Trying a new style of Gaming

[Hussar]

Well, three sessions of a Savage World game and we're on to the next one.

I like SW. Nice system. Although, I admit, I was not as prepped as I should have been for this game. I had an idea in my head, but, I procrastinated and real life keeps intruding and it wasn't as good as I had planned. Ah well, live and learn.

One thing I have learned is you have to be pretty on the ball with the mechanics for this sort of thing. Because we're all learning the system, everyone really leans on the GM for guidance - after all he's the one supposed to know things right? It's been a really long time since I had to do that. For my 3e games, the players generally knew the rules, and it was only some once in a while rules lookups for us and usually it was the players doing it themselves.

That doesn't work when everyone is a newbie.

One thing I was surprised at is I miss the CR tables in D&D. Eyeballing baddies is a lot harder when you're learning a system. I probably should have stuck with some pregen adventures - there are loads of them out there. I seriously misjudged how lethal combat could be and damn near dropped the entire party in an early fight that was supposed to be just a kind of warmup. In a game with no healing, that becomes a big problem.

Again, live and learn.

For the next game, we're playing Sufficiently Advanced - it's linked above. Cool system. Pretty indie based - not a lot of combat and the players have HUGE amounts of editorial control. When you create your character, you can basically choose two paths - either you have pretty decent stats in the game and you can effect changes within the parameters of the game, or you can have really poor stats and have the ability to step outside the game and effect changes more easily. It's a rather neat setup and I'm curious how it works in play.

Speaking of in play, my bunch surprised the heck out of me today when they created their characters. It's a hard SF game, but three of the four players took Stranger in a Strange Land type outsiders with little actual in game power. Not a problem. But, what surprised me is they all chose religious focused characters. They are all focused on worship as a core value of hte character. It never occured to me that the players would do that - my own filters pretty much skipped over that as an option.

It should make the first scenario very, very interesting. I won't spoil the surprise, you'll have to read about it later. But, I'm not afraid to admit, I had this big grin on my face as I realized what the characters were.

Oh, and by the way, one of the characters is a heavy metal viking with a flamethrower.

 

[Hussar]

/snip double post

 

[Hussar]

Just played our first session of Sufficiently Advanced.

Loads of fun. Really enjoyed it.

This whole "shared GM power" thing takes some getting used to I'll tell you. In SA, when you win a conflict, the winner determines the results. The first conflict, I started presenting the results and then stopped myself half way through. I then turned to the player and said, "Ok, you win, what happens?"

Later, the plot took a complete 90 degree turn from what I was expecting - the problem is now a hoax, a sort of attack on the society they are visiting. The session ended with yet another turn, as one of the players overheard a secret conversation, the contents of which, because she won the contest, I actually don't know.

So, next session is going to be about 90% surprise to me as well.

Very, very cool.

 

[Hussar]

Well the second session is now under our belt. I'm REALLY liking this system. The dice mechanics - (ability score+1d10)x10 makes for a huge range of rolls. And the reroll mechanic is nice. Each ability has a reserve pool equal to the ability. You can spend that reserve pool to reroll or to add to a roll. When the reserve pool hits zero, you lose the conflict.

This session, I ran a nested skill challenge. The party was manhunting a killer. At the same time, they had to avoid the authorities who were also hunting the killer but would attack the party if they caught them. The killer was also running a hide and seek conflict with the party. A three way conflict. The odd man out in the party used his skills to provide bonuses to the other two that were in the extended conflict.

A bit complicated, but, surprisingly engaging. Do you spend the resources to win a given roll or hold off? It can really be a tactical experience, but also very fluid since there aren't any really specific results to a single die roll. It's mostly just narration.

I made a bit of a mistake I suppose, I narrated successful checks, which, thinking about it, the players maybe should have, but, honestly, I think it worked better this way, this time simply because manhunt and hide and seek conflicts would be very difficult to narrate from the hunter's point of view. Better an objective narrator's POV to describe the action.

One thing that is just blowing me away. I've run D&D for so long that I'd forgotten how easy it is to build scenarios in lighter systems. It took me about two hours to build this scenario and most of that was spent on art. Actual mechanics and a bit of scripting? Maybe half an hour. Sweet.

The scenario, btw, was based on a short story featured on Escape Pod or in print here called Sinner Baker, Fabulist, Priest, Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast, by Eugie Foster.

I had the players either listen or read the short story before play began. I think it really engaged them. Well, two of them as one didn't bother... sigh. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't beat it to death without ... err... nevermind...

BTW, for those who play 4e D&D, could nested Skill Challenges be done? I'm not familiar enough with the mechanics. Seems like a fun idea though. It certainly worked well here.

 

[Woas]

Good too hear it's all going well for you and that the new games are perking your interest and you are seeing what else is out there. I think when all is said and done, it's making you a "better" gamer. I know doing something similar to this has for me.

 

[Rel]

Just caught this thread and good for you guys being able to try out some different stuff. I have gotten to play a wide variety of games over the last several years and I really think that different mechanics and different styles are good things to be exposed to.

Sometime around the holidays we'll be wrapping my first 4e game and chances are we'll be doing something similar to this for a while.

 

[Janx]

Regardless of the rules, I like the idea of committing to a short and finite number of sessions to tell your story.

A long time ago, WotC did that survey where they found that campaigns lasted about a year on average, and that folks typically only played to a certain level (which makes sense if they can't keep the campaign running past a year).

So locking the GM to get down to business and get it all done in 8 sessions means that you are within the 1 year average duration.

And there's nothing that says you can't chain them together.

Just the idea of running story arcs, to maintain campaign cohesion and momentum is a good one.

 

[Hussar]

Well, for us, 8 sessions is closer to two months. It's enough to get about one long module in 3e terms.

For Sufficiently Advanced, I'm running episodic adventures, so, each one is pretty much self contained and lasts about a session and a half or so. The next one should be a bit longer.

 

[Hussar]

Session 3 of Sufficiently Advanced under my belt.

I'm REALLY liking this system. Easy to use, clearly written. Very neat.

I was going to run a more complicated scenario today, but, last night, I realized that I hadn't given my resident head basher anything to take a swing at yet. It was time to let him break some heads. So, I shelved my scenario (based on the novel Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds) and substituted a new one based on a short story by (I think) Stephen Baxter.

In the story, a generation ship flees a war torn Sol system and tries to reach another system at sublight speeds. A journey of thousands of years. In the short story, Baxter explores the idea of evolution in a closed environment, splitting the crew into a sort of Morlock/Eloi split.

So, I followed along. The ship was detected and the party dispatched to find out what was going on on the ship. First they ran into the morlocks. The party combat guy went all happy and tried out his flame thrower. Unfortunately, he got cut off by the Amish farmer who spent a twist to end the fight. Very fun. Everyone was giggling like slightly concussed monkeys throughout the encounter. Always a good sign.

The party passed through morlock territory and have just met their first Eloi.

If you like, the transcript is here.

I should post some of the artwork from the game. I like how this last background came out.

 

[Hussar]

Well, the fourth session with Sufficiently Advanced has come and gone.

A bit of a frustrating session for me this time to be honest, although nothing caused by my players. Some real life stuff intruding during game time. Always makes me grumpy. But, the game went off pretty well.

We finished off the Ark scenario. They passed through the ship, met the captain and convinced him to disembark the crew/cargo and then the ship could continue on its way. A nice little fight along the way with the heavy metal viking recklessly charging a hunting party.

The next scenario is based on the latest Escape Pod story, Infestation which is about nano-tech vampires. I adapted it to a cargo cult style world which is roughly 21st century technology, having survived some serious conflicts in its distant past.

The party has been sent in to make first contact with this culture and discover more. They stumbled across a farmhouse with three police officers in the front yard in apparent standoff. The police mistakenly presumed the party was from the VED (which, at first, they didn't know what it meant - Vampire Eradication Department) that they had called some time earlier. The PC's investigated and discovered the high tech, nano-ware vampires. That's where the session ended, in a fight with the vampires.

Made a couple of mistakes prepping this session. I needed to have a blank token for Maptools so I could make secret rolls - I let things out of the bag when I impersonated a Vampire token for a chance to spot the party before they entered - "Vampire: Roll Roll Roll" kinda spoiled the surprise. Sigh. Live and learn.

So far the group seems to be really liking the system. I know that I do. Being able to prep a 3 hour session in about half an hour is such a change for me. I'm still struggling a bit with the mechanics - I buggered up the combat mechanics kinda badly this time around. Heh. Well, it'll be better once we smooth over the rough edges.

Funnily enough, it appears that one of my players is planning to reskin the system to run a Discworld game using these mechanics. Definitely want to see how that goes.