On top of my Continuum RPG that I run nearly every Wednesday night (and have been for 4+ years now), I'm now adding 3 other campaigns.
On Mondays, I'll be running two games, that alternate roughly every other week, depending on which players are available. These are with people who were in my Continuum game, but had to drop out for various reasons mainly having to do with inability to schedule everyone on the same night (and one player being unable to show up more than twice a month, regardless of day).
So, on Mondays when everyone's going to be around, we'll be doing short-shots and mini-series. The first one I'm going to run will be starting 2 or 3 weeks from now, and probably be a Scion game, but using either Fate or PDQ for the rules as those are much simpler systems than Scion's default White Wolf d10 system. Frankly, the setting and concept of Scion are great, but the mechanics were a pain in the butt past Hero level anyway. This miniseries will last 4 to 8 sessions, and then one or more of the players will take over GMing some other miniseries for a while, before I cycle in again. When I do, I'll probably try another stab at Night's Black Agents, which I like a lot but I got the impression one of my players wasn't thrilled with Gumshoe.
On the alternating Mondays (starting a week from today), when the one player just can't make it because of rotating work schedules, I'll be running 7th Sea. Again, the 7th Sea setting is better than the easily-broken system, so for this I'll be using a hybrid that is 80% PDQ, 15% 7th Sea, and 5% Fate (just character creation). Light, mostly simple, and easy for me to improvise because I've got a lot experience with the setting.
Continuum continues on Wednesdays, though with a slightly smaller play group than it once had.
On Sundays, I'll be running a huge Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Ed campaign. We made characters yesterday, and it was awesome. More about that in a future post, I assure you.
4 games at once, using 3 and a half rules sets, 1 of which is mechanically crunchy (Warhammer), and 1 of which requires extensive multi-timeline micromanagement (Continuum). So, clearly, I'll have zero free time in the next few weeks as I sort things out to get 3 games launched, and not many aimless days in the weeks thereafter.
It's possible I just might be crazy for trying to juggle all this at once.
Showing posts with label PDQ#. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PDQ#. Show all posts
Monday, March 18, 2013
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
7 Superheroes Walk Into A Bar
...and only 2 of them exchange numbers.
On Sunday, I played in the first session of a Supers game using the Truth & Justice (PDQ) system. The GM wanted the PCs to form a team or band of heroes, which seems perfectly reasonable.
So she asked us to first focus on our mundane secret identities, and make sure that every PC knew at least one other PC. Presumably, that happened. With 7 players, there was enough chaos around the tabletop that I didn't really catch the particulars of how everyone knew each other, and just focused on my own connections.
Then, for our first session, she had us all attending the University Street Fair when some supervillains showed up. That way, in theory, we'd all respond to the imminent danger, and have our super-heroic debut together. Tie the party to one another via a trial by combat.
As you are no doubt already guessing, it didn't really work. 7 PC superheroes arrive on the scene. 2 get into costume and wade into the thick of it. 2 turn invisible and 1 uses astral projection, and essentially keep their presence hidden from everyone. The remaining 2 participate, but do so in low-key "on the sly" ways intended specifically to prevent anyone from figuring out that they are a Super. The fight is over in about 2 rounds, so anyone who was "waiting for the right moment" to make their dynamic entrance just missed out. Bad guys defeated, police show up, everyone goes their separate ways.
This is why so many old D&D campaigns start with "There's a wizard in the corner, and he says he's looking to hire some brave adventurers, and will pay you lots of gold." Of course, at least 20% of those openers result in inter-party bloodshed before you leave the tavern, but at least they're all aware of one another.
Oh well, as they say in the biz: "The show must go on". I imagine a fair amount of meta-wrangling will have to happen before the first real scene of our next session, to get everyone on the same page.
The lesson is thus: Never ever start a campaign with what is supposed to be the party's first meeting or first adventure together. Starting with the origin story is virtually guaranteed to be more of a problem than it's worth. It sounds great on paper, but in reality it's a minefield.
It works in the movies, but that's only because scriptwriters and film directors have control in ways that GMs don't. A character in a novel can't misbehave and wreck the whole plotline, but a character at the table will do so more often than not. The self-destructive misbehavior meme is a strong one, and often hides behind the phrase: "It's what my character would do!" We'd like to pretend we're above it, but most of us aren't.
Far safer to run your first session from the perspective: "You've all known each other and been working together for about a year now, and have established strong friendships within the party." Several sessions later, when you've established a group dynamic, and gotten everyone's buy-in on how the campaign functions, then you can do a flashback session for an origin story, if you really must.
On Sunday, I played in the first session of a Supers game using the Truth & Justice (PDQ) system. The GM wanted the PCs to form a team or band of heroes, which seems perfectly reasonable.
So she asked us to first focus on our mundane secret identities, and make sure that every PC knew at least one other PC. Presumably, that happened. With 7 players, there was enough chaos around the tabletop that I didn't really catch the particulars of how everyone knew each other, and just focused on my own connections.
Then, for our first session, she had us all attending the University Street Fair when some supervillains showed up. That way, in theory, we'd all respond to the imminent danger, and have our super-heroic debut together. Tie the party to one another via a trial by combat.
As you are no doubt already guessing, it didn't really work. 7 PC superheroes arrive on the scene. 2 get into costume and wade into the thick of it. 2 turn invisible and 1 uses astral projection, and essentially keep their presence hidden from everyone. The remaining 2 participate, but do so in low-key "on the sly" ways intended specifically to prevent anyone from figuring out that they are a Super. The fight is over in about 2 rounds, so anyone who was "waiting for the right moment" to make their dynamic entrance just missed out. Bad guys defeated, police show up, everyone goes their separate ways.
This is why so many old D&D campaigns start with "There's a wizard in the corner, and he says he's looking to hire some brave adventurers, and will pay you lots of gold." Of course, at least 20% of those openers result in inter-party bloodshed before you leave the tavern, but at least they're all aware of one another.
Oh well, as they say in the biz: "The show must go on". I imagine a fair amount of meta-wrangling will have to happen before the first real scene of our next session, to get everyone on the same page.
The lesson is thus: Never ever start a campaign with what is supposed to be the party's first meeting or first adventure together. Starting with the origin story is virtually guaranteed to be more of a problem than it's worth. It sounds great on paper, but in reality it's a minefield.
It works in the movies, but that's only because scriptwriters and film directors have control in ways that GMs don't. A character in a novel can't misbehave and wreck the whole plotline, but a character at the table will do so more often than not. The self-destructive misbehavior meme is a strong one, and often hides behind the phrase: "It's what my character would do!" We'd like to pretend we're above it, but most of us aren't.
Far safer to run your first session from the perspective: "You've all known each other and been working together for about a year now, and have established strong friendships within the party." Several sessions later, when you've established a group dynamic, and gotten everyone's buy-in on how the campaign functions, then you can do a flashback session for an origin story, if you really must.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Star Trekkin
Starting last week, I'm now playing in a Star Trek game every-other-week. I'm playing a Tellerite astrophysicist. I'm a little nervous about taking on such a mentally-focused role, given Trek's mutable scientific (and temporal) laws that wobble from episode to episode. On Trek the characters seem to solve everything by reversing polarity or channeling energy through the main deflector, even when that makes no sense.
I think this will be a good learning experience for me, though. Either the GM will come up with clever ways to make the science-related challenges work, or I'll learn by trial and error what doesn't work. Either way, I expect my own GMing of sci-fi games will improve because of it. So, I'm kind of excited. Plus, it's a good group, these folks are a lot of fun.
The system being used is PDQ#, which is nicely flexible. It's less fiddly than Savage Worlds, but more defined than Risus. I think it's probably a c8 on my crunchometer, but I'll know better after I've played it more.
The era of Trek that is our setting is 5-10 years before Next Generation. There's been promise that Tholians the Gorn will show up, both of which have always been personal favorites that I wish the good series (not Enterprise) had done more with.
*Sigh* Why did the weakest Trek series have to be the only one that followed up on the most interesting aliens? I know those episodes exist, but the rest of Enterprise sucked so badly I'm afraid to watch them.
I think this will be a good learning experience for me, though. Either the GM will come up with clever ways to make the science-related challenges work, or I'll learn by trial and error what doesn't work. Either way, I expect my own GMing of sci-fi games will improve because of it. So, I'm kind of excited. Plus, it's a good group, these folks are a lot of fun.
The system being used is PDQ#, which is nicely flexible. It's less fiddly than Savage Worlds, but more defined than Risus. I think it's probably a c8 on my crunchometer, but I'll know better after I've played it more.
The era of Trek that is our setting is 5-10 years before Next Generation. There's been promise that Tholians the Gorn will show up, both of which have always been personal favorites that I wish the good series (not Enterprise) had done more with.
*Sigh* Why did the weakest Trek series have to be the only one that followed up on the most interesting aliens? I know those episodes exist, but the rest of Enterprise sucked so badly I'm afraid to watch them.
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