Fallout Shelter on the PC; a near-sighted affair

OK, so recently I've been getting over playing Fallout Shelter... I mean, you can only go so far with it, despite it's yumminess. I did have a slight resurgence playing in the relatively new "Survival" mode, but even that only holds my attention so.

That said, I found this PC Review article by Ian explaining how to go about installing the BlueStacks Android emulator on your PC, so that you could play on your laptop. (You can also see some hints at the Bluestacks website; good marketing, that.)

So, I installed and started playing it on the PC, which breathed a little more life into this process for me. A few days later I'm quickly over it, but I just thought it was strange that both vaults I've created are extremely near sighted. Seriously, almost everyone has glasses. Including the raiders!

I kid you not... LOTS of glasses.

So, how does this game stack up on the PC? Well, it's the same in general, obviously, since this is just an emulator. However not having a touchscreen PC, it's a little annoying in various ways. Zooming out is not well controlled. You use the CTRL and plus (+) or minus (-) keys, but they work haphazardly. Also, zooming all the way out doesn't give you a full view of the vault as it does on my iPhone or Android tablet.

I've played this game on the iPhone, where it is seemless. On my Android tablet, the game is a little finicky; it's hard to grab people in a timely manner. On the PC I found it somewhere in the middle.

It is nice seeing it all BIG, so that's the main positive. And I suppose if you don't have a smart phone, this would be the way - maybe the only way - to go!

EDIT: Time hack!

OK, so this may also work on phones, but with other unintended consequences...

You can use the Bluestack settings to move your virtual phone back and forth in time. THIS IS THE ULTIMATE hack for Fallout Shelter. Send someone into the wasteland... now move the clock forward 24 hours. Boom, found 24 items. Tell them to come back. Move the clock forward 12 hours. Boom, returned. Similarly you can accelerate training. The nice thing is that moving the clock back has no negative effects.

The method I've found is to setup your vault, then close the Fallout Shelter app in Bluestacks, then go to Settings and change the phone, then open the Fallout Shelter app. Done... it registers the new time just as if that much time had passed.

Strategicon Orccon 2016 (Feb 12-15)

Con startup

The usual: stay over at Howie's place Thursday night. The morning brings a fresh green juice to pump up my body with all the nutrients I'm definitely not going to get at the con.

After the "running of the nerds" for RPG signups, Howie and I find ourselves decently positioned for games.

The game packaged and ready to go. I love how heavy this box is. Feels like a portable nuke.

Fallout Shelter: Finding The Descenders (Fri 2-6pm)

GM: Me.
Players:

• Lori as Pamela Smith, Wasteland Orphan

• Jim as Franklin Webber, The Immigrant

• Andy as Mike McMahan, Wasteland Explorer

• CA Dave as Ed, Food Engineer

This was my scenario and system built around Fallout Shelter, the phone game. Getting to the room I already had a few alts waiting to play, and lucky them, cause Bob was stuck in traffic (unfortunately for him). That meant that both Andy Salazar and CA Dave joined Jim and Lori Sandoval for this little adventure.

Background: I tried to build a system that both celebrated the resource management and mood of Fallout Shelter, but: role playing. I settled on a Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) hack, but based on Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats and a d10 (simplifying Fallout Shelter's percentages). Oh ya, and Lego. I play-tested this a week prior, which gave me enough time to refine some props and tighten up some mechanics.

Please Stand By...

During a pee break; you get to see a little behind-the-scenes.

What game doesn't benefit from an initial journey through the wasteland.

I came into the con hoping the game was ready for prime time, and from the players comments, it didn't disappoint. Of course as the GM you are always looking at the bad, and there is definitely more than a few things I can fix, especially around the scenarios (of which this game can handle many and various).

Here's a clip from the Happy Jacks RPG podcast (live from Orccon) from the next night, with CA Dave and Jim Sandoval talking about the game. I do it partly to brag, but also because it means much to me that people enjoy it so:

Full podcast episode can be found on Happy Jacks RPG Podcast website.

Hell House (Fri 8pm-midnight)

GM: Tyler Spahr
Players: Tomer, Howie, Dimitri, Andy, Nick, and his girlfriend (each playing themselves, roughly)

The description read: Six friends gather at a rental beach house once a year for a private weekend of tabletop gaming. This year they are playing a game for their lives. You are put to the ultimate test of survival with 5 of your closest friends. 

This scenario felt very reminiscent of an escape room, where the room is trying very hard to kill you. Everyone came into it ready to play, and the role playing was fun. Tyler has scoped out the house, full of traps and interesting puzzles. The biggest problem was that an escape room relies on visual cues, and although there were some available (pictures and other props), we would get stuck and need to ask for clarifications on views, rooms and layouts.

Some of the really cool parts was that each player had his or her own tower. Additionally, certain game effects would have physical impacts on you as a player. If your eye got poked out, you'd need to wear an eye mask while pulling. A few fingers chopped off? You'd have to wrap those fingers in a gauze and not let them touch the tower. Loved it.

Our general feedback was that the game could benefit from a few more props, including picture / map layouts of the rooms, to better facilitate questions and ensuring all the players were roughly on the same page in regards to the very important physical locations in this game. Talking to Tyler later in the week, he created such props for the next night's game, and to great effect. I would highly recommend checking this out.

A medley of Hell House

Dead World (Sat 9am-1pm)

GM: Sam Carter
Players: 

• Tomer as Rose ("Thorn"), The Calamity

• Howie as Eave, The Preacher

• Andy as Russel, The ?

Normally I make it a point of playing in Sam's Saturday late night Dread games, having done maybe 5 times in the last few  years. This was the first time I've got to play in a game by Sam that wasn't Dread. The system is a PbtA hack for something like the gritty western Deadwood series.

As in most PbtA games, we did a bunch of character and party bonds and definitions at the onset. Eave The Preacher was travelling, and preaching the gospel of Eve. I played Rose, who everyone else called "Thorn", a dour, cool killer. Russel was an ex-slave, and the two of us traveled as hired ons for Eave's traveling road show. We ended up getting mixed up with the local preachers, who didn't take kindly to us, and as it turned out, weren't preachers at all... they were wanted men hiding out in the town. Shit went sideways, but in the end we wrecked shop, and settled down in various ways. Eave, it turned out, was not a male as many thought she was (which is perhaps why her sermons always captured my ear), and I opened a bar called the Tumbleweed Rose, and served up my lovely drink, the Whiskey Thorn (a thick-cut slice of bacon in a shot of whisky).

All in all, the game captured the mood well, and if you want a somewhat pure western game (i.e. not the Deadlands fantastic variety), this suits very well.

The Calamity

Dog Day Afternoon LARP (Sat 2-6pm)

GM: Aaron Vanek (and Kirsten Hageleit)
Players: About 7 of us, including Sasha, Howie, and more

The description read: "Inspired by the classic eponymous movie based on a real NYC bank robbery in August 1972. What was supposed to be a simple job turned into an unforgettable examination of the human condition. No familiarity with the film or the real incident expected."

This was definitely one of the highlights of the con. Aaron and his wife have run LARPs of one sort or another for some time, and this was something Aaron wanted to test out. He basically setup 2 rooms, one as the bank, and one as the police-type room. A phone connected the two. There were effectively 3 factions: The Robbers, The Hostages (bank employees / customers), The Authorities (police / FBI). Him and his wife played all sorts of NPCs, like the media, crank callers, the crowds that gathered that day, the mayor's office, etc. I got to play young Sal, the young partner in crime.

They setup the scene so that it is effectively the start of this real historical event, and then just let it play out. Everyone had certain restrictions: The cops couldn't shoot the robbers if they had hostages. The hostages couldn't overpower the robbers, but could try to escape. In a confrontation between the robbers and the cops, the robbers would lose. 

It was fascinating to watch it all play out, and what was excellent was the work done in providing the social and historical background around this situation.

If you are interested in the story, feel free to read the plot (spoilers!) here on Wikipedia. I haven't yet seen the film, but it's on the to-do list. 

It's sweltering!

The Happy Jacks RPG Podcast, LIVE (Sat 8-11pm)

I've been coming to Strategicon for 3 years, in large part due to this podcast, and yet I've never attended their 8pm Saturday live 'casts. I've always wanted to, but Saturday at 8pm is the time for some of the best games, including the likes of Cthulhu and Dread. I didn't quite mean to make this an underhanded insult to the crew, but succeeded immensely!

The podcast was excellent fun, entertaining, and drinky. I got to meet weasel_creature and wife, good salt of the earth. I got to hear people talk shit about my game. Good shit. One more check on the bucket shit list!

Me and the HJ crew

HJ crew and Stu

Fall of Magic (Sat 11:30pm-1am)

Bob Q as Ellamura, Golem of Ravenhall
Tomer as Caspian, Knight of Stormguard
Howie as Fawn, Swineherd of Barley Town
Sam C as ?

Time for some late night hippie smoking! I had a number of different game, but we settled on Fall of Magic, by Ross Cowman of Heart of the Deernicorn. Fall of Magic is a narrative-heavy game played on a scroll. There are minimal mechanics, and if you are looking for dice and miniatures, you are in the wrong place. If you are looking to play a game with index cards... JACKPOT!

Hippie game in a box!

The premise is extremely simple: Magic is dying, and the Magus is dying with it. We travel together to the realm of Umbra where magic was born.

Three of us started the game at Ravenhall, the starting point. The path is a bit of a railroad for the first few locations, as we are just starting to explore our respective characters, as well as the Magus, which everyone can help define. In this game I was the first to grab the Magus, and decided to make it a group of 15 little 2-foot high gnomes that traveled in a group. After a few locations go by, we get to a crossroads. There are more than a few of these in the game, so it definitely has replay-ability just in that respect.

A few scenes in, Sam swung by, having completed his 8pm-midnight game, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to just insert him into the game mid-flow. My friend Howie had to leave about an hour and half in, and I was also surprised at how easy it would have been to continue the story without him, if we wanted to. However being 1:30am, we decided to call it quits.

It's definitely not a game for everyone, but it's also definitely a game I want to play again and again, with different folks. As with many of these narrative-heavy mechanics-light games, I highly recommend people try them out. This one is a great one for a relaxing mood. Which isn't to say you can't make it narratively brutal!

Picking up the kid (Sun morning)

The morning involved breakfast and then navigating through LA Marathon traffic to get my daughter to the con. We proceeded to swim at the pool for almost 2 hours, and then wandered the halls for a bit. Lunch was a walk up 13 flights of stairs (the elevators sucked), and teaching the kid how to play poker (first regular, then Texas hold 'em).

Fallout Shelter: For Kids! (Sun 5-9pm)

GM: Me
Players: the kid as Coca and Cola; Anakin as Vlad and Sam

Originally we were supposed to be joined by two other kids, but as it turned out, it ended up being just the kid and Anakin. I tweaked the scenario more than bit, to give it a more kid-friendly feel (although it still involved betrayal, vault dwellers imprisoned and some cyborged into evil guardians). All in all though, these two little gamers (respectively 7 and 9 years old), were able to easily handle the mechanics and the story.

One funny thing was having Keith, Anakin's dad - who sat in for the last 30 minutes or so - tell me how great it was that I created this game "for kids". I had to dissuade him of such thoughts, as Friday's game and my prior playtest were quite more intense and horror in style, than kid-friendly. But it was great to see this could be a kid game too!

Kiddie vault

The late night King of Tokyo tournament, meant to dissuade kids from playing. 9-year old Anakin still won 2nd place, suckers!

Monday and out

The next morning was climbing 13 flights again, this time for breakfast. Then some swimming, hanging out with Anakin and family, and a quick look at the auction.

There was also the second Splendor tournament. Unfortunately couldn't play since I was on babysitting duties, but I did take some quick peeks, and it looks like the caliber of play has increased.

Splendor "mega" tournament with 36 participants!

I did a quick search for The Mook, but found that his normal Monday morning game had been cancelled due to sick.

And so it ends, until next time...

Fallout Shelter RPG: Play test and feedback

Coming into it...

I definitely didn't feel quite prepared with a few of the props, background music, and some of the possible storylines, but I knew I had enough that it should run as a game that shouldn't totally suck. So with that, yesterday I ran a playtest.

The scenario is called Fallout Shelter: Finding the Descenders, and is a one-shot convention game built on top of parts of various systems including some PbtA (Powered by the Apocalypse engine) as well as some weird cobbled together mechanics that are a hack of things that happen in Fallout Shelter the phone app. Some of the "moves" include Punch, Shoot, Heal, and Rush. There aren't too many proper moves because I want to emulate the game in may ways and have it provide a lot of the flavor.

However because this is an RPG, there is also a move called "3-D", which is a catch all for anything you want to do that isn't a two dimensional app mechanic; you know, like convince that super mutant over there that you're an ally.

Players included Howie, Sasha, Jenny, and Tyler. Three of them consist of my regular crew, but I haven't played with Tyler before. He has a background of D&D including the newer 5E.

The verdict

The game went well enough. Everyone had a pretty good time, but there were definitely some things that need to be tweaked. Feedback and fixes include:

• The game took just over 5 hours. I want this to fit nicely into a 4 hour con game, so some cutting will have to occur.
• The original version borrowed from Dread and had a questionnaire for each player. Although at least one player said this helped with initial game immersion, the questions and answers got lost in the game. It didn't seem to serve a story purpose, and to be honest, I'm just not GM enough to manage the questionnaire with all the other moving pieces. 
• I created little Objective cards (with the intention that each player have 3 objectives, similar to the game), and completely forgot to pass them out. Again, there was so much going on that adding that to the game felt overwhelming. However, in discussions with one player, it was suggested to replace the questionnaire, and instead have Objective cards, where the cards are specific to archetypes. For instance, an Objective card labelled "Bloodthirsty" where all the objectives are combat related. Removing the questionnaires should buy about 15 minutes.
• The initial Wasteland part took too long. Instead of having 4 separate scenes, I'll probably take it down to 2, however I'll incorporate random encounter roles from each of the 4 players to still provide the "wealth" of goods and encounters. Also, I needn't spend as much time as I did in the wasteland section, but it did provide some tone and mood. Probably shave about 20 minutes from this part.
• Everyone liked the RPG elements, so although I found it took a bit away from the mechanical component of the game, that wasn't a loss.
• Everyone liked the pacing of Caps collection in the game. Felt like you could do and buy things with it, but it wasn't too fast or too slow. I initially felt like I was handing out caps too easily, but as a player I think they enjoyed that pace.

Onwards!

Fallout Shelter RPG: A Hand With The Speaker System

Crunch time! Tomorrow is the game test for the Fallout Shelter RPG game, and I'm quickly scrounging together parts and mechanics. Getting nervous, but hoping everything will go fine. I mean, what could go wrong, really?

And with that, here is my little helper for tomorrow... my little X-mini Kai capsule speaker (per here):

Crossing fingers, or mechanical appendages as the case may be.

A Fallout Shelter role playing game scenario

It's time! A new year, which means a new Lego-based role playing game to create and run at cons all year long. At least, that's what I've done for the last 2 years.

The first year was the Dungeon of Yendor game, a dungeon crawl, Rogue inspired, Savage Worlds game. The second year was Distress on Life Liner 928, a Star Frontiers, Savage Worlds, starship dungeon crawl.

And now, it's 2016. Originally I was contemplating a Lego-based car wars type game, which would probably have elements from X-Wing. Especially when I found out how many Lego wheels I had lying around. And not a bad idea after Mad Max, and all that.

But instead I found that last year I fell into the Fallout Shelter app, a little resource management game that's something of a teaser for Fallout 4. And that's led me to this years Lego-based RPG creation: Fallout Shelter: Finding the Descenders:

It's been over 100 years since our ancestors built the vault. We've done pretty well since that time, all things considered. We even discovered how to use the telegraph that connects us to Vault 321, and have established a trade route between our vaults, through the wasteland. Today a group of us from Vault 456, the Ascenders, leaves on a journey through the wasteland to Vault 321, to meet with the Descenders. 

I'm hoping it'll emulate and do justice to some of the feeling and nostalgia around Fallout Shelter, but with in a different form factor: as a weirdo role playing game. No, it won't be a full vault built entirely out of Legos, but I really don't think it'll disappoint. 

Here's a spoiler-free view of my draft of character choices:

More later... got a ton of stuff to get ready by Feb 12!

51 in '15

I heard about "51 in 15" around October, through various gamers on G+ circles. Looks like it might've originated from Epie of Dread fame over here. I liked the idea, and had already done enough to maybe make it this year, so why not!?

Here's my list, with a sentence about each.

1. Microscope: Great GM-less world / history building system by Ben Robbins where you don't play specific characters (except temporarily in scenes) that I'm itching to use with players prior to running a campaign.
2. Forget Me Not (by Jim Pinto): A card-based GM-less game that creates a Twin Peaks-like mystery, which you will solve by the end of the game.
3. Numenera: The perfect blend of fantasy-style adventure with a far future so indecipherable as to seem like magic.
4. The Queen's Cavaliers (by Caoimhe Ora Snow): Swashbuckling adventure in a steam-punkish, renaissance-ish pseudo-France, with a really cool action shopping mechanic. 
5. Monster of the Week: Fun supernatural / monster mystery RPG, a la X-files or Buffy.
6. Apotheca: A beautifully potion-themed candy crush-like board game, soon to be released by Andy Federspiel.
7. Agricola: Finally learned how to play after purchasing it for $5 at a thrift store and having it sit on the shelf for 2 years.
8. Starship Valkyrie (LARP): Sci-fi pseudo-Star Trek type LARP with many ship roles, miniature sub-games, and also the opportunity for role playing mayhem.
9. Fate Core (Vinternacht by JiB): First time playing vanilla Fate Core (i.e. I've played Atomic Robo before) in a Viking one-shot run by Jason; so immersive and amazing table story cohesion.
10. Castle Panic: A great cooperative game for kids, but not something I'd otherwise bring to the table.
11. Timeline: A simple card game for guessing the sequence of historical events; great for history buffs and non-gamers alike; doesn't work for young kids who haven't taken history classes.
12. Cardline: A more kid-friendly version of Timeline, for guessing sequences such as the size or lifespan of animals.
13. Apples to Apples Kids / Junior: Excellent kid-friendly filler / party game that can be played with adults as well.
14. Legend of the Five Rings (Journey of The Savage Six by Bill Roper): Pseudo asia / Japan RPG with mechanics that suit the setting; great con game by Bill where we played Orcs.
15. Kingdom (The Stellar Eagle by Scott Martin): Another GM-less game by Ben Robbins, this time by playing a specific character in a kingdom-sized grouping; in our case the first (and possibly last) colonizing ship sent from Earth.
16. Dread: Mad Max Fury Road: A dread hack by Andy Munich, where you play a clan in the world of Fury Road.
17. Seafarers of Catan: The simplest of Catan expansions, keeping the essence of the original, but with Gold and exploration mixed in. 
18. Vox (The Facility by Matt Steele): A role playing game where you play both a character, and also the voice that haunts the player character to your right; a wild puzzly ride run by a great GM at Big Bad Con.
19. Serpent's Tooth (by Ross Cowman): A magically delicious system that transforms from GM-run to GM-less in spurts and starts; fascinating!
20. Torchbearer (The Secret Vault of the Queen of Thieves by Thor Olavsrud): I overheard this system described as the Vietnam of dungeon crawls, and got to feel that in action with the game designer running a session; very old school dungeon crawl feel!
21. Songlines (Generation Starship by Aaron Vanek): An inspiring dice game / rpg / mixtape, which I hope to write my own scenario for.
22. Fate Accelerated (Rise of Nations by Ezra Denney): A Fate accelerated hack, that takes "hack" to the next level by playing nation states, instead of characters; one of my (admittedly many) favorite games of Big Bad Con '15.
23. Elevensies: A high society tea-serving game that exudes flavors of Love Letter game play, but with more complexity.
24. Boss Monster 2 - The Next Level: I played Boss Monster once after the original Kickstarter at a friends place - perfect mix of old 8-/16-bit graphics and Nintendo look and feel mixed with gamer nerd references throughout and fun gaming; and then won and got to play version #2 which is an expansion that is also self-contained; fun for kids too, even though they don't get the references.
25. Thebes: A game of archaeology that harks to Indiana Jones, and actually involves treasure hunting when grabbing blind in bags for chips with real historical artifacts on them.
26. Loot: A simple and quick pirate-themed card game for kids.
27. Car Wars Card Game: Old Steve Jackson cardgame that provides quick auto duel arena action, without involving any miniatures or spacial requirements.
28. Takenoko: Very pretty panda and bamboo-themed board game with simple mechanics and goals, and a board that grows differently each time which adds decent re-playability.
29. Imperial Assault: Quick pseudo war-game Star Wars scenarios.
30. Cthulhu Wars: A very fun and mechanically clean combination of Risk, Diplomacy, and Cthulhu... with amazing miniatures (some of which aren't really all that miniature in size).
31. Dungeon Solitaire (by Matthew Lowes): A one-player push-your-luck dungeon crawl with a standard deck of cards.
32. Star Wars Edge of Empire RPG (Keeping Up With the Cloneses by Stu Venable): A narrative system that uses customized dice to good effect, and helps exude Star Wars flavor; my first time playing in any Star Wars RPG-type game, and an excellent scenario with hidden agendas that I enjoyed, by Stu.
33. Vye: An interesting land acquisition matching card game, not too dissimilar to Carcassonne in some ways.
34. Forbidden Island: A great Gamewright cooperative game that works well for kids and adults (especially those new to gaming); probably a better intro than Pandemic for the non-gamer.
35. Forbidden Desert: A second version of cooperative game that I enjoyed more than the Forbidden Island.
36. Frog Juice: A bit of an odd kids card game by Gamewright, but it works and fills the gap right now, and is worth it for a few bucks at the thrift store.
37. Battlestar Galactica The Board Game: Perfectly mimics some aspects of the show in that it is a cooperative game that may also contain hidden competitive player characters that are subtly sabotaging the game; played with a few expansions, some of which I hear are vital for long-term replayability.
38. Battle Sheep: Screw checkers, this should be the de facto basic little kid spacial strategy game; works for adults to, at least for a little bit,
39. Who What Where: A Pictionary-style game that works for kids, where you draw three random cards and get people to guess the who, the what, and the where: "A child..." "...drawing pictures..." "...at a board game."
40. Goblins Drool, Fairies Rule!: A beautifully illustrated, cute little kid card game of rhymes.
41. One Night Ultimate Werewolf: A 5-10 player party game that fixes much of Werewolf 's failures; it plays quickly (5-10 minutes a game), has no long delays between games, and is all about information and what you will and won't share.
42. Tsuro: A simplistic 2-8 player game of fluid dynamics.
43. King of Tokyo: Power Up! expansion: When King of Tokyo becomes a bit dull, this little expansion gives it a power up for a little extra life.
44. My Life With Master: Play a toady to the dark villain in this very narrative role playing game, where the mechanics make it difficult to break your allegiance to the big bad.
45. Worst Game Ever: A Jeff Siadek game which is really a card-based party game for gamers; you will hate it, but you will also be laughing hysterically within the first 15 minutes. 
46. Wordarrific: Another Jeff Siadek game which is a card-based "scrabble" type spelling game that has elements of the judging and voting system from Apples to Apples / Cards Against Humanity games.
47. Fallout Shelter: One of two phone games I played this year, which I have spent more time than I'd like to admit; a single player resource management and vault building in the Fallout universe with cute dwellers.
48. Subterfuge: The other phone game I played this year, which is a weird submarine / undersea country battle that has elements of PvP and diplomacy.
49. Escape Room LA - The Detective: You (and up to 9 others?) trapped in a 1940's detective's room where you must find a way out before someone comes to kill you; communication with others is the key, and booking with as many friends as possible is a win for fun.
50. The Grizzled: Thematic, enjoyable (yet melancholy) World War 1 (France?) cooperative card game with simple mechanics that's sort of a reverse rummy with friends.
51. Agricola All Creatures Big and Small: A 2-player simplified Agricola, which plays very quickly and feels difficult to optimize.

Huzzah! And here's my sticker reward (of which this, and others, you can get on the aforementioned URL)...

ASTG: Star Frontiers, A First Session

This was my first ASTG meetup at my place, with Aaron Vanek (of Cthulhu movie festival, LARP, and Songlines fame), Omowale, and Lucas (one of my neighbors). It was Wale's first time playing an RPG, and she dug it. Lucas has been doing D&D Encounters (or Pathfinder Society? same thing I guess) for a while at local game shops, so it was nice to expose him to some other fun madness.

I ran them through my Star Frontiers Lego game: Distress on Life Liner 928. Details not provided (because I'm writing this way after the fact).

Another crew of the Life Liner 928.

Two quiet years

The Quiet Jackercon Year

I love me some GM-less games. It's been a while since I've played the Quiet Year (http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year/ ), and wanting to participate more in some online gaming, I decided to run one for Jackercon VIII a few weeks back. Especially because a certain lowkeyoh said he'd be down.

Leading up to this game I was trying to figure out which software or method to use to have a collaborative drawing map for the game. Apparently you can draw in Roll20, but a little testing on that proved that it was more difficult than I felt it was worth.

A quick search online showed that a few people recommended Google Drawings, and a quick test proved it was usable. Of course if you are using Google Hangouts on Air, the drawing itself will only be recorded if you actually share your screen, although I always have problems sharing browser windows in Hangouts, especially if they are in Chrome. In my case, the best way to share the map, every once in a while, was to shine my video camera on my monitor. It works.

We went with a "fleeting" Quiet Year, which is to say that you basically pull 4 cards (of 13) for each season, so that you are playing a game that is about 2/3 as long as a full game. Combined with the 30 minutes of shitty wifi problems I first experienced, and then the general slowness you get online, and it still took almost 4 hours.

And there you have it, some fun with Andrew (lowkeyoh on the HJ forums), his friend John, and Bill. Here's the video, during which you can see my connection and camera were truly atrocious (although I've verified later that my connection wasn't that bad at the time, however the recording makes it look unusuable):

Here's the resulting map. Note that the Cthulhu is technically bad form, since we should only draw things and not use pre-made art, however it was part of the end game and I think at that point we were all winding down around midnight.

A Fantasy Flight Quiet Year in Roseville, Minnesota

I took a work trip to Roseville, to our offices there, for a few days. The office is a few blocks from the Fantasy Flight flagship store, which means that I played games every night with my work colleagues and gamer friends Robert and Joe. Among other games, I ran them a session of The Quiet Year. It was a long session, and ended around closing time, but we had a great time with a tribe that traded in teeth, and were in fear of the faceless man of the mountain. Many crabs later, the frost shepards arrive with the tribe moving into a mountain tomb, and a lone boy searching out old manuscripts in an abandoned, ransacked library.

Robert kept exclaiming that he felt that playing this game was a very illuminating experience, but also that the sense of sadness with the ending was a bit overwhelming, in a way. I wanted to impress on him that that feeling is one of the enjoyable parts of the game, at least in my experience. That sense of sadness, and unknown, that you get at the end of this game, after becoming attached to these people for the game.

It's sometimes the same experience you get with many of the narratively collaborative (often GM-less) games at conventions, where you really only have 3-4 hours and are just starting to get into it, and then have to let it all go into the ether. It's an experience I have come to love.

And the map:

This was the first time I ran the Quiet Year with 3 people (instead of 4), and it worked pretty well. It felt like you had a little more control over the way things were moving since there was less time between turns, and I don't know if this is a good thing or not.

Big Bad Con 2015 - Sunday, Oct 18

Wolf Chase 2015, 7am-8am

You read that correctly... woke up before 7am to go on a 5k run. At a game con. This needs to be something that is emulated at other conventions, in some fashion. No, I don't expect it to be popular, but I hope that it does become more so.

Also, I'll preface all this by saying that I have probably never in my life ran this far in one stretch. Like, ever. I have started getting into trail running in a very minor way in the last year, but haven't done so in more than a few months, I must shame-facedly admit.

Anywhos, met up with the crew at the hotel turn-about, and led by Kristin, we all ran off. Fortunately I found a jogging partner in Rob Hall, because we both were able to mostly keep up, but if it wasn't for him, I'd have dropped off somewhere towards the last quarter of the run. And apparently I was a similar inspiration, as we discussed later.

Runners included the likes of Sean, the aforementioned Rob and Kristin (in full mohawk regalia), and Oscar Simmons. I don't really know the rest, but we had a crew of about 10 or so, all up.

A little run from the hotel, near the Oakland airport.

My friends Gina and Jayson had handed me two free breakfast passes the day before, so after a shower I headed there to chow down. Fortunately I ran into Rob, and we had a pleasant hour long gaming conversation, of the type that I've grown to love at these cons. Before I left I even got to run into Vera and Vivian from the night before, and found out that I may now have gaming contacts in the Sacramento area, which is not far from where the parents are moving; so another bonus!

Rise of Nations (Fate Accelerated), 10am-2pm

GM: Ezra Denney

Players:

• Shawn Enderson as the nation of

• Tyson Fultz as the nation of

• Paul Bezultek as the nation of

• Tomer Gurantz as the nation of Nova

• Eric Zim as the nation of

I was drawn in for two reasons. One, the title. I love me some Civilization type games, and Rise of Nations was a favorite for a while. Two, the description, which reads, in part: "Explore the toybox that is FATE by trying my new concept where each player will create a nation in a world we will all create together."

I love me some games where you get to play as a tribe, or a voice, or a family, or... a NATION!

We sit down and Ezra is straight with us... he "lazy GM'd" this piece. He's got an idea, and some starting stuff, but he's gonna depend on us to be cool. Fortunately we had a pretty cool table.

We started by defining the type of game we want to play. This was a pretty free-form discussion. We went with pseudo-realistic, pre-industrial revolution type society. That said, and although most of the world is not "fantastical", there was (or will be) a discovery of Dragon bones, which is a power source of a very limited nature. We had agreed that we could do pseudo-scientific, steampunk-style stuff, of a limited nature. Additionally, we wanted to explore concepts such as natural disasters, a large external nation / force, and more.

We each get a pretty simplistic chara... er... Nation sheet. We need a Name, a Capitol, two descriptions of the capitol city, and some Approaches. Approaches will define the way our nation approaches problems and such, and we are to each define 2 of them. And then the fun part... we pass the sheets around and the other 4 players each add another approach to our sheet. In addition, after all that we would need to define their strengths as +3, +2, +2, +1, +1, and 0 (because: Fate).

All the other nations were settled by a far, and powerful nation called Marshak, which is sort of like our story's England, to our colonies. We decide to play the game about 10-20 years after the "revolution", where we beat back the Marshak forces. One of the colonies ends up being is a pseudo New Orleans / hippie-ville, one is a powerful New England type region (with closer cultural ties to the parent Marshak nation), one is a less successful, but industrial area which is still neighboring a region controlled by Marshak, and the fourth is a penal colony a la Australia. 

My nation was none of these, and was in fact made up mostly of indigenous peoples, who also feel a kindred to these Marshakians, because only a century earlier we had begun taking land ownership seriously and taking over neighboring clans and peoples. This is why we felt a kinship with these Marshakians, and also why we were able to secure our borders from them and negotiate settlements. I liked the concept of a never conquered / colonized kingdom, similar to Thailand, of sorts. I decided to have a society which had its upper tiers as a meritocracy, where anyone (male, female, any background) could become a chief engineer... the highest designation. That said, the rest of society functioned in a very region-centric way, where the region had all sorts of local laws that depended on the people who lived there. This meant that specific regions could be patriarchies, matriarchies, or all fashion of various structures... as long as they played by the overriding Nova federal laws, which are punished in a severely harsh manner.

I started with: Nation: Nova, Capitol: Refenja which is both a mountain fortress as well as incredibly dense. My leader was Cog Lysa. My approaches that I came up with were Innovate (+3), which is how we solve most problems, and what keeps us ahead of our neighbors and opponents, but also Measure Thrice, Cut Once (+2), which is to say that everything takes a huge amount of time.

We past our sheets around, and I got mine back with these four additional (very excellent!) approaches: Not Paying Attention (+1), Pedantic (+1), Never Look Back (+0), and Tyrannical Politeness (+2).

The game proceeded excellently, with a League of Nations type meeting, which Marshak sent a representative so that its local government could attempt to join. The role playing during this session was excellent fun, and it all continued from there. We had some scenes of conflict, and decided on one action per season. After a season, depending on the action and the situations at hand, our nations may gain aspects, or more likely consequences that would later need to be addressed.

We had a gold rush of dragon bones that caused some havoc, but we soon ran out of time. The 4 hour gaming session had a very long front-load time of nation generation, but in no way did I feel like this detracted from the situation... if anything this made the game that much more enjoyable. Ezra wanted feedback on the game, and we gave it back to him in spades, and all very good sounding stuff. It made me that much more interested in playing in this at a future time, or at the very least seeing what Ezra may come up with later. I wouldn't mind running this at all at a con or with friends. I can even see how you could use it Microscope-style as a world building session for another campaign or game.

As far as the theme, player participation, and overall excitement, I think this may have been my favorite session of the convention (although many others were close, to be sure).

Games on Demand... Forget Me Not, 3pm-4:30pm

I originally had signed up for 3-7 pm game, but I had crossed my name out much earlier in the day, when I realized that I just wouldn't be able to maintain that level of constant go go go.

That said, I was very interested in checking out the Games on Demand, and maybe running something light and GM-less. I brought a bunch of stuff with me, including Microscope, The Quiet Year, George's Children, and...

Forget Me Not. I found three other players to join me in this lovely game: Liz Ruifrok (who played in my Distress game Friday), Rob Hall (who ran with me), and Joyce (who was new to the con, and just getting her bearings). Forget Me Not is a jim pinto / postworldgames GM Zero game, which is a card-based role playing game where you create a story similar to Twin Peaks.

We had a great time with missing garden gnomes, and secret conspiracies between the sheriff, and the local millionaire and rich heiress, and other romantic and non-romantic drama. I'm just glad I got to introduce some more people to this excellent little game!

End of the season, as things begin to wrap up.

Microscope RPG, 5pm-6:30pm

GM: Tre' Grisby

Players:

• Eric Rollins

• Kevin Murphy

• Me (later)

And I thought I was done... I was about to head home, maybe hitting a thrift store or two on the way. But the con just kept drawing me in. And I ran into Tre Grisby running his Microscope game, which had started at 3pm. They had two drop-outs, so it was a three player, and he asked if I'd like to join, mid game. I was a bit fried, but how could I say no!?

And so I joined their game for about an hour and a half. It was an exploration of hidden conspiracies in a real history timeline of the world, from middle ages, to present.

I did have fun watching them conjure Illuminati, and Benjamin Franklins formula for alchemical gold, however in the end my brain just couldn't keep up. Tre and I were struggling with the very historic nature of the game, and it just had a bit of a feel of being in a history class, and at this point in the weekend I couldn't keep up. So I contributed some bits of fun, but then it just collapsed around our feet. Fortunately we devolved into friendly banter about the con weekend, and everyone was getting ready to go their own ways anyways.

Because I'd only met Tre before online (and for a few minutes at the bar on Friday with a random run-in!), it was nice chatting it up, and I can't wait to find him and others online for more virtual con action in the near future.

Eric, Tre', and Kevin for Microscope action

...and out

And with that, it was time to go. I headed back to San Jose. My brother and his wife didn't have their baby yet (despite the due date being that Saturday), my daughter was waiting up for me, I got there with no traffic, and had a pleasant morning with my mom and daughter the next day, before an easy SouthWest flight back south to LA. All-in-all, just a wonderful trip and game con, and something I'd be happy to repeat again and again.

THANK YOU BIG BAD CON!

Coming home to seeing daughter playing with Kinderbunnies with my mom. Gaming was going on while I was gaming... excellent!

Big Bad Con 2015 - Saturday, Oct 17

Sleeping in

Fortunately, Ross scheduled his game, which is on the somewhat shorter side, for noon. I got to try and sleep in (emphasis intended), and got to about 9 am. Did a 7 minute workout for a min-max win, then off to munch and wander.

Went into the Games on Demand room. Now, one lovely idea that they have here, is that they had a table full of board games, and each one was basically up for grabs... in the sense that if you played one, you could add your name to the raffle for that particular game. What an excellent way to exposing people to new games!

Ran into a lovely couple, Andrew and Dawn, who were playing one of these games, Elevensies. This being my favorite Hobbit mealtime, I was drawn in. It's effectively a game like Love Letter, but with a little more meat on it. The goal is to set your tea-time spread, in competition with the other servants. The graphics are lovely, and one of the cutest components is the little plastic sugar cube tokens.

My favorite Hobbit meal, along with Second Breakfast. Definitely a game for the day bag to share with the family.

Serpent's Tooth, 12noon-2:30pm

GM: Ross Cowman

Players:

• Jenn Martin as Celeste the Moon Cleric (adventurer)

• Noam Rosen as Blind Janella the Beholder (minion)

• Tomer Gurantz as Marklor the Mysterious (adventurer)

• Russell Borogove as Vig-Narg the conjoined twin Kobold Librarian (minion)

Link: http://www.bigbadcon.com/events/serpents-tooth/

This was another game I was very much looking forward to this weekend. I met Ross up at Go Play NW earlier in the year, but didn't get a chance to play with him. He's the designer for Fall of Magic, which he also brought and was showcasing. In fact, I tried to get in to that one too, but it was full. When I was up in Seattle for Go Play, I went to the Ray Gun lounge (aka Gamma Ray Games), and ended up picking up a copy of Serpent's Tooth, Ross' earlier game. Although I perused it in weeks prior, and I absolutely love the layout (very accessible!), being an indie game means it's hard for me to grok it without seeing it in action.

First, we had to choose the type of game we wanted to play, by choosing a King. There are choices such as The Taco King, The Prom King, and many more. We decided to go for Dungeon Master, which I suppose is quite appropriate given: game convention. This means that Ross would be playing the "dungeon master", although technically this didn't mean he was a DM, but played the controlling big bad of the fantasy world; in this case Lawrence Dragonsbane.

Next, we need to define the Kingdom. From the description of the game: "At the start of the game the King possesses three Regalia: a crown, castle, and sword, that give them authority over the characters, places, and threats in the kingdom. Like a Game Master in a traditional role-playing game, the king wields vast power over their Kingdom." He passed out one sheet for each of these three Regalia, and we players started filling in the blanks.

What a great table... we already started with interesting open-ended adventurers, minions, lairs, and treasures, which you just knew would be used to great effect. As an example, one of the minions was listed as "Blind Janella". Who's that? Well, it ended up being the choice of characters for one of the players (Noam) and he took it to the next level by making it a blind beholder. The eye stalks all work (but don't provide sight), and the big eye was unfortunately blind.

In addition, we had a cheese farmer (that of course figured prominently in the game), a GM PC, the lair of eyes, Onyx the dragon (which burned down the cheese farm), some cameos by Celeste's god Lumos, and a deep treasure vault.

What was fascinating about this game was that you, as a PC, can take control of one (or more) regalia, and that gives you some power over setting scenes. I.e. when you grab a piece of regalia you take 1/3 control of GM-ing power from the GM! And players can take control of these from other players throughout the game as well (although we didn't get quite that far given the short play time). Vig-Narl ended up with much control, taking his masters crown, and control of the "sword" (in this case a lich hand), and Blind Janella took the "scepter" (the eye of Vecna, or something similarly named).

This was one of my favorite games of the weekend. I just loved watching it morph from a GM-based game to GM-less in spurts and starts. Very interesting system dynamics. It's just lovely starting to feel like you've gotten a hold of different systems, such as GM-based versus GM-less games, and then BAM, getting knocked on your ass with something that's somewhere in between the two. Definitely one of the games I'm taking back to play with the home group. Maybe even the next Strategicon.

The Secret Vault of the Queen of Thieves (Torchbearer), 3pm-7pm

GM: Thor Olavsrud

Players:

• Jason "JiB" Tryon as Beren the Dwarven Adventurer

• Demian Luper as Ulrick the Cleric (I might've gotten him confused with David, below)

• Gina Ricker as Carolina the Fighter

• Tomer Gurantz as Tiziri the Thieft

• David Gallo as Taika the Ranger from Elfland (yes, that is a place)

The absolutely best description of this game I heard all weekend is that this game is the "Vietnam of dungeon crawls." Want to feel like a scrappy, dirty adventurer, living by the skin of her teeth in dank corridors, barely able to carry her gear, much less food, water, and other necessities. And oh ya, you want to pick up that treasure? Hope there is something you can drop in lieu of these vital life-saving utilities.

I've heard various things about Torchbearer. One is that it's a bit resource management heavy, and that is definitely something I do not like to manage as a GM. However, as a player I found this game fascinating. I did not know ahead of time that it's based on Burning Wheel rules. Apparently Mouse Guard is as well (although a simplified version), and apparently this game fits somewhere in the middle... simplified rules of Mouse Guard plus some crunchy bits from Burning Wheel. 

Thor (who, incidentally, is the game's designer) was an excellent as a GM, and I just love coming away with the feeling of old school dungeon crawl, with all the excitement and risk that was associated with it. It reminds me of the very first game I ever played of Moldvay Basic D&D, where we went into a crypt, ended up surrounded by Skeletons, and just ended up dying. The fear and trepidation. Excellent.

And all this without even saying that I got to play with two of my favorite Strategicon gamers: Gina and Jason (aka JiB), of Happy Jacks RPG fame!

We were a party of dungeoneering rapscallions, and were asked by Lady Attar to find the missing Jackal's Eye, which she was being framed for stealing from her lover, Taymar. This would involve going into the Tangle, the sewer depths of the city. Many giant rats and cultists of the mistress of plagues later, we emerged, not quite successful, scarred, but also laden with some few riches.

A bunch of dirty, grimy adventurers

Generation Starship (Songlines), 8pm-12pm

GM: Aaron Vanek

Players:

• Mark Ellsworth as family Tannen

• Morgan Hua as family Drood (Captain)

• Tomer Gurantz as family Nova (Psychologists)

• Vivian as family Navidson

• Vera Vartanian as family Saint-Fleur (Stowaways)

Another game I was excited about... the description being "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." Now, being someone who uses audio frequently, and in some cases quite heavily, in my games, I was quite intrigued.

This game system that was created by Aaron, called Songlines, consists of a mix tape that you use to inform role playing and mood. During a song, you perform tasks or role playing scenario (which is timed with the song) within the context of a scene (which is defined by the song number, or vice versa, as the case may be). The specific session we were playing was also written by Aaron, and called Generation Starship (the working title).

In this session, we each create, and play, a family on board a star ship being sent to colonize another world, as the Earth is sinking into collapse. We each create a family name, and define up to 6 family members. This could be a parent and children, or whatever. We also define a (aka make up any) role that our family performs on the ship, however one family will definitely serve as the Captain, and one family will be Stowaways on the ship.

In my case, I was neither of those two roles (neither Captain, nor Stowaways). I decided to make a "family" of six 16 year olds. In fact, they aren't genetically related at all, come from diverse backgrounds, consist of 3 males and 3 females, and have all taken the name "Nova" as a new surname. I decided to define my family as the Psychology Officers of the ship.

Part of defining your family includes choosing from a pool of traits (and each trait can only be owned by one family at any given time). I decided to go with Clever and Creative. Each trait gives you some benefit, whether that is power, in the form of dice, or tokens, which stand for some sort of fate chip-type mechanic (which allows you to change die faces, or perform re-rolls). Additionally, as the game progressed, you would gain or lose traits within your family, which was also cool.

As it turned out, many scenes were like various games and puzzles. In some we played dice games. Some were competitive, with each family trying to surpass the other. Some were puzzles that had us work together. In some we had to negotiate a favorable outcome to a difficult decision, all with the time limit looming over your heads.

One of the best scenes was one where we all listened to a melancholy piece, and had to separately write a letter. The letter was from one of our family left behind on Earth. The end came, and then Aaron announced, "The transmission never reaches the ship. You can throw it away." Holy shit. All our jaws just dropped. It was an awesomely depressing moment of the game. So good.

This game is the one that has been sticking in my head the most since the con. I want to write my own session of this game, with ideas about what I'd like to do different. Fortunately for me, Aaron is super cool and happens to live in the LA area, so we'll see where all that goes!

Great set of players, and everyone had great feedback for Aaron after the session. I think we all agreed that some of the dice games were cool, but some became repetitive or need work. The generation shift mechanic, whereby you gain new family members was interesting, but a bit broken and laborious. Also, naming all the children began to feel like useless exercise since their names were rarely used, or came up in the game. I think we all agreed that a little more role playing would definitely suit the game well. That said, overall the feedback was provided in such an excited way, that you could tell that the players bought into the system, even with the work it needs.

So I don't lose it forever, I will transcribe my letter, that was lost to the stars... 

To Boora Cameroon,

I know you've chosen the new surname, but I can't bear to use it, my lovely daughter.

I wish I had good news. Half of Africa has been destroyed by the bombs. Those that live, struggle. The rest of the world also suffers. I don't mean to burden you with this news, but I hope you will learn lessons from our failures, when you reach the stars.

I am so proud of you, and wish only the best for you in your new family. You are all that keeps me happy; the thought that at least you have escaped.

I have changed my mind. I will take your new name, so you can tell your children about who you left behind.

Love, your mother, Sabrina Nova

Big Bad Con 2015 - Friday, Oct 16

Getting there

Took a flight to San Jose, hung out with the family, and then left the kid with my parents so I could head up to Big Bad Con 2015.

I've been supremely looking forward to this for quite some time. The list of games was looking brilliant, and the games I signed up for included all sorts of interesting ones, such as Torchbearer, Vox, Songlines, a Fate Accelerated game where you play nations instead of characters... I mean, seriously. All in one con.

Got up to the con before noon, so had time to spare before running my game. The hotel was great in that they let me check in at 11:30am without drama, and I quickly grabbed a bite, and then headed down to checkout the scene.

Setup was still in progress, and Registration was still being constructed. Sean Nittner, the Chief Gaming Officer of the con, was there, so I said a hello, and he quickly got me situated and registered. I wandered about, getting oriented, and then went back to the room to get my gear for gaming.

Distress on Life Liner 928 (Star Frontiers  / Savage Worlds / Lego), 1pm-7pm

GM: Tomer Gurantz (that's me)

Players:

• Joe as Robot Medic #8247

• Wilhelm Fitzpatrick as Yazirian Pilot Grak-Ahz

• Liz Ruifrok as Sathar Weapons officer Kip

• Jason Murray as Dralasite Engineer Bliff

This is my Star Frontiers (Savage Worlds conversion rules) space-based Lego dungeon crawl that I've mentioned on previous posts here.

Starting a 1 pm Friday game has risks, and those risks mainly involve people not getting to the con on time. That's a better narrative than people hearing about my game and changing their minds, so I'm sticking with it! So, two players short, I was able to convince Joe to join us, though he already had a game scheduled later. He admitted that he'd ditch it if he was having fun though (as he ended up doing). And then about 30+ minutes in, Liz joined us as she was free... two unscheduled guests plus two scheduled guests equals gaming win.

Everyone built interesting characters, and I won't go into the details as there are always semi-spoilers if people want to play at a later time, but there were new builds this time around, which is always fun. I'm a huge fan of this plug-and-play method of creating characters, which gives players something of a pre-gen, but also a PC they are responsible for creating, and therefore have some ownership over. And it also means I, as the GM, never run the same game twice.

Some folks met their objectives, some met their objectives and then died horribly, and some continued living in hiding. All in all, good fun. Lessons learned? Mainly, pump up the volume a bit more (the players said it was a bit on the quiet side).

The crew of the Golden Can: Joe, Wilhelm, Liz, and Jason

The Facility (Vox), 7pm-1am

GM: Matt "Matthulhu" Steele

Players:

• Bruce Harlick as Gill, I mean Lawrence

• Tomer Gurantz as Tiffany

• Christopher Ory as Roberto

• Julie Dinkins as Hyrum

• Ezra Denney as Fritz... I mean Hanz

(at least those were our made up names)

I was very excited about this game. In fact, it was one of my two initial sign-ups.(For those not aware, Big Bad Con this year implemented multi-staged game registration. First you sign up for 2 games maximum on an initial Saturday. Then a week later, you can register for as many other games as you desire. Great plan, as this lets everyone get into some games they really want, without it being a complete slugfest.)

Why was I excited about this game? The first sentences of the description of the Vox game system: "Vox is a game in which you play a character and The Voice of the character next to you." Damn.

Here's the description of the scenario that Matt had written for this session: You wake to fire, pain and destruction. You’re in some kind of facility. You don’t remember coming here. You don’t know where you are. Hell, you don’t remember who you are. But then The Voice tells you to get out of there. Whatever happened to you is bad. What happens next could be worse. Time to get out.

And he ran the first 10 minutes of the session so beautifully in playing to that description. It was one of those great games where you chose your character according to a picture, and nothing else. Matt started at one end of the table, as characters became conscious, one after another, and had each character as a lead in to the next one awakening. It was masterfully done. It real lent to the chaos and confusion of the situation. And of course each player was bought in, and played their characters to the tee.

What was interesting was that we were each given 2 character sheets.

One was our main character, which in this scenario, had a number of blank spots. We might know, for example as I did, that I was a good Street Fighter and that I liked to Help the Helpless. But profession? Unknown. Other skills? Unknown. Your name? Unknown. Why are you here? Again, unknown.

The second character sheet was the voice. The voice has a personality. A physique and personality associated with it, and its own set of skills. And the voice knows the name of the character to your right (even though that character doesn't know that themselves). Playing the voice involves occasionally talking, or spitting words and phrases, to the player to your right, at opportune moments. However you can also communicate through other means. You can write things on paper and have those appear to the character on a wall, for instance. But I think the key is that these are some sort of verbiage (as opposed to complex visuals or hallucinations.

On the left, a picture, and character record with blanks that would slowly get filled out. On the right, a ghost that whispers in the ear of another player.

It was much fun. All I know is that there is something a bit disconcerting about a character that keeps asking about food and saying how hungry he is, and then this character's voice that keeps telling him to eat 'them' (where 'them' is the rest of us). 

All said, great session with a great GM and great players. Won't spoil any endings, cause you may, and should, play this game.

Confusion and voices

Late night ramblings

We were done shortly after midnight. What's next to do? Find players and more games! I wanted to get something going, like some Mad Max Dread, or some short GMless thing like Forget Me Not, but most people were pretty worn down by then.

I did run into a grand table in one of the rooms where muchas personas were chatting away. My friends Gina, Jason, and Morgan from LA, including many others. We were eventually joined by Adam Koebel as well, and hearing him, Morgan, and <that other fine gentleman?> chat away was pretty entertaining. They all know a lot of shtuff, but it was on matters that I'm no wizard on. So I just sat back, kept drinking, and enjoyed the ride. 

I got to sleep eventually, somewhere before 4 am.

Character sheets for Dread Mad Max: Fury Road

Andy Munich. This man is a genius. He created a beautifully simple Dread hack for Mad Max: Fury Road.

Dread is probably one of the simplest horror and suspense-based RPG systems out there. Everyone makes a character using a pre-built questionnaire for a specific scenario. And the GM takes the answers, and uses them as part of a scenario. The only mechanics used is Jenga (the block tower). Want to do something difficult? That'll be one, two, or three block pulls, thank you very much. The tower falls? Your character is dead (or at the very least, on the chopping block for a slightly better time in the story). Jenga and the story reinforce the inherent tension in each other.

Andy took the system, then hacked it slightly to create a Mad Max version. And in Andy fashion, everything is just improvised. It goes something like this (actual events may vary):

1. Get a speaker, and blast the Mad Max: Fury Road soundtrack in a loop, from game start until the game ends.
2. Ask the players what story they want to run.
3. Have each player create a number of characters (~3 each) to make a tribe.
4. Make shit up to go with the music.

I didn't get to play in Andy's game, but got to hear about it from others. And I got to ask him a few questions on how he ran it, because I wanted to run it for friends. I've run it twice so far, and the players say they had a blast, so that' good. And as a GM, I totally loved it.

As far as creating the characters, for the games I ran, I told the players to describe each character with 3 physical descriptions and 3 personality or mental characteristics. They also needed to write down any stuff the character had, although this doesn't come for free... gotta pay for that with some pulls (after all, stuff ain't cheap in the post-apocalypse).

Now, you really don't need anything more than just index cards, but wouldn't it be cool to have little Mad Max character sheets? At least that's what I thought, because I love that shit. So that was my little project.

I looked for a Mad Max: Fury Road logo using Google image searches. Many didn't work, but I finally found this one (which is off of a rogerebert URL):

That looked pretty good, as you can grab the Mad Max: Fury Road words and font without extraneous characters or graphics. There's even the iconic graphics below, which in theory you could include, but I decided to skip that part.

Had to find the Mad Max font, which it turns out is named AgencyFB. It might require a license to use it for profit, but I'm not selling nothing.

You want a pretty simple thing, which isn't more that a name and a few physical and mental descriptions. But of course you gotta have Mad Max sounding stats, right? After a little assistance from the wife, I ended up with Mug (physical appearance), Bent (personality; but just sounds twisted too), and Gear (which works for both stuff in general, but perfectly for that whole car thing). I put the infamous quote from the movie instead of just "name"; maybe that's cheesy. But it's Mad Max. There was cheese. 

And here we go, with little name tent and everything. Four to a page, about the size of an index card anyways:

Character sheets for Dread Mad Max: Fury Road.

Got a PDF version as well, but can't seem to figure out how to upload it here. PM me and you can have it.

Dread session in a Dungeon World campaign

Prior Dungeon World + Dread session

So, a few months ago were about to continue our Dungeon World campaign with a session where the PCs are just crawling out of a long underground tunnel, low on food and water, struggling after a hard trek.

I wanted a session that would feel sort of like an interlude. The PCs being allowed to breath, and possibly learning new skills (they all passed levels, in some cases 2), but I wanted that leveling to also feel like a tough transition. Growth through pain.

I pulled out the Jenga tower. 

The intention wasn't to make this a session with too much constant tension, but instead to make it feel like transition was difficult, and fraught with some peril. They all sweated a bit. There were times when they wanted to use even simple powers... but just like adventurers that had scraped through, and were barely making it, even the simplest of spells or actions required block pulls, prior to rolling dice (which would then determine success or failure). It made everything that much more difficult, and you could feel the characters struggling. It worked so well, and they enjoyed that session from the feedback I gathered.

Second Dungeon World + Dread session

That previous example was a few sessions back, and we hadn't played in a while. Everyone was chomping at the bit to continue the story. But I warned them: Tonight was going to be a Jenga night. Come prepared, accordingly.

We started with a long campaign recap, hitting the highlights, and everyone enjoyed that since they all remembered different interesting aspects, and had forgotten many of the events from sessions long past.

For this session I wanted a chase. I wanted them to feel the constant movement and the imminent threats. And in some ways it worked well. 

I setup the music (per the previous post), and I started by having them each make an NPC. I didn't tell them what it was for, just yet. I gave them each three Short Order Heroes cards (again per a different previous post), as well as one set for myself. That means each PC would get three adjective, of which they'd only need to keep two, and define the PC with a name and a short description. For example, I got Stormy, Old, and another adjective I can't remember. I kept the first two, and made Bubba, a very stocky, heavy set, human woman blacksmith, that at first looks like a dude, and definitely looks like a dwarf. In my case I knew that Bubba was my NPC, as the GM, and her life would be on the line immediately (since I wouldn't be pulling on that tower).

Dread session panoramic, with players H, a sibling, player J, player S, and player A.

Before long into the session, the party was on a boat and ran into a raft on the lake, which was inhabited by these same very 5 NPCs, refugees from the war. What the PCs didn't know is that I had tied their NPC's fate with their own. Even though I was asking for pulls quickly, which made all of them nervous, I knew that when the tower fell for a PC, the first time, it'd kill off the linked NPC. If the tower fell a second time, then the PC's life was at risk.

I was debating telling them something to that effect prior, but thought it'd make it too easy for them to pull. In retrospect: I should've done so. Let them kill off those NPCs more quickly and take more risks... it would've furthered the game faster, and eventually they would've been at risk anyways.

On the flip side, it was great when the Elf Ranger shot an arrow to get one of the big bad guys, and when the tower fell, it informed the story as such: The arrow missed the Orc and flew past, to that place the Elf wasn't watching, and landed straight in the chest of the NPC that the player had created. Now the Elf was blaming herself for that death.

The tower fell twice, and two NPCs died. Tension was had. The story progressed. A good session was played.

Player feedback

I made sure to ask the players for feedback here, especially because I could sense some things could have been done better. I ended up emailing them each separately the next day; this way there'd be time for the session to sink in, and also each of them could report in separately.

Some feedback was useful, some less so, but all players responded, which was great. I'll let their words speak for themselves, before I weigh in...

Player S wrote: "More dice!"

Player J wrote: "I really enjoyed the music and the free form mechanics.  The dread system is a lot of fun really.  Honestly this session worked really well for me, the review at the beginning was important because of the time lapse.  And the structure and forward plot was a lot of fun.  It was different playing with no character sheets but still kept to the characters.  I just want my experience points!!"

Player A wrote: "I enjoyed the game night. The music didn't come through as well as before, not sure if it was an acoustic factor (or not loud enough) or something else. The Jenga does add a different element but not sure if best for all situations. I felt that we were aware of the likely period when the jenga would fall and we would take our actions to suit that. Maybe combination of dice/jenga? Dont know, playtest."

Now, player H is a bit of a rambler. Which is to say great for feedback... I'll leave it all here, with a few typos fixed, and let you try to decipher it, if interested:
"been thinkn bout this one last few while shitting, showering, drivn, jerkn and what not: i'm in the idealogical camp of, "the medium is the massage" 
-or- 
in other words,
how jenga blocks make really good anxiety inducing, heart pumping incrementally risk building that inevitably
leads to ruin, narratives and game play in a controlled timescape but,
your shit outa luck if you are a godam invested  and i mean mulitple session character building max.min designs
wrapped around a commited narrative killer hobbo vaneer type of game play.

now, i don't mean theyre mutally exclusive mind you, just like the title says "the medium is the massage" dynamics are at work:

say, narratively a frikn deathwish long sequence "car chase-crash" is in full effect well, i'd pick jenga.
or, your in a mindblock psy battle, i'd pick jenga
or your doing a bank heist and gotta sneak then pick locks disarm traps n shit or things go boomboom i'd pick jenga,
or you doing some fast talkin' disguise wearing rip off artist trickery, i'd use jenga.

but!, if say i'm leveling up my character, and gettin' loot, entering a dungeon crawl or pitched battle
i'd pick savage worlds.

or, conversely - i was world building i'd use blah blah blah
or a pitched competitive world building (ending) i mix blah blah and jenga.

anyways- also consider the audience, if your w/ sophisticates you know hardcore multiple professional RPG orgiasts
you have the luxury of candy flippin' systems per session or during sessions, probably with just a few quick blinks or none at all after they get in the flow of things between all the stuff going ons,

but you got your fucken hymen intact frigid as nonfuck RPGer group and probably you gotta ease that shit in now-

other thing with the NPC group as a moderating force for the kill mechanic of jenga was effective

although i would have liked to know that before hand but-balance that meta-knowledge with an incentive rule where we would want to keep that NPC alive/group members alive as much as possible- and interweave it into narrative form.  like the more that die, the harder shit gets and or we lose some sort of advantage or gain some sorta disadvantage, plus it seemed like psychologically we were attached to certain NPCs too."

Lessons learned

I summarize what I've gotten from the feedback as:

• They missed the dice (and the more predictable mechanics) of Dungeon World. Although Dungeon World is so narratively driven (compared to something like D&D, or Savage Worlds), it is probably a little more structured than a Dread game. 
• Although there was a system change for the session, they'd feel like they missed out on XP if I didn't let that carry through, especially some of them that risked more by pulling more blocks. In retrospect it would've been nice to have some sort of translation of # block pulls * formula = XP, so there would be another form of incentive, and for consistency (especially since this wasn't technically a Dread game, just a Dread-based session in a DW campaign). I'm going to assign some XP, but it'll probably a bit ad hoc, since I didn't keep track of pulls and such; but I will reward the biggest block pullers a little more, I reckon.
• I feel like I should've been transparent about the NPC - PC link ahead of time. Maybe after they created the NPC, but before we started getting into the pulls. It would've made for a little metagaming, but hey, RPGs are games, and I think they would've had some fun with it. It would also have worked well if I had made the NPCs effective, so that they were actually useful and causing enemy deaths, or other good travel benefits, so that their deaths would be felt greater. Maybe have each NPC give a distinct advantage... YES, maybe even a Dungeon World advantage such as bonuses to travel moves, like Quartermastering, Scouting, etc. (since this session was about journeying quickly).
• I definitely would use this type of session sparingly, as I know some players may feel cheated at death in Jenga, given that we started the campaign with the tacit agreement this was Dungeon World... it'd feel a little weak to die by blocks, when none of the DW character stats or mechanics gets any play, when you've worked so hard at getting a PC to level 6 or whatever.

So there you go. Lessons learned. 

RPG music: No Escape soundtrack

Music in RPGs

I'm a huge fan of music in RPGs. Meaning, I love curating the right background / mood tracks for general scenes of games I'm running. Can music suck in an RPG? Surely yes, but I think you can avoid this by navigating correctly.

And speaking of which, I recently watched the movie No Escape, and was impressed but how well the music complemented the action and pace. It's like a lesser version of Mad Max: Fury Road, in that regard.

Many movie tracks have too many peaks and valleys, and highs and lows, within the same track. This makes them difficult to work with for gaming, because timing a climax with an actual game moment requires some serious DJ skillz, of which I have little.

But the correct tracks just set a pace and mood. Listen to any of the tracks from the game Fallout 2, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Appending complementary tracks

Now, many great tracks are unfortunately somewhat short. This can become a real problem because if you put it on a loop, you've got something which easily becomes repetitive. You really don't want your players distracted by the music, but even more so, you don't want them downright annoyed by it. That's serious bad news for the game.

What I've been playing with recently is appending complementary audio tracks so that I get a longer loop, for audio that similarly sets a mood.

This is exactly what I did in preparing for tonight's game, which will be a continuation of a Dungeon World campaign that has been on a 3-month hiatus. I will be using Dread for this session, and want action and movement. And I want the music to reflect this.

I bought the No Escape soundtrack, and made the following tracks by appending songs together (might be listenable on SoundCloud for a time by clicking those links):

1. Market Research + The President's Toast + Jack Wakes (5:30)
2. Rooftop Refuge + Roof Toss + Map Quest + Atavistic Jack (8:05)
3. Bike Thief (1:38)
4. Coup Coup Roux + Jack Be Nimble + Pool Que + No Escape + Embassy Issues (8:50)
5. Fighting For Annie + 007812 + Need a New Roof (7:08)

Track 1 works for them running into a band of refugees that may or may not be friendly.  Track 2 is a general background for interludes and travel. Track 3 starts to ratch up the tension. It works well on its own and can repeat pretty well, but I also know that this would likely be used for a scene that won't go on for very long. Track 4 is the meat; this is when the chase is on. And track 5 is battle.

Although some of those tracks work together, they aren't necessarily adjacent or sequential on the soundtrack, so appending them one after the other gives me a longer track I can loop, and also means there is variety in the music so players don't have a chance to get annoyed by any specific track before forgetting about it in lieu of the next time it plays.

As far as the game... What's actually going to happen? Not sure, as I don't really have that much narratively planned. But just like the Dread Mad Max: Fury Road game, I'm hoping the music does the work with my brain juices, and gets it going to the right place. 

I'll let you know.

Jackercon Interlude: Microscope

Last night I ran a session of Microscope RPG for Jackercon (an online convention I've previously talked about here). This was an experiment in a number of ways.

Running table top RPGs online

Online is definitely not my first choice of venue for gaming. I'm very lucky to have a gaming group I run things for regularly, all of which I love to play with. And I'm very lucky to be able to regularly attend Strategicon, which runs 3x a year in LA, with some fantastic GMs, games, and players.

But occasionally you want to play with someone who is far away, or can't get a local game going. Or maybe you just want to play something someone else is offering and you can't get where you're at. So I get those reasons why you'd play.

But I don't want online gaming to be a lesser thing. I want it to be almost the same as playing with people at a table. Which is to say: interactive, fun, and without the distractions that the computer, in front of your face, provides. This is difficult. When I've been a player in online games I've found myself to easily distracted by the call of the web browser (similar to that modern complaint of players getting distracted by their phones at the table).

I've been an instructor, and I've had to teach online. And it's hard. You have to try to be as interactive as possible. You need to maintain a connection with the audience using all sorts of tools, be they Q&A, getting the audience to help you finish your statements and thoughts even if they are obvious, use a cadence in your voice, constantly get feedback to ensure the audience hasn't died, whatever.

So, on to the second online game I've run...

A request for Microscope

I played Microscope for the first time at GoPlayNW 2015 (as mentioned here). Much like The Quiet Year, Microscope is a GM-less story-based game that involves lots of world building. Unlike The Quiet Year, however, Microscope actually contains more than a bit of role-playing, which is one of its big draws.

The premise is that you (as a group) create the big picture for the game, the bookends which frame the history you will explore, and the palette which narrows the types of things we agree can and can't happen within that exploration. And then we make history. All of these are game terms, as defined by Microscope.

This is a game that can work well with a table full of non-gamers who are interested in playing something new, or a table full of GMs or thespian / creative type players. But it probably won't work well if you have folks who just want to sit back and be entertained, because everyone has to do the "heavy lifting" in this game (which is to say: create).

But specifically, I had some very motivated Jackers who were interested in playing...

History of the Zorthons

Players: Curt, Harry, Ronnie, Tomer

We started with the initial game setup. For those not familiar with the game, these steps are performed with some group discussion, as well as taking turns adding things to the palette. I ensured that the players understood that we want to play with any detailed ideas or planned concepts close to the chest, and this was really setting up the broad strokes and framework for the game. We ended up with:

• Big Picture: The prehistoric pre-humans create a civilization on Earth.
• Bookends: The Zorthon civilization begins to grow [Light] <-> Modern Humans open a Zorthon crypt in the 21st centry [Dark]
• Palette (YES): Saurian / lizardmen, science-based rational world, different species of Zorthon, massive underdark cave system
• Palette (NO): Time travel, global-spanning empires (nations OK)

A screenshot that shows some of the game setup, rules, and palette (as well as information about the 2 rounds of play, which came later)

After this, we each have a first pass, where we get to each create a Period or Event. In Microscope Periods are long swaths of time, Events are noticeable events that occur within a specific Period, and Scenes (used later) are individual moments within an Event.

We created a few of these, and already we started with interesting periods such as "Zorthons optimize crystal-based energy source", and events such as "The first of many terrible meteor showers brought the crystals to the earth". Within a few minutes, you start having meat to work with.

We played a round with me as the Lens (the controlling player, of sorts, for this set of creations). As the Lens I get to create the Focus for this round, that we all have to play off of. Although I had nothing to do with the idea of adding the crystals to the game, my focus was "Crystal-based energy source", because I found that intriguing. 

^ This, by the way, is one of the charming things about the game. Someone will add an ingredient or component, and others will just grab it and run in all sorts of interesting directions. All this compounds and makes a beautiful tapestry of a story that everyone is responsible for, and yet no one specifically.

We continued playing the round through, and then most of another, before Curt's internet connection - out in the remote tundra of Alaska - caught up with him. Or maybe it was Wendigo, or whatever they have up there.

Regardless, we got play a few Scenes, which are little role playing encounters where everyone is involved, and everyone agreed that these were probably the highlight of the session.

The four scenes we played out, including characters (players) and various notes

In the end, we ended up with a history that looks something like this (where yellow sticky notes have a "light" theme, and purple sticky notes are "dark", as defined by the players during the game):

What worked well.

Excellent players with great motivation to make a great story. Everyone was collaborative in the right ways, but kept ideas (if they had any) close to heart, so surprises were had by all. 

We used NoteApp as the tool to keep track of sticky notes, and although there were definitely problems (more below), it was great that it provided different colored notes. I used one color for the rules, one for light and one for dark period/event/scenes, and another for scene information that we wanted to track separately.

Hangouts was decent. I still wish I could use my video camera and screen share simultaneously, but hey, those are just limitations (apparently).

What didn't.

Being an online game, sometimes the connections aren't perfect, and so that is annoying. The inherent delay in voice communication over the internet is always an issue in a game where people are excited and want to chime in, which many RPGs fall prey to. However, I think everyone here was versed in online play, so we didn't run into too many problems there with people stomping on each others words and such.

Although NoteApp had its advantages, it only allows up to one other collaborator without paying for a license. To work around this, I maintained the entire cork board, and used screen sharing in Hangouts to show everyone what was what. 

Managing the "index" cards by yourself can be OK, in that everyone gets a consistent view of what they look like. In my game I did all the typing and organizing. That can be good if the person is organized, and horrible if they aren't. However I do like sharing that work, and in person, on a table with index cards that seems to be the de facto way it's done. That wasn't an option here.

When running a Hangout, you sometimes also have to be a DJ. For instance, if you watch the video you'll notice that the first minutes of play the video focus is on Harry (and his son Charlie). Why wasn't it going to the other speakers? How can you get it to focus on the NoteApp board regardless of who's speaking? Ah, you have to click on that player, as the one sharing NoteApp, and that probably is what gets recorded in the Hangout on Air, right? Maybe? And what if during a scene you want the video cameras on, and want the recording to go back and forth to whomever is speaking? Oh, you either have to click on whomever is speaking, or you have to "unclick" on the focused screenshare / camera and let Hangouts takeover with it's automatic audio focusing. OK, so that's a bit of work.

The Microscope RPG community

Before I run off, I would love to say that the Microscope RPG community on G+ has been excellent. If you have already purchased this and plan to run a game, but haven't done so already, get your questions answered there. Ben Robbins, the designer, is often found responding, and always appears genuinely interested in how people are playing the game.

When playing in person, people use index cards. However on the forums, I found a number of other suggestions for how to run this online. Suggestions included using Google docs, but also Google Drawings, where you can collaborate for free. Setup a few template objects for Periods, Events, and Scenes, and everyone can just copy and paste them and place them where needed.

What next?

Well, Microscope is a game where you aren't supposed to (for good reason) bring players in and out of the story in later sessions. But, if these players are down, I'm open to exploring this some more. It's always great when a game session leaves you feeling like you want more! (Even if we never play it again.)

Hangout on Air

Fallout Shelter: Vault 12

Fallout Shelter: What is it?

Currently out as iPhone app game (and Android now, so I hear) is Fallout Shelter. The website is here: http://www.falloutshelter.com/, and it comes with its own Fallout-flavored introduction video:

It's been my little game obsession for the past number of weeks, and although I'm not a big phone-game guy, man has it been enjoyable.

Vault 12

You start with choosing a vault number (from 000-999), and although I first went with 666 (a pretty popular option, I'd imagine), I gave up on that one and started anew with Vault 12.

The game basically leads you easily through the first set of actions: recruiting lost humans into productive dwellers, creating rooms to farm the various resources (power, food, water), sending dwellers out to loot the wastelands, and otherwise just making a comfortable  home. The intro lead-in is very intuitive, and makes it a real pleasure to learn the basic moves. I'm not sure if there is a way to avoid it, however. I've started 3 vaults in total, and each time I had to go through the various tutorial moves, which might be annoying if you want to just go at it on your own.

The early game

Learning to play is trivial, as the game leads you through the process of acquiring your first dozen dwellers, and your first few rooms. The game sets goals for you which lead you through the main elements of the game (resource management, weapon and clothes acquisition, game mechanics such as Rushing a room). Most of those goals reward you with Caps (i.e. bottle caps, the game's money economy). And occasionally, completing those goals wins you a lunchbox. A lunchbox with 4 random cards that give you things like food, power, and the occasional weapons, and dwellers.

But beware! There are hazards. In the first release of the game, these come in the form of large radioactive cockroaches (rad roaches), random fires, and raiders from the wasteland. That, and other concerns, such as running out of resources. Not enough water? Expect the dwellers to get radioactive poisoning which reduces their overall hit points.

One nice part of the game is the variations in scale. Zoom out and your playing vault management. But zoom in and you get lots of cute details, and get privy to the conversations of your various dwellers. Although the game starts with resources management, there is much more that starts making itself known. For example, each dweller has the 7 SPECIAL stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck). Each one plays its role in the dwellers effectiveness either in managing the various rooms, or in different aspects in surviving the Wasteland when scrounging for supplies. And you can build rooms to train these stats. Dwellers also have other motivations, such as happiness. 

Soon, you start to realize that there is definitely a bit of min-maxing that can be performed by training your dwellers, as well as outfitting them with specific uniforms that improve specific stats. Before long you notice that all your power plant workers are wearing military uniforms (that improve Strength, the relevant stat), and your med bay and science lab workers are wearing lab coats that improve their Intelligence. It starts to look like a little city. Jillian Werner writes a very good article called How To Improve Your Fallout Shelter SPECIAL Stats that goes into this in good detail.

As far as tips and such, not much needs to be said about the early part of the game... just follow the instructions and read the little tips and hints they provide when the game is loading, and you will get the gist of it.

The mid-game

Once you get thriving and start to crawl up towards 60 vault dwellers, you will have a full fledged complex. Soon, you'll be unlocking the larger (and much more expensive) rooms, such as Gardens, Water Treatment Plants, and Nuclear Reactors. And the glorious Nuka Cola plants, which provide both water and food resources in one!

My first Nuka Cola Bottlery!

There are already a few folks out in internet land have written about this part of the game, and provide excellent tips. I know because I also incorporated similar methods prior to finding the articles, and can vouch for their usefulness. Examples include:

• 11 TIPS FOR A THRIVING FALLOUT SHELTER by Will Fulton
• 15 Fallout Shelter Tips, Tricks, Cheats & Strategies by Josh Smith
• Fallout Shelter Tips & Tricks by Cammy Harbison

One thing to note is that the raiders and other annoyances get tougher as time goes on. They start carrying bigger weapons, and the radroaches and fires that break out in your complex become harder to fight.

These are some laser-toting punks! They start getting tough later in the game...

Once you start min-maxing the roles of dwellers so that your rooms run more efficiently, you will have additional dwellers that you can use for other tasks... exploring the wastelands.

It's important send out wasteland explorers more and more often, as they will start coming back with better weapons and suits. The initial set of suits are of the +3 variety, sometimes referred to as common uniforms. The total bonus is 3 points to your stats, whether that's to one stat (+3 Strength for Military Fatigues) or something with 2 stats (+2 Strength and +1 Agility for Combat Armor). You will immediately start hoarding the +3 suits and provide them to the workers for those particular rooms (+3 Strength for power workers, +3 Agility for food workers, +3 Perception for water workers, +3 Intelligence for medical and science workers).

Advanced suits provide 5 points of bonus, and can be referred to as rare. Examples include the Officer Fatigues with +5 Strength, the Ninja Outfit with +4 Agility and +1 Luck, and the Greaser Outfit with +2 Charisma, +2 Agility, and +1 Luck. Needless to say, these advanced suits are somewhat hard to find. I recommend outfitting your explorers with these suits (especially the +2/+2/+1 variety), and outfitting the worker bees with the +3, +4/+1, and +5 variety (which give you just the stat you need to run your job in your Vault room).

A line of colorful explorers coming home to roost.

Another min-maxing strategy is to start training in Luck as much as you can. It takes a while before you can build the Game Room (50+ dwellers). But once you have one, cycle various dwellers in there from all walks of life. The more luck you have, the more lucky bonus Caps you get when collecting resources from a room. The only stat these busy bee dwellers need is the one for their room, and Luck.

In my next Fallout Shelter post I'll write more about The Late Game strategies that I've found work, for larger vaults. And an amazingly detailed document on Fallout Shelter efficiency.

Triple Feature: No Escape, The Visit, Dope

Time for another edition of Tomes at the movies.

No Escape

No Escape is the story of an American family going to work overseas, and almost immediately getting caught in a coup. I knew it would be a bit of drama, but what was such a treat was all the attention to details. So much story is contained in there. Even in the beginning scenes, there is so much attention given to minor characters who set the theme, tone, and mood. The music is so good. I mean like Mad Max: Fury Road good. The slow motion scenes, which are peppered throughout, as well as those really tense moments where the sound just fades into the background, are so well done.

I had the exact same feeling as in Mad Max: Fury Road of suddenly realizing that all my muscles were tense and my hands clenched.

The story would make an excellent little RPG scenario twist, which is to say that a character, as a relatively innocent contractor, is a face for the "evil corporation" as seen by the revolution.

This also inspired me to add more social unrest in my RPGs. It would be great to have the PCs in a scenario wandering into a city, only to find their in the middle of a civil war they knew nothing about. Even better is throwing them hints and clues as they proceed which hints at the mounting tension and unrest.

The Visit

The Visit is a little horror movie, with that whole video cam thing. The cute twist here is that pretty much the main character is the girl who is into cinematography, so there are some double entendres of that nature during the movie. This is a great exploration of some of the natural oddities of getting old, combined with that creepy madness that is so effective in freaking you out ("sundowning"; so good). The grandma and grandpa (pop-pop) are so unbelievably good at glowing with crazy. And the movie has an excellent little twist at the end.

I think this could totally work as a Dread game where the characters are the children (you can play various siblings, different ages). I think the grandparents, combined with a few additional characters (like the movie, various visitors from town), are enough to flesh out the scenario. The incidental old-person maladies are enough to start creeping out the PCs without giving away anything about the end. Love the limited communication, such as no wifi, one dial-up plug that gets occasionally used, a remote farmstead, the parent estranged from the grandparents, and also off on a cruise with boyfriend. It all sets a great sense of disconnection from help.

Dope

Dope was dope. Seriously. Great soundtrack, old hip hop references abound, and a dramatic story with excellent humor. Characters were super relate-able. Best part was having 3 main characters, none of which you'd consider to have a "super star" look. Go geek!

Did inspire me to think of a PC party that are "geeks". I.e. no one is physically strong, with everyone playing "weak", skill-heavy roles. Could be modern (such as the movie) or just convert it into some other scenario.

Gateway 2015: Sunday and Monday

Sunday; a late start

After the late night, a nice late start. Got up, wandered, ate, and then family time! Met up J (my partner) and the kid. Swam at the pool, grubbed, and then headed for games.

Started with the obligatory family shot:

The family selfie tradition

Sunday 3pm: Battle Sheep 101

The Kid and I signed up to teach people Battle Sheep. It's an extremely simple which you can teach in a few minutes, similar to checkers. However it had more replayability (in my mind) that's more similar to Go (but not that much!) What's nice is that the board is different each game, since the pasture has a placement phase, where every player takes turn putting down one of their 4 boards. The game is fairly simple and is just a territory claiming and blocking game. We had a decent turn-out, and probably had about 10 different people play through.

Always great to meet more parent + small child travelers at the con!

Sunday 5pm: What the Food!? 101

I first played What the food!? a few cons back when the designers were demoing it (just after the kickstarter). It wasn't too meaty, but a fun little party game, and I bought it in anticipation of family game days. It has sat on the shelf until a few months ago when the kid played a few games. Great for that age when they're starting to read, because you can force them to read the food combos as part of the game ("Slimy Pigs in a Blanket covered in Boysenberry Jam").

Got a decent turnout of motivated food fighters, but damn, that first game went on forever. 

Sunday 7pm: King of Tokyo tournament

This was the kid’s second time playing in the King of Tokyo tournament. It's a really fun party game for all ages, and is basically a Godzilla and King Kong-themed push-your-luck dice game. Skill isn't all that important, but man is it thematically designed. 

Unlike the last time the kid played, when she almost got to the final game and got "most kills" in the first game, this time she was eliminated quickly (but it was so close; a brutal fight to the death between her and one other guy). Although disappointed, she handled it very well.

We did get to meet and re-familiarize ourselves with all the kids that were there the last time (pretty much all of which joined again), so it's nice to feel that community. And also: all the kids died off early, which is unusual for this game, but ended up causing a bunch of commiseration.

Monday and goodbyes

We played a few games in the morning. J and the kid played a round of battleship, and we learned some Dice Masters, a super-hero type dice pool-building game. It's kind of like Magic and Dominion, but instead of building a deck, you are building a pool of dice. Not my cup of tea (too much comparing numbers and such), but I can see the attraction from those who like Magic-type games.

The first ship sunk was the kid’s battleship.

This was also the first time we've stayed long enough to go and check out the Auction. We ran into Craig / whodo, and hung out with him a bit while they sold things. I highly recommend it. Craig came away with a copy of Apocalypse World and Dungeon World for the high price of $1 total.

And with that... back home. But not before another visit to Endorffeine.

Gateway 2015: Saturday

Saturday 9am-1:45pm: Happy Jacks Presents: Journey of the Savage Six

GM: Bill Roper
System: Legend of the Five Rings
Players included me, Howie, Bruce, Kris, Kurt, Michael H...

First off, some pretty mean presentation. The table was organized with mat, nice character sheets, the Code of the Bushido, a Japanese-style coin necklace and fan (both symbolic, and necessary in our horribly inconsistently air conditioned con).

Never played L5R, so really wanted to check it out. And besides which I've only played with Bill once, and it was ridiculously amusing. L5R is a setting that emulates a psuedo Japan culture, but with magic and "taint" (i.e. evil stuff). Bill described the setting as like a Japan with a Wall of Westeros in the south, beyond which is horribly bad Japan-demon stuff.

We were the Savage Six, an eclectic mix of bad asses that work for our daimyo. Oh ya, and Bill's setting had all of us be Orcs. Japanese fantasy Orcs. 

All said, it was a fun game, with a great mix of interesting personalities, and I got to see how the mechanics flowed. Probably not a go-to system for me, but I liked certain elements. Still don't know too much about how honor works and such, but it was a teaser.

The game ran a little late, and so 45 minutes past the hour gave us enough time to order a pizza for mid-game scarfing in the next session...

Friday 2pm-6:30pm: The Stellar Eagle

GM: Scott Martin
System: Kingdom
Players: me, Howie, Sinh, James (and Scott) 

This is my second time playing a game designed by Ben Robbins (the other being Microscope). I was very much looking forward to it, and was not disappointed. Scott was a great GM. He would refer to the book here and there, but it was mostly to ensure we were hitting everything in the correct order, and didn't detract from the pace. Additionally I'd highly recommend the system; it's of the GM-less variety (such as Microscope, The Quiet Year, and those by postworldgames).

Kingdom is played as an exploration of a large group of people. In our case we would explore The Stellar Eagle, Earth's first colonizing vessel. The year is 2032, resources are getting scarce, and we have just enough Rhenium (fuel) to make 3 jumps. There is one world we've sent probes to (but never living organisms), and one that we haven't (but it looks promising), and then maybe a last jump to make it back home. That sounds like a good, desperate start.

We start by defining our characters, their roles, wishes, fears, and issues. And also whether they are Power (deciding what the kingdom does), Perspective (foresee consequences), or Touchstone (reflects how the people feel). We get:

• James as Liam Thomas, the de facto spiritual leader [Touchstone]

• Sinh as Pablo Reynholme, the Chief Agriculturalist [Power]

• Howie as S.E.R.A., the only Genetically Modified Being (GMB) aboard. [Perspective]

• Tomer (me) as Nova Arenas, the Chief Psychology Officer, one of the only who can supersede the captain. [Perspective]

• Scott as Captain Bryce Miller, the captain of the ship. [Power]

Howie, Sinh, Scott, and James. Conflicts abound!

We then define places on the ship where scenes will occur:

• The Scout Bay (a crowded space with our only two scout ships)
  

• S.A.N.E. (the psychology bay)
  

• The Garden (higher level food production)
  

• The Food Vats (fecal recycling)
  

• The Spiritual Center (ad hoc space with an ad hoc minister)
  

• The Crypt (friendly nickname for the small capsule like beds)

The next hours was a great session that consisted of two Crossroads (dilemmas):

• There is an epidemic of what we refer to as Mindbreak, a series of psychological issues that appear to get even worse when quarantined. Should we quarantine the sick?

• There are production problems induced by bugs in the ship's code that threaten the amounts of food and radioactive meds. Fixing the problem may correlate with higher incidents of Mindbreak. Should we fix the bugs?

All in all, an excellent little game, with lots of intrigue and politics. I just love how everyone had all sorts of directions to take it, and the end results is just a fracturing of anything resembling order and sanity, but definitely resembling society and pressure. We didn't even get to the outside of the solar system to take our first jump, but there was already great mayhem, as Mindbreak started showing some violent side effects. Or maybe it was just the Twankie bars. Our archaeologist died, but a vote was taken, and player majority ruled that the ship would survive the riots. Oh, did I forget to mention that our GMB started reproducing with the human crew? I did remove Directive 12, which allowed it to interact with the crew, so I guess it was only a matter of time.

Some other players echoed the sentiment that I also feel: this is a game you'd like to play over a number of sessions, as there is just so much meat in it.

There are a number of big differences from Microscope, for those that have played. In this one you actually play a specific character. Also, the story is pretty much told sequentially, so everyone is somewhat on the same page, as far as the story line.

I don't know that I'd play it in a con again (except to teach it as a GM, which I would enjoy!). I just think it would work better if there was 10 hours to play. Not that there is anything wrong with starting a story that just has to end.

Friday 8pm-11:30pm: Saving Throw Presents The Death of Sally Strike

GM: Wes Otis
System: Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed.
Players:

• Denys Mordred as Dr. James Foxworth (my love interest)

• Howie as Harold Dean (FBI Specialist; the "Mulder" character), or as kpop33 on the paranormal forums

• me as Jordana Klein (FBI; the "Scully" character)

• Dimitri as Dallas Gasnet (P.I. and porn enthusiast)

• drop-in (forgot her name, but she was great) as Samantha See (Paranormal expert; or is that charlatan?)

• (damn, name?) as Jonny Davidson (NYPD)

Wes always runs a fun game. Everyone had a blast running around, getting on each others nerves (player or character, sometimes it's hard to tell!), and mismanaging the situation in such a great manner. We probably annoyed the shit out of the neighboring table (sometimes you are on the receiving end, sometimes you dish it out). Drinks were had, and in the end, the Mi-gos won and took over the world in one long blast of grey, oozy pudding.

"Ashley Jackson has shit on me. Literally." - Dimitri as Dallas Garnett (P.I.)

Saturday midnight - 3am: Dread: Mad Max Fury Road (the circus)

So, what's to do on Saturday night, when you know you won't make your Sunday morning game? PLAY MORE!

GM: me
System: Dread
Players: Man, there were so many! 8 players: Howie, Sinh, Dak, Sean, Mario, Dimitri, dude and girlfriend (crap, names!?)

• Howie as ? and ?

• Sinh as Pickel Bob and Bay Boy

• Dak as Jumbo and ?

• Sean as Tannish and Lango

• Mario as ? and ?

• Dimitri as I.R. (Irritated Rectum, aka Errr)

• Dude as Jonny and Galla

• Dudette as Gabriel and ?

8 is a lot of players. If you had asked me ahead of time if I'd imagine that, I'd have said there was no way. But it worked so well. I gave them each 2 characters, and we had a tribe of 16.

They decided to be nomads, who travel the wastes for spoils. But they do have hidden caches where they store gear. And oh shit, they have a huge circus carnival truck! I'm guessing it's something like this, but who knows what was in their heads:

They want a gun turret up on top, and some sort of mortar / grenade launcher. Well, pulls start happening all over the place... this stuff doesn't come cheap. And a few have their own little vehicles. A car here, a pair of bikes there. Well, the tower already falls early, and one of Dimitri's characters is on the chopping block. I don't take him just yet. What are the names of these lovely individuals? Something like Tomer's Travelling Circus. Thanks, you lovely bastards.

They have two unfriendly neighbors. One is the Skull Shiners, which are cannibals and to be avoided. The others wear masks and are called the Wheelers. 

And guess what? They just got back to one of their caches and someone ran off with their shit! They find a cracked mask, and also a cigarette butt (I guess there are still a few?) on the floor, and it's still smoking. And it was their old tribemate, Leroy, who betrayed them.

Looking out the cave they can see the culprits driving off in the distance. The tribe gets halfway down the hill, on the chase, when they hear an explosion behind them. Dimitri's character on the bike explodes. It was time to cash in that check.

They are consumed by the chase, take down some of the masked folk, but these are the stragglers on bikes. Far ahead they see the car with Leroy. They strap their one surviving prisoner to the top of the circus truck, and one of Howie's characters crawls up and starts torturing her for information. Turns out there is a trap ahead. A canyon with rocks up above to drop on pursuers.

They are starting to catch the car, but it's reached a huge peninsula that stretches for miles, and it's started climbing up the road that heads up the peninsula. That's mask territory. They book it, and start catching the car, but guns are blazing, and friends and foes fall. They can't catch it before they start into a canyon, and KABOOM, it's raining boulders. More fall, but it's all happy endings, as they catch Leroy and smash his car to bits.

What? 3am already? Damn.

Gateway 2015: Friday

The journey there

A long bus ride on a Thursday. The first bus, to my friend Jack's new cafe, Endorffeine in Chinatown (plug!). So, so good.

Then a second bus. A ride down Santa Monica for 1.5 hours that involved a good, long listen to the Mad Max soundtrack. This inspired me with a realization about being ready to run the late night game, that comes later.

One of my favorite parts coming into the con, is the Thursday night... off to have dinner with friends, and a very late night game of Splendor (in preparation for the tournament), with my friends Howie and Lisa.

Friday pre-games

Howie and I take off, and pick up some nutrients in the form of cold press green juice (because god knows there will be nothing green to eat during the weekend). And then off to the con for an early start... gotta sign up for them games!

We get there around 10:30am, and get in touch with Craig (aka whodo on the Happy Jacks forums), who is visiting from the UK. Just for the con... amazing. Chat around, eat at the Habit Burger (now a tradition pre-con), and then back for the sheets.

By then there is a crowd getting ready to riot. Fortunately, Jim Sandoval (the Generalissimo de RPG) steps up and cracks the whip! Three people can sign up at a time, when one is done, next in line can step up. Slow, but very effective, and fair. And we got our own taste of some Gencon line waiting!

Friday 1pm-7pm: Distress of Life Liner 928

GM: me. This is my Star Frontiers / Savage Worlds / Lego game, which I've talked about in a previous post. 

Players:

• Kurt (Lauer) as Cutter Parsons, Human Pilot
• Kody as Galius Sturk, Dralasite Engineer
• Brian as Verm, the Sathar Medic
• Bill from Arizona as Sarkin Rah, the Vrusk Captain

Character generation

Character generation always takes about 30 minutes, but it definitely works faster now. Instead of having them make the basic character, then starting the game, and then stopping to do equipment (which, really, made sense in my head when first making the game)... now we just do it all up at the front and get into it (thank you player feedback!). Per always, they come up with all sorts of fun, interesting combinations that I haven't seen before.

I can't state enough how much fun the players bring into this. But needless to say, I had a grand ol' time running it.

A picture of people taking pictures.

Friday 7pm-10pm: Splendor tournament

I was supposed to be in an RPG, but about 2 weeks back I found out they are running a Splendor tournament. The first, at Strategicon. I got in touch with Asmodee, the US distributor, and was able to secure 3 more sets of the game to the Game Library. Thanks Asmodee and Space Cowboys! Unfortunately the "prizes" that they sent wouldn't reach us in time. But hey, next con.

As it was, had a great time, and even got 3rd place. Was in the final game with my friend Howie, and it was brutal. It was what I term a "fast" game, with lots of high-value cards in the center and top rows. And everyone knew it. And it was cock-block city, with everyone hoarding gold coins, and other people's colors, and pointing of fingers. So, so good. Truly a cut-throat game, and I'm honored to have been a part of it.

My semi-final win. Killed it with 17 points.

After that we wandered about a bit, and I ran into Bob Quinterro's Xcom game, which included these cats (including Dimitri / radzap and Craig / whodo):

Not finding anything to play, it was time to pull out the big guns in my back pocket...

Friday 11pm-2am: Dread Mad Max Fury Road

GM: Me.

Players:

• Howie as Bwarez, Howard, and Russians
• Albert as Grog, Alice Spiderhands, and Mike the Midget Master
• Sinh as Shaggy Pig, Charlie Brown, and Cupcake Daisy
• Andy as Honkey, Vladimir (damn, I forget the rest! He took the scraps of paper!)

I stole this game. The idea. It was Andy M from Seattle: He ran this at GoPlayNW 2015, which I attended. Although he played in my game during that con, I didn't get to play in his, but heard the players talk about how amazing it was. Fortunately, conversations with both Andy himself, and another amazing fellow named Stras, illuminated much of what seemed to make it so cool.

And so I've planned to hijack the game for some time, but just really wasn't sure if it'd just implode in my face, since it's very ad hoc, and all improv. But on the bus ride to the con, I was listening to the Mad Max soundtrack, and was touched by the great arm of the RPG god herself... it was all so clear: Just follow where the music takes you.

And so with that, I took my three friends, and then poached a Werewolf GM (who also RPGs heavily; but I did steal him from his Werewolf duties!) We find a spot, setup a Jenga tower, and I start playing the soundtrack, and then:

I start by asking them what kind of game they want to play. It's what Andy M does, supposedly. And within the first few minutes, Sinh says "thunderdome". There is a groan or two, but wait, I exclaim. We are not playing thunderdome from back in the day... this will be thunderdome as re-imagined in Fury Road.

And hence we have The Pig Hunters. They are gladiators that have risen through the ranks, but are now hunters for new players in the gladiator pits. Which they poach from the wastelands. And have them fight. The losers become "pigs" and are eaten by the community. The winners keep playing. Until they lose. Or until they come up in the ranks, and join the tribe.

Now, sterility is a thing. And they need women. Or children. And there are some, but they are beyond the radioactive wastes. Good thing they have a plan. There was an old man who came from the wastes in a biohazard suit, not too long ago. He had a Geiger counter, and when he reached our land, he said it was clean. Before we tortured him and ate him. His helmet and the tatters of his suit still hang in the town square. But he did reveal one other thing: There is a facility out in the wastes with more suits, where he came from, and "please don't kill me. I'll show you where it is." Blah blah blah.

And if they get these suits, perhaps they can find a new place to live, and start their own thunderdome. The big men in charge are not fun to work for, keeping all the best spoils for themselves.

Now, they need vehicles. And gear. And that doesn't come cheap in this world. And blocks start getting pulled immediately. Howie wants a motorcycle with a side gattling gun, and an AK-47 and a mortar, and some more miscellaneous stuff. No worries! "Just pull 8 blocks. What was that? Just a harpoon and some barbed wire? OK, two blocks it is." And so it goes...

Everyone is armed, and out. It's 2 days to the great river that'll need to be crossed. First they have to get by the Amazons who live up in the hills. Men go there to die, but it is said that the Amazons let them die in a pleasant way. Before they are eaten. However, the Amazons live in a fortress of rocks and caves, and noone has ever been able to infiltrate their home turf.

They scrape by, but then find they are chased. Battle ensues. The tower grows, and falls, and grows again. The Amazons are defeated, and they capture a new bike.

And now it is time to camp. In the red rock wastelands. Where the large Ligerbeasts live. Supposedly they hunt in packs of 10 or 20, and drag off travelers at night, silently. They set up camp, and blocks are pulled. And a tower falls, and someone is dragged into the night. The party gives chase and is finally able to surround the beasts with a crazy maneuver, (and a tower falls) and another member is decapitated by a fleeing Ligerbeast. But the sun then rises.

They continue on to the river, and find a huge croc sun bathing at the sandbar. The one used for crossing. And one of Andy's characters runs down to sacrifice himself (tower pushed) by holding the croc's jaws open while his mates scurry across... and as the last car passes, the croc's jaws come snapping down.

And it's 2:30am and we decide it's time to call it a night. But shit was that an amazing ride.

And where did the story come from? The music, man. Just follow the music.

A tower, a speaker, and a dose of crazy.