tabletop games – Page 8 – PopCult Reviews

Origins 2016 – Primetime Adventures and Final Thoughts

We’ve now come to the finale write up for Origins 2016. It was Saturday afternoon and I could feel myself running out of steam. I was going to just sit out the 2pm slot at Games on Demand, but our friend Mick Bradley encouraged me to take part in his Primetime Adventures game. I hemmed and hawed and with some prodding from my wife decided to go for it.

Primetime Adventures (Designed by Matt Wilson, Published by Dog-Eared Designs) allows a table of players to pitch, develop, and play out a television series of their own invention. The mechanics are there to simply create interesting outcomes from conflict in scenes. In a longer campaign, each character will get an amount of Screen Presence that determines how much influence they have over the events in episodes. For the purposes of the one-shot we played everyone had equal presence. Each scene is focused either on a personal Issue a character is dealing with or a more concrete plot related need. Cards a drawn and highest red card and highest total number of red cards determine how the rest of the scene should play itself out (Yes and, No and, Yes but, No but).

Mick presented the table with a number of series pitches, a good idea to save on time when running a convention game. The table collectively glommed onto a series Sojourn ‘66, an amalgamation of Deep Space 9, Babylon 5, and other various sci-fi media. A once proud hub of galactic diplomacy, now it was an outpost where planetary systems sent their rejects. The day to day operations were done by a couple series of clones, The Rogers and The Steves. The Rogers were the old model and The Steves were the shiny new ones. Player characters in our game consisted of one of the Rogers, a savvy barkeep, a scientist in charge of servicing clones that had gone awry, a past his prime diplomat, and the diplomat’s mysterious new assistant (really an exiled princess who refused to give into an arranged marriage). I played the past his prime diplomat, Tho Sint, who happened to come from the rival culture to our scientist (think Vulcans and Romulans).

The table has the right group of players who all listened closely and added to the story when it was their turn to set up a scene. By the end of the game, everyone would have signed up to continue this as a campaign if we were able. There was the right amount of humor and seriousness, so the game session never lagged. My particular favorite moment was when a bit of larping slipped into one of my scenes. Mick was played a black ops agent sent by my people, the Mox, to do some general nastiness. My character’s issue was always wanting to take control of every session so we played it as a character scene where I Thot was attempting to keep himself in check. The cards were dealt…and Thot was going to go off the handle. Mick and I both stood from the table and got in each other’s faces as our characters tried to chest bump and establish who was in charge. I’m sure we slightly frightened some of the other tables. But those are the moments that are magic when they happen in a tabletop game. Everyone is on the same page with the story and choices become very organic and fluid.

That night I played in an “off the books” game of Masks Brendan Conway ran. Once again, always fun, and the next game I planning on running for my own group.

I don’t have anything to really compare Origins to, I’ve never attended any other conventions. But I can say that the Games on Demand room has never been anything but the most inviting, kind space. The people who run GoD are always happy to welcome new faces and you’ll leave the convention with connections to a myriad number of people. There are people you can’t wait to have run a game for you and people you can’t wait to play alongside. You’ll leave having learned about a new, exciting game or with new ideas about how to run an old favorite. My wife and I had never attended a convention for any hobby until Origins 2015 and we now find ourselves reserving that time for every summer to come as long as we can.

For more information on Origins Game Fair – http://originsgamefair.com/

More importantly, for more information on Games on Demand – http://www.indiegamesondemand.org/

Origins 2016 – Dungeon World

dungeon world

When you tell people you play roleplay games most of them envision Dungeons & Dragons. They imagine you must spend your nights hacking and slashing orcs, or casting magic missile at kobold hordes, or firing off a volley of arrows at your enemies from a prime vantage point. Well, that has never really appealed to me. My first experiences roleplaying were in 2008 when I ran (yes ran, not played in) a 4th Edition D&D campaign. The amount of planning eventually turned me off and that’s when I sought out something different. After playing a variety of different games I ended up falling in love with the Powered by the Apocalypse engine which happened to have its own variation on that old D&D genre of game: Dungeon World (Designed by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel, Published by Sage Kobold Productions).

Our Friday night choice at Games on Demand was a no brainer. We’d noticed last year one particular GM’s sessions would fill up almost as soon as the doors to the room opened. Additionally, we were told he ran a damn good game of Dungeon World. Hamish Cameron is the designer of The Sprawl, a cyberpunk themed PBtA game, but is also a man who loves to run and and play Dungeon World. Having run Dungeon World many many times but never having played in it, this was a perfect opportunity. And I have to say, Hamish was one of the most energetic, engaging GMs I’ve played with in a long time. He was incredibly invested in the world the players collectively created and kept the momentum of the dungeon crawl going with interesting twists and dangers.

Dungeon World has all the basic trappings of a PBtA game: Basic and Playbook Moves triggered by player actions in the fiction, rolling two 6 sided die plus a stat to determine the outcome, and player directed worldbuilding. It’s both old fashioned but refreshing at the same time. In this particular game, I chose to play a Cleric, a playbook that doesn’t get as much love as say the Fighter or Ranger. The world the table created was focused around The City of Glass, an outpost in the middle of desert whose air was poisonous gas. Traders traveled across the desert on the backs of giant snails. The city’s religion revolved around the performing arts and so masks held an important religious significance. The various religious sects liturgies came in the form of dramas. My Cleric, Dahlia the Voice, came from the church of The Sage. Her people believed knowledge should be preserved in the mind and would memorize texts before burning them in a holy fire. They would then share their knowledge through dramatic performance or recitations of the knowledge they accrued.

Hamish gave our party a choice of dungeons to explore and we went with the (I might get this wrong) The Temple of Third Eye. It was an old mine in the middle of the desert and rumors about it housing a fallen sun god deep in its bowels were getting around. Dahlia’s purpose for being there was to uncover an ancient scroll that detailed life in these lands 10,000 years in the past. A very valuable find for my sect. In the party was a gruff Dwarven Templar, an illusionist Mage, and two orphans: Vaxx the Thief and Lillaine the Bard. Things went as you might expect in any typical dungeon delve. Lots of monsters, mystery and a dark god rising up from beneath the earth. Almost a total party kill, expect Dahlia the Voice escaped to warn The City of Glass that this angry sun god had risen.

Dungeon World is great fun. And Hamish was able to keep that fun going for four hours which is quite an achievement after running games all day. If you are a traditional tabletop gamer or someone who used to play and is looking for a way back into the hobby, I highly recommend Dungeon World as a great introduction to Powered by the Apocalypse. There’s no complex math, no worrying about line of site or other tactical minutiae, the emphasis is on weaving an interesting and entertaining adventure. The world you play in the world the people at your table want to play in so you always end up with something unique and keyed into motivation you to play.

Dungeon World can be purchased here – http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/108028/Dungeon-World

And if you were to click on Dungeon World under Rules Systems on the right hand side, you’ll see there are myriad of resources available to add to your game if you like. My personal recommendation would be the playbooks and products produced by Awful Good Games – http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/5695/Awful-Good-Games

Origins 2016 – Bluebeard’s Bride

Barbebleue If you know the overlooked fairy tale Bluebeard then you are good. If you don’t, let me summarize: A young maiden is convinced to marry a brutish, ugly aristocrat named Bluebeard. After their wedding, the maiden is left alone in Bluebeard’s home and told the place is her’s, except for one room that must remain closed at all times. As in all fairy tales, she succumbs to her temptation and discovers an abattoir of Bluebeard’s former wives. The husband returns and vows to kill her. Depending on the version, a family member arrives and saves the maiden.

Bluebeard’s Bride (designed by Whitney Beltran, Marissa Kelly, and Sarah Richardson, to be published by Magpie Games) takes this fairy tale and explores and turns the message of the original on its head. Intended to be a warning to young girls to obey their husbands, Bride is an exploration of the female experience through a lens of body horror. The game is yet another using the Powered by the Apocalypse engine, with some very interesting variations to the mechanics. The players are all a singular character, The Bride, but choose playbooks modeled after aspects of her mind: The Virgin, The Fatale, The Witch, The Animus, and The Mother. A physical “wedding” ring is used to represent which aspect is dominant at the moment and is passed voluntarily or when triggered by certain moves. This was our game for the Friday afternoon session of Games on Demand and we were lucky enough to have Sarah Richardson as our GM.

Game play consists of the controlling aspect describing a key on the key-ring left to her by Bluebeard, the GM referring to an oracle type sheet, and then describing the room. Once inside the room, the Bride may not leave until she declares a Truth about what is going on. The truth can either be one that strengthens her trust in her husband or grows the distance between them. While most PBtA games are open ended, Bluebeard’s Bride has two tracks that, once one is completed, bring about a series of endgame moves and decisions to be made.

It is difficult to talk about the game because in my personal experience it was a very visceral, emotional session. As my friend Mick said in a write up about the game: “[..] it felt like the kind of thing I’ve always been taught Eucharist is supposed to be like[..]”. It did feel a bit like moving through the stations of the cross or similar religious rite but much more interactive. Very quickly, based on the Moves and explanation from the GM, you realize that the typical response of fighting back is not an option. Instead you’re encouraged to explore and illuminate the purpose of each room or object. The Truth revealed before exiting takes your discovery and gives them context in the larger meaning of the Bride’s experience.

I don’t know if I could ever play Bluebeard’s Bride again. Not a slight to the game but a compliment to both the design of the piece and Sarah, our GM. I view the game in the same category as Requiem for a Dream or the films of Simon Rumley. They are perfectly made and one of their purposes is to interact with parts of your brain you aren’t used to experiencing in “entertainment”. Bluebeard’s Bride is one of those games that challenges the notion that all games should be “fun”, in the same way some films aren’t made to help you escape from reality but to examine it from new perspectives and with a creative twists.

The body horror of the game was not what affected me on such a deep level. The existential horror was what lingers with you in the wake of the session. I immediately thought about the works of some of my favorite horror author, Laird Barron foremost, who manage to find ways to disturb and shake me. For a piece of writing to wield that sort of power is admirable. Helplessness against a looming horror is profoundly more disturbing than any monster the mind can conjure up. In a climate where people are overfed stimulus through media it takes a deft and creative hand to fashion something that can shake a viewer/reader/player.

I would imagine Bluebeard’s Bride is a delicate game to run. You need the right GM and players with open minds who are ready to explore dark places. Like all games run at Games on Demand, the X Card is present for players who get uncomfortable if triggering subject matter is broached. A good GM would need to be agile in making sure the content strongly affects the players without venturing into territory that would bring up personal traumas. But I personally believe good horror can’t be too delicate. It loses its power when it is too restrained in the same way it loses power if it is allowed to go completely gonzo. The work exists as both a playable game and a poetic piece. I compare it to my purchase of Black Sun Death Crawl, something from a system I would never likely run, but a quality work of writing and craft

Bluebeard’s Bride has not yet been published, but a Kickstarter is coming. I would recommend backing it because you’re going to help get a game out there that deals with subject matter not often touched upon in tabletop gaming. For more on the game and the place to look out for the Kickstarter’s launch visit here – http://www.magpiegames.com/bluebeards-bride/

Origins 2016 – Monsterhearts

Friday morning rolled around and I knew exactly what table I would be at. We had the great honor of playing Monsterhearts with Joe Beason. Joe has been a Google Plus friend for awhile and I’d been very interested in his variation on Monsterhearts, Elderhearts which focuses on a retirement home rather than a high school. However, we were feeling the original that morning.

Monsterhearts (Designed by Avery Alder McDaldno, Published by Buried Without Ceremony) takes popular media like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, Ginger Snaps and similar works and turns them into one of the most enjoyable systems I’ve ever run or played. Once again, this is a Powered by the Apocalypse game meaning it uses fictionally triggered Moves and two six sided die plus the relevant stat to determine the outcome of actions. The playbooks consist of what you would expect with some twists. There’s The Vamp, The Wolf, The Ghost alongside The Mortal, The Queen, The Ghoul and many more both official and fan made. In other PBtA games relationships between character are played as favors or debts, but in MH characters have Strings, representations of the emotional pull you have on others and they have on you. These are meant to be much more manipulative than debts or bonds and they help heighten that sense of adolescent emotional immaturity. Monsterhearts also heavily emphasizes the fluid nature of sexuality. Every character is expected to be able to be Turned On by any other character. The extent of how that arousal is acted on is determined in the fiction and how much detail the players want. Most games I play in typically fade to black or cut away before the descriptions get too gratuitous.

For Joe’s game we were students in a Florida high school that was in the path of Hurricane Danny, a brewing tropical storm. In our group we had The Ghost, The Chosen (a Buffy style hunter skin), The Witch, The Fae, and I played The Queen. Every experience I’ve had playing MH has been a lot of fun. Getting to indulge those over-dramatic hormone driven personalities of teenagers is a great time. I really hammed it up with The Queen, a stuck up rich girl whose twist involved her mind being taken over by a genetically engineered parasite her daddy’s medical research company brewed up. She was now the leader of a hive-mind (her clique) with a group text on her smartphone serving as the hub of communication. Lots of selfies were taken, many Snapchats were snapped.

Joe did a great job weaving a lot of elements through the fiction of the game based on the material we brought through our characters. The chief difference between traditional tabletop scenarios and PBtA is the planning. You can pick up Monsterhearts with no scenario in mind, sit down with friends, and simply listen and engage in conversation to build the world. Games like this will definitely stretch your mind and your creativity but you’ll up getting quicker on your feet as a result. Our high school Spring play had ground to halt with the death of the drama teacher. In his place an older, former teacher at the school was substituting, the same teacher responsible for our Ghost’s murder in the 1980s. My Queen was missing one of her clique, the girl was part of the trio of backup singers in the school’s production of Little Shop of Horrors. After a power outage, The Queen found her way to the auditorium and, along with the other player characters, got caught up in an occult ritual that was connected to the presence of the powerful storm outside.

This was one of those table at Games on Demand where everyone was firing on all cylinders and we were simpatico. The story flowed from player to player and GM. In those four hours we had a complete and satisfying narrative that left hints of other plots that could come from these characters had we been able to continue. That is also recurring note at almost every game I played: the players getting so deeply into the session they wished it was a regular weekly or monthly game so they could discover what happened next to these characters.

Avery McDaldno is currently looking at revising and releasing a second edition of the game. Since Monsterhearts’ publication in 2012, many more variations and hacks on PBtA have been released and the best iterations have brought new and intriguing mechanics to the community. As with Vincent Baker’s revision of the original Apocalypse World, I cannot wait to see what Avery adds and refines with Monsterhearts.

Even if you don’t care for the inspiration behind Monsterhearts, I’m confident you would love the game. The places the game explores aren’t represented in many other tabletop games and, with the right group of people who have buy in with the material, you’ll end up with some of the most satisfying sessions of gaming you’ve ever experienced.

You can purchase Monsterhearts here – http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/100540/Monsterhearts

Later today: Bluebeard’s Bride and Dungeon World

Origins 2016 – Urban Shadows

urban shadows

Urban Shadows (Designed by Andrew Medeiros and Mark Diaz-Truman) is another game from Magpie Games and another variation on the Powered by the Apocalypse system. Are you noticing a trend with me? Urban Shadows was actually the first Magpie game I went all in for. I heard of some of their previous work but didn’t know these games were all from the same publisher. Urban Shadows is also a system I’ve run about 30 times in a series of small interconnected campaigns. I always love playing with a new GM though, because I learn techniques on how to run the game or discover subtleties about it that had completely gone over my head.

Urban Shadows takes many of the elements of World of Darkness with a focus on the faction politics. The four factions of the game are Mortality (Aware humans, monster hunters), Night (vampires, werewolves, ghosts), Power (Wizards, Oracles, Immortals) and Wild (Fae, Humans tainted by demons). Players have two sets of stats: one related to their individual abilities and the second for their knowledge and connection to each Faction. There are Basic Moves but also Faction Moves that require rolling with the relevant Faction stat. You accumulate Debts on other players and NPCs and can spend those debts for favors or greater influence in negotiations. You “level up” or advance by interacting with the four Factions. On top of all of this, there is a Corruption track that is advanced by certain choices in the Basic Moves and by a Corruption condition specific to each playbook. You can pick up new Corruption moves but in the fiction this moves you closer to your character becoming an NPC threat in a later game or campaign.

Thursday evening we sat down at the table with Derrick Kapchinksy, a member of Magpie. This was our first time with him running a game so I was very interested to see how things went. There was also a complete newbie to the PBtA style of game and appropriately Derrick spent time going over the basic mechanics and making sure he was comfortable with the game. After the game, my wife and I talked about how perfectly Derrick described how the system worked, talking about it in the context of a conversation with some mechanics that come to the surface only when needed. Our novice player definitely seemed to take to the game quickly. The urban environs of our game was Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city Derrick is very familiar with. As with all Urban Shadows games it’s fairly important that the GM have a good understanding of the city so they can weave real world elements with a fictional supernatural underbelly.

I played Raul, a Tainted Iraq War vet. He sold his soul in the midst of a firefight to an Ifrit. The result was that he was the sole survivor of his unit and returned to the state haunted by the fiery demon. Now the Ifrit had turned its attention to Raul’s nephew as a potential new host. Raul’s own rage built as the influence of the demon increased causing him to becoming brutally violent with bystanders, he particularly focused on the homeless population knowing they wouldn’t have many people looking out for them. In the opening hour of the game we established that vampires had been wiped out by a fellow player’s Veteran hunter. The Fae filled in that power vacuum but now the vampires were returning to the city.

I was particularly impressed with Derrick’s Redcap enforcers. They appeared as teenage Native American young men in backwards red baseball caps for the Albuquerque Cannons (now the Isotopes). I love that clever blending of traditional folkloric beings with touches of modern life. It helps to create the atmosphere of the supernatural embedded among us. The game consisted in the players getting their characters deeper and deeper into trouble between the Vampires and Fae, culminating in a showdown at a vampire nightclub.

Urban Shadows is one of the best adaptations of the PBtA system. It has a lot of moving parts and thus can be daunting the first time you look over a character sheet. With a little reading up and given some time the fluidity of these elements comes to the surface. As long as you run and play the game with an emphasis on the political you’ll have a great time. This does involve a shift in the traditional tabletop mindset where players receive plot from the GM. Here the GM looks to the players to communicate what things they are interested in doing and see happen. When everyone is on the same page the system sings. If this type of dark, political, supernatural style of storytelling appeals to you then I say you need to buy this game. I know for me it’s provided hours and hours of great gaming sessions.

Urban Shadows – http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153464/Urban-Shadows

You can also see Urban Shadows in play, run by the masterful Jay Brown here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ5Vuy-KoEM

Tomorrow: Monsterhearts & Bluebeard’s Bride

Origins 2016 – Zombie World

zombie_horde_by_joakimolofsson-d5mudbk

For the Thursday afternoon slot at Games on Demand, my wife and I went with Zombie World (designed and published by the team at Magpie Games). Our main reason was the game’s GM, Mark Truman-Diaz, co-founder of Magpie. Mark is both a stellar GM and an all around awesome human being so we knew we were in for a great experience. Two additional players joined our table and we were ready to begin.

Zombie World is another game that is Powered by the Apocalypse. Unlike with Masks, and most PBtA games, Zombie World uses playing cards instead of dice for resolution. Character creation involves drawing three cards and referencing an Oracle document for their meanings. The cards represent your character’s Past, Present, and Trauma. Each aspect provides specific moves or boons that only your character will have, as well as informing you on how to roleplay that character. Character creation in this style makes you think on your feet to connect what has the chance to be three very conflicting, yet compelling, aspects.

My character’s Past was Social Worker, Present was Scavenger, and Trauma was Imperious (I interjected myself into social conflicts, always wanting to solve problems). Holloway, was a social worker who still had a sense of concern for others, but this was balanced with his survival instincts. Getting involved in other’s arguments could shore up power and over time he could be seen as a de facto leader, or least open up avenues to get much needed resources if he was seen as a helper. He made a good Scavenger because his job required him to find resources for people in need and he also navigated the tougher parts of the city for many years.

Our particular game was set in an abandoned prison, which came with a playbook that we at the table collectively fleshed out. Cards were used to determine resources, threats, needs, etc. Once we had our characters and settings complete we began. Mark described a caravan of vehicles, some being manually pushed along a road outside of town. One of our hunters had spied the scene and said there was a chance a devastatingly large horde was following in the wake of these people. Two characters, our sharpshooter and a former cop, took the direct approach on the caravan while a third character, a guard who worked at the prison, led a group of Syrian refugees that had been living with us out into the woods to provide backup in case relations went south. Holloway, my social worker, didn’t volunteer to go, but snuck out of the prison to spy from a distance.

Things definitely fell apart and, while no one died, the characters suffered a number of serious setbacks, injuries, and were forced to make brutally hard choices. Conflict resolution was done by triggering one of the Basic Moves in the fiction of the game, then drawing a number of cards equal to the relevant stat. The highest card drawn would be used to determine how successful an action was. Jacks were complete successes, 8-10 was a success with a cost, and anything less than a 7 was a failure. Queens represented expendable resources and their effects and were removed from the deck after a use until they could be replenished or maintained in the fiction. For instance, our prison had a strong fence. Having a strong fence could have allowed you get very restful sleep because you didn’t need to be walking the perimeter all night. That rest could be what helped you stay alert in a firefight. But, if you don’t look for damage to the fence periodically or a massive horde crushes it to the ground then that Queen would not be reinserted into the deck again. Aces could be successes but required the player to take Stress if they wanted that boon.

I felt the character creation had light touches of Fiasco with the use of the Oracle. The drawing of cards created a sort of meta-tension. It worked even better because the higher your stat the more cards you had to draw. So being good at something actually meant the tension could be higher with each pull from the deck. From a fictional standpoint, the game completely got across the atmosphere of popular character focused zombie media (The Walking Dead). The zombies were there but not necessarily the greatest danger to our characters. As is typical with this sort of thing, it’s the other human beings you need to worry about. The game seems incredibly well suited for both one shots and small campaigns. It’s yet another Magpie production that has me excited as a hell to get my hands on it and run for friends. Zombie World does not yet have a release date, but Mark said it is pretty much at completion and will be released in the near future.

Later today: Urban Shadows.

Origins 2016 – Masks

masks

This year was my second trip to Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio. Organized by the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) and first held in 1975, the convention focuses on all flavors of tabletop gaming (board, card, roleplaying, and every other sort of variation). While the bigger events revolve around more of the household names of gaming (D&D, Pathfinder, Settlers of Catan, Pokemon, etc.) I prefer the Games on Demand events.

Games on Demand specifically caters to fans of small press, independent roleplay gaming and also for con goers who are curious about trying something new. All of the gaming I did at Origins 2016 was exclusively with GoD and I can say I never felt like I was missing out on other parts of the con. Your mileage will vary depending on your personal gaming tastes, but I believe there is something there that can appeal to every player.

My GoD sessions began Thursday morning with a game of Masks: A New Generation (Designed by Brendan Conway, Published by Magpie Games). Masks is currently in post-Kickstarter mode with a public release coming very soon. Instead of being a superhero game that focuses on playing the Justice League or Avengers, players assume the roles of teen superheroes who still aren’t quite sure who they are and who they will be. The emphasis in the game is on the relationships between the heroes and the labels that are applied to them by fellow teammates, the world, and even themselves. Stats are in flux as events cause the heroes to reassess their roles. In this Masks session, I played The Beacon, a hero who shouldn’t be fighting alongside ultra powerful godlike beings. Think Hawkeye or Blue Beetle.

Masks is a Powered by the Apocalypse (PBtA) game. If you’re not familiar with this particular system, it was created by Vincent Baker for his Apocalypse World RPG. The core of the systems revolves around roll two six sided dice and adding a stat to determine the results of actions. A 10+ is a complete success, 7-9 will be a partial success or one with a cost, and a 6- is a complete failure. Players simply narrate their characters’ actions and if they trigger one of the Basic Moves or Playbook Moves a roll is made. Everything is grounded firmly in the fiction of the story. You don’t make a roll unless it is justified by the actions and logic of the story. Characters are created from playbooks, a trifold sheet that gives players lists of options from the look of a character to special Moves only they can access. Players simply narrate their characters’ actions and if they trigger one of the Basic Moves or Playbook Moves a roll is made. Unlike most games using the PBtA system, Masks’ stats (here called Labels) fluctuate based on interactions with teammates and NPCs.

In my game with Brendan, the team was pitted against an alien vessel that had come to claim our Outsider for her arranged marriage. Due to our actions (I say “our” but my Beacon triggered things by firing an EMP arrow at the ship), the vessel crashed into the bay. The aliens sent forth an inhumanly strong bodyguard and it became necessary to negotiate our way out of the situation. However, my Beacon, desperately wanting to prove themselves as worthy of a place on the team, fired a Weird Tech arrow (think Kirby style technology) and somehow brought a future version of the alien bodyguard to the present day. The rest of the session dealt with traveling to outer space, trying to get our Outsider out of her marriage, and the revelation that my chipper upbeat Beacon could possibly become a bloodthirsty killer in a future timeline.

I’m very biased when it comes to Masks for a number of reasons, so consider this both a disclosure and me fanboy-ing out. I’ve been a rabid comic book fan since I was nine years old and Masks really captures the essence of New Teen Titans, early Claremont X-Men, Young Avengers, and similar media. I feel confident in my knowledge of the tropes and was able to easily jump in. If you threw into say…a Conan game, being less confident in the tropes, I’d stumble a bit more. Brendan Conway and the designers at Magpie are producing some of my favorite tabletop rpgs at the moment and Masks is top of the heap for me. The choice to focus on interpersonal conflict and the construction of an interesting world, rather than stat blocking the hell out of each individual superpower, appealed to me even more. I’ve never felt a desire to go as deep as Mutants & Masterminds and have always preferred superhero comics where the display of powers takes a backseat to interesting relationships.

I was a privileged enough to help contribute to Masks as a Kickstarter stretch goal in a flavor/fluff piece written with my wife. So, I’m not exactly the most neutral of parties. But I know even if I hadn’t gotten to know Brendan and the Magpie crew personally, I would still be playing the hell out of Masks. I didn’t think twice when I was invited to participate in a second, off the books, session Saturday night. I choose to play The Transformed (Beast, Cyborg) and had another awesome three hours of gameplay.

If you are someone who has an appreciation of superheroes at any level, from simply a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or a lifetime comic book collector, then I would highly recommend you check out Masks when it becomes available. It gives the emphasis on story that I think superhero games have been needing for a long time.

Tomorrow: Zombie World and Urban Shadows

Tabletop Review – Dead of Winter

Dead-of-Winter-A-Crossroads-Game Dead of Winter is a board game from Plaid Hat Games, designed by Jon Gilmour and Isaac Vega. There are a lot of board and card games on the market in the zombie genre, so seeing yet another one might be a turn off. However, Dead of Winter brings some incredibly fresh and interesting elements to the table.

Each player controls two members of the survivor colony. There is a wide variety of characters with very distinct personalities communicated through the art and their special abilities. This adds a role play element that elevates the game above simply strategizing. There is also the Crossroads deck. Each player turn, a card is drawn and at the conclusion of the turn the condition on the card is checked. If the condition was fulfilled the card is read and a piece of story is presented. The card offers the player a number of options, many options provide a new resource with a consequence or they can walk away, gaining nothing but staying safe. Added on to all of that is the Crisis deck, from which a card is drawn at the start of a round. Resources are required to stave off the Crisis and players can add to that during their turns. If they fail to add the required number of resources a horde of zombies is added to the table.

The game comes with a number of objectives that vary in length, depending on the time you have to play. Each player also has a secret objective that they must complete in addition to the Main Objective to win the game. The interesting twist is that a betrayal card is placed in the deck of objectives at the start of the game. This means someone may be out to sabotage the colony leading to bluffing becoming a part of play. Each round players roll their Action Dice and then take turns spending them to perform actions (Searching, Attacking, Barricading, etc.). If a player suspects there is a traitor they can even call a vote to Exile. After each player has gone, there is a Colony round where resources are accounted for, zombies are added to the board, and other housekeeping is done.

dead-of-winter-1 We’ve played Dead of Winter twice, once as a two player game and most recently with three players. My wife and I invited over a coworker, Tiffany, who is a big fan of zombie media, particularly The Walking Dead. Dead of Winter does a great job in recreating that group tension from shows like TWD. For our game, we used the recommended Main Objective of collecting sample from zombies to develop a cure. The first round of play was everyone getting used to their choices of actions and we managed to stave off the first crisis. What I enjoyed most was that almost every Crossroads card pulled came into play which created a lot more dramatic tension. I remember one of the my characters stumbled across an abandoned oil truck which would have brought a cache of Fuel into the colony (used to make multiple moves around the board during a turn). The catch was that the noise from the truck would bring half a dozen zombies to the outskirts of the colony, putting us on the verge of being Overrun. If a location is Overrun, the character with the lowest Influence is automatically killed, no way to avoid it. I decided against taking the tanker and a few turns later we had a Crisis that needed Fuel to stop it. Those sorts of moments make the game very re-playable because consequences for decisions always have an interesting way of coming back to haunt you.

Dead of Winter merges elements of role-playing with board games in a way I enjoy. The Crossroads deck is the jewel of the game because of the way it puts so much immediate pressure on the player and provides consequences for the rest of a gaming session. Plaid Hat has an expansion, The Long Night, in production at the moment that will also work as a stand alone game. The Long Night adds a new location Raxxon Pharmaceuticals, plus new characters, objectives, Crossroad cards, pretty much more of everything. With so many interchangeable components Dead of Winter has hours and hours of replay-ability and will push players to think beyond one or two strategies as Main and Personal Objectives change.

Dead of Winter can be purchased at Cool Stuff Inc. for an incredibly discounted price. The best I’ve seen to date.

Games for 2: Workplace Bully

workplacebully

Workplace Bully is a two player tabletop role playing game written by Steve Hickey. The game uses Vincent Baker’s Apocalypse World as a basis, but also more importantly Avery McDaldno’s Dream Askew, which gets rid of the dice involved.

In Workplace Bully, one player is the Manager (MGR) and the other player is the Employee (EMP). An audience can be included and will actually have ways to contribute to the game.Players contribute in a rotating series of Goes, verbal exchanges referring to a list of actions exclusive from each other. When the story comes to the point that neither knows what happens next the scene ends and Evaluation begins.

Evaluation is made up of a series of subjective decisions made about the scene that just occurred. The MGR could be rewarded with Stress points and the EMP might get some Insight points based on their growing understanding of what is happening at work. If the MGR gets stress points during Evaluation they decide if the EMP has become more Broken or Transformed (into a bully). The EMP does have three uses of a Panic Button to avoid this, but in turn the MGR can spend Stress to still force the EMP to have some sort of public outburst at work.

Stress and Insight are spent during additional goals to use special moves and permanently unlock moves. For every point of Stress the MGR uses, the EMP gains a point of Insight. This means the more active the bullying the more the EMP learns about what their MGR is doing and their methods. The game ends when either the MGR has blown through all their methods of deflecting and defending themselves from confrontation or the EMP is either Broken or Transformed by the MGR.

Workplace Bully is a great, and sometimes overwhelming, example of asymmetrical play: a game where players have opposing goals and ways to play the game. My wife, Ariana, and I played the game twice, each of us taking a turn in each role.

In our first game I was Manager, Mrs. Farnsworth and Ariana was Employee, Mr. Felt. Our place of business was Heartstrings, an online dating Service, I took the stance of being over concerned with details to mask my personal incompetence as a leader. My main strategy as the bully was to turn everyone against Mr. Felt. Mr. Felt finally gained enough Insight to purchase a cell (more than three victims of my bullying in the office). This led to a complaint filed with the Human Resources department and ended with me begging Felt to back off. Felt didn’t have much sympathy for me and rejected those. Eventually I resigned and left the office quietly.

Ariana said we had to take a break because she was getting stressed out at the passive aggressive attacks from my Manager, so I guess I was pretty effective. Because the game is a playtest we had some confusion about how to activate tags, the main way a MGR defends themselves and an EMP confronts. Before our second game, we sat down and made sure every tag had an explicit way to earn them, which helped the second game run more smoothly.

In our second game, I was the Employee, Stanley and Ariana was the Manager, Jenny. Our place of business was Reassurance Inc., an insurance adjuster. As the employee I was starting a new career after working as a teacher for a number of years. I had a disabled son and was a single parent. I was able to find allies in fellow employees Rhonda and Stan, as well as Jenny’s own secretary, Megan. Ariana’s strategy was that every time I claimed an ally she spent Stress to make that ally neutral and in one case turned that ally into her pawn. For most of the game Stanley was moving speedily down the Broken path. I accrued a good amount of Insight and began to confront the MGR on a daily basis, faster than she could spend Stress to defend herself. In the end I barely beat the MGR who was fired and left in a very destructive way.

Workplace Bully is a very interesting game about a phenomena we encounter in our lives from time to time. While most games we play are escapist, it is interesting to play a scenario of such real weight. It was also a mental hurdle to get into the Stress/Insight points method after being so used to dice rolling. As mentioned above, Workplace Bully is an alpha playtest so it is rough around the edges and requires players to take an active role in shaping the game if you encounter errors or absences. With people of the right mindset this can be an intriguing experiment into stepping in the shoes of other people.

Download Workplace Bully for free.

Check out more of Steve Hickey’s game work here.