Celtoslavian Gaming

Halloween Game

2007-10-31T12:36:00.000-05:00

Saturday was my Halloween game night. I ran a Conspiracy of Shadows one shot of Delta Green. It was set in Dakar, Senegal with the players' characters being a NASA orbital debris specialist, a USDA foreign service officer, a Blackwater guard for the USDA guy, an ATF special agent and a CIA cryptolinguist. I couldn't be happier with the character concepts the players came up with.

For the conspiracy, I had the Colour Out of Space landing and tainting tobacco that was being smuggled into the U.S. supply (group kicker). As a result of a Mi-Go experiment, an extremist group got some artifacts to suppress the Colour, which the group in turn was using to get a container ship full of Colour-infected zombies (think 28 Days Later) into Baltimore. Obviously, I drew heavily from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" and "The Whisperer in Darkness," as well as the Delta Green books for Call of Cthulhu.

By the end of the night two characters met their Doom (NASA & ATF), two others fled via the airport (USDA, Blackwater), which was subsequently in flames, and the CIA character ended up wandering about West Africa, obsessively studying the two Mi-Go artifacts. And no, the container ship never made it out of port, thanks to the ATF agent's last act on this world (although the intent behind this act was questionable).

The Doom was really popular and the Trust pool went away fast after the Blackwater guard shot the Colour-crazed ATF agent. I had some difficulties with the base conflict resolution mechanic in Conspiracy of Shadows, so next time I do Delta Green, I may want to slap the Doom and Trust pool mechanics on top of NEMESIS. Other than that, though, I think things went really well (really well, meaning the suitably grim/entertaining, Lovecraftian ending of madness and death).

An Evening Playing Carcassonne

2006-10-22T21:20:00.000-05:00

Carcassonne
Originally uploaded by MetalBard.

I just spent an evening playing best of three games for Carcassonne with my wife. Fortunately I won. Normally this is not the case.

Anyway, this game is great. It's very simple but it can build in complexity. I have yet to get any of the expansions or the city variation. Carcassonne is definitely genius game design. Besides, it looks so purdy when played!

Missed Conflict Opportunity

2006-08-17T15:36:00.000-05:00

In the last Eberron game we played, Nigad and I came into conflict as to whether we should free some prisoners we came upon in the jungle. I said that my character (Marduk) didn't want to get involved in the island's politics. Nigad's character (Kruug) wanted to be the hero and save them. We just sort of muddle about for a bit, role-played an argument and then moved on (I essentially got my intent). Next time this comes up, I'll definitely role-play it out, but once we get to the outcome, I'll request one or a series of conflict resolution rolls, along with help from the different players, depending on which side they agree with. This would be a ghetto-ized D&D version of Burning Wheel's duel of wits, but I think it would be worthwhile.

Eberron, D&D & more

2006-08-17T15:08:00.000-05:00

Our group has another Eberron game coming up soon. In the last few games we've have a good time of playing standard D&D along with the tweeks added. We've occasionally pulled out the conflict resolution on certain rolls, but with group preferences the way they are, it's hard to be consistent about it. I almost want hit points to be a count down to losing your intent when in drawn out combat, but I'm not sure how the rest of the group will react. (Mental note - discuss this at the table on Saturday)

Some of the conflict resolution has been pretty fun. One of the more laid-back players, Pep, was having his ranger scout and rolled a spot check. Mark, the DM, then asked him to state his intent, what he was looking for. There was a brief back and forth as that request stumped Pep, but eventually his successful spot check revealed some tunnels in the volcano that got us a lot farther along our journey to a ruined city. It also provided some conflict for a rod or scepter that could lead us to the city.

For this upcoming game, I think I want to play around with my character's goal and trait a bit in the reward system to see how I can get those action points going in new and different ways. Maybe it'll spur others on to do the same, but different.

Overall, the baby steps being taken in this Eberron game make me fairly confident that the group as a whole could really get into a Planescape game run with The Shadow of Yesterday.

We'll see...

Experimental D&D

2006-06-20T11:27:00.000-05:00

My group is starting a new game, Eberron, with Mark DMing it. At first I wasn't too thrilled because I wanted to get into something a little more narrativist. Anyway, the form the game has ended up taking is actually a bit of an experiment.

Essentially, the players are all running characters that want to go treasure hunting. We all have various reasons for doing this along with goals for said treasure. Since it's Eberron and we're basing it out of Morgrave University, we're doing treasure hunting Indiana Jones-style. In addition to a player-stated goal, we have one-word traits determined by the player for their character (one trait per character).

These little embellishments would be easily thrown away in a D&D game with the exception of Eberron's action points. We tied action point rewards to specifically pursuing the stated goal and playing up the character's trait. These goals and traits can be changed, but a player can never go back to the same goal and/or trait once it's been changed. The action points are spent in the traditional way, but with one exception. In situations directly pertaining to the player's stated goal, the player may use up to three action points on a roll (that's 3d6 plus the normal d20 at our low levels).

In addition to the player-determined rewards add-on we've got going, we've decided to go with conflict resolution and setting stakes for the rolls outside of round-based combat. I, personally, had great success with this by using my character's bluff and diplomacy rolls when dealing with some victimized (but still very much undead and dangerous) inhabitants. As we progress in the game, I plan to keep track of how these little add-ons work with our more reticent players (the ones that essentially "turtled" in our Burning Wheel games).

I'll post later about the actual in-game events of the first session along with some of the stakes set and how some people have started really getting into the traits and goals for action points. The first session was promising, so I hope this hybrid-D&D thing can be a gateway drug back into some more narrativist play for the half of the group that didn't really get into our first experiment with such play - Burning Wheel.

The New Nintendo

2006-06-15T14:22:00.000-05:00

I'll admit, I'm no fan of the Nintendo GameCube and I owned a Game Boy Advance for only a little while, but I've recently changed my my mind on Nintendo. I used to think that they should have gone the way of SEGA. Just stop wasting our time with sub-par hardware and focus on getting your games to as many people as possible. That is, until I bought the Nintendo DS Lite with Metroid Prime: Hunters and Big Brain Academy. I've been playing this thing very often since then, AND, more significantly, my wife has been playing it even more.

The stylus element is key, I think. She's hooked on Big Brain Academy, but she also found the controls for Metroid Prime to be "intuitive." Exactly how Nintendo is touting it's new Wii-mote controller. From the reports at E3, the new Metroid game for Wii will have the same control as the DS Metroid, but instead of the stylus on the touch screen, the Wii-mote will point at the TV. It sounds promising and with the new aesthetic displayed in the DS lite being carried over to the Wii, I may have to break down and get a Nintendo home console this fall. I haven't owned one myself since the old NES 8-bit. That is, if I can beat my wife to the console. We'll definitely have to get a lot of two player games...

Don't worry, Xbox 360, I haven't forgotten about you at all. There's plenty coming out this fall that I want for you.

Back to the Realms (and D&D)

2006-02-28T12:11:00.000-05:00

I post this not because I am giving up on indie games (quite the contrary, I think I'll keep a few in my bag for when attendance might not allow for our scheduled D&D session), but because the rest of my group (though not all, I think) are energized by the prospect of D&D in Forgotten Realms. I don't think Burning Wheel was their cup of tea. Anyway, on to the gory details.

We are playing through the City of the Spider Queen Forgotten Realms mega-module with freshly made 10th level characters (and 49k of equipment). I'm playing a Gold Elf Bladesinger, simply because I want to see that character concept get off the ground for once. In our first session, we spoke with Randal Morn, fearless liberator and leader of Daggerdale and accepted a mission to investigate and eliminate a drow threat from some abandoned crypts in the Dagger Hills. In our explorations we discovered a conflict between two drow factions was taking place. The Lloth drow appeared to be the losing faction. The other faction was devoted to Kiriansalee, a drow goddess of undeath. In Cirdan's view (my character's name), the latter gets the award for most effort put into making drow even more unnatural than normal.

Throughout the crypts and the more natural caverns that followed, we encountered all manner of undead (vampire, ghost), some "sickeningly" devious traps (Alton is still suffering from the compounded eldritch hang-overs), a roper who taught us that drow salutation etiquette involves several magical projectiles and a snack mix assortment of demons and drow (something as obligatory to the Underdark as hors d'oeuvres are to a cocktail reception.) The highlight, of course, was Dunn Stonecastle's plague of locusts (courtesy of Lathander's divine might) summoned down an escape hole onto a rather nasty-looking contingent of drow. Oh yes, and spiders. There are always the spiders. We are the Company of the Bloody Dawn and we plan to live up to that name. Currently, we're back in Daggerdale, resting up, dividing loot and preparing for another delve into the madness.

Rewards for pulling other players in?

2005-12-08T15:47:00.000-05:00

While playing our Burning Wheel Orient campaign, I've been thinking about how players can tie each other into their actions and goals. In Burning Wheel, you've got a great system of Beliefs and the reward, Artha, along with the fact that characters and campaigns are collaboratively built. But after the character burning session, the way the reward system works essentially ends up being a silo for each player being rewarded for their own stated goals/actions. There are some other humor, great deed and personification rewards which are great, but I think there could be more. In the character burning session, you pay attention to what others want and collaboratively develop the beliefs. Could there possibly be a reward system in place for a game that mechanically reinforces this during play? I think having a specific reward system for tying in other player's beliefs into your own actions might help people do the things they should already doing at the table. I've become a firm believer of "System Matters," so if this is a behavior that is wanted/needed at the table, then an explicit reward system should exist.

Or maybe this could also be the kernel of an idea for an entirely new game...

Gokai and Seiken

2005-11-11T15:52:00.000-05:00

I've posted a write-up for my character and his rival on the Burning Wheel boards. I'm pretty excited about what I've got going on between the two of them.

Also, something fun, a (sort of) cutesy version of Gokai:

Orient-themed game

2005-11-01T10:10:00.000-05:00

Well, last Saturday we finished up our Burning Sands game with many an explosion and essentially, a defeat for the players' side. We moved on quickly to work out the setting and theme for the next game. We'll be using Burning Wheel to play in a fantasy Asia setting with the characters being various elements of slightly less legal society. We'll see if we end up being a street gang. There's a thread up on the Burning Wheel site for it now. We'll be posting any additions and Actual Play accounts there. I've added my thoughts to the thread, but I'll post them here too:

I'm playing the ruffian/swordsman and I have yet to burn up the character. I think after I stroll through the lifepaths, I'll have a better idea. All of the beliefs and instincts of the characters are pretty rough now, so I see some fiddling as characters are burned. We pretty much had half a character burning session because of time and energy. A lot of it was spent hashing out what setting to do. We finally picked this as a break from Burning Sands, with the promise to some group members that we'd do Jihadis in the next campaign.

Part of the reason (aside from logistical concerns) why we went with the setting and then the beliefs first was that a lot of people wanted something where the setting didn't dictate the conflict as much. We wanted, instead, to have our beliefs being the sole driving force of the conflict... pretty much. The concept for the campaign is that the sushi restaurant is trying to stay legit, but keeps dipping into the criminal underworld. The three characters that are outright criminals (so to speak), the con-artist, monk and ruffian, are there to pull them into the criminal world. Hopefully, we see this game moving toward the characters becoming a struggling street gang, but we'll see how the conflict works out along the way.

I, personally, am looking forward to such an open-ended Burning Wheel game. I'll post my character when it's burned.

Saturday was a good one

2005-10-17T12:19:00.000-05:00

I just posted the summary of session two of our Burning Sands game. It was this past Saturday and it really went well. Everyone in our group seems to get and really dig the Burning Wheel thing now. At this point, I no longer have any reservations about using Burning Wheel for when our group starts a long term campaign.

Green Dice of Burnination

2005-10-14T14:22:00.000-05:00

Green Dice
Originally uploaded by markcbrennan.

This Saturday these dice will be rolled for matters of planetary importance on the very same table seen in the picture. We can only hope that they will be with us...

First session of Burning Sands

2005-10-12T13:43:00.000-05:00

The first session of play was recounted by one of our group members (Ferrum Angel) on the Burning Wheel boards. There are some comments as well. Evidently there are things that still need to be worked out.

Beliefs, Instincts and Traits

2005-09-30T08:48:00.000-05:00

I pre-empted our GM with this one, but I don't think any harm was done. I posted our group's beliefs, traits and instincts for our characters on the campaign thread. The character roles are also briefly explained.

Burning Sands Campaign Thread!

2005-09-29T19:14:00.000-05:00

So the GM of my Burning Sands game just started up a thread on the game. Just the world burning has been detailed, so far, but we'll get into more soon enough.

Westhaven Wrap-up

2005-09-23T08:59:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I ran a Burning Wheel game in a little homebrew setting (Westhaven) over the summer. It went well and my gaming group has really gotten into the whole Burning Wheel thing. Check out the campaign thread here.

Now we're moving on to the Burning Sands setting for Burning Wheel under a new GM. So far it's been really great. I hope to get some stuff on the Burning Wheel boards a little later, including my character write-up for Morgenthau, Warmaster for House Roland!

Tales of Westhaven has gone live!

2005-07-21T09:57:00.000-05:00

The campaign log and the character sketches for my Burning Wheel "Tales of Westhaven" campaign are now available here.

New game, new setting

2005-07-11T14:23:00.000-05:00

The setting manifesto is now online for the game I will be running soon. Check it out, since I will be running a Burning Wheel game during the summer in it.

More Dragonlance journals online

2005-07-02T13:21:00.000-05:00

Mithras Lysanguire has a good amount of journals written since the last post. Check them out here.

Mithras' 24th journal entry is up

2005-03-27T01:56:00.000-05:00

Mithras and his companions' trek through the Valley of Perfect Silences to the swampy grave of a silver dragon can be read here.

Mithras' latest journal is up!

2005-03-26T15:11:00.000-05:00

Mithras Lysanguire has added another journal entry on his Ergothian quest. Check it out here.

From the Demiplane of the Far Tower

2005-03-04T09:59:00.000-05:00

Looking out over the Astral winds, we peer into the worlds throughout the Multiverse. For now, we follow the path of an aspiring wizard, Mithras Lysanguire, who quests in the lands of Ansalon. His story can be followed here. We will follow his trek and all others whose paths draw the attention of the Demiplane.