RPG A Day 2015 - Day Twenty One

Favourite RPG Setting...

Ermmmm Dragonlance is a bit of an easy one here as would Star Wars given how it's largely built into my DNA.

Those 2 aside though there aren't any settings that have grabbed me and encouraged me to become immersed in the lore and such like - except for one and that will be my pick.

Battletech's universe is of interest to me and I do wish I had the time to delve deeper in to the various stories that surround the glory of House Davion (bias mine) but I don't have or haven't made the time to do that.

I first played a Battletech RPG with the old Mechwarrior 1st Edition RPG ran by my friend Gordon who shared an interest in the setting although not the miniatures game.  It was a lethal game and the mechanics were a bit odd in places.

Fast forward to now and you have A Time Of War - Battletech RPG which is a lovely book but again the mechanics are a bit odd.  I've ran it a couple of times and it was a lot of fun but I think the lore can get in the way unless the party are mercenaries as then the House/Clan factions get less in the way.

So yeah, in the interests of diversity I'm going to pick A Time Of War.

RPG A Day 2015 - Day Eighteen

Favourite SF RPG...

Sci-Fi RPG would have to be Star Wars : Edge Of The Empire, right?

I've played every iteration of published Star Wars RPGs from the original West End Games Edition through their 2nd edition into the d20 versions that WotC produced and now with FFG which I think is the best version of a Star Wars RPG.

Surely that makes it my favourite SF RPG?

Well yes it does but for different reasons to my previous post about D&D being my favourite Fantasy RPG.

I've not played that many different SF RPGs and the draw for me has always been the Star Wars setting.

If there had been a good Star Trek RPG with a set up that enabled things to happen beyond the standard Away Team approach I might have been more inclined to play one of those.  Although to be fair, I never tried or looked at the Decipher Star Trek RPG.

I played a reasonable amount of Traveller in my youth and whilst I like the mechanics the home setting(s) never clicked for me.

I've never played enough of Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2020 or Paranoia to really decide if they were for me but again the settings never really grabbed my attention. Interesting and fun but never really grabbed me... (sorry Al)

Rifts and Mechwarrior/Battletech worked for me from a setting perspective but mechanically they didn't, especially Rifts... I have a real dislike for the Palladium system... although given there's a Savage Worlds version of Rifts coming I might be tempted.

Judge Dredd RPG kinda fits the bill and I am a fan of the comics too but again it seemed to suffer mechanically in the GW and d20 editions, although never played the Traveller powered version.

So yeah, setting seems to be more important with my SF choice than my Fantasy choice.  Probably due to Star Wars being such a large part of my growing up and geek life.

RPG Pre-Conditions and Self Limitations

So way back when I started this blog I kicked it off with a post called "I'm Dave and I'm a Roleplayer" and I proceeded to talk about the rediscovery of what I wanted my hobby to be.

Since then I've managed to rediscover my hobby and I've achieved some things too, not least of which would be attending Gen Con and establishing East Neuk Tabletop Games.

As my post on DMing Lost Mines of Phandelver attests though I've not really lived up to the title of that first post - namely I've not done much roleplaying since this 2nd Chapter started.

Why is that?  Well.....

My Star Wars game has suffered as a result of conflicting schedules (mine and my players) and establishing another game has proven to be more challenging than I think I ever appreciated.  Not through a lack of player interest more that I've not found or indeed at times made the commitment of time to run a game.

One of the beauties of boardgames is that the majority of them can be played in 90 minutes as a maximum time span. Yes there are some that will take longer but the majority of the ones I own can be played in that 90 minute slot which is great.

RPGs can also be played in a relatively short slot too but I'm beginning to think that I don't like that... I actually think that for me RPGs should be in a 4 hour slot as a minimum.  Sure you can play one-shots in 2 hours or even less and that's essentially how the Star Wars game has functioned since it started.  Now if any of my Star Wars players are reading this don't fret, I'm not about to say that we're only going to play it if I have a 4 hour slot (although that would be nice...).
What I am saying is that for any RPG that I kick off from here-on I want the slot to be roughly 4 hours.

This obviously brings me back to my challenges with that around available free time etc but it also gets me thinking too.  What other things should be pre-conditions of running a RPG?

4 hour slot is great but it should happen semi-regularly. Ideally it should happen fortnightly as a minimum although weekly would be preferable but let's not over extend things and just stick to the fortnightly as a minimum.

The funny thing is that I used to be able to do this.

Every fortnight I'd turn up on a Saturday at +ORC Edinburgh and run a game.  Not always a campaign game but a RPG and I'd run it for 4 hours.  This worked really well for a good few years and then I found I couldn't sustain it due to Real Life (tm) getting in the way...  Ok so that sounds bad. Real Life (tm) didn't so much get in the way, it was more that my priorities changed when I became a dad.

So how does that help me now?  Well it doesn't really.

Where it leaves me is going back to that consistent element of "time". The only way I can really kick off a new RPG session in a 4 hour slot is by making that time.  That really means that something has to give and the most likely (and also easiest) option is that I swap some of my existing game time for other game time.

There is another option, or perhaps just a different nuance to the option above. My Star Wars game has just completed the Beyond The Rim scenario and whilst the players are keen to continue maybe I should put it on a short break and run something else (likely D&D) for a time...  I'm not overly keen on that though as my preference leans more to running RPGs at ENT and given we're now running in a 4 hour slot that becomes more likely.

No conclusions as yet, more pondering required about my options but without pre-empting my 2015 look ahead post I think it's clear that more RPG play is going to be one of the objectives I set myself.

One Small Step For A Meeple...

One Giant Leap For Meeple-kind?

Not quite.

I realise I've slipped into another "no update" zone with the blog which I can only apologise profusely for. Other than work, family and of course gaming I've not really had any real time to spend on the blog.

So a quick update is probably in order then.

Games at a beer festival went really well. We didn't have any converts but we did have some people asking questions which is never a bad thing.
We managed to play Poo, Get Bit, Kittens in a Blender and Braggart which all worked pretty well considering we were sitting near where the live (and at times excellent) music was being played.
I look forward to the next Cambolicious beer festival in May 2015 where more games and more beer can be enjoyed.

DWARF wise we've finally managed to re-instate the Star Wars game that we've been playing. First game since July and 2 of the party almost died.
We're coming to the end of "Beyond The Rim" and I've been very pleased with the scenario this far.  It is a bit railroady at times but it's flexible enough to manipulate the story.
The question I have started to ponder is what's next? Another Star Wars scenario or something else?
Of course alongside that I've been playing more board games at DWARF

ENT wise we're approaching our final event of the year - Sunday 14th December.  Alan aka +donjondo pulled together a list of all the games we've played since we started and it comes to the frustratingly not rounded number of 49! Then our community pointed out a few omissions and we're actually now at 52!
To celebrate our first year we're hosting a sort of poll / survey to get people to vote for their favourite games played this year ahead of the session on the 14th. Alan came up with the name Golden Axe Award and we've decided to stick with it, although what an ENT would be doing with an axe I'm not sure... ;-)
ENT will also see some changes from the 14th December with us moving to a 4 hour slot (1pm to 5pm) and also moving to the Upper Hall which should be warmer over the Winter!  I think the changes are a positive step forwards for the community, especially for the longevity of the community but also increasing the options of what can be played.

I've failed miserably at getting the "gang" back together for some D&D. This has been solely down to me just not having that much free time to actually play the game for any reasonable length of time (a separate post is brewing on the topic of game length).

So that's pretty much where we are although I do have a couple of other topics to be covered, just need to find the time to write them!!!

Tabletop Day 2014 @ DWARF in Dunfermline

So this Saturday is Tabletop Day.  If you're not sure where to go and take part in one of the many thousands of events to celebrate our hobby then go to the Tabletop Day website and find out where your nearest one is.

If that happens to be Dunfermline in Scotland then come along to the DWARF event.

I'm bringing some of my board games -

Sentinels Of The Multiverse - 2 to 5 player co-op superhero card game. 45-60 minutes to play.
Gloom - 2 to 4 player card game where you make your family miserable and kill them off. 45-60 minutes to play.
Lords Of Waterdeep - 2 to 5 player board game where you are powerful lords vying for control of this great city. Roughly 60 minutes to play.
King Of Tokyo - 2 to 6 player board game where you play mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens fighting each other to become the one and only King of Tokyo. 30 to 45 minutes to play.
Bang! - 3 to 7 player card game set in the Wild West where barrels are your friend and dynamite randomly explodes! 30 to 45 minutes to play.
The Resistance - 5 to 10 player card game where you are either in The Resistance or you're a Spy trying to stop the resistance! 30 to 60 minutes to play.
Jungle Speed - 2 to 8 player card game which is nothing like Snap! (with violence) whatsoever... 15 to 45 minutes to play.
Fluxx (Zombie, Star, "Standard" and I think 1 other variant) - 2 to 8 player card game where the rules and goal are always in Fluxx! 15 to 45 minutes to play.
Straw - 2 to 6 player card game where the players are trying to NOT break the camel's back unless it's with that elusive Straw. 30 to 45 minutes to play.

Plus I plan on running (if there's demand) 2 RPG scenarios.

The first one is a hack of my Prison Break scenario for Star Wars.  It's a hack as I need to condense it to no more than 90 minutes!  Doable but challenging!

The second one is an as yet undecided scenario for D&D Next/5th Edition.  I probably have toooooo many options here so will be picking something that fits the 90 minute slot as well as gives players a proper taste of the rules.

The Force is strong with this one.

In my previous post on licenses I made reference to the popularity of Star Wars within the hobby.

Star Wars is one of those properties that has serious longevity and is consistently establishing new fans to enjoy the games by publishers such as Fantasy Flight Games.

What caught me by surprise today is that ICv2 have released some market performance information around the success of games in the Non-Collectible Miniature format during Summer 2013.

These numbers are taken from independent stores in North America and doesn't include Games Workshop stores in that mix.  The numbers show that the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures game outsold Warmachine, Warhammer Fantasy and Hordes.  Now there are no numbers published to give market share or anything like that but seeing the game selling so well in comparison to the stalwarts of that format is surprising.

Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Lines – Summer 2013
	Title	Publisher
1	Warhammer 40k	Games Workshop
2	Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures	Fantasy Flight Games
3	Warmachine	Privateer Press
4	Warhammer Fantasy	Games Workshop
5	Hordes	Privateer Press

Mind you looking back at my post on bias/snobbery in the hobby I had managed to determine that the market for Warhammer (both games combined) was something in the region of 1.5 Million players worldwide.  So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that a game which gives fans of Star Wars the opportunity to play games of starship battles or maybe it's more a reflection of the size of that format as a whole but either way it was a surprise to me to find X-Wing as the 2nd most popular Non-Collectible Miniature game of the Summer.

Character Creation: Edge of the Empire

So we recently went through character creation for EotE and I really felt this was one of the easiest and most interactive character creation processes I've ever taken part in.

To set the scene - I've got about 9 people interested in playing and that number might increase so looks like the Active/Passive approach is going to be a must have here.

On the night that we got together for character creation only 5 of the players were able to make it.  Some of the players had fairly strong concepts in mind whereas others were largely winging it.  Lots of good chat followed and the players settled on the following.

Human Explorer (Fringer)
Human Smuggler(Scoundrel)
Human Smuggler (Pilot / Scoundrel)
Rodian Colonist (Politico)
Wookie Tech (Outlaw Tech)

What was most interesting though was how the characters changed as the players went through the process of creation.

One of the mechanics of EotE is called Obligation and this brings a very simple narrative measure of what connection the character has to the fringes of the galaxy.  Within the rulebook the player has the option of rolling d% or choosing an Obligation from the list; or with agreement from the GM they can develop another Obligation entirely.  There are other narrative components to the creation that develop the character's origin, journey to the fringe and their motivation.  All of which help to hone that initial character concept into a more rounded playable character.

The other thing about Obligation is that it matters how heavily obligated the whole party is to those fringe elements.  e.g. The higher the parties obligation the less likely that respectable (if only publicly seen that way) connections might be willing to do business with them.  The counter to that though is that if their obligation isn't that high then certain parts of the underworld might not take them seriously.

What was of particular interest here and something I was keen to do, was how the players started to knit their characters together through shared Obligations and other elements of their backgrounds. Alongside that those players with fairly strong concepts at the start of the process were happy to revisit and adjust them to create those links between the characters to ensure that the party had a strong foundation to work from.

When it comes to creating the other characters those same links will need to be woven into any underlying plot for all the characters that will be taking part in the game.  That's one of the challenges of the Active/Passive approach - involving all the characters in the game.

Active/Passive Characters in RPGs

I had planned to be kicking off a Star Wars EotE game by now but due to a number of factors that hasn't happened.

So for October what I want to do is complete character creation likely using this fabulous character generator (and so much more) created by OggDude on the FFG Forums.

Now as I've said previously in my Railroad Stations post I plan to use the Beyond The Rim adventure set as the core of the campaign. To get to that point of kicking off the game though there are a few things that I need to be clear on.

How many players?
The comfortable maximum number of players for any RPG for me is 6.  I can manage a game with more than that but it becomes more unwieldy and I'd add that it becomes less fun for the players when there is less opportunity for them to play in each session.
Given that this is likely to be part of my Friday nights and we're really talking about 2.5 to 3 hour slots that number becomes more and more of a maximum.  If the interest level is what I think it is then we're looking at a minimum of 8 people being interested with another couple of people on the fringes of that.

Dave, that's more than 6 players...  How do you do that then?
Cap it at the 6 and let the other players down? Not my style really and my preference is to do the following.
Take the 8 (or however many) players and go through Character creation.  What this does is builds contingency around the available players to take part in each session.

Yeah but you said only 6 players...
And I mean it too.  Ok so I'll likely make the odd exception to that rule but the approach is to cap the number of characters actively participating in games to 6.  That 6 isn't necessarily static and in my experience it's unusual for it be static for any more than 2 consecutive 2 sessions anyway due to other commitments that players have.  Which is where the other players and their characters have the opportunity to take part.

So what about the players who don't play?
Thematically I tend to use a passive/active character approach which essentially says that all the characters are progressing through the scenarios but some of those are passive characters in that they are not in the scenes taking place.  So in a RPG with a level based system like D&D I would artificially control the level of ALL characters to that of the party.  There are exceptions to this where particular players warrant the exception but in the main this mechanical flattening enables the sessions and story to the be the focus rather than any individual character progression.  Some players might find this unfair but it is the only real way that I've found to have a pool of players who can take part in a limited space game.
Story wise this is probably the hardest part.  The only real way to address any story gaps in the player knowledge is to have brief re-caps of where things are (by the rest of the players) at the start of each session.  This enables the formerly passive player and their character to jump in to the action.

Does that work?
I've been running games using this active/passive approach since I first used it at ORC all those years ago with good success.

Of course the right answer for some people is to just set the cap and leave it there.  That just doesn't feel like the right answer to me....

Railroad Stations

Back in my post named "Expansive Gaming" I reflected on the nature of expansions for games.

I've recently picked up a number of expansions for games I've been enjoying and wanted to share the reasons why I've picked them up.

This post is about Star Wars EotE : Beyond The Rim - So this is a scenario/campaign book which I plan to use as part of my EotE RPG sessions.
I've come to really like the published stuff that FFG produce and whilst there's an element of railroading within the scenarios that I've seen that's normally something I can work around.

So if you think about that railroad scenario and rather than seeing it as a linear path you put stops along the way you can add a lot more into the game. In other words, you're adding more stations to the railroad where intersections or "side treks" to use an old D&D phrase can be placed on the scenario journey. Similarly you can have a number of these intersections prior to the start of the railroad you've been given. That might be a bit more tricky simply because you might have to unpick some of the background to enable it.

So Beyond The Rim is likely going to be the main content for my Star Wars EotE RPG Sessions.

In my next post I'll talk about another expansion I've picked up.

Prison Break

I've referred to a one-shot scenario I've used for Star Wars on here a few times.

The scenario itself is inspired by an old RPG magazine by the name of Challenge which was published by Games Designers Workshop, a now defunct gaming company.

GDW were the publishers of a number of games over the years but Challenge wasn't solely an in-house magazine as not only publishing scenarios etc for Traveller it also covered games by other publishers like Star Wars.

Issue 49 of Challenge had a scenario in it called "Dandrians Ring" where the player characters had to rescue a defecting Imperial officer and return him to the Rebel Alliance.  The scenario itself was nothing special but what I liked in particular was the prison base - Alpha-Omega Prison.

Now as I said there was nothing special about the scenario but what I did find with it was that it provided a great setting to demonstrate playing in a Star Wars universe.  The setting is perfect for running one-shots and specifically works really well in demonstrating whatever ruleset you are using for Star Wars.

Last few times I've used this location I've ran the scenario in 2 different ways.

Prison Break IN

The party have been brought together by a common goal which brings them to Alpha-Omega Prison.  This common goal usually involves a NPC that they each either have a grudge against or some other reason to want to find the NPC.
All they need to do is get safe passage to the prison, break in and take on the defences of the base, extract the NPC (and perhaps other prisoners) and then get back off again.

Prison Break OUT

The party are all prisoners in the base and are all have a reason for someone to want them gone who has hired a group of bounty hunters to bring them back, alive in some cases.

The base has its power supply disabled as part of the attack which gives the characters a chance to get out of their cells.

In some variations I've had it that one of the PCs was a spy for the bad guy and in others I've had it that only one of the PCs was the true target but the characters don't know who that is.

In many respects these are very simple scenarios but alongside that simplicity comes lots of options on how the scenario plays out.

Both can also be used as kickoff scenarios for campaigns as there is potential for the characters to become a team and along the way make some joint enemies.  As I begin to pull together my plans for EotE I am looking to use this location in the campaign at some point.

Are there any specific locations (big or small) that you've used over and over again in one-shots or indeed built whole campaigns around?

J is for Jawa

Whilst it's not likely to be kicking off for a few months due to D&D Next playtesting I am starting to plan what I want to do with Star Wars Edge Of The Empire.

As I've said a number of times this game has been a contributing catalyst to this 2nd Chapter and I want to look at how best to develop my ideas for it.  Critically though I want to do that with the players so that the setting is by their design.

Before I do any of that though I need to make the time to read the book more thoroughly as there seems to be a fantastic amount of GM style resources in there particularly around how you establish the "party origin".

To help with things like that I've been searching for additional ways to flesh out the background of the players and indeed the nemeses I plan to use.  This is where the internet really comes to your aid as there's always someone who's blogged about what you're looking for, you just have to know where to look for it.

One of the best blogs out there on EotE is Triumph & Despair not just because it has some great homebrew material but it has a funky EotE Alphabet which they use to generate scenario templates.  Now this is really nothing more than a collection of random encounter tables with additional fluff.  The beauty of it though is that fluff.  Now it might get a bit repetitive over time and to help with that I've come up with a different Alphabet, ok so maybe not come up with it and more a case of discovering.

There's a Flickr album out there with a Star Wars set of Alphabet Cards and I'm sorely tempted to write a companion to the Triumph & Despiar EotE Alphabet using these cards as the trigger.

Just remember that J is for Jawa!

Small moves...

So it started to re-take shape through playing the new Star Wars RPG from FFG.

The main difference I was finding at this point what that I was looking forward to the games and I don't just mean the Star Wars RPG.

The Star Wars LCG game had been sitting on my shelf for several months and I'd got a couple of the Force Packs by this time and yet had never played it.

So enlisting my trusty fellow gamer Erik we set about playing this.  I really enjoyed it despite Erik beating me both times we played.  It certainly takes a little getting used to as the only real card game of that ilk (2-Player competitive) I've played is Magic.

The deck construction rules are a little strange at first but given we were only using the cards from the core set it didn't really come up.  Your deck consists of 10 objective sets or 8 if you're using the core set only. These are blocks of 6 cards with 1 of them being the objective and the other 5 being cards you use to attack your opponent (command deck).

My only grumble is the name "objective" as I don't actually see them as objectives.  They're resources and buffs and all sorts of other things but not objectives. An objective is something you try to succeed at achieving.  The objective of the game is fairly simple and while these sets are used to help you to achieve the overall objective they are not objectives themselves.
If you're the Dark Side you win by having the Death Star dial reach 12 or by the Light Side player running out of cards.
If you're the Light Side you win by destroying 3 Dark Side objectives or by the Dark Side player running out of cards.

So a better name?  I dunno, I'm not a game designer ;-)  In saying that though given that the other deck is called Command Deck could the objectives not be the Conflict or Control Deck?  Nah doesn't sound right either, plus as I say it's a grumble nothing more and certainly doesn't detract from the game.

If you want to learn more about the game then FFG have good video intro on their website - http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=175&esem=4

Are we there yet?

In the run up to Christmas 2012 Fantasy Flight Games released their Star Wars: Edge Of The Empire Beginner Game RPG.

At the same time Star Wars The Card Game LCG came out.  Having looked at the LCG offerings from FFG previously during the 1st Chapter I had never really been that interested in them.  Largely because none of the themes really grabbed me.  Star Wars however is completely different and so I picked that up too.

Back to the RPG though.  The Beginner Game is everything you need to play the new RPG.  Note I say play as you can't create characters with it however FFG supplied 4 pre-generated characters in the Beginner Game and also supplied 2 other pre-generated characters in PDF format on their website.

I've owned every version of Star Wars in RPG format from the original West End Games editions through all of the editions produced by Wizards Of The Coast and I've enjoyed all of them for different reasons.  The primary reason though is that I find the Star Wars universe is easy to come up with story ideas.

The FFG version of the game is very different at first glance, not least of all the dice.  Once you get your head around them though it's really not that different after all especially if you're used to using dice pool mechanics.

I managed to get a group together at my Friday night gaming and we were off.  This was it.  This was what I needed.  Relaxed gaming with a mix of people I knew well and some I really didn't know that well at all, as a group though it worked.

6 months of gaming later and the full edition of the RPG is now out.  The players want to play it more and I'm keen to run it more so we're going to go through the character creation process in a couple of weeks time.  Some of the players want to migrate their Beginner Game character over but others want to start from scratch.  To maintain balance across the party I'm going to give them the XP earned as additional points to create their characters.  If nothing else it'll give them a connection to the storyline already played through.

So am I back to enjoying my gaming and is the 2nd Chapter up and running?  Almost.  Almost...

Try something new

So, after trying something a little different and then trying to go with what I knew I could easily have opted for giving up or taking an extended break.

But that's really not what you do with a hobby that has been an integral part of your life now is it?

What I needed was a catalyst to really kick start my hobby.

It started with board games, namely Sentinels Of The Multiverse, Star Wars : X-Wing and some Magic: The Gathering.

I bought a deck builders toolkit for M13 and met up with my good friend Erik to play some friendly Magic.  Largely using a random assortment of cards from the M13 DBT and other cards I had left over from the 1st Chapter.

From there I started to try other things and stumbled upon Sentinels Of The Multiverse - http://sentinelsofthemultiverse.com/
The Enhanced Edition had just been released and I picked it up after reading some reviews.  This game was the spark I needed and I've since played it about 10 times with a variety of people.

I quickly followed it with Star Wars : X-Wing which gave me a Star Wars gaming "fix".  Now I've only played this 2 or 3 times but it was enough.  Whether I play it again it doesn't matter as it served its purpose.

So we're getting there but I wouldn't quite say we're up and running with the 2nd Chapter.  Not just yet.