Case Closed

The suspects

I finished up two investigative scenarios in the last week or so. The experiences could not have been more different. I was the GM for one and a player in the other. They were in very different genres and systems too. I am going to have a go at dissecting them and trying to compare them, nonetheless.

D&D 5E – An Unexpected Wedding Invitation

I wrote a little about this short campaign here. At the time I wrote that, I didn’t even know it was a murder mystery, to be honest. It is a published, third-party 5E scenario so I could have looked it up, but I avoided reading anything about it online. Our wonderful DM was also the consummate host and was always wonderfully welcoming. She was a great DM too. We met in person over the space of eight sessions, more-or-less every two weeks. Our DM, who has run this scenario more than once previously, informed us afterwards that we took far longer to get through the scenario than other groups. Personally, I think that’s probably because of a couple of very important factors. Firstly, we had a fairly large group, five players and the DM. But, I think the second factor is what really pushed it so far beyond the normal length for the scenario. We were all chewing the scenery at every available opportunity. This group of players does not shy away from the first person, expansive, full-chested role-playing and it honestly does my withered heart good to see it every time we get together. We all had reasons for going ham as well. There was the promise of romance and, failing that, friendship. The possibility for court intrigue and drama was there as well. But, certain sections of the table were there to get their kisses in (in the infamous words of Lou Wilson.) The mystery was almost secondary to those folks.

As for the mystery itself; I won’t go into details. No spoilers except to say that there is a murder and we were not aware of that aspect going in. I don’t know if the DM advice is to keep that from the players until it happens but that was the case for us. Anyway, that was quite exciting actually. To discover there was an actual crime to figure out gave us all a shot in the arm! Up until then we had been essentially casing the wedding for curses and harassing the guests with weird, cryptic questions about the nature of one family’s bad luck. So, when we had a specific thing to investigate, it filled us with the sort of motivation that, I feel, the scenario failed to provide up to that point.

As for the investigation itself, it’s all about the NPCs in this adventure. That seems appropriate for a mystery game and this particular scenario was replete with well drawn NPCs who had distinct personalities, motivations, idiosyncrasies and voices (provided quite expertly by our DM.) You have the bride and groom, of course but you also have a cast of characters drawn mainly from the families on both sides. There are several set-piece scenes that are designed to allow the PCs to get to know the cast and our DM graciously provided us with portraits for all the main NPCs, hanging them on her DM screen. This was very helpful as there were a lot of them and without that constant visual aid, it would have been much harder to keep track. Our interactions with the NPCs seemed to give us positive or negative standing with them, leading to later conversations being more or less difficult for us.

The setting was integral, of course. An opulent country manse belonging to one of the families involved, surrounded by a generous estate on which they enjoyed hunting and picnicking. The adventure provided a couple of maps; more for reference than anything else as there was not a fight to be had at this affair.

As I said, I am not going into spoilers here about the murder, the suspects or the ending but there are a few things I can say. It seems as though the adventure comes with several prepared possible endings. The actions of the players, their standing with the major NPCs and their final pronouncement of who they figure did the murder all seemed to have an effect on that. This served to give it a slightly video-gamey feel, which was neither good nor bad but certainly leant a lot to the idea that everything was laid out in the adventure quite prescriptively.

Speaking of which, the actions of the PCs throughout felt a little restricted. This was purely a result of playing D&D 5E characters in a genre they were never meant to exist in. Few of our powers or abilities were of much use in this milieu and that felt a little frustrating at times.

Equally, there were several timed events that could not be prevented or changed in any real way by the PCs. Once again, this had the effect of making us feel more like spectators than active participants.

Questioning the NPCs, the most important part of the scenario, by far, and the only one where you could make inroads in your romantic or duelling ambitions, was difficult to say the least. Pretty much all of them could have done it, to be honest. That, by itself, is ok, but failing certain rolls here and there made the process feel fruitless at times. Without some mechanic to allow you to fail forward, it was always going to feel like this.

In the end, we failed to catch the killer. We fingered the wrong guy for the crime. This was due, in large part, to us interacting less with the killer than we might have, failing s couple of clutch rolls in interacting with them and the fact that we were left with too many potential culprits at the end that we couldn’t whittle down further with the evidence we had. Our failure was revealed to us in a sort of cut-scene right at the end. After all the effort we had put in, this felt like losing even though we had all enjoyed playing together around the table. The overall consensus from the players was that 5E was not the system for this scenario. It is not built for this sort of investigation and it led to an unsatisfying feeling from the result of the game even if we had a good time playing together, as we always do.

Blade Runner, Electric Dreams

Two blade runners posing like neon noir heroes in front of a stylised Wallace Corp ziggurat beneath the title of the Blade Runner Role Playing Game. — A photo of the front of my copy of the Blade Runner Start Set box.

I wrote a little about this game here while we were still playing it. At the time of writing that, we were only two sessions in and I was greatly looking forward to the next one. There were two players, playing Detective Novak and Fenna. We did this online, using Zoom and Roll20. It took five sessions of two and a half to three hours each. Having checked out other groups’ experiences with the same case file, I can say that’s about average. I could absolutely see it taking both less or more time since it would be dependent on how quickly the blade runners discover the key clues and how quickly they act.

Electric Dreams is also a pre-written scenario but, I think, importantly, it was produced by Free League as the intro to the Blade Runner RPG. There was never going to be a mismatch of scenario and system like we saw in An Unexpected Wedding Invitation. In fact, it felt as though this scenario was close to perfectly designed to bring players into the world and the system at the same time.

If you are a Blade Runner fan but not familiar with the Year Zero engine or RPGs in general, its got elements from the movies for you to geek out over and allow you to feel part of the megacity of LA by referencing the media you know and love. Meanwhile, it holds your hand through the early interactions with the mechanics, kicking things off with a few basic Observation and Manipulation rolls, teaching you that the more successes you get on your dice rolls, the better the result. As time goes on, the references to the movies remain strong, keeping the whole thing feeling like a natural continuation of or bridge between those stories and establishing a consistent and immersive tone and atmosphere. But you get more and more in-depth interactions with the rules as it introduces you to chase mechanics, combat, use of more complicated investigative techniques and character advancement.

And if you are an old hand at Free League’s signature rules engine, you will be good to go from the start. I was somewhere in between when we started playing. I am a big fan of Blade Runner and I have run Tales from the Loop before so I knew how the system worked well enough. But it was a long time since I had played it and I definitely had to look some rules up in play. This was generally fine, and didn’t take too long. What we also found, was that, once we looked up those rules once, we grokked them and didn’t have to keep referring to the rulebook, which was a refreshing change of pace for a group of players who have mainly only played D&D 5E together before (at least in recent years.)

Now, down to the scenario itself. As with the Wedding mystery, this was largely based around really well drawn NPCs, all of whom were potentially important to the plot. But, from the start, it felt as though the PCs knew who their main suspect was. They were rarely dissuaded from that notion, despite (or perhaps because of) the powers-that-be forcefully reminding them about the way they would like to see the investigation go. Since the characters were playing blade runners, cops in the LAPD, there were a number of NPCs that were there purely to back them up or chivvy them along. You had Coco, the medical examiner (who you also meet in Blade Runner 2049) and Deputy Chief Holden (who got his chest punctured in an interaction with Leon the replicant in Blade Runner) as well as any number of ad-libbed beat cops and the AI LAPD Despatch. The Wallace Corp is represented by one of their replicant executives who was immense fun to play. You also had a few NPCs that were witnesses and were never going to be anything but witnesses. The investigation was not designed to send the detectives off on the wrong path. There was no more than one red herring and that was there more to reinforce a theme than as a real way of derailing things.

What we found was that most of the sessions involved them trying to track the one suspect and discover their motivations and whereabouts. This led them into a web of corporate intrigue and moral dilemmas. That’s what Blade Runner should be about, of course, and Free League nailed that. The PCs were able to use the abilities of their pregenerated characters to do that pretty well. In fact, I would say that they were implausibly successful most of the time. On a couple of occasions they rolled so well that I felt compelled to reward them with information that would not, otherwise, have come up until later in the investigation. Moments like these allowed them to make incredibly effective leaps. What I liked about this scenario is that it allowed for that. There is a timeline of events that will happen at particular points of the investigation, but only if the PCs do nothing to prevent them. So, that doesn’t stop you moving them two steps forward, instead of the usual one. I think it actually encourages that sort of thing, in fact, as the timed events are generally pretty bad for the investigators or the other major characters.

We got an ending that was equal parts satisfying and open-ended, with the PCs making the moral, rather than the legal choice after the corporation took the law into its own hands one too many times. We might return to Novak and Fenna someday, maybe in the next published case file, Fiery Angels. The first one ran so well that I would definitely be confident to play the next one.

Conclusion

It is almost unfair to compare these two games, but it has been impossible for me to do anything else. In blade runner, you had a scenario where any outcome the PCs reached was likely to be satisfying and a system that supported the sort of game you were playing, investigative, character driven and darkly themed. In the other, the scenario felt a little too restrictive and was hampered further by a system that was never designed to support the investigative nature or the regency feel. I had fun with both, but I know where I would turn first if someone asked to play a mystery game.

Oh Mother!

Moonbase Blues

New member of the Tables and Tales crew, and experienced GM, Joel, is going to be holding our hands and releasing them when we reach the airlock, only to lock the door and start the cycle sequence while we batter our fists raw on the glass. He will watch us, impassive and seemingly unaware of our distress. Is that a hint of reptilian hunger in his eyes?
If this is how Moonbase Blues actually goes down, I’d honestly be ok with that.

Mothership character creation

Any excuse for a character creation post, eh?

Mothership has a very handy method of guiding the prospective victim through the process. The third paragraph in the Player’s Survival Guide tells you to turn to the sheet in the back of the book as it leads you through character creation. And, guess what? It does! All the instructions are right there on pages 5 and 6 as well though.

Our thoughtful and wise GM has also provided us a lovely form-fillable character sheet. That’s what I will be using tonight.

A screenshot of the Mothership Character Profile. It is a form-fillable character sheet, which also includes almost all the instructions you need to create a Mothership character.

We are five-by-five. Let’s go.

Step 1 – Roll Stats

We have four stats: strength, speed, intellect and combat. For each one we will roll 2d10 and add 25. Just watch me fuck this up:

Strength: 31
Speed: 28
Intellect: 32
Combat: 36

It’s not a total shit-show but it’s not great. I only got one roll above ten and that was eleven.

Moving swiftly on to leave this debacle behind!

Step 2 – Roll Saves

You have three types of saves in this game: sanity, fear and body. I think they pretty much speak for themselves, no?
For the saves I am rolling 2d10 and adding 10.

Sanity: 21
Fear: 14
Body: 25

I feel like having a low fear save score in a horror game is a distinct and unfortunate disadvantage. I just have to remember to milk it for role-playing opportunities, I suppose.

Step 3 – Choose Class

I like the choice of Class you have here. They are the classic Alien archetypes after all:

Marine
Android
Scientist
Teamster

I very much like the description each one gets in the intro.

A screenshot of the "Step 3. Choose Your Class" table from the Mothership Player's Survival Guide. It shows the available classes, Marines, Androids, Scientists, Teamsters, and describes them. — A screenshot of the “Step 3. Choose Your Class” table from the Mothership Player’s Survival Guide. It shows the available classes, Marines, Androids, Scientists, Teamsters, and describes them.

I am leaning towards marine, mainly because my Fear save is so low and there is that crack about marines being a danger to everybody when they panic. Heh. This is why I like one-shots. No fucker is getting out alive.

Yeah, marine it is.

“How do I get outta this chicken-shit outfit?”

You actually do also get some mechanical effects through your choice of class, it’s not all planned panic and movie quotes.

A Marine gets:

+10 Combat
+10 Body Save
+20 Fear Save
+1 Max Wounds

Sounds good.
That makes my Combat now a more respectable 46, my Fear Save a 34 and my Body Save a 35.

Step 4 – Roll Health

Health is rolled with 1d10 and you add 10 to it. I’m sure this roll will go just fine.
It’s a 7! I genuinely expected so much worse.

Anyway, that makes it

Health: 17

So, the way it works is that, once you drop below zero health, you get a wound. Most people start with 2 max wounds before things start getting more permanent. Marines, as noted above, get 3 max wounds. Once you mark a wound, you reset your health to its max minus any damage that carried over.

Step 5 – Gain Stress

What? Already?
I start with 2 minimum.

Step 6 – Trauma Response

“They’re all around us, man…Jesus…They’re comin’ outta the goddamn walls!”

Yep, this is a fun bit of Mothership specific stuff here. The Marine’s trauma response is:

Whenever you panic, every close friendly player must make a Fear Save.

Just stay outta my way.

Step 7 – Note Class Skills and Choose Bonus Skills

So, my class skills as a marine are no big surprise. Military Training and Athletics.
My Bonus Skills, though, I get to choose one Expert Skill or two Trained Skills. There is a sort of skill tree that you can see in the screenshot of the character sheet above. To choose a skill you have to have at least one pre-requisite skill. In other words, if you don’t have an arrow coming out of your trained skill and into the skill you want, you can’t have that one.

I’m realising that Marines have a very narrow range of potential specialities here. But that’s ok, do you really need any more than Firearms and Hand-to-Hand Combat? Nope.
“Check it out. I am the ULTIMATE badass.”

Step 8 – Equipment, Loadout, Trinket and Patch

We have got some tables on page 7 of the Player’s Survival Guide. There is one for each class. I am going to roll on the Marine one with a d10 to see what shit I have.

A screenshot of the "Marine Loadouts" table from the Mothership Player's Survival Guide. It is a d10 table. Each entry has a different set of equipment for a marine character to start with. — A screenshot of the “Marine Loadouts” table from the Mothership Player’s Survival Guide. It is a d10 table. Each entry has a different set of equipment for a marine character to start with.

I rolled a 3. So this is what that gives me:
Standard Battle Dress (AP7 (that’s short for Armour Points, yw,)) Pulse Rifle (3 mags (that’s short for magazines)) and Infrared Goggles.

I’m quite happy with that.

On page 8, we have a d100 table of trinkets. Let’s see what I get.

That’s a 005.
Ok, this guy is a total jarhead. That’s a necklace of shell casings. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

Page 9 has another d100 table, this time for your patch. And that is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a patch that is sewn into your clothes, somewhere.

I rolled a 72 which means I have a patch of a black widow spider. I’m beginning to feel a character coming on.

I am pretty sure this marine is super serious about the job, really does consider themself a badass and is weird about it. Collects spent bullet casings and makes jewellery out of them, has a patch of the black widow spider because they truly respect her ruthlessness. But they are faintly ridiculous to their fellow crew and anyone who meets them, probably.

I am going to roll up my starting Credits. It’s 2d10 multiplied by 10. Here we go:

I rolled a 3 so that’s 30 credits. Clearly this marine has spent too much money on bullet casing jewellery courses. Should not be in charge of their own finances.

Step 9 – Finishing touches

That means name and stuff.

She is Corporal Victoria Ibanez, she/her.

Despite all those Hudson quotes, I think this marine is more like Vasquez. She knows she is the greatest marine to grace the corps in all the years it has existed and she doesn’t mind letting people know.
She has two brothers and a girlfriend at home on Theseus IV. She keeps promising to send credits to them but she somehow never has any left at the end of the month.
Victoria is 28 years old. She has a shaved head but it shows ginger when it’s growing out. She is stocky and broad and sports a lot of scars that she tells everyone she got in combat.

Also, I have to mark a zero above High Score on my character sheet. That’s because this records the number of sessions your character has survived!

The final chacter profile for Corporal Victoria Ibanez, she/her, my Mothership PC. She has a relatively high Combat score, mostly quite low Saves and is specialised in Firearms and Hand-to-Hand Combat. She knows she is the greatest marine in the corps.

So there we go, Victoria Ibanez, Corporal in the Marine Corps, all ‘round badass and potential cautionary tale. Can’t wait to start playing this PC at the table tomorrow night!

Festive one-shot

Celebrate

It’s almost that time of year again, everyone’s favourite holiday where we all dress up as our favourite characters and talk funny. That’s right! Talk Like a Pirate Day is fast approaching! It falls on September 19th, as I am sure you all know. As is traditional, we’ll all be renting a parrot, donning an eyepatch, practicing our “yaaaar” and contracting scurvy to commemorate the joy and wonder brought to the world by that most under-rated of historical figures, the lowly pirate.

As well as that, this year, I thought it would be fun to run a pirate themed one-shot. Since an RPG named Pirate Borg exists, it seemed like the notions of a landlubber to choose any other game to use for the occasion.

There has been an unsettling number of Borgs released over the past number of years, certainly more than enough to make Jean-Luc Picard lose his temper. It can be hard to see the hacks as anything other than cashing in, however, and I will confess to thinking that way myself. But I hear very good things about Cy-Borg and Pirate Borg has been a pleasant surprise as I read through it. It is genuinely more fun and more entertaining than I was expecting. The art, design and layout are good and the vibe is perfect if you are looking for a horror pirate game.

I have really only just gotten into the character creation section so I thought I would do another character creation post! Everybody loves those, right?

Random pirate

I’m gonna roll for everything as is traditional around here. Luckily, this game is well set up to allow for that.

Here’s the step by step guide provided on page 27 of the core book:

A photo of the table from the Pirate Borg core book that illustrates the 5 steps to Create a Player Character (PC.)

Random tables

So, when it says to roll on the tables on this page, this is what it means:

Container table (d6) I rolled a 6! That means I get a friggin’ dinghy! Good start.
Cheap gear table (d12) Got a 4. That’s a shovel. Should be useful for digging up buried treasure or my own grave.
Fancy gear table (d12) 9 on a d12 = a worn out book. I imagine it to be the well-thumbed guide to the manners of the gentry in Paris and London 50 years ago.

Random scores

A pirate has 5 abilities, Strength, Agility, Presence, Toughness, Spirit. You roll 3d6 for each one and consult another table to determine what your score is. Here we go!

Strength: I rolled an 8 so that gives me a -1 (it could be worse)
Agility: That’s a 7, which is also a -1 (a pattern is forming)
Presence: 12! Phew! That makes the score an incredible 0!
Toughness: 6. Shit. That’s -2. This pirate is not an olympic athlete
Spirit: 10. OK, OK. That’s also a score of 0.
Things might start to look up as I move on to a

Random class

You can choose to be a landlubber if you don’t want to take one of the 6 standard or two optional classes. But half the fun of this exercise is rolling everything up, I’m going to roll a d8 and take whatever class it gives me. In this case, I am including the optional classes.

Here are a list of the classes:

Brute
Rapscallion
Buccaneer
Swashbuckler
Zealot
Sorcerer
Haunted Soul – there is another d6 roll here to decide the type of supernatural entity you might be. Includes vampire, zombie, skeleton. All the classics
Tall Tale – if you get this one, you roll another d6 to determine what sort of tall tale your character is
1-2. Merfolk
3-4. Aquatic Mutant – this gets broken down even further. Lots of potential mutants out there, folks. If I roll this up, I’ll have to roll another d8 to find out which type of mutant I’ll be. Suffice it to state, Anglerfish is an option
5-6. Sentient Animal – this one will involve another d6 roll to decide what animal my pirate is going to be…

Well, I rolled a 3. That means my character is going to be a Buccaneer.

Skilled trackers and survivalists. Expert sharpshooters, especially with muskets and rifles

Buccaneers get a +2 to Presence, a -1 to Agility and a -1 to Spirit.
So that makes my Ability Scores:

Strength: -1
Agility: -2
Presence: +2
Toughness: -2
Spirit: -1

A photo of the two-page spread for the Buccaneer class in the Pirate Borg core book. The illustration on the second page shows a femme person wearing pirate gardb, including a tricorm hat. They have a hook instrad of a left hand and have a spade slung over the right shoulder.

For a Buccaneer, reloading a black powder weapon only takes one round instead of the usual two. I guess the hope is that you are far enough away from the bad guys that you have a round before they kill you or that they don’t have ranged weapons themselves.
I also start with a Musket and 10 + Presence rounds of shot. So that would be 12, then!

Random feature

I am going to now roll a d6 for my class feature. You do this when you first begin and then again each time you gain experience. Each feature can be taken twice, or so it says here in this book.

I rolled a 2! That is the feature, Crack Shot. That reduces the Difficulty Rating (DR) of all ranged attacks by 2. That’s pretty great actually. If taken again, the feature reduces that DR by another 2 points.

Random hit points

A Buccaneer gets to roll a d8 for hit points and add (or, in my case, subtract) my Toughness. Looks like d8 is the most common die for HP across the classes. I rolled a 7 so that leaves me with 5 HP. I am pleasantly surprised!

Random clothing and hat!

Now we’re on to the really important shit.
Buccaneers get to roll a d10 on the clothing table. The options range from Tier 0 rags to Tier 3 conquistador plate!

I rolled a frigging 10!! That’s the conquistador plate! -d6 damage. But it does add 4 to the DR for all agility tests and 2 to all defence test DRs. Also, the text goes out of its way to tell you you’re going to drown if you end up in the water…

Now for Hat! Have to roll a d12 for this.
You can get anything from “none” to “morion” on a d12.
I got a 6, bandanna, which I find acceptably piratical.

Random… Luck

A photo of the Devil's Luck page of the Pirate Borg core book. It shows an upsidedown five-pointed star with text describing the ways you can use a PC's Devil's Luck points in each of the five points and a pirate's skull in the middle. You can tell it belongs to a pirate because of the eyepatch over the left eye. — A photo of the Devil’s Luck page of the Pirate Borg core book. It shows an upsidedown five-pointed star with text describing the ways you can use a PC’s Devil’s Luck points in each of the five points and a pirate’s skull in the middle. You can tell it belongs to a pirate because of the eyepatch over the left eye.

Devil’s Luck is a resource that your character can use in Pirate Borg for the purposes of dealing max damage with an attack, lowering the damage done to you by d6, rerolling any die, neutralising a crit/fumble or lowering a test’s DR by 4. So it works like Omens in Mõrk Borg, basically.

Your class determines what you roll for your starting Devil’s Luck. The Buccaneer gets d2. For my purposes, I plucked the first die out of my dice bag and it turned out to be a glittery, turquoise d6. I rolled a 6! So that means I get 2 Devil’s Luck. Not too shabby, but not too great really, eh?

Random background

The next thing the step by step guide says to do is roll on the tables on pages 55 to 61. The first of those is a d100 table of backgrounds. These are more than just back story. They also determine your starting money and provide you with something significant like items, important NPCs and motivations.

I rolled a 97! That gives my pirate the “victim” background. That’s broad but might give me a spark for my actual backstory. It also gives me 2d6 x10 silver pieces and a haunted past (obvs.)

I rolled a 7 on my 2d6 so that’s 70 silver to begin. Along with the 200 I am likely to get for the conquistador armour, this buccaneer will be laughing all the way to the X.

Random flaw

Page 56 has the Distinctive Flaws table. It’s a d20 table of generally one-word personality traits. Some of these are only subjectively to be considered flaws in my opinion. I rolled a 9 and got “aggressive.” I would imagine that that is considered a good trait for a pirate in many situations. I’ll take it!

Equally, “2. Stubborn,” “6. Coward,” and “17. Paranoid” might all be considered beneficial to people in the pirating business at least some of the time.

Random trademark

I am rolling here for a Physical Trademark, rather than some sort of copyright or patent type deal. That would be a weird thing to include in the character creation section of a pirate game.

Another d20, here we go!
I rolled a 5… shit, I’m missing a hand; hook or claw instead. I’m thinking claw? Might be easier to handle my gun that way. Importantly, there is nothing in here about this causing any sort of mechanical drawback to your character, which I like.

Random idiosyncrasy

The full title of the table on page 58 is:

Idiosyncrasies one might have developed and will certainly never be rid of…Yet that certainly won’t stop you from trying.

It’s another d20 table. I have been using a different die for every single roll and I don’t see a reason to stop that now. It has been serving me semi-well thus far after all.
That’s a 12. Now this result might very well feed into the victim background I rolled up earlier:

You wronged and infamous pirate lord

I am beginning to think that the two are connected. My Buccaneer’s cat, Milly, tore out the throat of Captain Tall John Copper’s parrot, Butch. Milly jumped from the gunwale and swiped the emaciated bird off the shoulder of the famously bad-tempered pirate captain who had had men flayed alive and keel-hauled for less. As some sort of poetic justice, he made my pirate cook and eat poor Milly while the whole crew looked on, and then he chopped my hand off.

Random incidents

A photo of the Unfortunate Incidents & Conditions table from the Pirate Borg core book. It includes a black and white illustration of an overloaded lifeboat on rough seas surrounded by debris and a d20 table beneath that.

This one has an incredibly long full title as well:

Unfortunate incidents & conditions having occurred or developed with or without one’s express consent, desire knowledge or general understanding

Guess what! It’s another d20 table. I rolled a 9 on this table. The result is unfortunate:

Your last crew was killed by undead. They left you alive on purpose

Shit. I hope my new crew doesn’t learn of this…
I am thinking that I made a deal with a necromancer to send his vitality-challenged minions to do in Captain Tall John Copper but they got a bit enthusiastic and did the whole ship instead, leaving me to take a dinghy (call back to the first roll of the character creation process!) to the nearest port and find some new gainful employment.

Random things

The last table in the list stretches right across from page 60 to page 61. It is entitled “Thing of Importance.” It is another d100 table.

I rolled a 79:

A long scar on your face

I think it is only fair that Milly gave me that just before I popped her in the stock pot.

Random name

There is only one thing left to do as part of this process, and that is the all important name. Now there is a table for names on the inside cover of the book so I think I will use that. It is a d12 table with three columns. I shall roll a d12 3 times and combine the names as I see fit:

Roll the first: 7 – Sam(uel) or Butch(er) or Philip
Roll the second: 3 – Robert(s) or Jack or Fernando
Roll the third: 11 – Genny or Isabel(la) or Jean

I imagine the name Butcher came from the Milly incident. It should go in the middle. So, it’s Isabella “Butcher” Fernando. That’s a bloody good pirate name if I do say so myself.

Random conclusion

Not really.
I thoroughly enjoyed the process of making his character. I am used, in more recent games of Mõrk Borg, to using their Skum Birther site to come up with a random character and that can be fun too, although I do think, when you are that far-removed from the process, you don’t have that strong an attachment to them. So, spending the time rolling up this pirate with you, dear reader, has been rewarding and has taught me quite a bit about the game as well. And that, after all, was the whole point of the exercise.

Have you played Pirate Borg, dear reader? Will you be celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day this year? If so, what will you be doing for it?

Back to Troika with Tables and Tales

Whalgravaak’s Warehouse

We’re going back to Troika for another one-shot tonight! I’m very excited for a couple of reasons.
The first is that I finished reading through the Whalgravaak’s Warehouse book last night and it seems like a lot of (potentially very lethal) fun. I don’t think it was necessary to read the whole thing before beginning play, actually, but I was enjoying it so I kept going. That can rarely be said of RPG products so that’s a big tick in the plus column already.
How does it play? Only time, and my players, will tell, dear reader. But I will say, I love the setup of it. I think it has done enough, to lay the groundwork for a session full of strange and dangerous settings, fun and dangerous encounters and weird and dangerous NPCs.

They call it a Location-based adventure and, in the intro they admonish the DM to pay attention to
“the classic tenets of danger, resource management, exploration and player agency.”
This says a lot in just a few words I think. But it neglects to mention that it also involves elements of the classic dungeon crawl and a hex crawl in too!

New Tables and Tales members

The second reason for excitement is the introduction of a couple of new members to our little, local RPG community, Tables and Tales. We have been in existence only since February and after a small initial influx, recruitment died down somewhat. Our aim is to be able to have a few different games going on, in person, that interested players can get involved in and to continue to grow in our relatively small local community.
Although our growth has been modest, it has meant a lot to me, personally, to get to play with lots of people I would otherwise never even have games with. As a blow-in to the place I live, it’s also a great way to get to know people with similar interests and meet up face to face.
So, I love when I am able to share a table with some new tablers. Maybe talers is a better moniker? Hmmm. We’ll have to workshop that one.
I met these new recruits at the recent celebrated birthday party of one of our founding members. One was a friend of hers who has never tried TTRPGs before and one was the bar-tender, who just overheard me nerdily chatting about D&D while standing at the bar.

I think that shows that the RPG nerds are everywhere. If you want to find your people, just announce yourself loudly at the bar.

So it’s an exciting evening ahead. I hope I don’t end up frightening off the newbs…

World Building Part 2

A new approach

First of all, I struggle to get out of my old way of building a campaign world and, even a campaign. I recognised in my last post that there are definite draw-backs to it, but still, I find it hard not to do a whole bunch of preparation. I do still think that a certain amount of prep is advisable but I have been actively trying to limit the amount I do. This doesn’t work as well in some games as others. In D&D, if you don’t do a lot of prep, you might be alright but it is a real pain if you don’t have the right stats to hand when your PCs decide they are going to enter the local gladiatorial games or they want to go ankheg hunting. It slows things down a lot and hurts the overall flow of the session. But it does feel like you are pushing the plot and your PCs in a very particular direction when you do it! Is this an inherent issue with D&D? Probably not just D&D if we’re honest.

In other games, I find it can be freeing and fascinating to see how a session goes when you genuinely have no preconceptions about what is going to happen in it.

Heart

In the game of Heart I am currently running, I used a loosely written adventure that came in the Heart Quickstart Rules. We have just come to the culmination of that adventure and suddenly, the PCs are more-or-less free agents! They have done what a few NPCs have asked of them and more. They followed the breadcrumbs and now, now they are ready to take the training wheels off and head into the Heart to pursue their own dreams and nightmares. They have a couple of other leads but I am looking forwards to leaving the progress up to them from now on. I intend to largely take my hands off the wheel and, instead, rely on their own motivations to provide direction, their own relationships with NPCs to perhaps push them one way or another, even their own ideas for how the new and terrifying delves they go on might look and feel. I want to create our Heart together now that the leash is off.

Im-prompt-u

There are lots of tools out there that you can use to bring a world to life together with your players at the table. I mentioned on this blog before that we had a game of The Quiet Year by Avery Adler a while ago. In it, you get together and make a couple of establishing decisions regarding what sort of community you want to build together and what sort of genre or setting it might be in. After that, you proceed through the seasons of a year after the end of some cataclysm and before the coming of some other terror. The players use a regular deck of cards to draw on prompts from the book. Each prompt gives you an occurrence or an important decision that must be made. This way, you all draw a map together and you develop a community that includes important factions, elements of religion and social orders, abundances and scarcities, fears and loves of the populace.

I was surprised when we finished, by what a fleshed out place we had created in concert. It felt like we had the basis of a fascinating setting to start something else in. I could imagine beginning a more traditional RPG there with the same players. These players would all have had a hand in building the place, the world, its people, their relationships. And wouldn’t they be so much more invested in it?

I mentioned last time that I had made a mistake in the very beginning of the Scatterhome campaign because I had tried to play on the PCs’ devotion to their decimated homeland when they had no experience of it. They couldn’t even picture this diverse paradise island that I had in my mind. But if we had used a method like The Quiet Year to make it, we would have had the fun of playing The Quiet Year, for starters, and also, we would have a place they might have mourned as their characters.

Scale

You can go much smaller of course. In the Blades in the Dark campaign I played in recently, our GM had us use a different game called Clean Spirits to build our hideout. At the start we had to make some decisions about what sort of place it was going to be. We decided on a beached canal boat and then we worked through a series of prompts and exercises to create various parts of it. We each got to claim our own section and also collaborated to make it a place that we treasured as players and characters with its own little mushroom farm and the spirit of its former captain trapped in a bottle. Later, when we were attacked in our hideout, this made the stakes seem so much higher!

Of course, you could go even bigger instead of smaller. I know the game, Microscope, is used to create a whole history for a world that is separated into periods and events. I have no experience with it though so I don’t know how well it works.

At the table

The type of world building I like the most is the collaborative kind, I have decided. One of my players in that Scatterhome game, Tom of the Media Goblin’s Hoard blog wrote an incredible history for their character, who was a Dragonborn. Now, I had never given too much thought to the origins or current situation of Dragonborn in the setting but that was ok, because Tom had been considering it deeply. It was all couched in the back-story of their character, but it added a huge amount to the world straight away, including the fact there was an under-class of Dragonborn within the empire who were raised to be weapons at the command of their human masters, how they were raised from eggs to obey and how some escaped and went on the run. How there were bands of pirates that sometimes took on runaways like their character and how they impacted the archipelago. It was great and, although we didn’t get around to using too much of that in the game itself, the knowledge of it made a big difference to how I thought about the empire and the world as a whole.

Later in the same game, we gained some new players who decided to take their PC races from the D&D setting of Theros so we had a new island nation on our hands then, one that looked a lot like Ancient Greece and contained leonines and satyrs. Once again, their choices made that change to the world happen.

Another new character added a whole new vassal kingdom of elves to the Vitrean empire, for whom social hierarchy and feudal concerns were incredibly important. So much so that they caused a rift between his character and his siblings.

Character backstory is world-building when you leave the details of the world vague enough for players to have free rein when coming up with them. It adds to the shared world and gives them a greater feeling of ownership of it.

I personally love it, though, when someone, simply, confidently states the existence of a particular item, a specific shop or an individual NPC right there at the table. That item is going to help them get through that window, that shop sells the exact thing they are looking for or the NPC has the contact details they need. This sort of flavour is invaluable and often becomes far more than flavour. This happened in Spire a lot because you have to ask your players to make rolls to resolve situations but then leave the details up to them. They made up the dugguerrotypist, Reggie, who worked for the local tabloids and he later became an important bond to them. Same with every aspect of their casino, the Manticore, which quickly filled with important NPCs and locations that were largely player-created. It is the best feeling when these instantly generated details come into play right there and then at the table. It’s like magic.

How do you prefer to world-build, dear reader? Do you do all the work beforehand and let the players loose in it at the table? Do you build a world together first and go and play in it after? Do you let it all just happen at the table?

Old School Essentials – Character Creation

Make an OSE character with me

So, in my last post, I was chatting about the fact that I’ll hopefully be taking part in an Old School Essentials game sometime soon. I thought I would familiarise myself with it by creating a character. Come and join me!

In the Creating a Character section of the OSE Rules Compendium it’s got a step by step guide to rolling up your new character. So I am going to follow that as best I can.

1. Roll Ability Scores

Just 3D6 for each one. No fancy alternative ability score rolling options here! Although there is a subheading here that says the referee might allow you to dump your sub-par character if you have less than 8 in every ability. I should frigging hope so!
Anyway, let’s see what I get:

STR 11
DEX 7
CON 8 (not looking brilliant at this point is it, dear reader?)
INT 11
WIS 13
CHA 14
OK, it ended up not quite as bad as I feared, but this guy ain’t no Conan.

2. Choose a Class

I have to skip ahead a few pages to choose from the full list of classes. So, the available classes in this basic rules compendium that I have are Cleric, Dwarf, Elf, Fighter, Halfling, Magic-User and Thief. You will notice that some of these classes are races/species/bloodlines/ancestries. That’s taken directly from the basic D&D rules and they decided to stick with it. Now, it is important to note that there are ability score minimums for these classes so, I would imagine, with my less than stellar rolls, I’m going to be locked out of several options straight away.

Dwarf: CON 9
Elf: INT 9
Halfling: CON 9

The other classes do not have requirements, technically, but, let’s be honest, a Thief with a Dexterity score of 7 is going to spend a lot of time in prison.

Each class also has a prime requisite, or a most important ability to put it another way. My highest one is Charisma but, guess what? None of these classes have CHA as a prime requisite! No bards here. So, I think it is clear that I will have to go for the Cleric, which is the only one with Wisdom as a prime requisite, and that is my next highest ability.

3. Adjust Ability Scores

In this step, you can raise your prime requisite by one or more points. You do this by lowering another ability by two points for every one you want to give your prime. The only three abilities you can lower in this way are Strength, Intelligence and Wisdom though, and you can’t lower any below 9. Oof. I don’t think I can afford to lower any of those, really, and I couldn’t adjust Wisdom up high enough to achieve better than the +1 modifier that my 13 already gives me. So, forget it.

Speaking of which.

4. Note Ability Score Modifiers

STR 11 No melee modifier and a 2-in-6 chance to Open Doors
DEX 7 -1 to AC, Missile Attacks and Initiative
CON 8 -1 to Hit Points
INT 11 Spoken Languages – Native only, Literate? Yes
WIS 13 +1 to Magic Saves
CHA 14 +1 to NPC Reactions, Max # Retainers – 5 with a loyalty of 8

Also, as my Prime Requisite, Wisdom, is 13, I get +5% increase to all XP awards. Not bad.

5. Note Attack Values

I did not realise they used THAC0 in this game until just this very moment, dear reader. For the, mercifully, uninitiated, THAC0 stands for “To Hit Armour Class 0 (zero)” and it is represented by a number that you need to get on a d20 roll + your attack modifier, in order to hit an enemy with an AC value of 0, where the lower your AC is, the better. So, this was also the way things worked in the olden days of D&D and AD&D, so I guess they are sticking with that too. Okidoke.

So, at 1st level, my poor little Cleric has a THAC0 of 19. Meaning I would need a modified roll of 19 to hit AC 0, 18 to hit and AC of 1, 17 to hit an AC of 2 etc.

6. Note Saving Throws and Class Abilities

I have to say, I am not a big fan of using the word ability for both the character’s basic attributes and the classes’ features, but that’s just nit-picking.

Right, anyway, Saving Throws first

In the handy table you get in your class description it lists them thusly for a 1st level Cleric:

D: 11
W: 12
P: 14
B: 16
S: 15
The key at the bottom of the table indicates what the letters stand for: D: Death/poison, W: Wands, P: Paralysis/petrify, B: Breath attacks, S: Spells/rods/staves. These are, once again, representative of the saving throws from the original D&D. Incredibly specific, aren’t they?

As far as abilities go, Clerics get access to Divine Magic:

Holy Symbol: yup
Deity Disfavour: not exactly an ability but good to know that can happen.
Magical Research: you can research new spells, effects and magic items!
Spell casting: Uh oh. I don’t get any Cleric spells at 1st level. Only 1 1st level spell at 2nd level. This guy is in serious trouble here.
Using Magic Items: can use magic scrolls as long as the spell is a cleric one.

Turning the Undead:

To turn undead, you roll 2D6 and the referee compares the roll against the monster hit dice on a table to see the number affected. It is possible to turn or just fully destroy undead this way, depending on the level of the Cleric.

That’s about it for “abilities” at 1st level.

7. Roll Hit Points

Generously, they tell me, my character has to start with at least one hit point. So, if I roll a 1 or a two, that’s what I will be starting on. Clerics roll 1D6 for this. Here we go!

Hit Points: rolled a 2 so due to my truly dreadful CON score, that’s a 1. Fuck.

Now, there is an option to re-roll 1s or 2s at the referee’s say-so. But my referee ain’t here. Going to just stick to the basic rules and hope I don’t kick any rubbish bins and die.

8. Choose Alignment

Illustration from the Alignment section of the OSE Rules Tome. It depicts a sphinx-like god on the left-hand side, holding a sword out towards a party of adventurers and a bearded, four-armed, muscle-bound god on the right, holding out a spike mace.

OSE don’t have no truck with your good and evil dichotomy. It’s Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic. Given this Cleric’s start in life, physically at a disadvantage, frail and weak prone to sickness, I think he is leaning towards Chaos. He is railing against the world and the laws of man and nature.

Alignment: Chaotic

There is a note in the Alignment section that if the referee does not think you are role-playing your alignment, then they can give you one that better suits your character. Interesting.

9. Note Known Languages

Known Languages: Common, Chaotic (Alignment Language)
Another language, with my intelligence? No way buddy. I think the inclusion of the secret languages of gestures, signs and code words, known by all peoples of a given alignment is kind of cool and appropriate for the genre. Weird though.

10. By Equipment

I get 3D6 x 10 GP to start:

GP: 50 (that was two 1s and a 3 on 3d6. FML)
Going to flip to p42 to check out the Equipment list. I must bear in mind what Clerics can use: any armour and shields but only blunt weapons.

Time to go shopping

Club 3GP (1d4 Dmg)
Leather Armour 20GP (AC 7 (12 this is if you decide to use ascending AC instead of the standard descending))
Holy Symbol 25GP
Sack (Small) 1GP
Torches (6) 1GP
Waterskin 1GP

So, because I have to buy a Holy Symbol, and I really want to have some armour to protect my 1 Hit Point, I cannot even afford rations. I feel as though my Cleric must have taken a vow of poverty.

11. Note Armour Class

The Dex Modifiers table from the OSE Rules Tome. I am using it here to illustrate how odd it is to use negative numbers to indicate that a character's low Dex score can make their AC worse, when using a THAC0 system. — The Dex Modifiers table from the OSE Rules Tome. I am using it here to illustrate how odd it is to use negative numbers to indicate that a character’s low Dex score can make their AC worse, when using a THAC0 system.

Well, my Cleric, broke and pitiful as he is, is also clumsy as fuck. His Dexterity score is 7 and that gives him a -1 to his Armour Class. Now the wording here is extremely confusing. And I don’t know why they did this. So, as we discovered earlier, the lower your AC, the better when you are using THAC0, right? OK, in that case, if you get a negative modifier to your AC, that should be a good thing! But it is not. In the description of the Dexterity Ability Score they write: “a bonus lowers AC, a penalty raises it.” ! Like, what!? Why not just change the table so that a lower DEX score gives a +1 or +2 and a high score gives a -1 or -2?! Baffling. I need to point out that this is not the way they did it in my extremely old and battered copy of the AD&D 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook. As the picture below proves:

Table 2: Dexterity from the AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook. I am using this to show how the AC modifiers in the OSE Dex Modifiers table above should have appeared, in my opinion. — Table 2: Dexterity from the AD&D 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook. I am using this to show how the AC modifiers in the OSE Dex Modifiers table above should have appeared, in my opinion.

Anyway, what this means is that my Cleric, in his leather armour has:

AC: 8

12. Note Level and XP

Pretty straight forward:

Level: 1
XP: 0

13. Name Character

Canon Fodder

That is all.
This disastrous character creation post has been brought to you by Old School Essentials and very bad luck.

Anyone else got a truly desperate OSE character to share?

Player vs GM

Not what you think

I have an easier time writing about the games I am GMing or the ones I am going to GM in the future, compared to those I play in. I think the reasons for this are pretty obvious, right? I have an a behind-the-scenes view of the games I GM, I have read widely on the games, maybe I have home-brewed the world, I probably have a better handle on the rules than most others at the table. As well as that, I set up the game, I send out the invites, I normally host the game, so, it makes sense.

As for the ones I play in, I am still invested in them, or at least in my character, I have usually made some effort with a backstory and personality and I want them to experience cool stuff in the game world with a bunch of other weirdos. There are probably a couple of my characters that I could spend an entire post discussing (and probably will, now that I think about it) but not before they are even made.

Anyway, that’s why I am taking the last few games from my Games I want to Play this Year list and pop them all into this one post.

Old School Essentials – campaign I think

My friend, Isaac of Black Sword Hack fame has been working his way steadily through all the OSE books he could get his hands on. He’s almost ready to kick off that campaign! Very exciting! It will be my fist time playing this system and having been a part of Isaac’s Black Sword Hack game for the last couple of years, I know how he likes to construct a grubby, fun, weird campaign world for us to muck around in.

I am not all that familiar with the ruleset of OSE, but from what I understand, it took the rules from Basic D&D and some of those from AD&D and took out all the stuff that people tended to ignore. I know it does have a race-as-class idea that is similar to the way DCC does it but, overall, it gives me much more old school D&D vibes than DCC does.

I might just go and roll up a few little guys using the OSE rules to get an idea of how it works and get in the mood for it.

Heart: The City Beneath – Open Hearth campaign

This game technically already started; I am achieving my goals, dear reader! We have only had a session 0 in which I created my aelfir Incarnadine, Forgotten-Frost-Remembered. He is called to the Heart in search of adventure (also he had to flee the City Above due to his crass and embarrassing obsession with money, not to mention his astronomical levels of debt.) He and his fellow delvers are on a mission to help a haven that we created together using the rules from Sanctum, a sourcebook for Heart that is meant for this very purpose. The haven has no name as it was deleted by a Deadwalker some time earlier. The aim is to build it up while pursuing more selfish goals before we all blow up in a conclusion of zenith ability fuelled glory.

All credit to our GM, Mike, for having the presence of mind and session 0 nous to figure out our group’s haven-based goal and get us to create it together in under an hour.

Can’t wait to start getting weird in the Heart.

Call of Cthulhu – Masks of Nyarlathotep – campaign

This one is probably a long-shot. This is actually an ongoing campaign but has been on semi-permanent hiatus since, I want to say 2022? Not sure. Anyway, this is another of Isaac’s campaigns. It was one of those things, playing with adults can mean that sometimes, real life stuff takes precedence and there’s not much you can do about it. Since then we got into other games and other campaigns and Masks has been on the back burner for a long time. Every time we get to chatting about Call of Cthulhu, we end up saying we would love to get this classic campaign started up again.

Last we left our intrepid investigators (I was playing a gangland boss from London named Grant Mitchell) they had faced down other worldly terrors in the basement of an occult shop and proved the innocence of a man falsely accused of murder. They also uncovered some evidence and information that drew them to various other places around the world in their pursuit of answers to the question of who was responsible for the murder of their good friend, Jackson Elias. Anyway, they had concluded their snooping in New York and were on a slow boat to London. It has been a very slow boat at this stage…

Magus, Pike and Drum – Playtest

It’s Isaac again! This time with an early playtest for a game that he is very much still developing. I don’t want to go into any detail here but I think I can say at least that it is a semi-historical setting and it will be using the Resistance system, created for Spire. Can’t wait to try it out. What I have read of the character classes and abilities so far makes it sound very fun and interesting to play.

OK, that about wraps it up for today. See you tomorrow with more from the Dice Pool.

Turbo Tokens

Failure is failure

Nobody wants to fail, right? We frown on failure. We take it personally, even when it is no fault of our own. It is hard not to feel that way. It might even keep you awake some nights, remembering how you fucked up that one thing and someone blamed you for your failure, even though it was largely a matter of chance. It sucks, but here’s the thing, your brain will never let you forget that one time you messed up. You will almost certainly never make the same mistake again if it’s something you can avoid, right? You will avoid similar situations, you will learn to do the thing properly or you will let someone qualified do it.

But this is not the case in D&D and other similar games. If you roll a 12 and add your +3 bonus and you miss that guy with his 16 AC, that’s it. It’s over. There is nothing you can learn except that you better roll higher next time or hit him with Magic Missile. This feels so much worse than regular failure. This is failure with no upside. There is not even a fun narrative element to it, really, unless you shoehorn one in.

So, how do you fix this? I think the answer is pretty simple actually, and it was brought to my attention by Aabriya Iyengar and Brennan Lee Mulligan.

Adding interest to failure

In the latest season of Dimension 20, Never Stop Blowing Up, the gang are playing people stuck in an 80s action movie. They are not playing D&D this time. Instead they are using a version of the Kids on Bikes system that they have previously hacked for Mentopolis and Misfits and Magic.

I really enjoy the system and it suits the seasons they use it in really well. In particular, the exploding dice element of the mechanics makes a lot of sense for a show called Never Stop Blowing Up and it makes for some brilliant cast reactions when it happens.

But the mechanic I am interested in here is the Turbo Tokens they receive when they fail at an action. In the base game, they are called Adversity Tokens and they represent the lessons learned from failure and contribute to real swings of momentum during high-stress situations.

Kids on dragons

So, I am going to try it out in D&D. Not sure what name I will give the tokens yet. I might just start with Adversity Tokens and see what the players end up calling them. The idea I have is to use them the same way as they do in Kids on Bikes, basically. They will earn one token each time they fail at something, whether it’s an attack roll or a stealth check or an effort to wow the crowd in the inn with their musical genius. That way, failure won’t feel quite so bad and they will be able to spend them later to effect other rolls. I think a +/- 1 modifier for each token spent is appropriate. They will be allowed to spend them to add to or subtract from any roll happening in the situation they are involved in. So they could add a bonus to their own attack roll, help out a fellow PC when the chips are down or subtract from an enemy’s saving throw or attack roll for instance. I foresee some interesting behaviours when it comes to the saving and spending of these. I am thinking I might need to cap the number of tokens a player can have at 10, although I doubt they’ll be able to save up that many of them really.

What do you think, dear reader? Have you ever tried doing something like this in D&D. If so, how did it go?

DIE RPG – One-shot

Comic, not comical

The DIE RPG was developed by Kieron Gillen, writer of the comic of the same name. I really loved the comic book, mainly because the premise spoke to me personally. The premise of the comic is that a bunch of young friends were brought together by the one guy who wants to GM a new game for them. He presents each of them with a special die, one d4, one d6, one d8, one d10, one d12 and one d20 for himself. In the course of play they find them selves transported to the game world. They are trapped there for months and come back changed, having left their GM friend behind.
Cut to decades later, they are all grown, with families and traumas and problems. They are all drawn back into the world of DIE for various reasons and the comic basically goes from there, following their adventures to the metatextual unreality of this fantasy realm trying to find their friend and a way home again, or not. Meanwhile, they all deal with a melange of emotional issues that lead to some very high drama and high-stakes decisions.
It is pretty fraught most of the time, very relatable to many, and despite my sub-heading it is funny sometimes.

DIE RPG

So Kieron Gillen got together with one of my favourite game publishers, Rowan Rook and Decard, to make the DIE RPG. I followed the process and remember checking out some of the early beta material. As a game, it is working to do what the comic did but at the table with your friends. You have to create a character, who is the player of the game, as well as the character they play, so there is a sort of Inceptionesque quality to it, which is dreamy and cool. Now, your player has to come loaded with various real-world problems and worries for you to work through in the game within the game as well.

I have not read much of the fully finished game, although it has spent a fair bit of time on my shelf. I recently discovered, while reading the Burn After Running blog, that it is ideal for one-shots so that’s why I really want to try to bring it to the table soon. I want to unearth some traumas for my player’s players and express them through my player’s player’s characters.

Also, please take a moment to appreciate the beauty of the products. Yum.

Wildsea – Campaign

Give your players a home

It’s pretty difficult to give your journeying adventurers a particular place they need to look after. They are always schlepping off to the next dungeon or haunted house or wizard’s tower or whatever. There are ways around this. In one D&D campaign that we finished last year, the PC’s hometown was plonked right on top of a sort of nexus of worlds, an ancient tower, buried beneath a hill, containing dozens of portals to many different planes and other prime material locations. So, even when they popped off to Sigil or Mechanus or the Astral Plane or wherever, they were always going home eventually. Indeed, the focus of that campaign was to save their little island.

But I often find it gratifying to make the home they care about quite mobile. In the first of several interconnected campaigns, the PCs stole and adopted their own “turtling” vessel (like a whaling vessel but for giant turtles. You get the idea.) as the setting was a vast archipelago they needed the transport. Of course they took it and made it their home. Not much of their adventures revolved around that boat but I liked the idea that they had somewhere to return to, no matter where their travels took them.

A-thing-to-fuck-with

It was also a-thing-to-fuck-with. I never got the chance to seriously fuck with that boat since the campaign has been on a semi-permanent hiatus for a few years, but more recently, I got an opportunity to hassle their casino. I mean, this was a different set of characters but some of the same players and it was in Spire, not D&D. The Ministry of Our Hidden Mistress bequeathed to our “heroes” the poisoned chalice of a casino called the Manticore in the Silver Quarter. They put a lot of effort into it, hired entertainment and a succession of unlucky security guards. It did not end well for the Manticore or the staff. Threats to it made for real motivation and the fact that it was a public place meant their enemies could just walk in. That was a dream. Great stuff. But it veers wide of the mobile home to care about topic.

The most recent version of the mobile home in one of my campaigns is the Cadabra, a mirror-hulled squid ship in our Spelljammer game. It’s got a ready-made crew of spirits and a checkered past itself. They have had this ship since session 3 and they are now at the point where they are repairing it and upgrading it and even adding more boats! They’re going to have a frikkin’ armada! This is great because boats are a money-pit. They answer the question, “what are my characters going to do with all that gold?” As well as the “how shall I fuck with them?” question.

And I know the feeling of home-ownership within a game. In the Black Sword Hack game I’m in, we have a flying boat, called a slater. We are unreasonably paranoid about this thing getting stolen or burnt or otherwise becoming unusable by our characters. We park it miles from the locations we are trying to get to so no-one sees it. We always leave NPCs to guard it. It is our home and it’s where we store all our opium and it’s our greatest asset. I’ll be damned if any asshole wizard is going to take it from us!

A home in the canopy

A photo of a page from my copy of The Wildsea by Felix Isaac's. It shows a picture of a ship from the game.

So Wildsea is a good fit for me and my group. In it, the players make characters who crew a ship that plies the canopy of a world-blanketing forest under the power of chainsaws! Below the leafy waves, the poisonous substance, crezzerin makes descending into it just as dangerous as diving into watery sea. The characters are made up of a wild variety of bloodlines like the beings made up of a colony of spiders, cactus folk, spirits inhabiting the ruins of ship-parts and regular old humans. It is possible to start a campaign of Wildsea where the PCs do not have a ship, but I don’t think I would. In fact, the designer of the game, Felix Isaacs, recently suggested that the best way to start is by making your ship first, before your characters even! That way, the thinking goes, you can imagine them in place , posing upon the prow or hanging from the gunwale or climbing the mast. Also, the classes in this game equate to posts on a ship so it makes even more sense when you take that into account. I really like this idea and will probably ask my players to take this approach in session 0.

A photo of a picture of a Mesmer, one of the posts from the Wildsea book.

There is no doubt that this is a weird setting. In some ways, it should act like any other setting where you get around on a vehicle of some sort across a trackless expanse. There are plenty of sci-fi games where you have a spaceship to build and look after. Death in Space is like that. Then, of course, I have given a few examples in D&D above already. But this is pretty alien. Even the concept of the post-apocalypse that is so impossibly verdant that sentient life has had to scrabble for a foothold amongst all the greenery is unique and bold. Add to that the oddness of the playable bloodlines and the really setting-specific hazards and you would be hard-pressed to compare Wildsea usefully to any other single game on the market.

A photo of a picture an Ardent character from The Wildsea book.

On top of that, the mechanics are really interesting. It is known as the Wild Words Engine

From Wildsea, Chapter 2, Mechanics:
“It’s low on crunch, focusing instead on letting narrative, character and setting develop during play.”

Isaacs has said that, despite the similarity to certain other game systems, he came up with a lot of the rules independently or was influenced more by video games than other RPGs. The basic dice-rolling mechanic is very Blades in the Dark and he has, to be fair, indicated that he got it from that game. So, you build a dice pool to roll and take the highest roll (or two rolls in the case of a Twist). But there are elements such as the Twist, which happens when you roll doubles and adds a special little something to the effects of the roll, that feel new and fun.

Finally, it feels like the GM (or Firefly) and the players get to create the world together as they play, making a place with little magic or lots of it, with high technology levels or very low, with strictly faith based societies or entirely atheist ones. This is very appealing to me.

How about you? Have you had a chance to play Wildsea? If so, what were your favourite aspects of it?