Wednesday 24 February 2016

World of Darkness

Well it was good to get back to the club after a brief holiday in snowland and I was pleased to have met a new member, Nathan I think, though I could of course be making that up as these days it takes me a few hundred attempts to get  people right though oddly enough I am better with character names. Either way it was a pleasure to shake his hand but with a slight reservation that the lights immediately went out when I did. Now this could be a superhero or mutant power just exhibiting it's first presence or perhaps a side effect of an evil profession but we don't judge anyone here at the club so if there are any budding Witches, Worlocks or Werewolves out there who feel they need a break from real life then do get yourself along for some games and a pint.
 
As a result of the unscheduled onset of complete darkness I did pull back the FengShui crowd to my place where we got a good session in and as I understand it the DnD game went down to The Dice Saloon. I can't think of any other city other than Brighton where if your local RPG club undergoes massive reality failure you can simply walk down the hill to another one. Anyway I hope the guys got a good session in down there and I'll interrogate them at the next meet.
 
The power outage did spur a few jokes and a conversation on the White Wolf  RPG World of Darkness; a series of fictional universes used as a backdrop to horror based adventures, most notably Vampire: The Masquerade, which is also very LARPable. Uncommonly the genre is known as Gothic Punk I think but now the games have been rebranded as Chronicles of Darkness.
 
On another tack, my recent visit to the Arctic got me wondering if there are any completely ice world scenarios I have ever roleplayed in and actually I don't think that I have. Being a polar opposite so to speak (although a polar opposite is in fact another pole) I did remind myself of an old DarkSun game I enjoyed - although if any of you have played it, is a bitch of a world and extremely hard to stay alive in. The harshness of day to day life really made an impression on me which does boost the feeling of even small successes, though I eventually lost my character to the Great Desert
 
Feng Shui and DnD on for this week -see you Thursday



Saturday 13 February 2016

Odins Gate

Well, it appears that I am still on my hols but according to my scratchy internet comms up here in the Arctic circle it would appear that there is never an excuse to miss a blog entry. So I have spent a thorough 5 minutes trying to discern the roleplaying scene in Norway but appropriately enough its all a bit of a mystery. So all I can proffer up are some fragments on my journey so far and leave better imaginations than my own to thread an adventure together. I've certainly worked with far less in my time.

Gargoyle issues and a Necromancer's temple..



Thor's hammer and presumably his cat


An aerodynamically questionable iron angel


Odins gate. He wasn't in..

Tuesday 2 February 2016

One round left


For the most part game mechanics should be the perpetual angelic child that is seen and not heard as far as a clean gaming experience is concerned. One cannot of course help but take note of particularly slick systems due to the abundance of poor  mechanics at the other end of the spectrum and it is an often visited subject at the club.
 
The Feng Shui system has left me in two minds regarding this. As eye wateringly fun as the content is I was left with the impression that after the last action packed episode that we had after a coupe of hours gaming only actually completed one round of play. Now to be fair, we had split the party up and were all baying for the GMs attention so this was always going to test GM Jack's sanity as well as bending the system in several directions. It is also not all that uncommon for a particular session to slow when everyone is off doing different things, more so in various combat or hand to hand scenarios.
 
However things are not all that they seem. Feng Shui basically creates a points ladder upon which every character is placed according to a starting initiative and as actions are expended by all concerned, npc's included, everyone slowly jumps down the ladder. All the GM has to do is count down the ladder until each character is encountered and an action performed whereupon they are moved down again - as characters leave the action they are removed from the ladder. As a picture is still worth a thousand words here is what I am trying to say
 
 
I did find a reddit on this so in someone else words:
 
"
Everyone rolls a d6 and adds their speed, this is the "shot" they act on. The person with the highest shot goes first. They perform an action which has a "shot cost" and their "shot" is reduced by this cost. After the highest shot goes, the GM counts down by ones and everyone whose current shot is that number goes.
Example: I rolled a 5 on a d6 and have a speed 8 so my starting shot is 13. I have the highest shot so I go first. I do a regular attack which costs 3 shots, I perform my attack and my shot is now 10. Once everyone with 12 and 11 goes, I get to go again. If multiple people have the same shot number, PCs go first and if multiple PCs have the same shot number, they go left to right from the GM.
"
 
So the upshot is that actually this isn't a round as such but a sort of collective noun for several rounds. I don't known what that is...rounders ? Either way we are now at the bottom of the ladder after which I can only presume we roll our shot dice again and like all things in life it's a matter of understanding it properly to appreciate how it works.
 
 
The rather large cave troll figurine represents the head chef in a kitchen where I am having a slight altercation. I hadn't realised he used to work for Sauron but either way he has an empty Pizza box belonging to me that needs to be recycled properly so a gunfight is now ongoing. That makes me an eco warrior of sorts I suppose. Above is a quick shot of GM Jack mid game when we are all trying to ask stupid questions.