management issue, and so I volunteered to run a session of Golden Sky Stories for the younger ones next time, if they are interested and there were enough participants. We'll see how it goes!

A larger table during the second session...

First session, and the girls get some badges!

Story Games Glendale - Dungeon World with Lyurk and Pyre's Tower

At the last SGG I ended up running a Dungeon World session. Half our members showed a little late, and I knew we didn't have very much in the way of time (3 hours at the top end). And hence, I wanted to run a "dungeon starter" of sorts that I put together... three simple questions.

Character gen

We created characters, ending up with:

• Pollux the human fighter wielding a strange black axe, played by David.
• Knock the pudgy elf wizard, culinary officianado, played by Mark.
• Sibel the human druid, avatar of the blasted wasteland, dirty and bland, with cow skull helmet and vibrant green staff, played by Mead.

We created bonds: Pollux and Sibel both agreed that Knock looked like prey, and is soft and needs protecting. Knock believes that Pollux will play an important role in events to come, and that the scrawny Sibel is woefully undernourished. Pollux and Sibel have a blood pact, but Pollux worries that Sibel, knowledgeable of the upper earth, is not ready for dungeon survival.

Time to drop question #1, and see where they go with it...

Question 1

What rumor about the Scrimshaw Pass decided you on hiring Lyurk's band for protection?

The party had heard rumors of magic wards that could be confusing... and that the pass always takes something from those who try to pass through. And the valley they were travelling through consisted of many bones under the thin layer of fresh snow.

It was obvious to me that they thought highly of themselves, and didn't like the thought of needing Lyurk, so I quickly make Lyurk's band consist of a few scummy brigands... simple thug Assan, heavyset Lump, the cloaked and secretive Zir, and Lyurk's sister, Lah, with two curved wicked blades.

One thing I liked about this part of the session was that even though I was planning on just hitting the action in media res, we organically did a little flashback scene at the last towns tavern, where they hired Lyurk. He was obviously concerned about the money, of which the party had little, but despite this agreed to accompany them... it appeared that other motivations were in play. I love that the players just jumped into this scene, and then easily jumped out of it, back to the present.

Some keening arose from the hillside, and Lyurk's people ran to investigate. Sibel started pilfering through their things, and found a vial of red dust: Amber Sand, which they discerned was a sleeping substance that could be dissolved in food or water.

It was at this point that the party got attacked by what looked like skeleton wights. As it turned out, these were some sort of short humanoids wearing bone armor, and after some scratches and scuffs, they were dealt with. Just at the end of the combat, Lyurk's band returns claiming to have taken care of some more of these, over the ridge.

Question 2

Why do you now know that Lyurk is planning to have his band murder and rob you, even though he hasn't let this on?

I love these leading questions which move the story along. In this case it could be one of a hundred reasons, whether it's purely malice, simple robbery, or in this case the players settled on Lyurk having been hired by people who were out to get the party.

Knock, having culinary inclinations, sidles up to Lump (their cook, with a stew going) and tries slipping in the Amber Sands as "salt". Lump doesn't notice, but does offers a taste of the stew, which Knock fakes a slurp of, by inadvertently spilling and burning his shoulder. Before long Lyurk's crew is passed out.

The party take Lyurk's band's shoes and weapons, and toss them a mile out, as they head towards the pass. 

Question 3

What is Pyre's Tower, and what has driven you to it?

OK, this wasn't really my question #3; I hadn't finished it, but it was supposed to be something like this: What is the <some object>, and what has driven you to get it?  and What rumors have you heard about <some location>? Now that you see it, what does it look like? \

I went instead with a tower. Also, in game it came up that Sibel the wasteland druid was search for fire-starters and immolators, as one of them caused the destruction of his homeland, and he's an avatar out for retribution. I decided to call the structure Pyre's Tower, which sounds fire-y, and to have it inhabited by a fire wizard.

They were approaching it, but taking their time (and in the real world we were running out of that), so I just had a fire-enshrouded being appear near them in the growing night. They made a good feint, and Pollux was therefore able to sneak close, and plunge his axe into the sorcerers chest.

Wrap-up

Unfortunately we couldn't do a real "roses and thorns" type thing at the end, since Game Haus Cafe was closing shop and we had to get out relatively quick. But everyone seemed to dig the adventure.

For me, the best part was that the entire session was planned around these three questions. Nothing else had been pre-planned to any degree. It all came from our minds as we went along, and that's some collaboration that I love to see.

7 Wonder's Duel world building test run

As my entry for the 200 Word RPG Challenge (which I wrote about previously) I created "HISTORY BUILDING WITH 7 WONDERS DUEL". It was my way of giving myself something fun to do while playing 7 Wonders Duel with the wife, but I haven't really tested it yet.

After lots of conversations prior to the start of our Story Games Glendale meetup, I co-opted David into playing it with me.

You start by defining your fledgling civilization. Mine was was:

• Civilization: Saurian Empire
• Capital: Liz'Kit
• Leader: Tarsisus Bloodskin
• Aspects: Dense jungles, equatorial weather, extreme variations of genes, biology-based technology

The game itself consists of taking turns building resources, structures, science improvements, and military conquests. You can win through might (taking the other players capital), through science (by building 6 different science symbols) or with victory points at the end of the game.

It looks roughly like this:

An example of 7 Wonders Duel (from the net... this wasn't our game specifically). You can see the types of cards: Brown resources, Green science, Yellow economic, Blue improvements, Red military, etc.

We didn't finish the game, but it was enough to get a feel for how (or if) this would work. Our history ended up looking like this, by the year number:

• 0: (Initial event) Massive volcanic eruption has strong effect on regional weather patterns, and creates a tenuous land bridge between two continents
• 3: (Build: Stone resource) Mass extinctions force Saurians to use non-biology technology; they learn how to work with stone.
• 7: (Build: Stone Reserve) Etruscans enslave a race of mountain dwellers, securing a stone reserve.
• 14: (Build: Clay resource) Saurians commit genocide on a human tribe and take their clay-working knowledge.
• 22: (Build: Wood resource) Etruscans train and begin to uplift an ape species to log wood for them.
• 23: (Build: Altar) Saurian priests state that sacrifice of humans is necessary to please the lizard gods in lieu of this non-bio tech use.
• 25: (Build: Tavern) Etruscans discover a breed of poppy for its mind-altering properties.
• 29: (Build: ?) Saurians take more human lands.
• 32: (Build: Glass resource) Etruscans harness desert lightning to make glass.
• 40: (Trade 2 coins to Build: Writing science) Saurians trade with the Heptosians, providing brick for paper, with which they begin to create a  prolific writing system.
• 41: (Build: Theater) The Etruscan princess spurns the throne so as to build a theater to encourage her chosen art form.
• 43: (Build: Wood resource) Saurians raid and steal uplifted apes, improving them and gaining wood working ability.
• 45: (Build: Clay resource) Many apes run from the Saurians and bring back clay technology to the Etruscan kingdom.

And that's where we ended. I got the notion we were starting to get somewhat antagonistic, which is sort of the point. I think it's interesting to start on your side of the fence, and then slowly build with more oppositional stuff. We only got half-way through the first "age" of the three ages you play in the game. I got the impression that the second and third age would be fun with many direct skirmishes or outright wars. Also, in this test game there was little battle because no Red battle cards even showed up (which is unusual).

One aspect I was happy with was the speed at which it played. The whole point is to quickly build a sentence which describes the results of the year. This was partly due to me expecting to play it myself during a game with the wife, so it couldn't be time consuming. That said, you could easily spend more time fleshing out a more involved story, if that was your thing.

All in all, a successful test run!