Story Games Glendale: Roguish

A few days after Big Bad Con, and I knew a Story Game Glendale meeting was coming right up. Helps with the little downer that I was expecting coming from such a non-stop story high during the last weekend.

We met up at Game Haus Cafe again, which so far is working pretty well. The disadvantage is the cost, but man, those advantages: 1000 board games. Great tables. Good food and coffee. A decent environment regarding background volume.

I carpooled there with my fried Lucas. We chatted, and played two rounds of Lost Cities.

David showed up with a friend Mark, and we dived into it. Did a few pitches, and ended up going with Roguish, which I had played the prior weekend. This is a very rules light, story game that emulates the dungeon crawl of Rogue, the old ASCII game from the early '80s.

Things that worked well:

• We used my little Lego head pieces of different colors as our avatars. (Don't forget the little head icon is exactly what your character looked like in Rogue... bonus!)
• This matched the colored index cards we used for our characters, which made it super easy to identify who was who.
• There was some confusion when people had gone their turn, and when they could or couldn't come to "aid" another... I got to use my customized spotlight cards (based on some others... I'll link to it when I find them!) Although these were made for other RPGs such as Dungeon World, I found these worked really well for this game.
• Everyone was very open to the open-ended narrative structure (or I should really say non-structure) of the game, and brought cute little stories, conflicts, and individualized cards for the game.

What didn't work well:

• The game is so very story-ish... I think most folks want a little mechanics there. Talking to Lucas on the way home, this was exactly the problem. Even if that mechanic was uber-light, and just let you track the 5 hit points you have, or something. In fact, this would more accurately emulate the original games, perhaps. 

Mark had to go, and it was getting late. We could've probably fit in something small, but decided to go with a game of Splendor instead. One of the advantages of Game Haus!

A game of roguish.

Four characters into the dungeon depths. 

The final fight! Legendary Wicked Forks with their pair of rabid rats! Our friend the werefish bard getting some Air Piranha groupies. A character death. Epic ending.

Big Bad Con 2016: Sunday and out

7am: The Wolf Pack

You read that right. 7am. It was not easy getting up that early. On Sunday. After gaming at full blast all weekend. But it was well worth it.

I've always felt that if there is going to be a physical exercise event at a game convention, I'm going to be a part of it. I ran at the Wolf Pack last year, and it was a serious struggle, but it was the first <insert any number here> K run I've ever done. I'm not in bad shape overall, but I've never been a runner. Like, ever. I started getting into a little bit of trail running in 2015, and actually found it enjoyable. That said, I never got very good, and I haven't run anything in 8 months. So, a little trepidation. Worst case I could walk, right?

There was less than a dozen of us. I was surprised to see Sean, to be honest... he looked worked the last night during our 3am conversation.

But out the door we went, and thanks to some awesome planning by our run leader, we had a very pleasant journey through quiet neighborhoods and a park, and so close to the hotel. Good going, Walnut Creek. And in the end, it was not nearly as physically tough for me as I had feared.

Wolf Pack 2016!

Many Pokemon lost their freedom on that run...

The gap (and no nap)

My original plan was to head back, and then nap, as I had nothing scheduled until 2pm.

That didn't happen. Everywhere I went I ended up getting waylaid by friendly folk, and in fact I sat there in my sweaty jogging gear for an hour, for the first conversation. Shower. More conversations. Dealer room. Discussions with Andi and Becky at the teen game room. Wander around. Brunch at the dining room / atrium hangout area, joined by Kristine. More conversations.

In a sense this was the nap I needed, as the energy just flowed into me. This was a recurring theme for me in this con.

Got to meet fellow Gauntleteer Brian Vo during my various wanderings. Turns out other Gauntlet members were in the area, to be discovered after the fact.

Legend of the Elements: The Last Dowry

Of four games I've Kickstarted and wanted to play this weekend, this was the third. (The forth was Masks, but that'll have to wait to another time). Legend of the Elements is a PbtA game by Max Hervieux that emulates stories in the vein of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Andy has run this a few times, and it sounds like he likes to place the game in the timeframe of the 100 year war, where the Fire Kingdom is starting to push outwards and make claims to Earth Kingdom land, and a time when the Air benders and monks are being hunted.

• GM: Andy Munich!
• Kevin as ???, the Earthshaper
• Doug as Gobo, the Spiritshaper
• Mateo as ???, the Watershaper
• Tomer as Refenja, the Scholar

The Last Dowry is one of the two scenarios provided with the base game. Being PbtA, the scenarios are very high-level, provide leading questions specific to different playbooks (i.e. characters archtypes) and no strict guidance on the journey or destinations. What this means is that I've read the scenario in the past, but had no idea what would happen as a player.

In my case I wanted to play a non-bender (or "shaper", as is used in the game, to avoid any legal entanglements). Although the game hinges around element benders (and includes a "spirit" bender / communicator as well), it provides just as many playbooks for other character types (the Monk, the Peasant, the Warrior, and so on). Because the other three players chose benders, this worked well with my choice.

I grabbed the Scholar, and went for a stocky individual who was an inventor type (inspired from my Friday night character, perhaps). This one playbook has a special mechanic called Material. Material is used in aiding certain moves, or creating inventions, although rolls are generally still needed. I liked that it frames a limited economy in session, so you have to portion it out, as in many mechanical constraints.

I also went for some bonds with other PCs that played into a narrative of an ailment which I had, which caused me to need to eat constantly, and allowed me to eat almost anything organic, despite no change in body type or sustenance. I love throwing in little LARP-lite mannerisms, and because I hadn't eaten yet, I decided to very, very slowly chew on my sandwich and snacks over the course of the session... the point being that every time the other players looked over at me, I wanted to be chewing.

As far as the game itself, Andy pulled this off so well. He nailed it as far as characterizations, and we had so many NPCs come in and out of the narrative that felt so authentically from that world. I think that really helped enable me to play up the style of humor and personality that I've associated with the Avatar story. Another aspect of the game system I like is that it doesn't force humor or trappings on the narrative, but allows you to easily associate those in the play-style.

Andy also uses audio heavily in some of his games, and this was my opportunity to gauge how he does it differently from myself. In his case, he doesn't use looping background audio, but instead had very poignant tracks that sound like they're straight out of the show (perhaps they are). He would play these 1-2 minutes tracks at key moments in the story, such as when we start a confrontation. It worked very well, and I may emulate this in some of my games.

Legend of the Elements Pro-tip: One element of the game I found hard to understand, during my initial read, was the system of Tags. These are narrative tags that are assigned to characters, NPCs, and locations ("environment tags"), and seemed to share some flavor with the FATE system, but I didn't see exactly how they'd work in game... especially as a character can get 3 tags before being "temporarily out of commission". (Note: There is no mechanical cause of death, unless the player desires that outcome). Andy made this really easy to understand, and play with, by pulling out his pool of story tags. Additionally, he had a whole set of printed pictures to represent locations and characters, and we could use those easily during the game.

The tags themselves began to make all the sense. You get hit by an acorn on the head? You get the Dazed tag. You're falling through the air? Falling. Swept up by a large eagle in mid-fall? Remove that Falling and Grabbed. Do some Earth bending and raise a wall to protect a hut? Add the Fortified tag to that location. Additionally, what you find is that to make certain moves specifically directed to a character or location, they must be tagged... which means you have a bit of setup in getting a tag on a villain, first. This provided some of the setup and narrative-esque machinations of FATE, but was a lot simpler and less mechanically based.

Tag pool, with tagged people and environments above.

We wrapped up a little on the late side (about 4.5 hours for this session), but the story felt complete. Andy mentioned that he could have erred on the side of having less "village" story elements prior to the main course of the narrative, however we all agreed that the village really set the tone and scene so well. 

Mega-Dinner!

Once again down in the lobby, I found Andy as part of an organizational process by which 20 odd individuals were going out to dinner. I got tagged along.

Thanks mucho to Kristine for calling around and getting us a place that worked! We ended up at a Japanese and sushi restaurant that was super excellent. They had a large banquet room that basically just had us in it. Conversations flowed, as did some of only liquor (well, sake) that I drank all weekend. Got to meet Karen Twelves and hear a romantically geeky wedding proposal story... during a game of Parsely, for heaven's sake. How amazing.

Stras and I family-styled some delicious Sushi, and the conversation flowed, as it does. Thanks to Sean and Karen for sneaking out on us, in a pleasant way. Bastards.

More Legend

We returned to the hotel to find dozens of people on many tables and circles sharing in the post-con glow. Chatting, reliving, loving. I got into a nice circle with Andi and others, and realizing I didn't have a way to get back to Sacramento the next day, I even got an awesome offer from Jeremy to drive me back. Although his timing didn't work for me, he explained the Amtrak ride being pleasant experience, and so that decided the matter.

And then Stras runs up like an excited puppy, convincing Andy to run (another) Legend of the Elements game, with him and Morgan and whomever would be convinced. I waiting for them to get others, as my body and mind wanted to just chill.

But as it goes, I followed my heart. We found a little space, and set ourselves up. An amazingly fun little narrative ensued, with Andy running, Stras as Shu the Airbender (with very Ang-like personality), Morgan as a Fire nation Warrior deserter, and me continuing with the Refenja character from the prior game. Even more so than the prior game, we all embraced Avatar-inspired humor and interactions. Andy really brought it, with a cool mystery of who-done-burned-the-village, with nasty villain, and heart-wrenching ending. This could have easily been a great episode produced as a prequel for the series, and to me, that is a measure of the absolute success of our game.

But oh my lord were we wiped out towards the end...

Bookends

And it is with that, that I realize that Stras and Andy and I may have very well book-ended the con. We played in the Dread game Thursday evening, and then this final game that ran all Sunday night to the wee hours. Perhaps there were others playing, who can say. But I'm proud of this particular achievement.

Goodbyes, a Transit Journey, and Home

Dennis and I got up in the morning, still a buzz and chatting about the con, and what the future entails. We checked out, grabbed a ride to the BART station with the hotel shuttle, and then split our separate ways.

I then embarked on a very long, multi-staged mass transit journey, but damn if Jeremy was right. That Amtrak ride is nice. I got some family time with the parents, and then off to grab a flight back to L.A.

The highlight of the journey home, game-wise, was character generation for Golden Sky Stories with my 7-year old daughter on the flight home. She wrote this, unprompted, about her cat character (swoon!):

Hi. I'm a kitty. I'm black. I'm actually pure black. I'm super DARK! My name is Willow. What did you say? Oh, ya, I'm cute. I'm also very selfish. I'm 2 years old. It's hard for me to make friends with people, but nobody tells me what to do. I'm FREE. Yay! I can do everything I want. I'm very independent.

Toot toot! Until next time...

Final thanks

I've said it elsewhere, but it's worth saying again and again as many times as I can: Thank you to Sean Nittner and the entire Big Bad crew and volunteers and participants for making this such an amazing, supportive, and safe experience for everyone. I don't think I can recommend it highly enough. Although the convention and many of the people will be missed until the next time I can attend and connect, it serves as an inspiration for the places I will go and things I'll do. Cheers!

Big Bad Con 2016: Saturday

I woke up groggy after 2 nights of unsatisfying sleep... was it Sunday already? Sure felt like it... holy shit, it was only Saturday morning. That shot an injection of happy straight into my cranium.

World Wide Wrestling: Fall Fracas!

So, when planning for this convention, I was hoping to get in as many games that I've KickStarted, but haven't played, and especially didn't quite groc. Pretty much at the top of that list was World Wide Wrestling. Although on the surface it sounds like just an RPG about wrestling in a ring, it's really so much more. I had heard good things on a podcast or two, and it turned out to be all true.

• GM: Noam Rosen

• John Aegard as Sam Nostradamus, the Monster

• Ben as Ray Locke, the Technician

• Kris as Avery Adams, the Anti-Hero

• Tomer as Super Novae, the Golden Boy (or Girl, in this case)

WWW, like most Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) games, starts with playsheets that lay out the common tropes of the setting. In this game, those represent the different types of wrestlers: The Technician, The Veteran, The High Flyer, and so on. In this case, you are the wrestler as a whole. There is your persona in the ring, and also your life outside the ring. These collide and conflict in interesting ways during the story, within yourself, and also with other players. Like all PbtA games, you create much of the "backstory" in the game itself, by answering choosing selections from the sheet (Hailing From: Los Angeles, California, and Entrance: Showy and Ostentatious), as well as answering various questions (Who's jealous of my rapid rise? Who did I debut with, and leave behind?)

Before long, you've got Heat with various players (at the table, as well as non-player characters), and that works to your advantage in the ring. 

One of the best parts is coming in with a very thin, half-baked idea, but watching it grow when interacting with everyone at the table. John, who sat across from me, came in as Sam Nostradamus, a burly dude with dark, mystic regalia. But before long, his story had turned into one of a wrestler who'd been through 5 incarnations, and may be on the chopping block if he doesn't get the audience excited.

I came in as Super Novae, a star loved by the audience. However, it turned out that I had a dark past as a villain duo, the Binary Stars... and that I'd switched sides in the ring, leaving my partner in the dust. In the background, she's returned as the (NPC) Pride, and I had Heat with her as well. She didn't make an appearance in this narrative because we wanted to concentrate on the players at the table, however in a home game, that can certainly happen, and cause drama.

I've heard in conversation that someone criticized the art. I can't fathom that level of blindness.

Because we were playing a con game, we got 3 matches... two individual bouts, as well as a tag-team match. Naom, our GM, who plays "Creative", basically plans the bouts, and also the winners. This means the match is fixed, but us, as the players, didn't know who would win until towards the end of the match. And even then, there are ways to upset the balance, and have Creative change their mind and let the other wrestler win, if the crowd is in their favor, or otherwise. In the end, it's all about entertaining the audience.

Another excellent facet is that wrestlers choose to either be a Babyface (good guy) or Heel (bad guy). Each has slightly different additional powers in regards to a match. In our case we had Sam Nostradamus and Kris as Avery Adams as Heels, and Super Novae and Ben as Ray Locke as Babyfaces. This set up a spectacular final match between the lot of us!

This game was an absolute blast. Not all of us were wrestling aficionados, but you couldn't really tell, because it's so easy to go completely gonzo and get into it.

Exhibit 32b: Sam's spiraling career... from Sam Stone, to Glorious Sam, to Corporal Sam Victory, to Sam Steel the construction worker, and finally... to Sam Nostradamus. My nemesis.

In the end, the game just kept you feeling like you wanted more. And from what I've heard this really shines as an on-going campaign where you play a few "seasons". Wrestlers may get fired or retire out, or get injured to a point where they can no longer go on efficiently. And you can bring in new stars to fill their absence.

What more can I say? Favorite game of the con. And props to Noam for helping us be awesome by being an awesome Creative.

The ring. Picture by Brian Kwa.

Lunch at Pinky's Pizza

I caught up with Andy and Dennis, and we didn't have much time before Dennis' 2pm game, but we decided to run over to Pinky's Pizza Parlor. Not too far, but Andy had a car, so that helped cut down the time. Food was mediocre, but not bad, and we were even joined for a quick chat by Noah (who turns out is from The Gauntlet community, for which I sometimes get to play in online games).

Ad hoc: Cheat Your Own Adventure

After the morning session ending at 1pm, I had a big gap until 8pm. I think it's vital planning for some down time, to get refreshed. I find more often than not, it ends up being a chatty talk-fest with groups of like-minded individuals, or ad hoc gaming. Or both combined.

So, before long, I find myself convincing a nice big table filled with Andy, Kristine, Andy, Mateo (from last nights game), and Vivian from Sac-town (yay! we got to game!) and more for a little quick thing I found online, that I've been wanting to try.

Cheat Your Own Adventure is a little game written by Shane Mclean, which emulates a Choose Your Own Adventure book in the best way possible. It's a little GM-less game, where you take turns narrating a scene, and 3 other people create possible choices for your character. The narrator chooses one of the possible choices, and then you determine if its a positive outcome, or a horrible death. If the choice is good, than the author of the choice gets to be the next narrator.

If the choice is bad, then the author gets to narrate the death. But lo! As in days of youth, you had your finger bookmarking that last crossroad... and the narrator gets to go back and choose one of the other 2 paths. And that one will always succeed. And on you go.

The path gets more and more difficult, but you will always succeed down the second path, so there will be a happy ending, eventually. And the game itself? Riotous good fun, and very collaborative.

Andy started us off with his little setting: "You are on a field trip with your class at the Natural History Museum, and fall asleep on a bench. You wake up to find it dark, you are by yourself, and the museum is locked." The title of the book? "The Field Trip... Through Time!" We had a shrinking Obelisk, an Egyptian slave driver / taxi driver, and a universe rending rip in time, among other things.

This game is a blast. 

Ad hoc: Roguish

I'd been hoping to game with Tre, who I hadn't seen since last years con, except online. In fact, we played in a little Fall of Magic session a few weeks back on Google Hangouts. He got into a Games on Demand (GoD) session that we didn't, but fortunately met up with him a little down the track. We were joined by two others, and found a table in the little teen gaming hall, that was mostly open.

Andy volunteered to run roguish, a free little game by Evan Silberman that emulates a little dungeon crawl (a la ASCII video game Rogue from the early 80's). In this case, however, the rooms, monsters, and treasures are crowd-sourced from the players, shuffled, and help create a little GM-less narrative game (sans mechanics).

Every few rooms you find one with a set of stairs, and you dive deeper into the dungeon. In our case we decided on a setting with science-fantasy steam punk, in a floating boulder of a dungeon. I had a couple of Lego space heads we used as character markers, and we were off delving.

It's a silly little game, and has next-to-no mechanics, but plays pretty quick (~1 hour or so), and we all had a great time. Definitely in the read-to-play pocket for the future! The best part is seeing all the silly and weird that your fellow players have created, as you go along. Also, Andy was a big fan of ensuring that even after we finished, with monster and treasure cards to spare, we went through and examined them all, as that's always worth a few chuckles.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles...

I gotta send a shout out to my wife, J. Gurantz, who in the meantime was painting with a bay area artist on an electric box in Glendale! She's over on the right side (and found on instagram as @jgurantz). The bay area artist is Margeau B (on the left). I don't usually say "woot", but WOOT!

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog...

The Grand Warren

Another of the games I've Kickstarted, couldn't quite grok, and really really really wanted to play. It was at the top of my list, next to World Wide Wrestling. The fact that the caliber of GMs was super high as well (Jason Morningstar, Steve Segedy, Colin Fahrion, and Jesse Coombs)... bonus.

We’ll play The Warren in epic mode, as four groups of rabbits cooperate (and compete!) across four different tables simultaneously. The threats will be relentless, the adventure will be epic, and the Black Rabbit will always be at your paw.

I sat down at a random table, and it slowly came together:

• GM: Colin Fahrion

• Albert Kong, as ???, our doctor and herbologist, Composed

• Kim Farrell, as Tkon'e (Blackberry), Marked by the Black Rabbit

• Julie Southworth as Syewen (Power Song), Dominant

• Tomer as Senalisen (Quick Water), the Swift Runner

As it turns out, each table was a separate warren (aka territory) on an island. We each have our quadrant, and comprised of the Salmon, Elk, Orca, and Red Birch (I know I got that tree wrong) tribes. Almost immediately, we created our characters in true PbtA style, answering various questions, and having some interactions with each other. Additionally, we were also answering questions that defined our factions.

And then there was the little stuffed rabbit doll on the table. Each warren had a figure who traveled to other warrens to deliver messages, ultimatums, and just communicate in general. You see, traveling from warren to warren would be close to impossible for any of us, unless we were thrown out of our warren... and even then the journey would be highly dangerous.

Our rabbit was the matriarch of the island, which also meant that we had the warren in "control". As it turns out, we ended up being very isolationist, and in fact kick out any rabbits that breed with other tribes. That contributes to our shrinking numbers.

What was cool was when we stopped for a few moments to listen to everyone introduce their tribes. All of a sudden we find out the Orca clan is completely blood thirsty, and has an initiation rite that includes swimming to a small island and back... basically the Spartans of the group. Other tribes had similar, quite different, personalities.

Colin setting the tone, just prior or after Jason did his great X-card spiel. Picture by Brian Kwa.

And despite us initially diving into the conflicts and issues within the rabbit communities, very quickly it because apparent that there was another larger issue... the Humans. They had been coming to the island seasonally, but now were establishing a permanent residence. And they brought hunting dogs.

Within the first five minutes of play, Jason Morningstar comes over to borrow a new playsheet from our GM, Colin. He'd killed his first PC. I think we all just stared like deer in the headlights, feeling quite vulnerable.

This game was so great. At first I had the desire to visit other tables, and in fact my character was a bit of an explorer, at least around our warren. However in retrospect I really like what they did here. The stuffed rabbit dolls did travel around with messages, ultimatums, and news and tidings, and that in turn informed our (warped) view of the world. 

One aspect of the system I really enjoyed was the Innovate move: When you do something unheard of, imagine what your actions would look like as a move. Basically, we could craft our own moves. At one point in the narrative, one of us spoke for the First Rabbit, a spirit / rabbit god, of sorts. Because of this, Colin had us roll for the move, and because we were successful, we now had the Speaking for the First Rabbit move. We just invented religion.

You can see the map, split into the 4 quadrants for the 4 warrens.

As time went on, things got to a head, and the last 20 minutes was pure chaos. Rabbit warrens were having a war, and we later found out that half the island was on fire due to another Innovate move by another warren.

We split our clan in two, and one joined the Orca in the south, and one went to a remove little area. Poor Tkon'e was our injured and pregnant rabbit, and was carried off by a hunting dog, to everyone's horror... but her special power had always been Marked by the Black Rabbit: When others presume you dead, you’re not. Return, injured but alive, at some later time—with an incredible story. Then cross off this move. She comes back months later, with the 4 scars she earned earlier in the story, and with a litter of little bunnies. An epic win.

Overall, the game itself is great. Playing prey is daunting, as you have almost no ability to fight back. There is a panic track, which is brutal. And getting injured means you scratch off a basic move, which severely handicaps your rabbit. Captures the feelings really well.

The execution of this particular con game was stellar. It was a great balance of being able to play a standard game, but with an larger mega-game going on, that everyone felt a part of. Superb.

Late night ramblings

Fatigue be damned. The next 3 hours or so was filled with running into random lovely people and just having gaming and nerd conversations, as well as talks about the con itself and its excellent support of the community and safety. Highlights always include Andi (from Seattle!), Gavin and others, a discussion on Dread with David Kizzia and Andy, and a group of us being able to lend a helping ear for Sean to vent to.

Looks like 3-4 hours of sleep left until the Wolf Pack 5K run! Wait... what?

Big Bad Con 2016: Friday

Game arrives!

So, I left my Lego box at the cafe in Burbank airport on the way up to the bay area, back on Wednesday morning. Security confiscated it (and of course security is located outside the terminal), and I found out during the boarding process of our plane. Super suckie.

I was stressing on the flight, since I think the game shines with the Lego props, but thought of a few alternatives: maybe Dread it up? Fortunately, the lost-and-found lady at Burbank was dope, and helped me out by Fedex-ing the game box to the hotel. It arrived Friday morning, and I was set to go!

Registration

Last year I was impressed by the the con badges at registration. They included your name on the front, and optional twitter tag (or whatever), but also had your scheduled games listed on the back, including times and room numbers. I consistently heard people marveling at that magic. They also give you little buttons based on all sorts of things like if you pledged to the KickStarter (which helped fund private rooms for all games!) and if you are a GM.

They added pronoun stickers, which I think is awesome in being able to get everyone comfortable about gender associations for their conversation partners. And there are always a bottomless well of conversations, in my experience.

And then they took it to the next level: Playbooks. They created little playbooks to gamify social interactions at the con. You could choose one of them from Mage, Explorer, Ambassador, and Rogue, initially. Each of these had some basic principles on the front, and then a list of goals on the back. Whenever you complete one of these, you Mark XP! Mark 5 XP, and level up at the registration desk by getting the button, and choose another playbook. When you completed the 4 basic playbooks, they had advanced playbooks! You can see the Wolf in my image (there was also Little Red), however I was never able to complete those for the button... they included goals such as "clean up a room you see that has been left a mess" and "feed a staff member that is too busy to get food". All very optional, but oh so fun. Even if you didn't really get into it, it was just a brilliantly executed little piece of gamer-love.

Badges, buttons, playsheets, and more!

In addition to all that, there are also amazing donation events, such as the Tell Me About Your Character booth, which raises money for Doctors without Borders:

Nathan wants you! Photo by Brian Kwa.

Lunch: Ramen Hiroshi

Andy came out from SF, and drove Dennis and I to Ramen Hiroshi, in the downtown Walnut Creek area. Most restaurants would be a fair walk from the hotel (not really a problem normally, but difficult if you have a limited window between games).

We enjoyed a few bowls of ramen. Their standard Hiroshi ramen was delicious, and even comes with a free little side of Chicken Karaage. Good conversations, and then back...

A brief viewing of Ghost Court

I was walking about, and happened by the room where Ghost Court was in session. Just stuck around to watch one session in play (it happened to be Ross Cowman as a human on the stand), and it was pretty hilarious. I didn't play, but I mention this because it looked quite popular, and it's in KickStarter mode now (see link above), and I regret not having a go. But in all fairness, I was going to start my game...

Ghost Court in session!

Fallout Shelter RPG

My PbtA hack for the Fallout Shelter phone game, written about elsewhere and in my various blog posts, was first on my list. Originally I was going to run this for normal con-goers, but Sean asked if I could do it for the teen track. April was a non-teen who wanted in, and waited on signing up for this slot, and was therefore able to secure a place. I'm honored she joined us!

• GM: me!
• Bayan as Em Peached, the Ex-Overseer
• Leo as Elizbeth, the Wasteland Explorer
• Leo's cousin (name?) as Professor Gregor, the Scientist
• April as Indi-Go (?), the Food Engineer

A good little session. Bayan and Leo were the two 13-year olds, and uber enthusiastic. I was pleasantly surprised with Bayan's unrelenting pun-fest with character names, including his own character, Em Peached,  Nuca Mer the Immigrant (bonus for getting Nuka in there!), and Bruce Wane the Wasteland Orphan. I regret not talking in a low, growly voice as the orphan, in retrospect. Also, he wore his Vault 111 hoodie, and brought a little man bomb that made explosion sounds. 

In the end, April's Indi-go was able to complete her mission and make it back to her vault. Bayan's Em Peached did get back, starved and dehydrated, and was promptly thrown in prison. The others died horrible deaths. So: success!

Most of my crew! Unfortunately April had already left before picture time. Notice Bayan's "little man" bomb sitting at the bottom left.

Dinner?

I can't remember now, but I did eat. Maybe I'll edit later when memory returns. But I will say that BBC makes it a point to tell con-goers to follow the 3-2-1 rule, and I will reiterate it now:

3-2-1. In the excitement of gaming it is easy to forget some of the basics. The 3-2-1 con rule is a reminder to get a minimum of 3 hours of sleep, 2 meals, and 1 shower each day.

 

Paradise

I love signing up for game systems I haven't played, or even heard of. This was one of the latter, and I don't regret it. It was listed with:

You’ve traveled long and far to find it. The last haven this side of the Mississippi. They said it’d be safe. They said it lived up to the name. They said it was perfect. But right now, Paradise just looks like a dump.

War Stories is an RPG all about telling stories and surviving to see another day in an apocalyptic world. Players will take turns sharing a tale of harrowing adventure from their past, all while an impending threat encroaches upon their safety.

The GM was Alexis, who turns out is from LA. (Represent!) Played with Matteo and Brian and one other (name redacted). The setting was about 75 years after the "incident".

I created my character as young Novinski the Wizid, a little wizard / wiz-kid, grown up learning fixing things from her mom. And now orphaned and travelling the wild. What I loved, however, was the "Knacks" in this system... the whole character was defined by a few phrases, and also a list of skills. The list is still in beta mode, but I really dug options such as "Fixing stuff" and "Swindling". Some options have asterix, which implies that they are more complex in this post-apoc world, and therefore more expensive to purchase:

The War Stories character sheet

The game ran in 2 sections, which I thought was really interesting... an initial round-table, narrative vignette / story-telling part, where we each took turns describing our character in a scene. These scenes also are used by each player to add canon to the story, as desired. This felt very similar to some GM-less games I've played, including those from postworldgames.

After this initial section, we then become a more traditional GM-based game, where Alexis brought us into a scene where all the characters were mostly assumed to know each other (or just get to know each other). It's a little loose, and I think that transition could be a little more structured (e.g. with bond-developing questions you see in PbtA games).

From there it was more of a traditional GM-based RPG, however the mechanics were very narrative friendly, as you could really do anything, however your chances were just remarkably better with skills you had. It sounds like the mechanics are bit in flux with the system, but I actually thought they worked pretty well (d6 for non-proficient rolls, d6+d8 for proficient rolls, requiring a 5+ to succeed, if I remember correctly).

The story itself was fun... no spoilers, but I felt like Alexis did a great job evoking the post-apoc setting. It felt dusty and dirty, and the little village we were a part of felt well fleshed out. I felt the ambiance as wandering through the villages of Fallout and Fallout 2 (but that's me).

Alexis did have music, and I supplied my bluetooth speaker, which I was carrying around, but I don't think the audio itself was that audible. When it was, it didn't add too much to the game.

We did do a good post-wrapup session, but I think I forgot to mention audio feedback. One player mentioned he'd like stats for the characters, but I dissented, saying that many games do stat+skill, and I really liked how this one felt different, and felt like it was in sync with the narrative basis of the game. 

Paradise with Brian, Bill, Mateo, and Alexis.

Big Bad Con 2016: Thursday

Heading Back to the Bay Area

I lived up in SF for almost 8 years, so always love an excuse to get up there. On the plus side I got to fly up with my daughter, visit my brother and his lovely family, see the cousins hang out for mucho tiempo, and see my parents. The down side was not getting to see San Francisco at all, or the friends who reside within it.

Cousins! <3

Thursday rolled around, and I made a hasty afternoon exit to a slow, mass-transit crawl up to Walnut Creek. OK, it wasn't that bad. It was really just the standing on the very slow Dumbarton Bridge "express" bus that was lame. It did give me a chance to see the new Rogue One trailer (thanks Morgan!), so not all bad.

The Walnut Creek Marriott

Big Bad Con 2015, the only prior one I've attended, was in Oakland. I remember the hotel being easy to navigate, and with a decent bar. Apparently they bolted down the beds in the rooms, which prevents being able to have private game rooms. That's a show stopper. So...

BBC 2016 was in the Walnut Creek Marriott. I found it a couple of notches up the scale. The rooms were very nice, with hardwood / laminate flooring (much preferable to old carpet nastiness). I checked in to find that my particular room had a window that was intersected in half by the sloping roof. Odd. But that allowed me to see the weather outside, as well as look inside the hotel down at the lobby and dining room below! I spied some gamers ripe for the picking, and getting over some initial vertigo and introversion, I took the plunge.

I stepped up and said my initial hello "Gamers?", and also under the pretext of being hungry, and "how's the grub?" But pretext wasn't needed. It was like stepping into a hug. Suddenly I'm sitting with 6, then 8, then 10, then a dozen individuals, as more little particles came walking into the hotel and gravity worked its magic. Amazingly, I almost immediately got to run into Andy from Seattle. I also got to the lovely wife Kristine, which I hadn't previously met.

Gamers spotted in their natural habitat, with their strange modes of communication. I'm at home.

A Dread session

And then Jay, a member of our circle, pretty much mandates some ad hoc gaming! Before I know it, I'm signing up to run a game of Dread. A beam of sunshine named Stras walks in (we've gamed at Go Play NW), and before long, six of us are down in a lower lobby floor, in a dark corner, and I'm running that Dread scenario I wrote about not long ago. Included:

• GM: me! And as NPC Tarna (Electronics / Sensors), who died in the first minute
• Stras as Pyotr Romanov (EV Repair / Gravitonics)
• Jay as Abydos (Heating / Mechanics)
• Bananachan as Charlie from the Moon (H20 / Waste Disposal)
• Kristine as Sassafras Jones (Hazmat / Team Psych)
• Andy as Frunda 41/101 (Power / Radiation)

The last time I ran this I had a 3 hour time limit; This time we played around 4+, ending at a cool past-midnight. The hotel room scenery was good and abandoned, and it's amazing how well the hotel's quiet easy listening meshed with the creepy background audio I was playing.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, and the ambiance worked. I've got mad respect for Stras and Andi (having played with both before) and will freely admit, a little nervous to run for them. But that lasts for a few nanoseconds before diving in, and fortunately gets all forgotten in the moment. The players kept me on my toes with all sorts of technical know-how, physics (or pseudo-physics) knowledge, and things I didn't anticipate. I.e. good fun. We had a very unstable tower at the end, and Stras pushed it over for a little epic save, stabbing more than a few baddies with screwdrivers and shivs. Andi and Stras' characters had a touching moment on the comms before succumbing. The rest made it out, barely, and on to darker futures.

Banana-chan doing what needs to be done.

My roommate / friend Dennis showed up somewhere towards the end, with his friend Andy from SF (there will be many "andies" in this BBC narrative), and after some post-game chatting with the group, we three ended up chatting until pretty late up in the room, as you do.

All with plenty of time (5 hours?) to sleep and get back to gaming. Unfortunately the excitement bug got me, and it felt more like I was laying in bed for hours on end, but I'm sure some sleep must've been in there somewhere. Right?

A first Story Games Glendale, and Forget-Me-Not Murder Hoboes

Story Games Glendale

So, there is a group up in the Pacific Northwest called Story Game Seattle. My little interactions with this group has mainly been around attending the Go Play NW convention, in Seattle, for the last two years. I know a few well-known game developers (in indie RPG game circles) are from around there or have played in that circle, including Ben Robbins (of Microscope fame). In fact, Ben appears to have a strong hand in much of the weekly games happening and general atmosphere up there. For a little information on what that "looks" like, see the Story Games Seattle FAQ.

I was considering starting something like this in my area, but ended up finding The Art of Story Through Gaming meetup here in LA, and that seemed to do the trick for this year. I've hosted some Indie RPG nights, where we explore both GM-based and GM-less games. However, the meetup itself seemed to have gone quite regarding maintenance, and that reduced my confidence that it'd be around for much longer.

And as I was considering starting up my own meetup, *KABOOM* I get a notification about a new meetup called "Story Games Glendale". Not only a story games meetup, not only based on some of the guidelines from the original Seattle version, but also happens to be in my little corner of this great big trafficy city!?

Turns out a fellow named David has been running games such as these for co-workers for months now, and happens to live and work in Glendale.

First meetup at Game Haus Cafe

Our first meetup was on Oct 4, at our local Game Haus Cafe in Glendale. We've looked into the possibilities of Game Empire (in Pasadena) and Emerald Knights (in Burbank) as possible venues as well, however these locations already have many game and table reservations already.

After meeting up David, Caleb, and Tracy, as well as introducing Harry from my past meetups, we pitched a few games, and ended up taking on Forget-Me-Not: Murder Hoboes (by postworldgames and Jim Pinto). This particular game isn't released yet, but Harry and I had already played the original Forget-Me-Not recently, so wanted something a little different.

I have to admit we probably didn't follow the game exactly by the rules, due to my knowledge of how to run it with 4 people, but not 5. We started with the number of players you'd expect for a 4-player game but we were playing with 4 characters in a scene (instead of 3, the correct number). This meant we were blowing through the character phrases faster than expected, and so later in the game I slowed this down. We took it down to 3 people per scene, with the odd-man-out being assigned an optional NPC role that didn't match any of the characters (a monster, the bartender, so on). 

We had a good time. People appeared to mostly enjoy the free-form nature. We did a round of Roses and Thorns, and much of the negative feedback had to do with not getting to explore many characters deeply (which isn't the purpose of the game, really).

Harry has played a few GM-less games now where there is no attachment to a single character, and was curious if that is just a thing with GM-less games. My answer: not necessarily. Some GM-less games are based around exploring a community, or history, and so there is definitely less exploration of specific personalities, however there are some which do (such as Protocol or Praxis by Jim Pinto, or Kingdom by Ben Robins, or even Downfall by Caroline Hobbs). Perhaps I'll try getting one of these running soon.

The game was a little on the short side (~2 hours). But I suppose that's the advantage of being in a game cafe with 1,000 games on the shelves. So although Caleb had to go, and the rest of us played a round of Splendor, before heading out.

Forget-Me-Not: Murder Hoboes (beta version with temporary art)

David, Harry, Tracy, Caleb, myself

Dread: Only the Food and Aliens

(TL;DR? Just need the files themselves? Skip to the bottom for copies on Google Drive.)

Some friends were planning to watch a midnight showing of Aliens, at the local Santa Monica Nuart theater. What better time to run a game of...

Dread and the Only the Food scenario

Dread is a role-playing game by Epidiah Ravachol, which uses Jenga as its mechanic, and a questionnaire as character generation. I've played it many times at prior Strategicons, however have only run it myself in a hacked form: the Mad Max Fury Road Dread game.

Needless to say, the Mad Max version is very high paced, whereas a normal game of Dread has got a slow build up. I was definitely worried I wouldn't be able to pull it off, or at least lack confidence in my capacity to do so.

Only the Food is a scenario for Dread, written by David Schirduan, available off his website, which is a sci-fi horror adventure. I found it when looking for simple Dread scenarios to run, and it felt about right.

Preparation: Setting

In preparing to run the game, I found that the scenario itself was great, however I wanted to add some more flavor, and it wasn't organized in a manner that I could use off-the-cuff.

In a conversation with my friend Howie, one thing we quickly agreed upon was that the players should not be told about the history of the game world in the way the scenario describes. In the actual write-up, it mentions that the AIs win over humans, and mostly use them as tools. We figured it'd be much better to make it sound like the AIs were benevolent savior types, and give it more of a Paranoia vibe.

Preparation: Cheat Sheet

My first step in preparing to run it was to break down the scenario, and then put together a cheat-sheet that I could use. I'm a big fan of bullet lists with short phrases that remind me of what I need to know. The scenario as written by David was comprehensive enough (and definitely without too much information), however it fit over 5-6 pages, and would be difficult to use during game time. Hence I ended up with something that fit on a page. It looks roughly like this (with very minimal spoilers here): 

The first few parts of the cheat sheet.

Each "scene" of the scenario is self-contained, and has a bullet list of things to remember, or obstacles that will occur. The obstacles give some guidelines on the types of obstacles that might be encountered, and even the number of block pulls. Keep in mind these are rough guidelines to help understand the pacing of the adventure, but you can easily veer from the path if you feel comfortable. 

Preparation: AI Speeches

The "AI speeches" mentioned on the cheat sheet, refers to those times when the ship's Artificial Intelligence communicates with the characters. I transcribed these onto a separate pieces of paper that I could then cut into separate speeches, and hand to the players. Although I knew I could read them out loud, or play them on audio files (as you'll see I do, below), it's nice to have it written out in case players have a hard time hearing you or the audio, or simply want clarification on what was said.

Example of the AI speeches, transcribed.

Preparation: Character Sheets (EMS Personnel Forms)

I liked the questionnaires, however the ones that David provided were simply a bunch of questions on a sheet. I wanted them to have more visual flavor, and decided to give them more of a application / employee form type of vibe. I ended up going with a look something like this (with separate sections, highlighted roles for easier visibility when choosing your character, and some font choices meant to provide some flavor). In addition to the "What is your designation number?" question from the original form, I added a "Gender #" field (nothing is done to define what this means), and both the character's physical age (how old they appear) as well as their calendar age (how long since the year they were born, as time changes strangely when dealing with cryo-stasis). 

Here is what the top of the final form looks like:

The top of an EMS personnel form.

The six character choices all consist of a top "Worker Information" section, a Questionnaire with 3 very simple questions (you can see the first one, above in the example), and then a Private Information section with 3 additional questions. I changed some of the questions slightly from Dave's originals, and specifically had at least one question about general distrust for the AIs, in general. 

Preparation: Audio and Recorded AI Speeches

I am a big fan of audio in my sessions. For this game, this comprised of 2 different sets of audio files.

The first set of audio tracks were the AI speeches. To create these, I used the Text2Speech website, because it allows you to freely download an MP3 file which corresponds to this audio. I wasn't a huge fan of the unmodified speech, as the speed is a little too fast:

AI Speech 1a - Unmodified

I then take the MP3 file, and make some small tweaks to it using Audacity (which is free audio editing software). I used the Effect menu in Audacity to both Change Speed (to make it a little slower) as well as add Reverb (which makes it sound like audio coming from speakers and echoing in the ship.

Screenshot of Audacity, showing the Effects menu.

Here is the final result, of which I'm quite proud:

AI Speech 1a - Final with Reverb

The second set of audio tracks are related to the background music, which plays in a loop in specific areas. Each room, or travelling sequence, had a different audio track associated with it. Almost all of the tracks are from Plate Mail Games, however there were two tracks from DJ Spooky's Songs of a Dead Dreamer. You can purchase them from those sites, respectively

Here's a list of the audio tracks, as I've organized them:

My audio playlist for Only The Food. Purchase songs from Plate Mail Games or DJ Spooky

The best part is that my sound board app can play the music loops at the same time as the AI speeches. The way they layer is awesome.

Preparation: Ship Compartments / Map

Again, in preparation, I started to become concerned that the players would get confused if I told them where they were in the ship, but without visuals. I mean, you can just play this "in the mind's eye", however I could already see myself having to explain again and again where things were in relation to each other. Especially since there were more than a few rooms.

So, I decided to go for a modular, simple design for rooms and hallways. This allowed me to print them, put them out piece-meal (one at a time), and also customize them if I wanted to change things during the scenario. In the end I used Microsoft Word tables to create simple room designs, which I could lay out on the table as the players moved around the ship:

Rooms

EDIT: I just found these sci-fi tiles, which are pretty cool as well!

Running Only the Food

Well, writing all that makes me realize how much work actually went into it, given it was a scenario that was already written. However, what can I say. It's some of the prep that I actually enjoy, and that I believe the players would find fun and immersive. So how did it go?

I had 4 players. 3 are relatively seasoned, all having played Dread before (at least once, if not more). One was an RPG newbie.

• Howard as Fred "Brown" (O2/H2O)

• Sasha as Thoron (Electronics/Sensors)

• Thong as Kaylee (Heat/Mechanics)

• Sinh as Wilbur Hatchett (Hazmat/Psych)

We didn't have an unlimited window, and in fact had a pretty strict 3-hour time limit (due to the movie we were going to later). I felt like the pacing was very good, starting slow and building, which is what Dread is supposed to do. And although I ended up removing a scene or two at the end, we had a roughly satisfactory conclusion, with two character deaths through Jenga (one dropped the tower, the other sacrificed himself), and one character just making a weird end-game decision which caused me to epilogue him going out an airlock. The final character "won", by getting the 10% raise and getting back into the cryo-pod.

One of my favorite aspects and memories of the game was using a few player-generated events into the scenario. I also felt like the little touches I added did make the game run smoother, including the little ship compartment cut-outs.

I was able to do a little "roses and thorns" at the end with a few of the players. All in all, everyone loved the game. The newbie player said he thought it was a little on the long side, but he's also admitted to not being used to role-playing games, so wasn't sure if 3 hours was normal. Everyone loved the music and though it added a lot to the scenario.

I do have a suggestion on the additional character sheets that aren't chosen by the character. I would use those as NPCs, and as soon as the players have selected their characters, I would create names and define the remaining characters of their "team". This allows the PCs to create some bonds with some of these NPCs (as some of the questions allude to other members of the team). This works brilliantly in having one of the NPCs be a character that is killed by defective or destroyed cryo-pod. And makes them excellent cannon fodder for attacks and collateral damage.

Copies on Dropbox

And just in case you want these for your own use, here's the files:

• Original Only the Food scenario, written by David Schirduan

• Only The Food Character sheets, aka Anastasia  4159 EMS Personnel Forms (PDF)

• Only The Food Cheat Sheet (PDF)

• Only The Food Ship Compartments (PDF)

• Only The Food AI Speeches transcribed (PDF)

• Only The Food AI Speeches Audio Files (ZIP file)

Casualty through sacrifice.