My Blog Returns - RPG Update!

After a short hiatus my blog is back!

This year has been by far my busiest in terms of the number of RPGs I've played or ran.

So far I've ran Call of Cthulhu, Monster of the Week, Dungeon World, Grim World, Apocalypse World, Numenera, Dragon Age, Vampire, Unknown Armies and Nephilim. 

I've played Eclipse Phase, Torchbearer, Burning Wheel, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Warhammer 2E, D&D (Basic, 2E,5E),Legend of the Five Rings, Fate Accelerated, Marvel Heroic and Psi Run.

Phew!

This hobby continues to bring me great joy and I'm now looking for space on the calendar to fit in some other stuff before the year is out. I'm running Masks of Nyarlathotep (at last!!) and Unknown Armies at the moment, as well as playing Eclipse Phase and D&D 5e.

The next few months will hopefully see runs of The Strange and Nights Black Agents added to my list, along with a Halloween special run of Ravenloft using the new system....more on that when I get there.

What have you been playing?

Grim World RPG - Dark Fantasy Fun

In what is already a record year for me in terms of trying different games, I ran a one-shot demo of "Grim World" on saturday night.

"Grim World" is a dark fantasy supplement for Dungeon World and Fate Core. It was a successful Kickstarter, though it's now available to purchase as a PDF. It's a truly superb product of high quality, and I was really interested to try it, given that I've recently run Dungeon World and have a long history of running dark games. In this case I ran the Dungeon World version.

Any of the other playbooks can be used, though Grim World comes with seven new ones, two of which are reworked versions of other playbooks, the Shaman and the Templar. The others are the Battlemaster, Skirmisher, Channeller, Slayer and Necromancer. All the new playbooks come with "Death Moves"...a major event that happens if that character dies. Character death really matters and shakes the world. For example, if the Necromancer dies, an army of the dead rises. There are death moves included for all of the other playbooks too, including the supplemental ones. There are also fifteen races included, any of which can be used with any playbook.

The game also comes with a location generator, new guidelines for the setting to help the GM capture the atmosphere, a new organization for player characters to join ("The Hunt") and eight adventure outlines. I ran one of them as the demo for a group that consisted of a Battlemaster (the tactician), a Skirmisher (the opportunist) and a Necromancer (the life and soul of the party....just kidding).

The scenario had the group seeking a reward offered by a small mining town that is on the brink of financial ruin, having fallen victim to a bear the size of a house. Throw in Druids, rival adventurer groups, town secrets and some plot twists, and you have a nice session to introduce the world and the system. This was really good fun and exactly what I hoped it would be...it is Dungeon World tweaked and pointed in a different direction..a darker and messier one.

The players thoroughly enjoyed it and asked me to keep running it on saturday nights, which I'm happy to do. I'm not well versed enough with Fate Core to try that version, but I'd be curious to see how it compares with that system. I can strongly recommend this if you're a fan of Dungeon World and enjoy settings like Ravenloft.

Tuesday Night Gaming - Dungeon World,Numenera and more..

One of the problems that I'm sure I share with many players and GMs is finding time to get through all the games that I've spent a fortune on over the years.

For the last few years I've been running games on a monthly basis,and more recently, two saturdays a month. That's been good in terms of being able to plan campaigns and allows for plenty of preparation time. The drawback is that it can be hard to maintain a flow in a story, and this tends to hit players harder if they miss out on a session. Still, it works well in the current format (two parallel games in six month campaigns) but I wanted to expand. I've been playing in additional saturday evening sessions (more on that in a separate post), but it was time for tuesday night weekly games.

The initial plan was to alternate two games every tuesday and just run them for as long as it makes sense too. It's also a great chance to do demo's and oneshots without having to plan as much or require a commitment from a group. I did have concerns about burnout, but if anything this schedule and frequency has unlocked my creative side and I find it refreshing.

I've done three sessions so far, two of which were "Dungeon World". I've played this several times and wanted to experience it as a GM, given that I'm on an "Apocalypse World" binge right now. It has been really great fun, easy to run, with the story growing from the players decisions.

The other session I ran was "Numenera" which I'd posted about previously. I love the game and the setting, but I just didn't connect with it as a GM when I ran it. Part of it was adapting to a different system, part of it was running a published scenario (something that I'm not good at) and also I think I simply didn't understand the game in the same way the group did. I came away with the feeling that I wasn't really running "Numenera".I think I'd rather be a player in that game.

Going forward, "Dungeon World" will wrap up soon to make way for "Eclipse Phase", in which I'll be a player. I will be starting "Apocalypse World" next week, with "Nephilim", "Nights Black Agents" and others on my roster for the future.

Numenera RPG - Early Impressions

I recently bought the "Numenera" RPG by Monte Cook, a weighty tome that is beautifully produced and loaded with fascinating ideas. It is a science fantasy games that celebrates all things weird.

There is real buzz about this game from what I can see online, and also among my fellow local gamers. The premise is interesting...a billion years from now, our planet has passed through different phases and is now in it's "Ninth World". It resembles 1000AD in many ways, though there are remnants everywhere from the previous worlds.

These remnants are the numenera. Some can be used by characters to augment themselves temporarily ("Cyphers"), more complex items that can be used for longer periods ("Artifacts") and objects that have no game mechanic advantage, but add flavor to the game ("Oddities"). The general thrust of the game is find the numenera and make good use of them.

Character creation is easy and innovative. It's based around a statement, for example, "I am a charming Glaive who howls at the moon". The first adjective is selected from a list determines who the character is, what they're really about. The next word,in this case "Glaive",is the character class, chosen from three options: Glaive (warrior),Nano (scientist/mage) and Jack (all-rounder and rogue)...this is what the character does. The last part of the sentence,again chosen from a list, gives the character unique qualities. This all translates into stats,skills and abilites for the character. In the example above, I'd be a charismatic warrior who changes into a beast five nights a month.

Just reading through the various combinations that this leads to is exciting and should make for some great games.

The system itself is easy too, with everything based around a difficulty scale from 1 to 10. You multiply the difficulty by three, and the resulting number is what the player needs to match or exceed on a D20 to succeed. This is the case regardless of the task, whether it's combat or climbing a mountain. The difficulty number can be reduced in a number of ways, with the right equipment,skills or effort. Also, the GM never rolls the dice...this appeals to me as I'm coming to this as a GM who is used to that arrangement from "Apocalypse World" games.

I'll be doing a one-shot of the game at my local club later this month to see how it plays and there's already a lot of excitement about this. If you haven't checked this game already and are looking for something fresh and full of ideas,I strongly recommend taking a look. I'll post a review of the demo session in a few weeks time.

True Detective - "The King In Yellow" in games

Like millions of other viewers, I'm completely hooked by HBO's new show "True Detective". The storyline, acting and atmosphere is superb, full of foreboding and weirdness. Throughout the series there are references made to the "King in Yellow" and "Carcosa". This blew me away, to see this in a major production, and it's been really interesting to read interpretations of this by an audience who are largely unfamiliar with the source material.

I'm enjoying the various theories theories and threads even more because back in 2012 I spent most of the year running "Call of Cthulhu" RPG sessions dealing specifically with the King in Yellow, in relation to the Hastur mythos.

I started by running a published campaign called "Tatters of the King", which tells the tale of cultists in the UK.Some of them follow Hastur, others follow Shub-Niggurath, and the story explores how these devotions have taken a toll on their lives, relationships and sanity. The first section starts with a performance in London in the 1920's of "The King In Yellow" on stage. The players in the game attend the play, and the show itself leads to a riot in the audience. The King is an avatar of the god "Hastur", and it has a sanity-busting impact, especially on characters with an artistic leaning. From this point on the players are drawn into the story of the cultists.

I remember narrating the play to the group, describing Carcosa and characters such as Cassilda and the "The Stranger"...the man with a white bone mask which is revealed not to be a mask. It was very odd in content and I know it left the group utterly baffled. Further on in the game the characters end up in Carcosa itself, with elements of the play becoming very real. I remember most of this,and I can't help but try and look for symbols and story hooks from it in "True Detective" (still trying!!).

"Tatters" is a very complex, challenging and layered game, broken into three sections. By the end of the second section my playing group had become inconsistent and the momentum of the story was pretty much lost. I decided to replace the final section with an adaptation of another published scenario, "Tell Me Have You Seen The Yellow Sign?". This is a short adventure set in New Orleans in the buildup to Mardis Gras, with Hastur cultists, voodoo, swamps, Cthulhu cultists and of course, the King in Yellow himself. This ran for two sessions with a small group of three players, and is still one of my favorite "Call of Cthulhu" experiences. I found that the location lent itself really well to the uneasy feeling and sense of chaos that Hastur stories bring, and I see it working well in "True Detective".

We still have yet to see how the "King" story plays out on TV, and how it really relates...the might not even be a supernatural aspect to it at all in the show. I do know that this show is making me want to bring a "Call of Cthulhu" campaign back to Louisiana and the "King in Yellow", and I'd love to see the success of the show inspire more people to try the "Call of Cthulhu" RPG.

Running "tremulus" - Mixed Feelings

My latest one-shot game, "tremulus", was a blend of two of my most familiar gaming worlds. The system is based on "Apocalypse World" and the setting is Lovecraftian horror. I decided to try it out, this time with a small group of three players.

I brought a lot of energy to this one, fresh off "Monster of the Week" which had ran like a dream. "tremulus" has many of the same conventions. The players have playbooks, containing instructions for character creation, moves, attributes and levelling. It has a sanity system as well, a nod to other "Cthulhu" games. The GM (in this game the "keeper") doesn't roll any dice and has an agenda, a list of moves, and moves for the various hazards in the game, such as town elders, townfolk and locations.

The game also comes with a questionnaire about the town, the people and weird rumors. The players pick a few responses and this corresponds to a framework in the back of the book. This gives the keeper two story threads to combine into a unique framework. The threads have two descriptions, one for the players and one for the keeper. The various combinations are fascinating and give lots of story ideas, definitely a highlight of the game.

In actual gameplay, there were some issues that emerged very quickly that I hadn't seen in "Apocalypse World", "Dungeon World" or "Monster of the Week". For example, the "Lore" skill rating was very easy to exploit and accumulate by the character playing "The Chosen" playbook, and could have led to heavy imbalance in a campaign. The Lore moves didn't seem particular inspired either.

The were several times where the characters would do actions that are commonplace in this type of game, but didn't seem to logically map back to a move. The trickiest piece was that "schock", which is really the sanity mechanism, requires two rolls. First to see if you pass the test, and then another to determine damage, even if the first check was passed. It felt awkward at the table.

I will also say that I think games based on AW are at their best when the group is very engaged and active, one of the reasons my "Monster" session flowed so well. In that case I was really like another player in terms of the number of moves I made. In this session I felt like I was having to call on a lot more moves and do more to move the story. I would definitely try "tremulus" again, there's a lot to like in there and potential for great atmosphere, though I would do a preprepared setting and houserule some of the mechanics.

Starting "Monster of the Week" RPG

I started a short campaign of "Monster of the Week" (an RPG by +Michael Sands) over the weekend, to get my 2014 gaming underway. It's been in my hopper of games to run for quite some time now and should run through to July.

Before I had anyone sign up or choose characters I already had a concept for the first session. I wanted something that could tick several boxes, serving as a demo, a throwaway encounter but also potentially a major part of the overall mystery arc. I would decide,with the group, which of those it would be once we'd played the initial session. It turned out that they liked the concept and we'll ride with it.

I wanted to take an old world monster that was known to them, but that I hadn't seen in a modern setting. I went for the Minotaur. He was a shifter, in human form appearing as a strong teenage boy named Chris. He lived on a farm with an older man, thought to be his father, who in reality was his son. Every seven years the Minotaur needed to devour seven people to stay alive.

I added a layer on top of the story to give a hook and also to send the group on the wrong path (old "Cthulhu" habits die hard). In this case, the monster and minion made a crop circle on their farmland. The crop circle functioned as a labyrinth for the Minotaur, the place in which he is invulnerable and feeds. It also lured in a group of teenagers who were UFO spotting, the first set of victims. The UFO angle was also the hook for the players, one of them in particular who played a conspiracy theorist, "the Flake".

We had a good sized group for this, six players,and the mix of characters selected lines up some amazing threads. We had powers ranging from the demonic to the divine, along with murky family relationships and paranoia. All of the players really loved this game and for me it was a true pleasure to run. I felt that some of the options and instructions I was given as a GM in the system made for a more complete and rounded story.

I also had a personal revelation about my own gaming preferences. I've always liked horror games, but genre aside, the thing that made "Monster of the Week" (and another favorite,"My Life With Master") special to me is the cinematic quality. I stated up front to the group to remember that this plays like a TV show. I liked being able to play the game as scenes, without worrying about realism. I liked the way time flows and the structure works. I really liked introducing a "move" that I've never used before, the "cutaway scene", in which I described a scene to the players that's happening somewhere else, to give them insight into the story. That opened things up immensely, as I could reveal some of story to the players without the characters having to be present or directly engaged. I'm excited about the next session and am already thinking about other TV style games....perhaps "Monsterhearts" will be next.

2013 - What Games Did I Run?

Yet another great year of games is about to end, this one went by quicker than the last! My last post talked about the games that I was a player in, this time I'm looking back at the games I ran.

Call of Cthulhu - This was classic 1920's Cthulhu set in New York City. It featured elements of the scenario "Lurker in the Crypt", and I finished the story of the Bishop family,a legacy started way back in the scenario called "The Condemned". I also put in some weird travels through time and space to Mars, which finished off the sanity of one character in particular. A wild way to wrap up the story.

Delta Green - A five part campaign which had some of my very best sessions. The group was fantastic and really embraced the paranoia, chaos and overall downward spiral of the setting. I used one published scenario, "Convergence", to kick things off. The rest was my own material. Most of it was single room mysteries, the focus was firmly on plot twists. At the end of it most of the group casualties were inflicted by the players on each other.

My Life With Master - Still one of my favorite games, I ran this twice. The first was a one-shot, the second time I did a two-parter. I actually prefer the one-shot format for this game. Although it does rush things, the game flows and the threads all come together. This game has themes that everyone understands at a very deep level. The buzz for me is seeing what the players come up with in the darkest of situations. They never fail to surprise me.

Paranoia - Yes, the old classic. I ran this recently and it was great fun.The group composition is really important in this game and we had a good one. Some of them also played "Master", and these games certainly have things in common. It also stirred up nostalgia on the day, with people coming over to see what we were playing. I'm surprised this doesn't get run more often, it's definitely a much loved game.

Trail of Cthulhu - This was a short campaign in the "Bookhounds of London" setting. I enjoyed the system in many ways, though felt it was too easy for the players, especially compared to "Delta Green". It was also fun to have some new players at the table. Overall this one had some good moments though we burned through all of the story threads very quickly indeed. I don't think I had as good a storyline in this one compared to "Delta".

The ones that got away:
Unknown Armies - I do love this system and I had a big group. Too big. We just about finished character creation and I just wasn't "feeling it". We had no concept for the campaign and I could tell that none of us really understood it. I just knew at that point that this one was going to die quickly, so I pulled the plug.

Fiasco - I missed this because of stuff at home on the day...the game went ahead though and was a real blast.

2013 - What Did I Play?

With the end of another year rapidly approaching, I thought I'd take time to look back on the games that I played, as I line up new games for next year. Next time I'll be posting a summary of the games that I ran.

Games that I took part in as a player :

Dungeon World - This was run by +Michael Bay and through the course of various games I played several characters. It was interesting to visit the "Apocalypse World" engine from a different angle, which will help when I run "Monster of the Week" next year.

Apocalypse World - This time out +Tony Reyes was at the helm in a weird, violent (to be expected) mini-campaign. I played a cult leader who steered the group down entirely the wrong path. This game is always interesting but challenging to play, and I never envy the person who has to run it. They seem to be caught between improvised responses and not being allowed to have much influence in the setting.

Shadowrun 5th Edition - A one-shot demo of a game I'd never got round to trying before. Great setting, but far too crunchy for my tastes. I was definitely the only one at the table who wasn't having a blast, so it can't be denied that Shadowrun has a certain "something".

Mage:The Awakening - I finally got to try a "New World of Darkness" game! I thought it was great, much easier than I'd anticipated. The LARP adaptation of the rules and the tendency to stay immersed in character threw me a little, and sadly my schedule got in the way of staying with the game. I'd feel confident running this myself, but there doesn't seem to be an audience.

Savage Worlds - This was a zombie survival game, absolutely not my ideal setting, but I really enjoyed the system. It had enough crunch to make the combat satisfying, something which I feel is missing in the games that I run. Fun, and great for one-shots.

Fate Accelerated Edition - +Scott Acker ran a demo of this and aside from being a fun session, I came away feeling that I actually understood how the game works...always a good sign in a demo! I'm interested in seeing where Fate goes in future settings.

Old School D&D - +john yorio has ran two sessions of this recently and I played in both. It took me back to my childhood and was good old-fashioned fun. Simple rules, deadly opponents and a really great sense of camaraderie at the table.

So there you have it, a decent selection for the year and I didn't realize how much I'd played until I planned this post! I salute all the people who ran these games. All were excellent gamesmasters and I learned something from each of them to take forward into the games that I run.

Old School Gaming

Last weekend I took part in an old school meetup ran by +john yorio . I know John through some of my own games.He'd played in an "Unknown Armies" one-shot and one of my more unusual "Call of Cthulhu" sessions.

This game was Basic D&D with some Labyrinth Lord modifications. It was a one-shot, also one of the original modules. I couldn't resist the nostalgia and I love one-shot games in general.They're such a great way to get a taste for a game without investing too much in terms of characters and campaigns. Basic D&D was the first game I ever played back in the early 1980's. My next experience was with Advanced D&D 2nd Edition when I ran a Ravenloft campaign in the 1990's, and the only fantasy games I've played since returning to the hobby in recent years have been Dungeon World and Pathfinder.

There was a good turnout for the game. It took a few minutes to put some characters together (though pre-gens were readily available) and it was fun to see how basic and direct the game really was. You could be a Fighter,Magic User, Thief, Cleric, Dwarf, Elf or Halfling. I opted for the Dwarf, as I do enjoy head first characters.

It was a classic dungeon arrangement, with skeletons, goblins,an evil Cleric, hidden doors and traps. The action was fast and quickly resolved...but what was truly special was the headcount. My Dwarf was the first to die, my Halfling somehow made it. Some other players actually went through three...yes,three characters in what was probably a three hour session. The pre-gens came in handy!

All in all it was just simple fun. Everyone was into the game and the spirit of it. Thinking back to how I started running "Call of Cthulhu", I was really tapping into the same thing...giving players the chance to reconnect with an old classic that they hadn't played in years or missed out on first time around.This inspires me to dig out some of the others, like "Paranoia" and "Judge Dredd" (Games Workshop version). It also reminded me how much I love the one-shot/demo format, and I'm seriously thinking about making 2014 a year where I run a one-shot of a different game each month, alongside just one campaign. That would also be good preparation for my stint in "Games on Demand" at Dragoncon 2014...but that's another post :-)

+john yorio has another session lined up for next month and I'm looking forward to that one too. It's good to see the level of excitement around this and he runs the sessions well.

Reflecting On Running Horror RPGs

With very few exceptions,such as FASA's Star Trek RPG, every game I have run has been of the horror genre. Even Star Trek took a horrific turn when I ran it. I have always loved horror stories and movies.

My biggest runs have been "Call of Cthulhu" and "Ravenloft". I've ran "My Life With Master", "Unknown Armies","Kult" and "Wraith". Next year sees "Monster of the Week" added to the list. I was thinking over all of these games in a discussion with a friend a few days back, and it was the first time I'd really reflected on how I'd ran them.

On the surface I enjoy weirdness rather than lots of gore, probably why I favor Lovecraftian scenarios over zombie ones. I especially like games that focus on odd, disturbed NPCs. I also tend to play with time and dimensions in my sessions too, one of the reasons why I love Tindalosian Hounds so much.

Thinking back to "Ravenloft" and how well some of those sessions went, I realized that they weren't focused on those areas at all. Granted,it was a different setting and I was a lot less experienced then. It struck me however, that there was something that worked in those games that still works now.

One of the "Ravenloft" sessions was set in a small village in Kartakass, home to wolfweres. They are "inverse" werewolves, wolves that assume the form of humans. The locals are friendly, musical and jovial. The players were at their most paranoid in this session, and it was because they were out of their comfort zone...this was AD&D, a game in which they'd got used to fighting their way through things. Now,they were in a social situation, forced to mix with friendly locals, not knowing who or what the threat was. The paladin, representative of all things lawful and good, simply couldn't start swinging the sword.

That's really the thread I've seen as a GM.Make the players uncertain about reality, their characters capabilities and the world around them. Put the characters in situations where their usual modus operandi simply doesn't work or isn't an option any more. In "Ravenloft", it was fighting characters in a friendly,social situation. In "Call of Cthulhu", it's when the academia are forced to blow up buildings, or cops when realize their bullets don't work.

Playbooks - Making Life Easier

Over the last few years I've been lucky enough to have to played in or ran games from a variety of systems. A personal goal of mine is to have ran a session in every different "Cthulhu" RPG to get a feel for how the rules compare and contrast in a familiar setting.

Now in terms of rules,I'm a lazy GM. I don't want to to wade through hundreds of pages to understand how to run something or have to refer to lots of charts during gameplay. Combat usually frustrates me in this regard. I do,however, like to have some structure..enough to support and add to the game. "Call of Cthulhu" and "My Life With Master" have been great for this.

I also don't like situations where the players need a copy of the rulebook or a long explanation of the rules to be able to play the game. I ran into this when I did a kickoff session for "Unknown Armies" recently. I love UA and the base system. However, for players who didn't have the books it was remarkably difficult to explain the various magical schools, the setting and some parts of character generation. I brought a lot of handouts and cheat sheets to try and make this easier, but I still feel it's an uphill task. Hopefully things will click during actual gameplay. I also had to do a lot of handouts and preparation like this when I was starting up "Trail of Cthulhu" and "Delta Green".

It was then that it struck me, the thing that I really missed. It was the "playbook" approach used in "Apocalypse World" and all of the games based on it. I'd got used to using them in "Apocalypse World" and "Dungeon World", and I'll be seeing them again when I run "Monster of the Week" and "tremulus".

Playbooks are essentially a customized character sheet. For example, in "Dungeon World", there is a "Cleric" playbook. This contains all the instructions that the player needs to create the Cleric, details of the all the things that character can do that are specific to that class, and how to level up. This means no need to look for the rulebook,and each playbook captures the distinct feel of that particular class/role/occupation. The only other thing that's needed is a copy of the general "moves", things that every character can do.

I've used them enough that I miss them in other games. For the "Unknown Armies" session, I realized that I was trying to compensate by making my own cheat sheets...the process would have been so much easier for everyone involved if I could have handed over to each player a single document that had everything they needed to create,start and play.Has anyone else experienced this,and how did you adjust?

Mage - The Awakening RPG

I finally got round to playing a game of "Mage - The Awakening", which is the New World of Darkness version of my old favorite, "Mage - The Ascension".

The game was run by the Mind's Eye Society, a World of Darkness LARP group, and it was the LARP rules that were used in the game. The rules and certain elements of the setting reminded me of two other games in particular...more on that later.

First of all it was time for character creation. I'd done some research in advance and came with ideas of which magical path and order I wanted to belong to. As is often the case with me, when it came to actual creation and discussing concepts with the GM ("Storyteller"in WoD terms), I went with one that had initially appealed to me the least! The path is all about what kinds of magic you do, and how you interpret the world magically. The order is more about your philosophy and view on how magic should be handled.

The paths are Acanthus (Enchanters who are all about luck,chance and time), Mastigos (Warlocks who work their inner demons,and other peoples), Moros (Necromancers who focus on death and material things), Obrimos (Theurgists who use raw,prime divine magic) and Thyrsus (Shamans who deal with the natural world). I strongly leaned to Mastigos and Moros before I attended the session, and ended up going with Acanthus. I liked Time magic, and playing with chance. I wanted a character who would get into trouble through gambling.

The orders are the Adamantine Arrow (fighters),Guardians of the Veil (spies), Mysterium (Lorekeepers), The Silver Ladder (Rulers) and the Free Council (Modernists). I went with the Mysterium, as I also wanted a research and investigation emphasis in the character.

The game reminded me in some ways of "Nephilim". Specifically, the five paths are aligned to Watchtowers. You have your Watchtower, the others are neutral but one is opposed..it's your weakest point. When visualized as a pentagram, this strongly resembles how the elements in Nephilim work, and how you assign Ka.

The system had a few different ways to be played, with hands, cards or dice. I went with dice, and rather than using the tabletop rules of a dice pool, instead you add the number of dots in an attribute to the dots in a skill plus a D10. Anything over 10 is a success. This is pretty much how Unisystem works, and I recognized it from running "All Flesh Must Be Eaten". It's a fast,easy way to resolve things and has me wondering about giving the "Angel" RPG a shot...

All in all a fun game and not nearly as complex as I thought it would be. I look forward to more sessions and exploring the system more.

Fate Accelerated Edition

+Scott Acker ran a demo of FAE (Fate Accelerated Edition) on sunday at my usual gaming haunt. We've played in several different games together and he knows the various incarnations of FATE inside out, so I asked him if he could set up a demo as I'd yet to play any FATE games. Like all too many people in this hobby,I have shelves of games that I've never played or run.

The demo was called "The Gothelrealm University of Esoteric and Arcane Arts‏".The setting was a Harry Potter Hogwarts-style university where the students are all supernatural beings. The classics were all well represented, vampires,ghosts,werewolves, fae,wizards and dragons all on the roll call.

I chose to play a werewolf. Scott gave us blank character sheets and some previously prepared "Aspects" (descriptions of the character that can be directly applied to the setting) and "Stunts" (special things we can do) to choose from. We also prioritized our "Approaches" (how we do things), such as "Quick","Careful" etc.

I haven't used Aspects before and it made a lot of sense to me in play. In some ways I found it reminiscent of "Unknown Armies" with its list of Passions. I liked having a "High Concept", a nice one-liner summing up who and what the character is in the game. Most of all, I liked have a "Trouble" Aspect. By choosing to use this Aspect in the game, you can be rewarded with a "FATE point", which you can then use later in the game to reroll dice, add +2 to a result or to add a detail to the game. I think this is probably the part that I enjoyed the most in that it encourages the players to make the story more interesting by making dangerous or difficult choices rather than focusing purely on winning.

The game flowed really well. I won't give details of the session itself as I know Scott runs this at conventions too. It had a strong gothic feel and I could see how a "Sleepy Hollow" game would work well with this. The characters were also very distinct archetypes, something else that I personally enjoy in games,especially as a player.

So having played this demo, I feel I've had a good taste of FAE. It's remarkably easy to play.I'd like to try it's more complex brother, "Fate Core", and some of the established settings too. If you haven't tried this and fancy a light, fast-paced game I strongly recommend giving it a look.

Cthulhu - From "Call of" to "Trail of"

I'm two sessions into my "Bookhounds of London" campaign using the "Trail of Cthulhu" system. Prior to that I'd been running games for almost two years using "Call of Cthulhu",so I've been reflecting on the differences between the two games and ideas for the future.

First of all, I never stayed close to the actual game system when I ran "Call of Cthulhu" or "Delta Green". There were very few rolls of the dice, typically only for combat moves or sanity checks. If the college professor in the group had a solid background in history (40% or more) I wouldn't ask for a roll. "Trail of Cthulhu",as a system, is a perfect fit in that regard. No skill rolls are required if you have a particular knowledge, the rolls are for general abilities like fleeing or scuffling.

Secondly,I am more forgiving than most Cthulhu GMs in terms of survival rates. You don't see "Total Party Kills" in my games, and while a good portion of the group won't survive the whole campaign, they will typically make it to the last session. "Trail of Cthulhu" again is a better fit, the group don't feel the burn of injuries and sanity loss until much deeper into the game.

Speaking of sanity, the slow burn rate also means that I've yet to see the in-game effects of mental instability in "Trail" unlike "Call", so I can't really compare the two at this stage. I do think that this makes "Trail" a good choice for an epic campaign like "Masks of Nyarlathotep", where party casualties are commonplace and can make it harder to keep ongoing threads.

"Masks" is on my list of things to run next year, adapted to "Trail of Cthulhu". I'm also thinking of running adaptations of some of the "Call of Cthulhu" scenarios that I've ran over the years. Some have already been done and can be found on the Pelgrane Press website. I haven't seen one for "The Condemned" or "The Sanatorium", both strong contenders for reruns, but I do have adaptations of "Tell Me,Have You Seen The Yellow Sign?", "The Cracked and Crooked Manse","Malice Everlasting" and "Edge of Darkness". All of those games have stayed in my mind and in different ways influenced the games I ran afterwards. I may weave them into "Masks" or have them stitched together as their own mini-campaign. It very much depends on who plays..I don't want the same players to have played these before, so "Malice" and "Yellow Sign" would be the best ones to do.

Has anyone else tried both systems or conversions from one to the other? Let me know!

Preparing an "Unknown Armies" RPG Campaign

Next month will see the start of my first campaign for the "Unknown Armies" RPG. I've run one-shots of this game several times and I love the system and setting. A proper campaign is something that I keep putting on a backburner, so now it's time to go for it.

I've decided to set the game in Las Vegas. I think it's a great fit, with the combination of hope,desparation and despair that inevitably prevails in a gambling scene, the seedy side of town, and the over the top glitzy facades.

Most importantly, everything that catches the eye about Vegas,everything that defines it, has been constructed by humans, for humans. Games of chance, luxurious hotels, all you can eat buffets, magic shows, nightclubs, fake cities,fake daylight (Caesars Forum), fake lovers....it's all there. "Unknown Armies" is ultimately a very human focused game, all about the consequences of what we do with power and obsession. What better place to play this out than Vegas?

The campaign will have a chaotic nature, so I'm keeping the story threads loose in this one. As the GM I'll be shaping the game around the actions of the players, so hopefully they'll land themselves in a lot of trouble. They will all be "Adepts", the magicians in this game world. They can make magical things happen because of their obsessions, so I'm excited to see which schools of magick the players choose.

I'm also following the guidelines in the rulebook in terms of choosing major characters and factions to give a little framework to the world, things for the players to react to. I like how the book describes the factions, but encourages you to define their relationships. This maintains a degree of unpredictability, especially for players who have played in this setting before.

So new turf for me next month,to run alongside my "Trail of Cthulhu" campaign. I'm excited about this and have no idea how it will all play out. Expect some interesting and bizarre posts on this in the coming months!

Nephilim RPG

"Nephilim" is a French roleplaying game that was adapted by Chaosium back in the early 1990s. Since then there have been more versions in French, with the Chaosium version ending after a few supplements were published.

For me, it's one of the ones "that got away". It's billed as an "occult roleplaying game", the players take on the roles of the Nephilim, magical beings who incarnate periodically through human bodies. There is a deep backstory and complex system, based on BRP. It's a field day for anyone interested in the occult, conspiracy theories or secret societies, with the enemies represented by the Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, the Thule Society and the dark Nephilim, the Selenim.

I think this game came along at the wrong time, and also suffered from a clear lack of focus. It has so many fantastic ideas and yet there isn't a clear sense of what should be done with the game. The Nephilim themselves are described vaguely, and the magic system is complex, though true to real-world occult concepts.

One of my favorite parts of the game is the past-life incarnations that are done in character generation. A Nephilim could have been a god in ancient Egypt, or a monk in medieval France. Your occupation, life and even how you died are all chosen or calculated. You accumulate skills and magical knowledge across each of these lives with the personal goal of reaching Agartha, transcendence. Add to that the symbolism of classic elements and the Tarot, and you have something unique.

Some of the supplements had great material though also made the system more confusing in some ways, and it's sad this wasn't revised and integrated into a new edition. I believe that some of the newer French editions are a lot more playable.

I'm now thinking of trying a hack of this game using Vincent Bakers "Apocalypse World" system, which would be a very personal project. I've never designed a game and this is the one that I always wanted to improve because I think it has so much potential. Look for that to surface next year!

Geist : The Sin Eaters RPG

"Geist : The Sin Eaters" is a role-playing by White Wolf for the World of Darkness setting, one of several games in the new series of games they launched with "Vampire : The Requiem".

"Geist" is the ghost game, following in the same vein as "Wraith" and "Orpheus". As in those games, the player characters experience death. Unlike "Wraith", the characters get a second chance at life, granted by an incredibly strong restless spirit, the Geist.

This makes it potentially one of the most positive World of Darkness games. The characters have a chance to live their lives in a very different way, perhaps finishing business on behalf of the dead, judging those who have wronged others, or maybe pursuing a hedonistic path.

The characters are also some of the most powerful in the World of Darkness, more along the lines of Mage in that regard, with an incredible array of powers at their disposal, granted by the Geist. Of course,this comes with a price. The Geist has its own needs and agenda which must be respected.

I think this game resonates with me because of the dark,gothic nature, but also as it lends itself very much to mystery and investigative games, very much my preference as a gamesmaster. It's easier for me to pull together a campaign for this in terms of inspiration than most of the other games in the series, closely followed by "Promethean","Werewolf" and perhaps "Mummy".

It's definitely an option I'll offer to my current gaming groups as a first step into the new "World of Darkness" series..look for a gameplay review in the next few months!

Ravenloft - Nostalgia Time

Twenty-something years ago I ran my first genuine campaign in a tabletop RPG. The game was Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, the campaign itself took place in the official "Ravenloft" setting.

"Ravenloft" was a Gothic Horror setting in a different plane of existence. It was composed of Domains, very much like states or countries, each of which was ruled by a Darklord. The Darklords were also prisoners of the Domains that they ruled, and the lands reflected the central myth behind the villain. There was a purgatorial quality to it, the Darklords being unable to leave their Domains. Each was based on a classic horror character, or drawn from other AD&D settings, the main one being Strahd Von Zarovich, the equivalent of Count Dracula. Frankenstein, Vlad Tepes, Werewolves and Mummies were all represented in their own Domains.

The idea was that players would pass through a mist from their own worlds into one of the Domains, so "Ravenloft" sessions could be added on here and there to other games or campaigns. I took a different approach and based my campaign entirely in the setting itself, with each chapter taking place in a different Domain. I used published scenarios as the basis. The beauty of this approach was the variety it presented. We had encounters with zombies in marshlands, Egyptian deserts and adventures on ships. On the other hand, the radical shifts in geography and storylines made it hard to maintain a consistent tone through the campaign.

"Ravenloft" also has it's own tweaks to the established rules. The polarity between good and evil is more pronounced and extreme with game mechanics added to reflect that. Acts of evil could manifest in a physical change in a character. The party Thief, for example, grew horns! These changes remain should the character return to their own world. The game had rules for fear as well, so in some ways it was closer to "Call of Cthulhu".

Some of the sessions simply didn't work well, I was extremely inexperienced at the time and my preparation should have been much better than it was. Occasionally though, it worked wonderfully. There was one game were the villains were werewolves. I'll never forget the atmosphere that we,as a group, captured that night. The characters were very powerful at this point and yet were extremely intimidated by the locals in the town inn. Great roleplaying all round and it's something I try to recapture in other games.

I need to get a copy of the game again to see how it reads after all this time. I have no doubt that I could do a lot more with it now, though I'm not sure what system I'd use. I did love AD&D 2E at the time, though again, it's been decades since I've looked at it. Even though I'm primarily a "Call of Cthulhu" GM these days, "Ravenloft" was my first signature game and will always hold a special place.

Trail of Cthulhu - The Campaign Begins!

This weekend I kicked off my latest campaign. It's in the "Bookhounds of London" setting for "Trail of Cthulhu". This campaign takes place in London, 1935.

The session lasted roughly four hours and the first two and a half were spent on setting things up. First was character creation, something we didn't rush, especially with most of the group being totally new to this system. We have a great cast of characters...the Bookseller (owner of the bookshop and party leader), the Book Scout (dodgy acquirer of books), the Catalogue Agent (think of Johnny Depp in "The Ninth Gate"), the Occultist (enough said), the Antiquarian (museum contact and part-time employee), the Forger (again,enough said) and a Private Investigator (unusually the one with morals).

Next we created the Bookshop itself. This was a collaborative exercise for us all,with the Bookseller having final say on some decisions. We came up with a name ("Marlowe & Sons"), physical description of the store, its location (Soho), main lines of business, clientele and rivals. This was great fun and gave me,as a gamesmaster, lots of hooks and material to work into the sessions I already have outlined. It was also a pleasure to see how everyone contributed with great ideas. It's a very effective way to get the players invested in the setting itself, as they've created so much of it. This is definitely an exercise I'll embrace in future campaigns.

I then turned over the names of the investigation stories that I'd created loose frameworks for, along with a one-line intro. The group could choose which one to start with,and the order in which the others will be played.Again, a bit of a gimmick, but it gives the group some ownership and helps me plan things out and get a sense in advance of how the sessions may flow. They were offered "Dust to Dust","The Poe Ritual","Lot 666","When The Wind Blows" and "The Seance". They went for the Poe story which was a really good choice for a starter.

We managed to get a solid hour or so of gaming in so they could get a feel for their characters and I'd say we got halfway through "The Poe Ritual". I really enjoyed the system,setting and group dynamic. That being said, as usual, the system was really there as a backup for the story, something that I prefer and encourage. I like the feel of "Trail of Cthulhu" and look forward to using it in other settings. If you like Cthulhu games with more emphasis on the investigation and storyline side of things, do give it a try.