Back to the Grind, Plus Gamma World and Call of Cthulhu!

I'm in the final week of summer vacation. As a professor, I get a nice long summer vacation, but I'm actually usually busier during the vacation than during the semester. So I'm looking forward to things slowing down a little. Not too much, though. I've got a couple of composition (academic writing) classes this semester, plus a study I'm hoping to finish up by October for fingers crossed publication in December. But despite that, my schedule, and my boys' schedules, will be regular, so gaming should be more or less back on track. 

My TS&R Jade game has been going well. Yesterday, my boys and Denis were the only players, and they followed up on a rumor that took them to a location just beyond their abilities (if other players had been there, it likely would have been fine). But with some good strategy, a bit of luck, and negotiation, they managed to complete their objective (rescuing 3 kidnapped children from monsters) and only lost one henchman in the process. 

I haven't run Star Wars in a while. Steven, my younger son, has been asking when I will. And with the new Ahsoka series on Disney+ now, I'll likely fire up those Star Wars creative neurons and get something worked out soon. I need to get on the players, though. I gave them a bunch of leads after the last session, but the only feedback I've gotten so far was one player saying, "Yeah, any of those look fine." Gonna have to pester them a bit more.

Richard, a friend who played in my West Marches game back when I first started it up (as a 5E game), and who I've played with a bit in some of Dean's games, is starting up a new Call of Cthulhu game. We had a session 0 last Friday, and the first game will be this coming Friday. I rolled up a rum runner with a boat and skill at driving a car, so I'll be the party's wheels. We've also got a prizefighting boxer, an Italian anti-mafia spy, and an investigative radio reporter as our party. Should be fun!

On the play-by-post website I use (RPOL.net), I made a Gamma World game last October, but it's just been sitting there unused. I made a few last minute updates and changes (I'm running 1992 4th edition, but with some house rules and mutations from other editions/games, including some of the house rules I used in GamMarvel World a few years back) and opened it up for players. So far, I've had five players ask to join. Two of them are already rolling up their characters: a mutant webspinner (an insect) and a mutant armadillo. I'm hoping to recruit around 10 or 12 players, since RPOL games have a high attrition rate.

Oh, and my boys are still working on their airplane simulator! They've been working on 3D models this past week. If you want to support their efforts, please check out their GoFundMe page! Thank  you!

Airplane Simulation!

 This is not a typical post for the blog, and it's not about RPGs, but it is about gaming and building the gamer community. 

Last week, I was away for a few days at an academic conference (my presentation went over time but better than anticipated, with lots of interesting questions from the audience after). While I was in Daejeon, my sons realized that my older boy's computer isn't quite good enough to suit the ambitions he has to create his own free-to-play yet high quality airplane simulator. So, they decided to start a GoFundMe! 

Here's the link. You can listen to Flynn & Steven explaining why they're doing this in their video, and read the description for even more details. 

Why am I posting it here? Well, obviously, I'm hoping some of my readers may be interested in airplane simulators, and/or interested in helping support the next generation of game designers. They've got an ambitious project, but they aren't asking for a crazy amount of money. Their goal is $5000 which they'll use to upgrade Flynn's computer and then spend a bit to pay for some assistance with coding and 3D modeling so they don't have to do it all themselves. 

It's not an RPG, but they are hoping to make an open world style game, where people can role play as pilots of commercial, cargo, private, military, and eventually historical aircraft. And if they manage to pull this off, they've also got ideas for more open world style games, possibly fantasy or sci fi themed, which would probably be of more interest to my blog audience. But I still bet there are plenty of aircraft aficionados reading this.

So, if you've got a few minutes, please click on the link and check out their pitch, and if you feel interested, pitch in a few dollars! Thanks!

Operationalizing Honor

Last week, noisms of Yoon Suin fame wrote a blog post about a "single class paladin campaign" except he's not really talking about a single class paladin game, he's talking about how to operationalize honor for RPGs in a way that will facilitate and motivate a game built around honorable heroes doing honorable things. He admits that various character classes could be used in such a game, as long as the game revolves around matters of honor and correct, heroic behavior, rather than typical D&D "adventuring" or "murder-hoboing" or what have you. Instead of everyone being the Paladin class, they all are behaving by a code of conduct and in service to some greater power.

I was definitely interested in what he had to say, as it's something I've had to deal with with only limited success in Flying Swordsmen and Chanbara. Yes, FSRPG includes notes about the xia code, and what is expected of a wandering martial hero in Chinese stories/movies. But that's it. The XP system is still revolving around defeating enemies (of any type) to gain XP, and doesn't stipulate that the combats need to be won honorably. And granted, there are anti-heroes or those that skirt the line in wuxia fiction, and they don't necessarily need to be penalized. 

I think I got a step closer with Chanbara. I re-conceptualized the carousing rules from Arneson's original campaign. But instead of saying you're spending your hard earned treasure on drunken debauchery and flashy displays of wealth until you're broke and need to go adventure again, it's explained as donating that hard earned treasure to your various lords, patrons, and clan to aid them in their endeavors. That's a step up from "hey, just role play it!" but I admit it still leaves something to be desired. Collecting the treasure is still a necessary step in play. If we're really wanting to make our campaign seem like the legends of King Arthur and Charlemagne, or of honorable samurai loyal to their lords and so on, "getting the treasure" seems out of place.

So, what sorts of rewards could we offer in a game that would encourage players to play Captain America instead of The Punisher? Galahad and Percival instead of Fafhrd and the Mouser? That's not an easy question to answer. 

So what's been done before? Marvel Super Heroes, the old 4 color resolution chart game from TSR, had a huge list of dos-and-don'ts that could earn you Karma points, or take them away. The 1E OA book also had a big long list of "honorable and dishonorable" actions, which earned or reduced honor points. 

I'm not a big fan of this method. For one, it's fiddly and arbitrary. It also requires everyone to be paying attention to a level of detail in the game that can hurt immersion. Finally, it polices play, rather than encourages it. XP for gold and fighting monsters encourages play. It tells players what the goal is, but not how to go about achieving the goal. Lists of "Thou shalt not..." doesn't give you a goal, it just mediates your choices in game. And giving a goal of "be honorable" doesn't spur action the way "get gold" does. 

I don't have a lot of history with the Palladium or White Wolf systems, but from what I remember, Palladium has a lot of strictures for keeping your alignment a la the MSH Karma and OA Honor systems, but I don't remember if that had an effect on XP or not. It's been a while since I've done anything with that system. 

For White Wolf, I haven't played Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, or Changeling. I've played Trinity and Street Fighter. In both of these games, at the end of a session (and the end of an adventure that takes place over multiple sessions), certain criteria are given or questions asked, and determine how much XP each character earns. This, I think, may be a better way to handle XP for the sort of "all paladin" game noisms wants to run. 

For those that don't know, players get 1 xp just for taking part in the session, and then additional points if they can demonstrate that their character learned or matured in some way, a point for good role play, a point for sticking to the character concept well, a point for heroism (at least in Street Fighter, which I have). If I remember, for Trinity there was one criteria for using your powers to aid the mission. 

This seems like the way to go to quantify honorable behavior to me. Make a list of criteria. The Chivalric Code. Bushido. The Way of the Jiang Hu. The Cowboy Code. Klingon Batlh. Probably best to keep it to under six tenets (the Cowboy Code as often shared on the internet these days has lots of pithy sayings that basically boil down to the same few concepts). At the end of a game session, go through each tenet and ask each player how they felt they upheld that tenet. Award chunks of XP for each tenet they upheld. 

Of course, WW games use XP as a spendable currency to develop skills and abilities, rather than a measure of progress in class level, but that can be adjusted. If someone wants to keep the D&D class & level paradigm, either adjust XP values needed to level up down (divide by 100, maybe?) or tie the amount of XP awarded by the criteria to the level of the character.

Summer Camp Board Games

So the summer camps I'm teaching are for elementary students, and I'm teaching a "listening" lesson using board games. The kids need to listen well to the rules so we can play. Parents like the academic facade, students like to play the games! 

I'm using five different games this camp, with a slightly different line-up than I used last summer and winter camps. My games are: Bang!, The Keeyp, Dungeon!, Dominion, and King of Tokyo. 

Most of these games need to be simplified, because a) I'm teaching them to Korean speaking elementary kids with [mostly] rudimentary English, b) we've got 50 minutes for a class...if we don't get interrupted by snacks or other things, so explaining in 10~15 minutes then playing for 35~40 is ideal, and c) with 8 to 13 kids in a class, I need to have the kids play in teams.

Here are how I'm modifying the rules for each game for the camp. Anyone else wanting to use these games in lessons, or play with really young kids, these may be of interest to you. 

Bang!: First of all, I'm not using the various cowboy/gunslinger characters that give special abilities. Too complicated, and takes too long to explain. Everyone starts with 4 bullets, except the sheriff who starts with 5. I've pared down the deck to cards that can be easily used: bang, miss, beer, Cat Balou, panic, Gatling, Indians, Wells Fargo, stagecoach, Volcanic and Schofield. Everything else just complicates or prolongs the game. 

All the other rules stand. Roles besides Sheriff are secret (it helps that there is a "mafia game" Korean kids love that I can compare this to). Sheriff plays first. Draw two cards on your turn, play all you can/want except only one Bang card (unless you have the Volcanic). Discard if you end the turn with more cards than bullets. 

I give teams stickers when their team is eliminated, and the winning team(s) gets 2 stickers each. Kids love it. With these rule changes, most of the time we are able to finish a game within the class period.

The Keeyp: This game is so simple and easy that I really don't need to modify anything about it. I do keep track of the Keeplings' hit points and special ability use on the white board instead of using the dice for hit points, just so there's one less thing on the desks. Some kids just can't resist playing with everything in front of them, so they'd never keep their hit points straight otherwise! Or remember how many times they've used a special ability. 

We maybe finish the game half the time. The randomness of  when the key and gate get drawn, plus how well the kids figure out combat, seems to vary the time for this game a lot. Again, 2 stickers for winners, 1 sticker to everyone else.

Dungeon!: I made the mistake the first time I played this last week of letting the kids keep their treasure cards on their desks. One kid mangled a card (see above), since I don't have card sleeves small enough for the dungeon cards. Luckily or unluckily, this is the new version of the game I got for my son a few years ago. Luckily that they didn't mangle one of my old cards from the 80s, unlucky that my son will not be happy when he sees that. 

As for rule changes, there are a few. The gold each character needs to win I kept the same last week, but this week I think I'll reduce them by 1/2. Only one team got more than 1/2 their necessary treasure last week. Second, Wizard characters just get 7 spells: 3 fireball, 3 lightning, 1 teleport (I may give them 8, with 2 teleports, this week). I allow teleports from any Chamber to any other Chamber. Chambers only have one monster, but also have a treasure. If players face a monster and fail their roll, they don't roll for the monster, they just move back outside the room and can try again next time (with a random monster). 

Finally, as I said, I'm not letting the kids draw the monster and treasure cards anymore. I draw the monster, show it to them, and let them roll the dice. If they win, I draw the treasure card, show it to them, and add the value on the board. Then the treasure card goes at the bottom of the pile. 

So I played this once with only some of the variations, and twice with, and it went a lot smoother with all the variants, except as mentioned above, no one got close to their score threshold. So I'll try them with the values cut in half on Thursday and see how it goes. 

If we get a winner, it will be 2 stickers to them, 1 to everyone else. Without winners, it's just 1 sticker each as compensation prizes.

Dominion: This is a game I didn't use last summer or winter, so I was curious how it would go. The first time I played it last week, we played it straight, using the 10 action cards suggested by the rules for a "first game." The kids understood the basics of turn taking (action card, buy, clean-up), but they really had trouble with the concepts of cards in their deck, cards in discard, and cards in their hand. They kept mixing them up, shuffling when they shouldn't, etc. Also, 10 action cards (plus victory and treasure cards) to choose from when buying was a lot. And a few of the action cards were difficult to explain, in particular Workshop and Mines, which require players to "trash" (remove from game) a card and replace it with a more valuable card. 

So after the first go through, I cut the action cards in half. Five is much better. I kept Cellar, Village, Woodcutter, Smithy, and Market, plus the 3 treasure and 3 victory cards. 

Because Militia (which 'attacks' other players) and Moat (which protects from 'attacks') were removed, that allowed me to make a variation that helps with the deck/discard pile/hand confusion. The deck is on the desk in front of each group. They don't touch it until I tell them. On their turns, they draw 5 cards and play, then discard all the hand and purchased cards (as normal). They don't immediately draw new cards. They wait until their next turn to do that. This really helps avoid the confusion. 

We haven't had a game yet where a supply (pile of cards that can be bought) has been exhausted, but we play until just before the end of class, then I have the teams sort out victory cards and add up their points to see who wins. It works pretty well that way. 

Stickers as above.

King of Tokyo: I realized early on that the monster standees were going to need monitoring, as well as the dials on the monster boards. Even knowing this, last summer one of the standees got damaged, so I show it off at the beginning of my instruction to warn the kids not to do the same. That's worked so far. 

The big variant that I use with these students is to not use the cards. They are random, many are complex, and they slow things down. Instead of buying cards, I let teams buy Stars or Hearts with their energy cubes. Last summer, I had the price set at 5, but soon dropped it to 4. I'm considering dropping it to 3 next time. Using energy is the only way to gain Hearts while In Tokyo. 

Other than that, die rolling (roll and keep, up to 3 rolls per turn) is the same. Combat is the same. Healing is the same. Earning Stars is the same. 

I actually like playing the game this way. The cards are fun, but the simple beat-em-up nature of playing without them has its charms. 

Most of the time, we finish the game, with one team reaching 20 Stars before time is up. If we don't, at the end of class the winner is simply the team that earned the most Stars. One sticker for every kid, two stickers for the winners as usual. 

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The kids seem to have the most fun with Bang!, and it's probably the game I get asked to play again the most. King of Tokyo is a hit, as well. Gotta love kaiju battles! The kids have had fun with the other games, too, but Bang! and KoT are the favorites.

A productive weekend

Last week (this week, too) I was teaching at an English camp for elementary students. Lots of fun. Usually pretty draining, but last week it was a small camp with great kids and I came out of it with plenty of energy. So I ran my TS&R Jade game yesterday.

My boys were there of course, but only two other players were free. With a smaller group, and the mapper absent, they decided to hold off on the Pits of Lao (my micro-megadungeon), and instead followed up on a rumor that there was a "dark force" in the Yokai Village. This is something they'd heard about quite a while back when they visited the first time, when they found out that the mujina weaponsmith in the village can make silvered (good vs lycanthropes & some undead) or jade-inlaid weapons (good against incorporeal creatures). 

Traveling to the village took several hours, since the large group of henchmen they hired didn't have horses and Nate's thief PC has a wagon. On the way, they were ambushed by bandits who surrounded them, covered them with repeating crossbows, and demanded payment. The party feigned paying up while the spellcasters (my boys) put 1/3 to sleep and distracted another 1/4 with a phantasmal force of a dragon. After a brief exchange of missile fire and some melee by Denis' kensei PC, they were victorious but one man-at-arms was killed. 

Carrying on to the Yokai Village, they got rooms at the inn to wait out the day for nightfall, when the village came to life. They did a bit of shopping at the bakemono market, Nate's thief inquired about turning the wagon into a battle-wagon and was directed to the Tanuki Village further off, then they went to the shrine to confirm that the 5 really nice crossbow quarrels of the bandit leader were magical (+1), and to get information on fighting undead (which they assumed...correctly...the "dark force" was). 

After meeting with the village chieftain (a six-tailed kitsune), they got some more information and a promise of one of the chieftain's magic items as payment if they could cleanse the threat.

They set off to the village's former noble estate just south of the village (the yokai took over a human ghost town), and the wu jen's (my older boy) ESP spell identified two hungry, angry semi-sentient beings inside. After checking out all the side buildings and rooms to make sure there weren't any non-sentient threats, they went in. 

There were two corporeal undead, which they had surprise on. Rather than rush in and attack, they poured holy salt around the door to fence them in. The undead rushed them -- a ghoul and a jiang-shi (hopping vampire) -- but they were stopped by the salt. My younger boy's blade mage and the kensei went in and tried to put o-fuda (paper prayer strips) on their foreheads, but failed, and were attacked back. The kensei was paralyzed by the ghoul. 

Holy salt was thrown, another phantasmal force of a burly guy slapping o-fuda on their foreheads was cast, with the jiang-shi failing its save and falling for the illusion, standing paralyzed. The ghoul was finished off, but it took time to whittle the jiang-shi down. Luckily, the illusory o-fuda couldn't fall off from a breeze or a blow. Eventually the hopping vampire was taken down. 

There was no treasure, but they chose a nine-ring sword +1 as a reward, giving it to the blade mage. Then they headed back to Pine Bridge Town (the home town) without incident. My younger boy's blade mage had been damaged by the jiang-shi, but made his save vs corruption, so he won't become one himself.

It was a fun session. They didn't get much monetary treasure, but they got a decent chunk of XP, a magic sword and some magic ammo. And it was a lot of fun. The undead were just the right level of challenge for the party, and they prepared well and survived. 

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After the session, we came home, had dinner, and got my younger boy ready for bed. Then I sat down to work on my TS&R Game Master Guide, and made some good progress. I got over two pages written, including advice to new GMs about how to set up a 'home town' for a campaign, and how much to prepare before starting the campaign depending on how experienced the GM is and how deep they need the town/home base to be for the type of campaign they plan to run.

Mass Combat Rules -- Do we need them? Do we want them?

I was involved in a discussion of the BECMI Companion Set War Machine mass combat rules recently, and it's got me thinking about them. 

I had thought about adding a version of them to Chanbara, but I'd given myself the arbitrary and artificial constraint of 64 pages, and there wasn't room. I did manage to work in a revision of the domain management rules from the same set, though. 

For Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins, I easily could take the time to revise/streamline/simplify those mass combat rules, but should I? 

I have never done hex-and-chit war games, although it's something I would love to try one day. I've only done a small amount of miniatures based war gaming (a homebrew system my brother and I worked up for little green army men as kids, a game of Chainmail once). My friends and I did use the Companion War Machine rules fairly often in our old campaign we had as kids, though. 

The system of the War Machine is designed to give you an overall result of a battle, not a play-by-play of every move and every tactic. You do some calculations before the battle for each force. You figure any modifiers at the time of battle (with basic tactical options as optional rules that can be added on). Both sides roll dice and add the force rating, higher result wins. Check the difference in the results on the table to determine casualties and disposition of each force. 

Is it perfect? No.

Is it realistic? Not at all.

Is it simple to implement? I think so.

Does it allow you to add mass combat actions to D&D without overshadowing the PCs and their adventures? Yes. 

As I said already, I like this system because it's light and easy to implement, but it allows for some options to make it more complex if that's what the players want. So, audience of mine, I really would like to get your opinions on this. Would it be worth my time to go to the effort of revising/restating these rules to add to TS&R? Would you like to see something like this? Would it be useful to you? Should I spend a bunch of time on this, or not? 

Star Wars d6: Nerf Rustlers of Bogden IV

 I ran my Star Wars d6 game yesterday afternoon. My older boy wasn't feeling very good, so he sat out the session (no Mandalorian in the party), but Jeff showed up, so there were two Jedi. With daylight savings time in the U.S., it's a little easier for him to attend games at that time. Jeremy also managed to attend even though he and his wife were on vacation. So we had: 

Steven -- Minor Jedi

Jeff -- Young Jedi

Jeremy -- Sentient Battle Droid

Denis -- Smuggler

Philip -- Brash Pilot

Not a bad party. The last session (back in May?), they were on the 4th moon of Bogden, helping their Mando allies set up a covert after the Imperial Purge of Mandalore. In order to secure food supplies, they were dealing with local nerf herders. The nerf herders were being squeezed by the dewback ranchers who had lucrative Imperial contracts to supply stormtrooper mounts.They also ran into some gangsters, and nearly got into a fight with them, but managed to talk their way out of it, with promises of an alliance with the Hutt.

This session, they continued. Having secured the sale of some nerfs, they got an urgent call from the Mandalorians. Going to the arranged drop off point for the nerf herd, they found the remains of two or three nerfs, totally torn to pieces. Looking around the area, they found strange divots in the rocks that seemed to form a trail. At first, they suspected droids, but further investigation, and some comlink discussions with the nerf herders, they were told that the tracks probably belonged to acklay.

They followed the tracks to a cave, and realized they should head back to the spaceport to buy some supplies, and to get their ships. They set up an ambush, with the minor jedi (who has a rocketpack) as bait, in front of multiple bear trap type snares. The battle droid and other jedi were hiding in the nearby rocks, the smuggler and pilot were flying nearby in their ships. After creating a bunch of noise, one acklay came out, but the ship guns took it down pretty quickly. 

The other acklay wouldn't come out, so they eventually sent in the minor jedi's C1 astromech to map out the cavern, but after a few minutes they got a short emergency message that was cut off. They had no choice but to go in. The brash pilot stayed in his Z-95 to make sure no acklay escaped out other cave entrances, while the rest went in. They found the two remaining acklay, and thanks to spending character points to get their initiatives up beyond the monsters', they managed to take them out in two rounds without suffering further harm. But there were no traces of nerfs in the cave and no where for them to have gone. 

Realizing they may have been tricked, Satt (the brash pilot) scanned the area, and detected a group of nerf headed north, away from the nerf farms and toward the dewback ranches. Everyone else hopped in the freighter, and they flew up to see what was going on. They found six drovers herding the nerfs along. They landed (except Satt), and confronted them. The drovers revealed themselves to be bounty hunters. After a brief but tense gunfight (aided by Satt's Z-95, which was impervious to the hunters' missiles), they won and were able to bring the nerfs back to the Mando covert. 

While there are still tensions with the Imperials and the dewback ranchers, and gangster stuff they could follow up on, after getting paid by the Mando covert, they decided to leave this planet and seek jobs elsewhere. Maybe following up on the bounty pucks the rustlers were carrying. 

It was a pretty fun session. Both fights were easy in the end, but that's due to smart use of CP to improve initiative and some lucky rolls. Both the acklay and the bounty hunters had the potential to do a lot of damage, if more of their attacks had hit. Going first, and getting a stun or wound in on an enemy, or even just forcing them to dodge, really helps a lot. 

At the end of the session, I basically told the players to give me ideas for what they'd like to do. It's a big galaxy, and I feel like my own ideas are getting a little stale. I'll come up with some interesting information for the bounty pucks, but there's no requirement for the party to track them down (although some are interested in that). I'm happy with whatever: exploring the margins of the galaxy, bounty hunting, more gangster stuff back in Huttspace, or finally joining the Rebellion are all options, but not the only options.