The Middle Kingdom -- a Metatopia Roundup

Soooo...

We're back from Metatopia. It was freaking awesome. I came, I saw, I tested my game, it actually functioned as a game, and I have a zillion things to re-do, but I feel basically good about it.  I had some wonderful experiences and panels and thoughts about the con itself and the atmosphere which I need to think on some more, but which are broadly good.

Also, I played some amazing stuff, which I will more or less try to describe herein.

First thing, Friday I played a psionic cop game called Psicom, by Jim Dagg, which was awesome both for being pretty much my whole raspberry jam, but because of the other two playtesters, who were these dudes. Seriously, if you can play a game that has action in it with Stras, DO THAT THING. He is a full on Anime hero at the table and it is everything. John is also the nicest dude, though Jim is also the nicest dude, so it was all very happy. Instaback, instabuy.

I didn't do much else on Friday since I was stressing about my Hi-Test, which I also won't go into, as I wanna unpack and do design talk for it on another post. So skipping to Saturday, when I played Immortal Flight by the incomparable Shoshana Kessock. It was really neat; I am allll about playing some Nephilim just living in the world, and it's incredibly evocative. "The Midnight Song". Shivers. and there was a Rabbi at the table too, so we got fully down with it. Mechanics are interesting; I'm really looking forward to this one moving forward.

Another playtest for me, then we played Throne of the Void by the above mentioned Stras and John of Off Guard Games. Harbinger puts it most eloquently here:

This one was especially interesting because we got to play with Rob Donoghue, who is a political cutthroat in intergalactic space politics, but who I mostly chat with as a fellow Scrum Master and Agile development evangelist. Seriously, he did Lean Coffee Friday and Sat morning of the con and it was awesome. Also, it was my first real experience with a Forged In The Dark game by folks who really Feel that system, and I am into it.

Last game Friday was Wracked, by Matthew Malis, another ATL dude who Harbinger knows from LARP-stuff. Really strong concept-- dead folks who have escaped hell and are working for the Reaper in order to secure Redemption. So thematically similar to Immortal Flight in some ways, but not in others. Very strong Vice/Virtue mechanic, which I liked better than the way such is used in Mage, tbh. Dice mechanics were a lot like the ones I'm currently using in At What Cost, which is not a bad thing-- great minds and all! Definitely had fun, and am looking to see where it goes.

Sunday, I had one more test, and then B and I played a game called Vigilance, by AquaVertigo Games. It... was about people who come from the dead in pre-antiquity and function as Living Laws tied to constellations.

...as you can see, I maaaay have played to a theme a bit in my game choices.

Vigilance had a really cool dice pool mechanic, and was again, thematically very strong. The personal story mechanics, once I got them, are very evocative and pull you in well. Yeah, I pretty much hit the jackpot on all the games I played for subject and intensity. While many of them did deal with similar themes, they had interesting and unique things to say about them, and contributed something different in their own way to the craft.

Also psi cops and space politics, which I am forever here for.

And that is Metatopia Roundup #1, and the one I most wanted to get out, because whatever else, the awesome games I played deserve some shoutouts, and the awesome people who ran them as well.

G'night to all of you out there, and here.

Where she been, Oooh she been gone! (Sporadic Roundup #3)

Over the past... several months, I completely forget what I've been doing. So let's talk briefly about what I've been up to lately:

• Dungeons and Dragons 5e -- I'm playing two games at the moment: Shieldhaven's Aurikesh game (as I was, and will be, amen), and also a game called Reborn- a mostly online game run by a friend that I will call Mr. AWESOME. In the former, I am continuing to play my Veytikka Fighter and Beruch Warlock, and have now added a Kagandi Parthé who is a Royal Sorcerer. My Warlock has been the subject of a lot of tinkering and fussing, but really, it was the addition of a couple of new cleric cantrips of Haven's that really helped me have fun in combat (I'm a tomelock, see). So it seems like a lot of the problem was that most of the cantrips at base just weren't interesting enough. Well, and the combination of a) needing to take Agonizing Blast (even though I didn't), and b)  invocations being a little too much like build traps (see item a). But I digress. Hopefully, I'll also get to play a bit of Lost Mines of Phandelver fairly soon, so that will be cool.  
• 13th Age -- we started a game of 13th age, run by another friend I will call Batgirl, and I'm hoping we'll get to play more of that. I am playing something completely ridiculous, but it's been long enough I can't recall a lot of specifics. 
• Life is Strange -- a Square Enix story game. I bought the season pass, and am on my second playthrough of episode 3, having completely fucked up the second episode in one playthrough. Or, well, allowed something bad enough to happen that I had to have a second one to see the other primary outcomes. There's 5 episodes total, and it's interesting to see how they handle the branching consequences. So I'm liking that. 

Also, I am working on a Twine game about books that change based on the order you read them in. I need to brush up on my JS skills so that I can possibly write some macros around more robust array functionality, because a lot depends on whether I can make conditional content around whether one item has a higher or lower array index than another. On the subject of a lot of fiddly, branching consequences. Anyway, when I have a playable demo, I will doubtless post it here-ish. 

I have not been working on either of the tabletop game ideas I have; the one about psions, temporarily called The Red Ones, and the one about cities, working title: A City of Dolls and Monsters. 

And that's the news in brief. 

Not-Roundup #3

So, having completely failed at everything last Thursday, I am declaring this the Not!Roundup, and I'll resume regular updates on this Thursday. I have a few other projects for this blog that I want to work on too... not least of which is the next three rooms of Three Gates Prison for this project.

In the meantime, I recommend you check out Shieldhaven's second entry in the Dungeon of Three Deceits , and also Random Generators what rock and suck from D&D with Porn Stars. Yes, I am linking this here largely so that I can find it again later.

Oh yes... I wished to draw attention to one other of Haven's posts: The Strength of His Convictions, in which he puts a little more flesh on the psionic bones I maundered over in this post. I am also likely to maunder a bit more about how I want these things to work, and what systems I would base a psionic game on... I am a bit hesitant about using World of Darkness, although it is probably more suited, because I really don't like the way that one starts out at a lower base competency if they've got no dots in a given skill, than, say, in FATE. That is to say, in a modern game, I like to assume that people can do things like turn on a bloody computer and use google without having to go out of their way to spend build on same. I figure skill points should buy you real abilities, like-- I dunno, basic coding, or the ability to know your way around terminal, up to being able to build and maintain databases, program massive banks of servers, script the hell out of AI, or know like, Ternary.

Haven, Stands-in-Fire and I just got back from a LARP this weekend, so the thickness and fury of various design ideas was something to behold. Stay tuned for the off-chance that I am not a lazy ass.

Session Roundup #8

I wanted to get the first installment of the Dungeon Project done before now, but stuff is a bit crazy IRL, and hopefully I'll be able to finish it tonight or tomorrow. In the interim, here's a (hopefully) speedy roundup:

Arcana Evolved: Played this in GA last weekend, which was pretty good. I'm pretty much a session away from level 13, which is gratifying. We did not fight Winter Wolves, which was awesome, but had an actually fairly interesting fight against bandits around a ruined city where we'd finally arrived after what seemed like forever. Also, Angels. or an angel.

So, more and more I'm being faced with the problem that D&D clerics had-- do I blast shit myself, or do I buff my friends? This time, I did both, and came to the realization that if I could cast more than one spell a round, my Magister would probably be stupidly broken. With that thought in mind, I am still taking the Quicken Spell feat at the earliest possible opportunity.

Mage: The Awakening: The first session of this game just finished, as in not more than half an hour ago. I am playing a Mastigos (mind/space) mage with an emphasis on mind, because if I can play an Evil Telepath-- particularly if I can play the Evil Telepath, which I can and am (though really, Evil is more an aesthetic in this usage)-- then of course I'm going to. Shieldhaven is the Storyteller, and wished to run our Awakenings in play, as the first thing that happens. My character's involved coming out of one of his classes to walk down a hallway of mirrors, all with his own image in them, and the figures attempting to attack him. This was... interesting, but hardly difficult to deal with. Stephen's (my character's) sense of self-mastery is pretty well developed.

Stands-in-Fire is playing a South Boston Irish doctor, Samhaine is playing an ex-russian mob guy who believes he's the incarnation of an angel, Four Color Critic is playing a grad student researcher at Tufts, and Ikara, who does not have a gaming blog, is playing a Financier. As for myself, I'm a Business student at Emerson, of all places. It's a long story, but works, I promise.

Anyway, it's very much having just started, but I adore all of the other characters, and am looking forward eagerly to the next session.

And now, on to the DtD website edits, and maybe a little more progress on my part of the Dungeon Project.

No, I can't be bothered to link anything tonight, why?

Psychic Power and the Telepath Question.

One of the nice things (there are many) about dating a fellow gamer/GM is that you get to have long, late-night design conversations about various and sundry things. Last night, we wound up discussing what I was looking for in terms of The Truth in Yellow, the psychic horror game I am wanting to run. For this game, I am leaning very heavily towards using the Over The Edge system, although I am planning on using the Dawning Star setting. Yes, I know that DS was written for D20 Future, but the sort of game I'm planning to run isn't particularly a shoot 'em-up, while Red Truth is exactly what I'm looking for in terms of psionics for this game in specific*.

Which leads to to psionics in general, which is a special love of mine. I am a sucker for a good psionic system, though I've never yet found anything that works the way I think psionics should, exactly. Which wants to ask, well, what do I want from my brain-suckers, anyway?

*It is important to note that, although I have been maundering about Red Truth et al above, the list below is not something I intend to use in that game; Red Truth doesn't do the things listed below, as written. That said, Red Truth is effing awesome. But one can like more than one thing.

1) Psionics are different from Magic.

In my ideal system, Psi and Magic are fundamentally different, and while certain of the effects can mimic each other, the sources are not t'all the same. The primary example is Sleep. Traditionally, Sleep is considered an effect that works on the mind, whatever the source. So doesn't that make it psionic?

The answer in my proposed system is no. A mental effect is psionic only if the source of the effect is mental, not the target. Hence the difference between a pyrokinetic blast and a mage's fireball, metabolic healing and magical healing, or a telepath knocking out a target and the sleep spell.

I would not include telepathy or read minds as magic effects at all, except perhaps in a very limited, 'send message' kind of way. In these cases, what is happening is not one mind speaking to another, but an effect which simulates sound that only the intended recipient can hear.

The principal difference is that psionic energy comes from the person innately, while magic is pulled from somewhere else. To answer the question Shieldhaven just put to me, how would mages be limited at all? My thought is that the mage is limited in how much energy they can pull, and how they can pull it. Also, magic is something that has to be learned, and anyone cal generally learn it, while psions are born.

2) A Psion's lot is not a happy one.

Being a psi, using your powers, and learning to control your powers isn't easy, and is likely to take a huge chunk out of your ability to do other things. The penalty will vary based on the kind of psionics you're using. Sound risky? Should be risky. Success as a psi is freaking awesome. How to model this for different stories one wants to tell is something of a question. Not every story should or ought to be, "this is how I learned to control my powers, and these are my scars." For games that take place later in the characters' lives, perhaps a list of disadvantages linked to powers would be good, that could either be selected purposefully or randomly, though the latter runs the risk of becoming a gamble to see whether your character even survives creation.

3) Different sorts of Psi are also different.

This will require a lot more thought to cease being nebulous for me, but I think that different kinds of psi should be different skills. Pretty much as follows:

a) Telepathy -- I go into your mind with mine and affect your thoughts. I can change your mind, implant thoughts, or forbid you from thinking of a thing, though I can't make you like it. At the extreme, I can overwhelm your synapses and fry your brain. It's not particularly subtle though. I can sense thinking beings without necessarily seeing them, by 'hearing' their mental energy, if they are not trying to shield it from me, or else I am not trying to block them out. If I'm not careful, you'll wind up destroying my brain, or I'll go nuts and destroy all of yours.

b) Empathy-- I go into your mind with mine and affect your emotions. I can change the actual function of your brain much as drugs or alcohol do, by making you feel one way or another just at the moment, though I can't make you think anything in particular. I'm much more subtle than the telepath, at base. I can sense any creature which is alive and experiences emotions without necessarily seeing them, if they are not trying to shield from me, or else I am not trying to block them out. If I'm not careful, I'll go insane from everyone else's emotions, or I'll wind up driving other people to unpleasant things.

c) Telekinesis-- I move objects with my mind. With effort, I can actually sense objects that I cannot see; the more subtle, the more effort this requires. This is not easy for me. Aw shit, now I'm bleeding.

c.1) Pyrokinesis-- I generate heat energy with my mind. So... um, I set shit on fire. Go me. As for my problems, see the telekinetics.

c.2) Electrokinesis-- I generate electricity with my mind. I blow out streetlamps and can't ever wear watches. I might wipe hard drives too. But... force lightning!

d) Impression Sensitivity (Psychometry) -- I read the psychic impressions of objects. I can tell you who last touched an object, or at least what they are or were like while they were actually in contact with said object. The more information I can get from something, the more overwhelming objects are in general. (some sort of rules about how particular objects hold energy might be useful here).

Another version of Impression Sensitivity works on people at touch-- I 'read' you when you are touching me, and I can tell what you're thinking & feeling, as well as seeing a little bit of your past when I touch you.

e) Metabolics -- I heal people with my mind. I can make you-- and possibly myself-- better, stronger, and faster, with effort. I probably am also an empath though, otherwise I might fuck this up pretty badly, and wind up hurting you or myself, or healing you at a profound cost to myself.

f) Precognition-- I can see the future! I don't like being around other people who can see the future... we mess each other up. Also, this is extremely stressful, and did you know human brains aren't really built for this kind of thing? They're not.

f.1) Clairvoyance-- I can see the here-and-now at a distance! Problem is, I need something to focus on, or else it kind of hits me at random, and blacks out, you know, what I should be paying attention to. Like walking down stairs, or driving.

These are my starting place, I shall go further from there. But the brain, it storms. Storm brain, storm!