I've been playing a GURPS-campaign called Cowboys and Orcs for a while now. My first character was brutally killed, and I wrote up a new one. Here's the bio, the character introduction will come as a separate post.
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Francis Brown
Father: Jason Brown
Mother: Sophie Brown (b. Fried)
Personality: Fiercely loyal, impulsive, will step up for a fight
Francis is a native of Hillgrove, but has spent a lot of time roaming the Wildlands. His father, Jason, was shot and crippled by a gunman while on his way to work at one of the Hillgrove farms when Francis was nine years old. Luckily, they had some savings, and have been living off them, and off his mother's tailoring skills since then.
Seeing his father mercilessly crippled, Francis vowed never to allow himself to be caught out like his father was. He started shooting guns, and found he had a natural affinity for it. He has since gained a reputation for being a good man to have on your side in a fight, and rarely shies away from trouble, preferring to meet it head on.
Recently, an old buddy of his returned to town. Jochen StPierre was the same age as Francis, and, although his life took him in different directions, his experiences were similar. When a lowlife called Stephen O'Reilly was arrested for the murder of Mr. Wilson, Jochen had recognized him as the man who murdered his father. Along with his friends, he decided to help with the guarding of the jail.
The evening before O'Reilly's trial, a man described as an ogre with a Nordenfelt Single Barrel (HT128) Gatling gun, attacked the jail, killing the deputy, and turning StPierre to mincemeat. O'Reilly apparently got a hold of the deputy's gun, and was gunned down by one of Mr. Grotz' men who were also watching the jail.
The ogre was killed on site, but rumors spoke of a goblin with some sort of steam-powered suit with a weird four-barreled rifle (Lancaster Howdah, .476 Enfield, HT91), fleeing the scene after taking fire from Jochen's compatriots.
Being out of town when Jochen returned, he only heard that he'd been there, and killed, when he came home. Upon hearing of his friend's murder, Francis vowed to avenge him, and bring whoever was responsible to a sticky end.
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Significant NPC's:
-Goblin who fled the scene of Jochen's murder
-Gunman who crippled his father
Plot threads:
-Avenge Jochen's murder (short-term, temporary)
-Defend the family name (long-term, ongoing)
Francis Brown - Character bio
Review: Dogs in the Vineyard
After wanting to try it for a long time, I finally got to try Dogs in the Vineyard at Trondheim's annual games convention, Hexcon 2009 (writeup here). After just a short little taste, I decided I absolutely HAD to have Dogs in my collection.
It dropped into my mailbox the other day, and I pretty much started reading immediately. The first thing that popped out at me was the fact that Dogs, like most indie-RPG's I've read, is a compelling read. It is well written, and draws you in, not wanting to let you go before you're done.
A guy called John Harper, wrote the following about Dogs:
I have Dogs in my hands right now, and it's like holding a burning brand. But do I want to let go? No. I want to be *marked*.
It is so very true, and I couldn't agree more.
The strong points of Dogs are:
- Simple character creation
- Simple tools for town and NPC creation
- System built to prevent railroading
A great thing about Dogs is that, even for a con one-off session, you can justify spending two hours out of as little as a three to four-hour session on character creation. Character creation will obviously be quicker if the players know the system, but even with players that don't, it's pretty impressively quick.
As far as GM'img goes, Dogs has what might be the best mantra ever; Roll the dice or say yes.
When it comes to Dogs, I say "Yes".
Note:This post is in English, in spite of L'esprit D'escalier being written in Norwegian. The reason is simple: I am going to mail a link to this post to DC Comics along with my next question to them.
As you may have noticed, in my original post about my concept, L'esprit D'escalier, I quoted Neil Gaiman's excellent graphic novel Death: the High Cost of Living.
It is my intention to include the quote in the work to be published as well. In order to avoid any potential IP violation, I have contacted DC Comics to find out about Copyright. Even so, it seems to me that using this quotation would be covered by a) the Fair Use provisions of the U.S. copyright law, and the Sitatrett provision of Norwegian Copyright law.
That being my understanding (given my limited knowledge of copyright law), I view this, as well as my email correspondence with DC Comics as fair warning. Actually publishing the game is a long ways off anyway, and if they have a problem with it, they have time to get back to me.
I'd like opinions on this.
Serenity RPG - Into the Black
Session name: Into the Black
Session type: Con one-off
Game system: Serenity RPG
Number of players: 5+GM
About the play: I hosted the same session at this year's Arcon, and concluded that it did not work for seven players. I cut Inara and Simon, as they were the least active roles, and tried it again, at HexCon
I will not post a play resumè, little changed story-wise, except for the fact that I augmented the script, which is one of the most horrific examples of railroading I have ever seen, so much so as to be horribly, badly broken, with a good dose of improvisation, and use of Mythic RPG's random event generator.
With what I did, the session went from horribly, badly broken to simply broken. Even with liberal free-forming, and direct departures from the script (specifically in the places where the entire session hinges on three difficult rolls in rapid succession, failure in any one of those means the characters are dead) this script is broken.
Even so, we had a good time, and I got to GM for one of my favorite RPG script-wrights, so all's well.
Number of players: GM +4
Play resumè: I attended Hexcon this year as well, and had a real good time. During one of the sessions, I had nothing to do, and was invited to join a one-off session of Dogs in the Vineyard. We went through character creation, and then set off playing...
Arriving in Bridal Falls, the Dogs are met by the town elder. His wife, my character's cousin, greeted us, and then asked to have a talk with my character. During the talk, it transpired that her husband, Brother Higgins, had married a second woman, of whom she (Bethia) did not approve.
They also met a woman whose child had died before its baptism. Being a lost cause, they could not bury the child in hallowed ground. Their solution was to set up a burial site outside the hallowed ground, where the mother could bury the child.
She also told him that she suspected Edith (the second wife) of having an affair with the town deputy sheriff, brother Cyrus. This suspicion was confirmed by other sources to the rest of the Pack, and it transpired that one of the women in the village had blessed the sheriffs union with Brother Higgins' second wife.
The woman was, it turned out, the cousin of one of the Dogs. Said Dog went to talk to his cousin, who attacked him.
Hearing the noise, the rest of the Pack joined their colleague, and tried to remove the malignant spirit who had obviously taken control of the poor woman, unfortunately to no avail.
In the end, they had to purge the spirit by removing her lifeforce.
Post script: I had been wanting to try out dogs for a long time, and when I got home, one of the first things I did was to order the book.
L'esprit d'escalier
I går kom jeg på et av mine yndlingsuttrykk, og før jeg visste ordet av det, hadde jeg kommet fram til et svakt skjelett for mitt første rollespill.
Tanken rundt konseptet følger her. Dette er på ingen måte spilltestet, kun teoretisert og konseptualisert. Tilbakemeldinger og ideer mottas med stor takk.
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L'espirit d'escalier
Et come-back rollespill
L'espirit d'escalier: Fransk. Direkte oversatt betyr det "trappens ånd". Med uttrykket menes de smarte, vittige tingene du skulle ha sagt, som du kun kommer på på veien ut.
The clever things to say, taht you only think to yourself on the way out.
All the cool stuff you wis you'd said at the time.
Sextor Furnival - Death: the High Cost of Living (DC Comics/Neil Gaiman 1993)
Pitch: L'espirit d'escalier (LD) er et replikkdrevet rollespill for 3-5 spillere. Spillet er tenkt å basere seg på scenekort. Spilleren som har tur trekker et scenekort. Man leser det, og tenker gjennom hvordan man vil spille ut scenen. Så velger man en annen spiller til å spille den andre rollen beskrevet på kortet.
Scenene er tenkt å spilles ut som følger: sceneeier (den som trakk scenekortet) definerer hvor scenen settes, hvem rollene er i forhold til hverandre, og hvordan scenen begynner. Deretter definerer sceneeier en replikk som avslutter scenen.
Sceneeier og motspiller spiller ut scenen, men når sceneeier sier replikken som avslutter scenen, står motspiller igjen, uten å kunne si noe.
Etter dette får motspiller beskrive hva rollen tenker på veien ut.
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Når jeg nå sitter og skriver dette, ser jeg at det nok trekker inspirasjon fra Drømmernes selskab, som jeg var så heldig å få spillteste på Hexcon.
En tanke: i stedet for scenekort, som jeg føler kan bidra til å begrense konseptet ift. antall spillinger, hadde det kanskje vært en ide å bruke et randomness-chart, a la det som brukes i Mythic RPG?
Tanker?
Another fun thing about team-based FPS computer games is capture the flag games. This works as an expansion to the Frag Double Blind rules. Each team has a base on opposite sides of the playing board, and places a flag marker in it.
Camping (remaining in the base to take out opposing players) should only be allowed for one player per team.
The objective of the game is simply to capture the opposing teams flag, and take it to your own base three times OR the first team to ten frags OR to three flags.
Rules for Frag Double Blind
Background: One thing I really love about playing FPS computer games is the fact that you don't know where your enemy is before you actually see them. For Frag Double Blind you need to split the players into two teams.
Concept: In a double blind game, you only see what is in your line of sight. For it to work, you will need to divide the players into two teams, designating one player the referee. Frag Double Blind works for three to seven players. The referee keeps track of where the opposing team is, and informs the players when they see an enemy.
How to do it: Frag Double Blind assumes that as soon as one player in a team sees something, the rest of his team know it. The game is played with the same rules as regular Frag, with a couple of differences. The first has already been mentioned; the players play as a team, leaving one player to referee. This could potentially open up for friendly fire. This is solved by assuming that if a team-mate is in another team-mates line of sight, the other team-mate cannot shoot.
The second change is that instead of each player taking their turn separately, each team takes their turn as one, then steps away and lets the other team take their turn. The referee keeps track of where players are, informing the opposing team if they spot an enemy.
The first team to score anywhere from eight to twelve frags (depending on what length game you want) wins the game.
the Bunker - Frag Battlemat
The design is by Nicholas Anderson, and the map, along with a few others, can be found at http://www.sjgames.com/frag/extras/
I've recently purchased two battle mats, one produced by Renaissance Enterprise Games (one-sided, 1" squares, faux-leather vinyl, 34.5" x 48") and one produced by Chessex (double-sided, one side with 1" squares, the other with 1" hexes, vinyl, 26" x 23½"). The first I have cut into three pieces, halving it once, then halving one half again. This one I'll use to have a set of custom, carry-along, maps for Frag and Frag: Gold edition. The other I will use for general gaming.
I am very happy with both my purchases and my decisions as to their use. There is only one problem: These mats should be stored rolled up to keep them for as long as possible. In order to do this, and to have a way of carrying them without them becoming creased, I need a storage and carrying case. Being somewhat of a fantasy-buff, as well as a fan of the Dragonlance-series, I've decided to make something fitting of Tasslehoff Burrfoot.
My plan for the case then, is to get a postage tube, then to cover it with leather, also creating a custom lid and some sort of carrying arrangement. Although I don't expect it to be cheap, I am quite certain that I will have a unique piece of kit, which will also serve me well.