That awkward moment when you realize that despite what their playbooks might be called, everyone else is actually…

That awkward moment when you realize that despite what their playbooks might be called, everyone else is actually…

That awkward moment when you realize that despite what their playbooks might be called, everyone else is actually playing the Delinquent.

EDIT: Wow, that was fast!

EDIT: Wow, that was fast!

EDIT: Wow, that was fast! It looks like we’ve got enough players now, so I’m deleting the invite link to avert spambots. Thanks for your interest, everyone!

Hi folks! Trying to drum up some more players for a Discord game that will be running evenings on Thursdays and/or Wednesdays (we have a couple of players with unsteady schedules, so things will bounce around a bit depending on the week). Sessions start at 6PM central time, and we plan to run for 3-4 hours.

We’ve been hoping to do session zero tomorrow, but right now we only have two players, so it’s looking like the session may get pushed back. Anyway, feel free to hop in if this sounds like your kind of scene!

Any ETA on when the print version of the Halcyon City Herald Collection will be shipping?

Any ETA on when the print version of the Halcyon City Herald Collection will be shipping?

Any ETA on when the print version of the Halcyon City Herald Collection will be shipping? It’s been a couple of months since the PDF came out and the Kickstarter’s been quiet since then.

Just for fun: for NaNoWriMo this year, I’m writing the story of a Janus character I never quite got to play.

Just for fun: for NaNoWriMo this year, I’m writing the story of a Janus character I never quite got to play.

Just for fun: for NaNoWriMo this year, I’m writing the story of a Janus character I never quite got to play. I’ll try and post occasional updates here in November if this is a copacetic venue for that kind of thing. Wish me luck!

Originally shared by Jamie Frost

“So, inquiring minds want to know.” Gemini dismissed the hologram and turned to Erin, leaning back into the dusty couch with a practiced ease. “Who are you protecting?”

“Protecting?” Erin’s brow wrinkled in confusion.

“Yeah, you know, with…” she waved a hand in the general direction of her face. “This whole situation.”

“This whole… oh.” Erin’s brow relaxed, and she raised a hand to brush the side of her mask. “This isn’t to protect anyone.”

“Really?” Gemini cocked her head to the side. “That’s new. Usually you secret identity types lean on the whole ‘keep my loved ones safe’ thing pretty hard.”

“Not really a concern for me.” Erin half-smiled, staring down at the floor between her feet. “And I don’t see how lying to is supposed to keep anybody safe, anyway.”

Gemini leaned forward. “So why the mask? You know, if you don’t mind sharing… Bearing in mind I’ve saved your life twice now, just sayin’.”

Erin was quiet for a long moment before looking up. “I’ve done… some pretty bad stuff. To other people. And I didn’t even give it a second thought before, but after that thing with the Medusa…”

Her voice trembled for a moment, and her hands tightened into fists in her lap. After a moment, she continued, her voice steady. “After that, I got a taste of what being helpless felt like. So I’m trying to do better. To be better. And if people knew who I was–”

“It would sully your heroic reputation?” Gemini cut in.

Erin half-shrugged. “Well, yeah, that too. But the big thing is that if I want to make up for all the stuff I’ve done, I have to do it as me. As Erin, not as The Golem. And if people knew we were the same person, they might think that the stuff I do out here somehow absolves me of all the stuff I did back there. And then, I might start to think that, too.”

“I just…” She rubbed the back of her neck, looking for the words. “I want this part of my life to be a choice, not a ‘get out of responsibility free’ card. You know?”

Gemini stared back at her for a long moment, then leaned back into the couch with a satisfied nod. “Yeah, I think that settles it.”

Erin raised an eyebrow. “Settles what?”

“I was all prepped to talk you into going home. Had this whole speech planned out.” She puffed out her chest and put on a stern voice. “‘You really want to keep your loved ones safe, don’t go out and pick fights with supervillains.'”

“…And now?”

“Now,” Gemini smirked, her eyes twinkling. “I can see you’re too broody to go home no matter what anyone tells you. So I’m going to teach you everything I know about this life… and maybe next time you can handle a bush-league bank robbery on your own.”

She leaned forward, offering her hand. “Deal?”

Erin stared across at her, and after a moment’s hesitation, shook her hand. “Deal.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Prepping for #NaNoWriMo. Don’t know if this scene will play out exactly like this, but I’m trying to get into the characters’ heads. I’m going to try and prep instead of pants this year, we’ll see how it goes!

I don’t have a title yet, but the story is about a high school bully who gets abducted by a supervillain and ends up with powers as a result. The experience makes her reevaluate and try to redeem herself, and as she’s reforging her identity her freshman superhero efforts also get her involved in an intricate web of villainy.

For posterity, she’s based on a Masks character I never got to play: a Janus whose mundane obligations and opportunities were focused on that path of redemption rather than just being a way to complicate her superhero actions. The villain who abducted her turned her to stone, and she was eventually able to turn herself back when her powers manifested; now she can turn to stone and back at will, as well as speak to earth and stone.

Gemini is also a character I didn’t get to play much, though she’s a bit older and was in the Valiant system. She’s kind of a mix of Firestorm and Green Lantern; she’s psychically and physiologically bonded with an alien creature of living light and has a variety of light-based powers as a result. She is laid back bordering on lazy, and may or may not be a terrible role model for our young heroine.

I’m still cementing the cast, but there may be a few more unplayed and barely-played characters among them. They need a home!

Playing songs by The Who while you play is recommended, but not required.

Playing songs by The Who while you play is recommended, but not required.

Playing songs by The Who while you play is recommended, but not required.

Originally shared by Jamie Frost

CSI World: It’s a PbtA hack about solving crimes. It has two moves:

When you make a wry observation about the current situation in the form of a wicked pun, put on another pair of sunglasses. All sunglasses must stay in place and cover your eyes. There is otherwise no limit on how many pairs you can wear.

When you do literally anything else where the outcome is uncertain, roll+the number of sunglasses you’re wearing. On a 10+, you do it. On a 7-9, or on a 10+ if you are wearing too many pairs of sunglasses and can’t read the dice, you do it but must remove a pair of sunglasses. On a miss, or if you can’t think of a wicked pun that applies to the situation, the GM makes a move.

Sleep deprived character idea: an avian Transformed who changes playbooks and becomes a Star when they learn to…

Sleep deprived character idea: an avian Transformed who changes playbooks and becomes a Star when they learn to…

Originally shared by Jamie Frost

Sleep deprived character idea: an avian Transformed who changes playbooks and becomes a Star when they learn to celebrate and flaunt their weird feathery body instead of being ashamed of it. They take a lot of selfies now. Their name? Duckface.

Unleashing as a Wizard

Unleashing as a Wizard

Unleashing as a Wizard

So one of my players is a Wizard, and I suggested that they could Unleash with magic to chuck a fireball at someone (or a lightning bolt or whatever; fireball is just a specific example from the book that the Tainted does at one point). He answered that he didn’t think he could since there’s a specific Channeling option for that.

So I went back to the book for guidance, and I’m getting conflicting messages. On the one hand, there’s stuff like the above example of a Tainted conjuring fire without going full-on demon form. There’s also the Dark Arts corruption move which suggests that battle magic should be a thing. But in the playbook advice section, it says you have to Channel to cast a spell, and if you use Elementalism you then have to Unleash on top of that.

My interim judgment is that the Wizard can still Unleash with magic without that channeling option, but the Channeling option allows them finer control over the effects. I.e., with Elementalism they can always choose to deal 3-harm or 2-harm area; with general magical Unleashing the tags are in the MC’s hands. I just finished a long-running Masks campaign with him in it, so the comparison I’m drawing is that Channeling is like the Nova’s Flares: specific permissions with slightly altered mechanics, but not strictly speaking anything you couldn’t do with the basic moves alone.

How have y’all handled it? Does this scan, or do you tackle it another way?

PbtA mechanic idea: Conditions change the basic moves.

PbtA mechanic idea: Conditions change the basic moves.

Originally shared by Jamie Frost

PbtA mechanic idea: Conditions change the basic moves.

So, one mechanic that I really like in Masks is that instead of harm, you have emotional states (like Guilty, Angry, etc.). To heal each one, you have to take appropriate action in the fiction, which drives the characters to interesting action. And each condition has an impact on the mechanics. All great stuff, definitely my favorite damage mechanic in any game I’ve played.

Only downside: the mechanical effects that conditions have are all numerical. Bonus to the take a powerful blow move, penalty to a couple of basic moves, and that’s it. Bland. Bonuses and penalities bore me to tears.

A possible remedy to this is another mechanic that I’ve seen in a couple of games: basic move substitution. I haven’t seen this much, but the idea is that certain characters strike out a basic move and take another move in its place. You’ve lost access to that basic move, so if you come up against a situation that would normally be covered by it you have to handle it in some other way, typically by the GM making a move appropriate to the situation.

For example, the Revenant in Urban Shadows has as a Corruption advance that they can strike out Figure Someone Out (typically a cold read / conversation move) and replace it with Dig For Answers (an interrogation / torture move). They lose access to the typical paths to information (at least mechanically; when they read someone it’s more in the GM’s hands) but gain another path with different options.

This is a great way of reframing the fiction. So, why not combine the two? Take emotional conditions from Masks, and swap out one basic move whenever you have the appropriate condition marked. E.g., the above Revenant’s move swap might apply while you have the Angry condition marked; you’re less able to keep a cool head and empathize with people, but hurting people comes easier.

Thoughts?

Just wrapped up session zero of Legends of Chicago, and ended up with so much good (and twisted!) stuff to work with.

Just wrapped up session zero of Legends of Chicago, and ended up with so much good (and twisted!) stuff to work with.

Just wrapped up session zero of Legends of Chicago, and ended up with so much good (and twisted!) stuff to work with. Here are some highlights:

Wrenfield and Harker, a law firm run by the Night faction, is looking to gentrify Tucker the Wolf’s territory, which is currently a tent city that the upper crust has mostly abandoned (here’s some inspiration he linked: http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/02/09/exploring-tent-city-along-chicago-river). Tucker is a newcomer to the city, on the run from a small northwestern town and currently more swept up in the supernatural politics than an active participant.

Wrenfield and Harker are helped in their endeavor by Maura and Mallory Financial Solutions, a finance company that trades in both money and souls. The Tainted’s patron, Vito Mallory, is the CEO. They’re making deals with the rich and powerful who want to make a profit off of the project, and also exploiting the desperate poor who they’re pushing out, so they’re double-dipping in hope and misery.

On the other side, Christian and Son, the current owners of the property, are deliberately trying to keep the development from happening, but M&M and W&H are putting heavy pressure on the city to seize it under imminent domain if they don’t do something with it. Christian and Son follow the path of the Sacred Architects, and keeping that neighborhood poor and unexploited furthers their vision for the city, but there’s currently an internal power struggle over whether that vision should be changed.

So we’ve got an alliance between Wild and Night pushing up against Power, and Mortality is caught in the middle. Meanwhile, Tucker is being hunted by Captain Herrera for murdering his father in his hometown, so the cops aren’t going to be of much help.

Other characters are just as much in the thick of things, too. Krista the Witch is the daughter of the Wrenfields, former partners at the firm who died in a mysterious explosion. She’s working against the firm in order to make up for the mistakes of her family–including her own. The sacrifice that she made for her power was her unborn son, whom she traded to the Hawk, the fae king of winter.

Her son is now a fae abomination, hellbent on finding his mother no matter the cost in mortal lives. During his last such crusade, she managed to elude him, but it left her aunt Olivia bedridden and homeless, leaving Krista as the only one willing and able to look after Olivia’s 11-year old son Tyler.

And then there’s Clara the Vamp. She works for Wrenfield and Harker, a job she took when she was still a mortal, before she fell in love with a vampire named Hugo and his jealous girlfriend Rachel chased her down, tortured her and nearly killed her; Hugo turning her was the only thing that saved her life, and she still hasn’t forgiven him for it.

She’s seizing and manipulating every resource at her disposal so she can take revenge on Rachel. This has included arranging for Tucker to come into conflict with Grigori, the vampire formerly in charge of his territory, now a pariah. She’s got Tucker in her pocket, and Chett too since she’s also using those resources to help get him out from under his contract. The only person who has a real lean on her is Krista, who tries to help the poor and downtrodden–and sends any that can’t be helped to Clara. Girl’s gotta eat (emotions, in Clara’s case).

Of course, naturally Clara went digging for dirt on Krista, and now she’s squarely in the sights of her child.

Meanwhile Chett is doing everything he can to help the people he’s supposed to be hunting for Maura and Mallory. He only got into this contract because a gang of drug-running werewolves killed his sister, and Maura gave him the power and information he needed for his revenge. He’s always been on the wrong side of the law, but running people down and handing them over to demons is beyond the pale, so he helps where he can.

Which currently includes investigating the Fallen Angels. They’re that splinter group from Christian and Son with a different vision for the city, and lately they’ve engineered some locus points which are drawing out the risen dead and driving them into violent frenzies.

…Whew! That’s a lot of snowballing, and we haven’t even started playing properly yet! Stuff took longer than I anticipated, but we got a lot out of it so I think that’s all right; we went ahead and rolled the start of session stuff if that wasn’t clear already. Really looking forward to seeing how everything continues to spiral next week.