Ran a Laundry Files BitD hack, which worked surprisingly well with some minor updating to the Action and Equipment…

Ran a Laundry Files BitD hack, which worked surprisingly well with some minor updating to the Action and Equipment list; secret agents with a hazardous link to occult powers is a natural link, just had to reflavor the magic from spectrology to applied computational demonology, rename some Actions (Cipher became Code, etc), and give everybody modern equipment like smartphones and 9mm pistols.

The plot had a B-team of local defense agents going up against a plot to return the Faerie to England (to paraphrase Charlie Stross on Faeries in the Laundry-verse, ‘Our stories about them are about as accurate as the picture a Pashtun goatherder whisked away by black helicopters, interrogated, and dumped back home, would have of America). High points included breaking into a teacher’s house on a Sunday morning, a very Yorkshire St. Crispin’s Day Speech (“You fokken basterds git at ’em”), and taking out a gang of elvens and a PC in a blaze of hellfire missiles. 

From a GMing perspective, I really enjoyed being able to state the danger, which significantly upped the menace of the game, while still letting players retain agency through spending Stress. I found I was more explicitly calling out which Actions were to be used than the rules recommended; players would state a fiction, I’d tell them what Action to use, and they’d roll, I’d narrate the consequences, and let the player get the last word.

I was using v2 of the Quickstart, so there was some clunkiness with rolling for Action and Effect and repeat ’till clock is done.  I never really grokked Resistance rolls, or the proper amount of Stress to inflict, and wound up eyeballing it (players ended up out of Stress).  Just checked out v3 of the Quickstart, and it looks like a major improvement that addresses a lot of my rules concerns.  I’m especially excited to try to the campaign features for developing a crew, downtime between scores, and fighting for dominance in a living city.

Great game!