Pre6

Such a clever title … if … well, whatever.

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle is a game I sometimes play.  Sometimes included Friday night.

Friday was complicated.  Met up with a friend after lunch (on the road).  Visited mother.  Then got to Berkeley 1.5 hours early and stressed about parking.  Stressed more about parking situation later that night, but that was because I was dumb and couldn’t find car in the dark for a bit.

Anyway, eventually played two games.

Two six player games.

Alex (Ahrimanes) -> Ian (modified BH precon) -> Joe (borrowed Lasombra) -> Mark (Unmada and friends) -> Davey(sp?) (Francois and …) -> Rick (Malk Rising)

Not !Malk Rising.  Rick got out Lucian and Greger.  Lucian after Mark brought out Unmada.  Joe voted, and my justicar and prince were generally okay with his votes hitting Mark and incidentally Alex.  Alex stealth bled me for some as Ahrimanes are wont to do.  Lucian went to torpor a couple of times.  Davey couldn’t do much with one minion and various plus bleeds behind him.  I never drew a Haqim’s Law: Retribution, so I could fight a bunch and fail to block with two intercept due to the sleaze of Ahrimanes block evasion, but I never triggered Priority Contract on my prey while discarding three others.

Mark ousted Davey, then Rick didn’t last much longer, then Alex didn’t last much longer, and we called the game around 9PM when place closed at 11PM.

Davey (Ass vote) -> Rick (POT/Pro burn vamps) -> Alex (Ministry SB) -> Ian (modified Ministry precon) -> Mark (Hatchling vote) -> Joe (Malk/! SB)

Mark had no chance in this game.  Davey dropped Club Illusion early in the game, and I just bled repeatedly as I had nothing better to do and we wanted to finish the game.  I got bled for a lot, so I didn’t bring out a fourth minion (with what was essentially a perfect crypt draw) until I ousted Davey and the game was over.  Rick fought some with Davey, Davey did some voting, where my 2 votes from a baron were helpful to me.  Rick burned one of Alex’s two bleeders, which was also rather helpful to me.

So, not very interesting game.  I see what people mean by Ministry precon wanting more bleed (I discarded Club Illusion when I drew it).  I was kind of choked on stealth at times, but Dreams would have flushed that if I had any.  Second prey didn’t bounce me and I only saw one bounce card.

I spent both games doing lots of the same stuff.  First game was more interesting due to how much voting was going on.  Both games were fun.  Davey and Joe were unfamiliar to the rest of us, so it’s good that people are coming out of the woodwork (they aren’t new players).

I haven’t made progress in South Bay play as have a lot of things going on, but the plan is to get a Discord server up for Bay Area as communication is too fragmented at moment.  We talked about possible tournament, I suggested Thanksgiving Weekend.

That’s it.  I have to worry about Gen Con next.

Wait, that’s not it.  I promised complaining about our erstwhile mayor.  As I drove home a bit after 11PM, I got in my hood near midnight.  Her concert was still letting out, so roads were blocked, and I drive around to other side only to get trapped in massive traffic barely moving.  We have similar numbers of people at the stadium for football or other concerts.  Not sure why Taylor hadn’t gotten her minions to figure out how to get everyone out of my part of Swiftie Clara or, at least, not have a bunch of cars heading inward toward the stadium.  If former Mayor Taylor wants to cost me half an hour of sleep, I can think of a better way than being stuck in traffic.

Fisticuffs 20230729

Miguel hosted first of our newly planned quarterly location-rotating sessions yesterday.

Thanks for hosting.

I think I played seven games, but it might have been eight.

First game was four-player before others showed up.  I have a Penal Soldiers deck built I keep not caring hugely about but wanted to play at least once, so I broke it out for this game.

I got General Olivet in play, so I could have attacked on other people’s turns, but I wasn’t terribly relevant.  I know who sat where.  What else?

Oh, Paul, to my left, played Architects as well as he played Arcanoleech on my front site.  He put out Char with Elephant Gun and Commandant Barkhorn.  I didn’t get attacked much early on.  Mostly Paul and Miguel (opposite) doing stuff that mattered.  Tim, to my right, played same Scrappy Kid deck in every game he played that I also was in.

Well, I didn’t win.  I had nothing in play or in hand that could stop an attack on someone else.  Miguel attacked Paul, who only single blocked Miguel’s one attacker, and it got by the one interceptor.

Jackson and Drew arrived, so we split into two threes.

I played this deck I built in the morning:

Sufficient
Shadow Syndicate (45)
Syndicate (30)
Characters (22)
2x  Forest Sheng
1x  Hirake Kazuko
3x  Mars Colony Miscreants
1x  Mars Program Executive
2x  Ono Hideyoshi
3x  Planetologist
1x  Rei Okamoto
2x  Tamura Yumi
4x  Triad Punks
3x  Yamada Hanako
Edges (1)
1x  Corporate Warfare
Events (3)
1x  Catching Bullets
1x  Contract
1x  Zero-G Kung Fu
Sites (1)
1x  Cybermod Parlor
States (3)
2x  Herbert Suit
1x  Wall Running
Unaligned (15)
Events (4)
1x  Ejector Seat Malfunction
1x  On the Wire
1x  Scrounging
1x  The Algernon Effect
Feng Shui Sites (10)
2x  Dockyard
1x  Four Sorrows Island
5x  Möbius Gardens
1x  Precious Lotus Monastery
1x  The Hidden Grotto
Sites (1)
1x  Decked-Out Dirigible

After getting Yamada Hanako in play, I ended up with Hirake Kazuko, Rei Okamoto, and whatever.  I had a stolen Cop on the Beat for awhile.  Jackson, to my left, played at least four and was a threat with them and dorks with guns.  Miguel was playing Jammers and Hand.  There was a point when Jackson and I both had good power, and The Iron Monkey went right thinking could get damaged LaGrange Four, but the attack failed, and I eventually took Dark Traveler with Kazuko, who went from 4f to 8f, and swung for the win.

We had food.  Now, I lose track of quite what happened, but it may be that Drew had to leave at this point and Tim sat out so that we could play four-player.

Miguel was to my left … and I don’t remember this game at all.  Jackson’s decks were fast, so it may have been that he just ran over us, which is why I can’t remember what I did.  I may have played new Architects deck and just never put anything that mattered into play.  He may have played Flambards.

Rick showed up so that we had six again.

I think the next game was Tim to the left not getting sites and me not getting foundations, so the game ended without virtually anything happening.

Then, I played latest Brain Sucker.  I got lots of power from Möbius Gardens and Scrounging, even forgetting to use Möbius Gardens on various Ice Blessings and maybe other stuff.  Being able to not need a site structure helped immensely, as Jackson, to my right, was playing Flambards and monkeys.  I ended up with a Blood Eagles with BK97 Attack Chopper (played after using Blood Eagles for a BfV), Brain Sucker with BK97 Attack Chopper (played after using Brain Sucker for a BfV), and super Arcanomoth.  Nine monkey tokens and one Big Macaque Attack could try to block, but it was futile (nevermind that I had two cards in my hand to get stuff through) as I was going after flimsy Dockyard.

Jackson left.  Played four.

Well, at some point, there was a game with Tim to my left, Miguel opposite playing Queens and White Ninja that we kept stopping, Paul was to my right with Hand, and I played Architects and got Nachtshreck up to 14f when Tim won off of an attack where I failed to intercept like Tai Chi Student because of his Discerning Fire.  I feel like this had to have happened before Rick appeared, but I don’t know what Jackson was doing during this time.

Anyway.

Played a four with my playing a bunch of junky Ascended cards.  I did Shadowy Mentor Miguel’s 7f Thief in the Night to my right and had a 10f Might of the Elephant.  Miguel kept stealing power from me, had multiple Kickbacks, multiple Deep Pockets.  Rick was to my left with Miguel’s Ascended/Monarchs deck that tries to abuse Butterfly Knights.  Paul won off of The Burwell Incident after Miguel failed to win because I wasn’t running Dockyard or Möbius Gardens but rather Obsidian Mountains.  I didn’t even know the card existed.  Obviously, he was running Yakuza Enforcers and the like.

Final game was same seating, Rick playing Hand power steal, Paul playing Donner Lake, Miguel playing eunuchs.  I played Penal Soldiers again.  Miguel got his Imperial Boon engine going.  Hands of Darkness were constantly murdering The Iron Monkey but missed Commandant Barkhorn.  Rick Blade Palmed Imperial Boon …

I had two Penal Soldiers, Commandant Barkhorn, Colonel Griffith, Buro Official, so I Ambushed Paul’s The Unleashed for 9 with a Penal Soldiers to reduce his massive Lake army, but my Penal Soldiers, The Unleashed, and Rapid Response Team could not stop Paul, who still had enough little dudes to do 10 to Miguel’s site.

Suggested to Miguel he steal a play Don did all of the time on his Feasts of Souls for this deck – Dance of the Centipede.  Paul did manage to Glimpse too Briefly before he won:

The Shadowfist day worked well.  Penal Soldiers deck did what it was supposed to.  New Architects stuff interested me, I even played “CHAR is II sucky” (and may never again).  New Syndicate obviously must be banned as I outundercosted Cops on the Beat.  I got a bunch of empty boxes back from Miguel, so I can work on putting more cards away.  I’ll post about VTES Friday night later – after all, I have to complain about our former mayor and how she deprived me of additional sleep.

Campaign Concept – Thematic Advancement

As usual, this was in response to something.  I was reading old posts, reading about mechanical advancement in some campaign play, when some neurons fired and got to thinking about building a campaign around advancement – just not mechanical advancement.

I brought up this idea in a recent conversation, and I realized I wasn’t sure what I meant by this idea.  The more I spewed, the more I started comparing to various things that may not be what I’m looking for.

Videogames

It occurred to me that my use of the term “unlocking” campaign content sounds very much like how videogames expose more content only after making particular achievements.  Maybe this is worth doing even with my squeamishness around making RPG play more like videogames.

The Angry GM suggests looking to videogames for how to structure RPG play (over books and movies) because videogames are designed as games and designed to align with human nature to provide utility.

I stopped playing videogames ages ago.  I’m not up on a host of great games.  Still, moving locations based off of achievement, enabling taking on bosses based on achievement, upgrading your stuff, upgrading because of your stuff (only the boomerang allows bypassing this challenge to get to next).  That all sounds fine.  I’m likely a terrible person to try to emulate videogames given how much more others play them.

Titles

I like titles.  Sure, I don’t care about being an Emerald Magistrate in L5R play because it’s so common.  But, I’ve never gotten to be clan champion or some jeweled champion.  Come to think of it, I tend to end up being an ambassador … even starting as an ambassador in D&D play.

Anyway, within the L5R context, questing to get appointed to some major title makes a lot of sense.  The point of Glory is that PCs are supposed to be ambitious.  Note how I’m changing things slightly – instead of unlocking content through achievements, *winning* through achievements.

So, is this concept just a quest to be appointed a demigod?  Or, is it that getting to be a demigod means you get to do other cool stuff?

RuneQuest, certainly our play of it, was all about leveling up to Rune Lord or Rune Priest so that could unlock god plane adventuring.  I never achieved either, so I don’t know what would have happened.  While the process of getting to Rune Lord was awful, maybe this is an existing model.  I own RuneQuest materials, not the version we were playing but I’m guessing the concepts are the same between editions.

Achievements

Speaking of Glory, Glory is a mechanic.  While I’m not opposed to the idea that some achievements would relate to things like Renown, Fame, Glory, Reputation, or whatever mechanic some game already has, that’s not what I have in mind.

What I have in mind is a checklist.  When you check off all of the items, you unlock next phase of campaign.  An item could be “Being forced to beg for food.” or whatever that is a story element that could be neutral or bad.

Now, there’s a problem with this.  Metagaming.  If the goal of the campaign is to win through checking off story elements and story elements aren’t as objectively determined as character sheet numbers, then players are going to either too easily or not easily enough check off items (in their minds).  Puts more pressure on GM.

What if you hide the checklist from the players?  This seems counterproductive.  First, some players can try to make a game more fun by balancing winning against interesting things happening.  Second, if the players don’t know what unlocks next campaign phase, then why should they pay any attention to this campaign model?

Campaign Model Contrast

How is this any different from stuff that already happens in campaigns?

Well, the sequencing is different or the emphasis is different or both.  This is a very storyteller way to play.  Emergent story should occur no matter how a group plays, but this isn’t emergent – it’s predetermined.  In a one-shot, can just force people to unlock the endgame by making sure the rails run through the right stations.  One-shot play is routinely linear and largely predetermined.

Here, trying to sell the players on, “I know zero to hero is normal or Saiyan to Super Saiyan or whatever where powering up is the way to unlock facing monsters with more hit points, but this campaign is going to be about accomplishing a basket of story elements leading up to facing monsters with different story elements.”

Storypathing

Another model that came to mind while trying to define the experience I’m looking for was choose your own adventure stories. But, is this the opposite?  You aren’t choosing what you get to do but choosing to do things that might get you to do something different.  Okay, maybe not opposite.

In order to board the train, need a ticket.  To get the ticket, need to jump through the hoops the GM comes up with.  But, those hoops may be obvious, just that there’s a cost to jumping backwards through one and not another.

Is there a way to force players to choose or don’t to advance their paths?  Maybe being elected mayor is on your checklist, and you come across plague town where it would be easy to be mayor if you let the current one and heir die of the plague but would miss out if one of them survives.

What if players don’t want to change what they are doing?  Is that a campaign fail even if the players are enjoying playing?  How does this relate to having a more fun campaign?  Don’t campaigns already open up new activity when old activity is stale just by fiat and not by getting a notary to verify your forms?  What if the early stuff is boring and people want to move on but can’t?

Thematics, Thematics, Thematics

The parlor LARPs I did came to mind as having a similar feel to what I’m seeking.  Sure, having secret goals different from other players’ secret goals is always a good idea in RPGs or LARPs, so it’s not the same.  It’s much more about getting away from the campaign changing due to mechanics rather than through doing esoteric things.

Is it better to have someone beg for food because of stuff that happens during play or to have begging for food be part of a script that moves a PC on to a future act?

It’s never necessary to force story, though it seems necessary to force activity so that story results.  So, why?

I don’t know … yet.  I don’t quite know what this idea is.  Maybe it’s ripping off videogame structure.  Maybe the checklists are vague.  Maybe you only do three out of five things.  There are modules structured like this where you have to do certain activities to win the mod.  Not just solve some riddles or Courtier some courtiers or fetch some ingredients but …

… hmmm.  How different are those sorts of activities from what I’m thinking of?  Feels like those are a subset of what I’m thinking of.  Instead of doing XYZ to solve a specific problem, do any of X1, X2, X3 and Y1, Y2, Y3, and Z1, Z2, Z3 to open a new vista in a campaign.

Of course, this idea exists outside of videogames and someone could maybe point me to another blogger or whatever who defines this better than I have.  Maybe Angry has something like this on his site and I just didn’t see it (I haven’t read a bunch of older stuff).

If you have read Master of the Five Magics, that is structured along these lines.  Any sort of mythological story of becoming king after performing certain deeds.  Arthur has to yank Excalibur to unlock kinging.  Rand does the Prophecies of the Dragon stuff, though it never feels like that actually matters as it’s much more “Oh, oh.  He just did #15 that has not yet been mentioned at all in these books.  Way to go Dragon Reborn … that the reader knows is the Dragon Reborn.”

Maybe this shouldn’t be overemphasized.  It could be an element to a campaign that is always in the background … up until triple 7 shows up and clink, clink, clink.  That fits better with not forcing players to do things they don’t want to do (either by not letting them move on from grinding goblins or by forcing them to no longer grind goblins).

The beauty of making this stuff up as I go along – I’ve played in a campaign that had this feature.  20 Goblin Winter campaign.  We ground (through multiple TPKs) through monster slaying until we could become Crab samurai.  And, it never worked well.  The Shadowlands stuff was tedious.  The Crab stuff lacked any relationship to our PCs, so we didn’t really care.  Would that have been better ending on Crabifying?  That’s a different game, and there is a better campaign out there than just racking up points killing monsters [ssshhh].

Fantasy V Fantastic

I thought I had blogged more about this, but I’m having trouble finding relevant posts.

… In searching for posts, I find that my system of categorization is not good.  I find it really hard to find things I know I wrote about.

Book ’em Danaan may be the most relevant, maybe not.

Anyway, I was having a conversation that turned to the difference between fantasy and fantastic in RPG play.  I routinely view FRPG play as not fantastic … not in the sense of enjoyable or not but in terms of …

What do I mean by the difference?

I did some minimal online research, and a French person said they make a distinction where fantasy is where magic is part of the world and known, where fantastic is mysterious, etc.  That does a pretty good job of capturing the concept I’m thinking of.

I started using the Spellsinger series of books as examples of fantasy versus fantastic.  Jon-Tom’s adventures are replete with fantastic.  The entire world he ends up in is fantastic.  But, is Clothahump, his turtle wizard mentor?  That is more fantasy.  Given a world full of humanlike animals, a humanlike animal is not fantastic.  It’s just a known aspect of the setting.  I used the example of his encountering and getting away from the shapeshifters to be fantastic.  They were an unknown, with an unknown weakness.

Fantastic is weird.  However, we want the weird to also have verisimilitude.  We don’t want silly (well, not in my FRPG play).  We want mysterious, awe-inspiring, disturbing, … to steal from overused corporate jargon … disrupting.

Because it’s fantasy.  So much of the time, I find myself in a mode of thinking of the mundane concerns with fantasy play.  Not suggesting they shouldn’t exist, but just throwing a different monster manual monster at the party isn’t fantastic – the world is supposed to be, um, magical.

I think that’s an area that isn’t used enough – the world.  More specifically, physical settings.

I can’t help but bring up Rokugan/L5R adventures.  Any oni is fantasy.  Going to other spirit realms is fantastic.  The politics isn’t even fantasy, but that was a different blog post.  Btw, Deryni novels – how much fantastic is there?  I tend to think of the politics more than the magic, as some of the magic is rather silly both in terms of how it’s used and in how it isn’t used.  Healing when introduced was fantastic.  Then, it became just fantasy as it became commonplace.  Ironically, the minor scene of them using magic for archery is more fantastic than fantasy because there’s a novelty and unusualness to that.  “Oh, by the way, we never miss targets because we know psionics, I mean magic.”

I was pointing out that water flowing uphill, trees made of fire, etc. don’t break my suspension of disbelief in fantasy worlds because … fantasy.

The Shadowlands is fantastic, and that’s maybe why I have tended to enjoy modules that go there more than most others.  Not just because of randomly deadly stuff or attempts to spook players with eerie noises or whatever but also things like cities just existing in the Shadowlands – it’s all mysterious.  L5R’s stories has plenty of fantastic.  The building of the Carpenter’s Wall is fantastic.  Patrolling it is fantasy.

“Gunso, another attack by goblins, trolls, flying oni.” – fantasy.

“What just happened, oh my Amaterasu, I’m a goblin!.” – fantastic.

Anything can happen in D&D – some god/godlike thing just teleports in, (non-statted) plants start talking to you without a spell, cities can be run by a parliament of oozes.  But, there needs to be a point to it.  Weird for weird’s sake isn’t a better experience.  Weird to spark player creativity is a better experience.  Weird to make players feel like they are playing something other than a videogame or something other than sit around a table rolling dice is a better experience.

Feng Shui – how often do PCs have to deal with critical shifts?  Transformed animals reverting?

Conan stories are often about discovering ruins or isolated cultures or whatever.  When there’s something new to be concerned about, fantastic.  When it’s just kill natives until escape, fantasy.

It occurs to me that the reason I get attracted to exotic RPGs at Gen Con is the hunt for fantastic.  Native American fantasy play is fantastic to me.  Babylon (the city) fantastic.  Exotic isn’t a bad synonym.  Meanwhile, while I can appreciate some Alice in Wonderland play, that doesn’t feel fantastic as we know elements from the stories already.  There’s a reason book characters keep encountering new stuff – that’s fantastic.  When they just deal with the same monsters, evil wizards, magic items, then it’s fantasy.

It occurs to me that that may be part of my problem with reading more Moorcock.  Corum learning to use the eye and the hand to solve his problems is fantastic.  Yet another eternal champion vs former eternal champion argument is not so much.  Yet, it occurs to me that what makes early Moorcock (in my case, early Elric) so appealing is that it’s constantly fantastic.  Maybe I don’t read enough modern fantasy, but it seems like there was a shift away from weird tales to more realistic characters with more mundane problems.  Spellsinger, which is also humorous fantasy, has a nice balance to me much of the time, though it occurs to me that sometimes I grow weary of his mundane concerns.  Certainly, his magic is fantastic as it’s completely out of control what will happen, well, it is at first and for a long time, then we get to where he has mastered his craft well enough that we no longer get scenes about how some song does something he didn’t expect but rather just bard battles where song choices get glossed over.

The point of more fantastic isn’t to screw the players.  Sure, their character sheets may become less relevant or relevant in a different way than used to.  But, fantastic doesn’t really need any mechanics; it just needs to make the world less predictable, less ordinary.

Not everything fantastic has to be some one-off.  Once you know the Forest of Magic Eating Trees exists, still fantastic when you lure your magical enemies into it and righteously slaughter them.

While a different genre, I can see analogous elements in supers play.  Change to power sets is fantastic.  Shorting out electronic locks with lightning is fantasy.  I enjoyed going to the fae realm more than a lot of adventures because it had those fantastic elements.

Anyway, do you find your FRPG play to have much fantastic in it?