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.