So obviously this was not the first game of Liminal I've been involved in. I've run the adventure from the quickstart eight times now, and I've just started a second eight-week block at MK-RPG. So I've seen a lot of Liminal from the GM's side of the table but until now I'd never actually played it.
The scenario we're playing is brand new, and the GM is none other than Paul Mitchener, the creator of Liminal. Plus we were once again going to be streaming.
We're playing with the pre-gen characters from the core book. I picked up Ygraine Green, a changeling with a mysterious past trying to figure out who she is. It soon became apparent that she was part of the most dysfunctional group of liminals I can imagine, what with the paranoid wizard, the werewolf with anger issues, the former detective channelling Gene Hunt and the academic who appeared to have snuck in from the 1890s. Ygraine seemed relatively normal in comparison. I need to try harder next time.
We roleplayed our way through such seemingly mundane activities as having a cup of tea, going for a drive, and having a drink in a pub, with chaos ensuing at every turn, all with the supposed goal of following up on an anonymous note regarding suspicious werewolf activity. And to be fair, we did manage to find what we were looking for, despite the many arguments along the way.
Normally I'd say something about the rules at this point, but I said quite a bit after I first ran Liminal and all I can add having played it is that it's just as enjoyable from the player side as from the GM side. Fast and uncomplicated, but with enough nuance to make it interesting.
This was intended to be a one-shot game, but due to some technical issues with the stream we didn't get as far through it as planned. So we'll be returning next weekend to continue the adventure. I can't wait.
You can watch the stream, technical issues and all, on Twitch, or you can wait for the cleaned up version on YouTube. And tune in next week for the big finale where we will hopefully manage to stop arguing long enough to solve the case.
Sunday 28 June 2020
Monday 22 June 2020
First Time Playing: Mutant Year Zero
It's no secret that I love Fria Ligan games and the Year Zero engine. But while I've played plenty of Coriolis and Alien, until now I'd never really looked at the game that gave its name to the engine: Mutant Year Zero. I have a PDF copy, acquired when Fria Ligan did a one-day giveaway, but with no likely opportunity to play, I hadn't got round to reading it.
And then came the invitation.
This wasn't just my first time playing Mutant Year Zero. It was also my first time appearing on a streamed game. So I was initially a little nervous, but really it was not much different to the online games I've been playing for the last three months. The main differences were that break times were reliably set every hour (which is something I should think about more in my own games, as my god am I bad at remembering to take breaks) and that I put slightly more thought into my own appearance than usual.
The first game was Session 0, in which we created our characters, established relationships between them and NPCs, and defined the Ark in which they all live. Like the other YZE games I've played, character creation was mechanically very simple. Having picked the Stalker role, I simply had to assign a few points to stats and skills, pick one of three talents, and draw a mutation card. Where character creation shines, and where we ended up spending a fair amount of time, was on the relationships between characters and NPCs.
By the time this process was finished, we'd established that Rudy Russo the Fixer was somewhat unpopular with the rest of the party - although obviously his ability to get hold of decent equipment is likely to endear him to us eventually. This process did a great job of making the group feel like a coherent team of real people, and also set up some potential hooks for future character development. It also lead us very well into creating our Ark, with a number of key players already in place.
The book provides a number of suggestions for where the Ark can be set, but the first one to get mentioned, and the one that we went with, was 'subway station' - although since we're playing in the Big Smoke zone, it's a tube station. Then we had to decide where it was. Being right in the middle of the zone isn't a great idea, but as anyone who's travelled on the London Underground a lot will know, not all of the Underground is actually underground. However, with a bit of research we did manage to find a suitable location - Seven Sisters - which also set us up nicely for thinking about the NPCs in our Ark.
By the end of the session we had our PCs and our home base all well defined and ready for playing in. It was also a lot of fun. Fria Ligan's take on character creation is so much more fun than the more traditional approach I'm used to from games like D&D.
Since this is a streamed game, you can go and watch it on Twitch or wait for it to appear on Youtube. We'll be playing on Sunday evenings, UK time, and I can't wait.
And then came the invitation.
This wasn't just my first time playing Mutant Year Zero. It was also my first time appearing on a streamed game. So I was initially a little nervous, but really it was not much different to the online games I've been playing for the last three months. The main differences were that break times were reliably set every hour (which is something I should think about more in my own games, as my god am I bad at remembering to take breaks) and that I put slightly more thought into my own appearance than usual.
The first game was Session 0, in which we created our characters, established relationships between them and NPCs, and defined the Ark in which they all live. Like the other YZE games I've played, character creation was mechanically very simple. Having picked the Stalker role, I simply had to assign a few points to stats and skills, pick one of three talents, and draw a mutation card. Where character creation shines, and where we ended up spending a fair amount of time, was on the relationships between characters and NPCs.
By the time this process was finished, we'd established that Rudy Russo the Fixer was somewhat unpopular with the rest of the party - although obviously his ability to get hold of decent equipment is likely to endear him to us eventually. This process did a great job of making the group feel like a coherent team of real people, and also set up some potential hooks for future character development. It also lead us very well into creating our Ark, with a number of key players already in place.
The book provides a number of suggestions for where the Ark can be set, but the first one to get mentioned, and the one that we went with, was 'subway station' - although since we're playing in the Big Smoke zone, it's a tube station. Then we had to decide where it was. Being right in the middle of the zone isn't a great idea, but as anyone who's travelled on the London Underground a lot will know, not all of the Underground is actually underground. However, with a bit of research we did manage to find a suitable location - Seven Sisters - which also set us up nicely for thinking about the NPCs in our Ark.
By the end of the session we had our PCs and our home base all well defined and ready for playing in. It was also a lot of fun. Fria Ligan's take on character creation is so much more fun than the more traditional approach I'm used to from games like D&D.
Since this is a streamed game, you can go and watch it on Twitch or wait for it to appear on Youtube. We'll be playing on Sunday evenings, UK time, and I can't wait.
Monday 8 June 2020
Ova and Out: a tale of terror
In 2006 I moved in with a friend who had a room to rent. After a while I started to notice an unpleasant smell in the shared kitchen, and decided to do something about it. The result was so horrifying that when I came to write a blog post about it (Facebook not yet being available to the masses), I ended up attempting an H.P. Lovecraft pastiche. I've just been reminded of it, and by good fortune I have a backup of my old blog and was able to find the story. See if you can spot the exact moment where I failed a SAN roll...
I shrink to tell people my harrowing tale, but tell it I must, lest others succumb to the same dreadful fate as I.
While I would hesitate to so define myself, I have some small skill in investigation, and upon learning of some strange baleful influence haunting the kitchen of a house (the one in which I currently reside, no less!) I was compelled to go in search of its origin. Armed with a fine instrument of detection it was not difficult to confirm one corner of the room as the source of this drifting miasma. But as to a cause I could find nothing.
I searched - oh, how I searched! Through cupboards and draws, under shelves and between gaps I cast my gaze, but nowhere could I find what I sought. Until last night, when finally my eyes rested upon something so horrific I wondered how I had so many times overlooked it.
It was a cage, made of wood with wire mesh over the front. A simple clasp held it shut - quite sufficient to contain what lay within. I checked my instrument's readings. While I could not be sure this was what I sought, there was a poison here, one that crept into the very soul. And I knew what I must do.
I secured wrappings of a curious material, impervious to both water and gases, and laid them out ready. Then, with trepidation, I opened the door.
Four of the things lay within. They were not large, but in the course of my investigations I have learned that there are far more terrible attributes ones foe may possess besides mere size. While not identical, they were similar in appearance to one another, each being roughly ovoid and the colour of human flesh. I wondered if they would be similarly soft and yielding to the touch, but as I reached out for the first I found it was quite hard. I lifted it from its place of rest and transferred it into the wrappings.
The second and third followed with no more difficulty, and I began to think the task would not be so very hard after all. But when I came to the fourth I realised I was mistaken. Through the hardened shell some vile ochre feculence had dripped, the gelatinous residue forming an encrustation that adhered to the very cage that contained it!
With exquisite care I reached in to withdraw the shelf upon which the thing lay anchored. It came free - oh the relief! I prepared to separate the thing completely from its former prison and then - horror of horrors! As I pressed my trembling digits against its seeming solid walls, the shell cracked.
I must confess, gentle reader, that at that point my courage failed me. Overcome by terror I ran shrieking for the pump, there to douse my hands over and over with the blessed purity of water. But even there I could not linger long, for from the shattered carapace drifted a foul reek, a corruption that assaulted my senses with a sulphurous stench worthy of the very blackest pit of hell.
I ran from the room with nausea rising in my stomach, until I was able to inhale and fill my lungs with pure air. For a short while I stood motionless, dreading the inevitable return, but in time I steeled myself to the task. Filling my lungs once more I ventured back into the diabolic miasma.
The room contained a fan, cunningly designed to draw air from the room, and it was this I first went to. Next I seized upon a cannister of some chemical, known for its power to draw foul odours from the air, and sprinkled it liberally around both this room and the next. Revulsion seized me again and again, but I overcame it and continued my work. I took up cloths and once more approached the thing.
Within the shattered shell lay a livid amorphous blob, which seemed to tremble and pulsate even as I approached it. I prepared myself, covering my hands with layers of wrapping and cloths, then turned my head in disgust as I reached out to clasp the ameboid ooze. In moments I had it safely inside the wrappings, and with it I discarded the cloths - they would never again be fit for human contact. I covered the four things in layer after layer of the impermeable wrappings, before taking up the entire thing and transporting it outside the house where its hideous stink would trouble us no more.
Alas, my torment was not over, for as I returned to my own quarters I realised that the thing's taint had been transferred onto my own hands, and hence into the very room in which I now sat! Fortunately I class amongst my friends persons with a great knowledge of the occult. What a marvellous thing our network of telephone cables is! Upon my friends' advice I cleansed my room with smokes and vapours, then plunged myself into a bath scented with oils, and gradually the corruption was lifted from me.
In daylight I find myself bolder. The cage, that dreadful container that both held and concealed the horror from me, has been cast from the house. Bound in the same wrappings it now rests beside the horror it once contained. But my tale of horror is not yet at an end, for in the place where the cage once stood lies an abyssal viscous slime. I have tried with cloths and wrappings to remove it, but it remains motionless, as if taunting me with its contagion that still issues forth. I know not what course to follow now. How to remove this tawny sludge is beyond my wit, and I fear my mind will suffer with each further attempt.
It occurs that you might consider this a mere fancy - the result, perhaps, of an unsettled mind, or of indulging in cheese before retiring to sleep. I must assure you that this is not so. On this page I have attempted to set down the events of last night with as much detail and accuracy as my recollection will allow. The thing's emanations still exude from the ochre filth, and so after all my efforts the sense of revulsion still assaults me each time I enter the kitchen. I beg that rather than mocking my outpourings that you will offer advice, should there be any for one in such a position as I, and that you will learn from my dreadful tale and not succumb to such a horrible fate yourself.
I smell it still. The odour haunts my dreams and my waking hours. It is a nightmare I shall never forget.
I shrink to tell people my harrowing tale, but tell it I must, lest others succumb to the same dreadful fate as I.
While I would hesitate to so define myself, I have some small skill in investigation, and upon learning of some strange baleful influence haunting the kitchen of a house (the one in which I currently reside, no less!) I was compelled to go in search of its origin. Armed with a fine instrument of detection it was not difficult to confirm one corner of the room as the source of this drifting miasma. But as to a cause I could find nothing.
I searched - oh, how I searched! Through cupboards and draws, under shelves and between gaps I cast my gaze, but nowhere could I find what I sought. Until last night, when finally my eyes rested upon something so horrific I wondered how I had so many times overlooked it.
It was a cage, made of wood with wire mesh over the front. A simple clasp held it shut - quite sufficient to contain what lay within. I checked my instrument's readings. While I could not be sure this was what I sought, there was a poison here, one that crept into the very soul. And I knew what I must do.
I secured wrappings of a curious material, impervious to both water and gases, and laid them out ready. Then, with trepidation, I opened the door.
Four of the things lay within. They were not large, but in the course of my investigations I have learned that there are far more terrible attributes ones foe may possess besides mere size. While not identical, they were similar in appearance to one another, each being roughly ovoid and the colour of human flesh. I wondered if they would be similarly soft and yielding to the touch, but as I reached out for the first I found it was quite hard. I lifted it from its place of rest and transferred it into the wrappings.
The second and third followed with no more difficulty, and I began to think the task would not be so very hard after all. But when I came to the fourth I realised I was mistaken. Through the hardened shell some vile ochre feculence had dripped, the gelatinous residue forming an encrustation that adhered to the very cage that contained it!
With exquisite care I reached in to withdraw the shelf upon which the thing lay anchored. It came free - oh the relief! I prepared to separate the thing completely from its former prison and then - horror of horrors! As I pressed my trembling digits against its seeming solid walls, the shell cracked.
I must confess, gentle reader, that at that point my courage failed me. Overcome by terror I ran shrieking for the pump, there to douse my hands over and over with the blessed purity of water. But even there I could not linger long, for from the shattered carapace drifted a foul reek, a corruption that assaulted my senses with a sulphurous stench worthy of the very blackest pit of hell.
I ran from the room with nausea rising in my stomach, until I was able to inhale and fill my lungs with pure air. For a short while I stood motionless, dreading the inevitable return, but in time I steeled myself to the task. Filling my lungs once more I ventured back into the diabolic miasma.
The room contained a fan, cunningly designed to draw air from the room, and it was this I first went to. Next I seized upon a cannister of some chemical, known for its power to draw foul odours from the air, and sprinkled it liberally around both this room and the next. Revulsion seized me again and again, but I overcame it and continued my work. I took up cloths and once more approached the thing.
Within the shattered shell lay a livid amorphous blob, which seemed to tremble and pulsate even as I approached it. I prepared myself, covering my hands with layers of wrapping and cloths, then turned my head in disgust as I reached out to clasp the ameboid ooze. In moments I had it safely inside the wrappings, and with it I discarded the cloths - they would never again be fit for human contact. I covered the four things in layer after layer of the impermeable wrappings, before taking up the entire thing and transporting it outside the house where its hideous stink would trouble us no more.
Alas, my torment was not over, for as I returned to my own quarters I realised that the thing's taint had been transferred onto my own hands, and hence into the very room in which I now sat! Fortunately I class amongst my friends persons with a great knowledge of the occult. What a marvellous thing our network of telephone cables is! Upon my friends' advice I cleansed my room with smokes and vapours, then plunged myself into a bath scented with oils, and gradually the corruption was lifted from me.
In daylight I find myself bolder. The cage, that dreadful container that both held and concealed the horror from me, has been cast from the house. Bound in the same wrappings it now rests beside the horror it once contained. But my tale of horror is not yet at an end, for in the place where the cage once stood lies an abyssal viscous slime. I have tried with cloths and wrappings to remove it, but it remains motionless, as if taunting me with its contagion that still issues forth. I know not what course to follow now. How to remove this tawny sludge is beyond my wit, and I fear my mind will suffer with each further attempt.
It occurs that you might consider this a mere fancy - the result, perhaps, of an unsettled mind, or of indulging in cheese before retiring to sleep. I must assure you that this is not so. On this page I have attempted to set down the events of last night with as much detail and accuracy as my recollection will allow. The thing's emanations still exude from the ochre filth, and so after all my efforts the sense of revulsion still assaults me each time I enter the kitchen. I beg that rather than mocking my outpourings that you will offer advice, should there be any for one in such a position as I, and that you will learn from my dreadful tale and not succumb to such a horrible fate yourself.
I smell it still. The odour haunts my dreams and my waking hours. It is a nightmare I shall never forget.
Wednesday 3 June 2020
First time playing: Vaesen
I missed the kickstarter for Vaesen, but got in on the pre-order. I'm eagerly awaiting its arrival. Fortunately my Coriolis GM is an even bigger Fria Ligan fan than I am, and has got the beta. Hooray!
Like most Fria Ligan games it uses the Year Zero engine, with a push mechanic that requires you to take a condition to push a roll. It added a little interest to the pushes, thinking about which condition to take and how that affected the interaction.
I haven't seen much of the setting yet, but the combination of urban fantasy and the Victorian era is definitely my jam. We're playing in the 1850s, which is a little earlier than I'm used to in the 19th century, and combined with the fact we're playing in Sweden, that makes for an interestingly novel setting. Doing things like climbing into a sewer in voluminous petticoats while carrying a paraffin lantern certainly gives it a different feel to a modern day game, and having to think about things like trains and telegrams not being available yet distinguishes it from games set in Victorian Britain.
So my initial thoughts are that I'm enjoying both system and setting and am looking forward to seeing more. But there's something else. Something special.
I love life path systems. While there's a lot I complain about in Cyberpunk 2020, I maintain the life path system is absolute gold. So imagine my excitement on learning Vaesen has one too! But the test of a life path system is whether you get an interesting character out at the end of it. So here goes...
I rolled an aristocrat
With a rebellious nature
Who is a bohemian academic
And created an influential piece of work
(At this point I had the choice to be older, which I took)
And was involved in a scandal
(I chose not to age any further)
I picked a motivation, trauma and dark secret (from a choice of three of each) and here she is:
Dr Elin Gregorius comes from a wealthy aristocratic family, and was expected to make a good marriage. She had other ideas. She wanted an education. Folklore became the main focus of her studies, and against all odds she produced work on the myths and legends of Sweden that brought her fame and influence within the academic community.
Then it all started to go wrong. Rumours began to fly; rumours of both immoral conduct and of academic dishonesty. People were casting doubt on whether the work that brought her fame was truly her own. Her attempts to defend herself were hindered by a sudden illness, leaving her suffering with headaches and confusion. The medicines she was prescribed eased the pain but otherwise only seemed to make her worse.
It was by chance that she learned the truth. An overheard conversation told her that one of her colleagues was behind it all. He had been spreading the rumours, while poisoning her with arsenic to destroy her credibility.
Escaping her poisoner, she was able to make an almost full recovery from the effects of the arsenic. What she couldn't recover from was the laudanum addiction that the medicines had given her. All the same, she is now determined to repair her reputation and prove to everyone that she is every bit the academic she was once lauded as.
So yes, it's a good enough life path generator that I've got a complete character with background and motivation with just a few dice rolls and a couple of minutes to fill in the details. Wonderful.
So far Elin hasn't done much beyond completely fail to prevent a library being set on fire, but who knows what will happen next week?
Like most Fria Ligan games it uses the Year Zero engine, with a push mechanic that requires you to take a condition to push a roll. It added a little interest to the pushes, thinking about which condition to take and how that affected the interaction.
I haven't seen much of the setting yet, but the combination of urban fantasy and the Victorian era is definitely my jam. We're playing in the 1850s, which is a little earlier than I'm used to in the 19th century, and combined with the fact we're playing in Sweden, that makes for an interestingly novel setting. Doing things like climbing into a sewer in voluminous petticoats while carrying a paraffin lantern certainly gives it a different feel to a modern day game, and having to think about things like trains and telegrams not being available yet distinguishes it from games set in Victorian Britain.
So my initial thoughts are that I'm enjoying both system and setting and am looking forward to seeing more. But there's something else. Something special.
I love life path systems. While there's a lot I complain about in Cyberpunk 2020, I maintain the life path system is absolute gold. So imagine my excitement on learning Vaesen has one too! But the test of a life path system is whether you get an interesting character out at the end of it. So here goes...
I rolled an aristocrat
With a rebellious nature
Who is a bohemian academic
And created an influential piece of work
(At this point I had the choice to be older, which I took)
And was involved in a scandal
(I chose not to age any further)
I picked a motivation, trauma and dark secret (from a choice of three of each) and here she is:
Dr Elin Gregorius comes from a wealthy aristocratic family, and was expected to make a good marriage. She had other ideas. She wanted an education. Folklore became the main focus of her studies, and against all odds she produced work on the myths and legends of Sweden that brought her fame and influence within the academic community.
Then it all started to go wrong. Rumours began to fly; rumours of both immoral conduct and of academic dishonesty. People were casting doubt on whether the work that brought her fame was truly her own. Her attempts to defend herself were hindered by a sudden illness, leaving her suffering with headaches and confusion. The medicines she was prescribed eased the pain but otherwise only seemed to make her worse.
It was by chance that she learned the truth. An overheard conversation told her that one of her colleagues was behind it all. He had been spreading the rumours, while poisoning her with arsenic to destroy her credibility.
Escaping her poisoner, she was able to make an almost full recovery from the effects of the arsenic. What she couldn't recover from was the laudanum addiction that the medicines had given her. All the same, she is now determined to repair her reputation and prove to everyone that she is every bit the academic she was once lauded as.
So yes, it's a good enough life path generator that I've got a complete character with background and motivation with just a few dice rolls and a couple of minutes to fill in the details. Wonderful.
So far Elin hasn't done much beyond completely fail to prevent a library being set on fire, but who knows what will happen next week?
Monday 1 June 2020
North Star 2020: Our Last, Best Hope
North Star 2020 was to have been my first convention at the Garrison. I signed up, pitched two games, booked my hotel room...and you all know the rest.
And then came a glimmer of hope. Do you want us to organise a virtual North Star?
With four slots rather than five and with not much idea how I'd go about running Scum and Villainy online, I decided to just offer one game: Alien. I've already run the scenario at MK-RPG so I knew I could do it online and the Roll20 character sheet would help things run smoothly.
This was my first time offering a game at an event with pre-arranged game assignment. It's nerve-wracking at on-the-day events, waiting to see if my game is going to get enough players to run. Doing it all in advance just shunts the anxiety back a few days. I'm new to North Star. Most of the attendees don't know me. Would anyone want to play my game? And since I also had to choose the games I wanted for the rest of the weekend, would I get into the games I wanted? Would enough other people want to play the same games as me?
Obviously it was fine. Plenty of people wanted to play Alien, and I got my first choice in all the other slots as well.
Five of us had been assigned to this game, but one person wasn't well and couldn't make it, and another had technical problems not far into the game and had to drop out. So it was with a rather reduced team of a driver, a hacker and a CSI that we set out to solve a very high-tech crime and save the Japanese economy.
The story was exactly the kind of cyberpunk weirdness I was hoping for, with murderous robots, brain hacking and international espionage. And I also really enjoyed the Fate Accelerated system. I've previously played The Dresden Files RPG, and thought Fate was an excellent fit for that setting, but with Fate having such a strong focus on narrative play, I found the rules excessively complicated, particularly things like the skill pyramid. Accelerated cuts out a lot of the complexity, and really encourages the mechanic where you create advantages that you can then tag to boost your rolls.
So overall I found that once I got into the right mindset I was thinking far more about the situation and how to work with it than any specific skill, which I thought gave the whole thing a cinematic feel that really worked with the Ghost in the Shell setting. I would love to play more of this. Although I should probably watch the original Stand Alone Complex first.
Much like my Scum and Villainy game, this scenario was written according to the principles of 'situation, not plot'. The players are free to take pretty much any approach they want to the situation, and this group took an entirely different route through the map and very different actions along the way. Combined with the randomness of dice rolls, this made for an all-new experience for me as well as the players.
Stress really ramped up in this game, and I had the fun of dealing with recursive panic rolls. I think that interpreting the panic table is an important part of running a good Alien game, and I think I did a decent job this time as all the PCs ran around screaming at each other.
I can still see areas for improvement in this scenario and how I run it, but on the whole I'm happy with how this one went and I think I gave a good demonstration of how cinematic mode works even if you don't have any xenomorphs.
So a human, an elf, an ogre and a goblin donned our magical disguises and headed for earth to rescue an ancient Egyptian from 1960s New Orleans. We not only rescued our man, but uncovered and thwarted a nefarious plot and brought the perpetrators to justice.
I didn't love the system the way I love Alien. One or two interesting ideas (individual skills being independent of attributes but tied to a meta-currency called veterancy was one of them) but overall it didn't grab me. The setting, on the other hand, I really liked. I've been vocal about how much I hate the blend of urban fantasy and cyberpunk in Shadowrun. This has the urban fantasy aspects of that game without using them to ruin cyberpunk, and combined with the Men In Black flavour and the novelty of the 1960s time period, it absolutely felt fresh and exciting. While I'd be tempted to use a different system with it, it's a setting I'd definitely play again.
I got to see a fair bit more of the top part of the Mothership panic table this time, which is a bit different to the Alien one. Griselda's stress level rocketed once the monsters started moving around, and a simple attempt at first aid was what did for her. I like to think I took the fall for everyone else though - everybody else made it to the end relatively unscathed.
Mothership is an excellent game, and while Alien remains my first love where space horror is concerned, I'm sure I'll be playing more of this one too.
While an online convention is never going to take the place of meeting up in person for me, I've still had a fantastic weekend of gaming and I'll eagerly look forward to the next one, whenever that might be. We might all be living in a grim cyberpunk future, but at least we can temporarily escape into much more entertaining grim cyberpunk futures for a few hours of joy.
And then came a glimmer of hope. Do you want us to organise a virtual North Star?
With four slots rather than five and with not much idea how I'd go about running Scum and Villainy online, I decided to just offer one game: Alien. I've already run the scenario at MK-RPG so I knew I could do it online and the Roll20 character sheet would help things run smoothly.
This was my first time offering a game at an event with pre-arranged game assignment. It's nerve-wracking at on-the-day events, waiting to see if my game is going to get enough players to run. Doing it all in advance just shunts the anxiety back a few days. I'm new to North Star. Most of the attendees don't know me. Would anyone want to play my game? And since I also had to choose the games I wanted for the rest of the weekend, would I get into the games I wanted? Would enough other people want to play the same games as me?
Obviously it was fine. Plenty of people wanted to play Alien, and I got my first choice in all the other slots as well.
Game 1
My first game was a Ghost in the Shell game, using the Fate Accelerated system. I'd just been watching Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 and loving it, so was very much in the mood for some cyberpunk action, especially since the game pitch suggested that we'd be playing original characters rather than the usual Section 9 team.Five of us had been assigned to this game, but one person wasn't well and couldn't make it, and another had technical problems not far into the game and had to drop out. So it was with a rather reduced team of a driver, a hacker and a CSI that we set out to solve a very high-tech crime and save the Japanese economy.
The story was exactly the kind of cyberpunk weirdness I was hoping for, with murderous robots, brain hacking and international espionage. And I also really enjoyed the Fate Accelerated system. I've previously played The Dresden Files RPG, and thought Fate was an excellent fit for that setting, but with Fate having such a strong focus on narrative play, I found the rules excessively complicated, particularly things like the skill pyramid. Accelerated cuts out a lot of the complexity, and really encourages the mechanic where you create advantages that you can then tag to boost your rolls.
So overall I found that once I got into the right mindset I was thinking far more about the situation and how to work with it than any specific skill, which I thought gave the whole thing a cinematic feel that really worked with the Ghost in the Shell setting. I would love to play more of this. Although I should probably watch the original Stand Alone Complex first.
Game 2
I wanted an evening slot for Alien because it seemed right to be playing a space horror game in darkness. All five players made it to this one, and in we dived. I ran my own scenario, The Toxic Jewel, with some minor tweaks from the previous outing, the chief one being that everyone had a bit more equipment to start out with so there wasn't much time spent on sorting equipment before heading planetside.Much like my Scum and Villainy game, this scenario was written according to the principles of 'situation, not plot'. The players are free to take pretty much any approach they want to the situation, and this group took an entirely different route through the map and very different actions along the way. Combined with the randomness of dice rolls, this made for an all-new experience for me as well as the players.
Stress really ramped up in this game, and I had the fun of dealing with recursive panic rolls. I think that interpreting the panic table is an important part of running a good Alien game, and I think I did a decent job this time as all the PCs ran around screaming at each other.
I can still see areas for improvement in this scenario and how I run it, but on the whole I'm happy with how this one went and I think I gave a good demonstration of how cinematic mode works even if you don't have any xenomorphs.
Game 3
10am is not a time I like to be up and about on a Sunday, but for a game convention I'll do it. Slot 3 was Agents of Concordia, a relatively new game that I'd only heard about recently. One of my fellow players gave the best summary of the setting I've seen: "Concordia is basically Men in Black, but run by off-Earth folks who live in Shadowrun." Although maybe there's just a tiny bit of Stargate in there as well.So a human, an elf, an ogre and a goblin donned our magical disguises and headed for earth to rescue an ancient Egyptian from 1960s New Orleans. We not only rescued our man, but uncovered and thwarted a nefarious plot and brought the perpetrators to justice.
I didn't love the system the way I love Alien. One or two interesting ideas (individual skills being independent of attributes but tied to a meta-currency called veterancy was one of them) but overall it didn't grab me. The setting, on the other hand, I really liked. I've been vocal about how much I hate the blend of urban fantasy and cyberpunk in Shadowrun. This has the urban fantasy aspects of that game without using them to ruin cyberpunk, and combined with the Men In Black flavour and the novelty of the 1960s time period, it absolutely felt fresh and exciting. While I'd be tempted to use a different system with it, it's a setting I'd definitely play again.
Game 4
Time to let someone else run me some space horror in Mothership, the Alien-minus-serial-numbers RPG. This was the only game I played that didn't have pregen characters, but we ran them up pretty fast using the Mothership Character Generator. Last time I played Mothership I played an android, and I wanted to try something else this time, so went with the first thing the generator threw at me: Griselda West, a scientist whose stats suggested that she'd really want to be an athlete but had been pushed into archaeology by her family. Along with a marine and two androids she set out to inevitable doom.I got to see a fair bit more of the top part of the Mothership panic table this time, which is a bit different to the Alien one. Griselda's stress level rocketed once the monsters started moving around, and a simple attempt at first aid was what did for her. I like to think I took the fall for everyone else though - everybody else made it to the end relatively unscathed.
Mothership is an excellent game, and while Alien remains my first love where space horror is concerned, I'm sure I'll be playing more of this one too.
Reflections
My first online convention. And the way things are going, I doubt it will be my last. The organisers did a great job of getting everything arranged, and despite a few technical hitches, things largely went pretty smoothly. I got to game with some brand new people, plus some people I've wanted to game with for a while. I got to introduce more people to one of my favourite games, while discovering new games.While an online convention is never going to take the place of meeting up in person for me, I've still had a fantastic weekend of gaming and I'll eagerly look forward to the next one, whenever that might be. We might all be living in a grim cyberpunk future, but at least we can temporarily escape into much more entertaining grim cyberpunk futures for a few hours of joy.
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