Weekend of Gaming

 On Saturday, Justin ran a one-shot session of Mythic Bastionland. Here's my character sheet. I played Bertilak the Tankard Knight. Despite my fairly poor stats, I played him as a boisterous Brian Blessed type. C.C. played Glowy the Glass Knight, and Scott played Fainlin the Willow Knight. Glowy was exuberant and outgoing, while Fainlin was timid but hopeful of achieving glory. 

First, we had a tourney with three NPC knights (listed on my sheet). Glowy and Fainlin both won in the first round, but Bertilak lost to Demelza. Then Glowy, by lot, battled Demelza and won. Then Fainlin and Glowy fought, and Fainlin came out the champion. 

But at the feast that night, a weird minstrel woman put a spell on the assemblage and announced us the prey of Lord Spinjack's Hunt. Also, the lord's daughter was put into a magical sleep. So we did what mythic knights are wont to do, and set out to find Spinjack. We did, or rather Spinjack found us. And after a very rough battle, we emerged victorious. 

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I have to say, Mythic Bastionland is a more interesting NuSR type game than the various Black Hack spin-offs I've played. The combat system of using a die pool and placing successes to do damage or have special effects (gambits) is complex, but a nice challenging mini-game. 

Also, the opponents get to make their own rolls, rather than me as a player having to roll defense. I've come to really dislike that type of system. But that's a topic for another post. 

Mythic Bastionland does a good job of making the game feel like you're in a fairy tale or Medieval romance, where everyone is representing some sort of superlative archetype. A bit like The Princess Bride. Buttercup is the most beautiful. Humperdinck is the greatest hunter. Fezzik is the strongest. 

On the ride home, Justin explained how the game normally sets up a campaign with six "myths" to explore, but once these are completed the campaign is finished. So it's really not designed around one-shots, but the campaigns have a built in shelf life. I like it, but it's probably not something I'd run myself these days. I've moved on to preferring a little bit heavier game (but not too mechanically complex). 

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Yesterday (Sunday), I ran Missions & Mahyem, trying out my near-future Bughunts & Bedlam campaign module material some more. Last session, the players explored a mining facility on an exoplanet that had been overrun with Krytes (the titular Critters from those old 80s movies). Honestly, I thought with their strong bite damage and paralyzing poison darts that they would be a challenge. But they weren't. I should have at least doubled, if not tripled, their numbers. Also, I realized that the d20 Future stats for laser and plasma weapons, which I copied directly, may be too powerful for this game. Charles's PC, Magnum, bought a plasma rifle and was doing crazy amounts of damage. Sure,when a Predator is chasing you, I want that damage to be nasty. But in the hands of the PCs, it was too much. So I toned it down a bit. Charles took a bit of convincing but he went along with it, and he seemed satisfied by the reduced but still impressive damage of the plasma rifle. 

And on to this session. The PCs were back on the space station orbiting the exoplanet. They had some clues that survivors of the mine might have escaped to another mine, and what do you know, that mine was also now not communicating with the space station or the other mines now. So they went back down to investigate. 

This time, they found a pair of Alien Bounty Hunters that were looking for the Krytes and also some Coeurls (a.k.a. the inspiration for the displacer beast in D&D). They didn't trust the party, but the Heroes tried to ally with them. Well, when they suggested that the ABHs head in first with the Heroes right behind them, they assumed the Heroes wanted to backstab them (sorta, the players just wanted the ABHs to take the brunt of any attacks). So they opened fire. After a short gunfight, one ABH was badly wounded and so were one of the PCs (Flynn's new Hero, on his first mission!). The ABHs retreated, and the Heroes spot welded them into the mine's habitat area -- unknownst to them, where three of the Coeurls were napping. While Jada's Hero Sarah dished out some healing treatments, I quickly rolled a combat between the aliens and the Coeurls won, with one of the three cat-beasts dying. 

The party went another way to explore the mine more. They found some robots still mining ice, and then in the fusion generator room found three Coeurls napping in the nice warmth of the Fusion GirlTM reactor.  The Coeurls had surprise, and attacked. Flynn's Hero, Agent K, was almost dropped again, and Denis' Hero Lloyd was also beat up pretty badly. Magnum and Sarah covered their retreat, and then Lloyd laid down suppressing fire (FINALLY got to test out that mechanic!) and let Magnum and Sarah retreat. Agent K blew up an oxygen tank to do a bit of damage to the Coeurls, then the party retreated and also welded shut that door! 

They headed back up to the space station to report their sorta failure. And when they got there, they realized something is off. In the first mission, one technician was acting oddly. Now, several people, including the doctor and vice-administrator, were acting weird as well. But that's a mystery for next session! 

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It's good to be testing out a lot of these mechanics. There weren't a lot of general proficiency checks in this game, other than for healing. But the combat rules got a good run through, and seem sound even with some more powerful weaponry available. Also, the Krytes were not much of a threat in the previous session, but the Alien Bounty Hunters and Coeurls were good matches to a party of four 5th level Heroes.  

Resistance Is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated.

 Over the past couple of years, I've slowly been drifting into the headspace where I don't want to play the currently popular rules lite RPGs. Black Hack derived, PbtA games, Into the Odd, etc. I mean, for a one-shot or a short arc, they aren't bad. But they don't capture my interest that much. There's enough system to handle individual encounters, of a wide variety of types. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of staying power. Even the ones that have levels or some other advancement mechanics, like PbtA milestones/achievements just aren't holding my interest. And even if you do get to level up or improve every so often, the games usually don't have a campaign advancement system. You don't get to "grow up" and evolve to some sort of end game. It's still more monster hunting in dungeons, or another mystery/monster of the week, which is the biggest weakness of WotC versions of D&D in my opinion. 

And then we get into the art-punk stuff. I've mentioned before that Mork Borg may be a perfectly cromulent game, but the clashing fonts, disjointed layout, and purposefully garish art suits the genre it's going for, but makes it a pain on my old man eyes to read. 

Yet, if you've gotten the connection to this post's title, I did indeed try out Mork Borg a couple of weeks ago. Keith (who ran Cyberpunk Red at our game con last fall) ran a couple of sessions, running the same adventure for two different groups on consecutive days. I was in his Saturday group (the second game, the first obviously being on Friday). 

And honestly, the mechanics made sense when he explained them to me, they worked well for the adventure, and I sure had a ton of fun with it. Of course, it helps that my PC was the last one standing, after Scott backstabbed Martin, Craylin's PC died, then I backstabbed Scott's PC. :D Yeah, it was that sort of game. 

We did mostly randomized character creation. Keith let us pick our class and name (we could roll for that if we wanted), and if we didn't like a random roll result we could reroll once.  Or maybe it was twice? Anyway, being a one-shot, I wasn't super invested in making a bespoke PC, so I just went with my random rolls for my dirty old lives under the bridge hermit. 

Yes, I enjoyed it. As a more beer-and-pretzels or event (con) game, it seems really good. I don't see the long-term play aspect of it, although with just a one-session designed as a one-shot, I honestly can't judge it yet. But if it's like most of the other rules-lite OSR offerings of the past 10 years or so, I doubt it does lasting campaigns well. 

Of course, I'm becoming the old fuddy duddy who wants open campaign sandboxes that eventually turn into either a domain game, a plane-hopping series of grand adventures, or both. The way Gygax intended! Harumph! 

Jesus, I'm only 52 and stared gaming in 1984. Yet I realize I sound like those dudes who were already well along in their 20s or early 30s back in the 70s when the game debuted. 

But don't fear, loyal readers. This Saturday, Justin is running a one-shot of Mythic Bastionland. And I'll be playing in it. I don't have time to organize and run a game of Pendragon right now, so this is probably the next best thing. 

And Scott has invited me to a one-shot centered Discord server. I haven't joined it yet, but I might. We'll see. I'm not craving these rules-lite games per se, but one-shots or mini-campaigns (3 to 6 sessions and done) seem to be what's popular these days. 

Anyway, since I'm going on and on about evolving a game to a different endgame state, I should probably think about what to do with Missions & Mayhem at higher levels. How could I adapt domain level play to a modern or near-future setting game? Shouldn't be that hard. But that's either another section of game to create for the core rules, or another supplement to produce for the game. 

The "Day of the Dead" Problem

 Ever notice how, when characters in a TV show or movie go to Mexico, it always just happens to be Dia de los Muertos? Everyone's dressed like a skeleton in a parade? 

James Bond in Mexico*

 Well, yesterday I spent a good part of the day writing up information for designing exoplanets for Bughunts & Bedlam, the alien-fighting supplement for Missions & Mayhem. And while most of it is at least scientifically plausible, I realized that a lot of it isn't necessarily gameable. A planet with a weird orbit, or unusual axial tilt will affect what sort of life (if any) would develop on a planet, but other than helping a GM world build, there's not much difference in how an adventure plays out. 

Well, some things, like planetary size affecting gravity, have game effects. Day/night cycles or electromagnetic interference from the magnetosphere can come into play. But a planet with a transverse orbit (like Pluto, which crosses Neptune's orbit) don't really have much game effect. It's just color....

 Unless, the Heroes just happen to arrive during a crossover period AND the two planets are close to each other in their orbital cycles. Then gravity will cause all kinds of fun situations. 

 But like with the Day of the Dead in movies, will it will start to feel artificial if EVERY time the players get to a new planet with some orbital eccentricity, they just happen to be there at the most dangerous/interesting moment? 

Maybe not. We seem to be pretty OK with people in skeleton costumes dancing because it looks cool, even if a story already established itself as happening some other time of year than early November. We play these games to experience, vicariously, cool things happening around or to our characters. I could be over-thinking these things. 

But I noticed that Stars Without Number, for example, doesn't bother with orbital mechanics and the like. Their planet generator is geared towards what sort of environment and what sort of civilization is there. 

Of course, B&B assumes a barely colonized galaxy, at least by humans. It's not space opera. Most planets, if they have human (or intelligent alien) occupants, will be colony worlds, without a lot of developed society. The whole idea is to go out and explore the worlds, find alien "bugs", and kill them. So maybe I'm on the right track after all. As a resource, my system for creating unusual planets could always be combined with something like SWN or Terminal Space or Traveller or what have you. 

So I'm not getting rid of my work so far. But I am bracing myself for the game playing out in the rather artificial way in which any planet with unusual characteristics gets visited at the peak of its unusual activity.  

 

*I searched for more images, but Google just wants to serve up images from either Disney's Coco or Romero's Day of the Dead so I gave up. I know there are more examples, though. I've seen them. 

Movie Review: Supergirl

We went to see the new DCU Supergirl today. We liked it, but for me at least not quite as much as I enjoyed Superman last year. My wife, who has been a big Superman fan since she was young, really liked it a lot. Flynn, my 18-year-old (yeah, he's that old already) thought it was OK. 

For parents, googling if there are "curse" words in the film and getting linked here, yes, there are some. Not a whole lot. And I guess it must be PG-13 in the US rating system, because I think I only caught one F-bomb in it. 

So how was the movie itself? Honestly, the plot was kinda...small? For a movie that sets most of its story, and all of its action, in outer space, hopping from planet to planet, the story itself was not so thrilling. A simple revenge story. Kinda like a cross between True Grit and Big Trouble in Little China. Now, those are both excellent movies. But for a film about Supergirl, a Kryptonian, the stakes just seemed kinda small. I don't want to spoil things but I will say, the stakes are emotional. And the ending did conjure up the emotions in me I think the filmmakers were hoping for. 

I think the big problem for me is that the bad guy is really underdeveloped. I don't know if this is a character from Supergirl comics (never read them, honestly. Flash and Batman were my typical DC reads, and my DC reading paled compared to my Marvel reading back in the days I was collecting comics). --brief pause-- I looked it up. The bad guy is taken from the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comics. But if he was set up properly there, they seemed to drop the ball here. Very one dimensional. 

The acting was good, I'd say. I liked the sidekick character Ruthye and Millie Alcock isn't as cheerful a Supergirl as Melissa Benoist was in the Arrowverse show, but she sells the character as a younger, less experienced, and traumatized* version of Kara. And Jason Momoa was much more fun as Lobo than he was as Aquaman.  

The action was good. A couple of the fights were a little bit of a mess, with it unclear how everything fit together at times, but mostly they were fun to watch. 

There were some plot holes, and a few moments where characters make stupid decisions that are necessary to further the plot. So it's not perfect. But overall, it was enjoyable. 

Last year, I think DC beat Marvel in the Superman/Fantastic 4 contest. This summer, I get the feeling Marvel will win with Spiderman Brand New Day. But we'll have to see about that when it comes out later.

 

*By the loss of Krypton/Argo City 

Aliens! Aliens! Aliens!

 Come get some aliens! We got creepy aliens, slimy aliens, spiky aliens...stinky aliens! 

 This weekend, I wrote up stats and descriptions for around 30 alien species for Bughunts & Bedlam. Most are inspired by various works of military sci-fi. Xenomorphs, Bugs & Skinnies, metroids, System Lords, critters from Predator: Badlands and Alien: Earth, etc. 

Some were already in d20 Modern. There are space doppelgangers (John Carpenter's The Thing) and grendelspawn (Gieger aliens) and puppeteers (Heinlein/Star Trek). Coeurl (Voyage of the Space Beagle) are just displacer beasts. 

There are a bunch of aliens in Cryptids & Conspiracy (Greys, Yautja/Predators, Krytes/Critters, some more) that can be ported in.  

There's also a two page spread on creating your own aliens. That should be a good amount for a space action campaign, especially when you consider there can be hostile human factions, robots, and the like besides just fighting hordes of "bugs."

And I still need to write up sample robots and robot construction guidelines, the planet generation guide (I have notes, need details), rules for operating in Zero-G/low G/high G environments, and campaign/mission creation guidelines. Oh, the transport rules, too. Can't forget that. 

Anyway, I've got Advanced classes, equipment, and now aliens done. That's enough for me to put together a small adventure for next session.  

Foundational

 Recently, on Facebook, Jeff Dee (yeah, that Jeff Dee) has been talking about "simulationist" RPG design. 

Younger gamers might not know this but back around the turn of the century, Ron Edwards proposed the GNS Theory (later refined into what he called The Big Model, but I never understood the difference and TBM didn't catch public attention the way GNS did). GNS stands for Gamist-Narrativist-Simulationist. 

According to Edwards and his group of thinkers/designers on The Forge, good game design stems from identifying which of these three modes you want to focus on, and really leaning hard into it. Because according to The Forge, all gamers are one of the three, and will have the most fun if their games cater to that strongest desire. 

Now, for my money, Gamist and Narrativist were well defined. Gamists want to "win." They play RPGs to smash all the orcs and loot all the treasure. They want to gain levels, more hit points, better combat power, more spells, more magic items. If, as the tech-bros say nowadays, the "line goes up" they're happy. Narrativists, on the other hand, are there for the story. They want their Big Damn HeroTM to protagonize all through the DM's hand-crafted narrative (if there is a DM--a lot of the indie/story game people came out of The Forge's "narrativist" camp, and may of these games are GMless). 

Simulationism, according to GNS (as I remember it) was a desire to...not make the game realistic, as we're talking about dragons and fireballs and aliens and FTL travel and so on...make the game as realist as possible without ruining game play, but also to focus on the world-building and emulation of genre tropes and... Like I said, it was the least well defined of the three. I feel like "simulationism" as far as consistent and sensible world-building is a GM concern more than a player concern. I don't know many RPG players who WANT to limit their characters because "in the real world, that wouldn't happen." 

Now Dee is taking a different tract with what he calls simulationist design. To me it seems like a rejection of "bennies" or other metacurrencies in modern RPGs meant to give the PCs a boost. This goes all the way back to early game design, with things like Force Points and spendable character points in d6 Star Wars, Karma in the old Marvel Superheroes game (the FASERIP one), to things like Action Points in d20 Modern to Inspiration in 5E D&D.  And again, many of the indie/story games coming out of the old Forge narrativist tradition have a lot of these. Some games are ONLY this as a mechanic, with otherwise free-form play. 

A quote from Dee that sums it up, replying to someone asking about "The Rule of Cool": 

The least egregious version of it, as far as simulationism is concerned, is that “players should be allowed to try things outside the written rules, as long as they’re ‘cool’”. And under simulationism, I reject that because it places an unnecessary emphasis on ‘coolness’. You know what simulationism says that players should be able to try, outside of the rules? ANYTHING. Cool or not.

Simulationism isn’t limited to rules as written, and doesn’t need to be trumped by ‘cool’ things. Simulationism is an attempt to provide rules which *can* be played as written, producing satisfactory results as often as possible when played as written. But OF COURSE more things are possible than just the ones directly mechanized in any finite rules set.

And so all that simulationism requires is that when characters try to do things, their chance and degree of success should be informed by the difficulty of the task and the character’s abilities. Regardless of whether the written rules cover it. Whether it’s ‘cool’ is irrelevant.

 

I get what Dee's saying here, but I have a hard time distinguishing this from Gamism as far as GNS is concerned. The game has rules, you're playing a game. From a designer/GM perspective,  yeah, you want a rule set that has reasonable and well-defined rules. But as a player, how would this be a concern as compared to a rule-set that allows for cartoonish superheroism with metagame currencies? 

Let me get this straight. I'm not criticizing Dee at all. He's got the best understanding of "simulationism" I've come across in the past 25 years. 

I think this points to the foundational flaw of GNS/Big Model thinking. They have things backwards. They think good game design flows from pandering to the wants of the players. But you don't know who your players will be when you're designing a game. And even Edwards admits that most gamers enjoy all three of his pillars of game design to a greater or lesser extent. Gamist players enjoy the story, and appreciate a logical, consistent game world. World-builders have fun facing and overcoming challenges, and seeing how the actions in game affect the status quo of the world. And even the most loosey-goosey narrativist wants some sort of mechanical system within the game (wouldn't be a "game" without one), and a big part of creating a compelling drama is having a consistent world that doesn't violate suspension of disbelief. 

They're all intertwined. So why would "good" game design seek to isolate and hyperfocus on one of these three things? Seems like a bad design principle to me.

New GM Workshop May Be Back, Baby!

 Yesterday, a member of the Busan Gaming Discord server was asking for advice on how to start running games. Several of us chimed in. Then another player said they're also interested in learning. I mentioned the workshop we had planned that was cancelled. I suggested we do something like that as a standalone event. A few others agreed. 

 So, 

 [Pending discussion of when, where, and who will actually be doing this, that is.]