Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Gamer Gifts


Last year, I got the the gaming crew each a copy of the Swords and Wizardry Whitebox Rules.  That went over well, with it actually being used to spread the gospel of the OSR to uninitiated gamers.

This year, I didn't have so much money - especially since the regular gaming crew is up to ten people now.  So I went the less expensive route of hand crafting some presents.

I made hand painted dice and handed them out in tonight's gaming session.


These are Redshirt Dice.  See the little red shirts?  The Star Trek Emblem is a six.  The red shirt is a one.  Each player got a pair, so when they roll double red shirts, they fail their skill check hard.  Yay!

Adelaide made some awesome dice bags for us too.  Everyone got a very different type.  I didn't get a photo of them all, but I got a picture of the most important one - mine.  I have named it THE SPACE BAG.


It is sooo big, I can fit a sixteenth of my dice in it.  It's perfect for the Redshirts game. :)

-Ark

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Florence and the TPK

DCCRPG Funnel in Action

We had our second DCC game on Saturday.  If you'll remember, I had an arrangement with the our DM in which I was playing a gaggle of potential initiates into a witch's coven - the survivor being granted membership into that select group.

Well, good old Florence had leveled up from Zero to One in the middle of the dungeon, and by the grace of another unlucky party member with a grimoire, learned all of her 1st level spells while stumbling around in the dark reading it.  Somewhere she had found a Vampirella outfit, and the rest was history.

After the dungeon, Florence had some questions for the witch's coven in town.  I was most interested in the immortal entity that was sealed up in the dungeon, and if it would make a good patron.

Come to find out, the witch's coven was just a bunch of emo goth girls who knew nothing about magic.

Yeah.

They were completely freaked that Florence could now light cigarettes without a lighter, kill people with a cloud of red gas, and rip herself into 7 ultra-dimensional copies at will.  So, Florence decided that she would become the new coven leader, and with the help of Bob the Butcher (he co-party demonic cleric,) taught the coven nonsensical and  embarrassing rituals involving running around naked in a corn field during the equinoxes and solstices and that to retain their imaginary witchcraft power that they had to remain virgins forever and ever.

Okay, yeah, that one is going to come back and haunt me - but is was hilarious.

After shaking down the mayor of the town for everything he had, the party left.  Florence grabbed one of the coven members, a beggar girl named Clarissa, to be her personal lackey.  I mean, retainer.  Adminstrative assistant.  Um . . . horse watcher.

So,   the party made their way across country, following Bob the Butcher, who was following a black ram with red glowing eyes, who was being led by his demonic deity, to somewhere where Bob had to do something.  You know - standard adventure.  Will the Ranger, Kyrus the Smack-downer, and Florence the Well-Groomed were just along for the ride.

After a dungeon crawl where I'm sure the party pissed off every underground faction possible, including any potential allies, things came to a head in a room with a glowing electrical ball on a pedestal and a vast amount of angry hooded mages.

We were having our assess handed to us as the hooded goons broke though our lines and began dealing heavy damage.  I was sure the electric ball was important.  I suggested to the Boy that he pick it up and throw it at the mages.

Even if it did no damage, well, it should have been good for some battlefield chaos.

The Boy had Will the Ranger pick it up.  Well . .  that is not exactly what happened.  Will touched the electric ball and he turned to dust.

Yeah.  Oops.

I kept on blowing Florence's spell casting rolls.  That's harsh in DCC.  One success would have turned the battle, but nope.  It was not going to happen.  Bob was knocked to 0 hp, leaving Florence, Kyrus, and a room full of hooded goons.

So, Florence did the math - screeched - and fell down on the floor in her finest imitation of a possum.  Kyrus then was knocked down to zero and went splat.

Florence remained motionless while the hooded cultists moved all of the bodies (and charred dust) to an altar called the 'Altar of Life,' or somesuch thing.  There were dead bodies in voting booths and it got kind of confusing, but Florence slunk off of the altar before the bolts hit here dead friends and somehow moved their minds into the minds of the dead bodies in voting booths.

In the confusion, she hastily donned an ornamental hood and tried to blend in with everyone.  I got a distinct Sandahl Bergman sneaking into the Serpent Temple vibe.  But that's about where we left off - with everyone else rolling up new characters - new stats, new professions, new bodies - everything - but the same names and memories.

So, it was a TPK - minus one. Sort of.   Maybe Florence pretended to be dead well enough to appease the Gods of Death.  Maybe?  Just a little?  Pleeeeeaaasse?

:)

- Ark

Friday, December 7, 2012

Redshirt: Dressed to Kill

Petty Officer 2nd Class Owlicious
This week's Stars Without Number adventure took the scouts their old stomping grounds, the 1950s planet of Tunguska.  They were just on a refueling mission, but they happened to notice a very high tech ship on the surface, and went off to investigate.

Crazy-Ass Tim and Adelaide's record of the adventure is at From the Ashes.  I recommend reading it, since it's good, and I won't be going over the particulars here.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

While I'm waiting, I'll point out the picture to the left.  The party was invited to a fancy dinner during the adventure.  Adelaide found a dress she wanted her character to wear online, so had the ship's clothes printer spit it out.  The original dress is over on Crazy-Ass Tim's page, so go over there if you haven't done so.  This is just my attempt at drawing a truly stunning dress.

Actually, all of the players went found clothes on their phones or laptops.  No, I don't have one of those phones.  I am happy with my decision to NOT have one of those phones.  But you know, it certainly adds an amazing dynamic to a tabletop game.

During the game, Adelaide even went and dug up pictures of what she thought the high tech spaceship looked like.  Heck.  They were perfect.  And while taking a gander, I saw a name on the web page that was sooo much better than the name I had created for the main NPC, that I changed it then and there.

Now, we've used people's phones to pull up a name we couldn't remember, or a picture of something I'm describing that someone just can't quite get.  but it does seem to be growing into a bigger part of our lives, even around my table, a place which normally has had, at it's height, a mechanical pencil for its technological apex.

The use of gaming technology on Wednesday culminated in a completely spontaneous full length  Bollywood dance routine by Crazy-Ass Tim's character Dr. Ramapudi and a blonde administrative assistant named Yvonne that he had become smitten with - including a dance track on the laptop and holographic backup dancers in the star ship.

It reminded my a heck of a lot of the Bollywood movie Marigold.  Yes, you probably don't have enough Bollywood in your life.  Marigold is a fine entry point for the uninitiated to start.

I'm still reeling from the fact that in my gritty, character chewing  horror show of a sci-fi game that a romantic music and dance production spring up out of thin air.  But really, I guess I shouldn't expect anything less. :)

I don't have to do anything to keep them amused at all.  In fact, they amuse me far more.

- Ark

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Redshirts Christmas


After last night's Redshirts game, I was wondering exactly what time it was.  In the game, I mean.  We've had nine sessions in two months, and I was estimating that it had been about a year in game.  Looking at my notes, and slapping them into excel, I saw that I was wrong.  It has only been ten months.  In fact, the crew of frozen Popsicles was due to be back at their base on Christmas Eve.

Now, I've done holidays inside of RPGs before.  My favorite has usually been Halloween in D&D.  That's no-brainer right there, especially if you use zombies.

Heh.

I don't think I've ever done Christmas in Space before, though, and definitely not in Stars Without Number.  I'm not exactly sure what I should do.  Something horrific, of course.  Cthulhu Claus.  Yeah.  I like the sound of that.  Well, maybe that wouldn't the the best Christmas present for the players, but it would be one heck of a present for me.  Ho ho ho.

I supposed, at the very least, the characters should exchange gifts.  I'll let them mull that over in their minds. Great - not only do they need to really go shopping, they have to go virtually shopping as well! ;)

So has anyone else put Christmas into their games?  Anything good come out of it?  Anything horrible?

Here is the timeline, for what it is worth:

2/2/3200 The Reprieve blasts out of Perimeter Station Nine.
2/7/3200 Arrival at Three Sisters system.
2/9/3200 Exploration of the Biotonics Ark 3 begins.
2/15/3200 Arrival at Ukraine system.
2/19/3200 Alpha Team captures a Ukrainian Patrol Boat.
2/25/3200 Escape to Three Sisters system.
2/28/3200 Beginning of the construction of Beachhead Base.
6/11/3200 Completion of Beachhead Base.
6/28/3200 Arrival at Banyan system.
7/1/3200 Alpha Team delivers gun printer to the Brambles.
7/2/3200 Lifter pyramid explored.
8/2/3200 Arrival at Tunguska system.
8/3/3200 Submerged Jump Portal discovered in ocean.
9/4/3200 Ship building activities complete.
10/3/3200 Arrival at Thomas Jefferson.
10/4/3200 Alpha Team encounters Warchou and Berserkers.
10/24/3200 The court-martial and execution of Lt. O'Brien.
11/21/3200 Arrival at Levant system.
11/24/3200 Alpha Team acquires the Molten Rain.
12/8/3200 Refueling stop at Tunguska reveals mystery ship.
12/9/3200 Alpha Team meets Charles Shuttleworth.
12/24/3200 Arrival at Beachhead Base on Christmas Eve.

Ho ho ho!

- Ark

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

The Void Quadrant

Klikbikken
For those keeping track of the Redshirts Stars Without Number campaign at home, here is a handy-dandy star map to let you know from which direction the next horrible mutant plague of xenophobic xenomorphs will come from and kill all of the PCs.

Hmm, I might have given away too much with that sentence. :)

- Ark

PS

Oh yes, a key . . .

Black - Explored Space (inasmuch as space can be explored in SWN)
Purple - 'Hunch' Space (big bags of guesses from old charts, here-say, and psychic divination)
Dark Blue - The righteous Aquila Union
Orange - The Ptolemy Wilds, controlled by the Alliance of Independent Systems
Red - The foul fungal Skorpios Empire
White - The El Dorado Archipelago, a sort of close cluster in the El Dorado Sector
Yellow - A horrible, horrible place filled with genocidal machines and dog-bear things with horns.
Light Blue - The New Mandate, a place quite unknown to the PCs, that sounds pretty well organized.

Okay, that's about it.

- Ark :)

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Better Mental Health Through DCCRPG


Finally, after a year and a half of waiting, I got to play DCC RPG.  Well, I actually played it back in June of 2011 with Harely Stroh, but that was a mid level beta test one shot.  This time, on Saturday, I got to play THE FUNNEL.

I really don't get people that don't like the idea of the funnel.  That's okay.  I don't have to understand a point of view for it to be perfectly valid.  But the funnel was one of the things that drew me to the game.  Actually, DCC was one of the first games I wanted to PLAY in a long, long time.  Maybe since 1981.  Now, of course, when I say 'play,' I meant, be a players, as opposed to being the DM.  I'd DM anything - at least once.  Heck, I'd DM a game about players taking on the persona of rebellious dust bunnies if it meant that I could chase them with a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

But playing - yeah - the funnel, the dice, and the spell rules really sold it to me.  DCC takes the good parts of D&D and Rolemaster and smooshed them together.  Yeah, I said Rolemaster.  That was my game of choice for a couple of years there after ditching D&D.  Oh, the glorious critical hit and fumble tables . . .

Crazy-Ass Tim ran the game for me, the Boy, Merwyn, and Kaye.  Not content to leave things alone, I had bargained for a slightly different character setup than the standard.  I decided that my characters were all potential initiates into a coven of witches, and the survivor of the first adventure would be the wannabe-witch that was allowed into the gaggle of evocatrixes.  I really wanted to play a wizard class, and the opportunity to cackle madly when casting black magic was too good of an opportunity to miss.

The roster of coven abecedarians was as follows:

  • Petunia the wimpy, clumsy, unlucky Urchin, who had never seen plants growing before,
  • Florence the Healer, build like a brick shithouse with a Stamina of 18,
  • Carly the Minstrel, who bets you think she wrote a song about you, but she didn't, and
  • Sorcha the idiot Alchemist, I mean, like, doesn't know salt from pepper.


Initially, the Covenettes refused to do anything brave at all, three of them standing around and whispering to one another in a field of corn while Petunia gathered up as many ears as possible because this was here first time seeing food before.  They hung back in back and tried to avoid any danger at all.

Then upon entering the dungeon, Petunia, Carly, and Sorcha fell into a pit and died, accidentally killing a few other players in the process, as detailed in Crazy-Ass Tim's blog.

GLORIOUS.

Body count was HIGH in the game.  The four of us players ran through well over 30 characters before the end of the dungeon.  Each time we were getting low, we'd find a cage full of PCs ready to refresh our ranks, just like in Left4Dead 2.

Florence found some other Covenette buddies in a cage too, including:

  • Chardonnay the Gravedigger,
  • Seville the razor wielding Barber (I mean, BEAUTY TECHNICIAN), and
  • Heidi the frail Teutonic Woods(wo)man.


Seville killed most of the rest of the party withe a beautiful fumble on a oil flask lob.  Have you ever noticed that little 'G' on the '1' side of a GameScience d20?  I saw that a lot.  Anyway, her hands were burnt beyond recognition, but she survived for a good long while.  Until Seville's leg was cut off with a giant scissor trap.

OH THE GLORIOUS FUCKING IRONY.

Everyone else also had wonderful deaths too, whether from horrible curses, being charred by flame spitting monsters, or being granted special 'wishes' by a lunatic madman demigod.

I mean, Kaye, really.  What did you expect when you said 'okay, I have my character wish to be raised from a level zero nobody to a level one INSERT CLASS HERE.  You actually said 'INSERT CLASS HERE.'

Eventually, I only had one character left - the Venerable Florence the Healer/Witch Wannabe - and the party had to do this big complex ritual - in three separate rooms at the same time.  I love that we had to split the party in order to complete the adventure.  Well, I figured that if she was going to go out in a blaze of glory, Florence might as well put on a Vampirella outfit and head up the demonic ritual with all the gusto she could muster.

The monsters let loose from that ritual finished off all of the 'extra' characters.  And then, to get out of the dungeon, there was a single SAVE OR DIE roll for each character.

YAY!

Like I mentioned in the title, I really do think that the Funnel is a kind of mentally beneficial.  It's Flooding, or Exposure Therapy.  Players tend to have a lot of anxieties about their character's dying.  Mine - I had them huddling in back at the beginning, afraid to do anythign lest they breathed wrong.  and in the end, Florence was there screaming on an altar in a skimpy bathing suit while the the forces of hell swirled about her nubile flesh.

I think it also helps the DM.  Each time when I run a game, any game, I am extremely anxious about the first kill.  I mean, it's like a first kiss on a date.  You grope around, copping a feel here and there, rolling a d20 over and over again trying to hit.  With the first kiss completed - you know where you stand and can continue on confidently.  The first kill in a campaign is the same - you know you can kill the PCs, and the player didn't run off crying home to mommy and threaten to never play again.

Um, did I just equate killing PCs to heavy petting?

Yeah . . . I did.

Anyway, yes, DCC is a great game.  Crazy-Ass Tim pulled off a really good session, and it was one of the most memorable ever.  Everyone was very happy.

And now that we have put so much work into our 1st level characters, we REALLY want them to live. :)

- Ark

Monday, December 3, 2012

Bang


Again and again I keep finding that planning a sketch invites dissatisfaction, and only when I am creating by the seat of my pants with my emotions unbound that I make something I like.  That's also true with DMing.

- Ark