JiffyCon was Fun!

Yay!

There were some serious driving adventures, what with getting stupid lost trying to get to Stow to pick up Dave Younce (who is cool and I hope to see more of in the future) on the way out, and getting pulled over (but only given a warning!) on the way back. If you haven’t yet, you should check out the pictures put up by Bret and Shreyas. Here’s what my morning Annalise game looked like (sans players):

The game went very well, I thought. We managed to get through the whole thing in the 4.5 hours or so of the morning session, with three players. This is a fairly accelerated pace, as the game is designed to go for maybe 3 or 4 sessions with 4 players, but I think we made it work just fine.

Our story was a small one. We played three high schoolers in a small town in middle America, two girls who were friends and thought that they were better than everyone else for different reasons, and a geeky guy who felt like he had to to handle everything important by himself. He has a crush on one of the girls. They all end up going into the big city to see a KMFDM show, with some stoner goth friends. At the show, they see their Con Law teacher, all gothed-up, who doesn’t seem too happy to see them. Over the course of the show, a Mysterious Stranger appears, and it becomes apparent that a segment of the crowd is very, very enthusiastic. Blood begins to pool on the floor. The Mysterious Stranger is very interested in the girl that the guy has a crush on.

The show ends, and the kids are kept from leaving by a number of tattooed strangers who seem to be taking orders from the Mysterious Stranger. The other girl is taken to an abandoned office by a “bouncer”, and the guy and girl (who has started to reciprocate the crush) are stopped by their teacher, who had tried to warn them, and now says that he’ll get the other girl if they think they can make it out on their own. The Mysterious Stranger stops them as they try to leave, the guy (who reveals that he hears voices in his head) ends up taking him out by stabbing him in the neck with the inverted crucifix worn by one of the tattooed guys. They run for it.

The teacher takes out the “bouncer” and frees the other girl, and tells her to run for it when he gives the word. He gives it, and she starts across the club, and sees her goth friends tied up in chairs and bleeding out of open wounds, with a bunch of creepy tattooed people dancing and, uh, partaking. She reveals that she doesn’t think that anyone is actually good enough to be her friend, and she escapes before anyone can stop her.

The next day, their Con Law class goes as normal, except that they get one significant eyebrow from the teacher. The guy and girl have an awkward “hey-you-like-me-huh” conversation, and kind of end up asking each other out.

I still have some work to do on the game, specifically with messing with the main conflict mechanic so that it makes sense to people other than me, but I’m amazed with how solid it is. We had a really fun game, and many thanks to Kat and Melissa for playing with me!

In the afternoon, I played Jeff Lower’s Giants with Jeff and Shreyas. Here’s the map from our game. It’s really cool. I played a fire demon giant and Shreyas played a giant Wolf lord, and we stopped the Eternal Winter from coming by laying waste to a human city with an insane king. The game is fun, and I want to play a long-term game of it, maybe after the holidays. I mean this as a total compliment, though it may sound bad: The game is like being a Giant. Simple, direct, big (in scope and character), and without a lot of extraneous material. And making the map is super-fun.

Dinner was big and fun, and I got to catch up with people and just spend quality time.

After dinner was also big and fun. I ended up splitting off from the Baker’s and going over to Julia’s with Dev, Dave Younce and Eppie, and later Other Nathan showed up. We hung out and petted Julia’s beautiful cats and played Murder Ballad Blackjack. It’s like Baron Munchhausen for folk song nerds. I liked it!

And then homewards, with misadventures.

I feel…not recharged, per se, but more just reassured that the people I know from this community rock, and that I can depend on them to have a good time sharing a hobby I love without needed to engage with all the shit on the internet that I hate. And that’s a good feeling.

Can’t wait ’til the next one.

Update & Some Music

I’m heading out to JiffyCon on Saturday, which I’m mega-excited about.

I’m running a weekly Aberrant game for some friends, which is going well and is scratching all my long-term-established-setting-high-character-immersion itches.

I was playing in a weekly GURPS game with rotating “campaigns”, but I’m sitting the next cycle out. I need time to work on Annalise. It’s, as my buddy who’s playing in both of these games with me and who playtested Darkpages and Annalise with me aptly said, “A different kind of fun”.

Speaking of, I’ll be running it at JiffyCon, and shortly therafter have it available for interested readers, I expect. This is the first game I’m writing while listening to an extensive soundtrack (or any soundtrack at all, really), which has been a very rewarding ritual. So far tonite:

• Depeche Mode
• Goldfrappe
• Rammstein
• Oingo Boingo
• Lords of Acid
• Healer
• Evanescence
• The New Pornographers
• Rilo Kiley
• The Cure
• Sisters of Mercy
• Bauhaus

Though, the single theme song for the game is definitely Bat for Lashes’s ‘Sarah’.

{Annalise} More Playtesty Goodness

Played some more Annalise tonight. One of my players ended up not coming, cuz of a scheduling snafu, but it turns out the game is fine with people coming in and out. We brainstormed some stuff to get him up to speed next week, once idea of which is made of awesome sauce, maybe.

How the game works is, each player has a scene for their character in rotation, and when it’s your turn you pick one of the other players to be your scene guide. The other people get to have a hand in your scene, but it’s basically you and the scene guide until you’re done. Anyway, we have four people, so it could maybe be really effective to have two pairs going at once, until all the characters are up to speed. We shall see.

Anyhow, I recorded the session, which I hope turns out to be as useful as I think it’ll be. We discovered that there’s some kind of creepy occult group centered around mystical glyphs that get carved on people’s teeth, which may or may not be in the service of the vampire. My character isn’t willing to let anyone or anything get the better of her, and she’s trying to figure out what’s up with this cult; Jesse’s character keeps on getting these messages, through various channels, that someone or something is “watching him”, and he’s trying to figure out the cult as well, using math; and Can’s character is rapidly getting absorbed into the cult, though he may or may not end up fighting against it. Pat’s character is the unknown equation - so far, all we know is that he’s on someone’s trail, though not for what purpose.

This game centers around my favorite part of roleplaying, and it’s working in that way really well. It needs some economy fixing, and we have yet to see how the second half of it plays, but I’m feeling really positive. Really, really positive.

Yay!

Another Adventure Begins

I began playtesting my new game, Annalise, last week.

From my current intro:

The games is about creating Vampire stories from the perspective, not of the Vampire, but of his victims, servants, enemies, and others affected by his appetites. This is creating the story of Dracula by playing Van Helsing, Mina Harker and Renfield; it is the story of Lost Boys by playing the younger brother, the two vampire hunters and the grandfather.

We did character discovery and the first scene of the first phase of play, and it was solid. I mean, I took a ton of notes, and I have an idea of stuff to start carving away now, and we obviously have just barely began to engage with the economy and reward cycles, but my group seemed pleased with the core stuff and we’re looking forwards to continuing it (or at least I am).

Anyway, I’m polishing up my notes and procedural rules text into a more human-readable document. The stuff for the first phase of play is all done (with copious examples!), and the second “half” of the game is mostly elaborations and modifications of the mechanics for the first part, so it shouldn’t take so long to finish up.

The point being, by next weekend I should have a fairly usable playtest draft. So, if anyone’s interested in checking it out, lemme know!

Oh, and here’s a first draft of the “first half” character sheet. It’s looking like you’ll need a different sheet for the second half, and this one is actually already out of sync with my latest rules revision, but whatever. I’m digging how it looks so far.

Annalise Character Sheet

I’m excited.

Ties

I just got really excited about my tie-breaking mechanic for a new game.

“Once the active player and the scene guide both have dice, they roll them and order them sequentially. Look at the highest single result for each person; if the active player is higher, then he “wins” the first volley, and he describes how his trait and actions get him closer to his goal. If the scene guide is higher, than the active player loses the first volley, and the scene guide describes what this means in the fiction. If they are a tie, both dice are returned to their owners and you look at the next highest pair. If all pairs are ties, then the contest is interrupted by something that means it will have to continue on later. This something can be declared by anyone at the table, and that person automatically claims the conflict (as it has become a discrete repeatable action).”

That’s right; ties mean that the conflict gets broken off before it’s resolved, and turns into a resource that someone can bring back at any time in order to influence a different conflict. That’s hella cool, no?