PAX – Sean Nittner

Actual Play – Refuge in Audacity (9/2/2012)

GM: The Penultimate Mecha Ultra Zeitgeist of Audacity Ryan Dunleavy
Players: John Harper, Morgan Stinson, Shaun Hayworth, Sean Nittner, Twyla Campbell, and Marissa Kelley
System: Refuge in Audacity

The moon must have been in alignment, because somehow this game fell on my lap. I had wanted to play with John Harper at some point during the con and thus far hadn’t been able to hook up with him. Shaun and I were both feeling the con fatigue and were just about ready to leave, but were looking for one last event or thing to check out. Then out of nowhere, we we’re caught in a whirlwind of awesome.

“Hey, you guys want to play a game?” “Is it short” “Yeah, most most of the time. And it’s awesome. Come play.” That’s all I needed. That John was also playing in the game just made my con. That I got to meet two other cool gamers Twyla and Marissa, was combo bonus points exploding on the screen Scott Pilgrim style.

We rolled up our toons (yes, rolled them up) and I was a Titan Dwarf Chronomancer. Shaun was a Billy Dead Radblaster… so you know this game was going to be crazy. And it’s not just crazy, it’s so ridiculously over the top crazy that it actually evoked the kind of crazy interactions that Jolly R. Blackburn puts into Knights of the Dinner Table. It was full metal ludicrous.

The play is the thing?

Our game started with us flying a space ship through some place (remembering that the entire setting takes place in a city the size of a thousand galaxies) and finding that Kev “Ripper” Strongbald was going to blow up a planet and kill some space whales. That was pretty much the sum total of the story.

Our character used their Kung Fus, Demonic Packs, Demonic Patron, Cyber Gear, and generally single Exotic Art (only one but the right one) to do pretty much anything we described and did tens of thousands of points of damage to “Ripper”, only to find out that called shots to his genitals were nigh useless. Eventually Morgan realized killing off the other players net gained more XP for everyone (in the hundreds of thousands) and was the first to become an Infinity God and win the game.

Yep, it was like that.

Thoughts on this game

The game is so over the top, you can’t help but laugh when you play it.

It uses every die type (you start with 2d20 x 100,000 XP and the the insanity just goes from there. Don’t think, just download it from http://critical-hits.com/ch-presents/refuge-in-audacity/ and play it. You’ll laugh.

The game describes itself as “An over-the-top pastiche/parody of bad 90s RPGs and comics.” It nails that on the head.

Burned out at the end of the con, this game, and this silly mix of players was just what I was looking for. A perfect way to finish of PAX

Actual Play – Inheritance (9/1/2012)

GM: Luke Crane, Thor Olavsrud
Players: Sean Nittner, Devin Binger, Colin Booth, Meguey Baker, Wilhelm Fitzpatrick, Sean Sakamoto, Lesley Myhan, Lukas Myhan, and my hero Thorwald, er Morgan Stinson.
System: Inheritance (LARP)

This game is about exactly what it sounds like: Inheritance. A great jarl (viking lord) has just died and his son plus relations have gathered for his funeral, feast and reading of his will.

I won’t say much about the game itself because this is a LARP that is going to be run again. (Hey, hey, at Big Bad Con even!) so I don’t want to give away spoilers.

Mood

Luke wasn’t fucking around with this game. He opened it up and told us what was going on with no uncertainty. He quickly dispelled any notions (if they were even there to begin with) that we were viking caricatures. Our characters were serious, determined, and full of conviction.

I played Ring, the son of Thorwald (the jarl) and grandson of the great jarl who died. I was young and full of anger and wanderlust. The other characters included my father, month, brother, my brothers companion, our Christian priest (bookkeeper and scribe) and our father’s brother in arms. So our knowledge of each other (except the companion) was intimate. We were all personally invested in choices of one another.

Wrap up

The game ended with a long wrap up to conclude all the events that followed. I was really happy to see the fruition of many characters goals, getting to see into the future and see how the turned out.

Thoughts on the game

Each character had a envelope that we couldn’t open until the GM instructed us to. The contents of the envelope pre-determined the results of conflicts between two characters. It was an awesome mechanic, because it allowed for all the uncertainty we needed as players without introducing any foreign elements (like dice or a ro-sham-bo) into the game. I really dug it.

Some of the characters had certain authority explicitly written on their character sheet. Governance over law, the new faith, the old faith, the home, etc. These were great, because they were very easy to bring into the game “My word is law” and Luke and Thor were great about enforcing those. The other characters, who didn’t have those powers were in slightly murkier waters. At one point I took a fairly rash and physically aggressive, thought not violent, action. There was a bit of confusion and then Luke hopped it to adjudicate it, which was great. We talked some after, but it seems that the most important thing was to have a GM handy in this case to clarify what is happening in the fiction.

The pacing of the game was very well structured. It reminded me in some ways of a very good game of The Gift, with each scene opening and closing on an event (a funeral, a feast, etc).

Without giving away spoilers, I won this game so hard. I loved it.

Actual Play – The Sword (9/1/2012 2PM)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Shaun Hayworth and three peeps leaning the wheel.
System: Burning Wheel

It’s really my bad for not recording the names of the players. I hate referring to people as “the peeps” but I met so many people at PAX the names all mush together. I think this game we had Robert and Chris, but I can’t say for sure.

Our second game of The Sword, we again had two players, and again one of us (in this case Shaun) played the 3rd and eventually a fourth hopped in to round out the game. Shaun played Fidhean (the Elf). The player who grabbed Brechtanz did so with zeal, so I was excited to see what he would do with him. Predictably he went right for the blade and forced everyone to really get in his face to slow him down at all.

Failed rolls – Awesome results

Some fun things came about from failed rolls. They went a little like this.

Sssisz figures there are probably traps around the sword. He makes a below-wise test to declare Roden trap their lairs and that when the sword is pulled from it’s resting place the floor will collapse below the front of the alter. The failed roll indicated that the actually entered the room from the back side, the front having collapsed long ago, and he was turned around. End result. Trap springs and Ssisz falls into a natural crevice below. He also took a B3 wound so we got to introduce the wound mechanics.
Brechtanz failed a climbing roll to climb down and help Ssisz out. The result was him getting down there but his armor getting stuck in the natural rock formation below and being unable to get himself out without taking it all off. Also, he heard further up the fissure, water starting to run.

These two really gave the game a spin. Up to this point the Dwarf had brazenly claimed ownership of the sword and wasn’t going to listen to anyone. This particular situation make it possible for the Elf to insist that they talk about it. Essentially not offering Brechtanz until they could talk it out. A duel of wits, where one person has the sword (Fidhean was “holding” it for him) and the other person is stuck in a filling with water natural crevice is a beautiful thing to behold.

Later, when leaving the chamber Brechtanz declares the sword glows and fails a “stuff-wise” roll. I declare, in very Tolkien-derivative fashion, that the sword glows… in the presence of orcs!

As soon as I said that I wondered if it was a good idea to present an external threat to the party. The trap was arguably a threat, but one that made them turn inward to bicker with each other. This was a threat that was easy to unify against… Well it turned out awesome, because Robard and Ssisz wanted no part of a fight, but when Fidhean and Brechtanz broke past the first orc scout, it was Fidhean that had to stop them to wait for the rest of the part, endangering all of them.

We left off with the party together, hearing the growing thrum of war drums in the tunnels.

Thoughts on this game

In all future con games EVER, get the player names at the start of the game and WRITE THEM DOWN. If allowed, take a pic as well.

External threats have to be measured carefully in a really tight scenario. They have the potential to deflate (or at least pause) the internal conflicts and unite the characters to face them. Usually I try to make external threats a pressure cooker, where they magnify the characters fears about each other (like the trap) but I got really worried about bringing orcs into the game. It worked out fine, but I’m glad they didn’t show up till nearly the end.

Ssisz seems to want too much. I find it really hard to imagine him ever fulfilling his beliefs of both getting paid and getting the sword. Further, I’m not sure (except by saying the sword “is” the payment) that I see a way he can even start to argue for it. And he certainly can’t fight for it. He’s got the “you can’t trust him because he’s a thief” stigma going against him, which kind of sucks, because he’s really just doing a job and the party not wanting to pay him (they never do) are really the ones being cheep ass bastards.

Bloody versus was a perfectly elegant solution in this game. I found that by explaining that combat and injury were implicit to the roll, and for the player to tell me what they wanted as a result of the fight (to get free, etc) that the mechanics depicted the narrative beautifully. They didn’t kill the orc scout, but they gave him a gnarly wound left him staggering long enough for them to run past.

Actual Play – The Sword (9/1/2012 10AM)

GM: Shaun Hayworth
Players: Sean Nittner and three peeps leaning the wheel.
System: Burning Wheel

Shaun and I were running demos of Burning Wheel HQ in the Games on Demand room for the Burning Wheel booth. The hope was to do a variety of game, but we had some misfires and only ended up running three games (Shaun 2, me 1).

Shaun ran the first game, which started with only two players. I hopped in bumping it to three. Later we had a 4th add to complete the roster.

The sword is a fun scenario, it’s a single scene where each character is presented with conflicting beliefs. They each want the sword for themselves but none of them want to fight for it. The Elf and the Dwarf because of personal moral codes, The Roden because he still hasn’t been paid, and the Human because he sucks in a fight.

What I love about the game is that it forces players to make a decision about which belief to adhere to. The one demanding they take the sword, or the one honoring (or fearing) the other PCs.

Who gets the sword?

I played Brechtanz, which probably wasn’t a good pick. As an experienced burner and player who is comfortable getting aggressive at the table Brechtanz was a bit too easy. I should have gone for Robard (the human) or Ssisz (the Roden). End result, I ended up with the sword, despite refusing to take it until others accepted my claim to it.

We also had one hiccup on the game, which was Robard convincing all of us that the sword was a fake. I didn’t really know where to go with that. We planned to explore the ruins more, looking for the real one, but none of us were about to leave the sword behind. Even as a “fake” it looks amazing. Shaun was gracious and gave me a Steel test (for Greed) when the blade was finally drawn from the scabbard, failing that I claimed the “It must be mine result” and sought it anyway. That sort of worked, but it didn’t honor the Let it Ride rules in spirit. I had effectively negated the lie by saying “well, this might not be the sword of my ancestors, but it’s a beautiful blade and I’m not giving it up anyway!” So, not great on my part.

Teaching the System

One thing I really enjoyed about playing in Shaun’s game (and later having him playing in mine) was that we work together pretty well to teach the rules. Thought we didn’t hit a Fight! we did have a Duel of Wits (over the Roden getting paid) and it was fun to see new players interact with the DoW mechanics. I thought they got a hold of it just fine and were really good at acting out the moves without letting the mechanics eclipse role-playing. Anecdotal evidence shows that if people don’t think Burning Wheel is “too hard” or that they should “fix it”, it plays out just fine.

Thoughts on the game

The woman playing the dancing, prancing elf was a stereotype but very fun. She abhorred the idea of conflict of violence but was positively delightful with her singing. Oh, and she revealed her grubby, greedy ways when it came time to barter with Ssisz. It was great!

Games on Demand had a lot of misfires. People who were told to come back in two hours when GMs were just minutes away. Or players that said they would come back, but never did, or came back after a game was full. Coordination could use a two things to help this.

A white board to record GMs names, games they would offer, time slots coming up and players who want to play in those games.
Central communication via text, tweet or email. Some way for the organizers a) know the GMs they had on staff and b) let them know when them when players arrived.