lame mage productions

“I start a campaign… a totally _fascist_ campaign.”
–brand new gamer, solving the problems of Mars

I love Mars Colony. It’s hands-down the best game I picked up at GenCon 2009. That’s not even considering that it’s technically only an ash can release, not the final version, which is coming out at GenCon this year.

The trick is that it’s not a game you would normally whip out and get your group to try, because it is for exactly two players, an entirely interesting and largely unexplored gaming niche (ask Ping). But I was determined to get more people to give it a try, and some of my fellow gamers were a) curious and b) tired of hearing me rant what a great game it was, so we bit the bullet and got a bunch of folks together — six as it turns out, but any even number works. I explained the rules and then we split into pairs and played.

Three simultaneous Mars Colony games, all in the same room at the same time.

The rules of Mars Colony, as written, are tremendously clear. Crystal clear. But this was me walking everyone through it verbally, explaining the concept and all the rules from scratch. The system isn’t complicated, but there are concrete mechanics that push the drama and must be understood for the game to work. Was I nervous? Was I braced for confusion and big disappointment? Oh yeah.

Keep in mind, one of our players had never gamed at all. One had played traditional games but no story games. Everyone else had a mix of game experience.

When you’re introducing people to a new game, you are usually in the game, so you can gauge how things are going, provide helpful hints if things are going off the rails, etc. In this case, not so much. I’m playing in my own game, but I’ve got one ear cocked to hear if the other players sound miserable, confused, or just plain bored.

So given all that, what was the verdict? The red planet is made of win, and the gamers in that room rocked. When you overhear brand new players launching fascist regimes an hour into their first roleplaying game ever… well that’s a success in my book.

After everyone hit their last progress scenes and were ready for the endgame, Susan (our fabulous hostess) had the bright idea of doing the epilogue sequences one group at a time, so the whole room could hear how Kelly Perkins had fared in her efforts to save the colony. We did quick summaries of what the different Kelly’s were like, what the issues confronting the colony were, and the roller coaster ride that ensued. There were some glorious victories and some bitter defeats. Some games had both.

Right when we were first setting up, one of the new players asked something along the lines of “could you really play this game more than once,” meaning, once you’d played out saving (or failing to save) the colony, would it be interesting to do it again? Just going by how different every game I’ve played has been so far, and by how extremely different the three games we had in that room were, I’d say the answer is an unreserved yes.

In addition to just being, y’know, super-fun, it was also a great test run of my plan to have a big group of people play parallel games of Mars Colony at Go Play NW. Lessons learned, refinements brewing.

* yeah, literally blew up, like with bombs. Nice one, Caroline.

With San Holo in mind, I’ve decided to offer The Chargen Circle in the last gaming slot of Go Play NW 2010.

The plan is to grab a bunch of random chargen systems, random being the salient part, and roll up characters. I’m thinking of systems like Classic Traveller, V&V, Reign, FASA Star Trek. I suspect people will make characters together which is more fun IMHO as one writes while the other researches and together you invent a story for the results, but whatever works.

Besides for the fun, I’m also doing this because I find myself pretty wiped out by Sunday night from three days straight of the most intense gaming. A certain amount of energy goes into running the show as an organizer, but I play nearly every slot from morning until night and half the time facilitate which takes even more energy. The Chargen Circle seemed like the perfect way to kick back, drink in hand, and close out the weekend before clean-up.

I know others will play ferociously until the end. I salute them from the bottom of my dice, and on Sunday I shall again while rolling apron colors for my Maids.

Great moments in Mouse Guard. The patrol is welcomed to Darkwater after an arduous journey. Tired mice are tired, and hungry mice are hungry.

Hearty meals are arranged by the happy hosts.

player: mimes picking up food with his paws and nibbling on it
city-mouse: “We have forks.”
player: “I have a high Nature.”

This has been a great moment in Mouse Guard.

Playing Shock with (nearly) total strangers. We’re doing it old-school, so we secretly pick issues and then brainstorm a Shock that fits, instead of the wussy Shock-first approach. We choose overpopulation, cultural extinction and plagiarism, and decide on a dystopian future where ideological groups struggle for dominance in society.

The Shock we come up with is a technique to implant value systems (culture, beliefs, ideology) in people. It’s extremely widespread, so most people in society have been indoctrinated with the value implant of their faction, known as a Root. People who don’t have one, or whose Root has started to fray are derisively called Weeds.

I’m loving it already, but then we add one more juicy bit: you can’t just make up the value templates, you have to copy them from people who have those beliefs (like we said, plagiarism). And when you do copy it, you brain damage the source. So if you want to make a thriving tribe of Communists, you first have to lobotomize Chairman Mao. Way to honor your leaders.

So part way along, one of the nicer characters is trying to unite all the warring factions (that’s her story goal: end the divide and unite all the value systems), and she’s trying to bond with her estranged brother who now leads one of the gangs with a different Root than hers. He lets his guard down after a tender moment and, wham!, she backstabs him with a new implant, wiping his value system and overwriting it with her own.

The rest of us are like, wow, you’d brainwash your own brother, that’s cold, and the player looks up calmly and says “Now he’s my real brother.” Snap!

many more details in the excellent Roots & Weeds game summary Susan wrote up

Panning for gold in the used bin at Gary’s Games, we found a tattered copy of Traveller Book 1 1977 for $2. I had always been curious about “classic” Traveller, especially since I had heard characters can die during creation. So, we whipped up a bunch characters and here are the final results: 5 of our 9 characters survived the service and mustered out to PC-dom leaving the other 4 dead in character creation. Of the 5 survivors, 4 were one tour wonders, not making their re-enlistment roll.

Of the dead, the most tragic was San Holo, the space rogue who wanted nothing more from life than to have his own ship. Enlisting in the Scouts as a pilot, he turned into a serious renaissance man (Jack of all Trades-4). After his 4th tour, he started to feel the effects of old age, but decided to re-enlist just one more time. Oh, San Holo, 5th time’s not the charm. You should have listened to your creaking bones and quit while you were ahead and gotten your ship. DEAD.

The most successful character was JTK, Captain Janelle T. Kinser, Queen of Space. Gifted and an ambitious social and professional climber who survived five tours in the Navy and mustered out with some serious skillz (Int-B, Edu-F, Soc-F). A highly trained physician (Medical-4) but with some serious military experience to boot, she retired with a nice little pension to rule the universe.

Basically, it felt like we were creating real characters, not ones that just popped straight out of Zeus’ head fully-formed and god-like.

We just launched the new Go Play NW web site, and it does look pretty nice if I do say so myself.

Go Play NW is about as dense as fun gets. Last year I played Microscope with a ton of people (which was awesome) and got to try my first jeepform game.

The only downside is that it only happens once a year (except in 2008, when we were so excited we got together for a reunion con a few weeks later). So, y’know, one more reason why it would be unwise to miss it.

We’re rolling up characters in Flashing Blades (yep, from 1984). It’s a rapiers & muskateers system, but instead of historic France we’re playing in a supressed tech sci fi setting that we created in one of our Microscope games (the “stellar empires” history), a baroque and decadent period when the alien “gas whales” are the living gods of the Imperial church.

Ping rolls her stats and decides to play a noblewoman.

P: Do I get to be Queen?
Me: Uh, no. Starting social rank for a noble is only 8. The Queen is a 20.
P: Can’t I start higher?
Me: Well, theoretically you could start as high as Duchess. You’d have to take the Title advantage, and you’d have to roll really well.
P: [grabs a d20, starts shaking it vigorously]
Me: But just to be clear, you’ll probably get a lower rank.
P: [still shaking d20 in balled fist]
Me: You only start as a Duchess on a natural 20.
P: [first signs of cramping in her shoulder]
Me: …
P: [face scrunched up in pain, arm twitching frantically]
Me: …uh, just so you know.
P: [uncurls her claw and chucks the die]

Bam, 20. Duchess.

I got so many games at GenCon that I’m resorting to an inbox/outbox system to make sure I read them all and don’t lose track of any in the shuffle.

I’ve barely made a dent in the pile, but the one I’m most interested in so far is Sign in Stranger by Emily Care Boss. I haven’t even gotten to read it yet because some people yanked it out of my hands as soon as I bought it, but the demo was really fun. To create the alien world you take turns answering set questions like “what makes the aliens distrubing to humans” but you don’t show your answers to the other players and see how they interact until the end. The results are cool and surprising. Our aliens had the attractive trait “alluring eyes” but the disturbing trait “low social boundaries”, leading to a lot of jokes about leaning in way to close and muttering “heywatchadoing?” We’re already scheduling a regular group to play it.

The ashcan of Mars Colony, a two-player game by Tim Koppang also looks quite interesting. When I first starting reading it I thought “hmm, okay, fine, work to save the colony, sure I get it” and then I hit page 23, Deception, and had my “A ha!” moment (it’s only 32 pages, so this is pretty far in). Maybe you enact effective policies, or maybe you just lie about all the good things your policies are doing and hope no one figures it out. Now I’m jazzed to try it. Advice to game designers everywhere: don’t bury the lead!

Lots more demos at the Forge booth, and I also got to talk to Chris Engle, maker of Engle Matrix Games. I’ve walked by his booth in years past back when I had no idea about the concept of Matrix games. Now I’ve got one in my hands to try out.

There was also substantial looting of the dealer booths for old school games. Another score, although technically just before GenCon, was the Prince Valiant Storytelling Game. Yeah, that’s right, from 1989. Don’t get me started about all the games I ignored because they were based on licensed media (like Star Wars d6) but which turned out to be ground-breaking…