Jackercon 2018: The Final Girl

Jackercon is the Happy Jacks RPG Podcast fan-run online convention, and this was Jackercon 14! (No, it's not the 14th year, just the 14th time they've set up a week or two for online games... there have been times where a few of these happened in a year.) Curtis Jackson is our de facto leader, having inspired these over the years, sometimes with themes. I always try to support this fiasco by running at least one game, and in past I've run Microscope, Fall of Magic, The Quiet Year, and my Lego-based Star Frontiers adventure: Distress on Life Liner 928. 

This session was going to be The Final Girl, a role-playing game about slasher-flick type horror, to find out the final survivor in... whatever weird fiction we were to create. And weird fiction it was. (You can see this around the 15:00 minute mark) We went with some remote town up in the sort-of-Himalayas, with Morman-like missionaries there to convert some of the locals (some of which have been converted); a demon awaits them.

Players included myself, Andrew, Jairo, Bel, and Kurt. Characters included, among others, uncover operatives, bright-eyed dreamers, a plucky virgin, an old hippie bus driver, a retirned marine, a wise sherpa, locals who herded goats, or managed goods and ran electronic shops, a butcher, a chaperone, a high school teacher, and superstitious missionary.

After character generation, game play starts in more earnest around the 50 minute mark. Mucho thanks to Kurt Potts for recording the session for me! Had a great time running this, and as always, the survivor was always a surprise, and led to an interesting ending (no spoilers). If you are interested, link to video is below:

SGG: Star Crossed Cannibals + The Warren + Malice

Content warning: Cannibalism.

Star Crossed Zombie Apocalypse

My friend Candace met me early for the biweekly Story Games Glendale Indie RPG Night, for some chit-chat, but as it turns out: also for some 2-player love dread! Alex Roberts’ Star Crossed is the two player tower-based RPG about two people who really want to, but really shouldn’t, or really can’t.

Love dread!

Our world: A “zombie” apocalypse had broken out. Zombies aren’t the living dead, but instead are people infected by a disease that makes them cannibals. In fact, zombies often fight and eat one another, meaning they are strong and fierce. Those humans who aren’t infected have gone to live in hiding, many underground, and surviving off scraps; they are starving and weak, and in constant fear of being found by the strong zombies that hunt them.

Our characters:

The Lead: Dr. Haus (played by Candace), a scientist that isn’t infected, who is looking for a cure. She has laid a trap to capture one of the infected, so she can experiment on them because she has a lead on the cure. What she things is her most attractive feature: her optimism. What are two things about her that she doesn’t realize are attractive: her eyes, and her intelligence.

The Follow: Cleaver (played by Tomer), an infected, strong and handsome, currently full, so is in a relaxed state. What is his most attractive feature? A kind face. What are two things he doesn’t realize are attractive? His compassion, and his well-fed physique.

What has brought us together? Cleaver has fallen into Dr. Haus’ trap. What is keeping us apart? Cleaver eventually won’t be able to control his hunger.

We started with Cleaver strapped to a medical cart, and Dr. Haus pointedly ignoring him. But before long they started to establish connections; both intelligent and well-learned, in a world which no longer cares. Our mild-manner Cleaver began to win her over in part, but not enough to allow her to loosen his restraints. Just at a moment when the doctor was trying to hide them from some of her people, noisy, exploring, and willing to kill the captured infected if he was found, we have a sexy moment of her on his lap behind a curtain, hiding, but with his hand now loosened from the restraint, dangerous. But he is stuck by a needle again, and awakens restrained further. They go back and forth, and the story ends with a moment in which the two appear to embrace for a kiss, but with his hand loose again, and her hand behind his back, needle in hand.

As always, this was a fantastic little journey. I’ve played this game half a dozen times, and it never gets old.

The Warren and A Town Called Malice

We were joined by some friends I was excited to introduce to the meetup: Chris Grey and David Kizzia and more. David was very interested in playtesting his new game: A Town Called Malice. On the positive side we had enough people join for two full tables. Unfortunately I got called into action to run, which meant I’d have to play Dave’s game another time! (Interested? Dave appears to be interviewed about it here in the Everything Horror Podcast.)

I ran The Warren for a group of three. It’d been some time since I’d run this little game of rabbits, which creates stories of the sort you’d find in Watership Down. In our case we played in the grand park of a big metropolis. We played out two seasons, as it turned out, following a group of rabbits as they attempted to save a small group of missing rabbit children from some other predators. But one of our main characters was a break-out from a lab, and there were rumors of disease. We found a section of the park cordoned off, and in the second season we find that pest control appears, dressed very much like the people from the lab, and there to spray and kill off this grand warren under the old tree with poison gas. There was injuries and a mad scramble, and a brave escape for most of the residents. The epilogue included a disease being spread to the humans, so perhaps this was just the prequel to Planet of the Rabbits.

Viewscream: Black Widow, Brown Recluse

ViewScream

Most role playing games and LARPs are written to be played face-to-face. But every once in a while you'll find one that has been created explicitly to be played online. ViewScream is such a game. I backed it when it was a Kickstarter many years ago, but will shamefacedly say I haven't read it or tried to bring it to the "table" (virtual table, in this case).

The premise of the game is that you are various crew members. I though that all the included scenarios would be based on being on a space ship, but there are settings where you are cyberpunk crew hacking into a corporation, and other such settings. In all of these, you are physically separated, and communicate through video and audio channels remotely (and hence how it is played explicitly online with video conference tools such as Google Hangouts and Roll20).

Hmmm... the cover of the game is mildly disturbing.

Black Widow, Brown Recluse

Recently, Daniel threw it up on the Gauntlet online play calendar, and I signed up, along with fellow players David and Keith. We chose the scenario "Black Widow, Brown Recluse". Our situation involves being on a space ship with a rogue AI that was killing the crew.

Everyone gets a different character sheet which has some secrets that belong to them, as well as various "fixes" they have problems, and some secret background they get to establish. This is one of the things I think the game does exceptionally well, is allow you to customize the character towards some fiction you generate or want to explore, so even if you played the same scenario, there would be varying storylines and motivations.

The facilitator (in this case Daniel) still plays a character, and in our scenario that character is the Bridge. They're responsible more for establishing communication between the players and keeping the narrative rolling, but once the other players get going, that load might be alleviated. They also have win conditions, but ones that are different from the other player characters. The rest of us (Sensors, Engineering, Helm) had various problems we were facing, and various fixes we could try to perform to help others, but the mechanics here are very light. Basically the game is giving you some story prompt type fiction to help you role play out various scenes. The roles also have some personality guidelines and other secrets which flavor all the interactions.

Also worth mentioning, if you don't fix all your issues within a time constraint, your character will die, so there is some motivation to get things moving. I thought this might come across as a little stale or mechanical, but that wasn't the case at all, especially if you have folks interested in exploring the role playing aspects. I was additionally surprised at some of the fun interpersonal conflicts, touches of hilarity, and a touching moment or two that passed between some of the characters.

All said, a fun game, a really cool experience, and one that I'd like to provide to others at a future time (maybe even let Daniel get to play in the players seat, since he's apparently only run this as a facilitator!)

Sensors, reporting for duty. (Yes, I always have to do a little bit of low-fi LARP dress-up.)

Gauntlet Hangouts: Misspent Youth of The Janus Minds

I've been slowly freeing up a bit of time to run more Gauntlet Hangouts online games, and so after recruiting friends Jessica and Gina into the community, but neither of them having played yet, I set a thing up. I put up a one-shot game of Misspent Youth: "teenage rebellion in a fucked-up future", by Robert Bohl. I'd played it recently at Gamex 2018, and ran it at our Indie RPG Night meetup.

For the full details you'd have to watch the video (down below, and thanks Patrick for helping me record it!). But from what I remember, it went something like this...

We see a utopia, beautiful, the future in clean streets and strange architectures... and then zoom onwards, past the wall and gate to the next tier, where things are still looking pretty decent; maybe not quite as clean and generous. Middle class, maybe? And then another wall and gate. And more zones. And finally we end up on the edge of our massive city. The largest area by far. And the poorest and dirtiest and crowdiest.

A boarding school in the lowest caste; forced conformity; ugly jumpsuits ; manufacturing; and social experiments. Forced belief and value systems, patronizing, broad spectrum stereotyping about Millenials destroying everything and blaming youth culture. Strict ethical codes. But... they need "creatives". Not just anyone though... only the "OK" kinds of creativity. The ones that benefit society without all the disadvantages. You know, like depression, or any revolutionary thinking and counterculture. All this, and the kids are of course being recorded as part of some reality show, to try and win votes to ensure the people's support for re-election and re-implementation. The show title? "Janus Minds".

The Authority had VICE: Absolutism / VICTIM: Humanity / VISAGE: Systemic / NEED: Re-election and support for Proposition RE-ED0912. What systems of control does the Board of Re-education have? Emotional monitoring through a Fitbit-type device. Cameras everywhere. Confessionals. And they are very Scripted; with very specific punishments if you venture off script without permissions. 

We had Beana/Beatrice (she) - Born of mixed-class background, Kiyana (she) - a trusted and unassuming "A" student, model pupil, but sympathizes with the cause, Judas (he)- a brooding musician, and Lucky (they) - a scrounger. 

Authority figures included The Voice of God - In charge of confessionals; Jonathan Glen - Producer and supercreep on chicks; Officer "Fruity" Frutanis- Harassing students, sadistic; Mark "the narc" - Detentionee but works for the man. 

The Youthful Offenders had an exploit though... a way to super-charge the fitbit using strong emotions which could disable the monitoring in the vicinity.

Due to some delays with tech issues and such and a long (but oh so satisfying) world-building, we didn't have enough time to play through all 7 scenes. Instead we made do with a good 3. We had some hallway drama with the narc, and the officer making an appearance. We had some emotion disabling electronic exploits being used at the Voice of God rooms, where they find a way to hack the televised signals. Now to get a message out. We had a third and final scene, which I played similar to what would normally be scene 6 of the game: a decision to see who would win: the Authority or the Youthful Offenders.

Overall, playing online works, but was a little slower than in person. You definitely want to find ways to expedite the world-building parts of the game. Perhaps using a pre-made scenario? Although the world-building is always so fun. Another option I more recently experiences is using something like the Add and Bans from Microscope to quickly go around the table and establish some world guidelines.

Oh, you want to know the outcome? I guess you'd have to watch...