Shadowrun dreams (player POV session reports)

My last Shadowrun session (as a player after YEARS) is still fresh and I am so hyped right now. My samurai elf has chromed the last part of his body before going below the critical Essence threshold that can get you easily into cyberpsychosis: now I have nightvision, legs with enhanced jump, some body armor and a retractile blade on the arm, alongside the big tits with white led nipples.

The GM runs the game without the book at hand, he seems to make up most of the things and is actually very forgiving, I am sure he has spared my character from death at least once or twice (I made it clear that I was ok with rolling another character after that battle on the morgue, but he rolled something in secret and some random doctor there attended me miraculously). 

As a very succint summary of the campaign: one elf, one dwarf and two trolls were hired by a fixer to find the assassin of his friend. The leads took us to another city, where somehow we joined a gang that was the most probable perpetrators, and escalated slowly into the ranks. In our first mission, we were requested to scare some homeless away from a metro station, as they were interfering a bit with the drug dealers there. After a bit of negotiation, I hurled one of them under a train, and told the rest that I would do the same every day until they all left. The next day they rebelled on me, and I killed them all, soaking the katanas in the blood of old, sick and/or mostly disarmed men and women. That brought me a lot of respect in the organisation, but I knew my character was only pretending being heartless to himself. Little by little, the lawful in me got into the elf.

After weeks investigating, we found out that a high-rank member of our gang, a doctor, is using a fully chromed berseker to kill people and record it on BTLs (some kind of videos that are filmed through the eyes of a person, in this case, the assassin), and then sells them in the black market. We soon found out that it was the lead that hinted to our "main mission" which was almost forgotten at this point. My dwarf friend achieved for us a trial to work for the doctor personally, as assistants. We only had to undertake a simple mission of slaying a family who had a money debt with our employer. I knew I wasn't doing that mission, and my elf found out as soon as he went into the place and saw the man at his electric appliances shop. I enjoyed roleplaying how I gave him 10.000 yens for them to escape. 

"But with this, I could pay the debt with the doctor"

"He doesn't want you to pay. He asked me for your heads for his collection. The money is so you can get out of the city by nightfall, because tomorrow, another assassin will come who wont be me. I have done what I could, but the decision is on you" 

 I am enjoying a lot this kind of roleplaying moments. I love having a character arc with angst, loneliness and nihilism, then some regrets, redemption and honor. I like that it contrasts with the dwarf, who my friend is roleplaying as the classic hyperpractical character, but we get along well (in character, i mean, though the guy is a good friend ooc)

Today we were determined to survive the gang's attempt of execution, as they would surely know by morning that we had betrayed them. But before that happened, some havoc started in a nearby shopping center: Several squads of Lone Star (the setting cops) were trying to reduce a berseker'd assasin, which we assumed it was our target (It wasn't the exact one actually, we found out shortly after that there were multiple of them). 

Onane, the dwarf, managed to shot some srynge that stopped the cyberpsychosis WITH A SLINGSHOT into the guy's head. This gave a cop a chance to climb the guy and blast it from atop of his shoulders (losing his leg to the monster's final attack). The last thing recorded in his BTL is my friend making the sign of victory (he genuinelly did it without remembering he was being recorded. I really enjoyed that detail hahah). The doctor called us in our PDAs to yell at us and tell us we were dead men; as his best man was hunting our heads from that very minute.

Without access to the gang's headquarters, we had to find a place for the night, and was dead set on sleeping at the metro station of St.Mary, where I had killed all the homeless. I bought some auto-heating ramen (they are ubiquitous and serve as rations in our game) and invited some homeless people there, who didn't recognize us as they were new dwellers. After some rolls by the master, they were moved by the ramen's offering and, figuring out Onane was the hero of the shopping center, took us to a secret place where nobody could find us. We spent four days amongst the homeless and we bought them 18 medikits with the totality of our money. They cut our hair (my emo elf hair, and the dwarf's beard) after that time, and disguised as homeless men, we went back to our former city, where the campaign started.

Back home (the local brothel) I gifted our whore friend Coyote my old katanas, now obsoleted by the armblade, and she hung them behind the bar, sticking the nails with a big whiskey bottle. It brought me a true feeling of ¿accomplishment? realising how my character had changed from a clumsy samurai who failed all fighting rolls and whose only dream was having breast implants, then delving into evil trying to find some place in the world, and then disregarding everything, even my own safety, towards making what I thing the elf feels its good. Its really fun. I even put voices and act sometimes.

Parallel to all that, we invest trash a lot of our yens into making a Trap Band: We are keeping a list of song titles and we spend money to record and air them into some shitty channel. It's a cool sidegame because the songs are named after things we have lived in-game. No more explanations, but the current list:

1. More money than faith
2. Automatic ramen
3. Hot as the wasteland nights
4. Railways to heaven
5. Rooftop watch
6. Broken memories
7. Cayman and Caywoman
8. Doctor Richards is an assassin

I have been a GM in cyberpunk games before, and there are some points that are worth remembering for my/your future games.

1. Fame. We randomize stuff for our Trap Band: the quality of the songs or the fame we get every now and then. On the last session, we went viral on the city: everyone knew us, even though our music is shitty and we are seen as a joke band. I think that is interesting to portray fame as something easy to win and lose in this settings. Maybe by naming one or two names of recently famous singers/samurais/gladiators/whatever, make them appear tangentially on the plot and then allowing the characters to become the recent celebrity for a while, realizing that they are now where the other guy was. Just to be forgotten in a while by most. 

2. The importance of the analogic in a digital setting. Analog motorbikes cannot be hacked and found by GPS. Analog weapons cannot be neutered by an electromagnetic field. Digital shit can and will always be tampered with, remotelly even, at the GMs discrection. And this is OK and is genre-appropiate. But this is also very cool because it allows you to put there some unique/custom vehicles, weapons and artifacts. See pic below:

 

"Roll Under" Combat System

 

 

This is just a concept I came up with, that I like and may become part of a ruleset someday. Numbers are improvised but I want to give an idea of the chance proportions more than an exact measure.

Premises: 

* Health of common human NPCs goes from 1 to 4 points (lets call them "hearts" as I am playing a lot of Zelda lately). Beyond four hearts, you can only find adventurers and monsters, with no limit at all.

* Worn armor adds to your hearts. 

* Everyone has a "fight" skill, that ranges from 1 to 4 in common humans (with 4 being strong ones). Characters that are worthy of being a shonen anime character can raise their fight skill beyond that (6,7,8...). This should be rolled randomly, but leveled during the game.

* Melee checks are done by rolling 1d12 equal or under that score. A hit means you deal your weapon's damage (a fixed number of hearts: like 2 for a punch, or maybe 4 for a sword). On a miss, you might still deal 1 damage. This way, variable damage is achieved with a single roll,

* Initiative is simultaneous for now. Lets see what happens. If two hits would happen mutually, the highest number happens before the other (and if that means that the enemy is killed, his attack doesn't happen). It would still happen if there is a tie.

* If your opponent hits you and you miss, you don't deal the 1 damage, and viceversa. As an addendum to this, i'm thinking that spears should increase your fighting skill by 1 or more, maybe. So they are good at stopping attackers and have a reason to be lent to unskilled levies both as in mimicking the real world as in gameplay.

* If there is a sensible reason for which a miss would not deal damage, it doesn't.

* Some armors might substract 1 damage from all attacks, negating damage on a miss. 

* Ranged combat doesn't need special rules or it seems so.

* Receiving no damage from an attack is possible only if you choose to evade (and spending an action for it). Roll under your evade skill, dexterity or whatever there is, to do it.

*  An enemy moves too fast, and you can't represent it through AC? you can represent it by giving the attacker disadvantage (roll 2d12 and take worst). Maybe two misses are no damage, miss and hit is a miss, and two hits are a hit. Yeah, that sounds good.

* Giving advantage (roll 2d12 and take best) is also easy to do. Power ups from feats or magic weapons can also take the shape of multiple attacks, chain attacks (extra attacks on a hit), damage multipliers (like "you deal 2x damage if you spend a turn charging the attack") amongst others.

* Shields should work as negating damage on a roll of X I guess. I'm having samurais all the time on the mind, so I havent thought about that, but im sure that shields do not give more "hearts". It doesn't work conceptually.

* I like that this system makes the low-ranked fighters be careless about what weapon they wield, as the increase in damage per turn will be very small for a PC of fight:1. No matter which weapon he gets, he will tend to deal 1 damage per turn ever unless he rolls a 1.  

Senior - Cróniques de la Reconstrucció

 Just click in there and leave it in the background as you do stuff. I think you're gonna like it. Yes, you.

1d36 personality traits

 

I made this because I want to randomize how a given NPC "is" internally, and compare it with how the PCs approach him/her. I'd like to use this instead of reaction rolls when possible. Basically, I will assign one or more traits (two seems good enough) to NPCs as needed, in the middle of the session if suddently a random extra gets enough spotlight. 

I found some lists of traits in other games, but they are mixed with others that make reference to physical traits or irrelevant quirks such as "likes to sing", or just describe how the characters express (sarcastic, cynical, liar, etc). Those ones are good for dressing or describing the character, but for this purpose do not work, just as the physical ones (fat, thin, strong, pretty, etc). Some of these listed will be more or less obvious at first sight, and some might be hidden. I like that any two in combination creates a definite character in my mind, or in contrast with the NPC's identity or occupation.

Heroic (or courageous?)
Coward
Lustful (or easily infatuated?)
Greedy
Generous
Bossy

Cruel
Opportunistic
Jealous
Proud
Bad Tempered
Poised

Humble
Confident
Somber
Naive
Distrustful (or paranoid?)
Emotional

Optimistic
Pessimistic
Resigned (or tenacious?)
Easily Overwhelmed
Addicted (to something. Can be a drug, an activity... but depends heavily on it)
Curious (or adventurous?)

Passionate about their dedication
Sly
Chivalrous
Kind
Prudent
Idealistic

Rude
Kind of retarded
Crazy (in the way you like)
Temerary
Tempestuous
Lost (or in great need)

Shadowbanned! (like Florian Geyer)

Today, in my small crusade against the new order rewriting the past by messing with our only source of history (the internet), I found that google, wikipedia and friends are very strict in not showing the proper lyrics to this song anywhere, resorting to grotesquelly messed and made up ones. So here I am, being the change I'd like to see in the world:

 Wir sind des Geyers schwarzer Haufen, heia hoho, 

und wollen mit Tyrannen raufen, heia hoho.

Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt auf’s Klosterdach den roten Hahn!

Als Adam grub und Eva spann, kyrieleys, 

wo war denn da der Edelmann? kyrieleys. 

Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt auf’s Klosterdach den roten Hahn!

Uns führt der Florian Geyer an, trotz Acht und Bann, 

den Bundschuh führt er in der Fahn’, hat Helm und Harnisch an.

Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt auf’s Klosterdach den roten Hahn!

Bei Weinsberg setzt es Brand und Stank, heia hoho, 

gar mancher über die Klinge sprang, heia hoho. 

Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt auf’s Klosterdach den roten Hahn!

  Geschlagen ziehen wir nach Haus, heia hoho, 

uns’re Enkel fechten’s besser aus, heia hoho.

Spieß voran, drauf und dran, setzt auf’s Klosterdach den roten Hahn! 

 

For some reason I dont really know (maybe some politically incorrect opinion on a comment?), this blog is already shadowbanned from google at least, since july or so, so I don't think this affects much to my views. 

RETRO-POST: Dungeon Crawlers as an urban tribe

 I am closing an old blog I used to have, as I finally found the password. I just felt that all entries on it were obsolete and is like a pruning: cut the old branches to strengthen the green ones. But this one entry, I liked it a lot and wanted to preserve it here. I copied and pasted it as it was published on october 28th, 2017. Images were there in the original, too.

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Something I had on my mind for a while; I'll try to put it into words in case I can make something with it later.

The game/story centers around school kids on a modern town; and how they come in contact with the guild of dungeon crawlers: a mysterious gang of kids that speak about spooky, awesome underworld. Their stories are actually true. They've heard about a dungeon hiding somewhere. Just take any One Page Dungeon and put it on one of this:

(1. right under your school - 2. On a nearby forest, where the whole school is going next week on a trip - 3. Beyond your weird grandma's cellar - 4. On one of your uncles car junk lot. - 5. On the town's supposedly abandoned mansion - 6. Under a lost bridge, behind the industrial part of town)

Not all dungeons have to be under earth; every spooky or abandoned place is likely to have dungeon-like propierties: that's why they're abandoned or unconsciously avoided by normals. Also, some portals to dungeons might open in common places if one finds out how

You get your class at the start; just like that: fighter (though you depend on a specific kind of weapon depending on your background, because kids aren't usually trained on swordmanship), specialist (that kid that knows a lot about a certain thing, you can produce things from your bag that are related to your specialty) or mage (if you're a wizard, you'll probably discover it the first time you get in a dungeon). Use the rules of any dungeon game you normally use, but for the sake of tone, getting to 0 hp means that kids are unconscious and might need to be rescued.

Magic exists, but it only works in dungeons. When attempted on the surface, it acts dulled at best; and is easily dismissed by non-dungeoneers as tricks or sleight of hand. This happens to magic objects and, to a lesser degree, to any kind of treasure you recover from there. When a monster manages to escape from a dungeon, it's powers get subtler and must rely more on invisibility/stealth/cunning.

Normal people treats dungeon crawlers like they did with Goth Kids, Bronies, Emos, etc IRL: they mock them and despise their stories; attributing them to imagination. They're outcasts among kids, while the fashion trends awkwardly tries to appeal to them making artists and clothes about dungeons that miss entirely the point of what dungeons are about.

PC party getting back to the underworld after recovering HP

The underworld raw power of dungeons prevents cellphones and cameras from working, and jams most electronical devices. This prevents you from taking a selfie with a wight to prove your adventures to your friends. The most complex devices might even get hostile towards their wielders (your spotify list is suddently filled with hate messages from your loved ones; a GPS will lead you to the nearest chasm. Lanterns are usually OK, but you can never be sure if they're going to treacherously shut down right as you get into the troll's lair)

Dungeon subculture spreads mainly through drawings (mistaken by kid's edgy art), logs (mistaken as fanfic), grimoires (mistaken as new age books) and chansons de geste about their expeditions (mistaken for incredibly deep metaphors for teenage angst). Due to the inevitable impossibility of talking about dungeon experiences with normal people, there is a strong sense of comraderie between dungeoneers; though of course there are dicks who try to prevent new people from getting into it ("this kids only delve because they want to be cool, we old school delvers have been delving all the summer break and we know what dungeoning it's about"), tricksters ("treasure inspector, may I see your treasure?") and phonies ("Have you been to dungeon X?" yeah. "Dungeon Y?" yeah. "Dungeon Z?" yeah. "I've actually made up the last two" y- y- yeahhhhh of course I knew that)

* Beware: Deep speech ahead! *

Dungeons may appear anywhere; and they do not have any kind of supernatural cover up or anything (In fact, most of them might want to be noticed in order to grow). The only thing that prevents common people from knowing the magical reality is their very own drive to deny everything that clashes with their confort zone. The very zealotry of modern science (understood as denying weird options rather than acknowledging the unknown in order to investigate it) and the importance given to what society thinks we must instead of embracing the mystery of life is what keeps normal surfacers from the twisted horrors and treasures of the underworld. The importance of seeing the truth for oneself is a good theme to be enforced here.

Should a mountaineer discover the tomb of an atlantean king; the headlights on the news would be "Mountaineer goes crazy, pics from the madhouse on page 49" and handwave the whole tomb location automatically, is not like anyone is going to double check it; except dungeon delving kids who know where to read between the lines. No matter how many half-assed proofs you'll present or how good you are convincing people: No one will ever ever believe that dungeons exist unless they either see something strange with their own eyes (and cannot succesfully deny it using a weak pseudoscientific explanation) or really, really want to see a dungeon for some reason.

(If you're using a system that tracks sanity, maybe you need to be under a certain threshold to be operative on a dungeon)

there are those who have trouble adapting to a normal world after they've found the hobby

unexpected twists:

1 - you find out your mother never left you; she was in fact a fairy unable to escape the dungeon, but left you on the surface world to be raised as a human by your father.
2 - you're arranged in matrimony with a merfolk king of the underground sea. He'll whisper love letters to you through any kind of sink you visit.
3 - That mysterious fire that burnt the sawmill that year? a giant fire salamander. That earthquake? a troll
4 - proofs that one or many from this shirt are false.
5 - Goblins kidnap you or somebody you love in order to force you to become their king.
6 - An evil force wants to destroy the whole town in order to expand the dungeon into the surface.

example adventure hook

A 26 episodes campaign

Trigun, Gungrave and the enormous Evangelion. The always mentioned here: Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. From more obscure animes such as Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Gokudo the Adventurer or Utena, to modern classics such as Kill la Kill, they all have something in common: they manage to take a crew of characters through an adventure, sometimes meaning multiple arcs, in 22-26 episodes. (We can add Hellsing and Katanagatari if we split their 40 min episodes into 20 minute ones, through this might be cheating). If you are willing to sink time into watching something good anime, jump into any of those named without investigating further. Trust me.

Dropping more names in the comments is always welcome. There was a golden age during the turn of the century for 26 episode animes (let me refer to an old table to generate your own)

Recently I am trying to come up with different, "out of the box" ways to generate gameplay (as opposed to create "dungeons" procedurally or "missions" manually), and the idea of emulating an anime campaign structure... makes sense. Or does it?

The secret of blue water

 

These are some notes:

 * The campaign is played through 26 sessions, no more and no less. These are coincidentally half the weeks in a year (52) so if you play once per week, you will take half a year to complete a campaign to be remembered for ages. 6 months is a great time for a campaign to span without starting to lose focus or energy, more if you like to rotate games or GMs.

* Some episodes/sessions will be "Character Arc" episodes, those are specially dedicated to develop a given character or his/her past. Ex: Cowboy Bebop 05: Ballad of The Fallen Angels

* Some others are episodic, when there is a situation to be resolved that spans during one or maybe more episodes (depending on the players). These also serve to introduce key details of the setting into the story. Ex: Vash the Stampede dedicating one episode for each Gung Ho Gun. 

* Some are filler because the animators had to make the series last 26 episodes, but this doesn't have to mean boring in play. They can be fun to emulate too. Ex: the island episodes in Nadia.

* Some can be weird, and not fit into the tone at all, or a priori. Ex: the zombies and the baseball episodes at Samurai Champloo

* This liberates the GM when making things happen, and when they don't go as expected. But of course, without procedures and generators there is no game:

* For 4 players, each rolls 2 d20+4: this generates 2 episodes from the 5th to the 24th that are meant to be their "character arc" episodes. These can be rolled in the open or in secret by the GM, both have their points. Duplicates should be re-rolled so nobody has to share their character arc days. Starting at episode 5, this means that GMs have at least 4 days to understand the character and the player, and to think about what is a good challenge for them to be overcomed. 

* Each place on the world has a fitting (d12+ current episode number) table of "happenings". The first 12 ones are more easygoing: pastoral themes, small bosses, more slice of life (this might also form weird or filler episodes sometimes, unless the PCs do something strange). Beyond 13th onwards, there are more serious enemies, disasters, portents.... These should be rolled the previous session by the GM, so he can prepare the next week session accordingly to where the PCs are and cross the results with the PCs previous actions. A "place in the world" normally means a city or a wilderness area, maybe from a rooster of 15 different ones. But depending on your worldbuilding it can mean a new semester in high school or a new planet, or just play with 1 or 2 zones.

* What about this: the characters can't die in random episodes. A fallen PC is just down for the rest of the episode (this means be removed from play unless helped somehow), unless it's one of their Character Arc, or in the final two, in which this rule has no effect. Of course, all kinds of epic last words are permitted if the situation allows it. If a character dies, the player can keep on in the game playing an NPC but without rolling for character arc.

* This means that the GM can throw any kind of enemy to the players: they will just survive the big boss appearing at anytime to make a display of power, yet players will try to survive just to play that whole evening, unless the episode is reaching the end (climax and end of the IRL meeting)

* The exact resolution rules are not important, any can work, depending on what the show is about.

* However, mechanics that are activated by making the players make up the past of their characters are a very good way to help the GM develop a better character arc for the PC.

* Some idea for running NPC interactions: Each NPC has some traits on them (like generous, coward, ambitious, greedy, lustful, rich, nostalgic, sad, etc). Some are easy to detect, and some are kept hidden by the GM (and the NPC). The GM should roleplay the NPC's responses taking into account all its traits (both the secret and the exposed ones), and using a reaction roll only when something is uncertain. A table for traits is something I must surely work on. Some random mooks do not have to be particular traits, maybe they can share a common one. But the GM can add traits to anyone at any moment as the spot is put over a given NPC.

* It is advisable that PCs have also at least one strong trait that distinguishes them from the others, with some form of mechanical advantage if the trait is disadvantageous. For example, Thieves Can Do It Too, by Johnstone Metzger, gives +1 dice to a related roll if a trait is positive, or +1 dice to a future, unrelated roll if the PC's trait puts him at disadvantage at any point.

* The emphasis for the GM is in to build charismatic NPCs that can be talked with, and some lore to be exposed the next week. Then, after the 26 episodes have gone through, gather the players and reflect if the whole adventure could have been a true, top 10 anime of all time.