On the way to Placerville, I saw signs for $1 bag oranges at a truck parked off the road. Well, it was a double bait and switch. The bag only had 4 small oranges, or you can pay $4 for a 8 lb bag (with about 20 oranges). The sample slices she handed me tasted sweet, so I bought the bigger bag. Well, the big bag of oranges were different from the samples -- they weren't as deep orange (more pale yellow inside) nor as sweet. Double bait and switch.
So, if you see a lady selling oranges on the side of the road for $1 a bag, skip it. When I told my brother this story, he said, "Oranges aren't in season. That should have been a clue." So, I should have just drove away on the first indication of a scam. e.g. if the person is already willing to do unethical marketing practices, what's to prevent them from doing something worse?
One of the highlights of DoW was having Monday breakfast at Sweetie Pies. I got the smoked turkey wrapped around asparagus (diced) with extra crispy hash browns and cinnamon and walnut toast. Food was much better than Mel's and only slightly more expensive. It's a sad thing to say that Mel's put the Carrows (across the street from the Mel's) out of business in Placerville. It's sort of the battle of the meh.
This time, I didn't do any sight seeing before DoW, but I brought my ski equipment and went skiing for 4 days afterwards. It snowed Sunday, so I got to ski on powder on Monday and found some powder between the trees on the other days.
Heavenly Ski Resort on Monday
Heavenly Ski Resort on Weds, mostly empty of people
Kirkwood on Thurs, it took me hours to find this powder stash.
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Saturday 11am
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 6th Ed.
Scenario Title The Phantoms of Black Knife Ridge
GM: Badger McInnes
Variations: Some house rules
Power Level: You got callouses on yer hands from workin’ the range, or a sharp eye and smooth trigger finger
Number of Players: 6
Description: It’s November, 1901 in Black Knife Ridge, Oklahoma. The west is still wild out here, but folks from the East are starting to make the pilgrimage, what with all the money comin’ in from oil stakes and the like. Normally Black Knife Ridge is on the quiet side, but on this day, a special guest is rollin’ into town; singer Daisy Nash, giving a one-night performance during her country spanning tour. The locals are all a titter about the show, the dance hall is gonna be packed, and wouldn’t you know that the sheriff is off in another county today.
Gonna be a busy night.
The Phantom of Black Knife Ridge is a Wild Weird West scenario concerning a little bit of murder, quite a bit of snake oil shenanigans, a whole lot of corruption, and a big ol’ shitstorm of danger. Slap on those smoke wagons, grab your deputy badge…oh, and ya might wanna pocket that Elder Sign, too.
I enjoyed the game, but I felt the pace was a bit slow for me and the game fell in the standard template of investigate, find big bad, and blow it up. For me, the most enjoyable bits were the character interactions.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Daisy Nash gets gutted in her hotel room by something nasty. We investigate and find that it's associated with an oil man who is pumping out some alien goo from underground and that it is an elixir that can cure anything, but the side effect is that it makes you very compliant.
We kill all the miners and blow up the camp and oil derricks that are pumping out the goo.
Sort of simple, no?
My character was a Pinkerman Detective with the arrest warrant for another character (Duane's), an ex-US marshal, the body guard of Daisy Nash. The only bit of fright I got was when it appeared that there was some sort of lawman handshake between Duane's character and the Deputy in town (Josh's). So, I was worried that my arresting of Duane's character might run into double trouble. But I was able to discern that it was more of a professional acknowledgement vs a personal connection.
In the end, I learned that Duane's character committed justifiable homicide and decided to let him go and report that his character was killed in the finale. The Deputy was willing to confirm my story, so I was able to close my case.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Saturday 7pm
Game System: Reports from the Zone (The Veil)
Scenario Title: The Electric Psychopomp F**k Brigade vs. the Deranged Discotheque of the Damned
GM: Matthew Grau
Variations: None
Power Level: Paranormal Drug Addicts
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: In this mash-up of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Trainspotting, and Naked Lunch. Characters are drug fiends who have discovered the “Zone,” a place where they’re so altered that they see through reality. The world they’ve discovered is strange and dangerous, filled with existential threats, and they’re kind of the only ones who can do anything about it. However, they have to use a lot of drugs to do that, and that naturally makes them less… effective.
Fortunately, their crippling addictions have also given them new paranormal abilities to aid them in their fight – but these abilities also help drive deeper and deeper dependence. The Characters’ impaired judgment may easily lead them to make unsound choices – the horror is both external and internal.
Matt printed cards for The Veil. The collection of cards made up your character. For various tells for talents, you needed to write on the cards. Too bad Matt made really high quality glossy cards; it was hard to write on them as the ink/pencil didn't quite write on the high gloss. A matte finish would have worked better.
This was my favorite game that I played in at DoW. We each got to play various drug addicts with each drug of choice giving us benefits. Matt also did a great job of DJing various decades of music. Some of the music references were beyond me since I wasn't much of a pop music kind of guy -- I grew up playing the violin and listening to Mozart, Bach, and Vivaldi.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
I sort of heard about Krokodil, but never paid any attention to it. Well, my character was a Krokodil addict. The other addicts were Marijuana, Heroine, LSD, Speed, and Alcohol.
The fun bit was that depending on your level of addiction, you get additional skill cards. I, of course, took the max (3 out of 3) which meant that I could die at any moment, at the GM's whim. We got to pick tells for each trait and I wound up looking like something out of a slasher horror movie. I carried a cinder block that was tied to a chain that was wrapped around my body. I also had barbed wire strung around my arms and legs. I also didn't know where to put my used needles, so I left them in my arm. Things (people, animals, and plants) die in my vicinity. I smell like something decaying, and my touch kills. When I lay still, people think I'm dead.
In the game, the spirit of Disco (represented by the Bee Gee-sus) was trying to prevent itself from getting killed (with the help of aliens, and sometimes over zealous cops), but in effect it would prevent the rise of Michael Jackson, YMCA, Phil Collins, Biggie G, 50-Cent, etc.
So, we the heroes had to make sure Disco died.
When we got connected with the spirit of Rap, my chain and cinder block got blinged out (24k baby!). To stop the man from intruding on our sing/dance off, I faced the man and flipped a tank that man had sent to stop us with. Cool!
In the end, we helped Rap send the Bee Gees back in time and saved the world.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sunday 11am
Game System: Call of Cthulhu
Scenario Title: U-29 is Alive
GM: Gil Trevizo
Variations: Home rules
Power Level: Normal people
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: October 1918. The war is lost for Germany, but the Kaiser continues to feed the meatgrinders of the Western Front and crew after crew is lost on the bloodied seas of the Atlantic. Now the admirals have ordered one last foolhardy mission, to venture deep into enemy waters and “recover” the missing boat U-29, an experimental submarine lost over a year ago. Aboard its sister boat, U-31, the doomed crew will sail into black and forgotten depths and learn the silent secrets hiding beneath unfathomed waters for uncounted years.
I liked that this game gave us a lot of options even though we were stuck in a submarine and had a very rigid command structure. Gil spent a lot of time researching WWI submarines and the social structure at that time. I appreciated that and enjoyed the mini-lecture on the those subjects, that said, we spent 1-1/2 hours covering those subjects before we got to start playing.
I think part of the flaw was Gil trying to be true to a HP Lovecraft story (which I haven't read) instead of just taking it as an inspiration. Frank mentioned to me that it didn't really matter if it was a WWI submarine vs a modern day submarine. I think he was right, then you don't need to explain the social structures, the drawbacks on the submarine, etc.
For me this game was a close second to Matt Grau's game.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We were ordered to recover something from a sunken merchant ship that U-29 sunk and to find U-29 (we were it's sister ship the U-31).
The something was the body of a statue. When we recovered it, the dead bodies on the ship animated and attacked us. At one point we thought of killing the NPC who brought us there until he said, "We need the statue, I know how to stop this." We had already taken the statue from him and tried to destroy it.
On the trip to the location of U-29, the ships crew slowly sank into madness as strange creatures swum along side the submarine and increased in numbers.
At the site of U-29, we found a drowned sailor clutching the head of the statue.
Strange creatures were performing a ritual underwater near a temple that had sunk underneath the waves.
Once put together, the NPC took the completed statue and jammed it into a glowing force containment field in the temple to free the trapped Ares. Before this, the players were conflicted as to whether they wanted this or not. Those driven insane wanted it. Conflicting NPCs wanted to either free the entity or to enslave it. As players, both sounded like bad ideas.
After a few torpedo shots and characters either staying or fleeing, the game ended.
What I liked was that you could: stay, help, hinder, or just flee. All were valid choices. In a lot of games, fleeing just takes you out of the game and the right choices were always help or hinder. In this game, all the choices were valid. I liked that.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sunday 7pm
Game System: Nemesis
Scenario Title: Welcome to the Clown Motel
GM: Morgan Hua
Variations: Highly Modified (Simplified Nemesis)
Power Level: Silver Miners, Bikers, Military Personnel, and Old Folks.
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: The Clown Motel is located next to the Tonopah Cemetery. Tonight is the night of the Blood Moon. Who will survive the night at the Clown Motel? Players will have multiple characters as they uncover the history and mysteries of Tonopah from 1902 to present day.
I wasn't able to play test this game before DoW and I was experimenting with various things. The game ran a bit short: 4 hours. Part of it was I had four players instead of the six I was expecting and I didn't spend any time explaining Nemesis which generally takes about 1/2 hour. Almost all of the players knew the system except for one player and he said, "Let's just play, and tell me what to roll." I also made the bad guys too powerful and they wiped out PCs faster than I expected -- more about this in the spoiler section where I breakdown the complete scenario.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Blood Moon
I didn't want to explain the setting, so I created a short two minute video/slide show of the Clown Motel, the Tonopah Cemetery, and the Tonopah Missile Test Site -- all key locations in the game.
The whole idea I had was what if I didn't have an insanity meter, that the horror drove the actions of the characters. Would it work?
So, I wanted something that was terrifying that was impossible to kill and relentless -- psychotic killer clowns. I wanted the killer clowns to hunt down the first batch of PCs and show the players that they were nigh impossible to kill or win against in a battle of strength. The idea was to scare the crap out of the players.
My first batch of PCs would be tough bikers with firearms. They are staying at the Clown Motel because:
In the middle of the night, during a blood moon, a car runs over their bikes which are parked outside of their rooms. Lo and behold, a cop car ran over their bikes. But who is inside the cop car? My Killer Psycho Clowns.
I gave the clowns 5d with 2 wiggle dice. That was a mistake. They were too powerful and basically killed all the PCs in two rounds. I wanted it to last a little bit longer. So only one wiggle dice would have been better. I also gave them shock and kill which is a mistake and it should have been only kill damage.
As the last biker was attacked, I had wishbones to determine 50/50 checks. The biker won, so he lived and the clown got run over by a tour bus.
This is when I introduced the real PC heroes. The picture on the left is what everyone sees. The back of the character portrait is the picture on the right -- that is how the PC thinks of themselves. The whole conceit was to let old retired folks solve the mystery that tough guys can't. I also handicapped all the PCs with canes, wheelchairs, and all manner of horrible mobility tools that old folks use. Yeah, you can't run and you can't fight. Go solve this mystery.
I started with the old folks at their nursing home being abused and bored. Today was their field trip to Las Vegas, freedom at last and their bus hits something on the road and they get thrown about and get stuck in Tonopah, at the Clown Motel.
I wanted the PCs to go through the Tonopah Cemetery and find the two groups of true historical burials: The 1902 Tonopah Plague and the 1911 Mine Fire.
So, the surviving clowns would drag the biker bodies through the cemetery and towards the Tonopah Missile Test Range, leaving a trail of blood and drag marks.
Once in the Tonopah Cemetery, a successful History Knowledge roll would unlock two flashbacks: The 1902 Tonopah Plague and the 1911 Mine Fire.
The Tonopah Plague starts with a new set of characters, miners from 1902:
Their story is uncovering an underground tunnel while mining silver during a Blood Moon. This tunnel has a weird totem/doll inside:
As the miners investigate the tunnel, they'll discover it goes very long and deep and gets hotter and more humid and almost unbearable. Before that though, they find a pile of human skeletal remains with bones crushed and skulls bashed in from violent acts. The remains are also mixed with pieces of native american dress. All indications are that the bodies are all native american.
That night or if the players keep on exploring the tunnel, at that time, Natives wearing Kachina masks attack the miners and the mining town. The natives are just as deadly as the clowns. Here is where the overkill clowns actually become a signature and the players actually figured out that the clowns as the natives were one and the same. During play, the players actually put up a DO NOT ENTER, DANGER sign up at the entrance to the tunnel. I asked each player whether they have family and whether they tell them about the new tunnel. A survivor would be the one that would write or tell someone about what really happened in 1902 and that is the story that the History Knowledge roll would have revealed. When a miner dies, I close their coffin with a SNAP!
In 1911, it is another blood moon and a new set of miners are the new PCs. Several have the same last names as the first set of miners and they are relatives, which gives them an excuse to know something of what really happened in 1902. There are more deaths by mask wearing natives (players never found out that -- hey, that's not a mask) and several players entered the mine and found a better wooden barrier with a DO NOT ENTER sign to the tunnel. The players decide to collapse part of the mine with explosives and close up the tunnel which causes a mine fire.
The players now know the origin of the psychotic killer clowns and need to do something about it.
They follow the drag marks of bodies into the Tonopah Missile Test Site.
Eventually, they'll be found by Military Police and arrested for trespassing as numerous UFO kooks sneak onto the base and think it's area 52, a sister UFO site to area 51.
While being arrested, more killer clowns would show up. Well, in the game, the PCs blew up the first ATV that showed up, so that messed up my game plan. So, I let them find the crater where a missile test had reopened the Katchina Tunnel to the underworld.
While exploring how to get into the crater, I sent two more ATVs to capture the PCs. Two PCs got down into the crater and found a crevasse that had old rotten timbers, remains of a mine shaft. James Bond blew his wheelchair roll and I killed him with an ejection seat that broke his neck on a malfunctioned landing. Prof McGonagall (played excellently by Frank) got captured by GI Joe (in the movie GI Joe was played by Bruce Willis) and GI Jane (in the movie GI Jane was played by Demi Moore) -- ironic, huh?
GI Jane
GI Joe
The purpose of GI Joe and GI Jane are to have some PCs with higher fire power and a sympathetic PC that can help the PCs get into the mine and use military grade explosives in order to collapse the mine again.
In the game I ran, the PCs dug through the pile of fresh bodies: police officers, bikers, towns people of Tonopah, dead GI Joes and Janes and found on the bottom a small Kachina figurine. With a successful Archaeology roll, you know it's an evil Kachina. There are good and evil Kachinas and when the Red Man was here, their Kachina dances summoned the Good Kachinas to hold back the Evil Kachinas. Now that silver was found here and all the natives were kicked off their land, nobody does the Kachina Spirit Dances anymore and nothing holds back the Evil Kachinas from leaving the underworld and making mischief -- e.g. slaughtering innocents. So, Elvis who found the Kachina figurine and did the Archaeology roll, decides to do a impromptu Kachina Spirit Dance and did very well, so I ruled that that would hold off the Evil Kachinas for this cycle of the blood moon.
GI Jane replaced the dead James Bond as a PC and that character was convinced by an attack at the airbase that the killer clowns did exist. Video showed the clowns vanish after being gunned down; they seemed to lay there and then vanish after a video glitch. The bodies only vanish when a person looks away. So, the GI Jane arranged for explosives to collapse a portion of the underworld tunnel.
At this point the PCs can stop, but they wanted to put the Evil Kachinas down for a longer period of time. With research, they found Good Kachinas could challenge the Evil Kachinas to contests and each win would hold the Evil Kachinas back for 100 years. So, the players stole Good Kachina masks from various museums and waited for the next blood moon and waited for the Evil Kachinas to show up so they could challenge them.
The players picked their best skills (and used some trickery) and were able to beat the Evil Kachinas and hold them back for 400 years.
This free convention is completely online with painting contests, video panels, quiz contests, and of course, online RPGs. I played in four games and listened to two panels, and one one prize at the quiz contest.
I had a good time, below are a few issues I ran into:
An issue with AetherCon, a virtual convention, is that the players and GM are in different time zones. The schedule is a cryptic GMT-05. Unless the players or GMs can figure out when events are run in their local time, there's a danger of no shows.
Their website is also a bit cryptic with no FAQ, so be prepared to spend time figuring out where things are and what you might need to download. Various GMs may use Roll20 or Google Hangouts or Skype, and I've seen issues where players don't have their tech figured out and winds up being a time-suck as the GM waits for the player to solve their tech problems.
Events registration is on the warhorn.net site, but when you click on the "home" link for aethercon on the events page, it takes you to the warhorn.net/aethercon page which has no information as to where any of the conference rooms are. There's also information about having to use AnyMeeting, but no information as to whether that needs to be installed. Well, I found the links to the conference rooms on the AetherCon home page. So navigation is horrible.
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White Out
Friday, 13 Nov, 3-8pm (GMT-05)
Outbreak: Undead (2nd Edition)
The icy chill surrounds you, the quiet and desolate landscape of the arctic Yukon is shrouded by high winds and blizzards pouring through the glacial valley.
Large, hairless dogs were chasing you and your sled dogs throughout the night. Now you, and your dogs are hungry, and you only have a few ounces of gasoline left for the furnace back at camp, what do you do? Can you reach salvation in time?
GM: Christopher J De La Rosa
Minimum Amount of Players: 2
Maximum Amount of Players: 4
Length of Scenario: 4 Hours
Characters Provided for Players: Yes
Newbies Welcome: Yes
This game was actually run at noon local time. The GM thought it was at 3pm. I emailed the GM and luckily, the game actually happened at 1:30pm. I happened to walk by my computer when the GM tried to call us and we actually had the game. Chris was a good GM and the other player was also pretty good. So, I had a good time and enjoyed the game.
The system was a bit crunchy and there was a lot of math where you're multiplying numbers and adding bonuses for skill checks. The system is a percentile system with d5! which was innovative. d5! = 1d6, but a 6 is equal to a 5 that explodes. So, if you roll a 6, it's a 5 and you roll another d6 and add to the die roll. So, you can get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, (5 + 1 =) 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, (5 + 5 + 1 =) 11, etc. Whereas other exploding dice skips specific numbers, for example 1d6 which explodes on 6's = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, (6 + 1 =) 7, (6 + 2 = ) 8, 9, 10, 11, (6 + 6 + 1 =) 13, etc, skips all multiples of 6 because if you roll a 6, you roll another 1d6 and add it to the previous 6s that were rolled.
What I didn't like about the system was there was a lot of math to add an extra 3 or 6 percent to a skill (out of percentile die roll), it seemed like a lot of work for some minor bonuses.
What was interesting was each degree of success/failure (every 10% on the die roll below/above the skill check = 1 degree of success/failure) can re-enforce or cancel an action. It is like the adjustments CoC 7th did to fix the "whiff" factor of combat where nothing happens. So, even if both sides of combat misses, if one side misses more than the other, the degrees of missing can cause damage to the one worse off. e.g. in combat, person A has 2 degrees of failure, the person B has 1 degree of failure, then it actually means that person B will have one degree of success.
The GM is also allowed to take some successes away (for game balance) and use them later in the game. This is a cool idea. e.g. an early death to a PC can be avoided and the threat is saved for a later part of the game when the GM can cash in the successes for more dramatic purposes.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The game started with my character (a military nurse) and a military pilot going out to do some ice climbing. Of course the zombie outbreak starts without us knowing and we're to deal with the effects of it.
As the helicopter drops us off for our vacation, a moose comes out of nowhere and actually hits the helicopter and destroys it (GM got a critical success). After the moose leaves, we find that the pilot is dead and we radio in our situation and scavenge what we can from the crashed copter.
We radio in and are told to go to a research station a few days away. We take the dead pilot's body with us and in the middle of the night, the pilot animates and is fighting with some wolves. We actually kill/scare off the wolves and then windup having to fight the animated corpse. After we dispatch the body, we bury it in the snow and leave.
At the fenced off research station, some of the people there were getting sick, but there are no undead.
We get a disturbance at night and the research station winds up getting infected. We wind up killing a few undead (research station people dying in the middle of the night from the sickness) and getting into a misunderstanding with the remaining occupants of the research station. In the end, the remaining NPC tries to kill us and opens the gate to let in the wild crazed wolves. We windup hitting him with ice axes, taking his shotgun away, and shooting him in the head. We then close up the gate and then cleanup the crime scene.
I had fun and it was a good game.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Blessed Are the Damned
Friday, 13 Nov, 9pm-2am (GMT-05)
Call of Cthulhu
The stars are right and the Old Ones walk the Earth again. Mankind teeters on the edge of extinction.
A small band of nuns from St. Teresa's Abbey will attempt the treacherous journey to New Vegas Outpost along the remnants of old Route 66, the so-called Devil's Tail. They will risk cannibals, cultists, and nameless horrors all to rescue one girl - a girl who may just be the key to man's redemption - or his final doom.
GM: Ed Possing
Minimum Amount of Players: 3
Maximum Amount of Players: 5
Length of Scenario: 4 Hours
Characters Provided for Players: Yes
Newbies Welcome: Yes
I had fun in this game. It was more pulpy (think Mad Max: Fury Road) than scary. We had a lot of good role playing and good fun.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We start off given a mission from Mother Claire to go to New Vegas and rescue her niece. Sand Dwellers were on the rampage and wiping out existing strongholds of men.
Our strong hold, St. Teresa is protected by a Maze similar to Bryce Canyon. At it's entrance we find the aftermath of some sort of ambush. We find the survivors, a baby and mother, and are ambushed ourselves. The baby is actually a mustached midget.
On the way to New Vegas, we drop by a hermit's hideout and find that ghouls who live in tunnels in the Maze were wiped out by Sand Dwellers. We send the hermit to warn Mother Claire about this as we continue on our mission.
In New Vegas we find Faith, Mother Claire's niece, and a hidden cache of arms. We also find that the person who told Mother Claire about the Sand Dwellers was the same person who tried to capture Faith and was also responsible for leading the Sand Dwellers, so we return to St. Teresa, armed to the teeth.
We find the whole abbey captured and being prepared for a ritual sacrifice. The cult leader is standing right next to Mother Claire and is going to sacrifice her as part of the ritual. Surrounding them are scores of Sand Dwellers. Shannon's character throws a grenade and actually gets extreme success and kills Mother Claire and the cult leader. The Sand Dwellers, freed from the cult leader's control, flee. This stops the ritual and we save the world.
My favorite bits were the ineffective midget in disguise and Shannon's surprise grenade attack.
We also found another stronghold that was wiped out and filled with books -- that was pretty cool.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
The Haunting
Saturday, 14 Nov, 3-8am (GMT-05)
Call of Cthulhu
Boston is a city steeped in history, And one house in an affluent neighborhood seems to be cloaked in a shadow of mystery and misery. The investigators are hired to put a final end to bad mojo surrounding the home so the landlord can finally rent the home out again.
Open and shut case. What could go wrong?
GM: Jon Hook
Minimum Amount of Players: 3
Maximum Amount of Players: 6
Length of Scenario: 4 Hours
Characters Provided for Players: Yes
Newbies Welcome: Yes
This was an expanded and revised version of "The Haunting," a sample scenario available in most versions of CoC. For CoC 7th edition, they replaced the scenario with two new scenarios and put "The Haunting" in the Quickstart rule book. I read the scenario when it was in the 3rd edition and it was called "The Haunted House." it's been years if not decades since I've read the scenario and since everybody I know has either read the scenario or played in it, I've never had a chance to play or run the scenario.
I thought this would be a good chance for me to play in an official CoC 7th scenario and see if I'm running the system correctly. I had playtested CoC 7th and contributed to the kickstarter. I had been waiting for the hard copy before reading the new rules as the Core book is 448 pages and the Investigator's Handbook is 283 pages. But I'm currently running the new version of "The Horror on the Orient Express." So, I've been spot reading the new rules as needed and found that some of the rules from the playtest were either changed or made optional.
Jon Hook runs a great game. We also had a good table of players. Afterwards, Jon asked how many people had played in "The Haunting" before and only Shannon had. But it seemed at least half the players including me had read the scenario before. So, it is a tribute to the players that there was little metagaming and we did some stupid non-metagame stuff to stay in character.
For me, this was the best game I played in at AetherCon. And one of the best overall convention games I've ever played in. Jon was masterful and I hope he gets to update the existing Quickstart scenario with his new extended and revised version. It gave new life to such an old creaky, scenario.
It's pretty ironic that I find "The Haunting" a fresh and fun game.
Oh yeah, we had a TPK. Also we ran out of time, so Jon had to narrate the ending. This was a first for me, having a GM narrate a TPK -- this blew my mind. But he was right, if you look at what was happening, it was most certainly going to be a TPK.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Jon added psychic batteries powered by tortured and murdered children buried on the Corbitt estate. If we put the children to rest, Corbitt's power would be reduced and we would have a better chance at defeating him.
My favorite bit was when one PC almost fell into a well/sewer/storm drain and he told us there was a ghost in there. My PC decided he wanted to take a picture and wound up falling into it and being grabbed by the ghost of a drowned girl who was chained to the bottom. I was being drowned and another player decided to try to save me and wound up falling on me instead. We barely made it out. I had asked the other players to get a septic tank pump so we could pump out the water and then give the girl a decent burial, but we were running out of game time (last hour), so they decided to go into the house instead. Yeah, they should have listened to me.
In the house, we wound up trapped in the basement and lots of horrible things happened. Shannon's character went blind. One character attacked another. Another got horribly stabbed by the animated knife. Two corpses animated and started attacking us. It was all downhill from there.
One of the more interesting things that Jon did was even though we would get a clue, we would also get punished at the same time. When we attacked or touched a ghost, we would take damage and get a vision as to how the ghost child was tortured/killed/buried. So, we did have a chance to find the buried children and release them. But since we were strapped for time, the players didn't follow this line of inquiry. We even had uncovered clues about the psychic battery. I was given a hint several times when the drowned girl ghost continued to plead for her release, but my character was too traumatized and -- the other players didn't want to listen to me. Yep, blame the other players for a TPK. :-) I liked how it was a mixed message. You get a clue and get punished for it, so it wasn't clear cut as to what was going on. I loved how it obscured the message and made it confusing.
Well, the the panel started late and there were technical difficulties and one of the panelists didn't show up. There were lots of dropouts and audio problems.
The panelists mainly pitched their products and it was mostly a waste of time.
Silva Nigre ("The Dark Forest")
Saturday, 14 Nov, 9pm-2am (GMT-05)
Cthulhu Invictus
Trouble is brewing in the dark forests of Germania, again.
Gangs of barbarian bandits have begun savagely attacking travelers along the Accius Path. The survivors are few; usually a single person is allowed to escape by the bandit chieftain. The survivor always carries a message to the Roman authorities, often in the form of taunts and defiance. The bandits have declared that the Black Forest is now a free kingdom, and they are demanding outrageous tributes of silver to allow the Empire use of its own road! Sergius, the local Roman prefect would give them steel instead!
Your group, elements of the 21st Rapax (or predator) Legion are being sent into the Black Forest to gather intelligence. A combination of Roman legionnaires, local auxiliary troops, and barbarians, it is your job to see what this business is about. Is this a small band of upstart bandits, or a host of hundreds starting open rebellion? Have they occupied the old campsite inside the Black Forest, which the legions used during the previous campaign? From where in the forest are these bandits striking? How many troops are needed for total victory?
GM: Shannon MacNamara
Minimum Amount of Players: 3
Maximum Amount of Players: 5
Length of Scenario: 5 Hours
Characters Provided for Players: Yes
Newbies Welcome: Yes
Shannon enjoyed "The Haunting" so much he decided he wanted to run this game as CoC 7th vs the original 6th edition. This was a playtest and we gave some useful feedback to Shannon.
It was a fun game, but a bit too much combat for me. As Shannon said, this was a Sword and Sandals game, more combat than investigation. We had some great players and some fun role playing.
Two of my characters were killed and the last one survived but went insane.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We were told to resolve the barbarian issue and were given additional instructions to bring back five specific women from the trader's village. I was playing second in command and Frank played the first in command. We decided to not tell the rest of the PCs about the women.
Further up the road the village elder tells us a caravan had been ambushed. So, we go up there and investigate and run into zombies. We shield wall up and then head to an abandoned fort and shore it up. The zombies attack and only a few PCs survive. We head back to the trader village and are told that the women left and had earlier ensorcered the men. Now that the women had left, they could tell us that the women were witches. We head back out to the forest where they have a ritual area. We attack them and face their big-bad-monster and barely defeat it.
My favorite bits:
Warning the PCs that they should not molest the women, but the men were fair game and then having to punish Rich's character with 5 lashings for back handing one of the women and then Frank telling me to tell the PCs that any fraternizing with the women would be met with castration. Shep went ahead and sneaked away from the camp and had sex with one of the women and he botched several rolls, so I wound up catching him. Well, we had a castration.
My PC pushing a roll to repair a fort's wall and failing and dying as the wall falls on him and crushing him to death. He was down to his last hit points before he did the pushed roll.
My next PC jumping out of the fort to save himself from a mass of zombies. Whistles to his attack dog to follow him which gave a zombie time to catch up with him. The zombie attacks and gets a lucky hit and kills the PC. The PC wasn't really a deserter, he was a traitor and actually a spy for the tribes that didn't like the Romans, so he thought that the Romans were doomed and decided to leave and return to his own tribe.
My 3rd PC survived the final encounter, but went permanently insane. He's wondering around Rome somewhere as a homeless crazy person.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Themed Panel in The Philosopher's Conundrum - Save vs Insanity: Masters of Horror
Sunday, 15 Nov, 1:30-3pm (GMT-05)
Grab a chair around the hearth in The Philosopher's Conundrum and take in the wisdom of the sages.
This panel was a lot more interesting and there were only one or two audio dropout issues. Panel also started late because they waited for a late panelist.
This one has more content and has some interesting things worth listening to. Recordings of these sessions are available online. (I have no idea where, otherwise I'd link it -- again more bad navigation on their home website).
BigBadCon is the best indie RPG (e.g. non-pathfinder, non-D&D) convention.
This year there were a lot more private rooms and a good variety of food trucks so there was no need to leave the hotel to grab a bite to eat. I only played one game in a shared room, the rest in private rooms. I'm glad Sean got rid of the those room dividers, so even in the shared room there was good air flow.
Lots of good games and I ran into lots of people that I knew.
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Collision on I-81
Date/Time - Oct 16, 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM GM: Todd Furler System: Unknown Armies Maturity Rating: Adult themes Available Spaces: 6 Game Length: 4 Characters: Provided What’s supposed to be a simple week of training starts off with a
horrific car accident. And things get unimaginably worse from there.
Todd always runs a good solid game and this was no exception. We play normal people and things just got stranger and stranger until we realized we had to fix the anomaly.
Tod runs very well paced games and controls the time very well. We ended on time and I felt as if the game ran its course. Nothing was rushed and everything felt organic.
I had a very good time.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We started off viewing an auto accident ahead of our car and we noticed that the car that gets horribly mangled with a fatality has the same license plate number as our own, but from a different state.
Then we started noticing more and more changes.
One of the real gems is that we couldn't seem to open bottles and other people could do it. We finally realized that the bottles we're all reverse threaded from the way we're used to.
Then more time and space anomalies started to happen like a barking dog at the corner was replaced by a sheep which the owner also noticed, so it wasn't just us.
We finally figured out that we had skipped into a different dimension when our van had somehow got confused with the other van in the other dimension. This intersection of dimensions allowed us to cross over. Our event was propagating through time and space, like the ripples of a pebble dropped into a pond, and was messing things up. To fix this, we decided to re-enact the auto accident, and maybe cause an interference pattern.
I wanted to reverse the position of everything, so that we would be the van that had the accident and the other van would be the one that survived, but this was too much for the other players as the driver of the damaged van had a fatality. So, we only re-staged the accident with some necessary changes: We took the license plates off the totaled van and put it on a rental van. The driver of the damaged van was the fatality, so we swapped the passenger and driver occupants, but kept everything as before. Then we staged the accident.
The result? We wound up in another dimension, but did we fix everything or not? Well, that was where we faded to black as we find that the driver of our van also suffered a fatality and that snow was on the ground where it wasn't before, but the speed limit signs matched our home dimension. So, did we or didn't we?
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Extraordinary Mission
Date/Time - Oct 16, 7:00 PM - 1:00 AM GM: Dennis Jordan System: Morrow Project-Fate Hack Maturity Rating: Adult themes Available Spaces: 5 Game Length: 6 Characters: Created at the table
“You know what the hardest part about being a Morrow Project recruiter is?” “Finding people that straddle the line. You know how hard it is to find a stable, compassionate, caring person…who hasn’t started a family or has close community ties?
“Then there is the other side of the line. We ain’t putting on a bake sale here. We need killers, men and women that will not even blink at the idea of using force to protect or even further Morrow’s goals, all for the greater good.”
“Take me for example…a former Force Recon Marine with degrees in Psychology and Engineering, with a passion for Krav Maga and ceramics.”
“So yeah, I love my job…and deserve a raise.”
So…in the continuing BBC tradition of taking classic games with a great premise but horrible mechanics, and hacking them up with equal parts Diaspora crunch and tiddly wink spirit , we are tackling Morrow Project this year. Morrow Project is a post apocalyptic RPG about a dedicated paramilitary organization that knows the USA will be devastated by a nuclear war and volunteers to go in cryogenic sleep in hidden bunkers across the nation, to rise up 3-5 years after the nuclear chaos to rebuild a great nation.
Dennis ran this game on short notice in place of Gil's game. Originally Gil was going to run his Star ORE game which I really, really wanted to play in, but he had a family emergency and was unable to attend BigBadCon.
So a big thanks to Dennis for GMing.
The whole background behind the Morrow Project was that we were put into suspended animation and we're supposed to wake up 3-5 years after a nuclear holocaust and help put humanity back on it's feet. Of course, things never happen as they're supposed to.
I loved the depth of knowledge that Dennis brought into the game. What was curious is that he has so much technical detail, but Fate is such a low crunch game. It's a sort of an odd system choice.
We spent a fair amount of time creating our characters and getting equipment, but I wound up rolling no dice in the game, so it didn't really matter what skills my character had. This is the fault of nobody, but it just happened that the players were not Gung Ho kick-the-door-in players, but more cautious and rational. I think we played very realistic and very smart for the situation we were in.
I found this an interesting game, but I thought we spent too much time making characters. In these situations, I would have preferred pre-gens.
Hey Gil, we were in a Dennis game with all this equipment and ordinance and we didn't fire a single shot. :-)
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We were a MARS team, an elite tactical attack team.
We woke up 32 years later instead of 3 to 5. There were no biologicals or nuclear fallout residue, but our team leader had a software fault in her hibernation pod. She was still alive, but if we woke her she would need a full medical team to fix her.
First we wanted to find out if we had a mission: nope. We found out that our power generator was way below where it should be. So we wondered if we were woken up because our power system was at a critical level and we were woken up because otherwise it wouldn't be able to sustain us: nope.
So, we went through our check list and prepped everything to leave our bolt hole as we listened for any incoming message.
Eventually we got contacted by Section Leader, but it was an unauthorized transmission from Beth the bio-tech, asking us to come and "fix things." People were disappearing and people were unhappy. She gave us the coordinates for that local HQ and told us she couldn't contact us much more after this.
As we traveled to the local HQ, we scouted out areas trying to figure out how badly damaged society was. We found it it wasn't too bad, not Max Max bad, but down to steam powered equipment, horses and cattle.
In the end, we saved our team leader, woke up other teams that were left in cold sleep, and didn't really hurt anyone. We only slapped the Section Leader around and got him to give us the codes to wake up the other teams. We also figured out most problems were due to incompetence and not deliberate acts of evil.
I really liked the puzzle of discovering our environment and piecing things together. Dennis was able to fill out enough details when we wanted it to make it feel real.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Super Train
Date/Time - Oct 17, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM GM: Morgan Hua System: Godlike Maturity Rating: Graphic Violence Available Spaces: 6 Game Length: 4 Characters: Provided Allied Talents, WWII soldiers with superpowers, are notified by the
French Resistance that a Nazi Super Train is loading secret cargo. Your
mission, stop whatever the Germans are doing. Godlike is a brutal WWII system where one lucky bullet can kill a PC.
Not only do you have to deal with trained soldiers, but the Germans
have their own supermen too.
This time the players dressed up as German soldiers and ambushed the train at the station. This was much different from the other two times where they attacked the train before it arrived at the station. But in such close quarters it was much more dangerous and 2 PCs got killed before the party decided to retreat hastily. With backup characters they were able to complete the mission by attacking the disabled train a second time.
I'm probably not going to run this game again. Inside the spoiler section is the description of the game and some images from the game.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Here's the build out of the game:
Players are sent by HQ to investigate a message from the French Resistance: The Germans are stacking crates at the train station and are preparing to move the crates to Berlin. Contents unknown.
Upon surveying the town:
Train Station. There are various sized crates on the train platform and a loaded military truck. There is a published train schedule between Paris and Berlin, but there's a hidden schedule of the Super Train. That comes at a different time. There are various ways, the PCs can ferret this information out. The French stationmaster has the schedule and it is written down.
In a two story house commandeered by the Germans, staff car and motorcycle outside. 3 old French Resistance fighters are held here being questioned.
There is a burned out house with posts set up inside. This is an area for a firing squad.
It is difficult to find the French Resistance as the 3 old French Resistance fighters have been captured.
The players will generally attack the Germans, rescue the Resistance fighters and open the crates. One of the crates contain Winged Victory and the other the Mona Lisa. Other crates contain various national treasures of France. (In one game, the players blew up the crates thinking that if it's important to the Germans, we should deny it to them. During the fire fight, pieces of plaster, splinters of wood, and canvas rained down. I had printed a picture of the Mona Lisa and I tore her head off and said that this floated down to the ground in front of the player who blew up the cargo.)
If the players dawdle, I have the Germans take the 3 French Resistance fighters out to the firing squad and have the players notice this. (In one game, the players ignored this and let the Resistance fighters get shot.)
The players will generally damage the tracks and setup an ambush. What they don't know is that the German send down a Rabbit first. A small armored train that checks to make sure the tracks ahead are ok.
This generally leads to full combat with the Super Train. The Super Train is an armored train with a Talent that has added detection equipment. The Talent also has a ray gun. There are other Talents on the train. One can transform into a T-Rex.
Then it's straight combat until the players disable the train and eliminate the Germans.
On the train are more National Treasures.
This is a fairly simple and straight forward scenario and designed to fit in a 4 hour time slot.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Eagle’s Nest
Date/Time - Oct 17, 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM GM: Morgan Hua System: Godlike Maturity Rating: Graphic Violence Available Spaces: 6 Game Length: 4 Characters: Provided Allied Talents, WWII soldiers with superpowers, are sent to capture the Eagle’s Nest, one of Hitler’s retreats. Godlike is a brutal WWII system where one lucky bullet can kill a PC.
Not only do you have to deal with trained soldiers, but the Germans
have their own supermen too.
I think most people can read between the lines and know that they get to kill Hitler. This time, different characters killed separate Hitlers, so no one got to kill Hitler twice.
I'm probably not going to run this game again. Inside the spoiler section is the description of the game and some images from the game.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Here's the build out of this game:
Players are sent by HQ to capture Eagle's Nest, just in case Hitler decides to go there. They do not expect him to be there.
The players find that a full division of Germans are there.
If they scout around they'll find the Tunnel that is heavily guarded and they'll also find out that there are rumors (if they talk to people) that some of Hitler's personal Übermenschen (Axis Talents) have been spotted. Which may mean that Hitler is in Eagle's Nest. But it has been known that Hitler sometimes sends his personal Übermenschen on small missions.
There are two ways into Eagle's Nest
Tunnel and Elevator (which to date, no one has decided to take this route). Inside would be several Übermenschen. They would have been warned by Hitler's Weissager (Prophet) that the Talents are coming.
Tunnel to Eagle's Nest
Eagle's Nest Tunnel
Climb the Mountain
They must make 3 climbing rolls to get to the top.
After the 2nd climbing roll, the Valkyrie will attack them. It's Eva Braun with wings, armor, and a spear.
The Valkyrie
3 search lights will try to spot them. Hitler's Weissager (Prophet) is a precog and has warned the Germans that the Talents are coming. If the 3 search lights are eliminated, the Germans will work on moving the search lights from the other side of the Eagle's Nest to this side. If the Germans have been fooled into thinking that the threat has been eliminated, then they'll balance out the lights. If players are found by the spot lights, they'll be attacked by machine gun fire.
Eagle's Nest
Once the players make it to the top, they battle several Germans and one or two Übermenschen from the list of Hitler's 12. If the Germans think they've eliminated the threat, the players may have a chance to see this:
Hitler relaxing at Eagle's Nest
Watercolor of Eagle's Nest Interior by Hitler
If they kill this Hitler, he'll revert back to his original form,. This is Nachahmen (fake) and exact copy of Hitler. Otherwise, they'll find 2 Hitlers in the main bedroom.
At the top, they'll find the elevator going to the tunnel and a short flight of stairs going down to a level with just a hallway and doors leading to bedrooms. At the entrance to the hallway is a hallway monitor, Weissager (Prophet), but he'll not have enough will to make another precog talent use, so he's mostly useless now. He'll be unconcerned as he thinks all the troops upstairs can handle whatever the situation is.
The bedrooms are either:
empty if there's fighting going on.
has several Talents if they think the threat is over.
If the bedrooms are empty, all the Übermenschen are gathered in the bedroom at the end of the hall protecting Hitler. Otherwise if combat starts in the hallway, several Übermenschen will come out and defend themselves.
In Hitler's bedroom:
Tor (gate) will be drawing a door-sized rectangle on the wall.
The 3 Furien (Furies) will be holding hands.
Wand (wall) will be invisible and standing in front of the Real Hitler.
Nassen Lappen(wet rag) will be preventing gunpowder and explosives from going off.
Aura (aura) projecting a force field.
Others if they're still alive.
Real Hitler will try to command a player (the most effective one he's seen) to kill the other players.
If it goes badly, the Übermenschen will try to escape through the portal that Tor has opened up. Tor's gate goes to rolling hills and meadow land in full sunlight. A hint that this is a different time zone from Eagle's Nest. The gateway goes to Argentina. If Tor is killed or goes unconscious, the portal will close.
Hitler's 12 Übermenschen:
1. Valkyrie: Flying Female -- Eva Braun. 5d flight, +2 pt armor & spear (7d), 10 will
2-4. Furien (Furies): The 3 Zeds: triplet zeds, 6d, 6d, 3hd, can aid each other to max of 10d, 6 will each.
5. Nachahmen (fake): Perfect Copy Cat, walks around as Hitler, 2hd, 15 will
6. Weissager (prophet): Predictor 2hd, 2d, 25 will
7. Luftzug (draft): The Wind: Speed guy, 10 Coordination, 16 will
8. Nassen Lappen(wet rag): No chemical reactions (gunpowder/explosives), 7d, 7 yds radius, 15 will
9. Ohren (Ears): Hyper sense, 10 sense, 16 will
10. Aura (aura): Force field bodyguard, 5d, 20 will
11. Wand (wall): 2 hard armor, stands in way of bullets, invisible, 2hd, 5 will
12. Tor (gate): Teleporter by drawing a door, 2hd, 10 will
The Furher: Massive Will, Thought Control, Command 10, 50 will
The conceit is that Hitler is a Übermenschen with HyperCommand and has built his army and influence due to his Talent. He has 12 Übermenschen with him just like Jesus's 12 Apostles.
This is a fairly simple and straight forward scenario and designed to fit in a 4 hour time slot.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Generation Starship (working title)
Date/Time - Oct 17, 8:00 PM - 12:00 AM GM: Aaron Vanek System: Songlines Maturity Rating: Adult themes Available Spaces: 7 Game Length: 4 Characters: Created at the table This is a playtest for a new RPG system that uses music as a story
guide. In this scenario, players will represent generations of one
family line aboard a starship looking for a new home among the stars. The game uses dice rolling for task resolution, but also elements of larping and creation/making. Triggers: There will be elements of death (players represent a family
line, so individual characters are going to die, hopefully of old age)
and birth (sex is merely implied, however). Some of the songs might be
very sad or at least emotional. There will be a few instances of CvC
(character versus character) which could be intense or aggressively
argumentative.
Aaron was playtesting his own system which is pretty interesting. There's several aspects to it. One is a playlist with an associated image. The song also determines the duration of a scene. At the end of the song, the players must have either fulfilled certain criteria by dice rolling or by role-playing. The system is interesting and pretty flexible.
Aaron designed the Generation Starship game to have a balance of 1/3 role-playing, 1/3 dice rolling, and 1/3 making. Making is basically writing a note, puzzle solving, or drawing a map cooperatively. Dice rolling consists of rolling dice and either pattern matching (a preset pattern) or getting a specific total.
Since this was a playtest, we found several things that were tiresome:
We were naming each generation and that got to be a chore when someone had 20 children and at some point, the previous generation dies off, so all that work was for nothing.
Each child also allows you to gain or lose aspects, but at some point, rolling 20 dice to add and remove aspects became too cumbersome.
Some of the die rolling reminded me of the game Escape, which is a fun game, but that game only runs for 10 minutes. Die rolling for long periods of time and adding handfuls of dice became more of a chore than a pleasure. The die rolling became "The Thing" vs the role-playing which should have been the thing.
So some of the problems were with the scenario (which Aaron will adjust) and not the system that Aaron was trying to playtest. I think less die rolling and tying the die rolls to role-playing would serve the game better. Maybe 10% die rolling, 25% making, and 65% role-playing would have been a better mix.
Overall an interesting, but mixed experience.
Treasure Trapped!
Date/Time - Oct 17, 11:59 PM - 2:00 AM GM: Terror Rabbit Ventures System: Movie Big Bad Con Screening of Treasure Trapped! Three unlikely heroes journey into the curious world of LARP (Live Action Role-Play) to explore what happens when you take pretending to a whole new level.
I'm glad that Matt S. brought this documentary to show us. It was quite interesting even though the movie failed (bad disc) in the last 7 minutes and we lost the ending.
It starts off with SCA-style Boffers and D&D LARPs. The Boffer training seemed very odd. I've seen SCA and I've fenced and done Kendo, and what they were teaching didn't seem very realistic to me. They also didn't wear any head protection. It reminded me more of kids with foam swords than combat training.
Then it goes to more and more extreme LARPs where people have bought part of an abandoned mine to dungeon crawl, people who have opened up a high school where kids learn by LARPing, a group that spent over $1M to make the inside of a naval destroyer into a Battlestar from Battlestar Galactica, to a group that does a 36 hour immersive LARP as employees of a marketing firm for questionable products or PR for despots of a dictatorship.
At some point, I began to become disturbed by the lengths of what was going on. At first the high school seemed cool until I saw scenes where some students were wearing yellow Juden stars and it was clear they were roleplaying the Holocaust. Umm, that crossed the line for me. They also showed that they were going to roleplay a Salem Witchhunt (they talked about future events and pointed at upcoming schedules). My mind reeled. What was on the future schedule? A Lynching in the South? Killing Fields? ISIL beheadings? They should have learned from the Stanford Prison Experiment which went very wrong and I don't think there's people on staff that understood that some of these high school students could be damaged for life. One student said he loved the place because he was such an outsider before and he felt like this was a family -- yeah, like The Manson Family, especially if they roleplay Nazis and Jews.
The Marketing Firm LARP was painful to watch. I personally would not do it as it reminded me too much of real work. I roleplay to escape work stress. At one point, a player got fired. I turned to Jack and said, "I would have gone postal." I bet they wouldn't have counted on that.
The beginning was a bit slow with the SCA-style Boffers and D&D LARPers which most roleplayers are familiar with, but it got more and more interesting as it got more and more extreme.
Definitely worth a watch.
Death By Moonlight
Date/Time - Oct 18, 10:00 AM - 2:00 PM GM: Carl Rigney System: Night Witches Maturity Rating: Adult themes Available Spaces: 4 Game Length: 4 Characters: Created at the table In World War II’s darkest hour, natural born Soviet airwomen
volunteered to take to the skies to defend Mother Russia from the
Hitlerite bandits. They flew terrifying night missions in obsolete
biplanes, dropping bombs on the invaders and when they couldn’t get
bombs, they dropped railroad ties. By day they struggled with repairs,
parts shortages, political officers, and all the forces that wanted to
see them fail. This is the story of their triumph anyway, as told by
you. Beginners welcome, system will be taught. Your biplane is made of wood and canvas with an unarmored fuel tank
that goes up like a candle when hit. You don’t wear parachutes because
that weight could be better used for more bombs, and because you fly too
low for a parachute to be useful. The cover of darkness is your
greatest ally as you glide in, engines off, to torment the invaders. But
even when the moon is full, still you must fly.
A very fun game. Carl does a great job of balancing between players and giving everybody enough screen time. He did a great introduction to the Night Witches game. The game was designed to be more of a campaign, so he picked and chose some interesting parts for us to play.
Even though Carl picked and chose various parts of the campaign, it felt like a full game to me. Nothing was rushed and everything was fully fleshed out.
I loved the game, but I'm worried about the repetition of mission after mission in a campaign, whether that would get boring. I'll get into a campaign game of this to see if that's the case.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
On our first mission, we crashed and burned two planes. So, I had to scrounge for another plane. I was a NKVD snitch, so I blamed the repair crew for our crash. On our next mission, I crashed another plane and continued to blame a member of the repair crew, so she was being fingered as a saboteur.
At one point, our base was being overrun, so we had to evacuate and one of the better scenes happened where Kim F. wound up mercy killing her Navigator as the Germans closed in.
In the finale, we had to bomb our own abandoned landing strip, grounded bombers, and fuel depot to prevent it from getting into enemy hands.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Dead Dogs
Date/Time - Oct 18, 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM GM: Chris Czerniak System: Feng Shui 2 Maturity Rating: Adult themes Available Spaces: 5 Game Length: 4 Characters: Created at the table The triads have infiltrated the Hong Kong Police Force and crime has
become rampant. However, there is something that lurks under the crime
family and since the Triads killed your family, or ruined your career,
or your brother works for them and you want him out; you’ll do anything
to find out what is really going on and make things right.
This was the funnest game that I played in. I had a great time as the Scrappy Kid. My character concept was Wednesday from the Addams Family, but wearing a Girl Scout uniform and selling stale Girl Scout cookies which she used as Throwing Stars. Her motivation was that Pugsley was selling drugs in Hong Kong and got grabbed by Mad Tiger's men for failing to get the right amount of money.
I got to Toss My Cookies and kill people with them in a variety of ways. I also had a distraction move, so I used a lot of improvised weapons in order to slow the bad guys down.
What was amazing was that this game was only two set pieces and even though it was combat in two areas, we created full stories for all the characters and the game was organic and fully fleshed out and not rushed. I loved it.
One technique that Chris used was that we were required to make one connection between our character and another character, so when the action started, we had a reason to support each other. We also had our personal flashback which gave each of us our own bit of screen time to either expand our character or flesh out the plot.
In the set pieces, he let us add one element per player, so we could customize the layout. Again this game depends on cooperation and imagination from the players, so good players is a key to a good Feng Shui game.
Overall, very fun.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The main bad guy was named Mad Tiger. The first set piece was at a fighting ring. There's a VIP box above the fight ring and stairs leading up to the VIP box.
We were allowed to add one custom item each. Here were were the customizations: jetting flames in the fighting ring (Chris added the periodic jets, originally it was just flames), a giant gong, a betting booth, a giant buffet table (my addition), and caged tigers under the VIP box where a trap door drops people into the tiger cage. The floor is clear glass, so you can see the tigers pacing underneath the VIP box (my modification of another player's add which Chris allowed).
I added the buffet table because I needed various food items to throw at people in order to distract them. I used a creme pie, crushed Wasabi peas (as a blinding agent), a high alcohol bottle of liquor (thrown into the jetting flame during the fight), and a bowl of guac (as a threat).
Chris asked us where we were in the set. I was selling Girl Scout cookies. The Everyday Hero was in the fighting ring. The Thief was working for one of the Bad Guys and was in the VIP booth. The Masked Avenger was pickpocketing people in the audience. The Undercover Cop was inside waiting to give the signal for the HK police to raid the place.
A large fight ensued and we used everything in the fight ring and there was a lot of controlled confusion.
The players find out that a train containing a large shipment of illegal drugs were being taken into China. So the next set piece was the train.
We find that our loved ones: The Masked Avenger's brother, Pugsley, and others were buffed-up by the illegal drug and were under the bad guy's mind-control.
So we then had the big fight on the train and after all the bad guys were defeated, the train stops and we end on a cliff hanger for a sequel as we're surrounded by the Chinese Army.
My favorite bits were:
1. The conflicted Thief helping and hindering us several times due to divided loyalties. At the end, she grabbed the body of her unconscious evil mentor and fled the train. Her love interest was the Masked Avenger's brother who was another Masked Avenger. There was some mistaken identity-fu between the brothers which was quite amusing.
2. The two Masked Avengers fighting each other. The PC Masked Avenger unwilling to hurt his own brother and the NPC Masked Avenger willing to kill us all. Eventually, the PC Masked Avenger was able to snap his brother out of the mind control.
3. Wednesday saying to the Mad Tiger who had fallen into the tiger cage (and who was able to control the tiger who had already eaten someone else), "Hey Mister, where's my fat brother?" And Mad Tiger telling her if she let him out by using the door code that he knew, he'd take her to him. Of course, Wednesday let him out and she was taken to the train.
4. Wednesday taking out two of the major bad guys by using Girl Scout cookies. One move was to ricochet a cookie off a train poster of the Girl Scouts and hitting a major bad guy in the back of the head -- that was a knock out blow. Another was to throw a whole package of cookies up and firing it as a tube of cookies, each smashing into the guys face, cookie after cookie. That took out mind-controlled Pugsley.
There were more great bits. You just had to be there.
Dead of Winter Horror Invitational 2015
Saturday 11am
Saturday 7pm
Sunday 11am
Sunday 7pm
