For the third year in a row, Kristin and I are heading to KublaCon in Burlingame, CA.
Fri 12:45 pm - We meant to be leaving for the con in an hour or so. Two of our jobs got cancelled and replaced with a single job that probably won’t start until 3 or 4. We will hopefully make it in time to buy our badges tonight.
Fri 4:11 pm - Finally on the way to the bay! We have an extra hour delay, though, on account of needing to borrow my sister-in-law’s laptop for podcasting. Still, at least we’re on the road.
Fri 8:30 pm - Finally got checked in and registered. As always, getting badges, was painless. Parking not so much. The con filled up the garage, so we had to valet park. Of course, I left my wallet in the car, which means getting it bedore tomorrow will be a pain.
Sat 9:30 am - Not exactly live, but last night we were able to get into a Changeling: The Dreaming game run by Dave Martin of The Wrecking crew. It was fun, but I was incredibly tired, and started getting grumpy near the end.
Sat 1:00 pm - just got back from lunch with Sean from Narrative Control and some other folks. Had a great time. Hopefully, we’ll be able to convince some folks to do some pickup gaming between the scheduled games.
Sun 4:30 pm - Just finished playtesting Justin’s Schaurmarchen game for GOCon. Anybody playing in that one is going to have a great time with it.
Last night we got a chance to demo Geist: The Sin-Eaters. The premise is good, but the demo needs a little bit of work. Can’t say too much, but it should be worth getting when it comes out.
We also recorded an interview with Dave Martin last night, and an episode of Narrative Control with Justin and Sean. Both of those had some really great content, although NC I thought went better than the interview.
Sun 10:30 am - Just about conned out. I’m currently sitting in on a Dogs in the Vineyard game as an observer, and reading through Shock: Social Science Fiction.
That last one was a total impulse buy. I went down to get Dominion and 3:16, and Shock: was just kind of there. Judging by the opening fiction, it looks like it might have been a good buy.
Last night’s plan was to play Dread, but it was midnight before people were going to be out of their games, and we were all exhausted, so it just never happened. Which was fine, really. I only wish that we’d decided not to play prior to 2 am, since we’re going to be exhausted for the trip home.
Still, Kubla was a good con, as usual. Next year, though, I think I’m going to fill up my schedule, even if I have to add games that I don’t actually want to play. I figure that will get me into more games overall, while still giving me time for pickup games and whatnot.
My wife was wonderful enough to get me a new phone, one capable of letting me update this thing on the road. That means I might actually get to blog on a regular basis. Go me!
I’m one of those people that hate fake medicine. One of the awesome people who continue to fight against snakeoil and bullshit is the British columnist, blogger and scientist, Ben Goldacre. Not long ago, Ben posted a recording of a radio program that was promoting the idea that the MMR vaccine causes autism (it doesn’t). The radio station demanded that he take down the content, but not before the Internet had gotten ahold of it (you go, Internet!) and distributed the recording to many different websites. Here’s a video in which he talks about that event, and where he, as Phil Plait put it, slams UK anti-science.
So, it’s Friday the 13th, and I just got laid off today.
Of course, we’re in the midst of a wicked recession (in case you ain’t heard), and it wasn’t just me, so there’s really no hard feelings. Fortunately for me, my wife owns her own company, and she’s offered to let me help her out, so I won’t be entirely useless. Still, I find myself with some excess free time.
One of the things that I said I’d do was to post more. Obviously, I’ve failed to do that. However, I’ve had a couple of ideas for games that I need to get written down, and, well, there’s not much better places to do that than the blog that I’ve set up for exactly that purpose.
In any case, the beginning of those posts should start on Monday. Hopefully.
My wife has made a resolution to post to her blog every day this year. I don’t have that kind of resolve. I’m shooting for once a week. I’m going to try not to do it from work, though. Except for this time.
So, what’s been going on in the ol’ gaming world.
First off, while my friend and podcasting co-host, Randy, has been on a between-semester break, we’ve ramped up our gaming schedule from 2 weekly games to 3. Unfortunately, we’re going to have to cut back once school starts back up, so we’re going to have to decide which of our three games we’re putting on hiatus until the next semester break.
One thing that I’m really going to try and do is to recap our gaming sessions and give my thoughts on what worked and what didn’t. I’m also going to try to post some on any one-shots that I’ve played, or games that I haven’t played, but have read. That should give me enough source material to keep this blog going somewhat.
In any event, I’m going to try and do some recapping of the two Burning Wheel games that we’ve been playing later today, in addition to posting some thoughts about a zygote of a game idea that’s been rolling around in my head for a while now that I have yet to actually put down on paper.
I still need to work on getting all of the different characters posted. It should be easier now that I have everyone’s sheets sitting in my pile of gaming stuff. Expect those in the next couple of days.
In the meantime, though, we did play our playtest sessions of the actual game. Mostly, we used the first session to sort of bring everyone up to speed on the game mechanics. The nice thing is, it seems like some of the rules as presented in the Dresden Files RPG are a little more clear than they were in Spirit of the Century, especially the rules for performing Maneuvers.
Before I go into the actual play report, I’d like to review some of the characters. We went over Oklahoma “OK Tom” Tomorrow previously, but I haven’t really detailed any of the other characters.
Martin Dover Gentry is a changeling, and the owner of the comic book and curiosity shop, First Edition. He’s built around a magpie theme, so he’s very birdlike. We modified the Supernatural Stunt Bless this House slightly to fit with his theme - in some legends, magpies were the ones who taught people how to build homes, so we thought it was appropriate. Mechanically, it works as written, we just chose not to base it in Faith.
Calista Annabelle Thornis a werewolf firefighter with a hero complex. She pretty much has the werewolf package straight out of the Character Templates chapter.
Kate is a college cheerleader/novice Wizard. She’s also a spoiled rich girl. She used the basic wizard template, minus Thaumaturgy - the player really had no interest in it.
I won’t go into minute details on each and every roll. I don’t think that it’s important to the playtesting, and, really, the basics of the rules have already been vetted in SotC. On the whole, the regular game mechanics worked excellently.
The Scenario
Martin’s comic shop, First Edition, was robbed. He and OK Tom discover the assailant still in the building and chase him down. After a brief fight*, the mysterious theif tries to get away, but gets creamed by a car. The characters check the thief for signs of life, but instead find him to be a conglomeration of sticks and junk, wrapped up in old jeans and a hoodie and carrying a backpack. In the backpack were the items that were stolen from the comic shop, including an old hand-carved chess set that had been left by the previous owner. The black rook and queen were broken. When the rest of the group showed up at the shop, everyone went searching for clues. Martin, Calista and Kate found a wallet on the construct, and decided to track down the owner to see what he knew.
This is where the added importance of compels came in handy. I compelled OK Tom’s Bicycle Messenger Aspect - he had packages he needed to deliver. Upon making his last delivery, he found a a man dead, clearly murdered. A small green plant was growing out of his chest. A quick once-over of the room revealed the murder victim’s letterhead - he was an artist named Tad Willows, and his logo was a black rook. The package he was delivering also had a logo on it - a black queen. It was sent by one Emily Bellhaven. He used his Psychometry stunt to gather some additional information about the artist, basically discovering the “how” of how he died, but not the “why.” He passed off the information to an underfunded group of cops that we had created during the city creation sessions.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group traced the wallet to the area known as the Woods. Turned out that the wallet owner was a cripple, and a red herring. They were about to head back to First Edition when Kate’s College Student Aspect got compelled - she had a test that she HAD to take. While at school, another one of the stickmen came after her**. She managed to escape by slipping through a crowd, basically using an Athletics as a block against the assailant.
After that, everyone met back up at First Edition to figure out where to go next. Calista decided to use her werewolf senses to sniff out where the stickman came from. OK Tom decided to go digging on his own.
The scent trail led Calista, Martin and Kate on a merry chase around the Portland bus system. A quick compel of Calista’s Werewolf Aspect caused a bit of a scene (”Is that a service animal? We don’t let pets on the bus…”). Martin’s Resources cleared the way, and the chase was on. The three of them followed the scent into the Shanghai Tunnels beneath the city, which were filled with about two inches of water. As they were searching the tunnels, they heard footsteps splashing toward them.
Meanwhile, OK Tom decides to call Emily Bellhaven. It goes straight to voicemail, and he leaves a message, pretending to be the murdered artist. Later, the cops call him back, demanding to know how he knows Ms. Bellhaven, and if he’d be willing to have a detective come and speak with him at the loft. OK Tom, of course, agrees. He shows up at the artist’s loft a while later, and sees a detective’s car out front. So, Tom makes like a delivery boy. The cop questions him as the crime scene unit and coroner’s van show up. The officer demands that Tom hand the package, but loses the social conflict. He tells Tom that he’ll get a court order for it, and to keep the package sealed and safe until that happens. Of course, Tom opens it later. Inside are some seeds, and some chips and grains of some kind of grey stone.
Meanwhile, down in the tunnels, the werewolf, wizard and changeling are attacked by yet another stickman. Martin dove for its ankles, effectively blocking the thing while Kate made a grab for its hoodie. Calista used her Supernatural Strength to body check it, taking it out. After that, they followed the tunnels to a door. Beyond that, a good-sized room lined with cupboards and drawers and workbenches. They proceed to start investigating everything.
OK Tom, meanwhile, had gone to Powell’s Bookstore to do a little research. He discovered that the seeds were honeysuckle, and the stone was volcanic basalt, the same kind found at the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. He discovered that the plant growing from Tad Willows’ chest was honeysuckle as well. He makes an attempt at calling the rest of the group. Unfortunately, between Kate’s hexing and their being under ground, the call doesn’t go that well. Ther was, however, some hilarity involving text messaging, and a lack of a QWERTY keyboard. Tom then goes to his Contacts, invoking his Shadowy Contacts aspect, attempting to find out what the hell is going on.
Down in the basement, Calista picks up a new scent - this time of spring flowers, honeysuckle, and fresh cut grass. They follow it to a doorway bearing a plaque with the word ‘Antiquities’ on it. A clever use of Kates hexing shorted out the alarm system, and cleared the way for them to get inside. The trail stopped in one corner, at a stacked up pile of boxes…
Tom got ahold of his contacts, and started grilling them on what was going on. Turns out that the victims were Changelings aligned with the Autumn Court who were expected to make the Choice soon - the presence of the honeysuckle indicated that the perpetrator was a member of the Spring Court.
Meanwhile, I compelled Kate into using The Sight to see past the Glamour that was the pile of boxes. Behind the glamour was Annah, a former Changeling-turned-Fae who is one of the contenders for the Spring Queen throne***. This was, of course, the excuse that we needed to test out the Spellcasting rules. Calista body-checks the Fae and uses a maneuver to give her the Prone aspect. Kate gathers some power, but holds it in check. Annah used Seelie Magic to attempt a Bind maneuver on Martin, but he tags her Prone aspect. She fails the Discipline roll, and causes Fallout. Vines break through the linoleum floor and start coming for everyone, incidentally binding the Fae. Everyone else escapes the effect, but the vines continue to grow out of control, and are about to bind the door closed. Martin’s turn comes around, and he drops his Refresh to buy Wings, giving him a Refresh of 1, and then Intimidates Annah, giving her a “Cowed” aspect. She looks like she’s going to try and escape, so Kate releases the power that she’s gathered with an Evocation effect, knocking Annah unconscious. The vines were still coming, so they tear the Fae out of her bindings and flee back the way they came.
There was some incidental dialogue after that, most of which was questioning and bullying Annah, with me trying to twist the truth without actually lying. We left strings hanging to pick up when the game actually comes out.
* We managed to weasel in a test of the new Grappling rules here - it worked incredibly well.
** Kate’s player is very D&D/White-Wolf minded, and she had trouble grasping the idea of succeeding at a conflict rather than a task. It took quite a bit of explaining, and I don’t think she ever quite “got it.”
*** One thing that never came out during the course of play - mostly because the players never really made it an issue, and it was mostly an entertaining side-note - is that the new Faerie Courts that were created for the Portland setting don’t necessarily play by the same rules as the canon Courts. I wanted to keep the Chess metaphor going, so the Spring and Autumn Courts match the back row of the Chess board - a King, a Queen two Knights, two Rooks, and two Bishops. However, as new as they are, and with their limited resources, not all of the royalty has been chosen. The courts are filling the gaps with more powerful Changelings who are approaching their Choices.
What Worked:
The grappling rules worked really well for us. Much better, in fact, than they do in most systems. I don’t know if anyone else had problems with them, but for us, it was really quick.
Evocation worked well for me, personally. In retrospect, the vine maneuver should have probably affected the intended target - I erred on the side of what I thought was more interesting. But, in a situation where the players know the rules fairly well, spellcasting as written doesn’t take much input from the GM, which is exactly how I like my games to run - let the players do the hard work Also, the Backlash and Fallout mechanics worked really well - I liked using them.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to really test out Thaumaturgy, but the rules, as written, look like they should play well, since they follow the same basic principles.
What Didn’t:
There wasn’t really any mechanical issues that didn’t work.
When it came to antagonists, I had some problems, mostly due to the fact that there weren’t any fully statted out examples of things like True Fae. For the constructs, I basically used the goon rules from SotC - they were +2 at pretty much everything, with 2 boxes of Stress. For Annah, the recently changed Changeling, there wasn’t anything to go off of. I intended for her to be a weak Sidhe, but she came off as significantly underpowered. Some minions might have helped, but she was really an excuse to bust out some evocation.
Other Thoughts and Feedback:
One thing that we saw, specifically with the Supernatural Stunts chapter, was an organization issue. Since nobody was super familiar with the rules, the lack of an alphabetized list of supernatural Stunts made things a little bit difficult. It’s a minor issue that will most likely be mitigated in the final product, assuming it’s got a comprehensive index like SotC does.
One of the players also asked about someting that occurs in the source fiction, and how it’s intended to be handled in the game. In the books, Harry is often drained after casting a lot of spells, to the point where even calling up simple effects is beyond him. This player wanted to know how the game modeled that. I told him that it was pretty well handled by taking consequences in exchange for power, and, if that wasn’t good enough, the character’s Wizard aspect could be tagged or compelled to represent that. So, I was a little curious as to whether that was the intention, or was it something that just isn’t important enough to gameplay to matter.
So, that’s pretty much it, as far as our DFRPG playtest went. Really, the problems we had were pretty minor, and we’re all pretty stoked for the full game to come out. I think that this system will sing in long-term play.
Things have been slow as far as the DFRPG playtesting has been going. Fortunately, since my wedding is all done, and things have finally started to calm down, we’re actually getting a chance to play over the next few weeks. The hard part - character creation - is already done. As they come in, I’ll be posting the characters.
We decided to go with a standard naming convention for everybody’s novel (those of you who have played Spirit of the Century know what I’m talking about). All of them are a phrase that start with a number. This isn’t exactly supposed to indicate chronology, we just wanted a way to tie everyone into the same “series” as it were. The novels, preceded by the PC they are about, are as follows:
Martin - First Edition
Calista - Second Degree
OK Tom - Third Wheel
Kate - Fourth Quarter
I’m tempted to title the playtest scenario in the same way, but I can’t seem to come up with anything that starts with the word Fifth. If anybody has any ideas, feel free to post a comment.
Overall, I’m pretty pleased with how easy character creation went. Nobody at the table is exceedingly familiar with FATE/SotC, so it was nice to see that the character creation rules clicked pretty well for everyone. Not that they’re particularly difficult, but people latched on to them early on, and just ran with it. Even the newest player managed to create a novice Wizard with little problem. The only real issue we ran into was some confusion about the text, which was, I believe, an editing problem.
Probably the nicest thing was when we got to the “guest starring” phases, and people really started talking to each other about how they wanted their stories to intertwine. I really think that it helped get everyone on the same page and excited about playing the game.
On the mechanical side, it’s kinda nice not having so many Aspects in Dresden as there were in SotC. I think that people had an easier time coming up with things. Building the concept and theme of each character into an Aspect was also a nice touch.
As for skills, we went with the default 25 skill points, which gives a pretty good range of skills. Capping them at Great (+4) also gave the characters some room to diversify their skills. I don’t see this system as one that really rewards specialization as much as a lot of skill-based systems do.
On the downside, I wish that the character creation chapter talked about the Stress tracks, and how your skills relate to them. SotC starts characters out at 5 stress boxes, with skills and stunts that can push them up to 10. Dresden defaults to 2 boxes. This means that characters can get taken out pretty quickly (although, fortunately, the game isn’t designed to be particularly lethal), and are probably going to be picking up a lot of consequence aspects. The problem that I see is that the rules for increasing your available stress boxes are split between several chapters. I have no problem with them being detailed separately - like say, in the Skills and Stunts chapters - but it would be nice if there was a sidebar or chart that showed what skills and stunts increased your available stress.
All that being said, here’s the first character that I’ve gotten turned in to me. This is OK Tom, played by my friend and TMD co-host, Randy.
Oklahoma “OK Tom” Tomorrow
High Concept: Psychic Rom Bicycle Messenger
Theme: Heritage v. Progress OK Tom is trying to reconcile his family’s pressure to adhere to Rom traditions, and his own desire to understand the truth about the universe in all its scientific glory.
Background: Autodidact He had to hide all his pilfered science textbooks from his family. He spent all his free time with his head in a book.
Rising Conflict: I slept in the bed, now I have to make it. OK Tom cheated on his girlfriend while she was pregnant with his child. She aborted the fetus. OK Tom values family, and his actions destroyed his chance to have a family of his own. Now, he’s dealing with it.
First Novel: Eye for detail “Third Wheel” OK Tom’s ex-fiance, one who his family arranged for him, has come back to town with a new squeeze. After an accidental use of psychometry, OK Tom discovers the man to be a serial murderer. Can OK Tom save the next victim all the while keeping it a secret from his family?
Guest Star 1: Watch Kate’s back “Fourth Quarter” At Kate’s sorority party, OK Tom discovers the truth about an old book of spells just in time to save Kate from a fire she caused.
Guest Star 2: Shadowy contacts “First Edition” OK Tom overhears Martin complaining about customs; he can’t get his goods across the border. OK Tom comes to the rescue, even though he had no clue how to do it. So he made some new contacts…shadowy ones.
Stunts:
Psychometry
Human Google Map (+2 to navigation-based Driving tests)
Backhanded Compliment (use Rapport for social attacks)
Quick Eye (Investigate twice as fast)
Skills:
Great (+4): Contacts, Rapport
Good(+3): Driving, Investigation
Fair(+2): Scholarship, Craftsmanship, Presence, Resources
Average(+1): 3 to be determined
This chick is awesome, and I applaud her for encouraging people to speak out. It’s important for us to do so, and, despite what some people may say, it does NOT make you “militant”.
I still need to work on getting all of the different characters posted. It should be easier now that I have everyone’s sheets sitting in my pile of gaming stuff. Expect those in the next couple of days.
Also, the Backlash and Fallout mechanics worked really well - I liked using them.
