Author: Yanni Cooper

When was the last time you got a standing ovation during a role-playing game? I thought so. Well, I did tonight! You can find (semi-spoilery) details here:

http://lazy.saturnday.net/objectively-awesome/

Note that it is unlikely that the AP of session one of this campaign will be posted until after GenCon, and since this was session 5 it might be a month or so before the actual session gets posted. 

Okay, I’m done tooting my own horn!

http://lazy.saturnday.net/objectively-awesome/

Post Party custom move!

So between one thing and another it’s been nearly a month since my Monday night AW game met, and everyone was a little fuzzy on what’d happened last time. There was going to be a party at the holding to celebrate the harvest and we’d cut basically right at the start of the party, so to get things going I made a custom move and started the session the next morning, but with flashbacks to the events of the night before as dictated by the move.

Justify why you should get a bonus and then roll. The Violetta, our Skinner wanted to be unaffected, so I let her spend a barter and she had the advanced version with the bonus 12+ Choose none. Our Brainer stayed on the periphery and watched people so I gave him a +1 to his roll.

10+ Player chooses one from below.

7-9 Player chooses two.

6 or less MC chooses one. No hard moves are made on this roll.

* You did something you regret. What was it.

* You blacked out.

* You lost something last night. What did you lose?

* You woke up next to someone. The MC will tell you who.

* You had a fight with someone. The MC will tell you who.

The Hoarder (who’d been shot by another PC, and was too injured to actually be at the party, probably) got a solid hit and woke up with a drunk guard in his cot (still in armor mind). 

The Gun Lugger got a soft hit and introduced a guy she was interested in to the Skinner, and he became interested in the Skinner instead of her. She then started getting drunk and woke up with the Doc.

The Skinner avoided trouble like a boss. Boring, but her player was happy so that’s okay.

The Brainer got involved in a messy relationship by deep braining an unconscious girl and being discovered by her boyfriend.

I’d say it worked pretty well 3 of the 4 PCs got involved in a crazy standoff with a couple of hung-over NPCs, a gun went off as people where fighting over it, and words where said. The Brainer has started digging himself a hole.

So we just started a new AW game. And I’m playing the SMM book. We also have a Meastro’D, Brainer, Gunlugger and Skinner. The lack of Hx makes it kind of hard to get in on the fiction early, but since I went with the “stealth” option rather than combat we’re managing okay. Definitely not the easiest playbook to play, especially as I’m trying to play it straight (not for LOLs).

His name is Susan, I’m playing up the translator isn’t perfect, and half of the PCs think he’s cute (because Dolphin!) and assuming he’s a she because of the name. So I guess not TOTES straight, but as close as I can. I am doing my best to imagine a shared universe created during a drinking binge by David Brin  and +William Gibson.

Vincent Baker , thank you for this.

Game idea (unsure if it should be straight AW, or a Powerd By, or needs be a new hack):

Before the fall, there was a prophecy. A child, born on a certain day, would save the world. X children, born that day have been raised by the Order of the Word.

The PCs are those X children (where X=#ofPCs) and the prophesied day is less than 3 months away. Who is the chosen one? Is there anything the Order hasn’t told them? The Order has tried to raise them equally, but surely there is competition, and jealousy. Especially if one of them seems more likely to be the Chosen One.

So I ran a couple of sessions of ApocWorld… slightly flavored w/ zombie apocalypse. And it was super silly, so silly in fact I couldn’t really stay true to the fiction. Fortunately we had a big RL timeskip so I started over. Now, first session I was like “Alright guys, this is AW, so I want you to keep in mind that this isn’t a ‘Party game’ like D&D or whatever, and also, I’d like to try and be a bit more serious than last time.”

Now I think most of the group is trying to do this. They’re staying in character, they’re being awesome, they’re making hard decisions. However one of the players … not so much. He basically never speaks in character, he’s aggressively dubious of the rules and setting, he interrupts other people’s scenes. He’s also kind of a friend.

I kind of feel like the healthiest thing to do to make the game fun and engaging for everyone would be to just kick him out of the group … but that’s the easy way out. Or not, since again RL friend. I feel like I’m pretty good at taking criticism. Giving it, not so much. 

Any suggestions on how to broach the subject? Should I just bite the bullet and be like “Look man, you’re cool, but this game, it’s not you.” Tell him he’s harshing my ability to maintain immersion? I’m not sure any of the players are too off put by it, especially as aside from the two sessions of the previous AW none of them have played anything like this before. I just don’t know if I can run when half the time he’s implying the rules are dumb.

I saw somewhere that someone had posted a brief guide on how to fairly easily take a photo and turn it into the stylistic cover shots that are on all of the playbooks. However my Google-Fu has failed me. Anyone got that guide saved in their bookmarks and want to hook me up w/ a link?

Well, today’s experiment turned out well. I’d been wanting to write “Love Letters” to my PCs for a while now, but I totes wanted to do it before the first season was over. The season has been so super connected, I didn’t want to totally disjoint things. However at the end of the last session (actually for the entire session WHAT?!) our chosen was in his Darkest Self. And the final scene in the last session was our Infernal, using Elsewise Power to not die in a terrible car crash (of her own causing). 

Fortunately one of our players was away last week, so I had 2 whole weeks to ruminate on this, and here’s what I came up with. Plagiarism! Well sort of, maybe you’ve played The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, A Roleplaying Game in a New style (possibly one of the first Story RPGs!). If not, shame on you, but here’s how it works normally, you tell a story, and other people can offer you money to interrupt your story. You can incorporate their annoyance in your story and take their money, or match their bet and ignore it. 

Now I wanted to focus on each of the characters so I gave everybody a move on their “primary” stat in the traditional 10/7-9/6 format. Except instead of much in the way of particular game effect, I had a kind of “story seed” based on each character, and events that might be important to them. I gave each player a little intro, and then had them read all 3 outcomes before rolling. Then they had 5-10 minutes to tell a story. The catch was, while they were telling the story I promised (and mostly held to it) to interrupt occasionally. “I know it was a dream, but didn’t he want you to switch the labels, not just throw it in the trash”.

If they took my interruptions in stride, and and incorporated it into their stories, well, I gave ’em an XP. And of course my players are awesome and they all well earned that XP! Hell, I think a couple of those stories were probably worth two … but I don’t like to play favorites, so I won’t say who.

This ended up taking about an hour, and while it did require way more prep time than a PbtA game normally takes, it did give me a whole hour where I mostly just got to sit back, and occasionally mess with other people’s storytelling. So, not actually a “win” as far as being a lazy DM goes, but I feel like the prep time was well worth it, and the players seemed to like it.

The most worthwhile thing though (as MC), was giving up total narrative control. It’s easy to do when you’re the player, but so so hard when you’re the one running the show. None of the love letters turned out exactly how I expected, which is basically perfect!

Now my ramble is done. Hopefully someone will find this useful someday or something.

PS: Since two of the characters were in the hospital, I printed the love letters on Patient Record Sheets, and came out wearing a labcoat with a fake Doctor ID badge and the “patient records” on a clipboard. Hurray for the MC having an excuse to dress up for once!