In GOD we trust

We’ll be running a Games On Demand offer through this year’s Conpulsion as well, offering all those strange weirdo hippie games that laugh in the face of what we think RPGs should be.

Last year was a blast – one of the best cons I’ve been to, and I played in every day slot. I’m going to offer different games this year, and not Burning Empires because I’ve played that demo scenario four times now. But Mouse Guard of course. Could easily see myself playing nothing but MG all weekend.

I also dug Greg Stolze’s Executive Decision up – haven’t had a chance to play it yet.

Games on offer so far this year are: Poison’d, Classroom Deathmatch, Storming The Wizard’s Tower, Sign In Stranger, Mouse Guard, Serial Homicide Unit, Dirty Secrets, Executive Decision, Primetime Adventures, InSpectres, Hot War, Dead of Night, Contenders, Piledrivers & Powerbombs, Labyrinths & Lycanthropes, and perhaps 3:16 and Baron Munchausen. What a buffet!

If you read this and is going to Conpulsion, and is willing to run games under GOD, let me know asap.

Coming up: Serial Homicide Unit

I have been waiting for this game since I heard an interview with the creators a good while ago. Back then the game was only called Serial, and wasn’t entirely finished. Last week it was released in electronic format only, which totally makes sense because the game text, the instructions how to play, are audio files. Serial Homicide Unit is an even less prep no-prep game than usual, because you don’t even have to read the rules before you play – you can literally sit down and play along following the instructions in the audio clips. And that’s one hell of a selling point. You still need to buy the rules, of course.

For a mere $15 you get 14 audio files in mp3-format, 5 PDF files with rules references and help sheets, and a readme file.

SHU is a game about catching a serial killer – no one knows who the killer is beforehand, everything is disclosed via player-created clues from the crime scenes of the killer’s victims. And there is no guarantee the killer will be caught, that’s up to the police work of the SHU. Kat Miller, who wrote the game, is a big fan of CSI – I’m absolutely not, but I’m still very interested in playing this game, and it’s from CSI the inspiration for the details, the clues and the slow build-up of a case against the perpetrator.

Compared to Annalise, which I wrote about yesterday, there are quite a few similarities but SHU is much much simpler. SHU is broadly split into two sections: one section is where the players portray civilians that only have one thing in common: a profile. All these civilians will randomly fall prey to the killer as the game progresses. Every time a round of civilian scenes have been played out, one of their names will be drawn and will be the killer’s latest victim, and this cycle of murder will continue until the killer has been caught or all the civilians are dead. Nasty. I like it.

The game’s other section is the solving of the murders. In this section the players portray elite criminal investigators. There’s only one kind of scene in this section, which is a meeting between the investigators and in which players make up clues from the latest crime scene. So, a player  could simply state, “There’s a smear of blood mixed with Heinz Baked Beans along the corridor all the way to the victim’s feet.” Or simply, “The victime has been shot three times at close range with a small caliber.” Or whatever you fancy. Your inspiration is every cop show or movie or comic or book you have ever come across. All the clues are listed together into chains of evidence that may or may not in the end catch the killer. The more clues in a chain of evidence, the more likely it is to succeed against a suspect when your police force decides to indict someone.

This sounds(!) like it could be a very compelling, emotional and tense game experience, and I can’t wait to try this either. The structure of SHU makes it very easy to adapt to a play-by-post format if anyone out there is interested.

New games. First up: Annalise.

While waiting for the print version of Mouse Guard, and doing some more development on my police adaptation of it, I bought a couple of new games over the holiday period. The first one was Annalise and then I bought Serial Homicide Unit. Let’s take Annalise first.

Now, it’s no secret that I left a certain flavour of roleplaying behind around 2002. The kind of game where the plot and in-game events are predetermined and where one of the players has the role of being “GM” who in the end decides both in-game events and conflict outcomes and has the final say rules-wise, where the GM is a stand-in for “the System”. In short I consider this a deadly, dysfunctional combo able to kill off any joy and pleasure regarding roleplaying. I might add that I used to think this was the only possible way to roleplay, and I played like that for probably 15 years. What has this to do with these two new games? Quite a lot, because both Annalise and Serial operate without any predetermnation of plot, events, characters, and yet they are both game genres where the player group is solving a mystery.

Annalise is written by Nathan D. Paoletta, who also wrote a game called Timestream and the much talked about Carry – A Game About War. Personally I missed completely when Annalise was released, for two specific reasons: it’s written as a vampire-themed game, and I don’t like vampire-themed games. Plus, I think the title of the game is 100% awful, almost enough for me not to want to buy, read or play it. Maybe Annalise sounds slightly more intriguing of you are American, but to me it’s just a bit daft. I’m also not sure why the game is called Annalise at all, I’ll have to assume that it’s the name of a character that propped up during playtest ot whatever. If that’s the case, I wouldn’t recommend naming your game like that. I want the name to give me a clue about the game. Like Carry – A Game About War or Timestream.

But then I came across this rather cool AP report on The Forge. The PDF is only $12, so what the heck.

I’m still digesting the game text, and after one read I don’t feel confident enough to try and get a game going. But basically it’s a game without a GM in a traditional sense. You can play two to four players, and your player characters are protagonists in what Nathan calls “a Vampire story”. Meaning that soemwhere out there, in the life of the protagonists, there’s a vampire who preys on their vulnerabilities. I’m pretty sure that you can use this vampire metaphor for many other things, and that’s what I’m interested in. The players create characters from scratch and narrate setting and othe elements into the fiction, some of which can be “Claimed” by the players and used later. Each scene focuses on one of the player characters while another player is the “scene guide”, managing GM duties for that scene, as in describing surroundings, other characters etc. Who or what the vampire is is not determind from the beginning, but this shady character will slowly emerge as play progresses and the fiction is created.

Annalise runs on a fairly intricate system where the players can influence the fiction and define “Moments” in the game. Right now I haven’t got a clue how it actually works, it’s not that obvious by simply reading the game text, but at the moment I’m curious and interested.

The Pawlice – The Wire done Mouse Guard

I just finished reading Mouse Guard and watching the second season of The Wire. I guess you know where this is going, right? I couldn’t fall asleep last night and lay awake for three hours thinking about how perfect the Mouse Guard mechanics would be for a The Wire style game. This is what I’ve got so far, and if you haven’t read Mouse Guard or Burning Empires you may well be struggling already at what the heck I’m babbllng about.

One of the main things about The Wire is that a case investigation lasts a whole season, where the detectives gather evidence bit by bit over a long period of time. The Burning (whatever) system of eating away at a disposition suits this incredibly well, so I guess Burning Empires would be just as good a fit for this, but MG is more refined, more honed, simply: better. What I would like to nick from BE is the phase disposition – in this game that will tell us how well the case has been solved,  but more on that later

So, the big kahuna, the case, the investigation that overarches the whole thing and lasts for many sessions is the seasons. Every time the GM uses a twist based on the case, you move one space forward in the big picture, and when you reach the end the case is closed, whether it’s solved or not. Sometimes the bad guys get away, and that’s fine. In this the police version you have to start from the beginning, of course, whereas in MG you can start in any season. The player group may determine from the outset how many sessions the want the case to last.

That leaves the winter season. I’m not sure whether I need to bring that over, but just have Beginning, Middle and End as the “seasons” in the police game. The middle would then be extra long and hard, like so for example:

Beginning (3) – two sessions
Middle (5) – four sessions
End – (4) – two sessions

Every game session will be a GM-set mission turn and a player turn, just like normal MG, which is also perfect for this. And after each full session each side gets to try and eat away at the “case disposition” – the players for the police side and the GM for the criminals’ side.

Mission problems: case, location, authorities, people.

Tears in Rain

Tears In Rain (PDF)

My old blog has been shut down, and the files there are no longer available. This is the current version of my Blade Runner hack for Trollbabe.

[Sorcerer 1880] W.C. Temple

Peter, Søren and I are playing Sorcerer via Skype again, this time in a London anno 1880 setting primarily dreamt up by Peter, who also agreed to GM this time. This looks very promising indeed, and this is my player character.

The Most Reverend William Charles Temple, bishop at Westminster Abbey.
STA 3 Reliance on medicines
WILL 3 Upper class
LORE 4 Solitary Adept
COVER 3 Anglican Bishop
HUM 3
Price: Pompous (-1 to social rolls among commoners)
Telltale: Neck cloth coloured in blood.

Back of character sheet:
Dean Starkey and Lady Starkey (COVER), Ivy McNeil (sister) and Fergus McNeil (financier), Herbert M Temple MP (brother), Archibald Dickens, London House, (PRICE), Stone Tablet from British Museum, Hazel Miller (LORE), Mr X, Letter from Mr X (Kicker).

Kicker
William, dressed in civil clothes, is on his way home from a late visit at Ms Miller’s. Temple’s knees are shaking because they have had carnal pleasure for the first time, and Hazel – Ms Miller – showed him how not to make her with child. A well-dressed gentleman approaches him and hands him a sealed letter with the words: “I believe this is for you, Sir,” whereafter said gentleman disappears in the London night. The seal bears a mark unlike anything William has ever seen.
As soon as William is safely home in his London home, and has changed into his night gown, he carefully opens the letter without damaging the wax seal. It is written in blue ink on very thick paper.
“Sir,
And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.
And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.

A package containing a description of Your recent – We are at a loss as to how to classify them, even describe them – shall We say ‘activities’, has been deposited with the London Times newspaper, only to be opened on two occasions, namely in case of anything unfortunate happening to the bearer of this letter or by direct instructions from Us.

Fortunately, We have arranged for a comfortable modus vivendi to avoid said contents ever to see the frontpage of the London Times. You will commence by donating your entire salary to Us.

As a lamb, you have been separated from the fold, blamed the shepherd from not keeping you safe and now among wolves, hiding, afraid, praying never to have left.

Most sincerely,”

Demon: Signet Ring (no name). Object.
Thick gold ring with pre-Christian symbol.
LORE 3
STA 3
WILL 4
POW 4
Abilities: Hint, Cloak, Special Dmg (acid holy water) – William the user in all three.
Telltale: Symbol on ring disappears.
Desire: Knowledge Need: Touch female skin.

[Sorcerer Blood Simple] Abattoir Blues 2

Whoa, we met tonight for the second session of our Sorcerer game, and man did a lot happen. I should say that we played in a pub in Edinburgh, and that’s a first for me. It worked surprisingly well – we had a nice booth all the way back at the pub, the music wasn’t loud, and there were generally very few other people in that part of the pub anyway.

The first “real” session of play is a tough task for the GM. (I consider prep and character generation as part of play as well, I talking about when we actually start playing out the Kickers) Everything is ready to go and this session is really about getting the whole thing rolling. I think we managed to do that splendidly for Pooka’s and Malcolm’s characters, but it was harder going with Myles’s screenwriter, whose main motivation, according to Myles himself when Malc asked him directly, was self preservation. I might not have pushed hard enough on this one, and maybe I didn’t realise how easily Myles could slide off on his Kicker. That said, Myles was trying to play a more quiet and toned down Kicker compared to the other ones. It was a deliberate choice to have a calmer story line, but I don’t think we managed quite to kick it into motion.

I had 14 prepared Bangs and I used five of them in play. It’s obvious to me that storylines where the player is actively pursuing stuff, Bangs evolve by themselves. All in all we kept dice rolling to only significant situations, and we had a short but hectic conflict with four participants as the final scene for the evening.

So many things happended, I might already have forgotten some of them, so help me out guys if I missed important stuff. Let’s begin with Myles’s character Brent Brown, blacklisted screenwriter. His Kicker was coming home and finding an untitled anonymous screenplay on his desk, with a note asking him to put his name on it. The script is a pretty accurate a badly disguised re-telling of the period at Paramount Pictures while Brent worked there, including when he hired somebody to kill the starlite Deborah. Brent gets to work and rewrites most of the script, changes direct references, gives it an upbeat ending and sends it off to another production company and burns the original copy. Brent later got Johnny “The Eyes” to find out who sent the script and only managed to find out it was sent from someone at Paramount. Brent was also visited by to FBI agents investigating Deborah’s “disappearance”, one of which were agent Woodrow, who I got from Malcolm’s character sheet. Mr Johnson, head of Paramount, visited Brent in person and asked for the screenplay or at least find out who sent it.
I don’t think much more happened to Brent to be honest. The Bangs I used where
* FBI agents (from Chicago field office, maybe one of them is Clayton Woodrow) show Brant a photo of Deborah, the girl he had killed.
*Mr Johnson IN PERSON visits, clearly shaken, asking for the screenplay.

Walter Root, Malcolm’s character, started his day with finding six male, naked and gutted bodies hanging from meat hooks in the Schelling Bros Abattoir. And then Joshua Schelling, the boss himself, arrived. This was actually proposed by Malcolm, which was a very nice touch, and we had a great great scene where these two characters struggled with each other and themselves what to do, changing their minds again and again. In the middle of it all a photographer from Chicago Tribune arrives at takes a flash photo of the scene and was allowed to leave the scene in his car. Walter sort of convinces Schelling to get rid of the bodies while he himself takes of to meat with his scumbag, the mysterious Conductor, to arrange for the Chicago Tribune photographer to “disappear”. Malcolm failed his Humanity roll for that. Returning to the abattoir he learns that Schelling has instead drunk enough bourbon to pass out on his desk. The bodies are still hanging from the hooks and the first workings are arriving shortly. Here Walter decides to shred the six bodies in the big meat grinder and Malcolm earn another Humanity roll, which he makes this time. (We later learn that Schelling actually tried contacting a dirty cop – Luntz – apparebtly to take care of it all. This was a magnificent complication.)
Walter ends his fantastic day getting beat up by two Italian mobsters after a union meeting at a bar. This was the final conflict scene where Pooka’s cop was also involved because he was after the two mobsters. I used the following Bangs for Walter:
* Wayne, photographer from Chicago Tribune has been tipped off to come to the abattoir.
* Workers union rep asks for access to abattoir outside opening hours.

Phew. Leon Luntz, played by Pooka, arrives at work and finds his partner killed, executed, in front of the police station. Luntz promptly leaves the scene and goes on a desperate hunt for information among his contacts and informants. It turns out that it’s been a while since he has done any real police work. Pooka made up some great NPCs on the fly, whom Luntz threatened and intmidated without much result. Luntz also has a brief encounter in a men’s room with James Sawyer, Internal Affairs, who offers him to spill the beans on his partner Bill to go free himself. Luntz’s answer is to slam Sawyer against the wall. Thereafter he calls his Scumbag Carl “Cutter” and asks him to “take care” of agent Sawyer, which I interpreted as “kill” and which earned Pooka a Humanity check – which he failed. All three player characters are now down to 3 Humanity.
Luntz eventually gets the message that Schelling was looking for him, too late of course. Last scene outside the bar where the union meeting is held, Luntz is shadowing the Italians (working for the “Torino Boys”) and leaps into action when the two gorillas start beating Walter Root up. I think we had a five round conflict where I had a chance to present the different aspect of that system to the players. Luntz takes a flesh wound himself when shot by one of the mobsters, but shoots one of them and manages to incapacitate the other. In the aftermath Walter manages to crawl away with one of the mobsters’ guns. The one that was fired at Luntz. The only bang I used for Luntz was:
* Offered by agent Sawyer to rat on Bill, and his own case will ‘disappear’.

I think I’ve recapped the bulk of the action. It was a pretty good session, the only thing I was dissatisfied with was not being able to kick Myles’s character into more problems and forcing harder decisions.

Sorcerer Blood Simple: Abattoir Blues

I wake with the sparrows and I hurry off to work
The need for validation, babe, gone completely berserk
I wanted to be your Superman but I turned out such a jerk
I got the abattoir blues
I got the abattoir blues
I got the abattoir blues
Right down to my shoes
(Abattoir Blues, Nick Cave 2004)

We had our character generation session tonight, and I’m very hopeful. Not that I didn’t know, but I’ve got a killer group of players on my hand. In less than three hours we decided on setting and they came up with fantastic characters and ideas. I’m really looking forward to this. Malcolm owns the three first Sorcerer books, never played it but eager to try it out. Myles owns the book and played it once, unsuccessfully, in the past, and Pooka expressed a while ago that he wanted to give it a go as well.
We are playing Blood Simple, Judd Karlman’s adaption of Sorcerer. Malcolm suggested the 1950s, and someone, perhaps Pooka, said Chicago. And that was it. Here come the player characters.

Walther Root (created by Malcolm)
STA 2 (Whip-thin), WILL 4 (Too dumb to lie down), LORE 4, COVER 4 (Political radical), Price -1 (Reputation preceeds me), HUM 4. Telltale: parasitic twin.
Walther denied military service and is now working shitty jobs, unable to get anything decent. He’s currently working the worst shift at Shelling Bros Abattoir.
Walther’s Scumbag is The Conductor, a uniformed guy who takes people over to the wrong side of the tracks.
STA 5 WILL 6 LORE 4 POW 6. Desire: Everything running on time. Need: Names of those who disrupt the El. Abilities: Confuse, Shadow, Spec Dmg (like being hit by train), Travel. Telltale: Smell of ozone.
Kicker: Walther opens up abattoir at 4pm and finds eight naked, disembowelled corpses hanging from the overhead conveyor.

Brent Brown (created by Myles)
STA 3 (Muscle under the fat), WILL 3 (Big shot Ivy Leaguer), LORE 4 (Defrocked scholar), COVER 3 (Blacklisted screenwriter), Price -1 (Club foot), HUM 3. Telltale: Seven left toes.
Brent had a career in movies in LA, but is now struggling to to get any writing work due to allegations of subversiveness and communism. He hired a scumbag to get a girl killed.
Brent’s Scumbag is Johnny ‘the eyes’, a killer. STA 3, WILL 4 LORE 2, POW 4. Desire: Anger, Need: blood. Abilities: Warp(?), Cloak. Telltale: piercing eyes.
Kicker: Brent arrives at his apartment and finds a huge screenplay on the table, with only the name and title blank, and a note asking him to sign it as his own and he will be back in business.
Myles only wrote two things on the back of his character sheet, so I have to ask for some more during the coming week. Plus, Myles’s handwriting is as bad as my own, and a degree in cryptography would have been handy to make it easier to read his scribblings

Detective Leon Luntz (created by Pooka)
STA 3 (Rough drinker, rough life), WILL 4 (Mad dog), LORE 3 (Tarnished badge), COVER 4 (Police Detective), Price -1 (low class). HUM 4. Telltale: Dead glare.
Leon is a smalltime corrupt cop, taking some extra income by protecting the girls in Madame Linda’s Cat House. He is also under investigation by the IA.
Leon’s Scumbag is Carl “Cutter” Brantano. STA 4, WILL 5, LORE 4, POW 5. Desire: Power. Need: Immunity from prosecution. Abilities: Hint, Armor, Big, Cloak. Telltale: Heavily scarred.
Kicker: Leon’s partner Det. Bill Torrence is tied up and shot execution-style in front of the police department.
I have a loose R-Map ready based on Chandler’s short story Goldfish, which I am now going to have a look at and see how these characters may or may not be hooked on to it. There’s certainly a lot of potential here, and forward motion from the get go. Neither of the players included any detailed family connections or close relatives…interesting.
After the players left last night, and I sat down to contemplate, and search for some pictures of 1950s Chicago, I remembered the album Abattoir Blues by Nick Cave, and the title seemed a natural fit.

Catching up on my footdangling

I’m very excited. I’m playing Sorcerer next week. The group has agreed, or at least not protested against, playing something Ellroy-ish. You can’t mention Ellroy without saying crime fiction, and also his worthy predecessors Chandler, Cain and Hammett. More on Chandler later, but I can reveal this post’s title comes from him

I mentioned Judd Karlman’s SF Sorcerer in the last post, and I have had another of Judd’s ideas lying on my hard drive for a couple of years, his non-supernatural crime setting for Sorcerer, which I actually suggested to the group a couple of weeks ago.

The setting is called Blood Simple, which apparently derives from Hammett, but I know it from Coen’s hommage to the genre, their first film of the same name.

The big difference between Chandler and (late) Ellroy is the historical landscape and the politics. I like both, and whatever the players prefer I think we can accommodate. In Chandler the crook may be a low-life criminal or a wealthy retired businessman. In Ellroy he’s the DA, the FBI Director or the world’s richest man. So, lets see where the players, and player characters take it.

I am using one of Chandler’s short stories as inspiration for a relationship map, a technique Sorcerer’s author introduced in the book The Sorcerer’s Soul. The map establishes a web of characters and a backstory up until actual play begins. The story was pubishes in 1936 and is called “Goldfish”.

Sorcerer scifi

There has been some talk about a “Sorcerer in Space” supplement in the past, but nothing has come of it. Then, suddenly, the last two weeks, no less than two different scifi applications of Sorcerer came along.

Christopher Kubasik found after fiddling with different approaches, that Sorcerer & Sword, the pulp fantasy version of the game, fitted incredibly well to realise his dream of making the good old Traveller game playable the way he wanted. Even if you are not interested in Traveller, or Sorcerer for that matter, there’s loads of good stuff in here on how to make a game do what you want it to do:  Traveller using rules from Sorcerer & Sword.

On another channel, Judd from the Sons of Kryos podcast presented his Solar System’s Demons: Sorcerer Science Fiction, a scifi inspired by Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels, Altered Carbon, Broken Angels and Woken Furies, of which I have only read Altered Carbon. Again, wonderful stuff about the wheelings and dealings of the incredible Sorcerer system.

I’m always ready to give Sorcerer another go, and inspired by these two applications of the system, I have ceased the day and asked my current gaming group to play Sorcerer, probably in some Ellroy-related hellish setting.