gamesandrants

Kia Ora patient nerds!

Today's Topic: 2018 so far

It's been quite some time since I last posted, which means our main conventions of the year have been and gone! Buckets of Dice and Phoenix were both fantastic as ever and I even went to my first Cerberus (Dunedin's annual LARP convention).
My newest LARP, Tears of Heaven, is intended to tell the story of the extended walking part of a high fantasy adventure. It ran for the first time at Phoenix and was really well received. Now, for the first time, I am trying to write another LARP specifically to build on the format of a previous game, another walking game but in a post apocalyptic setting With four completed LARPs now (not including Brokenville) I really need to get around to publishing some things!

What I'm playing

I successfully ran my first D&D game, so there's a goal achieved! I have also got two new games that blur the lines of board games and roleplaying in interesting ways: Roll Player and Phoenix: Dawn Command. I think both kinds of game have a lot to learn from each other, so I am excited to see more interesting cross overs in the future.

Here's a thing

Some of my friends have quite a lot of feelings about Mars rovers, so I made a scenario for 14 Days about being a little Mars rover who is trying their best. 14 Days is a game about dealing with chronic migraines, but I felt like it was also weirdly perfect for what I wanted from this.

Brave Little Rover


Ciarán

Kia Ora improvisers

Today's Topic: On the fly

As a GM, I tend to do very little prep. I lie to have a couple of ideas about where things might go, but I am most interested in taking things where the characters dictate. In a one-shot, I might bring in a possible idea for a main plot, but abandon it completely when someone makes a character that gives me an "aha" moment (I find this happens most of all in Monsterhearts). I very much appreciate games that specifically allow me to run the game with no preparation at all. In order to help me run games that can change around a lot or include a great deal of improvisation, here are some things that can really come in handy.

Use the players: There are a number ways of doing this, and you can do multiple in one game! Firstly, you can ask the players questions at the beginning of the game, perhaps as character questionnaires or have a list of questions about the scenario or situation, asking one to each player. You can also ask questions during the game. It helps for these to be quite leading questions. "You hear a chilling noise. What does it remind you of?"

Name lists: This is a small one but extremely helpful for creating NPCs quickly. In my recent Cane Hill Monsterhearts game, I named each NPC after a wing of the asylum. Having the list there was very useful and the themed names really helped to link everything together.

A map: You can find all kinds of maps online, and the best part is that you don't even have to label it or decide what goes where. You can ask the players! To be fair, you can create a map from scratch with the players as well, but both are fun.

Index cards: Everything the players say or do is valuable, so keep notes. You will be able to find ways for it to come back to bite them later. It also always sucks when you come up with a good NPC and can't quite remember their name when you need them again.

If you want to learn more about improvising your RPGs, I highly recommend reading Unframed. It contains a tonne of essays by some very prominent GMs and game creators and is definitely worth a read. I learned a LOT!

What I'm playing

I just got to play Questlandia for the first time and absolutely loved it! It combines things that I love about a whole bunch of my favourite games. It feels a bit Fiasco, a bit The Quiet Year and a bit Microscope, and adds dice pool allocation, which I am desperate for more of in RPGs (I'll go into that some more in a future blog). It is a GMless game that focuses on worldbuilding as you play key figures in a declining fantasy kingdom of your own design. The book is well written and laid out, and it is definitely a game I will be able to bust out in a wide range of situations. Although it is GMless, I could see myself acting as a dedicated GM rather than a PC for a group of newer players.
The different aspects of the game combine well to give you plenty to get started with and build tension as you make tough decisions with that dice pool allocation I mentioned earlier. At the end of our play through, we felt very satisfied with the story we had collectively told and the world we had created.

I ran a very short lived but fun "campaign" of 7th Sea, set in their South American analogue, Aztlan. It was supposed to be significantly longer, but issues with player commitments meant that it had to be cut short at just two sessions. Somehow, I feel like I did manage a pretty satisfying conclusion, tying together a lot of loose threads and making a suitably epic final encounter. I'm a bit sad that it didn't get to continue, but the finale went a long way to making sure I was at peace with it. I probably won't attempt 7th Sea as the next campaign I run, but I am pretty desperate to actually get to play in it myself at some point.

I've also been playing some tactical miniatures games, notably Imperial Assault and Zombicide. Both are pretty great fun. They sort of bridge a gap between RPG and board game. This is a gap I want to continue to explore (as hinted earlier, I'll be blogging about that in the future).

Here's a thing

I made this quite some time ago, but it fits well with the "Improv" theme of today. I still think it's a LARP, but others say it's really more of a long form Improv format. Either way, I have played it a bunch and enjoyed it every time. It is based on a play of the same name by my favourite writer of all time, Philip Ridley.

Brokenville


Ciarán

Kia Ora LARPers

Today's Topic: LARPy thoughts

Phoenix happened last weekend, the first time it has taken place at a campground and the result was pretty excellent. It was also the debut of S.W.I.P.E. (Symbiotes Will Inherit Planet Earth) the third instalment in my (rather arrogantly named, only barely thematically linked) Acronym Trilogy! With that game done and pretty well received, I will be looking to publish the set at some point in the future. There will definitely be some tweaking, especially to E.S.P.A., but I am excited to get them out there.

I have once again been reminded how crazy it is that more people don't LARP, having convinced a friend to come and try it for the first time at Phoenix. Though it is seen as a very geeky, almost antisocial hobby, it's one of the most social things you can do. It develops your skills in acting, costuming, negotiating, problem solving and much more. Sure, LARP can be about hitting each other with foam swords (and who doesn't want to do that?!), but most of the games I play are more about experiencing feelings and situations you otherwise wouldn't get to, and telling an interesting story with your friends. I was also excited to find out that the gender balance this year was 23 male, 19 female, 1 non-binary, so not just a bunch of dudes! Given how accepted video games have become as a hobby, it seems ludicrous to me that LARP often is not.

What I'm playing

Here is a (spoiler free) rundown of all the games I played at Phoenix this year:

Round 1: Baby It’s Cold Outside- Writer and GM Carla Bayard. This game was a fun and silly way to start off the convention. A huge turn of events resulted in me, (essentially Indiana Jones/Batman) feeling like the most sensible person there. Special thanks to Keegan for the hostility and the caring and Ella for really coming out swinging in your first game. You were insane. I recommend this game to anyone who likes a bit of a romp and some odd happenings.

Round 2: The Paragon’s Peril- Writer and GM Daniel Starky. This game was a little heavier emotionally than I expected, which was excellent! It gave me a tale of crumbling dreams and rebuilding with what you’ve got. The moral of the story, never meet your heroes. Special thanks to Lee, for being the worst childhood idol ever. I recommend this to anyone who likes Masks (more on that later) and superheroes with feelings.

Round 3: Fool’s Gambit- Writer and GM Matt Swain. Lord Charles Arthur Michael Barrington-Smythe was an interesting character study. I look forward to hearing about this game’s second run, as there is something great in there with some tweaks. My main recommendation is honing it down into a small group of highly focused characters. Special thanks to Mutu for the most intense three moves of chess I have played and Sally for making me really, really upset in the last five minutes. I recommend this to anyone who likes the Cold War and wants to see what it's like to be a part of it.

Round 4: The Beginner’s Guide to Buying and Selling Haunted Items. Writers and GMs- Chloe Sutherland and Robert Vincent. I’m not often much of a flagship person, but this was outstanding. Lots of clever and elegant mechanisms that didn’t bog down the game and an evocative range of props and other set items made this a real experience. Special thanks to Tayla for being just vicious and gullible enough and Jo for knocking me out at just the right time. I recommend this game to anyone who likes to have plenty to do in a game.

Round 5: Persephone’s Choice- Writer and GM Larp Wellington. I had a very, very difficult time trying to convince humans of my viewpoint, and my failure was truly rewarding. I definitely felt a lot of R. App Elby’s stress. Special thanks to William for trying extremely hard to keep me sane and Summer for nearly breaking through my programming and forcing a robotic tear. I recommend this to anyone who has a lot of Thoughts about robots, or wants to. For the truly unique experience I got out of it, I think this may have been my game of the weekend.

Round 6: S.W.I.P.E.- My own game. I thiiiiiink everyone liked it. There was clear fatigue from a busy weekend but everyone gave it all they could and I really appreciated that. Special thanks to Jeremy for voluntarily fainting at the strain of suppressing part of himself (might think about making a mechanic for that!) and spinning a whole tonne of BS and Izzy for bringing all of the emotional bleed. I'll let others recommend this. Hopefully they will.

Here's a thing

Apart from all the LARPing, I have also just finished playing in an excellent little Masks campaign. As a character with high "Superior", I found myself using the "Assess the Situation" move a lot and finding it somewhat... lacking. My main issues were that the question list seemed to mostly include questions that should be readily apparent/already known, eg "What here is the biggest threat?" or provide answers that the GM doesn't really want to give/ the players don't really want, eg "How could we best end this quickly?". Of course, your results may vary but here is a version of the move that I made that solves the issues I had I borrowed a little from Dungeon World, but not much. There are also now six questions instead of five, but I always found I ran out of options before when I could ask three.

Assess the Situation


Ciarán

Kia Ora friends

Today's Topic: Space!

It's my holidays right now, which means this is the time for me to do any work on creative things for myself, without having to worry about students and lesson planning. I've been thinking a lot about space.
Firstly, I'm writing my LARP, S.W.I.P.E., for Phoenix 2017. It's about a group of energy based aliens who have possessed some humans and are readying for the invasion. However, it's been a while with no contact and... maybe they're having second thoughts. This game has been really challenging to write as the human sides and the alien sides of these beings are both involved. It's pretty weird (as you will have come to expect from my games).
I also was recently gifted a copy of the new "Far Beyond Humanity" supplement for Uncharted Worlds. Uncharted Worlds is the PbtA equivalent of Traveller. I had been looking for a simple sci-fi game (prefereably PbtA) for aaages and this was finally it! In its basic form, it can tell stories like Firefly, The Expanse and Battlestar Galactica (somewhat realistic and mainly about humans). I am excited that this supplement opens things up to include things you might like from Star Trek, Star Wars, Mass Effect and more. I am now pretty excited to attempt a campaign. Maybe I even have time for one!

What I'm playing

I've been playing more board games lately, which has been nice. To continue the space theme, Tiny Epic Galaxies with the new "Beyond the Black" expansion has hit the table a few times. I've also played quite a lot of Mystic Vale, which I really enjoy for its unique mechanic.
I played in a one-off guest role as part of a D&D campaign with some people I didn't know, which was rather fun. When I arrived, the GM presented me with a list of meta-rules about how he wants everyone to behave and the kind of stories he wanted to tell. I found this super useful! I immediately felt put at ease about playing with people I didn't know and knew what the expectations were. I will probably talk more about pre-game communication between GM and players in another entry because I think it's very important and I know I haven't always used this as well as I could in the past.
I have also now run two sessions of the game I am going to present to you in the next segment!

Here's a thing

There's a pretty good chance that you have come across the wonderful microsystem called Roll for Shoes. I have recently put together a scenario using the system to tell the story of a group of alien beings readying Earth for invasion. The premise of the game is similar to that of my LARP, S.W.I.P.E. but much lighter and sillier (no spoilers either). Both sessions I have run involved a lot of laughter and fun.

Roll for Invasion


Ciarán

Kia Ora friends

Today's Topic: Dungeons & Dragons

In all honesty, I'm rather a hipster when it comes to games. Although I do have some favourite systems, I tend to get the most fun out of playing a variety of different systems and settings, most of which are on the more indie side of things.
In my local game group, D&D 5th Edition has become enormous and is essentially the only game that many people play. Some friends of mine are in upwards of three campaigns of D&D, each meeting once a week. The reason for its popularity is obvious, so I'm not even going to get into that. It's also a great game, doing a lot for the hobby.
Sometimes I wonder though, what is it that makes people stick to a particular game? I am somewhat puzzled by people who are able to play a game and decide 'This is the one. I don't need other RPGs.'
I am more like a fantail, flitting from system to system as whims take me, trying things out and then moving on.
I love that our hobby has so many people with different likes and desires from their gaming. I also love that when I do want to play some D&D (which is reasonably often) our local DMs are very practiced and I always have a great time.

What I'm playing

Over the Easter weekend, I got together with some of my old gaming buddies from high school for a D&D marathon. We essentially played 10am-5pm Friday and 10am-10pm Saturday (with some breaks). The game was expertly DMed by my friend Chris, with a strong focus on our characters' personal goals and backstories. I felt a strong investment in my character, a bar-tending bard and was genuinely upset for him when it was invaded by his arch-nemesis: the Guzzler.
D&D worked excellently for our epic combats, and fairly well for our negotiation sequences as well.
It didn't help us quite so much in out investigations, however. D&D is a great game, but I think most would admit that it can't do everything. Overall, it was a very rewarding time!

Here's a thing

Obviously I've had D&D on the brain for a while now, so this is for use as a unique set-up for a D&D campaign. It has an initial sequence of play where the GM rotates each session. A gaming goal for me this year has been to experiment with sharing the GM role, or getting rid of it in unexpected places, so I very much hope I can give this a try. If you end up testing it, please let me know!

D&D- Heroes of Tragedy

Enjoy,

Ciarán