Starting a New Game

Over the past week, Pat and I got involved in a new game.  Both of us and one of our other gamer buddies each tapped a person who we knew and have played with at least once before - the aim was to put together a group that's fun and story oriented.  Early signs point to good things on the horizon.

We're using the Wild Talents system, and from what I can tell thus far, it looks cinematic and gritty at the same time (which is just what I'm looking for).  The system is for a supers game, but we're playing a science fiction game in the far flung future.  The 6 of us hashed out the setting over email, and I think it's pretty cool.  Maybe I'll post a more detailed description later, but the skinny of it is this: 3 known alien races with different goals, human upstarts with transhuman abilities, the threat of a scary alien invasion on the horizon, ancient artifacts and unknown planets, and weird physics.  I'm the GM, and I don't know yet exactly how all this is going to fit together.  But I do know that the setting is volatile and provides opportunity for politics, exploration, and all out war.   Seems like a good set up to me.

Character gen went pretty well.  I like the characters so far - they each have different powers and different goals.  Hopefully, we'll be able to knit all of them together with an overarching goal that they can all buy in to.  In fact, I think this is crucial after our Burning Wheel sessions.

So, in short, I like the player mix so far, I like the setting we've collaboratively made, and I like the level of excitement that seems to be there.  I'm hoping we can get a regular game going with some momentum, and at this point, I just want to play.  Theorizing about rpgs and discussing them is all well and good (and certainly amusing), but damn the torpedos!  I just want to roll some dice, blow some shit up, and put these new characters in some really tough situations.

Fightin' crime in the sandbox

Jeff Rients’ post about sandbox-style play for superhero RPGs got me thinking about the possibilities – and pitfalls – of this sort of gaming. Here’s his idea in a nutshell:

[Y]ou could assign each neighborhood some stats. A make-your-trait system like Risus can be handy for this.

Argentville
declining neighborhood trying to recapture former glory(3) domain of the O'Bryan Mob(2) best bakeries in the city(2)

Heck, you could probably get a lot done with just some encounter tables with built-in change conditions.

This is intriguing, because in my experience superhero gaming has been all about the push-pull between the players and the GM. The players typically strive to live up to their righteous ideals by patrolling neighborhoods and confronting villains before they have a chance to poison the city’s drinking water or plant bombs at the children’s museum. That sort of thing.

The GM, on the other hand, is responsible for driving the story forward with some semblance of a plot. When considered alongside the players’ ongoing superheroism, an overarching plot can sometimes feel like a story railroad that detracts from the players’ own goals and motivations.

Jeff’s idea of sandbox-style play ties this up neatly, especially for gritty, street-level games. Sure, players will eventually want to confront of the head villain behind a particular gang, but sandbox play ensures that they’ll have the proper context and experience when it’s time for the big showdown.

The only potential problem I can see is lack of social encounters to satisfy cerebral gamers – but really, this is sort of endemic to all superhero RPGs, especially the Silver Age ones I’ve played lately. Nice, meaty social roleplaying and intrigue is best packaged as part of a larger plot, which needs to be balanced carefully alongside the players’ motives.

Found the treasure! Or, a visit to Half Price Books in Dallas

I've been an energetic patron of Half Price Books since my first visit in years past. It's a super cool store with a great mission, plus they invariably have a great selection of gaming books and graphic novels. Pricing is intuitive: Everything is half-off the cover price.

Well, I dropped into what I soon learned was the flagship store and corporate headquarters of Half Price Books today while in Dallas for business. Here's the setup: The day's work was finished, and I was cruising Park City in a rented Malibu. The auto powered its way over a hill - and then I saw it. A huge red sign looming over the freeway, inviting me in with promises of out-of-print books and CDs.

I stopped in and browsed for a goodly while. They had a ton of old D&D stuff, including a good half-dozen books with spine credit by Gary Gygax. Cool stuff - to bad it was sort of falling apart. The next shelf held a bevy of oddball games from the beginning of the 21st century, when the Grim Meathook Future started looking more and more likely and movies like The Matrix glamorized the idea of firing off thousands of bullets in a heavily populated city. Gritty, street-level urban games; I saw Underground, Heavy Gear and a glut of World of Darkness titles. Mmmm, darkness. I love a good dark game.

I ended up walking out with a barely used copy of the Tribe 8 core book. Tribe 8 has been my elusive quarry for many years: I've known about it for a good while, and I've sort of mentally reserved a space on my post-apocalyptic shelf for it. In the past, I kept running across the splat books, but never the real thing. Today it is mine! It actually wasn't marked with a price, and I was bracing myself to cough up $15 if the clerk decided it retailed for $30. But he surprised me with a svelte $5.98 price, which I paid gladly.

Next up for me: Gamma World, Darwin's World, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Redline and Unhallowed Metropolis. And A|State is available on PDF now...

One key for successful worldbuilding

Ben pointed out that collaborative worldbuilding is his preferred method of gaming. I’m of a similar mindset — indeed, our local group is poised to build our own sci-fi setting for Wild Talents — but there’s a huge concern that GMs should keep in mind when embarking on this sort of venture.

Basically, the GM can’t keep very many secrets from the players. In a setting that’s only been sketched out on a legal pad or typed up as a quick Word doc, there will be precious few crunchy bits for players to chew on. As such, the GM needs to lay all the cards on the table so players can create nuanced characters with real goals. The GM shouldn't, for example, reveal a shadowy government organization six sessions into a campaign — because the commando player would be confused as to why his character didn’t have at least passing knowledge of the group initially. Little things are fine, but big story elements leave players scratching their heads thinking, "Huh? OK, I guess that's part of the game now." Get me?

Luckily, this quandary is really just an excuse to further fine-tune a collaborative setting. For the Sovereigns superhero setting I created with some friends back in 2002, we ended up codifying everything into a sourcebook that we then shared around the table. It’s also a great excuse to snatch ideas from published settings, which I do with great prejudice pretty much all the damn time. Need a space station for a character’s backstory? Flip open Transhuman Space, grab and idea and then present it to the players. Chances are that at least one other player will seize the concept and incorporate it into his or her character — and then you’re off and running.

My Kind of Fantasy

Pat has challenged me again: In response to my comments that I'll probably never play D&D again (after cutting my teeth on it in the early years, a year long sting with 3e, and playing the 4e demo), he challenged me to say what I look for in fantasy game.  I don't want this to be a D&D bash session, so instead I'll just try to focus on what I want a fantasy game to do for me.  Many of the characteristics I discuss below apply to the types of games I like to play generally.

First, I want a fantasy game that is dynamic and cinematic.  I don't want characters to move up to a monster and keep making to hit rolls - I want to see the sword slice down and watch the blood spatter on the wall.  I want acrobatic leaps onto the backs of bucking beasts and to have my character barely hang on to daggers plunged into the beast's shoulders upon impact.  Finding this level of cinematics usually comes at the expense of crunchy and tactical play - it's hard to make this kind of stuff happen with a lot of rules.  

Second, I want a fantasy game that's gritty.  In a land of sword fights and black magic, death happens and eyes get poked out.  The problem here is that gritty games often have lots of rules - it's pretty cool to roll the dice and find out exactly what location on your body gets hit.  Can a fantasy game be both gritty and over the top cinematic? I don't know, but I'd sure like to find one.

Third, I want a fantasy game that's about more than taking treasure and getting XP.  I like my characters to have goals that are well tied into the setting...like the desire to go on a mission of vengeance for the abandonment the party next to a wyvern lair.  In fantasy settings, I favor having somewhat grim or seedy personal goals.

Fourth, I like to bring the epic also.  No fantasy setting has every inspired me as much as LOTR (and this probably goes for many others out there as well).  As both a GM and a player, I love the possibility of changing, saving, or remaking the world.  The macro stuff is what got me into rpgs in the first place.  In a land where magic, powerful artifacts, and ancient evil are just over the horizon, I feel like games are lacking when they don't embrace these elements.  I recognize there's another tension here between the epic and the personal (and possibly unsavory) goals.  But that's the kind of tension that makes characters tick in the best kind of literature and that brings games alive for me.

Fifth, along the lines of bringing the epic, I want large scale stuff to be at least some recognized part of gameplay.  I just got a copy of the new game Reign by Greg Stolze, and it has a nice set of rules for dealing with "companies" and their interactions with each other.  While I'm not saying this system is the holy grail (hell, I just read it last night), it is certainly aimed at scratching the macro itch that I have.  What's the best part of the LOTR?  The armies clashing into each other.  The movie's nothing without it's strong actors, script, and characterization.  But the epic battles and struggles for power over the land are at the heart of fantasy for me.

Finally, it's worth noting that I don't really care as much about setting.  In general, rpg setting materials don't inspire me all that much (I know this isn't the case for Pat and probably many other gamers out there).  So, I'd rather create a setting for myself that contains the elements I find interesting.  I mean, if you've been playing rpgs for long enough, can't you just spout out "desert world" or "cities floating in a gas giant", start drinking a cup of coffee, and write down a page worth of ideas come out by the time you get to the bottom of the cup?  Though, I do like it when games throw out one liners or examples of cool situations that highlight cool aspects of the rules (like parts of the Dark Heresy PH).  

Review: The Inquisitor's Handbook for Dark Heresy

Dark Heresy, the horror/sci-fi rpg set in the voluminous Warhammer 40k universe, recently saw its first two supplements released: the Inquisitor’s Handbook and Purge the Unclean, a collection of three linked adventures. I picked up the Inquisitor’s Handbook and spent an afternoon thumbing through it; here are some thoughts.

To begin with, I didn’t really thumb through it. That implies that I skipped around and didn’t really dwell on one section. The exact opposite happened; I found myself pausing to digest each chapter and entry. Before I knew it, I was reading the whole damn thing. Luckily, this is the mark of a great book. I’ve owned a dozen “player’s guides” for various games before, and none were as packed with detail as the Inquisitor’s Handbook (IH).

It’s an incredibly meaty read, chock-full of tasty morsels from the 40k universe. I played the tabletop wargame for many years, so I understand a lot of the organizations and events described in the IH – but still, it was a real treat to see it all codifed and presented so lovingly in a book. Character development takes a great leap forward with the new career paths and additional options in the game.

My favorite parts of the IH are the offhanded details mentioned here and there that hint at the broader conspiracies that run rampant through the Imperium. Single-sentence descriptions of mutant uprisings in the lower levels of a hive world, Chaos pacts between gods and corrupt noblemen, or horrific tales of an Inquisitorial purging gone awry: these are the details that make the 40k universe grand, and I’m excited that the game line now encompasses three published tomes.

The release of the IH and Purge the Unclean is something of a milestone for the game. Shortly after Dark Heresy was published, Black Industries (a subsidiary of Games Workshop) announced it would cease publishing the line. “Craziness!” fans hollered. “Don’t they know they have a hit on their hands?!” Indeed, it was a hit. The first printing of Dark Heresy debuted earlier this year in the States and sold out within weeks. I watched many, many ebay auctions end above $100 in those dark days before finally securing one for near retail price.

The IH and Purge the Unclean are the last Dark Heresy books to be published by Black Industries. A fourth, Disciples of the Dark Gods, may or may not be scheduled for release in September. The game line itself has been licensed to Fantasy Flight Games, which is awesome because they’re a top-notch company, and I’m expecting great things from their continued support of the line. However, the timeline is a bit shaky at this point. I’ve spoken with some folks at FFG, and they’ve confirmed that there’s a senior line developer in place for the game line, but they’ve not yet begun writing additional supplements. At best, we’d be lucky to see a new, FFG-produced release within a year’s time.

Burning Wheel needs an explicit buy-in

More than perhaps any other game I’ve encountered, Burning Wheel really needs a common buy-in from players in order to make it viable. This realization forms the theme of my reaction to the game, which I’ll describe here in support of Ben’s postgame breakdown from last week.

He pointed out that our party sort of self-destructed because Burning Wheel’s beliefs system tends to force players into antagonistic roles. This is especially true in a “burned world” – that is, a setting created on the spot by the players and the GM. Because Burning Wheel encourages players to create a unique game setting just prior to character creation, there’s relatively little shared knowledge out there for players to draw upon. When one character seizes upon a bit of backstory or history, the other players tend to leap aboard as well, sometimes crafting opposing beliefs.

In our game, this happened once we sketched out the concept of the Tome of Architecture. We agreed it was a big, powerful book of Dwarven lore, and each of the characters then created beliefs involving the Tome. It turned out that they were all some variation of “I want the Tome for myself, and I’ll do anything to get it.” As you can imagine, this led to inter-party conflict and ultimately brought the party to a premature end (with my character fleeing with the book and then falling, pierced with arrows, into a lava river, still clutching the Tome). It's very telling that our GenCon demo also ended this way, with players competing to seize a bit of treasure in a dungeon.

So what’s the solution? I think it involves having some sort of macro-level buy-in that all the players can agree to, something that artificially removes the temptation of crafting adversarial beliefs, at least initially. This can be as simple as the good old “you were sent by the king to investigate X” or as complex as the feuding members of a royal family willing to put aside their bickering in order to achieve some shared goal.

It also helps if the players are all more or less heroes; we played a “morally ambiguous” group in our Burning Wheel experience, and I think it helped escalate our downward spiral.

Anyway. All the other game elements were a lot of fun – the social encounters, the “scripted” combat, as well as the FORK mechanism, which is the designers’ term for loading your die pool with relevant traits and abilities. My biggest regret (in retrospect) is that we completed our campaign meltdown having barely scratched the surface of Ben’s overarching story. Bummer!