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Scarlet Heroes – Character and World Creation

scarlet-heroes I decided recently to start a one on one tabletop roleplaying campaign with my wife and chose Scarlet Heroes as the system to use. Scarlet Heroes is an Old School roleplaying game designed specifically for one GM and one player. There is a premade setting that comes with the system, but I prefer to build something with my players, so we have a shared mutual vision of the world. Ariana and I sat down a couple weekends ago and used Ben Robbins’ Microscope to broadly build the world.

Microscope is a game that allows plays to collectively create the history of a world. You start by creating a concept for the world and starting and ending periods. From there, players rotate as the Lens, a role that allows a player to choose an aspect of the world and spend a round building it out through additional Periods, Events, or specific Scenes. Microscope is not about being comprehensive but about working at whatever level of detail you enjoy and interacting with a world that way.

Here are the results of our Microscope game.

The world we created is Muatera, a refuge for a large group of colonists from a world drained of its magic and left lifeless. Piling on board their planar shipwhales, around 350,000 refugees headed for a star that had been found by some of the last mages. They became lost on the way as the magic faded and found Muatera, a decently hospitable planet where a home could be made. Almost as soon as they landed, their shipwhales became stricken with a strange illness and the colonists realized they would be stuck here for the foreseeable
future. The races that made up the colonists were Humans, Elves, Halflings, and Orcs.

The Humans are pretty standard and hold many of the bureaucratic and political positions in the colony. Elves are more esoteric and alien and have developed their own technical magics, separate from the very elemental craft that drained and ruined the Old World. Halflings are the industrious agrarians doing the hard labor without seeking praise or reward beyond a good job done. Orcs are the roaming free spirits, moving in nomadic tribes and exploring Muatera in more detail that any other race.

eecb9967d852b7759d52ad659d98fa34 After about a century, the ruins of the Remnants were discovered buried beneath Muatera. These were the piece of a lost civilization, the details of whom are yet to be fleshed out. Their writings did lead to a cure that helped boost the shipwhale herds and allowed the colonists to visit the three neighboring planets in the system. Three additional races were discovered: The Goliath Tieflings, Hypogeal Elves, and Psionic Dwarves. Relations with each is complex and distinct, but no major conflicts have sprung up…yet.

Our campaign will take place 200 years after the colony began and Ariana decided she wanted to play as a Halfling came up with Estrella Pips, the daughter of a shipwhale rancher and the middle child of five. She has learned magic from some dusty tomes in her parents’ attic, and she uses her magic to midwife the shipwhales. We decided that once the shipwhales reach a certain size, possibly when they develop the capacity to hold their breath in the vacuum of space, they float up through the atmosphere and finish growing to their final massive ship size. Ariana established that Halflings are determined survivors who don’t think much of leisure time but are loyal to the death with their friends and allies. Estrella is the maturity equivalent of 15 human years in age and actually does like the idea of enjoying life and playing.

Some of the threads and hooks she gave me through my questions were:

Shipwhales escaped, Milo (Estrella’s eldest brother) thinks they were stolen by some Orc bandits.
Politicians from Kaphis, the capitol colony, wants to buy up or take land because of the Remnant ruins possibly buried beneath.
The worldscar left by a battle between a Magus and Remnant golems is barren and has caused the fertile land to increase in value and be fought over more violently.

This will be my first major delve into OSR/Dungeon Crawling since 2008 when I ran the dismal (IMO) D&D 4th. I am very excited about this and the world, fed mostly by details from Ariana has me intrigued. I’ve even purchased a halfling wizard mini for her to use. The first actual session will be Saturday, December 17th so look for a write-up after that.

Tabletop Actual Play: Lovecraftesque

Lovecraftesque is a game by Josh Fox and Becky Annison. The game seeks to evoke the creeping, brooding horror of H.P. Lovecraft’s work while getting rid of his problematic racism, misogyny, and inaccurate depictions of mental illness. There’s no GM. Instead, scenes are composed of rotating roles. There is the Narrator who sets the scene, creates conflict for the protagonist, and drops a clue in each scene. Then there’s the Witness who is the main character exploring the mystery being laid out before them. Finally, we have The Watchers who are the players adding flavor to the scenes the Narrator lays out or playing NPCs if asked by the Narrator.

love01

Each scene The Narrator must drop a clue that The Witness discovers. These clues can be physical objects, strange sounds, or even odd behavior. The catch is that nothing overtly supernatural can reveal itself until the third act of the game. The one catch are special cards that are dealt out at the start of the game and, if triggered by a particular condition, can allow a player to actually put something overtly supernatural into the story either as an Interrupt or an Ongoing element. All the clues until then should be able to be explained with mundane reasoning. At the end of each the players, without consulting each other, record the clue and their conclusion of what it means in relation to the other clues revealed so far. Eventually, the story works its way to The Final Horror and whichever player wants can step forward and reveal how these clues add up to something beyond the Witness’s comprehension. As Pamela, one of the players Saturday night said, it’s like the game of Telephone but with Lovecraft horror.

This past weekend myself, my wife, and three friends played an online session of Lovecraftesque. It was everyone’s first time with the game, and as with all new systems, it was a little more about comprehending structure than developing an excellent story. To get us started, we used one of the seeds from the book, The Chateau of Leng written by Renee Knipe. The premise is that Latissha Hall, a black single mother of two has purchased her first home on Nash Avenue in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The story takes place in 2004 at the height of the U.S. housing bubble. The seed presents the players with four possible characters to appear in the story, and we did make use of that.

Our story had Latissha preparing to do some renovating due to buying the house “as is” and inheriting a lot of structural problems. The first clue discovered was a weathered photograph from around the turn of the 20th century, a portrait of a family with individual members faces crudely scratched off. This led to the next scene: an awkward meeting between Latissha and her gruff neighbor Cass. Cass attempted to spook Latissha by telling her about the string of owners who has lived briefly in her new home and were scared off by something. She also noticed him carrying around a cat as he meandered about his front porch in a bathrobe. Scene 3 introduced Latissha to Officer Newhall, a local beat cop who ends up telling her that Cass had gone for prison decades ago for murder but apparently new evidence was presented and he was released. As a misty rain falls, Officer Newhall appears to vanish into thin air leaving Latissha unnerved.

love02 — Absolutely beautiful and horrific art by Robin Scott

That evening while rummaging around one of the side rooms, Latissha finds a cobwebbed baby grand piano. Stuffed inside is an entire photo album with the pictures sharing a common theme: all the faces have been scratched out. They show different families throughout the century but all missing any trace of who they were. The next morning, Latissha goes to visit Geraldine, the elderly neighbor across the street. She’s lived in her house for decades and Latissha figures the woman might have some insight to the photos. She brings the album with her but finds herself unnerved by strange shadows and sounds in the woman’s house. Geraldine gets very aggressive about putting her hands on the album, and this causes Latissha to back away. There’s also a large number of framed photos of a cat that looks suspiciously like the one Cass was carrying around. That combined with the missing posters for the beast pinned up around the neighborhood has her questioning what is going on. Cass coincidentally comes by Geraldine’s to “check up” on her and Latissha can’t help but notice the gun he has tucked under his belt.

Our protagonist is unnerved even further by her youngest son’s drawings of their family, including her deceased husband his eyes scratched out looking remarkably like the photos she’s found. That night she’s awakened by the sound of glass breaking in the basement and movement. She investigates and find it empty but notices a panel from the wall moved to the side. Reaching into the space, she pulls out an almost identical album to the one she found in the piano. This album contains photography akin to Diane Arbus: portraits of people missing limbs, memento mori, and the visages of just slightly physically deformed people. Unlike the previous album nothing is violently scratched out, there appears to be an attempt to preserve these images. She also notices Officer Newhall driving down the street in his car as she looks out a basement window. He gets out and skulks in the yard between her and Cass’s house. Something about Newhall feels wrong, and she goes upstairs to search his name and the neighborhood online. She discovers very little except for a poorly scanned newspaper clipping about some wrongdoing on his part in a case. The grainy photo strikes her as bearing almost no resemblance to the man she met earlier.

Something compels her to return to the basement, and after searching further, she finds a hidden room. What lies inside finally reveals the horrific truth. The floor is almost breathing as she enters and finds lying across this flesh like floor her youngest son and herself…but proto versions, still growing and not yet alive. Pulsing tentacles, like umbilical cords, attach to them, some substance oozing through them and into the fleshy creatures. Latissha gazes into the dark void these tentacles disappear into, and she is startled when the proto-son finally stirs, blinking his eyes. She lets out a scream and descends into the void, discovering at its roots a great multi-legged multi-armed horror growing in the center of a carved out hollow. The fluctuating blob was surrounded by small hooded figures who turned to look at Latissha. These were the only faces she could see in the scratched out photos, the ones who had been left unmarked, the children. Unaged and without eyes, a dreadful glow emanated from the sockets. Latissha attempted an escape but found herself swallowed by the darkness between this ghastly place and her home.

Latissha finds herself waking up to the sound of her youngest called for her “Mama, mama. Wake up.” She is groggy and not sure what has been real and what was a dream. Standing in her room are her two children and Cass. Cass says that Latissha will be okay, but she will have a difficult pregnancy like she did with her first two. Duh duh duh!

I don’t think we managed to explicitly explain the connection between the clues in the game, but in a conversation afterward we had very similar ideas as to where the story was going. We all pretty much had collectively agreed that Officer Newhall was actually dead and a couple people had pegged Cass’ murder as being that of the cop. In my own notes, the story I was shaping was that Geraldine’s family had been involved in black magic and had done horrible things to the original family across the street. The result was that the house had become an Amityville type of entity, protected and fueled by Geraldine, the last of her family line. Cass had become aware of this fact around twenty years prior and attempted to kill her, but Newhall had gotten in the way. Cass’ methods were tied to very specific rituals and spells and Newhall’s disturbance set him completely back.

I believe that on a second playthrough, now with a stronger sense of the structure of the game and an idea of how it *should* flow and the way clues operate we’d have an even better time with an even more satisfying conclusion. Lovecraftesque is the kind of horror gaming I enjoy, where all players can be held in suspense until the very end. The Telephone style mechanic with the clues is my favorite part especially post game being able to see how others interpreted the story and what directions they would go. With players that have both a good background in understanding creeping horror and improv acting this could be a very magical game.

Lovecraftesque can be purchased here.

Create-a-Character: Bubblegumshoe

185435 Bubblegumshoe is the work of Emily Care Boss, Kenneth Hite, and Lisa Steele. The game was published by Evil Hat Productions in 2016 and is a variation of Robin Laws’ Gumshoe system. Where Gumshoe has been used to tell mysteries based around Lovecraftian horror (Trail of Cthulhu), space opera (Ashen Stars), vampire spies (Night’s Black Agents), among others, Bubblegumshoe explores the genre of mysteries like The Hardy Boys, Veronica Mars, and Nancy Drew. The text describes the default setting as: “High schoolers solving mysteries in a modern American small-town setting.”

The expectations of the game are that your characters will all be teenagers who are Sleuths. Players spend from a pool determined by the number of total players in a game to develop a list of Investigative, Interpersonal, and General Abilities that will aid them in finding clues and solving mysteries. The type of mysteries could be anything from investigating a murder to figuring out who cheated in the homecoming queen voting. As long as it makes sense in the setting and would be something your teenage sleuth would reasonably investigate then it works.

I have read a few of the Gumshoe books and, while I have always felt there was a strong personal appeal there, I’ve never actually sat down to play or run them for my group. When I heard about the development of Bubblegumshoe, it sparked my interest because of the type of stories it encouraged. I have typically clung close to the Powered by the Apocalypse system as my choice to run and play in, but I frequently think about dipping my toes in some other gaming waters. I was lucky enough to be gifted a copy of Bubblegumshoe at Origins 2016 and decided to make it the focus of my first character creation article.

Having the framework in mind, I decided I needed to have a setting for a game to determine what sort of character to create. The book comes with eight pre-made settings to work as examples so, using my trust d8 I rolled and ended up with Strangehill Scout Troop 211. The concept behind this setting is a scout troop of both girls and boys who are doing ordinary scouting things but also solving mysteries in their community. The tone is light-hearted and all about being good people and helping.

Scouts in this setting start with two stats: Cool 5 and Throwdown 4 representing extremely high abilities to handle tense situations and navigate socially combative situations. Unlike standard Gumshoe builds, these characters have Badges which operate as Skill packages. To start, every scout has the First Aid and Community History badges. First Aid is composed of First Aid 4, Cool 3, Reassurance 3. Community History is Computers 2, Negotiation 3, Town Lore 3. From here, I have two more Badges to choose from and 15 build points to spend to buy more abilities or bump up what I already have.

Before I started purchasing more abilities or stating myself up, I needed to take a moment and figure out who this scout would be. I used an incredibly comprehensive random name generator, and I clicked through names looking for something that jumped out to me as interesting, ending up with “Alyse Leung.” Alyse,13, has been adopted by her aunt, Rachel (maternal side), who works in a local automotive factory. Rachel is a single parent who enrolled Alyse in the scout troop mostly out of a need for some form of after school care. As a new kid, Alyse hasn’t made many friends, and the scout troop is her only real positive social experience. Alyse is a latchkey kid most days and has to fend for herself until Aunt Rachel gets home, and even then her caretaker is so tired the young girl is expected to continue caring for herself.

Now that I knew a bit about who Alyse is, I could determine what Badges she has learned in her time with the troop so far. Cuisine is a given because she makes most meals for herself and she would like to make them tasty. She’s even started getting compliments from Aunt Rachel about how good the food is. This gives Alyse BS Detector 2, Cooking 2, Pop Culture 2. Cooking is “capped” meaning no more points can be spent on it. I like to think BS Detector signifies Alyse’s ability to tell when someone genuinely likes what she has prepared. For her second Badge I chose Sports, the idea being that before the tragic death of her parents, Alyse played soccer for many years. Her father was super competitive about it and got Alyse to take it pretty seriously. She still plays at school and the park “for fun” but in her head, it is always a big competition. The Sports badge gives Alyse Athletics 5, Intimidation 3, Notice 2.

Now with 15 build points, I need to decide what abilities to purchase and which to bump up. Because she is a pretty studious kid, I figured Research 2 would make sense. These points are also used to create pools for relationships so I do want to hang on to some, or I won’t have much luck interacting directly with people who are important to me. With 13 points left I will set aside 5 for her Aunt Rachel. That leaves 8, so I want to beef up my BS Detector a bit to 4. I think Alyse has dealt with a lot of adults trying to shield her from the tragedy of her parents’ death. As a result, she listens carefully to what people say to determine if they talk to her like an adult or pander. In turn, this leads me to decide that Notice should be bumped to 4 as well. Alyse is a quiet, observant kid who picks up on little details the other kids quickly rush by. That leaves 4 Build points that I would choose to save for any relationships that might come up.

Before I can see Alyse as a playable character, I’d like to use a couple of metrics to understand where her mind is at and what she wants in life. The three I’d like to use are Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Carl Jung and Isabel Briggs Myers’ personality type theory test, and Stephen Covey’s Maturity Continuum.

From what I have written about Alyse and my thinking about her she hovers somewhere between the second and third levels of the Hierarchy of Needs, Safety Needs & Love and Belonging. Her parents’ death has left her with trauma, but I don’t think it has manifested itself fully yet. She’s pushed past some of it out her tough nature, thanks to dad and the soccer career. As the new kid in town, she is deeply in need of friendship and isn’t getting the emotional support she needs from her aunt.

After taking an online version of the Myers-Briggs Personality Assessment, Alyse came out as INTJ meaning Introvert Intuitive Thinking Judging. This makes Alyse a very analytic person who likes to work alone rather than big groups, which should make the scout troop fascinating. Alyse enjoys working on earning badges at home and then presenting her accomplishments, but anything that forces her into a team setting will cause friction. Alyse knows her abilities and is a hell of a good researcher. Having this fact cause me spend two more of those Build Points on Research.

Now we take a look at Covey’s Maturity Continuum. Of the Seven Habits, I think is solidly nearing the stage of Independence, meaning she’s mastering the first three Habits: Be Proactive, Begin With the End in Mind and Put First Things First. I still think there are some hurdles to overcome with the self-doubt she has and the lingering trauma from her parents’ death. She is going to be very far from approaching Interdependence because of some of the pesky aspects of being an INTJ. For Alyse, learning to work with the fellow scouts of the Strangehill Troop will be her greatest lesson.

So to finish out the character creation I need to choose Alyse’s socio-economic class, clique, drive, and story arc. For class, I think she is very working class now because of Aunt Rachel’s situation but came from middle class. Her clique would be nerds or nerdy-jocks, not “meatheads” but more studious soccer player types. Her Drive is definitely “Justice for the Weak” based on the loss of her parents. Finally, she has a Story Arc of “Find Closure about Parents.” Alyse’s ability to come to a healthy place talking about her parents and expressing her emotions, particularly with Aunt Rachel who has also been pretty closed off, will lead her to a healthier and happier life.

Here’s a finished PDF of the character sheet for Alyse.

Next up: John Wick’s 7th Sea 2nd Edition

Masks: The Junior Elite #3 and 4

Issue 3

The Junior Elite stood in the lab of Magnificent Man, Xion unconscious on the floor and robot-butler Symba having gone full berserk mode. Black Hoodie, with support, hacked into Symba and forced an emergency shutdown. Symba was locked up, and Xion explained that as he was constructing a possible gateway to bring back The Elite, a presence entered our dimension and possessed Symba. Xion is convinced that the Elite are lost and wants to take apart the gateway his was building before something worse passes through.

At the same time, local Halcyon news is reporting the team’s visit to the Eon Institute as an illegal break-in and framing is as youth gone wild in the absence of their adult authority figures. Magnificent Lad is fed up with this, as it adds to his internal frustration over his search for his parents, so he rockets off to the site of the live news story. He shows up attempting to plead his case. Earlier, Gen. Juliet Mayhem of AEGIS cryptically warned him that certain forces would seek to weaken The Junior Elite through public perception. Mag Lad begins explaining what is going on when a powerful force bolts from the sky and carries the hero off in a bear hug.

On the television, the rest of the team sees Apollonia is the culprit. Apollonia is the alien queen, exiled to Earth and was one of the lost members of The Elite. She’s apparently under strict mind control. Kid Atomic gathers the team onto his Warthog, and they fly off to help Mag Lad. A battle ensues and using an extension of Black Hoodie’s psychic powers they wrest control of Apollonia’s mind back. The heroine is grateful to be free of the control and explains that she believes The Elite are lost to the Dark Dimension, now in the thrall of an omnipotent entity called Golgotha.

Gen. Mayhem gives Kid Atomic a lead, letting him know the mysterious overpowered weapons Professor Dark and his crew were wielding came from a lieutenant in the Fortunato crime family, Rocco di Chiara. The Junior Elite arrive at Di Chiara’s front, an Italian tailor’s shop in the Little Sicily district. They try to talk their way in with the elderly Italian tailor, but he catches on and unleashes the shop’s hyper hi-tech security system. Busting their way through the blast door and past the energy cannons and find a shipping center in the back where made men are prepping weapons for distribution throughout the city. Rocco shows up with some more men, armed with the interdimensional weapons and fires on the team as they try to escape, disrupting Silver Arm’s energy construct. The team plummets and Mag Lad barrels into Rocco, creating a crater in the street that brings the villain subterranean. Rocco gets off a lucky shot, incapacitating Mag Lad and he and his men escape.

rocco — Rocco Di Chiara, ruthless member of the Fortunato crime family

Meanwhile, back in the Magnificent Island laboratory, Xion is busy dismantling the interdimensional gateway when a twisted, talon-like hand bursts forth and grab’s his, crushing the bones like paper….

Issue 4

Xion is missing, and the Mag Island lab is in disarray. The team got beaten badly by Rocco Di Chiara and his men and now Gen. Mayhem has shown up to tell them it’s time to give up the search for The Elite. Apollonia sides with Gen. Mayhem but the Junior Elite defiantly say they will find their mentors with or without their help. Kid Atomic begins searching for Xion and discovers traces of his blood on the floor, Gravinian blood, which is extremely rare to see because of their species’ impervious skin. There are also traces of interdimensional energy, energy from the Dark Dimension in the lab. The Sphinx uses her postcog powers to see a half a dozen alien soldiers emerge from the gateway and leave Xion a bloody mess. Once they were done with him, they spread out through Mag Island.

A check of the island’s security feed finds them in the hangar bay attempting to commandeer a Gravinian shuttlecraft. Black Hoodie hacks the island’s security systems and uses the Warthog’s atomic ray to make quick work of the alien cyborgs. They rush to hangar bay to make sure it’s secured, just in time to witness explosions going off on the AEGIS city skyship that was over Halcyon. Apparently, sleeper agents belonging to the cult of Golgotha were onboard and are bringing the ship down over the city to perform a mass blood sacrifice to their god. Mag Lad calls on some guardian drones that patrol Mag Island and they rocket off to steer the crashing ship to the waters off the coast. Kid Atomic, Silver Arm, and The Phoenix rode in the Warthog while Black Hoodie and The Sphinx took the Gravinian shuttle.

golgothas-soldiers — The soldiers of the Dark Dimension

The crashing ship was dropped roughly in the bay, but the sleeper agents began a weaponized assault on the AEGIS agents who were losing ground due to still being in shock from the surprise attack. Silver Arms extends his constructs as tendrils to wrest the weapons from the sleepers but the air is cracked by a sonic boom and Magnificent Man comes flying down. However, he is transformed, turned into a twisted shadow version of himself. Acting quickly, Silver Arm unleashed a giant winged dire wolf that swallows Mag Man and hurtles into space to take the ultra-powered hero out of the action. The tide turns between AEGIS and the Golgothans, which allows the Junior Elite to pursue the wolf and Mag Man.

They find Mag Man shredding the wolf construct and then turning his rage back towards Silver Arm. Black Hoodie, her powers boosted with help from Kid Atomic, grabs Mag Man’s mind and lets Mag Lad speak to his father in an attempt to bring him back. Cracks form in the demonic hold, but Mag Man crashes himself into the moon as his mind and body go to war. Mag Lad talks his dad through it and destroys a device that seems to be phasing his father back and forth between this world and the dark dimension. When the device is damaged, Mag Man is back, but his powers are gone.

Returning to Halcyon, the Junior Elite finds a rift in space and time over the Eon Institute flooding more of the alien soldiers through. Also returning to action are Apollonia, Doctor Atomic temporarily recovered from his PTSD, and Mag Man piloting the Gravinan shuttle. They rush to Eon and muscle their way past Dr. Conway Claremont who wants to preserve the gateway in his lab. Waiting for the Junior Elite at the gateway is Gehenna, Golgotha’s second, with her pet, the twisted demonic version of adult Silver Arm. The Sphinx gazes back and sees the Gehenna uses a control rod to force adult Silver Arm to bend to her will. Junior Silver Arm unleashes his dire wolf construct again who pins Gehenna to the wall. The Phoenix wrests the control rod but she and her twins’ power go haywire due to the presence of the gateway. Multiple rifts in both time and reality are torn open. Through one of them, the team can see the young Phantom Spider, the man who would grow up to the guidance counselor at the high school. He can apparently see them and steps through the rift only to be killed by the manipulated adult Silver Arm. This pushes the team to return Gehenna and her soldiers through the rift and then destroying the gateway.

In the wake of this battle, a few things becomes apparent to The Junior Elite:

Adult Silver Arm, like Mag Man, has lost his powers, the silver arm sloughing off as an inert shell
Magnificent Woman and Vanity Fair are still lost
Phoenix and The Sphinx encounter a being that exists outside of time and tells them the death of their mentor, Phantom Spider, outside the normal path of time is being added to a list of charges past, present, and future. He warns that one day they will be prosecuted for these time crimes, but for now, they are safe.

Masks Actual Play: The Junior Elite #2

Our issue begins with Black Hoodie the Delinquent getting a hijacked text message from her former mentor, the imprisoned super genius Vincent Vincenzo. He baits her into visiting him at AEGIS Supermax where he’s locked up in a floating cell suspended in the middle of spherical chamber outfitted with lethal security measures. Through the intercom, he taunts Hoodie over the disappearance of the Elite and her team’s inability to find out what happened to them. Hoodie doesn’t go for it and tells him she’s leaving. Vincent replies that when she decides she needs his help just to let him know, he’s only choosing to stay in the cell for now.

thetwins — Phoenix and The Sphinx (The Joined)

Lily and Rose aka Phoenix and The Sphinx (The Joined) are called in for a meeting with their school guidance counselor Mr. Dritz. Dritz is a retired superhero formerly known as The Phantom Spider and one of the few people who knows Lily and Rose’s secret identities. He tells the girls he saw their powers go on the fritz during the battle with Nuada and warns he’ll go to the authorities if they continue putting their lives in danger, even threatening to contact DCS.Lily and Rose falsely promise but decide to call his bluff in the end.

Magnificent Lad (The Legacy) is still hoping he can find his parents and gets news from Xion that he’s picked up a transmission that matches Gravinian energy signatures coming from an old warehouse in Damnation, the old town district. Symba, the Magnificent Family’s robot butler, tells Mag Lad he’s still very uncomfortable with the family’s former foe Xion being allowed access to the laboratory. Mag Lad says that Symba should just keep a close eye on the man.

Xion stops by the Mag Family’s Interstellar Menagerie, a portion of their island dedicated to housing near extinct animals from across the cosmos. Silver Arm has voluntarily allowed himself to be housed there after his absorbed Nuada’s silver arm. Xion taunts the young hero telling him he could use his power to cripple his enemies and is weak by choosing to be imprisoned. Silver Arm spits his taunts right back and refuses to give into the power lust.

Kid Atomic visits his mentor, Doc Atomic, still in a state of dementia and PTSD from whatever happened at the Eon Institute. Doc has cracked open the ink pens he asked the medi-drones to bring him and has scrawled black hearts across the walls of the recovery room. Kid inquires what this means, and Doc can only reply “The black heart beats within” and finally just chants “Eon” repeatedly. Kid hops in the Warthog and rockets to Magnificent Island. He and Mag Lad share their individual and immediate concerns and decide to split the team. Kid will take Silver Arm, Phoenix, and The Sphinx to Eon under the guise of allowing the scientists there to run tests on Silver Arm. Mag Lad and Black Hoodie will check out the strange warehouse in Damnation.

director-wolfman — Director Marissa Wolfman

At the Eon Institute, the split team is met with a flustered and irritated Director Marissa Wolfman, the manager of the scientific research facility. She’s accompanied by armed security and eventually concedes to letting the young heroes in only if they remain monitored at all times. Dr. Conway Claremont runs a battery of tests on Silver Arm, but The Sphinx sees tests had been run previously on a sample of the metal composing the mystic arm and is took on demonic properties almost killing those present. She shouts out a warning just as thorny tendrils shoot off Silver Arm’s body and bore into the scanning equipment. Summoning a supreme level of will Silver Arm attempts to regain control of his powers and suddenly finds his consciousness floating in a black void.

A beacon of light floats towards him the void and feminine entity makes herself known. Silver feels a motherly love he had always wanted but never had as a foster kid and reaches out to her. She tells him she can soothe the pain of his arm if he accepts her. Silver hesitates but gives in and finds himself back in the laboratory with full and complete control of his now increased powers. Kid Atomic feigns the team departing now that the tests are over but instead hacks the security system and finds one curiously locked down sector. The half team fights past Eon guards and finally discovers a large testing facility containing a curious doorway connected to monitoring equipment. The Sphinx reaches out with her powers and sees the battle between the Elite and unseen, dark forces that occurred days ago. Strange cosmic interference shows her multiple realities where heroes are killed by chthonic forces emerging from the doorway or fighting them off and many other possible realities.

Kid Atomic remotely calls in the Warthog to blow a hole in the ceiling, but Phoenix detects another presence in the room. Shimmering into view is Mr. Drizt wearing his old Phantom Spider stealth belt. He tells the kids that they are going to the authorities to resolve the many crimes they committed breaking into this facility. Phoenix decides to solve things by overloading Drizt’s mind with images of his future and they leave him convulsing on the ground, regaining his senses after they have safely left.

Director Marissa Wolfman watches on the security feed, looking incredibly annoyed and frustrated. Dr. Conway Claremont shows her that Kid Atomic had hacked the lab’s readouts on Silver Arm and that he had reversed the hack tunneling into Doc Atomic’s secret files. She relays this news to Institute’s mysterious and shadowy benefactor Mr. Truman.

Across town, Mag Lad and Black Hoodie arrive at the warehouse and after Hoodies does some recon, they discover it’s housing an illegal metahuman pit fighting ring. Also, there’s some human trafficking going on as unwilling men and women are forced into the ring to fight the monstrous champion Khinzir, the Blood Pig. Mag Lad creates a distraction, busting in through the roof and drawing Khinzir’s rage while Hoodie sneaks into the management’s office to see where the Gravinian transmission is coming from.

Black Hoodie discovers Prospero, a decrepit, rotting old man that seems to the brains behind this operation. He summons a pair of infernal stone creatures using a device on his arm, but Black Hoodie uses her psi powers, channeled through a baseball to make short work of them. Prospero attempts an escape but is foiled. Hoodie questions him about what he knows in regards to the Elite’s disappearance. Prospero reveals that they were “given as a blood sacrifice” to aid in the coming of the “dark gods.” He mentions “Golgotha and Gehenna” and that more will die to hearken their visitation.

Mag Lad tricks Khinzir into letting down his guard, and the behemothic villain is tossed into deep space, belaying his threat for now. Mag Lad finds Hoodie and she shows him that Prospero was wearing a scrap of his father’s costume. Prospero will only say it was given to him as a boon from the dark gods. Hoodie attempts to burn the man alive in his business, but Mag Lad holds her back and turns the villain over to authorities. The Halcyon Police say Prospero was just a crazy old man, ranting on the street about some crazy religious nonsense, and that he’d dropped off their radar a few months ago.

The two half team reunite and head to Magnificent Island to debrief. When they arrive, however, they find Symba having gone mad and Xion lying bloodied and unconscious on the laboratory floor. To be continued…

Masks Actual Play: Junior Elite #0 & 1

For my first online Masks campaign, we have the following characters. To read more about the Masks game system check out my overview from Origins 2016. Illustrations of our campaign’s characters are done by John Alexander. Junior Elite logo by Mick Bradley:

Black Hoodie the Delinquent (played by Ariana Ramos)
- Mentored by and eventually discarded by an enigmatic figure, Black Hoodie can construct a useful gadget out of whatever materials are at her disposal.
Silver Arm the Innocent (played by Mick Bradley)
- Possessor of a silver arm that grants him mystic powers connected to Celtic mythology, Silver Arm was tossed forward from 1996 to present day where he finds his modern self to be a cynical, jaded jerk.
Magnificent Lad the Legacy (played by Pamela Alexander)
- The son of Gravinians Magnificent Man and Magnificent Woman, this young hero has been expected to follow in their footsteps since birth.
Kid Atomic the Protege (played by John Alexander)
- The orphaned son of a pair of super villains, adopted by Doctor Atomic and raised as his ward
Phoenix and The Sphinx the Joined (played by Misha B)
- Twins, one of whom is a precog and one a postcog, more powerful when in each other’s presence.

The team has been named the Junior Elite by the press, due to two of their members’ associations with elder members of The League of Elite, Halcyon’s premiere superhero team. In our first session, we focused entirely on character building with lots of questions and note taking on my end.

The inciting incident for our campaign is the disappearance of almost all the League of Elite. The Junior Elite responds to an attack on the Eon Institute; a research laboratory focused on multiversal and temporal science. The attack is led by Professor Dark and his Children of the Night; a washed up 1990s goth styled villain. The Professor is wielding cosmic level weaponry that he couldn’t have made himself, and it takes the combined Junior Elite to stop him. Before the team can examine the weapons more carefully, Gen. Juliet Mayhem of AEGIS swoops in and absconds with the tech citing her organization’s ability to keep it locked up tight. The only member of the League of Elite that’s still around is Doc Atomic, and he seems to have been broken psychologically from whatever went down. The Junior Elite also met Dr. Conway Claremont, the lead researcher at the Eon Institute. Claremont explained that Professor Dark broke into the wing that housed viewing equipment for that the scientists had coined “The Dark Star Dimension” and that he believes this was all a diversion from something worse. The twins share a vision of a darkened void with a single molten planet floating in the darkness. From the darknesses rises a being composed of the world’s very essence. It reaches out to make contact with a small being consisting of pure light. The vision ends. The first mini session ended with an object hurtling from space and crashing into a farm on the outskirts of Halcyon. The farmer rushes out to investigate only to see a thorny silver arm reach up over the crater’s edge.

In our first full session, we kicked things off with Magnificent Lad at his family’s secret base on a jungle island off the coast of Halcyon. There his robot butler Symba is trying to get the young to sleep after 18 straight hours of searching the known universe for his parents’ using their alien equipment. The conversation is interrupted by Xion, a former friend turned enemy of the Magnificent family who has arrived on the island. Mag Lad and Xion clash, with Symba alerting the rest of the Junior Elite. The battle leaves the planet’s atmosphere and ends on the moon where Xion is able to explain that he has come to help Mag Lad find his parents. His reasoning is that with their disappearance it finally set in that their species was on the brink of extinction and he will help find them. The team can’t get a good read on Xion but he does seem genuine in his concerns. The former (?) villain sets up shop in the Magnificents’ lab explaining that Mag Lad’s father would likely construct a beacon wherever he might be and that Xion can build a receiver.

The team is pulled away quickly thereafter when massive destruction is reported in the district of Prosperity. Prosperity is a borough of the city that appeared from the 31st Century. However, none of the residents came with it so, while it was amazing and beyond anything Halcyon’s citizens were used to it quickly decayed because there was no one alive who knew how to maintain and repair the technology within it. Now Prosperity is a rundown area of squatters and homeless communities. The Junior Elite, airborne in Kid Atomic’s warthog helicopter, see a path of destruction coming from the farmlands into the city. On the ground is Nuada of the Silver Hand, the mythical Celtic hero who bears the same weapon as young Silver Arm. Silver Arm attempts to calm the time lost warrior but Mag Lad decides to get physical and wants to take Nuada down. The rest of team goes into rescue mode until Silver Arm miscalculates and causes a towering spire to collapse into the energy district, exploding a fusion reactor and taking power out across town. The Halcyon City Jail is hit, meaning Professor Dark has a chance to escape.

Black Hoodie, Phoenix, and Mag Lad head for the jail while Silver Arm, The Sphinx, and Kid Atomic hang back with Nuada. It becomes apparent that Nuada knows more than he originally let on. His silver arm separates itself from his body, revealed as a sentient demonic entity. The silver demon strikes at The Sphinx who loses control of her powers and begins opening rifts in space and time. We get quick glimpses of possible futures and alternate realities, including The Sphinx as a world-destroying cosmic force. Kid Atomic tries to fly the Warthog in to scoop her up but Nuada used his sword to blow out the engine. Across town, Phoenix senses Professor Dark is headed for Damnation, the old town district of Halcyon, but they head back to help her sister when she sense the twin’s pain.

Nuada is finally taken down when Silver Arm reaches out with his consciousness and absorbs the silver hand into his own arm, causing the liquid metal to grow from his arm and shoulder and down his torso and leg. Nuada shrivels into a husk and before he passes out utters, “Heaven has fallen.”

The final scene shows Professor Dark arriving at a strange pit fighting venue in Damnation. We briefly glimpse Apollonia, one of the supposedly missing League of Elite, fighting in the pits against other metahumans. There’s no time to figure out what’s going on there as Dark meets with a figure named Prospero who usher the villain into a backroom for a private conversation.

To be continued…

Rolling Dice and Shaping Minds: Systems of Play and Teaching – Part One

Dungeons--Dragons-dice-010 I was a teacher before I ever picked up a roleplaying manual. In 2009, after completing my Master’s in Teaching and Learning I was struggling to find a job. In the meantime my wife, then fiance, suggested I try running the latest iteration of Dungeons & Dragons. She had experience in her youth with tabletop roleplaying and I had always been curious about the TSR advertisements that popped up in the comic books I read over the years. So I got a copy of 4th edition and read through it. The very first thing I did was try to make my own character. I reasoned that I wouldn’t know how to run a game if I didn’t know how characters worked. It didn’t seem too hard. In a few weeks, I had slapped together some ideas and ran an online session with some friends. We enjoyed it and I decided to keep it going. This was the beginning of my education in tabletop roleplay.

Dungeons & Lesson Plans

It was Sunday and I sat going back and forth in a number of PDFs and web pages trying to assemble some monsters, dungeons, and assorted NPCs for my players. I don’t care for the pre-planned lessons in the state-sanctioned curriculum, at the time I felt the same about using a module. From my limited experience as a GM, I saw it as limiting me and my players’ choices about where they wanted to the story to go. If the module didn’t gel with the style of characters they’d rolled up it might not be enjoyable. So instead I spent hours making scenarios that went along with character information fed to me during previous sessions.

I think my dislike of using a module comes from my dislike of the direct instruction model of teaching. This is essentially passive learning, where students take part in seminars, observations, and demonstrations. Direct instruction was formally developed throughout the 1960s by Professor Siegfried Engelmann and Wesley Becker to help disadvantaged students due to poverty or by being minorities, students who historically have not had the resources and privileges of others. This model of learning focuses on explicitly defining key terms, ability grouping students, and regular assessment to determine how much progress a student has made.

When you say the word “school” this is probably what most of us imagine. There are a lot of benefits to this way of teaching. You make key concepts very clear to the learners and you model skills step by step. If a student is paying attention they will definitely understand the basics. But it is not a very engaging way of learning. As I mentioned above, it’s known as “passive learning”. If a student is truly struggling or has no interest in the concepts they likely won’t get much. So the tug of war begins between in the learning process: is this about the teacher finding ways to engage the student or is it the student’s responsibility to find their hook?

Let’s come back to the module based tabletop roleplay. Using a pre-planned, adventure with most of the gaps filled in can be very disengaging for some players. But just like you would find in a classroom, some players/students like being led down a very clear path so they get the most out of the experience. Some of my favorite professors in college were notorious for being a little digressive. I enjoyed that, but other students had a different expectation of what they should get from a class.

In education, the Direct instruction model has come under a lot of fire lately. When the modern academic reform movement was getting started in the late 1980s, psychologist Robert Slavin released Success For All. This program heavily emphasized explicit direct instruction and was originally rolled out in Baltimore with a focus on children living in impoverished communities. SFA has become a major building block on which a lot of public school districts and charter schools have built their foundations on. The major criticism of the program is that it focuses on “drill & kill” instruction, some of the lowest level of thinking and learning on Bloom’s Taxonomy. It also pushes for a very authoritarian view of discipline. Students must not just follow a very clear path in terms of their learning but also behavior, with incidences of demerits in schools being given out over picking a pencil up for a classmate or not standing perfectly in line.

I personally don’t like telling children what they should want to learn. As a teacher, I know there is always content they are going to have to learn. And that gets taught in my classroom, but how they learn it can be made into an engaging, enjoyable experience. As a teacher, I’m always walking this tightrope between addressing the standards my students are expected to master and making learning an experience they want to continue for the rest of their lives. As a GM, I have expectations of what I want to get across to my players, whether that be certain plot beats, NPCs, a mood or atmosphere. But I also have to be mindful of what will keep my players engaged. If the game becomes me sitting there and simply reading some fiction I wrote with an occasional dice roll then I wouldn’t blame a player for completely breaking off.

There’s also a contingent of students/players who don’t like the idea of a structure that’s too loose. These stakeholders want assurance that they will be experiencing a complete narrative in a game and a purposeful lesson in education. They need concepts laid out concretely so they can feel that their investment of time was worthwhile. So adventures modules and direct instruction models are guarantees that there will be a direct thru line in the experience. From an educational point of view, I have been that student, sitting in a class with way too many professorial digressions and wanting to get to the point. I also believe my mood was affected by my relationship with individual teachers. The teachers I loved I could listen to digressing for hours. The teachers whose classes I barely tolerated I wanted to be super direct and get us to the end of the hour as fast as possible.

So, we come back to that Sunday afternoon. I have planned out around three hours worth of content and begin thinking about how my players will want to diverge from my path and so I end up inevitably making things up off the cuff and all these “plans” get tossed aside. So why am I making all these intricate detailed plans? That was probably the moment I gave up on D&D and haven’t really gone back to it, or any other OSR style of tabletop game, since. I don’t think I dislike those games, I know I don’t have an urge to run them anytime soon, but have always been open to playing them and seeing if I can find a GM who can make them shine for me.

But in that moment, I began searching for something new and different. My search would lead me to discover a bounty of new games and in turn, would lead me to sit at this desk and writing this very post.

Next: Fiasco! And Inquiry-Based Learning!

Games for Two – Dice Heist & Welcome to the Dungeon

Dice Heist

In Dice Heist, each player is a master thief about to take on the four major art museums of the world: The Hermitage, The Met, The British Museum, and the Louvre. There are famous paintings, jewels, and artifacts to snatch up but you’ve got to be skilled and bring in sidekicks to help you out.

The four museums are each given a dice rating from easy (The Hermitage with 2 pips) to the hardest (The Louvre with 5 pips). Each player starts with one black die and each turn has the option to roll for a heist or recruit a sidekick (a white die). There is a limited pool of sidekicks and once you claim one it is yours for the rest of the game. Each turn, a player draws a card and places that item under the matching museum. If you roll on a museum and succeed then you get every single treasure that has accumulated there. When you roll your dice you look for at least one that beats the target value on the museum.

At the end of the game you add up the values of your total paintings, first place gets 8 points and the second gets 5. For each artifact you get 2 points and each set of gems scores in an ascending order (first red gem is 1 point, second red gem is 2 points, third red gem is 3 points, etc).

The game was very fast paced and there was some strategy in which museums you wanted to target based on their target value and what treasures they held at the moment. This was a game I think would benefit from a third player just to increase the tension. An okay game, very simple and easy to learn, very light on strategy.

Welcome to the Dungeon

WelcomeDungeon_3Dbox Welcome to the Dungeon is a game about a staple in tabletop gaming: heroes going into a dungeon and fighting monsters. The twist in this small card based game is that players all play the same hero. The first round of play is bidding which consists of pulling a monster card from the deck and either placing in the dungeon deck face down or keeping the card which allows you to take a piece of equipment from the hero. This mechanic does a couple things: the players are trying to make the dungeon as uninviting to the other players yet still beatable by themselves. There is the danger that you will think you are going to Pass and leave the dungeon in another’s lap only to have them drop out and leave you with a hellish dungeon.

Each successful run through the dungeon earns the player a Success card. The number of Success cards up for the getting varies depending on how many players you have. If you are killed in the dungeon you must flip an Aid card you individually have over to its red side. If you die again with this card on its red side you are out of the game entirely. To defeat the monsters you either expend a piece of relevant equipment (the Dragon Spear defeats the dragon for example) or be able to absorb the hit point damage based on the card value and your total armor added to your base HP.

While the game works with two players, the Bidding phase screamed out that it would work so much better with at least three. Bidding between two is a little lacking in the tension while adding a third would create some more variables. There are four different heroes to choose from at the start and we did only play once so with additional playthroughs some things might shine forward.

Games for Two – Above and Below

Above and Below
Designed by Ryan Laukat
Published by Red Raven Games
Purchase here

Above and Below is the story of rebuilding after disaster. Your village was destroyed by barbarians and you’ve moved your people to a new place to start a new life. However, you find beneath the ground is an intricate series of tunnels and the opportunity to discover great treasure. You’ll need to build new buildings, recruit new villagers, harvest resources, and explore the world below to win.

You start the game with three villagers: one builder, one trainer, and one explorer. All are capable of going cave diving, the explorer just has the chance of rolling better. You can spend income to purchase new buildings, each of which have special actions, or purchase new villagers to train. If you choose to go into the caverns you take a cave card and roll one die. The pips correspond to a paragraph number in the adventure book. Another player reads and gives you options to choose from. Different options provide different rewards but you won’t know what those rewards are until after you roll. The game is played out over seven rounds and at the end you calculate points based on the number of buildings you have, how many of each resources you’ve accumulated, your reputation score, and any bonuses you get from specific cards.

My wife and I had a wonderful time playing Above and Below. Sometimes you come across games that say they are for two players, but as you play them you realize the experience would be more complex and interesting with at least a third. Above and Below works beautifully as a two player game and plays surprisingly fast. My wife actually commented that she wished there were a few more rounds. In total we played three full games. The first game was naturally a lot of figuring out the mechanics and making sure we were comprehensive in our actions. About halfway through that first session things began to click. By the third game, we were deep in the strategy and realizing what benefits delving into the caves beyond creating a very fun, light fantasy story.

Above-and-Below-board I was reminded a bit of IDW’s Machi Koro, a city building game, where certain cards are considered top shelf premium ones based on their cost and benefits. In Above and Below, there are six star buildings that provide multiple benefits if you can afford their large cost. There’s also four interchangeable star buildings that provide similar but less powerful benefits. Three pools replenish during your rounds of play: new villagers, regular buildings, and underground buildings. Each playthrough created vastly different villages for the both of us. Resources are harvested either from buildings or going into the caves. Once you have resources you can either stockpile them (which increases your income) or offer them up for sale to other players. At the end of the game you add up the resources you have stockpiled and multiply them by a point value based on where they were place on the stockpile track. So, selling resources can help the buyer increase that score while giving the seller a few quick gold pieces.

Above and Below is a game we would definitely play again. It takes a little more time to set up than the simple card games we had been playing, but nowhere near the set up time of games like Eldritch Horror and the like. If you are looking for a very deep, complex resource management game this is not for you. A perfect game to introduce someone to resource management without overwhelming them with too many actions and options. Because of the numerous building and variety of villagers, including special villagers that can only be recruited through going into the caves, there is a lot of replayability. Highly recommending this game.

Games for Two – Lost in R’lyeh & Sushi Go

After attending Origins 2016, I returned home with a decent assortment of new card and board games. This year I focused on smaller games that worked with two players, as my wife is my most common playmate. Expect posts through the next couple months as I play these games.

Lost in R’lyeh (Atlas Games, designed by Kedrick Winks, Illustrated by Kelley Hensing)

lost in rlyeh

Lost in R’lyeh is one of my favorite games I played at Origins for couple reasons. First, we got to play it with our wonderful friend Renee who was putting in many hours at the Atlas Games’ space. She did a great job laying out the game and it’s mechanics. Second, it was a game that my wife and I picked up quickly and, when we returned to waiting at the Games on Demand area, were able to get out and play a couple games of.

Lost in R’lyeh is a Lovecraftian trick taking card game. The premise is that the players are all trapped in the realm of Cthuhlu and must escape. This involves laying out cards, trying to create matching sets of numbers. Numbered cards have effects and the more of them in a row the more powerful the effects become. There are also Elder Sign cards that are like Wild cards in Uno. They can be played at any time and can be very disruptive to other players. Certain Elder Sign cards duplicate numbered cards, force the entire stack of cards onto another player, allow you to take the stack and all the tricks within it, and more. The game ends when only one person is left with cards and they are trapped by the Elder Gods.

As I said before, very easy to learn and Renee even mentioned Uno as she was explaining it. So think of it as that classic card game with effects added if you stack up similarly numbered cards in a row. I can see it being one of those warm up games before a roleplay session or a great way to kill some time. We were lucky enough to buy a copy at Origins before the game dropped for all consumers. Good news, Lost in R’lyeh is available as of today!

Amazon link – https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Rlyeh-Kedric-Winks/dp/1589781635/

Cool Stuff Inc link – http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/227156

Sushi Go! (Gamewright, designed by Phil Walker-Harding, illustrated by Nan Rangsima, Tobias Schweiger, Phil Walker-Harding)

sushi go

When I went over to the Cool Stuff Inc booth on Sunday morning, looking for last minute slashes in pricing I didn’t find anything that caught my eye. Then when I looked to the register and smaller card games I noticed the little tin box for Sushi Go! I’d seen it before online, my wife likes sushi, it was only $9, so I bought it. Our friend Mark expressed a lot of enthusiasm over the game when he saw it in my bag so I wondered what this game was all about.

Sushi Go! is a “draft and pass” card game. Each player has a number of cards in their hand and chooses one and plays it face down. Once every player has done this they reveal their card and then pass their hand to the player on their right. You repeat drawing a single card face down and then pass. Your goal is to create sets. Different sets are worth different point values. Maki have either 1, 2, or 3 on them and at the end of the round the player with the most Maki gets 6 points, the next player down gets 3. Nigiri has a set value, but that can be multiplied by three if you play Wasabi first. Every two Shrimp Tempura offer up 5 points, every three Sashimi offer up 10. Chopsticks allow card swapping and Pudding stays on the table through every round and is used to add 6 points to the holder and take 6 points from the people without Pudding.

There is quite a bit of interesting strategy here. You can go for the quick points, just dropping Nigiri on the table, or set up larger point drops for later, laying out Wasabi or putting down Sashimi. If you only have two players, there is a Dummy player variant listed in the instructions. Playing this with two players has a much more subdued and direct strategy. I suspect with a larger number of players things get crazier and even more fun. Simple, easy for everyone to pick up on and play.

Amazon link – https://www.amazon.com/Sushi-Go-Pick-Pass-Card/dp/B00J57VU44/

Cool Stuff Inc – http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/188409