It's been a while since I did one of these, and I kind of like the moment in time feel of them.
Last (non-RPG) Book I've Read...
The Third Secret by Steve Berry.
Treading much the same ground as Dan Brown's terrible novel turned into a mediocre movie, Angels & Demons. This one treads much the same ground. In this case, the camerlengo is the hero, the Pope is murdered (and anticipates it), and the newly elected Pope pretty seems like he modeled his life after the Borgia Family. It's a better read just because the characters involved in a lot of instances have conflicting agendas and loyalties. Worth a read if you enjoyed either of Dan Brown's novels that tread the same territory, as I consider Berry to be a better writer.
This would make a great d20 Modern Blood & Relics game, if I ever found the time or the group.
Last Music Listened To...
Black Rain, Original Soundtrack, Hans Zimmer
I've been on a soundtracks kick again recently, and I've been collecting a lot of Hans Zimmer's early work. While his later stuff is a lot more orchestral, and enters the same bombastic territory occupied by John Williams, a lot of his earlier stuff is more synth/light orchestra/chorale heavy, and trades the same ground as some of Vangelis's early stuff. Most recently, I picked up a copy of the Black Rain soundtrack. The movie was eh...but the soundtrack just screams cyberpunk to me...without being quite as familiar as the Blade Runner soundtrack, but treading some of the same ground. It may wind up at the gaming table some day for a cyberpunk or neo-noir game.
Last Movie Watched...
Inception
Rewatched Inception a couple of days ago. I tend to watch more TV series than movies these days. I don't go to many movies and I tend to occasionally go on DVD/Blu Ray buying binges. I'm about due for another one. Anybody got any suggestions? I'll certainly be picking up John Carter (I'm a Burroughs fan) and a few others.
Last Television Watched...
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes, Supernatural, Fringe, every Sunday night.
I don't have cable, and I don't have Netflix (though the later should be rectified soon), as I read a lot more than I watch, but the family and I got in a habit of watching television series on DVD a few years back on Sunday nights, starting with Firefly and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Since that time, we've worked our way through X-Files, seasons 1-9, and are currently working our way through Heroes, Buffy, Supernatural, and Fringe.
Supernatural is brilliant. If you haven't been watching it, you're making a big mistake. We're about halfway through Season 5, and loving it.
Buffy I saw bits of this series on the WB back in the day, but frankly I worked a lot of nights during its run, and I missed a lot more of it than I remembered. It's been fun, though frankly, I thought the series may have jumped the shark in Season 4 a bit, and I'm hoping Season 5 (which we started just a few weeks ago) tries to restart some of the momentum.
Heroes we just finished Season 1, which was brilliant. I understand the remaining three seasons represent a huge drop in quality. But the complete series was $8 a season on a Black Friday special at Target last Christmas, and I'm figuring I'll get $24 of enjoyment out of the last three seasons at some point.
Fringe we just started with Season 1. Looks like early X-Files with fewer supernatural terrors and more alien weirdness. I understand it got better with later seasons, but so far, I could take it or leave it.
I'm also collecting True Blood and Game of Thrones as they come out. Both television series are amazing.
Last RPG Book Purchased...
Physical Books:
Hollow Earth Expedition, Exile Game Studios
Wild Talents Essentials Edition, Arc Dream Publishing
PDFs:
d20 Deadlands Hell on Earth & d20 Deadlands Hell on Earth Horrors of the Weird West
Thrilling Hero Adventures (Hero System)
I'll talk about these in order. Both were purchased from Darren from Imperial Outpost Games at Conflagration.
Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) scratches my pulp itch. For those who know me, pulp, horror, and noir are basically the main themes that run through my games. Even when I run other systems, they wind up with noir or pulp elements, depending on the mood appropriate for the game. Although I'm still learning this one, the Ubiquity System looks like it would fairly easy to run, and most of the obvious pulp archetypes can be created readily.
One of the things I like about HEX in particular is that unlike a lot of pulp RPG games and settings, its very tightly focused. Most pulp games try to cover the gamut from boxing stories, to westerns, to car racing to space, to 1930's adventure yarns, and so on. HEX's emphasis and inspiration, is based on things like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar novels, and other novels using a Hollow Earth or Lost Island style adventures. The setting is pretty tightly focused on that style of fiction, and doesn't try to be all things to all people. If somebody's looking to dip their toes in the water with classic 1920-1940 style pulp gaming, you could do worse than HEX.
Wild Talents scratches my One Roll Engine itch. I've come to admire A Dirty World and Nemesis, and the simplicity of One Roll Engine, so I picked this up for a song. It's strictly the rules, but I'd probably roll my own as far as setting if and when I ran it anyway. I mainly just picked it up ($9.99 sticker price, but I got a bit of a deal) to check out the mechanics. One of these days I'll get around to picking up Reign as well...not enough money, too many games.
The d20 Deadlands stuff is a bit peculiar for me. I love the Deadlands settings (including Lost Colony and Hell on Earth), not so fond of Deadlands system (or its successor, Savage Worlds, for that matter, which I know puts me in something of a minority). Thought this might be fun in case I ever try to do a d20 version. Besides, RPGNow was selling them for $5 apiece as part of their promotion for the recent release of the Savage Worlds compatible Hell on Earth Reloaded. If nothing else, I've got some more creatures to throw in a Darwin's World game, so it's all good.
Thrilling Hero Adventures is more pulp. Although I'm great at math, I don't run Hero System, as I prefer not to be that rules heavy these days, but this was a $10 volume, has a number of great pulp adventures, a lot more great pulp ideas, and heck, I'll convert some of it to d20 Modern Thrilling Tales or maybe even Hollow Earth Expedition one of these days. I usually buy pregen adventures to steal ideas from, rather than run them whole cloth anyway.
What I'm working on currently...
I'm a bit of a gaming floozy. Even when I've got campaigns running, I like to tinker around with campaign ideas for other genres.
As far as games I'm running, I'm running a Pathfinder game based on RPPR's New World Campaign. It was originally written for 4E, but I'd rather rip my toenails out than play 4E, so I retrofitted it to Pathfinder.
For Basic Roleplaying (Chaosium's house system), I'm running my take on S M Stirling's Emberverse novel series. The grittiness of BRP seemed to fit Dies the Fire rather nicely, and its an easy system to adapt to new settings and genres, and an even easier one to teach.
Stuff being worked on, but not run at the moment...
I'm working on another one shot for A Dirty World...going to be setting this during the Cold War, but still toying around with ideas. No big rush, as con season is about over for Phoenix this year.
We're about to return to our Star Wars Saga Edition campaign, but I'll leave that for another post. Needless to say I've been working on that.
I'm tinkering with adapting the first scenario from Thrilling Hero Adventures to d20 Modern Thrilling Tales for use as a one shot the next time the mood strikes me.
I'm also working on the beginnings of a cyberpunk setting. Probably d20 Modern/Future, but I may try it with BRP...I'm not sure which direction I'll go. It won't be run for a while yet.
I've also been asked to run a Supers game. I'm actually thinking I may combine this with the Cyberpunk feel, and create sort of a Neo Postmodern/Iron Age in the near future sort of game. Not sure yet. At this point I'm just bouncing around ideas in my head, and haven't put pen to paper yet.
Showing posts with label RPGs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RPGs. Show all posts
Monday, July 16, 2012
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Review: A Dirty World
A few months ago, I had a few extra dollars burning a hole in my pocket, and RPG Now's featured product on their front page was Arc Dream Publishing's One Roll Engine game, A Dirty World.
On a lark, I picked it up for the sale price of $10, and I have had a couple of occasions to run it in recent months. While I'm certain there's a print-on-demand version of it, and as with most Arc Dream titles, it could probably be had via Indie Press Revolution, this review will be based on the PDF.
A Dirty World
Author: Greg Stolze
Pages: 70
Mechanic: One Roll Engine
Implied Setting: Noir novels, films, plays.
Layout:
Bear in mind that I have the PDF, not print version of this book. For all I know, this may be printed on slick glossy paper with a beautiful set of color cover illustrations in the print version. I wouldn't know. The cover of the PDF is black and white, and most of the interior illustrations appear to be black and white photographs of crime scenes, people in period dress, etc. The internal illustrations certainly fit the genre, which is a plus.
The volume is a slim volume, laid out in two-column format, with a simple clean font. Simple, elegant, but not exactly inspired.
I give it a 4 out of 5, mainly on the strength of the illustrations evoking such a specific mood.
Setting:
A Dirty World has no defined setting. It's effectively a set of rules for running games inspired by film noir, and the novels and stories that inspired film noir. Basically, if you enjoy Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, or the many films (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, etc.) and plays and authors their works have inspired, this is right up your alley.
For those unfamiliar with the basics of noir, they usually center around some form of a detective story. It may involve the recovery of a stolen item, blackmail, adultery, incest (Chinatown is a good example of neo-noir for these purposes), a rape, a murder, or sometimes, a witches brew of any or all of these elements.
What turns what might otherwise be a plain vanilla detective setting into noir is the characters themselves. The heroes are not necessarily the guys in the white hats, and the villains may very well have somewhat compelling motivations for what they've done. Everybody has a secret, everybody has a graveyard full of skeletons in their closet, and by the time the story is over, all of these things will come out, usually to damage our opinion of the hero, and have at least a little empathy (if not sympathy) for the villain.
The implied setting is evoked by a pair of short stories, which effectively begin and end the book. Both are good at evoking the mood of noir. However, I think it would have been a good idea for the book to take a little more time explaining some of the tropes of noir than it did. A Dirty World is likely to leave a novice to film noir wondering exactly what they are supposed to do with the admittedly good rules set.
I score it 3 out of 5.
Mechanics:
A Dirty World uses a greatly modified version of Arc Dream's in-house RPG engine, the One Roll Engine, the same base mechanic used in Wild Talents, Godlike (both are supers games), Reign (Sword & Board Fantasy), Nemesis (Survival Horror, and a freebie). Basically, it's a d10 dice pool. You roll so many d10s, and what you are looking for are numbers that match. The one roll engine name comes from the fact that the roll of these dice determines your initiative, attack, and damage, all in one roll.
The speed of your attacks or skill checks is measured by how many dice you roll that have the same number of, while the effectiveness or power of the roll is measured by the number on the matching dice themselves. So a roll of three 2's (3 x 2 in game parlance) will act faster than a roll of two 2's (2 x 2). Still, while it may be faster, that roll of 3 x 2 will not be powerful as a roll of two 8's (2 x 8).
There are a few other factors involved, but that's the essence of the mechanic.
A Dirty World differs from some one-roll engine games in that the player can alter his qualities (think of these as skills from most other games), and other players, as well as NPCs can alter the player's identities (think of these as character attributes) during the course of play, through either social situations or combat. Note that social encounters are resolved in the exact same manner as combat. It is possible to not only beat an opponent to a pulp, but argue her to the point where she becomes a quivering mass of jello bawling her eyes out in the corner without ever laying a hand on her.
The game also gives some pretty good examples of the mechanics in action, and the list of identity/quality pairs to form the dice pool needed to do specific things. The chapter on the mechanics is clearly written, and forms the vast meat of the book.
The mechanics fit the genre so well, it's hard to imagine a better set of rules for running a noir-themed game. As with the rest of the one-roll engine games, the simplicity of the mechanics make it ideal for a one-shot with a new group, or in a convention setting.
I score it 5 out of 5.
Character Generation:
Ironically, this is probably the shorteest chapter in the book, and comes after the mechanics and combat system. It's a point buy system, and an easily done one. Character generation is a snap, the chapter is thorough despite its brevity, and the character generation process so simple that it would take less than 10 minute to get even a total neophyte up to speed with complete character in hand.
5 of 5.
GM Resources:
This section is very slim. Again, if I'm a GM unfamiliar with noir films, plays, and fiction, I just don't have much to go on, as I won't find enough here to make up the difference. One very valuable resource available for a GM stumped for plot ideas, or staring at the clock, realizing she has players arriving in an hour, and hasn't got a clue what to run is the Appendix: One Roll Legal Problems. In essence, this is a very thorough, far more useful than normal, random scenario generator. I've personally used it to run the game I'm running now, as well as one I'm writing for the convention in February.
Still, it's not much to go on for a GM new to the genre.
3 of 5, basically on the strength of the short stories and the Appendix.
Overall Value:
Again, bear in mind that I'm working off the PDF copy. This is a thin volume. Retail price via RPG Now is supposedly $17.95...but I've never seen it priced for more than $10 there since I bought it. For the size of the volume, it's packed with all of the mechanics you'd need to run a film noir game...it is a complete game. That said, I'd be less satisfied with it at $17.95. However, at $10, it's fairly priced.
4 of 5.
Summary:
There is no game I've encountered that does a better job of capturing the feel of the Noir genre. If it has a downside, it's my sense that a bit more could have been devoted to defining the Noir genre for a green GM (which I am not) without adding too much to the page count. Still, for $10, it's a bargain, particularly when the game's mechanics knock the ball out of the park in terms of capturing the feel of the genre without sacrificing the ease of use that is the hallmark of the One Roll Engine
I give it a 4 of 5 simply for the mechanics, marked down slightly by the limited resources available to a new GM.
On a lark, I picked it up for the sale price of $10, and I have had a couple of occasions to run it in recent months. While I'm certain there's a print-on-demand version of it, and as with most Arc Dream titles, it could probably be had via Indie Press Revolution, this review will be based on the PDF.
A Dirty World
Author: Greg Stolze
Pages: 70
Mechanic: One Roll Engine
Implied Setting: Noir novels, films, plays.
Layout:
Bear in mind that I have the PDF, not print version of this book. For all I know, this may be printed on slick glossy paper with a beautiful set of color cover illustrations in the print version. I wouldn't know. The cover of the PDF is black and white, and most of the interior illustrations appear to be black and white photographs of crime scenes, people in period dress, etc. The internal illustrations certainly fit the genre, which is a plus.
The volume is a slim volume, laid out in two-column format, with a simple clean font. Simple, elegant, but not exactly inspired.
I give it a 4 out of 5, mainly on the strength of the illustrations evoking such a specific mood.
Setting:
A Dirty World has no defined setting. It's effectively a set of rules for running games inspired by film noir, and the novels and stories that inspired film noir. Basically, if you enjoy Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, or the many films (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, etc.) and plays and authors their works have inspired, this is right up your alley.
For those unfamiliar with the basics of noir, they usually center around some form of a detective story. It may involve the recovery of a stolen item, blackmail, adultery, incest (Chinatown is a good example of neo-noir for these purposes), a rape, a murder, or sometimes, a witches brew of any or all of these elements.
What turns what might otherwise be a plain vanilla detective setting into noir is the characters themselves. The heroes are not necessarily the guys in the white hats, and the villains may very well have somewhat compelling motivations for what they've done. Everybody has a secret, everybody has a graveyard full of skeletons in their closet, and by the time the story is over, all of these things will come out, usually to damage our opinion of the hero, and have at least a little empathy (if not sympathy) for the villain.
The implied setting is evoked by a pair of short stories, which effectively begin and end the book. Both are good at evoking the mood of noir. However, I think it would have been a good idea for the book to take a little more time explaining some of the tropes of noir than it did. A Dirty World is likely to leave a novice to film noir wondering exactly what they are supposed to do with the admittedly good rules set.
I score it 3 out of 5.
Mechanics:
A Dirty World uses a greatly modified version of Arc Dream's in-house RPG engine, the One Roll Engine, the same base mechanic used in Wild Talents, Godlike (both are supers games), Reign (Sword & Board Fantasy), Nemesis (Survival Horror, and a freebie). Basically, it's a d10 dice pool. You roll so many d10s, and what you are looking for are numbers that match. The one roll engine name comes from the fact that the roll of these dice determines your initiative, attack, and damage, all in one roll.
The speed of your attacks or skill checks is measured by how many dice you roll that have the same number of, while the effectiveness or power of the roll is measured by the number on the matching dice themselves. So a roll of three 2's (3 x 2 in game parlance) will act faster than a roll of two 2's (2 x 2). Still, while it may be faster, that roll of 3 x 2 will not be powerful as a roll of two 8's (2 x 8).
There are a few other factors involved, but that's the essence of the mechanic.
A Dirty World differs from some one-roll engine games in that the player can alter his qualities (think of these as skills from most other games), and other players, as well as NPCs can alter the player's identities (think of these as character attributes) during the course of play, through either social situations or combat. Note that social encounters are resolved in the exact same manner as combat. It is possible to not only beat an opponent to a pulp, but argue her to the point where she becomes a quivering mass of jello bawling her eyes out in the corner without ever laying a hand on her.
The game also gives some pretty good examples of the mechanics in action, and the list of identity/quality pairs to form the dice pool needed to do specific things. The chapter on the mechanics is clearly written, and forms the vast meat of the book.
The mechanics fit the genre so well, it's hard to imagine a better set of rules for running a noir-themed game. As with the rest of the one-roll engine games, the simplicity of the mechanics make it ideal for a one-shot with a new group, or in a convention setting.
I score it 5 out of 5.
Character Generation:
Ironically, this is probably the shorteest chapter in the book, and comes after the mechanics and combat system. It's a point buy system, and an easily done one. Character generation is a snap, the chapter is thorough despite its brevity, and the character generation process so simple that it would take less than 10 minute to get even a total neophyte up to speed with complete character in hand.
5 of 5.
GM Resources:
This section is very slim. Again, if I'm a GM unfamiliar with noir films, plays, and fiction, I just don't have much to go on, as I won't find enough here to make up the difference. One very valuable resource available for a GM stumped for plot ideas, or staring at the clock, realizing she has players arriving in an hour, and hasn't got a clue what to run is the Appendix: One Roll Legal Problems. In essence, this is a very thorough, far more useful than normal, random scenario generator. I've personally used it to run the game I'm running now, as well as one I'm writing for the convention in February.
Still, it's not much to go on for a GM new to the genre.
3 of 5, basically on the strength of the short stories and the Appendix.
Overall Value:
Again, bear in mind that I'm working off the PDF copy. This is a thin volume. Retail price via RPG Now is supposedly $17.95...but I've never seen it priced for more than $10 there since I bought it. For the size of the volume, it's packed with all of the mechanics you'd need to run a film noir game...it is a complete game. That said, I'd be less satisfied with it at $17.95. However, at $10, it's fairly priced.
4 of 5.
Summary:
There is no game I've encountered that does a better job of capturing the feel of the Noir genre. If it has a downside, it's my sense that a bit more could have been devoted to defining the Noir genre for a green GM (which I am not) without adding too much to the page count. Still, for $10, it's a bargain, particularly when the game's mechanics knock the ball out of the park in terms of capturing the feel of the genre without sacrificing the ease of use that is the hallmark of the One Roll Engine
I give it a 4 of 5 simply for the mechanics, marked down slightly by the limited resources available to a new GM.
Monday, November 14, 2011
What I'm working on...
Have a dinner party scenario to run for the next session of Masks of Nyarlathotep, so I'm detailing a few NPCs to give it some life.
I'm also putting the finishing details on the current chapter of the Star Wars Saga Edition campaign I've been running (I tend to run this campaign in episodic form, short campaigns of 10-15 sessions, and we're close to wrapping one of them up).
I'm currently writing a pulp one-shot for a convention in February. The game will use d20 Modern, mostly because I know it like the back of my hand, and I'm a big fan of Adamant Entertainment's Thrilling Tales line of pulp adventure stuff (also available for Savage Worlds).
The latter game will likely include as many of the following as I can fit in a four hour session: flying boats, hostile natives, dinosaurs, giant ant swarms, quicksand and other natural hazards, a secret Japanese base (and lots of Japanese baddies) and possibly some mutated half-men, half-animals as a result of super-soldier experiment gone awry. About the only pulp cliche I've omitted is Pulp Nazis.
More on the scenario as I develop it.
I'm also putting the finishing details on the current chapter of the Star Wars Saga Edition campaign I've been running (I tend to run this campaign in episodic form, short campaigns of 10-15 sessions, and we're close to wrapping one of them up).
I'm currently writing a pulp one-shot for a convention in February. The game will use d20 Modern, mostly because I know it like the back of my hand, and I'm a big fan of Adamant Entertainment's Thrilling Tales line of pulp adventure stuff (also available for Savage Worlds).
The latter game will likely include as many of the following as I can fit in a four hour session: flying boats, hostile natives, dinosaurs, giant ant swarms, quicksand and other natural hazards, a secret Japanese base (and lots of Japanese baddies) and possibly some mutated half-men, half-animals as a result of super-soldier experiment gone awry. About the only pulp cliche I've omitted is Pulp Nazis.
More on the scenario as I develop it.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Canon Nazis Must Die or Oh My God!, Darth Maul Just Killed Obi Wan!
First, I'll come clean. I'm a Star Wars junkie. I've read and collected virtually all the novels, and some of the Dark Horse comics stuff. I've got the Star Wars films in three different formats. I've been collecting the Clone Wars series on Blu Ray as it has been coming out. I bought the 3 volume Star Wars Encyclopedia at a store closing sale from Borders a few months ago. So I've got a stronger sense of Star Wars canon than any player I've ever had.
Still, I could care less about the continuity of any of that when I'm running a Star Wars RPG session. I see so many GMs who walk on eggs in fear of whether players will be upset with them for messing up canon, or worst still, GMs destroying their own game because they are afraid of destroying canon that I've got to say, take canon, put it in front of the Death Star's laser, and fire the laser on full power.
There are some things players of ANY RPG based on a licensed property, or even just an extensively published original RPG setting (cough. cough. Greyhawk. Eberron. Forgotten Realms. cough. cough.) need to understand if they really want to get the best out of their games.
1. YOUR PLAYERS' CHARACTERS SHOULD BE THE STARS OF THEIR STORY.
I'll come clean. I hate playing or running in the canonical Rebellion Era. What makes for a great pulp-space cinematic story in the Original Trilogy (a handful of determined, talented, doggedly loyal to each other friends taking down a Galactic Empire) makes for a terrible RPG setting. A canonical Rebellion Era dooms the PCs to being a B plot. Think about it. Luke destroys Death Star I. Luke becomes the first (and only during the Original Trilogy) new Jedi. Han and Leia lead a group of rebel troopers (and Ewoks) to destroy the shield generator on Endor. Lando and Wedge destroy Death Star II.
None of those characters are PCs. So what do your players get to do? Maybe they get to be Rebel Trooper #111 on Endor. Maybe they are Rebel Pilot 26 in a snowspeeder trying to delay the Imperial invasion of Hoth. Then again, maybe their actions are off-screen entirely. The one time I ran a canonical Rebellion era game, the climax had the players lead a diversionary action elsewhere while Luke, Han, Lando, Leia, Wedge, R2D2, C3PO, Chewbacca, et al. were destroying a Death Star. B plot. Strictly B plot. It was easily the least satisfying campaign I ever ran.
To make your game more satisfying, play fast and loose with canon. Lucasfilm certainly has over the years (mitichlorians, Leia knew then couldn't have known her mother, retconning Obi Wan's knowledge of Luke's father being Vader, various Expanded Universe gaffes). Feel free to have Wedge catch a case of food poisoning the day of the Death Star battle over Endor so a PC can have a chance to save the world. What does it matter? It's not like somebody is going to reshoot Episode VI to make it match what happens in your game.
2. NEVER LET YOUR PLAYERS KNOW WHAT IS COMING.
The other big problem with canon, particularly with a canon heavily developed along a timeline with an overarching metaplot (Star Wars, Dresden Files, Star Trek, anything publishing using the Cortex System) is that the players have a good sense of what is coming. In Star Wars, we even name the various eras in the timeline, and each of them has a very different feel (Rebellion Era, Prequel Era, Dark Times, Old Republic Era, New Jedi Order, etc.).
Even though players may not know the details of your campaign, they do have a pretty good sense of the general feel of the era, particularly if the game adheres to canon. For example, in a Dark Times game, your players go in knowing the Emperor has been triumphant, the Jedi are gone, force-users everywhere are hunted, repression is everywhere (particularly for non-humans), and eventually the seeds of a rebellion will coalesce.
Feel free to mess with the feel of the eras. Let ideas and concepts from other eras bleed into the era you've set their game in at least a bit.
An example of this is the campaign I'm running right now. It's set in the Prequel Era (moving towards the Clone Wars era, but between the first two films). The party is centered around a young Jedi Padawan who becomes a Knight, a young noblewoman who is a distant cousin of Padme Amidala, and a wise cracking Dug pilot/mechanic. In the early stages, younger Jedi just keep disappearing without a trace. The players are employed by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and so far he's been more than accommodating to every request made, interfering little with their missions once assigned.
Now, the players are beginning to run into all sorts of red lightsaber wielding dark siders? Are they Sith apprentices? Or are they Dark Jedi who defected from the order as part of the disappearing Jedi and stumbled across the wrong sort of knowledge? Is the Rule of Two still operative? Is Chancellor Palpatine really the one-dimensional villain he is made out to be in the movies?
Even though outwardly, the campaign looks an awful lot like the Republic from the Prequel Era, there are just enough oddities to create a sense of cognitive dissonance...a sense that maybe things aren't quite what they seem to be on the surface. Even if running a campaign in an era with a well-established canon and generally planning to adhere to that canon, I encourage GMs to create this sense of not knowing for sure how things are going to work out. Make the tactics of some members of the Rebellion morally questionable from time to time. Let your players run into honorable Imperial officers and soldiers. Create that sense of verisimilitude by changing things up a bit.
3. THE CARE, FEEDING, AND KILLING OF CANONICAL CHARACTERS
There's an unwritten rule that I've always adhered to when designing or running campaigns. Never put an NPC into the game if you aren't prepared to have them killed the first time the players meet them.
A classic example of this was when I ran the WotC campaign for Star Wars Saga Edition, Dawn of Defiance. It's a pretty solid series of linked adventures set during the Dark Times Era. Without giving too much away, the true Big Bad Evil Guy of the campaign is a recurring villain. By the end of the adventure, everything imaginable happens to this character. In the final battle, he basically winds up looking like Darth Vader without the really cool black helmet he's been wounded so much he's lost so many limbs and organs.
That's, of course, if the characters don't kill him outright the first time they encountered him by blowing a boatload of Force Points and Destiny Points. Which happened. In my game. My players were rolling exceptionally well, I rolled exceptionally poorly, and before I knew it, the recurring villain was being skewered on the business end of a lightsaber. Ouch. The campaign pretty much died with him.
My point is that in an RPG, no character should be more precious or sacred than any other, particularly NPCs. It's a slight spoiler here, but a decade old, so I'm going to give it away. Chewbacca's death in Vector Prime (New Jedi Order series of novels) was handled ridiculously by the fans. The unfortunate author, R A Salvatore, received death threats...yeah, that's right, real death threats because he killed off a fictional character in a novel.
Once you got through dealing with the shock though, the story made sense, both from a literary point of view (how do you write a character that doesn't speak in a recognizable language?), and from a dramatic point of view (nothing says "shit just got real" quite like the death of a beloved character). To me, it was written well (he dies saving others), and served to let people know in a way that every previous Star Wars novel had failed to, that the galaxy was dangerous, that the antagonists were utterly ruthless, and that all of a sudden you feared for the rest of the heroes of the story. Whatever you may think of the New Jedi Order series of novels (and opinions are decidedly mixed), that moment, to me, was one of the most dramatic moments of the novels. Mission accomplished.
In the most recent session of my campaign, I killed Padme Amidala. It happened off screen, so the characters learned about it by being contacted by the Chancellor's Office. As a character, she no longer served a story function, she was in the way of making one of my characters the star of the story (See Rule 1 above), and it just felt like the right time. My wife, who plays her cousin, a noble diplomat, actually teared up a bit upon hearing the news (I basically rewrote things to let the bomb on the landing pad seen at the beginning of Episode II actually kill her and the rest of her delegation). Her death served a dramatic function, it increased the sense of danger, and even advanced the campaign's metaplot. The handling of the news, the roleplaying that came out of it, and the story that will come out of it took to the game to a level I've rarely ever achieved running a game, and have never seen playing in a game.
4. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
All of this thinking led me to my current campaign, which has been entitled Anakin Takes a Bullet. To understand the thinking behind the campaign, I'm inclined to believe in a blend of the Great Man Theory, combined with a more social evolutionary approach.
To put this in Star Wars terms, Anakin Skywalker and the Emperor were the men, more than any others, who helped to bring down the Republic, but the state of the late Republic (endemic government corruption, rising internal disorder, economic decline, political conflict between the Outer and Inner Worlds, ossification of the Jedi Order) created the conditions under which they were able to destroy it.
I envisioned a multi-generational campaign, where the players would take a few sets of characters through the events of the Rise of the Empire, through the Dark Times, the Rebellion Era, and at least in to the early stages of the New Republic.
My first, and foremost goal was Rule 1, making the players the stars of the story. If you want to make the players the stars of the story during the time period covered by the six films, one of the easiest ways to do this is to remove the A plot, that being the Skywalkers story. How do you do this? The simplest way is to kill the Skywalkers.
In Episode I, during the podrace, there are several scenes in which we see Tusken Raiders, on one part of the course, taking potshots at racers using a slugthrower rifle. In one scene, we see Anakin's racer get grazed by a bullet. This is the point of divergence.
In Anakin Takes a Bullet, this shot instead hits Anakin in the brain. Even if he had a chance to survive the gunshot wound, The resulting trauma injury from the crash of the podracer finishes him. And in a stroke, no Anakin, no Luke, no Leia.
With ObiWan, QuiGon, and Padme now trapped on Tatooine (their ship now the property of Watto), Darth Maul can now deal with them at his leisure. Instead of the lightsaber battle on Naboo, the Sith Lord confronts the Jedi on the streets of Mos Espa. To create this battle, I actually statted up Episode I era versions of the three characters and let them duel it out. Ironically, as happened in the film, Qui Gon dies, but weakens Darth Maul enough that young Obi Wan, with the profligate expenditure of Destiny Points, kills Darth Maul in turn.
Enter the players. Their job is to pick up the paces of the failed mission on Tatooine. After retrieving Padme, Obi Wan, the rest of the group, and the body of Qui Gon Jinn, the group returns to Naboo, and the rest of the story from Episode I (alliance with the Gungans, battle with the Trade Federation Droid Army, destruction of the Droid Control Ship (with one of the PCs firing the shot that destroys it) proceeds from there.
But with this one death, Anakin's, a thousand ripples have spread. The Jedi must keep searching for their Chosen One. The PC Jedi becomes newly promoted Jedi Knight Obi Wan's apprentice instead of Anakin. The PC Noblewoman gets promoted from Handmaiden to diplomat for the Queen of Naboo, Padme. The Chancellor will need to find a new fallen Jedi through which to engineer the fall of the Republic, and other concerns are beginning to crop up. All because of one bullet.
DISCUSSION, DISCUSSION, DISCUSSION
One of the biggest challenges of a game like Star Wars or any other game with an extensively developed setting is selling your players on variations on a theme. I've been very fortunate in that my main RPG group, my family, have played together long enough, that we've developed a rapport, and they know, regardless of how experimental I get, that their characters will be treated fairly, that their characters will experience interesting stories and situations, and that together we'll make it a good game.
For those less fortunate, I encourage you to talk with your players. Seek their views on canon. See if they would be open to such a game. Emphasize that the changes you make are intended to give their players the opportunities to be the stars of the show, rather than a sidekick. And most of all, never let canon get in the way of a good game.
Still, I could care less about the continuity of any of that when I'm running a Star Wars RPG session. I see so many GMs who walk on eggs in fear of whether players will be upset with them for messing up canon, or worst still, GMs destroying their own game because they are afraid of destroying canon that I've got to say, take canon, put it in front of the Death Star's laser, and fire the laser on full power.
There are some things players of ANY RPG based on a licensed property, or even just an extensively published original RPG setting (cough. cough. Greyhawk. Eberron. Forgotten Realms. cough. cough.) need to understand if they really want to get the best out of their games.
1. YOUR PLAYERS' CHARACTERS SHOULD BE THE STARS OF THEIR STORY.
I'll come clean. I hate playing or running in the canonical Rebellion Era. What makes for a great pulp-space cinematic story in the Original Trilogy (a handful of determined, talented, doggedly loyal to each other friends taking down a Galactic Empire) makes for a terrible RPG setting. A canonical Rebellion Era dooms the PCs to being a B plot. Think about it. Luke destroys Death Star I. Luke becomes the first (and only during the Original Trilogy) new Jedi. Han and Leia lead a group of rebel troopers (and Ewoks) to destroy the shield generator on Endor. Lando and Wedge destroy Death Star II.
None of those characters are PCs. So what do your players get to do? Maybe they get to be Rebel Trooper #111 on Endor. Maybe they are Rebel Pilot 26 in a snowspeeder trying to delay the Imperial invasion of Hoth. Then again, maybe their actions are off-screen entirely. The one time I ran a canonical Rebellion era game, the climax had the players lead a diversionary action elsewhere while Luke, Han, Lando, Leia, Wedge, R2D2, C3PO, Chewbacca, et al. were destroying a Death Star. B plot. Strictly B plot. It was easily the least satisfying campaign I ever ran.
To make your game more satisfying, play fast and loose with canon. Lucasfilm certainly has over the years (mitichlorians, Leia knew then couldn't have known her mother, retconning Obi Wan's knowledge of Luke's father being Vader, various Expanded Universe gaffes). Feel free to have Wedge catch a case of food poisoning the day of the Death Star battle over Endor so a PC can have a chance to save the world. What does it matter? It's not like somebody is going to reshoot Episode VI to make it match what happens in your game.
2. NEVER LET YOUR PLAYERS KNOW WHAT IS COMING.
The other big problem with canon, particularly with a canon heavily developed along a timeline with an overarching metaplot (Star Wars, Dresden Files, Star Trek, anything publishing using the Cortex System) is that the players have a good sense of what is coming. In Star Wars, we even name the various eras in the timeline, and each of them has a very different feel (Rebellion Era, Prequel Era, Dark Times, Old Republic Era, New Jedi Order, etc.).
Even though players may not know the details of your campaign, they do have a pretty good sense of the general feel of the era, particularly if the game adheres to canon. For example, in a Dark Times game, your players go in knowing the Emperor has been triumphant, the Jedi are gone, force-users everywhere are hunted, repression is everywhere (particularly for non-humans), and eventually the seeds of a rebellion will coalesce.
Feel free to mess with the feel of the eras. Let ideas and concepts from other eras bleed into the era you've set their game in at least a bit.
An example of this is the campaign I'm running right now. It's set in the Prequel Era (moving towards the Clone Wars era, but between the first two films). The party is centered around a young Jedi Padawan who becomes a Knight, a young noblewoman who is a distant cousin of Padme Amidala, and a wise cracking Dug pilot/mechanic. In the early stages, younger Jedi just keep disappearing without a trace. The players are employed by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and so far he's been more than accommodating to every request made, interfering little with their missions once assigned.
Now, the players are beginning to run into all sorts of red lightsaber wielding dark siders? Are they Sith apprentices? Or are they Dark Jedi who defected from the order as part of the disappearing Jedi and stumbled across the wrong sort of knowledge? Is the Rule of Two still operative? Is Chancellor Palpatine really the one-dimensional villain he is made out to be in the movies?
Even though outwardly, the campaign looks an awful lot like the Republic from the Prequel Era, there are just enough oddities to create a sense of cognitive dissonance...a sense that maybe things aren't quite what they seem to be on the surface. Even if running a campaign in an era with a well-established canon and generally planning to adhere to that canon, I encourage GMs to create this sense of not knowing for sure how things are going to work out. Make the tactics of some members of the Rebellion morally questionable from time to time. Let your players run into honorable Imperial officers and soldiers. Create that sense of verisimilitude by changing things up a bit.
3. THE CARE, FEEDING, AND KILLING OF CANONICAL CHARACTERS
There's an unwritten rule that I've always adhered to when designing or running campaigns. Never put an NPC into the game if you aren't prepared to have them killed the first time the players meet them.
A classic example of this was when I ran the WotC campaign for Star Wars Saga Edition, Dawn of Defiance. It's a pretty solid series of linked adventures set during the Dark Times Era. Without giving too much away, the true Big Bad Evil Guy of the campaign is a recurring villain. By the end of the adventure, everything imaginable happens to this character. In the final battle, he basically winds up looking like Darth Vader without the really cool black helmet he's been wounded so much he's lost so many limbs and organs.
That's, of course, if the characters don't kill him outright the first time they encountered him by blowing a boatload of Force Points and Destiny Points. Which happened. In my game. My players were rolling exceptionally well, I rolled exceptionally poorly, and before I knew it, the recurring villain was being skewered on the business end of a lightsaber. Ouch. The campaign pretty much died with him.
My point is that in an RPG, no character should be more precious or sacred than any other, particularly NPCs. It's a slight spoiler here, but a decade old, so I'm going to give it away. Chewbacca's death in Vector Prime (New Jedi Order series of novels) was handled ridiculously by the fans. The unfortunate author, R A Salvatore, received death threats...yeah, that's right, real death threats because he killed off a fictional character in a novel.
Once you got through dealing with the shock though, the story made sense, both from a literary point of view (how do you write a character that doesn't speak in a recognizable language?), and from a dramatic point of view (nothing says "shit just got real" quite like the death of a beloved character). To me, it was written well (he dies saving others), and served to let people know in a way that every previous Star Wars novel had failed to, that the galaxy was dangerous, that the antagonists were utterly ruthless, and that all of a sudden you feared for the rest of the heroes of the story. Whatever you may think of the New Jedi Order series of novels (and opinions are decidedly mixed), that moment, to me, was one of the most dramatic moments of the novels. Mission accomplished.
In the most recent session of my campaign, I killed Padme Amidala. It happened off screen, so the characters learned about it by being contacted by the Chancellor's Office. As a character, she no longer served a story function, she was in the way of making one of my characters the star of the story (See Rule 1 above), and it just felt like the right time. My wife, who plays her cousin, a noble diplomat, actually teared up a bit upon hearing the news (I basically rewrote things to let the bomb on the landing pad seen at the beginning of Episode II actually kill her and the rest of her delegation). Her death served a dramatic function, it increased the sense of danger, and even advanced the campaign's metaplot. The handling of the news, the roleplaying that came out of it, and the story that will come out of it took to the game to a level I've rarely ever achieved running a game, and have never seen playing in a game.
4. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
All of this thinking led me to my current campaign, which has been entitled Anakin Takes a Bullet. To understand the thinking behind the campaign, I'm inclined to believe in a blend of the Great Man Theory, combined with a more social evolutionary approach.
To put this in Star Wars terms, Anakin Skywalker and the Emperor were the men, more than any others, who helped to bring down the Republic, but the state of the late Republic (endemic government corruption, rising internal disorder, economic decline, political conflict between the Outer and Inner Worlds, ossification of the Jedi Order) created the conditions under which they were able to destroy it.
I envisioned a multi-generational campaign, where the players would take a few sets of characters through the events of the Rise of the Empire, through the Dark Times, the Rebellion Era, and at least in to the early stages of the New Republic.
My first, and foremost goal was Rule 1, making the players the stars of the story. If you want to make the players the stars of the story during the time period covered by the six films, one of the easiest ways to do this is to remove the A plot, that being the Skywalkers story. How do you do this? The simplest way is to kill the Skywalkers.
In Episode I, during the podrace, there are several scenes in which we see Tusken Raiders, on one part of the course, taking potshots at racers using a slugthrower rifle. In one scene, we see Anakin's racer get grazed by a bullet. This is the point of divergence.
In Anakin Takes a Bullet, this shot instead hits Anakin in the brain. Even if he had a chance to survive the gunshot wound, The resulting trauma injury from the crash of the podracer finishes him. And in a stroke, no Anakin, no Luke, no Leia.
With ObiWan, QuiGon, and Padme now trapped on Tatooine (their ship now the property of Watto), Darth Maul can now deal with them at his leisure. Instead of the lightsaber battle on Naboo, the Sith Lord confronts the Jedi on the streets of Mos Espa. To create this battle, I actually statted up Episode I era versions of the three characters and let them duel it out. Ironically, as happened in the film, Qui Gon dies, but weakens Darth Maul enough that young Obi Wan, with the profligate expenditure of Destiny Points, kills Darth Maul in turn.
Enter the players. Their job is to pick up the paces of the failed mission on Tatooine. After retrieving Padme, Obi Wan, the rest of the group, and the body of Qui Gon Jinn, the group returns to Naboo, and the rest of the story from Episode I (alliance with the Gungans, battle with the Trade Federation Droid Army, destruction of the Droid Control Ship (with one of the PCs firing the shot that destroys it) proceeds from there.
But with this one death, Anakin's, a thousand ripples have spread. The Jedi must keep searching for their Chosen One. The PC Jedi becomes newly promoted Jedi Knight Obi Wan's apprentice instead of Anakin. The PC Noblewoman gets promoted from Handmaiden to diplomat for the Queen of Naboo, Padme. The Chancellor will need to find a new fallen Jedi through which to engineer the fall of the Republic, and other concerns are beginning to crop up. All because of one bullet.
DISCUSSION, DISCUSSION, DISCUSSION
One of the biggest challenges of a game like Star Wars or any other game with an extensively developed setting is selling your players on variations on a theme. I've been very fortunate in that my main RPG group, my family, have played together long enough, that we've developed a rapport, and they know, regardless of how experimental I get, that their characters will be treated fairly, that their characters will experience interesting stories and situations, and that together we'll make it a good game.
For those less fortunate, I encourage you to talk with your players. Seek their views on canon. See if they would be open to such a game. Emphasize that the changes you make are intended to give their players the opportunities to be the stars of the show, rather than a sidekick. And most of all, never let canon get in the way of a good game.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Role Playing History Part I (An Introduction)
When it comes to games, I'm something of a grognard. Oh, I'm not a crotchety old geezer who still insists that RPGs went into a state of decline around the time AD&D 2nd Ed came out. In fact, I don't run any system, outside of Call of Cthulhu, that is older than the last decade. I've tinkered with One Roll Engine (A Dirty World), 3.0/3.5 D&D (including a lot of 3rd Party stuff. I've run d20 Modern, all d20 versions of Star Wars, Savage Worlds, Mutants & Masterminds, FATE (Spirit of the Century/Dresden Files), and World of Darkness/Vampire (more new than old).
I'm meaning that my entry into the hobby, like a lot of gamers in the 1960's and 1970's came from board wargames, not RPGs. My first wargame was Avalon Hill's The Russian Campaign. From there I moved into a lot of games at a time when Avalon Hill and Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) were still going strong.
My first purchase of an RPG was the Black Box, three Little Black Book Traveller set. I didn't really know what I was getting into when I bought it. I'd heard of, and even played a little D&D, but SciFi was more up my alley at the time. I'd already devoured a lot of Heinlein, Asimov, H Beam Piper, etc., and Traveller was right up that alley. From Traveller, I moved on to AD&D, and then from there into a bit of GURPS, gave up the hobby for a while, moved back into games in the late 1990's, and have basically never left.
But my first love, and fondest memories were of laying out a card table, and playing games of Panzerblitz, Squad Leader, Russian Campaign, and other board wargames, and reading history.
What I'm hoping to do with this series, is point out, from a very amateur historian's point of view, a few settings, and system suggestions for running games based at least loosely on historical topics that I've come to know, and why such a game would be cool. I'll have a post up next time when we discover the ancient world, specifically speaking, RPGs in the Stone Age to early Bronze Age (from the rise of Egypt and Sumeria, circa 4000-3500 BCE up to roughly 1500-1000 BCE).
Feel free to comment out there if there's anything I've missed, or if you have other ideas.
I'm meaning that my entry into the hobby, like a lot of gamers in the 1960's and 1970's came from board wargames, not RPGs. My first wargame was Avalon Hill's The Russian Campaign. From there I moved into a lot of games at a time when Avalon Hill and Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI) were still going strong.
My first purchase of an RPG was the Black Box, three Little Black Book Traveller set. I didn't really know what I was getting into when I bought it. I'd heard of, and even played a little D&D, but SciFi was more up my alley at the time. I'd already devoured a lot of Heinlein, Asimov, H Beam Piper, etc., and Traveller was right up that alley. From Traveller, I moved on to AD&D, and then from there into a bit of GURPS, gave up the hobby for a while, moved back into games in the late 1990's, and have basically never left.
But my first love, and fondest memories were of laying out a card table, and playing games of Panzerblitz, Squad Leader, Russian Campaign, and other board wargames, and reading history.
What I'm hoping to do with this series, is point out, from a very amateur historian's point of view, a few settings, and system suggestions for running games based at least loosely on historical topics that I've come to know, and why such a game would be cool. I'll have a post up next time when we discover the ancient world, specifically speaking, RPGs in the Stone Age to early Bronze Age (from the rise of Egypt and Sumeria, circa 4000-3500 BCE up to roughly 1500-1000 BCE).
Feel free to comment out there if there's anything I've missed, or if you have other ideas.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Games I'm Running, Part I: Star Wars Saga Edition, Anakin Takes a Bullet
I was pulled into the Star Wars RPG by the video game Knights of the Old Republic, a wonderful RPG by BioWare. Frankly, I consider it to be the best bit of fiction to hit the Star Wars Universe since The Empire Strikes Back. A strong story, with deep characters, and so replayable that you really don't do the game justice until you play it as both male and female characters, as well as dark and light.
As a result, I got into Wizard of the Coast's (WotC's) d20 Star Wars RPG right about the time of the transition from Original Core Rulebook (OCR, built on a modified version of WotC's D&D 3.0), to the Revised Core Rulebook (RCR, built on a modified version of WotC's D&D 3.5). I ran a lot of games with RCR, but liked when Saga Edition came out even more. It was simple, and the character classes a lot more customizable.
One of the things that has always dogged me about running Star Wars games set in the time period around the six movies is what to do about breaking canon, and what to do about the main characters and villains of the film. There's a wide variety of opinions on the best way to handle canon.
Some GMs quietly herd players away from the big events and characters of the films. As a player, I wouldn't personally find that to be satisfying. Having the players making diversionary raids in another system while Han, Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, Lando and Wedge are blowing up the Second Death Star in orbit around Endor just didn't seem fun to me.
Of course, other GMs will let their players run into movie, novel, comics, and TV series characters, which sometimes will lead to the GM going into shock when the players kill Darth Vader in the First Act...or worst still, giving him an implausible escape rather than let him die in the First Act.
I decided to avoid all these dilemmas, and throw the A-Plot of most of the films out. I thought the way I did it was rather clever. For those of you who remember Episode I: Too Much Jar Jar, not enough Jedi, er, The Phantom Menace, one of the big scenes is Anakin's podrace on Tatooine. There's a great sequence where a group of Tusken Raiders (Sandpeople) are standing on a bluff well above the course, and taking potshots at the racers as they pass the location. One of those shots grazes Anakin's podracer, but he manages to keep it under control...and this is where I blow things up.
In the immediate prologue, I described a sequence to the players where that bullet instead strikes Anakin through the right temple. While the shot might or might not have been fatal with Star Wars Medical Technology, the resulting rather fiery crash when Anakin loses consciousness and control of his vehicle is.
Needless to say, Anakin loses the race (as well as his life), Qui-Gon loses his bet to Watto, and therefore, the group's only means of escaping Tatooine, which now gives Darth Maul plenty of time to hunt down the Jedi there before they can ever return to Naboo. Maul fights a desperate lightsaber battle with Qui-Gon Jinn and a young Obi-Wan Kenobi. I actually statted up the characters and ran the battle as a combat. In the simulated combat, pretty much the same thing happens. Maul goes after Jinn, burning hit points, and killing the aging Jedi Master, while Obi-Wan blows a load of Force Points, and takes down Darth Maul.
That's where the players begin. Their job is to rescue Padme Amidala, Obi-Wan, and the rest of the Queen's retinue before the Trade Federation can send a boatload of droids to kill them.
More importantly though, Anakin is dead, which means there will be no more Skywalkers. The Sith are still there. Some of the supporting characters are still there (Obi-Wan is the Master to a young Jedi apprentice that is one of the players). The players can take center stage.
This is the game I've wanted to run, and have been running off and on for a couple of years.
As a result, I got into Wizard of the Coast's (WotC's) d20 Star Wars RPG right about the time of the transition from Original Core Rulebook (OCR, built on a modified version of WotC's D&D 3.0), to the Revised Core Rulebook (RCR, built on a modified version of WotC's D&D 3.5). I ran a lot of games with RCR, but liked when Saga Edition came out even more. It was simple, and the character classes a lot more customizable.
One of the things that has always dogged me about running Star Wars games set in the time period around the six movies is what to do about breaking canon, and what to do about the main characters and villains of the film. There's a wide variety of opinions on the best way to handle canon.
Some GMs quietly herd players away from the big events and characters of the films. As a player, I wouldn't personally find that to be satisfying. Having the players making diversionary raids in another system while Han, Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, Lando and Wedge are blowing up the Second Death Star in orbit around Endor just didn't seem fun to me.
Of course, other GMs will let their players run into movie, novel, comics, and TV series characters, which sometimes will lead to the GM going into shock when the players kill Darth Vader in the First Act...or worst still, giving him an implausible escape rather than let him die in the First Act.
I decided to avoid all these dilemmas, and throw the A-Plot of most of the films out. I thought the way I did it was rather clever. For those of you who remember Episode I: Too Much Jar Jar, not enough Jedi, er, The Phantom Menace, one of the big scenes is Anakin's podrace on Tatooine. There's a great sequence where a group of Tusken Raiders (Sandpeople) are standing on a bluff well above the course, and taking potshots at the racers as they pass the location. One of those shots grazes Anakin's podracer, but he manages to keep it under control...and this is where I blow things up.
In the immediate prologue, I described a sequence to the players where that bullet instead strikes Anakin through the right temple. While the shot might or might not have been fatal with Star Wars Medical Technology, the resulting rather fiery crash when Anakin loses consciousness and control of his vehicle is.
Needless to say, Anakin loses the race (as well as his life), Qui-Gon loses his bet to Watto, and therefore, the group's only means of escaping Tatooine, which now gives Darth Maul plenty of time to hunt down the Jedi there before they can ever return to Naboo. Maul fights a desperate lightsaber battle with Qui-Gon Jinn and a young Obi-Wan Kenobi. I actually statted up the characters and ran the battle as a combat. In the simulated combat, pretty much the same thing happens. Maul goes after Jinn, burning hit points, and killing the aging Jedi Master, while Obi-Wan blows a load of Force Points, and takes down Darth Maul.
That's where the players begin. Their job is to rescue Padme Amidala, Obi-Wan, and the rest of the Queen's retinue before the Trade Federation can send a boatload of droids to kill them.
More importantly though, Anakin is dead, which means there will be no more Skywalkers. The Sith are still there. Some of the supporting characters are still there (Obi-Wan is the Master to a young Jedi apprentice that is one of the players). The players can take center stage.
This is the game I've wanted to run, and have been running off and on for a couple of years.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
The Obligatory Autobiographical First Post
My story begins with a 1979 trip to the local hobby shop. In those days, in addition to the stuff you might find in one now (HO/N Gauge Trains, models and supplies, craft stuff, etc.) my local one carried board wargames (mostly Avalon Hill and SPI titles...with a little bit of GDW and other stuff thrown in). I was a board wargamer in those days (had been since picking up Avalon Hill's The Russian Campaign at the ripe old age of 12.
I had a little bit of lawnmowing money, and I went ostensibly to purchase another wargame, but stumbled upon the First Edition, Little Black Book Traveller boxed set. Like every other burgeoning 14 year old sci-fi geek, I'd read Asimov, some H Beam Piper, a bit of Poul Anderson, Harry Harrison, Heinlein, Herbert, etc. and so the idea of running SciFi games sounded fun, and on a lark, I bought it.
Yes, I was one of the rare late-70's gamers whose first game WASN'T Dungeons and Dragons, though that deficiency was rectified later that year, when my mom and dad hooked me up with the old red box D&D Basic Set for Christmas, followed by my own purchase of the AD&D Core Books (DMG, PHB, MM (the early version, with the Cthulhu Mythos stats that something of a collector's item these days, since Chaosium got medieval on TSR's a** about including Cthulhu Mythos creatures without permission.
Like everybody else, I recruited some of my high school friends, we rolled up characters, and a ran terrible SciFi games, and fantasy games. Other games I flirted with in the early years included TSR's Gamma World (First Edition), a GDW Age of Musketeers game called "En Garde", SPI's DragonQuest and Universe (I keep meaning to convert the setting from the latter to d20 Modern or maybe Savage Worlds some day), and a lot of First Edition AD&D.
Still, at the end of the day, the game that kept me coming back was Traveller. I collected a lot of Classic Traveller, everything published for the second edition of the game MegaTraveller, Traveller the New Era (which I never played, but did convert a lot of it back to MegaTraveller). I keep meaning to pick up the new Mongoose version, but never have.
The game was grim and gritty, the published setting was strong and intriguing to me, mixing feudal elements with megacorps and space travel in a unique blend. Eventually, in the late 1990's, I was given the opportunity to work on the ill-fated Fourth Edition of the game, writing for the first setting book, Milieu 0, and co-authoring with a variety of folks the new material for the hardcover version of Milieu 0, Psionics Institutes (still the go to source for Traveller Psionics), Pocket Empires (which effectively converted the old Classic Traveller board game Fifth Frontier War into an open ended system that could create a strategic wargame out of any Traveller setting), an Alien volume, and an unpublished Adventure.
That was pretty much me until the 1990s. I'd just about got out of the hobby, until the early part of the last decade, when I began searching for something to play with my own kids. Enter the video game Knights of the Old Republic. Built on a modified version of the first version of the d20 Star Wars system (Original Core Rulebook or OCR), it seemed like a fairly elegant system. Just as I hadn't started with D&D back in the 70's, my first entree into the world of OGL (Open Gaming License) wasn't with D&D either.
I never actually ran OCR, but I did pick up and run RCR, and later Star Wars Saga Edition. From there, I branched into 3.0/3.5 Dungeons and Dragons, d20 Modern, and more broadly into d20. I also scooped up Mutants & Masterminds, Savage Worlds, and most recently, Call of Cthulhu.
These days, I run a D&D 3.5 third-party Setting (Fantasy Flight Games' Midnight setting), a third-party d20 Modern post-apocalyptic setting, Darwin's World (currently on hiatus), a Star Wars Saga Edition variant campaign, along with the occasional Call of Cthulhu and Pulp-era one shot. I'm also working on creating stats for an unofficial Yuuzhan Vong-era Star Wars Saga Edition supplement as I have time and devotion.
I'm married to a loving gamer woman, with two children who also double as my primary gaming group. I may talk about gaming with family some from time to time. I may post character designs, adventure seeds, reviews, etc. as I see fit, as well as After Action Reports, if I see fit.
I had a little bit of lawnmowing money, and I went ostensibly to purchase another wargame, but stumbled upon the First Edition, Little Black Book Traveller boxed set. Like every other burgeoning 14 year old sci-fi geek, I'd read Asimov, some H Beam Piper, a bit of Poul Anderson, Harry Harrison, Heinlein, Herbert, etc. and so the idea of running SciFi games sounded fun, and on a lark, I bought it.
Yes, I was one of the rare late-70's gamers whose first game WASN'T Dungeons and Dragons, though that deficiency was rectified later that year, when my mom and dad hooked me up with the old red box D&D Basic Set for Christmas, followed by my own purchase of the AD&D Core Books (DMG, PHB, MM (the early version, with the Cthulhu Mythos stats that something of a collector's item these days, since Chaosium got medieval on TSR's a** about including Cthulhu Mythos creatures without permission.
Like everybody else, I recruited some of my high school friends, we rolled up characters, and a ran terrible SciFi games, and fantasy games. Other games I flirted with in the early years included TSR's Gamma World (First Edition), a GDW Age of Musketeers game called "En Garde", SPI's DragonQuest and Universe (I keep meaning to convert the setting from the latter to d20 Modern or maybe Savage Worlds some day), and a lot of First Edition AD&D.
Still, at the end of the day, the game that kept me coming back was Traveller. I collected a lot of Classic Traveller, everything published for the second edition of the game MegaTraveller, Traveller the New Era (which I never played, but did convert a lot of it back to MegaTraveller). I keep meaning to pick up the new Mongoose version, but never have.
The game was grim and gritty, the published setting was strong and intriguing to me, mixing feudal elements with megacorps and space travel in a unique blend. Eventually, in the late 1990's, I was given the opportunity to work on the ill-fated Fourth Edition of the game, writing for the first setting book, Milieu 0, and co-authoring with a variety of folks the new material for the hardcover version of Milieu 0, Psionics Institutes (still the go to source for Traveller Psionics), Pocket Empires (which effectively converted the old Classic Traveller board game Fifth Frontier War into an open ended system that could create a strategic wargame out of any Traveller setting), an Alien volume, and an unpublished Adventure.
That was pretty much me until the 1990s. I'd just about got out of the hobby, until the early part of the last decade, when I began searching for something to play with my own kids. Enter the video game Knights of the Old Republic. Built on a modified version of the first version of the d20 Star Wars system (Original Core Rulebook or OCR), it seemed like a fairly elegant system. Just as I hadn't started with D&D back in the 70's, my first entree into the world of OGL (Open Gaming License) wasn't with D&D either.
I never actually ran OCR, but I did pick up and run RCR, and later Star Wars Saga Edition. From there, I branched into 3.0/3.5 Dungeons and Dragons, d20 Modern, and more broadly into d20. I also scooped up Mutants & Masterminds, Savage Worlds, and most recently, Call of Cthulhu.
These days, I run a D&D 3.5 third-party Setting (Fantasy Flight Games' Midnight setting), a third-party d20 Modern post-apocalyptic setting, Darwin's World (currently on hiatus), a Star Wars Saga Edition variant campaign, along with the occasional Call of Cthulhu and Pulp-era one shot. I'm also working on creating stats for an unofficial Yuuzhan Vong-era Star Wars Saga Edition supplement as I have time and devotion.
I'm married to a loving gamer woman, with two children who also double as my primary gaming group. I may talk about gaming with family some from time to time. I may post character designs, adventure seeds, reviews, etc. as I see fit, as well as After Action Reports, if I see fit.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)