HeroQuest 2 with mom

It has been a while. A long while. But I'm still out there! I just haven't played solo or used Mythic *that* much lately. I have been involved in quite a few RP sessions with a friend though (using Pathfinder mostly), and it might lead to new posts.

For now, I wanted to mention a new attempt at playing with parents, my mom in this case.

During my last vacation, I thought it'd be fun trying a game again, and since I don't see my mom often, it's also a way to "have done something together". I had the Mutants & Masterminds 3rd edition with me, as well as HeroQuest 2. Superheroes definitely NOT being her cup of tea, HQ was the only plausible solution... and it's generic enough that I would be able to do mostly anything with it, right?

So I tried to find something that she could actually enjoy and approve. She does not like violence, nor much of fantastic stuff. The last time I managed to make her play through a pulpish adventure and I'll suppose that's the most she'd accept in that regard (and only if it barely has anything weird and not too much combat, gosh ^^;). After a while of discussing it, I suddenly came up with something: hikers!

The Hikers

Simple enough: we would both play as guides for a group of hikers. This definitely makes us PCs, with responsibility and, no doubt, a heap of trouble ahead :). And yes, we would play. That is, I also decided I wanted to play along rather than GM for one person. In retrospect, it might be better to fully GM a game once when one doesn't know the system, but eh ^^;... So this means we used Mythic to ask questions, and a on-the-fly made up system with tables to generate trouble.

As such, I also hoped she could contribute to the content by providing ideas for the tables. She did, but I realized at that point she had trouble just coming up with things. I insisted a bit and we did manage to fill out tables appropriately. I also decided it would be fun to create two hikers each, in the simplest way possible: an occupation/archetype and two personality traits. Here's what we ended up with.

The four tourists:

• Judith, the pessimistic but helpful student
• Marianne, the young ecology-oriented idealist
• Ronald, the fat and disrespectful American tourist (ahh, clichés...)
• Charles-Edouard, the whiny but physically fit bourgeois

They were actually randomly generated out of a list of archetypes and traits we had provided. And yes, the lists were meant to give up trouble-prone people, of course.

The guides

They were created using the on-the-fly method HQ2 provides. It seemed the best option to avoid bogging down things from the start. And I knew mom would have trouble creating a complete character beforehand. Actually, I would have too, since it's not my usual setting.

Of note for HQ connoisseurs, I mark Masteries as "+" instead of the weird W. That symbol is just something I never managed to grok. I actually dislike the whole "12W2" notation, but eh ^^;

Nicolas "Nico" Bourget

(played by me)

32yo, short brown hair, not well shaven, wearing sandals and sporting a generally relaxed outfit and attitude.

• Hiking guide 13+3 = 16
• Diplomacy 17+7 = 4+
• Motivation: Regain confidence after "the Incident" 13+5 = 18
• First Aid 13+2 = 15
• Flaw: Weak against trouble 4+
• English Language 13+3 = 16

I admit I don't remember if he got any of these along the way or if I just came up with them as we established the first scene (HQ2 on-the-fly mode requires only 2 traits and 1 flaw I believe). Also, English because we were playing French guides.

Motivation and Flaw explained: Nico was a regular guide until a recent incident where his group got lost and injured in the process of getting back home. This made him lose confidence in his abilities and he had to stop for months. Just now, he's about to go back into the fray with his first group since that Incident. He really wants... needs this to succeed. But as such, he's also afraid something will go wrong and bring the trauma back up.

Ninon "Ninette" Charette

(played by mom)

40yo, light brown hair, hiking shoes, shorts, hat, shirt. Definitely a more "pro" look than Nico.

• Hiking guide 13+5 = 18
• Survival 17+5 = 2+
• Flaw: Bad direction sense 2+  (yeah, I know, isn't that great for a guide? XD)
• NOT a pushover 13
• Cheery 13+5 = 18

I'm pretty sure she had no specific backstory and I was not going to force it on mom, so...

The Game

Admittedly it's a bit blurry since this took place a few weeks ago, but I'll try to remember and not any HQ-related comments along the way.

We started with an intro scene which I deemed necessary to bring to life our characters and the hikers. This didn't use any of our tables. I remember we were not terribly inspired and I was already feeling that "blank page" feeling Mythic gives me at times.

Scene 1

From there, we had planned to have three random scenes before the epilogue and we went and generated the first one: Stream, Fall(ing), Fog. The group had come upon a clearing with a stream gently flowing among the trees. What a quiet little place! Oh but some fog had come up as we went.
I generated who would be "falling" since it was to become the main trouble for the scene. It fell (ha!) to Charles-Edouard to trip on a rock as he crossed the stream. Slip, splash, oh dear. C-E is NOT happy. This is NOT a good hike. We are NOT good guides! Why bring us here? Wasn't there a safer way? Couldn't you warn me about the dangers of this stream?!

That's when we switched to HQ2 for the first time. HQ works by establishing the scene (done), reaching a conflict (done) and defining goals for each party. Charles-Edouard, our antagonist, is out to discredit the guides to shift the shame off himself. Nicolas wants to keep the fuss to a minimum as not to spoil the mood. We then define the difficulty of this obstacle in a very abstract and narrative fashion: based on previous events and the current "feel" of the story. Since we've just started, we're on neutral ground and pick the average difficulty which is 14.

Now how this works is that Charles-Edouard, the obstacle, rolls against 14. It is as if he suddenly gained a "Being an Annoying Jerk" ability at that rating, for the purpose of the scene. You could also say The Plot itself gained an "Obstacle" ability at that rating. Again, it's very abstract: the system doesn't care to explain what "14" truly entails, nor whether an opponent is truly skilled or whatever... it's really just "plot power". Moreover, the roll isn't made against Nicolas for now. It's d20 VS 14 (rolling low is better).

On the other side, Nicolas will be rolling d20 VS his most appropriate ability. I picked Diplomacy. It's at 4+, meaning he's rolling against 4, and will bump the result up later thanks to his Mastery (+). If the opposition rating had had a Mastery, they would have cancelled each other out.

I don't have the exact rolls but Nico failed the overall conflict. This could, for example, mean he rolled 10, over his 4, making his attempt a success (failure, bumped to success by Mastery) and that The Plot rolled 5, making it a success too. If you compare both results, success VS success has the lowest roll win. The Plot has 5, so it gets the upper hand and earns a Marginal Victory.

This also means it's a Marginal Defeat for Nico, and it means he gets some lingering penalty. I decided that C-E's rant, while supposedly uncalled for, manages to raise a few good points about the hike so far and cracks the group's confidence overall. Trust in Nico as a guide is weakened and he takes a -3 penalty to any future roll where trust is important.

Scene 2

After more walking and a slightly heavy mood, we find ourselves stepping careful along a mountain path, next to a dangerous drop. We randomly got "Storm" as color for the scene but forgot to use it, oops. As for our trouble this time, it's "Lost Object", meaning one of the tourists loses something. We randomly generate who, and... it's Charles-Edouard again, joy!

This time, he managed to have his cellphone fall out of his chest pocket as he was tying up his shoes. And since luck is on our side, it's fallen off the path, down to a flat chunk of rock jutting out from the cliff side below. Once again he gets all pissy and wants to blame us for this. We get into a very similar conflict as before except this time Ninon is getting fed up with his attitude and joins Nico in trying to shut him up. I believe we managed to get a Marginal Victory out of this, finally making a point. As in other systems, I like to treat "near successes" as "yes, but..." situations. For this, I imagined the whiner did not succeed in blaming us for his own carelessness, but managed to have us help him get the cellphone back. We were very insistent that he got down there. We would be holding him with ropes.

I thought this would make another nice opportunity for trouble and turned it into a challenge. This time, C-E is not our opponent anymore (he wants this to succeed), and so it's The Plot against us, clearly this time :). The Plot wants something bad to happen / us not to get the cellphone back.

Thankfully, this resulted in a Marginal Victory for us, but since it was a group challenge (Nico & Ninon), we could each get different results. Ninon failed her own roll badly and ended up with a lingering penalty of -3. It was decided that she hurt her arm as she was pulling C-E back up. This would impact any physical actions using that arm.

Scene 3

Since we had forgotten about the storm, we decided to have it in this scene, saying it had been building up across the previous scene. This time, we find ourselves in a pine forest, following a trail. But... the path is blocked! And... someone's phobia comes into play!

How we interpreted this is that the storm had gotten quite bad and lightning hit a tree which fell across the path. Also, our (randomly rolled) American friend happens to be scared shitless by storms. Woop!

At that point we had two separate challenges going: Nico was gonna try to reason with the tourist while Ninon was going to try and find an alternate path for us to keep going. Also, I don't remember when exactly, but I tried to use First Aid to reduce Ninon's hurt arm penalty. I failed thoroughly and added to her penalty. SWEET...

So, reasoning the tourist does not go well, even using English to reassure him in his native language: he's so scared he does not listen to me (lalalala!) and even reflex-punches me in the face as I try to hold his shoulder. Nico ends up shaken, with a -6 penalty. Things are just going down the pooper too much for him now and he's losing hope fast.

What about Ninon? Not doing much better! She searches around but rain and lack of light make it very difficult. She ends up giving up and coming back to the group, also starting to lose it (-3 penalty).

At that point, things are looking pretty grim. Will our guides find a way out? Narratively, HQ2 was doing its job: we started with average difficulty and got failures and successes. Suddenly though, we kept getting bad stuff happening (possibly also because of penalties). HQ2 variable difficulty system meant that at this point, things were going to get easier so we could possibly get out of it, coming out of hell in time for the climax.

And that's what happened: Ninon tried her hand at cheering up the American and it did work out! Then one of us (can't remember) also managed to find a path we had missed up till now and we were able to lead the group out of the forest.

Epilogue

Admittedly I don't quite remember what we had for the epilogue. It was getting late and I wanted to stop things at that point I think, so we might have made it very short: we reached the rendez-vous point and left our tourists. Things could have gone better, but we had soldiered through.

The System

So, HeroQuest 2 uh? Well, it was... special. I had been eyeing the game for a long while because it looked really original and not bogged down in specific contextual rules àla d20. Also loved what I saw of character creation: absolute freedom. I like absolute freedom. I was a bit scared of the abstract level, though.

Now that's I've gone through, I can say it's not bad, but I don't know if it's good either. It definitely has flaws. It feels like a very good idea only somewhat well executed. Of course, part of it might come from me not knowing the system, doing mistakes and so on. Since it's such an "alien" among RPGs, I'm pretty sure I missed stuff or misused concepts.

One big thing I realized as I wrote this is that I don't remember using the penalties that much, even though we had plenty of them. I don't know if lingering penalties are to be used everytime one fails a challenge, or only if "it makes sense". In this game, I had them every time. This does mean our characters were technically bogged down by them. And yet, I have this memory of ignoring most of them because our chances of success were already pretty low. It felt like we were losing more than winning a lot of time. I actually made the "up/down" chart they have in the rules and we went down quite a bit towards the end (scene 3 mostly).

On the other hand, I appreciate how the system gives you an abstract result (marginal victory, complete defeat, etc...) and lets you interpret the how of it. Penalties are also free form: you decide its representation based on what you failed at and what makes sense... and then you apply them to tasks where it would make sense that they impede your progress. Since you pick things that make sense, it remains logical. And it's also very adaptable to various settings and tones. What makes sense in an epic space opera might not in a gritty noir investigation.

I did not use the Extended Contest rules here, partly because I wanted things to go quick (it had to be a one-shot) and because the example they give in the book is....... underwhelming. It takes a LOT of time, and yet looks boring as hell. I've read similar opinions on the web, so it seems something might be wrong with these. It's sad too, because it looks like it has potential.

I believe Augments were used a few times (you make a sub-challenge to help your main ability with another ability). It's an interesting mechanic, but I barely touched it so I don't have strong feelings about it.


Overall conclusion then? I don't know if the system is really for me. Parts of it is. The philosophy itself might grow on me, but it's difficulty to get into (I love narrative systems, and yet I keep having simulationist reflexes -- mostly I want things to make sense). While narrative, it still has quite a few rules to keep in mind and, a pet peeve of mine, lots of tables. Thankfully a few of these can be memorized easily.

I think the biggest issue with HQ2 is that it relies on the GM to know precisely what's best for the game at any time and which sub-systems to use to make the most out of it (simple challenge? group challenge? extended contest?). If the GM makes the wrong choice, I have the feeling it can be catastrophic. It's a system that would deserve a LOT of examples. Long actual play examples with mechanics and choices explained. Though I'm scared the extended contest example is just that... I really hope they failed at it and the system can actually do much better than that.

Mythic Chartless

I keep mentioning how I don't use Mythic by-the-book and most of my hacks are about adding or removing 10%. So here's an explanation of how I do Mythic rolls.

At first, I used the Fate Chart as provided, but it quickly dawned on me that I was annoyed by needing such a thing just to ask Mythic questions. So far, the good points of the chart I see in the long run are:

• It gives you the extreme results numbers
• It uses a curve that makes wide rank differences less potent

But I don't see these as incentive enough to keep using the Chart.


How I do it now:

• I start at 50% (or a 50/50 rank if you will)
• I add or remove 10% per rank difference between a skill and the difficulty (or another skill if it's a resisted question), giving a Target Number
• I roll the d100 and look if I'm below or equal the Target Number (if so, it's a Yes, otherwise No)
• I quickly check if I'm below 10 or above 90 (easily noticeable) and unless the Target Number was quite far from the average 50%, I consider it an Extreme Yes/No
• If the TN is like 80 or 90%, it's a matter of adding +2% for each 10% shift from the average to know if I have an Extreme answer or not. It's not instant, but the case rarely comes up for me anyway... and I'm not too sad if I've missed a few Extreme answers here or there. Most of the time I eyeball it anyway.

What I like with this method is that as long as I have a d100, I can ask Mythic questions. Here's an example:

Does the archer shoot the apple in the tree?
We start at 50%
It's a small object and a bit of a distance away. Let's remove 20% because of difficulty. We're at 30%.
Our archer has the Bow skill at rank 3, which is +30%. We're at 60%.
There, we can roll our d100 : 25. Below 60, so it's a Yes, he does hit the apple. Woop!

If I had rolled 6, being obviously below 10, I would have known it was an Extreme Yes. Maybe he shoots three apples with that single arrow. If it had been 95, above 90, it would have been an Extreme No, and our archer would not be able to sit for a few days.
Finally, if he had been right next to the apple, it might have been a chance rating of 90%, in which case I might have been more careful with rolls below 20 and rolls near 100 (eyeballing it, 98 and above would be an Extreme No in that case?)


So there! That's how I do it. I have the nagging feeling I'm missing something cool about the Chart given how everyone seems to love it. If anyone could tell me what it is :)

GMing with Mythic - Player Emulation

Today I tried something new I've been meaning to try for a while: emulating players with Mythic.

The concept is rather simple. You act as the GM and you host an adventure for X characters whose decisions won't be made by you, but by Mythic. The good thing is that it allows one to use premade modules, which is a nice change from having to imagine everything based on Mythic's answers. The "bad" thing is that it's just as tiring, if not more (for some reason), and it's a bit sad to see your characters escape your control (after all, you still have to create them, yet not control them).

Systems

Even worse is that I decided to try yet another system hack. I made a mix of PDQ# and Mythic. PDQ# is great in that a character ends up looking something like this:

Gruff, dwarf
Past: Senior Mechanics of his clan +2
Race: Dwarf +2 (techniques: stone cunning) (note: this is an addition of mine, races as a trait)
Motivation: Become a legendary dwarf +2
Main Forte: Warrior +4 (techniques: warhammer, brutal, charge, shield, thrown axes)
Prosthesis +2

Foibles: Overconfident, Mechanical prosthesis


Bam, that's it, you're done. No need for detailed equipment (obviously this one has a warhammer, a shield, probably some armor and some mechanical tools...), no need for detailed skills or feats or strengths or whatever (dwarves have darkvision, resist poisons and so on? that's all assumed under the "Dwarf +2" forte)
Techniques are (usually) linked to a forte and give a bonus if an action includes them somehow.

I've oversimplified things for my own hack, so it ends up going something like this:
Base chances are always 50%, modified by task difficulty. Any applicable forte gives a bonus rank (+10%). Any applicable technique also gives a bonus rank.

Mythic note: this is another of my hacks to Mythic. I don't use the Fate Chart. I just add or subtract 10% per rank. I'm pretty sure it messes up stuff here or there, but it's still fun.

Say Gruff wants to bash a door with his warhammer with brutal strikes. The door is somewhat strong, so I give a penalty of 2 ranks (-20%). He can use his Warrior forte for a bonus of 2 ranks (+20%) (I know, it says +4 but to fit Mythic I had to divide every PDQ value by 2). Since he's using his warhammer, his technique is valid (+10%). He's also doing it like a madman, so brutal goes too (+10%). He ends up at 50(base)-20+20+10+10 = 70% chances of making good damage to the door. With goblins, who are admittedly less sturdy than a door, it's more like 90%... Yeah, Gruff is a basher :)

What's great is that it's easy to create characters based on a concept... and it's easy to define bonuses to any action. As PDQ does it, you also get easy bonuses as long as you describe things the right way. The brutal technique will almost always give a bonus here, unless Gruff is trying to bash things silently (*chuckles*). It's not for powergamers, for sure :)

The Adventure

I ran a bit of the Dungeon of Akban, found in the free Quickstart for Sword and Wizardry. If you plan to play this adventure, stop reading now...



It was pretty difficult at first to switch from player to GM while still using Mythic. I had to think of what I would describe to these virtual players/characters... or in other words, what the characters themselves would see. Admittedly, this is only difficult because I've never GMed any D&D :).
Then, instead of deciding what the characters would do, I had to see what actions they might do and weight them for a question. I used 50/50, 33/33/33 and 25/25/25/25 when there were multiple possibilities. Sometimes, I had 50/40/10 because some options seemed much more logical than others (adventurers explore the room they're in before running to the new doors, right?)

The group of four (the dwarven warrior, a human pirate-adventurer, a gnomish alchemist and an elven swamp witch) started by exploring the first room. They happened upon a strange statue with magical flames. Here again, I had to ask if they were intrigued by the statue or not... They were. Were they intrigued by the flames? No... So they looked for some secrets hidden by the statue... and found none (I rolled the dice for them, as a GM would probably ask for rolls to keep some mystery as to wether there *is* something there or not... assuming clearly failed rolls would mean they were none the wiser).
At times, I had no idea what they might do, so I used Complex Questions (using a dictionary). It gave me some contradictory actions at times... They seemed uninterested by the flames... and a complex question just led them back to them... oh well! So they examined the flames some more... tried a stick in them... which burned... and then they got bored with it and tried the doors.

The door was chosen randomly, of course... Further directions too. They ended up in a room with giant ants which had digged tunnels from below. That's where Mythic did interesting things. As player, coming face to face with three giant ants, I might have not insisted much... or just attacked with simple tactics.
I asked if the group fleed, waited or attacked. They waited. They saw the ants didn't seem to mind them from where they were, but they had been clearly spotted. I asked if they fleed or attacked and, despite a low chance, they decided to attack. But next, the group closed the door (one of these contradictory Complex Questions). I asked if they now went back or had an attack plan instead, since they *were* about to attack... They had a plan indeed. But what?
I supposed they were going to boost themselves before the attack (among other things)... and asked which of the alchemist or the witch would do something. The alchemist apparently had an idea. Since I didn't describe any equipment linked to her skill (I went for a very freeform game àla FATE v3) she could come up with anything from acids to sleepy pills. Another Complex Question later, I had the answer: she would try to recreate the chemical scents used by ants to recognize each other, danger zones and such... Wow!

I assume most GMs, especially in a regular D&D game would just say "no way!". But hey, it seemed fun. I made the roll difficult but it succeeded anyway... and our gnome ended up with a vial of ant scent which everyone promptly spread on their bodies. I decided, as the GM, that it would only make the ants neutral.
The group went back in, searched the room without being bothered by the ants and ended up with gold pieces and a magic scroll (generated by my newly acquired D&D DM Guide :D). Lucky! I asked what they did then. I assumed players would usually be intrigued by the tunnels, so I included this in the possibilities. They were indeed... but thankfully not too much (I might have rigged that :P... didn't want to stray too far from the module... eh, railroading virtual players).

But what happened next was yet another surprise: apparently, they were not finished with chemicals. The gnome wanted to perfect her scent to make the ants friendly! I made it way more difficult but she still succeeded (really lucky roll...) so... she ended up with two friendly giant ant workers as bodyguards. I limited it by saying it was only for her, and would only last 6 minutes (1d10 mins). But wow...

The adventure went on with the discovery of a room full of goblins, their easy dispatching by the dwarf and the human pirate (no ants were used because of a very narrow corridor). Admittedly, it was 1) too easy, 2) rather boring because of this, 3) I had issues with my hack and went back to something closer to Mythic for the combat... which made this part quite frustrating. I was also getting quite tired by that point, which didn't help...


Conclusion

It was an interesting experience. I don't know if I really want to resume it later or if I will go back to what I did for Hollow's Last Hope. I mean, it's *really* fun to come up with strange plans thanks to Mythic inspiration, and it does feel like you have players with crazy ideas, but it's definitely not as fun as being in there and discovering things as you go or, at least, reacting to some rare Mythic surprises when playing through a premade module.

RP with Parents - UP, Part 2

Contrary to my belief, we did end up playing the second session. Sadly, my mom was actually pretty tired and she had trouble focusing. She was also trying to think up a follow-up to the story bit she made up during the first session and, I think, lost a lot of energy/concentration on this. Once I knew, I told her she didn't *have* to... Mythic would help us build upon her seed. She just felt obliged to finish what she had started alone :|

Note: I haven't given details on what has actually happened in the story so far (nor even who the characters are), to avoid spoiling the movie "UP". I'll continue this way for now, but I might make a summary of the whole adventure in a clearly spoiler-marked post.

After some random obstacle from Mythic, the heroes actually reached their destination! And yet, things didn't seem finished. A bit of thinking revealed a new goal for my mom's character... but my dad's was pretty much done with his adventure and I was scared he would have nothing to do for the rest of the session.
Thankfully, that's when Mythic threw us a bone to gnaw at: a new character! It ended up being mine, meaning I would finally leave my GM seat for a player seat, leaving the obstacles fully to Mythic. My character gave an opportunity for my mom's to reach his goal... but they would have to stick together first. We used the occasion to bring my dad's character back in, too, and the adventure went on.

Not that much happened after that and we didn't have much time left. Obviously, we wouldn't be able to finish the new goals in a single session, so we just stopped at a quiet point. I seriously doubt we will ever finish this adventure either (it's hard to resume months after...) but it was quite fun while it lasted.

I also notice it's near impossible to describe anything interesting without giving details, so... I'll make a spoilery post later where I explain exactly what happened during the adventure.

RP with Parents - UP

As my parents were here for the holidays, I couldn't help but get them into another roleplay session. At first we were going to continue the pulp adventures started during our last vacation, but then we watched UP, by Disney/Pixar. What happened is that we didn't like the movie that much... but we liked its beginning very much. After discussing this, I suddenly exclaimed: "I know! We should reset their story to when we stopped liking it and do our own version by playing the characters, and use Mythic to guide us." And that's what we did yesterday night.

Technicals

I didn't want to bog down enthusiasm with rules like the FATE ones we used last time, and since I've been into the Mythic rules lately, I went with a variation of these. The result was a mix of FATE, Mythic, Risus and recently discovered Lady Blackbird.
The characters were described through two attributes: Body and Mind, 0 being average, 1 above average, -1 below average, etc... These work like Mythic attributes. Then, I went "Risus"/"FATE v3" and simply described the characters with little sentences such as "Wannabe Explorer" and "Fan of that Cool Explorer Guy". It was pretty easy to find four or five short phrases describing each main character.
At first, I gave these ratings (1, 2, ...) but then I discovered Lady Blackbird that very day and used their system: if one of the phrases fits the situation, add a bonus rank to your roll (+10% with Mythic). If you're trying to calm down a wild animal and you have "Best Friend of all Animals" as a description of your character, you'll start with your Mind attribute and add a rank. If you have "Explorer of the Wild", you'll add another rank because, well, it's a wild animal.
Of note: I picked something from FATE v3 in that some of the phrases were goals and motivations rather than skills, just like Aspects might be. This would yield bonus ranks if your action happened to follow one of these goals directly.

Apart from game mechanics, Mythic was used to generate obstacles and the scene system was used with its characters and threads lists.

How it went

Pretty good! It seemed like everyone actually enjoyed the session more genuinely than it might have been last time. The "describing phrases" system was grasped very quickly and dice rolls were easy to prepare: pick Body or Mind depending on wether it was a physical or intellectual challenge, then go through the character description and add a rank for each fitting phrase. This would give us xx% chances of success, followed by the d100 roll of course.
I also kept Mythic's "Extreme Yes/No" rolls which gave us some interesting surprises.

Mythic's GM emulator was mostly used by myself, since I didn't have any character to play at first (I was waiting for a new NPC to appear and take its role). I asked questions that I hoped would yield some obstacles or fun situations. Following my lead, my parents soon started asking questions of their own. Furthermore, my mother came up with a story of her own at some point and I let her explain it. I only stopped her after some good exposition to keep her surprised by having Mythic decide a few of the finishing touches.
From that point on, though, Mythic took a nap because everyone was getting a good idea of where things were going. I tried to push Mythic forward once or twice to avoid having a single player tell the whole story, but it felt forced. I did use it still to settle some little disputes ("The next room is bigger" "Uhh, I'd have thought it would be smaller" -> "Is the room bigger? *roll*")

The GM emulator helped us a few times with its random events. Once it got us out of a rather uneventful situation and later it created tension where a character had to hide from a threat. The characters list was also used for these events. The threads list was updated with mysteries encountered during the story but didn't come up through events so far.

Considering how things went once everyone was comfortable with the story and mechanics, I think my parents would actually work better with a story-game. Probably not one with systems that push players to create stories within a framework (FATE Aspects were, I think, too restricting and meta), but one that allows everyone to chip in with bits of story. Heck, they might enjoy not *being* the characters but controlling them all "from above", so to speak. Collaborative storytelling... I know I found a game that used chips that players would use to introduce facts in a story and that could be payed off by others if they didn't like it... I bet this would work well for them.

The future

We're supposed to resume this game this afternoon but I don't know if it will be possible. My parents are leaving tomorrow and they're already tensed up (one day of car trip). If it keeps up like this, they won't be in the right mood for it and prone to bickering. We'll see...

In any case, I'll study the simplified system we used as I might enjoy it for my own games. It's easy to describe characters and very easy to find out bonuses.

Using Mythic with a module

God I'm slow... Anyway, here's the first part of how I tried using a published adventure with Mythic and... got some issues at some point.

The adventure is the freely available (PDF) Hollow's Last Hope from Paizo. It's meant for D&D 3.5 with about four level 1 characters. I'll be spoiling things, obviously, so if you plan to play the adventure at some point and want all the surprises, you might not want to read this... I will try to keep to generalities most of the time, though, just because someone might want to try and solo it too.

I played with the four premade characters of the module, which I adapted to the FATE system (I hadn't bought the Mythic RPG rules back then). There's Valeros the fighter, Kyra the cleric, Seoni the sorceress and Merisiel the rogue.

The game starts with the PCs entering the town of Falcon's Hollow.
My group came in with a merchant whom they escorted. They got their salary and went on their merry way. I followed the module suggestion of linking at least a PC to someone from the town. Valeros thus knew a friend who he hadn't seen for years. Since this was not detailed in the module, Mythic was a good aid and my imagination was free to roam.

The friend's house hadn't changed and Valeros knocked. Follows the introduction of said friend's spunky young daughter, the bad surprise that said friend has caught a bad sickness and the whole town is actually touched. The local priests can't seem to do anything about it but the local herborist provides some potions to soothe the pain. It doesn't cure anything though.

All this previous part was made up as I went, and since I was writing on the computer for notes, I actually started writing a dialogue for all the characters and it was quite fun. It allowed me to develop personalities too. Mythic wasn't used here, but the game system was a few times.

Mythic interrupt! Yeah, we love these :P Absolutely outside of the original module boundaries, I came up with a bounty hunter stopping the group because he recognizes his quarry among them. Except he's wrong. Mythic was used here to define the bounty hounter (gender, minions, ...) and his actions. Random event! ... which I interpret as him suddenly getting the hots for one of the group ladies (I mean, "Create / Love"... c'mon!) and totally losing his cool. Some stuttering later, he's gone, but not before promising to return.
He was obviously added to the NPC list but hasn't popped up ever since. Which is sad.


This is where things went wrong. I tried to continue the adventure later, and wanted to try recording it as audio instead of typing (I don't even know why...) I was also tired, which didn't help with my patience and imagination.
Sadly, in a fit of exasperation, I deleted the recordings, so I have only my vague memories as proof of what went wrong. I remember having the group try to go to the herborist to learn more about the plague, but then fail somehow... and look elsewhere. This is where I went off the road of the module and tried to have Mythic help me. The biggest problem was that I still tried to keep to what the module explained about the town and the people in there, particularly the fact that there is a church with a main priestess and her acolytes. All I remember is that I was lost as to what to ask Mythic... I spent way too long reading the module to pick up details on the priestess (not much) and... I just gave up.

It gave me a cold shower at the time and I stayed cleared of the module for a long while. But it's obvious the context and I were at fault, not Mythic.

Thankfully, I ended up wanting to try again, forgetting about the mishap and starting over from when they tried to reach Laurel. By then, I had an eye condition that prevented me from looking at a computer screen for more than a few minutes in the bad days... so I wasn't going to type things... and I had to go audio once more. I was *very* wary of this, but it ended up going much better than I expected.

One thing I did was pull up the Neverwinter Nights game editor and select some audio background (music and ambient). It helped tremendously to set the mood and actually forced me to imagine the scenes to select the most appropriate sounds. I also tried to steer the story according to the module rather than push it offroad (I'm pretty sure that's what happened with the priestess part...) What I also did was switch to Mythic RPG. I converted the characters and used these rules for the rest of the game.

I'll listen to my recordings and make other posts sometime... soon... hopefully. But to sum it up: it went very well, with very cool surprises overall.

Summary of past weeks

Again, it's been a long while... but I actually have lots to say about various things! I realize I should get started on them before I get overwhelm and post nothing at all ^^;

I'll have something to say about Mythic since I finally went back to trying premade modules played through Mythic. My first attempt had not been utterly satisfying but this new one went wayyy better. I don't think I have used any particularly clever trick to make it work, but I will describe things nonetheless, just in case. I keep screaming about lack of examples, so I better provide one ;)

I've also started a lunch-pause solo game at work and was surprised at what Mythic threw at me. I'll probably say a word about this one too soon.

Lately I've been reading through Planescape setting material as I took a new slap by Planescape Torment (which I've yet to finish!). The setting is just soooo different than the usual without being *totally* something else... Hopefully, I'll launch myself into a solo game of it soon, too.

And finally, I've gone back to Neverwinter Nights. Following my current obsession, I looked for Planescape modules. The first one was a big disappointment, but I still have another one to try. The other thing is that I suddenly wanted to play a Tiefling... and a properly stated one! I used LETO, character editor, to do it, adding custom items to simulate things the game wouldn't do on its own (racial resistances and powers). So far, so good :D... I'm actually going through the Original Campaign (/w Aribeth), which I found very boring the first time around (stopped at Chapter 2), and am now enjoying quite a bit. I'm roleplaying the character in my head (more or less) and try to do clever stuff with my familiar (oh yeah, she's a Sorcerer-Rogue tiefling) and... I can't explain why exactly, but I'm getting a very good vibe from the game.


I'll go into the Mythic games next time!

In the meantime...

Wow, uh... it's been a while!

No, the blog isn't utterly dead, but I have not found interest nor courage to post about new things in detail. So here's a summary post instead!


Tired

First thing of note : I've been veeeery tired lately. Might be my allergy, a lack of vitamin or something else. In any case, it definitely affects my output.


DBZ game + Mythic

It's a strange thing but I have been having fun with it! I picked up Dragon Ball Z - Budokai Tenkaichi 2, a fighting game on PS2 which I've played quite enough to be almost bored with (I know the story from the manga, the anime and playing the game multiple times).
And then it occured to me I could use Mythic to create a whole new story. Instead of using a RPG ruleset, I'd push the story towards brawls and use the game (which is customizable to an extent) to play through the fights.

It worked rather well, providing a pace very similar to the source, with surprisingly lots of talking and searching around and not that many fights (in spite of my pushing!). What I really liked in the end was how it breathed life into a game I barely played anymore (a few fights once every two months) and how losing a fight is actually a possibility with an impact on the story (the provided story mode, of course, has you retry until you succeed... even when the characters are supposed to lose in the story).

I might apply this to other games in the future.


Planescape Torment

Got back into it after a lot of thinking back to how fun it was but how I never finished it. I had a renewed blast dicovering Sigil and its incredible setting and meeting so many interesting characters. Sadly, after some time, the game seems to throw a lot more dungeons at you than story and it's already making me less motivated :/. Hopefully I can muster enough motivation to go through them to grab at the better bits.


Planescape

Following my new Torment craze, I gave a more extended look at the original Planescape setting (AD&D 2e). I'd really like to get the original box and/or the book about Sigil but man have these gone rare and pricey (double and more the original price for new or almost new quality).
I hate this rarity thing :|...


Random dungeons

It seems I have finally found the game to play when I'm too tired for the rest! I went with something strongly inspired by Raiders of the Ruins of Kanthe, removed things, added new ones and ended up with something fun (for me at least).
RotRoK (grrmf) goes with a simple idea : create your own random tables ahead of the game (10 monsters, 10 room features, 10 types of traps, ...) and roll on them to generate your dungeon content.

Where Kanthe pre-generated the dungeon layout, I do room by room generation. Where Kanthe uses a pool matching system, I use a "dungeon skill" one (dungeon has Treasure +2, roll dice + 2 and try to beat a medium number; success means there's a treasure here). But the rest is pretty much all Kanthe and I'm probably going to grab a few more things from it like item generation.

The great thing about the core concept is that even though you're the one writing the tables, you have no idea when or IF something will appear during your crawl. And you don't know in what context. The mix of room types, monsters, their power, the treasures you might find, wether doors are trapped or locked, and so on and so on, makes for actual surprises, and yet does not have to feel terribly vanilla. The dungeon is what you make of it: good tables should end up giving good adventures.

Also, to avoid too much randomness and add a bit of logic in there, I associate features and other things with dungeon skill bonuses. You're more likely to find a treasure in a chest for example, so the Treasure roll is boosted for that feature. You are more likely to encounter opposition if you hear strange noises coming from the next rooms, so the Opposition roll is boosted.

The mapping is still rather random and it's certainly not worth a Mythic-run session, but it lets my brain rest by giving me clear cut answers to "what's in there?" and yet pleasing me, since I devised the answers beforehand.

My most lucky rolling so far was a dark room where I managed to sneak through, avoiding four goblin archers who could have had an easy shot at me through a metal portcullis.


Gutter Skypes

I have also gone back to my pre-sleep half hour of listening to the Gutter Skypes podcast. I'm very bad at going to sleep on time when I have nothing specific to do when nearing midnight, and the podcast gives me that clear cut "half an hour of fun before sleeping" (note: I split the session in half-hour parts myself; the actual stuff is usually two and a half hour long)

Oh and it IS fun. A loads of it! The Skypers have gone through games of Spirit of the Century, Starblazer, Hollow Earth Expedition, Cartoon Action Hour and Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies. The guys are hilarious, both with their asides and with their (good!) roleplaying. One of the listeners said it was "like being at the table with a group of friends" and it is utterly true. I highly recommend it!

Mythic - Location Generator

I've been meaning to make posts about what I've added to the Mythic system for my personal use. After some more tests, I think I'm ready to show what I have come up with.

It is by no means final, but my current tests were satisfying. Also, it's nothing big: I'm just reusing what Mythic taught me and presenting a new tool among the Mythic tools. Finally, I can vouch it works for me, but not that it will work for everyone :). This said, I still hope it will be of some use to others, if at least as a springboard to yet other tools for Mythic.

Quick Mythic summary - People in the know, skip to the next paragraph!

Mythic is a system for roleplaying games (primarily) that allows you to determine things out of your control through Yes/No questions and a roll of dice. It offers additional tools tailored to specific situations such as Complex Questions, Scene Management and such... It is very useful to play a tabletop RPG on your own or with an all-player team (no Game Master), and can be used for wargaming too. I find it's an interesting tool for writing inspiration too.

Generating locations

The main system

I use a system initially created to generate dungeon themes (abandoned haunted mine, forest vine labyrinth, ...), now adapted to more generic locations and certainly adaptable to other things.

My problem: while Mythic answers Yes/No and Complex questions, I quickly realized it didn't really work for me when I was trying to come up with places, rooms and dungeons. Say you're walking through a forest. You ask "do I find something peculiar while I walk?" YES. Okay... but what? If you want to be surprised and have that peculiar something be something wholly new, where do you start? What kind of questions can you ask? There are so many possibilities that I found it mind-boggling myself, and I was rather scared I would keep coming up with the same questions, hence getting dull discoveries.

My solution: simplify the process by letting chance choose what to ask about. Then keep using Mythic as usual.

The issue : it uses random tables. If anyone can think of a solution that works similarly but without random tables... please share :)

Location types

I tried to come with things that would define a location quickly, yet leave an open field of possibilities. For this, I use an initial roll on the Location Types table which follows:

Portal
Lone dwelling
Dwellings
Camp
Utility building
Structure
Plane
Water source
Obstacle
Difficult terrain
Particularity

I know I can make this table better, but for now it will do. The main idea is that types are vague enough, yet not *too* vague that there would be a thousand questions left. "Water source" is currently the type I'm less fond of as it's already a bit too precise.

Attributes

Once the type is defined, I roll three times on the Location Attributes table:

Hot/Cold
Surface/Underground
Structured/Chaotic
Light/Dark
Solid/Unstable
Toxic/Pure
Natural/Urban
Clean/Dirty
Damp/Dry
Mechanical/Mystical
Divine/Demonic
New/Old
Visible/Hidden
Easy/Hard to access
Populated/Deserted
Decorated/Sober
Good/Bad shape
Big/Small

This table is also a work in progress and some entries might be left out depending on the setting, or taken at metaphorical value. You will notice each attribute is actually a "something or something" entry. Each entry is meant to be a Mythic question and can get YES, NO but also ABSOLUTELY and NOT AT ALL answers. This gives more variety than the usual tables where you'll see "Populated" and "Deserted" as separate entries.

Function or Fact

Tests showed that even with types and attributes, I was often left wondering about what location I had really encountered. This is where I'll use a single Complex Question and either get the Function of a building or structure, or ask for a Fact about the location (it can be something the location does to people or what people do to the location... it's very context sensitive).

Examples

All the tools lay bare... time to use them!

A)

Context : A lone adventurer explores a cave. Medieval Fantasy.


I roll for Type : Utility building (this is meant to be any building with a function and since we're in a cave, I'd be tempted to say it extends to any sort of "construction")

Populated/Deserted : (98 vs 50) Not at all -> There's not a single soul here, nor has there been for a long time.
Visible/Hidden : (98 vs 50) Not at all -> I'd fathom it's actually invisible!
Lit/Dark : (9 vs 50) Absolument -> And yet it's emitting a large amount of light? I admit this is peculiar.

Given how mysterious this all is, I go on and ask for the function of this strange building :
Oppress / Riches.

Lacking context, it's a bit hard, but since I'm thinking of some medieval fantasy setting, with bits of steampunk, I imagine this to be a very well camouflaged building. It's not lit right away, but if you happen to pass in front of it while carrying riches (gold, or maybe anything metalic), it lights up and sounds an alarm.

I admit, I have no idea what this would be doing in a cave... but it's hard without context. As is, this is not my best example to date but I really wanted to do it on the fly... and 'lo! I stumble upon a case where the results are not good. The thing with Mythic and sub-tools though, is that I never know if Mythic is to blame... or my lack of imagination at the time. So, any person out there saw something else in these attributes?

B)

Same context, to see what else we can get... hopefully better.

Type : Difficult Terrain

Natural/Civilized : (17 vs 50) Yes -> Natural, it was not created by anyone.
Mechanical/Mystical : (49 vs 50) Yes -> Mechanical, since it was not created by anyone, it will just mean that it's not magical and is based on simple physics.
Decorated/Sober : (20 vs 50) Yes -> Decorated. Again, since it was not created, I will say that the terrain has some visual appeal.

Fact : Oppose / Pain
(here I picked a fact because a natural occuring is not meant to have a function... it just is)

Admittedly, this one is also very difficult for me but I have come up with something, although a bit far-fetched compared to the results : the adventurer enters a large room filled with stalagtites and stalagmites. It's a very beautiful sight as the natural formations glisten like precious stones. But the room is dangerous! Not only is it difficult to walk through (many pikes on the ground), but any loud sound will shatter the fragile structure, making for a deadly trap to the unwary.

The "fact" is the one giving me the most problems. I pushed it towards "the terrain refuses to be hurt", and that's when I thought "if anyone breaks one of the spikes, the sound makes everything crumble". Now, though, the fact could be something very indirect : the minerals of which the rock formations are made is used in alchemical potions to help ease the pain (oppose pain). Will adventurers be bold enough to pull out tools and carve bits out of it? Tink tink tink CRASH! Risky endeavour.

C)

Now here's one of my early tests. Context : a fairytale-like setting where violent conflicts are reduced to a minimum. It focuses on the employees of a magical shop, one of which, Framboise, gathers ingredients in various locations.

Type : Difficult terrain

Good/Bad shape : (17 vs 50) Yes -> Good shape
Surface/Underground : (33 vs 50) Yes (*double*) -> Surface (since these are Mythic questions, there *can* be random events on a double -- we'll get to it after the attributes)
Solid/Unstable : (28 vs 50) Yes -> Solid/Stable

The random event : PC Positive (there's only Framboise here), Expose/Enemies

Fact : Carelessness / Fear -> The terrain makes you scared to be careless, because of the consequences.

From this, I came up with a stream running through the forest, with a slightly strong current. A large log lays across, allowing passage. According to the attributes, it's good wood, solid and stable: it won't break nor roll out of the way easily. Admittedly, not much of a dangerous terrain. But the random event made this fun:

Here I used FATE to know if Framboise crossed it: yes (it was an easy roll, really, even though Framboise is all but athletic). But there goes the random event : the terrain "exposes an enemy", which is a good thing for Framboise.
Said enemy is visibly clumsy as it falls down the log into the stream, revealing its presence.

Who is it? Why was Framboise followed? Will she help this stalker out of the waters?


Conclusion

Most of my early tests were more positive than A and B. C is where it's at most of the time. That said, there are clearly still issues. I'll work on them, but I'd be glad to hear some opinions in the meantime :)

Fate Heroes - Part 2 - Gnomes

Follow up to Part 1. We left our hero, Minuteman, victorious over a group of disorganized bank robbers and running to the rescue of Man-o-War, one of his Freedom Force buddies.

Intent : Go to the St Johns church and investigate
d10 (6) : no change (I assume a permanent Chaos Factor of 5 by the way)

For the ones who don't know Mythic, the above is where you declare what the next scene should logically be, then roll a dice which result tells you if it happens as is, or with a twist (scenes can be Altered or Interrupted).

Minuteman reaches the church after a few minutes spent crossing the town.

Are there signs of conflict? No -> The church and surroundings look undisturbed.
Are there people near the church? No -> No one is explicitely at the church... just passersby.

"Odd, it is as if nothing happened!" says Minuteman with suspicion.

He tries to contact Mentor through their telepathic link.

Setting note : Mentor is an alien with mental powers (duh, uh? :p), co-creator of Freedom Force and provider of many technological wonders. For more : http://www.giantbomb.com/mentor/94-1212/

Does he reply? (very likely) Not at all

"Mentor? Mentor?! I... I don't feel the telepathic link at all anymore! What is going on?"
Minuteman is getting worried but decides to at least take a look inside the church before going back to the Freedom Fortress.

Is there something unusual inside the church? Yes
What exactly? (here I tried a random event to get an answer but it wasn't inspiring so I went back to questions)
Is the inside destroyed? Yes -> It didn't look like it from outside but the church is in a bad shape.
Does it look like the results of an explosion or hand-made destruction? No -> Furniture and statues have taken visible hits.
Is there someone visible in there? Absolutely -> There's more than one person!
Are they familiar? No
Do they look responsible for the damage? Yes -> They're still wrecking what's left standing.

What do they look like? (I tried picking a random word from the dictionary but, again, wasn't inspired, so I switched to a set of D&D monster types tables I adapted)
Came up with "Swarm Fey" -> It's a group of small humanoid creatures similar to lawn gnomes in size and garbs. They are crawling over statues, running around, smashing things and cackling. It's quite the chaotic vision!

They look busy enough and Minuteman would rather take them by surprise: he tries to sneak on the side, behind some intact benches.

Stealth vs Alertness : -1 vs 1. Not good for Minuteman!

FATE allows paying Fate Points in these cases and get either a +2 or a reroll. Problem is : you need to tag an appropriate Aspect (either of your character, of the scene or of another character). So at that point, I wanted to know more about the evil gnomes, in a slightly pushy way I admit:

Do the gnomes have an Aspect defining a focus on destruction such as "Destroy! Destroy!!!" (that could be tagged to mean they're not paying attention)? Not at all -> Obviously, it backfired ;)
Instead, they get an aspect for their "sensitive hearing". I also note to give them a few points in Alertness when I start defining their stats. In any case, Minuteman is not making this roll any better...

The steps of Minuteman echo through the church and the gnomes all turn their head at the same time, looking to the source of this noise.

Have they seen him?
Stealth vs Investigation : 1 vs 2

Yes, the gnomes have spotted Minuteman.

Do they attack? (very likely) -> Yes!
Are they 1 or 2 zones away? No -> They're near the altar while our hero is near the entrance, slightly to the side. That's 2 zones away.

Main skill of the gnomes : Melee or Athletics? No -> Athletics

Evil gnomes

Fair (+2) : Athletics
Average (+1) : Melee, Alertness

Aspects :
Sensitive hearing (invoke to notice sounds, can be tagged to confuse them with loud noises)
Creepy little brats (invoke for small size and persistence)

How many are there? 5+d6 (3) = 8 -> Two groups of 4 gnomes (+2 group bonus for each on all actions)

I don't want to go into too much detail for the actual fight, so I'll keep to the highlights. Mythic didn't have any role here, but FATE was there to provide some narrative incentive instead.

It starts with Minuteman lifting the bench he was trying to hide behind and waiting for the gnomes to come closer (2 zones is a bit far to throw items with FATE... not very superheroesy, but I'm planning to fiddle with this rule later). The gnomes all run towards our hero but (failing their Athletics checks) stumble over each other and fail to progress much.

Now that they're closer, Minuteman throws the bench on the bunch (huhu). He barely fails his roll though (gets a total of 0 which isn't enough to deal damage) and has to invoke "Might makes right!" to get some damage done, killing two gnomes (they're groups of minions so attacks "go through").
In their counterattack, none of the groups manages to get anything done to Minuteman. Worse! They fail so much that he gets spin... twice! (it's a +1 on your next attack or defense). Even though no actual damage was done on the gnomes as a result, I described it as them being roughed around, thrown against walls or crushed under boots. Just enough to keep them at bay :)

Next round, Minuteman kills two gnomes again, but has to resort to invoking "For Freedom!" (saving Man-o-War being, in a way, For Freedom... Force!) to get a +2.

Mythic was used here to know if the gnomes were artificial or organic : mechanical lawn gnomes or actual gremlin-like horrors? They turned out to be organic, so more "splortch" than "crack".

Once again, none of the gnomes manages to land a hit. Since they're minions, they can't use Fate Points until they get one through the tagging of one of their Aspects... which never happened, so... no FPs for the gnomeys.

Since the fight was getting a bit long, I really wanted to finish this quickly and used yet another Fate Point (I kept getting 0's for some reason, thanks dice!). This time, two gnomes go flying through the church, landing behind the altar.
Finally, one of the remaining gnomes clings to Minuteman's leg and gets a bite.

But it's their last action as they end up crushed in the ground the next round.

I tried to make the fight as cinematic as possible in my head, acting out status quo and even failures of the dice as positive actions anyway, just not terribly effective ones (and definitely mechanically neutral ones). I've found that doing this helps staying focused on fights (especially long ones) and gives some ideas on how to use Aspects or what kind of Maneuvers to attempts. I haven't used Maneuvers so far, but they're basically the alternative to attacks that allow you to place a new Aspect and invoke it for free once if the roll succeeds. It's especially powerful with a team of PCs.

This said, this is where I stopped so far, a few inches from the end of Scene 2. Next scene should have Minuteman going back to the Freedom Fortress... if Mythic is willing :). I might continue this during my two weeks vacation starting next week, depending on mood and other occupations.

Fate Heroes - Part 1 - Bank Robbery

The adventure proper! All mechanics will be in italics. Descriptions/narration will be in regular text.

To start this adventure, I wanted a quick set up to immediately get into something fun. Mythic (and even Fate actually) works with Scenes. Since I had an idea for how it would start, I just established it and went with it :

Freedom Force (the team of superheroes of this setting) has detected a bank robbery in progress downtown. Minuteman has been sent to deal with it.

That's it. That's my input. From now on, I use Mythic to know what happens. So I start with a bunch of questions to get an idea of the surroundings. How do Mythic questions work? You ask a yes/no question and establish a probability (Likely, No way!, etc...) Then you roll a d100 and look up the results on the Fate Chart (not related to the Fate v3 system). If the number falls under the middle point, it's a Yes. Over it's a No. And to spice things up, extreme results (very close to 0 or 100) get you an Absolutely! and a Not at all!
Let's see how it goes.

Are the bandits already leaving? (50/50) No -> They're still in the building
Is the Police here? (likely) No (double) -> The Police is not here yet!

Here I get a double (rolled 88). Usually you'd compare 8 to a "Chaos Factor" but I don't use it. For me, double = random event, always. Random events are rolled on specific tables. They give you the type and then they give you very vague words that you interpret given the context.

Random event : PC Positive, Be careful / Enemies -> The bandits haven't heard any sirens yet, so they are focusing on gathering money and not looking outside at all. They don't notice Minuteman one bit.

Are the glass doors tinted? (not sure of the word here : I mean hard to see through glass) Not at all -> got an extreme result here. The glass is crystal clear and one can perfectly see what's going on inside.

Are there many bandits in there? Yes. I roll a 2d6 and get 5, 1 = 6 bandits inside.

Do they have an apparent leader? Not at all! -> another extreme result I take as the bandits being terribly disorganized. Some of them might be tempted to turn on their pals if need be.

I get another double (99) on this question which means another random event!

Random event : Remote event, Betray / Investment -> One of the clerks, noticing how disorganized they are, tries to trick them with fake paper money.

(note : I didn't use "Remove event" properly here, as it's supposed to be something taking place quite elsewhere.... but hey, when it fires up your imagination, I call it fair game)

Do the bandits notice this? Absolutely! (double) -> Nearby bandits immediately notice it.

Random event : Ambiguous event, Create / Notoriety -> ambiguous events are meant to be "something rather irrelevant". Also, here I decided to pick a random word from a dictionary (some Mythic players use an encyclopedia or thesaurus) to get an idea about what it was. I ended up with "tour"
-> Out of nowhere, an advertisement van drives past the bank, with a booming announcement of some music band's next tour in town.

Not sure how the bandits might react to this, I ask a Mythic complex question (the Verb/Subject type you've seen for most random events so far) :
How do the bandits react? Oppress / Dreams -> The loud noise makes them jump and puts them on edge. Turning back to the clerk who tried to trick them, they get very threatening.

And that's my cue to act...

Minuteman, seeing things are getting ugly, decides to intervene, and quick! He will try to get the effect of surprise by charging through the glass doors.

Are the doors reinforced? (somewhat likely) Yes -> I use this to decide the glass Quality is not Poor (-1) but Mediocre (0)

Here I finally use FATE to roll skills and such. Crashing through glass doors will be Might (+3) vs Door Quality (0). I roll a +2 (FATE uses Fudge dice and you roll four of them, which gets you a result like so : + . . +, a plus, nothing, nothing, a plus = two plusses). This makes Minuteman's Might at +5 for this roll, against the Mediocre 0... It's a clear success and I even get spin (+3 shifts or higher over the target). Spin means it was a frank success!

Minuteman jumps through the doors bursting into many pieces, with a loud crash. He ends up in the middle of the room, met by a shocked silence. The bandits are so stunned they don't even react.

Minuteman gets a free surprise round thanks to his great roll (my decision).

He charges the thug nearest to the threatened clerk and smacks him with his staff, the Patriot.

Melee (+4) vs Thug's Quality (0) : roll -1 +4 = +3 vs 0

(note : I decided the thugs were just Mediocre, having 0 at all their stats for now)

The thug has no time to react one bit and is struck by the staff, sent rolling over the counter, on the clerk's side, knocked out. The five remaining bandits are finally getting out of their stupor.

(note : I also decided thugs would be Minions, which means they have no stress track ; one hit and they're gone)

Do some of the thugs have machineguns? Not at all! -> Actually, two of them only have knives. The others have regular guns.
Note : I decided guns would be "on par" with superheroes, while machineguns would start giving bonuses. A human with a knife, though, would get a damage malus.

So that makes one group of 2 thugs with knives and one group of 3 thugs with guns.

I roll init and get this order : Minuteman, Knives, Guns

Is one group at a distance? Yes -> random choice : the gun guys are further away


Minuteman runs towards the gun-equipped thugs, judging them more threatening for the citizens in the room.

Melee (+4) -1 (I moved to their zone) VS thug's quality (0) +1 (group bonus) : I get 4 vs -2, which gives 6 shifts for me, which is a spin (and even a double spin!).

The protector of the country moves lightning fast, no giving the thugs any time to defend. The strikes are overwhelming and three bodies drop to the ground, grunting in pain.

Note : when such weak Minions are grouped together, each stress you inflict takes one of them out. With 6 shifts, I could have beaten them up twice :)

Do the remaining thugs insist on taking on Minuteman? No

They look at each other... look at their pitiful blades... and decide a bunch of fresh air would suit them well.

End of fight.

Has the Police arrived since then? (Likely) No

But the Police isn't there yet and Minuteman can't just let these criminals run away : he goes after them immediately.

Since I had double spin on my last action and it couldn't be used in combat, I use it here to say Minuteman is already close on their heels before I even roll for pursuit.

Athletics (+3) vs Athletics (0) : 0 vs 0

The bandits run as if it was their last day on Earth... so much that even Minuteman can only keep up with them. Of course, Minuteman could hold this speed for quite a long time and wait until they tire, but there's no sense in wasting time this way. He raises his staff and energy crackles at the tip. In a wide sway, he launches the projectile, an energy eagle, towards the fleeing criminals.

Minute Missile power (+2) vs Athletics (0) : 4 vs 2 -> 2 shifts
Amusingly, the Minute Missile attack in Freedom Force is a chain one, and so it perfectly makes sense I would get two knock outs from this attack (they're Minions and even though it's not a proper battle, we can consider them grouped, thus damage "goes through" the whole group).

The eagle speeds through the air, smacking the first thug in the head before ricocheting to the second one. Both stumble from the shock and roll to the ground, out. Minuteman unhurriedly catches up and brings them back to the bank after taking off their weapons.

How much time does the Police take to come? I use a base of 1 minute and use the absolute value of 4 Fudge dice (they can yield -4 to +4, so 0 to 4 with the absolute value, with 4 being very rare). I get +3, which means 3 shifts on the time ladder, which gives half an hour.

Since the Police has not yet arrived after five minutes, Minuteman asks the bank employees for help in tying up the bad guys. It's only half an hour later that the first Police car makes an appearance.

"Glad to see you officer! But if you don't mind my asking... what took you so long?"

Complex question : Emprison / Freedom

"We would have been here earlier if we hadn't had to deal with yet another lunatic! One of your teammates got captured as he was fighting him off!"

I asked "is it a man or woman" to know if I should type "him" or "her". Also, I must note here that I first interpreted the complex question differently, thinking "some villain put most of the town cops in their own cells" or something. And then I noticed how "Freedom" could just be "Freedom Force", the team of superheroes... and it seemed much more interesting ;)

"One of my teammates? Who?!"

Here I made a list of heroes from Freedom Force and randomly picked one : Man-o-War. He's a gruff ex-sailor who got super powers as he was dealing with a stowaway on his fishboat, the Man-o-War. Both him and the stowaway, a young girl, got hit by Energy X and gained powers from it (which saved them from a large wave in a timely manner, of course). In the game, he has a Sean Connery like voice.

"It's the old man, err... Mano... Manu...?" replies the officer, unsure
"Man-o-War! I must help him at once! Where did this happen?" asks Minuteman, alarmed.

Complex question : Create / Love

"In front of the St Johns church!"

And so, Minuteman runs to the church, hopping from building to building, after leaving the bank robbers to the care of the Police. Man-o-War captured?! And who is this new villain? All will be revealed... in the next episode!

That's where I decide to end the first scene of the game. And thus, that's when I need to note down a list of open threads and NPCs. The lists are used by Mythic to define who or what is involved in some random events.

Threads : Investigate at St Johns church, Save Man-o-War!, Discover who the new villain is
NPCs : The Police force, Man-o-War, the new villain, the bank robbers

And that's where I'll stop for this post. I'll write up the second scene sometime soon!

On the fly roleplay

I did something a bit strange today. That is, stranger than roleplaying solo :P

I have this commute time in the morning (and evening, really) of about 40 minutes. I'll usually either vegetate when I'm too tired / still waking up or read some roleplay material on my Nintendo DS, or play a game on it, but it's become quite rare these days.

I have been eating tons of superhero rpg material lately and I guess it's slowly boring me now (the reading of rules and setting I mean! I want to play now!) And today I tried something new : using Mythic on the fly during the commute.

The only thing I need is a little imagination and a random d100 generator (since rolling dice while standing on a sidewalk is not practical). Solution? Reading numbers on car ID plates :D. And so this morning I was an elven ranger who got robbed by bandits and went to get his revenge in the nearby forest where they set camp. Worked like a charm!

Fate Heroes - Part 0

Last time on Moni's Catbox...

I finished Freedom Force some time ago and started the second opus a few days later, just giving myself some pause to avoid getting sick of it (I tend to consume media as one would consume his favorite meal). But was it really a pause? I ended up picking up my solo roleplaying and what else but a superhero setting could I choose? :)

I have been spending weeks on reading Marvel Superheroes RPG material and with Freedom Force on top of this, let's just say I'm very much "Supers!" minded these days. I almost went with a custom character but then realized it would be simpler to pick a character I just learned a great deal about : Minuteman, the main hero of Freedom Force.

This first post, titled "part 0", will explain the RPG systems I use to play, without going into details too much. Next post will be the actual adventure.

How I do it

First, I should explain what I use for my solo roleplaying.

My RPG system of choice is Spirit of the Century, by Evil Hat Productions, a pulp pick-up game based upon the FATE v3 system (itself based on Fudge!). I allow myself to sprinkle it with bits of Starblazer Adventures, by Cubicle 7, the space-opera counterpart to SotC. And last but not least, I apply my own variations (which I call Fate Fantasy but it's nothing official) whenever I feel the rules are lacking something or are not to my taste (if there's something I've learned from RPGs, it's the "customize at will" advice!). For this particular superhero adventure, I have started a new set of variants I call Fate Heroes, which follows advice from Marvelous Fate, a Fate adaptation of the Marvel Superheroes rules.

Yes, it's fair to say it's a big mix of ideas, but overall, it's just FATE v3, adapted to a particular setting.

Last but not least, I use the Mythic GM Emulator from Word Mill Games. I know, I know, a GM emulator? Pfah! But you'd be wrong thinking that. It's actually a very simple but incredibly effective mini-system that allows a GM or players without a GM to come up with what happens in an adventure AND still get surprises out of it. While it does have a few tables for random picks, they don't provide anything set in stone and setting specific and rely on one's imagination and interpretation instead, not unlike tarot reading. The main part of the system, though, is based on asking questions (Magic 8 Ball like) and having the dice answer for you.
I won't get into it more than this as it will be more easily explained during the actual adventure write-up.

Well I guess that's it! All I can add is that I currently play by writing what happens in a notepad-like program to keep track of everything.

See you next post!