News Bits: 9/30/2013

This week's NEWS:

SeaFall, new "Legacy" game, coming in 2014 from Plaid Hat Games and Rob Daviau [Link] I thought the idea behind Risk: Legacy was awesome (if cringe-inducing to this collector), but I don't like the underlying game enough to give it a go. This new game looks fantastic: a 4x game set in an alternate age of discovery that remembers grudges and evolves as you play. This one I would love to try.

Tales of Legend and Woe at Gencon 2013

Yesterday, FarmerLenny wrote up his experience at Gen Con, primarily regarding the games he played.  Now it's my turn.  I'll talk about some games, but I feel that my experiences go beyond just playing a few demos, and most of the games I played were also played by FarmerLenny, so I don't need to bore you with unnecessary details.  It was definitely a wild ride, but not all of what happened was super fantastic, even though it tried to be.

So, without further ado, here's what happened at Gen Con.

The Calm Before the Storm and other Stories

The lesson learned from my most recent session of my ongoing DnD/Pathfinder campaign, Fallen Heroes, is that not every great idea works well right out of the box.

RPGs: The Readied Action

The other day on twitter, I found myself (read: violently broke into) in a conversation about Readied Actions and their appropriate usage, with a few other players of various DnD brands.  A particular frustration expressed was when players used a readied action to constantly get a jump on baddies, trying to achieve surprise round after surprise round.

Being that I am somewhat of a blogger on RPG topics, I decide to dig into the readied action a little bit, and share my thoughts with the world, AKA "you guys."

Fallen Heroes, Chapter 5: This Might Be Harder Than We Thought

This session of my Fallen Heroes campaign was possibly the most interesting. This session focused not so much on combat, or even overcoming challenges.  This chapter really brought out character backstories, and some of their conflicting natures.  Players darkest secrets were blasted in their own faces.  Surprisingly, a lot of the conflict that arose centered around the secret alternate identity of one of the characters, which I did not plan or expect to be fully revealed at this point.   The mechanics of this session?  Almost entirely just telling a story.  The challenge wasn't dice rolling.  It was presenting situations that dug deep into characters feelings.  And it was awesome.  I'm basically just going to tell the stories because I'm pretty happy with what happened.

Fallen Heroes, Chapter 3: Flying Heroes

Picking up right where we left off, our heroes were taking a leisurely ride on an eccentric old dwarf's airship. It was, perhaps the calm before the storm, as they were heading towards the ominous "Fortress of Souls."  As far as they knew, this was the only airship in existence in the entire world.

Not too long after resting up, the players find themselves on some floating mountain islands.  In the sky.  Why the detour?  Gakkeren, the dwarf, had visited those mountains many times before, and their friendly Skypeople inhabitants.  But something was wrong.

Fallen Heroes, Chapter 2: Frozen In...

This week, in Fallen Heroes...

Our heroes set out after resting at the Wizard's tower, heading for the Dwarf's keep.  The journey was almost incident free, except for a strange, mysterious, and apparently incorporeal person appearing along the way.  After babbling a few nonsense sentences about everyone being so small and how tiny it was in here (this encounter occurred in the great outdoors, in a wide-open field) he made some remarks about each player, hints at their true backstory, causing players to question each other temporarily.

RPG Reflections Part 3: Truly, a Role Playing Game

Check out Part 1 here: RPG Reflections Part 1: The Story So Far
and Part 2 here: RPG Reflections Part 2: The Bad, The Ugly

In the initial scene, players were tasked with fighting off Kobolds in an unfamiliar town.  They had not yet met each other, so each player started in a separate part of town.  In addition to this, the characters would have had no knowledge of the other player's presence, and thus would have no reason to intentionally search them out.

RPG Reflections Part 2: The Bad, The Ugly

See Part 1 of this post here: RPG Reflections Part 1: The Story So Far
and Part 3: RPG Reflections Part 3: Truly, a Role Playing Game

In the first encounter of this session, players began in a town without knowing each other.   To simulate the idea of the players not having any idea where the other players were, I drew a large map on gridded paper of the entire town, then cut it up into small 8x6 areas.  Each player had their area in front of them, and the surrounding areas were only placed when the players wanted to move into them.  This way, as the battle slowly went on, the players could explore freely, not knowing where they were relative to the other players.  The town map slowly assembled and two players actually found each other before the battle ended.

RPG Reflections Part 1: The Story So Far.

Last night, I started my new, original DnD/Pathfinder campaign, entitled "Fallen Heroes."  I should also note that this is my first time ever hosting a DnD style roleplaying game.  It went fairly well, I think, but not perfectly and I thought I'd take an honest look back while the memories are fresh, so that I, and maybe some of you as well, can learn a little something.

Let's Make 'Em Dance!

It's been on hiatus during the holiday season, but this weekend my DnD group is starting up a new adventure, with myself at the helm as GM.  As a result, RPGs have been on my mind in the past couple of days as I work on the last details of my next session.  I'm actually running a Pathfinder campaign, which for those of you who don't know, is an update /offshoot of Dungeons and Dragons version 3.5.

A lot of what I've been focusing on, aside from updating character sheets to the right stats and abilities, is not really system-specific.  As I create my plot, I'm working not just on story advancement, but ways to give the players some unique choices, as well as ways to make combat and non-combat encounters unique.