The Frozen Reaches

Last night we completed The Frozen Reaches, the first book of the Warpstorm Trilogy for the Rogue Trader RPG.  It took us 9 sessions, and while I don’t think we ever entirely came to terms with the system ‘crunch’, it was overall a fun time.  What follows are my reflections on this scenario and do contain some spoilers. 

The setup for this scenario is set out pretty clearly in the blurb:

“The Frozen Reaches throws the Explorers before an impending Ork invasion as they work to save the planet of Damaris... Use all your charm and influence to prepare a planet’s defences as the Ork fleets close in on Damaris. Fight the xenos in space aboard the bridge of your starship, or meet the bloody Orks in brutal hand-to-hand combat on the ground! The choices you make ensure success, or guarantee defeat. Choose wisely, and reap the rewards of your victory.”

So the explorers have a job in three acts, organise and prepare the planet, fight the siege, then take the fight to the Orks to end the threat once and for all.  It’s a nice idea - to have the characters directly involved in a massive global siege, able to spread their influence to different parts of the fight to tip the balance.  This is achieved through a series of structured missions, and a bespoke system for resolving each aspect of the siege, modified by the actions of the characters.  That seems pretty cool, and a different approach to the Star Trek style episodes of Lure of the Expanse, promising to really invest the characters in the richness and complexity of a planet.  However, in my opinion the book fails to adequately deliver on its potential.

This set-up becomes a victim of its own ambition.  The authors clearly wanted to have the explorer’s ship, and crew, have a major impact on the scenario – so a planet with a population of 3 Billion is described as having a military strength of something in the order of 150,000 including some tanks, a moon defence base, several system ships.  That means the explorers crew can make a meaningful impact if deployed to man the city walls, but it does stretch credulity a little far (at least for my group).  The moon defence base, in orbit around the planet, also seems to have some fairly obvious drawbacks in terms of being a meaningful obstacle to preventing invasion to a specific part of the planet.

In addition several other Rogue Traders are described as having responded to the planet’s distress call, and as their ships are reasonably powerful, it does seem unlikely that the explorers would actually be anything but bit players in the forthcoming events.  However, the characters are expected to discover the motives of the other Traders, and merge them into an impromptu coalition. So the scenario seeks to make the planet worth saving in terms of future profit for the explorers, but at the same time arranges events so that a Rogue Trader and their ship could significantly influence the outcome of the battle, and this comes at the expense of some in-game realism.

This could have been addressed if further details were provided – perhaps the Imperial Levy has recently been particularly heavy and stripped the planet of soldiers (picking up on the thread of simmering ambitions for independence presented elsewhere in the scenario)?  Perhaps there is an evacuation already underway, and the Imperial fleet is en-route, but the Explorers have a critical role to play in the interim.  Unfortunately there is simply not enough detail provided to facilitate this, and the GM is left to find their own meaning in the void.

In short; Frozen Reaches feels like a rushed product.  It weighs in at just 70 pages, and would have been so much stronger if it had spent more time detailing the city, the major players in it, and what happens within the city as the invasion rages (providing an additional suite of social challenges for the explorers).  A layered approach like this would have allowed a GM to run each part in as much, or as little, depth as appropriate for their group.  Nowhere is the rushed nature of this product more clearly evidenced than in the mysterious relic contained in a stasis casket, which the Bishop begs the characters to safeguard as the siege reaches its zenith.  The nature of the Relic is also apparently a secret from the GM:

“Just what really resides in the stasis casket will be revealed in future instalments of the Warpstorm trilogy…”

To conclude; The Frozen Reaches provides a fairly innovative and interesting set-up for the characters, allowing them to engage with a specific planet, and play a significant role in an epic Ork siege.  However, the GM is not furnished with enough detail to really bring any particular aspect of the scenario to life outside a narrow railroad of expected PC actions, and accordingly a large creative load is put on the GM to help this scenario deliver on its vision.  We had fun playing this scenario, but some characters (like the Navigator) were significantly disadvantaged in their potential to be useful, and the final conclusion, with outside aid coming from the Eldar, feels like an unrewarding way to repay the efforts of the characters, and their persistence with the relentlessness of the Ork attack.

Games within Games

As we make our way through The Frozen Reaches for Rogue Trader we have used the starship combat rules a little more frequently than in our last outing with this system.  These rules are interesting, as they exist as a completely separate subset to the core rules governing characters and their actions, and even the rules governing life on a starship not involved in combat.  To play these rules in the way the designers intended you need to use a grid and tokens or models to reflect the ships.  Characters then take specific roles – either direct (moving the ship through piloting rolls, and firing the weapons) or indirect – (boosting crew morale, making repairs etc.).  All of this is intended to combine into a dramatic and balanced battle which plays out like a movie, with each character getting a cut-shot of their activities during the action.

 

So does it work?  I’m a big believer in having a system which reflects the core function of the game – and for me Rogue Trader is a game about exploration and commerce, with a little diplomacy and action thrown in for good measure.  Accordingly I think that the system should reflect this, and to its credit, it does in many places by providing abstract rules for things like crew population and morale, establishing a colony, determining your cargo etc.  Shifting from this activity to a game of grid squares and tables - effectively a mini-wargame -  seems to jar with the rest of what this game is trying to achieve, not to mention being extremely time consuming.

 

My real gripe with these rules, however, is how difficult they are to reference.  A tabletop wargame (or boardgame for that matter) needs to have rules that are extremely easy to reference, unambiguous, and will ideally include examples which reference all the key activities of that game.  The Rogue Trader rules by contrast are written into the long paragraphs of text that are typical of the rest of the book.  This makes finding key rules time consuming, and even then, some of the wording is ambiguous.

 

Perhaps the greatest irony of this is that Games Workshop (whose IP is licensed in Rogue trader) are established market leaders in wargaming, and Fantasy Flight Games (who published Rogue Trader) are established market leaders in boardgaming.  So if ever there was a product which should have robust and well considered rules which optimise space combat, it should be a marriage between these formidable companies – like Rogue Trader.

 

Instead it feels like the space combat rules for Rogue Trader were hastily bolted onto the core book, as were the combat rules, and equipment – all taken from an assembly line of 40k RPG components.  A feeling reinforced by the GM screen (which for Rogue Trader includes only combat rule summaries – no skill summaries, exploration or space combat rules are in evidence).  You might argue that this situation was the result of the speed to bring this product to market – the core rules are a sizable product after all.  But Fantasy Flight has subsequently published many expansion books for Rogue Trader over several years, and had ample opportunity to revise and improve these rules (in publications like Battlefleet Koronus for example). Instead they use additional books to layer yet more complexity to an already ill-fitting system.

 

In fairness, we have enjoyed the game to this point, and the space combat rules certainly add a high level of interest to proceedings, forcing the characters to agree a joint course of action under some degree of pressure.   But as with many aspects of this game, it leaves me to wonder what might have been...

 

Can you think of any other examples of games within roleplaying games?

Back Into Space - The Warpstorm Trilogy begins

Following Chaosium's announcement that the publication of the 7th edition rules for Call of Cthulhu has been further delayed, I discussed with my group whether we should wait until the finished rules are published, and run Horror on the Orient Express in the way it is intended, or continue to play using the quickstart rules, or even go back to 6th Edition.  The consensus was to wait, so in the interim we have returned to a campaign which has been on my list of things I want to run for some time: The Warpstorm Trilogy for Rogue Trader.

"In Frozen Reaches, the Explorers find themselves facing an impending Ork invasion and working to save the planet of Damaris. But first, they will need to organize squabbling factions and establish a united front. This is no easy task, as powerful forces are working against them from the shadows...  The exciting adventure continues in The Citadel of Skulls and culminates in Fallen Sun. Do you have what it takes to brave the dangers of a warpstorm?"

Re-entry to the Rogue Trader system was a little rocky.  I had forgotten just how much complexity exists in such an old school system.  While not radically different from other Old School style games, Rogue Trader requires players to reference multiple sections of the core rules, and if they want to utilise all the options the system provides, reference specific sections in multiple books across the range.

On top of that, fairly routine actions (such as travel through the Warp, acquiring new items etc.) require a 3-5 stage process, each with a discrete set of mechanics, tests and modifiers, to say nothing of combat in both space and interpersonally.  It led me to wonder - what is the point of all this complexity?  What is this game doing (intentionally or otherwise)?

My conclusion is that all these mechanics and details provide a veneer of balance, and serve to effectively camouflage the degree of GM fiat that occurs in most traditional games.  To an extent the mini-outcomes these micro-systems produce can be used as a creative crutch by the GM, fleshing out details to add to descriptions and providing some colour.  However, as these systems also require the GM to specify difficulty, other variables and then situate the outcome in a meaningful context, they do not check GM fiat in any meaningful way.

Thus far, the mechanical complexity of Rogue Trader has been tiresome, convoluted, and just a little bit wonderful.

Structure Your Fun

Is it necessary for RPG scenarios and adventures to have a pre-established structure?  And more importantly, how does having a structure help a GM both read and run a game?,

 

Scenarios with a compartmentalised structure are - in my opinion - much easier to read, assess, compare and then run.  When looking for a scenario to run a short notice, my preference is to skim through the pages – looking for what seem like great scenes, then backtracking to check that the detail of how the scenes link seems to be coherent and workable for my players.  Then I skip to the end and check the finale, to see if it seems suitably memorable and pitched appropriately.  Passing those tests, I then read the scenario and make notes about how I’ll run it.  When the text runs together this assessment is much harder, and I need to make many more notes in order to run the game.

When I created EPOCH I set a set structure for scenarios - this was a layout that I felt had a dual purpose, both to provide a coherent story, while providing a clear vision for how the game would unfold, and to be usable when facilitating the game - allowing GMs to access information with ease.  This structure was based entirely on my own preferences, although I assumed the utility would be apparent to all.

 

I was wrong.  When I worked with other authors, I found that few of them submitted scenarios in any form that resembled the structure I had established for EPOCH scenarios.  Indeed most were in sharp contrast the rigorous divisions I had established.  

 

But what about other games?  Here are some examples from scenario collections, selected at random from my bookshelf.

 

Example 1: Call of Cthulhu (Terrors From Beyond)

In the past I have found scenarios for Call of Cthulhu to be a leading benchmark of quality in scenario structure.  They (almost uniformly) follow a similar structure, setting out a Keeper Background (which usually serves as a background and synopsis) followed by a section on 'Involving the Investigators' or 'Investigator background' which establishes the role of the characters in the scenario. Statistics for NPCs and monsters are usually found in the back (although sometimes on the body of the text as well).  This is pretty good, but the coherence and layout of the main body of each scenario can vary greatly.

 

Example 2: Trail of Cthulhu (Out of Space)

Expands a little on the traditional CoC format by including sections titled  'Hook' (how the characters are involved) 'The Awful/Horrible Truth' basically the same as a Keeper background section, then 'The Spine' (a paragraph by paragraph summary of the scenario scenes) then some variance between scenarios but generally a section titled 'Scenes' which contains the bulk of the scenario.  I think the addition of 'The Spine' is a significant improvement on the CoC formula.

 

Example 3: The Laundry (Black Bag Jobs)

No real coherent uniformity beyond a 'Mission overview' section which is usually a page or two into the scenario text, following a discussion of background elements.  Player handouts are at the end of each scenario. Thankfully most of the paragraphs are small and easy to digest.

 

Example 4: Rogue Trader (Edge of the Abyss)

No coherent uniformity beyond an appendix containing adversary statistics at the end of the book.  Ironically scenario two in the collection systematically establishes the setting, objectives and rewards for a series of encounters the characters can have providing a small oasis of order (and I found this was one of the easiest sections to facilitate when I actually ran this game). 

 

Example 5: Paranoia XP (Crash Priority)

No coherent uniformity although most scenarios have a 'Mission overview' section somewhere close to the beginning. 

 

My conclusion: few RPGs I examined imposed a systematic and consistent structure on scenarios written for their games.  I think this makes it more difficult for GMs to rapidly assess information and use it in gameplay, and increases the variance of the experience for players.  The ability of the GM to remember, prepare or bookmark key sections becomes much more significant and it is more likely that key details of the scenario are omitted, or changed on the fly by the GM.

Four Campaigns I’d Like to Run

We’ve been playing a lot of EPOCH recently, which has been terrific fun, but too much single-session madness can sometimes set you hankering for the meaty substance of a longer campaign.  There are many games on my shelf that I’ve been looking at wistfully – planning to run one day when time permits.  Here’s my shortlist:

 

1. Call of Cthulhu 7^th ed.: Horror on the Orient Express

A Chaosium classic, I played through parts of this campaign and ran parts of this campaign years later, but I’ve yet to give it a thorough and solid run.  An evocative campaign with many classic horror moments, I plan to run this campaign with 7^th edition next year, when both that kickstarter and the new Orient Express Kickstarter are delivered.  I’m particularly interested in seeing how the writers have addressed some of the more ‘clunky’ elements of this campaign, and what material they’ve added to the new prequel scenarios.

 

2. Rogue Trader: The Warpstorm Trilogy

After running Lure of the Expanse I had a hankering for another, longer Rogue Trader campaign.  The Warpstorm Trilogy remains high on my ‘to be run’ shelf, although I am a little concerned about how many Rogue Trader books have been published since we finished Lure of the Expanse, and what new or extended rules might now exist, and have to be ferreted out, deciphered and interpreted.  As always with Rogue Trader, the amount of preparation needed to stay ahead of the curve seems fairly high, as each sub-element of the game has different rules and tables.

 

3. WFRP 3^rd Edition: The Enemy Within

This version of the game has vexed me for some time.  I really like the idea of this game, and some of the elements of the latest edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay seem really neat.  My initial playtest of this edition was not a great success, but that probably had something to do with just how many choices are involved in character creation.  I’d love to give it another try and this campaign seems like a good option.  I ran the original Enemy Within Campaign, and this product seems to have little resemblance to that, but I still think it will offer an entertaining and accessible epic fantasy campaign, if only we can get through character creation.

 

4. Mutants and Masterminds 3^rd Edition

Epic Villains and Vigilantes campaigns were an important part of my formative gaming years.  Ever since I’ve thought it would be great to have an ongoing supers campaign with a decent amount of crunch.  My recent supers campaigns have had a much more narrative style – and while these have been great, I’d really like to run a game which used a more detailed system, and have players that were engaged with their characters on that level.  I think it would add a deeper level to the important narrative aspects.  M&M 3rd Edition seems like it might offer an interesting entry to this style of campaign.

Return to the Cold

There hasn’t been a great deal of activity here in recent weeks.  Mostly this is because I’m in the middle of trying to revise EPOCH, my horror roleplaying game, and add some adventures.  Posted below is a teaser extract of the blurb and cover:

"EPOCH is the game of character-driven horror.  At its heart is the goal of delivering a genuinely scary experience in a single game session.  EPOCH delivers this by identifying, and cutting through, conventional barriers to achieving strong player engagement, placing the focus squarely on character and supporting this with a simple, yet evocative, system.

 

There will be blood…  EPOCH is a game of survival horror, and much like the movies, not all of the characters can expect to survive until the final scene.  Unlike many other games, EPOCH players have complete control over the fate of their characters.  They may know the rules of the horror genre, but who becomes a victim, and how, is different every time.

There will be drama…  EPOCH rewards interesting character play with increased chances of character survival.  Players are not just the protagonists, but also act as the audience who hold the fate of all the characters in their hands.  Using a simple, flexible, character creation method, complications and flashbacks, players shape their back story to reveal interesting new facts and surprising twists.

There will be a reckoning… EPOCH assumes a high level of character competence, streamlining skills and abilities, and placing the focus back on the characters’ story and the personal impact of the horror.  But victory is never assured, evil may prevail, and the true cost of the horror is never fully revealed until the final credits roll."

Thanks to Doug for an amazing job with the cover art.

In other game news, I finished running Lure of the Expanse with a suitably epic ending.  As with the rest of Lure, the ending has grand ambition and scope, but is not backed up with a lot of detail.  I think the campaign could easily have been 2-3 times longer and really done a great job of each of the really ambitious and fascinating elements. As it is, it feels like the outline of a truly great campaign, but ultimately fails to deliver on its promise..

This week I hope to run a one-off game of Flying Coffins for my Cthulhu group this week - I've long throught WWI aviators would make a great cthulhu adventure, and even wrote a plot outline of an adventure myself, but have yet to write it up:

Next, in time for the return of winter, it’s a journey Beyond the Mountains of Madness.  I’m using a toned down version of my pulp house rules, which allow the players a finite number of skill re-rolls.  I’ve also drawn on the Pillars of Sanity concept from Trail of Cthulhu to have the players crate several anchors for each character – unfulfilled ambitions or links to the world, which can restore a limited amount of sanity during the campaign with appropriate play.

Going Rogue

I’ve recently been running Lure of the Expanse for Rogue Trader, and I have to say, it’s been a really fun time. I’ve been wanting to run a science-fiction campaign for some time, after playing in Doug’s Dark Heresy game for Fright Night Splinter of Corruption, and Rogue Trader is the first game that really appealed to me as a premise. Rogue Trader seems to do a lot of things well, I’ve already written about how it formalises the individual vs group paradigm in a way that works with the current published material, so I thought I might expand my thoughts on why Rogue Trader is currently hitting the spot.

First, the core system has a fair bit of crunch. Rogue Trader is a slightly tweaked version of the Dark Heresy system, which, in turn is a slightly tweaked version of the core WFRP 2nd ed. System. What this means is that there are a lot of pages in the book devoted to character paths, and a lot devoted to equipment. Trying to read this cold is a bit of a hard task unless you just love this kind of detailed abstraction. Personally, I don’t, and I struggle to prioritise this reading over my scenario prep and broader reading for the setting, which leave me feeling a little behind the curve on the characters. Not a big problem, games like D&D 4th ed. showed that you can compartmentalise characters from the GM tools, if you do this in a consistent and balanced way.

Unfortunately Rogue Trader lacks the finesse and completeness of 4th ed. D&D in this regard, leaving the players sometimes confused and working to integrate several sections of rules. This is no worse than many old-school games of this ilk, but much like the games on which Rogue Trader has been based, a casual player will spend a fair chunk of the game flicking through the rules – so you’d better have multiple rulebooks if you don’t want to slow the game right down.

Next, combat. Again, this is a fairly traditional fare, which is fairly reminiscent of D&D 3.5. However, unlike 3.5 which, more or less, required you to use a map or tactical layout, you can get by in small scale Rogue Trader encounters without such tools. This is mostly due to the ‘exploding’ dice mechanic (like in WFRP) which can unexpectedly truncate combat, and the presence of a combat specialist in most Rogue Trader’s retinues. Unfortunately, if you want to run a larger combats you really do need some kind of tactical materials, plus, as with WFRP in the GM chair there are inevitably a large number of special abilities and traits to look up (and, not being familiar with the character section works against you here) which adds to the prep time for a given game.

I should have said the above section refers to personal combat, because in Rogue Trader starship combat is also something you can do. So far it seems fairly cool, although we have only lightly touched on it to date.

That brings me to the neat stuff about Rogue Trader. First the themes: exploration and profit. Powerful ideas which go to the heart of many games, especially games like D&D. By making the quest for plunder explicit, then abstracting the actual mechanic to a generic profit factor, there is a lot of scope for excellent roleplay and creative approaches, without being bogged down in endless tables with prices etc. The exploration theme is strong as well. As a Rogue Trader you are a privateer, usually operating in the Expanse, a lawless and wild part of space with a full range of science fiction possibilities – from hostile aliens, to haunted ships, to planets which seem like paradise but with a deadly secret, and pretty much everything in-between. Balance this against the traditional 40K setting (mankind besieged by the forces of chaos, cult of the god-emperor, scientific dark-age, xenophobia etc.) and you get a nifty setting, with some reasonable boundaries on the characters, but also a good amount of scope for whatever you care to do.

The neat mechanical abstraction mechanic carries through to starship management. Crew morale and population have rating out of 100, and most of the management challenges simply draw on this system. Have a nasty virus outbreak? No problem, lose 1D5% of your crew population. Too long in the warp?  Minus 1D5% crew morale.  Quell a mutiny with violence? Sure thing, the crew morale might not drop by much, but you’ll lose more of your crew, abstracting pitched battles, barricades and hundreds or even thousands of combatants. It’s simple, and allows for some great roleplaying, without getting bogged down in detail.

Then there are the achievement points and endeavours.  A neat, abstract, way to construct a scenario, with the group collectively earning achievement points, which they 'spend' to complete the current endeavour.  Get enough points, you've completed the task.  This system runs parallel to traditional experience points for characters.  I like this compartmentalisation, but really the achievement points, as they are, have little relevence to the players.  It might have been better to allow them to cash these in to gain additional fate points, perhaps change a narrative detail, automatically suceed in a test that effects the whole ship, or prevent a villain from spending their fate points.

So far, every session in the campaign has delivered a different kind of experience, based largely on shifting the spotlight to different characters at key moments, while also forcing group decision making – which makes for a fairly cohesive experience. The challenges and environments have been diverse, while also barely scraping the surface of the sci-fi genre. The adventure material does suffer a little from ambitious scope of the setting.  The Lure of the Expanse details no less than half a dozen planets and other more exotic locales, like Footfall (think a sci-fi version of Tortuga), a space station and trading port built into an asteroid - yet, understandably there are only 5-6 pages detailing each of these locales, meaning that much improvisation is required if the players decide to explore a little more broadly.  The game would be enhanced by more releases which detail planets, systems and sectors and contain side adventures, like was done for WFRP 2e, but then I'm not sure how well these sold. 

I'd also like to see more adventures.  Lure is great, and I like it enough I want to return and run The Warpstorm Trilogy after Beyond the Mountains of Madness later this year, but more adventures rather than more rules and options books would be nice.  The game also suffers from fairly standard Fantasy Flight 40K RPG issues - rubbish index in every book, poorly thought out GM screen (although nicely made) and a range of proofing errors.  On the plus side there are several free adventures, complete with mini-system summary you can download, and I imagine the material in Rogue Trader ports fairly easily into other 40K RPG game systems.  Overall, a really strong game, and one I'm glad I decided to purchase.

Oh, and make sure you check out Andy's excellent novelisation of a scene from last weeks game 'The Bull and the Wasp'.

Gearing Up

I haven’t had much to post about, as I didn’t actually do any gaming in December, and most of the things I post about come out of gaming experiences. But for the New Year I plan to run more Rogue Trader, finishing “Lure of the Expanse” and possibly doing the “Warpstorm Adventure Trilogy”. The epic Call of Cthulhu campaign for 2012 is looking to be “Beyond the Mountains of Madness” following the popular vote amongst players, probably using a cut down version of my pulp rules for a little extra character longevity on the ice.

Meanwhile Kapcon preparation is also on the agenda for this month – I’m running “Sundown” and the most recent Esoterrorist release “Love of Money” then finishing up with “Kapcon Summer Slam” – so it’ll be cowboys, spooks and wrestlers for me this year.  Kapcon needs more games, so if you've got some game, drop them a line and join the fun!

Finally – more interesting than you'd think– Luke talks about balls.

Individual vs Collective

When running campaigns, there is often a tension between individual character spotlight time, and the needs of a group to work together and accomplish the broader strokes of the plot. In the simple terms of a traditional game this tension often reflects the difficulty between one player dominating the focus of the GM while others sit idle, and all the players interacting and being involved (to a greater or lesser extent).

As a player I’m not a fan of sitting idle – I do enjoy watching others play, but if the periods of inactivity are too pronounced, then I’ll start thinking of things I’d rather be doing. As a consequence I try and avoid too much downtime for people who play in my games, while trying to balance this against the need to maintain an element of realism for individual characters.

In the two campaigns I’m currently running, I recently noted two, fairly extreme, completely divergent examples.

Rogue Trader
In this game the system actually proscribes the formation of the group. There is one character - a Rogue Trader - who is commander of the spaceship, and who holds a warrant to trade, plunder and profit. The other characters are the executive officers, specialists who each have unique functions to support these aims. The published adventures for Rogue Trader are an interesting mix of challenges which allow each of these characters to shine, while maintaining the overall structure – with the specified aim of all characters seeking to increase the Rogue Trader’s Profit (which they can use to obtain goods and services). It’s an odd mix of capitalism in space, crossed with Pirates of the Caribbean.

The game has gone very well so far – although it’s still early days (4 sessions including an intro adventure with pre-generated characters). The players seem to have embraced their unique roles and advocate, in character, for their individual preferences, effectively accepting the construct of the setup. They must manage their crew and ship, and mutiny remains an ever-present challenge (as the crew number 20,000 NPC’s, the executive officers are perceived as the collective authority – regardless of their individual differences). The play, thus far, may have been influenced by the very colourful nature of the setting (while a little clichéd the pre-written material has been a lot of fun) and their previous player relationships, having spent several months together playing my pulp version of Masks of Nyarlathotep, but it seems that there is a sustainable basis for a solid campaign arc with this arrangement.

Reverie
This is my own superhero campaign which has run for around 12 sessions. After having experienced setbacks I discussed previously in this genre, with divergent character play detracting from collective play in Canberra Mayhem, I had tried to structure a background which bonded the characters together through their superpowers, with the proviso that as the characters had limited recollection of the previous arrangements, they were effectively ‘different people’ now and thus free to take whatever action they wished. I also foreshadowed this, and allowed a degree of influence over the shape of this historical background through using active ‘flashback’ scenes for individuals.

While this game has been fun, it has highlighted the fact that few of the players were willing to sacrifice their individual autonomy to any significant extent in exchange for a collective arrangement. The characters sometimes united to fight common enemies, but this was often not an easy arrangement, and as soon as the danger has passed they return to their own individual concerns. This was most evident in the last session, where the players had agreed out-of-character before the game that they would spend some time in-character discussing their future arrangements. Accordingly, I made sure that there were no major threats to detract from this dicusssion, and no urgent matters which would require the group to split up.

However, what eventuated was a series of unfortunate events which led one character to kill another, and two others to travel overseas. While dramatic, and perhaps appropriate to the style of the game, it seems likey that further play will be fragmentary and continue to involve a significant degree of player downtime.

Conclusions
Obviously two instances do not make a rule – but what I conclude from these examples, is that the balance between individual and group play should ideally be established early, and transparently, as attempting to introduce it later is likely to cause friction between the players perception of the character as an individual, and their willingness to sacrifice a degree of autonomy for the collective.

Equally, it's possible that some players simply prefer a specific style of interaction with a game, and you must carefully consider this when forming a group, or when having having initial discussions about the shape and arranagments of a campaign.

State of Play

What have I been up to? Here's a quick update:

Running: Masks of Nyarlathotep – Pulp Edition (Call of Cthulhu/BRP)
This campaign just reached the half way stage after 8 sessions and it’s been a blast. The fate and fortune points system I introduced have really worked well. The fortune points (which allow skill re-rolls) allow the players to really make sure they have all the leads they need, and add a new and interesting tactical dimension to Cthulhu combat, while still not spoiling the simple and straightforward vibe that’s the hallmark of BRP rules. Fate points have let the characters tackle the campaign head-on and really embrace a pulp style of play, which I think is necessary for such an old-school campaign. So far I think I’ve claimed at least 6 fate points, which would otherwise be 6 dead characters. I’ve also found the BRP rules I’ve added to Cthulhu (rumoured to be part of the next edition) have further empowered the players, while also adding some neat narrative details. I’m looking forward to seeing how the next half of the campaign plays out!

Running: Reverie (BASH Ultimate Edition)
This supers mini-series is in its infancy, but the first episode was huge fun, and I’m confident in sustaining this level of enjoyment. I find running supers games both fun and rewarding, and I’ve honed my style of origins stories to a good level which makes adding a strong character focus an implicit element of the game. I’ve developed quite a lot of plot for the game, but have been careful to thread this right through character backgrounds and will work hard to keep the focus on character driven drama which the group seems to enjoy. The stakes for me are higher with this game because it features a lot more of my own ideas then the pre-generated scenarios I usually run, so I usually feel both more nervous beforehand, and feel a greater sense of reward if things go well.

Playing: Gotham High (PDQ)
This has been an interesting experience and I took it on to try something different. I’m not a huge fan of the setting or system, but developing the characters has been entertaining, and the other players have been great fun.

Not Mentioned: I’ve temporarily halted running Kingsport Tales to focus on running Masks in a streamlined way. I’d really like to get back to Kingsport Tales soon, but I’m also enjoying the change of pace in Masks, so I guess it’s a case of not having cake and being able to eat it too. I also have suspended my involvement in the long-running D&D 4e campaign I had been playing due to ‘creative differences’ with the GM.

Looking Ahead: I’d like to run games at both Confusion and Fright Night, although so far I’m not sure what I’ll choose to run. Rogue Trader is also on my list of games I’d like to try running.

One Year Old Today

Today TPK turns one!

Over the last 12 months 45 posts have been made here including reviews of games, actual play reports, ‘con reports, promoting published materials and my own musings on the nature of gaming, and how it can be improved. A total of 178 comments have been made to challenge, support, edify or inform these posts. Thanks to everyone who has been a part of the discussion, or even just idly skimmed the material.

The most viewed post? Oddly, One Night as A SuperVillain – Part 2, weighing in at 147 views, with Kapcon 20 - Part 2 the runner up with 107 views. In total so far TPK has had around 3,500 page views.

My favourite posts have been those about the nature of gaming, particularly in a 'con setting:

Ante Up

Out of the Box

The Art of the Pitch
Player Activation

The GM Toolkit

So looking ahead, what for the next 12 months? Well it’d be a brave person to predict this blog will continue at the same pace, but my gaming goals for the next year are:

- Continue to run my Kingsport Tales campaign.
- Run Masks of Nyarlathotep – Pulp Edition.
- Run a Rogue Trader mini-series.
- Run a Superhero mini-series.
- Attend upcoming Wellington tabletop roleplaying conventions.
- Write and publish EPOCH
- Write and submit a scenario for Fear Itself
- Write and submit another scenario for ICONS
- Write and submit a monograph or scenario for Call of Cthulhu

What about you?

September-a-thon

This week was a busy week in gaming for me:

Monday: Playtest of Splinter of Corruption. This game reminded me just how much I love some aspects of sci-fi horror. It’s a really solid scenario, with some truly great gimmicks to help reinforce the tension. I played with a crew of relative strangers (bar one) and I think Doug got a really thorough test. There are some things to be tweaked and tidied, but overall it should be great for Fright Night. It inspired me enough to pull out my copy of Rogue Trader and think about whether I might be able to squeeze in another Kapcon game.

Tuesday: D&D Campaign. My character’s troublemaking has finally led to some consequences for the group and we spent the first half of the session treading carefully around some strong views (both in and out-of-character) about how the characters should be interacting with the environment. Then, to our genuine surprise, a fairly powerful creature showed up and tried to kill us. A pretty epic fight ensued.

Wednesday: Kapcon LARP meeting.

Thursday: The Burning Stars. A new Call of Cthulhu adventure from Terrors of Beyond with a creepy premise which involves the investigators waking in a Haiti military hospital with no memories. Unfortunately the pre-generated characters seem too light on detail to really let the players understand the initial setup and buy-in; flashbacks might have helped. In my view there also seems to be more railroading than is necessary for a good scenario. I am assured that all will be revealed in the conclusion, so reserve final judgement for now.