[OrcCon 2014] Cowboys and Dinosaurs

Pictured, from left to right: Sparks Nevada and a lunatic.

Ah, late January, a time when a middle-aged SoCal gamer's mind turns to thoughts of OrcCon and the games to be run and played there. This middle-aged SoCal gamer will be running three games over the course of President's Day Weekend (aka Valentine's Day Weekend... awkward...), which is what this post is about.

I know lately I've been doing breakdowns of all the Fate games being run at these conventions, but it's been a long day and I just wanna get this one out. I will say this: There are 10 eleven such games at OrcCon, including the three below.)

Friday night at 8:00 and Sunday afternoon at 2:00 are playtests of the Sparks Nevada Adventure Game (working title -- maybe the Sparks Nevada Thrilling Adventure Game?). Why not call it Sparks Nevada: The Roleplaying Game? I dunno. I kinda like "adventure game." I seem to recall it was out there in the '80s, but never really caught on as a term, which is too bad, I think. I like how it tells you what the game's going to be about: adventure! I mean, yeah, it's about playing roles too, but if you were to ask me "Do you want to go on an adventure?" vs. "Do you want to play a role?" I'm pretty sure I'd take you up on the former faster than I would on the latter. Plus, it feels like a natural derivation of "The Thrilling Adventure Hour."

Anyway, I digress. Here's the blurb:

Kids! Shine your astro-spurs and don your robot fists! It's time to playtest the Sparks Nevada Adventure Game! Based on the wildly popular Thrilling Adventure Hour, the Sparks Nevada Adventure Game uses a greatly altered and simplified version of Fate Core that emphasizes character interaction and big dramatic moments. Newcomers to Sparks Nevada and/or Fate welcome!

I'm... not entirely sure what the premise is yet, but for some reason I'd like to make use of K of the Cosmos, if I can get the voice down. Oh yes -- owing to the audiocentric nature of the Thrilling Adventure Hour, Sparks Nevada is one of those games that really benefits from getting the voices down, which makes it an unnatural fit for me, but whatever. I'd also kinda like to make it Valentine's Day themed, but y'know, President's Day might be just as good. Sparks and Croach fight Lincoln and Washington for reasons that only make sense to K? And hey, wasn't there a Star Trek kinda like that? This idea's sounding better all the time.

More on OrcCon after the jump.

That was the jump! Did you enjoy it?

Sunday morning at 9:00, which you may know better as "the best time to not run a game at a convention," I'll be running an Atomic Robo scenario I'm calling Bring Me the Head of Dr. Dinosaur. It was prompted by the thought that if Dr. Dinosaur is a spectacularly failed genetic engineering experiment, then -- well, the blurb explains it pretty well, I think:

You were elite agents of a secretive government agency, genetically engineered to be the best of the best. But 14 years ago, the black sheep of your group, a psychotic with the delusional belief that he's a velociraptor named H'ssssk, slaughtered your creators and set off on a worldwide chaos spree. Tesladyne wants to imprison him. Majestic 12 wants to study him. But you? You just want revenge.

So it's that game, the one where the PCs are non-insane versions of Dr. Dinosaur, more or less, and both Tesladyne and Majestic 12 are the badguys. It'll take place after volume 8, which just concluded this past week. For those among you who are sticklers for canon, this means we will be operating without a net. I mean, obviously I know what goes on in volume 9, to a certain extent, on account of how special I am, but we'll be ignoring that for secrecy reasons, and also because I honestly don't know that much.

Pre-reg opens today at noon PST, so get on that. I want full games, people! There may be a little tiny cool surprise at one or more of those games, if you're a dedicated fan of the thing that one of those games is based on, but I promise nothing.

In related news, there may be some exciting related news soonish, so keep checking the blog. Or y'know what? I'll just let you know via Twitter. Yeah, that's better. Saves you checking the blog in vain.

[Fate] Happy New Year Three Days Ago

Hey, so 2013 was a pretty great year, right? The kinda year people make lists about.

But let's not dwell on the past. Let's dwell on the future. What does it hold? What does 2014 have in store for us? More on that right after we dwell on the past a little bit. And then I swear, it's future-stuff all the way.

A couple weeks ago Thrilling Fate got another playtest, specifically to try out a couple changes that cropped up as a result of the last playtest (which, as you may recall, was awesome).

The major one had to do with cues, the roleplaying-prod mechanic. I'm trying to standardize cues for all PCs so it's easier not just to make characters, but to make quick comparisons between them. In my last post, I talked about how I'd given them categories (a proactive mannerism, a reactive response, two connections with other PCs, and a big dramatic cue that only happens once an episode). Every PC has a potential connection with every other PC, as shown on their character sheet, but not all of them are in play in a given episode.

I'd planned to use the connections to establish ties between PCs by having each player name another PC and say something about them, something to setup the current episode. I was thinking it'd be stuff like "What did they reveal to you yesterday?" or "How did they recently disappoint you?" We'd start with Sparks -- "When last we left our hero..." -- who would pick someone, and those two players would have a connection with one another for that episode. Then it'd be the second player's turn, and we'd continue until everyone had two connections (so it'd loop back around to Sparks with the last player).

Trouble is, that requires a certain degree of familiarity with those characters, and as it happened, Will Huggins, playing Sparks, didn't really know anything about Sparks Nevada at all beyond the theme song. Neither did Jim Waters, playing Cactoid Jim. (Gina Ricker and Jason Tryon are both relatively recent converts to the Thrilling Adventure Hour, so they had good handles on their PCs -- Red and Croach, respectively. And Gina did a spot-on accent for Red, I gotta say.)

So we went with Plan B, which was this: Everyone circles their connection with Sparks, then picks one other connection with another PC. Cross the rest; they're not relevant in this episode. (Sparks circles his connection with Croach.) This proved to be a great alternative, and resulted in a lot of what I'd call "mechanically productive" player interaction. More than last time, even.

The other change I wanted to test out didn't actually get any actual "testing," unfortunately. I changed troubles to be more straightforward and more reflective of how the show usually goes. Now it's this: You have three trouble slots, each with two check boxes. If an attack against you is a success, write down a trouble and check one box. If it's a thrilling success (success of 5+), check two boxes. If you ever check a fourth box, you're defeated. No more tracking damage.

The intent is to let, say, Sparks intimidate a guy to give them a trouble, then, when that troubled badguy decides to get violent anyway, he guns them down fair and square. (Most NPCs won't have as many trouble slots as the PCs do.) It feels like it could use an escalation mechanic, but man, that really seems too fiddly and involved for what the rest of this Fate variant is trying to do (which is, basically, not be fiddly or all that mechanically involved).

Fun-wise, fun was had. Once again, the PCs seemed to have been written well enough that even players who weren't familiar with the source material were able to help create an authentic-feeling episode of play. Since then, I believe Will and Jim have both subscribed to the podcast and have plans to attend at least one show at Largo, so once again, Acker and Blacker, I have created new fans for you. You're welcome.

THE FUTURE... OF TIME!
Planning on playtesting against on January 19th, again at Game Empire in Pasadena, assuming I can think up another scenario and stat up some new PCs for it. Whatever it is, it'll have the Troubleshooter, Mercy Laredo, and, like, Gene Peeples as PCs. (For some reason, I want to do something featuring K of the Cosmos. As an NPC, of course.) I can't believe how many of these game days I've attended lately. (Two.)

I'm also going to run at least one session of Sparks Nevada at OrcCon in February, plus Atomic Robo. I have this Robo scenario in mind that sounds like a lot of fun, but I have no real idea how to do it just yet. The premise is that the PCs are some sort of genetically engineered elite agents created by someone or other. (So... not Action Scientists at all.) They're running a mission in the service of their creators, but upon their return to Taravai Island they're shocked to discover everyone's dead. Everyone, that is, except one of their own, a fellow "experiment" deemed too unstable for field work and scheduled for destruction, now missing and presumed responsible. And the PCs want only one thing: revenge. Bring Me the Head of Dr. Dinosaur. Coming soon to... well, OrcCon, like I said.

After that in 2014? ARRPG's impending release, continued work on Shadow of the Century, my bit for a Tian Xia stretch goal... and who knows, maybe even something that doesn't use Fate! Stranger things have happened. Not to me personally, but y'know. You hear things.

[Thrilling Fate!] More Playtests

So this happened. Clockwise, starting with me: Me (speaking with hands), top of Mark Gagliardi's head, back of Molly Quinn's head, side of Ben Blacker's head, Ben Acker, fan-favorite Hal Lublin.

Hi all my buddies! Right up top, this week's episode of the Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast is last year's "Christmas on Mars" show, so go download that.

Now that that's out of the way, I've done two more playtests of Thrilling Fate! since my last blog post. Both were fun and productive, but I'm not gonna lie: I preferred the one pictured above, for reasons which should be obvious.

In late November, I ran a playtest at the Nerd SoCal Game Day at Game Empire in Pasadena. Besides me, we had Hamish Cameron as Sparks, Morgan Ellis as Croach, David Gallo as Cactoid Jim, Megan Arch as the Red Plains Rider, and Gina Ricker as Rebecca Rose Rushmore. Although only Morgan had really had any exposure to the source material at that point -- he did play the theme song for everyone before I got there -- we produced a very authentic-feeling Sparks story nonetheless, which is kinda the point. Plus, a couple of them are now subscribers to the Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast, so you're welcome, Acker and Blacker.

The big thing that came out of that playtest was that the PCs need cues that point them at one another. Croach had a cue that encouraged the player to mention his weird Martian anatomy; Sparks had a cue that encouraged the player to be grossed out by Croach. There was a cool moment when that synergy worked like a charm: Croach shoved his secondary esophageal tract down Sparks' throat to save him from suffocation, which naturally grossed out Sparks (and, to be honest, the rest of us as well).

But... nobody else really had that level of mechanical incentive to interact with the other characters. Worse, some had cues that were purely reactive, and that relied on other players doing something first -- like Jim's cue about deflecting praise, which is meaningless unless someone praises him. So that was a problem. I was reluctantly convinced that the best solution was to give everyone a cue for each other PC. This also seemed like a problem, but I couldn't see a way around it.

Another thing was that people were only incentivized to play to their cues when they had aspects that needed recharging, which meant that in the beginning of the game there was no incentive to do that. The simple solution, from David, was to start everyone off with all of their aspects pre-exhausted.

(It's also worth noting that in the next game that day, Gina invented the law firm of Acker, Blacker, Marc & Mark. We'll be seeing more of that sooner or later, I'm sure.)

Before the next playtest, I gave each PC five cues. These broke down like this:

• Mannerism: Something active the player can almost always do or say in a scene.
• Response: Something reactive the player can usually expect to have the opportunity to do or say in a scene. 
• Connections: Two cues that tie the PC to other, specific PCs. In the end, I just couldn't do one cue with each other PC for two reasons. One, it was unwieldy -- every new PC I made would've meant n+1 cues for me to write and for the player to manage. Two, it just didn't work. The fact is that not every character in Sparks Nevada has a meaningful relationship with each other character. I figured if each PC connected to two other PCs -- which ended up being Sparks and one other -- that would make for enough of a web of interactions.
• Dramatic: The big once-per-episode cue that should happen at a dramatic moment. Sparks announces he's from Earth. Croach discards the customs of his people in service of the greater good. Red confesses her feelings for Sparks, Croach, or Jim.

I also simplified troubles and made some cosmetic changes in the interest of making everything as accessible as possible to new players -- specifically, I renamed "fate points" to "story points" and changed "stunts" to "gimmicks." 

This was all in preparation for December 7th, when the playtest pictured above took place. And it was so rad, you guys. We had Mark Gagliardi and Molly Quinn playing their characters from the show (Croach and Pemily Stallwark, respectively), Ben Blacker playing the Barkeep, Ben Acker playing the Red Plains Rider, fan-favorite Hal Lublin playing Cactoid Jim, and Clint Trucks as Sparks Nevada. (Marc Evan Jackson couldn't make it, but Clint was a great Sparks.)

Here's another picture of that!

Left to right: Gagliardi (cosplaying as Scroach the Rocker), Quinn, Trucks, Lublin.

I will keep posting pictures of this game, because it was awesome and I can't believe I was lucky enough to run it with these people as players. Video of this will, as I understand it, be included as an extra on the DVD of the concert film that this Kickstarter helped produce. So get that DVD when it comes out. Thanks to Charlie Fonville for capturing and providing all this media. I'll post more pics when I get them, for the aforesaid reason.

Clint's a dedicated GURPS player, and I believe Hal plays D&D and Pathfinder, but the other four had no gaming experience. (Molly had a friend in high school -- which... was only a couple years ago, apparently -- who was into RPGs, but she never got into them herself despite some interest.) I'm happy to say Acker, Gags (look, I'm just gonna call him Gags), and Molly seemed to get the hang of it after a couple rolls. Blacker had an air of apprehension about him whenever I talked about mechanics, but even still he steered the Barkeep to glorious victory over the Bad News Compadres in the game's final scene. In the end, he estimated he got about 80% of it. Which is fine -- we wrapped things up in about 90 minutes, so I'm sure if we'd taken more time on the front end to discuss things he would've been closer to 100%. As it was, I was very conscious of not taking up too much of everyone's time with the game.

Fortunately, everyone had a great time. I believe this because they repeatedly told me so. The scenario was a cross between Dune, Jaws, and a classic Western bank robbery. Cactoid Jim defeated an adolescent Tremors-style sandworm by taming it, Pemily lassoed and rode an enormous Shai-Hulud-style sandworm and rode it into town, the Barkeep gave Alloy Roy some trouble, Sparks promoted Pemily to First Deputy over Croach, and Croach... Croach was Croach. Mark spoke in the Croach voice pretty much the whole time, in character or out. Charlie's video footage will give testament to that. And Hal did the intro narration! Live, in my face!

In short, the game couldn't have gone better. It was just an amazing opportunity, and I'm so grateful to everyone not just for making time for it, but for being and having so much fun. The icing on the cake was Acker telling me I knew more about their show than he and Blacker do, which... I doubt that's true, but it's awfully flattering nonetheless.

(Non-gaming tangent: I had kind of a Thrilling Adventure Weekend, actually. That Saturday night, my wife, a friend, and I went to their Christmas show, which not only heavily featured Jib Janeen the Jupiter Spy throughout but also included a Philip Fathom story. Look for it next December! They're a year behind. Anyway, the next day, my wife and I went to the Thrilling Adventure Hour holiday brunch, which was just so cool. Man. Gags and Molly told me again how much fun they'd had at the game, Paul F. Tompkins almost accidentally struck my wife in the face, I explained roleplaying games to Marc Evan Jackson (who'd been told the playtest the day before had been "the real deal"), I had a great conversation with TAH musical director Andy Paley, we talked with James Urbaniak... there were fritters... I spotted Mark McConville... Weird Al Yankovic was there... I could go on. I felt like I'd won a contest. I know I'm getting all fanboyish here, but c'mon, how couldn't I? Be reasonable!)

Okay, Professionalism Mode re-engaged.

I'll be playtesting Thrilling Fate! again this Sunday the 22nd back at Game Empire. Making another change to cues that incorporates a Danger Patrol-esque "What happened last time?" setup. Have to come up with a holiday-themed scenario first, but I have, like, all week to do that, right?

[Fate Accelerated] Paired Approaches

About a month ago, when Rob Donoghue was posting about his Fate Accelerated hack he's dubbed FAE 2 (in which you apply two approaches to a roll instead of one), I started thinking about the possibilities of paired approaches in terms of mechanical hooks, because that's the kind of person I am.

Anyway, the thing that struck me was how each approach just intuitively pairs better with some approaches than others. To me, at least. Like, it makes sense that you could try to be both Careful and Sneaky at the same time -- the latter seems to require the former, even -- whereas a Careful-and-Quick combo seems like a harder sell. I'm not saying you can't be both Careful and Quick; it's just not as easy as being, say, Flashy and Quick.

So I made this:

Haven't you read The Kerberos Club (Fate Edition)? I love diagrams!

When you combine related approaches (connected by a solid line), you get a +1 to your roll.

When you combine opposed approaches (unconnected by any line), you get a -1 to your roll.

Otherwise, just add the two approaches and roll.

In this variant, you'd have two approaches at +0, two at +1, and two at +2. That may be too generous. I'm not sure. Maybe three at +1 instead. Details.

(Notice how they ended up in alphabetical order if you go counter-clockwise. Coincidence? Probably, yeah.)

I'm also interested in the idea that the GM would pick one of your approaches for a given task and you'd pick the other. Maybe not all the time, but the option's there.

For example, let's say you're fleeing from eighty-five beholders and there's a locked door in your way! This is terrible. The GM says, "Whatever you're gonna do, you better do it Quick." You have Careful and Clever +2, Sneaky and Quick +0, and Forceful and Flashy +1.

• You could be Forceful and break down the door, which would give you a +2 (+1 from Forceful, and another +1 because Forceful and Quick are related). 
• You could be Clever and try to pick the lock at a +1 (+2 from Clever, but -1 because it's not easy being Quick and Clever). 
• You could be Sneaky and just try to hide, for a +0 (Quick and Sneaky are both +0 for you, and they're neither related nor opposed, so it's just the sum of those two approaches).
• Etc.

One stunt that immediately suggests itself is improving the relationship between two unrelated approaches. Maybe you're better at being Quick and Clever than most when you're responding to an insult, or at being Forceful and Careful when using explosives. In fact, if the character sheet shows the approaches as in the graphic above, you could even just draw new dotted or solid lines to reflect this. You get the idea.

[Thrilling Fate!] First Thrilling Playtest (and News)

I got my first chance to playtest Thrilling Fate with a Sparks Nevada scenario last weekend in San Diego. The PCs were Sparks, Croach, the Red Plains Rider, and Cactoid Jim, and though they were played by four players who had zero familiarity with the source material, there were nonetheless some moments that felt like they could've come right out of a Thrilling Adventure Hour show.

So yeah, I'm making some changes, but on the whole I'd say it went quite well! Of course, the players were all friends who were already well-acquainted with Fate, and had played various hacks of mine before, so I may have had a best-case player group there, but whatever. The fact that I'm making changes is at least indicative of a productive playtest.

One kinda weird thing that came up while playing was how liberating it is to just roll dice. Y'know, without worrying about what skill to use. Because Thrilling Fate doesn't have skills. So after the roll, if you didn't like your result, you might do something about it, but until then there's literally nothing else to think about other than "Let's see who wins." It just felt great to say, "This thing is happening, everyone roll dice."

Now, I realize that when I say that, your reaction is probably something along the lines of, "Hey, that doesn't sound like a great or innovative thing you're talking about there, and also I really do like to make interesting choices about my character when I roll dice for a thing," and I understand that. What's neat is how the exhaust-an-aspect mechanic puts that choice entirely in the realm of the fiction, without anything as abstract as even a broadly defined skill, like Athletics, getting in the way. I dunno. I'm probably not explaining it well. But the difference between "I dodge because I have +3 Athletics" and "I dodge because I'm a Quick-Thinking Man of Action" was definitely felt at the table.

As for news, I've been given the go-ahead to post about this: Next month, I'll be running a Sparks Nevada game for TAH co-creators/writers Ben Acker and Ben Blacker and whatever Workjuice Players they can muster, mostly likely including Sparks stars Marc Evan Jackson and Mark Gagliardi -- and, if I'm very lucky, Hal Lublin will be there to narrate (I don't know what that'd mean in this context, but whatever, there's no way I'd pass that up). Plus, I believe it'll be audio and/or video recorded for your online listening and/or viewing pleasure at some point. No pressure, right?

I am super-psyched about this, as you might guess, and also probably more nervous than is required. But then again, I'm kind of in awe of everyone who makes TAH happen, I love it so damn much, and the prospect of getting to run a game for them, any game, is awesome, let alone a thing I've made for a thing they've made. They're pretty excited for it too, though, so maybe we can all just be giddy about it together.

[Zombies] More Zombies!

WERE YOU AWARE that this past Wednesday was the 75th anniversary of the Mercury Theatre on the Air's War of the Worlds broadcast? That's just one of many date-relevant facts I would've told you if I'd managed to get this posted before Halloween!

Anyway.

So when a zombie bites you, it's bad. We all know this. Any consequence from a Teeth attack will eventually result in the victim becoming a zombie, no two ways about it. It'll worsen from scene to scene, moving from mild to moderate to severe, until the victim is taken out... by becoming a zombie.

There's only one way to "treat" a Bitten consequence, and that's amputation. It's not the hardest surgery in the world, but man, you gotta do it fast. Regardless of the severity of the consequence, the difficulty to treat it is +6, and doing so gives you a severe consequence appropriate to the amputation. (I recommend Dis-Armed. I use it every chance I get.)

If that first attempt fails, no further attempts can be made. You are doomed. And if that Bitten consequence was already severe, then... see the previous sentence.

This is pretty rough, but a zombie can't actually make a Teeth attack without first invoking an aspect. It doesn't get the usual bonus or reroll for invoking this aspect -- all it gets is the opportunity to bite. We used to call this "invoking for effect." The idea is that it'd create an advantage with Claws, like Grabbed, then bite with its next action. Or the victim might be Surrounded, or maybe that Sprained Ankle slows them down. You get the idea.

Miscellany:

• I had this idea that zombies would only roll 2dF. They're reliable, predictable, and experience neither highs nor lows. But I'm uncertain about this one.
• Mobs are important to zombies and their particular brand of horror. Even though they take consequences individually, I'd still mob 'em up whenever possible. So they attack you en masse, but you attack them one-on-one.
• There've been quite a few scenes in The Walking Dead of people just head-stabbing helpless zombies through a chain-link fence. As always, if there's no interesting failure result, don't roll for it; it's just narrative color. "So you're out on fence duty, braining walkers with a crowbar, when all of a sudden...."
• If you need zombies to use a Physique-type overcome action, you could use Body. Or you could use nothing, and rely solely on mob-based gang-up bonuses. This is pretty cool, I think, because it means you can pretty easily keep one zombie at bay with a closed and locked door, but a pile of them will break through, given time.
• Brains. BRAAAIIINS.

[Zombies] Zombies!

I thought up some mechanics for zombies a while ago -- almost two years ago, according to Google Docs -- so I figured I'd post about it on account of it almost being Halloween and all. I'm talking about aim-for-the-head, brain-eating shamblers here, so don't try to apply these to, I dunno, voodoo zombies or 28 Days Later zombies or whatever.

So first of all, zombies don't have the same skills PCs do. Instead, their skills represent body parts: Claws (attack, create advantage), Legs (overcome, create advantage), Teeth (attack), Body (defend), and Head (defend).

The typical zombie might rank them like this:
Fantastic (+6) Head*
Great (+4) Body
Good (+3) Teeth
Fair (+2) Claws
Average (+1) Legs
*I'm fully aware of how dirty this sounds and regret nothing.

When you attack a zombie, you choose how it defends -- Body or Head.

A successful attack on the Body deals a consequence. Zombies don't have stress tracks, but they do have two mild consequences (or Arms consequences) and one moderate consequence (or Legs consequence). When a zombie's taken two Arms consequences, it loses its Claws skill. When it's taken a Legs consequence, it loses its Legs skill. But a consequence is the best you can do when you attack the Body. Well, you can get a boost if you tie or succeed with style, but the point is, even if the zombie's taken all three consequences, even if it's lost its arms and legs, it's still alive.

So, my God, how do you stop it? A successful attack on the Head takes the zombie out. (I'd fluff a tie against the Head as blowing its jaw off or something, thus the boost, but leaving the brain intact. Related: I'd also severely limit, or even eliminate, Weapon ratings, because all it takes is one shift on a headshot to take out a zombie. Like, shotguns and katanas are Weapon:1, but almost everything else is Weapon:0, and I don't mean Wolverine.)

Putting those two things together, obviously no one's going to attack a zombie's Body if it already has three consequences (or even two or probably one), but that's how these things usually work, isn't it? And mechanically, there's no reason to go for the Body once it's taken a consequence, because you can invoke it for free to cancel out the Head's higher skill rating.

It might seem odd for zombies to have a Great (+4) skill for defense, but it's not that they're so great at dodging or anything. On the contrary, they're easy to hit. They're just not necessarily easy to damage in a substantial way. So that's how I'd color that in play. Most failed attacks against their Body are actually going to be "narrative hits," in that I'd describe them as on-target but mostly harmless.

Next time: BRAAAIIINNNSSS...!