Tag: Adam Schwaninger

Glow in the Dark Relics Playtest 1

Glow in the Dark Relics Playtest 1

Glow in the Dark Relics Playtest 1

Despite catch-up character creation eating into our session time (doesn’t it always take longer than you think it will?), we had a successful Relics playtest with Matt Schwaninger, Thomas Berton, Jason Eley, and Logan Shoup playing a Driver, Shark, Leftover, and Junker respectively. Their settlement was the Leftover Nestor Carlisle‘s spaceship crash site in an overgrown, mutated park in the middle of the Boneyard.

From my first playtest (Shepherds), I learned how much better it is to have a starting situation that comes from internal pressure, ie. “You are out of damn near everything” rather than being approached by some questgiver* whom the players might not engage with. The tribe decided to raid the Monarchs’ (bug and plant mutants in the Boneyard) drug stockpile so they’d have goods to trade with Hightower (a +1 faction that ostensibly controlled the surrounding territory) for food.

One of their settlement’s farmer-scavs was once a slave for the Monarchs, and provided exceptional info. The tribe took Rooster’s custom ride, “Layla” (a Mustang-esque dualie) into the old metro tunnels, approaching the Monarchs’ lair near where they kept their slave pens. A risky engagement roll resulted in an “All The Guards!” clock being ticked and a mediocre force of guards in the underground itself. Time was an issue, but the tribe had avoided the bulk of the plant- and bug-people topside.

A flurry of rolls after that saw one thorn-man burned to death by Torch the Junker and another locust-mutant crushed under Layla’s wheels. We had to call it there, but we’ll be back to finish up this run.

I had a great time finding out about this new tribe of survivors. I’m curious as to whether a Shark (mainly a social playbook) and a Driver (well, driving-focused, naturally) can both be effective on the same run, or if we’ll see one waxing as one wanes depending on the type of score the tribe chooses.

It should also be fun to see Tuesday Grace the Shark contend with Torch, because Tuesday’s built her whole background on a web of lies about being an engineer and having all this technical knowledge so she can pass herself off as important. Will Torch expose her comrade? Will she even care?

Also wanted to touch on the survivors’ Taboos for a moment. In Glow in the Dark, you have a background and a taboo, something that you won’t do or a moral code that sets you apart from the largely amoral rank and file of the wasteland. You also mark XP if following (or breaking!) your taboo causes you trouble. I’m toying with the idea of having a set list as the playbooks develop, but at this point in development it’s been more freeform.

Rooster the Driver won’t break an oath. Simple, solid, and easy to bring it into play yourself.

Torch the Junker won’t put out a fire. This is maybe a little more suited for a Trauma (and would be a fine embellishment on a future Unstable or the like), but for now it seems pretty ripe for drama, especially since she just burned a plant-man to death in an enclosed space.

Tuesday the Shark will not abide senseless suffering. She’d give a parched man a drink or shoot him, but she wouldn’t leave him. I think it’ll be cool to see how the nuances of this play out when you get into situations like the Monarchs keeping slaves.

Nestor the Leftover won’t tolerate barbarism. Again, the boundaries of this are proving pretty interesting. Burning a plant-man didn’t seem barbaric, and led into us learning that Nestor’s got a dose of that sci-fi racism against mutant abominations.

* Baszo’s offer in the BitD quickstart averts this, as choosing to not engage in such a charged situation is still making a dramatic choice.

#glowinthedarkrpg

The Narcoleptic Dire Goat Caper

The Narcoleptic Dire Goat Caper

The Narcoleptic Dire Goat Caper

The Dead Setters turned the tables on the hit squad from Charterhall Bank, ambushing their would-be ambushers. The Setters had Rook the Cutter, fresh out of Ironhook (and whose player had to skip about a month due to an online class), and Deemo the Leech, fresh out of her player having a baby. Ironically, the other guys couldn’t make it so we had the inverse of our usual suspects. Charterhall Bank’s squad included Mr. Green and Mr. Veldt, both essentially former blades-turned-respectable (played by the Stabbington brothers from Tangled), leading six combat hulls in two goat-drawn carriages.

The crew had exceptional intel, and placed their ambush along an industrial boulevard in Coalridge. They paid a coin to their new Cabbie associates so they’d have a proper roadblock, but the engagement roll went south. Green and Veldt spotted the trap and one of their hulls disembarked while the carriages were still rolling. The machine slammed into the Cabbies’ roadblock, clearing a path and then stood its ground, electroplasmic emitter charging up to cover its masters’ escape.

Rook clambered out of the toppled Cabbie carriage and traded railjack hammer for electroplasmic lightning with the combat hull. Rook was still standing at the end of it. Meanwhile, the bank carriages thundered past on the cobbles… flashback!

Cut to Rook leading his pit fighters as they toil in the street, uprooting cobblestones and digging down into the packed earth. They make a trench and cover it up with tarps, dirt, and broken stone. There’s no way those heavy carriages, laden with hulls, will make it across.

And they don’t. A goat breaks its leg, loosing one of those horrible human screams. Another goes narcoleptic, tumbling to the ground. The lead carriage’s wheels break as it hits the mother of all potholes. The second carriage, pulling four heavy hulls, can’t stop in time. The goats see the gap and leap, but the carriage slams down into the trench.

Deemo releases two of her gadgets – the first is a clockwork gyro-drone, a little flying device that can drop a payload and return to its mistress. It’s carrying the second gadget – Quality VI chokedust. Not that weak-ass drown powder, we’re talking the old-school quickstart rules chokedust here. It’s been Deemo’s specialty since v4 of the rules and she missed it, so she made more during downtime and was wildly successful at it.

Green and Veldt have to escape. They’re not a hit squad of elite badasses anymore; they’re scared and can’t breathe and all their hulls just can’t seem to kill one guy with a hammer. Thanks, Battleborn and Not to Be Trifled With.

They try carjacking the last upright carriage the Cabbies brought. Deemo uses binding oil on the wheels. A crit! Green and Veldt get just enough momentum before the axles lock that they’re thrown to the street and lose their guns.

They try just legging it. Rook finishes off the last hull and uses Savage (as the two men are terrified) to Command them to stop – or else. Partial success.

“Which one stops?” I say.

“Veldt!” Deemo’s player suggests. “Green shot my drone, he’s gotta die.” And so we learned a bit about Deemo’s priorities. Rook agrees. Veldt stops short, shouting “Don’t shoot! I have a family! This was just a job, you know?!”

Green, on the other hand, meets the Dead Setters’ pit fighters coming the other way.

“Do you want him dead, or captured, or maimed, or what?” Then I look at the cohort’s flaws. Wild. Unreliable. That settles that.

Deemo helps them kick Green to death in the street.

#heestcomplete

The Third Rails Give Peace a Chance

The Third Rails Give Peace a Chance

The Third Rails Give Peace a Chance,

or

Trucks Mate For Life

The Third Rails out of Prism City hosted peace talks between Blacksand, a fortress-refinery taking cues from Gastown and Elvis, and the sentient drone semi truck-deity Big Red. Tensions started high as each contingent arrived with enough armed guards to fight a small war should things go south (mixed result on the social plan’s engagement roll).

The Rails’ main goal was to quell the animosity between the two factions, with a secondary goal of making some sort of trade deal with Blacksand (they had arranged one previously with Big Red). They did not want Blacksand to find out that they had allied with Big Red to take down a Blacksand convoy previously.

Gameplay-wise, I started each faction off with grievances to overcome and then something they wanted if they were going to move forward. Blacksand wanted Big Red to lay off their convoys, but their real problem was with the Tier IV trading hub Hightower, which was cutting in on their business. They needed allies more than they wanted retribution for their losses.

Big Red was easy. It wanted a bride.

“A bribe?”

“No, a bride.”

“I ain’t marryin’ no goddamn truck!” shouts one of the Blacksand guards, resplendent in body armor festooned with Vegas showgirl plumage.

“Our lord is not simply a truck!” bellows Big Red’s chief Mechanizer in return.

Johnny Tabernacle, the Third Rails’ Leftover, stepped in trying to bring everyone around to the idea that maybe Big Red wanted a truck bride, not a human one. With a six, he defused the situation, the guns went back down, and the exchange mutated into whose issues would get addressed first.

This was more interesting for me, because I’ve done lots of Glow in the Dark sessions that head towards violence. This was new territory. Was there enough structure here in my hack to make these negotiations compelling?

Gotta pause here to talk about the PCs. I’ve got a Leftover (social, some tech, middling combat), a Reaper (killing and bossing), and a Junker (hacking and scrounging). Zeke the Junker was throwing in some assist dice here and there, but this was clearly Johnny’s show. Lt. Dan the Reaper, however, looked like he didn’t have a lot to do aside from being there in case the guns came out. So I changed the game from figuring out this NPC on NPC shit and focused on making the NPCs want the PC tribe’s stuff.

1. Big Red wanted a truck. Zeke had a truck, a big tandem tractor trailer they hijacked from NOAH the mad AI (1 upgrade in Cars plus the Quality upgrade for Vehicles). Zeke and the other PCs had to convince Big Red and its Mechanizers to look for their Bride of Truckenstein somewhere else, which was hard because really, the Rails’ truck was perfect. While we still didn’t know what Big Red’s intentions were or even if this mandate was from the truck itself or something its acolytes just said their god desired, this was the best and fastest way to suddenly make Zeke care very deeply about what was going on.

2. Lt. Dan Halen recently tracked down an enemy on his revenge list. Bubba the mutant was in charge of a small Last Cavalry (Tier IV paramilitary nomadic raiders) recon force currently camped out in the Barrens near Dead Horse. This intel had an expiration date, however. The Last Cavalry was nomadic, and helping Blacksand against Hightower first or searching for some other suitable bride for Big Red would mean Bubba would vanish and Dan would have to restart his long-term project.

Zeke had an idea. “The Last Cavalry’s mobile. They’ll have lots of trucks.” A controlled Sway later and Big Red was onboard. So many sixes.

Blacksand still wanted their Hightower problems addressed first, however, and a controlled group sway roll on 5d6 produced naught but 3s. Would Dan try to coerce or intimidate them? Would they try their argument again, pressing their luck and eroding Blacksand’s patience? Johnny tried the Barter route, offering them a larger cut for their help against the Last Cavalry and arguing how they’d all be able to use any stolen warfighting gear against Hightower together. The sixes were back and the three factions parted ways.

The trade deal the Third Rails wanted would be contingent on their help against Hightower, but for the moment they had brought a tenuous peace to their corner of the wasteland.

No payoff, sadly, and Fallout for the score/run/job was Wastrels (pay Upkeep again) – easily explained by the Third Rails being generous hosts. While everyone’s load stayed Light, the tribe’s Supplies dropped from 5 to 3 even as their Rep maxed out. They’ll be ready to move to Tier I as soon as they can get 8 supplies (and if they’re smart, more than that to account for increased Upkeep, which means I’ll want their allies to claim enough loot to make the PCs’ situation untenable without conflict). Muahaha. The Third Rails also dinged over in tribe XP and picked up the first dot in Gyros (the explanation for which I am eagerly awaiting) and a Farm, which should help mitigate their upkeep in the future.

#glowinthedarkrpg

Glow in the Dark: Robots and Monkeys Session 0

Glow in the Dark: Robots and Monkeys Session 0

Glow in the Dark: Robots and Monkeys Session 0

Had a good survivor/tribe creation session with Thomas Berton and Jason Eley last night for my Relics tribe playtest! The as-yet-unnamed settlement has sprouted up around Jason’s Leftover’s spaceship crash site. Thomas’ Shark, Tuesday Grace, spun a web of lies to her small group of refugees about being an engineer and knowing all about the World That Was, so we’ve got a charlatan and an actual Charlton Heston-style astronaut-out-of-time. Logan Shoup will join us in 2 weeks as well for our starting situation (and finalizing names for stuff).

The guys really went for all the robot choices when it came to contacts and factions, and their settlement has a farm, bootstrapped by seeds stolen from the Ape Empire’s fertile valley.

From a playtest perspective, I’ve got a lot of conceptual blanks for Relics that, while I’ve got lots of touchstones in my head, I’m not sure which ones deserve to be put to paper yet. We’ll find out.

#glowinthedarkrpg

Glow in the Dark: The Third Rails

Glow in the Dark: The Third Rails

Glow in the Dark: The Third Rails

TL;DR: A PC rams silverware into a guy’s eye socket and shouts “Fork you!”

Operation Truck Yeah saw the Third Rails out of Prism City successfully team up with Big Red to take down a Blacksand guzzoline shipment. Although Old Zeke the Junker trauma’d out with Reckless in their desperate escape, the Rails returned and both they and Big Red the sentient drone truck parted on good terms (+2 faction status).

Part of their arrangement with Big Red was setting up a trade route, which I treated as a claim. Each tribe type in Glow in the Dark has two unique claims (the claims system is stripped down and made a bit more generalized to handle anything from taking turf to stealing cars), and the Dealers have one called Caravans, which does the whole “downtime tier minus friction equals supplies” thing. That matched pretty well!

Downtime is a flurry of vice indulgence for Johnny Tabernacle the Leftover. Lt. Dan Halen the Reaper tracks down the next name on his revenge list. Zeke, fresh and clean from his trauma, spends all his downtime actions, his bonus action from the Blackfinger ability, and spends a point of rep for another action in order to finish repairing Johnny’s bodytank power armor flaw “Limited Power”. We paused after this and talked about whether the costs involved in removing the flaw permanently like this seemed balanced. We all thought it was a pretty long process but fair – this was the second or third downtime Zeke was using on this, and he’s pretty optimized for crafting as it is.

After downtime, a Blacksand truck rolls by to make trade. When the Third Rails hit their previous convoy, they didn’t leave anything that pointed to them helping Big Red, so they retained their +1 status with the refinery-fortress. Valley, the Blacksand rep, wants to make a deal. He wants the Rails to plant a tracker on Big Red. Johnny T counters with an offer to settle up peacefully with the drone truck.

He does this, however, and in Lt. Dan’s rush to help, he ends up antagonizing Valley’s bodyguard, and then he escalates to violence. Johnny uses the scuffle as an analogy in his argument for peace and crits! Meanwhile, while the grownups are talking, Dan plunges a fork into the bodyguard’s eye and crits!

“Fork you!”

Because the results were just so good, Valley doesn’t take the kill the wrong way, but actually resolves to treat this tier 0 tribe as serious business. He takes their offer back to the King of Blacksand.

Social plan chosen, next time we’ll open with engagement! I never thought I’d be running a session about post-apocalyptic peace talks.

#glowinthedarkrpg

The Dead Setters are moving away from stealing immortality as a Final Score and seem to be getting into the idea of…

The Dead Setters are moving away from stealing immortality as a Final Score and seem to be getting into the idea of…

The Dead Setters are moving away from stealing immortality as a Final Score and seem to be getting into the idea of producing a ghost economy using phantasmal coinage minted using forgeries from Charterhall Bank.

I have no idea how this is going to work, but printing money for ghosts to use is awesome.

Meanwhile, the bank has a hit squad out looking for them, while most of the heat got redirected against the crack team of Iruvian investigators when the Setters planted a second copy of the forged printing dies in the Iruvians’ base of operations. The investigators retreated to the Consulate and are probably going to be shipped back to U’Duasha in shame.

Rook the Cutter gets out of jail next week! His player had an online class conflict with the game, so we figured the gang might as well get a wanted level taken off for it!

#heestcomplete

#glowinthedarkrpg Version 5!

#glowinthedarkrpg Version 5!

#glowinthedarkrpg Version 5!

It’s been a while, but I’ve got Glow in the Dark (my Fallout/Mad Max/Gamma World hack) up to v5.

Claims are back, although the UI for it (as it were) is rough still. Several playbook abilities got edited. Relics are still light on details.

I think I need to get a playtest group together to specifically run a Relics tribe. It’s helped make the Shepherds tribe type much more cohesive, and Relics need the same love. Looking at tentatively probably fortnightly tuesdays perhaps.

Here’s the main doc:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B436j88kgCAtRU1RcjRGYnB0b3M/view?usp=sharing

Here’s the playbooks:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B436j88kgCAtVzhyTy1WdnBIZzg/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B436j88kgCAtRU1RcjRGYnB0b3M/view?usp=sharing

The Charterhall Bank Caper

The Charterhall Bank Caper

The Charterhall Bank Caper

The Dead Setters, in what turned out to be the third session of this heist, set out to copy the printing plates/dies for Coin by accessing their vault at the Charterhall Bank. They were also trying to frame this band of “untouchables” (in the Elliot Ness sense) put together by the Iruvian consulate to catch them for all the dead young Iruvian nobles in the Red Sashes. They figured if they could finger the Untouchables for it, it’d be enough of a political mess that even the consulate would have to back down.

They got Raven the Hound into the vault, and she managed to stave off asphyxiation and make a decent copy of the dies. Then Richter the Spider and Teatime the Whisper basically got the Captain of Currency, one Beneful Camshafterbutch, to open the vault and then booked it.

The fun part is one desperate team Prowl roll while being chased by Hull bank guards toting blunderbusses is that you essentially get Matrix lobby destruction with a single roll. Good thing they all had room for armor.

Then Teatime trauma’d out resisting consequences from a blown desperate Study roll to find an escape route on their blueprints. He resisted being cut off by bank guards but was caught in a blast that blew out the floor. The Iruvians captured him in the confusion and dragged the poor Whisper into the sewers. That’s his third trauma, but he’s also at 4 ranks of Lifestyle. Will Teatime survive the Untouchables long enough to retire?

Interesting things we brainstormed about the Charterhall Bank for our game:

1. It uses hulls once you get past the lobby and front offices. Armored and armed hulls for guards, lighter-duty ones for menial tasks. They don’t make good targets for social engineering, they do their jobs well, and they’re intimidating.

2. Rumor has it it’s never been robbed. That’s not true, but the bank doesn’t want people to know that and when you mostly employ hulls you don’t have a lot of leaks.

3. It has its own lightning barrier (as some noble houses do) but the interior is inlaid with runes and patterns to create something of a building-sized spiritbane effect or faraday cage. We had them firmly on the “industrial” side of Blades’ industrial-fantasy slider.

4. They’re used to having the Coin and getting their way, much like a Broken Empire or Westerosi bank. Inside the bank, their word is law, even if you’re posing as a magistrate. And if that’s not good enough, they’re happy to detain you while they “sort out the irregularities.”

#heestcomplete

Glow in the Dark downtime and playtest musings!

Glow in the Dark downtime and playtest musings!

Glow in the Dark downtime and playtest musings!

I’ve been making a lot of revisions to my Glow in the Dark post-apocalyptic hack in the wake of some great feedback from playtesters. One group came to a close but I’m still playing with my tribe of “Dealers”, the Third Rails. One of them is playing a Junker, a techie/jury-rigging/scrounging playbook, and during our downtime last night he pulled off quite the combo.

Zeke the Junker wants to fix up Johnny Tabernacle’s (the Leftover – think Fallout protagonist) bodytank/power armor. The suit has a flaw “limited power”, where a clock ticks over until the suit’s drained and needs to be charged. We decide, using the BitD crafting rules, that it’ll be a Complex project and require two entire design/build phases.

1. Design new power core (8 clock)

2. Build power core, quality 4

3. Redesign new suit wiring (8 clock)

4. Install core and wiring, quality 2

The tribe has a lot of rep but not many supplies, but they took the ability The Check is in the Mail: Your crew is true to their word. You may spend rep instead of supplies on downtime actions to increase the result. When you buy an additional downtime action with rep, you add +1d to your roll.

In addition, Zeke has Blackfinger: You get an additional downtime activity to work on long-term projects involving technology or to acquire technological assets. You get +1d to this bonus activity.

as well as Mechromancer: When you invent or craft vehicles, robots, or drones, take +1 result level to your roll. You begin with one special design already known.

Zeke blows through the first design clock with rep and uses his Blackfinger bonus action to build the core, mitigating the difference in quality with Mechromancer (power armor’s like a robot AND a vehicle, I rule it applies) and minimizing the tribe’s supply cost. I’m astounded he rocked it that hard but happy that Zeke’s player’s found that kind of emergent synergy. That’s exactly where the Junker is supposed to shine.

Near the end of our session, we started a Deception score to sell a tracking device to Blacksand, a walled community of oil/gas hoarders, so they could keep track of their trade convoys. Zeke and Johnny plan to sell the frequency to Blacksand’s enemy, Big Red (an autonomous, insane drone truck from before the War), scavenge the inevitable violence, and get paid by Blacksand’s rivals at Hightower (think Tenpenny Tower plus Bartertown).

I was concerned that Glow in the Dark wouldn’t lend itself as well to social/deception plans as vanilla Blades, but the last few scores my group’s put together have been fairly covert. I’m glad they’re looking at how factions interact and where they can stick their knives.

#glowinthedarkrpg