SamuraiVille Episode 0: Pathways

In March 2012 we ran through pathways for our first Smallville game - set in the Japanese Warring States period. This series of articles was originally posted in a thread on RPG.net. For this first (rather long) post, indented text is lifted straight from the original post, and regular text is me adding notes and context.

The Smallville RPG is built to emulate the sort of melodrama you see on teenage drama shows. Despite the name, though, most people seem to adapt it to their own settings; I don't think I've heard of anyone actually using it to run a game set in Smallville, although I'm sure they're out there!

The mechanics focus on interpersonal drama and conflict between the "Leads", or PCs. The advice on designing scenarios is all geared towards creating tension and conflict between the leads so they can fight, regret their actions, make up, and come back fighting against a common foe. Or tear their friendship apart with acrimonious accusations.

The important thing to keep in mind is that Smallville pits characters against characters, not players against players. For great play, everyone needs to understand that setbacks and losing arguments to others isn't the same as losing the game or doing poorly - rather, it's fuel for you to be able to roleplay the angst, tragedy and drama that your character's experiencing.

26 March 2012

It was a bit of a mind-melt making sure everyone did the bits they were meant to, and one player was constantly reorganising her Abilities... In the end I think we sorted it out, although there seems to have been a little more focus on Assets than Relationships. We stopped after the Life-Changing Event, and will fill in the remaining steps as the first few sessions progress.

Smallville's character creation is based around two things - a "Pathways" chart that gives you a range of options for diferent stages of your life, and a relationship map where you develop connections to PCs, NPCs, and Locations. As you go through your Pathway choices, you get to "step up" various values. Anything you have a connection to starts with a rating of d4. Each extra step-up allows you to increase the die by one type (d6, d8, d10, d12).

Pathways has about a dozen steps, divided into two sections. Stopping after The Life-Changing Event  gives you the equivalent of "Season 1" characters on a TV show. If you complete the rest of the steps, they become about as developed as characters from Season 3 or 4. We basically played catch-up by doing one extra stage at the end of each session.

The characters are:

• Okitsu, a fox spirit who currently has the rice-god Inari as a D6 Extra. She doesn't appear to be heavily connected to worldly affairs, although she sees herself as a divine agent sent to punish or reward mortals. Her ability to possess people may lead to complications, especially as she is by default riding around in a Shrine Maiden who isn't even listed as an Extra - in other words, at the moment she's a total nobody unless the fox spirit is possessing her.

• Yuriko, a somewhat elderly female ninja who has just been promoted to a senior position within her clan. As a cover, she runs a tea-house in town. Apparently some of the drinks they serve weaken the barrier with the spirit world, allowing patrons to glimpse the supernatural. She has very Japanese Values, and a number of ninja tricks which are mainly based on gear. Thanks to an amulet she has the ability to shape-shift, and can pass herself off as someone much younger.

• Taro, a blacksmith who takes great pride in his work. Although he followed a similar life-path to Yuriko, they ended up being quite different. Also, apparently Taro's master is: Yuriko's brother; is in love with Okitsu's shrine-maiden form; and is of the same weapon school as Yuriko's clan leader. In a way, Taro's master is more connected than he is. This should be OK, since he's also Taro's most important relationship; other than that, Taro applies himself to his work.

I have a week to mull things over and develop some wedges. I think it's going to be interesting, especially as two of the characters have alternate forms which people may end up having completely separate relationships with! I'll have to confirm some particulars about the fox spirit's form; I think she can manifest as a fox, or a human form with a tail, but prefers to possess the wholly human body of her god's shrine maiden. I'm not sure if the poor girl will actually become a character in her own right. It's a bit of a complex situation for a first game! 

None of the Leads have particularly strong relationships or committed statements to each other. I think the first couple of sessions will need to concentrate on challenging the assumptions (or non-assumptions) they have about each other to push for growth and redefinition.

27 March 2012

... it's been tricky so far trying to find story leads to gnaw on, since the Leads are mostly noncommittal towards each other. I'm trying to find ways for the Features to cause situations between the Leads that will cause them to Challenge and re-form their relationships. Taro's master (who really needs a name) is an obvious start, because he's linked to all of the Leads. 

I wasn't really sure what to do about the Shrine Maiden thing. The concept turned up late in the piece, and there wasn't an opportunity to cast her as an Extra or anything. I sort of figured that if people encountered her alone, they could start a pick-up Relationship with her and go from there; she could evolve into a Feature as people interact with her. I think otherwise she is a fairly willing servant of Inari who doesn't mind being host for a Fox Spirit, and I have a feeling that Okitsu will be "riding" her around most of the time. I'm also not sure to what extent the other Leads know of her actual form and identity, and will need to address that before we start play.

I wanted to base something around the Master Blacksmith - now tentatively named Sensei Tetsu - since he's connected to each of the Leads. For a while I couldn't figure out how to get him to provoke the Leads into action. I have a second situation in the works involving plans for improved firearms and his sister's ninja clan, but for now I just want to get the Leads together and trying to deal with personal issues and the relationships between them. 

Tetsu's sister, Yuriko (a Lead) runs a local tea-house. One of the drinks they purvey is a type of "dream-wine" that has the side-effect of blurring the barriers to the spirit world for the imbiber. Tetsu has been established as "frequently visiting" the tea-house. After one such evening of pleasantly watching the gossamery things float by, he drinks a little too much and falls asleep with his spirit open, leading to possession by a mischievous spirit. 

I've yet to determine its exact nature, but he'll probably start behaving erratically back at the forge. This should cause concern for his student Taro and his sister Yuriko. If they deduce possession, they may seek the help of the local shrine maiden, thus allowing me to bring Okitsu into the situation. Perhaps the spirit might cause Tetsu to seek out Okitsu by himself, giving him a Reckless Distinction and causing him to lose his inhibitions regarding his secret desire for the shrine maiden! 

Anyway, that's what I have so far. I'd love to work in some tensions between PCs more directly, but as I mentioned earlier there isn't much to work with at the moment. 

Hopefully this situation will stir things up as everybody tries to do what they think is best for Tetsu. I'm making a list of potential sub-plots and things to throw in if the situations arise. I'm trying hard not to start sandboxing by giving the NPCs their own independent motivations and just letting things unfold; I'm learning to focus the story more definitely on the Leads, using the Features as tools to that end. My brain hurts a bit, but I've discovered that situational goodness will leak out of it given enough time!

31 March 2012

Just after we'd gone through Pathways together, +Paul realised that he would be able to make it to game nights after all, so I had to deal with adding his character to the relationship map once everyone else was already done...

The fourth player and I made his character on Saturday - a Zen Buddhist monk called Yushin. He introduced a Buddhist temple and shared a Waterfall Location, and introduced the Buddha and the local Daimyo as his Extras. Since his character's been away from the town for over a decade, he has some delightfully outdated and prejudiced Statements towards the other Leads! 

The distant temple at which he trained was raided and burned, so he has returned to his hometown. The local abbot has appointed him to guide the young Daimyo in spiritual matters. 

So as the book suggested, I drew up an Episode Map so I could take a look at the current frictions and see what I could mess with. Happily, my current possession plan seems like it will do nicely; the actual scenario should be fairly brief to resolve and is pretty much a simple A-plot situation, but that means we'll have more time to finalise some of the bookwork from last week, and for explaining and figuring out the system as we go. I want to also spend some time prompting the Leads to develop more concrete opinions of each other. 

Drawn up as relationship pairs, it currently goes something like this:

• Yuriko: Taro is just this guy / Taro: I don't trust Yuriko.
• Okitsu: I don't appreciate Yuriko's drinks making life difficult / Yuriko: Okitsu is annoying but necessary for rice.
• Taro: I don't trust young women like Okitsu / Okitsu: Taro is promoting trade, so that's worthwhile.
• Yushin: Yuriko is a disreputable woman / Yuriko: ???
• Yushin: Taro is an uncontrollable wild-child / Taro: ??? 

Statements relating back to Yushin will be done tonight before we start play. Yushin doesn't have an opinion of Okitsu either, because we're not sure which version of her he knows. Technically everyone else's relationship is to Possessed Mariko the shrine maiden, but Mariko would probably have been too young when Yushin left home to have been possessed yet. His relationship might be to Possessed Mariko but only recently formed on his return to town, or he may have known Akiko (the fox-girl form) when he was just a boy. We need to see what Okitsu's player thinks. 

My possession scenario can prod various relationships in the following ways: 

• Yuriko/Okitsu: Yuriko's drinks are causing trouble for everyone, and Okitsu may be their best hope to break the possession.
• Yuriko/Taro: Taro gets a chance to help his master and prove he's more than "just some guy". Yuriko could demonstrate her love for family, and perhaps earn some trust from Taro.
• Taro/Okitsu: If Okitsu helps his master, Taro may be more willing to trust her. Then again, as his master is in love with her current form, something may happen to reinforce his distrust.
• Yushin/Yuriko: Apparently the daimyo is visiting the tea-house to partake of some illicit substance, and tonight Yushin has tailed him. He has a bad opinion of Yuriko to begin with, and it could go either way depending on how the episode pans out.
• Yushin/Taro: Taro will have the opportunity to reinforce or challenge Yushin's childhood opinion of him, depending on if he acts rashly or sensibly. 

Next episode, once I have the rest of the blanks filled in, I'll probably try to concentrate some more on people's relationships with Yushin. However, we'll see how it goes tonight - for all I know, he may get plenty of spotlight time even without me doing much to Wedge him.

>>> Episode 1 

FATE: The Rocks are Talking!

After the Monster Hunters game, I managed to persuade my other group to try FATE - although after the Black Waltz campaign, I had to assure them the game did not require or assume a competitive, character vs character environment!

We started with an open discussion of the sort of setting people would find interesting, and ended up in a Wild West flavoured retro-future, somewhat reminiscent of Trigun - a colony ship had crashed on an inhospitable planet a couple of generations ago, and the survivors were eking out an existence where they could. Certain areas of the world were actually quite fertile, but they were few and far between, with the rest of the landscape consisting of arid wasteland and desert. Fuel for the old technology was becoming scarce, but The Company had patented a process for turning certain rock crystals into a fuel source, and was growing in influence as their monopoly spread.

The player characters all ended up being related, one way or another, and were mostly based around the dustblown town of Tailfin.

• +Andrew played Vern Kidney, a respectable tradesman (a glassblower and lens-maker) with ambition to become an upstanding pillar of the community. Brother of Franz, half-brother of 'Tima, cousin of Alia.
•  John played Franz Kidney, the local sherriff and an inveterate drunk. Brother of Vern, half-brother of 'Tima, cousin of Alia.
• +Melysa Hamilton  played 'Tima Kidney, a former prospector for The Company who'd fallen into a crystal cave and was convinced the rocks had talked to her. Half-sister of Vern and Franz; cousin to Alia.
•  Rohin played Alia Basnia-Cotton, a local entrepreneur running a small saloon and gambling house. Cousin to Vern, Franz and 'Tima.

As the first scene opened, Franz took down the outlaw Red Bart in a gunfight, and dragged him to the jailhouse to await the circuit judge. 'Tima rode into town after her encounter with the speaking rocks; Melysa spent a FATE point to make a narrative declaration - she said there was an electrical storm rolling in, and added the Scene Aspect "An ill wind". She used this when trying to convince others of her story, that the rocks the Company was mining were actually alive! Nobody really took her seriously, because she also had the Aspect "Nobody believes the truth about The Company". However, Vern analysed some samples she'd brought with her, and eventually discovered that they were in fact some sort of organic crystal; a weird alien coral, maybe?

Franz and Vern's Ma ran a local vineyard, on a fertile patch of land at the edge of town. Their Pa had fathered 'Tima years before, and married Franz and Vern's Ma after 'Tima's mother died. He eventually died of alcohol poisoning. Ma had some exciting news for her boys - she had just gotten engaged to the local Company man, Bryce Culverton, and they were to be wed within the week!

Over the next few days, Bryce attempted to curry favour with Vern with promises of resources and social advancement, while at the same time pressuring him to get Franz to clean up his act. It became apparent that The Company was looking to expand their influence in Tailfin. They'd apparently bought out the saloon (putting many ladies of the night out of a job, but they were taken in by Alia), and Bryce pressured Franz to shut down Alia's saloon to squash the competition. After a family talk, Alia decided to rebrand as a "tea-room"...

While Franz was out drinking, Black Bart broke his brother Red Bart out of jail and fled by motorcycle. Franz put together a posse to hunt the outlaws down. The bandits fled in the direction of the cave 'Tima had fallen into earlier, and she took pains to make sure its location remained hidden. Once the outlaws were recaptured, though, she was persuaded to let her family members take a look.

'Tima discovered that there was a mother-lode of crystal under the vineyard, leading to theories that perhaps the crystals were responsible for the land's fertility, and that mining them for fuel would leave the land desolate and uninhabitable. A sneaky look through Bryce's mansion revealed Company survey maps that showed the crystal deposit, and it became apparent that he was only marrying Ma so he wouldn't have to buy the land out from under her! Ma was a hard nut to crack though, as she was still in love with Bryce no matter what, and wouldn't have any of 'Tima's talk about speaking rocks. In the end, they persuaded her to add the names of several other family members to the title deed, to keep the vineyard in the family.

Outmanoeuvred, Bryce went through with the marriage anyway. Had the game continued, he would have attempted to oust the others from the title deed, one way or another, but we called it quits at that point.

Reactions and Thoughts

Most of the Stunts ended up being picked off the sample list again. It really does seem that people need to rely on those examples to see what's possible and appropriate, especially the first time playing.

Andrew expressed a dislike of players being able to introduce elements into the story. I think the basic problem is that giving players authorial control makes the world and the game feel less solid, and cheapens the resolution of challenges presented by the GM. It's one step closer to just improv story telling. It also interferes with an immersive playstyle and the desire to explore the setting through your character, since you have to think outside of your character and operate on the story level to act as an author.

During the game, Melysa embraced the narrative mechanics more readily than the other players, but even she seemed to cool on them a bit in hindsight. She was impressed with Aspects as a concept, and attempted to introduce them to a low-powered supers game using PowerFrame as the base system. To date though, we've only played a couple of sessions, and the Aspects haven't really come up in play at all.

I'm not sure what John thought of the system, but we did discuss where the game could have gone had it continued, and he made some brilliant suggestions for evolving the story and maintaining dramatic tension.

After running FATE a couple of times, I'm getting more comfortable with the system. Since I usually run open-ended, situation-based games, I don't really have a problem with players being abe to reach in and directly influence the narrative, but that's obviously a sticking point for some players. I was just wondering if maybe I should try running the game for a group of GMs, but then I realised that everyone in the "Rocks" game has GMed at one point or another!

My main sticking point still seems to be in the adjudication of Aspects, especially Compelling them. I'm not sure if I'm having a hard time because I need more practice, or because the Aspects I've had to work with have been sub-optimal. In the end, everyone needs a bit of practice to find that sweet spot, I think. I also still need to work on my ability to see narrative structures and predict the outcomes; occasionally, I make judgement calls that accidentally shut down a line of play instead of progressing the game while adding to the consequences. However, I've been getting a lot of practice at that lately, so at least I can recognise the problem. The next stage will be seeing it before it happens, and avoiding it!

FATE's definitely an interesting game, and although this post has been back-dated, I've recently (Jan 2013) put in for the FATE Core Kickstarter.

FATE: Monster Hunters!

To launch my gaming odyssey, I decided to run a FATE game over January and February, inspired by the Monster Hunter computer game franchise (not to be confused with the various Victorian-era monster hunters that seem so popular nowadays). The setting would be primal, with small communities of humans eking out an existence in the shadow of giant, terrible creatures. Among each tribe are those charged with protecting the community from the ravages of such beasts - the Monster Hunters! Using powerful weapons and cunning hunting techniques, these individuals could chase off or even take down the great behemoths.

I decided to make this world slightly more primitive than that of Monster Hunter; a neolithic world with no great towns or cities. The PCs would be part of a small group recently exiled from their tribe, seeking to establish a new community. The PCs were all Hunters, charged with protecting the dozen or so other tribespeople.

• +Paul played Dezzi, a muscular engineer who wielded a great hammer.
• Barb played Markel, a stealthy archer.
• Rohin played Zeb, a shaman who preferred animals to people.
• Matt played Bonoff, a loud-mouthed letch who also tended to act as distraction and bait.

The exiles trekked for most of a day, heading across a desert and reaching an area of mesas and canyons covered in lush jungle by the afternoon. The tribe was attacked by fast, man-sized raptors, but the hunters saw them off. They soon built some huts in a clearing by a stream, and settled in.

Axehead, an apex predator on the jungle floor

Over the next several sessions, the hunters dealt with a growing village and personal politics, eventually tracked down and cleared out a raptor nest including a Raptor King, hunted a T-Rex-sized Axehead (which Bonoff managed to intimidate by roaring back at it instead of running away), and saved the village when a giant Sky Serpent strayed too close and threatened to destroy everything!

Sky Serpent, a canopy predator

As our first attempt at playing FATE, it was a little awkward. There were some good moments, such as when Paul made a declaration that the rock the raptors were living on was actually a type of "flash-powder" conglomerate, simultaneously getting a free tag when slamming his hammer into it to make a small explosion, and also lining up a potential source of explosive powder for advanced weaponry (although he didn't actually end up working on any). Apart from that, though, there was very little in the way of declarations, invoking for effect, or manoeuvres to set up follow-on moves. I also struggled a bit to come up with decent ways to compel their Aspects, although this was probably a combination of my inexperience, and the Aspects maybe not meshing perfectly with the situations they found themselves in.

The setting was also probaby a bit ambitious for a first game. The unusual, primitive setting made it tricky for the players to think up good Aspects, or even Stunts - almost all of which were picked straight off the brief list of samples. As GM, I had problems balancing the difficulties of encounters. If I accidentally threw in too many raptors, the minion/mob bonuses made the enemy groups too powerful, and I almost overwhelmed the PCs a couple of times.

On the other hand, I was probably not experienced enough to be able to put together truly challenging large monsters as boss fights. I couldn't make the large monsters' skills too high or they'd be unbeatable, but even with extended Stress tracks they mostly got taken down in only a few rounds because they were being assaulted by three or four hunters at once. Having looked back and thought about it a bit, I could probably have a better go at designing such creatures - either with massively extended Stress tracks, higher armour, or figuring out a way that you need to disable them in stages before you can finally take them out completely. I doubt we'll be returning to this particular system and setting combination again, though.

Oh, I did find the Time Increments ladder to be very handy though! Basically, if you succeed at a task, you can choose to use any excess successes to either do it better, or do it faster. If you fail, you can sometimes choose to take extra time in order to gain a basic success. This was very useful when figuring out how long it would take to build parts of the village, and what quality they were. In general it prevents the need to make multiple rolls until a task succeeds, and is a mechanical approach I've become quite fond of.

FATE: First Thoughts

FATE would be the first game in my 2012 gaming odyssey. I'd read a lot about the system on the RPG.net Forums, and thought that Aspects sounded pretty interesting. An Aspect is a brief statement or description that shows who a character is, rather than what they can do (which is covered by Skills and Stunts). Aspects can provide bonuses in relevant situations at the cost of a FATE point, but they can also be used to earn FATE points when they lead to complications in the character's life. For example, a warrior might have the Aspect "as strong as an ox." This can be used to the character's advantage ("invoked") when a feat of strength is required, but it can also lead to complications. For example, while chasing someone who squeezes through a narrow space, the "strong as an ox" Aspect can be "compelled" to make it harder for the character to squeeze through because of their massive physique.

Aspects can also be invoked or compelled "for effect", which means they do something to the story apart from providing a straight bonus or penalty to a die roll. For example, "Respected NYPD Detective" could be invoked for effect to say that a beat cop who responds to a disturbance is one the character already knows. Likewise, the same Aspect could be compelled to restrict the character's choices and make their life more complicated; a detective may have to follow procedure instead of doing something more convenient but unlawful.

I found the concept of Aspects intriguing because they allow players to gain mechanical benefits from motivations and goals, personality traits, and other intangibles that most games don't track. In many games, when you come to a point where you need to make a roll and something of vital importance is on the line - "if I don't make this roll, my sister will fall to her death!" - all you can do is appeal to the Dice Gods and hope for a good roll. With FATE, you can not only track what's important to your character, but gain a mechanical advantage when it comes into play.

In addition, FATE distributes some narrative control to the players; although the GM has to give their approval, they aren't the only one who can introduce details and elements into the story. Players can spend a FATE point to make a minor narrative declaration - in effect, supply a convenient detail. Players can also use their characters' skills to make declarations - they make a statement, and then roll on a relevant skill to see if it is true or not! The difficulty of this is based not on realism, but on how interesting and useful it would be if the statement were true (or not). The aforementioned "invoke for effect" can also introduce new elements into the story, or colour those already present. In this way, FATE is a game where the group truly collaborates to create a shared story.

Aspects, Skills, and Stunts are the three basic pillars on which FATE characters are built. Skills work pretty much as they do in any other game, although their performance can be affected greatly with Aspects. Stunts are ways in which the character can break the rules; granting permanent skill boosts or allowing one skill to be substituted for another in a specialised area, providing companions or sidekicks, or other more esoteric modifications.

FATE's Different Aspects

There are many different versions of the FATE system, each of which has its own approach to Aspects, Skills, Stunts, and various subsystems specific to each game.

I picked up Spirit of the Century (and Trail of Cthulhu) on a visit to an out-of-state game store over the 2011 Christmas/New Year break. When I got home I did a little research into the evolution of FATE, and discovered that SotC was the first iteration of FATE 3.0. Most of it was a pretty interesting read, and it took the time to explain itself in detail. However, this verbosity also reduces its usefulness as a reference book, as you need to hunt through more pages to find a specific ruling. Also, I'm not a huge fan of the pulp genre, and I was a bit turned off by some of the setting elements. Probably my least favourite part of the book, though, was the Stunts section - so many of them, each with its own effect and prerequisites. Things like this tend to turn me off, because it requires the players to read and digest a sizable chunk of rules just so they can make properly informed choices about their character. When it's voluntary, like choosing to make a wizard and having to read through a list of spells, that's a different matter.

I ended up buying Strands of FATE because of its wildly different approach (although as of Jan 2013 I've yet to do more than read through some of it). I also picked up a copy of Free FATE, a 48 page stripped down presentation of FATE 3.0. I decided to use this slim version to run my first FATE game; partly because it explained things clearly and succinctly, but also because it had broken down that massive Stunt chapter into just a few pages, and included basic templates so you could easily build your own.

In 2012 I ran two FATE campaigns; Monster Hunters, and The Rocks are Talking!

The Dark Space: Black Waltz Campaign Diary

This is just a straight infodump of the notes I took during the Black Waltz campaign. Unfortunately it doesn't look like I kept it up to date for the last couple of sessions, so it peters out before the campaign ended.

DAY 1

08:00 The characters are all passengers on board a tramp freighter, the Alchemist, heading from Apelitar to Quancette.

• Gottlob Asche (Andrew) - A human with aspirations of nobility.
• Adder (John) - An escaped Library "Doppelsoldner" combat robot that has gained sentience.
• Merru Rah (Mel) - A fugitive Valon warrior, on the run for theft with menaces.
• Xar-Kar-Shek (Roh) - A Vin Monk of Shek, whose ultimate goal is to end the Universe.

The Alchemistʼs captain, Lance Batraskan, summons them to the lounge. He is not present, but communicates via screen from the bridge. The ship is being pursued by an Imperial yacht. To avoid trouble, Lance offers a choice - he can hand them over to the Empire, or drop them off on the nearest planet, which happens to be the Crypt.

Merru gets Lance to agree to come back for them in a week or so, if he is able.

12:00 The PCs are marooned on the Crypt.

12:00 - 13:00 The PCs investigate one of the giant crystal spires, and uncover a ship buried underneath it.

13:00 - 14:30 After exploring the ship and talking to its AI, the PCs discover that the ship, apparently named the Black Waltz, moves according to their will. It moves into orbit using an unknown dimensional jump technique.

14:30 - 16:30 The PCs continue to explore and examine the ship, discovering the dance floor and the power exchange.

16:30 - 17:00 A decision is made to warp to Quancette. Surprised at the instant travel time. They pass customs and land on the planet (Gottlobʼs erratic piloting smooths out to a perfect landing).

17:00 - 19:00 Most of the crew rests while Gottlob trades for food using a beam pistol as surety. He also sends his card to a local contact, Yenoff Uller.

19:00 - 00:00 Sleep.

DAY 2

00:00 - 04:00 Sleep.

04:00 - 05:30 Breakfast, dayʼs prep.

05:30 Black Waltz returns to orbit to await the Alchemist.

06:00 The Library yacht Valiance arrives at Quancette, but ignores the unknown Black Waltz.

07:00 - 07:30 The Alchemist arrives at Quancette, and is intercepted by the Black Waltz. Gottlob reclaims most of his trade goods, minus a small fee kept by Lance for not turning them in. Gottlob offers use of the Black Waltz as a high-speed courier to Lance, should he need one.

07:30 - 08:30 Black Waltz lands again. Gottlob buys a hat and mantle to disguise the robot, whom he has dubbed Adder.

09:00 - 10:00 Gottlob, Adder and Merru visit Yenoff Uller. Yenoff reveals Merruʼs crime, but offers to buy her debt so they will owe him instead. He also provides Gottlob information on a lawyer that his father had dealings with.

In addition, Yenoff has a job in mind so Merru's ¢200 debt can be repaid. He wants a rival small offworld-supplied arms dealership shut down, and gives the group information to contact them. Wants his name kept out of it.

09:30 Alone aboard the ship, Xar figures out how to activate the bracelets to form a customised, powered vac-suit. He communicates via the suit to Adder.

10:30 - 11:00 Group returns to the ship so Gottlob can get the appropriate papers to identify himself as a relative of Leonid Vink to the lawyer. Xar demonstrates the suits. Merru activates hers, but Gottlob wants to get a designer to sketch something up for him first.

They also post a message to arrange a meeting with Ullerʼs rival arms dealers.

11:00 - 12:00 Gottlob, Merru and Adder visit the Gaudelain lawyer Darden Elwen. Darden is the trustee of a fund that is paying a C60 monthly stipend to a woman in the city – Lalani Fraden, and her child Ratis. Darden offers to redirect the stipend, but Gottlob wants it to continue as-is.

12:30 - 14:00 Merru accompanies Gottlob to a tailor, where he has a custom design made for his bracelet-suit. Adder returns to the ship.

13:00 - 13:15 Xar and Adder are the only ones aboard the ship when it is declared impounded at the spaceport. A Librarian and his escort demand the right to board and search it as an Imperial vessel. Xar takes off, and Adder tries to blast the Librarian with the main gun. He misses, causing minor damage to the port building. The dock cannons return fire, but cause no damage. The Black Walts flies into the sea and hides. The Valiance searches for a while, but eventually gives up.

13:15 An APB is issued for the Black Waltz and crew, on charges of violation of impound order, violation of port airspace without approved flight plan, discharge of weapons within port area, damage to port facilities.

14:30 - 15:00 Gottlob and Merru visit Lalani and Ratis. Gottlob finds out about his father’s dalliance, and that Ratis is his step-brother. He also hears of Markus Kravmarg, and how Lalani lost her position as courtesan due to the affair.

Two of Kravmarg’s men come to harass Lalani; Merru kills one, and Gottlob captures the other. They hire a cab and move to rendezvous with the Black Waltz at the coast outside the city.

16:00 The crew is reunited on board, and the ship returns to the bottom of the sea.

16:15 - 18:00 Adder takes the prisoner to a cell and interrogates him to find details of Markus Kravmarg’s compound.

Gottlob contacts Darden Elwen to find out how they stand legally. There is an APB out on the Black Waltz and her crew. A loophole manages to reduce the amount owing to Port Authority – as the BW is not an Imperial ship, the Library has no right to board and thus the Impound order was illegal. There still remains, however, the issue of damage to the port and recompense for disobeying Port Authority directives. The total amounts to ¢6000.

19:00 An email notification is received from the arms dealers, notifying of a meeting place in the city for first contact – a small café in a downtown suuk, at 21:00.

20:00 Merru scouts the location of the arms deal from above, using her flying suit. She takes up position on a rooftop opposite.

21:00 - 21:30 Xar remains on the ship to monitor comms and to fly in if needed. Gottlob and Adder head to the cafe in a crowded suuk to meet with the arms dealers - a Gaudelain front man and a female human minder. Gottlob recognises the human from the crew of the Alchemist, but she fails to recognise him or Adder. Gottlob negotiates for a large quantity of arms, which the Gaudelain says may take some time to acquire. They agree to meet offworld to sample wares, and the dealers depart.

21:30 - 22:30 Gottlob returns to the ship. Merru follows the arms dealers from the air, and Adder follows at a distance through the alleys. When they split up, Adder follows and captures the Gaudelain while Merru stalks and captures the human after a struggle. All return to the ship.

22:30 - 23:30 Adder interrogates Gaudelain, discovering financial details (personal and business- front accounts currently totalling ¢1200) and connection to Markus Kravmarg. Gottlob questions human, Lucita Alvarez, about Lance. Adder follows up with a mind reading interrogation, revealing her loyalty to the Alchemist and the Corian Privateers.

23:45 Gottlob hatches a plan to make Yenoff the contact for Lance rather than Markus. Sleep is had by all except Adder.

DAY 3

00:00 - 06:00 Adder transfers the Gaudelain prisoner's funds to the Port Authority. Debt now owing is ¢4800.

Threatens the street thug with torture and death, and he offers to work for Adder. Adder plans to start a garden on the upper engineering deck.

09:00 Arise for the day.

Gottlob, Merru and Xar return Lucita Alvarez to the Alchemist. Negotiate with Lance about changing allegiances from Markus to someone else. Sets up a meeting between Lance and a middle-man for Uller.

Adder talks to Ratis. The boy is intrigued but cautious.

Upon returning to the ship in the hatbour, Gottlob, Merru and Xar witness a gas attack at a restaurant. Merru talks to a suspicious Vin in an alley, but they part ways. On board the ship, Xar recognises the gesture Merru saw the Vin perform as a secret gesture of the Order of Shek.

Discuss means for taking out Markus, including parking the ship over or in his house. Adder interrogates their captured Gaudelain again, going as far as cutting off a node. They gain info about the mansion interior and Markus' secretary, Pandro Rhebàn. They also get info on Markus' warehouses, and the location of various weapon caches. They decide to hit a couple of warehouses to acquire weapons and distract Markus' security forces, hopefully drawing some away from the mansion.

Gottlob hires a truck, and puts together a civil worker uniform with Merru's help. Xar and Adder scout the warehouse compound before dusk. They talk their way in, then take out three guards. The warehouse is raided for weapons, and a small box of narcotics is also discovered. A outfits himself in many weapons.

While others load up, Merru heads out to hunt the remaining guards. As the two patrol guards head towards the looted warehouse, Adder steps out and shoots at them while Merru drops on them from the roof. They are defeated after a brief scuffle. The guard at the gate calls in for backup, but is pinned down by Adder and slaughtered by Merru. They finish loading up (guns, drugs, a table, preserved food) before setting the warehouse on fire (with all guard bodies in it) and driving away.

They rendezvous with Black Waltz by driving AG-truck out to sea. They notice that there are patrol ships over the harbour. After a quick unloading, they drive to the second warehouse complex by about 10 pm.

Merru scouts from the air, spotting a few pairs of patrolling guards. She lands on a roof and takes out the light in front of their target warehouse. A few minutes later, the rest drive up to the front gates and Gottlob talks their way in as electricians again. Truck is stopped in garage area and searched, revealing Xar and Adder and precipitating a fight.

All guards defeated (Adder administers coup de grace where necessary).

Weapon crates missing from warehouse. Random looting and burning. Looting cut short by sirens approaching. Leave with two extra stolen trucks, and evade police dragnet.

Drive to a remote valley out of town, where they summon Black Waltz. They discover that the unpleasantness affects them even when not on board.

Xar rigs the two wheeled trucks to explode. Gottlob gives his relatives the hire truck and sends them back to the city.

DAY 4

After midnight, Adder and Gottlob drive one truck, with Igor in the second, to Markus' mansion. However, he has called in Port Authority support, and they are forced to withdraw. Park overnight to wait.

Mid afternoon, Library yacht Valiance spots the Black Waltz and attacks, dropping out of orbit. Merru and Xar defeat it after a brief dogfight, destroying it utterly.

Heat at Markus' does not clear all day. At 22:00, Gottlob calls Pandro Rhebàn to propose selling Library robot (Adder). Will call them back at 23:00. They wait in car park, driving the trucks near Markus' place a bit before 23:00. They notice that the police patrols have died down, but the PA ship is still overhead.

At 23:00, Gottlob calls back and sets up a meeting with Markus, through Pandro. Agree to meet at an abandoned freight yard. Many potential plans are discussed, until a luxury car emerges from the estate. The two trucks attempt to pursue and block the car, but Adder and Igor fail to get their truck started amd return to wait near the mansion. Gottlob tails car to yard and blocks the gate after it drives in. The Black Waltz leaves the ocean undetected and flies towards the yard. As Gottlob gets out of the truck, he spots concealed Port Authority assault unit vans. He runs into the yard, suits up, and flies to top of building. Port Authority vans pull up, but exploding truck slows them down. Gottlob announces himself as the son of Leonid Vink just as Black Waltz strafes overhead and blows car up. Gottlob flies to meet it, and they fly to Markus' estate.

Meanwhile, Adder and Igor break through estate back wall and raid secret weapon stash. Adder grabs a missile launcher and starts blowing up random buildings. He breaks into the main building as Black Waltz arrives, and starts heading to office wing in search of Pandro. Black Waltz blows up both anti-ship guns and disables the Port Authority Cutter before landing in the garden. Adder debarks onto mansion roof, entering through explosion hole.

Adder encounters Markus and Pandro, with guards, in front foyer. Adder and Igor engage the guards while Markus and Pandro move towards garage under covering fire. Adder briefly captures Pandro in the garage as Gottlob turns up, but Pandro escapes when Adder returns to the foyer to secure Markus' briefcase. The guards are overpowered or flee, and Markus is captured. Meanwhile, Merru and Xar raid Markus' secret weapon stash and load up the Black Waltz.

As they load up the Black Waltz, a squad or Port Authority ships begins to converge on their position. They quickly load up and warp out. Due to some disagreement over the destination, they end up parked in deep space close to Gaudelia.

DAY 5

Spend a day in space. Adder interrogates and tortures Markus, with Gottlob present. He isn't very forthcoming, so Gottlob leaves and Adder tortures him some more. Adder also experiments on the bag man, cutting off his remaining nodes to see what will happen. The bag man becomes depressed, but not suicidally so. Adder puts him out an airlock anyway.

Did anyone else do anything of note? Not that I recall.

Led by Gottlob, a "consensus" is reached to travel to Coria and get involved with the Privateers - or at least offload the surplus weaponry and trade goods to buy necessary items and supplies. Adder acts as a telepathic intermediary between Gottlob and Lance Batraskan. Lance fills Gottlob in on some good contact names among the Privateers. BW warps in-system behind an outer planet, just before midnight.

DAY 6

Approach the Corian Belt, and are intercepted by the Wraith and another vessel. Boarded by Maxa Grendev, Rrendis Rah and... their Vin. After mentioning Lance's name, they are welcomed rather than held to ransom or robbed. Gottlob also does a superlative job of charming Maxa. Rrendis introduces himself to Merru, and upon learning her identity he challenges her to a duel to satisfy the honour of their clan.

Black Waltz is escorted to a major asteroid with a large station built into it. They also sight the Esmeralda, but aren't aware of its role as flagship. Upon docking, Maxa helps clear a space on the zocolo for the Valons' duel. Merru wins in short order, knocking Rrendis safely unconscious with an aerial drop-cut to the hip.

Gottlob decides to go to a bar, and Maxa acts as escort. Gottlob continues to chat up Maxa, who responds favourably. Adder and Xar head out to go shopping, but surprise Vitus and Royce. Vitus "sees" Adder psychically, and runs to Maxa. Maxa doesn't seem put off too much. Gottlob makes inquiries about a letter of marque, and Maxa offers to make arrangements.

The group goes shopping at Big Hilda's, trading most of their weapons for a tech/ chemistry lab, medical lab, hydroponics gear, food, grav sled and a psychomantium (allowing those inside to see into Sylphspace).

Spend most of the afternoon shipping things to and from the ship by grav sled. Adder and Xar (with the help of Tak and Igor) start installing new equipment. Maxa turns up again, and takes Gottlob out for the evening.

DAY 7

Xar and Adder spend most of the day installing tech bay, medical bay and hydroponic equipment on the ship (although no plants yet).

Beyond...

Within a couple of days, the group made contact with Imperial loyalists among the Privateers, who claimed the Privateers were secretly in league with the Kingdom of Noc DiVane. The Privateers requested the Black Waltz take out an Imperial ship that was sitting close to their border, but Gottlob instead decided to alert the Imperial ship to the impending pirate attack in order to score points with the Empire.

First though, they decided to test out Black Waltz's space-jump capabilities by warping to the Imperial homeworld, Niverase, which had been lost fifteen years ago to a spatial anomaly known as The Hole, which prevented regular ship travel through Sylphspace. They discovered Niverase had been devastated, and was under orbital blockade by an armada of alien vessels known as the Nameless. Teleporting into a lake near Gottlob's childhood mountain estate, they made contact with the locals and took a couple of their Librarians back with them.

Rendezvousing with the Imperial ship they were meant to destroy, they discovered that it was actually a Library vessel, acting as a communication waystation. The head Librarian, Lysandra Hydrergot (Andrew's character from the first Dark Space campaign) was actually part of a secret society dedicated to the preservation of humanity. She was intrigued by the Black Waltz' capabilities, and sent a group of Librarians aboard to travel back to Niverase.

The game ended here, as John managed to annoy everybody by constantly suggesting the Black Waltz should emerge from the lake, thus exposing Gottlob's estate to orbital bombardment.

The Dark Space: Black Waltz

Around the end of 2011, I finally got some inspiration for running a new campaign with my own game system, PowerFrame. It would be based on a gothic sci-fi game I'd run about five years prior, but set 50 years after the end of the previous campaign. Rather than focussing on the xenophobic human-ruled Mandel Empire of the old game, the new campaign would start in the cosmopolitan, diverse heart of the Gaudelain Trade Concern.

I discussed the game's set-up and expectations with all the players, billing it as a cross between Blake's 7 and Captain Harlock. I indended this campaign to be a vehicle for trying out a bunch of the new theories I'd read about recently. My main idea was to bind together a group of disparate characters with strong individual goals, and explore the conflicts that arose as they pulled each other in different directions. I would run it as a sandbox, responding to the proactive plans and actions of the PCs.

After character creation, we had the following cast:

• +Andrew played Gottlob Asche, a minor noble whose family had fled the Mandel Empire just before the loss of the homeworld to a mysterious dimensional hole. However, his family's lineage was bogus, and he was hoping to surreptitiously return to the Empire and claim a position among the aristocracy.
• +Melysa played Merru Rah, a catlike Valon hunter from the distant reaches of space. The Gaudelain had recently made contact with the Valon, and Merru had stolen a weapon and hijacked a ship. She was fleeing the Trade Concern's pursuit, but in turn her goal was to track and hunt worthy prey. 
• Rohin played Xar-Kar-Shek, a turtle-like Vin and member of a cult that believed enlightenment was achieved at the moment of death. He was fleeing his home planet after a purge of the cult's headquarters, harbouring the ultimate goal of destroying the universe to enlighten all life. 
• John played Adder, a cowardly combat android who had gained sentience and fled from the Empire. He was desperately fleeing the agents of the Library of Arcane Technology, who had created him and were now hunting him down; ironically, his ultimate aim was to use his developing psychic powers to manipulate and take over the Library, using them as his puppets and liberating his fellow enslaved robots. 

The Black Waltz

The four began the game on board a tramp freighter. The captain got word they were being pursued by a Library ship, and figured they were after one or more of his passengers. He insisted on dropping them off at a nearby desolate world, and said he would come back and pick them up once their pursuers were off the scent. On the planet, the group discovered a mysterious abandoned but as-new spaceship buried in the desert, and decided to make it their own. They discovered it was called the Black Waltz, and possessed some fantastic capabilities - it couldn't travel through SylphSpace like other ships, but instead had the ability to teleport instantaneously to any location, based only on the wishes of its crew. It was also a fully-functional "Dancing Ship"; a model that had not worked properly since an event 50 years ago, when the souls of Sylphs bound into the Imperial ships were emancipated. The four PCs became psychically linked to the ship, thus cementing the group together.

For a while, the game played very well. I gauged which direction the PCs intended to go, and only then prepared material for what they would find. Initially I could probably have offered a few more options in response to a stated intent, but they always had the option to ignore something and go in a different direction. As it was, Gottlob ended up following a thread related to his family all the way through, waging a war against a criminal syndicate, destroying their power base, stealing all their weaponry, and imprisoning their head.

Group Dynamics

Despite Andrew eschewing the role of captain, it was largely only he and John putting forward proactive opinions. Melysa's character Merru took on a fairly passive role as Gottlob's bodyguard (although she enjoyed the occasional active combat outing), and Rohin's Xar-Kar-Shek was mainly interested in collecting weapons and the technology to create weapons. Adder was acutely paranoid of the Library; while desperately trying to avoid them on a Gaudelain world, he brought the Black Waltz into disrepute, which angered Gottlob who was hoping to establish a power base there. This sort of conflict is exactly what I was hoping to provoke, making people deal with the consequences of their own actions and the actions of the others in the group.

Gradually, Gottlob's desire to have his claim to aristocracy legitimised by the Empire so he could return and live the good life became one of the major driving forces in the game. This was fine with me, as I could see the inherent conflict in this - Gottlob wanted the Empire to welcome him with open arms, while the Empire wanted to capture Adder and held no love for the two aliens. The closer Gottlob came to his goal, the harder life would be for the rest of the group. However, despite the players pointing this out, nobody acted definitively in-character to alter the campaign's direction.

As the situation became more tense, there were occasional raised voices; usually, it was Andrew and John butting heads, as their characters expressed the strongest drives. Whenever this happened I made sure that the argument was in-character, between Gottlob and Adder, and that it was not the players themselves getting upset. However, despite their assurances, in the end the pressure-cooker environment I had subjected the PCs to boiled over into real-world tensions. One extremely hot summer's day, Adders's repeated attempts to exercise a petty vendetta against Gottlob led to flared tempers and the dissolution of the game.

After the End

While the game had been going swimmingly as far as I was concerned, I think there were several factors at play that caused the game to collapse. These are my opinions, and while I don't want to re-open any old wounds, I encourage any of the players to express their opinions in the comments if they disagree or have other insights. I can only see things from my own point of view, after all.

At the very least, it was a valuable exercise in crystallising the gaming priorities of some of the players. Andrew expressed a clear distaste for intra-party conflict. Melysa thought that she would have been happier if the game had taken longer to reach boiling point; that she expected it to take six months to reach the point of seriously considering shoving PCs out of airlocks instead of less than two.

Because PowerFrame is a fairly old-school system, it doesn't contain any mechanisms for resolving anything other than physical conflicts between PCs. It's possible to use social skills to influence NPCs, but players always have final say over what their characters think and believe. Therefore, conflict between PCs was largely mediated by the players' own abilities and willingness to argue with each other. Dominant voices tended to get their way, and those who didn't want to rock the boat ended up being dragged along into undesirable situations. After the game ended, I thought a system like Smallville might alter this dynamic by mediating disagreements through a universal conflict resolution system, but now I think it's mainly a matter of approach - "social contract" rather than mechanics. For a game like this to work, the players need to be willing to make poor decisions, and to have their PCs experience adversity - often caused by the other PCs - without taking it personally or treating the game as a secret information war.

I also learned some lessons about open and hidden secrets. In a game where you just play your character and experience the world as they do, you tend to only want to know what your character knows. If the group's working together, this is no problem. If the group is working at cross purposes, this tends to manifest as secret meetings and note-passing, which can generate mistrut and paranoia in the group. Nobody knows who's out to get whom. It was this style of play that Andrew expressed a fervent distaste for. Just before the end of the campaign, I had invited John to privately message me about a secret plan he wanted to discuss. I soon decided that was a bad idea, but he didn't end up messaging me anyway.

In a game with open secrets where the characters are at cross-purposes, all of the players know what everyone is up to, but the characters don't. This requires a more active separation of in-character and out-of-character knowledge, which I think tends to interfere with the "immersion" of just being your character. For a game with open secrets to run smoothly, not only do the players need to not act on OOC knowledge, but I think they should try to minimise peer pressure on the other players to alter their plans just because it will make life difficult for other PCs. After all, the aim of this type of game isn't to keep your character safe, or to "win" by beating all of the other PCs; instead, it's to experience a rich drama with highs and lows, victories and setbacks. The GM acts as mediator, but the conflict is largely initiated and driven by the other players, which I feel could result in more worthwhile adversaries than the GM trying to run several NPC villains. It requires more a spirit of collaboration than competition, though.

After the Black Waltz campaign finished, I started feeling more limited by games that required a rigid party structure and enforced co-operation between PCs. I yearned for a game where the players could feel free to express their characters' desires without being considered a disruptive "special snowflake"; in other words, a game about the PCs, not about the scenario. This was the sort of game I'd been trying to run with the Black Waltz, which had ended with mixed success.

This vague feeling of dissatisfaction led into my odyssey to try different games with innovative mechanics; mechanics designed to provide a gaming experience I'd never had before. I wanted to find out if the gameplay I was looking for could be found in a rule system, or if it was just a matter of player buy-in to a particular style of play.

MAID: Thoughts and Musings

It's been over a year since I last ran MAID, so my impressions are a bit hazy at this point.

The randomness can bring fresh and unexpected results, which in turn requires some thinking on your feet as a GM. Unless you and your group are very high energy and really into the genre, though, the default mode of play - the "Favour Race" where you just try to curry favour with the Master by performing tasks around the Mansion - can get stale rather quickly. I think my players preferred having meaningful objectives, and weren't of a mind to go into detail roleplaying tasks such as getting the Master out of bed, serving breakfast, drawing the bath, and other minutiae of servant life.

The inter-character competition wasn't a favourite with my groups, either. Our first game had an infiltrator out to assassinate the Master, and our third game had a maid motivated by revenge against the Master. My players are, by and large, happier with games where the whole group gets along and works towards a common cause. This came through a bit with MAID; the first game was just frustrating, although the third game played out quite nicely with revenge served at the very end of the storyline. Maybe it's just a matter of familiarity and forming a suitable attitude.

The general way of thinking for a lot of players seems to be "if my character is disadvantaged, especially if someone in the group causes that disadvantage, it damages my fun because I want to succeed and prosper through my character." With games like MAID (and also FATE, Smallville, and to a lesser extent Tenra Bansho Zero, all of which I'll discuss later), if you approach them in this frame of mind you're unlikely to enjoy yourself. Rather than vicariously experiencing your character's success or failure and becoming annoyed at the lows, the priority shifts. You use setbacks, complications and consequences as opportunities to roleplay intense emotions and define your character - show how they deal with adversity, demonstrate something about them as a person, and really get into the characterisation. Use conflict to ask questions about their personality and beliefs - is this worth fighting for? Is it worth dying for? Is it not as important to them as you first thought?

Of course, this sort of expression is not for all games; a group running a straight-up dungeon raid is likely to roll their eyes if one of the players is constantly expressing angst over the slaughter of innocent humanoids... But if the game is about drama and the free expression of characterisation without regard for group stability, then an appropriate approach is essential. This is why a discussion of the game and expectations of play should precede each new campaign, to make sure everyone is on the same page.

I also think that in games with secrets and rivalry, it is useful for all of the players to know what's going on, even if their characters don't.  This was a bit weird to start with, coming from a viewpoint of "I only want to know what my character knows" and trying to cut down on exposure to out-of-character information, but MAID pretty much demands that you be able to hold both in-character and out-of-character knowledge in your brain while keeping them separate. It also encourages players to act on out-of-character knowledge to put their characters in awkward situations, or to make life difficult for someone else, so they can play up their secrets and expose themselves to adversity. That sort of fourth-wall-breaking attitude is difficult to embrace when you're used to playing the game as a simulation of a world rather than an emulation of a narrative structure.

Anyway, a lot of this musing congealed much later on in 2012. MAID opened the door for me to try out new GMing techniques and group dynamics, as well as exercising advice such as "talk about preferences and expectations before the game." It hasn't always worked that well as sometimes players seemed uncomfortable or unfamiliar with articulating their gaming preferences, but over the course of the next few campaigns, I learned more about what sort of games and techniques my players do and don't enjoy.