Whirly Waffles

Player Recruitment

2009-06-30T10:08:00.004+01:00

People move, get ill or encounter hardships, Schedules change, babies are born, Life takes its toll and inevitably at some point your gaming group find itself looking for new blood.

This leads to the tricky situation of recruiting. Player recruitment is the responsibility of every member of the group, but as GM of the group I'm going to talk about me own concerns.

Finding new players for an existing group is not just difficult, it's dangerous. Your existing group is a fine balance of personalities, who for one reason or another get on with each other. They have differing needs, a particular view of roleplaying, their own in-jokes, and there will be social contracts in place that you're not even aware of. Adding the wrong player to this group can produce friction, upset friendships and potentially break the group up. Its therefore something which should be undertaken with care.

Finding Players

There are a number of useful online references for finding players. NearbyGamers is one of the best. Frappr Maps is also good. I'll start by contacting everyone listed on both those sites in the local area. In addition living in the United Kingdom I have the advantage of UK Roleplayers - a great resource, and there is a local forum for games in my city (I set it up myself so that the various gaming groups in the area could stay in touch with each other).

Most roleplayers at some point pass through their local gaming shops, many of them also buy comics. It’s worth checking out local gaming shops and comic shops, seeing if they have notice boards, and if they do advertising on them.

Friends who don't game may be interested in giving gaming a try. I have several work colleagues who play online games like World of Warcraft. Some of them have expressed an interest in roleplaying (normally followed by an excuse that they haven't got time for a regular weekly commitment unfortunately). Talk about gaming. If you don't talk about gaming you'll never find out if there are other gamers you deal with on a daily basis. You could see gamers every day and never realise.

The most important thing is to be active. Roleplayers won’t just come to you in your time of need. Unless you advertise your need for players, and talk about your gaming you wont find people. Each day we deal with dozens, perhaps hundreds of people. Each of those people is a either a hidden gamer or has the potential to be a gamer.

Assessing Players

Okay. Lets assume I've found a potential player. How do I know if I should let this stranger join my game? Will they be a good fit? Can I rely on them? I’m going to be picky. This is someone I'm going to hopefully be playing with for some time.

To begin with I need to know a little about them. Depending on the method by which I made contact with them I might phone or email him (or her). I'll tell them a little about my group, what we play, when we play and who we are (in general terms - nothing which will allow him to identify individual players). Then I'll find out what sort of group they are looking for, and ask whether this meets their expectations.

The next step is meeting them in person. I'm a little nervous about this stage. I'm not exaggerating when I say a gamer followed me and a friend home on foot from a comic shop (he followed us over 4 miles) because he overheard us talking about roleplaying. Thankfully he turned out to be harmless and friendly if a little obsessive. We told him about a local gaming club, he joined a game, and later dropped out when he discovered girls. You'll be pleased to know he grew up to be a really great guy, and later rediscovered roleplaying. The experience has taught me to be weary though. The next person to follow me home may be less 'harmless'. So - 'meet them'. I'm going to suggest that when you meet a new player for the first time it should be in a public place, somewhere quiet enough to talk and somewhere comfortable. Coffee shops are a good choice, but I favour a local bar thats got really comfortable couches and serves great coffee. A poor choice would be the local gaming sh

So what do I ask them? Well initially anything except roleplaying. If they are right for the group you'll be able to happily chat with them about life outside of gaming. I don't know about other groups, but my group meet for barbeques, to go to the cinema together, chat before and after games (often during if I cant keep them on track) and are happy to do favours for each other. At this point I'm not recruiting a gamer - I'm recruiting a potential member in a circle of friends.

Working players into the group

The first game with the group is potentially difficult. If you have a long running campaign the built up backstory can be potentially overwhelming for a new player. They'll be nervous and the other players won’t really get to see them at their best. There are various ways you might get around this, but I would suggest your first game with the new player either be a board game with roleplaying elements, or a short one-off convention length game. That way the new player is not at a disadvantage. You can work him into your campaign later - this is his chance to meet the group and you don’t want to detract from it. Like the first meeting I would suggest doing this in a neutral location. If this meeting goes well then you can start trading details and inviting them to real gaming sessions.

Summary

These are all thoughts based on my previous experience of recruiting players. My gaming group is now once again short of players and I'm back at the start of the recruitment process. I normally view this as a three stage process: Find the gamer, assess the gamer and introduce the gamer to the group. It’s an active process, and it involves talking to potential gamers and non-gamers about gaming. It’s also something I do with care since the wrong gamer will not work with my group and I've had experience with strange gamers before. I'll keep you updated on how recruitment goes this time.

Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies flawed?

2009-06-27T01:16:00.006+01:00

S7SHardcoverCover220
Originally uploaded by Whirlmeister

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies (henceforth refered to as S7S) is flawed. Flawed, but easily fixible. In fact the fix is so minor I'm surprised no one commented in playtesting.

S7S uses task resolution. Most tasks are resolved as challenges (any non-trivial task that a character is confronted with, where therewould be only mild consequences for failure) although significant high-drama, high-threat task are resolved as Duels. I'm going to discus the problem looking at challenges although the problem is just as true for duels. Its just easier to only have to discus one set of mechanics.

Challenges are resolved as a single roll. The player announces what they are doing. In one of the examples a player claims he is 'trying to charm a maid into letting him into the Countess Erzay’s townhouse'. The GM sets a difficulty, the player rolls, and succeed or fail the player narrates the outcome.

In most of the examples in the book the players Intent is clear, but it isn't always. In another example the player states that his character will 'attack the guards.' We have no idea if his intent is to kill them, to knock them unconscious, to distract them and keep them from noticing something else, or even to enrage them so they will throw him in jail. The GM at this point sets the difficulty and the player rolls.

There are two issues here. Firstly without knowing the players intent it is impossible to set a sensible difficulty on the task, and secondly without knowing what the intent was its impossible to know if the players 'failure' narration actually has the player failing to meet his intent.

The simple fix for this issue is to borrow a little from Luke Crane's three roleplaying games. Before any dice are rolled the GM and player both need to have agreed the task, the intent and the consequences of failure (the stakes). The task is the physical act which is to be performed, the intent is the result the character would like to see, the stakes are the results if failure isn't met.

So, for example a player might state, "I'll silence the guard" (an announcement of intent), to which the GM might respond "How?". The player will then probably give announce details of the task, "I'll sneak up behind them and hit them with my sap." We now have enough information for the GM to set stakes and difficulties. The GM might for example set a difficulty of Expert [11], and state that the stakes are that enough noise will be made that the alarm will be sounded". Now at last the player can roll them bones, happy that whatever the outcome he'll be in a position to narrate what happens.

Having talked about how S7S is flawed I feel its only fair to say something about how it's awesome. S7S has an amazing setting perfect for a Swashbuckling game. Not only is the setting action packed, but its memorable, interesting and fun, filled with plot hooks and easy to get to grips with. S7S also has the best roleplaying ship to ship combat rules I have ever seen. In addition the S7S style dice mechanism is stunningly good in play producing some of the most fun I've had in a long time. It encourages players to reward each other for clever, stylish, fun or just plain awesome play. Suddenly everyone is encouraging everyone else and having a brilliant time as a result. If you have any issues with negativity at the table, this game will dispel it. At the moment I'm rating S7S as my game of the year (although there are still six month to go so something may beat it - but thats going to have to be a truely stunning game).

Savage Tides No More?

2009-06-24T18:30:00.005+01:00

In about 2 hours I am going to really upset my players.

For the last 9 months we've been playing through the Savage Tides adventure path using Iron Heroes rules. About 3 months into it I began to question whether I could continue. I broached the possibility of continuing the campaign using a system which was tailored to telling the sort of story we were telling (i.e. something which wasn't so combat centric). The players were less than enthusiastic about this and I was forced to drop the idea (although in the process I did spend somewhere around 30 hours producing my Spirit of the Iron Heroes ruleset).

Since that day I have become more and more disillusioned with the game we are playing. The problems are down to both the system and the scenario and I will deal with both in turn:

The system is prep-heavy. Not just mildly prep-heavy but enormously prep-heavy. Even though I've got a prewritten adventure I have to look each and every monster up, work out what all their abilities do, and this takes far more work than it should. I can stat a minion fight in SotC in about 20 seconds. Stating a fight with a ship full of pirates and two named NPCs for last session took the better part of 90 minutes.
The character sheets are becoming increasingly complex, with more and more powers, point pools and strange rule sets which I need to understand, whilst managing to have nothing of any importance to the narrative anywhere on them.
Combats are getting longer and longer as the game goes on. Player damage and monster damage are not scaling in line with each other, meaning that combats are now taking an inordinate amount of time. Meanwhile social conflict by the rules is taking seconds. This means the two non-combat characters are getting seconds of limelight compared to the hours the combat characters are getting.
The adventure path is an implausible sequence of dungeon crawls - and I'm having to make extensive re-writes in order to produce a game with a sensible balance of delving and politicking. In fact I am spending much more time trying to re-write the adventure so that the various bits meet up than I would have to spend if I wrote entirely new material
The level of railroading in the original adventure path is ridiculous. As an example one of the adventures ends with a storm and a shipwreck. The adventure makes it clear that this will happen, and the next adventure is dependent on the players having just survived a wreck and having to make their way across the island. One of my players is a mage specialising in weather, water and air magic, with the ability to predict and control the weather. Another is specialised in repair magic. There is no way they would have encountered the storm by surprise, if they had they could have calmed it, and even if they had been shipwrecked they could have repaired the ship far quicker than they could have walked across a 400 mile wide island covered in jungle.

To be honest I cannot understand why the players are happy with it. One of the characters is a political demagogue, another a confidence trickster, and neither of them is actually getting to do almost anything. I'm also disappointed that dispite several conversations with them they haven't taken the hint that I am not happy with it.

Anyway, In 2 hours I'm going to give them two simple choice: We will make our way to the end of the current adventure which we will consider the end of the season. We will then take a break from it.

The first choice: Do we either give the game up for good, or will they allow me to give the remainder of the adventure path an extensive re-write. In fact this rewrite will probably consist of working out who all the key players are and what their motivations are, and what's actually going on - i.e. putting me in a position where I can plan each session based on the players actions and not some pre-written script.

As for the second choice: If we rejoin the action do they want to do so using FATE or Burning Wheel.

I feel bad about this. I know from talking to them that they are enjoying the game - a lot, but I feel that is largely due to the sheer amount of work I've had to put in to work around the issues with the system and the to fix the adventure. The simple fact is I am not enjoying it, and haven't really been enjoying it for about half a year now. Its become a chore and I' have better things to be doing with my time.

I wonder how they'll feel about Shab-al-Hiri Roach next week.

Back after a long hiatus

2009-06-24T18:27:00.002+01:00

Its been a long time since I last felt a need to post anything. I will fill you in on all the things which have happened since my last post soon (I promise) but first I need to get something off my chest so I'm afraid my next post may come across as something of a rant.

GFFE Phase 1 Results Now In

2008-04-11T08:49:00.009+01:00

The Phase one results are now in. The full results can be seen here:

Full Results Genre

Full Results Aspects

The winning genre was:

E.E. "Doc" Smith style Space Opera, suggested by Ben Chapman.

The winning aspects were:

What tangled webs we weave, suggested by bachelornewtling
The Great Library, suggested by bachelornewtling
Action yields its own rewards, suggested by Whirly (me)

It was a close run contest - a single vote could have changed either poll.

I will try and get details about the next phases up as soon as possible. In it we need to come up with the three main protagonist groups this settings. As an example in the new Star Wars Trilogy the results would have been something like 'The Republic', "The Seperatists" and "The Sith". I need to work out the groups that make things happen. In the Dresden Files you could argue that the groups could be "The White Council", "The Faye Courts" and "The Black Council" (although this is very open to interpretation - Jim hasn't really let us in on who the true powers are yet).

Anyway, for these powerful groups I'm going to try to kick off a few discussions, because whatever three we pick are going to have to gel together - so the suggestions and poll method wont work.

Then in phase 3 we need to aspect the groups. Each group will get five aspects, but two of these aspects will be on their view of the other groups. So for example if the groups were Tau'ri, Jaffa, and Goa'uld, then the last two Jaffar aspects might be 'Distrustful of Tau'ri' and 'Hateful dependence on Goa'uld'.

Anyway I'll get more details up as soon as I can (but I need to do some actual work now - real life getting in the way)

Great Experiment Phase 1 enters last 24 hours

2008-04-10T11:01:00.005+01:00

As we enter the final 24 hours of the polls I though it might be worth saying a few words about the leading genres. At the moment its looking like a two horse race. The leading four places are:

E.E. "Doc" Smith style Space Opera - 13 votes (39%)
Victorian Undersea Adventure - 13 votes (39%)
Musketeer Swashbuckling - 10 votes (30%)
Napoleonic-era fantasy - 10 votes (30%)

And interestingly each of these brings to mind a single literary figure (E.E. 'Doc' Smith, Jules Vernes, Alexandre Dumas, and Susanna Clarke). I can't help wondering if its this easily graspable narrative that makes these genre popular, whilst other genre that don't immediately suggest a genre lag behind.

E.E. "Doc" Smith style Space Opera immediately suggests Smith's two seminal series the Lensman series and the Skylark series. I read the lensman series several times a long time ago. I've read parts of the Skylark series but not the whole series. Smith had a doctorate in chemistry and attempted to make the 'science' in his books accurate. Unfortunately he didn't read beyond his field and appeared to have a limited knowledge of physics (and definitely never considered the impact of general relativity on his science). His works are touched however with an impressive knowledge of early twentieth century munitions and explosive, a good understanding of traditional tactics and an ability to extrapolate how things might develop.

Smith's works are a product of the era they were produced in. They are extremely pulpy, but despite an inherent belief that man will always overcome adversity it is always better arms which win the day. Most of Smith's book boil down to an arms race resulting in increasingly apocalyptic weapons. In addition by today’s standards Smith's works seem some what sexist - but at the time Smith was extremely open minded. He's been quoted as saying he believed that men and women were "equal, but different," however in his books woman always take stay at home role. His only two strong fame characters in the Lensman series are Virgilia Samms who always seems to need the protection of men, and Clarrissa MacDougall who showed her status as the most evolutionarily advanced woman the human race would ever produce by becoming a nurse and staying at home to pine for Kimball Kinnison.

In trying to capture Smith's works as a campaign setting I would first try to capture the fast fun pulpy feeling. In addition in Smith's works there is no moral ambiguity. People are either good or evil. They may be spies, but at heart they are all white or all black. Further more both the incorruptible and the completely corrupt people should be bigger than life characters. As such I need to ensure the setting has no shades of grey and the main characters need to be huge men of steel characters with abilities well beyond normal men. Finally Smith's settings are all about the technology and the weapons. Big buzz bars carrying huge amounts of energy and enormous machines should dominate. Everything in a Smith universe should be big, and the weapons should be over powered.

Victorian Undersea Adventure all stems from the work of Jules Verne. Verne actually only wrote one novel involving the submarine Captain Nemo the Nautilus - 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' (1870), although the final fate of Captain Nemo is mentioned in 'The Mysterious Island' (1874). The most famous version of Captain Nemo is the 1954 Disney Nemo, and it would be a huge mistake not to use this in my source material. This movie has two sequels - Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969), The Return of Captain Nemo (1972) which have little to do with Verne's work, but are interesting (if rather flawed) additions to the Victorian Undersea adventure genre. There are also some interesting genre animations including the Japanese anime series 'Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water', and Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, although it could be pointed out this film is set 11 years to late to be considered Victorian Undersea adventure and is actually early Elizabethan. Whatever the case, the feel is right.

This genre is again dominated by the environment and a sense of exploring the unknown. In many ways it is a precursor to the Sci-Fi cliché of people trapped in a claustrophobic vessel that provides their soul protection from the dangerous environment they are exploring. To capture the atmosphere there should be the excitement of mad explosive action when things go wrong, combined with growing the growing threat of inter-crew hostilities as the environment forces pre-existing tensions to the fore. The dangers here are both the environment / nature and the very crew themselves. This is a much more human story than the E.E.Doc Smith story, yet again the machines are pretty significant central characters in their own right - the Nautilus dominated Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, whilst the Ulysses dominated Atlantis: The Lost Empire. It could also be a difficult game to capture correctly, since living antagonists are always much easier to get players invested in, than natural terrors.

Then there is the question of undersea cities. Jules Verne didn't feel this was really necessary for his story, but since his time Undersea cities have almost become central to any Undersea adventure - and as almost invariably called Atlantis. I'm tempted to push for one so I can add 'The Spy who Loved me' to the research list. Its one of the only two Roger Moore bond films I'd rate in the top 10 Bond films (the other is 'Live and Let Die').

I'd say a little about Musketeer Swashbuckling and Napoleonic-era fantasy too but I'm running a little short of time, so I won't. Anyway I haven't read any of Susanna Clarke's work yet. 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' was delivered on Tuesday at the same time as 'Small Favour' so its second on my to read list, but I'm already up to chapter 18 in Small Favour and the weekend is approaching.

To be honest it does look like a two horse race now, so I think well either get our Space Opera or our Undersea adventure.

My Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...?

2008-04-08T11:06:00.002+01:00

My Harry Potter Alter Ego Is...?
created with QuizFarm.com

I scored as Hermione Granger (with a large chunk of Ginny Weasley)

You're one intelligent witch, but you have a hard time believing it and require constant reassurance. You are a very supportive friend who would do anything and everything to help her friends out.

Hermione Granger

90%

Ginny Weasley

85%

Severus Snape

80%

Albus Dumbledore

75%

Sirius Black

75%

Harry Potter

70%

Ron Weasley

70%

Remus Lupin

60%

Lord Voldemort

55%

Draco Malfoy

20%

Restarted Genre Poll

2008-04-07T06:54:00.001+01:00

Sorry guys,

I've had to restart the genre poll because I managed to miss a couple of the genre off the list - and one of them was great. I've added the corrected poll but I'm going to have to ask you to vote again.

No problems with the aspects poll though

Sorry for the mess up,

Whirly

Great Experiment voting now open

2008-04-06T23:04:00.004+01:00

The voting for the Great Fate Fractal Experiment phase 1 is now open. You have 6 days in which to make your mark, and place your vote. The polls are to the right

At the end of voting the most popular three aspects and single genre will be selected...assuming they show some form of mutual compatibility. In the event that two incompatible aspects are chosen (there are a few clear opposites) the less popular of the two will be dropped in favour of the fourth most popular aspect.

Have fun choosing.. you can pick as many as you like.

Whirly

Going to have to cap suggestions

2008-04-05T22:06:00.003+01:00

I need to make sure tomorrows vote for the Great Fate Fractal Experiemt isn't overwhelming, so I'm going to cap at 50 aspects and 30 genre. We are currently on:

I'd love to keep it open but asking people to vote on 50 aspects is going to be enough as things stand.

That means there is space for 1 more aspect and 5 more genre suggestions - and about 24 hours to submit them.

The Great Fate Fractal Experiment update

2008-04-03T11:49:00.004+01:00

I was rather surprised to discover that "Prophet King Governor Press" have decided to make my little experimental game one of their links of the day.

Someone I've never heard of before is lining to it. I guess it must be important then.

We are now up to an astounding:

I have to admit I had no idea what some of the genre were and had to look them up. As an example I had no idea what 'Ruritanian Romance' entailed and "Strange & Norrell" left me completely stumped. As it turns out though Wikipedia has great articles on both. In fact the entry on Strange & Norrell was enough to get me ordering books from Amazon - it sounds interesting and I never have enough good books to read

I'm keeping the lists on the game website up to date as suggestions come in, but I'll probably move the first poll up a bit to Sunday. I already have lots of suggestions for the first things we need to decide and I don’t want to outface people with too long a list.

Don't forget - I'll look for your input here on my blog and if for some reason you want to post elsewhere I'll also look on on the Continuum UK forums and the FateRPG yahoo group. Also note that the deadline for suggestions for the first phase vote is now this Sunday.

From Iron Heroes to FATE

2008-04-03T11:44:00.001+01:00

I ran my usual weekly Iron Heroes session yesterday. As usual the players were astounding, and the roleplaying moments were brilliant. They came up with some great ideas which are forcing me to rethink and rewrite the events which come next. Unfortunately the pre-written scenario expects the GM to railroad the players, but as a GM I like to allow the players all the freedom they can handle. As such they often head well of the beaten track. They gave me some great moments during this session - managing to implicate themselves as arsonists in a fire which destroyed several houses. The fact that they didn't start the fire is irrelevant - they implicated themselves.

Later on the scenario is going to bring them back to this part of the city, where the plot as written calls for them to get involved in an ongoing investigation. I knew this was coming so I gave them a good starting relationship with the watch. I now suspect things may go a little differently to how I envisaged. It should be lots of fun.

Now the down side - I'm getting increasingly annoyed with the system. It feels like the rules are getting in the way of the action. I know the players and I are on the same page when it comes to the plot and all the scenes where we don't actually have to rely on the rules, but the moment someone uses an ability it feels like the game comes to a grinding halt.

My initial response to this was to ensure all the rules for the abilities the players had were on the character sheets. I hoped this would mean that the players weren't always looking through rule books. Unfortunately this in turn means the character sheets are turning into multi-page novels - and we still need to look things up all the time.

So now I’m seriously thinking about changing the rule-set we use. Iron Heroes is definitely an improvement over D&D, but I’d like to go further. I’ve virtually figured out how to represent all the characters in FATE. I just need to figure out how to represent the Arcanist properly – and then I need to sell the idea to the players. It might be difficult. I think they’ve bought into the ‘crunchy’ bits from the system.

Why Whirly / R00kie

2008-04-02T06:47:00.002+01:00

Quite some time back I created a character for City of Heroes called Whirlmeister. The character name was quickly truncated to 'Whirly'. What surprised me is that a lot of people who knew me as other characters or knew my real name started calling me Whirly. Somehow the nickname managed to migrate from City of Heroes into the real world and people I knew in real life started calling me Whirly. I like the nickname so I've never complained.

Meanwhile I have always tried to use R00kie as my online persona. A lot of people know me only as R00kie.

Since I'm hoping both crowds will be wondering passed this Blog I'm signing things as Whirly/Rookie. It doesn't mean there are two moderators. They are both me.

The Great Fate Fractal Experiment

2008-04-01T18:35:00.010+01:00

My third game for Continuum this year is experimental. I can't guarantee how it will go, but I will say that if you get involved it will be interesting and you'll learn what the end results are of allowing the public to author a game.

In Master Plan #15, Leonard Balsera (one of the authors of Spirit of the Century and guys behind FATE) talked about the Fate Fractal. The principle is that any element of a FATE game can be described in terms of the same components. The implication is that Aspects could be applied to everything, be it the Scenario itself, NPCs, locations, objects or even abstract things like the relationships between two NPCs.

Then in Independent Insurgency Episode 007, Rob Donoghue and Fred Hicks (the other two guys behind Spirit of the Century) take this one step further and point out that aspects could be applied to an entire campaign. Listening to this podcast in the car home from work gave me the idea I needed for my third game...

I have about 120 days till Continuum. During that time I'm planning to allow Convention attendees and those on the FATE yahoo group to help me create an adventure from the group up. I have no pre-conceived ideas as to what it is going to involve.

I'll start by requesting campaign aspects and genres. In two weeks time I'll hold a poll for the best campaign aspects and from that pick the three most popular which don't appear to be mutually exclusive. I will also at this point pick the genre. I don't want to pick the genre too early as it might influence the aspects I receive. I would like to pick the most popular genre, but again I'm going to have to take compatibility and playability into account.

The following weeks will flesh out three factions. As we speak I don't know if these will be nations, mafia gangs, fast food restaurants, high school cliques or dog packs. All I know is that they will follow from the genre and that they will be key to the world setting.

Having generated those I'm aiming to generate a few key locations, and a significant event or location. Again this could be a prom, a princess’ birthday, the one ring, or a famous sunken ship. I currently have no idea but I will find out soon

Finally in the last month I plan to take the generated ideas and try to tie them all together into some sort of adventure.

The Great Fate Fractal Experiment
System: FATE
GM Declan Feeney (me)
Players Six Players

Synopsis: An experimental game, based on group authorship. The exact nature of this game will be built up during the weeks leading up to the convention and will be detailed on the game website and my blog.

So what do I need from people?

For the first phase I need campaign aspects and genre suggestions. I promise that any suggestions I use will be attributed to the people who suggested them. I will write the game up, and I will note all the contributors who's ideas are used in the game. Good aspects would be aspects which could apply to any campaign. They could be rules of the universe, descriptors, or even objects (but if they are objects they are going to be absolutely central to the campaign

To start the ball rolling I'll put in a few suggestions of my own:

Aspects:
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
"Why is it always Monkeys?"
There's always somewhere to hide
The last ones always toughest
The Star of Elra
(Note: This last one is pretty generic - The Star of Elra could be a star system in a sci-fi setting, it could be a jewel in a fantasy setting, Elra could even be a play or musical and it could refer to actors competing for parts.)

Genres:
Zombie Breakout
Musketeer Swashbuckling

Thanks in advance for getting involved.

Whirly

My Continuum UK Games

2008-04-01T17:41:00.007+01:00

During mid July I usually go to AmberCon UK. I normally have a great time, drink more beer over one weekend than I do in a typical month, meet up with old friends, and run about three games.

My mind is normally coming up with ideas for the next AmberCon UK before the Con is over. I don't know if you've noticed but conventions are incredibly inductive to coming up with great adventure and campaign ideas. Anyway, by January I had a good dozen ideas for Amber games I wanted to run and was trying to whittle the number down to something more reasonable. By late January I had a final list of the games I was going to run, and had moved onto play test them; and by mid February I was getting very concerned that I hadn't yet heard anything about ‘AmberCon UK 2008’.

I still haven't heard anything about this year’s AmberCon UK and that’s despite being signed up to the Newsletter, and posting requests for information on the Yahoo group. I've had to give up on it, since even if they announce the con now its going to be too late for most people.

AmberCon's loss is however Continuum's gain. Continuum is about the right time of year, and I already have money put aside for a con. I don't feel like running Amber games at Continuum, so I've come up with three cool new games for the Continuum.

Here are the details of the first two. The third one deserves a post in its own right.

The Old and the Deep
System: Fear Itself (GUMSHOE)
GM Declan Feeney (me)
Players Six Players max

Its November 4, 1872. Tomorrow you set sail from Staten Island, New York to Genoa, Italy. You are the passengers and crew of the an eleven year old brigantine called the 'Mary Celeste'.

and

Spirit of the White Council (an adventure in the Dresden-verse)
System: Spirit of the Century (or the Dresden Files RPG if its been released in time)
GM Declan Feeney
Players Six Players (who don't need to have read any of the Dresden Files Books - its all pretty self explanatory)

The Dragon triumvirate, an alliance of three powerful Dragons - Hicax, Balserax and Donograx, controls Hong Kong with an Iron Fist. Hong Kong is a powerful nexus, a points where ley lines intersect. It plays a key role in control of South East Asia and the White Council wants free access to this place. Unfortunately so do the Vampires of the Red Court.

As apprentices you're travelled with you master, Wizard Kinskey, to negotiate with the triumvirate. Unfortunately with news of a group of Red Court delegates and the sudden disappearance of your master things aren't going well.

I'll be interested to see how they go. I've never run either of these systems at a Con before, but I've run a lot of other systems (Traveller, Amber, Risus and AFMBE) and never had any difficulty helping players pick up the rules. I've written them with an eye to instant action and fast play so I'm hoping they'll be a lot of fun

And if you'd like to play in either of these games check out the Continuum website and forum.

Welcome to Whirly Waffles

2008-04-01T17:21:00.000+01:00

Strangely this is my first blog even though I've been involved with computers since I was very small and was messing around online before most people knew what a network was.

I'm mostly going to use this blog to organise a little experiemnet I plan to run. You'll hear a lot more about it later. I'm calling it 'The Great Fate Fractal Experiment', but in addition to that I expect to include details about my Wednesday tabletop roleplaying cxampaign, my Sunday online game, my TV habits, my work and probably my wife and pet. You may get the occassional photo, although first I'll have to charge my camera.

Anyway, welcome to Whirly Waffles.