After the success of last July's Jacks-Con, those responsible were persuaded that we should do it again, and by January they'd recovered enough to make it happen. For reasons possibly involving copyright, it did get a name change, but it was still based around the Discord server for the Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast. Sign-up was by lottery, assigned by some arcane and possibly eldritch algorithm with the goal of making sure as many people as possible got into a game they were interested in. There were 18 game slots, but due to the unfortunate necessary of allowing our fleshy meat sacks to sleep, nobody was actually playing that many.
Game 1: Silencers
With my regular weekly game scheduled for Thursday evening I didn't think I'd be able to play in the Thursday slots, but I realised I could fit in a game before that. Silencers is a two-page RPG I wrote last year about inept assassins, and with randomly generated plots that I didn't expect to take very long to resolve, this seemed like a good time for a bit of playtesting.
I had one player, which meant I was able to confirm that the game does work with one player (although I suspect two is the sweet spot). He created an assassin with great juggling skills who did children's birthday parties in between hits. I rolled two random plots, filled in a few details, and off we went. While Silencers characters are skilled in a variety of combat techniques, it was ultimately prawn toast and knitting needles that finished off the two targets.
While I still want to try it out with two or three players to see how it runs, I'm overall happy with it, and the only improvement I can think of is to add a few more lines to the random plot generator tables. Which means I need to get it onto DTRPG pretty soon.
Game 2: Alien
Friday afternoon meant another outing for my Alien scenario, The Toxic Jewel. Unfortunately one of my five players had got the dates mixed up and nobody else was available at zero notice, but the scenario still works with four so off we went. The captain and the medic were the spare characters this time, and I managed to engineer a situation that meant they weren't with the rest of the group most of the time so I only had to have them make occasional radio calls instead of constant interaction.
Alien remains my favourite space horror game. While I enjoy Mothership, for me it just doesn't have the finesse of Alien. The scenarios are harder to write, given that for cinematic mode you need agendas for each character, but the end result is worth it.
Game 3: Call of Cthulhu
The Murder Shack is a contemporary Call of Cthulhu scenario first appearing in The Blasphemous Tome, which as a podcast patron I have a copy of. I've been carefully avoiding reading it though in the hope of getting the chance to play it, and I was lucky enough to have my number come up for this one. While it wasn't Scott Dorward himself running it this time, the GM still did an excellent job with it. I don't think I've ever lost so many sanity points in one game before.
The scenario itself reminded me a little of a creepypasta I read back in 2004 (which I won't name since the title would be kind of a spoiler, especially for anyone else who remembers that bit of internet history) and makes an ideal one-shot, so much so that I might even decide to take a shot at running it myself some time.
Game 4: Hellboy
I'm not sure what possessed me to sign up for a game at 8.30am on a Saturday (a time when I am rarely awake) but the game was the quickstart adventure for the new Hellboy RPG and I was keen to get a look at it.
The game uses D&D 5e for its engine, but with some significant modifications to fit the genre. I think that they've done a good job of this, with the extra d10 for insight/doom proving to be a fun mechanic. All the same, I think they could have done an even better job not using D&D 5e and using something a bit better suited to the setting.
I also suspect that despite being set in Britain, the quickstart adventure may have been written by Americans, as our British and Irish group rapidly found ourselves distracted by the implausible number of toilets in a supposedly Georgian house. All the same, we had some fun with it, and the visual style of the maps was lovely, really emulating the style of the Hellboy comics.
I would happily play a Hellboy game in the future, and even put up with the 5e system to do it. Although I still think Liminal would be a better system for it.
Game 5: Call of Cthulhu
There were a bunch of games I was interested in in this slot, and the one I got assigned to was The Forbidden Beat, another Call of Cthulhu scenario. This time it was 2003 and we were a group living in a squat trying to organise an illegal rave.
Normally in Call of Cthulhu it's a failed sanity roll that ends up entirely changing my character's plans. In this case it was someone getting a critical success on an Art (DJ) roll that changed everything, leading to my character being on ecstacy at the point where everything started going to hell. I'm not sure if it helped or hindered, but it did make things more interesting.
Game 6: Kult: Divinity Lost
I hadn't planned to play the 10pm slot on Friday, but when I saw Matt Sanderson was running Kult, I had to give it a go. So I sat out the previous session (so I had time to eat food and stuff) and then dived in. Night is the proper time to play Kult anyway.
Matt described the game as a 'horror starter', a concept I'm entirely unfamiliar with, but people reading this might know. Through a series of questions we determined who each of our characters were and why they'd all decided to run down an alleyway that lead them to Metropolis.
I've played three Kult games before, and this was an entirely different experience. Not only was it fun, but it also gave me an idea of just how much variety this game is capable of. It remains probably my favourite implementation of the PBTA rules. Hopefully this and the upcoming kickstarter delivery will be enough inspiration to finish writing my own scenario.
Game 7: Liminal
After being up past 2am playing Kult I wasn't particularly keen to get up on Sunday morning but fortunately my first game was at the rather more reasonable time of 11.30am. I ran Bad Blood, my newest Liminal scenario, partly because it's set in Milton Keynes - close to home for the podcast team.
It's amazing how different groups get through scenarios in different ways. I've run Bad Blood three times before. The first time was part of a campaign and included an NPC that was important to the campaign's crew. The second time I took her out as I wasn't sure she was needed. The third time I put her back in when it became clear she really was needed. But this fourth group solved the whole thing without ever encountering her. Players, huh?
I re-used the pregen characters from Mother Said I Never Should rather than write a full new set, and overall they worked well. While I might tweak them slightly for future runs, they're a fun bunch and it's nice to see them reinterpreted yet again.
Game 8: Noir World
I didn't sign up for anything else on Sunday as it would have clashed with my regular Mutant: Year Zero game, but when that got cancelled I signed up for a pick-up game of Noir World.
As the name suggested, this is a PBTA game about creating a Film Noir style movie plot with all the archetypes you'd expect as playbooks. It's slimmed down a bit from regular PBTA with only three stats, and I'm not sure what the player moves actually were as we barely used them. I think this would be an easier game to play around a table, as part of the concept was the multiple rather complicated hooks that connected each character and I was struggling to keep them all in my head. Fortunately the very light rules meant I didn't have actual mechanics to worry about too.
It's also set up as a GMless game where players can take it in turns to be the director and call for a scene. I pretty much opted out of this, however, as it rapidly became apparent that I know nothing about Film Noir as a genre beyond what it looks like. I could picture my character perfectly but really struggled with dialogue.
By the end we'd produced a thoroughly convoluted plot, several characters were dead, and a dramatic epilogue had filled in some final details. My lack of genre knowledge meant it didn't quite land for me, but if you're a fan of Film Noir and PBTA you'll probably have a lot of fun with this game.
Reflections
My only suggestion for improving the previous event was to have a gap between game slots. This time round there was a half-hour gap between each four hour slot, and that worked well. While my games did largely wrap up on time, it meant we didn't have to push things towards the finish, and were able to spend a few minutes chatting after each game. Hanging out in the bar was once again fun, and I'm glad I found a bit of time for that too.
I got to play in a great mix of games, mostly horror themed, and with a great mix of people that included some familiar faces, some welcome reappearances and some completely new people. A really nice community has built up around this podcast and I'm very happy to be a part of it. A Weekend With Good Friends really does describe this event.
So, do it all again in July?
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