A Fistful of Games

Closing My Fistful

2008-06-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

With the last of the summaries from phase one of our Burning Empires game posted, this blog is closing down. Using this as a place to post session reports has been a fun experiment, but I'm consolidating my online presence over at the Gameslinger Enterprises website. I'm going to continue to post about my Actual Play experiences over on the Gameslinger blog, but with a slightly different slant. I'll be focusing more on what I learned from my experiences and less on the facts of play. (I've already been doing this for a while with my board game session reports, but I'm going to be applying it to my RPG reports as well.) So, if you're one of the four people following this, thanks for reading, and come on over to the new digs!

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Phase 1 Wrapup

2008-06-19T10:47:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I don't have a recording of the final session of phase one to give a good summary from, so I'll jot down what I remember. The Vaylen, sensing victory was near, chose Gambit, so as to prevent Flak. The Humans, realizing this was probably their last maneuver of the phase, chose Inundate, so as to do as much damage to the Vaylen as possible.

The pirates staged a daring rate on the island of the mediums. Jabin warned Jael about this ahead of time, giving Miriam a chance to ask Tay to bug out. The Archocotare, having gotten wind of this through Levi, ordered Michael back to the Temple so that he couldn't participate. Jael forced Levi to admit that there was a prophecy concerning "one from the Outer World, coming at a time of great crisis, who would be tested by fire" and that Levi believed Jael to be the subject of the prophecy. Michael's ship reported "technical difficulties" en route and diverted to the island. A huge Firefight ensued, with Michael's Anvil supplementing Miriam's Hammer and Jael's security forces. In the end, Tay himself disabled the Pirate Queen with a shot from his stet gun; her forces were smashed and the survivors scattered. Miriam made good on her word to let Ahab go, and he and his brother Jabin escaped in the pirate flagship. Goliath also survived to lead a ragtag band of Mukhadish freedom fighters.

In the maneuver roll, both sides reduced each other to zero, thanks to lots of dice, Artha, and call-ons. We decided that both sides got part of what they wanted: the quarantine was reduced to normal levels, and the pirates were eliminated as a faction for phase two.

The pirate threat ended, peace descended on the planet. For a time...

Riding That Train

2008-06-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

I had my first chance to try out the Ticket To Ride Card Game this weekend, as Gwen and I picked it up from a local shop with some gift cards friends had given us. (We also grabbed the new version of Acquire, which, sadly, I have never played.) My snap judgment based on a single two-player game: the mechanism are very familiar but the feel of the game is quite different. Yes, TTR has always been a set-collecting game. However, the connection element in the board game seems to be an important part of why I enjoy it, and that's not at all present in the card game. The memory component also adds to the foreign feeling. I'll play it again, but I suspect it won't be an evergreen title in my collection.

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 10

2008-06-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

25 March 2008

Session Summary

Both sides choose to Take Action

Roy's Color: Jael's police forces raid several suspected pirate-allied merchants.

Ted's Color: Michael's forces plant evidence on several of his enemies before the raids.

Christina's Interstitial: Miriam and her retinue visit one of the Mystes to read the omens about the pirates. She casts the sacrifice into the fire and it spits fire back at her. "The Wheel spins out of control. Fire blazes everywhere. Those would ride this Wheel: beware."

Roy's Interstitial: Jael sends Elisha to investigate the ancestor cult. Elisha expresses his pleasure that Jael has learned to accept its existence, and he agrees to help look for "outside influences" on the cult.

Ted's Building: Michael talks Benjamin, an administrative dregus, about the placement of "spiritual advisers" with nobles. Benjamin reveals that the Archcotare has been maneuvering these chaplains, perhaps for his own plans.

Benjamin: "Don't take this personally, but thank the Wheel you're not the Archcotare."

Christina's Interstitial: Miriam goes to visit Tay on Medium Island, where she ceremonially installs him as the local governor. After all the pomp and circumstance, they discuss the current pirate situation. He is a bit drunk, and his guard is down. "Jael has always served you faithfully. Tell me, do you think of her more as a husband or a daughter?" Miriam avoids answering. Tay talks about how Hagar is a figurehead, inspiring the imaginations of the pirates. Tay explains that he doesn't share their ideology. Miriam is relieved to hear this. They agree that they're stuck with each other.

Ted's Color: Miriam flies the grav sled back, though no one really knows it.

Roy's Conflict: Elisha has been on the temple island for some time when he notices Mukhadish symbols (like hobo signs) that reveal a secret way into the complex to speak with their own ancestors. He finds a secret chamber with primitive paintings of Medium Island. Elizabeth enters from the water, and Elisha hides but eventually reveals himself and confronts her. She is surprised to see him, and asks forcefully why he is here. Elisha backs down and tells her why he has come. She reveals that how the Mukhadish use this chamber and some about her own background.

He pushes her about her history and she reveals that her son is prominent among the pirates. Elisha comes to see the Mukhadish as spritial kin of the Kerrn.

Ted's Building: Michael accompanies Erik to meet Leah at one of her clan's residences. Makeda greets them and tries to cover for Michael's lack of ceremony. While Erik and Leah get to know each other, Michael assures Makeda that he has no intention of arranging the death of her eldest daughter to advance his own family's interests. She see that she had underestimated him. Michael wants to know if he can trust Makeda, and she questions whether or not he is capable of trust. Makeda says that she does not want be his enemy. "I think we're too much alike to be good friends, but I think we can come to some understanding." They exchange priority access codes so as to keep the lines of communication open.

Roy's Interstitial: Jael debriefs Elisha about his mission. Jael is annoyed by Elisha's new-found respect for the Mukhadish.

Paul's Conflict: A would-be kidnapper breaks into Makeda's residence to make off with Leah. Unfortunately, Michael is there and foils the attempt.

Miriam's Interstitial: After speaking with her mother, Miriam talks with Elizabeth about the bad omens. Miriam warns Elizabeth about Jael's intentions towards the cult. Elizabeth tells her about Elisha's visit. Miriam thinks that Jael's problem is that she is not married. Elizabeth wonders if it would help if Jael could speak to her ancestors.

Paul's Interstitial: Hagar throws the kidnapper out of the ship and into the water.

End of Maneuver

Jael's Investigative Logic: 5d, 2s
and
Hagar's Smuggling: 8d; help from Jabin and Jonas, 4s

Vaylen 11, Humans 5

Things we learned (fiction)

You purify yourself with smoke before visiting the Mystes.

The Mystes are very parallel to the ancestor cult.

The Kerrn relax in mists.

Most Anvil and Hammer Lords have personal chaplains, some of which are officially appointed.

The temple complex is on an island in the bay near the capital. The complex is built into the shear cliffs facing out to sea. On the side facing the city, there is a huge patchwork of shops on the approach to the temple.

Elizabeth wears a ceremonial amulet that is used when speaking for the Mukhadish ancestors.

Elisha is gendered male. He's like Jael's brother.

Elisha's regalia includes a funny hat.

Part of Serena's personality has bled over into Elizabeth, especially with regards to family.

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 9

2008-06-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

18 March 2008

Session Summary

The Humans choose Take Action against the Vaylen
The Vaylen choose Take Action against the Humans

Paul's Interstitial: Cerelia and Makeda suggest striking economically at the pirates by removing the quarantine on various items. These regulations were put in place after the last confrontation with the Vaylen, and the Merchant League has been agitating for changes for years. Miriam agrees, but asks Cerelia to follow up with Jael about the security aspects. Afterward, Cerelia suggests to Miriam that she talk with Pitr. He hasn't said anything, but she can tell he's upset. Miriam thanks her and says that she will.

Ted's Interstitial: Michael calls Lord Omri to talk about how the pirates continue to vex Omri, especially without Nimrod. Michael leaks word of Makeda's proposal to Omri. Omri points out that the league has been clamoring for this for years, but that the nobles have been dragging their feet. With Miriam's support, though, it should pass. Omri notes that this sort of insider information could be very profitable, and Michael hints that his information is not free, as he's looking for a way to supply his secret forces with military tech. Omri smiles and says that they'll be in touch. Afterwards, Michael makes a call to another noble...

Christina's Interstitial: In the secure room, Miriam and Jael talk "off the record." She asks, "Jael, why is Cerelia coming to me complaining about how her brother is being treated?" Jael admits he's been cutting Pitr out. "I did not tell you about this because it is not fair to talk about your husband without more proof, but certain signs are present that Pitr might be compromised." Miriam has a hard time believing this and grins her teeth when Jael mentions that Michael was also in a position to know. Jael expresses his surprise and disgust that Pitr would take it so personally. Miriam thanks Jael for doing her dirty work, but she insists that Jael bring him back in from the cold. Jael assents and apologizes. "Bring it too me sooner next time," Miriam asks.

Jael's Building: Jael ask Michael to put her in touch with a propagandist. They work on pro-quarantine posters. "Use only licensed prostitutes." "A brain-scan a year keeps the world safe from fear." "Vigilance. Inspection. Customs. VICtory!" "The Worm Is Always Watching"

Paul's Building (Hagar): Hagar, Jabin, and Goliath track down a master smuggler, Jonas, to fill the gap left by Ahab's capture. When Jabin is informed that there will be no rescue mounted to recover Ahab, he is surprised and shocked.

Michael's Interstitial: In Michael's private house on the church ground, Tay says his goodbyes before heading off to oversee the island of the mediums. ("I suppose being shipped off is better than being married to Leah.") Michael asks why he did all this. Tay says he wanted be respected for who he was.

Miriam's Interstitial: As the breakfast plates are cleared, Miriam and Michael discuss their sons. Miriam jokes about marrying Tay off to Jael. "Choosing marriages is women's work." "Men don't seem to have much sense in terms of getting getting into marriages, one way or another." Miriam asks Michael to talk to Erik about his impending marriage to Leah. Michael agrees it's a good match, but he's worried about giving Makeda a hold over him. Miriam wants Erik to want this.

Miriam: "He's good boy."
Michael: "He does what his mother tells him."
Miriam: "Like I said."

The two of them both are made slightly uncomfortable by the similarity between this marriage and their own. Michael suggests sending them on an off-world honeymoon.

Miriam: "Michael, how are you of all people telling me they should go off world?"
The glass shatters in his hand.
Michael:"I'm sorry. I can plot all I want, but sometimes things hit a little close to home."

Paul's Conflict: Miriam confronts Pitr about the situation with Jael

Miriam: "Do you have anything to report? You haven't been reporting to Jael, I hear."
Pitr: "I don't have anything to say to Jael."

Miriam: "Surveillance does things to people."

Pitr: "How many husbands before me will you have? Michael, Avram, now her?"

Pitr questions whether or not he's supposed to be here, and he admits he's been thinking of joining the Church.

Miriam: "I run a bureaucracy Pitr. Sometimes things get... lost. Sometimes I'm as confined in iron as you are. You need to help me figure out what the best place for you is."

Miriam: "There's something you can do for me. Michael's gathering a secret army of Mukhadish. Jael doesn't know about it."

His sense of purpose re-invigored, Pitr agrees to stay.

Pitr: "Am I your loyal subject."
Miriam: "And my husband."
Miriam: "Always."

He smiles as he leaves.

Jael's Interstitial: Jael asks Nimrod how someone like Lord Omri is affected by the quarantine. Nimrod says Omri breeds Mukhadish slaves for profit, but asks why Jael's is suddenly interested in him. Jael says he's more interested in the nobles as a class.

Nimrod explains how Miriam uses the ancestor cult to her advantage.

They briefly discuss the altercation with Pitr, and Nimrod blames himself for not anticipating it.

Michael's Interstitial: Michael passes Nimrod in the hall on the way to see Jael. Michael brings rumors of changes in the quarantine level, and Jael lets Michael know she's heard about his scheming (though not about the details). Michael explains the economic relationship between the quarantine and the pirates. Jael objects to these ideas, but Michael insists that unless structural changes are made, pirates will continue to exist, even if the current pirates are smashed. Both come to the conclusion that perhaps co-opting them is the best plan.

Michael objects to the portrayal of the Mukhadish in Jael's posters. "If they were like you, immune to the worm?" "If Kerrn had wings, they would be birds."

Jael: "Hope is a noble thing, so long as you do not let it blind you to what is."

Christina's Conflict: Following his torture, Ahab is brought to see Miriam and Jael in the throne room. He is treated suspiciously well.

Miriam offers him a chance to start over somewhere else, by leading pirates to desert. At first he resists, but Hagar's betrayal convinces him that he will never succeed her. A broken man, he believes that the Forged Lord will not betray him in this.

Jael's Building: Jael escorts Ahab back to his cell and pumps him for information on the way, trying to establish connections between various merchants and the pirates. Ahab sees through the ploy and reveals nothing. "Don't pretend you have my best interests at heart. She doesn't and neither do you.

Paul's Interstitial (Daniel): Levi calls Jael and patches in a signal from Jabin. Jabin offers Hagar in exchange for the release of Ahab, his brother. Jael does not agree immediately but does agree to keep talking.

Michael's Building: Michael goes to talk with Erik about his arranged marriage. Erik confesses that most of his unhappiness comes from the surprise of it all. "I thought Tay would be first." Michael raises the possibility of the couple spending some time off-world after the wedding. Erik asks Michael to introduce him to Leah. He agrees.

Later he follows up with Uriel about the state of her research. "Damn these Mukhadish! If only they worked how the books said." "It will certainly make a name for you if you succeed." She asks about Tay and the rest of the family. Later she calls up an old-friend, an off-worlder stentor named Nicolai.

End of Maneuver

Miriam's Rhetoric: help from Jael's IL: 1s
and
Hagar's Smuggling: help from Jabin and Jonas: 4s

Vaylen: 13, Humans 9

Epilogue

Jabin spys on Hagar and Jonas's planning.

Things we learned (fiction)

Cerelia arranged the marriage between Miriam and Pitr.

Avram is very fond of his younger sister, Leah.

Not all merchants are nobles.

Ahab had a distinquished Hammer career before he dead-ended and became a pirate.

Erik is a bit of womanizer.

Braaaaaaains

2008-05-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure my actual exposure to zombie movies is limited to parodies and homages (i.e. Shaun of the Dead and Fido). But that's enough for me to enjoy Last Night on Earth, because that's what the game is.

Jeff Tidball turned me on to it with his comments on GamePlayWright, but it's been between print runs for a while. This weekend we were up in Monterey for a wedding, and I noticed the hotel we were staying it was right across the street from store called The Game Habitat. We arrived too early to check in, so when we decided to wander around downtown for a while, I suggested we check the store out. As luck would have it, they'd just gotten a copy in stock. I valiantly held off purchasing for several hours, but like any zombie movie protagonist, I eventually succumbed to the inevitable.

Since buying it on Saturday, I've gotten in two plays of it, and I'm quite pleased with my purchase. I'm going to talk more about it on the show, but thus far my opinion is that it fixes most of the problems I have with Arkham Horror and Betrayal at House on the Hill. It reminds me most, actually, of Habro's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I love to an irrational extent. Expect to see more of this one.

Games at Mark's, May Edition

2008-05-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

My boardgaming life has been a bit spare recently, but one of Mark's regular events (which I've written about before) was last weekend. We showed up a little late, and our timing was just wrong enough that pretty much everyone there was in the middle of a game. Fortunately, someone (whose name I sadly missed) broke out a copy of Mr. Jack (with the expansion), which turned out to be just right given the time we had. We played a pair of games, and it cemented my conclusion that Mr. Jack, like Fury of Dracula, is clearly balanced for a different group of gamers than the ones I normally play with. Jack and Dracula just have too hard a time. Still, it's light and fairly quick, and the expansion does switch things up a bit.

As the other games broke up, I rounded up some players to try the copy of Age of Gods I'd cracked open. I'd only read the rules that morning, but what I'd seen had intrigued me. I'm going to talk about this one at more length on an upcoming episode of Have Games, Will Travel, but suffice it to say that I was pleasantly surprised and I would gladly play it again.

I skipped out on the next round of games to chat with folks, but before Gwen and I headed home we gave Roy's copy of Infernal Contraption a try. I'll admit, I wasn't particularly inclined to like it, and I didn't. I have the same feeling about it that I do about Fluxx: I appreciate the cleverness of the mechanisms and the interesting emergent behavior, but I get the same enjoyment out of watching it that I do out of playing it.

So not a huge number of games played, but two of them were new to me, and with PaulCon VI coming up next month, I'm sure I'll get more in soon.

In a Wicked Age, Session 2

2008-05-19T11:44:00.000-07:00

13 May 2008

Oracle: God-kings of War

The very first time a certain young solider, impressed against his will and wanting nothing more than to return to his home, has killed.
The human servant of a mighty and unspeakable demiurge.
A demon of rage and avarice, secret power behing a great tyrant's rule.
The site of a pitched battle, ground churned and stinking, and the widows mourning there.

Protagonists

Ashur, the young solider, later to become Ashur Bey (played by Roy)

Best Interests: For me to win reknown by killing Hadir Eil; for me to win Leili's forgiveness
Particular Strength: A Father's Blessing (for Myself/Self-Protection, Potent)

Leili, the widow of the man killed by Ashur, a noblewoman in the retinue of the tyrant (played by Christina)

Best Interests: For my husband's death to be avenged; for Omar to guard over my husband forever

Omar, the immortal gravedigger, bound to this place of death for eternity (played by Ted)

Best Interests: For death in this place to end; for me to be consumed by the demiurge; for Leili to rule over the kingdom
Particular Strength: Family Locket (with Love/Action, Consequential (for Myself/Self-Preservation))

Other characters

Nur-Ayya, the great tyrant, whose life has been extended beyond mortal span by the demon

Best Interests: For me to marry Leili

Isar, a demon of rage and avarice

Best Interest: For Ashur to depose the tyrant

Hadir Eil, a fierce warrior and general, the servant of a mighty and unspeakable demiurge

Best Interest: For me to kill the gravedigger
Particular Strength: The sword Kismet (with Violence/Action, Consquential (for Myself/Self-Protection))

How it went down

At dawn on the first day of of a terrible battle, a frightened Ashur pulls his sword from the guts of the first man he has killed. Omar creeps him out, buries the body, and takes the head.

Meanwhile, Nur-Ayya and Leili (a noblewoman in his retinue) discuss the battle from the safety of the tents. Nur-Ayya is an ancient man, kept alive and moving only by Isar's dark magic. His desire for Leili is obvious.

That night, Omar takes the head to Leili, but she refuses to look at it or acknowledge her husband's death. She pleads that it was not his time.

Ashur is dragged before Isar, who tells him that Nur-Ayya can only be slain by a man who has been blessed by his father and killed his first man within the last three days. Isar promises him great wealth if he does it and great suffering on his family if he doesn't.

Omar encounters Hadir Eil on the battlefield. Hadir says that all this has happened before and will happen again, unless things are unmade by chaos. He wishes to kill Omar, but cannot unless Omar takes up a blade. Omar does not, and Hadir Eil rides away.

Leili summons a soldier to help find her husband's body. The solider happens to be Ashur, and he realizes who he has killed. As they seek out the grave site, they see Hadir Eil riding across the field, but they avoid him and find the grave site. As Ashur digs it up, the corpse sits upright and points accusingly at him. He confesses to Leili that he killed her husband but says that he turned traitor first. It was only after he stabbed one of Ashur's fellows that Ashur killed him. Ashur flees into the night.

Omar arrives and tries to keep Leili from unbraiding her hair for mourning. He reminds her that all of her husbands have died here.

Ashur tries to poison Nur-Ayya. He is caught and dragged before the tyrant, where he begs for his life. Nur-Ayya is not surprised, as he killed the previous tyrant at Isar's request. He spares Ashur but banishes him from his presence until the three days have passed.

Intrigued by Hadir Eil's words, Omar seeks out Isar. The demon draws back in fear at both Omar's presence and the mention of Hadir Eil's god. He tries to cast Omar from the tent, but he fails, and Omar forces him to reveal how to contact the demiurge.

The next day, having learned of Leili's husband's death, Nur-Ayya comes to her tent to press his suit. He reveals Isar's hand in the death, thus alleviating some of Leili's fears. She agreed to marry him after her day of mourning is over.

Omar is visited a second time by Hadir Eil, who offers him the sword Kismet with which to fight. Omar again refuses.

During the battle, Ashur finds himself fighting against Hadir Eil. He is struck full in the chest with a blow that gashes his armor and leaves a severe welt but nothing more.

Leili sends a servant to offer Ashur a great ruby ring if he will do a favor for her, to test if Ashur is possessed by the avaricious spirit of Isar. Ashur refuses the ring, telling the messenger that he already owes Leili a blood debt.

Omar uses his sorcery to subtly turn the tide against Nur-Ayya's forces, but Isar's magic and the thought of contacting the demiurge are too much for him, and he withdraws to make preparations.

That night, Hadir Eil and Nur-Ayya parley, as is required by custom. They do not come to terms, but during the truce, Nur-Ayya and Leili are married, much to Isar's surprise and displeasure.

As Hadir Eil returns to his camp, a shirtless Ashur stops his retinue and begs a boon. He asks to borrow Kismet to slay Isar. Hadir Eil agrees, on the condition that after it is done, Ashur slay anyone he sees that day. Ashur consents and takes the sword.

Ashur finds Omar digging a huge grave asks Omar to guide him, blindfolded, back to Hadir Eil after he has killed Isar. Omar agrees. Ashur then sends word to Leili to tell the demon that he can be found at the foot of the great wizened tree on the edge of the battlefield, thus discharging his blood debt to her. When the messenger finds her, she is in the demon's tent.

On the last day, the armies clash for a final time. A furious Isar finds Ashur at the tree, where Ashur cleaves him in twain with the rune-covered sword. Omar appears from nowhere and pushes Ashur into an open grave, commanding him to "be as one dead." Omar then harness the dying demon's power to fuel his ritual to summon the demiurge. While he does this, Leili arrives and starts to dig up Ashur to make sure his head is still attached. Omar stops him from seeing her, gives her the sword, and asks her to help kill Hadir Eil as part of the ritual. She assents. Near the end of the battle, Hadir Eil rides up and finds Omar holding his sword. He embraces Omar as his brother; Omar takes advantage of this to bind them magically together. As they move to fight, Omar tosses the sword to Leili; Hadir Eil tries to call it to him, but he fails and Leili strikes down him down. As he lies in the dirt, she stabs him and Omar rips out his heart. The ritual complete, the battlefield is flooded with the presence of the demiurge. Omar is consumed by it, each of the millions of buried bodies springs up into a dark twisted tree, and the very name of the place is erased from the mind of humanity. Never again will a battle be fought here.

In the aftermath, Ashur finds the sword Kismet and is hailed as a conquering hero. Hadir Eil's forces are dispersed. Nur-Ayya, without the power of the demon to sustain him, dies, and Leili becomes ruler of his kingdom.

We Owe

Jila
Ashur
Leili

In a Wicked Age, Session 1

2008-05-13T13:56:00.001-07:00

6 May 2006

Oracle: Blood & Sex

A siren-ghoul, who entices the amorous into deadly peril.
An oasis of sweet water in a barren wilderness, haunted by the shadows of some vast atrocity committed centuries ago.
A slayer of monsters, heralded and lauded.
The death of the primary heir of a local noblewoman.

Protagonists

Jila, the siren-ghoul (played by Ted)
- Best Interests: For the slayer to fall in love with the mother; for the lover to join me in undeath.
- Particular Strength: Unearthly Beauty (with Love/Maneuvering, Far-Reaching)
Asanu, the dead heir (played by Christina)
- Best Interests: For my lover to join me in death; for my mother not to name a new heir.
- Particular Strength: Touch of Time (with Love/Maneuvering, Consequential (with Love/Action))
Ashur Bey, the slayer of monsters (played by Roy)
- Best Interests: For the lover to fall in love with me; for the head of the siren-ghoul to hang from my belt.
- Particular Strength: The sword Kismet (with Violence/Action, Consequential (for Myself/Self-Protection))

Other characters

Soraya, the noblewoman
- Best Interests: For the slayer to destroy the shadows; for the ghoul to face justice for the death of my son.
Merzhad, the lover of the dead heir
- Best Interest: For me to be named heir
The shadows
- Best Interest: To absorb the dead heir
- Particular Strength: Bloodlust (with Violence/Action, Consequential (Directly/Action))

How it went down

Ashur Bey arrives at Soraya's palace in the barren wilderness. She instructs him to destroy the shadows that plague the oasis and that caused the death of her son, Asanu. Ashur Bey seeks out his fiancee Merzhad to learn the details of Asanu's death.

Merzhad, meanwhile, is visited by the ghost of Asanu, who professes his undying love for her. Ashur Bey arrives, and Merzhad is torn between her dead lover and the very much alive Ashur Bey. Asanu succeeds in making Ashur Bey look foolish, and he leaves to investigate the oasis.

Later, Merzhad discusses Asanu's reappearance while bathing with her best friend, Jila, who is disguised in human form. Jila suggests that if Merzhad can recover Asanu's signet ring, Soraya will be forced to acknowledge Merzhad's claim as heir to the kingdom. The two of them sneak out of the palace and head for the oasis. Asanu disguises himself as a feather on Merzhad's breast and comes along.

Ashur Bey has already arrived at the oasis and given the shadows a whipping. This doesn't stop them from whipping up a sandstorm to separate Asanu (in feather form) from Merzhad. The feather catches on a reed near the edge of the oasis, and when Jila and Merzhad arrives, Ashur Bey helps them locate Asanu's body. A struggle ensues, as the shadows attempt to animate the corpse to choke Ashur Bey. In the confusion, Jila reveals her true form, Merzhad stabs her with Ashur Bey's sword, and Jila kisses Merzhad. The shadows are defeated, and Asanu's spirit reinhabits his decaying body. Merzhad rejects both Jila and Asanu.

Soraya arrives with a small force of men. Asanu convinces her not to name an heir, and Jila makes her fall in love with Ashur Bey, who becomes prince consort.

Some months later, after a failed revolt, Merzhad lies dying in her prison cell. Jila and Asanu come to her, and she accepts their offer to join them in undeath.

After Soraya's death, no heir is named, and the kingdom is reclaimed by the harsh desert sands...

We Owe

Ashur Bey
Jila
Asanu

A Weekend In Sacramento

2008-05-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

I drove up to Sacramento last weekend to do the photo shoot for A Penny For My Thoughts, and while I was there, I managed get in a little bit of gaming. Ryan and I broke out BattleLore and managed to get in two Lore adventures, Crisis in Avignon and Assaulting the Tourelles. These were my first games with a full War Council and with a customizable one, and I really like the flavor that the latter option adds to the game. I also realized that I'm willing to deal with BattleLore's setup time for a six or more banner game. Otherwise, I'd rather play Memoir '44. Still, my love for the Commands and Colors system goes deep.

On the roleplaying side, I got roped into producing a pilot episode of Primetime Adventures for Ryan, Jerry, and James. The idea of cop show in the vein of The Shield or The Wire was floated, but we settled instead on Air Crew, which was a cross between Airplane! and The Love Boat (with a good helping of the Airport movies as well). I was the only one at the table with prior PTA experience, but that didn't matter much. We had a few problems with disagreements about how long the episode should be and what the tone of the game was, but everyone picked up the Fan Mail mechanic pretty quickly, and it ended up being a lot of fun. And as Ryan said, "That was the sort of game we wouldn't have considered if we hadn't been playing PTA."

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 8

2008-04-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

18 March 2008

Session Summary

The Humans choose Flak
The Vaylen choose Take Action against the Humans

Roy's Building: While Elisha is researching the ancestor cult, he discovers that (a) the wild Mukhadish have a primitive religion similar to the ancestor cult, (b) only Mukhadish who have borne a child can be mediums, (c) mediumship is unique to the Muhkadish on this planet, (d) Muhkadish can detect their blood relations through smell, (e) the strongest mediums are the ones who give birth to the strongest male children, and (f) one of the areas with herds that produce the best mediums is also a hotbed of recent pirate activity. [Elisha's Research: Ob3 on 7d]

Upon finding this, he tracks down Jael. "A connection between the pirates and the ancestor cult. I knew it," Jael says. Jael starts trying to make connections to the island: any mediums, any known pirate henchmen, etc. [Jael's Investigative Logic Ob2 on 6d; help from Elisha (Muhkadish-wise)] Using the DNA taken from Elisha's wounds, Jael discovers that Goliath is Elizabeth's son.

Ted's Interstitial: The Archcotare arrives in the capital to tell Michael it's time for him to deal with the ancestor cult. Michael is concerned about what will happen to the Muhkadish if the cult is shut down; Daniel says that he doesn't care, so long as the normal workings of the Wheel are interfered with. Daniel suggest that Michael insinuate himself into Miriam's good graces as her chapelin.

Paul's Interstitial (Daniel): Daniel meets with Tay (apparently at Tay's request).

Christina's Intersitial: Miriam, alerted about Daniel's meeting with Tay, summons him to the palace.

Miriam: "Spoke with my son today."
Daniel: "Yes, my nephew was interested in talking with me."
Miriam: "I suppose I can guess what about."
Daniel: "Can you?"

Miriam notices that Daniel is watching her the same way the Psychologist did.

[Daniel's Psychology: Ob5 on 6d]

He realizes that Miriam thinks Michael put Tay up to talking to him about joining the Church and that she will not take such interference with her family lightly.

Daniel: "Is that really what you think he came to talk to me about?"

Miriam reveals that Tay had seen a Psychologist, and as Daniel leaves, her body language is clear: "I won't have you stealing the rest of my family, Daniel."

Roy's Color: Jael and Elisha, while drinking and eating the intoxicating Kerrn delicacy.

Elisha: "Maybe this Pitr, he has the Koro."
Jael: "Koro?"
Elisha: "It is this disorder where the human feels his penis is retreating to his body."
Jael: "Can it do that?"
Elisha: "No."

Miriam's Color: Meanwhile, in Miriam's bedroom.

Miriam: "Do you want to talk about it?"
Pitr: "No."
Miriam: "Is it about Jael?"

Paul's Conflict: Pitr jumps Nimrod in the hall and beats him up, humiliating him before they're pulled apart.

[Close Quarters One-Roll
Pitr: Ob3 on 5d (5s)
Nimrod: Ob5 on 6d (3s)
]

Michael's Color: Michael finishes talking with Miriam's mother, hugs her medium, and walks out with the hint of a tear in his eye.

Roy's Conflict: Jael confronts Miriam with the evidence of pirate infiltration of the ancestor cult.

Miriam: "Where's Pitr?"
Jael:"Last time I spoke with him, he said he had other priorities. Which apparently include beatin up my signals tech!"
Elisha: "Have you noticed if Pitr has a problem with his penis?"
Miriam: *laugh*
Elisha: I take it that is a yes?
Jael: Enough about Pitr, enough about Nimrod, enough about external genatalia.

Later, as the family prepares for a ceremonial dinner, the argument reignites, with Michael siding with Miriam and Tay siding with Jael.

Jael: "Tay, when you were working with the pirates, did you ever meet Elizabeth's son?"

Jael realizes that an attack against the ancestor cult is an attack against Miriam, but they both agree to increase security around the mediums, including the island where the mediums are harvested. Jael suggests that she and Miriam review recording of the meeting with her mother afterwards.

Miriam: "I don't want hearing what's said between me and my mother. It's just a matter of piety."
Jael: Just play them back when you're not in the moment to make sure there's nothing suspicious."

[DoW
Jael: Persuasion, 1 Routine
Miriam: Persuasion, 1 Routine
Elisha: Rhetoric, 1 Routine
Michael: Persuasion, 1 Routine
Tay: Persuasion, 1 Routine]

Roy's Interstitial: Jael goes to tell Cerelia she's failed in her attempts to undermine the cult. She's

Jael: "It is too important to her, to her rule, to just cast aside."
Cerelia: "Well, you did what you could."
Jael: "I have concessions. You will increase the security at your family's harvesting operations."
Cerelia: "Jael, it is our place to advise. It is hers to rule."
Jael: "Has this happened to you before?"
Cerelia: "Of course.
Jael: "How, how are you sure again? When your advice is wrong, because she knows it it wrong, how are you sure enough to advise her again?"
Cerelia: "A very wise man once told me, if you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you. The truth is like a slippery fish. It is hard for any one person to hold on to it. We make our choices, we advise her as best we can, by the mere fact that she continues to ask our opinion, we know that they are worth listening to. We are not the smart people surrounding the dumb one."
Jael: "You set my mind at ease."

They agree that Tay would be a good person to head up the security operations.

Ted's Building: At his hidden facility, Michael begins converting the Muhkadish trainees to the Church (albeit his slightly heretical flavor of the Church). [Michael's Persuasion: Ob2 on 5d]

Later, Michael bribes a temple official and obtains a copy of Miriam's mother's braintape. [Michael's Scheme-wise: Ob1 on 3d; Resources: Ob4 on 8d; failed, Gift of Kindness, taxed 1]

End of Maneuver

Daniel's Investigative Logic: Ob1 on 7d (3s)
vs.
Miriam's Persuasion; help from Michael (Persuasion, Court-wise)
Offense: 6d (5s)
Defense: Ob3 on 3d (1s)

Vaylen: 14, Humans 13

Epilogue: At the ceremonial feast, we see that no matter what the rifts are between specific family members (including Daniel), they're still a family; communications are still working and the rituals still occur. "At the end of the day, even if they disagree, there's still this other level of interaction.

Daniel avoids Tay.

Things we learned (fiction)

There is some biological agent in the atmosphere that causes a high percentage of miscarriages among female children. The Church condemns going off-planet to conceive because you're going against the Wheel. When they were in power, the Church benefited from families not having heirs. Now that they are no longer in power and more upper-class families can afford to go off-planet, the merchant clans have become more stable and more of a political threat to the Church.

Muhkadish genes are very easily sequenced and family relationships are trivial to determine.

Pitr and Cerelia's family is big in the medium-harvesting business.

Muhkadish culture emphasizes being servile.

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 7

2008-04-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

4 March 2008

New Characters

Rachel: Makeda's eldest and favored daughter
Leah: Makeda's younger daughter

Session Summary

The Humans choose Take Action against the Vaylen
The Vaylen choose Take Action against the Humans

Paul's Interstitial (Hagar): Hagar, Ahab, and Jabin plot to purge the traitors and informers from their ranks.

Christina's Color: A funeral procession for those martyred by the pirates, led by Muhkadish mediums, comes to the gates of the Cathedral, which are closed to them. The mediums are recounting the ways in which the martyrs died and the procession denounces the impiety of the pirates.

Paul's Conflict Scene (Omri) : While Jael and Nimrod examine their data on the pirates, Nimrod raises the possibility that Pitr is either a willing or unwilling spy. While Jael talks about duty, Nimrod focuses on Pitr's ambition. Jael agrees to cut Pitr out of the loop until his loyalty can be proved. Nimrod's respect for Jael grows as a result of his willingness to run an isolation op.

[Duel of Wits: Jael's Persuasion, 1 Routine; Nimrod's Persuasion, 1 Challenging; Jael ends up with a complicated Relationship with Nimrod.]

Ted's Intersitial: Michael finds Cerelia and Miriam having breakfast and reviewing the footage from the funeral procession. Cerelia leaves. Michael's been trying to understand what's happened to Tay, and he's concerned that Tay was coming after Miriam next. Michael suggests that they use Miriam as bait for a pirate trap.

Michael: "I don't want to use Tay again. I want to give him a chance."
Miriam: "I'm giving him a chance."
Michael: "By fucking over everything he's worked for?"
Miriam: "Yes, when what his work was was to betray me. I'm giving him another chance by allowing him to tear this down. After all his treachery has been buried with his own hands, then we can start again."

Miriam wants to make sure she can count on Michael's military support.

Miriam: "Will this be official or unofficial?"
Michael: "Does it matter?"
Miriam: "It matters a great deal to me."
Michael: "I think it's too early to make it public. Rumors are fine, but I will not be used for your propaganda."
Miriam: "I don't want to appear to be in Daniel's debt."

Paul's (Hagar) Building: Hagar rounds up a traitor in her ranks (someone from Makeda) and executes him in front of the assembled pirate fleet. [Hagar's Circles: Ob5 on 8d] "We have been for too long under the thumb of the Forged Lord and crushed beneath the Wheel of the Church. We must band together if we are to find a new place for ourselves, if we are to raise ourselves up. But there are some who do not share our dream. Some who feel it is better to sell out the dreams of their companions. Some who feel that this world is not worth sacrifice. For them, there can be but one fate. *blam* Such is the fate of all who would oppose the future. Who would keep those down that would rise above their stations. Such is the fate of the old world, for we are the new!"

Roy's Building: In the war room at the Cathedral, Jael, Michael, Esau discuss the pirate situation. Jael: "We lost a good man today, shot like a gaffed pike."

They plan ambush to draw out the pirate leaders. Jael asks, "What can we do to convince them that we've actually put the Forged Lord at risk?" Tay plants rumors among the pirates that Miriam is arranging a marriage for him.

[Jael's Investigative Logic: Ob5 on 8d (6s); help from Michael (Scheme-wise, Conspicious) and Miriam (Noble-wise) vs. Hagar's Investigative Logic: Ob6 on 7d (5s)]

[Hagar's Circles: Ob5 on 8d; Enmity Clause, the observers are Tay's men]

[Troops' Infiltration: Ob3 on lots of dice; help from Jael (Command) and Michael (Strategy, Sodalis-wise)]

Christina's Interstitial: Just before the ambush, Tay reassures Miriam that Michael will be fine. He asks about what the Psychologist did to him.

Tay: "Is this affection I feel for him real, or is this something you put in my head? I don't know any more."
Miriam: "I think it's real, but remember, you chose to let the Psychologist in. I never would have forced that on you."

Miariam: "Tell me, why was it Makeda that you listened to?"
Tay: "Maybe because her family is much like my father's and mine: discontent with their place in this world, scrabling for a higher rung. A kindred spirit? Maybe it was just the right words at the right time. Maybe she said something that resonated with me. Maybe I wanted to prove myself to you. Maybe I wanted to prove myself to him. Do we really know so much about why it is we do what we do?"
Miriam: "Your interests and mine don't have to conflict."
Tay: "It's hard not to hate you for what you have done. But you're right, I need to look at things rationally. Sometimes we're forced to do things by our circumstances, not because we want to do them, but because we must."
Miriam: "So what you're saying is that if I married you to any woman, I wouldn't be able to trust either of you not to betray me again."
Tay: "Yes."
Miriam: "I can respect that." Thought bubble: "He's like his father."

Ted's Conflict: On a small island, the ambush takes place. Michael's forces steamroll the pirates, capturing Ahab, though Jabin and the flagship escape.

[Firefight: Michael's Command: 1 Routine; Tactics, Ob3 on 6d; Close Combat Ob5; Esau's Command, 1 Routine; Tactics, Ob 3; SSW Ob2 on 5d; Ahab's Signals, 1 Routine; Command, 1 Challenging; Tactics, 1 Challenging; Jabin: VW Ob3 on base ]

Roy's Interstitial: Later, Pitr storms in to Jael's office.

Pitr: "Why wasn't I informed?"
Jael: "Why would you have been informed?"
Pitr: "I'm her husband."
Jael: Thought bubble: "We fooled him too. Is that why we fooled them?" Aloud: "I assure you, she was never in any danger."
Pitr: "I saved your life, Jael. I deserve better than this."
Jael: "We have a job. I did it. I didn't take action against you. I didn't put your wife at risk. How is it that I have wronged you in this?"
Pitr: "I don't know enough about Kerrn biology to know whether or not the idea of impotence gets through your skull. I have a role to play in this. I have something that she has given me to do and you have taken that from me."
Jael: "This human problem is something that thankfully we do not suffer from, this castration fear you all carry around with you."
Pitr: "I trusted you, Jael. I thought we had an understanding."
Jael: "I thought we had an understanding, too. I thought we had an understanding that we would do whatever it took to protect the Forged Lord. Tell me, wouldn't you do everything for her?"
(beat)
Pitr: "Did it work?"
Jael: "I worked very well, and I would appreciate your input as we reviewed the debriefings."
Pitr: "I'm sorry. There's something else I need to do."

Christina's Building: In space again, Miriam meets with Makeda to discuss marrying Erik to one of Makeda's daughter to seal the bond between the families. Makeda offers Rachel, but Miriam suggests Leah for Erik's sake.

[Miriam's Circles: Erik (Ob4 on 8d; help from Michael; Enmity) and Leah (Ob3 on 9d; help from Michael; predisposed, relationship)]

Ted's Color: On the Isle of Beasts, Uriel frustratedly realizes that her medical texts on Muhkadish didn't have a large enough sample size for their studies.

Roy's Color: In a scene very reminiscent of the opening, Ahab's interrogation begins. Jael presents his findings to Miriam, who denounces the pirates to the merchant league.

End of Maneuver

Jael's Investigative Logic: Ob2 on 7d (2s); help from Michael and Miriam (Rhetoric); 2 Persona
vs.
Hagar's Investigative Logic: Ob2 on 7d (2s)

Vaylen: 19, Humans 15

Epilogue: The merchants give the Forged Lord a standing ovation while Pitr consults his encrypted files.

Things we learned (fiction)

Pirate ship going underwater would be cool.

The Church is gendered female (and has lots of husbands).

List-making is masculine.

Makeda has two daughters, Rachel (the favored daughter, two husbands) and Leah (the other, no husbands)

Things we learned (rules)

As long as you know roughly what both sides want from a DoW, you don't have have to spell it out exactly beforehand.

Against independent actions, all Point successes reduce Body of Argument (same thing with Take Action).

Cloaking against Sensors is best combined with cloaking against Signals.

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 6

2008-04-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

19 Feb 2008

New Characters

Nimrod: Security specialist, formerly employed by Anvil Lord Omri

Session Summary

The Humans choose Take Action against the Vaylen.
The Vaylen choose Flak.

Paul's Interstitial (Daniel) : Late at night at the Temple, Levi hands over a datapad to Daniel. "You're right, Levi," says the Archcotare. "The time to take action has come."

Christina's Interstitial: In the family throne room, Tay reluctantly accepts his orders from Miriam but blames her for his current state.

Tay: "I don't understand. Why won't you let me see my father?"
Miriam: "I don't trust him."
Tay: "Like you didn't trust me? Maybe you could send him to the moon."

Before he leaves, Miriam gets Tay to admit his role in the smuggling operation, which was entirely commercial: buying stolen goods, money laundering, etc.

Tay: "What do you want me to do? Stop selling them grain or poison it?"
Miriam: "They don't all know that you've turned yet. I say we insinuate ourselves deeper. I presume it won't be too much of a burden on you to pretend disloyalty to me."
Tay: "Before we do, I'd like to speak to Grandmother."

Roy's Interstitial: Somewhere in Jael's chambers (where Jael's Kerrn-scale workout equipment has been brought), Jael questions Tay yet again about the pirates. "I owe your mother the loyalty of a daughter, but I don't owe you the loyalty of a sister," says Jael. Tay tries to get Jael to question Miriam's loyalty towards her. "You hate the Muhkadish, don't you? Doesn't it grate on you that she goes and listens to them?" Tay asks. But Jael is having none of it.

Tay admits that Miriam was the Pirate Queen's next target. "She wanted you for what you did to her, but then she saw that you were merely the knife, not the hand that holds it. She has grand ambitions. I spoke with her once. She is a driven and dangerous woman. She rejects the teachings of the Church. She sees the Wheel as slavery. She would break the chains of this world. But, I sensed in her a tiredness. A sense that perhaps time had passed her by. Perhaps this world no longer had room for her. Perhaps she'd grown to big for it. Perhaps she was like the [fish], that when it grows too large and too old is nibbled to death by its children. Perhaps she could sense her children coming for her. . . Children. . . She has a daughter in the Church."

Based on this recollection, Jael and Tay identify Uriel as Hagar's daughter.

Ted's Color: Tay, wandering the palace, checks the old dead-drop caches that he and Erik used as children and finds a message from Michael.

Roy's Color: During a training exercise, Michael's computer systems alert him that Jael has run a security scan on Uriel's records.

Paul's Interstitial (Omri): At a secret meeting in orbit, Makeda introduces Security Specialist Nimrod and Jael. Makeda has drafted him into service (which doesn't come cheaply) from her ex-lover Lord Omri to help repay her debt to Miriam. Nimrod is deferential to Jael and enthusiastic about the idea of working together. Nimrod hands over communications data from Omri's files to help spy on the pirates. He admits his previous employer had problems with the pirates. Miriam is outwardly pleased but inwardly frustrated with Makeda: "She's outwitted me again. First she gives my son back to me, and now she gives this other man."

Paul's Conflict (Hagar): Michael forces a meeting with Jael and Tay about Uriel, with Uriel listening through the curtain and speaking in Michael ear. Tay is eager to prove himself to Michael and reveals the information about Uriel's parentage. Tay says, "We thought you should know there's a possibility of a spy in your ranks."

[Duel of Wits: Tay's Persuasion, 1 Routine; Michael's Persuasion, 1 Routine; Jael: Persuasion, 1 Routine; Uriel's Oratory, 1 Routine]

Tay tries to press the issue, but Michael shows them the precautions he's already taken, but Jael realizes that when it comes to his family, Michael's intentions are to be trusted.

Michael: "She married another because of my failure."

Paul's Color (Daniel): Simultaneous planetwise sermons condemn the ancestor cult and announce an upcoming address by the

Paul's Interstitial (Daniel): Daniel calls his brother to discuss the sermons. "I know we disagree about many things, brother, but can we not agree that this is an abomination?" he asks. They spar about the relationship of Muhkadish to the Wheel. ("Do you question my authority, Cotar Fomas?" "Not at all, Daniel.") They eventually agree that the ancestor cult is tantamount to slavery.

Christina's Building: Miriam talks with Jael about the sermon.

Miriam: "It's obvious what they were aiming at. Do you understand why? ... You realize the face of politics on this world relies on the negotiations between our families, between our long-lived clans and our ancestors. And that the easiest way for the Church to regain power is to destroy the political bonds that everyone else works to ensure they can't."
Jael: "Would you not have the same ancestors without these Muhkadish to speak for them."
Miriam: "If you can't bring your ancestors to the table and they have no voice, then how can you possibly form bonds with them?"
Jael: "Come. You must know what they are like, as I know about my Motha, and my Motha's Motha, all the way back to the Kerrn who stood before the Emperor. I can speak for them without any alien to speak for me." Miriam: "You were there when we welcomed Makeda. You've seen that happen a millions times. Explain to me how we could have done that, where it would have had that sort of effect on her, on us, where it would have affirmed those bonds without..."
Jael: "You know I haven't seen what goes on in that chamber! I see what happens afterward, but what they say there..."
Miriam: "They say the same thing as if you loaded a brain tape on you computer, I suppose. That's not the point. The point is that the Church is trying to take away one of my most valuable political tools, and they're trying to do it through the realm of doctrine, which is how they always do it."
Jael: "Well, can you not, as they say, each two fish with one gulp? What if you did use a computer?"
Miriam: "The palpible prescence of our ancestors is what gives them their power."

Miriam encourages Jael to attack the Church's position by making it an attack on the ancestors rather than their representation, thus angering the populace.

Roy's Conflict: Jael, having discovered that Levi is the originator of the sermon, contacts him. Jael, playing off of Levi's hatred of the Muhkadish, whips him into a frenzy.

[Duel of Wits: Jael's Persuasion, 1 Challenging; Levi's Oratory, 1 Challenging]

Michael becomes aware that this call happened.

Ted's Building Scene: Michael, concerned about the fate of Muhkadish, approaches Tay about setting up an "underground railroad" for them. Tay agrees and spends a sizeable fortune to set up a secret training facility for Muhkadish forces on a small, out-of-the-way island. [Michael's Scheme-wise: Ob1 on 3d; Resources: Ob 8 on 10d; help from Tay, failed by 4; Michael taxed 2, Tay taxed 4]

Later, Michael confronts Uriel in her lab about her mother. "This is what I was born to. She abandoned me to it. I have no bond with her. I owe her nothing. Tell me what to do." [Uriel's Pharmacology: Ob6 on 5d]

Christina's Color: Miriam uses the ancestor cult to mobilize protests against the Archcotare's address, particularly war veterans.

Paul's (Daniel) Building: The Archcotare implores the faithful to reject the cult's teachings. "For too long, the Church has remained silent and allowed these dead voices to speak and to be heard. ... I know that many of you long for the touch, for those voices of those you held dear, those who have left us, those who have gone to the sea. But we must not, we cannot, we shall not let the living be controlled by the dead." This goes well until he brings the Forged Lord into it, at which point it looks like a blantant political move. [Daniel's Oratory: Ob8 on 8d vs. Miriam's Propaganda: Ob2 on 8d + 2 Persona]

Remaining rolls:

Michael contacts Cedric, the Muhkadish leader, who leads a troop of Muhkadish to the island [Michael's Circles: Ob4 on 10d; relationship established]

Miriam checks on Tay's activities and discovers the island. [Miriam's Accounting: Ob1 on 5d]

End of Maneuver

Jael's Investigative Logic: Ob1 on 6d (3s)
vs.
Daniel's Oratory: Offense: Open on 5d (2s), Defense: Ob3 on 5d (1s) (help from Levi with Oratory and Locals-wise)

Vaylen: 21, Humans 17

Epilogue: Levi calls Jael to apologizes for his failure, and Jael realizes Levi is in her power.

Things we learned (fiction)

The land around the Temple is always frozen.

There are multiple throne rooms in the palace.

Nimrod is very competent but has a history with Pitr.

Conversations with the dead are more private than conversations with the living.

There is both a braintape and non-braintape method of channeling the ancestors.

Things we learned (rules)

Thinking about each maneuver as an issue of a comic book helps.

If you can't immediately set the stakes, you probably shouldn't have a Duel of Wits (yet).

Nerds On The Beach

2008-04-14T15:58:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the second Nerdly Beach Party, an RPG get-together inspired by the east coast's Camp Nerdly. For the second year in a row, roleplayers from northern and southern California camped out at San Simeon State Park, in the shadow of Hearst Castle, to game. This year's attendance grew from 14 to 22, and our organizing prowess grew to compensate. But I'm not here to talk about the event, I'm here to talk about what I played.

Friday evening I facilitated two simultaneous playtests of A Penny For My Thoughts. If I been thinking, I would have printed out the most recent draft to see if the "read it at the table" procedures work yet. Alas, I forgot, so I had to explain it. Fortunately, writing that chapter drilled into my head how to explain the game, so it was pretty easy. I floated between the two groups, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Saturday morning I convinced Josh Roby to start a campaign mode game of Sons of Liberty. Originally it looked there were only going to be three of us, so I figured we could get a couple of battles in, but a few more players turned out. Our Patriots were John Hancock (Albert Andersen), Paul Revere (myself), George Washington (John Kim), Sam "Ringo" Adams (Michael Parker), and Abigail "Yoko" Adams (Meghann Ahern), while Josh took up the Tory mantle. Sadly, the Beatles references mostly stopped after the travel hand. Highlight of the game: after converting freed clockwork slaves to Deism, we had to fight the Tory Robo-Theist. It was a big disorganized at first, but it turned into a lot of silly fun, as usual.

Saturday afternoon I finally got to try out Dirty Secrets, which I've been looking forward to since GenCon last year. Jesse Burneko declared that I would be the Investigator, and I was only to happy to oblige. We played the novella-length game (which was just about right) with a total of five players (which I think was perhaps one too many). I think novella is probably the sweet spot for this game, and I think it would absolutely sing with three players. In any case, it landed smack dab in the middle of what I want out of a collaborative mystery game. It was great fun working with Jesse, Laura, Morgan, and Colin to make sense out of what the game was giving us.

Saturday night I dipped my toe into a playtest of unWritten, but we were all so tired that we stopped after the first round. It's got a lot of potential, and it's already got two things going for it that will score points in my book. First, there's a mechanism to reward people for presenting obstacles that the other players find interesting enough to engage. Second, every scene, whether you engage the conflict mechanics or not, results in a mechanical change to the character and the setting. I'd like to try this again as the text gets polished a bit more.

Sunday I only got one game in, but it might have been the most satisfying single-session game I've played. Ryan, Jesse, Laura, and I busted out a game of In a Wicked Age, which I've been longing to play since Dreamation. We had pretty much a perfect confluence of gaming styles and personal knowledge, so we ended up playing to each other to great effect. There's a more detailed discussion of this game over on Ryan's LiveJournal, but the quick summary is that we all had wicked amounts of fun.

And that was the weekend. We're hoping to do it again in late September. If it's half as fun as this one, I'd gladly go again.

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 5

2008-04-10T09:12:00.000-07:00

12 Feb 2008

New Characters

Lord-Pilot Magnate Makeda: head of Clan Kraken, Avram's mother, and the primary conspirator among the merchants
Cedric: a leader of the Muhkadish

Session Summary

The Humans choose Assess the Factions

Paul's Color (Hagar): Jabin slips Goliath in to the temple complex to visit Elizabeth, his mother.
[Jabin's Infiltration: Ob3 on 4d]

Roy's Building: Jael, Miriam, Michael, and Cerelia meet to discuss their current position. (Michael is present via super-secret comm link.) Jael's investigation has revealed that the primary connection between the pirates's is Clan Kraken, headed by Lord-Pilot Magnate Makeda. [Jael's Investigative Logic: Ob3 on 9d; help from Miriam (Accounting), Cerelia (Accounting), and Avram (Court Gossip-wise)] Miriam suggests considering revoking their charter; Cerelia counters that the evidence so far isn't strong enough justify such an action without tremendous outcry from the other clans. Jael, in his search for leverage over the Church, has been looking for incriminating prostitutes but doesn't have any hard evidence yet. ("The dregutai are celebate. . . nominally.") [Jael's Investigative Logic: Ob3 test on 6d; help from Michael] Michael suggests that the Muhkadish represent an opportunity rather than a necessary threat, which Jael and Cerelia object to. In private, Jael relates to Miriam a story from Elisha about the fall of another planet due to Vaylen infiltration of the Muhkadish. [Elisha's Human History: Open test on 6d]The primary divergence from this world is that the Mukhadish were all free, rather than slaves. Miriam thanks Jael for the advice. "The reason I keep you by my side is your paranoia."

Paul's Conflict (Hagar): Lord-Pilot Magnate Makeda comes to visit the Forged Lord. After the ceremonal exchange of gifts (performed by the Mukhadish ancestors), Makeda confronts Miriam about Tay's imprisonment. Miriam convinces her that Miriam's marriage to Avram binds their families together and they must both face the pirates. "I see from the ancestors you brought that you value the bonds of marriage. That's what hold us and our planet together." Makeda assents and agrees to convince Tay to accept the Psychologist's touch.

[Duel of Wits:
Miriam's Persuasion, 1 Routine
Makeda's Persuasion, 1 Routine]

Ted's Color: In flashback to before he joined the League, Tay gives Michael power of attorney over his medical care when he's incapacitated.

Roy's Color: Jael and Cerelia have been sponsoring a campaign of violence against the Mukhadish. A gang of local toughs beat a Mukhadish to death.

Christina's Interstitial: In flashback to near the beginning of Tay's imprisonment, Miriam calls Michael from the moon to confront Michael about Tay's legal situation.

Miriam: "Technically, this will be easier if I have your permission."
Michael: "So you're willing to let him back into your life? You know that's a risk."
Miriam: "That's the same with everyone else in my life."
Michael: "Jael usually doesn't let people who betray you back in the building."
Miriam: "But we know there are exceptions."

Michael: "You promise you'll give him a chance to shine?"

Michael:"You're not going to just stick him in a room somewhere?"
Miriam: "No, I plan to marry him off."
Michael: "Marriage doesn't always work."

Michael assents to the procedure.

Roy's Interstitial: Elisha, hearing that Miriam is looking for a Psychologist, comes to talk with her about her relationship with her husbands and with Tay.
Elisha: "These men that you marry, they trust you, are at their most vulnerable with you, are they not?"
Miriam: "Some of them."
Elisha: "It is a hard thing when you have a child that betrays you, disappoints you. You humans, humans, you have saying, "Flesh of my flesh? You know we Kerrn, we bud. Flesh of our flesh indeed. The Fazzia, it grows from him, you watch it develop. Sometimes, there is the bad bud, though, you know. They do not do what they are told. They go off, they hide in places on the Omship. I have seen it happen even in the students in my Yeshiva. You look and they, day by day, they have slipped away, you know? They are fermenting biologically active compounds. Suddenly, you do not know them. The Fazzia, they come and they do not know this thing they have made, this thing that they thought was like them. And what you do then, it is a very hard thing. Sometimes, you sends them to become Solzaja; the displine, it molds you. Sometimes I suspect so it was with Jael. But sometimes, you must do hard things. Sometimes you must treat them sternly. You cannot let your feelings for a bud threaten the Omshiip. I know that you will do what is right. You world means so much to you."

Ted's Building: Cedric, a leader of the Mukhadish, comes to Michael to beg for help and protection against Jael. [Michael's Circles: Ob3 on 8d]

Cedric: "He is no better than a plant. He cannot rise above what he is."

Cedric: "They think we are traitors? We speak for their dead! We have given many of our number so they may speak with those who have gone to the sea."

Cedric: "We shall ride the Wheel!"

Michael asks him for a Mukhadish volunteer for medical experimentation to develop a treatment to seal the Naiven tube. Uriel begins work on her research. [Uriel's Pharmacology: Ob6 on 5d]

Later, Michael tries to find the security tech who hooked up the palace's system so that he can tap into it, but fails. [Michael's Circles: Ob5 on 9d; using two Reputation dice]

Paul's Building (Omri): The Vaylen Usurper gets a new gun. [Resources: Ob3 on 9d]

Christina's Building: Miriam meets with the Psychologist on the moon. "I want him returned loyal to me, and want all the details of his treachery." [Miriam's Circles: Ob4 on 8d; help from Elisha]

Makeda arrives and convinces Tay to submit.

Tay emerges newly loyal to the family, but if push comes to shove, he'll pick Michael over Miriam.

End of Maneuver

The Vaylen choose Flak.

Jael's Investigative Logic: Ob1 on 8d (3s) (help from Michael (Investigative Logic and Miriam (Accounting)
vs.
Hagar's Persuasion: Offense: 1s on 3d, Defense: Ob3 on 3d (1s)

Epilogue: Jael sitting in her office late at night, going over Makeda's debriefing, a chart of Mukhadish deaths, and a pixelated video of a dregus and prostitute moving out of range of the security camera.

Vaylen: 23, Humans 19

Things we learned (fiction)

The temple complex isn't in the palace.

Lord-Pilot Magnate Makeda's clan is the single biggest player in off-world commerce.

Clans are identified by totemic ocean creatures: Scylla (Michael), Leviathan (the second husband), Kraken (Makeda)

Clan Kraken is not old money.

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 4

2008-04-03T12:14:00.000-07:00

29 Jan 2008

New Characters

Serena: Miriam's mother, the previous Forged Lord. Deceased, but her brain-tape resides in the hands of the ancestor cult
Elizabeth: Sereana's Muhkadish spirit-medium

Session Summary

The Humans choose Go To Ground

Roy's Interstitial: Jael, still recovering from his wounds, seeks out Cerelia to discuss the dangers inherent in the ancestor cult and the sway it has over Miriam. Cerelia explains how the brain-tapes and mediums work. They both agree that problem needs to be dealt with.

Ted's Interstitial: Micahel goes to to Daniel to convince him that more fighting men are needed in the capital. Daniel says that the pirates have been freeing Mukhadish, and Michael express his concern that they're allied with the merchants. "Those who do not know their place on the wheel will be crushed beneath it," Daniel says. Michael agrees to send military assets, "but for our sake, not for hers."

Paul's Interstitial: Meanwhile, in another part of the Temple, Levi conspires with Jabin. "Anything I can do to help," Levi says. "It is their fate to be destroyed."

Christina's Interstitial: Miriam seeks guidance from her mother's spirit through her Muhkadish spirit-medium, Elizabeth.

Serena: "I trust you've found yourself a husband?"
Miriam: "Yes, several."
Serena: "Have any of them betrayed you yet?"
Miriam:"Yes, several."

Serena: "You must forgive a dead woman her faults."

Miriam: "I've long considered the Church the greatest threat to my power."

Miriam: "It's not just him. I need to find a way blind all of the other eyes with my walls."
Serena: "Did I teach you nothing? We are always watched. There is no place we can escape the eyes of those who wish us harm."

Serena: "Only the dead keep secrets from your enemies."

Ted's Building Scene: Michael and Jael meet in the chapel to discuss Miriam's security. Michael asks for assistance in rooting out Daniel's spy among the new men. Jael asks how Michael would go about planting a spy among his ranks: "If you were going to put a spy in my security service, how would you do it?" Michael points out that the Vaylen co-opt people in place; thus, doing the opposite (long-term sleepers) is the best way to avoid Jael's detection. With Jael's help, Michael goes over the records of the new men. [Michael's Circles: Ob5 on 9d; help from Jael] They turn up clean, which, of course makes Michael suspicious.

On Jael's advice ("What we need is scanning. We need to detect bombs, sacs of toxins, and of course, worms."), Michael goes to Cerelia to request better security systems in the palace. "I've come to spend the Forged Lord's money," he says, and he brings her a gift. Michael volunteers his men to help with security; Cerelia is concerned about a scandal. Cerelia confesses that Miriam asked her to become Regent if necessary; Michael is shocked. Cerelia is concerned that Miriam is so worried and agrees to purchase the appropriate equipment. [Cerelia's Resources: Ob14 on 21d; help from Michael and Jael; gets Automated Security 7 for the palace]

Paul's Conflict (Hagar): Tay and Jabin try break out the merchant captured at the pirate rendezvous [Jabin's Security Rigging: Ob5 on 5d (5s) vs. Automated Security: Ob5 on 7d (5s)], but they are discovered and a firefight results. Pitr, realizing his mistake, rushes in. Tay hits him with a stet gun and knocks him out. Tay's forces are doing well until Michael shows up. Michael takes out Tay with his stet gun and his forces captures everyone except Jabin.

[ Firefight
Pitr: Routine Close Combat, Routine Command, Routine Tactics, Challenging Steel
Tay: Difficult Close Combat, Difficult Command, Challenging Steel
Michael: Routine Command, Routine Resources, Routine Close Combat]

Roy's Building: Jael reports to Miriam, "Your son and your ex-husband will both live." They both head to the interrogation room to see to the wounded as the stragglers are rounded up. Uriel sees to Pitr. [Uriel's Surgery: Ob2 on 7d; Pitr's Forte: Ob2 on 6d] Jael presses for Tay to be interrogated immediately. Uriel says to Michael, "I will heal a man for her, but I will not torture one." (Pitr will, however.)

Christina's Building: Miriam offers the opportunity to ask for forgiveness. [Miriam's Intimidation: Ob4 on 9d; help from Pitr, Michael, and Jael] Tay spits on her. Jael tries to stop him, but Michael wounds Tay again. [Jael's Power: Ob2 on 1d (1s) vs. Michael's Power: Ob1 on 3d (2s)] "He's your son," objects Jael. "He gave that up when he joined the Church," replies Miriam.

As Michael is hustled out, Miriam tells Jael, "You get out of here too." Jael agrily complies and deactivaties the recording system. "Do you have any idea what your life is going to look like from now on?" Miriam demands. Silence. "Do you care?"

Roy's Color: Jael is in a rehab facility for maimed Hammer (all women).

End of Maneuver

The Vaylen chose Take Action against the Humans, so it's a versus roll.

Miriam's Persuasion: Ob3 on 11d (6s); help from Michael and Pitr
vs.
Hagar's Smuggling: Ob6 on 7d (3s); help from Jabin

Nine months pass. . . (And Tay makes his recovery roll. [Tay's Forte: Ob3 on 4d])

Vaylen: 23, Humans 20

Things we learned (fiction)

Nurses are male. Surgeons are female.

Cerelia loves off-world art and artifacts.

There are feasts where the ancestors get together to renew old grudges and feuds. The relationships of the dead never change.

There was a feud between Michael's family and one of the other husband's.

When possessed by Serena's spirit, Elizabeth is the Forged Lord.

There are no security pickups in the ancestor cult chamber.

Cerelia is a devout follower of the Church.

Cerelia thinks Michael is hot.

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 3

2008-04-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

15 Jan 2008

New Characters

Tay: Michael and Miriam's son; merchant league official.
Cerelia: Minister of Trade, Tourism, and Public Relations; Pitr's sister.
Uriel: Michael's surgeon and second-in-command

Session Summary

Humans choose Take Action against the opposition.

Paul's Color (Hagar): Hagar wishes Ahab and Goliath good luck as they head off on a mission.

Roy's Interstitial: In the Briefing Room, Jael and Pitr (in Anvil armor) inform Miriam of their plan to disrupt a meeting between the conspirators and the pirates. Miriam is worried about the political ramifications, and she wants concrete evidence of treachery. Jael assures her that by the time things become public, there will be a way to link the merchants with the pirates.

Ted's Interstitial: Michael goes to visit Tay in his corporate apartment. There is tension between the two of them, as Tay resents being pushed into the merchant league by his father to further his family's ambitions. Michael lets Tay know that he's worried about someone going

Christina's Interstitial: Miriam and Cerelia go to visit Elisha in the hospital. Cerelia asks Elisha about his attack, and her dislike of Mukhadish (and the ancestor cult) become clear. She arranges for a television crew to interview Elisha in order to help turn public opinion against the pirates. After they leave Elisha, Miriam asks Cerelia to act as Regent if anything happens to her. Cerelia asks Miriam makes her so nervous. Miriam says she doesn't trust her husbands, she doesn't trust the Church, and she doesn't trust Micheal. Cerelia expresses surprise at this last bit, but she he

Ted's Color: As he leaves Tay's office, Michael tells his observation team to begin operations against Tay.

Paul's Color (Omri): Jabin sends a message to someone in Iron that the pirate operation is beginning.

Roy's Conflict: Jael's assault team drops in on a covert meeting between the merchant conspirators and the pirates. They kill the pirate leader and capture a maimed merchant leader, but Jael is gravely wounded and Pitr is forced to assume command.

[Firefight
Jael: Challenging Command, Difficult Close Combat
Pitr: Challenging Tactics, Routine Close Combat ]

Christina's Building Scene: While Jael is in flight to the hospital, Miriam calls Michael and asks him to bring Uriel to operate on Jael. [Uriel's Surgery: Ob4 on 7d] While Jael's in surgery, Pitr does his best to take credit for the operation. Uriel informs them that Jael should make a full recovery, but he'll be healing for a while. [Jael's Forte: Ob4 on 11d]

Paul's Conflict (Hagar): Using the transmitter in Elisha's head, Hagar contacts Miriam on her private channel to ask about Jael. Hagar tells Miriam that's a personal matter between herself and Jael. Hagar accuses Miriam of ignoring love in favor of practicality, while Miriam argues that Hagar is not acting purely out of personal obligation.

Hagar: "It's only when we know what we have to lose that we can truly understand what matters. What got us here and what keeps us alive are two different things."
Miriam: "And I know that I can lose anything, and ultimately who am is not tied up in that man."
Hagar: "Perhaps you're right. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this wasn't a personal matter. Maybe this is about survival."

[Duel of Wits
Miriam: Routine Persuasion
Hagar: Routine Persuasion ]

Christina's Color: Elisha's interview airs. ("I would like to send a big get well to my friend [CENSORED], because if you think I'm bad you ought to see him.") The anchors attempt to link the pirates with the Vaylen, in the way they always link anything bad with the Vaylen. On the street, rumors spread about the captured merchant leader.

Ted's Building: Michael's scouts play back some tape of one side of a conversation Tay has. Tay clearly know about the conspiracy and is concerned that the captured leader will expose them.

End of Maneuver

The Vaylen also chose Take Action, so the tests are independent.

Miriam's Rhetoric: 3s on 4d
and
Hagar's Smuggling: 4s on 6d

Epilogue: Aboard the ship, Hagar curses Miriam. "Damn it. She's too good. The frog isn't enough."

Vaylen: 23, Humans 20

Things we learned (fiction)

Tay is in on the conspiracy.

The role of Regent is normally filled by the father of the heir.

There have been prior attempts on Miriam's life.

Things we learned (meta)

Don't get shot.

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 2

2008-03-31T15:58:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly catching up on the session summaries for the Burning Empires game we're playing right now. We play again in nine days, I've got a backlog of seven, so in theory I can catch up by the time we play again.

Session 2: 20 Nov 2007

New Characters

Pitr: Jael's second-in-command, and Miriam's third husband. Self-important and odious.
Avram: Another of Miriam's husbands; a young playboy who knows something about the merchant conspiracy.
Jabin: Lord Omri's spy amongst the pirates.

Session Summary

Humans choose Assess the Opposition.

Roy's Interstitial: Jael orders Pitr to assemble a strike team.

Paul's Color (Hagar): Elisha is found unconscious but alive just outside the palace.

Christina's Interstitial: In the Secure Room, Miriam asks Jael for his files on Avram. She also asks him to put pressure on Avram to make him panic. "Give him enough rope to hang himself," she angrily asks. Jael agrees.

Paul's Building (Hagar): Flashback to Ahab and Hagar implanting a listening device in Elisha [Hagar's Resources Ob4 on 7d; Ahab's Field Dressing: Beginner's Luck, 1 Routine]

Roy's Color: Pitr and crew equip a sled for a heavy assault.

Ted's Color: Michael continues to drum up recruits, using a merit-based system, including a Mukhadish squad. (Quote of the night: "Have you accepted Ahmilakh as your lord and savior? Because if you have, you misunderstand our religion.")

Christina's Building: Miriam reviews the files on Avram. The early ones were assembled by Pitr and reveal that he isn't a very nice person. Miriam sees Avram being interrogated by Pitr, scenes from their wedding, Jael and Elisha commenting on Avram's trip to a brothel (which gives us an interesting insight into Kerrn sexuality through a human lens, or vice versa), and Avram's first visit to Miriam's mother at the ancestor cult. [Miriam's Circles: Ob4 on 9d; Miriam establishes Avram as a Relationship character.]

Ted's Interstitial: By the pool, Michael threatens Avram and tells him he wants in on the conspiracy.

Roy's Building: In the showers, Jael confronts Avram and fools him into following him to an interrogation room, where Elisha is strapped to an examination table. Avram confesses he know about the conspiracy, and that it's his mother's idea. [Jael's Security: Ob4 on 7d, Jael's Intimidation: Ob4 on 8d] Jael fails to notice the bug implanted in Elisha. [Jael's Observation: Ob3 on 4d]

Paul's Building (Daniel): Senior Dregus Levi brings his concerns about Michael to the Archcotare. The Archcotare activates a spy in Michael's ranks who secretly hates Daniel [Daniel's Circles: Ob6 on 10d, Enmity Clause].

Ted's Building: Michael's review of his ranks fails to turn up the spy [Michael's Circles: Ob5 on 11d], but he does managed to place a promising young nobleman in a position to infiltrate Jael's Secret Police [Michael's Circles: Ob4 on 6d].

Paul's Building (Omri): The Vaylen Usurper's spy in the Pirate Fleet begins transmiting information to his master. [Circles Reserve: 2 points; Jabin's Signals: Ob2 on 4d (4s) vs. Automated Security: Ob4 on 5d (2s)]

Christina's Color: Miriam can't resist asking Avram how his day was, and then says that she's glad he's with her. Then (by popular demand) they have hot sex. Afterwards Avram ends up at the same minor-young-nobles bar where Michael had been earlier that day, staring into a drink and wondering what the hell had just happened.

End of Manuever

The Vaylen chose Assess the Factions.

Jael's Investigative Logic: Ob6 on 10d (7s); helping dice we forgot to note.
vs.
Hagar's Signals: Ob7 on 9d (6s); helping dice we forgot to note.

The Humans successfully Assess the Opposition.

Epilogue: Avram tells Jael about his contact among the conspiracy, whom he met at the brothel. The man he describes is Omri's spy, Jabin.

Vaylen: 26, Humans: 24

Things we learned (fiction)

Daniel's first public appearance as Archcotare was Miriam and Avram's wedding.

Avram may not have realized that he had been a hostage prior to his marriage to Miriam.

Miriam's mother's braintape was made before Miriam was married. ("You'll always be the first to her," Miriam says to Avram.)

When you visit the ancestor cult, you offer a bowl of wine to the medium. After the entranced medium accepts and drinks it, you can speak to the spirit through her.

There's some sort of connection between the pirates and the merchant conspiracy.

Things we learned (meta)

Awarding artha can provide an interpretive lens that makes maneuvers more interesting as stories.

Color scenes can be tricky to do something meaningful in.

Games At Mark's, March Edition

2008-03-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

My friend Mark has been hosting some semi-regularly board game gatherings for a while now. Recently, though, he and his fiancee moved into much larger place that's more conducive to these types of gatherings, so he decided they should be a regular event. The first (or second, depending on how you count them) of these every-other-month gatherings was the weekend before last, and while I wasn't there for the whole thing, I did get some good gaming in.

Gwen and I showed up after the first game was already in progress, so we played a pair of two-player games of Taluva, which I'd not played before. It definitely took me a game to get my brain around, but I learned it sufficiently well to win the second game. I liked it two-player, but I don't think I'd like it with more than that. We own it, so I suspect it will come out for some after-dinner play in the near future.

After that we got a quick introduction to Race for the Galaxy, which I'd heard good things about. Its heritage as a possible design for the Puerto Rico card game is evident, though I can see why the design that became San Juan was chosen instead. This is much meatier (which I like) and fixes a few design warts inherited from Puerto Rico (which I also like), but it pushes further toward solitaire-style play, which I'm not a huge fan of. It also didn't help that we were taught the game by two players who had played it a lot and that the glare off the card protectors made it nearly impossible to see the other players' cards. Still, the design is intriguing and it plays fast. I'm not going to pick it up yet, but I'll see about playing it again.

After that we broke out Mike's copy of Arkadia, which Gwen and I hadn't played since the West Coast Meeple Fest. This was my third play, and I'd definitely learned a lot from the first two. The game ended 99-99-98-73, with me in that heartbreaking third-place slot. Gwen and I both agreed that we should probably pick this up, as it's meaty game that we both like (which is moderately rare).

I sat out the next round of games, and we finished up our evening with two plays of Clans. I've liked this game for a quite a while, but I like it even more now that I've learned the correct rules. (This is not an uncommon occurrence for me, with Bang! being the most notable example.) It's quick, it's tactical, and it's got just enough hidden information to keep the game from bogging down and to keep things interesting. I like it more than Gwen does, but it's a filler that we're not likely to trade away any time soon.

No Apologies, More Games

2008-03-03T15:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's been too long. Yes, I have more Burning Empires write-ups to post. But first, games I've played recently.

Gwen got me Bamboleo for Christmas, and it's my new favorite dexterity game. I still love Jungle Speed, but this one is great. It almost equals the "geek cool" factor of Polarity but with more playable rules.

Wings of War is better with the miniature planes, but the physical details of the game keep me from enjoying it. It's just too easy to knock planes completely off their heading or screw up the movement distances. Roy and I toyed with the idea of a hex-based implementation of the same basic system, but I'm not sure I like the predictability that introduces.

Ticket to Ride: Switzerland is awesome. Specifically, it's all of the good stuff I love about the original game, plus a mechanic that really makes the tunnels from Europe sing, and it's specifically designed for two or three players. Gwen and I have been playing the heck out of it recently.

I was reminded yesterday of why El Grande is one of my favorite games. After the first scoring round, I was way back in fourth place (out of four). Against three of the most analytical players I know, I pulled myself back to within a few points of the winner. Yes, there's a lot of analysis you can do on the game. Yes, there's the potential for a lot of chaos. But the game seems (at least to me) to reward players who pay attention, who don't completely overlook their opponent's strategy, and who capitalize on unexpected opportunities. And it seems that there's always an opportunity for a comeback.

That's it for now. More later.

The Multitudinous Seas Incarnadine, Session 1

2007-11-15T17:40:00.000-08:00

“Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”

--Lady MacBeth (MacBeth, Act II, Scene ii)

It’s been a long time coming, but we finally started our Burning Empires game. As usual, I’ve give it a pretentious name. Given that the planet is an ocean world called Celadon, it seemed appropriate. (You can read more about the world here and here.)

Dramatis Personae

Figures of Note

Jael, Kerrn Head of Lord Miriam’s Secret Police (Roy)
Lord Miriam Celadon, the Forged Lord (Christina)
Cotar Fomas Michael of the Wheel, ex-husband of the Forged Lord (Ted)

Hagar, the Pirate Queen, a Merchant League agent gone rogue
Archcotare Daniel of the Wheel, a former High Inquisitor and Michael’s younger brother
Anvil Lord Omri, a Vaylen sleeper agent and usurper

Others

Elisha, a Kerrn Piilosihver
Uriel of the Wheel, Michael’s second-in-command
Tay Celadon, Michael’s eldest son
Pitr, one of Lord Miriam’s husbands and Jael’s second-in-command

Dregus Levi, the Archcotare’s chief administrator
Ahab, the Pirate Queen’s trusted lieutenant and pilot
Goliath, the Pirate Queen’s Mukhadish bodyguard and dogsbody
Esau, Commander of Lord Omri’s Anvil forces
Nimrod, Omri’s personal bodyguard

Session Summary

Beginning of Infiltration Phase: Roy rolls Security getting 3s on 6d, and Paul rolls Signals getting 5s on 7d with one point of Fate spent [Open roll]. Starting disposition is 26 (Vaylen) to 24 (Human).

Prequel: Jael’s strike teams raid a pirate base and take Hagar’s lover prisoner. After finishing up the interrogation, Jael shoots him in the head and burns the body, leaving only the Pirate Ring. Hagar later recovers the ring and swears vengeance on Jael. Jael’s teams raid several warehouses based on misinformation as Hagar taunts them.

Phase objectives: The Humans choose “Eliminate the pirates as a faction.” The Vaylen choose “Change the planet’s quarantine level to None.”

First Maneuver: Humans choose Assess the Factions.

Roy’s Interstitial: Jael reports to Lord Miriam in a secure room in the palace. They discuss recently pirate activities. Jael requests permission to raid the data stores of several powerful Merchant League families, which Lord Miriam grants.

Ted’s Color: Cotar Fomas Michael’s forces put on a military demonstration on the cathedral grounds, hoping to drum up recruits. Michael also meets via video conference with other factional leaders. A common screen between this and the previous scene is of an empty red room with a single chair.

Paul’s Color (Hagar): Ahab, manning the spy equipment aboard his assault sled, notes that Elisha is the Head Brothel Inspector.

Christina’s Interstitial: During the demonstration, Lord Miriam and Archcotare Daniel discuss the Church’s current position. (“I would expect the view from your own balcony to be better. Ours was not always so low.”) Lord Miriam makes clear the Church’s dependence on the people (and, by extension, her).

Paul’s Conflict (Hagar): During the festival, Elisha is ambushed by Goliath. He is injured and taken captive. [ICHASHITF, Close Combat: Elisha’s 0s on 2d vs. Goliath’s 3s on 6d]

Ted’s Interstitial: Before the party that evening, Michael asks Jael about the unusual craft that flew through the demonstration. Jael is distracted by his upcoming mission, which he obliquely tells Michael about.

Roy’s Color: Jael leads an infiltration team off through the forest toward the data store.

Christina’s Building: At the party, Lord Miriam (with help from Michael) discovers that one of her husbands, Avram, knows something he isn’t telling her about a conspiracy within the League regarding the black market. His level of involvement is uncertain, but his knowledge is specific. [Circles: 4s on 8s vs. Ob4]

Ted’s Building: As Jael’s team approaches the base, Michael’s air support takes out the League’s forward observers. [Strategy: 3s on 6d vs. Ob3]

Paul’s Color (Daniel): Daniel’s senior Dregus, Levi, shows him recently received pictures of Elisha after his capture.

Roy’s Building: Arriving at the data store, Jael’s team breaches the perimeter [Infiltration: 3s on 6d vs. Security: 1s on 3d] but fails to get access to the necessary files. [Security Rigging: 2s on 4d vs. Security: 4s on 4d]

Paul’s Building: At the party, the Archcotare keeps an eye on Lord Miriam and Michael, and figures out that Michael and Jael were somehow involved in the day’s events. [Observation: 3s on 6d vs. untrained Inconspicuous: 3s (1s) on 4d]

Christina’s Color: Miriam wakes up the next morning next to Avram.

End of Manuever: The Vaylen chose Assess the Opposition, so it’s versus test. Roy rolls Jael’s Investigative Logic 5, FoRKs in Observation, and takes a helping die from Michael to piece together the lay of the land. Paul rolls Daniel’s Observation 6, FoRKs in Investigative Logic, and takes a helping die from Levi to determine where the government’s real power lies. The Vaylen get five successes to the Humans’ two, the Vaylen successfully Assess. [Investigative Logic: 2s on 7d vs. Observation: 5s on 8d]

Epilogue: While Daniel and Levi fly back the Temple, they talk with a representative of one of the merchant families. He confirms that there was an attempt on their data store and thanks them for their help.

Artha Awards: Jael, 1 Fate; Miriam, 1 Fate; Goliath, 1 Fate

Vaylen: 26, Humans: 24

Things we learned (fiction)

The Merchant League is not a unified front; rather, it’s made of up many squabbling families.
The Cathedral in the capital city is impressively large and sufficiently away from things that military demonstrations don’t cause too much collateral damage.
The Archcotare is a bitter, conniving opportunist. He makes no attempt to disguise his displeasure at the Church’s current position.
Avram is involved with people who are actively working against Lord Miriam's interests, and knows a fair bit about their scheming. How instrumental he is to those plots in unknown. He or they may or may not also be trying to unseat the Forged Lord, but the treachery she knows about is basically mercantile.

Things we learned (meta)

Thinking too much about the Infection mechanics means you neglect your Beliefs.
Don’t mess with a Mukhadish bare-handed.
Smacking people around doesn’t get you tests for advancement.

Back To Basics

2007-10-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

After finishing up my second PBeM game of Hammer of the Scots on Saturday (and this time, it was the Scots who were hammered), Gwen and I decided to have some folks over to play a few games Sunday night. (Normally, Sunday evenings are reserved for football, but there wasn't a late NFL game this week.)

We started off with Doge, which I got Gwen for her birthday after we played it with Doug and Shelley this summer. I'll admit that for me, a little of sheen has gone off of it, but I still like it. I think I need to pay more attention at where people need to go and actually go there, rather than just looking for good deals. It looks like it's not up on BSW any more. Anyone know where I can play it online?

We followed that up with Attika, which I haven't played in a while. As is consistent with my experience, our four-player game ended with a temple connection victory. I like this one, but I played a fair amount of it as a two-player game when we first got it, and four-player strategy is very different (even more so than Carcassonne).

Finally, we broke out Blokus for a quick nightcap. It was easily the most painful game of it I've played, as all of us made life difficult for each other. James ended up with somewhere around thirty squares left, I had eighteen, and Mike had sixteen. Gwen, of course, ended with four. I realized afterward, as I was logging my plays on the Geek, that I'd rated this game an eight. That's wrong. It's a ten. I love playing it, I'll never turn down a game, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Hammer Of The English Was More Like It

2007-10-08T11:01:00.000-07:00

I haven’t had much chance recently to play board games, mostly because my schedule has precluding getting together with like-minded folks to play them. Fortunately, the power of the Internet has enabled to play at least a little bit. Last month I started up a few play-by-email war games, and although one died an untimely death, and one is still in progress, one turned out really well.

That game was Hammer of the Scots. I had picked up a copy in a trade earlier this year, and I’ve wanted to give it a try. Fortunately, the CyberBoard implementation is quite good, even if there’s a lot of back and forth with the revealing of cards. I was able to find a capable opponent through the Point2Point forums (Hi, Shana!), so I was all ready to go.

We finished up the game last week, and I won the game rather handily as the Scots. (I controlled all of the nobles at the end of fifth year.) I liked it, and I’d like to think that my victory didn’t color my perception of the game. The game has pretty much all the hallmarks of a game that I’d like: limited control, simple rules, complex emergent behavior, and a reasonably quick playing time. In particular, I like how you need to think tactically in individual battles and turns but strategically within years and with an eye to wintering. That it pulls this off with so few rules is impressive. The asymmetry of the two sides is interesting as well. The English have to bring up most of their units (and all of their most effective ones) from England every year, but they come in at full strength. The Scots get to build more units in place as they take more valuable areas, but the units come in a minimum strength. The English are also at a disadvantage when it comes to converting nobles during the Winter phase, as their nobles have to go home first. As I play more games, I find that I like these sorts of asymmetries, as they make playing a particular side much more interesting.

You’ll probably be hearing more about this, as we’ve started up another PBeM game of it. We’ll see how well I fare as the English.

Inking and Coloring

2007-09-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

We did all of the mechanical creation for our Burning Empires world last week, but this week we fleshed out the color a bit more. Here’s what we came up with.

The Planet

The world is predominantly ocean, though with large polar ice caps. There are a handful of Cuba-sized islands, and uncountable numbers of smaller ones. Because dry land is so scarce, many of islands’ cities extend under the surface of the water. There are also a number of artificial, floating islands.

There is a considerable amount of geologic activity on the planet. Volcanism, and particularly new island formation, is common.

The planet’s habitable zone is in a narrow band around the equator. Islands within this region are much like the South Pacific, though slightly cooler. The polar regions are extensive and inimical to human life. One of large islands is just on the edge of this zone.

The People

With regards to culture, we’ve got a few things going on that form the basis for the game. First, the planet’s inhabitants regard personal, one-on-one relationships and interactions as very important. They tend not to interact much as large groups. These include all sort of interactions, including commerce. There’s practically no such thing as a solitary transaction. You buy your bread not from the person who offers it at the cheapest price, but from the person you’ve bought bread from for twenty years.

Second, the society is polyandrous. This is due in part to biological factors (low male fertility rates, high gender imbalance), but also to social roles. Men are expected to sacrifice themselves for their families. They take the high-risk roles in society, and they may very well end up dead. Women are expected to bind the community together.

Third, generosity is seen as a virtue and a source of prestige. However, it puts the receiver in the giver’s debt. While gifts are supposed to be given without expectation of reciprocity, in practice the receiver usually does all she or he can to respond in kind.

Fourth, the Church occupies a unique role in society. While many of the planet’s inhabitants are followers of Ahmilakh, they no longer trust the Church to rule them. This is because in order to join the Mundus Humanitas, you must formally sever all ties to your family. (This is essentially the only way for a divorce to occur.) The locals believe that this “apartness” is the reason the Church failed to protect them during the Vaylen invasion. They are still held in high regard, however, and they occupy an important role in society as formal observers of important processes, due to their apparent impartiality.

Fifth, the war against the Vaylen was a “Good War.” The Vaylen are seen as a lot like the Nazis. There’s a local variation on Godwin’s Law: the first person to mention the Vaylen in an argument loses. Most of the Church accepts their exile on the southern island as their fate for failing the people in the war.

What emerges out of this are some fun secondary effects.

You get large, complicated family arrangements (we’re calling them clans). Because commerce is based on long-term relationships and there are an excess of males, major business deals are often solemnized with marriage. One measure of a woman’s status is the number of husbands she has.

Women, as guardians of the family’s relationships, are in charge of all mercantile activity, and by extension, transport. Women make up the major of the planet’s Hammer forces, especially the officer corps.

Violent conflict between clans is uncommon, as they often have many mutual interests and common members. The boundaries between clans are very hazy. However, when two clans do eventually decide that an issue must be settled by violent means, they may declare vendetta on each other. This involves a formal ceremony, supervised by the Church, where every member of both clans either declares or renounces their membership in the family group. Those that declare themselves outside the conflict are inviolate. The other clans swear not to interfere until the dispute is settled. This often results in the annihilation of one or both clans.

The other group that’s outside of the social system (though not formally) are the pirates. They’re predominately made of lower-class people who reject the Church’s teachings on fate. They believe their place in society is preordained, and they reject many of the normal social structures of the culture.

That’s it for now. We also made good progress on getting the characters fleshed out, but I’ll talk more about them in a future post.

This World’s On Fire

2007-09-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

Our next game? Burning Empires. Here’s what we came up with last night.

Galactic Location: Casiguran Outworld
Atmospheric Conditions: Human Life-Supporting
Hydrology: Predominantly Liquid
Topography: Broken Terrain
Tech Index: Low
Government: Noble Fief
Factions: Serfs and Slaves, Organized Crime, Merchant League, Theocratic Institutions
Predominant Military: Lords-Pilot
Planetary Attitude Towards Vaylen: Educated
Primary Industry: Raw Materials
Quarantine: Advanced Quarantine (Livestock, pets, offworld labor, travelers, cryonic machinery)
Economic Regulation: Moderately Regulated (Psychology, immigrant labor, sex trade)

Vaylen Disposition: 21/25/23
Human Disposition: 21/26/28

So what we’re picturing so far is a water-dominated planet, with lots of little islands. The oceans of this world produce some sort animal product for export. The Nobility maintains a monopoly not only on Hammer and Anvil, but also on transportation, which they lease out to the Merchant League. This, of course, leads to a thriving pirate community.

The back-story we’ve agreed upon is that the world used to be controlled by the Mundus Humanitas church. However, when the Vaylen invaded previously (a long time ago), the church was ineffective, and merchants banded together to fight off the invasion. The church was shamed, and the leader of the merchants was Ennobled by the Imperial Court (thus driving a wedge between the merchants and their highly effective leader). The current Forged Lady is matrilineal descendant of the resistance leader.

Next step: Figures of Note.

Short Thoughts About A Long Game

2007-09-16T23:21:00.000-07:00

Ted, Christina, and I have been wanting to play Here I Stand for quite a while now. Today, we finally got the chance. My brief opinion: The three-player Tournament scenario is probably the best version for me to play. It’s got a lot of cool stuff going on, but it’s a little too long for me. Especially with six players, I don’t think I’d enjoy a full game.

G Is For Gaming

2007-09-13T13:07:00.000-07:00

During August and September, I played games at three different events starting with the letter G.

GenCon

As usual, I got play one game at GenCon, but it was a doozy. A while back, Judd Karlman from the Sons of Kryos floated the idea of Star Wars Episode LV. It was basically Star Wars reinterpreted through the God-Emperor of Dune lens. Several people, including myself, thought “Heck, yeah!” So we played it at GenCon, using Primetime Adventures for the engine (a game which Judd describes as his “Narrative GURPS”). And it rocked. Hopefully recordings of the game will pop up soon, because it was one of the most satisfying convention games I’ve ever played.

Gateway

Speaking of satisfying, the game of Grey Ranks I played at Gateway was remarkably fulfilling. It’s designed as a three-session game, but we were able to play out a beautiful little story arc in just one, using Jason’s recommended setup. I talked more about this one over on The Voice.

I also got to play in the third installment of Denys’ Heroes of Middle-Earth game. This time around we seriously derailed Tolkien’s timeline by killing Smaug twelve hundred years before The Hobbit. Sadly, our hobbit companion died in the process. He was buried in Rivendell, a place he greatly loved.

On the last day of convention, I managed to sneak away from the booth long enough for a game of The Napoleonic Wars. I once again took the field as Austria, and after a two-turn game featuring an incredible French attack on Britain (Napoleon was in London on turn one, and Bagration was unable to get him out), I managed to pull off the win. It was definitely a case of being the guy no one was worried about, though I did manage a bit of a finesse at the end of turn two to keep France out of my capital.

Gwen’s Birthday

For Gwen’s birthday party, we had a few people over to play some board games. While we waited for everyone else to arrive, the early arrivals broke out Tongiaki, which I’d played a few times before. I think I agree with Roy: this one is best with three. Otherwise, the chaos and downtime make it not quite as fun as I’d want a game this light to be.

After that, we finally broke the shrink-wrap off of our copy of Amun-Re. We’d all played it before, but it had been a while. I think we all overpaid for auctions early in the game; I know I did, and I saw how badly it hurt me. I was glad this hit the table again, as it really is an excellent game.

Finally, we played a long game of A Game of Thrones, which Gwen had been wanting to try for a while. It went a bit a longer than all of us would have liked, but I still enjoyed it. Once again, I played Stark, but this time my conservative strategy held me back a little. I had a shot at the win, but I needed to have moved a turn earlier to really have a chance.

What's All This Then?

2007-08-10T15:26:00.000-07:00

So, things have happened. Among them, the West Coast Meeple Fest, a board game event organized by Doug Garrett of Garrett's Games and Geekiness. Gwen and I had a great time, and over the course of the long weekend I played 25 games, almost all of them new to me. I'm not going to talk about all of them in detail, so here's my quick judgments on the new ones.

The Best

Excellent

Good

Not My Bag

Thurn and Taxis: Power and Glory
Rat Hot
Factory Fun
Unpublished Bruno Faidutti prototype

Since we gotten back we've also played Scotland Yard and Vino, in an attempt to burn through the games on our "to be evaluated" shelf.

Meanwhile, in RPG-land, we had our second session of Wine Dark Sky. We had fun, but something just didn't sit right with us. We've decided to take a break from it, in part because we're not fully gelled as a group yet. We're going to play something a bit more familiar to integrate the group a little better. We're also taking a break from the regular Tuesday routine because August is insane for me. Tuesday RPGs will return sometime in September.

And soon, off to GenCon!

The Wine-Dark Sky, Session 1: Naxos

2007-07-26T15:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, I've given the Full Light, Full Steam/Spelljammer game a pretentious name. Get over it.

Summary:

Low on food and air, the exhausted crew found their way out of the phlogiston to the ring-colony of Naxos. On approach, Naxos appeared to be a series of asteroids circling a water planet and connected by huge plants hundreds of feet long. The center of the colony was an ancient Elven Armada that had “gone wild” and grown around the largest asteroid. Although there were a substantial number of Flitters on the Armada’s landing deck, the elves did not appear to be part of the Elven Empire. In fact, the colony looked to be populated by a mix of humans and elves, all of whom dressed in extremely simple styles. Reassured that the locals wouldn’t be interested in killing them for their ship, the crew decided to land in order to take on supplies.

The ensuing first contact went humorously awry. Due to some Thematic Battery charging and bad die rolls, the human governor, a man named Demos, become convinced the crew was part of the Empire’s strike force sent to wreck vengeance upon the colony for not supplying troops to the Empire. There was already an Imperial Military Envoy, an elf named Einar, on the asteroid who had been stirring up trouble, and Demos was convinced the crew was part of the retribution Einar had promised. While Guillaume, Reg, and Piter were unable to calm the governor down, they were able to convince him that they weren’t going to start killing people right away, and they arranged a meeting with Einar.

Fortunately for the crew, Einar was easily confused, so even though Piter’s title (pronounced perfectly by Guillaume, whom Einar took to be some sort of footman or valet) was more than slightly archaic, Einar reported the details of his mission to who he believed was a superior officer. The Empire’s primary concern in the area was bringing elves lost in the Diaspora back into the Imperial fold, so as to bolster their forces. In this, Einar had failed completely, as the local elves had so “debased” themselves as to put the humans in charge of the colony, as this particular band of elves though that the primary failing of the Elven Hegemony was that they were too inclined to take the long view. Einar had nothing but contempt for colonists. He had also discovered that the Governor had some sort of secret agreement with local pirate captain who was searching for lost elven artifacts. Most disconcerting to Guillaume was that this pirate, Antoine le Flamboyant, was none other than the previous owner of the crew’s last ship (which was stolen, of course).

Meanwhile, Kami, Reg, and Kaira were seeing the town. While the idea of human/elven harmony was reassuring, and their mastery of agriculture was impressive, the notable absence of young men was a bit disconcerting. They soon discovered that the colony was afraid some external threat and that the governor had conscripted all of men capable of military service and sent them on patrol to protect the outlying settlements. They also encountered a rather disgruntled and suspicious Einar, but before he could spot their ship, Reg’s “new friends” carried the elf off.

Kaira and Kami (especially Kami) still wanted to learn more about the Imperial Military Envoy, however, so they followed him back to his ship. Einar spotted Kami just as he was about to board his Flitter, but as he drew his sword on her, Kaira turned his rapier into rope. Embarrassed by this turn of events (discharging three levels of his Grace Condition Battery), he invited Kami into the ship to speak to her in private.

Meanwhile, Antoine’s Hammership landed at the colony. While Piter headed off the market to buy some unusual supplies for their ship, Reg decided that seeing what Antoine was up to would be a good idea. He was able to overhear a conversation between Antoine and Demos in which Demos thanked Antoine for protecting the colony from the Neogi. In fact, Demos said, as there had been no additional sightings of the Neogi ship since Antoine’s arrival, perhaps it was time to bring the patrols back. Antoine counseled against this action, saying it was still too soon. He and his men were still “investigating” some of the outlying asteroids where the Neogi might be hiding. Before Reg could hear any more, however, Antoine spotted and recognized him. Both men took aim at each other (Reg with one of his many pistols, Antoine with a blunderbuss tossed down from the ship), and the exchange of volleys ended with Reg gravely wounded and limping back toward the ship.

While Kaira, who had by now returned to the ship, tended to Reg’s wounds, Guillaume challenged Antoine to cross blades with him. While the duel lasted mere seconds, with Guillaume handily disarming Antoine, the post-duel posturing for the assembled masses and crews took considerably longer. Antoine gave Guillaume the opportunity to kill him and “expose these poor people to the terrors of the Neogi,” but Guillaume declined. Instead, he was able to gain access to Antoine’s charts and maps, giving him a clearer idea of how to get home. And to add insult to injury, he convinced Antoine to fly Guillaume’s personal jack until they left the system. Angry and embarrassed, Antoine agreed, but he swore revenge upon Guillaume and his crew.

In the meantime, Kami had grown tired of Einar’s imperious demeanor and had used his sword/rope to tie him in his own ship. With help of the recently-arrived Piter, she absconded with the crystal he used to communicate with his superiors. Piter, while ostensibly letting Einar go, in fact sabotaged his spelljamming helm, which would leave him stranded in the phlogiston, much as the crew had been.

With the ship’ stores restocked, a new course home plotted, and an escort out of the sphere provided by Antoine’s Hammership, the crew sailed on, in search of home.

Analysis:

As expected, passing Scrips took a little getting used to, but people seemed to catch on reasonably quickly. I suspect we’ll get better at it.

Josh has said that Full Light, Full Steam is a system where the players get to decide when they want to win. I agree, and I like the shape that gives the game. The way the player characters’ Thematic Batteries charge and discharge (and how the NPCs’ Batteries work the other direction) mean that the players will take it on the chin early but then win in the end. That’s exactly the sort of feeling I want from this game.

The inability of the GM to end a scene leads to the players having a lot of power in Risky conflicts. If they win big and get a situation modifier out of it, they can keep asking for more. If they lose and give the NPC a bonus, they can end the scene. The scenes with Antoine vs. Reg and Antoine vs. Guillaume were excellent illustrations of this.

Because the GM doesn’t have the usual scene framing control, I need to be more aggressive about introducing things during scenes. I need to be more willing to throw in “two guys with guns burst through the door” type developments. I wasn’t, and that lead to not enough Situation getting exposed during the game. There were a lot of elements of the underlying Conflicts that didn’t really come up because the players didn’t really investigate them, and I didn’t really put them out there.

Switching from Full Light, Full Steam’s usual “you need to defend the Imperial Navy’s interests” setup to “you’re a group of outsiders trying to get home” situation means that I need to pull harder on people’s Thematic Batteries to tie them into the Situation.

I could have sworn there was something else, but I’ve forgotten it.

And of course, it was fun!

Andrew, Teisha, Christina, Ted, Roy: Comments?

The Odyssey, If Odysseus Was A Space Pirate

2007-07-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

That was my big takeaway from the planning session of our Full Light, Full Steam game. It’s going to be a game of people trying to get home and the piratical adventures they have along the way. The central McGuffin is the ancient Elven Man-O-War the crew found while lost in the phlogiston, which has the Thematic Batteries “Mysterious,” “Loyal Crew,” and “Responsive.” The ship disappeared thousands of years ago, before the end of the Unhuman War. The crew, stranded in the Flow after a privateering raid gone wrong, found the ship and its pilot, who had spent millennia in suspended animation. They have now finally made their way back to a crystal sphere, and they’re beginning the long trek home.

And here’s who they are.

Captain Guillaume de Lyonesse (Roy), a noble son whose dissolute ways earned him a pointed "invitation" to make a name for himself as a privateer, far away from home. Thematic Batteries: Fiery Temper, Remittance Man, Noblesse Oblige

Reginald “Reg” Verant (Andrew), a middle-aged marksman and gunner who dislikes violence "up close", has a family he misses back home (though he knows that Dora and the kids can take care of themselves), and tries to always keep things low-key and relaxed. Thematic Batteries: Armed, Salt of the Earth, Experienced.

Kaira (Teisha), the teenaged, technology-obsessed wizard who accidentally stowed away on the ship. Thematic Batteries: Young, Inquisitive, Claustrophilic.

Kami Greenleaf (Christina), the elven pirate ninja who intentionally stowed away on the ship to avoid a life in a temple. Thematic Batteries: Diasporic Elf, Prima Donna, Idealistic.

Pietr (Ted), the ancient elven pilot. Thematic Batteries: Elven Noble, Man Out Of Time, Ever-Present.

More to come. . .

True Kings Of The North

2007-07-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

After a game each of Ca$h 'n Gun$ and Bang! (including my first time playing with the excellent Dodge City expansion), I spent much of Sunday playing Fantasy Flight’s A Game of Thrones board game. I’ve played this one before, and after having figured it out a lot more, I like it even better. I played House Stark again in another five-player games, and this time around I had a much better idea of where I needed to be headed in the early game. I was able to grab the critical choke point of Moat Calin in the first turn, through aggression on the part of both Greyjoy and Lannister kept me from marching on Seagard the following turn. My reluctance to fight a pitched battle combined with Lannister’s movements along his southern flanks kept Greyjoy’s attention elsewhere, though he did smash my nascent western navy in the Bay of Ice. Along with my early defeat in the Narrow Sea by Baratheon, this kept me confined to overland movement.

In the middle game, however, I was able to slowly creep down toward the middle of board, taking the Twins and eventually moving into the Mountains of the Moon. Lannister had rebuffed Baratheon’s early gambit for victory, and Greyjoy had repeated invaded Tyrell’s capital of Highgarden, so I was largely left to my own devices. By the time the next bidding phase came around, I had maxed out my Power, allowing me to substantially improve my position on all three tracks. This, along with having a powerful force of three cavalry units near the middle of the board and rebuilt navy in the Shivering Sea, put me in great position for endgame.

The key component of my final strategy was finally dislodging Baratheon from the Narrow Sea. Once I had done that, I had three ships there to provide support to all of the adjacent areas. I took The Eryie from Baratheon and moved quickly to grab Crackclaw Point before Lannister could get there. That gave me five Cities and Strongholds to everyone else’s three or four. With three turns to go, all I had to do was hold on. Yes, I was adjacent to the two additional spaces I would need to win, but I was stretched pretty thin. I decided to hole up, consolidate my power, and prepare for the final push.

That strategy worked pretty well. I was able to take King’s Landing in the second to last turn, but Greyjoy’s resurgence almost doomed me. He took Winterfell from me, but I didn’t panic. On the last turn, I lost Crackclaw Point to Baratheon but retook it and Winterfell before fending off one final assault from Greyjoy to pull off the win.

As usual, there was something strange about the game. In this case, it was lots of Musters and few Supply cards coming out. As a result, I had almost my entire set of troop markers out, but I was incredibly constrained as to how I could move them. I spent most of the game controlling six supply spaces, but because of the timing on the card I never moved past four on the track.

Overall, I was satisfied with the game. I played a deliberately conservative style, and I was able to capitalize on the mistakes of others. I wasn’t overly aggressive, and I didn’t over-extend myself. I’m sure that this strategy worked better than it should have because of the number of new players in the game, but even if I hadn’t won I still would have enjoyed it. There’s a lot of nuance to this game, and I was pleased that I got the chance to explore it further.

That's Right: Fantasy Anime Steampunk Space Opera

2007-07-18T14:21:00.000-07:00

Our next weekly roleplaying game is a bit of a mashup: We’re playing in the Spelljammer setting using Full Light, Full Steam for mechanics. Think fantasy anime steampunk space opera. Or something like that. Before talking about what the specifics of our group’s setup, I want to touch briefly on a few system issues.

The only real changes I had to make to the Full Light, Full Steam rules to make this work were related to magic and skills. On the skills side, Motoring is replaced with Riding, and Weightless is out in favor of Weaponry. Beekeeping, Ether, Jury-Rigging, Gadgeteer, Horticulture, Mechanics, Steam, and Theory are all gone. Everything technology-related now falls under the Technology skill. The rest of the new skills are all Magic skills. Spelljamming replaces Piloting. Healing works like an improved version of Medicine (and possibly Empathy). The other five skills pretty much straight translations of Ars Magica verbs: Creation, Destruction, Control, Divination, and Transmutation. Want to make or summon things? Use Creation. Need to blast someone? Destruction, baby. Control can be anything from telekinesis to mental domination, while Divination and Transmutation allow you find stuff out and to change things that already exist.

The important thing about Magic skills is that they’re tied to the new Magic Condition Battery. The key difference between these and other skills is that using them always involves risk, so any use of magic may discharge your Magic Battery. That seemed like a good way to avoid having to keep track of spells per day while still maintaining the feeling of magic as a limited resource. Recharging your Magic Battery is much easier than recharging the other three, however, as it simply requires eight hours of rest and either praying for spells or studying your spellbook (or however else you get spells back).

I believe that the difficulty for Spelljamming checks will be determined by the Helm Type and Maneuverability Class of the ship in question. Note that unlike the original, simply sitting in a helm doesn’t drain all of your spells for the day. Tough checks may discharge your Battery, however.

That’s it so far. I’m sure things will come up in play, but I think this will deal with 95% of potential system issues. Later in the week, after we hash out a few details, I’ll talk about what sorts of stories we’re going to try to tell in this crazy world, and I’ll get into a few details about characters.

It Happens

2007-07-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

The last month has been not so good for this blog. Fortunately, it's been really good for my gaming. Between wrapping up the PTA season, PaulCon V, Go Play NW, and Origins, I've been able to play a ton of fun games. I just haven't had time to write about them. Now that we're starting up a new Tuesday night RPG series, I'm going to try to get back into the swing of things. More on that later today.

Think Less, Do More

2007-06-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

(The subject of this post is stolen from Mike Mearls, and it pretty accurately sums up the direction I'm heading in my gaming.)

Last night's Primetime Adventures session was, in my mind, the best yet. I think there were three things that made it awesome. First, we're in the payoff section of the game. The groundwork has already been laid, and now we're reaping what we've sown. (Reviewing the unresolved plotlines at the beginning certainly helped.) Second, it was a Spotlight episode for Christina's character, and we really took advantage of that. Even scenes that she wasn't in were about her, and that helped tie the episode together into a nice, tight bundle. (Way to go, Ted and Roy, for making that happen.) Third, we made things happen. We never shied away from conflict, and we didn't worry about what the choices we made would do to the overall game. We just played our characters honestly and to the hilt, and we trusted that we'd figure out later how it would work out. We were helped, of course, by the end of the season approaching, but it can still be a hard thing to do. Fortunately, we seem to have gotten pretty good at it.

This makes me realize an odd thing: I'm good at starting and ending games, but middles give me trouble. Clearly, I need to play without middles. I should play every session like it's both the first and last.

Backstabbing? In A Spy Game?

2007-06-07T11:54:00.000-07:00

There were lots of fun twists and in the finale of our Covenant game last night, but we had a bit of trouble in the climatic scene, with the villain coming out ahead in the multi-way conflict. In a way, he seemed too powerful, due to the game’s affect-a-die-or-bow-out mechanics. He just kept invoking the PCs’ Consequences to keep his Edges in reserve. Thinking about it, I can come up with three ways within the system to deal with it, though there may be more.

Resolve Truisms. These give you the ammo to keep going. Behold, mechanical incentive to address Premise!
Set up preliminary conflicts. Use these to put Consequences on the Big Bad before the final showdown. You run the risk of taking them yourself, but in that case you might choose to sit out the showdown. Or not. Which leads to. . .
Invoke Consequences for people on your own side. So far as I can tell, there's no reason why you have to limit yourself to using the other side's Consequences. And in a game that focuses so much on betrayal and hidden agendas, I think that's a good thing. (This occurred to me literally five minutes after people left last night.)

I need to think more on this. . .

Back From Mid-Season Break

2007-06-06T16:33:00.000-07:00

With Roy finally returned from Madagascar, we resumed our Primetime Adventures game last night. This was a fairly low-key episode, though it was obvious to me that improv work is clearly leaching over into my gaming headspace. I’ve been working on “finding the danger” in scenes, and I certainly felt like I was doing it here, as Bacchus just showed up in the first post-titles scene to cause trouble. I did wimp out in one scene, though, and I’m not quite sure how to fix it. (Roy, Christina, Ted: For reference, this was the scene between Jack and Andy.) We’ve got three episodes left, and I’m not quite sure how to pace the remaining plot points I’ve got in mind.

One Of These Games Is Not Like The Others

2007-06-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

Tom threw a boardgaming event yesterday, and despite the length of it, I only got to play two games. The first was quick two-player game of Caylus - or shall I say a quick dismantling of me. I’m really not a good Caylus player (I swear that every Caylus session report I make includes this phrase), but I still enjoy the game, especially when it’s played quickly. I really should check out Caylus Magna Carta.

The second game was where the time went: We broke out a four-player game of War of the Ring. I’d wanted to try this for a while, and while I think it would probably be better with only two players, I still had a great time. It was a long game, mostly due to the rules explanation and unfamiliarity, but for me it was worth it. The Free Peoples managed to pull of a Ring-related victory, but only because the Shadow forces were completely unable to roll sixes on their Hunt dice. I’m going to be tracking this one down and playing it again.

Today, Gwen and I opened up the copy of Notre Dame I brought back from Gamex. We’d both played the prototype last fall at BGG.CON, and Gwen had played it on Saturday, so I was happy to finally get another shot at it. I was pleased at how well it works as a two-player game, the only real issue being that the cathedral itself tends to become a wash. I was also surprised at how well my carriage strategy worked, though that was due primarily to a board setup that gave me a significant first mover advantage. I’m just as excited about this game now as I was last fall, and given how quickly it plays, I know it will be hitting the table a lot in the coming months.

Make No Secret Of It

2007-06-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

I quite like Covenant. The system doesn't force the central conceit of the game down your throat, but the back-and-forth nature of conflicts, the tight focus on relationships, and the inevitability of Consequences makes it a solid espionage game in the Le Carre/Sandbaggers mode (though it could probably do Alias/Mission: Impossible/James Bond just as well).

Which is to say: last night's session went really well. I actually felt good about my GMing. Inspired by Jesse's Sorcerer & Sword game last weekend, I hit the ground running by very aggressively framing a scene for each player and then letting them take it from there. Everyone seemed to respond well to me hosing their characters from the get-go. And I had no idea that it was going to end up how it did. Story Now, baby. Story Now. We'll do one more session next week.

The Third and Final Round

2007-05-30T15:08:00.000-07:00

Last night was the finale of our Contenders game, and despite my boasts about winning it all, I lost my only match of the game in my final fight for the belt. The last two fights of the game were a study in contrasts, with Christina losing to an NPC in a first-round knockout and with Ted and I slugging it out for a fourteen long, painful rounds. Amazingly, two of us managed to get positive endings, so Ted’s long-suffering fighter retired after finally regaining the championship while my young up-and-comer reconciled with his brother and will likely win his own title in time. This week’s game reinforced the ideas that I posted last week. My character ended up with the most coherent story because I was able to narrate my Connections into every type of scene I did, including fights. I think it’s really important to create Connections that you’re going to be able to do that with. Otherwise, they don’t end up being as central to play as they should be.

So, Contenders is done. Next week we’ll be back to Primetime Adventures. I should try to remember how to play that.

As Usual, Tiring But Awesome

2007-05-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

I’m finally back from Gamex, which took place down in Los Angeles this weekend. Although I’m still involved with running the RPG department, I was much more hands-off during this show, as I had a great staff to handle operations. This meant I got to play games, which was important.

First, I played in the second session of an on-going Lord of the Rings game using HeroQuest for its mechanics. It continues to rock, although this definitely felt like a bridge session in the campaign. We had plenty of room to be indecisive, and we didn’t accomplish anything big (aside from being smacked around by the Witch-King of Angmar). I got be angsty and broody, which was fun. Even more fun was being goaded out of it by Andrew’s character. I can’t wait to see what happens next time.

Second, I finally got to play Sorcerer, specifically Sorcerer & Sword. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, as we’re looking at playing The Dictionary of Mu this summer, and I wanted some experience with the system first. Jesse (the GM) really understands Sorcerer, so it was a great learning experience. I think I got a pretty good handle on the way Sorcerer conflicts work, which is very different than just about anything I’ve played before, so that was definitely useful. It was also a ton of fun. I’ve discovered that I really enjoying playing big, dramatic characters, so when the opportunity to play the half-demon son of a nature goddess whose human lover had just been killed and who had a Humanity score of 1, I jumped at the chance. There are people who claim that if you stand up while you’re roleplaying that you’re LARPing. I went way beyond that. It was awesome.

And speaking of awesome, I got to help playtest Joshua BishopRoby’s next game, Sons of Liberty. Any game in which you get to say, “Alexander Hamilton dons his power armor,” is worth playing. Josh and I talked more about it on what will soon be out as episode 90 of Have Games, Will Travel. We sat down on Monday and did a pretty good wrap-up of the con. And I already can’t wait for the next one.

Domus Romae Aeternae

2007-05-24T23:12:00.000-07:00

Tonight Ted, Christina, and I sat down with new recruits Andrew and Teisha to do cell creation for our short-run game of Covenant. I was surprised by how long it took, but looking back, it’s a lot like a pitch session for PTA with more details to flesh out. There’s a lot of front-loading in this game, so we had lots of things to figure out. I found it interesting that we were able to set up the nature of conspiracy relatively easily, but the creation of individual characters and the specific situation took us a long time. It does appear to be a nice tight package, however, with the game’s Conventions and Motifs clearly reflected in the PCs and their situations. I’ve got a lot of good material to work with, and we’re all clearly on the same page, so we’ll see how it plays out next week.

Round Two

2007-05-22T23:42:00.000-07:00

Our Contenders game hit a bit of snag tonight, not because it wasn’t good at what it was trying to do, but because we weren’t trying to do that. We’ve got a good handle on the system now, and it’s very clear that the game pushes you into the ring. The reward structure is constructed in such a way that, in general, fighting makes more sense than working (unless your Pain is really high relative to your Hope, in which case you don’t want to accelerate endgame). As such, we’ve been spending a lot of time fighting and training, and not much time working or connecting. The problem is that Ted and Christina’s characters are very involved in non-fighting related issues. As such, they’re not getting addressed very much. That’s definitely something I wish we had realized at the outset. Still, we’re enjoying ourselves, and I’m looking forward to the wrap-up next week.

Round One

2007-05-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

Last night we started our brief experiment with Contenders, as a fill-in game while Roy is out of town. I’d been grooving on what the Durham 3 had to say about it, and I was excited to finally get it to the table. We’re playing three-handed, and we decided on a setting that’s loosely Las Vegas in 1960. I think it’s working pretty well. All three of our fighters managed to pull off wins in our first set of bouts, and we’re doing reasonably well on the Hope/Pain scale. Of course, this means we’re setting ourselves up for a big fall. That ought to be fun to watch.

We'll Never Be Invited Back, I'm Sure

2007-05-12T23:13:00.000-07:00

My friend Mark has a new house that turns out to be awesome for big gaming parties. This is unsurprising, considering how much he likes to throw them. Today was the first of those. I had to leave early, as I had an improv performance at 8 PM, but I managed to get in a few plays before I took off. The first was a tossed-together, six-player game of Rise of the Luftwaffe, which I managed to arrange a trade for and had just appeared in the mail as I was walking out of the house. Gwen seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, though that might have been because she got to shoot down Ted. Twice. I do really enjoy the Down in Flames games, and I’m glad I’ve been able to pick them up.

Once everyone arrived, we broke up into smaller groups, and I found myself teach and then playing Carcassonne: The City. We were very aggressive about wall-building, and we actually finished the game before getting to the third stack of tiles. This is my favorite Carcassonne variant, and this game demonstrated that I’m definitely getting better at it.

Before I left, I fit in a game of Winds of Plunder, which was also fresh from the mail. I did substantially less well than in my first play of the game, but I still think it’s excellent. I was somewhat strategy-less for the first two or three turns, which didn’t help. There are multiple paths to victory in this game, but you need to actually choose one.

It ended up being a shorter day of gaming than I would have liked, but it was still fun. Hopefully, given the suitability of his new house, Mark will invite us back again.

Somewhat Of A Break

2007-05-09T14:08:00.000-07:00

No game last night, though we did watch Raging Bull in preparation for playing Contenders next week. We also had a long discussion over dinner about the social space around our game, inspired by Christina's post over here.

Waiting For June Sweeps

2007-05-03T16:07:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was the midpoint of our Primetime Adventures season and the last episode before our three week break. It was also Roy’s character’s spotlight episode. I felt like it went pretty well, as his character pretty clearly resolved a major story arc, though his Issue remains unchanged. We spent a lot of time dealing with how creepy magic is in this show, and a good bit of the drama came from people finding out about it. That seems pretty played out, though, so I suspect that it will largely be a non-issue in the future. I also felt like I might have pushed for conflicts too much and perhaps over things that didn’t matter. I did end up winning a lot, though. It was interesting to see how the game felt different when the players had less Fan Mail. I think what makes sense is for me to hold back while people are building up Fan Mail and then to go whole hog for folks with a big stack.

Twilight Struggle Was Not The Long One

2007-05-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Ted and I spent this past weekend at the GMT Weekend, sponsored by renowned war game manufacturer GMT Games. I’ve been drifting more and more in the war gaming direction over the last year, and I was looking forward to digging into it a bit more.

Friday evening was relatively light, as my only two plays were games from the Down in Flames series. These are really a single game about WWII-era dogfighting with lots of supplements that add new planes and theaters. At it’s core, it’s a card game in which you control a leader and a wingman. It’s very quick to learn, and it plays quickly with between two and eight players. What makes is very cool is the campaign system. If your pilots survive, you get to run them again in latter missions. As you accumulate experience and kills, they get better equipment and special abilities. If your pilots are shot down, however, that’s it for them. Mike Lam runs this event all weekend, and it’s very well-done. He posts pilot records for each theater, so by looking at the wall you can see how people are doing. This carries over from convention to convention, and if you make Ace (five kills) get a T-shirt. It was a lot of fun to play, and I’m thinking about doing something similar at PaulCon this year. To that end, I picked up Zero! and Corsairs & Hellcats, the two in-print games in the series.

On Saturday, I played one game, but it was worth it. We threw down on a four-player game of The Napoleonic Wars, which Ted and I had been itching to play for a long time. If we were looking for a chance to learn how the game works, this was certainly it. One of the major features of the game is that is has the possibility of ending after any of the five turns. It didn’t. We ended up going the distance, playing five turns over the course of about ten hours. As the Austrians, I was mostly a passenger, especially for the first three turns. I knew that was likely to happen, which is why I volunteered to play them. After nearly being conquered by the French at the end of turn three, I actually switched camps and improved my position quite a bit in turn four. Sadly, the French fell apart in the final turn, and as their support eroded, the Russians and their Prussian allies reversed my prior gains. I can see how the praise and criticism that gets applied to this game makes sense, and I can’t imagine playing it very often, but I had a great time. It was a crazy and epic game. I’ve got the second edition on pre-order, and I’m looking forward to having it appear.

Sunday, I actually played a non-war game: Winds of Plunder. This is a very solid game about piracy, and I’m not just saying that because I won. I’ll be talking about it on a future show, but I think it’s best described as a thematic experience that uses modern, elegant mechanics (which is different than saying it’s a Euro game about pirates).

Ted and I headed home after that, but we still had one game left in us. We finished off the weekend with a game of Twilight Struggle, and it confirmed the opinions I developed after Wednesday night’s play. This one turned out to be nail-biter, as it lasted a full ten turns and ended with a single-point victory for the Soviets (controlled, this time, by me). I’d heard concerns that the USSR doesn’t have much of a chance in the Late War phase, but that’s clearly not true, as Ted is hardly an inexperienced US player. Certainly, the pendulum does swing in favor of the Americans, but the Soviets can hold out long enough to take the victory. I suspect this one will be coming to the table a fair bit, as I like the feel of the game, and we were able to play out the whole thing in about four hours.

I predicted I’d get four games in this weekend, while Gwen picked three. I guess I won the bet. I certainly had fun, and I’d love do it again in the fall.

Now The Trumpet Summons Us Again

2007-04-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

Within the board game community, Twilight Struggle was one of the biggest hits of last year, winning not only a Charles S. Roberts award, but also the International Gamers Award and BoardGameGeek Golden Geek Award trophies for both Best Wargame and Best Two Player game. Clearly this game had something going for it, and yet I’d managed to miss playing it several times. Fortunately, Ted and Christina own it, and Gwen was interested in trying it out, so we finally borrowed their copy and gave it a try last night. We started a little on the late side, and we were both a bit tired, so we only made it through the first three out of ten turns, completing the Early War phase. However, only an extremely lucky roll on my part kept Gwen from achieving automatic victory on that turn, so I consider it a fairly complete play.

As a fan of GMT’s card-driven series, I was inclined to like Twilight Struggle, and the relative simplicity of the rules certainly helped draw me in. Knowledge of the card list is a very important part of successful play, which is really my only knock against card-driven games in general. Much as in Magic: The Gathering, the basic rules are extremely light, but you’ve got to know how the cards are going to change them in order to play well. I was also a bit surprised how hard of a time the US player has it at the beginning of the game, but in hindsight I shouldn’t have been. I knew that my role was simply to weather the Soviet storm until the mid-to-late game, but I didn’t really how much of an onslaught it was going to be. I’m going to be playing this one again. While Gwen did enjoy it, the time factor may keep the two of us from playing it much. Fortunately, I’m heading up the GMT Weekend on tomorrow for much wargaming, so I may be able to sit down with this one again very soon.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

2007-04-25T11:44:00.000-07:00

I think, after five episodes of Primetime Adventures, that we’re finally figuring things out. Before Tuesday’s game, we reviewed the section on conflict (specifically, on what conflicts are in this system), and I know that helped me. One thing I finally got clear on is that conflicts in PTA are about Protagonist wants. That means my job as the Producer is to know what people want and to put interesting obstacles in front of them. (Yes, this seems obvious in hindsight, but it’s not the case for all games.) This, combined with the fact that we’re far enough into the season that people seem to have a good idea of what their characters want, meant that last night’s game was full of interesting conflict. And even better (from my point of view at least), I finally managed to drain some of that pesky Fan Mail away from the players. Of course, I didn’t win a single conflict during that process, but that’s fine with me.

Overall, I felt like the session built on the groundwork we’d laid in previous episodes and established a momentum that will carry us through the rest of the season. And next week is Roy’s spotlight episode. Woot.

I Need More Power!

2007-04-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

There are some games that I'm not very good at and that I don't enjoy losing (e.g. Reef Encounter). On Saturday, I played one that I'm not very good at and don't mind losing: Power Grid. Power Grid is one of our circle's favorite light-heavyweight games, and it comes to the table quite often. I usually end up playing something else that I have a better chance at winning, but this time, as it was the only thing being played, I joined in a five-player game. I wouldn't say that we were tremendously hardcore, but when Mike bought a particular powerplant, we all knew the game well enough to know that he had won. Despiting finishing last, I felt good about my play. I don't feel like I made any particularly grave mistakes, and I enjoyed myself. I think the key difference between Power Grid and Reef Encounter that allows me to enjoy the former is that Power Grid has very little player downtime. With Reef Encounter, I feel like after my turn I can leave the table for thirty minutes, but in a game of Power Grid, because of the turn structure I'm involved the whole time. That, as it turns out, it important to me.

Amazingly, this was the first time I'd played the Germany board. All of my other plays had been on the US side.

Goes Down Smooth

2007-04-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

This week’s Primetime Adventures episode had what I like to call “that laid-back awesome feeling.” There weren’t tons of conflicts, and the action was relatively low-key. The show was mostly about people talking to each other. And yet, it rocked. We had Roy enjoying his momentary successes but setting himself up for a fall. We had Christina finding out more about what had happened to her and what is really going on, but not yet making strong decisions about what’s going to happen. And we had Ted feeling out possible avenues for the plot to go but not charging hard down any of them yet. We were definitely feeling the flow of the season and using it to our advantage.

One thing that we’ve all noticed about the game is that I keep having Budget left over. My initial comment was that this meant the players needed to be going harder after conflicts. I’m now thinking that the problem may be that I’m too accepting of what the players suggest. I’m tempted to say that this is an overreaction to my improv classes. That might be true, but I want to make sure that I don’t accidentally block by saying yes when someone wants me to say no. There’s a great example of this in Carol Hazenfield’s Acting On Impulse.

Alice is preparing to undergo a medical procedure performed by Bob.
Alice: (worried) Is this going to hurt?
Bob: Yes.
Alice: (even more concerned) Have you done this before?

The correct thing for Bob to say is no. Alice is making the offer that the scene be about Alice’s fear of the procedure. If Bob says yes, he’s denying that. Sometimes, yes means no.

What I need to do a better job of is being clear on what opposition the players want and playing it hard. I’ve got a pretty good idea for Roy (as he made things very clear at the end of the last episode), but I need to think further about the other two.

Beach Con 2: Electric Boogaloo

2007-04-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

This weekend, in a tradition we started last year, Ryan and Sarah invited a group of like-minded gamers down to “the beach house” in Huntington Beach. Much gaming ensued. I had to miss most Saturday because of a longform improv workshop (at which we played Werewolf, interestingly enough), but I did manage to get in a few games. On the RPG side of things, I ran a single-episode game of Hero’s Banner, which I’ve wanted to try since GenCon last year. Despite some initial missteps, it ended up working out well. Our primary mistake was in not realizing the potential danger of putting all of the characters together. The result was that Ted’s character didn’t really have a story to tell, as he soon discovered that his Influences didn’t match up with what was going on in everyone else’s action. This sort of danger exists in any game, but because of Hero’s Banner’s mechanics, it was particularly problematic. We also had a few pacing difficulties, but that’s par for the course in games with pre-set endgame mechanics (cf. My Life with Master, Polaris). Still, it was a fun time. I’ll be talking more about it on the next episode of the Voice of the Revolution.

On Sunday morning, Gwen and I played a few games of Hive while we were waiting for everyone else to wake up. Gwen must have still been asleep, as I actually won the first two games. By the time we finished a seven-race game of Odin’s Ravens, a few folks were up and moving around, but before the games got started in earnest, I had time to teach three people R-Eco. I enjoyed all three of these, and I think they all have excellent strategy-to-time ratios.

A good chunk of my Sunday was taken up with finishing the Hero’s Banner game we’d started the night before, but I did get to play a game of The Pillars of the Earth with the copy I’d picked up at Endgame the previous weekend. I liked this game when I played (in German) at BGG.CON last fall, and I was pleased to discover that I still enjoy it. Despite being the only player not to fall victim to “the tyranny of the bag,” I finished a distant last. I had a good time though, and I want to get this to the table a lot more now. We finished the weekend with a game of Alhambra, which I played for the first time only two months ago. I understood the game much better this time around, and I ended up running away with the game. I’m curious to see how well I actually understand the strategy, so hopefully I’ll find some excuse to bring this out again soon.

Letting The Awesome Flow Like Wine

2007-04-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

In the aftermath of our successful pilot, our Primetime Adventures show, Terroir, got picked up for a first season of nine episodes. Last night was the second these (the first was two weeks ago, which I somehow forgot to write about), and it’s already really cooking. One of my weaknesses as a gamemaster has been my inability to do what I call “medium-term” games. I have plenty of experience running one-shots, and I’ve run a number of successful games that have gone 16+ sessions. However, I have trouble with games that fall in between those extremes. One of my resolutions for this gaming year (the gamer year begins at GenCon) was to work on games in the five to nine session length. Thus far I’ve been moderately successful, and the PTA game is showing that progress. One of the things I’ve learned is that if I come up with something cool, I should do it right way. I shouldn’t put cool things off until “the right time” just because I don’t know what will happen afterward. As a result, I’m starting to make the transition from aggressive scene framing to aggressive pacing. Last night was a great example of that, as at least three cool plot threads came out of scenes near the beginning of the episode that ordinarily I would have held until later in the session. These then provided fuel for even cooler scenes later in the episode. (For reference, those were Julian’s confrontation with Steve, leading to his initiation; Andy’s job offer from the Dodgers, leading to his tentative reconciliation with Claire; and Lena’s encounter with Bacchus, leading to her tentative breakup with Nick.)

After the last two sessions, we’ve talked about how quickly everyone has “brought the awesome” to this game. I’m realizing that one of the tricks to running games of this length is not waiting for the awesome to emerge. The players and I all need to be pushing for conflicts and character changes early on, as the results of those shakeups make the game more exciting earlier. We don’t have to know what the game is eventually going to be about; we just have to do stuff now and see what happens.

The Nerdliest Place On Earth

2007-04-02T14:32:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the first Nerdly Beach Party, a gathering of like-minded gamers at San Simeon State Park, just north of Cambria, CA. This may be the only organized gaming event I attend this year were I traveled less far than the majority of the participants. There ended up being fourteen of us: three from the Bay Area, two from Sacramento, three from Santa Barbara, and six from Los Angeles. We mostly each other, so it was much more a social gathering than a convention. Still, games were played, and that’s what I’m here to talk about.

On Friday night, four of us started a Polaris game. Two of us had played Polaris before, and I had played with each of the other players in other games, but this was the first time any of the other players had gamed with each other. It’s a testament to the ritual power of Polaris that even though it had been a year since I last played and I hadn’t reviewed any of the rules that I still remembered all of the key phrases (and most of the mechanics). We played for several hours (I have no idea how many exactly), stopping for the night after three of our number had made Veteran. We actually got to that point fairly quickly, due to aggressive Experience checks and some good rolling. We picked up the game again the following evening and finished it off reasonably quickly, with three characters dying (one of them at Weariness four), and the remaining character becoming a demon, symbolically unseating the Solaris Knight in the process. (There was incest too. Ben would be proud.)

In general, the first night’s episode was very over the top, due no doubt to a general lack of sleep and the presence of alcohol. We mostly reined things on the second night (with the exception of Ryan, who went hell-bent for leather to demonhood), with what I felt was a corresponding increase in thematic focus. One of the problems I have with short games of Polaris is that the pacing often feels weird. In our case, we had a ridiculous amount of corruption going on before the characters made Veteran, and then it slowed down considerable afterward. It did lead to an interesting conclusion though, as the Remnant had essentially fallen to the Mistaken long before the end of the game, and the final conflict involved the last of Knights leading an army of demons to claim the city from the other demons who had already subverted it. This game also made me appreciate how much the shared Fate of the characters can influence play. In this instance, it was Idea: Children, and we all hit the familial aspects of our character’s stories hard. It ended up being very different from my previous experiences with the game, which only increases my desire to play it again.

Between the two halves of the game, I played in a one-shot of Full Light, Full Steam, Josh’s game of steam-driven Victorian action. Despite its apparent complexity, it’s actually pretty simple. Once I figured out how the scrip system worked (which is FLFS’s mechanic for know when you can end a scene), I had a great time with it. Thematic Batteries are yet another excellent variation on the Spiritual Attributes/BITs/Muses/Keys/Aspects concept, and I liked how they drove play. Much as Spirit of the Century is all about Aspects, FLFS is all about Thematic Batteries. I’ll go into this in greater detail when I talk about it on the show, but the more I think about it, the more I’m coming to believe that FLFS might work better for my style of pulp than SotC. (Let the flames begin.)

So, I didn’t get to play anywhere near as many games as I had hoped, but I had a ton of fun hanging out with the folks there. We’re already talking about doing it again in six months.

Noble Men of Hawkshold

2007-03-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

Mike and I got together this afternoon to play some Battleground: Fantasy Warfare, the "miniatures game on cards," as people often describe it. It's true, the units are cards. The game has a lot more going for it than that, however. I'll be talking about it in more depth on next podcast, but my high-level assessment is that it's very much about command and maneuver. The system rewards effective planning, and you can create very interesting problems for your opponent by presenting unforeseen obstacles. The rules are a bit unclear at times, but we still had a good time. I'm hoping this one gets to the table often.

A Little Undercooked, But Tasty

2007-03-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

With Roy in Australia, we weren't planning on doing any roleplaying this week, but Game Chef intervened. We spent several hours last night playtesting the first draft of my entry, A Penny For My Thoughts. I had two primary inspirations in mind when I wrote it, 1001 Nights and Impro, and I think I managed to correctly steal the bits I wanted from each. I'm reasonably pleased with the results of the playtest. As I said as people were leaving, I feel like the game is largely doing what I want, but that there are a number of details that I need to fix. That's certainly better than the other way around.

Breaking Ground

2007-03-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was the pilot episode of Terrior, our Primetime Adventures game about wine and magic in Santa Barbara County. If the rest of the season is half as fun as this session was, we’re in for a great ride.

The episode opened with the basic ingredients we’d agreed upon: Ted’s character’s wife (who had been cheating on him with the tasting room manager) died, leaving him controlling interest in the family winery. The twist was that she’d been murdered, as some unknown magician had left a charmed bottle of wine under the seat of her car, causing her to become intoxicated and to drive off the road. Because there were no player characters in this scene (which was effectively the teaser before the main titles), I decided to actually script the scene in Final Draft. I printed out several copies and had Roy and Christina read the parts of the doomed lovers while I read the action. I was a little worried it wasn’t going to work, but everyone said that it helped set the mood really well. It was only five pages long, so that probably helped.

The rest of the episode introduced to our protagonists. Steve (played by Ted) is the winemaker from and now majority owner of the Caire Winery. He’s also the most magically-inclined of the three. Andy (played by Roy) is his brother-in-law, who turned his back on the family business to make his own way. Despite his tremendous business successes, it’s gone badly for him recently, and he got the call notifying him of his sister’s death just as he was about to complete the paperwork finalizing his separation from his wife. Finally, Lena (played by Christina) is the young, new-promoted tasting room manager, who is trying to make sense of post-college life. She’s the only one of the three that doesn’t know about the magic yet, but she’s beginning to suspect something.

Overall, things went really well. We seem to have caught right on to the scene-framing style and to the basic mechanics. There weren’t that many conflicts in the session, primarily because we were still establishing who the characters were. There was plenty of fan mail getting tossed around, which is definitely good. And we also had some brilliant scenes, my favorite being the cross-cut flashback scene in which we learned why Andy hasn’t wanted anything to do with the winery and the lengths to which Steve is willing to go to ensure it carries on. We also got some clues as to who the murder is, but nothing conclusive.

The only unfortunate part is that we can’t play next week, which means I have to wait two weeks to get my fix.

Birthday Quick Hits

2007-03-12T16:47:00.000-07:00

My gaming group has a tendency to get together for birthdays and play lots of games. Saturday was Sarah’s birthday (observed), and we decided to keep up the fine tradition, meeting at noon and continuing late into the night.

I started off with a three-player game of Thurn and Taxis. Despite getting completely destroyed by Sarah (who has played it a lot and managed to set down seven houses on a single seven card route), I still enjoyed it. I do think that Thurn and Taxis is one of the best sixty-minute games out there right now, and it’s probably the strongest Spiel des Jahres winner since El Grande. I’ll play this one anytime. Now I just have to find the time.

We followed that up with a game of Blokus Trigon. I love Blokus, and while Trigon breaks my brain, with three players the original just doesn’t work. During the game I figured out that there’s an important difference between the two. In the original, your choice of places to play is determined by the pieces on the board, because you need corners to play off of. In Trigon, it’s determined largely by the piece you’re going to play, as the off-board pieces provide their own corners. That’s a potentially important insight, I think.

After those two lighter games I joined in a five-player session of Arkham Horror (using the Dunwich Horror expansion for good measure). My first character got munched by a Star Vampire, but after a rocky start we managed to be quite well equipped by the time the Ancient One awoke. Ithaqua went down in a hail of shotgun blasts. Despite that, I’m not sure that I’m going to play Arkham Horror again. To me, it’s not so much a game as it is an experience. While that’s fine, it’s also an experience that takes longer than I want it to.

Sadly, I feel much the same way about the next game we played, Caylus. I’ve played it five times now, and I just can’t seem to grasp it. I’m perpetually two turns behind, which is the kiss of death in that game. I had the same problem when I started playing Puerto Rico, but I grew out of it. I’m not sure if that’s going to happen with Caylus.

Fortunately, at that point we changed pace with a game of Pit. I’m glad we picked it up in a trade, as I’m enjoying it. I’m starting to be able to keep track of which people might have the commodity I want, which helps.

I finished up the evening with a game of Alhambra. I’m not sure how I managed to go this long without ever playing it, but I’m glad that I finally did. It seems like a nice, light, little game, though I need to give it another play to know for sure, as I only really figured it out halfway through (as is typical for me).

All in all, it was a good day. Combine that with two games I played on Wednesday night (Louis XIV and R-Eco), and I’ve not nothing to complain about. And the next birthday in the group is coming up in May. Woot.

Best. Show. Evar.

2007-03-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

The Tuesday RPG group has decided to shuffle its schedule of upcoming games around, so next up on our list is Primetime Adventures. Last night was our pitch session, and, man, did it rock. I’m more excited about this game than I think I’ve ever been about any other campaign. Why?

Well, we chose to keep it close to home and to do something that we know. (The latter is why we decided against most procedurals. We didn’t think we knew enough about any of the appropriate fields to get them right). So, our game is set in the Santa Ynez Valley. At a winery. With wizards. It’s going to be a tight family drama with all sorts of viticultural symbolism and subtle but creepy magic. I can’t wait.

I may need to re-read Earthquake Weather before next week’s pilot.

Week In Review

2007-03-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

This week, I played a few more games of Memoir ’44 at work, as we’re slowly working out way through all of the scenarios. I’m definitely learning how to play the game better. Instead developing a strategy and then seeing how I can pull it off with the cards in my hand (an endeavor that often ends in frustration), I’m focusing more on what sort of strategy I can formulate with the cards I have. I think I first stumbled on this idea when I was playing Combat Commander at OrcCon, but it applies equally well to Memoir. I’m not entirely certain that it’s effective, but it’s certainly less stressful. I also finished another online game of Hacienda, and I’ve concluded that I do prefer it with four players. Five is a little too tight for my tastes.

Today we got together with a small crew to do a little board gaming and eat some sushi. There was more sushi eating than gaming, but we did fit in a quick game of Betrayal at House on the Hill and an even quicker game of Metro. I’ve confirmed my feelings about the former: it’s a perfectly good atmospheric game so long as no one takes it too seriously. The latter has quickly become one of my favorite fillers, as it plays really well with a wide range of player numbers (two to six) and it moves right along. For some reason, it just works for me.

Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead

2007-02-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

Our game of The Mountain Witch ended last night, which was a session earlier than I had originally planned. The players just grabbed the reins and kicked it into overdrive, however, so I’m not at all disappointed that it did. I feel like making it last another session would have destroyed the great momentum we had created.

As usual, several ronin ended up dead, and as usual, all of the deaths were at the hands of the other player characters. In this case it was Roy’s character (Hanjo) killed Ted’s (Asano) because the Witch promised to free the soul of a man he had caused to become an angry ghost. Asano and Tsune (Christina’s character) had already managed to kill the Witch, but its malevolent spirit lingered for a few moments, giving Hanjo hope the deal might still be honored. Alas, Hanjo was cut down by Mike’s ronin, who had sworn revenge on Hanjo for killing his wife. All in all, it was a fine ending.

I definitely understood the game better this time around, and I’m glad that I ran it again. In fact, we’d all like to play it again, now that we’ve got a little experience with it under our belts. A big change for me was that I didn’t know what people’s Dark Fates were, and I think that greatly improved the game for me. It gave the players a lot more responsibility, because the burden to foreshadow their Fate had to be carried by them alone. There was a fun “feeling out” process that we went through as people would give hints as to what their Fate might be and I would respond with provocative scene framing or stakes. When it happened accidentally, it was even better. Ted had the “Worst Fear” card, and he decided that Asano was terrified of the restless dead. He had dropped several hints, but when they group was attacked by zombies, it just took off.

The other thing I learned this time around (and here’s where my improv classes are starting to peek through) is that Dark Fates work best when players use them to engage the other players. They’re not called Dark Secrets, and there’s a reason for that. My advice to future players is to find ways that make your Dark Fate something that the other players can play off of. It shouldn’t be something that’s purely between you and the GM.

And don’t forget, the Witch is a MacGuffin. The GM’s goal isn’t just to threaten the players. The goal is to make that by the time they get to the Witch the ronin have sufficient reason to kill each other.

A Little Behind, Part 2

2007-02-26T16:52:00.000-08:00

I only managed to play in one RPG event at OrcCon, but it was a doozy. My friend (and RPG department co-supervisor) Denys decided to run a campaign game spanning the three conventions a year that make up the Strategicon family. He’s running three duplicate sessions per convention, each with a major decision point in the middle. The outcome of those games determines which direction the “canonical” storyline goes. That sounded cool enough, but when he told me it would be a Middle-Earth game using the HeroQuest rules, I had to play. The game is set around T.A. 1974, the last days of the Kingdom of Arthedain, and the central action of the game involves the fight against the Witch-King of Angmar. I played Peledur, nephew of King Arvedui, which basically meant I got to angst it up. That’s not entirely true, but my portrayal of him centered strongly around the ideas of fate and duty. It was fun afterward to compare notes with the other players (including Ted, whom I have mentioned here before) who had run him through the same circumstances in the two earlier sessions. There was lots of good mood in the game, and I look forward to the next installment.

Speaking of mood, last week’s session of The Mountain Witch had it in spades. Most of the session centered on the ronin telling each other ghost stories while they were trapped in a ruined shrine during a snowstorm. There was some great character work, including one outright revelation of a Dark Fate. The session ended with the ronin finally entering the fortress of the Witch, so while the session lacked action, I suspect this week’s episode will have it in spades.

And speaking of action, my involvement with the Durga’s Ironhelms campaign ended with a bang last week. Following the Markus’ Day celebration in our honor, the company decided to step up our recruiting efforts. Unfortunately, the rumors my character had been spreading about our successes and the vengeance we had sworn again Khador (and Queen Ayn Vanar herself), came back to haunt us. Three of our would-be recruits turned out to be Greylords (think KGB wizards). The four of us turned out to be vastly overwhelmed, and the session ended with everyone unconscious and in an obscuring mist. I took this opportunity to exit the game, not because I wasn’t having fun, but because I need my Wednesday evenings back. I’ll be curious to see what happens to the rest of the company, but for now the game is going on without out me.

And now I’m up to date. Hooray!

A Little Behind, Part 1

2007-02-26T15:41:00.000-08:00

The last ten days have been really good for me gaming-wise and not so good for me blogging-wise. I'll try to catch up, covering board games first and roleplaying in the next post.

OrcCon was a blast, and despite my convention commitments I still managed to get in a few games. On Friday afternoon I played a prototype dice game with the convention's Guest of Honor, Reiner Knizia. It was fun but a little long, and the post-game discussion of how to make it shorter was interesting. Friday evening I hooked up with Don and Derek from Pulp Gamer to play a quick game of Mission: Red Planet in the bar. I won, but I probably shouldn't have. I say this for two reasons. First, I didn't play very well, and second, due to confusing language in the rules, we scored the game wrong. I think I still would have won without the error, but it would have been much closer. Anyway, it was fun and extremely light, but I could see people having problems with the luck factor.

Saturday I managed to fit in a game of Memoir '44 while I minded the RPG signup table. I squeaked out a narrow victory in the Sainte Mere-Eglise scenario on both sides, which always makes me feel good. I still love this game, especially for the excitement-to-time ratio.

Sunday I convinced Doug Sun (whom I had met at GenCon SoCal and played Wellington with) that he needed to teach me how to play Combat Commander: Europe. He agreed. This was my first look at Combat Commander, but the similarity to ASL Starter Kit #1 helped me pick it up quickly. Sadly, I think that similarity might prevent me from picking it up, as I don't know if Ted (my usual wargame opponent) will want to play it instead of ASL. Regardless, I liked it, and I look forward to playing more of it at the GMT warehouse in April.

Monday I participated in two more playtests with Dr. Knizia, this time for a game that's pretty far along in development. I enjoyed it, and I'll be curious to see what the final scoring mechanism ends up looking like. Overall, I had a great time at OrcCon, and I can't wait until Gamex in May.

Since then I've done a little bit more gaming. Gwen and I tried out Battle Line last night, as we had just gotten it in a trade. It turned out to be much more "thinky" than I expected. It was ok, but certainly not as addictive as Lost Cities. (Then again, what is?)

Finally, OrcCon made me remember how much I want to play more Memoir '44, so I brought it in to work to play with Jason, my frequent lunchtime opponent. We wanted something a little lighter than Paths of Glory, and Memoir '44 fit the bill nicely. We played both sides of the Pegasus Bridge scenario, and he seemed to like it, so I expect I'll be playing more of that in the coming weeks.

A Long Time Coming

2007-02-15T10:11:00.000-08:00

This week I finished up two board games that took longer than normal to play. The first was a game of Hacienda that I played on Spiel by Web. I'd never used SBW before, but Eric Burgess (of Boardgame Babylon) was in India for work and needed some connection back to the world of gaming to keep him sane, so I decided to give it a try. Hacienda is well-suited to play via web, as there's relatively little player interaction, and it's not overly long. Even with Eric being timeshifted from us, we still managed to play the entire game in about two weeks. It was an interesting experience, though I still don't think I like the game with five players. At that number it's just a little too cutthroat. And I definitely prefer it on the irregular board.

I also finished up the game of Paths of Glory I've been playing at work over lunch. I lost, through several really poor choices that I made in the last few turns. I still play too aggressively, though I did much better in the early game than I usually do. I'm still learning a lot about the game, and it's creeping up my ratings list. If only it didn't take quite so long to play.

The Four Samurai

2007-02-14T13:58:00.000-08:00

Last night was the first session (not counting last week's planning session) of our game of The Mountain Witch. I've run the game once before at convention, and I'm excited to be running it again. I drove a little too much last night, as we got used to the system and the pacing mechanics, but I suspect that won't be too much of an issue in the final two sessions. We talked about it afterward, and the players are ready to take over. There's already been some foreshadowing of Dark Fates, though I still have no idea who has which cards. I'm also really glad that I read Kwaidan before I started the game, as I stole mercilessly from it for last night's action (though Wikipedia now tells me that what Lafcadio Hearn misidentifies as rokurokubi are technically called nukekubi). It was a good first session, and I'm looking forward to taking a more reactive role next as the players start driving.

Flame On

2007-02-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I played in a one-shot of Wild Talents, Dennis Detwiller and Greg Stolze's superheroes game built on the rules engine from Godlike. I've been wanting to play Godlike for a while now, so I was excited when Andrew posted to the Santa Barbara Gaming list about it. He had laid out about two pages of setting material ahead of time, but character creation started from pretty much a blank slate when we showed up. I was pleased at how quickly (relatively speaking) we were able to get through that, even if my character concept didn't completely solidify until halfway through play. I opted for a character with a single power, Create Fire, and dumped about half of my points into it. As a result, I was devastatingly effective at creating fire, to the extent that there was a pretty good chance I could take down our brick in two rounds. This made it all the more amusing that I didn't end up using my power until the final scene.

Character creation was nice and speedy, as I've said, and the resolution mechanics are as well. In play, Wild Talents occupies a nice middle ground between HERO/GURPS on one end the spectrum and Truth & Justice on the other. It allows for more character differentiation and tactical options than T&J does, but it moves much, much faster than HERO or GURPS. I liked it, though I think I prefer it on the lower power end. It is, as Ted observed, a fairly game-y sytstem, which is certainly a change from what I've been doing recently. I may have to think about running a Godlike game at some point.

Outside of the system, I have to say that it was one of the best GMed games I've played in a while. Andrew had a great sense of what was going on with everyone at all times and really kept things moving. It took me a while to figure out my character's personality (I started out a little too Liz Sherman-esque and drifted in very different direction), but that was really my own problem. As I've said, it's hard for me to just be a player, but I had really good time in this one. So, yes, it was a good afternoon. I should do more of those.

Masterful

2007-01-31T13:46:00.000-08:00

Last night we finished the My Life with Master game, with suitably apocalyptic results. Ted's character was killed by the mob, Christina's character destroyed herself, and only Roy's simpering Minion was integrated back into society. Running this game again two and half years after I discovered it (and three and half years after its initial publication) was interesting, as my gaming has changed quite a bit in that time. At the scene level, I think the game is still state of the art. Both the way it handles scene-level resolution and the way it paces individual scenes work so well and mesh very smoothly with my style of gaming. I also really like the larger game pacing mechanic, though I don't think I run it as well as I should. I tend to let the players control their own fate too much, which sometimes gets in the way of smoother development and thematic consistency. I don't think that the endgame mechanics work as well as the rest of the game, however, or at least I don't see how to make them do so. It seems like the Minions have every incentive to team up and aid the Minion in conflict with the Master right away, as they only get weaker and worse off as the endgame continues. Last night, the pre-endgame grab for Love was actually more frantic than the actual endgame itself.

My Life with Master is a tremendously innovative and influential design, and I'm very glad we decided to take a look back at it. Even if it doesn't completely mesh with my GMing style, it's a great change of pace that continues to teach me about gaming.

Creating Monstrosities

2007-01-26T11:37:00.000-08:00

That’s what this week’s roleplaying games shared. On Tuesday we continued the downward spiral in My Life with Master, with the Master gradually commanding the Minions to do more and more horrible things in order to create his “perfect menu.” This session featured the eventual retrieval of the priest’s foot, saw somewhat of a recovery for a despondent Minion, and ended with a truly monstrous scene about stealing a baby from its mother’s womb. Based on the amount of Love the characters have, I suspect the game will go two more sessions. This week was a bit less serious than I think I originally intended, as there was a lot of reveling in being evil. If I want to downplay that element, I’ll need to take a stronger hand in guiding things. Of course, we’re all enjoying it right now, so I’m not sure if want to.

In the Iron Kingdoms game, the horror being constructed was steam-powered. We had a bit of a downtime session, and the Professor took that opportunity started building the steam armor he’s been talking about since the beginning of the game. After realizing what his stats will be once he gets it done, we started to get a bit scared. It’s going to result in a very interesting chance of pace in the game, which isn’t a bad thing, I think. I spent some time during the game planting plot seeds for the GM to potentially grow and spring on us later, which also ought to be fun. Our play schedule looks to be a bit erratic for the next few weeks, but I’m hoping we can get together again soon.

War. HUH. What Is It Good For?

2007-01-22T16:34:00.000-08:00

Apart from a filler game of Clans on Saturday, the last few days have really been about war games. On Saturday we did a five-player session of A Game of Thrones, Fantasy Flight’s medieval war game with color from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series of fantasy novels. I’ve never read the books, but the game certainly stands on its own. It’s a lighter war game, with distinct Euro elements, like the periodic auctions to determine turn order, tie-breaking, and special powers. I particularly like the hidden order placement mechanic. The scary thing is that it feels to me like a streamlined version of Dune (my current favorite game), albeit without some of the diplomatic strategy. With players who don’t dally it moves right along, fitting nicely into the two to three hour space.

On Sunday I went over to Ted’s for our first monthly “long games” day. Our intention is to set aside time for those games that don’t make it to the table very often because of their length. This primarily means war games, but certainly heavier Euros like Die Macher (a copy of which Gwen just picked up) qualify too. As it was the just the two of us this time, we opted for Rommel in the Desert, which I had picked up for cheap at BGG.con but had never played. This is very much a game about mobility and supply, which makes sense, given the subject. It also has a fair degree of uncertainty to it, as you don’t know exactly what units your opponent has (due to the fog of war created by units being represented by blocks), you don’t know how long your opponent is going to be able to keep doing stuff (due to the presence of dummy supply cards), and you don’t know what resources you’re going to get next turn (due to variable buildup points and the possibility of early reinforcements). We played three games: the introductory 1940 scenario and two runs at the 1941 scenario. The first of these latter two ended prematurely due to a daring run into the Axis base, and the second was called on account of a fairly inevitable Allied victory. Playing it revealed a few non-obvious features of the game, and I’m glad I own it. It really does need to get played more often.

On Monday we finished up the mobilization scenario of Paths of Glory that one of my co-workers and I had been playing at work. We were able to leave the map set up, so we’d been playing a turn each day at lunch. He’d never it played before, and I hadn’t played the Central Powers yet, so it was a learning experience for both of us. Next week we’re going to start a full game of it, which ought to be fun.

Meld This One, Split That, And Then Urk

2007-01-18T22:18:00.000-08:00

I have a fondness for games that are conceptually simple but then develop an emergent complexity that breaks my brain. The latest of these that I've encountered is Rummikub, which draws its basic rules from the card game Rummy. You try to play numbered and colored tiles in sets and runs, allowing you to get rid of all of your tiles. What I love about the particular ruleset we've been playing with (there are apparently a reasonable number of Rummikub variations) is that you can rearrange existing sets and runs on the table if it allows you to play a new tile. This leads to lots of chained analysis of the form "I can play my blue six if I pull the blue five off the set of four fives and split the blue seven from the run over there which means I need to put the blue eight into the set of eights over here and the nine can go. . . hmm. . . well, I could grab the red nine from that set and. . ."

Like I said, it tends to break my brain. I like it anyway.

Let The Parade Of Delicacies Begin

2007-01-17T22:43:00.000-08:00

Tonight we began our game of My Life with Master in earnest. As I described last week, in this particular instance the Master is an exiled chef seeking his revenge upon the nobles who shunned him. The session began with the Master announcing to the Minions that, due to the incompetence of the recently dispatched fourth member of their company, the Prince of Moravia would be dining with the Master sooner than he had intended. It was thus imperative that, in order to avoid being strung up by their own entrails as Sebastian had been, they work quickly and efficiently to gather the required ingredients. This session was relatively laid back, with little pressure being applied directly to the Minions. This allowed the players to get a sense for how the system worked and for all of us to develop a feel for the structure and flow of the scenes, something that is very important for My Life with Master. Each of the players ended up taking a slightly different approach to their characters based on those first few scenes. Roy became very fond of invoking Desperation, Christina developed enough Self-Loathing to cause a Horror Revealed scene, and Ted ended up wallowing in Weariness. I started to ratchet things up a bit at the very end of the session, when I ordered Ted's character to cut out his own tongue (he failed), and sent Roy's Minion out to bring back the foot of a priest, who happens to be someone's Connection. It'll be interesting to see the tension level go up next week.

Calling It A Mini-Con Makes It Sound Small

2007-01-15T22:20:00.000-08:00

How much do I love gaming? So much that I'm willing to drive for five hours to play three games, then turn around and drive home. To be fair, Endgame (the host of this event) has other attractions, but it really was mostly about the gaming.

Saturday morning I played The Esoterrorists, Robin Laws' new game about investigations. We had a little bit of a rough time of it, for several reasons. First, the scenario we played (which is in the rulebook) is explicitly not intended as an introductory scenario. Instead, the book is very specific that it is an example scenario. I think part of our trouble with it was caused by unfamiliarity with the system. Second, I think both the GM and the players made a few mistakes, which compounded each other. Because we were constrained by the four-hour time limit, we really didn't have a chance to get out of the problems we got into. Perhaps most importantly, however, I don't think a good game of the Esoterrorists is about the investigation. A good police procedural isn't about detective work. I think what the system that the Esoterrorists brings to the table allows you do is stop worrying about the investigation, and instead focus on what the game is really about.

In the afternoon, I played a classic: Macho Women With Guns. It was quite tactical and very tongue in cheek. I had a good time with Sister Madison "Mad" Maxine, a Renegade Nun on Wheels. With our trusty H&K G-11's we were able to put a stop to the nefarious plots of the Dip Ones and their unearthly masters, Isaac Azathoth and Harlan Nyarlathison.

In the evening I was finally able to try out Best Friends, a game about girlfriends and all of their petty hatreds. Our game ended up getting the title of "Catholic Schoolgirls in Trouble," and that's certainly how we ended up. There were a lot of "I will kill you all" moments, but I knew we had all bought into the game when, at the end, after we had all pretty much ruined each others' lives, the GM asked if our characters were still friends. Without missing a beat, we all said "Of course." I don't think I'd want to make a steady diet of it, but Best Friends was definitely a refreshing change of pace. I also don't think I want to drive to Oakland every weekend, but I'm definitely glad I did for this one.

Fun with Hugin and Munin

2007-01-12T13:08:00.000-08:00

Gwen and I had played a game of Odin's Ravens at BGG.con last year, but that was the extent of our exposure to it. We both liked it, so I got it for Gwen for Christmas, and last night we broke it out of the shrinkwrap to give it another try. It is a neat little racing game that turns out to be very efficiency-based. You only have a limited number of movement cards you can play each turn, so you want to get the most bang for your buck. I realized last night what the store of face-down cards really does for you: It helps to keep from having to burn through pairs of cards to get through land types you don't have cards for. You can save up the cards you can't use right now in order to make efficient use of them later. I expect this game will see a fair amount of play in 2007.

"It sounds like a cheap place to sleep. Someone's always getting robbed or stabbed there."

2007-01-12T13:01:00.000-08:00

Undercover city missions are always fun. In the Iron Kingdoms game, we reached our destination in the mining town of Rynyr, which turned out to be a much bigger and more industrial city than I realized. This session I pretty much took a back seat to the other players, mostly by choice as I had plenty of opportunities to get in trouble. This session focused on the Mikes' characters. Mike M.'s gun mage had to make some tough choices about protecting the innocent or preserving the secrecy of the mission, while Mike S.'s Umbrean arcane mechanic got to deal with some of his countrymen who were serving in the Winter Guard. I tried to stay quiet. We did manage to convince the dwarf we were "rescuing" to come with us, and half of the group got to go off on a bit of a side quest involving destroying someone's apartment. Perhaps best of all, we managed to make it out of the city with a minimum of fuss. We're off next week, so I suspect the fuss will come the week after.

A Dish Best Served Cold

2007-01-09T22:53:00.000-08:00

The regular Tuesday roleplaying group got together tonight for the first time this year, and the order of business was planning our My Life with Master game. I've run this once before, about three years ago, and it was my introduction to "non-traditional" RPGs. It will be very interesting to see how it's different this time around.

We decided on a Beast-Collector Master, an exiled French chef known only as "Monsieur" who Wants revenge upon the nobles who spurned him. He intends to take it by creating the perfect menu, albeit by using decidedly unsavory components. He Needs both ingredients and, ahem, test subjects from the townspeople, and his Minions are ready to do his bidding. There are three of these unfortunates. The first is Gregor, a tall and unusually joined man who can hide from anything except vermin but cannot move faster than a walk (except by moonlight). Next is Cosette, who has appeared strangely pregnant for these last five years. She has an exceptional sense of smell except around flowers but she cannot eat with others (except on Sundays). Finally, the muscle of the group is Asa, a hulking brute of a man who can lift anything, except children. He also cannot touch the flesh of any living human except those who love him. These three will do the Master's bidding in a small town on the shores of the Black Sea. . . when we return next week.

Better Late than Never

2007-01-08T22:56:00.000-08:00

This should have been up earlier but, well, you can read the title.

On Friday night we dug into the "games to be played" shelf and pulled out Betrayal at House on the Hill. This is a flawed but fun game about exploring a haunted house. We have the revised version which corrects some of the problems, but we still fell prey to the "how does the underground lake end up on the second floor?" problem. I definitely want to play it again, as I'm curious how the other scenarios work out. (For the curious, we ended up playing number 33, Creature from the Lake). In general, I think the game gets the atmosphere right, even if there are some rules problems.

On Saturday we went an engagement party for some friends and ended up playing Wits and Wagers, a great trivia game that I have played a bunch of but haven't had a chance to talk about on the show yet. Gwen describes it as a trivia game for people who aren't good at trivia, which seems pretty accurate considering she's beaten me several times. She wasn't playing this time (she was instead distracted by a fascinating little geometric game called Tantrix), so I was able to win. The amusing thing is that it wasn't even our copy of the game; Brian just happened to know one of the creators through a friend of a friend and had picked up a copy.

So, with two new games played through the end of the first week, I'm on pace to hit 100 new games in 2007. We'll see how long that keeps up.

Guns and Snow

2007-01-03T22:43:00.000-08:00

Tonight was a relatively low-key installment of our Iron Kingdoms game. For those of you following along at home, this is a campaign about the remnants of a mercenary company that was nearly wiped out during the Khadoran invasion of Llael. We're playing with the Escalation timeline as a backdrop, so as we're taking small jobs trying to rebuild our company, the war is raging on around us.

This week's session picked up right where last week's left off, with the four of us making our way through the winter landscape of northern Llael to slip behind the Khadoran lines. Our goal is to rescue the nephew of a dwarven arcane mechanic who has agreed to help us construct the steam armor one of our party members is working on. Last week we had been attacked by Cryxian bonejacks, so we were understandably a little jumpy to start out. This week we had two encounters with victims of the war. The first was a group of Menite pilgrims being escorted to safety by a Paladin of the Order of the Wall, which proved to be a little tense due to my character's bad history with the Menites. Fortunately, nothing much came of it. The second was a young woman who turned out to be the recently orphaned daughter of the Archduke of Esmynya, whose father had died when the Khadorans had taken Riversmet. Unfortunately for her (and us, I suppose), she had come into possession of a Fell Blade, an ancient magical weapon that drives its wielders insane. (The Khadorans chain them to convicts and use the resulting madmen as shock troopers.) Thankfully we were able to subdue her and rid her of the sword. With her help, we were able to find a way across the river that didn't involve getting too close to the Khadoran army, and now our target is in sight. We should be able wrap this section up in a session or two.

Back By. . . Er. . . Popular Demand

2007-01-01T23:33:00.000-08:00

I decided at some point in the fall of 2006 that I wanted this blog to focus on the minutiae of my play experiences. Over on Have Games, Will Travel I tend to get caught up in the 10,000 foot view of gaming so much that I often forget about the little things. In 2007, I intend to use this space to counter that trend by touching on every game (board, card, or roleplaying) that I play, starting with today.

This afternoon was spent cleaning out the game closet, figuring out what stays, what goes, and what needs to played and evaluated. We managed to fit all of the "to be played" games on the top shelf, and now our goal is to go through all of them as quickly as we can. Tonight, we checked Ark off the list. Ark looks like it's a game about trying to fit lots of animals onto a ship, but really it's an area control game with a complex placement mechanic. Whenever you put an animal on the ark, you get credit for it in one of five scoring pools. You win by controlling these pools, but in order to do so, first you have to draft a card (which is tied to a specific pool), and then place it, but only according to strict and complex conditions. It's a little fiddly, but at points it reminded me of El Grande, one of my favorite area control games. It's a deceptively interesting little game, and it's terribly cute as well. It's definitely staying.

Closed for Renovations

2006-10-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

A Fistful of Games is going dark for the remainder of the year. Look for new content starting in January 2007.