SPOILERS INSIDE.

Briar's the mostly-NPC character I am "playing" in the Elfquest game. She was Recognized in the last session. I knew a little of her background, but it wasn't until that hit that I realized the reason why she was going to fight this. Nevermind it's like refusing water, and it might kill her and her potential mate. She's got a story, and this is what is behind it.

peer behind the GM screen • • "Elfquest: Briar's Tale" »

Please note that I am actively soliciting comments and game-design questions here on this post, so if you're feeling like you've got something that'll work, or even work "better," please chime in!

edited to add:comments now work [sigh]

So we completely reworked the way we had been doing magic, as a skill roll combination that didn't really fit the comic's view or the system very well. Number of successes and effect weren't really rolled together.

I don't think it's necessarily munchkinism that has some of our players taking advantage of the fact that several "standard actions" in the system rely on a couple combinations of rolls, and putting all their points in those combinations, but it's close enough to give me a frown. Does that count?

peer behind the GM screen • • "Elfquest: Fire and Ice...shaping." »

I often quote the aggravations of what I call "bookkeeping" in a gaming context. Some of it is literal; last week I put together a conglomerate spreadsheet of all the Elfquest game characters and their statistics. I had a few (example: Glitter and the Glamour) spreadsheets I've used before to run analyses and keep track of the little number details, but it always ends in heartbreakends up meaning administrative details that either consume my time and energy, or being fairly irrelevant.

You'd think this would push me harder to go to descriptor-based systems rather than numbers, but the truth is, I don't like the vagaries of words compared to the hard truth of mathematics. Is "va-va-voom sexy" higher or lower than "knock-out sexy?"

peer behind the GM screen • • "Elfquest: Administrative Details" »

When it comes to breaking anything into two types, you usually have the ones "in the know" and the ones out of it. (Or the ones who can't count.) I, myself, prefer to lean into the "develop in play" method of character development. That's from years and years of writing 20 page character histories and then finding out in the middle of session two, "Oh, that isn't how it happened at all, and, by the way, I didn't know this at all before, but my character is like, gay. Totally gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, flaming homosexual gay."

peer behind the GM screen • • "Elfquest: Character Hurdles" »

If you're not familiar with the [comic] series, I'll sum it up very generally to say Elfquest is based off the travels of a chief of a tribe of elves called the "Wolfriders" (who have a special bond with their canine kin), and how this chief deals with the other kinds of elves he discovers, and finally with the origins of the elves on this world with two moons (Abode.) It's a story of change, exploration, survival, with all sorts of romances and betrayals, and some great soap opera, so, of course, you would think that it would be a world ripe for gaming!

I would agree, but now you're waiting for the, "except..."

peer behind the GM screen • • "Elfquest: Plot Concepts" »

The assorted evils of cultural, class-related, ritual, or gendered assumptions in gaming will not be solved by a bunch of white guys with internet access.

I never thought they would.

peer behind the GM screen • • "No, no, you don't need to remind me." »

So last Sunday I had been invited to Doyce's whimsical Spirit of the Century character creation get-together (along with such infamous individuals as ***Dave and the inimitable Margie, their exuberant daughter K, the always piquant Mr. Trimmer, and John Barnes (not as reported previously, and I don't know why it was written differently on my notepad. [sighs] [thanks Doyce for the update]). I pushed myself to go (normally I don't drive up to Denver on a whim) but I knew, turning the corner off my street and towards Adventure! I would be glad to go, and I was!

peer behind the GM screen • • "Pulpy Goodness" »

No really.  "Space Slayers, the Series!" 

So, in trying this Prime Time Adventures thing again (this time with Rainbow K and the Barbarian) we started with a pitch session that had Pirates, Vampires in Spa(aaaaaaaaaaaaa!)ce, and bits and pieces from other shows the two had watched. We were driving to my place, so I figured we had enough time to at least build the idea in the kids' heads.

"Why vampires in space?"
"No sunshine."
"Oh.   Yeah.  They'd LOVE space."

The premise turns out to be that Vampires have invaded Earth, and the protagonists are freedom fighters trying to get their home out of the clutch of the evil undead (undead, O!)

So the real argument came up with the fact that both players wanted to be Captains of their own ships. I tried a variety of alternatives

"How about one of you take 'Captain' as a trait, and the other be...I don't know... pilot?"
"No." [in chorus]
"How about you both be other things, and there be another Captain on the ship, like an NPC?"
"No." [in chorus]
"What if I said that your ships were itsy-bitsy tiny so being Captain wasn't really going to count for anything?"
"Um...." pause, consider, "No."
So on, and so forth.

...but they were set. Cool.

(I always encourage testing them to see what's going to be their pivot point, but if they're steady, let's (of course!) go with what they want. I think that's one of the "gaming with kids" rules that goes unnoticed a lot, because we have GM fiat and player choice (fiat! [snort]) and when working with kids, they'll change their minds if you haven't poked them. After all, does it say anywhere in the rules that you can't change your mind?)

So, we described the characters, and why they were involved in their anti-Vampire ways. Rainbow K's character had a vampire contact who had been teasing her by offering her the power to do what she wanted, but we created this intensely convoluted reasoning, wherein she was his catspaw against the other vampire families. The Barbarian had as his main contact his dead father, who was the reason he was fighting, and as we pointed out, could still have a lot of minor contacts and favors, and a possibility of a cameo as a ghost.

After several rejected names for the series, we decided on "Space Slayers!" which was a tad bit misleading, but easy to remember. [note to self: make logo]

The first scene had people going through a processing facility before they could load up on their ships. It was very depressing, with cattle-kill lines of folks being scanned for possible vampire taint, and no views of the ships. They were being held for departure when an alarm sounded. The force fields (made of anti-gravity technology) start sputtering on, when one of the spaceforce guards (in femme-style armor) is grabbed by a pair of levitating vampires. Enter combat, with lots of pretty weaponplay (including UV grenades), and a rescue of the guard, with the next scene going to be reviving her in the medical unit.

Unfortunately at that point we made it home and other things took our attention, but I think the kids liked it, and they got the hang of the narration and contribution very quickly. It's starting to look like PTA may end up being a good "car game," which would be a break from Amber. I think using group consensus is a fair use of the game even without cards, although it may weaken the conflict. More experimentation is needed.

I had written previously:

The "standard" (by which I mean, "described and suggested") character types for Illegal Gods are: Pirates, Ambassadors, various members of Military Forces, Spies, Asteroid Miners, Priests, God Merchants, Soul Jockeys, Demigods, Scientists, Bureaucrats, and Droids. Most of these are fairly self-explanatory, but there are some professions (God Merchant, Soul Jockey) that are unique to the setting.

Pirate is pretty non-gender specific, right? Same with Ambassador, Military, Spy, Asteroid Miner, God Merchant, etc.

So it's only "Priests" and potentially "Demigods" that hit my (broken) feminist sensor. The problem I have there is whether or not to change them to "priestesses" and "demigoddesses," the latter of which is clunky at best. I don't want to presuppose that only those two classifications are feminine, which changing them (in my mind) would suggest. Should I shift "Priest" to "Cleric," and risk the D&D connection? Probably wouldn't hurt, but I don't know what to do with "Demigod."

So I bought PTA as a pre-birthday present for myself, hoping to run it with my little sisters and nephew, and, of course, anyone else who wanted to tag along. We were going to do it at the Pirate Birthday Party, but ended up just doing other stuff instead. So I was itching to play it, especially after Doyce's example, and what with having a couple hours to kill before we were ready to go to bed, my husband and I gave it a spin.

peer behind the GM screen • • "PTA to the 2nd Power" »