Gateway 2018 MoT Games: Thoughts
Sept 6, 2018 17:54:35 GMT -8
Post by Stu Venable on Sept 6, 2018 17:54:35 GMT -8
I ran two MoT games on the Saturday of Gateway 2018.
The morning game was Blood, Blade and Tusk.
SynopsisThe basic premise was that a group of orcs are traveling to a small farming village in the Kingdom of Burgundy to secure a trade deal for food. It then turns Seven Samurai (but with orcs, and 4 of them) when they arrive in the village, only to find it pillaged by a petty lord. There's a burning church, where in the local parish priest locked away the town's children for their own safety. The lord and his henchmen set it ablaze and left. The party breaks into the church and saves the priest and children. They then try to help out the injured townsfolk. They're told that this lord (none of the villagers have heard of him before) has pillaged the village a few times in the last couple months. In fact, he and his henchmen left with most of the town's surplus of grain (several wagons' worth). They pursue the lord and discover that there's a rendezvous with a figure dressed in black. They attempt to disable the dark figure and dispatch the bandits hauling the grain. After the battle they discover that the dark figure is actually a nun, who runs an orphanage of half-orc bastard children (no one else will take them in). They agree to take the half-orcs back to their creche, secure a trade deal, and return the surplus grain to the village.
I'm putting this adventure several years earlier in the BBT campaign I'm currently running. At some point, the party may discover that there's a creche of Ur'Rach orcs who don't look much like other orcs, but they're fierce warriors and don't much like those of Christendom...
Setting Thoughts: It seems I've put enough complexity in orc society to run an orc only game that itself has internal conflict. The party was made up of two from the warrior caste, one from the sage caste and one from the shaman caste. There was some interesting interplay between the warriors and the non-warriors (one of whom was a pacifist). There's enough complexity, and I think I may need to expand on the orc society chapter in the setting book, and lay out explicitly some of the possible conflicts that might arise and how they might affect internal orc politics and their relationship with other orc tribes and their Christian and Muslim neighbors.
System Thoughts: The magic system world wonderfully well. Christopher (who played the shaman) pushed his abilities a lot and suffered (IIRC) two backfires, which were rather painful, for him and the party (and sometimes innocent bystanders). Ironically, his pacifist character probably inflicted more damage that the two warriors combined (from backfires). He experimented some with the improvised magic, and it worked well, but was appropriately dangerous, I think.
As far as the regular game system, things ran very smoothly, and nothing happened that makes me want to rush out a new revision.
The afternoon game was Mobile Danger Fource.
Synopsis: The party are members of the Mobile Danger Force, a 1960s team of super spies (a la the Mission Impossible series, but with more coke, apparently). This was a far more "pulpy" game, so I made appropriate adjustments to the MoT core rules (1 success, rather than 2 to succeed -- and a more liberal distribution of MoTs. The team was informed that their headquarters had received word that Soviet agents working within the US were attempting to sabotage the Apollo 11 mission to the moon: they had rocketed explosives to Tranquility Base and intended to detonate them remotely from Earth. They followed the clues to Cuba, and discovered, with the help of L Ron Hubbard (who was sailing on the Free Winds), a barge with an enormous transmission antenna. They set the autopilot of their plane to crash into the antenna and bailed out onto the barge, dispatching the villainous commie spies.
Setting Thoughts: This setting is in its infancy. I've only spent 8-10 hours developing it, and only ran one previous game a few years ago (I think it was a 1 or 2 session game). I think once it's fully developed, it'll be a fun setting. It's currently a very black-and-white view of the 1960s Cold War era, but once I have more time, I'll probably give it elements of Dr. Strangelove as well, with a few crazy American military commanders ("I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence..."). I want to convey the suicidal nature of the Cold War, but perhaps cut it with a similar kind of dark humor. Adam also helped me figure out the 1960s version of the internet: a direct radio link to the Mobile Danger Force Library, where a team of crack librarians are there to provide incredibly useful information with just a quick radio conversation.
Mechanics Thoughts: Again, things worked out well. There were no glitches, system-wise. I think I might adjust the weapon damage numbers to make this setting more pulpy and less dangerous, kind of like what I'm doing with Vast Dominions.
What I'm Working on Now
In the back of my mind, I'm cogitating on revision to BBT, but several people said MoT would be very well suited to horror, which is actually what I originally wrote it for. I've started working on a setting, called "World Without Gods," which is a misnomer, as there are several gods. I'm attempting to make a cosmic horror setting that doesn't rely on the Lovecraft pantheon (a Lovecraftian setting is fraught with legal entanglement, so I'm not going there).
Instead, I've created an ancient history (called the Time Before). I've "revised" history some, by having humans emerge much earlier in Earth history, having been a servitor race to dark, powerful gods and their minions. I'm not naming the gods, except for giving them a descriptor, like "the war god, the plague god, etc." In humanity's past, these gods were called by several names, depending on the culture. In short, I looked through several pantheons from different cultures and found common themes, so some might refer to the War God as Mars, or perhaps the Chinese equivalent.
So far the most fun aspect of this is creating summaries of literature from the past that explore this lost history. The first text is "The Lost Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge." Published in the 1920s, it includes an alleged continuation and sequel to "Kubla Kahn," where Coleridge (probably in a opium-induced dream) goes on a vision quest into the "caverns measureless to man," only to discover a vast sleeping god surrounded by servitor beings trying in vain to wake it. I'm not going to attempt to write these poems (I'm no Coleridge), but I may try my hand at writing a few excerpts.
I have to say, it's challenging writing a cosmic horror setting without using Lovecraft, as his (and his contemporaries) cast a very long shadow on the genre. I may try writing a few short stories to sort of solidify the tone of the setting.
Right now, World Without Gods, in its very abbreviated form, is coming in around 30 pages in length. I think it'll easily hit 100+ by the time I flesh things out.
I may try my hand at making the art for it. Pelgrane Press's Trail of Cthulhu has some amazing art in it. I may try to emulate that sort of art for World Without Gods.
Once WWG is in it's first-draft form, I'll put my efforts into finishing BBT and send it off to my proofreader/editor. That may happen by the end of the year.
Also once either the BBT campaign or L5R campaign is finished, I'll probably run a short WWG campaign, to see how it translates at the table.
The morning game was Blood, Blade and Tusk.
SynopsisThe basic premise was that a group of orcs are traveling to a small farming village in the Kingdom of Burgundy to secure a trade deal for food. It then turns Seven Samurai (but with orcs, and 4 of them) when they arrive in the village, only to find it pillaged by a petty lord. There's a burning church, where in the local parish priest locked away the town's children for their own safety. The lord and his henchmen set it ablaze and left. The party breaks into the church and saves the priest and children. They then try to help out the injured townsfolk. They're told that this lord (none of the villagers have heard of him before) has pillaged the village a few times in the last couple months. In fact, he and his henchmen left with most of the town's surplus of grain (several wagons' worth). They pursue the lord and discover that there's a rendezvous with a figure dressed in black. They attempt to disable the dark figure and dispatch the bandits hauling the grain. After the battle they discover that the dark figure is actually a nun, who runs an orphanage of half-orc bastard children (no one else will take them in). They agree to take the half-orcs back to their creche, secure a trade deal, and return the surplus grain to the village.
I'm putting this adventure several years earlier in the BBT campaign I'm currently running. At some point, the party may discover that there's a creche of Ur'Rach orcs who don't look much like other orcs, but they're fierce warriors and don't much like those of Christendom...
Setting Thoughts: It seems I've put enough complexity in orc society to run an orc only game that itself has internal conflict. The party was made up of two from the warrior caste, one from the sage caste and one from the shaman caste. There was some interesting interplay between the warriors and the non-warriors (one of whom was a pacifist). There's enough complexity, and I think I may need to expand on the orc society chapter in the setting book, and lay out explicitly some of the possible conflicts that might arise and how they might affect internal orc politics and their relationship with other orc tribes and their Christian and Muslim neighbors.
System Thoughts: The magic system world wonderfully well. Christopher (who played the shaman) pushed his abilities a lot and suffered (IIRC) two backfires, which were rather painful, for him and the party (and sometimes innocent bystanders). Ironically, his pacifist character probably inflicted more damage that the two warriors combined (from backfires). He experimented some with the improvised magic, and it worked well, but was appropriately dangerous, I think.
As far as the regular game system, things ran very smoothly, and nothing happened that makes me want to rush out a new revision.
The afternoon game was Mobile Danger Fource.
Synopsis: The party are members of the Mobile Danger Force, a 1960s team of super spies (a la the Mission Impossible series, but with more coke, apparently). This was a far more "pulpy" game, so I made appropriate adjustments to the MoT core rules (1 success, rather than 2 to succeed -- and a more liberal distribution of MoTs. The team was informed that their headquarters had received word that Soviet agents working within the US were attempting to sabotage the Apollo 11 mission to the moon: they had rocketed explosives to Tranquility Base and intended to detonate them remotely from Earth. They followed the clues to Cuba, and discovered, with the help of L Ron Hubbard (who was sailing on the Free Winds), a barge with an enormous transmission antenna. They set the autopilot of their plane to crash into the antenna and bailed out onto the barge, dispatching the villainous commie spies.
Setting Thoughts: This setting is in its infancy. I've only spent 8-10 hours developing it, and only ran one previous game a few years ago (I think it was a 1 or 2 session game). I think once it's fully developed, it'll be a fun setting. It's currently a very black-and-white view of the 1960s Cold War era, but once I have more time, I'll probably give it elements of Dr. Strangelove as well, with a few crazy American military commanders ("I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence..."). I want to convey the suicidal nature of the Cold War, but perhaps cut it with a similar kind of dark humor. Adam also helped me figure out the 1960s version of the internet: a direct radio link to the Mobile Danger Force Library, where a team of crack librarians are there to provide incredibly useful information with just a quick radio conversation.
Mechanics Thoughts: Again, things worked out well. There were no glitches, system-wise. I think I might adjust the weapon damage numbers to make this setting more pulpy and less dangerous, kind of like what I'm doing with Vast Dominions.
What I'm Working on Now
In the back of my mind, I'm cogitating on revision to BBT, but several people said MoT would be very well suited to horror, which is actually what I originally wrote it for. I've started working on a setting, called "World Without Gods," which is a misnomer, as there are several gods. I'm attempting to make a cosmic horror setting that doesn't rely on the Lovecraft pantheon (a Lovecraftian setting is fraught with legal entanglement, so I'm not going there).
Instead, I've created an ancient history (called the Time Before). I've "revised" history some, by having humans emerge much earlier in Earth history, having been a servitor race to dark, powerful gods and their minions. I'm not naming the gods, except for giving them a descriptor, like "the war god, the plague god, etc." In humanity's past, these gods were called by several names, depending on the culture. In short, I looked through several pantheons from different cultures and found common themes, so some might refer to the War God as Mars, or perhaps the Chinese equivalent.
So far the most fun aspect of this is creating summaries of literature from the past that explore this lost history. The first text is "The Lost Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge." Published in the 1920s, it includes an alleged continuation and sequel to "Kubla Kahn," where Coleridge (probably in a opium-induced dream) goes on a vision quest into the "caverns measureless to man," only to discover a vast sleeping god surrounded by servitor beings trying in vain to wake it. I'm not going to attempt to write these poems (I'm no Coleridge), but I may try my hand at writing a few excerpts.
I have to say, it's challenging writing a cosmic horror setting without using Lovecraft, as his (and his contemporaries) cast a very long shadow on the genre. I may try writing a few short stories to sort of solidify the tone of the setting.
Right now, World Without Gods, in its very abbreviated form, is coming in around 30 pages in length. I think it'll easily hit 100+ by the time I flesh things out.
I may try my hand at making the art for it. Pelgrane Press's Trail of Cthulhu has some amazing art in it. I may try to emulate that sort of art for World Without Gods.
Once WWG is in it's first-draft form, I'll put my efforts into finishing BBT and send it off to my proofreader/editor. That may happen by the end of the year.
Also once either the BBT campaign or L5R campaign is finished, I'll probably run a short WWG campaign, to see how it translates at the table.