Last night I ran a game of Old School Hack, using a dungeon I had created with How to Host a Dungeon.

I’ll start with dungeon creation.

How to Host a Dungeon, for those who don’t know, is a solo activity (I hesitate to call it a game, though it is certainly fun) in which you use pens, paper, little glass beads, and random tables to generate a dungeon by simulating its creation and subsequent occupation by civilizations, monsters, adventurers, and evil villains. The game is played out in rounds representing seasons in which each faction currently on the map acts according to a script, and in some cases additional factions are introduced. These factions often have interesting rules interactions that force conflict with other factions, which is handled with a simple die roll.

I’ve only played it once, and I got some of the rules wrong (rules clarity in the game could be better), but I had a great time and I fully intend to play it some more. It’s a fun activity (again, not sure I’d call it a game, as there’s really no condition for winning or losing) that takes a couple of hours (probably faster once you’re familiar with the rules). Best of all, when you’re done you’ve got a fully populated dungeon with a backstory you can call upon.

My particular dungeon started with a devastating earthquake. A society of dwarves delved into the depths in search of gold, but soon stumbled upon a cavern that spelled their demise. Shortly afterward, monsters started inhabiting the dungeon. Among them were a one-headed ettin who preyed upon the villagers on the surface, a clan of duergar, some kobolds, some orcs, and a tomb of undead horrors.

Eventually all these monsters drew the attention of the Thought Lords, mind-controlling abominations from beneath the surface of the world. They slowly insinuated their tendrils of control into the nearby monster clans, as well as the bold adventurers who came to stop them. Eventually, they even took the surface world for their own.

Using the dungeon required a little bit of hand-waving. By the end of the game, there were three factions left: the Thought Lords, an adventuring party, and the surface kingdom. All of the monsters had been wiped out by adventurers, and the Thought Lords had taken control of everyone who remained. I repopulated the dungeon with the monsters that I felt would make for good gameplay, and prepped it for play.

That brings us to Old School Hack, which is a fantastic little dungeon crawling game that encourages off-the-wall awesomeness. Also, it’s free. The adventurers who ventured into the dungeon were a burly fighter who wielded a flaming caber, an evangelical cleric of Hubert the Happy, god of jokes (apparently), a “high class” magic user who could talk to doors, and a vicious goblin with a hatred of kobolds and rats. The party seemed to follow the goblin, whose quest was to find and slay the Ur-Rat.

This required a little bit of improvisation on my part (I didn’t have an Ur-Rat prepped!), but it worked out pretty well. There were some great moments; the fighter flung Grobnar the One-Headed (the ettin) off a cliff, the cleric used his preacherly ways to take control of a tribe of orcs, the wizard spoke to every door she encounters and provided valuable intel, and the goblin wound up riding the body of the Ur-Rat down a hole, Dr. Strangelove-style.

We were nearly out of time toward the end, so I reskinned the leader of the Thought Lords as the Ur-Rat, and made it into a giant, tentacled, psychic, mind-controlling rat-thing. It was pretty great.

My last day at GenCon was good, if short. I started by going back to Games on Demand to see what was on the menu. I got a chance to play TechNoir, a cyberpunk noir RPG with really elegant character generation and conflict resolution rules. The session was so-so; the GM hadn’t been planning on running anything and decided to at the last minute, so he wasn’t really prepared. I can’t really fault him for that. The session did sell me on the game, though. I’m definitely buying this one.

That was the only game I played. I did, however, go to the IPR booth and pick up a copy of Dread (a horror game that uses a Jenga tower as its primary resolution mechanic). There I ran into Amanda and Clark Valentine (Amanda edited Bulldogs!), and we got to talking (about games). Tracy Hurley (Sarah Darkmagic), Thadeus C., and Tracy Barnett (Troll in the Corner) also stopped by, and we had a nice conversation.

Shortly after I went to the airport, where I started killing time by reading some of my games.

Zombie Cinema is short to read (took 15 minutes or so, all told), but it seems like it’ll be a lot of fun, especially as a zero-prep pick-up game. How to Host a Dungeon looks like a great one-player game, and I have a hunch it’ll go well with a game that I heard about today called Old School Hack, which I’m going to research tomorrow. I’m halfway through Mortal Coil, and every freaking page is giving me ideas. It’s great.

So now GenCon is over, and I’m a little sad. Still, it’s nice to be back home, and it’s not like I won’t be gaming. I’ve got D&D Encounters this Wednesday (new season, new character), and I’m also planning on running at least one demo of Bulldogs! at my FLGS. I may run some other indie games, just to get a chance to play them. Huzzah!

Part One Part Two Part Three

The Story

The next day, PJ, Percy, Debra, and Boop-Boop all met in Bartram Gardens, Boop-Boop’s home. They each discussed what they had learned and compared notes, all coming to the same terrifying conclusion: that the Black Court vampires had to be stopped, and that they would have to do it. They needed help, though.

PJ called the nightclub Babylon and set up a meeting for that night with Gerhardt von Manschafft, the leader of the city’s White court vampires. Gerhardt was influential and often had valuable information, and PJ had a good working relationship with him.

The group decided that they’d leave and wait for the meeting time, then they’d all meet at Babylon. As they were leaving the Gardens, though, they were confronted by five men with guns in the parking lot. The men were a mis-matched lot; some wore business attire, others casual clothing, and one looked like a homeless man. They all, however, had expressions of vacant, incoherent rage on their faces, and they moved to attack.

Percy reacted quickly, darting for the car in the hopes of getting it closer to the group, so they could escape. PJ, wanting to protect Debra, ran for one of the thugs, wrested the gun from his hand, and knocked him out with the but of the gun. Debra followed Percy’s lead and ran for the car, running to the driver’s seat; she was the better driver of the two.

While this was happening, the thugs fired off a few rounds at Debra and PJ; both were grazed, but not seriously injured. Boop-Boop reacted by casting faerie magic, surrounding two of the thugs in an airless bubble that caused them to pass out.

PJ, enraged by the thug who had shot at Debra, turned and fired his newly acquired gun, killing the man. Debra and Percy, in the car, drove straight at the remaining thug, colliding with him and knocking him out cold.

The group started investigating their fallen foes, finding that most of them had identification and money, but that there didn’t seem to be any link between the two. They took the guns, bound the thugs, and dropped one of them in the trunk for later questioning. Then they got in the car and sped off as sirens approached.

The group split up after that. Debra went back to campus, accompanied by Boop-Boop, to get medical attention for her bullet graze. Percy and PJ drove the car to a warehouse owned by Maximillian so that they could question the thug.

In the warehouse, they discovered that the thug was unlikely to talk to them. He screamed in rage, but said nothing; it was likely that he was a Renfield, a thrall of the Black Court whose mind had been shattered so utterly that he was no longer capable of coherent thought. Percy put the man out of his misery, then asked Maximillian to dispose of the body. Maximillian agreed, telling Percy that he would owe a favor for it.

That night, the group went to Babylon to speak to Gerhardt. Gerhardt was very forthcoming and helpful, which was somewhat worrying to the group. He confirmed their theories about the Black Court, and told them how to disrupt the ritual that the vampires would no doubt be performing on midnight on Halloween. He also offered to lend the assistance of two of his associates, a pair of White Court twins, to help manage the Black Court’s mortal muscle.

In return, though, he asked the group for a favor. Papa Leroy, a houngan information broker working out of a bar called Wormdaddy’s, was manipulating the biker gang known as the Warlocks into taking territory from the Pagans motorcycle gang. This territory happened to have a high concentration of out-of-order phone booths, used to access random magical information. If the group could convince Leroy to back off of the turf war, Gerhardt would help them.

Having few options, the group agreed.

The Game

We had our first fight toward the end of the session, and it was educating. FATE combat is pretty fast-paced, and doesn’t take a long time; that fight took maybe ten minutes of real time to adjudicate. It is, however, potentially very deadly; guns are no joke in this game.

We also discovered that the magic system takes a little getting used to. Once we’ve used it a fair bit, I’m sure it’ll be come second nature; however, at the moment, it requires a lot of referring to charts and slowing the action down, which is unfortunate.

All in all, this session was a rousing success. It was fun for everyone, and required very little prep work on my part. I’m a big fan of DFRPG, and FATE in general.

Part One, Part Two

The Story

Later, in a cafe around the corner from Independence Mall called Neutral Grounds, PJ and Percy compared notes after a tacit truce (there was tension between them stemming from PJ’s romantic feelings toward Debra and Percy’s protective feelings toward her). Between the two of them, they had found out that more than twenty people had disappeared from in and around the Mall, and six of those had been found again, as corpses. In addition, of those twenty plus, four of them had been police officers, one of them a member of the Thin Blue Line, the mayor’s unofficial task force for dealing with supernatural threats.

Percy also asked PJ for information on the biker war going on in the city; PJ told him that the best place (though not the safest place) to look would be a bar outside the city in New Hope called the Alomeda Bomb Range, the hangout for the Warlocks biker gang.

Meanwhile, Boop-Boop went back to Bartram Gardens and met with her mistress Lily, the Summer Lady. Boop-Boop informed Lily that something was killing people in the city, and that it was likely vampires of the Black Court. Lily agreed, and told Boop-Boop that they were likely after something in the park.

Boop-Boop then called upon a contact of hers, Grendel, a shape-shifting raven. Grendel told her that there were actually more people missing as a result of the Black Court than anyone realized, and that he suspected what they were after. He agreeed to take Boop-Boop inside the building in Independence Mall, which he did shape-shifted as a police officer. Inside, he took her to the Liberty Bell, which he explained was a powerful magical artifact. Its power was held in check by the fact that it was broken, but if it were repaired, it could grant vast supernatural power to the one who did it.

Later that night, Percy and Debra met for dinner and discussed the day’s goings on, as well as whether or not Debra had any feelings toward PJ.

Meanwhile, PJ girded himself against the Black Court and when to Independence Mall to stake it out. Boop-Boop, at the same time, was scrying around the city, trying to find the Black Court hideout. She found a vampire walking down the street; it became mist a block away from the park and glided gently in, reforming out of sight of the police. Boop-Boop also saw PJ there. She immediately flew as fast as she could toward Independence Mall.

PJ watched as the Black Court vampire approached a homeless man sleeping on a bench, bent over to him for a moment, then straightened. The homeless man stood up and started walking out of the park. PJ decided to follow him.

Boop-Boop also saw this as she arrived. The vampire, she saw, was now heading toward a policeman on patrol. Acting quickly, she flew down to the police officer, lowered her veils, and shouted, “RUN!” The police man ran, Boop-Boop on his tail, and the vampire following quickly behind. Boop-Boop told the man to get to a public place, then to radio to the others in the park and tell them to be on guard, and to stay together. Once the police officer was safely out of the park, she flew up into a tree and, exhausted, fell asleep.

At midnight, Percy met a contact of his, Maximillian, at Babylon, the night club center of power for the vampires of the White Court in the city. Maximillian appeared as a tall, thin black man with vertically-slitted pupils; this was not his true form, however. In his true form, he appeared as a black cat.

Percy asked Maximillian what he knew about the Black Court in town, and Maximillian told him that they were building strength for an attack on Independence Mall, likely to perform some sort of ritual on the Bell. That, he told Percy, would not be good.

The Game

My preparation for DFRPG was considerably different from what I was used to. In D&D, you prepare discrete encounters, usually focusing on combat. This can sometimes make combat the focus of the actual game, as you don’t want to let all that time you spent prepping encounters go to waste.

In DFRPG, I used a different tactic. I statted up all of the NPCs that were likely to come into play, as well as some faceless mooks, and I came up with three situations that were going on in the city. Then I let the players discover what was going on, and allowed them to guide the story in the direction they found most interesting. That happened to be my Black Court storyline, though some focus was also given to the war between the Warlocks and the Pagans.

I deliberately left these storylines entirely skeletal, so that the the players and I could fill in the blanks through play. I knew that I could probably have come up with some pretty cool stuff ahead of time, but I also knew that the players would likely come up with a lot of awesome stuff, too, and I decided to capitalize on that. It worked out pretty well.

Part One, Part Two

The Story

Later, in a cafe around the corner from Independence Mall called Neutral Grounds, PJ and Percy compared notes after a tacit truce (there was tension between them stemming from PJ’s romantic feelings toward Debra and Percy’s protective feelings toward her). Between the two of them, they had found out that more than twenty people had disappeared from in and around the Mall, and six of those had been found again, as corpses. In addition, of those twenty plus, four of them had been police officers, one of them a member of the Thin Blue Line, the mayor’s unofficial task force for dealing with supernatural threats.

Percy also asked PJ for information on the biker war going on in the city; PJ told him that the best place (though not the safest place) to look would be a bar outside the city in New Hope called the Alomeda Bomb Range, the hangout for the Warlocks biker gang.

Meanwhile, Boop-Boop went back to Bartram Gardens and met with her mistress Lily, the Summer Lady. Boop-Boop informed Lily that something was killing people in the city, and that it was likely vampires of the Black Court. Lily agreed, and told Boop-Boop that they were likely after something in the park.

Boop-Boop then called upon a contact of hers, Grendel, a shape-shifting raven. Grendel told her that there were actually more people missing as a result of the Black Court than anyone realized, and that he suspected what they were after. He agreeed to take Boop-Boop inside the building in Independence Mall, which he did shape-shifted as a police officer. Inside, he took her to the Liberty Bell, which he explained was a powerful magical artifact. Its power was held in check by the fact that it was broken, but if it were repaired, it could grant vast supernatural power to the one who did it.

Later that night, Percy and Debra met for dinner and discussed the day’s goings on, as well as whether or not Debra had any feelings toward PJ.

Meanwhile, PJ girded himself against the Black Court and when to Independence Mall to stake it out. Boop-Boop, at the same time, was scrying around the city, trying to find the Black Court hideout. She found a vampire walking down the street; it became mist a block away from the park and glided gently in, reforming out of sight of the police. Boop-Boop also saw PJ there. She immediately flew as fast as she could toward Independence Mall.

PJ watched as the Black Court vampire approached a homeless man sleeping on a bench, bent over to him for a moment, then straightened. The homeless man stood up and started walking out of the park. PJ decided to follow him.

Boop-Boop also saw this as she arrived. The vampire, she saw, was now heading toward a policeman on patrol. Acting quickly, she flew down to the police officer, lowered her veils, and shouted, “RUN!” The police man ran, Boop-Boop on his tail, and the vampire following quickly behind. Boop-Boop told the man to get to a public place, then to radio to the others in the park and tell them to be on guard, and to stay together. Once the police officer was safely out of the park, she flew up into a tree and, exhausted, fell asleep.

At midnight, Percy met a contact of his, Maximillian, at Babylon, the night club center of power for the vampires of the White Court in the city. Maximillian appeared as a tall, thin black man with vertically-slitted pupils; this was not his true form, however. In his true form, he appeared as a black cat.

Percy asked Maximillian what he knew about the Black Court in town, and Maximillian told him that they were building strength for an attack on Independence Mall, likely to perform some sort of ritual on the Bell. That, he told Percy, would not be good.

The Game

My preparation for DFRPG was considerably different from what I was used to. In D&D, you prepare discrete encounters, usually focusing on combat. This can sometimes make combat the focus of the actual game, as you don’t want to let all that time you spent prepping encounters go to waste.

In DFRPG, I used a different tactic. I statted up all of the NPCs that were likely to come into play, as well as some faceless mooks, and I came up with three situations that were going on in the city. Then I let the players discover what was going on, and allowed them to guide the story in the direction they found most interesting. That happened to be my Black Court storyline, though some focus was also given to the war between the Warlocks and the Pagans.

I deliberately left these storylines entirely skeletal, so that the the players and I could fill in the blanks through play. I knew that I could probably have come up with some pretty cool stuff ahead of time, but I also knew that the players would likely come up with a lot of awesome stuff, too, and I decided to capitalize on that. It worked out pretty well.

Part One: It Begins

The Story

Each one of them blinked, and was somewhere safe and familiar. PJ was in his apartment; Percy was at work, in City Hall; Debra was in her dorm room at Drexel; Boop-Boop was in Bartram Gardens, her home. They had each recieved a glimpse of a possible future, three days from now.

PJ, determined to get photographic evidence of supernatural goings-on, called City Hall to schedule a time when he could be there, taking pictures. He talked to Percy, pretending to be an architectural reporter doing a story on the buttresses of City Hall. He got the name of an architect (who he would likely not contact), and scheduled a time to come take pictures of the outside of the building.

Meanwhile, Debra was procrastinating, trying not to think about mid-terms. She was cleaning up around her dorm room, and began idly scrying around the city. At the exact same time, Boop-Boop was also scrying around the city, and the two of them wound up scrying at each other. They were both stunned–Debra because she was looking at a fairie, and Boop-Boop because Debra could see her, despite her glamours. Before they could communicate, though, they were both immediately redirected to an image of Independence Mall, where they could both feel something distinctly unclean.

Debra, recognizing Bartram Gardens, quickly drove there to find the faerie. She found a very surprised, very confused fairie (“How can you see me?”), and after a brief introduction, they both agreed to go to Independence Mall to investigate the feeling that they had had earlier.

Meanwhile, PJ was eating his lunch in Independence Mall, which was across from his apartment. He noticed a distinctly heavy police presence (which made him uncomfortable), and decided to find out some information by Listening to a couple of officers. Shutting out his other senses, he focused on his hearing and was able to eavesdrop on the two. They were speaking, in hushed tones, about disappearances happening around the park. He decided to call his police contact, Detective Mark Harrisson, about the disappearances.

Meanwhile, Percy was called into the mayor’s office. The mayor, Kenneth Darmon, told Percy that there were some troubling events afoot, and that he needed a man like Percy, who had numerous contacts both politically and . . . otherwise, to investigate these rumors. First, there were rumors of disappearances around the park. Then, there was talk of escalating gang violence, a turf war between two motorcycle gangs: the Warlocks and the Pagans. Finally, more disappearances, though these ones were around South Street. Darmon told Percy to contact Detective Mark Harrisson for more information on the disappearances in Independence Mall. Percy called Harrisson, who agreed to meet in Independence Mall in half an hour.

In Independence Mall, Debra and Boop-Boop arrived to find PJ there; PJ was overjoyed to see Debra (and couldn’t see Boop-Boop at all). Boop-Boop, however, recognized that PJ had been in her prophetic dream (as did Debra). She appeared, and the three quickly realized that something larger than them was going on. Percy soon arrived on the scene, and came up to say hello to Debra. Then everything clicked: all four of them knew that they would be in a car chase together, three days into the future. The wheels were in motion.

The Game

This segment of the game was almost entirely player-driven. There was a lot of in-character banter and dialog between the players, and I mostly just kept my mouth shut. Occasionally I’d chime in with a compel (or to reward a de facto compel, when the role-play was going particularly well), and I’d answer questions when they were asked of me.

Initially, I had wondered how I was going to get this group together. The car chase that I started the session with gave them some impetus to find each other, but they all started in different parts of the city when I asked them where they were when they “woke up” from their prophetic dream.

However, the players made this pretty easy for me, all things considered. Sean (PJ) connected himself to Mike (Percy) with a phone call, which was a good start (and a great roleplaying scene that resulted in the line, “I like big buttresses, and I cannot lie,” from Kathleen (Debra). I awarded a fate point for that.). But where it really started to click was when Kathleen (Debra) and Denise (Boop-Boop) both decided that they were scrying at the same time. We had already established during city creation that mystical “crossed wires” were common in Philadelphia, so a simple compel on a city aspect allowed me to connect them together. I was able to connect that to Independence Mall, which got the ball rolling.

From there, I really only had to figure out how to get everyone else there. Sean (PJ) again made it easy, by simply saying that he lived across from the Mall and ate lunch there every day. In retrospect, I probably should have given him a fate point for that as a thank-you. Percy was the hardest to get to the Mall, but an audience with the mayor solved that, and also gave him some goals to work toward. Once they were all in one place, it became clear that Fate had something in store for them.

One final note. After the prophectic flash-forward sequence, I told all of the players that there was an aspect on the city: Threads of Fate. I told them I could compel this aspect any time I wanted to steer them toward that future. I didn’t have to; not once. The players did so much of my work for me, I feel like I probably should have given out twice as many fate points as I did.

Part One: It Begins

The Story

Each one of them blinked, and was somewhere safe and familiar. PJ was in his apartment; Percy was at work, in City Hall; Debra was in her dorm room at Drexel; Boop-Boop was in Bartram Gardens, her home. They had each recieved a glimpse of a possible future, three days from now.

PJ, determined to get photographic evidence of supernatural goings-on, called City Hall to schedule a time when he could be there, taking pictures. He talked to Percy, pretending to be an architectural reporter doing a story on the buttresses of City Hall. He got the name of an architect (who he would likely not contact), and scheduled a time to come take pictures of the outside of the building.

Meanwhile, Debra was procrastinating, trying not to think about mid-terms. She was cleaning up around her dorm room, and began idly scrying around the city. At the exact same time, Boop-Boop was also scrying around the city, and the two of them wound up scrying at each other. They were both stunned–Debra because she was looking at a fairie, and Boop-Boop because Debra could see her, despite her glamours. Before they could communicate, though, they were both immediately redirected to an image of Independence Mall, where they could both feel something distinctly unclean.

Debra, recognizing Bartram Gardens, quickly drove there to find the faerie. She found a very surprised, very confused fairie (“How can you see me?”), and after a brief introduction, they both agreed to go to Independence Mall to investigate the feeling that they had had earlier.

Meanwhile, PJ was eating his lunch in Independence Mall, which was across from his apartment. He noticed a distinctly heavy police presence (which made him uncomfortable), and decided to find out some information by Listening to a couple of officers. Shutting out his other senses, he focused on his hearing and was able to eavesdrop on the two. They were speaking, in hushed tones, about disappearances happening around the park. He decided to call his police contact, Detective Mark Harrisson, about the disappearances.

Meanwhile, Percy was called into the mayor’s office. The mayor, Kenneth Darmon, told Percy that there were some troubling events afoot, and that he needed a man like Percy, who had numerous contacts both politically and . . . otherwise, to investigate these rumors. First, there were rumors of disappearances around the park. Then, there was talk of escalating gang violence, a turf war between two motorcycle gangs: the Warlocks and the Pagans. Finally, more disappearances, though these ones were around South Street. Darmon told Percy to contact Detective Mark Harrisson for more information on the disappearances in Independence Mall. Percy called Harrisson, who agreed to meet in Independence Mall in half an hour.

In Independence Mall, Debra and Boop-Boop arrived to find PJ there; PJ was overjoyed to see Debra (and couldn’t see Boop-Boop at all). Boop-Boop, however, recognized that PJ had been in her prophetic dream (as did Debra). She appeared, and the three quickly realized that something larger than them was going on. Percy soon arrived on the scene, and came up to say hello to Debra. Then everything clicked: all four of them knew that they would be in a car chase together, three days into the future. The wheels were in motion.

The Game

This segment of the game was almost entirely player-driven. There was a lot of in-character banter and dialog between the players, and I mostly just kept my mouth shut. Occasionally I’d chime in with a compel (or to reward a de facto compel, when the role-play was going particularly well), and I’d answer questions when they were asked of me.

Initially, I had wondered how I was going to get this group together. The car chase that I started the session with gave them some impetus to find each other, but they all started in different parts of the city when I asked them where they were when they “woke up” from their prophetic dream.

However, the players made this pretty easy for me, all things considered. Sean (PJ) connected himself to Mike (Percy) with a phone call, which was a good start (and a great roleplaying scene that resulted in the line, “I like big buttresses, and I cannot lie,” from Kathleen (Debra). I awarded a fate point for that.). But where it really started to click was when Kathleen (Debra) and Denise (Boop-Boop) both decided that they were scrying at the same time. We had already established during city creation that mystical “crossed wires” were common in Philadelphia, so a simple compel on a city aspect allowed me to connect them together. I was able to connect that to Independence Mall, which got the ball rolling.

From there, I really only had to figure out how to get everyone else there. Sean (PJ) again made it easy, by simply saying that he lived across from the Mall and ate lunch there every day. In retrospect, I probably should have given him a fate point for that as a thank-you. Percy was the hardest to get to the Mall, but an audience with the mayor solved that, and also gave him some goals to work toward. Once they were all in one place, it became clear that Fate had something in store for them.

One final note. After the prophectic flash-forward sequence, I told all of the players that there was an aspect on the city: Threads of Fate. I told them I could compel this aspect any time I wanted to steer them toward that future. I didn’t have to; not once. The players did so much of my work for me, I feel like I probably should have given out twice as many fate points as I did.

Cast of Characters

PJ O’Toole is a journalist from Chicago. In Chicago, he dug a little too deeply in pursuit of the truth, and ran afoul of the White Council. They were going to execute him, but he managed to talk his way out of it, with Harry Dresden’s help. Dresden told PJ to go to Philadelphia, where there was plenty of weirdness afoot, but a very small White Council presence. PJ agreed, and moved to Philadelphia where he went freelance, and tried at every turn to avoid attention from those in power. While in Chicago, PJ met Debra (below), interviewed her for an article, and promptly fell in love with her. In a happy coincidence, she moved to Philadelphia, too.

Debra “Heather” Spivey is a grad student from Chicago, where she was raised by two lesbians.She is currently studying mythology at Drexel. She has some minor magical talent, mostly in the area of divination, and she has trouble figuring out where to draw the line when she’s using her power. She knows PJ, but thinks he’s a little creepy, especially since he pays so much attention to her.

Boop-Boop is a pixie of the Summer Court. She heard about the Za Lord’s Guard in Chicago, and decided to create a similar organization in Philadelphia, which she calls the Rose Guard. Lily, the Summer Lady, wanted to encourage her, so she granted Boop-Boop the ability to use seelie magic, which complimented the pixie’s already potent ability to cast glamours.

Percy was raised by a single mom, along with his sister (who is away at college in Alabama). He got a job in City Hall, working as an aide to the mayor, in order to help his mom pay the bills. However, his supernatural connections also landed him a job working for a shape-shifting black cat named Maximillion, who uses him as a spy within the mayor’s office. Percy is able to transform into a bat, though he only does so when it’s necessary and he’s unlikely to get caught doing so. He is very protective of Debra, seeing her as a surrogate little sister.

The Story So Far

Tires on asphalt squeal through the night, shattering the silence. It is Halloween night, and PJ, Debra, Boop-Boop, an Percy are in a car, running from agents of the government, speeding down I-95. They are likely being chased because PJ has photographic evidence of the mayor turning into a werewolf (which Percy would like to obtain for himself).

As the two car’s speed down I-95, Boop-Boop takes out her scrying bowl (a plastic water bottle cap invested with seelie power) and scries into the pursuing car. She sees three large men in nondescript clothing, one of them loading a handgun in the passenger’s seat. Boop-Boop warns the rest of the car that the others have a gun, and likely mean them harm.

Deciding to try to give the other car the slip, PJ (who is driving; it’s his car) turns on his left turn signal, then veers to the right, trying to shake them. At the same time, Boop-Boop throws a veil over the whole car, and PJ kills the engine. The other car goes speeding by, losing them. Boop-Boop continues to scry their car, and sees that they soon pull over, realizing they’ve lost their quarry.

The group knows that they have precious little time before the hunt begins again, and they try to decide what to do, but . . .

. . . they open their eyes. They are each somewhere safe, and familiar. It is three days before Halloween, and none of this has happened yet. They are each, however, armed with foreknowledge, a glimpse of a future that may come to pass.

To be continued . . .

Running the Game

The above represents about the first twenty or thirty minutes of play of our first session of The Dresden Files RPG. We started with four fairly different characters. PJ O’Toole is a vanilla mortal, Debra is a minor practitioner (she had the Ritual power initially, but at the end of the session traded it in for Thaumaturgy), Boop-Boop is a full-on fairie with a whole host of supernatural powers, and Percy is a shapeshifter who can transform into a bat.

I decided I wanted to catch everyone’s attention right from the beginning, so I started in media res, with the car chase. I told them they were running from someone, and asked them who they were running from. PJ’s player, Sean, immediately said “the government”, and everyone else agreed. I then held up a FATE point and asked whose fault it was, and why. Again, Sean volunteered, saying that they were being chased because he had photographic evidence of the mayor turning into a werewolf. He got the FATE point, and that became true.

This led to a nice little exchange between Sean (PJ) and Mike (Percy), where Percy was trying to convince PJ to give him his camera’s memory card (he wanted the photos for his own reasons), and Sean refusing. Sean wound up taking the memory card out of the camera and hiding it in his watch’s band (which Percy, being very observant, saw). He then gave Percy his camera, and Percy promptly threw it out the window.

I had initially planned on an extended chase scene, but the players threw me a curveball. PJ’s fake to the right would have been easy enough to handle, but Denise (Boop-Boop) decided to veil the entire car, which ended the chase pretty quickly. It was clever, though, so I let it happen. It allowed me to put the next part of my opening into play a little more quickly: the flashback.

The idea was that the whole chase scene was a vision of a possible future. The PCs all now had that knowledge, but they didn’t know how they’d get to that point. It’s now up to them to get to that point, and up to me to nudge them in the right direction. To help facilitate that, I placed an aspect (Threads of Fate) on the whole city that I can compel to get them to go in the right direction.

What’s nice, though, is that, in the entire first session, I didn’t have to compel it once. The players are doing a pretty good job of getting there on their own. More on that in a future post.

In our last update, the group had found and entered a mysterious tower full of badders and porkers, reputedly the source of the defective robots plaguing the outpost of Kin.

After dealing with the yexil and the guard-badders upon entering the tower, the party hunkered down to rest for a bit. His Grace skinned the yexil, making a fur coat and hat from its pelt. The Inevitable piled a bunch of junk against the door leading deeper into the tower in an attempt to fortify their position while they rested. However, he had grown his own fur coat (a shaggy yeti pelt), and his furry hands kept getting in the way. Once the group had rested up, they removed the makeshift barricade and continued down the stairs, into the tower.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they saw a pair of badders crouched behind an overturned table, trying (unsuccessfully) to remain hidden. The party attacked the two badders, taking one out quickly and badly injuring the other. Two more badders–these ones armed with flails–came from around the corner, though, and quickly dropped Qro7t with their flails and psychic emanations. The Shroom activated his laser hound (a mechanical device with a faulty targeting system), which joined the fray. Man Bush crashed through a side door to outflank the badders, and found a large machine occupying the center of the room. On the other side of the machine was an iron cage containing three vacant-eyed humans, two women and a man. They seemed strangely oblivious to the battle around them.

Man Bush quickly figured out that the machine was generating harmful psychic emanations, but was also healing the badders. Once the party had taken care of the badders (and revived Qro7t), they focused on disabling the machine by hitting it with large objects. They tried to get the attention of the caged humans, but after they were unsuccessful, Sparx theorized that perhaps the machine had left them in a vegetative state. Sparx, The Inevitable, and His Grace pooled their knowledge about Stupendico Robotics (whose facility they were in) and the machine in front of them, and determined that the machine had originally been used to read peoples’ minds, but had been subverted by the badders. They got to work repairing the machine, and successfully reversed its harmful effects; hopefully, while they were exploring the rest of the facility, it would help the caged humans recover.

The party entered a natural cavern, and Qro7t sneaked forward to scout the area. Finding nothing, he ventured further, only to stumble upon the lair of a group of blood birds and gamma moths. Using psychic powers recently gained, the party managed to instill terror into one of the blood birds, and force another blood bird to attack one of the moths. Things, however, got worse.

The gamma moths’ radiation beams proved nearly lethal, dropping Qro7t (again) and The Shroom, and badly injuring Man Bush. The birds, on the other hand, proved to be virtually no threat at all. Between The Inevitable’s gunplay, His Grace’s tending to the wounded (with squirrel jerky and a sort of squirrel mash rubbed on The Shroom’s feet), and Man Bush finding a cache of ammo for his sniper rifle, the party was able to defeat the creatures and revive their wounded.

Hunkering down in the caves, the party rested before venturing down, deeper into the cavern complex.

I ran my first session of Gamma World last night, and it was great fun.

The Party

• Lord Marquis Dr. Reginald Von Buddmunchen IX, Esq., PhD (or just ‘milord’ or ‘His Grace’), a pyrokinetic doppleganger. He wielded a canoe paddle and a bag of squirrels with great aplomb, and had a penchant for creating fiery duplicates of himself and sending them after people.
• The Inevitable, a prescient gunslinger. He was pretty effective with those six-guns, and he wasn’t afraid to mix it up with fisticuffs, either. He came forward as the party’s spokesperson on most cases, and did an admirable job.
• Man Bush, an exploding gravity controller. His sniper rifle was deadly, but he could do some serious damage when he blew up on people, too.
• The Shroom, a seismic fungoid. His weapon of choice was a microwave oven, and he had a mental connection to the ur-mushroom, a massive, sentient fungal entity beneath the surface of the world that he could communicate with to cause localized earthquakes.
• Qro7t, a speedster giant. He was the last survivor of a race of subterranean giants, and was the runt of the litter. Even so, he wielded a stop sign as an axe and a traffic light as a flail. The 7 is silent.
• Sparx, an electrokinetic felinoid. Agile and deadly, Sparx alternated between shocking people and scratching their eyes out, and she flung poisoned ice cubes at people when they were too far away.

The Story
As the sun rose, the group traveled down the river Shi-Yen toward the small outpost of Kin. Their ultimate goal was Far-Go, a place where mutants like them could find acceptance, safety, and peace. Before leaving Kin for Far-Go, though, they would need to barter for supplies: food and gasoline for their vehicles.

They were greeted at the docks by Ulysses, a man wearing camouflage fatigues and a bowler hat, with a shotgun resting on his shoulder. He explained that he was Kin’s constable; he was in charge of maintaining the outpost’s defenses and keeping troublemakers out. The Inevitable told him that they did not seek trouble, and that Far-Go was their destination; however, they would need supplies before continuing their journey.

Ulysses offered them a trade: help them with a security problem, and they could walk away with all the food, gas, and ammo they needed. The group accepted, and asked what the problem was.

Kin, it seemed, was having a robot problem. Every day at noon, like clockwork, a robot would arrive from the foothills to the south. Most of these robots just shook and exploded, but a few shot rockets at the walls of the outpost, damaging them. They presented a possible risk, and their presence did not bode well for the outpost.

The Inevitable, Qro7t, and Man Bush scaled the walls and waited for a robot to show up, while the others occupied themselves. Eventually a robot did appear, and exploded just as Ulysses had said it would. His Grace searched the wreckage of the robot and found, improbably, a tin of sardines; he discussed the benefits of a diet rich in canned fish with his invisible manservent, Theobold. Theobold, of course, agreed.

The group followed the path of the robot for a few hours, into the foothills, until they came to a tower. The tower was clearly guarded by humanoids of some sort, though they couldn’t tell what they were facing. The approached cautiously, but were spotted by the badders (humanoid badgers with cruel tendencies) and porkers (humanoid pigs who like to ride motorcycles and fight).

One of the badders told them to leave, that the Iron King did not suffer intruders and had given them leave to kill trespassers. The Inevitable stepped forward and, drawing on the High Speech, told them to run, or face the consequences. The badders and porkers did not run, but were visibly shaken, and the group was able to get the drop on them.

A quick battle ensued. Man Bush sniped at badders from a distance, while Sparx and Qor7t engaged porkers in melee combat. The Inevitable gunned another porker down. His Grace sent flaming squirrels after the assailants, and when one of them shot him with a crossbow, he immediately manifested a flaming duplicate of himself; it was weeping uncontrollably. Soon after, it ran and embraced a badder, immolating it. The fight was quick and brutal.

The party searched the corpses of the fallen and the surrounding area. They found a number of intact items that they could use or trade, as well as some powerful Omega Tech. They proceeded to the door of the tower; Qro7t kicked it in.

Inside were two raised platforms, upon which were more badders with crossbows at the ready. At the end of the room was a raised aerie, and in that aerie was a yexil (a winged lion with mandibles) chewing on a suit jacket. The badders opened fire.

Several people focused fire on the Yexil, causing it significant injury; it returned fire with lasers from its eyes, then swooped down to attack in melee. The badders fired crossbow bolts at the party, and two more burst out of a side room.

The Shroom caused a minor earthquake that toppled one of the raised platforms, bringing the badder on it down to his level so he could crush it with his microwave. Qro7t followed suit, smashing the other platform with his stop sign axe. Man Bush’s head-mounted laser (a powerful piece of Omega Tech he had found) injured the yexil severely, and His Grace finished it off with a force pike to the mouth, pulling a blazer out when he retracted his hand.

The badders just outside the melee were causing problems for the group, so Man Bush ran over to them and exploded, severely injuring a pair of them. He was soon overcome by his own wounds, though, and rendered unconscious. The rest of the party made short work of the badders, though, and revived Man Bush. They searched the area and found more valuable junk, as well as a fully-loaded pistol and some more Omega Tech.

Inside the badders’ baracks, they found a notice, which verified that this was source of the defective robots. Knowledge (and heavy ordnance) in hand, they continued into the tower.

Thoughts
Gamma World has a reputation for zaniness, and it’s well deserved. Even though the character generation is mostly random, it provides a lot of fuel for creativity when you’re figuring out how to play and describe your character. My players did a great job coming up with cool schticks.

Something interesting that I noticed is that basic attacks are used a lot more in Gamma World than they are in D&D. At-will powers are often very situational (such as Man Bush’s ability to explode, or Qro7t’s Brickbat power), which means that basic attacks are what you often fall back on. Unlike D&D, however, it’s likely that you’ll be good at using your basic attack, because your weapons are going to be keyed to one of four different ability scores: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, or Intelligence. It’s likely that at least one of those will be at least 16, so you’ll probably have a good basic attack to use.

I also noticed that people were rarely simply using a power without describing what they were doing. Gamma World seems to encourage creative descriptions, and the players at my table seemed to want to out-do each other with the wackiness of their attacks. Even when His Grace used his ranged basic attack, he described it as throwing a squirrel, which set itself on fire mid-flight.

Finally, Gamma World works really well with a rule called the Kill Shot (I didn’t make it up, but I forget where I got the idea). The idea is that occasionally, when players kill an enemy, I allow them to describe what it looks like. I got some really creative descriptions of enemy deaths, including pulling a blazer out of the yexil’s mouth.