Post Mortem - Blood on the Planes

[guitarspider]

Finally getting around to writing this, been thinking about it since the game ended.

It was a bit of a weird game for me as GM. I had a lot of fun. As far as I could tell, the players had loads of fun, which means it was a good game. On the other hand, this certainly wasn't my best run game by a long shot. Part of this has to do with improvisation.

To understand this, I need to talk about the setup for a second. Planarch Codex is a Planescape variant of Dungeon World. The group had been trapped in a thieves guild, they'd served as a diversion for another group, had already lost a member (NPC) and were running onto the streets all beaten up. One of them was hit by a cursed arrow, which would slowly kill that person unless major healing powers were in play (6 "marks" until death, one every half hour and every time the character would physically excert itself, fight, etc). The thieves guild would obviously try to hunt them down while they were running.

Characters would be created at the start of the session, as you do in Dungeon World. In this Dungeon World variant, that part is especially crucial, because characters are the opposite of the typical "cookie-cutter" fantasy stereotypes, they're extremely unique. Pregens would be hurting the game big time.

My preparation for this game: non-existent. First, I wouldn't know the characters until the players came up with them, second, I wouldn't know where the hell the players would be wanting to go, third, by now I've run a lot of games in that setting and had lots of bits and pieces to pull out of my GM-hat, fourth, I do that all the time when I run games that allow me to do it. In this case, I don't think I did it particularly well.

The thieves guild really didn't put a lot of pressure on the characters throughout the game. The characters proved pretty crafty at getting out of their immediate reach and I would have had a hard time justifying any more than the one ambush I inserted. As a result, the guild remained a blank piece of plot paper and the ambush was maybe too much "out of thin air".

The characters the players came up with were fantastic. Unfortunately I missed a number of opportunities to take full advantage of what they had come up with during the second half of the game (the characters were travelling through an underground network/canal system). I felt that part wasn't as engaging as I would have liked it to be, the environment always remained kind of paper-y.

Last point, the humor. I feel a humorless Planescape is a dead Planescape. It's an integral part of a very weird and varied setting. Still, I had the feeling that at some point of this game, it became more about the jokes than the rest, which I hadn't really intended. This was a point where I as GM just stepped back and let the players do their thing, which was perfectly fine. Maybe part of the not-so-engaging second part simply was a function of me stepping back, I tried to keep the game going without interfering too much. It also meant the game had a comedy ending, the tone of which did not fit the start of the game very well at all.

So, where does that leave me? I had a lot of fun, the players seemed to have a lot of fun. I also think I could have done better. I could have made more use of the character backgrounds. I think I was right in stepping back and not trying to keep the game more focused, but it left me in an odd spot as GM. We still got a session that would have been a perfect set-up for a campaign. I'm not unhappy with how the game went, even though the text above may sound like it. I'm guess I'm still not quite sure what to think.

[D.T. Pints]

It was a great game. The issue I have with OPEN character creation is that the players can often go too far in a direction. We were a group of players that had never played together before and I think in those instances (and it was a happy jacks game after all) we went UBER silly. I think an MC should allow players breathing room but also if you would like to have serious moments as well, steps can be taken for that to happen. Please post the link to this game here. These are exactly the sorts of discussions that should occur around these APs. Thanks again for running it!

[guitarspider]

That's a great point! I'm sure the fact that it was my first con game as a GM and a new group of players had something to do with it. I don't think there's anybody "at fault" here though, I simply took the decision to support you players in where you were going instead of enforcing what I was going for tonally. Had this been the first session of a campaign instead of a con game, I probably would have kept things tighter, but in this case the long run didn't matter, so why not go for comedy.

This is definitely something I will think about for my con games from now on: what kind of tone do I want throughout the game, does it have to be a specific tone or not, do I even want to be consistent. I can't take for granted that you'll just pick up on what I'm doing with my other groups in that same setting. Both of those are very similar by default, so I guess I kind of took their tone for granted.

Setting that tone for everybody would have been as simple as saying "So, this is a harsh world, you're kind of struggling to survive, but there's lots of small pockets of humor and mirth in this world too, because of its limitless variety and clashing extremes." at the start of the game. I could have also done that by having the thieves guild trace the giant wolfman to the lizard mafia lair. We had a comedy scene there, but now you're trying to get out and you're suddenly surrounded. Would have kept up the pressure and reinforced the "serious with some fun" tone at the same time. Would have been better than the somewhat random ambush. That's the risk of improvisation though, sometimes you think of better solutions only when it is too late.

Still, I have to emphasise again, I'm not unhappy with the game at all, it was fun and the group of players was great.

Unfortunately I don't have a recording of the game, because I forgot to make it on air, so there's no youtube video to rip an mp3 from. :/

[D.T. Pints]

Right. I had forgotten that it wasn't recorded. I'm not sure if Ronnie is on the forums or not, but I know andreasdavour is. And he has been also thinking about what went right/wrong with his game and there are certainly some similarities. One aspect that took most sense of "threat" or seriousness from the game was the respawn (meeting death and getting a second or even a THIRD chance). I like this idea as a way to allow things to be deadly but also not take a player out of the game too quickly. However, perhaps a way to make the game have more gravitas is that when a character dies they then have to make some sort of "deal" with death. One that requires some difficult choice later on.

I think I rely on trailers for my con games to convey the tone I am hoping for. The Dark Heresy game trailer is spooky music, stars, spaceships and just warhammer bad assery. I've even pushed the other way as a player and made a trailer for my L5R game showing some of what I was hoping for (i.e. samurai epic katana fights and romance). The Paranoia game tried to encourage the silliness and yet dark, dystopian grimness of that world.

Not to say everyone should make a trailer but I think music and images do a lot to show what as a GM you are hoping for. And I agree it was a fun game and I'd like to see more of it; these discussions are more about making it even better.

[guitarspider]

these discussions are more about making it even better.

Totally agree with that.

The deal with death isn't really a thing for a con game unfortunately. andreasdavour already had one (give death one soul per day) from character creation (1), but that's just not going to matter in a game that only spans a few (fictional) hours. It's tough to make a deal that will matter in that short period, but not seem overly railroady  or draconian. I could have said "Pst will have to move in the shadows for the rest of his life." but would that really have been better? Maybe a con game is a situation where a different kind of deal needs to be made and it actually would have been better.

Straight up "death or deal" without rolling the dice and the chance to slip away/die isn't going to improve the situation I don't think. On a die roll you at least can fail, so you can actually die. On the other hand, I don't feel like pregens are an option for this kind of game, and neither is having the player make a new character, so taking away the deal completely isn't great either.

My impression was that the deal with death and the time Pst's soul slipped through death's fingers were kind of scary moments, but maybe that sense that it's really kind of hard to actually die did sneak in. I guess that's a thing you players have to tell me. On the other hand I do feel like every one of the players was roleplayer enough to not metagame that. There were several moments after that when you could have chosen far more dangerous and potentially deadly routes.

(1) In that instance I chose not to let him roll, because it was so very early in the evening and we were just done with character creation, so I simply gave him the deal.

[andreasdavour]

My thinking going into the game was that I was curious about these Apocalypse World inspired games. I had never played any of them before, but had heard a lot.

They are kind of typical for the New School of design (to which I include Savage Worlds) in that it hinges very much in the game mechanics. In many of those games they are driven by the mechanics being adhered to. There are gears and levers, and they are there do drive a specific kind of play.

My impression of the session was that it was not very much like that. Naturally, you can transcend the rules when you have mastered them, but maybe that isn't the easiest thing to do in a con game? If you you really have the mechanics "in there" you know that the game will function, and it's easier to focus on things like the mood or what's happening in the interactions between the players and how to pick up on that. If you can lean on the rules a lot, you can focus on the scenery and those things.

I know that getting the challenges for the characters more clearly on the table, clearly engaging the advantages/disadvantages of the characters, was something that could have enhanced my game.

Maybe that could have helped you a well? I'm not totally sure I'm making sense, but whatever...

Naturally, like you say, you have to adjust things to matter for the 4 hour format. My deal with Death wasn't that involved. But, it did cause me to have one quite fun "serious talk" to Ronnie's character about using his soul if he was going to die anyway.

[andreasdavour]

BTW, I'm on here, but I hate web forums so I only check in infrequently. You'll find me quicker on g+.