One-Night D&D-The Haunted Castle (and the lessons therefrom)

Hello internet, my irregular publishing of entries marches on . . . irregularly.

On Saturday, I ran a short scenario of my own devising for a "pick up" game of Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

The game worked out well enough that I likely may run this scenario for other groups as an intro.  I and the group had fun, and I definitely learned some lessons that I could apply to (hopefully) make it run to be even more fun and exciting.

If you don't want spoilers, you should stop reading.

For anyone else, here is an overview of how things went.

The adventure is not in a determined setting.  The main adventure location was inspired by a real world castle, Caerlaverock in Scotland.

The players, who were a group I was able to get together with a few days notice, picked pre-generated characters from a set I had put together.  The characters were all third level, to allow for everyone to have some significantly cool things to do, and to avoid having to write a scenario about giant rats and other lower level threats, when I wanted to put a bit more risk and reward into the scenario.

We ended up with a pretty well balanced party, including two Wood Elves, a Cleric of Light and a Druid (Circle of the Moon) (Val & Telar, played by Tom and Robert), a Rock Gnome Eldritch Knight (Teflanto, played by Dan), a Forest Gnome Arcane Trickster ("Nick" played by Jamie), and a human Berserker (Arek, played by Darrell).  We did a short little Q&A between me and the players to determine how they knew one another, and then we got them on the rails to the adventure.

They received a summons from a Herald of the Duke to come and meet with an official of the Duchy for an opportunity.  Like any group, the characters were suspicious, wondering if this was legit, or a trap of some kind.  The eventually went to the meeting, and the Duke himself met with them, and charged them with a mission.

Role playing the discussion was pretty fun, and people made some social skill rolls, and it all went well enough.

This was the deal.  They needed to go to a remote castle, Kerag Ynys, near the northern border of the Duchy, where a castle had become haunted and disused.  The Duke had not been much concerned with the castle in recent years because the border had been closed, and the function of the castle (as a customs station for trade and garrison for protecting the trade route) had been superfluous.  Further, hostilities on other borders of the Duchy had kept the Duke from sending units to determine what had happened to the Baron of this castle.  However, in the last six months, peace and general amity had been negotiated, and the trade route was opening back up.  Now the Duke needs the castle.

Choosing a Baron is down on his long list of things to do, but in the meantime, he had decided that he can put the player characters to good use, get them out of his back yard, and test their mettle  to see if they are worth further recruitment and investment as agents.  He offers them positions as temporary Wardens of the castle if they will retake it from whatever monsters inhabit it, and if they will agree to help secure the Barony and assist a ducal steward to run the castle and return the village to habitation.

The characters reluctantly agree, especially after he explains that the typical adventuring group in his duchy, once they have achieved the kind of fame and notoriety that they have, either end up as his "friends" and in his service, or end up with their heads on spikes on his gate.

Further, the Duke had a story for them, accompanied by two clues.  His patrols had recently captured a bandit who had first hand knowledge of the castle in question.  He and companions had observed the castle and saw that its drawbridge came down each night, only to be closed up during the day.  They decided to try to take the castle as their base of operation and entered.  After beginning their search of the castle and finding some trinkets and remains from the former inhabitants they were attacked by "dead men."  Only the one bandit escaped with his life, and part of his reason.  He also had on him a fragment of a letter from the former steward of the castle to the last Baron (Marketh) of Kerag Ynys.  The steward urged his lord to return a "mask" to a place called Tor Mortas, warning it would bring great evil.  An annotation on the letter seemed to be from Baron Marketh, recording that he would never give up this treasure from Tor Mortas.

The Duke gave them the letter fragment, and also provided them with the possible location of a mechanism to open a postern gate and a passage across the moat of Kerag Ynys, so they would not have to enter across the drawbridge at night.

The adventurers journeyed to the north for days, until they reached the outskirts of the area containing the keep.  Since they knew that something was definitely active at night in the keep, they decided to time their arrival to the morning to give them all day to work on entering and dealing with whatever might be in the keep.

After thoroughly scouting the area, they were able to locate the mechanism to trip the Dwarven made device that raised stepping stones across the back of the moat to the postern door.  They made their way into the keep by this hidden path.

Once inside, they began to investigate.  They found the keep largely in tact, though seemingly deserted.  However, in the barn area, they found a pile of dead bodies, in various degrees of decay, and some seemed to have been "gnawed."  They we close to several ladders which could lead them to upper level on the wall, and particularly to the hoardings atop the walls.

Hoardings

Model of curtain wall with hoardings

They also inspected the ground level room formed by the base of one of the castle towers, in which they found a small armory, and a trap door that led to something below.

However, before they could explore more, they began to take arrow fire from the top of the gatehouse.  A quartet of skeletons had detected them and had gone to the attack.  The characters scattered.  Most headed up ladders almost immediately, seeking to get cover, higher ground, and eventually reach the skeletons via the hoardings.

The Cleric, Barbarian and Arcane Trickster all headed up.  They were soon surpassed by the Druid, who turned into a panther and made short work of climbing, even having to use a ladder.  This left the Eldritch Knight still in the line of fire, and he caught an arrow, but was able to look for cover.  However, then a swarm of zombies shambled out of a nearby cellar.  Discretion being the better part of valor, the Eldritch Knight retreated up a ladder, and was assisted by the Arcane Trickster in jamming the trap door first on the ladder he came up, and then on another at a ladder around the corner.

Meanwhile, the Cleric, Barbarian and Druid all made it up to the level of the skeletons and charged in.  Once in range, the Cleric raised her holy symbol and invoked the powers of light, forcing one skeleton to cease his attack and flee to the far side of the gatehouse roof.  The other three, however, continued to draw arrow, until brought to close combat by the Barbarian who went into a rage, whereupon they drew their blades.  After trading indeterminate blows, the Druid shaped back into his human form and cast Moonbeam.  He was disappointed that the skeletons largely made their saving throws, but on the subsequent round, they all failed, and he melted them all like candle wax.

The Barbarian then charged back to get into some kind of view of the zombies, and with a furious throw, actually hit a zombie over sixty feet and two stories away with a thrown hand axe, neatly ending it.  The Cleric followed cautiously behind, looking for some way to attack from above.  The zombies were stymied by the ladders and blocked trap doors from making any attacks on the party.  Then the Druid turned his moonbeam upon them, and within two rounds, all but three were puddles on the ground.  The last three, barely holding together, retreated into the cellar.

The party, triumphant in this first battle then carefully searched the keep.  They found the trap door in the small tower armory merely led to a prisoner hole.  However, searcher the living quarters, they found the day books and ledgers of the Baron, and found his notes on how he journeyed to a place called Tor Mortas and retrieved a gold mask, with which he became obsessed.  On the trip there and back, two men at arms died, his personal priest went mad and fled, and he apparently murdered his body servant as too clever.  After he brought the mask to the keep, the town began to be beset by "things" who took the villagers.  Eventually, the remaining peasants fled the town, and the keep became threatened.  The Baron's wife urged him to return the mask, and then she had an "accident."  The information in these entries pointed to the mask being in the family crypt, built, like all the foundations of Kerag Ynys, by a allied clan of Dwarves centuries ago.

The characters found the way down by taking one of the main spiral staircases that served the keep.

They went far down underground, and then came out in a crypt.  It was evident that there was some "thing" in the crypt, but it, and its cohorts (more undead) did not immediately move to attack.  The characters identified the creature that seemed to be in control as a "barrow wight."  They attempted to treat with it, explaining that they sought the mask to return it to its place of origin, Tor Mortas.

They had a hard time of it, but made several speeches, gave oaths, and called it to recognize their honor.  Finally, the wight stepped aside from the door where it stood and told the party to work their "arts" on the door.  If they took the mask with the intent to return it to Tor Mortas, the wight, and its slaves, a ghoul and a specter, could be free.

The Wight

Up stepped the Arcane Trickster.  He handily unlocked the door, but then thought to look for traps.  The door, like all the entrances to the tombs in the crypt, was trapped with a mechanism which would allow the moat to rapidly pour into the crypt, likely crushing and drowning those who would defile the dead's rest.  He then tried to assess how likely it would be to set off the trap by disarming it.  He determined it would be unlikely.  However, that unlikely event occurred [his player having rolled a 1].

Two things happened at once.  The door opened, revealing the entombed bodies of the Baron and Baroness, the golden mask perched atop the sepulcher, and water began to pour in all around the crypt.

The Arcane Trickster, using his Mage Hand, seized the mask, and then cast expeditious retreat and fled the crypt.  The other party members tried to contribute to each other's survival [defined as a skill challenge].  Things did not go well.

The Barbarian sought to block some of the water coming in from the Baron's burial chamber, but instead ripped the door from its hinges [another roll of 1].  Others had some success in helping one another towards the exit stairs, but just as many tripped each other up or impeded one another.  Finally, the Arcane Trickster, as the chamber filled with water, shot an arrow tied to a rope towards his companions, hoping to pull them to safety, but as they grasped the rope, it pulled them down under and each seemingly lost their last breath.

For a moment, Nick, the trickster, thought about just leaving.

However, he managed to get the rope free, and found that, like a reflex, some of his friends had, in losing consciousness, held onto or been entangled in the rope.  He pulled first the Cleric, Val from the water and got a healing potion into her.  Next, they pulled out Teflanto, the Eldritch Knight, and while one revived him, the other pulled out Telar, the Druid.  Finally [after succeeding three death saves in a row], the Barbarian Arek simply refused to die and dragged himself up out of the now receding waters onto the stairs.

After some rest and healing, the party camped within the keep that evening and managed to prepare themselves for the trip to Tor Mortas.  There they found the ancient and primitive mausoleum from which the Baron had taken the mask.

They returned the mask, and it was sucked back down into the earth, presumably back to its owner.

This did not give the adventurers a good feeling, but they did feel lighter as they exited and then set off to claim their reward as the new wardens of Kerag Ynys.

The Standing Stones of Tor Mortas

Now for a bit of self reflection and criticism [and thanks to Matt Colville (Reddit here and YouTube channel here) for modeling this kind of process for me; definitely check out his stuff]:

In retrospect, I think what I did at the start of the adventure was a mistake, and I would do it differently the next time I run this.  What I realized after running the long introduction that included getting the mission from the Duke was that it had not been that important.  The players have to agree to go to the castle or their is no adventure.  As a "one shot" I should have started them just already on their way.  That way, all the time spent with the Herald and the Duke could instead be spent with some role playing between the characters and then giving more time to explore the castle and fight monsters.

Live and learn.

Having eaten up a lot of action time with not very consequential timing, I forced the players to have to resolve the adventure with talking, since we had about 40 minutes to finish up once they got into the crypt, and a combat would take an hour or two.  I did not want to quite railroad so much at the end, but it was a one night one shot, so it had to do two things.  It had to end with some satisfaction, and it had to be fun as a whole.  This also played into how I resolved the long series of bad rolls that could have resulted in all but one of the characters dying.  However, I thought it was more interesting to play through a series of death defying challenges.  The skill challenge ended poorly and the trap took all but one character down.  However, with one surviving character, it allowed for a heroic rescue and a salvaging of the mission.  That just seemed like more fun for my audience.  So, that's what I did.

When I run this again, I think we will start just a short way from the Keep, with the back story already assuming they are on the mission.  That is the scenario after all.  If I were to use this for an ongoing game, that would be different.  I would let the players move at their own pace and decide to take the mission or not.  There would be other things to do if they turned down Kerag Ynys.  But, for one night D&D, the agreement is generally, the DM has a particular thing to do in mind, and the players agree to give it a try.

On the whole, I had a lot of fun.  I was surprised by some of the things the players did (as always) and I was pleased that I was able to share an evening doing one of my favorite things for a goup of folks who (mostly) had not played for many years.

With luck, we will do it again, perhaps more than once.

First Time Watcher: Marvel Heroic Role Playing Actual Play Report

This past weekend I had my first chance to run Margaret Weis Productions'  Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game as the game master (the Watcher, in MHRP parlance).  I have played RPGs off and on for over 30 years, but I had not yet run MHRP.

Some friends of ours generously host a game day at their home about three times a year.  The focus is mostly board and card games, but my son and I decided to take MHRP to see if anyone would sit down and play a brief event with us.

Fortunately, last week MWP released as bonus content, a "What if" scenario based in part on New Avengers issue 6, which happened to be one of my favorites from that era of Brian Michael Bendis' run.  The original story had to do with a batch of the New Avengers (Spider-Man, Spider Woman, Luke Cage and Wolverine) ending up having to fight The Wrecker (who is constantly reminding them that he has successfully fought Thor) and having quite a hard time of it.  The mini-event gives you the opportunity to run an encounter with The Wrecker, but also provides datafiles for the rest of the Wrecking Crew, as well as Thor, and provides some ideas on how to run an alternative scenario from how it played out in the pages of New Avengers.  Quinn Murphy wrote the action scene and Cam Banks and Dave Chalker (Dave the Game!) developed the bonus content download.  Amanda Valentine edited.  I mention all these folks, because they provided something that I was able to immediately jump brand new players into with minimal effort and prep and we all had a really good time.

Before I go into how things ran, I want to send a few more shoutouts to the professional and fan community surrounding MHRP.  I have been watching the development of the game by following Cam Banks (lead designer), Philippe Menard (The Chatty DM)  and Dave "The Game" Chalker on Twitter, and I had the good fortune to go with my son, Ian, to a launch event at Labyrinth Games in Washington, DC and sit at a table with Dave the Game as Watcher.  I have learned a lot from them.  Further, I have been really impressed and learned a lot from the fan base of MHRP.  Especially helpful have been Dr. Doom and Marvel Plot Points who through posting support materials, actual play reports and events (adventures) have really fired my imagination.

I have to give major prop supports to Plot Points, because I printed out a bunch of their unofficial hero datafiles to add to the official ones from the basic game in order to have an even broader appeal for my potential players. 

One pro-tip on printing datafiles from Plot Points: the image files will kill your printer as is.  They are beautiful and would totally work if you are using them off of a tablet (e.g. iPad), but to print out they are a challenge.  However, here is how I solved it.  I use Picassa 3 (free from Google) as my photo-editor.  I imported the datafile images into the program, and then I transformed them using Picassa's "Pencil Sketch" tool.  Just a little fiddling with the intensity of the "sketch" and I had very legible sheets that did not kill my printer FTW.

So, how about some actual play in the actual play report?  [This is what happened to the best of my recollection]

We arrived at the game day, and immediately, my son, who is 14, looked to recruit players.  He immediately had 3, our hosts' two sons (12 and 9) and the younger son's good friend (also 9).  I sat them down and they all selected heroes.  We soon had a team consisting of Captain America (my son), Mr. Fantastic, Iron Fist and Rogue (thank you Plot Points!).  I started to do my best impression of someone who knows what he is doing (thinking back to playing at Dave the Game's table) and explained how the basics of the game worked and how to read the datafiles.  Then two more boys sat down, each about 13.  We were happy to add them, and they picked Spider-Man and Iron Man.  Aside from my son, I think all the kids were pretty new to RPGs and most I did not know well, if at all.  However, we got everyone up to speed and launched into the mini-event.

In the wake of the Breakout at the Raft, heroes had been assembled to try to recapture the many Super villains who were at large.  SHIELD intelligence had identified a collector of super villain and super heroic memorabilia who might have acquired dangerous technology/gear that belonged to some of the escaped villains.  Heroes were dispatched to secure the items and set up to try to apprehend any evil doers who might show up. 

Captain America had the lead.  Reed Richards was the scientific advisor, since they were unsure as to what they would encounter in this collection, Iron Man was along to provide firepower (both scientific and physical) and Spidy, Iron Fist and Rogue were there for their versatility, experience and ability to punch things hard.  They touched down in a Quinjet on the cul-du-sac near Ed Gross' McMansion.

They quickly split into three groups.  Iron Man was flying over watch, Cap, Rogue and Mr. Fantastic went to the front door, and Spidy and Iron Fist went around back.  Cap asked Mr. Fantastic to do some kind of scan to give them an idea of what to expect.  Dr. Richards quickly jury rigged something and soon had a full schematic of the house and its secure sub-basement filled with all sorts of super-tech and mystic junk.  Also, Richards could tell they some super-powered individual was already in the basement with someone else.

At this point Iron Man got bored, or at least the kid playing him did.  I felt a pang of failure as a watcher for not being able to immediately engage him and keep him interested.  However, no one gave him a bad time about deciding that this was not for him, and he went to find a more conventional game.  Later, my host told me that he actually doesn't like to play games that much, but he comes to the game days because all the other neighborhood kids come and he does not want to be left out.  So, not an epic fail, but, so long Iron Man. 

I informed the players that Iron Man had to respond to an emergency at Stark Enterprises and they were going to have to deal with things on their own.

So, then we switched to Spider-Man and Iron Fist.  They detected the intruder as well, but the old fashioned way, since someone had come in through the rear, ripped out the sliding glass door and stomped through the house and down to the sub-basement.  Spidy and Iron Fist followed the trail and soon heard some mean guy threatening a teenage girl.  The heroes immediately leapt to action.

I chose Spider-Man to act first since he seemed the most tentative of my players and I wanted to give him a moment to shine.  We talked about what he thought Spidy would do and I showed him how to form a dice pool.  He had a great role and he leaped into the room, web-shooters blazing and quickly had webbed Wrecker's face and feet!  I then explained how action order worked in MHRP and he wisely chose to let Wrecker go next, so Iron Fist could bat cleanup.

Wrecker, who can at least go a few rounds with Thor, was not going to let some web slinger do more than annoy him.  He ripped the webbing off his face and teleported away from the webs on his feet and behind Spider-Man, recently recovered magic crowbar raised to strike.  The collector's teenage daughter (being held hostage by The Wrecker) really started screaming at this point.

Into this calmly stepped the Living Weapon of K'un Lun.  I turned to the nine year old playing Iron Fist and said, "What do you want to do?"  "I think I should kick that crowbar out of his hands."

Okay.

One terrific role later, the crowbar was out of the Wrecker's hands and imbedded in the wall across the room.

Iron Fist graciously picks Spider-Man to act next.  He was not sure what he wanted to do next.  Bullpen style, we all gave him some suggestions.  Next thing he was rolling to grab the crowbar with his webbing and swing it upside Wrecker's head.  "Hey Wrecker, I think you dropped something!"

PTANNNGGGG!!!

Spidy K.O.'s the Wrecker with his own crowbar (d12 physical stress). 

Wrecker falls onto a pile of alien technology, mystic artifacts, and superhero fan magazines.  Sparks start to arc and there is a little smoke curling from behind his head.

The teenage girl continues to scream.

Back to Cap's group.  They briefly consider knocking down the door after the house foundation jumped when Wrecker hit the floor, but then they did decide to check the door, and low and behold, the collector's (Ed Goss) daughter has left the door unlocked (much like many a forgetful son and daughter I have known).

The heroes rush down to the basement, led by Mr. Fantastic’s holographic schematic and arrive to find one ex-hostage teenage daughter near hysteria, one unconscious super villain lying on top of some stuff that probably should not have been crushed together, and two very satisfied heroes (Spidy and Iron Fist).

Suddenly, Wrecker's limbs start to spasm, and before anyone can take an action, his right hand grasps the crowbar and he vanishes [yes, this was some mean old Watcher fiat, and I can explain that I had planned to have Loki (thank you Plot Points!), masquerading as the Norn Queen, manipulating things; I was going to follow the flow and decide if he would take a direct hand at all, or if he was just jerking everyone around.  At this point, he was just making mischief and putting Wrecker back into play with the rest of his Crew.

Reed Richards quickly scanned and could tell that Wrecker was being joined by three other like powered individuals and they all seemed to be approaching the parked Quinjet.

Uh oh.

In this brief transition scene, everyone besides Spider-Man decided to spend plot points to make assets based on picking up useful things from Ed Gross' collection.  Everyone made up what it was they were taking.  Cap picked up a Hydra pulse rifle.  Mr. Fantastic picked up a pocket mass canon.  Iron Fist picked up a mystic staff.  Rogue picked up an energy baton.  Then, they all raced topside, except for Cap, who took a moment to calm the distraught teenager who was sure her dad was going to kill her when he saw his collection.

Cap reassured her, and she said he was kinda hunky for an old guy.  Cap beat a hasty retreat and sprinted to join the rest of the heroes.

Spidy leapt from the front door to a lamppost and saw that the other three of the Crew (Bulldozer, Piledriver and Thunderball) had arrived in a huge dump truck.  Wrecker was back on his feet.  Thunderball, the genius, was cracking the code to get into the Quinjet.  Spider-Man acted decisively and leaped to the front of the dump truck and flipped it at Bulldozer and Piledriver.  He only rolled well enough for one effect die (and I got to add a d8 to the doom pool!) and he smashed the engine block onto Bulldozer's head, additionally exploding the gas tank and spraying burning fuel around the neighborhood (DOOM POOL, YAY).

Mr. Fantastic notified SHIELD authorities than an evacuation of the local neighborhood might be warranted.

Iron Fist got himself in position to stop anyone from escaping in the Quinjet.  He was unable to create an effect die to help him by melting into the shadows, but he still was in good position.

Bulldozer said "You are dead Spider-Man!" and attacked.

At this point, Spider-Man's player, unfortunately, was stating that he was tired (I think he spent the morning at the pool) and was thinking about going home.  I told him we would miss his participation, but if he needed to go, we would be okay. 

Bulldozer then hit Spidy so hard he went flying out of the neighborhood and into a nearby playground jungle gym.  The Bullpen decided that Spidy probably would see some folks trying to get out of the neighborhood that needed rescuing and would get caught up doing that before he could get back to the fight.

Piledriver then went after Iron Fist, saying he was going to plant that old Bruce Lee wanna-be six feet under.  Iron Fist easily evaded.

Thunderball declared that Mr. Fantastic was clearly the most serious threat given his intellectual superiority, so Thunderball put everything he had into catching him with his huge ball and chain and flinging Reed Richards out of the neighborhood.  Despite a valiant attempt to evade the attack, Reed Richards soon found himself having avoided damage, but under the complication of "hurled far away".

Rogue went after Wrecker directly, flying straight at him (gloves, literally off), grabbing his face, flying up with him, leeching his strength, and then pounding him into the ground.  How do y'all like that Sugah!

Wrecker's attack was ineffective against Rogue. 

Reed Richards halted his flight, crashed into someone's skylight, but then (again literally) began to spring back to the action.

Then, Captain America hit ALL the bad guys with his shield.  He made sure that he put two effects on Thunderball.  One was physical stress, but the other translated to mental stress.

While I could spend from the Doom Pool to activate invulnerability for Wrecker and Thunderball, I had to sacrifice and take some stress on Bulldozer and Piledriver.

Iron Fist then continued his fight with Piledriver.  Somehow, the battle took them up onto the Quinjet where Iron Fist swept Piledriver's feet out from under him and made sure that Piledriver's crotch hit the wing (hey, this was a nine year old narrating).  More physical stress to the Wrecking Crew.

Wrecker then teleported behind Captain America and laid him out with the crowbar.  Cap was down, but not out.  Rogue in turn took Wrecker down with his own stolen strength. 

Iron Fist easily leaped over Bulldozer’s charge, but could not counterattack. 

Cap caught his second wind and threw the shield to hit Bulldozer and Thunderball again.  Bulldozer went down, but Thunderball sucked a die from the Doom Pool and ignored the physical stress. 

"I'm smarter than all of you put together" declared Thunderball.  "You'll never take me down!"

Ian, playing Captain America did a facepalm and said, we have to stop hitting him and stress him out mentally!  We need Mr. Fantastic!

At which point, in sprang Reed Richards!

"Take him down with SCIENCE!" yelled Cap!

Cut to brilliant and funny nine year old playing Mr. Fantastic: I make my head really big, and I explain to him what the many probable outcomes of his continuing to fight with us.  I tell him he is going back to maximum security and tell him his intellect is nothing compared to mine!  Also I shoot him with my pocket canon.

One roll later, Thunderball collapses in a pile of overwhelmed nerves and neurons.

Cap: "You talked that guy into unconsciousness!  Way to go!"

After that, it was all cleanup.

“When do we fight Loki?” asked the kid playing Iron Fist (who had noticed the sheet in front of me). 

“Not right now,” I had to say.  We needed to break and everyone wanted to try some other games.

There was a lot of interest in doing some more, but we did not have time then.  But, I would totally sit down with those kids again, probably in one or two action scene and one transition scenes at a time.  My core group of 4 totally understood the game and really got into it.  They were uninhibited, creative and enthusiastic!

My Reed Richards proudly declared "Mr. Fantastic is definitely my favorite superhero ever!!"

For me, these kids epitomized why I play RPGs.  We went to a different world and had a whole lot of fun by cooperating together to tell a really interesting and exciting story.

It was a blast.  I don't know when my next opportunity is going to come, but I am definitely running this game again!

Marvel Heroic Role Playing actual play fron "A Taste of Marvel"

Sunday my son, Ian, and I had a great time at the launch party at Labyrinth Games for Margaret Weis Productions new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game.  As with Labyrinth's other demo events, this was termed a "Taste of" and it certainly was a lot of fun, even though it definitely left us wanting more.

I am not going to try to recount our experiences moment by moment as I lack the time to do it justice, but I hope that I can give an overview of the thing we experienced and convey why we had such a good time.

Ian and I drove down to Labyrinth yesterday and arrived in the area 10 minutes early.  Unfortunately, it took another 15 minutes to find a parking place and another 10 or so to get back to the store.  Labyrinth has a great location in Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, but parking is a challenge.

So, there were two filled tables (being run by Rob Donoghue and Nate) and our two reserved spots left at Dave Chalker's (aka Dave the Game) table.  We had somewhat missed the preliminaries and did not manage to really properly introduce ourselves or catch the names of everyone at the table, though Tom Cadorette was playing Iron Man; I am sorry to say I did not catch and retain (typical for me I'm afraid) the names of our fellow players who had Ms. Marvel and Daredevil).  Ian got the hero he hoped for, Captain America.  I had planned to take Daredevil, but he was taken, so I grabbed Spider-Man.

Dave quickly outlined the basics of taking actions, how to build a dice pool from various character attributes and how to roll and read the dice, and then we were off and running.  The game "event" was the adventure that comes with the basic book, and it, in turn, is based on the storyline of "New Avengers 1-6", a story arc called "Breakout."

The heroes had to start in different places when the breakout started.  DD, in his civilian role as Matt Murdock, defense attorney, was with Ms. Marvel at a supervillain prison called The Raft.  He was going to see some guy who claimed he was a former hero called The Sentry who wanted to be locked up because he believed that he killed his wife.  Captain Americal was on a helicopter, returning from addressing the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, DC.  Tony Stark/Iron Man was addressing a corporate gathering, and I, Spider-Man, was just about to cuddle up to my wife, Mary Jane, on the couch for a romantic comedy and our first quiet night at home in forever.

Having sketched out these beginning scense, Dave, as The Watcher (the term for the game master in MHRP), quickly launched into the central problem of our first act.  Lightning seemed to strike The Raft, and to go on to overload the entire power grid, backups and black out not just the prison, but all of New York!  Captain America was able to observe that a bolt of lightning also seemed to leave The Raft and head away.  The residual energy fried the helicopter flight controls and it was going down!

Inside The Raft, Matt Murdock, his law partner Foggy Nelson (NPC) and Ms. Marvel suddenly found themselves in the middle of a maximum security block where all the cells were suddenly open!

Tony Stark (played hilariously by Tom, who channeled a lot of Robert Downey, Jr. for his portrayal) found his meeting suddenly cancelled by the blackout, realized that this was a huge outage that might be the result of some kind of attack and went Iron Man (while posting on Twitter, checking Stark Industries stock numbers overseas and making sure that 1000 lawyers were on retainer if this was somehow tied at all to Stark Tech).

I, as Spider-Man had to profusely apologize to MJ, put on the Wall-Crawler tights and zip off.

I quickly spotted the helicopter in trouble and swung onboard.  Cap was able to take care of himself, but I rolled well to grab the SHIELD pilot and get us down safely to The Raft.  This gave me an "asset" of being able to call on the pilot for help in a later roll which was a cool game effect.

Down below, Ms. Marvel was throwing thugs back into cells as much as possible, while DD as Matt Murdock did his "helpless" blind man deal while knocking around, tripping and "running into" the mob of woud-be escapees.

Up top, enter the first Super Villain.  Just as Ian, as Captain America, looked into the smoking elevator shaft, he spotted the evil Count Nefaria rising out of the prison.  His reaction was what any red-blooded American hero would do in his place.  He jumped into the elevator shaft shield first to take out the evil-doer (and he would figure out how to survive the rest of the fall later).

Let me just say a little about how action flows in the game.  There is an "action order" system, which basically has The Watcher pick someone to go first (often with input from the table), and that person finishes the character's action and picks someone else, friend or enemy, to go next, until everyone has had a turn.  Last person to go, hero or villain, decides who starts the next order.  This is fun, allows for fluid, yet tactical play, and really feels like the organic flow of action in comic book panels.  As we played, I could visualize the action leaping off the page.  It was pretty impressive.

So, for any attack, you build out a dice pool based on various attributes (see my earlier posts to describe the attributes), and then roll to try to produce a high base number and pick a leftover die, as large as possible, for an effect.  Once again, simple, once you are doing it, fun (picking from the menu of what your character can do), creative, imaginative, evocative and relatively fast.

So, Cap rolled his action (attack), and Count Nefaria rolled his reaction.  One thing is that the reactor knows the number to beat, so it pushes the actor to try to do as well as possible to put success out of the reactor's reach.  Anyway, that was not how it worked out.  Nefaria blasted Cap to the side, and suddenly he had to come up with how to survive the fall down the elevator shaft.

Fortunately, this allowed him then to choose your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to act next.  I told the SHIELD pilot "cover me" made some dumb joke about Count Nefaria breaking out for good Italian food, and started shooting webbing like crazy.  I managed to create a web-trampoline under Cap to save him, and it gave him a bonus on his next action as he sprang up from behind Nefaria.  Second, I completely webbed Nefaria's face, so he was blinded.

I think we bounced back to Ms. Marvel and DD, and they were holding their own against the mob, but Foggy got taken away. 

Then, in comes Iron Man and Tom played him just as overconfident as possible.  He tried to fly into the shaft and basically put Nefaria through the back wall.  Instead, Nefaria managed to beat his roll and get the opportunity to activate a counter attack.   So, basically, Iron Man flew in, and there was a huge explosion and Iron Man flew out, not under his own power, after almost being taken out.  Tom and Dave did a great job of describing how the suit's alarms were all going off and the heads-up display was filled with error messages and everything was reading "offline."  Again, I could totally see it both on a comic book page, and on screen.

So, it was just me and Cap against Nefaria.  I had my doubts, but while distracted Nefaria who failed to blast me, Cap completely clocked him by surprise with a shield blow to the temple.  Moments later, we had him safely webbed up and had rebooted enough of Iron Man's systems to go down into The Raft to join up with DD and Ms. Marvel in the hunt for Foggy and to try to reactivate the systems onboard.

I need to metion, that during this whole action sequence, the main game currencies were flowing freely.  These are Plot Points, which players receive for voluntarily taking penalties in their dice pools (rolling d4s), based on their personal foibles which are sometimes advantages and sometimes not, and also for rolling 1s, which add to The Watcher's source of currency, The Doom Pool.  Players speend Plot Points to get bonuses, activate special effects and opportunities, take counter attacks, change the way dice get counted or to create stunts, among other things.  The Watcher uses the Doom Pool in a similar fashion for the antagonists, but can also sometimes just roll the Doom Pool as the difficulty in a situation that calls for an challenging roll, but there is no opposing force, except for how dire the situation is.

This gives the game lots of tactile and visual goodness.  When building a dice pool, you get to pick up the dice that represent the powers/skills you use.  You see the Doom Pool growing or shrinking based on your actions.  You can count Plot Points with hash marks, but more often (and more fun) with poker chips, counters, or some other thing you can gather in piles to see how ready you are to take on the opposition.  If you are out of Plot Points, you need to start adding in some disadvantageous dice or accepting other limits to bank those for when things really count.  On the other hand, there is no sense in hoarding the points.  If you need to KO Count Nefaria, you need to spend and spend big (go big or go home) so you either force The Watcher to deplete the Doom Pool to save the villain early, or to allow him to go down to conserve the Doom for what else is in store.  It makes the game fun and fiddly in a good way.

So, to go with my promise of not going blow by blow, after our first battles, things just continued to be fun and awesome.  While Cap and I rappelled down into The Raft, Iron Man, of course, just flew underneath and punched in through the bottom to get to the control room, kinda because he could.

We played through searching for Foggy, found Foggy, got attacked by Carnage, who apparently just has a "totally disable Spider-Man" power, which got used on me.  We found out that Captain America is REALLY COOL and he basically was two for two in taking out Super Villains.  DD held his own and rescued Foggy.  I learned about "trauma" and that is is not a fun thing for your hero to have.

Iron Man and Ms. Marvel ended up fighting Graviton.  This was not Graviton's day however.  For one thing, Dave's d12 kept rolling 1s, which made Graviton less of a threat.  Iron Man and Ms. Marvel totally capitalized and took him out.  Then Iron Man convinced him to help us, and he told us who engineered the escape and for whom (Electro for Sauron (not the big flaming eye from Middle Earth, but instead a mutant energy vampiry guy who can turn into a fire breathing Pteradactyl; go figure).  We also talked to Sentry who seemed pretty crazy, but said he could help us if we called on him.

Then we went to talk to Electro.  We had learned that much of the hit first and then talk had not worked so well the first time around.  However, when Cap tried to talk to Electro, DD decided instead to try and take him out.  I said something like, "wait, we're going with the punch first plan?"  Iron Man rescued Electro's ex-girlfriend from the scene and flew off, lightning bolts started shooting around, Ms. Marvel ended up charging up Electro, and just when it seemed to be all going south, Iron Man flies back and hits Electro like a ton of, well, iron, taking him out.

We had fun interrogating him, and I told him he was going down with the Bad SHIELD guys, not the ones that worked with Captain America.  They guys that did waterboarding.  He said he'd spill it all if we promised minimum security Club Fed.  We made the deal and off we were to find Sauron in The Savage Land.

There was a lot more fighting (I helped KO a T-Rex) and merriment (Ms. Marvel chose SHIELD over the rest of us and tried to take Iron Man out) and the game went really well.

I will spare you the details and just say, it was a heck of a good time, so I can get this posted.

Excelsior!

A few more words about the Marvel Heroic Role Playing game

So, I am continuing to speak about the new Marvel RPG from a first impressions point of view.  I will get a good playtest run this weekend when I attend the launch party at Labyrinth Games on Sunday.  But, since I have the PDF I have wanted to give my pre-play impressions of the game.

Sequentially, the book does not talk about character creation right at the beginning.  There are a lot of basic concepts in the game discussed first as well as detailed explorations of how various game mechanics work, how the game is played through action scenes and transition scenes (the game really gives the feel of creating a comic book story) and how to take actions in those scenes.

However, the way I flip through things is different than going to cover to cover.  I keep a bookmark slowly progressing through the book, but I'm constantly jumping around to see other interesting things.  So, as I mentioned yesterday, I jumped to the end to see the 23 Marvel heroes statted out in the basic book. 

While that is a solid and representative sample, and plenty to play through the "Event" included with the book (perhaps I can post later on how the "adventure/module" structure for the game is structured around these "events"), everyone is going to be missing one or more of their favorite heroes.  Also, plenty of people will want to create their own heroes and strike off in quite unofficial/"What If" directions.

The game well provides for both contingencies.  On the one hand, Margaret Weis Productions has a fairly aggressive production schedule for their "Events" planing to bring out Civil War, Annihilation, and Age of Apocalypse.  Each of those are likely to be packed with character write ups.  In part this is because the game aims to satisfy those individuals who always wanted to play their favorite hero.  So, if you want to be Hawkeye, or Nightcrawler, or The Silver Surfer, all of those official write ups are coming this year.

On the other hand, the game makes it reasonably easy to create your own character, or to come up with a playable version of your favorite, but unreleased, character following the rules and models provided.  Hero characters are defined by five key traits: Affiliations, Distinctions, Power Sets, Specialties, and Milestones.  Combined, these build a character that is complex, versitile, and very role play ready.

In brief, these traits act in the following manner:

Affiliations tell you if the person works best alone, as a buddy, or in a team.  Then, based on how the hero is acting in a scene he or she has a better or worse die to roll in their dice pool (a set of dice you build out of your traits to accomplish actions or to react to things in scenes).  These are not immutable traits and can change and shift over time.  So, for example, Captain America, at the start of the Avenger's Disassembled Arc, operates best as part of a team and lest well on his own.  His peak performance has been trained to operate working with the Avengers, and when they disband, he has a real game incentive to try and get them, or some team, back together.  On the other hand, heroes like Wolverine and Daredevil have their peak performace solo, and operate less well as a member of a team.  Marvel Team Up veteran Spiderman is best as a buddy.  So, by ordering your affiliations, you already know a lot about your hero and it has a very Marvel feel.

Distinctions are pieces of information, catch phrases, titles, or other words or phrases that describe the essence of the hero.  Depending on a given situation, they may count for or against the hero.  When they are a positive influence, they add a "good" die (d8 in a system that goes from d4 to d12) to the dice pool, when they have a potentially negative influence, they add a d4, but also give the hero a Plot Point (which is the action currency of the game that allows heroes to really shine when it counts).  For example, Captain America has as his three distinctions "Lead by Example", "Man Out of Time", and "Sentinel of Liberty."  These traits add flavor to the hero and give flexible and interesting in-game mechanics that help shape play and allow character rewards for making in-character choices that a player would avoid if merely playing the "game."

Power Sets are the heart of the super hero identity as they represent inherent powers, technological or magical equipment, or whatever else (training, alien physiology, etc.) that makes the hero powerful.  The game suggests that you should be able to stat out a hero with no more than two Power Sets.  As I have thought through various Marvel heroes and seen how they did the 23 for the basic game, I have to say they seem to have done a good job with their rule of thumb.  Within a power set can be a number of individual powers that are somehow linked (using Captain America again, he has Super-Soldier Program as one set, and his Vibranium-Alloy Shield as his other).  The powers that make up the Power Set are each rated at a die level from d6 (ho hum, but allowing something a regular person can't do) to d12 (Godlike).  Generally, for any action, only one die from any given Power Set can go in the dice pool.  So, if you have two sets, you can general apply more powers in a roll.  On the other hand, each power set also includes one or more special effects that help customize the powers, and also limits which may interrupt or prevent the use of the power (e.g. Cap can lose his shield) until some condition is met.  The game gives good guidelines for describing and using powers that would appear to easily handle anything you have ever seen in the Marvel Universe, and if it not there, there are clear guidelines for developing new things to go in Power Sets.

On the one hand, the power curve seems a bit flat, with only 4 levels of powers possible (ho hum, Enhanced, Superhuman, Godlike).  However, the combinations, addition of special effects, and combination with other traits really allows this simple spread of power levels to describe a very diverse set of heroes without the need to have every possible attribute statted out in dozens or hundreds of gradiated levels.  The point is not to try to figure out the physics of superheroes and model that, but to model the way that things work in comic book stories.  The play reports I have seen and my own impression of the simple elegance of the system support that MHRP does just that.

After Power Sets are Specialties.  Theses are the "skills" of the game.  They are few in number and broadly defined.  You get a die if you are an Expert (d8) or a Master (d10) at something important.  There are, at my count, 13 skill Specialties offered in the game.  The focus is on things that come up in comic books, things like Crime, Science, Combat, Tech, Medical, etc.  The focus is on relevant playability, not modeling a complex real world inventory of what people can do.  It is possible that some other specialties could come into play at some point, but really, these do the job of handling your Marvel character.  They also allow for interesting interactions with powers and other traits to flexibly deal with challenges in the game. 

Finally, there are Milestones, which are triggering events that provide the hero with experience.  This is one of the more innovative parts of the character description.  These are not unique, as they have appeared in earlier games (the one that I am familiar with is the Lady Blackbird steampunk scenario where experience "keys" are similarly described).  However, using these milestones to describe possible story arcs and rewards for characters is new as far as the Marvel Universe.  Each Milestone is described by a 1xp, 3xp and 10xp level.  The 1xp level could be a thing that can happen often and the character can gain xp frequently by meeting the terms of that level.  Cap has two milestones (again, a hero may have one or two) and his first one is, for the included scenario, "Mentor the Hero."  If he chooses to aid a speficic hero he gets 1xp the first time he does it.  But there are lots of heroes to help, so he can pick up a fair amount of xp by being helpful.  The 3 xp is a once per scene trigger.  It is a bigger, scene defining moment.  One of Caps is to earn 3 xp when he ais a stressed-out (i.e. out of commission due to physical, emotional or mental stress) hero in recovery.  The 10xp is a defining decision by the hero and may be hit only once per Act.  For Cap, one of his is to get 10xp when he either gives leadership of th team to your chose hero or to force your chosen hero to resign or step down from the team. 

For me, these Milestones are really powerful role playing tools.  The xp rewards allow for purchase of advantages along the arc of an Event, so they have real game implications for success or failure, and they shape the character's behavior to deal with certain issues along the path of the overall story.  While all of the heroes in the book come with predefined Milestones, it is clear that each new important stage of a game/campaign, should be marked with the GM (called The Watcher) and the players coming up with Milestones for all the characters that make sense to the story they plan to tell together. 

Taken together, I see the character system as innovative, comprehensive, flexible and fun.  It is also demanding on a certain level, in that it requires real thought and collaboration between the players and The Watcher to make things like the Milestones and Distinctions work.  However, I think the collaboration it demands builds a better, more trusting and richer play experience.

If I have time, more tomorrow.

A Few Words on the Marvel Heroic Role Playing game

There is a lot to say about this great game and the company that produced it, and I can only speak to a fraction of it at the moment.  However, I wanted to get some thoughts down before I get to actually play the game (which will happen at the previously mentioned Taste of Marvel at the wonderful Labyrinth Games) and then give some more impressions after I get to experience it in play.

So, I am actually buying the hard copy book from Labyrinth and picking it up at the event this weekend.  However, since I prepaid, I received a prompt and efficient e-mailed link and coupon code for a free download of the PDF so that I could start looking at the game last week.  MWP was prompt and the download on Drive ThruRPG was easy.  This is the second game I have bought from MWP (I pre-ordered Leverage for a friend), and this interaction confirms my initial impression, that they do good work and are very competent with their customer care.

I have not read the game itself cover to cover yet.  As is my usual, I have done a combination of flipping through, looking things up (good index and TOC) and then started slowly moving the bookmark (so to speak with a PDF) through the volume.

Everything that I have seen so far impresses me. 

First, they have a foreward by Jeff Grubb who helped bring us the original Marvel Super Heroes game from TSR.  It is a nice piece, and it is classy to have him, in effect, hand the torch to the new game.  Despite many criticisms I have written here about the old MSH game, I have a great fondness for and terrific memories of playing it.  From the first pages, I get the feeling that MHRP will similarly gain a solid place in my RPG repetoir.

The look of the book is great.  The layout is clean and clear.  The art is well selected from a back catelogue probably hundreds of thousands of images in the Marvel library.  But the selected art fits with the themes of the sections they adorn and are not just randomly assigned.  The feel is very professional, very comfortable and it communicates well as the system is described bit by bit.  Right up front they have a breakdown of what things make up a character and a summary of what they mean, using Captain America's sheet as an example.  Then you can dive into the details of the rules immediately following.

Of course, before digesting all the nitty gritty of the rules, the first thing to do is to flip to the back and check out the official stats for the included heroes!

There are 23 super heroes fully statted out and ready to play in the "Mini Event" included in the book.  They include a good representative group from Mavel's popular teams: all of the Fantasitc Four, important members of the Avengers and X-Men, and of course a number of popular "unaffiliated" (at least before the Avengers Disassembled story arc) heroes like Spiderman and Daredevil.  I have no complaints about the initial group of heroes, though I do have some observations.

The group is very representative of the marvel Universe and should satisfy most Marvel fans as a first round of official stats. 

What is disatisfying for me, which is not the game's fault, is the lack of representativeness of the Marvel Universe. 

In this group of heroes, we have 8 women heroes and 15 men.  Marvel suffers from a lack of solid and interesting female heroes, and has never developed any female hero iconic as DC has in Wonder Woman (and even if she is constantly treated as a distant third behind Batman and Superman, no matter what DC does, it has been unable to not have her in that big three).  Here we have Armor, Black Widow, Emma Frost, Invisible Woman, Ms. Marvel, Shadowcat, Spider-Woman and Storm.  These are all solid heroes, but given the almost 2 to 1 ratio of male heroes to female, I hope that somehow the game can overcome the inherent gender issues in the Marvel Universe to get girls and women to the gaming table with the game.  Because I like it a lot.

Looking through the vector of race/ethnicity, there is a starker contrast.  19 of the heroes are white/caucasian background, with other racial/ethnic groups represented by two black Africans, an African American and an Asian (Japanese) character. 

Gaming should know no boundaries, and imagination should admit everyone.  Marvel, along with mainstream comics everywhere, has definitely got some major gaps in how representative its heroes are.  While Marvel has established an imaginary world where there are 9000 significant characters, many from all over the world and from all kinds of backgrounds, the most popular, the most promoted, and the most famous tend to be white and tend to be guys.  This game is not going to fix the industry.  However, going into the game and making the Marvel Universe your own to game in, one has to understand that the way things play out in character selection for the write-ups is pretty reflective of the Official Universe. 

The nice thing about it is that, if you don't like it, in the game, you can change it.

Hopefully, MWP can find some way to tap into those players who maybe don't see themselves in the "top tier" of Marvel heroes and nonetheless get them interested in the game.  With luck, that may bring in some more readers who may be able to exert some market forces for change in the official universe to balance out its cast.

As it is the rules make creation of heroes or statting up of your favorite (but as yet not officially released) hero fairly easy.

I'll have to talk about that tomorrow, as I am out of time to write today.

Marvel Launch Week

So, I have written quite a bit about the upcoming game release of Margaret Weis Productions new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game .  It is not so upcoming now, as midnight tonight sees the release of the PDF.

Today, despite being a holiday, I am a bit pressed for time, so I'll just point out two great resources that have made things clearer about what the game does, how it does it, and what is planned for the line.

First, there's the information that outlines how things are organized for the game's launch parties: here.  Looks like there are play opportunities for some of the more popular, interesting and diverse characters from Marvel.  Not perfect, of course, but a good sample nonetheless and good for showing what can be done by the system.

Second, there is a very interesting interview with game author Cam Banks at the BAMF podcast.

I'd say everything is looking very good, and I am very interested to get my game on with the system next month.

Into the Marvel Universe pt 4

Despite good intentions (Road to Hell paved?  Check!), I have been less than constant in my blogging this week.  Nonetheless, I will play a little catch up today while my son practices with his Pipe and Drum band.

So, I have raised a lot of questions about how the new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game about to be released this next week by Margaret Weis Productions is going to play, and I have expressed various hopes while mentioning misgivings, many tied to my former experience with TSR's old Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) RPG.

However, I think that my hopes are pretty much going to be fulfilled and my worries allayed based on this terrific post (Collateral Damage #0: The Making of a New (Marvel RPG) Series) by the Chatty DM over at Critical-Hits.com.  He outlines some of his challenges even though he is working on the game and goes through the start of a new ongoing campaign and the creation of the new player characters.  It is a great write-up and showcases what can be done within the framework of the basic rules.  While what he describes is not without a speedbump or two, it is a clear demonstration of the robust and flexible character creation possible.  This is very heartening.  I was pretty sure such would be the case, but, sadly, even good companies sometimes make major mistakes, especially with licensed properties (which are just no easy thing to work with (Fred Hicks has some good thoughts on them here).

So, now that I need not hold my breath on the game, what is left to say?

Hey folks, this is the blogosphere, there is always something to say.

The core of the system looks extremely sound and I see it as seriously more malleable and functional than the old MSH system (as much as I enjoyed playing it).  The question I do have is how does it operate on the extremes.  For example, is it going to work at the very low powered end (say you want a S.H.E.I.L.D. campaign inspired perhaps by DC's Gotham Central or Checkmate type approach (why yes, I am a flaming Greg Rucka fan))?  I think the answer is yes, but I'd like to see a test drive.

Also, how does it work at the very high level side?  Can you do something like the Incredible Hercules run by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente or the classic Thor stories by Walt Simonson?  A campaign like these inspirations require some major city demolishing, cosmos shaking, dimension bending power to be available, and more importantly, it needs to be interesting.  I think one of the problems with old MSH, was that the system just might have made the high level stuff uninteresting.  Okay, you take 1000 points of damage, and we're done.  Obviously, a good GM could do a lot more, but the system did not provide a lot of support.

I am thinking that in both cases, for the highs and the lows, you can get very good play from the system, but I am still hoping to see some actual play and first hand accounts.

One of the reasons that this is important to me is my own experience.  One of the things that worked incredibly well in the old campaign (so very long ago (and hey here's an article about my old GM), was that it wasn't the powers that made us heroes, it was the fact that we were heroes and happened to have powers (sometimes).  So, for example, we had an armored hero, who was still working hard on his I-want-to-be-Iron-Man suit.  It started off fitting in a really big box and had to be carried around in a van.  Sometimes, there was not enough time to don the armor.  That did not stop the player.  He was ex-military or law enforcement, and, for example, when Hydroman was rampaging, he was more than willing to shoot up a gas station with incendiaries (BOOM) and drive him off.  Another time, a huge Sentinel robot attacked our fellow hero who was a mutant weather controller.  Once again, the need to don armor was a hindrance to going "super", so the player just grabbed the nearest semi truck and rammed it into the robot, allowing me to do a little laser surgery on its head (if I recall correctly (and I had been, at that point, transformed from a ROM the Spaceknight clone into a Justice clone)).

So, the moral of the story is that, I want that feeling that the players are the heroes of the stories, powers or not, and that they have something to do, that is easily modeled by the rules.  Cortex+ looks like it will do it, but I am still at the "show me" stage.  After all, we are about to get The Avengers and the quote is

"Big man in a suit of armor, take that away – what are you?"

"Uh... genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist,"

That needs to work.  I will be looking at Chatty DM, my own experience upcoming at Labyrinth Games, and other actual play reports to see how things play out.

But I would say things look very, very good.

Into the Marvel Universe pt 3

Missed out on wrting yesterday, but will try to regain ground today.

So, continuing on with my thoughts and hopes from the planned release of Margaret Weis Productions new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game I wanted to start by contrasting what I think and hope we'll see from the new game with the classic, but not perfect, TSR Marvel Super Heroes game (MSH).  One of the issues with MSH was a certain inflexibility in the resolution mechanic.  There was a universal chart and various abilities and powers were rated at fixed levels (good, amazing, unearthly, etc.) , and things had a fairly binary correspondence.  Breaking down a door required strenght, dealing with attacking ninjas required fighting.  There was not a lot of room to innovate and mix things up with the rules as written.  So, if you had an armored hero who wanted to break a door down by charging or flying through the door as a self propelled battering ram, it was not really clear how to adjudicate a rating for that.  The rules would tend to force a GM to either say "you can't do that" or to make up something arbitrarily.  Now all games have such limitations at some point.  Somewhere, the "physics" created by the rule system break down.

However, with a game inspired by the amazing and crazy things that can happen in the pages of a comic book, the farther off you can push that rigidity, the better.  This is one of the reasons I am quite pleased at the prospect of the Cortex+ system driving the new Marvel system.  From what I have seen of the impementation in Leverage, the manner in which creative description and flexible ability and skill categories can work together make for a powerful and fun system that has much fewer "you can't do that" moments, and many more pick up your dice and see how it turns out moments.  That is exciting to me, and I am really happy to get a test run of the game at my favorite game spot next month (Labyrinth Games in Washington, D.C.).

Now, I can still see some downsides.

First, the Marvel Universe, as much as it has produced stories and characters I have enjoyed, it comes freighted with a lot of crappy baggage.  One of many not great things from Marvel is their many mediocre at best "events."  The new RPG is going to have at its heart, a whole variety of the past events to sell additional products that expand the basic game and the defined universe (read lots of hero and villain descriptions and advice about running various places and aspects of the mainstream Marvel Universe).  I don't begrudge Margaret Weiss Productions this organizational structure, but I think it showcases the bland filler of the Marvel Universe along side its more positive aspects.  This is not to say that every event has been a failure artiistically as far as story (I'm not even competent to speak commercially), but as I have tried to go through back issues and from time to time follow through one event or another (and Civil War was the last one I seriously looked at (with disappointment)), I can't say that I love any of the big cross overs (and this goes back all the way to the Secret Wars craziness that perhaps began it all).

So, there is that which may weigh against buying much into the line of products.

Also, there is just a lot to dislike in the Marvel Universe.  Obviously, both big publishers have always had trouble in balancing their portrayal of women and minorities in the pages of their books.  While not bereft of success from time to time, on the whole, the comics of the Marvel Universe are targeted at the white, middle class, heterosexual, male reader who expects female heroes, when they get seen, to be seen as wish fulfillment fantasies first and their story, personality and intellect, if shown at all, are all secondary at best.  This is not a view I want to subscribe to or to have prevelant at my gaming table (on those rare occiasions I get to game).  So, in taking the mainstream Marvel Universe as the default field of play, I get stuck with a narrower world than I would like, and a lot of work to make it over into an image that I feel more comfortable in (and having my players, most likely including my children, play their stories).

And there are number of other things that have been woven into the Marvel Universe that just violate my worldview.  People in the Marvel Universe are really much worse and more banally evil than you find in the "real" world, for all its flaws and tragedies.  This comes out most strongly in the Mutant Menace trope of most X-Men/Mutant etc. books.  Its like regular people, at least if they are in an X-Men book (not necessarily a Spiderman or Fantastic 4 book mind you), have the super prejudice power.  It only activates normally if you are in an X-book, and then beyond all history, evolving social understanding, or ability for information to be spread and people being able to rise above their context, you always seem to have just a mob of "mutie haters."  It is absolutely incoherent and frustratingly so.  I mean, I know this is a super hero comic, so with flying people and blue people and telepathy and all, the threshold of the willing suspension of disbelief is pretty high.  Still, emotionally, most of these stories fail because there is not enough truth to them.  People are prejudiced and they do hate, and it has and will continue to lead to suffering, injustice and even genocide, but it seems like there is truth (in an emotional sense) to how it gets portrayed in the Marvel Universe.  The feelings come and go depending on what book you are in, and the story of prejudice just falls on its face because it almost never is told the way things really happen.  There are a number of other examples of things woven in to the fabric of the Marvel Universe that just grate against me, but ifyou are going to get Spiderman, Captain America, Kitty Pryde, et al, all the rest comes with it.

So, of course you can, under your own steam, create a completely different reality, as in the already mentioned World War G post by Fred Hicks.  Or, you could chose a slightly different flavor of Marvel by trying to use the Marvel related settings in other media, such as The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes animated show, or any of the Marvel super hero movies (Spiderman (1+2 but NOT 3) Iron Man (1+2), Captain America or Thor pretty good, first and second X-Men movie and X-Men first class also pretty good; Daredevil, Elektra, any of the Punisher, Ghost Rider or Hulk movies from bad to very, very bad), but I'm not sure where that really gets you.  Also, there is the "Ultimate" universe, which has some promise.  Unlike the old "New Universe" where Marvel tried to generate a whole new set of heroes in a new version of a super heroic universe (which did not last long), Ultimate, really starting with the well done early issues of Ultimate Spiderman, tried to remake the Marvel Universe by shifting, tweaking and reimagining its heroes.  They seem to have done a pretty good job with Spiderman.  But I tried to read the Ultimate X-Men books, and, for me, it was if they took all the dumbest plots from the last forty years of X-Men and found ways to make them DUMBER.  So, your mileage may vary.

In the end, there has to be a way to make a corner of the universe your own and have your players' front a center.  But deciding what to take and what to leave, especially when it gets all interconnected, can be a task, and I am not sure how I might take that on.

Wrote myself through another lunch, so, here's to blogging, unfounded opinions, and forceful statements without analysis.

Thanks for reading.

Into the Marvel Universe

At the end of this month Margaret Weis Productions is launching their new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game built on their Cortex+ system which powers their Leverage and Smallville games, among others.  Next month, I will be getting to test drive the new Marvel RPG at a Taste of Marvel at the wonderful Labyrinth Games in Washington, D.C.  I expect the event will be a lot of fun.  I have been impressed by what I have seen of the Cortex+ system.  It appears to be a very flexible, fast playing system that allows for a lot of creativity and imaginative play that should be a good fit for a comic book style game.

Super hero role playing has been a hit an miss genre for me.  I have read a number of games, played a few, and missed many more that have come and gone.  Supers has been a style of play that came out pretty early in the RPG evolutionary tree, I think really flowering first in the early 1980s.  Champions and Villains & Vigilantes seemed to be the games I remember being on the scene early.  The Hero system came out sometime in that distant past too, and all of these were generics, not taking an identity from any particular license.  Then both DC and Marvel did get into the game with respective licenses with Mayfair and TSR.

The old TSR Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) was my first experience trying to play any kind of ongoing supers game.  I was never much of a comic book collector.  I had friends who were fanatics, however, which was good, because I could read their stuff.  While DC and Marvel both got represented in my friends collections, the dominating theme of those days were the X-Men and Marvel.  DC made some inroads with Justice League International and Man of Steel, and (on the other end of the light/dark sepctrum) the Dark Knight Returns, but Marvel just seemed to dominate the majority of my peers' reading and discussion time.  So, naturally enough, there was interest in MSH.

We had a number of abortive attempts to start campaigns (after all it was competing with my sprawling, derivative, and in many ways lame, yet dominant AD&D campaign), but finally it settled in to three characters and the GM.  We had an Iron Man type knock off, a Storm knock off and a, sort of, ROM the Space Knight knock off to start with.  I definitely learned things from our play about runing these kinds of games and about the system TSR put together. 

First, just like any game, you have to run a good story.  There need to be fun bite sized bits you can get through, and you also have to have something bigger going on.  Even if one night's play is, or seems, to be a one-shot, it still needs to showcase the interesting things about the characters, from their foibles to their awesome powers.  So, for example, the game that my character started in was a rather abortive attempt to make an initial campaign that started, as most of our RPG experience did up to that time, in a Dungeon type crawl.  That did not work.  It was not effectively about anything.  Then, as the other players dropped, but I wanted to keep my quirky, strange character, the GM had the very effective plan to drop me into a parallel Marvel Universe, where he then started the other two players, and use the first adventure to basically kill or cripple most of the important heroes in New York.  We watched a horrible moster kill or make disappear most of the Avengers, Fantastic 4, Dr. Strange, etc.  This was great, because it gave us as players a place to fit in, and small and large things to do.  We had to 1) help stop the monster, 2) rebuild the hero teams, 3) find out what was behind the attack, & etc.

As it turns out, the framework to start the new RPG is not that different (now if we could only get paid for having the idea first . . .) as the setting proclaims:

"The Avengers have been disassembled, the Fantastic Four are somewhere in space, and the X-Men aren’t answering their phone. When dozens of dangerous villains are spring from the maximum-maximum security prison known as the Raft, who’s going to stop them? You are."

Of course this is a storyline already seen in the Marvel books as well, and it is a great place to start off because the story is about the player characters and how they can make an immediate impact (perhaps quite literally) on the story.  The problem with established supers universes is that they may have one, two or three already of the kind of character that the players want to do.  Unless you are having them run the established characters (which is a mixed blessing) it can be hard to make space for them.  The problem with a blank slate approach (often the challenge with the generic systems) is where to begin to build your world.  The models that people will think of are complex universes with everything from established teams to alien races and magical dimensions.  You can find yourself biting off too much.  Still, you have room to let the players' characters be the front page news, instead of being a note in the style section while Superman or Thor is on the front page.

I have some (many) more observations, but they will have to wait, as this is to be a lunchtime exersice in trying to write coherently for the next few weeks.  So, for now, adieu. 

Tomorrow more thrillng anecdoes and unfounded opinions.

I can't go, but you can!

If you live in the DC metro area, consider dropping by Labyrinth Games down in DC (near Eastern Market Metro stop) for the August 13 Gamerati Tour (Tour Stops: Saturday, August 13th).  Gamerati is an organization developed by Ed Healy to try to build and link communities of game players.  This month he is driving across the United States and stopping to showcase local game stores, their patrons, owners, and cultures.  Ed explains his thoughts behind his tour at the tour site linked above.  My own spin is that I think that he sees the building of strong community and social network ties helps expand interest and acceptance of different kinds of games and gamers, and this in terns offers commercial opportunities to stores and game producers.  And everyone wins.

Well, I wish him much luck.  I will be heading out of town that weekend, but anyone remotely interested in games, from Scrabble to Dungeons & Dragons, should head to Labyrinth Games to see what it is all about.  The store is fantastic and the owner and employees are incredibly nice and knowledgeable.  I should note that this is a store that is totally mom and kid friendly.  Even if you haven't played a game for a long time, you will find yourself right at home (and probably playing a game before long) at this store.

I think Ed may be capturing some video to showcase the store and may also be doing some recording for podcasting, etc.  I think the event will be interesting, and, if nothing else, you can pick up a fun new game and maybe meet some cool new folks you never met before.  Wish I could be there.  Give it a shot!