Wednesday, January 2, 2013

DCC Goes to Town

Continued from Florence and the TPK . . .

We got to play DCCRPG again on Saturday!

It was decided - by me, mainly - that my character Florence the Witch was just the kind of person to sneak out of the wretched dungeon from last game and leave her captured party members behind to rot.  So Florence did just that, hooking up with her NPC lackey Clarissa, who had been watching the horses outside of the dungeon, and traipsing off to parts unknown.

I should add here that when playing an asshole character, it's best to have buy-in from the rest of the players.  They were really quite ready to roll up new characters, so this gave them an excuse to start fresh, and gave me the enjoyment of role-playing a quite horrible person.

Kaye rolled up a cleric, but The Boy and Merwyn wanted another slew of zero-level funnel characters.

Have I mentioned that around here people love the hell out of the Funnel?  Even a Funnel in Space?  They most emphatically do.

I was curious how Crazy-Ass Tim was going to pull off a funnel with half of the party.  He did it quite well, actually.  The zero level horde and the cleric joined Florence since they were travelling in the same direction after their village was destroyed by orcs.  As they continued along, they saw a large wall bisecting the valley they were traversing, and an absolute ton of people that looked like peasants and refugees.

The party continued on through the crowds of peasants to the wall, but the peasants were getting uppity.  Florence happened to have a cart full of food, but had put one of the zero level characters in charge of it.  He was Lev the Tax Collector, and he wasn't about to hand over anything to anyone no way.

So thus was born THE GAUNTLET OF STARVING PEOPLE.

The hungry peasants began to shred the zero level characters.  The party began hacking them to pieces in return, but also throwing copper pieces into the crowd to distract.  Eventually the peasants were disbursed, but alas, Florence's lackey Clarissa was murdered.

Then Crazy-Ass Tim let us do something odd - replenish our fallen with the very peasants who attacked us.  They, um, liked the cut of our jib?  Or maybe just knew who had the food and weapons and wanted in.

Florence found a starving peasant girl named Veronica and made the girl her new lackey.  Florence renamed Veronica to Clarissa #2, though.  It was too much a bother to remember a new name.  Veronica didn't seem to mind, as long as she was fed.  Florence decided to rename the next lackey Clarissa #3 when this new one dies.

Is it dawning on you that I am taking the 'YOU ARE NOT A HERO' blurb from the back of the DCC book seriously yet? :)

Eventually, the party learns that beyond the wall lies a city, the wall prevents them from leaving the valley, and that the valley, their town, and everything they ever knew was simply the prison where criminals from the city were exiled to.

Sounds about right, actually.  Kind of like Death Valley Free Prison.  (Thanks Kyrinn!)

The party eventually met someone from inside the city that said he could get them in if they agreed to . . . well . . . they weren't exactly sure what they agreed to - indentured servitude or something like it - but they got out of Shanty Town and into the city proper.

Apparently, Crazy-Ass Tim has been making sweet love to Les Misérables lately, so the city turned out to be a Magically Electric 19th Century Paris where everyone was . . . miserable . . . oddly enough, and had either French or Cardassian names, wore cloaks, and lived in palafitte.  The party met their new patron/owner, who was some rich dude with multiple wives, and he set them up in a shack on the poor side of town and told them to sit around and wait for him to assign them jobs to do.

Sound like a campaign hook generation system to me! :)

So, this is where it gets odd.  DCC has Mercurial Magic - which means that each spell a magic user can cast has something odd about it - rolled randomly.  Well, Good old Flo the Witch has Magic Missile, but every time she casts it, something random nearby turns to lead, and something else turns to gold.  The other players clench their sphincters in dread every time she pops off a magic missile.

Florence thinks it's really nifty, but everyone else gets stuck with useless gold and lead weapons at critical times during combat.  Or gets a bag full of lead coins - which is what happened during the Peasant Gauntlet.

Well, the party was wandering around the city and a thief snagged one of their money bags - a bag of copper coins that had been turned to lead.  They never did catch up with the thief, but felt that he deserved the bag of lead and didn't think much about it.

Next day, they receive a visit from some mafioso types that were HIGHLY interested in the lead coins, as they clearly were struck from the royal copper coin dies, but were lead, so clearly someone was producing counterfeit money and they wanted in on the profits.

Talk about awkward.  It's bad enough they think the party has a counterfeiting device.  If the mob discovers that Flo is the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, then she'll end up kidnapped and locked in a dank dungeon, where she will spend the rest of her life casting magic missile until she is nothing but tentacles brought on by blown casting rolls.

Not good.  Luckily they got a job from their patron.  They have to stop a ship from leaving port in a few days.  They know nothing else about the job.  But Florence figures that if they can convince the Mafia that the Ship's captain knows where the coins come from, and is part of some larger conspiracy, then they can kill two birds with one stone.

Or spend the rest of her life in a dungeon casting magic missile.  Talk about pressure.  Some might call it karma.

:)

- Ark









Friday, December 28, 2012

Christmas Swag - RPGs I'll Never Play

I normally ask for RPGs that I intend on playing at some point.  I think I've just given up and, this time around, asked for games that I want, but would never buy since I don't think I'll ever get around to playing them.

This year, I received Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, and Mongoose's Traveller: Core Rule Book.

Over the years, I think I've probably played five percent of the RPGs I've own.  That's a wild guess, but it seems about right.  It used to be finding players was the biggest issue.  Now the issue is time.  Life is funny.

Traveller was one of those games I that I was super excited about when I discovered it in 1981 - soon after my discoverer of Dungeons and Dragons.  I ran a few adventures, but the players were far more interested in fantasy, and I think my ability to pull of sci-fi wasn't as great at the time.  My attempts later with Star Frontiers were a much bigger hit.

That didn't stop me from continuing to buy Traveller, Traveller: 2300, MegaTraveller, and Traveller: New Era products.  I'd sit around and make characters, design starships, and populate stellar subsectors.  All my copies disappeared in various moves and book cullings over the years.  Then I found Stars Without Number, which has been filling my sci-fi RPG void very well.

Except . . . SWN is extremely abstract about a lot of things, including world creation and starship building - two of my favorite parts of Traveller.  During play, the abstract system is wonderful for creating scenarios and having a great ship battle in a short amount of time.  But when I'm sitting around, thinking about potential scenario or trying to get a fix on what a shuttle actually looks like and how combat would flow inside, I reach for the detail of Traveller - which just isn't there.

Of course, I make it up as I go along and everything is okay.  But sometime I just want some structure - and Traveller was all about structure.  I picked up a battered copy of the MegaTraveller Referee's Guide to try to stitch ship building in - but it just wasn't flowing well.  This Mongoose edition of the game, while similar, appears to be a much better match.

Reading through the Traveller book has been great fun.  It's very much like Classic, with adjustments that I really like.  I've sat down and made some characters even.  It's great for that.  Actually, I think this version is the best organized I've seen to date.  It makes me even want to run the game.  The big issue for me - the kicker - is lack of advancement.  While I don't really care - DMing advancing or static characters doesn't seem to be a problem - I think the players would mind.  They are so . . . accustomed . . . to gaining levels an/or skills that static characters would probably freak them the hell out and bore them - or frustrate them - to tears.

But part of me says that they maybe NEED that.  Traveller is supposed to take away a big part of meta-gaming by focusing the players on what their character are doing NOW, as opposed to how they should shuffle points or prepare for the next level and worry about that upcoming HP roll.  It gives them a character - one they didn't exactly expect - and says PLAY THIS NOW!

I'd like to see that in action one day in a longer campaign.  How would it change the player's attitudes?  Oh well.  I don't see it happening.  But I will be stealing the ship stuff and grafting it into my SWN game - assuming that I have the LEET SKILLS to do so.

Okay, I've probably talked enough about Traveller.  Now, on to Doctor Who!

I was surprised as hell when I got Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space.  It's a box.  It's a heavy box.  Heavy.  It's crammed packed with shit.  Pretty shit.

There is a quick start guide, a player's book, referee's book, adventure book, and all sorts of extra thick card-stock character sheets, punch-out equipment cards, and little XP token things.  Oh, and there are these awesome Doctor Who dice.  Everything is nice and colorful and very pretty.

Okay, I thought, nice try, guys.  You spat out a pretty looking game designed by the BBC marketing department to increase the reach of the Doctor Who 'brand.'

Then I began to dig into the books, and was surprised there there looks to be an actual game here - a game designed by people who might know what they are doing.

In the beginning of the players book, it tells a story about Rory - one of the characters (well, WAS one,) of the TV show.  The little story involves huge and strange shaped objects going missing all over the universe, and the TARDIS crew trying to track them down.  The shapes were odd - tetrahedrons, octahedrons, dodecahedrons, icosahedrons, an the like.  Turns out a race of giants was stealing these huge objects to play a role playing game.

Okay, yeah, it was stupid.  Doctor Who is often stupid.  But it's stupid for a reason, and if you just lay back and relax and go with it, the stupid turns into cool.  And that was cool.  Like bow-ties and fezzes.  And that little story was a nod back in time to the beginning, to Dungeons & Dragons.  The game doesn't even use all those dice.  It just uses the d6.  But they chose to mention the dice anyway.  And that tells me that the designers are MY KIND OF PEOPLE.

I have a lot more to read, but the base game appears very cool.  You can make whichever character you like - a rival Timelord or a street sweeper or Goldie Hawn circa 1968.  The mechanics are basically a 2d6 point by system, like Traveller made love to Champions-lite or something.  It's simple, with various levels of success or failure.  Nothing innovative here - just comfortable.

Actually, the box, the books, the feel . . . it's all comfortable.  Opening it gave me a similar feel to that of opening the old D&D box way back in 1981 - except full color and glossy.  Interesting.  I think they did that on purpose.  AND, this thing is currently cheaper that the Traveller book on Amazon.  Go figure.

Regretfully, I doubt I'll ever find enough people interested in playing it in person.  Even The Boy is all MEH about Doctor Who these days.  He never got over the change from #10 to #11.

So I'm really happy with my Christmas presents.  Maybe I should just make some characters, pull out the Mythic Game Master Emulator, and play these in the wee hours of the night.

- Ark

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Stars Without Number Meat Funnel

It the Redshirts Stars Without Number game, I've been dropping hints and foreshadowing an ancient, hidden menace upon a blacked planet blasted by three novas and bathed in the radiation of their rapidly spinning pulsar remnants.

The players have, understandably, been somewhat reluctant to go take a visit.

I'm not sure who came up with the idea.  Perhaps it was Merwyn.  Perhaps it was me.  But whoever had the idea - it was awesome.  Simply turn the adventure into a Stars Without Number/DCCRPG Funnel Mashup.

Ca-Ching!  Done!

Welcome to the universe of zero level Stars Without Number characters.  They have no class.  They have d4 for hit points.  They only have 4 skills and three pieces of equipment.  And you can't decide on any of it!

I'll be running this next week.  I don't think that all nine of our players will show up for this, but if they did, that would be 9x4=36 ponential corpses to be ripped to shreds in a horrific feeding frenzy of character death.

So, here are the character creation steps:
  1. Create up to 4 characters.
  2. Roll 3d6 straight for: STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON and CHA.  Note Ability mods as normal.
  3. No Class, prime attributes, attack bonus, or special class ability.
  4. Roll Hit points - 1d4 plus CON bonus.
  5. All saves are at 17.
  6. Roll 2d10 once to determine Occupation, Skills, and Equipment. See tables below.  Skills provide a ZERO level and equipment is AS-IS, no trades.  Additional ammo available from corpses of fallen comrades.  Stop whining.  You are here to die.  Quickly.
  7. Write it all down on the handy dandy sheet (provided below.)
  8. Poof!  You are done.
  9. If a character survives, she/he may be upgraded to 1st level and enter the regular campaign.

Occupation Table
Roll Occupation
2 Priest
3 Journalist
4 Mechanic
5 Corporate Suit
6 Astrophysicist
7 Field Researcher
8 Planetary Scientist
9 Xenobiologist
10 Xenoarchaeologist
11 Infantry
12 Scout
13 Security Analyst
14 Medic
15 Pilot
16 Officer
17 Gunner
18 Combat Engineer
19 Sniper
20 Space Marine

Skills Table
Occupation Skills
Astrophysicist Profession/Astrophysicist, Science, Tech/Astronautic, Vehicle/Space
Combat Engineer Combat/Projectile, Exosuit, Security, Stealth
Corporate Suit Bureaucracy, Business, Leadership, Persuade
Field Researcher Science, Tech/Maltech, Tech/Postech, Tech/Pretech
Gunner Athletics, Combat/Gunnery, Exosuit, Vehicle/Land
Infantry Combat/Projectile, Combat/Unarmed, Exosuit, Gambling
Journalist Bureaucracy, Culture/Criminal, Exosuit, Persuade
Mechanic Exosuit, Gambling, Tech/Astronautic, Tech/Postech
Medic Athletics, Exosuit, Perception, Tech/Medical
Officer Combat/Projectile, Exosuit, Leadership, Tactics
Pilot Combat/Projectile, Culture/Spacer, Vehicle/Grav, Vehicle/Space
Planetary Scientist Profession/Geology, Science, Tech/Postech, Vehicle/Land
Priest Culture/World, Perception, Persuade, Religion
Scout Culture/Traveller, Exosuit, Navigation, Survival
Security Analyst Combat/Unarmed, Perception, Security, Tech/Postech
Sniper Combat/Projectile, Exosuit, Perception, Stealth
Space Marine Combat/Energy, Combat/Primitive, Combat/Unarmed, Exosuit
Xenoarchaeologist Artist/Plastics, Culture/Alien, History, Science
Xenobiologist Bureaucracy, Profession/Xenobiology, Science, Tech/Medical

Equipment Table
Occupation Equipment
Astrophysicist Dataslab, Survey Scanner, Vacc Suit
Combat Engineer Instapanel, Spike Thrower, Vacc Suit
Corporate Suit Dataslab, Portabox, Vacc Suit
Field Researcher Toolkit/Postech, Toolkit/Pretech, Vacc Suit
Gunner Heavy Machine Gun, Metatool, Vacc Suit
Infantry Mag Rifle, Telescoping Pole, Vacc Suit
Journalist Argus Web, Dataslab, Vacc Suit
Mechanic Toolkit/Astronautic, Toolkit/Postech, Vacc Suit
Medic Lazarus Patch, Medkit, Vacc Suit
Officer Binoculars, Mag Pistol, Vacc Suit
Pilot Metatool, Void Carbine, Vacc Suit
Planetary Scientist Dataslab, Survey Scanner, Vacc Suit
Priest Survival Kit, Translator Torc, Vacc Suit
Scout Navcomp, Survival Kit, Vacc Suit
Security Analyst Dataslab, Survey Scanner, Vacc Suit
Sniper Climbing Harness, Sniper Rifle, Vacc Suit
Space Marine Assault Suit, Grenade (x2), Laser Rifle
Xenoarchaeologist Dataslab, Survey Scanner, Vacc Suit
Xenobiologist Dataslab, Bioscanner, Vacc Suit

Character Sheet

This should be fun.  And horrific.  And sad.

Please feel free to use any of this for your own games.

- Ark

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Tired of Christmas Music Already?

Then it's obviously time for GERMAN CLUB MUSIC!

Nachtleben - MURANO meets TOKA feat. Dumbstruke

Morgens immer müde - Laing

Du & Ich - Colina

Party (Ich Will Abgehn) - Die Atzen

Dynamit - Kollegah & Farid Bang

You can danke me later!  (I BLAME YOU, SPOTIFY!)

- Ark

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Redshirts: Jack Frost Roasting Over an Open Fire

HO HO DIE.
Last week was the Stars Without Number Christmas Special.  The Reshirts were back at the Beachhead Asteroid Base for some well deserved R&R, shopping for Christmas presents at the PX or performing maintenance and/or horrific biological experiments in the lab.  In the station's Zócalo, a robotic Santa, reindeer, and elf were amusing soldiers and scientists alike.

The scouts are getting rusty.  I swear.  Come on, a robot Santa, reindeer, and elf?  That has to mean trouble.

Kal Kek and Roswell were in the Zócalo, and Kal Kek was acting kind of grumpy.  The elf came over to cheer him up by pulling out a pistol and shooting him.  Then the Santa open his mouth wide and began spewing a green mist that turned people into glowing eyed yellow zombies.

Merry Christmas!

Robot Santas are mostly evil.  Mostly.
Things went downhill form there.  Battle-stations were called as a Skorpios attack force was bearing down on the asteroid as well.  Their secret base had been compromised, and the enemy had decided to send their presents on Christmas Eve.

Much chaos and battle ensue.  Eventually, the evil robots were blown up, but Roswell the (sort of) good robot was blown up in the process.  Kal Kek grabbed his C3-P0-like head and ran with it like a football back to the ship.

While escaping from the zombie gas, Dr. Ramapudi followed Newt, through the station's air ducts.  Newt was the eight year old psychic girl that the scouts had rescued in an earlier episode from an crazed interplannar entity that had inhabited her body for 600 years.  Well, Newt, being a bit untrusting, had stockpiled rifles and grenades in the air ducts, just in case something like this happened.

Eventually, the party made it back to the ship, where they found out that the Reprieve had been undergoing maintenance and had it's engines dismantled.  Having no other craft that could mount a defense versus the Skorpios attack fleet, they hopped in the Molten Rain mech suit assault shuttle and blasted off.

The plan was simple.  Everyone was to get in their mech suits and be shot out of the mech suit rail gun at the oncoming Skorpios Cruiser that was making an attack run on the Beachhead Base.  At the end, "Profit" was somehow to be gained, but plan for everything in-between was somewhat hazy.

The Skorpios Cruiser was actually an old, run-down ship constructive with run-down, primitive parts at the Lost colony of Ukraine, so luckily, it didn't have much defense against seven human size projectiles shot at it.  The scouts didn't have much defense against being shot at a cruiser, either.  Kal Kek ented up penetrating a armored turret with his head.

The scouts began to dig through the ship like miners, using the mechs' urban assault abilities to turn the cruiser's bulkhead's into Swiss cheese.  They plugged Roswell's C3-P0 head into a computer conduit in a maintenance tunnel to begin the cyber assault.  Roswell took over a pack of maintenance bots that launched an assault on the bridge while the party split up in an attempt to take over engineering, nullify the angry grav tank muscling it's was through the maintenance shafts, and eliminate the threat of unattended cafeterias.

Admiral Beringer looses eye in attack.
Despite the fact that the party split up, or maybe because of it, the Skorpios lost most of their control of the ship and decided to self destruct.  Roswell narrowly prevented the cruiser from blowing up, but the Skorpios crew sabotaged the craft, detonating as many munitions and hydrogen tanks as possible before they evacuated.

The guns on the asteroid base mopped up the stream of evacuees and the scouts took control of the devastated, burnt out hulk.  Regretfully, the resident psychic was killed in a munitions explosion.  Attempts to revive him by The Boy using an untested nanotech revitalization system proved to have horrific results, turning the dead body into an ever expanding ball of gray goo that was eventually isolated by Aquila scientists.

As a reward for saving the day, Admiral Beringer cancelled the scheduled court-martial of the group for horrendous crimes to humanity that they had perpetrated on previous missions.  Merry Christmas, Redshirts, Merry Christmas.

- Ark

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Top Games

Dice Bomb by ~j-burgess
Gnome Stew's and Frothsof's mention of the Top Seven meme got me thinking about my Top Seven's.  FAvorites are one thing, but ones I have actually played are another - and as a mostly DM, the playing list is of more interest.  I've stuck my toes in a lot of rpg pies since 1981, but where have I double dipped the most?  It's hard to quantify - I'll just have to guess.  I really just haven't played with very much consistency.

The Top Seven RPGs I've Played
  1. D&D 4e
  2. AD&D
  3. Champions 4e
  4. AD&D 2e
  5. Holmes D&D (or Molday Basic - they kind of blur)
  6. Gama World 1e
  7. Shadowrun (maybe tied with Risus)

That one in first place is kind of odd, but I guess it is true. I blame my participation in the RPGA for that. ;p

GMing is much easier, since I do it a lot more:

The Top Seven RPGs I've Run
  1. AD&D
  2. RoleMaster
  3. D&D 4e
  4. Stars Without Number
  5. GURPS Space
  6. Twilight: 2000
  7. Fantasy HERO

Funny how this doesn't represent what my Top Seven Favorites are. :)

- Ark




Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Doctor Who in the Desert

I tend to get strange emails from all over the place referencing the blog.  Typically, it's people wanting me to review stuff - which I don't do because I am lazy - or people wanting me to buy male enhancement products - which I don't do because I am lazy.

Recently, I received a message about my post Doctor Who in Arabic from Jon at BroaDWcast, asking about the doctor Who shows I watched back when I lived in Saudi Arabia.  The site is a guide to foreign airdates and worldwide transmissions of Doctor Who.

Odd, yeah?

Well, turns out they have a heap of information there about when and where the good Doctor has been broadcast around the word over the last umpty-ump decades.  A lot.  I think part of it has to do with a search for the lost Doctor Who episodes.  A while back, BBC deleted a heck of a lot of archival material - which included many old episodes.  There is a hope that may someone, somewhere, stashed some tapes in a cupboard or something.

Anyway, Jon took my vague memories, tracked them back to a particular television station out of Qatar, and even had an episode list of what I most likely saw.  FROM 1978 and 1979.  WOW.

I do hope I gave him helpful information as well.  The episodes were in black and white, dubbed over in Arabic, and subbed in English, which was weird - so who knows, maybe that will be useful? :)

Anyway, it was pretty fun exercise - and help me straighten out some fuzzy memories.

So let this be a lesson - if you have any odd things you've done or strange memories that no one else has - jot them down in a blog post.  You never know when or how they might be useful.

- Ark