It sucks being told that you're a bad GM. To be fair, however, my heart really wasn't into the story-aspect of the game anyway, and nobody seems to have minded my GMing before now, and I've run quite a few campaigns. But my main concern for this last little while has been the rules. And there are a lot of things about/in the rules that need to be addressed. But those issues will be addressed, I'm sure, in the upcoming weeks and months, as we are still playing, just with Jonny moving into the GM chair. It'll be good, too. He's a story guy, and he's been begging for something to do for a while now.
So, this blog will continue, and with full-color commentary, but from a player's perspective as opposed to a GM's.
And I'm considering re-naming the system to Redshirts, because it appears that there is a Red Shirt Games company out there, and I don't want there to be any confusion. Besides which, it's such a small change I doubt anybody would even notice. And, by taking the game from the character level to the company level, it makes more sense to pluralize it anyway.
Consider "Redshirts" and "Redshirts the Game" copyrighted, as of now.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Redshirt, Game Session 3
Wow. What an interesting game this is becoming. First of all, we had to finish up the two "away missions" from last week, which I hadn't had time to get to during the proper phase, which would have been during the post-game session last week. So we did it this week. There were two of these missions that the company had decided to take. The first was a "clean up the sewer rats" that were living in the sewers downtown. The name Sewer Rats was, of course, a euphemism for "undesirable people living in the sewers." Jonny had sent two of his people on the mission. I decided that it really shouldn't be too difficult, as my idea of these folk was that they were dirt poor, unarmed, &c. So I had Jonny roll against a T.N. of 11, which is an average task. He succeeded. That's a quick 5 marks for the company. Then the other mission, in which two characters, Jick the legless and Marty's seductress Kas attempted to get to the bottom of who those actors were who were out front performing really bad plays all day and night forever. Because each of them had gone their own separate ways to do the investigation, I let both Marty and Jonny roll. Marty's seductress came up empty, but Jick the legless managed to figure out that the black-clad bodyguards were from a company named Hamlet, which company specialized in personal protection &c.
Now, this did beg several questions about away missions, namely, how to determine the mission's difficulty, and then how to go about figuring out Target Numbers vs numbers of people involved, &c. This is going to be an ongoing issue, because quite frankly, I don't have it nailed down yet. These first couple were incredibly easy, because there really wasn't a chance of character injury involved, so we could conveniently ignore that part for now, and I had just given them basic Target Numbers. I will probably continue to do something like this from now on, the idea being that each "away mission" has a target number that must be beat, in order to succeed. The characters who go on said mission have a number of skills. I take the highest skill that seems (or that the player determines is how his character is proceeding) reasonable, and add that bonus to the roll. If there are any other characters that also have appropriate skills, then I figure add 1 for each additional character beyond the first. This way the bonuses to the roll don't balloon out of hand and get unmanageable too fast. That seems like a good way to proceed, at least for now, so we can get something testing. The real trouble comes with devising an "away mission combat mechanic." That will require some thought.
At any rate, we talked for quite a while about the game, and didn't get started playing until 730 or so, which left us with only about an hour and a half. Jonny was obviously anxious to get started, because he kept looking at the clock and pushing us to get going. So, we got the post-game from last week wrapped up, then moved on to the pre-game, in which Jonny decided to let 1 of his legless employees go (he had 2). I think it was Jick, but I'm not entirely sure. He then decided to hire another employee, and rolled up a character quick, and got a witch-doctor. Sweet. Somebody with Medicine, finally. Note that after all of this, Jonny had 5 characters (one of them legless), and Marty had 3 (remember that last session one of his characters received spinal damage and was paralyzed, and thus unemployable) because he opted not to hire anybody. The Company then had 5 marks left over, which was not enough to last another session without income, so they went looking for work.
At this point, I need to talk about something that, quite frankly, really surprised me. That was the reaction of both Jonny and Marty to the paralysis result on the Death&Dismemberment table. I mentioned it in my last post, but I think I stated it wrong and made it seem like Marty was upset at the loss of his character, when in reality it wasn't that his character was lost, but rather that he was paralyzed, which, according to both Jonny and Marty, raised a host of moral/ethical questions. Such as: this guy was an employee, now he's crippled and unable to take care of himself, what does the company do with him? Kill him? Leave him on the side of the road somewhere? What? I hadn't thought about that when coming up with the table, simply concerning myself with semi-realistic possible injuries, and let's face it, the possibility of sustaining spinal damage in a fight is very real. Marty and Jonny both made it seem like they would perhaps even prefer it if that were not a part of the table, as it was "too real," and dragged down the game-feeling. I'm not so sure. I can see where they're coming from, but at the same time, that's the entire point of the Death&Dismemberment, right? Is to give danger to combat, and personality to characters who survive? Like Jonny's legless people. I had honestly thought, when coming up with the table, that such characters would be little less than useless to the company. But Jonny decided to keep them, and made good use of Jick (granted, only for a session, before letting him go, but still), and I'm sure will make good use of the other guy. So now the character's still there, the company's still using him; it's color, it's personality. It's the same thing with the paralyzed character. What will the company do with him? I, as the GM, simply do not care. The company can do whatever they like with him. If they want to be stone-hearted bastards, then they can kill him or whatever. If they want to be a little more compassionate, then they can take care of him, as it was an injury suffered during the course of work. Of course, this second option would end up costing the company money (a bed in their facility/base, plus wages for the caretaker, plus food, &c), but that's the choice we make, right? Which are you, light-side or dark-side? I don't care. Just do it, and if it makes sense that there might be repercussions from the action, then I'll think about it. Just like I, as the GM, didn't care when in game session 1 the players killed/injured an innocent family in the Southland Downs. Just like I, as the GM, didn't care that the company took a job clearing homeless people (the Sewer Rats) out of their makeshift homes in the sewers (which plenty of people would consider to be entirely a-moral and bastardly). It's not my place to judge (at least not in an ethical capacity). It's my place to provide a game, and give the company opportunities.
Moving on; there were essentially 3 routes that the company could go: there was still the business with the Bad Actors, there was the Investigation&Vengeance Carswell mission, and there was the continuing bounty on the RVs in the Southland Downs. Jonny sent his legless character to go do research & investigate the Carswell business, and the rest of the characters went to apologize to Frank for beating him up in the first session. When they got to Frank's Place, they saw some Hamlet employees standing guard. That was the final piece they needed to definitively say that Frank was the source of the Bad Actors. Jonny's new Witch Doctor intimidated the guard at the door with his shrunken heads and incredibly racist witch-doctory antics, and they entered the building. Frank, upon seeing them, bolted for the back door, and the two Hamlet employees inside blocked the characters from going any further. To which they left a note, apologizing. And maybe some flowers. I don't know.
It was the intimidation part of this encounter that was fun, because it was the first time that we had actually used the social combat rules, which worked really well, I thought.
Then they went to the Downs, and found the Bonsai burning. They went to some bars and did some asking around, and it turned out that the RVs were in a turf-war with the Lone Rangers, and getting their asses kicked. They witness a couple of RVs gun down a Lone Ranger in the street with a crossbow and run off, and the characters take the dead Lone Ranger's mask and Marty's noble puts it on. They walk down the streets begging to get shot at, and eventually they do. The bolt misses, and most of the characters move to the door. Trell takes cover across the street and watches for the crossbowman to show his head again. He does, and Trell takes the shot. He rolls a 15, and even with a cover bonus the crossbowman takes a bolt and falls, dropping his crossbow out the window, which one of Marty's characters picks up. They move inside and intimidate the last opponent in there into giving up, which he does. They then interrogate him about the situation and offer to work for the RVs, to which the fellow takes them back to the RV base so they can talk to Big John. They convince Big John to hear their story, and Big John makes an offer of them taking over any of the money-making ventures that they can wrest away from the Lone Rangers, and moving 50% up the ladder to him. Marty and Jonny hesitate at this one, as they don't particularly want to be somebody else's employees.
And here's where it got really fun. Jonny wants to accept the deal but double-cross them later, and Marty decides that's not his cuppa, and fires a crossbow bolt point-blank into Big John's chest. It's fight time, and the characters are surrounded. They have 6 characters, and the RVs have 7 inside (6 troops and Big John) plus the 6 on watch outside. After the surprise round, the characters finish off Big John in the first real round, and proceed to butcher sundry RVs. After about the end of turn 2 or 3 I was thinking that if it continued, the RVs would have to start making morale rolls, because several of their number were down, and they were about to be outnumbered by the characters, even with their reinforcements. But then the table turned, and within 2 rounds or so both of Marty's characters were down, and one of Jonny's, leaving only 3, with 5 RVs in the warehouse and a couple yet outside. It really was amazing how fast the fight shifted, from the characters looking like they had it in the bag, to everybody going down like wheat and Jonny making the hard decision to abandon everybody who was already down, plus sacrifice one of his remaining standing characters, in order to give Trell the diminutive pig-herder/crossbowman and Malik the Witch Doctor the chance to hightail it out of there.
And then, when they all got back home, they were arrested. All of them, with the exception of the legless fellow of Jonny's who was doing investigations. The charge was Murder most foul, Attempted Murder most foul, Assault, Disturbing the city's peace, &c &c.
All in all, this was not a good session for the company. They ended up losing (as in, dead, no chance to roll on the Death&Dismemberment table) 4 characters, plus those characters' equipment, plus not making any money, plus now 3 of the remaining 4 are in jail. The company's tally is now 5 marks. Granted, the company doesn't actually have to pay their employees while they're in jail, but one would expect that the proper back-wages were there once they got out.
The jail-time was because the street-fight right in front of their place of business from last week. But now I need to be careful, because it feels like I'm railroading, and that's not what I want to do. There must be options given to the players, even while most of their company is in jail.
Man, I can't wait for next week.
Now, this did beg several questions about away missions, namely, how to determine the mission's difficulty, and then how to go about figuring out Target Numbers vs numbers of people involved, &c. This is going to be an ongoing issue, because quite frankly, I don't have it nailed down yet. These first couple were incredibly easy, because there really wasn't a chance of character injury involved, so we could conveniently ignore that part for now, and I had just given them basic Target Numbers. I will probably continue to do something like this from now on, the idea being that each "away mission" has a target number that must be beat, in order to succeed. The characters who go on said mission have a number of skills. I take the highest skill that seems (or that the player determines is how his character is proceeding) reasonable, and add that bonus to the roll. If there are any other characters that also have appropriate skills, then I figure add 1 for each additional character beyond the first. This way the bonuses to the roll don't balloon out of hand and get unmanageable too fast. That seems like a good way to proceed, at least for now, so we can get something testing. The real trouble comes with devising an "away mission combat mechanic." That will require some thought.
At any rate, we talked for quite a while about the game, and didn't get started playing until 730 or so, which left us with only about an hour and a half. Jonny was obviously anxious to get started, because he kept looking at the clock and pushing us to get going. So, we got the post-game from last week wrapped up, then moved on to the pre-game, in which Jonny decided to let 1 of his legless employees go (he had 2). I think it was Jick, but I'm not entirely sure. He then decided to hire another employee, and rolled up a character quick, and got a witch-doctor. Sweet. Somebody with Medicine, finally. Note that after all of this, Jonny had 5 characters (one of them legless), and Marty had 3 (remember that last session one of his characters received spinal damage and was paralyzed, and thus unemployable) because he opted not to hire anybody. The Company then had 5 marks left over, which was not enough to last another session without income, so they went looking for work.
At this point, I need to talk about something that, quite frankly, really surprised me. That was the reaction of both Jonny and Marty to the paralysis result on the Death&Dismemberment table. I mentioned it in my last post, but I think I stated it wrong and made it seem like Marty was upset at the loss of his character, when in reality it wasn't that his character was lost, but rather that he was paralyzed, which, according to both Jonny and Marty, raised a host of moral/ethical questions. Such as: this guy was an employee, now he's crippled and unable to take care of himself, what does the company do with him? Kill him? Leave him on the side of the road somewhere? What? I hadn't thought about that when coming up with the table, simply concerning myself with semi-realistic possible injuries, and let's face it, the possibility of sustaining spinal damage in a fight is very real. Marty and Jonny both made it seem like they would perhaps even prefer it if that were not a part of the table, as it was "too real," and dragged down the game-feeling. I'm not so sure. I can see where they're coming from, but at the same time, that's the entire point of the Death&Dismemberment, right? Is to give danger to combat, and personality to characters who survive? Like Jonny's legless people. I had honestly thought, when coming up with the table, that such characters would be little less than useless to the company. But Jonny decided to keep them, and made good use of Jick (granted, only for a session, before letting him go, but still), and I'm sure will make good use of the other guy. So now the character's still there, the company's still using him; it's color, it's personality. It's the same thing with the paralyzed character. What will the company do with him? I, as the GM, simply do not care. The company can do whatever they like with him. If they want to be stone-hearted bastards, then they can kill him or whatever. If they want to be a little more compassionate, then they can take care of him, as it was an injury suffered during the course of work. Of course, this second option would end up costing the company money (a bed in their facility/base, plus wages for the caretaker, plus food, &c), but that's the choice we make, right? Which are you, light-side or dark-side? I don't care. Just do it, and if it makes sense that there might be repercussions from the action, then I'll think about it. Just like I, as the GM, didn't care when in game session 1 the players killed/injured an innocent family in the Southland Downs. Just like I, as the GM, didn't care that the company took a job clearing homeless people (the Sewer Rats) out of their makeshift homes in the sewers (which plenty of people would consider to be entirely a-moral and bastardly). It's not my place to judge (at least not in an ethical capacity). It's my place to provide a game, and give the company opportunities.
Moving on; there were essentially 3 routes that the company could go: there was still the business with the Bad Actors, there was the Investigation&Vengeance Carswell mission, and there was the continuing bounty on the RVs in the Southland Downs. Jonny sent his legless character to go do research & investigate the Carswell business, and the rest of the characters went to apologize to Frank for beating him up in the first session. When they got to Frank's Place, they saw some Hamlet employees standing guard. That was the final piece they needed to definitively say that Frank was the source of the Bad Actors. Jonny's new Witch Doctor intimidated the guard at the door with his shrunken heads and incredibly racist witch-doctory antics, and they entered the building. Frank, upon seeing them, bolted for the back door, and the two Hamlet employees inside blocked the characters from going any further. To which they left a note, apologizing. And maybe some flowers. I don't know.
It was the intimidation part of this encounter that was fun, because it was the first time that we had actually used the social combat rules, which worked really well, I thought.
Then they went to the Downs, and found the Bonsai burning. They went to some bars and did some asking around, and it turned out that the RVs were in a turf-war with the Lone Rangers, and getting their asses kicked. They witness a couple of RVs gun down a Lone Ranger in the street with a crossbow and run off, and the characters take the dead Lone Ranger's mask and Marty's noble puts it on. They walk down the streets begging to get shot at, and eventually they do. The bolt misses, and most of the characters move to the door. Trell takes cover across the street and watches for the crossbowman to show his head again. He does, and Trell takes the shot. He rolls a 15, and even with a cover bonus the crossbowman takes a bolt and falls, dropping his crossbow out the window, which one of Marty's characters picks up. They move inside and intimidate the last opponent in there into giving up, which he does. They then interrogate him about the situation and offer to work for the RVs, to which the fellow takes them back to the RV base so they can talk to Big John. They convince Big John to hear their story, and Big John makes an offer of them taking over any of the money-making ventures that they can wrest away from the Lone Rangers, and moving 50% up the ladder to him. Marty and Jonny hesitate at this one, as they don't particularly want to be somebody else's employees.
And here's where it got really fun. Jonny wants to accept the deal but double-cross them later, and Marty decides that's not his cuppa, and fires a crossbow bolt point-blank into Big John's chest. It's fight time, and the characters are surrounded. They have 6 characters, and the RVs have 7 inside (6 troops and Big John) plus the 6 on watch outside. After the surprise round, the characters finish off Big John in the first real round, and proceed to butcher sundry RVs. After about the end of turn 2 or 3 I was thinking that if it continued, the RVs would have to start making morale rolls, because several of their number were down, and they were about to be outnumbered by the characters, even with their reinforcements. But then the table turned, and within 2 rounds or so both of Marty's characters were down, and one of Jonny's, leaving only 3, with 5 RVs in the warehouse and a couple yet outside. It really was amazing how fast the fight shifted, from the characters looking like they had it in the bag, to everybody going down like wheat and Jonny making the hard decision to abandon everybody who was already down, plus sacrifice one of his remaining standing characters, in order to give Trell the diminutive pig-herder/crossbowman and Malik the Witch Doctor the chance to hightail it out of there.
And then, when they all got back home, they were arrested. All of them, with the exception of the legless fellow of Jonny's who was doing investigations. The charge was Murder most foul, Attempted Murder most foul, Assault, Disturbing the city's peace, &c &c.
All in all, this was not a good session for the company. They ended up losing (as in, dead, no chance to roll on the Death&Dismemberment table) 4 characters, plus those characters' equipment, plus not making any money, plus now 3 of the remaining 4 are in jail. The company's tally is now 5 marks. Granted, the company doesn't actually have to pay their employees while they're in jail, but one would expect that the proper back-wages were there once they got out.
The jail-time was because the street-fight right in front of their place of business from last week. But now I need to be careful, because it feels like I'm railroading, and that's not what I want to do. There must be options given to the players, even while most of their company is in jail.
Man, I can't wait for next week.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Redshirt, Game Session 2
This game session was something else. First, I had finally come up with a Death&Dismemberment table for the characters, so we started off the game with Jonny rolling for his 2 characters that had gone down in session 1. He ended up rolling knee injuries for both of them, but one was only a light wound, and that character recovered without incident. The other character, however, suffered a serious knee injury and ended up losing his leg from the knee down because there weren't any surgeons in the company. Bummer. There went the first casualty of the game.
Then we started off with a troupe of bad actors performing really bad plays right in front of the company's place of business. And they wouldn't stop. They worked in shifts, actually. And had bodyguards. Men wearing black.
One thing led to another, and before you know it, blood is being spilled on the streets of Midtown. 2 more characters went down this fight, one of Marty's and one of Jonny's. And the fight wasn't at all successful. The company won, but within a couple of hours more actors were back, with more bodyguards.
Except now blood had been spilled. In public. In Midtown, even.
Then the company split up, in order to maximize profit-making. 2 characters went to investigate who these actors and their bodyguards were, 2 took a job cleaning the sewer-rats out of Downtown sewers, and the last 2 answered a call put out by Leopold Carswell in the Village. This was the job that Marty and Jonny played.
Turns out that young girlie Carswell, Leopold's daughter, is missing. Find her. 5 marks for finding her, 5 marks for bringing her back safe. The characters searched high and low, discovered an illicit love-affair between girlie Carswell and some chap from outside the Village, and then discovered the bodies of young Carswell and her servant. Leopold agrees to pay them their 5 marks, for finding her, provided that they also find out who did this, and put an end to them. 10 additional marks on top of the 5 already promised if they do so.
And thus ended the session. Both Marty and Jonny rolled on the Death&Dismemberment table, for their 2 characters who went down in the fight with the actors, and Jonny rolled another knee wound. I had to laugh. That's 3 times he's rolled a damned knee wound. The odds of that are not likely at all. But of course this character also lost his leg, or can't walk properly without a crutch, or something. Because the party still didn't have a surgeon. Marty's character got spinal damage. Wouldn't have mattered if they had a surgeon or not, that character's toast. Definitively unemployable. Kind of a shame too, because I think Marty was sort of attached to him.
And that's all she wrote. The social combat needs work. Not that the idea is bad, but because I felt unprepared (again), without clear rules for it, and NPC attributes/skills laid out beforehand. We'll have to try it a third time and see if I can actually do it this time.
Repercussions/Consequences:
Then we started off with a troupe of bad actors performing really bad plays right in front of the company's place of business. And they wouldn't stop. They worked in shifts, actually. And had bodyguards. Men wearing black.
One thing led to another, and before you know it, blood is being spilled on the streets of Midtown. 2 more characters went down this fight, one of Marty's and one of Jonny's. And the fight wasn't at all successful. The company won, but within a couple of hours more actors were back, with more bodyguards.
Except now blood had been spilled. In public. In Midtown, even.
Then the company split up, in order to maximize profit-making. 2 characters went to investigate who these actors and their bodyguards were, 2 took a job cleaning the sewer-rats out of Downtown sewers, and the last 2 answered a call put out by Leopold Carswell in the Village. This was the job that Marty and Jonny played.
Turns out that young girlie Carswell, Leopold's daughter, is missing. Find her. 5 marks for finding her, 5 marks for bringing her back safe. The characters searched high and low, discovered an illicit love-affair between girlie Carswell and some chap from outside the Village, and then discovered the bodies of young Carswell and her servant. Leopold agrees to pay them their 5 marks, for finding her, provided that they also find out who did this, and put an end to them. 10 additional marks on top of the 5 already promised if they do so.
And thus ended the session. Both Marty and Jonny rolled on the Death&Dismemberment table, for their 2 characters who went down in the fight with the actors, and Jonny rolled another knee wound. I had to laugh. That's 3 times he's rolled a damned knee wound. The odds of that are not likely at all. But of course this character also lost his leg, or can't walk properly without a crutch, or something. Because the party still didn't have a surgeon. Marty's character got spinal damage. Wouldn't have mattered if they had a surgeon or not, that character's toast. Definitively unemployable. Kind of a shame too, because I think Marty was sort of attached to him.
And that's all she wrote. The social combat needs work. Not that the idea is bad, but because I felt unprepared (again), without clear rules for it, and NPC attributes/skills laid out beforehand. We'll have to try it a third time and see if I can actually do it this time.
Repercussions/Consequences:
- Coldstream is still out there somewhere, and it's only been 2 sessions since the company killed a bunch of them.
- The RVs are still out there, likewise (this one took Jonny and Marty by surprise, I think. Although I'm not sure why it should. What kind of self-respecting street gang only has 10 members? For that matter, what kind of self-respecting street gang goes by the name the Rusty Vaginas?).
- Now there's bodyguards wearing black who are dead/injured because of the company.
- A fight, with casualties, in broad daylight, with witnesses, in the streets of Midtown.
- 3 innocents injured/murdered in the Downs in session 1.
- Leopold Carswell, of the Carswell Penny fame, has been let down because the company failed to rescue his daughter. Even if the company manages to locate the murderers and kill them, that is still a 2nd-best resolution to the case.
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