Character Creation: The Ward (ashcan)

I feel like doing something easy today, and a PbtA game is about as easy as you can get, as far as character creation goes.

I admit, too, I have an ulterior motive here - I need someone to run this game at Gen Con this year for IGDN. We've got two sessions on the schedule (Thursday night and Saturday night), they're both full so the games will run, and I need GMs. If you can take one or both, please comment or email me. You run a game, IGDN covers your badge.

On we go!

The Game: The Ward
The Publisher: Magpie Games
Degree of Familiarity: Some. I got a chance to play it at Breakout 2017, and it was a lot of fun.
Books Required: Just the one.

 

The Ward is a modern medical drama RPG. Now, I know you're thinking "wait, what?" And yeah, for me this falls into the same category as Pasión de las Pasiónes; it's a million miles from what a lot of people think of as a "roleplaying game," but if you're talking about doing exactly that - playing a role - and finding the fun in the drama of the situation rather than the mechanical/tactical gratification (or the violence), well, this game is baller.

(Not to say there's anything wrong with tactical or combat-heavy games, mind, just that games like The Ward scratch a different itch.)

So, with that in mind, The Ward takes its inspiration from TV shows like ER, Gray's Anatomy, Chicago Hope, and, for me, House (though it's not in the list of inspirations, oddly). Anyway, I need to first pick a playbook. There are only four: Resident, Nurse, Intern, and Specialist (unlike a lot of PbtA games, duplicate playbooks are fine). I'm trying to remember what I played at Breakout. I'm pretty sure it was the Resident. OK, let's play the Nurse, then.

(I could wax poetic about being a man in a career field that's typically seen as being for women, since, y'know, I do that in my day job, too, but let's move on.)

OK, so I start off choosing tags. I can be Cynical, Old, or Optimistic. Decisions, decisions. I think I'll be Old (man, an old male nurse, that opens up some questions).

Next, I fill in demographics and descriptions. I should also find a name. My character's name is...well, assuming this game is set now, and assuming "old" means "70s," my nurse was born in the 40s (ugh, he's a Boomer). Let's say his name is Frank, he feels like a Frank. I fill out the demo card on the sheet; Frank has gray hair and blue eyes. He wears glasses because of course he does. He's divorced (he used to really despise his ex, but it's been long enough now that he just kinda doesn't think of her much), and his next of kin is his daughter Marie. Frank is hunched, slow, and stern, but he's strong (he works out and of course his job is physically demanding).

OK, so now stats and specialties. I get +1, -1, 0 and 0 for my stats. I'll put my +1 into Nerve, my -1 in Brains, and my 0s in Guts and Heart (but I'm gonna take a move that gives me an extra point of Guts, so it's actually +1). Now I take two specialties. I'll take Emergency Care and Dependable.

Now I get two moves. I know I'm taking seen it all, which gives me an extra point of Guts, and then I'll also take move aside (if I show contempt in the medical theater, I can ask extra questions and the person I'm contempt'ing can't ask me anything; basically it makes me crotchety).

Ooh, now I must decide my addiction. Said addiction doesn't literally have to be a drug. I'm gonna say Frank is addicted to "how it was." He's not saying things were better in the 60s when he first started working as a nurse, but you didn't have all these damn computers and the charting and the young doctors who didn't speak English...

Oh, now, this is weird. The blurb at the top of the sheet says my Rep is -1, but then below stats it says +1. Well, the book says +1, so I'ma go with that.

Everything else is connections, which I can't do without a group, so that's me done!

Movie #460: My Fellow Americans

My Fellow Americans is one of many 90s comedies playing off the success of Grumpy Old Men, and stars Jack Lemmon, James Garner, Dan Aykroyd, John Heard, Lauren Bacall, Wilford Brimley, Everett McGill, and Bradley Whitford.

Russell Kramer (Lemmon) and Matt Douglas (Garner) both served a single term as President (Republican and Democrat, respectively), and hate each other's guts. They find themselves mixed up in a conspiracy masterminded (they think) by Kramer's former veep, current President Haney (Aykroyd), but in fact masterminded by his veep, Matthews (Heard), who's pretending to be a Quayle-like idiot in public. The Matthews thing is a footnote, though; it's meant as a big reveal but the meet of the story is about Kramer and Douglas sneaking across the country with the NSA (headed by rogue agent Tanner, played with appropriate menace by McGill) following them.

Along the way they meet a few lower and working class Americans in North Carolina, West Virginia, and Ohio, and finally discover that shit, there are people out there who really do believe in the office of the President and in the American system. The movie ends with them running as an independent ticket.

So, I enjoy this movie largely because I'm a fan of both Lemmon and Garner, and there's enough clever interplay between them that you can avoid looking too hard at the premise (which falls apart almost immediately if you squint). Lauren Bacall is wasted as Kramer's wife, but the two of them have chemistry so they're fun in their brief scenes together. The supporting cast is pretty strong in general, although it's also very, very white, which is a shame.

But it's interesting watching this movie now. Like, the opening line in the movie talks about how bitter the relationship is between these two. And then four years later, when Douglas gets voted in (meaning the Democrats ran him against Kramer for the second time, after losing the first time, which rings false, but then again the first race between them was said to be extremely close), Kramer calls upon his supporters to respect and support the new president, despite any misgivings. That's supposed to be rancorous. Watching this movie in 2018, when we have a horrible vulgarian in the White House who talked about the size of his dick and bragged about sexual assault while campaigning, holy shit, I would love to have a president like Kramer, who's dignified and honest (Douglas is charming, but in one note about this movie that rings true he's described as not doing much during his presidency).

Anyway, the movie is funny but it stings a little these days. Douglas has a speech in the movie where he says that somewhere out there, there's a fool who still believes that elected politicians will do what they're elected to do, and if we lose that guy, man, it's over.

I think those fools are still out there, but they voted for Trump. Hey-ho. Anyway, this is more analysis than this movie deserves, so I'ma shut up.

My Grade: B
Rewatch value: Medium-high

Next up: My Name is Bruce

Character Creation: Against the Darkness

Back at it! This character will make me caught up with my one/week goal, and then I'm gonna try to get as far ahead as I can over break.

If you have suggestions or requests from my list, I would love to have them (but maybe comment on that post I just linked, because I go back to that a lot).

The Game: Against the Darkness
The Publisher: Tabletop Adventures
Degree of Familiarity: None, really
Books Required: Just the one.

 

So, Against the Darkness is one of many "there are monsters and demons and they kill people" kind of games (of which Chill is one, of course). The twist is that here, you play folks working for the Vatican as the Catholic Church fights said monsters. The folks in the Church who know about the war are dwindling because, like, demons keep eating them, so it's a dire fight against the forces of Satan.

The book reminds me a little of Vampire Hunter$, just inasmuch as it has a pretty simple premise and not a lot of padding (seriously, the book is only about 65 pages). That's not a bad thing, necessarily, and it's pretty clearly and concisely written, which I appreciate. There are a couple of things in the book that make me a little nervous (I'm always concerned with heavily religious RPGs, and there's a use of the phrase "political correctness" that made me side-eye a little), but I'd need to read more carefully to see if there's anything I really object to.

In any case, let's make a character!

There's a handy character creation summary in the back of the book, I appreciate the heck out of that. I start with Assign build points. I can do point-buy or I can roll randomly. Y'know, I think I'll roll, using my handy friends over at random.org.

Four Attributes (Corpus, Mentus, Spiritus, and Fidelis), which start at 1 and then I add a d6 to each. Scuse me while I "roll": 5, 4, 3, 3. Better than average (I'd have only gotten 10 points to split up if I'd done point-buy). I start with 1 in each Attribute, so I'll add them straight across, for Corpus 6, Mentus 5, and Spiritus and Fidelis 4.

Now I assign task resolution dice. In this system you roll a die, then add Attribute, Skill, and whatever else. Dice can be d4, d6, or d8, and they're attached to Attributes (so what are the implications of a high rating but a low die type?).

Well, as we know from Savage Worlds, a lower die type might not have as much potential, but you'll roll a 4 more often on a d4 than you will on a d8. Oh, also, I can only use Miracles in the Attribute that has my d8, so that's a pretty good way to decide where to put it.

Skipping ahead a little, there are Archetypes in this game. They don't mean much mechanically, but they're pretty cool as inspiration, and one of them is "Anointed Assassin." I like the idea of a kind of Black Staff (that's what it's called, right? From Dresden?) with special dispensation to kill for Christ. With that in mind, which Miracle(s) would lean toward that concept? Maybe Spiritus (which would give me Telekinesis). But I dunno, what's under Corpus? Oh, wait, under Spiritus you get a Miracle called Ghostliness, which lets me be all stealthy and intangible. Shit, yeah, there's my d8. I'll stick my d4 in Fidelis, and my other two get the d6s.

Now I assign Skill points; I get 30 and I can't go over 7 in any one Skill. I'll go ahead and assign 5 to Ghostliness right off the bat. I'll put 7 into Combat and 5 into Speed. I'll put 3 into Mechanics, 5 into Investigation, 2 into Translation, and 3 into Wealth.

Finally, I add personal information. This is pretty freeform. My character is Nico Dinah, observant, if not always devout, Catholic from the time he was very young. He entered the Army and did a couple of tours in the Middle East as Special Forces, but there were people higher up in the chain of command who were interested in his skills. Of course, not all of those people were people...

Nico did some things for years that he's not especially proud of, but then one day he was ordered to carry out a hit on an imam who (unbeknownst to him, obviously) was a recruit in this whole "war with Satan" thing. Nico got close enough to kill him, but then had a vision, and felt the presence of God in his life. He went AWOL and works for the good guys now...even if the good guys want more or less the same thing from him that the bad guys did.

Nico is in his 30s. He's tall and muscular, with olive skin (father was Persian), brown eyes, and black hair. He has a cross tattooed on his right hand.

Movie #459: My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady is, of course, the film version of the famed stage musical, and stars Audrey Hepburn (singing by Marni Nixon), Rex Harrington, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Jeremy Brett, Mona Washbourne, and Gladys Cooper.

You probably know the story, but: Professor Higgins (Harrington) makes a bet with colleague Pickering (Hyde-White) that he can pass a Cockney flower seller Eliza (Hepburn) off as nobility at an Embassy ball by teaching her "proper" English. He manages that, but he treats Eliza like dirt because he's a classist dickbag, but then after she quite rightly storms out, he realizes that he's grown fond of her. She comes back, but their relationship afterward is left uncertain.

(I'm leaving out a lot here, including the relationship between Eliza and her father (Holloway), the love interest Freddy (Brett), and Higgins' mother (Cooper), because almost none of that is relevant to the main plot.)

This movie is really long, but I think the last time I watched it was pre-SLP training, and it's interesting now that I have more of a background in phonetics and dialect. To wit: Higgins is a prescriptivist, which bugs the shit out of me (I mean, product of the times, sure, but what I find infuriating is that he's able to recognize the philosophical genius of Eliza's father because of his lack of eduction, but places so much emphasis on "proper" speech, but recognizes that it's all that keeps Eliza from "nobility"). I also had not realized how much the movie queer-codes Higgins, holy shit.

There are a host of really famous songs from this musical - "Get me to the Church on Time," "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" just for starters. I think that about a quarter of the show is unnecessary and I'm amazed they kept everything in for the film - it's three hours long and contains an intermission, but it also won eight Oscars including Best Picture, so apparently audiences didn't mind that.

The cast is fantastic; I love Harrington as Higgins, but Hyde-White is also low-key and subtle and funny, and of course Holloway gets some good laughs. Hepburn is lovely as Eliza, and I also really enjoyed Cooper as a voice of reason in this whole mess. Could have taken or left Brett as Freddy; frankly I think that plot point didn't survive the transition from Pygmalion very well.

My Grade: A-
Rewatch value: Low (it's so damn long)

Next up: My Fellow Americans

Night's Black Agents: New Op, New Agents

Saturday we played Night's Black Agents. Two days later the footage was found.

Last time, of course, we lost two agents and the survivors holed up in Sweden with a conspiracy theorist/ex analyst for Swedish intelligence. This time, the agents call in Firinci, asset handler and fixer, to try and help them out. They immediately run up against a kind of hitch: they're being pursued by a conspiracy spanning multiple countries and involving vampires, and Firinci doesn't have any reason to believe any of that.

What he does believe, however, is that these yo-yos will pay him, so he meets with them to discuss their needs. The agents need lab space and privacy, and (thanks to a Preparedness roll) they need a hard drive stored in Florence to be recovered and shipped to them. Said drive has their data up until they went to Belgrade the second time, and it wasn't accessible by Sedillo or Koltay, so it should be undisturbed.

Firinci makes some arrangements with a friend of his and gets some space at Stockholm University for the agents to use, and gets someone to ship the drive. He turns it over and the package also contains a thumb drive, which makes the agents understandably nervous. They check it out under controlled conditions (to make sure it's not gonna summon vampires), but it's a video recording from Gambone. He tells them that also included here are account numbers for offshore accounts, and he wants half the money to go to a girl named Maria Romencio, and half to be used to bring these fuckers down.

("They know her name," Ava said back in London.)

The agents get to work. MacAteer starts trying to synthesize the anti-vampire poison, but he can't actually do it without a sample from a "master" - the data he's working with is incomplete, and Sedillo isn't around anymore to help. The other agents start looking through media reports, and learn that Sedillo was found dead in London shortly before they were captured - self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Parker wonders if it was "suicide," but then realizes that Sedillo would have shot herself rather than being taken by the conspiracy. Koltay, it seems, either lacked that courage or didn't get the chance, since he's now a "cold" vampire.

They start looking for conspiracy-related stuff, and boy, they find it. Human and drug traffic out of Budapest has picked up, and it looks like Hajnal's organization is trying to restart the operations that the agents (well, Hanover and the original team) closed down in Paris. The IFEA is back in business and planning a big conference in Minsk in six months, and the head of the IFEA is now...Ioan Koltay, living in Budapest. Janos Sas, the head doctor at Budapest prison, was off the grid for a while but he's back now. And Davor Klobucar, the paymaster who started this whole damn thing, has disappeared.

The agents have Firinci look into that last one a bit (he's basically in the same business and he can look into it without as much risk). Firinci realizes that Klobucar "disappeared" like someone going dark, not "disappeared" like "shot and left in the river". He also learns that Hajnal's organization was looking for a money launderer, and that's something Klobucar could do - but that would be a promotion, so why would Klobucar run? The agents can't learn anything else from Sweden, so they decide to head to Sarajevo to look into where Klobucar might have gone. Firinci and Carlsson are taking point once there, because the conspiracy doesn't know them (and the conspiracy thinks the others are dead and that's an advantage they're not willing to squander).

So now we know the next op: Find Klobucar and see why he's running.

Character Creation: Undiscovered

Ah, here I am on summer break. Sadly I do have to work the summer sessions, but they don't start until later in June, so I am, for now, free of work-like obligation. I celebrated this first day of summer break by fucking up my back, so I am now sitting at my table with a heating pad braced between me and the chair.

Ain't no party like a gettin' old party 'cause a gettin' old party stops when you die.

Anyway, I'm running Night's Black Agents later, but I have a bit of time now.

The Game: Undiscovered: The Quest for Adventure
The Publisher: Eilfin Publishing
Degree of Familiarity: More than I'd like with fantasy heartbreakers, none with this particular one
Books Required: Just the one.

There are really a lot of games like this, games that assume you've only played D&D, but you have played D&D, and set themselves up to compare to D&D. I'll show you what I mean.

See that? It's a skill-based game, not a class based. That sets it apart from other games. Well...no. It sets it apart from class-based games, which really means, in this context, "Look, we're not D&D." But like, what if I told you that even in (hang on) 2001 when this game came out, there were plenty of games on the market that didn't "base" characters on their capabilities, but rather on their role in the story? Yeah, mind blown. And besides, it's still level-based, which is much bigger indicator (IMO) of how the game works than class vs. skill.

Anydangway. This game takes place in Arkhas, but all I know about it before we get into system stuff is that "monsters lurk there." Um, OK. There's a chapter on the history of Arkhas at the very end of the book, but it starts out in prehistory, I think. I can't imagine there's a lot of compelling setting info; if the setting was interesting they'd lead with it. Presumably this is just another D&D clone (though, of course, it's "skill-based" rather than "class-based").

OK, well, the first thing I do is choose race. One thing I will give this game, the races are kind of interesting. Sure, there are humans (who aren't described as "diverse" or "adaptable" in the initial blurb! Huzzah!) and elves and dwarves, but the dwarves all have a random earth-based superpower and some of the elves are "star elves." That's pretty exciting.

I think, though, that I want to be a duster. Dusters are these weird reptile-people that live in the desert and can turn into a big ol' snake and (depending on subspecies) a drake or an amphiptere (like a winged serpent). That sounds fun, actually, so I'll do that, making me a plains duster.

Wow, there's a lot of shit here. I can turn into a brown grass snake or an amphiptere (see below), I can fly in amphiptere form, though not for very long, I can camouflage myself with a turn of concentration, I can see in the dark, and my eyes are this cool gold color.

SCREEEEK

So that's all kinda cool. Moving on, I see that races have minimum and maximum values, and that Luck tends to be high for dusters, but Charm is low, so we tend to get charged more for goods and services. That's...weird.

Oh, wait, lemme do height and weight real quick. These folks are pretty short; my character is 4'8". In snake form he's...good lord, height + 2d4 inches? At minimum he's 58" long, which is a pretty big snake. Well, I'll say he's 60", or 5'. That's large. I'm my usual "humanoid" size in amphiptere form, which means I'm pretty small as dragon-things go. Seriously, picture that thing in the illustration but it's not even 5 feet nose to tail. SCREEEK. Aw. So cute.

Anywho. The book tells me I have to roll for age and money randomly, so sure, lemme dice out my dice. My age is 25 +2d10. I roll 10, so I'm 35. Old age is 250 + d100; not sure why I'd need that, but sure. Oof, 8. I guess I'm old at 258? I get 6d6 gold pieces. 17. Yeah, that's my usual dice luck.

OK, so on to Attributes, I guess. Two methods for distributing scores - I can spend 400 points or I can roll 5d10 for each of them. I think, lord help me, I'll do the point distribution thing today rather than trusting luck.

There are 8 Attributes (Strength, Endurance, Intelligence, Spirit, Agility, Dexterity, Charm, and Luck). If I were to split my 400 points evenly I'd get a 50 in each of them, but the mins and maxes probably play into this. Oh, wait, that would be fine, because the mins are down around 20 at the highest and the maxes are 60 at the lowest. But let's say I don't want to do that.

See, one thing about class-less systems that I don't like - they don't give you a sense of how to build characters in a setting with no...real setting. Well, let's assume my little duster guy is somewhat roguish and might want to steal some shit (seems about right for lucky-but-not-charming guy that turn into a snake). I figure that means I want high AGL and DEX, but the rest of it isn't as important.

Let's arrange Attributes this way:

STR 40
END 40
INT 55
SPR 45
AGL 70
DEX 70
CHM 30
LCK 50

That's 400. Now, I get to roll a d10 for each one add a modifier (can be a bonus or a subtraction). OK, then. This ends up with...

STR 41
END 38
INT 56
SPR 42
AGL 74
DEX 75
CHM 27
LCK 45

Well, definitely played to my strengths, there. I'm not real lucky as dusters go, though. I copy my scores onto the sheet and note all the little derived traits (including Life Points, which is half my END plus a d8, which sucks). My Luck score isn't high enough that I get random bonuses, but it's also not low enough that I get random penalties, either, so that's nice.

Some other character bits: I decide I'm left-handed (why not, I'm a snake, seems kinda ssssssinisssster), I become middle-aged at 140, which, like, would never happen in a real game so why bother, I'll take an alignment of -1. That's kinda on the "evil" side, but like, I'm a thief, so I figure I'd err more towards selfish.

Charm ratings guide your personality, with higher ratings leaning more friendly and gregarious and lower ratings leaning more dour. I...have some issues with this, not least of which "that's not how any of this works," but I do think it's nice to have this rating translate to RPing in some way. Anyway my Charm rating is pretty low, so I'll say my duster is sullen and quiet and...not grouchy, but wary. I think he gets a lot more outgoing in amphiptere form.

I speak Duster, and if I have skill points to cover it, I should learn Common. Grumble grumble stupid language systems in RPGs.

OK, now I get 100 points for Skills. Skills are divided into three groups. Group A (Power Skills) include combat skills but also spells and psionics; I can spend a maximum of 80 points here. Group B (Percentile Skills) are more general Skills, while group C (Enhancers) look more like proficiencies from D&D, I guess? I gotta dig into this a little more.

All right. There are charts, and they're actually pretty easy to follow. Thank goodness for that. I'll just list the shit I want.

Circle Knife (Small weapon) 3: 7 points
Dagger (Throwing Weapon) 3: 7 points
Blind-siding 1: 4 points
Buckler Fighting 2: 3 points
Parrying 2: 4 points
Rolling 2: 2 points
Common 5: 5 points
Balance 3: 3 points
Concealing 4: 4 points
Quick Hands 3: 6 points
Picking Locks 3: 6 points
Shadow Walking 3: 4 points
Hiding 3: 4 points
Stealth 4: 10 points
Scaling Walls 3: 6 points
Information Gathering 4: 4 points
Direction Knowledge 4: 4 points
Observation 4: 4 points
Weapons Training 3 points
Dodging 3 points
Poison 1: 7 points

OK, and normally I would figure out scores for all these things, but like...I don't wanna. I also don't want to shop. I know I want a circle knife and a couple of throwing daggers, a buckler and some loose-fitting robes and a pack (I have to get nekkid to take on snake form, so I need clothes that I can shuck easily).

I need a name. No idea about how the duster language works (see, this is the kind of thing I'd include in a fantasy game). Without delving too deep into phonology, I'll name him Sayth (that last sound is voiced; the /th/ is the sound from "the" not "breath").

Sayth is smart, but not smart for a duster. He's pretty gifted at stealing shit, though, and he's developing his ability to gather info and choose targets. He hooked up with another duster (a desert duster) for a while who taught him poisons, but he hasn't made a lot of study of it because he thinks he'd rather be a thief than an assassin. Of course, you go where the money is, right?

When Sayth takes his amphiptere form, he's bright and beautiful and loud and cheerful, and flies and swoops and glides. In duster and snake form, he's quiet and paranoid and grouchy. He's not sure what makes the difference and he isn't sure how to do that introspection.

And I think that does it, because I don't feel like doing the boring bits.

Game Prep: Promethean, Blades, maybe NBA?

I am now done with school for the year and I can focus on what's really important: To wit, gaming.

As always, players stay out, all others pay cash, or something.