Back from Dreamation
Feb. 22nd, 2010 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
So I went down to Dreamation in beautiful Morristown NJ this past weekend and ran a few games. I ran two sessions of Houses of the Blooded and two sessions of Diaspora.
Let's talk about Diaspora: short form, it's got a lot of potential but it's not a good convention game. Or perhaps I should say that the things that make Diaspora interesting for long-term play really work against it in a one-shot. The various mini-games are seductive but it's easy to turn everything into a mini-game and then it starts to feel repetitive. Also, I'm thinking the platoon combat system is a bit too baroque for a one-shot. there was a lot of stuff to prep for and it still felt off and incomplete.
On the upside, the social combat system is great for doing things like research or training montages and is certainly worth adapting for other games. There was one tweak that I made on the fly to the social combat system. Often the PCs are represented on the social combat map with a single token -- they're a group acting together to help achieve the goal. this group token also gets a mini skill tree based off the skill of the PCs. However, players are allowed to spend their personal Fate points to help the group succeed. The NPC opposition gets its own stack of Fate points, but it's never as many as the PCs could bring to bear. So I have the PCs chip in Fate points to build a pool for the group at the start of combat. These points are lost at the end of the combat and the group can only gain more points if tagged or compelled. So now the PCs have to make tough choices about how much to dumb in. It seemed to work pretty well.
And then there were my goof-ups:
One other thing to think about: it was mentioned that Fate points and Aspects are kind of odd. If I roll the dice and it comes up short, I can spend a Fate point to get a +2 bonus to win...and then I go back and look over my Aspects to find something relevant that justifies what I just did. The implication is that you don't bring the Aspect into play, you just use it abstractly post facto to explain a roll that you've already won. Some of this is a bit nit-picky and some of it can be solved with good example setting at the table, but I've got another idea. You can spend Fate points for a +2 bonus before you roll (stating the Aspect you want to use). Because this is a pre-roll commitment the choice to use Aspect/Fate in this way should be more thoughtful. Post-roll, the Fate points can be used to re-roll your dice. Since you'll only make a re-roll in dire circumstances, it's a "second chance" deal and again, the Aspect work should be more mindful. Again, these might be more useful in a one-shot than long term (since it didn't seem to be as big a deal in the long term FATE game I played in).
So yeah, Diaspora is a fun game, but convention one-shots aren't really its medium. Especially since the long-term game gives players a lot more input and buy-in to the game set-up.
Let's talk about Houses of the Blooded. This might very well be my go-to game for conventions. It's odd because the book is dense with setting material and you'd think conveying it all to the players would suck up all the time, but I just say "You're a bunch of aristocratic elves and you're all a bunch of assholes" and we're off to the races. I do include a blue-sheet with a bit more detail than that, but because the PCs get to fill in a lot of details everything works better on an outline.
It was a repeat of last year's scenario: the PCs all show up at a Duke's party to steal something from him. In the first game, they had to steal a magic palette. In the process, the players discovered that the Duke's estranged son was supplying magical clay to enhance the Duke's paint and thus cause his paintings to act as a conduit for the evil Earth spirit he secretly worshiped. Meanwhile, one of the PCs fell in love with the Duke and had a torrid affair with him. Another PC got pleasantly drunk, pissed off the Duke and got involved in a duel with him, agreed to help the evil son kill the duke during the duel by poisoning her blade and finally hacked the Duke apart when he got wise to the poison. The PC who'd seen her lover so cruelly hacked down slit the drunken PCs throat (it was the end of the game and seemed appropriate).
The second game was a full table of six players. This time it was a magical axe they were after. the PCs managed to kill the Duke's son and his favored, illegitimate daughter (who was not, in fact, his illegitimate daughter and who was, in fact, in love with the Duke's son who hated her guts). It ended with a heavy burden of guilt for the PC who did most of the killing. In some ways the most poignant and saddest game of that adventure I've run yet.
I need to cook up a few new scenarios. One involving the exploration of ancient ruins, one a straight up assassination and one in more of a forbidden romance vein. A few of these packed away and I should have a good repertoire of stuff to do.
I had signed up to play a few things but they either dropped or ran late (and I had to bag on one of them). I did get to play Happy Birthday Robot -- a simple storytelling game about a robot. It was a fun Sunday morning filler.
But the exciting bit was that I got to play 1st Ed. AD&D. I was a 4th level Human Ranger. We were teleported somewhere into the dungeon of the Mad Arch-Wizard and had to find our way out.
First edition is merciless to thieves. We had a 4th level Halfling Thief but his percentages to Find Traps or Pick Locks was just barely above 33%. So he was basically a roving trap-setter-offer. In fact, on the first door he falls into a pit trap onto some spikes. I mean, seriously, who uses pit traps anymore?
"Should've tapped ahead with your 10' pole", I said.
"10' pole?"
"Yeah the DM said we could buy stuff, didn't you get a 10' pole?"
"Uh..."
"You get one of everything in the equipment list and two 10' poles."
Kids these days...
Highlight of the game: we're going down a corridor and these floating coins and bones are headed towards us. We back off but then realize that it's a Gelatinous Cube. So we break out the torches and drive it back with fire. And it seems like a good way to safely find pit traps so we just drive it ahead of us and follow behind. Eventually we hear some commotion. A band of hobgoblins was concerned by the approach of Gygax's Roomba and they break out their own torches to push it back from their lair.
So now the Cube is quivering between two torch-wielding mobs. That's when both sides realize that there's only one way to get to the fight and we both start hacking through the cube to get at each other. The actual fight was a bit anti-climactic. The thief couldn't find a trap, but he did have a Figurine of Wondrous Power -- the Ivory Ram that mowed down the hobgoblins like a combine through a cornfield. The Ranger was heard to comment several times: "I want to be the goat when I grow up!".
The hobgoblin lair contained a set of stairs that lead out of the dungeon. We then conquered our most insidious foe and resisted the temptation to go back into the dungeon for "one more quick look around". We'd gotten a small pile of loot and in teleportation scenarios like that, finding the way out should be the main aim.
Overall, my guy did great. I didn't fall into any pit traps. I did get caught behind a portcullis, but the Dwarf rolled an 03% on his Bend Bars check and got me out (woot!). I only took one shot from a skeleton, but otherwise didn't do much fighting and had a good pile of hit points left. Oh and I was the party mapper, which was a lot of fun too.
Non-gaming related: we found this amazing Cuban place near the hotel that had great food, reasonably priced and their desserts were jaw-dropping good. The rice pudding was light and fresh and had this great tropical fruit undertone to it. There was this "Three Milks" desert that was pound-cake soaked through with condensed milk and a hint of rum and a whole lot of oh my good good. There were a number of other good places to eat a short distance from the overpriced hotel so it was good that we got out to explore.
A bit long-winded but I had a good Dreamation.
later
Tom
So I went down to Dreamation in beautiful Morristown NJ this past weekend and ran a few games. I ran two sessions of Houses of the Blooded and two sessions of Diaspora.
Let's talk about Diaspora: short form, it's got a lot of potential but it's not a good convention game. Or perhaps I should say that the things that make Diaspora interesting for long-term play really work against it in a one-shot. The various mini-games are seductive but it's easy to turn everything into a mini-game and then it starts to feel repetitive. Also, I'm thinking the platoon combat system is a bit too baroque for a one-shot. there was a lot of stuff to prep for and it still felt off and incomplete.
On the upside, the social combat system is great for doing things like research or training montages and is certainly worth adapting for other games. There was one tweak that I made on the fly to the social combat system. Often the PCs are represented on the social combat map with a single token -- they're a group acting together to help achieve the goal. this group token also gets a mini skill tree based off the skill of the PCs. However, players are allowed to spend their personal Fate points to help the group succeed. The NPC opposition gets its own stack of Fate points, but it's never as many as the PCs could bring to bear. So I have the PCs chip in Fate points to build a pool for the group at the start of combat. These points are lost at the end of the combat and the group can only gain more points if tagged or compelled. So now the PCs have to make tough choices about how much to dumb in. It seemed to work pretty well.
And then there were my goof-ups:
- Compel, compel, compel! -- I really need to more proactively go after the compels since it's the only way to get more points into the player's hands. I was real weak on this and players were running low.
- I was weak on some of the rules.
- I really over-prepared and a lot of stuff didn't get used. I got caught up in all the mini-games and setting up potential encounters and didn't just let the examples in the book be a guide and wing it as the players directed the action.
- I think that 10-Aspects is 5 too many for a one-shot. It's nice to have a bunch of Aspects to play off and in a long-term game it's probably a better deal, but in a 4-hour game it's just too much to process and it's harder for me to decide what to compel on.
One other thing to think about: it was mentioned that Fate points and Aspects are kind of odd. If I roll the dice and it comes up short, I can spend a Fate point to get a +2 bonus to win...and then I go back and look over my Aspects to find something relevant that justifies what I just did. The implication is that you don't bring the Aspect into play, you just use it abstractly post facto to explain a roll that you've already won. Some of this is a bit nit-picky and some of it can be solved with good example setting at the table, but I've got another idea. You can spend Fate points for a +2 bonus before you roll (stating the Aspect you want to use). Because this is a pre-roll commitment the choice to use Aspect/Fate in this way should be more thoughtful. Post-roll, the Fate points can be used to re-roll your dice. Since you'll only make a re-roll in dire circumstances, it's a "second chance" deal and again, the Aspect work should be more mindful. Again, these might be more useful in a one-shot than long term (since it didn't seem to be as big a deal in the long term FATE game I played in).
So yeah, Diaspora is a fun game, but convention one-shots aren't really its medium. Especially since the long-term game gives players a lot more input and buy-in to the game set-up.
Let's talk about Houses of the Blooded. This might very well be my go-to game for conventions. It's odd because the book is dense with setting material and you'd think conveying it all to the players would suck up all the time, but I just say "You're a bunch of aristocratic elves and you're all a bunch of assholes" and we're off to the races. I do include a blue-sheet with a bit more detail than that, but because the PCs get to fill in a lot of details everything works better on an outline.
It was a repeat of last year's scenario: the PCs all show up at a Duke's party to steal something from him. In the first game, they had to steal a magic palette. In the process, the players discovered that the Duke's estranged son was supplying magical clay to enhance the Duke's paint and thus cause his paintings to act as a conduit for the evil Earth spirit he secretly worshiped. Meanwhile, one of the PCs fell in love with the Duke and had a torrid affair with him. Another PC got pleasantly drunk, pissed off the Duke and got involved in a duel with him, agreed to help the evil son kill the duke during the duel by poisoning her blade and finally hacked the Duke apart when he got wise to the poison. The PC who'd seen her lover so cruelly hacked down slit the drunken PCs throat (it was the end of the game and seemed appropriate).
The second game was a full table of six players. This time it was a magical axe they were after. the PCs managed to kill the Duke's son and his favored, illegitimate daughter (who was not, in fact, his illegitimate daughter and who was, in fact, in love with the Duke's son who hated her guts). It ended with a heavy burden of guilt for the PC who did most of the killing. In some ways the most poignant and saddest game of that adventure I've run yet.
I need to cook up a few new scenarios. One involving the exploration of ancient ruins, one a straight up assassination and one in more of a forbidden romance vein. A few of these packed away and I should have a good repertoire of stuff to do.
I had signed up to play a few things but they either dropped or ran late (and I had to bag on one of them). I did get to play Happy Birthday Robot -- a simple storytelling game about a robot. It was a fun Sunday morning filler.
But the exciting bit was that I got to play 1st Ed. AD&D. I was a 4th level Human Ranger. We were teleported somewhere into the dungeon of the Mad Arch-Wizard and had to find our way out.
First edition is merciless to thieves. We had a 4th level Halfling Thief but his percentages to Find Traps or Pick Locks was just barely above 33%. So he was basically a roving trap-setter-offer. In fact, on the first door he falls into a pit trap onto some spikes. I mean, seriously, who uses pit traps anymore?
"Should've tapped ahead with your 10' pole", I said.
"10' pole?"
"Yeah the DM said we could buy stuff, didn't you get a 10' pole?"
"Uh..."
"You get one of everything in the equipment list and two 10' poles."
Kids these days...
Highlight of the game: we're going down a corridor and these floating coins and bones are headed towards us. We back off but then realize that it's a Gelatinous Cube. So we break out the torches and drive it back with fire. And it seems like a good way to safely find pit traps so we just drive it ahead of us and follow behind. Eventually we hear some commotion. A band of hobgoblins was concerned by the approach of Gygax's Roomba and they break out their own torches to push it back from their lair.
So now the Cube is quivering between two torch-wielding mobs. That's when both sides realize that there's only one way to get to the fight and we both start hacking through the cube to get at each other. The actual fight was a bit anti-climactic. The thief couldn't find a trap, but he did have a Figurine of Wondrous Power -- the Ivory Ram that mowed down the hobgoblins like a combine through a cornfield. The Ranger was heard to comment several times: "I want to be the goat when I grow up!".
The hobgoblin lair contained a set of stairs that lead out of the dungeon. We then conquered our most insidious foe and resisted the temptation to go back into the dungeon for "one more quick look around". We'd gotten a small pile of loot and in teleportation scenarios like that, finding the way out should be the main aim.
Overall, my guy did great. I didn't fall into any pit traps. I did get caught behind a portcullis, but the Dwarf rolled an 03% on his Bend Bars check and got me out (woot!). I only took one shot from a skeleton, but otherwise didn't do much fighting and had a good pile of hit points left. Oh and I was the party mapper, which was a lot of fun too.
Non-gaming related: we found this amazing Cuban place near the hotel that had great food, reasonably priced and their desserts were jaw-dropping good. The rice pudding was light and fresh and had this great tropical fruit undertone to it. There was this "Three Milks" desert that was pound-cake soaked through with condensed milk and a hint of rum and a whole lot of oh my good good. There were a number of other good places to eat a short distance from the overpriced hotel so it was good that we got out to explore.
A bit long-winded but I had a good Dreamation.
later
Tom
