PiccoLaguna Resources

In May and June 2012 I prepped some game material for a new Smallville campaign, set in a Renaissance Venice inspired fantasy city called Laguna. The title of the campaign comes from "piccola," Italian for "small", and Laguna, the name of the city.

The PCs would all be movers and shakers at the Doge's court. Even someone with humble origins will tend to end up with powerful connections and patrons. The game intended to explore a web of intrigue, corruption and deception as the characters vied for power and influence and worked to further their own interests - but at what cost to their entangled relationships?

I still haven't run this game yet, although I'd like to some day. I tried to recruit a different group of players than I'd run through SamuraiVille, but for three weeks in a row I couldn't get more than two of them to turn up at once, so we never even got as far as Pathways.

I'm sharing the resources here in case anyone has better luck than I! Some of them are incomplete, and have entries marked as "???". If they'd come up in play, I'd have figured them out with the relevant player. I'd welcome any ideas for finishing them off.

Pathways

I created a custom PiccoLaguna Pathways chart (which says Piccolo Venezia, my original but obsolete title for the game), which borrows fairly heavily from the original Smallville Pathways. The main difference is that Abilities have been replaced with Offices, and Heritage Distinctions are replaced with Titles.

Distinctions

Bravo (Distinction)

You are a swaggering swordsman with a penchant for picking fights to show off your skill with the blade.
d4: Earn a Plot Point whenever you Choose to pick a fight because of a slight to your honour.
d8: Exacerbate your Angry or Injured Stress to Increase your Injured or Exhausted Stress pool when armed.
d12: Add a d6 to Trouble to ???

Devout (Distinction)

You are devoutly religious. Roll in this die when debating religion, recalling scripture, or resisting temptation.
d4: Earn a Plot Point when you Choose to adhere to your faith's precepts in the face of an easier path, or insist that others do so.
d8: Add a d6 to Trouble to Reroll a die when upholding or promoting your beliefs.
d12: Spend a Plot Point to Recover your own Afraid or Insecure Stress through prayer.

Renaissance Man (Distinction)

You have embraced the spirit of the Renaissance, combining the passions of art and science to create a new understanding of the world. Roll this Distinction’s die when you are discussing art or science, trying to understand a new theory or technology, or working on a new creation or invention.
d4: ???
d8: ???
d12: ???

Two-Handed Bodyguard (Distinction)

You have studied the use of the two-handed sword as a bodyguarding and crowd-control weapon. Despite its size, you can bring it to bear in virtually any situation, from a narrow back-alley to a broad plaza. Roll in this die when you are fighting with a two-handed sword, or engaged in bodyguard duties.
d4: Spend a Plot Point to Increase your Injured or Afraid Stress pool when armed with a two-handed sword.
d8: When using your sword in an open area, Spend a Plot Point to cancel any Aiding dice your opponent gained from other characters who are engaged in combat with you or those you are protecting.
d12: When Aiding another character with your sword, Spend a Plot Point to Reroll your entire pool, handing over your new highest die.

Titles

Noble Title (Heritage Distinction)

You have earned or inherited a title of some sort, making you a privileged member of the aristocracy - anything from a knight to a Prince. Roll in this Distinction’s die whenever you are lording it over your lessers, or when you exercise your authority to get what you want.
d4: Earn a Plot Point whenever you Choose to step on someone’s toes to get what you want.
d8: Spend a Plot Point to Reroll your Title’s die in a Test or Contest involving authority.
d12: Add a d6 to Trouble to Use a Special Effect from a Linked Office you don’t have.
Limit: God
Linked Offices: Civic, Military.

Offices

Special Effects

• Automatically gain a new SFX at Office ratings of d4, d8 and d12.
• SFX can also be bought with Growth dice as usual.

Civic or Public Office (Office)

You have either been appointed to a civic office, or elected to a public office, either of which grants you power for as long as you can hold onto it. Different Offices will have different purviews and commensurate Special Effects. Positions may include Treasurer, Spymaster, Ambassador, Chancellor, Magistrate, and many others. Roll in your Office’s die whenever you are dealing with issues covered by its portfolio.

Special Effects: Spend a Plot Point to:

• Get Aid from an exhausted Resource related to your Office.
• Generate a d10 Useful Detail related to your position, such as official documents.
• Find out what’s going on in a different scene, thanks to your information network.
• Deputise another character as an agent of your Office for one episode, at a d6 rating.
• Issue a decree or by-law, which remains in effect for the rest of the episode.

Limit: Official Documents

Ambassador (Office)

You are an ambassador, a representative of a foreign power, charged with championing your state’s interests at court. Roll this Office’s die when lobbying for your state, when arriving at a diplomatic solution, or when manipulating the situation to your advantage.

Special Effects: Spend a Plot Point to:

• Generate a d10 Useful Detail related to your position, such as official communiques from home.
• Add a d8 to Trouble to grant another character asylum at your embassy.
• Deputise another character as an envoy of your Office for one episode, at a d6 rating.
• Add a d12 to Trouble to lodge an official protest when a situation turns against your interests.
• Claim diplomatic immunity to get out of a sticky situation.

Limit: Official Documents

Commercial Office (Office)

You have been appointed as an Envoy to lobby the court and investors for favourable trading conditions, on behalf of a merchant family or powerful Guild. Roll in your Office’s die when negotiating trade terms or discussing financial arrangements.

Special Effects: Spend a Plot Point to:

• Generate a d10 Useful Detail related to your position, such as a contract.
• Find out what’s going on in a different scene, thanks to your contacts.
• Grant another character access to a 2d8 Resource, good for one use only.
• Bribe an Extra to let you in somewhere you’re not meant to be.
• Arrange for someone or something to be transported into, out of, or around the city in secret.

Limit: Signed Contracts

Military Office (Office)

You have been granted command of an armed force, whether it be elite guardsmen, rank-and-file soldiers, mercenaries, or militia. Positions include Admiral, General, Captain and so on. Roll this Office’s die when dealing with those under your command, or when administering military matters.

Special Effects: Spend a Plot Point to:

• Generate a d10 Useful Detail related to your position, such as official documents.
• Find out what’s going on in a different scene, thanks to your network of underlings.
• Deputise another character as an agent of the Military for one episode, at a d6 rating.
• Commandeer a building or vehicle for security purposes.
• Call on Reinforcements (Fighting, Security) 2d8 for one scene.

Limit: Direct Orders from a Superior

Doge (Office)

Through a council of electors, you have been chosen as the Doge, de-facto ruler of the city-state. This is a position of great responsibility - politically, ceremonially and militarily. In foreign affairs, you are given the stylings of a Prince. However, this Office comes with many responsibilities and restrictions. Roll in this Office’s die when administering internal matters or affairs of state.

Special Effects: Spend a Plot Point to:

• Get Aid from an exhausted Resource related to your Office.
• Generate a d12 Useful Detail related to your position, such as official documents.
• Add a d10 to Trouble to revoke any Title or Office (apart from Religious Office) for the remainder of an episode.
• Grant another character a d8 Civil Office trait for this episode.
• Issue a decree or by-law, which remains in effect for the rest of the episode. This can overrule any other decree currently in effect.

Limit: Scheduling - Earn a Plot Point any time you must leave a scene early on, due to official business

Religious Office (Office)

You have been inducted into the Catholic Church as a priest, bishop, archbishop or cardinal. Roll this Office’s die when dealing in religious matters, performing ceremonies, or debating scripture.

Special Effects: Spend a Plot Point to:

• Reduce an opponent’s Clergy rating for an episode (treat this like Reducing Stress, depending on whether their Trait is less than yours or not).
• Get Aid from an exhausted Resource related to your Office.
• Generate a d10 Useful Detail related to your position, such as a holy writ or ceremonial item.
• Excommunicate any character who is not a member of the Clergy.
• Extract a confession from a character who is not a member of the Clergy (requires a Contest against a Feature or Lead).

Limit: ???

SamuraiVille Resources

By the end of the SamuraiVille campaign, I'd put together a few original Assets to reflect the setting and the nature of the main characters. Feel free to use these, wholesale or just as inspiration, in your own games!

Priest (Distinction)
You are a member of a religious order. Roll in this die when debating religion, recalling scripture, or resisting temptation.

d4: Earn a Plot Point when you Choose to adhere to your faith's precepts in the face of an easier path, or insist that others do so.
d8: Add a d6 to Trouble to Reroll a die when upholding the ideals of your sect.
d12: Spend a Plot Point to Recover your own Afraid or Insecure Stress, or to step back the Afraid or Insecure Stress of everyone in the Scene who subscribes to your teachings.

Kitsune (Heritage Distinction)

You were born a fox; long life has transformed you into a yokai with supernatural powers. All have the ability to assume a fox or human form at will, although the human form always features a bushy fox tail. You may be a trickster spirit, or a messenger of the rice god Inari - and all are fond of sweet rice cakes. They are easily panicked by dogs, to the point where they may revert to their true form and flee. Some are said to carry with them a magical gem (Hoshi no Tama) that contains their power.

d4: Earn a Plot Point when you Choose to complicate a situation using trickery or misdirection.
d8: Add a d6 to Trouble to use a Special Effect from a connected Ability you don't have.
d12: Spend a Plot Point to Reveal you know a spirit or supernatural entity with knowledge or abilities that could be useful in the current situation.
Connected Abilities: Shapeshifting, Possession, Dream Manipulation, Flight, Invisibility, Illusions.
Limit: Dogs or Hoshi no Tama (Gear)

Tengu (Heritage Distinction)

Some say that these yokai are the form taken by yamabushi who stray from the true path by developing excessive pride in their esoteric powers. They have crow-like faces or exceptionally long noses, and black feathered wings. Tengu are known for their prowess with weaponry, and some have even trained the great heroes of legend in the arts of swordsmanship. They are also known to cause mischief by possessing people, especially women and monks.

d4: Earn a Plot Point when you Choose to let your excessive pride get in the way, or when you are swayed by flattery.
d8: Add a d6 to Trouble to Increase your Injured or Afraid Stress Pool while using a weapon.
d12: Spend a Plot Point to Reveal you know a spirit or supernatural entity with knowledge or abilities that could be useful in the current situation.
Connected Abilities: Flight, Possession.
Limit: Humility

Iron Will (Ability)

Your mind is a fortress, protecting you from unnatural and malevolent manipulation. Roll this Ability’s die when detecting or resisting supernatural interrogation, manipulation, domination or possession that targets you personally.

Effect: Defense
Descriptors: Mental, Magic, Spirit
Limits: Concentration, Mental

Special Effects: Spend a Plot Point to...

• Cast out a character that is Possessing you.
• Decrease your opponent’s AFRAID or INSECURE Stress pool against you.
• Recover your AFRAID or INSECURE Stress.
• Reflect a mental Ability back at your opponent (they must Give In or roll against their own result).
• Shutdown a mental Ability that someone attempts to use on you, for the rest of the Scene.

SamuraiVille Episode 5.2

• Barb plays Okitsu, a fox-spirit who often possesses a shrine maiden.
• Matt plays Taro, an apprentice blacksmith under Master Tetsu.
• +Paul plays Yushin, a Buddhist monk recently returned to the town.
• Rohin plays Yuriko, the owner of a tea-house who is also a ninja.

Well, SamuraiVille has come to a close. Yushin's player has been off sick for the last three weeks, and Taro's player had an unfortunate personal emergency to deal with, but I wanted to push on and get it done rather than leave the end trailing for yet another week. Unfortunately, that made things a little lacklustre.


Yuriko got a coded message to meet her clan master at the waterfall at sunset. He warned her to stay away from the untrustworthy fox-spirit, but more importantly, told her that a rival Lord, Kageshima, was poised to invade the province. Although the clan worked for Lord Morinaga, they realised that the battle would be lost, even with the gain of a new musket design, so are planning to change sides. He instructed her to acquire the new muskets, but to pass them on to the ninja clan rather than letting them fall into the hands of the local Lord Morinaga.

Okitsu was at the tea-house, and started impersonating Yuriko. Akira turned up for a drink, and mentioned that he had been sent to seek out his brother, the pirate Kenji (whom Yuriko was to get the muskets off). Okitsu tried to drug him, but he refused alcohol and managed to brush off her attempts to feed him random herbal teas. He left just as Yuriko returned; Okitsu filled her in, and Yuriko followed him invisibly in her young male form.

Being followed made Akira a bit twitchy, but he didn't manage to find out who it was. He began patrolling the coast, towards the smuggler's bay. Yuriko intercepted him, claiming to be a messenger from the castle come to tell him that the daimyo was in danger. Although he resisted the explanation at first, he eventually gave in and returned to the town.

Yuriko arrived at the smuggler's cove, where she met up with the pirate Kenji. She traded the bottled tengu for several sample muskets. Kenji gave the trapped spirit to a black daoist, who seemed satisfied with it. Yuriko headed back to town to hand over the muskets to her ninja contacts.


And... yeah. I ran out of conflicts, and that's how the game ended. I should have done some more exposition at the end (the back-story between Kenji and Akira, the reason the daoist wanted the spirit), but I'd forgotten some of my notes, and I was trying to figure out how to wrap the story. Also, Kenji was showing some Japanese reserve in front of his crew.

All up, my first attempt at Smallville was a mixed success. I made plenty of bad calls, and I still have to stop and think over whether I should contest something or give in. Even so, I'm quite bad at predicting what will happen to the dramatic flow, and I'm still somewhat resistant to tweaking events just for the story. For example, at the end I thought it would make a good climax to have Akira confront his brother while Yuriko was making the deal - we could have had acrimonious exposition, and she could have picked sides. I was hoping Okitsu would be there as well (although my original plan was to have Akira drag Taro along). However, since I got Akira talking to Okitsu, she knew what he was up to and Yuriko turned him away from the path which would have led to that final confrontation. It kind of dramatically deflated the situation, so I probably should have just had him take stress and keep looking for Kenji. Problem is, I'm pretty sure Yuriko's next move would have been to take him out - which meant I shouldn't have tipped them off that he was looking for the pirates in the first place. I was just trying to keep Okitsu involved, but it made things go flat.

It's a little depressing, but I did learn things too. I'm priming to run a political game set in a fantasy renaissance Venice with a slightly different group, so hopefully I can apply what I've learned.

Note: I did a bit of work setting up a new Smallville game called PiccoLaguna, but when I tried to organise a new group not enough people showed up. I still haven't had an opportunity to run it.

Interface Zero: Vegas

Since Rohin fell in love with the Interface Zero setting for Savage Worlds even more than I did, he decided to run a game based in the Free City of Las Vegas, located in the Northeast of Baja Mexico. The city was controlled in equal parts by corporate and organised crime interests. The party would all be working as security and troubleshooters at a strip mall owned by corporate magnate Bob Ho.

We played several sessions in 2012, but didn't manage to resolve the main storyline.

+Andrew played Gerald Rigg, an android security guard.
John played Mr. X, a blind mouse-hybrid hacker.
+Melysa played Kuma, a genetically modified security dog with near-human intelligence.
I played Devlin Monterey, a dog-hybrid rentacop of French-Canadian extraction.


The game started with a couple of us pulling security duty in the mall. A few kids started a food fight, so I intimidated them (and drew my stun-stick) and they ran away. During the ruckus, a virtual graffiti artist dropped a hyper-reality tag on the wall. I think he got chased off by Mr. X.

We were soon called into our boss' office, and given a mission. The daughter of a friend of the company had gone missing, and we were asked to find her. The situation was big and complex. The reference photos for the daughter had been doctored, but we managed to hack her school and find security footage of her. She'd disappeared from an alley in a Triad part of town during some turmoil with rival Hispanic gangs, but we learned she had friends in the Mafia and had probably gone with them. We tracked down the car she'd been taken away in, but it was booby-trapped and exploded. It began to seem as though she might have run away rather than being kidnapped.

We were sent video footage from the kidnapper showing her being sexually assaulted. The man in the video had a class ring. Her father was a member of the same class; we tracked down three other members who were currently in Baja Mexico - a scientist working for a bio-research facility, someone with connections to the European mafia, and an ex-General now working as a fight promoter and manager for a cyber-gladiator.

We ended up at a bit of an impasse, trying to untangle the various webs of stories and connections, and trying to figure out the best way to gain leverage and information hile exposing ourselves to minimal harm. Luckily, we had some other things to keep us occupied...

We received a tip-off that some gangers were going to raid one of our stock warehouses. We waited nearby in our AV, swooping in once they entered corporate property and our jurisdiction. We engaged them with deadly force, killing most of them and destroying their van as they fled using our vehicle-mounted cannon.

We'd been hearing rumours of a Bio-Horror prowling around the city ever since the start of the game, but we finally got a call that it was rampaging through one of our company malls.  We arrived to find it - a mutated giant tiger-like creature - prowling around an upper-storey food court, eating things and people. Some of us engaged it head-on to draw its attention, while the others guided the civilians to safety. It was a tough fight, but we eventually managed to subdue it.

As we transported it to the roof for extraction, a second Bio-Horror, like the first one but twice the size, climbed up onto the roof and, using  voice synthesiser, demanded the return of his "brother." It charged, and I faced it down as the others hurried for the AV. Miraculously, I put one shot into its head and it went down. My elation was short-lived, as it began to regenerate and showed signs of moving. We cleared out as fast as we could.


That was as much as we got through in 2012. My first impressions of playing Savage Worlds are that the dice did tend to feel "swingy" quite a lot of the time. In particular, I had a hard time trying to get decent damage rolls, and it was frustrating to not have the option of spending a Benny to reroll. I spent four or five rounds shooting the little Bio-Horror to no effect, only to completely drop the larger Bio-Horror with a single shot from the same gun. From what I've read about the system since, we probably could have used a few combat manoeuvres other than just repeatedly making attack rolls.

Deciding what to increase with an advance does tend to take a little while, unless you have it planned out. To start with, I guess there were a few Edges on my wish-list that I hadn't managed to pick up at character creation. I found that Skills only start to feel really competent at d10 or higher; starting with d8's, I flubbed more rolls than I would have liked.

Overall it's a serviceable game. I think we spent a lot of time trying to plan our approaches and minimise exposure to danger rather than just diving in, which given the way NPCs tend to fold like card-houses, was probably largely unnecessary. I think we were still in a Cyberpunk 2020 mindset to some degree, where a single bullet can lay you low. While that's still true in Interface Zero, characters are by and large somewhat more resilient.

The VR/HR elements of Interface Zero were also a bit hand-wavey at times; the setting book gives a glimpse at an awesome vision of hyper-reality, but doesn't have solid enough grounding principles to allow for us to extrapolate logical outcomes without relying on GM fiat. Also, the rules for hacking and controlling other people were a bit vague.

I'm actually writing this blog post in April 2013, and I've recently put in for the Interface Zero 2.0 Kickstarter at the PDF level, so it will be interesting to see if the new version addresses any of my concerns with the setting-specific rules.

SamuraiVille Episode 5.1

• Barb plays Okitsu, a fox-spirit who often possesses a shrine maiden.
• Matt plays Taro, an apprentice blacksmith under Master Tetsu.
• +Paul plays Yushin, a Buddhist monk recently returned to the town.
• Rohin plays Yuriko, the owner of a tea-house who is also a ninja.

Turns out "Yushin" was just coming down with the flu that's been going around, leading to tired crankiness, so it looks like we'll probably go another session or two.

I'm not sure which enemies in particular "Okitsu" wants to permanently knock off; possibly the tengu, although as GM I'd probably be inclined to Give In to having it die if they seriously trap or beat it into submission. I don't think anyone has a permanent relationship to it, and there are plenty more mischievous tengu out there if I ever needed another.

If I run Smallville again with this group, they'll have a better idea of what to expect, and have realised how important it is to tie the Leads together strongly from the start. One piece of advice for new players joining existing groups - if someone has to join later, I'd get them to make their character with everyone else present so the group can help work the character into the game world more comfortably, making suggestions and agreeing to any potentially controversial tie-ins. We made one Lead separately later on, and a few of the connections we came up with sort of chafed with how the established players saw the world and their characters working. Openness and collaboration is key in all aspects of Smallville.

Taro and Akira fight the Giant Gaki with the aid of Okitsu in fox form. The gaki pulls in all of the smaller ghosts to heal itself, but it is defeated anyway. Okitsu steals away the spirit-flame that drops from its remains. She realises it could be used to restore the valley's damaged fertility, or she could give it to Yuriko to trade for the new muskets.

Taro, Akira and Tetsu drop by the tea-house to wind down, while Okitsu and Yuriko go back to patrolling the mountain looking for the tengu. Akira excuses himself so he can return to the castle and report the gaki's defeat to the daimyo.

Taro and Tetsu are returning to the forge when Tetsu has to stop to relieve himself in an alleyway. Mariko appears in the street and talks to Taro - she tells him that Yuriko's spirit-tea WAS responsible for Tetsu's possession. She also tells him that she captured the tengu with the help of the townsfolk, but decided to show mercy and release it. Okitsu interrupts the conversation by running through town as an invisible fox, projecting an illusion of the tengu. Taro runs to the castle to find Akira.

The Okitsu-tengu stands on the roof of the tea-house squawking, but Yuriko shoos her onto the next building so she doesn't drive even more customers away. The townsfolk flee the streets. Mariko hops up onto the roof and confronts Okitsu, telling her not to try anything or she'll harm "the girl." Convinced that Mariko is possessed by the tengu, Okitsu leaps straight at her and attempts to re-possess the shrine maiden. The tengu resists, but gains stress. Before it can throw Mariko's body from the roof, Yuriko leaps from the tea-house next door and pins Mariko down. The tengu is stressed out and flees Mariko's body, and Yuriko captures it in a spirit-bottle.

Things went pretty well, although the confrontation with the tengu was a bit disappointing as it didn't manage to roll very well on either Contest. I could have presented it a bit better dramatically speaking, but mechanically the outcome would have been the same. I could have had tengu-possessed Mariko confronting the illusion tengu on the roof in view of townsfolk witnesses, or even better in front of Taro and Akira returning from the castle, but I only thought of that after the event. Maybe the opening scene of next episode will have Taro and Akira turning up just in time to witness the confrontation on the roof; that should sow a bit of confusion.

For the fifth session in a row, Yuriko has steadfastly failed to gain any Stress - she has come out on top of every Contest she's been directly involved in!

Since we are only getting two hour sessions at the moment, I decided to split Episode 5 in half. Episode 5.2 will be next week. The Trouble Pool and Plot Points are not re-setting, and I've allowed Growth Pools to carry over if people want. I'd been getting the feeling that things were just starting to ramp up and then the session would end, so I'm seeing if this will help the mechanical pacing. Of course, I was hoping the tengu would still be around, but I can move on to focus on other concerns.

>>> Episode 5.2

SamuraiVille Episode 4

• Barb plays Okitsu, a fox-spirit who often possesses a shrine maiden.
• Matt plays Taro, an apprentice blacksmith under Master Tetsu.
• +Paul plays Yushin, a Buddhist monk recently returned to the town.
• Rohin plays Yuriko, the owner of a tea-house who is also a ninja.

Tonight's session was a bit of a bust. I had a cold or flu over the weekend which I'm still trying to throw off, although my energy levels were fairly reasonable. However, Yushin's player might be trying to fight off the same illness - he flaked out and had to call it a night only an hour in. It sort of petered out after that; there were no Contests, and only one Test. No Challenging, no Stress, no Recovery, no Growth.


Yushin let the tengu go, and persuaded the actual shrine maiden Mariko to accompany him back to the castle to talk to the abbott.

Okitsu stayed at the tea-house overnight. Yuriko received a midnight visit from her contact the pirate captain. He offered to trade her a new model of foreign musket in exchange for the soul of a yokai, but he needed an answer within 24 hours.

Yushin wanted to point out to the abbott that Mariko was being controlled by an outside force such as an evil spirit, since she couldn't remember what happened for most of the previous day while she was possessed. She claimed to be under the influence of Inari. Yushin's player was flaking a bit by this stage, and I found it hard to discern what the aim of the scene was.

In the morning, Tetsu and Taro were visited at the forge by a young samurai, Akira, who'd been sent by the daimyo to investigate the tales of spoiled rice and ghosts. Taro took him to the tea-house to drink the special spirit tea, allowing him to see the spirits.

Yuriko and Okitsu headed up to the shrine to get the tengu and trade it for the muskets, only for Mariko to tell them that it had been released by Yushin. Okitsu assumed the form of a tengu and, followed by an invisible Yuriko, they began searching the mountain for it.

Akira managed to slice a little ghost in half when he and Taro were on their way back through the town, to Taro's surprise. Taro then led Akira and Tetsu to the waterfall, where they discovered that the bags of rice he'd left out there had been completely consumed, and a trail of green ooze pointed towards the valley's rice fields. Okitsu and Yuriko also reached the waterfall, and secretly followed the three men to the edge of the rice fields - where an enormous gaki has started eating the rice harvest.


I think illness and lack of energy took their toll. There were some pacing problems, and Yushin's player was lacking focus before deciding to leave early. He'd displayed some general grumpiness towards Okitsu's player, as their characters have become antagonists; I'm not certain if weariness led to grumpiness or if grumpiness led to leaving early. I'm hoping that people aren't taking things personally, but those two do have a tendency to bump heads a little IRL.

I think the game might possibly go another session or two, or we might call it a wrap there depending on how Yushin's player's feeling. The rest of us discussed how the game was going, and it had a mixed response. "Okitsu" doesn't like that it's all but impossible to permanently defeat something, and that decisive results aren't always forthcoming. "Taro" has some issues with pacing, which was admittedly a bit too lumpy this episode, but otherwise enjoys the system He also lacks much knowledge of feudal Japan, so there can be a bit of a cultural divide in this current game. I don't remember any strong opinions from "Yuriko" (who was starting to pass out on the couch), and I'll talk to "Yushin" later. There was also a general feeling that Growth is too slow, although I think that's a combination of short sessions and not enough familiarity yet to "game" the system for Growth dice.

>>> Episode 5.1

IZ: Scavengers of the Sunken City

I ran a short introductory Savage Worlds game in the Interface Zero setting, just so the group could become familiar with character creation and the basic mechanics before Rohin launched his Interface Zero Vegas campaign. I don't have a full cast list of characters, but the players were +Andrew, John, +Melysa, and Rohin.

We set the game in the semi-sunken ruins of Los Angeles, after the land to the West of the San Andreas Fault slid into the ocean. I cast L.A. as being 10 to 100 metres underwater, with ruined skyscrapers and fractured freeways poking above the surface. Several communities of scavengers, gangers, and the remnants of the LAPD had been built on the elevated land around the city basin.

There was some resistance to the system, especially from Andrew. In particular, needing to read and absorb the entire list of Edges in order to make informed choices at character creation was a big mark against the system. However, the whole point of this short game was to give people a chance to experiment and find the pitfalls so they could make more informed choices when making characters for Rohin's long-term game.

John went through a couple of iterations before deciding on an aquatic hybrid. There was also some uncertainty and confusion about the Interface Zero occupation and income system and how it related to Edges and Hindrances such as Rich or Poverty. He wanted to be a Crime Boss ($25K income) along with the Poverty Hindrance (halve income, can't hold onto cash), but this would still have meant he would be starting with more money than anyone else (mostly $5K to $10K incomes)! In the end, I decided that the Corporate and Crime Boss occupations were only available if you took the Rich Edge, and the Ganger occupation ($2K) was a representation of the Poverty Hindrance.

Speaking of money, IZ lacks a standard exchange rate with the dollars used in the Savage Worlds core rulebook, and also lacks a mundane equipment list! Due to hyperinflation, dollar values in IZ are between 2 and 10 times higher than their modern day equivalents, but it's somewhat frustrating to have to guesstimate prices for everything, especially when gear is a big part of the setting.

We opened with a fight, and I discovered how fragile Extras in Savage Worlds can be.


The group came down to their boats one day to find rival gangers looting them. The fight was brief, and none of my gangers got to fire a shot; I think one managed to crawl behind cover, but it didn't do him much good. 

The characters discovered a hyper-reality data file on one of the gangers - a map, describing the location of what appeared to be a concealed lab in one of the submerged skyscrapers in the abandoned central city. They dialled up a virtual connection, discovering that the lab seemed to contain several prototype wheeled remotes which may be collector's items. However, the HR version of the lab couldn't tell them much about the physical condition of the lab, except that the power was off. They decided to take a couple of boats and go check it out.

Using the map they quickly located the building and began trying to find a way into the sealed lab level. It turned out that it was definitely underwater now, but one of the group was an aquatic hybrid. Before they could find a way in though, they were attacked by several speedboats loaded with gangers.  A big firefight ensued, spanning the building with the lab and the one next door. They managed to snipe, outmanoeuvre, and gun down most of the gangers, but the last survivor took a boat and fled.

They finally managed to cut their way into the lab and recover the first edition remotes, but then decided to explore the upper levels of the shattered building in case there was anything else worth looting. Of course, most of the decent stuff had been stripped decades ago. They ended up disturbing a bio-horror that was nesting in the building; even as a Wild Card, it didn't last long against assault shotguns. They heard more scrabbling sounds from the next floor up, and took that as their cue to leave.


Even boatloads of Extras were little threat to the group, and the powerful weapons in Interface Zero seem to be able to chew through Wild Cards pretty well too. Playing cards worked pretty well for initiative, although as we were seated around a loungeroom rather than a table, it sometimes took more than a glance to see who was up next.

Some of the Hyper-Reality and hacking rules seemed a little vague, and I wasn't really confident in my approach. Oddly, having searched a few forums, apparently the guys at Gunmetal Games haven't fully thought through their vision of virtual reality either, as they mostly seem to say "we hadn't thought about that" and "just do whatever you like" in response to questions about The Deep. I can see a grand vision in the basic IZ hacking system, but it's a little too obscured for me to be able to see it clearly. I prefer to understand things from base principles, but it's tricky to come up with a consistent, understandable interpretation of The Deep that actually matches the rules. I also invested in the Hacking 2.0 PDF, which purports to simplify VR, but I think it takes away some of the charm.

After mostly playing the same game for a decade or so, some of the players were a bit slow on the uptake of a new system. I ended up making little summary sheets on how to make skill and damage rolls.

Up next, we made characters for Rohin's game, set in Vegas - a Free City in the country of Baja Mexico.