BASHCon 2016 Wrap Up

BASHCon was a lot of fun, though the RPG component was pretty sparse. I think the only RPG event that wasn't Pathfinder or Peryton Affiliate game was a Marvel Supers game. I saw a pick up Paranoia in progress, but didn't get to play it. When I walked up to it I was like "Wow dude awesome, Paranoia. It's like one of my favorite, one of the best..." And the guy I said it to was like "Yeah, whatever, we're on break, beat it. You're annoying." So I slunked off.

I only played in one game, Robin's Crystal Rifts of Tartarus. This was a cool trip out to Pluto to fuck up a renegade faction of a MegaCorp's science outpost that was working with extra dimensional beings and Pluto's anti-living natives. She ran it using the Cypher system which I thought was pretty solid. Somewhere I had read that it was no great shakes, and sorta expected a D20 with extra stuff, but instead I found a neat little package. The spending ability scores at varying costs turned out to work fairly well. I think when I had read about the levels of difficulty shifting based on paying points that are also your hit-points my mind started to glaze over and I might've made a jerk off motion at the computer. I was wrong about that, it was easy and neat. Also liked the rolling dodges instead of the GM rolling hits. I'm not sure I'd ever run it, or even buy the book, but I'd definitely play it again. Still haven't decided on the "Blankety Blank who Blanks" character descriptor aspect. I was a "curious explorer who moves  like a cat." I can't figure out if it's cutesy and dumb, or just as good as any other way of giving a class combo. The adventure itself was a  nice combination of fighting and discovery with weird aliens.

I ran three games: Gimme Shelter using Tom's Crawlspace rules, Scream Bloody Gore with DCC, and Jupiter Mining Corp Disaster on Ganymede using a bastard Savage Worlds. Gimme Shelter went well, and I still haven't gotten sick of running it. Tom's UFOlogist ran behind a bus and turned invisible, stole squad car keys and an unmarked car, hit and ran some alien henchmen and staged a getaway in the most heroic action of the night. Jerry's Case Worker crawled to the bottom of the bottle but came out long enough to pick up all the other characters since he at least had a car. I don't know if Liam got that his character wasn't actually the mayor in a political sense, but Mayor of Edgewater Beach was just an honorific. But the character was supposed to be deeply delusional, so I guess this is what people mean when they talk about immersion. I didn't find out until days later that the alien ship summoned at the Rock Hall was a Boston Space Guitar, but, Randy, I'm glad it was.

Scream Bloody Gore I've written about here before. This game was made up entirely of Perytonians (Gimme Shelter on the other hand had one stranger) and was a blast. I had some second level pregens, the party ended up being a cleric, Dunston, Huggin the warrior, Decklin the Slick thief and Wizard Myria. Under cover of darkness the band arrived at a village plagued by maggot zombies. Their introduction to the situation was given by a priest tending to the funeral pyres of afflicted villagers, some who still were not dead at the time of their death. They stopped Priest Luckey from burning a baby, and demanded to know who was in charge. Dunston and Luckey shared the same god, Monolopopia, but Dunston was not familiar with this particular practice. The thief stayed with the baby while Jerry ran out for a minute and the rest of the party was taken to see Haskins, the head priest of the town. En route they were attacked by zombies and Liam got some maggots in his arm. Randy's quick witted cleric reacted with swiftness and amputated the infected limb. Liam's limbless warrior was maybe not as grateful as he could have been for the quick save, but the band played on. Around this time Jerry came back and we caught up with the thief and baby. The thief noticed maggots crawling under the skin of the swaddled lad, so he decided to leave it on the ground and make haste back to the group. This was good because you should never shake a baby. All in together, the band confronted Haskins in his shrine. Had they taken a more circuitous route, Haskins would have been like this guy:

And had killed himself to wield awesome power in undeath. But they caught him while we has making last minute preparations desecrations at the shrine to Monolopopia. The band thought Haskins was behind the maggot zombies though he was not. Still he was uncooperative because he was planning on committing ritual suicide to become an undead menace and gain unimaginable power. Soon a fight broke out and the band took charge. Once Haskins figured he was done for, he began chanting hoping Death by Cop counted as much as Hanging Oneself from a Tree in the many thousand eyes of the dark mad gods. Robin's Myria blasted him with a color spray and stopped the winging it ritual in its tracks. Soon villagers started creeping around, and perhaps somewhat surprisingly if you believe social behavior is rational, did not take well to being told their spiritual leader did not have their best interests at heart. At this point just more than an altar boy Luckey got killed, and the burning of the shrine really pissed off the town, and the villagers attacked. They then were slaughtered. At this point Haskins came to and continued his chant. Myria Charmed Haskins and a villager, and defused the situation. Here began an investigation into what was causing the zombie infestation. A few dead villagers and a not grateful enough populace later the band decided to just get the hell out of Dodge. As they left the village they came to a burning field filled with demons, and that's where we ended.

Sunday wrapped up with Jupiter Mining Company Disaster (on Ganymede). I ran this using the goofy Saveage Worlds Funnel random character generation I tlaked about here. They attribute rolling was unwieldy, unituitive and stupid. Afterwards Robin came up with what I think is a much better solution:

For each ability score roll a d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12. Record which die has the lowest result.

That should work much better and I plan on trying that out soon.
Once we got rolling the adventure went alright, but I sorta fucked up the pacing. I think for the most part people liked the tone, that of Paranoia/Red Dwarf/Black Mirror being about how work sucks. Unfortunately I didn't kill off enough people quick enough, and had two maybe villains which is too much for an under four hour con game.

I'm going to be coming back to Scream Bloody Gore and Ganymede. I think Scream Bloody Gore could work nicely as a funnel. Will report back when I have more.

Here's a photo Tom took of the Crawlspace game. I'm the tubby guy in the white shirt.

BASHCon 2016 Events

BASHCon is coming up in a few weeks, February 19-21 at the University of Toledo, and I'll be running a few games.

BASHCon 1988 was the first D&D convention I ever went to. I had just turned 9 and the trip to Toledo from Cleveland was my Birthday present. I bought a Potion of Paper Aging and got sold on a space exploration game called Expendables. After a couple of hours poking around in the dealer's room my dad came back from the university library and we headed back. The next year we got a to stay in a hotel room that had adult shit my dad had to keep off the TV and adult shit going on in the neighboring rooms.

This turned into a yearly thing until I turned 15 when I hit my low point of D&D playing and stopped doing stuff with my dad. Sometime in my early 20s I came back, and found Yu Gi Oh and heroclix and not much on the RPG front. Still there was fun to be had. My dad was pretty amused when I told him I was first going back and maybe somewhat satisfied our old activity stuck, and that I had found a something in which I can find joy. This will be the first one since the old man died, there is a lot of memory and nostalgia tied up in this thing.

BASHCon is also where I met my now good gaming buddies Tom and Robin. And it's where a woman told late 20s me that her 14ish year old daughter ought be very desirable because she was a female gamer. And she kept pushing it, like Walder Frey. It was the Times of a Dying Pancreas, and i had been puking in the parking lot earlier, so there was an onedge haze to the day already. That is one of the weirdest things to ever have happened to me, game related or not. I'd entertain it being a deranged figment of my imagination if my buddy Nick wasn't there giving me what the fuck is going on looks. Whodini told me the freaks come out at night, not at D&D conventions.

This will be the first year in many that I run events at BASHCon. When I was 11 I registered to run a game. When my players arrived and saw it was a kid refereeing, they suddenly remembered they were gonna be late for work and had to bail. A bit later my friend Justin and I saw them playing D&D in a lounge area on the way out. Justin called them out on faking work, I just wanted to climb into the Catacombs of Doom. This experience now presents me with a potential dilemma. If I ever show up to a con game and it's a kid sitting there running it, do I stay or cut? On the one hand I remember the humiliation I felt, on the other hand I kinda hate kids...

What I'm running:

Gimme Shelter for Crawlspace. I've written about his one here, its a mad camp romp often fueled by drugs (real and roleplayed) to get to a homeless shelter while avoiding cops and cultists.

Jupiter Mining Company Disaster using the DCC-ified Savage Worlds rules from last week. Disaster will strike the paper pushers of the future who do the busy work on a Ganymede water extraction outpost in order to maintain fictions about labor and human endeavour. And there will be robots that have grumpy cat heads.

Scream Bloody Gore DCC-RPG. Based of the death metal record by Death (Florida). My first and second posts on here were on this idea. Dark fantasy, undead, deranged priests. Each song of the ten songs corresponding to a point on this point crawl, and also serve as the clock/timeline of events. Was gonna run it with second level characters so there's some mercurial magic hyjinks, but maybe I'll do zero level with a suspicious number of dark grimoires available to the bakers and swineherds.

Gimme Shelter Contest Announcement & Advertainment

I’ve spaced out on this D&D Blog because a buddy was in a coma, then died. To paraphrase the rapper Noreaga, “I didn’t want to make a D&D thing, my buddy just died.” I already got good use of the actual lyric earlier this year, “My excuse is my pops just died, and I ain’t wanna make music, my pop’s just died” (Invincible Capone-N-Noreaga). There have been a quite a few blown saves this year, but that how it goes.

But all this downer shit is ultimately for the best because it has D&D applications! Stay tuned for posts on a Misery Index Rule system. Sorta like sanity rules, but a measure of the awful shit that hits a character: fallen comrades, illithid attacks, existential dread. I think I’m going to try and work up something fun and interesting on this tip for the post apocalyptic game I’m going to run soon. Been kicking ideas around in my head and will share some soon.

The real purpose of this post is crassly commercial. Back on Halloween, Peryton Publishing released a Crawlspace scenario I wrote, Gimme Shelter. The players take the roles of marginalized individuals who may or may not have secret information about Alien Demons. Contemporary horror stumbling through Cleveland, Ohio, chased from bars and libraries and framed for crimes while ducking creatures and cops.

John G did the cover and an interior piece, and I think they both look pretty great, and convey the tone of how we play. John and I have been friends forever and worked on plenty of schemes and projects together. Our freshman year of highschool John got us invited to play D&D in a garage with candles and cool teenage clubhouse vibe. We both didn't get invited back because we were too disruptive. I don't remember what it was we did. Might be something related to what the Battlelords of the 23rd Century dude inscribed in a book we shared, "Inner turmoil forever." I'm glad Tom from Peryton was cool with me pulling in my own guy.

So at the very least it looks cool. It is written as more of a framework than a step by step adventure, so there is enough stuff that can be readily dropped into contemporary, near future or near past horror game.

Past sessions have had characters punching through walls in Ghost Wife Power Armor to explore alien laboratories in preparation for battling yuppies and commandeering yuppie yachts, an obnoxious yet strangely charismatic laborer enlisting a squadron of mad men to take control of a robot army, and a world weary social worker who watched on in defeated resignation as the history’s largest rally (devival) proclaiming the way of Bob Dobbs happened within the confines of a telephone booth.

In the book you’ll find a cast of weird characters and sets of mundane places and a list of Weird Shit to add to the mix.

If you, reader of this blog, would like a free, physical, paper copy mailed to your door, for absolutely free, leave a comment on this post saying so. In ten days, December 1, 2015 I’ll randomly select one lucky winner. If your commenting login isn’t tied to your google plus account, make sure there is some way I can then contact you if you are the winner.

New shit should be coming soon, like a recap of the last DCC R&PL session that was already over a month ago, Misery Index shit, Post Apocalypse stuff, and some writing for a sci-fi mining tragedy funnel I’ll be running at Bash Con in Toledo, Ohio in February.  

Me and artist John G circa 1987.

Feeding Me Lines - Talking RPG Talking, Not Blow

Last year on our way to Con on the Cob, my friend Marty and I began saying things like:
"Wait where is the hotel?"
"Ahh, it lay past yond eldritch tower."
"Yes, just through the twisted bramble."
It cracked us up. So we decided every time we said one of these phrases, we'd get a point. While being teenagers plagued by Krampus traipsing through a dark wood in an event run by the great folks of Rogue Cthulhu we were sure to point out the blood was dripping from yond eldritch tower and that the only route for escape was through the twisted bramble. And we'd mark hashes on our sheets, and add up the points in the Marty-Beckett extra fun time game.

This gave me an idea to apply to games I run, give the players lines for their characters to say and give them an equivalent of a Marty-Beckett extra fun time game point when they do. It helps to build theme and atmosphere through player engagement and interaction.

The Dying Earth RPG has a similar mechanic, the Tagline. At the beginning of each session of The Dying Earth, the GM assigns each player two taglines, and each player selects one. They reflect a particular Vancian locution to conjure that convoluted whimsy of the end of Earth's days. Taglines also give experience points.

Artwork by John G for the forthcoming Crawlspace scenario Gimme Shelter

The first scenario I used this mechanic is in Gimme Shelter, an event I ran at Gen Con and am running again in a couple of weeks at this year's Con on the Cob. It uses the Crawlspace ruleset, a rules light horror game that uses ordinary playing cards for the resolution mechanic. It is fast and fun and I recommend checking it out. Gimme Shelter should be published by Peryton sometime in the near future.

The scenario follows a group of marginalized people that may or maynot have secret information about demons or aliens. Kind of a Save the Green Planet! but on the street and in shelters. Before we start playing, I give everyone a card with a phrase, and once they work it in, they get a "fame card" (allows a second attempt on actions) and another phrase. I run it as player driven as possible, and the cards go a long way in setting the tone without me having to do much talking.

Here is part of Gimme Shelter's "script":

• Oh, do we have something on our face?
• Who do I look like? Ratso Rizzo on the bus man?
• Those boys are following me on a speaker phone.
• Oh, you don’t understand. That isn’t me, he’s our husband.
• Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?
• We’re just actors in a dream. It’s all an illusion.
• Plate. Or Shrimp. Or plate of shrimp.
• The puppet show of sight and sense.
• Well of course they couldn’t have let me stay there, I’d have just crapped on the floor again.
• She’s not a crackhead. I met her before she smokes crack.

I think using a tagline type mechanic can work in all sorts of games, and can really help to establish a tone. Before the next session of DCC R&PL I will create a list to use for that. I think one XP is about the right scale for DCC.