At BigBadCon, we get to signup for all the games we're interested and there isn't a shuffler. The great news is that I know my gaming schedule before I even show up. Compared to KublaCon where you have to hang out and try to crash into every game, this was a great relief. It was nice knowing when I had to wake up the next day vs getting up early to try to get into a game and then finding there aren't any open games and that you could have gotten a few more hours of sleep. The bad news was that some people didn't show up for their scheduled game and we had empty seats. I hear that they're working on an electronic waiting list for next year.
Also, the gaming rooms were shared by 4 games. Cloth partitions worked pretty well to cut down the noise. I did notice that the rooms with partitions that went all the way to the ceiling were quieter vs the ones that were 2 feet short of the ceiling. Also ventilation was fine for the first game of the day, but the later sessions were over warm and stuffy. For the games near the door, the temperature and air quality were better. When I was playing in an evening game in the back corner, it got very uncomfortable. This room had the sound barrier that didn't reach the ceiling which allowed better air circulation, but that didn't help. Also it didn't help that some people had closed one of the doors to cut down the noise. Luckily, one of the other games ended and we moved to a table near the door. Hopefully, a solution for the ventilation could be solved next time. In one room, I think I saw a back "Exit" door. I wonder if we can open that?
I had a good time. Games I had to try to get into at KublaCon and CelestiCon (and sometimes failed) had open slots. And you don't have to deal with the Shuffler Gods. Definitely a good thing.
Minimum spoilers below about the games I was in, mostly my impressions and analysis of various systems.
Fri 4pm-10pm. Travis Smalley's The Isle of Dark Silk (Legend of Five Rings).
A small delegation from the other Great Clans is being sent to Mantis lands in order to bring news of the fall of a hero in a distant battle. However, they are blown off-course and marooned on a small, sparsely-populated island.
Legend of Five Rings was written by John Wick (also known for 7th Sea and Houses of the Blooded) and won best RPG in 1998 at Origins. I've never played Legend of Five Rings and I've heard that Travis is a very good GM, so I signed up.
Legend of Five Rings is a d10 system, much like Godlike and Exhalted.
- In Godlike, one roll of a handful of dice determines the initiative, success, location and damage of an action -- based on matches. e.g. if you roll 10 dice and get 10, 8, 7, 7, 7, 5, 3, 3, 2, 1, you will generally use the three 7s and compare it to other people's rolls. The number (7) is the height and the number of matches (3) is the width. The person with the widest roll goes first, with ties broken by the height. In combat, the width determines damage. There is a maximum of 10 dice rolled.
- In Exhalted, you roll of a handful of dice and count number of dice that roll 7 or above and count 10s twice. e.g. for the above example the total would be 6. In combat, the number of successes equals the attack damage. There is no limit to the number of dice you can roll. You sometimes wind up rolling 20 to 40 dice.
- In Legend of Five Rings, you roll a handful of dice and pick several dice to sum up. e.g. in the above example, if the die roll was 10k3 (roll ten dice and keep three), you would keep the 10, 8, 7 and have a total of 25. Under most circumstances, the 10s exploded. e.g. you roll an additional d10 and add it to 10 for that single die and continue until you don't roll a 10. A target number determines if an attack is successful or not. You can volunteer to increase your difficulty level to potentially increase your damage. There is a maximum of 10 dice rolled; you discard any extra dice, but for every 2 dice you had to discard, you get to add an extra die when you roll damage. e.g. you were supposed to roll 13k3, but you're only allowed to roll 10k3, but you now get an extra d10 when you roll damage. For damage, you roll another set of dice much like D&D where you roll to hit and then roll for damage, but most weapons only let you keep one or two dice. If you had increased your difficulty level, you are then allowed to roll extra dice, but not keep more dice, so that increases your chance of doing more damage, but doesn't guarantee you do more damage. e.g. your weapon does 2k2, but you threw away 3 dice and also increased your difficulty by 2 ranks, so you roll 2k2 + 1k0 + 2k0 = 5k2. Damage is equal to the total of the two highest numbers.
In Legend of Five Rings, there are various clans that are split on blood lines and philosophies (similar to the Houses of the Blooded). Some clans specialize in combat, some in magic, diplomacy, etc. The world is a mishmash of Feudal Japan and other Asian cultures. There is an honor, glory, and taint statistic. Honor is internal (similar to Bushido RPG, 1979). Glory is external (similar to fame points in other RPGs). Taint is whether you're infected by spiritual pollution (similar to Chaos in Warhammer and sanity points in Call of Cthulhu).
There are things from Asian Hell that break out from the underworld to flood the world above with evil creatures. Jade draws out this underworld taint much like a sponge and also can affect evil creatures (similar to holy symbols vs evil creatures).
I found the clan specialization structure artificial and odd. One clan specializes in diplomacy. But don't all clans have to have diplomats? Another clan specializes in magic. Don't all clans require magic? So, yes, each clan has its own diplomats and magicians and warriors. So, why this artificial delineation?
One of my favorite game books for Feudal Japan is Sengoku. The system is horrible, but a very good historical and gaming source book. I purchased the hardback and the PDF and found out that they shrunk the PDF when they printed the hardback (to a regular hardback book size vs the standard oversized RPG hardback), some maps and side bars are almost impossible to read. The font is something like 4 point. Go with the PDF or paperback. There's also various typos sprinkled throughout the text.
This was the first game of the day and I actually arrived 10 minutes late. I had dropped by my parents home in El Cerrito from the South Bay and timed the drive as I passed the Oakland Airport exit. The drive was only 21 minutes. I had allowed 1 hour to get to BigBadCon from my parents home. The traffic was horrible. The good news was that I still arrived in time to get into the game, the bad news was that I wasn't the last player to arrive. Also there were two no shows, so we started with two characters short.
Though I was very familiar with Feudal Japan; I had run a Sengoku period game for over two years, there was enough of a world difference that we had to ask for clarification about some major things such as the importance of Jade and its effect on Taint. These things are "well-known" in the world, but for new players we had to have things explained to us.
I can see that an action adventure Legend of Five Rings scenario would work best for a convention game, but an intrigue based one might be harder due to all the background required to understand the clan differences that would be taken for granted.
Travis's game was an investigative action adventure. The plot was interesting and the horror elements well done. The "worms" worked really well and added to our paranoia. The only issue I had was that since we were outsiders and the world is such a closed society based on status and station, the NPCs were very closed mouthed and that reduced the amount of role-playing available. I went to a village bar and no one wanted to talk, so the only way to investigate was to get physical facts (rolling dice and noticing things) vs talking to people (role-playing).
I liked the "roll and keep" system, but it also shows its age. It is a refinement of D&D. One dice (vs die) roll for attack, one dice (vs die) roll for damage. You total up points for damage, but since you roll multiple dice for damage, hit points are in a larger range such as 50. As you take more damage, you take penalties for actions.
In D&D there are multiple types of pole-arms and each have their own statistics and various dice for damage. People laughed at Gygax's table of pole-arms. Nobody really cared about Gygax's pole-arm porn. As gaming systems are evolving, streamlining seems to be the keyword. Legend of Five Rings only uses d10s, so the only variation you can have is multiple d10s or adding or subtracting a few points such as 2k2 - 2. So, there's no reason to have several dozen different pole-arms, the differences between each one is slight.
The "roll and keep" system also has one small issue, you have to add multiple dice and some people are slow in adding or are prone to making mistakes. This slows down the game, especially during combat -- when you want the game to be fast and furious. I also experienced this with my Ghost in the Shell game. We were lucky that this game was scheduled early in the Con. I think if this game was on Sunday, it wouldn't have flowed as well.
Sat 10am-2pm. Ben Hartzell's The Lost Capricorn (Hollow Earth Expedition).
You're on Dr. Nowak's experimental submarine "Capricorn." He claims it can make it to the North Pole and back, but it has never been attempted before. There are a thousand things that can go wrong, but isn't the risk why you signed on?
Hollow Earth Expedition was nominated for Best RPG in 2007 at Origins.I've never played Hollow Earth Expedition and Ben is in one of my regular gaming groups, I signed up for his game without hesitation.
Hollow Earth Expedition is set in pulp 1930s with dinosaurs, lost cities, Nazis, and extinct cultures, all inhabiting a "Lost World" hidden within the core of the earth.
The system can use either d6s (actually d2s) or special Ubiquity dice. When you roll a d6, 1-3 = failure, 4-6 = success. So you add the number of successes. If your number of successes reaches a specific difficulty number, you succeed. The Ubiquity dice come in 3 colors (white, red, blue). The white dice are numbered 0-1 and are equivalent to 1d6. The red dice are numbered between 0-2 and equivalent to 2d6. The blue dice are numbered between 0-3 and are equivalent to 3d6. The Ubiquity dice reduces the number of dice you have to roll.
You also get style chips where you can spend them to increase the number of dice you get to roll, reduce damage, or add automatic successes.
Combat is determined by rolling a handful of dice and totaling the number of successes. Armor and defense subtract from this number and any remaining successes become damage. Weapon damage range from 1d to 2d with maybe a plus or minus. Keep in mind that a +1 is the same (probability-wise) as +2d . So, a plus or minus is very powerful in this system. e.g. 1d+1 = 3d.
Hollow Earth Expedition is 10 years more recent than Legend of Five Rings. If the evolution of RPGs is simplification, then we have it here. If the difference between weapons is rolling a few more dice, the difference between knives whether it is a bush, bowie, machete, katana, or saber is minimal; they all do 1d (or whatever the damage is -- I don't quite remember the exact number from the game), so there's no need for extensive tables for various, but similar weapons.
We started the game short one player, but I don't think it mattered.
Ben provided us with pre-generated characters. We only had to pick a character portrait from a customized stack for each character. The stack contained both genders and sometimes different races. We had a variety to choose from. We also had to make up a name for our character.
My character was a native that hated "City Folk." The rest of the expedition were mostly White, so I decided to tell them a fake name that translated to "White Men Suck" and proceeded to teach them how to say it multiple times and loudly. The expedition members mainly called to me when they needed help or were in trouble, and I wouldn't answer them unless they called out my name several times, so that worked out pretty well. :-)
We had a fun game and had a great time meeting lost civilizations and giant creatures.
The one flaw in the system appeared at the very end of the game. We were escaping from a very perilous situation whose success all depended on one die roll. The whole party put in all our style chips and we got to roll 19d. We only had to roll a total of 7 to succeed. We rolled 3. We should have died, but Ben was nice and only stranded us on an island full of Nazis. Instead of rolling the 19d, we rolled a combination of red, white, and blue dice which statistically should be the same was flipping 19 coins. Someone did mention on a blog somewhere that one issue with the Ubiquity dice is that the whiff factor is higher, but statistics tells me different and it should have been equivalent. The chance of getting 3 or less with 19d is about 1 in 475. Or if we rolled 1d1000 and rolled a 2 or less.
Sat 6pm-3:30am. Matt Steele's Safehouse (Call of Cthulhu).
A joint operation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the US Bureau of Investigation ventures into the Monashee Mountains west of Trail, British Columbia. Their goal? Bring in American mass-murderer Silas Corbin.
Shannon told me that Safehouse was one of the creepiest games he's ever played and that I should sign up for it. Matt has always delivered a great game, so I had no hesitation in signing up and looked forward to this game.Call of Cthulhu won best RPG in 1982 at Origins.
Call of Cthulhu (CoC) mainly uses 1d100 to determine success. In combat, it follows the D&D model of roll to hit and roll for damage, except it uses 1d100 for the "to hit" die roll. Damage requires a variety of dice. CoC is now 30 years old. The main complaint is that CoC has a giant whiff factor. Most characters who are considered competent in a skill will have a statistic of 25%. Under normal, non-strained conditions, they will succeed in their skill automatically, but under pressure, their success percent is only 25%.
My character was a veteran Texas Ranger (now in the Bureau of Investigation) and his success with a Rifle was 35% and his Bowie knife was at 25%. He had seen multiple engagements and was well respected.
Matt did a great job in keeping the tension up. The high point for me was the "tortured soul" and the big shoot out at the end.
We had almost accomplished our task when our Tracker decided the person under arrest "had to die." He fired twice and missed. My character already on edge and a few points short of going insane, opened fired and hit the suspect. The Mountie shouted to us, to stop. The Tracker opened fire again and missed the suspect but hit my partner (an underling in the Bureau). My partner opened fire with his shotgun at the suspect, but missed and hit the Mountie. I open fire again and hit the suspect. Behind us, the Big Boss monster shows up and sends several of us over the edge to insanity. My character loses the use of both his legs and has a delusion that he's at the Alamo and is fighting off Mexicans. He shoots the suspect again and kills him. The Tracker, now insane, thinks I just killed his best friend and advances towards me with his bowie knife. I shoot him, but he's still standing. My partner hits him over the head with a sap, but he doesn't go down. He tries to slash at me with his knife but misses and buries it in the tree I'm slumped against. He tries to grapple the rifle away from me and doesn't succeed. But we're too close for me to use my rifle, so I let go and whip out my Bowie knife and slash the Tracker. He falls over unconscious. The Mountie runs over to me to stop me, but I try to slash at him too, shouting about Mexicans. My partner, now realizes that I went over the bend tries to sap me, but misses. The Mountie then impales me in the heart with his saber and I die. They try to administer first aid on the fallen Tracker, but they're too late, he has bled to death.
I was the first character to die, and I killed one bad guy and one character. There should be an award for being the first to die and killing another character beforehand. :-)
This was like a movie, where all hell breaks loose and people wind up shooting each other and when the smoke clears, you wonder what the heck happened. Weren't we all friends?
I think this creaky 30 year old system works for CoC because of the whiff factor. I got lucky and rolled really well and got several impales during combat. The Mountie also got a very lucky impale. The accidental mis-fires of characters shooting each other worked really well at the end.
If you think about it, in CoC, you usually can't kill boss monsters with firearms. And the CoC creatures usually don't miss. You're at the complete mercy of these unworldly creatures.
I had a great time. Even though the game ran over by almost 2 hours, I was still wide awake at 3:30am. Thanks Matt.
Sun 10am-4pm. Morgan Hua's The Carnival Magic - A Haunted Cruise Ship (Dread).
The Carnival Magic vanished enroute to the first season's Carribbean Voyage, then re-appeared during a tropical storm. The storm is preventing any type of coordinated rescue effort. Your elite investigative team will be helicoptered in.
Dread was published in 2005.I was introduced to Dread at the first Dead of Winter in a game run by Kristin H. Afterwards, I knew I had to run a Dread game and introduce more people to it.
I had play tested this game and it took two 4 hour sessions with my gaming group, so I scheduled this as an 8 hour game. We finished the game in 6 hours.
Dread uses a Jenga tower for any type of resolution. If the tower collapses, your character dies. The tower is then reset, but with 3 blocks pulled per dead character, so it starts off less stable.
Addendum 12/8/2019, I ran with less than a full table, 3 Players instead of 6, so I started with 10 blocks pulled to seed the instability of the tower. I believe the original seeding was only 6 pulled blocks. In this situation, I only increased the number at reset to 10 + 1 per death. In retrospect, maybe I should have used 10 + 2 per death, but even with 10 + 1, I got 4 deaths (2 were heroic deaths, deliberate knocking down of the tower to get an extraordinary result), but the tower was pretty stable after the last death, so 10 + 2 would have been slightly better.
I highly modified Dread for my game.
I had a colored Jenga set and wanted to use the multiple colors and the special d6 that came with the set. The d6 specifies restrictions on which blocks you can pull.
I wanted to streamline character creation and didn't want to focus on character relationships. So, I threw out the one page questionnaire for character creation, but I wanted to still add some character motivation and personality. I used various short cuts to satisfy these requirements.
For character creation I did the following:
- Select a character portrait. I had about 40 famous actors from iconic movie roles. If the player recognized the portrait, then they can get a personality and occupation without much work.
- Addendum 9/7/2012, I don't tell them how many replacement characters there are, but I do tell them backup characters are available.
- I had a list of skills. The player gets to pick one skill and I get to pick another to round out the character. The skill had two aspects. The first aspect is if the character does something they have a skill in, they don't have to roll the Jenga d6, but only needs to do a normal Jenga pull. The second aspect is that I had special Reward tokens. If they have a special Reward token, they can spend it to do something superhuman with their skill.
- Random motivation slips. I had made slips of paper with various motivations and if a character succeeds in fulfilling their motivation, they gain a reward token. Every slip of paper required the player to come up with a name that they showed me. This was actually a GM trick on my part. On some slips of paper, there were motivations that involved other players and this was a way for me to hide this fact from the players since every player had to give me a name. I also used the NPC names during game play. The motivation slips were uniquely numbered, so the player only had to tell me what their number was and I could look it up on my master list.
I created a list of insanities and put them on slips of paper. When someone gained an insanity, they randomly drew a slip of paper. Some insanities involved other players, but I didn't want the character to select someone and show their hand, so I would instruct them that the "offending" character would be to their right or left. The insanities were uniquely numbered too. I had a master list.
I think this all worked really well. One issue was that I didn't hand out enough Spook points and only near the end did 4 characters get an insanity. Also the level of insanity went up equally when all the characters were bunched together as they all saw the same gruesome sight. I think I would modify this in the following way. I should hand out 1 to 3 Spook points, depending on the level of horror, but allow characters to shake them off by drawing blocks. Each block drawn reduces the number of Spook points by one, to a minimum of 1.
Addendum 9/7/2012, I don't allow them to shake off the insanity unless it is the 3rd point, then I let them draw to avoid the 3rd point only.
Addendum 12/8/2019, changing the tipping point from 3 to 2 fixed the problem. Also there was no need to increase the amount of Spook points. It worked best when the tower was unstable and then I created a situation that would hand out Spook points. At that time, some Players would draw from the tower, others would take the Spook point.
What would of helped is that I should have given more spooky descriptions during the game. (Jack Y. mentioned this after the game. Thanks Jack). Then I could have set the mood more and handed out more Spook points. I did have a few gruesome scenes, but I should have sprinkled out some more disturbing things as they explored the Ship -- which would have fit in the setting. Generally, I start with more descriptions at the beginning to set the mood and then speed up as we head towards the resolution. But in a horror game, it makes sense to describe some horrible things as characters get mangled. Also a player death should cause the witnessing players to gain Spook points.
When a character dies, I confiscate their motivation slip and any reward tokens. I leave the Spook points. The replacement character would have already been on the Ship for some time and would have seen unsettling things. In the game, I let the player reset their Spook points with one draw. In retrospect, it should be one draw per Spook point because the tower is now reset and should be stable enough for multiple draws.
Addendum 9/7/2012, I don't allow them to remove any existing Spook points between character deaths.
The good thing about Jenga is that you can estimate how stable the tower is and you know when you can push the players to draw more blocks. As the GM, you can also ratchet up the tension by delaying major confrontations until the tower is more unstable.
Near the end of the game, I made the mistake of giving one of the new characters the Demolitions skill (I wanted to be funny since the character was Beav from Leave it to Beaver) which they used to kill the Boss monster. In retrospect that was ok, but I shouldn't have allowed him the Reward token so easily. The right solution for the next time I run this, is to put human hostages in with the Boss monster, so that explosives is not the easy solution.
Gil T., Matt S., Jack Y., and Dovi A. are master of props. Mike G.'s The Tower was the first game I was in that had a slideshow intro. That was so cool, I wanted to do the same thing. I can't compete on paper props, so I've went digital.
For my game I created five multimedia files. Sean N. was nice enough to bring his projector and sheets of butcher paper and tape (to make a wall screen). You rock Sean!
I was able to download various video tours of the Carnival Magic. I stitched the 8 video segments into one 4 minute video. This helped set the setting, but the commercial was too cheery for the mood I wanted to set. So, instead of making this part of the briefing, I showed this video first as an ad the characters may have seen on TV.
Second, I had created a slideshow explaining the background of their mission. I found a spooky soundtrack to go with the slides. This slideshow lasted 1-1/2 minutes.
I then handed out floor plans of the Carnival Magic. I had downloaded them from the Carnival website.
I then played an audio file of the distress call which was only 44 seconds. I made this audio file from free software that let me mix multiple audio tracks. The audio file consisted of nine audio tracks. I had bought a set of CDs with special effects tracks and I was also able to find some needed audio from the web. I had to record one track with my Laptop microphone. For some key elements, I deliberately lowered the volume to the edge of perception.
Addendum 9/7/2012, I have to make sure the speaker volume isn't too high because then they can hear too much on the first audio file.
I then asked the players if they wanted more info. If they did, they had to pull from the tower which I expected them to do since the tower is now fresh. I played a second audio version of the distress call. I had upped the volume of the hidden audio elements in this second audio file.
Their helicopter then reached the Carnival Magic. I had found on the web a video of a floundering cruise ship. The video was so cool, I had to use it. The only problem was the video was shot during the day. I took the video and added a dark green filter to make it look like it was viewed from a pair of night-vision goggles. I tried to match the green to various night-vision pictures I had used in the slideshow earlier. Once I was satisfied, I generated the new video file. This file was 3-3/4 minutes long. Only about 2 minutes were necessary, but people are so fascinated by it that they watch the whole thing. It's actually very scary.
In total, the multimedia intro/show was about 12 minutes long, but it set the mood and setting very well. I didn't want to use any more multimedia once the game started. The star of the game was the Jenga tower. Mucking with more multimedia during the game would just disrupt the mood. I had pictures of things to show during the game, but I didn't want to rummage for a picture on my laptop, so I printed the pictures instead.
Part of the trick for running Jenga is to get the players comfortable with pulling and to destabilize the tower. So, early on, I want them to pull and to get used to pulling. Also most of the fun is in pulling and getting that adrenaline rush.
In my game, only Jack was a veteran Dread player. Everybody else was Fresh Meat. I saw hands tremble on first pulls. After the first 1-1/2 hour, everyone was standing. Nobody wanted to sit at the table.
One issue came up which may not be a problem; It would depend on the type of game you want to run (more of this later). I let the players pick from the stock of 40 character portraits. Players were shocked when I told them if the tower falls, you die. But then I told them that I had replacement characters. I had engineered the character creation to be easy and swift.
Part of the fun is to not wanting to die. But after a while, you realize that dying isn't so bad and also dying resets the tower and makes it easier for other players. For veteran D&D players, not dying is so ingrained and hard to break, that it works against them. In this game, I think I may have had too many replacements. Maybe I should either limit the number of replacements or at some point of no return, set a deadline where no replacements are available.
In games where you do not get replacements, the mood is more dire. In games where replacements are easy, the mood is more like "Final Destination" where deaths are extremely entertaining, but with less emotional impact.
Maybe the right move is to take the unused character portraits off the table and only bring a couple back when someone dies. Then they're not conditioned to think that they're easy to replace.
But dying confiscates their Reward tokens which are hard to attain, so at some point, they don't want to die. Also, each death causes the reset to have more blocks taken out at the beginning. I limited the number to 12 blocks, but maybe I shouldn't limit it at all.
Addendum 9/7/2012, I don't limit the number of pre-drawn blocks anymore.
In my play test, six characters died. At BigBadCon five characters died. So, maybe it's not much of a problem. 6 * 3 = 18 blocks. Most Jenga towers can go to about 26 pulls before collapsing. I can have no limits to the initial blocks pulled on a reset and not limit the number of replacements.
One problem I had was that I forgot to throw some preset encounters at the party (I blame four hours of sleep. Damn you, Matt. That was a great game Sat night!). I had additional encounters up my sleeve and totally forgot about them. In the play test, the party went through more dangerous parts of the ship and I threw some of these encounters at them. At BigBadCon, there were several players who were very good and took very safe routes through the ship and avoided potential encounters. They also knew where to go without help. In my play test, the players weren't that familiar with a ship, so the preset encounters also gave them needed information. These encounters would have added to the mood and helped tie in more of what was happening into a more cohesive plot. In game, some of the events and encounters may seem random, but they aren't.
Another issue was my Jenga d6 had a "reverse" which doesn't make any sense in the context of the Dread game. I originally thought maybe it would mean that the player had to roll again and use both restrictions on the die, but would probably be too harsh and that block may not exist. So, during the game, I said to re-roll, but it came up several times (it's only 1 in 6, guys). (Jack also mentioned that I should figure this out for next time. Again, thanks for the suggestion, Jack.) Someone mentioned that maybe they should use their off-hand. I really like this idea. If you roll "reverse," you can draw any block, but it must be with your off-hand. Which also means I must ask every player what handed they are at the beginning of play.
Addendum 9/7/2012, Reverse now means you must use your off-hand only. I ask for their handedness at the beginning of play. One person actually told me he was ambidextrous, so I forced him to declare one hand as his normal hand.
I had a good time and I hope everyone else enjoyed it too. And from some of the comments, I think we'll have other GMs running Dread in the future.
