Leaving Crowsmantle: A Campaign Postmortem

Last week we had our final session of Crowsmantle. That’s my PbtA hack for our game about adults returning to a fantasy world of their youths. I’d rate myself as generally happy, moderately OK with the campaign as a whole. More than anything over ten sessions it lunged wildly from a rock solid session to a weak one to a great one and then back. My earlier post outlines the ideas we had going in and has a link to the pdf of the rules I wrote. The basic pitch was, In their youth, they journeyed to a land of wonder. There they became heroes and saved lands from a great evil. Then they grew up. Now as adults, they’re called back to fight peril to a realm transformed.” I wanted my system to be light and adaptable.

OTHER MEDIA

I posted some sample characters. If you like watching online games, you can see the full series here. I put together a Pinterest board for the campaign. That’s been my go-to for visuals lately. I used to have wikis, but the free ones I used switched over to a pay model, so I’m off of that. Pinterest has the problem of not really allowing for annotation and organization though. I also put together an inspirational YouTubemusic video playlist. I had the players each select a song for their character. I should also say G+ continues to cut event functions. I had cool banners for each session, but because of the way people RSVP now, you end up missing them.

NUTS AND BOLTS

Let me start with the mechanical aspects of Crowsmantle I like hacking games; sometimes they work (Action Cards; White Mountain, Black River) and sometimes they don’t (Scions of Fate). You can see lots of examples of my hacking half-assery on the blog. Many I don’t do anything with, some I get to the table. With Crowsmantle I wanted to try out my idea for a PbtA basis for pickup game aka Pug'buttah. I refined that a little for CM. I had World of Dungeons and Simple World as reference points. Overall I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but I screwed up my execution in several ways: from not having the pdf be cut & paste to leaving aside several of the major systems I wanted to emphasize.

FILL IN THE BLANKS

When I showed him the rules, Rich said “this puts a lot of the heavy –lifting on the players.” I acknowledged and yet underestimated that. Rich was pointing to the system for advances. I had offered a general template for them (ala FAE) but didn’t spell them out further. In the 1.1 revision added more examples but it was too late. In effect I gave the players homework, something I’ve said you shouldn’t do. And if you do that don’t expect them to actually complete it. We played bi-weekly, we had a vague set-up, and sessions ran for less than two hours. Instead of coming up with crafted advances, players fell back to taking stat boosts. Nothing else seemed as easy or useful. If I wanted the system to actually work I needed a formula for how you built advances (new abilities, new moves, upgraded moves) combined with easy shopping lists. The examples I had weren’t enough.

That’s especially true with moves. I thought we’d be coming up with custom moves on the fly. But that requires switching modes in play and draws attention to the moves themselves. Maybe if we’d had longer sessions we could have done “move creation” at the end? I’m not sure. I think a shopping list would have been better. And the blame rests with me; I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain. The only move I introduced came in the last session, to abstract and dealing with Mobs of Guards. It’s still an open question whether refined move-making in play would work or not.

KEEP MOVING

There’s a mechanical problem (one among many) with my Crowsmantle rules. I present four basic moves (Fight, Interact, Act, and Discover). Those parallel Fate’s four basic actions. That means you can apply one to any task. If that’s the case, why would you need new moves with rolls? Why should players spend an advance to get a new move if they can just do it with the existing framework? Player-bought moves need to be stronger. That means that the “default” moves need to be a little weaker. For example, my Fight move reads,

10+ Deal take/standard harm and pick three effects.

7-9 Deal take/standard harm and pick one effect.

…deal extra Harm (may be taken multiple times).

…gain +1 Forward for yourself or another (Set Up).

…take no Harm.

…Change State/Position.

A reduced move, let’s call it Conflict, would deal & take standard harm plus two effects on a 10+. On a 7-9 it would deal & take standard harm OR pick one effect.

If a player wanted to buy a Move representing combat proficiency, they could take something closer to the original Fight move. They could also add new choices (Clear a Mass of Minions, Send People Flying Back, Cause Terror in Your Foes, Find a Weakness, etc). That gives a mechanical incentive to figuring out a new move for something your character does well. I’d need to create a better shopping list and build structure to do that.

YOU’RE SPECIAL

I had a stat called “Talent” to represent the special magic PCs had when they were younger. It had atrophied. Players named their talent stat, vaguely defining what they could do with it. I planned to use “Big Magic” from Monster of the Week for this. There you roll & get several effects, but you also have a drawback or catch. I tried that a couple of times, but eventually ended up ignoring that catch mechanic. Players got themselves in enough trouble without it. In retrospect I wish I’d had everyone make up a custom move representing their power. That would have helped them define clearly what they could do.

For example, Raven had Futuremancy as a talent, Charlie had Patterns. In practice those ended up way, way too close. Because Futuremancy had an obvious predictive note to it, the group called on Raven to use it, and as a result it got more play. I should have spotted that problem early on. My solution above would have fixed that. Alternately I could have suggested Patterns be explicitly about figuring things in the present scene and Futuremancy be about inquiring about future scenes. Overall I short-changed Sherri in play.

BUY OFFS

I used Keys as the experience basis, ala Lady Blackbird and TSoY. I still like those, but I’m not certain they worked as well as they could. They fit with our Middle Earth f2f game because they support a certain tone. I’m wondering if something looser and more player defined like flags or directives (from The Sprawl) wouldn’t have been a better choice. Again, it would have asked players to make significant decisions about their characters.

FIGHTING WORDS

As I mentioned in other posts I’m still getting used to running PbtA. My recent work has split between trad (13th Age, Mutants & Masterminds) and narrativist (Fate, Action Cards). Even when I run the latter I tend to slow things down in combat, extending scenes to give players space for cool stuff. With the latter games I imagine I’m going super-fast. But my ongoing joke with Rich is that after I ran a Fate micro-combat that moved along at a rapid clip, he said “Man, I’d forgotten how long Fate combats take.” Emphasis on long.

I struggled with Crowsmantle combat pacing. I started by following MotW’s approach, which seems closest to my own. There foes have wounds and you have to figure out a Big Bad’s weakness before you can affect them. That went OK, but slower than I wanted. It got better when I abstracted things later on. In the final fight, a hit either took a lieutenant out or put them in mortal peril for another.

YOUR MOVE

My other stumble came from GM Moves in combat. The fight move I mentioned above has your typical pick “take no Harm” under the choices. Early on I got stuck in combat. When players rolled 6+, I fell back to only dealing harm or harming NPCs. Because I wanted speed, I didn’t want to stop off to come up with things. I got over that later. But it’s one of those places I need to work. Fate has aspects and those encourage an interaction with the environment. I think in combat GM reaction moves serve that function. You can use those to cause interesting effects and showcase scenery. I got better as we went along (in places), but it’s something I want to think about more. Maybe I need to write out a set of interesting GM moves for combat scenes. I do like crib sheets.

Session nine’s a good example of a bad session. The previous episode had ended strongly, with players captured as a result of a combat gone wrong. It was one of those great “play to see what happens” results. Since they had been caught and since we had airships in the game, I thought I’d do a Lady Blackbird homage. It landed like a lead balloon; the players either didn’t care about the frame or didn’t catch it. But more importantly dealing with the guards and getting to the flight deck wasn’t that interesting. I had some cool action descriptions, but I ended up bogged down there. The early part of the session sucked the energy out of the room, and we hit a solid meh by the end.

In retrospect I should have done what I ended up doing for the next and final session. I have to give credit to Jason C for making explicit a technique I’d partially used before, but hadn’t pictured in this context. I’m paraphrasing, but he said for a dungeon he just needed a custom environment move, some GM Moves and he could go to town. At Origins (which came after my weak S9) I sketched those out for both Magic, Inc and Neo Shinobi Vendetta. Not just more guards or the opposition is coming. But interesting bits and pieces. I should have had those ready for the ship. Fighting the guards should have happened once, and then shifted to other interesting things.

I THINK YOU’RE MUTED

Session 9 had another problem moment, something which happened several times over the course of the campaign. The players had a choice. They’d made a decision and started on that path. Then that would get obscured, they’d debate the choice again, and it’d become clear that people had missed what was going on. In Session 9, I pushed a choice about direction (go X or Y way with some small structural differences between them) that wasn’t that interesting. I also threw in a secondary event that complicated the choice; I should have just dictated that as my move instead of making it wishy-washy.

Anyway, the lesson I keep learning when I run online is that you have to assume people are only hearing about half of what you’re saying: GM or players. There’s the noise of the medium, user isolation, personal environment distraction, the crunch of a short time frame, and a host of other causes. Having the camera and seeing faces helps, but you’re losing body language signals. When I’m at the table I can tell if Chris is getting it or not. I can tell if he’s even listening. That’s less true online. And if you’ve ever seen players talk over, not listen to, or completely misunderstand one another at the table, that’s compounded online. Some of my Wednesday players are terrible at listening to one another, forcing me to go back and restate points constantly. And that’s a game with a shared map and token space, which usually makes things better since we have a visual representation.

DROPPING BEATS

When we originally talked about the game, the group said they wanted to deal with both the Real World and the challenges of The Realm. The idea would be that we’d swap back and forth between the worlds. Once we got into the game, I realized that wasn’t going to happen. For one thing we had four player kingdoms we wanted to at least touch on and ten 1 ½ to 2 hour sessions to do that in. If I’d super abstracted the events and challenges, we might have been able to. But I started more on-the-ground than bird’s-eye. So instead I focused on the other issue we’d talked about: figuring out what had happened during their absence.

I leaned into that because I like running mysteries. That’s one of my favorite things: seeding details, having players come to conclusions, and using those to push things forward. That’s a large part of my f2f games. Assassins of the Golden Age, our riff on Assassin’s Creed, has been pure mystery, problem solving and manipulation. The players spent the last session finding out details and putting them together as a way to take down their enemies. Mysteries work less well online, in part because of that noise factor. But some great players, notably Rich, don’t dig mysteries. He’s not the only one. Judd Karlman shocked me when said he didn’t do mysteries, period, during an episode of This Imaginary Life. Anyway, I spent more energy than I should have seeding details, building frames for mysteries, and leaving threads to be pulled (Eagle Cloaks, Owl Capes, etc). I should have dialed that back and focused on more revelation maybe? I’m not sure. It might be the nature of PbtA, running online, or more likely my own style hang up.

NOW ROSES

What did I like? That the rules got out of the way. We rarely went back to the book and instead just rolled, assessed, and played. I loved most of the NPCs: the goblin Ortiz, Friend Raccoon, and Subasa all stick with me. Several sessions really clicked for me (the battle at the town and the meditative session afterwards; the capture in the mall; the final episode). Others were seriously uneven. I enjoyed coming up with fairy-tale weirdness (the travelling jazz band; the civilized bear; land shark travel; the Minecraft riff; the Goblin Mall). I liked the world and some of the plots. I thought Mischa’s arc ended up being fairly poignant. I like that Ignacio didn’t really belong in the real world. There’s a ton more. Andrea talks a lot about head cannon. In this case I’ve got a ton of GM head cannon about the setting.

AFTERWORLDS

I’ve got a couple of other issues I’ve been thinking about (the difficulty of running a vague vs. unstructured game online, does PbtA work with authorial structures, etc). But let’s leave it at that. If you’ve slogged through my report, thank you. I may get up the courage to do another serious revision of these rules and perhaps even run the same premise with another group. 

Other Postmortems: 

Bloodlines (M&M 1e)

Scion: Hero 

Vampire: TM

Last Fleet

Star Wars: The Darkening Rift

NOLA Nightwatch (M&M 2e)

City of Ocean

Star Wars Roleplaying: Play on Target Ep. 41

Though we didn’t plan it during recording, we managed to have a Star Wars-themed episode for May the Fourth. In it we discuss our experiences with different iterations of Star Wars rpgs. Spoiler: Until the week before, I hadn’t actually played any of published Star Wars rpg. We try to get at what makes a strong Star Wars system & a strong Star Wars campaign. We knock around the question of canon and player knowledge to figure out what works at the table. As a bonus we're releasing a set of extra episodes today. Andrew ran a demo session of Edge of the Empire for us. If you dig Actual Play you can check out the audio here (broken into three parts) and you can see the session video here.

Star Wars Roleplaying

Play on Target Episode Round-Up

SEVEN THOUGHTS ON STAR WARS AND GAMING

1. I’m old enough to remember standing in line for Star Wars opening weekend. I also recall not wanting to go at all. I’d seen the previews and the flash of the Tuskan Raider terrified me. I relented of course loved it, even though I covered my face every time Luke got attacked. Every time I watched it. I got the pre-order of the action figures that Christmas: the waiting was a killer. When my dad went to England to teach there, I made him take me to a tiny London cinema to watch double feature of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. I remember how exhausted and exasperated he looked afterwards.
2. The Star Wars rpg always did well at the game store I worked at. Those sold and sold- certainly more than anything else West End Games put out (Paranoia, TORG, Masterbook). We did hand-written inventory management, so you’d have to check every couple of weeks to see if anything had fallen through the cracks.
3. Among the many players I gamed with over the almost thirty years of Star Wars rpgs available, I only remember one person who actively collected and ran it. I bought some of the WEG supplements, thinking I might do something with it but I never did. Even the die-hard Star Wars fans in our group never bought or followed the rpgs. I’m not sure why. Sci-fi- outside of cyberpunk- never grabbed players' attention, even stuff as fantastical as SW. 
4. On the other hand many of those same gamers loved the Star Wars video and PC games. Why didn’t translate into a desire to play that on the tabletop? I know many ripped through Dark Forces, Star Wars Battlefront, Knights of the Old Republic, and even the first Star Wars MMO.
5. Has "May the Fourth" always been a thing? I honestly didn’t notice it until last year.
6. As I mentioned in the podcast, I've run Star Wars once, but with a homebrew. I had a great time and intended the short arc to be the first "movie" in a trilogy. However players’ schedules shifted after that and I’m reluctant to run the second part with some missing. You can see how I prepped that and my post-mortem of the play here. 
7. I don’t think I’d really play Star Wars: Imperial Assault, but I kind of want to buy it for the figures. They’re really nice. They’d be great for doing a tabletop rpg. But that way lies madness. I might start thinking “well, maybe I need to buy models to simulate the space battles…” and then suddenly I’ve wasted even more money I don’t have on X-Wing or Star Wars: Armada. I need to stick with using vaguely sci-fi'ish HeroClix and my weird partial collection of Starfleet Wars ships from the late 70’s.

Star Wars Roleplaying

Play on Target Episode Round-Up

If you like RPG Gaming podcasts, I hope you'll check it out. We take a focused approach- tackling a single topic each episode. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes or follow the podcast's page at www.playontarget.com.

Campaign States: Ten Years Out

Almost exactly ten years ago- June '05- I wrote a quick summary of the five campaigns I had going. Of those, three wrapped up with a full final session and two trailed off due to scheduling and player loss. Of those I ran for at the time, seven I don't play with these days: four because they fell out with the general gaming group, one because they moved away, one just due to timing, and one because they died. In fact, Steambuckler's the last full and finished campaign my friend Barry played in before we lost him. But in the ten years since this I've added seven new and continuing players to my regular gaming circles, plus another half-dozen who've played on and off. Loss and gain. 

It's also worth noting that I don't play any of these systems anymore. This ended up being the last great hurrah of GURPS before we grew tired of it. Storyteller ended up dropping off the map from WW, even as we saw the problems with it for our various hacks (wuxia, L5R). I still run Mutants & Masterminds, but the most recent edition which differs greatly from the 1st I ran here. 

What were you running/playing ten years ago? What systems have come and gone for your group?

Steambuckler (GURPS Steampunk/Swashbuckler/Fantasy)

The group makes their final preparations for the trip to Jubilee and the Grand Exhibition of Progress. They know that many of their enemies will be there, including some who have loved ones held hostage. Before departure Qynn learns of Dahlia vro-Haitus' role in the coming struggle for the Throne in Atlantae. Finally they set off, using the dangerous Glacial Air Stream to hurry their progress. Even so, they are set upon by Sky Pirates set to intercept them; the battle is fierce but ends with victory. At stops along the way they learn of the theft of the Dauntless (a grand Miremallian sky carrier) by the Captain's robot doppelganger created by Dr. Cross. Basho is also offered a position as an advisor to the Throne of Atlantae if he will kill his brother, Sheridan.

In Jubilee the group finds lodging with the Technocrat Fott Hobswain. Preparations are made for the great aero-race and old friends are met again. The group manages to free Sian Owen from one of their enemies but the villains escape. Sheridan, long lost, arrives with the mad naturalist Cynowae Autumn. Jacob encounters his mentor, long thought dead, who tries to kill him but fails and dies. In the aftermath, Jacob's secret marriage to Tara Stillwhisker is revealed. Even with all these troubles the group manages to find time to work on the great puzzles of the event, marked out in the stones and design of the city. When they succeed, they find themselves visited by the royalty of Math. Taking advantage of the situation they marry Sheridan off to the daughter of the Emperor and ask for a boon…the use of the Great Southern Dragon the largest airship ever built!!! The Emperor defers, but says he will think on this request.

The Captain and Qynn take to the skies for the aero-race, accompanied by Basho and Jacob who are last minute substitutes on a giant bug when the Orcish contingent is briefly jailed. Lady Galina goes to hand over the Perpetual Engine to Dr. Cross in exchange for the lives of her cousin and Julian's sister. At the same time, Julian heads down into the underground in a desperate bid to stop the plans of the Summoners from coming to fruition. Gallina spring's Braverman's trap on Dr. Cross, forcing him out of his robot shell and replacing him with the soul of Timeaus, long thought lost. Julian and his allies break a standoff between rival powerful villains, resulting in a massive melee of magic and death. Qynn and the Captain cross the finish line of the race, Dr. Cross' ship decloaks and his pirate allies arrive. A full scale air war breaks out over the city. Dozens of ships are destroyed in the ensuing battle. Basho takes advantage of the chaos to rescue the former Queen of Atlantae from the clutches of her son's allies. Though Cross does his level best to destroy it, the Great Southern Dragon survives.

In the aftermath, the group tells the Emperor of Math the full story of the impending invasion from the celestial sphere. News arrives of the destruction of the Drow Woods by the first wave of invaders, pressing the timetable further. The Emperor agrees and gives them the Great Southern Dragon. Knowing these "Spirit"-like invaders cannot bear the touch of Unlife, the group heads first to the Undead lands to bargain with Baron Dechenka who holds sway in the former Dwarven capital. He agrees to assist them, for a price, and the group begins their journey up out of the reach of the earth and to the sphere.

Searching for the final mechanism they will need to battle the comet-like vessel of the invaders, they head to the Moon. Jacob knows legends of ships left from an ancient tyrant who tried to invade the world but was stopped by heroes. Despite an overwhelming ambush by Jacob's enemies, the group manages to find the necessary equipment and set out, only to discover that the comet has picked up speed. The Captain realizes that the threat is larger than simply an invasion; they mean to strike the center of the continent and render it unfit for human life.

Desperately they strain the engines of the Great Southern Dragon, trying to catch up. Spirit Beasts peel off from the Comet and begin to assault the ship. All across the craft, the crew finds themselves under attack. On deck, Baron Dechenka tries to focus his magic to shield the ship but is only able to maintain the defenses when Jacob channels the power of the Shaddai through the Orb. Lady Gallina mercilessly channels her own archmagic through Jacob in a bid to protect everyone. Qynn leads the fighter assault, keeping back as many as they can, while the Captain desperately tries to plot and replot the intercept course for their one shot at the Comet. Below decks Basho readies the weapon with the aid of Simlain Braverman, the arch-villain. He's agreed to aid them in saving the world, but after that all bets are off. Basho has to swing over to repair the lines when they are cut by an attacker but manages to launch the weapon, loaded with the Deathstone they've prepared into the comet. At the same time Braverman let's go of Basho sending him plummeting to his Doom.

The explosion blinds everyone on deck and the magical channel protecting the ship is shattered. Explosions rock the ship as the engines overload and bombs planted by Braverman destroy the arcane engine providing life support. Basho desperately manages to catch the tailfin of the ship with his Dragon-arm, nearly tearing it from his body. As the ship plummets into the atmosphere, he hangs on for dear life. Inside Julian tries to rescue those injured and trapped by the internal explosions while at the same time trying to ready for impact. The Captain throws everything into steadying the craft as much as he can. Gallina draws down all of her mana pool and overcasts creating a current of air to slow the ship. The misfire from the spell creates hundreds of tornadoes across the landscape. As the ship tears into the Atlantaen countryside, Basho is peeled from the bottom of the ship and flung into the storms.

*whew*

HCI (Currently L5R Storyteller)

The characters, having gone through the strange sea-borne gate in the rogue Fading Suns portal, find themselves back in Rokugan, with apparently some time having passed since they participated in the Bronze Swan tournament. They find a strange disconnect between their real selves and their samurai selves; while together they find it easier to remember who they are in the real world, but when apart that starts to fade. The group takes up their duties as magistrates in the Scorpion city of Ryoko Owari, under the command of their Emerald Magistrate lord Ikoma Okataru.

After some rough starts meeting with the various major families the group learns a little about the strange happenings in the city some months ago that left hundreds dead. Whatever occurred had something tom do with the fall of the Usagi clan and the strange magistrate group who passed through earlier. The Daidoji member of that group warns them off, telling them that this matter has been closed at the highest levels, perhaps from the Hantei himself. In the midst of this the group is given their first case, the murder of a Crane merchant. At first it seems a simple strange ritual killing with the victim having been decapitated and displayed as bundori. However, the team quickly discovers that this was not the first such murder. Others have happened and have been quietly covered up by the Clan Magistrates.

Each victim bears descent from a group of legendarily abusive maho-hunters disbanded years ago for their wicked ways. After much leg work, it becomes clear that the killer has contacts among the city officials and access to a magical method of disguise. They intercept the fifth victim before the killer can strike and put him under their protection. They also learn the name of the sixth victim and that they've accelerated the killer's timetable. However, the killer strikes while the group decides to catch up on their sleep. They arrive too late on the scene. Shosoro Yori remains to speak with the local magistrates while the rest of the group heads out to warn others. But the killer is still there disguised! He attacks Yori while she is alone. Some blocks away from the scene the Isawa thinks to check the magical energies to see if the disguise magic is in operation. Realizing their mistake the group rushes back to aid Yori. They arrive just in time to see a wounded Yori make a brilliant slash and strike down the killer.

The aftermath of the investigation is unpleasant as various groups try to steer themselves clear from the deaths and the cover up. Lord Ikoma asks for discretion in the matter, but Yori has already sent the killers head to the governor as a warning. The group begins to settle in and look into other personal matters. Kenichi, the Monk, and Kuni Yusuke look into the matter of some wandering monks who used magic to get them drunk in public and cause them loss of face. They discover a larger plot of these monks who clearly believe that everyone would be better off drunk and have conspired to cause the effect on the Thunder Guard, the largest group of armed samurai in the city. The magistrates rush to the scene, uncertain of what awaits them.

Arkham Harbor (Mutants and Masterminds)

Having adopted the team name Vigil, the group continues to discard it in favor of the more catchy "FWAP!" (aka Fabulous Women with Amazing Powers)*. Investigating strange phenomena in south Arkham Harbor leads them to the land of the fae, where the Court of the Earth has been overtaken. They overcome obstacles, take photographs with a giant fish and rescue the queen of the court. She gives them the second key to the Watchman's house and tells them that the third key lies in the hands of the one who engineered his downfall.

On their return to the real world, the group is immediately called to two different crimes. They choose to follow up on a hostage situation at a movie theater rather than the robbery elsewhere for the sake of people's lives. At the theater they raid the unattended concession stand and then take on the bad guy, the Silver Scream. Apparently in town for the Horror film festival, she creates duplicates of the group to fight them. In the tussle, the two Vinca's fight and no one can tell one from the other. However in a splash of insight Sylph spots Jujubes stuck to the true Vinca and blasts the doppelganger. They finish the fight and then head to the robbery where Player Two has apparently gotten away with his theft of a collection of rare artworks. On the scene they meet city patron and millionaire philanthropist, Mr. Sterne. He hands them the third and final key to the Watchman's estate!!!

They make their way to the former HQ of the Watchman's super team. The untouched base is as it was on the day they left for the their last battle. Moving through they find a host of equipment and materials useful in crimefighting. In the base's lock up they find the body of an unfortunate villain lost and forgotten. In another cell they meet the diminutive Devil's Robot!!! They leave him there though begin formulating plans to have the arch-criminal reprogrammed to clean the base. In the basement, apparently abandoned by the most recent Watchman, they find an occult library. In a vision the group sees themselves holding some kind of orb.

In a flash they find themselves transported back in time where they meet the Watchman of the 1950's. Assuming them to be some kind of supernatural aid, he enlists them in his battle against Dr. Cross and his Ur-Beasts who have control of the city's underworld. They take of to the fight and interrupt the deadly masked Dr. Cross at the height of his rituals. Despite the group's never having fought Cross, he recognizes them and does his level best to destroy them. As the battle finishes up with their victory there is another flash of the same orb and the group finds themselves transported back in time yet again to pre-Revolutionary America and a meeting with the first Watchman!!!

*The group would later discard this name when they discovered the internet. 

City of Tiers (Exalted: Dragon Blooded)

The young Dragon Bloods of House Ledaal are drawn together by the weave of fate, somehow tied to their own impending and yet avoided death and to the actions of a strange anathema. The family, wanting their lingering fate wrecking auras far away sends them on to Crux where the family home has been lost. They find themselves in the Dusk Quarter, an unseemly underground where they are forced to fight for their lodgings. The group settles in and begins to investigated the city.

Soon they learn that two other groups of young Dragon Bloods from other families have also arrived in Crux, though in superior lodgings than their own. The five begin to consider how they might mark their mark here and demonstrate their worth to the family. Various street gangs are fought and rumors of a mysterious monk arise. Ledaal Mihir makes a man scream in terror for no reason. Ledaal Lupita falls off a massive staircase and introduces herself to the woman who usurped their family house here; Ledaal Zhu du Fan with a sudden and strange attraction to this woman.

As they settle into things in the city, other weirdness begins to arrive. A bizarre meeting with one of the other new Dragon Blooded; rumors of a mysterious dojo enforcer named Final Sky; the strange voice that came from Zhu du Fan that he doesn't remember; circumstances surrounding the dead exiled poet and why his body cannot be returned; the three brothers marked with mysterious birthmarks all intent on catching Lupita's attention; the Sorcerer Sharpened Thought's alliance with Mihir; Kiir's late night spotting of her beribboned colleague skulking about at night, and finally the bizarre attack by one of the gangs of Ledaal Illathin, convinced that he has affronted them.

As money grows tighter the group begins to look for opportunities….

City of Silence (Vampire the Masquerade)

News grows grimmer in the city and the Vampires decide to follow up on the Irish Travelers who attacked them some weeks before. They track them back to a trailer park and cross paths with a Garou who has also been watching them. The leader of the Travelers involved with the shooting seems to have been involved with some kind of occult workings, having killed the rest of his group in a ritual. At home, the four kindred wrestle with what to do with Circe, the Tzicmze whom they have not reported to the Prince of the City, Clocke. They decide to allow her to remain here and continue their silence on the matter.

While Michael works to get his bar set up, Magdalyn tries to figure out how to get out from the clutches of Queen Arcane, a Toreador who has become infatuated with her. Erika asks Joshua to help with her father's illness and then both Joshua and her father vanish. Michael tracks down his much hated foster brother only to find him married to one of his foster sisters. He begins to plot murder. Naomi continues her work to uncover more about the Kindred and develop a reasonable business for the group. She begins to here rumors that her kinship with the Brujah may put more responsibilities on her. Erika also hears word of a stranger in Chinatown looking for her. Magdalyn suspects Dr. Hollow the Malkavian of sinister motives. However when she tries to follow up she manages to summon an angry wraith.

A meeting by the Prince is called and it is revealed that a Kindred has been slain, though by whom is unclear. Trying to figure out the occult situation, the group follows up with the Orpheus Group. In a meeting they come to realize that these people are using ghosts to conduct business. Wrapped up in their own paradigm, the Orpheus agents believe the group not to be Vampires but simply people possessed by ghosts. With more questions than answers, the group leaves and meets the third herald. In an instant they find themselves back in Victorian London again.

There they meet more of the strange figures of that city and learn of Clocke and Palladino's blood marriage in the past. It becomes clear that something is not right about this "time travel" and the changes they have undergone. They meet Naomi's sire from the past and begin to piece together something about the incident that led to his downfall, including the strange presence of the Kuei-Jin embassy which has come to England. They meet Jin-Shan, one of the Kuei-Jin, her name is one that Naomi heard before her embrace. Heading back to their "home" in this London they are set upon by some kind of supernaturals who possess an understanding of the Beast. They defeat them but with major damage to themselves.

The next night Obano Savall comes to visit them. They discover that like they, he has come here from the future. He explains that it is a strange story that ends up repeating itself in time. He also tells them how to escape it, by causing a major disruption to the timeline. With that information in hand, they go to the London Elysium to try to learn more. Magdalyn makes a Bloodhunter nervous, Naomi learns much from the Prince Mithras, Erika begins to pick up on the hatred of the Kuei-Jin and Michael speaks with Clocke and Palladino.

Eleven Pillars Post-Mortem: Play on Target Ep. 39

We try something new for this episode of Play on Target. Sam offers up one of his concluded campaigns, "The Eleven Pillars," and we dissect it. It isn’t exactly workshopping, but more a chance to see the choices made by another GM and their results. I dug it because I got to see under the hood. We looked his prep, his mechanics, his decisions- and got to question him about how those operated. We’re hoping to do this kind of exploration every once in a while- with each of us eventually putting one of our campaigns under the microscope. I’m debating  whether to present a campaign that worked or one with deep problems and player conflicts.

If you enjoy this kind of material, I also recommend you check out The Zantabulous Zorceror of Zo. That’s a solid Oz-like game using the PDQ (Prose Descriptive Quality) system. But, and I hate to say this, even better than the game is the author's outline of his own campaign. He discusses what he did and why. That’s interspersed with reactions from his players. It’s like the best commentary track ever for a campaign. I’ve also written up a few campaign post-mortems, not nearly as awesome as that: City of Ocean (Modern, Unknown Armies-Inspired), The Darkening Rift (Star Wars), Bloodlines (Mutants & Masterminds), Loosing Las Vegas (Scion: Hero), and Aftermagic Chicago (Vampire the Masquerade). 

Eleven Pillars Campaign Post Mortem

Play on Target Episode Round Up

I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD

BTW you have to admire the guts of going in to start a new campaign populated entirely by people you haven’t run for and actually give them an 8-hour session. I’m not sure I could do that, or at least not sure I wouldn’t come home and collapse. Sam talks about the challenge of figuring out what different players want from a game- one of the key elements of GMing. He managed to do that on the fly and offer a responsive campaign.

That ties into something I read this week. I got my copy of John Wick’s Play Dirty 2. It’s good- particularly the post-mortem of his Changeling the Lost campaign. He talks about a technique he crafted for 7th Sea. If you’ve read that you may have heard of it, but this was my first exposure. He breaks down campaigns into a set of activities: Action, Intrigue, Mystery, and Romance (and Military & Exploration for some games). During character creation, each player breaks down their interest in each of these areas by percentage. So Sherri might go Action 10%, Intrigue 30%, Mystery 40%, and Romance 20%. That gives the GM a rough scale and big investments (lack thereof) point to key issues. But Wick also suggests tying rewards and incentives to these areas. Handing out points, drama tokens, or some other kind of reward when players work within their favored areas. It reminds me a little of Keys from The Shadow of Yesterday- and you could probably combine the two.

Now, this system wouldn’t have worked for Sam since he dove right into the game. But it’s a nice tool for those running for new (or old) players, and break between CC & play.

MEMOIRS FOUND IN A BATHTUB

Sam mentions his “notebook” for the Ranger as a major prop he constructed. I wish we’d circled back more to that: how it was used, how well it worked, was there anything he’d have done differently with it? I had some success with a similar handout for my Changeling the Lost campaign, but I also learned a couple of lessons. You can see my big write-up on that here, The Wayward Notebook. In particular, I should have had multiple copies ready. I also probably should have broken it up into pieces, making the discovery a reward and avoiding the info dump problem. And I should have realized that because I’d gotten the inspiration to do this from a cool but flawed prop I’d seen another GM use.

A few sessions into a Hunter the Reckoning campaign, we discovered a cassette tape. When we played it, we realized it had come from another, more experienced Hunter. That confirmed for us that our experience wasn’t entirely madness or unique, which shifted the campaign. But more importantly, the GM actually played the audio for us at the table. It gave an overview of the various threats facing our stomping ground. While evocative, it slowed the pace down heavily because it dragged on for 25 minutes or so. We had to sit there and take notes, which broke the mood. As well, the GM didn’t have a transcript for the recording. We didn’t get that until a half-dozen sessions later. Having had that happen to me as a player, I should have been focused on usability. Instead I fell into many of those mistakes with my prop.

TIME IN A BAG OF HOLDING

Sam makes a great point in his discussion of time and the passage of it between campaigns. In short, he hits a tough decision about how far to move the game world forward. I’ve struggled with that in my ongoing campaign world, run significantly since ’87. The problem lies in wanting to allow enough time to pass for significant events while maintaining continuity. In Sam’s case he wanted some radical changes- to societies, to structures, and to memories of the past. He came against the typical fantasy trope of long-lived peoples (Dwarves, Elves). In order to eliminate direct experience of the “old world” the timeline had to jump forward far enough to encompass more than one generation.

I’ve jumped my campaign world forward several times. In most cases, the shift involved years or perhaps even a couple of decades. Barring a cataclysmic event, that passage of time allowed mostly for political changes, shifts in ideologies, and some new advancements or revolutions. Like many GMs, I kept that small because I wanted a direct continuity. Players could go places they recalled, interact with institutions they knew, and generally operate with some mastery. As importantly, old NPCs and PCs could be brought back in as a touchstone. Their presence could lend weight to a situation. Or the group could see how the story went for those characters.

When I made a radical jump forward like Sam, I fretted and worried over it. I didn’t think I could take back such a move. But we’d had a gap between plays in the setting, so I had the opportunity. I added more steampunk elements, excised parts I wasn’t happy with, and broke up some established forces. When the players finally met someone from a previous campaign, it came as shock and changed up some of the events’ meaning. But I pushed things forward only three centuries. And even then I kept many things intact…more than they ought to have been. But my attachment kept me from the boldness of Sam’s shift in the Eleven Pillars campaign.

Side-Note: I’ve been elbow-deep in Post-Apocalyptic games, so I’m acutely aware of how important this is to those settings. If designers want a world radically changed- full of mutated beasts, vast new societies, and weird established traditions- they have to posit a large gap between the Collapse and the Present. Of course, the further they go away from that, the less important the past becomes. That’s what makes the most recent Gamma World’s “reality storm” pretty brilliant. It bakes mutability into the setting (even more than Rifts). 

Eleven Pillars Campaign Post Mortem

Play on Target Episode Round Up

If you like RPG Gaming podcasts, I hope you'll check it out. We take a focused approach- tackling a single topic each episode. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes or follow the podcast's page at www.playontarget.com.

Running the Ashen Stars One-Shot: Hacks and Complications

TAKE TO THE STARS

Talking about unsuccessful game experiments offers different insights from successful ones. I hack and change rules often- that’s how we ended up with playing and revising the same homebrew for the last 10+ years. I’ve talked in other posts about the odd reaction several groups I played with and ran for had with GUMSHOE, primarily in standard action resolution. They bought into the investigation side and the settings, but often disliked the d6-based mechanics. So I’ve considered a number of solutions to that problem. Prior to this I’d run GS for Esoterrorists, a spy-game hack, and Mutant City Blues. I’d also played in a Victorian-era campaign.

We had a break night after I wrapped up my FATE-based Scion campaign and before the players would be moving on to another GM’s Pathfinder game. I offered to run a one-shot for the five players available. I considered several options before ultimately deciding I wanted to try out Ashen Stars on them. I had the Dead Rock Seven anthology as well as the double-adventure Tartarus/Terra Nova. I settled on running the Terra Nova adventure since it seemed to rely least on knowledge of the setting and at first glance looked like something we could get done in an evening. It is a solid adventure, worth picking up.

Of the group, only one had played Gumshoe before. I decided I wanted to try out another standard resolution system. Since I’d played it for the first time recently and like the speed of it, I bolted on Savage Worlds’ mechanics. I used the sample characters from DR7. In order to calculate their die roll for a General Ability, they essentially raised it one die rank for every two points So if someone had a 1-2 in Preparedness, they used a d4. If they had a 5-6, they used a d8, etc. None of the players had played Savage Worlds, but if figured it would be just as easy as explaining the usual GS system, since it is disconnected from the investigative skills. I made a few other tweaks as well and offered the players some extra points to spend on both sides. I had a couple of handouts with the skill descriptions on them.

The session as a whole went fairly poorly, with more frustration and confusion than I’d seen in play for a number of years. I ended up stopping a little early since we had a ways to go and would have had at least another hour of frustrated play.

SO WHAT DID I DO WRONG AND WHAT WENT WRONG?

• The group’s generally focused on fantasy. It has been years since we’ve done anything harder sci-fi. The most recent versions have been a brief HALO game, Star Wars, and Fallout. Switching to this from Scion, while the group was getting ready for a fantasy game may have contributed. I like the Ashen Stars setting, but it is one that rewards a longer campaign play. Even then, if I were to run, I’d probably dial down the number of alien races. As it was, the PCs had a lot to track about the setting- despite my attempts to reduce that.

• Related to that, when I handed out the characters, I gave them the background material from Dead Rock Seven. That meant everyone had to slow down and absorb that on top of the new and complicated character sheet. I could have probably skipped that or put a short descriptive post-it note on each one. I also suggested no one take the pilot character, since the adventure would have less of that. Announcing that was a misstep on my part- it pointed to players with back-up piloting skills that those wouldn’t be as useful. I should have skipped mentioning that (since there were plenty of other skills which might see marginal use) or have figured out a way to bring those into the scenario.

• Two large sets of differently operating skills combined with weird and obscure names for those skills absolutely killed people. They zoned. I went through those as best I could and distributred handouts. But some of the terminology present isn’t immediately intuitive. It fits with the setting and offers depth, but for a one-shot it elicited confusion, constant questions, and frustration. Having so many skills felt overwhelming. The granularity of those skills made the players unsure about what they could or could not do. Details for PCs races and implants compounded the problem. If I’d be more experienced with the setting and rules perhaps I could have alleviated those issues, but I’m not sure I could have fully fixed it with a group coming in cold.

• The structure of a one-shot invites looser and less concerned play. That’s a good thing to me. It also makes the players acutely aware that this isn’t something they’re going to be going back to. Other structural issues also affected the run: we got started late, we took a break for food, and everyone seemed more prone to wisecracks and giggles throughout the night. As a GM had a couple of choices- go with it and just goof or try to drive things back onto the rails. I chose the latter- and with another set of mechanics I think I might have been able to do it. But I got sidetracked as well often, so it may well be that I’d goofed things up in terms of tone right from the start.

• Terra Nova’s a good mystery- but I don’t think that great as a first adventure. It is more complicated and challenging for the GM than it first appears. It puts the players into corners in a couple of ways and has some central mysteries that require several complicated pieces to put together. It also needs a full four-hour session to play out well. It would make a solid third or fourth adventure for an Ashen Stars campaign. I should have chosen a slimmer scenario with a clearer and firmer through-line. That’s a misjudgment on my part.

WHAT DID WORK?

• Players, as usual, liked the approach to investigative skill- when they could figure out what a particular skill does. That continues to be something I’ll be borrowing for every game I run.

• Players also liked the Savage Worlds resolution system once they grasped it. It was fun, fast, and dangerous. I will likely make this one of my go-to “pick-up game” systems (along with Unisystem).

WHAT WOULD I DO DIFFERENTLY?

• Choose a less challenging module for a quick one-shot of Ashen Stars with players who hadn’t encountered Gumshoe before. That’s especially true where I knew we would probably have at most three hours of play.

• Consolidate and rename the Ashen Stars skill lists on both sides. This isn’t a solution for campaign play, but purely to offer an approachable one-shot. Right now there are 46 Investigative Abilities, broken into three categories. I think no more than 18 could be approachable, in three groups. There are 31 General Abilities, with 9 being for specific races. I’d leave those latter ones off the sheet except for those races. I’d probably reduce those skills down to 12-15. Ideally I could get all the skills on one sheet- with equipment and a skill explanation on the back. I would also rename the skills so that someone coming into the game cold could easily grok their use. This wouldn’t be Ashen Stars, but instead Ashen Stars-lite. It would be a useful way to introduce the game to new players. I suspect I might take the same approach for one-shots and demos of the other GUMSHOE games from now on. That could work even if you stick with the existing challenge resolution system.

OVERALL

Most of this comes down to bad choices on my part. I could have and should have anticipated some of these problems. I ended up doing a poorer job of offering fun than I usually do (I hope). I continue to like GUMSHOE conceptually, and I enjoy all of the settings crafted for the game. It does, however, present some barriers to entry. That may be less for groups which play crunchier games or a wider variety of them. I still want to show off some of these to the players, but I will invest some more prep work next time before heading in. 

Changeling the Lost: Pieces Fall Into Place

Following on my post from yesterday, CtL: Why You Should Never Look Behind the Campaign Curtain, here's the other half of my campaign prep brainstorming:

Themes and Other Elements to Consider

Dreams, the Dreamscape,and other bits. Think about what will serve as the dream images, repeated figures, or fixtures. Dream bastions, landmarks, maps of the human or Changeling soul. Some of this comes from the character’s own hopes and fears. Some of it comes from flashes of memory of the character’s durance. So several stages of the PC’s life: pre-life, taking, transformation, service, and escape from the Hedge. Shared links and images.

The Hedge and the possibilities of the other places: sterility. Zones in which the driving force of the True Faerie Overlord has been removed. There could/should be an indicator, but needs to be set up clearly so that when they see one of these realms still possesses life, they know there’s some bad shit going on.

I do like the idea of a certain amount of divine conflict- figures fighting over something. Perhaps a McGuffin device from the past. Powerful, legendarily tied to the faerie, but with other ramifications. If I hadn’t already used the Celtic stuff in the Mage game, I’d do something like the Cauldron. Perhaps from some other mythic tradition- Scandinavian, Polish, or Italian? Ideas worth exploring there.

What else to add into the mix here? Elements- Wards marking time. The calling of the Hours: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline, Terminus (or Liminal). The last out of sequence representing the in-between state.

Other supernatural threats: Ghosts here should have some distinctive features. Basic ghosts and spirits have some requirements and reason for remaining. However there should be some special trait or characteristic that separates out the “Angry Spirits” from the standard ghosts. I think human magic…operating under a more classic paradigm (rather than the Postmodern magic of Unknown Armies) would be a useful approach. Provided that I don’t end up looking too much like Buffy or Angel’s approach. 

Perhaps as an opponent or threat we might work with TED Klien, Manley Wade Wellman, and other Americana corrupted. Maybe not entirely Lovecraftian, but a significant threat. Parallel with the stupidity of the Urban Satanists. These guys might be scarier and possibly tied to the Sheriff. Two theme/images that might work here. MacDowell’s Blackwater stuff and my idea of a prison camp for the Innsmouth refugees. I like the idea of that land being a park in the south. But not big because of the toxix, old army base dump. A particular ethnic line that ended up having some wed into the population.

Overview (9/29/08)

To sum up where I am with my thinking.

Characters originally taken from Wayward (campaign city) in a relatively close/short time period. This was a sacrifice and/or evidence of the barriers protecting the Freehold breaking down. PCs rescued or at least escaped and were helped at the last moment by the Dues ex Machine NPC (DxM). He brought them through and bound them with a vow in their desperation. PC’s kept on ice for some time- the vow creating a bond of fellowship. (We’ll come back to his reasons for that after some time).

The PC’s awaken from a magical slumber. The DxM Changeling has been murdered. Why he was and why he rescued the PCs remains unclear- though the process was evidently destructive to his clarity. The group discovers the DxM’s notes, gains new basic identities, and eventually discovers that the DxM has arranged their entry to the local Marlowe Academy. Now they can choose to take this up if they wish- but it will present a generally useful place. Give them the freedom to pick. Need to decide initial site of entry/hiding. Makes a difference in terms of the murder, how group hidden, their reaction ot the place. In any case, the old, unused dormitory/gardening building is theirs for living in.

The DxM is rebelling against either general corruption or a specific situation. This means his role in helping establish the Bad Thing which is happening in the Freehold. There’s a combination of corruption, exploitation, and bury-my-head-in-the-sand reaction. They city itself is somehow warded. Markers of this- perhaps eight plus one or 13 (twelve hours plus one). What are the daily prayers. In any case we have a city divided into two halves, with two courts. Each one run by a leader, younger. They’re closely tied enough to be considered siblings but publicly seen as rivals. There is also an “in-between” person.

Standard, quiet policy is to run off Changelings who wander in through the material boundaries- since supposedly they can’t get in otherwise- a quiet secret. Mani of the Changelings here willing to trade freedom for security. The Wolf figure- high noon- in charge of enforcing that. There three leaders are caught up in an inverted Lear situation. Their “father/patron” the retiring/retired kingmaker of the Freehold. He and his crew setup the current defenses of the Freehold (including the DxM). But the others have died, lost clarity, or retired.

In the meantime, the city still has to deal with supernaturals of other kinds- for which these wards offer no protection. Those remain tools of the Others to manipulate. Plus they’ve got a Changed One chained/bound to one of the closest hedge bits.

Marlowe Academy

Need to define: Ages and tone; population and size; staff; general layout; relation to town; secrets; and fit with the campaign.

A great deal of their interaction will depend on what/how the ‘Headmaster’ or ‘Principal’ appears. Could be singular figure- not exactly sinister but distant. Another option is to approach it more as a Prisoner-esque thing. The Headmaster changes every few weeks. Have to make sure doesn’t end up seeming like the stuff from Buffy.

The Prisoner idea, while appealing, implies very different interactions. It suggests a behind the scenes secret master, for one. It does make it harder to build a connection (antipathy or otherwise) for that NPC. I think I have to stick with a more classic depiction, unless we have the headmaster and the secretary- the person who carries out the headmaster’s orders.

Random Quick Plot/Scenario ideas

• Bellairs’ The House with Clocks in its Walls: Something like that kind of theme- dreamlike quality.
• A variation on the Grimm setting…elements from Little Fears? Tied to Hobgoblins?
• Spirit animals or totems which have to be overcome (ala Northwood, complete with a phantasmal observer).
• The burned-out place that is strangely rebuilt or the place the character remembers which is no longer there or recalled by anyone else.
• I like the visual of people with swords in their homes. Maybe for a Changeling who came over from one of the suspended homes.
• Usually welcoming folks from a narrow ethnicity- Ethiopian, Albanian, Morrocan.
• Dollmaker ala that awful Aztek comic. There’s at least a kernel of neat there.
• Evil Chemistry Experiment kid. Trace back to that. Strangely enough my Google-fu let me down on that. Series of children’s books where he had a magic chemistry set.
• Water swilring to form eyes. Like the eyes in Ju-On out of the shadow. Likewise the mask from Eyes Without a Face. Ghosts, visions floating in water.
• Some kind of glamor infection- causing people to have deeply personal hallucinations. Gets them when they’re alone- a powerful, wish-fulfilling thing- a synthesized thing…
• Infection? Premonition? The Vivian Girls. Cucumber Hundreds. Creepy stuff.
• Presence of representatives of the Corporatist Supernaturals. Here because of the patterns and rumors regarding the McGuffin device: Solomon’s Key or whatever.
• Angry ghosts: possessors or something else. Dying in sleep or unconsciousness. Maybe something about the barriers keeps them here. Million dreams of death. Some kind of treatment for the sick Fetch causing this. Perhaps the nature of the wards keeps certain souls from leaving. Can’t find their own way out.
• Spiritualist machines: ghost or angel powered. 

Notes on Notebook

If I'm going to use that as a device, I need to handle it well. What could be done there? Other options, clippings in a folder? No. Too much? I like the idea of collaging it a little- stamps, stickers, clippings, etc--> need to see if I can find anything useful in the attic to make this work. 

Generally the DxM character's Notebook- Charlotte will be the name, since with an nice ambiguity and spider reference- ought to hint at several characters the players will encounter. using code names. PCs will then have something to hunt down later. Also should be 3-5 outstanding problems. These would be addressable issues within the campaign arc. Should also lay out in scattershot terms why Charlotte went and pulled them out of the Hedge (against his own strong sense of self-preservation). Some story of his travails. He also bound them with a vow they won't remember at the start of the game. "Am I one of them?"--> increasing deterioration should be reflected. His actions breaking down his clarity. 

Begins with a run down of the major players and people- code names to be established. Should set the stage. Then I need to lay out a little bit about the setting- basics. What is wayward- then a tale, establishing that he began a hunt to find them. Preparations made to track them, but other forces at work. The need to have someone protect the city and the people from the awfulness coming. Bonding them in brotherhood- for their own protection and that of others. 

(At this point I switched over to other prep tasks: NPCs and Notebook. I felt I had enough here to start running the game. I also did a first session outline, just because there was a lot to cover). 

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