Tags: gamenerd
ACUS game list
Sleepers
The full write-up for Sleepers is up, with all the rules and, most notably, sample characters.
Not only is Sleepers the game for spies and secret agents, it's also the game to find out what happens when Roy Batty fights River Tam while Echo from the Dollhouse teams up with Chuck Bartowski.
Not only is Sleepers the game for spies and secret agents, it's also the game to find out what happens when Roy Batty fights River Tam while Echo from the Dollhouse teams up with Chuck Bartowski.
ACUS game choices
Update
part 1: fashion.
Last night, the belt I wear with my work pants broke. It has been getting worn, but I realised that I can put my finger through the hole that the buckle goes through. Since I was at work until 8:30 last night, this meant that shops were closed by the time I got back near home, leaving me beltless for today.
Since I had no belt, I wore suspenders to keep my pants up. I also added a grey vest over the standard black oxford shirt to cover up the suspenders and give me a pocket to keep my phone in. The pocket watch was a natural addition at that point. As was the grey silk brocade tie. I used my new skills and did a full windsor knot. I considered a fedora, but since I lack a good overcoat, the effect would have been wasted.
I need to go buy a new belt this weekend.
I'm not sure what to do about footwear - my combats have a big split in the leather, but I can't afford to replace or repair them right now.
part 2: medical.
A wheezy day today, despite the advair. I called off the planned gym experiment - I am concerned that if I have to leave classes gasping for air too often, they'll have to ban me from the gym. and that would upset me greatly.
part 3: gaming.
I've decided on running Nano-Victorian Futures and Sleepers at ACUS. The website has stymied my attempts to register games thus far. I have been mucking around the wiki adding more NVF character gneration examples and the skeleton of a section for Sleepers. I've got a plot seed for NVF that should grow into an actual plot before the con. Still not sure what Sleepers will be about plot-wise, but if all goes according to plan, I should just need to nudge the players a bit and sit back to watch the mayhem. I'm really hoping someone comes up with a Sleeper that is weirder than my sample ideas.
part 4: NOMs.
I really want chocolate right now. Instead, I have apples. I do not want apples.
Last night, the belt I wear with my work pants broke. It has been getting worn, but I realised that I can put my finger through the hole that the buckle goes through. Since I was at work until 8:30 last night, this meant that shops were closed by the time I got back near home, leaving me beltless for today.
Since I had no belt, I wore suspenders to keep my pants up. I also added a grey vest over the standard black oxford shirt to cover up the suspenders and give me a pocket to keep my phone in. The pocket watch was a natural addition at that point. As was the grey silk brocade tie. I used my new skills and did a full windsor knot. I considered a fedora, but since I lack a good overcoat, the effect would have been wasted.
I need to go buy a new belt this weekend.
I'm not sure what to do about footwear - my combats have a big split in the leather, but I can't afford to replace or repair them right now.
part 2: medical.
A wheezy day today, despite the advair. I called off the planned gym experiment - I am concerned that if I have to leave classes gasping for air too often, they'll have to ban me from the gym. and that would upset me greatly.
part 3: gaming.
I've decided on running Nano-Victorian Futures and Sleepers at ACUS. The website has stymied my attempts to register games thus far. I have been mucking around the wiki adding more NVF character gneration examples and the skeleton of a section for Sleepers. I've got a plot seed for NVF that should grow into an actual plot before the con. Still not sure what Sleepers will be about plot-wise, but if all goes according to plan, I should just need to nudge the players a bit and sit back to watch the mayhem. I'm really hoping someone comes up with a Sleeper that is weirder than my sample ideas.
part 4: NOMs.
I really want chocolate right now. Instead, I have apples. I do not want apples.
Aha!
ETA: I really need a catchy name for this system. Preferably one without my name in it so other folks won't feel weird using it once I get the kinks ironed out (and in). Meta-diceless?
I finally figured out how to polish the general set of diceless rules that I've been meddling with for a while (basically the rules set that Nano-Victorian Future is based off of).
You can get a general feel for the rules here.
Basically, it uses an Amber-ish diceless conflict resolution - whoever has more points wins. Characters are based on three types of properties: attributes, powers and knacks. Attributes are qualities that everyone has, and the primary focuses of conflict. Powers are qualities that some have, and some do not. Knacks are features unique to the character. Every character should also have a motivation, a couple words that sum up the main narrative drive for the character.
Exactly what the attributes, powers and knacks are is setting dependant.
While I haven't made it explicit in NVF, I've got a loose system for using powers and knacks in conflicts. Depending on how broadly usable a feature is, I either just add it in for the conflict, or double or (rarely) triple it. Moving forward I think it will be more clear if I let a player know up front if a given feature is straight-up, two-fold or three-fold. For example, a cloak of invisibility does only one thing, where "super-senses" is more broad, so the former would be two-fold and the latter straight-up. You would need to have more than twice the points to see past the invisibility cloak with your super senses.
In a fantasy setting, this would be pretty important if powers included being highly skilled at something (like fencing, say).
Finally, I've noodled before about the "Princess Bride problem" - how do you deal with Wesley and Inigo game-wise, letting Wesley win when they fence even though Inigo does nothing but fence? Previously, I figured that the solution was "fate points" in service of Motivation, but worried that the game would devolve into the players trying to game the fate point system.
My new idea is to simply not tell the player how many points they have. That introduces uncertianty into conflicts without overly eroding a PC's competancy. If you try to use a fate point and you're out, the action will either fail, or the player takes "damage" in one way or another.
It's probably a big PITA for the GM, so I'll have to work out some way to track this for myself during play, but I think it's worth a shot. I won't change the existing game I have running now, but I'll make the tweaks to any games I start up in the future, including convention games.
I finally figured out how to polish the general set of diceless rules that I've been meddling with for a while (basically the rules set that Nano-Victorian Future is based off of).
You can get a general feel for the rules here.
Basically, it uses an Amber-ish diceless conflict resolution - whoever has more points wins. Characters are based on three types of properties: attributes, powers and knacks. Attributes are qualities that everyone has, and the primary focuses of conflict. Powers are qualities that some have, and some do not. Knacks are features unique to the character. Every character should also have a motivation, a couple words that sum up the main narrative drive for the character.
Exactly what the attributes, powers and knacks are is setting dependant.
While I haven't made it explicit in NVF, I've got a loose system for using powers and knacks in conflicts. Depending on how broadly usable a feature is, I either just add it in for the conflict, or double or (rarely) triple it. Moving forward I think it will be more clear if I let a player know up front if a given feature is straight-up, two-fold or three-fold. For example, a cloak of invisibility does only one thing, where "super-senses" is more broad, so the former would be two-fold and the latter straight-up. You would need to have more than twice the points to see past the invisibility cloak with your super senses.
In a fantasy setting, this would be pretty important if powers included being highly skilled at something (like fencing, say).
Finally, I've noodled before about the "Princess Bride problem" - how do you deal with Wesley and Inigo game-wise, letting Wesley win when they fence even though Inigo does nothing but fence? Previously, I figured that the solution was "fate points" in service of Motivation, but worried that the game would devolve into the players trying to game the fate point system.
My new idea is to simply not tell the player how many points they have. That introduces uncertianty into conflicts without overly eroding a PC's competancy. If you try to use a fate point and you're out, the action will either fail, or the player takes "damage" in one way or another.
It's probably a big PITA for the GM, so I'll have to work out some way to track this for myself during play, but I think it's worth a shot. I won't change the existing game I have running now, but I'll make the tweaks to any games I start up in the future, including convention games.
ACUS games!!?!
Presumably as a side-effect of the reg page going up a month later than usual, there's only about a week until the end of game submission for ACUS.
This means I have to start and finish thinking about which games I am going to run, and soon.
Ideas I have so far;
I'm interested in Primetime Adventures and In a Wicked Age, but I don't know the rules well enough to run either as yet.
I will probably end up running two games this year. One of them will almost certainly be Nano-Victorian Future. Any comments from the peanut gallery on which of the others sound good?
This means I have to start and finish thinking about which games I am going to run, and soon.
Ideas I have so far;
- Another Nano-Victorian Future game. I'm pretty confident that the setting and system are holding up for this one, since it seems to be working in my F2F game. I just need to come up with a plot, but for NVF, that shouldn't be too hard.
- A consensual world style fantasy game using a set of diceless rules similar to the ones for NVF. I'd have to a) come up with a plot on the fly, and b) go for one of the longer slots so we'd have time to build the world and still have a game. I'd be nervous about the pacing/timing, especially since I doubt I'd have a chance to playtest it before ACUS.
- Sleepers, a game of spies and secret agents. As previously mentioned, this needs some smoothing out still.
- I could try to run Blood Shadow again, but I'm still feeling deflated from how last year's went, and I haven't figured out how to fix the setting.
- I could maybe throw together a set of rules for a Jim Butcher Codex Alera game? And come up with a plot? Perhaps better I don't.
I'm interested in Primetime Adventures and In a Wicked Age, but I don't know the rules well enough to run either as yet.
I will probably end up running two games this year. One of them will almost certainly be Nano-Victorian Future. Any comments from the peanut gallery on which of the others sound good?
Game dreams
Friday night, I dreamed an RPG. Or, at least, the basic broad strokes of one.
Zil and I have been watching a lot of Chuck lately. This apparently triggered a dream about secret agents and spies with weird knacks, powers and features. As the dream progressed, it turned into a game design.
The game is called Sleepers. All the players are sleeper agents for an intelligence agency. They're all in deep cover doing spy things. You go from your basic undercover spy, to guys with Intersect type things in their heads, through brainwashed Dollhouse-esque characters who don't know they're agents until they hear their trigger phrase, and down into really weird stuff.
Each character would be made with a small number of points. To get more, the character takes negative features - things like being activated by a trigger phrase, being a double, or even triple agent, having arrival agency have your loved one hostage, etc. The GM would have to figure out how big a bonus to give for each drawback. The idea is to get characters with really odd situations. In return, they can use the points on either becoming super awesome in attributes, or (in my mind, better), coming up with wacky spy powers. I had more examples from the dream, but I've lost them now.
For attributes, since we're talking spies, I figure we should assume that they're all universally highly trained in all combat skills. Any spy can take out a non-spy, and spy on spy competition comes down to finding another edge. Strength and Dexterity would have to be on the table, as would something like Intelligence (for code cracking, hacking, etc.) and maybe some sort of social/lying/acting attribute.
Anyway, this more or less popped into my head when I woke up Saturday morning. I think I could make something out of it.
Of course, I just found out that the ACUS game submission deadline is this week, so the question is, can I fill in the gaps and smooth it out by the end of the week?
Zil and I have been watching a lot of Chuck lately. This apparently triggered a dream about secret agents and spies with weird knacks, powers and features. As the dream progressed, it turned into a game design.
The game is called Sleepers. All the players are sleeper agents for an intelligence agency. They're all in deep cover doing spy things. You go from your basic undercover spy, to guys with Intersect type things in their heads, through brainwashed Dollhouse-esque characters who don't know they're agents until they hear their trigger phrase, and down into really weird stuff.
Each character would be made with a small number of points. To get more, the character takes negative features - things like being activated by a trigger phrase, being a double, or even triple agent, having arrival agency have your loved one hostage, etc. The GM would have to figure out how big a bonus to give for each drawback. The idea is to get characters with really odd situations. In return, they can use the points on either becoming super awesome in attributes, or (in my mind, better), coming up with wacky spy powers. I had more examples from the dream, but I've lost them now.
For attributes, since we're talking spies, I figure we should assume that they're all universally highly trained in all combat skills. Any spy can take out a non-spy, and spy on spy competition comes down to finding another edge. Strength and Dexterity would have to be on the table, as would something like Intelligence (for code cracking, hacking, etc.) and maybe some sort of social/lying/acting attribute.
Anyway, this more or less popped into my head when I woke up Saturday morning. I think I could make something out of it.
Of course, I just found out that the ACUS game submission deadline is this week, so the question is, can I fill in the gaps and smooth it out by the end of the week?
weekend
Nano-victorian reminder
BTW, there have been some new pages with background put up on the Nano-Victorian Wiki.