Free RPG Day 2016

June 18, 2016 was Free RPG Day.  I went to my local game store which I had to find online and found they were running Night's Black Agents (NBA).  I wanted to try it again because I was interested in running The Dracula Dossier and I wanted to try it again.  The game went from 3-6pm.  I enjoyed the game and learned about "cherries."  When a General Ability is 8 or higher, special skills and options opens up for the character.  The "Double Tap" supplement adds even more cherries.  These cherries basically adds more "moves" in Apocalypse World parlance.  I really loved the cherries because they added a lot to the action-spy-feel of Night's Black Agents.

The Van Helsing Letter was a fun scenario and definitely runs longer than the 3 hour time slot allotted to the game.  I had fun.  At one point some mooks confronted a shop owner and as my other wet work buddies started to strong arm the mooks, I opted to do something different and as the mook in front of me started to pull a gun out of his pants pocket, I reached in and pulled gun's trigger, shooting him in his leg.  Ouch.  Outside of the shop, our Parkour expert got into a chase and fight.  As a side note, what I did wasn't a cherry, it was something I wanted to do and spent enough General Ability points to succeed in.  One thing I was thinking of doing, grabbing the mook and using him as a shield, I was prevented from doing this because it was a cherry and I didn't have a high enough skill to get that move.  So, what becomes odd is that when you want to try something unique, but it's codified into the rules, you're not even allowed to try.  But if I try something that isn't codified, I can actually try and succeed.  Sort of odd.

I enjoyed the game, but I'm still a bit luke warm on Night's Black Agents.  With the cherries, it felt like a toned down version of Feng Shui 2.  In that case, I'd rather go full bore Feng Shui 2 instead.

As a side note, one of the players in the Night's Black Agents game was very well versed in the game and is a big fan of the game.  He pointed me to other starter scenarios and podcasts of NBA sessions.

I also watched a little bit of the 13th Age game, Swords Against the Dead.  It was another combat heavy fantasy game.  What was funny was there were two chaos mages in the game and their random spell effects basically messed a lot of things up.  I can see the attraction of running them because they're fun to play and their randomness adds a bit of humor and wonkiness to the game.  Thus there were two and too much wonkiness.

A bonus was I was able to pick up a hardcopy of The Derelict.