Mistakes and Infinite Hallways

A small group of people with boring monotonous live taking the subway late one night find themselves let off the train as it goes out of service.

As the train pulls away they realise that they are at a station that they have never heard of before. When another train does not come, they explore the station looking for an exit only to find that the station is barred up and they are locked in.

As things continue there seems to be no way out of the station, and some people claim to have been here for years. Each time they turn there back someone disappears or new arrives, or their are signs of much time passing.

Each attempt to escape the station is thwarted by an infinite hallway or a looked door.

Finally the people at the station either become part of the station, a permanent fixture, or they think of the monotony of their lives and how they would change it.

Little clues are given throughout that they have been leaving the station, only to return the next night without any memory of having been gone.

When they decide to change their monotonous life, an exit can be found. They leave the station and they are presented with their lives. If they follow through with the desire for change, they are free. If they do not change their lives, they will wake up back in the station, their escape only a dream.

That is the game that I wanted to run this last week. I wanted a game about the monotony of life and the daily commute becoming purgatory. It was an excellent idea that a friend of mine back from my home town suggested I try.

Sadly that is not the game I ended up running. I will start off by pointing you to an article over at Gnome Stew.

My first and most major mistake was in giving out characters. I did not emphasise enough the monotony of their lives. As the game progressed, two of the three characters turned out to have been happy all along. It slipped by me that they were happy at first. But as the players filled out the characters, there was really on reason to be stuck in at the station.

So the game, at least for two of the players, was simply a case of being stuck somewhere in time.

The second main mistake was with what I like to call "infinite hallways". Its a reference to a game I played in a year back were we were stuck in some compound for some ridiculous number of sessions. Every idea we had for escape was met with an infinite hallway or some other arbitrary and insurpassible obstacle.

The infinite hallway has always been something that I have tried to avoid in my games. But it seemed needed in this case. The nature of the story was vary Dues Ex Machina, and you could not have people just strolling out of purgatory.

However, since two of the players were playing almost an entirely different game, it was just an annoying and brutal case of infinite hallway. I think I need to apologize to these players for this.

One of the tools I like to use in my games is The Stool. A little to the side of the circle of gamers I place a large wooden stool and occasionally I send people to it. Then we play it a little "reality tv" style. When a player is on the Stool they have to give the internal monologue of their character, in character. Just like the confession booths in various reality TV shows.

In general, this helps the player fill out their character and lets everyone get a sense for that character. It also seems that roleplaying spills over from the Stool and can facilitate a much more lively session.

My third mistake for this game was that I did not give the players enough back story for their characters to use in the Stool. Instead the Stool became awkward and no-one seemed interested in it by the end of the session.

I had planned for the Stool to let me know when a character had reached some sort of breaking point to move the story forward. But it was not so helpful in this session.

But in the end there was one player who had a terrifically monotonous character. He went through various stages of coping with the situation including contemplating suicide. He even escaped from the station once only to carry on with the monotony and wake back up in the station. His character found a new resolve and up making it out of the station permanently.

Looking back on the session, I find it difficult to decide if the success with the one player outweighed the disaster with the other two.

I think I will put this idea back on the shelf. Perhaps I will give it another try a year or so down the road. But next time I will have learned from my mistakes.

Bright Star

In a recent sci-fi game that I GM'd in, I found myself in a conundrum. One of my players had rolled himself up a character that did not work well with others. He was good with the other PCs, but when it came to NPCs he would create friction. This did not work so well in a game based around a close nit crew on a small ship. Particularly, Mac the character had a problem with Johnson the NPC.
Introduce the ghost ship. The Bright Star misjumped, and found themselves stranded in a system with no way home. One of the few things in the system is an incredibly old capital ship. A derelict that had been sitting in orbit for thousands of year. However, since the White Star had reached the system, the old ship had started to power up again.
A small away team, including Mac and Johnson, went aboard to search for anything that might be of use on the ship. One of the first things found on the ship has a low birth with several occupied cryo-pods. One of them was open.
Johnson was good with alien tech and began fiddling with a console to bring up a map. After fiddling with the map for a time, he pointed out a few doors that were open that he claimed were closed before. There was something else on the ship.
Johnson stayed behind to help guide the away team over the radio using the map. He kept on sending them updates as to the location of a mysterious red dot that as traveling around the map. Occasionally old droids would jump out to attack the crew. The away team would have to jump out of the way when a door would slam shut almost on top of them.
Then it came to a point when Mac found himself isolated from the rest of the crew. He was in a position where he could easily be jettisoned into space.

I took Mac out to the balcony so we could play out the next bit away from the rest of the players.

Instead of carrying on the adventure from that point, I took it back in time to Mac and Johnson
s days at the academy. I left mac in a scenario where he would have an easy opportunity to play a brutal prank on Johnson. Then I skipped forward a little, to another opportunity for Mac to mistreat Johnson. Then forward again. And Again.

It did not take long for the player playing Mac to clue in. There was no one else on the ship. Johnson was at the map. Johnson was learning how to control the ship. Johnson hated Mac.

New and Old

The Retirement of Baron Harveset Bowman M.D. 
We finished our last travelers game this last week. In the end we got revenge on Treece, killed that damn dolphin that had been messing with us and even won ourselves a planet. 
Perhaps latter I will fill in more details when I can do it justice.

Burning Wheel

As our travellers game come to an end, we have decided to start a new game. We will be using the bruning wheel system. Burning wheel is specifically designed for "middle fantasy" games. Games with little magic or where magic is mostly in the background. Books like George RR Martins A Song of Ice and Fire would fit nicely within this game. 

The game is designed to revolve around politics and battles of wits. 

How to Dispose of a Kadariak Kepf

Through various adventures Chuck, John and Joe wound up in a cavern beneath a mosuleum in the middle of a forest in Maine. Trapped in a cage in the corner was a demon. The cage sparked with blue electricity. 

The demon had already lured one group into the cavern and convinced them to start a murderous cult. They were on the verge of completing the ritual that would release the demon from his cage. We put an end to those plans. 

so there we sat, trying to figure out how to dispose of this demon before he formed another death cult. Our research showed us that it was a Kadariak Kepf, and that it might be vulnerable to fire, or perhaps water. And apperently it could be contained by electric cages. 
So we gathered up our guns and built a flamethrower, and a tried to dispose of the KK. Sadly, it seemed that the cage would not let anything past it and we would have to release the KK from the cage to kill it. Then we realizede that we had no idea how to open the cage. Everything we tried only released blue sparks from the cage. 

Eventually, we gathered up some cable and some jumper cables. We connected the jumper cables to the cage and ran the cable outside to some metal spike we had planted in the ground. Efffectively grounding the cage and releasing the KK. 
Several shotgun blasts, flamthrower bursts and axe swings later we had the KK's head seperated from its boddy and both aflame. 

But there was still the matter of disposing of the boddy. We tried burning it some more, but that produced to much smoke which could draw attention to the site. We tried to drag it out in a boddy bag, but the boddy would not stop smouldering and melted anything that touched it.
We were not certain of KK biology, so we were not certain if the KK was truely dead, despite its severed head. It had servived a milenia or two in this cage and had not died, and its mouth was located over its heart. So we were rather skeptical of its demise. 
Eventually, we decided to try its other weakness. We poored some water over the boddy. With a billow of steam the boddy dissapeared. 
We stood there blinking at where its body had been, uncertain of what had just happened. 

Psychics and Rats

Psychics
The first game I ever ran was about an group of psychics that formed a gestalt and had to escape from an evil sentient asylum. It had many fun twists and turns as the characters discovered that they were the main tool in the asylums plan. The game took place in Chicago in the 80s and involved allot of bad hair.
I recently begun to rerun a condensed version of this game with my Saturday group. However, the first thing they did once they escaped from the asylum was to head to Connecticut and flee from my plot. There characters then spent a year there being beach bums.
I think I will have to run a game where they are all stuck on a train, so when they derail my plot they will go with it.

Rat and Mushroom Kingdoms
I am planning on running a game or two this Saturday. Recently I have bee inspired by a DS game called Mushroom Men and a comic called Mouse Guard. From these I plan on running two somewhat related games.
The first will be the Dark Woods. It will revolve around the boarder territories of the mushrooms where the woods meet the swamp. This game will have more of a voodoo and shamanistic feel to it as the mushroom men struggle to survive in a world where superstition servers you better than knowledge.
The second will be the Old Oak. It will revolve around a kingdom of rats that have transformed a great oak tree into a fortress. This game will have a medieval feel to it with many aspects borrowed from Redwall and Mouse Guard. Inside of the Old Oak the Rats will forge weapons of bronze and Iron to fend off their enemies.
I want both of these games to have a very different feel from the other. One of swords and the other of sworcery. Then, after a session of each I will reveal that the worlds are the same and that the Rat and Mushroom Kingdoms have a common enemy and that the two Kingdoms also have conflicting goals.

It's My First Day

The Saturday crew got together again and there was gaming. This time Hutch took the GM's chair, and showed us that she can run one heck of a game. Hutch is a theater tech and decided that we needed to have an appreciation for the terror that is theater school.


Theater School Hell
I played Marcus A. Threegood, and Darnivar played Unnamed Sanchez on our first day of theater school. The first task was finding the room that we were supposed to report too. We quickly figured out that half the people that we talked too would outright ignore us if we asked for directions. When we finally found where we were going, we discovered that the fourth years ran shit in this place, and they had a strong distaste for first years.
Threegood and Sanchez got assigned to their first task: Commando Training. Plug in three lights in the crawl space above the stage. Sounded simple enough. Two hours later, we had finally figured out where we were going in the maze, plugged in the light, replaced the light that we had broken, and managed to get back down alive. I however ended up in the infirmary covered in bite and scratch marks from things that at one time could have been rats.
I nearly got out the door before I got dragged back in to the infirmary. I was having a bad reaction to the medication.
Sadly, the day did not end up there.
Hopped up on pain killers and wireded out on some bad reaction, Sanchez and I were sent out on our next task. Go fetch foue stacks of chairs from the basement of the theater school. Sounded simple enough. Several hours later, we had finally figured out were we where going, found the stacks of chair, moved some and gotten locked into the boiler room of a basement. Sanchez saw the crawling arm of one of the many ghosts that reside in that place. I did not. I was passed out from heat exhaustion. Luckily someone had wandered by and heard Sanchez pounding on the door. It was back to the infirmary for me.
Sanchez managed to finish delivering the three stacks of chairs that we had gotten out of the basement before the ghost arrived. When questioned about why he was missing a stack, Sanchez replied with a straight face "The hand got it" and went back to see me in the infirmary.
Exhausted, he fell asleep next to my unconscious body in the infirmary.
We woke up the next morning, 8 am, sprawled unceremoniously in the hallway outside of the infirmary. A fourth year walked in with his cup of coffee. He looked down at us and said "Good, your early. Time to get to work."


Since last I posted, one campaign has come to an end, another has started, and I have gotten into a brand new system. I am sure I will post more on that later.

On Plauge Doctors and How Not to Run a Ship

Got the old crew back together last weekend, and so we broke out some one shots. 

The Plague Doctor
To make a long story short, the old crew has a run in with a Plague Doctor, but for reasons as of yet unknown, the doctors life sucking ritual fails horribly. Instead of taking the last of the life of one of the crew, the doctor somehow restored him. By the end of the session, the crew had burst into the doctors home a proceeded to set him alight. One of the crew was laid out by a knife to the back, and another had a wheelbarrow full of thaumatology books and a fallen comrade. 

Suds and Duds
The crew of the Suds and Duds are not the most typical group to fly amongst the stars. The pilot, an ex-trucker named Big Sugar, is a bone crushingly huge black man that spends most of his time in the cockpit hating any passengers on board and wearing a top hat. The ambassador, a man of leisure, spends most of his time aboard his yatch in his hot tub messaging his own bosoms. The captain, battle-scared cigar smoking chinchilla, will come flying out of air vents screaming at the slightest hint of peanut butter. The doctor, a con-artist who conned hospitals for so long that he figured out the trade, spends most of his time accusing poeple of having the "brain fever". 

Death By Darnivar and Bear Fisted

This week we departed from the usual in the Fallen Soldiers game and played some other characters that have been wandering about in the same world. 

I ended up with 'Bob' the closet homosexual that has been causing one of the PCs Shaajid so many problems. As the story progressed we discovered two things about Bob. He can be unintentionally really creepy and he is a pretty good guy and a bit of a badass hero. 

The creepiness came out in a situation that found a PC Darnivar in a dress and a compromising position with a guard. It was all part of a rather successful plan to take out a guard station, but the creepiness was enough to cause Darnivar to really have Bob. 

The hero bit came about when the party fought against the a rock crab pulled out out of the Tremors movies. Bob bravely stuck his axe into the ground and stood in the monsters way. He of course was tossed aside as it flew by beneath him, but that did not stop him from keeping on the assault. Although the rest of the team did most of the useful work , Bob was there clinging to its back with one hand while beating it with his axe in the other. He struck the final blow the felled the beast. 

It was later that night that Darnivar snuck into his room and slit his throat for being creepy. 


Bear Fisted
Hutch had her own side quest to kill a demon bear. As this was all part of a spirit quest, hutch had to take the beast allone and unarmed. Despite her best efforts to cheat, she ended up going toe to toe with the bear. She punched it in the face. It stood there stunned, unable to think comprehend a gnome punching it in the face. Unalbe to comprehend the amount of force packed into those little angry fists. Hutch punched it in the face again. This caused the bear to be more stunned. Where does this gnome get such nerve? Two more fists to the face and the startled bear fell to the ground unconcious. 

It wasn't long before the gnome struggled back to the party dragging a bear carcus behind it. 

New Systems

Recently I sat down with some friends to try to come up with a new and interesting system. I decided to try a system using tarot cards. There are two main reasons that I wanted to give this a try. 

The first is that many games have a magical or mystical feel to them, using tarot cards can be perfect for keeping the mood in such games. I think the cards can carry the mood of a game much better than most other props. 

Secondly, I have recently watched a rather interesting video of Richard Dawkins discussing cold reading and thought that many of the concepts discussed could be applied to gaming. Tarot cards are vague enough, while sounding concrete, that I can twist the cards to my story. 

The human mind is great at finding patterns, especially where there are none. This often can leave the players with the unseetling feeling that a card drawn was perfect for the situation. 

Of course there are cards that have enough meaning attributed to them that your story must change to fit the cards. 

While trying this system out, I returned to Cobblestone creek. One of the players was missing from the last session and his character was sent of on some vague mission. So to try out the system we followed his adventures. 

The system seemed to work well. Karma issues where being dealt all over the place. Eventually I drew some cards that where unmistakeably loyalty followed by a great revelation followed by a great gift. It was similar to rolling a few critical successes in a row. So I pulled it into the game and ended up giving the character a few extra powers. 

Not long after that, I pulled some cards that read close to the opposite. So I ended up taking the characters arm half off.

The problem that did aries came from the lack of influnce from the character makeup. When rolling dice, the character's sheet will have a modifier or of some form or another change the likelyhood of success. This is largely removed from a tarot based game. I could see this bothering enough players that I do not think that a tarot system on its own would be preferable. At the very least, this type of system needs the right crowd. 

Another aspect that I had examined: using the tarot cards as a random event generator. First, draw a card, but do not reveal it to the players. Keep a mental note of what it stands for. When the topic or event on the card is brought up or about by the characters, thats when you deal a few cards to change things up. 

I have had some decent feed back from this idea, and I think I will give it a few more tries to see if it keeps me amused. 

Trouble in Cobblestone Creek

Another one shot over the weekend. It went very well, but not as planned:


The Sheriff and three deputies of the town of Cobblestone Creek set out to the hamlet of Gibson. Rumors had come in that their had been trouble with the natives, and no-one had heard from Gibson in several days. 

When they got there, the town was dead. 

They found the bodies gathered into the town saloon. What was left of the townsfolk had been gnawed on by wolves. 

It wasn't long before the Cobblestone Creek crew had berried the bodies and went looking for wolves. 

Then the part split up and they started to get killed off in turn. 

This is where thing departed from what I had expected. 

The plan was for all of the PCs, the outstanding gunslinging law enforcement of the town, to die in horrible and gruesome ways. Then I would hand out the players real character sheets. It would be up to the alcoholic, gambling addicted, lowlifes to save the town of Cobblestone creek from the Werewolves. 

But here is what actually happened. 

I botched a stealth roll for one of the wolves. I rolled in plain sight, so there was no real way I could hand wave it. One of the characters got in behind the thing and pumped it full of as much lead in a round as the mechanics would allow.

So in the end, two of the PCs survived the encounter. Although one was rather gnawed on. 

This is were the players rebelled. They demanded that they be turned into Werewolves and be allowed to bring down the town of Cobblestone creek. They demanded it in such unison that I could not deny them. 

So the game ended with four newly made werewolves running free in the countryside wreaking havoc. I am sure this will be a one shot with a sequel. 

R.I.P. Jayden, Beloved Nephew

A duel was the only way to solve it. A duel or some underhanded kidnapping work. Thats the way it works with these people. You make it a matter of honor, or you ransom your freedom. 

Of course, being an older man myself, I cannot duel and must have a champion. My hired gun, Jordan, had taken off on some fool mission to kidnap a girl and solve the problem that way. I figured he would get himself killed or captured. 

Jayden insisted that I let him be my champion. He had held his own with our last encounter with our disgruntled shipmate. So of course I thought he could hold his own. 

And he did. 

He got a shot off first. But then two bullets ripped through him. 

Jayden's ever present cigaret fell from his lips. A soft "oh" escaped him. Then he slumped to the grass. 

It was a that moment, as Jayden lay slain at my feet, that Jorden came in over the radio. He had pulled off his escipade, and there was no reason for to duel. 

Jayden, you will be missed.

-Baron Harveset Bowmen MD.

Anatomy of a Rhinoat

The Rhinoat started off as a joke early on in the Aire'Nevahn campaign. Hutch, the purple haired bounty hunter gnome needed a bit of a back story for why she had had previous dealings with the street sweeping philosopher Shaajid. So the players come up with an brief recap of an adventure that involved the chase of a half goat half rhino creature.
As the campaign carried on, the story of this creature evolved. The rhinoat is in fact a sacred mount for gnomish warriors from Hutch's home. Eventually, we even met up with a few rhinoats and Hutch got a mount.
As the twists and turns of the plot demanded that Mr Wells needed to be hidden from spiritual detection, there was only one natural thing to do. Turn him into a rhinoat.
I am now playing a rhinoat.
What started off as a little bit of a joke has now become my character. Mr. Wells does not mind it so much as part of the proper treatment of a rhinoat is to constantly scratch it behind the ears.

One Shots

I have been entertaining friends on the weekends. Usually, as things wind down in the evenings I kick off a one shot. The last two that i have run have gone something like this:

A Very Special Green Ops Christmas: Operation White House
Its Christmas Eve 2009. Santa and the Elfs are all busy delivering presents. The most dangerous missions are left up to the elite Green Ops team.
The adventure followed two members of the Green Ops team as they set out to deliver presents to the the president of the United States.
Of course as they are sneaking through, air vents and take on the secret service, another sinister force is going through the white house. John McCain in power armor and Sara Palin with a shot gun are trying to fill the Obama's stockings with coal.
The final results: McCain has a christmas ornament flash bang induced heart attack. Palin gets a shot in the face from the secret service. And half the united states gets hypnotized by irresistible sugar plums.


The Sad Tail of Montgumery Jones
As a group of my friends are leaving my place after a gaming session, they stumble onto an unlikely event. A well dressed man walks past them, followed by several paces behind by the same man, only haggard and worn. They will soon come to call these men Montgomery Jones.
The following weeks lead to several run ins with the man and his doppelganger. Eventually they find that the haggard version of Mr Jones has is the original and that he was replaced while he was forced to serve as a teapot in the halls of the Fay.
Monty shows the group a bush that acts as a portal, which can only be seen through glasses which Monty says was a man once named Edwards.
Through the glasses, anything that is Fay touched is illuminated: Montgomery's doppelganger, the portal to the Fey realms and one of the part members.
Soon the party sets off through the portal into the Fay realms.

War, War Never Changes

There is a new addition to the games I am playing. This one will be rather unique as there is only the GM and me, and it is done by email.
We are using the Fallout system, but I won't get to see any of the dice. Although I will be aware of some of my stats, in general I will be separate from my character sheet.
As this is an email game I should be able to pull out the more interesting sections of the game and present them here.
I am excited about this game for several reasons:
The DM is one of my favorite people to game with. I love post-apocalyptic settings, especially the Fallout setting. As one of my favorite soul sucking video games of all times, Fallout has always been a system that I have always wanted to give a try on Pnp.

I hate Treece

We arrived on a small water planet, I don't recall the name. It was supposed to be a refueling stop and a place to take on some more passengers. The local authorities must have had word we were coming, because they had our parts all planned out for us.
I was called to do a medical exam for the high commissioner. His own physician was off planet and he had heard of some of the research that I had done. During the exam, I discovered two things that sealed my fate. The first is that the man was avidly against any treating with the hell of a planet Treece from which we just came. The second is that the man was in spectacular health for his age.
One of the passengers that we brought with us from Treece was the latest diplomat sent to rape this small paradise of its resources and natural beauty. Undoubtedly he is the one who had the high commissioner killed. With me as the last doctor to see him alive, and having declared him in excellent health, I knew I would be the one who would take the fall. Playing along would be the only thing that would get me out of this one.
I gave them what they wanted. The death is recorded as an acident with my signature on the autopsy report. At least it got me and my crew off world.
Don't think we are done yet. We still have our secret weapon. We are coming back to screw you Treece.

-Baron Harveset Bowman MD.

All About The Games

Here is a brief intro to the games I am currently involved in:

Travelers: Second Chances in the Spinward Marches
A collection of ex-pirates, ex-marines, and retired doctors start a new life aboard the small space freighter Pleasant Voyage. Always a step behind on their mortgage payments, the crew has to decide just how far they are willing to go to keep their boat afloat.
So far we have managed to make some enemies by being particularly callus when there was no need. But we have made our mortgage payments, and that is what matters.
I play the on-the-verge-of-senility Doctor Harveset Bowman.

True20: Aire'Nevahn
A fantasy game in a class of its own. In a world full of Rihnoats and secret factions, a group of strangers are thrown together with the common goal of getting away from the people that are trying to kill them. The plot is thick and complicated. Everyone seems to have their own angle.
In this adventure I play Mr. Wells, the proper and inexplicably English Butler. On the occasional side quest in the same setting, I play Germic, the half-halfing-orc with a friendly and trusting disposition.

GURPS: Supernatural
A cross between Supernatural and Buff the Vampire Slayer. A group of three friends always seem to find themselves in the middle of some supernatural trouble. Learning some of these arts themselves, they battle freaky mayors, sinister sherifs and the occasional serial killer.
I play Charles (Chuck) Worthington III, a young version of Jiles. Although currently young Chuck has his neck snapped and isn't much good to anyone.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Werewolves are the guardians of earth and her spirit. The story follows a group of cubs who are forming their own pack. So far nothing in their rite of initiation has gone too well.
I haven't gotten to much of a handle on the character I am playing yet. He will eventually become a taoist sotryteller, but at the moment he is just young, awkward and confused.

Theme and Setting

Moving to a new city can be an adventure. But it you don't get yourself out and meet people, you can find yourself sitting along in your new apartment trying to ward off cabin fever. Sitting on the floor, I might add, as you might not have enough money for proper furniture.

My solution to the uncomfortable floor problem is some good old fashioned pen and paper RPGs.

There is something about sitting back and playing some games with folks that causes almost instant comradery. There is nothing like slaying a few monsters with people to get to know them.

Finding a game to get into was far less difficult than I thought it would be. A little bit of searching online found me some gaming communities in my area with some open games. Actually, finding a game to get into was so easy that I am now in more games than I have time for.

Having previously tried and failed miserably at maintaining a blog as a way of keeping in touch with friends and family, I have decided to give a new approach a shot. Instead of keeping people posted about the mundane aspects of my life, I will keep on topics that interest me and that I care to write about. Mostly this will be pen and paper RPGs with the occasional dash of other local flavor thrown in.

Hopefully that will let people feel in touch with my life while keeping me posting.