Yes, I realize that the working title is *still* D&D Next. Yes, I realize that D&D Next sounds like NewCoke or Crystal Pepsi. That's why I don't use it. And technically, if we're counting all of the editions, we're on D&D 10e or something. Meanwhile, here comes the playtesting. (Obviously, spoilers abound for the playtest adventure.)
So let me set the scene. Five players, me in the DM's chair (well, I stand for the entirety of the game, but I think DM's chair is more a figure of speech anyway). First, a little more about the players.
Vicki - Playing the Elf Wizard. Her experience with D&D amounts to two sessions of Pathfinder.
Adam - Playing the Human Cleric. Adam doesn't generally play spellcasters, but really likes this Cleric.
Heather - Playing the Dwarf Fighter. Usually plays fighters. Refuses to play spellcasters.
Mary - Playing the Dwarf Cleric. Has some experience with meaty, hammer-wielding nonsense.
Joe - Playing the Halfling Rogue for two reasons: 1) Everyone else picked their characters first. 2) Joe somehow always ends up playing Rogues.
The session started out with Our Heroes leaving Castellan Keep for the Caves of Chaos. As the PCs crested a small hill, the full majesty and terror of the Caves of Chaos came into view. The party, having been sent to the caves for several different (but complimentary) reasons, set off for the cave entrances.
Adam, being the voice of Cleric, decided that they should go into the cave at the far West end of this tier of the complex. His rationale was that the path to it was lit by the Undying Light of Pelor and therefor nothing bad could possibly go wrong.
In that cave, the party found an Owlbear. Something bad had gone wrong.
The halfling hid, the dwarves tried to sneak into melee, and the other two stayed outside the entrance hoping to blast the hapless monster with lasers. Initiative was rolled and off we went.
Joe, having advantage over the poor giant magical monstrosity, decided to start pelting it with rocks from his sling. A well placed shot and the monster was injured. Cheers around the table.
Heather charged in, Greataxe in slaughtering mode. She swung and missed. A collective "aww" was uttered. That is, until I reminded her that even on a miss she does damage. Cheers again.
Mary carefully positioned herself to better harm the beastie. She swung and connected with her warhammer.
It was the owlbear's turn. Yay. Claw, Claw, Bite. All directed at Heather. All misses.
Adam cast a Radiant Lance at the owlbear, searing off some of its fur.
Vicki cast Magic Missile, because she'd always wanted to do that.
Joe hid again to regain advantage. Heather swung and hit with her axe. Mary cast Crusader's Strike on her warhammer, turning it into Warhammer 40k. The owlbear hit Heather for a grand total of 6 damage. Adam cast Searing Light on the owlbear, doing significant damage. Vicki tried to cast Ray of Frost, but missed the attack roll.
The combat went on for another three rounds, with the PCs emerging victorious. I let them know that the Owlbear was supposed to be sort of a sub-boss for this complex and they'd gone in a totally different direction than the module designers had planned. Most of the players thought this was bad game design, but Joe and I countered that they probably just used the original Caves of Chaos/Keep on the Borderlands adventure with updated monsters. That means random crap happens. I'm not sure how much I like that, but the point of the playtest isn't to check for story.
High Points/Things We Liked: Overall simplicity, the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic, and at-will spells for the Wizard/Clerics. All of the fire-and-forget spells seemed to really be worth casting. Spell descriptions were to the point and simple enough for a complete newbie to understand on first read-through.
Low Points/Things We Disliked: The fighter seems a bit too simple compared to the other classes. Not enough options for Heather during a round. Also, our dice didn't want to roll well all night. I don't think the playtest will address that particular issue. Monster design is rather basic, hopefully there'll be a fix to that during the next round.
So far, D&D 5e is looking pretty sharp. 4 / 5 d20s. Later today (or possibly tomorrow), I'll have more on our playtest for your reading enjoyment.
2012/05/25
2012/05/24
Medical supplies for some, mutiny for others.
Our second session of Mass Effect Heroic descended into madness. Well, madness might be a strong word. More like ridiculosity.
A third player joined us this week, who coincidentally also decided to play a Human Engineer. Thankfully, they chose entirely different Human powers (one has Enhanced Intellect d6, Enhanced Reflexes d8; the other has Enhanced Stamina d8, Enhanced Strength d6) and different Bonus Engineer Powers (one has a Machine Pistol d6, the other has a Combat Drone d6). Last week's Engineer will be referred to as The Hacker and this week's new Engineer will be referred to as The Mechanic.
Given the choice between three basic scenarios (go to the Citadel and dick around, hijack a medical supply ship and sell it on the black market, or smuggle some civilians off of a war-torn planet) they choose to be pirates. This seems to be a running theme with games in which two of these players play. I don't really see a problem with this.
So the MSV Triton sets off towards the Aralakh System. Upon their arrival, the Mechanic wants to try to dampen the ship's heat output so their approach will be stealthier. He rolls and gets a 10 with a d8 effect die, but with 2 Opportunities. The target ship is aware of them, but believes them to be a small shuttle instead of a freighter. The Mechanic launches a pair of docking cables and attaches their ship to their target. The Hacker gets the door open through a rather amazing roll (16 with a d10 effect die) against the Doom Pool (4 with a d6) so the door slides effortlessly open. Unfortunately for our heroes (I guess protagonists works better, as they're not as much Heroes as they are Pirates), there are some armed guards waiting for them in the entry hall.
Our Drell spots an overhead conduit and tells the Hacker to close the door after he fires a shot. The Drell's sniper rifle punctures a hole in the conduit, causing a power overload. The Drell's player spends a Plot Point to change the weapon that one of the guards is carrying into a Flame Thrower. The power overload arcs to the guard with the flamethrower, which has the predictable result of exploding rather violently. Thankfully, the Hacker has there wherewithal to get the door closed before the explosion engulfs Our Protagonists.
After a few moments, the fire suppression systems turn off and our protagonists are free to explore a bit more. The Hacker seals downloads a schematic of the ship to his Omnitool while the Mechanic starts unlocking doors. They decide to make their way through the sterile hallways to Engineering, because it'll be easier for them to override the Autopilot than it will be for them to take control of the ship via the cockpit.
The door to Engineering is locked down tight (Deadlock d10, Hardened Metal Door d10) and neither the Hacker or the Mechanic can seem to bypass it. Meanwhile, the Drell has found an access point to the ventilation system (this guy loves dropping Plot Points) and shimmied his way through to the other side of the door. He drops down into a creepily darkened Engineering and unlocks the door for his companions.
Upon further examination, it appears that the ship is on Autopilot, heading for a spatial anomaly which used to be a moon orbiting the third planet of the system. No craft or probe or other thing that's gone into the anomaly has come back out. Some say it's a doorway to another dimension, others say it's a quantum schism which turns reality into candy, still others believe it to be the doorway to Heaven/Hell/Purgatory/Alien analog of one of those things. Whatever it is, it is not a place that one wants their newly acquired ship and treasure to go.
It also appears that the Autopilot is on lockdown, with only the captain's command key to override it. So our protagonists decide to hoof it to the captain's quarters. As the first of their group sets a foot outside engineering, the lights go dead. The Mechanic scans the area with his Omnitool and realizes that Life Support has failed as well. The group puts on their helmets and flashlights, continuing towards the captain's quarters.
Along the way, the Hacker's flashlight illuminates a door with large dents protruding from it. Something on the other side is trying to get out. Cue dramatic music as a Very Angry Yahg bursts through the door. (At this point, I admit I may be overusing the Yahg in my examples, but who cares?) Combat starts.
Combat seems slow and ponderous until I realize I was doing Stress entirely wrong. Apparently getting 2 hours of sleep the night before a game and then working for 10 hours tends to make people forget some basic rules. After I adjusted for previous results that should have been successes, the Yahg was rather badly injured. Fortunately for the Huge Lumbering Ragebeast, the protagonists had generated quite a few Opportunities along the way and the Doom Pool was at 3d6+2d8+2d10. The Yahg picked up one of our protagonists' security escorts (whom they'd retconned, via some plot points, into existence after the lights went out) and threw him at the Hacker. I rolled exceptionally well (17 with a d12 effect die from the Yahg's Enhanced Strength) and nearly stressed out the poor, hapless Hacker.
The Mechanic stunned the Yahg with a conveniently placed Shotgun blast and the Drell finished it off with a pair of bullets to the eyes. As it turns out, Yahg are weak to Bullets-in-the-Eyes.
The protagonists carried on, their security escorts having all been rended into tiny bits by the previous encounter, towards the captain's quarters. A little Omnitool work and the door was open.
The room was in a rather bad state, clothes and supplies thrown everywhere. They stumbled across an audiolog from the captain, describing an attack by pirates and many of his crew being killed before they knew what was happening. Our protagonists thought pretty well of their success, until they realized that the timestamp on the audiolog made it clear that the recording had been made six hours before they arrived. The guards they'd killed on the way in? They were the last of the previous boarding party, left behind by their compatriots for some reason (justified or not) when they sent the ship towards the rift.
A rather frantic search through the quarters and the command key was found. The group nearly sprinted the entire way to Engineering. Upon their arrival, the Mechanic used the command key and a lot of elbow grease to disengage the Autopilot. Not a moment too soon, either. Had they waited another few minutes, the ship would have been past the event horizon of the anomaly; potentially lost forever to whatever hell dimension or Whimsyshire lay on the other side of it.
The protagonists reset the Autopilot to take the ship to the scrap yards, as was the original stipulation of the mission. In the meantime, Datok (their ship's captain and their boss) revealed that the reason they'd taken the mission is because he *knew* that the ship had been taken by pirates, so it should have been easy pickings. Unless, of course, the pirates had still been aboard or there was a muderous ragebeast being transported from its homeworld to a Salarian research outpost. Or the ship had been set on a suicide course into an unknown anomaly.
With that, the talk of mutiny began. Several quick conversations and everyone on board was convinced that their captain was a jerkface and needed to be spaced. And so, they did. Right out the airlock.
Next time, on Mass Effect. Who will step up to fill our Volus Captain's tiny shoes?
A third player joined us this week, who coincidentally also decided to play a Human Engineer. Thankfully, they chose entirely different Human powers (one has Enhanced Intellect d6, Enhanced Reflexes d8; the other has Enhanced Stamina d8, Enhanced Strength d6) and different Bonus Engineer Powers (one has a Machine Pistol d6, the other has a Combat Drone d6). Last week's Engineer will be referred to as The Hacker and this week's new Engineer will be referred to as The Mechanic.
Given the choice between three basic scenarios (go to the Citadel and dick around, hijack a medical supply ship and sell it on the black market, or smuggle some civilians off of a war-torn planet) they choose to be pirates. This seems to be a running theme with games in which two of these players play. I don't really see a problem with this.
So the MSV Triton sets off towards the Aralakh System. Upon their arrival, the Mechanic wants to try to dampen the ship's heat output so their approach will be stealthier. He rolls and gets a 10 with a d8 effect die, but with 2 Opportunities. The target ship is aware of them, but believes them to be a small shuttle instead of a freighter. The Mechanic launches a pair of docking cables and attaches their ship to their target. The Hacker gets the door open through a rather amazing roll (16 with a d10 effect die) against the Doom Pool (4 with a d6) so the door slides effortlessly open. Unfortunately for our heroes (I guess protagonists works better, as they're not as much Heroes as they are Pirates), there are some armed guards waiting for them in the entry hall.
Our Drell spots an overhead conduit and tells the Hacker to close the door after he fires a shot. The Drell's sniper rifle punctures a hole in the conduit, causing a power overload. The Drell's player spends a Plot Point to change the weapon that one of the guards is carrying into a Flame Thrower. The power overload arcs to the guard with the flamethrower, which has the predictable result of exploding rather violently. Thankfully, the Hacker has there wherewithal to get the door closed before the explosion engulfs Our Protagonists.
After a few moments, the fire suppression systems turn off and our protagonists are free to explore a bit more. The Hacker seals downloads a schematic of the ship to his Omnitool while the Mechanic starts unlocking doors. They decide to make their way through the sterile hallways to Engineering, because it'll be easier for them to override the Autopilot than it will be for them to take control of the ship via the cockpit.
The door to Engineering is locked down tight (Deadlock d10, Hardened Metal Door d10) and neither the Hacker or the Mechanic can seem to bypass it. Meanwhile, the Drell has found an access point to the ventilation system (this guy loves dropping Plot Points) and shimmied his way through to the other side of the door. He drops down into a creepily darkened Engineering and unlocks the door for his companions.
Upon further examination, it appears that the ship is on Autopilot, heading for a spatial anomaly which used to be a moon orbiting the third planet of the system. No craft or probe or other thing that's gone into the anomaly has come back out. Some say it's a doorway to another dimension, others say it's a quantum schism which turns reality into candy, still others believe it to be the doorway to Heaven/Hell/Purgatory/Alien analog of one of those things. Whatever it is, it is not a place that one wants their newly acquired ship and treasure to go.
It also appears that the Autopilot is on lockdown, with only the captain's command key to override it. So our protagonists decide to hoof it to the captain's quarters. As the first of their group sets a foot outside engineering, the lights go dead. The Mechanic scans the area with his Omnitool and realizes that Life Support has failed as well. The group puts on their helmets and flashlights, continuing towards the captain's quarters.
Along the way, the Hacker's flashlight illuminates a door with large dents protruding from it. Something on the other side is trying to get out. Cue dramatic music as a Very Angry Yahg bursts through the door. (At this point, I admit I may be overusing the Yahg in my examples, but who cares?) Combat starts.
Combat seems slow and ponderous until I realize I was doing Stress entirely wrong. Apparently getting 2 hours of sleep the night before a game and then working for 10 hours tends to make people forget some basic rules. After I adjusted for previous results that should have been successes, the Yahg was rather badly injured. Fortunately for the Huge Lumbering Ragebeast, the protagonists had generated quite a few Opportunities along the way and the Doom Pool was at 3d6+2d8+2d10. The Yahg picked up one of our protagonists' security escorts (whom they'd retconned, via some plot points, into existence after the lights went out) and threw him at the Hacker. I rolled exceptionally well (17 with a d12 effect die from the Yahg's Enhanced Strength) and nearly stressed out the poor, hapless Hacker.
The Mechanic stunned the Yahg with a conveniently placed Shotgun blast and the Drell finished it off with a pair of bullets to the eyes. As it turns out, Yahg are weak to Bullets-in-the-Eyes.
The protagonists carried on, their security escorts having all been rended into tiny bits by the previous encounter, towards the captain's quarters. A little Omnitool work and the door was open.
The room was in a rather bad state, clothes and supplies thrown everywhere. They stumbled across an audiolog from the captain, describing an attack by pirates and many of his crew being killed before they knew what was happening. Our protagonists thought pretty well of their success, until they realized that the timestamp on the audiolog made it clear that the recording had been made six hours before they arrived. The guards they'd killed on the way in? They were the last of the previous boarding party, left behind by their compatriots for some reason (justified or not) when they sent the ship towards the rift.
A rather frantic search through the quarters and the command key was found. The group nearly sprinted the entire way to Engineering. Upon their arrival, the Mechanic used the command key and a lot of elbow grease to disengage the Autopilot. Not a moment too soon, either. Had they waited another few minutes, the ship would have been past the event horizon of the anomaly; potentially lost forever to whatever hell dimension or Whimsyshire lay on the other side of it.
The protagonists reset the Autopilot to take the ship to the scrap yards, as was the original stipulation of the mission. In the meantime, Datok (their ship's captain and their boss) revealed that the reason they'd taken the mission is because he *knew* that the ship had been taken by pirates, so it should have been easy pickings. Unless, of course, the pirates had still been aboard or there was a muderous ragebeast being transported from its homeworld to a Salarian research outpost. Or the ship had been set on a suicide course into an unknown anomaly.
With that, the talk of mutiny began. Several quick conversations and everyone on board was convinced that their captain was a jerkface and needed to be spaced. And so, they did. Right out the airlock.
Next time, on Mass Effect. Who will step up to fill our Volus Captain's tiny shoes?
2012/05/17
Avatar: The Legend of Heroism
More hacks incoming, farcical aquatic readers! Starting work on Avatar: (The Last Airbender/The Legend of Aang/The Legend of Korra) for Marvel Heroic this weekend. You have been warned.
2012/05/13
Legend of the Five Rings: Heroic Edition
Legend of the Five Rings is my favorite setting. Unfortunately, that amazing setting comes coupled with one of my least favorite rule sets. Time to get that fixed.
Click here for the fix. Cortex+, fixing awkward mechanics since 2010.
(Edit: Based on feedback from a few associates and random internet people, there's a huge revision going on at the moment. Should be finished tonight.) -J
Click here for the fix. Cortex+, fixing awkward mechanics since 2010.
(Edit: Based on feedback from a few associates and random internet people, there's a huge revision going on at the moment. Should be finished tonight.) -J
2012/05/10
A Turian, a Drell, and a Human Walk Into a Bar on Palaven...
After quite a long time of trying to get a group together, I finally got to test out my Mass Effect hack last night. It was a real proud papa type moment for me, as this is the first hack I've put enough effort into for it to actually get to a playable state.
We started off with group character creation. Our team came together as a Human Engineer, a Drell Infiltrator, and a Turian Sentinel. Character creation, including the Relationship Map that I borrowed from Smallville, took up about two hours. Once that was done, the group named their ship (the MSV Triton) and decided to play a Privateer style game; starting out with a janky old ship, working their way up from the bottom. We decide to play in the post-First Contact War / pre-Mass Effect 1 era. None of them have decided on names yet, so I'll refer to them by their race for the time being.
As with all great stories this one starts out in a bar on Palaven, waiting for laborers to finish loading cargo onto the ship. The PCs order drinks and engage in some chitchat with each other. I have them all roll a notice roll against the Doom Pool (a piddly 2d6, since this is a dive bar in a minor port city). All three players succeed at noticing a pair of Turians looking to start a fight with the only Krogan in the bar. They know things like this tend to get ugly and quick, so they decide to GTFO. I throw them each a plot point and tell them that both doors are blocked by the Turians' friends. The Drell decided to sneak up and try to knock out one of the attacking Turians. The Human sent his Combat Drone out the front door to alert the authorities. Our Turian simply sat at the bar, enjoying her drink.
The Drell dropped a Plot Point to create a Stunt off his Sniper Rifle, a hidden stun gun inside the stock. The prongs just happen to extend out the butt of the gun. He rolls, gets a 14 with a d10 effect die. The Turian is reeling, but still up. Meanwhile, the Combat Drone finds a pair of policetypes walking down the street nearby. The Human rolls a convince-the-cops-to-help-out roll, getting a 12 with a d8 effect die. He tells the cops that there's a Krogan starting a fight in the bar and that he will probably end up killing two or more civilians if they don't hurry. The cops follow his Drone back to the scene of the crime. I write Palaven Police Patrol D8 on a notecard and hand it to the player. The Combat Drone leads the cops into the bar.
Bad Guys' turn. The Turians both pull knives, slashing at the Krogan. The Krogan activates his Fortification and headbutts the uninjured Turian.
Top of the order, the Drell declares that he's going to try to talk the Injured Turian into standing down. The Human hands him the D8 Police asset, under the auspices of them helping with his Menace roll. He rolls, gets a 12 with a d10 effect die. The player has a bright idea. He hands me a Plot Point and says that he wants to convert the Mental Stress into Physical Stress. It turns out that the Turian was goaded into attacking instead of standing down and the police shot him. I like it. The Turian drops.
The Krogan interrupts the Human, so the Human's player gets a Plot Point. The afore mentioned Krogan decides to completely punk the remaining Turian. A headbutt from an armored Krogan Helmet is enough to knock the Turian not unconsciousness. At this point, the remaining bar patrons riot. Our PCs decide that now is the time to beat a hasty retreat back to the Triton.
Through the back alleys, they're chased by a small mob of bar patrons. The PCs use their acrobatics (and a few conveniently placed crates to get back to the ship ahead of the baddies. Their captain, a Volus named Datok, gives them a bunch of crap for bringing the fury of the locals down on their heads, but luckily the cargo is loaded and they can get off this rock.
The session ended there. Overall, everyone had fun. Going from a very restrictive game like L5R run by a very restrictive GM to seeming cinematic like Marvel Heroic was a bit of a system shock at first, but ey seemed to get it really well by the end of the session.
High Points: The chase sequence and the bar fight.
Low Points: It took me quite a while to make characters and figure out how their characters were involved with each other. I think this goes back to the last game we played with out old GM. He ran a very "you have limited options and can only do things for which I have prepared" game. It was rather difficult to deal with.
I'm really looking forward to next week.
-J
We started off with group character creation. Our team came together as a Human Engineer, a Drell Infiltrator, and a Turian Sentinel. Character creation, including the Relationship Map that I borrowed from Smallville, took up about two hours. Once that was done, the group named their ship (the MSV Triton) and decided to play a Privateer style game; starting out with a janky old ship, working their way up from the bottom. We decide to play in the post-First Contact War / pre-Mass Effect 1 era. None of them have decided on names yet, so I'll refer to them by their race for the time being.
As with all great stories this one starts out in a bar on Palaven, waiting for laborers to finish loading cargo onto the ship. The PCs order drinks and engage in some chitchat with each other. I have them all roll a notice roll against the Doom Pool (a piddly 2d6, since this is a dive bar in a minor port city). All three players succeed at noticing a pair of Turians looking to start a fight with the only Krogan in the bar. They know things like this tend to get ugly and quick, so they decide to GTFO. I throw them each a plot point and tell them that both doors are blocked by the Turians' friends. The Drell decided to sneak up and try to knock out one of the attacking Turians. The Human sent his Combat Drone out the front door to alert the authorities. Our Turian simply sat at the bar, enjoying her drink.
The Drell dropped a Plot Point to create a Stunt off his Sniper Rifle, a hidden stun gun inside the stock. The prongs just happen to extend out the butt of the gun. He rolls, gets a 14 with a d10 effect die. The Turian is reeling, but still up. Meanwhile, the Combat Drone finds a pair of policetypes walking down the street nearby. The Human rolls a convince-the-cops-to-help-out roll, getting a 12 with a d8 effect die. He tells the cops that there's a Krogan starting a fight in the bar and that he will probably end up killing two or more civilians if they don't hurry. The cops follow his Drone back to the scene of the crime. I write Palaven Police Patrol D8 on a notecard and hand it to the player. The Combat Drone leads the cops into the bar.
Bad Guys' turn. The Turians both pull knives, slashing at the Krogan. The Krogan activates his Fortification and headbutts the uninjured Turian.
Top of the order, the Drell declares that he's going to try to talk the Injured Turian into standing down. The Human hands him the D8 Police asset, under the auspices of them helping with his Menace roll. He rolls, gets a 12 with a d10 effect die. The player has a bright idea. He hands me a Plot Point and says that he wants to convert the Mental Stress into Physical Stress. It turns out that the Turian was goaded into attacking instead of standing down and the police shot him. I like it. The Turian drops.
The Krogan interrupts the Human, so the Human's player gets a Plot Point. The afore mentioned Krogan decides to completely punk the remaining Turian. A headbutt from an armored Krogan Helmet is enough to knock the Turian not unconsciousness. At this point, the remaining bar patrons riot. Our PCs decide that now is the time to beat a hasty retreat back to the Triton.
Through the back alleys, they're chased by a small mob of bar patrons. The PCs use their acrobatics (and a few conveniently placed crates to get back to the ship ahead of the baddies. Their captain, a Volus named Datok, gives them a bunch of crap for bringing the fury of the locals down on their heads, but luckily the cargo is loaded and they can get off this rock.
The session ended there. Overall, everyone had fun. Going from a very restrictive game like L5R run by a very restrictive GM to seeming cinematic like Marvel Heroic was a bit of a system shock at first, but ey seemed to get it really well by the end of the session.
High Points: The chase sequence and the bar fight.
Low Points: It took me quite a while to make characters and figure out how their characters were involved with each other. I think this goes back to the last game we played with out old GM. He ran a very "you have limited options and can only do things for which I have prepared" game. It was rather difficult to deal with.
I'm really looking forward to next week.
-J
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