30 Days of GameMastering--Day 29!

Just two more entries to go in Lindevi's "30 Days of GameMastering" challenge!  Let's dive right in!

Teaching the game:  how do you sell players on the system while running a demo or convention game?

While I don't run games online, I do run them at conventions, as you followers of this blog well know.   Even before starting Cold Steel Wardens, I demoed WEGS and Pittsburgh 68, to say nothing of my numerous convention games at Origins and the many local conventions here in the Miami Valley.

Everyone has a different schtick!
Keep your PCs unique!

Firstly, I make sure to play up the major themes and archetypes in any game that I'm running.  This helps provide your players a jumping-off point, as well as helps them to understand the setting better.  For CSW, my pre-generated characters all echo already-existing comics characters and I describe them as such.  Dusk, for instance, is an unabashed pastiche of Nightwing, while Veritas is a slightly less psychotic Rorschach.   In my Deadlands one-shots, I included very archetypal Old West characters:  a big-game hunter, a riverboat gambler, a 'lady of the night', and an Indian ambassador.

However, this emphasis shouldn't just extend to your pre-generated PCs.  Rather, you should ensure that your adventure itself emphasizes the core themes of the setting.  One of my most successful convention games--the Deadlands one-shot included over in my free gaming materials:  "Westbound on the San Juan Express"--played this angle up with emphasis.  "Westbound..." emphasized the alternate history angle of the setting, as the PCs were hired to escort Samuel Clemens to Denver to deliver a speech, but also touched on the occult/horror theme, as the game also featured a mysterious Harrowed and a batch of walkin' dead, hidden away in the cargo cars.

I also try to ensure that PCs all have interesting, unique things to do and don't step on one another's toes.  In my "Reno Six-Pack" of Hell on Earth adventurers, I do include three 'spellcasters', but all three use different powers:  the Templar focuses on healing and self-buff powers, the Doomsayer blasts things with radioactive energy, and the Junker has Tesla-based gadgetry.  Even though the mechanics of their spellcasting is nominally the same, their form and function differ greatly, providing niche protection and covering unique bases.  Further, the non-caster characters cover numerous unique skills.  The Road Warrior, obviously, is the best at driving and piloting checks, but is also a terror in melee, wielding a mini-chainsaw.  The Harrowed gunslinger makes for an expert marksman, but is also a capable tracker and scout.

Taking the pain out of the system's learning curve also helps aid play.  After players pick characters in a CSW one-shot, I walk them through the character sheet, using one of the non-chosen characters.  In doing so, I also demonstrate what certain rolls look like, particularly showing how certain modifiers (for CSW, mainly Skill Specialties) fit into a given roll.  This tends to speed things up, though I often start each one-shot with an 'easy' encounter, where the players can get their feet wet in an environment that isn't going to harm them drastically.

Lastly?  Remember it's just a game.  For a one-shot--especially at a convention--it's a much better idea to fudge some rules for the sake of the game moving forward and players having fun.  Getting hung up in minutia, particularly with new players, isn't worth the hassle.  Make sure everyone's having a good time and that they leave the table satisfied.

In Which The Warlock Comes Up With a Backup Plan...

For those of you playing along at home, you may have noted that I haven't been talking much about our romps in Deadlands on Friday night.  Truth be told, it's been quite a while since we've actually had a session of "The Flood"!  Real-life issues took their toll, between our trip to C2E2, some illnesses, and a few alternate obligations, resulting in over a month of missed sessions!

Yeesh!  That's a lot of time.  But, many groups face the same situation--what do you do when you need the whole group present, and it just hasn't happened?

For us, the answer is usually board games.  Arkham Horror is a particular favorite, as two sessions of that can fill an entire game night for us.  Lately, we also broke out Innsmouth Escape and had a blast with Munchkin Axe Cop.  These are usually good for single night sessions where we're just looking to unwind after a long week, but occasionally we just get the itch for some actual dice-rolling RPG that a board game just can't scratch.

The PlatinumChick and I, after years of running games for conventions, have quite the library of one shots.  Under normal circumstances, we tend to use these sorts of nights for playtesting.  Most of my WEGS games and several of our other one-offs get tested with our home group when a few players are missing.  Again, that's good for most circumstances, but when we don't exactly have a lot of one-shots to test this year, due to the Origins date change, that leaves that option out in the cold.

So, the question has been:  "What do we do now?"



Straight from the comics, onto my gaming table! 
Iron Man and the Avengers take on Carnage in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

The answer, interestingly enough, arose from one of my recent reviews:  Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.  After going to see The Avengers a few weeks ago (and again a week later...), we were all really high on some superhero goodness, and I was eager to give the system a run.

So, with no prep at all, we decided to delve into the book-built scenario, based on Brian Michael Bendis' "Breakout" arc from "New Avengers".  Serendipitously taking on Bendis' Avengers--Iron Man, Captain America, Miss Marvel, and Wolverine--we dialed up the action as the SHIELD/Riker's Island prison known as "The Raft" exploded with an EMP pulse.  With Iron Man in the in the sub-basements upgrading security and the rest up top, examining some new holding cells with Maria Hill, we started with the party already split....and Carnage making a beeline for Iron Man!

The nice thing about all this?  I've already managed to lay down enough plot hooks in one session to provide a ton of possible "episodes" in the future.  Where did Carnage escape to, after attacking Iron Man?  Who was at fault for the explosion?  Who were the infiltrators in the northwest guard tower, and what's their relationship to "Mutants Sans Frontiers"? 

While we're hoping to get back to "The Flood" this week--with the Battle of Shan Fan, no less!--we'll be revisiting MHR off and on, when we have missing members.  And, it's already looking to be spectacular!

In Which The Warlock Compares Two Posses...

As a wonderful reprieve, here at the end of my spring break, the PlatinumChick and I headed on up to Akron to spend some time with our good friends ChaoticLauryn and CincinNick, who live up yonder.  Previously, I'd offered to run a one-shot for them while up there, because they don't exactly get to game as much as we do down here.  I let them choose from my fairly-sizable game library and--surprise, surprise!--they picked Deadlands.

Not wanting to do too much prep for the one-off, I decided to download one of Pinnacle Entertainment's official adventures:  Night Train 2:  For Whom The Whistle Blows.  It's received fairly good reviews since its release, and it's the sequel to a Deadlands classic adventure, known for its lethality and creeping horror.

With that in mind, let's flash briefly back to WittCon IX.  As I'd mentioned in my WittCon wrap-up, my Hell on Earth game didn't exactly go as planned.  In light of this, I'm going to play a little game that I like to call Bad Posse, Good Posse!

Teamwork kills zombies!
That, and chainsaws!  And shotguns!

A Bad Posse struggles with basic foes, because they don't use teamwork.  The first combat encounter that my Hell on Earth posse faced was against ten basic Walking Dead, as well as one Living Faminite.  Three of the group didn't even get out of their armored car, leaving only three of the group to face off against the hordes.  Those three took significant wounds, which cost them heavily in Fate Chips.  Had the other three joined the melee, the undead would have split their targets more widely, resulting in less wounds overall (due to no gang-up bonuses) and a quicker elimination of targets.

A Good Posse prioritizes targets and takes out those priority targets in haste.  When ambushed by some nosferatu at the Pickman telegraph station, our Huckster realized almost instantaneously that one of their attackers was a different type of undead--recognizing him as a Harrowed (and a Voodoo shaman, at that!), he quickly sent a charged "Aces High" hex at his head.  Realizing that his undead allies were outmatched, the Harrowed beat a hasty retreat and the posse claimed a quick victory.

A Bad Posse ostracises NPCs and don't follow up on available leads from them.  When our post-apocalyptic posse rolled into Reno, the Reno locals had just been raided by the dreaded Rojo Bastardes gang, and many of their supplies had been stolen.  So, when a heavily armed group of adventurers rolled into their town, they reacted with a fair degree of hostility.  But, rather than try to prove their good intentions, the posse decided to intimidate Abe Ellison--the nominal Reno mayor.  Once cowed, he came clean about the Rojo Bastardes attack, but the posse left almost as soon as they could get directions to the Rojo Bastardes camp.  Had they stayed in town to gather information--or to help the poor Reno scavs--they would have gained valuable information about the coming Faminite horde!

to kill "nose-ferrets" for Union Blue!

A Good Posse gets every inch they can out of their NPC contacts.  As my group this weekend worked their way through Pickman, I was somewhat astounded at their tactics.  Basically, any NPC that they managed to save, they pressed into service against the nosferatu.  By the end of the adventure, the posse was leading nearly 10 heavily armed NPCs--townsfolk, mostly, but a few with reasonable stats!--against the undead horde!  As a semi-organized fighting force, they managed to wipe out the undead scourge pretty easily!

A Bad Posse is content to let the dice fall where they may.  Each of the Hell on Earth posse members has at least one relative weakness.   For Edward Castellan, the New Templar, that weakness is his Quickness.  And, as it turned out, the dice were not in the player's favor when rolling Initiative.  Despite having a sizable stack of Fate Chips, the player was unwilling to reroll or add to failed Initiative rolls.  As it happened, that player went for the ENTIRE NIGHT without getting a single turn in combat, despite three combat encounters and five separate Initiative deals.  He was content to let the dice speak for him, rather than work for a success.  Fortune favors the bold, not the complacent!

A Good Posse fights on their own terms.  When it became apparent that the train itself was a priority target for the nosferatu, the posse literally took it away from them!  Stealthing up to the train itself, the group decoupled the train and drove it nearly 20 miles out of town, then used it to rest until sunrise!  Flabbergasted--and denied one of their major goals--the Harrowed retreated out of town and the nosferatu hunkered down for the day, as the heavily armored survivors holed up in the church.  By denying resources to the adversary and establishing a base of operations, our posse really threw the bad guys for a loop!

Don't you forget it!

I'm not trying to say that either group is made of bad or good players.  Hell, some of them played in both games!  But, the fact remains that the tactics being used were paramount to the posses' success or failure.  While the Hell on Earth group fell beneath the Faminite horde, that's not representative of the players' skill or even the characters' effectiveness--just a matter of how the dice fell and how the players responded.  And, while the Deadlands group managed to totally annihilate the undead scourge, things could have easily turned against them in a single roll.  Some days, you just can't win...

In Which The Warlock Compares Editions...

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I'd been prepping my Friday night Deadlands group for a what I've been terming an "interlude".

You see, we finally reached the halfway point of our exploits in "The Flood", with the posse gaining several significant allies and having gained a massive enemy in General Kwan, to say nothing of their ongoing struggle against the Church of Lost Angels.  Taking some rest and relaxation in Shan Fan, the posse got to kick up their heels, while I prepped my players for a fast foward.

I'd been itching to break out Hell on Earth for quite a while, but I'd never managed to play the original game that led to Savage Worlds.  That, naturally, has changed.

"All the way to Reno..."

I spent the last two weeks--in amongst some ongoing illness--writing up six experienced pre-gens in the Hell on Earth rules, as well as something of an "alternate timeline" scenario, in which the players' actual Deadlands posse had failed, and Reverend Grimme was free to spread his cult all the way into the 21st Century.  With a horde of Grimme's Faminites heading towards Reno, it was up to our far-future posse to lead the defense of the Biggest Little City in the Wasted West.

Our new posse included:

• Edward Castellan--a New Templar from Boise, wielding a massive sword and a sub-machine gun.
• "The Main Man" Marlow--a self-styled road warrior out of Junkyard, complete with chainsaw!
• Leslie K. Marvin--a Junker from Junkyard, and the creator of several robotic combat drones.
• Garret Walker--a Librarian from Sacramento, with his pet bobcat, Felix.
• "Doc Neutron"--a heretic Doomsayer from Carson City, capable of blasting foes with raw radiation.
• Carrie Ann Waltrip--a Harrowed bounty hunter, who's traveled all over the Wasted West...

While the group loved the change in feel--moving from the steampunk craziness of Deadlands to the desperate post-apocalypse of Hell on Earth--it's the change in rules that really stood out the most.  Playing Savage Worlds before this rules-set made the flaws in it stand out particularly highly.

A result of the hit locations
in Hell on Earth...

Particularly, the multiple damage systems were particularly difficult to remember.  While I don't have issues increasing the wound modifiers up to -5, I kept forgetting to deal Wind damage on normal attacks.  Also, I had to keep reminding my players to roll a d20 for hit location for every damaging attack, which added an additional roll and slowed down combat significantly.  FridayNightWill had a great moment while fighting against some undead Faminites:  playing as "The Main Man", he chainsawed off a Faminites legs and right arm, before finally managing to get a head shot.  It looked like infamous "Black Knight" scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as the undead thing would Not.  Give.  Up.

Also, the sheer number of stats seemed to be really excessive.  Hell on Earth has a separate stat for "Scrounging" and "Survival", which seemed to be a pretty large disconnect for some of my players.  But, on top of those, there's also a "Search" stat.  What does one do when you're looking for a spare part?  Is it "Scrounging" or is it "Search"?  The streamlining done in Savage Worlds--looking for that spare part would be a straight up "Notice" check--seems much needed.

While our foray into the original rules for Hell on Earth is going to be short-lived, it's been an interesting (and fun!) experience.  I purchased Hell on Earth primarily for the plot points and the setting info, and that hasn't disappointed me in the slightest.  When the "Reloaded" version comes out, though, I'll be the first in line to switch over.

In Which The Warlock Muses on the Future...

Last night was Wittenberg's first game night, which is always exciting for us.  It's spectacular to be able to meet a whole legion of incoming gamers and share with them all of the exciting events that the Guild puts forward, all of the events and systems that we run, and the cameraderie of slinging dice with your fellow man.

There's really nothing like the first time that you sit down to experience a game.  The 'first impression' that one gets just can't be replicated.  The first time I slung out the d10s and d6s in WEGS, for example, was a game unto itself.  The first time we broke out Arkham Horror, while frustratingly long, got us immediately hooked.  The first time we watched someone's dice 'ace' two and three times at a clip in Savage Worlds...it caught the eye like none other. 

What to write, what to write?!

But keeping that newness?  It's hard!  The longer one plays a game, the more apparent the flaws are in the system and the more 'rote' things become.  The Journeyman GM and I discussed this tendency on our way home from GenCon this year.  By this point, he had run his Blackbeard-based Doctor Who game nearly 12 separate times for various groups across the Miami Valley.  I'd been pinging my "WEGSthulhu" adventure and "Westbound on the San Juan Express" just as often.

As such, with the close of the convention season, it comes time for us gamers to think about what comes next:  what one-shots are on deck for the coming 2012 season, for the Friday Night One-Shot series at Witt, and what we're excited about.  But, that leaves me with a major question:  with so many options, what do I write?!

Obviously, my first and biggest option (and my biggest priority!) is my campaign of Cold Steel Wardens.  I'm running my alpha test--a campaign that I'm calling "Hard Rain"--at Witt this year, with my tentative players' Heroes making their way into the (ideally forthcoming) book as sample characters.  But, one-shots?  I have no issue running them at Wittenberg, but I'm not sure if the rules-set is ready for the convention circuit yet.

Last year, I built a series of Deadlands characters specifically for the purpose of using them on the convention circuit.  As such, I'm very tempted to bring back those characters for another go.  However, I'm at somewhat of a loss of what I'd like that adventure to look like.  I'm loathe to put forward another "train-based" adventure, and would like to lean towards something a little more investigative.  However, that's the furthest I've managed to think this one out.

The Laundry, similarly, is an appealing option.  While I'm more than proficient in the BRP Call of Cthulhu game, The Laundry has its own unique style that makes for a strange balance between absurdist comedy and deadly serious spy-drama.  But, that same balance makes it particularly difficult to GM appropriately.  Even for a skilled GM, it becomes difficult to shift gears so quickly between tones.  I'd been also thinking up a basic Call of Cthulhu adventure based around Shakespeare's "Scottish Play", but that's still in development.

Coming to a game convention
near you in 2012?

I'd also been thinking about potentially revisiting one of my all-time favorite heroes:  the Masters of the Universe in the role-playing arena.  However, I'm really not sure what system I'd use.  While I'd be tempted towards picking up Cartoon Action Hour, I actually think that ICONS would work really well for emulating the over-the-top action.  But, again, I haven't really thought out what the adventure would entail, or any plot ideas beyond the simple "He-Man and crew have to team up with Skeletor to take out a greater threat". 

And then...there are other options.  While I'm swearing off D&D for a while, my gaming stack's still full-up.  I'm planning on picking up All For One: Regime Diabolique in the near future, and I just found a copy of Wild Talents at Half Price Books for $5.  Also, The Journeyman GM still has my copies of Hell on Earth, while my regular Friday night group is chomping at the bit for some post-apocalyptic action.  Oh, and there's always WEGS, particularly with the Ultimate Dungeon Party out now, and the official printing of Dingbitt's Dunge-O'-Doom on the horizon. 

So many options, so little time, fellow gamers!  What should I run?  What would you like to see at WittCon, FOPCon, and all the rest in the next year?!