JiffyCon Summer
Jun. 22nd, 2008 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
So this weekend I went out to Greenfield MA for JiffyCon which is an informal, one-day gaming convention for the Western MA/Indie game set. It was a lot of fun. I got to see a bunch of people I haven't in awhile and play some fun games.
In the morning, I ran a session of Traveller. Memo to self: The game is about 40-something ex-service members looking to earn a quick buck. Never assume anyone will be heroic if the cost/benefit ratio doesn't work in their favor.
The basic gist is that the Fifth Frontier War has broken out. A University has hired the PCs to go rescue a research team that is located on some spitball of a planet deep behind enemy lines. The PCs show up, promptly alert the Zhodani garrison (Zhodani = 70's Russian Commies with psychic powers). There's a couple of shootouts. The PCs investigate an alien artifact and get jumped by a ghoul. Then they rush the field station where they come up against a Zhodani trooper holding a scientist hostage.
The uber-sniper decides that taking the shot is worth the risk -- misses and spatters the poor hostage. The other Marine finishes off the trooper. In the end, the Zhodani, flee the area (killing the rest of the scientists), the alien artifact takes off, but the PCs manage to save one PC and some data tapes and probably at least break-even on the trip and probably earn a bit of profit. So...hooray for them. Next time it'll have to be something more...mercenary.
In the afternoon I took part in a session of Bullwinkle and Rocky Role-Playing Game. The game is 20 years old, and I think I and the game's owner actually knew anything about Bullwinkle and Rocky. Jim Ward, the show's creator is listed as a playtester. The game actually comes with little plastic hand-puppets (that aren't actually used in the game).
I gotta say, we're pretty sure that this is probably one of the forerunners of Indie games as we know them today. Rotating GM duties, everyone starts with a kicker, everyone has strong narration rights and goals, there's a built-in endgame mechanic. There's a lot of stuff in there that would eventually become "cutting edge" stuff. No one else has yet (to my knowledge) utilized a series of spinners to help determine character success or failure, but it does make a new form of fortune I've played with now.
So, fun game, would be better with people who know the show better. In the end, Boris and Natasha failed and the forces of freedom gained the formula for Hush-a-boom.
There was a lot of time left, so I sat down for a game of Trial and Terror: Supernatural Victim's Unit -- a free RPG for Free RPG Day that went from concept to published form in under a week. For such a quickly assembled game, the game itself was great and the production values were fantastic.
So Trial and Terror is basically Law and Order in a Supernatural world. The game runs in two, one-hour phases. In the first phase you play a detective team and in the second, you play the attorneys who prosecute the crime. The idea is that when you win conflicts as a detective, you shove skill points down to the Attorneys. When your attorneys win conflicts, they shove their points into a pool that will be rolled against to determine the outcome of the case.
For the first half, I played a young, hot-headed human detective with a bad attitude while Emily played my senior partner -- a Wendigo named Sully who'd seen it all and was utterly unfazed by anything. Sully had a great story in that he was friends with a Coyote spirit who was a hitman (Coyote really didn't appreciate the whole smallpox deal and turned to a life of crime).
We investigated the murder of a gillman (black lagoon creature). Eventually we discovered that the son was doing coke with his gang buddies, he got caught and in a fit of passion, killed his dad. The best part was a foot chase to catch one of the gang buddies. Sully tried to catch up to him and invoked his Coyote spirit connections ("well, we used to go running together and sometimes it was a bit of an urban chase to jazz things up"). Failed utterly. The perp blows past him and I run by and growl at him. But we were still in the running and she invoked her spirit connection again and this time succeeded. So Emily narrates how the perp bursts out of the alley into the open, he dashes across the street and my guy gets cut off by traffic. The perp ducks into an alley, rounds a corner - and runs right into Sully. I catch up and am just as flabbergasted. Sully simply smiles and refuses to explain things.
So eventually we arrest the son and things flip to the lawyer side. This time, Emily is the fresh-faced, idealistic young lawyer and I'm a Bodhisattva...with a drinking problem. So I'm not really free from worldly things, but I've got a keen grasp of the human spirit and I can call in some favors from time to time.
So we go to work on the case, but the mom confesses that she did it (clearly covering for her son). We talk to the mom and I realize that she's a cocaine addict. Her son was buying for her and he killed dad to protect her. So we offer a plea bargain to the mom to try and get their lives back in some semblance of order. He goes to juvie until he's 18, she gets some time and gets cleaned up, they both get out together and can go from there. She agrees.
Now the kid's lawyer is ticked off and demands that we prosecute the mom. We talk with the kid and gain the insight that he's afraid that if he goes down for this crime, his gang will get dragged into it and they want his mom to take the fall so they can walk. The gang is largely composed of upper-class rich kids who don't want this on their permanent record. That's when we realize that the son's lawyer has ties to the family of the gang leader -- a pretty clear conflict of interest. In the end, we try and get the defense attorney removed from the case. This is our big finish. We've been moving points like madmen and we're pretty much unstoppable. The GM rolls the outcome...and we win. The defense lawyer recuses herself and the new lawyer accepts our deal.
So, like I say, a fun game. Certainly worth much more than I paid for it.
On Sunday we got back together to playtest/brainstorm game ideas. I had a couple of people help me out with my Culture Clash game (it'll get a better title someday). In Culture Clash, the main gimmick is that the difficulty of you completing a task has nothing to do with game-world variables and everything to do with the stories/stereotypes within your PCs culture. So if you want to climb a wall, it doesn't matter if the wall is 500' tall, covered in grease and topped with shards of glass. If you've got a cultural story that says "we're great at climbing walls", they you've got a better than average chance of success. If you've got a story that says "we suck at climbing walls", then a low 2' foot garden wall may be impossible for you. The other big catch is that you never really get to define the stories of your culture. Instead, the players of other cultures come up with those stories. So, it can be pretty brutal.
We did a game based on the current culture clashes in Nigeria between the people of the delta who sit atop vast oil reserves and the people of the interior who get all the oil money. There was a lot of great stuff that came out of the game. I found a couple of weak points, confirmed what I thought might have been a problem and got a few ideas for forward progress.
All in all, it was a pretty good weekend for me. I also picked up and read a copy of Runners by Sean Wang. This is a graphic novel collecting the first 5 issues of the comic by the same name. It's good old, smugglers in space. There's only one human and he's a secondary crew member. It's not outstanding but the art and story is pretty good so I might look into the next collection if/when it comes out.
Oh! I also got a sneak-preview of the Mouse Guard RPG. A.) It's gorgeous. I think it's on par with Nobilis for prettiest RPG. B.) It uses a slimmed down Burning Wheel ruleset. C.) Archaia Studio Press is handling the actual publication. Which is kind of a bummer since they're notoriously irregular in their publishing schedule. So I guess it's just wait and hope.
later
Tom
So this weekend I went out to Greenfield MA for JiffyCon which is an informal, one-day gaming convention for the Western MA/Indie game set. It was a lot of fun. I got to see a bunch of people I haven't in awhile and play some fun games.
In the morning, I ran a session of Traveller. Memo to self: The game is about 40-something ex-service members looking to earn a quick buck. Never assume anyone will be heroic if the cost/benefit ratio doesn't work in their favor.
The basic gist is that the Fifth Frontier War has broken out. A University has hired the PCs to go rescue a research team that is located on some spitball of a planet deep behind enemy lines. The PCs show up, promptly alert the Zhodani garrison (Zhodani = 70's Russian Commies with psychic powers). There's a couple of shootouts. The PCs investigate an alien artifact and get jumped by a ghoul. Then they rush the field station where they come up against a Zhodani trooper holding a scientist hostage.
The uber-sniper decides that taking the shot is worth the risk -- misses and spatters the poor hostage. The other Marine finishes off the trooper. In the end, the Zhodani, flee the area (killing the rest of the scientists), the alien artifact takes off, but the PCs manage to save one PC and some data tapes and probably at least break-even on the trip and probably earn a bit of profit. So...hooray for them. Next time it'll have to be something more...mercenary.
In the afternoon I took part in a session of Bullwinkle and Rocky Role-Playing Game. The game is 20 years old, and I think I and the game's owner actually knew anything about Bullwinkle and Rocky. Jim Ward, the show's creator is listed as a playtester. The game actually comes with little plastic hand-puppets (that aren't actually used in the game).
I gotta say, we're pretty sure that this is probably one of the forerunners of Indie games as we know them today. Rotating GM duties, everyone starts with a kicker, everyone has strong narration rights and goals, there's a built-in endgame mechanic. There's a lot of stuff in there that would eventually become "cutting edge" stuff. No one else has yet (to my knowledge) utilized a series of spinners to help determine character success or failure, but it does make a new form of fortune I've played with now.
So, fun game, would be better with people who know the show better. In the end, Boris and Natasha failed and the forces of freedom gained the formula for Hush-a-boom.
There was a lot of time left, so I sat down for a game of Trial and Terror: Supernatural Victim's Unit -- a free RPG for Free RPG Day that went from concept to published form in under a week. For such a quickly assembled game, the game itself was great and the production values were fantastic.
So Trial and Terror is basically Law and Order in a Supernatural world. The game runs in two, one-hour phases. In the first phase you play a detective team and in the second, you play the attorneys who prosecute the crime. The idea is that when you win conflicts as a detective, you shove skill points down to the Attorneys. When your attorneys win conflicts, they shove their points into a pool that will be rolled against to determine the outcome of the case.
For the first half, I played a young, hot-headed human detective with a bad attitude while Emily played my senior partner -- a Wendigo named Sully who'd seen it all and was utterly unfazed by anything. Sully had a great story in that he was friends with a Coyote spirit who was a hitman (Coyote really didn't appreciate the whole smallpox deal and turned to a life of crime).
We investigated the murder of a gillman (black lagoon creature). Eventually we discovered that the son was doing coke with his gang buddies, he got caught and in a fit of passion, killed his dad. The best part was a foot chase to catch one of the gang buddies. Sully tried to catch up to him and invoked his Coyote spirit connections ("well, we used to go running together and sometimes it was a bit of an urban chase to jazz things up"). Failed utterly. The perp blows past him and I run by and growl at him. But we were still in the running and she invoked her spirit connection again and this time succeeded. So Emily narrates how the perp bursts out of the alley into the open, he dashes across the street and my guy gets cut off by traffic. The perp ducks into an alley, rounds a corner - and runs right into Sully. I catch up and am just as flabbergasted. Sully simply smiles and refuses to explain things.
So eventually we arrest the son and things flip to the lawyer side. This time, Emily is the fresh-faced, idealistic young lawyer and I'm a Bodhisattva...with a drinking problem. So I'm not really free from worldly things, but I've got a keen grasp of the human spirit and I can call in some favors from time to time.
So we go to work on the case, but the mom confesses that she did it (clearly covering for her son). We talk to the mom and I realize that she's a cocaine addict. Her son was buying for her and he killed dad to protect her. So we offer a plea bargain to the mom to try and get their lives back in some semblance of order. He goes to juvie until he's 18, she gets some time and gets cleaned up, they both get out together and can go from there. She agrees.
Now the kid's lawyer is ticked off and demands that we prosecute the mom. We talk with the kid and gain the insight that he's afraid that if he goes down for this crime, his gang will get dragged into it and they want his mom to take the fall so they can walk. The gang is largely composed of upper-class rich kids who don't want this on their permanent record. That's when we realize that the son's lawyer has ties to the family of the gang leader -- a pretty clear conflict of interest. In the end, we try and get the defense attorney removed from the case. This is our big finish. We've been moving points like madmen and we're pretty much unstoppable. The GM rolls the outcome...and we win. The defense lawyer recuses herself and the new lawyer accepts our deal.
So, like I say, a fun game. Certainly worth much more than I paid for it.
On Sunday we got back together to playtest/brainstorm game ideas. I had a couple of people help me out with my Culture Clash game (it'll get a better title someday). In Culture Clash, the main gimmick is that the difficulty of you completing a task has nothing to do with game-world variables and everything to do with the stories/stereotypes within your PCs culture. So if you want to climb a wall, it doesn't matter if the wall is 500' tall, covered in grease and topped with shards of glass. If you've got a cultural story that says "we're great at climbing walls", they you've got a better than average chance of success. If you've got a story that says "we suck at climbing walls", then a low 2' foot garden wall may be impossible for you. The other big catch is that you never really get to define the stories of your culture. Instead, the players of other cultures come up with those stories. So, it can be pretty brutal.
We did a game based on the current culture clashes in Nigeria between the people of the delta who sit atop vast oil reserves and the people of the interior who get all the oil money. There was a lot of great stuff that came out of the game. I found a couple of weak points, confirmed what I thought might have been a problem and got a few ideas for forward progress.
All in all, it was a pretty good weekend for me. I also picked up and read a copy of Runners by Sean Wang. This is a graphic novel collecting the first 5 issues of the comic by the same name. It's good old, smugglers in space. There's only one human and he's a secondary crew member. It's not outstanding but the art and story is pretty good so I might look into the next collection if/when it comes out.
Oh! I also got a sneak-preview of the Mouse Guard RPG. A.) It's gorgeous. I think it's on par with Nobilis for prettiest RPG. B.) It uses a slimmed down Burning Wheel ruleset. C.) Archaia Studio Press is handling the actual publication. Which is kind of a bummer since they're notoriously irregular in their publishing schedule. So I guess it's just wait and hope.
later
Tom
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 11:31 am (UTC)Sounds like a great time.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-23 01:43 pm (UTC)Yeah, I really had to jet. Sorry I couldn't stick around, but nice seeing you however briefly.
later
Tom